Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So what's the first day of Christmas. My true love
gave to me a partridge and a pear tree. Ah,
that's going to be tough to find tonight with the
ice and everything planned ahead. Not great, And I think
all of those things probably migrated already, so you know,
good luck with that not migrating, or maybe migrating if
you're brand new to it. A bunch of lawmakers heading
to Washington, d C. One of those representing the second
(00:22):
Congressional district of your state of Nebraska, Representative Don Bacon,
joining us on the phone line today. Representative Bacon as
always an honor. Thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Emory, thank you. And I wonder if Santa Claus was
going to be using drones practicing with them right now?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Oh well, that would that would be efficient if you
you know, we knew who's was what, and you know,
we didn't have interceptors trying to take stuff off of them.
But before we get into, you know, some of the
big news items of the day, I did want to
ask Uh, You've had over a month to kind of
digest what happened in the election, and your race was
pretty close for a while and you ended up winning
(00:56):
by a pretty comfortable margin, all things considered. Have you
had a chance in the last month or so to
talk to any you know, anyone from the Democratic Party,
especially Tony Vargas about the race.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
No, unfortunately not. You know, it's interesting. It used to
be standard. You you know, you call it concede and
wish that your opponent of good luck kin of so
many words, uh, when you lose, and most people still
do it, but he just he didn't do it, and
unfortunately need to do my primary opponent. So I think
it's I think Nebraskans are better than that.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Was this different than the way it was handled when
you took on Vargas, uh, you know, previous years.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, he called me the day that it was confirmed
that we won, or when they announced that I won,
and I would say, you know, carry Eastman did both times.
It's sort of Brad Ashford and so it is a standard,
and I think it's a you know, it's a decency
thing that most people would do. And I if I
said my brain that I would want to do the
right thing if I was, the shoes are on the
(01:52):
other foot for me.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah. And I think anybody who's been following politics, you
know you it seems standard. I don't know what's changing
right now, and hopefully the polarization of the two sides,
that's maybe something that can heal. What what do you
feel about, you know, some of the rhetoric and how
it seems like a lot of it has calmed down.
(02:14):
But some people are shouting from the rooftop tops now
talking about all of Trump's nominees for his cabinet and
all these positions and saying that these are all bad decisions,
even though I'm not sure they really know if they
are good or bad. But it does seem like things
have chilled out just a little bit. Is that kind
of the read you're getting now that we've gotten through
the election.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, it starts with President Trump. I think President Trump
has also been congenial and cordial, you know, compared to
the first term. And I would also say we tend
to focus on the one or two nominations that people
get worked up about, but frank fect the matter is,
I think ninety five percent of them are really good.
Rubio is well liked by everybody. I think Burden is
(02:54):
going to be great in an interior of Stefanic Greate
at United Nations I could go on and on Radcliffe
the A uh so I just are going to go
through I think fairly easy laters. Obviously the Attorney general
pick was a lightning rod and for me as well,
I mean I had to battle that nominee in the
House during the speakers fights, and that would and I
(03:18):
think it's going to be a tough fight for hug Stuff,
I believe. But he's got a chance to prove himself
in the Senate. In the end, the Senator's got to
vote on it. They get to hear him in the hearings.
I think he will. That will be one of the
hard ones, I believe. And I'm I'm and our nominee
for the Director of National Intelligence, I don't know. I
(03:38):
saw a report today where some of the senators said
that she wasn't impressing him. But but she's gonna have
her chance to in front of the Senate. So it's
I think it's through early to tunnel and both of
those if you know to count them out, they have
a chance to win people over and so tough hearings.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
We're speaking with Representative Don Bacon here on our phone
line and Tulca Gabbert. I'm a fan. I've been a
fan of a fan when she was a Democrat, just
because she seemed to be willing to stand up to
the establishment. It kind of got her ejected from the
Democratic Party, and there are a lot of people that
have questions about her. But I think her and Pete
haig Seth have kind of this strange outsider perspective that
(04:14):
is good for politics to have, you know, people that
are willing to kind of mix things up. And like
you said, the Senate is going to have a chance to,
you know, one by one confirm all of these people,
and it's going to be very public. At the same time,
there is a lot of stuff happening in the news
that I'm sure you're being you know, briefed on and
trying to understand the best that you can, and you
being somebody who's got great military experience, I just have
(04:37):
to ask about this Syria situation, trying to understand now
that Asad is run away into to Russia and what
that means for Syria moving forward. They've been fighting for
over a decade. What does that mean for Syria and
what does that mean for kind of what things are
looking like in the current climate of the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Oh, it's a good thing that Asada has gone. That
man has murdered so many Syrians and torture house that
they found in a prison with hidden cells with people
in there. I mean, it's just it's atrocious what some
humanity can do to humanity. And obviously he was an
evil person and his regime was terrible, But we don't
(05:15):
know that the new guy's coming in. How they're Sunni
terrorists versus of you know, Asad, who is more of
a Shia or Allo white aside, but a terrorist in
his own right. But they so far, this new group,
they seem good to protect, you know, Christian rights. They're
allowing more freedom for women, and they don't have to
wear the you know, the not to cover their hair
(05:35):
their face. It seems like so far is early to
say so that so far it looks promising. I would say,
no matter what, though, this new regime whatever's going to
look like they're not going to be friends by Iran.
And Asad was allowing Iran to shift weapons through Syria
into Lebanon to arm Hisbola to target Israel. And so
(05:56):
this no matter what, get rid of in this new
regime from at least for one area, it's definitely good
for Israel's and it's good for I think the United
States on that on that front. And also this is
weekend Russia. Tremendously. Russia was the guy profit, they were
the group propping up aside and there have so much
(06:18):
troubles in Ukraine. They didn't have the bandwidth to help
out us Oude at the end, they just sort of
let it happen. Now this weekends Russia as well. So
there's some definitely some good things out of this development
and was rapid. It's a reminder that dictator so they
looked sturdy, sturdy, stree and then just collapse overnight, you know,
And that's what happened here. So I see mainly positives,
(06:38):
but it's there's some risks with this new more soony
extremists now being in charge.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, and we'll have to see. Time's going to tell
on exactly how things pan out over there. It hasn't
really led to a lot of stability over the civil
wars and all of these countries that occurred back in
I think twenty eleven is when a lot of this
stuff started. Representative Bacon, I know that we talked about
your military experience, but also the House of Representatives. One
(07:04):
of the big things that has happened this week is
the passing of the eight hundred and ninety five billion
dollar Defense bill, and there were a lot of, you know,
provisions in that that I'm sure you want to speak on,
but also that the mainstream media has picked up on,
including the gender affirming care and things of that nature.
How can you best describe to the Nebraskans listening to
you here on the radio about what this bill looks
(07:27):
like in you know, how it passed essentially and what
was left out or put in that might be controversial.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Well, for the amount of budget, and actually it's a
record low spending when you compare to the GDP of
our country. It's only represents three percent of our gross
domestic products. Historically we've been at four right, Ronald Reagan
was at six for example, we were at eight percent
in the nineteen sixty so we're so it's really a
sort of record low spending. But with what we have
(07:55):
as a top line, I think we've done the best
you can with it. It's we did. I had thirty
one recommendations and improving quality of life. I was the
chairman of this panel. We've had a thirty recommendations. I
got twenty eight of them through the Senate that partially
are fully embraced, and I'm excited about it. We have
a targeted pay racer junior listed. We're going to try
to fix the dormitories that have been underfunded by the services.
(08:18):
We're going to try to help spouses get employment because
they're the number one unemployed group in our country, military
spouses are. We're going to try to expand healthcare because
that's people are I guess there's not enough of it
right now in the military, and we have a two
few nurses. So we're going to we're thirty or twenty
eight recommendations out thirty one to help our men and
(08:38):
women serve the military have a better quality of life
because and they deserve the one should be on food stamps,
go to food banks to survive serving the greatest military
in the world. We also got money going to the triad,
you know, the nuclear I should be MS, the bombers
and subs, because that's important pretty terrens. And we didn't
fund that for like twenty years, right, and so we
got catch up there and what became controversial for the Democrats,
(08:59):
is we we set for military families as they were underage,
they couldn't get transition surgeries or puberty blockers and things
like that, and we don't most people do not think
that should be on the tax payer dime. We think
it's dangerous for a lot of our youth. And we
know that some kids take actions when they're underage that
they can't take back as adults and they regret it.
(09:21):
And some of these decisions should be made as adults.
So we put a ban on any kind of transition
things for transgender for underage people, for our military families,
and so about two out of three Democrats voted against
it for that reason. I think it was a bad
hill to die on for them. I mean, the voters
are pretty clear in this last election this is a
lightning rod issue and it broke heavily our way. These
(09:44):
things should be done as adults, not as kids. And
I'm just surprised they made such a big deal about
it when they got their butts kicked for this on
this topic. You know, this last November, and so I
know if they learned the.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Lesson, well again, this is one of the things that
you're kind of trying to see, you know, who is
where on some of these issues, and the American public
have the ability to see who voted how on some
of these things, and like you said, very strange hilded
die on, especially in the wake of that election. Real quick,
before I let you out of here, you mentioned drones
at the top. We got to talk about it, because
that's what everyone's talking about right now. What do you
(10:17):
know about this? I mean, obviously it seems like we
don't know a whole lot of what they are, but
we're being told about what the government thinks they are not.
What are you hearing and what should we do about this?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Now? We got to find out. I think it's probably
mainly private people. There's drones everywhere, by the way, I
was in you know, all of the SuDS in Ukraine
in September. There's a thousand drones over the battle space
at all times right now, and they're all about the
size of my desk, and they're sorcery and bombs and
some are kamikaze drones, some are delivering food, some are reconnaissance.
(10:49):
But there's been a obviously just a huge expansion. My
neighbor has a drone he flies at my backyard as
an example, there's a lot of drones out there. I
don't think it's I believe the story that came out
that maybe in a ranging ship, I don't think that's
got any evidence behind that. It could be bad at
people that are flying drones if that's a risk. If
(11:12):
you're flying a drone over off it and you ran
one of our ISR airplanes or intelligence airplanes, it's a
bad thing. We got sub bases, so you could have
terrorists in our country with these drones that could do
bad things. But I think it's more private operators, nosy people.
I really don't know yet, and I think the law
enforcement and the government should be in fifth gear trying
to get their arms around us and get answers because
(11:33):
obviously they're everywhere. They've been bestudies of California all the
way to New York.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, well, that's just one thing. It's interesting seeing some
of the pictures and videos. They're not very high quality
photos or videos because of how dark it is, but
you can see these drones. You can see everybody's seeing
them and talking about seeing them. So it'll be interesting
to see what we can learn about them in the
coming days. And weeks Representative Don Bacon. As always, thank
you so much for giving us some time generous with this,
(12:00):
and we'll chat with you again soon.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Merry Christmas to you as well. Three twenty more on
the Way on news Radio eleven ten KFAB.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Emery Songer on news radio eleven ten KFAB
So what's the first day of Christmas. My true love
gave to me a partridge and a pear tree. Ah,
that's going to be tough to find tonight with the
ice and everything planned ahead. Not great, And I think
all of those things probably migrated already, so you know,
good luck with that not migrating, or maybe migrating if
you're brand new to it. A bunch of lawmakers heading
to Washington, d C. One of those representing the second
(00:22):
Congressional district of your state of Nebraska, Representative Don Bacon,
joining us on the phone line today. Representative Bacon as
always an honor. Thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Emory, thank you. And I wonder if Santa Claus was
going to be using drones practicing with them right now?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Oh well, that would that would be efficient if you
you know, we knew who's was what, and you know,
we didn't have interceptors trying to take stuff off of them.
But before we get into, you know, some of the
big news items of the day, I did want to
ask Uh, You've had over a month to kind of
digest what happened in the election, and your race was
pretty close for a while and you ended up winning
(00:56):
by a pretty comfortable margin, all things considered. Have you
had a chance in the last month or so to
talk to any you know, anyone from the Democratic Party,
especially Tony Vargas about the race.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
No, unfortunately not. You know, it's interesting. It used to
be standard. You you know, you call it concede and
wish that your opponent of good luck kin of so
many words, uh, when you lose, and most people still
do it, but he just he didn't do it, and
unfortunately need to do my primary opponent. So I think
it's I think Nebraskans are better than that.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Was this different than the way it was handled when
you took on Vargas, uh, you know, previous years.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, he called me the day that it was confirmed
that we won, or when they announced that I won,
and I would say, you know, carry Eastman did both times.
It's sort of Brad Ashford and so it is a standard,
and I think it's a you know, it's a decency
thing that most people would do. And I if I
said my brain that I would want to do the
right thing if I was, the shoes are on the
(01:52):
other foot for me.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah. And I think anybody who's been following politics, you
know you it seems standard. I don't know what's changing
right now, and hopefully the polarization of the two sides,
that's maybe something that can heal. What what do you
feel about, you know, some of the rhetoric and how
it seems like a lot of it has calmed down.
(02:14):
But some people are shouting from the rooftop tops now
talking about all of Trump's nominees for his cabinet and
all these positions and saying that these are all bad decisions,
even though I'm not sure they really know if they
are good or bad. But it does seem like things
have chilled out just a little bit. Is that kind
of the read you're getting now that we've gotten through
the election.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, it starts with President Trump. I think President Trump
has also been congenial and cordial, you know, compared to
the first term. And I would also say we tend
to focus on the one or two nominations that people
get worked up about, but frank fect the matter is,
I think ninety five percent of them are really good.
Rubio is well liked by everybody. I think Burden is
(02:54):
going to be great in an interior of Stefanic Greate
at United Nations I could go on and on Radcliffe
the A uh so I just are going to go
through I think fairly easy laters. Obviously the Attorney general
pick was a lightning rod and for me as well,
I mean I had to battle that nominee in the
House during the speakers fights, and that would and I
(03:18):
think it's going to be a tough fight for hug Stuff,
I believe. But he's got a chance to prove himself
in the Senate. In the end, the Senator's got to
vote on it. They get to hear him in the hearings.
I think he will. That will be one of the
hard ones, I believe. And I'm I'm and our nominee
for the Director of National Intelligence, I don't know. I
(03:38):
saw a report today where some of the senators said
that she wasn't impressing him. But but she's gonna have
her chance to in front of the Senate. So it's
I think it's through early to tunnel and both of
those if you know to count them out, they have
a chance to win people over and so tough hearings.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
We're speaking with Representative Don Bacon here on our phone
line and Tulca Gabbert. I'm a fan. I've been a
fan of a fan when she was a Democrat, just
because she seemed to be willing to stand up to
the establishment. It kind of got her ejected from the
Democratic Party, and there are a lot of people that
have questions about her. But I think her and Pete
haig Seth have kind of this strange outsider perspective that
(04:14):
is good for politics to have, you know, people that
are willing to kind of mix things up. And like
you said, the Senate is going to have a chance to,
you know, one by one confirm all of these people,
and it's going to be very public. At the same time,
there is a lot of stuff happening in the news
that I'm sure you're being you know, briefed on and
trying to understand the best that you can, and you
being somebody who's got great military experience, I just have
(04:37):
to ask about this Syria situation, trying to understand now
that Asad is run away into to Russia and what
that means for Syria moving forward. They've been fighting for
over a decade. What does that mean for Syria and
what does that mean for kind of what things are
looking like in the current climate of the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Oh, it's a good thing that Asada has gone. That
man has murdered so many Syrians and torture house that
they found in a prison with hidden cells with people
in there. I mean, it's just it's atrocious what some
humanity can do to humanity. And obviously he was an
evil person and his regime was terrible, But we don't
(05:15):
know that the new guy's coming in. How they're Sunni
terrorists versus of you know, Asad, who is more of
a Shia or Allo white aside, but a terrorist in
his own right. But they so far, this new group,
they seem good to protect, you know, Christian rights. They're
allowing more freedom for women, and they don't have to
wear the you know, the not to cover their hair
(05:35):
their face. It seems like so far is early to
say so that so far it looks promising. I would say,
no matter what, though, this new regime whatever's going to
look like they're not going to be friends by Iran.
And Asad was allowing Iran to shift weapons through Syria
into Lebanon to arm Hisbola to target Israel. And so
(05:56):
this no matter what, get rid of in this new
regime from at least for one area, it's definitely good
for Israel's and it's good for I think the United
States on that on that front. And also this is
weekend Russia. Tremendously. Russia was the guy profit, they were
the group propping up aside and there have so much
(06:18):
troubles in Ukraine. They didn't have the bandwidth to help
out us Oude at the end, they just sort of
let it happen. Now this weekends Russia as well. So
there's some definitely some good things out of this development
and was rapid. It's a reminder that dictator so they
looked sturdy, sturdy, stree and then just collapse overnight, you know,
And that's what happened here. So I see mainly positives,
(06:38):
but it's there's some risks with this new more soony
extremists now being in charge.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, and we'll have to see. Time's going to tell
on exactly how things pan out over there. It hasn't
really led to a lot of stability over the civil
wars and all of these countries that occurred back in
I think twenty eleven is when a lot of this
stuff started. Representative Bacon, I know that we talked about
your military experience, but also the House of Representatives. One
(07:04):
of the big things that has happened this week is
the passing of the eight hundred and ninety five billion
dollar Defense bill, and there were a lot of, you know,
provisions in that that I'm sure you want to speak on,
but also that the mainstream media has picked up on,
including the gender affirming care and things of that nature.
How can you best describe to the Nebraskans listening to
you here on the radio about what this bill looks
(07:27):
like in you know, how it passed essentially and what
was left out or put in that might be controversial.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Well, for the amount of budget, and actually it's a
record low spending when you compare to the GDP of
our country. It's only represents three percent of our gross
domestic products. Historically we've been at four right, Ronald Reagan
was at six for example, we were at eight percent
in the nineteen sixty so we're so it's really a
sort of record low spending. But with what we have
(07:55):
as a top line, I think we've done the best
you can with it. It's we did. I had thirty
one recommendations and improving quality of life. I was the
chairman of this panel. We've had a thirty recommendations. I
got twenty eight of them through the Senate that partially
are fully embraced, and I'm excited about it. We have
a targeted pay racer junior listed. We're going to try
to fix the dormitories that have been underfunded by the services.
(08:18):
We're going to try to help spouses get employment because
they're the number one unemployed group in our country, military
spouses are. We're going to try to expand healthcare because
that's people are I guess there's not enough of it
right now in the military, and we have a two
few nurses. So we're going to we're thirty or twenty
eight recommendations out thirty one to help our men and
(08:38):
women serve the military have a better quality of life
because and they deserve the one should be on food stamps,
go to food banks to survive serving the greatest military
in the world. We also got money going to the triad,
you know, the nuclear I should be MS, the bombers
and subs, because that's important pretty terrens. And we didn't
fund that for like twenty years, right, and so we
got catch up there and what became controversial for the Democrats,
(08:59):
is we we set for military families as they were underage,
they couldn't get transition surgeries or puberty blockers and things
like that, and we don't most people do not think
that should be on the tax payer dime. We think
it's dangerous for a lot of our youth. And we
know that some kids take actions when they're underage that
they can't take back as adults and they regret it.
(09:21):
And some of these decisions should be made as adults.
So we put a ban on any kind of transition
things for transgender for underage people, for our military families,
and so about two out of three Democrats voted against
it for that reason. I think it was a bad
hill to die on for them. I mean, the voters
are pretty clear in this last election this is a
lightning rod issue and it broke heavily our way. These
(09:44):
things should be done as adults, not as kids. And
I'm just surprised they made such a big deal about
it when they got their butts kicked for this on
this topic. You know, this last November, and so I
know if they learned the.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Lesson, well again, this is one of the things that
you're kind of trying to see, you know, who is
where on some of these issues, and the American public
have the ability to see who voted how on some
of these things, and like you said, very strange hilded
die on, especially in the wake of that election. Real quick,
before I let you out of here, you mentioned drones
at the top. We got to talk about it, because
that's what everyone's talking about right now. What do you
(10:17):
know about this? I mean, obviously it seems like we
don't know a whole lot of what they are, but
we're being told about what the government thinks they are not.
What are you hearing and what should we do about this?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Now? We got to find out. I think it's probably
mainly private people. There's drones everywhere, by the way, I
was in you know, all of the SuDS in Ukraine
in September. There's a thousand drones over the battle space
at all times right now, and they're all about the
size of my desk, and they're sorcery and bombs and
some are kamikaze drones, some are delivering food, some are reconnaissance.
(10:49):
But there's been a obviously just a huge expansion. My
neighbor has a drone he flies at my backyard as
an example, there's a lot of drones out there. I
don't think it's I believe the story that came out
that maybe in a ranging ship, I don't think that's
got any evidence behind that. It could be bad at
people that are flying drones if that's a risk. If
(11:12):
you're flying a drone over off it and you ran
one of our ISR airplanes or intelligence airplanes, it's a
bad thing. We got sub bases, so you could have
terrorists in our country with these drones that could do
bad things. But I think it's more private operators, nosy people.
I really don't know yet, and I think the law
enforcement and the government should be in fifth gear trying
to get their arms around us and get answers because
(11:33):
obviously they're everywhere. They've been bestudies of California all the
way to New York.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, well, that's just one thing. It's interesting seeing some
of the pictures and videos. They're not very high quality
photos or videos because of how dark it is, but
you can see these drones. You can see everybody's seeing
them and talking about seeing them. So it'll be interesting
to see what we can learn about them in the
coming days. And weeks Representative Don Bacon. As always, thank
you so much for giving us some time generous with this,
(12:00):
and we'll chat with you again soon.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Merry Christmas to you as well. Three twenty more on
the Way on news Radio eleven ten KFAB.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Emery Songer on news radio eleven ten KFAB
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.