The Daily Signal - 4 Conservative Lawmakers Offer Solutions to Biggest Issues Facing America

Episode Date: February 26, 2022

How can conservatives have a voice in Big Tech? Why is the left working so hard to promote a radical ideology in classrooms across America? How is America doing under President Joe Biden’s leadership? And how should Biden respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?  Offering solutions to such pressing questions are four House Republicans—Ted Budd of North Carolina, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Jim Banks of Indiana, and Ken Buck of Colorado—who join “The Daily Signal Podcast” at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special bonus edition of the Daily Signal podcast. We are still here at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida. And we have so many awesome interviews that we want to share with you all today. Doug, tell us a little bit about them. We have some interviews with some of the most important lawmakers in Congress right now, and they're going to talk to us about the most important issues facing the country. So, Virginia, who are we talking to today? We are talking to Republican Congressman Jim Banks, Ken Buck, Ted Bud, and Scott Perry.

What a lineup. These are phenomenal leaders in our nation today. And we're so excited to share their conversations with you all. We hope you enjoy. Here with me today is Congressman Banks, a representative from Indiana. Thanks so much for being here. Great to be with you. So we'd love to get your take on what's going on in Ukraine right now. We know that Russia has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. What are your thoughts on this? Well, first and foremost, it appears to me at this point that Joe Biden did a head fake yesterday. Unfortunately, he didn't head fake Putin. He had fake the American people. He signed sanctions, but the more that we learn about the sanctions, the more that we learn how much of a joke they are. They actually carve out the energy sector of Russia's economy. So if America is truly serious

about backing off Russia from invading Ukraine and causing this conflict to go any further or removing them from Ukraine to begin with, then why not hit Russia where it counts? We could We could do four things very quickly and easily to cripple Russia's economy. We could sanction their energy dependent economy, which the sanctions don't do. We could remove them from the swift banking system, the international banking system. We could sanction Putin directly, hit him where it hurts, and we could go after the oligarchs around Putin that prop him up. And then the fourth thing that we could do is name Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.

for helping Hezbollah and a lot of our other enemies. And unfortunately, this president, who is so weak in this moment, has refused to do all of those things. And that's why we have this conflict continuing to get worse. And do you think that the way the United States withdrew from Afghanistan played any role in this? Sadly, I do. I really do. I served in Afghanistan. It still makes me sick to my stomach what happened last summer. Truly a debacle that caused so much embarrassment for America on the world's stage.

And make no mistake about it, Putin was waiting for a moment like this. He was waiting for a weak American president who he knew was not going to do anything to cause Putin or Russia harm to invade Ukraine. And that's why he's doing it right now. For four years, we had a strong president who deterred Russia. And keep in mind, for four years, we had a president and Donald Trump who made the world more safe and secure because of his strong American foreign policy. there has not been a single day with Joe Biden in the White House that was more safe than any day of the four years of Donald Trump in the White House. So it's that American weakness expressed by Joe Biden that has invited Putin to invade Ukraine. But that's not the worst of it.

The worst of it is that Chairman Xi and China are watching every move. And Russia is doing everything that they're doing in coordination with China. They both put out a joint statement. And in that joint statement, they said, Ukraine belongs to Russia and Taiwan belongs to China. So China is watching every single week move by America, and they know that they can get away with their ultimate goal of taking Taiwan away. And that's disastrous for Western values, for freedom, for democracy around the world if they accomplish that. And are you worried about these next steps? Because, you know, I've heard you lay out steps that the United States should make.

I've heard a couple other Republican lawmakers lay out steps the United States should make, but it doesn't sound like President Joe Biden is going to follow that advice. And are you worried about what happens next? I mean, every single moment I'm questioning, why is this president not doing what is obviously the simplest thing that we can do to cause harm to Russia? I mean, why is it that Joe Biden is not willing to be tough on Russia? It doesn't make any sense to me. Instead, there's a lot of talk about bloodshed and war.

when all of this could be deterred if we simply do what I said a moment ago to do. But hit Russia where it hurts. Russia is a gas station with an army. They depend entirely on the oil and gas sectors to prop up their economy. Their economy is not as strong as our economy. Their military is not as strong as our military. But we have a president in the White House who appears completely unwilling to do anything strong at all to deter Russia. And that's why all of this is happening.

And I know you just said that Russia's military is not as strong as our military. I keep seeing these videos on Twitter. Conservative commentators have been resharing them, comparing this Russian military recruitment ad to United States military recruitment ads. And in the Russian one, it's very tough and macho, and they're doing all these physical feats. And the American one, it's a girl in a sorority who talks about her lesbian parents who's joining the military.

And a lot of people were joking that this is an embarrassment. Are you worried about any? kind of repercussions from this type of ideology in the United States. It's not a joke. I mean, Joe Biden has spent every day in the White House as commander in chief emasculating our military while other militaries are getting stronger around the world. It's about misplaced priorities. It's about building a military that can fight and win wars, not using the military as a social experiment on some of these radical left-wing issues like critical race theory and radical gender theories and other other

other leftist ideologies that we're pushing on the military. It's sickening to me. I mean, at a time when the world is on the brink of a major conflict, the world is not safe, it's a dangerous place. And we have a president who's more focused on advancing critical race theory and some of these left-wing ideologies on our military and our schools, and really stripping away who and what we are as Americans. I mean, it's absolutely sickening to me.

Do you think Americans are starting to notice this? Do you think they'll take a stand? I really do. I mean, that stand comes in the midterm election this coming November, but they're also, but so many Americans are also speaking out and getting involved, people that have never been involved before that are getting involved at the local level, at the school board level, but also at the state and federal level. It's going to culminate with the upcoming November election, but I see a movement building in this country to take our country back because Americans are seeing, for many Americans, for the first time of their life, they're their standard of living decline in the greatest country in the world. It shouldn't be that way, but that's what we get with Joe Biden and these Democrats. I also have to ask, I mean, as you think about inflation, crime, the drug epidemic, the border crisis, all of these foreign policy collapses and debacles, Afghanistan, how can any thinking or reasonable American ever vote for a Democrat again when they're seeing exactly what you get

with Democrats, which is so different? than what we had for four years with Republicans in office. Well, we're so grateful for your insights, and thank you so much for joining us today. Great to be with you. My guest today is Congressman Ken Buck, who represents Colorado's fourth congressional district. Congressman, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. It's good to be with you. It's a pleasure to have you. Let's talk about Big Tech. Now, Congressman, you have been very open about your belief that Big Tech represents a threat to free speech. Given that, we believe that is the case. What is Congress's responsibility to deal with this? Well, there are a number of strategies that have been developed, and I think it's really important to understand.

I am the ranking republic on the antitrust subcommittee, so I'm advocating for antitrust action. I also believe that we've got to figure Section 230 out, and I also believe that we have to look at certain privacy laws and make a determination about privacy laws. But I think you can't get the job done with just one or two of those. You really have to look at all three. And so I believe that if we create competition in the marketplace, people have five Facebooks to choose from. They have eight search engines to choose from. They can then make a decision and create the kind of platforms that we're looking for.

Right now, those monopolies are crushing competition and acting in a way that doesn't give consumers' choice. Absolutely. And I'd like to go through those three sections individually. So let's start with antitrust. What does that look like? Does this look like what we had back in the early 1900s, with the Rockefellers and stuff like that? How do we work that angle?

So I think these companies actually dwarf anything that we have in the early 1900s in scope. It's really unbelievable what these companies have created. And I just want to say at the beginning, I'm a big fan of capitalism, and I am a big fan of success. I am not trying to punish success. What I'm trying to do is make sure that we have competition.

These companies succeeded because there was a marketplace that allowed them and really fostered them in a lot of different ways. So I think what we're ultimately talking about is one, the first bill that will come to the floor in the House. It's already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee is what we call the venue bill. And it allows state attorney generals to sue these companies and keep that case in their home state. So often these cases are.

removed to the Northern District of California and the State Attorney General from Texas or Florida is playing in the backyard of these Silicon Valley Giants. And so that would be one case. Another thing that really is an important concept, when you search for something on a search engine, that's your data. That is not the search engines data. Shouldn't be the search engines data to market and sell to advertisers. So if people own their data, just like when you own your cell phone, number, you can take that with you to another cell phone company. That opened up competition. This is the same idea. If you own your data and you want to go to another search engine, that search engine, we believe, will actually pay you in the

future to take that because they can monetize your data. And also, if you decide you don't want it monetized, you just want to keep that data private. You can do that also. And that's what consumer choice is really all about. Absolutely. So the second angle you mentioned was Section 230. So Section 230 briefly is something that companies can use as a liability shield, publisher versus platform. How do we reform Section 230? You know, I haven't been as involved in that debate and I'm fascinated to hear it because there are some of my friends who believe that we should get rid of Section 230 altogether. There are some of my friends who believe that we should break 230 up very specifically instead of having sort of this generic all of the above.

If you find something offensive, you can keep it off of your platform and make it just much more specific. It has to be an imminent threat. It has to involve pornography. It has to, and even when you do that, you are giving these woke big tech companies and their employees the discretion. And given their bias, they're going to use that discretion

against conservatives. And perfect example. If you had some imminent threat standard, they would say that when you talk about a vaccine or a mask, it's an imminent threat. And so they're going to take that off. So really, there's hardly any language that I can think of that would be specific enough to curtail the censorship of these companies. I do want to talk about the final angle that you mentioned, which is conservative competitors, but that is something that really struck me as well. When we look at some of these sites like Twitter and Facebook, they oftentimes will use the phrase. misinformation as an excuse to ban content that they don't like.

Often that is either anti-vaccine or anti-mandate content. How does misinformation or this idea of misinformation play a role in censorship on these tech platforms? Well, you use it. It's an excuse. You know, one thing we have in this country that makes us unique and really special is we can be wrong. And the way to address speech that's false, wrong, in intention. wrong is with more good speech. We never, as a country, no, I shouldn't say we never.

We have had tyrants in the past, John Adams with a sedition act, Woodrow Wilson with a sedition act, we have had presidents that have tried to stifle negative speech. And the answer to that is always more speech. The answer is that we protest in the streets. The answer is that we use those God-given rights and the Bill of Rights to make sure that we overcome those people, small-minded people, that want to make sure we don't have the ability to be wrong. So the final angle that we've discussed is conservative competitors to these large sites. So how do places like Parlor, Getter, Rumble, what role do they play in this debate over Big Tech? Well, Parlor is a perfect example.

You had a company that was competing. It wasn't a huge portion of the market, but it was competing. And then there was this seemingly, I have no evidence of it, but it sure seemed awful suspicious that all of a sudden, you know, the Amazon Web Services acted, and then Apple acted, or maybe in the other order. And so you had all these woke companies deciding, well, parlor's reckless, and we're going to take them down. So again, and we learn something from that.

We now have web services that will host conservative platforms. So some good came of that. But really the necessity is to have more parlors, stronger parlors, and parlors that are immune from that kind of really collusive behavior. So we have actually got a new social media platform that has just come out, truth social and this is a platform that has been backed by President Trump. What are your thoughts on this new platform? Well a good friend of mine, Devin Nunes, is running that platform and I think he will be wildly successful with it. I think President Trump has put together

the funding that's necessary to make that successful. I understand that there is a waiting list just to get on that platform. It's so popular at this point and I think that's exactly what we need. Now Twitter is not as much of a monopoly and that marketplace is easier to penetrate than the marketplaces that we're talking about with Facebook and Amazon and Apple and Google. So it is a little bit different and it's not even one of the companies we're aiming at with these antitrust bills. But I think it's really essential that we create the kind of competition and we have this

robust debate in our society. One final question for you, Congressman. Do we believe that big tech will ever recognize it's important to have conservative voices on the platform or are we going to have to move to these other platforms to let our voices be heard? I think that big tech reacts to profit and loss and the more that we can pressure them, the better we're going to be at getting them to move in the right direction. So in other words, if these new platforms force Twitter to reconsider their position, they'll reconsider their position.

And that's what competition does. and that's exactly the reason why we need the antitrust laws. That was Congressman Ken Buck, who represents Colorado's fourth congressional district. Congressman, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. I am so pleased to be joined by North Carolina, Congressman Ted Budd. Congressman, thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Virginia. Thanks for having me.

You know, as we think about what is happening right now in our nation and in our schools in particular, I think we think back to the past two years. And so many Americans have really been a way. to what is happening in education and what are these really progressive policies that are being pushed and promoted on our kids. I think this is something that North Carolinians have been aware for maybe longer than the rest of the country. You all were the first state to have a bathroom bill up for debate that would allow biological men to use women's bathrooms. You all have been on the forefront of this fight. So why do you think that the far left is so determined,

to promote and push their ideas into our classrooms and on our kids in school. But you know, you're right, Virginia, this has been going on for quite a while. But I don't know if it accelerated, but what COVID did is it drove a lot of kids out of the school. It drove a lot of parents home doing those who could work remotely. And they started watching what was happening on their kids' computer screens. And they started seeing what was being pushed. The left, foolishly, tactically, didn't change their, they didn't soften their message. they drove even harder under the cover of COVID.

So parents were seeing this and saying, well, it's like the theme of the conference here. It's awake, not woke. And that's what happened to parents is they woke up. And, you know, I think it's a good thing that parents have awakened to the challenges that are going on right now. But the left has been tremendously aggressive,

you can say, for, you know, it's been a hundred years or so. And it just seems to exponentially accelerate. Well, and I think that that's been the one positive of COVID, is this unveiling of parents actually kind of getting to see in the window of what is my child actually learning, what are they being taught? But we know that there's so many damages to remote learning. You have just sponsored a bill that was introduced by Representative Mark Green of Tennessee

that says, okay, we have to get our kids back in school and we shouldn't be providing federal funding to schools to educational institutions that aren't offering in-person learning. What do you think are the long-term effects for our kids who, you know, have been out of school for a year, for two years? Well, I mean, as humans, we're supposed to interact with others. You know, it's part of our God-given design. And we take a lot of that away when we only interact with screens. You have a lack of social maturity. You're seeing even Atrium Health in North Carolina, one of the big health providers, based out of Charlotte and also now Winston-Salem.

they're seeing 28% increases in those that are age 5 to 11 in their mental emergencies cases. So I'm tremendously concerned that you're seeing somewhere around a 25% increase in psychiatric needs for the youngest in our society. And we hope that's short-lived, but my concern is that it's not. Yeah, that's really frightening to hear you say that. Well, one of the other major issues that we are facing in our schools is the teaching of critical race theory. We're seeing this really far-left agenda being promoted. And you actually serve on the Subcommittee for Diversity and Inclusion in Congress. Obviously, we hear those words. Everyone has different meanings associated with those words. People draw conclusions right away. What exactly is your

mission on the Subcommittee for Diversity and Inclusion? So that's a subcommittee of the Financial Services Committee. So it's particularly in banking insurance. A lot of people come up to me around the state since I'm traveling statewide now running for the U.S. Senate. They're asking me everywhere in my district, around the state, and they're saying, what is this ESG, environmental, social, governments, attacks from the left, trying to control through diversity, through environmentalism, through governance, and to really press this woke leftist progressive agenda. Not only does it hurt individuals, I think it destroys the value of these companies economically. So it hurts us from every single angle. I mean, it's just, and we've seen this accelerate.

just like we have from our schools over the last two years. One of the things that we see is our national motto, yes, it's in God we trust, but it's also E pluribus unum, more of a national slogan. And so we see the Latin there, which is out of many one. Critical race theory, the irony there is it's trying to ostensibly solve racism, but it adds more racism and more division in order to do so. We need more things that are E pluribus unum that bring us together,

out of many one, out of many states, one nation, out of many peoples, one country. So we need to have more of that rather than more division which we see through critical race theory and ESG and other advances from the left. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that's so critical to be tackling those issues really on the home front and be talking about them and raising that awareness. And, you know, as we think back to all of these issues, whether it be critical race theory or COVID that we're facing right now in America, you had been really clear that we need to make sure that at home, we are taking care of the folks back home,

and that includes in our hospitals. And you've recently asked the government to let rural hospitals with staffing shortages to not require all employees to be vaccinated. What exactly was your motivation behind this ask of the government? Well, I mean, you have so many people in the cities, urban areas, but especially in rural areas, that are choosing not to be vaccinated.

They have concerns about the vaccine. Now, let's remember. I was on President Trump's team helping with Operation Warp Speed, the presence of the vaccine, I believe is a good thing. But nowhere in the Constitution does it allow for a mandate that someone should be vaccinated. I believe it's absolutely against individuals' right to life, liberty, and their pursuit of happiness. So we can't allow the Constitution to be violated in search of public health. And that's still in question. So we want to make sure that the hospitals have as many people as they need. There are staffing shortages. It doesn't matter if you're going to, well, throw back to our state,

jangles, biscuits, right? Or Biscuitville, you know, one of the great places there, or any quick serve restaurant or fast food restaurant, all the way across to manufacturing, trucking, we see so many shortages. Why would they want to make that worse with a vaccine mandate? When these are the smartest people when it comes to public health, these are nurses and practitioners that work day in and day out. They know the risks. They know their own health status. Let them make the decision rather than government mandating it to a person. Yeah, well, and I think for so long we were calling them heroes, and gosh, it's got to be so hard to then for them, you know, one moment they're being called a hero and thank for their service. And the next, they're being told, you don't have a job anymore because you refuse the vaccine, even though you're a medical professional. So thank you for helping to stand up for their rights. And Virginia, it's happening in our military as well with these mandates. You're seeing folks that have impeccable records of service in all branches of our military that are being denied religious.

or personal exemptions to the vaccine that are being asked to leave the military in a time where the world's more in flux than it's ever been in the last 30 years. So it's tremendously concerning not only what it does to our medical providers and our hospitals. What does it do to our potential police forces? What does it do to our military as well? Let people make their own decisions and live with the risk thereof. Look, if somebody needs to wear a mask or have a vaccine, I'm totally supportive of that. We shouldn't make fun of anyone for their decisions there, but we should let it be an individual's decision. Well, and I've spoken with teachers as well that have that same concern that their school districts are asking them, hey, you have to be vaccinated.

And they're in fear of losing their jobs now. How is North Carolina dealing with that? The same way. Again, we have a Republican state legislature, but we have a Democrat governor. Unfortunately, you know, his policies track right along with the progressive left. It's mass mandates. We see a tremendous amount of hypocrisy there with Governor Cooper. But, you know, now they're trying, the left is trying to.

to race forward because they see a red wave coming in 2022. All of their policies now are about mitigation and damage mitigation, trying to lessen whether it's redistricting, whether it's mass policies, hoping that by the time that November gets here, that American people will forget how oppressive the left was towards them. I don't think that the American people, North Carolinians in particular, are going to forget how oppressive the left was in schools, in hospitals, police forces, workforce in general, and their mandates. So we will remember. Before we let you go, I want to ask you, we've talked a lot about schools, we've talked about public education, things that they're facing. Some people are at the point where they're saying,

you know what, I think the public schools are lost. What are your thoughts? Can they be redeemed? Can we pull them back from all these far left policies? I think I've been to every type of school, a public high school in Davy County, where I still live on our family farm today and went to a public college. I wouldn't say they're lost. And I would say on the net, we have more good teachers and administrators than we do bad. But we always notice the rotten apples and the rotten eggs. That's what needs to leave the system. Let's be people that promote constitutional freedoms to our next generation to preserve what's great about this country. So we've homeschooled our children. My daughter Macy is with us today. She's 17 years old, headed to Liberty University next year.

So we've got, you know, our kids have been homeschooled, but many of our friends were public schooled. And in Davy County, we've got great schools, but a lot of places, including closer to where you are in northern Virginia. Loudoun County, we've seen just tremendous woke agenda. The parents are waking up and putting a stop to it. I've never seen more energy in my history, pre-politics, because I've only been in politics five years or so, but I've never seen more energy for county commissions and school boards. So I'm proud of parents that are stepping up and being involved. It's very impressive. I agree. Well, Congressman, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate you during the show. Thank you, Virginia. My guest today is Congressman Scott Perry,

chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and a representative for Pennsylvania's 10th congressional district. Congressman, welcome to the show. Well, thank you very much. It's great to be with you. It is a pleasure to have you here. So President Biden has been in office for slightly over a year now, and we are quickly approaching his State of the Union address, which will be coming up next month, that will address how America is doing. So, Congressman, what is the State of America? The State of America, unfortunately, is abject failure and chaos, both abroad and here at home. And unfortunately, as I understand it, the capital has a fence around it again.

The city's locked down. This is America's capital. And the citizens that pay the bills, the citizens that are the bosses of the president and members of Congress, they're not invited. They're literally not invited to the state of the union. So people that are living under the tyranny of an open border where their loved one was killed by somebody here illegally, either in drunk driving or other criminal activity, not invited. to come in and see their president and see him face-to-face ignore the problem of the border.

Gold Star mothers that lost their loved ones in war as we walked out of Afghanistan giving a terrorist organization $85 billion in American military treasurer and in a humiliating defeat. Those who have lost their loved ones who say, what was my sacrifice? What was our sacrifice for? Aren't able to face their president. those who are paying exorbitant prices at gas stations just to live their daily lives that go to stores can't afford to buy what's on the shelf but even can't find stuff on the shelf based on the terrible policy decisions of this administration and President Biden aren't invited to the Capitol to see the president and hear the State of the Union. This is a, it's just an unprecedented and unfortunately a very dark time in America and we seek to change things obviously dramatically. Moving on to the news of the day, obviously all eyes are on Ukraine as President Vladimir Putin has invaded the country.

What do you think of President Biden's handling of this crisis over in Ukraine right now? So talking about how we got here is as important as talking about what we do next. How we got here can be laid at the feet of President Biden, in my opinion, and it is in two forms. First of all, the energy policy. President Biden, this administration, and many on the left, while they have dreams of grandeur in this green, New Deal either refuse to understand or incapable of understanding not the world as they wish they see could be but the world as it is. Russia gets 40, 50 percent of its economic power from petroleum, right, from fossil fuels. They do that by selling them, by providing them to other

parts of the world. The only way that a large land country like Russia with the size of an economy, the size of Italy, can have this invasion set up shop in Ukraine is because they are affording it because of the high prices based on United States energy policy. We used to be sending out about three million more barrels, three million more barrels a day under the Trump administration than we are now. You're seeing the price at the pump. We're seeing Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine. That's as a function.

That comes as a function of that policy. That's the number one. Number two, the rhetoric. Weak, feckless, and inconsistent has told Vladimir Putin that the guy in the White House is either incompetent or just unable to deal with the problem at hand, and he's got a green light to go in, and nothing's going to be done. And realistically, at this point, not much, certainly nothing's been done to stop him. And it doesn't look like, and it doesn't sound like we're willing to do anything to stop him. So what should be done? It sounds like action must be taken.

Action must be taken. So immediately reverse the United States, the Biden energy policy. Open up the federal lands. Open up the Keystone Pipeline. Open up Anwar. Open up continental shelf drilling and say that we are going to start supplying the world's oil and natural gas as we can and should. And also, we're going to discontinue buying Russian. Understand this.

We're buying Russian oil and gas right now. Today we're going to buy at the same time that Russia is invading Ukraine. We're paying Russia to invade Ukraine. We're paying Russia to invade Ukraine. Ukraine. It's ridiculous. That's number one. Number two, all the financial requirements, swift. What are we waiting for? Are we waiting for them to invade Poland or Latvia? What are we waiting for? They should not be able to finance any of this stuff. There needs to be very difficult and profound consequences to an unprovoked tack on a peaceful neighbor.

Moving from abroad to at home, of course America is also suffering from economic problems, COVID-19 problems. How has America's leadership affected that recovery? How is President Joe Biden affected our recovery? All it's done is shutter it and slow it down. You see the problems at your store shelves, whether it's the cost or just the availability of goods. Now we potentially have one of these trucker or more of these trucker convoys because of these mandates that you get the injection. This is America. We all want to be safe. We all want to take care of the person in our family or our neighbors. But it's not the federal government's job to mandate that you, you get some medical care that you may or may not need that you have questions about. And America is being slowed down.

People are losing their jobs. They're losing their jobs in the health care arena after we relied upon those people to be there to put themselves on the front lines, not knowing what we had and to potentially have themselves infected and imperil their own lives. And now they're treating them like literally second-class citizens saying, unless you do what the federal government says, you, the person who should know most, you're in the health care arena, you lose your job. That's having a cascading effect on this economy that ripples from the top to the bottom. Sure. Now, we've discussed foreign policy, domestic policy, in what area

has the president performed the worst? Well, it is, boy, it is difficult to make that assessment. I mean, Afghanistan, now Ukraine, arguably, the president's poor performance not only has such profound negative effects for the United States of America, our economy, the psyche of the American people pride in America, but for the rest of the world. So while he has decimated the United States economy with these horrific policies, that's just the United States. Now, it does have spinoff effects to the rest of the world, but these other foreign policy blunders just have profound effects that might affect the rest of the world for the rest of our lifetime. And so I think I'm going to have to fall in on the side of abject failure on the foreign policy front as the winner for Biden's failures. Interesting. As we mentioned at the top, you are chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.

How is the House Freedom Caucus helping to counter the president's woke agenda? So what the House Freedom Caucus is, if people don't know, we're people that actually believe in what we say when we run for office. So when you see the commercials and you say, oh, I think I might vote for that person. And then later on, you say, well, I voted for these people. Why isn't any of this happening? Because a lot of people say one thing and do another. We're the people that say one thing and do the one thing. We don't make it complicated, right?

We said we're going to do this. When we go to Washington, this is what we do. We are the conscience of the conference. So what we do is we prove that even in difficult districts, you can say what you're going to do if you're elected and people rely on you. It's your duty. It's not only what you hope to do. It's your duty to stand by your word.

and do those things and we prove that you can do that and still get reelected and so we kind of lead the conference and saying be courageous stiffen your spine if you said this on the campaign trail if you're for a secure border if you're for funding the police if you're for a strong economy where we don't bankrupt our country then just vote that way and your people even though they might disagree with you on occasion will respect you for that the respect that you were you treated them with respect as your boss, they're your boss, and that you were straight with them. You're not always

going to be perfect. No one is, but just do what you said you're going to do, and they will reward you with sending you back to fight for them. That's our job. Congressman, one final question for you. One might assume that the Republicans may take a majority back in the House in 2020. Shouldn't assume that. Never assume that. What role, if that was to happen with the Freedom Caucus play in a majority? Again, we would be the conscience of the conference. So, oftentimes, and look, we've lived this. Republicans have given the privilege and the honor of being in the majority and setting the legislating and the governing schedule and then failed to live up to the things that we said that we were going to do when we got there.

The Freedom Caucus will make sure that these things get to the floor for a vote. Now, we can't tell you how your representative is going to vote. That's up to your representative. But what we're going to seek to do is provide the opportunity for your elected official to do what he or she is. said to they were going to do. That's what we're going to, that's what the Freedom Caucus is going to do. Excellent. That was Congressman Scott Perry, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and a representative for Pennsylvania's 10th congressional district. Congressman, very much appreciate your time. Thank you, sir. Great opportunity and we sure appreciate what you guys do. Absolutely. Thank you.

And that'll do it for this bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. Thanks so much again for listening. As always, please take a moment to subscribe and leave us a five-star review and a rating on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen. It makes a huge difference. Stay tuned. We still have a couple more days here at the Conservative Political Action Conference. We're going to have some great interviews for you. You don't want to miss it. Stay tuned. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Virginia Allen and Kate Trinko, sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, please visitdailysignal.com.