Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 629 | Inflation, Baby Formula, & Gas: Will It Ever Get Better? | Guest: Sen. Marco Rubio

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

Today we're talking to Republican U.S. Senator from Florida Marco Rubio about all the major issues affecting America. We cover the encroaching influence of China, the baby formula shortage and high gas prices, and the war in Ukraine, as well as culture war issues and why so many Republicans are hesitant to participate. For each of these topics, Senator Rubio explains the challenges facing America and how the GOP would go about addressing them, in contrast to what the Biden administration is doing, which seems to just be making everything worse. But before we get into the interview with Senator Rubio, we talk about how Twitter suspended Allie once again just for telling the truth about someone's gender. --- Timecodes: (0;00) Introduction (1:24) Allie was kicked off of Twitter - AGAIN - but this time for criticizing the Fox News segment that aired last Friday (15:17) Interview with Senator Marco Rubio (51:09) Goodbye --- Today's Sponsors: Good Ranchers is giving away 2 FREE 18oz. prime, center-cut ribeyes when you use promo code 'ALLIE' at checkout on GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE. American meat, delivered! ExpressVPN: control where you want Netflix & other streaming websites to *think* you're located at ExpressVPN.com/ALLIE, plus get 3 extra months for free! Annie's Kit Clubs has month-to-month subscriptions & their monthly kit clubs make it easy to keep your kids (and even you) engaged & constructive even when school is out! Go to AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE to get your first month for 75% off. --- Previous Episode Mentioned: Ep 628: Et Tu, Fox News? https://apple.co/3MPUlYP --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise- use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed.

You can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. This episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers. That's American Meat delivered right to your front door. Go to good ranchers.com slash alley. That's good ranchers.com slash alley.

Okay, guys, today we are talking to Senator Marco Rubio from Florida. We're going to be talking about a few things. we're going to be talking about gas prices, the baby formula shortage that is still going on, inflation, China, all of these big political issues that are really affecting our everyday lives. And I'm going to ask him, okay, what are Republicans doing about it? What are Republicans going to do about it if they take a majority in the fall with the midterm elections? and we are also going to be talking about the culture wars a little bit and why Republicans seem so reticent to engage with the issues that are affecting our children the most.

And then at the end, I will ask him about fatherhood because Father's Day is this weekend. And I just want to hear a little bit about what he loves about being a dad. Before we get into the interview, though, I do want to talk about something that happened yesterday. If you haven't listened to yesterday's episode or watch yesterday's episode on YouTube about the Fox News segment that celebrated unabashedly the transition of a small child from a girl into a boy. And I use transition in scare quotes because, of course, we don't believe that it's actually possible even through surgery or hormones to transition your gender. Fox News celebrated this on America's Newsroom. complete and total propaganda. And we talked about the physical, psychological, and societal consequences to promoting something like this. And I had tweeted about this segment when it happened on Friday.

And I tweeted that, let me pull up the tweet. I tweeted that. I'm stunned that Fox News ran a segment celebrating a girl whose parents transitioned her into a boy when she was five because she apparently told them she was a boy quote before she could talk. absolutely maddening and heartbreaking. So that was my original reaction to it. And I just got word yesterday. I got an email last night after the episode had come out about this subject from Twitter saying that that tweet that I just read to you violated the Twitter rules and that my account had been temporarily suspended. So my account had been locked. Here is the email that I got. Hi, Ali Bathsaki, your account has been locked for violating the Twitter

rules, specifically for violating our rules against hateful conduct. You may not promote violence against threatened or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. Now, remember what I tweeted. Remember what I said. Anywhere. In that, tweet. Did I harass? Did I encourage harassment? Did I encourage violence in any way? No, of course not. See, they are going to side. Twitter is going to side with the people who are actually brutalizing and mutilating children's bodies, the side that is actually promoting physical violence against children because they've decided that that kind of violence is acceptable. But words calling a girl

who is objectively a girl, she, that is apparently more violent and more dangerous than the actual physical violence against children that is happening. We read this terrible story that was chronicled on Twitter by someone who has detransitioned. This person explained the physical consequences, the ramifications that he will deal with for the rest of his life because he went through this transition process as a fairly young person. And so this kind of stuff, this kind of promotion and the censorship of the criticism of this kind of promotion of this kind of ideology is actually dangerous. It is deleterious, not just for individuals, but also for society. And I've said this before and I'll say it again, you are more likely to arrive at the truth, whether it's just

factual truth, scientific truth, or moral truth about something, not just by assuming that a left wing narrative is a little bit off or a little bit skewed or a little bit biased, but actually in assuming that the exact opposite is true. Now, of course, that's not always the case, but you are more likely to arrive at a conclusion that is true by assuming that the left wing narrative about something is completely false, is the exact opposite of true. By simply seeing something, that the left says and saying, oh, okay, I believe the opposite of that, you are more likely to arrive at a true conclusion that's certainly true about gender ideology. And so they suspended my account for saying something that is true and then sharing my opinion about it, that it is

horrifying, which of course, I believe that it is. And Twitter said, okay, you can access your account again in 12 hours if you delete this tweet. Now, this is a little bit of a conflict for me. It's a conflict that a lot of conservative commentators have had to kind of wrestle with. If you delete the tweet, are you then giving in? Are you caving to the pressure of Twitter? And are you then, you know, bowing down to the mob? Because of this, are you acquiescing? Are you showing weakness in this way? On the other hand, if you don't delete the tweet and get access to your account, you lose this huge platform. And I understand people say, well, why are you even on Twitter? You know Twitter is run by communist, which, yes, well documented, it absolutely is. Why don't you go to another platform?

Well, look, that is also really hard. Twitter kind of has people because that's where the majority of social media users are, at least the ones who talk about news and culture and things like that. And so it's not easy to just say, okay, well, I'm going to go to this other platform that isn't going to discriminate against my views because no one's there. Very few people are there. Things do happen on Twitter, and Twitter engagement does translate into other opportunities that give you a platform to talk about the things that matter. For example, when the Dobbs draft leaked a couple months ago, I tweeted about it a lot.

Those tweets got a lot of engagement. That translated into me being on several shows to talk about the importance of making of making abortion illegal, talking about the importance of recognizing the rights of children inside the womb. And I even had a debate on cable news about this. I got to go on Megan Kelly's show and talk about the importance of the right to life of these vulnerable babies. And so Twitter engagement can actually translate into getting an even bigger platform to talk about really important issues. So it's not just as easy as saying, well, I'm just going to lose my account and it doesn't matter. There's actually, there are actually things to weigh and to wrestle with.

And so I was wrestling with this. But then I went on Twitter and it doesn't even let you when you were suspended because this is the second time this has happened to me. The first time was because I called Rachel Levine, who is the assistant health and human services secretary in the Biden administration. I called him, him because he is a man, even though he identifies as a old. woman and I was suspended for that and I ended up deleting the tweet so I could get my account back this time wrestling a little bit more but I went so I went on Twitter they don't let you access the DMs or anything they don't even let you like look at any tweets and it gave me an option to appeal it to try to you know argue about why I should not be taken off Twitter and so I

just chose appeal and I gave my explanation in the comment box and I said, I did not encourage, I did not encourage harassment or violence or endorse these things at all. I think I said it a little bit more concisely than that because I didn't. And to my shock, absolute shock, I got an email from Twitter, maybe an hour later saying, oh, that was an error. That was a mistake. We didn't mean to lock your account. And now you have full access to your account. We apologize. for any inconvenience that this has caused. Now, was this really an error? I don't think so. The errors always seem to go one way. And they always seem to be about certain tweets. It's not these errors are never about like, oh, they just accidentally locked my account because of this non-controversial

tweet about pizza or something like that. It always is an error that has to do with these tweets that we know that they don't like, that include what they would call misgendering. And so I was very surprised that they accepted my appeal. I think it's probably because a lot of people were tweeting about it. Seth Dillon was tweeting about it. Josh Hammer was tweeting about it. I think that got retweeted by Ben Shapiro. And so it was causing quite a bit of backlash.

And I appreciate, by the way, everyone who tweeted about it, everyone who sounded the alarm about it, that kind of stuff really does matter. It really does make a difference. So I think it's that Twitter got backlash, and that is why they restored my account. But it's frightening nonetheless. It's disturbing nonetheless. Not only that they, that Fox News and Twitter seem to be at least in this like in cahoots. Now, I don't know who reported the tweet.

I have my suspicions, but it's just interesting that when it comes to this subject, Fox News and Twitter, or apparently at least part of it. Fox News and Twitter are apparently on the same team here. But also that you can get censored. I mean, just think about this. You can get censored from one of the largest platforms where people are going to get informed and get their news because you told the truth. You told the biological truth.

And you told the truth about what is happening to children and how troubling it is and how brutal it is, what is happening to children's minds and bodies through gender ideology. That you were actually deplatformed for telling the truth. You are never de-platformed for telling a lie as long as the lie affirms a left-wing narrative. And you are not censored for actually, literally promoting violence, promoting murder, promoting rape, promoting all kinds of assault and encouraging threats towards people as long as you are on the left and you are doing that towards people that the left doesn't like. I mean, just look at the threats against Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Thomas, because of their

conservatism. I've reported some of those tweets and Twitter always tells me, oh, they don't, they don't violate our, they don't violate any of our policies. Isn't that interesting? And actually, we also see that from the Biden administration, that as long as it is violence towards the quote unquote right group of people, it's not going to receive harsh condemnation. It's just not. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting? Actually, it's not really interesting. It's downright disturbing. And I think we see the writing on the wall, where the country will go. if someone, I don't even know, someone, somehow we don't push back on this. Of course, we want Elon Musk to take over Twitter because we hope that he will at least care about free speech and not censoring people just because of their political opinions or because they said something that is true.

I honestly don't know at this point if that is something that is going to happen. I just have a feeling that that is not going to go through. I don't have any special insight necessarily about that decision-making process, but it just seems less likely than it was a couple months ago. So we'll see. I say continue to speak up for that, which is good and right and true. One day I probably will get officially de-platformed for telling the truth about this. But rest assured, I promise you, I will never give in one inch on the gender nonsense.

ever. I will never affirm that which is not true when it comes to the biological reality of male and female. I will not give in at all, even if Twitter de-platforms me, even if I somehow lost my job because I refuse to say that a man is a woman, which of course would not happen at Blaze TV. But I will never give an inch on that madness because I believe not only just in objective reality and truth, but I also believe and know for a fact that this ideology is damaging lives, it's damaging bodies, it's damaging minds, it's damaging families, it's damaging a whole generation of children. And I just refuse to go along with it. For the sake of love, for the sake of truth, I will continue to stand up against it along with you guys. So thanks for

sharing the arrows with me. Thanks for linking arms with me. We will continue to beat this drum and push back on it because it actually, it matters that much. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles,

faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over high. hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

Senator, thanks so much for joining us. First, I want to talk to you about something that your team just tweeted out about China. We talk about China a lot on this podcast. You tweeted most Americans don't realize how much of their retirement savings are under the control of the Communist Party of China. Now, we read that. Most people have no idea what the heck you are talking about. That's as frightening as it sounds. So can you explain a little bit about that for us and tell us why it matters? Yeah, and that's why we link this video. We want people to look at that and say, well, let me watch this video and see. So here's what happens, right? Most Americans are not day traders. So if you have investments for your future, you know, it's in a 401k, it's in a pension fund.

If you're a federal employee, it's with a thrift savings plan. And those funds invests the money for you. And they invest it all over the place in things you see and things you don't see and in funds that you don't understand what's inside the guts of them. And a lot of times these funds are investing in companies that have links to the Chinese Communist Party or Chinese companies. And the reason why they invest in these companies is because they've made a pretty good rate of return on it. I mean, these companies have grown very quickly. They've been capitalized by American investment money.

Again, not day traders or anything like that. That's just everyday, you know, hardworking people that are trying to put some money aside for their future. Now, here's two problems we have. The first is those companies traditionally have not been subject to the same scrutiny. So Chinese companies for years would refuse to live by the auditing rules that every other company listed on our exchanges had to deal with. So you had to actually show them this is how much we made. This is how much we spent. This is how we run our company.

Some transparency. The Chinese law prohibited that from occurring. And the other is these companies, there's no such thing as a private company in China. China. At the end of the day, every company in China exists because the government and the Communist Party allows it to exist. And so if in the future, we're in a conflict with China and the Chinese decide, well, here's one of our leverage points we have over Americans is to threaten their retirement plans, is to threaten them. And so you can imagine all of a sudden a bunch of American retirees whose pension funds or whatever they're used for retirement are suddenly

collapsing and they're pressuring their government. Don't go to war with China because it's going to ruin our retirement. So it's just one more piece of leverage that they have over us. And what's going to be done about this? Well, I wanted to start, obviously, with the Thrift Savings Plan, which is the plan that invest federal money. And here's the absurdity of it. This Thrift Savings plan, which is the federal 401K for federal employees, including, by the way, my staff, members of Congress, but also members of the military, are investing in Chinese companies linked to the Chinese military. So theoretically, you could have an American sailor on a ship who's a retirement. is being invested in a Chinese military-linked company who's designing anti-ship missiles to kill him or her.

That's the absurdity of it. So we held up, there was these appointments with the Thurft Savings Board, and we actually put a hold on those nominations until we got a letter from them saying that this is an issue that they would take care of. They have fought us for three years on this. Like, you would think that we were trying to disband the Thurth Savings Plan. that these people have fought us left and right on that board to not be prohibited from doing business with companies that are linked to the Chinese military. Axios just reported a few minutes ago that President Biden in an Oval Office meeting last week with key members of his cabinet indicated he's leaning towards removing some products from the Trump administration's China terrorist list. I mean, it's obvious why he's doing this. He thinks that this is probably going to ease inflation.

Inflation is going to hurt Democrats in the midterms. But do you, are you concerned with Biden's policies towards China? Do you think that he is helping empower China even more and giving them more leverage where we should continue to be chipping away at it? Yeah. Yeah. So to begin with, the tariffs have absolutely nothing to do with inflation. Nothing. There's two things that they're a problem here.

The first is they pumped a bunch of money into this economy. We have to remember that Biden and his people were saying inflation was not a big deal. Like, don't worry about it. It's temporary. It's a blip on the screen. It's going to go away. They were saying that. They said that for over a year.

So when the people in charge have that attitude, then, you know, you wind up with the situation we have right now. The inflation is being driven by a bunch of money pumped into the economy and supply chain disruptions that were caused by, A, the Chinese factories weren't producing. That's going to happen again. I mean, Shanghai was shut down for a month. Beijing may get shut down now. Of course, that's a byproduct of our over-dependence on China.

And then the other has been with industries in America that were stolen or never restarted as a result of all this. And then just key components, embedded, but the number one driver of inflation right now is fuel prices. Because fuel prices are embedded in the cost of everything. When you go to a grocery store and you buy five pounds of ground beef or a pound of ground beef or whatever you buy, that got there on a truck. That truck uses diesel fuel. The more expensive that diesel fuel, the more they're charging that supermarket for that delivery. The more they charge them for that delivery, the more they're going to charge you when you buy the ground beef.

That's a fact. And that's happening in product after product after product. And the reason, how we solve the fuel issue, the cost of gasoline and diesel in this country, the answer is not complicated. We have to have more of it. The more of it there is, the lower the price will be. We in America have the ability to produce at least a million barrels of all a day more than what we're producing now. But Joe Biden can't do that because if he does that, he has to go to war with the radical leftist elements in his own party. So their ideology is out of touch with reality, and it's keeping them from solving that problem.

keeping them from solving the border. It's also keeping them from solving the crime wave. Most people who listen to this podcast are young women. And there's this very popular Instagram account that leans to the left who is telling her followers that the reason for the high gas prices is just high demand. Americans are driving too much. They are going on vacation this summer. And that is why the gas prices are so high. That's not really true, is it? That's that's kind of misleading. Well, first of all, we are producing a million barrels of oil a day less than we were in 2019. So that's number one. Number two is, are Americans driving more than they were in April of 2020?

Yeah, because everything was shut down. Are we driving more than we were in April of 29 or July of 2020? No, we're not. 2019. I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, who knows how much we'll be driving in 20209. But the point is that we're not.

So that's just not true. Demand is up compared to in the middle of COVID when everything was close. it's certainly back to sort of historical numbers. And the notion, but look, embedded in that, I don't know which Instagram account that is, but embedded in that is, I'm glad she's writing that because let's not be misled here. The people on the left have been arguing for a long time

that the way to get us away from fossil fuels, natural gas, gasoline, petroleum products, is to make it so expensive as people would stop using it. That has always been their plan. Make it more expensive to use that than to use renewables, make it more expensive to gas, a gasoline powered car than an electric car. That's for their goal. And this is helping them along the road. So they're willing to lose this

election if it means that down the road with high gas prices, people will be willing to drive. They want everybody on buses, mass transit, and electric cars. That's what they want. And in some places, that's just not feasible. It's not possible. It's not going to happen. But that's what they want. So they like these high prices. If you're from that radical view, others are just apologists who are trying to cover for Biden. And so what she's really saying, when she writes that is it's your fault. It's your fault that you want to take your family on vacation this summer. You're the reason why there's high gas prices. That's silly. So is there an end in sight? I mean, how does this change? This is something that is affecting people's day-to-day life and it affects

their ability to function as a family, not just go on vacation, but really just live. So, I mean, what does this look like in the next year or so? Well, at some point, you would hope that sanity would prevail and common sense would prevail. But before we get there, I think we're going to have to hit Brock Bonham in our politics, and that hasn't happened yet. And here's what I mean. I think we could very well see here very soon the rationing of diesel fuel. There's already a shortage of diesel fuel. There's now talk about having to ration the availability of diesel fuel, which will not only add to the cost, but it will actually lead the supply chain disruptions of all sorts and kinds. I think you could see the rationing of jet fuel, which means it's going to be harder for people to travel. Both jet and

diesel fuel right now is at a critical shortage. I think you're going to see some rolling blackouts in some of the utilities in this country because their generation portfolio, how they generate energy, move too quickly to renewables and they don't have enough of a mix of historic coal or natural gas or they can't get enough natural gas or whatever it might be. And so in these peak places where you see this peak energy consumption, you're going to have some of these potential disruptions as well. And I think that's the point at which people are really going to break. I think they're going to take it out on them in the elections.

But ultimately, I think we're going to have policy leaders, have. some level of sanity in here and say, look, guys, when times get like this, we have got to produce more oil and we can't let ideology get in the way of common sense, which is what's happening on the left right now. There's a gimmick that is being pushed by at least two senators, Senator Duckworth and Senator Warren. And I'm calling it a gimmick because actually Obama's former economic advisor also called it a gimmick.

And that is these anti-price gouging bills for the oil companies. Can you just talk about why those kinds of bills are not? not actually effective in bringing the price of gas down? Well, a couple of things. Number one, a substantial percentage of what you pay at the pump. People don't realize it. The smallest piece goes to the gas station. A large chunk of it goes to local and state taxes.

So whatever the taxes are, and that's why you see different gas prices and different parts of the country. And then there's the oil companies. Are the oil companies, for lack of a better term, greedy, that they want to make profits? Yeah, they always have. That's the way they've always been. But ultimately, they don't necessarily control the price because the price is set by production. Were they any less greedy two years ago or three years ago when the gas of price was 50%

what it is today? They've always wanted to make money. The fact of the matter is there are people are traveling and using gasoline around the world as much as they did pre-pandemic and there's not as much of it. And as a result, the price went up. And there's not as much of it because the OPEC countries are saying, why would we increase production at this point? We're recouping all our losses. And in America is off the market. They're controlled by green radicals. And so what you have is this very weird, strange, absurd situation where you have Joe Biden about to get on an airplane and travel to the Middle East to beg the Saudis to produce more oil, hopes to have a deal with Iran, so they'll produce more oil. That won't make a difference, by the way. The market's already priced in an Iran deal, the

expectation of an Iran deal, trying to cut a deal with Venezuela for more oil, which also won't make a difference because they can't produce more oil because communism has destroyed their productive capacity and they give 80% of it to China anyway as a payment for the money they owe them. So, you know, it's a weird situation that we have in place here. So I think it is a gimmick. I don't think it works. It won't make a difference. At the end of the day, these prices are set by global market. It's very simple. If somebody was able, if in fact I was charging too much for oil, my company, some other company would say, hey, I can steal some other business. If I just lower the price by a little bit, I can undercut you. And I can take away your business. And I can take away your

business. My oil is cheaper than your oil. That's what would be happening. That's not what's happening. And the reason why it's not happening is this is a supply and demand issue. The supply is up to historic number. The demand is up to historic numbers. The supply has been restricted and one of the world's leading oil producers, the United States refuses to produce more oil because we have an administration that, for example, going to banks and saying don't lend money for new oil exploration. Don't do business with oil companies or natural gas companies. Yeah, green energy is such a racket, not only because we are asking these other countries to pump more oil. So obviously we're not against supplying more,

but also because it requires fossil fuels to make the electric cars that they say are going to solve this problem. There's one more thing I want to ask you about that a lot of women are concerned with, particularly women who listen to this podcast because they're young moms. And that is the baby formula crisis. And so kind of similar to the anti-price gouging bills that were seeing in the Senate, the bills that passed in the House really didn't address the problem. They gave more money to the FDA rather than holding the FDA accountable.

And so what do you think the solution is to the baby formula shortage? Well, and we asked the president to do it a week before he did, which is to invoke the Defense Production Act, which is to actually allow the government to get involved in mandating the creation of this and basically to take charge of the productive capacity in a short-term emergency. The other is to allow the importation of a formula from other parts of the world, which we've tightly restricted, but in this case should be allowing, unfortunately, because of that shortage of this couple plants that shut down as a result of a safety situation back in December or November or last year. So common sense would tell you, okay, these guys have 50% of the market because there's really only two major formula producers in America. One of them is closed. They're not producing.

We're going to have a shortage. Like when you take the largest company in America, I'm not allowing to produce a certain type of formula for a month, for two months, for three months. Eventually, when the inventory is used up, you're going to have a shortage. That will common sense. Nobody can, to this day, no one in the Biden administration can tell you who was in charge of addressing that? Who was in charge of identifying? Guys, we have a problem here. And we're not producing formula.

And in three months, we're going to have a critical shortage. And I can tell you, when my first child was born, my oldest daughter now, she had a particular food allergy. And so she had to have a very specific formula that we needed to find. I'll never forget it was not easy to find as it is, but we were able to do that. And I can't imagine and what people are going through now. I think 33 states have critical shortages where in some counties in those states, the availability of it is zero. And so people are hunting, traveling long distances with very expensive gas to try to find baby formula.

And you hear stories of people coming up to you saying, you know, I have to, travel to, you know, they live in Miami. I have to go all the way to Martin County to find a store that has any of this formula, but I can't afford the gas. And so it's a terrible situation that needs to be corrected. And it really has to do with incompetence in this case. And as you said, total lack of accountability on the part of the FDA, but writ large the Biden administration. So is it going to change? Like, do you see a light at the end of the tunnel for this? I do only in the sense that this factory is back up and running and eventually that productive the capacity will catch up, but there's still a lag time, right?

Just because they produce formula this morning, by the time that gets to the store shelves, there's weeks in between. And I would also say that like anything else that's being transported in America, if the price of diesel climbs, that price of that formula, when it gets, they're still going to be high. So we can't protect it from inflation in that way by producing it, but we can certainly deal with the availability part of it. But in the interim, this is something that ever should have happened. In the United States of America, the most advanced economy in the world,

we should never have a baby formula shortage. That just should never happen. Right. And Americans are doing what they always do in the same way that they help small businesses who are shut down by Democrats' policies and the lockdowns. They've created formula exchanges. Women are donating either formula or breast milk. And so Americans are always on the hook making up for the incompetence of a lot of the people in charge who are continually failing us for whatever reason. One thing that you have, possibly faced a little bit of criticism for is voting yes on the $40 billion to Ukraine. I think a lot of people are looking at all the issues that we are facing today here at home and they're like, why are we sending this much money over to Ukraine? Not that they don't care about what's happening there, but, you know, for some people, it may seem like a misalignment of priorities. So what would your response be to that? Yeah, it's a valid question.

I have people, my own family, that ask me about it. So here's the two things I would say. Number one is we gave Ukraine a bunch of our own equipment, right? Like when you say you're going to send them ammunition or missiles to shoot down things, these things come from us. They're from our stockpiles. So now they have it. So now we need it.

So most of that money, substantial percentage of that money, was simply to buy stuff we gave them. So we have it for ourselves. We have to replace it. So that costs money. Could it have been a smaller package? Sure. But about over close to half of that was simply us buying new equipment that we had donated or given to them. The second piece I would make is the fall of.

And this is broader and it requires kind of to view the world larger in a larger context. China's watching what's happening in Europe very closely. And China, as you know, has intent on taking back Taiwan, either voluntarily in the Taiwanese case or by force. And one of the things they're looking at is let's see how the United States and the West reacts in Ukraine. Because if they're not willing to do much or they're only willing to do lip service on Ukraine, then they're certainly not going to get involved in a Taiwan situation. And the day that China takes Taiwan and we do nothing about it, that will be the moment in human history in which the world will conclude that China has surpassed the United States and is now the world's most powerful country. And so one of the things that could encourage China to do that earlier than they planned is that they come to believe that no matter what happens with Taiwan, we may talk tough, but we're not going to do anything about it, especially if they decide that if we didn't do anything about Ukraine, we're not going to do anything about China.

So this messaging matters, just as I'm convinced that the disastrous pull out of Afghanistan. And I thought that war needed to end. But the way we did it, encourage Putin to do what he's done in Ukraine. Because he says, if these guys don't even know how to get out of a war, how are they possibly going to do anything to stop me from taking a country that I want to take. So I do think we have to view it through that lens as well. That said, I said it at the time and I'll say it to you again now. We can't be writing, you know, $40 billion checks every three months. I think we've done a lot to help Ukraine. I want us to continue to be helpful to them. But it certainly can't be an open-ended forever because we've got some issues you've got to confront here, including our national debt. One issue or set of issues that a lot of Americans wish the GOP would focus more on is the culture war, specifically as it involves our children. And you tweeted kind of a picture of this, what I thought was a horrifying, quote unquote, family friendly drag queen brunch that apparently happened in Texas.

You tweeted most people realize drag shows for little kids is crazy, but many won't say anything publicly because they know for most people speaking up comes with a heavy price. of course, I've found this to be true as well, including for a lot of Republican politicians. Why do you think it is that Democrats, they are always willing and ready to be on the front lines of the culture war? They see it as more of a moral and even philosophical and theological war than Republicans do. It seems to me like Republicans just kind of don't want to talk about these things. They're afraid of the backlash. They're afraid of the progressive lobby, whatever it is. Why do you think that is?

And do you think that can change if Republicans take the majority this fall? So what I'm about to use as an example, an analogy here could apply to any industry. I'm just going to pick one. Let's say you wanted to have a career in finance, right? So you went to one of these colleges. You spent a lot of money to go to this college. You have a great credential. To begin with, while you're in that college, there's a very clear risk-reward system in place.

So as an example, if you go out and you put the right stickers on your laptop, you know, with all whatever the social cause of the month is, and you join the right clubs, and you tweet and say the right things, and you have your pronouns on your social media page, there's rewards for that. You get rewarded for that. You get promoted.

You get, you know, all kinds of positive feedback for doing that. If you say nothing, you may not get punished, but you certainly won't be rewarded. And if you speak out against those things, if you have stickers on your laptop, for example, attending one of these elite colleges that has a, you know, Trump 2024, or Trump 2020 bumper sticker or sticker on it, you're going to be punished.

You're going to be called a white supremacist, the hater, whatever it might be. Okay, that's just in college. Now you graduate and you go on to the real world and you have to send applications and go interview with people. If your resume talks about your activism on these issues, you use the right phraseology, because these people have invented a brand new language, right? It's not English. It's this brand new language with key phrases about inclusivity, diversity, equity, you know, all these words that they throw out there.

what's the other intersectionality, you turn all these words, you use the right words and how you describe what you've done and studied, you have your pronouns listed on your resume and so forth, you're rewarded for that. You're rewarded with all kinds of benefits, promotions, getting hired, jobs, people saying nice things about your, people empower. If you don't have that on there, you're at a disadvantage, and if you have the opposite on there, right? If you actually have a history, they can go through your social media account and they find out, oh my gosh, person was involved in the Federalist Society, or this person was involved in the college Republicans, there's a punishment attached to it. And that's true in profession after profession and field after

field. Now, for a lot of Americans, you have a business or you're in your work somewhere, you just don't need the hassle. You don't need the hassle, so you just try to avoid it. And I know a lot of people that have gone through that. You know, they try to avoid it. If you come for their kids, that's a different story, then they'll react. But for a lot of people, they've decided, look, I know the cost-benefit analysis. I either A, have to cave in. in and go along with this stuff just because that's the price of getting ahead. Or I sort of have to stay quiet and bite my tongue and pretend that I agree without actually going too far because otherwise I'm going to pay a price for it.

And that's what's happening. So look, I don't care where you go to a lot of Democrats and you ask them, do you think it's normal? Do you think it's okay for six-year-old kids to be taken and have these events hosted where drag queens are reading stories to them where men dressed up as women are reading stories to them? I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't, you know, take them there. I wouldn't do it. And we certainly shouldn't be using government money like we were about to in an Air Force space in Germany before

we wrote a letter about it to be doing that kind of stuff. But there's a lot of people in positions of power who do think this is a healthy activity and I'll punish anyone who speaks out against it as being a transphobe or homophobic or whatever terminology they want to come up with. Yeah, I think a lot of Republicans just seem really reticent to even talk about these culture war issues. I guess for the reasons that you listed. But that really sucks. I mean, that sucks for the rest of us. People shouldn't be, you know, looking to commentators, people like me to be fighting on the front lines. We really should be able to kind of expect our representatives to be on the front lines of these issues. I mean, we've got Republican governors, Republican legislatures and states

across the country who are unwilling to, for example, protect women's sports or to protect children from a lot of this predation because it's just too toxic for them or they're just too scared to touch that. Democrats don't seem too scared to touch any issue. And it's for the reasons that you listed. All the institutions are dominated by leftism. There are rewards for that. There are penalties for being on the other side. But it does seem like there is kind of newfound courage from some governors like Ron DeSantis and saying, okay, I'm going to use all of the tools constitutionally available to me to push back against these entities that are trying to subvert the will of the majority of Floridians, like in the whole Disney privilege case when that was revoked

because they spoke out against the, against the law. So I'm wondering, what is your take on that? What's your take on Governor DeSantis's strategy and kind of pushing this culture war politically? Well, and I think those issues in many ways have come to them, right? He's not out there provoking these things. These things are happening and he's reacting to them and appropriately. So here's what I would say, if you're a Democrat, of course you're not in fear of doing these things, at least except for the day, you know, except for election day when people, the common sense actually punish you for it. But every other day, if you're involved in the stuff, virtually every major media outlet in America is going to support you. I mean, and that's extended to sports

coverage now. I mean, there's really no part of entertainment, media, whatever, for the most part, with the exception of Fox News, some online outlets. But basically, everyone's going to support you. You're not going to get taken down from Twitter or Facebook if you're in favor of these things. And in fact, you might even be promoted and by some of their algorithms if you do some of the stuff. So all the rewards are there for them to do it. If you're a Republican and you speak out against this, you're going to be labeled as a homophob, as a hater, as transphobe, as all these sorts of things. Now, if you have a platform or you have a megaphone like a governor does at a state,

and to some extent some of us in national government, you can defend yourself. And the whole lie about don't say gay, that law has nothing to do. That is a complete and total lie. You want to talk about disinformation. That should have been labeled as disinformation. It was a flat out blatant lie. Now, fortunately, the governor of Florida has the megaphone and the courage to expose it for the lie that it is. But if you're some obscure state legislator that no one knows and you just get labeled this way, you know, by everybody who covers you, you're really defenseless in terms of how you can protect yourself.

And yet, you know, many members of the state legislature stepped forward and did that. So I think it really has to do a lot with that. The price you pay, the controversy that surrounds it. Some people either don't feel like they have the bandwidth or frankly don't want to deal with the hassle of that. But I think that's changing. I really do. And I think the reason why it's changing is because there's a lot of people out there that agree with you. And I think the growing realization that I've seen among Republicans that the bottom line is this. If most Americans believed a third of when mainstream corporate media rights or says about us, there wouldn't be an elected Republican in the country. I think that they just simply don't have the influence or the credibility they did even a decade ago.

And that's their own fault for lying and for putting things out there that are distorted. And that's exactly right. And I think that's what Republicans, even the obscure Republican legislator needs to realize is that the people that are backing you do not care if you're called a homophode. They don't care if you're called a transphope. And so I think what more Republicans need to do is realize that we want more politicians to stand up and say, I don't care. I don't care what you call me. I know that's easier said than done, but if you've got obscure individuals doing that willing to say, you know what, I'm not going to sell this cake. I'm not going to sell this flower arrangement because it's against my personal beliefs, then certainly people with some kind of bully pulpit, even if it's small, should have the courage to be able to do that. And I think you're right. I think that absolutely is changing. And I hope and pray that's true.

If Republicans do gain a majority in Congress this fall, what are some priorities for you? you guys. Well, I think as a senator, I think the number one priority that I would say, and that's not the number one priority overall for the party and for the movement is that our job is to confirm people. And we've got some of the wildest, most left-wing people being nominated by this administration to position after position. We have a nominee now of the FCC that's openly, you know, called Fox News as an example, a state-sponsored media. And if it was up to her, she would shut it down. and it's just going to be one of the commissioners, the tie-breaking boat on the FCC. So just being able to stop bad nations is a really big deal.

Obviously, we're not a defensive movement. There's things I want us to be about. And this is my personal view. I'm not sure it's shared by everybody. But I really think the Republican Party needs to be a party that represents working-class common sense values in American government. And what I mean by that is the following. I always explain this very carefully.

I believe in capitalism and free enterprise 100%. I do. I think socialism is destructive and it's evil. I'm not for socialism. I'm not for government control of means of production. I do know, however, that we have a market that serves people, not people to serve the market. And the fundamental question we have to ask ourselves is, what do we do when the market outcome is not in our national interest? As an example, the market outcome tells us, let's buy more stuff from China because they do it cheaper. But it's not really a market outcome. It's a manipulated, distorted outcome because they're

subsidizing their industries, they're cheating, they're stealing, they're banning our industries from developing. It is not in our national interest to depend on China for medicine like we do, for rare earth minerals, like we do. In those instances, we have to have an answer for that. And that's the first thing I would tell you that we have to get back to. The second is there are things we have to be able to make in America. There just are. There's a reason why we have, we wouldn't have an airplane industry of the Defense Department didn't require airplanes to be made in America. We wouldn't have a shipbuilding industry. They didn't require. And The reason why we have that in place, because we don't ever want to have to buy our airplanes from a foreign country because they could cut us off.

The third, I think we have to understand is there are two things we're for. Economic growth, but we also have to have dignified work. They have to go hand in hand. We can have the fastest growing economy in the world, and that's a good thing. But if it's not creating good paying jobs that allow people to do some very basic things, get married, start a family, own a home, retire with dignity, leave your kids better off than yourself. If your economy is not producing jobs that allow people to do that, then our culture, our society is going to crumble. It won't be able to coexist. You can't be.

The fact that we're generating economic growth alone won't help you. That growth doesn't lead to the production of good paying jobs for Americans. And there's been a disconnect over the last 20 years, I would say even in the center right between economic growth and the production and the creation of good, solid, dignified work for Americans. It hasn't always worked out that way. Sometimes we have big economic growth and we have great corporate returns on a quarterly basis. But it's not because they created good jobs for Americans. It's because they were able to take those jobs somewhere else and produce the same thing at a cheaper price. There comes a point, right, where that is not good for America.

And that's not good for our country and it's going to lead to real problems. So these are the kinds of things that I think we have to be for. And how do we reorient in the 21st century, our economic policies, to the realization that China is not going to become like us now that they're rich. they're going to continue to cheat and steal, and we have to protect ourselves from it, or we're going to wind up in a very bad place here before the end of this decade. And I think associated with that, of course,

there's a lot of other important issues that we have to deal with, you know, public safety and security. You know, as a party, I would say to you that we've learned the lessons that we've forgotten from the 90s. The way to bring down crime is to arrest criminals and put them in jail for a long time.

The more criminals are on the street, the more crime you're going to have. When you refuse to prosecute criminals, when you decide to release them early from jail, when some cases you won't even arrest them, you're going to have more crime. And I think associated with that is for the first time in American history, we don't have effective control of our borders. We don't have effective control. Our border today is as controlled as much by Mexican drug cartels as they are by American officials. And that can't continue.

They are flooding our country with fentanyl. We are six, seven thousand people illegally a day. We have caravans of 15,000 people headed here. Because when you tell people don't come, But if you do, we're going to let you stay. They're going to come. And that's what's happening. Yep, absolutely. So basically, it's putting American interest first by prioritizing American production and prioritizing American protection. And I'm so glad to hear you say that about American production and manufacturing. I think you're absolutely right. I'm so glad that you'll be spearheading that and that you are spearheaded not already. We only have a few seconds left. It's Father's Day this weekend. Can you just tell us the best part, your favorite part about being a dad? I think the best part about being a dad for me is I understand it's the most influential job I'll ever have. And just to see sort of your kids develop and take off their own interests, their own success. I didn't really understand that 10 years ago if you had asked me, but now that I have two kids that are adults, one that's a year away from being an adult, one that's just starting

high school, you suddenly start to see, you know, them developing in their interests and what they want to do. And it just, it's rewarding to have been able to influence that and provide them those opportunities. And you really do end up living through your kids. And I tell You would ask me what's changed the most in my life in the last 10 years. It's the realization that at the end of my life, none of these other things I've done or will do will matter nearly as much as the time I spent with my family and with my children. And I remember my own dad,

who wasn't a big talker, he wasn't the kind that would sit you down and give you a bunch of lectures. I learned from his example. He went to work every day, and he came home every day on time to his family. And he did that throughout my entire life. And just the example that he set is the one I hope to set for my children. and I hope my children will step for theirs.

Amen. Well, thank you so much, Senator. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today. Thank you so much for having me on. All right, guys. Hope you enjoyed that episode. As always, if you love this podcast, please leave a five-star review wherever you listen.

I'm super excited for tomorrow's interview with Julie Kelly. She is a senior writer at the American Greatness Magazine, and she has been probably the number one report. about January 6th and the treatment of the people who are imprisoned because of their involvement with January 6th and because there is a hearing going on in Congress this week about January 6th and how Trump was involved in all of it. I wanted to talk to her. She's a very unique perspective. She has been beating this drum for a long time, really, since January 6th, 2021. And so she's going to offer us a lot of insight into what is really going on and why we should

all care. So I'm looking forward to you hearing about that. And then Thursday will be the conversation with my dad. You guys sent me a lot of questions for him and not just fatherhood questions, but also trying to break down the political issues that we are facing in a way that makes sense to all of us. He is really good at doing that. And so I know that you're going to absolutely love that interview on Thursday. Reminder also, I am on vacation next week. I think we will have two new episodes come out. And so make sure that you tune in for those, but it'll be a little bit different of a week because I will be on a break as well, the rest of my team. So I will see you guys back here tomorrow with Julie Kelly.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

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