GOP calls out Biden's SOTU lies; Twitter admits it was wrong to ban Hunter Biden story

From high atop Fox News headquarters in New York City, always seeking solutions, never sowing division. It's Brian Kilmead.

Well, almost Brian killed me. This is Jason Chaffetz. I'm filling in for Brian. Brian's on his way to the Super Bowl. Gonna be one of the best Super Bowls I think we've ever had.

Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, it's going to be an epic game. Great quarterbacks, great coaches. Tenacious teams. I'm just looking forward to a great, great game, and Brian's going to be there. And so I'm sure he's just settling into his first-class seat there and taking a little nap as he gets down to the Super Bowl.

So I'm filling in for him. I used to serve in the United States Congress once upon a time. I was chairman of the Oversight Committee.

Now I'm a Fox News contributor. And my name is Jason Chaffetz, by the way. But we're looking forward to having a good show and excited to have some guests who've really got some experience. And one of them, I'm just thrilled to have is on the line with us right now. It's the former senator from Massachusetts, the former ambassador to New Zealand, Scott Brown.

So, Senator, Ambassador, thanks for joining us on the Brian Kilmead Show. Hey, it's great to speak with you, and congratulations on everything you're doing. And by the way, you're talking to a seasoned ticket holder from nineteen ninety four for the New England Patriots. I will say that the Atlanta Falcons Patriots game is probably the best. from what twenty eight to three.

So just saying, I don't wanna ruffle anybody's feathers, but I am looking forward to uh to the game and I'm I'm I'm going with the Chiefs. I love Mahomes. He's a he's just a great guy and a great athlete. But Two super teams. It'll be wonderful to watch.

No, yeah, good teams, good coaches. I'm pretty partial to Andy Reid. He's got some connections to those of us out here in Utah. But it's just going to be a great game. I hope so.

And I don't think it'll be a blowout like the national championship game in college football, but it'll be good. But hey, you've seen some epic games there at the Patriots. But we're going to talk a little bit about politics, if you don't mind. No. Hey.

Hey, y I got a beef with you, by the way. I I don't know if you know this but well, look, I served in the House, you were in the Senate. And when we go into the State of the Union, you guys were always got the like saved front row seats. And I always told us I was joking with the speaker, I'm like, Hey, it's our house. Why don't we sit up front and let them sit in the back once?

But, you know, the reason is that, you know, we're guests in your house and you treat your guests, you know, a little better than you treat your own. And uh I think it would have been good to put the senators in the back for once and see how they feel. I'll sit anywhere. It was an honor to serve. But I'll tell you what, you and I have been to a few of these and Sadly, it was kind of the same old, same old more spending, more taxing, talking about resort fees and taxing our energy companies and wanting to destroy our tech industry when we took an hour to mention the fact that we have a Chinese spice balloon traversing our country freely with no intercept, no nothing, no put a hole in it, capture the whole thing intact.

It's just a joke, and it's it's very serious. And while people were drinking their coffee, you know, they're looking up at this balloon for just going across the country and the President's doing nothing. It's very scary, and President Xi is watching this stuff. Yeah, I thought it was pathetic in its response. You know, one parallel that nobody's really drawn here is.

Uh when I was in Congress and I was the chair, uh we had this guy in an ultralight. Remember he was oh yeah, I remember yeah he came into the to the Washington DC zone. He basically came in close to the Pentagon in the White House, made a left-hand turn and then decided to land this thing on the the steps of the Capitol. And the reality of it is, they had trouble seeing him and determining whether or not this was an object.

Now, They could have come clean on that and said, Hey, look, we have trouble seeing this type of thing, but that's not what has been said about this. And you would think that when that happened, that maybe we should have the technology in order to determine. Because when they look at it on a radar, it kind of looks like a flock of birds. And so they were having difficulty, but. The President did not instill confidence that the military knows what it's doing, and I still don't understand why they didn't shoot it down when it was off the coast of Alaska.

That's when they should have been detected. Yeah, they they should have. And listen, you can't tell me there's not a mechanism to basically neutralize it and potentially bring it down at a slower rate either and capture all the information and deny them the information that they've been receiving. It's just a comedy of errors. As we know, President Biden's been wrong on almost every major national security issue.

And it's just a sign of weakness. And we have to get past. And I find it interesting watching him obviously really At the border, really not ta uh, you know, demonizing our energy producers, demonizing our high-tech industry. And yet, you have an eighty-year-old president and then you have the response from a forty-year-old governor. And I think that's going to be the message: past versus the future moving forward.

And I'm looking forward to doing what we have we call them the no BS, Scott Brown no BS backyard barbecues. Where last cycle we had sixteen out of the eighteen presidential candidates to my house and had New Hampshire, Mass, Vermont, Maine people come and grill these candidates.

So I'm glad the Republicans I'm sure which we we have a history of vetting our candidates really well. Yeah, no, look, there's some very viable people out there. Everybody from Governor DeSantis and Senator Tim Scott out of South Carolina. Nikki Haley also is South Carolina. The former governor there, of course, and working as the ambassador to the UN.

You got potentially Christy Noam out of South Carolina, South Dakota. And you're right, they're a whole new generation. compared to a very uh older, almost senile, if you will, you know, President Biden and the generation that he represents, we're grateful for that generation. But, you know, if you won't let the guy even fly a plane, maybe he shouldn't be flying the country.

Well, you know, more importantly, I mean, I had trouble even listening to what he was saying.

Some of his words were jumbled. I mean, he's teleprompter. Without the teleprompter, he he's he's done. And he's so closely handed I just wish the media would just do their job. Just cover it.

Just tell us how it is. Don't protect them. You know, let's sink or swim. This is the President of the United States and some of the things, the history over the last two plus years. It's scary, and everybody's watching.

And then, you know, to tote this bill by Amy Klobuchar, obviously, that Robert O'Brien, Larry Summers, former Clinton Treasury Secretary, and many others are saying, hey, listen, this would force us to basically hamper our innovators, not only the large ones, but the up-and-coming ones. But more importantly, Champagne Corps will be popping with WeChat, BikeDance, and other Chinese tech companies as President Z is basically empowering these tech companies over there. We're trying to, you know, we have the number one industry. And this president and Amy Klobuchar, and respectfully and sadly, a couple of Republicans who I think are misguided are trying to give away the advantage of one of the biggest enterprise. about job creators and it's just wrong.

And especially with inflation out of control still for nineteen months. Yeah, it's It is such a mess there and dysfunctional. And, you know, look, Democrats have to answer these questions themselves. I think one of the more interesting questions is going to happen later today. I'd love to get your take on this.

Over in the House, they're going to vote on House Resolution 104, which is condemning the Chinese Communist Party's use of a high-altitude surveillance balloon over the United States territory as a brazen violation of United States sovereignty. I don't know. Democrats will go all one direction or another. And I don't know what they're going to do on this one. Do you have any idea?

Yeah, I don't know either. This is clear that they did it on purpose. They're poking and prodding and testing. And listen, every country spies on other countries. I mean, as you know, the United States is a member of Five Eyes.

That's why I went to New Zealand as a Five Eyes partner, U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, to determine, figure out these things, try to protect our world and freedom and democracy. But we we spy, they spy everything. But you know, this is usually when can you imagine if President Reagan got even JFK, if this ever happened, President Trump, are you kidding me? They would be down in like minutes. And it sends a message that we're not going to take crap from the Chinese Communist Party.

And listen, I'm not sure how it's going to go either. The Democrats are all over the place. They're o all over the place in the border. And by the way, with regard to the border, I mean, here we are. The w it's the most ever.

What what does it take and at what point do we say enough? Like what's the what's the end game? Just to get so many illegals in here that they ultimately get their obviously their their legitimization and and then they can affect the outcomes of elections? This is just wrong. Just stop.

And we need to make a send a message. People need to get in there who can actually stop this stuff. You know, news is coming across now that we use surveillance balloons. You would think we would know about balloons because we use them ourselves down on the border, and they're good surveillance tools because you can, when you get up in the sky, if the weather's okay, which it usually is down on the southern border, you can actually watch people through infrared. You can see them at night, you can see them during the day, and give some intelligence as people are crossing the border.

And now, the Biden administration, in an effort to further secure the border, is saying that they're no longer going to use balloons. This just coming across this morning. Yeah, listen, it's a comedy of errors, as I said. We've been using balloons, if I'm not mistaken, since the Civil War, definitely World War I. I mean, we shot down a tremendous amount of those surveillance-type balloons.

Yeah, it's part of all the tools in the toolbox arsenal we have to keep our country safe. But there's just a clear and present danger being created by this administration for the lack of securing the border, the lack of being strong. In addressing what's happening with the CCP, you know, trying to destroy our businesses, overtax, overspend, putting us in a debt-ridden situation, inflation out of control. I mean, listen, I don't need to tell anybody who's listening, the price of eggs, the price of bacon, you know, obviously gas is down, or we should be happy. Hey, listen, it's still over $340, $350.

In California, it's over $5. Come on, let's not kid a kidder here. We have some very serious problems. And he's talking about resort fees and attacking smokers. And it's like, come on, Mr.

President, get real. Yeah. Last topic here, you know, one of the things the administration is doing is putting out this whole army, literally like an army of IRS agents. And one of the things they say they want to do is get after people and their tips and making sure that there's much more enforcement on people who are making tips. I don't know how that plays in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and places you hang out, but for a President who goes out and says, Hey, listen, you know, we're not going to increase taxes on anybody who earns less than $400,000 a year to go now pick on somebody and assume they're guilty for not paying taxes on their tips.

Come on.

Well, listen, you're going to have a lot of young kids. I mean, Venmo, you've got kids mowing lawns or making a grand maybe in the summertime. Kids that are doing painting in the summertime to pay for college tuition. They may get a little cash under the table. Good for them.

They're out hustling, they're out working. And we know when there's abuse, we have to address it. But what I've said, you say, well, so-and-so, this billionaire and this president didn't pay taxes. They paid little or no taxes. Great.

Then fix the damn tax code. I mean, they're taking advantage of things that Congress has provided, the loopholes and exemptions.

So businesses can be created and people can take advantage of things when things may not be as good as possible. The accelerated depreciation, writing off your business costs and interest to create jobs. If you don't like it, fix it. But to hire an army of IRS agents, listen, that's where Congress comes in. They control the purse strings.

And I'm thankful. I wish there was by a larger majority that the Republicans are in charge of the House.

So we at least have that check and balance and we can slow down this runaway freight train. But we need to zero in before our rights are taken away on so many different areas. And I think obviously the tech industry, our job creators, inflation, the debt, the deficit and our border are probably the top. And then obviously, dealing with CCP is top three, four, five right there. I love it when you're fired up.

I really do. I really do. You listen to me every day, Jason, and you too. I listen to you. I see you.

It's real. And people need to kind of not be complacent. And this whole laissez-faire attitude, it's like, come on, guys, let's get off the couch and let's get involved because it starts at the local school boards, and you've got to get out there and run. I mean, you've got to get out there and get involved. Support people you think can make a difference, or we're going to be in deep trouble.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Senator Scott Brown, the Ambassador. And just all-around good guy. Appreciate you joining us on the Brian Kilmey Show.

Really do appreciate it. Anytime. Anytime. All right, stay with us. We'll be right back.

Honest commentary, unique opinions. No agenda. It's Brian Kilmead from the Fox News Podcasts Network. I'm Ben Dominich, Fox News contributor and editor of the Transom.com daily newsletter, and I'm inviting you to join a conversation every week. It's the Ben Dominich Podcast.

Subscribe and listen now by going to FoxNewsPodcasts.com. He's so busy, he'll make your head spin. It's Brian Killmead. When applied to the approximate $888 billion in benefits paid during the pandemic, we estimate that at least. 191 billion.

in pandemic UI payments could have been paid improperly. with a significant portion attributable to fraud. Holy moly. I mean, talk about an absolute stunning number. That was Larry Turner, the the Department of Labor Inspector General.

They are estimating that more than twenty percent, more than one out of every five dollars, Roughly one hundred and ninety one billion dollars that was allocated for uh the pandemic payments for unemployment. We're fine. I mean We hear all the time from government leaders, right? You hear from the President at the State of the Union, you hear from all kinds of people. We need more money.

We got to raise more taxes. We have to have more money in the Treasury. We have a thirty one trillion dollar debt. And then the American people pull out of their wallets and add more debt to their own personal share of that debt. The amount of money to go out to help people during the pandemic, and the administration doesn't know how to deal with it.

So they just keep handing out the need for speed was much greater than the need to make sure that it's done properly and that it's documented properly.

So $191 billion goes rolling out the door. Just to give you an idea and a sense of how big that is, for the state of Utah, I'm from Utah, I'm more familiar with Utah. Our entire state budget, everything for schools, roads, national guard, you name it. is in the twenty billion dollar range.

So you have a hundred ninety one billion dollars that's going out the door, and that's just the unemployment, folks. Remember, you have the social you have a the Secret Service testifying that they think there's a hundred billion dollars out there. I don't know what the grand total is going to be, but it we already know it's going to be hundreds of billions of dollars that fraudulently went out the door.

Now a lot of that went overseas. And a lot of it went to who knows who. But you know what is inexcusable? We were supposed to know about this. I participated when I was in Congress with TARP.

Remember the troubled asset relief program they had? TARP, and we did hearings afterwards. They didn't know how to deal with the acceleration of the spending of money out of Washington, D.C. This happened under Barack Obama and Joe Biden. You would think that the administration would actually learn this, these bureaucrats.

And you know what, folks? Do you think there's a single person in the federal government that's going to get fired? Do you think there's anybody that's going to be held responsible? Do you think, no, every one of these people that were involved in this travesty and this ripping off and fleecing of America? They're going to get a raise.

They're gonna make more money. Not one person will be fired. If this happened at your own business, are you kidding me? More than 20% of those monies were stolen fraudulently, went out the door. It's outrageous.

We have to demand. We can't just let this report come and go. We have to actually, actually fix this problem. We got a lot more coming up on the Brian Kill Meet Show. I'm Jason Chaffett.

Stay with us. We've got some exciting guests coming forward. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Information you want, truth you demand.

This is the Brian Kill Me Show. Hey, I'm glad you're with us. I'm Jason Chapitz, filling in for Brian Kilmead, and there's so much to talk about right now. And I'm thrilled to have on the line somebody I actually served with in the United States Congress, the former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the former representative from Michigan, Mike Rogers. Thanks for joining us.

Jathan, it is great to hear your voice. And great to be here. Yeah, no, always good to chat with you. There's another Mike Rogers in Congress who's still there, who's a pretty important player down there, but this is the Mike Rogers as far as I'm concerned. You're too kind.

He always says he's from Alabama, so he may have a little bit of a southern draw, and he says that I'm the one that talks funny. Yeah. Well, I'm not going to argue with him. He's still there, so that's good. Hey, listen.

Look, you. You were the chairman of the Intel Committee, right?

So you've seen a lot of stuff along the way. And I want to start off and kick off and talk about. And you've been through some of these raucous state of the unions, but I don't know. This one had sort of a.

Sort of a special glint to it. Let me start with cut two and get your reaction to it. Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans Some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I'm not saying it's a majority. Anybody who doubts it.

Contact my office. I'll give you a copy of the proposal.

So folks. as we all apparently agree.

Social Security and Medicare is off the books now, right? They're not to be started. All right. I mean, to suggest that the Republicans are supportive of. Sunsetting it as opposed to, hey, let's fix it so that it will continue on and make sure that you make some adjustments to it so it can continue on in perpetuity.

I don't know how he got away with that. But that's the kind of contentious stuff that was happening there at the State of the Union. What were your thoughts and reactions to what was going on? First of all, the President took the low road already when he tried to do that. And he was trying, what they were doing in the campaign leading into 2022 was running around the country saying, if you recall, Republicans are cutting your social security and cutting your Medicare, cutting your social security and cutting your Medicare.

And, you know, as you and I maybe have discussed on the House floor many moons ago, They are very good at the Democrats at being disciplined about their message. And they say it over and over and over and over again as people start to believe it. And so that was a political line in a speech that really, I think. Warranted a lofty view of where we are in the country and what our challenges are. And he swung in a missed on that.

Um it just didn't se it just seems like our politics emanating from the leader in the in the administration isn't big enough to handle the big problems we have. Medicaid, think of this, is going to be in a cash deficit in twenty twenty eight. Not 10 years, not 15 years, 2028. And so what he's saying is, let's just bankrupt it and then we'll try to see what we can do. I mean, that's absolutely irresponsible.

It is. It's malpractice to not address it now when you can actually steer the ship in the right direction without cutting benefits to those that are on the program or right about to be on the program. To wait until then a disaster is wrong. You can see this car crash going to happen. Exactly.

And other than nothing. Other than saying we're not going to do anything. And by the way, you should vote for us because we're not going to do anything. But when it crashes, that something's going to happen, right?

Something's going to have to change. There's going to be we're either going to have to borr borrow more money from China just to meet demand, which is unsustainable, Right. I mean, it just creates all of these other problems. by not trying to deal with the issue today. And we have time.

That's the that's this is the worst part of it. We have time. But I think they're more concerned about getting reelected than they are actually fixing real problems. And Medicare is the lifeline for, as you know, just millions and millions of Americans. Yeah, yeah.

I want to transition now and talk a little bit about China, your perspective, you know, as the former chairman of the Intel Committee. Look, look. One of the uh Key people that testified on Capitol Hill on Tuesday was this Admiral Harris.

Now, I'm sure you're familiar with Admiral Harris. I actually, at one point, went to Hawaii where he was stationed and got a classified briefing for more than an hour talking about the threats, the developments, what was going on in China. And I was just, it's kind of a shock and awe. You're just sort of like, wow, we better get our act together. Listen to this Cut 16, and then I want to get your reaction to it.

Over the past five years, the situation has worsened, in my opinion, and almost every geostrategic measure. A security environment more complex. and more volatile, and more dangerous than any that I've seen. We are in what I call the decisive decade. And this is from a guy who knows, who's put his life on the line and was the commander out there as an admiral.

What's your reaction to what he said? I think he's absolutely right. The sad part is, Jason, we knew about this back in the early twenty thousand to twenty ten era because they were saying they were going to do this. The Chinese Communist Party was saying, hey, these are the things that we're going to do. We're going to compete with the U.

S. Navy.

Well, guess what? They just surpassed us in the number of ships. We are going to take on the dominance of the United States in space. And guess what? We are now have.

uh strategic competitors in space. China being the main player there. And they've militarized it. We never militarized it, they have militarized space. With killer, you know, they have anti-satellite missile capability, they have anti-satellite capability, they have killer satellites they've launched to take out other satellites.

I mean, this is pretty serious stuff. We all know what they've been doing in cyber by stealing intellectual property, maybe the largest transfer of wealth. in the history of the world from information they've stolen from American businesses and repurposed in China. Their military is getting better and more modernized.

So they're going through all of these processes. And look at the politics we just talked about on the House floor with the President of the United States saying something he knew not to be true. I mean, this is where we are. And the reason the Chinese are moving out and being so aggressive is because they say this is their kind of terminology: hey, they're soft. and self-absorbed.

That's how we're going to beat them.

Well you look at that State of the Union, you can't how do you argue we're not Yeah. And you have a president who's Not fully aware. And let l I want to stay on this just a little bit because it is so important to our national security. This is again Admiral Harris testifying on Tuesday in Capitol Hill it's going to cut seventeen. I'll just say that That we're shooting behind the Peking duck on the hypersonics.

China is ahead of us in that regard. We need an offensive capability and we need a defensive capability. Imagine a missile that's flying so fast. that you can't pick it up on radar, let alone shoot it down. And that that's what we're up against.

And y you know um Mm-hmm. President uh Trump when he created the Space Force. Hollywood kind of laughed at it, created a series called Space Force. You know, everybody's kind of but I'm telling you, what's going on in space is pretty important to how we live in this country. What huge.

So you think about everything is connected. Let me just start with the military side of that, Jason.

So you think of smart soldiers, smart sailors, smart ships, smart bombs, smart airplanes, that's all space enabled. One of the reasons the Chinese and they did this back in 2007, I was on the intelligence committee, it was the first time we had seen it, they the Chinese fired an anti-satellite missile, went you know, up from the ground into the uh atmosphere and uh hit a satellite.

Now they were shooting at their own just to show they had the capability to do it. But that cha fundamentally changed the way we had to look at space, we, the United States. And we said that we, the United States, said we gotta do something about it. We were very, very slow in reacting, and our defense and intelligence services were scratching their heads. And if they take those things out, it's not just You know, you don't have your Starbucks app working when you get up in the morning.

Financial transactions come to a halt. There's all kinds of really big and important things. All the logistics that happen from getting. corn from Iowa to New York to get to bakeries is all space enabled. And so all of that stuff gets disrupted in a way that could be very harmful, A, for our economy, but think about the national security implications You know, you know, that that carrier group just becomes a big bobbin piece of concrete out there if they don't have that space-enabled military-grade GPS.

to fire missiles and do other things. You gotta go back to the old way of doing it. China knows it. That's why they went after us in space. They knew that was our strength.

And why we were so dominant on the battlefield anywhere we went. And guess what? They decided to go after it. And hypersonics, by the way. was a part of their equation to say what what's the other thing we worry about they have space Yeah.

What's the other thing? They have this blue water navy that's best in the world. What can we do to push that blue water navy out of places like the South China Sea and other places where most of the world trade flows through? and it was hypersonic missiles.

So they developed it, implemented them and have it. And as you know, you went to the briefing, but you would ever talk to a commander out in the Pacific, the one thing that gives them a bead of sweat are these hypersonic missiles. And it meant that our Navy has to have longer standoff, meaning we have to pull out of certain areas because of the threat of these missiles. And so China's just been marching along. We've been doing things like sending FBI agents to school board meetings.

We are not taking this threat seriously, and we're not preparing ourselves for the strategic competition in the way that we need to. to compete against uh this rising China. No, it's it's scary stuff and I I'm glad we're talking about it. We need more people talking about it and we need Congress focused on it as well. I've only got you for a few more minutes.

I want to focus I want to totally shift gears now and get into this op-ed you wrote. It's in the Washington Times talking about schools.

So tell tell me w what's your thesis here and what you wanted to highlight.

Well We have a literacy crisis in America, Jason. And by the way, this is one of the things that I've been out around the country talking about how we have to get our act together to compete against China. We're graduating half, think of this, half. Of high school seniors last year couldn't read at the sixth grade level. Wow.

And we're graduating, they're putting them out in the workforce. And that puts us at a disadvantage. This is a forced disability and one that we can cure. And so, if you're going to compete against China, the one thing we have to do is get our schools not focused on. Your sexuality, but focused on reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The rest of those problems will take care of themselves. But this uh hijacking of curriculum and making making it so that we're graduating kids that can't read at the sixth grade level. By the way, what that means for them is they have a much higher percentage likelihood to end up in prison or living on welfare.

So you're sentencing these kids to two really terrible options. And my argument is if this is the one thing that we can tackle and cure it, and there's great reading reclamation programs. They're all nonprofit. That can go into schools and get these kids reading at grade level. And here's the economic benefit of this, Jason.

If you can get every child graduating in the twelfth grade reading at the twelfth grade, it adds about one point seven trillion dollars to the economy because they can upskill from there. They can actually go out and improve their skills and go to community college or fill out applications. Imagine trying to fill out an application with a sixth-grade reading level, pretty tough.

So it improves their life, it improves the communities they live in, it improves. the economics of the United States. And if we're going to compete with China in this next generation in technology, you need smarter kids graduating from high school. This is the one thing we have to start on, and we can do and we can fix. And I argue we must do it.

No, I totally, totally agree. Glad you're on that as well. We've been talking with Mike Rogers, former Congressman from this great state of Michigan and also the former chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

So thank you so much for joining us. Always good to hear your voice and talk to you again. And thanks for joining us on the Brian Kilmead Show. Hey, thanks, Jason. It's great to hear you, and I look forward to catching up in person.

I'll buy you that cup of coffee, and we'll. will solve the world's problems. Very good. Very good. All right.

Thanks again, Mike Rogers. I appreciate it. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Thank you.

Expanding your knowledge base. It's the Brian Kill Meet Show. From his mouth to your ears, it's Brian Kilmead. I think you guys got played. I think you guys wanted to take it deep down.

We saw what the chairman put up where you said, you know, everyone in the White House isn't as a fascist. I think you guys wanted to be taken down. I think you meet with these guys every week. We know that's been established in the Twitter files. You had weekly meetings with Mr.

Chan in the run-up to the election. They send you all kinds of emails. They send you documents on the super secret James Bond teleporter. You get information on that. I think you guys wanted to take it down.

I think you guys got played by the FBI. That, of course, is Jim Jordan, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the Congressman from Ohio, and somebody I served with in Congress for a number of years when I was there. I'm Jason Chaffins, by the way, filling in for Brian Kilmead. Jim Jordan is making the most salient point here. Here you have Twitter um as an you know independent uh private company.

Um but the FBI, I guess what should scare everybody on both sides of the aisle? I know you have you have Democrats out there, Jamie Raskin and AOC and others kind of poo-pooing it, downplaying it, saying, Oh, there's nothing there there and and we shouldn't worry about this. Yes, we should worry about it. You had the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Department of Justice, embedding itself with the private company to inject itself to at points saying You know, we gotta make sure that you do this, or that you do that, or that you do this, or you do that. To what end?

You know, one of the core questions I think that has to continue to be asked of the FBI is, what laws do you believe were being broken? You know, these companies out there, they have Protection under what's called Section 230 of the Code, of the United States Code. And under this so-called provision of 230, there's limitations on liability. The argument when the Internet was first starting and social media platforms were in their infancy is you can't hold us liable for what goes out over this because we're just the the pass-through. And so Congress gave them this exemption.

And it was really supposed to be an accelerant for people exercising their First Amendment rights.

Now, if there's some foreign entity that's trying to manipulate it, then highlight it and take that down. But that's not where it's gravitated. What happened is that Twitter was allowed to be infiltrated itself, and as Jim Jordan points out, He believes that they were complicit in wanting this to happen, to make political decisions, to take down, for instance, the New York Post, the fourth largest newspaper in our country, from publishing a story that the FBI knew was true. Remember, in the Hunter Biden laptop scenario, they had the laptop. months and months and months and months before So they knew that this laptop was true.

And yet you have the former general counsel for the FBI now working at Twitter, and you have this whole array of of FBI agents that are interacting with them Weekly, if not daily. And at some points, you have the FBI peppering them with questions, with Twitter people with questions and suggestions. Remember, they're law enforcement. If law enforcement knocked on your door and said, you know, you really ought to think about taking this down, at some points they were saying, because it violates your terms of service.

Now Even that was questionable, but what in the world is the FBI doing, injecting itself into terms of service discussions and putting pressure on them to take down things that were politically inconvenient for Democrats? That's the reality. It's the weaponization of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for purely political processes. And that's what I think will continue to go out there and continue to be exposed, and we all ought to pay attention to it. I'm Jason Chavitz.

Thanks for listening to us. Jason in the house. If you listen to my podcast, I'd appreciate it. From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan, it's the fastest-growing radio talk show. Brian Kilmead.

You know, Brian Kilmead is the most approachable guy, and you know, right now he's on an airplane headed to the Super Bowl.

So I'm Jason Schaffetz filling in for him. Please, if you're on a plane and you see him sleeping or he's got his eyes closed, or even if he's working, tap him on the shoulder. Tell him you said hi. Make sure you shake him, wake him up, and say, hey, you're the most approachable guy. He'll love that.

I promise. He'll love it. And I'm also glad that we've got as one of our first guests here for this hour, Sean Duffy. The former congressman from Wisconsin, who's now the co-host on the bottom line on Fox Business Network, there at 6 p.m. Eastern.

First comments, voice of the day. We're glad we woke him up. Sean Duffy's joining us. Jason, Shacus, it's great to be with you. Listen, I love that.

If Brian killed me, just sleeping on the plane, shake him, wake him up. And see if he's the most approachable guy on TV or radio. See what happens. Yeah, I think he'll love that. I think he'll love that.

Hey, thanks for joining us. Congratulations on the new show. You and Degan got a lot of energy, and it's a great program.

So you're off to a great start there. Yes, thank you. It's been a fun show. Dagon and I would work together when I was in Congress actually, and you probably did too. You'd go on Maria's in the morning, and she was always wonderful.

And we're halfway through week three and just been having a lot of fun and great guests. You were kind enough to join us. I was razzing a little bit as you came on. And to do it every day has been a lot of fun. And as I'm doing the bottom line, Fox business at 6 p.m.

Eastern and I watched what happened in Congress, not just for the speakers vote, but also all the lives I heard at the State of the Union, I was kind of like, I don't know that I miss it that much, Jason. This might be better. Yeah, you know, it was a little raucous there. It's an honor to be in there and be one of the representatives for the State of the Union. I wish it was less raucous, quite frankly.

I think it's a time for the president to make his comments. I know it's a one-way conversation, and you get frustrated because he's saying things that you know aren't true. And that was probably more true this year than any of the years we probably went through, but it was maybe a little bit raucous.

Well, so first of all, I agree with you. I like to have decorum In the chamber, and especially for the State of the Union, we have a long history of that. And so, when you erode the norms, whether it was at the State of the Union or even kicking members off of committees. Nancy Pelosi did it to Jim Jordan, Kim Banks. Uh Marjorie Taylor Green Paul Gosar.

I didn't like that because I, and you knew the same thing. It's like, well, when Republicans take over, and they will one day. They're gonna do the same to you. And I think Kevin McCarthy had to respond in kind, though. He was more generous.

Peter said, there's certain committees you can't serve on. We're not gonna kick you off of every single committee. Where Nancy Pelosi kicked Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, Congressman from Arizona. off all committees. But in the House, I like, again, the Speaker invites the President, and I would appreciate.

The President not coming in and telling a bold-faced, flat-out lie on Medicare. in front of you know, the majority of members in the chamber, which are Republicans. And I don't think they have much of a choice but to fact check him in real time. The media won't backtrack Joe Biden.

So members of Congress did and When you when you start to push the envelope like like like Joe did in the speech, You know, you're going to get a response. And I wish that he had a little more tact in saying we all should stand together and preserve and protect Social Security and Medicare, as opposed to lying about Republicans and saying they want to take it away. It's outrageous. Yeah, there was a high-road way to do that. I thought, you know, having watched that clip again, I really think he was baiting.

The Republicans. I think it was a purposeful bait as opposed to taking the high road and say, can we all agree? And then he could have said, and then everybody would have stood and clapped, and then he could say, Good, I'm glad we all agree.

Now let's move on. But the president was yesterday in your home state of Wisconsin, and I want to play a clip here, a clip 30, because the president was out, you know, usually they kind of barnstorm the country and talk about their state of the union. Um But let's listen to clip thirty. He was in uh DeForest. Is that how you say it?

Uh Wisconsin. I don't know was that in your congressional district? It was it was not. You won't go to my district. We're too Republican.

All right. Let's listen to the President yesterday in Wisconsin, clip thirty. Inflation is falling, six months trade. Inflation is coming down. Take home pay and workers is going up slightly.

Manufacturing is rebounding. at the fastest rate in almost forty years. The economy is growing on a solid clip. Folks, I hate the disappointment, but the Biden Economic Plan is working. It's working.

Yeah, it's working, Congressman. What do you got? Nothing to worry about. Everything's rosy, everything's going great.

Well, you and I have talked about this a lot, and many people on Fox have discussed this. But if you ask the American people, they'll tell you: actually, it's not going better. Four in ten Americans. Say they're worse off financially under Joe Biden than they were under Donald Trump. That's a staggering number.

Joe Biden also said, I'm going to unify the country. That was his main pitch. I'm not Donald Trump, I'm not going to have those. Raucous Twitter account. I'm not going to fight with the media.

I'm going to unify you.

Well, eight out of 10 Americans, 82%, say that the country is fracturing like a family. They're going in two different directions. We're more divided. And that's 10 points higher than when Donald Trump was in office.

So he hasn't made it better, he's made it worse. And just not to throw all these numbers at you, but on the economy. Um and wages Wages have gone up. He's right. Wages have gone up about four point four percent.

But inflation's up six point five percent.

So your wage gain isn't keeping up with inflation.

So you're poorer as an American because of Joe Biden's economy. And he's so he's not telling the whole story, which is why when people look at prices at the store and what's left over at the end of the month, They know that they're worse off under this economy. No matter how many times Joe Biden lies, To mean to the American people, that it's really great. He can't fool my lion checkbook in my lion eyes of what I see in my own life.

Well, you know, when I listen to, and I listen to every word of that State of the Union. I was struck with a couple things. First of all, I thought it was the least patriotic one I'd ever heard. Almost no mention of a United States military, our border patrol, or first responders. None.

I mean, just no acknowledgement there of all those people who serve our country and really are on the front lines for all of us. The second thing is, what is his plan to tackle inflation? What is his plan to make our country more energy efficient and drive down the cost of gasoline? Those aren't his goals. But I still am in bewilderment as to what he thinks he's doing to tackle inflation.

Yeah, and he said, help us finish the job. Let's finish the job. That was his theme at the State of the Union. And I think that's probably going to be his reelection theme to have him finish the job. I think most Americans are like, finish the job.

You've already destroyed the economy. You've destroyed the border. You've destroyed education. You've destroyed law enforcement. You finish the job.

My God, we're already getting crushed. Don't finish the job. Go back to the Donald Trump era. But to your point, Jason, on inflation, the problem we have is massive government spending.

So to be fair to Joe, it's not all his fault. There was pent-up demand, there were supply chain issues, all that came after the pandemic. You were going to see some inflation. because of just the structure of the economy and the shutdowns and lockdowns and China shutting down during COVID. But it didn't have to approach 9%.

It doesn't have to be 6.5% as it is today. And that comes from, you and I know, massive government spending. And he's not done yet. A lot of the bills that they passed in the last Congress A lot of that money hasn't been spent yet.

So you have hundreds of billions of dollars. still yet to go out the door, which is still going to be an inflation driver.

So you have Joe Biden with spending, driving inflation higher, and then the Federal Reserve is jacking up rates, trying to slow down the economy and combat inflation and pushing the card in different directions. And the person that's caught in the middle is the middle class American who says: one, this spending doesn't help me, it helps those who are well tied to a green agenda. But I'm getting crushed with higher interest rates on my on my used car or on my credit card. If I'm going to buy a house or refinance my house, rates are much higher and you're sapping into the discretional spending of so many Americans.

So they're getting they're the ones that are getting pinched. Yeah, no, they I don't think he has a plan other than more government, more spending, more government. And I really thought Sarah Huckabee Sanders nailed it. I thought she was much more patriotic. I thought she talked from her heart.

She told salient stories and really, I think, framed the issues in front of our country much better than the president did. But Sean, Duffy, don't go yet. Give me one second. You're going to push the brake. Make all your creation.

Did you notice that Joe Biden? Was to your point was all about government. We had this idea before that it was about the private sector, the individual, the innovator that made the economy great. And Joe Biden's view is the only answer to the problems that we face in the country is more government, more government control, more bureaucracy, more spending, more printing. And that's the exact opposite.

Of what we need to do to get the economy back going. And one last point, Jason: if you look at what Joe Biden said about Ron Johnson and Rick Scott from Florida, that we want to take away Medicare, I didn't mention this to you. Joe Biden in 1975, I'm not sure if he talked about this earlier in the show. He came out, he's on video saying, I want to freeze Social Security and Medicare and even veterans benefits.

So, Joe Biden was doing in 1975 what he claimed Rick Scott was doing. But what Rick Scott is saying, hey, this program's going broke. We have to figure out how we fix it for the future generation of retirees. Joe Biden was going to take money away from all retirees as a senator from Delaware.

So just the hypocrisy, the lies are so rich and so frustrating.

So I'm sorry I took another minute of your time, but I had to rant one last time for you, Jason Chapins. No, anything for the one and only Sean Duffy, of course, he's got that new show on Fox Business Network with Dagon McDowell. That's 6 p.m. on Fox Business. Great show.

It's called The Bottom Line.

So I hope everybody has a chance to check that out. Sean, sorry to wake you up, but thanks for joining us on the Brian Kilbreak Show. Thank you, Listen Traffic. You're a great American. We'll talk to you soon.

And we'll be right back. Hmm. Giving you everything you need to know. You're with Brian Kilmead. A talk show that's real.

This is the Brian Kill Me Show. Thanks for joining us on the Brian Kill Meet Show. I'm Jason Chaffetz filling in for Brian. He's on the way to the Super Bowl. You know, earlier we were joking about him.

You know, if you see him on the plane and he's asleep, but you know, the guy never sleeps. The guy's unbelievable that way. But it's an honor to fill in for him. I appreciate it. He's done Super Bowl after Super Bowl for Fox News.

And the Super Bowl is on Fox.

So they get even more access, and it'll be a great game moving forward. Looking forward to that. But we're still talking about all the craziness that is Washington, D.C. and everything that's going on. And we're honored to have Senator Bill Haggerty, the senator from Tennessee, joining us on the line.

Senator, thanks for joining us. Jason, it's great to be with you, and I couldn't agree more. Brian is just a ball of energy. He's amazing, and I know he's going to do a great job covering the Super Bowl. No, he works as hard as anybody.

And anyway, he's also a super funny guy.

So anyway, let's talk a little bit. We got a couple of things we got to hit in the few minutes that we have you. State of the Union, what was your top line kind of takeaway and concern, if you had any, from the State of the Union? I think most Americans felt like I did. Here we go again.

Here's another bait and switch where Joe Biden tries to obfuscate or just make claims that aren't credible. You know, he's taking credit for people returning to jobs that were lost during mostly Democrat driven lockdowns. He's talking about being a middle class champion. He's out touring the country right now. But who suffers most from Biden's policies?

Think about it, the inflation. The average family in America has now lost ten thousand dollars of buying power since Joe Biden took office. Prices are up 13.5% since he took office. Crime through the roof. the flood of humans and drugs coming across our collapsed southern border.

The people that suffer most are our middle class, and that's who Joe Biden is trying to act like he's a friend of. But frankly, he's punishing our middle class terribly. You know, I watched it, and I've sat through ten of these types of speeches in the past. I was struck by the lack of patriotism by not mentioning or talking about our troops, first responders, or people in the Border Patrol who are going through hell right now trying to deal with the onslaught of people coming across the border. But the second thing is, what does he have in terms of a plan?

He threw out lots of statistics like some technocrat would do. But what is his plan to tackle inflation, energy, all those types of things? I'm going to play this clip, and it was one of the more interesting moments from the State of the Union. Let's play clip six, please. Big oil just reported his profits.

Record profits. Last year they made two hundred billion dollars in the midst of a global energy crisis. I think it's outrageous. They invested too little of that profit to increase domestic production. And when I talked to a couple of them, they say, we're afraid you're going to shut down all the oil wells, all the oil refineries anyway, so why should we invest in them?

I said, we're going to need oil for at least another decade. And that can exceed And beyond that, I mean. What is the President's plan? I mean Jason. What is you still out of touch?

Yeah, what was your reaction to when you heard him say that?

So you know I've been a business person my entire career. Joe Biden and this administration just do not understand the basic principles of investing and earning a return on that investment. He's made it such that oil companies cannot invest. He's talked about ending fossil fuels in America the year twenty thirty. That's seven years, not even a decade.

And oil and gas companies are in a position now where they cannot reinvest in more capacity because this administration will not permit more capacity. They won't allow the pipelines. They won't allow the drilling. They're doing everything they can to demonize and make us weak in the oil and gas sector. That was a huge source of our competitive advantage just three years ago before Biden took office.

We were energy independent, more competitive than any other nation on earth. They are destroying our energy independence. They're making us, again, dependent on communist China to get batteries, to get solar panels, to get windmills. That's their plan.

However poorly articulated it is, it's basically shifting our competitive advantage to China. No, that and that's that's the rub, and that's why the prices are so high, it's why they don't invest. It's understanding, you're right, the basics of the economy and basic business principles because, you know what, he's been in Washington, D. C. The only thing he's ever done is really politics.

So he's been there for fifty literally like fifty years.

Now, you're also you're on the Foreign Relations Committee, you're on the Appropriations Committee, the Rules Committee. Let's put on your foreign relations hat here for a second, talk about China, talk about this balloon and the aggressive nature, because I think China smells weakness, and they're testing and probing and pushing us like never before.

Well, I think China is demonstrating a very systematic process where they're building out at every level. They've now built the world's largest navy. They're building out their nuclear arsenal at an incredible pace. They've been working in space with satellite technology.

Now what they've demonstrated is that they're taking on the stratosphere. And you're right, they are testing us. And I think the fact that they floated that balloon across the United States of America was a real test of our resolve. And Joe Biden failed that test. It is just amazing that if that reporter in Montana, the photographer and the news outlook there in Montana had not made this public, I wonder what the Biden administration would have done.

Did they hope that America would just not know that they let this float over and pun intended that they just let it blow by? They really wanted a meeting with Xi Ji Ping. Those press releases and those scoto ops drive this administration. And not until a couple of days after the balloon was discovered did Secretary of State Blinken take down the meeting with President Xi. I think China was just testing to see how much they could get away with.

How bad did we want that meeting? And there is no resolve, there's no show of strength in all of this. It is extremely disturbing. And I'll say one more thing, Jason. You'll appreciate this given your experience.

what was the Pentagon's response to this when they were caught? They said, oh, the same sort of thing happened during the Trump administration. There were incursions then. Let me tell you this. The senior official at the Pentagon that said that, if it's true, Was revealing very sensitive information, classified information, because it means that we were able to detect the break.

Senator, I have to cut you off. We have a hard break. We've been talking to Senator Bill Haggerty. Thanks for joining us on the Brian Kilmean Show.

Sorry to cut you off, but we have to go to commercial break, and we'll be right back. A radio show like no other. It's Brian Kilmead.

Hey, it's actually Jason Chiefetz. I'm filling in for Brian. Very excited to be hosting for him. He's on the way to the Super Bowl and.

Somebody who actually knows a bit about football along the way, I'm real thrilled to have. I'm really excited. This is personally very exciting for me to have Brian Erlacher, the Hall of Fame linebacker from the Chicago Bears, is joining us on the line. Brian, thrilled to have you on, appreciate it. Thanks for having me on, Jason.

I appreciate it. Good job doing it, man. Yeah, well, thanks. I always see you on all the Fox shows, so you do a great job.

Well, I'm glad to hear you're watching The Right Network. I really do appreciate it. That's kind of fun.

Now, I do need to tell you up front, I was actually. I have a hard time saying it with a straight face, but I was actually a football player as well.

Now, I only played in college. I didn't go on to the pros like you did, but I was a place kicker once upon a time. And I'm really a football player. You know, guys like you touch me, they throw a flag. Yeah, kickers are very underestimated.

They people don't realize how much they need them until they miss a field goal or until they can't make a field goal to win a game.

So, uh don't uh don't sell yourself short there. Kickers are a big deal. At least I I valued our kicker a lot.

Well, you were always the leading scorer on the team. I would try to remind the quarterback of that. Yeah. It's a big deal, man, especially when you get those tight games and and you get the cold weather games and kick you know, play in Chicago. We uh we were fortunate to have a really good kicker in Robbie Gold, and the weather didn't bother him.

Now, didn't you start out as a safety and then move to linebacker? I did, Jason. I played free safety in college. I played free safety in high school and I kind of grew out of safety my last couple of years in college. And I knew when the Bears drafted me out I would be a linebacker.

So and I was six four, two fifty.

So I kind of figured I might be a little bit too big to play safety back there.

Well, yeah, that's a problem, right? When the coach says you're too big, but boy, you are tenacious. You had a great career, great in the community. And before we talk a little bit more about football and the Super Bowl that's coming up, I want to talk about sort of some of the time you've been dedicating to going out and working with the Border Patrol. Tell us what you're doing there, why you're doing it, what you're seeing.

And, you know, I got to tell you, there are 20-plus thousand Border Patrol agents they have got to appreciate. Your support of what they're doing and how they're doing it. That's one of the toughest jobs there is. Yeah, yeah, but it's really, you know, he's certainly appreciated. I appreciate what they're doing.

You know, we live in Arizona, so we're down here by the border. We're not a border town, but we're about two hours, two and a half hours from Yuma, which is where I went down to visit twice. Chief Clem was nice enough to let us come down there and just kind of be on boots on the ground. You know, we got to go on the boats on the water and kind of go up and down. The Colorado River there and see what's really going on on both sides and spend a lot of time with the agents.

You know, we got up close and personal with a bunch of them. and just hear some of the stories and the stuff they see and You know, it's the stories you hear, you just can't believe it until you hear it from their mouths. You know, you hear hearsay, but until you actually hear it, it's hard to believe what they're seeing and what they're going through mentally. You know, they're not just trying to protect that border, they're processing these people. They're humanitarian, they're trying to take care of them when they get them in their custody, trying to protect them at the same time.

so many things going on down there that sh they should not be dealing with. Yeah, you know, I think the mental health aspect of the Border Patrol are here dealing with people who a lot of them these people coming north have been, you know, abused sexually and physically. the young kids that they're dealing with, they get abandoned. Um the human toll of the human trafficking that happens by having a wide open border i is just devastating. These people are dealing with this every single day, and yet it's sadly that the rate of suicide among our Border Patrol agents it it's just unacceptably high.

Oh, it's it's it's taking a toll on them. You know, it's bad. Like you said, the things that they're saying they should not have they should not be dealing with. You know, they should be they're tasked with protecting our border and keeping people from coming in. That's what they're supposed to be doing.

They can't do that because they're processing people all day. They can't get out there and protect the border like they're trained to do. It's just the like you said, the humanitarian part of this is very sad on both sides, you know, for the migrants, the guys, the peop the people that are coming across is what they're having to deal with. And also our agents having to deal with it all. Yeah, and that, you know, at least my point has been: look, what you're doing by signaling, and again, the President did this at the State of the Union.

This is my opinion. By saying that, you know, we need comprehensive immigration reform. It's just signaling to people: hey, come across the border. Eventually, we'll get you amnesty. Go ahead and take the risk because we're not going to deport you.

It's open. Come on in now. And then they form this relationship with these drug cartels. And it's human trafficking. That's what it is.

That's all it is. You know, it's obvious to everyone. I guess if you're not in the administration, you're obvious as to what's going on to everyone. But they don't care. They're just going to keep pushing their policies.

And, you know, the overwhelming thing I've heard from the border agents is the policies are what's putting us in this position. It's not what we're doing. They're doing their jobs. They're trying to enforce the policies that are in place for them from our government. That's all they can do.

You know, they can do their jobs because they work for the government. All they can do is enforce the policies that are in place. And the policies aren't working. That's all there is to it.

So they can't do anything. uh beyond their control because the policies won't let them. Yeah. We're talking to Brian Erlacher, who played 13 years in the NFL. You've got some, but there's a really neat initiative.

Some former NFL players, along with yourself, are going down to the border and meeting with these Border Patrol agents. Tell us a little bit more. I think the notes that I'm seeing about this, they've had five trips down there. You've been on two of them. What are the players doing?

What are they saying? Um and what's happening when you go down there? I think we're just trying to give them some support, you know, to let them know that not everyone is against them. You know, the stuff you see in the media is not really what's portrayed with people who already know what's going on. We support them.

I think that's the number one thing: trying to let them know that we care, that they're doing what they're doing, and we want to support them and spend as much time with them as we can. But maybe just trying to get their spirit up a little bit, honestly, as well, to let them know that we do care. But yeah, we got to spend, the first time I think we were there for like eight hours, six to eight hours, just hanging out with them. Second time we went around, I want to say it was around Christmas. Yeah, we were around Christmas, and we come out.

Like I said, we met a bunch of people that cooked for us. We had lunch with three or four different crews. It's fun. It just gets a chance to meet with them and, like I said, talk with them, not just about the border, about life and football mostly for me. But it's really cool to meet and they're from they're from everywhere.

They're from all over the country.

So it's nice to get their view on certain things that are going on as well. When I was in Congress, I went down there multiple times. And one time I told them, you know, look, guys, don't, because I'm in Congress, I don't need like, you know, the nice suburban with the air conditioning. I want to see it like you see it. And so I saw some ATVs and I said, you know, I own an ATV.

And this was at night down there. And they said, oh, really? You want to ride with us? And oh my gosh. I have ridden an ATV.

I know how to ride, okay? But not like these guys know how to ride. They took me on the ride of my life. I mean, we were going so fast and we were chasing guys that were bringing drugs across the border. We had to get off, hike up this big hill, up this rocky mountain, chasing these guys.

We eventually did get the drugs, and it was one of the craziest nights of my life. And they do this every day. You got the real good stuff.

So I got some of that. I got to ride on the boat something down the College River, and then they took us on this Doombuggie that I don't care to get on again, honestly. We may or may not have what, yeah, that's what I got saying coming out of certain places in my body from this doom buggy ride. But yeah, we were going faster than we should have been going. But that's what they do.

You know, they live on the edge there when they're trying to get the drugs and get these traffickers. That's what they have to do.

So it was a little stressful for me, but they enjoy it. No, I saw that they had horses. I said, I know how to ride. And then they talked to me some more, and they're like, you know, you don't know how to ride like we ride. Going through the cactus in the desert, chasing people.

Yeah. Yeah, that's some real cowboy stuff. I'm telling you. I can jump on the back of a horse and just trot, no problem. But you get those things running.

It's a little different story for me. Yeah, through the Saguaro cactus of southern Arizona. Yeah. I've had some run-ins with some Suaros too living here in Arizona. Those aren't on the golf course.

Those aren't fun either. Oh, chasing balls off the course. Yeah, I've actually fallen off my mountain bike and do a few cactuses. That's not fun either.

Well, you've provided a lot of great football along the way. For those of us that are football fans, what you did, Brian, through the years. You you had a really just an amazing career. And from somebody from the state of Utah who helped produce Jim McMahon, you guys, I mean, Yeah. We there are a lot of Bears fans around here, I can tell you that.

I appreciate it. There's a lot of Bears fans throughout the country. It's amazing. When we played road games, we always had good turnout. My reason is because people wanted to get out of the cold in Chicago and move other places.

That's why I always talk. Yeah, no problem. No problem there. All right. Tell us a little bit about the Super Bowl.

What are your thoughts? I mean, we got two great teams coming together. This should be a good game by all accounts. Yeah, I'm excited. You know, I'm a huge Andy Reid fan.

I played for Coach Reed at a couple Pro Bowls when I was young. Last two or three years, he coached us in the Pro Bowl. The special teams coach for Kansas City was my special teams coach in Chicago for nine years.

So I got a little connection there. Plus, they had the best quarterback in the NFL. But Philly's just finding a way to win games, and they're winning big. I do feel like the NFC was a little bit down this year when you come to the strength of conference when you look at AFC compared to the NFC. But these games always hope for good games.

You don't really want to blow out. But yeah, I see the Chiefs pulling this one out, honestly. I think Mahomes and his experience and Coach Reid, I think they're going to find a way to get it done.

Well, we were talking to Brian Erlacher. Appreciate you. Listen, I appreciate you on the field. Really appreciate guys who off the field also just get involved and engaged in their community, and that's obviously what you've done. You did it throughout your career.

And to go down and take your personal time and bring other NFL guys with you and talk to those people down at the Border Patrol, they'll never forget it. They'll always remember it. And it's an important thing to do. And I think we can all support our Border Patrol. Pray for them, think about them, help them when we can, because every day they put their lives on the line, and they're doing an incredibly difficult job.

They are. They really are. Appreciate you having me on your show, Jason. Thank you. Appreciate it, Brian Erlacher.

And thanks for joining us. We're going to be right back. Stay with us. Educating, entertaining, enlightening. You're with Brian Kilmead.

The more you listen, the more you'll know. It's Brian Killmeade.

Well, we were just talking to Brian Erlacher, one of the great NFL players out there. And you know what? Seems like an incredible guy off the field, too. Spending his time, taking time, going down, working with the Border Patrol, who have one of the most difficult jobs out there. And, you know, It does have to be a bit demoralizing, does have to be a bit frustrating.

when the President of the United States and the Vice President Kamala Harris spend almost zero time Getting to understand the problem and the situation and are complicit, I believe, my personal opinion, in exacerbating the situation and inviting more illegal immigration with borders that are wide open. The catch and release program that they have in place, the attitude and the approach that they have. And I think the President's State of the Union made it crystal clear. That he does not get, nor does he understand, what's going on at the border, and if he does, which would be even worse. He's making the situation worse because he's making um He's giving it rewards and incentives to continue to break the law.

You know, if you're going to go claim asylum, you're supposed to do it at the port of entry. But the drug cartels have figured out that they can clog up and get everybody moving in the wrong direction by across the border not at the port of entry. Therefore, having to tie them up, and then they take their high-valued clients, their high-valued people, people that we know, some of which are terrorists, some of which are carrying drugs. The whole president's the president's approach to fentanyl and the, you know, he cited statistics about the number of people that died. He said seventy thousand I've seen north of a hundred thousand people, people dying every day from fentanyl.

And you know what? Guess how it gets here, mister President? Your wide open border policy Listen to the president from the State of the Union Cut 22. We now have a record number of personnel working to secure the border. arresting 8,000 human smugglers.

Seizing over 23,000 pounds of fentanyl in just the last several months. We've launched a new border plan last month. Unlawful migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has come down 97% as a consequence of that. But American border problems won't be fixed until Congress acts. That's not true, Mr.

President. That's just not true. Enforce the current law. Stop doing everything you can to open up these borders. Just today, they said they're going to stop using surveillance balloons.

These are the balloons that go up and give intelligence to our people on the ground so you can see where people are coming. It's infrared technology. They can see people at night. They can see people at day. Why are you taking that down?

That's an important tool. And when they are, listen, if you don't come through a port of entry and you're here illegally crossing the border, under the current law, you're supposed to be detained, incarcerated, fired. Fined and deported. That never happens under the Biden administration. They do not do that, folks.

That's the current law.

So enforce the current law, Mr. President. Listen to the President here in Cut 23. If we don't pass my comprehensive immigration reform, At least pass my plan to provide the equipment and officers to secure the border. and a pathway to citizenship.

For dreamers. Those on temporary status, farm workers, essential workers. No, Mr. President, no. If you pass comprehensive immigration reform, that doesn't secure the border.

If you provide citizenship for the so-called dreamers and temporary status workers, farm workers, and essential workers, you give them a pass too. Does that lock down the border? No, it doesn't. What you're actually signaling to the people who are thinking about leaving their country of origin, and they come from about 150 different countries, by the way, it's not just Mexico or Guatemala, something like that. Most of the people that come maybe come from Central and South America, but they're coming from 150 countries.

Just the last few days, Chinese nationals were coming north.

So if you're saying you're going to do all that, guess what? You're signaling, come across, come right now. You're not going to get detained. That's what's fundamentally wrong with the president's approach and why he's making things worse. And then you have like this Katie Protestant.

The Congresswoman from California. Listen to her comment, Cut 25.

So what we've seen from my colleagues is Tweets that say, you know, over 800 pounds of fentanyl. This is Biden's border crisis. That's a tweet from Rep Stefanik. To me, the fact that you're seizing these drugs is a success.

So I think that there's a need here to acknowledge the successful work that you're doing. Congratulations, the successful work. And we are proud of the Border Patrol when they do seize and capture this. But you know what? You need to prevent it in the first place.

If you listen to any one of the twenty plus thousand Border Patrol agents, They will tell you how to secure the border. Can you name another set of federal workers where they don't ever get listened to? Where they will routinely tell you, their leadership will tell you time and time and time and time again, you're not enforcing the law, you're not allowing us to do our jobs. You know, it was malpractice. The Democrats had the House and Senate and the Presidency.

For two years the Congress never did a hearing on the border of the border crisis or on fentanyl. How can you not have a hearing about this? And what they're telling us is you need to lock down that border. And there is a way to lock down that border that is humane. What they don't understand, what they don't appreciate in the Biden Harris administration is that what they're doing is human trafficking, drug trafficking, and it's cruel, it's inhumane.

We've had over fifteen hundred people that we know die. Trying to come across that border. If it was secure, if the drug cartels knew they couldn't get past, it wouldn't happen. We were doing that. Biden and Harris changed it.

Now it's wide open.

Now we have this fentanyl crisis.

Now we have human trafficking.

Now we have all of these problems at the border. And it was because of the Biden-Harris policies that did that. I'm Jason Chaffetz filling in for Brian Kilmead. Thanks for listening. From high atop Fox News headquarters in New York City, always seeking solutions, never sowing division.

It's Brian Killmead. Well, it's the Brian Killmeat Show, but I'm Jason Chaffetz filling in for Brian. Brian's on his way to the Super Bowl, gonna be one of the best Super Bowls out there, I think. Kansas City Chiefs. And uh Philadelphia Eagles uh playing on Sunday.

It's gonna be an epic ma epic uh game and uh Brian's on his way there, so he's letting me fill in and uh I'm thrilled to have somebody on the line that I really, really like. One of my favorite guys out there in politics, Jeff Landry. He's the. Louisiana Attorney General. He's going to be a candidate for governor there in Louisiana.

I served with him in the United States Congress and I'm just telling you folks. This guy knows how to cook. Uh you when I think of Jeff Landry, um He ha he was renting this house. Correct me if I'm wrong. And you would make the best food and we would go over and say, like, Hey, where are we going to eat tonight?

Let's go over to Jeff's. I bet he's got good food. And we'd go over to Jeff Landry's house and sure enough, you had good food. Oh, it was great. You remember that Steve Southern had that that was an apartment that Steve had as well.

We would invite everybody over.

Sometimes I'd bring friends. I'd have them flown in. We'd have food, all of the ingredients shift in from Louisiana. you know, Washington DC can be a very cold place in the winter. And we all know I don't know if the town has a functioning snowplow when it starts snowing.

And so I just figured, you know, Jason, it was just a great way to just all of us get together and get a little bit of good Cajun food. You know, it's it's art. That's the final little taste of Louisiana on any menu around the country, but it was great. I I can tell you, I I tell people all the time, I serve Would some of the Greatest people like yourself. In Congress during that time.

And it was great. And look, you're welcome to come back to Louisiana anytime. I cook as often as they'll let me at my camp. We cook all kinds of different things.

So, you're welcome to come down, bring the whole fox crew with you. Oh, that would be so fun. I know you do a gator hunt and you do stuff like that, and I'm telling you, I don't know how you're not 450 pounds because I would go over there and eat so much food. But uh you're slim, trim, fit. And you're doing some great things as the Attorney General.

I'm really impressed of what you've done. You have not shied away from some of the biggest fights out there. And. Glad you're so engaged.

Well, I can tell you, you know, I mean, you know, Congress can be a pretty dysfunctional Institution, and when I had an opportunity to run for and then ultimately serve as the attorney general, I realized. that unfortunately a lot of policy is being shaped in the courts. It's It's not the way it's supposed to be, but that's the way it is today. Louisiana, we built an unbelievable team. I got a solicitor general, we appointed the first.

Solicitor General Louisiana Liz Murrow, as our Solicitor General, her and her team do a fantastic job. In fact, I saw some rankings the other day. I think Louisiana is number one in suing the Biden administration and winning. um i mean from the censorship case that we've got going on to to forcing them to have federal offshore lease sales. to improve our domestic energy portfolio to the Title forty two case, which we're going to immigration case, which which we are going to be at the United States Supreme Court Uh literally In about 28 days.

And we were at the tip of the spear on the OSHA and CMS vaccine mandate case.

So it's been fun. It's been absolutely fun. And I get to get on the radio with great friends, great people like you.

Well, thank you.

Now, let's dive a little bit deeper here. Tell us a little bit more because you're. Your lawsuit, your you were the kind of one of the first people to get out there along with the I believe it was the Attorney General in Missouri to get after this big tech censorship what's going on. What have you learned so far and why should Americans even care about this? Yo, they should really care about it.

And I'll tell you why, yes, and you are right. This suit was initiated by myself and then Attorney General Eric Schmidt, who's now, by the way, a U. S. Senator. And and It is what I believe the most important First Amendment case.

in this century. Because this is a question of whether the government was actively involved. in suppressing the speech of Americans on social platforms.

Now we know Data. We don't have a First Amendment right when we deal with private individuals and private corporations, right? But If the government It pices forces colludes with a private person. or a private corporation to do that which they could not ordinarily do. then that is a violation that knows the knows the private Citizen or the corporation, then become an arm of the government.

And then it's a violation of the First Amendment. And Lord, You the things that we have found It's been on Believable. We know. We know now. that the CDC was holding monthly censorship meetings with Facebook.

Okay, we know Then when Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke, America's speech. What's sense it? We also know now through the discovery That the White House does this what all the way up to the top.

Okay? And here's the scary part for everyone listening out there. It did not matter. whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. We Have the evidence that show that the White House even censored Robert Kennedy's post.

Now look, think about that for a second. You just kind of step back. We know there's an active engagement in trying to muzzle conservatives out there, Republicans, right? But here we have a gentleman. who is the son of the former U.

S. Attorney Who is the nephew of a former president of the United States and nephew of a former US Senator? And the White House. is saying we have to take his pose down. We got to We got to throttle it back.

We caught them throttling back to Ca Carl Carlson's post. Over fifty percent. I mean, the reach and it wasn't just in during COVID. We know they did it on the Hunter laptop. Uh story.

Hunter Biden that story? We know they did it. Yeah. the elections. I mean, there is no reach by which this government has Going about trying to squelch or silence Americans.

And that should really I mean That should really scare people out there because the First Amendment was placed there. specifically to allow a free society. If you if we don't have a right to be heard. Arrived. to disagree.

A right to question our government and our elected officials, then we are not citizens anymore, we're really subjects.

Well, and you know what bothers me about this, too, is that Congress is a past, before you and I were serving, Passed this so-called section 230, which gave them limitations on liability on what was posted out there.

So, my question for the FBI, who is the hearings that were going on at Capitol Hill this week, what law do you think was being broken? Like, what law, and if there were laws being broken by misusing Twitter, Um, how many people have you charged? I mean, who's gone to jail? They put dozens and dozens and dozens of agents onto this. And yet, I want to know, well, what law was being broken?

Because instead of trying to find the murderer of those, you know, those four young people in Idaho, or maybe dealing with the Chinese spies that are prevalent around the country doing intellectual property theft and everything else, like how many other places could you use FBI agents? What are the opportunity costs? What laws do you think were being broken by using Twitter to go out there and say, you know, Um I don't think I'm going to get the vaccine.

Well, how about concentrating on a porous border under which fentanyl is pouring through the border, human trafficking is prevalent, at the southern border. How about ringing in the cartels And yet we have the FBI the DOJ, the C D C the White House. Um I mean, you name it, the NIAID. The DHS, Department of Homeland Security, censoring American speech? I mean I mean Hey, how about the scourge of people going to school board meetings and expressing concerns about what their kids are reading?

Obviously, we need the FBI on that issue. But what law did they think was being broken? And if they put so many agents on it, how many arrests did they have? I think that's a legitimate, simple, easy question. But there was no law.

Twitter was exempt from any liability. Right, well I I would tell you this, the only violation that occurred was basically the government violating America's free speech. Yeah. And so so the if if any laws were broken, it was on the other side. Look, you know, one of the things that is going to be interesting about this case, you know, Jason, you've, you know.

You've been around the law plenty of times. But I'm interested to see because If we're able to prove our case, the question then is begged is whether or not these actions give rise to what's called. Of Bevin's action, right?

So that's when the government, and you normally see this in the law enforcement side, when they violate your first, I mean, like, say your Fourth Amendment right, right? Search and seizure. then the government the courts have held that the government can be liable for that violation.

Well, if the government violates your First Amendment, The question is whether or not it doesn't give rise to Bevan's action as well. I mean, just think about that. Think about the amount of people that have been censored, have been squelched. I've been silent, just really just. Putting out their own opinion.

Expressing their feelings and trying to have the internet was supposed to be the greatest thing because it was supposed to connect us. and give us an opportunity The debate in the marketplace of ideas. We're going to connect people more. This is going to help us to have. good robust debates Create ingenuity and technology, and just it was connected, it was gonna be the greatest.

What it has turned out to be is literally one of potentially one of the biggest chains out there to imprison. A free society. Because these big tech platforms, and you talk about Section two hundred and thirty, I don't believe I tell you right now, as a lawyer, I don't think that Section two hundred and thirty is as broad. As they claim it is to be. I mean, I'm waiting for somebody to try it.

in the course. Hmm. But at the end of the day, these big tech platforms are basically controlling a virtual public square. who goes into it, who goes out of it, what's debated inside of it, And that's the danger behind all of this. And look, this case is going to continue.

To show the American people all the things that they said, many people that were conspiracy theories and. You know, just, I can't believe they're saying that they wanted to send us off to some psychiatric ward. What we're finding today is that it's We were right. And they were hiding. They were wrong.

They knew what they were doing. They were just hiding it. Yeah, the origins of COVID and that whole discussion. I'm hoping that there's a. A civil suit out there because I think it's been uh a problem and sort of an FTC type of problem, a Federal Trade Commission, where they go out and say, Look, you have this many followers and you can follow these people.

But if they're going to suppress that and not allow me to follow the people that I they tell me I'm going to follow and not allow the people that are following me to actually see the post that I put up, then guess what? You're lying to me. That is, you couldn't get away with that on a box of cereal. I mean, I pick up a box of weedies and it says that, oh, the weedy is not actually as big as depicted on this, you know, and be careful. Like, if they have to do those kind of warnings on cereal boxes, don't tell me how many followers I have and how many people I'm following.

You telling me that that's being truthful and honest? Look, I could go all day with you. We have to go to a commercial break. We've been talking to Jeff Landry. He's the Louisiana Attorney General.

He is a rising star in so many fronts. Candidate for governor. If I get a chance to guest host again, I want to bring you on and talk about all the good things you could do as a governor. I think you'd be an amazing, amazing governor because I know how hard you work. You care about the people of Louisiana, and you just got this common sense to you that I think we need more of in government across the board.

So I wish you nothing but the best. It's always fun to chat with you, and I wish it was in person because I know we'd go get a good. Good meal. I can promise you that. Oh, we would.

And look, we thank you. If people are interested, they can check us out at J. JessMystery.com. Join the scene. Very good.

Jeff Landry, the Attorney General there from Louisiana. Thanks for joining us on the Brian Kilmead Show. We'll be right back. Newsmakers and newsbreakers, here at first on the Brian Kilmead Show. If you're interested in it, Brian's talking about it.

You're with Brian Kilmead. One of the things Republicans say is a priority for them is investigating your family: your son Hunter, your brother, Jim. They talk about Access that they say others have gotten because of you, because of your political success. How do you how do you plan to to deal with that. The public's not going to pay attention to that.

They they want these guys to do something. If the only thing they can do is make up things about my family. It's not going to go very far. Oh, Mr. President, the interview with PBS's Judy Woodruff.

Um You're living in fantasy land if you think that the public's not paying attention to this. The second part of it is Congress is paying attention to it because there are those of us that are concerned that you're compromised, that you have been using public office to enrich your family and yourself personally. And there's an awful lot of evidence out there. You may try to poo-poo it away and hope that nobody's paying attention and that it's not going to go very far. But there are a lot of unanswered questions.

One of the recent ones that many people didn't even see is Joe Biden took out a l in December, the report is, took out a line of credit on his one of his homes. Um why?

Well, he's a sitting president. He's making $400,000, essentially has no expenses, and yet he went out and took a. I think it was a $250,000 line of credit on his home. What's that all about? Like, what's that for?

Some are guessing, and it's a pure 100% guess, okay? Does it have to do with Hunter and the fact that he may have some real tax problems? Remember, Team Hunter Biden has already foreshadowed that there may potentially be some taxes that weren't paid along the way. How is it that the president lives and has a beach house in these multi-million dollar homes, and yet his wife is supposedly a school teacher and he has been on a government salary pretty much his whole life?

Now, he had a couple years there recently. Where he was the former vice president, could have done a book, got a deal with the University of Pennsylvania, had lucrative speaking engagements. But he had these houses well before that. How do you have that on making $175,000 a year and also having to house in Washington, D.C.? Like, how do you buy multi-million-dollar homes?

Why is it, Mr. President, that we have emails from The laptop, for instance, from Louis Free, the former FBI director, to Hunter Biden saying, hey, thanks for the referral for the business out of Romania. By the way, I'm going to put $100,000 into some of your kids' or grandkids' account as a thank you for the business. And oh, by the way, Hunter, please tell your dad how much I appreciate it. Look forward to doing business with him in the future.

Why is it that $100,000 ended up in the Biden's account? You know, these are things that matter. And by the way, why did you bring Mr. Cooper, one of Hunter Biden's business partners, on Air Force 2 when you went to do business in Mexico. What was that all about?

A lot of unanswered questions. If the President thinks he's just going to go away and people aren't going to pay attention, the Republicans in Congress will. I'm Jason Chaffett. Stay with us. More to come.

Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. Hey, this is Jason Chaffetz. I'm filling in for Brian. Brian's on his way to the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl is going to be epic this year. I mean, two of the Grays' teams, I really do feel like. Two of the very best teams ended up there in the Super Bowl. I don't think one team's going to blow out the other. This is going to be a hard defensive battle.

You've got great quarterbacks coming into the game, wonderful coaches that are uber smart and will come up with something creative. I'm just looking forward to the Super Bowl. It's on Sunday, and Brian Kilmead's going to be down there for all the coverage leading up to it. And so I'm filling in for him. Again, I'm Jason Chaffetz, and we've got a great guest coming on now.

I haven't spent a lot of time talking to him, but I've admired his work from afar. He's a New York Post writer. John Levine. John, thanks so much for joining us here on the Brian Kilmead Show. Thank you for having me, Jason.

No, I appreciate it.

Now Again, maybe this is a little too personal. Maybe this is a little too um Getting right into it, you know. what you write. What did you think of that? Big wet kiss that the first lady engaged in at the first at the that was weird.

I mean look I don't I'm not look, I'm a very I'm a live-free or die person. I think people should. Should live their lives. It was weird. I don't know what that was.

And I hazard to even speculate. But. It was weird. You know, do you wanna know? It almost reminded me of that if you if you remember that Al Gore Tipper Gore kiss at the DNC.

Like, and everyone was and I and they were married, obviously, this is not the same situation, but it was like It was just the awkwardness and the like I could you could kind of feel everyone watching television and be like, ugh. What was it? I you know, I've been married uh thirty-one years. Oh yeah. And I see my wife in public, you know, and give her a little kiss on the cheek or a little you know, give her a hug and something.

I don't think I've ever engaged in a kiss with somebody else's wife on the lips. Right. Especially with all the cameras rolling, but even behind the scenes. I have a theory, too, which is that Joe Biden has no idea that that happened. BAAA!

Because the media he consumes isn't going to report it. Who's going to tell the president that one? Who's going to tell him? There's no like who's going to be the town crier on that one? I I think he je I bet you he doesn't know.

I I think it was kinda creepy and um I don't know. I I just it's just never happened to me. And it's not like any either of 'em turned to the side. They they both went for it and yeah, it was just right there for everybody to see. You're you're opening up with the really hard hitters this morning.

Very it's very intimate personal stuff. All right, so let's get to some other stuff. I got I got a couple of topics I'd love to go through with you. Um I want to play this clip eleven. This is Jamie Raskin, who's the ranking member now on the uh oversight committee.

Um and he's thinking that, you know, These concerns about big tech censorship and what happened at the New York Post and getting censored there, that's not a big deal. It's just a distraction. Clip 11. We return not to focus on advancing this robust agenda of progress, but instead to take up an authentically trivial pursuit, all based on the obsessive victimology of right-wing politics in America. The majority has called a hearing to revisit a two-year-old story about a private editorial decision by Twitter not to allow links to a single New York Post article made for a two-day period that had no discernible influence on anyone or anything.

What's your take on that, John? I mean, Democrats are going to try to Democrat this, right, and try to minimize it and make it seem trivial and unimportant, but it's not. I mean, we're talking about Freedom of speech in this country, and do Americans have a right to free expression in this country? Does the free press have a right to free? have a right to operate unimpeded?

And what is the appropriateness of the federal government and the intelligence agencies leaning on a private company to shut down the press in the middle of a contentious presidential election? And these are, you know, he's trying to trivialize this. Oh, it was a simple thing two years ago. It speaks to the foundation of a lot of stuff in our country and how we operate. And it is much more than just an editorial decision Twitter made.

And thankfully, we have the Twitter files now.

So we know so much more than when we would get these. You know, when when social media executives would come to testify before Congress in the past, You know, members of Congress were asking questions with one arm tied behind their back because we really didn't know what was going on internally at the company.

Now we do, thanks to the Twitter files. And there's just so much that these people need to answer for. And it was. I thought it was kind of a mixed bag yesterday. truthfully, but I'm I'm glad it happened.

No, and I hope it's not the end of it. It shouldn't be just a one and done. If you go back and look at some of the Twitter files as released by Schellenberger, what you'll see is that a lot of these big tech groups were engaging not only with former Department of Justice officials, but other, you know, from the Washington Post, the New York Times. They all role-played this back in August of that year. What if there was a story that we wanted to have suppressed?

How would we deal with it? What would we do? And it was really absolutely stunning that they tabletop this. They foreshadowed it. They practiced it.

And then when it dropped. they knew exactly what to do, and that's why they were all in unison, because not only did they get the suppression on Twitter, which we now have evidence on, thanks to Elon Musk, but none of these other networks were running it. And don't say that it was a one-day story or two days or whatever. The New York Post is, you know, was it fourth largest newspaper in the country? And it wasn't for just a day or two.

And is it so surprising they were doing these tabletop exercises, the FBI and the intelligence community, when we know that they had access to the hard drive? The computer repairman gave the FBI a copy of the hard drive in 2019. Yeah, they knew it was real. They had access to the hard drive from Rudy Giuliani because they were monitoring him for an unrelated investigation. They knew it was real.

So they knew it was real. They knew it was going around. And they tried to kind of. You know, kill it before it could be born. And that's why they kept sort of priming the pump at Twitter.

For example, if there's a Hunter Biden story, if there's some kind of Hunter Biden story, and You know, we didn't even this didn't even come up that much, but it it should have. Yoel Roth was talking about how, oh my god, there were so many Russians on the platform, Russians here, Russians there, left and right. But if you look at the Twitter files, It was the FBI and the federal government that kept pressing Twitter to find evidence of Russian activity. And the companies, employees at the company internally, couldn't find it. And it was the Fed that kept saying, go back and keep looking.

Go back and keep looking. And so it is a complete myth that you had millions of Russian accounts behind every issue in America. There was a company. Um forget the name of the company, but the guy's name is Clint Watts. He's an MSNBC contributor.

And one of the Twitter files talked about how that company, all they did was ascribe Russian motivation To different hashtags and different news events. Literally, thousands of articles generated across the news ecosystem, blaming Russia for everything. comes to this one group founded by Quint Watts. And it was bogus. And Twitter executives internally talked about how there was no major Russia interference problem on the platform.

It is a story that will not die. that Twitter is is infiltrated by Russians top to bottom. Yeah, and and and and for people like Jamie Raskin to encourage people to just bury their head when their Twitter's e exempt from liability issues. What law do they think was being broken? And if the FBI had to put these dozens upon dozens upon dozens of of agents on it, Then why didn't they charge anybody?

Was anybody... Did anybody break the law? I mean, that's what's absurd about it. If Twitter had Censored the New York Times reporting about Trump's tax returns and prevented people from sharing it and shut down the New York Times Twitter account for two weeks. In the middle of a presidential election, in October, what would Jamie Raskin say about that?

Do I even have to finish that sentence? Yeah. Anyway, all right, look, I want to get your take on another thing. This comes from the Wall Street Journal reporting. It's really, really from Larry Turner.

Larry Turner is the Inspector General at the Department of Labor, kind of exposing that there were some $191 billion of inappropriate payments made on. The $888 billion that went out the door for unemployment insurance or unemployment pro uh fraud. Can imagine uh more than twenty percent of what went out the door Was paid improperly. Let's go to Cut thirty five and listen to Larry Turner, the IG for the Department of Labor. As the OIG reported, states were not prepared to process the historic volume of claims resulting in significant delays.

Initial reliance on claimant self-certification. rendered the PUA program extremely susceptible to fraud, and the unprecedented infusion of federal funds gave fosters a high value target to exploit.

So we hear people talking all the time that they want more money, roads, bridges, schools, infrastructure, all that. The President talks about taxes, the need to increase taxes all the time. But they can't manage the money. They do have $191 billion inappropriately given out for unemployment insurance. Right.

That honestly I thought it would be higher. I mean, you you remember 2020, 2021. It was it was Wild West. Like There was so much. much federal money going out the door for for for various programs And I get it, we shut down the economy.

So business owners were told they couldn't go to work, they couldn't open their businesses, they couldn't pay their employees. There needed to be some kind of lifeline, but It was just, it was the Wild West, and so much money went out the door. Fraudsters took advantage of so much. And it's sad because, as you said, there are critical infrastructure projects that could have gone to Or it couldn't have we might have just not spent it at all and maybe not add to the thirty trillion dollar debt that we have. Yeah, or the military or something that would actually you know what bothers me about this, John, is that Nobody will be fired.

Federal employees are all going to get raises. Nobody's going to be held accountable for this. And what also bothers me, having been in Congress for eight and a half years and participated in I don't know how many hearings on TARP, remember when TARP came along, we had the hearings because there was so much fraud and abuse then. And supposedly, all these government workers and agencies were going to fix these problems so that the next time this came around, it wouldn't happen. But you know what?

It got worse, not better, and nobody will get fired, lose their job, or be held accountable. leased with tarp. Those banks paid the money back. With interest. People always forget about that with tarp.

We're not a lot of this money that we went out with with COVID relief money, we're never going to see that again. Yeah, it's gone forever. It's gone forever.

Well, I think that number you mentioned it being potentially bigger. I think it is bigger because you have the Secret Service saying that they estimate over $100 billion was inappropriately done. And again, we're talking about just one program. That wasn't the only program that was going out the door there.

So, you know, it is hundreds of billions of dollars wasted. Just absolutely. And now the government wants more of our taxpayer dollars. Go into further. It's unfathomable.

At a certain point, these numbers are not comprehensible to normal humans. It's like $100 billion, $100 trillion, a gazillion million, bajillion. And I think that's part of the problem is we don't. It it's it's no one no one's held accountable because it's really no one's money. I mean, it's the American people's money, but there's no single person on the hook and there is there is no mechanism to hold people accountable, really.

Which is the problem. That that you're absolutely right. That is the problem. All right. Last question I want to talk to you about is the Super Bowl.

I don't know if you have a dog in the fight, but it is a big deal. It is going to be on Fox on Sunday. I am neutral. Don't you even dare try to get me to take your side because I'm not. I hope the best team wins.

'Cause you're like a Jets fan and it's going to be a while till you actually go to the Super Bowl or what? Yeah. When when when the Jets play, then I'll take a side.

Well, I'm a Raiders fan and so it's going to be a while. Um, you know, I kind of grew up in I was born in California, lived in the on the west coast, and you know now they're in Vegas, which is the closest thing we've got to Utah for an NFL team. And it's going to be a while until the Raiders get there. But that stadium, holy cow, that is an amazing thing. I think both teams are very good.

As you said, very well matched. I'm sure it's going to be a great game. And I just know the best team is going to win. That's all I'm gonna say. You know that the the team that scores the most points is gonna win?

Yeah. That's right. All right, we appreciate it. John Levine joining us, a New York Post writer. If you don't follow him and read what he writes, you're missing some great, great stuff.

So look him up there at the New York Post. Thanks for joining us on the Brian Kilmead Show. Do appreciate it. Thank you for having me. All right, we're going to be right back.

Stay with us. Diving deep into today's top stories, it's Brian Kilmead. Breaking news, unique opinions. Hear it all on the Brian Kill Me Show. looking at why the country's so divided politically, culturally.

What do you think? Why do you think it is?

Well, I think it's a number of reasons. Number one, I think that we Um There was a deliberate effort by the last guy. To uh to play on people's fears and to uh appeal to uh base instincts. I mean Uh And i i it it's just it's not who we are. Boy, I got to tell you, Mr.

President, I totally 100% disagree with you on that one. That was Judy Woodruff, PBS, interviewing the president. Uh the president You know, ask the question about how to unite the country. Why are we divided? But how do you unite it?

And to say, well, it's all Trump's fault. It is a pretty lame excuse. He ran on the idea that he could work with the right, he could work with the left, he could bring us together. What I've witnessed in the two years that the President has been in place there is that they have routinely divided America. divided us based on race, based on income.

uh based on location. They they've they've all that's I can think of nothing that he's done to help unite us and bring us together. You know, the I think a case in point there is when the President of the State of the Union said that Republicans were trying to sunset was the word he used Medica Medicare and Social Security. Nobody has ever suggested that. What he could have said is the positive version of that.

We need to all work together to preserve, protect Social Security and Medicare. And virtually everybody would have stood up and applauded that. Because what Republicans have argued in those two cases is that if you don't refine them, if you don't make alterations to fix them, they will run out of money and then we'll be in disastrous times. That's what Republicans have said. Not taking away benefits from current retirees or current people that get the benefits from those programs or that they paid into.

But for younger generations, you're going to have to make some adjustments. That is the responsible, adult-like way to approach that. But the president, again, chose to divide. I think he was baiting people there. And when Judy Woodruff asked, how do we unite the country?

Why are we so divided? He has no answer. Just like he has no plan for Dealing with inflation, dealing with our energy prices, d securing and locking down the border, or taking on China.

Some of the basic, most important issues that I think people are asking themselves all the time. It's a missed opportunity, and I think the Democrats have a long ways to go to help unite this country. Republicans have got to reach out their hand too, but it doesn't mean Getting rid of your principles. I'm Jason Chaffetz filling in for Brian Killed Me. It's been an honor to be with you.

Thanks to Brian. Hope you enjoy the Super Bowl.