Rep. Jim Jordan: We’re Going to Take Back the House

Listen Here: 

CLAY: We’re joined now by Congressman Jim Jordan from Ohio, and he is a fantastic battler on the grand stage that is in the middle of so much chaos this week on Capitol Hill.

REP. JORDAN: (laughing) Yeah.

CLAY: Jim, we appreciate the time, my man.

REP. JORDAN: You bet.

CLAY: What do you expect to see happen this week as it comes with the reconciliation, with infrastructure, with the debt ceiling? All that coming together this week, what’s the end result in your mind?

REP. JORDAN: Well, I mean, let’s hope it doesn’t happen. Good to be with you guys and congrats on all the success, amazing show you have. Let’s see what happens, but let’s hope it doesn’t, that the only thing they get passed is some bill to keep the government open and we fund it at current levels — which are, frankly, bad enough — and not at these ridiculous spending levels they’re proposing.

So, we just gotta see. It’s frankly gonna be up to Nancy Pelosi and if she can get the votes. They typically do, but if they don’t it will be the first chance that we actually slow down their crazy agenda and all the bad things they have done in the nine months where they control the federal government.

BUCK: What do you do here? It feels sometimes once a week we’re gonna talk about this a lot, but the debt ceiling, we’ve seen this fight play out before. It always gets raised one way or another. The budget bill, it looks like, it’s gonna get passed one way or another. So, is the best we can hope for just the pressure to bring some changes so that we get from… They keep saying 3.5 trillion. I’m hearing it’s, all-in, more like 5 trillion. We just pare that down a little bit? I don’t know if we could talk about victory, but what does a best effort look like from the GOP side with this budget mess?

REP. JORDAN: Well, the best effort would be the 1.2 that’s supposedly got a little bit of real infrastructure in it that that doesn’t pass on Thursday. That’s the date she’s now given. So hopefully if that doesn’t pass on Thursday if that doesn’t pass on Thursday then the so-called moderate Democrats in the House aren’t gonna be able to support the 3.5 because the hard-core progressive, the hard left in this conference won’t support the 1.2, and nothing happens other than they just fund the government for some length of time at current levels.

That’s what’s typically called around this town the continuing resolution, so you fund government at the current levels which would be much better than what they’re proposing. So I hope that’s the endgame and that we never get to this, certainly never get to this 3.5. But that’s gonna, in the end, depend a lot on what happens in the Senate, too, with Senator Manchin, Senator Sinema, and those who’ve said they’re not gonna go for that level of spending.

CLAY: What are you hearing and what do you expect when all the rubber kind of meets the road here with Manchin and Sinema. There are reports that Sinema has said, hey, she doesn’t want any tax increases at all. Manchin certainly has said, “Hey, I don’t feel comfortable at $3.5 trillion,” even though the cost is higher than that but at that number and he might want it at one. Manchin also has said, “Hey, I don’t even want to do this now. Let’s wait and see where we are, nmaybe after the first of the year.” If you were kind of crystal ball gazing here, Congressman, how do you see this shaking out?

REP. JORDAN: Yeah, it’s hard to say. You just don’t know what she’s gonna be able to get her conference to do this week, Pelosi. Again, I think the American people are done with all this. I’ve seen every area they’ve screwed up. We went from secure border to chaos went from stable prices to record inflation, we went from respect around the globe to what happened to the debacle in Afghanistan, we went from safe cities… Every policy area they’ve screwed up.

I think what the American people want don’t go increasing our taxes raising the spending making the economy worse than what you’ve already done. I think that’s what the American people want I don’t know what they’re able to get I really don’t know. Remember the vote was supposed to happen yesterday the vote on the $1.2 trillion package.

So Pelosi’s already misled her own members. She promised them! To get through this crisis a few weeks back, she promised them the vote was gonna be yesterday and that didn’t happen. Now she’s promised it’s gonna be Thursday. So, we’ll see how this all shakes out. But the truth is, nobody knows. The only thing we do know is everything they have done has been a disaster. So let’s hope that this is not the same thing.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio. And, Congressman, we have seen images coming out of the U.S.-Mexico border in the last week and a half or so —

REP. JORDAN: Yeah

BUCK: — that have finally got people paying attention to it, because they can visualize what it means to have a lawless and de facto open border. The numbers, though, have been staggering all summer.

REP. JORDAN: Mmm-hmm.

BUCK: It looks like the Senate is not gonna be able to get through amnesty through reconciliation, thanks to the parliamentarian saying no, that’s not actually budgetary. Giving mass amnesty is not a budgetary measure. But where do you think this political divide over illegal immigration goes, and do you think it plays a major role in the upcoming midterms as a real weakness for the Biden administration?

REP. JORDAN: Of course it does! We had Secretary Mayorkas, Buck, say last week… He said in front of the Congress, “Oh, the border is secure,” and you’re like, “What are you people talking about?” We got a briefing, the Judiciary Committee got a briefing last week from people in the Biden administration, and we asked the sort of fundamental question:

“Where are they? Where are the Haitian immigrants? Where are they at? How many in the country, how many sent back?” They couldn’t even tell us where everyone was at and they even said that, “Oh, some of them we think went back. They turned around and went back on their own,” and I wanted to just laugh on the phone call. (laughing) I’m like, “What are you talking about?

“So they made this thousand mile trek or whatever it is and they get here, and they say, “Oh, we’ll just turn around and go back because there’s some Border Patrol agents on horses or whatever?” It’s crazy to think they say — and the idea that now there were 15,000 under the bridge a week and a half ago, we don’t know where they’re all at. And there’s another 15 to 20 to 30,000 coming in a caravan, and they have no clue how they’re gonna deal with this.

So, yes, this is gonna have an impact on the next election, ’cause Americans are tired of this administration not being honest with them. Not being honest with them on the border security issue. Not being honest with them on covid, on natural immunity, on all this other stuff. They’re sick of the lies. So heck, yeah, it’s gonna play out in the election. I think we’re gonna take back the House in a big way.

CLAY: How much fear do you think there is when you see Joe Biden’s approval rankings tanking like they are, basically across, Congressman, all facets, right? We talked about earlier in the show that he’s lost the public trust on covid, certainly on the economy. Democrats just don’t even seem to understand the very rubrics or basics of how our economy works. Where does this lead, right? The answer might be to a majority in the House, which would be great, and a majority in the Senate, but is Joe Biden going to be able to lead basically after this year? Where are we headed?

REP. JORDAN: No, it’s bad where we’re headed. You’re right. Economically, they got the dumbest plan in history. Their plan is lock down the economy, spend like crazy, pay people not to work, tell people you can’t be evicted if you’re not paying your rent — and for everyone paying their rent? Oh, we’re literally gonna raise your taxes.

It’s the dumbest plan you could ever see and what are they saying particularly in New York yesterday, they’re telling me people, “Oh, you were heroes a year ago, health care workers. But now we’re gonna fire you if you don’t do what government says, even if you have natural immunity.” Totally stupid. That’s their economic plan. So of course there are people who got some common sense in the Democrat Party, a few of them at least, who are saying this is…

And you saw a few people vote against some of the package in the last few weeks that they’re putting together this $3.5 trillion package. You saw some of them vote against it because they got at least some common sense and they go, “Oh, the folks I represent are seeing all the baloney that we’re doing, they’re not gonna be pleased with this. How am I gonna win reelection?” So, yeah, it’s having an impact. Joe Biden hasn’t led the first nine months when he controls Congress, when his party controls Congress, I don’t know how he’s gonna lead it all when we take back the House and the Senate next year.

BUCK: Congressman Jordan, we obviously want to focus as much as we can here on the way forward in the future, but there are some unfinished bits of business from the past that I do know many in our audience want resolution of want clarity on — and that certainly includes what we now know more than ever — I mean, we’ve known it for years — was the Russia collusion hoax under the Trump administration.

There is an ongoing probe, right, the Durham investigation, the former U.S. attorney from Connecticut leading this. There has been an indictment now of a lawyer who essentially was laundering Clinton campaign, oppo research to the FBI and lying about it. That’s the allegation. So we’re starting to see the real origins of this. Do you think there’s more coming in the Durham probe, and do you think there will be any real accountability for what was done to the Trump administration?

REP. JORDAN: No, great question. I’m cautiously optimistic, and I’ll tell you why. Because remember, the indictment on the false statement to the FBI wasn’t a false statement made to John Durham by Mr. Sussman. It wasn’t a false statement made to Durham’s investigative team. It was… I said to someone last week. I said, “It wasn’t a false statement. It was the false statement. It was the false statement made to the FBI — James A. Baker, the chief counsel of the FBI — on September 16th, 2016, when this whole charade began.”

So Durham’s going all the way back to the beginning and said, “What you guys did started on a false statement made to not in this case but the chief counsel at the FBI, Mr. Baker! That’s pretty significant.” Plus, it was a 27-page indictment. These normal false statements the FBI are couple-page thing. Oh, they lied to the investigative team doing the investigation. That’s not the case here. So I think that’s unique.

I think that’s distinctive. And that says something when you see a 27-page indictment. So I’m cautiously optimistic, but we’ll have to wait and see. The problem, of course, was we had hoped for this information from Durham a year and a half ago. Now we’re getting it now. But we’ll just have to see.

BUCK: And what do you make, Congressman, before we let you go — and we appreciate Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio spending some time with us here on the Clay and Buck show. Why can’t we see you it’s not all certainly most of the footage from the so-called insurrection on January 6th? People ask me that and I, with an intel background, I say that smells fishy to me.

REP. JORDAN: Yeah, well, you saw the judge did release some of it last week —

BUCK: Some, yes.

REP. JORDAN: — and I thought that was a good thing. Look, the hallmark of a free society and free government is there’s transparency. You can’t have Hillary Clinton saying, “Oh, no. My emails? You’re not gonna get to see those, even though they’re…” You can’t have all this… James Comey? You can’t have unelected people like Milley and Fauci making decisions the hallmark of how our system is supposed to work is transparency in the courts with the Constitution.

I’m for releasing all that information to make sure that Americans can see it so we know exactly what took place. And I’m also for anyone who did wrong to be held accountable. If you did wrong that day on January 6th, you should be prosecuted and guess what? That’s exactly what’s happening to those people who did wrong. That’s the way it’s supposed to work in our country, and we want to make sure it continues to do so.

BUCK: Congressman Jordan, always appreciate you coming by to hang out with us, sir. Thanks so much.

CLAY: Thanks a lot.

REP. JORDAN: Great, guys. Take care.