The Daily Signal - BONUS INTERVIEW | Rep. Kevin Hern Stands by Previous Call to Impeach Homeland Security Secretary

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

The chairman of the House’s biggest Republican caucus says he “stands by” his call for the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to cross the southern border.  Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., first advocated that the House impeach Mayorkas in October, and earlier this week Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, filed articles of impeachment against the homeland security secretary. “In October of 2022, I think I was the first to formally call for him to be impeached. I stand by that,” Hern, the new chairman of the Republican Study Committee, says on “The Daily Signal Podcast.” “I actually called first for Mayorkas back in February of 2022 to resign,” the Oklahoma Republican says. “And we had a meeting with him with 40 of our Republican members at the Border Caucus meeting at the Capitol. To his credit, he showed up for the meeting [but] was very, very defiant then that there was any problem, when there’d been some two and a half million people had crossed at that time under his watch.” “Secretary Mayorkas has been involved with the border since 2005 as the deputy homeland security director, and other immigration processes over the years from California,” Hern says. “And it is amazing to the American people, based on everything that we have seen, that he still thinks there’s control of the southern border.” Also on this episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast,” Hern talks about the 15 ballots to elect a speaker of the House; his goals as chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the largest GOP caucus in the House; and his thoughts on the Pentagon’s lifting its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for members of the armed forces. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, everyone. Samantha Sharis here bringing you a bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. It's Thursday, January 12th. And joining today's show is Representative Kevin Hearn from Oklahoma. As many of you know, it took 15 rounds of voting to elect House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. And even in some of those later rounds, Representative Hearn was still being nominated and voted for for the position. He shares what he first thought when he was nominated, some of his goals as the new chairman of, the Republican Study Committee and what he hopes the GOP investigates. We'll get to my conversation with Representative Hearn right after this. Conservative women, conservative feminists. It's true. We do exist. I'm Virginia Allen. And every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort through the news to bring you stories that are a particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women.

That is women whose views and opinions are often. excluded or mocked by those on the so-called feminist left. We talk about everything from pop culture to politics and policy. Plus, we bring you an exclusive interview with a problematic lawmaker or conservative activist every second and fourth Tuesday of the month. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcasts. And we are also problematic on social media. So be sure to follow us on Instagram. Joining today's show is right. Representative Kevin Hearn of Oklahoma's first congressional district. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us. Great to be with you. Now, as you and our listeners know, it took 15 rounds to elect

Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy. And even in the 12th round of voting, other members of Congress were nominating and voting for you. So first and foremost, what did you first think when your name was nominated, when people were still voting for you, even in those last rounds? Yeah, I think, first of all, to have your peers, your colleagues to nominate you for such a important position is very humbling. Certainly, I've never been fearful of leadership roles. I've been doing it for some 35 years down in various businesses and institutions. So that wasn't the issue. The real issue was, you know, how we were going to get to a resolve and get a speaker of the House.

We'd already surpass, you know, sort of the 100-year mark of 1923. we were pushing toward the 1850 or 1856 measure. I was certainly hoping we weren't going 133 rounds. But, you know, when you look at what went on, I think this was really good for the American people. You and I just spoke about it. People are watching this play out in real time. I doubt that many Americans had spent this amount of time, probably in their entire life, prior to last week, looking at what the Congress did.

And you saw healthy debate, sometime contentious debate. you saw a lot of things brought up. I was very, again, humbled by the comments that the nominating, the people who nominated me. But I still at the end of the day, I thought that Speaker McCarthy, then Speaker Elect McCarthy, was probably going to be the best person to get us to the place where we needed to be. He had all the levers of information and power to get us there. And my position with Speaker McCarthy was, is I'm with. you until it appears you can't get it done. And I think that's where the 200 were at in resolve.

It's until you indicate you can't get it done, then we're all with you. And just to dive a little bit deeper, you brought this up a little bit. When people were watching last week's process play out, we saw headlines that it was chaos, that Speaker McCarthy might become weakened because of some concessions. What is your response to that? Well, first of all, it wasn't chaos. It was very orderly. Yes, people got vocal because we're so typical up here, people being, you know, things being voice voted or a vote not having any pushback because that's where the House has evolved to. There's been no debate on the floor since 2016. There's been there been no amendments.

Very little interaction. Typically when you see the traditional videos of someone speaking on the floor, there's literally nobody there, but you speak into a camera. And I thought it was very healthy personally. I've only been in Congress four years. I'm used to in business having healthy debates with people, the people who I worked with alongside people who work for me, to get their thoughts and opinions. Up until last week, this was not a place you could do this.

So I would say it was a win not only for economic security of this country, because a lot of the centrality of what was being talked about was how do we get a fiscal responsible nation. But I would say equally important in this is that, is that now we've empowered every member of Congress. Republican and Democrat, by the way, to be able to speak on the floor, to offer amendments, yes, and to even vacate the chair if necessary. But I'm going to tell you, these aren't like new rules.

These are rules that were in place some six, eight, ten years ago. And the most egregious change was under Speaker Pelosi. She basically insulated herself from being able to be vacated from the chair, which is why we got some $10 trillion in spending. out of the Democrat-led Congress over the last four years. Something else I wanted to talk about was the fact that you recently became the chairman of the Republican Study Committee. Can you tell us a little bit more about this committee and some of your goals for it moving forward? Sure. The Republican Study Committee has been around 50 years in April,

started by then a staffer named Ed Volner, who was actually the founding, one of the founding members of the Heritage Foundation, which is a very important connection between the two. synergies between the two groups, both inside and outside of Congress. I described it as the conservative conscience of the Republican Conference. It's about putting forth positions on bills, positions on policy that are conservative in nature. In fact, I would go as far as to say, I don't even like to say conservative in nature. I like to say they're American in nature. They're about limited government.

They're about having less intrusion into your life. It's about being responsible for, to the tax, pair of dollars that are sent to Washington, D.C. to run this great nation. And it's an honor to be chair of that. It's a two-year term. You don't get to run for re-election. Every chair that's been in existence in the last 50 years has got to do it for two years and then move on. The members, we represent about 80% of the entire conference. So there are 222 members of the Republican conference. We have about 170 members in the RSA from the most conservative Freedom Caucus members. to the most moderate groups in the Republican conference or in the RSC.

We work on policy, not politics. Now, I also wanted to dive into something that actually was announced on Tuesday. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin released this memo rescinding the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for members of the armed forces. I saw you put out a tweet on this, so I wanted to get your thoughts on this memo and this announcement. Yeah, so it's sort of always a mixed emotions, right? We want our military men and women to be, you know, warfighter ready, if you will, being able to be deployed anywhere in the world. But there never was this consistent message with the COVID-19 vaccination.

Didn't mean as a civilian you couldn't take it if you didn't want to. I mean, we politicize this. But there was never an affirmation that this was going to prevent you from getting COVID-19. they take yellow fever vaccinations to break you from getting yellow fever and it actually works. And so as this thing progressed, meaning the evolution of the COVID-19 shot and the people that were vaccinated were getting it too, and they were actually kicking people out of the military for what it was doing in the harm. But now we're learning, you know, post that time of birth defects, we're learning with pregnancies that are having challenges. We're learning with people that continue to die after getting the shot.

this was the right thing to do. The sad thing is that it took a mandate from Congress through the NDAA to make this actually happen. So it really took a legislative action to make this happen. And as a leader of the largest organization in the country, meaning the military, Secretary Austin should have done a better job. Now let's talk a little bit about investigations. Who are you hoping that the GOP investigates? And are you thinking of spearheading any investigations? R.C. won't be spearheading any investigations.

It's not necessarily in our purview. You know, while the investigations are going on through our two primary accountability committees, which are judiciary and oversight, that's where that's going to be. And then we have subcommittees on many of the certainly larger committees of jurisdiction, like ways of means and energy and commerce that have. their own oversight subcommittees, education and labor, they will be investigating them either the inappropriate use or the misuse or abuse of taxpayer dollars to fund things like wokeism or redirecting monies out of the fossil fuel industry and

illegally to other industries just because the Secretary of Commerce or some others may have done that Secretary of State, they can redirect from around the world. what we're going to be looking at is accountability to the spending process. So, saying it strictly in that policy world, I think it's important that we don't get bogged down as a total conference and obstructing Congressman Jordan and Congressman Comer's work as they methodically walk through the subpoena process and the subpoena power they have as chairs to get to these things, such as why now we're learning that on November 2nd, six days before the election, that then Vice President Biden had taken classified documents and they've been sitting around his private office for six years

and we know that DOJ knew this six days before the election and chose not to release this. Yet they were perfectly willing to attack Mar-a-Lago in an election window for President Trump. Seems a little bit like there's some posturing there that's interfering with the proper election and the future of the presidency in 24. When you look at the Hunter Biden laptop,

that the DOJ has lost and can't find. Any other agency out there, local police agency, state police agency, would be completely investigated how they lost evidence so critical to a relationship with two of the most talked about nations in the world today, China and Ukraine, as it related to Hunter Biden

and has involved him with the president and sitting in the White House today. These are things that the American people need to understand. This is not about, you know, this is not about oversight necessarily, it's about being accountable. And we've got to get credibility and accountability back in the Department of Justice to the FBI. It's paramount and that's being a safe nation as we move forward. I want to talk a little bit more about these classified documents that were found at the Penn Biden Center.

CNN reporting that 10 classified documents including U.S. intelligence memos and briefing materials that cover topics including Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom were found. Now, President Biden did weigh in on this on Tuesday, and we have some audio that we're going to play now per ABC News. People know I take classified documents and classified information seriously. When my lawyers were clearing out my office at the University of Pennsylvania, they set up an office for me, secure office in the Capitol. When I, the four years after being vice president, I was a professor at Penn. They found some documents in a box, you know, locked cabinet, or at least a clock. And as soon as they did, they realized there were several classified documents in that box.

And they did what they should have done. They immediately called the archives, immediately call the archives, turned them over to the archives, and I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office. But I don't know what's in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I asked what's done. that I asked what documents they were. I've turned over the boxes, they've turned over the boxes to the archives, and we're cooperating fully, cooperating fully with the review and which I hope

will be finished soon and it will be more detail at that time. So, Congressman, what are your thoughts on the president's comments? Well, I think it shows how easy it is to take classified documents out of a facility, namely the White House and other briefs. clearly our Commander-in-Chief is privy to a lot of activity more so than probably anyone else around the world activities from State Department you know obviously Department of Defense and certainly Department of Energy and I think it's it's important that we get to the bottom of how easy it is for the chain of

custody of these classified documents and that that ended of itself in this whole investigative process we're doing right now with Congressman Comer and Congressman Jordan's committees needs to be investigated and put some, you know, we need to make some fundamental changes in how that works. We saw earlier this week as well, Texas Representative Pat Fallon filing articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas. Do you think we will see more impeachments coming from the GOP? Well, I think we need to be focused.

I actually called first for Myoercus back in February of 2022 to, you know, we will. resigned. And we had a meeting with him with 40 of our Republican members at the border caucus meeting at the Capitol. To his credit, he showed up for the meeting. It was very defiant then that there was any problem when there had been some two and a half million people had crossed at that time since under his watch. Secretary of Marquis has been involved with the border since 2005 as a deputy, homeless security director, and other immigration processes over the years from California. And it is amazing to the American people based on everything that we've seen, that he still

thinks there's control of the southern border. In October of 2022, I think I was the first to formally call for him to be impeached. I stand by that. I haven't seen Congress from Fallon's articles, but if a person is refusing, he or she is refusing to do their job that they're constitutionally swore their oath to do, then they need to be removed. And if the President of the United States, from whom Secretary of Maroarchis works for is not going to do his constitutional duty in making sure he is the right cabinet members in the right position, then it falls upon the Congress to do their job, which is set up the articles of impeachment. I think it sends a message to America that we're not going to allow the southern border to continue to stay open. Republicans are in charge. We're going to move forward with securing the southern border.

Congressman, just before we let you go, what are some of the main issues aside from investigations and impeachments that the Republican Party will be focused on this Congress? Yeah, I think, too, the most important issues, again, I think the critical central focal point of everything it was talked about last week, or was fiscal responsibility in empowering Congress. If you look at the fiscal responsibility standpoint, it's really about a balanced budget, which the RSC and Republican Study Committee has done for years now. I chaired that committee in that budget process for the last two years. I'm intricately familiar with what the budget looks like and what it should look like.

So that's important to get that on the floor, American people need to see us be responsible with their taxpayer dollars. The second faction of that is that we need to fund the government in regular order. That's DC speak for, let's do our jobs. It's the core job that we're supposed to do, which is fund the government appropriately and being responsible in a balanced way, and then putting the 12 spending bills out there with Republican support and then send them to the Senate and have the Senate do their job. The whole issue with empowering the congressional members will see that play out over the

next, you know, two years under Speaker McCarthy's watch, I believe it will happen. The balanced budget and the appropriation bills, we have to get those done between now and the 1st of June and get those sent over to the Senate. It is my hope. The RSC will be working steadily and steadfast in making that happen from our perspective and pushing on the leadership to make it happen. And it's incumbent upon the other 40 or 50 members outside of RSC to help us get there. And so it's exciting. It should be exciting for the American people because at the end of the day, they were the real winners last week. Well, Congressman, thank you so much for joining our show today. I really appreciate it and love to have you back on in the future. Thanks for having me.

And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to my bonus episode, an interview with Representative Kevin Heard. If you haven't gotten a chance, make sure you subscribe to the Daily Signal wherever you get your podcast. And help us reach even more listeners. by leaving a five-star rating and review. We read and appreciate all of your feedback. Thanks again for listening. Have a great day, and we'll be back with you shortly for top news.

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