Sen. Hagerty on the Border Crisis, Inflation and Musk’s Twitter Move

BUCK: Got some big questions to pose on our friend Senator Bill Hagerty of the great state of Tennessee — which, of course, Clay, big Tennessee fan, but everyone loves Tennessee. Senator, thanks for being with us.

SEN. HAGERTY: It’s great to be back with you. Thank you.

BUCK: What do you make of the situation as it’s unfolding right now at the southern border, currently beyond the capacity of Border Patrol to process the people illegally crossing as of today. That’s already happening. They think it might double, maybe even triple within 30 days. (chuckles) What is the Biden administration thinking?

SEN. HAGERTY: The Biden administration is not thinking at all about what’s happening at the border. If they were, they wouldn’t be allowing this. You know, they won’t go there. Joe Biden won’t go to the border. Democrat politicians won’t go. I recently led a group of Tennessee sheriffs and mayors down there, ’cause we’re dealing with the aftermath what’s happening at that border right here in Tennessee.

They’re turning every town into a border town, and I’ll tell you this. Each month here in Tennessee is worse than the month before in terms of the number of overdoses and deaths, most of it due to fentanyl, all of it coming across that southern border. It’s the Chinese Communist Party shipping the fentanyl and its precursors into Mexico.

They’re working with their partners in the drug cartels. Those cartels control the entirety of the northern border. They have lost complete control of the northern border of Mexico to the drug cartels. The Mexican government cannot control them, and those cartels are controlling that border and ours. They’re using humans to basically take the Border Patrol officers and get them completely distracted and tied up, and then they’re shipping the fentanyl across in major quantities to poison our youth here in America. It’s just terrible.

CLAY: Senator, appreciate you coming on. As you’ve discussed that situation at the border, it appears that a lot Democratic senators — probably not coincidentally, a lot of them in very much toss-up states and running for reaction — are opposed to the Biden administration’s decision on Title 42. What sort of recourse do you guys have in the Senate to fight against this? What do you anticipate that looking like as May the 23rd moves closer and closer to fruition here?

SEN. HAGERTY: Clay, I’m actually introduce legislation to strengthen Title 42, and I need my Democrat colleagues to join me in this ’cause if we do, we can come back with legislation that will basically take this Title 42 rule and put it into law, and the Biden administration will have no chance but to keep it in force. My addition to that… You know, if Title 42 is based on a public health emergency.

They’ve used covid as the rationale, tuberculosis could be that. A public health emergency that would cause, you know, danger and harms to Americans with people coming across that border with unknown diseases. Well, there’s something else coming across that border, and it’s fentanyl, it’s illicit drugs, and it is kill our kids.

In fact, it’s the number one cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 last year. Over a hundred thousand lives lost to this. This is a public health crisis. My legislation strengthens that, and that’s exactly how we push back — and again, begin to arm our Border Patrol agents with the tools they need to stop this. The Biden administration has tried to destroy every tool they had.

They stopped building the wall. It’s just a disgrace when you see what’s happening down there, just big gaps and holes in the wall. They won’t allow the Border Patrol agents to do their job. They’re taking away every tool now. When you take away Title 42 — again, which is their one tool that they had to say, “Look, because of the public health crisis, we can turn people away.”

They remove that, we’re gonna be completely swamped at the border. I was told that we would have as many as a million people come over after the Title 42 is dropped in late May, if that were to happen. They’re building up on the border now and they’re just gonna crush and overwhelm our Border Patrol.

BUCK: Speaking to Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee. Senator, the economy is not good (chuckling), as I’m sure everyone listening already knows and you know.

SEN. HAGERTY: Yes.

BUCK: Inflation number just came out this week, 8.5%. The Biden regime is struggling to come up with an explanation other than it’s Putin’s fault. What are you seeing and hearing about how this is gonna go in the midterms, how much of an effect this will have, and is your expectation that until there’s different leadership, it’s just gonna continue to get worse? It’s remarkable Biden keeps saying — I believe, even still — that the way to deal with inflation is to pass this $5 drill spending package.

SEN. HAGERTY: It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. They believe that spending more money reduces inflation. This started back in March of last year when Biden came in and shoved through on a completely partisan basis — you remember not a single Republican vote, they shoved through — a $1.9 trillion stimulus package. The economy was already moving in a positive direction.

I warned then that it would set off inflation that they wouldn’t be able to control. They did it anyway. Again with 50 partisan votes and Kamala Harris casting the tie decision, they came in and shoved another $1.9 trillion of stimulus into an economy that was already overheating and they set this thing off. The other thing they did, though, that I think was even more serious than the stimulus spending that they put in place was the war that Joe Biden waged on the oil and gas industry here in America.

He started that on day one. He canceled the Keystone XL pipeline. He forbade drilling on federal lands, whether it be onshore or offshore. They killed the permitting process for pipelines. What they’ve done is sent a message to the capital markets that you shouldn’t invest in oil and gas in America. We’re gonna destroy the return on your investment.

So that’s dried up capacity in the oil and gas industry; no new investment is going in there. That had the effect of increasing domestic energy prices of course; but it also had a global impact because these energy prices are all tied. So the energy price increases what he saw at the pump of diesel fuel, gas, we’ve seen it in heating oil throughout America, some places doubled.

What we’ve also seen is this has happened on a global basis. In fact, the biggest beneficiary of the price increase that Biden kicked off is Vladimir Putin, because they’re the second largest producer of oil in Russia. So he’s actual inadvertently funded Putin’s war machine at the same time he set off inflation here in America. This is all Joe Biden’s fault. Now what he’s trying to do is blame it on the Ukraine invasion. This was well underway before Putin ever invaded Ukraine. All Joe Biden did was fund it.

CLAY: Senator, you’ve got a good business background. You’ve been involved in a lot of companies over the years — and this just happened in the last hour or so, so you may not have had a lot of time to digest it. But Twitter’s board has adopted a poison foil effectively, it appears, keep Elon Musk from being able to buy the company and implement more free speech freedoms so that people can say what they actually think in a marketplace of ideas. What are your thoughts on the battle over Twitter, on the board’s actions from both a business and political perspective?

SEN. HAGERTY: Well, let’s just give our listeners a quick rundown of what a poison pill is. A pill is a mechanism that evidently the Twitter board is… I knew they were contemplating it. I’m sorry they went ahead and did it because I think they violated their fiduciary duty. In most cases that’s the result. Twitter shareholders are gonna suffer because of this because this poison pill mechanism basically means if Elon Musk takes steps to acquire, — at a premium, to acquire — the stock of Twitter, there’s an automatic dilution provision that essentially whites out and dilutes the investment.

So it’s gonna basically damage the value of the company. They’re willing to sacrifice shareholder value so they can pursue their own control, keep management in place, and so they can continue to pursue their own political agenda because they’ve already contorted Twitter into a political machine. I think that probably has already suppressed shareholder value.

Elon Musk probably sees the potential to unlock that value because he could make it an open forum, not subject to censorship and not subject to political bias. That would probably already unleash a lot of value (chuckles) and now the board of directors is gonna put in place a poison pill mechanism to not allow them to go ahead and exercise the premium that is being offered? That’s very detrimental to shareholders. I’m certain there will be a tremendous number of lawsuits over this.

BUCK: Two more things for you quickly, Senator Hagerty. One, do you think those lawsuits are likely to be successful, right? It’s one thing to sue; it’s another thing to actually get a judgment. And then, is there a pathway…? I know you’re not on the Twitter board and not sitting around looking at the M&A possibilities here, what the actual structure of Twitter is internally. But is there a way that Elon Musk…? I mean, he’s the richest man in the world. Can he force a buy of Twitter even if Twitter tries to stop? You know what I mean? Is there a nuclear option?

SEN. HAGERTY: Well, I’ve served on New York Stock Exchange boards, NASDAQ boards. There are a variety of options that he has. In the Delaware courts… I’m not sure where Twitter is incorporated, but it depends on which court system the suits are brought in. The options, though, are multiple on the lawsuit side as well as the financial mechanisms that he can use to obtain control anyone direct means, direct and in direct means. So the answer is, I haven’t fully analyzed it. I’m not certain what tack he may take next. But certainly, Elon Musk has an enormous amount of resources available to him to pursue this if he wants to.

CLAY: Senator Hagerty, we appreciate it. And, by the way, I’m looking forward to seeing you at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday with President Trump for a big event.

SEN. HAGERTY: I look forward to being there with you, Clay. That will be great. I look forward to seeing you there.

CLAY: Should be a lot of fun. That is Senator Hagerty of Tennessee.