The Daily Signal - Rep. Devin Nunes Confronts Biden White House's 'Extreme Left-Wing Agenda'

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., a favorite of conservatives for his past leadership of the House Intelligence Committee, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to share his perspective on the Biden administration so far.  For Nunes, "a big concern” is “this whole idea that we're going to bring the country together." He's "never seen the country so divided" as it is now under President Joe Biden, the California Republican adds. "You would think it would be in Biden's best interest to try to bring the country together, try to find things that we agree on," Nunes says. "But instead, what they're doing is they have ... the most extreme left-wing agenda in the history of the country." We also cover these stories:  The House of Representatives votes to pass a hotly contested overhaul of elections known as HR 1, the For the People Act.  New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he won’t resign over allegations by three women that he sexually harassed them.  Secretary of State Antony Blinken says America is going to avoid “costly military interventions” while showing the world the power of democracy.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, March 4th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Richard Deltudis. Congressman Devin Nunes of California joins me today during a conversation we both had at CPAC to discuss his perspective of the Biden administration. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now, onto our top news. On Wednesday evening, the House of Representatives vote. voted to pass the election legislation known as H.R.1, or the For the People Act.

In a recent Daily Signal op-ed, former Vice President Mike Pence outlined the key issues of the H.R.1 bill. Pence, now a distinguished visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, wrote that the 800-page election overhaul bill would increase opportunities for election fraud, trample the First Amendment, and further erode confidence in our elections. The bill mandates the most questionable and abuse-prone election rules nationwide, while banning common-sense measures to detect, deter, and prosecute election fraud, Pence says, and he added that HR1 will force states to adopt universal mail-in ballots, early voting, same-day voter registration, online voter registration, and automatic voter registration for any individual listed in state and federal government databases. The former vice president has called the bill unconstitutional, reckless, and anti-democratic, adding that it could permanently damage our republic. If you're interested in following Pence's work, please be sure to check it out on the daily signal. We'll be carrying a new column every month from the former vice president.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday during a press conference that he won't resign in spite of allegations of sexual harassment from three women. Here's what he had to say via Fox News. Some politicians will always play politics, right? That's the nature of the beast. I don't think today is a day for politics. I wasn't elected by politicians. I was elected by the people of the state of New York. I'm not going to resign.

I work for the people of the state of New York. They elected me, and I'm going to serve the people of the state of New York. And by the way, we have a full plate. We have COVID. We have recovery. We have rebuilding. We have a teetering New York City. We have a terrible financial picture.

We have to do vaccines. So no, I'm going to do the job the people of the state elected me to do. Cuomo did apologize to one woman who accused him of sexual assault. Here's what he had to say via ABC. I want to address the recent allegations that have been made against against me. As you probably know, the Attorney General is doing an independent review, and I will fully cooperate with that review. Now, the lawyers say, I shouldn't say anything when you have a pending review until that review is over. I understand that. I'm a lawyer, too. But I want New Yorkers

to hear from me directly on this. First, I fully support a woman's right to come forward, and I think it should be encouraged in every way. I now understand that I acted in a way that made people feel uncomfortable. It was unintentional. and I truly and deeply apologize for it. During his first major policy speech,

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said America is going to avoid costly military interventions while showing the world the power of democracy. Blinken explained America's strategy for international leadership Monday per the U.S. Department of State. We and other democracies can show the world that we can deliver, not only for our people, but also for each other, the more we can refute the lie that authoritarian countries love to tell that theirs is the better way to meet people's fundamental needs and hopes.

It's on us to prove them wrong. So the question isn't if we will support democracy around the world, but how? We will use the power of our example. We will encourage others to make key reforms, overturn bad laws, fight corruption, and stop unjust practices. We will incentivize democratic behavior, but we will not promote democracy through costly military interventions or by attempting to overthrow authoritarian regimes by force. We've tried these tactics in the past. However well-intentioned,

they haven't worked. Blinkett also defended President Joe Biden's decision last week to launch a strike in Syria, which targeted Iranian-backed militia without the consent of Congress. Offensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional, absent extraordinary circumstances, Blinken said, explaining that the circumstances for the strike were deemed as such. Dr. Seuss' children's books are now on Amazon's top 10 list after being under fire for supposedly being racist. A few of the books that hit the top 10 list on Wednesday morning included The Cat and the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, and Fox and Sox.

Seuss's books have been called out for being racist. For example, one of his books, and to think I saw it on Mulberry Street, features a drawing of a Chinese man with slits for eyes. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Congressman Devin Nunes of California at CPAC. 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 and interviews that are 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 policy and politics. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcast. I'm joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Congressman Devin Nunes of California. Congressman Nunes, welcome back to the Daily Signal podcast. Hey, it's great to be with you here at CPAC. Well, thanks for being with us, so we love having you. So I just want to start off talking about your thoughts on the President Biden administration. We're about three months in, and so what's your perspective of the administration so far,

and what concerns you most about the trajectory we're seeing right now? Well, there's been a big concern that this whole idea that we're going to bring the country together. I've never seen the country so divided. And despite that they ended up taking control of the Senate, and they have all the power, but the margins are very, very close. You would think it would be in Biden's best interest to try to bring that country together, try to find things that we agree on. But instead, what they're doing is they have a very, well, the most extreme left-wing agenda in the history of the country.

And, you know, just look at the legislation that just passed yesterday with this inequality act, the targeting of Newsmax and Fox News and OAN, where is it going to stop? And I think that's the challenge that we have moving forward as conservatives and Republicans is to not be obliterated from the, you know, from social media, from the entire fake news media complex, we've got major challenges ahead. And anybody that comes to CPAC, it's like the fake news makes it out like this is like some strange event.

But you know, you walk around here and it's all just, you know, normal people that love politics and love being involved in conservative ideas and talking about them. Yeah, well, we're going to come back to the aspect of cancel culture. but given we have the Democrat White House, obviously, and now the House and Senate, what would you say principal conservatives can do? I mean, there's not a lot that can be done given the Democrat majorities, but where do you see room to work even in this time?

Well, you would start with national security, but that's a problem because you don't have any apologies or confession, so to speak, about what the Democrats did in 2015 and 16. to the Republican Party creating this Russia hoax that then turned into an impeachment hoax and, you know, all based on the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes. So you would like to see us, you know, China, that threat continues to grow. President Trump and, you know, we've been running an investigation in the China House Republicans have for a decade. And the China threat every day gets more and more serious, just with the growth of their

economy, their unwillingness to come clean on the Wuhan Labs issue and whether or not what they were involved in with the virus and just their lack of transparency. So you would think we could come together on that? I mean, there's simple things like supply chains, for example, that every American should agree that we are way too reliant on China. And we found that out through this pandemic. basically every sector of our economy, we don't want to have to be reliant on China for that supply chain. But unfortunately right now, they're the place where we get most of our technology. A lot of our medical supplies and pharmaceuticals are made in China. And that would be an area that we could focus on, but it's going to be difficult because we haven't seen, you know, really an olive branch at this point.

We've seen, you know, very extreme legislation that continues to move and wild accusations about that Republicans are white supremacist and we're going to focus on domestic terrorists. And, you know, their definition of domestic terrorism is pretty much anybody that's a Republican or a conservative. And that's just not acceptable. It's false. They know it's false. And what they're doing, they're creating domestic extremity. by putting these thoughts into people's heads that somehow the Republicans, you know, we've gone from being Russian, you know, sympathizers to Ukrainian sympathizers to, you know,

now, you know, we're all, you know, white extremists and Q, whatever that is. I mean, it's just, it's just really incredible and quite disturbing. And then, of course, the targeting of what's left, whether it's the cable news, networks, very few, and the very few media outlets like you that are out there to actually be a place for us to go and express our ideas. But it's the challenge moving forward. I know we're going to get to this, but I'm talking to you right now. This is going out to your podcast and it goes to your subscribers. But your challenge is, just like my challenge is, if I can't put that somewhere where on a social media site, how am I going to get growth?

You know, how is Google going to suppress, you know, your podcast, my podcast? So, yeah, we can talk and we can talk to each other, but how do you get your ideas out to the broader population if nobody can find you on the web? Well, on that note, Congressman Noon is something that has been a really big component of cancel culture that we've seen recently is, and as you alluded to is big tech censoring conservatives on social media and we saw it really, you know, first happened big with former President Donald Trump, them removing his Twitter account. But more recently, we've seen it with organizations like the Job Creators Network, who is, you know, they're a pro, you know, low tax, pro-jobs

organization. And so what's your perspective on what's happening here and how do we hold Big Tech accountable? Well, it's a good question. So I've been warning about this for a couple of years, over a couple of years now, where I noticed that really slanderous negative stories, defamatory stories, were being promoted on Google, you know, when you would do search. You couldn't find videos that I was putting out on YouTube. I was being shadow banned by Twitter. So these are all warnings that I gave to my Republican colleagues. And now when I even gave it to President Trump several times, I said, look, you know, this is going to be a big problem moving forward.

And I don't think he realized it until, you know, seriously until they, the Hunter Biden laptop story from the New York Post. Just, you know, if you posted it anywhere, it got eliminated. And then it looks like it was, they were just waiting to kick Donald Trump off of these platforms and use the January 6 riots to do it. it's it's quite concerning it needs to be the courts have to step in to do something here and rein this in but so far that hasn't that hasn't happened but the more this goes on the more people are going to push back and you know you see this week for example rumble is now streaming this live that's a u2 alternative i went to rumble i switched over to rumble just a few months before the election and just to tell you the size and scope of the manipulation, and this I tell this to all my colleagues, and this should

be an eye-opener. I've been in the news quite a bit since 2016, since the Russia hoax, and not because I wanted to be in the news, but I was forced to be in the news and running these investigations, but I had 9,000, four years, I had 9,000 followers on YouTube, where then, In three weeks on Rumble, I had already surpassed that. By Election Day, I believe I was at, so this was after only two or three months, I had 350,000 subscribers on Rumble. And today, I'm at closing in on 650,000 subscribers on Rumble. So how's that possible? Rumble doesn't have very many, you know, Rumble's a small little company.

And all it was was that, you know, it shows you, you know, I was sending out my YouTube videos to people, but somehow something was happening to where, how could I only have 9,000 subscribers? And my views started going, started going way up on Rumble. So, you know, we're on YouTube. I'd be lucky to get a few hundred views. Now it's fairly usual for me to get 10, 20, sometimes hundreds of thousands of views within just a few days. What is your thought to on the fact that very rarely, I mean, I'm not even sure I know of this happening. We don't see people on the left being censored or taken off of Twitter or, you know, shadowband, but it's consistently people on the right. And so, you know, I know Senator Lee is someone who's talked about this a lot, and he's asked, you know, these CEOs of Facebook and Twitter, and they're like, oh, well, we do the same to everyone. And so, but when you look at the actual results of who is shadow band or who's a

account is removed. It tells another story. So what's your perspective of this? Is there something here or not? We're being systematically targeted as a party, as a movement. It's not just about, you know, the media tries to play that it's just Donald Trump. But it's really not because it's been happening for a while. So there's a complete disinformation ecosystem out there that involves 95% of the media. And then you put that, what I call the funnel, goes through the disinformation funnel. And what comes out of that at the end of the people that you want to reach, 99.9% of the people are never going to hear your podcast or read anything from a conservative

or even center-center-right news site, you know, whether it's Google, searches or what have you. And that's that's the challenge we have breaking through to the people. Now what can be done about it? There's talks about section 230 being able to be overhauled, but that obviously is not going to happen right now. I've been trying to make these cases in court with some small success, but most of it now is going to be at the appellate court level. This is why I said earlier that it's going to be, It's really important that people who have been wronged by this, by this censorship and or defamation,

that we take these issues to the courts to try to get the courts to step in and protect our First Amendment rights as citizens of this country. The other thing that people can do is that what's happening here with this censorship is unacceptable. And we need more of my colleagues to understand that. So more Republicans in Congress and the Senate, they really need this.

This has to be our number one, two, and three issue. And I say that because we're in a battle for ideas. You have to be able to sell those ideas. You can't win any battle, whether it's a battle for ideas or all throughout military. history if you don't have a communications architecture. And right now we have no reliable communications system. We're basically relegated to the ghettos of the web, and it's going to be a struggle.

But we need more Republicans to understand this. I notice that Governor DeSantis, he spoke this morning here at CPAC, he now is raising this issue, at least that you're not going to be able to just band. people from your platform or you're going to get fined. That's a good move. I know other states are doing similar, taking similar types of actions. So for the person that's out there that understands this, if you know a congressman, call that congressman, you know, especially a Republican, because this should be their number one issue. But also at the state level, if you have a state representative

or a governor or an attorney general, you need to raise it for them so that they prioritize this. because at the end of the day, we're in a battle for ideas that we have no chance to win if nobody knows what we're saying. You're exactly right. So you're from California, and I want to hear about how the COVID shutdown has impacted, especially the small businesses in your state. Well, even before COVID, we had a shortage in California of U-Haul trailers. and that's not because there's not places to rent U-Hauls in California, it's because so many are leaving the state that U-Haul has no way to get those back to the state because, you know, their business model involves moving, you know, they rent them from one city to another, and that's how it works.

Well, if people are moving to Texas, moving to Florida, moving to Idaho from California, it makes it a little difficult. So what's happened in California is it's tragic. It's such a beautiful state. It's got the best weather. It's the most blessed land in the world. Not just because of weather, but because of soil. A lot of people don't realize this.

We're the largest agricultural state, largest in the country. In my area, San Joaquin Valley, we grow over 300 different crops, just about anything you can think of, grows there. And not only it grows there, but it grows. in abundance and it grows in very high quality. So that's why you will see some of the finest fruits and vegetables come from that region and a lot of specialty crops, not to mention just simple commodities like dairy because it's a, you know, you don't have, you know, you have very moderate temperatures. It's an easy place for animals to thrive. But over time, that's been targeted

with kind of the radical environmental movement that's put a lot of pressure on even the agriculture industry. The other thing we have in California is we have an abundance of energy supplies. We have an abundance of oil, so much so that we don't even know how much is out there. Some of the last studies were done in the 1970s. So for sure, before you were born,

and probably the last studies were done right around the time I was born. And today with all the new technology that's out there now with fracking and everything else, California could be sitting on more oil than most countries have, but we're not utilizing that. And of course, when you have a shutdown, and you shut down your entire tourism industry, you begin to wonder where the hell's the money coming from.

And even in Silicon Valley, we've seen many tech companies, including one of the most popular ones, is Tesla that just recently moved out of state. So those continue to pile up. And if you haven't been to California recently, there's also what I only halfway jokingly referred to, the zombie apocalypse that's occurring. There are homeless people everywhere, everywhere in every city across. California. It's not just what you see on television in Los Angeles and San Francisco. It's in every city in my district and it's growing and they're just everywhere.

And a lot of these people are being probably coming from other states. They're being let out of prison. It's a sad situation because half of them probably have severe mental issues now, largely brought on by drug abuse. But we're dealing with a with a, with a, a real crisis. It's a complete crisis in California. And I don't put that lightly. There's, you know, how are we going to fix it? And nobody, you know, this governor can't even, you know, get into first gear. He can't even decide how he's going to implement the COVID restrictions, right, where some counties are treated better than others, right? The more prominent counties have been open for a while. My county has been closed, for example.

They're very slow to get the COVID money out, very slow to give the vaccines out. So you start to look at all this. It's completely a dysfunctional state with despite the real pillars of the economy and energy and tourism and defense and technology and agriculture like we talked about. You wonder how long those pillars can stay without crumbling. And clearly people losing our human capital, smart people that would love to be in California. When they're leaving, you know, I've been to many places around the world. They're third world countries. And yet you wonder how are these third world countries because they have, you know,

similarities to California. And they've just never been able to get out of poverty. And it's largely because of the loss of human capital that leaves those countries. and you're seeing the same thing in California. Well, there's a lot of work to do here and a lot to follow. Congressman Nunes, thank you so much for joining us on the Daily Signal podcast. It's great to having you with us.

Thanks for having me. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

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