BUCK: Senator Daines from the great state of Montana, thanks for being with us.

SEN. DAINES: Hey, glad to join you.

BUCK: So tell us, sir, we’ve got this vote tonight, covid mandates, people pushing back. What do you make of it?

SEN. DAINES: Listen. Every so often Washington, D.C., does something that lights up our phone lines where I have Montanans calling me with either incredible anger or flat-out fear. This is one of these issues, these vaccine mandates. This vax mandate is the overreach of D.C. at its worst. I think it’s unconstitutional. Thank God for some of these Trump judges who have actually intervened to stop this insanity.

But tonight we’ll have a vote on the Senate floor, because this particular provision, it’s a simple majority vote to get this passed. It looks like we’ve got 51 votes. Joe Manchin’s gonna join us on this vote tonight and then they’ll go to the House where we gotta put the pressure over there. I doubt Pelosi is gonna get this thing passed, but the Senate will stand strong in opposition to this mandate.

CLAY: Okay. First of all, thank you for getting this done. Thank you for coming on be with Senator Daines. For people out there like Buck and I and many of our listeners who believe that what Joe Biden has done in terms of a private vaccine mandate at people who work at businesses with over a hundred employees under OSHA regulations is a flagrantly unconstitutional attempt by him, what is the significance of the Senate — the majority of the Senate — saying they disagree with this from your perspective?

DAINES: Well, it sends a very clear message. First of all, I think there’s two messages being sent. One is you have a complete united front in every single Republican senator. We oppose this. We have at least one Democrat, and that’s gonna be Joe Manchin. Basically, this provision is a way for us to overrule a regulation or an edict imposed by the president.

So that’s what this does, sends a very strong message. There’s another message here, though, too. Back to the fundamental vision of this country, given that virtually every Democrat won’t support us on this fundamental reversal of a horrible mandate. You think about a business that has, let’s say, 102 employees, 103 employees. Why is it that suddenly they are bound by this mandate, but if you’ve got a business of 95 to 99 employees, somehow it’s safe to go in to work.

It makes complete nonsense — and furthermore, we’re starting to see more natural immunity developing. There’s no credit given to anybody for natural immunity, which, again, the American people are smarter than Dr. Fauci and this administration. They see right through it. This gonna be a resounding rebuke tonight of the Biden administration.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Senator Steve Daines of Montana. Senator, the U.S.-Mexico border is an area that we don’t get a lot of media coverage of. We actually had Brandon Judd from the National Border Patrol Council on with us yesterday telling us about the reality down there. And it seems like the Biden regime is just gonna continue largely doing what they do.

Even though Remain in Mexico technically will go back into effect at some level, we’ve been told that it’s going to be minimal and they’re gonna slow roll it , essentially use the bureaucratic slow walk to make it seem like they’re doing something about the border when they’re not really doing anything. Are the Democrats gonna pay a political price for this? Where do you see this going? And also, how can we get some of your colleagues to raise more attention to this issue? Because we know the American people in polling are very attuned to and really oppose illegal immigration.

SEN. DAINES: Absolutely. Well, and furthermore, for a senator that comes from a northern border state, Montanans are absolutely perplexed. Why in the world would Joe Biden…? He kept the Canadian border shut down (laughing) and he’s got the southern border wide open for illegals to cross and furthermore to think that the Biden administration’s negotiating to pay some $450,000 to illegals to cross!

It’s like completely outrageous. I’ve been down to the border a couple of times. I always will go during the night so you can really see what’s going on. The last time I was down there earlier this year we literally saw Mexico cartel members shining their floodlights who are standing on the banks of the Rio Grande. Literally my boots were a little bit wet.

You could hear them yelling in Spanish. I asked the Border Patrol Agent, curious, what are they yelling at us? He said, “Sir, it’s so vile, I don’t even want to translate it for you. It’s terrible.” So the Mexican cartels are in control of the southern border because of Joe Biden’s policies. Remember, it was on the day he was inaugurated Biden started — through executive orders — reversing what President Trump had put in place.

Whether it was building the wall and these policies that disincentivized illegal crossings. And, of course, we’ve seen a disaster. And you’re exactly right. There’s a political price that’s gonna be paid. We saw the beginnings of that certainly in the Virginia election, in New Jersey and other places around the country. The numbers we’re seeing now, polling data in swing states, swing districts, is the strongest rebuke of the Democrats that we have seen going all the way back to 1994. It’s stronger than that in 2009-’10 which were both huge, sweeping elections. If the elections were held today, it’d be a disaster for the Democrats.

CLAY: We’re talking to Montana senator Steve Daines, big vote tonight on the Senate floor. Maybe a big vote — we don’t know for sure — on Build Back Better. We played earlier in the show some quotes from Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla saying it makes to sense to do it. What are you hearing in the Senate about the likelihood of a vote before the end of the year, maybe before Christmas, and whether or not Democrats are gonna be able to corral Joe Manchin who you said was gonna be voting with the Democrats on the vaccine mandate and or Kyrsten Sinema? What are you hearing inside the Senate about the likely outcome here?

SEN. DAINES: Yeah, well, it really comes down to Joe Manchin. You said it well. He holds all the cards in this, and Joe made statements yesterday about concerns on what this will do to inflation, what this is doing to the debt. You know, and Joe is right on this. This will be another hyperinflation bomb to drop on the economy. This bill, the real cost of it is probably somewhere closer to $5 trillion.

They gamed the system, the Democrats have, Pelosi and Biden and Schumer and Bernie Sanders by truncating some of these massive entitlements. It makes the bill look like, quote, it’s “only” $1.75 trillion. We’re talking about trillions of dollars! The real price is about $5 trillion. So Joe has expressed more concern yesterday. I’m optimistic, but I can’t be for sure this thing gets pushed into early next year.

I think they’re gonna have a hard time getting Joe on board between now and Christmas. Remember, West Virginia is a state that went for President Trump by 38 points. Every single county in West Virginia voted for President Trump. So you don’t have to be Braveheart if you’re from West Virginia to stand up against Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer.

BUCK: Senator Steve Daines of Montana. Senator, great to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.

SEN. DAINES: Thanks for having me on.