00:01:59.900And, and, and, you know, this is Joe Biden being a, a totalitarian, like justifying massive government power by saying, you know, I am we, the people.
00:02:26.240But, but, you know, Joe Biden thinks he's the sun god.
00:02:29.140I mean, I, I, I mean, it, it, it is the arrogance and ignorance of that statement.
00:02:36.100And it is what big government Democrats believe.
00:02:39.700But I think a lot of people think this, Senator, and I, I, I will try to refrain from ascribing to malice, that which is equally explained by stupidity.
00:03:04.900But what do you say to people who say, look, yeah, the government is when we, we all get together, you know, we, the people get together.
00:03:11.760And then the thing that we do that expresses our unity together is the government.
00:03:16.620And you, you're just some crazy conservative who has an irrational fear of government.
00:03:20.660So we, the people is the boss of government.
00:03:25.380Look, for most of human history, government was the monarch, was the ruler.
00:03:32.160And, and, and the power of government came from God Almighty.
00:03:36.460And, and, and, and it was a top-down vision.
00:03:38.880And, and, and when the framers rested sovereignty with the people and the people lent government power to office holders for a temporary period of time, that transformed the face of the planet.
00:03:54.900I mean, that was a revolutionary idea.
00:03:58.440You know, Thomas Jefferson put it really well when he said that the Constitution serves as chains to bind the mischief of government.
00:04:07.500It's all about restraining government.
00:04:11.040Now, we want a government strong enough to, to, to defend the nation, to do the essential functions that the government needs to do.
00:04:17.560But the Constitution and Bill of Rights are all about protecting we, the people, from the Joe Bidens of the world that want to take our freedoms away.
00:04:26.840And there seems to be this total blurring of the distinction between the different parts of the government.
00:04:33.360I'm, I'm no con law expert, but I have read the document once or twice.
00:04:36.700And it seems to me, you have the people, and you have the states, and you have the federal government, and you have a separation of powers, and you have checks and balances, and you have federalism.
00:04:47.960And yet, when you hear Joe Biden talk about it, it's all just kind of the same blob, and we got to do whatever it tells us to do.
00:04:55.980Yeah, look, the modern left is openly socialist.
00:05:01.560The people driving the agenda in the Biden administration are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and AOC.
00:05:10.540Bernie and AOC explicitly are socialists, and Warren is not too far behind that.
00:05:16.440And that means they believe their solution to everything is government and government power.
00:05:22.960Now, one of the consequences, I will say, the Biden guys, they came in on January 20th.
00:05:27.520They immediately fire everyone connected with the Trump administration.
00:06:10.820Look, I think it will be interesting to see, see how California resolves that.
00:06:17.920I find it wonderfully beautiful that Gavin Newsom is getting recalled.
00:06:29.220I mean, it, you know, karma has a way of coming back on you.
00:06:33.720You know, it says something that his shut everything down policies were so extreme that even the people of California said enough of this nonsense.
00:07:22.520Now, Caitlin is running, you know, in 2016, when I was running for president, Caitlin Jenner publicly said that she wanted to be my trans ambassador, the trans ambassador for Ted Cruz, which caused a lot of the LBGT world to lose their minds that Caitlin said such a thing.
00:07:46.240I think democracy is all about standing up for what you believe in, and if the people of California choose anybody who is more protective of liberty than Gavin Newsom, that's a step in the right direction.
00:08:00.720There is a real world, because obviously it would raise lots of questions about even just the pronouns.
00:09:53.460I don't know what I would do in that circumstance.
00:09:55.380And so every word I said praising him in that speech was heartfelt.
00:09:59.340I didn't praise him for the terrible liberal policies he supports.
00:10:02.220There's lots of things John McCain did that I didn't like.
00:10:04.780But I praised him for that, which was praiseworthy.
00:10:09.100But I also meant it to be a statement that if you go low road, if you go nasty and personal and in the gutter, I'm not going to respond in kind.
00:10:30.660And he said, you know, in the Senate, like in most places in life, the 80-20 rule applies, which is that 80 percent of the work is done by 20 percent of the people.
00:10:42.760That the Senate is a place where if you really want to roll up your sleeves and you want to lead and you want to engage, that you can and you can very quickly lead.
00:10:52.120You don't have to – you know, the House can be tougher.
00:12:03.100And if you resolve – so when I'm talking to potential candidates who are thinking of running for Senate, and I talk to a fair number of people who are looking at Senate seats, and they'll ask.
00:12:14.000They'll be like, well, can you make a difference in the Senate?
00:12:16.940And with the right person, I'm very encouraging because I say, look, if you want to, if you're willing to do the work, this is, to a significant part, self-directed.
00:12:29.060How many issues are you going to lead on?
00:12:31.280Are you going to – how hard are you going to work?
00:12:33.460But if you're willing to work and lead and you've got courage, you can make a big difference.
00:12:38.320Yes, and I actually can attest to your compliment of Senator Alexander because just about a month ago, my newborn son was baptized in Lamar Alexander's punch bowl.
00:12:51.980It said, Lamar Alexander, businessman of the year, 1980 or something.
00:12:55.700Somehow a Catholic church in Nashville fell into this sort of thing.
00:12:59.980And so Lamar Alexander is still doing good work, including bringing my son into the body of Christ.
00:13:05.000That – I'm almost speechless on that.
00:13:08.600I will say Lamar owns something that is a unique connection between your new home and my longtime home, which is that Lamar has a walking stick that was owned by Sam Houston.
00:13:23.780And Sam Houston was governor of Tennessee and was governor of Texas, the only person in U.S. history to be governor of two different states.
00:13:31.460And so it's a very cool walking stick that Sam Houston had.
00:13:35.900By the way, on the question of senators doing things productive, I'll give you an example that might surprise folks, which is a Democrat.
00:13:49.640And actually, just today, I did a press conference with Kirsten Gillibrand on an issue that she has been relentlessly leading on and that I've been working with her for about eight years.
00:14:02.680And it's sexual assault in the military.
00:14:25.420Her – she has legislation that would move the decision about whether to prosecute sexual assault from the commanding officer to a military prosecutor who is outside the chain of command.
00:14:39.960And the top brass at the Pentagon hate this idea, and they argue vehemently against it.
00:14:46.280And so I'm brand new on the Armed Services Committee, and I go to a hearing, and, you know, sometimes you think, well, debate doesn't make a difference.
00:14:53.160That's all just play acting, and everyone knows what they think.
00:15:29.980And they studied it, and it has not had an effect of undermining good order and discipline.
00:15:36.080And the real challenge is that the rates of reporting in the military are very, very low.
00:15:41.120That when someone is a victim of assault, they are far too frequently unwilling to come forward and report it.
00:15:49.160And one of the biggest reasons is they don't believe the commanding officer will be fair and impartial.
00:15:55.340That they're worried that the commanding officer may be buddies with the guy who committed the assault and will be reluctant to bring charges.
00:16:03.680And so I listened to those arguments and was persuaded by them.
00:16:08.260And so back in 2013, I signed up and co-sponsored the legislation with Kirsten and have been fighting.
00:16:17.760And she's been fighting for eight years, and I've been fighting.
00:16:20.160And so we sit down with whiplists where she goes and looks for Democrats to support it.
00:16:24.680I go and look for Republicans to support it.
00:16:27.300We just did a press conference this morning.
00:16:29.300I think the bill is likely to pass in the next two years that we're seeing really growing momentum.
00:16:35.420But I use that as an example where she has, I mean, just tirelessly bird-dogged this issue.
00:16:42.700And I think if we can reduce the incidence of sexual assault in the military and do a better job protecting our servicemen and women, that's very worthwhile.
00:17:38.280They spend every waking moment thinking about how to be effective.
00:17:44.000Republicans, often politics, if they do it, it's a hobby.
00:17:47.900It's not, it doesn't have the same seriousness.
00:17:50.720So when it comes to wielding power, you don't get people that are nearly as serious about moving a policy agenda because they don't necessarily have the same passion to it.
00:18:03.620There are a couple of different challenges.
00:18:05.380Let me, let me break this down a couple of ways.
00:18:07.900Number one, how do you run a federal agency?
00:18:09.980And so a challenge that Republican appointees have in an agency is if you're in an agency that you think should be abolished, that can be a real problem for running it.
00:18:21.780You know, you remember Rick Perry famously at the debate, you know, forgot one of the agencies that he wanted to abolish and said, oops.
00:18:28.920The irony is the agency he forgot was the Department of Energy, which he later became Trump's Secretary of Energy.
00:18:35.120So he literally led, led the department that he forgot that he wanted to abolish.
00:19:06.500And what Tim understood, if you go into an agency as a Republican political appointee and you tell every person at the agency, your job is meaningless.
00:19:16.360Everything you've done with your life is worthless.
00:19:18.480I hate the mission of this agency and you suck.
00:19:53.460And so one of the things that I led is something called competition advocacy, where we would study a state legislature or a state regulatory body would request our views on a particular and a competitive bill.
00:20:06.660They were considering that was typically restricting competition, favoring big business and hurting consumers.
00:20:17.960And then we would go and provide testimony or provide expert, uh, guidance on if you do this, uh, prices will rise 20% for consumers.
00:20:29.220And the competition advocacy, people were eager to do it.
00:20:33.100It was beneficial, but it was expanding freedom and it was reducing the footprint of government.
00:20:37.660Another example, um, class action lawsuits.
00:20:41.740There, there were plaintiff's lawyers that were bringing abusive class action lawsuits where they have a big class.
00:20:50.300They'd negotiate what's called a coupon settlement, which is, you know, anyone who ever bought a bag of Doritos gets a coupon for 10 cents off Doritos.
00:20:59.920And, but, you know, as 50 million people, so everyone gets a 10 cent coupon and the lawyers take home $70 million.
00:21:06.560And, and the coupon settlements, frankly, are a crock many times because they're designed to make lawyers fees and not actually to help the, the ostensible clients.
00:21:17.960And so what we did in the FTC is we began intervening in cases that involved coupon settlements and arguing to the judge that the judge ought to chop down the lawyer's fees and give the money to the consumers.
00:21:31.720And, you know, Michael, on the question of the Republican paradox, I like that, that the way that was put, it also sometimes is a conservative paradox.
00:21:42.020And, and, and I'll give an example, many times moderates in government have been much better than the conservatives.
00:21:52.180They've been better prepared, they've taken it more seriously, and they've won bureaucratic battles.
00:22:44.760And Jim Baker becomes Reagan's chief of staff in the White House.
00:22:51.100I mean, that's, I don't know of any other circumstance where the campaign manager for your primary opponent becomes your chief of staff when you win.
00:24:20.100And in his autobiography, Baker admits, he says, look, I knew I was eating Meese's lunch.
00:24:30.100Because, all right, if he controls the schedule, he controls every minute of the president's time.
00:24:36.600Well, that's a big deal if you decide how the president spends every day, all day long.
00:24:42.940If he controls personnel, there's an old saying that I think is very true, that personnel is policy.
00:24:49.600If Baker is picking the people that are throughout the administration, he controls the administration.
00:24:55.340On budget, everything that happens in government happens through budget.
00:25:00.380If he controls budget, the dollars drive the substance.
00:25:04.800And then finally, on ledge affairs, the way he put it, he said, listen, if I'm the one sitting in the room with the Senate majority leader and the Speaker of the House, and I'm negotiating the bill, Ed can have whatever he wants in his cute little policy council.
00:25:20.680And they can write as many white papers as they want.
00:25:25.200And Jim Baker, extraordinarily capable guy, but not a conservative, very much a moderate.
00:25:31.780And conservatives suffered because he was so good.
00:25:35.260Dick Darman, who worked for Baker, likewise, not a conservative, but ruthlessly effective, really understood the machinery of government.
00:25:44.200And I'm a big believer that conservatives need to be just as effective as the other guys, that we need conservatives who are as good as Jim Baker, who understand how to drive an agenda and actually get it accomplished.
00:26:00.240You know, there is a lot to be said for the philosophical debates among conservatives.
00:26:05.580You can throw 100 conservatives into a room.
00:26:07.940They would somehow find a way to disagree with every single other one and how much they've read and how much they think.
00:30:27.780The Democrats believe it definitely will.
00:30:29.480Well, I actually think Republicans could compete in Puerto Rico, but at a minimum, it's two new Democratic senators from D.C.
00:30:38.240If they end the filibuster, they will pass H.R.1, the Corrupt Politicians Act, that will federalize elections, that will massively expand voter fraud, that will register millions of illegal aliens and felons.
00:30:51.920That's designed, that will weaponize the Federal Election Commission to target Republicans.
00:30:56.340That's designed to keep Democrats in power for 100 years.
00:31:00.420And if they end the filibuster, they'll pack the Supreme Court.
00:31:03.180They'll grow the Supreme Court from nine justices to 13 justices.
00:31:07.840Because that is the greatest threat to our constitutional liberties we're facing.
00:31:12.880So, on the question of how screwed we are, the biggest thing that hinges on that in my mind is whether the filibuster goes or not.
00:31:54.540Like they are, they're not just going left.
00:31:57.820They're going off the charts, extreme left.
00:32:00.900Every time they do something like that, I think that makes it more likely that we have a very good election in 2022 and a very good election in 2024.
00:32:10.020And the analogy that I draw often is it took Jimmy Carter to give us Reagan.
00:32:14.120And I think Biden going radically left sets us up to move back in the direction of freedom, back in the direction of the Constitution in 2022 and in 2024.
00:32:24.740Senator, I'm relieved to hear that because when you said that you had some hope and you said, I'm an optimist.
00:32:30.900I feared you were going to say, I'm an optimist.
00:32:33.020I think things can get much, much worse than they are right now.
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