BUCK: We got Congressman Jim Jordan. Let’s get to him.

CLAY: Right, Jim on the line with us right now. Jim, we gotta make sure we make everybody happy here we’re on all over the place. Hopefully, you can make everybody happy by letting us know it seems like the Democrats could take two roads after the ass kicking they got on Tuesday.

REP. JORDAN: (laughing) Yeah, yeah.

CLAY: They could go back to moderation and try to be somewhat reasonable, or they could double and triple down on the insanity. And it seems like they have decided to double and triple down on the insanity. The budget they’re trying to get done. I want to get the update from you on the House schedule as it pertains to the infrastructure and the Bernie budget bill. And then also simultaneously we’ve got the decision now, the vaccine mandate has officially been announced just two days after. It’s all crazy, right?

REP. JORDAN: Yeah. Yeah. No, they’re gonna take the latter path. They’re gonna double, triple down, as you said. There’s a reason why that, to me, is amazing because what was the polling like a week ago, 71% of the country — 71% of our fellow citizens — think the country’s on the wrong track.

CLAY: Yeah.

REP. JORDAN: My takeaway from that is, who are the 29%?

CLAY: (laughing)

REP. JORDAN: Who actually thinks there’s anything going right? And yet Democrats are gonna do just what you said. They’re gonna continue to pass this crazy thing. Let’s hope they don’t — and here’s the good news. Remember, there’s been four occasions where the speaker of the House has said that they were gonna pass it. They were gonna do it. It was gonna pass.

The big thing was gonna happen, and all four times they haven’t. So she’s 0-for-4. Twice she has summoned the president of the United States to Capitol Hill to close the deal. He’s 0-for-2 so let’s open this week is 0-for-7. Six times they haven’t got it done. Let’s hope this week is 0-for-7 and this doesn’t happen ’cause it is not good for the country in any way whatsoever.

BUCK: Congressman, it’s Buck. Thanks for being with us, as always. I want to know what…? It’s important that we, to some degree, understand what’s in this, just insofar as the Democrats now seem to be as a party largely pinning their hopes on, “Well, this will pass, and it will have…” Put aside for a second whether it’s good for the country.

I think you, me, Clay, people listening all agree it’s not gonna be good for the country; it’s gonna make inflation much worse. But what are the things — what are the pay-off mechanisms, if you will — that are in this bill? If Pelosi could get it through, if Schumer could shoehorn this thing through and into law, what would it actually give the Democrats that makes them feel like it’s a turnaround moment? Who’s getting the payoff, Jim?

REP. JORDAN: Yeah, yeah. I don’t think anyone. Certainly, it’s gonna reward Big Government. All the Big Government employees who tend to vote Democrat, it’s certainly gonna reward them. But I don’t see it helping on the inflation problem. It’s certainly not gonna help on the border problem. It’s gonna actually exacerbate that because this thing does a roundabout way of giving amnesty to eight to 10 million people who came back into our country illegally.

So it’s not gonna help that problem. It’s not gonna help the crime problem that we’ve seen. So I don’t know who it’s gonna help other than they’re so far down this road, I feel like they believe they can’t turn back and this gotta pass something. So that’s… I think that sort of, in and of itself, what’s pushing this thing forward. But it’s bad.

Bad economic policy, bad energy policy. Remember last week we had this spectacle of in a hearing, a Democrat member of Congress telling the four big oil and gas companies in this country, “Will you pledge, will you promise to decrease production?” and I’m like, “Are you kidding me? You’re asking American companies (laughing) to decrease production at the same time the president of the United States is begging OPEC to increase production?”

I posed the question to him and I said, “What do you want, $8 gas?” This is crazy. So nothing’s gonna benefit the American people, the American family. But I think it just like the Democrats are sort of like, “Oh, well, we finally got and done. Let’s hope it helps us.” But it’s not gonna help the country.

CLAY: Jim, also in addition to all the other news that’s coming down we got Russia collusion officially going up in smoke in a massive way. It’s not gonna get a lot of attention, but you fought against all of this crazy conspiracy talk for years. The Durham investigation has now arrested the person who was most responsible as a source for the Steele dossier.

REP. JORDAN: Yep.

CLAY: What does this tell us, and how vindicated do you personally, who was one of the most ardent defenders of Donald Trump for all of this Russia collusion madness, feel as these indictments are coming down and these arrests are happening?

REP. JORDAN: Yeah, I already feel that all of us who fought this and said this was baloney, I already feel we’ve all been vindicated certainly the one that’s been most vindicated is President Trump. But the idea they’ve now arrested this individual, they interviewed him back in 2017 and he lied to the FBI then. So why wait stinking four years to arrest this guy?

Look at what they did to Michael Flynn when the FBI, when they interviewed him, didn’t think he lied to them. But they charged him with that nonetheless. So this is how… Comey knew; the FBI knew. We got this from the deposition. They knew clear back in 2017 when Comey was fired, and we deposed him in the Judiciary Committee.

He told us that up until the time he was fired, they still didn’t know if they had anything ’cause they didn’t — and they knew that the Steele dossier was false, frankly, when they took it to the FISA court to start the whole darn investigation. So this just confirms all that. And now that they’ve been actually arrested this guy, coupled with the Sussmann indictment, I think that is huge news, but it confirms what we all suspect and what I think we already all kind of knew.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio. Congressman, vaccine mandate from OSHA is supposed to go into effect January 4th. In terms of the enforcement, right. At that stage anyone who has more than a hundred employees either has to get the weekly testing or get the shot or face, I believe, a $14,000-an-individual-employee fine, penalty.

So I just have to know. I mean, you’re a member of Congress. Doesn’t it kind of feel like this F if OSHA can just decide stuff like this, why do we even have a Congress, right? Why don’t we just have the unelected fourth branch of government the federal bureaucracy make all the decisions for us what’s your opinion on the constitutionality of this move?

REP. JORDAN: Yeah, right. Well, to your point because so many of those guys who work at OSHA actually put their name on the ballot and ran for office, right? You’re so right, Buck. This bugs me probably more than anything. When did Dr. Fauci ever run for office? When did General Milley put his name on a ballot and go out and talk to We the People and run for office and actually get elected to a constitutional office?

This is the part that drives us all crazy. So this is… It’s unbelievable, and I would ask the question of some of these people: Is having more nurses in the hospital good for America or bad for America? Is having more truck drivers good for our supply chain problems or bad for our supply chain problem?

So there’s the liberty argument, but there’s also just the practical, common sense argument, like you want to make the supply… I was in California a few weeks ago. I saw those ships lined up in Southern California. You want to make that problem worse? Do this to trucking companies. I talked to an employer today in our district.

He has almost 600 employees. He said over half… A big trucking company. He said over half his truck drivers don’t have the vaccine. What the heck is he gonna do, and what does that mean for Ohio and for economic activity? This is how stupid this stuff is, and it’s unconstitutional. But this is the Biden administration. They just keep moving ahead with it.

CLAY: Jim, how much fun did you have watching the election results come in Tuesday? Where were you?

REP. JORDAN: Winning beats losing every time, Clay. You know that from sports.

CLAY: (laughing)

REP. JORDAN: Every single time winning is better than losing, and not when you lose you learn from and you come back but I don’t think the Democrats are gonna get a lesson from it. I think they’re just gonna as we talked at the start here, they’re gonna just keep going. It was great to see that moms and dads win and government loses ’cause that’s what this thing came down to.

In that hearing where he told us that the (laughing) only evidence that he used to do the memo was the letter from the school board association to the president of the United States, and that letter was a bunch of baloney that they had to apologize for the very day after we had that hearing? I think it says it all ’cause you try to get between moms and dads and their kids; they’re gonna push back, and they did in a big way.

CLAY: Kevin McCarthy said he thought the House Republicans could pick up around 60 seats in the midterms. I’m assuming you saw that number and he set the over-under at 60. That’s a big number. There is some support for it, by the way. I’ll share this data with you that Axios shared, just based on the way that the line had swung. If Republicans were to outperform the Biden-Trump margin by 10.8 points in New Jersey, they would pick up 44 seats. If they did what they did in Virginia, 12.3 points, they’d pick up 51 seats. How much more red tide do you think we’re looking at?

REP. JORDAN: I think we’re moving in that direction in a big way. I love what Kevin said when he goes… I just want to say that any D-plus-16 districts, you’re now in play. We’re gonna be putting good candidates. I thought again thinking with the sports analogy that’s the way coaches talk, like we’re coming after those too. So, yeah, I think it’s moving in a good way for the country, good way for our party, which I think are the same thing. So I feel real good about that. It turns out Americans don’t like all this garbage.

BUCK: Yeah, Congressman, to that point, I just want to know what you think the…? What is the template? People are talking about, ’cause Clay and I obviously this show is in all 50 states, people listening internationally on podcasts, too, which is fun. All 50. Just throwing that out there. But all 50 states go people listening. So we’re talking a lot about Virginia.

But we keep saying, “No, Virginia is the laboratory, the experiment was run.” Obviously, a huge win and congrats Young and Winsome Sears and others. But what is the template, as you see it, and Republicans look to you. You’re a guy who knows this game, knows how to win. How do they approach this so that we get that red tide going forward that Clay’s talking about, red wave?

REP. JORDAN: Yeah, in some ways it’s as basic as treat people with respect and common sense! They know what Biden has done is a complete disaster. They appreciate people like President Trump who said he was gonna do certain things and then got in office and actually did ’em. I mean, I always say, you know, he did more what he said he was gonna do than any president I’ve ever seen.

He said he was gonna cut taxes, did. Said he was gonna reduce regulations, did. do what you told ’em you were gonna do. That’s the model that works, and Glenn Youngkin said, “I’m gonna stand up for families. I’m gonna make sure your kids get a first-class education, not this racist, hate-America stuff.” So treat people with respect instead of everything be identity politics, groupS, woke culture all this BS.

Treat the people the way they want to be treated with respect that’s what wins and understand… I think what Joe Manchin said today which is interesting Joe Manchin said today we’re a center-right country. we’re not a left-wing crazy country we’re a center-right country we believe in conservative principles and values and the Constitution and, frankly, we also like the First Amendment and what the left has done to the First Amendment over last year is frightening. So that’s the other thing that is frustrating. And when you talk about those things, you can win.

CLAY: By the way, speaking of winning, you gonna be winning on the bookshelf soon. Jim Jordan: Do What You Said You Would Do, Fighting for Freedom in the Swamp. It will be out November the 23. Last little bit for you. How much did you love Rob Manfred speaking of woke culture taking it to the chin, having to give the Atlanta Braves the trophy, Congressman, after he wouldn’t allow ’em to host the All-Star Game?

REP. JORDAN: (laughing) Well, we saw your tweet when you said that the president was gonna be there and then we treated out about it of course as soon as the Braves won the championship series. So, yeah, it was great. Sometimes poetic justice is just that. It’s exactly what’s needed, And I think the country appreciated the Braves and sort of their… what they were below .500 at the end of July, I think?

CLAY: Yeah, that’s right.

REP. JORDAN: They appreciate that, and I don’t think back in July at the All-Star game anyone thought the World Series Championship Trophy was gonna be handed to the Braves at the end of the year. So that was great. The way it works out. It’s funny how the Good Lord works.

BUCK: Congressman, thanks so much. Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, everybody. We appreciate it, sir.

REP. JORDAN: Thank you. Take care, guys.