The Office of Management and Budget has the ability to turn on and off spending within the executive branch. It has all the regulations coming through it to assess whether something is good or bad, or could be done a different way, and what does the president think. And then all of government execution. It s the nerve center of the federal government, particularly the Executive Branch, and it s the president's most important tool to dealing with the bureaucracy and the administrative state. In this episode, former OMB Director John Bolton talks about his time at OMB and why he thinks the office should be re-named OMB. He also talks about what it s like to run OMB, why it s important to have a chief financial officer, and how to deal with a bureaucracy that doesn t get on board with your agenda. And he talks about how important it is for the president to have someone in charge who can bring them to heel and make sure they do what the president wants them to do. This episode is brought to you by Humber River Health, a Canadian non-profit organization that helps keep health care innovations alive and thriving. Donate at HumberRiverHealthFoundation.ca/HealthyLives to help us innovate to keep our health care alive and keep our patients safe and free. Thanks to our sponsor, Humberriverhealth.ca. This episode was produced and edited by Tucker Carlson and is produced by Alex Blumberg and his team at Tuckercarlson Media. The opinions stated in this episode are our own, not those of our companies, and do not necessarily those of the companies mentioned in the show. We do not own the rights to any of the music used in the music, music, or any of our songs used in this piece. or any other of our work. Thank you for all the work done by our songs, and we are not affiliated with any other artists, unless otherwise stated in the song or other third parties. If you'd like to support our work, please reach out to us directly, we are working with us directly through our website or to us via our marketing, or through our social media or social media, we thank you. . We thank you for your support and support us, we really appreciate the work you do so much, we appreciate all the support, and the support we get back and appreciate all of our efforts. Thank you, thank you, it really means a lot.
00:00:30.000So you ran OMB before, and you don't have to comment on this.
00:00:35.080It sounds like you are very likely to run OMB again.
00:00:38.760Tell us what OMB is for those who aren't from Washington, what it does and what you would do with it.
00:00:47.160So OMB is the nerve center of the federal government, particularly the executive branch.
00:00:51.920So it has the ability to turn on and off any spending within the Office of Management and Budget.
00:00:57.540Office of Management and Budget has the ability to turn off the spending that's going on at the agencies.
00:01:02.260It has all the regulations coming through it to assess whether it's good or bad or too expensive or could be done a different way or what does the president think.
00:01:14.640So anytime you have cabinet executive branches conflicting with each other or working together on something, for instance, you know, the wall.
00:01:23.400The president wanted to fund the wall.
00:01:24.800We at OMB gave him a plan to be able to go and fund the wall through money that was the Department of Defense and to use that because Congress wouldn't give him the ordinary money at the Department of Homeland Security.
00:01:37.720So it really is presidents use OMB to tame the bureaucracy, the administrative state.
00:03:16.620You will be in a situation where you will have, at best, really awesome cabinet secretaries who are dealing on, sitting on top of massive bureaucracies that largely don't do what they tell them to do.
00:03:30.220And you have to have statutory tools at your disposal that force that bureaucracy from the White House to get in line.
00:03:39.060And that is really the main thing that OMB can accomplish in addition to what everyone would think of from a budget office, which is, yeah, you cut spending, you figure out how to deal with your fiscal finances and all of that.
00:04:13.380Because it's a corrupt country and we didn't know how it was going to be spent.
00:04:16.620It's totally normal policy process to go through that the people lost their minds about.
00:04:21.480But the bureaucracy was literally just ignoring it.
00:04:25.120And quite frankly, his political appointees, like John Bolton, were ignoring him as well.
00:04:30.380And what we then did at OMB was I had been personally told, look, you know, I want the money cut off until we can figure out where it's going.
00:06:05.940And if you would have seen Woodrow Wilson bemoan our constitutional system, he would have wanted constitutional amendments.
00:06:11.920The left stopped talking about constitutional amendments because they innovated to this new fourth branch, which is totally different than anything the founders would have ever understood.
00:06:22.540The notion of independent agencies that think of and Congress has designed them to be divorced from the president.
00:06:29.420But even the notion of, like, this is – we're supposed to be technocrats and experts, and we don't have to listen to what you say.
00:06:38.000We work for – and I caught this, Tucker.
00:06:40.860People would say, well, we work for the office of the president.
00:06:56.620They have no legitimate authority in the Constitution.
00:06:58.880But they are part of this fourth branch that I still believe reports in large measure to congressional leadership and the K Street interest, right?
00:07:10.200You have very powerful interests that direct them to keep going in the direction that they want them to go.
00:07:17.020It's why these bills are written in such a way that they are – anything – you could read anything into them, right?
00:07:22.920When Nancy Pelosi says, we're going to find out what the bill says, she wasn't actually being inaccurate.
00:07:31.100They pass bills, and then they let the experts fill them in.
00:07:34.820But over the phone, they put massive pressure on them to go along with their directions and their ends.
00:07:42.020And lo and behold, you get conservatives, Republicans that take office, and then you find that it's incredibly difficult to wield power to get them – to deal with all of that muscle memory to get them to do what you want.
00:07:55.420And so you've got to have statutory authority that a president kind of steps in and says, I am fully aware of where I sit in the Constitution.
00:08:03.900I am fully aware of the tools at my disposal, and I'm going to use them on behalf of the American people because I just want a massive agenda-setting election, and I'm going to go do what I said I would do.
00:08:19.880And when they say we're going to preserve democracy, we know that they have been meaning – all they want to do is preserve their kind of amorphous oligarchy administrative deep state.
00:08:30.680I don't think that's an overstatement at all.
00:08:33.520I mean, I just think – I don't even see the counterargument against what you just said.
00:08:36.640So let's just – if you don't mind walking us through what happened in the example that you gave Ukraine.
00:08:41.980So you just said the president comes into office in 2017 and says, why are we sending all this money into Ukraine?
00:09:09.980And I think one of the things you'll see in this next Trump term is policy officials, his political appointees that are not looking to get out of what he has clearly told them to do, right?
00:09:31.620So, for instance, my staff was part of what we call the policy process, right, where you would go and you defend and you would articulate what you're trying to accomplish.
00:09:43.160And we had put the hold on the Ukraine funding, and my guy goes to all of these meetings, and he's like literally the only one in the room that wants to do what the president has asked him to do.
00:09:54.520Everyone's kind of just ganging up on him.
00:09:57.340And that is – think of that often for all of our political appointees.
00:10:02.680They are surrounded by people that have no idea about what the reasons and the agenda that the president has been put in office.
00:10:11.880And they're just bombarded with reasons of how can you do this?
00:10:20.460And so you have to cut through all of that and to have the courage of your convictions and, quite frankly, Tucker, the know-how to know – to have read the law.
00:10:31.240To get in the granular details yourselves, to not be staffed by the people working for you.
00:10:38.280This notion that you can just come in and preside is not true.
00:10:41.100You have to be in the weeds and to drive these agencies to be able to fix where we have – the undergrowth and the muscle memory that we've had for decades.
00:10:53.360So why can't you just – so if the president says, again, to refer to your example, I don't think we should be funding Ukraine.
00:11:03.220If Congress wants to fund Ukraine, they can go ahead and do that.
00:11:05.680But the agencies are not going to fund Ukraine.
00:11:07.000So why wouldn't you just fire the people who disobey, who try to subvert democracy?
00:11:15.040You've got to know how to fire them, and there are tools to do that.
00:11:18.960And the president was innovating in that space himself with what's called Schedule F of essentially saying, if you work for me in your policy, a career official, think your attorneys who are writing regulations, then we're going to create a new classification for you.
00:11:34.560And you are going to be what most of the country is, which is at-will employee.
00:11:39.140I don't understand a system where a president, any president, Obama, Biden, Donald Trump, comes in and doesn't have control of the executive branch because constitutionally he does have – so how come you can't fire them?
00:11:58.400Why is it just not as simple as saying you're fired?
00:14:33.340They can execute under withering enemy fire.
00:14:36.300They are up to speed and they are no nonsense in their own ability to know what must be done.
00:14:42.540And they are unbelievably committed to the president and his agenda and believe – and truly believe in their bones that they're not there for their own agenda.
00:14:51.960They're there for what President Trump was elected to do.
00:14:55.920And so his commander's intent matters a great deal.
00:14:59.900And that's the view that I always had, Tucker, is how do I get in the minds of the president to think through what is he trying to accomplish?
00:15:06.180And then I'm going to go figure out how to do it.
00:15:09.360Yeah, because once again, he is the authority and no one else does because only he was elected.
00:15:14.260And I just – I'm fixated on this question of like where do career bureaucrats think they derive the authority to make these decisions?
00:15:22.560I think it's very – no one ever asked that question in D.C.
00:15:25.600You're considered a freak if you do, but I think it's a key question.
00:15:28.740So one of the problems that you had last time was the media.
00:15:32.180Explain how that works, how the media works in conjunction with the permanent state and the Congress to thwart the president.
00:15:38.180Well, I think number one, they are always framing narratives and messages that both are lies and are also designed to destabilize the Republicans in control who want to be for however that narrative is being framed.
00:15:57.680You used one already with democracy, right?
00:15:59.740If you're not aware that when they say democracy, they mean oligarchy, you're like, I don't want to be anti-democratic, right?
00:16:07.000The whole point is preserving democracy.
00:16:09.880And if you have a plan to deal with the administrative state and then they frame it as authoritarian, you don't want a cast of your own allies saying, I don't want to be anti-authoritarian.
00:16:20.560We saw this in COVID, right, where if they define something as anti-science or anti-public health, it causes our political appointees to just completely wilt, right?
00:16:34.240And so that's, I think, the beauty of President Trump is he's kind of immune to these media-generated narratives that conflict with common sense reality.
00:16:43.740That, I think, is the main one because that is controlling the skies from a military standpoint, right?
00:16:50.780Like that is their ability to shape the conversation in such a way that it makes it very hard.
00:16:57.320Number two, they're obviously working in conjunction with leakers and individuals with know-how to know, you know, when a hold has been put on Ukraine to be able to send that and have it explode in the public arena.
00:17:44.700I mean, that was the basis of my question.
00:17:46.020I do think things have changed, right?
00:17:47.540I mean, if you still care what the New York Times or Washington Post say or Ken Delaney did NBC News, like, I hope you're not working there.
00:18:02.520The whole ballgame has shifted, right?
00:18:05.440Like, I don't even know why you would do many of these interviews at all because if you can't get, you know, you've got to be able to get your words out without just complete combativeness.
00:18:17.020And I think the best example is, remember, the Caitlin Collins interview with President Trump.
00:18:23.240I mean, it's just constant interrupting and misuse of, you know, lies, actually.
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00:23:29.320It does seem, I'm going to ask you about the intel agencies, it does seem like one of the main vectors of control is briefings.
00:23:38.480And the number of people I've spoken to, Congress, Executive Branch, are like, oh, no, no, no, if you only got the briefing, I think I live there too long.
00:24:01.960And so, you know, I think I came away with the similar skepticism of these briefings and the information and the overclassification in the system.
00:25:00.840And honestly, I think that's the biggest thing that I was bemoaning is the extent to which rigorous analysis that I thought would be there wasn't there.
00:25:11.680What do you mean by rigorous analysis?
00:25:13.780I don't expect people to agree with me constantly.
00:25:17.480I want well-prepared memos that have a conviction to them and then support them.
00:25:26.180It's not – these are not, like, I'm going to plant the flag and then we can just say, okay, who's right, who's that, who has better support?
00:25:34.780It's like I'm going to give the blob an exercise to report on something, and the blob is going to kind of, like, all – it's not a Google spreadsheet, but it's going to all be, you know, an interactive Google spreadsheet to just spit out something that is a consensus document.
00:25:51.860And you're reading this thing and you're like, this makes no real claims other than to affirm the narrative that we just talked about, right?
00:25:59.460So what's the point other than to preserve the status quo?
00:26:02.420At that point, the point is just to know what the intelligence community is writing on because you're not going to learn anything from it.
00:26:07.840I talked to someone recently in the last few days who works in the intel community, the IC, who is saying that you can see people who come to Washington for the first time in high positions and other branch before and after their briefings.
00:27:08.660And so that has killed us on our side of the aisle, the conservative side, to say we don't have people that are driving policy and bringing their own opinions and their own history.
00:27:20.840And so they are susceptible to feeling like – and they still believe that these people have an authoritative stance on things.
00:27:31.800And they don't have enough skepticism that, in fact, you know, there's no – the emperor has no clothes, right?
00:27:38.560And that is the – and you've got to bring that perspective.
00:27:42.300They're weak inside is what you're saying, a lot of these people.
00:27:45.220I do think that's – I do think that's the case.
00:27:47.500You know, and I – you know, from the standpoint of the – I see the other thing that they would do is they would keep you from being briefed, right?
00:27:54.840The brief – and we've already discussed of what the brief is and sometimes, like, what President Trump is saying, I'm not going to necessarily get the brief, right?
00:28:03.420But I would find that I wasn't read into certain things until they needed my signature.
00:28:10.420So once they needed some reason to get my signature, then all of a sudden I get this brief, right?
00:28:15.940And it was – that's not the way it should be.
00:28:18.720If you're trying to provide oversight and accountability, you need – you don't know what you don't know.
00:28:24.200And so you have to be able to be – have the whole entire landscape of things that you could – oh, that's interesting.
00:28:34.260We should do something – President Trump wouldn't like that.
00:28:37.280And I find that was very restrictive unless they needed me.
00:28:40.180And so I basically said, look, I'm not going to – you are not getting my signature unless you get me briefed up.
00:28:46.600And I want access to all of these things that I need to be able to provide oversight for the federal government.
00:28:53.240And one of the things that we did, Tucker, is that since the rise of OMB, that ability to turn funding on and off, had always been done by a career individual, not a political appointee.
00:29:32.800And if you don't know and have that thesis that says this is what must be done, you could be the most incredible conservative in the world.
00:29:40.960You could be the most policy-consistent person with the president.
00:29:45.080But you don't know how to put your hand in the glove and use that agency for the president's behalf.
00:29:52.740The president's not going to be able to be well-served at that agency.
00:29:56.360I saw David Ignatius, who is a longtime water carrier for the CIA.
00:30:01.420I don't know if they're paying him, but they should be because he does their bidding and has for decades at the Washington Post.
00:30:06.500And I heard him saying yesterday that we can't have Tulsi Gabbard at DNI, Director of National Intelligence, because it will cause, quote, chaos, because the intel community doesn't like her.
00:30:17.600And basically, he's making the argument that we should not have Sillian control of these agencies because the agencies won't like it.
00:30:56.480You know, as to what's, what, what just is normal, good government behind the scenes, managing, pushing, pushing through whatever, I think it can be done very wisely and done in a way that, you know, anyone who had a bird's eye view into that would be able to say, that's exactly what we put this administration into office.
00:31:19.260But, yeah, you're going to have to kick over people's paradigms, you're going to have to kick over people's turfs, you're going to have to change people's understanding of things that they have invested their whole life into a view of the world.
00:31:32.280And none of this is, their views of the world aren't, isn't rooted in the Constitution, in some cases, any, you know, version of the facts.
00:31:41.060But you're going to, that's going to cause a lot of turmoil within these bureaucracies, and you've got to fight through it.
00:31:47.120And then they're going to overlay the aspect of, oh, my gosh, you guys are racist, and, you know, you guys don't care about us as people.
00:31:54.540You know, you're going to have to deal with that, too, right?
00:31:57.460They are, you know, one of the arguments that they're using in the press against me right now, as they say, he called for trauma within the bureaucracies.
00:32:06.420Yeah, I called for trauma within the bureaucracies.
00:32:08.980The bureaucracies hate the American people.
00:32:11.480They want to put a 77-year-old, and did, a 77-year-old Navy veteran in jail for 18 months for building four ponds on his ranch to fight wildfires.
00:32:29.620And so, yeah, we – I would want to provide trauma against that bureaucracy in a way that frees the American people from the people that have assumed the type of power that the Constitution and no law, no public debate ever gave them.
00:32:45.740Does that mean we dislike everyone working at federal agencies and want them to have a bad life?
00:32:51.380There's a lot of people there who have come to serve and do great public service, and we want to affirm that, and we want to turn over the bureaucracies that are traumatizing the American people.
00:33:02.180Yeah, and the outcomes are terrible, and they're terrible because it's corrupt.
00:33:06.040And the D.C. metro area is the richest in the country, and they don't make anything.
00:33:10.520So it's just like that's the most obvious marker for corruption I can imagine.
00:33:15.740Tell us about what congressional confirmation hearings are going to look like for Trump's appointees.
00:33:24.800They're going to be exhilarating if you have the right approach, Tom.
00:33:32.460But they'll – they're going to come at everything we've got, right, or everything they've got with what they are able to put someone in the dock,
00:33:43.220and that individual is going to have to face the balance of wanting to defend everything that they have done in life and belief.
00:33:52.980And at the same time, you're – the thing that's a little hard about it is you're no longer yourself, right?
00:33:59.400You are yourself, but you are also going to do a job for a person.
00:34:02.820So what I think about a particular issue doesn't mean as much as what the president thinks about something like that.
00:34:10.260And so it is a different thing than coming on and doing an interview about what your viewpoints are on a particular issue.
00:34:17.200No, that's exactly – it's not a cable news hit.
00:34:20.160So – but I think – look, I have – I've had experience – you know, Bernie Sanders went after me very, very hard in my first confirmation hearing as deputy OMB for essentially believing in John 3.16.
00:34:38.160Wait, he hit you – he attacked you on the basis of your religious belief?
00:34:41.560He said I was a bigot and I should not serve in the federal government because of my Christian faith and believing something that essentially comes down to what's articulated at sports games with John 3.16.
00:34:52.500And that was – most – who's the bigot?
00:35:09.200And it will be the most freeing thing in the world.
00:35:11.100You will come at – through the end of a process like that and you will – I find it to be, at that point, exhilarating because it prepares you to take on enemy fire.
00:35:21.160Where are they going to – are you afraid they've been calling you a bigot, racist, Christian nationalist, authoritarian?
00:35:27.540If you are not afraid of these attacks and you give them no credence, no credibility, then you will be able to get through these things.
00:35:37.880You will be able to convince enough senators and you'll be able to serve – and you'll be able to serve more effectively.
00:35:45.000But the bright lights will be on in these confirmation hearings.
00:35:48.940So how much of it is, like, theatrical and how much of it is real?
00:35:53.960Like, so you go into a hearing like that, your confirmation hearing, do you know the outcome at the beginning?
00:35:59.860Or do you think that votes really change based on the testimony of nominees?
00:36:03.600I don't think most votes change at all.
00:36:05.960I think that, you know, you may have one or two anomaly senators that are trying to – you know, have you answered something to their satisfaction?
00:36:13.140Or are they trying to get a feel for you that they haven't otherwise?
00:36:17.680But I think increasingly in the partisan world that we live in, the Democrats are voting no.
00:36:24.980And it's a matter of making sure you've convinced and you've brought in the –
00:36:29.120So you get – I mean, what's interesting –
00:36:32.980But the Republicans are always voting for the – I mean, Lindsey Graham will vote for any Democrat.
00:36:37.240Sorry, I'm not going to put you in an uncomfortable situation, but there are plenty of Republican senators who are liberal Democrats effectively.
00:36:44.320And they vote for all kinds of nominees.
00:36:46.420But you don't see that on the other side.
00:36:49.600And they have an appreciation that they have to attack our people at every level because they know that every level is the stepping stone for –
00:37:14.620And next thing you know, Mick goes to the chief of staff.
00:37:17.540And so I have an opportunity to serve as deputy – as director.
00:37:19.900And so that is – they understand government and they understand the career path that is opening for people.
00:37:29.180And they – when they sense – and it's not always the case – but when they sense that this is a committed conservative, it's a partisan line down the road.
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00:40:26.200Isn't it the role of Republican leaders, particularly now, since Trump won the majority of the popular vote, overwhelming majority of electoral votes, House and Senate are Republican, majority of state houses, majority of government ships.
00:40:52.720I have high hopes that people are seeing what Trump just accomplished and are going to be pulling the oars to get things done as soon as possible.
00:41:34.160It is a specific provision in the Constitution to be able to allow a president, if he has to stand up in administration quickly and he's dealing with a Senate that won't move quickly enough, to be able to install his people so that he can actually function as a government, right?
00:42:07.540He writes one – he's one of the main kind of legal luminaries on the right and ethics and public policy are one of those think tanks.
00:42:16.860And he's out there opposing the whole notion of recess appointments for whatever reason I don't know other than he thinks unseemly and not the way the –
00:42:27.300Okay, so don't – I mean this is a whole separate question and it's a broad brush, but in general, conservative think tanks, with some exceptions, are not conservative.
00:42:37.540They're tools of the left and sort of repositories have broke down people with no other job prospects.
00:42:43.640Why would anyone pay attention to them?
00:42:45.940I think they should increasingly not be.
00:42:48.220Yeah, and by the way, there are some good ones that I –
00:42:50.020You know, I love Kevin Roberts and Heritage and there are good people in some think tanks for sure.
00:42:54.380But in general, it's like the world of Jonah Goldberg.
00:43:15.860So – and I think that's – but my point is the extent to which people have opposed Trump and the America First agenda I think ultimately is a loss of power because they didn't get to set the agenda.
00:43:31.100They don't get to kind of say, oh, this offends my sensibility anymore.
00:44:05.760That's one of the reasons we just put out a five-page paper.
00:44:09.180We'll put out a 40-page paper next as to this is the constitutional grounds for recess appointments of – we haven't – President Trump hasn't decided to do it.
00:44:17.160But if he does, he will be in the same vein as our founders.
00:44:20.060It's a little weird, and again, you haven't – well, as of right now, so it's November 18th, you've not been nominated.
00:44:32.680So I don't want to put you in an awkward spot because if you are, you're going to have to deal with this.
00:44:36.500But why would Mitch McConnell, still the Senate leader of Republicans, why would he say we're not doing recess appointments?
00:44:44.800Again, I can't – I haven't spoken to Senator McConnell on it.
00:44:48.140But my guess is that the Senate is going to want to know the argument, and they probably have been told and may have been told, and I'm going to just keep it as positive as possible, that this is inappropriate.
00:45:12.020And then if you win the argument and then people are like, no, we don't want to do this, then it's a different matter, right?
00:45:17.300It's like – it just kind of reveals that they're not actually on board with those particular nominees going into office, and that's a different issue.
00:45:28.500So I think that we don't know yet to whether – will the Senate have an issue?
00:45:34.220I mean, to some extent, the Senate knows it has an issue because they couldn't move these nominees fast enough in the first term because the Democrats were filibustering everyone, right?
00:45:43.700And so – and by the way, you know, a lot of these hearings and – you read the history books and people got approved by the Senate in a day.
00:45:52.440You know, like the system wasn't meant to be this slow, and it has been bogged down and slowed down.
00:45:58.740And we'll see, you know, Senator Thune, Majority Leader Thune will have a chance to put his own imprint on the Senate, and I want to see how he does.
00:46:07.160Yeah, I've got, you know, high expectations, low hopes, hope I'm wrong.
00:46:13.340It'd be one thing if the outcome was positive, if the country was thriving.
00:46:17.320You know, you'd say, okay, the system's dysfunctional, but you don't really need a lot of change right now, so that's fine.
00:46:21.400But the outcome is not positive at all.
00:46:23.100It's total destruction of the country we grew up in, so got to fix it.
00:46:26.600Why would you want to enter back into this?
00:46:29.120Well, you know, I've always said the last four years I would never want to miss out on another chance to be at the president's side.
00:46:36.160I find in him to be someone who's so uniquely situated for the moment.
00:46:41.980And you go back – and I've done some reading on this.
00:46:45.040You go back and read some of the Federalist Papers, and they actually designed the system for someone like him,
00:46:50.780whose – his interests would align with the country's interests to such an extent to which it actually works.
00:47:01.340Like, separation of powers is meant to have strong, opinionated, convictional leadership that go as fast as they can and hard as they can in their direction,
00:47:13.740and for the system to then have true separation of powers, right?
00:47:18.880An example of that is what he's proposing on recess appointments.
00:47:23.600If the Constitution allows you to do it, why wouldn't you do it if it's in your interest?
00:47:27.800And then let's see what Congress does in response to that.
00:47:32.640It's not like this kind of fake fourth branch administrative state where none of it works,
00:47:38.360and it's all kind of cartel behind the scene where all you get is kind of different parts of each of the branch coming together almost as a blob.
00:47:48.280And I think he's so unique in terms of being a historical transformative person that we can actually save the country,
00:47:57.740and that's really what it comes down to.
00:49:00.080We're here because God has given us a particular purpose for a particular time, and it's incumbent us to be responsible with those moments that we're given.
00:49:08.360So I don't know what the future holds.
00:49:09.800I don't know if I serve or if I continue at my center to be championing the ideas that he's working on.
00:49:15.860I'm happy with both of those scenarios.
00:49:18.720But it's incumbent on us to give everything we can to be successful in this moment because I don't think we will get another moment like this.
00:49:28.420And if you doubt how serious the opposition is to the public, not just to Trump, but to the majority of the country that voted for Trump, they're trying to leave him with World War III on the way out.
00:49:38.720I can't imagine a more desperate or evil thing for Tony Blinken, who I think is desperate and evil, in my view, to do.
00:50:18.160I mean, these are the same people that have weaponized the Department of Justice, have the lawfare.
00:50:24.280I have a colleague of mine, Jeff Clark, who's, you know, has – they're trying to disbar him because of the care that he had on behalf of the president to deal with voter integrity and election fraud after 2020.
00:50:36.380And so the system has thrown everything at the warriors that are on the field.
00:50:44.920I mean, why is all of this stuff being thrown at him slanderously?
00:50:50.200Can I just say, I thought – I'm sorry to digress, but since you mentioned Gaetz, we don't accuse – look, DOJ leaked that he was a child sex trafficker, okay?
00:51:03.780So at that point, they have a moral, I would say, legal obligation to charge them for child sex trafficking and prove it in court.
00:51:13.640They leaked that – Matt Gaetz, a guy they didn't like whose views were a threat to them, is a child sex trafficker.
00:51:21.280Then they just let it hang in the air and all their repulsive little minions like Joe Scarborough, like, he's a child sex trafficker.
00:51:27.020You want to live in a world where the secret police can just slander you through the media?
00:51:31.560I read in my Bible this morning that you don't believe something unless two or three people are witnesses and say – and there is none of that.
00:51:40.780In fact, the weaponized Department of Justice said we don't have the proof to pursue these allegations.
00:52:24.880Why do we – why does our side – why does Republican congressmen, Republican senators believe that where there must be smoke, there must be fire?
00:52:34.780They're only because this person has been a confrontational, courageous, convictional leader in a true generational talent, I might add.
00:55:05.460I'll stop with my stupid editorial comments.
00:55:07.160You just go through the top three or four things that you think this incoming administration, which has a rare mandate, should achieve in order.
00:55:16.320I believe that there's a lot of policy issues downstream, the border, inflation, wars across the world.
00:55:25.600All of them are downstream of one reality, and that is we don't – the American people currently are not in control of their government, and the president hasn't been either.
00:55:40.160We have to solve the woke and the weaponized bureaucracy and have the president take control of the executive branch.
00:55:46.640So my belief, or anyone who wants to listen, is that you have to – the president has to move executively as fast and as aggressively as possible with a radical constitutional perspective to be able to dismantle that bureaucracy in their power centers.
00:56:05.920And I think there are a couple of ways to do it.
00:56:08.000Number one is going after the whole notion of independence.
00:56:13.980Congress may have viewed them as such, SEC or the FCC, CFPB, the whole alphabet soup.
00:56:21.120But that is not something that the Constitution understands.
00:56:25.220So there may be different strategies with each one of them about how you dismantle them, but as an administration, the whole notion of an independent agency should be thrown out, particularly with the Department of Justice, in which there's literally no law.
00:56:39.580All it is is precedent from the Watergate era that the attorney general and those lawyers don't work for the president.
00:57:59.380I can't look at the Constitution and the massive decades-long decisions that they have made totally undemocratic and see that that is a place where there deserves to be an exception for –
00:58:15.200I don't even understand who controls the Fed.
00:58:18.020I mean, and where does their authority come from?
00:59:02.040The issue is like the call to action is against the Fed.
00:59:05.820Well, sorry, you're kind of out of luck.
00:59:08.060Yeah, what's the lever we would use to influence the Fed?
00:59:10.740And so they have existed with this notion that they have this priestly ability to make decisions.
00:59:19.500And in fact, I don't actually think they're that good at it.
00:59:22.840I think people like President Trump are in fact better at it.
00:59:26.260And there's no reason that they should be exempt from the normal democratic process.
00:59:33.300Listen, if Congress wants to come along and pass rules that says, you know, this is how we want the money supply to go, all of that is in their purview.
00:59:40.420But I think, you know, this is not some exception to the rule.
00:59:44.280It doesn't mean in any way that, you know, President Trump has any interest in doing anything in this area.
00:59:49.060But I don't think it's the exception that proves the rule on independence being something that is important downstream to the CDC, the NIH.
00:59:58.600I think everything that people like Bobby Kennedy have been running on and others is about, no, you're not some priestly role.
01:00:53.340The president says, I don't think it's a good idea or I certainly can do it better or I have events that are happening overseas that cause me not to want to spend on the gunboat when I want to get some treaty done.
01:01:05.000All manner of executive decision-making that would be a part of that.
01:01:08.800In the 1970s, at the lowest moment of the presidency, Congress steps in and to some extent the courts and they pass the Impoundment Control Act, which was really the Impoundment Elimination Act.
01:01:22.740And in that – from that moment, they had destroyed separation of powers on spending and on fiscal issues.
01:01:46.520And I believe, as a budget guy, that was the original sin on why we can't do anything fiscally from that moment on.
01:01:54.520It's also why we get omnibus bills because if I only need you to get your signature and I lose all of my ability to, throughout the rest of the fiscal year, to push and pull and not spend and have – make different decisions, I just got to get your one signature.
01:02:10.860So I'm going to put everything in that one bill, thousands of pages, and I'm going to push it through at the most – the hardest time for you politically.
01:02:19.000You might have some diplomatic visit that you're going on.
01:02:22.660And so impoundment is vitally important not just to save the country fiscally.
01:02:28.080It is vitally important to be able to wrest control of the bureaucracy because when you combine Congress giving the agencies vast authority to interpret the laws that they passed, overly broad, make law essentially.
01:02:41.900Make law essentially that has no repercussions on the people who voted it, right?
01:02:45.560They don't have to vote on what the right blend is for ethanol.
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01:06:50.380You only want it from the standpoint of control if you want to be able to say,
01:06:54.240you're going to spend what I tell you you're going to spend.
01:06:56.020It is nothing more than an institutional desire to force the president to spend X amount of money.
01:07:08.340But again, it's never just about that.
01:07:10.920It's always about where they have tried to innovate from really the progressive era.
01:07:15.980Like, they wanted congressional government.
01:07:18.500That was the title of Woodrow Wilson's book.
01:07:22.420He wanted a system where essentially the agencies largely worked out of the Congress or associated with Congress,
01:07:31.720not unlike what you would see in the House of Commons, right, where their cabinet lives in their House of Parliament.
01:07:39.120And it's largely, you know, the monarch, the executive over time becomes toothless.
01:07:44.320That's essentially what they have wanted and have pursued at every turn here.
01:07:48.080And you saw that on steroids with them using the events of Watergate to promulgate new paradigms and ways of binding the constitutional system from working.
01:08:01.420So everything post-Watergate is largely, you can just make an assumption it's not the way it was meant to work.
01:08:07.480And so you have our guys defending post-Watergate paradigms instead of trying to think through,
01:08:43.980Laws that have been passed, perhaps not challenged.
01:08:47.780Laws that have been passed that give them bargaining power, that give them certain processes that have to be followed before they can be dismissed.
01:08:57.580But I think in that, and it's certainly made it very, very hard to hire and fire.
01:09:02.440The current system needs to be changed, but it also can be used to deal with these same kind of actors if you're willing to do it.
01:09:11.920And I don't want to get into all of the tools that are available.
01:09:17.280You know, one of them is the reduction in force.
01:09:20.160I mean, you can, and Vivek has talked about this.
01:09:22.780I mean, you can proceed on the basis of what is good for the efficiency and the effectiveness of the agency to be able to dramatically lower at a macro level the size of the workforce.
01:09:38.340And that will give you certain legal abilities to begin to move people off of the payroll.
01:09:46.200So there's a lot of things that are being creatively discussed in this space, but it has to be front and center.
01:09:52.480Schedule F, as President Trump has already run on, that seems to be like a day one thing.
01:09:57.080He has already instituted in his first term.
01:10:00.560We just didn't get to get it across the finish line.
01:10:02.480One, every agency has to go and categories how many of his employees are policy and therefore subject to at-will employment.
01:10:12.260I put 90% of OMB in that category because I wanted, A, it was true, and B, I wanted to set a high bar for the rest of my colleagues at agency heads that this should be viewed maximally.
01:10:25.700You're willing to fire your own staff, which is another way of saying you're willing to relinquish some power because personnel, manpower is power.
01:10:32.720And it's always not just about firing, although there's certainly going to be massive layoffs and firing, particularly across some of the agencies that we don't even think should exist.
01:10:41.080But what I found was that you get better staff work when people are now in their mind realizing, okay, I'm not immune from all accountability.
01:10:50.820And I would tell people, you know, you'd have to have these conference calls.
01:10:55.500We're in the middle of COVID and explain, you know, what we're trying to do.
01:11:02.960We don't believe in these, you know, these laws that give you these protections that we think make you less good at your job of serving a particular president.
01:11:13.920So it's just on its face outrageous, like everyone else in the country faces the vicissitudes of the job market.
01:11:20.000I've been fired so many times with a lot of kids.
01:11:23.220And I'm not whining, but most people have been had moments like that where it's like, oh, wow, I'm out of money.
01:11:28.260Why are the people that we pay with our tax dollars immune to the pressure that the rest of us feel?
01:11:58.500I mean, I don't really understand, like, what, how does an entirely separate set of rules apply to our employees, the public's employees, our housekeepers, is how I think of them.
01:12:52.920That's why you've got to have a massive effort to dramatically reduce this so that the good ones rise to the top and everyone else is fine in other work.
01:13:04.960So, you know, and then the last thing is dismantling all of the specific things like overclassification, the FBI background checks, all of the things that deny information to the political class
01:13:21.220that are the political appointees that prevent them from doing their job.
01:13:26.060But this is where people start getting murdered or getting cancer or whatever they're doing to maintain control.
01:13:32.140Because if you start threatening, I think this is why they're terrified of Tulsi Gabbard, you start threatening to expose things, to let the public know what its government is doing,
01:13:39.920you're going to be exposing crimes because they're committing crimes.
01:13:57.140Tucker, the reality, and I think this is I would encourage everyone to think this way, there is no place in America where you're going to be protected from the walls closing in on you and your family.
01:14:06.820And the only extent to which that may not be true yet is the which, you know, Kevin Bacon's degrees of separation, you don't have someone that's immediately in proximity to the FBI raiding their house or being the victim of lawfare.
01:14:23.960I mean, I know two people very, very closely who have been in jail.
01:14:28.820I know four people that have multimillion dollar lawsuits.
01:14:35.880And the only way to stop that from happening for people that are in this community trying to rebuild from a storm or run their coffee shop, the only way to keep it from happening is for those of us in the political arena to stand tall and unabashedly and to lean forward no matter the costs.
01:14:57.800And that's the moment that we live in.
01:14:59.760And so it's not meant to be provocative.
01:15:01.360It's just meant to know that if you are not loud and proud, that's the wrong way to think about it.
01:15:08.780But if it is aggressive and public and articulate in how you go about it, it will make it so that more and more people can come along beside you and make it so that the president has enough people that are willing to take on the system.
01:15:25.860And I believe that he has a growing number of people that are like that and it will make it very difficult for them to move against individual actors.
01:15:34.240And the nice thing about being out of office is you get to read and kind of understand what happened and have new perspective.
01:15:46.040And I'm just blown away by the number of people that they went after individually, like like wounded individuals.
01:16:00.740These are individuals that blew the whistle on corruption and their agencies conspired with their political appointees to make them go away.
01:16:09.920And I don't think they'll be able to get away with that this time around.
01:16:19.000You know, they're dealing with stuff in their families.
01:16:21.960Life happens and you're dealing with the intel agencies, multiple working behind the scenes together, never giving you due process.
01:16:31.080And I think that is, we know their playbook and we know not only what to look for, but how to be prepared to ensure that that cannot happen again.
01:16:45.660I've noticed, and I don't think I'm imagining it, that a huge percentage of people who criticize the intel agencies wind up with kiddie porn on their computers.
01:16:54.000One of the reasons I don't use a computer, I don't think that's because they're disproportionately perverts.
01:17:00.900I don't know why you would use a computer.
01:17:02.340You know, first of all, you know, you can't respond to anything without it being FOIA'd, right?
01:17:06.540And so we have to have a totally different view about going into government.
01:17:12.600But the intel agencies are not allowed, well, most of them are not allowed to operate domestically, period.
01:17:29.860Well, I think you need to have people that are there who are fearless and obviously Tulsi and RFK and not intel, but saying there are, you know, there are certainly health aspects of national security.
01:17:42.000Matt being at DOJ, those are the types of people that you need to get under the hood and to push as much as you possible.
01:17:50.220Well, you've got to shut their funding off until they can prove to your satisfaction that things are – and then –
01:17:57.000But wait, we're not even allowed to know what their funding is.
01:17:59.760We don't know what the CIA's budget is.
01:18:55.960Like, you go around and you realize, oh, wow, that alphabet has an enormous institutional presence that the country's never even heard about.
01:19:05.820Has a real estate footprint that's beyond what you can imagine.
01:19:09.560I lived as a child with my brother in a house in Georgetown in high school that was owned by CIA.
01:20:12.460Well, the intel committees, the oversight committees in Congress whose job it is to oversee, restrain, keep the intel agencies within constitutional bounds.
01:20:23.720I – in my whole life in D.C. from 1985 until now, I've never seen a single member of an intel committee who wasn't in the pocket of the intel agencies.
01:20:32.720I don't want to – I would just say this.
01:20:36.420Devin Nunez was kind of a unique character in his ability to provide leadership in that – and they came after him with everything they got.
01:21:03.720I mean it's never like some guy at Langley, you know.
01:21:07.240And so what – why don't we have more Devin Nunezes?
01:21:10.540That would be the question that I would ask is what fear factor is there that – and I'm not making an accusation of anyone.
01:21:18.880I'm just saying that with all Congress and with all non-government organizations, even our organizations, there's this point where you're like, if I don't – if I go after these individuals, this issue set.
01:21:31.840Or this area of corruption or this policy set.
01:21:36.180And I saw it right after Mar-a-Lago was raided and we came out really quickly and said, you know, the FBI should be radically reformed.
01:21:44.020I think I thought it should be, you know, exploded into a thousand pieces, right?
01:22:08.600But I would just say, you know, if there are members of the, you know, intel committees providing oversight of the intel agencies, they shouldn't be allowed to serve if they have spouses who work in the intel community.
01:22:24.600So tell us on a much happier note – sorry for the dark digression – what exactly are Elon and Vivek going to do, do you think, with this Doge enterprise?
01:22:38.560Well, I think they're bringing an exhilarating rush to the system of creativity, outside-the-box thinking, comfortability with risk and leverage.
01:22:52.380Boy, they are comfortable – both those guys are comfortable with risk.
01:23:03.720And I don't think it is, but I think it feels that way.
01:23:05.820And we're bringing people that, you know, are trying to get to Mars.
01:23:08.980So I'm pretty sure they can handle, you know, the ability for us to balance our books and run a government that's much more efficient.
01:23:17.280So I think that the things that I've heard them say are things like really going after or from a deregulatory perspective all of the recent court cases that have said and chopped at the feet of this administrative state.
01:23:34.900You know, you don't have the ability to just come up with new major questions, you know, rank agency, rank-and-file agency.
01:23:41.620You've got to have actual specific language from Congress.
01:23:45.740You don't have the ability to get the deference for every position that you've taken just because you're a federal agency.
01:23:52.380These have been big axe cuts at the administrative branches.
01:23:59.660And so I think what they want to do is to use those as the basis for a massive deregulatory agenda and, you know, game on.
01:24:07.500I also think they want to look for as much that you can do to start cutting costs without Congress or with Congress, but to be really aggressive in some of the areas that I've mentioned.
01:24:20.060And empowerment would be, you know, a huge part of that, the ability to just not spend the money.
01:24:24.000And so, and then, of course, you know, being as radical or aggressive as you can in eliminating and reducing employees, you know, full-time employees, individuals, and going after contracts that may not make sense.
01:24:41.920So I think that that's where they're headed, and I think it'll be an enormous boon to the country.
01:24:48.740Can you do it from, so neither one of them is going to become a federal employee himself?
01:25:20.960And then you give it to the people, and hopefully that's been a two-way conversation, but you give it to the people that are on the president's executive team and his administration, and they run with it.
01:25:32.340And then you've got Doge out there providing a political support for what must be done.
01:29:31.240I know what you're talking about, but will you flesh it out a little bit because I think you've hit on one of the keys.
01:29:35.900So for, for what we have been unwilling to cut any non-defense spending, the bureaucracy, which is the, quote, discretionary spending, members have a vote on it every single year.
01:29:48.760They don't have a vote on entitlements.
01:29:55.180So everything they hate about government, their members are voting on.
01:29:58.260We haven't been able to have cuts to non-defense, not because Republicans are unwilling, although many of them are unwilling as well, but because there has been a view that those two things have to be constantly considered together.
01:30:12.300And the Democrats insist and Republican hawks insist that defense has to be growing at X percent to deal with the threats in the world.
01:30:23.800And that requires you to then bring additional non-defense spending to be able to be for that political coalition.
01:30:32.000And ultimately, if you get your average Republican member, they ultimately care a lot more about the defense stuff than they do about the bureaucracy.
01:30:44.280Ultimately, you have your average Republican member cares more about the military industrial complex than they do about the woke and weaponized bureaucracy that is oppressing.
01:30:52.300They care more about flexing their power abroad than about fixing their own country.
01:30:56.740I think that's I know that's true because I know I know them.
01:31:01.640They have zero interest in anything that's happened.
01:31:03.600Not zero, but they have very limited interest in what's happening in the United States and the, you know, 100,000 people dying of drug ODS every year.
01:31:58.380And it worked until, you know, at a certain level when we had the Soviet Union.
01:32:02.740But when we don't have the Soviet Union, it kind of takes on a life of its own, and now you have to keep us everywhere in the world to be able to justify all of the institutional buildup and the complex that has been built up, all of these, you know, defense industrial companies and things like that.
01:32:24.120And Pat Buchanan actually talks about this in his book, where he says, look, this was a specific strategy hatched out of the Department of Defense by some of the neocons at the time to be able to continue to justify the largest from a defense standpoint that we continue to be tied down to.
01:32:43.900That, I also think, you know, is – so that's a big part of, I think, why your average Republican that grows up thinking like, okay, I'm going to be pro-defense, I'm going to be free market economics, and I'm going to be a social conservative at best, right?
01:33:01.440Those – that's like – that's what you grow up to be.
01:33:11.920Do I not to be for making a defense that we can actually afford?
01:33:19.420Does that mean that I think that from an economic standpoint that we're not actually citizens before we're consumers?
01:33:25.400Like there's just a lot of unhealth in all of those –
01:33:27.800Yes, and it's not a natural coalition.
01:33:29.860I mean famously you see this in the Democratic Party where you've got, you know, Hispanic immigrants alongside transgender activists, and they clearly have nothing in common.
01:34:29.340Yes, I agree without being too specific about it.
01:34:30.880But there are all kinds of acts of violence against Christians around the world.
01:34:37.140In fact, it's almost always against Christians.
01:34:38.840I have noticed that Christian leaders, including the Speaker of the House, like defend on Christian grounds.
01:34:46.140And I just don't think, obviously I find that evil, but even if I was in favor of it, I would recognize like that's not something that can last for long because it doesn't make any sense.
01:36:00.280And I remember being in high school, reading an abnormal psychology textbook that I bought at the school bookstore that had an entry on autism that was like two paragraphs long as this esoteric disorder whose origins we were uncertain of, whose parameters were unclear.
01:36:16.160But it was, and I remember thinking, wow, that sounds awful.
01:36:18.120And, you know, 35 years later, it's like a central feature of life in America.
01:37:13.680But, like, if I didn't get my head wrapped around it, future generations would have to indict me for me being irresponsible on an existential issue facing our country.
01:37:23.300So I don't think most people think like that.
01:37:25.920But in general, I think our Republican coalition is unhealthy and has been for a long time because we have, and if we are, the country will be too secular, too imperialistic and global, and too economic.
01:37:41.220And I come out of the free market economist lane, right?
01:37:48.500Like, the notion that the end of all economic good is consumption, and so consumers get the veto and everything, it's not actually what a citizen and a country and a nation are.
01:38:12.160But I don't believe that just because Facebook is a corporation, that means that they get to not have to answer questions about how big they are, what the impact is on our country.
01:38:27.000Whether they're wrecking my kid's brain.
01:38:28.340Amazon giving me, you know, same-day service on a book or, you know, a product is awesome.
01:38:36.100But that doesn't mean that everything that Amazon does is something that we shouldn't be thinking through and that our normal disposition of free market economics may make us bad at assessing companies once they get too big.
01:38:55.320Well, it does seem like there, as you said a second ago, we need to be less doctrinaire.
01:39:02.040And I, as someone who grew up around, as a conservative, around conservatives, there were these pillars, you know, hawkish on defense, free market, and to a much lesser extent, socially conservative, which no one in D.C. actually took seriously at all.
01:39:16.040And they had total contempt for people like you.
01:40:15.940But on the economic questions, I think I've been almost hesitant to draw obvious conclusions because I don't believe in government controlling the economy to a greater extent that it does.
01:40:27.860I just got not good at it and it just – it abets corruption, so I'm against that.
01:40:31.540But it doesn't mean that we have to, like, be in favor of usury, right?
01:40:48.680You know, you'd have your Christian conservatives being upset with that, having debates with the free market coalition to say, like, where's a place that we can land in ways that previously the conversation wasn't?
01:41:02.400Because in this to say, OK, that's something that would come out of the mouths of our adversaries.
01:41:13.500Trade's like the one big domino that the president, I think, finally has now toppled with his election.
01:41:19.860But there will be a sizable number of Republicans that are very grudgingly going along or opposed to what he wants to do with what I think is a no-brainer policy with regard to universal tariffs and higher tariffs for China.
01:41:34.320And I want the money to be able to balance the books, but I also want this country to be a manufacturing-producing hub.
01:41:41.400And what I found, Tucker, is that even I can win arguments with those who are free traders because they themselves have ceded the ground of independence.
01:41:54.960You know, if you're comfortable with other countries making your stuff that may or may not be important from a national security standpoint or just period because we don't want to have to wait for six months to have a refrigerator, you know, if you want independence, you've got to make it here.
01:42:12.480If you don't want to have to rely on China and have Xi shut down his whole economy because he's dealing with the COVID, then the answer is independence.
01:42:23.080And how do you get to making things more here?
01:42:25.260And just – I also zoom out from a standpoint of like –
01:42:27.160If my parents are paying my rent, I'm still a child.
01:43:09.900The other is the American Enterprise Institute, which for my whole life, 55 years, have been sort of leading standards in the right-wing firmament.
01:43:19.800You know, AEI, Wall Street Journal, like people really care on the right what they have to say.
01:43:25.500And I can't wait for both of them to collapse.
01:43:32.540But like why haven't people who want to put the country first, its actual interest first, built their own institutions to rival the Wall Street Journal and AEI?
01:43:58.100Look, I think this is what is needed as new institutions.
01:44:01.920It's why we created the Center for Renewing America, because we wanted to make sure there was a home to give elites, both in D.C. and in the grassroots, this is actually how you do what's necessary to be done.
01:44:15.180So like if President Trump gives a speech in the first term or you from your show are articulating something that must be done, we felt there needed to be an institution to actually take that and turn it into the regulations, the translating into actually public policy.
01:44:53.580And if that paper is not read, you go and you like get it in front of people so that they understand it.
01:44:58.780And then when they have read it and you figure out, why haven't you acted on it?
01:45:01.920What's, you know, like you have to work it hard.
01:45:05.540And that's going to come from from not sitting around a board table at a prestigious organization.
01:45:09.840That's going to come from people who are hardened, battle tested and really awesome in their mind as to what they what they think and what they know.
01:45:18.660I mean, since we've moved toward an economy where, like, you can't really do anything without a billionaire on your side, I've noticed.
01:45:25.320Luckily, you know, good people now have Elon Musk.
01:45:30.940But big picture, it's super bad to need a billionaire to do anything meaningful.
01:45:36.660And you wonder, are Republican donors coming around to the idea that, you know, America needs to be saved and and that what we've been doing isn't working?
01:46:08.740You kind of have to acknowledge, you know, there's a lot of grift out here.
01:46:11.460But at the same time, do everything you can to just get up in the morning and do your job and do it effectively.
01:46:15.720And then people come where I feel like the issue is, is that with everyone, you're educating them on the same journey that I think you have.
01:46:23.560I think you've talked about it and I know I have of of this trying to like what's what has been off about conservatism for a while and been I think the reason why we have lost and been on the edge of tyranny.
01:46:35.820And sometimes there are there are there are folks that still have viewpoints on that.
01:46:41.060Like when we took Ukraine, we were the first organization out to oppose Ukraine funding.
01:47:14.240Well, it's certainly in terms of like getting a read on where someone is and then you can have whatever conversations you want to have with them.
01:47:38.880And so over time, that coalition, that conversation we're having about what conservatives need, what does conservatism need to be to save the country?
01:47:48.380Not protecting, you know, your little niche within that, but to save the country.
01:47:52.600You were given resources to do nothing else but to save the country.
01:47:57.260And that's what your donors are giving that conversation on the ideas.
01:48:01.400It's why when you come to one of our events with our donors, I hand out books.
01:48:06.180Like I want – I don't want you to just necessarily read our policy paper.
01:48:09.980I'm sure you're going to do that anyways.
01:48:21.660Like I want the whole conservative movement to be going deep in these books so that you're both enlightened, encouraged, and you come out of fighting for us, whether you are the practitioner here in D.C., the funder on the outside.
01:48:36.140And that is a – and that's a long-term project, honestly.
01:48:41.140But I think it's one that's absolutely vital.
01:49:09.960And this has been an undercurrent that has been popped up at times but is largely suppressed by the Republican establishment and their intellectual Praetorian Guard.
01:49:56.320These are the kinds of kind of first building blocks that if you get in place, then you can have a much more coherent, convincing, and satisfying public policy life.
01:50:05.400But ultimately, you know, I think it's like Whitaker Chambers married to Pat Buchanan married to someone like a Donald Trump.
01:50:12.940I think that movement over time is something that trying to find out how to give it flourish in life and institutions and will ultimately be successful in saving the country.
01:50:26.380Man, if you wind up with this administration, I will sleep better.