Speaker 1: Good afternoon, everybody. Steve Schmidt here with the warning and
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled today to be joined by my friend George Conway,
Speaker 1: candidate for Congress twelfth District of New York.
Speaker 2: George, welcome, Thank you for having me, Steve.
Speaker 1: As we come to the end of January, I want
Speaker 1: to I want to tell you what I would say
Speaker 1: if I was heading over to negotiate with the White
Speaker 1: House the Democratic position. I would walk in the room
Speaker 1: wherever they do the meeting over at the over in
Speaker 1: the Roosevelt Room, and I would say, uh, uh, well, fellas, Susie,
Speaker 1: you don't you don't have the fucking votes. You don't
Speaker 1: have the votes, right, I got you by the balls
Speaker 1: here right, and Susie you two and uh and and
Speaker 1: what I and what I would say is well, we
Speaker 1: will shut down the government for two hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: five days and will ask the American people to stand
Speaker 1: with us. It will ask the American people for power
Speaker 1: to end this. But we will not permit these massed agents.
Speaker 1: We will not permit the blatant violations of the Fourth Amendment.
Speaker 1: These people will be leashed and the American people's abuse
Speaker 1: will cease, and we will not yield on this point.
Speaker 1: You don't have the votes, we control the money. And
Speaker 1: that is the Democratic position now, Chuck Schumer and Hakim
Speaker 1: Jeffers right or in this position right now, And they
Speaker 1: have been equivocal, to say the least about what it
Speaker 1: is that they're prepared to do with saying, well, affordability
Speaker 1: is the issue, and no doubt everybody in America knows
Speaker 1: two things. Everything's more expensive and Trump is responsible. So
Speaker 1: the Democrats don't really have to talk much about something
Speaker 1: that people already blamed Trump for and don't particularly think
Speaker 1: they have any credibility on. What they could reestablish their
Speaker 1: credibility on is drawing a red line, holding that line
Speaker 1: and insisting that they will, in front of the American people,
Speaker 1: use every bit of their capital to protect American citizens
Speaker 1: from abuses by as by a mass gestopa. One do
Speaker 1: you think they will assert leverage? Two do you think
Speaker 1: that they understand where the basic Democratic party is and
Speaker 1: how imperiled their leadership will be if they do not
Speaker 1: hold that line? And three talk about talk about the
Speaker 1: implications right of yielding yet again, because now there is
Speaker 1: no other place to interrupt Trump's power until November of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six through congressional elections that hopefully you come
Speaker 1: to power with in the next Congress as a member.
Speaker 2: Look, I think it's absolutely imperative that nobody vote to
Speaker 2: fund ICE anymore because it is basically an organization of
Speaker 2: brown shirts. It's the essay revisited and after the murder
Speaker 2: of Renee Good, I think it would be just absolutely
Speaker 2: immoral to vote for funding ICE period, full stop. And
Speaker 2: you know, I hope that people on the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: I think many people in Democratic Party are already there,
Speaker 2: many elected officials are already there. I think that's where
Speaker 2: the American people are landing. And I don't And even
Speaker 2: if it's even if there's some political risks of a position,
Speaker 2: I don't know how. It's just it's just a moral
Speaker 2: obligation to say no. And and so I absolutely agree
Speaker 2: with you that that this the line has to be
Speaker 2: drawn here, and it has to be drawn now.
Speaker 1: I can. I can go back to comments I've made
Speaker 1: over the last twelve years talking about militarized cops against it.
Speaker 1: I've written about the local cop who's dressed like a
Speaker 1: sealed Team six member in small town America. Not in
Speaker 1: the last year, but five six years ago. All of
Speaker 1: the sales of surplus military equipment to small town police
Speaker 1: departments has always always been a disaster. And I've thought
Speaker 1: about Homeland Security from the very beginning as a as
Speaker 1: a bad thing. And so I I think that ICE
Speaker 1: must be abolished. Now what that what that means is
Speaker 1: do we need immigration enforcement? Of course we do. Never
Speaker 1: whatever it's going to be called, though, we're going to
Speaker 1: have an agency that's not called the US Border Patrol,
Speaker 1: it's going to be gone. Everybody can go visit Bavino's
Speaker 1: long ss code in the Holocaust Museum or the Tolerance Museum.
Speaker 1: That's where you go see a Border Patrol uniform. It
Speaker 1: will never be worn again. The agency won't exist. It
Speaker 1: won't exist because of Tom Homan and and Greg Bavino
Speaker 1: and and all of the thugs. There'll be a new
Speaker 1: name and a new uniform, and new ethics and and
Speaker 1: new standards and and all of these things. But you know,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the foremost disasters of the
Speaker 1: Bush presidency was the creation of the Homeland Security Department.
Speaker 1: And in the Homeland Security Department is the monster created
Speaker 1: by John McCain. I read a criticism of McCain and
Speaker 1: you know, it's spot on, which is he wasn't a
Speaker 1: person that ever really cared about second or third order
Speaker 1: consequences of of things that he supported. And and I
Speaker 1: don't mean that in a in a disrespectful way, but
Speaker 1: in a but in a precise way. And the Homeland
Speaker 1: Security Agency has become a threat to the liberty of Americans.
Speaker 1: It's the foremost bureaucratic monstrosity that's ever been created in
Speaker 1: the history of the of the country. And so so,
Speaker 1: starting with the Coastguard goes back to the Defense Department,
Speaker 1: the Secret Service, goes back to the Treasury Department, that
Speaker 1: maybe we have a airport security agency that that all
Speaker 1: of this consolid day of power, uh in something called
Speaker 1: Helmeland security, it needs to be busted up and it
Speaker 1: and in busting up that concentration of power, uh then
Speaker 1: is to me a gateway to busting up other concentrations
Speaker 1: of power. And so how do you think about that,
Speaker 1: George is you know, I I was a you know,
Speaker 1: during my Republican years, I was a moderate Republican. I
Speaker 1: was a fifty yard line guide. Culturally, I'm a I'm
Speaker 1: a New Jersey. I'm a New Jersey moderate, right, A
Speaker 1: Christy Whitman, Republican. I am a I'm a capitalist. I uh,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not inclined on the natural to load
Speaker 1: up business with regulations. I think regulations imposed costs on consumers.
Speaker 1: But when you when you look at big ad, big banks,
Speaker 1: big tech, how, how does a how does a per
Speaker 1: who came from a intellectually serious conservative position on things
Speaker 1: think about busting up power right to to unshackle Americans,
Speaker 1: ordinary Americans from that from the threats they're facing, because
Speaker 1: I think they're all linked together.
Speaker 2: How I totally and I said, I think it actually
Speaker 2: it's a strand of conservatism to decentralized power. I mean,
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why you know, we have talked
Speaker 2: so much about small government in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 2: right way back in the a galaxy far away unit
Speaker 2: in a long time, long long time ago, in a
Speaker 2: galaxy far far away, is because of the fear that
Speaker 2: if you agglomerated too much power in various arms of
Speaker 2: the government, some bad person could take it over and
Speaker 2: do bad things to everyone. Here we fucking are yep.
Speaker 2: And in terms of the private market, you know, my
Speaker 2: inclination is like yours that generally I don't think that
Speaker 2: government managing markets or controlling markets, for example, setting prices
Speaker 2: gets you very far. At the same time, I believe
Speaker 2: in the central values of for example, the antitrust laws
Speaker 2: to promote competition so that we don't have monopolies. And
Speaker 2: I think now, you know, we have to rethink some
Speaker 2: of that nineteenth century wisdom that was codified in the
Speaker 2: Sherman and Clayton as to apply it to The most
Speaker 2: stunning example to me now is the is the growth
Speaker 2: of media conglomerates that basically are becoming tools of the
Speaker 2: state because of the fear that they have. You know,
Speaker 2: they have so much invested in not making the powerful
Speaker 2: state happy that they you know, conform their editorial policies,
Speaker 2: and they can't. They become propagandists for the government, for
Speaker 2: a corrupt government ce G CBS. So I absolutely think that,
Speaker 2: you know, that's something that's something that we have to rethink,
Speaker 2: and I think there has to be it's part going
Speaker 2: to be part of kind of a reconstruction that has
Speaker 2: to occur after we you know, if, if, if, and
Speaker 2: when we get rid of Trump. You know that we
Speaker 2: were going to talk about things like I mentioned before
Speaker 2: about the justice department. But we also have to talk about,
Speaker 2: you know, the structure of the media, you know, and
Speaker 2: and and and various departments of the government, like you mentioned,
Speaker 2: Homeland Security has been a disaster from the get go,
Speaker 2: and it was ripe for this kind of abuse that
Speaker 2: we're seeing today. So yeah, no, we have to we
Speaker 2: have to take long standing justice and apply them in
Speaker 2: different ways that we haven't thought about before, because we
Speaker 2: are in a different century, and we are not. This
Speaker 2: isn't nineteen eighty when I became a Republican. It's twenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a long time ago in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: A lot different to me now than it did then.
Speaker 2: And I think one of the problems is a lot
Speaker 2: of people of various political persuasions basically think their minds
Speaker 2: were set in stone about what's right and what's wrong
Speaker 2: ideologically based upon conditions that no longer exist.
Speaker 3: I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning. I invite you
Speaker 3: to join this community where I promise to be honest,
Speaker 3: blunt and direct about what is happening in this country.
Speaker 3: America is in crisis. Follow and subscribe to this channel
Speaker 3: and on substack. Thank you