Chairman Jim Jordan joins us now. He runs judiciary. He's also a member of the Oversight Committee. Congressman, welcome back. Good to be with you, Brian.
Thanks for how you do. Yeah, I mean, I know you don't follow the Senate, you've got your own chamber to worry about, but does it blow you away you can't get votes on, they can't pass that? Yes, it just I think underscores what Leader Thin was talking about, just how radical the left has become. And they control the Democrat Party that they won't vote for photo ID, they won't vote for citizenship voting, they won't support that legislation, which is as common sense as it gets. Of course, maybe it shouldn't surprise us when you really dig into it, Brian, because I think we've talked about this before, but Act Blue, the big supporter of them.
We've deposed ten people from MacBlue. They've all taken the fifth. They've taken the fifth because it looks like they're taking foreign contributions in our election cycle.
So if they're comfortable with taking foreign contributions, I guess maybe they're comfortable with foreigners voting. Again, just underscoring. how radical the left has truly become in this country.
So I guess nothing's going to get done. I also, I'm not sure if it's generated in the House or Senate, but didn't you guys look to generate cutting the interest rate on student loans? Yeah, I think we have. It may have been part of our we've talked about that before, but yeah, I think that's something that's been been looked at. It should be a no brainer.
That's a way of immediately lessening costs for people. Yeah, and then and when you sell your home, if people sell their home, the capital gains tax and other things, there's things you could do that would free up housing, bring down the cost of housing, so young families could have a better chance of getting an affordable home and getting that first home. There's things we could do in the tax code there as well that would help with affordability. But again, the left doesn't want to do it. They're all about power.
They're all about. Um I mean deep down they just don't like the country. It's sad. The greatest country in the world, greatest country in history, and the left hates it. I just do not understand these folks.
So let's talk about Ohio again on the Senate side. Senator John used to have a chance to know. He has a low profile. He's a worker. He got put there when J.D.
Vance became Vice President of the United States, and now he's trailing by four points as Sherrod Brown. Is Ohio in jeopardy? Because in the governor's race, Vivek has one up or one down in every poll. I'm used to Ohio being firmly read. What's changing?
Well, I think it's just overall concerns that, you know, look, I always say this campaign, in my judgment, is about kind of three key messages. Number one, we did what you elected us to do in 2024. We need to go tell the voters that. You wanted us to cut taxes. We did that biggest tax cut ever.
You wanted us to secure the border. We did that, frankly, in record time. And God bless the administration for the good work they've done there. Talk about that, I think we have to acknowledge things cost a little too much, and I think that's a concern that many Ohioans have. We've brought down the cost of so much, the record inflation under Joe Biden, but there things still cost too much.
So the things we should be we could focus on and we're going to continue to work on, as I mentioned, the cost of housing and different things we can do. And then third, I think this campaign is, and this is what we have to I really focus on these last five weeks. is this campaign is reminding the voters what the left wants to do. Where they want to go. They want to make us a socialist nation.
They want to get rid of the Senate, get rid of the presidency, fundamentally change the Supreme Court, pack the Supreme Court, not to mention all their crazy policy positions. And I think it's really important we go tell the voters: look, you may not be 100% excited about everything this election. We understand that. But look what happens if you don't vote, if you don't come out and vote. This is where the left is going to go.
And it is a frightening place. Never forget, Mom Donnie was sworn in nine months and 29 days ago, as the mayor of our largest city. And he said, I was elected as a Democrat socialist. I will govern as a Democrat socialist. They are going to do all the crazy things they've talked about unless we stop them.
And the only way to stop them is on election day.
So I want you to, I mean, just some of the things that are going on. The one issue that's popped up I wasn't expecting was data centers. That went quick. It's down. If you look at the voting, only 1% of the people are voting on whether there's a data center in their town or not.
But still, it matters. People are talking about it. And number two is AI as an industry.
So first off, President's like, hey, we're having the CEOs over. We're going to come up with some type of plan, but I'm not looking to slow anyone down. Democrats are firmly looking to slow people down. Here is what AOC said yesterday: cut 43. AI.
Data, all of this are founded on theft. They are stealing what is yours, your face. Your your behaviors, your privacy. And they wanted she wanted to say this, cut 44. in an environment of AI.
They want to wipe out all of our livelihoods. They want to make sure none of us have jobs. And they want to keep all the spoils of those riches while consuming and burning energy at a pace that is completely unsustainable to make this worse.
Okay. I mean, can you imagine? Is there anything more irresponsible you can say so quickly?
Well, I'd be thinking about she talk about privacy and your rights and your liberties, for goodness sake. Jack Smith went and got our phone records. He probably got some of you. He probably saw some of your text messages, Brian, to some member of Congress or some member someone in the administration. He went and got that.
He went and got mine for two and a half years. He got McCarthy as the Speaker of the House 16 days after he became Speaker. Like, you talk about privacy and violating our liberties. That that is what the the left has done. Look, but these data centers It should be common sense things done at the local level.
Local people should decide when, where, if, and how these things happen. And if they're coming to your community and you decide to do that as a local community, great. I would ask these companies to do something for your community. Lower your property taxes. Put in a new swimming pool for the kids.
Build a new park for the community. Whatever. But it should be a local decision. That's how it should happen on a local level. But for her to say all those things she said in light of what they did to our liberties, what they did to Americans during COVID, I mean, the censorship, the shutdown of the government, telling people they couldn't go to church, couldn't go to work, couldn't go to school, what they did to kids who couldn't go to school for a couple of years.
You got to be kidding me. And now suddenly it's like, oh, they're out to save your liberties and your privacy and your rights. Give me a break.
So Jack Smith testifying right now, and one of the things he said is Donald Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation, so he continues to obsess. But they called him in on the Senate side, and they're sparring with him nonstop. What you people, you know, we're doing this show, you're on with me, we're not watching right now, but what you people know about Jack Smith? He was out to get the president. It was all about keeping President Trump from winning reelection.
Just like in 2016, the Clinton campaign did the whole Russian dossier baloney that Comey used to go spy on the other campaign that was all designed to stop President Trump. Just like in 2020, when the 51 former Intel officials signed the letter saying the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian information operation. Baloney. They had the laptop. They knew it was real.
I mean, it's always been designed to stop the Republicans and President Trump from winning election. Jack Smith, the biggest takeaway from Jack Smith is it's best to understand this, what he did and how he handled the Speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy becomes Speaker. 16 days later, he goes and gets his phone records. Who he called, who called him, when it happened, how long it lasted.
He tells the agent who goes to serve the subpoena, he tells the agent that they don't tell the agent it's for the guy who's Speaker of the House, second in line to the president. They don't tell the judge, this is a subpoena to... to get the phone records to the judge. for the Speaker of the House, the guy second in line to the Presidency. They don't tell him that because they ask the judge for an for an a nondisclosure, a gag order on the company.
They tell AT and T, you you and the judge, you can't let this guy know. Because he's a flight risk. You gotta be kidding me. The speaker of the house is gonna flee the country. But that's how determined Jack Smith was to go get the president.
It's sickening what they were doing, violating the Constitution, not being honest, not being square with the people. We we actually deposed the guy who served the subpoena, the agent. He said, if I'd have known it was a speaker to the house, that would have caused me real concern. I didn't know that, I just had a phone number. This is how bad.
The left is willing, this is where they're willing to go for politics. That's the key takeaway. All right, so I want to cover a couple of things. This trade deal with Canada that's not happening, more tariffs go in place. They say it's going to cost Ohio, Iowa.
Maine and Michigan, $188 billion. Here is President Trump yesterday on what's going on with this trade war with Canada, Cut 50. How does this end, Mr. President? three or four weeks, they're going to come to us and they're going to say, we need to get rid of all the tariffs.
We're going to win everything. your thoughts about the toll that's taking in the short term and where it's heading in the long term?
Well, we understand the President's objective here, of course, is bring back manufacturing, help the country and That in many cases it's working that way. You've seen some of the manufacturing numbers. Manufacturing jobs are up.
So it's working. In short term, it's sometimes tough, but this is how the President negotiates. We get that. But we understand the goal. And I think the goal is a worthy goal, particularly in key industries, key manufacturing sectors, key defense sectors.
You want that stuff done, built, and put together here in the United States.
So that's what he's trying to do. There's always some difficult times in the short run. But I think in the end, The President's pretty good at getting these negotiations to move in the right kind of direction. And that's what we hope happens here. You know, there's some Biden officials working with the leadership over in Canada.
Do you think they're playing politics here at all? The left is always playing politics. I mean the the the left The left, which now controls the body it it was funny, but it b uh in the bumper uh stuff that going on uh in when I was first called in, it was uh there was they were playing uh uh J John F. Kennedy. And the once great party of FDR and JFK is now completely radical, controlled by the left, and they don't like the country.
So, of course, they play politics with everything. Our chief of staff always says, remember one fundamental fact, all Democrats are operatives. All Democrats are focused on politics all the time. And it's like there's a lot of truth to that.
So yeah, that's that of course they're playing politics. They always do, because politics means everything to the left. and power and control And this this scary fact that they just they don't like the country now. It's really frightening. But do you think that it's going to hurt you guys in the midterms if you can't land this trade deal?
Well, I'm hoping we can. You heard Leader Thune talking about some of the concerns in the Midwest. Particularly with people in the agriculture sector. And some of that's tariffs, some of that's just the cost of things, obviously, the affordability concern.
So, yeah, it it's a concern now, but I think we can we can turn things around. We got five weeks. We can remind the voters of, as I said earlier, what we've done. We can remind them that we understand the cost concern issue out there. We're working on that.
And we can certainly remind them, which I think has to be the central message, how radical the left has become. I want to talk about the Sports Act that passed yesterday. The Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act 7722. And I'll give you a rough idea. It'll give athletes a federal right to earn NIL money and receive a share of school sports revenue.
I hope they come up with a clearinghouse on that to make sure these are legit companies. Transfers allowed one transfer, five years to play five seasons. Scholarships, by the way, you can't be over 25. Scholarships and care protect scholarships after injury or poor performance, provide a path to finish the degree up to 10 years after eligibility. I love that.
Agents and enforcement cap fees at 5%. NIL contract rules and let athletes sue to enforce specific protections. Sports programs, that's a rule that will require schools to reserve a minimum number of sports protecting your sport, my sport, wrestling, and soccer, things, sports like that. Olympic programs while giving college sports bodies limited legal protection to enforce national compensation eligibility rules.
So it's going to. Would give the NCAA a little bit of teeth. It's going to protect. Listen, you don't even know what it's like, but outside where I grew up in Long Island and you in Iowa and Penn State and places like that, wrestling's not a major sport. And it's usually one of the first to go, like gymnastics.
Doesn't mean they're not really important. But if they don't restructure this, we're going to lose the other sports. Right, we're going to lose the women's sports and the Olympic sports, which was one of the things we tried to focus on. When we started working on this, a couple years ago, our focus was sort of three big objectives. One, you want some parity.
As much as I'd like to see the Big Ten win the football championship every year, it's nice if there's real parity, real competition out there. Number two is you want to maintain opportunity, is what you were just describing, Brian. You want opportunity, not just in the big sports, but in the Olympic sports and the women's sports, make sure they're not dropping programs. And then number three, frankly, is you kind of want to remember this is supposed to be about getting an education. I mean, when's the last time you heard of a one of these great college players, uh college football players, being academically ineligible?
You don't hear about it anymore because they're paying him so darn much money. There's like no way. No, Johnny actually passed that test that the professor said he flunked. No, he's playing on, because we're paying him a million bucks. He's playing on Saturday.
So those are sort of the three objectives we had when we were working on this. And then, of course, you got to give some antitrust, some antitrust relief so that you can have a governing body actually make rules, and not all the rules are determined by so is there anything you don't like about this that the House is going to wrestle with? Because I mean, I hope you guys take this up, but I'm sure you're just not going to just rubber stamp it. No, there's some concerns. There's the union, there's the collective bargaining issue, the union issue that's that's sort of there.
There's some other prescriptive things there. We tried in our bill that we put together in the House working with Chairman Wahlberg and Chairman Guthrie and some of the other committees. And Gus Bill Arakas, who was the sponsor, we tried to put together one that. Was minimum amount of rules because you want the NCAA to kind of do their own thing here and work. You don't want the Congress prescribing everything for goodness sake.
The only thing worse than the NCAA would be Congress doing it.
So we try to do that. I think this has got a little more prescriptive, but overall I think it's positive, and we're going to take a look at it. I hope so. Do you think I mean, I understand why you didn't get back. I mean, you barely have a majority.
Massey's not voting for you. Sadly, you have one of your guys is really ill, and then you got. Corey Mills is not coming back ever since he lost the primary, so you barely have a majority. Is that one of the reasons you guys didn't come back? Yeah, and then you have some Republicans who were opposed to our bill that we had put together with three committees and they in the House who weren't willing to support it.
And the Democrats who were were co-sponsors pulled their co-sponsorship. Because of a different issue, the Cal A decision on redistricting in some of these southern states. And so they pulled their support, so you just didn't have the votes. And my guess is that same dynamic would exist now. And so we'll have to wait until after the election.
Always great talking to you, Congressman Jim Jordan. Appreciate it.
