BUCK: A little victory high five for our main man, Senator — and senator for six more years — Ron Johnson from Wisconsin. He is with us. Senator Johnson, sir, great to have you back.
SEN. JOHNSON: Well, guys, listen, I appreciate you letting me come back mainly to say thank you and thank everybody in your audience. You know, when they spend more than $100 million lying about you, distorting everything you say, assassinating your character — and then you have the media amplifying their lies — you need some resources to fight back. And it was audiences like yours that provided me those kind of resources and other candidates as well. So, I just really wanted to come on and say thank you from the bottom of my heart. You guys made a big difference in my race.
BUCK: Oh, we really appreciate that, and that was the goal. That’s why we’re having great candidates — or, in your case, great incumbents — on the show to try to make sure everybody knows what’s going on, what the stakes are. Senator Johnson, it was a little closer than we thought it was going to be. I’m just wondering if you could give us some insight into did they turn out a lot of, you know, 20-somethings who think that it’d be a great idea to become socialists or I don’t know what? What happened? How did it get closer in your state than anticipated?
SEN. JOHNSON: Well, first of all, this is always Wisconsin. I kept telling people, “Assume this is a dead-even race.” Okay. But no, some like the Democrats, had a really effective turnout model down in Madison at the university. You know, give them credit for it. Okay? But one thing we also did — again, I listened to your program earlier. I mean, it’s just outrageous what’s happening in Arizona, Nevada.
SEN. JOHNSON: In Wisconsin, our governor did not sign the laws to really fix the system. But what we did as Republicans is we recruited over 5,000 poll workers versus 1,650 in the previous election. We filled every election observation shift. We did go to court. We sued so that we, you know, force the courts to follow the law in a couple of cases. So by the end of the night, because we had observers, we had eyes on the process on a bipartisan basis… You know, we had some candidates win, some candidates lose on a bipartisan basis. Everybody accepted the results.
And that’s what we want. We weren’t looking for a partisan advantage. We just wanted to restore confidence in our system. Again, we have more things to fix here in Wisconsin, but we did a good enough job that we were all pretty confident at the end of the night on a bipartisan basis, and that’s what we want in this country, is to restore confidence in our elections. No voter suppression, increased confidence, and we did it here in Wisconsin. I’m pretty proud of it. On a bipartisan basis, I’m proud of what we did here.
CLAY: Well, Buck and I were rooting really hard, watching the results come in. And we’re ecstatic that you won and that we’ve got you for six more years. What does it feel like to know when you finally won a race that you have fought this hard in, and you had to make a decision whether you wanted to run again? You’ve now won three times in Wisconsin. You got six more years. What does that moment feel like when you know, “Hey, it’s finally done, we won,” and, boy, now you can really take it to the forces of the world, the Hunter Bidens, the FBIs? I mean, we’ve got our fingers crossed, as you mentioned, what’s going to happen in Nevada and Arizona. But what did that moment feel like to finally get that victory?
SEN. JOHNSON: Well, in 2016, we had that moment because the race was called early and kind of surprising. And that was the moment. This thing dragged on. It was pretty obvious. Nobody, you know, the networks weren’t calling it. So, it’s like 2:30 in the morning. You know, my opponent did concede till ten, 11:00 the following morning. So, it’s kind of a nothingburger from that standpoint, and so now what the moment really was for me is I turn my attention immediately to work.
And so I wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal talking about, you know, what we need to do if we get these majorities, you know how to return function and fiscal responsibility. I’ve reached out to the doctors. I want to assemble — I want to convene — a meeting in Washington, D.C. with all these, you know, courageous doctors and medical researchers to figure out what we know right now in terms of the vaccine, our covid response, what the public needs to know, what our next steps are. So I just started working immediately. So — (crosstalk)
BUCK: Oh, sorry, Senator Johnson, we’re just about to go and I just want to ask: Do you have a little victory celebration? You know, you take the family out for burgers or something? You shotgunning a beer? I mean, what’s going on? I mean, you’ve got six more years now.
SEN. JOHNSON: I chugged a beer that night about 2, 3 in the morning for close campaign staff and said, “Thank you,” and went home, went to bed.
BUCK: (laughs) Clay, you got to send the senator some of your beer.
SEN. JOHNSON: Yeah, that’s not the best subject. (laughing)
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: Well, congrats again, Senator Johnson.
CLAY: Congrats in all seriousness.
BUCK: Six more years of a great senator for Wisconsin. Wisconsinites! Hey, you up there, our Wisconsin audience — WISN-Milwaukee and these other stations we’re on in that state — you got it done!
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