Inauguration Eve With Trey Gowdy
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Well, welcome back to the Jason in the House podcast. I really do appreciate you joining me. I'm going to do things a little bit differently this time. We've kind of kicked the year off and we're doing things a little different than we normally do. And this time I've got Trey Gowdy joining me. Now, Trey Gowdy and I both served in the United States Congress. We served on the Judiciary Committee together. We were on the Oversight Committee chair. When I left, he became the chairman of the Oversight Committee. And I'm going to talk a little bit about the Oversight Committee.

We had lunches together, although he didn't eat much lunch. We would share dinners together more often than not. We both happened to sleep in our offices. It was kind of getting weird. I was spending more time with Trey Gowdy than I was my wife. I realized my life was totally out of balance. But that was the reality for about six years of my life.

I served in Congress for eight, but I got there two years before Trey and then left. And then he served two more years after I departed. But anyway, we often record these here in New York City. Rare to none that we're both in New York City at the same time, same place.

So we thought we'd kind of have a discussion, talk a little bit about memory, take a walk down memory lane and talk about everything from books to who knows what. But I thought this would be a great way of doing it. Normally, I do a little segment. It's called There's Always Somebody Doing Something Stupid Somewhere.

And I think you're going to find that Trey and I touch on the stupid along the way. So here's my conversation with Trey Gowdy, time we served together in Congress and some of the fun, interesting things that we did along the way. When you're having a conversation with Trey Gowdy, you never quite know where it's going or what's going on. So here it is.

Well, welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and sitting with me is Trey Gowdy. It's always good to see you in person. Chairman as well. Well, let me amend that. It's not always good to see you in person, but it's good to see you in person today.

Jeremy, let me congratulate you. The over under on you having a podcast was five weeks and you surpassed that. Can you believe it? I owe a lot of people a lot of money. Congratulations. You probably owe me some money too.

It wouldn't be because you ever bought a meal, because you never did that the entire time we were in Congress together. So I can't imagine what it would be for. There's only one place that Trey would go eat, and that's because he had a tab there that somehow he could just pay like once a year. I went there so much. Do you remember they named a salad after me? They did. It's the Gowdy. Yep.

In fact, my wife would come and she loved it. It was a bed of greens with salmon. What else did it add? Some other like nuts in it. Yeah, it was healthy, but I still managed to gain weight. I know you must have eaten it some too. A little bit. I did get a little porky there. There was one time I think it was in Politico. One of those

on the hill of rights. And I'm, I'm walking to the conference meeting, which you never went to. And I'm pulling up my pants, like on the side, it's the worst picture ever taken. And somebody else saw it and said, Ooh, that's brutal. And I'm like, okay, that's kind of a reminder. I need to lose some weight. Uh, so why didn't you, uh, M&Ms? I liked M&Ms. You're like,

Peanut or regular? Regular. Do you have a color preference? I tend to like the green ones, but I've also come to realize they're the same. I like the way they crunch. Psychiatrists would disagree with you. They would say there's a reason you like the green ones, and I would encourage you to get professional help immediately after this podcast.

Well, I ate lots of them, so I didn't discriminate too much. If I ate just the green ones, I probably wouldn't have gained as much weight. My favorite thing is we would go eat dinner, and then you would want to go get a snack. Literally, walking back, we lived in our offices, and so we would go eat, and then you would go by the name of this place, so you could get- Good stuff. Good stuff. They had great onion rings, but you liked-

their dessert, even though you had just had several desserts. You mean their French fries? Yeah, you had French fries, even though you had just had what many people would call dessert. We ate a lot, but I'll tell you this.

You and I never had an ethics report. You and I never got in trouble. What I tell people is, if you hang out with Tim Scott and Jason Chaffetz, it's going to be boring, but you're not going to get in any trouble whatsoever. Radcliffe, Scott, Chaffetz, you're never going to get in trouble in Congress. And we all emerged without ever getting in trouble. I remember one time we were walking to dinner, same place, and I got about halfway there, and I just...

immediately got these huge, massive stomach pains. Like I thought it was like, I went from a zero in terms of pain to like an eight, like in, like in 20 seconds. And I thought, oh my gosh, something is really wrong. And I kind of nailed over and, and, uh, I said, I got to go back to the house physician. And I did not know what was going on, what was wrong. And

And you were kind enough to say, hey, I'll save you a place to dinner. Never mind me. I'll go ahead and walk by myself, even though I can barely see straight. I prayed for you. Yeah. He thought you'd be best to go order in advance and make sure you weren't late for your meal. First of all, I was incredibly emotional. The thought of seeing you in pain drew a lot of emotion out of me. I'll save us our table.

And I had a gallbladder problem. And I ended up flying to Utah and getting my gallbladder taken out. Well, first of all, in my defense, I can't help with your gallbladder. So I'm not sure what you wanted me to do. Make sure I got to a doctor. You're industrious. I figured you would make it there. I mean, there are plenty of cops. They could have helped you. I mean, at that point, I couldn't have carried you.

I mean, we're talking about 250 pounds at that point. I couldn't have carried you. I'll remember one time walking back after, because we always walk back. And again, I mean, our offices doubled as where we slept. I've never seen you mad, which is something I can't say about very many people. Never saw you mad.

but saw you disappointed because you took a call from somebody that we both liked personally and you worked a lot with, the late Elijah Cummings. And it was a call that I don't think you were expecting. That's literally in the entire time I've known you, the closest I've ever seen you come to being mad. Yeah, that's true. And I was, I was disappointed because I had a thought, a good working relationship with him and

You know, he's passed away since then. It's been years. I can't even remember what it was. But yeah, sometimes you get that degree of frustration. And, you know, you used to tease me like, will you stop smiling? We're talking about a murder here. Like, you know, like literally people died and you're over there smiling. You're always in a good mood. But I will say this, the higher up you go in Congress, the harder it is or seem to be

Like I was talking about Hageem Jeffries earlier this morning. We all got along great with him when we were all backbenchers and nobody was in leadership. But the higher up he ascends, the more there is an expectation that he's going to be more partisan. I saw him at the DNC. Yeah.

And he greeted me like he wasn't, you know, second in command in the house, just like nothing had ever changed, like the old days. But the truth is, when you become a chairman or a ranking member like you and Elijah were. Yeah.

there's an expectation that things are going to be more partisan. And I think that was the source of your disappointment, that we thought the relationship transcended that. And that was like an eye-opening experience that even people who are friendly ordinarily have those moments where the partisanship trumps the friendship.

Yeah. You know, we can disagree and stuff. I think one of the best lessons, you know, John Boehner, um, you know, everybody, not everybody's a fan. Some have quibbles and not, but I learned a lot from him. One of them is, yeah, you can be a, you can be a, just don't be that guy in the room that nobody wants to work with, you know, and you're going to disagree, but you can do it without being disagreeable. And I think that's,

I think that's right. And it's hard. You know, I was there eight and a half years. And at some point you're going to probably tick somebody off. But I remember a couple of people said some things I thought were inappropriate. I went and approached him and talked it through. One of the best actually on the Democratic side that I really like to joust with and I appreciate it was Steny Hoyer. Yeah. He was down on the floor once and he made a speech and I went after him afterwards. And it wasn't personal.

But to his credit, he stayed there on the floor. He listened to what I said. And I was pretty aggressive against him and his idea. And then at the end of that debate, instead of just leaving and huffing off, he came over and shook my hand. He said, that was pretty good. Well done. Let's talk some more about this. Steny was well-liked. I had a similar experience with a guy named Jim Hines from Connecticut. We were on the Intel Committee, and we had a rare public hearing.

And he said something, and I said, would you apply that same rule to your own team? And most, 99% of Democrats would have given a disingenuous answer. Himes, really smart guy, Rhodes Scholar, says, you make a good point. Let's talk about it afterwards. That's rare, but it does happen. We don't – we actually rarely argued off camera, rarely. I –

I did not have a great relationship with Adam Schiff. I don't know what relationship you had with him, but it wasn't great on or off camera. And there were a couple of, you know, towards the end, the Republicans in some ways were tougher on other Republicans. I mean, you were the chair of a committee. I don't know if any of your Republican committee members ever took you to task, but sometimes the arrows came from both sides.

Yeah, sometimes. I mean, I got a little bit of it here and there, but hey, I gave them time. And Democrats, we let a lot of air out of the balloon by just making sure they have equal time. Seems fair, right? Seems like the only thing you can do is make sure that they're given time. And I gave a great deal of latitude when I was chairman. The Democrats can ask whatever they want. It's their time. It's the people of South Carolina or Georgia or wherever state they're from. That's your five minutes. You can do with it what you want. So I was pretty...

liberal in a sense in terms of you can say what you want. Now, they're

There are limits to it. Under House rules, you're not supposed to call out the president. You're supposed to always address the chair. Sometimes that would get a little out of hand. And some people increasingly, and you and I have talked about this, what became a problem is people were doing it with a staffer standing right in front of them doing a video, making a YouTube or an Instagram or something, something for X or whatever. When we first started, that never happened, but it became more and more commonplace in

person was about to give their speech and their staffer would stand up right in front of them. And it was all for show. It really wasn't to actually

talk to the witness. I think some of the most, what's the word young people use? Viral. Some of the more viral moments that we may have had in Congress were actually unintended. It was just doing our job in a committee and it happened to go viral. Now, I think the emphasis is what can we do to become an Instagram star? Yeah. In the old days,

If you did your job, eventually people would notice and pick up on it. Nowadays, the goal, they wake up in the morning and say, where's my makeup? How can I get on television? And what can I do for fundraising? And I just, I don't know. I don't remember it being that way when we were there. No, no, it was good. I think some of the, you know, we're getting mad. We're getting upset. We're getting a little fired up. But

I think the most viral moments we had here in Congress is just logically taking them down a path and asking them direct questions where they had to answer yes or no or tell us specifically and then having more facts than they did. The ones that drove me nuts were there was a time, for instance, with Director Mueller had come before the Judiciary Committee. You know, he's...

And I wanted to know about the metadata that's connected to somebody's telephone calls because they admitted that they were collecting, our federal government with police powers, calls between one phone and another. And I sent in advance the question that I had was –

Do you also collect the geolocation of those calls? Because if you're tracking me and where I'm making my phone calls and the cell phone tower that it's paying off, you can tell a lot about me. And so...

Um, that was the question. And when I got to it and he said, I don't know, boy, I don't know. And I said, well, that's why I sent you the question in advance so that you would be able to know by the time we got there. And they always just kind of bumbled through. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'll have to get back to you, which of course he never did. And I did that several times. They do with Eric Holder, did it with director Mueller. And they always conveniently said, ah, just, I said, well, did you not read the letter?

I sent you a letter from a member of Congress. Did you see it? Yeah. Then they'd say, well, yes, I did see it. But

But you weren't prepared for it. Like, we would run in circles, and it drove me nuts. If I could change anything about Congress, it would be the five-minute rule. I just, I don't. Well, some of us didn't pay attention to it. Well, I don't know. I had chair people that were pretty quick with a gavel, like the guy I'm talking to right now, and a few others. I mean, the minute it hit 5-0-0, the gavel came down.

But it's almost better to give an hour to each side, and then all members aren't equally adept at asking questions. Different members have different skill sets. So why a member that's not good at asking questions should have the same time to

As a you or a Jordan or a Radcliffe or other good questioners, it just never made sense to me. It felt like we ought to be able to designate our best questioners. If the goal is to get information, you want your best questioners to do it. We both served with people who really couldn't get directions to a local Sonic. I mean, they just didn't know how to ask the questions to do it. Yeah. I –

Nor did they have any inclination. They just felt almost obligated. And in order to do your... I think you're right. I think if they parsed it up... And also, the number of members that would show up to a hearing having not read any of the material was just like, all right, you have no idea what you're talking about, so maybe you should yield your time back to somebody who actually does know what they're asking. I got a question for you. When staffers would hover over your shoulder and say...

a chairman or a congressman, we have some questions if you need them. What was always your go-to response? Yeah. Gee, thanks. You said them right here. It was just like... That's why you're a nice guy. That was not my response. Yeah. It's just like, okay. Because I think they were dealing with a lot of members who didn't do their homework. They didn't even know the topic, let alone the question. Yeah. But it doesn't take long to figure out who knows how to do it and who doesn't. I know. But that's why you and I both became chairmen. So...

I would always look up at him and say, remind me how many jury trials you had. And the answer was zero. And I said, well, then I think I'll do my own questions today. Exactly. Exactly. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Trey Gowdy right after this.

All right, so...

If you ever get like,

inaugurated as the president of the United States. Are you going to invite me? Which country? Yeah. The United States? Yeah. Well, you should move. Would I invite you? Yes. I would probably invite you to sing the national anthem just to embarrass you. Or I would, there's usually a poet. I would usually have you as the poet just so I could embarrass you on national television. I think I should have asked Trump to be the poet laureate.

Who is the poet laureate? I couldn't tell you that. I can tell you who this – I can name every player on the University of South Carolina women's basketball team, but I couldn't tell you who the poet –

having sex with cannibals or something to the effect of that is based on a guy who made an application to some island in the South Pacific to be the poet laureate for this country. And they said yes. So he moved down there. That's what brought him to this island. Now his wife was like a nurse or something. And it's a hilarious book. It's very funny.

I'm getting the name of the title of the book slightly wrong, but I know that the premise of this book is accurate. Can you help me and the audience with how you transition from the inauguration to cannibalism?

I'm all for great segues. I didn't rewind this tape, but we went from Poet Laureate. Yeah, but- Because you told me I have to sing the national anthem. But then you went to cannibalism. Yes. And I'm just trying to see the connection between reading poetry. It's a great book. Oh. Have you read a Thoreau book about his travels? No.

Riding the Red Rooster. Henry David Thoreau, or was it David Henry Thoreau? I've read it both. Thoreau, the last name. Okay, you just... I've read a couple of his books. Like Lindsey Graham, any question that begins with, have you read? The answer is no. So anytime you ask Lindsey... I'm naming the books. What's the best travel book you've read?

I don't read travel books. I read historical fiction. Like I'm reading The Book Thief right now. Okay, let's go to historical fiction. What good is there reading historical fiction? It seems like antithetical. No, it's doubly good.

You are learning about history, but you are doing it in an interesting way. How do you tell what's fiction and what's real? Well, like I'll give you – for instance, Stephen Pressfield wrote The Gates of Fire. The battle at Thermopylae really took place. It really was between Sparta and the Persians, but you inject and give life to characters that –

that may or may not mimic real history. So when you just don't let facts get in the way. No, no, no. Ken Follett. Ken Follett wrote books about it. Oh, I love that. I do too. Yeah, he's good. His books on World War I, World War II. I mean, you learn about history, but you do it through the eyes of fictional characters. So All the Light We Cannot See, I think that's the title, or All the Light They Cannot See, amazing book.

Well, the one about cannibals. Oh my God. It's really good. Have you, have you been studying Jeffrey Dahmer lately? I mean, I didn't really pick you as a Dahmer type, but you're missing the point. It's not all about cannibalism. How much he has this incident where he runs into people that probably would have eaten him if they could. It's not all about other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play? It's not all about cannibalism. No, it's really good. Uh,

I think your initial question is, would you – first of all, you should move. Would you invite me? First of all, you should move. If I'm ever elected president of anything, you should move to another country. But yes, I would have you up on the dais, probably singing –

certainly in a position of prominence. I can't bring like the Tabernacle Choir, which Trump did. Like I would do better in a group setting. I would probably have you in my cabinet. I might put you at DHS actually, because I know you have an interest in Secret Service. Yeah. I would put you at DHS, but then I would have you move Secret Service back to Treasury. They should split it. That's really what they should do. Everything that has to do with

integrity of our currency and credit card transactions, that should all be in Treasury. Agreed. The protective mission, I think, can be either meshed with U.S. Marshals. Marshals, I can't say enough about it. First of all, our oldest law enforcement agency that there is is

They take care of the prisoner transportation, but they also are protecting prosecutors or protecting judges. They already have the infrastructure in place. They have the offices and regional offices. I actually think the U.S. Marshals should actually be the first line of assessment when threats come into members of Congress, House and Senate, outside of the capital region. So if you're going back to South Carolina or I'm in Utah or somebody's in Florida, you

That U.S. marshal should be able to do that sort of threat assessment because it's a whole lot different if that threat's coming to you from your home state as it is from coming from Oregon. And you and I both had to deal with this. And the 1-800, you know, Capitol Police was not cutting it and they never could follow up properly.

And the FBI is a bit overwhelmed, although a couple of cases the FBI had to get involved. There was one guy who was actually, in my case, out of Florida that was prosecuted and had to serve time.

for the death threat that he offered me. He was smart enough to leave a voicemail, which helped the case. But U.S. Marshals should do that. They do it for judges. They do it for prosecutors. They should do it for members of Congress. Not that everybody's going to get a security detail, but if you have a threat come in, somebody's got to figure out if it's real or not. I'll give you a little known fact. U.S. Marshals actually have the broadest jurisdiction of any federal law enforcement agent. Mm-hmm.

They don't use it, but they have the broadest jurisdiction statutorily. I mean, obviously, I work with them every day when I was a federal prosecutor, and they serve warrants. They serve fugitive warrants. They provide protection to judges. Yeah, fugitive apprehension. They're the best. Yeah. I had them living with me when I had a credible death threat when I was a federal prosecutor. I think it is an underutilized agency, entity. Yeah.

I don't know, Secret Service. It just never made sense to me that you both protect the president and you go arrest people who use an inkjet printer to print a counterfeit $20 bill. Those two just never went together to me. Well, and I think if you expanded the mission of the U.S. Marshals, the protective division, most people are fairly surprised when you talk about the protective division within the Secret Service division.

The list is actually pretty small of who they are actually protecting, but they're also there to protect heads of state, visiting dignitaries. So the embassies, that becomes a much broader portfolio. But for an agency that is 1,000 people short of their desired goal in terms of the proper number of employees, right?

They're in trouble. And by the way, that brings me to a sore spot, which we're coming up on January 20th, right? We're recording this just before the inauguration and this podcast is coming out just before then.

January 20th. Who was the dumb bell who looked at that and said, you know, that would be a really good date for the National Championship football game? Let's go and put the inauguration and the National Championship football game on the same day. It's also the day that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is celebrated. There are a lot of things going on that day. I can't speak for you. You'll probably be dancing at one of the balls. I...

We'll be pulling for whoever's playing Notre Dame in that game. I don't know who it's going to be. I hope Martha McCallum and John Ratcliffe aren't listening, but...

Don't worry. Nobody listens. So I'm assuming you are going to the inauguration. I'm assuming you're going to take Julie. You're not going to take Julie to the ball. You're going to be watching football. No, I'm not going. There's no way I'm going. With all due respect to President Trump, I went to his first inauguration. I went to Barack Obama's inauguration.

I didn't see you there. Well, actually, I did see you there. There's a great picture on the internet. In fact, that's one of my favorite pictures. I forgot about that. I didn't even thought about this. Or Sean Duffy had to show me how to put on the rain gear. Oh, yeah.

You want to see Trey Gowdy in a slicker, you go ahead and watch this. Pull up a picture. Trey Gowdy inauguration picture is probably what it is. Yeah, don't. You look like the dorkiest person. There's a reason for that. Not even dorkiest member of Congress. I'm going to broaden it out to dorkiest person. Had you ever worn, this is a clear plastic jacket.

that goes on and drapes over your body, and you're just sitting there like, I am so cold and I am so bored. Wasn't that at the inauguration? Yes, and thank God I was sitting by Sean Duffy because Duffy watched me for about 30 minutes try to unpack this slicker they gave me because I've never worn one before. I have a zero restrictions golf stuff I wear when I play golf in the rain, but I've never sat through a rainy inauguration before.

So the fact you want to talk about being humbled, having to turn to Sean Duffy and say, can you help me figure out how to unpack this rain gear? So he did it and then he helped me put it on. And yeah, it's not a lumberjack picture from Wisconsin. But I'm taking a lot of unflattering pictures. So it's not like this one is particularly a highlight in my brain here. In fact, I don't know. I mean, Congresswoman Mays.

put one out the other day and said that I was transgender. That wasn't a flattering picture either, which I still don't really get that. My parents had three daughters. I don't think they wanted four. I don't know. But then Radcliffe said, what do you think TG stands for? And

I mean, he and I were traveling together playing golf, and when that story broke, and everybody was asking me, what in the world is she thinking? And Ratcliffe says, well, what do you think T.G. stands for? He's pretty quick that way. He is quick. He is funny. He's going to be a great CIA director. If he's confirmed, let's just hope they don't find out he went to Notre Dame and hope they don't ask to see his transcripts, his great transcripts.

He will be a great, he'll be a great director. It's too bad we won't see him. We won't know where in the world he is. But yeah.

But yeah, he's going to be a little busy. That's the sad part of watching friends go back in is they'll be busy. You'll lose touch with him. We got a lot of friends going back into the administration. But that's a job where you're on call 24-7 all over the world. And that's why we went and played golf. It's because I'm probably not going to see him for four years. Yeah, no, but he's the right person for that job. He's highly qualified and

You just rest easier knowing you got a person of integrity who knows their stuff, who's going to work their butt off and make good, hard decisions in a moment. Because you get like a moment's notice to make these types of decisions. He's the perfect pick for that. President's had other really, really good picks also. But Radcliffe is, you know,

And he's a darn good golfer. How is your golf game these days? It was good enough to beat John. That's pretty good. So it comes and goes because I got a dizziness disorder. So some days it's not great. But if you're wondering, can I still beat you? The answer is yes. I have no doubt about that. Can I?

Can I beat, you know, Scotty Shuffler? I'd love to play with him, but no, I can't beat Scotty Shuffler. It's getting better. Like, there weren't six months when I didn't touch a golf club at all. And I think Ratcliffe's a little surprised I agreed to go

California with him. But my wife, I give her credit for talking me into it. She said, you know, you're going to miss him. We went to Cypress Point. It was absolutely gorgeous. And I cannot thank the two men that hosted us enough. And, you know, lifetime worth of memories. And like you said, Johnny's going to be gone for four years. So to know that he left losing to me in golf and

means more to me with the possible exception of the birth of my two children than anything that I can possibly think of. I did get a chance to golf El Dorado. Now that's a course. That's unbelievable how nice that course is. I want to play with Trump again. You're listening to Jason in the House. Stay with us. We'll be right back. I'm ready for my life to change. ABC Tonight, American Idol returns. Give it your all. Good luck. Come out with a golden ticket. Let's hear it. This is amazing.

I've never seen anything like it. And a new chapter begins. We're going to Hollywood. Carrie Underwood joins Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan, and Ryan Seacrest on American Idol. Season premiere tonight, 8, 7 central on ABC and stream on Hulu. So this is where I got myself into trouble with my wife because I happened. Yeah, I, I got, I happened to be, and I think I may have told this story before, but I,

I happen to be on the phone with the president. Not that that happens very often. Great honor. We're chatting away. And at the end of the conversation, he said, well, why don't you get your wife and come have dinner with us here at the White House? It's obviously during his first term.

And I said, you know, Mr. President, what I'd really like to do is I'd really love to go golfing with you. He's like, really? And then he kind of lit up, really? I said, yeah, now listen, I'm not as good as Trey Gowdy, but because I know that you had golfed with him previously. I said, I'm not as good as Trey Gowdy, but I'm not going to embarrass myself. He said, that's great. And then we set it up from there. And I got all excited. I went back. I said, Julie,

I'm so excited. And I told her the story and she said, so we were going to dinner at the White House and now you are going to go golfing? Your wife is one of the sweetest people. I hope at some point I can...

do a makeup on that one and actually go have dinner at the White House would be a tremendous honor. You pulled something off. Your wife is one of the sweetest, kindest people on the face of the earth. If you managed to make her upset, you've done something that's really hard to do. Julie, if you're listening and you're probably not, he didn't even play well. For me, I played out of my mind. You missed dinner at the White House so he could go lose a dozen golf balls in Virginia. Yeah.

You know, it's hard golfing with the president because he's, first of all, he's exceptionally good. He didn't lose a ball. He hits it right down the fairway, you know, right down the fairway. And he can make putts like there's no tomorrow. I mean, he just gets up there and knocks it in. He is an exceptional golfer. And plays quickly, which is important. But that, I remember going off the first tee, I hit it off on the left on the rough. And then you got to do an approach shot to the green. Well, he's already standing on the green.

And you're like, it's quick. But I'm not that accurate, you know? And I'm thinking, okay, here it comes. You know, like, please don't hit the president. Please don't hit the president. Of course, I hit the green. It rolled off into the bunker. So now I've got to take the walk of shame all the way across the green into the bunker. Got to chip it out.

Yeah, because the whole time he was whispering to me, is he always this slow? And I said, yes, Mr. President, he's always this slow. He was a field goal kicker in college. Yep, that was a fun time. I, he

He's quick. He's good. But, you know, when you own the course, you can drive to the tee box. You can drive to the green. I mean, most courses, you know, you got to like get out and walk a little bit. But when you own it, there's certain luxuries there. There is also another embarrassing moment with the president. You're on the back nine and he comes up and he looks at my shot. He says, that's a heck of a drive.

And I had to put up two. That was my second shot. He thought I drove it that far. I'm like, that's where my second shot landed. But I was honest about it. But he laughed. Who was our fourth? The pro there. The pro there. Yeah. So his pro at Mar-a-Lago is John Neaport.

And he came to South Carolina recently, and Lindsey and Ratcliffe and I played with his pro, who's a wonderful guy. He has daughters that play volleyball. And Ratcliffe and I played the president's pro.

And Lindsey Graham, and I won't say how it turned out other than John and I won. Other than that, I'm not going to say a word about how it turned out. But you know there's a verse in the Bible about a millstone around someone's neck? That's what Neoport had around his neck for 18 holes. Well, Lindsey has a partner, a millstone around his neck. I think it was Mike Muir. That sounds right. Yeah. Yeah.

He was good. I remember that. Oh, he was really good. He carried us. They play a different game. Yeah. When you're that good, it's a different game. Yeah.

But it was an honor. It was fun. Hopefully we'll get to play with him again. But, you know, the fact that you're not bothering to attend his inauguration probably is not going to go over real well. I don't know how often he listens to your podcast. I will be there. So the chances of me playing with him are probably a little higher than you playing with him right now.

Yeah, that's probably true. I'm sure you have something more important to do than watch the second Grover Cleveland, but that's fine. I can't imagine what it would be, but I look forward to hearing your explanation of that to him. I'm sure you'll be more than anxious to bring that up. If I see you, I'm going to say, hey, have you seen Jason, Mr. President? I know it's a big day and that's a random question, but this is the same guy that was talking about cannibalism when we were talking about inauguration, so it can't be any weirder than that.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Well, it's a good book. I'll have to get you that book. I hope you read the other book I got you. It depends on which one it was. Letters from a Nut?

Oh, gosh. I think I waited for the movie. No. Letters from a Nut. We talked about this. Oh, yes. I read that. I bought that. Yes. Yes. Now, it's an old book. Yes. This is an older book. That actually was good. And I think Jerry Seinfeld wrote the introduction. Yes. I remember that book. It was funny. But it seemed like very Trey Gowdy-ish. It seems weird. Which is like you can appreciate this. This is a guy who wrote letters to...

to major corporations like Mr. Bubble, and he would say, Dear Mr. Bubble, I'm anxious to use your product for the very first time. I like taking baths. But it says on the box to keep in a cool, dry place. How do you keep Mr. Bubble in a cool, dry place if you can't mix it with... I thought you were supposed to mix it with water. Please explain. And then they send him all kinds of things or...

My favorite, and I hope this is a family-friendly podcast, but my favorite is to a very prestigious hotel, probably here in New York. And he writes, Dear, whatever it is, Ritz-Carlton, I'm looking forward to attending or staying in your hotel for the week of whatever it was, March 12th. I'm a level three bedwetter and will require special assistance.

It would probably be best to cover all the furniture. You know, he writes it in a very serious way. And the hotel will send him a very serious letter back. The whole book is chock full of these things.

I particularly liked it, and I thought, eh, Trey, my friend Trey will like this as well. That is my sense of humor, but I am reading a book now, The Book Thief, which is about a young girl in part that does have issues when she sleeps. So you should really embrace, and I'll be happy to tell Dana Perino that you don't like her favorite genre of book either, which is historical fiction, if you want me to. You really should give those books a shot because you're going to learn history, which you didn't at BYU. Yeah.

And you're also going to be entertained. So you get the best of both worlds. Yeah, okay. But Letters from a Knight and having sex with cannibals. I liked it. I did like it. It's funny. It's funny. It's a pretty light read. Yeah, it's not reading Brothers Karamazov. It's not reading, you know, A Hundred Years of Solitude. No, it's not that. One thing that people need to know about Trey Gowdy is his...

Greek mythology mastery. So when you and I are together, who do I remind you of? From Greek mythology? Yeah. Medusa. Medusa. Because of the hair. Because of the hair. All right. Well, that's a fair assessment, I guess. I don't know much about it. Or I would say there's an old story from Greek mythology, just because I listened to you for so long in Congress. So Zeus has a girlfriend named Eo.

But he's married to Hera, obviously. And Hera finds out about Eo and turns her into a cow. So you're with me. Husband has a girlfriend. Wife's not happy. Wife turns girlfriend into a cow. And Hera has the foresight to have a monster with 100 eyes to watch this cow to make sure Zeus never turns the cow back into a beautiful girl again.

Zeus outwits her and sends Hermes to tell a story that has no beginning and no ending. And slowly, every one of those hundred eyes falls asleep, and then Zeus turns her back into a beautiful girl.

Why does that remind me of you? Why do I call you Hermes? Because I've heard some of your floor speeches and I've heard some of your opening statements at committee and they have no beginning and no ending. They slowly put every one of our eyes to sleep that were on the committee. So I would say a cross between Medusa and Hermes. So the reason I know that Greek mythology is something that you studied extensively in college is because

There was somebody in the conference who was running unopposed. Keep in mind, this person was running unopposed. And Trey gave the most passionate two and a half to five minute speech. I can't remember how long it was. Invoking like these Greek mythology. Like it was the best possible speech for somebody who is already going to get 100% of the vote. It was a speaker's race.

And it dealt with Sparta. Yeah. I also, we had a speaker who brought us into the room. Do you remember something called CFIUS? Yes. All right. So CFIUS kind of investigates whether or not foreign companies should be able to invest in American companies. That's an oversimplification, but-

The speaker brought us all into a room to discuss something very important. He said, I want to talk about Siphius.

And I said, why are we talking about the guy who rolled a rock up the hill and let it come back every day? That was Sisyphus. He didn't get it. Everybody else in the room. Nobody else. Well, no, they thought it was pretty funny. But Speaker Ryan did not get it. And he did not laugh. But that's another Greek myth of the guy who pushed the rock up the hill every day only to have it fall back down. And that's what he did every single day. That also is from Greek mythology. Right.

It's a great skill to master. But you haven't. You're too busy reading about cannibalism to read Greek mythology. Letters from a Nut. Yes. Letters from a Nut is really pretty good. You should read Circe or Song of Achilles. Have you read The Odyssey? No. You've got to read The Odyssey. You have to. It's one of the classic books of all time. Odysseus, coming back from the Battle of Troy.

Don't give it away. Don't spoil the ending. I get the feeling that every historical movie you ever watch has you on the edge of the seat. I watched Gladiator on the airplane. Oh, come on. That's...

That's partially. There was something called Rome. Nate Bargatze, I think, is my favorite comedian at the moment. The guy is hilarious. And I had the honor of having dinner with him one time. Got to sit right next to him. My wife and I, we loved it. He's a great guy. The Tennessee kid, right? He does some of the best comedy out there. I think he's got a Netflix special out right now. Anyway, Nate does this whole thing, and he's talking about how he really didn't do anything with history. He said...

Hey, and I'm going to blow it compared to the joke that he laid out on this, but I think it's true. That's what makes it so funny. He said, boy, every movie I see about history, I really don't know what's going to happen. He says, I'm on the edge of my seat because I have no idea what's going to happen. I went and saw Pearl Harbor. I was as surprised as they were. I had no idea what was going to happen.

That is – speaking of comedians, I'm in Greenville, South Carolina, walking down the street. I'd just gone to get a chocolate chip cookie back when I could eat them. And I was like, I'm going to eat them.

And I hear my name being called, and I turn around, and I think, okay, I'll go give the guy $20. I mean, I don't have it, but I'll go give it to him. It's Larry the Cable Guy. Oh, yeah. He's in downtown Greenville, nice as he could be. We sit there and chat for about 45 minutes, and I look at the top of his shoes, and he has things written on the top of his shoes. And I said, Larry, why do you have things written on the top of your shoe? And he goes, Trey, everybody expects me to be funny.

So everyone who comes up to me, except you, says, tell me a joke. So I write jokes on the top of my shoes. So I will have something funny to say to them because everyone expects him to be funny. That is funny into itself. It is. He's funny even without trying to be funny. Oh, yeah. And he's a good golfer. He just walks in the room and I start smiling. He's a good golfer. Did you golf with him? No, he was playing in a pro-am and I was working. Okay.

for a law firm at the time. But I got that out of my system. It's much easier. Let's go golf with him. Let's call him up. See if he wants to golf and talk politics. Probably would. I'll have to find out when he's coming back to Spartanburg. Because you're sure not going to play with the president again now that you're skipping an inauguration. Bargatze's a pretty darn good player. Who? Nate Bargatze. Oh, really? Oh, he's an off-the-charts good. Yeah, like he's a scratch golfer.

That's his gig. What he does is he goes from town to town, but he'll golf in the morning. Then he does his set in the evening, goes to the next town, does it all over again. I've got a friend. You just described right there. I've got a friend who's a really good golfer. He's like a negative two or something. And he...

He is unbelievable, what he does. I played with a guy the other day who was a plus five. Ooh, I should say negative, too. I should say plus two. Yeah, he's a plus five, which means his first five birdies, just getting back to where he should have been. Golly. Can you imagine? Yeah, no. No, I can't either. No, actually, no. I can't either. I've been down to zero, but I've never been plus. Other than putting, I do all right.

Well, putting's like 40-something percent of the game. So other than that... Exactly. All right, real quickly, Congress going into this session, I mean, I can't even imagine having a one or two seat margin. I mean, we had Chick-fil-A and some people would complain that the conference had Chick-fil-A as opposed to a mixed bowl of fruit. So how in the world

They expect to get anything done other than Donald Trump having to pick up the phone and bludgeon people every single time. He's got enough of a job rather than having to also try to help the speaker do his job. All right. So two things have happened since he won. He asked them to clear the debt ceiling debt for him. DECK, D-E-C-K, DECK, clear the debt ceiling. 30-something Republicans didn't do it.

He said, Mike Johnson's my pick. Two of them held out. I don't know if you know the backstory there or not, but they went into the smoking room off the floor of the house. And there were more that were going to change their vote to no because they were trying to leverage Mike to make someone speaker of the rules committee because that committee is picked by the speaker himself.

So that is not a good foreshadowing of things to come. With Waltz leaving, Stefanik leaving, the guy that's singing happy birthday to 17-year-olds on Cameo being gone. Gates, was it? It's Gates, right? I think that's it. So that's three down. Massey, I like Thomas very much personally. He's a libertarian. He caucuses with the Republicans, but he's a libertarian.

So Mike has no margin for error at all. You start talking about tax bills with all the SALT stuff and pay-fors. It's going to be tough.

Trump is going to have to do to the House what he does to senators, which is you either get on board or I'm going to get involved. And if he doesn't do that, remember you and I were there the first time the Obamacare repeal failed? It wasn't John McCain that killed it the first time. It was the Freedom Caucus. McCain killed it the second time by doing the thumbs down. But the first time it failed the House because of the Freedom Caucus.

Yeah. So I know they're down there meeting with him right now. He's going to have to have a word of prayer with him. I cannot imagine. I would rather do a root canal on a crocodile than have Mike Johnson's job. I don't know how he's going to keep that group coalesce. I don't know. It's nearly an impossible task. And it's anything that passes with getting the majority. I mean, even suspension bills are going to be tough. And so-

I just – it'll be amazing to see how this all plays out because just getting the speaker into his role took the president coming in and using some choice words to say, hey, this is where we're going to. And you shouldn't have to. You shouldn't be leveraging Mike for a chairmanship because then two more people are going to come in and say, I want to be on Intel. And two more are going to come in and say, I want this. I mean –

Republicans, for whatever reason, Jason, just seem to thrive in the minority. I can't tell you. I'm not a psychologist. I can't tell you why. Yeah, you just vote no. Say no, and then you say, wait, what are we voting about? Yeah. Yeah, it's like a...

Trump's got two years. And if they start playing games and fighting about, you know, reconciliation and, well, this bill's not perfect enough, you know, some of those members would complain about Halle Berry. I mean, they would find something to complain about no matter what. So he's going to have to put his foot down. Ironically, he has a bigger margin right now in the Senate than he does in the House. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah.

Trey Gowdy, thanks for joining me. JC, it is a pleasure. I do not miss us being in Congress, but I miss you. Well, thank you. Thank you. You're going to have to get some of my books on my reading list here. I think you'll be a better person for it. Will you stop by and say hello at the inauguration? Keep your lookout for me. Definitely maybe.

Thank you for having me. God bless you. Hey, Julie, I'm sorry he didn't take you to the White House to eat dinner and then play golf with me instead. I'm sorry about that. You can take that out with your marriage and family counselor. So as you can see, my conversation with Trey, we get along fabulously. It's always a pleasure to see him, hang out with him, do stuff with him. Really smart guy, really grounded, wonderful family, and a good friend that we can joke around.

Just about, well, pretty much anything. So if you could rate the podcast, I'd appreciate it. Subscribe to it. That'd be a good idea. Trey's got a good podcast. Go to foxnewspodcast.com and you can check out Trey's podcast. You want to check that one out? I also want to remind people you can listen ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app,

Join us again next week. We're going to have a good, good fun show. You can't believe who some of the guests are. We've got coming up some really famous faces coming up on the schedule and look forward to having you hear those. So don't miss an episode. Subscribe to it. Rate it. Come back next week and I think you'll really, really enjoy it. Appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Hope you enjoyed it. I'm Jason Chaffetz and this has been Jason in the House.

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