The Benny Show - Trump Shuts DOWN The Border LIVE Right Now | Kristi Noem Confirmation Hearing For DHS, Deport, with Guest Hogan Gidley

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

Nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, testifies at her confirmation hearing, Trump to choose the leader of his personal detail Sean Curran for Secret Service Director and Hogan Gidley joins the show. Check Out Our Partners: American Financing: Save with https://www.americanfinancing.net/benny NMLS: 182334, http://www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org Patriot Mobile: Go to https://www.PatriotMobile.com/Benny and get A FREE MONTH Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today is Friday, January 17th, 2025. Welcome to Inauguration Weekend! Are you ready? It's free-for-all Friday! Kristi Noem for DHS Secretary, arguably the most decrepit and wicked and weaponized position in the Biden regime. Alejandro Mayorkas should face criminal charges in a selling Guantanamo Bay for the rest of his life for what he's done there, not just with the border, of course, which is egregious enough, but also with the Secret Service, which answers to DHS. So this is a very important hearing today. Kristi Noem hearing just kicked off seconds ago, but the Democrat, like the Democrat chair is like,

blah, blah, blah, is like giving his like long speech right now. So anyway, ladies and gentlemen, we're not going to miss a second of it. Just know that that's what's happening. Trump chose the leader of the Secret Service just in time for this hearing. Sean Curran, who is the man who stood right behind Trump and was that sort of large, looming figure, actually somebody tall enough, strong enough, big enough to actually protect Donald Trump in the famous assassination photo. He is locked in. As the Secret Service Director, my name is Benny Johnson, and this is The Benny Show.

We're going to talk so much today about what's at stake heading into this weekend. And I want to begin by just touching ever so slightly on the driving core of this program, which is going to be having our sights set on victory. There have been malign, dark, I think potentially foreign, somewhat maybe not human forces that have been tearing and ripping at the America First movement. From the second we won, there has been, I don't even want to name it, okay? I don't even want to freaking Beetlejuice this thing, but there's been drama and backbiting and backstabbing

and so much infighting. And I am through with it. Be very, very wary of people that are trying to tear down their own side. Yeah, we gave a little chin music to John Thune. I think that's good. Toughens it up a bit. And now we're uniting with John Thune. He won. Let's go. Let's win. Okay. It's good. It's good. Okay. That's a

refining fire. I'm talking about the nanny, bitchy little nonsense stuff with people attacking each other, going after each other. They want Trump to enter office broken and with an atomized base. And that is not the way that we should be entering office. We should be entering office victorious. Blessed are the peacemakers. We're going to be making peace on this program.

We want to make sure that Trump enters office as strong as possible, ladies and gentlemen. And so we are going to be uniting. And lo and behold, here we go. John Thune, live right now, is introducing Kristi Noem. We're going to go to it to prove exactly that we are water under the bridge. We are uniting. Here we go. The first introduction for Kristi Noem. She hasn't spoken at all yet. We just got started here.

Senate Leader John Boone from South Dakota. A member from South Dakota, representing our state's interests there for eight years and now currently as South Dakota's governor. And I think she brings to this job a number of things that are going to be really essential. And one is obviously a skill set when it comes to managing hard problems. She led our state through the pandemic, managed what were extraordinary circumstances all across this country in a way that made South Dakota, frankly, a magnet for people from other states who were trying to flee or get away from some of the heavy-handed requirements that were imposed

in other states around the country are state open, state free, and that was largely due to her leadership. And I would say too, as we tackle what is an enormously complicated and hard issue, which is our southern border, it's going to require a skill set, which I believe she possesses. It's going to require a tremendous amount of persistence and determination, which I think she has, an enormous amount of energy, which she has in abundance. And frankly, what I would say is just absolute toughness. It's going to take some tough and hard leadership to get things back in order. And I want to refer to something she said in her state of the state address earlier this week to South Dakotans, and that is that over the past four years, we've seen a complete disregard for the security of our borders and the safety of the American people to say nothing for the rule of law. Chaos at our southern border and the Biden administration has left our country vulnerable to a whole host of security concerns from terrorist entries to cross-border criminal activity like drug trafficking. I think it's well documented, and I think it's high time that it gets fixed. And we have somebody nominated by the president

that I believe has the capabilities, the qualities, the experience, and again, frankly, the determination and toughness to solve what is a very, very tough issue and one which is desperately in need of solutions. So I'm pleased to be able to be here today to introduce our great governor and to thank you for your consideration. I look forward to this committee acting on her nomination, and I look forward to voting for her on the floor of the United States Senate to be the next Secretary of the Department of the United States Senate to be the next Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Kramer.

Thank you, Chairman Paul, Ranking Member Peters, colleagues. Once again, I find myself in full agreement with the Majority Leader. It's a good place to be in our business. So this is a very special opportunity for me. And the first thing I want to do is thank nearly all of you. I got into almost every one of your offices with Christy as her very amateurish sitting Senator Sherpa. And the blessing for me was not only to be with my good friend and former colleague, but to learn a lot about this committee that I'm not on, and to get an inside view, and Gary, especially learning how we can work together at the northern border, and how similar, although very different, Michigan and North Dakota are. So thank you for

your hospitality. You were all very kind to Christy and to me. But Christy is a former colleague. You know, when you're the only member of a body of 435 from an entire state, it's really important to have friends. So together, Christie and I were two, two out of 435. And if we could get Montana, Wyoming and Alaska, there'd be five of us that could take on the fight. But I know this. I remember our very first year, my first year, it was not hers, my first year in the House, the unthinkable happened and the House of Representatives failed to pass a farm bill. And all I can tell you is the least secure homeland person in America was the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader the next day when Christy and I doubled up and eventually we got a farm bill done.

I say that because we are living at a time. And Senator Peters, you used the words strong, stable, and principled. I can't think of three better words to describe Christie Noem than those three words. I would add this. I'm not surprised that President Trump turned to Governor Noem. Securing the homeland is the number one priority, our number one priority, our number one constitutional priority as a Congress. And it is for sure the number one priority of the voters in the last election. And it is the number one priority for President Donald Trump.

So naturally he would say, hmm, who is the toughest, smartest, most capable protector that I know? I think I'd like to find a ranch woman mom,, who knows how to protect her own. And when you grow up on a ranch in the prairies or the West, nobody else is going to look out for your critters. No one else is protecting your family. You do it. And she brings this skill set, as Senator Thune said, as a leader, as a legislator, as a member of Congress, as a governor, a very important, by the way, when I'd get into the room with other governors, Senator Hassan, I might as well have just left because I was now part of the club that I, where I don't belong. But anyway, it was very, very rich because there's an, there's an alliance

there that's really, really important. And so for me, it's just a really special opportunity to be able to be here with her and to have had this time in your offices introducing her to you. But I want to wrap up with this because last night I received a very touching letter, unsolicited by either Christy or me, from the tribal chairwoman from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe which straddles North Dakota and South Dakota they don't really care who wins the South Dakota State North Dakota State football game but they do care about about the reservation and chairwoman Al Kier sent me this letter Standing Rock is the home of Sitting Bull, in case you were wondering about the credentials of their ability to protect the homeland.

I'll just read a few words. On multiple occasions, Governor Noem has invited the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to her table at the South Dakota State Capitol to enter into meaningful discussions. That's what I witnessed when she came to your offices. And Janet writes, it is a great excitement and enthusiasm that our North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum will be at the helm of the Department of Interior and my hopes remain high that you will feel the same about Governor Kristi Noem at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security. These two governors understand the needs in Indian country

and what words like tribal sovereignty, jurisdiction and consultation mean to the indigenous people. Speaks volumes to her leadership and to her character. It's my honor to support her and turn it over to her. Thank you for those great introductions. The committee has also received several statements in support of Governor Noem's nomination, including a letter from 22 fellow governors, the International Association of Firefighters, and six other organizations. Without objection, these letters of support will be made part of the hearing record.

And I know our senator's going to have to go, but thank you for coming and doing those introductions. It's the practice of this committee to swear in witnesses. Governor known. Please stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear that the testimony will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help your God. Governor Noam. You are now recognized for your opening statement. Well, thank you. And good morning, Chairman Paul ranking member Peters and

the distinguished members of this committee. I'm honored to appear before all of you today as the nominee for the secretary of Homeland Security. I'm honored to appear before all of you today as the nominee for the Secretary of Homeland Security. I want to thank President-elect Donald J. Trump for his confidence in my leadership and the people of South Dakota for their fantastic support throughout my time in public service. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Senator Kramer. He has been an invaluable resource to me throughout this process and given me much wisdom as well as insight into the thoughts and the procedures of the Senate in this body. And I'd also like to express my gratitude to Senator Thune, the majority leader

of this esteemed body. He's been an advisor to me for many years as well as a friend, and I'm so grateful for the generous support of these two men and their willingness to be here this morning to speak on my behalf and to introduce me to this committee. Now, I'm a wife and a mother and a grandmother, a farmer, rancher, business person. I've served in our state legislature in Congress for eight years and also a governor. I've spent my entire life in rural America. I understand what it means to work hard every single day and to build a better future for your kids

and for all of our communities. I come before you today with a deep sense of responsibility and a humility as the nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, and also a commitment to the more than 330 Americans who we will work together to help serve and to keep safe and secure in their homes and in their communities. Now before I proceed, I want to introduce to you my husband, Brian, who's here with me today. He is my constant 24-7 reminder of our dedication to public service and that it's not a solo effort or done alone.

He has been a rock by my side and I appreciate all of his love over so many years. I'm grateful that he's here with me today. Now securing our homeland is a serious sacred trust that must be relentlessly pursued and can never be taken for granted. Being safe within our borders here in America is critical, and yet Americans feel less safe than they have felt in decades. For the first time in 30 years, more than 40 percent of Americans are afraid to walk alone at night within a mile of their homes. President-elect Trump is going to change that. I've seen firsthand the challenges and the opportunities facing our great nation. In the 20 years since the Department of Homeland Security was formed, the nature of the

threats to our homeland has grown and they've evolved. This department was created in response to the failures of the government that led to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. And that reality is not lost on me, especially in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks over New Year's. Now, I've led South Dakota for the last six years with a focus every day on making our state safer, stronger, and freer. I focused every day on making the best decisions, not just for right now, but for generations to come. I've overseen a state budget of over seven billion dollars and a state employee workforce of more than 13,000 including more than 7,000 that report directly to the governor. I've addressed

important issues like cyber security, human trafficking, drug interdiction and also natural disasters. The same challenges that are facing so many of you and the people that you represent back home. I've secured our state and supported the rule of law, and if confirmed as the eighth secretary, that is the same approach that I will take to leading the Department of Homeland Security. As we face the evolving threats of the 21st century, the mission and the success of DHS is more critical than ever. We must be vigilant and proactive and innovative to protect the homeland.

The challenges in front of us are extremely significant, and we must secure our borders against illegal trafficking and immigration. We must safeguard our critical infrastructure to make sure that we're protected against cyber attacks, respond to natural disasters, and also terrorism. I firmly believe that we can meet those challenges. Head on with resolve. Innovation, we can use collaboration with federal and with state partners. And Senators, I want your input. Border security must remain a top priority. As a nation, we have the right and the responsibility to secure our borders against those who would do us harm. And we must create a fair and a lawful immigration

system that is efficient and is effective and that reflects our values. President Trump was elected with a clear mandate. He needs to achieve this mission because two-thirds of Americans support his immigration and border policies, including the majority of Hispanic Americans. I was the first governor to send National Guard troops to our southern border when Texas asked for help and when they were being overwhelmed by an unprecedented border crisis. If confirmed as secretary, I'll ensure that our exceptional, extraordinary Border Patrol agents have all the tools and resources and support that they need to carry out their mission effectively.

The same is true of my commitment to the outstanding men and women of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They are responsible for apprehending, detaining, and deporting illegal immigrants. And getting criminal aliens off of our streets and out of the country will help American communities be safer again. The bravery and the dedication of the border patrol and ICE are unmatched, and I will restore dignity to their work.

The rising threat of cyber attacks also demands our utmost attention. And our critical infrastructure from energy grids to financial institutions, is under constant attack by foreign adversaries and criminal actors. As Secretary, I will prioritize a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach to cybersecurity. In fact, in the coming days,

we have to plan bigger and think faster and smarter. I fully acno in Washington D. C. Do no answers and therefore I w public partnerships. I'll edge state of the art tec our nation's digital lans a proven track record of

Dakota to back me up. I've helped make Dakota State University a global leader in cybersecurity education because we recognize the need to address this merging threat. And I will take a proactive approach if given the opportunity to serve as secretary. Now, President-elect Trump has been a tremendous friend to law enforcement over the years, and I will do the same in my role as secretary. As governor, I've worked closely with law enforcement to make South Dakota safer. I've overseen hundreds of state troopers in the South Dakota Highway Patrol, and on several occasions, I've convened groups of law enforcement from across our state to address policies that will make our people safer. In fact, while some in this country were attacking law enforcement and defunding them, we took the opposite approach in South Dakota. We recruited law enforcement

officers to move to South Dakota, a state that respects their service and their sacrifice. And we revamped our law enforcement training to provide the first ever state-led tribal-focused law enforcement training academy. I'm very proud of the work that we've done in cooperation with our tribes to help make their communities more safe. And we must remain vigilant against terrorism and against others who wish to do us harm to our country and to our great people. I'll ensure that our intelligence and our law enforcement agencies are working together hand in hand, that they're fully equipped to detect, prevent and respond to threats from radical ideologies and foreign adversaries. This requires resources, coordination and collaboration across all levels

of government. And once again, I will seek your wisdom and I will seek your input into the months ahead for the sake of the people that we both represent, we have to get this right. Now, I recognize that Homeland Security isn't just about prevention, but it's also about resilience. When disasters strike, as we know they will, the Department of Homeland Security must be ready to respond swiftly, efficiently, and effectively to protect the lives and the property of Americans. As Governor, I've worked with FEMA in response to a dozen natural disasters in South Dakota. These have included historic floods, tornadoes, blizzards, wildfires, a derecho, and even a global pandemic.

As Secretary, I will enhance our emergency preparedness and strengthen FEMA's capabilities, and we will ensure that no community is left behind and that life-saving services like electricity and water are quickly restored. As Secretary, I will oversee the Secret Service, an agency that is in serious need of reforms. We all saw the threats to President-elect Trump last year and the consequences of failure. Now, that should never happen again. And I've worked closely with my own gubernatorial protective detail, and I'm familiar with what works and what doesn't work. And I'll bring that experience towards strengthening the Secret Service once again.

I'm committed to working with this committee, with Congress, and with the dedicated men and women of the Department of Homeland Security to fulfill our mission. And together we can ensure that the United States remains a beacon of freedom, safety and security for generations to come. So thank you for the opportunity and the honor to appear before you today. Thank you for the meetings and the time that you took in your office to discuss the department and what we can do in the future to make the american homeland much more secure i look forward to your questions and i hope to earn your trust and hopefully also your vote as we embark on this critical work together with that mr chairman i yield back thank you governor ellen we will now proceed to uh questions each member will have seven minutes. We

will have a vote that will start at 10 10 a.m. But we're gonna continue the hearing and keep people in line as you come and go to vote. We'll keep the hearing moving. Um, I want to be clear from the outset that we will not tolerate any disruptions. The Capitol Police have been asked to escort anyone immediately from the room if they disrupt the hearing. Um, this is question, Governor Noem, that we ask of all nominees. Governor Noem, do you agree without reservation to comply with any request or summons to appear and testify before any duly constituted committee of Congress if you are confirmed? Yes, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to reserve the rest of my time for my questions and go to Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to reserve the rest of my time for my questions and go to Senator Peters.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Governor Noem, the DHS Secretary has many competing priorities, as you well know, and you outlined certainly in your opening comments, from our borders to wildfires to cyber attacks. But as you and I discussed at length, and I appreciate you bringing it up in your opening comments as well, we do have a northern border in addition to a southern border. It's absolutely essential that the DHS has the resources necessary at the northern border to carry out its mission, both between ports of entry and all along the border. In fact, we've seen an increase in unauthorized crossings in recent years at the northern border. So my question for you is, if confirmed, do you commit to ensuring, along with the southern border, that the northern border is sufficiently staffed to maintain its security and robust trade between the U.S. and its neighbors,

including at the Gordie Howe International Bridge in my home state of Michigan, have the resources they need to facilitate trade while keeping Americans safe. Yes, Senator Peters, you and I talked about this in your office and also with Senator Slotkin as well, how important it is to continue to remain focused on our northern border and all borders and ports of entry that the United States has. I think there's been some universal concern from some of the committee members that as we focus on the southern border and what we're seeing as far as the invasion there and the amount of people crossing that the northern border would lose focus. But that that will not happen. And we will ensure that our borders are secure and we're addressing all threats that may come in from any direction. And also with the with the bridge as well and staffing up on that, that as well.

And I've assured Senator Slotkin as well that our focus is there to make sure that it is staffed appropriately. Very good. And as we discussed, the department is diligently working to stand up the Northern Border Mission Center at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan, following the authorization and funding that I was able to secure in the last Congress. This center is critical to supporting the department's northern border security missions and addressing evolving threats. So quick question, if confirmed, do you commit to working with me to fully build out the northern border mission center? Yes, Senator, we will look forward and I look forward to working with you to

ensure that that that is a priority and that it's adequately resourced and working with Congress and senators to make sure that we have what we need to to make sure that that mission for that base is fully fulfilled. Great. Thank you. On New Year's, we witnessed two incidents that reminded us that terrorism and extremism remain serious threats to all Americans. Both DHS and the FBI have consistently said that the most persistent threat to the homeland is from U.S.-based individuals or small groups, radicalized

by a variety of ideologies from white supremacy to ISIS to al-Qaeda. We must certainly continue to focus on people who are radicalized here in the United States with the intent of terrorizing our communities. So my question for you, ma'am, is how do you plan to address this threat of U.S.-based terrorists? Senator, this is a grave concern for our country, as we all agree that the number-one threat to our homeland security is the southern border. In fact, since Joe Biden has been president,

we've seen 382 individuals that have come over that border that are on the terrorist watch list. Behind me, I have the governor of Louisiana with me, and he and his state and people in this country went through a horrific event on New Year's Day, one that we never want to see repeated again. But this governor behind me is concerned also about an upcoming event, which is the Super Bowl coming shortly, which we need to do all that we can to work together that he has the reassurance that the federal government, that the Department of Homeland Security is prepared to help him protect that event and to keep people safe while they are there. Those 382 terrorists or known terrorists that have come over our border, we don't know

necessarily where they are because of what has been happening under Joe Biden's policies. Now, President Trump obviously won the last election with a clear mandate, and that mandate is for the American people to secure that border. But also, we need to focus on domestic terrorism and homegrown terrorism, which you just referenced in your question. Homegrown terrorism is on the rise. We see more and more incidents of people that are U.S. citizens that have become radicalized, and knowing when people are leaving the country and coming back and changes to their behaviors and what their actions are is critically important. So the resources that the Department of Homeland Security has needs to be utilized

as far as identifying those threats and being proactive to prevent them, but also protecting civil rights and liberties in that process and making sure that the department is on mission to do what it was called to do, why it was created, and what authorities that Congress and the Senate has given them. My hope is that Governor Landry and his staff and his people and the people that attend the Super Bowl know that the Department of Homeland Security is their partner, is on watch to protect them and to keep that event safe. I hope all Americans know that leadership has consequences. I hope that we can get through

and get your support for this nomination and get confirmed quickly so that we can address the threats that we currently face and make sure we don't have any repeats of the day that we saw just starting this year on New Year's Day. In the last two years, we have seen increasingly aggressive and expansive cyber attacks against our federal agencies. Just last month, Chinese hackers infiltrated the Department of Treasury and stole potentially thousands of unclassified documents. So given these concerning trends by the PRC to hold our federal networks hostage, do you believe that federal agencies should be required to implement cybersecurity upgrades and maintain the highest cybersecurity standards to protect sensitive or classified data and U.S. citizen information as well? Well, Senator, the mission of CISA, which is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, the mission of it is to hunt and harden. It's to find those bad actors and help work with local and state infrastructure,

critical infrastructure entities so that they can help them be prepared for such cyber attacks and that they can make sure that they're hardening their systems to protect them in the future, recognizing the vulnerabilities that they have. This has gotten far off mission. They're using their resources in ways that was never intended. The misinformation and disinformation that they have stuck their toe into and meddled with should be refocused back onto what their job is. And that is to support critical infrastructure and to help our local and small businesses and critical infrastructure at the state level to have the resources and be prepared for those cyber attacks that they will face. You know, salt typhoon was a campaign of espionage by the PRC in China against our telecoms where large amount of data was stolen and taken and people's private information was taken as well. And we've also seen China and the PRC go after our critical infrastructure with the volt typhoon hack.

And that was extremely dangerous because there was no reason for them to do that, just to steal people's data and information. The reason for them to go after that was to control our critical infrastructure, for the ability to see if they could shut down a water plant, a utility company, and that was to cripple our country. So these threats are real. CISA needs to be much more effective, smaller, more nimble to really fulfill their mission, which is to hunt and to help harden our nation's critical infrastructure.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Scott. Man, those are light questions from the Democrats. Geez. Governor, congratulations on your nomination. Thank you. I think you're going to do a great job. Rick Scott, frickin' baller from Florida. Bring that expertise to the table. So I just went through the campaign to get reelected,

and it was after the Butler shooting. I'd ask people. I said, raise your hand if you think the acting director of the Secret Service is going to tell us what happened. Not one person. I said, what about Secretary Marcos? He's running HHS. What do you think? Or Homeland Security.

What do you think? I said, how about Christopher Wray? You know, head of the FBI? Not one person. Can you just talk about the importance of transparency and accountability in government and how you're going to bring that to the table? Yeah, Senator Scott, thank you for that question, because that's what I have found across the country as well. And I know it's certainly true in my home state of South Dakota is that people

don't trust the federal government. They don't trust our leadership and this current administration that's in the White House right now to tell them the truth. To tell them the truth about what the threats really are about our agencies and departments when there are failures addressing them and fixing it. The Secret Service is one of those perfect examples. They need leadership that understands why that Secret Service was created and what it needs to do. There's two elements really that the secret service is tasked with, and that is protective detail and then also investigations. Yet we see investigators within the secret service out there investigating antiquities and other things that are off mission when they should be focused on making sure we're addressing national security events with the protocols that are necessary and protecting the individuals that they're charged

with and getting that skill set and training that are necessary. That's been compromised by not having enough people there and being adequately staffed and resourced. But frankly, the leadership hasn't been honest about talking about it. We saw this with the drones over New Jersey as well, the federal government not answering the questions from the public. And when they finally got a straight answer out of President Trump, they felt reassured that somebody recognized that this was something they were questioning and that they deserved answers.

My goal and my mission is to build trust. We will undertake a large job and a large duty that we have to fulfill that the American people expect us to do by securing our border, to make sure that our nation is a nation with borders or we're no nation at all, and that we are making sure that those criminal actors that are perpetuating violence in our communities and in our cities and towns and states are removed from this country, that there's consequences for breaking the law in our country again. There has to be consequences because when Americans break the law, there's consequences. And why would we ever allow someone to come in from another country

and not allow them and not have consequences or allow them to continue to go forward and to commit rape and murders and break other laws that endanger our society? So we've had over 13,000 murders that are loose in this country that have come our society. So we've had over 13,000 murderers that are loose in this country that have come over that border. We've had almost 16,000 rapists and sexual assault perpetuators that are loose in this country right now. 425,000 plus people have criminal convictions that are here illegally in this country that our current administration is doing nothing to round them up and get them out of our country. We will be doing that immediately. And that will be the priority. And that is one of the reasons that today the American people have lost their trust.

President Trump will build it back and know that their federal government is accountable to them and is working to put America first again. Yes. Joe Biden completely opened our southern border and dismantled our entire immigration system. Go in. As a former governor, I know that when the federal government policies are broken and failing Americans, you see the impacts in your state, just like I did when I was a governor. And you take the steps necessary to protect the families in your state. I know you've done that. One thing you did is you talked about before you sent troops, our National Guard to the southern border. Can you talk more about how Biden's open border policies affected your state and communities and the role your state resources placed in helping secure the border?

You know, we certainly have seen the effects in South Dakota that many of your states did, and I would say every state has seen the effects of an open border and the policies that have been under the Biden administration. We saw increased crime, but we also saw increased drug activity. We saw cartel and their affiliates moving into our state to proliferate trafficking, and we saw people being victimized and a lack of accountability with the federal government. So when Texas was addressing the situation and asked other governors for help, we sent help. I know many of the other governors at the time were sending law enforcement,

but I made the decision that at that time that it was more appropriate to send the National Guard, that our National Guard could be activated under Title 32 and sent to assist another state from the invasion that was happening. And because the National Guard is trained for just such a mission. Because of this invasion that it is a war zone down there with what they are going to see, the threats that they would see,

and that they are trained specifically to interact with other agencies. The National Guard is used to falling in with other agencies and cooperating with them and could do that seamlessly. And their families and their communities are normalized to them being deployed. So we have in South Dakota deployed our National Guard to the southern border eight different times. Two of them were federal deployments that the Biden administration sent them down there. One was to send our Lakota helicopters, which were used for surveillance and the drug interdiction that was going on down there. But six other times I sent them under state activation to partner with Texas and other states in securing our southern border.

They did security operations. They also did building of the wall and partnered with Texas, recognizing the failures of the federal government. The failures of the federal government are significant and we've seen our families and communities devastated by those effects, by the drug epidemic, by the trafficking that's going on, the increased crime. And we recognize that just because the federal government wasn't doing their job, we could not fail our state. And I needed to protect the people of South Dakota. And the people of South Dakota

were overwhelmingly supportive of these deployments and very proud of our National Guard. When I was governor of Florida, there was a terrorist attack in Paris by Syrian refugees. So President Obama was present, and I said, I'd like to know if you're going to send refugees to my state that you give us some background on them. I assume you vetted them and tell us what's going on. You have to tell me, but you ought to tell our state law enforcement and our local law enforcement. They said, go jump in the lake. They're meaner than that, but they said, you have no rights as a governor, which made no sense. But over 70,000 people come here after Afghanistan on planes into this country, completely unvetted. They've never given our governors any information. So would you change that?

Yes. The communication between states and the federal government has been absolutely broken. And that's what I love about this committee is you do have governors sitting on this committee that have been in that role as a commander in chief and have the responsibility for being the CEOs of their state. It's a different perspective than serving. I served in Congress too, and both are extremely important, and they're just different in that responsibility that weighs on your shoulder. I often told folks that that is the thing that most times, if something was going to keep me up at night, it was the responsibility that I had being Commander-in-Chief, recognizing the decisions that I made. And I'm sure you had this feeling as well, Senator Scott, as governor, that impacted those families, those soldiers, and it impacted their communities when

we pulled them out and the importance of that. And when they were bringing refugees into the country, I as well communicated that to the federal government. They were bringing refugees, and I asked how they were vetted, how we were working with their home countries to find out who they really were, what their intentions were, and why they were coming to the United States and received no information from this administration, that that vetting process was being done, that we knew where they're going. In fact, they kept us in the dark and didn't communicate to us even what states and where those refugees were being placed. So that is something that we need to change

when we have programs that fall under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, there needs to be communication, especially with the governor so that we can coordinate to ensure that it's the right thing for that state. Thank you. Senator Hasso. Thank you, Mr. Chair and welcome Governor Noem.

Really appreciate you being here. Welcome to your family as well. Thank you. And families do share in this kind of public service, and we appreciate them very much. They're being incredibly nice to us. As we discussed at our meeting last month, as a former governor, I appreciate the important responsibilities that governors have to ensure the safety and security of their communities, including by managing public

safety and emerging in emergency agencies and i will uh say that in many ways i agree with some of the things that uh senator scott just said about improving communication between the department of homeland security and governors uh around uh who is being sent to states. It's a critical issue and something that I was frustrated by when I was governor. So I look forward to hearing more today about your priorities, if confirmed about how, if confirmed about how your experience as governor would help you run the Department of Homeland Security.

Let me just start by following up with a question that Senator Peters had also touched on. We have recently in New Hampshire seen a dramatic increase in unauthorized border crossings at the northern border. And when I was at the northern border recently, law enforcement told me about the need for more personnel and resources. We still don't have cell phone coverage, a lot of the stretch of our northern border. I've worked with Senator Kramer on bipartisan legislation to strengthen our northern border strategy because it's clear more support is needed. So, Governor, if you're confirmed, would you deploy additional full-time personnel and upgrade equipment along the northern border? You know, Senator, I enjoyed our meeting that we had

and you identifying the northern border issues that are going on, the lack of security and the lack of technologies that you really need to cover some of the landscapes that are there. Very different than the southern border, some just as equally challenging, but all need to be addressed. So I definitely will be working with you to ensure that our northern border is adequately resourced as well.

And we do have to have the resources in order to be successful. That's something I want to work with Congress, with the Senate and the House on to ensure that the resources are there to meet the challenges that we have. We have not fully utilized the technologies that are available that are necessary

to really secure this country and to compete with those bad actors which wish to infiltrate our country. And having the ability to utilize them will make us much more safe. So I'll work with you most definitely in ensuring the northern border is protected. Well, I appreciate that. And I just note, too, that at the same time, there's real concern in New Hampshire and all along the northern border that we strengthen the border and have the resources we need. We also have a really strong economic relationship with our partner, our friends to the north and a lot of family relationships. So I think it's important that we're smart in the deployment of technology. We don't want to impede that flow of economy and people that's lawful, but we do want to make sure that we have the resources we need.

I want to turn to the southern border now. At the southern border, we need significant technological investments to support law enforcement personnel in their efforts to catch fentanyl smugglers, to stop human traffickers and seize the cash and illegal guns that criminals traffic southward to the cartels. And we talked about this a little bit. There's bipartisan support for these investments, and I've worked with colleagues, including Senators Lankford and Cornyn, on legislation around these issues. Governor Noem, could you identify specific technological investments that you would make at the southern border, And are you willing to work with me on increasing southbound inspections if you're confirmed? Yes, certainly, Senator. You've heard President Trump talk about the need to build a wall, and the wall and infrastructure

is critically important, but also at our 382 legal ports of entry, we need to have technology so that flow can happen north and south, and it can happen in a legal manner to ensure that our commerce can continue to operate and that we can continue to make sure that we're also secure. I think de minimis shipments are a concern and the need to look at those and how traffickers and fentanyl distributors are using that. I think we also need to use scanners, surveillance operations. out there to cooperate wi some area where the topog

um facilitate having actua then also the ability to utilizing that technology know what is going south that might be fueling some of the violence that ends up coming back north and ensuring that we're stopping that before it has the chance to supply those cartel and bad actors that would come in. Yeah, I really appreciate that because the southbound flow, particularly of cash and weapons, fuels the cartels and strengthens them. And it's something that we really have to focus on.

I also want to follow up on the issue of cybersecurity. Recently, criminals launched a successful cyber attack on PowerSchool, a cloud-based record management system that contains personal information about tens of millions of kindergartners through high school seniors, including many students and teachers in New Hampshire. This cyber attack on power school comes as schools and local governments across the country have seen a surge in cyber attacks on their systems. And when a small school of maybe a couple of thousand system, maybe a thousand students or so has to pay $2 million in ransom. I want you to think

about what that does to one of our small communities, right? So Governor Noem, if you're confirmed, how will you empower the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to improve the cybersecurity of state and local governments in the United States? Well, thank you, Senator. If I am confirmed and have the opportunity to serve as secretary of this department, I'll be following the Constitution and the rule of law and then getting these departments back on mission to why they were created and why they are existing. What CISA should be doing is helping those small entities, those schools, those local city governments, the state governments, and the small businesses that are critical infrastructure that don't have the resources to stay on top of the critical protections that they need to enact. Well, let me follow up just quickly on that one point.

It's something we discussed when we had our meeting. I worked with Senator Cornyn on a bipartisan bill that became law that created a cybersecurity grant program for state and local governments. This is in addition to each state getting a cyber coordinator to help on the ground. We discussed this program, and I know you as governor had some reservations about the structure of the program, but if confirmed, will you commit to working with Congress to adjust it? I love your input about what gave you pause as governor. I think there were only two governors who didn't participate in the program. And I hope that as we work on the concerns you have, you'd work with me to adjust and reauthorize the program.

Yes. All grants within the department will be evaluated when I come in and be looked at to see what we can do to make sure that they're actually fulfilling the mission to which they were established. What I would say about the cybersecurity grants in South Dakota, when I came in as governor, one of my main priorities was to bring the next industry into the state. And I determined that that would be technology and cybersecurity. In fact, we have Dakota State University in our state, which is a cybersecurity national leader in training those cyber warriors that we need to protect us and keep us safe. I've since then partnered to grow and double the size of that school. We train a lot of NSA employees

in South Dakota. And so understanding cybersecurity and my experience in that, I think, is critically important to the department and bringing it to the table to do this. You talked about why we didn't take that cybersecurity grant in South Dakota and it's because the requirements of that grant would have caused me to grow my state government. The administration costs of it would have been much more than what it would have been able to facilitate at the local level and our state was already proactively helping these individuals that needed the resources to secure their systems. Well, I appreciate that. I'm way over time. There were very few requirements purposely in that grant program other than to make sure the money was being spent the way we authorized.

But let's continue to talk about that. Thank you. Senator Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Governor Noem, welcome. Congratulations on your nomination. I'm delighted to see you here. I do notice the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee is over your shoulder there. I have to question your judgment about who your friends are based on that. Here we go. The great chairman from the State of Missouri. Go in, Josh! It's fantastic to have you here.

Go! The Department of Homeland Security is not particularly old, but you already have the, what I hope will soon be the distinction of succeeding the worst secretary in the history of the Department of Homeland Security. Alejandro Mayorkas has been an absolute disgrace to that department and frankly to this country. And I'm delighted to see you willing to step up and serve. Let me just ask you something. I repeatedly asked your predecessor when he sat where you're sitting whether the southern border was secure. And he repeatedly told me under oath, it is secure, Senator. And he repeatedly said under oath, our policies are working, Senator, meaning the Biden administration policies that, of course,

gave us this devastating open border. So let me just ask you, is the southern border secure as we find it today? Senator, no, the southern border is not secure today, but in just three days we will have a new president in this country, President Donald J. Trump, and he will secure our border. That is refreshing candor. I'm glad to hear it. Let me ask you about a young man from my state. This is Travis Wolf, who's 12 years old when he was killed just over a year ago by an illegal migrant who mowed him down, and I choose my words carefully, mowed him down in a motor vehicle, hit him head on doing 75 in a 40, killed him. Others were severely injured. today told this committee that migrant crime is, and I quote, not an actual concern, not an actual concern. In a hearing before this committee advising us to drop the Lake and Riley Act and

not focus on migrant crime, you know, in my state, with the death of people like Travis Wolf and Officer David Lee, who was assaulted and killed in St. Louis, and officers in Kansas City who've been assaulted by illegal migrants and others who have been carjacked and stabbed. Would you agree with me that migrant crime sure as heck is an actual concern and that you intend to do something about it? Yes, Senator, absolutely. And I am so sorry about Travis and my prayers go out to his family. I can't even imagine what that is like. And thank you for telling his story because there's so many families in this country that have that same story and they don't understand why the federal government is allowing people to come into this country

illegally and then perpetuate crimes against their people and then give them resources and shelter and food and and debit cards to go take care of their families when they go to work every single day to make sure that they're providing for their families and are held accountable to when they break our laws. Let me ask you this. Will you work with President Trump to reinstate the Remain in Mexico program that the president had in place in his first term, which does so much to ensure that those who would seek to abuse our asylum system are not allowed into the country, and those who have legitimate asylum claims, their claims are processed in due order and in due course but they wait in Mexico until those claims are fully processed. Will you work to reinstate that program? Yes, Senator. The President and I have talked

extensively about this and will 100% partner with him to reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy and make sure that it's in place. Fantastic. I think Travis might be alive today if that policy had been in place. Let me ask you about CBP1, the phone app that I've called Concierge Service for Illegal Immigrants. I'm sure you're familiar with it. This was the Biden administration's effort to allow asylum seekers to apply ahead of time using their phones, but not actually to provide any evidence that they needed asylum. There was a newspaper report, a press report that said the only problem with the app is it never asks users, are you seeking asylum? They don't ask for any asylum evidence.

They simply release these so-called asylum seekers who use the app into the country on parole. Sometimes they're never given a hearing. The inspector general actually did a report, a full investigation report on CBP one and found that frequently users of this app were claiming the same addresses in the United States as their intended destination, even though they didn't know each other. They weren't family connections. In other words, it has been completely abused. And the idea that the federal government would pay for this kind of concierge service for illegals, I think, is outrageous. Will you end the use of the CBP1 app? Yes, Senator, if confirmed, and I have the opportunity to be secretary on day one, CBP1 will be shut down. There's data and information in there that we will preserve so that we can ensure we know who's coming into this country and who's

already here that we need to go find, but also we make sure that there's another program, CHNV, which I'm sure you're very familiar with, where our federal government actually paid to fly people into this country directly from other countries without any vetting or knowing who they are. So there's several of these programs that need to be eliminated and we need to ensure that we're following legal immigration laws. I'm glad you just mentioned CHNV. This is a mass parole program. Of course, as you know, our law allows parole in only very limited circumstances. There are two circumstances,

and it requires case-by-case evaluation. The present administration, soon to be gone, has granted mass parole in direct defiance of the law, not case-by-case evaluation. The CHNV program is one of those instances. Will you put a stop to this abuse of our parole law and our asylum system? Yes, we will go back to case-by-case evaluation of these parole cases and ensure that we have more resources, if you will partner with us, to make sure that our legal immigration system is fully utilized, that we have more judges, more immigration courts, so that we can process people legally

and make sure that they are going through that process rather than, like Joe Biden has done, use this as an excuse to allow people to come into our country with no consequences. Let me ask you about another low light, not a highlight, but a low light of this last administration and DHS. Your predecessor, the current secretary of DHS, established a disinformation board using taxpayer resources to police speech on the Internet and elsewhere to tag American citizens' viewpoints as either legitimate or not legitimate and use the power of the state to censor them, including having them removed and perhaps penalized. This has got to be the darkest chapter, I think, in DHS's short history. He eventually withdrew the board under intense criticism, but has never fully repudiated it and never promised not to do it again. Will you pledge to us here today that under your leadership, there will never be a disinformation board or anything like it at DHS, and you will be a champion

for the free speech and First of all Americans. Senate a board such as that under the Department of Homeland Let me ask you my remaini one more thing about the you've mentioned this. I' did this committee and it This committee has done b

the attempted assassinati attempts that should perh former president soon to b bipartisan work on the attempted assassinations or the assassination attempts, I should perhaps say, of the former president, soon to be future, soon to be the future president, soon to be the president, President Trump. We were stymied at every turn, and I should use the present tense. We are currently being stymied at every turn by the current Secret Service leadership and, frankly, by the leadership of DHS, who have refused to turn over documents, who refuse to make people available for interviews. We finally had to pass my own law in this committee, which we unanimously adopted, a law, a statute, mind you, which would

require DHS and Secret Service to turn over relevant information to us about the assassination attempts. It's unbelievable. When you come to office, to this office, I hope very soon, will you pledge to us that you will open the books on all of the facts associated and around these assassination attempts, that you will make available to us and to the public, most importantly, all the facts so that we can ensure that this never happens again and that the needed reforms in the Secret Service are put into effect. Senator, if I am the Secretary of Homeland Security, I will certainly work with you to build transparency and make sure the facts are shared with you and your committee. I know that you've been very frustrated by the lack of transparency from the department, and I want to thank those of

you that have worked on that report that was put together on these assassination attempts, I know it was a bipartisan report and investigation that this committee conducted, and I appreciate you focusing on that, and I will work with you to get the information so that you have the truth of really what happened there and the failures so they can be fixed. Thank you. That's a great place to end on a high note as I see my friend Senator Blumenthal, who did fantastic work on this effort, And it will be an incredible, an incredible new day and incredibly refreshing to have a DHS secretary who will tell us the truth, who will be honest with us about the facts, honest with the American people and who will enforce our law. And I know you'll do that, Governor Noem. I look forward to supporting your nomination. Congratulations.

Great questions. Incredible questions. Welcome, Governor Noem, and thank you for being here. Thank you for visiting with me, and thank you to your family for their service as well. Let me begin on a high note, thanking Senator Hawley for his leadership on the effort that I led with him to essentially get some basic facts out of the Secret Service when we were investigating Senator Johnson and I as leaders of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, helping to lead it with the chairman and ranking member here. And I'm hoping that you've read our report

and that you will agree to begin implementing its recommendations, which call for major reforms, in my view, a house cleaning top to bottom in the Secret Service and greater transparency with this committee and with the American public. Yes, sir. I will certainly work with you to do that and to work to make sure that we have that transparency and the committee has the information that it needs to do due diligence of its oversight. Our investigation is continuing.

Senator Johnson and I have discussed it and we will be making more requests to pursue the fact-f finding that is so important. I want to ask you about disaster relief. California is on fire. The fires raging there are going to leave destruction and devastation that is heartbreaking. I am really disappointed with some of the statements that President-Elect Trump has made, for example, saying that, quote, we won't give him, referring to Governor Newsom,

money to put out all his fires. And if we don't give him money to put out fires, he's got a problem. The specter is there of potential discrimination based on politics, withholding money from California or other states. It's not an unfounded fear. In the last administration, There were public reports about President Trump withholding money from the state of Washington because of his disagreements with Governor Inslee. Connecticut, like the rest of the nation, suffers from these natural disasters. Most recently in August we were hit by major flooding and these natural disasters are going to become more frequent, as will be the

need for the federal government to meet the requests for declarations of natural disaster. I assume you will agree with me that withholding disaster relief by President Trump or any other chief executive of the United States is a violation of his duty and of law. Well, Senator, leadership has consequences. And looking at the tragedy that's happening in California is... I want to ask you yes or no, with all due respect. It's an easy... What's happening in California is the ramification of many decisions over many years. But under my leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, there will be no political bias to how disaster relief is delivered to the American people.

So if President Trump were to say to you, we're going to withhold money from Connecticut or Michigan or any of the states, Iowa, because we don't like the governor or we don't like the politics of the state, you would stand up to him and say, Mr. President, we need to allocate that money. Senator, in three days, President Trump will take an oath to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law in this country. And and he will do that. And I'll be glad to have him back. And I don't see hypotheticals, which is what you're asking me to do. But what I will tell you is that as secretary, I will do the same. I will deliver the programs as the laws dictate.

Well, it's more than a hypothetical, with all due respect. And I apologize for interrupting you, but my time is limited, as you know, as a veteran of these hearings. It's more than a hypothetical. It's based on experience with President Trump withholding money from Washington state and elsewhere. I need to know from you, will you stand up to the president and say, no, the Constitution and the Impoundment Act requires us, for example, to allocate the $100 billion that we have just

appropriated in the last session to states like Connecticut, $3 million, Texas, $10 million, almost every one of the states represented here. Will you say no to the president if he withholds that money? Sir, I don't know about the scenarios that you're referencing with President Trump, but what I will tell you is that if given the chance to be Secretary of Homeland Security, that I will deliver the programs according to the law and that it will be done with no political bias. And if the programs change or if you decide to change the rule of law, then I will follow that while you pledged to allocate and distribute that $100 billion.

According to how the program is written with no political bias. Every American deserves to be there and have disaster relief, the same as their neighbors. Basically following the law. Yes. Let me ask you, Senator Peters asked you about homegrown terrorists. The New Orleans tragedy was the result of a homegrown terrorist born in this country, radicalized by ISIS. And it reflects the reason why the intelligence community, the FBI,

almost all of our law enforcement has said repeatedly, domestic violent extremism is the most lethal and persistent threat to our security. That terrorist was radicalized by ISIS. The investigation is underway. We don't know all the facts, but we do know that he was a military veteran and ISIS was responsible for radicalizing him. Shouldn't we focus on ISIS as a threat to this country's security? Senator, certainly we should be focused on all threats to this nation's security. That's the mission of the Department of Homeland Security. And homegrown terrorism is growing.

We have more and more incidences. The tragedy we saw and the terrorist attack in New Orleans. What will you do to combat it? What will you do to stop ISIS and other extremist organizations from radicalizing people in this country? also within Secretary of State and the other branches and cabinet officials to make sure we're bringing all resources to bear to identify and to stop these types of terrorist activities. What I would say is the cybersecurity and intelligence elements that we have within the Department of Homeland Security have been incredibly siloed. They have not communicated with other intelligence agencies like they should and partnered. INA has some interaction, but not enough. And we also need to have CISA have interaction with the FBI, CIA to make sure they're working together to stop these types of threats and identify when they're growing among our citizens and how they become radicals. This area of questioning, I think, is supremely important.

I know there's a lot of focus on the border. We all want more border security. We want to stop migrant crime, but let's not take our eye off the ball. The governor of Louisiana for the Super Bowl ought to be really riveted on the potential for homegrown terrorism as a threat. And I hope that you will help him and other governors to do their duty to protect the people of the United States from that homegrown terrorist threat. Thank you. Senator Ernst. Thank you, Senator Johnson. Governor Noem, thank you so much for being here today, and I want to thank you for your continuing service, the service that you had as a member of Congress, the service that you have displayed as a governor of the great state of South Dakota, our neighbor to the Northwest, and for being willing to step up and take on this immense responsibility. So thank you so very much. We had such a good

discussion when you came to my office in the last several weeks, and we talked about the importance of securing our border and fixing our broken immigration system. And I'd like to start today by sharing a story about one of my constituents from Council Bluffs, Iowa. And what we have seen through this broken border is tragedy that strikes so many families across the United States. So very similar to the story that was shared by my colleague from Missouri with his constituent, Mr. Wolf. I have a young woman by the name of Sarah Root who encountered tragedy on January 31st, nine years ago. So Sarah Root was struck and killed

by an illegal immigrant who was drunk driving. He was driving at three times the legal limit of alcohol. And Sarah's killer was bonded out, bonded out before the Roots laid her to rest. He fled the country and has not been seen or heard from since. The Root family has not seen justice. So, Governor, how do you plan to prioritize the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants like Sarah's killer? Yes, Senator. Thank you for telling Sarah's story. I remember when this happened because it was so close to home and so devastating for her and her

family and the entire state of Iowa and our country. President Trump is focused on making sure that these types of situations don't happen again, that we don't continue to lose our children and our family members to illegal immigrants that come in and perpetuate crime with no accountability and then are released with no consequences. So the number one priority of the president is to secure the border and to deport these criminal actors immediately. And as soon as possible, they will be the number one priority to make our community safer. And so that we don't have this kind of situation going forward. In fact, people, I think when they first heard my name being mentioned and nominated for the Department of Homeland Security, maybe thought it was a little bit of a surprise.

Like, oh, I didn't think about Christie doing that job. But I tell people the reason that I asked for it is because I knew it was the president's number one priority. I knew that it needed to have someone in the position that would do what the president promised the American people, would be strong enough to do it and follow through to make sure that we're protecting our communities and America, but that also came at it from a perspective of how these families feel. That was a wife and a mom and a grandmother and would be able to stand up and communicate to the American people what we were doing and why we were, because it's what they asked us to do.

I have three grandchildren and one more on the way. And when I look at little Miss Addie every day, I just think, what kind of a country is she going to grow up in? What kind of a country will we leave her and her brother and a sister? And I don't want them to think that their grandma sat on the sidelines and didn't do all that she could. So I will enforce the Constitution and the law, and I will make sure that when people enact horrific things like this that happened to Sarah and her family, that there will be consequences for it. Yeah, absolutely. And as a fellow grandma, I know that you are perfectly positioned to enforce this. I do want to move on to another topic that we visited about in my office. So I'm the founder

and the chair of the Doge Senate Caucus. And so we do need in my office. So I'm the founder and the chair of the Doge Senate caucus. And so we do need greater government efficiency. And I do believe in order to do that, we need less of our employees teleworking and more of those government workers back in the office working for our constituents. And to that end, it ties together then, too. We just found out that the Treasury Department had a cyber attack on December 8th from China. And no surprise here,

they accessed servers through work-from-home software. So it all ties together. We need more people back in the offices making sure that any communications are secured, any work is secured. And to that, I know the Biden administration has put a huge emphasis on cyber, the cyber bureaucracy, but they haven't really done anything about it. And they haven't given any authority to those that are enforcing the standards. So we need to enforce the standards that are set forth to make sure the cybersecurity is truly there. But what can DHS do? One with telework, how do we get the employees back? And then two, how do we make sure that our systems are secure from these cyber attacks? Well, Senator, thank you for focusing on remote work of the agencies within the department are not showing up.

They're not doing their jobs. But even FEMA, who is responsible for disaster response, that they have the alternative, some of these employees, to not even respond to a disaster, which might explain the horrific results that we saw in North Carolina when they had such a terrible disaster that impacted families and communities and FEMA failed them so miserably. If it's not even a responsibility of them to show up when terrible things happen, what other day-to-day activities are not getting done because they're working from home or not doing their job at all? You talked about cybersecurity and the need to ensure that our systems are safe and secure. One of the things that disturbs me the most is that we don't necessarily even know how some of these espionage attacks that have infiltrated our systems have happened. We don't know how to stop them yet. We don't have the knowledge and that our departments and

intelligence agencies and cyber security agencies have become siloed and aren't working together to stay in front of these bad actors. But many times our most vulnerable area happens at the state and local level. Some of these smaller entities that feeds us information into our systems is where they choose to infiltrate and get our data and to really hold for ransom many of these companies

and then impact our federal systems as well. So one of the first meetings I had when I was elected governor with the former governor during the transition was he said the number one priority you're going to have as governor is to secure our systems. He said our systems are so antiquated and we've had over 16,000 hacking attempts in just the last month. You need to secure our systems and get it done. So that was a priority for me to do that, and we fully funded it and got it done in South Dakota,

and it's being implemented today. I look forward to doing that at the federal level to make sure that people's data and information is safe, but also our country is safe from these bad actors that have a plan to take us out. Well, thank you. My time has expired, but I do want to end on a note that another thing that I do truly appreciate about you and your nomination is that as a governor, you have worked with those local constituencies as well and those local governments. And I know that this will be an incredible strength that will ensure continued success for you within the department. So thank you, Governor. Very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Senator Kim. Thank you, Chairman. Governor. It's good to see you. Thanks for coming before our

committee. I wanted to just ask you not just about your work, but how it's going to fit into the broader incoming Trump administration and particular. I guess I'm uncertain about roles and responsibilities regarding your position and Tom Holman's. I guess I just want to ask you just point blank, like, who's going to be in charge of the border? Well, the president will be in charge of the border. It's a national security issue, and the president is in charge of this country and has made a promise to the American people, and we fulfill his agenda well that's my that was a good answer as the answer i would have given as well but i guess i got confused when trump made the announcement about tom holman he said quote

i'm pleased to announce that tom holman and said that he's in charge of our nation's borders so i guess again i'd just like to go back to you how How are y with Mr Holman? What is t I'm trying to get a bette charge. Yeah, Tom Tom Hol human being who has over Incredible experience. Ye to think the insight and process when it comes to

instance, will he be giving orders directly to CBP, ICE, USCIS? Tom Holman has a direct line to the president. He is an advisor to the president, the border czar. I obviously will be, if nominated and confirmed and put into the position of being the Department of Homeland Security secretary and responsible for the authorities that we have and the actions that we take? I say this because I actually want to make sure that we're empowering the next Secretary of Homeland Security. Yes.

You know, in the legislation that was codified by Congress and moved forward that started this after September 11th, it said, quote, all functions of all offices, employees, and organizational units of the department are vested in the secretary. So I guess the reason why I mentioned this is I've just seen some quotes from Mr. Holman, where he said, quote, I'll be making decisions on border security and deportation. He was asked in another interview about the stronger role that he'll play. And he said, absolutely,

I'll be making decisions on how we do the border. So I just raise that as a concern of mine, because not only is that about the function of our executive branch, but also the capabilities of this committee to be able to properly do our constitutional duties for oversight, the ability for us to be able to have that conversation. We can talk to you, engage with you. That is the direct way. But if he is going to be making decisions, then he should come before this committee as well. And I know that that's

something where, as far as I know, his role will be directly at the White House, is not something that will be under the purview directly of this committee. So I just wanted to raise those concerns. Yeah, Tom and I work very well together and talk and communicate all the time. And we'll be working together on a daily basis when we're in our positions under the new administration. And I would say there's no authorities being planned to be taken away from the department or myself if I'm in the role. But it sends some mixed signals. You can understand how people in my home state, maybe around the country, when they hear Mr. Holman saying I'm making the decisions when they hear President like Trump say he's in charge of our border. So you

know, I just I urge you know that we're going to try to do our best to try to make sure we're empowering the department to empower in the next secretary because that's where you know, our laws are invested in our decision making. Yeah. Well, thank you, Senator. And we'll make sure you have all the information that you need and, and Tom working directly with are invested in our decision making. Well, thank you, Senator. And we'll make sure you have all the information that you need. And Tom, working directly with the president,

and I, working directly with the president, hope to help you get all that you need to reassure that the authorities will stay the same as they currently are, but we will continue to work to secure that border and make sure that we're working together in that way. I want to just switch gears about you. You the concerns about terrorism especially foreign terrorist groups i guess i just want to ask you what are the major foreign terrorist groups uh that are uh well first of all what are the major foreign terrorist groups that are out there that we're tracking which are

the ones that are concerns to us in terms of potentially trying to inspire or coordinate an attack upon us? And if you can just give me a sense of what their current capabilities are to try to enact that. Well, I think we face a lot of threats, Senator. And since I'm not in the role today, I shouldn't get into specifics with you. Well, you can at least get into specifics about what organizations that are out there. So I just wanted to get a sense of your knowledge of the organizations. We have all the traditional terrorist organizations that have always threatened the United States. But I would also say, I would say Hamas, ISIS, continuing down that path of those terrorist

organizations. But we'll continue to also focus, though, not just on those, but also the cartels, their partnership with the Chinese and what they are doing. Listen, I've told people for years, for over 30 years, I've worked on national policy, on food policy, on agriculture policy, and I've seen the Chinese agenda to infiltrate our country, control our food supply chain, but also their manipulation of their currency and stealing our IP. And now I believe that this fentanyl crisis that they have flooded our country with is geared, and the purpose of it is to kill our next generation of Americans. No, I don't discount the importance of those. So when you focus on one or two groups, I think it takes your eye off the ball as to where all the threats could come from.

We just spent a significant amount of time talking about homegrown terrorism as well. Correct. I'm glad we're having that conversation. But the reason why I mentioned it, I was not trying to quiz you or anything of that nature. It's just that, you know, when the Department of Homeland Security, when their threat assessment for 2025 lists three organizations, lists Al Qaeda, lists ISIS, in particular ISIS Khorasan, and the IRGC and the threat from Iran. I just want to make sure that I get it. You know, you're talking about the importance of the border. We all understand that we want to work with the incoming administration to try to have an orderly process with that. But I just want to make sure that in

particular with DHS, the primary mission, you know, if we look at the founding legislation, the primary mission, the very terrorist attacks within do everything we can to m threat. So yes, I do thin for us to focus in on on wherever these terrorist Yes, I know that part of to minimize terrorist att

the work that we try to do to secure our borders, all of them, air, sea, and land. But the primary mission still is about preventing terrorism, not just the border security. That's a tool to be able to accomplish that. So I just raise that with you. I wanna make sure that the next Homeland Security Secretary has a very detailed knowledge and understanding about the

terrorist groups, their capabilities, and is tracking that on a absolute daily basis and that they understand that is their top mission. With that, I'll yield back to the chairman. Senator Johnson. Governor Noem, welcome and thank you for your willingness to serve. You'll be taking over a massive federal government agency, 240,000 employees. It's probably too massive. I think had I been there back then, I don't think I would have assembled these 22 different agencies

in this massive department, but that's what we've got. It's a department that the previous administration, I think, is completely misused. Instead of using Customs and Border Protection to do that, to protect our border and secure it, they've utilized those resources to incentivize a massive influx of illegal immigration. Instead of using the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security structural security agency to do that. They instead engaged in mission creep and utilized it to censor Americans with the Misinformation Board.

I am concerned about disaster relief, just federal disaster relief in general, creating greater and greater and increasing levels of moral hazard, resulting in higher costs of these disasters. So let's cover each one of those kind of in order. How do you gain control over a massive agency whose resources and personnel have been misused? I mean, how do you root out those individuals who instead of securing our border, opened it up and facilitated this? Well, Senator, this has been a big topic of conversation in most of the meetings that I've

had with the members of this committee was how do we fix this agency, which the reputation is, is that it's broken and dysfunctional. I think that was the question I get asked the most is why would you want to head up such a dysfunctional department? And I would say that because the mission of the department is to secure the homeland and our people, it's our biggest vulnerability right now. And we have a president that's not enforcing the law. And I don't believe the law should be unequally applied. Everyone should be shut into our laws. And a nation without laws and without borders is not a nation at all. So I will work by ensuring one of the things that

Senator Ernst talked about, people have to show up for work. I think there's going to be a majority of people who don't have their primary mission to secure the homeland, that if they don't want to show up for work, then maybe they're just not truly passionate about protecting America. I think they need to do that and they need to recognize what their job is. The morale in DHS is very low. I'm going to let people do their jobs. I'm going to remind them what their jobs are. Some of these border patrol agents haven't been able to do their jobs for a very long time. They've been processing paperwork and facilitating an invasion when they should be back securing our border, which is why they were recruited and wanted to serve there to begin with. We're going to build partnerships with local law enforcement, with ICE and task forces. So we're communicating again with local

sheriffs and mayors and law enforcement to partner together. When you talk about the fact that this is such a broken agency that needs so much improvement, a lot of it goes back to why were we created and are we fulfilling that mission and making sure that these individuals are getting back on task? So under my chairmanship and under the Trump administration, we did rename a part of DHS, the Cybersecurity Information Security Agency. I in no way, shape, or form ever contemplated that the sub-agency within DHS that was really focused on securing us against the cyber threats and other threats to our infrastructure would ever be used to violate the Constitution the way it was

used to violate the Constitution under the Biden administration. This administration has been completely opaque. We do not have the information to know and the communication in terms of what all happened here. So my question is relates to how they misused CISA. Will you commit to providing the transparency, providing the information, investigate it yourself, but provide this committee, my subcommittee, the information to expose the truth to the American public, but even more importantly, propose a piece of legislation based on our investigation, based on those results, to fix it so that no administration can ever misuse the language of the law

to commit that kind of unconstitutional act and violate people's First Amendment rights. Yes, Senator, I look forward to working with you on that. And I think what we saw during the COVID pandemic, the actions of CISA, their misinformation and disinformation campaign, the materials they were putting out was shocking, shocking at what they were doing to decide what was truth, what wasn't, and how they were trying to manipulate the American people. We saw it in elections and Russia influence as well. And so ensuring that they can't do that in the future under any administration would be a priority, that they stay doing what they're supposed to do and hardening our systems and working with local officials to do that is a priority.

And I'd look forward to working with you on legislation should you wish to rein them in. So the first step in that process is to expose the truth, to find out who these bad actors were, expose who they were, hold them accountable. I mean, that is crucial that we take that first step. So again, look forward to working with you on that. You know, the tragedy of the California fires, the more we learn, the more we understand that not only was it predictable, it was predicted, which means it was preventable. Again, you're not going to be, you can't prevent start the initiation of those fires, but you certainly prevent them from raging into the tragedy that they became, the dozens of people who've lost their lives,

the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of property damage. It's not just California, though. I mean, again, that was grotesque mismanagement. That could have been prevented. You can't prevent a hurricane. You can't prevent floods. But you certainly can try and start reducing the moral hazard that we've allowed to explode, quite honestly, by the federal government rushing in immediately, no questions asked, just tell us how big a check

you want. What can you do in your new role to try and start reducing over time the moral hazard that we have created in this country with federal disaster relief? Well, Senator, emergencies and disasters are always locally led. They're led by the local communities and leaders, and that's because they're much more responsive and much better informed on how to bring relief and to get those emergency services there to meet the need. Then it's state supported and federally resourced, which means that when we come in, that we're supporting what the mission is, what those emergency operations and plans are that the local city and county and then also the state has implemented and do what we can to fulfill the mission of our programs. One of the things that FEMA is not doing today that I think we should be doing is streamlining communications. We saw this in New Orleans. We saw it in other terrorist attacks in the country. And we, you just referenced it as well about the American people

not getting the truth. Senators not getting the truth and the transparency that we need is that I believe FEMA can always put out a blueprint for what a response would be should something terrible happen. And when we look at the Secret Service, what happened in Butler, we saw that communication was an issue, that the Secret Service wasn't communicating and balls were getting dropped with local authorities, local law enforcement. And we can put forward a blueprint for how communication can happen and be streamlined between the federal government, the state, and the local entities so that should something happen, this is how we talk to each other,

to make sure that the public has the facts, they're not getting misinformation, which happened with the New Orleans terror attack just recently, but also up in Pennsylvania as well. That blueprint is what we do at the state level that FEMA has failed to do to proactively educate the public on what everybody's roles are, what we do should something happen, whether it be a natural disaster or a terrorist attack or an emergency response is needed,

that we can put out those blueprints ahead of time, educate people, train those local entities, which they currently do to a certain extent today, but not good enough to really know that not only can the resources be pre-deployed in many of these situations so that they're more readily accessible, but also how are we going to communicate and make sure everybody's on the same page so that we can be much more efficient. I wish that we would have had different leadership and a different governor in California, or we might have a different result there. But in the Department of Homeland

Security, we can do all that we can to make sure that the people that live in California know that they're going to get a response from the federal government that's appropriate. And we did all that we could to make sure that they had the information ahead of time so they could protect themselves when they do have a failure in leadership like we've seen. Thank you and good luck. Since Senator Johnson brought up California fires, I have to interject here. We talked about burn policies, you know, these are local policies, how we try to not have so much brush and things like that. They're also next to the largest the world, the pacific oa homes all burning on the I'm like, wow, if they ju

and a hose, you start suck of the pacific ocean. But that. You could pump it a up in the hills a mile or rain very much there. But the ocean water, put it in cisterns, and have a bunch of water ready when a wildfire shows up? But it's like, once again, bad, bad local government. Senator Gallego. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Governor, for your attendance, and I appreciate us meeting

last week in our frank conversation. So in partly following up to our conversation, in recent years, I've been in very close contact with our Arizona border communities, which are unlike other border communities, and about the funding needs to address migrant influxes through the Shelter and Services Program, or SSP. Without this funding, border communities must bear all the financial burden for national immigration challenges and the broken border in general. So that means police, fire, hospital systems in general, anything of that. And at the same time, they also face the potential challenges of street releases. And again, these are very small, small towns on the border. So having thousands of people being released becomes both burdensome security issues and just not fair to them.

And we get lumped in with places like New York and Chicago about how they do their shelter programs. Our shelter programs are not the same as New York and Chicago. We do not permanently put people in apartments or anything of that nature. We are trying to move people away from the borders so that way they don't become a burden

on these very, very small communities. So I'm very highly concerned, as I told you in our meeting, when the SSP program becomes politicized and to the point where we get lumped in with those programs I don't think are effective and are actually counterproductive. And it ends up depriving our small Arizona borders of these very, very vital funds that they need. So as DHS Secretary, how would you ensure that border communities are not left to respond to and pay for

these immigration influxes, the broken border system on their own? And would you commit to helping really not politicize or just join the SSTV program to the point where places that are doing things correctly, like Yuma, Arizona, like Pima County, like Cochise County, aren't lumped in with people that are doing things incorrectly, like Newima County, like Cochise County, aren't lumped in with people that are doing things incorrectly, like New York State and Chicago. This should have been Carrie Lake. Senator, thank you for the conversation in your office about the program, FEMA, the southern border and the challenges, and then also the difference between your state and how you utilize funds versus other states. I would say that my hope is that if given the

opportunity to serve as secretary, that the federal government would no longer, and I believe as President Trump has promised the American people, facilitate an illegal alien invasion and that your communities in Arizona would no longer have the issue with having people in your small towns and communities that you need to figure out how to take care of and get them to where they want to go in other places of the country. The president has promised he will secure the border, that we will uphold our nation's laws, and that he will do that to the benefit and be putting America first again. So I know we talked extensively about the SSP program and how you've utilized it, but getting these programs back to the to what they

were intended is important. FEMA is a disaster response agency and some of the facilities that have been utilizing these types of funds and dollars need to be re-evaluated and to make sure that it's truly doing the service that is upholding our nation's laws. And certainly I understand re-evaluating, especially how some of these states have been using it. In an ideal world, we don't have to have a program like that because we don't have this mass of humanity that's coming towards our borders. But even under the first Trump administration, we actually still needed it also.

So this is why my concern is to not get rid of this program because, again, these small communities, I'm talking communities of maybe 10,000 people, maybe only six or seven cops are going to end up really bearing the brunt. And we are not a big state. We can't really compensate for those types of losses. These small communities are also largely, you know, you come from a rural state, counties that are largely rural with a lot of federal land. So they actually don't even have a tax base.

So when the broken immigration system sends people to these borders and we end up not having to have enough, these communities don't have enough money to pay for cops, firefighters, overtime for hospital systems, it's that type of program that keeps us, keeps these small communities afloat. So I just want to make sure, you know, that again, this does not become politicized and that we are kept separate from, I think, the mistakes that other states have taken on. Moving on, you know know in Arizona we have large parts of the border that run through tribal lands. We have 22 federally recognized tribes. We have great relationships with these tribes. They want to be collaborative partners when it comes to border security and we have some great programs that have worked in the past. For example, the Shadow Wolves program with the Toyota

Autumn Nation. It's a really good example, a collaborative program of tribal law enforcement that works with DHS to make sure they stop human smuggling and cartels going through the borders. But as DHS Secretary, what is your plan to consult with our border tribes and work together to balance both national security but also their sovereignty? Yeah. Well, Senator, I believe that my experience as governor and my relationship with working with our tribes is going to be an incredible, powerful tool for me to bring to bear at the Department of Homeland Security to work on how we secure our southern border, but still respect their sovereignty and still be able to work with them. This year, when looking at public safety issues that we had in South Dakota and their lack of ability to hire tribal officers on our reservations

in South Dakota, I offered to train federal law enforcement officers, BIA officers, but also their tribal police in South Dakota at no cost to our tribes. And it's been an incredible, powerful tool that we've had to build relationships. Those tribal police had the chance to go through academy with the local maybe deputies from the counties and the state highway patrol troopers that were coming on board. And those relationships have built partnerships in our state that we didn't have before. The Shadow Wolf training opportunity is incredible that was down in Arizona that you spoke of too. And in looking into that program, I'd like to continue to build on that and perpetuate in the future so that our tribes have an opportunity to have a secure border, but also have it reflect

their values and their culture and have their own people be a part of the solution. And then even when it comes to the infrastructure of the wall that we're respecting that in their landscapes and their land as well so i look forward to working with you as as we move into this next administration to to be able to protect our country and then work and respect our tribes as we do so thank you and the president trump and some of his other um potential staff uh and advisors have been very vocal about implementing a mass deportation strategy. You know, talking to my agricultural community, my dairy community, they have concerns that this approach will lead to workforce shortages that will further drive up the costs of everything

and something that we have really been working hard to cross, I think, a bipartisan and bipartisan meant to bring down the costs of everything. And unfortunately, this would reignite inflation. What is your plan to ensure safe and legal immigration processes for agricultural workers while protecting local agricultural operations, including those both of our home states? Well, Senator, the President and President Trump has been very clear that his priority is going to be deporting criminals, those who have broken our laws and perpetuated violence in our communities. That'll be the priority.

And as I spoke earlier with our statistics, having over 425,000 of those with criminal convictions in our country, that will be a focus that we need to tackle right away. And it'll it'll be a big one beyond that his next priority is going to be those with final removal orders and focus on those individuals who who have long overstayed and that there is a consequence for ignoring our federal laws beyond that we'll continue conversations as you know i'm a farmer and a rancher and come from an agricultural state and we'll work together to make sure that laws are followed. You know, it is the Senate and the House that puts forward the laws. I, as secretary, uphold the law.

So you determine what that is and debate and discussion. I'll be transparent and share as much information and insight as I have with my background and experience and continue to work with you. Yeah, but Senator Moreno, first of all, thank you, Governor, for being here for testify, testifying before this committee and for your service, not just to your state, but to America. Nine years ago today, we met and probably the coldest day I've ever been in my life in Iowa. As you and I were making phone calls and whipping up votes for Republicans in Iowa, my wife, Bridget, who's here, got a chance to meet you. And we left Iowa saying, that person's really going to go far.

And here we are nine years later. You've been an amazing governor, amazing congresswoman, and now you're going to make an even better uh secretary of the department of homeland security so i think sometimes in dc we tend to complicate things uh there is a current secretary of homeland security so why don't we take this opportunity to do a little job review and compare and contrast him to you so just if you don't mind i'll ask you some questions and you can give me an answer. Secretary Mayorkas allowed about, you said it, just about 400 people on the terror watch list to come into this country illegally. If you were confirmed as Secretary of Homeland

Security, how many people on the terror watch list would you allow into this country? Well, Senator, we would work every single day until we had that number was zero. And if you look at the previous Trump administration over his entire four years, in comparison to Joe Biden's number, President Trump, it was 11 that were then removed from the country and faced consequences. When you look at the 382 that Joe Biden has let in and the policies continue is shocking and needs to be changed immediately. Mayorkas let in about 12,000 murderers. How many would you target to let into this country? My goal every day would be to have

no murderers allowed into this country in our communities. Mayorkas allowed 16,000 rapists. How many would you target to let in? Every day I'd work to make sure that there was none let into this country. He let 600, 600,000 people with crimi many would you allow in? day to make sure people a with criminal convictions removed. How many private

the United States taxpaye foreign countries to pick them here? Yeah, Senator, we will no longer be undertaking that mission at the Department of Homeland Security. So not 700,000 individuals on private jets over the last four years. You would not have any. No, I'll be working with President Trump to put in place his agenda and adherence to our federal laws. And how many illegals will you plan to house in luxury hotel rooms in Manhattan at a cost of $6,000 per month? Sir, clearly, Senator, during this election, the American people said they did not support that and that that would not be a part of this new administration.

How about sex change operations for illegals? How many of those would you suspect you would fund? Senator, I believe that the Department of Homeland Security will be re-evaluating its mission in this country to not allow that going forward under President Trump's goals. And if you had an illegal migrant that was in this country and they committed a crime, would you offer them airfare from one state to another to evade law enforcement? Sir, I will be following this nation's laws and the constitution and make sure that all laws are adhered to. And if you had been the head of the Department of Homeland Security a year or so ago, would you have closed a detention center in Georgia that would have allowed the release of somebody charged with a crime? Sir, I don't have

the specifics to tha that would not be somethi want to have under my wat Lake M Riley would be ali had been the secretary of Senator, my hope is that Yes, let's switch to anoth the disgraceful immigrat Biden and Mayorkas,

who objectively, by the way, objectively has been the worst cabinet member ever in the history of the United States of America. Let's talk about temporary protective status. Temporary being the operative word. He just, Mayorkas and Biden, just extended temporary protective status again through 2027. Will you continue to corrupt TPS to allow some sort of open borders agenda? And will you use hot weather of 80 degrees and sunny beaches in El Salvador as a reason why people have to stay in America and not safely return. Yes, Senator, this program has been abused and manipulated by the Biden administration, and that will no longer be allowed to allow that and these extensions going forward the way that they are. The program was intended to be temporary, and this extension of over 600,000 Venezuelans as well is alarming when you look at what we've

seen in different states, including Colorado, with gangs doing damage and harming the individuals and the people that live there. In terms of our border, like the physical border, I've been there many times, you've been there many times. Who should be in charge? Who should have operational control of our border? The United States government or the Mexican drug cartels? Senator, the United States needs to control our borders and secure them. So if this were a job interview in the private sector and you had somebody like Alejandro Mayorkas in charge. And we had the opportunity to upgrade to you. This would be the greatest upgrade in history of the United States of America. But I'm going to end my time with a startling statistic and actually a challenge to the Democrat Party. When Mayorkas was confirmed, every single Democrat voted to confirm him.

And six Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in that confirmation. If we get to the vote, and hopefully, Chairman, we could do that Monday, because we cannot wait one you being in charge of th should have 100 100 senat as to whether we have a D like securing this country and protecting our citizens. Any Democrat that voted for Mayorkas that does not vote for you should be in front of their voters and removed from office. Thank you for serving, Brian. Thank you for being here,

for putting up with the nonsense that you guys have had to put up with over the years. You are going to make an amazing Secretary of Homeland Security. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Senator. Senator Slotkin. Thanks for being here and thanks for our time in my office. Governor, I'm a former CIA officer, joined right after 9-11 and served three tours in Iraq alongside the military. I'm actually the first CIA officer in the Senate.

And to me, the most important thing, again, as a Democrat from a state that Trump won right on the same ballot, we both won. I understand we're going to have different policy opinions. I certainly understand that the president or incoming president has the right to nominate whoever he wants. Those are not the issues for me that I'm going to spend my time on. The ones that I care about the most relate to the mission of the organization when it was founded, protecting the homeland. And I think to me, it's one thing when there's campaign rhetoric or political politicization of things, everyone does that on both sides of the aisle in this committee and in our line of work. But when it comes to actually protecting the country, you do have to be clear and honest

about facts and not conflate things. So it's just important to me that I know, particularly since you do have one of the intelligence agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, that you're going to call a spade a spade, right? The most recent acts of domestic terrorism in New Orleans, horrible incident in Nevada, had nothing to do with migrants, correct? Correct. They were homegrown American citizens. One of them was actually in a very elite military unit. I mean, it's horrible. It's one of the hardest things to catch, the sort of lone wolf, radicalized American citizen. But I want to protect ourselves. Our most recent examples of domestic terrorism were not what we've spent the majority talking about today, crime from a migrant. And I don't dispute there is crime,

but I just want to know, and I want to hear from you as an intelligence officer, that you're going to speak about real threats and not blow something up, politicize something, make something more exciting, because that's maybe what the president wants to hear. But your mission to protect and defend the Constitution means calling honestly what the threats are to the country. Can you just give me a yes or no, please? Yes, Senator, I will be as transparent and factual every day with you and the American people as possible based on the information that I have. I don't know if the investigations are closed in New Orleans and in Nevada, but what we know so far

and needs to be related to the American people needs to be the truth and facts. Yeah, I just, I'd ask that. We've talked a lot about border security. As a CIA officer, I think one of the only people on this committee who's actually worked on protecting the homeland. I'm a Middle East terrorism and militia expert by training. So I believe deeply in it. And every country of the world gets to decide who comes inside its borders. That's not a radical concept. But I think I've been open with this committee that it is also on us to fix the deeply broken legal immigration system.

I'm glad to hear that you're going to carry out the laws on the immigration system. Democrats and Republicans are to blame that we haven't fixed this system. But I also believe you can't fully control the border unless you give people that we need for our companies, for our economy, a legal vetted way to come here. So do you believe in legal vetted immigration and that we need more of it in the United States? I do believe we need to follow our legal immigration laws and that it needs to be vetted. We need more resources, I believe, in some of the elements of this. Do you believe that our economy depends and needs some level, just like your family came from Norway and on economic, you know, drive and

wanted a better life. Immigration's always been a part of our history and will be a part of our future. We just need to make sure that we're adhering to our nation's laws, which this body has the ability to continue to change and to put in place. Again, going back to the fact that you will pledge an oath to the Constitution, not to President Trump, just like every other nominee, President Trump said in November that he is willing to use law enforcement, National Guard, or even active duty military to go after, quote, the threat from within the United States. I don't know exactly what he

was talking about. But we have recent examples from your predecessors at DHS where federal law enforcement were sent into a state, in this case Oregon, without coordination with the governor. Those federal law enforcement officers at the time were putting down threats to federal buildings, and they were legitimate threats. I don't dispute there was destruction of property going on during a bunch of protests and riots, so I don't dispute that. But they weren't wearing insignia. We talked about this. They weren't wearing any markings. So people were arrested by folks in fatigues with no names, no idea who they were, like right out of a bad Hollywood movie. Okay. If the president asks you to send in federal law enforcement to a state without coordination

of that governor, would you support that action? You know, Senator, the my job if nominated and sworn in as Secretary of Homeland Security is to uphold the Constitution and to so you will push back of this country. Yes, that will be the oath and the pledge that I will be making. And my goal also is to work with you to ensure that we have situations that are always appropriate, that we are well defined. I just need to know you're a former governor. You can imagine that if Joe Biden sent in 700 federal law enforcement under Secretary Mayorkas without coordinating with you, I think we can agree you'd be a little upset. So I just ask that you give the same respect for coordination and that we just, we are very sensitive. People are worried about politicizing of law enforcement

and the uniformed military. That's a bad thing. I hope we can agree. Lastly, I will just say, look forward to looking at the northern border, the Gordie Howe Bridge, your help staffing that. We know you are, right now, across many administrations, we haven't met our staffing goals at DHS, and that's a problem. So we really want to make sure that opens on time. But I also want your assurances, you know, you received FEMA assistance from Joe Biden's administration, right? You had historic floods. You asked and requested of the administration and you were given millions of dollars to help with that. I understand you don't like Gavin Newsom, but can you say in front of the American people that you will open the books to

this committee who does have oversight over FEMA, right? That you will give, open the books in a bipartisan way to ensure whether it's North Carolina or California or anywhere in between, that the American people can know that you are not playing politics with disaster assistance. Yes, Senator, I'll work with you and this committee to make sure I'm following the federal law and ensuring that you have information and transparency from us and from DHS and FEMA. Thank you. Appreciate it. You're back. Senator Langford. Governor Ngo, great to see you. Great to see you too. Thanks for being here. Thanks for accepting this nod that the president has given you. For Brian, thanks. Both of you, you've walked through a lot. I have had the privilege of knowing you for a very long time since we served together in the House of Representatives.

So I have the benefit of knowing how your qualifications and how strong you are in all these background issues and how hard you work on these things because I've seen it firsthand. So I appreciate you stepping into this because a lot of attention across the country will be focused on this. You know that full well, and you've stepped into it. For Governor Landry, my state and many folks in my state are praying for you and for your state. You've done a great job in leadership at this moment in a very, very tough time for Louisiana, and we don't want to see acts of terrorism anywhere in our country. It's incredibly difficult days for governor. So thanks for your leadership on that as well. I also have to tell

you, Chrissy, I, um, I want to my wife occasionally about the temperature that's coming on Monday. I'm very excited about Trump's inaugural, but we're all gonna be sitting outside in about 12 degrees. And I thought just for fun, I would check South Dakota on Monday. It's one for a high, for a high. And so I'm going to stop whining about the temperature Monday here in Washington, D.C. on it. I'm going to run through a couple of things here because I know you. Not everybody in Oklahoma knows you. The questions that I get from people, though, in Oklahoma, I want to be able to run past you because they want to be able to know the answer

to these things. So I'm just going to blitz through a whole bunch of them. Will you use the legal authority that DHS already has to be able to close our border? Yes, Senator. I will work with President Trump to ensure that we're securing our border. Thank you. There's a lot of things that this Congress needs to do, as already been mentioned by Senator Slotkin as well, that we need to do to be able to close loopholes, to be able to give you additional authority. But there's a tremendous amount of authority currently not being used. And Oklahomans are saying, is that about to be used? And they'll be grateful to be able to hear that. No other president has ever created a phone app to be able to facilitate a faster processing of aliens in called the CBP one app.

It's been mentioned several times here. Will you use your authority to stop facilitating faster processing of illegal aliens into our country with the CBP one app? Yes, Senator. We will eliminate the CBP one app, maintain some of the data that's in it that's critical to knowing who's in our country. But that app will no longer be in use. Thank you. No other president has ever used the parole authority just in general, humanitarian parole to facilitate faster processing of aliens into our country, which leads to the catch and release we've all heard about.

So the Oklahomans that I talked to say, are we a of parole and in catch an about to stop? Senator Pre been very clear that he w Terrific folks want to kn your authority with the f to you by Congress to act rather than use the fundi

you as the Biden administ environmental remediation rather than use the funding that's given to you as the Biden administration did to do environmental remediation around the border rather than actual border wall and border structure. Yeah. Yeah. Senator President Trump has been clear that he wants to build the wall. So do we. So will you use your authority to be able to scan more vehicles? And obviously, we've got to get you the funding to be able to do this, to be able to scan more vehicles and individuals that are carrying fentanyl into our country through our ports of entry. Yes, Senator, we will continue to use technologies, but hopefully be able to use more with the resources that were granted to scan those vehicles and know what's coming in and out of this country. FEMA employees during disaster relief were instructed by one of their supervisors that if they see a Trump sign or a Trump flag flying to skip that house, to not stop by there and tell

them what their federal government can do for them. Will you allow FEMA employees or any within DHS to politicize their role into pick and choose who gets help and who doesn't as an American. Senator, under President Trump's administration, disaster and emergency relief will not be handed out with political bias. Every American will be responded to and treated equally. That's what folks want to know. Will you review the Secret Service responsibilities to be able to go back through it and to say, are they focused on their primary mission or is there something it could distract? Secret Service still chases down financial crimes. They're still chasing down child exploitation. Those are serious things for Treasury or for FBI to do. But there's a question is if that's the first priority for Secret Service. Senator, the Secret Service is in need of dramatic reforms.

They do have a protective detail element that is their priority and also an investigation side. My understanding is that that investigation side is often used to train the protective detailed officers. But clearly, they are not focusing on what their true duty is and it needs to get back onto what they were created for, and that was the protective detail mission and emergency situations that they need to help plan and prepare for and defend. Thank you. This committee made a request to the Secretary of Homeland Security last year, and by the way, also the head of the FBI, to be able to come before this committee and to do what every secretary of Homeland Security has done for the last 20 years, every single year unbroken until last year.

And then the secretary refused to come before this committee in an open session and talk about national threats. Now, the former chairman protested strongly to the Biden administration and DHS. They weren't coming, but they still refused to be able to come. Will you come before this committee and talk about the threats openly so the American people can hear them in a public forum? Yes, Senator. Senator Peters and I discussed this quite a bit in our meeting as well. And I have committed to come and give that bri and to the american people

We need that. Uh let me t we've had with homeland s four years when we ask fo We get, I'll get back to we ask again and again an we get the same statement you on that. Now I can go the command center where the actually get the data in live,

and they have it up on big screens, and they're tracking exactly what's happening on the southern border to the minute. But if I ask for what happened last month, they'll say we're still gathering that data. We're not asking for anything other than what Congress is supposed to get. That's the ability to be able to see data and to have real oversight over DHS. And that has been a failure of this DHS along with multiple other issues on that. When we request the data for basic things like how many special interest aliens

were allowed across the border. If it was last year, we had to find out on our own. It was 70,000 people that were targeted by this administration as a potential national security risk that were not just found at the border, that were released when they were found at the border. 70,000 people just from last year in the country right now that this administration declared at the border, they're a potential national security risk. Now, I know you're not going to do that, but when we ask for the data and for the information, when we say, how's the National Vetting Center working? Do you have the connection between it to be able to screen individuals there? We're just doing our oversight responsibility. You've served in Congress before and did a great job on that and did oversight. We want to still be able

to do the same thing. Will you provide data to this committee so that we can cooperate with you to help? Senator, I will follow the law and be transparent with you and allow you to do the same thing. Will you provide data to this committee so that we can cooperate with you to help? Senator, I will follow the law and be transparent with you and allow you to do the due diligence towards oversight that you are tasked with. I have absolutely no doubt about that, Governor. I've absolutely no doubt. Looking forward to you serving that role. Thank you. Well, congratulations, Governor. You are almost done. We've been through a lot of questions. I think you've handled the questions very well. And there's going to be I'm going to ask a couple of questions. And I think the rank members of you and I think will be done very shortly. I think a lot of Americans, including some conservatives, misunderstand the First Amendment.

They think the First Amendment says that Facebook has to publish my opinion or the Wall Street Journal has to publish my opinion or we need to force them to be fair. That's not what the First Amendment's about at all. The First Amendment really doesn't apply to telling private companies what we can or cannot say. YouTube censored me and I despise their policy. They actually took down speeches I made on the floor. But really, I don't have a legal recourse other than I can complain about you two being unfair and not hosting, you know, both sides of an issue. However, with the government, though, there is a rule. The First Amendment specifically says Congress shall pass no law banning or abridging speech. And this is what really got us worried about, you know, what not only the FBI was doing, but the Department of

Homeland Security actually meeting with these companies on a weekly basis. And imagine the chilling effect of this. Imagine that, you know, there are cameras here, that they're going to end their filming of this interview and then decide, well, you know, what she said or what he said really was misinformation and we should edit that out. Can you imagine? You know, it's just hard for me to imagine that the media has not, which once defended the First Amendment, hasn't been in more of an uproar of the government meeting with the media to decide things.

Some of this we didn't know. And then Elon Musk bought Twitter. People ask him, they said, you've paid $44 billion for Twitter. Isn't that too much? And he said, I paid $44 billion to defend free speech. And it's been an amazing service, not only to open up the forum to more viewpoints, but to point out what the government was doing. In this last week, we heard from Mark Zuckerberg, who said that the pushiness, the coerciveness of government meeting with them was unprecedented, that they pushed back. But he also said worse than them just sort of telling him he should restrict speech. They also threatened him. They threatened to come after him through antitrust law. They threatened to remove parts of, you know, Section 230 of the liability protection. Just to imagine this bully nature of government. And I know you're opposed to that, but if you're confirmed and you're in a position of saying we're just no longer sending people to meet with media.

And the way I describe it is to talk about constitutionally protected speech, because some will say, oh, well, what about, pornography or what about child trafficking? Those are illegal. Those are not constitutionally protected speech. You have every ability to meet with that. But for constitutionally protected speech,

will you tell us in America that you will no longer be sending government agents to meet with the media? Yes, Senator, I'll work with you to ensure that civil rights and liberties are protected and that we are not in the misinformation and disinformation space like the current DHS is. The only other thing I would ask on this basis is we will send requests. We sent requests previously, sometimes and often, bipartisan requests for information. The Twitter files, Michael Schellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Barry Weiss, did a great job of showing what was happening in Twitter and how they were cooperating with government. I think the other investigation that needs to occur is who were the people in government they were talking to? Do they still work at DHS? And can we make sure that they're not in a position of authority? And this is not something I'm going to tell you to do. It's just

a request that you have your own investigation, that you have people who work for DHS to say, we are going to look for people who are bringing their political bias to work and trying to influence speech and restrict speech based on their bias and help us in rooting that out and making sure that these people never again have that responsibility. Because I think that I don't think there's ever been anything like this as far as the restriction of speech. And I think the election is largely going to stop until things the other way. But will you help us by looking internally for those who are trying to restrict speech? Senator I look forward to working with you on that mission. I don't have any other questions now but I think Senator Peters and Senator Blumenthal and we'll see how it goes.

We're gonna start with Senator Peters with one more five-minute round. Yeah, I'll be fairly brief. We've had opportunity to talk at length about many issues and again, I appreciate that, Governor. I just want to stress going forward and we've heard a lot of comments here. I think there's been a fair amount of political theater, not as much as I know exists in other committees. And I've always strived and I know ranking member or now chairman Paul share the notion that we want to be a fact based committee and try to find tangible solutions to the tough problems that we face. And data is important. We've heard a lot of numbers being thrown around here, and I don't have time to go through and challenge those numbers. Some of them we don't even know where they came from. I don't think that's helpful to the very important mission of Confirmed

that you're going to be dealing with. So I hope in the future that we're actually dealing with facts. You've mentioned many times that you do want to deal with facts and real data. And, again, we heard a lot here that's not real data, and we should not operate that way. And if confirmed when we move forward, I'm going to look forward to working with you based on the facts to understand where the real threats are, how we need to appropriate resources to make sure we're meeting those threats. And let's take this hyper-partisanship out of such an important issue of homeland security.

We have way too much partisanship in this country, and it's resulted in a polarization of people here. We've got to come together as this country. We've got to lock arms and understand that we're all proud Americans. We all want to do what's best for the American people and solve the issues that are before us. So in that spirit, and certainly you've communicated that spirit to me, but in that spirit, I hope, if confirmed, that is exactly what you will be bringing to this office.

And let's move away from this toxic political environment that we have in the country and celebrate what's great about our country and the spirit of bringing the American people together. Even to say when you lost. Question before we turn it over to other members. As a member of this committee, as well as the Armed Services Committee, I focused a great deal on the safe integration of drones in our airspace while addressing the growing threats that drones possess. We certainly see what drones are doing in changing the face of warfare,

whether it's in Ukraine and other battlefields around the world. We are very concerned about the weaponization of those drones and what it could mean to the security here in the United States. I've proposed comprehensive legislation to extend authorities beyond just the FBI and DOJ and Homeland Security to local law enforcement. You mentioned in your comments about security for the Super Bowl, which is incredibly important. But we have to remember that that threat exists for all games. In fact, one of the biggest supporters of my legislation is the NFL. In fact, we just had a recent playoff game that was delayed because of drones that flew into that playoff game. We are very concerned that you could have a drone with a grenade or explosive device, which would be absolutely catastrophic. It's absolutely essential that we address this threat. What we're seeing around the world and what we're seeing in daily activities

should be a concern. I think this is just a matter of time. It's not if, it's when. And we need to be on the front end of that. And with that in mind, I want to remind folks that Congress just recently extended critical counter UAS authority, counter drone authority, only for a short time basis for the 12th time. We only do these little tiny short-term extensions and we aren't dealing with the, for the 12th time. We only do these little tiny short-term extensions and we aren't dealing with the problem comprehensively as we should. And those are gonna expire on March 14th,

a very short time from now. And so my question for you, Governor, is if confirmed as DA Secretary, will you commit to working with me and my colleagues to pass durable long-term authorities that will protect this country from what is a real threat in just a matter of time. And I don't want to have a horrible incident occur and people wonder why we didn't take action beforehand. So please address that. Senator, I look forward to working

with you and this committee to address the threats we may face and the usage of drones in this country and in relation to our national security interests and and our homeland security interests so thank you for bringing up the conversation today because it is one of the areas within dhs that we have a responsibility to address in cooperation with congress and my first comments on bringing people together please comment on that oh well thank you i didn't ask that, but it's in my 24 seconds left. I'm looking forward to working with everyone, Republicans and Democrats and everyone else in between that in this country that is focused on keeping America safe and secure for our future. I would just point, Senator, to my background and my history.

When I came to Congress, I worked with Republicans and Democrats on both sides of the aisle on many pieces of legislation and was very happy to do so and focus on priorities on where we could agreement knowing we may disagree on some issues, but there was areas where we could keep the federal government accountable and do due diligence by the people that pay their taxes and get up and go to work every single day as governor as well. I was governor for every single person in the state of South Dakota and they were my number one priority and everyone knew there that it didn't matter if you were Republican or Democrat, that my focus was on them and keeping our state thriving and free. So I look forward to continuing the work that I always have to be coming up with solutions and in a bipartisan

manner. And hopefully my visits to your office and conversations reflected that and my intention on how I would conduct the role as the Department of Homeland Security Secretary. Got a brief follow-up to that. So it's data and facts that we can all agree on that drive our policy and not political theater. Would you agree? Certainly, sir. We need to be addressing facts and information rather than political theater. We also need to speak truth to facts. So I think it's important that we're willing to confront our challenges head on and have those conversations.

And you'll see me back at your office door very soon to continue our work together. Very good. Thank you. And I want to second basically what Senator Peters has said. Like on records requests, I've told him and I plan on it. It's going to be administration of my party. But if he wants records and there are legitimate records, we're going to sign requests together and we'd like to get the records. It also helps, though, and I think senator langford uh mentioned this is you ask a question not you but to the administration or any administration they're like oh yeah we'll

get back to you on it many times i've even asked in advance and i would suggest that we ask in advance together we ask in advance if you're coming in a month we say we want this data be prepared to talk about it and if you are you'll have many more friends on both sides because because what usually happens and that's why I don't like springing the question. If it's a technical question that needs data, we're going to tell you in advance, at least I will, and we want you to come prepared with that. And that goes a long way because really what happens is we get stiff-armed. They say, we'll get back to you, and we have no way to force you really other than we can cut the money off, and nobody ever does that. But you'll have 200,000 people working for you.

By goodness, send your experts out, scour the records. And it is true. I mean, facts are difficult, and sometimes there's different spins on the same set of facts. But I think that will help. On the drones, I think we need more facts. So I'm more than willing to work with a ranking member on doing something on drones, but I don't want every sheriff out there shooting up in the sky and stuff. We've got to figure out, we've got to get the truth about,

do we really have drones everywhere flying all the time? How many of them are planes? How many of them are drones? And let's go through this, and then let's figure out, and then let's talk about how we bring drones down. If we interrupt and collect a lot of cellular signal through that, are we doing it with a warrant? What are we going to do with all the Americans' data that we've collected to take down drones? If we have to take a whole cell tower's worth of data, there's a lot of innocent people's data that's going to be collected in that. Is that being gotten rid of?

So I think there are ways we can get to the right place. Everybody, obviously, nobody wants drones coming down. The only other thing I'd add on drones before I turn it over to Senator Langford is look I'm all for the NFL being protected the Super Bowl being protected. They need to pay. They are a very rich organization. They want drones flying over in New Orleans. I'm all for it. The NFL ought to pay the government if the government's doing it or we ought to have private contractors doing it but they shouldn't just get it for free. Senator Langford. Thank you. Thanks again. As Senator Paul will remember on this, there used to be a public facing website that all Americans could actually get the data, what's happening on the border,

what's actually moving. And then when the numbers got bad, that seemed to disappear. And then we couldn't even get the data anymore. So I look forward to actually finding ways to be able to have everybody has the ability to be able to see some of this data as well on it. There's a reason that the DHS secretary is the very first week of nominations. This is a really important role, and it is a nonpartisan role. It is a national security role, and we're grateful that you stepped into this, but it is important that we actually get you on the task to be able to make sure that it's out there. You mentioned earlier in your testimony that we do have a morale problem at DHS right now. And I think a lot of that is because people that signed up to be federal law enforcement to be able to protect the United States of America have felt like they've been sidelined.

And they've not been able to do their job that they really signed up for. And what I'm hearing from you is you're going to allow them to do their job again. What has been historically true for a long time, the federal law enforcement is there to actually help protect the country and the citizens in those communities that you're going to allow them to do that. And that's helpful. So two quick things that I want to be able to mention on this. One is right now, just in the structure of this, and we can talk about this a different time, but CBP facilities that are along the border are really run by a different entity called GSA. And they're not allowed to be able to do updates on their facilities or to design their facilities.

Somebody who lives 3,000 miles away and who doesn't actually do Border Patrol work, they actually design and oversee their facilities. That's a problem that we've got to be able to fix. So we've worked to be able to give more flexibility to CBP that when they have difficulty and challenges there, they have the ability to be able to make those changes. But I'm not going to ask you to make a commitment to this because this is just one of those detailed areas. But will you commit in the future to working with us that this committee and you can work together to be able to figure out how the folks that are on the field can actually make decisions about the facilities they work in. Yeah, Senator, I commit to working with you on that issue. It's terrific. And then I had a constituent in Oklahoma

that is a hunter, like you are, like I am. He had a bag that he had some additional rounds that were in his bag that were left over from a hunting trip months before. He packed his bag, went on a vacation trip overseas, went through security with his bag. When he got overseas and then left and came back, they scanned his bag and said, you have bullets, you have rounds in your bag. And I think five that were in his bag that he didn't even remember were left over in an outside pocket from a hunting trip before. Well, they promptly put him in jail and held him there and detained him there. Now, we worked through all the process to be able to get him back. My question is, that same bag went through TSA security in my state before it went through security overseas. And so one of the questions that I've asked is, why were those rounds picked up there and not here?

Now, we don't have the full answer to that yet, but that's just one of those TSA questions that we need to have. Americans right now are on planes all over the country and they count on a certain level of security when they go through that process. So in the days ahead, will you work with me to be able to identify what are the challenges that we still face with the screening process and to be able to correct those for the security of all Americans?

Yes, Senator, I will work with you on that. I was surprised TSA didn't come up more today, but that is an area in need of reform as well. And I look forward to working with you there. Look forward to that. Thank you. The government needs a healthy dose of common sense. Look forward to that. Thank you. Government needs a healthy dose of common sense. You know, bullets in your bag. I had a guy with bullets in the back of his pickup truck coming back from Mexico. We arrested him and took his truck. And only because the Institute of Justice fought for him for three years that he had his truck back. I mean, that's

crazy, the things we do. Let's have some common sense. And hopefully someone overseeing it will allow that. Senator Blumenthal, you're going to finish this up. Thank you, Chairman Paul. I'm the last of your questioners, so that means I get unlimited amounts of time. OK. Not really. OK. All right.

Gone. Not even close. I want to sort of continue the emphasis on bipartisanship and most especially on immigration reform. What this nation needs is comprehensive immigration reform. We know about the need for more H-1B visas and other kinds of extensions of the visa program that enable the United States to have more workers that are desperately needed in certain areas of our country. We know that there has to be better border security generally. We know we need to provide some kind of path to earn citizenship for a lot of the undocumented people in this country. And we know it's possible

because we did it in 2013. The United States Senate, as you will recall, passed a comprehensive immigration reform measure. Overwhelmingly, it was bipartisan. I was proud to be a part of it going through the Judiciary Committee, but obviously it will involve homeland security and i hope that we can continue as senator langford was a part of the effort in the last session to expand on those efforts and move forward on a bipartisan basis toward bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform um i want to talk to you a little bit about domestic terrorism, which we discussed during my previous round, and I know you've discussed it afterward, including not just migrant crime and radicalization by ISIS, which are real and present problems. I also want to ask you about domestic

terrorism events unrelated to groups outside our borders we've seen a rise in anti-semitism in this country it has spiked beyond any prediction yeah and I want to know of your concern with anti-semitist racist events charlottesville buffalo pittsburgh there's a shorthand for these violent terrorist acts against people in the united states yes senator i'm very concerned about what we've seen in this country as far as anti-semitic violence that has happened. In fact, last year during our legislative session, I brought legislation to more clearly define it so that we could fight it in our home state. And I'm hopeful I can work with you to continue to do what we can to make sure that we are addressing this rising threat and not facilitating it in

this country. And I just want to make sure that when you say we're protecting Americans against terrorism, that we're protecting all Americans, including people in mosques, in churches, in synagogues, people regardless of their worship, their race, their background. We need to protect all Americans from anti-Semitism, racism, Islamophobia. I hope you'll commit to that effort. Yes, correct. Thank you, Senator, and I look forward to working with you to do that. In my closing minute and a half, I just want to call your attention to an effort that I've led to help reunite children with their parents, children who were separated as a result of the so-called family separation policy in the last administration.

Here we go. I have introduced a measure called keep Families Together, not only to limit separation of families at or near ports of entry, but also the Families Belong Together Act for several Congresses to help bring the children, the kids who were victims of this policy and who still are not big back with their parents. I hope that you will support that kind of effort. Senator, the Trump administration never had a family separation policy. They had a zero tolerance policy, which said that our laws would be followed. What I'm alarmed by is the over 300,000 children that went missing during the Biden administration. And when we talk about children and what they're potentially facing as far as victimization in this country and the trafficking that's going on, this administration's lack of desire to find out where those children are, what they may be going through is alarming to me. So I want to stop that.

Because my time is expiring, I'm just going to interrupt again with apologies to say, let's put aside. Well, I can't put aside 340,000 children. Let's put aside what happened in the past. There are still 1,000 children who are separated and waiting to be reunited. I'd like your commitment that you're going to continue the effort to reunite them with their parents. Senator, keeping families together is critically important to me and to this country. I'm concerned about Lake and Riley's family, that they no longer have her. I'm concerned about the fact that we have people in this country that

don't know where their children are or people in other countries who sent their children here and they've been lost by this administration. So yes yes my focus will be to keep families together we will uphold our law and we'll make sure that we're doing everything we can to keep our children safe from the trafficking and the drug epidemic that's hit this country i'm going to end on an optimistic note and say i take that as a yes thank you you, Mr. Chairman. MR. Thank you for your testimony. The nominee has filed responses to biographical and financial questionnaires, answered pre-hearing questions submitted by the committee, and had their financial statements reviewed by the Office of Government Ethics. Without objection, this information will be part of the hearing record with the exception

of the financial data, which are on file and available for public inspection in the committee offices. The hearing will remain open until 5 p.m. today, Friday, January 17th for the submission of statements and questions for the record. This hearing is adjourned. Boom. Okay. All right. Here we go. Good job, man. That was relatively efficient. Only two and a half hours life. On the nose, in fact. So well done, Rand Paul. Ladies and gentlemen, a massively important hearing there, talking about everything from government censorship to flying in criminal aliens in the dark of night to Trump assassinations

to using an app to get into the country. Oh yeah, I'm just going to come here illegally. Thankfully, the government gave me an app so you just walk in. It's great. I actually, it's like, we do our best here to obviously know the subject matter that we're talking about,

but the amount of absolute dumbass policies that are currently installed in the Department of Homeland Security is gobsmacking. Have you heard of stupider policies? Have you ever considered how dumb it is that we have an app that says, here, just log in to be a criminal alien, then we'll fly you into the middle of the country, put you all in Springfield, Ohio to eat the cats and Dogs. Still a great song. Banger. Should have been number one on the hits list. But I think Chrissy Noem did a great job.

Obviously, I checked the comment section. There's some people who don't like the way that Chrissy Noem treats dogs. There's some people who don't like some of Chrissy Noem's policies. As we stated very quickly before we jumped in here, we find that this is a moment for unity. We are very thankful for the giant map in our studio that shows the electoral results of the 2024 election. And you cannot win without unity. You're going to disagree with me. You're going to disagree with me because I'm a sinner, because I've made mistakes, so on and so forth, right?

Like, this isn't about being perfect people. You're going to disagree with RFK and Tulsi Gabbard. They were literally Democrats seconds ago. Take a note from Donald Trump, and I'm going to like, I've been, I'm not sure if I'm watching this too closely or not, but I've been seeing a lot of people be bigger men. And I really respect that. And the small people are in the fraud. The frauds are being exposed right now. The fraudulence is being exposed and it's happening in real time. And there's these little sad cretins who just keep trying to tear MAGA apart. And so I don't want to be part of it. I don't. You even saw me complimenting John Thune on the stream today. Come on, people. Look at the way that Trump's behaving. And that's going to show you the projection for the next couple of years in this country.

Trump is inviting senators who voted to impeach him down to Mar-a-Lago to have dinner with him. Trump's inviting tech barons, billionaires who de-platformed him to Mar-a-Lago. It's like hang out. They're going down there. He's having them all for dinner. Jeff Bezos de-platformed Trump. Jeff Bezos de-platformed Parler. Remember that?

Zuckerberg. President Trump is behaving like an absolute and total gentleman when sitting next to Barack Obama. Staring down. Like, have you ever had to do that? Trump is behaving like an absolute and total gentleman when sitting next to Barack Obama, staring down at him. Like, have you ever had to do that? Have you ever been deplatformed at such scale? Have you ever been voted for impeachment? Have you ever sat next to a guy that was trying to put you and your family in prison for the next 400 years?

Somebody who probably chuckled when a part of your ear got blown off with an assassin's bullet. President Trump's done that. The magnanimity is contagious. And so we're going to try and do our very best on this program to just lock in and win. It's amazing what happens when you have these great victories. You have this splintering and this atomization

of the actual movement that got you there. And we're going to do our best, like hold the sides down, okay? We're bringing in a lot of new guests. We're gonna bring on a lot of people. We're gonna make sure that people have a voice to speak freely and that we can exchange ideas on this program.

We're not gonna be scared of that. Not gonna be sniveling little hall monitors. Like I'm just disgusted at watching the people who are trying to break the movement apart. But lucky for us, ladies and gentlemen, we have the truth on our side. And lucky for us also,

boom! Shaka! Laka! Three days! Are you ready? Three days! I have to report to you that we will be live for some of Donald Trump's... Funny hair today. Just kind of like, you know, got dad hair.

Got dad hair. Kids are jumping all over me. We will be live for Donald Trump's rally on Sunday. We're going to be live for all of the inauguration festivities. We're going to have a team on the ground there. And I am on baby watch.

As you know, my wife is 39 weeks. She's full term. So we're waiting. We've had all of our kids naturally. So no induction for us. My wife's a nurse. She don't like that. So we're going to roll with it the way that God intended.

So there we go. What's this? Inauguration will be indoors due to temperatures. Whoa, really? Is that been confirmed? Did ALX send this? ALX sent that. Wow, so breaking news about the inauguration it's now

going to be indoors due to extremely cold temperatures in dc that's a shocker i've never seen that in my life inauguration indoors breaking news that sucks i don't want to be listen okay so we were looking at the phones the other day i don't want people to listen, okay, so we were looking at the phones the other day. I don't want people to freeze to death. It's going to be like 10 degrees in D.C. And 10 degrees in D.C. is colder than other places. And you're going to say, shut up, you're dumb. Okay, fine. You have a right to say that, by the way.

We're pro-free speech here. We're pro-getting roasted. I'm happy to be roasted. It's colder in D.C. Now, I've lived in D.C. and I've lived in a landlocked state, Iowa. All right. Not too far off from South Dakota.

In D.C., it's colder because there's all this. It's surrounded by water. And there's all this frozen moisture everywhere. And all the water freezes and it makes the wind and it makes the cold just like rip it's different than the cold that comes off like a cornfield or a soybean field or that sort of like rolls off a mountainside right if you're in colorado right or if you're in the plains it's different than that the cold and easy when it gets this cold in dc There's like this really bone chilling cold, this dark gray that like, that like seeps

in. And it's like, it's just like when you have wet socks cold, how it gets into your bones. I've lived in DC for 15 years. So I know of what I speak. And, uh, this is, uh, I mean, I was looking at the weather. I'm like, I've never seen it that cold in D.C. Never. I've seen blizzards in D.C. This is really cold. I've never seen a move, an inauguration indoors, ALX. Has that ever happened before?

Due to dangerously cold temperatures expected on Monday, President Trump's inauguration is moving indoors, sources say. Expects Trump and Vance to be sworn in inside of the Capitol Rotunda. So will there even be the crowds outside? That kind of sucks because you won't get that epic shot, right, of all the crowds and all the, you know, beautiful off into the distance audience percolating onto the horizon. And Trump up there at the epic dais. Will he be giving a speech? I guess we'll see.

Keep me updated on this. This is very, very interesting, ladies and gentlemen. So I guess everyone's going to be live streaming. You know what I mean? Like, we'll be live streaming this. I'm on baby watch unless something changes. We have tickets to the inauguration. We have tickets to all the balls and invitations

and all this and that and ding dong, ding dong. Great. It's great. We love it. But obviously you're not a man if you miss the birth of your child. Like I'm not gonna miss the birth of my kid to go hear Mark Zuckerberg apologize to me in person, right? For censoring

our Facebook page. So this is like what we're going to, this is how we're going to lock in unless something changes. We'll just be live, right? We'll be covering these things live. And I have something very fun to show you live right now. Here's video, official video of, official video of Joe Biden's portrait getting chiseled off the wall. Very fun. Ah, yes, very, very fun. So it's happening, ladies and gentlemen.

It's an exciting moment. There it is. See ya. Goodbye. Dusty old dirt bag so we just heard something shocking as the administration is on its way out uh alejandro mayorkas the man who just holds i've never i've never bore you or torture you by playing a mayorkas clip but here here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Mayorkas just told us live on TV during Kristi Noem's confirmation hearing that he was prevented from securing the border, that Joe Biden stopped him from securing the border.

I've never heard anything like this. The rats eat rats. This is why I want unity on our side so badly this is why i will not engage i will not i will not i'm like i'd have to i had to literally lock put on mittens right to stop myself from tweeting to put on like and in handcuffs i will not i will not engage in the drama and the flame wars i won't do it i won't do it oh we'd nuke these people I won't do it. I won't do it. Oh, we'd nuke these people. I won't do it. Unity, ladies and gentlemen, blessed are the peacemakers.

They should be the side that is atomizing right now, not us. So Alejandro Mayorkas, a dagger into the back of Joe Biden on his way out, saying Biden stopped me from securing the border. He's a criminal. Let's go. Mr. Secretary, do you not put the put the politics of the election aside if you want? Do you not look at the immigration issue in this country and what has transpired over the last four years, given the number of people coming into this country illegally, given the firestorm that this has created, the national dialogue about it, given some of the efforts, frankly, by the administration,

especially early on, to be more lenient than they have been? Do you think none of those things, if you could go back, you would do differently? Look, Andrew, yes, and you have to understand something, and this is not specific to government, but to any large organization, including a government administration. People have different views on what the correct policies should be, what the correct operational measures should be. Those disagreements, those different views are voiced. Decisions are made. And then everyone marches in unity together.

That is the nature of a large organization. And the government is no different. But just so I'm clear, are you suggesting your own personal views about how to operate this were at odds or there was a distinction between your your personal approach and how you would have wanted to do it and how maybe your bosses wanted to do it? I don't want to get into the deliberative process. We're one team and it's one effort. But there's this is not a revolutionary concept that there are disparate views when one has many people involved in the decision making process. They're trying to prevent criminal charges is what's going to happen here. They're going to prevent they're doing their best because they know that they're all going to be investigated. The guy looks terrible, by the way.

Mayorkas looks pale, peaked. They're trying to prevent criminal charges is what's going to happen here. So they're all going to go run. They're all going to go run for cover. And they're all going to turn on each other. It's going to be remarkable. Obviously, you've seen how scared they are of Kash Patel. Every question is about Kash Patel.

Pam Bondi is sitting there for seven hours, like 25 Kash Patel questions. Pete Hegseth gets Kash Patel questions. Democrat senators are taking a leak in the bathroom. The janitor's in there and they're like, what about Kash Patel? The janitor's like, I just work here, shut up. Speaking of somebody who's got the job, Trump has selected his new secret service director.

Now, I spoke to somebody who's got impeccable access, let's just say, and I knew that, and I've said this on the show, that Dan Bongino wasn't going to be taking this position. I wanted Dan Bongino for this position, but it wasn't in the cards for him, not because he couldn't do it, but because it just doesn't align with where he is in life right now. And that's fine. I mean, that's like, you know, it's a big, obviously a huge, huge job. And it probably gets, you probably get minimum wage, you know, for doing the job. And so Donald Trump has gone with Sean Curran, who is this man. You of course know this man. If you're eagle-eyed like me, you've seen this man beside Trump like everywhere. He's ubiquitous around President Trump.

And he is one of the guys that like immediately jumped into a prone position on stage to protect Donald Trump during the Butler rally assassination attempt. Here's Donald Trump Jr. saying, President Trump will be naming Sean Curran, who heads up his personal detail to be Secret Service Director. Sean is a great patriot and will stop the insanity once and for all.

There's no better person to be in this position. Ladies and gentlemen, I know that this has sparked some internal debate inside of Team Trump. Team unity here. Curran was incredibly vocal about the need to increase Trump's security ahead of the Butler rally. It was denied by the Biden regime. Curran put his life on the line jumping on stage as gunshots rang out. If Trump trusts him with his life, then so do I, many are saying. Here you can see Sean Curran.

If you ever see Trump backstage, there's, again, a ubiquitous presence behind Trump. Trump grew very, very close to Sean. Over the past couple of years, when he was at the white house sean was there and so you can obviously see sean is always in the photo even with some of the more fun selfie photos little known fact did you know that alx designed this hat little known fact that is true fact check true alx designed designed the Gothic MAGA hat. Here we go. There's again, is Sean Curran.

So an absolute consummate pro, and straight up G, somebody who's hopefully going to be reforming the Secret Service for the better. And I wanna talk quickly about why we think that this decision to move indoors may actually be happening. And it's a, it has less to do with the weather than it does to do with something else far more nefarious and dark, ladies and gentlemen, that's the protection of the President of the United States.

Here is what Kristi Noem said, in part, about the failures to protect Donald Trump. Kristi Noem said that it's time for the American people to get access and for the Senate to get access to all of the information that DHS holds on the assassination attempts of Donald Trump. What do we know so far? Nothing. We know nothing. And so it's a good idea, considering the fact that we pay billions of dollars for this,

when the president has to eat a bullet on live TV and then come very close to eating another one and then come very close to more assassination attempts, that we have a secretary of department of Homeland Security, which DHS is under, that is not running some type of evil satanic cabal that wants to get the president killed uh but the president is under threat and did you know that there were new assassination attempts as early as

this week against donald trump we're not trying to cause panic or fear but we think there may actually be something else to them moving the inauguration indoors. Something far more nefarious, something very dark, ladies and gentlemen. OK, very quickly, here's what Kristi Noem said about assassination attempts. As secretary, I will oversee the Secret Service, an agency that is in serious need of reforms. We all saw the threats to President-elect Trump last year and the consequences of failure. Now, that should never happen again.

And I've worked closely with my own gubernatorial protective detail, and I'm familiar with what works and what doesn't work. And I'll bring that experience towards strengthening the Secret Service once again. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, here's what happened. Last week, there were two men, two men, no evidence that they were working together, tried to kill Donald Trump. Donald Trump was at the U.S. Capitol, and the U.S. Capitol Police found one man with machetes and three other knives. So four total sharp knives who was

there to stalk Trump. And then another man was arrested trying to blow up his car to trail a motorcade and to blow up his car. This happened last week. Here's the Capitol police. Amazing how you didn't hear anything about this. Here's the Capitol Police. MR. The biggest threat I think for all of us remains the lone actor. Just in the past week, while President Carter was lying in state, we had two lone actors show up at the Capitol, one trying to bring in knives and a machete, another one who was trying to, what I believe, to disrupt the proceedings by setting their car on fire down in the Peace Circle area. U.S. Capitol Police were able to interdict these folks before they had a chance to do any harm. But that threat of the lone actor remains the biggest justification for us being at this heightened state of alert throughout the next week.

Okay. So here is President Trump standing as Jimmy Carter is lying in state. This is a normal thing for presidents to do. The casket lies there in the middle of the Capitol building. And the president comes and does a prayer. The head of state comes, does a prayer, you know, sort of stands silently there and moves along. Okay, this is something that typically happens. Here we go.

This is what was confiscated from a man entering the Capitol on the same day. This is directly from the Capitol Police on the same day. Now, they have not published subsequent interviews with the guy or testimony,

like what were you planning on doing with all these knives? The guy was there stalking Trump. And then the Capitol Police chief says there's another guy that's trying to light his car on fire, presumably light the gas tank on fire, blow the car up to attack the motorcade.

So there's two more assassination attempts against Donald Trump? Last week? While we were live? Something crazy is going on, ladies and gentlemen. President Trump recently said that he's furious about what's going on with these drones over the United States of America. I just want to put some threads together for you, and we'll just call it good, okay? President Trump has said he's very upset that the federal government has been

lying to you about what these drones actually are. We've covered this with great aplomb over the month of December as these drones just flew. We had law enforcement on, we had mayors on, we have senators on, New Jersey congressmen on, and boom, they were all gone. Just like that. Vanished. Trump asked a couple of hours ago by Peter Doocy, what the hell were these things? A story that kind of disappeared very suddenly. Do you have any idea what ever happened to the drones? What happened to drones? Well, you said that you thought the government knew what was happening with these drones

over New Jersey. There were some by Bedminster. I don't know. They were over Bedminster a lot, so I can imagine. I'm going to give you a report on drones about one day into the administration because I think it's ridiculous that they're not telling you about what's going on with the drones. And it's not only with me. Glenn was telling me today that in Virginia they have drones all over the place. Oh, wow. And then he goes through all the governors who were there and they all

like yeah there's drones attacking us too. All over our military bases, flying everywhere and Trump's like uh better not be a foreign country. We've got a lot of this. Just putting the pieces together. That's what you pay. This is what we do here, right? We don't claim to be high IQ. We don't claim to be geniuses. We're guys who went to community college, but we are alive. We do pay attention and we are capable of pattern recognition.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, regular guest on this program, who we love and we care about and respect, says, I just flew to DCA. That's the airport in DC. Before landing, our pilot announced that there was, that he had to fly in another direction Due to unauthorized drone activity over the White House

So let me make something very clear to you If you want to go to prison, fly your drone over the White House You're not allowed to do that, of course It's like one of the more protected places on the planet Earth You can't fly drones over the White House And if there is a drone flying over the white house it damn well better have like a military call sign everybody knows what's going on okay they do fly into the white house what the hell is that about how are unauthorized drones

flying all over the white house before i get to what tucker says that he found out from an intel agent about what's going on here, just really quickly. Chinese drone giant DJI, Killer Clyde, DJI is like the biggest drone manufacturer in the world, right? Like 70% of all drones operating are DJI drones. Guess what this Chinese drone manufacturer just did? Just removed all the geofencing that protects the white house airports wildfires government buildings ladies and gentlemen uh this is hours before trump's inaugurated outside with hundreds of thousands of people presumably in attendance of the tens of thousands right of people standing

there live dji just says all of our drones can fly wherever they want to we're going to put it in the hands of the drone operators uh mike lee is saying chinese drone maker removes geofencing days before president's inauguration what could possibly go wrong well a lot could go wrong actually because these things are deadly you can make them very dead i mean just a drone flying into you alone can really hurt you obviously you ever try to catch one of these things you slice your finger off. Just in time for the inauguration, DJI removes geofencing, allowing attacks on the U.S. Capitol with drones. MTG saying that they stopped my flight because of drones.

Dan Bongino regularly warning on his program about a drone attack, saying that there are malign forces that are telling him that drone attacks could truly happen and that there's no preparation for it because we've wasted too much time with DEI. I've been warning you about the threat to the inauguration through drones. I've got a lot of sources that have been feeding me information. I am absolutely unconvinced that the Secret Service has a bulletproof, pun absolutely intended, plan for a swarm drone attack in or around the inauguration. I'm not telling you they don't. I'm not telling

you they do. I'm just telling you what sources are telling me that they're not confident. Is it safe or not safe? That's a question on the margin. OK, I'm not sure. I'm just telling you I'm concerned. I really wish people would have reached out. The Biden administration, of course, can't stand me. They have zero interest in anyone with any expertise in this taking an unbiased look at it because they just don't care. But here we go. Zero hedge Chinese drone firm

DGI eliminates the automatic no fly zones one week before Trump's inauguration. Oh! Could this have something to do with Trump moving his inauguration indoors? All the smart people are saying that

Donald Trump's in danger. And Xi Jinping has decided not to attend the inauguration because it's too risky. Wait, what? This is what they say. He says, oh, it's too risky to accept the inauguration. The gesture from Trump. The invitation.

So he's not going to go. Say what now? On over to Tucker. In early December, a Chinese spy satellite randomly got blown out of the sky. Fell to Earth right over middle America. What was that about? Tucker Carlson saying he's cracked the case

on what the hell was happening with New Jersey drones over middle America. What was that about? Tucker Carlson saying he's cracked the case on what the hell was happening with New Jersey drones. And it reflects what some of the best and most trusted members of Congress that came on this program told us that this was a foreign enemy flying sophisticated space age weaponry over America as a show of force.

Level of aggression. That just doesn't seem characteristic of the Chinese. Unless you were, well, of course I agree with you. An intel person told me that this person believed that they were in fact Chinese and that a Chinese satellite

went down, was visible to the naked eye. There were news stories about it. It evaporated, it burned up and that this person told me that was taken down by the u.s government that was a command and control satellite for these drones and the belief was the chinese government was sending the following message we're moving on taiwan and

maybe other things you can't do anything about it okay so you know i have no idea if that's true or not zero yeah i mean i don't know that just doesn't it just i just gotta say it's just it's so aggressive and and also but the other thing is that like you know reckless actually seems really reckless and i mean the chinese have not been seeking confrontations like that for the most part um i don't agree with the end of that clip but i do agree that something's crazy going on i want to tell you that right now what you should do and i'm not here to cause the sound the alarm or say nobody should ever go outside again and you know we're all under attack and everything's unsafe this is not me okay if you knew me during covid you know this is very much not me uh these

things can be psyops but that you heard today actually in the hearing that there are multiple senators being like uh have we got any plans if there's like a drone attack on us you know the biggest drone manufacturer in the world from china just released all their geofencing now drones can literally fly over the white house in the inauguration. Yike, is there any plan to protect us? Yeah, maybe you guys should have been concerned about that instead of the sexuality and skin color of the people you were hiring. Maybe you should have been looking at people

who are like serious adults and not baggage thieves at the airport. Remember that guy? Sam Brinton kept stealing ladies' bags to play dress-up in them? What a... Oh, what have we all lived through? How did we even

survive? And you know what? I think that we have yet to see, actually, the full consequences of the incompetence of this nation. So, ladies and gentlemen, that's why we're... It's funny because we've already recorded on this. This drone thing, this drone attack potential for the inauguration is a real threat.

Does Trump moving the inauguration indoors have something to do with that? Because everybody keeps banging the drum on that issue. Trump's got a lot of enemies, got a lot of enemies, right? Pray for President Trump. This is all we're trying to do. We're trying to like project here. All right. Pray for President Trump. Where were you when you heard that Trump was shot? I know exactly where I was. It's just one of those moments you'll remember forever. Where were you when you heard that Trump was shot? I know exactly where I was It was just one of those moments You'll remember forever Where were you?

You'll remember it forever God had his hand of protection on Trump And through a confluence of miracles Trump won the election And we won on a landslide Smarter people than me Including Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Dan Bongino, have all said they're not going to stop trying to kill him.

And lo and behold, just moments later, there was another assassination attempt and another assassination attempt and another assassination attempt just last week. Pray for Trump. Pray. Now, this is actually the only way to fight the forces of darkness because it's the spiritual forces. They're spiritual forces of darkness. Just really quickly, I want to get to what President Trump said yesterday

that set the internet on fire. Also a Bongino clip. My dog, my dog, damn Bongino. He was on Bongino's radio show, Trump calling in, and he said this about January 6th. He said, we're going to investigate the feds, actually. It he said this about January 6th. He said, we're going to investigate the feds, actually. It's not just about pardoning people. It was about

investigating people like Ray Epps, the scaffolding commander, the people who were cutting the fences around the Capitol, the pipe bomber, and just sort of blew everyone's mind at how knowledgeable Donald Trump is about like the peculiar behaviors of certain individuals who are in the forefront of the January 6th riot. Here we go. I believe that is the case. Can we get an answer between you, Pam Bondi, and hopefully Kash Patel on who this person is and have the FBI open the books? Because I believe this is a huge scandal and a massive cover-up. I think we will, and I think we're going to find out about Ray Epps, and I think we're going to find out about Scaffold Man. You know who Scaffold Man is, right?

The guy who's screaming to everybody, go into the building, go into the building. We're going to find out who Scaffold Man is, and we're going to find out some other things. And I think you're going to be very happy with what I do with respect I call them the J6 hostages because I consider them hostages you know they did a beautiful

song and they asked what I do the words not the singing the words that song went to number one for so long it was beating out Taylor Swift I'm not a fan of Taylor Swift but that's okay and everybody else beating beating them all out for a long

time and it was pretty amazing ladies and gentlemen this is part of the reason why I'm so part of the reason why you need to just pray for Trump. Do you know what he speaks there? Here's what we do know. We do know that Ray Epps is the only individual that we have on camera for days saying that everybody who's there for President Trump's rally needs to go into the Capitol. Ray Epps says on camera, we need to storm the Capitol. I am quoting directly Ray Epps. I was at January. I was there during the speech. I got invited to the speech. It's a historic speech. I go there and I sit in the speech. I sat right next to Terrence Williams, Scott Pressler, and Alex Jones because Trump was

giving a speech. I didn't go to the Capitol, so I can't report to you on that, but I can tell you this, that no one, and I mean no one, and I talked with people and I stopped there and chatted with like bunches of people, right? It was like, so you've never seen so many MAGA in Washington, DC. No one was saying go into the Capitol. And if somebody said go into the Capitol, everyone would've been like, boo, what is wrong with you? Fed, Fed, Fed, they literally did this to ramps.

No one was saying that. I can tell you from personal experience, somebody walked by what had to be 10 000 people that day there's not a single person saying that so perhaps so why exactly why it should be nice to like actually know that scaffolding commander of course is the individual with a megaphone who stood up atop a scaffold which is intended for the press for the inauguration of the, this was Joe Biden's, which would be Joe Biden's inauguration. He stood up there with a megaphone and he was like giving militarized orders for people, right?

Like command them how to get into the building. The hell was that guy doing? Why was he there? What's going on with that guy? Donald Trump, when asked, says, yeah, there are like dozens, there are dozens of people from the FBI that were in the crowd that day. And that's according to the FBI.

Wait till Cash Patel gets in there and actually shows us what's going on. So there are people, and this is what he says, who we have to find out about who exactly was in there because there are people that did very bad things and were not prosecuted. He's right. But this is why you need to pray for President Trump. This is why you got to pray for President Trump.

President Trump posted. Oh, this is bad quality. President Trump posted about how he's moved his inauguration indoors. This has just happened. I mean, I guess we can, I can make it out. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. Klein, feel free to pop it up if you get a better quality here. January 20th cannot come fast enough.

Everybody, even those who initially opposed the victory of Donald Trump and Trump administration, just want it to happen. It's my obligation to protect the people of this country. Before we even begin, we have to think about the inauguration itself. The weather forecast in Washington, D.C. is a wind chill factor. Could take temperatures to severe record lows. This is an arctic blast sweeping the country. I don't want to see people hurt or injured in any way.

This is dangerous conditions. So he mentions the canines, the first responders. Therefore, I have ordered the inauguration address, in addition to prayers and other speeches, to be delivered at the United States Capitol Rotunda, as it was used by Ronald Reagan in 1985, also because of very cold weather. The various dignitaries and guests

will be brought into the Capitol. This will be a very beautiful experience for all, especially a large TV audience. So, looks like we did make the right call for live streaming, because you just won't be able to watch this live. I'm sorry. I know ALX is going to be there. Sorry, ALX. ALX sitting there, crying into his gothic MAGA hat. That's okay. The tears make it sweeter. We will open Capital One Arena on Monday for live

viewing of this historic event. Okay, so people can go into the arena and to host the Capital Presidential Parade. Okay. I will join the crowd at Capital One after my swearing in. Okay, very interesting. So this is the sports arena that's in downtown Washington, D.C. All other events will remain the same, including the victory rally at Capital One Arena on Sunday and the inaugural balls on Monday evening. Everybody will be safe, everybody will be happy, and we'll make America great again. So big news there, but I think very, like, obviously very logical news.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, let's rock and roll. That is the, that is the news. These are the portraits right here. And this is, uh, your inauguration, your inauguration super station. We will be rocking and rolling. Uh, the tiktok app has been banned that was breaking while we were live during the hearing maybe it means something to you maybe it doesn't uh to me i don't like chinese spyware tiktok was absolutely chinese spyware i don't like chinese uh being able to manipulate algorithms in our country so prima facie i'm like yep good ban it like cause it to be sold to an american company this is too important and obviously duh china does this to us china doesn't allow tick tock in china just show you what a poison

that app is so um like i'm i'm i'm about it i'm about it all the right people are mad about it so i'm about it trump's saying uh my decision tick tock will be made in the not too distant future uh but i have time to review the situation. Okay, ladies and gentlemen. I just wanted to scroll down here to one other piece of information. We sort of feted out to you because we are very close with Trump camps and very close with Vivek camps. The information that we had, which is that Donald Trump was very much advocating for Vivek Ramaswamy to become the next senator from Ohio. But unfortunately, the and I think I think that would have been a really good position for Vivek.

But unfortunately, Vivek has not been selected for that by Governor Mike DeWine. Governor Mike DeWine, I think, is what you could call a squish. And he has selected sort of a hand-picked successor here. His lieutenant governor, John Houston, will be the next senator from Ohio taking J.D. Vance's seat. You can see here in this article from NBC News. This announcement is supposed to come actually officially in the next hour. We have no interest in actually carrying that live. But that is the breaking news.

What does that set Vivek up for? Well, let me tell you. It says Vivek up for running for governor in two years in Ohio. And I can tell you as a matter of fact, that is definitely what Vivek wants to do. So this is this is what the breaking news all this breaking news happening while we were live. Yeah, go live for two hours you missed like the entire the entire world changes suddenly. So here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, and this is the breaking news I'm going to check with my product. I'm gonna check in with my

production team. Okay, all right, lock and load. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the breaking news. I'm going to check in with my production team. Okay, all right, lock and load. Ladies and gentlemen, as we will be, as we are going to be having a digital inauguration at this point, and certainly our next guest, who served as a deputy press secretary for president trump uh hogan gidley can tell you um this is the most powerful medium actually that there is and as much as you love a good old-fashioned proper inauguration ceremony uh is probably the wisest move

considering the security failures and functionalities of our enemies, also including the weather. But ladies and gentlemen, if you stream this program, and if you are watching on your phone, and if you will be watching the inauguration on your phone, I hope it's a Patriot Mobile phone. Patriot Mobile is the cell phone that powers our program. It is a cell phone that powers free speech the American way and obviously the capacity to unwoke your cell phone company. There's a lot of companies that have been canceling their DEI programs and things like that. Haven't heard any of that from Verizon or AT&T. No, no, no, ladies and gentlemen. Patriot Mobile is a non-woke cell phone company.

I talk about it all the time. We love them. They do power our program and when i am out from when i whence i am out from the uh excitement that is expecting a new baby that could come at any time i literally sit here at all times i don't know i'm sure if you can see my patriot mobile phone right here there it is literally sitting here plugged in on my desk waiting for the call because it could literally happen. It happened actually live during the show. We went to the hospital like two days ago.

Live during the show. So it is what it is, ladies and gentlemen. New Johnson baby at any time. And I'll be using my Patriot mobile phone to get that notification. Right now you can go to patriotmobile.com slash Benny or call 972-PATRIOT to get a free month of service with the offer code Benny.

Switch to Patriot mobile today to defend freedom with every single call and text 972-PATRIOT. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, the producer is saying baby is waiting for Trump. Anna Polina Luna texted me last night saying, you better name your kid Don. What do you think about that? If we have an inauguration baby, are we required? Am I required to name my fourth child Don?

Not sure, but I'll take baby name requests, ladies and gentlemen, in the comment section. Maybe, maybe. Oh, Baron. Okay. Baron's a great name Barron, okay. Barron's a great name, okay? Don't, Barron's a great name, all right? Barron is a fantastic name. Ladies and gentlemen, Hogan Gidley is ready to rock on the program. Deputy Press Secretary for Donald Trump in term number one. He's been ushering and shepherding, they call it,

many of Trump's nominees through their hearing meetings. You will see him standing aside and striding aside. Everyone from Cash Patel, Pam Bondi, Christie Noem. And he must be in a very, very good mood right now based on how these hearings are going. Joining us live, Hogan Gidley. so the chat is now requiring that i name my new child lebaron johnson what do you think about that hogan i mean hogan's a great name it is a great name i think this is way older than your audience but i'm a big seinfeld guy and it was an episode where George wanted to name his kid Seven after Mickey Mantle.

You should name your kid 47. How about that? How about that? Just use the number. I love that episode. There you go. We are massive Seinfeld fans on here, and I know it does date us, but actually, you know what? It doesn't because Seinfeld is like the number one streaming show on Netflix every single year. This is like

continues to be the number one streaming show. So it's reaching a whole day. It's like timeless comedy. And yes, you're right. The seven episode, May 47. Okay. Very good. There you go. That's my advice. Okay. So Hogan, uh, your advice, maybe you were the one who advised president Trump to move his inauguration indoors. Can you talk us through that, obviously? And then I want to get to the hearing stuff. Well, I wasn't the one who advised him of that. But listen, you're talking about some security risks.

I think we're all worried about that. I mean, it's not like far-fetched to think someone would try to assassinate him for a third time. We've already had two warnings here, and paying attention to that is very wise. I was concerned the whole time. Is there a parade? And if so, does he have like a bulletproof Popemobile? I don't know. When he goes out to speak, is he going to be behind or in some type of bulletproof glass or cage? I didn't understand that. But now when you find out the temperature is going to be around 12 degrees, a lot of people were concerned. And I think Trump understands, as you know, at the end of the day, he really is a host. He wants you to enjoy your time around him, enjoy your time at his properties.

And I think he took a look at the weather and went, you know what, let's just move it inside. By the way, he's loaded up his calendar with so many events. It's not like you're going to have fewer than one chance to see him. You've got many opportunities now with the rally and other things. So he understands what the crowd wants to see. Monday can't come soon enough. I mean, obviously, we've got to get this guy sworn in. I'm so excited for what he's going to usher into this great republic that has been so destroyed for the last four. But I think moving inside, probably the right move. I want to be outside in the cold and watch it. But hey, any way I can see this man get inaugurated,

get sworn into office, I'm here for it. So the security threats that have been talked about by Bongino, that have been talked about by various others, one, pure incompetency from the Secret Service, we've seen on many different occasions, including and not up to and not limited to just last week when a dude with three knives and a machete got into the United States Capitol when Trump was there. Trump was going to be there for Jimmy Carter

who was lying in state. And then there was a car bomb outside that the Capitol Police briefed everybody on that. I think they're trying best to cause people to not panic, but it does seem unsafe. DJI, the biggest drone manufacturer in the world, Chinese drone company, just released all their geofencing.

So you can fly drones right up and over the White House now. You can fly them up and around the Capitol. And way smarter people than us, with better sources than us, are saying this is dangerous. Like, we need to take precautions for this. We just listened to Kristi Noem talk a little bit about that. So you're saying that those threats are very real, Hogan. Yeah, I'm concerned about it. And knowing what I

know, having worked in the White House, listen, that roof is covered with snipers and anti-terrorism, you know, weapons, weapons, etc. And so you'd think anytime any object came close to the White House that wasn't authorized, it would be taken out immediately with no questions asked. So that does make me a little nervous. Again, more information for the American people is better. Two words, I think, are going to be prominent in a Trump term, and that's transparency. Yes, we want to know what's happening. Yeah, Hillary has her 30 term. And that's transparency. Yes, we want to know what's happening. Yeah, Hillary has her 30,000 emails that she gets rid of, et cetera, et cetera. But then accountability. Once you find out she has them, what are you going to do about it?

Same thing applies to drones or any of these other deep state actors, et cetera, who continue to try and work and cobble together groups to stop the duly elected president and his agenda from moving forward. But in and around this complex, I can promise you when you have someone like Kristi Noem at DHS, when you have someone like Rubio at State and Pete Hegseth at DOD, not only are they going to get to the bottom of this and let the American people know, they're going to hold people accountable and they're going to stop any such activity that would dare threaten this president. And by the way, this should happen for any president. You don't let drones, unidentified or otherwise, fly over the White House or the Pentagon or any of the CIA headquarters or any place. It's ridiculous and has to be stopped. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy that there

was such lax security at the White House. And since we're on this subject, I just want to get your opinion quickly here. And then I want to talk to hearings. Bro, I've been to the White House a lot of times and you worked at the White House. Sometimes I went at your invitation. Yep. And I had to stand there on a rubber mat with drug-sniffing dogs, doing, you know, really like making sure I don't have drugs,

okay, anywhere on my body. Let's just say, okay, very much. It was like a ditty party. Like making sure, okay, that there was, you know, that I was, that there was nothing left unchecked. Yeah. And so I, you know, luckily I didn't have any drugs

on my body, but like, dude, I wasn't getting into the White House with a bag of cocaine. Right. And nobody was actually. And I've been through that like time and time again, every time I went to the White House. Yo, let me tell you, there was there was no way I was getting in with anything that they didn't want in the White House when you guys were running a very tight ship. Lo and behold,

not only was there one bag of cocaine found at the White House, there were like a bunch of bags of cocaine found at the White House. Secret Service, according to our sources, say there were three baggies that they were able to find. How did that happen, Hogan? You know, there are people in the president's closest bubble that, you know, don't really have to worry or be concerned about the same security that you or I would have to worry about when we went into that building. Some people have a security detail and they can drive right through and there's no there's no worry about that because whoever's inside the package, we call it, you know, has unfettered access to the building or to the president.

They can do those types of things. So who knows? And look, I know this is a lot of speculation on whose cocaine it was, but, you know, you do have somebody who had a known admitted problem with cocaine in and around the White House at that time. That'd be like inviting the Hamburglar to your backyard barbecue and be like, who ate all the hamburgers? Who can figure this out? Or Chris Christie. Yeah, or Chris Christie. It's fair. But, you know, this type of stuff is ridiculous. Now, in fairness, you getting in there was clearly a breach of security.

I still don't know how you got in the building at all. But you managed to slip through somehow. So maybe we didn't need to tighten it up a little bit. But look, I mean, again, the security questions that have been unanswered during this administration have to be answered before Trump takes office or at the very least in the first week, month of when he's there. And I think he's put some people in place that are going to ask those tough questions and make sure these types of attempts don't happen on his life. planning something, they're stopped way early because, again, this nation can't go through something that tragic, that earth shattering. And that starts and stops with strong security measures. And I think they've been lax for a long time, just resting on the fact that people don't think that would ever happen to us. But clearly, with someone like Donald Trump, who missed death on television by a millimeter.

And, you know, I've talked about this many times. I'm sure you have, too. If anybody understands millimeters, it's a golfer. He knows the difference between making a putt, missing a putt, you know, hitting it in the water, in the trap. He understands that because millimeters count. And when I told him that, you could see the gears start turning. he was like you know i'd not thought of it that way it was another little log on the fire for him to realize that god really had spared him in that moment and um you know i think it's it's taught him so much he's coming back into this building benny with

the wisdom the discernment the knowledge of having done this before and now knowing so much more about what the deep state was doing behind his back to try and imprison him and and kick him off the to move quickly with the House and the Senate to get it accomplished because, you know, that time is short because people are going to start running for re-election in the House in 18 months, and that's going to stop things. So he's ready to move forward fast, and the American people deserve it after getting kicked in the teeth for the last four years. Yes, we hear that there's going to be some confirmation votes as soon as January 20th. Monday evening, I hear.

Yeah. Okay. Fantastic. And you've been shepherding some of these nominees. Are you at liberty to tell us which ones and how everything's going? Can you give us like a- I'm helping out with Linda McMahon and the great SBA administrator from the first administration, and Christine Ohm, governor of South Dakota, soon to be leading DHS. And of course, I have friends who are running for a lot of these other, or up for nomination for a lot of these other cabinet posts, and I've been talking to them too, just kind of giving my unsolicited advice whenever we talk. But we've got such a great group. I mean, the start of this, when you started with Pete Hegseth bringing the House, and then Pam Bondi brings the pain,

can you imagine? I mean, the Democrats didn't know what to do, and they're still talking about the same stuff that got them beaten in the House and the Senate and at the White House level. And our folks, usually it's just kind of D.C. decorum of, no, Senator, I will work with you on that. Yes, Senator, I understand that. Uh-uh, not with Pam Bondi. The Biden administration is that they really went back and pushed back at senators. And I love that part of it.

I thought it was great. Yeah, it's so different from the last round because the last round it was them getting just bullied and getting pushed around. No more. And by the left's narratives. Oh, Jeff Sessions, you once drank Smirnoff. You can't oversee Russiagate. And he says, oh, yeah, yes, thank you, Daddy. Can I have some more?

It's so wonderful to see actually some balls. It really is. Listen, take away the executive orders. Change all the policies Trump did, okay? Whatever you want to do. Trump gave us something, I think, that is here to stay, and that is he said it's okay to fight back. You don't have to take their narrative.

You don't have to play their game. You don't have to listen to all the brilliant minds inside the Beltway. You can say, uh-uh, I think I'm going to fight this one. And you've seen that with these nominees, starting with Pete, as I said, did a great job. Pam, Lee Zeldin, Ratcliffe, the rest of it. It's going to be an outstanding group of folks who not only have the knowledge and wisdom and the records to do these jobs really well. They also have something Donald Trump loves, and he did this on purpose. They're good on TV.

So you can't mess with them in the ways that these senators are trying to mess with them and expect not to get a backslap across the face, which is exactly what's been happening in these hearings. Adam Schiff, welcome to the Senate, pal. Yeah, no joke. This is why you were censured, welcome to the Senate, pal. Yeah, no joke. This is why you were censured, you snake. What a clown. So there is one other hearing that hasn't been scheduled yet.

It's Kash Patel. Yet you'd assume that it was Kash Patel in every one of these hearings because the Democrats can't stop talking about him. Is Kash Patel in the room with us right now? And show us on the doll where Kash Patel, you know, uh it was getting like quite quite a few questions yeah about cash when's that gonna uh when's that gonna happen how do you think the cash tell hearings are gonna go I'm not sure and cash is a friend of mine like he is of yours they are prepping him hard ready to get after it and I think it's going to be one of the most contentious hearings of all. He knows

the entity. He knows what these issues are that face Americans because he's been in those rooms. He's been in those meetings. He's seen the paperwork. He's seen the documentation. And that terrifies the left. It terrifies the media because their fiefdoms that they've built for decades in this town are all in danger of someone coming back and pulling back the curtain or whatever cliche you want to use and letting the American people see it. But remember those two words, transparency, but also accountability. Cash is going to hold people accountable. There's no enemies list, but if you have done the wrong thing, if you violated the law, it's time someone pay for that.

And Cash has such a wealth and depth of knowledge about the post for which he's been nominated. And I'm telling you, that dude is going to be outstanding over at FBI. I can't wait for it. All right. So if we're going to have who is going to get votes on January 20 to close us out here, Hogan, what can we expect? Hegseth, Secretary of State, Bondi? I'm fairly certain, based on some rumblings around the Capitol, that Hegseth, Rubio, potentially Bondi and Noem, because they want the legal and the defense pieces put in place immediately.

But as I understand it, with the rules that go on, Schumer's going to have to allow for more than just like two on day one. So there's some wrangling going on now, some pressure being put on the powers that be in the Senate to say, look, we got all kinds of threats floating around. We got drones. We got people coming across the border killing our american citizens etc etc we need some posts filled on day one and uh hopefully they get that gets done all right uh which which are you excited to hear the village people is that is that who you're most excited about i gotta i got i'm gonna hear dirks bentley we got carrie underwood we got some good ones man i'm excited i'm saying it's a party kid rock come on man yeah that's that that's exactly right kid rock going hard on michelle obama last night being like all that yeah being like good for you

you know that's exactly the attitude uh uh unity a lot of electric a lot of electric energy very exciting and uh man it's good to be back h Hogan. We are so back, Ben. This is going to be epic and being a small part of the first administration was a blessing to me and getting to watch him come back the way he did. He didn't just come back, he roared back. This was the most incredible thing

I've ever seen in American politics and I don't think it's ever going to be duplicated again. Nobody can do what Donald Trump did or has done, and no one can do what Donald Trump is about to accomplish either. I can't wait to see it. I think the country deserves it. We're waiting for it, and Monday cannot come soon enough. Ladies and gentlemen, Jay Hogan Gidley. Go give him a follow on X. 77,000 Americans. Can't be wrong. We're on our way to 100,000 for Hogan. Thank you. Yes. And he's a man who's been fighting for President Trump for nigh on a decade at least now.

And so right back into those well-worn boots. The great Hogan Gidley. Godspeed, sir. Thanks, Benny. Have a good one. Lots of news. Lots of news. We love the news, ladies and gentlemen. So much happening.

The inauguration outdoors versus indoors. You know what? It is what it is. You know? It is what it is. You know? It is what it is! As they say. C'est la vie. I mean, it's kind of like a, you know,

it's going to be a different, it's obviously going to be a different vibe, right? Because you're going to have... Here, this is a great, thank you. Thank you, Killer Klein. So you're going to have like sort of a vibe like this, where this was Reagan inside of the U.S. Capitol there because it was very cold, and he's getting inaugurated for the second time.

Trump's getting inaugurated for the second time, so he gives a speech inside of the Capitol. The one thing that you're missing with this is obviously not, I think, the subject of the speech, right, and the dignitaries, and generally most of it stays the same. The difference is you're not going to have the roaring crowd, right? And the dignitaries and generally most of it stays the same. The difference is you're not going to have the roaring crowd, right? You're not going to have these beautiful panoramic crowd shots with thousands and thousands of Americans that are there to watch President Trump give a speech live as his voice booms over the National Mall.

That's what I think you're going to be missing. So, yeah, there, that's the, this is the last Trump inauguration. That's what you're, you know, that's, it's going to be, yeah, it's just going to be a more of a, more of a synthetic, more of a digital vibe, right? You're going to miss this shot, sadly. I have a feeling that people will still show up probably show up outside of the capital right but trump's directing everybody to capital one arena to go inside of an arena does bother us a little bit i'm just saying it bothers me a little bit because we've been reporting on these drone attacks and many people are saying that there's an imminent drone attack or at the very least there's a potential for one so it's scary to us and large

gatherings of people obviously you could do more damage in in that way uh so we'll see ladies and gentlemen we'll see we'll be live for you and we'll be live with you and we'll be locked and loaded and ready to prepare ladies and gentlemen our, our Ask Benny Anything segment every single Friday. Here we go from Richard Waring. You need to have a meme channel or post your memes. I've been looking all day for the camel Gulf of America. Put your show at the end and I would love to see them all day.

You hear him, Jerry? You hear Richard Jerry? Jerry's supposed to be posting these memes. We do get some up. We had one up for Pam Bondi that went viral yesterday. That was so fun. Can we get that loaded?

Unless that's in the closer. But yes, you're exactly right, Richard. We need to do a better job of categorizing our memes. You're exactly right. Carol Prentice says, how effective has calling our senators and representatives been? It's been very effective. You've literally seen us be able to get Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, all of them from like hard no's in the Senate to like they're going to pass. You remember Pete Hegseth? Pete Hegseth has the votes now.

He was dead on arrival a month ago. And that's what calling our senators does. This is the power of Oscar. Well, thank you for the question. Juiced Griffin says, are you tired of so much winning? Never. I will never be tired of so much winning? Never. I will never be tired of so much winning.

We won't tire, ladies and gentlemen, because we have the correct motivation. Motivation is our family, our children, and raising our family in a peaceful and happy America. And ensuring that we have the kind of country that you want to leave to your children. That's what an immoral generation does. An immoral generation, a broken generation, decides to surrender and to leave a place, worse off, to destroy the place and let the oar cords in. No, ladies and gentlemen, we will draw the line, okay? If you are a member, and I encourage you to become one if you support what we're doing, you can go to

bennyjohnson.com and sign up for the Benny Brigade. Please ask a question. Please leave a question. You can submit a question, ladies and gentlemen, on our website at bennyjohnson.com. Our verse of the day. For the Lord your God is one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies and give you victory. Deuteronomy 24. The Lord your God fights for you against your enemies and gives you victory. Oh, man, we've seen a lot of that this year. Boy, is that ever the truest verse ever?

Is that ever the truest verse written there? The capacity to fight is reserved, quite frankly, for those who have their faith in God and who understand which battles to actually fight. And it's an important strategy as you move forward and understanding that God's got us. And you've got to listen. You've got to have a profundity to what you're doing. You must be locked in. And you feel this, there's like a flow state that happens, right?

When you are locked in, that like pushes you in the right direction. Ladies and gentlemen, God is the conqueror. He is the victor. And we fight alongside of you to defend this great nation, defend this country, to ensure that we have days like we're going to have on Monday where we can claim absolute victory and where we can say with one voice, we took this place back.

Do we have the Pam Bondi meme? We do. We do? Was that in the outro or no? Not in the closing. Okay. So here we go this is this one's just for this one's just for this is just for richard here who asked about memes the name of love

Saying do you wanna dance To the rhythm of your heartbeat We could take a chance Leave the only world we know This is the beginning The fire in the unknown Tell me what you're saying Tell me where you wanna go

We can be anything We can be anything It's perfect. It's perfect, ladies and gentlemen. It's our honor and our distinct privilege to do this show for you and have fun while we do it. We are ready to lock in and win. Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy your weekend, inauguration weekend in here, this, the greatest country on earth. It's Benny. See ya. this the greatest country on earth it's Benny see ya

friends join us. We have a spectacle. Thank you for your love and support. I give you the war wolf. billionaire elon musk recently appointed to president trump's cabinet as transportation secretary and border czar, is now shoving... Excuse me. He is rounding up asylum seekers like cattle into his rocket ships. He calls them illegal aliens. The problem is the rockets keep exploding.

The biggest ships in the sea All owned by the oldest kings And their dying legacy Media deal wease So will the Benny show Come to mind The salt from lives for fun Feed the gold and bring the gun

We sail for number one. Soon will the penny show come to mine the salt from lids for fun. Leave the gold and bring the gun. We sail for number one. The biggest ships in the sea. All owned by the oldest king. Former MLB All-Star Sean Casey, a.k.a. The Mayor, keeps hitting it out of the park. Take my 30 years of experience. Take the wisdom and knowledge I've learned from the failures.

When I got sent down my rookie year, all the injuries I had to overcome. Your mind is the most important tool you have in life. Be relentless. Keep charging. It matters how you talk to yourself, how you look at the world. That matters. We talk about that. I don't know. I'm fired up. Baseball's back, and it's going to be incredible. I love it. The Mayor's Office with Sean Casey from Believe.

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