Will Cain Country - Pete Hegseth & Senator Markwayne Mullin: Is America An Expanding Or Declining Empire

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Story #1: Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the first cabinet member impeached since 1870. What indication does this give us about the fight between Biden and Trump? Plus, does Alexander The Great gives us a lesson about the necessity of building empires? A special edition of Will & Pete featuring FOX & Friends Weekend Co-Host Pete Hegseth.  Story #2: MMA. The only sitting Native American in the U.S. Senate. What went down with the border bill? A conversation with Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK). Story #3: Everyone needs to take a deep breath with Travis Kelce and Andy Reid. Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail] Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One, Alejandro Mayorkis impeached, the first sitting cabinet member impeached since 1870. What indication does this give us about the fight between Biden and Trump? Plus, does Alexander Grego Great give us a historical lesson? lesson on the necessity to build an empire. A special edition of Will and Pete. Two, Travis Kelsey and Andy Reed. Everybody take a deep breath. Men are competitive.

Three, MMA, the only sitting Native American in the United States Senate. And what went down with the Senate border bill, a conversation with Senator Mark Wayne Mullen. It is the Will Cain Show streaming live at Fox News.com and on the Fox News YouTube channel as well as the Fox News Facebook page. Everywhere there is Fox News, you can catch the Will Cain Show live streaming across the internet. It's always available on demand, the Will Cain Show on YouTube. From there, you can get exclusive content, including our interviews like yesterdays with a man full of wisdom, Tony Robbins. Go back and listen to that. on the power of investing and the power of positivity in your mind and how you can control the

objective reality with your subjective perception by waking up every day full of gratitude. As well, you can find interviews with Dave Portnoy or Jordan Peterson. You can always listen to us on demand wherever you get your audio entertainment at Apple, Spotify, or at Fox News podcast. Coming up today, we have, I think, probably the most, perhaps the most unique senator in the United State Senate. Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma. He is and has been in the past an MMA fighter. We'll talk to him about whether or not everyone needs to be punched in the face. He is the only sitting senator who is Native American, a member of the Cherokee Nation. He's unique, but he's also

going to talk to us about the Senate border bill that failed and what should be America's approach to foreign aid, say, in Ukraine. But first, there are many things. that I am good at when it comes to being a husband. I don't fight. I'm not jealous. I have a loving marriage. We get along very well. And it's full of love.

I think of all the things I've done in my life, perhaps the place where I literally outkicked my punt coverage, the place where I did the best, was in my marriage. It's produced wonderful sons, a wonderful relationship, a life that I could not have, if not, for having married my wife, Kathleen. But one of the things I'm very bad at, is celebrating that love. Happy Valentine's Day to you.

I had to be reminded last night that today is Valentine's Day. It snuck up on me. February the 13th snuck up on me. So February the 14th was a surprise. And it's not unique to Valentine's Day. I'm bad at holidays. I'm bad at Christmas gift giving. I'm bad at birthdays.

I'm pretty much bad at the calendar. significant events. And if that's how you mark the success of a relationship, consider me a failure. I mean, there's no flowers, there's no chocolates, there's no gift giving. There will be dinner, which she helped coordinate the reservation. And I'm not telling you this proudly. I don't have some deep theory about the commercialization of romance and how we should all opt out of the mainstream culture.

I have nothing. No, I should. And I fail. I'm bad at holidays. And so count this is another thing that I'm bad at. I'm a failure at Valentine's Day, but I know somebody who's not. And we will start as story number one. He is my co-host at Fox and Friends Weekend.

He's joining us every other Wednesday right here on the Will Kane show. And starting this morning on Fox and Friends every Wednesday, if you wake up, you'll catch Will and Pete off the grid. It's a weekday version of our weekend segment off the wall. And I'm going to bet, like, first of all, you have OCD. your calendar-oriented. I think you spend more time prepping your to-do list and calendars than you're executing.

Yeah, I see it. Whatever appears on that calendar. Yeah, and you're conscientious. You're definitely a loving husband. You nail Valentine's Day. Maybe. First of all, you've never described me as wise. You need to go back and watch the podcast

and get the wisdom of Tony Robbins. You've never described me as such. Second of all, Mark Wayne Mullen's might punch you the face by the end of the interview. Interesting guy, you should definitely watch that. He tried to fight somebody in a Senate chamber. That's going to be interesting. Valentine's Day. Here's the thing for me. You're right. I'm very organized. I think through it. I get stressed if I'm not ready for it. But see, my wife, you got Christmas. Then it's her birthday on January 30th. And then it's, it's Valentine's Day. And so I'm exhausted by the time.

I benefit from one thing, Will, my first marriage to my high school sweetheart, we divorced. Our wedding was on Valentine's Day. So I get to downplay that day because it's not an anniversary that I translate into my marriage with Jen. So it's sort of a muted holiday. I have to recognize that flowers are en route to the house. I don't get into late tonight, but we will celebrate it on Tuesday of next week. here's what I figured out well don't try to get a gift gifts are stressful

you know that so what I've done is I've combined birthday January 30th and Valentine's Day with a shopping with Jen all day day where I just carry the bags and it's my credit card and she kind of does whatever for the day and I follow along and that way I don't have to do anything

but she loves it I love that but here's the thing I can't execute because my wife gives me an out that, which I happily, I happily accept. She's always like, let's not do gifts or, you know, I don't like shopping. I don't want to spend money. And then I'm like, cool. And I don't know if it's meant. I don't know if it's sincere, but that little parachute rip cord allows me to exit

the free fall. I'm, okay, cool, you know, next holiday. By the way, who did Senator Mark Wayne Mullen try to fight in the Senate? Oh, one of the, yeah, he called him out. in a hearing it was a union boss it was some union boss that was there and apparently they'd been going at it um over twitter and so this union boss shows up in his committee and he calls him out and then he's like you want to fight and then union boss was like yeah i'll fight you and then he's like oh i'll fight you and then he stood up behind the dais and the union boss stood up and then a fight they almost fought uh they both look like pretty tough dudes i think the ufc fighter's to be okay you should ask it double check it i'm pretty sure it was mark way that is that that

story now rings a bell with the union boss by the way you and i play cowboy i mean i think mark way moan's the real deal like he's from you know eastern oklahoma and i know a thing or two about eastern oklahoma you know he fought and he's got i don't know he's got horses um i think if i were ranking senators that i least want to tangle with but might most want to have a beer He might come in number one. High on the list. I mean, he's got two first names combined into one name, Mark Wayne, and that is a sign that you are a legit country, all right?

And he's a U.S. Senator. I mean, that's it. I wouldn't fight the guy. I probably got him now in trouble with him. You got me in trouble with him. I don't want to fight you. You win. Oh, I want to tell you a quick story.

First, a point. Mark Wayne Mullen. You know, he's fortunate that the space. was left out between the two first names, because if it had been a two-name, you know, moniker, he would be high on the list for secret service targeting for potential presidential assassination. You know how that works. You know that almost all presidential assassins have been two names. Lee Harvey, who else is escaping my attention? John Wilkes. John Wilkes Booth, yeah. So by losing the space, he's taking himself off.

of a Secret Service target list. Hey, I was in Las Vegas for the Super Bowl, and how did this come up? I was walking down the Las Vegas strip with my son, 16 years old. And we were talking about the rock, and there was somebody that I had met at the Super Bowl who was really jacked and in shape,

and he was like, do you think you could win a fight with him? I was like, no, I couldn't win a fight with him. You know, he would destroy me. I wish I could remember who this was. And it was gronk. I think it was gronk because I was telling me about some guys that I had met at the Super Bowl. And then he goes, do you think Pete would win a fight with him? Let's just presume for a moment it was grunk.

And I was like, wait a minute. Did you just escalate your rankings? Did you say, well, you can't fight gronk, but Pete could win a fight with gronk? And he goes, well, yeah. And I go, so let me just see if I can do the math. Are you saying that Pete wins a fight with me? And he goes, yes. Well, A, you're right.

And B, I don't like you looking at my friend and going, he's more alpha than my dad. That is a hilarious Wilcane admission. I want to thank Charlie for that endorsement. I think it's super cool, by the way, that you brought your 16-year-old to the Super Bowl. Like, what a moment. And I saw that you had the hat when you went with your dad. Like, that is, I got chills just saying that and thinking about that. That's super cool.

What an experience. I'm still at a place where I've convinced my kids that I could beat anyone in a fight, anyone. The rock, gronk, anybody. I'm still invincible. And it's still in the bloodstream amongst all of them. I know that facade is going to break down. I think, but you're right. I'm kind of into building those facades, knowing that they're going to fall down.

down later, and your parenting style is a lot more of like, hey, I'm just going to be real with my kids. Like, of course, Cronk would beat the crap out of me. And likewise, with the rock, whatever example I would use, I just prolong the disappointment. But, Charles, I appreciate that, Charlie. Thank you very much. Yeah, you've managed to cultivate an image in a young, 16-year-old man's mind. But it is an image that would fall second to Mark Wayne Mullen coming up in just a moment here on the Will Cain Show. All right, story number one with Pete Hegg-Seth. First, I want to start with something that on the surface is, I think, really ridiculous in light. But I have a deeper theory that I want to run by you, Pete. So first of all, Rachel Dolazol, famous transracial NAACP activist.

Everyone can remember that Rachel Dolazol for years pretended and pulled off that she was black and rose in the Pacific Northwest high up in the rankings of the NWACP. I don't know if she darkened her complexion. She definitely had like dreadlocks. And, you know, of course, afterwards she was accused of cultural appropriation. I mean, at some point, by the way, transracial is going to be accepted. It's as logical as transgender. But the new career path for Rachel Dolazol, Pete, is apparently she is on OnlyFans. She is, and I'm not, I'm not pretending to be more pure than I actually am. I don't know much about OnlyFans, but it is a subscription-based, basically porn site. And Dolazol is on.

there basically, I think she's no basically, I think she's doing porn on only fans. And I find this fascinating in that this is her second career move from civil rights activist to porn star. So I read this article. This is one of those articles. You see it if you followed the first story and you absolutely click on it because you need to know what this is about. And I'm with you, will. I'm not faking virtue here. I know what OnlyFans is because it's almost ubiquitous cultural wise. When you read the article that I read about this, first of all, she's definitely doing like Orne by request. That's what OnlyFans. And she clearly has a lot of fans in that. And I think OnlyFans becomes a place for sort of B-level 15 minute of fame people get for their

extension. But here's the thing. She is also living under a new name, which is, I can't remember the name, but it's like an African name. And she's now an after-school supervisor. So she works for a public school in a different state under a new name and has assumed an only-fans page. And to me, we've, we've, I don't know, how does a school reconcile that? If you're doing, like, you know, drag queen story hour and gender transitions, why is it not okay for a teacher to have an only-fans page and be the after-school supervisor? I mean, there's, where's the, where's the boundary? it's a great question here's my takeaway that so many people are seeking attention it's not a great leap from you know fake african-american n double acp civil rights activists to only fans it's something

psychological that that people are seeking and i don't think i don't think i want to use rachel dolazol as this great illustration of society at large but i do think I think there's two things that are symptomatic. One, all she really wanted was attention. That's it. And she's going to find that attention validation wherever it's available. At first, it was in the civil rights movement. Second, it's in Onlyfans.

But this is the other symptomatic thing I find fascinating. I am shocked, Pete, and I'm not going to lead you down too bumpy of a road here. But I am shocked at the number of women. who decide that external validation through the way they look is the end game. What I'm getting at is, and there's an internet term for this, thirst trap, that's an Instagram term. Like, you know, post the bikini picture, post how hot you are, post something sexy. And what I'm taken aback by Pete is not necessarily Rachel Dolezol in this moment, but so many people in maybe in news. in professional environments

who maybe I'm scrolling and I'm like, oh, hey, you know, wasn't expecting the shot of you in your bikini. I'm a little taken aback by it seems like if you keep like, not everyone, not everyone. But if you keep distilling it down, you boil things down,

I'm just a little surprised at like how many women end up here. Like after you boil everything down, you reduce it, reduce it, reduce it, reduce it. you end up with, hey, check out how hot I am on Instagram. Seeking validation and affirmation somewhere else. I hate to be old school about it, but like when you pull God out and you pull out families and relationships and good fathers, then you get, you're seeking affection

somewhere else, validation somewhere else. And it's become the image of self. It's become I basically worship myself. And if other people are worshipping me, then that God gets bigger. And as a result, the more clicks, the more likes, the more follows. So here's the thing. I used to say, you know, it's true. I mean, we're all four bad decisions away from being the homeless guy.

Like, without God, like, we're all three bad decisions away from being on only fans. Like, I mean, really big bad life decisions, right? I mean, like, we like to say, oh, but if you like, I lose this, I lose this, and I give up on God. like pretty soon I'm selling myself on the internet so I mean I don't want to stand in judgment of all of those women but you talk to a lot of women and men and they ultimately when they're able to escape it they they talk about how empty it is and that it is a temporary place to maybe make money or whatever and obviously there's demand for it right if people are paying for it it's that's a sad commentary too I don't buy that we're three bad decisions away from homelessness

But I do buy that we might be three bad decisions away from OnlyFans. So with that, what is the male version of this? What is the male version of, hey, check out how hot I am in my bikini on Instagram? Like, what do we do when you start distilling it down, you know, reducing it down to, we're the three bad decisions away from being what as a man? Like, we're not. I don't know. Like, it's not a direct quarterly.

Dudes aren't about to post, like, shirtless photos, you know. gratuitously on Instagram and workout videos are kind of for other dudes like check out me you know my workout so it's not really like look how hot I am and a needy external validation but there's something I just don't know what ours is like you reduce it down and we're three bad decisions from what

three bad decisions away from hammering Coors Light at 11 a.m. playing bingo like I don't know like it's it there's a restaurant that has that like you know it's just there you're where you've lost your self-worth and everything around you. That's why I think trying to find work from the world is increasingly an empty proposition. I hear you.

Three bad decisions away from self-flagellation. Popping a colds light, smoking a marlborough red, and see any of you going to hit on bingo. See where the day goes. All right. Story number two. Alejandro Mayorkas with Pete Hegg said here. Alejandro Mayorkas has been the first sitting cabinet member to be impeached since 1870. He has not fulfilled his duty.

according to the House of Representatives. In some way, Pete, it's symbolically important. In other ways, it's practically ineffectual. It doesn't, nothing will happen in the Senate. He will not, nothing will change. But do you see that differently in any way on this moment for Alejandro Mayorkas? No, it's what Republicans are best at, right? Pro forma stuff.

So, like, we get to demonstrate that we're really serious about this issue, but getting anything done about it. Usually, when they're in power often doesn't happen. Now, they can't do anything. thing because of the Senate and because of the White House. So doing this, I think, is the right thing to do. But it doesn't change anything about the border. I'm just glad they didn't cave on the border for Ukraine deal. Now we've learned that Republicans love Ukraine more than they love the border in the U.S.

Senate. But I'm just glad they didn't cave on that because that's a signing on to a bad deal, as Trump has said is, I think, worse than signing on to a bad deal is worse than no deal with the clock ticking. He deserves to be impeached. He's what his actions are treasonous. Our border is wide open and that means you don't have a country. And the Senate's going to just dismiss it. I don't find a way to do nothing with it. But you consider what Trump got impeached for. This is real stuff, my opinion. You know, there was a New York Times focus group that just came out. And it was fascinating, I think, in a couple of different revelations. One, it did boil down. First of all, I think 11 of 13 members of the focus group were Trump over Biden. And it isn't to say they didn't have negative things about both. Like, there were negative things they had to say about Trump's personality. There were more negative things to be said about the mental fitness of Joe Biden. But then when you got into some of the issues, and I am a big believer, and I've talked about

it here, like, I think issues should be important. I'm not sure they will be as important as the personality contest. And as part of that personality contest, I include Biden's mental fitness. But when it came to issues, the issues that were rattled off by this focus group, Again, New York Times were inflation and immigration issues that trend obviously towards Republicans. Well, we're doing this segment off the grid, which is not about the grid and living off. It's about like getting off of the D.C. New York media cycle of what everyone's talking about. And when you get outside in America, those are when I talk to folks, those are the, those are the things that come up. Like, I can't afford my life for a number of reasons.

I work hard. I've got a middle class existence and I can't afford it, which means I looked at a diminished life for myself and a diminished life for my kids. And I can't believe we're letting in 10 million people and we have no idea who they are. This scares the heck out of me. And so I do think this New York Times example swings us back to when things get this bad. It does get back to policy. It does get back to like, hey, I'm going to sign on for the daddy party here. I'm signing on for somebody I may not like in Trump,

who's at least going to do something about these things that affect my life over the guy who's had a chance and has crushed our country. So oddly, even though the personality aspects are going to get bigger, I think it's so bad that the issues take over at some level. One last point on Majorcas. Last week, Pete, I had here on the Will Kane show, Matt Taibi, who's done some reporting along with Simafore on the links to which the Democratic Party is going to go to ensure a victory for Joe Biden.

And of course we know about the links they'll go to when it comes to Donald Trump. But this was reporting on what they will do to anyone else who could disrupt the electoral process, meaning the threats they have issued in the form of a letter to, for example, no labels, any third party. I think the direct quote was, there will be no Jill Stein in 2024. for. And one of those that they're talking about is RFK. There will be no RFK disruption of this process. And to put a button on Mayorkas, you know, this was recently revealed. This is pretty shocking.

He personally declined. He personally declined the Secret Service protection for RFK Jr. And when you put that into the context of what Taibi was talking about and how vindictive, they said in this reporting, by the way, Pete, forget a skeleton in your closet. If you have a fingernail in your closet, we are going to launch the investigations. And you combine that with, hey, and we're also not going to afford you any secret service protection. Like the links to which over the next, what is it going to be, six to seven months, that we're going to see disruption of the democratic process in the name of saving democracy to ensure that Joe Biden.

I guess, I'm still unconvinced it's going to be Joe Biden. But to ensure a Democrat is President of the United States, mind-blowing. Democracy will be saved by destroying democracy. That's exactly, I mean, it's animal farm stuff. It's 1984 stuff. This is exactly, they're parroting themselves, which is why when people say, what should Trump do? The first thing I say, and I mean this seriously, she needs to double the security. And I don't say that trying to be hyperbolic or conspiratorial, but there will be.

no end to which the Democrats believe it is necessary that they win this election to include they've already said with third parties you can't do this. It's and they'll use the intelligence services as we've learned a lot this week, the CIA or foreign services to get whatever they can. Yeah, just to put some flesh on that. So everybody knows that's the new reporting. So when it comes to the Russia collusion investigation, the story now goes according to new reporting, the CIA asked foreign intelligence companies to spy on Trump. I believe it was 26 different, 26 different foreign intelligence

agents to spy on Trump. The FBI then used that, those foreign intelligence agencies that accepted the invitation from the CIA, the FBI then used that as a predicate to say that Trump was coordinating with foreign intelligence agencies creating I mean, that is entrapment.

That is, first of all, it's a violation also. It's also a violation of, like CIA not supposed to spy, even through proxies on America. citizens much less election interference but it's also definitionally entrapment and the creation of something then dismissed as conspiracy it's and we just call it Tuesday I mean and at this point it just rolls off our back do you know what I mean like what else have they done that we're not aware of and half the population won't believe what I just said half the population will not

ever a hear it or be believe it even when it's laid out with the facts because it's their friends that are doing it so i i mean they they go to the same schools they travel in the same circles they're they're intermarried the media the journalists the CIA uh the executive i mean it's all one giant group saving all out to save democracy uh in in pursuit of uh making sure there's only one democrat that gets to be in charge story number three the speed wobbles on fox and friends with pita xs before i get into this this morning before you did off the grid you told me and my return didn't work on off the grid i couldn't see you so i don't know what i could be wearing but um i you texted me hey man i'm gonna wear a flannel

i'm gonna go more casual i may do a double collar and i literally said to my wife hey this is what pete said he's wearing uh what's a double collar and she goes i don't know what's a double collar and my return on the will cane show is over here so every once in a while you'll see me glance to the right because i can see my guest instead of looking directly at the camera and i see you're wearing the double collar i didn't even know this is a thing i don't know do people do this this is a minnesota is this a princeton thing what is the double collar i wouldn't i'll say i became familiar with the double collar from steve bannon steve bannon made the double collar a popular thing I think it's great.

It's basically a modified zipper-up sweater, right? Like you wear a collared shirt under a quarter zip. This is just doubling up the collars. I think it's a sharp look. I wore it this morning on Foxy's as I looked at myself. I'm like, man, I look great. So I decided I'll wear it on the one. For a moment, I was like, is he wearing an ascot?

What is under his shirt? And like, oh, no, it's another button down. This is the shirt you have also. We got this on Fox and Friends. and I was worried you might wear the same shirt, so I covered it up with a different shirt. The double button down, interesting. Pete, I'm going to let you tell this story

because I didn't even know this was happening on Fox & Friends. I truly did not. I did not know this was happening until you pointed it out. Now, I'll set it up to this extent. People often ask me, hey, how much do you read on Fox and Friends? Meaning, not for preparation, but on the show. How much are you reading a teleprompter? How much are you talking?

And the answer to that for me is usually like, I'm probably reading 20% of the time. Now, I think everybody watching should understand that doesn't mean somebody's writing my thoughts out for me and my job is just to read them. Some shows are more teleprompter driven, some less. For example, the five, no teleprompter. Any of your prime time shows, almost all teleprompter. But that doesn't mean that they're reading what is told to them. The hosts write those scripts in the teleprompter. and then it's a more polished presentation in primetime.

In Fox and Friends, it's really more like the five. It's less teleprompter. We read to transition. So sometimes you read the headlines. That's written in the teleprompter. Sometimes we read it to set up the next topic. But sometimes we don't have something in the teleprompter, and we have to set up the topic on our own.

And I want you to tell everybody now what happens in those moments. Well, it's next level enjoyable to host with two people you know so well that you can get into these idiosyncrasies and have fun with it because something like this might actually aggravate hosts if you don't have this, like, great relationship, but it adds another. So at the top of the hour, oftentimes, you know, we have multiple topics and it doesn't, you will, you know this, nowhere does it say, okay, Pete's going to set this topic up or Will's going to set this topic up. It's very much an open season. So if you, if your, Will's really passionate about it, he might set it up, or if it's a military topic, I might set it up or whatever. Well, there are times when everyone kind of hesitates and it's like, well, no one really knows who's going to take this story and set it up? Because no one really knows the story, because you're prepped. And really quickly, by set it up, by set it up what he means, what we're talking about is give the facts and the background of the story as opposed to simply opinionate on how you see.

the story. So the audience needs to understand the story before we give you our view of the story. So the person that sets it up has a burden, has a responsibility to lay up, to set the stage. So yesterday, this story caught our eye. A school out in California has a new policy that says in the boys' bathroom, every boy's bathroom is going to have, you know, feminine nap, something like whatever it is but you've got to give the facts so that will and rachel can then sound off on what we think about it and i started to notice every once in a while when i was doing it and you can tell the viewer probably can't tell but i can tell that i'm barely barely getting the facts together barely know the story i can see out of the corner of my eye will is doing this just staring

at me just staring at me and he doesn't always stare at me when i talk okay but he's staring at me And it just creates this extra set of pressure because he feels like I'm losing control. Like, I don't really know the topic. And so he's watching me for his own amusement to see whether or not I can land this plane and finish this setup. And it creates all this additional stress. And so every time Will turns his head now, I feel like, what am I doing? Am I messing something?

You know, it gets in your head a little bit. And so it doesn't bother me. I have fun with it. So what happened is, I think I shared it with you, Will, that this was happening. Like, you know this happens. And I don't think you even knew you were doing it. You were doing it? And then, so then he knew it was happening.

And so now turn about his fair play. And you're doing it to me. Now, but here's the deal. I didn't know I was doing this to you. So again, for the audience, like, I can tell when he has full command of a story to set it up. And I can tell when we have all been very patient. to see who's going to set this story up, because none of us feel really confident in all the ins and outs of a story. And I can tell when you've taken the wheel and you don't have full

command, and you are sort of, you're searching with your words on what to say. This is your analogy. And for me, all of a sudden, I feel the steering wheel, even though your hands are on the wheel. I can feel the wheel go, whoa, whoa. You know, and I look at you because I want to see the car crash. It's like my son, I remember when he was little, and I made him skateboard down this huge hill. And the risk on going down this huge hill is if you ever get the speed wobbles. You know what I'm talking about? Anyone who's ever rode a bike or skateboarded down a hill.

Once you get the speed wobbles, it starts going like this and it gets worse, and now it's headed for disaster. So when I feel you speed wobbling, I turn because I want to see how this is going to go or how you're going to pull it off. And I didn't know I was doing it until you said. You know what? I know you think I'm wobbling. but I'm going to nail this.

And sometimes I've noticed you do it anyway, just even if I'm not wobbling. Maybe it's trying to get me off my game. So now I've taken to every once in a while, I would just turn and stare at Will in the middle of his read, whether he's nailing it or not. And I can tell when he could see it out of the periphery, just to return the favor, just a tiny bit. So when you're watching the show, look for some of the...

Now, a lot of times they're covering this on the screen, you're seeing something else than the couch when this is happening. but yeah and you know what no thanks for for taking the bullet on the topic that nobody wants it's it's a thankless job when you when you've got to carry the whole team um but you know it's the cross i carry you know but just watch okay just watch fox and friends and see if you can identify the speed wobbles and just know that if somebody has a little bit of a shaky steering wheel there's another guy watching and kicking the skateboard just going i can't wait like guys though Just like, guys, I'm not here to help you.

I'm here to watch you fall hard, okay? And then we're going to laugh about it. You're totally right. You couldn't do this on any other show where you don't have this relationship. If I did that, and I like him, I just don't have this relationship with Steve Ducey. Of course, his skateboard would never wobble.

But if I don't have that relationship with others, they'd be like, what is he doing right now? Why is he staring at me? All right, story number four with Pete Hegg-Seth. All right, man, I'm watching Alexander the Great on Netflix. It's a docu-drama series about his conquest throughout Asia, expanding it from a small little empire in Macedonia throughout the entirety of Asia and defeating the Persian Empire.

And I got to thinking of when I was watching this, man, for some reason it reminded me of Jimmy Johnson, the legendary coach of the Dallas Cowboys. I'm pretty sure it was Johnson that said this. There is no status quo. You're either getting better or you're getting worse every day in sports. You're never remaining the same. And it kind of made me think about this when it came to Alexander and empire building and like you're either growing or you're shrinking. And I wondered if that applied.

And then I thought about America and I thought, well, what about us? I mean, we're not a traditional empire in the historical sense of expanding our territorial boundaries. But we certainly reach out with our tentacles, you know, bases in bombs and in, you know, centuries past, you know, some form of colonialism more prominent in Europe. My point is, I'm wondering, does that apply? in modern day analysis, in history that we're living in. Like, if we're not growing, are we shrinking? Now, you and I are both, and everyone who watching knows, I'm pretty much a non-interventionist,

not an isolationist, but a non-interventionist filtered through the prism of, you know, serve America first. Our prosperity and our peace come first. But just kind of like in the broad historical concept, context, I started to wonder, like, well, every other empire is either growing or declining. one or the other. Are we the exception because we have two great oceans on either side of us and we can, and no great rivals to the north or to the south, can we afford to be, you know, citizen farmers, you know, city states, focus on our own internal prosperity and freedom,

or are we missing the broad historical scope of every other empire? I love this topic. I love the way you're thinking about it. I've thought about it a lot, too. We think about the Roman Empire. We think about it. The phrase I've always used, I wrote about it my first book is, history is not over, history is not over, which is sort of a pedestrian phrase, but it's playing off of Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the book, The End of History, this idea that like democracies were inevitably going to support each other and peace would break out this perpetual peace. And it hasn't happened. And it's not going to happen because humanity is not perfectible and pride and power. And these are all things that infect the human

soul and countries are going to rise and fall. So absolutely everything is moving, and it's not just military power, it's economic power, it's cultural power, it's the international systems, it's how mutually dependent countries are in each other. And I look at the complacency of the American system, which loves to see now our power executed only through bombs and drones and interventions. And I contrast that with, say, what China is trying to do through international bodies, through debt, through economic, through cultural influence, through technical, through intellectual property, like they're ascendant in their aspirations, and it feels like we're playing defense in a very static way, trying to, I love that we're trying to make America great again, but we're trying to sort of reverse engineer greatness that we had as opposed to looking to the future as the frontier of American dominance. And again, I don't mean that

geographically or militarily per se, just in our sort of status in the world. We, that's one of the big flaws of our republic is that we think two to four years in advance because we think in iterations of elections and we make giant changes in direction. We're going to go from worshiping climate change under Joe Biden to dismissing it completely under Donald Trump and unleashing energy independent. Like that's not an effective way to steer the world, the leader of the free world. So that's, I think that's the big question. We're all asking, are we at the top? Are we in the decline? And what does that mean? And usually the power to change when a country in decline thinks it's big enough to defeat its next rival and

comes up against something it can't defeat, and then the collapse comes quickly. And that doesn't have to be militarily. It can be culturally, politically, or financially. And the question is not if, it's when that clash comes and what form it takes. Well, if that's true, and I think it is true, then the American experiment or the American Empire, and you could argue that it wasn't supposed to be an empire, it was supposed to be an experiment, is relatively short-lived. If you're, you didn't say whether or not we are on the decline, whether we've hit the apex or not, but historically, look, two, three hundred years would be a short run for a world power. And I don't know where we are in that. There's a lot of people saying we are a declining

empire. Everything that's happening culturally is a symptom of a declining empire. And I think they have really strong point. But I just try to sometimes, by the way, you're 100% correct about China as well. China thinks way longer time horizons. They think 50 years. They think 100 years. What will this look like? And I have given them, I've done monologues here on the Wilcancho about we should take, yes, we should rival China and criticize China, but we should also take lessons from your strategic foe on what they're doing well. And they seem to have a lot of global influence without bases and bombs. So maybe there's something to learn from China. But I try to, like, broaden that scope myself and say, are we truly over the hump? We've already hit the apex and we are on the

decline. Or does history tell us we've got a longer runway? Quick things on that. The average, I remember doing the research on it, my first book, again, the average lifespan of republics is about 275 years. Historically speaking, there's been some shorter ones, there's been some much longer ones. So we're right in that area where you could conceive of a tipping point. And then I think things just happen a lot faster. I mean, think about the speed of communication, the speed of movement, the speed of change. Today is a lot different than in Alexander or the Roman time. I mean, it just took that much longer to exert your will or your weaknesses to be exposed or a foe to take advantage of you than it does today. So I think our fall

could be faster and even harder than previous. But I don't know that it'll be a military, Because of what you described in the oceans in north and south, it'll be influence, culture. I mean, look at the British Empire, look at the French Empire, look at what was and then what wasn't and how quickly it happened. I think that's the kind of influence we think we can exert, which is we fly our drones over your country and bomb you at will with no consequence. may not be the world we live in in 50 years, but it could be that China bombs your country at will with no consequence, and we're at the whim of it. You know, I mean, those are the ways in which it would change.

Really good, really good stuff with Pete Hagseth. Enjoyed it. Another episode of Will and Pete here. I appreciate it, man. I'll see you again next time. Thank you, brother. Try the double collar. It's good.

All right. Maybe. We'll see. It feels Princeton. Senator Mark Wayne. Mullen is not Princeton. He's Eastern Oklahoma. He's a former MMA fighter. I think he's a legit cowboy. He's coming up to talk about not just his life, but also the movement in the Senate, the border bill, the foreign aid funding, Ukraine, that. And I've had it. I've had it. But not in the way that you think. I'm tired of actually the response, the outrage to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey.

Coming up on The Will Kane Show. Enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes iced coffee and delivery. I'm Janice Dean. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope

and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world. Listen and follow now at Fox Newspodcast.com. Men are competitive. That doesn't make it right, but it doesn't make it worthy of outrage. Andy Reid getting bumped by Travis Kelsey in the Super Bowl. That's coming up in just a moment here on the Will Cain show. Streaming live at Fox News.com and on the Fox News YouTube channel. Always on demand. Go check out Pete Heggseth in that interview, plus Tony Robbins,

plus Jordan Peterson, plus Senator Ram Paul, and our next guest, Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, who will all be available on demand at the Will Cain Show on YouTube. So joining me now, for story number two is Senator Mark Wayne Mullen here on the Will Cain Show. Senator, great to have you. Hey, brother, how are you doing?

I'm good. By the way, speaking of competitive, I have to ask you because it was just left off in my last conversation with Pete Higg said. So you did almost get in a fight on the floor of the Senate? On the floor of the Senate? No. It was in the hearing.

room. I wouldn't say a fight. I mean, we're always for a fight. I just get paid to fight. I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to just fight somebody for the heck of it. But I think you may be referring to Sean O'Brien, the teamster president that wanted to run his mouth a little bit and call me out and say anytime, any place. And I just calmly said, we can fight for charity. We can do it right here right now if you'd like to. In fact, I think my words were this is a time, this is a place. If you want to run your mouth, we can sell it right here. Something to that nature. How dare I assume that would happen on the floor of the Senate? It was just in a hearing room, and we all know, among the things that take place in Senate hearing rooms, that would be one of the more tame events to unfold in a Senate hearing room. And people asked me if I was mad about that. I wasn't. I mean, like I said, I used to get paid.

I fought professionally. I just, you know, we just don't do that in Oklahoma, and I don't like bullies. And I mean, really, this is really what it comes down to. I don't like bullies. And if I was, I grew up with a real bad speech impediment, and I had wear braces on my legs, and so I couldn't argue with you, and I couldn't run from you, and so I learned how to fight as a young kid, and so I tell not everybody has the ability to stand up to bullies, but if you do, someone's got to stop them.

That was kind of my whole point there. Some people said I could have handled it different, but I handled it like we do in Oklahoma, I guess. Well, speaking that, by the way, I mean, it's part of your bio. People know this. You fought MMA for a while, and I think your family in general, is it wrestling that you, I think your kids wrestle, you may have wrestled. So this is a big, I mean, fighting MMA, big part of the Mark Wayne Mullen story. Yeah, listen, my wife was a professional kickboxer.

She's a, I think three, I think she's a third degree black belt and karate. And she may be fourth degree, but, and she, I mean, she's tough. I got two boys wrestling for Oklahoma State, to speak, one that's committed to OU next year. He's a senior. And then I've got three girls that are tougher than my boys, and they're not quite old enough yet. But I'm sure they'll probably go someplace and wrestle. But it's just a discipline for us, right? So it's something we do as a family.

In my family, you wrestle and like it or wrestle and don't like it. So choose your attitude. And because it's a life experience, and I think life mimics so many of these, so many one-on-one sports. I don't care if you're running cross-country or running track, even if you're playing golf, which I don't play golf. but you really don't have anybody to blame but yourself when you screw up. And so it's one of those things you just got to suck it up, take your licks as they come, and take your victories as they come. But you don't celebrate long because, you know, next day or later on that day,

you've got somebody else coming after you. I want to ask you about the Senate border bill. I want to ask you about foreign aid funding specifically to Ukraine. But I also am fascinated by your biography, and I want to ask you a few more questions on that. You know, you're from eastern Oklahoma, small town. I'm fascinated by this area of the country. I'm from North Texas, I'm from Sherman, Texas. Right between us, you could draw a 90-degree angle from basically where I grew up, through where you grew up, to...

I know you have this poster I read, to Arkansas, you know, in the home of, like, True Grit. And I just got done watching the series Bass Reeves on Paramount, which basically that's the area. From your home to my home is where the entire thing takes place. it's a unique part of the country and it historically rough still impoverished in many ways and you have a unique tie to it

I mean you're the only sitting member of the Senate who's a Native American you're a member of the Cherokee Nation what is all that bring to you like how it's easy to read how it's unique in your bio how does that make you unique as a man as a senator

you know honestly when you grow up where I grew up by the way I'm sitting right here on my ranch I'm in my, actually in my office that's in my barn. And I'm looking out of the horse right now using the bathroom in front of me as we speak outside my window. I mean, it's just, it's where we live. Arkansas is right beside me. And growing up here in Indian country, being Cherokee or being Native American is anything special because everybody is.

No one makes a big deal of it. Everybody grew up using IHS, Indian health services. Nobody had health insurance because everybody went to the Indian health services. You, the county I'm in right now, out of 77 counties in the state of Oklahoma, it's the poorest county in the state. And it's way we were always raised. So I didn't think anything special about being Cherokee until I went to Washington, D.C. And Tom Cole, who is Chickasaw at the time, he says, congratulations, we just doubled our Native American population in Congress. At that time, it was just him and I.

Now when I went to the Senate, I'm the first Cherokee and the first Native American to serve in the Senate. from Oklahoma since 1925 and the and the only current member that's a that's a Native American and the perspective really is anything different than anybody else and I get to ask this question but really we all are elected to represent our backyards right and we represent our backyards by it being our life experiences and the way we're raised so I I just represent Oklahoma it's I was born and bred here at my family's been here we came over on what they historically, I get pushed back when I say this, but historically it's referred to as a volunteer walk. It was the Trellateers. Trellateers had two walks. One was what would they consider the volunteer walk,

which happened in the 1830s, and then the Trelletiers, which was a force walk. That was a second walk. We've been right here in that area since then. I mean, we crossed Arkansas, which is just a half mile to my east from here. and we settled, and we haven't moved. So I will tell you, honestly, when I first got to Washington, D.C., though, I was a little bit intimidated. I was like, what do I have to bring? I got these guys sitting across from where you that graduated from Harvard and Yale and MIT and Duke and all these fancy degrees and law degrees. And I grew up milking cows and working cattle and breaking horses and doing plumbing work. And what do I have to bring this different?

I mean, I got punched in the face for money. I mean, that's not really the background that people have in Congress, but it also is unique because it's the way our founding fathers wanted to set us up, right? We wanted to be set up by not a ruling class, but from different individuals. And it's the great thing about America is that you don't have to be from royalty. You don't have to be from a bloodline that's always been in politics. That's not the way it is in America. You could just say I got fed up and why I ran for office because I got fed up.

They shut down a company we had that employed about a little over 100 people. The EPA did it. And I thought, well, my problem isn't my ability to hire and fire right. My ability is the fact that some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. Shut me down. Then that's where I'm going. And that happened underneath Obama. And so the background that I bring is just Oklahoma.

home. I think my background is no different than anybody else that lives in this state. We all have similar backgrounds. I love that. I love what you just had to say. I love your background. Of course, it's not exact, but it's one I'm familiar with. By the way, they always say the biggest hatreds are small divisions. I'm taught that I was raised on the right side of the Red River, you know, and there's a reason Texas doesn't fall off into the Gulf of Mexico. We learned how to do two things really good. You guys don't even know how to wrestle in Texas. And And then we know how to play football really well. So we got that.

You may be bigger in landmast, but we're bigger than hearts. I'm going to let you have the wrestling with the football thing. I think you're on a limited timeline on that one. No, but the small differences is that I understand your lifestyle. I understand how you grew up. And I appreciate that there's somebody in the Senate who has your background, who has your mindset. Let's apply that. Let's apply that to the current efforts in the Senate.

Look, I'm having trouble. and I'm being, you're in the Senate, okay, and I don't know, I do know that you have, you believe you've adopted an America first ideology to some extent asking how it serves America. And you, even more importantly, should be asking, I think more importantly, how does it serve Oklahoma? Because that's your job. But tell me how, for example, we'll use one, because foreign aid is currently a matter of much debate. How does it serve the people of Oklahoma to be funding to the tune of, record numbers of billions, a war in Ukraine. And I don't care about good guys or bad guys. I'm not

here to defend one side or the other. I'm not here for any of that. I just want to know why is it important to American peace and prosperity? So I will tell you, I was, I had this same question before I went to D.C. And as I stated earlier in the program, we all make decisions based on two things, the way of raising our life experiences. My life experiences changed drastically since I've been to D.C. setting on the Intel Committee, set it on the Senate Armed Service Committee, you get privy to a lot more information than what just the average person walking around there. So let's talk about why it's important to us. Let's use Ukraine, for example.

Ukraine is the first area that everybody gets spun up about. Go back to, first of all, our federal obligation. Now, like it or not, we didn't get into this agreement. You and I is before our time. But in 1994, December of 94, we signed a Budapest memorandum with Ukraine that said that if they were to give up their arsenal of nuclear weapons, which, by the way, was the second largest in the world of the time, second to us, if they were to give up that arsenal that the United States and the might behind it,

would defend them in the case that they were invaded specifically by Russia. You can Google the Budapestman Randolphinus, got us all Wikipedia page. So we have a federal obligation to them. But more importantly, what do we get out of it? For 20 years, we've been fighting a war on terror. and we our conventional weapon system had kind of rotted away it kind of got outdated because you're not using missile defense you're not using you're not using air defense you're not using ships you're not using things to knock down drones you're really trying to have big bullets to go through rock and clay walls you're worried about iEDs and so you're more worried about MRAPs and up armoring or Humvees than you are about anything in the air or in the water When we started this fight with Ukraine, we realized that our defense industry was way down. For instance, 1-5-5 rounds, Russia makes more a month in 1-5-5 rounds than we make an entire year inside the United States.

We're spending $2 million to bring down a $100,000 drone or a $50,000 drone. We never fought drones in Ukraine. So our defense industry has actually gained, or I say Ukraine in the Middle East. Our defense industry is actually helping get spun up because of the war in Ukraine to some degree. So what do we get out of it, we're getting prepared to fight if we have to with China. And we're not going to choose to fight against China. We're not going to choose to fight against Putin. But there's one guy that President Xi in China is making that decision for us.

We're not being aggressors. They're the ones being aggressors. May I? And in the Pacific. Go ahead. May I interject a question? I find your answer interesting in this respect. You gave me an answer, and then there's going to be more, because as you said, you've become privy to more information.

First, a question, and then I want to push you on something. This is a little bit off, but you bring up, it's your privy to intelligence briefings, you know. And I appreciate that the intelligence agencies, I appreciate, and I don't appreciate, are far and wide and vast, and that means there's great people and bad people, and trustworthy people, inside of our own intelligence agencies. But when I see stories that just came out, for example, of the CIA helping to begin the investigations into President Trump, I think a worthy question to ask going forward is how much can you trust what you're being told in those intel briefings? Just because you have the three-letter moniker CIA doesn't mean that what you're getting is a truthful or be in the best interest of America. You don't. The people that are appointed by the presidents, you don't trust them.

It's a trust but verify. So that's why CODELS, congressional trips that we do that a lot of people complain about. There are some people that abuse the CODELs. Don't get me wrong. But if you're doing them right, you're going to in-country, you're getting the end country, the chief of station briefings. You're going to the FOBs, four operating bases. You're getting away from Washington, D.C. that are politically appointed positions, and you're getting to the guys that are in the field. You're getting your eyes on it.

You're getting your ears on it. And you're getting your hands on it. And you can get the information you need. then you go back to those briefings and he pushed the political appointees on why they're not telling us the truth. Why are they redacting it? And that is because if you just rely on the briefings that the White House sends you, you will get nothing but their story that they want. You have to travel. I was in 17 countries last year alone, a little kid from Westville, Oklahoma, that never really left a 250-mile radius around where I live today.

All of a sudden is going to 17 countries in one week. It's humbling, but it's also important. because it's fact-checking, because someone's going to have a presence around the world. And if it's not us, then who is it going to be? Because, by the way, the person that has a presence around the world also controls the economy, too. And you've got to think about that. We can't be an isolationist country because we're not an isolationist economy. Our economy is widespread.

Is there an argument to be made, Senator, on that note, and I'm just trying to have a conversation with you. I'd not interrupt to debate. I just find some of the things you're saying. I just had this conversation with Pete Hegseth, my co-host, on Fox and Friends Weekend, about, you know, this, I was with, I'm watching Alexander the Great, and we were talking about empire building. You know, if you're not growing, are you declining? You know, Jimmy Johnson once said when it came to sports, there's no status quo. You're getting better. You're getting worse.

Right. But that may be true. That may be true. But I'm curious, because you've brought them up more than once now, it seems like America's approach to being involved in the world, as you just described it, has been rudimentary. explanation here, but bombs and bases, you know, drones and bases, military footprint, where China's taking a different approach. They're intertwining, their influence, their economy, they're peddling influence, they're intermingling, their businesses, and African, Latin America, across the globe. I'm not saying China, good guy, America, bad guy, obviously.

What I'm saying is, is there not something there to learn from your adversary? Yeah, so I would say that you have to look at a different approach. We look at politics excuse me, four years, they're in a 100-year Belt and Road initiative. It's called One Belt, One Road. So I understand the differences. We are involved in a lot more. Our foreign aid through our USA aid, our State Department, we're not just bombs and stuff.

We're there in the case they need it. So like Ukraine, they're in the case and need it. We're in all these other countries. We're not in fights with them. We don't have troops there, but we may have a base there that's in the region that they want influence because they want to know that we're there for Overwatch projection, but typically what we're looking at is actually shipping lanes.

So one belt, one road initiative, it is to get, you got to think about what President Xi is trying to do here. He's trying to encompass the world in one belt, one road, one road with exit ramps that go to China. That means he wants everybody to be reliant on them. And so when they do that, they got to control the shipping lane. So what you're seeing now is China isn't investing in their economy. They're investing in areas so they can build a port to control the shipping lanes. So where they put a port, they also put their military. You start looking at what they're trying to do by encompassing the economy. 80% of the cranes right now that used in all shipping ports right now, 80%. The technology that was built and the technology that uses the information

of what's in the container to ship it to what ship is controlled in China, Beijing, China, 80% of it right now. When you start looking at the currency, they're pushing real hard in Brazil currently for Brazil to start to recognize the yen as a currency. when you start realizing that the belt, the road is, it's complete, and then they start doing the off ramps, what does the belt mean? Why do they say one belt, one road? The belt in China has two meanings. It's a traditional meaning. Hold something up. Hold something together. That's your pants. And also on the other side of it is a way to insult or to correct. It's a belting used to they would take their belt off like in the Middle East where they filled a shoe at you. In China, they would take their belt off because it was a cloth belt at the time and they would slap your across the face. And it was a form of humiliation and correction. And so the belt is when you start complaining about them, they're going to tighten their belt around their waist and then trying to tighten the economy, tighten the world, make them be relying on China. And if you don't respond to them, then they're going to discipline you and slap you across a face. That's what we're

dealing with right now with China. That's the one belt, one road, a hundred-year initiative. United States, we can't get out of it through a presidential election cycles. And if we don't take a different approach to it, then we are going to find ourselves great. behind, which we are today. Ten years ago, China only control or only had an interest in roughly 10% of the nations around the world, 10%. Today, they're approaching over 70%. In South America right now, they're in every single country but one in South America,

but one. Six years ago, they didn't have a presence in South America. I want to go back to, by the way, small town guy from Oklahoma. plumbing business sure has made himself very informed on geopolitics. I think your answers are appreciated and the effort and time you've put into that. I want to go back. I don't know. I want to be sensitive to your time, so you can also just let us know on air if we're pushing into running up the horses. The answer on Ukraine, our military was behind. You know, you pointed out several different things, specifics, where we were behind Russia, for example, on ammunition or whatever

it may be. And your answer to me was this has been an opportunity to spin up our military industrial complex. That answer from you is going to strike some as like, well, that's exactly what I thought. It's a big laundering operation for the military industrial complex. Now, you could be saying the same thing, though, Senator. You could be saying the same thing. You're kind of saying, we need to. So here's my question for you. I think this is a fair statement. Over the last 20 years, nobody in the globe

has been more militarily active than the United States of America. We have been, throughout largely to Middle East, militarily active. Of our military industrial complex has allowed itself to somehow fall behind another power.

And in this case, we'll talk specifically about Russia, who to some extent has been exposed as not quite the great might that we might have all thought militarily, Russia. If we've fallen behind Russia,

I would think there's something wrong with our military industrial complex and their ability to respond to our needs and efficiently deliver our needs that should be addressed beyond, hey, here's a new war to trial out stuff that might be needed in the military industrial complex. Like, I don't think that I'm having trouble with this war is what was needed to get the military up to speed. I don't want you to think that that's what I'm saying. I'm just saying if people want to look at what we're doing, up to date right now, majority of our money or majority of the money we sent to them has been to what we consider out-of-date shells, out-of-date equipment, out-of-date stuff that we would normally be blowing up, munitions, air defense, that we'd be blowing up in McAllister at noon every single day. McAllister, Oklahoma is a munition depot, and every day it sounds like thunder is going off at noon

because we're using the spent rounds. So 75% of the aid package that we just, that the Senate passed, 75% of it goes to replenish our munitions and restock them. So what we did, though, is when you start talking about that, you got to start looking at what we've been fighting. Our military defense industry was focused on what our needs was for a war on terror. We wasn't having to focus on air defense. We wouldn't have to worry about ships. We definitely weren't have to worry about drones. Now that we're seeing what a conventional fight was, so one's a war on terror, now we're switching to a conventional, we're switching, we're making a move to a conventional war which China and Russia had been focusing on.

While we were worrying about IEDs, they were worrying about getting supersonic missiles, which we had even started on. When we were worried about MRAPs, China was worried about building ships. Now they're building ships at the tune of 30 to 1 that the United States is doing. And so we're having to change our defense industry. So what the war on Ukraine did is it woke us up and said, oh, hold on a second, we've got behind from what a conventional war actually looks like instead of fighting guys that run around in Toyota, Comas with a 50 cow mounted on it with a rag around their head, we're now fighting guys that it's a conventional war. They're a conventional army. These guys are fighting the same tools with the same technology that we have. I mean, we're fighting guys that haven't had night vision.

And so we can win all of our fights in the night. We're finding guys now that they have that same technology that we have. And so we're having to change. The whole defense industry is having to move. And then we're realizing we can't keep up with the amount of shells that it's required to fight in Ukraine. How would we be able to fight two fronts at one time? God forbid we have to take China on and Russia on at the same time. Right.

So we're using this as an opportunity not to. not to launder money, but to get better prepared for what our enemies might bring to us because it's peace to strength. Reagan believed in that. We won the Cold War because we were able to outproduce and outpace the arms race and Soviet Union, and we broke them because they couldn't keep up with us, because they feared the technology that we had. No one's fear in our technology today. And if we don't have something for them to fear, then there's nothing to keep them from pushing their will on around the world. By the way, when I use the term money laundering, that's a loaded term.

And it wasn't the right term for me to choose in this particular application. What would have been the more appropriate term for me to choose would be sort of the – and look, I'm not – this isn't a debate point, but this is the way many people see this. It's a political payoff to a huge constituency that's ever present in Washington. That's the military industrial complex. not arguing to you that that's the case. I'm telling you. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. No, no. You'll say to me what? Well, it's kind of at our own doing when you start looking at this. It's so stupid. Everybody wants DC to operate like a business, and yet we don't. We don't even kind of. It drives me nuts. So what happens inside the DoD, the DoD, they talk about these Boeing or all these other

organizations that have huge contracts. I hate to just single out Boeing, but I really don't want to go down the list and start naming people. But we start using these guys as an example because they have billions of dollars of the contracts for the defense industry. But what happens is, is because of the rules that Congress has passed, there's so many checks and balances that's put in place, the small guy really can't get into it because the paperwork and the amount of auditing that takes place to get a contract like that with the Department of Defense really can only be a publicly traded company. So when we have a small company that comes up and tries to sell to the Department of Defense and they say,

yeah, we'd like to give you this contract. But since it's over $500 million, because this is a case, in one case, since it's over $500 million, we can't do business with you unless you sell to one of these other guys because they're a publicly traded company. They've already got cleared through Congress to be able to handle the contract. So you're going to have to sell and they'll have to buy the product. And then the product goes from costing us, let's say, I'll just use round numbers, $100,000 for a piece of equipment, now that contract has markups on it and that contract is going to cost us $175,000. And I get arguments like this all the time inside the Senate Armed Services Committee when we're having briefings, especially classified briefings, is why do we

continue to do this? And they keep coming back to us to say, as Congress wants to change that, then Congress needs to change the rules. And then when we go to change the rules, people are saying that we're just trying to get bought off so we can give one of our friends a contract that's favorable for them to the DOD. And it's like a lose. lose situation. Well, I think the best example of this is I've been reading. It's 600 pages, so audience, just give me some time. I've referenced a lot.

The biography of Elon Musk, where he did this exact thing with NASA. He's like, look, cost plus is a dumb business model, and it's incredibly inefficient. And so he presented an option of space travel that was predicated upon outcomes like any entrepreneur would, and it's revolutionized that industry. One last thing. And then I want to ask you about the border really quickly. But one last thing on this. I don't think, so if I asked you, set aside the Budapest memorandum, what is in the best interest of Americans today?

Why is funding a war in Ukraine? Like, what do I care if Russia takes a chunk of Ukraine, whatever it may be? And I'm not trying to be callous. I'm not trying to be cold. But, like, my job, your job, is to understand and serve the interest of Americans. And if I ask you directly, how does this serve the interests of Americans? Am I correct in hearing you out in this conversation because it prepares us for the next existential war? There's a lot of tentacles to this. Let's go to what Ukraine has their offer. For instance,

Ukraine has the largest rare earth mineral deposit arguably in the world, definitely in Europe, but arguably in the world. The only person that would rival that is the rare earth mineral deposit in China. The next one to that is in Afghanistan. So if you start looking at where we're moving as a world, do you want the alliance between China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia controlling something that we're using in every one of our batteries, every one of our cars because they go in the chips, every one of our phones, satellite technology, everything we're

using, and we don't have the minerals here inside the United States. And if we do, we can't get past the environmentalists to actually go mine them to begin with. So that's one. Two, they control also the second world supply of food to that region next to Russia. So you start thinking about

the destabilization that Russia all of a sudden controls that they controls the minerals, they control the shipping lanes and the food. Third, talk about gas. The only person that can rival Russia inside Europe for gas, meaning for heating cases, and we see Russia use heat, use gas as a leverage point all or over Europe, is Ukraine once again. Ukraine has the second largest pipeline next to Russia in Europe, and they supply the biggest chunk of that. The second one is their nuclear power plant, which also supplies power. So you start thinking that Ukraine may not just be Ukraine.

Ukraine is a central power source that Russia desperately wants, which is why Putin chose to go there. They could have went into Georgia. They could have went into any of these other countries they wanted to, but they need the resources that Ukraine has. And if Russia is allowed to get the resources, they'll control the economy because the power, energy is the backbone of the economy, Without reliable and affordable energy, you cannot have a reliable and affordable economy.

Without that, I'll show you a third world country. So if Russia all of a sudden controls the energy to the entire Europe area, they will control that entire economy. All right, we've gone longer than we anticipated, which I'm happy with, and I hope that you're okay and pleased as well. But I want to hit the border before we go. You were on Fox and Friends before the release of the Senate border bill. which came under huge criticism. At that time, I believe you were talking to my co-host, Pete Hick-Seth. You said, just give it a minute.

Let's read the bill. You advocated for patients. I think afterwards you ended up not, you can correct whatever I say here, clarify. I think you ended up not supporting the way that that turned out. What I don't, I think what many of us think is, why do we need a bill? Like, why is it necessary to pass a law where it seems like everything is available? All we're lacking here is enforcement. That is actually a really good argument, and you don't.

You technically don't need the bill to have to secure the border. Biden could absolutely reverse the policies and the executive order she put in place and went back to what Trump wanted and Trump had in place, which was when we had a secure border. But one thing that Trump couldn't get done is he couldn't change the asylum rules and he couldn't change the parole process. In fact, when he tried to change the asylum rules, what ended up happening is they took into court and the court overruled his executive orders. And so the asylum process has to change.

And so instead of them just being able to come in and say, I fear my government, no proof of burden on them, they can simply come in. We give them parole and they have to show up in six to eight years while they're here legally, and we have to support them in the United States. We had to change that policy. And what Trump wanted to basically do is go back to what the PAC said,

like Canada and Mexico is. You have to claim asylum in first country. We have a first country policy that says, with China, Mexico, United States, and Canada that says you cannot claim asylum in my country if you come through one of these countries first. You have to claim asylum in the first country go to. We're the only one that doesn't enforce that. Trump tried to reverse that. In this policy or this border bill, we were actually trying to make that change. And then in the parole process, instead of just claiming it and automatically getting accepted it, you had to

actually prove the burden that you had credible fear in the country. and there was no safe place for you to go to along the way, which would have been Mexico, because it's considered a safe country. You'd had to claim asylum there. And this is what Trump was saying. If I do that, that'll keep the flow of these 170 other countries that's crossing Mexico,

these individuals from 170 different countries crossing Mexico, it'll keep Mexico start securing their own border on their southern side because otherwise these invaders have to claim asylum there. So they don't want to be invaded either. That was what we're trying to get done. with this parole bill to begin with, not to secure the border. The border could be secured today if the Democrats wanted to do it. But in order to have this process from going farther down the road, if Trump gets an office, which let's pray to God he does, then he won't have to go to court.

He can immediately enforce this part that Joe Biden won't enforce. You're absolutely right about the asylum process. Beyond enforcement of the border, it's the biggest issue that has to be solved. I don't know that the prices or the compromise. and I know governing is about compromise, but I don't know what the prices and the compromise that were required to go along with that asylum process was what's best, but we got to fix asylum process. Hey, am I correct in one of my producers told me that you have a quote? Did you say something like everybody needs to get punched in the face every once in a while

or at least once in their life? Yes, I did say that, yes. Every now and then you need to be checked. Is it once in your life or every once in a while? Every once in a while, you need to be corrected. It's okay. I mean, sometimes you get a little too big for your britches and someone needs to correct. unless you live with a wife like me who's happy to correct me all the time, then every now

that you need to be, you need to be checked at the door. Well, Mike, the skateboarder, dotted my eye in eighth grade. It swall up. He had a fighting ring on, so it cut it and swolled it. So I got the, I've had to check that box. I do remember it. Deserved it or is he being a bullet? It was a stupid middle school. How did we end up in this fight type situation? You know, two dogs passing each other in the hallway. You know, and all of a sudden, you're like, why do you guys start fighting to the two dogs? I don't know to this day why we started fighting.

But I need one. I mean, it's been a while. I can probably use one. That's not an invitation for you or anyone else. I don't imagine you're one of those keyboard warriors that talk real strong with the keyboard, but, Judge, you won't back it up when you see somebody face-to-face. Those are the individuals that I'm referring to. Well, this has been a pleasure, Senator Mark.

Oh, by the way, it's true. Mark Wayne, your mom, I read, your mom gave you, what is it, two uncle's names or your dad and an uncle, but then on the birth certificate, but didn't go back and edit it. She couldn't decide, and she put them both down, or did she forget the space? What happened? This is going to set me up for criticism. They thought I was going to be a girl. And so when I was born, they didn't have a guy's name picked out. I had two uncles that didn't have any boys. And so they were in the delivery room, literally arguing about who I was going to be named after. And my mom got sick of it and just wrote my, wrote one name down on the first certificate and she had intentions of making one of a middle name and she never did so it's stuck mark wayne and i keep thinking someone's going to make at some point so i won't be the only person there they google do you have a middle name as well in addition to the double first name no middle name there we go all right i think it works this has been a real pleasure thanks for talking substance and and having some fun with me as well

today here on the wheel can show i hope to have you again center at any time Appreciate you. Thank you. Okay. Take care. There goes center, Mark Wayne Welland there on The Will Kane Show. Awesome conversation. Coming back in just a moment, we'll hit story number three. Andy Reid and Travis Kelsey. Coming up on the Will Kane Show.

This is Jimmy Phala, inviting you to join me for Fox Across America, where we'll discuss every single one of the Democrats' dumb ideas. Just kidding. It's only a three-hour show. Listen live at noon Eastern or get the podcast at Fox Across America.com. All right, dudes are competitive. So Travis Kelsey got competitive with head coach Andy Reid. It's the Will Kane Show streaming live at Fox News.com and on the YouTube, Fox News YouTube channel. On-demand, Will Kane Show hit subscribe.

You'll get in all of this show, plus exclusive content right there and listen to us on Apple, Spotify, or at Fox News podcast. Everyone's outraged about Travis Kelsey. in a moment from the Super Bowl. Travis Kelsey was briefly caught on camera, yelling at his head coach Andy Reed, not just yelling, but physically getting into Andy Reed space, bumping his head coach, who stumbled a bit. This is because many people to say, look at this, look at Royd rage, look at this ego, look at this guy.

And there's no doubt about it. It was wrong by Travis Kelsey. If that had happened on a youth team of my children, your children, if you or I behave that way, we would absolutely deserve criticism. It's outside the lines. And Kelsey has mentioned it. He has admitted to that fact. His brother, Jason Kelsey, on their podcast together, said, dude, you were way over the line.

That was too far. And he said, I know. I know I was. And I regretted it. And if Andy Reid, who went and spoke to him during the game afterwards, according to Kelsey, had cold-cocked me, I would have just eaten that punch. But Reed didn't. Reed said, I love your competitiveness. I love your fire.

Let's go win the Super Bowl. Because in the end, I just wasn't as outraged as everybody else about this moment. And still, it's wrong, but it's not deserving of this kind of outrage. This was competitiveness. And what more, this was fire from two men who are familiar with each other. Familiarity can lead to liberties in a relationship. Not all those liberties are appropriate. But this is not, for example, Latrell Spreewell and P.J. Carlissimo.

You remember that from the 90s? LaTrell Sprewell, New York, Nick choked his head coach during a practice, P.J. Carlissimo. These two men did not have a good relationship, and that was an absolute assault. That's not what this was with Travis Kelsey. And at this point, the Travis Kelsey Taylor Swift story has taken on such a life of its own that non-sports fans are out there completely outraged about Travis Kelsey, but they're not really outraged about this moment. otherwise they've never been in that kind of heated and competitive environment.

Again, it's wrong. But you can see a line between it's wrong and, oh my God, this is the worst thing ever. Look at this privilege, whatever you want to make your argument. That's, by the way, an argument made by Tyreek Hill. Wide receiver for the Miami Dolphin said he would have been kicked out of the league. I don't think so, Tyreek, especially considering your domestic violence charges that keep you in the league. It's not white versus black. And too much of it is left versus right, I guess.

like everybody's wrapped everything up into Travis Kelsey oh Mr. Pfizer oh I don't even know his politics by the way I don't know that Travis Kelsey has made a political endorsement oh Taylor Swift who has made a political endorsement but I've told you before at this point like if I start X and out all the celebrities or entertainers who disagree with me politically I'm not going to be left with much

to entertain I don't require that of the people that entertain me I'm really not even interested in it I'm not interested in their political POV, but just too much has been layered on this thing. It's like, yeah, okay, I disagree with Travis Kelsey about his endorsement of Pfizer. I disagree with Taylor Swift about her endorsement of Joe Biden. And, and so what, I don't need to layer that on top of this moment between Kelsey and Andy Reed. Everybody just needs to calm down for a moment. Because this is sports, not right, still wrong, but also still sports.

And in the end, it's honestly all going to be a net positive for Travis Kelsey. He's turned into Uber famous. Look, who is Kelsey? A very, very good NFL tight end. I mean, not the best of all time. Maybe soon getting in that range. Locked up by Dre Greenlaw in the Super Bowl. Not enough to talk about that in the first half.

Locked up until Greenlaw blew his Achilles trying to enter the game in the second half. Then Kelsey ends up with nine catches for 93 yards. But a really, really good tight end. The best in the game today. Goofy. Fun loving. I don't know that it's like my style and anything or everything he does. The way he dresses, the way he celebrates, the way he talks.

I don't care. I don't have to care about all this. I don't have to layer on all of our differences and all these meta-analysis to look at a moment that was a regrettable moment, but not worthy of normie non-sports fan. Lose your mind, outrage. only if you layer everything else into one box. And I'm just tired of everything being layered in to one box.

That's going to do it for today here on the Will Kane show. I will see tomorrow. Go download again Pete Hegeseth or Mark Wayne Mullen from today's episode. Share it with your friends. Subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to the show on YouTube. I will see you again next time. Listen to ad free with a Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcast.

and Amazon Prime members, you can listen to this show, ad-free, on the Amazon music app. from opposite sides of the aisle, along with all your Brett Bear favorites, like his All-Star panel and much more. Available now at foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.