The Dispatch Podcast - GOP Turns on January 6 Commission

Episode Date: May 21, 2021

After being the only candidate to run against Rep. Elise Stefanik in a bid to replace Rep. Liz Cheney as the No. 3 House GOP leader, Rep. Chip Roy joins Sarah and Steve in this week’s episode. This wide-ranging interview touches on the January 6 commission, how Republican voters perceive the party, the Cheney ousting, and potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by Steve Hayes. And this week, we are talking to Congressman Chip Roy. He serves the Texas 21st District. He is a Republican. He came to Congress in 2018. Before that, he was chief of staff to Senator Ted Cruz and First Assistant Texas Attorney General. This is going to be a very interesting conversation. We're going to get to GOP leadership, the future of the party, the January 6th Commission, all of it. Let's dive right in. Chip, you voted against the January 6th commission. And we've gotten a lot of emails from listeners.

I've gotten tweets. Hey, ask your buddy Chip Roy why he voted against it. I'm going to leave it open and did. Just explain yourself. Explain myself. That's a good way to start. So look, we, you guys know my position is pretty well publicized, well documented about my concerns on January 6th and my statements on the floor. And both in terms of objection as well as kind of what went down and talking about the aftermath, I do think we need to obviously get to the bottom of what occurred. And right now, what I would say is

pause for a second. There are a lot of things at play at the moment. A lot of people are concerned about, well, you've got to have this bipartisan commission. Okay, well, why? Why that bipartisan commission? Why that structure? That structure was just given to me. I, of course, had no say in it. And then I was given an up or down vote on it.

I have concerns as a former prosecutor of saying that in this case, we ought to have four leaders, the speaker, the majority leader, or the minority leader, and then McConnell and Schumer, picking two handpicked people each that would then have subpoena power and then be able to have this kind of ongoing effort and what we all have to recognize wherever you come from on this whole issue is a highly charged, highly politicized environment. This is not the same in terms of unity of national view of diving into things as it was, for example, in the 9-11 Commission or maybe the Warren Commission, which by the way was also highly political, or the what was the name of the commission for Pearl Harbor? I can't remember the name of it. But these are

monumental momentous things in our history where you come and you have these bipartisan commissions. I'm not sure I would have supported those commissions. Okay. I wouldn't hear then. I believe we have plenty of oversight authority in the House of Representatives, plenty of oversight authority in the Senate. As Dick Shelby said the other day, it's like, well, you know, we're in the process. We're about to release reports on stuff we've already been looking into and research. By the way, we were all here. And we all saw a lot of what occurred. And so I think there's legitimate questions about the power that you're giving. You've got Democrat-run staffing of the entity that was to be created. And I think it will basically create the environment for a continued fishing expedition

and a continued politicized effort to go down this road. And I'll just say this. When you go out into the district I represent, go out into the hill country, go out throughout the district, Austin, San Antonio. Talk to the people there who are upset because people they know have been arrested, who have been, some are in jail. Some are being questioned about their, presence at the Capitol at the time. For example, I had one constituent who is a friend of a good friend of mine, who was in fact served with an arrest warrant, who presented video showing yes, and he acknowledged, in fact, he crossed the barrier, but never went inside the Capitol, was never doing anything, has video of the whole time that he was in that particular moment,

and was telling people don't go into Capitol. Yet that guy was arrested for crossing the barrier. Let's have oversight, review these. Let's understand the arrest. Let's understand what's happening. And then we can go through it and make determinations using our powers in the House representatives. It's just the way I think we ought to go through it. Doesn't it, though, also have the side benefit, maybe for some, the primary benefit of protecting some Republican members of the House who have said that they were just tourists or Donald Trump himself, who has said he doesn't want this commission because presumably he would be part of the inquiry? Well, I think the inquiry is ongoing, right? The Senate is engaging in an inquiry. The House of Representatives can engage in an inquiry, but yet I've not seen us, why have we not an oversight, which I used to serve on. I don't know.

I'm on, but in judiciary, we could have hearings, too, about what's going on with the arrest, what Department of Justice doing, what research, where they're finding all their investigations to go, seek truth wherever it may lead, but why aren't we just following and using the powers we have in the House? And to your point, like, well, if the House wanted to do that, well, Call witnesses. Call the sergeant-at-arms right now. Next week, call the sergeant-arms, have a hearing in the oversight hearing. Do a closed-door hearing? Do an open-door hearing? Do one for the public to see, whichever. But go dive into it and go explore what evidence do you have. We have all the power in the House to do that. But you go set up this commission. You're now setting up a basically political process by which to go do that. So, well, no, you're not. This is bipartisan. Look, when you've got Democratic staff running it, and when you're actually in the process of doing this, empowering agencies in terms of what they're able to do, IRS and others. I think that's highly problematic. I would say that we should have our existing

House members and Senate members continue to look into this. If your problem is that this is a political process, how does keeping it in Congress depoliticize it? I mean, that's a hyper-political process. Everything about Congress is political, no? Right. But I think having the light of this, You're kind of making my point, and I understand it. I get your argument. But by having the transparency in the light of day being able to shine on it with House, so you can have a hearing and be able to answer to that hearing and call people and call witnesses forward, then we can actually, I think, get to the truth of what we think

actually happened. I believe that if you set up a, what I believe would be a fairly tilted entity, a commission, I guess what we're calling it, where you've got four Democrat handpicked folks. for Republican, but who would they be? There's obviously some split in division among Republicans and all this. I think you'd end up with a fairly tilted entity that is then going to be in the throes

of a massively politicized effort. And frankly, where we want to go forward, I think, is to look at the facts of what occurred at every sort of step of the way in the Capitol. The first question is, why did the Capitol get breached? That's the first question to me. It's like, why did the Capitol get breached? And they kind of work backward

to kind of what? led to those events and why the capital got breached. But I just don't think going down this road is particularly beneficial in my analysis of it. So one last question on the process. Having spent a lot of time covering the 9-11 commission, if it were the case that the staffing would be Democratic run, I would agree with you. I think you can't have, I mean, the staff are the ones who drive the process. They're the ones he asked the questions. They're the ones who interview the witnesses. If it were a partisan staffing process, that would be hugely problematic. But I don't think that's the case. The language was built on the 9-11 commission staffing, which

makes it bipartisan. It says the chair does the hiring, quote, in consultation with the vice chair. So a Democrat working with a Republican and John Capco, the Republican who negotiated this on behalf of, well, I guess he thought it was on behalf of Kevin McCarthy, said that. They hire as a team. That's his, that's his language. Is Katko wrong about how this would work? My experience in town as a staffer, both a lawyer on the Senate Judiciary Committee as well as Chief Staff, Senator Cruz,

and by conversations, and I want to be a little careful here about the private conversations I've had, I'll just put it this way. I got no assurances in my worldview that this would be a truly objective and nonpartisan approach to figuring out how, to figuring out the events of the day. I got no real assurance that we were going to have a truly bipartisan view at the staffing level and or at the members. And, you know, at a higher level, look, I am unapologetic about any position I've taken along the way. You know, obviously, always reserve the right to go back and review

and make sure that you feel like you're doing the best you can do. But I stick by my positions on all of this. But I do think it's important that we be moving forward on the important issues that I know the constituents I represent are raising to me every single day for jobs in terms of inflation, in terms of the border, in terms of fentanyl, in terms of Israel, in terms of go down the laundry list. These are the things every single day that I'm, my, the people back home are talking me about.

And then one last point. The last trip I made around the district two weeks ago and I made, you know, I made a pretty good circuit. I had, and I had kind of town hall. meetings with lots of constituents all over the district, man, they were really upset, genuinely upset. These are good people, Steve. I mean, they were genuinely upset about what they saw as private citizens being arrested for being present in D.C. Now, we might all agree. And I've said publicly and I agree, and I've told them, I say, you know, look, if you were assaulting police

officer, if you destroyed property, if you were a part of any of the melee, and I said it on the floor of the house, you need to be prosecuted, you know, strongly to the fullest extent of the law. But there are real questions, right? I mean, I talked to some lawyers that were raising questions about AUSAs who are setting aside traditional mechanisms by which you decide prosecutorial discretion about what you do here. A lot of people that were raising issues about who was in jail and for how long, we had to have a federal judge step in and say, hey, wait a minute, you're only going to be in jail if you're being accused of violence. And they had to have a federal judge kind of break that down. That concerns me, right? I'm a limited government constitutional. I don't like

the power of government denying people's liberty. I introduced legislation with Hakeem Jeffries to say that the indigent should be able to have people pay for them to get to court so that you don't end up in pretrial detention because you didn't make it to court, right? Like I think we ought to be mindful of due process. And I'm sorry, I'm going down a little bit of a rabbit trail, but I just think these things all matter. Do you think the Benghazi Commission was a mistake? I don't know. I mean, I have to go back and look at the specifics of what came in or what went into the in and out of that. I mean, this is rare for me. You're blindsided me a little bit on that one to remember what what was a result of all that. But I do know that as a rule, I don't think the commissions

that we've had have been all that overall beneficial for, you know, the Warren Commission report. I mean, we want to sit here and engage in what we believe about, you know, magic bullet theories or something. I mean, I mean, I, I can consider when we've got to jump into the, like, you know, JFK fray. But, I mean, what I'm saying is, is, you know, like, I worked with Arlen Spector when he was on the Judiciary Committee. I used to poke him a little bit about the Warren Commission. I mean, look, there are, this is part of the problem. I genuinely believe this is part of the problem. We end up saying, we're going to go, oh, have all of these people, you're empowered to come tell us what the truth is. Look, that's your job.

Right? That's the press's job. Now, you need fact finders. Great. I know. We need fact finders. I think that's our job in the House. I think that's the Senate's job. I think we can dive into that. It's the Department of Justice's jobs if crime is involved. There's criminal activity. We have plenty of federal law enforcement entities who are perfectly empowered to go look into crimes. So go look into the crimes, prosecute the crimes, and then see where they lead. And I think that then ends up telling the story of what occurred. If you've got evidence, prosecute the crime. And then can't carry that forward and then report back to us for oversight, and then we'll tell you whether that amounted to something that the American people need to see in a broader context. How much did the commission turn into a litmus test for support for Donald Trump? Yeah, the press clearly are, you know, making that an issue. But I would probably argue that there are, you know,

in the sort of political universe out there, it's certainly at least social media seemed to indicate, that over the last 24 hours, frustration by Samu said people who supported it, you know, they're looking at it through that political lens. You know, I'm trying to be a voice for the best I can muster for navigating this country forward to address the issues that I know are front and center for the American people. Yes, getting to the truth and the facts of what occurred on January 6th is an important issue that we need to address. I happen to be one of the ones without beating a dead horse that believe that's transpired.

and we've got to go through it and see what happens with these prosecutions and so forth. But I mean, very much believe. I mean, if you guys go take a trip, come down with me to McAllen, to Laredo, come down to South Texas, and go talk to ranchers, go talk to what they're dealing with, go talk about the fentanyl pouring in, go talk about the ranches being overrun, the high-speed chases in Uvaldi, Texas, the 600,000 apprehensions, the 300,000 people who have been released through the process or got a ways that the Border Patrol can't get.

the fact that the cartel to the rest in Nueva Laredo or the Rhinosa faction of the Gulf cartel in Rhinosa are have full operational control and they run Tomolipas. This is all real. This is all happening. We have terrorist activity in the form of cartels moving human beings for profit through San Antonio in the district I represent in Bernie, Texas and putting them into the human trafficking trade and sending them to stash houses used to Texas. We have $30 trillion of debt. Six trillion dollars spent in the last year. Inflation, lumber up 470 percent. People can't get jobs because we're paying people not to work. Israel's under assault with 3,500 missiles being fired at it. We have Nord Stream 2. We're like saying, oh, don't mind the Ukrainians.

Screw you guys. We're with Putin and we're going to just get, you know, a pipeline to Germany. Meanwhile, we can't have pipelines and we can't have natural gas. You see what I'm saying? Why aren't we talking about this all day long? I'm not being critical. You guys. I'm just saying, And look, we have limited time in a day. Those things right there are going to determine the future of your children and those things are going to determine their future. Yeah, so I want to move on. I do want to circle back to Donald Trump a little bit later,

but I want to move on and talk about this in sort of a big picture. I know you did. I'm saving all the hard questions. You describe yourself as a limited government. constitutionalist. I share that. That's how I see myself. Basic similar worldview, I think. And having followed your career, knowing you a little bit, I think we agree on a lot more than we disagree. I want to look back at the last five or ten years and talk about sort of where Congress is and where the country is on that question, limited government constitutionalism. And I go back and

And I used to see the polls from Gallup and elsewhere, 38% self-identified conservatives. And I'd sort of look around. I'd watch what the Freedom Caucus was doing and be, even where I sometimes disagreed slightly on tactics, would be sort of with the Freedom Caucus and the spirit of things. We needed a disruption. We needed a limited government voice in Washington, and we didn't have one. And one of the things after having lived through the past five years that I've come to conclude is that there are just a lot more people in the country

who are not limited government constitutionalists the way that you and I might think and that maybe as much time as I spent criticizing the establishment, the Republican establishment, you know, going back before the Trump era, maybe my real concern should have been with Republican voters more. Maybe the country's just not as conservative

as we thought it was. Where are you on that? Well, wow, we're going to try to address this in just a few minutes. This is one of those old. Let's get the beer and just throw a camera up and sit for three hours. I mean, we can do a part two and a part three if you want to. Yeah, I would love to, actually. These are the, I think, the core questions, not to minimize the other ones that we'll get to,

but is this is it, right? And this is kind of, you know, my career has kind of spanned a lot of that. You know, coming to Washington in 2003, working for John Cornyn, Senate Judiciary Committee during the Bush years, 08, 09, Obama, has elected Tea Party wave 2010, Mike Lee's elected, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, then Ted Cruz in 2012. And I'm working for Governor Perry. I help him write the book fed up in which we talk a lot about, you know, limiting government and states and federalism and empowering people and how fed up the American people were at the Supreme Court and other things stepping over what they

believe. Just as a footnote, by the way, I had to read all of the books that were on the market at that point that had come out within the last decade or so that were of that ill. sort of political manifesto books. Fed Up is by far the best one. If you're sort of curious what the Tea Party manifesto was at the time, it's actually worth going to pick up that book. I still recommend it to people who want to understand what the philosophy was there.

So well done. You're very kind of say that. I mean, obviously it was Governor Perry's book and we collaborated heavily on that, and I've worked with him hard on it. And you can pick it up for probably $1.98 on some, you know, online somewhere. But, you know, that was 10 years ago.

And as a footnote, you remember, I was working for Governor Perry, and I was diagnosed. So I worked on the book, and then I, that next year we're putting it out and then he runs for president that I was diagnosed with cancer. It would be 10 years ago this July. And my daughter was four months old. My son was not quite two years old. I would crawl over broken glass for Rick Perry. He was so good to me. He prayed for me.

He prayed for me literally as he was heading on the stage for a debate, which I always used as a punchline as a joke to say, don't blame me for the debates. just because he was distracted, praying for me when he came on stage. But he's one of my favorite people on Earth, and I was blessed to work for him. But, yeah, I mean, that book does outline a lot of my philosophy and worldview in conjunction with, I think, what Governor Perry's worldview was then and is today. You asked the question, and I'll try to get the answer, which is just one question you ask is, is our brand of constitutional conservatism, limited government conservatives? is that out of sync with where the American people actually are or where the Republican voters are?

I actually don't think so. I think actually part of the, you may not agree with this or you might, I don't know, part of what happened that resulted in the election of Trump in 2016 and the significant amount of support that he has, and I can tell you, he has enormous amounts of support among my constituents and voters in the district, is that he was running against this. town representing people who wanted government to get out of their life and to stop interfering with them in so many ways. Now, I agree with you that, you know, all right, you can't touch Social Security. You can't touch Medicare. So how conservative are you? Are you really a fiscal

conservative when you think you can spend all this money? And, you know, and for everybody, it's always it's somebody else's problem. But fundamentally, I think the American people believe in personal responsibility. They believe that they're best able to run their lives. I think They believe they ought to teach their children what they think is right. I think they believe we ought to have a secure border, a strong military, use sparingly. And we can have a debate about that, about, you know, how far we, how engaged we should be in the Middle East or not. But a strong military to beat bad guys, but use sparingly and not stuck sort of endlessly somewhere. I think there's a general agreement among the American people in these principles.

Do they nerd out over federalism like Mike Lee and Chip Roy would, you know, on the floor of the House or the Senate? No, but do they understand fundamentally that they ought to be able to decide how to live in Texas or in Florida or in New York, California? I think a lot of people do. They just don't study it the way we do. I think we have an obligation to leave. We have an obligation to run the country that way. And when you do, I think good things happen. And I will have to say, credit to President Trump and the administration, a lot of the principles that were laid out and that we carried out in 16, 17, 18, 19. there's a lot of good stuff done that marries up with our worldview. Not always. Spending was at atrocious. And I used to go get into it with my friend Russ Vote and OMB and with the president in the White House saying, guys, what are you doing? You're spending money, hand over and fist. And we can have a debate about our engagement in Middle East and so forth. But I do think there

was a lot of conservative principles undermining, underpinning, I should say, the last four years that reflect the worthy American people are. We interviewed Liz Cheney last week. You were one of the, votes to remove her from the conference position, where did Liz lose you? Because you originally voted to keep her in that conference position after she voted for impeachment. So Liz is a friend, and she'll remain and always is a friend. We were talking on the floor of the house just today about the future of the party, the future of the movement, future of the country. I believe she believes intently in wanting to fight for the future of this country.

and we're going to visit, hopefully, over the next few weeks about that. And I will do that with anybody in the conference of any ideology, friends on the other side of the aisle. I do it regularly. But what's unusual is that policy-wise, you and Liz actually are pretty simpatico. You're not identical by any means, but, you know, you're pretty close. Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at the voting records, the percentage is pretty close. I mean, it's certainly good on life and those issues. We have some differences in the opinion, as I suspect,

Steve Biden, I'm not sure about, you know, how long and how much we should be engaged in Afghanistan, you know, Syria, et cetera. But by and large, we have a general agreement about most issues. And I think in this case, I took a lot of arrows because I stood and said, hey, Liz ought to be given the grace and the ability to be a representative and represent her people and then she'll have to deal with that in election, however that goes. But the, she should be able to represent and make her mind up on what she thinks occurred on January 6th, make her mind up about objecting, make her mind up about the impeachment vote and everything else, and give her the grace to do that. And that she has been our conference chair for the last two years

and that we should all come together now and move forward. And so I took that position. I gave her my word that I would. And I stood up on the floor of our debate among my fellow Republicans. And I defended her right to do that. And I defended our joint agreement that we had massive concerns about what occurred on January 6th. And the way the president, his actions engaged in pressuring the vice president were wrong. And I've said that publicly. I said it there. I stand behind that. And I defended Liz in that context. Liz lost me when she came out after a press conference, after we just had a conference meeting. And she said in response to a question about whether the president should be at CPAC. She said, well, that's up to CPAC. Well, that's a good answer.

Should have been a period. Problem was, it was comma. And then she said that, you know, he has no place in our party, no place in our country or something like that. I'm paraphrasing. I don't want to put words in her mouth, but it's something like that. And I had a press conference later that day or the next morning. I don't remember which. Next morning, I think. And I said something in the zip code of. I think she's forfeited her ability to be the chair. And I told her that. And we pulled aside and we talked about it. And I just said, look, you know, your job is to go out as chairs to represent the conference. And your position is significantly out of step with the conference here. And you can't, you can't go out and do that. You can't go out and say that. What does it say about the GOP

conference, your colleagues, that they replaced a pretty staunch conservative. You ran to replace her. And they picked overwhelmingly, Elise Stefanik, someone who, I mean, I thought this was probably shows you what scorecards, how much they're good for. But one scorecard had her as less conservative than Congresswoman Rashida Talib. Yeah, I think that was the Klepper Grove scorecard. I mean, look, we made those points. And, you know, look, I'm pretty proud of the fact we had we had 58 boats that were either for me or a present vote, you know, basically just saying, hey, we maybe we shouldn't be going down this road. I think we had 46 for me. We didn't even enter the fray until about, you know, 18 hours before the vote.

And the reason I did, I kept telling people, said that she just can't run out of post. I believed that. I believed that for myriad reasons. One of those reasons is our very different voting records and history in support of core conservative ideology. I mean, if you go down the laundry list of the issues, whether it was forcing us back into the Paris Agreement,

whether it was voting for a tax cut bill, whether it was border security and, you know, fence funding, whether it was go down the list. Act, other things that I disagreed with, pretty diametrically opposed background on that. I thought we should force a vote on that. Obviously, the conference voted. Now, it was a little bit of a rushed kind of proceeding, I would say. I think the leader, leader McCarthy should have given us more time to debate that. But we had a robust debate that night. We had a good candidate for him. I raised a lot of these issues. The other reason I ran is for the one you're alluding to.

I don't think it should be that it's like, well, you know, you, there's some litmus test about whether you're, you know, did a certain vote or not with respect to the objection strategy or how we talk about January 6th. I think we need to be able to be, have a full debate about all of that. And I would actually note, by the way, that Elise objected to Arizona, but yet voted to certify Arizona later that night. But then, so the vote was to certify, but then voted not to certify Pennsylvania and when we had the second vote that night and then obviously voted against impeachment. So I think she has like a 67% Trump vote for that cycle or that time in January. So look, I think that vote has occurred. But she won not because she agrees with most of the conference on policy, on messaging on policy, on any issue, all the things that you listed, that your constituents, care about. She's on the wrong side more than you are. She won because of Trump. And if I can just add to that point real quick, she won with the enthusiastic support of Jim Jordan, who for the past several years has been more or less the face of the House Freedom Caucus,

which at one time was kind of an ideological pull on the Republican Party to the right in a favor that I like, but seems over the past five years to have been more a partisan tribal loyalty enforcer. You are correct that Elise was elected by pretty good margin and was elected in significant part because of a perceived kind of loyalty test, if you will. But what I would say is this is there's other factors here that I think, need to be accounted for. And that is the factor of Liz and then certain members of the conference across the

spectrum, so not just some Freedom Caucus or folks that wanted to see Liz gone because of differences in opinion about President Trump, but also, I mean, it was Virginia Fox who introduced the resolution. I mean, Virginia Fox is no, you know, I don't know, hard. core like Trump warrior or something, right? I mean, you know, Virginia Fox introduced the resolution. And when she did so, I want to be a little careful. These are private meetings.

But it was her general point, I think I can characterize broadly, was about, you know, when you're leading and you don't have followers, you're just kind of on a walk. And that was what her posture was about, about Liz. And I want to be careful saying that because, again, I'm friends with Liz, and we're going to go forward and work together on different things. But that perspective was pretty across the board in the conference in terms of frustration. And so when the vote came down on Liz, it was fair. It was a voice vote.

And it was, I'm guessing, audible in the room, 85, 15, 80, 20, I don't know, something like that. And so it was overwhelming. But part of that was built around laying the predicate for Elise being who was going to be sort of the heir apparent. that obviously stuck in my craw that we ought to have a robust debate about the future of the parties to say we've agreed let's move forward Liz has lost the competence now let's have a debate my position was we should set it on hold let's have a debate about the future of the party let's talk about a lot of these issues looking forward and then so let's you know but that wasn't going to happen and I look I've publicly expressed this and privately expressed this to Kevin I disagreed with him on this I think his perspective was let's just get moving forward Let's get a lease in place. Then we can, you know, be able to kind of put this behind us and move forward. I understand, but I disagree with that. I thought we'd have a robust debate about it.

So I would love to have that debate about the ideological outlook for the Republican Party. I think you're a lonely guy in your conference wanting to have that debate. I think for most people in the Republican conference today, they don't care. As long as the Republican Party is aligned with Donald Trump, enthusiastic about it. And I would put at the top of that list, Kevin McCarthy. Just to drill down a little further on this question, setting aside the actual vote on Liz Cheney, but taking the point that you made, which I heard many, many people made in the context of that vote, you say it's time to move forward. You know, she was looking backwards. She was finger wagging. We've got to move

forward. How is the Republican Party moving forward? I mean, Elise went out and did a podcast with Steve Bannon and Seb Gorka in which she talked about the 2020 election in the Arizona audit. Kevin McCarthy went on Sean Hannity's program and talked about how virile Donald Trump is because he doesn't have to sleep much. You have the NRCC with record fundraising numbers because a lot of the emails that they're sending out have literally have Trump loyalty tests. Like we're going to tell Donald Trump if you don't respond to this and support him. The NRC sent out 100 emails, mentioning Donald Trump, the party's not looking forward. The party's looking backwards. And when Donald Trump is a bigger factor in the 2022 elections, you can be sure that he's going to make

all of you talk about 2020 and how the election was stolen and all this. So isn't that, I take your point and I probably wouldn't agree with it. If, you know, if I were a member, I wouldn't say, well, really it has to be all forward looking in January 6th is in the past and we've got to sort of move, move past it. But even if that were the case, that's not what's happening on the ground. Well, yes and no. Okay, so I hear you.

Your perspective, I mean, it's respectfully, and Sarah, you too, respectfully, is very much a inside-the-but-way perspective. Now, I would hear you. I mean, you go out and talk and look at where activists are and stuff around the country. Yep, and the president, former president's talking to different activists around the country.

I hear what you're saying. But remember what I was saying before, and it's really hard. And I'd certainly welcome either or both of you or anybody who wants to come to a town hall in my district and come talk to people who are so unbelievably upset about the state of things and so supportive of the former president because of policies and positions that he took. And it's hard to, it is hard to gloss over that when you're talking about the context of, you know, I was a part of last year campaigning when I campaigned against Wendy Davis of massive Trump dreams, right, throughout the district, okay? And talking to people that were so, like, you drive through the district and you go down a ranch in a back road with hardly any traffic on it with 20 flagpoles lining the ranch with Trump's flags on it. Still to this day when I drive around the district.

Trump signs and Trump flags flying around the district. Now, we can talk about that and talk about personality and talk about, well, we want to be focused on issues and ideas. But again, it takes someone to go get those ideas into execution, and then people want to follow that. And it's understandable. The president, again, picking one example, the embassy to Jerusalem, right? You talk about that for 30 years.

It never happens. And then what happens? You have three, four Arab countries that are then engaging with Israel and Middle East peace because these are good and smart policies, right? Or it's good and smart policies to actually pick judges who will stand up and fight, right? That Amy Coney Barrett would sit there in front of the, you know, powers that be on the Senate Judiciary Committee like Clarence Thomas properly mocked in his hearings and to take him to task or that, you know, we'd have Kavanaugh basically stare down the mob that went after him. These things are things that galvanize an American people to say, finally, finally you're stopped, you're not rolling over. And say what we want to say about the president, about concerns we have.

And again, I've been to many arrows coming at me from my base and constituents, and if they hear this podcast, you're going to be, there you go again, talking with all of those inside the belt, you know, because I said, I didn't think that pressuring the vice president to violate his duty under the Constitution to count votes was remotely appropriate, that I think that's constitutionally problematic. I think we ought to say that and not be afraid of saying it. I came down a different conclusion than others and saying that I thought that this is not a time or place to go impeach. I'm a former prosecutor. Some things are prosecutable, and you choose not to do it. I think that we do have a duty to move forward. This is a country. We're all going to come and go. We're all going

to be pushing up daisies. What are we going to leave behind for our kids and grandkids? Yes, the rule of law. Yes, fighting for the Constitution. And I'm going to stand up and do that all day, every day. But I also want to stand up right now for a secure border or it may not even matter. I want to stand up against Iran because it may not even matter. I want to stand up against China because it may not even matter. I want to stand up against $30 trillion of debt undermining our currency, weakening our country, or it may not even matter. We've got to be able to find a way to get people galvanized to band together and save this republic. or we're not going to have it.

And we're not going to have podcasts to sort of debate, you know, commissions and the specifics and intricacies of what was said and when it was said, because literally we're staring down, I really, and I put it in the memo that I put out when I was frustrated about the coronation of Elise, was that we've got an iceberg right in front of our country, guys. It's literally right there. I don't think we have very much time left. I don't.

I think we're on that kind of thin ice with China nipping at our, heels and with our current fiscal state and with our current, I mean, I just think undermining of the very American ethos or things like critical race theory and so forth. Anyway, I got far afield of your question because that's what we do as politicians. It's a podcast. It goes in a bunch of different directions, right? That's true. That's true. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having

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slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. is the Chipproy Caucus right now? You know, I don't know because that's one of those things that I really despise, and you didn't mean it this way, I despise the cult of personality about, you know, who, you know, me and the center of any of this. I very much believe in the power of ideas. I believe in the power of work. I believe in the power of standing up and, and every single day presenting an alternative.

Never just let something just go by. And what people ask, well, why do you object to the floor on somebody's, you know, seemingly trivial voice votes and everything? Well, because it's another bill, it's another activity, it's another Democrat initiative that's just going to move through the House floor. I think every day we should stand up present an alternative view. And I will tell you dozens of my colleagues, I'm not going to give you a total number, but dozens of my colleagues across the ideological spectrum covering every gamut of views

about January 6th, literally across it, came to me thanking me for, putting the memo out and for running and for trying to present a credible alternative, but yet trying to move forward and focus on the issues. Today I had a press conference with Elise and with Andy Biggs and with Brian Mass from Florida. These are, and leave Zeldon. These are divergent individuals. And we were talking about Israel and talking about the attacks, the attacks from Hamas, out of Gaza, and the abhorrent policies of this administration. And it was a great day. And we stood up in defense of Israel and we called out Biden. I just think we need a lead. And I think we need more leadership on the issues the American people care about. And yes,

I want to be very clear to anybody listening. I want to seek truth wherever it may lead in fact finding about what occurred, how it occurred, and so forth on January 6th and what led to the events here and the unfolding events here. But I do believe that we need to move forward on some of these big issues. And so to answer your question, there is a large block of the Republican conference that agrees with that position. And I'm going to continue trying to hammer it forward. Is Joe Biden governing in a way that's more progressive than you thought? Or is this roughly consistent with what you thought you'd get? You know, I kind of, it's consistent in a sense, right? I was hopeful that he would be more engaged as the old Joe Biden once he actually got the

position. I was kind of hopeful, you know, just prayerfully hopeful, if you will, that, you know, hey, the Biden of old, the guy that was for, you know, putting bad guys in jail and, you know, the guy that was, you know, generally somebody you could kind of work with on things, even if you disagreed, that he would be, you know, more engaged as president. I don't think he's that engaged. And that's not a commentary necessarily on the sort of jokes about his engagement. it's more of a commentary about the strangle hole and the left hats, right? And it's pretty profound.

I mean, we saw that today. I don't know if you were watching the floor today when they had the last vote was on the appropriations for us, you know, putting up some magic fence around the capital. I don't even know. It's all sorts of garbage about, you know, lots of spending in order to, quote, protect the capital.

But I voted no. But the squad came in and apparently they were holding up boats and it jammed it up and they didn't think they had the votes for a while. I don't think we know yet what they got out of the deal in order to try to get that across the finish line. But they have a stranglehold, and they do. And, you know, I was talking to one of the Democratic leaders.

I'll just leave it at that. And I made a point about that. I said, you know, like, I understand the position that you've got to manage the, you know, the left and the squad and AOC, this individual, they don't have a. you know, they're, they're not the ones calling the shots. And the fact is, yes, they are. And we're seeing it. And we're seeing it right now when we saw to leave exchange with Biden there on the tarmac, I think, in Michigan. And, you know, they talked for eight minutes. I mean, well, you know how that went, right? I mean, that was, that was President Biden going basically, yes, ma'am, I'm going to go, I'll go, I'll go stand up and make sure we're going to go stand up with Hamas. I mean, it really is pretty extraordinary to watch. I mean, the extent to which the Democratic Party has moved that far away from being able to say they would stand with Israel and stand right alongside Amas, I think you see that unfolding.

So it's been very disappointing. It's been a presidency that's gone hard to the left more than I was even thinking would be possible. Given the president that Joe Biden is right now, and I'm not asking for you to endorse anyone, it's early, but as of today, who in the Republican Party do you think is best position to run against him in 2024? You know, I get that question a lot, as you would expect. The easy answer is for me to say what I believe, which is going to stay focused heavily on 2022 and making sure we do our job and we put a vision out there.

I think that is critically important. You know, look, but I won't dodge the question. In Austin, we just had an event like Rove hosted with a bunch of people and we had pretty much, you know, a lot of the players that came through and you had Tim Scott, you had Tom Cotton, and you had, you know, DeSantis and a lot of the players

that you would expect to be on the field. You know, I've been around this a long time now, I'm getting old, but the, which is better than the alternative, right? But I always account for a wild card, right? There's a wild card we're not talking about yet that will probably materialize. You know, we always say, well, who would that be?

I don't know. I mean, you know, maybe it's, you know, like a mayor from South Bend type, you know, wildcard. You never know. There can always be a wildcard. Politics, you know, politics is about events, right? You can't account for events. You can't account for the 9-11s. You can't account for, you know, pandemics.

Things happen. So there's a lot of time between now in 2024 that's going to impact that. But what do we know for sure? A Joe Biden presidency that is like the Jimmy Carter on steroids with gas, lines and inflation and joblessness and, you know, unrest in the Middle East and, you know, wide open borders, et cetera, et cetera. So is very likely going to lay the mat out for a strong Republican candidate to be able to come in, a strong Republican candidate. And so I think, look, he's my former boss. You can't rule out Ted Cruz, given the structures that he has in

place. He came in second last time. That is a significant thing, right? You've been a got infrastructure in every state across the country. You got infrastructure in Iowa, infrastructure in South Carolina, infrastructure in New Hampshire. That matters. I think you cannot, if you're in the cruise world, you cannot discount DeSantis. Ron DeSantis is leaving. People want leadership. And I think if you want to have the ability to marry the extent to which people are enthralled with Trump doing what he said he would do, with people that, you know, just want to be. be able to beat the Democrats and move forward with a strong agenda and show success. You got a governor that's doing it and proving it and he's standing up, right?

He led into the fight on the virus. He led into the fight for, you know, having Florida to be open and free. He's got a strong personality. He's a veteran. He's a smart guy served in Congress, governor. So I think it's hard to discount that. I think if you had to ask me, I would say those two guys are probably at the top of the likely candidates. Obviously, there are others that people are going to be watching closely.

Tim Scott brings a compelling story and a compelling narrative. He was one of the more compelling people that I saw come address us in Austin. And I like Tim Scott a lot. And then all the other folks bring a lot to the table. When you hear Marco Rubio talking about the extent to which it is corrosive to the soul as an American, to be paying people not to work, when you're undermining the very nature of who we are as people to work and provide for our families and that you're gutting the soul of somebody when you do that. And he says it in a way that it better than I just did. It's compelling. It's compelling. Nicky Haley has compelling times. And there's others. But I do think that you have to have to say, in my opinion, that I think Cruz and DeSantis

are at the top of the list currently. So ending where we started, there were 35 Republican votes for the January 6th commission. Kevin McCarthy made very clear, I would say very late, made very clear that he opposed it as a potential witness, I think. Steve Scalise whipped against it, and still 35 Republicans voted. Kevin McCarthy also stood up in February

and talked about how important it was to have Liz Cheney in leadership and the importance of a variety of voices. And then just three months later, changed his mind, said, no, not really. Is he an effective leader, Kevin McCarthy? I think that Leader McCarthy, in backing up for a second, remember that I think I said this earlier,

that one of my first acts was, as an elected member of Congress, was to nominate Jim Jordan for leader in the fall of 2018. And if Kevin were sitting here in the room with us right now, virtually, or literally, he knows that, and he knows who I am, and he knows I'm a giant pain in the butt to him and to others because I tend to speak my mind for better or worse and try to lead the way I think we need to leave. Some people say, well, you march to your own drummer. Yeah, yes and no. I try to march to the drummer of the people that elected me and what they expect out of me and to fight for the things that I believe in. So let's get around to your

question. I think if I were advising Kevin, I would advise Kevin that right now we need a crystal clear direction and we need it right now. I think, I don't know whether we need a contract with America or whatever. That's always cliche, right? That's not 27 years ago. Can we move on to a different idea? But conceptually, we need a roadmap for where we want to carry the country forward. Okay, but that's what we need from leadership. We don't just need to raise money, and we don't just need to take back the House beating Democrats. That's pretty easy to do in a mid-term election when the current administration is crapping all over most Americans. That's not going to get the job done, because then when we get in January of 2023, if we do have the majority, we're going to be expected to do something.

We're going to be expected to talk about issues the American people care about. Let's take health care. We dropped the ball in health care in January of 2017. It was complete and total fail. That falls at the feet of the Republican leadership at the time. And that's the entire Republican leadership. Not just Paul Ryan, it's everybody. We dropped the ball.

As a cancer survivor, I think we ought to take health care head on, just to use that example. We should talk about direct primary care. We should talk about getting insurance bureaucrats and government bureaucrats out of the way so that you can go get the care that you want in an affordable price and be able to control your health care and carry job to job and never be in the position of a preexisting condition. We can have the shining city. on the hill for health care. We can talk about the art of the possible. We can talk about

what we can achieve in this country like we just did with vaccines if we get the government out of the way. We can own that. We can literally own it and go on offense. Do that. Don't go poll test something and then go throw it up against the wall and go, okay, what do we need to do? Go bundle some money. Go win this race. And then let's go figure out how to be in the majority. Being in the majority is useless if you're not fighting. So I think that that would be my advice to Leader McCarthy. That would be my advice to Scalise. That is my advice to them, and it's my advice to Elise. We have Scalise and Elise. And I told Elise this morning, we had a great press conference on Israel. Let's do more of this. Let's have the entire conference on the steps of the Capitol

saying, we stand with Israel. They don't. We stand for jobs. We stand for affordable prices for gasoline and for lumber and not for spending our children's inheritance and driving up inflation, right? We stand for, you know, closed, you know, for securing the borders that we're going to have cartels running it, making sure that we have immigrants who aren't being abused on our watch. Stop allowing Democrats to claim that they're the party of compassion when immigrants are being abused and when we're empowering cartels to endanger Americans. We're the party of compassion. We're the party of opportunity. We're the party that's going to help move people up the ladder. We're the party that actually believes that sovereignty matters to have a strong

country say that own it believe it say it that's where the leadership problem is do it i mean stop you know the whole thing about trump i don't worry about trump i think i'll stand on his shoulders of the america first agenda but i'm not going to stand in his shadow worrying about what the hell's going on i'm going to go forward and leave because i believe that those principles are ones i can run on i can run on most of that america first stuff and happily do it but i'm not going to you know just sit back and say, okay, well, whatever you say, tell me how high to jump. Uh-uh. I'm elected by 800,000 Texans. I'm going to represent

them. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race.

Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca.com. Speaking of which, I want to end this podcast with some proselytizing. Chip, you and I worked literally next to each other. You sat like two seats away from me in 2002 on John Cornyn's campaign. By the way, for anyone listening, Chip sounds exactly like he did in 2002, but in 2002, it was like, Chip, stop talking. We just need that white paper on whatever the thing was.

It's like, who's he talking to? It was probably border security. Yeah, I know. I mean, it was like a Truman show. Like, who's he talking to? Is there a camera? And see, here you are. And now it's so important.

So here's the proselytizing. I want to share with everyone. You introduced me to so much that was important that summer. El Arroyo before their Twitter feed, great margaritas. But if you're not subscribing to Elorio's Twitter feed, it's E-L-H-A-R-R-R-O-Y-O. You should. The ditch. The ditch.

I do want you to tell everyone if you're going to be introduced to Texas country music, and it is totally different. then pop country, Nashville, that you're getting on whatever radio station you have in your hometown. I want you to tell them they go on Spotify or Pandora. What is the name they should put in to get a proper introduction to Texas country? Wow. I mean, that is such a loaded question, you know, and I spent, I had a number of years where I went on Coke FM, the local Texas country radio show in Austin, Texas, Bob Cole, my good friend who runs that show,

and they have a gospel show on Sunday. Sarah's right. She and I and a whole bunch of other people used to go down and see live Texas country music in Austin, Texas. Back before Austin got all kind of, you know, more hipster and people from moving from out, had, you know, Texas country and blues, rockabilly. It's all great stuff. There's still great stuff there.

Here's what I would tell you. If you're going to nail me down to one, right? I'm a politician. It's always, you know, hard to get me to nail down to one thing. If you're going to nail me down to one person, you're going to go listen to that I think best personifies and exemplifies Texas country music. putting aside the sort of, you know, legends like a Willie Nelson or something, which that doesn't count, right?

That's a kind of different class. Totally different. Or a George Strait or whatever. There's a very different things. I would tell you that, you know, I think if you just look at the entire inventory, if you go grab Robert Earl Keene and you listen to Robert Earl and then you let Spotify do it's magic branching off from Robert Earl, you're going to cover a whole lot of the genre where you're going to get the Joe Ely's and you're going to get the, you know, you're going to branch off

to some of the younger guys that have been covered or worked with Robert Earl. Obviously, Robert Earl went to Texas A&M with a lot of love it. And they were roommates and they wrote songs together and they've done concerts together down at Holote's Florida's country store. Whether you go to Luke and Bach. I mean, I've seen Robert Earl Fourth of July show of Curville, which I represent.

He's from there. Hopefully we're going to go back this July. You know, Green Hall, broken spoke. I mean, I've seen Robert Roll in, I don't know, probably 20 different venues. But it would be my guy if I was going to do it. And I'm not saying that just because my wife's an Aggie. I'm saying that because I think it's the best. I think that is a great pick. I mean, when I was in high school, it was you were either

going to Robert Earl Keene or Jerry Jeff or Jerry Jeff or Jerry Jeff last year was brutal. And, you know, I spent an entire week listening to nothing but Jerry Jeff Walker on the campaign. I was striving around listening to, you know, every song under the sun that he ever wrote. The only, I think my dark course would be Walt Wilkins. I think he's underappreciated. I think he's one of the best, but far lesser known. Walt Wilkins out at Lukenbach as a treat if you haven't done it. And I represent Lukenbach and it's a great, you guys should come down. We'll go to Lukkenbach, go out, we'll go to a tea party rally out in Fredericksburg.

And you guys can, you guys can sit there and ask them what they think about a lot of these questions. Steve, Walt Wilkins singing when there's no money coming in is, I mean, I listen to that song, lights off, headphones on, and it is, it will transport you to a different place. I'll have to check it out. I will say I am and have been a big fan of Lyle Lovett. I don't know if he counts. I suppose he counts in an answer to your question. But I've probably seen him in concert seven or eight times. Wow. And I subject my kids to his stuff all the time. It was a great concert. I went to, I saw him at GW, the Lisner Auditorium. This is George Washington University in the District of Columbia. saw him and he had a new album out and one of the best songs on the new album was called fat babies and the chorus is fat babies have no pride and he uh pretended like this was a very

meaningful emotional song for him and asked the crowd the whole crowd to sing along to sing the chorus with him and we all got very into it of course and we're all singing fat babies have no pride fat babies have no pride. And then he just stops. And he said, will you all just listen to yourself? Because it was totally ridiculous. And this whole group was really into it. It was fantastic. That's so awesome. I mean, I saw Lyle at the Birchmere in Alexandria. I saw Lala at Wolf Trap. I've seen him a million times in Texas. I can't tell him any different venues. He and Robert Rold together in the Hello, the Supporters Country Store, a place called the backyard, which no longer exists, unfortunately, because suburban growth. But a big fan of Lyle.

Yeah, he and Robert Rowe went to Texanem together and wrote songs together. We need a whole podcast on Texas Country Music, which I know you're probably already, we're already going to get this part cut. I'm sure it won't make the cut, probably. But this is my favorite part of things that we talk about. I thought it was the McCarthy question, honestly. Well, I mean, so I will say that my first dance with my wife was to La Love it, and it was to She's No Lady, ironically, which my wife enjoyed the,

the, you know, fun and sarcasm of it. Well, Chip, thank you for coming on the pod. And we really appreciate it. We hope to have you back. No, look, we got to keep having these conversations. This country's worth fighting for, and I appreciate it. And let's get a beer. And let's do that podcast over a beer.

Just have some fun. Sounds good. Done. All right. Appreciate y'all. This episode is brought to you by the space. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business,

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