00:13:26.680And so this seems to be the get-out-of-jail-free card for this White House consistently when Americans are held hostage.
00:13:35.760Well, it's we're working the back channels, and we really can't say much publicly.
00:13:40.280Like, at what point does that answer become unacceptable?
00:13:43.960And also to the family members who are sitting there waiting for these updates.
00:13:47.920Look, if the Biden White House is doing anything other than undermining Israel to try to get the American hostages out, I don't know what it is.
00:14:14.620You contrast it to Israel in the Entebbe raid.
00:14:18.760Now, look, sometimes, Ben, people ask me, how is it that a guy who is a Cuban, Texan, Southern Baptist ended up as the leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate?
00:14:35.480And there are lots of reasons for that, but it is very much a passion for me, and it's personal.
00:14:40.040And one of the reasons has to do with my childhood and growing up, I remember very clearly the Entebbe raid.
00:16:08.120And that's normal, just so people understand that, because there actually seems to be a lot of misinformation that if, well, if they're in another country, it's not as simple as you can just go get them.
00:16:18.440That is, the job of the military is to protect Americans, and rescuing American hostages is a critical responsibility.
00:16:27.620It can be difficult, but if you have hostages that are taken by terrorists, by the way, you know, you remember back when Jimmy Carter was president, and we had in Iran, we had American hostages taken and held in captivity for 444 days when the Iranian radical Islamic terrorists took over the embassy.
00:16:48.440Jimmy Carter sent a military force to go attack to try to get the hostages out, and the military force ended up crashing in the desert with no opposing fire.
00:16:59.520I mean, it was – but to Carter's credit, he actually tried to go in and do something.
00:17:06.340If Joe Biden has done anything to try to free those American hostages, he hasn't bothered to tell us or anybody in the world about it.
00:17:15.220Yeah, and I think that's the biggest concern for so many Americans right now is the aspect that we're just sitting around kind of waiting and letting Israel, in essence, take the lead here.
00:17:26.580I hope that we get some answers or at least some accountability or pressure on this White House.
00:17:33.440Is there any way that you guys, lastly, in Congress can do that?
00:17:36.760Well, as we've talked about, I'm going to be forcing a vote, and a vote in the next couple of weeks on my resolution under the War Powers Act to defund the Gaza pier.
00:17:48.900And that – by using the War Powers Act, I can – Schumer can't stop me from getting a vote.
00:17:57.100And so, look, I would rather force a vote on providing military weapons to Israel immediately and stopping Joe Biden and the Democrats from blockading those weapons.
00:18:08.760But Schumer's not going to allow that vote.
00:18:10.520He's already said he's not going to allow a vote at all.
00:18:25.380We'll keep you updated, obviously, on that one.
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00:21:00.900You saw an angry mob that was conducting brazen criminal activity right outside the White House.
00:21:09.080They were, if they themselves are not actual terrorists, they are certainly supporting terrorists.
00:21:14.260They are chanting in support of Hamas.
00:21:16.480They're carrying signs saying they support Hamas.
00:21:20.140Here, take a listen to what they're chanting as they're walking down the streets outside the White House.
00:21:25.020I mean, Senator, this is in front of the White House.
00:21:48.560Hezbollah, Hezbollah, kill another Zionist now.
00:21:52.140And in another part, they were saying kill another soldier now.
00:21:55.580This is calling for the extermination of the Jews, and it's right in front of the White House.
00:21:59.580Yeah, look, and this is, number one, this is now the hardcore base of the Democrat Party.
00:22:05.940These are the voters that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Chuck Schumer are trying to kiss up to and get the votes of.
00:22:11.680It's why Kamala Harris went to Michigan and said that expressed her remorse for the Palestinian terrorists being killed instead of standing clearly with Israel against Hamas.
00:22:55.780They're throwing water bottles at him.
00:22:57.360And the stunning thing is, all right, D.C. Metro Police said they made zero protest-related arrests at the protest.
00:23:07.180U.S. Secret Service told reporters they made no arrests at the protest.
00:23:12.760So, you can vandalize, you can spray paint, you can deface public monuments, you can assault police officers, you can call for the murder of Jews, and there are no consequences in this administration.
00:23:32.220That's who they are, and this is who they're rooting for.
00:23:35.680And to be clear, so people understand, I lived in D.C., you're there virtually part of every week when you guys are in session.
00:23:43.500I think people need to understand, D.C. is a very liberal city run by Democrats, and this is a top-down.
00:23:50.640Whether it was Black Lives Matter, whether it was setting a church on fire across from the White House when Trump was in office,
00:23:56.800this is the Democratic Party that is basically sanctioning this behavior and saying, we will continue to look the other way, because it's complicated.
00:24:10.020You've got Secret Service that has a certain type of jurisdiction, but it's not in many parts of the streets where local police would be, and that's where the Democrats are in charge.
00:24:19.000Well, number one, D.C. is an overwhelmingly Democrat city.
00:24:22.840The mayor is a very left-wing Democrat.
00:24:24.620D.C. voted, I think it was 94% or 96% for Joe Biden, so it's almost exclusively a one-party town, and the D.C. police, the mayor is not letting them arrest anyone.
00:24:39.020But on top of that, Lafayette Square is under the control of the U.S. Department of the Interior, so it is the Biden administration.
00:24:47.260Joe Biden could direct his administration.
00:24:49.440The FBI could go out and arrest these people, and they're not doing it.
00:24:52.960They're not doing it because they don't want to offend the people chanting, Hezbollah, Hezbollah, kill another Zionist.
00:25:03.060The Democrats look at that and say, hey, those are the people whose votes we want.
00:25:06.800The protest had around 9,000 people in it, the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protest, so this is a massive protest outside the White House.
00:25:17.420How many U.S. park police do you think were assigned to police the 9,000-person protest?
00:25:56.780And by the way, this is a Department of Justice where, my goodness, if you pray outside an abortion clinic, they'll come after you with commandos at your house.
00:26:07.040If you were standing on the mall on January 6th singing God Bless America, they'll track you down wherever you are and devote all the resources to the Department of Justice.
00:26:17.900There's video of everyone defacing these monuments, throwing things at law enforcement, and the Biden administration is doing zero.
00:26:26.500Their view is, if we agree with your politics, and tragically, today the Democrats agree with the politics of the people saying, Hezbollah, kill another Zionist now, if they agree with your politics, they will not arrest you, they will not charge you, they will not prosecute you, and they will let you break the law right in front of them with zero consequences.
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00:27:21.820I want to move to another domestic issue, and that is the Hunter Biden trial.
00:27:27.260This is not a surprise to any sane person, but we got official, official confirmation from law enforcement that, yes, in fact, the Hunter Biden laptop is real,
00:27:40.960which means all of our spies, all the top people at the CIA and the FBI that came out and said that this had all the markings, right,
00:27:52.700of Russian disinformation campaign before the last election, they all knew the laptop was real.
00:27:59.040They were all lying to the American people, and there seems to be zero accountability for that.
00:28:06.580So this past week in the Hunter Biden trial, the Biden Department of Justice came in and made the argument to the court that the Hunter Biden laptop was real,
00:28:16.200that it was accurate, that it had not been modified, that it had not been altered in any way, shape, or form.
00:28:22.760And actually, the media just reported, reported, matter of fact, ABC, NBC, CBS, Washington Post reported that the laptop showed no evidence of tampering and was both real and authentic.
00:28:34.800And none of those outlets acknowledged that for years, and especially in the weeks and months right before the 2020 election,
00:28:43.800they said over and over and over again, first of all, they refused to cover it, but to the extent they did cover it,
00:28:50.120they said it was Russian interference and Russian disinformation.
00:28:53.300Now, the Biden Justice Department just argued that's a conspiracy theory, and yet, do you hear anyone calling to accountability people like Clapper, people like Brennan, people like Leon Panetta, people like Tony Blinken?
00:29:13.160Tony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, led the effort to get 51 former intelligence officials to sign a letter saying this had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.
00:30:50.640I love, by the way, how the whole time the moderator is like, we've got to move on from this.
00:30:54.800We've got to move on as fast as we can.
00:30:56.780We don't need to be talking about this.
00:30:58.100She did not want any topic about this.
00:30:59.740Look, I mean, the moderators, they might as well wear Biden campaign hats, and that is just where the press is, and they're even worse now.
00:31:09.400But every word Biden said there was a deliberate lie.
00:31:12.980And by the way, Hunter Biden knew as an absolute fact the laptop was accurate then, which means either Joe Biden knew as a fact that it was accurate, or if he didn't know, it's because he didn't want to know it.
00:31:52.320And you look at the press – all right, take a listen to Leslie Stahl when she's interviewing Trump, and she's making very much the same point.
00:32:02.440I think it's one of the biggest scandals I've ever seen, and you don't cover it.
00:33:41.060And by the way, the people who have signed this letter, they're not coming back and admitting, okay, I was completely full of crap, and I lied to the American people right before an election, and it influenced the election profoundly.
00:34:19.720I got to tell you, every morning I start my morning off with a cup of coffee, and when I start my morning off, I've got to be awake and alert and do a show at 7 a.m.
00:34:28.740I want to be on my A-game because anyone that's listening, I want to make sure they get the best information from me, and that means I need to be awake and I want a premium cup of coffee.
00:34:39.340That is why I switched to Blackout Coffee.
00:34:42.440Now, let me tell you about this company because I get an email or a text message or a message on social media now almost every day from one of you that has switched to Blackout Coffee.
00:34:52.520Blackout Coffee was founded in 2018 because they say they were tired of giving their money to woke corporate coffee companies that didn't share our values.
00:35:04.540The CEO of Blackout Coffee says, quote,
00:35:06.480We also felt like the coffee that was available didn't come close to the quality and freshness that we were craving, so we made our own.
00:35:13.820I love American companies that just say, hey, I'm going to fix the problem myself, and Blackout Coffee has done that.
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00:36:47.120Ever since the war started, he's in the fatigues every day.
00:36:50.620And so he was in kind of an olive green sweatshirt.
00:36:55.160So you meet with him and he's got a bunch more money, a couple, you know, a couple hundred million dollars more, 200 and something, I think, is what Biden said during this trip that he was going to give to them again.
00:39:06.400The difficulty, and I got to say, that question that I asked, he didn't really answer me on how he would define victory.
00:39:14.200He has, in other contexts, defined victory as Ukraine winning back essentially every square inch of territory that Russia has taken.
00:39:23.460I understand why Zelensky would say that's victory.
00:39:27.560If you were Zelensky, you'd probably say the same thing.
00:39:30.380But that doesn't mean it is in the United States' interest to demand every square inch of territory be taken back.
00:39:39.220The reason we have an interest in this war is that we want, we do not want our enemy Russia to win and get stronger.
00:39:48.140And instead we want Russia to be weaker so that they're less able to pose a threat to America.
00:39:55.800There are also, by the way, very, very significant resources, in particular rare earth minerals in Ukraine, that are critical for the economy going forward.
00:40:07.440One of the reasons Russia's invading Ukraine is to get a stranglehold on those rare earth minerals.
00:40:19.140And so, but, you know, what was really striking then is in the meeting with Zelensky, and we also had a classified meeting with senior leaders of the Pentagon talking about details of what exactly is happening in the war, where the battles are, where the victories are, where the losses are.
00:40:38.020And it was a very interesting and worthwhile briefing, but the question of what does victory mean, this administration is not asking that question.
00:40:51.680No Democrat in that room is asking that question, what is victory?
00:40:56.160And I got to say, it really, you know what it struck me, is we went out to lunch two days ago at a little Paris cafe in between meetings, and we're sitting there at lunch talking, and I was, most of the senators there at the lunch table were Democrats, and they were all talking about Vietnam.
00:41:15.660And it struck me, looking around the table, that they're all baby boomers, they're all children of Vietnam, they all kind of got their start in politics protesting against Vietnam.
00:41:26.860And look, for you and me, I mean, neither of us were alive when Vietnam was a thing.
00:41:32.840You weren't alive at all, and I was like two when the Vietnam War ended, so I have no memories.
00:41:39.620Vietnam did not impact my awareness of the world.
00:41:43.240It was done by the time I was learning about the world.
00:41:49.000And so, I got to say, a lot of the boomers, particularly the Democrat boomers, they took the wrong lesson from Vietnam.
00:41:58.660And I think there are lots of lessons to take from Vietnam, but one of the central ones is that you should have a clear, defined objective, that you know what it is, that is directly related to your national security, that is achievable.
00:42:11.380You should have a plan to achieve it, and then you should get the hell out.
00:42:15.060And Vietnam, we just let it go on and on and on and be a quagmire and just kept pouring money and American soldiers and lives into it without a clear objective that we were willing to use overwhelming force to accomplish.
00:42:56.900The White House has said, we'll be with you forever, no matter what, and that's a lot of cash for a lot of Americans that we're going to be spending on this without there being, as some have described it, I think, without, like you said, what does victory look like?
00:43:13.600Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays.
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00:43:34.020And on those in-between days, make sure you grab my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast, and I'll keep you up to date on those in-between days.
00:43:41.240And the senator and I will see you back here on Wednesday morning.