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Speaker 1: The Armstrong and Getty Show. Let me be very clear

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Speaker 1: about what's happened here is that the mob has overtaken

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Speaker 1: the process of trying to certify the electoral college. Security

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Speaker 1: here at the United States Capitol has failed. Demonstrators were

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Speaker 1: inside the building. Security here has utterly failed. Congressman Tom

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Speaker 1: McClintock joins us. Mr McLintock represents the fourth District of

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Speaker 1: California in the northern part of the state, and joins us. Now, uh, Tom,

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Speaker 1: first of all, your overall impressions of the insanity of

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Speaker 1: the Capitol yesterday, I think you discarded very well. Insanity

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Speaker 1: at the Capital. I mean, it was an attack that

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Speaker 1: strikes at at the most sacred act of our country,

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Speaker 1: and that's the peaceful transfer of power. You know, ever

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Speaker 1: since we were all in grade school, you know, our

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Speaker 1: our Civics teachers hammered into us that, you know, one

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Speaker 1: of the greatest things about our country that sets us

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Speaker 1: apart from so many others, is that every year, for

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Speaker 1: two hundred, more than two hundred years, every election over

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Speaker 1: two hundred years, which peacefully transfer power. Um. So, it

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Speaker 1: was an outrage and I think a threat to the

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Speaker 1: most fundamental principles that we have as a free people,

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Speaker 1: and it was terrorists and violence in pursuit of political

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Speaker 1: goals is a very definition of terrorism, So that the

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Speaker 1: people who stormed the capital are terrorists and ought to

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Speaker 1: be condemned that way well, and ought to be arrested

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Speaker 1: and prosecuted like esecuted. Absolutely right. George Washington set the

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Speaker 1: precedent of the peaceful transfer power. Ronald Reagan called it

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Speaker 1: a miracle, and it is. It's one of our most

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Speaker 1: precious gifts. Uh. What do you think were some of

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Speaker 1: the factors that went into what happened yesterday? Well, obviously

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Speaker 1: the President's remarks in the rally at the White House

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Speaker 1: right before it certainly, you know, stirred it up. I

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Speaker 1: think we do have to recognize that there's a great

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Speaker 1: deal of sentiment across the country that the election system

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Speaker 1: is breaking down. I think a lot of that, uh

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Speaker 1: stems from the fact that we've abandoned in person election

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Speaker 1: day voting in favor of mail in ballots, which uh

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Speaker 1: strips the system virtually all of its safeguards against voter fraud.

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Speaker 1: And if it's not actually producing voter fraud, it is

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Speaker 1: very clearly producing the suspicion of voter fraud. You know,

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Speaker 1: we've got to go back to to the system we

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Speaker 1: had where where we all waited until the debate was over,

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Speaker 1: all the candidates had had their say. Then on a

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Speaker 1: single day, election day, we all went to our local

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Speaker 1: polling place, which was in our own neighborhoods. It was

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Speaker 1: usually you know, at the at the local elementary school,

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Speaker 1: or of in the neighbor's garage. We'd all look our

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Speaker 1: neighbors on the precinct board in the eye as they

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Speaker 1: handed us our ballot. We'd take that ballot into a

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Speaker 1: curtained voting booth. We would cast that ballot without anybody

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Speaker 1: able to threaten or cajole or plead, would cast it

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Speaker 1: according to our own conscience. We would give it back

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Speaker 1: to the precinct a poll worker who would then immediately

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Speaker 1: in our presence, place it in the locked box. By

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Speaker 1: eight pm, we knew exactly how many votes had been cast,

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Speaker 1: and usually by ten o'clock midnight in a close race,

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Speaker 1: we knew what the what the result was. We've stripped

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Speaker 1: the system of all of that, and now we're simply

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Speaker 1: mailing out ballots of to to every name on the

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Speaker 1: voter roll, whether they're deceased or long ago moved um

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Speaker 1: with no chain of custody from the time they are

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Speaker 1: mailed until the time they're counted. I don't think it's

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Speaker 1: an overstatement to say, if we enact what you're talking about,

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Speaker 1: if we had back in that direction, it will substantially

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Speaker 1: cure most of these problems, and if we do not,

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Speaker 1: it will exacerbate them. To the point that this sort

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Speaker 1: of violence is common. But at the risk of belaboring

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Speaker 1: the point, because we've been making it for years and years,

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Speaker 1: the left and America's media sent the message over and

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Speaker 1: over and over again that political violence is okay if

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Speaker 1: your cause is righteous in our eyes. And we've been

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Speaker 1: saying forever, folks, you keep sending that message, the angry

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Speaker 1: right is going to respond in kind, and they're pretty

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Speaker 1: well armed. Do you agree that that has played a

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Speaker 1: role in where we got yesterday? Of course, this has

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Speaker 1: been spinning out of control for many years now. We

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Speaker 1: we uh, you know, started to encounter that four years

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Speaker 1: ago when when when the town halls, which were always

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Speaker 1: a routine, you know, civil sharing of views, suddenly turned

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Speaker 1: into these near riots where people were shouting each other down. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, I got to the point we had to

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Speaker 1: stop holding them. And I think that that the situation

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Speaker 1: is simply continued to progress and escalate on both sides

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Speaker 1: until to uh. We see the culmination of that in

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Speaker 1: the attack on the Capitol yesterday, and I hope that

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Speaker 1: this is going to be an opportunity for the country

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Speaker 1: to take a step back, take a deep breath, and

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Speaker 1: realize we can't continue down this path. All right. Finally,

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Speaker 1: were you in the Capitol yesterday? Oh? Yeah, it was

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Speaker 1: in the chamber when all of this came down. And

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Speaker 1: how crazy was it? Well? It it escalated. I mean

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Speaker 1: the first thing you knew there was something was wrong

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Speaker 1: was when the security teams came in and whisked the

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Speaker 1: leadership that was then on the floor out the door,

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Speaker 1: locked the doors, told the rest of us to hunker

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Speaker 1: down and get out gas masks. Uh. I started to

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Speaker 1: see fly we were the chamber doors have frosted glass

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Speaker 1: on and he started seeing flashes uh through the uh glass.

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Speaker 1: You knew something huge was going on. Then ultimately they

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Speaker 1: evacuated us UH down a corridor and UH out into

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Speaker 1: the tunnels. That's when I heard the through UH as

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Speaker 1: we were being safely evacuated out the Capitol police were

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Speaker 1: heading to the danger and you could hear on their

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Speaker 1: radios this announcement. Shots fired on the House floor, and

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Speaker 1: I thought, I could I must have heard that wrong.

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Speaker 1: That couldn't possibly be and indeed it was. And then

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Speaker 1: I what really brought it home was when I got

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Speaker 1: to the into the tunnel is begin the office complex,

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Speaker 1: there's a wounded officer being being evacuated out. Congressman Tom

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Speaker 1: McClintock on the line back to politics for a moment

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Speaker 1: or two. I think it's worth recognizing that immediately after

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Speaker 1: the chaos was brought under control, democracy got back to work.

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Speaker 1: And I salute you all for that. Yeah, and and

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Speaker 1: and that's that's really the story of all of this

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Speaker 1: is Uh, you know, our republic continues, the constitution holds.

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Speaker 1: I you know, Vice President tested exactly the right thing.

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Speaker 1: He recognized that the role of Congress is to count

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Speaker 1: the votes that are sent us by the state. We

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Speaker 1: can't pick and choose which votes we're going to count

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Speaker 1: and which ones were not. If we do that, the

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Speaker 1: electoral college means nothing. The elections mean nothing. And uh

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Speaker 1: and in Congress simply elects the president every four years,

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Speaker 1: which brings us to the president. There is quite a

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Speaker 1: bit of talk, of course on the left, but some

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Speaker 1: on the right about either the amendment or another quickie

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Speaker 1: impeachment or something like that. Is that just idle talk? Well,

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Speaker 1: I think the uh, I'm so angry about the president's conduct,

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Speaker 1: particularly over the last twenty four hours, I want to

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Speaker 1: go too deep into commenting on it until I calmed down.

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Speaker 1: Radio you can say anything. Well, again, trying to tone

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Speaker 1: things down, but I think that uh, the next two week.

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Speaker 1: I I think he's largely taking himself out of the

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Speaker 1: picture by disgracing himself in the way he did. I

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Speaker 1: don't think we're going to be paying much attention to

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Speaker 1: what he says over the next few weeks, and then

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Speaker 1: we can, you know, move on with with you know,

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Speaker 1: the work ahead of us. Well, we know your night

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Speaker 1: was very, very long and you're short on sleep. We

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Speaker 1: sure appreciate you taking a few minutes. Congressman, it's my pleasure. Joe.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for having Tom McClintock fourth District in California. That's

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Speaker 1: really interesting.