Sen. Hagerty Weighs in on Canada, China, Ukraine, Durham

CLAY: We’ve got Senator Hagerty on with us right now. Senator, I know we got a lot to get into with you, but have you been following the Canadian trucker protest and the truly extraordinary powers that now Justin Trudeau has taken in terms of being able to monitor who’s donating money, where that money is coming from? For Americans out there, this is a truly Draconian, dictatorial action that the Canadian prime minister has undertaken here.

SEN. HAGERTY: It is very Draconian, and I think it’s a preview of where these Big Government Democrats want to go. This is socialist policy on steroids up there, and it moves from Big Government essentially to Big Brother. That’s what we’re seeing manifest itself in Canada. That’s the instinct people in the Biden administration have right now as well: to move to crush opposition and to use the massive powers of government to do it. Again, it’s manifesting itself in Canada by Justin Trudeau, but we’ve heard Biden say himself that Trudeau ought to crush these truckers, and that’s so counter to the liberty and freedom and everything that our nation stands for.

BUCK: Senator Hagerty, it’s Buck. I’m just wondering — whether based on what we’re seeing now, we’ve been talking to people about how much support the Canadian truckers have and obviously in this country a lot of people see it as a real movement for not just freedom but also normalcy — are you getting a sense that some of your Senate Democrat colleagues and just Democrats who are gonna be up in this cycle in general are worried that they are overplayed their tyrannical hand with the covid mandates and may be paying a price, or do you think they believe they’ve handled it just right?

SEN. HAGERTY: Buck, I’ve gotta believe they’re thinking hard about this now. There may have been a lot of inside the Beltway breathing your own exhaust going on up until the Virginia election. But after they saw the voters manifest their perspective and sent Terry McAuliffe packing — after they brought national Democrats in and really tried to make it about their national issues — I think they’re beginning to realize that the American public doesn’t want this big-handed government approach. And the Canadian situation is just underscoring that even further. But it’s all part of the same theme. Americans have had it with Big Government. We want our liberty back. We want our freedom back. And if they’re too deaf to miss that, they’re gonna be out of office come November.

BUCK: Senator Hagerty, I also wanted to ask you about what’s going on in China right now, the Olympics, and whether you think that… How is the Biden administration handling all this? What do you think about the fact that we’re even having an Olympics in China? It feels like not a lot of people are watching it.

SEN. HAGERTY: Well, Clay, I would encourage people not to watch it. The Biden administration went through with a, quote, “diplomatic boycott” of the Olympics. But I pushed them to do far more. I used to be the U.S. ambassador to Japan. I did a lot of work preparing for the 2020 Olympics with my team there and what we did was press the pause button. We paused those Olympics for a year, and the Summer Olympics are much larger than these Winter Olympics.

We should have hit the pause button on this one. Again, the International Olympic Committee should have never awarded it to Beijing, but we had the opportunity to press the International Olympic Committee and get them to move the Olympics to another venue. I feel for the athletes. I know they worked hard for this. But just like they did in the 2020 Olympics, they could wait another near and practice, they would be going to a much safer venue, and they would deny the communist government of China the opportunity to propagandize what is supposed to be a celebration of the human spirit. What we’ve done is we’ve allowed the CCP to use this as a massive propaganda tool.

CLAY: Senator Hagerty, what do you think is going to happen in Ukraine based on the briefings that you have seen and tying it in with China? How much do you think of what Russia is doing is being watched by China? Given they’ve already taken over Hong Kong effectively and ended up democracy there, how much of a serious threat do you know China poses right now in the immediate future to Taiwan based partly on what might happen in Ukraine?

SEN. HAGERTY: Well, I think China and the CCP are watching Ukraine very, very closely, as you intimated. And they’re gonna watch our response to it more than ever because this is predictive for them of what we might do, how we might respond if they move further on Taiwan. I think you gotta back this up to the very beginning of the Biden administration, though, to understand the face cards that have been dealt to Vladimir Putin since Biden came into office.

The first thing that Biden does is come into office, killed the Keystone XL pipeline, stopped fracking, and basically waged war on the oil and gas industry. That’s had the effect of driving energy prices through the roof. The number two producer of energy in the world is Russia. That windfall has gone straight to Vladimir Putin. We’re probably funding all of this malign activity right now.

If you look at Putin’s direct engagements with us, the START treaty extension that Biden gave him… President Trump was trying to hold back on this nuclear weapons negotiation to get Russia to include a lot more in it. Biden came and with no conditions, gave them a five-year extension. Then the next thing we see is Russian hackers come and hit the Colonial Pipeline. Instead of having real penalties for doing this… Again, Russian hackers hit our infrastructure here in America, our energy infrastructure.

Joe Biden’s response was to present a list of 16 industries and wag his finger and tell Vladimir Putin he shouldn’t touch those. I’m sure that Vladimir Putin looked at that list and thought, “Boy, I didn’t even see number 13 there. Maybe we should hit that one too.” It was just like a laundry list or shopping list for him. And what does it say about the other industries in our nation? And then finally, with Nord Stream 2. We had congressionally mandated sanctions on what will be a huge geopolitical weapon that Russia will use to control the flow of energy into Europe.

We had that stopped and Biden waived it. So as Putin sees all of these face cards dealt this way, then he sees incompetence. Look at our southern border. Biden has allowed that to collapse. Look at what happened in Afghanistan, an embarrassment of proportions we’ve never seen in our lifetimes. Look at crime here in America. What Putin is seeing is weakness at every turn. This is the opportunity of a lifetime to do just the type of thing he’s doing right now — and other adversaries like China, as you mentioned, are looking at this very, very closely.

CLAY: Senator, the Durham report is eventually going to be come out in a larger context. We have the independent counsel investigation that is going on. How significant are the allegations against Hillary Clinton’s campaign and what they might have done to both Donald Trump’s campaign and when he was president? And if the Senate flips back to Republican hands and the same thing in the House, should there be investigations particularly focused on what Hillary Clinton’s campaign did in order to allegedly spy on Trump’s? Because right now obviously many in the media are pretending this story doesn’t exist. I’m curious what should happen on Capitol Hill in your mind based on the revelations we got Friday.

SEN. HAGERTY: Well, step one is Durham needs to continue this probe. Step two, we need to retake the House and the Senate because you’re talking about exactly what is gonna happen. There needs to be massive oversight. This doesn’t just have echoes of Watergate. It’s of much greater concern. We’re talking about Hillary Clinton spying on the White House itself, one of the most secure complexes in the world.

If our adversaries see that she was able to get away with this, what does it saw about America? It’s a direct attack on our democracy — and the liberal media refusing to cover it? This is just unbelievable, and when the GOP retakes the majority in 2022 there will be answers to this. We will not tolerate this.

CLAY: Senator Hagerty, I appreciate the time. See you again soon, and appreciate you fighting the battles you are every single day.

SEN. HAGERTY: Clay, thank you so much. Great to be on with both you and Buck.

BUCK: Thanks, Senator.

CLAY: That is Senator Hagerty out of Tennessee.