00:00:51.200I plan to be flying in an F-5 fighter jet painted in Freedom 250 colors along with four other fighter jets flying over the nation's capital.
00:00:59.200Listen to Newt's World on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:06.380Why should you listen to Armstrong and Getty on demand?
00:02:24.380When they signed it, they were pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors.
00:02:33.460And what is extraordinary is that virtually all of them gave their lives, gave their fortunes, but not a single one of them abandoned their sacred honor.
00:02:45.140Fifty-six men put their signatures on that piece of paper.
00:02:49.860And understand, when they did so, they were committing treason.
00:02:55.620They were, at the time, British citizens.
00:02:58.260They were subject to the British crown.
00:03:00.440And by declaring independence, they were declaring war on the mightiest military on the face of the planet.
00:03:08.820John Hancock, of course, signed it with a signature large enough that King George could read it without his spectacles on.
00:03:16.180And if you look at that declaration, it was the beginning, it was the birth of this nation.
00:03:23.520We're going to talk today about what is unique, what is extraordinary, what makes the United States of America different.
00:03:31.640Different from France, different from England, different from Germany, different from Japan, different from China, different from Russia, different from every country on the face of the earth.
00:03:40.880250 years of our extraordinary nation, we're celebrating it right now.
00:03:45.680Yeah, it really is incredible. And just to be excited about what's happening right now in this country and be proud of it is another part of the conversation we're going to have today.
00:03:55.660I also want to talk to you about as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, this milestone is also a time for all of us to reflect on the enduring relationship between the U.S. and Israel.
00:04:07.140Our greatest ally and President John F. Kennedy once said Israel was not created in order to disappear, Israel will endure and flourish.
00:04:16.400Now those words capture the spirit of a young democracy determined to survive.
00:04:21.380Two nations, thousands of miles apart, yet united by shared values of democracy, faith, freedom, and resilience.
00:04:29.320As America celebrates 250 years of independence, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews turns to God in prayer, asking that his wisdom will guide elected officials and lead America and Israel to moral clarity and national unity.
00:04:46.680So sign up to receive a free USA-Israel flag pin when you go online to flagpinifcj.org.
00:07:46.660We're only going to have one 250th birthday of this country.
00:07:49.940everyone who listens to this podcast you care about america you love america you're not a
00:07:58.700passive citizen you're an active citizen you care about what is unique and extraordinary in this
00:08:04.720country so i'm i want to charge everyone listening to this take a minute to talk to your kids
00:08:11.400about what's different about america what does it mean to be an american that's different from
00:08:17.240being a Frenchman or a Chinaman or a Venezuelan or like, look, they're countries all over the
00:08:22.940planet. What is unique? Have that conversation with your kids. And by the way, if your kids are
00:08:28.780anything like my kids, they'll resist it. They won't want to have that conversation.
00:08:33.620But have it anyway. Take this moment to reflect. And I'm going to say one of the things I've
00:08:39.020learned having two teenage daughters? Talk less, listen more. Ask questions. Try to elicit from
00:08:48.640them. And, you know, certainly for every parent of teenagers, you may not love every answer they
00:08:54.780give, but use this moment to have the conversation about what would it mean, son, daughter,
00:09:03.640If you had been born in another country, if you were not an American, what are the blessings of liberty you've inherited and why does that give you a unique place in the world?
00:09:18.700That's a conversation you ought to have with your kids this weekend.
00:09:21.760Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And I tell you what, just having basic conversations about how grateful we should be that we live in the United States of America. How many people that want to come here? How many people wish they were born in America? Just having basic pride, and like you mentioned a moment ago, has nothing to do with politics.
00:09:42.960Like, it is okay to celebrate this country and be proud of it.
00:09:47.660I want my kids to have pride in being Americans.
00:09:50.720I think the World Cup is a great example of this.
00:10:52.220My best friend from England actually came through Houston on their family vacation, and we got to watch a game together, the U.S. game together.
00:11:00.860They were freaking out as kids because they're obsessed with soccer, a.k.a. they call it football.
00:11:04.960But I love watching so many different people get together, so much excitement, and people celebrating this country and our team.
00:12:24.420So there was a guy who was a fullback on our team who would slide tackle with his cleats up and just rip the living daylights out of the shins of the other guy.
00:12:36.520They don't do ā I actually Googled this week wondering, what happened to slide tackles in soccer?
00:12:41.140And they said, well, the refs now give so many red cards for it that they don't do it very much.
00:12:46.300Look, I played it, but I'm not a big soccer fan.
00:12:51.380There are people that are obsessive about it.
00:12:53.680I'm enjoying it because World Cup is like we're hosting it, and it's a great time to be patriotic.
00:12:58.800I will say my cousin Marino, who loves soccer, I did manage to get him a ticket to one of the games in Dallas where Messi was playing.
00:13:07.340And Marino, God bless him, it was like I'd given him a chance to meet Pele and George Washington and William Shakespeare and, I don't know, Charles Lindbergh all combined.
00:20:38.540Democrat, Senator from Virginia was questioning.
00:20:41.480And one of the things this nominee had said
00:20:43.740is he'd said that our rights in America,
00:20:47.320they come from God and they don't come from government.
00:20:51.160And Tim Kaine began unloading on this nominee.
00:20:54.960He said, I read this statement in your written statement.
00:20:58.340And he said, that is a radical concept. That is an extreme concept. That is dangerous. It is fundamentally dangerous. And he said, that's what theocratic regimes like Iran believe. And he said, we're not like Iran.
00:21:18.160We don't believe our rights come from God. We believe our rights come from government. He unloaded on them.
00:21:23.140And I got to admit, like most hearings I come in, my staff has prepared a series of questions, some comments.
00:21:28.700I had for this hearing a series of questions. I don't remember what they were on, but they were on a different topic.
00:21:34.080As I walked in, I saw Tim Kaine unloading on this nominee, and I got ticked.
00:21:39.680And I ended up just kind of freewheeling, and I was questioning shortly thereafter.
00:21:46.020And I said, you know, just a minute ago, Senator Kaine said the idea that our rights come from God, not government, is a dangerous idea.
00:23:58.880It emanates from the people, we the people.
00:24:01.720The Constitution begins with we the people.
00:24:03.720And the idea was the people have sovereignty, and they give the authority to govern to elected officials for a temporary period.
00:24:16.240Nobody has an entitlement to this, and that temporary period, the sovereignty comes from below.
00:24:23.680So the Supreme Court has described what the Constitution did as splitting the atom of sovereignty, taking what used to be uniform government control.
00:24:34.120And number one, splitting it horizontally, splitting it between the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch, separation of powers between three branches.
00:24:45.220And number two, splitting it vertically between the federal government, the states, and the local government.
00:24:52.000And all of that was designed, as Jefferson also put it, the Constitution was chained to bind the mischief of government.
00:25:03.080That was radical, the idea that sovereignty rested with we the people.
00:25:08.660If you look through the history of humanity, what America did here was extraordinary and unprecedented.
00:25:15.680And likewise, the point that our rights, what does come from God, is not the authority of kings to rule us.
00:25:26.100Instead, what comes from God is, as the Declaration put it, certain unalienable rights.
00:25:34.560Look, you and I, and everyone listening to this podcast, we are created in God's image.
00:25:40.520He formed us to reflect his mind, his spirit, his character, and by virtue of being a human being, whether you are brilliant or stupid, whether you are strong or weak, whether you are incredibly able or profoundly disabled, if you are a human being, those inalienable rights,
00:26:05.040life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, what it means to be a child of God is profound.
00:26:12.300And that concept that our government has created to protect those rights is unique and powerful
00:26:21.260and worthy of celebration on this birthday.
00:26:26.040And I do think you look at where this country is and how great it is.
00:26:31.460And it's also, I think, a point where, as you mentioned in the first segment, we've got to do a better job of being proud of this country and defending this country to this next generation.
00:26:41.560Because if you look at the data in the polling number, there are a lot of younger people in this country that have been indoctrinated to believe that somehow America is a bad country, that America is not a country to be proud of,
00:26:52.300that America is so flawed that there has to be massive changes to move into something that looks
00:26:59.140like communism or socialism or Marxism. And so I think this is like a really important birthday
00:27:05.840historically on two fronts, Senator. One, because it is 250 years, the fact that we survived this
00:27:12.360experiment and thrived to this point is amazing. But you also have to realize how fragile it is at
00:27:17.580the same time yes there are people that want to destroy this so that we don't have a 300th birthday
00:27:23.760and look like what we look like right now well and let me focus like most of us know the most
00:27:31.480famous sentence of the declaration we hold these truths to be self-evident i i want to point out
00:27:37.660the sentence that follows that is every bit as important right after it says life liberty and
00:27:45.040The Pursuit of Happiness, the Declaration says the following, that to secure these rights,
00:27:53.260governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
00:28:01.920So understand, it's not government that gives us those rights. Instead, it says that to secure
00:28:09.040these rights. So your right to life, it's not the federal government, it's not the state government,
00:28:14.100It's not any elected official that gives that to you.
00:28:32.980And in most of the world, that's not the law.
00:28:36.620In most of the world, that's not the understanding.
00:28:38.840In most of the world, the government has the power to take your rights, to take them, certainly in dictatorships, whether you're talking Russia or China or North Korea or Iran, in dictatorships, the government has the power to throw you in the gulag, to torture you, to murder you, to do whatever they wish with you because the government has all power.
00:29:06.060However, America was built on the principle that the entire purpose of the government is to protect our rights.
00:29:19.020And I want to say something else about America.
00:29:21.680Look, critics on the left criticize our nation as being arrogant, as being imperial.
00:29:29.800And listen, we are the strongest superpower on the face of the earth.
00:29:34.240we're certainly not immune from arrogance. But I want to say you want to look at a unique moment
00:29:41.060in history. Look at 1945 at the end of World War II. America was the only country on the planet
00:29:47.380that had nuclear weapons. For millennia, if any country had the ability to destroy any other
00:29:54.080nation, they would have conquered the world. You know what America did? We exercised restraint.
00:30:00.120we said we're not interested in conquest we're not interested in using an asymmetric power we
00:30:07.040had over everyone else instead we are going to protect america and promote freedom and
00:30:14.460prosperity across the globe there is a nobility to that which which every american ought to be
00:30:20.140proud of senator i want to spend a moment and talk about how there are two ways that we can
00:30:26.100go as a country moving forward. We can either continue to be proud of this country, continue
00:30:31.000to grow, continue to learn, by the way, from mistakes that we've made to become an even
00:30:35.780better country than we are right now, or we can take the other road. And that other road
00:30:40.940actually seems to be pretty darn clear. It is the democratic model to be ashamed of this country
00:30:46.980and to fundamentally want to destroy it from within. We are witnessing and watching candidates
00:30:51.840across the country running and winning on this platform.
00:30:54.920That is obviously very, very concerning.
00:30:58.640I want to get your reaction to where we are now, 250 years in.
00:31:03.440Well, I want to do something that may surprise you.
00:31:06.740I want to speak directly to Democrats.
00:31:09.840Now, I recognize there are probably not a ton of Democrats that are listeners to this podcast.
00:32:50.900They are, and understand, socialist is the sort of nice, sweet, homogenized term for what they in fact are, which is America-hating communists.
00:33:05.820Listen, communism, the economic system of communism is socialism.
00:33:09.540Anyone who calls themselves a democratic socialist today is in fact a communist.
00:33:17.000And many of the DSA leaders, you can find lots of videos of them saying, look, our goal is communism.
00:33:23.520Communism, I speak from personal experience.
00:33:27.440My family was imprisoned and tortured and nearly killed by communists in Cuba.
00:33:34.780Communism has brought misery across the globe.
00:33:37.900It has brought misery. It has killed over 100 million people between Russia, between China, between Vietnam, between Cambodia, between Venezuela, between North Korea, between Cuba.
00:33:50.660Communism has been ā it's not an accident.
00:33:53.560Every nation that has imposed communism has resulted in massive human rights violation, murder and torture and oppression.
00:34:01.520When the government has all power, your rights go away because communism is based on the inverse of the premise America was based on.
00:34:13.240Communism is based on the premise that government has the power ostensibly in an egalitarian purpose to empower the proletariat.
00:34:22.520But every single instance, not most, not a lot, all of them, communism results in massive oppression and suffering and misery and poverty and death.
00:34:36.640And so I want to say to Democrats, look, I look at my Democrat colleagues in the Senate.
00:34:43.220Most of them are not, in fact, socialists or communists.
00:37:10.400And I want to point out, I'm engaged in this same fight in the Republican side right now.
00:37:16.920The woke right that is trying to destroy the Republican Party, that is trying to turn us into a big government left-wing party, that is trying to turn us into an isolationist party, an Israel-hating party, an America-hating party.
00:37:30.260I am fighting the Tucker Carlson's and all of his acolytes in my party and at not inconsiderable personal and political risk.0.63
00:37:39.820And so I want to call out to Democrats, on this nation's 250th anniversary, is there anyone who will stand up and say, damn it, I will lose, I will be voted out of office, rather than lose my party and lose my country?
00:37:57.840Look, for those of you all that are regular verdict listeners, you probably did not anticipate my making a plea to Democrats, particularly on our nation's 250th anniversary.
00:38:08.260But I pray that there are some Democrats who, like JFK and FDR, love America and are willing to say, I'm not going to roll over and see our nation destroyed.
00:38:20.900I want us to have a 300th and a 400th and a 500th anniversary.