Can Trump Double The Size Of The US?
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He's doing to Canada what he did to Europe. When he went to the UN and he was like, why is it that America

America has to subsidize the defense, the national security of all of Europe, and we get nothing but guff for it. All you do is criticize me and our country all the time and we protect you. For what? Yep. Right? And it's the same sort of playbook. And Trump, as a businessman, is just the best in the business of doing it. You got to carry your own weight to the agreed upon amount. And if you're not living up to it, then you start complaining about getting called out.

Canada's the same boat. It's like if you're saying that your economy is dependent on America and then you're trying to play us, of course he should call you out on that. And I don't think it's any accident that Justin from Canada quit the day

Donald Trump got certified. You know, January 6th, he knew the drill. Get out of the way because Trump is here. He couldn't handle it. So he got out of the way. That's it. Yeah, he thinks big. And that is what Americans want. We should conquer Canada. We should conquer any place we want to conquer. To be honest with you, we're America. We're the best country in the world. And if somebody is in our way, we should.

Do you have any ideas here, Ashbrook? You want to add to the list? Well, somebody tweeted, and I thought it was very astute, that the Australians don't have guns anymore, so we can take Australia. Yeah. Didn't they lose a war to some flightless birds down there? Yeah, the emus. Yeah, the emu war. I don't have to tell you Americans are ready for what's next. Moving beyond the hardships of inflation and economic anxiety towards building a future, a better future for our families.

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Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. Just to catch up strays over here. You're in for a hell of a show. Keep the faith, hold the line and own the libs. It's time for our main.

Welcome back to the Ruthless Variety Program. I am Michael Duncan. Joining me today, comfortably smug, Matt McDaniel and John Ashbrook, left to right across your radio dial. Not with us today, though, Josh Holmes. He's out there working hard. On the road, putting in the work. Yeah, well, he's not in D.C., which is nice because we're still dealing with the aftermath of a single snow event that apparently closes down this city.

But the big news today, and I want to get right to it because it's really important, this incredible Donald Trump press conference, wide-ranging, a lot of topics. We're talking Greenland. We're talking about renaming the Gulf of Mexico. A ton of stuff going on there. I can't wait. I mean, this was really one of the greatest press conferences I've ever seen. Yeah. And I can't wait for four more years. Maybe, if we're lucky, eight more years. I think so. You know, what I'm calling it is the Monroe Doctrine by shitposting.

Which I think is kind of a synopsis of the whole strategy here when it comes to the Western Hemisphere. The one clip I want to play for this is clip one. Can we get to that one, Spaghetts? We're going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory. The Gulf of America, what a beautiful name. And it's appropriate. It's appropriate.

It is. I mean, that's it. He's not wrong, is he? He's 100% right. For so long, it's bothered me thinking about it. When you think, why is it called the Gulf of Mexico? It touches Florida and Texas. And like, those are two very major states. And they define to a great extent what America is to begin with. That's our water. It's always belonged to us.

Always. And so calling it the Gulf of America, I mean, again, it's called North America for a reason. Like, we're the centerpiece here. We don't need to start being like, okay, you can have a little bit of this. It's like children on a playground. It's a little presumptuous for Mexico to just claim it as theirs. I mean, I don't think that's fair. And it's not just the Gulf of Mexico here. We're talking Greenland. We're talking the Panama Canal.

I mean, wide ranging. And we're going to get to all of it. We also have to talk about this incredible news. At Amedda, you know, the parent company of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg had a huge statement about sort of, you know, political speech on the platform, which I think is a breath of fresh air across, you know, our politics and the whole industry of tech.

We're going to go through a lot of the Biden dementia comments everybody left on the Tuesday episode, which are incredible. We got some clips on that. And we also have a great guest, Mark Wayne Mullen. Oh, man, he is just the best. He's the best. And he's kind of at the center of a lot of stuff that's going to be happening here over the next month in the first quarter of the Trump administration. So we're going to get to all of that right after this.

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Okay, we got to get first to this presser. We referenced it at the top, a lot of stuff going on there. Let's sort of set the table here with this first clip, Spaghetti No. 2.

No.

Are you going to ask the Canadians to hold the vote? What is the strategy? I can't assure you. You're talking about Panama and Greenland. No, I can't assure you on either of those two. But I can say this. We need them for economic security. The Panama Canal was built for our military.

I mean, we're back. We're back. Well, we're back, but it seems like the media is falling into their old game where they try to think of the question. I get it. It's their job, but they're trying to think of the question that's going to

have the most viral tweet. But that's the thing. It's like Trump is like catnip for them. Yeah. And he's like rocket fuel for their page views and their ratings. So they have slipped right back into their old pattern of being like, everything Trump has said is the most outrageous and dangerous thing. It's a danger to democracy. Like, they're all like, it's like, you know, a junkie back on the smack, right? So they've got their high, they're cooking, they're doing their like shuck and jive dance thing.

But it's Trump being classic Trump. He's like, no, I'm not going to tell you. Remember how they were like, why don't you tell us your secret plan for beating ISIS? And he's like, why would I tell you? And they're like, how dare he not reveal it? ISIS gets decimated. It's like, okay, well, maybe the guy knows what he's doing. Yeah, you're supposed to telegraph exactly what your strategy of negotiating something is before you actually do the negotiating. He's not even President of the United States yet. Yeah, that's not how it works at all. I love it on the journo part, though, that for the last four years, it's just been warm milk.

They haven't cared. Biden was slowly rotting away in front of us, and they're just, I don't know, nothing's really going on. And as soon as Trump even says, yeah, maybe we'll talk about the right idea for the 22nd century of adding Greenland. Oh, no, are you going to invade Greenland? That's the only step they can imagine. But I did want to make a comparison because everybody's saying,

Donald Trump is the new Reagan. He's the new Teddy Roosevelt. Yes. Because it's this idea of kind of a rough rider. He's a pioneer. Pioneer. Panama, you know, charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba. You know, looking out, what can America become? It's very forward looking. And I mean, I'm here for it. Because he thinks big. Yeah. Yeah.

We should have Greenland. We should. It should belong to America. And taking it over would be very simple. You wait till the summer, all the igloos melt. They have no shelter. They don't. And then we just roll up in eternal daylight with helicopters and jets and boats, and they'll give it away. Yeah. That's the thing is like, how much do you have to really negotiate with Greenland?

Has anyone heard about Greenland's massive military? Like, oh my God, watch out for Greenland. No, no. And they would welcome us as liberals. It's kind of semi-autonomous, but technically part of Denmark, I believe. Yeah. Right? There are only 45,000 people who live there. Yeah. I do want to make another historical comparison here. Back when we were considering buying Alaska...

William Seward. Yeah. And it was called Seward's Folly. Like, they made fun of him at the time for saying, why would you want to buy Alaska? There's nothing in Alaska. Why would you want to buy Alaska? And yet, when we went, we went through with it, and now Alaska's been, you know... It's full of gold and oil. Gold, oil, yeah. Yeah. And...

When you look at Greenland, it's part of North America. It's 45,000 people there. And in the 22nd century, it's going to be perfect for our shipping lanes. And I mean, there's lots of, it's a very, lots of frozen, desolate areas that you could send illegals, build large camps for illegals, send them there for like processing and then shipping them to wherever we got to ship them. Yes, but Greenland isn't the only place that Donald Trump has his eyes on. Even though Justin Trudeau has said now that he's going to step down

down in Canada, Trump's still on it. He still wants Canada to be the 51st state. Spaghetti, let's do clip three. Supporting a country, 200 million plus a year. Our military is at their disposal. All of these other things, they should be a state. That's why I told Trudeau when he came down, I said, what would happen if we didn't do it? He said, Canada would dissolve.

Canada wouldn't be able to function if we didn't take that 20% of our car market. You know, again, they send us hundreds of thousands of cars. They make a lot of money with that. They send us a lot of other things that we don't need. We don't need their cars. We don't need the other products. We don't need their milk.

Yeah, I love it. He's not wrong. Yeah. Well, I kind of like that he's doing to Canada what he did to Europe when he went to the U.N. and he was like, why is it that America has to subsidize the defense, the national security of all of Europe?

and we get nothing but guff for it. All you do is criticize me and our country all the time and we protect you. For what? Yep. Right? And it's the same sort of playbook. And Trump, as a businessman, is just the best in the business at doing it.

I mean, that's the thing. I think your example of Europe is perfect. Like, you got to carry your own weight to the greed upon amount. And if you're not living up to it, then you start complaining about getting called out. Canada is the same boat. It's like if you're saying that your economy is dependent on America and then you're trying to play us, of course he should call you out on that. And I don't think it's any accident that Justin from Canada quit the day before.

Donald Trump got certified. You know, January 6th, he knew the drill. Get out of the way because Trump is here. He couldn't handle it. So he got out of the way. That's it. Yeah, he thinks big. And that is what Americans want. We should conquer Canada. We should conquer any place we want to conquer. To be honest with you, we're America. We're the best country in the world. And if somebody is in our way, we should.

Do you have any ideas here, Ashbrook, you want to add to the list? Well, somebody tweeted, and I thought it was very astute, that the Australians don't have guns anymore, so we can take Australia. Yeah. Didn't they lose a war to some flightless birds down there? Yeah, the emus? Yeah, the emu war. Yeah.

You've been to Australia, right? Yeah, we're going to get some negative emails about that, I'm sure, from our friends. They'll come in at 2 o'clock in the morning. No one will see them anyway. Again, we roll up, we surround the island. They're not going to throw boomerangs at us. They can't stop us. We're America. We can have what we want. Yeah, there's a lot of other things that can go on a Barbie other than shrimp. Right. You know? On Canada, the biggest problem is

their standard of living is so much lower than ours. They just don't know how good it is to be an American. We would be well, we would go in, we'd have to raise their standard of living. We'd have to invest in Canada. I think we only want Alberta, um,

Maybe the Maritimes. But I don't know if we could raise the standard of living of British Columbia. I don't know if we want Ontario. They have lots of problems in Canada, is the thing. I think that's a good point. You should only conquer countries that you benefit from without having to put a lot of work into it, like in terms of, well, you need to build infrastructure here, and you've got to hope that democracy or whatever takes flight. No. We only find places that we can exploit, that can be a part of the team, that can bring something to the table. Well, Trump is doing what Trump does best, and he has the whip hand right now.

Right. He's coming in, you know, going to be sworn in as president of the United States. He's got all this momentum behind him. And so he's using that whip hand to get all the leverage he can for the outcomes that he wants. But it's not just Greenland. It's not just Panama. It's not just Canada. He had a message for Hamas, which is incredible. Let's go to that clip, please. Spaghetts.

We have to run it properly. It's going to be run properly. We want to get back those hostages for Israel and for us. You know, we do have people that are hostages being held. And I'll just say it again. If this deal is not done with the people representing our nation, by the time I get to office, all hell is going to break out. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I love how that's how he ends the presser. He's just like, thank you very much. Bye. All hell will break loose. Thank you. Goodbye. What a pro. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is like he's not just talking the talk. Like ask Soleimani what happens if you cross Trump. You know, like the thing is that we have had for four years an America that the world saw as being weak. As you can do whatever you want. You can take Americans hostage. They won't do anything.

And now they're going to learn. They know. They've seen what happened the last time he was there. I mean, ISIS got decimated. There was peace in the Middle East. You had Iran bankrupted.

None of this Hamas nonsense was going on because Trump took care of business because they know this guy, he's going to follow through on it. If Biden issues a threat to anybody, does anyone worry? No one cares if Biden says anything. Well, I think the era of American diplomatic nuance that has completely failed over the last four years is over. Especially in a place like the Middle East. Well, that's what I was going for. Like when you say, when you follow through, people know when Trump was president, he followed through on his threats.

But he's also not going to bomb people just for the hell of it, right? I mean, there was that back and forth with Iran where he decided not to bomb them.

But when Trump says, you know, fire and fury, the likes of which you've never seen, that you don't really need a translator to understand what he's saying. It's not a threat. It's a promise. Yeah. I mean, and he will. And you know he will. And Hamas knows he will. And the Palestinians know that he's going to follow through. So when you're negotiating with Trump, it's very clear what his goals are and what the consequences are. So that brings us to our question of the day.

And if you haven't subscribed yet to the YouTube, you got to do that. You know, and if you've watched just every single Tuesday and Thursday and you love this show and you're like, boy, we only got 80,000 subscribers on this channel. Well, take a second and share this with your friends and your family and keep spreading the word. Get them to like and subscribe so they can comment, too. But that question of the day is which territory is Trump most likely to get? Good question.

What do you want? Do you want Greenland? Do we want Canada as the 51st? Maybe just Alberta. Who knows? We're going to take the Panama Canal back. Got to get the canal back. Or is it Gulf of America? Or should it be Gulf of Texas? I saw Senator Ted Cruz said maybe Gulf of Texas. I don't know. They got a lot of shoreline there. I don't know. Anyway, that's our question of the day. We're going to be back right after this with your comments from our Tuesday episode, Biden's Top Dementia Moments.

I don't have to tell you Americans are ready for what's next. Moving beyond the hardships of inflation and economic anxiety towards building a future, a better future for our families. Ensuring greater access to more affordable energy that powers daily lives, reliable energy that fuels innovation and economic growth, and the abundant energy that keeps our nation safer and more secure. It's all within our grasp.

We'll do this together, building a brighter future for us, powered by America's oil and natural gas resources. You can learn more about all of this at API.org.

I am very much looking forward to this, fellas. Yes. Because I was reading all these comments after the Tuesday episode, and, like, I forgot. I thought maybe I had dementia. I had forgot some of these incredible moments. And that's the great thing about the community of our show and all of you listeners and viewers is,

like having this huge network effect of people, everybody had such great comments for this. And for the first one, we always go right to the voice. Okay, this first one comes from Mark Bowers. And Mark writes, fellas, I love the program. I've been a listener since day one. My favorite Biden dementia moment is the Easter egg hunt at the White House when he went wandering off and a handler dressed as the Easter bunny had to go wrangle him. Mark, that is just a...

Brilliant. Brilliant pool. Again, I had forgotten about it. There's so many. It was different from answering a question. Yeah, right. See, like, that's the thing is you always assume the dementia moment is something where he talks, but a lot of times it's him simply not knowing where to be. Exactly. All right, so let's go to that clip, please, Spaghetts. Here it is. The Easter Bunny is trying to stop him and redirect him to go a different location. Oh, my God.

They have to have someone in a large bunny suit direct the President of the United States. I love that the bunny is still following him just in case he makes the same mistake again. And the bunny has to have...

waving of the arms to make it clear, like, hey, I'm not just coming over to be a prop here, pal. You got to get back over there. It's like he's guiding a plane into the gate. He's like, okay, this way, old man. Like, holy moly. And this was a couple years ago, right? Yeah. This guy is unbelievable. McDaniel, you want to do the next one? Yeah, sure. So comment two comes from Brad Wilkinson.

My favorite Biden moment is we hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created equal by the, you know, you know, the thing. Let's do the clip spaghetts. We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created by the goal. You know, you know, the thing. How? How? How do you get that so wrong?

Man, that's like second grade. Yeah, it is. That was real, not a joke. I thought, I mean, I think stand-up Chuck was bad or like take a bow Jackie or whatever. Where's Jackie? At least he wasn't at the funeral crawling into her casket. Jackie, wake up. Maybe tomorrow he's going to ask where's Jimmy. Yeah. Oh, God. Jimmy Carter would be so sad. All right, Smug, give us the third one here. Best Gaff.

This was when Biden was still a senator, but I swear this was a sign that his mind was already going. Senator Biden told wheelchair-bound state Senator Chuck Graham, stand up, Chuck, let him see you. I think he was always an idiot. So this is a crowd favorite, you know, and it's near and dear to our hearts because it's just your sort of classic Biden moment. Let's go to that clip, Spaghetts.

You know the saddest thing about that clip?

As you can tell there, because that's from 2008, I believe, Biden's way more lucid. And he's able to get himself out of a jam a little bit easier because he's more cognitive faculties. Oh, that's a good point. He realizes immediately that he made a goof. Now, Biden doesn't even know when he goofed. He needs a giant bunny to come over and be like, hey, man, you got to get back with the program. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, you know, another one of my favorite moments, it was in 1988, and Smug and I always talk about what it takes. Great book that covered the 1988 primary for Democrats. And remember, I think he was in New Hampshire, and he just starts getting into this argument. He's like, I have high IQ. Do you have high IQ? My IQ is higher than yours. Like, he literally, for his entire career, has not only been an asshole, but somebody who doesn't quite have –

the same thing that like Bill Clinton had, that Obama had. It was like when he was running and he called that guy fat. Look fat. Look fat. Then he challenged him to a push-up contest. This is just unbelievable. Well, that was great. Thank you so much to everybody who submitted those comments. They're always fantastic, but especially when we could do a whole segment here on the show about it. So thank you so much.

We're going to get to that news from Metta and Mark Zuckerberg. But first, we got to talk about a great sponsor, one of our favorite sponsors here at the Variety Program. And I'm talking about Z Biotics. The best. I don't think I would have survived the holidays, fellas, without this stuff. It's a prebiotic drink. You take it before you have a big night. It helps neutralize a lot of the toxic byproducts of alcohol in your gut.

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Okay, let's get to this meta news. So it was really big on social media here this week, this big announcement that Mark Zuckerberg made, you know, direct to camera talking about

political speech on his platform and how things have sort of changed over time and this notion of fact checkers, which I think is just, I think it speaks to a larger thing that's happening in our politics, in our country writ large. But I just want to read here a little bit.

Meta is ending its fact-checking program and lifting restrictions on speech to, quote, restore free expression across Facebook, Instagram, and Meta platforms, admitting its current content moderation practices have gone too far. This is from Mark Zuckerberg. We're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms. God bless it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, I want to kind of take a victory lap. I'd said that

Mark Andreessen was a man of the year. He's currently on the board of Meta. And this is we all saw the fact that Mark had in the election helping encourage people in Silicon Valley of like, hey, it's time to step up for our rights, for our freedoms, for free speech in this country. And I would not be surprised if he had an impact in helping bring this about, because beyond just.

so many Americans facing censorship, worrying about like, oh, you know, am I allowed to even say this of what ends up being the truth? Like, you know, things like Hunter Biden's laptop.

This was also a thorn in the side for Meta because they're having to deal with these lunatics, these like left wing groups who are like, no, we get to call the shots on your platform and you have to deal with the fallout from it. Yeah. So I bet for Meta, this is like a huge relief, too. I think so. And I think it's an oversimplification to say, like, well, Donald Trump won. And so now Mark Zuckerberg and Meta.

are gonna be supporting more free speech on their platforms. I think the other side is just not a small little thing. It's probably the driving force, and that is after 2016,

You know, a lot of these tech companies tried to play nice with the left and these orgs that were just trying to ban political speech on the Internet and find ways to monitor content and all these sort of things. And I think a lot of it was like in goodwill and trying to work with these people as partners. The problem is when you work with these lunatic left wing groups and all of these people, it's

It's never enough. Never. And ultimately, they just want to work the refs and censor their opponents. Because what they actually want is power. Right. And this move is so big for regular people in this country who have lived at the mercy of the power centers on the East and West Coast, rich people who think they're better than everybody else in this entire country. And now everybody gets a chance to have their voice heard.

It's not completely the or the conversation is not completely controlled by the networks and Hollywood and the big finance and big government conversations are controlled by the people. And I just I think this is one of the greatest moves. That's why I also like the embracing the community notes function like on X. It's like, let's use the power of the user base and.

and have a conversation about what we disagree. That's the whole point of social media. And the left and all these lunatics want to take the social part out of social media, right? They want it to be a place where you put up a press release that's approved by some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. I love the anger that's coming. They're trying to democratize fact-checking, which is objectively a good thing, because that gets more opinions in to actually find out what the truth is versus arbiters of truth, which is just...

It's truth dictatorship, which is a terrible, terrible model. I mean, obviously X learned that. And you actually had Elon put out a tweet praising Zuckerberg, which in this sort of industry, you know, you don't always, Ford isn't always praising Mercedes, right? Yeah. But a couple of points on this, like this was the podcast election, right? This was the democratization of information election. And I think when you hear Zuckerberg's statement,

He really got to the fact that that's what people are looking for, that people are not just want to be told what the truth is. They want to be able to see, you know, why, why is this true? What, what, what is this fact checker? Who is this fact checker? Who's paying this fact checker? Right. And, and,

Rather than saying, I think a lot of the left is freaking out that Meta has made the shift. I think this is shifting back to the center. I don't even think that this is a shift to the right. I think this is a shift back to reality, just the way it should be. Not some right-wing craziness. It's just a shift back to sort of the normal way the ecosystem should be working versus the way it was. Yeah. So we've got this great side-by-side. Yeah.

Just to put it in context here, we've got Mark Zuckerberg back when he was getting grilled, you know, after he's getting all the blame that Facebook elected Donald Trump. And then we've got Mark Zuckerberg now. Can we put that up?

Look at that glow up. Look at that glow up. What a baller. That chain is everything. I think he's like living in Hawaii now. So, Duncan, I got to get your take on this because of something we talked about earlier. But I've now been doing jujitsu for like four and a half, five years. And Zuckerberg also probably for about four years started doing jujitsu. Yeah. Which for people who don't know, it's like the like wrestling and mixed martial arts.

being a part of that community, it's not necessarily socially conservative. Culturally, though. It's culturally conservative. It's real people. And when someone's trying to choke the life out of you, you're not really arguing about politics. It's not the soy kind of nonsense. But this is a guy who... Nick, can you put that graphic back up?

So we're seeing the testimony guy. That's the guy who you want to choke out versus the guy who can choke you out on the other side. That's right. And that's a big difference because not... I mean, to me, it just speaks a lot about confidence. It's about what he's willing to be able to... Like, the guy on the right...

knows he's going to get incoming, he's going to get flack, and he can take it. The guy on the left is terrified of speaking one... He's terrified of misgendering someone on the left, whereas the guy on the right doesn't give a crap. He's wearing an $850,000 watch. He doesn't care. I think Zuckerberg, when he went before Congress...

You know, I think he was trying to play nice with these Democrats thinking that they were coming from a place of good faith, which, of course, we all know that they weren't. And I think the ethos of the Internet and a lot of these tech companies and what got a lot of these founders interested in building things and disrupting industries changed.

was the ethos that is more sort of libertarian and culturally conservative. And I think that's the drive for people like him and so many in the tech industry. And it took Donald Trump running for president again, like you were saying with Marc Andreessen, and there's a lot of other ones, to come out and say, this is what we believe in. We believe in these values of free speech. And just in Donald Trump winning has sort of unlocked all of that.

And again, I think it's very telling the way that Democrats in the Senate and the left had a freak out after Trump won 2016. And their first instinct was

was silence all dissension. We need to have complete control over what people are allowed to see, hear, and say online and everywhere. And so that's why they had this crackdown in the first place in 2016. And they're going right back to their old tricks. You hear them being like, oh my gosh, they're getting rid of the fact checkers that we put in place there to try and control speech. The only way...

Democrats can get a victory in this country as if the American people are not allowed to speak their mind and not be free. That's what their whole goal has been this whole time. And accumulating power, like you said, it's all about power for them. This scares them.

because the American people are once again going to be able to live up to the ideals I found in this country of being free. No more censoring the Hunter Biden laptop. It's great. It's great. There's so much good news, and we have a lot of good news about what's going on on the Hill right now and everything for this first 100-day agenda for Donald Trump. And so we brought in Mark Wayne Mullen, senator from Oklahoma, to tell us a lot about what's going to be happening here over the next quarter

quarter in Congress, and he's got a meeting with Donald Trump coming up. There's just a ton of great stuff we've got to get to this interview. I want to welcome to the program a man with the unenviable or enviable, depending on your perspective.

at the nexus of everything we're going to get done in this next Congress, Senator Mark Wayne Mullen. How are you? Good. That's a big title, and I think it's got a little bit too much in on that. I don't think it's the nexus of everything that's going to get done. Look, look, look. I hear your phone is ringing off the hook. It is crazy, but I'd rather be busy than not. So it's since November 6th, and it hasn't stopped. And I'm not complaining because I met with the president yesterday,

I liked President Trump last Tuesday. I flew down there, met with him on Monday and Tuesday. And Monday and Tuesday, mind you, was the 23rd and not the 23rd, but the 30th and 31st. Right. And the reason I was going down there is because we were talking about some national security stuff. And Mike Waltz was in the meeting and we were just we were visiting. But he was supposed to have the day off.

I was his last of 32 meetings that day. And this was his day off, mind you. The 31st...

was no different. And it should, and the guy is so high energy. I hate to complain when I say my phone is nonstop. He has two phones that's nonstop. Plus Natalie, his assistant, she runs a phone too. And she'll bring a phone, bring her phone into him occasionally too. The guy is incredible. I mean, he's incredible. So it's really hard for me to complain because

But I'm wore out. I mean, really. And I may get divorced. My wife is like, you're going to have to turn that off. I was like, I can't. I don't know where you turn it off. But, you know, he sets the pace. He's, you know, he's the leader right now of our party. He's the president of the United States or he's acting as the president of the United States. We don't have a president in the White House right now. Right. Yeah. And it is it is just amazing at the level he's setting. And it just makes all of us want to work harder.

Yeah, I was just going to say the energy level that he's bringing is completely the opposite of what we've seen the last four years with Biden. I don't think I mean, he probably didn't do 32 calls in a week. Yeah. 32 meetings. Those aren't his. Those aren't phone calls. Those are 30. That was 32 meetings in his office. Incredible. And we we we finished at about seven thirty eight o'clock, walked him to his residence at Mar-a-Lago.

had continued conversations. Then Mike Waltz and I talked for quite some time afterwards, too. And it's just all of us had the privilege of being able to just see a little bit, a little glimpse of what the president, and I'm not as close to the president as a lot, right? But just to see the little bit of a glimpse of the way he runs and how hard he works, it really puts that thing as...

no way you're going to outwork me. You set that tone and you're living it. There is no way I'm not going to get up and get moving. He has a motor, obviously. He's going to need to have that because he's pretty ambitious about everything he wants to get accomplished here, especially in this first quarter. And even on the campaign. I had the privilege of being on Trump Force One multiple times and Trump Force Two with J.D. Both of them are just working their tails off.

I mean, they were just absolutely working their tails off. It was very, very common. In fact, it was more common than not that we were at the hotel for less than five hours. Now I'm talking about from the time we pulled up at the motorcade to the time we're leaving with the motorcade was less than five hours. And from the time the president walked on the plane, which was a working office. I mean, Trump Force One is a working office. He didn't go to his living quarters. He literally...

I say living quarters. I don't guess it's living quarters. He didn't go to the personal quarters. He sat in the middle of the plane. He would have a huge stack of papers. He would have people around him. He's dictating what needs to be said, what message he wants to put on True Social. Going through his speech, making phone calls because the plane, obviously, he can make phone calls on. From the moment he walked on to the moment we landed,

at the last event of the day and we're going to go to the hotel. He was running, he was doing multiple town hall meetings. I mean, he was doing 11 or 12 town hall meetings for members of the House and members of the Senate every day. On top of doing three, four, five rallies a day, completely sold out, same energy level. But it was one thing that I found intriguing was

is he loves The Undertaker. Oh, does he really? Loves The Undertaker. He thinks he has the greatest walkout of all time. Oh, yeah. It's legendary. Oh, it is, right? Yeah. And Paul Bearer there with the urn and everything. Oh, yeah, the whole thing. He was such a production artist, and the president would be like, you know, that...

That is that's straight out of casting right there. I mean, the guy knows how to sell himself. That's advertisement. That's retail. He's retailing. So it was just so because most of the time when we're going into land for a at least when I was with him, you know, we're going into land for for a new rally. Some people.

from the Undertakers coming on. And I've never watched so much WWE, WWF, whatever it's called now, I don't know, in my life. And it was just, but it was serious but fun. Yeah. And it's because of the energy that he kept. Yeah. And so that's, I mean, you cannot work the guy.

That's why the American people love him. You're exactly right. I mean, there's nothing more American than a work ethic like he has. And it is exactly what people want in a president. And every day is important. Every single day is vital. And today is no different. You are about to go into a meeting with President Trump and senators to plan out the next couple of months. And I wonder if you could talk about what you expect from that meeting this afternoon. Yeah. And mind you, I want to reiterate this, too.

This is his second trip to the Capitol since he's been elected. Other than the State of the Union, I don't think Biden has made a trip to the Capitol or maybe when the president of Ireland was there and they're doing an event, but never to meet with members. Just zero engagement from the White House for four years.

So the fact that the president of the United States is coming in, the future president, you know, the 47th president, former 45th president of the United States coming in to already talk to us because he's trying to make sure that we're moving in the same direction. And leaders have to communicate. That's one thing in our company. That was one thing that was always so important to me is I had to communicate. Don't expect people to understand what you're thinking. It's the same thing with my kids, except when I'm working cattle.

When I'm working cattle, my kids are just supposed to know where to be. I mean, I don't know why. There's a different human. For anybody that's ever worked cattle with their dad, there's a different human that shows up the day you're working cattle. But I'm just saying for communication in any organization is key because those that work inside that organization, be it your board members, be it your executives, be it your managers, your mid-level managers or your lower-level managers or just your regular employees, have to know the focus and the drive of where you're trying to go.

And the president understands that. That's why he's a successful businessman, and that's why his value has almost doubled. When they were trying to bankrupt him, he was still able to outmaneuver them and almost double his billions. It's just remarkable. But by communicating with what he wants to get done in those first 100 days—

is so important. He started with the house, and the way I describe the house, this is no disrespect, love the house, love my friends over there. I still go over there all the time. I go to, I'd say at least half the house conferences. I go to a lot of the RSC meetings because I just have good friends over there. But it's a thoughtful, but yet right now dysfunctional body. Mm-hmm.

You can't argue with that. I don't think they'd argue with that. No, that's what I'm saying. They don't. But the president started with them, visiting with them on Saturday, right?

and was communicating with them on what we need to do with reconciliation. That's his big deal. The House has to get the budget and has to get reconciliation moving. The Senate, we have to get reconciliation, and then we also have to do confirmations. I mean, today I was in what we call a murder board for Pete Hagseth. Oh, that's great. Which is just where you just go up there and outplayed.

Jackie Rosen, I mean, since I look just like her, and my voice is just like that, right? Uncanny. And ranking a minority member, ranking member Reed. Yeah. And you're getting them prepped, getting them prepared, because the president wants us to hold these confirmation hearings now. So on January 20th, we immediately roll in to voting on these confirmations. And the way he's moving, the pace he's moving...

He it's a little odd for the Senate to move this fast, but he's setting the pace. Right. So by coming here and laying out expectations and answering the questions and being accountable to the senators to make sure that it's clear communication with him and while he moves into the White House is vital. And that's what he's going to continue to do. Yeah, I just he's just a leader. Yeah, I love that. And it's also taking a lot of this campaign tactics seriously.

to the official side, to the West Wing, to Congress, where, like, you have to drive the message every day and you've got to be prepared for what the opposition is going to do. And, I mean, I think a lot of lessons were learned in that first four years of the first Trump administration. So, I mean, I'm just so glad to hear that. Do you want to know the biggest mistake that I've made with the president? What?

So we're sitting down. This is a few weeks ago. I don't know, two weeks ago, three weeks ago. I don't know. I was down there. And we're meeting with people, and the president was in a good mood, and we're sitting there talking. He's really always in a good mood. Just sometimes he gets monotone because he's just focused, but he's always honestly never in a good mood. I've never seen him really in a rage mood at all. He's like anybody. Sometimes he gets very frank.

But he's in a good mood. We're sitting there talking. He's having a Diet Coke. I'm having a Coke and a bottle. About the only time I ever drink Coke is with him. And we're talking about the people that's come to see him, all these social media CEOs. He's talking about Jeff Bezos that had been there for the second time. Mark Zuckerman has been there a couple of times. While we were there, the CEO of Google was there.

And he was going through the list of people that was there just talking. And he was talking about how much he's enjoyed it. I mean, it seems different this time. And I said, sir, stupid mistake. I said, so stupid. I said, sir, if you would have went to the White House in 2020, it would have been different. Yeah. He goes, what do you mean if I would have won? I did win. I'm not saying you didn't win. Yeah.

Give that back to me. Hold on. Let me change that. What I'm trying to get to, sir, is because you didn't get to the White House in 2020 or 21, it gave the American people the opportunity to see what wokeism does to the American economy, what it does to the U.S. military. What it's done to some of these companies. Well, that's part of the economy, right? What it's done and how we're viewed around the world. Because of that...

This unity that we're seeing with athletes, mind you, go back to 2019, 2018, 2017, 2020, and athletes. These CEOs that were all going woke, and now they go woke. What's the saying? You go broke, right? They've all seen that, and they understand the value that the president-elect, President Donald Trump, brings to them. And now you're coming in. And he said, I believe that. I believe that. Although...

I'd rather have been there in 21. And I was like, sir, we would have rather had you in 21 too. But it gave us an opportunity, honestly, maybe a better opportunity for the American people to see it if we can just deliver it. And it's true. We have to deliver now. But the expectations may be high, but I think we do have to deliver. But geez, government just moves so slow. It's hard. I hope we don't over... I hope the expectations isn't

overly exaggerated where we can't deliver and people get upset at us. Yeah. So, so you are sort of an official liaison here between the house and the Senate trying to get on the same page for all of these things like reconciliation. And I know like there's this point of contention, like one bill or two bills. Do you do border security? Do you do taxes as two separate things? Do you roll them into some huge bill that also includes energy and deregulation and all these sorts of things that are important to a lot of constituencies across the country and

you know, I Trump, it seems like at least from my perspective that Trump is like, whatever works fastest, let's, let's all stay focused on the outcome here. And the outcome is success. We pass all of these things. I'd love one. If it's gotta be two, it can be two, but like, you know,

People in the House have concerns about doing two or what have you, and the Senate have their own issues. So where does this ultimately land? This has got blown in proportion. Yeah. And I've said this with the media. The media, I'm so sick of them saying. It's like process, process, process. It's like, hey, what is it? Why is there already contention? Does this signal that there's going to be contention between the White House and the chamber? It's like, no, hold on a second. Yeah. We're two separate bodies. Yeah.

We're going to deliver. It's just the process. How do we get that done? What can the House do and what can the Senate do?

get done. More than likely, if the House can get a reconciliation passed, it's going to be one bill. And the reason why is just real simple. And Chairman Jason Smith, Chairman of Ways and Means, who's honestly, he's my best friend, really, it's like we're yin and yang, completely different in any aspect of it. But he said, very smart and articulate. I mean, that guy can get into the weeds on taxes. That's why he's a chairman. And he's like, the dynamics. And I was with him when he was talking with Thune about this.

is the dynamics is different for us. I mean, you have Chip Roy, right, from Texas. Chip Roy said he won't vote for any tax bill that doesn't raise corporate tax rates. Now, I don't know why any Republican in the world would say that they want to raise corporate tax rates. We saw that when we dropped underneath President Trump, when we dropped from 35% corporate tax rate to 21%,

the corporate revenue into the, into the treasure increased three folds. So obviously it works when you give them more money to invest in the community, hire more people and increase the revenue. So why he's in that position, I don't know. But if you put, if you put taxes on a bill that has, uh,

border for chip i'm just using chip i'm not trying to pick on him i'm just using this for an example right yeah that uh that that that chip is from texas border is important you put energy on it it's important

How does Chip at that point vote against it? Right. And then you have guys in New York that all, why we're all border States, right. But salt's their biggest thing. Yeah. They may not support border and energy because they want to get salt done and they don't want to be pushed second. They don't believe that if you do energy and border first, you're,

that you're going to be able to actually get taxes done. So you kind of keep everybody in the tent by doing it all in one. And the American people hate big bills. Yeah. I get that. Okay. But that's part of negotiations. You got to have, and it all has to be done. So it's not like this big Omni bill that's got a lot of fat in it.

We're talking about things through reconciliation that has to get done. These are President Trump's priorities. So if we have to do two, fine. We'll do two. If we can only get one passed, then we'll get one passed. The thing is that we would like the House to move first, but the House isn't necessarily in reconciliation. They have to move first on the budget. They don't have to necessarily move first on reconciliation.

So if they can't get it done, then we may move a simple package first, energy and border. But then it really puts us in a situation with taxes. And the president has been very clear. He's okay with one bill.

He's okay with two. And people say, well, that's not very clear. No, his clear point is that he just wants it done. Right. He wants results. That's all he wants. So the difference between the two, it doesn't matter. The bodies are going to work their will, and we're going to eventually deliver for the president and for the American people. It's going to get done. Yeah. So-

Yeah, I like what you have to say about one big bill. You know, some people are like, oh, it's too big, it's too big. But the problems are big. You know, that's why he was elected to fix these problems. And so you've got taxes, the economy, you've got border security, you've got energy. What do you think is...

plausible on a bill like that? Well, first of all, let's go back to why the president wanted one bill. And I'll get to your question. But let's get back to why the president wanted one bill. Because he wanted to make his executive orders permanent. Because executive orders, as we saw four years ago, can be overturned like that and wreak havoc on the energy sector and on our border.

So the president can go in on day one and reinstate those hundred executive orders that President Biden put in place in the first 96 days he was in office to that undid energy policy that president had that released a energy economic boom.

boom where we became an exporter of crude for the first time ever and saw prices at a very reasonable, some people sometimes very low, very reasonable price, which spurred the economy along. You saw a very secured border. Right before you left office, we had the most secure border we had had in decades, decades. And so the president can go and enact those immediately. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

The American people overwhelmingly want border security. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But the technology, as we know, in four years has changed dramatically. In fact, the technology has changed dramatically in three years. There's a company down in Houston. I think it's called Astro Technologies. Astro Technologies.

I haven't talked to Dave. Dave's the owner. I haven't talked to him in quite some time, but he has a technology. It's a virtual fence, right? It uses AI before AI was a word, right? I mean, think of how far AI has come in just the last year. Well, but this is remarkable because you can bury it

30 feet in the ground, which, by the way, still receives 30 more feet, so it's 60 feet in the ground, 60 feet up. So, to detect tunnels, if you try to dig underneath it, if you cut it, it's fiber, so it still sends a signal back. It can detect instantly the difference between a human and an animal. It can detect instantly how many humans, their approximate weight... Mm-hmm.

and size, and it can even detect the difference between a male and a female in most cases because of their stride and the way they hit their feet. It has all this put in place. Immediately at that point, it can put eyes on them by sending drones that are to that location. That can be eyes on it in a matter of less than 60 seconds, depending on how far you place these out. So sometimes it may take longer than that. But then once the drone locks in on the target, it stays with the target.

You cannot run that drone until we can dispatch people there. So securing the border that way is almost instantaneously, right? Yeah. When President Trump was in office, we passed a bill that funded where you had scanning equipment that scanned every truck and every equipment that came across the border. The technology is out there. Why wouldn't you do it? We scan ourselves every time we go to the airport. We know smuggling is coming in. Yeah.

Why wouldn't we just scan it? And we don't – I mean there's technology today to where we're having security for shoplifters to where they're not having to – I mean a lot of times that security camera is in the monitor to sit up there and nobody did anything, right? Because you get bored looking at it. I have monitors on my phone and I haven't looked at them and I don't know when. You usually look at them when you go back and check them, right? Yeah, like the OnX app. Yeah, but this has technology that alerts –

If suspicious activity or a known shoplifter comes in, and it can be housed in El Paso, Texas, and they're looking at somebody in L.A., and can immediately alert security or the manager who's there on the activity that's going on. And they don't have to sit there and watch all of it. It just immediately alerts, right? You can do the same thing with this equipment. It's possible to secure a border. Yeah.

We just had a president the last four years that wanted an open border. So you can get that done. Is it possible for us to have a huge impact on the cartels? Yes.

But we can't just fight them at the border. We have to be more proactive on the fight. You know, if we're playing whack-a-mole, you're losing because they're better at it than we are. They can overwhelm the system. We have to have cooperation with the Mexican government. The president does that by putting tariffs in. Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry. Some people are going to gripe about that. I've been hearing from companies all the time right now about tariffs.

But we're talking about national security now. Right. So the president is giving us the ability to do it because he is able to enact those tariffs. Twenty five percent tariffs on Ford trucks coming across the border is big. Mm hmm.

Twenty five percent tariffs on equipment coming across, windshields coming across. You know, whatever it is, it's big. Eventually, it's going to take a huge toll on the president that is currently in place. And there's questions if she's compromised or not. I'm not saying she is just saying there's been some reports that's raised a lot of questions about her connection with the cartels. And but we have to get more proactive on there. The president and President Trump can work, first of all, initiating that.

And then Congress can help codify that through legislation or whatever orders he needs. It's possible to do that. Energy independence, man, we just – we've got to neuter the EPA. Mm-hmm.

And what I mean by that is EPA has a role to play. I'm not saying they don't. I mean, when they first came in and they started doing the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, it was awful. I mean, rivers were contaminated. Fish were dying. They were having fish kills. There was obviously chemical blooms happening with these factories. And so I'm not saying they don't, but they've overreached so far that it's affecting our ability to...

to even increase our own manufacturing. They're involved in every agency. If the DOE, Department of Energy, has a permit that they're trying to do, EPA can overstep and stop it. They should be focused on their lane. Their lane is issued in the 401 or is it 404 permits? 404 permits for, I think it's four or something permits for direct discharge into

Navical bodies of water. Not a drainage ditch. Not a stream. Right. Not a stream or a ditch that may have it. It specifically said navical bodies of water that the U.S. Coastal has – or not the Coastal, but the – dang it. Coast Guard. Coast Guard, yeah. Has jurisdiction over. Yeah.

You could go back and get them focused on the clean air permits that had to be pushed in. Put them back in their lane and allow the economy to go through. And just a real quick example. It's so important because they've become basically missionaries for the climate religion. 100%. They're not focused on doing the job that they're supposed to be doing. We used to make over 90% of antibiotics inside the United States just a couple decades ago.

I mean, just think about how volatile the world is right now. Yeah, talk about national security. You can't fight a war without antibiotics unless you're going to go back to the Dr. Sawbone ages in the space of war, right? So you have to have antibiotics. We make less than 1% of the antibiotics now on the side of the United States.

Do you know who makes the majority of it? China? China. Not good. By over 80%. There's a company that produces 70% of the world's antibiotics. They're wanting to move to the United States. Worked on it for two years. The EPA came back to us.

And said, because the CEO of the company came and said, hey, we want to move. We actually found them because they can't have high humidity, but yet they still need to have access to water. The reason why they're talking to us is because we have this thing called Port of Catoosa inside Oklahoma. It's outside of Tulsa. People are like, you have a port? I thought you guys were landlocked. No, there's this thing called the Arkansas River that runs into the Burdickish River. It runs all the way down to the Mississippi that eventually goes to the Gulf. So we're not landlocked. We just have to navigate it.

And so we had the largest inland water port that's open 365 days west of the Mississippi. And they were like, it's a perfect area for us. The EPA came back and said it would take over a billion dollars, seven years of permitting, and they're not guaranteed to be able to get the permit for it. And why are they even – like that's just outrageous. Because they had to bring so much raw material back.

Up the navigational channel on a barge. And so they're saying, how do you contain it if you were to spill it? You can't possibly go against all scenarios, right? You can't regulate human stupidity. Yeah, right. You just can't. It's like water heaters. You have to raise them up 18 inches because people were stupid enough to store a gas can beside it in an open flame. Yeah.

Sometimes stupid is just stupid, right? And you can't over-regulate that. And so they were saying that if it has a break, it could have a major fish kill, it could do all this. But we're used to containing spills if we have to. We haven't had to, but we can because we take crude oil, we take a fertilizer, we take LNG up and down that navigation channel every day. We're designed for it.

But this is just a prime example how now the EPA has stepped into a national security issue for us. Yeah. And the amount of the economic boost that would bring to that region, to northeast Oklahoma. It would be huge. Would be massive. Would be absolutely massive. But the EPA has got their thumb on it. And I can use example after. Yeah. The steel industry, the mining would be reason why we don't have to be dependent on China to get our earth minerals. Yet we are. Yeah.

Right. I mean, you could just go through the list. I mean, just sort of checking the administrative state, I think, is going to be a huge priority for the Trump administration. And God knows we need it. Switching gears here for a second, because I got I got to get to this because I just I'm desperate to know.

But you got a little... I'm happily married. I have six kids. I'm not looking. Even though your sweater's cute, it's not my style. Hey, look good, feel good, feel good, play good. Play good, get paid good. That's what Deion Sanders says. All right, but I've never seen him in the sweater like that. Hey, do you hate the American flag? No, love the American flag. It's the sweater.

I mean, they have three-quarter zips like that. I mean, you make that look, you know, decent. Thank you. It's a good sweater. You know Michael Duncan was a wrestler. I was. Back in the day. Yeah, I was. His buddies make fun of him right now. Well, they would make fun of you. I'm just saying. Yeah, absolutely. Unless you're pulling weight. You know, I'm going to tell my wife you don't like the sweater. Did she pick it out for you? Huh? Did she pick it out for you? Yeah. Yeah.

She's trying to keep you at home. You know, we just had Christmas. It's cute. It's cute. I'm not saying it's not cute. It's cute. I mean, if she bought you skinny jeans, would you wear them? I don't know. That's not a problem. Maybe if I don't know. If my wife picked out skinny jeans for me, I'd be like, no, honey, there's a limit. There's a limit. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. But you've got this congressional workout group that you do. And what I want to know,

And I don't want all the details, but I want to know, like, who in the group's, like, pushing heavy weight? Like, who's there with a big bench press? Other than myself? Yeah. Really? Like, what's going to surprise me? Don't say, like, Wesley Hunt, because that guy. No, Wesley doesn't work out with us. I mean, he does have a barreled chest, but I think it's just all show and tell. Oh, wow. Show and tell. What are you benching these days? Uh.

I threw up 385 for a couple reps the other day. A couple reps on 385? I got three boys wrestling in college. Two in Oklahoma State, one at OU, right? The one at OU is a big boy. He walks around about 190-ish. He wrestles at 174. And he came home the other day, and he's like, hey, Dad, I think I got you on the bench. Because it's this big thing, right? I got you on the bench. I was like, okay, son, you go. You take off.

He got, you know, he did, which 315 is my last set of reps. So I'll do reps of five with 315. And he like threw up for 315. He put on 335 and he was struggling with it. And I said, you just tell me when you're done and I'll go.

And I said, you picked the weight. He said 365, and I just threw it up. He said, put 385 on it. And I put 385 up twice, and he got so mad. Literally, he got so mad. But the last time I maxed is 405. I don't know if I can still do that. I mean, that was two years ago. Don't hurt yourself. Four plates on the side. Yeah. Now, going to who would surprise you on their strength. Seth Moulton...

um shocks me he has i mean i don't have big legs it's genetically just not part of it's not that i don't squat and i don't do deadlifts i do it all there's not a day i don't ever skip curls yeah i don't ever skip leg day in fact i throw in legs every single day but seth has skinnier legs than i do i mean his calves would make tweety bird's legs look big right but the guys

super strong in his legs. I mean, crazy, crazy strong in his legs. Totally not what you think. Josh Gunheimer is pretty strong, but he has very short distance to travel with his arms. So I make sure I point that out. But he's pretty strong. I mean, he can throw up a couple of plates. Bruce Westerman.

Okay. Now, Bruce Westerman is a guy and I get, he's a very close friend of mine. We've been friends since he showed up. Arkansas guy, obviously he's been in the house multiple times. You know, he's just, my wife loves his, his, his family. And Bruce is this unassuming guy that when he told me he played for U of A football, I was like,

You didn't play for U of A. You fetched water. Yeah. He's like, no, I mean, I wasn't actually a starter, but I got in the game quite a bit. His son, by the way, has a son playing college ball right now too. And he's athletic as all get out. He's quick. He has some of the quickest explosions on his feet. He's the guy that pushes me when we're doing yo-yos or we're doing box jumps or we're doing –

We're doing frog jumps or whatever. And then even when he's doing curls and stuff like that, the guy is very athletic. He is very, he's, he's the most deceptive build of anybody you see. He's that guy that you walk into. And if you saw him at a bar and he was mouthing, you'd be like, whatever, man. Yeah. I can take him. And then he would whip the crap out of you. Yeah. That's Bruce. I feel like guys like that sometimes run their mouth on purpose because

But Bruce doesn't. He doesn't ever say, I give people crap all the time. Like your sweater, right? If you're in my workout group, I'm giving you a hard time. I promise you. I'm going to show up and we're going to wrestle one day. And I'm going to wear this sweater.

That'd be cute, too. I mean, by the way, your ears look great. I mean, they don't look trashed at all. Yeah, no, I mean, you've got to wear the headgear. But if you look real close at me, you'll notice this earlobe is up higher than this one.

I have no intention of looking that close. It's from being a right leg lead in this year. Oh, no, no, hey. You lose the rope a little bit. Yeah, I got that. True story about my ears. My ears used to be like this. I mean, I had a call flyer in the back of the ears, had them in the front, and my wife –

you know, I love her. We've been together since third grade. She's just, you know, she's put up with me. She's the reason why I'm not in prison probably. Good woman. Yeah. Why she put us together is I don't know. You know, I'd like to point out that my wife has faults. You know, to be honest with you, her only fault was she picked me. I know that sounds, I'm not trying to just suck up. I'm just telling you, she's just way better than me. I can relate to that. But she's brutally honest and she goes, hey, your nose is bad enough. Could you at least do something with your ears? Yeah.

So this is when I was done fighting. I was competing internationally in jiu-jitsu and stuff, but I wasn't fighting anymore. And I looked at her, and I was like, are you serious? She was like, yeah. So I went to just a country doctor. His name was Dr. Jim Coder. He's passed away now, but he was this guy that his role was if it's under five stitches, don't even ask me to numb you. He'd just sew it up, right? And he'd been my doctor since I was a little boy, and so that was just the way he was. He says, you know, all that is is blood collected in there. He says, I think I could scrape that out

and just scraped the blood out of it. I mean, it's just dead blood. It's just, you know, I can get it. And I was like, okay, well. So he numbed my ear, which my ears were numb anyways. It didn't matter. So I had like zero filling in my ears. I don't ever wear anything around my ears because they'd be frostbite by the time I knew they were cold. And he just started cutting on them. The sound was ridiculous. It was like, it was the worst sound you can ever say. I bet. And then he wrapped my head and

And he said, leave it like that for three days. All right, fine. And I left it on there for three days. I unwrapped it. I didn't realize how much I couldn't hear. Wow. Just take your ears and pull them forward like this, right? It's an echo chamber. Okay. When he pinned my ears back and got all the cauliflower at least out of the back, I still have it in the side, but I could not believe. Now you've got surround sound. Yeah. You ever seen that movie Wild Hogs? Is it Wild Hogs? No.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The motorcycle. You know, the twins. One of them has his ear that's gone, and he always talks about him on that side. And then he messed up one time. That's what I was like. I was like, guys, I can hear you now. You can't talk to me on my back anymore. I can hear you. Oh, man, that's awesome. So you've also done our favorite thing here at the Ruthless Variety Program. You've brought tribute. These wonderful mugs. These are from Mullen Ranch.

You know, I'm like a walking billboard for y'all. Like the hat you guys gave us. It's incredible. I love that thing. Blue and it's got that leather on it. You send me your address. I'll send you guys a vest. Oh, I have a vest. Oh, you do? I have the black vest. Did you get your vest too? I got it, yeah. I wear the vest all the time. Those mugs. So my wife is a big gift giver. I'm not. That's not my act. What's it called again?

acts of service, the love languages. The gifts is not mine. But she, if you come to my office at my house,

you're going to leave with a gift. You come to the ranch, you're going to leave with a gift. And she designs them and she just, and I use them. I promise you, if you drink coffee, those are some of the best mugs you'll drink out of. They're big enough to hold the coffee that we're going to need to keep up with President Trump over the next couple of months. Yeah, and I gave up caffeine four years ago, so...

I'm in a mess. I'm glad you mentioned your ranch. Just real quickly, your home, your ranch, because I know there's a very, very important nominee who has been there from time to time, Tulsi Gabbard. Somebody you've got a great relationship with, and I wonder if you could talk about her chances to get over the finish line. I think all the nominees will get there.

Tulsi is my sister. She'll call me her brother. Her husband, Abraham, is a remarkable guy. I love the guy. I joke instead of having a man crush on him. The first time I met him, we were surfing. I wasn't surfing. I'm not a surfer. I try. I get in the water. I fall. But he came out of the water, and we're in Hawaii, and he has long hair, and he shakes it. And I was like...

That's like out of a movie. I mean, I'm not attracted to guys, but that was kind of cool. And so from that point on, we just had a very good relationship. But Tulsi and I became friends because we came in as a freshman. And she got to know my wife. She got to know my kids. My daughter wanted to go live with her in Hawaii. I mean, that was like her goal. To see Tulsi's development over the years, the way she has a backbone from day one standing up to Pelosi.

To making a conscious decision after the way she was treated in her presidential bid in 2020 to saying, you know, the way that they had set that up for, I guess it wasn't, was it 2017? What year was that that she ran for president?

That was 2020. The way that she had to fight every step of the way and the way they basically set it up for Biden to be the nominee. Yeah, and they were calling her Putin's puppet and all this stuff. The same playbook they ran on Bernie in 2016. The same playbook they ran on Trump. On anybody that disagrees with them. You're a racist or you're a socialist or whatever. Domestic terrorist. So Tulsi, people didn't know her like I did.

And hadn't got to know her because she's a no-nonsense. She's very funny, but she's a no-nonsense, very mission-driven individual. So when you first meet her, you don't really know if she has a personality. You get her out of politics and you get her out on the ranch or you get her out in the water. She has a much different personality. But when she's on, she's on. And it can be intimidating about it.

When every time I hear people sit down and talk to her, they always call me back and say, wow, that was a great meeting. People are concerned about the Assad meeting with Syria, right? I get asked that question. What about that? What was that all about? Yeah.

It was a bad situation that happened. It wasn't by design. It just happened. And then for people to say that she's compromised, I'm like, she was a captain in the United States Army when that happened. She's now a lieutenant colonel.

and the United States Army, and she's running the reserve units in Missouri and Oklahoma, which is why her and her husband are at her house all the time because she makes rotations in every three weeks. I think if she was compromised, right, probably wouldn't have been promoted twice and definitely running our reserve units and the readiness that she's over the readiness and over fires down in Fort Sill. You know, she knows what she's doing, and it's interesting on how people, when they get to know her, see her. So I think...

um or i i think they're going to going to confirm her i think cash is going to get confirmed i mean i doubt if we get uh democrat votes on cash you may see someone cross over like federman or somebody with with tulsi pete hex hexeth will it'll be tough for him to get anybody and who knows you know federman once again may come over somebody else may come over um you you're going to see um

You know, Chairman Cassidy has some concerns about Bobby, but the meeting today went really good with Bobby Kennedy. Good to hear. When you get to know Bobby, I had the privilege of getting to know him on the campaign trail. That's somebody you need to have in here. Yeah, serious. He is funny. Yeah. And he can tell the best Irish jokes of anybody. We got it. He is hilarious. And you're talking about a life. Yeah. You look at this guy as being, well, he's a Kennedy guy.

This guy worked on a dude ranch. He ran away from home when he was a teenager. Yeah. He openly admits that he's had, you know, drug problems. He still goes to, he goes to, um, uh, uh,

to AA meetings or whatever type of meetings every day, no matter where he's at. He says, I never miss unless I'm on my deathbed. I go wherever I'm at. I find a meeting. It's part of my sobriety. And he's been clean and sober for decades, right? I think he's been clean and sober for 30 years or something like it, maybe 40 years. I don't remember, but it's been a long time. And he's just honest and open about that. When he starts talking about vaccinations, he's,

This guy is smart and whip smart. And people sat down and talked to him, and it's not a feeling. It's not an emotion for him. He's not just pulling this out. The guy has real questions. And he's not dug in on like people say he is. He has real questions. Science should be questioned. Right. And when he's asking the questions, he's not asking it from an uneducated perspective. There's probably—I bet you there's not doctors—

that has read more and studied more and had more meetings on these different types of vaccinations and what we're giving and meetings from all over the world than he has.

And a lot of people in this country have questions. I do. And they love the fact that somebody is asking them. Right. You know, it's not just, hey, shut up, and you sit down there and take it. You have somebody actually asking the questions. Yeah, and if there's anything we could learn out of COVID and, you know, the silencing of dissent and everything that happened. My mom had the vaccine and the booster and the second or the third shot, right? She's had multiple strokes since then. Mm-hmm.

Now, strokes don't exactly run in our family, and the doctors don't understand what's causing it. Well, you go back and you look at the shots. It does cause strokes in some people. I don't even think you can abate that now, right?

But the questions that he's bringing up are legit questions. I have questions about it. I mean, why does my son or my daughters at two years old look like a pincushion when they come out of their doctor's appointment? Why do they have to do it again at five and six and at 12 and 16? I mean, my daughter just had to go through another round of shots. And I hate it because but she competes for USA Wrestling twice.

And she's required to compete to build a travel to have those shots. I don't like it, but it does ask questions. When he brings up the fact that when he was a child, that it was 1 in 10,000 individuals had autism. Today, it's 1 in 32, I think, and 1 in 27 males. Those last numbers may be different. It may be different.

But it is 20s and 30s. So don't quote me exactly on that, but I think it's what he said. It was 20, 32, 1 in 32 children show some sign of autism after 2 years old. When do you get your shots, right? 1 in 27, I think it's males. Males are a lot more to this, have signs of autism at the age of 2 or 3. Now,

Why? We're the only developed world that has that, and the only person that's close to that is Ireland, and they have similar, and they're not even close, but someone that has high numbers, and they have similar vaccination rates that we have. The only population in the United States that doesn't have, they have zero cases of autism is the Amish. And actually, they have two cases, and the only two cases were children that were adopted after their shots. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Isn't that interesting? Yeah. So why wouldn't you ask the question? Yeah. Why wouldn't you ask the question? Why wouldn't somebody try to get to the bottom of it? And I'm not an anti-vaxxer. Like I said, my kids are all vaccinated. But I think we should ask the questions. And one other thing that you go down this route, Charlie, Bobby, all this from Bobby, just talking to him, right? Bobby, he said when you ask for it, because they say that it's been studied.

But when you ask for a specific study on autism from any of the shots, specific study on autism, I've never got one of them. They refer to their study that they got by the FDA from approval to give the shots, to sell it, you know, the process. That's what they refer to. But specifically targeting autism...

He said he he he you can't get it. So we asked the request for it. Can you show me? Because reporters always say this. Right. But it's already been proven. It's already been proven. It's already been tested. And I was like, well, I don't think it has. I don't I think it's been approved by by the FDA. But I don't I don't think it was actually I don't think the study specifically for autism has been done. And so you go back through and you ask for that specific study for the vaccinations.

we haven't, we've got zero response from it. I'm not saying they may have them now, I don't know, but we have got zero response. They're important questions, and it's not just Bobby. I mean, you know, Hegseth's a lot of questions about how we run the Pentagon better. I don't know why everybody's concerned with all of this media buzz around his nomination, and meanwhile the

Department of Defense fails seven audits and nobody seems to care. And Secretary Austin's done a great job in there, right? What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing. But evidently that's what Washington, D.C. wants. They want somebody back in there like Secretary Austin. They're going, okay, recruiting numbers are down. By the way, I was quoted on this. It said recruiting numbers are down.

DOD responded back to me and said, because I did it on a national show, and they said, our recruiting numbers are hitting targets. I was like, okay. That's not a... You've lowered... Yeah, what are the targets? Well, we know because I said on Senate Armed Services, right? And I was like, okay, that's not factual because you've lowered your recruiting numbers to hit those. The only exception to that is the Marines. The Marines always hit their numbers. They're just good at recruiting. They're everywhere, right? But you have low morale.

You have a secretary of Navy that is bragging about the fight he's having with the Houthis in the Strait. And he said it's the greatest – it's the biggest sea war that they've had since World War II. And I'm like –

They don't have a Navy. How is that successful? There are people shooting rockets on the land, and you're calling it the greatest. This is what he said in a hearing, right? You have people like that running our military, and you're like, why wouldn't you want to just change it up? And that's what the president represents. That's what the American people wanted. They want change. President Trump changed.

Completely fills that bill, and everybody he's putting it in, from Pete Hegseth to Tulsi Gabbard to Kash Patel to Bobby Kennedy, and the list goes on.

They're all individuals that can usher in that change that the American people want. And I want it too. Yeah. No, it's great. I hope we can get all of them confirmed and we can get onto this agenda and getting it passed. Senator Mark Mullen, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. And you can keep the sweater. You don't have to send it to me. Thanks. I do like that three quarter. Yeah. I get to rock that. Thank you very much. Listen, thanks for having me on. I always love being on your show. Uh,

If you ever want me back, just let me know. Anytime. I love when you come on. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Man, I love when that guy comes on our program. He is such a good dude. Genuine, genuine person. I can't wait to have him back again. He gave me a lot of shit about my sweater. He didn't like the American flag. It is a good sweater. We like your sweater. You only get so many cold days here in Washington, D.C. You've got to pull the sweaters out. Very funny. Fellas.

Great episode. Good to have you, McDaniel. Thank you. I think we probably should just, as sort of the news is coming out, I think from all of us on the program, if you are in being affected by these wildfires, our hearts do go out to you, obviously. Horrific. It's absolutely horrific. We are watching it. All the videos we're seeing, and we're hoping, you know, once we know more about that, we

here in the coming days. We'll talk about it in a more fulsome way. But other than that, I think it's a banger. I think so. Absolute banger of an episode, gentlemen. Thank you, Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, and thank you to the Minions. Again, remember, if you have not yet subscribed, remember to do that and let your friends know to get in on the fun. So until next time, Minions, keep the faith, hold the line, and own the libs. We'll see you on Tuesday. Stay ruthless.

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