Jenny Beth sits down with old friends and conservative warriors, former Members of Congress Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, and Steve King.
Jenny Beth sits down with old friends and conservative warriors, former Members of Congress Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, and Steve King.
Steve King (00:00:00):
When I arrived in Congress, the national debt was $6 trillion, 6 trillion. Now it's 34 and climbing. And we actually talked about
Louis Gilmer (00:00:07):
Balancing the budget about three, right?
Steve King (00:00:09):
Yeah, three. I thought it was 6 trillion in oh six when I came in. Well, that's because I held the line for three years. Well, thank
Michelle Bachman (00:00:15):
You Steve King. Why aren't you? Speaker of the house?
Narrator (00:00:19):
Keeping Our republic is on the line, and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she is most proud of is Mom To Her Boy, girl Twins, she has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:00:51):
In the previous three episodes, you heard from the three most reliable members of Congress at the beginning of the modern day Tea Party movement. In celebration of 15 years, my team and I wanted to bring them all together to reminisce on the battles we fought and to thank them for the incredible service each of them dedicated to our country. It was so great having them all in the same place. Now, please welcome once again the Honorable Michelle Bachman, Louis Gilmer, and Steve King Michelle, Steve and Louis. Thank you so much for joining me today, and thank you for everything that you have done for our country. You helped set the stage for the fact that we now actually have a true conservative who is a speaker of the House, and you helped teach the Tea Party movement about how Congress works and you champion freedom and you champion liberty. And I just want to talk to you a bit about those things and some of what we did in the past. But right now, thinking about where Congress is right now today, when Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House, what are your thoughts on that versus when you were in Congress and the speakers of the house you had?
(00:02:06):
Don't be shy. Oh, Louis, you
Louis Gilmer (00:02:08):
Go. Okay, well, polite. I was thrilled. I know since 1923, January 23, when the election for speaker went to nine ballots without getting anybody getting a majority, that we had the same situation that had occurred back then. All power had accumulated or been accumulated by the speaker. Speaker had all power. Basically, you couldn't get a bailout in the committee out of committee onto the floor without the speaker's permission, you couldn't get any position. Yeah, there's a steering committee, but who the speaker wants for different places, different committees, different chairs, that's who gets in there. And back then, in 1923, the speaker had all power. So I think it was around 16 or 18, said, we're not voting for you till you give back power to the committees, to the individual members the way the constitution intended. And after the eighth ballot, the speaker agreed to give back to that power and so won on the ninth ballot.
(00:03:20):
Well, a hundred years interceding, that power has been accumulated. And we thought it was all accumulated the speaker until Nancy Pelosi became speaker, and we found out, gee, there was more power she was able to take. So it needed to happen that a speaker would agree to give up power so that members had power, committees had power, that they didn't have to go begging the speaker to take up a billing committee. But that's where we've been. And those courageous folks that stood up last year and said, no, you're going to have to give back power or we're not going to ever let you be speaker. So they got some power to fall back, got some rules changes. But I know personally it takes a lot of courage to stand up like that. You got three people that have stood up and know what it is. And as my former pastor used to say, you're out front leading when people turn and start shooting at you. And so we've all experienced he sure have being shot at. So anyway, I was delighted to see that we had a lot of standup people more than we've had since I've been there. So it's a good thing for the Republic,
Steve King (00:04:47):
Steve. Well, in my view, I look back at the speakers that I served under, and Denny Haster was the easiest one for me to do business with. And it seemed to flow pretty well. We could do business. When we got to John Vayner, John Vayner was undercutting conservatives, especially me, when we came across that 2010 election. He just would not allow us to go forward and just, and repeal Obamacare for example. He was dead certain that Steve King would never chair the immigration Committee, which had been promised to me right up until the minutes before we gaveled in any change the deal on that. But we've done battle with John Vayner, Paul Ryan, a better personal relationship, but a lot of the same results. John Vayner was cutting deals with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats and undercutting conservatives. And while he was doing that, Eric Cantor was the majority leader and his chief of staff would host a meeting for the Republican Chiefs of staff once a week.
(00:05:40):
My chief came back and said, oh, what I heard today from Cantor's chief of staff is they love to defeat conservatives. And so that gives you the flavor that was inside Bayner and Eric Canter. And it flowed over into the protege in a way, and Paul Ryan and then Ryan, you the same things. And when we got into Kevin McCarthy, he embodied all the worst characteristics that I had seen. And on top of that, he's the center of gravity for himself. And he measured everything and how it affected him and his career and his aspirations to become Speaker of the House and cut deals with Nancy Pelosi and sold us out over and over again. And they ran out of patience with him. So I'm glad we're in this place. And when the motion came to vacate the chair, and thanks to Matt Gates for taking the leadership on that, somebody needed to, and if he wasn't there, maybe nobody would.
(00:06:29):
But when that went up and on the 4th of October when the motion came up, the 4th of October, I offered Mike Johnson's name then because I thought we'd get to that place where if you're going to vote for a speaker, you're voting for your dictator. And if you have five people that hate you, you're never going to be speaker. So Mike Johnson always was the guy that held conservative principles, balanced full spectrum conservative principles, but he didn't alienate people. He listened to people, he voiced himself in a modest way. He voted a reliable way. And I think that he was the best choice that they could have pulled out of that conference. And it took a while to get there, but I'm happy we have him for a speaker now and had to make some tough decisions. I think that I've said to the, I'll say the Freedom Caucus members and other conservatives in there that I said from the beginning, Mike Johnson is not going to go pick a fight and he's not going to run to the fight. You have to pick the fight and then you have to bring the fight to Mike, but he'll be on your side when he can be. And we're a lot better off. We're starting to clean up the mess that's been created over those previous three speakers.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:07:29):
Well, and he certainly was on their side and blocking the open border bill from the Senate, but they were the ones who had been, especially Chip Roy and the House Freedom Caucus had been so adamant that we had to have a bill that actually secured, secured the, so they were picking the fight, kind of like what you
Steve King (00:07:51):
Just said and bringing Mike into it, bringing Speaker Johnson into it, just the way we analyzed it. And this border, by the way, when they lost the vote on repealing or impeaching mayorca, that's stunning to me, to propent somebody to analyze the Constitution that high crimes and misdemeanors didn't take place. When you're bringing millions of people into the United States willfully in violation of existing law, that's way more than enough to bring forward the impeachment. That disappoints me, but I think they'll get it fixed.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:08:21):
And Michelle, what do you think about, especially about the speaker and the changes in the House conference versus when you were there?
Michelle Bachman (00:08:31):
Well, I think it's age old, but our government is meant to represent the interests of the people. And I think people were very frustrated because of the open border, because of the out of control spending, and they saw nothing was changing. And there's an old adage, nothing changes unless something changes. And so what we saw was something changed. I actually think Mike Johnson is the right guy, right time, right job. He has the right demeanor. I think he is a genuine, authentic conservative, and the conservatives know that, but also he's not a threatening personality to the establishment Republicans. He really is just that perfect blend for this moment because we're at a time right now with a Democrat president and a Democrat senate, and Mike Johnson has the smallest majority in the American history, in the House of Representatives. He has a one vote margin, somebody gets sick if somebody dies. Here we are in a constitutional crisis in effect. So I think he is the right guy for this moment, and I think he is steering the ship so that hopefully by November and those results after November, we can see a real sea change in the United States. Again, nothing changes unless something changes. And so that's why people are needed to make sure that they vote this fall for change so we don't continue with an open border and out of control spending. This has got to change.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:10:03):
It really must. And the problems that we are seeing right now there worse than we ever even could imagine. In 2008 when we saw tarp pass, that was horrible. And then 2009 with stimulus was even worse and then Obamacare. But what we're seeing right now, the spending is more than any of us,
Michelle Bachman (00:10:24):
Well, every 90 days spending adding another trillion to the national debt. I mean, we remember when a trillion dollars was real money. We can't do this because math wins. At the end of the day, math wins.
Steve King (00:10:40):
When I arrived in Congress, the national debt was $6 trillion, 6 trillion. Now it's 34 and climbing. And we actually talked about budget January oh three, right? Yeah. 2003.
Michelle Bachman (00:10:51):
I thought it was 6 trillion in oh six when I came
Steve King (00:10:53):
In. Well, that's because I held the line for three years.
Michelle Bachman (00:10:55):
Well, thank you Steve King. Why aren't you speaker of the house,
Jenny Beth Martin (00:11:01):
But from 6 trillion then? Well, we're accumulating 6 trillion in debt every 18 months right now, if it's wet, do that.
Michelle Bachman (00:11:09):
We can't do that because we are the brokest nation in American history, not American history, world history. There's never been a nation more broke than the United States of America. Just to get back to zero, we have to pay back $34 trillion. It's an amount of money we've never seen before. No nation has ever paid back that money, and we keep going on, nothing's wrong. There's some money tree in the backyard, we shake and everything will be just fine. It won't be fine. It will mean the destruction of the United States and the destruction of our children's future. That's what's happening. And then when you don't have America and the values that America stands for, then what do you have? Whose values will we be and what will America be? Will we look more like communist China or will we look more like America that we remembered 50 years ago? It's a real issue. It's a real issue. Will we choose life or will we choose death for this country?
Steve King (00:12:11):
I can tell you where this started too. When I came in, in that year, that 2003, that was the last balance budget we've had in this country. Oh three. Yes. It was the oh two to oh three budget. So the first budget that I weighed in on would be the fiscal oh four, fiscal oh four budget. And they had just blown that budget. And I went to the budget chairman, Jim Nussle, who was from Iowa, and I said, Jim, where's my balanced budget? You had a balanced budget from 98 until 2003. Where's my balance? He said, we can't balance the budget. We're at war in Afghanistan, preparing to go into war in Iraq. Wars are
Michelle Bachman (00:12:46):
Expensive,
Steve King (00:12:46):
And all of the safety stuff we had to do to make sure that nobody to sabotage any of our infrastructure here in the United States. And so we have to do all of that. We can't balance the budget. And I said, the American people will tighten their belts, but if we don't balance the budget now, we'll have I use these words, we'll have the devil's own time ever balancing it again and look where we are. We're 28 trillion. Beyond that point. When I had that discussion with Jim Nesson, now, they didn't even talk about balancing the budget.
Michelle Bachman (00:13:12):
Oh, no, no. That's so 2006,
Louis Gilmer (00:13:17):
Right? Well, and actually 2006, I can recall discussions Democrats were saying we should have balanced the budget
Michelle Bachman (00:13:26):
Because Lou, you came in in 2004,
Louis Gilmer (00:13:28):
January. Well, I got elected in November oh four. And so in oh six though it looked like the deficit was going to be about 160 billion. And the Democrats were saying, if you put us in charge, we'll balance the budget. Of course they were going to do it by raising taxes. That's so funny now. And anyway, it ended up being a little more than that that year. But you go to the first year of President Obama, president Bush had just gotten 700 billion to bail out Wall Street, and then we had 900 billion that President Obama asked for to get the economy going, the stimulus bill. And we ended up with between 1.5 and 1.6 trillion deficit that year.
Michelle Bachman (00:14:27):
That had never happened before.
Louis Gilmer (00:14:28):
Well, the Democrats did win the majority in November of oh six, and they just started spending, but nothing like the exp spending when Democrats had Obama in the White House and Pelosi and Harry Reed, and they blew the top off of it, and you love to go back to 200 billion deficit in one year instead of this outrageous amount. And you and I have been in Israel and one time said, what is your GDP to
Michelle Bachman (00:15:06):
Our debt to GDP ratio? It,
Louis Gilmer (00:15:08):
Yeah. Yeah. And he was shocked. Oh, I had no idea you got that. Because
Michelle Bachman (00:15:15):
That's a reality. It, I mean, if you've got your home or if you've got your business, you're paying that debt back. And that's what a lot of people don't know, Jenny Beth, is that Congress never thinks that we have to pay this debt back. I mean, it is gone completely over their heads, even taxes. It's like, well, whatever we bring in taxes, who cares? We'll just keep printing more money. We're going to keep the party going. That is the delusional nature of what's going on in dc. It's beyond what any, this has never happened in any other nation at this level, and it's the bigger they are, the harder they fall. And we don't want to be here gloom and dune, but it's like we've got to take some really harsh actions at this point to not continue to go down this road if we want a future.
Steve King (00:16:04):
However bad it is too in the house, it's worse than the Senate. They have got zero sense of spending money. Yeah, there's none. It doesn't exist at all. I don't know. Maybe it's because they're about another 20 years older than the house members on
Michelle Bachman (00:16:17):
Average. The truth is that there's an open border because as expensive as wars are, immigration is almost as expensive. Immigration is extremely expensive. When you're busy giving out free phones and you're giving out pre-charge credit cards, and you've got giving people healthcare and housing and food and all the rest, this is extremely expensive. And so we're all paying for it, and the party is going to come to a crashing halt if we don't wake up and get a brain.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:16:50):
And we absolutely have to do that. I think it's part of the reason why the House Freedom Cock is fought so hard in January of 2023, and then again once the speaker, once McCarthy was removed, fighting so hard to find someone who would be willing to fight. And they really want Speaker Johnson to fight. And I don't think they've thought about it the way that you've pointed. You pointed out, Steve, they have to fight and he'll back them up
Steve King (00:17:20):
And they've got just surrounding with support on a conservative agenda. And if they can get through this year and elect and maybe expand their majority, they'll have more leverage and there'll be more opportunity. We really need to elect a president with the mandate, all the work that can be done in the house in the Senate, if you have a president with a mandate that says, finish the wall, lay out a plan to get the budget balanced, get us out of these engagements, these foreign engagements save that money, but the border's got to be secured and worse than war because immigration is one of those things that if you make a mistake on immigration, you can't undo that. No, that's it. Just geo multiplies forever itself. It does forever. In 1924, they froze the immigration coming into the United States because they believed that they was such an overload of people that the culture was getting. It
Michelle Bachman (00:18:08):
Was Calvin Coolidge.
Steve King (00:18:09):
Yeah, it was getting
Michelle Bachman (00:18:10):
Separated. He said we'd had so much immigration that we had to have a pause. We had to take a pause so that people could have time to assimilate, understand what it is to be an American, understand American culture and history and teach their children. And so we took a pause for a long, long time on immigration until Ted Kennedy came along in 1965 and turned the tables upside down and preferred non-Europeans. If anyone was racist, it was Ted Kennedy because he decidedly preferred that we would no longer have Europeans coming into the country. And he began this thinking where he was pitting people with different skin tones against themselves. Nobody thought to do that. This was a bizarre thing. And what he put into place has been dividing us unfortunately ever since. And that's not the kind of nation we are. We are United Nation, that's when we're strong. And now we have a series of divisions.
Louis Gilmer (00:19:11):
And Jimmy Beth on the Money Rush Limbaugh, I do miss the guy. Me too. He was saying on the air, they're just printing money like crazy. And I text or I emailed him, he was amazing. He could read email while he was talking and respond and told him about being at the Fed at a meeting. And I asked one of the guys there, I said, how much more money are we printing now than we did say 15, 10, 15, 20 years ago? He said, not that much different. I said, but there's so much more money in the system. And he said, and I quote, oh, we couldn't possibly print all the money we are creating. They're not even bothering to print it anymore. You just add digits to the system and that can't go on forever.
Michelle Bachman (00:20:10):
It's called IOUs. It's called IOUs.
Louis Gilmer (00:20:12):
Well, that's what's in the Social Security Trust.
Steve King (00:20:15):
It Parkersburg, West Virginia. The bonds that they place in the filing cabinet in Parkersburg, West Virginia, thanks to Senator Byrd, they were going to have a lockbox for the social security account. They'd like to convince us that everybody has their own shoebox, and when you pay social security, they put the money in for you, then you get to take it out. So I chased that down and I ended up with a sample bond out of there that they have to keep a paper record of the Social Security Trust Fund, and that's bonds that they put in a filing cabinet just in copy paper. It goes in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, West Virginia. I had one for 3.5 billion. It was just a copy of it, but it's just another fun
Michelle Bachman (00:20:50):
That's being cruel to senior people who depend on that money. Social security and Medicare, how cruel to not have money there. Because if you go to a vault and everyone thinks there's a vault with all the money they paid in their whole life and it's all sitting in there for them, the dirty little secret is that Congress rated that money every time you paid in Congress spent that money. So you open up that door to Social Security and Medicare. There's no money in there. Moss and feathers fly out. There's nothing in that vault copy paper that should get everybody's attention.
Louis Gilmer (00:21:25):
Well, and I wondered how long ago did it start that they started spending the Social Security Trust money as part of the general fund and just putting IOUs in there? I don't
Michelle Bachman (00:21:38):
Remember
Louis Gilmer (00:21:39):
Anymore. Well, it turns out that once Roosevelt got that passed, when the Social Security money started going in one door, it was going out. The other
Michelle Bachman (00:21:52):
Was the very be general fund.
Louis Gilmer (00:21:54):
Yeah. Immediately they would put markers. Gee, so it
Michelle Bachman (00:21:57):
Was a fake savings account for the
Louis Gilmer (00:22:01):
Beginning. Yeah, somebody would be a fee
Michelle Bachman (00:22:03):
On the people who had to pay it. Now, that's robbery, that's theft. You think you're
Louis Gilmer (00:22:07):
Putting money in the account except when the government does it
Michelle Bachman (00:22:09):
Account and the government spends
Steve King (00:22:11):
It, and then they ran for office on the lockbox theory office on the lockbox
Louis Gilmer (00:22:17):
Lock
Steve King (00:22:18):
Box.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:22:20):
That's just ridiculous.
Michelle Bachman (00:22:21):
Well, it's criminal. It is. It's criminal. We would go to jail
Louis Gilmer (00:22:24):
Except that the government says
Michelle Bachman (00:22:26):
Yes, we would go to jail,
Louis Gilmer (00:22:28):
But the government says we're going to create this pyramid scheme and it's okay because we legalized it. Yeah.
Michelle Bachman (00:22:35):
The only thing is there's human consequences
Louis Gilmer (00:22:38):
For people who are the most vulnerable
Michelle Bachman (00:22:41):
Time of their life. And that's why ultimately it always comes down to humanity and it comes down, do we love the people in this country or don't we? If you truly love them, you would never do this where you steal money from people's bank account. Well,
Jenny Beth Martin (00:22:56):
Stealing money and lying about it too, because then anytime that someone comes forward to say, we need to address what's going on with Social Security because the money isn't there, and we may have to adjust how we're allocating the money and pushing the money back out to people who are retired, people get angry and they think you're taking something away from them. And what they don't understand is that what you're actually trying to do is make sure there's something for them and there's nothing. It's not there right
Steve King (00:23:30):
Now. When George W. Bush took his oath for a second inaugural, he launched a reform of social security that time he tried, and he went everywhere all the time giving speeches about how a portion of it could be yours, and that would be at least a way to open this thing up. But his political head handed to him by the other side, that demonized it to no end. And I'm not even sure that his motives were as pure as they needed to be, but at least it was a start and
Louis Gilmer (00:23:53):
Nobody wants to touch it. He actually did try. He really did try. I know he did. And he couldn't get Congress to help at all because they all know that's dangerous
Steve King (00:24:00):
Because the Democrats demonized it. Yeah, he did. And so now it won't be touched again for another generation or so I don't think.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:24:06):
No, I don't think that it will. And I don't know how much longer we can sustain the amount of debt we continue to add. I don't know where we are, at what point we hit the tipping point.
Michelle Bachman (00:24:18):
Demographics are everything because that's our destiny. Because you take people who are baby boomers, they're retiring, so they're leaving their peak earning years. All the money that was flowing into the treasury, they're leaving. That's a huge bubble of people that are leaving and going into retirement. So now they're drawing down, they're drawing out of social security, they're drawing out of Medicare, and their revenue isn't coming in. So it's this Democrat's idea of a replacement theory where they're the ones that want to bring in a different population. They don't like us very much, so they want to bring a different population into the United States. The only thing is the earnings that are coming in from the new population isn't anywhere near what the old population's earnings are. So that's re tilting the United States and pushing us faster into bankruptcy.
Steve King (00:25:10):
It reminds me that Paul Ryan
Michelle Bachman (00:25:12):
Isn't this good news,
(00:25:13):
James, this a happy story.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:25:16):
What it motivated the Tea Party movement to begin with. I mean, these
Michelle Bachman (00:25:20):
15 years ago, congratulations.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:25:22):
Thank
Steve King (00:25:22):
You. Paul Ryan presented a balanced budget when he was the chairman of the budget committee. And I went into a small room there with about 10 or a dozen us. Well, he briefed us on this balanced budget. And so I'm looking at this and he's got the charts with the graph and this and the budget balanced in 25 years. I was stunned that we could, I
Michelle Bachman (00:25:39):
Remember that thinking. I thought this was a balanced budget. This is a delayed
Steve King (00:25:44):
Budget. And I said to him, according to this and all
Michelle Bachman (00:25:47):
The savings of the last year,
Steve King (00:25:48):
You are waiting for the baby boomers to die to balance the budget. And he goes, well, we have to because after all, there's so many on retirement. We can't balance the budget until they're dead. And I said, why did you have to bring that up, Steve? Is what he said to me.
Michelle Bachman (00:26:01):
And then what about the boomers then who go in? And there's more of them that will be on social
Steve King (00:26:07):
Security. It's just stunning how some other testimony, statistics, Dean from Stanford testified before an immigration committee that we needed to bring in millions of third world people to pay for the social security and the Medicare of the baby boomers. I remember. I remember. And I asked him, who is going to pay their social security and their Medicare? And he goes, that's for the next generation to worry
Louis Gilmer (00:26:28):
About. That's a pyramid scheme
Steve King (00:26:29):
Right where we
Michelle Bachman (00:26:30):
Are. It's a pyramid scheme.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:26:32):
So shifting gears a little bit to something that Tea Pretty Patriots action does not engage in as much, but you guys had roles paying attention to this national security and the things that are happening right now around the world. It seems to me that the world senses weakness from America. They do. And that is they do. Part of why Putin went ahead and invaded in Ukraine while Biden is president, and we see what has happened with Israel and there's concern about China and Taiwan, and I want your opinions on that. And then there are legitimate questions about how much should the government be spending those helping other countries, and whether it's an endless war or not, it's a lot of what people are talking about right now, and I'd love to hear your opinions on it.
Michelle Bachman (00:27:30):
One thing I would say is that I think if anything that modern history has shown us, you can get domestic policy wrong here in the United States and you can turn it around. The evidence of that would be Ronald Reagan after Jimmy Carter, he was able to miraculously turn the economy around pretty fast by using good fundamental principles. Donald Trump did the same thing. The problem is if you get foreign policy wrong, if you get foreign policy wrong, it is decades into the future that you pay the price, if at all. Sometimes it's irreversible. One of the worst. I'll give you an example. One of the worst mistakes ever made was Jimmy Carter who sat on his hands when the s Shah of Iran needed our help. And Jimmy Carter sat in his hands. And so what happened is that Shaw fell in Iran and instead the Ayatollah Khomeini was living in Paris, France.
(00:28:21):
He went to Iran and that created the modern state of terrorism. Since 1979, Iran has been the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world. We just saw their most recent escapade on October 7th when they hired their proxies to attack Israel and bring a one day genocide against Israel. They're a very bad actor. They just announced they're building another nuclear plant. The Ayatollah Khomeini said about 10 years ago, we will annihilate Israel in 25 years and if there's anything history teaches Jenny Beth, it's when a mad man speaks. You listen. So they mean the world is on fire right now because they saw, they didn't try any of this during Donald Trump. He was very strong. Everybody knew where Donald Trump stood. The United States was held in great respect and esteem. The tables have flipped completely. And it's almost like Joe Biden is a caricature of the United States.
(00:29:23):
And so the worst actors, the worst leaders on the world stage are looking at Joe Biden and they're seeing a stumbling bumbling leader, and they're attributing him to the United States. So they're taking the measure. And the reason why you see all this kinetic activity all over the world right now and bad actors doing unthinkable things is because they see our weakness. They not only smell it, but they're deciding, Hey, this is our opportunity. We're going to take a quantum leap toward what we want. And that's rule and dominion over helpless people. And you're seeing that with communist China versus Taiwan and other forays. You're seeing that with communist Russia against Ukraine. You're seeing it down in Venezuela. You're seeing it literally breaking out all over the world. The worst is Iran and what their intention is. And now what's worse is for the first time in human history, we're seeing Iran, Turkey, Russia, we're seeing a conflagration.
(00:30:22):
And economically at the same time, we're seeing bricks, which is a group of bad actor nations. Brazil is now led by communists. So we're seeing bad actor nations wanting to freeze the American dollar out and reduce sales of oil on the American dollar and instead displace the United States dollar as the global currency and instead have a different currency that will bring untold devastation to our economy. But also the question is, at the end of the day, who's going to be the ruling parter in the world? Who will be the economic superpower? Who will be the United States? Every day when we woke up of our lives, we woke up knowing the United States was the economic superpower of the world. We were the military superpower of the world, so we had choices. Now, I would have to say that I don't think the United States is the economic superpower of the world anymore, and I don't think we're the military superpower of the world anymore. And I think that's evidenced by what other bad actor nations think of us. They're taking a position of leadership and that transfer of power won't be a peaceful one. If communist China is the global power or Iran, a regional power, that won't be a peaceful transfer of power. It'll be a world on fire.
Steve King (00:31:45):
Go ahead. Just a piece of history that I'm thinking about as I'm listening to this contemporary piece. My father was World War ii, and so I grew up in the fifties and sixties and I would ask him, dad, have we ever lost a war? No, we've never lost a war. We will never lose a war. The United States always engages to win and we win and the world knows it, and that's a deterrent for the rest of the world. Now, I didn't realize at the time that Korea was a negotiated settlement. Dad called that a victory. But when I look back on history, not so much so after the Vietnam War, sometime I found a book written by General GA who was the commanding general for the North Vietnamese, and the title of the book is How We Defeated the United States. And he wrote in that book that he got his first inspiration on how to defeat the United States because we had accepted a negotiated settlement in Korea.
(00:32:36):
He believed that we did not have the resolve to finish a war, and he fought a war of attrition throughout all of those years believing we would give in. And in the end, Nick Richard Nixon was impeached, and the chaos out of that brought about massive Democrat majorities in the house, and they brought legislation that cut all funding off to support the South Vietnam and the land. No military support in the land of Vietnam. The skies above it sees adjacent to it or the country's adjacent to it. And I've read that legislation that was there. It was essentially pulling ammunition off the docks at Dane Nang, and we wondered why the South Vietnamese collapsed. That's the biggest reason as to why. And now we couldn't go on with Afghanistan, 85 billion with the military equipment cut and run in the most economous fashion that there ever was, and leaving all that military equipment there pulling off of Bagram airbase, which I imagine we've all been to. And that base controls that entire region around there. And it's so defensible. He pulls off of that and then goes back to the municipal airport in Kabul. This is so disgraceful and piece after piece of this, Joe Biden's been wrong on every foreign policy piece for his entire public career,
Louis Gilmer (00:33:45):
As Secretary Gates said. That's right.
Steve King (00:33:47):
Well, yes, that's right
Louis Gilmer (00:33:49):
In his book.
Steve King (00:33:51):
So he said, I'm right. Huh?
Louis Gilmer (00:33:53):
He said that Biden had been wrong in his book. He said years ago he'd been wrong on every foreign policy for the last 40 years.
Steve King (00:34:02):
He said it in some private meetings with us. That was 10 years ago, wasn't it?
Louis Gilmer (00:34:06):
Well, he's been more than that. Yeah. So at
Steve King (00:34:08):
Least half a century he's been wrong.
Louis Gilmer (00:34:10):
Right? Well, and going back to Iran, as Michelle was talking about, let's give Jimmy Carter some credit. He didn't just clear the way for the, I told it to come back. He welcomed him back in control of Iran as a man of peace. Religious
Steve King (00:34:30):
Is that
Louis Gilmer (00:34:31):
Unbelievable. He called him a man of peace. And so people around the world, they know that actions in foreign policy have consequences. And so when Russia made a move on Georgia, not southeastern conference, but Georgia, the former Soviet Union, they made a move. They attacked Georgia and the Bush administration. I thought it was kind of a weak response, but they put really tough sanctions on Russia and Russian officials. So when President Obama won, they send Hillary Clinton over there with a plastic red button. I that guys remember, I couldn't believe that. And if she wanted it, going
Michelle Bachman (00:35:17):
To give Russia a red button to push. I don't think this is a
Louis Gilmer (00:35:21):
Good visual. It called it a reset button, but the word they used in Russia didn't mean reset. But anyway, but you've got to see what that means besides it meant incompetence that we couldn't put the right Russian word on it. But it also sent a message. What Hillary Clinton was saying by that action was, we think the Bush administration overreacted. When you attacked another country, Georgia, we want you to know we were okay with what you did, and we won't overreact if you attack another country. It was all but a written invitation to attack Crimea, which they did, which they then did because they knew, well, Obama administration and Hillary Clinton said they won't overreact when we attack every, everybody would never
Michelle Bachman (00:36:12):
Know we were in congressman. That happened.
Louis Gilmer (00:36:14):
Yes. Yeah. And so those kind of things, people are looking for signals and going back to Korean War, some attributed the north attacking south, when after a Secretary of State at the time said that Korea basically was beyond our sphere of influence, and they took that to mean they could attack and we wouldn't do anything but those kind of things, those kind of statements, those kind of actions. Oh, we think Bush overreacted. It sends a clear message to tyrants that you can go ahead and get away with things. And
Michelle Bachman (00:36:53):
That's what voters need to remember when they go to the polls in the fall, the importance of the foreign policy issue. We think about our wallets and we think about a lot of issues like that. But we've also got to think about foreign policy. If you look at the cumulation of the foreign policy disasters of the last 60 years, there's one political party that's fingered for making the worst possible decisions. The Republicans didn't always get it right either. But these disastrous decisions like what Obama made, Obama wanted to empower Iran. He's been trying to do that. This is Obama has, well, this is Obama's third term. Let's face it. Obama's enjoyed his third term as president. And his whole goal has been to empower Iran. What a devastation for the world and who's paid the price more than anyone? Israel. Israel has paid the price, and now they are paying
Louis Gilmer (00:37:49):
The price.
Michelle Bachman (00:37:50):
They are paying the price. And now for the first time in a way that we've never seen before, the United States of America is cursing Israel with our foreign policy. We are cursing them. It couldn't be worse.
Louis Gilmer (00:38:03):
Threatening them. Threatening,
Michelle Bachman (00:38:04):
Threatening them. We have a pro Hamas, a pro terrorist policy, and a lot of the points that were put forward, I heard a speech from Vice President Kamala Harris, and my jaw hit the floor when she spoke. I couldn't believe all the demand she was putting on Israel essentially demand that they lose this war effort. And there was peace. There was peace. On October 6th, there was peace, there was Hamas. Joy ended that. That's right.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:38:36):
When we had peace on September 10th and then we were attacked on September 11th, we would've told the rest of the world to go jump in a lake. If they told us that we had to lose a war, that would not be okay with any single American. That's right. We were the most united I've ever seen our country right after that happened. And same we'd never forget and united, we stand and of course, look at us now. We all forgot and we're sharply divided. But I put myself in Israel's shoes and I just think there's no way in the world that we would've allowed anyone else, no matter what country it was, to tell us how to fight back against a brutal terror attack.
Michelle Bachman (00:39:18):
And it really is true. You reap what you sow. So we need to be careful as a nation, if we are making these demands that you must lose a war to Israel
Jenny Beth Martin (00:39:29):
After you've been attacked,
Michelle Bachman (00:39:30):
After you've been attacked, there are consequences to us. So here Joe Biden is eager, he can't wait to give away another 60 billion to Ukraine, but he can't give even 14 billion to a desperate Israel who, yes, October 7th was a genocide. But what most people don't know, Jenny Beth, is that every single day there are deaths either from guns, knives, or people taking a car to run over and kill Jews. That's the whole focus to try and kill Jews. Why would we want to empower and be on the side of people with a radical ideology that sees Jews as subhuman? As subhuman? That's a wrong ideology.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:40:14):
I've seen the video that the Israeli government has allowed media and key leaders around the world to see. I've actually seen it twice now and the thing, they're horrible, awful things in it because you're watching as a terrorist are killing people. It is awful to watch. The thing that I found the absolute most shocking is that they were taking bodies back into Gaza and they were cheering, the people on the streets were cheering and yelling like it was a parade for the terrorists. And they were more excited to see those terrorists than any Taylor Swift fan in this entire country would ever be. It was Team Jihad.
Michelle Bachman (00:40:58):
Yes, it was Team Jihad. And they are
Jenny Beth Martin (00:41:00):
All, they're okay with.
Louis Gilmer (00:41:03):
Well, they voted Hamas into
Michelle Bachman (00:41:05):
Power. They voted it in
Louis Gilmer (00:41:06):
Knowing what they were.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:41:09):
And I have not seen where Israel is cheering as people in Gaza have been
Michelle Bachman (00:41:14):
Killed. I haven't. No. As a matter of fact, kibbutz bury, I lived in Kibbutz Bury. He was one of the first kibbutz that were attacked when I was an 18-year-old. I went over and lived and worked and volunteered. I went back in December just to visit people that I knew from there were killed and slaughtered in their homes in cold blood, innocent people on Saturday morning on October 7th. It was the most horrific event. How fast the world forgets what happened, like you said, what if that happened here? Would we stand by and allow ourselves not to be able to put ourselves in a position of peace? Because what's Israel supposed to do? You have this mad ideology that lives next door to Jews and their belief is that Jews shouldn't live. That's the article. It's an article and the charter that Jews, that's genocide that they need to defeat and Israel must not exist. And so this cannot be allowed to go on. And Israel needs to have the freedom as any sovereign nation would to protect its people and the sovereignty of its border and to protect against future attacks. Because the leadership of Hamas, that's all they've been saying, is we're going to have more October 7th, more October 7th. They're probably more energized and engaged than ever in bringing genocide about the Jewish people.
Steve King (00:42:40):
Something like this happens, something like the Sabbath massacre, which was October 7th or our September 11th year or Pearl Harbor, whatever that happens that there's a half life of a culture's anger over that, and you have to bring the maximum force as early as possible to put it into it. However, ghastly the slaughter, you have to perpetrate on them because the will to complete this is diminished, whether it's among the people that are threatened in Israel, which is lesser, but the allies that are there that will has been dissipating on the first days and weeks and months of this. It was the strongest opposition. And that was a time to unload everything on there. And I thought that they should have pushed it harder out of Israel than they did. But they also, the casualties that were concerned about, and they were concerned about the hostages that are still some of them there, but I just needed to come about
Michelle Bachman (00:43:27):
136 or 130,
Steve King (00:43:28):
But it had to come hard and strong so that there was no question. And the things that we did the second World War, for example, and we burned nearly every city in Japan and we saved back because we had to get rid of their industry and we had to break the spirit in the will of them. You have to break the spirit and the will as bad as it is. But that's a lesson of history. And I think that Israel is going to come out of this, but
Michelle Bachman (00:43:50):
It's tough. And regarding Israel, the weaker the United States is, the weaker we are on the world stage, the more that empowers Iran. So Iran will continue to do every outrageous thing they can because they literally do believe they have the political will. The military will, they really believe that they're going to destroy Israel, meaning they're going to destroy every Jew and they're going to commit genocide against the Jews. Where's the world coming after Iran? Where is the world they're going after Israel? Why aren't they coming against Iran? It's Iran that wants to kill and bring genocide against the Jews. And
Jenny Beth Martin (00:44:30):
Iran just killed Americans and they've been attacking military installations, American military installations,
Michelle Bachman (00:44:37):
And there's American hostages and Gaza,
Jenny Beth Martin (00:44:39):
And we're
Louis Gilmer (00:44:40):
We telegraphed how we were going to respond to make sure they were covered, protected underground. But it goes back to what John Adams said. This constitution was intended for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the governing of any other. And that is so true. And if you look what the leftists, so the socialists that have moved into universities and been teaching, everything's relative. There's no moral right or wrong. It's all relative. That's
Michelle Bachman (00:45:15):
Why they should all come to Regent University, Dean of the Government
Louis Gilmer (00:45:18):
School. And it's widespread. It's even affected dramatically. My alma mater used to be such a conservative university, but Natan Sharansky, I was telling Ron Dermer said, I know you helped him with the case for democracy. He
Michelle Bachman (00:45:38):
Was democracy. He was a chief to Prime Minister Netanyahu. Ron der a
Louis Gilmer (00:45:42):
Democracy. He was the Capital one. I said, I know you helped Sharansky with the case for democracy. That was really a terrific book. So well thought out. He's such a brilliant man. He said, have you read his defending identity? And I said, no. He said, you need to. He was right. I read it. And in there Sharansky points out that the failure to teach citizens that there is moral right and wrong and give them moral clarity is what, and he wrote this in oh eight. That's what causes them to confuse the arsonist with the firemen and say, well, they're moral equivalent or to, and he spells this out. It causes you to say that the terrorists that attack innocent people and kill them are morally equivalent to those who defend themselves. And the victims attack them back
Michelle Bachman (00:46:40):
And the victims within
Louis Gilmer (00:46:41):
About
Michelle Bachman (00:46:42):
Six hours October 7th, all of
Louis Gilmer (00:46:44):
A sudden they were seen victims. We've seen thing play out that people, there's so many students at universities, people all over the country coming out protest don't know the difference between protest right and wrong. They can't tell the difference evil between terrorists that kill innocent people and people that defend themselves against it. That's right.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:47:04):
That's right. And there's this bizarre thinking that I've heard. They're counting the number of people who have died in the war versus the number of people who died on October 7th.
Michelle Bachman (00:47:19):
Yeah, they're counting the soldiers or the Jihadists that are fighting in Gaza. They're counted,
Jenny Beth Martin (00:47:27):
Right? They're counting this and they're saying, well, there are more people who have died in Gaza now than who have died in Israel. And first, I'm not sure that we can believe all the numbers from Hamas. Hamas, you think? Yeah, exactly. And we don't have any independent body going to verify that Whether's saying is true or not. And perhaps they're being truthful and perhaps they're not. But we have no way of knowing because there's no one verifying that. But in war, you don't go, okay, it's a scoreboard and we're counting numbers. Who has more? And that's how
Louis Gilmer (00:48:05):
You don't see a moral equivalent. You say, these are the people that were evil and attacked and killed innocence, and these are the people that are defending their rights to live.
Michelle Bachman (00:48:16):
What would we have said about the Japanese when Pearl Harbor was bombed? I think you were getting to
Steve King (00:48:20):
That point, Steve. Well then what the point was, we killed about 6 million. Japanese general Curtis Le me had the fire bombs out of the B 20 nines. They flew over the cities in Japan with incendiary bombs. They flew in a cross pattern, an X pattern, and they looked at the weather and the wind and they would detonate those bombs about 200 feet up, and it would go over all the paper houses and just incinerate, and then it'd create its own weather and roll down the streets. Tokyo was burned. It was Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kobe, I believe it was, were saved for the atom bomb. They didn't bomb those cities because they saved 'em to put the atom bombs in them. That was so devastating, and it doesn't show up in our history. I've got a book that's got the pictures, and I read through that and well, there's no question. I believe it. So that was a devastating thing we did in Germany. Nearly every city in Germany dressed.
Louis Gilmer (00:49:08):
But Truman gets a bad rap on that. And in fact, there was a question under the federal mandated tests that some had on their state tests a true false that the United States using nuclear bombs and Hiroshima and Nagasaki raised serious moral issues about the United States. It was something like that. And the truth is, what they were weighing is all of the information indicated, the emperor had said, you will fight to the deaths house to house. You will fight to the death. And they knew we would probably lose 5 million more Japanese and 5 million more allies. And if they drop those atomic bombs as horrendous and horrible as they were, it might be half a million people. And so it was an agonizing decision,
Michelle Bachman (00:50:09):
Wanted war. He wanted to
Louis Gilmer (00:50:10):
End the war, and he saved millions and millions of lives on both sides. It was
Steve King (00:50:15):
About a hundred thousand in each of those two cities that were killed by the bombs, about a hundred thousand. And when you look at the numbers that would've been with an American invasion, however that might've been, it probably started with a half a million and whatever.
Louis Gilmer (00:50:26):
It's an agonizing decision, but it saved lives to save lives, lives.
Michelle Bachman (00:50:29):
It's why war is terrible. It was a moral, and it's why you want to have the United States be strong and healthy as a nation and have moral clarity. And when we lack any of those elements, then that's when you have weakness. And when you have weakness, then you have bad actors want to pray on a nation. That's our vulnerability right now. We need to be a strong nation with the moral clarity and be economically strong in every respect. And that's our whole goal is we want this country and the people in this country to have the greatest life they can possibly have. That's what we want to see and can't when we're weak, we can't. When we're in the current state that we're in,
Jenny Beth Martin (00:51:11):
I agree with everything that you just said. And war comes sometimes whether you want it or not. It is not like Israel wanted war to happen, and we can debate how much money needs to go to Ukraine, but war came to Ukraine as well, and they had to step up and defend themselves. And I think that that's something in the debates that are going on right now about how much money should be spent, whether any money should be spent in helping these other countries. I think that we just have to remember, sometimes war comes whether we want it or not. And when it does come, you have to address it because it's right in front of you. It's like if you're going along and you're dealing with everything in your life and all of a sudden you have a heart attack, you have to deal with a heart attack right now before you can take care of anything else. As those debates are going on, and they have been and they continue, and Congress about how much to spend helping you Ukraine or helping Israel or potentially Taiwan, what do you think about that? Because the spending, we just talked about the spending issues that we have in our country, and I think that the people in Congress who are saying there needs to be offsets or some way to pay for it, I think those are legitimate arguments and debates that we need to be having.
Louis Gilmer (00:52:39):
Well, for one, as someone who spent time in Ukraine, that was the first part of the exchange student summer I spent over there. I have a heart few crane, but I was disturbed when Zelensky came and addressed the house and basically in essence was saying, I know there's concern about all the money you're sending. Don't worry. We're spending it wisely or wells, I'm sorry. There needs to be accountability. Where did the money go? Who got that money? Are the rumors that some people have been enriched Wyatt? Or is it true that it have Americans that then send products over there? Where has that money gone? And there's not been adequate accountability
Michelle Bachman (00:53:33):
There? And let's say it, we've spent minimum $112 billion. So we haven't been cheap. We've spent 112 billion. I don that.
Louis Gilmer (00:53:43):
Well, don't forget if that includes the weapons or not. When Joe Biden came in as president and took all those actions to stop our being energy independent and all the things he did to raise the price of oil and with the sanctions off of Iran, that actually paid, Russia made, yes,
Michelle Bachman (00:54:06):
Huge
Louis Gilmer (00:54:06):
Amount money, hundreds of billions of dollars. Iraq. The same thing with Iran. In other words, we pay for both sides of that war. We paid Russia. We
Michelle Bachman (00:54:13):
Usually do. That's what most people don't realize. We usually pay for both sides of every
Steve King (00:54:18):
War. Well, it is legitimate to make the argument that we aren't defending our own border. Instead, we've opened up the gates to that and we're helping Ukraine defend their border against the Russians. But I had a meeting with three Russians here about a month ago, maybe a little less, and they were fairly young in their mid twenties to probably about their maybe 30. And they said, we're going back to Ukraine and we're going to fight the Russians, and we will fight them to the death because they will kill us. If we surrender, they will kill us. And they have a history. Russians have killed millions of Ukrainians starved them into death, Stalin, Stalin. And so there's a piece of this Death by Go that my attitude is that if they're willing to spend their lives in their blood, then we can help 'em from the freedom side of it. We did lend lease to the Russians before the Second World War under a similar philosophy. But you've got to monitor that, and it's got to be, you got to know exactly what's going there and for what. And that means that you got to, of
Louis Gilmer (00:55:11):
Course, with their own military, how many trillion have thoroughly
Steve King (00:55:15):
Modern type
Louis Gilmer (00:55:17):
Unaccountable for. I mean, weve given a hundred trillion.
Steve King (00:55:22):
Well, okay, but you can appoint people to monitor that right out of the White House. And if you remember when George W. Bush, we were in Iraq, and I came back from there, he wanted to be briefed and debriefed, me and a few of the other people that went with me, and there's that general LT in the White House, and I'm listening, watching that General lts taking notes, and he's kind of off on the side. And afterwards I walked out with W and I said, what's General Ruth's job here? And he said, well, his job is to make sure that the orders that I give, the commandments I give as commander and chief are carried out because I can't get the joint Chiefs to follow through on what it is I tell 'em to do. So I assigned General Lute to monitor this and put a team together to follow behind the direction. You can do many things like that to follow
Louis Gilmer (00:56:05):
The military. Well, and the Pentagon had a guy like that who was monitoring expenditures to make sure we got value for what was spent. His name wasn't Adam Levenger. And he found where there were two, $300,000 payments, over a million going to some professor in London, and he couldn't find that they got anything in return for that. So he passed that information up and they made up a reason, an excuse to fire him. It turns out they were paying Stefan, helper, helper, who was the one that is alleged. He's setting up Carter Page and Papadopoulos so they could get a warrant so they could spy on the Trump campaign. So the defense department was paying that guy.
Steve King (00:56:57):
It is true that all the institutions in America have been corrupted by the left. Every institution in America. Culturally, the damage is so bad that I can only think, go back down to the families, go back down to our churches and build this thing from the bottom up, and all the people that will homeschool their children, young people that fall in love, get married, have a lot of babies, and raise 'em. Right. And I'm glad to see that Elon Musk has come around to that side, although I don't agree with the methodology he has. I think his ideology is right, a lot of babies and raise 'em, right. And that slowly then lifts up our society again. But the poison that's out there in our public institutions, for example. And then when you meet immigrants at the border with your, well, you go down with the NGOs clear down into Ecuador, and here's our welcome mat here, and we'll put you on and put on the magic carpet to the United States of America, and as you said, here's your debit card and here's your medical and here's the plane ticket to take you where you want to go.
(00:57:50):
When they arrive here, even before they arrive here, they are taught assimilation is now a dirty word. You don't have to learn the language. You don't have to accept the American culture and civilization. It isn't really what we think it is anyway. It's what they say they want to turn it into. And then you have Joe Biden saying that by the Year X, well the America will be a minority white, white country. And he said, that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing because diversity is our strength. And no one can make the argument as to why diversity is any kind of strength. I would say that diversity has assets to it that you can certainly use, but assimilation is the glue that glues them together. Then you have strength
Louis Gilmer (00:58:28):
Is united. We're united country. If we're united as a country, as divert with all the diverse backgrounds. But some of the best citizens in this country have come from places like Eastern Bloc countries, Venezuela, African countries that have known how horrible a totalitarian government can be. They're some of our best citizens. And they're freaking out that they're seeing this taking hold in this country.
Michelle Bachman (00:58:58):
The United States has been funding totalitarian regimes. We funded Iran, and this is a horror on our nation that Joe Biden lifted the sanctions on Iran for their oil sales that President Trump effectively put on. And they had tens of billions of dollars in money and they used their money to advance terrorism. And Joe Biden gave $6 billion just before October 7th to the Iranians who have very obvious, well stated designs against annihilating the Jewish state, but then he gave an additional 10 billion to Iran. So we have a situation of America funding the chief state sponsor of terrorism and to give $10 billion after they slaughtered 1200 innocent Jews and took 246 people hostage in Gaza, and we still have them in Gaza. There is no moral equivalency here. It's inexplicable what the US administration has done. We have never treated Israel's enemy like we have treated. We are lavishing them.
(01:00:10):
And I think part of it is, it is my contention that this is Barack Obama's third term as president. He was always decidedly pro Iran. That's where he faced pro Iran. But look what Iran has done with what we have given them. They've brought about death and destruction and they continually shout death to America, death to Israel, and they mean it when a mad man speaks. Listen, so we're looking at 14 point something billion for Israel that's fighting for their life right now. There's no equivalency here. And so I am hoping that the United States really quickly wakes up and again gets a brain and does the right thing. We should be punishing evil doers and rewarding those who are doing good. That's the purpose of government. Punish evil doers and reward those who are doing good. And in this scenario, Iran is the evil doer. They should be punished. Israel is doing good and they should be benefited.
Steve King (01:01:12):
Just put that 14 billion up on the floor on a standalone bill and it pass,
Michelle Bachman (01:01:16):
Which Mike Johnson did. One of the first things he did was that, and the house passed it, but the Senate won't take it
Steve King (01:01:22):
Out because they want to package together a deal and leverage something back. That's
Louis Gilmer (01:01:25):
Where we don't know where all the moneys go
Jenny Beth Martin (01:01:31):
With Ukraine, but are you seeing that about Israel as well, or Ukraine? We don't know where all the money is going.
Louis Gilmer (01:01:38):
We don't know where all the money is. No, I'm not as concerned about Israel because we know where that money is being spent and a lot of it does go.
Michelle Bachman (01:01:49):
It stays in the United States. It's weapons
Louis Gilmer (01:01:53):
American companies that are providing the ammunition, the rockets and things like that. So I don't have a problem with that, but I do have a problem with a lot of the money the defense is spending when we don't, when they say, oh, another trillion dollars we can't account for. Yeah, we don't know where that went. I'm not as concerned about Israel. I'm concerned about our defense department and I'm concerned about Ukraine accountability. And there should be no money going to Iran or anyone that Iran is helping until terrorism that they find
Michelle Bachman (01:02:32):
No accounting firm would ever certify the books of the defense department. Oh my gosh, ever, ever. They don't even bother to try and reconcile their ledgers. They don't even bother.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:02:43):
It's just another example of the two tier justice system that we have.
Michelle Bachman (01:02:47):
It's just them. It's also the covid money that was spent. You want to talk about fraud, unbelievable fraud. That's all through the government. So don't let anyone tell you the government is on a bare bones budget that doesn't survive the falling off the chair laughing
Jenny Beth Martin (01:03:03):
Test. Okay, one last question to wrap it up. We are in 2024 and next year is 2025, and that is the 250th anniversary of our country. When you think about that in the future of America, just what are your thoughts?
Michelle Bachman (01:03:27):
May it ever be, may we ever be what we were when we began, and may our children be able to sit here one day in front of a microphone and say that we live in the greatest country in the world. We're free.
Steve King (01:03:40):
That's more eloquent than I. However, I would say this, that I would want to see the pillars of American exceptionalism refurbished all of them and pride in who, what our country is and our history. This brought us here and the greatest generation that took us through World War II and handed over to the baby boomer generation and the hippies that came out of that have poisoned the well. And let's clean that up and let's get back to the basics, the simplicity into individual rights and liberty and all of this robust freedom, this sadness today about what's happened to our freedom of speech. And we have to wrestle that back and get back all of those principles that have made America great and teach it in our schools over and over again so they know why the United States of America has long been the unchallenged greatest nation in the world. We derive our strength from Judeo-Christian values, pre enterprise and Western civilization.
Louis Gilmer (01:04:33):
Yeah, the aspirations at the founding, yes, there were people that had slaves, but the aspirations that they set forth in our founding documents were what created the way for the first country that would actually go to war and end slavery as a result of a civil war and to move forward and have a civil rights movement so that as Dr. King said, people would be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. And now in recent years, people are being taught no. You judge people by their skin color. You judge people by all these things that we're not supposed to be judged on, that we're supposed to be considered equal in. But so I hope we'll get back to the founding aspirations, but that will never happen until we start, we get back our institutions and teach a moral right and wrong based on Judeo-Christian principles. And David Horowitz is an agnostic, but he has made a clear look. If we don't get back to those basic founding Judeo-Christian principles, this country is going to be over.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:05:54):
Well, I hope that we do get back to those principles and we all, you aren't in Congress anymore, but every single one of you continues to stand for liberty every day of your life and that we're doing everything we can this year because the elections ultimately will determine the fate of the country and they do every year. But I think this year, especially important and that we hold on liberty in America and around the world.
Louis Gilmer (01:06:23):
Amen.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:06:24):
Thank you all so much for Mar this. Thank you Louis, Steve and Michelle. Thanks Jenny. Beth
Narrator (01:06:31):
Good. The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:06:51):
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