Triggered - Donald Trump Jr


DeSantis Botches Rollout, Plus Live with Sen Tommy Tuberville | TRIGGERED Ep. 36


Summary

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) joins Jemele to talk about why he thinks Ron DeSantis is the best choice to replace Donald Trump if he decides to run for president in 2020. He also talks about the failure of his campaign launch and why it may have been the biggest blunder of his political career to date, and why he doesn t think it's likely to be as bad as it looks right now. And, of course, there's a quiz from Jemele about what he'd do if he won the 2020 election. Tweet Me! if you like the podcast and/or have any suggestions for future guests, we'd love to hear them in the comments section below. Timestamps: 3:00 - What would you do if you were elected president? 4:30 - How would he handle the Ukraine crisis if he was elected? 5:15 - Why he thinks he's the best shot at defeating Trump 6:00 What would he do on Ukraine if he were elected 8:30 - What he would do on day 1 of his administration 9:20 - How he would deal with the ongoing war in Eastern Europe 11:40 - How much money would he raise 12:10 - What kind of foreign policy would he bring to the table 13:15 14:00 -- What he's going to do in 2020? 15:40 -- Would he be good on Ukraine 16: What s the best foreign policy 17:30 -- would he focus on the core values 18:15 -- What s his foreign policy plan 19:00 | What s he would focus on? 21:10 -- What does he want to do on the Ukraine? 22:10 -- What's the most important thing he d like to do for the country 23:00 Is he a good guy in a foreign policy deal 26:40 27: Does he have a problem with Ukraine? -- What would be the best way to win in 2020 29:00 Would he have an effective foreign policy strategy? 30:00 Does he think he'd be good at it? 31: Is he better than Trump? 32:00 What's his biggest challenge? 35:00 Do you think he could be a better than the other guy in the White House?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Good evening, guys.
00:00:28.000 Welcome back to another huge, with a capital Y, episode of Triggered.
00:00:32.000 Thank you for tuning in.
00:00:34.000 Tonight we're talking with Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.
00:00:38.000 Senator Tuberville doesn't have the typical career politician background.
00:00:44.000 Certainly not of most senators. He was a very successful college football coach,
00:00:50.000 the head coach of one of the major programs like Auburn and Ole Miss, and I
00:00:55.000 and I have a feeling this one's going to be interesting.
00:00:55.000 have a feeling this one's gonna be interesting. We can talk about some of
00:00:57.000 We can talk about some of the great rivalries in sports, the difference between rivalries in pro sports and college,
00:00:58.000 the great rivalries in sports, the difference between rivalries in pro
00:01:02.000 sports and college, a lot of stuff, as well as strategy, both on the gridiron, in
00:01:03.000 a lot of stuff, as well as strategy, both on the gridiron, in life, in politics,
00:01:07.000 life, in politics, and how that all works. But before we get into that, let's get on
00:01:09.000 and how that all works.
00:01:10.000 But before we get into that, let's get on what's on everyone's mind,
00:01:16.000 the hashtag disaster of the Ron DeStablishment announcement yesterday.
00:01:24.000 DeSantis didn't launch with a rally of fans, maybe because, as evidenced by even when you listen to him,
00:01:31.000 he couldn't find enough people to be interested in it.
00:01:34.000 Instead, he decided to announce on Twitter Spaces before he headed to a cocktail party with his donors at the Four Seasons in Miami.
00:01:42.000 Here's how his big announcement kicked off.
00:01:45.000 Check it out and listen for yourself.
00:01:47.000 Sound of a glass breaking Now it's quiet.
00:02:01.000 As I said, it was a hashtag disaster.
00:02:06.000 And it took a long time for Elon Musk to apparently figure out how and what was going on.
00:02:11.000 And it took two charismatic billionaires like Elon Musk and David Sachs to carry DeSantis through this where he basically read like an op-ed about what he was going to do.
00:02:22.000 But I think what I noticed most about this whole failure to launch was Without the visuals, because it's an audio-only program, you realize just how sort of nasally and effeminate his voice is.
00:02:36.000 I don't know if I'm going to be able to get rid of that thought now that it's been sort of isolated.
00:02:43.000 You know, when you're on TV and you've got visuals, you get a little distracted.
00:02:46.000 But go back and listen for yourselves.
00:02:47.000 I don't mind sending you there because it was that bad.
00:02:51.000 This failure launch is probably a sign of things to come.
00:02:55.000 DeSantis is going to regret running.
00:02:57.000 A poll came out today from Iowa showing President Trump, my dad, up by 42 points.
00:03:04.000 That's a state we haven't even...
00:03:07.000 Historically, it's always been a little bit of an issue, right?
00:03:10.000 Even for Trump. It's a little bit more establishment-y at times, I guess.
00:03:16.000 And we're going to see more of this, especially when we find out the truth as opposed to what's sort of been put on there by the swarm of sort of paid online DeSantis influencers.
00:03:28.000 You see what they're doing, and once you actually put out the facts...
00:03:31.000 I think a different image is going to emerge.
00:03:34.000 Ron wants people to think that he's like Trump light or something like that.
00:03:37.000 He's not either on policy grounds or personality.
00:03:40.000 Trump has the charisma of a mortician and the energy that makes Jeb Bush look like an Olympian.
00:03:50.000 The policies of a D.C. swamp rat, because we've seen, we've seen the flip-flops, right?
00:03:55.000 You can pretend you're MAGA, but Ron still can't answer what he'd do on Ukraine.
00:04:01.000 Just watch. Watch him dodge last night with Trey Gowdy in Fox's now failing 8 p.m.
00:04:07.000 hour. You wore the uniform.
00:04:11.000 If you are elected president, you may be the first one in a while to have worn the uniform.
00:04:16.000 How would you address the ongoing war in Eastern Europe between Russia and Ukraine on day one of a Ron DeSantis presidency?
00:04:26.000 Well, first, I think what we need to do as a veteran is recognize that our military has become politicized.
00:04:33.000 You talk about gender ideology, you talk about things like global warming that they're somehow concerned, and that's not the military that I served in.
00:04:41.000 We need to return our military to focusing on commitment, focusing on the core values and the core mission.
00:04:49.000 That would be something that I... Hey guys, he gets asked about Ukraine and he starts talking about gender ideology.
00:04:56.000 I mean, listen, it's an important issue, okay?
00:05:00.000 I get it. It's easy to dunk on gender ideology in the military.
00:05:04.000 That's an easy one for social media.
00:05:07.000 Answering the question without upsetting your donors, without upsetting Mitch McConnell and those guys who would love to have yet another never-ending war, this time with a nuclear-capable power, not dudes that live in caves...
00:05:22.000 It's a problem. If the same question were asked of my father, as it was in a CNN, so not exactly a friendly hometown town hall, about a week ago, he'd answer, I'd get to work to secure a peace deal, to stop the unnecessary deaths.
00:05:41.000 And Ron tried doing that, but his donors didn't like it.
00:05:44.000 Remember that a couple weeks ago when he took the Trump-lite approach and sort of almost tried saying what Donald Trump's been saying, and then...
00:05:51.000 Ooh, the donors, the establishment, the people who are really creating this image, they didn't like that one little bit, and so they cut it off.
00:06:03.000 And that peace deal is necessary, folks.
00:06:06.000 We're running full speed into a nuclear war just today.
00:06:10.000 Today! Russia announced that it's deploying...
00:06:14.000 Tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
00:06:18.000 This is the first time tactical nuclear weapons will be stored outside of Russia since the end of the Cold War.
00:06:25.000 Hey guys, what's the worst that could happen?
00:06:28.000 I mean, we've been fighting not just a proxy war, but a boots on the ground war against the world's largest nuclear power by volume of nuclear warheads.
00:06:40.000 You know, a despot, a dictator like Putin?
00:06:44.000 Sure, guys, keep pushing him so you can get your jobs at Raytheon and the board seats that are required.
00:06:50.000 But, you know, the problem with those is you've got to sell more missiles.
00:06:53.000 This movement of nukes to Belarus, which borders Ukraine, comes a day after a report revealed that Ukraine was behind a drone attack on the Kremlin in May.
00:07:05.000 U.S. taxpayer money is the only reason the Ukrainian government exists.
00:07:12.000 Our dollars, your hard-earned dollars, umpteen billion dollars are going to perpetuate the violence and the death.
00:07:24.000 And as long as we're sending billions in this proxy war and having a de facto war with Russia, it's never going to end.
00:07:32.000 Okay? At this point, we're probably paying their salaries.
00:07:36.000 We give them equipment.
00:07:38.000 We're backstopping their pensions.
00:07:40.000 We can't take care of our problems at home.
00:07:42.000 God forbid we help Americans, our own veterans suffering.
00:07:47.000 We want to turn Ukraine effectively into either an American colony or a globalist colony either way, okay?
00:07:54.000 It's just big ag land.
00:07:57.000 That's how they're going to feed the world when the globalists take over, by controlling that.
00:08:01.000 So when they're directly attacking Russia, we're party to that attack, folks.
00:08:07.000 Russia keeps threatening to use nukes.
00:08:09.000 So why exactly are we not putting an end to all of this?
00:08:14.000 Seems odd, right? Think of all the crazy steps taken to try to reduce COVID deaths, right?
00:08:21.000 Remember, they put sand in your skateboard parks, for God's sakes.
00:08:25.000 But we move full speed towards nuclear war, which would end life as we know it.
00:08:33.000 Just so we're clear, Russia has approximately 6,000 and change nuclear weapons.
00:08:41.000 Doesn't take a lot of those to, let's just say, create a serious climate change problem, not the one that they're pretending is going to end the world in 12 years.
00:08:51.000 That will end it in about 12 milliseconds, okay?
00:08:54.000 DeSantis is a phony.
00:08:56.000 Republicans are becoming more and more aware of that every day.
00:08:59.000 And by the way, most of these conservatives that are lined up behind Ron right now, well, guess what, folks?
00:09:04.000 Look him up. They're all never Trumpers.
00:09:07.000 They were all never Trumpers in 16.
00:09:10.000 Sure, some of them put the MAGA hat on for a couple of seconds to get the obligatory photo or whatever to raise a couple bucks from a base and take advantage of them.
00:09:20.000 They weren't MAGA then and they aren't MAGA now.
00:09:25.000 And this definitely isn't the time to roll the dice on a rhino.
00:09:30.000 There's too much at stake for the future of our country.
00:09:33.000 But the Democrats right now are loving every second of it because they know that the billionaires backing DeSantis and the money spent there...
00:09:44.000 It's not going to help Ron win.
00:09:46.000 It's going to help Republicans lose.
00:09:49.000 So the Democrats are rejoicing as we spend all the money that we'd be spending to ramp up a ballot harvesting operation to take on the insanity of the left on a war.
00:10:04.000 Where the establishment wants to take out America first.
00:10:08.000 Nothing more. We'll get more into this later in the show, but first, we have a few more examples in the news of the far-left lunacy destroying our country.
00:10:18.000 Say, for example, you might have fond memories of going to baseball games as a kid, or maybe as an adult bringing your kids.
00:10:27.000 There's supposed to be family-friendly events, great time, Good old American fun.
00:10:34.000 But folks, that's not what the Los Angeles Dodgers think.
00:10:38.000 Take a look at the group that they're inviting to an upcoming Pride Night.
00:10:44.000 Check this out for yourself.
00:10:46.000 I'll tell you how it is, you only see it when you're standing there.
00:10:51.000 You're standing there, and you're looking at the world.
00:10:55.000 You're looking at the world, and you're looking at me.
00:11:05.000 Might as well stop and let you know that I'm there for you.
00:11:11.000 You're looking at the world, and you're looking at me.
00:11:15.000 Why are the Los Angeles Dodgers fine with a group that mocks, desecrates Jesus and Christianity?
00:11:22.000 And speaking of anti-Christian hate, where's the manifesto from the Nashville trans shooter?
00:11:27.000 We found out recently that the shooter went from the school to the attached cathedral and fired seven bullets into the stained glass figure of Adam, the first man in the Bible.
00:11:36.000 This is clearly an anti-Christian terror attack, and yet we hear nothing about it.
00:11:41.000 That's why the press swept it under the rug.
00:11:44.000 It's not a hate crime if the target's a group the left also hates.
00:11:49.000 Okay? Imagine for a second, imagine for a second this happened to say, I don't know, They were doing this about Muslims or any other religion.
00:12:00.000 But sadly, folks, it's par for the course.
00:12:03.000 It's not just baseball games.
00:12:05.000 It's our own government.
00:12:06.000 You can attack Christians.
00:12:08.000 Who cares? It doesn't matter.
00:12:11.000 Ooh, take them all out.
00:12:12.000 You can desecrate Jesus at a professional sports game.
00:12:19.000 And they don't care. And get this, the Media Research Center just found out that the Biden administration gave a grant to the University of Dayton, to the tune of about 40 million of your taxpayer dollars, to conduct a project that targeted groups such as the Christian Broadcast Network, Turning Point USA, and even Breitbart News.
00:12:42.000 The reverse of that is unthinkable.
00:12:44.000 Imagine they use that kind of money to go after like the clowns in Congress like Adam Schiff who spent months, if not years, lying to the American people.
00:12:53.000 Or all of the leftist media who tried cramming their garbage and their lies down our throats.
00:13:00.000 There's no accountability for that.
00:13:02.000 According to the Media Research Center, under the Trump administration, the targeted violence and terrorism prevention grant program was used to prevent terrorism.
00:13:11.000 But it was revamped under the Biden administration and renamed to provide funding to, quote, combat all forms of terrorism and targeted violence.
00:13:24.000 I don't know, guys. I've spoken a lot of Turning Point events.
00:13:27.000 I've read a lot of Breitbart articles.
00:13:29.000 I've never seen targeted violence, other than perhaps from the leftists trying to protest it.
00:13:36.000 But of course, instead of focusing on preventing actual violence and terrorism, the program is now being used to target conservatives.
00:13:43.000 And it's costing you, again, around $40 million.
00:13:48.000 And sadly, this is part of the same theme that we see from major corporations, who seem to be totally on board with the same sort of insanity.
00:13:59.000 It never ends, folks, because have you been following what's going on now at Target, right?
00:14:07.000 They unveiled their Pride Month merchandise, which...
00:14:11.000 Apparently included a tuck-friendly bathing suit and using a brand that has a history of satanic-themed products.
00:14:21.000 Think about this for a second, folks.
00:14:23.000 This isn't even a joke. This is Target, one of the country's largest, if not the world's largest retailers, pushing satanic-themed projects.
00:14:34.000 This designer says things like, Satan respects pronouns, and Satan loves you.
00:14:38.000 Well, you know what?
00:14:40.000 I bet they do, because it leads to the destruction of everything that is good and decent, the destruction of the nuclear family, and everything else the radical left wants to attack.
00:14:52.000 What's the purpose of this?
00:14:54.000 What does this have to do with Pride Month?
00:14:57.000 Absolutely nothing.
00:14:59.000 but the degeneracy never ends.
00:15:02.000 Now, we do have some good news in that the backlash has been so strong
00:15:07.000 that Target reportedly lost $9 billion in one week and called an emergency meeting over the LGBTQIA,
00:15:17.000 bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, you know, can't remember all the acronyms.
00:15:21.000 I don't think anyone even actually knows what they are.
00:15:23.000 Merchandise. And in some stores, they're reallocating or relocating or, all right, moving and removing the merchandise.
00:15:34.000 And I actually received a letter from a friend.
00:15:36.000 I'm trying to keep it specifically as vague as possible because there'll be reprisals if you have people that are friends that work in these companies, right?
00:15:46.000 If you're a leftist, you can do and say whatever you want.
00:15:48.000 If you disagree with some of those things, you're out.
00:15:52.000 So this is from inside of Target Corporate.
00:15:56.000 The letter reads, and I quote, Hey Don, hope you're well.
00:15:59.000 I'm not sure if I'll catch you before you go travel.
00:16:03.000 I'm taking a week with my son.
00:16:05.000 I figured I'd pass on a little behind the scenes from Target.
00:16:10.000 I sent it to some other friends of yours as well.
00:16:12.000 My spouse works on the corporate side of Target.
00:16:16.000 He or she has several times noted how extremely woke the corporate structure is.
00:16:23.000 So much so that while they have a zero tolerance policy for bullying and safety,
00:16:28.000 such that if her opinion makes anyone feel unsafe, she will be terminated immediately.
00:16:34.000 If she doesn't outwardly tow the work line, she will be fired.
00:16:38.000 Remember, tolerance is king.
00:16:40.000 King.
00:16:42.000 He continues, with the recent Pride line and satanic-themed closing lines being pulled after Bud Light backlash and others on the retail merchandise, people in corporate are crying foul and forming peer support groups.
00:16:58.000 Because these leftist co-workers are so distraught that the corporate masters are bending to the dollar rather than continuing to push their satanic trans-themed garbage, they're having breakdowns in Zoom meetings.
00:17:13.000 There have even been, quote, emotional support groups formed for people to help cope with the groomer line clothing being removed.
00:17:24.000 We need to keep the pressure on.
00:17:26.000 Don't let their executive leadership walk it off and whitewash the whole thing.
00:17:31.000 It's affecting them.
00:17:32.000 She's already looking for alternate employment.
00:17:36.000 So you see, folks, the strategy is working, and we need to keep up the pressure.
00:17:41.000 Don't let the Satanists win.
00:17:44.000 I promise you, nothing good will come from that.
00:17:47.000 Don't let these woke corporations get away with any more of this nonsense.
00:17:52.000 And it's why I talk so much about Public Square, which I'm super psyched about.
00:17:56.000 We had Michael Seifert, the CEO, on here a couple weeks ago talking about that.
00:18:00.000 Go check out PublicSqu.com.
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00:18:05.000 They are a company in the parallel economy.
00:18:09.000 They're a place where you can find people who share your values, support their businesses.
00:18:16.000 Go shop there and shop with people who share your values.
00:18:20.000 Okay, I invested in it myself because I believe so much in this mission
00:18:24.000 to find freedom-loving businesses who support your values, just like the sponsors of this show, okay?
00:18:30.000 Go to publicsq.com.
00:18:32.000 They got number three in the app store on merchandise because people like you are looking at it.
00:18:38.000 We're making moves.
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00:18:41.000 You don't have to choose between what you believe and what you buy.
00:18:45.000 You can actually vote with your dollars.
00:18:47.000 All of us America First patriots are actually starting to win some of these battles.
00:18:54.000 And we'll talk about winning battles a little bit more with Senator Tuberville in just a few seconds.
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00:21:00.000 And with that, I want to bring in legendary coach and United States Senator Tommy Tuberville.
00:21:07.000 Come on in here, Tommy. How are you?
00:21:09.000 I'm doing well, man. I'm doing well.
00:21:10.000 We have to do this a little informally.
00:21:11.000 You had some rough weather getting in, and they're saying, uh...
00:21:14.000 Tommy's getting off the plane.
00:21:16.000 I'm saying, I know where the airport is, and that's a little bit long, but it's been a rough couple of days.
00:21:21.000 Yeah, well, traveling, raising money, that's what you do now as a politician.
00:21:26.000 That's something different for me, but yeah, flying a lot.
00:21:29.000 I lived in South Florida.
00:21:31.000 I lived in Miami for 10 years, so I knew coming down there, afternoon weather is always unpredictable.
00:21:36.000 Yeah, especially this time of year.
00:21:38.000 I feel like, you know, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.
00:21:40.000 It usually changes, although there's been like three days of just non-stop storms.
00:21:45.000 It's a little bit nuts.
00:21:47.000 Oh, well, that's South Florida, but there's a lot of pluses that go along with the minuses.
00:21:53.000 I love living down here, and obviously you do.
00:21:55.000 It's a great place. Good people and, you know, conservatives, Republicans, a lot of Republicans, and thank goodness we have a state like this that still exists.
00:22:04.000 We don't have many left. No, well, Alabama's certainly one of them.
00:22:07.000 Talk about that a little bit.
00:22:09.000 I mean, you're running a Saturday.
00:22:11.000 Listen, part of the game, obviously, is fundraising.
00:22:13.000 Because even in Alabama, even, I guess, a race you won by close to 30 points?
00:22:18.000 Yeah, 25 points.
00:22:19.000 25 points. I mean...
00:22:21.000 About as big a blowout as you get in sort of, I'm going to call it national politics, because even if it's a state senator's seat, there's only 100 of those seats, and the Democrats spend big there.
00:22:31.000 So even there, they raised a lot of money to fight against you, to try to damage you, to try to pull someone else over the line.
00:22:39.000 So you even have to deal with that in Alabama.
00:22:41.000 Oh, yeah. I beat a sitting congressman.
00:22:44.000 I beat a former United States Attorney General and Senator, Jeff Sessions.
00:22:49.000 And then I had to beat a sitting Senator, who was Doug Jones, who had somehow won in Alabama.
00:22:55.000 And he spent 10 million a month for three months.
00:22:58.000 And I was about broke because I'd had to go through all those primaries.
00:23:02.000 And we ended up winning Pretty handily.
00:23:05.000 But the people of Alabama, we're still conservative.
00:23:07.000 We still believe in God. We still believe in guns.
00:23:10.000 We still believe in the Constitution.
00:23:12.000 And that's what it's all about.
00:23:13.000 We've got several states, you know, Georgia, you would think.
00:23:17.000 And Georgia's still conservative.
00:23:19.000 I don't know what's going on over there.
00:23:20.000 But it's a very conservative state.
00:23:23.000 And then you have Tennessee. Then you have Mississippi.
00:23:24.000 But we're all about the same.
00:23:26.000 And, you know, we just got to get the right people to run and pull the trigger and get it done the next time around.
00:23:33.000 Yeah, I mean, so you had that.
00:23:34.000 You had a rough primary, and it makes the general a lot harder.
00:23:39.000 I mean, it actually sounds sort of similar to what we're talking about right now, right?
00:23:42.000 Where you have a sort of Iran descent is coming in, you know, pretty significant deficit, but there's a lot of billionaire money that seems to control a little bit more there, right?
00:23:52.000 I mean, you saw the flip-flop on Ukraine and all this stuff.
00:23:55.000 Do you think that this sort of situation is sort of...
00:23:59.000 I mean, are the Democrats just rejoicing that there's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars made by consultants to keep a race going like this?
00:24:07.000 You know, I look at it as money we don't have for a general.
00:24:09.000 We've got to create a ballot harvesting operation, right?
00:24:11.000 If America was Alabama, I wouldn't worry about it.
00:24:14.000 But in races where they're outspending us 10 to 1 already in some places across the country, I think as a strategist, and you certainly did that as a football coach, it seems like depleting our resources that way is sort of the Democrats' wet dream.
00:24:30.000 Yeah. You know, I'm new to this business, and I've been watching it now for three or four years in House races, Senate races, and now the presidential race coming up.
00:24:40.000 The Democrats raise money very easily.
00:24:42.000 That wind blew. It is unbelievable how much money they have.
00:24:45.000 They have three or four times the money we do as Republicans, but still money doesn't win for you.
00:24:50.000 You still have to have people.
00:24:51.000 You still have to have the right The right ethics, the right morals.
00:24:56.000 And most people that are still Americans that believe in the Constitution, they're going to vote the right way.
00:25:01.000 And so I like what President Trump's done.
00:25:05.000 You know, he's more of a hands-on guy, retail politics.
00:25:07.000 You go out and talk to people.
00:25:09.000 Go to rallies. He went on CNN the other day.
00:25:13.000 That's his polling, by the way.
00:25:15.000 He hears it from the people directly.
00:25:17.000 And I've told him that. He's not listening to the billionaire class, which is probably why you want to support others.
00:25:22.000 The more people you shake hands with, that's a vote for every time you touch somebody.
00:25:27.000 As a senator, that's fairly easy because it's statewide.
00:25:31.000 I can't imagine it being a presidential race, but this This is going to be interesting.
00:25:35.000 I hope we have more people get into the race as President.
00:25:38.000 I told President Trump that.
00:25:40.000 The more the better. We need a deep bench.
00:25:43.000 There's not anybody out there that can really beat him.
00:25:46.000 He'll beat himself if he loses, because he'll beat himself by not getting out and doing what he normally does, but he's going to do that.
00:25:52.000 I mean, he's going to get out in politics.
00:25:54.000 No one's ever accused him of being low energy.
00:25:56.000 No! He loves doing it.
00:25:58.000 And, you know, everybody asks, well, what about Ron DeSantis?
00:26:02.000 He says, well, we've got to find out, first of all, who he is, and we've got to find out, is the establishment funding him?
00:26:08.000 Because if they are, and people find that out, it's done.
00:26:11.000 It's over with. Well, I mean, I think we know some of that already.
00:26:14.000 When you get sort of the Karl Rove, Paul Ryan endorsement, you start saying, probably not MAGA. Hey, let's see what happens, but probably not MAGA. I mean, there's a revolt amongst those guys.
00:26:25.000 They want that power back.
00:26:27.000 For me, I'm an outsider as well.
00:26:29.000 I built buildings for a living before we got into the craziness of all of this.
00:26:34.000 And that's what's sort of surprising.
00:26:35.000 You saw... Two weeks ago, you know, with the firing of Tucker Carlson, some of your colleagues in the Senate saying, well, you know, Republican colleagues, well, you know, with Tucker gone, at least now we can fully support the war in Ukraine without backlash.
00:26:50.000 Like, but your constituency doesn't want it.
00:26:52.000 And yet, off the record, you'll tell a liberal journalist that you're thrilled that Tucker Carlson's gone because you can literally go against the will of the people who put you in those positions.
00:27:03.000 And I was like, isn't that like everything Americans hate about politics?
00:27:08.000 Well, deep down, at the end of the day, Don, people want truth in this country.
00:27:14.000 They're tired of being lied to. They are tired of being lied to.
00:27:17.000 I've never seen the deceit in the two years I've been in the Senate.
00:27:20.000 How about in the last two weeks?
00:27:23.000 Between the Durham report, between...
00:27:26.000 But we knew that was wrong anyway.
00:27:27.000 We knew it for two years. We did, but the media, the powers that control this, big tech, mainstream media, big social, they still pretended like it was real.
00:27:37.000 I mean, there's still people out there on TV being like, Russia collusion was real.
00:27:41.000 It clearly wasn't.
00:27:43.000 But listen, you got into this because you believe in it.
00:27:47.000 I started, instead of just shutting up and being a real estate guy, I got in it because I actually believe in it.
00:27:52.000 I'm fighting for it. But there's people that, you know, again, and I don't even fault them.
00:27:56.000 They're living their American dream or trying to in the Joe Biden economy.
00:28:00.000 They're struggling every day.
00:28:01.000 They're consuming five minutes of news.
00:28:04.000 If they're hearing that kind of disinformation or that nonsense, it's like, You know, maybe there's gotta be something to it.
00:28:10.000 I mean, would I have...
00:28:11.000 When I was a target of these guys, you know, in Russia, Russia, Russia, right?
00:28:16.000 I did 50 hours of testimony for treason, a crime punishable by death, minor details.
00:28:20.000 Like, I was like, well, there's gotta be something to it.
00:28:22.000 Someone must have maybe infiltrated my email, or maybe I took a selfie with someone, and that's how I got sucked into it.
00:28:29.000 Even I, as a target, couldn't have imagined that the FBI was just lying.
00:28:35.000 That they were in cahoots with the other side.
00:28:37.000 Even if I was thinking about it politically, and yet now we know that actually happened.
00:28:40.000 And that's pretty scary. It is really scary.
00:28:43.000 All of our institutions are compromised.
00:28:44.000 All you have to do is look at it and listen just a little bit.
00:28:47.000 You don't have to know a whole lot. I mean, just the average citizen out there can figure it out on their own if they just keep watching what's going on and then read the reports.
00:28:55.000 And this Durham report, most of us knew what it was about and knew the endgame.
00:29:03.000 Let me say this.
00:29:05.000 I've got friends in the FBI, and I've talked to a lot of them, and they said, listen, what happened with the FBI was back when Obama became president, he took the upper echelon of the FBI and inserted bureaucrats.
00:29:16.000 He took out former FBI agents and put bureaucrats in.
00:29:19.000 And they said, until we get FBI agents back in running the FBI, this is not going to happen.
00:29:24.000 We're not going to have the same FBI we had years and years ago.
00:29:28.000 CIA, the same way.
00:29:29.000 They've run their education system.
00:29:32.000 Just look at anything that has to do with bureaucrats.
00:29:36.000 We've got problems now.
00:29:37.000 They're trying to get in the military.
00:29:39.000 And man, have they got a foot in the door on that.
00:29:41.000 And it just scares me. It scares me that they're gonna do what they've done to the other institutions and do to our military.
00:29:48.000 Because if they get that, The only thing left is the Supreme Court.
00:29:51.000 That's the only thing that we have. Well, and they're talking about that every day, right?
00:29:54.000 Every day. They're talking, hey, let's just flood the courts.
00:29:57.000 We'll add 100 judges and we'll appoint them all.
00:30:00.000 I mean, there's nothing off the table, right?
00:30:03.000 They have disastrous recruitment in the military right now.
00:30:06.000 You know, no one wants to go serve a military where they're pushing, you know, being pushed by, you know, trans or, like, drag influencers.
00:30:13.000 Like, it's just not the people who would go fight and die for a country, probably not into that.
00:30:17.000 Like, you know, it doesn't take a marketing genius or a military, you know, it doesn't exactly take George Patton to figure that out, and yet it doesn't stop them from doing it.
00:30:26.000 No, and they do it every day.
00:30:28.000 I'm on the Armed Services Committee and there's not a hearing that doesn't go by that some of us don't ask a general or admiral, now you have these books in your library on some of our aircraft carriers, or you're doing poems on aircraft carriers, or You're building more transgender restrooms than you are for coverings for 100 million dollar airplanes.
00:30:51.000 What in the world is going on here?
00:30:53.000 And it's, again, it's a total transition of our country where we're being turned inside out.
00:30:58.000 And you and I both know, we've grown up in the best country on the face of, and we'll never be one that's as good as what we've got.
00:31:06.000 As pissed off as I am about what's going on right now, there's nowhere else I think is better.
00:31:10.000 We're the leader of freedom.
00:31:12.000 We're the leader of all those things.
00:31:14.000 Although, all the things we believe in, they're on the table.
00:31:18.000 To the Democrats, they're all negotiable for their agenda.
00:31:22.000 And again, that sort of has to wake everyone up.
00:31:24.000 Well, this group wants us to be like Europe in a lot of ways, socialist, a dictator as a president, like some of the presidents that are in Europe.
00:31:34.000 I was on a plane the other day traveling.
00:31:36.000 I forget where I was at. I travel so much.
00:31:38.000 But this lady was sitting next to me.
00:31:39.000 I said, where are you from? She said, I'm from Canada.
00:31:41.000 And we started talking.
00:31:43.000 She says, what are you all trying to do with your country?
00:31:46.000 And I said, what are you talking about?
00:31:48.000 She says, we have a dictator in Canada.
00:31:51.000 We have no freedoms left.
00:31:53.000 We used to be a great place to live.
00:31:55.000 It is awful as I speak.
00:31:58.000 And y'all are doing the same thing to your country that we did to ours.
00:32:01.000 You need to stop it. She didn't know I was a senator, so I didn't speak up at that point.
00:32:06.000 But I told her, I said, yes ma'am, I do believe and understand what you're saying.
00:32:09.000 And she's exactly right. They are turning, the Democrats and the progressives are just turning us inside out into something that, number one, we don't want to be.
00:32:18.000 Number two, it won't last long.
00:32:22.000 But once they get to that point, will we ever get it back?
00:32:25.000 Well, I think the answer is no.
00:32:27.000 I mean, you know, again, they've controlled these institutions so well.
00:32:29.000 I think it's been going on for much longer than we probably realized.
00:32:33.000 Probably decades. It just took, like, a Donald Trump or, you know, a little bit of a revolt of the actual people fighting back against the sort of uniparty establishment to actually bring out the true, you know, they're saying the quiet parts out loud now.
00:32:48.000 They were just doing them before.
00:32:50.000 And I think that was really important.
00:32:51.000 It's sort of like when with the...
00:32:54.000 With the school lockdowns, right?
00:32:57.000 Randy Weingarten and the teachers union, we don't want...
00:32:59.000 It was actually the greatest thing to happen.
00:33:01.000 Our kids, it was a disaster for them.
00:33:04.000 It was a disaster for their reading, for their science, for their math scores, for everything.
00:33:08.000 But parents finally figured out what was going on.
00:33:11.000 Because they're walking by and their kids are learning about everything other than math, anything other than things that are actually important to an education.
00:33:20.000 And... So it was like the greatest sort of self-own of all time.
00:33:24.000 They exposed themselves.
00:33:25.000 You know, so much of what you're talking about with Canada, I agree.
00:33:28.000 I mean, I would have thought, you know, Canada, the UK, Australia, maybe New Zealand, you know, us.
00:33:33.000 We're like the glass fashions of freedom in the world.
00:33:35.000 And it's like, you look at those places and it's like, oh my god, like...
00:33:39.000 We're so much further fallen than we could ever believe.
00:33:42.000 We've got to continue to fight for that.
00:33:43.000 And you brought up the key. One of the reasons I ran for this job, because I did it for 40 years after I got out of coaching.
00:33:52.000 I worked for ESPN for a little bit.
00:33:54.000 And sit around the house one day and my wife walks by and she said, you know, you haven't been here for a long time, 40 years.
00:33:59.000 This has been my house. Find you a job.
00:34:02.000 We're going to send you to the slump.
00:34:04.000 Get out. So I ran for this job.
00:34:06.000 But I ran because I saw for the last 15 years of where education was going.
00:34:11.000 Because I went into high schools in every state.
00:34:14.000 I talked to counselors, principals, teachers.
00:34:17.000 I saw the transcripts and what these kids were taking.
00:34:20.000 And I'd ask, what is this?
00:34:23.000 And how are you going to pay back your college loan with that degree?
00:34:27.000 And they don't teach reading and math.
00:34:33.000 In China right now, in 6th, 7th grade, they're learning calculus and algebra 2 and all these things.
00:34:40.000 We're teaching social justice, diversity.
00:34:43.000 We don't teach math. We don't teach kids to learn.
00:34:45.000 38, what, 28 schools in Baltimore a few months ago, last year's graduating class, 28 schools in Baltimore, zero proficiency in math in any graduate.
00:34:56.000 Zero, guys, right?
00:34:58.000 I mean, think, not a single graduate This country was built on the backs of educated young men and women that got an education and went out and got a job and helped this country become better.
00:35:13.000 And you can't make this country better.
00:35:14.000 It's like being an offensive lineman in football.
00:35:16.000 Unless you know the fundamentals and techniques, I don't care how good an athlete you are, if you don't have the fundamentals and techniques, you can't play the position.
00:35:24.000 You can't play the position in life if you can't read and write and do math.
00:35:29.000 You can't do it. You're going to have to live off the government.
00:35:32.000 I'll be dang. Hey, the Democrats have a solution for you, sir.
00:35:37.000 Oh yeah, exactly right. We'll take care of you forever.
00:35:39.000 You can just be an idiot and do nothing.
00:35:41.000 So that's an interesting one.
00:35:42.000 It's an angle I actually never thought.
00:35:44.000 But yeah, I mean, you've been immersed in education.
00:35:47.000 Forever. You know, coaching, but like it's the same thing.
00:35:50.000 And you see the students. Talk about, you know, when you got into it.
00:35:55.000 Versus more recently.
00:35:57.000 Do you see those changes manifest themselves throughout?
00:36:00.000 Oh, big time. You could bring them in.
00:36:02.000 And what I would do, as a football coach, you sign 25 new players a year.
00:36:07.000 And you bring them in, and before you put them in a tough college class, whether it's English or math or whatever, I found out the hard way to make sure that they're proficient in that before you put them in that class.
00:36:20.000 Because if they flunk a couple of classes, it's going to be hard to catch up.
00:36:23.000 You're going to lose your eligibility. So I'd bring them in.
00:36:26.000 And Don, the last 10 or 15 years, you would have very few young men and women who had 3.5, even some 4-point GPAs that were not proficient in reading.
00:36:40.000 They couldn't read 12th grade.
00:36:41.000 They were 6th grade, 9th grade reading level.
00:36:44.000 It's amazing. And some of them couldn't read at all, but they got a degree in high school.
00:36:48.000 They just passed them on. I spent some of my own money trying to put them in reading classes, trying to get them to a point.
00:36:53.000 And then we budgeted money for tutors And we get them to a level in a certain point, whether it's math or English, science, and then we could put them in a college preparatory class, but it's gotten a lot worse.
00:37:07.000 And again, it goes back to one thing.
00:37:09.000 If you can't read and if you can't write, you can't live in a country like this, And not have somebody help you make it through life.
00:37:21.000 That's a lot of what this government wants.
00:37:23.000 Teachers unions have absolutely killed our schools.
00:37:26.000 Killed it. If we don't get school choice, I heard a North Carolina governor today, they passed a law for school choice in North Carolina.
00:37:33.000 Well, he comes out today, he's a Democrat, and says it will just destroy our public schools if we do this.
00:37:38.000 They're already destroyed. I saw the stats the other day.
00:37:40.000 It was only like 25% proficiency.
00:37:44.000 If you're getting a 25, that's a failing grade.
00:37:49.000 It's lunacy, and yet we keep doing it because they control so much power.
00:37:55.000 That notion of school choice or dollars following the student, I can't imagine anyone who actually understands the facts not being for that, and yet You know, that's the difference between the constituency and the powers that be that have that control, right?
00:38:09.000 I imagine if you explained it and you took, even in the inner cities, and you explained to them what they could have for their children, who wouldn't want that?
00:38:17.000 But that's not what they're getting, and they don't even know that that's an option.
00:38:19.000 And when it is an option, they spend more money fighting the onslaught from the teachers union than they do actually being able to form the charter schools or whatever it may be.
00:38:28.000 Well, the COVID really brought it out about how bad our schools are and how bad our teachers are in the inner city.
00:38:34.000 Most of them in inner city.
00:38:36.000 I don't know how they got degrees, to be honest with you.
00:38:39.000 I don't know whether they can read and write.
00:38:41.000 But they're the experts that want to make sure that parents have no say.
00:38:44.000 How do you decide what to do with your children?
00:38:48.000 They want to raise. They want less time to work and less time in school.
00:38:52.000 It's just we've ruined work ethic in this country.
00:38:55.000 We don't work at it anymore.
00:38:58.000 We push an easy life.
00:39:00.000 And we all want it better for our kids.
00:39:03.000 We do. And that's the reason I worked hard all my life.
00:39:06.000 I got one son who works for Goldman Sachs and the other one working on a hypersonic missile.
00:39:10.000 Both got degrees. But I didn't give them anything.
00:39:14.000 They had to earn it on their own.
00:39:15.000 And I think a lot of people got to understand, make your kids earn what they're getting.
00:39:21.000 Help them to a point, but you can help them too much.
00:39:24.000 Yeah, listen, and again, I'm very self-aware.
00:39:27.000 I understand I'm the son of a billionaire, but my parents were very much like that.
00:39:29.000 My mom, she escaped communist Czechoslovakia.
00:39:33.000 So, as blessed as we were, we were sort of spoiled differently.
00:39:37.000 Great experiences and stuff like that, but it was never like bought off and just here's what it is.
00:39:41.000 They always made us have summer jobs.
00:39:43.000 And my dad was like, hey, if you're going to build a building, you better learn how to dig the foundation.
00:39:47.000 You're going to do that for two summers.
00:39:49.000 And I thought that was so important and made a big difference in my life.
00:39:53.000 Again, fully understanding that I'm blessed.
00:39:56.000 Not everyone has what I was able to start off with.
00:40:01.000 But from there, you have to do it on your own.
00:40:04.000 And I think that's an important foundation for setting things up.
00:40:06.000 Exactly. You learn how to work.
00:40:08.000 You learn how to make decisions.
00:40:10.000 And most people don't now.
00:40:11.000 Most of these kids growing up don't know how to make a decision.
00:40:14.000 They're addicted to their cell phone and social media.
00:40:19.000 Relax. Don't go crazy.
00:40:22.000 I may be guilty of that myself.
00:40:25.000 They stay on it all the time.
00:40:27.000 You're talking about 14, 16 hours a day.
00:40:29.000 You can't live a normal life like that.
00:40:32.000 And we have a huge mental health problem in this country.
00:40:35.000 Because of that. And it's not just because of that.
00:40:37.000 You know, of course, the borders are open and we've got drugs everywhere.
00:40:40.000 And of course, we had a mental health problem beforehand, but we've never had an answer to it.
00:40:46.000 Our answer to mental health is if somebody has a problem, you put them in jail, and then after you can't keep them in there for a while, you kick them back out on the street and let them wander around.
00:40:55.000 Or you just put them on whatever drugs Big Pharma's pushing that week and, you know, let's just solve the problem because there's a pill for everything, right?
00:41:00.000 Exactly. And we've got to get control of mental health.
00:41:03.000 I don't think we can make it as a country because the status quo, for a while, we were making progress and then all of a sudden, you know, a lot of things come in to affect and our kids are growing up as zombies in some areas.
00:41:21.000 I mean, they're just bullying.
00:41:23.000 It used to be, you know, you'd get bullied maybe at school or whatever.
00:41:26.000 They get bullied online.
00:41:28.000 And it's a tough situation.
00:41:31.000 But again, there's no answer for it.
00:41:35.000 And where I work in Washington, D.C., nobody wants to talk about it.
00:41:38.000 They want to talk about the visual things that they can get on TV about and talk about and all that.
00:41:45.000 Yeah, exactly. Everything can be done in 140 characters or less.
00:41:47.000 It's a headline, not a substance.
00:41:52.000 Listen, you're passionate about it.
00:41:54.000 Was there a thing that sparked you saying, hey, I'm going to get into this wonderful world of politics?
00:42:00.000 Listen, in Alabama, at least at Auburn, you walk on water.
00:42:06.000 I think there's probably some Alabama fans that may disagree with that, given your record against Nick Saban.
00:42:13.000 Was there something that was like, boom, I'm getting into this?
00:42:17.000 One of the things that kind of pushed me over the edge of getting into politics was your dad.
00:42:24.000 When he ran, being a non-politician, and I was coaching at the University of Cincinnati when he won.
00:42:32.000 That was my last year, 2016.
00:42:34.000 And he won, and I saw the things that he was trying to do.
00:42:40.000 Actually pushing things that we needed pushing, but also fighting back against the establishment.
00:42:46.000 I said, you know, I might want to do this.
00:42:48.000 And he helped, obviously.
00:42:50.000 And I didn't serve in the military.
00:42:53.000 My dad died on active duty in the military at age 53.
00:42:56.000 My brother was in the military.
00:42:58.000 And so I barely missed Vietnam and said, you know, I'm going to do this.
00:43:01.000 This is going to be my service.
00:43:04.000 And, you know, you can make a lot more money coaching, to be honest with you.
00:43:07.000 A lot more money. Listen, like all things.
00:43:10.000 Literally, it's like a key of the show.
00:43:12.000 It's like, hey, it was a lot easier and a lot more lucrative to be a real estate developer, but I also have five young kids, and I've got to leave them a country that we recognize.
00:43:18.000 Exactly. And, you know, again, that's on the table for these guys right now.
00:43:22.000 Yeah. But I can't say that.
00:43:24.000 And I tell people back in Alabama, they say, you like what you're doing?
00:43:27.000 Not really. I don't like this, but I'm glad I'm there.
00:43:30.000 Because I think I bring a little common sense and something from a different part of what a lot of, most of them are lawyers that I work with.
00:43:38.000 You have a few business people, most are lawyers.
00:43:40.000 And I've learned a lot.
00:43:45.000 It's worse now that I got in, that I was watching and looking from the outside.
00:43:51.000 Yeah, you can't imagine how bad it is until you're the guy actually taking those slings and arrows.
00:43:55.000 That's why I'm like, you know, when everyone's like, well, Trump should have done this, should have done that.
00:43:58.000 Like, relax. Like, you don't understand, like, what you're up against.
00:44:01.000 It's not, you know, you're not the Lord.
00:44:04.000 Exactly. When you're in one of these positions, whether it's president or senator, you know, there's all sorts of people that can subvert you along the way, and we figured that out.
00:44:12.000 Now we actually know who those people are.
00:44:13.000 I think that's why they hate Trump this time around even more, because that's the true threat to those little fiefdoms that they've been able to create for, you know, unelected bureaucrats, essentially.
00:44:23.000 Well, since I've been there, I've looked at it and, you know, the Democrats, they stay more on attack and resentment politics, meaning that they want every individual group to fight each other.
00:44:37.000 It's like taking a hornet's nest and just shaking it up.
00:44:41.000 You know, everybody's always fighting each other.
00:44:43.000 There's nothing easy about it and nothing's getting done.
00:44:48.000 What'd your dad do?
00:44:50.000 He didn't really get into the policy that much.
00:44:52.000 What he did, he went after the establishment and politicians that weren't doing their job.
00:44:56.000 And he called them out. And my gosh, you're talking about stirring up a nest.
00:44:59.000 You know as well as I do.
00:45:01.000 And so that was a difference.
00:45:02.000 And that's what he has done and did as president.
00:45:07.000 Like nobody else has done, he called everybody out, he called the media out, fake news and all that.
00:45:12.000 He's exactly right. The things I see in Washington, D.C. is absolutely amazing.
00:45:16.000 It's full of, you know, bureaucrats.
00:45:18.000 It's full of people that live off the federal government.
00:45:21.000 Listen, it's a cutthroat business, but so is sports, certainly at your level.
00:45:27.000 Talk about that. Talk about the similarities.
00:45:28.000 What are the similarities and perhaps what are the differences?
00:45:31.000 Well, I mean, you've got a common goal, obviously, to win.
00:45:35.000 And in college football, you recruit and you get people on your side, and you try to win on a Saturday.
00:45:44.000 The thing about government, you try to win, but it is slow motion.
00:45:48.000 You don't play every Saturday. You know, there's not a game every Saturday.
00:45:50.000 You might have a game every three or four months, and you're trying to get enough people on your side to vote your way, you know.
00:45:57.000 They have a much bigger cheerleading squad with the mainstream media and big tech.
00:46:01.000 Well, the media is one of our big problems.
00:46:03.000 I mean, if the media was down the line, balanced, and they held Republicans to the fire and the Democrats, and they just called it the way they saw it, we would have a country that would be unbelievable.
00:46:18.000 For some reason, I don't know what happened, over the years, years, and even before your time, they started moving to one side, and it's just, it's not bipartisan, it's all partisan.
00:46:30.000 I come off the Senate floor and I can see the ones, and they're coming to you asking a question, some I'll talk to, some I won't, because I know that they're going to take your words and mix it up and make you look like that.
00:46:43.000 Meanwhile, your colleague John Fetterman, he's a brilliant mind, he's a great orator, it's a little bit of a double standard, right?
00:46:50.000 You know, I like John. He took my old office the last few weeks.
00:46:54.000 I moved to another office.
00:46:55.000 He took my office and, you know, he come in and he's obviously had problems.
00:47:00.000 He's had health problems. And I can't imagine, you know, I was healthy and I struggled doing it.
00:47:07.000 You know, going through a campaign and going through all the things you have to go through and he's really struggled and, you know, We all wish him the best, and I talk to him every day, but he struggles.
00:47:25.000 He understands that. He's had health problems, and he wanted to do it, and he stayed with it, and so he's going to have to make the best of it.
00:47:33.000 I'm curious about that one, because it feels like he was sort of pushed into it, right?
00:47:39.000 The Democrats knew about a lot of the health stuff and the stroke beforehand, and they just assumed maybe he was the guy that they could get to win, and then it's like, you know, he missed a couple months of work, and then it was...
00:47:50.000 And again, I understand private relationships.
00:47:52.000 I don't ever want to broach those.
00:47:54.000 But it doesn't feel to me like he really wants it.
00:47:56.000 It's like, oh crap, he's there.
00:47:58.000 Alright, just go vote.
00:48:00.000 Rubber stamp the Democrat policy and go on.
00:48:02.000 I have a hard time, because you have to communicate with so many people every day.
00:48:08.000 Then you have to give speeches and you have to go to hearings and ask questions.
00:48:12.000 And he's on the Ag Committee with me.
00:48:14.000 He's not on any other committees. I mean, you've got to be prepared.
00:48:18.000 And of course, when he first got there, he's kind of like me.
00:48:22.000 He didn't realize what you're getting into.
00:48:24.000 And once you get into it, then he kind of got stressed out.
00:48:29.000 And of course, he goes in the hospital for a couple months.
00:48:32.000 Now he's back. But, you know, you've got to be 100%.
00:48:37.000 We'll watch and see.
00:48:39.000 I hope he gets better. It's a high-level game, but there's also real stakes.
00:48:46.000 Not that there's not in football, but like, you know, these could be, you know, Russia's moving tactical nuclear weapons into Belarus today.
00:48:55.000 I mean, you guys are being issued satellite phones.
00:48:57.000 I don't want to know what they're for, but I can only imagine.
00:49:01.000 That's scary stuff. And if people aren't functioning 100%, you know, if your quarterback's at 90%, It's game changing.
00:49:11.000 That would be, you know, double digits in a point spread change if people knew that, right?
00:49:16.000 The bookies would alter that.
00:49:18.000 But when we're talking about life and death, when we're talking about trillion dollar decisions, when we're talking about decisions that our children and grandchildren could be beholden to, whether it's financially or otherwise, you've got to be on.
00:49:31.000 Yeah, oh yeah. And I get up every morning at 5 o'clock and I read for a couple hours.
00:49:37.000 I read stuff where I keep up with, I'm not talking about news, I'm talking about articles about whether it's Ukraine, it's what's come out of Russia, what they're doing in Iran.
00:49:48.000 And football had an offensive and defensive kicking game.
00:49:50.000 Here, you've got everything. And you've got to keep up with it.
00:49:54.000 And so that's the reason I say it's hard to be compromised and be 100%.
00:50:00.000 And you've got to be on your toes, I'm going to tell you.
00:50:04.000 And then you've got the mainstream media out there that's going to attack you.
00:50:10.000 They won't attack you every day.
00:50:12.000 You know, I've got holes on all these generals and admirals right now, and they're all over me about this.
00:50:19.000 Pass the law. Bring it over.
00:50:20.000 The only reason I held it was because they're dictating from the Pentagon.
00:50:24.000 Don't do that. Hey, they elected us to Congress.
00:50:27.000 Let's vote on it. Pass it.
00:50:29.000 You can have your admirals and generals.
00:50:31.000 But do not go overhead.
00:50:32.000 And that's what's happening right now, Don.
00:50:34.000 The White House and the Pentagon, they're doing legislation themselves.
00:50:40.000 And if they're going to do that, we might as well lock the door and go home.
00:50:43.000 Yeah, they're totally bypassing Congress.
00:50:45.000 We had a retired colonel on here a week ago talking about exactly that.
00:50:50.000 There's more four-star generals now when we're not really at war versus when we had World War II. Let's just say slightly different.
00:51:00.000 Even if we've been at war for 20 years, it's a different war.
00:51:03.000 And yet, you know, the results don't really seem to be in line and doesn't stop the bureaucracy from expanding or, you know, more generals.
00:51:11.000 And no one really retires and everyone gets the reward to be a general.
00:51:14.000 And if you're trans, you probably become a general or an admiral real quickly too.
00:51:17.000 And it never seems to end.
00:51:19.000 And so I actually love that you're holding them up because We have to.
00:51:23.000 We have to put checks.
00:51:25.000 Our whole system is based on checks and balances, and yet it seems like if you're a Democrat, you can totally bypass all of that.
00:51:31.000 You can get it in. The bureaucrats control everything, and they're de facto running the government while being unelected officials.
00:51:37.000 Exactly. And you were saying about generals, in World War II there's one for every 6,000 service members.
00:51:42.000 Now there's one for every 1,500.
00:51:44.000 We've got too many. They've got to figure that out in the Pentagon.
00:51:48.000 Newt Gingrich always talks about taking the Pentagon and just make it three sides instead of, what, five?
00:51:54.000 You know, we've got way too many people over there.
00:51:56.000 And in hearings, in armed services hearings all the time, I ask Whether it's Secretary Austin or Milley.
00:52:02.000 I said, listen, we're not spending our money on building weapons.
00:52:06.000 We're either doing it...
00:52:07.000 We're worried about white rage or something.
00:52:10.000 I never even heard of it, but apparently it's a big thing.
00:52:13.000 We're supposed to have a killing machine.
00:52:16.000 And you hate to say that, but that's what the military is.
00:52:18.000 They've got to be afraid of us, but they don't want that.
00:52:21.000 They want to make sure that everybody understands they've got total control and they've got people in place that are going to teach the things that they want to teach.
00:52:31.000 It's really sad, but we've got to have a good military.
00:52:35.000 I'm going to tell you, In my lifetime, and yours, this is today, we have the most dangerous world that any of us have ever lived in.
00:52:44.000 Of course. Listen, we're talking about nukes casually these days.
00:52:48.000 Iran, they've almost got a nuke, okay?
00:52:50.000 They've almost got it. Once they get it, what are they going to do with it?
00:52:53.000 Then you've got Israel sitting around waiting, and they're not going to sit back.
00:52:57.000 No, of course not. They're not going to sit back.
00:52:59.000 And then, of course, you've got Ukraine. Well, and it's not like it's their entire existence.
00:53:04.000 Has been threatened by Iran daily.
00:53:07.000 The Ayatollah, you know, he still has his Twitter account when they ban Trump and stuff like that, but he can literally say they're going to wipe him off the face of the earth.
00:53:13.000 It's like, well, that's different. That's okay.
00:53:16.000 I mean, it's the double standard that we deal with every day.
00:53:18.000 But we don't need any more wars.
00:53:20.000 No, I agree. And, of course, we're funneling all this money.
00:53:23.000 I hadn't voted for one dime for Ukraine.
00:53:25.000 Nor should you. But I'm for Ukraine.
00:53:29.000 You know, because I'm for Ukraine winning, but we can't continue to do it.
00:53:33.000 We can't afford it. People don't understand.
00:53:35.000 We can't afford it. The problem is this.
00:53:37.000 As long as we're funneling money to them, as long as we're giving them $130, Billion?
00:53:42.000 I mean, that's a lot of money. That's a lot of money.
00:53:45.000 That's like, okay, beyond that, the Pentagon lost 220 billion.
00:53:49.000 You know, minor details, right? I'm sure most of that's going there or de facto going to our military to send it over there.
00:53:55.000 You know, so you could be at, you know, half a trillion dollars in this proxy war with Russia.
00:53:59.000 But as long as that money's flowing, All the corrupt people are getting rich.
00:54:04.000 There's no incentive to actually stop fighting the war.
00:54:08.000 We're fighting that war for them with our equipment.
00:54:10.000 We're spending our money, and no one's coming to the table as long as they're like, hey, there's more weapons, and we'll probably take some money on the side, and everyone's getting rich who's making decisions while people are dying in the streets, needlessly.
00:54:21.000 We hadn't won a war in a long time.
00:54:23.000 I don't know why we'd want to get in another one.
00:54:25.000 Think about it. Vietnam, we ran.
00:54:29.000 Iraq, it wasn't a war.
00:54:30.000 I mean, they didn't have an army to really fight.
00:54:32.000 We just marched through them and we turned around and gave it back to them for some unknown reason instead of taking our oil and paid ourselves back in terms of what we put into that.
00:54:43.000 Of course, Afghanistan, Our military didn't run, our politicians ran.
00:54:49.000 And that was the worst debacle I've seen.
00:54:51.000 And that was when I first got to the Senate.
00:54:54.000 And, you know, our military people, true military people, were embarrassed of what the White House did.
00:55:00.000 Of course they were. They had to be.
00:55:01.000 I mean, I know people there who say, like, again, hey, we can do the hyperbole about Democrats.
00:55:07.000 Like, for me, it was one of the maybe only times as an American I was embarrassed.
00:55:13.000 You know, I picked up my son.
00:55:15.000 I tell the story all the time. I picked up my son from school.
00:55:17.000 It was that week. We were doing, like, a father-son dinner.
00:55:19.000 And he was nine.
00:55:21.000 I was like, hey, Dad, why would we leave them $86 billion worth of equipment?
00:55:25.000 I don't understand. I was like, I don't either.
00:55:27.000 I didn't know how to even explain it to him because it's so ridiculous.
00:55:31.000 He thought, like, I must...
00:55:34.000 Be withholding something.
00:55:35.000 Dad, why would we take out our military before we took out the civilians?
00:55:40.000 Why did we leave them? You know, he didn't know what a biometric scanner was, right?
00:55:44.000 But he goes, why did we leave them the machines that they could figure out who was helping us for 20 years?
00:55:49.000 It seems like they would probably kill those people.
00:55:52.000 I was like... A nine-year-old.
00:55:55.000 A nine-year-old got it.
00:55:57.000 But our generals wanted to worry about white rage.
00:55:59.000 And Joe Biden wanted to take credit by accelerating it into the fighting season so he could say he did it faster than Trump.
00:56:07.000 No one was advocating for the endless wars.
00:56:09.000 And I think the American populace, frankly, until Ukraine became the new religion of the left...
00:56:16.000 um was generally out of this mindset of no one wants to be in endless wars and I think that's why the generals went so well because that was the retirement plan like the Raytheon board yeah uh now it's like oh maybe we'll go to Disney or something like that well the one thing I will say and and standing up for a few of the generals that I've gotten to know pretty well uh after investigating you know the Afghanistan the guy that pulled us out was Joe Biden He went against most of the—now, I'd say some were probably for, but he went against some that he should have listened to, that really knew what was going on, that had been there for a while, that was there under President Trump.
00:56:52.000 He said, we don't need to do it.
00:56:54.000 But he said, we're leaving.
00:56:56.000 We're out. It wasn't a very good plan.
00:57:00.000 You know, when you do it on a whim...
00:57:03.000 Yeah, well, he knew because he was just going to get covered in the headlines, and they were going to say, oh, he did it faster.
00:57:06.000 He's better than Trump. Again, Trump wanted to get it out, too.
00:57:09.000 But there's a way to do it, and there's a way not to do it.
00:57:12.000 And Joe Biden demonstrated the way not to do it.
00:57:14.000 Exactly. Exactly.
00:57:16.000 I want to ask a little bit about, you know, you think about some of the great rivalries in sports.
00:57:21.000 You know what I mean? Talk about, you know, Alabama versus Auburn in that.
00:57:26.000 Because, I mean, I think of that as sort of like a, you know, Army-Navy, Texas-OU, you know, Yankees-Red Sox.
00:57:34.000 You know, for those who, you know...
00:57:36.000 Again, some of these rivalries tend to be more regional and everyone's rivalries are the biggest, but talk a little bit about the Alabama-Auburn rivalry.
00:57:43.000 Well, fortunately I was coaching in a lot of big rival games.
00:57:47.000 My first one was the Catholics vs.
00:57:50.000 Convicts when I was at the University of Miami and coached with Jimmy Johnson.
00:57:53.000 We went to South Bend and they called it the Catholics vs.
00:57:56.000 And what a game that was. And then I was involved in the Texas-Texas A&M game.
00:58:00.000 I was at A&M as an assistant.
00:58:01.000 Then I was in the Egg Bowl with Mississippi State and Ole Miss.
00:58:05.000 You know, that's big for that state.
00:58:07.000 That's a big one. But let me tell you something.
00:58:10.000 The Auburn-Alabama game, it's life or death.
00:58:14.000 I mean, hey, they will talk about football, college, that game, before they'll talk about hunting and fishing.
00:58:21.000 And you know how important that is in that state.
00:58:22.000 That's a big deal in Alabama, yeah.
00:58:24.000 And you can't ride the fence in that state.
00:58:27.000 You know, you're either one or the other, and if you don't pick a side, then you'll be ridiculed.
00:58:33.000 But it was a fun game.
00:58:36.000 It was hard for a coach. When I coached it, it was hard because I wanted to get it over with because you felt the weight of every alumni person or football player that had ever played at Auburn, you know, for that game.
00:58:49.000 And you wanted to win it for them, not for you, not for your football team.
00:58:53.000 That's what made it so tough.
00:58:55.000 And in the same way, now Nick, I'm going to tell you, he's turned the impossible what he's done.
00:59:00.000 Not just winning the Iron Bowl, but also winning national championships is just unbelievable what he's done.
00:59:05.000 But there's great football players.
00:59:07.000 In the South, in Georgia, in Alabama, in Mississippi, in Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida, there's a lot of great athletes.
00:59:14.000 And if you just look at the NFL rosters, most of them come from those five or six states.
00:59:19.000 Talk about Saban. Is he the greatest of all time?
00:59:21.000 You actually have a winning record against him, which I think not a lot of people can boast, and certainly not a lot of people in what would be a big rivalry.
00:59:30.000 No, but he's a good friend.
00:59:31.000 We play a lot of golf together.
00:59:33.000 I don't know how and why he's still doing it.
00:59:36.000 He's made a lot of money. He's in the Mercedes business, the John Deere dealership business, but he doesn't hunt and fish.
00:59:41.000 He plays golf. He goes out on a boat.
00:59:44.000 He just went on a three or four week trip with his wife to To Italy and France, I know he was miserable.
00:59:51.000 Because he's the type of worrying about what's going on back home.
00:59:55.000 But he's really good.
00:59:57.000 And to accomplish what he's done is just absolutely amazing.
01:00:02.000 So, you know, politics in Alabama, right?
01:00:04.000 Obviously, Auburn's loved, but, like, half the state also hates that.
01:00:11.000 Was that a consideration, I mean, getting into the game?
01:00:13.000 Because, again, you can be loved, but you're also the guy that competed against, you know, teams that, again, I saw it.
01:00:20.000 I've spent more time in sort of Texas.
01:00:21.000 I've been to Texas OU a bunch of times.
01:00:22.000 I mean, I watch grown men just crying.
01:00:24.000 Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Literally just crying.
01:00:27.000 And, you know, I came from, you know, New England, I went to an Ivy League school.
01:00:31.000 It wasn't the same, so I didn't understand football culture until I sort of got out and started hanging out with guys in the South, where it is, to your point.
01:00:40.000 Practically life and death to these guys.
01:00:42.000 Oh, yeah. My buddy from Texas, a big Republican involved in the game, and he goes, Texas OU weekend for him was the culmination of Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, his birthday, and every other major holiday rolled up into one special weekend.
01:00:58.000 And I'm like... Oh yeah.
01:01:00.000 What are you talking about? But it was.
01:01:02.000 And so, you know, how was that as you got into politics?
01:01:06.000 Was there an issue that you were the rival coach of someone's beloved team?
01:01:10.000 When I sat down to run for this job, being at Auburn, still living in Auburn, my wife and I sat down to talk about it.
01:01:18.000 She says, how are you going to get the Alabama people to vote for you?
01:01:21.000 Because it's basically 60-40, okay?
01:01:23.000 And I said, you're going to have over 50% of the vote.
01:01:26.000 I said, yeah. So I had me a little strategy.
01:01:30.000 Of course, for two years I campaigned.
01:01:32.000 I went to every small town, went to Cracker Barrels, every Waffle House, you know, talking to Alabama, Auburn people.
01:01:38.000 And basically told them, why would I vote for you, Coach?
01:01:42.000 I'm an Alabama fan. You know, you beat a six in a row and you stick a thumb in her face and all that.
01:01:46.000 And I said, well, listen, if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have Nick.
01:01:48.000 I ran the rest of them off.
01:01:50.000 I got them fired. And it kind of resonated.
01:01:52.000 Everybody kind of laughed about it, you know.
01:01:54.000 But it's true. I went through five coaches in ten years when I was at Auburn.
01:01:59.000 Think about that. Now Nick's been there throughout 13.
01:02:02.000 I went through five in ten years.
01:02:04.000 And he was the fifth one. So they lose to you twice and it's over.
01:02:07.000 It doesn't matter. They have a winning record otherwise.
01:02:10.000 But if they lose to Auburn, it's a problem at Alabama.
01:02:13.000 Doesn't matter. But it's what keeps life going in the state of Alabama is that game.
01:02:17.000 And, of course, football. Now basketball is big.
01:02:20.000 Baseball is big. All sports are big.
01:02:23.000 And if we don't allow this transgender movement to ruin women's sports, women's sports are getting bigger.
01:02:29.000 Talk about that. Listen, I went to Penn, where the home of Leah Thomas, which probably, it's been going on for a little while before, but that was the first big one.
01:02:39.000 You can literally have an exact tie with a woman.
01:02:41.000 It's like, well, we're giving it to the dude.
01:02:46.000 Sorry, my producers are laughing, but it's true.
01:02:48.000 They had an exact tie with Riley Gaines.
01:02:51.000 It's like, well, we're giving it to that one because there's press around it.
01:02:54.000 And they're like, well, why would the tie go to the biological male who became a woman, at least in his own mind, a few weeks ago rather than the woman?
01:03:01.000 I mean, talk about what that is.
01:03:03.000 Because I sit there. I have a daughter that's a great athlete.
01:03:05.000 She's a great golfer. And I know the time it takes, the dedication, the perseverance to be the best.
01:03:12.000 And yet... Against men her age, it's just different.
01:03:16.000 There's a biological advantage, there's physical advantages, there's strength.
01:03:20.000 They can erase all of that in academia.
01:03:25.000 What I want to know, where are the soccer moms?
01:03:28.000 Well, they're the ones going to have to change it.
01:03:30.000 And this is one topic that has really made me mad over the last two or three months of we're letting this happen because it's a small part of our country that's transgender.
01:03:43.000 And listen, I don't care what you...
01:03:44.000 This country lets you be whatever you want.
01:03:46.000 Be who you want. But for you to be able to compete, say, I want to compete against girls or women in a sport where you are...
01:03:55.000 Definitely 30, 40, 50% bigger, faster, and stronger.
01:03:59.000 Your daughter, what, 15, playing golf, if she plays against Bubba Watson's son in a few years, she's not going to beat him because he's going to hit it 325 yards and she's going to hit it 280.
01:04:11.000 She's hitting 280 now.
01:04:12.000 She's like LPGA tour length average basically already.
01:04:15.000 So she's exceptional for what it is and who knows what happens with it.
01:04:19.000 It's unfair. Yeah, it's unfair.
01:04:22.000 I mean, you can't do it.
01:04:24.000 At Auburn, I mean, I'm sure you dealt with the entire athletic department.
01:04:28.000 Is there a woman that could have, from any one of the other sports, that could have gone?
01:04:33.000 And sat on the offensive line while you were coaching there and overperformed.
01:04:37.000 Or even hung in there.
01:04:39.000 No. No, it's not going to happen.
01:04:41.000 It's just a 350 pound cap.
01:04:42.000 You're not comparing apples to apples.
01:04:44.000 No, of course you're not. I tell people this.
01:04:47.000 It's unfair, but it's also unsafe.
01:04:51.000 I mean, when you're competing against bigger, better athletes, we saw a volleyball game, you know, where the kid gets hit in the face with a volleyball.
01:04:59.000 Well, there's the MMA, the trans MMA guy that knocked out all these women and fractured their skull.
01:05:04.000 There's, you know, the weightlifting, I guess no one's getting hurt on the other side, but like...
01:05:09.000 It's insane. Like, you know, of course, I mean, you look at the, just the records of the men, the top men and the top women, and let's just say there's a large discrepancy, and yet it continues.
01:05:19.000 And, you know, again, the moms are what surprises me the most, because I know how much effort they put in.
01:05:26.000 Oftentimes, and the dads, but like, it really feels like it, because it really only affects women, right?
01:05:32.000 There's no women getting into men's sports that are dominating and costing young men their scholarships or whatever it may be.
01:05:40.000 It's only going the one way, which probably tells you everything you need to know, and yet it doesn't seem to matter.
01:05:45.000 But the fact that there's so much silence, you know, why are they afraid to take on that issue?
01:05:50.000 They're afraid to be called out.
01:05:52.000 I've had a lot of them tell me, well, I'm not going to let my daughters play sports.
01:05:57.000 I said, that's exactly opposite of what you don't want to do.
01:06:00.000 You want to fight for this.
01:06:02.000 And a lot of people don't know how to fight for what's right because they're afraid they'll be called out, be called names, ridiculed because, oh, you're against this certain group.
01:06:12.000 That's not what this country is about.
01:06:14.000 It's about being fair.
01:06:15.000 And there's no fairness. One of the few things that Washington, D.C. has done right in the last 50 years is made a law called Title IX where women had a level.
01:06:26.000 You had to deal with that, I'm sure, a lot.
01:06:28.000 Oh, yeah. The football programs at these universities, in all fairness, that's the athletic budget, and yet it had to be distributed sort of equally amongst the sexes.
01:06:38.000 You pay for every sport.
01:06:40.000 Yeah, you're the only one really generating what we call serious revenue.
01:06:43.000 Basketball doesn't make any, baseball doesn't make any, football pays for every athletic sport.
01:06:50.000 And now that transgender is coming along, and fine, let them have their own group to compete, but don't let them compete against women, because what's going to happen is these young girls coming up aren't going to play, and it's going to be devastating to women's sports.
01:07:07.000 Yeah. Well, hopefully we push back on that.
01:07:09.000 But I think also, how did sports actually get so politicized?
01:07:14.000 You see that in the NBA and the NFL and my intro talking about the Dodgers are hosting sort of this blasphemous group with the crucifix made of dildos.
01:07:26.000 How did that happen?
01:07:28.000 How were they able to get a hold of that?
01:07:30.000 Because it doesn't feel like, certainly not in Alabama, but it doesn't feel like the fan base is even accepting of some of this stuff, or at least would be 50-50, and yet it doesn't matter.
01:07:40.000 They're happy to throw that in the face of all of it and just go full woke.
01:07:43.000 Well, it's all about money.
01:07:45.000 It's all about whether you're commissioner of a league or you're an athletic director or you run ESPN. Yeah, well, you worked with ESPN. Yeah, yeah.
01:07:55.000 I mean, they feel they're more political to me than CNN. Sure they are.
01:07:59.000 Well, they're owned by Disney and ABC, and they're very political.
01:08:05.000 I worked with a group for two years.
01:08:08.000 I worked with about 45 people.
01:08:10.000 We traveled everywhere together.
01:08:11.000 I was one of the announcers of the games, and I was on the short end of the stick when it came to being conservative.
01:08:21.000 It is what it is, because most of them come from the Northeast, the people up there.
01:08:26.000 No, it's a lot of politics in sports and the Kaepernick deal of taking an E on the national anthem really got it stirred up and I think people saw that if you start something like that, you can accelerate politics and get people talking about it.
01:08:42.000 I think for some of them you can also accelerate the career, right?
01:08:45.000 They become the martyr. Kaepernick made money deals with athletic companies, let's call it He's a great athlete, I'm sure, but he was a journeyman quarterback, certainly for the NFL, right?
01:08:56.000 I mean, he wasn't outstanding by any metric, and yet he became one of the most talked about NFL players.
01:09:04.000 And probably, you know, I don't know if he sold a lot of jerseys or sold no jerseys, but he certainly got the financial deals that no one else with his stats would have ever gotten.
01:09:12.000 And so... Did it push that?
01:09:14.000 Did you see that in your players, too?
01:09:15.000 I mean, was there sort of that revolt against the flag, against the anthem, or did that not really exist?
01:09:21.000 Did that really come once they got into the pay world?
01:09:25.000 No, yeah, you didn't see that because, like you said, it's about money.
01:09:29.000 Usually politics is about money, and so you didn't really have that.
01:09:32.000 That problem in college, but now you're getting into NIL and all these college kids are making money and it's going to be the downfall.
01:09:41.000 It won't take it to its knees, but it's going to degrade how competitive it is because you're going to have just a few people that's going to have the money to get the best players.
01:09:54.000 Yeah, talk about that. I mean, what does that do to your ability to recruit, say, even at a big school like Auburn versus Alabama, where now they've got a bunch of national champions and, like, you know, it's the feeder program to the NFL, right?
01:10:09.000 Between that and Georgia or whatever it may be.
01:10:11.000 Does it make that disparity grow a lot further where there's two or three teams that are just going to be the only ones that can be dominant and that's it?
01:10:19.000 Well, you know, you're going to have several teams in the big leagues in college that's going to be able to make it.
01:10:24.000 The problem is you've got 400 other Division II teams.
01:10:30.000 If they get a good player, they're going to take money and go to one of the better teams.
01:10:34.000 And so you're not going to be able to build a team.
01:10:36.000 It's going to take away from a lot of the smaller schools, 1AA schools as we used to call them.
01:10:43.000 Joe Manchin and I have got a bill.
01:10:45.000 We're getting ready to start pushing.
01:10:47.000 That's going to basically do four or five basic things to try to help the NCAA because they're afraid of lawsuits.
01:10:53.000 And one is this transfer.
01:10:56.000 We're letting kids transfer and play immediately when most of the time when I coached, if you transferred, fine.
01:11:03.000 But you had to set out a year.
01:11:05.000 You had to take a penalty.
01:11:07.000 Did you lose a year of eligibility or did you just have to push it off for a year?
01:11:11.000 Well, it depended. You got four years and you can play, you can be there five.
01:11:15.000 So you could still get that fourth year unless you were kind of in the end of your time.
01:11:21.000 But We're teaching kids to quit.
01:11:24.000 Hey, when times get tough, I don't like this coach or he's making me do too much or working too hard.
01:11:30.000 My buddies at this other school say we're not doing it, so I'm going to go to this other school.
01:11:34.000 So that's not what this country is about.
01:11:36.000 This country is about going and doing your job, doing your duty, working as a team, learning time management, work ethic, and all those things.
01:11:46.000 I see both sides.
01:11:47.000 I mean, I do see, hey, a lot of these schools making...
01:11:50.000 Tens and hundreds of millions of dollars off of the players who couldn't do anything.
01:11:54.000 So, I mean, I get a component of it, but I think the point you just brought up is actually the scary one, which is like, I don't want to put in the work.
01:12:00.000 This guy's going to give me more money to do that.
01:12:02.000 I mean, I think what made a lot of the great players is having a great coach, someone who pushed them out of their comfort zone.
01:12:08.000 And I think, you know, for better or worse, in today's sort of instant gratification world, if it's like, well, I can take $10 million from this, it's like, I can be done for life.
01:12:16.000 Yeah, and we've got money involved in it, and one thing that we're trying to put back into it is when you go to college, you go for what?
01:12:23.000 You go for an education.
01:12:25.000 Now you're not, if you start transferring for money, you're not going to get a degree.
01:12:29.000 You know, it's not going to happen.
01:12:31.000 And so what we're doing is we're putting money in it, and parents are taking money, and actually what a lot of these kids are doing, all the money goes to the parents, and the kid doesn't get anything.
01:12:44.000 Yeah, that's where a lot of this abuse, you're going to see lawsuits, this is going to be a problem.
01:12:49.000 And there's contracts that are broken, so there's really no rules or regulations right now.
01:12:54.000 It's kind of the wild, wild west, and we're trying to get it under control, but listen, I'm for players making money.
01:12:59.000 Because it's hard, what they do.
01:13:02.000 It's the only time in their life they'll have two full-time jobs.
01:13:05.000 Going to school, academics, tutors and all that, and then you gotta turn around and you gotta go work and practice for a crazy coach and spend a lot of time lifting weights, you know, going to meetings, practicing.
01:13:17.000 It's a lot to it. So I'm for them making money, but I tell you, I'm not for two or three on a team making money and the rest of them not making any.
01:13:23.000 I'm for all of them getting a piece of money. I can see that creating a problem also.
01:13:26.000 There's some bitterness. I could even see it in the sense that, you know, these are also young kids, right?
01:13:30.000 They're pissed off. This guy's, you know, driving a Ferrari and we're not like, hey, I'm just going to miss that block.
01:13:35.000 It happened to teams last year.
01:13:38.000 We call it a bad locker room.
01:13:40.000 You go in there and nobody talks to each other.
01:13:42.000 They're mad at each other. Well, I'm playing, but he's making $500,000 and I'm making $100,000.
01:13:46.000 Wait a minute. How come I'm the starter and he's not, but he's getting more money?
01:13:50.000 And so that creates a terrible locker room.
01:13:53.000 And the whole object is to win.
01:13:55.000 You know, to win games.
01:13:56.000 Yeah, I can say that again, in a contact sport like football, Right.
01:13:59.000 Someone misses a block on purpose to level the playing field for them.
01:14:04.000 But it can happen.
01:14:06.000 This is an 18-year-old kid.
01:14:09.000 Who knows what's going through their minds.
01:14:11.000 You wish they wouldn't do that, but I can't say that, I don't know how many kids are playing college football, but it's thousands.
01:14:19.000 It's going to happen, and that could be devastating to people as well.
01:14:23.000 Well, there's two things left in our society where kids get disciplined.
01:14:27.000 Because a lot of our kids nowadays have one or no parent.
01:14:31.000 Because this generation, for some reason, you know, the Democrats have fought the nuclear family and busted it up.
01:14:38.000 Well, they've incentivized almost getting rid of it.
01:14:40.000 Where you can make money. You know, you can make money if you're not married and all that.
01:14:42.000 Bigger programs and more money. But the two areas that's really kept us together is military, you can go get discipline and hard work, you can learn all that, and sports, you can do the same thing.
01:14:54.000 Everybody can't do it, but a lot of these young men and women learn to work with other people and do things right and know when things get tough, how to get up off the ground and go again.
01:15:06.000 We're ruining all that.
01:15:07.000 And we talked about the military earlier.
01:15:09.000 Now we're talking about sports.
01:15:11.000 What have we got left? We don't have family.
01:15:13.000 We don't have sports. And we're not going to have military to take thousands of kids into.
01:15:18.000 Well, they're getting rid of God, too, as evidenced by the L.A. Dodgers.
01:15:21.000 If they're comfortable doing that, you know what I mean?
01:15:25.000 Again, I don't think they would do it if it was Muslim or Hindu or anyone else, but to attack the Christian faith in that specific instance, Catholics that way.
01:15:36.000 We're maybe Christian in this country now, maybe 30%.
01:15:40.000 Hopefully it's a little bit more than that.
01:15:43.000 And this country was built on Christian faith.
01:15:46.000 And of course, a lot of the Democrats fight it every day.
01:15:49.000 These are common things, but again, there is a flagrant attack on that.
01:15:55.000 Right. From coaching, what are the moments that stood out to you most?
01:16:00.000 What's the most memorable experience there?
01:16:03.000 Well, I enjoyed seeing young men Start from almost nothing and have nothing to being very successful.
01:16:16.000 And them learning how to work, again, you come from high school, you think, man, I've made it.
01:16:20.000 I'm going into college. It's just now getting started.
01:16:25.000 And they look around the first day they're there, man, these guys are big, they're strong, they're fast.
01:16:29.000 Well, they weren't. When they were your age, They were starting on a weight program and they were starting to learn how to play the game and learn how to be a good person.
01:16:39.000 And so it was good to see kids.
01:16:41.000 I recruited Ray Lewis, for instance, up here in Orlando, Kathleen High School.
01:16:46.000 In Lakeland. One parent.
01:16:50.000 Very raw kid.
01:16:52.000 Nobody hardly recruited him.
01:16:54.000 He ended up being one of the best players ever.
01:16:55.000 But Ray Lewis wanted out.
01:16:57.000 Michael Irving the same way.
01:16:59.000 Michael Irving... He wanted out in college?
01:17:01.000 No. He wanted out of...
01:17:04.000 What he grew up in. He was hungry.
01:17:08.000 He was hungry. He wanted a better life for him and his mom and his brothers and sisters.
01:17:14.000 And they worked to get to that point.
01:17:16.000 And they earned it. And so to me that was the most enjoyable thing is to watch kids go from one to the other.
01:17:23.000 We had a guy one time called Dwayne Johnson.
01:17:26.000 You know who Dwayne Johnson is?
01:17:28.000 Dwayne Johnson was at Miami, played as a defensive coordinator, and he wanted to be a wrestler.
01:17:34.000 Well, Dwayne Johnson is a rock.
01:17:35.000 He ended up being a wrestler.
01:17:37.000 Pretty good one. But being an actor really put him to the point where obviously he makes millions and millions.
01:17:44.000 I really enjoyed seeing kids, not just kids like that that went on to make all pro or...
01:17:49.000 To be excellent at football, but to just be good at life.
01:17:51.000 Yeah, but to go have a great life, you know, and knew how to work and put time in and knew if they had to be there at five, hey, you better be there at five.
01:18:01.000 So many of these kids don't know time restraints anymore.
01:18:04.000 They don't understand it. Did you see the discipline change?
01:18:08.000 You did it for a long time.
01:18:10.000 Did you see that sort of level of discipline change or did the great ones always have that discipline and was that a standout factor?
01:18:16.000 You would see some that you'd have, that's one of your most disappointing things, to see a kid come in with all this talent and they didn't put it to use.
01:18:24.000 I mean, they thought they were to the promised land and they didn't want to work out on weights and they thought, hey, I'm here, let's get it done, instead of earning their spurs and really doing what they needed to to make themselves even better than what they were.
01:18:39.000 That was hard. But you start to see the lack of discipline.
01:18:45.000 But the thing about it, again, most in this country, the high school football programs I'd go to, they were hard-nosed.
01:18:50.000 I mean, you can't be football and not be hard-nosed because you're not winning many games.
01:18:56.000 The coach is going to get fired. And so that's one thing that, as I said earlier, sports, men and women, have really helped this country.
01:19:05.000 Maintain the leadership, dedication, and the work ethic they need to make it through life.
01:19:11.000 Well, it's sort of the ultimate meritocracy, right?
01:19:13.000 Which is why it's so interesting that sports has been so politicized because it's the opposite, right?
01:19:19.000 The NFL taking their woke positions on these things.
01:19:23.000 If the guy's not the best, if you're not Tom Brady, you're not starting.
01:19:27.000 If you have Tom Brady, that guy's going to be the guy that's starting because there's so much on the line.
01:19:30.000 And yet, it's always interesting watching sort of That's the, like, key tenet of the entire game in that, and yet the sort of issues they espouse, the issues they take are actually sort of the opposite of that in real life.
01:19:45.000 Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know.
01:19:47.000 The irony is sort of, you know what I mean?
01:19:48.000 Like, that would never fly. Like, you wouldn't be an NFL team.
01:19:52.000 You'd lose money, and then therefore you wouldn't exist, and therefore it wouldn't happen.
01:19:56.000 And yet, it feels like they're pushing that stuff outside of their ecosphere, but not within.
01:20:02.000 It's happening more than you think, but it's, you know, If you just look back at sports, how people have, you know, came from nothing.
01:20:11.000 You know, O.J. Simpson, you know, running back in my day, watching one of the greatest ever to play, you know, he got cut from his eighth grade football team.
01:20:19.000 You know, wouldn't let him play.
01:20:20.000 He wasn't good enough. And look where he ended up.
01:20:23.000 And, you know, if you look at guys that I'm friends with, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, they're not great athletes.
01:20:31.000 They made themselves into quarterbacks.
01:20:34.000 Here. Because they hadn't thought the other thing.
01:20:36.000 Seventh round, something like that?
01:20:38.000 It was funny. They could throw the ball, but they didn't have the legs that some of these kids have nowadays.
01:20:45.000 But there was something different, right?
01:20:45.000 Like I was there with a bunch of buddies of mine who I affectionately call Massholes.
01:20:51.000 We were watching a Patriots game the day Drew Blitzo was taken out.
01:20:56.000 And again, these were grown men from Boston, like, in tears that their guy,
01:21:03.000 maybe not the greatest ever, but he sort of carried the franchise a little bit for a while.
01:21:08.000 And they're in their tears because this guy that was warming up the bench, Tom Brady,
01:21:14.000 Brady was going to now be their quarterback.
01:21:17.000 And I'm sitting there like, well, who would have known that that was sort of the start of a dynasty of probably the greatest quarterback in NFL history?
01:21:26.000 He was. And, of course, we forget about a lot of them over the years and they call him, you know, the GOAT, greatest of all time.
01:21:33.000 And probably in the last 20 years, you could match him up against Joe Montana, you know, who was really, really good.
01:21:41.000 Roger Staubach in his day was really, really good.
01:21:44.000 Terry Bradshaw, really.
01:21:47.000 So, but, you know, all those guys Made themselves into players because they understood the only way you can get there is to be dedicated to the job.
01:21:56.000 And that's the reason they were successful.
01:21:59.000 Again, I just hate to see the road that we're taking in sports right now in a lot of areas to where it's more about money than it is about making yourself better.
01:22:10.000 How did you get into it to begin with?
01:22:12.000 I played. I played high school, played college, and then a small school in Arkansas.
01:22:17.000 And then I decided, you know, a coach is really somebody that doesn't want to grow up.
01:22:23.000 Really, it's true. And so you can't play, but what's the next best thing?
01:22:27.000 You're going to coach. And so I got into it on the high school level.
01:22:31.000 Then I got into it on the college level.
01:22:32.000 And then Jimmy Johnson hired me down in Miami in 1985.
01:22:36.000 And that was kind of my break.
01:22:37.000 And I didn't move a whole lot compared to, I've known guys that have moved 15, 20 times in their career.
01:22:43.000 I only moved like six or seven, which was good.
01:22:45.000 But it's, I enjoy sports.
01:22:48.000 I enjoy everything outdoors, hunting, fishing, sports.
01:22:52.000 I wasn't a rocket scientist.
01:22:54.000 You know, I didn't study like, my two boys are very smart, but they worked at it.
01:22:58.000 One of them is actually a rocket scientist, I think.
01:23:00.000 Yeah, really. I got up every day, done, and enjoyed going to work.
01:23:09.000 Now, this new job I've got, I can't say that 100%.
01:23:13.000 Like I told you, I'm glad I'm there.
01:23:15.000 But my goodness, it's something different every day.
01:23:19.000 But I think the same sort of stuff applies.
01:23:21.000 The strategy that you used To become a winning coach in football.
01:23:25.000 I mean, politics is strategy.
01:23:28.000 I mean, there's a lot of it to it.
01:23:30.000 It's not just going in and stamping something.
01:23:31.000 I mean, you know, how aligned is sort of, you know, the strategy or the mentality of the strategy that you used in football to win games the same as moving the ball forward in politics?
01:23:41.000 I tell people this, the one thing that's common denominator for everything that we do in life is you have to sell yourself to other people.
01:23:52.000 I mean, they can figure out a phone in a heartbeat.
01:23:55.000 You've got to be able to communicate, but you've got to be able to sell yourself to three or four people on the Democratic side and get a bill passed.
01:24:03.000 You're going to get most people on your side.
01:24:04.000 You've got to sell that. But there's no different.
01:24:07.000 When I went into somebody's home in Detroit, I had parents sitting there, kid, I need you to come to Auburn.
01:24:14.000 Why don't you go to Auburn, Coach?
01:24:15.000 Well, if they don't believe in you first, they're not going to send him to your school.
01:24:21.000 So you've got to sell yourself.
01:24:23.000 And so for any advice I can give to any young people out there is, you know, learn to sell yourself to other people by communicating what you're about and who you are.
01:24:34.000 I mean, it's interesting you say that because the two other senators that you talked about are on the other side of the aisle, whether it's Fetterman or Manchin.
01:24:42.000 So, yeah, I guess that's right.
01:24:44.000 I mean, we forget that. We sort of pick that side.
01:24:45.000 But I think sometimes we do have to figure out how to make that work.
01:24:48.000 Otherwise, we are going to be in a perpetual stalemate, especially when you talk about a Congress where we have a four-seat majority in the House and, I guess, a one-seat minority in the Senate.
01:24:59.000 I mean, these things are so close.
01:25:01.000 If you can do that, you can actually flip that in our favor fairly well.
01:25:06.000 But you've got to sell yourself.
01:25:08.000 They've got to believe in you. Joe Manchin and I have worked on this NIO bill for a year.
01:25:13.000 Of course, we've got to be pretty close because of it.
01:25:16.000 I've worked with others. Tim Kaine, Krista Sinema.
01:25:19.000 I've worked with them on bills.
01:25:21.000 There are some of them I can't work with.
01:25:24.000 I hear the words coming into some of their mouths.
01:25:26.000 I understand.
01:25:29.000 Speaking of negotiations and getting something back, I heard the Biden administration is now pushing back on removing, I guess, Space Force was going to be located in Alabama.
01:25:39.000 Space Command. Your dad put Space Command in Huntsville, but he started Space Force.
01:25:48.000 President Trump was smart enough to understand the next war is probably going to be won or lost in space.
01:25:56.000 Of course it will. Between satellites and this.
01:25:58.000 Exactly. In Alabama, we've got a place called Huntsville that most people hadn't been.
01:26:03.000 But let me tell you something. We've got what we call the Redstone Arsenal.
01:26:07.000 It's 40,000 troops behind the wall.
01:26:09.000 We have the Missile Defense Agency.
01:26:12.000 We protect the world with missile defense from Huntsville.
01:26:17.000 We have 600 or 700 defense contractors.
01:26:19.000 We build everything from rockets to tanks.
01:26:23.000 And we have obviously NASA. We have probably at least 30-40% now of the FBI. We just built them new buildings behind Redstone Arts, all their cyber security.
01:26:37.000 We have ULA, SpaceX, Blue Origin.
01:26:40.000 You name it space-wise, it's in Huntsville.
01:26:44.000 And, you know, President Trump put Secretary of Air Force We've been in charge and say you find the best place for it.
01:26:51.000 They looked at 60 places.
01:26:53.000 Huntsville won it, hands down.
01:26:55.000 And of course when Biden gets into office, he's talked into doing a re-review.
01:27:03.000 Well, but the re-review was based on basically Alabama's policy on abortion, which, you know, doesn't have much to do with space, but that doesn't stop the Democrats from radicalizing and again trying to punish people for not just going along with everything that they want.
01:27:17.000 So how do we hold them accountable?
01:27:19.000 Well, that's an excuse because you do have military bases in Florida where your abortion laws are just like ours.
01:27:27.000 Same thing in Texas.
01:27:29.000 So if they're going to start moving all military bases...
01:27:31.000 The bastions of most military, frankly, they're not really in the liberal states with the exception of maybe California just because it's so big.
01:27:36.000 Listen, I'm an American.
01:27:39.000 And if I was a senator from Alabama and I truly thought the best place for us to save our world would be to move Space Command and have it in Colorado, hey, let's go do it.
01:27:53.000 But it's not. We did it the right way.
01:27:55.000 And it was done the right way.
01:27:56.000 And I've invited President Biden, I don't know whether he's ever been to Huntsville or not, to see what was there.
01:28:03.000 Listen, if he was there, he wouldn't know it.
01:28:04.000 Yeah. Just tell him he's been there a number of times.
01:28:08.000 Tell him he loved it. He'll probably give it to you because he doesn't know the difference.
01:28:12.000 But I'm a senator from Alabama, but I'm also a senator for the country.
01:28:16.000 And I want us to be well protected because I can see it coming.
01:28:20.000 The Chinese are building satellites right and left.
01:28:22.000 Russia's building them. Iran's building them.
01:28:26.000 They know how to shoot satellites out of space now.
01:28:29.000 Russia did it two years ago for some stupid reason.
01:28:32.000 We got space debris all over up there.
01:28:35.000 But we have a lot of smart people that are involved in that.
01:28:38.000 A lot smarter than I am.
01:28:40.000 But I've looked at all the reviews and it's hands down.
01:28:43.000 But it's gotten political.
01:28:44.000 And that's what this administration's done.
01:28:47.000 It's made it all political. Well, we appreciate you being in that fight.
01:28:51.000 We appreciate you taking the time to be with us today.
01:28:53.000 Guys, thank you so much for tuning in.
01:28:55.000 Make sure you like and share this content.
01:28:58.000 Make sure you're supporting Senator Tuberville in all of his things, even if you're an Alabama fan.
01:29:03.000 Obviously, I think he loves America above all, even above that rivalry.
01:29:09.000 Maybe. I don't know. I don't want to get you into too much trouble because I know it's close.
01:29:12.000 I love living in this country.
01:29:14.000 I've been all over, all over other places, and you have too, and I'm always glad to come home.
01:29:19.000 Well, we appreciate you doing it.
01:29:20.000 Thank you. Guys, again, like, share, subscribe on Rumble so other people can see this programming.
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01:30:20.000 I think you understand.
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01:30:39.000 So go Go to DonJrSecure.com.
01:30:44.000 That's D-O-N-J-R-S-E-K-U-R, a little bit different spelling, where you can get a 15% discount on any of their solutions for the next five years.
01:30:53.000 Again, guys, thanks for being here.
01:30:55.000 I'm going to flip over to the locals.
01:30:57.000 If you have the Ask Me Anything, I'll be on there in a couple of minutes.
01:31:01.000 Thanks for all you guys do.
01:31:02.000 Like, share, subscribe, and we'll see you on Monday, guys.