I am pleased as punch to have the member of Congress from the Oh geez, Jeff, what districtor are you fifth? Yes, fifth congressional district. He's Representative Jeff Crank, who I completely smeared his good name this morning on my blog by saying he did something when in reality it was the other representative, Jeff from Colorado. Jeff heard, I've got Jeff
Crank with me today and Representative Jeff Crank. It's clear that one of you is going to have to change your name because they are two confusing the idiots like me who confuse a kind of important vote. And we'll get to that in just a moment. But first of all, welcome back to the show.
Well thanks for having me, Mandy. I always enjoy being on with you.
Yes, I appreciate you taking the time to do this. Let's start with what I initially reached out many many. It feels like a lifetime ago, but it was September second.
I went back and looked at the date today.
September second, Space Command is being moved to Alabama. I reach out and said, let's get you on the show. Today's the first day that we could get you on. But Holy crap, it's like a lifetime has happened in the last two weeks. But let's start with Space Command. Is there any chance to salvage this for Colorado Springs?
Yes, yes, I think there is, and I'm working to try and fight that decision. Actually, all of the members of the delegation, Democrats and Republicans, signed a statement the day that had happened that we are opposed to it. It's the wrong thing to do from a national security perspective, and we're fighting the decisions and I'm working with our senators to help do that as well. There are some, though on the left, who who think that fighting this
decision is attacking Donald Trump. Right. It isn't right, because Donald Trump and the Trump administration make the decision about what roles and missions might come to Colorado. And so I have been working hard with the administration to find some things to come to Colorado that would expand missions beyond Space Command. And there's lots of things, and I've had really good discussions with them. I'm very confident that
we're going to get more things coming to Colorado. Nothing in this decision to move Space Command changes the fact that fifty percent of US Space Force is actually located in Colorado. It's going to remain in Colorado. Fifty percent of the Space Force and growing will be in Colorado. And so people confuse sometimes the difference between Space Force and Space Command. Obviously, we're disappointed in the decision. It's
the wrong decision. We're going to fight it. But as equally important is the fact that we're just going to work hard to bring more missions, roles and missions to Colorado, and specifically to Colorado Springs.
So I mean not to disparage what you just said, that as sounds a little like we're going to get a consolation prize, like we're going to get other things to make up for the loss of talent or the other things that will be peeled off by the loss of Space Command.
So let me ask you this.
One of the things that President Trump said in his comments announcing the change was that when I heard from the Alabama delegation, everybody all the time, they didn't talk about anything else but moving Space Command. Do you feel like they just got to jump on us because they tend to all align with the same political party. Did it make it easier for them to do a full
court press than our situation. And I'm not asking you to say anything bad about your Democratic colleagues at all, but dealing with someone from your own party is a heck of a lot easier than dealing with someone from the other party.
I don't care who you are.
Well, I mean, the Alabama delegation has been working this for many years. Keep in mind, I mean I've been a member of Congress for nine months, right, So I got sworn in nine months ago. The decision to move Space Command was made by President Trump in his first term at the in twenty twenty one. In January of twenty twenty one. I wasn't a member of Congress, wasn't even thinking about running for Congress back then. So there's a lot of history that's been, you know, been behind
us on this decision. So what I was left with when I arrived on January third of this year was really, you know, what do we do? How do we fight this decision? And we fought it not from a political standpoint, but from a military one that it just doesn't make sense from a military standpoint to move Space Command. But I would say this, the pie is so much bigger today. And you talked about maybe a consolation prize. I would
just say I don't think that's the case. I think there's going to be a pretty major realignment of our military, particularly when it comes to space, over the next couple of years. As I said, we're going to the space force in Colorado will continue to grow. But the high is so much bigger today than it was those many years ago when the decision was first made. We just added Golden Dome. Golden Dome. We just put twenty five billion dollars Congress approved for the first year of Golden Dome.
I mean, Golden Dome's going to be hundreds of billions of dollars that's going to be spent. Much of that money will be coming to Colorado. So I would just say that what's coming to Colorado through Golden Dome and through other things is going to dwarf what might be lost in Space Command. And by the way, Space Command was originally supposed to be about twenty three hundred jobs. We've worked with the administration to talk about what the impact would be and it'll be about one thousand jobs,
six hundred of those civilian, four hundred military. So it's going to be a far less impact than it was originally going to be when they announced it number one and number two. Just with with Golden Dome, there's just going to be so much more coming here. There's going to be more space business in Colorado five years from now than there is today, no matter what happens with Space Command.
So a couple of people asking just to be clear here, I'm gonna answer this question, Mandy, as I understand it. Space Command has moved, but not Space Force. And that's what Jeff was just saying here, is that Space Force, over fifty percent of Space Force is still located in Colorado. Let me ask you about Golden Dome for just a second, because I think this is the Israelis have proved how effective a dome defense system is. And you know, Ronald Reagan got laughed at when he said we're going to
have this Star Wars missile defense system. It's kind of interesting that fifty years later, and yes it has been fifty years, it finally looks like it's going to be coming to fruition. If so much of that is coming to Colorado, is that because of our existing commercial infancy structure, the companies that are already existing in Colorado springs in Denver in those areas that are doing this kind of high tech stuff.
It is. It's a lot of that, and much of that is going to stay here. It's not going to move to Alabama. Most of it won't move to Alabama just because Space Command may move to Alabama. But it is both that civilian workforce, but we also have a lot of the military bases here that do so much that can't be moved. GPS satellites. All of the GPS
satellites in the world. Every day when you use your phone to navigate you from one place to another, that's all controlled on the ground in my congressional district at Shriver Air Force Base, that's all done there, Norrad, Cheyenne Mountain, all of that stuff that's not going to go anywhere. So Northern Command is a unified command and it's still headquartered here in Colorado Springs. They're going to be the
executors of Golden Dome. They're going to decide if something If a missile is fired anywhere in the world, they're going to in a split second, make a decision about whether that missile is headed to the United States or not, and if it is, how to shoot it down. And how to defend the United States. Every decision about that in the Command structure will be made right here in Colorado Springs. Actually, so that's why Colorado is going to
really benefit from Golden Dome. I formed the Golden Dome Caucus in Congress so that we could continue to keep Colorado the head of really space in the military.
Somebody just checks it in.
During the Biden era, Colorado Springs was named the permanent home of Space Command. Trump overturned that. Let's not forget that. Represent your voters, not Trump. I think that's kind of what he just said, that he's been advocating for this.
But how do you respond to that?
Yeah, and Mandy, look, I mean that's a political question by someone who's probably trying to make score a pulit aint. I have fought the president on this. I just said that we don't agree with the decision. It is a bad decision for national security. I do not support the decision to move it. But what's the alternative? Should I just attack Donald Trump as a president like many Democrats
have done. That's counterproductive. To attack the president doesn't help us get more missions for the people that I represent. So my job as their congressman, and as a representative from the state of Colorado is do my best to keep as many jobs here as I possibly can. We are fighting as best we can to keep the Space Command in Colorado. But you know, it's also tough sometimes when we do have a governor that wants to thumb his nose at the Trump administration over immigration, over healthcare,
over everything. We have US senators that tend to want to do that too. Although I will say Governor ben Or, I'm sorry, Senator Bennett has been really helpful in the fight here on Space Command. So you know, it's tough. Colorado has continually tried to poke the eye of Donald Trump. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to try and work to get roles and missions to Colorado. That
doesn't mean that I agree with the decision. I've said from day one that I oppose any move from Space Command and I'm going to do everything I can to stop it.
I'm with Representative Jeff Crank and I want to to get to with something that I and I've gone back and I've corrected the blog, so if you looked at it earlier, you will see me as I just told Jeff I've hoisted myself on my own Petardi idiocy because one member, one Republican member of the Colorado delegation, voted against a move to censure Representative ilhan Omar, who has been everywhere she can be saying the most nasty things she can about your kirk, because that's what she does.
And I am so wrong. It was Representative Jeff Heard who voted no.
You voted yes on that?
Why well, And to even confuse it a little bit, a little bit more, what we actually voted on was a motion to table a motion to censure ilhan Omar. So I actually voted no on the motion to table it. Jeff Heard voted yes. But essentially I voted to continue with the resolution of censure on ilhan Omar. Jeff Heard voted yes on the motion to table that, so he voted against the censure of ilhan Omar. And you know, I don't want to speak for Jeff. Jeff's a friend.
It's not a vote that I agreed with or would have cast. I just believe that, you know, of course, I support free speech. I've I am very much opposed to the government coming in. You know, there's been a lot of talk about free speech as of late, and the whole issue with Jimmy Kimmel and all of that, well, look, the free market ought to decide whether Jimmy Kimmel's on the air or not. I don't watch him, I don't like him, and if people don't want him on air,
stop watching him. But the government should never whether it's a fec or I'm sorry, the FCC chairman or anyone else should never step in. It's a violation of the First Amendment to get government telling someone that they shouldn't be doing that. We saw it during COVID. I mean, we saw what the Biden administration did to censor people who had a different view of COVID. That is wrong, and the Supreme Courts ruled that it's wrong. So I'm totally against that. But this wasn't an issue with Ilhan
Omar in my view of free speech. In fact, if we would have passed the resolution of censure, she still had free speech. She had every right to say whatever vile and discussed thing that she wanted to say, and she has said a lot of vile and disgusting things, particularly about Charlie Kirk. She's fully entitled to do that. The question on whether or not we should censure her is whether or not that is becoming of a member of Congress, and whether we should hold ourselves to a
higher standard. And I would simply say this. You know, we had a motion or a resolution a few months back when two Democrats were killed in Minnesota by this guy who went to their door, these Democrat legislators, and he killed them. I voted for that, and I think every Republican voted right to condemn that action. They did.
I looked this morning.
Every Republican voted to contemn the political violence that took the lives of Melissahrtman and her husband. And you can't even get Democrats to vote for a resolution just honoring.
Yeah.
No, it's terrible that we've to that point where we have to fight over this. Look. I said this last night. If you can't as a human being and an American, if you can't say that the murder of someone else is wrong, an innocent person, just because you disagree with them. If you can't say that that's wrong, you need to go back and go to church again. You need to go back and have your parents raise you again, because that is the most Unamerican thing. It's the most un
Christian thought that anybody could have. We should all be condemning violence, and we should all stand up for the First Amendment. They are not mutually exclusive. We need to do the right thing, and we as leaders need to hold people accountable when they don't do that.
You know, I've been going back and forth.
It's like I can appreciate the fact that everything you just said about the SEC and my issue with Brendan Carr is significant enough that if he was cut loose, I'd be okay with that, because I don't want people who have the power to permanently disrupt someone's life. And let's be real, the FCC commissioner can call my boss right now and Jeff, your former.
Radio you know this.
The FCC commissioner can call my boss right now and say, I'm about to find your host five hundred thousand dollars for something I think she said wrong, and that's going to get me fired, Like the you know I heart won't fire me for what I said, They'll fire me for getting that. Fine, that's how it works. So I am against that. I'd be okay if he left. But at the same time, this hue and cry over Jimmy Kimmel has been full of crocodile tears and massive swaths
of hypocrisy. That my defense of him in the sense that what Brendan Carr did was stupid, he should have never done that, he should have kept his yapper shut.
I'm like, eh, you know, I probably should.
Be more upset, but the outrage does not meet the level of what actually happened, especially when today on x I see Jim Jordan has published a read of admissions by Alphabet by Meta of the myriad ways that the Biden administration worked very diligently to censor viewpoints that at this point have found to be accurate during COVID. You know, it's not even that they were wrong, they were just unpopular, and now most of them have been proven true.
So the censorship issue was huge, and.
Mandy that that was all litigated. It was taken to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ruled on it in the Missouri case and said that the government interfering and trying to go to these social media companies and have and censor through them, to use social media companies as the agent that would censor on behalf of the government was a violation of the First Amendment. And the same is true if the FCC chair or someone from or the FCC as a whole would try and do
that as well, that's wrong. But look, let's be honest. A company has every right if they are hiring you as a spokesperson and you say something that you know is offensive, they have the right to fire you.
That's in my contract.
That's not a violation of the First Amendment in any way, shape or form, right.
I think for me, the issue really comes down to, and I said it on the first day, it is my belief. You've worked in media that ABC News looked at a show that's probably losing money hand over fist. We know Colbert was losing forty million dollars a year and they saw an opportunity to scrape that contract off and they tried to take it, but the backlash was such that.
They could not do that. And that that is my theory.
I'm gonna I'm gonna die on that hill because I've been in this industry for so long, I know how it works, and that makes the most sense.
Oh, I think that's one hundred percent true. And you know, the reality is anybody and you know this because I do think that the radio business, having been in it is a free market business.
Right.
If you don't produce a good show, advertisers won't pay to advertise, and pretty soon, uh you know, your your employer looks at and says, well, I don't know, let's just go in a different direction. So it still is one of those areas. It's very free market uh here. But but we don't embrace that as conservatives, right, and you know, to think that these late night shows, they don't they're not even funny. What what about what Jimmy
Kimmel said? What whether it was it was uh you know, inappropriate for him to say it or not all of that? What about it was funny? There was nothing funny about what he said? And so you know the job here on late night comedy last I checked and Johnny Carson of course, has a great famous discussion where he said, you know, it's not my job to preach to people, it's it's to entertain them and be funny. And so you know that's that should be the standard. And I'll
tell you that. And you see with like Greg Guttfeld on Fox News and his show, he's killing these guys, because he's got it down. He's trying to be funny, and he goes after Trump, he goes after the right, he goes after the left. He's funny, and I missed the old days. I thought David Letterman was funny until you know, until George Bush came along, and then he is. His driven hatred for George Bush caused him to go off in a terrible direction and ruin late night TV.
Representative Jeff Crank, I really appreciate your time today, and boy, am I glad you didn't vote against that thing that I clearly had no idea what I was talking about.
But no, I appreciate your time.
Let me tell you many, I'm glad I didn't.
Vote it too.
There you go, to Congressman, I appreciate you coming on today very very much, and hopefully we'll be able to do this soon.
You got it. Thanks all right, Andy, appreciate thank you.
That's Representative Jeff Crank, who is not the one who voted against the censure of ilhan Omar.
So there you go.