BUCK: Welcome back to the Clay and Buck show. We now have Senate candidate in the State of Alabama, Mo Brooks with us now. Mo, appreciate you calling in.

BROOKS: My pleasure.

BUCK: So how’s it going, sir? You’re in a runoff. What are the key issues, and what do people need to know?

BROOKS: Well, that’s kind of a broad question. In a nutshell, it’s gonna be a David vs. Goliath type of race, MAGA vs. anti-MAGA, the big money swamp machine in Washington, D.C., vs. the people.

I’m not gonna have nearly as much money as the establishment candidate. That’d be Katie Britt. We conservatives tend to be somewhat frugal, which is a good thing normally, not so good when you’re trying to raise money in a political campaign.

But we’re very pleased. You know, I was counted as dead about two months ago. And, like Lazarus, I was resurrected, although this time it was by the people of the state of Alabama. So I’m very appreciative of those who felt that they wanted a person in the United States Senate who shares their respect for the foundational principles that have made America the greatest nation in world history.

CLAY: Appreciate you coming on with us. When is the runoff election, and what will the role be, if any, of Donald Trump, in your mind, in this election? I know he’s endorsed and then pulled the endorsement. Do you expect him to get involved at all in the runoff?

BROOKS: I don’t know if he will or not directly, but of course he will indirectly by way of example, the Trump family, Donald Trump Jr. has referred to Katie Britt as Alabama’s Liz Cheney. And for those of you who don’t know Liz Cheney is a Pelosi Republican. That’s not a good thing to be.

And then Donald Trump has already said about Katie Britt, “She is not” — this is a quote — “is not in any way qualified and is certainly not what our country needs or not what Alabama wants,” end quote.

So you’ve got those kind of past quotes by President Trump about Katie Britt and more recently he has said same things that are kind of off the wall about me, for example, he called me “woke” which is unusual descriptive term for someone who according to the American Conservative Union has the best record of any person from Alabama who serves in the House or the Senate in Washington, D.C.

BIDEN: I spent my career as chairman of the Judiciary Committee and as vice president working for common-sense gun reforms, as I said, as a Senator and vice president. While they clearly will not prevent every tragedy, we know certain ones will have significant impact and have no negative impact on the Second Amendment. Second Amendment’s not absolute.

BUCK: Yeah. So he’s saying significant impact, no downside. Well, what is it, congressman? What does Joe Biden want us to do that’s gonna stop so much and not be an infringement?

BROOKS: Well, I will let people decide for themselves what the phrase “shall not be infringed,” quote, unquote, means in the United States Constitution. To me that means that you shall not be doing things that inhibit the ability of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.

That’s the way I interpret the Second Amendment right to bear arms. And because of that, as you probably aware, I’ve been endorsed by the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, and the National Association of Gun Rights. That’s in part because I’ve had a perfect A record in Congress according to the NRA and Gun Owners of America, but it’s also in part because Katie Britt has a less-than-good record, having publicly stated that she would have voted for, back in September, legislation that had red flag laws in it.

That’s where they seize your guns first based on rumor or surmise, and then you have to litigate to get them back. We have a big clash here between myself and Katie Britt. Of course, both of us clash with Joe Biden and probably what he wants done, based on the quote that we just heard. But I’m gonna fight to protect the Second Amendment.

And keep in mind I’m one of the people who’s been in one of those shoot-outs, having been the target of an assassination attempt at a baseball field in Virginia in which five of my friends were shot and the assassin was killed, 170 bullets fired over about a seven minute period of time.

And another thing that the Democrats are doing here is they’re trying to divert attention from the causes of these killings. And that’s what’s very important. You have a lot of these kids nowadays, young people who grew up in single-parent households or grew up, they were born out-of-wedlock or they weren’t exposed to proper moral values that teach us the value of life. And those are all Democrat things.

They’re the ones who have adopted policies that have encouraged wedlock — excuse me — childbirth out-of-wedlock, that have encouraged divorces and single-parent households that make it so much more difficult for one parent to raise a younger correctly than two parents. I mean, it’s just easier with two.

And so what they’re trying to do by diverting this public attention to something else is they’re trying to strip us of our Second Amendment right to bear arms where Joe Biden and the other leftists want to do it a little bit at a time in part because they don’t want the American people to be able to take back their government should it ever become dictatorial, bearing in mind that the Democrats want to impose socialism, and socialism at its heart is dictatorial.

CLAY: We’re talking to Congressman Mo Brooks. He’s in the runoff for the Alabama Senate seat against Katie Britt that will be voted on soon. We got a monster audience in Alabama Congressman. We’re number one in Birmingham and all throughout the state so we got a lot of people in Alabama listening to us right now. And a lot of those people have heard us in the last couple of hours talking about the school shooting in Texas and you’ve kind of touched on it a little bit. But I’m curious what you would directly attribute — we’ve had available guns in this country for hundreds of years. Prior to Columbine we did not have inside-of-school shootings occurring like they have.

What should we do to try to stop these school shootings, which I think everybody agrees we should be trying to stop them, going forward, in your mind?

BROOKS: Well, back up in my neck of the woods in the Tennessee Valley, we have a pretty secure school system.

CLAY: Yep.

BROOKS: You have to go through one set of doors before you can get through to the next set of doors that are locked. And in between, you have a barrier where you can communicate with somebody who in turn can look at you and determine whether you have a legitimate purpose for being in that school. Of course, they can look at you and determine whether you’re carrying a rifle of some kind or perhaps whether you’re carrying pistols or other weapons. So that’s what we have done in my neck of the words here in the Tennessee Valley.

Each system on its own has to determine what they can afford on the one hand and what has to be put in place in order to adequately protect the children that are there.

I do want to emphasize something that you just said and that is that these things used to be very rare. When I was growing up back in a day when we focused more on moral values, back in the day when you had two parent households so that the parents could give better instruction, particularly on right and wrong, particularly on moral values and the value of life, a shooting, a mass shooting was rare.

I don’t think I can think of one mass shooting during the decade of my youth, not one, in 10 years. Now, there may have been one someplace and I just missed it, ’cause, after all, I was anywhere from about 6 years old to 16, 17 years old.

But look at how it is today. And what’s the change? The laws concerning gun ownership were a lot more open back when I was growing up. Heck, I used to bring a gun to school. Now, it stayed in my car because I’d just gotten through duck hunting, okay, so early morning hunting. Put the shotgun in the car, drive the car to school. And we didn’t have this stuff because we had better moral values being taught.

But nowadays you’ve got amoral values being advocated by Democrats in particular and then being accepted by Republicans who are unwilling to fight those Democrats who are pushing these amoral values on us. That’s the big change, the societal change.

And if you look at the root of these shootings, I think you’re gonna find most of the time but not always that there are any number of about four or five or six different factors that have contributed to that person deciding what they want to do. Sometimes it’s drugs. Sometimes it’s despair because the future doesn’t look as good as it used to.

See, when I was growing up we didn’t have this competition for blue-collar jobs by illegal aliens and other cheap foreign laborers. And so even if you didn’t have the skill set to get the best grades in school, you still could have a pretty good future. You might start out as a carpenter and eventually have your own business as a carpenter, as a framer, whatever it may be. You might start out as a roofer and eventually have your own business.

Heck, I have a client who was a high school dropout, okay, and he became wealthy. Last time I’m familiar with how much he earned, it was 300 million dollars in one year. He was telling me it was $38,000 an hour even when he’s sleeping, a high school dropout because he worked really hard and eventually came up with the idea, founding a company known as ABC Supply, which is now America’s largest distributor of roofing, siding, and windows.

So that was kind of an opportunity you had when I was growing up when you didn’t have all this cheap foreign labor competition. The gentleman that I worked for, he might not ever have started out.

BUCK: Congressman, can I ask you — sorry. We cut out there for a second, the audio. But on that issue of illegal immigration, the border is arguably the worst it has ever been in terms of lawlessness, the numbers are very clear in that regard. And they’re likely to get worse over the next six months which just seems mind-blowing. But that’s what everyone at Border Patrol will tell you right now. What is the answer? What should we do? How do we of this problem?

BROOKS: It is easy to fix if you elect the right people. You’ve got two blocks of elected officials who form a majority who keep us who want border security from doing what it needs to be doing. So it’s up to the public doing their homework.

Those two blocks consist of Democrats on the one hand, who have the open borders and ultimately amnesty and citizenship as their long-term ticket to rule of this country. Then you’ve got the Chamber of Commerce Republicans who support cheap foreign labor, legal or illegal, however they can get it here because that’s in exchange for huge campaign contributions.

And this, by the way, is a huge contrast point between myself and Katie Britt. I’ve got an A+ grade with NumbersUSA every single year I’ve been in the United States Congress on border security and the issue of cheap foreign labor.

Katie Britt on the other hand has been subordinate by virtual every entity that wants to provide cheap farm labor and they have provided millions of dollars in support to her campaign because in the eyes of these professional paid special interest group lobbyists, Katie Britt is the one out of the six candidates running for the United States Senate who has the weakest record on border security and the weakest record on cheap foreign labor. So that’s a huge contrast.

Now, what can we do if we get the right people elected? Well, for one thing you can do E-Verify so that the employers are put in a position where they have access to the information that tells them whether a person is here lawfully or illegal, okay? Then you can also build the wall and you can start enforcing the laws that are already on the books so that people don’t think that they can ignore our laws.

Part of that would be as soon as they cross the border just catch and return, not catch-and-release in the United States, catch and return across the border. If you come in illegally, boom, you’re exported immediately. Deportation is the key. If you’re caught in the interior of the United States, deportation is the key.

Ultimately if you deny these illegal aliens wages, then they will not come because it’s the money that entices them to break our laws and enter the United States of America. And just by way of an example, which industry is it that has the highest percentage of illegal aliens, according to Pew Research, it’s Big Ag, the agricultural industry.

So they’re a bug player in politics, in Alabama and across the country. And that is their number one or number two lobbying position is — give me more cheap foreign labor. And of course that undermines the wages of American citizens and costs them job opportunities.

CLAY: Congressman, we appreciate the time. Good luck in the runoff, and thanks to everybody in Alabama who will be making that decision. Have a good Memorial Day weekend, sir.

BROOKS: Thank you. You too.