CLAY: We’re joined now by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Senator, I know we’ve had you on since you won reelection in November, but Joe Biden seems to enjoy attacking you by making up stories about you. I know you’re used to that, but he traveled to your state and made some claims about you. What did you consider to be the biggest whoppers — and I hope you’re having a good weekend, early start to your weekend. Thanks for coming on with us.
SEN. JOHNSON: Well, great. Hope you’re doing well. Well, I think the president might have just forgotten the fact that I already won reelection and he doesn’t have to worry about attacking me for another five or six years.
CLAY: (laughing) You’re going to be in office for longer than he is. I feel good about that.
SEN. JOHNSON: But what’s amazing, I actually really appreciate what Fox News uncovered, is back in 1975, Senator Joe Biden was proposing exactly what he has, for example, accusing Rick Scott of saying. He proposed sunsetting every government program every four years, and talked repeatedly about freezing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. So, I mean, not only is he a liar. He’s a hypocrite. So, he comes to Wisconsin — he did this in the campaign and just did it again yesterday — basically saying that I want to cut or end or put Social Security on the chopping block. I’ve never said that. It’s a complete lie. What I have said is I want to save those programs, and I’ve said the way to save them is we need to start reducing the out-of-control deficit spending. I pay attention to our massive debt, and it is that deficit spending in massive debt that is the greatest threat to Social Security — and politicians like Joe Biden, who now as President Biden, simply will not take a look at federal spending and start reining it in and start prioritizing it.
CLAY: So there’s a lot going on right now. I know we were hoping that you would have control of a committee, that the Republicans would take control of the Senate. But the House has really been unveiling a lot as it pertains to Twitter, misinformation campaigns, and everything else out there. And I want to I want to ask you about this question in particular, because I was hammering it yesterday, and I know it’s something that you would consider to be incredibly integral as well. So, we know that the FBI’s had the Hunter Biden laptop since December of 2019. We also know — smoking-gun evidence — that they were providing briefings to big tech companies, arguing that for them to be prepared for Russian disinformation potentially connected to the Hunter Biden laptop.
To be fair, we don’t know whether the FBI agents giving those briefings had also been privy to the investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop. What we do know, Senator, is that some people at the FBI — we don’t know how many — would have known that the laptop was real and would have been in some way either allowing or encouraging the briefings to Big Tech to suggest that the laptops were not real. And I know that involved you as well and what the FBI acted. Who do we think was the puppet master here trying to rig the election in 2020 based on the Hunter Biden laptop, and are we ever going to know who inside the FBI basically ordered these code reds?
SEN. JOHNSON: Well, one of the reasons I called for in my testimony the House investigators to call and interview every one of those 51 intelligence officials that signed that that “information operation” letter. Okay. I remember that they said that the Hunter Biden laptop “had all the earmarks of a Russian information operation.” No, that letter was an information operation that interfered and had an impact on our election to a far greater extent than anything Russia ever could have hoped to accomplish. So, first of all, we need to find out who masterminded that letter. But you know what? One thing, I think Chuck Grassley kind of took this part of his testimony, really focused on the sabotage of our investigation into the Bidens.
And it was multiple actors. I mean, we had Democrat senators setting us up. We had the FBI setting us up, giving us unsolicited briefings that were nonsense. They told us nothing. I knew that I was being set up. They did later leak it to smear me in 2021 and impact the Wisconsin election as well. So, what is key about that December 2019 date is, yes, the FBI definitely had that information. We have whistleblower telling us that they were told, “Do not look at that laptop.” Okay? But we have evidence, you know, a little piece of the puzzle. That’s the point that I point out in my testimony. When the FBI left the computer shop, somebody — one of the agents — said basically, “You know, it is our experience that people who don’t talk about these things, don’t get in trouble.”
And I said, “That was the opening salvo in a ten-month operation to sabotage. Any revelation that the laptop existed or any bad information.” So, I mean, people have to really think and focused on that. The FBI spent ten months working, giving us unsolicited briefings. You know, basically, you know, by the way, we were off of that computer the day after our report dropped in September, but we didn’t take possession of it because we do our due diligence. We went to the FBI. “What do you know about this?” They never told us what they knew about it. They gave us the runaround for weeks until Paul Mac Isaac or John Paul McIsaac gave it to Rudy Giuliani and the New York Post.
So people really have to understand the gravity of what the FBI was doing, how pervasive this was, how the media played a part of this Democrat senators played a role in just using Russian disinformation. They’ve been using it for years, starting with the Hillary Clinton emails, the DNC hack. We still, to this day, don’t know was that really Russia that hacked into that? But it sure worked effectively, didn’t it? So, I don’t have all the information. I just have I have so much suspicion. There’s so many things that indicate a massive diversionary operation.
CLAY: Amen. And I’m glad you — I mean, we are ecstatic that you — won reelection to be able to ask so many of these questions as a sitting senator. But I want everybody out there listening to us right now to understand, look, at Twitter and Facebook and all these different tech companies they have a lot of people, I think, that were carrying water for government for Democrats. We all know that. But what is scarier to me, Senator, is the rig job that you just talked about from inside of our own government, our own taxpayer-funded FBI. There is a cabal. There is a collusion that is going on there.
We don’t know how many people there were, but they made a calculated decision inside of the FBI to try and rig the election by arguing the Hunter Biden laptop wasn’t real, when they 100% knew — at the top of the food chain in the FBI — that it was real. And those same people, by and large, Senator, are still there. And we’re going to have a new election cycle coming up in 2024. I don’t know how anybody in the American public with a functional brain can be confident with those same people in positions of power when really they’re the puppet masters, is what I’m calling them. And you can say, “Oh, look at how the Twitter and Facebook people are dancing.” You know, they’re the puppets. But who’s the puppet master? We still don’t know, and that’s the essence of what we have to get to, right?
SEN. JOHNSON: It is the global left en masse. I don’t think that’s what our side has really understood well enough yet, is how pervasive, how literally global this is. And that’s what I tried to point out in my, you know, ten or 12 minutes worth of testimony yesterday is the pervasiveness of this.
CLAY: Yes.
SEN. JOHNSON: I mean, all of the actors. It is the left. And they have infiltrated every institution of our country. They started with universities. I mean, the Saul Alinsky Rules for Radical playbook. I mean, it’s been following that for decades, and they’ve been very effective at it. So when you control universities, you’re teaching journalists, you’re teaching our educators, indoctrinating our children, you control our media. And so they get away with falsely accusing conservatives of exactly what they are doing, and so we need to come to grips with how unbelievably effective they are, how effectively they’ve infiltrated all of our institutions of power, how they control the narrative.
We’re not winning this. It’s not a level playing field. It’s not a fair fight. And when we have our elected officials, you’re pretty well kowtowing to the left as well. You know, signing on to their massive, out-of-control deficit spending. It gets pretty frustrating from my standpoint, not willing, really willing to admit, you know, how far behind the eight ball we truly are and how our freedoms are so are so severely threatened. Listen, I appreciate, Clay and Buck, but you know how effective you’ve been and how you’ve been outspoken about the freedoms taken away during the pandemic. You’re one of the few. I mean, there aren’t many people — there are many people in Congress, really — screaming about what happened with the pandemic, but you have your eyes open. We just need to open up a whole lot more eyes.
CLAY: Amen. And I’m still furious about it. Buck’s out on his honeymoon right now. You know, hopefully he’s resting up so he can come back ready for the fight. I’m still fired up about so many things. But just last week, Senator, we had — and I said on Friday of last week, I never would have believed that this would be the topic that we would lead the show with. We had a Chinese spy balloon go all the way from Alaska across the entire United States and then exit off the South Carolina coast.
What in the world is going on that we allowed that to occur, and how was it normalized in any way that a foreign adversarial country is allowed to have a spy balloon that they control and we just permit it to happen? I mean, sometimes crazy things happen and I think we get used to them existing. I can’t believe that that happened and that basically people are like, “Well, it got shot down once it was in South Carolina. No big deal.” To me, that’s an unbelievable act of aggression by China, and I thought Biden’s response was incredibly weak.
SEN. JOHNSON: Well, one of the points I’ve been making — the major point — since this story is broken is why did it take so long for the administration to start talking about this?
CLAY: Yeah.
SEN. JOHNSON: So, you know, one of our huge advantages is we have an open society. Now, it’s also a disadvantage, but we need to utilize that open society. And what I’ve witnessed now that I’m in Washington, D.C., I’m not of this world. I’m an accountant. I’m a manufacturer. But now that I’m there, we go over classified material. These… You know, information is power. And so certainly within the administrations, and Congress is just willingly giving up its constitutional authority to the executive branch. And they take it. And one of the the ways they maintain power is they control all the information, which is why it’s going to be very difficult for the House to get information out of the FBI.
I mean, you’re already seeing the legal fight there. They’re just giving Comer and Jordan the middle finger. They’ll continue to do that. But we need to be more transparent. We need to force transparency of these administrations. And in terms of this balloon, we should have been made aware this immediately, the administration should have talked about, “Hey, you know, we have now detected this,” and then laid out, you know, if there’s a rationale for letting this come across so we can track it. Tell the American public about this. There’s no reason to keep this stuff secret. But they keep a secret because they keep information and they maintain the power. We need to demand greater transparency across the federal agencies.
CLAY: Last question for you — and it’s far less significant than everything we’ve been talking about so far. Who wins, Chiefs, Eagles Super Bowl Sunday.
SEN. JOHNSON: You know, I’m not a prognosticator. You know, I don’t make those predictions. I just hope for a really good competitive game. I really don’t care who wins. It’s not the Green Bay Packers there, so I don’t care.
SEN. JOHNSON: I just want a really fun game to watch. That means it’s a close game and a fair game, and not decided by a stupid call. I want to see excellence. I want to see the competitors compete, and I want to see a good close game that somebody wins. I don’t want to see somebody lose it. I want to see somebody win it with just excellence.
CLAY: Outstanding. Have a good time up in Wisconsin. We’re excited to have you for six more years and we appreciate you giving us some time on this Friday.
SEN. JOHNSON: Enjoy the game. Take care.
CLAY: Will do.
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