Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 131 | Dan Crenshaw

Episode Date: June 28, 2019

Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw and I discuss some of the most pressing issues facing our country and what Congress is actually doing — and not doing — to tackle them. 

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Friday. I hope everyone has had a wonderful week. Today, I am sitting down with Representative Dan Crenshaw from Texas. You guys already know exactly who he is. He has been making waves ever since he joined Congress and I'm really looking forward to you guys listening to this conversation. I hope that you have enjoyed the maternity episode so far. I've gotten a lot of good feedback. If you guys would like to ask me any questions, of course, you can email me, Allie at the conservative millennial blog.com. You can send me a message on Instagram, but for now, the conversation with Representative Crenshaw. Representative, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so I don't think I need to give any formal

introduction to everyone listening to the podcast, but if you could give us just a brief, a brief backgrounds on who you are and how you were raised? Well, I was raised in Texas, the Houston area. I was raised in an oil and gas family. So the reason I point that out is because what that meant was I moved around a lot. I grew up in Houston. We also lived in Scotland. We moved back to Houston.

We lived in Egypt. Why did you live in Scotland? You were born in Scotland, right? Yeah, I was. Why were you born in Scotland? Well, there's a big oil industry there. Okay. So my parents, my parents met at Texas A&M.

Gotcha. And, you know, my dad's decide the family goes back six generations here in Texas. My mom came to Texas A&M to study her master's in nutrition. And they met. And his first job was out in Aberdeen, Scotland, you know, working at the, obviously, the North Sea has a lot of oil. So. Yeah. Yeah. And there you go. And actually, the doctor who delivered me was named Clark Kent. It's just a little fun fact. Yeah. Dr. Clark Kent. Fun fact. Wow. And so were you raised a conservative? Well, I don't think there was a lot of politics in my family. They were definitely conservative. But it was not, you know, and I know this from looking at baby pictures and my dad's wearing a Reagan shirt, of course. And they've always been conservative, considered conservative. But I don't think my family did not wear politics on their sleeve. It was not something that came up a lot. And frankly, it's not something I even was overly involved with in college. And the military is fairly. apolitical. The SEAL teams, the special operations community is going to be a little bit more conservative, generally speaking. And the military as a whole is for the most part, but we don't talk about it a lot. We're focused on our job. It is not a highly political environment. And it also speaks to the era we're in. I think as social media has gained more traction.

And I think unfortunately, and I think this is a bad thing, politics has seeped into every aspect of life, your job, the military, your culture. your pop culture, comedy. It's in all of it. Can't escape it. And it's not good. You know, I think we should have some separation so we can share some things together. Yeah.

So when did you decide, okay, I'm going to, you know, you weren't necessarily raised, always thinking about, talking about politics. My story is kind of the same way. It was during this past election, really, that I was like, okay, I'm noticing that a lot of people my age, a lot of young people. This was 2015, have no idea what the heck is going on. and that kind of created this spark in me where it's like, okay, I got to talk about these values

that I was raised with, even though we weren't overtly political. So when was that moment for you? I don't know if there was a moment. I think it happened gradually during my time in the SEAL teams. And here's what it is for me. Every time I would look into an issue, it turned out that the headline or the bottom line that they were trying to tell you up front

was not actually true, right? And that every time I actually delved into something, it was the conservative side that actually did the work to explain layer upon layer why this was the way it was. And I became a lot more interested in the think tank work that was, say, done by heritage and AEI and things like that. And when I had to leave the military, I wanted to pursue that. I went to Harvard Kennedy School.

I wanted to be in policy. The policy mattered a lot to me. I wasn't necessarily looking at politics. I knew in the back of my mind that if I wanted to make an impact on a lot of different issues and advocate for an approach to governance that is coherent and based on timeless principles and based on the founding principles that created the miracle we have today, then I would have to get into politics. But I had no avenue into that. So I created an avenue by jumping through a window of opportunity when Congressman Ted Pill announced retirement in my district.

And what did your wife think about that when you said, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to run for office. Yeah. So she, well, she was all for it. That's good. The way it happened was, you know, one day I happened to win the right place, the right people, the right time who pointed out to me, that bill announced retirement. And I said, okay. Yeah. Well, you know, I was thinking about this, but maybe, maybe some time in the future when I have more money. And I understand that policy intricacy just a little bit better. And that's a typical military way of thinking. I think you have to be fully prepared. you've got to be super prepared. And then you realize, like, you're way more prepared than everybody else. Because I've been studying a lot of this. I knew what I thought, right?

I've been studying a lot of this for a long time. And voters do appreciate that. When you can articulate the best what they believe, and that's what voters are looking for oftentimes. And so I came home and asked my wife what she thought, and she said, let's do it. And that was it. That's the support that you need, really more than anyone else who tells you to run, is the people that are close to you and really know you and care about you.

Exactly. What's been the biggest thing that's surprising? surprised you about the legislative process since you've been in Washington. I get asked that question all the time, and I don't have a great answer for it yet, because I don't I don't feel that I've been overly surprised by anything. I sort of knew what I was getting into. I'd both buys open, one eye open, you know, going into it. But, you know, there's certainly disappointments. I think a lot of the arguments being used by the left are terribly dishonest. Yeah, and you knew that going in. I bet I knew that, yeah, but I knew that. Yeah, but I knew

are a lot more honest than I thought. I just, I think I was a little surprised. Maybe I believed the moderate Democrats a lot more than I should have. Believe them in the sense that they truly wanted to work with us and kind of fight back against the leftism of their party. And I found that to be certainly not the case. I mean, there's still some decent ones. And if it was up to me and them to find solutions, I think we could.

But they've got no power and they've got no willingness to actually speak out against that far left side of their party. So I really don't know what direction they're going. I would say kind of jokingly, one surprising thing was that I have to pay for the house gym. You know, like, why can't I just use the gym? I don't understand. It frustrates me on a daily basis. It's not included.

Maybe that's something that you need. Well, I was going to ask you, like, what one thing that you really want to change? If there's just one thing that you could say, okay, this is my goal on there, but maybe it's the gym membership thing. That's probably it. Yeah. A little bit on a serious bigger policy or how. the house works? I would like to hear both actually because I feel like you do have some beef with how the house works. I watch your Instagram videos and I'm very enlightened by the process. Yeah. And that's,

well, in that, well, my beef that I put out on Instagram is with a bigger legislative issues. Okay. And that's my beef with the policy. I do have beef also with just the general way things work. How it goes. Yeah. I'm surprised how little debate we actually do. Like we don't, we don't ever sit in a committee and just go at each other, you know, which I think would be healthy. You know, And there's just there's not really an opportunity to ever do that. Has it always been that way? I don't know. Probably. And because it's difficult to see how it was ever a different way because of the way it's structured.

I mean, first of all, in the House, the majority really rules. I mean, they really don't have to listen to us at all. And so they're the ones debating amongst themselves what to put forward because they know they don't really care what we think. And that's a little unfortunate. It's so rare that a piece of legislation will go to the floor. and we walk on there unsure of how we're going to vote. It's happened very few times. It's interesting when it does and when we're actually listening for the arguments.

And engaging. And so it does happen and it's kind of cool when it does happen, but it's very rare that compromise just isn't happening. There is on another note, it's the way social media works. And like, this is something I've been thinking me in AOC would have some alignment on. Totally. Is the rules surrounding social media in Congress are, I think you, know what I'm talking about. They're horrible. They, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they

take rules surrounding official mail. And I don't want to get into that because it's confusing for the listeners and it's, it's just, yeah, basically you have to separate campaign mail from your official mail that you mail to your constituents, which makes sense. But they try to adapt those laws to social media, which is why, you know, for your listeners, which is why I have like five different social media accounts. Okay. I have to have all these different, personalities. You don't follow all five of my social media accounts. Well, now that I know, well, now that I know I'm going to do it right now. There's two on Instagram. No, sorry, there's only one on Instagram. I'm battling back on that one. The one that I follow on Instagram, you post the videos like on IGTV. That's, like, here's the truth.

I think you did a recent one about an immigration bill. So that's the one that I follow. That's good. That's good. That's acceptable. Where you are like AOC where you're drinking wine and putting together a futon. I would love to follow that one too. I have one Instagram. I have a I've been able to maintain one Instagram, but they want me to split it up. And I'm like, no, man. Yeah, I mean, I would agree on that. That's a, it seems like a small thing, but what it does is it makes it hard for people to see what I'm doing. Yeah.

Because they have to figure out where to find me. Yeah, that's true. And that's frustrating. And I think people really appreciate that. I've appreciated just the simple videos that you've done explaining what's going on. Because like you said, the thing that frustrated you before you got into politics is the thing that I think frustrates me. And a lot of just, you know, of your average people reading how. headlines every day. I mean, this is probably one of the questions that I get asked the most is,

like, how do you know what's true? How do you know what's true? Where do you go to know what's true? And really, all we feel like we can do, unless you have access to an actual politician is, okay, I'm going to read as much as I possibly can from both sides of the aisle, and then I'm going to make the effort to piece things together and hopefully find the truth, read the original legislation. But the fact of the matter is young people don't have time, or they just don't want to. People have their lives to live. And it's not, yeah, it doesn't make sense to expect that of them. And so what I try to do is not give them the talking points, right? Because people see through that and people can tell if you're coming at them with a simple talking points that you're reading.

Or if you've got a few more layers of explanation underneath that. And even if they don't trust you, at least they can see whether you're persuasive or not. And, you know, I try to be and I try not to just throw out a bunch of red meat. I want to explain to you why this is wrong. And I don't think our party has done a great job of doing that in the past. And so we're just trying to change that. I don't think so either. I mean, we have obviously so many good people in the party,

but I do think that a problem is that a lot of legislators just don't know how to use social media. So when they do, it's really awkward. That's true on the left, too. I mean, we've seen that with Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand. I mean, it's painfully awkward. There's just a lot of people that don't know how to use it. And also, they don't, I think a lot of people. I think a lot of conservatives especially seem to not be able to get out of the, like,

politician persona. Like they've got the hand motions. They've got the cadence. And someone like me or just, you know, your average millennial whatever is watching that as like, What are you doing? I don't really, you know, I don't really trust you. I might like you and what you're saying, but I don't really. You feel like that's scripted.

Yeah. They're robotic about it. And then then, and so that's what we're trying to change. And, you know, that's what we can't underestimate AOC too much because she's good at that. She is. She seems very genuine. Now she says nothing when she talks. She's wrong every time she says something.

Right. But she's genuinely wrong. Yeah, it's my job to be like, hey, guys, this is why she's wrong in a genuine way. Yes. And you've got to know the issues well enough to be able to speak about them off the cuff, which is maybe another problem sometimes people have. And, you know, there's also little tricks, right? Like have subtitles.

Have subtitles because a lot of people don't turn on the sound on their phones. A lot of politicians don't realize that. Yeah. Especially people, R.H., I would say. Like my dad totally doesn't get that. He was in public the other day and he had, his phone was on loud. And so you heard it ding every five seconds and he just totally doesn't get it. But you're right.

For some reason, our generation is like, is different about that. Yeah, exactly. So that's true. Okay, you said what bothers you about the process, but what about the biggest policy thing that you want to tackle? You talk a lot about immigration. Would you say that's probably it? That's definitely a priority right now. I'm on Homeland Security Committee.

It's something I ran on was border security. This is a frustrating one because it's so solvable. All right. We need to implement, whether it's, you know, on the Senate side, Senator Graham is a good bill on amnesty, or not amnesty, asylum reform. The way we do asylum processing, Will Hur just came out with a good bill in the House that we should look at and get that moving forward. The question is, isn't really on the Republican side, whether we should move forward with that or not. The question is, the Democrats want the same things we want or not. This is why this is just so frustrating.

We know exactly what needs to be done. This isn't rocket science. You know, and it's not just a wall. It's a wall where Border Patrol wants that wall. It's more facilities to process illegal immigrants claiming asylum. It's a better handle on how we process asylum claims, where they can claim those things. And we have legislation to address all that. Democrats fundamentally have a different goal than we do, though.

And that's what I've unfortunately been convinced of over the last few months. And what is it? Yeah. I mean, if you can guess. It's a good question. Because we used to agree, we used to agree at least on our nation's sovereignty. We might disagree on the methods of how we protect that. But even just a few years ago, I mean, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, they all said that they believed that we should curb illegal immigration. They, if when you're, when you're liberal, you tend not to value the sanctity of your nation the way a conservative does.

And that's just in the data. That's not me making that up. That's not me assuming that it's, that's like. That's from moral psychology data. And the way people take surveys, the way they answer questions. So they just don't value that the way we value it. So that's the first thing, okay? And then you get to this other, and this is the more cynical view is do they just want more votes?

Are they trying to overwhelm our population with people who they believe will vote for them? They can tell them that they are for that group. And this is identity politics run rampant. And this is a toxic kind of situation here where you don't really care about the sanity, the sovereignty of your country. and you want more votes to have more power so you can implement the policies you want. Okay, well, now they found themselves in a good spot and where the status quo looks pretty nice to them. And they'll continue to allow this underclass to inflow into the United States. And then they'll make the moral argument that that's an underclass and that we should give them voting rights.

Okay, well, we know what you, you know, the rest of us have to call out the truth that we see here. That's the cynical, that's a cynical view. I don't think all Democrats want that. I definitely don't think Democrat voters want that. That I am sure of. There's no Democrat voters saying this. Yeah. All right.

But I think the politicians have somewhat of a different view. I do worry about those who follow in the footsteps of people like AOC, people who are my age, who have just come out of the university system where they're basically just teaching this crazy postmodernism that doesn't have any founding in reality. I worry about those people who, for them, illegal immigration, or basically having open borders is ideological. Like it's truly a moral issue for them to where they buy into this crazy narrative that, well, white supremacy founded this country.

This wasn't our land in the first place. So why the heck do we have borders? I worry about those people because how do you rationalize with irrational people? Do you have any advice on that? If they're that far gone, I don't try to rationalize with them. I mean, I'm not so sure that there's a point to it. I think it is about, you know, 7% of the population by some statistics. And so I'm not overly worried about that or I'm not going to waste my time trying to tackle that.

I'll debate them in public so that I can, you know, put on display for the rest of the population, like what's going on here. But, I mean, because what you're describing that postmodernism, they're coming from such a fundamentally different place. Yeah. There's so much daylight between us that it's, you can't. You can't even get it. You got to go to the bare goals. I mean, when you have different goals, you can't compromise. You can compromise.

If we all want to alleviate poverty, like we can compromise. Okay, they're going to want more transfer payments, more welfare. We're going to want some institutionalized personal responsibility within that welfare program. See how there's a compromise that we eventually come up with. If we want fundamentally different things, if one side thinks the country is bad, like in a deep core level, it's bad and we think it's good. I'm not so sure we have much in common anymore. And it's hard to have conversations based on that. And it does seem like, and maybe it's amplified what we see in the media,

but it does seem like that position of being really anti-patriotism and thinking that America and the West that they're good places that have done good things, that is somehow racist and wrong and immoral, that does seem to be a more mainstream position on the left. Do you think that's exaggerated or do you think that's true? Do you find that in Congress? Well, so there's that extreme part of them who would openly advocate that America was founded on genocide, okay? That's the Ilhan Omar's in the world.

This is what they say. It's crazy. I mean, she's in Congress, so it's mainstream. Yeah, in a sense it's mainstream. But I would, and then I would point to the more moderate liberals, the more well-intentioned types, right? The ones I talk about is being, you know, they're focused on injustice and inequality, and there's a naivete associated with that. But they're not bad, right? And they do, they do, they do, they love Fourth of July parades.

Do you have an example of that? Like, like a person. Yeah. If you don't, it's okay. Sure, sure. Plenty. You know, like, I'll, I'm friends with Joe Kennedy. You know, I think he's a good person.

He still loves the country. Yeah, you like, read his Twitter account and you're like, oh, God, it makes you want to tear your eyeballs. The one remaining eyeball you have out. But like, you know, he's a good, he will just have an unemotional political conversation with you and just get to the, get to the point, right? So there's, and then voters. right. I mean, so I try to put this in terms of how I interact with voters also and like people who say that they're Democrats and then I have these conversations with them about what they believe. They're still going to wave the American flag at a Fourth of July parade. So they haven't

gone into this sort of intersectional left of postmodernism where America is bad. They haven't gotten there yet. Here's the problem with well intention and liberalism is they're not willing to defend the values that they themselves live by. They're not willing to defend the fact that they love America. They're not willing to defend the fact that they grew up in person with a sense of personal responsibility and and love of family and traditional values. They live by those, but they won't defend them. And this is, this is a big problem. So this is why it's actually, you can objectively state what you stated earlier, which is they're all the same thing. Because if you're not willing to defend something, then, you know, and if everything you do basically enables the far left,

whether it's a vote or whether it's your inability to defend the values you know or right, well, then you might as well be the far left. And that's actually what I see in Congress. And that's what I see in someone like Joe Biden. I think that we probably would have said at one point, even maybe a couple of years ago, okay, yes, he was a part of a very progressive presidency, but he himself, you know, he probably still loves America, but now we see him, cowtow, we see him totally bend over backwards to appease the far left.

So I'll use that to ask you what you think about how 2020 is shaping us. and if you have any predictions or just any thoughts on the craziness that's going on there? I don't know. I have no idea. But it's going to be really entertaining. It's going to be really entertaining. Biden obviously looks like he's on top right now. I think your assessment of how he will go with the wind, he will go with the political leftist wind.

Which is very unfortunate. It's about correct. And heck, even if it wasn't, you'd still end up with an administration full of Obama-era official. You would. It would be really, really bad, even if he was still. stick into his guns. He would never govern moderately. No, no, he can't. He has no choice, right? He would govern with, he would bring back the entire Obama administration. That's what would happen. I don't, I don't see any other. No, no, here's, here's our advantage there. He's

going to have to answer a very difficult question, which is, how is it that you coming back is better? Because by every measure we have, things are better. Now, there's a lot of people who just don't like Trump and they believe that character matters in the White House. Fair enough. And they've convinced themselves that actually the country is doing really poorly. despite all statistics are the contrary. Right. Because, yeah, once you have that emotional belief, you'll look to confirm that any way you can.

And they do do that. They do that. But even if they acknowledge that by every measure, every indicator, things are better off, and that includes foreign policy, by the way, as well, they'll still hold on to the idea if they just don't like the person. Because this always goes back to,

why do you vote? And I would argue that the reason you should vote is not for the person. I mean, that definitely has something to do with it. I'm sympathetic to these people who just don't like the president. I get it. but and I'm less sympathetic to people who just vote on one issue.

I don't think that's a good reason to vote. You should vote based on how somebody is going to govern and the philosophical approach they bring to that. And conservatism is a coherent form of governments. Liberalism is not. It just isn't. It's a good thing to have in your society because you need to kind of, you know, sometimes blunt the rougher edges of capitalism or whatever it is.

It's a good thing for activists to do, to seek out injustices and advocate. That's all good. That is a good democratic thing to have, but it is not a coherent governing philosophy. Right. Okay. One last question. If you can give people some advice, young people, some advice, going into 2020, a lot of them are scared to voice any of their conservative opinions because they've got scary aunts and uncles

and friends on Facebook who are going to, you know, exactly. You've been called a Nazi about a million times. And I think a lot of them are fearful of that. So if there's any advice or encouragement that you can give to young conservatives who want to speak up but are nervous. Geez, you know, it's not like, I wasn't in the political debate as a young person. And so I'd be lying if I said that I knew exactly how to do that. All I can say is know what you stand for, know that you have to anticipate their argument

and know a couple more layers deep of a particular issue than they do. So go in well-armed. listen to a lot of especially like the younger political pundits out there, especially me. Yeah, I mean, just totally objectively. You probably want to listen to us the most. Yeah, just objectively speaking, that makes them a sense. Because what I try to do constantly is provide you with the right arguments, not the false talking points.

And we always fall into that trap. Like, you know, and we always want to make sure that the data we're using is correct. And then just do it with open arms. Don't show contempt for your opponent. They will show contempt for you. But if you start to show contempt for them, it'll end any ability to persuade anybody at all. So do it with love and show the morality of conservatism. Show the morality of conservatism.

Which is really the why, something that you talk about a lot. I think knowing the why behind what you believe, knowing the why behind conservatism, which really goes back to even knowing why the founders set up this country and the principles that conservatism in America was founded on, I think that can really help guide people a lot. And you do a good job of relaying that, I think. So thank you so much for what you do. And thank you for being here.

Appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Ellie. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. I learned a lot from him. I certainly think that Representative Crenshaw is someone that we can be proud of, fighting for us in Congress. If you guys enjoy Relatable, if you love the show, I would highly appreciate you leaving a five-star review on iTunes.

If not, that's okay. If you just want to listen to the podcast and not tell me how much you like it, I still love you and I still appreciate you anyway. I hope that you guys have an awesome weekend and I will see you back here on Monday.