00:06:08.340That might be the best investment you've ever made in any website ever.
00:06:11.900You may have missed the investment window on some of the big stuff, but at least you got that website.
00:06:17.800It was really – so her record is extreme.
00:06:22.120It was she is a partisan advocate, and Biden was giving in to the radical left by trying to name her to the FCC because I believe he wanted to use government power to silence conservative voters,
00:06:38.580to attack Fox News, to attack conservative outlets, and to advance an extreme partisan agenda.
00:06:47.240In the Commerce Committee, we managed to hold all the Republicans together, and multiple Democrats expressed skepticism.
00:06:57.920Well, today, midday, Joe Manchin put out a statement saying he was a no.
00:07:49.380And then at about 1.57, so about three minutes before the lunch is over, my guys send me a text of the media stories that had just broken saying the White House had withdrawn her nomination.
00:08:19.160And I really gave a testament to all of the Republicans on the Commerce Committee who stayed united, who stayed focused.
00:08:25.980You know, in my new role as ranking member, we tried very hard to work with each of their teams to help each of the members focus on a different aspect of her record.
00:08:34.480But it was a comprehensive effort to make clear she is not for someone on an independent agency like the FCC.
00:08:53.080And as of today, this nomination has been defeated.
00:08:56.100It's a success story coming out of Washington that we wanted to make sure people knew about, because this is what happens when people expose these individuals and let everybody know.
00:09:07.460And this podcast played a pivotal role in exposing who this nominee was and why they were not qualified.
00:09:14.540And this is a victory we should all enjoy.
00:09:17.280And the important thing, Ben, also to underscore, look, we beat her in a Democrat Senate, which means if it were just a party line vote,
00:09:25.900if it were just all the D's vote yes, all the R's vote no, she would have been confirmed.
00:09:31.300So to beat her, we held all the R's together, but we also picked off several D's.
00:09:37.040And actually, from what I'm hearing, there may have been as many as four, five, six Democrats who were going to vote no.
00:09:42.980And so that was really a big victory, because I got to tell you, Democrat senators have been willing to vote for some of the most extreme nominees I've ever seen.
00:09:52.960So to actually flip them was a great victory for free speech today.
00:09:59.460Yeah, no doubt about it. It was awesome.
00:10:01.000I want to get to this other issue, and it was a shocking issue, of four Americans that were taken hostage in Mexico.
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00:11:05.580Senator, there was a story that was really a shocking story.
00:11:09.440It also came along with video, and that video showed four Americans who had traveled into Mexico, right across the border with Texas, going into Mexico.
00:11:29.400The most shocking part for me was not that the cartels did this.
00:11:33.380It was the fact that the president of the United States of America had nothing to say about it when these, at that point, we didn't know if anyone had actually been killed yet of these Americans.
00:11:44.120And the White House was asked about, what is the president doing and saying?
00:11:48.020And the White House press secretary, all she had to offer the American people and these hostages was this.
00:12:42.240The story as we know it right now, more facts may come out, but as we know it right now, four Americans from South Carolina who traveled down to Mexico so that one of them, a woman, could get a medical procedure, a tummy tuck.
00:12:53.920They drove down there in a rental car, and what's being reported right now is the Gulf cartel believed that they were Haitian smugglers, either drug smugglers or human smugglers.
00:13:07.220We don't know the exact details, and opened fire on them.
00:13:14.380The third was injured, shot in the leg.
00:13:17.680And the two that lived were taken hostage for several days.
00:13:20.960And the president publicly didn't say a damn word.
00:13:26.280The president ought to stand up right now, and he should have stood up when they were taken before we knew their situation and said, release these Americans.
00:13:33.420America will not stand by while you kidnap Americans, while you shoot Americans, while you murder Americans.
00:13:39.120And particularly, this happened just south of the U.S.-Mexico border, just south of our southern border.
00:13:46.400Let me say secondly, this crisis was caused by Joe Biden.
00:13:53.020Joe Biden's open border policies have caused the worst crisis on our southern border in our nation's history.
00:14:02.180In two and a half years, we've seen over five and a half million illegal aliens crossing the border.
00:14:08.640We saw last year more than 100,000 drug overdoses in the United States, the highest level in history.
00:14:18.140More than half of those are Chinese fentanyl flooding across the border.
00:14:22.400But I'll tell you one of the real consequences.
00:14:24.740So Biden came in, and Biden and Harris together in the first week, they did three things.
00:14:30.120They made three political decisions that caused this crisis.
00:14:33.100Number one, they immediately halted construction of the border wall.
00:14:36.140Number two, they reinstated the failed policy of catch and release.
00:14:41.140And number three, they pulled out of the incredibly successful remain in Mexico policy.
00:14:47.480That combination of policy and political decisions caused this border crisis.
00:15:21.540Yes, it is, without exaggeration, the single best thing that has ever happened to Mexican drug cartels and drug lords is Joe Biden becoming president.
00:15:40.220$13 billion, by the way, of that money, roughly half the money they make is from human trafficking, from bringing human beings across the border in horrible conditions of squalor and abuse.
00:15:53.520And roughly half of it is from drug trafficking.
00:15:56.100So, why do these cartels feel that they have the power to kidnap and murder American citizens?
00:16:04.400Well, when you're vicious terrorists, when you're violent criminals, when you are cruel and abusive, and you got $13 billion, sadly, the impact in a country is terrible.
00:16:21.780The Attorney General Bill Barr, former Attorney General Bill Barr, was asked about this, and he obviously had to deal a lot with Mexico when he was in charge.
00:16:30.680Under the Trump administration, he summed it up by putting it this way.
00:16:35.000The Mexican government is being held hostage by tens of thousands of paramilitary members of terrorist organizations that effectively control Mexico.
00:16:45.100It's pretty close at this stage to a failed narco state.
00:16:48.320They can use violence and oceans of cash to corrupt the government.
00:16:55.100The government has no will, and it doesn't have the ability to deal with the cartels.
00:17:00.760And they are sitting next door, producing mountains of poisonous drugs and killing over 100,000 Americans a year,
00:17:11.560which was at the height of World War II, that was our killed in action rate.
00:17:15.620So we are sustaining the same damage as we would in a major war from these groups operating right beyond our reach.
00:17:24.760Senator, when you put it in perspective the way that he did, talking about the number of people that have died,
00:17:31.660you know, the killing of over 100,000 Americans a year, which was what we were dealing with the height of World War II,
00:17:37.000that was our killed in action rate, and we're sustaining those losses right now because of an open border, because of this president,
00:17:46.220and he doesn't seem to have any connection to reality or want to stop the death of all these Americans.
00:17:54.420And even when Americans are being taken hostage, did you ever think you would see a day where a president wouldn't immediately come out to the White House press briefing and say,
00:18:01.980I want to make it clear the cartels, whoever took these Americans, you better return them or we will unleash holy hell on you.
00:18:08.240And if the Mexican government is the failure that was just described here by Bill Barr, that's basically a narco state,
00:18:17.080and you know that because he was just down there, why wouldn't you have said this because you had no honest ability to believe that the Mexican government
00:18:25.740was going to be able to find these people before two or three or four die?
00:18:29.160Well, because Joe Biden is an unbelievably weak president.
00:18:36.140Listen, Bill Barr, as you know, he's been a friend for a long time, for 20 years.
00:18:40.520We've had Bill Barr as a guest on this podcast when he was attorney general under Donald Trump,
00:18:46.080and Barr has spent a lifetime fighting for law and order, fighting against drug dealers, fighting against human traffickers,
00:18:53.340fighting to keep innocent people safe.
00:18:56.940And the condition in Mexico is tragic.
00:18:59.160These drug cartels are more powerful than they have ever been in the history of Mexico or the history of the world.
00:19:08.040And Joe Biden is making them powerful.
00:19:10.120He is making them incredibly rich by allowing their businesses to flourish and prosper.
00:19:16.840And listen, Bill Barr is right that the Mexican government, sadly, has at best turned a blind eye to the horrific predations of these drug cartels,
00:19:27.240and at worst, has been complicit in them.
00:19:30.520You know, it was really striking when Biden went down to Mexico and did a press conference with AMLO,
00:19:37.160the extreme leftist president of Mexico.
00:19:40.420AMLO praised him effusively in Spanish.