Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
It's the new year and time for the new you. You've thought about running for political office but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from godaddy.com today.
Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Folks, we've had some good guests on this program over the almost two years we've now been on the air, but no guest quite at this level. The gentleman we have on the line with us today is a graduate first in his class, which is pretty impressive, Chuck. Very. From West Point Military Academy, Harvard Law. He has served as a member of Congress. He has been the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Director
Then he became the 70th Secretary of State of the United States, Secretary Mike Pompeo. Welcome to the program. Sam and Chuck, it's great to be with you all today. Thank you. So, Mr. Secretary, so...
President Biden did a Biden thing again and just spoke off cuff. And he said, we are at the risk of a nuclear Armageddon, the highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, as the Russians are reeling from Ukraine. What are your thoughts on that? And what should the United States be doing to, A, help Ukraine win, and B, lessen this possibility of a nuclear Armageddon, which Joe Biden has put in everybody's mind now?
Oh, my goodness. Well, that remark is, to be polite, unfortunate, and to be less polite, deeply dangerous. I saw the reporting of the remarks. Somehow it sounds like he was just speaking off the cuff at a fundraising event. He used language that if the President of the United States actually believed, if he believed we were on the precipice of an Armageddon-like nuclear conflict with the Russians, he should be speaking directly to the American people about the seriousness of what's going on. Instead, he just kind of
At your point, he did a Biden thing and just wandered around the room and mumbled. The Russians heard that mumbling. The Ukrainians heard that mumbling. Leaders all across the world heard that mumbling, and the American people heard it too. And now he's going to have to go figure out what he's going to tell us. As for the situation, there's no doubt it is dangerous.
dangerous. Vladimir Putin has made repeated threats to use what he calls battlefields. We've referred to them as tactical nuclear weapons. These are serious instruments of power, and unleashing nuclear power is a big deal. And the only thing that the United States can do is continue to provide the tools and the weapon systems that the Ukrainians need to shorten the time period at which Vladimir Putin can continue to threaten this.
And, you know, I'll give the Biden administration credit for providing systems, but they've been too slow, too short, too hesitant, and too worried about provoking Vladimir Putin. My judgment is Vladimir Putin has done been provoked. He's killed thousands and thousands of Ukrainians and thousands and thousands of his own soldiers and continues
continue to conscript people, throw them into the battlefield with less than two weeks training. We can push back. President Biden is not a victim, as his remarks last night made it sound. He is a primary actor in ensuring that Vladimir Putin never unleashes his nuclear arsenal. Is this, Mr. Secretary, the most dangerous aspect? The Biden administration has proven they are really bad at lots of things.
But is his capacity to just sort of spitball randomly about foreign issues and foreign policies in ways that are deeply disturbing and dangerous or perceived as deeply disturbing and dangerous by other countries, is that sort of the most dangerous element of his presidency? Yeah.
Boy, it's hard to pick amongst the things that present risk, right? The domestic issues. But yes, it's the case. I still get calls from people around the world who I came to know when I was the Secretary of State. And what they're often asking is, what the heck is American policy? Who's running it? We hear President Biden say one thing, his team comes out and reverses it. We've seen that on Taiwan, not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. And
And what they're looking for is a clarion. They're looking for someone to speak directly about the things that America is prepared to do and then be prepared to execute on. One of the things I'm most proud of for my time in the Trump administration is that we didn't say we would do everything everywhere. We were pretty clear about that. But the things we said we would do, we were prepared to do. And when we were called upon to do them, we did them. And that credibility matters. And when you wander around a donor meeting, talk
Talking about Armageddon as if, gosh darn it, there's nothing you can do about it. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, our European allies and friends, the Israelis, they all see that and they think, what the heck, and begin to hedge their bets in ways that are deeply, deeply dangerous for the United States of America. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, let's talk about Iran quickly here.
they're having the protests. Are these protests different than ones in the past, in your mind? We know Iran loves you, obviously. The Iranian people do. Not the leadership. Yeah, yeah, not the leadership. So do you feel this moment in Iran is different than the others, or is it just another, we're going to have some protests, they're going to kill a bunch of their civilians, and we're on to the conservative course they take?
Oh, goodness. It's hard to know. It feels a little bit different. It's gone on a little bit longer. The nature of the people protesting and the things over which they're protesting are a little bit different than before. But I'm always mindful that there's enormous power in the IRGC, the internal police force. They are still firmly in charge here, and they have demonstrated a brutal willingness to suppress their own people.
And I hope that the United States is doing all the things that it can to encourage the Iranian people to continue to demand simple things like being able to show your hair or live your own life the way you want to. And we're encouraging these folks who are protesting against a regime that is killing its own. It feels a little bit different to me, but I've also seen before the moments where it looks like a regime is about to find itself in a very difficult place and it doesn't.
And then the last thing I'll say is, you know, it's also very hard to know when that moment will happen, when the snap will occur. We didn't anticipate that the Berlin Wall would fall to the day it did either. But hard work, patriotic work by Americans for decades provided the groundwork. And we ought to do the same kind of thing here in Iran so that the Iranian people get a chance to have their voices heard.
Mr. Secretary, I really felt like you and the Trump administration were doing that work, frankly, with the Abraham Accords and the work you did in the Middle East. Laying that groundwork really requires bringing a partnership together of the other countries that we can work with in that area. And do you feel the Biden administration, I think that's actually one area they've carried on kind of quietly, carried on some of the policies that you and President Trump developed recently.
But at the same time, they're clearly not the quality of ally that our partners in that region need. They're not reliable, as you just said. You can see it. You can see it just this week in the Saudi decision to announce a two million barrel per day reduction in its oil output target.
That wouldn't have happened just two years ago. It wouldn't have happened because the United States would have been drilling, providing its own energy. So in the first instance, we would have been doing what every nation must do, which is self-help, take care of our own. And we're highly capable of providing affordable energy for ourselves and for much of the world. So we wouldn't have put ourselves in this precarious position. And then, you know, Chuck, they did carry on pieces of what we did with the Abraham Accords.
But in the end, they chose Iran to negotiate with. And that's what the, if you're a Gulf state Arab leader, you see the American sitting at the table with the Ayatollah and
and negotiating a deal which guarantees that Iran will get a nuclear weapon, that is all the signal you need to realize you have to make other friends. So they begin to get closer to the Chinese. They begin to play footsie with the Russians. They begin to hedge the bets because their security partner, the United States of America,
is now negotiating on the timeline for a nuclear weapon for their eternal adversary or their most threatening adversary. And not only do the Arab states see that, the Israelis, our best security partner in the region, sees that too. And so they upended what we had done. The Abraham Accords only happen because we confront the Iranian regime in a serious way and impose massive sanctions on them that denied them the resources to build out their nuclear program.
Let's go south of the border. Let's say there's a President Mike Pompeo, the 46th President of the United States. What would you do about the southern border and what would you do about the cartels?
oh, this is important. You know, as a Secretary of State, I spent a ton of time in Mexico. It's very unusual. Secretaries of State usually don't. We think of Mexico as a friend and ally neighbor, not as a foreigner, right? I spent a lot of time down there because the border mattered. American sovereignty mattered. I saw that when I was CIA director. I saw the people that were coming across the border, the risk of terrorism inside our own country. So what the next administration must do, because this one clearly isn't going to,
is returned to the central policies that we put in place i negotiated what became remain in mexico it's a simple idea of great by far your claim for a file but you're not coming here while you do it uh... you don't be live in northern mexico and it soon as we got that in place and the court didn't throw it out uh... the spigot was turned up the magnet was gone because uh... the reason they travel here is because they know they can come filter into society appear uh... for an awfully long time and then someday will grant amnesty to the business their theory
We should put Remain in Mexico back in place. As for the cartels...
We have never, and I'm glad you asked this question, we've never had ungoverned space on our southern border. Guys, when we talk about ungoverned space, we usually think about the hills of Tora Bora, what the hell, Osama bin Laden built, or in Africa where al-Shabaab is. We have space on our southern border that there is no national power policing. And these cartels are roaming free. And I am very worried that these cartels that, you know, frankly begin to look like terror organizations...
will begin to exert the influence here in the United States in ways that are even worse than the fentanyl and the human trafficking they're bringing on us today. We can shut these cartels down. We must demand that the Mexican government do it. And if they won't, we got to do it. Mr. Secretary, I'm going to ask you a hard question, one you might be hesitant to answer, so you can just kick it back right at me. But how much of Mexico is under control of the Mexican government right now?
Yeah, I think the best analysis says it's somewhere between 60% and 70% of the real estate, more than that of the population because they're in control in the big cities.
But you have huge states, their governance, huge states that are largely being run by cartels or law enforcement agencies that are on the take from the cartels. This is a real problem for people who live in Arizona and California and Texas along our southern border. And then that all moves through. This is deeply dangerous. Attorney General Barr and I had a
had a series of proposals that we were presenting to the president about what we would do as we began to build out our security against the risk from these ungoverned spaces in Mexico. How much ability would the U.S. have to go in and target these cartels? I mean, how much? Because Mexico will not really partner with anyone against them because they're flatly killing every politician and journalist in that country who questions the cartels at all.
How much room do we have to work with the Mexican government to actually do something?
So it's a difficult problem, one that we presented to the Mexican government. And we just have a short time, but I'll say this. We have always done whatever America needed to do to protect itself. And we are now under assault. We have crime in the United States as a direct result of what these cartels are doing. They're killing kids in our cities all across the country with fentanyl and drugs. We have a responsibility to fix it. And if the Mexican government doesn't give us the authority and the permission to do it, we're going
we're going to have to find a way, and I'm confident that there is one. Fantastic. Secretary, 70th Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be back with us on our next segment here. Oh, I'm sorry. Nope, we got him over one segment. And Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you all. Wonderful to be with you. Bless you. Thank you. Battlegrounds back right after this. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. On the line with us next...
Brian Dometrovich. Brian, I hope I got your name right there. Yeah, Dmitrovich. Dmitrovich. Okay, much better. He is the Richard S. Strong Scholar at the Laffer Center in Nashville. For folks who don't know Art Laffer, a great economist, someone I have deeply admired his work.
So we're very excited to have him on the program today. He is the author and editor of six books, including Standard History of the Supply Side Economics, Econoclasts, and his forthcoming book,
book, Taxes Have Consequences, co-authored with Art Laffer and Gene Sinkfeld. I'm going to get this wrong, Chuck. I'm sorry. And Brian Sinkfeld? Sinkfeld? I'm sorry. But yes, taxes have major consequences, and we see that every day. And Brian, thank you so much for joining us, and welcome to the program.
It's really great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Former college students who are having a hard time making their private student loans. You can learn more about this great opportunity to invest with them. It's secure. It's collateralized. So look up, call 855-316-3087 or simply go to their website, which is invest.com.
Y-R-E-F-Y dot com and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you and get yourself on a good financial path to safer retirement. You get a 10.25% return, so you can actually beat this terrible Biden inflation, at least for now. 10.25% is pretty good, isn't it, Brian? Yeah, I get that. All right, Brian, now we've talked about inflation. Let's get into it. All right, so...
Explain to our audience, pretend you and I are walking down, we're going to a convenience store or a hardware store. People keep hearing about inflation. They just know when you have high inflation, things cost more. But sort of the old series of books, Dummy's Guide to, pretend Sam and I are that audience. Give us a Dummy's Guide to Inflation. Chuck lets me honestly are that audience. Give us a Dummy's Guide to Inflation. How does it start? What role does the Biden administration play in the current 8.5% inflation we have?
Yeah, we've had inflation in the past. That should be our guide to what's going on today. The major episode in American inflation, at least in recent history, was that of the 1970s, in which the price level tripled. Prices went up 8% every year for 12, 13 years, sometimes
Five times they went up over 10% per year in the 70s and early 1980s. That was the era of stagflation. Now, we know a lot about now what caused that stagflation. We went off the gold standard. I mean, the dollar was on the gold standard as of 1971. Richard Nixon took it off that year, never to return again. What was the response the next decade? No deal with the dollar's worth. You don't know what the dollar's worth, and everything price-to-make goes up.
We also had very high tax rates, up to 70%, 7-0. Nobody wants money if the return, if the profit comes taxed 70%. So when there's not demand for the dollar, the prices of everything priced in dollars goes up. There's demand for other stuff, not the dollar. When Ronald Reagan cut tax rates in the early 1980s, all of a sudden people said, hey, I want to go get that dollar so I can invest in it because the profits come back to me less taxed. Real return is higher. And you said the collapse of inflation.
So right now, I think we have to learn from that. We shouldn't necessarily look at the Fed and printing money and all that stuff. But we have a big government with lots of spending. Taxes are fairly high. Nobody wants to do business. You don't want to do business, and you're not going to be interested in going to the bank and taking out a loan and demanding that dollar. And if nobody demands the dollar, prices are going to go up.
How much are we seeing stagflation now? Because it does seem like people's incomes are lagging behind the level of inflation that we're seeing across the country. Simple definition of stagflation is just the two parts of that word, staginflation, economic stagnation and price inflation. And we're seeing that pretty perfectly right now. You look at, say, GDP growth, you know, the standard model of the economy.
It's absolutely flat. About zero was even negative for the first two quarters of this year. Might be negative this third quarter. So that's stagnation. And then we have, what, 8.5% inflation. So one, two, we got it.
One of the things that I've been seeing is reporters who, quite frankly, one of the few things that came out of the Obama administration that I thought was right on was when Ben Rhodes ran his mouth to The New Yorker and said that reporters know absolutely nothing. And you're seeing all these reporters sort of touting numbers, spending, you know, consumer spending is up 0.8 percent or 0.3 percent, whatever it is.
But when you're factoring in inflation, that's actually a drop in consumer spending, isn't it? Well, yeah. If the dollar is going down in value, you want to get rid of your dollars. I mean, you don't want to sit on dollars that they're going to lose 10% every year. You want to exchange them for goods and services more quickly than you might otherwise, especially if what you buy might be durable in some fashion. You saw that with cars.
Cars being bought and then increasing in value after you bought them. When has that ever happened before? So it's just that if there's inflation, people want to get rid of their money. So if a consumer spend is going up, that means they're exchanging dollars for non-dollar things. And that makes perfect sense in an inflationary environment.
Let's talk a minute about so progressives want to keep raising taxes. Right. And in the 1950s, you had a 91 percent tax rate, which is just hard to fathom. Right. It seems made up, but I'm sure Bernie Sanders thought it was still too low. OK, so we always hear about the good old days of the 50s. The good old days in the 50s weren't really great economically. Right. We had like what, three, four recessions during that time.
Yeah, so Arthur Lafferty and St. Colvin and I have just written a big history of the income tax. Taxes have consequences, came out last week. And we have a whole devoted chapter, a long chapter on the 1950s, fun chapter to write. Yeah, I mean, the 1950s are nowhere near as nice as national memory serves. There were four recessions in the long 1950s, 1949, 50, 53, 54, severe one in 57, 58, and then in 1950, 56, when Kennedy got elected.
Four recessions in 11 years. It's not enviable. Unemployment was usually 7%, very low participation in the workforce. Okay, all that. But of course we did fine in the 50s with suburbanization, jobs for life, all that. Government spending at the federal level was 16% of GDP, easily a quarter to a third lower than it is today. So whatever you say about this tax rate,
They were not collecting enough to fund as big a government we have today. And that's the reason we grew as we did back then. In your book, Taxes Have Consequences in Income Tax History of the United States, is there anything you learned that surprised you as you did your research for the book? Well, yeah, what the big surprise is, and I mean, we knew this intuitively, but we really discovered it on research.
is that when tax rates go up, I mean, the rich really shelter their income way beyond anything we ever had any understanding of and way beyond the understanding of the IRS and the government. I mean, in the 1930s, when Hoover and Roosevelt, FDR raised income tax rates at the top,
They were completely surprised by the reaction. I mean, the legal sheltering was so creative on the part of the top 1% that it completely whiffed out Congress. It's like, well, we raised taxes. We didn't care at all what happened. And then they do an investigation, and they find this just incredibly...
imaginative legal devices to avoid taxation at the top. And that ended up being the big discovery of our book. And that was the secret to the 50s, by the way. Nobody paid at that 91 percent rate. They found all sorts of ways at the top to earn money and not be subject to income tax rates. We have just 30 seconds before we go to break. Brian Domitrovich with the Laffer Center. How do folks follow your work?
Well, we have a website, LafferCenter.org, and I have a website, GlobalMonitorism.com, and you can find our book on Amazon. Fantastic. We're going to be right back with more from Brian in just a moment. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. On the line with us right now, Brian Dometrovich, Richard S. Strong, scholar at the Laffer Center, co-author of the new book, Taxes Have Consequences.
So tell us this. If you were president, what would you feel is the most important tax to cut? Is it personal income tax? Is it business tax? What taxes do you feel have the biggest bearing on our economic growth?
Yeah, well, that's a good question. That's a question that President Trump confronted in 2017. He said, what tax is sticking out like a sore thumb right now? He said that in 2017, and he said, aha, that corporate rate, that top corporate rate at 35% is the highest in the world. That's sticking out like a sore thumb, so let's cut that. So he took that down to 21%. Well, now I think that does leave the personal income tax rate
Pretty high, 37. But I think I still might vote for the top capital gains rate. I can't actually tell how high that rate is because President Obama made it so complicated with these surcharges. But I think that rate is now 23 to 28 percent, depending on what exclusion you can claim. And when you have inflation.
The capital gains tax is on index for inflation. So if you gain 8% on your asset this year and sell it, you have to pay that 25% capital gains rate. Well, that's crazy. The income tax is indexed for inflation. So I think I'm going to vote for a cut or an elimination in the capital gains tax. So Florida, where we're on in Miami, Tampa, and Orlando, they have no state income tax. Arizona just voted on a flat 2.5% tax.
Would a flat tax for the United States really add a lot to our economy? Would it really help it grow?
Oh, absolutely. If we lowered rates and flattened, lowered and flattened rates, we would have a much more rational tax system. We essentially had that in the late 1980s when there were only two rates, unbelievably, just 15 and 28 percent. And that set the stage for the great boom of the 1990s. It is true that Bush and Clinton fiddled with those rates a little bit. But that was the trajectory towards this incredibly complex, high, staggered, progressive rate system.
system that went from 20 to 70, superfused down to 15 and 28. That gave us the 40 million new jobs and 4.4% GDP growth every year in the 80s and 90s. That would be a great solution, but the rate's got to be way lower than 37 as it is now.
So tell me this, Brian, how did you get in excited about studying and become a researcher on taxes and the income tax history? Were you the kid when the encyclopedia guy came to the door, you bought all of them or read them all? I mean, how did you get to this point in life?
Well, to tell you the truth, I mean, as Albert Camus once said, you know, all of one's activities in life are trying to recapture when one came of age at the age of 15. I mean, that's when I was witnessing the Reagan Revolution. I was a little kid under Carter, and the economy was embarrassing. And then I just saw this incredible wave, this transition into mass prosperity that was supposed to be the birthright of the country, the American dream, in the 80s and then the 90s. And
And, like, what made that transition? I mean, that's what captured my attention, and now I've really followed it up with all this work. You know, I think I'm a little younger than both Chuck and you, Brian, here. Yes, you are. But I remember very specifically as a little kid –
My impression of the 70s, the late 70s into the start of the 80s, was of a very gray, depressed, really oppressed country. And then Reagan came along and all of a sudden it's like you said, all of a sudden it really was morning in America. There was this enormous hope and optimism and suddenly people were doing a lot better than they were. I think people are missing that perspective right now.
But is that kind of where we're heading right now? I mean, if we don't right this ship, is that where we're heading? Well, I totally agree with you. That was the mood then. And the shift was just stunning. And I think it's embedded kind of in the consciousness of all Americans, especially the youngest generations that are just coming of age, that their birthright really is the American dream. And so I do think there are powerful forces that will kind of push towards reversion to trend today.
So, no, our current course is horrible. Throughout the whole 21st century, 22 years, it's been growing at like under 2%. Never had anything that bad in American history for that long. So we've got to make a turnaround. And I think the will of the American people, in particular the younger generation, will make it happen.
Fantastic. Brian, once again, we have just a little over a minute before we end this segment. We really appreciate you being on with us today. What would be your last word? What do you tell Americans about what needs to happen in the coming years to turn this inflation around?
Well, you have to have small governments and rationally organized governments while being small. So you can't have $6 trillion in spending. You can't have a tax system that's trying to collect 40% on incomes and is under indexed for inflation. You can't have mass regulation. You just can't have that stuff. And when you start tearing that away –
Then you start seeing demand for money that kills off inflation, and people throw themselves into the private sector, and they start thriving. And they start saying, you know, we don't need government jobs. We don't need government contracts. And spending naturally falls. That's what happened in the late Clinton years. And we have that right in our grasp in our historical resources, and that should give us some courage as we confront our challenges. Fantastic. Brian Dometrovich of the Laffer Center, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate having you on the program. It's great to be on the show.
Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Thank you for joining us today. Obviously, fantastic show starting off with Secretary Mike Pompeo. I want to thank him again for joining us. That was just phenomenal. Brian Dometrovich of the Laffer Center, obviously touching on something really critically important, the inflation that is tearing up this country right now. And folks, if inflation is tearing up your portfolio, if your portfolio looks like mine,
Oh, man, Chuck, it's ugly. I told you not to look at it. I'm trying, but for crying out loud, every morning I wake up and there's a giant new headline, the stock market crashed again today. Just stop looking. Stop opening that mail. Oh, dude. I don't know. But you know what you can do, folks? If you want to avoid the pain that I keep experiencing every morning is go to investyrefy.com. That's invest, the letter Y, R-E-F-Y.com. Go there. You can...
earn a great return, over 10% return, which actually is beating the Biden inflation. So you can actually make money on your money still, and you're doing good for folks, helping out students who have gotten behind on their college loans, get good refinancing, cut their rates, cut the amount they're paying. So you earn good and you do good.
Win-win. Go to invest, Y-R-E-F-Y, that's invest, the letter Y, R-E-F-Y.com, and make sure that, you know, tell them Chuck and Sam sent you, or call them, 844-204-7756. That's 844-204-7756. Make sure they know Chuck and Sam sent you, because folks...
We really appreciate InvestWire. We find their support of this program and the things they're doing for college students and for investors in this country. They're doing good stuff. Absolutely. So we have a couple of things we want to talk about in this segment. First of all, Jeremy, could you play those two clips, please? This first one is from the U.S. Army recruiting commercial. Oh, geez. And the next one is from the new organization TroopsSpeakOut.com, which is our 70th Secretary of State's PAC, talking concern about the woke military. Go ahead, Jeremy.
Although I had a fairly typical childhood, took ballet, played violin, I also marched for equality. I like to think I've been defending freedom from an early age. When I was six years old, one of my moms had an accident that left her paralyzed. Doctors said she might never walk again, but she tapped into my family's pride to get back on her feet, eventually standing at the altar to marry my other mom. With such powerful role models, I finished high school at the top of my class.
This is the worst damn ad ever, Chuck.
I am so privileged. I had to join the military. I found it. A way to prove my inner strength and maybe shatter some stereotypes along the way.
Okay, stop, Jeremy. We've got to stop. We've got to stop this right now. I'm going to throw up on this microphone here. All right, Jeremy, let's play the next one now. That is the worst darn ad I've ever heard for our U.S. military. Well, this was the concern from former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Oh, for crying out loud. So he has started a PAC, and this is an issue he's concerned about. Go ahead, Jeremy.
When I got accepted to the United States Military Academy, I knew my life had changed forever. My first assignment was as a platoon leader in a tank platoon. As a young officer, I had dozens and dozens of young men and women come to work alongside of me. These were some of America's finest. These were people who understood what America was truly about.
Our military today is under assault from the radical left. If you're a young kid sitting in a foxhole, you don't give a darn about political correctness. If we focus on the wrong priorities, then Americans will be a lot less safe. We'll use the right pronouns, but what we won't have is the capacity to keep our country safe. I can assure you that there's no Russian general, no Iranian leader, no Chinese Communist Party admiral who's spending one second thinking about gender or woke ideology or climate change.
They're thinking about how to kill Americans, and the fight is on. We have to walk away from this radical left ideology. We cannot let it penetrate our military. You know, so... I mean, amen to all of that. Well, so the first ad, which was funny, it was animated. It was well done. What's funny is when they showed the women in the UC Davis, they were all real pretty in it, you know, so they weren't body positive movements there. Look, Salmon, I don't care who your parents marry.
We want people who love America and treat it. So the military is spending who knows how much on this ad, which is probably targeting 100 people that are even interested in that category. No, Sid, I mean, seriously, she described the demographic least likely to ever join the military. Yeah, who cares about it, right? I mean, this is like McDonald's trying to sell Big Macs to vegans. So, you know, and we now have military recruitment down 15%, 25%.
And they wonder why. And, you know, look where you get your soldiers from. They come from rural, suburban families, previous military generations, generations. And if you have that tradition,
Why are you going to say, you know what, I'm going to go join this new woke movement? I'm sure they're having relatives say, don't bother. It's not worth your time. This is not what I knew growing up. Look, this is you're getting this in police departments, too, where they're they're force feeding all these folks the same woke ideology that this critical race theory, gender ideology. And I got to tell you, Chuck.
I really don't give a darn what pronoun, whether our armed forces use the right pronoun. I want them to use the right weapon. Right. You know, so what they're missing right now is what is the central thesis of what our military is supposed to do, what its focus. And their focus is to protect America. It's to protect our national security, to protect our freedoms. They're not...
The military has done a lot of great things with integration, things of that nature. But this seems to be going way overboard to fit some social science professor at some university saying this is how we integrate this when it's not even your target. The problem is it's not even your target market. I mean, I could get if you're if you're a high tech company and you're trying to reach out to a bunch of people. Right. That's that's sort of the universe. If that was Apple.
I would kind of just shake my head and assume that's what they're doing. But, you know, again, the line from Secretary Pompeo's ad said, I can assure you that there's no Russian general, no Iranian leader, no Chinese Communist Party admiral who's spending one second thinking about gender.
or woke ideology or climate change. That's right. Folks, let the military do what it's supposed to do and stop trying to make it something it's not supposed to be. Look, not to be crass, but I want a military that is better at killing people than anybody else's military, period. That is the purpose of it. We had in Arizona last night a race that has been
by all the prognosticators, a toss-up, right? Right. Last couple weeks, he's gone lead Democrat. I don't think it's a lean Democrat. I think it's still very much a toss-up, much too, you know, look, I'm not an anti-Mitch McConnell guy. I think he abandoned this way too early. Blake Masters is two or three points down. He's probably closer than that because I think Republicans are being undersampled on these various polls right now. And you look at the enthusiasm. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot more enthusiasm. Double-digitism gap. But we're going
to play some clips from last night's debate where you can tell Mark Kelly never has to answer a question. And you can blame folks like the Arizona Republic for that. They give him a free pass on everything. He has been running a basement strategy like Joe Biden has for the past two years. So is Katie Hobbs in the governor's race. I mean, they don't answer anything. So, Jeremy, let's go with number one. I've been focused on the border since day one on this job.
I'm down there all the time. I was on the phone this week just, you know, with Mayor Nichols of Yuma, Sheriff Daniels of Cochise County, talking about what more we need for Border Patrol and immigration. That, my friend, is called evasion. We're working to raise Border Patrol pay by 18 percent. I've got legislation to do that. I've been focused on the border since day one.
Okay. You know, we know great effects because we have a wide open southern border. So if that's the best you can do, I respectfully request you resign. Let's get someone in the seat who will actually secure our border. The border, since Mark Kelly's been elected, is worse off than it was the day he was elected. Oh, by a lot. And by using that standard, if the national press.
If this is a Republican and you had this, they would be all over them. Mark Kelly has done nothing to get this border across. If he really was representing Arizona, because we are tied 50-50, he could literally go the Republican side. I'll give you that 51st vote. Here are the things we need to do. And it may not be the...
perfect policy decision in the Republicans' eye, but even if he got a B grade on it, he'd probably get the vote. It would be significant. Yeah. It would be significant. So you go and you push these things saying, you know, I can make this difference. Well, there's 50 votes for you on the other side. Well, get them. And you've done nothing since Biden's come in office and 5 million people have come. Literally since Biden's in office, folks, 5 million people have come to this country illegally. Yeah. Yeah. And
So look around. One or two out of every hundred people you meet are here illegally and have come here since Joe Biden. Yeah, it's unbelievable. Jeremy, let's go clip number two, please, from the debate last night.
You never have to wonder which way Senator Kelly is going to vote because any spending bill that Biden puts in front of him, he will sign. So yeah, we got the Inflation Reduction Act and Mark Kelly was the deciding vote. He hired 87,000 new IRS agents. Mark Kelly voted to send stimulus checks to illegal aliens. He voted to send stimulus checks to get this, violent felons sitting in jail. Is that a good use of taxpayer money? I don't think so. Think about that the next time you go to the grocery store and you can't afford to buy steak or eggs.
So that's another wonderful clip by Blake. Mark Kelly last night in that debate was justifying the 87,000 IRS agents. Oh my goodness. I almost fell over. It was unbelievable. I wish the one thing Blake had hit him on is Mark Kelly voted against an amendment that
That would have, you know, not allowed audits for people's incomes $400,000 or less. He voted against it. So Mark Kelly was last night saying, well, we're going to the super rich. Well, you had the opportunity to prove that with the vote and he did not. But this is the one thing about Mark Kelly, which is completely different than Kyrsten Sinema. And Blake Masters brought this up and I'm surprised it's not got more play. When a vote comes up like Build Back Better, you don't know where Kyrsten Sinema is going to be.
Right. I mean, you know, she's at least thinking of it or trying to figure out what she's going to get out of it or what she can get out of it. I mean, Mark Kelly is like Julia Roberts and pretty woman. He's a sure thing for Joe Biden. He doesn't need he doesn't need to be courted. He doesn't need to be seduced. He is a sure thing for Joe Biden. That's exactly right. And, you know, I mean, look, he's there literally saying that these these 87000 IRS agents that he voted for are there to pursue the billionaires.
Well, Chuck, there's 720 billionaires in this country. So how many IRS agents are you personally going to assign to each one of them? In fact, his preparation for the debate was horrible last night. Jeremy, let's go clip number three. For the past two years under Joe Biden and Mark Kelly, we've been going in the wrong direction. Everybody knows it. You are less safe today. Your bills have gone way up since Mark Kelly took over. He's got a bunch of excuses. I think you heard a lot of them here tonight.
You know, it's up to you to decide whether excuses are enough. But ask yourself, do you deserve a secure border? Do you deserve to feel safe when you walk outside at night? Do you deserve to be able to afford your own home if you work hard enough? I think the answer is yes. You deserve so much better than what we have. Mark Kelly disagrees. Otherwise, he wouldn't have spent two years backing Biden every time. Send me to the U.S. Senate if you think that you and your family deserve better so we can go in the right direction.
Well, that's exactly right. So Mark Kelly, he tried to pull a military card last night. Here's what Mark Kelly provides. Mark Kelly votes for Joe Biden almost 100% of the time. He's a sure thing. Mark Kelly supported 87,000 new IRS agents, $80 billion to fund them, right? That money could make a big difference on the border, right? He could have secured our border for that money.
Since Mark Kelly's been in office, people in Arizona are paying $200, $300, $400 more a month just for the basic necessities that they were paying for in 2020. $8,600 a year per family. I am stunned when Republicans think this man is a moderate.
Vote for Mark Kelly just because you want to vote for Mark Kelly. But please do not, under any circumstance, pretend like he is some moderate. There's nothing moderate about Mark Kelly. There's nothing conservative about Mark Kelly. Mark Kelly is a sure thing for the progressive agenda. I'm going to add something I think is worse. There is nothing thoughtful about Mark Kelly's actions in Congress. When you say he's a sure thing, he's just a rubber stamp. Absolutely.
Kyrsten Sinema has a thoughtful approach to governing, and it's valuable. Mark Kelly is a stuffed shirt with a rubber stamp. I would submit to you Chuck Schumer is much more thoughtful in his votes than Mark Kelly. Far more. I mean, Mark Kelly is just stamp of approval. Stuffed shirt, rubber stamp on the end. Great show today, Sam. We loved having our guest today. We learned a lot about foreign policy, taxes. The 50s weren't what everybody thought regarding economic prosperity, but good stuff today. Really good stuff.
Really good stuff. Folks, make sure you tune in again next week. We're going to have more great guests. Can't thank Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Brian Dmitrovich from the Laffer Center. Really appreciate them coming on the program. We're going to be back on the air next week. Be sure to tune in.
The political field is all about reputation, so don't let someone squash yours online. Secure your name and political future with a yourname.vote web address from godaddy.com. Your political career depends on it.
