Congressman Chip Roy on Texas AG

Kenny Webster interviews Congressman Chip Roy.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, if you enjoy that, you want a Johnson show
like we do, then you might also enjoy the Pursuit
of Happiness show in the afternoon with oh Kenney Webster there.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
And as a matter of fact, I think, do we
have a clip? Can we play a clip? All right?

Speaker 1 (00:18):
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 Hart, we started the interview
with a banana joke. I did not get a laugh.
I'm not mad at you. 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. Great to

(00:39):
be here. Not a fan of banana jokes. First thing
we've learned about you this afternoon.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Well, I'm just having flashbacks like Eddie Murphy sticking a
banana and the tailpipe.

Speaker 4 (00:49):
That's Beverly Hills cop. That's all I've got going in
my head.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
A creature in my own heart. Congressman chip Roy is here.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
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 do this well

(01:15):
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. I cannot play the

(01:36):
SoundBite on the air, obviously, as it contained some language.
Why don't we start off with that's what happened?

Speaker 3 (01:42):
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

(02:05):
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. Sure,
I scored number one in Texas, number two in the

(02:26):
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's agenda.
Go back in time. I was, yes, a supporter of

(02:48):
my friend who I've known for over a decade, Governor
a Rond De Santis, who's been kicking butt in Florida
in that interview you're talking about.

Speaker 4 (02:57):
Let me set the stage. This matters.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Sure it does.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
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

(03:21):
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 I stuff like that happens all the time. It

(03:43):
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 false meme, I reacted. Now,
what did I say. I didn't say anything about MAGA
mother efforts. What I said was, you guys out there

(04:05):
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 about our

(04:28):
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 1 (04:39):
That's I'm okay. 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 2 (04:53):
Do you still feel that way.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
I fought impeach twenty twenty Excuse me, I fought yeah,
twenty sure. I fought impeachment with every ounce of my
beingvoted 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,

(05:16):
mail in Ballance is filled with fraud and it's going
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,

(05:38):
I need evidence, I need ammo was the quote that
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

(05:58):
had fifty slates of electors. We didn't have another slate
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

(06:19):
are people in Pennsylvania, people in California, or the Vice
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, and the job
is to count them. 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

(06:40):
to prove fraud and flip a slate of electors.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
We didn't do it.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
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. 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 forward

(07:07):
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 1 (07:17):
I mean, I think that's a given right. 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 corn and 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,

(07:39):
two different kinds of populists. Let's start off with this.
One of my favorite things about Ken Paxton is he
has lawsuits with balls of steel on him 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 aourney

(08:00):
General Ken Paxton did wrong, then it probably wasn't that bad.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Do you disagree with that?

Speaker 3 (08:04):
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,

(08:26):
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 been carried out for the
last decade to do exactly that, which is, sue the

(08:47):
pants off of bureaucrats, sue the pants off of big corporatus.
And we actually developed a 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 know any of the other good judges

(09:09):
where 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 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

(09:31):
Trump appointee. 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.

(09:54):
Is that the first of the last time that strong
conservatives might disagree. John Adams and Jefferson notorious fought and
then you know, came back together 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 2 (10:11):
Do you still think that he should have resigned?

Speaker 3 (10:13):
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 continue to litigate and defend the
state of Texas. I will just say this, there were
people in that office that I worked with who were

(10:34):
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 cold case homicide thirty years later,
great respect in the law enforcement community. And I felt
the need to defend people that I had hired, and
I stand 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,

(10:56):
I'm going to defend them.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
That's just who I am. 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 they're ballzy. No other
ag in the state would do this. Would you do
anything differently?

Speaker 3 (11:12):
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

(11:36):
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 with this you know
Islamic cent are in Houston, We've got to go even
further with respective For example, Plyler v. Do A lot
of the listeners out there are going, wait, what's Plyler Vedo?
That was the case in nineteen I think eighty two
or three where the Supreme Court said, sorry, Texas, because

(11:58):
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 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.

(12:20):
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 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 with the

(12:42):
opinion they got there and 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 in our country, where
big corporations and boards in New York are telling us
what we need to do in Texas with their woke agenda,
buying up our ranches buying up our you know, meatpacking facilities. Hell,

(13:02):
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 corporation. So we've
got a 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

(13:25):
cases before the Supreme Court before Scott Keller, whom I
hired along with Ken Paston to be our next listener
general when I was there in the AG's office and
Scott worked with being Ted Cruise's office. So you know
a lot of the strongest legal minds are standing alongside me.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
All right. You let's talk about that.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
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, and with him looking back

(14:02):
on it, how do you feel about that vote?

Speaker 4 (14:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (14:04):
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 of 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 4 (14:25):
What are you doing?

Speaker 3 (14:26):
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. Four
conservatives on the Appropriations Committee to reset how we handle
the appropriations in spending, fight a whole laundry list of

(14:49):
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 borders security, without amnesty and without future flow
H one B all of the nonsense. We put that
together with building the wall and all this stuff and
funding for the wall, and we got that to be

(15:11):
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 Caracus chairman, Byron Donalds,
Scott Perry, Matt Gates, Lauren Bobert, all of us. There

(15:32):
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 arrows in the process. That's what I've

(15:52):
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

(16:12):
the deal, 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

(16:33):
border security 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 1 (16:48):
Do you think that Matt Gates would have been a
better Attorney General than Pam BONDI.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
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 less
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. Matt

(17:15):
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,

(17:36):
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, you know, 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 Besen's
been doing a great job at Treasury. Marco Rubio has
been kicking Bud as the Secretary of State. I've got

(17:58):
good friends throughout the administration. Russ 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 2 (18:15):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
You know, these are all things that you would have
said five years ago, goy, we never do this.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
Well we're doing it.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
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
polling numbers don't look crazy for Mays right now, so
really most people consider this to be a race between

(18:41):
you and Aaron reats.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Aaron does not have the polling numbers you have.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
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 ballot boxer?

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Do you think the polls are accurate?

Speaker 4 (19:07):
No, we will not see that translate.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
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. And let's go piece by piece. You

(19:32):
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 race you go look
at Do you want somebody who's actually stood up in court,
stood up in front.

Speaker 4 (19:44):
Of a judge.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
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 a 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

(20:06):
who's a proven 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, the best in Congress on virtually every scorecard,

(20:29):
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 has a demonstrated track record and has put

(20:51):
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 age. No candidate is remotely close to me
on any of those scores.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
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 in 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.

(21:25):
Supposedly there were some emails between UTMB and the Wuhan
Institute of Virology.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
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 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.

(21:51):
But this gets into the issue of why you want
to be an executive being an age 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 4 (22:07):
Right.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
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 the
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

(22:28):
AG opinions, 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 at Congress, you know, where we go after an
agency 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 after highlighting,

(22:50):
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 in 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 even

(23:10):
in Congress.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
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 2 (23:20):
Can you tell us a little about that.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, So we've got a bill that we're going to
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.

(23:42):
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.
Let's have the conversation though about what we need to

(24:02):
do to protect American jobs and American workers. 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, and that was
part of the fight over medicaid funding. That's what the

(24:24):
Democrats wanted to do on the shutdown fight. 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

(24:44):
which have been badly abused our corporations 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 Counsel for whatever
aerob Islamic Relations or American Islamic Relations, which has literal
affiliations with terrorist activities. I also induced legislation to say

(25:06):
that we should vet people for their 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 1 (25:24):
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.

(25:47):
You know, how do you feel about it? Who do
you blame or.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
To support it? What do you think about it?

Speaker 3 (25:51):
Well, obviously 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 how you should legislate. And
I'm frankly it's offensive and frustrating.

Speaker 4 (26:04):
But you did vought for it. Well, hold on a second.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
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. Let's take talk

(26:27):
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
them through Arctic frost. Now, look, that was an offensive
from a libertarian standpoint. You know what United States senators

(26:48):
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 bunch of us threw

(27:08):
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 we legislate issues like

(27:29):
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 THC 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 1 (27:43):
Trump wants to kill the filibuster. It feels like a
mistake to me. What's your thoughts on that?

Speaker 3 (27:46):
Well, So this one's interesting, right because you talked about
my Senate background as Ted's chief of staff, spending time
in the Senate, I know this issue really well. I
have long over my life, said you've got to hold
that sixty vote threshold because nothing good happens in Washington.
So anything that's slow 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

(28:08):
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, 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

(28:29):
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 4 (28:38):
So here's my two paths.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
We either rip the band aid off and say, look,
let's just go to fifty 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 in unilaterally disarm and allow Democrats
to have the leverage and the benefit to kill us
with a fifty one vot threshold, because when they do it,

(29:00):
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 spend. So the question here is are we going
to inspire a new generation of Americans to believe in
what we believe in?

Speaker 4 (29:18):
We better lead?

Speaker 3 (29:19):
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

(29:40):
House and Senate, and we better dang well deliver.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
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 or
clothes close.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
If this is so obvious.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah, now Jane Nelson wants to spend millions of dollars
to keep it open.

Speaker 4 (29:56):
So this is not a hard question.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
But the Constitution, I think, I think very clearly will
make clear that we need to do that. That happens
to be in front of Matt Kasmirick, 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 closed primary.
My guess is it will get kicked to the legislature

(30:20):
to define the parameters of what the election should look
like under a closed 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

(30:40):
that if it's closed right cause 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
fall in the general election, that's a debate we would
have on the floor. But of course they should be
closed primaries.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Chip Roy Congressmanship ride the website chip roy dot com
with very complex Yeah, it's very very hard to remember. Well,
thank you for your time this afternoon.

Speaker 4 (31:06):
Appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Thanks for coming in, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 4 (31:11):
Pursuit of Happiness Radio You and Now and two to
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