How do Senate rules shape policy, power, and the fate of America First legislation? In this episode, Clint Brown, President of American Path and former Executive Director of the Senate Steering Committee, reveals how procedural tactics, backroom deals, and deep-state obstruction impact conservative priorities. Learn why Senate amendments are often blocked, how leadership controls the process, and what it takes to restore accountability in Washington. If you want to understand the hidden mechanics of the Senate and what it means for the future of President Trump’s agenda, don’t miss this conversation.
How do Senate rules shape policy, power, and the fate of America First legislation? In this episode, Clint Brown, President of American Path and former Executive Director of the Senate Steering Committee, reveals how procedural tactics, backroom deals, and deep-state obstruction impact conservative priorities. Learn why Senate amendments are often blocked, how leadership controls the process, and what it takes to restore accountability in Washington. If you want to understand the hidden mechanics of the Senate and what it means for the future of President Trump’s agenda, don’t miss this conversation.
Twitter/X: @DissidentClint | @jennybethm
Clint Brown (00:00):
The biggest obstacle to passing President Trump's agenda is the Senate. It is the place where the Democrats have the most leverage because of how the Senate operates and because they're elected there. So you have the bureaucrats in the deep state that will be an obstacle, and then you have the deep state in the Senate. There will be an obstacle
Narrator (00:20):
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 of 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 (00:52):
In today's episode, I'm joined by Clint Brown, president of American Path for an inside look at how Senate rules influence policy and power. We originally recorded this conversation in December, but we had to wait to release it because Clint played a key role is Cash Patel's Sherpa helping him navigate the Senate confirmation process. Now that cash Patel's been confirmed, we're finally able to share this discussion from backroom deals to bold reforms. Clint offers critical insights on restoring accountability and advancing a principled agenda. Clint Brown, thank you so much for joining me today.
Clint Brown (01:30):
Thanks for having me. Jenny Beth, it's great to be here with you
Jenny Beth Martin (01:33):
And you are with, you are now the President of American Path and you used to be the executive director of the Senate Steering Committee.
Clint Brown (01:39):
Yes.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:39):
What's the Senate Steering Committee?
Clint Brown (01:42):
Senate Steering Committee is sort of like the Freedom Caucus in the Senate. It's much more secret, it's more low key. They don't advertise it. The list of members is secret. It's been around in some form or another since basically the founding of the Senate, but it's a group of conservatives who get together and make plans, try to figure out how to stop what the uni party is doing, use procedure and other tools, coalitions working with outside groups like Tea Party Patriots to effectively push for conservative legislation
Jenny Beth Martin (02:15):
And why are the Senate rules important to understand?
Clint Brown (02:19):
So whoever controls the process has all the power. That's how legislatures work essentially, and that's also how bureaucracies work. That's the deep state. They control the process. They have all the power. The same thing happens in Congress
Jenny Beth Martin (02:34):
And the same thing happens. I'm interrupting just of course to relate it to people, grassroots people. The same thing happens in the local Republican party. You have to understand Robert's rules of order if you want to be able to push your way through to do something.
Clint Brown (02:49):
That's right. That's right. We have to have an orderly process for resolving conflict if we don't. Conflict evolves human nature into violence, so that's why the rules exist. That orderly process can be used against you or for you because anytime you put structure on something, it gives somebody control and somebody has to make a decision at the end of the day, and the Senate, it's supposed to be a body of equals. They're supposed to all have control over the rules and be able to use them to their advantage. It has evolved away from that in recent years and it's really to the detriment of our country. A lot of the, not all, but a lot of the political violence you've seen in the country has centered around the Senate. I mean, you were there for a lot of it, Geneva at the Kavanaugh hearings. Thankfully neither of us were caught up in it, but there's January 6th that was about the Senate. That's what was happening in the Senate,
Jenny Beth Martin (03:51):
Impeachment,
Clint Brown (03:51):
Impeachment, the protests that happened in the Senate where leftists go and sit in somebody's office and chant and think that's going to change something. Really, it's just annoying people. But if there's no place to resolve debate, there's no place for people to be heard. They will find a way to make their voice heard, and that's what happens. So you have to have this orderly process for resolving differences in politics, and that's what the rules do. That's the basic big picture purpose of the Senate rules. Now, to get really in the weeds, and I know your viewers are really engaged and interested in this kind of stuff, the craziest thing that I learned as a Young Hill staffer shocked me, and I think you'll shock your viewers too. Most senators have zero opportunity to amend legislation.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:46):
No way.
Clint Brown (04:46):
Yes, zero opportunity. They're completely blocked
Jenny Beth Martin (04:50):
Left
Clint Brown (04:51):
Or right.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:51):
I thought Mr. Smith went to Washington and they're able to make a difference.
Clint Brown (04:56):
Yeah, yeah. Theoretically. And really, if you think about it, if you can't amend legislation, what's the point of being a senator? You just vote yes or no on something pre-negotiated in a backroom. That's why we've been talking as Tea Party Patriots for a couple decades now about these backroom deals and these omnibus spending bills that come to the floor that is all a result of the Senate rules. That is all a result of this process where amendments have been blocked. Now, how this started is Harry Reid did something very taboo. He did something called filling the amendment tree. I know that sounds really wonky, but in an orderly process, you can only offer so many amendments at a time. You Jenny Beth, offer an amendment, I like your amendment, but I need a tweak. You want to give everybody a puppy? I really like kittens too. I want to add kittens. So I amend your amendment. Everybody votes whether they like kittens. They say yes. Now it's puppies and kittens. We vote on that. It goes on the bill. Everybody in America gets a puppy and a kitten. We don't actually want that to happen. Although we do love puppies
Clint Brown (06:03):
And I'm not actually a cat person.
Jenny Beth Martin (06:05):
Me either. I would've voted that part down.
Clint Brown (06:09):
I would've sold it as we got to hunt down some of these rats.
Jenny Beth Martin (06:13):
That might be better.
Clint Brown (06:15):
So that's how the process works. But if you can't offer any amendment, the bill, in order to get enough votes, there's a hundred of us has to be negotiated. It needs 60 votes. So they have to offer people something. The Democrats, as we know are going to vote in lockstep and they're going to get what they want because in order to pass these omnibus bills, you have to have the Democrats. Even if Republicans are in the majority, we don't ever have over 60. So they go into a back room. They say, what do you want? What do I want? Okay, I don't like what you like, but you're going to get what you want and I'm going to get what I want. And then we get 60 votes and we pass it. Now, if you as a patriot would come in and say, Hey, why is there something in here that's providing funding to trends kids? I'm going to strike that. You can't. It's blocked because Harry Reed started this process of filling the tree, those orderly amendments, amendment one and amendment two. He puts up a blocker amendment and he's the only one that can take it down.
Jenny Beth Martin (07:23):
What's a blocker amendment?
Clint Brown (07:24):
It is an amendment that is changing a comma to a semi or changing the effective date from tomorrow to the next day. And once it's up, the only way to get rid of it is to vote on it or have unanimous consent to take it down. Or Harry Reed could withdraw it. This was very taboo because senator was supposed to be equal, right? You're supposed to have an opportunity to amend the legislation. It's supposed to be a body where people debate things and how you debate things is you put it on paper and you say, well, do you like the way I proposed? We give everyone a puppy. Well, I do, but I really like if we give everybody a kitten too. There you go. Now we've had a debate. We've resolved our differences. Cats and dogs getting along. At the end of the day, that's what happens.
Clint Brown (08:12):
So with these blocker amendments up, there's no opportunity for that. And you get into a process where every year predictably, we know when the funding deadlines are. We could put up bills beforehand. They go in a back room, they negotiate it, they have it ready. They pretend it's some crisis. I've seen this, I've been there. I've been in the rooms where this is happening. They pull it out of a drawer, they put it on the table like six hours before the vote. It's 3000 pages long. It's funding the entire United States government, which is the biggest organization in human history, the biggest and most expensive, all the funding for that. The checks on the table, that's 3000 pages and it does not read like a novel. So how are you going to go in and know whether to vote yes or no on this? Our guys, the Patriots end up just voting no, and then they sell it to a few Republicans to vote for it because there's something in there that they really need for their district or there's some defense funding in there that's really important to them, and they're put in a tough spot where they have to vote on it.
Clint Brown (09:19):
Now, McConnell was the biggest critic, believe it or not, of Harry Reed doing this. He gave a fantastic speech on the Senate floor. I mean, it was like historic. One of the speeches of legend of the Senate where there have been many great orders in 2014, January of 2014.
Jenny Beth Martin (09:41):
Do we need to call the media so they can do a headline that you just praised McConnell?
Clint Brown (09:46):
Yeah, yeah. Well, but the
Jenny Beth Martin (09:50):
Is coming the yes.
Clint Brown (09:53):
So then he becomes majority leader and he doubles down on this. I have a chart I can send you and I think you'll find it fascinating where it shows how McConnell nearly doubled the number of amendments that he blocked.
Jenny Beth Martin (10:07):
Wow.
Clint Brown (10:09):
Yeah.
Jenny Beth Martin (10:09):
So he was against it before he was for it.
Clint Brown (10:11):
He was against it before he was for it.
Jenny Beth Martin (10:12):
The senators always flip flop.
Clint Brown (10:15):
Yes.
Jenny Beth Martin (10:15):
They're always for something before they vote against it or against it before they vote for it.
Clint Brown (10:19):
Yes, absolutely.
Jenny Beth Martin (10:21):
Drives me insane.
Clint Brown (10:22):
And when you control the process, you have all the power, right? So McConnell can now control the process in this way that Harry Reed started. He didn't have to take the blame for it. And to be fair, what the leader does is a result of the will of the senators that he leads. It is in that sense a body of equals. They voted for him and they voted for him again and again to be leader. They wanted to be protected from tough votes. They knew that Tea Party Patriots were going to be calling their office and saying, why in the hell did you vote on this?
Clint Brown (11:02):
They didn't want to do that. They didn't want the ads run against them. I think times have changed a little bit. I think we'll get to this, but I want to note this right here. Senators are less afraid of that now, which is a really, really good thing. So it's not entirely McConnell's fault, but it is McConnell's fault. He did it. He could have been a leader and said, no, we're going to take these tough votes and we're going to use our campaign funds to protect you when you have to take these tough votes. But that is not what happened. Schumer doubled down on it again, and so for the last decade, the Senate has existed since the founding of the country. They have been able to offer amendments the entire time. I mean, we're looking at a picture right here of a place where they had these kind of debates. You can see them debating and voting in that picture.
Jenny Beth Martin (11:50):
I
Clint Brown (11:50):
Dunno if the camera can see that, but that is the history of our country. That is what we are founded on, and for the last 10 years, there's been none of that. It's been a few people, the Uniparty and a backroom negotiating a bill. Sometimes they loop in the White House, sometimes they don't, and the people have no say over it. The crazy thing is, here's where I get a little bit nerdy and crazy. That gives the people zero recourse over their government, and that is why I'm not very old. I haven't lived through very many presidential elections, especially as a voter, but presidential elections have gotten more contentious. They tried to imprison Donald Trump for life. They tried to kill him to keep him from being president twice, and who knows what else they would've done. They accused him of insurrection, of being treasonous. All this contention on presidential elections because the people have no other recourse.
Clint Brown (12:53):
The Senate and the House are supposed to be the check on the executive branch of the government and the Senate is actually the best check as we all know. As we're watching right now in real time, the heads of the executive branch, the cabinet come through the Senate to be confirmed. That is where you have check on the executive branch. Now the people have no other recourse because the Senate is neutered. So their only option is to replace the head of the executive branch. That is their only way to get any relief from this overbearing to radical government,
Jenny Beth Martin (13:25):
Which is not at all the way the country is supposed to be.
Clint Brown (13:28):
No,
Jenny Beth Martin (13:29):
The supposed be able to. The representative is supposed to be representative of the people of their district. The districts are so large, so many people in it. It's very few people actually know their congressmen personally, percentage wise. It's not like at all a state legislative body where you're likely to bump into your state senator, your state rep at a grocery store or a gas station. And then the senators, they're in there every six years. They're completely insulated. They your vote for them every six years. So they have a six year term. They're insulated and they get up here and make all sorts of deals and get rich personally.
Clint Brown (14:13):
Yes, absolutely.
Jenny Beth Martin (14:13):
It's infuriating.
Clint Brown (14:15):
Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that up. We can step aside from the procedure for a second. I want to tell people a little bit about, and only people who watch your show are going to get this information. I'm not saying it anywhere else. It's only for the Patriots. A little bit about how the Senate actually works. The Senate is a small organization. When you think about it, it's a hundred people.
Jenny Beth Martin (14:35):
They know each other out of like 330 ish million people in the country. A hundred,
Clint Brown (14:41):
That's right.
Jenny Beth Martin (14:42):
Very exclusive.
Clint Brown (14:43):
Extremely. It is the most exclusive club in the country. There are fewer senators than there are billionaires, more than senators. There are fewer senators than any major sports athlete like N-H-L-N-F-L. There's more players in both NBA. There's more players. It is the most elite institution, but they're normal people. A lot of them. They start as a big fish in a small pond. They're state. Some of our states are really small. Wyoming has about 500,000 people and they come to Washington and everybody wants two things. And this is really important for understanding how to influence the Senate and influence the house, influence anybody really, your local government as well. Everybody wants two things. They want to be a part of a group and they want to have status within that group.
Clint Brown (15:38):
That is human nature. Well, suddenly you go from being a lawyer, a doctor in your community, prominent, maybe you've delivered a lot of babies and everybody in that community was born. You were at the bedside when they were born. I don't know, whatever their background is. Suddenly those people that they were connected with, they're now part of this exclusive club and they can't relate to those people anymore. And it's not their fault necessarily to some degree they could take some blame for that. But you come to DC and suddenly you're on TV and the people back home, they might be mad at you or they might not understand and they see you as the guy on tv. Suddenly your church isn't allowing you to speak in front of the body because it's too political. You're cut off. So who do you relate to? The people in that room? The people, the a hundred people every week. They have three lunches about this. We've talked about where the Republicans will get together and the Democrats will get together for lunch.
Jenny Beth Martin (16:39):
So it becomes even smaller. Even smaller and even more exclusive. So you're like one of 50 or one of 40 or one of 60.
Clint Brown (16:45):
That's exactly right. This is the time where they actually have a minute to talk to each other. Senators have, their schedules are booked minute by minute, literally minutes. Some of them have two people that manage their schedule. It's extremely busy because there's 330 million people trying to reach 100 people. So this is the time that they have to get together and talk. There's one on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Tuesday it's run by the official leadership organizations On Wednesday, it's run by the steering committee where I used to work, where Mike Lee is the chairman and they sort of control the debate. That's where the real debate happens. And Thursday it rotates from state to state.
Clint Brown (17:27):
So you go into this room and I've had the privilege of being one of the few staffers to actually go in this room and it's like a high school cafeteria. You see in the movies where there's the jock table and the theater kid table, Rachel Boulevard, our friend at CPI always says It's mean girl senate. And I think that is such an accurate description, a really brilliant pithy description of the Senate. So you go into this room, they're sitting around a big table and you have sort of the defense hawks sitting together, and then you have the leadership cool kids sitting together, and then you have the rebels, our people sitting together and they have this debate in that room. And the sense that it's like a high school cafeteria is that your status sort of depends on your group within there and if you do something that causes trouble, if you
Jenny Beth Martin (18:28):
Get sent to the rebel table. Yeah,
Clint Brown (18:31):
Yeah, exactly. If you object to moving a bill, if you offer a really contentious amendment back in the day, suddenly you're a little bit ostracized. And the only group that you can really relate to because when you're a senator, everybody wants something from you is suddenly ostracizing you and you no longer have status within that group. And that is a lot of the reason that they change and they flip flop.
Jenny Beth Martin (18:55):
I want to tell a story, please. I won't tell which senators were involved, but during the time when we ultimately wound up shutting the government down over defunding Obamacare back in 20, not 2012, I guess it would've been 2013,
Clint Brown (19:14):
Somewhere in there.
Jenny Beth Martin (19:14):
Yeah, I think it was 2013. There was this effort went on for months and months and months and months to lead up to the point where the government is about to shut down. And ultimately it did shut down. Brent Bozel from Media Research Center, and I traveled the whole month of August all over the country meeting in different senators states doing press conferences at their state capitals. There was a lot going on to lead up to that moment, building momentum for it. And so I had a meeting inside the capitol with a few elected officials and a couple of them, maybe a few came from the senate side and had just finished the lunch
Jenny Beth Martin (20:03):
And
Jenny Beth Martin (20:04):
Told me that they had just been raped over the coals and one of them actually looked like he was about to cry. And there have been a few other times when I've met with members of the house on the house side and I have seen grown men with tears in their eyes after being just bashed in one of these meetings and yet they come out and they're still standing firm, but when they finally get to a point where they can let off a little bit of steam, they became that emotional. It was so intense that they teared up over
Jenny Beth Martin (20:37):
It.
Jenny Beth Martin (20:38):
That's how intense the pressure is. It is impossible to understand the kind of peer pressure in those meetings. I can't even completely understand it because I haven't been inside of it, but I've watched the ramifications of it, the emotional ramifications of it, and our guys come out and they're still strong after all of that, and it makes me respect them so much more.
Clint Brown (21:01):
It is really encouraging to see them stand strong and the face of that kind of peer pressure. We want members of Congress with courage and there's multiple kinds of courage. There's physical courage running up the hill in battle, but moral courage is rare and it's hard to identify. You have to have that moral courage to withstand that peer pressure. And we can say, oh, put on your big boy pants, get over it. But until you're there, until you're experiencing that kind of peer pressure, it's really hard to know what it's like.
Jenny Beth Martin (21:35):
Right?
Clint Brown (21:37):
You walk into a room and everybody hates you and you have to work with these people for another six, 12, maybe longer years. They're the only people you relate to that is pretty tough. And they're going to go publicly embarrass you. They're going to talk about you on tv.
Jenny Beth Martin (21:56):
They're going to do hit pieces on you. They're going to roll out front page articles about you, and the media is all too compliant and all too willing to attack our guys. So they just jump right at this low hanging fruit and you just have to go, okay, throw everything you've got at me. I'm still going to stand for what I stand for.
Clint Brown (22:17):
That's right. That's right. And it's hard to do. Their kids are going to see that,
Jenny Beth Martin (22:20):
Right?
Clint Brown (22:21):
And the friends of their kids at school are going to see that their kids are going to face peer pressure because of what they are doing.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:30):
And I can relate to that. I've had the front page hit pieces against me. I've had more hit pieces than I care to think about against me. Those are painful just because I worry that our donors who don't believe anything else from the mainstream media are going to believe that and go away. Thankfully, they're wise enough I think at this point to understand it's a hit piece. It's expected, but my children have encountered that from teachers and their peers because of things that I have
Jenny Beth Martin (23:06):
Done.
Jenny Beth Martin (23:06):
It's frustrating. And I still just have to keep doing what I do.
Clint Brown (23:12):
Right. You have to stand strong in the face of it and it's really important. I think what we miss a lot of times it's really fun to go beat up the bad guys in the Senate and they deserve it or in the house. But what's even more important is what you just described. You created a space where they could come and vent and they knew they had an ally. Just that moment of moral support of saying, you're doing the right thing. Tea Party patriots are with you. You have no idea. No one can possibly know how big the impact of that is for them. When you have nobody else and somebody says the people are with you, that's huge.
Jenny Beth Martin (23:56):
I try really hard, which probably doesn't give me as many likes on social media. I try really hard to keep it when I'm attacking, I attack on the issue because even if McConnell is driving me crazy today about something that he might be doing in a few months from now, he might be doing something on judicial nominations that I'm championing. And I appreciate what you said. He might've been against it before. He is for it. And if you make it about the person rather than about the issue, it makes it really hard to come back together and stand together when you need to
Clint Brown (24:32):
Because
Jenny Beth Martin (24:32):
You have to have the votes,
Clint Brown (24:33):
Right? They're not going to be on your side. Then they're going to go join with somebody else who is there for them. And those people may not have our best interests at heart.
Jenny Beth Martin (24:40):
Often they don't. They rarely do. We kind of got sidetracked there, but just it's super. But it's important to understand this is what goes on in the Senate.
Clint Brown (24:52):
Well, I want you to know that, and I was in the Senate for 10 years. That's not a lifetime, but dog years in the Senate, every year is like seven years. It's a very long time. You work very long hours, it expands quickly. But every time we got into a contentious fight, I knew you were there, impeachment, vaccines, the 2020 election, and it felt like the cavalry had arrived because you were there. You were willing to help us. You did whatever it took to get it done. And I won't bore the viewers with all the details, but you did a lot. And that makes a huge difference.
Jenny Beth Martin (25:33):
Thank you. During Covid, what a lot of people may not know, we brought doctors up to Capitol Hill twice. I mean they know that because there's video and stuff of it, but you helped us arrange a conference call so the doctors could call into what would be the Senate lunch. It was the Senate Steering Committee meeting except that it was a conference call. They,
Clint Brown (25:56):
Because it was
Jenny Beth Martin (25:57):
Covid, but the doctors were explaining everything going, we can open it's okay to open. It's okay to get back to living life again. And they needed to hear that because they weren't hearing it anywhere else.
Clint Brown (26:11):
That's right. And you brought a group of doctors up to the smaller meeting of the steering committee to talk to them about what was going on and was because of the censorship at the time. Thankfully, we have X now. That was the only place they could get that information. It's people to people, it's relationships. And funny enough, that's how the Senate operates is on these relationships. It's still very much an interpersonal institution in a digital age and having somebody come to the hill and say, I'm an expert. I know what I'm talking about. You don't have to worry. Here's what's really going on. When they can't get that information anywhere else, but through the interpersonal, it's huge for them to get it.
Jenny Beth Martin (26:54):
Okay, so now we are recording this, and I think it's going to air this month in December, though it may air in January, but we've got Trump's nominations coming up for his appointees and then we have his entire agenda. How do the rules work with that? How do we get legislation passed that is America first legislation and the nominees that he's nominated passed?
Clint Brown (27:26):
That's the question of the moment. And I imagine a lot of Tea Party patriots are sort of scratching their head at the results of the Senate leadership race, but we actually had a huge victory there. Dune may not have been the choice of every red-blooded American, some certainly. But the debate over time became about how does the Senate operate backing up? The biggest obstacle to passing President Trump's agenda is the Senate. It is the place where the Democrats have the most leverage because of how the Senate operates and because they're elected there. So you have the bureaucrats in the deep state that will be an obstacle. And then you have the deep state in the Senate. There will be an obstacle.
Clint Brown (28:18):
All of President Trump's nominees as cabinet officials, as we know, have to go through the Senate. Anything he wants to pass legislatively has to go through the Senate, all the funding bills, which can restrict what he does on the executive side with his own authority. Well, that passes through the Senate and that is the place where the Democrats have the most leverage. So over the course of several months, a number of senators started pushing, especially Senator Mike Lee, but also Senator Schmidt from Missouri, Senator Grassley. They started pushing, and a number of others, I don't want to leave anybody out. There were a lot of senators who were pushing for this, pushing to change the way the Senate operates to return to having an open amendment process, to having some sort of functional leadership on the Republican side. And they really shaped the debate around that so that by the end, even the Washington Hill rags like Politico and Punchbowl were saying Mike Lee and Rick Scott have changed the Senate and they left a lot of people out.
Clint Brown (29:22):
But that's what they were saying. Mike Lee and Rick Scott have through this leadership fight, changed the way the Senate's going to operate. So in the end, all three candidates committed to having an open amendment process is sort of the default. That's where they don't block the amendments. Senators get to offer amendments to bills on the Senate floor to having a real process for appropriations bills, not putting 'em on the floor at the last minute, but giving time for debate so that senators can go through it with their staff, figure out, okay, I see this provision here. I think that's going to block President Trump from doing some deportations. We need to take that out. Then they can offer an amendment and take it out. That's huge. That is the ultimate tool for passing President Trump's agenda and making sure that we can fulfill what he campaigned on. So that happened.
Jenny Beth Martin (30:09):
Do amendments have to have 60 votes or 50 votes?
Clint Brown (30:14):
It depends.
Jenny Beth Martin (30:14):
Okay.
Clint Brown (30:16):
In most cases, they can pass with 51
Jenny Beth Martin (30:19):
Or
Clint Brown (30:20):
50, since we have the vice president who would break the tie, but we have 53 Republican senators, hopefully all 53 of them would vote for amendments that push President Trump's agenda, knock on wood knock. That's right. In some cases it requires 60, but you can know in advance when those cases are and try to repair that behind the scenes
Jenny Beth Martin (30:44):
By giving cats and kittens.
Clint Brown (30:45):
Right? Yeah. It has to be germane is the word they use. It has to be really relevant to the bill at hand when you're talking about an appropriations bill. The funds, the entire government, everything is
Jenny Beth Martin (30:56):
Relevant.
Clint Brown (30:57):
So it should be at 51. They've used tools in the past to set it at 60. Hopefully they don't do that. That's something we have to watch out for. If they don't want something to pass and they come up with an excuse to set it at 60 so that the Democrats can kill it, that's not a good sign. That's the uniparty at
Jenny Beth Martin (31:13):
Work.
Clint Brown (31:16):
So yeah, we have a real opportunity if Dune is able to hold to his word, if the Republican conference really supports having an open amendment process to actually get something done in the Senate, and it's huge. And I give Senator Lee and Senator Scott and all the other senators who worked on this, a ton of credit. It was a patriotic stand. They recognized the problem and they did something to fix it.
Jenny Beth Martin (31:39):
And we think that, what do you think about the nominees? Are they going to run into trouble or are you hearing that, I know you're not in the Senate anymore, you have a different job now, but based, you're in DC so what are you kind of hearing
Clint Brown (31:54):
Still closely working with the Senate? Very much so. I'm hearing a lot of the same things that other people are hearing at this point when we're filming this. There's a lot of controversy around Pete Hegseth. I think some senators have questions about him, and I am on a spectrum of, some of them genuinely have concerns, and some of them don't like President Trump's vision for the Department of Defense, and I'm not going to say exactly who, but
Jenny Beth Martin (32:25):
We know
Clint Brown (32:28):
If they want more war and they want to give more funding to Ukraine and they want to bomb everything that moves well, they're not going to like Pete Hegseth. And so they're trying to kill his nomination right now. Hopefully he stands strong. He can lose three votes and still succeed. And I think they should give him a chance. It's supposed to be civilian control of the Department of Defense. He has military experience. He was a leader in combat. He's decorated. And I think the most underrated thing about him that people don't understand is he sees the big picture because he is a Fox News host, which some people kind of look down on that and leading the Department of Defense, he understands all the issues because he has to talk about them every morning on Fox and Friends. And you need to see the big picture to know where the Department of Defense fits in. You need to know what's going on in the world, but you also need to know what's going on with the budget, what's going on with healthcare, what's going on with immigration and border security. He has dexterity with all of those issues, he can communicate about all of them. That is what civilian leadership means. You're not just siloed and focused on defense. You see the big picture of the whole country. That is the point of civilian leadership and also to keep the military in check
Jenny Beth Martin (33:52):
And want to be careful. I want to take a step back and see, and we support the military
Clint Brown (34:01):
Of course,
Jenny Beth Martin (34:03):
And it has a role, and sometimes bombing things is necessary
Clint Brown (34:07):
To
Jenny Beth Martin (34:07):
Do, but we also need to make sure that it serves the interest of America to do so.
Clint Brown (34:15):
That's right. And thank you for
Jenny Beth Martin (34:16):
Clarifying that of all of Americans.
Clint Brown (34:18):
That's exactly right. And President Trump has been very effective at that,
Jenny Beth Martin (34:21):
Right?
Clint Brown (34:22):
He targeted some bad guys in a very public effective way. They're still reeling about it has to be done sometimes, and we have the best tools available to do it. We have the most lethal fighting force in the world. Maybe let's focus on making them more lethal and not more diverse, equitable and inclusive. And that's the kind of thing that Pete Hegseth is going to do is actually strengthen our military, be restrained, have a targeted focused foreign policy that benefits America first and the American people. But there are a lot of interests that make a lot of money on building weapons, and those interests have a lot of power, and they don't like someone like him coming in and saying, do we really need that? We're really going to spend our money there. Is this a good idea?
Jenny Beth Martin (35:12):
Because they don't have the dexterity with all the issues that you were just mentioning.
Clint Brown (35:18):
Exactly.
Jenny Beth Martin (35:19):
And it's sort of a check and balance to have both. You need someone who's focused solely on the military running. I want the people who are running the different branches to be very focused and very, very, very good at their jobs because I want us to have the most lethal force in the world and to continue to, but we need someone who's looking at the whole entire picture and making sure that what's happening inside those branches actually benefits America and achieves that goal rather than the So you're just mentioning,
Clint Brown (35:51):
Which, that's right.
Jenny Beth Martin (35:52):
A lot of it is crazy.
Clint Brown (35:54):
Our troops deserve that, right? They deserve leadership that sees the big picture
Jenny Beth Martin (35:58):
Well, and they deserve it. And we are kind of getting sidetracked just a little bit, but we have a recruitment problem right now, and I know personally, I've talked to people around the country who have told me, and I started hearing this in early 2022, that they were telling their 18-year-old kids, these are military families who they were in the military, the husband, the wife, and their parents. Their fathers were in the military and they were telling their children, and sometimes their grandparents do not go into the military right now. Part of it was because of the vaccines and the covid craziness, and they were worried about their sons getting a shot that could cause myocarditis. And this probably because I said, that probably makes us have to go rumble and not on YouTube. But then also they were worried about what they were seeing out of the military. Your kids are going to be at risk when they go into the military because it's a risky job, so you want to make sure that they've got the best support team around them, not the support team that meets some quota somewhere.
Clint Brown (37:08):
Yeah, absolutely. Patriotic Americans who have signed up for the military for generations are willing to defend this country.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:15):
Yes,
Clint Brown (37:15):
They are willing to die for this country. They've put their name on paper. They're willing to send their sons to die for this country if it's necessary.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:24):
Right.
Clint Brown (37:24):
They don't want to do it in a pointless way. They don't want to see their lives or their children's lives is expendable for somebody else's business interest. Now, if somebody messes with America, we need to defend the homeland like what happened on nine 11 or something. Even worse, they're ready to go and we need to bring that culture back to the military. I'm no expert in what's going on at DOD, but anybody can see that we need to bring that culture back.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:51):
Okay. We're about out of time for today. I would like to put you on the spot and ask you if, when we get in a little bit into the new Congress, if we could come back and revisit and do an episode just on reconciliation, because I think people are going to really need to understand the ins and outs of that and the budgeting process and the bird bath rule and all of
Clint Brown (38:13):
Those details.
Jenny Beth Martin (38:14):
Absolutely.
Clint Brown (38:14):
There's much to discuss there and I'd love to come back anytime. Thanks so much for having me. We can talk reconciliation. I can nerd out about that and maybe make it a little bit relatable. We'll see.
Jenny Beth Martin (38:24):
Okay. Well, thank you so much. And how can people find you on social media?
Clint Brown (38:28):
I'm on X as dissident Clint.
Jenny Beth Martin (38:31):
Dissident Clint?
Clint Brown (38:32):
Yes.
Jenny Beth Martin (38:33):
Okay. Thank you so much. Thank
Narrator (38:35):
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 (38:55):
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.