House Majority Whip Tom Emmer on Trump’s Agenda, Border Security, and Fiscal Reform
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Alright, welcome to a special edition of Breaking Battlegrounds. Today we're with the majority with United States House Representative Tom Emmer. How are you? Great. Great to be here. A little bit better here in Arizona than it is in Minnesota right now. Yes, well generally that's the general rule, right?

I think the day it's worse here than Minnesota, it's called hell freezes over. I think it's about a 60-degree difference right now. It'll probably be about 75 degrees before it freezes over. Yeah, 100%. 100%. There's a reason we live down here. That's right. And avoid it. So first of all, we did this last time, but explain again to our audience, what does the majority whip do in Congress? So in order to do that, I've got to give you the top three positions. The Speaker of the House is in charge of everything. The campus, which is the capital complex. Mm-hmm.

in charge of security, in charge of our agenda, all of that. The majority leader, which is the number two position,

He builds a calendar for the year so members know when we're going to be in session, when we're going to be back in our districts working. And then he schedules the floor. So whatever's coming to the floor, that's done through the majority leader's office. The whip, the number three position, you can't do the first two without the whip's job, which is we've got to make sure that we get everybody together first.

to get things across the line. And we've had some amazing success over the last two-plus years with very small numbers, but the challenge just keeps getting more of a challenge. Well, your job is to herd cats, and then with all cats, there's usually a feral group of cats that you have. Actually, I tell people I wish they were all cats. We're actually herding a variety of exotic animals. You've got some raccoons in there. Yes, oh, yeah.

Crocodiles. Yeah. So President Trump has done a shock and awe strategy with executive orders. The Democrats just seem to be caught on their heels, backed in a corner.

What does Congress have to do now to codify things like his various executive orders on the border? You know, what are four or five issues that the whole Republican conference can agree on to pass and send to the Senate? Well, I mean, before we get to that, let's talk about our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They're broken.

You say they're on their heels because they can't understand Trump. Well, maybe they should start agreeing with Donald Trump a little bit more because they're not listening to Main Street USA. 77 million people voted for Donald Trump because they want him to fix the economy so it works for everybody. They want him to seal the southern border and take care of the crime problem that we have in this country. And they want him to stabilize the turmoil around the globe.

What do we got to do in Congress? First off, he's done over 350 executive orders in his first three to four weeks in the job.

It's been amazing. Everything from the border issues to plastic straws. I mean, he's done all of it. No more men participating in women's sports. All kinds of things that he's already accomplished in three weeks plus. Our job as we go forward will be to make much of that law by passing it through the House and the Senate and then sending the actual legislation to his desk. And the reason that's important is

which is why I think you took me down this road is because if we don't, and there is a change of leadership four years from now that we don't agree with, well,

We'll have the same problem this country has experienced over the last three decades, which is this whipsaw, which gets worse and worse every four years with a new administration that comes in. Donald Trump, for example, had the border sealed in 2020. And then we got Joe Biden, and we had a record number, by some accounts, anywhere from 10 to 15 million illegals, including cartel members, rapists, murderers that crossed our southern border.

These are the things we got to make sure never happen again. So it's got to make it law. Matter of fact, I don't know if you saw Axios reported that Biden deported more people in November than Trump did in January. He's like,

Well, the border's shut. Yeah. You can't deport what's not here. No, and you've got to laugh because what they don't understand in the, some call it the lamestream news media, they don't understand that America is on to them. Yes. I mean, these guys are writing articles three weeks into Donald Trump's term. He still hasn't solved the price of eggs. Well, you guys broke it.

And you've been hiding this. I mean, the media, if you want to know how corrupt they are, just look at how they all came out the day after that debate in June between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Joe Biden has been deteriorating since day one, I would argue before he was inaugurated more than four years ago. And yet they waited until the morning after that horrific debate where the poor guy looked like he should already be in a home. Correct. And said, we can't believe this. Why didn't anybody tell us? These guys are, they're just unabashed liars. When Biden was in the White House,

How often were you invited to the White House to try to work out a bipartisan solution? I know you're going to be shocked by this, but I just didn't get many invitations to the White House, the Biden White House, which was probably better that way. Mike Johnson could barely get an invitation to the Biden White House. In fact, he'll tell you a story about a meeting, first meeting he ever had with Joe Biden, where he told him, look, you could fix the border, sir.

All you got to do is undo these 40 to 50 executive orders that you signed since you came into office. And he will tell you, the president looked at him and said, I didn't do that.

I didn't have anything to do with that. That is so frightening. Yeah, but this is what we've known for a long time. Right, but it's just so frightening just to hear it from someone who actually has firsthand experience versus I heard it from somebody who knows somebody. Ukraine, what are you hearing about the negotiations of Saudi Arabia? Well, that'll start today, and it's really interesting. Trump is the master negotiator, and he's also the master instigator. He does things, for instance, Gaza last week.

We're going to make it beautiful. We're going to rebuild it. We're going to clean up that beach. Well, you know what happened, which doesn't get widely reported,

Egypt kicked off serious diplomatic discussions with the Arab nations because now they want to rebuild Gaza. For the first time. Yeah. Maybe that was the reason. 100%. He's calling their bluff. He points a laser pointer and the cat jumps at the wherever it is. And that's what he's doing with Gaza. And I look at Ukraine. Because you've got Western Europe convening a meeting with...

They're not happy with Trump and his relationship with Russia. But you can't get anything done unless you have negotiations. And I think they're all worried about what the end game is going to be. Zelensky won't be there today, which is probably appropriate because you've got to figure out what other parameters that are possible. Yeah, and it's a ridiculous statement because we can't make any peace deal unless Ukraine signs on to it. So this is sort of like spring training. Let's go out and let's see what's feasible.

then let's bring Ukraine in. And I find it ridiculous that they think the United States is immediately going to say, well, the war is over. It's not over unless Ukraine wants it over. No, it's right. It takes two parties, right? It's exactly right. It was interesting. I shared it with Kylie this weekend. There was an article about Prime Minister Starmer and –

In Britain. Right. And how his defense officials said, we need to raise our defense spending plus 2.3%. And he just said no. Then he announced that he's going to send British troops over there. But the thing that stood out to me, the British Army only has 78,000 people now. They have not had that amount since the Napoleon Wars. Wow. Wow. Think about that. You're talking almost 300 years. Wow.

That's how much their military has decreased on the army level. So now he's talking about a peace force of 100,000 people. Where are they going to get these people? I'll bet you half of them come from Eastern Europe. They probably come from Poland. They probably come from Estonia. And don't you think the Ukrainians are probably better warriors than they are?

They're great warriors. Ask Russia. Amen. Although the Russians, this guy has killed more of his population. He's wiped out a generation. It is amazing. There's a special place in hell for him. Oh, no, he's on his way. There's no question. But it's interesting when you bring up Starmer because Western Europe has been living in a complete fantasy world for years. And, you know, it's this elitist attitude, which we actually have these European-loving Americans who...

who want to have the same attitude. They're Democrats, right? Oh no, we're better than all of you. We're going to tell you what's good for you. You know what? Western Europe, their economy has not been growing. It's been stagnant for a decade.

These guys have not been doing anything right. And you got Pete Hegseth and J.D. Vance go over there and start speaking truth to their confusion. And what happens? The mainstream media, again, which is littered with these political elites and these academics, start criticizing these guys. How about Margaret Brennan saying that the Holocaust was the result of free speech?

She should be fired, man. She shouldn't even have a job. Yeah, you know, again, I'm a big free speech proponent. But if I'm CBS and that's my anchor, I'm saying, man, we're going to do you on entertainment in Hollywood. You need to go.

don't even know she's qualified for entertainment she may not be based on her knowledge of just what free speech is it's incredible i don't know that i'd have her teach in my uh kindergarten class no it's it's horrible all right dodge so politico as we know has been wiped off government largesse by dodge and they're mad about it by the way yes they oh i would be too

If I was relying on my subscriptions and they got taken out by the government, I'd be a little mad too. So you know what's funny is I brought this up in an interview on one of the news channels, and the CEO of Political called my office complaining, saying he doesn't understand. Most of that is for Political Pro, which is a research tool, and it's like, dude...

Both your research tool and your publication are a waste of money. What taxpayers should not be paying you to produce. If you were producing value, you'd get paid. Your audience, so you know, I thought about subscribing to it about four years ago. It's like $12,000 a year for then for my five-person office, right?

I mean, who knows what they charge you? Do they send you a doily or do they send you something that, you know, you can prove that you're paying the 12 grand a year? Like a gift? I remember just rolling my eyes when the guy gave me the pitch. Like, for what? You know, I can do Google News Alert.

Wow, what an interesting concept. So anyway, Politico's reporting, and I can see this to be a bit truth to it, that GOP flinches at Musk cuts. Are you getting some pushback from some members in some swing districts saying, you know, I don't know, we're taking sort of a hatchet to us, can we take a scalpel to it? Are you getting conversation like that yet? Well, see, those are two different things. We're not getting pushback at all on what Doge is doing, except from Democrats and leaders. By the way, by the way,

I remember Yellen before she left talking about how our national debt was just going to crush our country, which it is. It needs to be solved. Explain this to our audience. What do people not understand how to balance a budget? I mean something has to be cut.

And I can even hear and be honest and say, okay, it may get down to the end, Social Security may need to raise payroll taxes on top earners. I get all that. I'm open to that. But you first have to cut something like any household, any business. What are they not getting about this? And what did they expect to happen when you're saying we're going to go through every line item of every agency? It's bigger than what don't they understand. So politics has...

have overcome all common sense too often, right? Whether it's Democrats or Republicans, oh, geez, I want to cut everything but not my stuff, right? The beauty of Doge is Elon, with the platform that he has, which is second only to Donald J. Trump, is keeping the issue front and center in the public's eye. The more that he can show the waste, fraud, and abuse, the ridiculous stuff, USAID is a great example.

I happen to like a couple of the programs that were in USAID. Right, and I think you and I agree, we're not opposed to foreign aid. No. I mean, I want to help starving children. Right, but when you're taking our taxpayer dollars and you're doing diversity training in Serbia and you're doing LGBTQ stuff in South America and the list goes on and on. For countries that don't want it. Yeah, well, and God forbid, I mean, you should be ashamed because you've put all the good stuff at risk. But to your question, we...

We bleed $1.7 to $2 trillion a year. We got $36 trillion in debt and growing. The debt markets are looking to this Congress and this president to see if we are serious about dealing with our debt. Now, the fight is going to be to what extent.

You've got to put this thing on a better trajectory so that you have a plan to pay off the debt and balance the budget. I don't think our guys are opposed to that whatsoever. The real issue to them is going to be, to your point, scalpel versus hammer, right? Right. Whatever it is, bazooka. Right, hatchet. I mean, you go in with a bazooka, you come out maybe with more of a scalpel-based approach. Right.

People need to know. It's, you know, transparency is, was it Justice Brandeis? Transparency is the greatest medicine for corruption. We got to show it. And then we got to fix it. So far, the biggest loser in the first month of Donald Trump's presidency are the NGOs.

who just became money loitering operations. I'll call them loitering, laundering, all of them. They just hung out, took money, and pushed a simple agenda that most Americans would disagree with. Right. I mean, there was an article, there was a news clip in San Diego Today that a shelter for immigrants has $7 million they can't spend because there's no immigrants there. Oh, no. So they should refund the money.

Right? I mean, it's as simple as it is. What are they going to do? They don't know. I mean, she literally was complaining about it. She goes, well, I guess we just save it until another time. It was funny. I'll send you the clip. It was pretty amazing.

Do you think the Dodge conversation has changed the way a majority of Americans will look at government spending going forward, even from the state to county level to the local level, saying, okay, I want to see what you're spending money on? Do you see this popping up in town meetings, city councils, things of that nature? I actually do. I do too. And remember when we were younger, Tom Colburn from Oklahoma used to have the golden –

Turkey Awards, the Golden Fleece Awards, whatever they were. And he would point out these outrageous things like $8,000 toilet seats and whatever. And that was always talked about. Then it kind of disappeared. And I know our guys, this is why I push back a little bit when people say, well, Doge is going to fix all of this.

Our guys for the last decade that I've been there have been identifying this waste, fraud, and abuse on a regular basis. The only problem they've had, which we seem to have overcome now with the trifecta, is getting these bureaucracies to actually release all the records that are requested and

But it's really interesting now that we're getting into it and we're seeing it. I mean, you don't have to be a Republican or a Democrat or some other persuasion of politics to go, that's BS. Well, how insane is the argument? And you especially see this on the left and with the media. Let's talk about USAID. Well, it's only 1% of our budget. The last I looked, the Democrats wanted everybody to have free tuition.

There's some argument, some merit for it. Do they realize if you eliminate all the Fund USA, which I'm not recommending, but if you eliminate all of it, that takes care of the free college tuition every year? I don't think they do. No. I mean, so they really don't know who they're supporting. So, Lula, you could support Americans with free college tuition for a year, what they're spending on the nonsense they're doing there. Look, these guys on the left, their identity politics have finally come back to consume them.

whether it's gender, whether it's religion, whether it's your lifestyle, whatever it is, that's who these guys have been playing to. And it's not, when you ask the question, it's like they actually try to discern is one better than the other. They don't. No. They just want more money and they're going to just keep throwing money. Even if the thing's not working, you throw more money at it. That's their answer. Well, leadership's my priorities.

And that's what Republicans, I hope, say this is the priorities, what Americans want, what they want their money spent on, what they want their tax dollars spent on. Tell our audience, how mediocre really is the job market? I mean, you know, Biden's – the job growth – okay. Biden's jobs under Biden were 45 percent government jobs. Yep.

How mediocre is the job market really the past four years? The past four years, the incentives have been all back asswards, as they like to say.

I you are literally I encouraging people to stay out of the workforce with these different government programs right there's a great book called the myths of inequality that was written by a Phil Graham and a couple other economists within the last two years people were listening it's a short book it's about 200 pages and what he does is he shows you how they have cooked the numbers in our country to try and show inequalities that don't exist

example did you know that it is the US Census Bureau that defines who is wealthy and who is poor and the definition for the US Census Bureau is wealthy are pre-tax income people and poor are pre-government transfer income and he shows you by

splitting the population up into quintiles because that's the other thing they do. There's just a handful of uber wealthy families at the top of this pyramid in this country. But by bringing the number down below another group, you can pull a whole bunch of other people into that top group and make it look like there's a lot more of these uber wealthy families than there are. So he's honest about the uber wealthy families quintiles. He goes all the way to the bottom quintile and he shows you

that someone in the bottom quintile earning, say, gross earnings for the year, $4,000, $4,500, if they take advantage of every single government program that's out there, they could be in the mid-40s. They could be taking home $40,000 to $45,000 for the year. And by the way, that puts them at the bottom of the third quintile with people who are working their butts off to make ends meet. So the work is there.

Trump is going to start with the economy. I mean, the whole goal is you've got to unleash American energy again. Energy is more than just what we put in our gas tank. It literally drives our quality of life in this country. Abundant, efficient, affordable energy is the key to American success.

He's going to open up that again, which Biden shut down. He was trying to kill one sector of our energy industry, the fossil fuels sector. Trump will open that up. That'll help get our economy moving. We're going to take care of the permitting process in this country.

I gotta tell you, why are we waiting 10 to 20 years to do projects in this country so people can go through some maze of different regulations and regulators? Well, what the left doesn't understand is the same litigation they put on energy, they put on housing. That's why we have a housing shortage.

That's right. I mean, they make it impossible. But remember, that's local, county, state, and federal. Yep. We've just layered all this regular... I got Minneapolis. These idiots in Minneapolis passed rent controls. Now, they were all advocating for it. It's the greatest things, bunch of socialists, right? As soon as it was done, the paper that was actually on their side started writing articles, surprised, developers are not moving forward with projects in Minneapolis. Boy, I wonder why. Yeah.

It's amazing. All right, renewing the tax cuts. Is the conference supportive of it? When do you think we'll see it brought up for a vote? Well, you've got two processes working in parallel universes. The Senate may bring the skinny bill to the floor as early as tonight. This is the Lindsey Graham bill.

They may do it tonight, tomorrow. If they do, that bill just covers about $300 billion. It's the border money that Tom Holman needs like yesterday.

It's the supplemental defense money that are – I mean, the issue for defense is if you don't get your spending bills done by the 14th of March, April 30th, you could have a 1% cut across the board, including defense, which would be devastating in this world. So they're trying to take care of both of those, give Trump a win right out of the chute, and then they want to do a second bill. The House? Yes.

We passed a budget resolution out of the House Budget Committee last Thursday, I think it was, after a long day. That budget resolution is not the budget for people who are listening. It is the key to unlocking the door to reconciliation, which is where you can start to get all your savings and your cuts to try and balance the budget and put us on that trajectory to a more sustainable future in this country. What's going to happen?

We're either going to have one bill or two bills. I don't care. I mean, I support our speaker who wants one big, beautiful bill. The thought is you got to do tax extenders, the permanency in that one big, beautiful bill. You got to have all of it in it so people can't say, well, I already got border. I don't need to vote for this. But I think what we're missing is

Donald Trump is the greatest whip we have. We're going to get to that point where it's going to be... We've got this academic debate going on, too. How much of a role did he play in the leadership elections when there was a few? Did he stop in and make some calls and just say, that's enough of the silliness? We didn't need the drama going into the new Congress. And it was clearly going to happen again. Worked on it for several days. I mean, do they not understand the perception?

I mean, I know it's probably hard for you to answer, but you talk to people and people who are involved in politics, like, what are they doing? They're human beings, and human beings are emotional animals. Oh, my gosh. Sometimes we let our emotions get the best of us, and then it takes a little bit to wind those emotions down and get people back to ground zero, and it's like, yeah, you're right. Department of Education. Do we need to take a scalpel to it, or do we just need to get rid of it? Get rid of it.

I mean, I've been saying this for 20 years. So how much, explain to our audience exactly what the Department of Education does with their money. Because since we created it in '79, education results have gone down significantly. My state, my state pays as much or more than any other state per student. And guess what? The difference between minority students and white students, the learning gap has increased. It's horrible.

It's increased. It's a travesty. Here's what you're dealing with. So Thomas Massey, last year or the year before, we had a thing called the Parental Bill of Rights that we were going to pass off the House floor. This wasn't a mandate to local school districts. It was just suggestions. You know, you should publish the curriculum. You should do this, list all the things so your parents can see what their students are getting in the classroom, in the school.

I it violates the concept of federalism for some people right they don't think the federal government should even be telling records what they should do that's Thomas Massey I tend to agree with him but this is something that we were doing at that point it was gonna become law because in Chuck Schumer right I but I call Thomas and I said can I get your vote on this and he won't carry pick care if I tell you the story he says well you might be able to night said okay will tell me how he says

there's an amendment I want to offer, but you may not like it. And I said, what was that? Thomas says, I want an amendment to eliminate the Department of Education. And I said, Thomas, I've been talking about this since I first got into politics. I would love to help you with this. Thomas goes through the process with the amendment, which means you have to send it to the CBO to score it. You're not going to believe this. They said if we eliminate approximately 4,000 jobs with an average salary and benefit package of $100,000 each...

It's going to cost the federal government money. I kid you not. They did this mental gymnastics thing where they said if you take these 4,000 people out of the federal retirement account, you're going to have this hole in the federal retirement account. I'm sorry. I'm just a simple guy from the Midwest. It seems to me if you take those 4,000 people out, they're no longer part of the program. It's just yellow pad math. Oh, yeah. Third grade math. Yeah.

Well, as we wrap up here, and we appreciate your time today, is there anything you want to tell our audience that they can be helpful with, what they should be doing? Yeah, I mean, keep the faith. The Republican trifecta is going to go through ups and downs. You're going to see agreements. You're going to see disagreements. You're going to see people say things that you think are just outrageous and emotional. Let it go. Let it go. This is like any other team. You can put jerseys, the same jerseys, on a group of people. They aren't a team on the first day.

They're going to run into each other. They're going to have to go through practices which get very physical. And they're going to have to come out the other side understanding what their common goal is. And in this case, the common goal, which we have talked to our members about since November, 77 million people elected Donald J. Trump to fix what they broke the last four years. It's the economy. It's the border and crime. It's peace and stability around the globe. We deliver on that agenda.

Not only is the country going to be a lot better off, but Republicans are going to be governing for a long time. One last question. Do we have a chance to pick up the Senate seat in Minnesota?

We do. We do. But it's going to take somebody, in my opinion, that's got that star power name, somebody that's been a professional athlete, a professional broadcaster, somebody who people know on a national level that can raise $20 million, and more importantly, that Donald Trump will actually be attracted to and say, I want to lean in and help. Some razzle dazzle. If you're going to win Minnesota, you've got to have the right person, you've got to have the money, and you've got to have Donald Trump.

Congressman Tom Emmer, thank you so much for joining us on Breaking Battleground. Thank you.