November 14, 2025 • 45 mins
This podcast edition of Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness features Congressman Chip Roy and journalist Michael Quinn Sullivan. ( @KennethRWebster )
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jigana government sucks. Pursuit of Happiness radio is dupes. Liberty
and freedom will make you smile. The Pursuit of Happiness
us on your radio toil, just as Cheezburgers living it
Rise at time.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
A man charged with double homicide in New Mexico says
a cockroach told him to kill Come on, that's crazy.
Gavin Newsom would never tell anyone to murder someone. Hi, everybody,
Kenny Webster here this afternoon on the show. Michael Quinnsullivan's
stopping by, and Congressman Ship Roy he is running for
Attorney General.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Stick around. We got a lot coming up.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Late last night, after a few beers, we discovered the
art of deceiving politicians. Just tell them the truth and
they'll never believe you. Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Chairman, Lady, be quiet, It's America's time. Now. What do
you think? This is?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Fredericksburg, I digress. Hi, everybody, Welcome to uh oh Segment two.
It's great to be here with you guys this afternoon.
A lot has been happening this morning. We broke news
with our friends from Turning Point USA over in the
Round Rock part of the state Round Rock ISD, where
James Tallerico is the local lawmaker, has decided to give
(01:17):
a giant middle finger to high school kids that wanted
to start a Club America chapter that's the high school
equivalent of Turning Point USA. And now there's all this
hubbub and brew haha and controversy.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Guys, we did this already. We did this a couple
months ago.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
If you try to stop young patriots from starting a
conservative student group on campus, you're gonna triple quadruple the
numbers of people that want to join this. You tell
teenagers they can't do something, especially something that's clearly not harmful,
you're gonna make more of them want to do it.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
I have a friend that's in that part of the
state right now.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I often say he's certainly one of the most important
people in conservative media in our state, a leader of
the grassroots movement, a guy that slays rhinos and ends
the careers of some of the worst people in politics.
I have many times said he's the most dangerous man
in the Texas political media. I still stand by that.
My good friend, Michael Quinnsullivan. Are people talking about the
(02:10):
Turning Point USA thing over in your neck of the Woods.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah, they are starting to talk about it.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
Look, this is the you know, you've got guys like
call Rico and his ilk who oh free speech. Free speech,
by which they mean we want little kids to have
access to porn in the schools of the taxpayers pay
for that. That's what Talla Rico and the Democrats meaning,
they say free speech. When it comes to the actual
discussion of ideas about governance, about the conflicting views and
(02:38):
the different ways to approach how do you organize efficiently
and effectively a government for the sake of liberty, they
want to shut that down. You sure don't want sixteen
and seventeen year olds, those formed of years being exposed
to ideas like those of Milton Friedman and Hyek and
Ronald Reagan and the very goal old water of the
(03:00):
nineteen fifties and nineteen sixty eight. You don't want that
if you're one of those guys. So they shut they
have to fight and shut down any any efforts and
and it kind of reveals so they are they're very insecure,
very insecure.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
That is like a short list of the people that
inspired me to start doing this for a living. I
think you knew that when you said it, isn't it
interesting too? This isn't what I was going to talk
to you about, but I'd love to get your thoughts
on it. James Tallerico is this person that's supposed to
be the great Savior of the Democrat. He's the new Beto,
He's the new what was her name with the sneakers,
abortion Barbie, Wendy Davis. He's the new whatever Colin alrid
(03:38):
and he's His whole stick is that he's a pastor
who finds things in the Bible that he can twist around.
So it sounds like Jesus supported trans kids or abortions.
And now we've learned that he follows a bunch of
porn stars and booty models, Instagram, escorts and that sort
of thing on social media. That felt like a as
(03:59):
a politician, did he want to get caught or and
how many minutes away are we from hearing him explain
the biblical reason why you're supposed to follow booty models
on Instagram?
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Michael Quinnsulivan.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Your response, Well, there's certainly some there's a school of
thought that maybe his Instagram account or following those folks,
so you don't pay attention the kind of attractions he
actually has.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
That's one. That's one school of thought. Uh.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
The other is, look, you know, you got to hand
it to a politician who who is actually listening to
their to their core constituency. And for the Democrats, that
is the core constituency of them these days. Remember the
Democratic Party was not able to get a quorum together
for their own convention last year. The Democratic Party in
(04:46):
Texas is you know, they have pushed out anyone who's
pro life. They've pushed out anyone who owns a Bible
that they you know that they take seriously. They push
out in anyone who wants to cut tax because they
push out, push out, push outs. Now you really are
left with these really weird, abhorrent people. Tall Rico is
(05:08):
who lefties in San Francisco and lefties in the zorn
Mondabi camp of New York City politics think would be
a great, great Democrat in in in Texas. That that
that who they think would be would be attractive to Texans.
(05:29):
And tall Rico is another one of those long line
of radical lefties who appeal to the far left in
far off places.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
In the in the green room, in the lobby right
now of this radio station. Michael a lawmaker, a statesman
whose career you and I have both covered extensively in
our respective mediums. A lawmaker, congressman, Ship Roy, very principled conservative.
At the same time, somebody that some would argue is
not pragmatic enough has been critical of Ken Paxton and
(05:58):
Donald Trump, and he actually wants to replace Ken Paxton
as our next attorney general. Pauling seems to make it
seem as al He's very popular, but at the same time,
you look around online at the discussions about him among
grassroots activists in Texas on social media, they don't paint
the same picture, do they.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
No, they don't.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
And look, I think there's a there is a sense
there that one we always have to be careful about
about confusing online activism with the real world. Like I'm
literally sitting at the desk with a keyboard in front
of me and one of the little windows open on
(06:38):
my computer screen somewhere buried on all the other windows,
you know, is is is X, Right, I'm not sitting there,
But at the end of the day, it is not
the real world. And I think that everyone who you know,
people who spend too much time looking at their phones.
People who spend too much time lakinics you can sometimes
(06:58):
start to confuse what you see online, you know, grassroots
online with grassroots in the real world, and particularly voters
in the real world. That's when you know, I try
to encourage I encourage my team to to not just
sit in their offices and make phone calls, but to
go out and actually talk to people, be with people.
(07:19):
And that's you start to see that, you know, some
of the things that really gin people up online aren't necessarily.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
What what are ginning people up in the real world.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, it's I mean, people forget this all the time.
John Cornyn is popular with not with talk radio listeners,
not with the people that follow us on social media.
But there's a group of people out there that really
it's weird. I don't understand it. But all right, before
we run out of time, I got to talk to
you about this. Jane Nelson is the woman right now
who's the Secretary of State is trying to lead the
(07:50):
effort to stop the primaries in the state from being closed.
And I don't get this at all, Michael. I don't
understand why they would want to keep the primaries open.
Nobody should choose the Republican candidate for any race except
for Republicans. I'd say the same thing about Democrats. I'd
say the same thing about the Libertarians or the Green
Party if those weren't just glorified book clubs. What's the
(08:11):
point of having a political party if you have open primaries.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Yeah, there's absolutely no point in having political parties if
you're going to have open primaries. It is a complete joke.
It has been revealed to be a joke. You do
have to give the give due to the Democrats for
having put in place the system and when they had
the absolute uncontested majority, they put in place the system
(08:37):
that way everyone would pay for their party nominating selection process.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
They figured out a way how to how.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
To builk the taxpayers for funding their party's nominating process
the system of finance, and they in part of their
decision that was old, you know, we'll have them be opened,
and it's very very egalitarian. They'll be open and no
one voted, very few people. That are the Republican primaries.
So our open primary system that Jane Nelson, I'm an
(09:08):
appointee of Governor Greg Abbott, both Republicans Jane Nelson, long
serving member of the Texas Senate before becoming the Secretary
of State.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
You know they are.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
She Abbot has not spoken about this, but she is
his appointee. Are working in service of defending something put
in place by Democrats that Democrats saw as a way
to perpetuate their power in Texas for decades beyond their
ability to win elections. And that's precisely what they've been doing,
where you will have this system where someone can just
(09:42):
show up on the day of the election having heard
nothing from any candidate that having had no one knock
on their door, had no pieces of mail come to
their house, not paid attention to anything going on, but
because their Democrat precinct chair said, hey, we need people
to go vote for this person in the Republican primary.
Please go vote for them, they do. And you see
that happen in race after race up to race. You
(10:03):
know that that is antithetical the way the system is
supposed to work. And Jane Nelson, her logic, at least publicly,
is well, it's the law, and as the Secretary of
the State, Secretary of State, I am supposed to uphold
the law. But yet the Attorney General of Texas has
already said this law is stupid, this is unconstitutional, it's
violating Republicans' rights.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
We need to stop this. So, you know, it feels like.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
There is a bit of Austin crony establishment at play
there where you've got the the Austin croniousestablishment benefits from
this open primary system where you've got Democrats interfering in
the Republican process. That's hanged up with people like Dave
feelin Is, a member of the Texas House only wins
because of Democrat support.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Should do State of Texas have an election for the
secretary of state? You know they do this in other states. Missouri,
for example, a deep red state politics not terribly different
from Texas is spot and in Missouri they vote on
their secretary of state.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
It's not assigned by the governor.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
Well, i'll tell you know, it is unusual for Texas,
given that we elect railroad commissioners and we elect comptrollers
all the other positions, that we don't elect our secretary
of state. And in many ways that's because when the
secret secretary tape position was originated, it had far fewer powers.
It was, it was a far smaller position. It was
this functionary position in the office of the governor, and
(11:30):
over the years, more and more powers is going to
push there, not necessarily from the furious reasons, just because
it had to go somewhere. Someone had to be the
one stamping the papers, right, And there really is a
case we made that maybe we should move this from
being appointed to an elected position, given the amount of
power and responsibility that has been pushed into that office.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
My brother from another Michael Quinn Sullivan, I always awesome
talking to you, my man.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
How are things at Texas Scorecard? You guys doing okay?
Things are great.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
You know, we're looking forward to heading into into Thanksgiving
and the Christmas season is always fantastic, of course because
the school you're still going on. Folks can come to
Texas Scorecard and see they're reporting by Aaron Anderson who
has a mission to expose the bad apples, and every
single day you're finding about these horrible teachers and horrible
things to kids. So it's but the horrible these are
(12:26):
the kind of horrible things that we do need to
keep track of so that maybe we can root them
out and we can fix that problem.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
And we've got a lot of the fun fun thing.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
Then the actual fun things that we're covering, and some
big projects will be coming out in the next couple
of weeks.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
They're all very exciting. You know. A clever idea.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
If people want to save money on Christmas gift somebody's
still dealing with a little bite inflation in their household,
get them a Texas Scorecard dot Com subscription.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
Hey, look, it is a It's the perfect gift for
every real Texan in your family that the Texas Scorecard
dot Com. You just you all. You have to print
out the r L and hand it to them. Trust me,
you will be their face, favorite son, favorite daughter, favorite niece, nephew, grandparent,
whatever you happen to be. You give someone Texas core Cord,
they will love you forever. Is it expensive, man, it's free.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
It's free. That's great.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Everything you've heard is a lie, Well unless you heard
it from the mouth of Kenny Webster.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Oh no, don't say.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Even the bit about it is Little Kenny still not funny, Sorry, bro,
I mean Big Kenny every time.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
To Kenny Webster's pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
I gotta get some new liners. Congressman chip Roy right
after this, it should be interesting all right. A memorial
service was held today for Jane Goodell. It was incredible.
You should have seen the fancy catering setup. It was bananas,
Chip Kenny Howard, we started the interview with a banana joke.
I did not get a laugh.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
I'm not mad at you.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I'm not mad, but I do feel like that was
some of my best material today. Congressman Chip roy in
the studio right now.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Great to be here. Not a fan of banana jokes.
First thing we've learned about you this afternoon.
Speaker 6 (14:01):
Well, I'm just having flashbacks like Eddie Murphy sticking a
banana and the tailpipe that's Beverly Hills cop.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
That's all I've got going in my head, a creature
in my own heart.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Congressmanship Royce here, you want to be Attorney General, and
I've got a lot of questions for you. Some of
these were written by listeners, some of them were written
by some of your biggest critics. Why don't we just
dive into the main thing here. This is the thing
people often bring up now that you're running for office.
Trump's margin of victory in Texas was the biggest of
any twenty in twenty years. We hadn't seen a guy
(14:32):
do this. Well in the state of Texas. You are
kind of famous for criticizing Donald Trump, and you I
don't remember this happening. As someone pointed this out to
me on social media. You have been accused of referring
to MAGA supporters as MAGA f words. It happened in
December twenty twenty four in an interview with Steve DC.
(14:52):
I cannot play the SoundBite on the air, obviously as
it contained some language. Why don't we start off with
that what happened?
Speaker 6 (14:59):
Yeah, Well, first of all, great to be on the show.
And I always start with the premise that I have
a job as a member of Congress right in an
article one, to stand up for my constituents and go
do what I think is right and defend the constitution,
defend the rule of law, and represent them. So I
do that, and I do that to the best of
my ability, and I feel confident that the people that
(15:22):
have elected me over and over again support what I've
been doing and defending them. And in that vein, what
I would point out is a poll came out recently
or a score looking at how people fare with respect
to their fidelity to President Trump's agenda and our current platform.
I scored number one in Texas, number two in the
(15:43):
entire House Representatives, and number five out of the House
in the Senate. So when it comes down to actually
delivering and working with the President the big beautiful bill
on legislation, the Lake and Riley Act, where we got
good legislation put in place, I could go down the list.
No one's been doing more to advance the president agenda,
go back in time.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
I was, yes, a.
Speaker 6 (16:04):
Supporter of my friend who I've known for over a decade,
Governor Rond de Santas, who's been kicking butt in Florida
in that interview you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Let me set the stage. This matters, Sure it does.
Speaker 6 (16:17):
I had taken a public position that at the time
the funding for Ukraine, which was front and center and
a part of remember the debate over the Speaker of
the House and what the House Representatives would do. I
had taken a position that, under no circumstances should we
give any money to Ukraine at all. However, if money
(16:38):
does go to Ukraine, you certainly should secure the border
of the United States and pass HR two first as
a condition. In other words, a negotiating position that was
a strong position. So some people came at me for
saying I was pro Ukraine. Oh Chip Roy, and he
is a rhino and he wants to give money to Ukraine. Now,
(16:58):
I stuff like that happens all the time. It doesn't
bother me. But when they start running a campaign to
come after my staff and calling people in my front
office and using foul language and attacking my team for
a false narrative and a false mee, a false meme,
I reacted. Now, what did I say. I didn't say
anything about Maga mother efforts. What I said was, you
(17:22):
guys out there want to come at me and call
me a rhino, come here to my office and debate me.
Because I've spent a lifetime fighting for conservatism, and I've
devoted my entire career to limited government and outing the
swamp long before anybody was talking about it, and so
I would match my record against anybody on that front.
And to the point that I said what I said,
I meant it about the individuals who were wrongly lying
(17:45):
about our position and then attacking my staff. I'll say
it today. You got a problem, come to my office,
come debate me. I will beat you in the debate
because that's what I do.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I'm okay.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
So to that point, you're known for being principled. Look,
I'm a Ron Paul guy. I love a principled lawmaker.
Do you feel like there was ever a point where
you weren't pragmatic enough? I mean, you took a stance
that what Trump did was impeachable in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Do you still feel that way? I fought impeach twenty twenty.
Excuse me, I fought yeah.
Speaker 6 (18:13):
Twenty I fought impeachment with every ounce of my being.
Voted against impeachment twice, called out the crazy arguments that
were being made against the president in the first impeachment
and the second. My point at the time, now, remember
rewind the clock on the electors, because that's what that's
all about. Pre November twenty twenty, I was fighting saying, guys,
mail in ballants is filled with fraud and it's going
(18:35):
to create a problem in this election. Right after the election,
two days later, I flew to Atlanta, met with cletand Mitchell.
First met Marjorie Taylor Green, met with election officials in
Fulton County, Georgia, trying to get to the bottom of
the truth was then a sale because my text leaked
through the New York Times and the CNM with Mark Meadows.
Because we were trying to get the truth. I said, guys,
I need evidence, I need AMMO was the quote that
(18:57):
I used so that we could go do the one
thing that mattered. What was that get one state where
we could prove the case that we needed a different
slate of electors because President Trump had actually won that state.
Then fast forward into January, that didn't happen. On the
day that we were voting on the electors, we only
had fifty slates of electors. We didn't have another slate
(19:18):
of electors. My view, and some can disagree with this,
my view then and remains now. You cannot have the
Vice President of the United States unilaterally refusing to accept
the electors because, under no circumstances, and I'll say this
right now as Attorney General of Texas, under no circumstances
are people in Pennsylvania, people in California, or the Vice
(19:40):
president going to be able to tell me what the
electors are from the state of Texas. We send our
slate of electors as Texans to Washington.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
And the job is to count them.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
Now you can disagree with that, but my fight from
the election in twenty twenty through January sixth was to
work as hard as we could to prove fraud and
flip a SLA electors.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
We didn't do it.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
So my point then at that time was you cannot
pressure the vice president to not count the electors. And
at the end of the day, we got through all
of that. We fought the impeachment, the president beat the
law fair, the president got elected, and the president is
now doing great things. It we'll actually focus on delivering
and right now we're going to get our butts kicked
next November if Republicans in Congress don't continue to work
(20:24):
forward and deliver an agenda and drive down affordability for
the American people so we can win next November, because
guess what will happen if we don't don't impeach him again.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
I mean, I think that's a given right.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
If we lose the House, which we might, if we
lose the Senate, they remove him from office. And that
brings me to another topic. You worked for Cornin You're
famous for being associated with a guy who is spending
three million dollars a week right now, so he could
stay in office. His opponent did not endorse you. Ken
Paxton a very popular attorney general. He's a populist, you're
a populist. Obviously, two different kinds of populists. Let's start
(20:58):
off with this. One of my favorite things about Ken
Paxton is he has lawsuits with balls of steel autum
every week. He's soon every day. Most people in the
MAGA movement weren't didn't even really understand why he was
getting impeached. I've always said, if you can't explain to
a guy on an oil rig or a truck driver
what Attorney General Ken Paxton did wrong, then it probably
(21:19):
wasn't that bad.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Do you disagree with that?
Speaker 6 (21:21):
Well, first of all, you went back to my first
job out of law school, where I went to Washington
and worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee, And yes, it
was in Senator Cornon's office with Frankly, some of our
best conservative lawyers. Jim Hoe is one of our best
lawyers on the Fifth Circuit right now. Myself, rit O'Connor
is now a federal judge in the District Court who
has struck down large numbers of bad pieces of legislation
(21:43):
and as one of the judges we go to when
we want to go file suits. Which when I was
Ken Paxton's first assistant Attorney General, which by the way,
I did for a reason new Ken for a long time.
I was his first assistant. I was his first first
assistant because we're ideologically the same. And we laid out
the plan which has been carried out for the last
decade to do exactly that, which is sue the pants
(22:04):
off of bureaucrats, sue the pants off of big corporatus.
And we actually developed the strategy to be able to
go into courts that would be more favorable. Remember Democrats
have been doing that for years, we weren't doing it.
So now we started going to the Northern District, into
that court that I just talked about rit O'Connor or
Judge Chasmeric or any of the other good judges where
(22:26):
we can get some rulings that actually reflect the people
of Texas. So we laid out that strategy. Look, I've
been very public about this. I was spent sixteen months
with Ken, and it was a good sixteen months. We
built a great team with strong solid conservatives. Brantley Star
worked on that office. He's now a great conservative. Federal
judge Bernie McNew is in that office. He was a
Trump appointee to the FIRT Commission. Brantley was a Trump appointee.
(22:49):
I could go down the list. Jim Davis as a conservative.
He's now the head of the University of Texas, and
he's now moving UT in a better direction with Civitas
and a lot of things they're doing. We had a
great team. I just ultimately had a disagreement and how
you do things in the office, okay, And I've always
left it at that. I'm gonna leave it at that.
I think it kind of all speaks for itself. We
just disagreed about how you do things. Is that the
(23:11):
first of the last time that strong conservatives might disagree.
John Adams and Jefferson notoriously fought and then you know,
came back together at the end of the day. Ken's
done a great job in litigating and defending the state
of Texas. I can agree to disagree about the style
of the way you do it, and I'm going to
just focus on the way I do things.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Do you still think that he should have resigned?
Speaker 6 (23:30):
Look, I thought never made a comment about the impeachment issues.
There had nothing to do with any of that. That
was a state issue. It's been asked and answered. The
House made their position, the Senate acquitted effectively, and Ken's
been moving on and continued to litigate and defend.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
The state of Texas.
Speaker 6 (23:47):
I will just say this, there were people in that
office that I worked with who were being thrown under
the bus publicly. That were good public servants, including a
lifetime Texas ranger who was battling cancer, who had solved
his sister's old case homicide thirty years later, great respect
to the law enforcement community, and I felt the need
to defend people that I had hired and I stand
(24:07):
with as I said before, when I got mad at
the people that came at my team, the people that
I hired, that I pull on my team, I'm going
to defend them.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
That's just who I am.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
All right, let's talk about this so as the OLAG,
I mean, this is the position you want. Is Ken
Paxton's job. He is known for these lawsuits that just
sure they're ballzy. No other AG in the state would
do this. Would you do anything differently?
Speaker 6 (24:29):
I mean no, we just build on what again we
started when I was his first assistant laying into that
and carrying out great cases, and we would continue that
and go even further. I mean, look, that's just where
it is. We've got now even a heightened degree of
a need for an Attorney General who will go to
bat to fight to defend Texas. We have a massive
march of radical Sharia adherents and Islamists who want to
(24:53):
remake our state and our country, and we've got to
combat it. We got to go even further respect to
what's happening at Epic City or or this you know
Islamics that are in Houston. We've got to go even
further with respective For example, Plylor v.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Do Do.
Speaker 6 (25:06):
A lot of the listeners out there are going, wait,
what's Plyler Vdo. That was the case in nineteen I
think eighty two or three where the Supreme Court said,
sorry Texas, because it was a Texas case, you have
to provide an education for illegal alien children here with
your tax payer money. We should fight that. We've got
to go even further to stop that ridiculous mandate from
(25:27):
the Supreme Court. There are other things that I think
we can do to be even more aggressive with respect
to the das that are putting criminals on the streets
that are funded by Soros. We need to go after
the network and the vast network of the C three's
and all of the money that are coming in from
the foundations for Soros and through the various leftists and
(25:47):
Marxists that are moving people into our country and pushing
the Islamic agenda. So there's so many fronts that we
got to continue to fight. The last point I'll make
is the corporatism. I mean, Ken did a great job
going after Google, but the opinion they got there, got
the ruling with a billion and a half dollars for
Americans or Texans privacy. But we've got to go even
further further with respect to the corporatism that's going on
(26:09):
in our country, where big corporations and boards in New
York are telling us what we need to do in
Texas with their woe agenda, buying up our ranches, buying
up our you know, meat packing facilities. Hell, we even
got private equity buying up Waburger, right Like, We've got
to make sure that Texans owned Texas. And that's one
of the original charters of the Office of the Attorney
General is to deal with corporations. So we've got a
(26:30):
lot of work we need to do to continue Ken's
legacy and to defend the state very very well. And
you know, I'm proud to have Ted Cruise's endorsement, former
Solicitor General of Texas, and he had the most cases
before the Supreme Court before Scott Keller, whom I hired
along with Ken Paston to be our next listener general
when I was when I was there in the AG's office,
and Scott worked with be in Ted Cruise's office. So
(26:53):
you know a lot of the strongest legal minds are
standing alongside me.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
All right, you let's talk about that.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
When you were a lawmaker, you voted for Kevin McCarthy
to be the House Speaker. You were the final ballot ship.
This followed a marathon four day process, fifteen total ballots,
longest speaker elections since eighteen fifty nine. I love American history. Obviously,
Kevin was not well liked by a lot of conservatives.
We all know what happened with him. Looking back on it,
(27:19):
how do you feel about that vote?
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (27:21):
Well, I mean that framing respectfully isn't quite right. Remember
what led to that? There were twenty of us who
refused to seat the United States House a representative speaker
for sixty days while we were getting pilloried by people
in Texas, including activists who were blowing up my phone
on the House floor saying, Chip, you're going to hand
the speakership over to Hakim Jeffries.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
What are you doing?
Speaker 6 (27:43):
I said, have a little patience for those of us
who are trying to fight the fight to deliver what
you want us to deliver on. And guess what we
were able to do in January of twenty three deliver
three Conservatives on the Rules Committee, which is the powerful
committee which determines what gets to the House floor, Conservatives
on the Appropriations Committee to reset how we handle the
(28:03):
appropriations in spending, fight a whole laundry list of other things,
including putting the Texas Border Plan, which I drafted and
got the entire Texas delegation to sign onto, which was
the first time we had a plan that was for
border security without amnesty and without future flow H one B,
all of the nonsense. We put that together with building
(28:24):
the wall and all this stuff and funding for the wall,
and we got that to be turned into in that
agreement with Kevin the first big bill we passed that
spring was HR two, the first time Republicans have done
that in a generation. That was all a part of
that deal that we struck, myself, Andy Biggs, strong conservative
and former Freedom Coccus chairman, Byron Donalds, Scott Perry, Matt Gates,
(28:47):
Lauren Bobert, all of us. There were twenty of us,
including other Texans like Michael Cloud and Keith self. We
negotiated that and guess what, we would not have delivered
the big, beautiful bill for President Trump had we not
done that two and a half years ago. Because part
of leadership is looking around the curve, looking down the
road and setting the stage for success and taking the
(29:07):
arrows in the process. That's what I've always been willing
to do, and I did it that week. I could
go back and show you the laundry list of text
messages blowing me up on the floor from donors and
activists saying, don't risk this, you can't do this, just
make Kevin the speaker. I said, hold on, I'm not
going to just make Kevin the speaker. We need to
change the House. When we finally decided to do the deal,
(29:30):
we got major concessions that reshaped the House of Representatives
for a long time to come. Then that led to
the result that then nine months later, Matt Gates filed
the motion to you know, vacate the chair, and then
we ended up fighting through for a month and we
ended up with Mike Johnson and Mike by the way,
I fought Mike on the Ukraine HR two border security
(29:51):
piece that we started this whole interview with. But at
the end of the day, Mike has been a more
conservative speaker, and we've been working with Mike and we've
been delivering. Got the big beautiful bill done with a
three seat majority in the House, and I'm proud of
what we've been able to do through those changes.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Do you think that Matt Gates would have been a
better Attorney General than Pam BONDI.
Speaker 6 (30:09):
Well, I'm not going to get into comparison. I supported
Matt right out of the gate. I supported all of
the president's nominees strongly. When JD was being attacked last summer,
I was one of the first to publicly come out
in his defense. When Bobby Kennedy was being attacked, people said, well,
Chip Roy, why are you supporting Bobby Kennedy? Of all
people because I knew Bobby would shake things up. I
wrote an op ed in defensive Bobby, in defensive Tulsi.
(30:31):
Matt when he was nominated, defended him because I trusted
what the President was trying to do to shake up
the town. And these were all people that were going
to take on Washington. That was the key, right And
you know, I think through the first term we kind
of had that kind of learning exercise that hey, these
people who know Washington, they're not really the ones that
were going to change things up. And so you know, Matt, Bobby, Taulsi,
(30:53):
those guys would now Matt obviously name got pulled and
then Pam became to AG and we've been working with
Pam since the beginning of the year, and we continue
to try to work with the administration in all levels.
And frankly, I've been very impressed overall the administration. They
haven't lost anybody, They've got strong talents. Scott Beson's been
doing a great job at Treasury. Marco Ruby has been
kicking But as the Secretary of State, I've got good
(31:15):
friends throughout the administration. Russ Vote is the head of OMB.
He is one of my best friends in the world
much less in politics. Russ is a great friend, and
he's been doing wonders at O and B with the
recisions package. But by the way, we're not talking about
all the wins that we're getting in recisions, cutting NPR,
cutting PBS.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
I love that.
Speaker 6 (31:32):
You know, these are all things that you would have
said five years ago, goy, we never do this. Well
we're doing it.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
I mean it is great. Yeah, yes, a lot to
be said about that. All right, let's talk about your
opponents real quick. I don't know why Joan Hoffman's running
for AG. I'm not even gonna try it. I don't
know who that's a candidate for. I don't get it.
I like May's Middleton, I love the taxpayer funded lobbying things.
Someone needs to go after that. That being said, the
pulling numbers don't look crazy for Mays right now. So really,
most people consider this to be a race between you
(31:58):
and Aaron Reats. Aaron does not of the polling numbers
you have. But when you look online at what people
are saying about you and Aaron, the people on social
media really seem to like Aaron. They're very critical of
you right now. Obviously that doesn't always mean anything. Polling
numbers don't always mean anything when it comes down to
election day. Do you think we see some of the
hype for Aaron on social media translate over to the
(32:21):
ballot boxer.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Do you think the polls are accurate?
Speaker 6 (32:24):
No, we will not see that translate. He's not moved
out of single digits, and he's not going to move
out of single digits. And here's the reason why the
people of Texas are going to want somebody who's done
the job, can do the job, has been elected, has
been a lawyer, has a proven track record of being
a conservative. If you go across all of those things,
there's only one candidate who fits all of those descriptions.
(32:45):
And let's go piece by piece. You want somebody who's
been elected. Aaron Wright hasn't been elected dogcatcher, and the
only race he's ever run in he came in fourth
in a state rep.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Race.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
You go look at Do you want somebody who's actually
stood up in court, stood up in front.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Of a judge.
Speaker 6 (33:01):
I've done that as a federal prosecutor in the US
Attorney's Office. I've had my name on all of the
filings as the first Assistant Attorney General making all of
the strategic decisions alongside the age filing, the litigation filing,
the cases that we were putting forward, the briefs that
we were filing. And I've done that. I can tell
you May's Middleton hasn't done that. And you need somebody
(33:23):
who's approven conservative. I talked about the scorecard demonstrating that
I have the highest record in Texas and Congress, the
second in the House of Representatives, fifth out of the Senate,
in the House of people who have fidelity to the
GOP platform and the President's agenda. But importantly, go down
the entire list of scorecards, A plus ratings, top ratings,
(33:44):
the best in Congress on virtually every scorecard, whether it's guns,
whether it's life, whether it's the Freedom Index. I mean,
very few people are able to do what I do.
And you talked about earlier, were talking about libertarian support
and Ron Paul, who have significant support from the liberty crowd,
significant support from the gun crowd, endorsed by gun owners
of America, et cetera, significant support from Life, but also
(34:06):
has a demonstrated track record and has put his name
and his election certificate on the line. You want somebody
who's independent. You want somebody who's proven. You want somebody
who's an actual lawyer. You want somebody who knows the
AG's office. No candidate is remotely close to me on
any of those scores.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
All right, I want to go deep in the weeds
here for just a minute. I did not know about this.
A friend of mine who's a journalist tells me you
did an investigation in the University of Texas Medical Branch
on their Gain of Function lab research. And apparently nothing
came from the investigation, at least not in anything that
most people know about. Apparently the head of the lab
resigned as soon as COVID made landfall in March. Supposedly
(34:43):
there were some emails between UTMB and the Wuhan Institute
of Virology.
Speaker 6 (34:48):
What happened there, Well, we leaned in pretty hard on that,
and we were I think the only office that was
highlighting this massive problem with the taxpayer dollars that were
being funneled through this ut system with respect to gain
of gain of function. We did end up getting I
think a positive result in terms of highlighting that and
getting changes in terms of what the university was doing
and addressing it. But this gets into the issue of
(35:09):
why you want to be an executive being an AG,
because when you're a member of Congress, you're one four
hundred and thirty fifth of one half of one third
of the federal you know establishment up there in DC,
and so you can only do what you can do.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Right.
Speaker 6 (35:24):
You got to muster coalitions, and you've got to get
people to vote. You got to move bills, and I
do pretty good job of that given you know that
that narrow ability is one four hundred and thirty fifth.
But as an executive, you have the ability in AG's
office to go in and get things done and be
able to go try to move the ball, and you
can actually raise issues, you can sue. You can also
do things with your opinions. When you put out AG opinions,
(35:46):
you can force those questions, and you can also get
the legislature to act and use the bully pulpit. But
there's more room that you can that you've got in
the executive branch. So you know, look, I see lots
of things that we're doing every day that we're highlighting
in Congress. You know, where we go after an age
and see or we go highlight something. Obviously, now with
Trump in the White House, it's different in terms of
what we do with the FEDS. But we're constantly going
(36:06):
after highlighting, you know, as Brian Harrison's highlighting the stuff
at Texas A and M and the various woke crap there.
We're trumpeting that and putting it out there, you know,
reaching out or reached out to UT when there's some
planned parenthood funding that we saw on their stream. Then
we got that who observed it, went and talked to
them and guess what, They've changed it. So the more
we keep doing that, and at the AG's office, you
can do a lot more of that than you can
(36:27):
even in Congress.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
All right, I know we only have a little bit
of time left here with you, so I got to
ask about this. You have a plan right now to
freeze all immigration, all of it completely, no exceptions to that.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Can you tell us a little about that.
Speaker 6 (36:38):
Yeah, So we've got a bill that we're gonna introduce
next week called the Pause Act. We had to wait
because of the shutdown to get all this stuff drafted,
but we've got the framework put together and we're still
putting together every piece of it. But the bottom line
is we should freeze all immigration, freeze all legal immigration
until we've got our house in order. We have fifty
one million people in the United States who are foreign born.
(36:59):
That is about sixteen seventeen percent. That is the highest
percentage we've ever had. Why on earth are we going
to continue to import people when we have Americans who
can't find jobs, we have Americans who aren't able to
afford housing, we have Americans who are suffering. Let's freeze immigration.
That could be for six months, six years, sixty years,
I don't know. Let's have the conversation though, about what
we need to do to protect American jobs and American workers.
(37:22):
Let's freeze the immigration and then get some fixes. Do
we get PLYL or vdo fixed? I told you about
that earlier as ag Let's stop having a mandate that
we have to fund the education for legal alien children.
Let's stop all of the social welfare and healthcare benefits
for illegal aliens. We know what's happening, We're funding it.
That was part of the fight over Medicaid funding. That's
what the Democrats wanted to do on the shutdown fight.
(37:43):
Let's stop that funding and make sure that illegals aren't
getting those benefits. Let's go through and fix things like
birthright citizenship the President issued in executive order, Let's make
that permanent. Let's make it very clear you're only a
citizen if you're born to an American citizen, that you
can't come here in this churn and get this benefit
as a magnet of people coming here. And let's fix
H one b's which have been badly abused our corporations
(38:04):
meant money, leaving the American worker behind. And also I
introduced legislation last week to take away the C three
status from care. Let's stop funding with taxpayer dollars the
Council for Whatever Arab Islamic Relations or American Islamic Relations,
which has literal affiliations with terrorist activities. I also introduced
legislation to say that we should vet people for their
(38:24):
adherence to Sharia law when they come into the United States.
You should actually adhere to American values. This is all
stuff we need to be doing. I've been leading on
it with our bills in HR two and all of
our border bills. We need to keep leading on this front.
And I think the President deserves a great deal of
credit for what we're doing, but Congress needs to get
in behind him.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
All right, let's talk about the government shutdown real quick
in the eleventh hour. This thing with the Hemp band,
This was a surprise to some people. Delta a low
level THHC. Apparently Mitch McConnell, who was originally a supporter
of the twenty eighteen farm Bill, was the reason that
this guy. I don't know what happened with him, why
he changed his mind, only ran Paul ted Cruz and
Thomas Massey. You seem to have tried to resist this thing.
(39:04):
You know, how do you feel about it? Who do
you blame or do you support it? What do you
think about it?
Speaker 6 (39:08):
Well, obviously that there were two eleventh hour provisions. That
was one of them. I'll address the other one in
a minute in the Senate, which should not have been done. Okay,
let's be clear, this is not how you should legislate,
and I'm frankly it's offensive and frustrating.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
But you did vote for it.
Speaker 6 (39:22):
Well, hold on a second, Okay, we voted for the
reopening of the government and the funding per the president's request,
and because we were looking at people who were hurting
because of a shutdown government that Democrats are doing for
political purposes, and by the way, we needed to be
able to do that in order to get and move
forward the President's agenda. So we were forty five days
in and that was the bill that was put before us.
(39:43):
Let's take talk about the second provision, which was a
provision put in there at the eleventh hour that would
allow senators to have a private right of action against
the Office of the Attorney or you know, the Department
of Justice, looking for basically a payback for the attacks
they had on him through arct Frost. Now, look, that
was an offensive from a libertarian standpoint. You know what
(40:04):
United States senator is being targeted by the Department of
Justice and having their phone record search. It's offensive and
a massive abuse of justice, abuse of power. But here's
the problem. You can't put in a provision that says
that a senator can go get a five hundred thousand
dollars pay day simply by suing and settling with the
Department of Justice. That got stuck in at the eleventh hour.
I think we're going to fix that. On Monday, a
(40:25):
bunch of us threw a fit over that we voted
for the bill in order to get the government open.
But we're going to vote this I think provision on
Monday to reverse that. And now I think we're going
to have a full debate about what got put in
there on the issue of HEMP, which you rightly point
out was kind of a dispute between McConnell and Rand.
And look, I think that should not be the way
(40:45):
we legislate issues like that when you've got businesses that
were built around the policies that were put in place.
There are legitimate concerns about some of the stuff and
the various PHC levels and whatnot that we need to
have a conversation about, but it should not have been
put in a must pass piece of legislation like that.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Trump wants to kill the filibuster. It feels like a
mistake to me. What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 6 (41:03):
Well, So this one's interesting, right because you talked about
my Senate background, is Ted's chief of staff spending time
in the Senate.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
I know this issue really well.
Speaker 6 (41:10):
I have long over my life, said you've got to
hold that sixty vote threshold because nothing good happens in Washington.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
So anything that.
Speaker 6 (41:16):
Slows down legislation in Washington is a good thing, Right,
That's my default position. But here's the problem right now,
I believe Democrats will, with a one hundred percent degree certainty,
the next time they get the trifecta kill the filibuster.
The only reason they did in last time was Kirsten
Cinema and Joe Manchin. Now we can hold out hope
and hold our breath. That a Fetterman, right, But again
(41:37):
it depends on the majority. I mean, they've got forty seven.
If they get fifty, you know, one, two, three, four,
you're relying on Fetterman. The point here is is when
they get that again, they're going to kill it. That's
almost certain. So that's the question now is are we
willing to say, let's call the question.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
So here's my two paths.
Speaker 6 (41:57):
We either rip the band aid off and say, look,
let's just go to fit one and let's go advance
an agenda to save America. Or let's call the question
at sixty. Let's pass the constitutional modment that says it's
going to be sixty for everybody. But what we shouldn't
do is sit here and unilaterally disarm and allow Democrats
to have the leverage and the benefit to kill us
with a fifty one vote threshold. Because when they do it,
(42:17):
they will pack the court, they will make DC estate,
they will advance a radical agenda. They will socialize medicine,
medicare for all, take away freedoms, go after our guns.
They will, I mean they will take it for a
massive spind So the question here is are we going
to inspire a new generation of Americans to believe in
what we believe in?
Speaker 3 (42:35):
We better lead?
Speaker 6 (42:36):
And if all we do is sit back talking about
sixty votes and don't lead and deliver, then how are
we going to win a generation? We can use reconciliation
like we just did to advance some stuff. Fine, let's
do that, but we got to be aggressive. We can't
hide behind sixty and fail to lead. We've got a
once in a lifetime moment right now with President Trump
who's willing to take the system on, and a Republican
(42:57):
House and Senate, and we better dang well deliver.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
All Right, one more real quick question because I know
you got to run and we're way long on this.
Texas Republican primaries. All the both parties primaries open.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Or close close. If this is so obvious.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Yeah, Now, Jane Nelson wants to spend millions of dollars
to keep it open.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
So this is not a hard question.
Speaker 6 (43:15):
But the Constitution, I think very clearly will make clear
that we need to do that. That happens to be
in front of Matt Kasmerck, who you know as a
federal judge, and we'll see what he does. I've got
my suspicions of where that will go. My guess is
that they're going to find that we have our right
to association, that we're going to be able to say
that we're going to have a close primary. My guess
is it will get kicked to the legislature to define
(43:38):
the parameters of what the election should look like under
a close primary. But we'll see what happens in the
in the litigation. But yeah, of course it should be closed.
It's a non question. The only question is what do
you do to frame it? So, for example, if you're
an independent, do you get more say in a general election?
Do you have to change the structures that if it's closed?
(43:58):
Rightcause right now, independence at least they can go get
a vote or a voice in a primary. But if
you take that out and say it's just Republicans and Democrats,
how to independence? Then get a ticket you know, get
a voice in the in the fall in the general election.
That's a debate we would have on the floor, but
of course they should be closed primaries.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Chip Roy Congressman, ship ride the website chiproy dot com
with very complex Yeah, it's very very hard to remember. Well,
thank you for your time this afternoon.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
I appreciate it. Thanks for coming in, ladies and gentlemen.
Pursuit of Happiness Radio you and now it too to
the sound everyone.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
We got to run hav an awesome afternoon. Thank you
so much for listening. We'll be back bright and early
Monday morning for more of what you bought a radio for.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
You are listening to the Pursuit of Happiness Radio.
Speaker 6 (44:52):
Tell the government to kiss you're as when you listen
to this show, do do
Jigana government sucks. Pursuit of Happiness radio is dupes. Liberty
and freedom will make you smile. The Pursuit of Happiness
us on your radio toil, just as Cheezburgers living it
Rise at time.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
A man charged with double homicide in New Mexico says
a cockroach told him to kill Come on, that's crazy.
Gavin Newsom would never tell anyone to murder someone. Hi, everybody,
Kenny Webster here this afternoon on the show. Michael Quinnsullivan's
stopping by, and Congressman Ship Roy he is running for
Attorney General.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Stick around. We got a lot coming up.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Late last night, after a few beers, we discovered the
art of deceiving politicians. Just tell them the truth and
they'll never believe you. Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Chairman, Lady, be quiet, It's America's time. Now. What do
you think? This is?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Fredericksburg, I digress. Hi, everybody, Welcome to uh oh Segment two.
It's great to be here with you guys this afternoon.
A lot has been happening this morning. We broke news
with our friends from Turning Point USA over in the
Round Rock part of the state Round Rock ISD, where
James Tallerico is the local lawmaker, has decided to give
(01:17):
a giant middle finger to high school kids that wanted
to start a Club America chapter that's the high school
equivalent of Turning Point USA. And now there's all this
hubbub and brew haha and controversy.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Guys, we did this already. We did this a couple
months ago.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
If you try to stop young patriots from starting a
conservative student group on campus, you're gonna triple quadruple the
numbers of people that want to join this. You tell
teenagers they can't do something, especially something that's clearly not harmful,
you're gonna make more of them want to do it.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
I have a friend that's in that part of the
state right now.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I often say he's certainly one of the most important
people in conservative media in our state, a leader of
the grassroots movement, a guy that slays rhinos and ends
the careers of some of the worst people in politics.
I have many times said he's the most dangerous man
in the Texas political media. I still stand by that.
My good friend, Michael Quinnsullivan. Are people talking about the
(02:10):
Turning Point USA thing over in your neck of the Woods.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah, they are starting to talk about it.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
Look, this is the you know, you've got guys like
call Rico and his ilk who oh free speech. Free speech,
by which they mean we want little kids to have
access to porn in the schools of the taxpayers pay
for that. That's what Talla Rico and the Democrats meaning,
they say free speech. When it comes to the actual
discussion of ideas about governance, about the conflicting views and
(02:38):
the different ways to approach how do you organize efficiently
and effectively a government for the sake of liberty, they
want to shut that down. You sure don't want sixteen
and seventeen year olds, those formed of years being exposed
to ideas like those of Milton Friedman and Hyek and
Ronald Reagan and the very goal old water of the
(03:00):
nineteen fifties and nineteen sixty eight. You don't want that
if you're one of those guys. So they shut they
have to fight and shut down any any efforts and
and it kind of reveals so they are they're very insecure,
very insecure.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
That is like a short list of the people that
inspired me to start doing this for a living. I
think you knew that when you said it, isn't it
interesting too? This isn't what I was going to talk
to you about, but I'd love to get your thoughts
on it. James Tallerico is this person that's supposed to
be the great Savior of the Democrat. He's the new Beto,
He's the new what was her name with the sneakers,
abortion Barbie, Wendy Davis. He's the new whatever Colin alrid
(03:38):
and he's His whole stick is that he's a pastor
who finds things in the Bible that he can twist around.
So it sounds like Jesus supported trans kids or abortions.
And now we've learned that he follows a bunch of
porn stars and booty models, Instagram, escorts and that sort
of thing on social media. That felt like a as
(03:59):
a politician, did he want to get caught or and
how many minutes away are we from hearing him explain
the biblical reason why you're supposed to follow booty models
on Instagram?
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Michael Quinnsulivan.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Your response, Well, there's certainly some there's a school of
thought that maybe his Instagram account or following those folks,
so you don't pay attention the kind of attractions he
actually has.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
That's one. That's one school of thought. Uh.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
The other is, look, you know, you got to hand
it to a politician who who is actually listening to
their to their core constituency. And for the Democrats, that
is the core constituency of them these days. Remember the
Democratic Party was not able to get a quorum together
for their own convention last year. The Democratic Party in
(04:46):
Texas is you know, they have pushed out anyone who's
pro life. They've pushed out anyone who owns a Bible
that they you know that they take seriously. They push
out in anyone who wants to cut tax because they
push out, push out, push outs. Now you really are
left with these really weird, abhorrent people. Tall Rico is
(05:08):
who lefties in San Francisco and lefties in the zorn
Mondabi camp of New York City politics think would be
a great, great Democrat in in in Texas. That that
that who they think would be would be attractive to Texans.
(05:29):
And tall Rico is another one of those long line
of radical lefties who appeal to the far left in
far off places.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
In the in the green room, in the lobby right
now of this radio station. Michael a lawmaker, a statesman
whose career you and I have both covered extensively in
our respective mediums. A lawmaker, congressman, Ship Roy, very principled conservative.
At the same time, somebody that some would argue is
not pragmatic enough has been critical of Ken Paxton and
(05:58):
Donald Trump, and he actually wants to replace Ken Paxton
as our next attorney general. Pauling seems to make it
seem as al He's very popular, but at the same time,
you look around online at the discussions about him among
grassroots activists in Texas on social media, they don't paint
the same picture, do they.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
No, they don't.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
And look, I think there's a there is a sense
there that one we always have to be careful about
about confusing online activism with the real world. Like I'm
literally sitting at the desk with a keyboard in front
of me and one of the little windows open on
(06:38):
my computer screen somewhere buried on all the other windows,
you know, is is is X, Right, I'm not sitting there,
But at the end of the day, it is not
the real world. And I think that everyone who you know,
people who spend too much time looking at their phones.
People who spend too much time lakinics you can sometimes
(06:58):
start to confuse what you see online, you know, grassroots
online with grassroots in the real world, and particularly voters
in the real world. That's when you know, I try
to encourage I encourage my team to to not just
sit in their offices and make phone calls, but to
go out and actually talk to people, be with people.
(07:19):
And that's you start to see that, you know, some
of the things that really gin people up online aren't necessarily.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
What what are ginning people up in the real world.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, it's I mean, people forget this all the time.
John Cornyn is popular with not with talk radio listeners,
not with the people that follow us on social media.
But there's a group of people out there that really
it's weird. I don't understand it. But all right, before
we run out of time, I got to talk to
you about this. Jane Nelson is the woman right now
who's the Secretary of State is trying to lead the
(07:50):
effort to stop the primaries in the state from being closed.
And I don't get this at all, Michael. I don't
understand why they would want to keep the primaries open.
Nobody should choose the Republican candidate for any race except
for Republicans. I'd say the same thing about Democrats. I'd
say the same thing about the Libertarians or the Green
Party if those weren't just glorified book clubs. What's the
(08:11):
point of having a political party if you have open primaries.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Yeah, there's absolutely no point in having political parties if
you're going to have open primaries. It is a complete joke.
It has been revealed to be a joke. You do
have to give the give due to the Democrats for
having put in place the system and when they had
the absolute uncontested majority, they put in place the system
(08:37):
that way everyone would pay for their party nominating selection process.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
They figured out a way how to how.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
To builk the taxpayers for funding their party's nominating process
the system of finance, and they in part of their
decision that was old, you know, we'll have them be opened,
and it's very very egalitarian. They'll be open and no
one voted, very few people. That are the Republican primaries.
So our open primary system that Jane Nelson, I'm an
(09:08):
appointee of Governor Greg Abbott, both Republicans Jane Nelson, long
serving member of the Texas Senate before becoming the Secretary
of State.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
You know they are.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
She Abbot has not spoken about this, but she is
his appointee. Are working in service of defending something put
in place by Democrats that Democrats saw as a way
to perpetuate their power in Texas for decades beyond their
ability to win elections. And that's precisely what they've been doing,
where you will have this system where someone can just
(09:42):
show up on the day of the election having heard
nothing from any candidate that having had no one knock
on their door, had no pieces of mail come to
their house, not paid attention to anything going on, but
because their Democrat precinct chair said, hey, we need people
to go vote for this person in the Republican primary.
Please go vote for them, they do. And you see
that happen in race after race up to race. You
(10:03):
know that that is antithetical the way the system is
supposed to work. And Jane Nelson, her logic, at least publicly,
is well, it's the law, and as the Secretary of
the State, Secretary of State, I am supposed to uphold
the law. But yet the Attorney General of Texas has
already said this law is stupid, this is unconstitutional, it's
violating Republicans' rights.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
We need to stop this. So, you know, it feels like.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
There is a bit of Austin crony establishment at play
there where you've got the the Austin croniousestablishment benefits from
this open primary system where you've got Democrats interfering in
the Republican process. That's hanged up with people like Dave
feelin Is, a member of the Texas House only wins
because of Democrat support.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Should do State of Texas have an election for the
secretary of state? You know they do this in other states. Missouri,
for example, a deep red state politics not terribly different
from Texas is spot and in Missouri they vote on
their secretary of state.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
It's not assigned by the governor.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
Well, i'll tell you know, it is unusual for Texas,
given that we elect railroad commissioners and we elect comptrollers
all the other positions, that we don't elect our secretary
of state. And in many ways that's because when the
secret secretary tape position was originated, it had far fewer powers.
It was, it was a far smaller position. It was
this functionary position in the office of the governor, and
(11:30):
over the years, more and more powers is going to
push there, not necessarily from the furious reasons, just because
it had to go somewhere. Someone had to be the
one stamping the papers, right, And there really is a
case we made that maybe we should move this from
being appointed to an elected position, given the amount of
power and responsibility that has been pushed into that office.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
My brother from another Michael Quinn Sullivan, I always awesome
talking to you, my man.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
How are things at Texas Scorecard? You guys doing okay?
Things are great.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
You know, we're looking forward to heading into into Thanksgiving
and the Christmas season is always fantastic, of course because
the school you're still going on. Folks can come to
Texas Scorecard and see they're reporting by Aaron Anderson who
has a mission to expose the bad apples, and every
single day you're finding about these horrible teachers and horrible
things to kids. So it's but the horrible these are
(12:26):
the kind of horrible things that we do need to
keep track of so that maybe we can root them
out and we can fix that problem.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
And we've got a lot of the fun fun thing.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
Then the actual fun things that we're covering, and some
big projects will be coming out in the next couple
of weeks.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
They're all very exciting. You know. A clever idea.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
If people want to save money on Christmas gift somebody's
still dealing with a little bite inflation in their household,
get them a Texas Scorecard dot Com subscription.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
Hey, look, it is a It's the perfect gift for
every real Texan in your family that the Texas Scorecard
dot Com. You just you all. You have to print
out the r L and hand it to them. Trust me,
you will be their face, favorite son, favorite daughter, favorite niece, nephew, grandparent,
whatever you happen to be. You give someone Texas core Cord,
they will love you forever. Is it expensive, man, it's free.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
It's free. That's great.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Everything you've heard is a lie, Well unless you heard
it from the mouth of Kenny Webster.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Oh no, don't say.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Even the bit about it is Little Kenny still not funny, Sorry, bro,
I mean Big Kenny every time.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
To Kenny Webster's pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
I gotta get some new liners. Congressman chip Roy right
after this, it should be interesting all right. A memorial
service was held today for Jane Goodell. It was incredible.
You should have seen the fancy catering setup. It was bananas,
Chip Kenny Howard, we started the interview with a banana joke.
I did not get a laugh.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
I'm not mad at you.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I'm not mad, but I do feel like that was
some of my best material today. Congressman Chip roy in
the studio right now.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Great to be here. Not a fan of banana jokes.
First thing we've learned about you this afternoon.
Speaker 6 (14:01):
Well, I'm just having flashbacks like Eddie Murphy sticking a
banana and the tailpipe that's Beverly Hills cop.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
That's all I've got going in my head, a creature
in my own heart.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Congressmanship Royce here, you want to be Attorney General, and
I've got a lot of questions for you. Some of
these were written by listeners, some of them were written
by some of your biggest critics. Why don't we just
dive into the main thing here. This is the thing
people often bring up now that you're running for office.
Trump's margin of victory in Texas was the biggest of
any twenty in twenty years. We hadn't seen a guy
(14:32):
do this. Well in the state of Texas. You are
kind of famous for criticizing Donald Trump, and you I
don't remember this happening. As someone pointed this out to
me on social media. You have been accused of referring
to MAGA supporters as MAGA f words. It happened in
December twenty twenty four in an interview with Steve DC.
(14:52):
I cannot play the SoundBite on the air, obviously as
it contained some language. Why don't we start off with
that what happened?
Speaker 6 (14:59):
Yeah, Well, first of all, great to be on the show.
And I always start with the premise that I have
a job as a member of Congress right in an
article one, to stand up for my constituents and go
do what I think is right and defend the constitution,
defend the rule of law, and represent them. So I
do that, and I do that to the best of
my ability, and I feel confident that the people that
(15:22):
have elected me over and over again support what I've
been doing and defending them. And in that vein, what
I would point out is a poll came out recently
or a score looking at how people fare with respect
to their fidelity to President Trump's agenda and our current platform.
I scored number one in Texas, number two in the
(15:43):
entire House Representatives, and number five out of the House
in the Senate. So when it comes down to actually
delivering and working with the President the big beautiful bill
on legislation, the Lake and Riley Act, where we got
good legislation put in place, I could go down the list.
No one's been doing more to advance the president agenda,
go back in time.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
I was, yes, a.
Speaker 6 (16:04):
Supporter of my friend who I've known for over a decade,
Governor Rond de Santas, who's been kicking butt in Florida
in that interview you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Let me set the stage. This matters, Sure it does.
Speaker 6 (16:17):
I had taken a public position that at the time
the funding for Ukraine, which was front and center and
a part of remember the debate over the Speaker of
the House and what the House Representatives would do. I
had taken a position that, under no circumstances should we
give any money to Ukraine at all. However, if money
(16:38):
does go to Ukraine, you certainly should secure the border
of the United States and pass HR two first as
a condition. In other words, a negotiating position that was
a strong position. So some people came at me for
saying I was pro Ukraine. Oh Chip Roy, and he
is a rhino and he wants to give money to Ukraine. Now,
(16:58):
I stuff like that happens all the time. It doesn't
bother me. But when they start running a campaign to
come after my staff and calling people in my front
office and using foul language and attacking my team for
a false narrative and a false mee, a false meme,
I reacted. Now, what did I say. I didn't say
anything about Maga mother efforts. What I said was, you
(17:22):
guys out there want to come at me and call
me a rhino, come here to my office and debate me.
Because I've spent a lifetime fighting for conservatism, and I've
devoted my entire career to limited government and outing the
swamp long before anybody was talking about it, and so
I would match my record against anybody on that front.
And to the point that I said what I said,
I meant it about the individuals who were wrongly lying
(17:45):
about our position and then attacking my staff. I'll say
it today. You got a problem, come to my office,
come debate me. I will beat you in the debate
because that's what I do.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I'm okay.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
So to that point, you're known for being principled. Look,
I'm a Ron Paul guy. I love a principled lawmaker.
Do you feel like there was ever a point where
you weren't pragmatic enough? I mean, you took a stance
that what Trump did was impeachable in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Do you still feel that way? I fought impeach twenty twenty.
Excuse me, I fought yeah.
Speaker 6 (18:13):
Twenty I fought impeachment with every ounce of my being.
Voted against impeachment twice, called out the crazy arguments that
were being made against the president in the first impeachment
and the second. My point at the time, now, remember
rewind the clock on the electors, because that's what that's
all about. Pre November twenty twenty, I was fighting saying, guys,
mail in ballants is filled with fraud and it's going
(18:35):
to create a problem in this election. Right after the election,
two days later, I flew to Atlanta, met with cletand Mitchell.
First met Marjorie Taylor Green, met with election officials in
Fulton County, Georgia, trying to get to the bottom of
the truth was then a sale because my text leaked
through the New York Times and the CNM with Mark Meadows.
Because we were trying to get the truth. I said, guys,
I need evidence, I need AMMO was the quote that
(18:57):
I used so that we could go do the one
thing that mattered. What was that get one state where
we could prove the case that we needed a different
slate of electors because President Trump had actually won that state.
Then fast forward into January, that didn't happen. On the
day that we were voting on the electors, we only
had fifty slates of electors. We didn't have another slate
(19:18):
of electors. My view, and some can disagree with this,
my view then and remains now. You cannot have the
Vice President of the United States unilaterally refusing to accept
the electors because, under no circumstances, and I'll say this
right now as Attorney General of Texas, under no circumstances
are people in Pennsylvania, people in California, or the Vice
(19:40):
president going to be able to tell me what the
electors are from the state of Texas. We send our
slate of electors as Texans to Washington.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
And the job is to count them.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
Now you can disagree with that, but my fight from
the election in twenty twenty through January sixth was to
work as hard as we could to prove fraud and
flip a SLA electors.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
We didn't do it.
Speaker 6 (20:02):
So my point then at that time was you cannot
pressure the vice president to not count the electors. And
at the end of the day, we got through all
of that. We fought the impeachment, the president beat the
law fair, the president got elected, and the president is
now doing great things. It we'll actually focus on delivering
and right now we're going to get our butts kicked
next November if Republicans in Congress don't continue to work
(20:24):
forward and deliver an agenda and drive down affordability for
the American people so we can win next November, because
guess what will happen if we don't don't impeach him again.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
I mean, I think that's a given right.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
If we lose the House, which we might, if we
lose the Senate, they remove him from office. And that
brings me to another topic. You worked for Cornin You're
famous for being associated with a guy who is spending
three million dollars a week right now, so he could
stay in office. His opponent did not endorse you. Ken
Paxton a very popular attorney general. He's a populist, you're
a populist. Obviously, two different kinds of populists. Let's start
(20:58):
off with this. One of my favorite things about Ken
Paxton is he has lawsuits with balls of steel autum
every week. He's soon every day. Most people in the
MAGA movement weren't didn't even really understand why he was
getting impeached. I've always said, if you can't explain to
a guy on an oil rig or a truck driver
what Attorney General Ken Paxton did wrong, then it probably
(21:19):
wasn't that bad.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Do you disagree with that?
Speaker 6 (21:21):
Well, first of all, you went back to my first
job out of law school, where I went to Washington
and worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee, And yes, it
was in Senator Cornon's office with Frankly, some of our
best conservative lawyers. Jim Hoe is one of our best
lawyers on the Fifth Circuit right now. Myself, rit O'Connor
is now a federal judge in the District Court who
has struck down large numbers of bad pieces of legislation
(21:43):
and as one of the judges we go to when
we want to go file suits. Which when I was
Ken Paxton's first assistant Attorney General, which by the way,
I did for a reason new Ken for a long time.
I was his first assistant. I was his first first
assistant because we're ideologically the same. And we laid out
the plan which has been carried out for the last
decade to do exactly that, which is sue the pants
(22:04):
off of bureaucrats, sue the pants off of big corporatus.
And we actually developed the strategy to be able to
go into courts that would be more favorable. Remember Democrats
have been doing that for years, we weren't doing it.
So now we started going to the Northern District, into
that court that I just talked about rit O'Connor or
Judge Chasmeric or any of the other good judges where
(22:26):
we can get some rulings that actually reflect the people
of Texas. So we laid out that strategy. Look, I've
been very public about this. I was spent sixteen months
with Ken, and it was a good sixteen months. We
built a great team with strong solid conservatives. Brantley Star
worked on that office. He's now a great conservative. Federal
judge Bernie McNew is in that office. He was a
Trump appointee to the FIRT Commission. Brantley was a Trump appointee.
(22:49):
I could go down the list. Jim Davis as a conservative.
He's now the head of the University of Texas, and
he's now moving UT in a better direction with Civitas
and a lot of things they're doing. We had a
great team. I just ultimately had a disagreement and how
you do things in the office, okay, And I've always
left it at that. I'm gonna leave it at that.
I think it kind of all speaks for itself. We
just disagreed about how you do things. Is that the
(23:11):
first of the last time that strong conservatives might disagree.
John Adams and Jefferson notoriously fought and then you know,
came back together at the end of the day. Ken's
done a great job in litigating and defending the state
of Texas. I can agree to disagree about the style
of the way you do it, and I'm going to
just focus on the way I do things.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Do you still think that he should have resigned?
Speaker 6 (23:30):
Look, I thought never made a comment about the impeachment issues.
There had nothing to do with any of that. That
was a state issue. It's been asked and answered. The
House made their position, the Senate acquitted effectively, and Ken's
been moving on and continued to litigate and defend.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
The state of Texas.
Speaker 6 (23:47):
I will just say this, there were people in that
office that I worked with who were being thrown under
the bus publicly. That were good public servants, including a
lifetime Texas ranger who was battling cancer, who had solved
his sister's old case homicide thirty years later, great respect
to the law enforcement community, and I felt the need
to defend people that I had hired and I stand
(24:07):
with as I said before, when I got mad at
the people that came at my team, the people that
I hired, that I pull on my team, I'm going
to defend them.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
That's just who I am.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
All right, let's talk about this so as the OLAG,
I mean, this is the position you want. Is Ken
Paxton's job. He is known for these lawsuits that just
sure they're ballzy. No other AG in the state would
do this. Would you do anything differently?
Speaker 6 (24:29):
I mean no, we just build on what again we
started when I was his first assistant laying into that
and carrying out great cases, and we would continue that
and go even further. I mean, look, that's just where
it is. We've got now even a heightened degree of
a need for an Attorney General who will go to
bat to fight to defend Texas. We have a massive
march of radical Sharia adherents and Islamists who want to
(24:53):
remake our state and our country, and we've got to
combat it. We got to go even further respect to
what's happening at Epic City or or this you know
Islamics that are in Houston. We've got to go even
further with respective For example, Plylor v.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Do Do.
Speaker 6 (25:06):
A lot of the listeners out there are going, wait,
what's Plyler Vdo. That was the case in nineteen I
think eighty two or three where the Supreme Court said,
sorry Texas, because it was a Texas case, you have
to provide an education for illegal alien children here with
your tax payer money. We should fight that. We've got
to go even further to stop that ridiculous mandate from
(25:27):
the Supreme Court. There are other things that I think
we can do to be even more aggressive with respect
to the das that are putting criminals on the streets
that are funded by Soros. We need to go after
the network and the vast network of the C three's
and all of the money that are coming in from
the foundations for Soros and through the various leftists and
(25:47):
Marxists that are moving people into our country and pushing
the Islamic agenda. So there's so many fronts that we
got to continue to fight. The last point I'll make
is the corporatism. I mean, Ken did a great job
going after Google, but the opinion they got there, got
the ruling with a billion and a half dollars for
Americans or Texans privacy. But we've got to go even
further further with respect to the corporatism that's going on
(26:09):
in our country, where big corporations and boards in New
York are telling us what we need to do in
Texas with their woe agenda, buying up our ranches, buying
up our you know, meat packing facilities. Hell, we even
got private equity buying up Waburger, right Like, We've got
to make sure that Texans owned Texas. And that's one
of the original charters of the Office of the Attorney
General is to deal with corporations. So we've got a
(26:30):
lot of work we need to do to continue Ken's
legacy and to defend the state very very well. And
you know, I'm proud to have Ted Cruise's endorsement, former
Solicitor General of Texas, and he had the most cases
before the Supreme Court before Scott Keller, whom I hired
along with Ken Paston to be our next listener general
when I was when I was there in the AG's office,
and Scott worked with be in Ted Cruise's office. So
(26:53):
you know a lot of the strongest legal minds are
standing alongside me.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
All right, you let's talk about that.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
When you were a lawmaker, you voted for Kevin McCarthy
to be the House Speaker. You were the final ballot ship.
This followed a marathon four day process, fifteen total ballots,
longest speaker elections since eighteen fifty nine. I love American history. Obviously,
Kevin was not well liked by a lot of conservatives.
We all know what happened with him. Looking back on it,
(27:19):
how do you feel about that vote?
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (27:21):
Well, I mean that framing respectfully isn't quite right. Remember
what led to that? There were twenty of us who
refused to seat the United States House a representative speaker
for sixty days while we were getting pilloried by people
in Texas, including activists who were blowing up my phone
on the House floor saying, Chip, you're going to hand
the speakership over to Hakim Jeffries.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
What are you doing?
Speaker 6 (27:43):
I said, have a little patience for those of us
who are trying to fight the fight to deliver what
you want us to deliver on. And guess what we
were able to do in January of twenty three deliver
three Conservatives on the Rules Committee, which is the powerful
committee which determines what gets to the House floor, Conservatives
on the Appropriations Committee to reset how we handle the
(28:03):
appropriations in spending, fight a whole laundry list of other things,
including putting the Texas Border Plan, which I drafted and
got the entire Texas delegation to sign onto, which was
the first time we had a plan that was for
border security without amnesty and without future flow H one B,
all of the nonsense. We put that together with building
(28:24):
the wall and all this stuff and funding for the wall,
and we got that to be turned into in that
agreement with Kevin the first big bill we passed that
spring was HR two, the first time Republicans have done
that in a generation. That was all a part of
that deal that we struck, myself, Andy Biggs, strong conservative
and former Freedom Coccus chairman, Byron Donalds, Scott Perry, Matt Gates,
(28:47):
Lauren Bobert, all of us. There were twenty of us,
including other Texans like Michael Cloud and Keith self. We
negotiated that and guess what, we would not have delivered
the big, beautiful bill for President Trump had we not
done that two and a half years ago. Because part
of leadership is looking around the curve, looking down the
road and setting the stage for success and taking the
(29:07):
arrows in the process. That's what I've always been willing
to do, and I did it that week. I could
go back and show you the laundry list of text
messages blowing me up on the floor from donors and
activists saying, don't risk this, you can't do this, just
make Kevin the speaker. I said, hold on, I'm not
going to just make Kevin the speaker. We need to
change the House. When we finally decided to do the deal,
(29:30):
we got major concessions that reshaped the House of Representatives
for a long time to come. Then that led to
the result that then nine months later, Matt Gates filed
the motion to you know, vacate the chair, and then
we ended up fighting through for a month and we
ended up with Mike Johnson and Mike by the way,
I fought Mike on the Ukraine HR two border security
(29:51):
piece that we started this whole interview with. But at
the end of the day, Mike has been a more
conservative speaker, and we've been working with Mike and we've
been delivering. Got the big beautiful bill done with a
three seat majority in the House, and I'm proud of
what we've been able to do through those changes.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Do you think that Matt Gates would have been a
better Attorney General than Pam BONDI.
Speaker 6 (30:09):
Well, I'm not going to get into comparison. I supported
Matt right out of the gate. I supported all of
the president's nominees strongly. When JD was being attacked last summer,
I was one of the first to publicly come out
in his defense. When Bobby Kennedy was being attacked, people said, well,
Chip Roy, why are you supporting Bobby Kennedy? Of all
people because I knew Bobby would shake things up. I
wrote an op ed in defensive Bobby, in defensive Tulsi.
(30:31):
Matt when he was nominated, defended him because I trusted
what the President was trying to do to shake up
the town. And these were all people that were going
to take on Washington. That was the key, right And
you know, I think through the first term we kind
of had that kind of learning exercise that hey, these
people who know Washington, they're not really the ones that
were going to change things up. And so you know, Matt, Bobby, Taulsi,
(30:53):
those guys would now Matt obviously name got pulled and
then Pam became to AG and we've been working with
Pam since the beginning of the year, and we continue
to try to work with the administration in all levels.
And frankly, I've been very impressed overall the administration. They
haven't lost anybody, They've got strong talents. Scott Beson's been
doing a great job at Treasury. Marco Ruby has been
kicking But as the Secretary of State, I've got good
(31:15):
friends throughout the administration. Russ Vote is the head of OMB.
He is one of my best friends in the world
much less in politics. Russ is a great friend, and
he's been doing wonders at O and B with the
recisions package. But by the way, we're not talking about
all the wins that we're getting in recisions, cutting NPR,
cutting PBS.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
I love that.
Speaker 6 (31:32):
You know, these are all things that you would have
said five years ago, goy, we never do this. Well
we're doing it.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
I mean it is great. Yeah, yes, a lot to
be said about that. All right, let's talk about your
opponents real quick. I don't know why Joan Hoffman's running
for AG. I'm not even gonna try it. I don't
know who that's a candidate for. I don't get it.
I like May's Middleton, I love the taxpayer funded lobbying things.
Someone needs to go after that. That being said, the
pulling numbers don't look crazy for Mays right now. So really,
most people consider this to be a race between you
(31:58):
and Aaron Reats. Aaron does not of the polling numbers
you have. But when you look online at what people
are saying about you and Aaron, the people on social
media really seem to like Aaron. They're very critical of
you right now. Obviously that doesn't always mean anything. Polling
numbers don't always mean anything when it comes down to
election day. Do you think we see some of the
hype for Aaron on social media translate over to the
(32:21):
ballot boxer.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Do you think the polls are accurate?
Speaker 6 (32:24):
No, we will not see that translate. He's not moved
out of single digits, and he's not going to move
out of single digits. And here's the reason why the
people of Texas are going to want somebody who's done
the job, can do the job, has been elected, has
been a lawyer, has a proven track record of being
a conservative. If you go across all of those things,
there's only one candidate who fits all of those descriptions.
(32:45):
And let's go piece by piece. You want somebody who's
been elected. Aaron Wright hasn't been elected dogcatcher, and the
only race he's ever run in he came in fourth
in a state rep.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Race.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
You go look at Do you want somebody who's actually
stood up in court, stood up in front.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Of a judge.
Speaker 6 (33:01):
I've done that as a federal prosecutor in the US
Attorney's Office. I've had my name on all of the
filings as the first Assistant Attorney General making all of
the strategic decisions alongside the age filing, the litigation filing,
the cases that we were putting forward, the briefs that
we were filing. And I've done that. I can tell
you May's Middleton hasn't done that. And you need somebody
(33:23):
who's approven conservative. I talked about the scorecard demonstrating that
I have the highest record in Texas and Congress, the
second in the House of Representatives, fifth out of the Senate,
in the House of people who have fidelity to the
GOP platform and the President's agenda. But importantly, go down
the entire list of scorecards, A plus ratings, top ratings,
(33:44):
the best in Congress on virtually every scorecard, whether it's guns,
whether it's life, whether it's the Freedom Index. I mean,
very few people are able to do what I do.
And you talked about earlier, were talking about libertarian support
and Ron Paul, who have significant support from the liberty crowd,
significant support from the gun crowd, endorsed by gun owners
of America, et cetera, significant support from Life, but also
(34:06):
has a demonstrated track record and has put his name
and his election certificate on the line. You want somebody
who's independent. You want somebody who's proven. You want somebody
who's an actual lawyer. You want somebody who knows the
AG's office. No candidate is remotely close to me on
any of those scores.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
All right, I want to go deep in the weeds
here for just a minute. I did not know about this.
A friend of mine who's a journalist tells me you
did an investigation in the University of Texas Medical Branch
on their Gain of Function lab research. And apparently nothing
came from the investigation, at least not in anything that
most people know about. Apparently the head of the lab
resigned as soon as COVID made landfall in March. Supposedly
(34:43):
there were some emails between UTMB and the Wuhan Institute
of Virology.
Speaker 6 (34:48):
What happened there, Well, we leaned in pretty hard on that,
and we were I think the only office that was
highlighting this massive problem with the taxpayer dollars that were
being funneled through this ut system with respect to gain
of gain of function. We did end up getting I
think a positive result in terms of highlighting that and
getting changes in terms of what the university was doing
and addressing it. But this gets into the issue of
(35:09):
why you want to be an executive being an AG,
because when you're a member of Congress, you're one four
hundred and thirty fifth of one half of one third
of the federal you know establishment up there in DC,
and so you can only do what you can do.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Right.
Speaker 6 (35:24):
You got to muster coalitions, and you've got to get
people to vote. You got to move bills, and I
do pretty good job of that given you know that
that narrow ability is one four hundred and thirty fifth.
But as an executive, you have the ability in AG's
office to go in and get things done and be
able to go try to move the ball, and you
can actually raise issues, you can sue. You can also
do things with your opinions. When you put out AG opinions,
(35:46):
you can force those questions, and you can also get
the legislature to act and use the bully pulpit. But
there's more room that you can that you've got in
the executive branch. So you know, look, I see lots
of things that we're doing every day that we're highlighting
in Congress. You know, where we go after an age
and see or we go highlight something. Obviously, now with
Trump in the White House, it's different in terms of
what we do with the FEDS. But we're constantly going
(36:06):
after highlighting, you know, as Brian Harrison's highlighting the stuff
at Texas A and M and the various woke crap there.
We're trumpeting that and putting it out there, you know,
reaching out or reached out to UT when there's some
planned parenthood funding that we saw on their stream. Then
we got that who observed it, went and talked to
them and guess what, They've changed it. So the more
we keep doing that, and at the AG's office, you
can do a lot more of that than you can
(36:27):
even in Congress.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
All right, I know we only have a little bit
of time left here with you, so I got to
ask about this. You have a plan right now to
freeze all immigration, all of it completely, no exceptions to that.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Can you tell us a little about that.
Speaker 6 (36:38):
Yeah, So we've got a bill that we're gonna introduce
next week called the Pause Act. We had to wait
because of the shutdown to get all this stuff drafted,
but we've got the framework put together and we're still
putting together every piece of it. But the bottom line
is we should freeze all immigration, freeze all legal immigration
until we've got our house in order. We have fifty
one million people in the United States who are foreign born.
(36:59):
That is about sixteen seventeen percent. That is the highest
percentage we've ever had. Why on earth are we going
to continue to import people when we have Americans who
can't find jobs, we have Americans who aren't able to
afford housing, we have Americans who are suffering. Let's freeze immigration.
That could be for six months, six years, sixty years,
I don't know. Let's have the conversation though, about what
we need to do to protect American jobs and American workers.
(37:22):
Let's freeze the immigration and then get some fixes. Do
we get PLYL or vdo fixed? I told you about
that earlier as ag Let's stop having a mandate that
we have to fund the education for legal alien children.
Let's stop all of the social welfare and healthcare benefits
for illegal aliens. We know what's happening, We're funding it.
That was part of the fight over Medicaid funding. That's
what the Democrats wanted to do on the shutdown fight.
(37:43):
Let's stop that funding and make sure that illegals aren't
getting those benefits. Let's go through and fix things like
birthright citizenship the President issued in executive order, Let's make
that permanent. Let's make it very clear you're only a
citizen if you're born to an American citizen, that you
can't come here in this churn and get this benefit
as a magnet of people coming here. And let's fix
H one b's which have been badly abused our corporations
(38:04):
meant money, leaving the American worker behind. And also I
introduced legislation last week to take away the C three
status from care. Let's stop funding with taxpayer dollars the
Council for Whatever Arab Islamic Relations or American Islamic Relations,
which has literal affiliations with terrorist activities. I also introduced
legislation to say that we should vet people for their
(38:24):
adherence to Sharia law when they come into the United States.
You should actually adhere to American values. This is all
stuff we need to be doing. I've been leading on
it with our bills in HR two and all of
our border bills. We need to keep leading on this front.
And I think the President deserves a great deal of
credit for what we're doing, but Congress needs to get
in behind him.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
All right, let's talk about the government shutdown real quick
in the eleventh hour. This thing with the Hemp band,
This was a surprise to some people. Delta a low
level THHC. Apparently Mitch McConnell, who was originally a supporter
of the twenty eighteen farm Bill, was the reason that
this guy. I don't know what happened with him, why
he changed his mind, only ran Paul ted Cruz and
Thomas Massey. You seem to have tried to resist this thing.
(39:04):
You know, how do you feel about it? Who do
you blame or do you support it? What do you
think about it?
Speaker 6 (39:08):
Well, obviously that there were two eleventh hour provisions. That
was one of them. I'll address the other one in
a minute in the Senate, which should not have been done. Okay,
let's be clear, this is not how you should legislate,
and I'm frankly it's offensive and frustrating.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
But you did vote for it.
Speaker 6 (39:22):
Well, hold on a second, Okay, we voted for the
reopening of the government and the funding per the president's request,
and because we were looking at people who were hurting
because of a shutdown government that Democrats are doing for
political purposes, and by the way, we needed to be
able to do that in order to get and move
forward the President's agenda. So we were forty five days
in and that was the bill that was put before us.
(39:43):
Let's take talk about the second provision, which was a
provision put in there at the eleventh hour that would
allow senators to have a private right of action against
the Office of the Attorney or you know, the Department
of Justice, looking for basically a payback for the attacks
they had on him through arct Frost. Now, look, that
was an offensive from a libertarian standpoint. You know what
(40:04):
United States senator is being targeted by the Department of
Justice and having their phone record search. It's offensive and
a massive abuse of justice, abuse of power. But here's
the problem. You can't put in a provision that says
that a senator can go get a five hundred thousand
dollars pay day simply by suing and settling with the
Department of Justice. That got stuck in at the eleventh hour.
I think we're going to fix that. On Monday, a
(40:25):
bunch of us threw a fit over that we voted
for the bill in order to get the government open.
But we're going to vote this I think provision on
Monday to reverse that. And now I think we're going
to have a full debate about what got put in
there on the issue of HEMP, which you rightly point
out was kind of a dispute between McConnell and Rand.
And look, I think that should not be the way
(40:45):
we legislate issues like that when you've got businesses that
were built around the policies that were put in place.
There are legitimate concerns about some of the stuff and
the various PHC levels and whatnot that we need to
have a conversation about, but it should not have been
put in a must pass piece of legislation like that.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Trump wants to kill the filibuster. It feels like a
mistake to me. What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 6 (41:03):
Well, So this one's interesting, right because you talked about
my Senate background, is Ted's chief of staff spending time
in the Senate.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
I know this issue really well.
Speaker 6 (41:10):
I have long over my life, said you've got to
hold that sixty vote threshold because nothing good happens in Washington.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
So anything that.
Speaker 6 (41:16):
Slows down legislation in Washington is a good thing, Right,
That's my default position. But here's the problem right now,
I believe Democrats will, with a one hundred percent degree certainty,
the next time they get the trifecta kill the filibuster.
The only reason they did in last time was Kirsten
Cinema and Joe Manchin. Now we can hold out hope
and hold our breath. That a Fetterman, right, But again
(41:37):
it depends on the majority. I mean, they've got forty seven.
If they get fifty, you know, one, two, three, four,
you're relying on Fetterman. The point here is is when
they get that again, they're going to kill it. That's
almost certain. So that's the question now is are we
willing to say, let's call the question.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
So here's my two paths.
Speaker 6 (41:57):
We either rip the band aid off and say, look,
let's just go to fit one and let's go advance
an agenda to save America. Or let's call the question
at sixty. Let's pass the constitutional modment that says it's
going to be sixty for everybody. But what we shouldn't
do is sit here and unilaterally disarm and allow Democrats
to have the leverage and the benefit to kill us
with a fifty one vote threshold. Because when they do it,
(42:17):
they will pack the court, they will make DC estate,
they will advance a radical agenda. They will socialize medicine,
medicare for all, take away freedoms, go after our guns.
They will, I mean they will take it for a
massive spind So the question here is are we going
to inspire a new generation of Americans to believe in
what we believe in?
Speaker 3 (42:35):
We better lead?
Speaker 6 (42:36):
And if all we do is sit back talking about
sixty votes and don't lead and deliver, then how are
we going to win a generation? We can use reconciliation
like we just did to advance some stuff. Fine, let's
do that, but we got to be aggressive. We can't
hide behind sixty and fail to lead. We've got a
once in a lifetime moment right now with President Trump
who's willing to take the system on, and a Republican
(42:57):
House and Senate, and we better dang well deliver.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
All Right, one more real quick question because I know
you got to run and we're way long on this.
Texas Republican primaries. All the both parties primaries open.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Or close close. If this is so obvious.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Yeah, Now, Jane Nelson wants to spend millions of dollars
to keep it open.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
So this is not a hard question.
Speaker 6 (43:15):
But the Constitution, I think very clearly will make clear
that we need to do that. That happens to be
in front of Matt Kasmerck, who you know as a
federal judge, and we'll see what he does. I've got
my suspicions of where that will go. My guess is
that they're going to find that we have our right
to association, that we're going to be able to say
that we're going to have a close primary. My guess
is it will get kicked to the legislature to define
(43:38):
the parameters of what the election should look like under
a close primary. But we'll see what happens in the
in the litigation. But yeah, of course it should be closed.
It's a non question. The only question is what do
you do to frame it? So, for example, if you're
an independent, do you get more say in a general election?
Do you have to change the structures that if it's closed?
(43:58):
Rightcause right now, independence at least they can go get
a vote or a voice in a primary. But if
you take that out and say it's just Republicans and Democrats,
how to independence? Then get a ticket you know, get
a voice in the in the fall in the general election.
That's a debate we would have on the floor, but
of course they should be closed primaries.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Chip Roy Congressman, ship ride the website chiproy dot com
with very complex Yeah, it's very very hard to remember. Well,
thank you for your time this afternoon.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
I appreciate it. Thanks for coming in, ladies and gentlemen.
Pursuit of Happiness Radio you and now it too to
the sound everyone.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
We got to run hav an awesome afternoon. Thank you
so much for listening. We'll be back bright and early
Monday morning for more of what you bought a radio for.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
You are listening to the Pursuit of Happiness Radio.
Speaker 6 (44:52):
Tell the government to kiss you're as when you listen
to this show, do do
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