Hey everybody, I think you're really going to love this conversation with Byron Donalds.
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Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. Byron, great to see you. It's great to see you. Victory. It's great to see you, my friend. Victory feels good.
Amen. So I want to talk about the election, what happened, but I've been running an event, running all over the place. Can you explain what happened during this last week with the CR? Help us make sense of all that, because it's so confusing just as we're trying to run our lives.
So look, at its core, it's mismanagement. This is what happens when you kind of, when Washington does what it typically has done, where we call it the four corners, when they kind of go into a room and nobody else knows what's going on. The difference between today's Washington and the Washington we all know is that there is real outside influence that can stop garbage bills from being passed at the last minute. So, you know, when members started saying no publicly on this bill, Elon comes out, says his bill should not pass. President Trump comes out, says his bill should not pass. At that point, they had to go back to the drawing board, and that's when members came in the room working with the leadership to get to what we got to here.
The big thing now is next year, which really starts in a week for us, we can't have any missteps. We have a large agenda we have to get through, not a lot of time to do it. Yeah, so help me understand, and I'm not trying to get you in any trouble, but mismanagement by who? The leadership team. In the House of Representatives.
In the House, yeah. Is it fair to say, again, I don't want to name any names, but like, you know, you know who. Is it fair to say, though, that this was negotiated in private over a course of six weeks? Is that right?
Yeah, it is, because members were asking questions. Where are we with this? What's our game plan?
We weren't really getting any real answers. Then you start hearing rumors around town. We hear there's a package. We hear this is in it.
We hear that's in it. And you weren't really hearing anything concrete until, you know, whether it's lobbyists, staff members start coming back to members and reporters saying, hey, we hear it's going to be about 500 pages. You're learning about the bill from the media? Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes you hear about it from media. So we know as much as you know, basically. Yes.
And I will tell you, and let me expand on this. The 118th Congress, which is the one that just ended, has been, in my view, a very historic one. We started this Congress with a major fight over the speakership, because members like myself and others wanted to see the ways of Washington change. And we actually did accomplish a lot of those things. But to be blunt, when, you know, McCarthy got vacated, a lot of the stuff that we kind of got accomplished was rolled back, and it was embodied in what came out this last week. So we have to get back to the drawing board, get back to making it a member-centered process. If it's a member-centered process, you don't have these issues, and you have, frankly, the will of the voters reflected in the packages that come out of Washington. Yeah, I just, just from a process standpoint, let alone the actual result, which we all know is garbage, just how it works for six weeks, how, I mean, you're a very well-respected member of the body. You're not even involved. I mean, let alone notified, and you're learning from CNN that we're going to go, like, give money to biolabs or something?
Yeah. Look, I'm going to tell you this. That's even worse than, and I had, like, the lowest possible opinion of Congress.
That's worse than I could have been. When you start hearing things from the lobby corps, from K Street, from staff members, and from media, before you hear from it from your leadership, that's a problem. And I will tell you, there, I will tell you, there is a lot of us who are, who left D.C. either this morning or last night saying, we're not going into 2025 operating this way. We're just not. Again, I, I, feel free to just kind of take the fifth.
Does that mean a personnel change? I'm not going to comment on that. Yeah, okay, that's fine. Yeah, okay.
No, it's, I invoke my Fifth Amendment rights to. Well, look, well, look, let me, let me, I will expand, I will expand. It's incumbent upon the leadership to realize what went wrong and fix it immediately. If they do that, I think things will be fine. If they don't, or they don't come to a recognition of that, there's going to be other discussions that are going to be made.
I don't fault anyone for, for voting for the final version of this thing, which I still think was not the desirable outcome. But help me understand just the process side of it, because you've been amazing, Byron. He's so great. He fights every day.
He's just been terrific. And I, help me understand, though, why Congress did not just work through Christmas and do 10 or 12 appropriation bills and just said, hey, you know, nurses have to work on Christmas Eve. Airline pilots have to work on Christmas. We're not entitled to a Christmas vacation while the country is being screwed up. We're just going to work all the way through until January 3rd. If we have to shut down the government for a couple days, we will.
It seems as if there's like this lifestyle sense of urgency that we are so entitled to a Christmas vacation. We just need to kind of vote for this because we have no other option. Like, help me understand that, like, you guys should still be there for all intents and purposes.
I agree. Hammering this thing out, right? There was a conversation that was had, not yesterday, the day before, where we're looking, honestly, the package that ended up was not the best one. We're starting to look at how we're going to get the the agenda done because President Trump has a mandate. So how are we going to get that through Congress?
There are some major adjustments to spending that are going to have to be made. There's a lot of us, where our attitude is, go home, see your family for Christmas, get back to town the 27th and let's just work because it's going to be a day in, day out process. Yeah, there could have been a CR till the 27th, though, right? We could have done a continued resolution so you guys get a Christmas vacation, go breathe. But we're not going to fund the government in this because, by the way, a CR should be like five sentences, right? Yes, it should be.
Not 150 pages, let alone 1,500 pages. The leadership, to be blunt with you, the leadership and the Democrats and also you have a lot of our colleagues where their view is, we'll fix it next year. I just want to get out of town. January's here.
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Go to mag breakthrough.com promo code Charlie. I'm not an expert, but I've been seeing this for 12 years. How much of the destruction of our country actually is just people don't want to just stay there over a Christmas break? It's insane to me. I want to say it's not Christmas break. What this town likes to do is bring everything up to the last minute. So it's not Christmas. It's what were you doing in June and July?
But what are you doing in September? Again, I don't want to, I don't want to overemphasize on this, but I think it's so important. Byron, the excuse was in June or July it's an election year. So we can't do anything controversial during an election year. Well, what in the fresh hell is their excuse right now? I mean, we've never been so far away from an election. But I will tell you, that's why when that deal came out, you had so many members go against it. Because members like myself and a lot of my colleagues, they were like, we just won a major election. Why are we acting as if we need the Democrats to bail us out of something?
Like we won. So at this point, we should be dictating terms, not having to go to them saying, well, this is what we're trying to accomplish. What do you need? Because please, please, please, that stuff you can't do. Because once you start that way, Charlie, you've been in negotiations, anybody that's worked, you've been in negotiations. Once you start coming to the table like you need something, you're done. And I just look, everybody wants something in life, everybody fears something in life, and you have to find the combination of those two things. What does Senate this is a general thing, not a personnel question, because it's all the same, you can replace by the way, replace the speaker, it's interchangeable parts. Okay, so if you get rid of Johnson, you might just have someone who's like the same.
It might be a good idea might not be. The point being is that what does the average house leader want? And what do they fear most? What do they want most?
And where they fear most psychoanalyzed to me, those people because it's it's a mystery. What they want most is to keep the majority. Okay, so let me have they have that thing. But I may expound upon it. And by the way, you're correct.
They do have it because of Trump. The focus of the end this man right here, you are correct. And this man right here. Leadership likes to be in leadership. In leadership. So everything is always about the next election and keeping the majority. Even now the conversations are while we're going into the midterms, the odds are we're going to lose. So we have to do everything we can to keep the majority. My position in the position of a lot of a lot of members who agree with me, a lot of them you'll probably hear from today are if you accomplish the agenda that helps us get to keep the majority. But you got to do something. So what good is the majority? Don't do anything like exactly.
Exactly. The purpose of majority is to accomplish your agenda. The purpose of accomplishing your agenda is to change the way the government works in the way your society is organized. And the only way you get to that point is you have to institutionalize an agenda and say what you will about Nancy Pelosi.
She's never had a problem making her members walk the plank to accomplish their agenda. And we have to be agenda minded. We have to be mission minded. And that actually helps you keep your majority. What do they fear most?
Not being in leadership. Yeah, I mean, that's that's sick, actually. I mean, you know, I fear what you fear most is losing our country, obviously. That's what that's our drive.
What we love most and what we want most is to save the country. OK, so I think we've gone through that. Are you hopeful that this I mean, look, President Trump, this is why President Trump is so successful because of garbage like this because he's an insurgent against all this stuff. Do you think that we'll be able with President Trump's incoming mandate, the bully pulpit, the political power that he has, the ability to snap a finger, he could remove a member of Congress literally through a primary campaign. Do you think this will change with President Trump taking off on January 20th? Some of it will. But I will I will stress to you the the thought process and the working process of the leadership in both chambers is going to be critical to that because that town has its own muscle memory, which Donald Trump ran up against the first time.
Now, the thing that the town doesn't like more than anything else is the fact that he's had time to now think about it, which is problematic for them. But can we do it? Yes, it takes will more than anything else. And where I will dovetail, Charlie, and this goes to the work you did during this campaign, because you demonstrated that young voters can go to the polls and pull the lever or check the box and vote for the future of this country and vote for conservatism and common sense and republicanism, however you want to view it, because you proved what the political world said could not be done. It gives wind in the sails of people in DC to say, you know what, maybe we should do this.
The other thing is, you got to have people who are just willing to go home to get the mission done. Like, I don't care, send me home. I'll go make money. I like money.
It's great. My wife might be happier than being in Congress. But she's happy. Don't get me wrong, ladies and gentlemen.
She's very, very happy. But you get what I'm saying. But you got to have members who understand the purpose is to come and accomplish it, not to come and stay. Amen.
And I want to get to questions because you're tight on time here. Byron is very talented. You made money before you went into Congress.
You had a great business career, all that stuff. Yeah. There's so many people that go into Congress, though. They have a substandard skill set where this is like the biggest thing they'll ever do. So they never want to let it go. And for them, this is like the dream.
You don't have to work. You have a bunch of people serving you all the time. They call you congressmen. You kind of act important. And so they never want to lose that thing. Because for them, that is a way over accomplishment giving their skill set, like a way over accomplishment.
One pushback I will tell you. Since probably 2016, there's a new member coming in. These people actually have done stuff. And I think they're adopting more of the mindset of I'm not coming here for a 30-year career. They're coming in to serve, might be eight years, 10 years. But then they want to go home. Like I told my district, you got 10 years max out of me. And then I'm going home because it's time for somebody else. And so I think you have that wave of people coming into the House, which is going to make it easier to get not just to pass tax cuts or not just to make sure we secure a border, but to make sure that becomes the way that the town thinks about these policies.
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So good, your pet will ask for it by name, roughgreens.com. Let's get some questions here. And I will just say, actually, I'm not going to say it because I don't want to get Byron in trouble, but I think he has a great future.
Don't you think? I think Byron has a great future. That's all I'm going to say. I don't want to get Byron in trouble. You can get yourself in trouble on the show. You already got me in trouble, Charlie, but that's okay. Okay. I just said you have a great future.
I think you got a great future. Okay. Hey, I'm Stephanie from Michigan, and we flipped a Democratic seat to Republican with Tom Barrett. That was the Slotkin seat, right?
Correct. And he's an excellent guy. He was at many events that I got to speak intimately with him.
He was very sweet. How can we make sure we hold him accountable, but making sure we don't fall back into the blue side in that region of Lansing? Oh, this is a great question. So first of all, how you hold him accountable is you would want to constantly be in communication with him and his staff. On the Hill, staff is everything. We say in Washington, personnel is policy. So whoever's working in the office tends to dictate because the members were running all over the place. So you want to stay in contact with the staff and with him as much as you can. His schedule, especially these first six months, he's not going to be home a lot because we got a lot of work to do. So we're going to be in Washington a lot, but that doesn't mean he's not doing the right thing. Second thing is you got guys like me to, not that you said that, I'm going to find them and I'm going to be like, Tom, I saw some of your people.
I'm watching. But for your area, and this is important, electoral politics only work when you are engaging people locally on a continuous basis. It's about building relationship, not just getting votes. And so if you are constantly in your community having these conversations with kids who are in high school now who then become college students and then become young adults, they're in your churches. They're in your communities. They're at the local bar.
They go to the local restaurant. When I give speeches in areas, I talk sometimes to the people who are working the room, not the people who are sitting at the table. Because the people that are sitting at the table, they already agree with me.
I mean, y'all agree with me. That's cool. I get it. The people that are working the Phoenix Convention Center, those are the votes that we need. And when you think about how to go through the process over the next two years, you want to be focused on the working men and women of your community.
If you have them in alignment, not in 100% agreement, in alignment with where your philosophy is, it is easier to get them to vote your way when it comes to elections. Very good. Next question, Daisy.
Charlie and Byron, thank you. I'm actually a pastor in Southern California. So it's a quick question. My name's Shane Eitelman. I know you. Charlie, good to see you. Good man, I can't see you back there.
That's okay. I was on the pastors panel in San Diego last year. Courageous guy. Quick question.
Well, I have you both here. Newsom's up in two years. What are you, strong candidate for Republican in California, number one.
Number two is, is it even possible to get hopeful because of, we know the shenanigans and the rigging and things like that. But a lot of red in California now too. It's going in that direction. So curious your thoughts.
Oh boy, California. I think Steve Hilton is thinking of running. I like Steve a lot. Oh yeah, he is thinking about it actually. And I think Steve would be really interesting to look at if he decides to run. He's a great patriot.
And I think he's dynamic enough to be able to make it close. I mean, the likelihood of winning back the governor's race in one year is low, but California moved the most to the right of any state in the country in 2024. It was the most to the right of any state.
And look, you got to go county by county. Here's my best piece of advice for Californians, is guys, win back the Orange County congressional seats and then go out from there because it's local and also national impact that helps us grow our majority, which obviously, you know, leadership only cares about. But honestly, we want to try to get those Democrats out. But California is a long-term project. And I think it's possible, maybe 10 years, 15 years. Think of it this way. If you improve California to be one point more Republican for the next 15 years, it becomes a red state.
And you say, oh, that's too far out. That's what the Democrats have done to us. That's what they did to Colorado.
Okay. They said, okay, if we just win by one and a half points for 10, you know, lose less by one and a half points for 10 years. And now Colorado is super, super deep blue.
Honestly, that's what Byron did. And everyone in Florida, Florida used to be a battleground state. You're like, hey, every year we're just going to make it two points redder. And now you guys are winning races by like 17 points. That's crazy. Look, to add to that point, Florida 35, 35 years ago was a blue state. It was, I mean, it's obviously it's the best state in the country now, but it was a blue state.
So, but it takes consistency over time. I will tell you, especially in California, it's the same recipe for Lansing, Michigan. You have people in those communities who are frustrated.
They just don't know why. The Democrats in California, obviously they have a massive machine. You know, they're talking about some lady running to be governor out there. I don't know her name. I don't think anybody knows her name because she lost.
But anyway, Hillary Clinton. Oh yeah, maybe. But it's about consistency over time. That is the key thing in a state like California. And I will also tell you this, if you can slowly move that state, you now shift the electoral college for the presidency and the balance of power in the Senate in a major way. That's right. So just be consistent, lock in, see your people every single day. Last thing I'll say real quick.
Go ahead. The three issues in Florida, as I was told by the political leadership of that time, was education, crime, and economy. That's what they focused on when Florida was a blue state.
Education, crime, and economy. So I would say that's the three areas I probably will focus on in California. And I'll say this. I think that California has this amazing opportunity. Thanks to President Trump. And hear me out.
We had Tom Homan here yesterday. I think all of a sudden when the people of California start to see San Francisco get a little bit cleaner and illegal, start to leave their communities and they can thank Republicans for that. I think there's an opportunity to really move people to the right because there'll be a before and after picture of when the federal government comes in and starts this mass deportation force in California, which will happen. And these communities start getting liberated. I think there's a great opportunity there to seize on that, lean in on it and win California back for Republicans.
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Lydia from Ohio. If Trump's cabinet is approved, as we assume, and they execute all their tasks as planned, how can they make sure if a Democratic Party comes back into power, they don't undo everything the way Biden did with all the executive orders? It's a great question.
It is the most important question. The first part is this is why elections do have consequences. You've got to at least have a blockade somewhere. The second thing is, and I think the one positive out of COVID-19, it was really a reset, I think, mentally for how people see the country and what they want out of our government. The next year is going to be critical in that step because it is about deportations, economy, border security, foreign policy. If those things get back in the line the way they need to be, then it gives the voices of all of you here at Turning Point, but then this new ecosystem of alternative media, which is in some respects becoming bigger than big media now, it gives that ability. You think it's bigger now? I think alternative media for the right is way bigger than traditional.
Yeah, it probably is. Those are the building blocks you need in order to keep these ideas going. Obviously, we have to do the business next year.
I don't want to get ahead of myself talking about 2028, but if we do our job next year, not just on Capitol Hill, but also in our communities, continuing the efforts of being engaged with voters on the ground, that will keep your majorities in 26, and that will help you hold the White House in 28. Very good. Next question.
Chris Nordstrom from Idaho. So, Congressman, would you support a convention of states to propose term limits for Congress? Absolutely. Absolutely.
Look, I'll just tell you straight. There's only a handful of colleagues who have really been around a long time. Actually, on the Democrat side of the aisle is where they have members who do not leave. The Republicans, if you look at us, especially over the last decade, members' average term is around six to eight years on our side.
We have some older members, Mr. Lucas of Oklahoma, Mr. Cole of Oklahoma. We have some members that have been in Washington, probably since Newt came in, but that's the vast minority on the Republican side of the aisle. But I will tell you, in Florida, we had term limits.
I would have never had the opportunity to serve in the state legislature and then have this opportunity now if it wasn't for term limits. So I do believe that people need to move on. Move up or move out, make room for other people to come in. Next question. How you doing? My name is Jacob Todd.
I'm from Louisiana. I was there for January 6th in 2021, and I just wanted to say if there's anything that's in plan for this inauguration to prevent anything like that from ever happening again, especially after Ashley Babbitt. Well, yeah, first of all, I don't know if you got arrested, but hopefully all of them get pardoned. So yeah, we gotta get pardons for all those guys.
I agree. Look, I think that the speaker is going to make sure that doesn't happen. One of the biggest issues that happened with January 6th is that Nancy Pelosi was derelict in her duty to make sure that the capital was secured. Donald Trump provided 10,000 National Guard troops on January 4th. They were authorized. The mayor of Washington, DC, put the National Guard on traffic duty. And in that and during and people need to know this during 2021, during January 6th, 2021, this was COVID.
Nobody was coming to DC, so there was no traffic because nobody was driving in to go to work because all of the district was shut down. That what happened was wrong. Nancy Pelosi should have made sure that that the place was secured. And I believe it is correct that then FBI Director Mr. Ray, or he's probably still with us, hasn't resigned yet. They actually transmitted intelligence to the capital about concerns on January 6th. We don't know what happened with that because Nancy Pelosi stopped the oversight committee from investigating what the capital police knew and when they knew it.
And then the J6 committee was a travesty of justice. We all know that. Thank you. And Louisiana, we're going to get rid of Bill Cassidy sometime soon. Don't worry. So yes, next question.
Jamie Rappus from the great state of Wisconsin. You know, will we ever find out what happened in Butler? That was the first Trump rally that CNN carried live. You had the photographer in the well that happened to have, you know, one 3,000 speed camera going and taking pictures of Trump at that immediate moment. So will the American people ever know what really happened that day?
Yes. And I would say we're going to get that information probably somewhat sooner rather than later because when you have a change in administration, it's going to open up a lot of things that are going to be investigated. And on top of that, I'm pushing the incoming administration to do a major whistleblower protection program. So all the whistleblowers of the Biden administration can come forward and blow the whistle. We have time for one more question.
Brenda Gifford, Phoenix, Arizona. Thank you for being here and for all that you do. We keep having a conversation about term limits. And I appreciate what you said, but it seems to me that it's such a catch-22. It's really hard to know the pros and cons.
Can you speak to that conundrum a bit, please? In my view, there's only pros, not cons. I know that everybody has a great member of Congress. You have some great ones here in the state of Arizona. They are awesome men.
They are patriots. However, nobody is promised anything forever, not in this life. And I do think that on par, term limits are better off for the republic and for the people that we serve. I've heard the arguments about how you would lose institutional knowledge. Well, guess what? If you get elected and you're not smart enough to figure this thing out, then you're going to get unelected. And I will take the collective wisdom of people who come to Washington or go to a state capital over those who become so enamored with their own intelligence because they've been there too long.
They're stuck in the game, stuck in the process, and do not see what's happening on the ground in the lives of people on a day-to-day basis. Byron Donalds, everybody. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless.
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