The Inside Story: ANOTHER Biden Nom Defeated, plus Biden LOVES China & Kerry LOVES Private Jets

Biden administrations would draw on him. Talk a little bit about the dynamics here, because to be honest, it's the second time they've had a nominee that's not made it through and without your leadership. I'm going to say this because it was obvious this would not have happened if you weren't in the position that you're in. And Americans should feel safer now because of this. Well, it's a

big deal. Big news broke this weekend Saturday night, sort of quietly late at night, trying to avoid the news, the Biden administration announced they were withdrawing Phil Washington, their nominee for fa This is now the second major nominee the White House is withdrawn. Earlier they withdrew gig Soone, who they had nominated the Federal Communications Commission. Both of those nominees go through the Commerce Committee, and I am as of this year, the new ranking member on the

Commerce Committee. In other words, I'm the lead Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee. It's the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. It's got jurisdiction over about half the US economy, including both of these appointees. Both of them. Now we've taken him down, and it was not by accident. Look,

it is a good thing. We talked last week on the pod about Phil Washington and why he was not qualified to run the FAA, why this is an incredibly important safety and security job and he didn't have the background in aviation or aviation safety. Gig soone we've talked about a lot on the podcast as well. She's a left wing radical and activist, someone who hates Fox News, who's described Fox News as a threat to democracy, who has ad vacated using government power to silence voices she

doesn't like. She would have been very dangerous as a government regulator. I do think that there are valuable lessons to be taken in terms of how on the Commerce Committee we were able to take these two nominees down because there were bad nominees, but if you look at most of the bad nominees Biden puts forward, make it through. We did a couple of things different that led to

two big victories in a matter of two months. Number one with gigisne, I tried to systematically empower every Republican on the committee and in terms of providing them information on her record, providing her information on all of the different things she had said and done that were extreme, and that led to different different members of the committee being empowered, being able to run with Okay, what issue

do you want to take? And so for example, she had sent tweets praising people were calling for abolishing the police, and so one of the Republican senators went with those and pointed out that a number of police groups, the sheriff's groups, had a posed her nomination because they didn't want someone at the FCC who actively undermines cops. There were a whole series of issues, you'll recall. We empowered everyone and then at the hearing and we had a

total of three markups on her. But at the hearing, I walked through some of her extreme record and in particular that she kept supporting this left wing group that attacked incumbent Democrat senators and that put up billboards saying that incumbent Democrats senators were corrupt. So she had put up a billboard saying or the group rather had put up a billboard saying Joe Manchin is corrupt. I asked,

asked Gigi Son, do you think Joe Manchion's corrupt? She said no. The group had put up a billboard saying John Tester is corrupt. By the way, John Tester is on the Commerce Committee. Not an awkward moment at all when you're trying to get someone to vote for you, right, So I asked, do you think John Tester's corrupt? She says no. They put up a billboard saying Kirsten Cinema's corrupt. At this point you knew where it was going. I

asked her if she thought Kirsten Cinema was corrupt. She said no. At this point, Maria Cantwell, who's the chair of the committee, says, what are you going to have them coming after me next, which, as it so happened,

I had to laugh and say, well, actually yes. So this group sent a letter to Chuck Schumer in December twenty two, so just a couple of months ago, demanding that Schumer fire Maria Cantwell as the chairman of the Commerce Committee because we hadn't yet confirmed gigs own and I put put up the press release the story behind me, and if you watch the video, Maria Cantwell is like cracking up, laughing, and I just said, I said, you know, I have to say, in my entire time in the Senate,

I've never seen a nominee who supports a group. And by the way, she'd attacked a bunch of the Republicans too. Yeah, but I was like, who attacks half the senators on the committee that's asked to confirm her that this is a new one. I also asked her. I said, okay, after they sent these put these billboards up, you sent fundraising tweets, you raise money for the group. Afterwards, I said, did you know about it? Now? Look, any lawyer is told never asked the question, you don't know the answer.

I didn't actually know the answer, but I figured it was reasonable to ask. And she said, well, I didn't know about the others. But she said I did know about their billboards, saying Kirsten Cinema's corrupt. Like, oh, you did know about that? She said yes, And I said, and you raised money for them after they'd accused Cinema being corrupt. Correct, She goes, oh, yes, like quite proudly, quite brazenly. That had I think a real effect. It had an effect in terms of lots of wobbly votes

on the committee. It had an effect in terms of other Democrats. But we also my team was organizing different constituent groups who were reaching out to their senators saying, hey, we don't want a left wing partisan who will censor us abusing power at the FCC. And what ended up happening. And I will tell you I did a lot of personal diplomacy, going to Democrats on the committee, going to democrats off the committee, and just walking through some of

the things she said. By the way, as an aside, you may recall and we talked about this once on the pod, but it's worth worth revisiting. I did complain at the hearing. I said, look, I actually feel a little bit offended. You've attacked half the senators on this committee, but this group has never attacked me. I mean, what do I have and people attack you? So there you go, but like, am I'm really feeling like like inadequate. Apparently I'm not doing a good enough job of irritating this

left wing group. And so they saw that, and I guess I feel some vindication when I when I complained that they hadn't attacked me, they promptly began crowdsourcing for a billboard attacking me. So I wasn't left out. I felt good. And the billboard had a picture of me with the website Ted Cruz hates free speech. And the funny thing is these guys are not very good because they hadn't secured the website. So I promptly bought it. Well, yeah, I owned the website you've ever seen Ted Cruz hates

free speech, And so I tweeted out their crowdsourcing. I said, please go to the website and it goes to a campaign fundraiser for me where you can contribute to my campaign. And it just look it was trolling and having fun. But that's a good day for trolling when you when you search to see it, the website is available and it says yes, and immediately you're like, let me buy this. As fast as I possibly it was, I got a

lot of laughter out of it. But look the organized, comprehensive effort of bringing together of the material having it be substant if none of the attacks on her were personal. Yeah, I actually like Gis. She's smart, she's a true believer. She is a leftist. She is a hardcore leftist. Look, I'm a hardcore conservative. I respect people who believe something, who don't flinch, and so I understand where she's coming from.

I just think she is ill suited to be on a regulatory agency with massive power over communication and broadcast and telecom. That's just dangerous. That wants to take down different sectors conservative media. In that job, it's not supposed to be a political position. So my point in terms of there are lots of Biden nominees that are radical and extreme and almost none of them are taken down. There is a specific approach to doing it. Some of it is doing the homework. And I'll tell you my team.

The top two staffers on the Commerce Committee. I hired both of them. They're incredibly talented. They were both the top two staffers and the Senate Banking Committee last Congress. So they worked for Pat Toomey, the Republican retired Pat's a good friend, and banking took down a couple of extreme nominees from Biden in the last two years. So I deliberately went out and hired these guys and said, look,

y'all did a great job last time. You remember what was it the Russian woman who was nominated to be a banking regulator who had like literally was a Marxist. In fact, if you remember, John Kennedy had the great questioning where he said, so should I call you comrade? But it's the same approach where you do your homework. You assemble all the materials, you assemble the substance, you marshal it out to key members of the committee. You present it in a way that is clear, that is understandable,

that is and it's substantive. It's not a personal attack. It's not going. It is going. Your record is not suitable for this job. Now, let's fast forward to Phil Washington, and I wanted to ask you about that because the FAA nominee here is a position that's obviously supposed to be non political. And before we get into that, and it's how it's about protecting everybody's family when they're flying

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Use my name Ben. You'll also get your fees way for ten years Augusta Precious Metals dot Com or you can call them eight seven seven four gold Ira eight seven seven four gold Ira Center. You'll look at this FAA and Washington right away. It was very clear, and you brought this up immediately. We talked about it a little BITU on this pod that he was just not qualified to lead the FAA. That's what it was about.

And you liked him as a person. I did you know, he's someoneld have spent twenty four years in the military as a smart guy, served his nation honorably, senior enlisted in the military. But he's someone who was wildly unqualified for this position. And you know, I have to admit for me with Phil Washington, it was never ideological. I was offended that they would nominate someone who couldn't remotely succeed,

didn't have the background. And so back in January, right when I started as the ranking member, I said publicly, I said, Gigi Sown and Phil Washington, neither of these nominations will be confirmed. I don't know why the White House is wasting their time on them. They're going to fail on them both. And so I predicted this at the outset Phil Washington. We did several things. Number one, again it was it was going through and doing the research.

So they're a whole host of issues. There was one issue, which is under the statute creating the FAA and defining the administrator, it says that the administrator must be a civilian, in other words, cannot be military. And Congress has consistently interpreted civilian to mean not active duty military, but also

not retired military. And so this has happened a number of times where you get someone who served twenty plus years in the military, they retire, they're receiving a retirement every month, and Congress six times has required of FAA nominees that either Congress granum a waiver which takes both houses of Congress, or and this has happened twice, the retired military officer give up his or her retirement, like legally, I mean, you're really committed to this new job if

you do that. So that's been the consistent pattern. One of the very first things we did as I went and met with. I met with the entire House Committee in charge of Transportation. I met with the chairman, Sam Graves, is a good friend's House member from Missouri, and we together pend a letter together saying, under this statute, it requires a waiver where both houses of Congress have to pass it, and we said, the House is not going to pass this Normally on confirmations, Look, it's the Senate

that's in the personnel business. Most nominations, the President nominates, the Senate confirms. The House doesn't play a role here. The House does play a role because you had to have a waiver from both houses. So we started with that argument, putting it out there, laying out the legal basis. Did that take Washington's nomination down? Know, But it was an argument that was a real concern, and we had

history and law and practice on our side. So there was a second set of issues, which is that Washington has an ongoing public corruption investigation going on for him right now. So he was previously the head of La Metro, so did trains buses in Los Angeles, and there's an investigation concerning a whistleblower that he allegedly retaliated against, and a non profit that got what's alleged to be a sweetheart deal in order to ingratiate Washington with a really

powerful Metro board member. Now, this investigation the Democrats didn't want to address at all. So here's what my team did that was really important. Number One, the La County Sheriff, who's a Democrat, had executed a search warrant describing all the things that the sheriff was looking for from Phil Washington about this public corruption. So in the hearing, I walked through the search warrant and quoted it, had it blown up behind me, and walked through the terms of

the search warrant from the La County sheriff. But secondly, so the California Attorney General has taken over the public corruption investigation. My team did something no one else had done, which as they picked up the phone and they called the California Attorney General's office and they said, hey, what's the status of this investigation? And California Attorney General's Office said, well,

it's active and ongoing. And they said, well, what's Phil Washington's connection And they said, well, Phil Washington is materially connected to this investigation. He's right in the middle of this investigation. And they said one other thing. They said nobody else had called them. So I want you to think about this. This is the week before the hearing. They said the Biden White House had not called them. They said the FBI had not called them. They said

the Senate Democrats had not called them. So my staff were the first people to call the California AG's office and say what's the status of the investigation. And they told my guys. So all of that I laid out at the hearing and I said, look, I can't think of another time that I've been in the Senate where the president has nominated someone for a position who's right in the middle of an active public corruption investigation. And to be clear, this is not some partisan witch hunt.

The La County Sheriff is a Democrat and the California Attorney General is a Democrat, hardcore Democrats, hardcore like left wing Democrats. They're actively investigating this right now. That argument likewise, look, do I think that this that argument defeated Washington. No, which is also kind of scary. If yes, it is. I mean, if you have an active investigation, you would think that the Biden administration would say, hey, we gotta table this guy until we figured this out. Maybe for

another position, but certainly not right now. This is not who we're going to go with in the world of sanity. It would here. If those were the only two issues. My guess is Phil Washington would be confirmed. The Democrats would be willing to look the other way, say never

mind the statute. By the way, with the statute that requires a waiver, one of the things that meant is if Washington had been confirmed as FAA, every decision he made would have had a legal cloud and could have been challenged in court by saying, you have any legally

serving administrator actually hurts the agency. There would have been litigation from some plane manufacturer from something you know, I mean, anybody that wasn't getting their way could just sue, could sue and say the administrator is illegal because the statute requires a waiver for someone who's a retired military individual individual to serve. The Democrats would have happily ignored that and ignored the public corruption. What took Washington down was

his utter and complete lack of qualifications. And at his hearing, and we played this on the podcast, I asked him systematically, did he have any aviation experience. I said, have you ever flown a plane? No? You ever been a military pilot. No, you've ever been a commercial airline pilot. No, you ever worked for an airline. No, you ever worked as an air traffic controller. No, you ever worked for a company that manufactures airplanes. No, ever worked for a company that

repairs airline airplanes. No. I walk through this nowday his credit. He didn't try to fill a buster, He wasn't overly political, and you weren't trying to be a jerk. It was it was. It was one of the most just shocking moments because it's like, I'm ask you every position you could have had that would then give you credibility to have this position and being in charge the FAA. You don't check any of the boxes, sir. It's almost like, why are you here? Why would you think this would

be good for you in that scenario. You know nothing about what we need to keep people safe who are conservative or liberal, black, white, every religion on planes. It doesn't matter in that scenario. I just want to be safe. So we laid out those facts, and as I said, listen, I was offended. This is a technical job. It's like if you're nominating someone to be in charge of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and they don't they don't know anything

about nuclear energy, Like, holy crap, that's a problem. I would like someone should know enough not to have nuclear meltdowns and have us all grow a third eye. And you know, there are safety jobs, and to be clear, you and I are unqualified for both of these. You're more qualified. You know more about a plane than I do, but I wouldn't put you in charge of the father. Sorry about that. I'm okay with that. I feel good

about that, losing that opportunity. But look, these are it's not like you want a right winger or left winger in these jobs for these kind of safety jobs. You just want someone competent up to the task. But laying out those facts. So we also did the same thing. We coordinated with all the different members of the committee so that they had a ground for questioning. So, for example, Ted Budd, new Senator from North Carolina, Ted Budd is

a pilot. So Ted Budd had a really effective series of questions where he asked him different things that any pilot should know. He asked them, for example, how close can two commercial airplanes come on a runway, and Washington is like, I don't know, and like he walked through a whole bunch of technical questions that frankly I don't know the answer or two like it's why Ted did such an effective job with it because he was asking

the FA. Administra should absolutely know how to answer that question. It's like two plus two is four. If you're going for a math job, you should always know that answers. Like the FA is in charge, among other things, of regulating how close the planes can come to each other. If he doesn't know how close they can come or the reasons why, that's just a huge problem. So we had all of the different players on the committee empowered with the information that they could raise it, and then

we had to do several things. Number one, look, there's some Republicans on the committee, particularly from rural states, who care a lot about the FA, who were a little nervous about. Oh, I don't want an administrator who's mad at me, who will take it out of my state.

So explain the politics quickly. That the reason why rural states and rule people that represent ruyers, they need their smaller airports, they need their regional airports, they need the money that comes, because the cash made on the ground there will never cover what it costs. Brand airports are very expensive to run, but you want to have access to your state, You want people to be able to fly into your state, and you want to hopefully grow that,

but you have to have money come in. Otherwise you could never open up a lot of these smaller airports. And if you have a politically vindictive FAA administrator, you punish a small rural state. And so there were some Republicans that were concerned that we had to calm their concerns. It wasn't personal, it wasn't it was substantive. Look, we want someone who keeps people safe and protects us from plane crashes where lots of people die. That was a piece of it. We had to work on Democrats, So

I worked on committee Democrats. I'd go and make the case to them. Now. One of the pieces that was very helpful we had a hearing on the FAA the acting administrators a guy named Billy Nolan. I don't know Billy Nolan, but he's the person Biden has nominated to be acting administrator. He was a commercial airline pilot. He's worked in the FA and senior positions. He was he has multiple certifications at aviation safety. Like we would ask him substance of questions about aviation safety. He knew it

and he'd give answers. And look, by the way, the Biden administration is very Dean County, and you know it. Phil Washington happens to be African American. Billy Nolan also happens to be African American. So if their view is they just wanted to nominate an African American administrator, okay, fine, but could you have someone who knows a damn thing about airplanes? So we're at the hearing with Billy Nolan. I actually turned back to my staff and I said, hey,

what do you think about Nolan? They're like, he's pretty capable, And I said, would it be crazy for me to suggest right now that they should withdraw Washington nominate Nolan. And my guys are like, no, no, that's fine, and so I just it was an audible This was not planned. I leaned forward and I said, let me say something right now. As I see mister Nolan acting administrator. Nolan answering these questions, they're obstintive, they're real. I think if

the White House Withdrew. Phil Washington nominated mister Nolan. He would at all likelihood be approved with a large bipartisan majority because he's capable of the job of dealing with safety in the FA you know, absent some big smoking gun we don't know about, you know, I mean something terrible in his background that nobody knows absent, that he would be an easy confirmation. And so I suggested at the hearing, and you saw a lot of heads turn.

I actually heard from a former senior official in the Biden White House. He said the White House like their heads jerked when I said, if you nominate this guy, he could get confirmed and confirmed quickly. That was an important part to beating Phil Washington because what had enabled me to do so. This past week I was on the Senate floor. I had an entire pocket full of

pocket cards. So my team prepares them. They're a note card that I carried inside pocket, and I had individual senators they were prepared for for each one Democrats that I'd go to and I'd pull a senator aside, say let me talk to you about Phil Washington, particularly people who are not on the committee. So people who were saying pilots people who were more moderate. I said, look, here's his background. He doesn't know this, he doesn't know that.

I'd give him the pocket card, and I'd say and by the way, the acting administrator Biden put him in place, this is not partisan. This is I'd like to have someone qualified. One of the things my team did also as we worked with stakeholders. So lots of different groups came out against Washington and said he's not qualified. Lots of pilot groups in individual states. So, for example, the Tana Pilots Association said no, said he's manifestly unqualified. Well,

John Tester is on the Commerce Committee. John Tester's running for reelection in twenty twenty four. Do you really want to be the Democrat who votes to confirm someone the Montana Pilots Association says is unquestionably unqualified. The Arizona Pilots Association said the same thing. So we worked. I gave a floor speech which actually we paid played in a previous podcast about Phil Washington. Here's a piece I didn't

tell you about. So when I'm giving the floor speech, the person presiding, the way it works on the Senate presiding anytime she wishes to the vice president can preside. Generally speaking, the vice president does not preside only on really critical votes where a tie breaking vote is required. So the way it normally works as a senator from the majority party presides, and it's usually the more junior senator, so it's on seniority. The more senior ones are kind

of out of that responsibility. So when we had a Republican majority, I liked presiding. You'd preside every week, typically an hour each week, and it was interesting. You'd sit there, you could do some work, you'd listen to speeches. But it's the more junior members of the majority party that are presiding. Well, when I gave my speech on Phil Washington, it happened so happened that Peter Well was presiding. So

Peter is one of the newest senators. He's a Democrat from Vermont, was just elected replaced Pat Lahey was in the House for a long time, but is new to the Senate. And I like Peter. I'm just getting to know him. He's on Commerce with me and he's on Judiciary with me, so I'm on two committees with him. But it's interesting Peter's listening to me give the speech and I'm walking through Washington's record, I'm walking through the substance,

I'm walking through the corruption case. I'm walking and you can tell he's paying attention to you because there's not a lot of people in the Senate chambers. Virtually nobody. I watched you when we were in DC recently. There's virtually no one in there. There's the pages sitting on the left and the right side on the little steps.

There might be another member that walks in getting ready for their next speech, and there's, like you said, it's almost like you have an audience of one in that moment. And I will say, by the way, different presiding officers do it differently, So there are a number of people. Elizabeth Warren when she presides, she won't look at you. She's just reading a paper and just ignores you the

whole time, which I never liked. Yeah, when I presided, I tried to look at every senator to listen to their speech, even if there's some left winger and I didn't like what they were saying. I tried to give them the courtesy of the Senate listening to them and hearing them out. Yeah, So Peter number one, he looked at me and was engaging but was interesting. He's nodding quite a bit, and at the end of the speech he literally gives me a thumbs up. Wow, now this

is on c Span. Don't you wish we had more of this? By the way in the Senate? I mean, wouldn't it be better for the country if you could have moments? More moments like that? And so I went up up to the dais and I stood there with Peter for like ten minutes, just talking to him and saying, look, these concerns are real. Yeah, and he had not heard

a lot of them. He's on the committee, but he wasn't there for all the discussion and so listening to them all together, and I was saying, so here's what I arged several Democrats and I said, look, Peter is a new senator. It's hard for him to come out against a Biden nominee. And I said, I'm not asking you to do that publicly, but what I would say is, if you've got a concern, quietly pick up the phone, call the White House or call Maria Kent Well the chair,

and say, look, I've got a concern. If you force a vote, I'll be in now. And I pointed out to him, I said, listen, during the Trump administration, I did this multiple times. Now, I didn't do so publicly. Sure, I didn't throw a fit publicly, but there were several nominees you said this ain't gonna fly with me that I picked up the phone and said, you don't have my vote. This nominee is a problem. And every single time I did it, they pulled the nominee. Now, you

don't you don't. You know, you don't piss on them publicly unnecessarily, but there is a responsibility as a senator, even for your own party. And the case I made. Apparently the Biden White House was freaked out because I'm having this conversation with Peter on c SPAN. I mean, it was not hidden because it just happened. The camera was, yeah, you can, you can watch, and so they're all the

White House was was nervous as all get out. But I had this conversation with multiple Democrat senators where I said, look, if God forbid, there's another plane crash, and at some point there's going to be a plane crash. I mean, it's an inherently dangerous activity. We know, we hope that there's never another plane crash. But we also know with reality, something will go wrong, pilot error, there will be a mechanical breakdown, something will happen, if God forbid, there's another

plane crash in the next two years. Do you really want to be the senator who was the deciding vote in confirming the head of the FAA, who's manifestly unqualified and didn't know how to prevent it? Like that? Frankly, And I said this to several Senators. I said, let's be honest, this is the kind of issue senators lose elections on. Yeah, Like, it's not hard. This is an easy want to get right, and if you get it wrong,

it could go really bad. It could You could literally be looking at hundreds of dead bodies, women, children, dead because you put someone in a position they weren't qualified for and they screwed up solely based on politics. Yeah, yeah, and it was. It was a And I had several Democrats say, why are they nominating this guy? I said, look, Frankly, I don't know. At that point, You're like, I'm not on your team, Like, I have no idea why they

would do this. Well, but but what I said, look, I don't know but but I assume it's a political favor either for California Democrats or for Colorado Democrats, because he had worked in both California and Colorado, and I assume he was east tight with the Democrats there. But this was cronyism, and there are jobs in government you can put someone for cronyism that they're just a buddy of yours. And so you get this job. You wanted

to make him ambassador to some small country. Knock yourself out. Fine, by me, He'll be fine. I pointed out. Look, he had quite a bit of experience with trains and buses. He was originally considered for the Amtrak Board of Directors. I said, you know what, that would have been a perfectly reasonable position. Number one, you're part of a board. But he has train experience, so that you know, as the old phrase goes, that's good enough for government work.

But the FAA is something different. Yeah, So I would say, listen, I'm really proud. I want to commend my team because the guys on my team worked their tails off. But did it right? Did it based on substance? Did it based on real legitimate concerns? And we presented with Phil Washington. We presented an alternative, and I'll draw a distinction. Look

the SCC. If I were a left wing Democrat, I'd actually be pissed at the Biden White House because through they're trying to ram Gigi sewn through and this thing's been pending for over a year. They had three markups. It was clear she was never going to go anywhere. They kept a vacancy on the FCCCC has two Republicans, two Democrats. They haven't had a Democrat majority on the FCC, and with a Democrat majority they would ram through some

terrible policies, but they overreach. They went for someone who was so far left that they couldn't hold their own party. They couldn't hold the Democrats. If I were a partisan Democrat, I'd be irritated at the Biden White House. Why didn't you just find an ordinary left winger and gets have

done for two years? And so from my perspective, I actually had mixed sentiments when they withdrew gd soone, I don't know that I would have minded them continue this fight for another year and then fail in a year, because it stops them from a bad three commissioner majority on the FCC doing real harm to jobs in America at a free speech in America, to communication in America, the FA, I feel very different. We haven't had a Senate confirmed administrat at the FA for a year now.

That's bad, and I've hold Look, I told Maria Cantwell, get the White House to nominate someone like Billy Nolan, will confirm him quickly, because I want someone in that job tomorrow. Yeah. Like, I don't like the delay there because tomorrow morning, when I go get on an airplane and fly to Washington, I'd really like an FAA administrator

know something about not having that plane crash. Yeah. So it does vary job by job, but I do think there is also hopefully it was worthwhile for listeners of the pod to kind of go behind the scenes, no doubt on the mechanics of building support. By the way, I'll say one other thing, which is with the FAA, the Biden Department of Transportation was leaning on everyone. They were leaning on airlines, they were leaning on unions, they were pounding the hell out of them support Phil Washington,

and they were exerting political pressure. We mostly kept people on the sidelines. There were a few like Frontier Airlines came out in support of Phil Washington, which frankly pissed me off. And so last week we had a hearing on bad customer service on airlines. Frontier Airlines is routinely ranked very last. So I invited Frontier Airlines to come testify. All right, you're gonna give lousy service and be enlisted to be political henchmen for the Biden White House in

confirming a manifestly unqualified FAA administrator. Why don't you come on end? They refused to come. So Frontier was a bad actor in this, although I'm sure the political pressure put on them was a lot. Yeah, But I will say on our end, we did a pretty good job with almost everyone of keeping them on the sidelines. And my team was on the phone to all of them and they're like, these guys are beating the heck out of us. So we said, fine, he's not going to

be confirmed. Just we're not saying come out against him. We're asking other people to do that. Sure, but look, if you're a big regulated entity, it's frankly dangerous to come out against someone who may be your regulator. Like that's yeah, that's that's a big gamble. That's asking too much, but it wasn't asking too much to say, just sit this one out and let the Senate work its will. And it's a remarkable story. It's a remarkable story of

how we got to where we are now. And I also think it's got to make the White House realize they actually have to bring better candidates before your committee because they're going to have a rough two years if they don't, well, We're going to make sure people know what their record is. And if their record is reasonable and they're qualified and they're not extreme partisan nominees, they're

likely to get confirmed. But but if their record, if they're unqualified, and they are extreme partisan nominees, they're gonna face a much rockier time center. I want to move to something else that was big this week, and it

dealt with Russia and China having meetings. The President's hanging out in the Oval office with his wife and a TV group of stars at the same time and totally doesn't seem to be looking at what's going on with international security issues with China and Russia meeting kind of a big deal, Ted Lasso. Apparently it was much bigger than that. Before we get to that, I want to remind you about our good friends at Chalk. If you're a guy and you're dealing with that, you're getting older fatigue,

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dot Comhoq dot com use the promo code Ben. You'll get thirty five percent off any Chock subscriptions and you can cancel anytimehoq dot com use the code Ben Center. There was a shocking moment and it was just like, is this real life? The cast of Ted Lasso. I don't know if you've ever seen a show a great show, love it, watch it on airplanes all the time. That the victory dance in the locker room is still awesome,

still amazing. They're asked to come to the White House in the exact same day that Vladimir Putin and the leader of China are meeting. Now they're not meeting in China, which I also think you could read a lot into they're in Russia meeting and their meeting, and there's been a lot of conversations about weaponry coming from China and technology to killing us some people in Ukraine. Russia desperately needs at China also desperately needs energy. This is a

perfect alliance. And the White House thinks, and I'm just talking about from an optics standpoint, why the hell would you not cancel or delay that that meeting? Now. The President also mocked a lot of the reporting. I want to play this video, basically saying, you guys have all been saying that they're gonna give weaponry to Russia. It hadn't happened yet, and then he goes, I mean, it may happen. But it was also one of those moments

like what are you doing. Take a look, look, look, I don't take China lately, I don't take Russia lately, but I think we vastly exaggerate. I would here I've been hearing now for the past three months, how about China is going to provide significant weapons to Russia, and they're gonna. I've been talking about that. They haven't yet, doesn't mean they won't. But they haven't yet, doesn't mean they won't. They haven't yet. Senator, this is This is

embarrassing and the scary price. Our adversaries, Russian, China are watching this. They are and listen. The Biden foreign policy has been a disaster from day one. You know, Gates, the former Defense Secretary, famously said Joe Biden's been wrong in every foreign policy issue the last forty years. That just is Biden. And he's talking about going back to a Senate time. He has been wrong, and he has a long record, consistent when he was a center, being

wrong over and over and over again. The Biden to White House. What they have done systematically, They've alienated our friends and allies. They've driven our friends and allies away, and they've shown weakness and appeasement to our enemies. All of our enemies are stronger than they were two and a half years ago. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, all of them. If you're an enemy of America, they bend over backwards to you. They wave sanctions on you.

By the way, what does Biden do consistently Russia? He wave sanctions on Nordstream two, gives billions of dollars to Putin, causes the war in Ukraine Venezuela. He's declining to enforce sanctions. So now Maduro is stronger and making more money because Joe Biden is there Iran. He's refusing to enforce sanctions against Iran. The Ayatola is selling a million barrels a day of oil because Joe Biden's weakness. And what does he say right there? He's like, oh, they're not so bad.

Remember this is the same Joe Biden who a few years back said, come on man, Yeah, China's not our enemy. There are friends, come on man. So he had respect for China. It's competing with China. This is someone our enemies don't respect. They're not afraid of. Why did Putin invade Ukraine? Number one because Biden let him complete Nordstream two? But number two because Biden's so weak that they're not concerned about him. Why is Taiwan in existential danger right

now from China? Because she doesn't respect Biden. And when he says, look play the beginning of that clip again. Yeah, but play just the beginning of the clip where he says they're exaggerated, because I want you to listen to it. Look. Look, I don't take China lately, I don't take Russia lately. But I think we vastly exaggerate. Okay, stop right there. I think we vastly exaggerate. Now, if we had a functioning press corps, there would be follow ups to that.

Mister President, you said, quote we vastly exaggerate when it comes to China. You said, quote we vastly exaggerate when it comes to Russia. Mister President, is an exaggeration to say that China maintains concentration camps with over one million weekers in it today, Miss President. Is an exaggeration to say that China uses murder as an official government policy. Mister President, is an exaggeration to say China uses torture

as an official government policy. Miss President, is an exaggeration to say China has come in and crushed democracy in

Hong Kong. Mister President, is an exaggeration to say that China is responsible for the release of the COVID virus, that the virus was likely developed in a Chinese government lab, that the virus may well have been manufactured by Chinese scientist in that government lab to make it more trans admissible and more lethal, And that the Chinese government actively and aggressively covered up the leak of from the lab

and allowed COVID to become a national pandemic. Mister President, is an exaggeration to say that the Chinese Communist government engages an espionage, steals our national security secrets, steals our commercial secrets, steals intellectual property, mister President, is an exaggeration to say the Chinese Communist government takes our weaponry, is assembling a military design to defeat us. That's what a functioning press corps would say. Now, I have no idea

how Biden answers to that. He just, oh, it's all exaggerated weakness. That kind of weakness means our enemies are laughing at us. But you know what's even worse, not just our enemies, our friends are laughing at us. Here play this next clip. So today I applaud China for stepping up, assuming I applaud Canada, you can tell what I'm thinking. So that's addressing the Canadian Parliament. Yeah, and listen. Fine, So he had a slip of the tongue. Everyone does that.

Biden does it a lot. But I just want to point out that's the entire Parliament of Canada laughing at the President of the United States. Now, Canadians are many things, but fundamentally they're polite. They are very polite. Just how bad you have to screw up to have a room full of Canadians laughing laugh at you. And he's saying, you can tell when I'm thinking, which is what they're laughing. As the cognitive part it is. I wish the verbal slip was not actually indicative of what this White House

is doing. Unfortunately it is. Yeah, it is. There was another big oops this week that dealt with John Kerry, John Kerry Acts having to answer some questions and this was a moment for Carry that I'm sure he was hoping didn't happen. He usually gets a free pass of the press. I want to play that for you. Before I do that, I want to tell you about Patriot Mobile, the only conservative cell phone company in the US. I love hearing from many of you that have switched to

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Use a promo code verdict or online at patriotmo dot com, slash verdict center. This last video, it just makes me laugh. John Kerry gets to walk around do a bunch of easy interviews. He's been doing it for years when he makes of these new positions in the government that he has. But he had a reporter that I actually wanted to ask him something legitimate. Take a look. Private aviation is an example of something where people are starting to pay

more attention. And but when you know people who go to Davos to talk about climate change fly private, it seems like they don't want to make They actually I've talked to them about it. They offset, they offsets, they offset, and they are working harder than most people I know to be able to try to affect this transition. Right, So you can beat your wife as long as you give money to a battered women shelter and it offsets

the crime. Look, I gotta say, John Kerry embodies the rich, out of touch contempt that today's left has for working men and women. He has claimed, well, yes this, yes, all my gazillion are friends fly private everywhere, but they have offsets. Look at it's like in the dark Ages where you could buy indulgences from the Catholic Church that that like you know, it's just like well they write

a check. So if John Kerry believes what he's saying, it means when John Kerry puts his privileged dairrier on a private jet, he is destroying planet Earth and simply buying an indulgence of well, well, I sent a check to somebody else, so so it fixes it. It fixes it, And and his comment, these gazillionaires are doing more than most people I know. And I've talked to them, I've I've talked. I've said, really, you need to know, like

like it's such dripping content. And by the way, most people he means, like the dirty masses you you truck drivers and taxicab drivers just just fly private. Why would you possibly be with like I will say, you know I At one point, John Kerry has defended his own private jet flying by saying, really, for people in positions like me, it's it's the only reasonable way to travel. Yeah, and you shouldn't expect me to sit on a commercial airliner ever, because of the stature that I've gotten doing

in this world. And I was on a I think on Fox News doing an interview and I compared him to Thirsted Howel, and I went back to my Senate office and someone in my office us put it out that he didn't know who Thurston Howell was, and I asked, now, let's look, you know, Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill is a young person's game, and most of the people there are twenty something or maybe thirty something. So I, you know, grabbed about twenty of my staffers and I said, all right,

do any of y'all know who Thurston Howell is? No one, not a single person knew. By the way, since many of our podcast listeners are are young, Thurston Howell was the millionaire on Gilligan's Island. He was the rich, out of touch millionaire. For the record, I didn't know who that was either, So that means yeah, I just wanted to feel young today. Thank you, Thank you for giving me that gift. All right, I twenty somethings in thirty somethings,

but Skippy, you didn't. You didn't know ninety nine luff balloons, and you don't know Gilligan's Island. I know Gilligan's Island, apparently not, but I don't know the old persons. Okay, it was Thurston Howell, the third. So here's an amazing story. Though this happens in my my with my staff, I go to the Senate Republican lunch. Now, we have lunch together every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and for some reason

I was thinking about it. I decided to tell my colleagues that story, which which got a good laugh because my colleagues the median age is one hundred and forty two, so they all know who Thurston Howell is. And then Mitt Romney says, you know, I actually discovered the same thing when I was running for president, and I found if you want to use an analogy, a much better

one to use is mister Burns. That that that young people get, mister Burns, And I'm like, oh, dear God, I'm being I'm getting advice on how to be like in touch and a man of the people from MIT. But it's actually it's actually good advice, mister Burns. You know, Miss burnsess so excellent. Yes, so, but let me tell you something amazing about John So since he began serving in the Biden administration, let me tell you something about

his personal emissions, and I mean his plane. In twenty twenty one, he took forty eight trips, lasting more than sixty hours in total. It's a lot of time in private planes. He has a big private plane. His plane emitted an estimated seven hundred and fifteen thousand, eight hundred and eighty six pounds of carbon or three hundred and twenty five metric tons. This is John Kerry single handedly

since he first took his position in the Biden administration. Now, I was trying to think of, how do you characterize what is three hundred and twenty five tons to put it in kind of relative comparison, And so I did a little bit of searching online. Actually, right before we did the podcast, I wouldn't let you start because I was on my phone googling. Here's what I found. The country of Greenland emits in a given year one thousand,

five hundred and thirty tons of carbon. In other words, John Carry, individually, one person emits roughly a fifth twenty percent of what the entire nation of Greenland emits. In Greenland, by the way, is a little over eight hundred and thirty six thousand square miles. Greenland has over fifty six thousand people who live in Greenland. So one guy, John Carry and is entourage that care for his gray poopon

and that polished the tassels on his loafers. He emits one fifth of what fifty six thousand people in the entire nation of Greenland emits. And he has kind of a big deal center. You should know that he's kind of a big deal. He deserves that private jet. And you know what he's willing to tell you. You need to give up your automobile. Yeah, you need to give

up your gas stove. You need to give up your lawnmower, you need to give up your washing machine, you need to give up your dishwasher, because after that's his offset. I guess right, that's exactly right. If he gets if he takes away your cars and the cars of the other fifty six thousand people in Greenland, it will make up for his private jet, and he's saving the world. The absolute hypocrisy the left, it is difficult to find it better personified than his comment. The gazillionaires and Davos

do more, much more than you little people. Great googling, by the way, right before the show, that was worth it. Now that's it for this episode of Verdict. Don't forget to subscribe. Hit that auto download button. Please write a five star review. It helps us reach more people. We do this show three days a week. If you're seeing the video version of this, you're missing out on the other two. So hit subscribe auto download. You can tell Siri Alexa play Verdict with Ted Cruz will play automatically

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