From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Senator Ron Johnson On Ukraine: It Starts With National Unity

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

This week, Sean & Rachel bring Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) back to the Kitchen Table to discuss his take on the war on Ukraine. Senator Johnson explains the historical mistakes the U.S. has made that lead up to the war, and shares what he thinks the American approach should be when providing aid to Ukraine. Later, the Senator weighs in on Hunter Biden's laptop. Follow Sean and Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey, everyone, welcome to from the kitchen table. I'm your host, Sean Duffy, along with my co host for the podcast, but also my partner in life, Rachel Campos Duffy.

Thank you, Sean. Well, we're back with more conversations from our kitchen table. And today we have a special guest with us. He's a friend of ours. We've known him for a long time since 2010 election, that big wave election, Sean, that you you won your first congressional race on. So did Ron Johnson. He came into the Senate as as a Tea Party Republican, just like you. I want to bring him in because this situation, Senator, in Ukraine is complicated and there's so much human suffering. And at the same time, there's a lot of suffering here at home in America. And I think a lot of Republicans in particular at the base level are having a very big debate about where we should do, where we should be on this issue. about where we should be on this issue. We want to help the Ukrainians, but how do we make sure that we don't turn this into a direct war with another nuclear power? So, Senator Johnson,

give us your take on Ukraine. Well, guys, thanks for having me on. And by the way, just to prove the authenticity of this, I'm at a kitchen table as well. We're doing it virtually. Hopefully we're going to do it in person sometime, Senator. Maybe at one of your events in Wisconsin, we'll get there and actually do a podcast. Or maybe now that our government has decided COVID is kind of over, maybe Senator Johnson will come join us on the couch at Fox and Friends instead of via satellite. Senator, so great to have you. i want to i want to get into covet and hunter biden but we can't go there first uh because we just have to get your take on

ukraine it's you know front and center in the news there's so much going on and i think there's a maybe not on tv maybe not in congress but i think there's a very healthy debate among the base in um the republican party about what we should do here. And I think a lot of people are confused. They don't know. They're scared because we're hearing the word nuclear weapons coming out. And I think we've been lied to for the last two years by our government. And so we're not sure what to believe. Would love to hear your thoughts on all of that. government. And so we're not sure what to believe. We'd love to hear your thoughts on all of that.

Well, I think as you guys know, I was chairman of the European subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Now I'm the ranking member. So I've traveled a lot, not only to Ukraine, multiple trips there, but also to East European countries. And I just have to admit, my heart lies with those people. They want what we want. They want freedom. They want a democracy that is, you know, as free of corruption as possible. And that's what they're all fighting for. It's very difficult to shed the legacy of Soviet era corruption. I'll give you an example. In Ukraine, this was described to me by the new prosecutor general that Zelensky basically twisted his arm almost out of his socket to have him take this job. He didn't last very long, unfortunately. But he said, you know, Senator, there's 22,000 prosecutors here in Ukraine. We don't pay them very well,

but they live quite well. I thought to me that just encapsulated the level of corruption. It's at the street level. The Ukrainian people hate it, which is why they elected Zelensky with 73% of the vote. He ran on a platform of defeating corruption. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to defeat. I mean, he was a political neophyte. He didn't really have people to surround himself. He completely trusted. So the long knives were out. And again, he simply wasn't able to accomplish the mission. But looking at what's happening right now, people need to understand the evil that is being perpetrated on the people of Ukraine. Russia was not threatened by Ukraine. This isn't something like, you know, after 9-11, after 3,000 American citizens were slaughtered by Islamist terrorists and we had to do something about it. Ukraine was not threatening Russia at all.

Nobody was. NATO doesn't threaten Russia. The U.S. doesn't threaten Russia. This is all about the megalomaniacal narcissism of one man, Vladimir Putin, and maybe a small group of people that surround him that want to remake greater Russia. For what reason? It is such a tragedy of historic proportions that Putin didn't accept the West's outstretched hand, fully integrated into the Western economies, fully embraced true democracy for the Russian people. Listen, we have no beef with the Russian people. We really don't. It is their awful leadership. It is that evil that is Vladimir Putin right now, slaughtering civilians, children, bombing, you know, facilities that are housing

people that are clearly housing people. They're labeled that, you know, children are here that, you know, this is evil that is being perpetrated. And just to close it out, I believe the American people have to support the courageous people of Ukraine who are not only fighting for their children, their families, their democracy, their country, their freedom. They're fighting for our values as well. And they need to be supported. So, Senator, like the whore that's taking place in Ukraine, I think everyone can see it on their TVs and they agree with that. So I'm going to ask you a multi-part question. So I think to learn from what happened in the past that brought us to this point is important. So I'm going to take a look back for you, then I'm going to take a look to present. And it's my understanding that in November, Joe Biden signed some kind of a memo of understanding with Ukraine, bringing them one step closer to NATO, number one. Number two, after that, they started to amass even more troops on the Ukrainian border. The Russians did. And it seems only appropriate that at that point, it seemed pretty clear what Putin was up to And that we should have the Americans should have armed Ukraine to the teeth as a disincentive for for Russia to attack.

I mean, a threat of sanctions is one thing, but arming them is completely different. And again, just on the on the on the NATO front, NATO in and of itself has been pretty peaceful. It is about self-preservation of the NATO alliance. But I don't know that Putin necessarily sees it that way and has been pretty clear that he doesn't see it that way and has been very outspoken about it. So that's, I want your take on the history of what brought us to this point and what we should have done differently, number one. But then number two, right now, what is the right approach? I agree. These people in Ukraine are fighting for their freedom. They're not asking us to fight for

their freedom. They're doing it themselves. They're asking for assistance. So what should the assistance look like? Should we have a no-fly zone, which I don't think we should, but I want your take on that. Should we send them the mix? I vacillate. I think we should, but I don't have all the intelligence maybe that you have. What's the consequence of sending them the mix?

Obviously, we're sending them missiles and drones and guns and helmets and Kevlar. So tell me about the historical mistakes we made that got us here, and what should the American approach be right now? Well, first of all, again, NATO threatens no one. It is purely a defensive organization, and it has kept the peace in Europe after two horrific world wars for 75 years. So it's a very successful defensive alliance. It threatens no one. The history really dates back to other aggression by Putin, whether it's Transnistria in Moldova, the frozen conflict there, the occupation of the areas in Georgia, then the illegal annexation of Crimea, their incursion into eastern Ukraine. So Vladimir Putin for years now has been showing what his true aims are. And it's simply to remake Mother

Russia. I guess it'll leave a legacy for him. Was he going to be Putin the Great? So we need to understand what he's all about. And that's why i say this is just this is just pure evil it's indefensible what he's doing um and the fact the matter is is we have been weak in reaction to his aggression obama john you were there when congress unanimously approved 300 million dollars of lethal defensive weaponry after Russia invaded eastern Ukraine. Obama did not provide it. And that's when Poroshenko came for a joint session of Congress saying, we can't defeat Russia with blankets and nightgowns. So it took Trump to actually supply them with the javelin weapons, the lethal defensive weaponry.

Leading up to this particular one, I agree with Ronald Reagan, you achieve peace through strength. But it's not just military strength. That's the last piece of the puzzle. It starts with national strength, economic strength. Everything Biden has done has weakened us economically, weakened this nation. But even more important, it starts with national unity. And even though President Biden laid that out as his goal, his number one goal, to unify and heal this nation. But even more important, it starts with national unity. And even though President Biden laid that out as his goal, his number one goal to unify and heal this nation, he's done the exact opposite. So you look at open borders, you look at out-of-control deaths

of spending, sparking a 40-year high inflation rate. You look at the embarrassing and dangerous surrender in Afghanistan. You look at the Biden administration crawling back to Iran to get back into that awful deal. Disgraceful. And Iran won't even talk to us. So guess who's negotiating the deal for us? China and Russia. You think they perceive that as weakness?

So, you know, looking back in history, I think what happened is we just tempted Putin with our weakness. You know, he wants to reconstitute Mother Russia. He's going to take the opportunities when he thinks he can. He didn't do it under Trump because Trump was too unpredictable. Trump actually armed Ukrainians. Trump actually sent cruise missiles in when Syria is using chemical weapons. They feared Trump. They don't fear Biden. Let's face it, it was Obama and Biden. They used the exact same words. When these threats arise, they say, well, you do that, there are going to be serious consequences. And then, of course, there never are. We'll get upset if there's a small incursion, Senator. There's a small incursion that's okay,

but a big incursion we might take offense with. I mean, what kind of language is that from a president who's trying to allegedly deter aggression from Russia? It's weak language. So now looking at what we should do now, I think we do not want to spark actual conflict between Russia and the U.S., even though we do realize we have confronted Russia. We wiped out, I think, hundreds of their troops in Syria when they went too far. But we want to avoid that at all costs. So I don't think a no-fly zone is going to be overly effective when they're shooting cruise missiles. What they need is they need surface

to air missiles. They need anti-aircraft missiles. So what the Biden administration should have done as Russia was building up, we should have been flooding very visibly, not quietly. When I talked to Wendy Sherman, well, we're doing it quietly, Senator. So we'll do it out loud. Show Russia the cost that they're going to incur by invading, trying to deter them. They wouldn't do that. But then what they should have also been doing is they should have been taking a complete inventory of the lethal defensive weaponry available in Eastern European countries within NATO nations. They should have been staging it. They should have been preparing for it. Those MiGs should have been supplied quietly. Okay, that's not the be-all end-all. There's some real issues with those MiGs. I don't know how effective they'd really be, but it's a signal.

And the fact that Biden stopped it signaled Russia the fight the fact that Biden is told Russia what we won't do emboldens Russia this is you know I remember Trump as a candidate said you know we're too predictable in foreign policy we need to be more unpredictable and at the time I thought man that's wrong answer I think our enemies have to know what we're going to do but I will admit I think Trump was right I think a certain have to know what we're going to do. But I will admit, I think Trump was right. I think a certain level of unpredictability was helpful. I think it was very useful from Trump's standpoint. But here again, Biden has been totally predictable that he's not going to act with the kind of strength that's going to be required to, first of all, deter Russia. that's going to be required to, first of all, deter Russia. And hopefully he'll change his mind. Hopefully he will provide the courageous Ukrainian people with all the defensive weaponry. I mean, the drones, intelligence, surveillance, the anti-aircraft weapons, the S-300s. I saw a pretty good piece in the Wall Street Journal, somebody saying, hey, you know, Turkey can get

right with NATO again. They'll get F-35s, you know, getting us cooperating with them by just turning over those S-400s to Ukraine. I mean, that'd be a brilliant thing to do. I guess I, I mean, I'm listening to what you say. It makes sense on one level. I have a different perspective on it, Senator. And one of the things that I think is really important is that, you know, this week I've kind of expressed some of my views that are a little different from yours, maybe a little more dovish. And I've been called a traitor.

I mean, I told Sean, like, I'm used to being insulted, especially on social media, but being called not patriotic or a Putin puppet is really a new one to me. I've never heard that one. But so I think it's important that we're having a healthy debate. I think in terms of, you know, whether signing, you know, in any way signaling the entrance of Ukraine into NATO, I think was perceived, we knew would be perceived by Russia as provocative. And I look at the suffering of the civilians, of the children in this war, and I just wish we hadn't fought this war. I wish we hadn't done anything to signal that because I think that was the excuse that Putin had for invading Ukraine. I think the two weeks leading up to all that buildup when the Biden administration was saying they're

going to come, they're going to, you know, they're going to invade, they're going to invade. Well, what the hell were they doing during those, you know, weeks and months of all that, you know, building up of armaments around Russian armaments around our troop buildup around Ukraine? What were the Biden administration's diplomatic wing doing to stop this? What are they doing now? I mean, you know, we saw Zelensky say, OK, NATO's off the table. Let's talk. It's time to talk. It's time to meet. And then we get a

statement that Joe Biden's going in 10 days to Europe. I just I'm not feeling like our government is doing enough to resolve this diplomatically that they didn't do enough on in the lead up to it and they're not doing enough now and i've heard like statements that have come out from for example hillary clinton earlier saying that what what we should be doing is bleeding um and there are other neocon type people who are saying you know this war is they like the idea that it's a proxy war i guess guess, that they could bleed Russia dry. And my concern, Senator, is throughout all of this, I'm seeing Russia and China becoming a block. And I hate that we've taken our focus off of China. And I wish we didn't have this war and suffering. And I'm just not sure this is all in the interest in the long term of our of our country. And I don't trust that our this administration or many of our foreign policy people think ahead enough.

And I think I have Afghanistan to to to lean on that and Iraq. I felt on that like I got lied to on that, Senator. I was lied to about Iraq weapons of mass destruction. Yeah. So, Rachel, first of all you know i think you have very legitimate concerns which i share i personally don't think that if zelinski would have disavowed joining nato that that would have made any difference if vladimir putin's always wanted the land bridge to transnistria another frozen conflict vladimir putin's aim is he, Russia doesn't have the capability of stabilizing situation of improving the lot of people's lives. All they can really do is destabilize. And the

reason he destabilizes the nation surrounding him is the last thing he wants is for the Russian people to realize there's a better way, that there's a more prosperous future with a different type of approach. So again, I just don't think the NATO discussion really affected it one way or the other, quite honestly. But I'm completely sympathetic with the concern about this becoming a much wider conflict. And it's the people of Ukraine that are suffering. But I think that's kind of my point as well. It's not up, quite honestly, for me to decide whether or not Ukraine wants to join NATO. Now, it will be NATO to decide whether we want to let them in. But that's really up to the people of those countries to determine whether they want to

join, whether it's the European Economic Union or whether it's NATO. That's really their decision. They are paying the price right now. And I think you have to look at the fact that they are supporting Zelensky's leadership in resisting Russia. We'll have more of this conversation after this. The faster money and data move, the further your business can go to a seamless digital future for Canadians.

Let's go faster forward together. In life, interact. Tell me if I'm wrong on this, because that's why I'm grateful that you're joining us, because what I think what happens in Congress, in the Senate, the House, you get way better information. The intel is so much better than anywhere else in the country. So we had the Russians put missiles in Cuba or wanted to put missiles in Cuba. And John F. Kennedy rightfully lost his mind. Now, we didn't say that was up to the Cubans to allow Russia to put missiles right on our border. We said, hell no, that's not going to happen. And the same thing would happen as if Canada or Mexico said, we want to partner with

China. It's in our discretion to partner with China, and we might build up some military armaments in our country with China pointed at the US. There's no way we would stand for that. And so what frustrates me is if we say, well, of course, it's Ukraine's prerogative to make this decision. Well, we wouldn't allow Canada. We didn't allow Cuba. We wouldn't allow Mexico the prerogative to make that decision if we felt threatened by it.

I take your point that NATO has not been an aggressor. I agree with you. But Putin has said he's felt threatened by it. And that's why I'm like, what's the difference in the way we would feel if someone was arming our neighbors and they were somewhat hostile to us than Putin himself? And the reason I ask that question is I always think it's important to put yourself in the mind of your adversary. What are they feeling? What are they thinking? It might not not be justified but trying to get to their space on on on what's going on with them through my own experiences i as i think nuclear weapons

involved i mean i just you know what i want peace and i want my kids to live and when i you know i was on air senator johnson when we heard that the nuclear weapons you know that russia had put their nuclear weapons on alert and i was like it was it felt surreal and you know again that Russia had put their nuclear weapons on alert. And I was like, it was it felt surreal. And, you know, again, I was one of those gung ho Iraq war got people I got I got emotionalized and brought into the whole Iraq war. And I was one of those defenders of George W. Bush. And I felt really duped by that. And so when I heard this nuclear weapon thing and I look at what our foreign policy is doing um our foreign policy so called experts are doing and how they handled iraq how they handle afghanistan how they've taken their eye off of the ball of china and how we're bringing these two to your point partnering

with iran i mean i don't trust any of these people and so i just i'm concerned and i'm worried i share your concerns i've as a, I've only voted on one authorization for the use of military force in Syria, and I voted no. I remember. I share those concerns. I think what happened in Afghanistan, it was unfortunate we didn't get Osama bin Laden right away, which I think prolonged it for 20 years. I mean, I think that is one of the reasons we didn't leave. But I think the best book written on Afghanistan was written by special operatives that said we'd pretty well done what we needed to do, punish the Taliban before Tommy Frank ever said a Buddha on the ground. Again, that's all hindsight. So I understand the reluctance. I understand the desire to be Fortress America and be more isolationist.

But the fact of the matter is, what happens a third or halfway around the world does impact us, does affect us. And I guess, Sean, to answer your question, the difference is when they come into Cuba, that's coming into our hemisphere. They already have nuclear armed, you know, France, the UK, not that many hundreds of miles away from Ukraine. And again, it's been a state where nobody has threatened Russia. This is an excuse by Vladimir Putin. OK, I don't I don't I don't I don't think he truly feels threatened by NATO. This is just an excuse to undertake his plans. So, again, I understand. So Sean has this saying that I love. It isn't just to apply to this. He always says, don't mess with crazy. Don't mess with crazy.

And so I just feel like, you know, that's my concern. Did we mess with crazy? Could we have avoided this entire situation and a lot of suffering? We're in it now. We're in it now. But what led up to it? What I'm saying is we're not messing with crazy. Crazy is being imposed on us.

OK, we did not take the offensive action. Putin did. He invaded a country that did not threaten his country. There was no provocation in this whatsoever. That's true. That's true. So he brought it to our doorstep. Our question is, do we not react? Do we let him get away with it? And then what would be the consequences? So let's say he takes over all of Ukraine. Now he's on the front door of Poland and Romania. Okay.

He's right in the front door of NATO. What does he do with the Baltic states? Our options are limited, Senator, now. But I think things could have been avoided before. Can I just move to- No, no, we're going to go to Hunter. I want to tell you, Senator, that actually Rachel and I go back and forth on this.

I know, we're not sure. We want to have a healthy debate. So just my heart is where you're kind of at is like, listen, they want to fight for their freedom, which is the first thing you said here. They want to fight for their freedom. We should assist them in fighting for their freedom. We should avoid conflict with Russia ourselves.

I think that is the right approach, which is what I think we're starting to do right now. I think Biden has been late to the game, to your original point. He should have been arming them earlier. I mean, again, this has gotten very complicated. We're going to go to Hunter. Can I just ask you one quick question before we go to Hunter? Because Rachel can't stand not talking with you about Hunter. How much is the administration partnering

with the Senate? Are you getting good intel? Are they doing good briefings? Because I've been to those briefings and sometimes they feed you bogus what's in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Are they actually giving you good intel? Are you getting good insight that you know what's going on in the Senate? Nothing more than what you read in the New York Times. That's always been the case, Sean. I think most of these secure briefings are primarily undertaken so that we don't say things publicly that they don't want us to say, that they're trying to freeze our ability to communicate with the broader public. So no, I mean, generally, secure briefings are a joke. You come outside and it's already been broken. And I mean, all these lead up and listen we have pretty pretty good intelligence and i thought it was good

of the biden administration to talk about how there could be these false flag flag operations you know a false terrorist attack that would be a predicate for for war so i think that was all good to lay it out there um but no you don't get very good information out of the administration, out of any administration. I've been obviously talking about the lack of our ability to do oversight is Congress. The administration, even under Republican president, because it is a deep state, not sympathetic with the conservative cause, they don't give up their secrets. the cause. They don't give up their secrets. Yeah. Well, you look at all the players in this whole situation, Russia, Ukraine, China, and all of them are places where the Biden family has had dirty business, dirty deals. And you also look at this phone call that led to this impeachment

with Zelensky and Trump and the leaking from the Ukrainian born Vindman. I mean, put all this together for me, because I'm I it's just so crazy. And then we have now finally the New York Times admitting that that you were not a purveyor of Russian disinformation. The laptop theory is actually true that the laptop was real and that was all surprised to hear that and that all those former i know right and and all those former intelligence um community people who signed that letter that despicable letter that now makes people like me question intelligence they were saying it was russian disinformation right and no no it was true it was hunter's laptop and it's a wealth of information about the dirty deals between Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and as Rachel said, Russia, China, and Ukraine.

And is our president compromised by all of this? So there's some big guy who got 10% of all of it. So I'm going to let you go ahead on this because I want to hear the connection between all of this. Well, this is a big topic and this is years worth of work that you're, you know, opening up this can of worms. But let me just describe the deep state. I think you get a pretty good indication with those 50 or 51 intelligence officials, bipartisan, basically signing a letter. They didn't have any evidence that this was Russian disinformation, but they did that to make sure that Biden got elected and Trump was defeated. I mean, that's just obvious,

the politicization of our intelligence community. Here's how politicized it is. There was actually an intelligence product produced by Democrats, by lead Democrats. It was classified and then leaked to the media accusing Chuck Grassley and I of soliciting and then disseminating Russian disinformation from somebody we'd never even heard of, Andrei Derkash.

They did a intelligence operation against us. I've always believed, or very early on, I started believing when you heard Peter Strzok's text. In December of 2016, you know, think our sisters are, they were scorned. They were worried. They're political. They're kicking it over their eyes. Oh, I think our sisters are leaking like mad scorned, they were worried, they're political, they're kicking into overdrive. Oh, I think our sisters are leaking like mad, scorned, worried and political, they're kicking into overdrive. Again, their sisters were the intelligence agencies.

I've always felt what the whole Russian hoax was an intelligence operation designed to distract and divert from the wrongdoing during the 2016 election. And what was the wrongdoing during the 2016 election. And what was the wrongdoing? Well, now you even have John Durham investigating whether or not the DNC server was actually hacked by Russia. I've always questioned that. We've never seen the evidence. The FBI did not take possession of that. And yet that was, you know, Russian interference. That's where it all began. Hillary Clinton dossier or the Steele dossier, that was paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign. The Alpha Bank, that was a hoax perpetrated by Michael Sussman and other actors paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. So it is a very deep state. It's not populated by conservatives.

It's populated by leftists. And the Hunter Biden cover up is just part and parcel of that. cover-up is just part and parcel of that. Chuck Grassley and I issued that report in the end of September 2020 so that the American public would have some sense of the vast, and I mean vast, web of foreign financial entanglements of Biden, Inc. And yet the mainstream media looked at, oh, nothing new here, no criminal activity alleged. It's not our job to indict. Our job is to describe. And of course, that prompted, by the way, quick little historical note. The Hunter Biden disk drive was offered to me first. I have heard that. So go have to do my due diligence. I couldn't take possession of potentially stolen property. We had to figure out what that was. So who do we go to? We went to the FBI, who I, by the way, had subpoenaed because we weren't getting the information, never did get the information. They just thumbed their nose at us. But we went to the FBI. What do you know about this? Is this genuine? Is this something we can take possession of?

They, of course, told us nothing, even they knew all kinds of things about it. As a result, Mr. McIsaac got impatient, delivered that to eventually the New York Post, who started publishing things. You knew almost immediately that that was a genuine, authentic disk drive. There's no way anybody could put that thing together. There was such a depth of information. There was so much there. This wasn't just a couple of emails cobbled together. There's rusting disinformation. It was obvious this was authentic from the get-go. But the fact that the New York Times now, more than a year later, comes out and says, oh, we've authenticated. Why now? Why now?

Well, I think they're just covering their tracks again this wasn't a blockbuster we have authenticated this it was contained in a paragraph of a story that now the term is authenticated and by the way it's the silence in the media is deafening i know fox is covering this you know i'm talking about this but this is big deal. Zero minutes on any of the other networks. Zero. They have not covered that change in the classification of the emails and the laptop being authentic by the New York Times has been covered zero minutes by any of the other networks.

Yeah, so this is their cover-up. This is their integrity play, I guess. We've acknowledged that that was an authentic laptop, but the damage has already been done. You know, think of it. The predicate to all of this was that Russia interfered in our election. Russia got Donald Trump elected. You know, Donald Trump is compromised by Russia. by Russia, when the truth is the interference on election was the Russian hoax, the complicity of the media in all of this, the impact on our election by the by the complicit media, by the Democrat Party that bought and paid for this political dirty trick is vastly more important than anything Russia or China could ever do to interfere in our elections.

That was far greater. But the American public, just because most people get their news from mainstream media, from Facebook feeds, all these leftists, that's our challenge. These guys will never admit they're wrong and they have the power. And here's the main point. The mainstream media, big tech, social media giants, a live Democrat party, they have the power to make it almost impossible to get the truth out, to prove that they're wrong. But you also do have, and I agree with you, the media is a massive problem. But the media doesn't work for me. And first of all, I want to say I 100% agree. We do have other sources of news that comes out.

I want to say I 100% agree. We do have other sources of news that comes out. My biggest concern, Senator, is even more so than the media, that you have the intelligence community. You have the FBI and the DOJ, the CIA, all working to undermine what I would argue is democracy. We elected Donald Trump. He actually won with a majority of the states, duly elected, duly sworn in, and they're working overtime in the deep state on a government salary to undermine the election and feeding the American people false information, not just once. It was, to your point, this was a continual stream of an operation against Donald Trump. And it's not just once. It was, to your point, this was a continual stream of an operation against Donald

Trump. And it's not just to the president. You just mentioned that it was used against you as well. And so, again, I've grappled with this too when I was in Congress. How do we get our hands around these really shady areas of the government that we don't have? To your point, you're a senator. You don't get good purview into their operations and what they're doing how do we get this under control where our government is far more responsible to the people or responsive to the people and that you win an election the deep state can't undermine the will of the people that they're going to continue on the same track that people's votes be damned how do we we change that? Well, you almost need a president,

a candidate for president running on just this issue to root this out. Another example of it, Chuck Grassley and I had a very long list of information we wanted from Gina Haskell, the CIA director under President Trump. She didn't provide us anything. And as the days and weeks went by without her responding to our legitimate oversight request, Sean, you've been there. These nominees come up before Congress and they all swear that they will absolutely respond to congressional oversight requests, and they don't because there's no enforcement. But we reached out and said, well, give us a call. You know, tell us what's pulling off here. The CIA director under President Trump would not even call Chuck Grassley, who was the president pro tem of the Senate at the time, chairman of the Finance Committee.

I'm chairman of the Senate Oversight Committee. Wouldn't even call us back. Does that give you some kind of indication of what we're up against? And of course, I don't know how things work, but why wouldn't Chuck Grassley just go? I'm going to the CIA. I'm going to bring my cameras. And until Gina Haspel, I mean, and maybe I sound crazy, but it's just to me, it makes no sense. Like how this, these people work for us. They work for you.

I mean, they have to respond to senators. I just can't. It makes me so mad. I did an oversight on financial services and the CFPB, the FDIC, they would respond with clippings from the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post. It was just a laugh in my face. I think the one thing we do have in Congress is the power of the purse. And if we had enough Republicans say, okay, here's the deal. Unless we get all of this back information, we're not going to cut all the funding, but you're going to get 25 percent of your budget.

If you want if you want us to fund you, you're responsive to us. And that really is the power that we have that I don't think the Congress has adequately used yet. And if Republicans take control, they will have that power. Do you think that would work to leverage compliance? No, listen, I think the power of the purse is probably the ultimate leverage. But until we, for example, do something like the Preventing Government Shutdown Act, where we take government shutdowns off the table, that leverage just doesn't exist for us because Democrats always win that fight. So we've got to have some mechanism first to keep the government running. By the way, that bill, which I passed out of my committee, which will not be taken up even under Republicans. They don't want us to have a legitimate vote.

They'll give us a show vote that they know is going to be defeated, but that would give us the ultimate leverage. But what- Senator, how does that stop the shutdown? I didn't I'm not as familiar. So all you do, just like in Wisconsin, if for whatever reason, dysfunction in government, you're not funding an agency or the entire government, you don't shut it down. You just funded it to previous levels. So you just kind of keep things in automatic pilot. Now, you know, where these agencies always want more funding, that's pretty significant leverage. So it would start there. That ought to be something we ought to bring up for a real vote it's got it has had bipartisan support now will democrats actually allow that to be passed i don't know but it's going to require that type of leverage but then

it's going to need a concerted effort sean when i was investigating hunter biden that was not popular in our republican conference that's right i was able to I was able to get a subpoena, which I had to have votes for. I needed votes on the Republican part of my committee, and they couldn't deny me the subpoena for the FBI with the whole Russian collusion hoax and that corrupt investigation. But I had a real problem trying to get subpoenas and do the investigation for Hunter Biden, partly because it was occurring during COVID too. Same issue with his investigation. We'll be back with much more after this. This NFL season, get in on all the hard-hitting action with FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. You can bet on anything from money lines to spreads and

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Senator, is Joe Biden compromised based on what you have seen in the laptop and the emails? I think so. I mean, his business partner, Tony Bobulinski, is the one who said it, but that's the whole purpose of our report is to show this vast web, and it was a vast web of foreign financial antagonists, suspicious financial transactions occurring all over the world, more than a dozen countries. That's what we laid out. Again, I don't know all those connections. I don't know all the extent of these compromise. But as I've said repeatedly, I know who does, Russian intelligence and Chinese intelligence. Is that why he canceled the sanctions on people constructing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline? Is that why he canceled the sanctions on people constructing the Nord Stream

2 pipeline? Is that why he's been so weak on Russia, so weak on China? Is that why he canceled the Chinese initiative, the Department of Justice, that was supposed to investigate the way China steals our intellectual property through the universal system? That's as good an explanation as any that Joe Biden is compromised is compromised senator you know what i look at what you've done um and again i'm proud that you're from my home state and rachel's home state of wisconsin and and sometimes things are not always clear-cut but it smells bad and when things have smelled bad whether it was hunter biden whether it was what was happening with covid you have been fearless in your effort to seek the

truth and find the truth. And people demonized you just for asking questions. And I think it's fair to ask questions to go, I want to know what happened here. And as you mentioned, you couldn't even get the votes to pursue the information on Hunter Biden, or you had to work and struggle to get those votes. You eventually did. But I think so many politicians and you and I know we serve together, but they just always look for the safety of reelection. And I think that the American voter wants someone to actually be a leader, someone to actually find the truth and someone to actually give them that information, which is what you've absolutely done through the course of your what, 11 years in the Senate, which again, for me and Rachel, we're like so proud that you're our home state senator and you have fought so hard, especially we don't have time to get into COVID.

I do want to ask one small question, Senator. I have to ask you this because I think you're the only one who's ever brought this up. So last night, by the way, or a couple of nights ago, Dan Bongino had Marty McCary on to talk about what appears to be an increase in blood clots with young people. I understand that the military has some of the best records of what's happened to people post-vaccine. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what you've done, or are you looking into any of that? Is there any indication with vaccine injuries? And is there something that military health records can shed some light on?

Because Dr. McCary said that we don't know with the blood clots what is the cause, but he said there was zero curiosity at CDC and NIH, which has me concerned. So have me back on and we'll do an entire hour or two hour on COVID. Okay. But very quickly, my interest in this started as I started seeing VAERS reports, you know, a couple thousand deaths. This is early in, in 2020, 2021. When we, when they had the vaccine and I approached Francis Collins, we had a group meeting with a bunch of Republican senators. And I was laying this thing out back then. I think 46 percent of those couple few thousand deaths were occurring on day zero, one or two.

And I said, listen, this is this is concerning. What are you looking at this? And he said, ah, Senator, you know, there's only six deaths. I think those are the clotting issues with the child bearing age women from Johnson Johnson vaccines. It's to this day is the only thing the CDC has actually acknowledged was directly Johnson & Johnson vaccines. To this day, it's the only thing the CDC has actually acknowledged was directly correlated to the vaccines. They've given some indication on myocarditis. But we're up to well over 25,000 worldwide deaths reported on the VAERS system, approaching 1.2 million total adverse events. We're just getting information from Germany, from an insurance company, showing that in their system, it's about a 12-fold, not increase, but there's 12-fold more adverse events

that they're being treated than what the German health authorities are showing. And of course, that's one of the knocks on VAERS. It doesn't prove causation. It's also generally dramatically understates adverse events. But I completely agree with Marty McCary. Our CDC, FDA, NIH are completely blowing off the safety signals from the very system, the Bayer system, that they were touting before they got the emergency use, saying that, oh, you know, we're going to take this so seriously. There's an adverse event that results in a couple of days lost work. We're going to have a CDC representative on there. We're going to be talking to that individual. That was all complete BS as

they rushed headlong into a mass vaccination campaign globally where nobody can tell you the long-term safety profile of these vaccines. Nobody can. We're pushing them on children where there's literally no medical necessity. Flu is a more dangerous thing than COVID for young children. Why are we pushing vaccines on them when we don't know the long-term safety profile? This makes no sense other than the state of fear the Democrats whip up, whether it's on climate change, whether it's on pandemic, in order to control your life. So that's about as quickly as I encapsulate. No, I think vaccine injuries are real. They're severe. Rare is a relative term. But I can tell you, our health agencies are completely ignoring this. They have not been honest. They have not been transparent. I've

written 35 oversight letters. I'll send out a 36 today on this very issue, the DMED system, that was actually whistleblown in my event called COVID-19, A Second Opinion on January 24th, where we revealed that we're on the DMED system. And we've seen diagnoses threefold to tenfold increases over the previous five years. And Department of Defense said, oh, it's a glitch. Can you explain that again? Because I did watch that. Can you explain that again? Because I did watch that. Can you explain that again? What's the, explain to our listeners what DMED and. So it is the database of diagnoses.

It's always been touted as probably the best database of any health system in the world. And so it just tracks all the diagnoses of people in the active military. So we had whistleblowing doctors that were seeing vaccine injuries. They went into the DMED system. They were seeing alarming rates in 2021 over the previous five years. And they blew the whistle on it. But I mean, three times certain cancers, 10 times neurological issues. And so I sent a preservation record letter to Secretary Austin. He didn't respond to it. Followed up with a letter laying out, I think, 15 different diagnoses where there are at least a threefold to tenfold increase

on these things. They responded to politifact. Not to me, not to the American people, not to the respond to political facts, politifact saying, oh, no, that's just a glitch in our system. faxing, oh, no, that's just a glitch in our system. And I figured what they would do is they'd downgrade 2021. No, what they did is they increased the number of diagnosed CCs for the previous five years. I'm not buying it, but they are not being transparent. They're not explaining what's happening there. Can they do anything to the data? Can they erase it? Can they dilute it? What can they, I mean, you sent this preservation letter, but can something be done to preserve that? Because that's so important. I mean, I imagine it's eventually all going to come out.

I mean, if people are getting cancer at, you know, you know, two times, 20 times, you know, the rate normally that's going to come out. I mean, how you can't keep the lid on this. Can you? Well, you wouldn't think so. One America has reported an insurance company in Indiana, 40% increase in all-cause non-COVID-related mortality. So 10% increase would be a 200-year catastrophic event. We're witnessing a 40%, similar to what we're seeing in Germany. So I think eventually this will come out. But in know, in terms of doctoring, what, one of the reasons I was really concerned is myocarditis. These doctors had downloaded in August, you know, the, again, previous five years in 2021, 2021 had something like 1200 cases of myocarditis compared

to an average of 43 per year, the previous five years. So that's a 1200% increase, 12 fold increase when they actually downloaded the entire system for their whistleblowing in January of this year, all of a sudden myocarditis, there's only 250 cases in 2021 and the previous five years magically increased to 118. So now it's only a two and a half time increase. So it already appeared that they were doctoring the data in the one diagnosis that the CDC is certainly concerned about in terms of myocarditis. But no, I think, as I said, vaccine injuries are real. I've talked to the people who are vaccine injured. I've held events on it. I've talked to leading experts. I've talked to doctors. But unfortunately, our CDC, NIH, FDA are ignoring it and or covering it up.

And Senator, I think the government may try to do that, but life insurers who have really good actuaries who look at this data and assess risk and then charges premiums, they're gonna come out with the information about the increased deaths. So the government may not be the answer, but the private sector, as you mentioned,

I think this was in Germany or somewhere in Europe where a life insurer came out and said they had this huge spike in death between, I think it was between 20 and 54 years old, which is an age range that doesn't see a high spike in death at all. I think I read somewhere that this is almost like a Vietnam era spike in death. So I think that's where we'll get answers because we can't look to our government to tell us the truth. We want to have faith in a defense department. We want to have faith in the Defense Department. We want to have faith in our health care agencies. We just don't anymore.

That's one of the real tragedies, one of the real consequences, casualties of the pandemic is that loss of confidence because they lost integrity. They're not trusted. It's very unfortunate. And that's the full circle moment here because we started talking about Ukraine. And that's why a lot of people, you know, their hearts are breaking for what's happening there.

They just don't trust government anymore. And it's a level of distrust of government and our institutions and our health bureaucrats and our intelligence agencies. And all of these people, it is destroying our confidence in the system. And that's why you have been such an important voice. Honestly, Senator, I can't say it enough. I don't think there's anyone in government, in Congress that I respect more than you right now, because I just think you have been a hero. I mean, you've just, you've taken these arrows. It called you all kinds of names and you insist on following and getting to the bottom of the truth. And I just, I have so much respect for you. I want you to know,

because you probably hear all the negative stuff. I have so many friends on both sides of the aisle because the Duffy family, Sean side has many, many Bernie supporters in them and they love you because they feel like you're the only one willing to tell them the truth and to pursue it and to hold hearings and to stand up to all of these lies. And I just personally, I can't thank you enough and I can't thank you for enough for being on this podcast,

Sean and staying and staying 20 minutes later than you was. I know, I know. I'm sorry. Thank you for doing this. And again, I want to for being on this podcast, Sean. And staying 20 minutes later than you were supposed to. I know, I know, I'm sorry. Thank you for doing this. And again, I want to double down on what Rachel said again. You make me proud to be a Wisconsinite, how hard you've worked. And again, as Rachel said, you take arrows, people slander you.

But what's interesting is as time goes on, we see that more often than not, Ron Johnson was right. Yes, you've been vindicated at every turn, which is from the laptop to COVID, to early treatments, to vaccine injuries, you name it, you've been on the right side of it. So thank you, Senator. Listen, I appreciate your kind words. And Sean, you remember when we both stepped out to play in 2010 as part of the Tea Party movement. I still consider myself more Tea Party than even Republican Party. But I made two promises in 2010. I'd always tell Wisconsinites the truth. And I never vote,

and by extension, not conduct myself worrying about re-election. I've honored those promises. It's really just that simple. So again, thank you for having me on. Thank you for what you're doing. Your mission and your voices of integrity in the news media. And we need that. We need journalists. We have way too many advocates for the left. You're journalists and opinion leaders. And I appreciate what you're doing as well. God bless you.

God bless you, Senator. Thanks for joining us. Well, that was nice of the Senator to stay an extra 20, 30 minutes. It's hard. Yeah. You know how tough those schedules are for senators. So he's scheduled every 15 minutes at least. And then he has to go vote and he has to go to committee hearings. So he took extra time with us. I'm grateful. I'm not sure who is sitting

outside his office waiting. Do you think we held up a Senate vote, Sean? Oh, maybe we held up a Senate meeting. But I want to ask you something because I thought Senator Johnson did a good job talking about his perspective on Ukraine. And you and I go back and forth really throughout the day about what's happening. And I want to push you a little bit in where you are on America's role. I just want our kids to live, Sean. No, I know. But again, I thought the Senator brought up a good point. We always kind of take the Tucker view of, well, what next? What happens if you act? We always kind of take the Tucker view of, well, what next? What happens if you act? But what next if you don't act? And so in your perspective,ence of this administration. I look at General Milley and Lloyd Austin and Joe Biden and Antony Blinken, who, by the way, looks like he's scared when he's giving a press conference.

I don't know what the deal is with that guy. I see so little diplomatic action on our part in terms of leading towards peace or even in the buildup, trying to stop this war from even starting when we had so much anticipation, weeks and weeks of knowing that this was going to happen. So, I mean, it's hard for me to talk about it without talking about the incompetence that got us here and then go, you know, this is precarious. This is dangerous at the, at the point we're at right now. And do we trust the people who got us here and are so incompetent to move us to the next level, which could be an escalation, um, and, and could lead to nuclear war. Now, do I think the world will be better without Vladimir Putin? Of course I do, but the world isn't the way I see it. Um, the world isn be better without Vladimir Putin? Of course I do.

But the world isn't the way I see it. The world isn't the way I want it to be. The world is the way it is. And if he's as crazy and evil as he seems to be, do we really want to push this guy into a corner where he feels there's no way out and and he just you know does something catastrophic well i do think we have to push him into a corner but always let him save face and get out of the corner you do that in life with our with our marriage we do that you do that with me i'm a wild animal in a corner that you're gonna let me out i gotta let you out because when she's caged it's crazy you want to catch her um but you're right you have to let people say face i think that's a that's a good point and he has

to want to be able to say so but so this is where i i think i'm at and i think maybe you are as well so if i look you're right there's massive incompetence um in the lead up to this conflict and we don't have a lot of faith because we always talk about what happened with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And when you get everyone in the media, everyone in government saying the same thing, buying the I don't want to call it propaganda. Well, in the Iraq war, it was propaganda. There wasn't weapons of mass destruction. And we also said what you just said. The world would be a better place without Saddam Hussein.

You said the world would be better without Vladimir Putin. Sure. Well, I don't think the world actually, in hindsight, is better without Saddam Hussein? You said the world would be better without Vladimir Putin. Sure. Well, I don't think the world actually, in hindsight, is better without Saddam Hussein. Less people died in Iraq than would have died if Saddam, who was not a good guy, had stayed in power, but it's created absolute chaos since he's been gone. And that was the question, again, that Tucker always asks, what next? You take him out. What comes after Saddam Hussein? Saddam kept Iraq together. Now, what's different is in Iraq, there was intelligence that lied to us and said there was weapons of mass destruction. In Ukraine, we can actually see with our own eyes that Vladimir Putin has invaded. He is indiscriminately shelling and bombing

and killing innocent people. And so I think what's important is that what we have to do is we do have to help arm the Ukrainians. Yeah, I have no problem with that. We have to be very, very smart. Wish we'd done that sooner. Arm them.

Let them have the tools to defend themselves, which, by the way, you didn't have that in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in Ukraine, they want to defend themselves. They want to fight for their own freedom. Their form, the Ukrainian form of democracy, which involves a little more corruption. Yeah, a lot. But let them fight for that. Let's give them the tools. And let's be to your point. You want smart people in government that know the lines between how far you can you push the aid that we give them? When do you cross that line when you bring yourself into direct conflict with Russia?

And to your point, I oftentimes don't trust the the the Biden government, the Biden cabinet. I don't trust Biden leadership, the whole neocon Republican establishment either. I'll say this. Here's what I think should have happened. Ukraine should have known they could have never entered into NATO. And then we should have funded the heck out of them with with weapons to defend themselves. But but always signaling that they were never going to enter into NATO. And I think that's what Trump did. I think that's what Trump did. And I think that was the right way. That was the smart way to go. Look, you are you're going to be a neutral country, but we're going to arm you to the hilt.

And we did the opposite. We signaled you might you might be able to come into NATO. And then we didn't give them the weapons to defend themselves from a Russia who was obviously going to take that as a provocative move. So I don't want to be in a war. I don't want these civilians and these children to suffer. I don't want to be in a war. I don't want these civilians and these children to suffer. I don't want Ukraine to lose their entire country. You don't have a choice, right? The kids are going to suffer, right? There is going to be right now. They are

suffering. And what does the world look like with if Russia takes over Ukraine? Terrible. Now, what does it look like if Ukraine actually survives this conflict? I think that's what we have to think. Is it too late or is Or is this, as Zelensky himself said, the time to meet and negotiate, the time to talk? I think that Putin has to be put a little further back in the corner. So that Zelensky can come from a better negotiating position. And we let Putin save face somehow. Again, that's why you want smart people in government to figure that out.

How does he save face? How does he still look strong? How does he still look like a winner, even though he's going to be a loser? It seems to me, Sean, that the people running this war for on our behalf for this whole crisis are the same people who got us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, such a poor way who told us we were going to be greeted with roses and flowers when we entered into Iraq. I just I'm sorry. I hate being so cynical about our government. But after being lied to about covid, you have to be about about our intelligence community, our intelligence community telling me that that that Trump got elected because of the Russians, that the laptop was Russian disinformation. I don't know what to trust. Here's a Rachel. I disagree. I think no one's lying to us about Russia invading Ukraine. That's happened. No, no, no. That happened. Indiscriminate shelling and kids dying.

That's happening. Ukrainians fleeing. That's all really. They don't have to lie to me. I was on the same page on that. It's a matter of what do we do now? And here's where I hate to do this to Senator Johnson, because I'm going to disagree with him on a point when he's not on the podcast now. That's OK. He's a friend. I brought up the point of of Canada, Mexico, Cuba and Cuba, the Western Hemisphere. Right. He said, well, we don't have any weapons in the Western Hemisphere, but in Europe they do have weapons in France and in the UK. And so Russia shouldn't care. Well, I think that that doesn't really hold water because Putin has said over and over again that he was not going to allow Ukraine to join NATO. And he was clear and he was angry.

It was a red line for him. And so he didn't like when Latvia and some of these other countries came in. But he at that time didn't really couldn't really stop it. It was not he was he was not in a position to to politically geopolitically. Lots of reasons. But he expressed anger about it. But he said not Ukraine. And I don't have to agree with him in his assessment on Ukraine. I don't have to think this is a sound stable viewpoint

but it was his viewpoint that's right and it i think that was one of the key parts that prompted this war in addition to the fact that we didn't arm ukraine to the hill now just one other point on that the now i'm trying to give joe biden some credit and rachel doesn't want me to do that maybe but here's my i actually there's some parts of what biden's doing that i'm not unhappy with although i'm not sure he's all so when we didn't arm ukraine to the hill which is what i'm saying we should have done maybe the u.s government was concerned about providing before the war all of this high-tech armament the missiles the drones the all the things that are necessary for ukraine to defend themselves we probably didn't want to provide that material to them because then they have this great technology.

And with the corruption in Ukraine, could have they sold it? Could have. I think that's a factor. Well, I think Trump was giving them this stuff. Yeah, but he was giving them the stingers and the javelins. But now we're giving them the switchblade drones. We're giving them more technology, higher classified technology right now, which we might not have wanted to give that to them early on because, again, we didn't want it to get in the wrong hands. We don't want it to go to China. We didn't want it to go to

Russia. And so that might have been a consideration why they weren't armed to the hilt before the war, because if no war happened, what happens to that equipment? Just a just I'm trying to be fair to the president point. I never heard anyone say that. Sean, can I ask you really quick? Because, you know, having Ron Johnson on and not talking about Hunter Biden and laptop is is is just hard to do. Do you think that I mean, it's pretty obvious from the polling, Donald Trump would have won this election, had this information about Hunter Biden's laptop. There was a poll that came out that said that 10 to 14 percent would not have voted for Joe Biden or would not have voted at all in the election, which would have thrown the election to Trump. So we know that this is serious stuff.

So what I think the lesson here is, which is what we saw through the whole campaign, Joe Biden sat in his basement and didn't do anything. I mean, he was not a good communicator. He slurs his words. He wasn't crisp. You know, he would do a little rally in front of a few cars that would honk at him. And what happened was it shows the power of the media and social media that they were able to cover and prop Joe Biden up for a whole presidential campaign, which I thought was impossible. And this laptop that they totally suppressed of Hunter Biden is just one extra piece that clarifies what they were doing. They didn't want Donald Trump to win and they were going to use the power of their papers and in TVs and social media to make sure that the American voter did not have all the information and that their guy, Joe Biden, would win and the guy they hated, Donald Trump, was going to lose. And the problem with that is so often we look to the media as arbitrars of truth. Yes,

they might be slanted a little bit to the left, a little bit to the right, but I'm supposed to get the truth from them. What we saw in the last campaign is there was nothing about truth. the truth from them. What we saw in the last campaign is there was nothing about truth. These were just absolute political machines that were here to deliver a result and really take information away from honest Americans who just wanted the best information to vote for the best guy to best lead America. And they stopped that from happening. And they bashed and abused so unfairly Donald Trump, made allegations that were false against him. And they bashed and abused so unfairly. Donald Trump made allegations that were false against him in the actual allegations that were legitimate against Joe Biden. They buried. I have to say they weren't small questions. I mean, if you are the big guy getting

10 percent. From China, from Russia, from Ukraine. Look at the mess we're in. The American people absolutely had a right to know what these deals were and if their president was compromised. I thought we broke a little bit of news right now with Senator Johnson on this podcast when he said he believes that Joe Biden is compromised. And he pointed to different deals that make no sense for the American people that Joe Biden, you know, positions that he's taken diplomatically, whether it was Nord Stream 2 with with the Chinese government. These are things that if you cared about the American people, if you were only looking out for their best interest the way Donald Trump does, you would not take that position.

And he and he took the position of these people that his family or these countries that his family was taking money from and enriching themselves from. the real story. I think it's so easy to get distracted by the M&Ms and the porn and the drugs and the crack and the baby mamas and all the really debaucherous stuff that Hunter does. This is not about Hunter. This is about Joe Biden. And I want to just make one last point on this, which I'm probably reiterating my same point, but the media went after Donald Trump and said he was colluding with Russia. Ron Johnson mentioned Alpha Bank, and there's a back channel to Russia to get their assistance. Now, we saw through all of the investigations, there was no evidence that Donald Trump colluded with Russia. It didn't happen. The DNC server hacked by Russia. Actually, they think it was an internal Bernie guy that

leaked the emails out. It wasn't Russia. It was an internal staffer at the DNC. So again, that whole story that the media ran with, which I think they knew was absolutely false, but they amplified that through their channels. And then the real story of Hunter Biden that actually was true with all of this shady money coming into his family, cutting deals with not great people around the world, his dad helping him out to accomplish the goals of these shady actors as he's the vice president of the United States.

That story, which is real, is buried. And that's what's so frustrating. They amplify the fake one and bury the real one all to win an election. And that's why so often we can't trust the media. You can't trust social media. If you can't trust your elections, this experiment's over, Sean.

I mean, the whole point of this is that you're elected by the people, that the people have a voice. This is a government by and for the people. And if a bunch of elites and DNC operatives and deep state intelligence people and big tech and if if all of these giant you know powerful forces can suppress our votes then this experiment's over i i've here's what's not i don't want to be pessimistic i love my country i want to be

hopeful but this has been a really rough two years. It's not about COVID. It's about the lies that I've been told for the last. I'll go into, we have a whole woke problem through corporate America and for our schools, but this is, this is my point is different. One, you through the power of the purse can absolutely root the corruption out of the FBI. You made that, that was a very interesting point you made. All Republicans have to stand firm on that, but you can fix it. You do have that power. And then with regard to the media and social media, you just have to create a parallel technology and media base that allows you to get real information. And again, there's a lot of money there. I think the brilliance of Fox News was half of America is a little bit right of center. If we tell America the truth, we can make all the liberal networks split up 50% and

we can take for ourselves 50% of America. That's right. Which is why Fox is. Which is why we're crushing it in the ratings, Sean. Crushing it in the ratings. That's right. If you look at the ratings, it's like the first 20 shows are fox shows and then and and and and then then cnn well and i think fox came out recently and said

we're not competing with cnn or ms oh no we compete with each other shows no no they're competing with abc nbc and cbs oh that's who they're competing with yeah yeah we're not even competing in cable so again that's how that's how great fox is because you tell people the truth um and you're fair and you don't tell fake stories like what they do uh in the in the russia collusion hoax that we spent two years on so with that rachel i guess that's that that's our take i'm grateful for ron johnson coming on and again there's so much to talk about which is why we went overboard today chatting about ukraine so we apologize for going so long i'm on my second cup of coffee already i took a break here and went and got my another 16 ouncer it's hard not to talk when you have

a hero like him on but we're so grateful for him thanks so much for joining us at our kitchen table we hope you'll join us again next week and we're gonna have another great guest so bye everybody stay tuned have a good one.