June 15, 2024 • 28 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Former President Donald Trump meeting with the GOP for a luncheon.
In my own mind, does it seem different in twenty
twenty four than it did in twenty sixteen. The President
coming out to talk to the reporters after meeting with
GOP lawmakers, having this lunch, and I want you to
(00:23):
hear what he had to say. This is something Joe
Biden could not pull off.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Great meeting, this tremendous unity in the Republican Party. We
want to see borders, we want to see strong military.
We want to see money not wasted all over the world.
We don't want to see Russian ships right off the
coast of Florida, which is what they are right now.
That's unthinkable. We want to see just success for our country,
(00:51):
and we don't have success right now.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
We have inflation that's killing everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
We have levels of inflation that nobody see for They
say forty two years, they say fifty three years, and
they say seventy five years.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
I would say probably all of them are wrong.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Probably we've never seen levels like this before.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
And we're going to end that.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
We're gonna bring back our jobs, We're gonna bring back
common sense to government.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
We're gonna have strong borders, and we're gonna.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Have people come into our country, but they're going to
come in legally. They're not going to pour in from
prisons all over South America and all over the world.
And it's not just South America, by the way, it's
all over the world. And we're not going to have
them pour in from mental institutions, which is where they're
coming from. Large numbers, and large numbers are terrorists, and
we're not going to have this. So what's happening to
(01:41):
our country is of great concern to the group of
people standing alongside of me, and I just wanted to
say that we have great unity, we have great common sense,
a lot of very smart people in this room, and
a lot of people that love our country. They love
our country beyond just about all else. The only thing
that maybe supersedes it is their family and maybe their
(02:03):
faith in certain instances, and that's very nice. But they
want this country to be great again, and we're going
to make it great again. And so I just want
to thank the Republican Senate, and I want to thank
also the House. We met, as you know, with the
full house Republican House today and we had a tremendous
meeting with them also, and there's great unity. Very similar
(02:28):
different topics actually, but not that different. And there's one
thing in common. We want to make America great again.
We want to make our country great again. We're a
nation that's in decline. We're declining nation. We're a nation
that is being left at all over the world. We
have a leader that's being left at all over the world,
and we're going.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
To turn it around. We're going to turn it around fast.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
The polls are looking like they're very strongly for us,
and no matter where you look. In fact, a lot
of states that people thought weren't in play a very
strong in place somewhere actually leading in But we have
to get elected.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
We have to take this.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Beautiful place and we have to make it really something
very special again. Right now, it's not special right now,
it's being scorned and being used as an example of
when they look at the crime on the streets, when
they look at all of the problems that we have.
They're using us as a bad example of democracy and
they're getting away with murder, and we're not going to
(03:28):
let it happen. So I just want to thank you
for coming, and I want to thank everybody here. You're
all either elected or you're going to be elected again
and re elected, and I'm with every one of you,
and you know that I'll be with you always, and
thank you very much for inviting me. And we're gonna
have great success. I think we're going to have a
tremendous election. It's November fifth, is very important, but we
(03:50):
really start much earlier than that. You have North Carolina
as an example. You have North Carolina or September sixth.
You have Pennsylvania starts on September twenty second.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
These are things different from the old days.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
We had election day and you had paper ballots and
you had voter ID. Unfortunately, maybe someday we'll get back
to that, but you don't have that right now. But
this is an outstanding group of people. I'm with them
a thousand percent. There was me a thousand percent. We
agree just about on everything, and if there isn't, we
work it out. And I've had a really great relationship
(04:27):
with just about everybody here, with everybody here, just about
all of the senators, and if it wasn't fantastic, it
gets worked out. And we have one thing in mind,
and that's making our country great, So.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Thank you all very much. We appreciate you being here.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
You're going to hear the clapping of the senators who
just had lunch for them, and you can hear the
reporters losing their minds, the reporters behind them yelling at
him questions. He's shaking hands with every senator that's there,
Republican they just had lunch with. This was obviously a
(05:11):
very very very big moment and a different moment for
the Republican Party. I want to make that clear. You
look at the President of the United States of America
and look, he did not have this type of unity
in twenty sixteen. You had a lot of Democrats and
you had a lot of Republicans. When he was elected,
(05:32):
they didn't like him. They were Republicans that didn't like him.
This type of press conference, last statement would have never
happened in twenty sixteen. It's happening now. And the reason
why is because they're learning, they're understanding, and they're learning
that if you're not united and you're not together, you're
(05:55):
gonna get beat. And there's a lot of people that
are sick and tired of losing. There's a lot of
people that are very angry in this country that the
Republican Party has not been able traditionally to kind of
get it together and unify and work together. Democrats do
an excellent job of getting together uniting together when they
(06:20):
get power, when they get elected, they work as a
team instantly. Republicans we get power, and many times we
screw it up. But what I saw from the President
of United States of America in this conversation, what I
saw also on the faces of the Republican senators that
were standing around him after this luncheon, is that there
was a clear, I think understanding right now that it
(06:43):
is go time that we can't sit here and squander
if the president is re elected, we don't have time
for two years to kind of halfway do it. We've
got to be all in. We've got to be focused.
We've got to have our game together, our plan together,
(07:04):
the legislative agenda together. We can't have infighting this time.
We can't have people that are sitting on the sidelines.
We can't have people whose feelings are hurt. And what
I witnessed in this was very authentic and real center
Ted Cruz. Many of you know a Coast a podcasts
Verdict with Ted Cruz. He was at the luncheon. Has
(07:27):
he described it, He said, Ben, this is something I've
never seen before, watching the way that others were acting
towards the president. He said, I've never seen this before
watching not just that, but the enthusiasm in the room.
Like there's a very very different mentality this time from
(07:47):
the room. Right. Like in the past, you've had some
that have been very excited and very focused. Right, you
have some that are are are working, but you have
others that just kind of, you know, they go the
other direction. Names I'm sure if you really want to
talk about that, I'll give you example. People like Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney was never a team player. Mitt Romney was
(08:11):
somebody that was undermining Donald Trump in twenty sixteen after
he didn't pick him for a job, a cabinet position,
and so then he wanted his revenge. That's the type
of Republican infightingments that it terrifies me. And now what
we're seeing is it seems that we've gotten rid of
the Romneys. Right, he's not running for reelection, He's going
(08:32):
to be gone, and those types of people are no
longer sitting there trying to screw the President of the
United States of America every chance they get. They've lost
that power, and that room yesterday was about putting American first,
securing our southern border, protecting our kids from this radical
(08:56):
leftist agenda that is dealing with grooming and and transgenderism
and all of this insanity in our classrooms. They're not
afraid to say that, Yes, many of those come across
southern border are terrorists. Yes, many of the coming across
the southern border are rapists, are murderers. Our drug dealers
(09:16):
are killing our kids with fetanol. That's what's changed as well.
In fact, I want you to hear just part of
what Center Cruz had to say on our podcast. We
do vertic with Tech Cruz about this meeting, because he
was in there behind closed doors, and I want you
to hear what he said about what was actually talked
(09:36):
about with the President behind closed door with the Republican
senators and Donald Trump before the press commerce that you
just heard. Listen, Senator, this was a very interesting moment
on Capitol Hill. Donald Trump came and met with a
lot of the Republican leadership. A lot of your colleagues
were there, and the initial reports that came out were
(09:59):
saying it was a lot of enthusiasm and a lot
of excitement from the Republican leaders that were there. You
were in the room, tell us what was happening. So
I was.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
So.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Trump began the day by meeting with the House Republicans.
I was not in that meeting. Some of the reports
of that as that was a little bit wild and wooly,
that got into all sorts of topics. But Trump came
by the Senate to have lunch with us, and so
we met at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is
like three blocks away from the Capitol, and Trump joined
(10:30):
us for the lunch and it started.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
We're all sitting in a room.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
It started with him talking for about oh, twenty twenty
five minutes, and then we did a whole series of
Q and A where probably about a dozen of us
asked him questions and he commented on those. And then
we went out and we did a press conference where
we stood we all stood behind him, and he stood
up and gave the press conference and listen. I gotta say,
(10:54):
the biggest thing about the lunch that struck me was
the unity in the room. The media likes to talk
about divisions and the Republican Party, and there are certainly some,
but today I didn't see any of that.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Today.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
Everyone in the room was focused on winning in November
and turning the country around. And Trump was in great spirits.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
You know.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
One of the things I asked him after the meeting.
I came up and spent a couple of minutes talking
with him. I just asked, how are you doing. I mean,
it's been this BS you're dealing with with these New
York convictions.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
They're utter garbage.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
But listen, it's not fun to be convicted of felonies.
I mean, it's been He's been through hell. And so
just as a personal level, I was asking him how
he was doing, and he said he was doing fine,
and it seemed real and genuine. I mean, he was
not he was not down in the dumps. He was
not discouraged. In fact, was he was really in good spirits.
(11:50):
He was optimistic, and his message to everyone is listen,
let's stand together. And he emphasized several things. Number one,
he emphasized the border, that we've got to secure the border.
That is insane, that we have open borders, that it's
an invitation to terrorists, and he's exactly right. If and
when Trump wins, we will secure the border in the
(12:10):
first month or two of the next Trump administration. And
I can say that because we know how to do it.
We did it before, and we'll do it again. He
also talked a lot about inflation and energy in particular,
and he pointed out quite rightly that energy is foundational
to inflation. And one of the reasons that prices have
gone up on just about everything is that energy prices
(12:32):
of skyrocketed because the Biden administration has been waging war
on American energy and we are an energy powerhouse where
the number one producer of oil in the world, where
the number one producer of natural gas in the world,
and the Biden administration is doing everything they can to
stifle that. And Trump was very clear that that we're
going to reverse that. We will reverse that fast early
(12:56):
next year, and that's going to have a real impact
on energy prices and inflam should across the board. We
also talked about national security and in particular how insane
it is that the Biden administration has flowed one hundred
billion dollars to Iran, and if and when Trump wins.
That's going to end as well.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
You mentioned a moment ago that there seemed to be
unity in the room. That's incredibly important for getting legislation passed. Yes,
and you need that, and we didn't have that type
of unity, I would argue last time in twenty sixteen,
early on, there was some splinters, there were some divide
divisiveness in the House that Senate side. What you seem
(13:37):
to be describing this time is if Donald Trump is
elected and Republicans have control of the House Senate, it's
game on from the from January tewod there's not going
to be you know, let's get to know each other
time and have some meetings and maybe come over the
White House like there's an agenda and it's ready to
go for the American people.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
And let me put it in broader context, which is
y yesterday, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, came
and had lunch with all the Republican senators. And by
the way, that almost never happens. When Paul Ryan was speaker,
he didn't do that. When John Bayner was Speaker, he
didn't do that. When Kevin McCarthy was Speaker.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
He didn't do that.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Mike Johnson has done that this multiple times. This is
either the third or fourth time he's come and had
lunch with all the Senate Republicans. I think that's great.
He was talking at lunch yesterday. He said, you know,
it's amazing that the media treats it as a news
story that the House and Senator talking to each other.
And the reason he came over and talked to us
is is he said, he's focused on his end, very
(14:38):
much on developing the agenda and the plans to hit
the ground running if and when we win in November,
if we come in to January of next year with
a Republican president, a Republican Senate, Republican House, we got
an enormous amount to accomplish. And the Speaker, to his credit,
is very focused on the first hundred days. What can
(14:59):
we pomplish, what can we do to change the path
of the country. I encouraged him to dig in on that.
In fact, I shared with a speaker and with everyone
else in the room.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
You know a lot of.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
The senators that are there now were not there back
in twenty seventeen when Trump first became president.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
You know.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
The Speaker said, look, when Trump first became president, he
was a freshman, he was brand new in the Congress,
and he was amazed that the Congress was not prepared
with the legislative agenda from day one. And he pointed
out that he thought a lot of Republicans were surprised
that Trump won. They were expecting Hillary to win, and
so when the administration came in, they weren't ready for primetime.
(15:40):
They didn't know what to do. In this instance, I'm
very glad the Speaker is trying to think proactively. And
I described I described something that I did back in
the summer of twenty eighteen. So summer of twenty eighteen,
we did a lunch with all the Senate Republicans and
I prepared a PowerPoint. It was about fifty pages long,
(16:03):
and I spoke to my colleagues probably the better part
of an hour. And the title of the power point
was carpe dim And what I did in the power
point is I looked in the past, in previous instances
when one party controlled the White House, the House, and
the Senate.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
It happens pretty rarely.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
When the Democrats do it, they fundamentally transformed the country.
So in the last century. The first time they did it,
they passed the New Deal. The second time they did it,
they passed the Great Society. The third time they did it,
they passed Obamacare and Dodd Frank And now for the
last two years we've seen they've spent us into an
(16:46):
absolute inflation and recession.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Home. Former President Trump went and met with Senate Republicans
as well as the House Republicans in a really focused,
an incredible show of unity. This is something we had
not seen before in this scenario where the Republican Party
certainly not in twenty sixteen. Why were they meeting not
(17:10):
just to show unity, but to get their act together
and have an agenda. If Republicans gain control of the Senate,
keep the House, and grab the White House, they're ready
to go day one, not sitting around like twenty sixteen
trying to figure out what to do. The agenda and
the unity is about getting stuff done. We should excite
(17:33):
every single American listening right now. If you have a
Republican government, then you better do something with it. And
that's exactly what Senata Cruz said their conversation was about.
It was exactly what needed to be talked about. Take
a listen.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
And on the other hand, Republicans, when we have unified control,
we tend to do small and piddling things. So what
I argue in the PowerPoint is, at the time I
presented it was August of twenty eighteen, I said, listen,
any rational political observer recognizes that there's a very real
(18:13):
chance that we will lose at least one House of
Congress in November. And I said to my colleagues, particularly
the guys who were the sophomores, who were the people
who had been elected two years earlier, and I said,
look for you, guys, we have one hundred and eighty
three days till the next Congress. For many of you,
(18:33):
if we do not pass things now, you will never
again have another chance to pass anything into law. And
so I put together a spreadsheet. It was about fifty
different bills. All of the bills had been written by
different Republican senators. Some I had written, but most of
them were my colleagues. And all of the bills were
bills that had a reasonable prospect of garnering fifty one votes.
(18:59):
They were fringe things that would get ten or twelve votes.
There were all things that would easily get forty five
Republicans and that had a real shot at getting fifty.
And what I argued is, I said, listen, this is
going to sound radical to you, Ben, we should do something,
(19:21):
we should not do nothing. Amazingly enough, that argument proved unpersuasive.
Mitch McConnell said, well, so the principal avenue that if
you look, the biggest legislative victory of the Trump years
was the twenty seventeen tax cuts. We passed that using
(19:43):
what's called budget reconciliation. Budget reconciliation is a process under
a bill called the Budget acted nineteen seventy five. The
budget piece is not terribly consequential. What's consequential is, under
the terms of the statute, you have an up down
vote at fifty votes and it can't be filibustered. So
it's one of the most important exceptions to the filibuster
(20:08):
we could have. If you look at the Democrats, they
did three budget reconciliations. It's how they passed almost all
of their agenda. That put us in this hole. When
the Republicans had the majority, we did only one budget reconciliation.
We did not do a single one in twenty eighteen,
which Frankly, Ben is indefensible, and so I made the
case of the speaker and my colleagues, Let's not make
(20:30):
that mistake again. Let's hit the ground running.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
This seems different. And even when I say different, there's
also a lot of people behind the scenes that are
working on putting together a Trump administration and a government
and learning from the mistakes that happened in twenty sixteen.
How encouraged are you by that? I mean, I've had
quite a few people I know that I've talked to
(20:54):
in many different areas of government who are saying, this
just feel different. This time. We learned from our mistakes
in sixteen. We learn from our inaction and people that
we should have replaced and changed with conservative minds, and
we've witnessed what happens when you do that. But this
time it's going to be different. That may be the
(21:15):
thing I'm the most excited about is if we had,
like you mentioned, a House and Senate ready to go,
but also many of the bureaucrats that have been changed
out very quickly this time. That seems to be the plan. Well.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
In twenty sixteen, I think Trump's winning surprised a lot
of people. It surprised a lot of Republicans in the Senate,
surprised a lot of Republicans in the House. It frankly
surprised the Trump campaign team, and I think it actually
surprised Trump himself. On election Day, I think they were
all a little bit startled that they had won and suddenly,
(21:49):
Holy cow, we're going to go do this now. And
so it resulted in when the administration came in in
the beginning of twenty seventeen, in cong the risk Republican
leadership of the House and Senate was not prepared with
an agenda because they had assumed Hillary was going to
win and they didn't need one, and and the White
House did not have the experience to know how to
(22:12):
drive an agenda. There was no first one hundred Days mission.
And you're right, there's a whole series of nonprofits that
that are engaged in laying out specific plans for executive orders,
for regulations, for for legislation uh and and whether it
is the America First Policy Institute or the Heritage Foundation
(22:32):
or others. I think if and when Trump wins this November,
we will hit January with a much much better level
of preparation to to to make a lasting difference immediately.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
This, by the way, should make every conservative excited. You
can just tell that there's a difference this time around.
You heard him mentioned that, you know AFP and and
and Heritage Foundation. They are and have been for quite
some time, focused on having a government that is there
(23:09):
to support the president if he is re elected, and
a government that is ready to go day one. There
were a lot of bureaucrats that were not replaced when
Trump won in twenty sixteen, and we now know how
big of a mistake that was because they were undermining
(23:30):
Trump and there were a lot of positions, career positions
in DC that were being used to undermine the agenda
of the president of the United States of America. And
so you heard him mention that twenty twenty four project.
Let me just explain, because I know a lot about this.
There are people that were in the Trump administration in
(23:53):
twenty sixteen that saw how fast the president could be
undermined and how many different forces there were in Washington
that we're doing everything that could have stopped Trump instead
of support him. And what they've understood is, Okay, well,
we can't have that mistake again. And so what they're
(24:15):
putting together is a government right now. They are looking
and doing background checks and interviews and conversations with people
in every aspect because when I say there are tens
of thousands of jobs that will need to be filled,
there are literally tens of thousands of jobs that need
(24:35):
to be filled that we did not fill in twenty
sixteen by career people, individuals in Washington, d C. That
was a mistake. We should have filled them with people
that were on our team. Because when you win, you
put your team together, and if you don't, then they're
going to undermine you. That's what's going to happen. And
(24:59):
that's what happened to Trump in sixteen. And so it's
not just Trump winning that is big and something that
excites me. It's actually knowing that we have taken our
time over the last and this has been going on
now for since the mid terms, where there are people
that are saying, we were going to find the best
and the brightest in all of these different areas where
(25:21):
we were undermined, whether it's environmental issues, whether it's oil
and gas, whether it's parks in services, whether it's national
security issues, whether it's border security, whether it's it's it's
food stamps and government aid. There are so many different
categories and things that are important that we just didn't
(25:43):
put our people in there with our ideology in there,
and we should have, like, that's what we should have done.
And so that mistake we learned a very tough lesson.
And if you don't, then then you have basically an
entire government that is working again against you. And that's
what Donald Trump experience in twenty sixteen. So this level
(26:07):
of focus from the Senate Republicans, from the House Republicans,
this partnership. I go back to Speaker Johnson, the point
that Cruz just made a moment ago about Speaker Johnson
coming over multiple times and meeting with the Senate and
he said, this tells you what's wrong with Washington. They're
(26:28):
treating it like a news story. When the Speaker of
the House goes and meets with the Senate leadership in
the same party. Well, you have to have one. You
can't have one without the other. To get a law pass, right,
you have to have the Senate Republicans agree, and you
have to have the House Republicans agree. They should be
speaking all the time. But there was this divide in
our government. All Right, you guys in the Senate, you
stay on your side. You guys in the House, you
(26:49):
stay on your side. We'll talk and we get you
something to look at. That's not how you win. That's
not how you run a government successfully. Okay, I like,
that's not how this is done successfully. And so you
have a Speaker of the House that's meeting with us
that the Senate this is a great framework for success. Hey,
(27:13):
what do you guys need? Well, you know, tell me
what you're looking at. What are you thinking? All right, Well, look,
I don't think I got the votes to get that done.
So let's not waste their time on that, or let's
not do it that way, because then we're gonna have
to you know, reconciliation and we're gonna have to change that.
It's gonna it's gonna you know, you know, jam up
the system and we're gonna not get that done fast.
Stuff like these are conversations you'd rather have on the
(27:33):
front end than on than after the fact, because how
many times have you heard, Well, the House passed this,
but the Senate's gonna change it. They're gonna send it
back to the House, and it's gonna go back and forth.
Why why not talk on the front end and then
have a game plan that like for success. You also
want to know why Democrats are gonna do every single
thing they can to stop Trump from winning this time,
(27:54):
and why they're trying to put them in jail, and
why they're they they've they've weaponized the legal system against Trump.
It's because they understand that everything I just told you
is exactly what the Republicans are doing this time. And
the Republicans, learning from their past mistakes and being organized
day one terrifies the Democrats because they understand their career
(28:15):
people in the government in DC that were allowed to
keep their jobs last time will not be allowed to
keep their jobs this time, and undermine the president at
every turn and undermine the Republicans in every turn. And
now they understand, Okay, the Republicans have figured it out.
This is scary. We can't let them win. So if
you want to know how effective this plan could be,
(28:36):
look at how the Democrats are already doing everything they
can to undermine it. Please share this podcast with your
family and friends. Please make sure you write us a
five star review. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, so
that it will help us reach more people. And we
will see you back here tomorrow
Former President Donald Trump meeting with the GOP for a luncheon.
In my own mind, does it seem different in twenty
twenty four than it did in twenty sixteen. The President
coming out to talk to the reporters after meeting with
GOP lawmakers, having this lunch, and I want you to
(00:23):
hear what he had to say. This is something Joe
Biden could not pull off.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Great meeting, this tremendous unity in the Republican Party. We
want to see borders, we want to see strong military.
We want to see money not wasted all over the world.
We don't want to see Russian ships right off the
coast of Florida, which is what they are right now.
That's unthinkable. We want to see just success for our country,
(00:51):
and we don't have success right now.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
We have inflation that's killing everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
We have levels of inflation that nobody see for They
say forty two years, they say fifty three years, and
they say seventy five years.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
I would say probably all of them are wrong.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Probably we've never seen levels like this before.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
And we're going to end that.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
We're gonna bring back our jobs, We're gonna bring back
common sense to government.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
We're gonna have strong borders, and we're gonna.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Have people come into our country, but they're going to
come in legally. They're not going to pour in from
prisons all over South America and all over the world.
And it's not just South America, by the way, it's
all over the world. And we're not going to have
them pour in from mental institutions, which is where they're
coming from. Large numbers, and large numbers are terrorists, and
we're not going to have this. So what's happening to
(01:41):
our country is of great concern to the group of
people standing alongside of me, and I just wanted to
say that we have great unity, we have great common sense,
a lot of very smart people in this room, and
a lot of people that love our country. They love
our country beyond just about all else. The only thing
that maybe supersedes it is their family and maybe their
(02:03):
faith in certain instances, and that's very nice. But they
want this country to be great again, and we're going
to make it great again. And so I just want
to thank the Republican Senate, and I want to thank
also the House. We met, as you know, with the
full house Republican House today and we had a tremendous
meeting with them also, and there's great unity. Very similar
(02:28):
different topics actually, but not that different. And there's one
thing in common. We want to make America great again.
We want to make our country great again. We're a
nation that's in decline. We're declining nation. We're a nation
that is being left at all over the world. We
have a leader that's being left at all over the world,
and we're going.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
To turn it around. We're going to turn it around fast.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
The polls are looking like they're very strongly for us,
and no matter where you look. In fact, a lot
of states that people thought weren't in play a very
strong in place somewhere actually leading in But we have
to get elected.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
We have to take this.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Beautiful place and we have to make it really something
very special again. Right now, it's not special right now,
it's being scorned and being used as an example of
when they look at the crime on the streets, when
they look at all of the problems that we have.
They're using us as a bad example of democracy and
they're getting away with murder, and we're not going to
(03:28):
let it happen. So I just want to thank you
for coming, and I want to thank everybody here. You're
all either elected or you're going to be elected again
and re elected, and I'm with every one of you,
and you know that I'll be with you always, and
thank you very much for inviting me. And we're gonna
have great success. I think we're going to have a
tremendous election. It's November fifth, is very important, but we
(03:50):
really start much earlier than that. You have North Carolina
as an example. You have North Carolina or September sixth.
You have Pennsylvania starts on September twenty second.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
These are things different from the old days.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
We had election day and you had paper ballots and
you had voter ID. Unfortunately, maybe someday we'll get back
to that, but you don't have that right now. But
this is an outstanding group of people. I'm with them
a thousand percent. There was me a thousand percent. We
agree just about on everything, and if there isn't, we
work it out. And I've had a really great relationship
(04:27):
with just about everybody here, with everybody here, just about
all of the senators, and if it wasn't fantastic, it
gets worked out. And we have one thing in mind,
and that's making our country great, So.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Thank you all very much. We appreciate you being here.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
You're going to hear the clapping of the senators who
just had lunch for them, and you can hear the
reporters losing their minds, the reporters behind them yelling at
him questions. He's shaking hands with every senator that's there,
Republican they just had lunch with. This was obviously a
(05:11):
very very very big moment and a different moment for
the Republican Party. I want to make that clear. You
look at the President of the United States of America
and look, he did not have this type of unity
in twenty sixteen. You had a lot of Democrats and
you had a lot of Republicans. When he was elected,
(05:32):
they didn't like him. They were Republicans that didn't like him.
This type of press conference, last statement would have never
happened in twenty sixteen. It's happening now. And the reason
why is because they're learning, they're understanding, and they're learning
that if you're not united and you're not together, you're
(05:55):
gonna get beat. And there's a lot of people that
are sick and tired of losing. There's a lot of
people that are very angry in this country that the
Republican Party has not been able traditionally to kind of
get it together and unify and work together. Democrats do
an excellent job of getting together uniting together when they
(06:20):
get power, when they get elected, they work as a
team instantly. Republicans we get power, and many times we
screw it up. But what I saw from the President
of United States of America in this conversation, what I
saw also on the faces of the Republican senators that
were standing around him after this luncheon, is that there
was a clear, I think understanding right now that it
(06:43):
is go time that we can't sit here and squander
if the president is re elected, we don't have time
for two years to kind of halfway do it. We've
got to be all in. We've got to be focused.
We've got to have our game together, our plan together,
(07:04):
the legislative agenda together. We can't have infighting this time.
We can't have people that are sitting on the sidelines.
We can't have people whose feelings are hurt. And what
I witnessed in this was very authentic and real center
Ted Cruz. Many of you know a Coast a podcasts
Verdict with Ted Cruz. He was at the luncheon. Has
(07:27):
he described it, He said, Ben, this is something I've
never seen before, watching the way that others were acting
towards the president. He said, I've never seen this before
watching not just that, but the enthusiasm in the room.
Like there's a very very different mentality this time from
(07:47):
the room. Right. Like in the past, you've had some
that have been very excited and very focused. Right, you
have some that are are are working, but you have
others that just kind of, you know, they go the
other direction. Names I'm sure if you really want to
talk about that, I'll give you example. People like Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney was never a team player. Mitt Romney was
(08:11):
somebody that was undermining Donald Trump in twenty sixteen after
he didn't pick him for a job, a cabinet position,
and so then he wanted his revenge. That's the type
of Republican infightingments that it terrifies me. And now what
we're seeing is it seems that we've gotten rid of
the Romneys. Right, he's not running for reelection, He's going
(08:32):
to be gone, and those types of people are no
longer sitting there trying to screw the President of the
United States of America every chance they get. They've lost
that power, and that room yesterday was about putting American first,
securing our southern border, protecting our kids from this radical
(08:56):
leftist agenda that is dealing with grooming and and transgenderism
and all of this insanity in our classrooms. They're not
afraid to say that, Yes, many of those come across
southern border are terrorists. Yes, many of the coming across
the southern border are rapists, are murderers. Our drug dealers
(09:16):
are killing our kids with fetanol. That's what's changed as well.
In fact, I want you to hear just part of
what Center Cruz had to say on our podcast. We
do vertic with Tech Cruz about this meeting, because he
was in there behind closed doors, and I want you
to hear what he said about what was actually talked
(09:36):
about with the President behind closed door with the Republican
senators and Donald Trump before the press commerce that you
just heard. Listen, Senator, this was a very interesting moment
on Capitol Hill. Donald Trump came and met with a
lot of the Republican leadership. A lot of your colleagues
were there, and the initial reports that came out were
(09:59):
saying it was a lot of enthusiasm and a lot
of excitement from the Republican leaders that were there. You
were in the room, tell us what was happening. So
I was.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
So.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Trump began the day by meeting with the House Republicans.
I was not in that meeting. Some of the reports
of that as that was a little bit wild and wooly,
that got into all sorts of topics. But Trump came
by the Senate to have lunch with us, and so
we met at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is
like three blocks away from the Capitol, and Trump joined
(10:30):
us for the lunch and it started.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
We're all sitting in a room.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
It started with him talking for about oh, twenty twenty
five minutes, and then we did a whole series of
Q and A where probably about a dozen of us
asked him questions and he commented on those. And then
we went out and we did a press conference where
we stood we all stood behind him, and he stood
up and gave the press conference and listen. I gotta say,
(10:54):
the biggest thing about the lunch that struck me was
the unity in the room. The media likes to talk
about divisions and the Republican Party, and there are certainly some,
but today I didn't see any of that.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Today.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
Everyone in the room was focused on winning in November
and turning the country around. And Trump was in great spirits.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
You know.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
One of the things I asked him after the meeting.
I came up and spent a couple of minutes talking
with him. I just asked, how are you doing. I mean,
it's been this BS you're dealing with with these New
York convictions.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
They're utter garbage.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
But listen, it's not fun to be convicted of felonies.
I mean, it's been He's been through hell. And so
just as a personal level, I was asking him how
he was doing, and he said he was doing fine,
and it seemed real and genuine. I mean, he was
not he was not down in the dumps. He was
not discouraged. In fact, was he was really in good spirits.
(11:50):
He was optimistic, and his message to everyone is listen,
let's stand together. And he emphasized several things. Number one,
he emphasized the border, that we've got to secure the border.
That is insane, that we have open borders, that it's
an invitation to terrorists, and he's exactly right. If and
when Trump wins, we will secure the border in the
(12:10):
first month or two of the next Trump administration. And
I can say that because we know how to do it.
We did it before, and we'll do it again. He
also talked a lot about inflation and energy in particular,
and he pointed out quite rightly that energy is foundational
to inflation. And one of the reasons that prices have
gone up on just about everything is that energy prices
(12:32):
of skyrocketed because the Biden administration has been waging war
on American energy and we are an energy powerhouse where
the number one producer of oil in the world, where
the number one producer of natural gas in the world,
and the Biden administration is doing everything they can to
stifle that. And Trump was very clear that that we're
going to reverse that. We will reverse that fast early
(12:56):
next year, and that's going to have a real impact
on energy prices and inflam should across the board. We
also talked about national security and in particular how insane
it is that the Biden administration has flowed one hundred
billion dollars to Iran, and if and when Trump wins.
That's going to end as well.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
You mentioned a moment ago that there seemed to be
unity in the room. That's incredibly important for getting legislation passed. Yes,
and you need that, and we didn't have that type
of unity, I would argue last time in twenty sixteen,
early on, there was some splinters, there were some divide
divisiveness in the House that Senate side. What you seem
(13:37):
to be describing this time is if Donald Trump is
elected and Republicans have control of the House Senate, it's
game on from the from January tewod there's not going
to be you know, let's get to know each other
time and have some meetings and maybe come over the
White House like there's an agenda and it's ready to
go for the American people.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
And let me put it in broader context, which is
y yesterday, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, came
and had lunch with all the Republican senators. And by
the way, that almost never happens. When Paul Ryan was speaker,
he didn't do that. When John Bayner was Speaker, he
didn't do that. When Kevin McCarthy was Speaker.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
He didn't do that.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Mike Johnson has done that this multiple times. This is
either the third or fourth time he's come and had
lunch with all the Senate Republicans. I think that's great.
He was talking at lunch yesterday. He said, you know,
it's amazing that the media treats it as a news
story that the House and Senator talking to each other.
And the reason he came over and talked to us
is is he said, he's focused on his end, very
(14:38):
much on developing the agenda and the plans to hit
the ground running if and when we win in November,
if we come in to January of next year with
a Republican president, a Republican Senate, Republican House, we got
an enormous amount to accomplish. And the Speaker, to his credit,
is very focused on the first hundred days. What can
(14:59):
we pomplish, what can we do to change the path
of the country. I encouraged him to dig in on that.
In fact, I shared with a speaker and with everyone
else in the room.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
You know a lot of.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
The senators that are there now were not there back
in twenty seventeen when Trump first became president.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
You know.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
The Speaker said, look, when Trump first became president, he
was a freshman, he was brand new in the Congress,
and he was amazed that the Congress was not prepared
with the legislative agenda from day one. And he pointed
out that he thought a lot of Republicans were surprised
that Trump won. They were expecting Hillary to win, and
so when the administration came in, they weren't ready for primetime.
(15:40):
They didn't know what to do. In this instance, I'm
very glad the Speaker is trying to think proactively. And
I described I described something that I did back in
the summer of twenty eighteen. So summer of twenty eighteen,
we did a lunch with all the Senate Republicans and
I prepared a PowerPoint. It was about fifty pages long,
(16:03):
and I spoke to my colleagues probably the better part
of an hour. And the title of the power point
was carpe dim And what I did in the power
point is I looked in the past, in previous instances
when one party controlled the White House, the House, and
the Senate.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
It happens pretty rarely.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
When the Democrats do it, they fundamentally transformed the country.
So in the last century. The first time they did it,
they passed the New Deal. The second time they did it,
they passed the Great Society. The third time they did it,
they passed Obamacare and Dodd Frank And now for the
last two years we've seen they've spent us into an
(16:46):
absolute inflation and recession.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Home. Former President Trump went and met with Senate Republicans
as well as the House Republicans in a really focused,
an incredible show of unity. This is something we had
not seen before in this scenario where the Republican Party
certainly not in twenty sixteen. Why were they meeting not
(17:10):
just to show unity, but to get their act together
and have an agenda. If Republicans gain control of the Senate,
keep the House, and grab the White House, they're ready
to go day one, not sitting around like twenty sixteen
trying to figure out what to do. The agenda and
the unity is about getting stuff done. We should excite
(17:33):
every single American listening right now. If you have a
Republican government, then you better do something with it. And
that's exactly what Senata Cruz said their conversation was about.
It was exactly what needed to be talked about. Take
a listen.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
And on the other hand, Republicans, when we have unified control,
we tend to do small and piddling things. So what
I argue in the PowerPoint is, at the time I
presented it was August of twenty eighteen, I said, listen,
any rational political observer recognizes that there's a very real
(18:13):
chance that we will lose at least one House of
Congress in November. And I said to my colleagues, particularly
the guys who were the sophomores, who were the people
who had been elected two years earlier, and I said,
look for you, guys, we have one hundred and eighty
three days till the next Congress. For many of you,
(18:33):
if we do not pass things now, you will never
again have another chance to pass anything into law. And
so I put together a spreadsheet. It was about fifty
different bills. All of the bills had been written by
different Republican senators. Some I had written, but most of
them were my colleagues. And all of the bills were
bills that had a reasonable prospect of garnering fifty one votes.
(18:59):
They were fringe things that would get ten or twelve votes.
There were all things that would easily get forty five
Republicans and that had a real shot at getting fifty.
And what I argued is, I said, listen, this is
going to sound radical to you, Ben, we should do something,
(19:21):
we should not do nothing. Amazingly enough, that argument proved unpersuasive.
Mitch McConnell said, well, so the principal avenue that if
you look, the biggest legislative victory of the Trump years
was the twenty seventeen tax cuts. We passed that using
(19:43):
what's called budget reconciliation. Budget reconciliation is a process under
a bill called the Budget acted nineteen seventy five. The
budget piece is not terribly consequential. What's consequential is, under
the terms of the statute, you have an up down
vote at fifty votes and it can't be filibustered. So
it's one of the most important exceptions to the filibuster
(20:08):
we could have. If you look at the Democrats, they
did three budget reconciliations. It's how they passed almost all
of their agenda. That put us in this hole. When
the Republicans had the majority, we did only one budget reconciliation.
We did not do a single one in twenty eighteen,
which Frankly, Ben is indefensible, and so I made the
case of the speaker and my colleagues, Let's not make
(20:30):
that mistake again. Let's hit the ground running.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
This seems different. And even when I say different, there's
also a lot of people behind the scenes that are
working on putting together a Trump administration and a government
and learning from the mistakes that happened in twenty sixteen.
How encouraged are you by that? I mean, I've had
quite a few people I know that I've talked to
(20:54):
in many different areas of government who are saying, this
just feel different. This time. We learned from our mistakes
in sixteen. We learn from our inaction and people that
we should have replaced and changed with conservative minds, and
we've witnessed what happens when you do that. But this
time it's going to be different. That may be the
(21:15):
thing I'm the most excited about is if we had,
like you mentioned, a House and Senate ready to go,
but also many of the bureaucrats that have been changed
out very quickly this time. That seems to be the plan. Well.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
In twenty sixteen, I think Trump's winning surprised a lot
of people. It surprised a lot of Republicans in the Senate,
surprised a lot of Republicans in the House. It frankly
surprised the Trump campaign team, and I think it actually
surprised Trump himself. On election Day, I think they were
all a little bit startled that they had won and suddenly,
(21:49):
Holy cow, we're going to go do this now. And
so it resulted in when the administration came in in
the beginning of twenty seventeen, in cong the risk Republican
leadership of the House and Senate was not prepared with
an agenda because they had assumed Hillary was going to
win and they didn't need one, and and the White
House did not have the experience to know how to
(22:12):
drive an agenda. There was no first one hundred Days mission.
And you're right, there's a whole series of nonprofits that
that are engaged in laying out specific plans for executive orders,
for regulations, for for legislation uh and and whether it
is the America First Policy Institute or the Heritage Foundation
(22:32):
or others. I think if and when Trump wins this November,
we will hit January with a much much better level
of preparation to to to make a lasting difference immediately.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
This, by the way, should make every conservative excited. You
can just tell that there's a difference this time around.
You heard him mentioned that, you know AFP and and
and Heritage Foundation. They are and have been for quite
some time, focused on having a government that is there
(23:09):
to support the president if he is re elected, and
a government that is ready to go day one. There
were a lot of bureaucrats that were not replaced when
Trump won in twenty sixteen, and we now know how
big of a mistake that was because they were undermining
(23:30):
Trump and there were a lot of positions, career positions
in DC that were being used to undermine the agenda
of the president of the United States of America. And
so you heard him mention that twenty twenty four project.
Let me just explain, because I know a lot about this.
There are people that were in the Trump administration in
(23:53):
twenty sixteen that saw how fast the president could be
undermined and how many different forces there were in Washington
that we're doing everything that could have stopped Trump instead
of support him. And what they've understood is, Okay, well,
we can't have that mistake again. And so what they're
(24:15):
putting together is a government right now. They are looking
and doing background checks and interviews and conversations with people
in every aspect because when I say there are tens
of thousands of jobs that will need to be filled,
there are literally tens of thousands of jobs that need
(24:35):
to be filled that we did not fill in twenty
sixteen by career people, individuals in Washington, d C. That
was a mistake. We should have filled them with people
that were on our team. Because when you win, you
put your team together, and if you don't, then they're
going to undermine you. That's what's going to happen. And
(24:59):
that's what happened to Trump in sixteen. And so it's
not just Trump winning that is big and something that
excites me. It's actually knowing that we have taken our
time over the last and this has been going on
now for since the mid terms, where there are people
that are saying, we were going to find the best
and the brightest in all of these different areas where
(25:21):
we were undermined, whether it's environmental issues, whether it's oil
and gas, whether it's parks in services, whether it's national
security issues, whether it's border security, whether it's it's it's
food stamps and government aid. There are so many different
categories and things that are important that we just didn't
(25:43):
put our people in there with our ideology in there,
and we should have, like, that's what we should have done.
And so that mistake we learned a very tough lesson.
And if you don't, then then you have basically an
entire government that is working again against you. And that's
what Donald Trump experience in twenty sixteen. So this level
(26:07):
of focus from the Senate Republicans, from the House Republicans,
this partnership. I go back to Speaker Johnson, the point
that Cruz just made a moment ago about Speaker Johnson
coming over multiple times and meeting with the Senate and
he said, this tells you what's wrong with Washington. They're
(26:28):
treating it like a news story. When the Speaker of
the House goes and meets with the Senate leadership in
the same party. Well, you have to have one. You
can't have one without the other. To get a law pass, right,
you have to have the Senate Republicans agree, and you
have to have the House Republicans agree. They should be
speaking all the time. But there was this divide in
our government. All Right, you guys in the Senate, you
stay on your side. You guys in the House, you
(26:49):
stay on your side. We'll talk and we get you
something to look at. That's not how you win. That's
not how you run a government successfully. Okay, I like,
that's not how this is done successfully. And so you
have a Speaker of the House that's meeting with us
that the Senate this is a great framework for success. Hey,
(27:13):
what do you guys need? Well, you know, tell me
what you're looking at. What are you thinking? All right, Well, look,
I don't think I got the votes to get that done.
So let's not waste their time on that, or let's
not do it that way, because then we're gonna have
to you know, reconciliation and we're gonna have to change that.
It's gonna it's gonna you know, you know, jam up
the system and we're gonna not get that done fast.
Stuff like these are conversations you'd rather have on the
(27:33):
front end than on than after the fact, because how
many times have you heard, Well, the House passed this,
but the Senate's gonna change it. They're gonna send it
back to the House, and it's gonna go back and forth.
Why why not talk on the front end and then
have a game plan that like for success. You also
want to know why Democrats are gonna do every single
thing they can to stop Trump from winning this time,
(27:54):
and why they're trying to put them in jail, and
why they're they they've they've weaponized the legal system against Trump.
It's because they understand that everything I just told you
is exactly what the Republicans are doing this time. And
the Republicans, learning from their past mistakes and being organized
day one terrifies the Democrats because they understand their career
(28:15):
people in the government in DC that were allowed to
keep their jobs last time will not be allowed to
keep their jobs this time, and undermine the president at
every turn and undermine the Republicans in every turn. And
now they understand, Okay, the Republicans have figured it out.
This is scary. We can't let them win. So if
you want to know how effective this plan could be,
(28:36):
look at how the Democrats are already doing everything they
can to undermine it. Please share this podcast with your
family and friends. Please make sure you write us a
five star review. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, so
that it will help us reach more people. And we
will see you back here tomorrow
Host
Ben Ferguson
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