CLAY: We are joined now by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley who is, I imagine, a little bit tired after an all-night event on the Senate floor. Senator Hawley, first thanks for coming out, and I just kind of give you a broad question here. Our audience is paying attention to this $3.5 trillion budget. How is it gonna shake on you, in your mind? Is there any reason to have any faith at all in Kyrsten Sinema or in Joe Manchin to help to cut this back? Give us the lay of the land so far as you can.

SEN. HAWLEY: Well, thanks for having me. It’s great to be on, and congratulations, Clay. I think it’s the first time we’ve got to chat since your new and great gig here. So, this is awesome. It’s great to be with you. You know, the $3.5 trillion is a total boondoggle.

I mean, let’s not mince any words here. It’s a disaster. It is full of the woke, lefty politics. That’s what this is all about — and, of course, it’s fueled by just outrageous pork barrel spending, the worst kind of stuff, like building highways in Canada — seriously — and all this ridiculous research on salmon spawning, all these giveaways to senators to try to get their votes.

I mean, it’s just… It is really, really outrageous stuff. So, you know, what will become of it, I’m afraid that the Democrats are really on track here to get this thing passed. They only need 50 votes in the Senate because of procedure that they’re using to do it so I think that right now Republicans have gotta be crystal clear that this is bad for the country.

This is not what the American people want. I mean, if this continues on the track it’s on right now, Clay, nobody’s gonna be able to afford to buy any food to put on their table with the inflation that we’re having. They’re not being able to afford to get their car repaired, for heaven’s sake.

I mean, it’s outrageous and the Democrats just want to pour it on and pour it on and, in the meantime, they want to turn the whole country woke. So, we got a lot of work to do here. But I think Republicans gotta take a stand, gotta be clear that this is a disaster, would be a disaster for the country and offer a clear alternative.

BUCK: Hey, Senator Hawley, it’s Buck. I just want to know, given that they do have this budget reconciliation maneuver to try to get through a lot of this stuff, it seems like that Republicans in the Senate can do is try to raise the flag about — which is really what we’re doing right now — what this is all going to mean.

How concerned should we be, though, about some of the stuff that’s in there, in the budget, that just no reasonable person could think is actually a budgetary measure that should be able to be considered through reconciliation? I’m thinking specifically of the amnesty that they’re trying to get through. Is the Senate parliamentarian rock solid on kicking that stuff out, or is there a real concern?

SEN. HAWLEY: Oh, I’m concerned. I’m concerned. We should all be concerned. People needed to be wide awake to this. The Democrats are exactly as you say, Buck, they’re gonna try to get amnesty for illegal immigrants. That’s in this bill. They’re gonna absolutely try to jam that in. I fully expect they’ll try to jam in measures that will take away legal protections for cops.

Right now, our cops… You look at the assault on police officers in this country, 50% assaults on cops over this last year. Of course, that’s no mistake because the left has just declared open season on cops. I fully expect that the Democrats will try to get in their anti-cop measures into this reconciliation bill. Green New Deal will be in this bill.

So, hey, it is their wish list. It is their woke left wish list and it would be terrible for the country. So I can just say this: Republicans have gotta fight this at every turn. Last night, we voted for hours on end. That is just the start. We are going to fight this at every turn, every inch of the way. And then, you know what?

We’re gonna give the American people a real alternative here, and I think that they’re gonna be able to say, “isten. This is not what we want,” and in a year, we get to go back to the polls and the people can register what they think. And, boy, that’s gonna be, I think, a great opportunity for people to weigh in.

CLAY: Talking with Senator Josh Hawley here from Missouri. Senator, you’re trying to get more… You were just talking about the lack of respect for police. What are the odds…? We know that Cori Bush on the House side continues to advocate that defund the police is the right idea. I know that some senators are now running for the hills.

As you mentioned, there is an election next year, and they are aware that defund the police is toxic with white, black, Asian, Hispanic, all Americans of all different political persuasions. What are the chances we get more police on the streets, and how do you see this political issue playing out going forward?

SEN. HAWLEY: Well, you’re exactly right, Clay. The Democrat policies are endangering this country; they’re endangering children. People are not safe in their home, they’re not safe on the streets and there’s one group of people is responsible for that is Joe Biden and the Democrats. And this defund the police movement which they have fully embraced. That is their platform.

You’ve got members of Congress who are actively pushing it, United States senators who are actually pushing it. Joe Biden has basically endorsed it by talking about the need to cut back on protections for cops, making them more vulnerable in effect. It’s terrible. So you’re right. What I think we ought to do is go the exact opposite direction.

I think we need 100,000 new cops on the streets right now and we need to give a pay raise to every single cop in America. That’s what we should be doing. Will that ultimately be in the bill that the Democrats pass? I doubt it. I mean, I highly, highly doubt it. I think what they want to do is say, “We don’t want to defund the police. We don’t want to defund it.”

And then they just switch up the labels, and they go ahead and they cut the funding. They redirect it to something else. They take away the protections that cops have to do their jobs. So it’s say one thing, do another right now. But I’ll tell you this, Clay. What has become very apparent to these Democrats who are up next year is that their policies are hugely unpopular and they’re making this country unsafe.

I think the American people, they’re gonna know who’s done this, and they’re gonna say, “Listen. I want my kids to be able to go to school in safety. I want my kids to be able to walk down and buy a gallon of milk at the store in safety,” and right now in many parts of this country that just isn’t true, and Democrat policies are to blame.

BUCK: Senator Hawley, Buck again. You mentioned the price that Democrats may pay on the issue of police and what they’ve done with defund the police. But I see what’s going on at the southern border. I’ve been down there numerous times to see with my own eyes exactly what’s going on. I have contacts in Border Patrol and ICE who tell me openly and in back channels these days, that it’s the worst it has ever been, that the Democrats have no interest in stopping the massive flow.

You’re talking about now a couple of hundred thousand in the most recent months apprehensions. You gotta add tens of thousands of got-aways at our southern border on top of that, thousands and thousands of them with confirmed covid cases, by the way, as they are coming across the border. They’re trying to not test so that we want really know the full-scale of covid cases coming across the border.

Senator, the Democrats, how are they gonna…? Is the plan here to try to just ram through the amnesty so that they’re not held to account for the open border? Because it feels like this has gotta be a disaster in the making for them in the midterms.

SEN. HAWLEY: Yeah, I would think it would be. And, Buck I, think that is their plan. I think they want to jam through this amnesty. But again, I think that this is not gonna work because the American people are seeing this crisis on the border that you described, and it is real. And let me just tell you a little bit more about what ICE tells me.

What ICE tells me is that currently not allowed to make arrests of criminals, criminal illegal aliens. Tthat now, because of the Biden administration, if you are an ICE officer and your job is to go arrest criminal illegal aliens, you gotta ask for permission from your supervisors before you go out and make an arrest! Can you imagine a cop on the beat saying, “Oh, wait.

“I see a crime in progress. Let’s see. Let me call back to headquarters. Maybe let me call back to the chief. I’ll call back some of them. In the meantime, I’ll just sit here in my car and wait until I get approval.” It’s insane. That’s what they’re doing, Biden is doing to ICE. And I know it’s true because ICE officers are telling me. ICE leadership is telling me. And here’s the real deal.

The administration will not release the data on how many times ICE officers have asked for approval to arrest and leadership has said no. They are desperate to keep those figures hidden. They are desperate to keep ICE under wraps. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to testify about it. They don’t want to release any information, and it’s because they are allowing criminal illegals to run rampant, and they are doing nothing about it.

So I agree with you a hundred percent. This is a huge, huge issue. They are actively endangering the citizens of this country. That’s before we even talk about the drugs on the border, the criminal gangs on the border, the cartels who basically control the border on the southern side, it’s crazy. And I think the more people see this, the more they’re gonna say, “Whoa, that is not what we want, it’s not what we voted for, and it’s not what we’re gonna support.”

CLAY: Well, much less seriousness than that, there’s a lot of people out there that are hoping your Kansas City Chiefs are going to fall back to the pack a little bit. New offensive line. I know Patrick Mahomes is the greatest quarterback in maybe the history of the world. Is there any reason for me as Titans fans or anybody out there who’s a Bills fan or anybody else in the AFC to have a little bit of optimism that maybe your boys in the Kansas City Chiefs are going to be a little bit more normal this coming year, or are you still wildly optimistic on their future?

SEN. HAWLEY: I’m hugely optimistic and I think you should be very depressed, because we’re gonna be amazing.

CLAY: (laughing)

SEN. HAWLEY: The Chiefs are gonna be amazing. No, I think that the off-season… Listen, we had a great off-season, got five new starters, big additions on our line. That’s really obviously what we had some major holes, you can see that in the Super Bowl. Mahomes is a generational talent. That is obvious.

I mean, anybody could see that. I think he is gonna end up as greatest of all time at that position. He’s got a long, long career ahead him. I think he’s just getting started. I mean, he’s just getting started. So I think the Chiefs made some great moves. I think you’re seeing good stuff out of training camp.

I think the Orlando Brown move in particular was a great one and he’s getting ramped up and we’re seeing it in training camp. He may be a little rusty but he’s getting into the system, and I think it’s gonna be good and they’re gonna be — we’re gonna be — amazing this year.

BUCK: Clay, I’m just gonna coast on the senator on all of this football analysis ’cause I have no idea what you two guys are talking about.

SEN. HAWLEY: (laughing)

CLAY: Is it gonna be important…? How important…? We keep talking on this show, Senator, about the importance of returning to normalcy. And having full football stadiums, even if you’re not a big football fan, is a big part of the sign of normalcy. Do you think we’re gonna have full stadiums? And how important is it 18 months into this ridiculous covid response to finally get back to feeling and looking normal in some of our pastimes like football?

SEN. HAWLEY: I think it’s absolutely vital, and I predict that in the red states where you have Republican governors and legislatures, you are gonna have full stadiums. I don’t know what the Democrats want. The Democrats have become the party of the permanent pandemic. They want this to last forever. They want kids to live in fear.

They want them to be masked in schools or not be at school! Let’s be honest. We know where this is headed. The next round is gonna be, “Oh, well it’s too dangerous. The kids can’t go to school,” despite the fact that all the science says kids are not at high risk, and you all have talked about that quite a lot. This is what the Democrats want!

It is pandemic forever because that’s gives them control, that gives them the ability to scare the country, and it gives Joe Biden a permanent excuse for his failures. And I mean failure or every policy issue we’ve been talking about including the pandemic where he’s been an utter failure and that’s become their policy and I think it’s bad for the country.

We do need to return to normal, and we need to give people hope! We need to give people home that, “Listen, we are on the far side of this; the end is in sight.” We’ve gotta get people encouragement to get back out there, live their lives, and particularly kids. Clay, you and I have talked about this. You’ve got young kids. I’ve got young kids. The thought of our children being forced to mask up and to social distance, maybe miss their activities, miss sports? It’s insane.

CLAY: Amen.

SEN. HAWLEY: It’s just insane.

BUCK: Senator Josh Hawley, great to have you on here. Thanks so much, and hopefully you’ll come back and hang out with two of us soon.

SEN. HAWLEY: Hey, thanks so much, guys.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Clay and I just talked to Senator Josh Hawley. Great discussion covering a range of issues: The budget, the Democrats being crazy, lockdowns, the border, and then some stuff about sports that Clay and him were talking about that could have been in Ancient Greek.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: They’re talk all these names I’ve never heard before. But I’ll say this, Clay, there was another voice, so to speak, a weighing in of somebody on the budget that has been advanced by Democrats using the reconciliation process. I want to be very clear, because they’re using reconciliation, they got the 50-50 plus Kamala to break the tie, there’s actually no filibuster to block this.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: Republicans can’t actually stop it which is why I’m asking Josh Hawley, “What are we really gonna do here?” and the answer is not much. What about the struck bill, though, which got 19 Republican senators going along with that. We’ll come back to that in one second. But, Clay, the former president — I’m sure you saw this — Donald J. Trump.

I miss him, man. Not only did he Make America Great and make the country better, but he made this job of political commentary and media just so rich every day because it was just awesome watching him crush and own the libs and make them cry constantly. I miss it very much.

CLAY: He was the only guy who was up when I was doing my early morning radio show in that 6 a.m. hour. You hit Twitter and there’s nobody awake tweeting and then the president’s there.

BUCK: There were days where he retweeted me at 6 a.m. six times, seven times in a row to his 80 million, roughly, followers or whatever. I’ve never seen so much crazy stuff on Twitter timeline.

CLAY: Oh, yeah. You can’t even check your mentions.

BUCK: Oh my gosh. I have actors and I’m saying to myself, “I think you were in a movie in 1997.”

CLAY: (laughing) Yeah.

BUCK: They’re saying, “I hate you, Buck Sexton! Jump off a bridge.”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I was wondering, “What did I do?”

Anyway, President Trump weighs in here, and here’s what he says. This is statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th president of United States of America. “Good Morning America. While you were all sleeping, the radical Democrats advanced a plan that will be known as the $3.5 trillion Communist Plan to Destroy America. This legislation is an assault on our nation, on our communities, and on the American dream.

“It destroys our borders and the rule of law by granting dangerous amnesty that will flood America’s beautiful cities. It will overwhelm our schools and make our nation less safe. It raises taxes like we have never seen while also making many things you buy every day more expensive — gas, groceries, and much more — and don’t forget the crazy Green New Deal.

“America, you are being robbed in the dark of night. It’s time to wake up.” By the way, Clay, the Communist Plan to Destroy America? God, I miss this guy. Think about how useful it would be if we could get Trump back on all the social media platforms — and, obviously, get him back in the Oval Office. But I miss him.

CLAY: There’s no doubt, and look. One of the biggest issues with not having the presidency is not only the lack of power, it’s the lack of a bully pulpit. You can’t drive the narrative. And whether you love or hate him, Trump drove the narrative amazingly well for four years and got a lot done.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We want to talk a little bit more about the budget because this was happening in the cover of night, as you just said reading from Donald Trump’s statement, Buck. And a lot of people out there are asking, what’s going on with the interplay between infrastructure, which is around $1.2 trillion — and it was passed 69-30, including 19 different Republicans supporting that infrastructure bill — and also what’s going on with the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill which is the budget. So Mitch McConnell was asked, Senate minority leader, about the budget, and this is what he had to say.

MCCONNELL: The policies they want to put behind this budget resolution read like somebody walked across the rotunda to the House and handed The Squad a pen and piece of paper. Sweeping, sweeping amnesty for illegal immigrants in the middle of a border crisis, regulations that are so radical that our colleague, Senator Markey, quote, said, “The Green New Deal is in the DNA of this budget resolution.”

BUCK: That’s stuff I know we want to get into. The Democrats do act like they have a mandate.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They’ve got a president who, let’s just say, things were tight. (laughing) Okay? Just to avoid getting into that whole discussion —

CLAY: Even the best-case scenario for Joe Biden, he won by 40,000 votes.

BUCK: A super tight election.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I think we could say that much without…

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Everyone’s saying, “Buck!” We’ll talk about that another time. But beyond that, it was as narrow as it could be, literally as narrow as it could be in terms of it’s not even a real majority, a de facto majority in the Senate what, a handful in the House. And they’re trying to slip through to get around the filibuster by doing this reconciliation bill thing.

They’re really momentous changes, generation-defining changes to our system of government, to our law, to our systems. And they’re doing it with what mandate, exactly, Clay? While Biden’s like wandering off into the woods looking confused, what exactly do they think gives them this right? I just want to put that out there. The backdrop of this is they act like half the country doesn’t exist.

CLAY: It’s very well said. And this is the gamble, ’cause a lot of people out there saying, “Well, why aren’t the Republicans stopping this?” The answer is, they really can’t. If 50 Democrats are able to stay together under the budget reconciliation process, then they are going to be able to shove through this budget.

Now, you heard Mitch McConnell there going after the budget and effectively saying — I think fairly — that this is streaming left-wing budget. And to your point, Buck, it’s happening with almost no mandates at all. The risk here… What is going on, I think, behind the scenes is, all of these Senators, 19 Republicans who ended up supporting infrastructure, including Mitch McConnell, are gambling that they are going to be able to…

Now that the infrastructure bill is passed, that Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona and Joe Manchin in West Virginia and maybe a Jon Tester in Montana — we don’t know exactly. That some of these moderate Senators that are representing states that either have substantial Trump support or are the biggest Trump-supporting states in the country, which is the case with West Virginia, that they are going to slice and dice this $3.5 trillion down by a massive amount and that the power is there for Sinema and Manchin in particular because there is no margin for error on the Democratic side. They need all 50 and Kamala to support it.

BUCK: So can I give you another possibility here? It’s that they’re putting all this stuff in… We talked to Hawley about Senator Hawley a minute ago about the Senate parliamentarian and can they get his okay.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: By the way, I don’t think they’re really gonna get through amnesty. It’s hubris to even include amnesty in the budget.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: If they got that through —

CLAY: There’s no point in the parliamentarian then.

BUCK: Yeah, then it’s like, “Smoke ’em if you got ’em. Our system of government, our hte thing is completely corrupted and fetid and falling apart.”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That’s like a game-over situation. So I am hopeful that’s not where we’re going. (laughing) But my concern, Clay, is that some of those pieces getting stripped out or being told “no” by the Senate parliamentarian might even create some grounds for Sinema and Manchin to say, “Well, the really crazy stuff is out.

“We could all agree the stuff that, as McConnell says, The Squad from the House of course would want in there…” People are also referring to this as the Bernie budget. “Since that’s gone, we’re just spending money on critical things.” This is the biggest expansion of the welfare state in over a decade, the biggest —

CLAY: Since Lyndon Johnson.

BUCK: It’s game-changer in that sense. And as we said, there’s no mandate here, but this is exactly… If you were expecting the third term of the Obama administration, which has just been pretty conventional wisdom for anybody following politics on the right for a while, that’s what you’re getting here.

CLAY: I think it’s even beyond that. I think this is even more expansive than what Obama tried to do, and he’s doing it, Biden is, under the mantle of the fact that he’s just a “unifier.”

BUCK: To that point because Obama did have a filibuster-proof —

CLAY: Mandate.

BUCK: So he actually went all the way with Obamacare. I can’t believe that there would be a future in which if the Democrats had a-filibuster-proof majority right now, the first thing they would do is amnesty. They would call it five million in the legislation, and then we’d find out it’s not 11 million. It’s probably more like 15 to 20 million if you talk to…

By the way, whenever I ask Border Patrol about this… I’ve done it many times. I say, “Do you believe the Census number, the official numbers that is 11 million?” They say, “Well, considering we’ve got a half million to a million coming in year in and year out, uh, no.

CLAY: (laughs) Right.

BUCK: They do not believe the number. That, Clay, is that is game-changer long-term strategic view from Democrats this is one of the big criticisms people have of Republicans. We had on the House, the Senate, and the Trump administration, and what did the machinery of the Republican Party want? Tax cuts. Okay. We didn’t get the full change in Obamacare that we wanted. We didn’t get a number of things. So you just see Democrats go all the way. And they go as far as they possibly can. They’re unified on that point.

CLAY: I think the big question here is, effectively the government is boiling down to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. People want to talk about Joe Biden. They can talk about Nancy Pelosi and The Squad and everything else. But ultimately, the entire United States government — the biggest budget of any of our lives — is going to be a function of what Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin decide.

BUCK: And the people who were voting on it and in favor of it have not and will not read the entirety of it or even a majority of it.

CLAY: Oh, God no! Of course not.

BUCK: This is a Frankenstein’s monster budget. This is all pulled together from different pieces. I know Frankenstein was actually the guy who created it, but whatever. The monster. People like to call me out on that. “That was Dr. Frankenstein!” The point being they pulled this thing altogether. It’s a Democrat, Squad-approved wish list of just massive spending increases.

Here are some of these things in here since we’re talking about it. It includes funding for universal pre-K (universal prekindergarten), tuition-free community college, paid family leave, clean energy source development. Now, Clay, those are the sweeteners. Those are the things that some people would say, “Well, it’s maybe expensive, we don’t have the money, but those things sound good.”

Oh, but when you start getting into the “equity councils” and the Green New Deal parts of this — you start getting into the fine print — is where you find out that they’re also enlarging and empowering the administrative state at the expense of the American economy and American freedom.

CLAY: I’m a business guy and so the fact that we still — and I keep harping on this ’cause I think it’s very significant, and I know there are a lot of people who run small businesses and are affiliated with making business decisions. Buck, the fact that we still don’t know what the tax rates are going to be in 2021, despite the fact that we are all the way up to August and they’re not gonna try to reconcile a lot of this stuff until September and they’re talking about retroactively — which is a wild idea, right?

It’s a wild idea that deserves way more discussion. They are talking about retroactively applying tax increases all the way back to when Donald Trump was still president for any decisions that were made from a business perspective. This is an outlandish, unbelievable attempted change in law to retroactively put in place laws that didn’t exist when many business owners are making decisions out throughout this year. (laughs)

BUCK: It’s like we’re in the gym and we forget about dinnertime. We’re just too busy with all those steps.

CLAY: Well, the budget is a big deal, given they were going to 4:45 in the morning.

BUCK: Oh, no, it’s a huge deal!

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: We got a lot on the cutting room floor still.

CLAY: I feel like there’s a lot of people fired up about it.

BUCK: We have not yet begun to fight here. We’re getting going.