Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Representative Jeff Crank from the third Congressional District in Campuses
el Paso County. What else is your district encompass.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Jeff, Well, it's literally El Paso County. It's actually the
fifth Congressional district, but dang it is. It is most
of El Paso County. There's a little sliver out east
of El Paso County that is in Lauren Bobert's fourth
Congressional district.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
That's nice for you because the fourth is huge.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, no, yeah, I can drive across it in forty
five minutes.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
That as a politician who will run for office, that's
got to be nice for you. Let's talk about what
you've been up to the last couple of years. You're
running for reelection, of course, and I think let's talk
about some of the stuff that's been going on with
you as the representative.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, I mean, first, the biggest thing, biggest challenge we've
had for our district and really for Colorado over the
last eighteen months. You know that I've since I've gotten elected,
was the loss of Space Command US Space Command in
Colorado Springs. And you know, we had some politicians that
wanted to throw fits and use that as a way
(01:15):
to kick sand in the face of Donald Trump and
the Trump administration. I chose a different tact, right, I
chose to work with the administration. And we do that
by the way, in Opaso County, our sheriff works with ICE,
our district attorney helps work with ICE. We don't try
and have a fight with the president on everything down there.
(01:39):
And so that's the way I took it was to
represent my community. And so we did that, and I
work with the administration. And you know, about ten days
ago or so, we were rewarded in that and we
were you know, Secretary of the Air Force came out,
did a press conference with me and we talked about
(02:00):
some investments that they're making in Olpaso County that you know,
the loss of Space Command would be about one thousand jobs,
about six hundred civilian jobs, about four hundred military jobs.
But we just announced three different things coming to El
Paso County from Space Force itself. One of those is
a space Operations Center that will be built at Shreeber
(02:22):
Space Force Space and that alone will be about fifty
seven hundred jobs, twenty five civilian jobs and a total
of fifty seven hundred and you know, I like to
tell people, you know, I know I'm in Congress. I
know I spent a lot of time in Washington, d C.
Maybe I'm not as good with math as some people
would think because of that, right, because we're not very
good with math here. Last time I counted fifty seven hundreds,
(02:45):
a lot better than a thousand. And that's what you get,
is you get a win when you actually work, when
you want to work with other levels of government. That's
what our citizens expect and that's what we do.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
So just that part of it, the loss of space
force was a space worce command. I should be clear, right,
that felt that was such a what am I trying
to think here? It felt more political than those decisions
are often political. They're always political to some extent. I mean,
(03:17):
they just are. Do you feel like there was anything
else that the Colorado delegations could have done.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Well? I mean, first of all, there was a basing study.
There are actually a couple of basing studies. And during
you know, it was kind of a political football during
the first Trump administration and during the Biden administration and
back and forth. And look, there's arguments to both sides.
I mean, I see where Alabama has making the argument
they wanted some redundancy in the system. Right, You've got
(03:48):
Northern Command in Colorado Springs, you have currently US Space Command,
you have all of those space assets there. Their argument
was there should be some redundancy in the system so
that you know, if if something is taken out or
you have a cyber attack on an installation or something
like that, you have some other things other places. So
they made that case. I didn't agree with it. I
(04:10):
still think it belongs in Colorado. But look, I mean
to me, if we sit and fight over that forever,
we're going to miss out on the much bigger pie.
And the bigger pie is Golden Dome on the chair
of the Golden Dome Caucus in Congress, and you know
Golden Dome and what we're going to spend. We just
(04:31):
allocated twenty five billion dollars to Golden Dome in the
One Big Beautiful Bill. There's far more there that we
can capitalize on as a community in Colorado Springs and
in the state of Colorado. Then there was to sit
and fight over six hundred jobs at Space Command. And
so you know, to me, it's like, you know, I'm
(04:52):
just not going to keep fighting over it. I thought
as a delegation we stood firm together in a bipartisan way.
But there were some and you see it right now.
You see it in these TV ads that people are
running right now. And in the Democratic primary, you know,
you got Michael Bennett saying that Phil Wiser didn't sue
(05:14):
Donald Trump enough, and then you got Phil Wiser going
back and say, well you didn't. You didn't fight him enough.
You approved six of his nominees. That was six too many,
in the words of Phil Wiser. So I mean they
want to sit and fight and play political games. Somebody
has to step up and kind of lead and be
the adult in the room. And I tried to do that.
(05:35):
My community did that, My community stood with me on it.
We filed an amicus brief against that. Well, we didn't
file it, the color Springs Chamber of Commerce did, and
our community supported it. Our city council and our County
Commission supported an amicus brief opposing phil Wiser suing because
Phil Wiser never came to Colorado Springs and to our
(05:57):
city and said, hey, what do you want me to do?
Did it because it made him feel good to add
to the lawsuits against the Trump administration.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
We're in agreement on that one. Let me shift gears
a little bit, because today I get up and I've
been following the war in Iran very carefully. A lot
of Republicans growing increasingly worried that if gas prices are
not or there's not some sort of resolution, that it
could very much hurt Republicans in the midterm elections. But
(06:26):
for me, it feels a lot more personal. I have
family in Israel and I talk to them often, and
their frustration is Israel is currently fighting for its existence
and we're fighting over oil prices. So there's a disconnect there.
And I would love to hear your thoughts overall on
the war in Iran and what you would like to
see happen here.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Well, look, I supported this president because this is something
that for forty seven years, they've waged war against Israel
and the United States, by the way, killing thousands of
American service personnel and civilians throughout those forty seven years
with their terror that they've exported. So I was with
(07:08):
the president, and look, I've seen some intelligence. We can't
get too much into that, but I can say this,
I think the President acted to say, to stop an
attack that was being planned on US service personnel within
the region. Right we have many military installations where our
service members are serving in that region that are vulnerable
(07:30):
to a ballistic missile attack from Iran. They were preparing
an attack, and I think the President did what he
needed to do to protect our men and women in
the military. And I'd make the argument that, you know,
if he hadn't done that and there had been an attack,
wouldn't the left right now be trying to impeach him
for that. I mean, this president can't win for anything.
(07:52):
But look, I think it's a good thing that we
in a lot of ways, we have a president is
not going to make a bad deal just to make
us feel better or do better in the midterms. I think, look,
he knows the political pressure, he understands it, but he
wants a deal that's going to last. And we've had
too many deals that were for political convenience with Iran
(08:17):
over the years, including President Obama and his buy off
of Iran with pallets full of cash. So I think
we've got to give the president. We've got to give
him time to do this. And I just tell folks
to have some patients. I have a little more access
to intelligence, some of the military intelligence that's out there,
but I don't have as much as the president does.
(08:39):
He knows more about what's happening in Iran and whether
they're serious about negotiating with us than you or I do,
and we have to just trust that that president would
do it. And the last thing I'd say is this,
I would hope that if we have a Democrat president
right now, I tell people I'm a supporter of the
nation of Israel. I would support our Comanite and or
(09:00):
a chief if he were a Democrat in stopping this
scourge that has happened for forty seven years. I wouldn't
play politics with it. And I just wish that we
would hold democrats accountable for the same that same belief,
because they've all told us how much they supported Israel
and then when it came time they cut baden Ram.
(09:21):
I mean, we.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Could spend the next you know, twenty minutes talking about
the rise of anti Semitism on the left, but we wlled.
But for me, I'm going to be perfectly frank, anything
short of regime change is going to feel like a failure.
And that is just because as you said, for forty
nine years, they have exported terror, They have oppressed ninety
million people in Iran. They have been launching, you know,
(09:45):
through their proxies, the Huthis or Amas or Hesbela. They
have been attacking Israel relentlessly for the last forty nine years.
What are your thoughts do we try to pursue regime
change or would you be satisfied with a deal with
the Mullas, who I have no faith in them actually
living up to any deal that they sign on to.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Well, again, I think we have to trust that the
president has more intel and understands whether they're being genuine
and whether they are really negotiating in good faith or not.
I think there's different factions right that. I mean literally,
that regime was decapitated in the opening days of this war,
well in the opening minutes of the war. It was
(10:28):
decapitated and further degraded over the weeks that followed. And
so you know, I don't think you have a unified
government right now that's able to speak with one voice.
I think you have folks and factions within Iran that
are fighting for control. And so again I think we
(10:50):
have to trust that the administration has good intelligence about
who they're dealing with, and I'm willing to give the
president some leeway. What I prefer to see a different
government in there. Of course I would, of course, But
you know, I think it's something that the US government
(11:11):
has never made regime change, despite that being my desire
and your desire, and I think President Trump's desire, We've
never made regime change one of the goals. Now that
is the goal of Israel. Yes, get regime change, and
it's the unspoken goal I think that we have, but
we've never made that a written goal. The President's been
(11:32):
very clear, you know, to grade their missile capabilities, get
rid of their nuclear capability, and you know, eliminate their
ability to export terror. Those are the things that the
President has said as victory for US.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yeah, so I have one more question, and this is
about Okay, so say you get re elected. One of
my frustrations is that we're still not back to regular order.
We're still not passing budgets, although there have been signs
of life in passing budgets. When does that happen? Because
you know, I am a big deficit hawk, and I
(12:06):
don't see any way to begin to manage the deficits
that we are running every single year until we know
exactly what's in those budgets.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Yeah, well, it is very frustrating. This is a very
frustrating place. And as you mentioned about regular order, it's
been broken for so long, it's kind of the expectation
that we continue to be broken. And look, we got
very very close to regular order this last time because
we did do all of the appropriations bills, and then
(12:36):
of course the Democrats decided they didn't want to fund
the Homeland Security piece, and so you know, we've had
to kick that along and find a different way to
do that. It's a difficult problem to have, especially when
you have a one or two seat majority. And I
must say I give Mike Johnson tremendous credit. I think
there's almost no one else in the House of Representatives
(12:58):
who could do what Mike Johnson has done. Our appropriations bills,
over and over, with the exception of Defense, have all
decreased spending from the previous year, and I think that's important.
We've got to hold the line on those appropriations bills.
But we still have to deal with some of these
(13:20):
entitlement issues and programs, and we did right in the
one big beautiful bill, deal with some of the fraud
that's been going on, people sitting and collecting medicaid and
not working when they're able bodied and could go out
and work, people who don't have children, and things like that.
And so there's lots of work that we can do there.
We need to continue to do it, and I think
(13:41):
we are going to do it. We're looking at doing
another reconciliation bill right now that I think we'd deal
with a lot of the fraud that we're seeing in
a place like Minnesota and I friink in Colorado and
other states. And so we have to do that. But
we do have to continue to push for what you
said is regular order and getting back to examining these
(14:03):
bills and doing the right things in them and not
just passing what passed the previous year. The Democrats wanted
to do that because they got more spending, more big
government by doing that, and we've got to stop that.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Well, all that spending is still in the bill, you know,
all the bide nearest spending is still in the continued Resolution.
I'm not mad at you, I'm just saying I'm just mad.
Representative Jeff Crank. I appreciate your time today and I
hope we'll talk again soon.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Mandy, thank you for your time, and I'm sure we will.
Thank you all right.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
You have a good one, sir,