Ron Johnson’s Running to Unite the Country

CLAY: Four days until all of your voices can be heard across this country, until the Red Tsunami rises up and sweeps from the East Coast to the West Coast, including the state of Wisconsin, where our next guest is from. He has been a two-term senator. He is running for a third. He is Ron Johnson. We appreciate him joining us. Senator, you’re out and about. It’s four days until the election. What do you see on the ground? What do you expect to happen come Tuesday?

SEN. JOHNSON: Well, guys, one, right now I’m in Green Bay, Wisconsin. We’re driving right next to Lambeau Field and we’re on the bus tour probably about 4000 miles out, over 60 events. And the enthusiasm is high. The crowds are good. We probably… I know the county chair of Scott County, 150 at a Green Bay event here. So people are excited. They understand exactly what a disaster Democrat policies and Democrat governance has been for America as well as for Wisconsin. So I think they’re looking for a change.

CLAY: You’re by Lambeau Field. What in the world is going on with the Packers so far this year?

SEN. JOHNSON: Oh, we don’t want to bring that up.

CLAY: (laughing)

SEN. JOHNSON: Let’s talk about another disaster. Let’s talk about Biden’s disaster.

BUCK: Yeah, I was going to say, “We’re here to talk about winning, Clay, winning on Tuesday, not whatever’s going on up there in Green Bay these days.” Senator Johnson, I mean, you know, you’ve been able to extend the gap in the polls in your favor, which is which is fantastic. You know, we’ve got a bunch of members of Congress in just dead-heat races that we’ve had we’ll have on today, have had them on all week. We’ve got some senators — you know, Dr. Oz, Blake Masters, others — who are very close. I mean, if they’re looking just for a little bit of a last-minute pep talk from Ron Johnson up in Wisconsin, what do you say to ‘em?

SEN. JOHNSON: Well, just tell the truth. If we’ve taken — if we’ve gotten — an advantage in the polls, it’s because we’ve just been telling the truth about the radical leftists that my opponent is. What’s interesting is, I’m hearing other candidates describe their races, though. It’s all the same playbook. “They’re lying about us distorting what we say, assassinating our characters.” They’re engaged in the politics of personal destruction, because that’s all they have. They can’t talk about the disastrous results of their of their policies, the 40-year high inflation, the record gas prices.

And by the way, in Wisconsin here, they’re back up to about four bucks a gallon. So people are feeling the pain, the pump. They can’t fill up their gas tank or the grocery carts. So, we just focus on those issues. But I may have told you guys in the past that it’s more fundamental than that. People here in Wisconsin, because of the indoctrination of our children, the teaching of Critical Race Theory, transgenderism. People are just afraid we’re losing what we have going for us here in this country. We’re just losing our culture.

CLAY: I think that’s well said and I think it’s very accurate, and Buck and I have been fighting on this ever since we came together, getting ready for Tuesday. You have been in the minority because Kamala Harris has the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, presuming that you win reelection and Republicans take control of the Senate, how much does Washington, D.C. change? For people out there who may not understand, I think it’s important to keep hammering this home. The difference between being in the Senate majority and being in the Senate minority is what from the perspective of what you can do at your job?

SEN. JOHNSON: Well, what we can do is we can stop confirming these radical leftists that he’s installing in these agencies that are running roughshod over the private sector. The only thing we have to do — and this is something I need to get Republican leadership to commit to — is restoring function to Congress. By that I’m talking about a budget process that actually drives an appropriation process so we can start getting this out-of-control, deficit spending under control. And then over the next few years, we also have to lay out our game plan if we win in 2024.

I mean, “Here’s our agenda to bring America back,” and from my standpoint, it’s energy independence. It’s securing our border. It’s a reasonable regulatory environment. It’s a competitive tax system. A simpler, more rational one. So we… You know, for me, for me, less is more. Concentrate on what we have to do to bring strength back to America, because everything the Democrats have done have weakened America. And you guys know this, particularly Buck: When America is weak, the world is a far more dangerous place and people like the Ukrainians are paying the price for American weakness because it tempts tyrants only Vladimir Putin to commit his atrocities. So, we have to unify and heal this nation. That’s a goal that President Biden set out for himself; he’s done the exact opposite.

BUCK: Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that, Senator Johnson. He had a speech, what, two nights ago now in which it really just seemed to be admonishing and scolding Republicans for election result denial and also the prospect of this this amorphous concept of the political violence that’s going to come on the right. But that really hasn’t yet. But they say it will. What is that all about?

SEN. JOHNSON: Well, it’s a classic tactic of leftists. They accuse — falsely accuse — their political opponents of doing exactly what they do, and so he really has become the divider-in-chief. We need to be healed. We need to be unified. As Lincoln said, “A house divided cannot stand and the left,” and we have to understand this is the left that is angry is the left. It is divisive in this country. Somebody has got to be the adult in the room. And that’s why I’m calling on Wisconsinites to do is talk to their friends or family neighbors regardless of past party affiliation, and ask them to join us in healing, unifying, and saving this country.

CLAY: I think the last two elections you ran in, the polls both had you losing. You can correct me if I’m wrong. Do you have any faith at all, even now, that the polls have you winning, or are you just completely of the opinion that polls are worthless and until people start actually casting their votes and you can see the results yourselves that you don’t put a lot of faith and stock in them.

SEN. JOHNSON: Well, there is only one poll that counts — that’s Election Day — and the only consistency in the polls on my race is that they’ve been consistently wrong, but they’ve always been having me lose by wide margins. I think last cycle, 56 public opinion polls, 52 had me losing by an average — they were off by an average — of nine percentage points. So I think there is certainly a phenomenon when you have a president of the United States calling Republicans semi-fascist, potential domestic terrorists…

We’ve seen the abuse of the, you know, folks that attended January 6th. Republicans are going to talk to somebody they don’t know is a pollster. So, I’ve got to believe there’s some under polling of conservatives and Republicans. But again, I always view elections. Wisconsin is dead even. We’re going to run through the tape. That’s why I’m traveling about 4,000 miles here over the next you know, the last ten days. We will be doing more than 60 events. We’ve got we’ve got to work hard and we’ve got to win.

BUCK: It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen, Clay. I’m looking forward to it. Yeah. You got to… Go ahead.

CLAY: Yeah. Well, I also wanted to ask you this. Senator, Buck and I were talking earlier this week about the big I think it was the intercept story about the collusion between Big Tech and the Democrat Party, the Biden administration, the Biden campaign. I presume that you have had a chance to read some of those documents, and I imagine you have a lot of questions you’d like to ask as a member of the majority party in the Senate, potentially, starting in January.

But it feels to me like the biggest single story that exists in America today right now is the direct collusion between Big Tech companies and the Biden administration. This is a direct threat to all American democracy, if you really want to talk about threats to democracy. It also ties in with something suspicious that involved you, which is the briefing that you supposedly got about Russian disinformation and everything else that they then leaked that you had received. Where did this all come from? Shouldn’t somebody have to answer for it?

SEN. JOHNSON: Well, it dates back to when radical leftists took over university systems and they control college journalism. So, we don’t have very many journalists anymore. We have advocates, and they’re the leftists. They’re advocates for the Democrat Party, and so if we had an unbiased meeting media holding both sides accountable, we wouldn’t have the corruption in the FBI. We wouldn’t have had those 51 intelligence officials basically enacting their own intelligence operation, covering up for Hunter Biden and his laptop. So, no, I hold the press greatly responsible for the division in this country.

We need to hold them accountable. But I think this lawsuit by Missouri and Louisiana, I think is fascinating, the fact that they were granted expedited discovery. Very unusual in the in the court order, basically saying they’ve already proven the collusion. So, watch that one very carefully, and that’s another thing that we will absolutely do if we regain majorities. For example, if I’m chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, you can rest assured that I’m going to do everything I can to expose the truth in so many areas.

BUCK: Senator Johnson, we know you’re doing well, but if you need any help or if you just want people more involved in your campaign, where should they go?

SEN. JOHNSON: It’s RonJohnsonForSenate.com. I have been outspent 2 to 1 over the last three or four weeks, so let us keep our ads up through Election Day. We got to run through the tape. So, RonJohnsonForSenate.com.

BUCK: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Senator Johnson.