In this episode of The Jenny Beth Show, The Honorable Ken Cuccinelli, former Attorney General of Virginia and Acting Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under President Trump, joins Jenny Beth Martin to discuss the urgent fight for citizen-only voting. As National Chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, Cuccinelli explains why proof of citizenship is essential for voter registration, how loopholes in state laws are exploited, and the bipartisan support behind protecting America’s elections. Learn about the SAVE Act, state-level reforms, and how you can help safeguard election integrity in your community.
In this episode of The Jenny Beth Show, The Honorable Ken Cuccinelli, former Attorney General of Virginia and Acting Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under President Trump, joins Jenny Beth Martin to discuss the urgent fight for citizen-only voting. As National Chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, Cuccinelli explains why proof of citizenship is essential for voter registration, how loopholes in state laws are exploited, and the bipartisan support behind protecting America’s elections. Learn about the SAVE Act, state-level reforms, and how you can help safeguard election integrity in your community.
X/Twitter: @KenCuccinelli | @ETI_now | @jennybethm
Website: https://electiontransparency.org/
Ken Cuccinelli (00:00):
One thing, people may be listening to us and saying, well, wait a minute, it's already illegal for people who aren't US citizens to vote in elections, well, that's true in federal elections and in most state elections. But what you may not know is that the laws are written badly enough and with court interpretations laid on top of it, the states are actually blocked from enforcing that legal requirement. So it's a requirement that is toothless and virtually meaningless in the absence of passing the Save Act or something that contains those protections.
Narrator (00:36):
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's 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 (01:08):
Today we're joined by King Cuccinelli, who is the chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative. He's the former Attorney General for the State of Virginia, and he was an assistant Deputy secretary for the Department of Homeland Security under President Trump. And President Trump's first term, so he knows about immigration, he knows about all sorts of things that prosecutors do as an Attorney General might do, and he has been working very hard on helping secure our elections for the last five years. Ken, thanks so much for joining me today.
Ken Cuccinelli (01:42):
Always good to be with you.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:44):
So tell everyone a little bit about the Election Transparency Initiative and then we'll get into some of the other topics.
Ken Cuccinelli (01:49):
So the Election Transparency Initiative was started in response to the many problems in the 2020 election, and it was set up by the American Principles Project in tandem with Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life, and they set it up as a joint project between them because they knew that to fight for life or to fight for families, A PP is a leading fighter against the transgender agenda and has been for years, for example, that they need to be able to win elections and they can't convince people to stay engaged if we don't believe the elections are fair or at least fair enough that they can have confidence in the outcome. And so we took on that role and we've been doing it as you noted for the last four and a half years now, and we've had a lot of success. I have never seen the right of center coalition.
Ken Cuccinelli (02:47):
I won't even say just conservatives, which is what I'm used to working with. I've never seen the right of center world stick together on an issue so well for so long. Literally nothing that I can remember along these lines. Even things like fighting Obamacare, the Establishmentarian abandoned us on it, but not here. And we still have even in 2025 after Donald Trump won in 20 24, 1 of my worries was that there would be a sagging in the enthusiasm to continue the reform efforts because as you and I both know, we still have a lot more to do, even as much success as we've had and I haven't seen that. So we continue to press forward in all 50 states. We also work in Washington dc, we have an associated pack where we will engage in select races. We've managed to take out some incumbents in primaries, which we're very proud to do, and it has a very refreshing effect on the remaining people who do not get taken out in those primaries.
Ken Cuccinelli (04:00):
Arizona. We've seen success in that regard and several other states as well. So we are in all of those arenas and we do engage in the nitty gritty of Bill passage and writing. We're doing that in North Carolina now and hoping to continue to see improvement. But I have to say it's been a really successful run with this whole coalition. No one of us of course can claim credit for that, but I'm very pleased to continue to be part of it with you as well. Among others. We've worked on this for years together and it's been an impressive set of accomplishments and it's one of those things that if for no other reason than changing technology, we're always going to have to pay attention to. And the left has been on this field for over 20 years, really since 2004, and we just arrived in 2021, so we've still got a lot to catch up on.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:58):
Yeah, we do have a lot to catch up on, but you're right, the coalition is, it sticks together and there have been squabbles within the Election Integrity Coalition. It happens. We're all humans and human nature happens, but by and large, we're able to put those things aside and just keep focusing on the fact that we want to have trust in the outcome of the election. And in order to do that, there are things that need to be done to secure the election process, and we constantly have to work on that. And it just seems that that mission and that goal supersedes all the interpersonal squabbles that may happen from time to time and coalitions.
Ken Cuccinelli (05:37):
And at ETI, we try to create what amounts to a mission statement for election reform. And for us, the gold standard is that every American in every jurisdiction gets to see. Thus our name Election Transparency Initiative gets to see literally everything going on in election except how their neighbor marks their ballot. And that's right down to the computer code on the machines. It hasn't happened yet, but one of our long-term goals is open source coding. The geeks watching will know what I mean, but it basically means that everybody can see your code and know how your machines are working and so forth. So that's our gold standard that we're working toward. And we've made progress. We haven't broken through on the open source coding yet. There's still this small industry of elections, sales companies like Dominion most famously or infamously that sell equipment to these localities, which in most of the country is how the equipment is bought to run elections. And that's a vanguard. We're trying to find ways to break into because we think it'll put us on a very long-term stable platform to maximize transparency.
Jenny Beth Martin (07:02):
And some people may not understand why having open source code is so important, but the fact is they're counting ballots. It's not rocket science. It shouldn't be that difficult. And sometimes you will hear from some of the vendors, well, it's our proprietary software. We can't let anyone see what's going on. I'm like, you're counting 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 2. I mean, it shouldn't be that hard. So I understand that intellectual property went in it, but you also are providing something for the public. And there has to be that faith that your software is solid enough that we don't have to worry about hacking. We don't have to worry about other issues, and we don't have to worry that some coder maliciously did something to the software other than hacking. And I am not accusing anyone of that. But when there isn't the transparency, it winds up creating questions that lead to a lack in faith in the
Ken Cuccinelli (08:04):
Outcome election. Well, Reagan trust but verify.
Jenny Beth Martin (08:07):
I
Ken Cuccinelli (08:07):
Mean, honestly, that's a chicken in the egg circle. That's a good one. You gain trust by verifying. You also ensure that people are less likely to cheat in the first place. I'll tell you from my attorney general experience changing penalties doesn't change behavior. Changing the belief in the likelihood of getting caught absolutely changes behavior. And we've succeeded in doing that with one of the things our movement has done, as you know, is recruit poll workers. And just in my home state of Virginia, when Glen Youngen was running for governor in 2021, the year after 2020, it was one of those newly recruited poll workers that spotted the biggest cheat going on in Virginia that year where several counties were ignoring the voter ID requirement for absentee ballots. And so mass mailing by nonprofits of ballot applications was just being fed into registrar's office and they were given out ballots without any voter id.
Ken Cuccinelli (09:14):
And again, it was one of those newly trained watchers participating as a poll worker, not someone associated with a campaign. They went and got a job working for the election officials. It's the most important thing somebody can do if they're concerned about election security is go be part of that solution. And we still are outnumbered by people on the left filling those slots, but we have closed the gap as we have in so many other areas there. And that's served us very, very well. The election integrity network gets a lot of credit for picking up that model that we started in Virginia. They actually call it the Virginia model and taking it across the country to other states. They do many things, but one of what I think is the most important things the Election Integrity Network does is recruit those poll workers and train them. Don't rely on the election officials to train them.
Jenny Beth Martin (10:14):
Yeah, that is exactly right. And when we have the poll workers and the poll watchers, I always tell them, I want you to have the most boring day possible. I don't want you to encounter any issues. I want you to be trained to look for them, watch everything and report back that it went well. And I think that's what we all want. We know though, human behavior happens and sometimes mistakes happen. Sometimes malicious intent happens. Usually though I think it is more, it has more to do with mistakes than
Ken Cuccinelli (10:45):
Oh, overwhelmingly.
Jenny Beth Martin (10:47):
Yeah,
Ken Cuccinelli (10:47):
Overwhelmingly. But if you're an outsider and a bad thing has happened to something important to you, the election process, and it's important to a lot of us, as you noted human nature, you're inclined to believe that it happened for the worst reasons. And so here's where that transparency protects the people who are suspected, no, no, look, we just made a mistake. Anybody would rather be stupid than evil. And we all make mistakes and no American expects perfection. But if you start covering it up, and if you won't let me be in a position to see the problem in the first place, there's good reason to get suspicious. There's a reason. The old where there's smoke, there's fire quip still applies because it's so true. It's so true. And the way election officials who just get offended when we question what they're doing would be best served is to simply open their doors to show us everything. And when I say us, I mean the American people. I don't mean just the right, I mean everybody should have absolutely equal
Jenny Beth Martin (12:02):
Access. Well, if you have that kind of access and transparency, then it will rebuild the faith in the outcome. And as much as the left wants to ignore this, the left has had problems with the outcome of elections as well, and neither side, we should both be able to trust the outcome. I think it's very important that we're able to do that. And when there are legitimate problems to be able to investigate those problems, get to the root cause, solve it for whatever the current election is, but also prevent that from happening ever again in future elections.
Ken Cuccinelli (12:39):
That's right. And I would say in the last 25 years, the left has complained far more often than the right, but we're Americans, we remember what happened yesterday more than two days ago. And so it's all dumped on Donald Trump. And it's just a fact. You don't have to look very far across the 2020 election state officials weren't obeying their own laws. And now COVID was often the excuse, but that's what the law is for. The law is. So everybody knows the rules ahead of time. A 2-year-old will say, if you deviate from the rules set ahead of time, you're cheating. And that's what the left tries to do frequently. And in 2020, they got away with it all over the place.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:28):
They really did. And they don't like to admit or talk about that, but
Ken Cuccinelli (13:33):
No, they don't.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:34):
I've seen the evidence. I've seen the sworn affidavits. You've seen the evidence. And so we know what happened there. So this brings us to the issue that we're working on this summer, which is to ensure that it's only citizens who are voting in our elections and we're working our organization. Your organization and several other organizations are working together to promote the need for only citizens to vote and to work to get the save act passed through Congress, whether it's actually the save act or the contents of the bill, get put into a different bill, whatever it is, just so that we can require that you have to show proof of citizenship to register to vote. Can you have been working on both the save act and then on the same issue at a state legislative level? Can you talk about that some?
Ken Cuccinelli (14:28):
Sure. And one thing, people may be listening to us and saying, well, wait a minute, it's already illegal for people who aren't US citizens to vote in elections. Well, that's true in federal elections and in most state elections. But what you may not know is that the laws are written badly enough and with court interpretations laid on top of it, the states are actually blocked from enforcing that legal requirement. So it's a requirement that is toothless and virtually meaningless in the absence of passing the Save Act or something that contains those protections. So we've been focusing also at the state level in 2024, there were eight state referenda addressing citizen only voting, and they passed everywhere overwhelmingly. And of course, the left fights us like crazy from these getting on the ballot because they know that they're going to lose that one of these has never lost anywhere.
Ken Cuccinelli (15:32):
It's been voted on by the people. And so this also points up, this isn't a partisan issue. Americans think this is common sense. And in fact, if you did sort of a man on the street interview, you could pick any city, town or suburb and just ask people what they think about non-citizens voting. And their first reaction would be, well, I thought they weren't allowed to do that already. And the left plays games with the language and state laws and constitutions. And so these referenda have tightened up, particularly the constitutions and the usual voting margin is something like 70 30 when it's put to the ballot. The other side is needless to say, hard pressed to come up with a reason that this shouldn't happen. And so they resort to their usual, well, you're all racist. Just the usual litany you hate, fill in the blank.
Ken Cuccinelli (16:34):
No, no. I love America and I hate it when Americans votes are canceled out by non-Americans votes. But that's the extent of my hate. But it's all ad hominem attacks because they've got no substantive defense to this. So we've been working in state legislatures. The referenda are particularly fun to talk about because of those overwhelming margins. And it really is, it's very straightforward. It's one of those yes or no questions that's hard to confuse on the ballot as long as you don't have multiple issues on the same ballot measure. And these eight items were either solely citizen voting or they only had maybe one other related issue like voter id for example, was in one of them. So that was very successful and it was all kinds of states, including swing states like North Carolina where it passed very heavily. So I think it tells you a lot about what the American people really think. This wasn't a poll. We didn't get to tweak the questions. Real Americans, tens of millions of them walked into voting places all over the country and came out with the answer.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:50):
Yeah. If 70% of the people voting on these referenda are voting for it, it tells you that this is not a left right Republican Democrat issue. This is just Americans. It's common sense. It's really just common sense.
Ken Cuccinelli (18:06):
It really is. And you get a similar reaction to voter id. And we saw the Nevada referenda, of course, we were all watching Nevada as a swing state in the presidential, and I think President Trump won it by three or four points. Well, voter ID won 70 30 also in the same state. And it's interesting what this does, it changed the legislature as it related to election matters this year. So the Democrats realize you have to pass it twice in Nevada when you do it by referendum. So there's one more coming. So the Democrats were offering to Governor Lombardo a Republican, well, we'll do voter ID if you do these other things like drop boxes and other terrible things that you and I know reduce the security of elections. And basically they were trading and moving voter Id forward one year because they knew it was coming to get various things that they wanted. Thankfully, governor Lombardo wisely rejected that offer and he's going to let the people decide this question. And it's really important in a state like Nevada, which is in my view, is you and I have had these debates. Who's the worst? Well, Nevada is arguably the worst swing state. I think it's pretty close with Michigan now. Michigan's been working very hard to make their election system as bad as they can, and they've had great success in it. All the other swing states have improved.
Jenny Beth Martin (19:40):
Yeah, they have improved. It is not a badge of honor to to make it as bad as you possibly can, and Nevada is one of the states that we're going to be visiting. It'll be the second state we visit on our tour. It is, it really makes sense to work on these issues and we need to work on it at the federal level, but also at the local level, both so that we protect the federal elections and we also are protecting the state and local elections. Americans should be the ones deciding who is going to represent America in our legislative bodies make to govern America. Yeah, it's just common sense.
Ken Cuccinelli (20:25):
Right. And I agree with you when you get numbers like this, it's obviously spanning the political spectrum.
Jenny Beth Martin (20:33):
Yeah, it is. It's really just a no brainer. Okay, so we talked about that. Now in your experience as Attorney General, you fought against Obamacare and tried to help us repeal Obamacare through the legislative process. And you also did a lot, you really worked a lot on healthcare and medical malpractice. And I was listening to you in a meeting recently and you were talking about a very simple change that could be made to Medicaid and Medicare. And when he heard it, I was like, wait, what? I was shocked that it isn't already happening. Would you explain what
Ken Cuccinelli (21:17):
About this is the healthcare billing version of What do you mean They're non-citizens voting?
Ken Cuccinelli (21:22):
Yeah. So the fact is that when I was attorney general, we worked very hard and very successfully to recover healthcare fraud monies and to prosecute people. We were literally the most successful state in the country. Amusingly, as soon as I left the office, the Obama administration gave the Virginia Attorney General's office the award for being the best in the country at that. And they were right or they got that right. But the opportunity that we were talking about in that meeting was that Medicare and Medicaid just pay bills. They get a bill, they pay it. And if they figure out if there's a problem later, much farther down the road when you and I get bills, we open the bill, we look at the bill, we make sure the bill is right, and then we pay the bill. And really that was all I had suggested.
Ken Cuccinelli (22:25):
And it sounds so simple, but I'm telling you and everybody listening, I've been suggesting this in various fora for 15 years, including in Virginia when I was the attorney general, and they wouldn't make the change. And it's simple to just pay bills that come in, but particularly in the day and age of artificial intelligence. And Doge has shown us what's possible that we should be doing fraud screening, which will take no additional time before we pay these bills, but the bills should be screened for correctness prior to paying them. And people may not even know it. Probably everybody watching us uses a credit card at some point. Well, if you run your Visa card before they give that store your money or really their money, which they then bill you for, they have an entire backend system set up. And I've been in the headquarters for it.
Ken Cuccinelli (23:33):
It looks like Houston at an Apollo launch with all the wall computers and everything else going on where they're running very sophisticated algorithms to screen for potential fraud before they pay, before they pay, even though I'm the one who's liable for that. They do that really kind of as a service to provide value. They do charge of course for their intermediary role. And we don't do that for the largest expenditure in government. And for those of you who care about government spending as I do, if you look out to 2050 and you add Medicare and Medicaid, it is going to pass everything except sadly interest on the debt in government spending. It is dominating our government spending growth. And there is a simple way, and as I think I told you before, Jenny Beth, I believe we can immediately cut about half of the fraud right there, right at the spigot. And with the US budget, we're literally, if I'm even close to right, we're literally talking about hundreds of billions of dollars every single year.
Jenny Beth Martin (24:56):
I am shocked that it's not done, and I shouldn't be shocked because of course the government isn't taking this extra extra step. Ken, if they were to do this and to change it so that they actually reviewed the bills before paying them, would that need to be a legislative change or could just be done through an executive action?
Ken Cuccinelli (25:22):
It can.
Jenny Beth Martin (25:23):
If you wanted to codify it, I guess, so that no one
Ken Cuccinelli (25:27):
Could come back, then you need Congress. Yes.
Jenny Beth Martin (25:30):
And it seems like I am no Senate parliamentarian expert at all, but it seems like if they added this to the next rescission bill because they're going to do a rescission 2.0 or a mini rescission or something, and the rescission for everyone who's listening the res, I'm sorry, not rescission reconciliation, they're going to do a reconciliation 2.0. The reconciliation is a process that Congress just went through to pass a one big beautiful bill and it only requires 50 votes in the Senate or 51 votes in the Senate to pass rather than the 60 votes that normal bills require. But it seems to me that this is something they could add to a reconciliation bill because it truly would affect the bottom line. It isn't really a policy change. It's changing how they are treating the billing before they pay. And that seems to me to be a function of government. I mean, it just seems like it really does affect the budget and in order to be part of the reconciliation, it has to affect the budget. It can't be considered policy.
Ken Cuccinelli (26:38):
Correct. On the latter point, which sort of exhausts my knowledge of how the Senate parliamentarian works as well, but it is a mere process change. It is not a change to substantive law. All of the things that the Medicaid law says would get paid, would get paid, all of the things that Medicare's law says would get paid, would get paid. It doesn't change those a bit, not one iota. What it does do is it screens for fraud before the money goes out instead of after the money goes out. And as a person whose office literally set the record for healthcare fraud recoveries in Virginia, it's since been passed, but we spent a lot of time and effort on this. This is a simple but workable change that even before ai, I knew would save enormous amounts of money on fraud. And now in the age of artificial intelligence, you can actually make yourself a bit of a threat to potential fraudsters on the front end. You can give them a real danger of getting caught. Remember my comment earlier, penalties don't change people's behavior. The likelihood of getting caught changes people's behavior. And when you add that to actual prosecutions, because in this space, this is one of those spaces like election fraud where prosecutors just don't feel like they want to spend much time. Well, you put a few corporate officers in jail for their companies committing fraud against the US government and the state governments in Medicaid's case. And I think you'll pretty quickly see a change in behavior.
Jenny Beth Martin (28:24):
Yeah, I think that you would, and I thought it was so enlightening to me that I wanted to make sure we were sharing this with the audience, and it may be something that we try to help work to get changed. It's the little things that make such a huge difference. They're big amazing things that can happen, but some of those little things make such a huge impact on one of the issues you and I care most about. And that is trying to figure out how we're going to get the debt to be reduced.
Ken Cuccinelli (28:55):
Well, and let's sort of flip the coin. I used to tell people when I was hunting down Medicaid fraud, which was my focus as a state ag because state money goes into Medicaid, but inevitably the same treaters also had Medicare. So we ended up investigating Medicare fraud as well. And we can all debate how much money should be set aside for poor Americans. Hopefully we don't have to debate Americans healthcare assistance for people who don't have enough money. And I think generally everybody watching would say, yes, we should do that. We may disagree about how much that should be and we can look across the aisle and see the disagreements there. But this money has been set aside for that purpose. And we are not talking about changing one penny of who qualifies not one penny. What we are talking about is being aggressive with people billing the government and in a way that doesn't really delay legitimate billers because now with artificial intelligence, you can do all of this so quickly that frankly most providers, healthcare providers wouldn't notice a difference in the payment timeline. And yet we'd be interposing and making fraud so much harder
Jenny Beth Martin (30:26):
And it just should not be easy to commit fraud. And then one other topic I'd like to talk to you about, and that is because of the work that you did in the Department of Homeland Security. What do you think about what's happened to the border since President Trump became president again and what are your thoughts on all this amnesty talk?
Ken Cuccinelli (30:49):
Well, amnesty is always a terrible idea. It has such massive long-term negative consequences. And I don't know how many times we have to learn this lesson. I think it was Reagan's greatest mistake, the 1986 amnesty and I put on a seminar yesterday for congressional staffers on the US Mexico relationship. And of course immigration looms very large, but so does trade. And if you go back to the NAFTA agreement in 1994, we knew that many of our people, including in Virginia were going to suffer because they were going to be undercut particularly in the factory space by the move of capital to Mexico. And the goal was to create a Mexican middle class that would stabilize that country and eliminate or reduce illegal immigration. Well, we have helped create a middle class in Mexico, but it has not stabilized or limited illegal immigration that is still on us.
Ken Cuccinelli (31:52):
And as President Trump proved, including proving it against other Republicans, you just need a president who's willing to crack down on the border to stop the illegal invasion that was going on under Joe Biden. And even relatively speaking, they've been much tougher in Trump 2.0 than in Trump 1.0 I wasn't allowed to do. I begged to do some of the things they're doing now and now they're doing them. They're toughening them up. The president is really taking as close to a zero tolerance policies they can. They're being very creative with the establishment of defense territory there in California, New Mexico, Arizona in particular. But it's wonderful to see in the last two months there have been no catch and releases out of the border zero folks. That is a magnificent accomplishment. And the numbers, of course, the border crossers dropped precipitously by the end of February, I will say as I predicted end of February after his election because he immediately implemented border security measures.
Ken Cuccinelli (33:06):
Now even with the no catch and releases. And what this means is that everybody caught is actually held through their immigration proceedings, and most all of them overwhelmingly they're going to be kicked out of the country because they don't have any legal basis to be here. That's why they were coming across illegally in the first place. We have to continue to drive that number down. So we're reserving our detention for use in deportation because while President Trump has succeeded, as I know you and I both knew he could in driving those border numbers down, now he needs to get the deportation numbers up. And they are struggling to do that. In part, they're struggling because of judges. That's getting a little easier with the Trump v casa ruling in May, well June from May oral argument where the Supreme Court stopped nationwide injunctions, which were particularly problematic in the immigration space. So they have more ability to do that, but they need to build out lots of nuts and bolts in the management and logistic pipeline to start moving large numbers of people out of the country. And so they've stopped the inflow or nearly stopped it. It always helps to drive that farther down because it's easier to keep someone out than to remove them once they're in
Ken Cuccinelli (34:32):
By a factor of 10. So it's worth putting a lot of effort into keeping anybody from coming in illegally. So I've been very happy with what I've seen. It's such a major improvement for America. It's so much better for our security. It's changed the international dynamic in illegal immigrant flows. People don't just roll in expecting to get in. You remember the four years ago people were coming in with Joe Biden for president t-shirts on and so forth and yelling, keep your promise to us. They accurately heard that Joe Biden promised them all that he'd let 'em in. And unfortunately when you look at this has been true of the Middle East as well, Joe Biden has imported a multi-decade security problem for the United States. If you look at the October 7th, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel mass attack, they began planning that attack almost 20 years before they began saving the money.
Ken Cuccinelli (35:33):
All the humanitarian aid that our government and the UN and so many others were sending to Hamas wasn't being used for humanitarian purposes. They were buying weapons and material to support their eventual attack on Israel. That's what it was always going for all the time. And people should pay attention. That polling in the Gaza Strip even today shows three quarter support for that. All of Gaza wants to literally eliminate Israel and Israel's just step one for them. We are on that master plan. So we need to realize that we've now imported that problem. Thank you Joe Biden into the United States, and we are going to be suffering attacks and consequences for the next 20 years because of it.
Jenny Beth Martin (36:26):
It's just horrible. But it's good that President Trump has secured the border that the inflow has almost completely stopped as far as illegal immigration goes and that he's working to deport and to get people to self deport. And I think that I've heard Rosemary jinks with the Immigration Accountability Project say, if you start talking about amnesty, then the self deportations are going to stop. So that will be as
Ken Cuccinelli (36:54):
Soon as I heard you say self deportation. That was my exact thought. I agree a hundred percent. So these bills floating around have to be killed fast so that no illegal thinks that there's some possibility they can snake their way through and stay here. And I get pressed, as you might imagine, by the Chris Cuomos of the world and all the media I do. Oh, you can never remove them all. And my position is I will never admit that we can't remove them all. First of all, we're Americans. We can do anything we set our mind to doing. And we're not a clan or a tribe. Our fundamental, if you boil what is America down to one thing, it's that we all live under the same set of rules. And if we start making exceptions to that, we're literally eating away at what America is. And it may be statistically improbable that we'll ever get everybody, but we should never stop trying to remove everyone. And we should never admit that that is not possible. And we've now got Republicans, a few of them on Capitol Hill who are undermining that and we need to make clear those bills will never see the light of day. And ideally those people won't get reelected.
Jenny Beth Martin (38:15):
Yeah, that is exactly right. And we have them saying that it's going to affect self deportation. We have to do everything we can to prevent these bills from getting a lot of traction. I think that's going to require making phone calls into the house for the people who co-signed it, sending messages to the Senate, not to grant amnesty, to remind people what amnesty is, which is not just a pathway to citizenship, but it is actually saying that the law no longer applies to certain people and that the consequences of breaking the law don't apply to them. It's basically trampling on the law, setting the law aside for a hand chosen group of people.
Ken Cuccinelli (38:58):
Well, and Jenny Beth, before I was a deputy secretary, I ran U-S-C-I-S, which is the Legal Immigration Agency. It's the one people listening to you and me haven't heard as much about. You've heard of IE, you've heard of CBP. The third Immigration Agency is U-S-C-I-S. I had the honor repeatedly of swearing in hundreds of new US citizens, and for anybody watching who was born in the us, you must get to one of these ceremonies. You need to see for yourself what we all take for granted. And these people, it is the greatest day of their lives. They're so excited and happy and these people played by the rules. And one of the most offensive aspects of these amnesty proposals is that they let cheaters win this massive invasion under Joe Biden. One of its many effects was to slow down the ability of U-S-C-I-S to apply resources to people playing by the rules, the non cheaters, and it's the non cheaters who should win first every single time. And unfortunately, people, they use words like dignity and all this other malarkey to quote the last president. That's just baloney. What they end up doing is they're spitting on the people playing by the rules, including the non-citizens who we've asked to go through this. Not easy, not entirely cheap process, but they're doing it. They're doing it out of respect for what they want to become. And that's part of an America that stands as the light of the world, as the place where the rule of law and freedom reigns.
Jenny Beth Martin (40:49):
Yeah, you're exactly right. And calling it dignity. I will never call the act that has been introduced, that it's the undignified act, it's immoral, it's undignified, it's just wrong, it's not fair or right to allow a certain group of people who broke the law to cut in line in front of the people who followed the law. And if you asked a five-year-old that they would say, no, you can't cut in line in front of me. You're not allowed to do that. And we all understand that's not right or fair, and that's
Ken Cuccinelli (41:21):
Go to these newly sworn in Americans, by the way. I mean I of course stick around and talk to them and meet 'em and learn their stories and so forth. And a lot of them would bring up to me how infuriated they were, Hey, why do these cheaters get special treatment? I had to work so hard and I had to do this and follow the rules. And of course they were preaching to the choir with me, but that they would bring it up so often, so repeatedly, whether I was doing this in New York, in Virginia, in Chicago, we did 'em all over the country of course. And it was a very consistent theme among newly sworn in Americans, they still have that new American smell and they want to keep it. They want to protect what they now have, the value of American citizenship. There's very little more valuable on the planet earth than the citizenship in the United States.
Jenny Beth Martin (42:20):
Yeah, there really is not. So I'm glad that you are standing against amnesty and we'll probably have to work on that in the next few weeks and probably separately from the work we're doing on the Save Act, also work on that in the month of August because we've got to make sure that the elected officials understand this is not going anywhere and it cannot, it is disrespectful in so many different levels, it just cannot happen.
Ken Cuccinelli (42:49):
And destructive. Yeah, I agree with you entirely.
Jenny Beth Martin (42:53):
Well, is there anything else that your group is doing that you would like to cover before we end?
Ken Cuccinelli (42:59):
Well, there's a little more important than citizenship only voting, and there's a lot of things that go into elections. Voter ID is at top and we mentioned that. We talked about the transparency focus that we have and we just look for these opportunities. So for everybody watching, don't assume we know what's going on in your state. Please follow me on Twitter at Ken Cuccinelli. You can visit us@electiontransparency.org and we'll keep you informed, but you should also keep us informed. We look for partners in every state. We never try to come in and lead. We try to come in and support and we're very good at playing a supporting role. I know when to be an Indian and not to be a chief, and we do a lot of that at ETI, and it's a big part of why I think we've been a useful coalition member across the country and we want to continue that work. But I'd urge folks watching you and I now to follow me on Twitter where we stay on top of the election and immigration issues and also to help us advance the cause of election reform in your home state. And last but not least, go be an election official.
Jenny Beth Martin (44:15):
That's right.
Ken Cuccinelli (44:15):
You actually get paid to do it. I mean, it's sort of, you're not going to get rich, but think of it like paid volunteer work. We need you the viewer inside that election place. We want you counting the ballots. We want you signing in voters and we want you cleaning the voter rolls and your local election officials staff up for every election. So I never want to pass that up. I'm in Virginia where every year is an election year. We have the governor's race this year in 2025, so no exception. And voting begins in two months in Virginia because we've got one of those crazy 45 day election seasons that are so hard to secure. And by the way, that wear out the election officials, even Democrat election officials hate it.
Jenny Beth Martin (45:05):
Well, yeah. I mean that's a whole other topic, but it's more expensive for the government to run it. It's more expensive for the campaigns and people get so sick of the campaign ads, but now the campaign ads basically must start 60 days before the end of voting, and so you're just inundated with it for two full months with no break whatsoever in Virginia. I would go insane in your state. Sorry, you've got a beautiful state and that would make me nuts. Yeah,
Ken Cuccinelli (45:35):
I understand. I understand. Yes, we do have a beautiful state. I tell people we've got everything but desert and who wants desert
Jenny Beth Martin (45:42):
Desert's hot.
Ken Cuccinelli (45:43):
Yes, but we're also a purple state. It's tough here. And these reforms and the transparency really matters in the confidence of the outcome. And we're cycling through this every single year. The more you do things, the better you get at them or at least the more you learn. And we're doing this twice as often as most states, and which is part of why the Virginia Plan got started in Virginia is it was the first place after 2020 that could happen. And again, credit to the Election Integrity Network for taking that nationwide, but the real credit goes to all the individuals, not just in Virginia where it was about 4,000 people, but similar numbers in all the other states who are stepping forward to be those election officials we need on the inside.
Jenny Beth Martin (46:28):
And there really are thousands of people who do that and they work. It takes thousands in basically every single state, and it takes thousands from both sides of the political aisle. And that's how it should be because that helps keep the checks and balances on the election system.
Ken Cuccinelli (46:47):
That's right. It's funny how everybody behaves better when the other side is watching.
Jenny Beth Martin (46:52):
Very true. Well, Ken Kelli, thank you so much for joining me today and I look forward to seeing you on our bus tour.
Ken Cuccinelli (46:58):
I'll see you certainly in my part of it, Georgia and North Carolina, South Carolina, looking forward to it, and I'm so glad you all are doing it. It's a great idea and it's an issue that needs a lot of focus, so I'm glad you're bringing it to it as you always do.
Jenny Beth Martin (47:14):
Thank you so much.
Narrator (47:16):
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 (47:35):
If you like this episode, let me know by hitting the light button or leaving a comment or a five star review. And if you want to be the first to know every time we drop a new episode, be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications for whichever platform you're listening on. If you do these simple things, it will help the podcast grow and I'd really appreciate it. Thank you so much.