House Majority Whip Tom Emmer on Biden's Report Findings and Herding Cats
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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, we have a fantastic guest in studio first off today. Someone we are very excited to have here. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, elected to...

became the majority whip in the 118th Congress, previously the chairman of the NRCC. He is on the House Financial Services Committee, House Republican Steering Committee. But for this program, the important part is he got his B.A. in political science from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where we're on the radio, folks. I hope you're tuning in for this one up there at Alaska News Radio AM 970 KFBX.

Majority Whip, Emmer. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the program. Great to be with you, Sam and Warren. So how did you get into politics? I mean, you're a lawyer. You have seven kids. You're not busy enough, apparently. What made you decide to get into politics? No, no. I was running my own business, and that was the second thing. The first thing was my wife Jackie and I were raising those seven kids.

And I just told this story to somebody yesterday, obviously here in Arizona. By the way, I want to thank both of you. This climate change thing is working out. Yesterday, Minnesota was actually warmer on February 8th than Tempe, Arizona.

It's a great day for a golf tournament here. Yeah, I'm sure it is. Everybody was so thrilled. But the story actually starts in probably, I mean, I was always involved in the kids' different activities, whether it was the sports stuff or the school stuff, which gets you embedded in your community. Ended up serving on a city council, which was fine. But then there came a day, I think I was like 40, 41, or 42, where

We dropped the kids off after church to do, supposedly to do the chores that they're supposed to be doing. And I took Jackie to a town that's about five miles away, Wisetta, Minnesota, and we're having coffee on the sidewalk across from beautiful Lake Minnetonka. And I'm reading the paper, and I said, look at this. Our state rep's not going to be running again. I wonder if that has anything to do with carrying the loaded gun through the airport last week. Yeah.

She looks at me and she says, you should do that. And my response was, why in God's name would I ever do that? I mean, we're raising seven kids. We're in our peak earning years. This is not the time when you do this. And her answer was essentially, aren't you the guy that says if you're not willing to do something about it, you should keep your mouth shut?

She threw your words right back at you. She said a little bit stronger than that, but yes. And I don't know. I don't know what she'd tell you today about that conversation, but it's been an interesting journey. I'll bet so. So we had something interesting happen yesterday. We have a president who apparently is a senile old man, and Democrats are rushing to defend this as gaffes, which I think is a poor use of words,

What is your take on what happened yesterday? Well, I mean, it's very sad what we've been witnessing. The media has not, they haven't been fair about this because they're so partisan, the national news media. This problem has been evident for quite a while. And it's kind of like an old athlete, Warren. When it's time to go, you got to go.

But this athlete, this political athlete, is not ready to go off into the sunset. And I think part of the issue is, and here's the conspiracy theorist, which you heard about this. I think we always have to be looking at what these possibilities are. Think about it.

Last December or so, you guys might have been talking about it where Axelrod, Obama, some of these others start signaling that Joe Biden is not up for the job or more importantly to them, up for the election. Right.

Is yesterday actually – does it have Obama's fingerprints all over it? Because this is the kind of stuff that these people do, whether it's Hillary Clinton and the Russian hoax or the – I mean, they concoct these incredible things. And I have said, and who knows how likely it is, but there is a certain eloquence if, for instance, they were to replace Joe Biden at their national convention –

when every Republican in the country has been targeting their campaign at him for a year plus.

And now all of a sudden you have 90 days of an unknown, unscathed candidate emerging who's their standard bearer. That becomes a big electoral challenge if that's the case. Well, his mental awareness is not going to get better over the months before August. No, it's not. And by the way, if they were to do that at the convention, they'd have to wait until he accepts the nomination.

Because if he doesn't accept the nomination, then Dean Phillips could be the candidate because he'll have the most. That's a great point. He'll have the most delegates and he'll be the only one there. So he has to accept the nomination, which makes that conspiracy theory just a little bit more problematic. It doesn't mean it can't happen. But here's where I part ways. And Warren knows this because we had this discussion with a different group of people yesterday about.

I don't believe that you talk about how they have this short sprint and it's not 90 days. It's it's a little over 60 days from their convention in August to the to the election. I mean, I'm splitting hairs, but 40 here in Arizona where our ballots go out. So that's actually a great point.

Some states start early voting in September. Yeah, correct. So we're going to have a much shorter timeline. And if you think about it, you have to build voter intensity over several months. And what has happened to the Democrat Party, which is why Joe Biden, it's not just that he's not competent and not up for the job.

Nobody's excited about Joe. I mean, his own voting base is like so disappointed with what has happened. They're either not going to come out or they want Joe Biden. I just I find it hard to believe that you could put like these conspiracy theorists, Michelle Obama, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer. I mean, there's all these different what ifs.

That's going to be really hard for people because you expect that people are going to turn around and go, well, now I don't like Donald Trump. Well, Donald Trump's going to be our guy. And I just want you to keep in mind that, in my opinion, I travel the country and I am a Minnesotan and I've never left Main Street. How many people and maybe you've done it, Sam, how many people say at least once in their lifetime, you know, I never thought I'd be saying this.

But I really feel sorry for that guy. Yeah, 100%. There's a fairness issue going on. And when you're trying to kick a guy off the ballot, when you're bringing all these things all over the place, that's going to come back to haunt him. 100%. I think one interesting thing yesterday as well that happens, the supposed impromptu press conference he called last night, Axios actually wrote a piece on February 4th.

saying that the White House and his campaign were concerned what was coming out in the report. They knew what was coming out in the report. That's why they were concerned, because I'd imagine, I haven't had a deposition like that, but he probably had an attorney in the room, right? And the attorney probably said-

This didn't go great, gang. He's going to look like X, right? I mean, so this was no surprise to me yesterday. So I love people saying, well, he got out right away for this impromptu press conference to show how energetic he is and so forth. That thing was probably rehearsed for days this week. I don't. So I don't think so. And I'll tell you why. You're right, obviously, about the February 4th thing. I haven't confirmed this yet, but my understanding is

It's not just that they knew what was coming. They saw a draft of it. And so then they worked. Oh, my. Yes, because this is the way it works in essentially a legal proceeding. Your lawyer is going to see what their lawyer has. As you should. Yes. It's a due process. Right.

But my understanding, and again, I have to confirm it, so I can't say that I know this for sure. But my understanding is they actually saw a draft of it, which is why you would see the article on the 4th. Which is why they're complaining and leaking it. And what they're doing in the interim is their attorney's trying to work with them to clean it up.

And then the story was yesterday it shows up and none of that stuff was out of there, which they thought they were going to successfully navigate.

And then I'm told yesterday, remember, this is a president who will not go on air to talk to the nation about our southern border, will not go on the air to talk to our nation about the Israeli-Hamas conflict, will not go on the air to talk about what's happening in Ukraine and why we're there and what we're doing, won't talk about the Red Sea. Any other executive we have ever had, when you have this kind of a world...

is out in front of the public reassuring telling them what's going on but no yesterday my understanding is he was so mad about the piece in there that said uh that he couldn't remember within a matter of years when his son died that he was hell-bent on going on national tv and showing everybody that he was young and uh up to the job and from all reports uh he did just the opposite

Oh, 100 percent. Yeah, it was a disaster of a performance, quite frankly. But that leads to the second point. If you get all that stuff out of the report, then what's the justification for not prosecuting him?

Well, I still say what's the... I think it's a very feeble excuse not to prosecute because someone's mentally infirm. It still doesn't change. Here, I'll give you the thing. We've sent 80- and 90-year-old gangsters to jail. Yes, we have. Interesting comparison. The thing about circumstantial evidence, right, is the difference between direct evidence and circumstantial is...

You can see someone walking in the snow. That's direct evidence. Circumstantial is you can see where their footprints are and you know that they walk there. So the fact that they're not going to prosecute him actually exacerbates a bigger issue, which is the two-tiered justice system. Correct. You're following through on this ridiculous Mar-a-Lago thing, but now you've found a cute way because the poor guy is too feeble and infirm to

to actually have a concept that what he was doing was wrong. I mean, my understanding, and I used to practice law, it's you don't look from the perspective of where he is at now to justify his actions back when he did it. You look at his behavior back when he took the actions and does it violate the law?

And it seems pretty clear that it does. I mean, multiple elements of that report were very clear. If I had to make a comparison between what we know about Donald Trump's handling of classified documents and Joe Biden's,

I wouldn't say there was a market difference in the quality of security applied to the documents in either case. I don't know. I might argue with you. I think in Mar-a-Lago, you could make that argument. It's more secure. Yeah. In a garage than a garage. Yeah. Garage door opens up. And I mean, plus, here's the difference to me.

You're dealing with the president of the United States. That's a completely different standard in my mind. From a classification standard also, right? Yeah. And I mean, nobody's ever done this to a former president where the National Archives suddenly has a voice in this thing. No, you're the National Archives. This is the president of the United States who had the ultimate classified record.

whatever you call it, the pass. I want to get to that when we come back here. We got about 45 seconds before we go to break here, and then we're going to be coming back with more from House Majority Whip Tom Emmer. But Tom, one of the things I want to touch on when we come back is it's not just the weaponization of our justice system.

It's the weaponization of executive agencies and authorities at every single level. And the National Archives are merely one example of that. Which is more frightening than increasing taxes. The regulatory state, to me, is the more concerning issue than the tax rates right now. Especially given the out-of-control power of that of executive agencies in the last few decades. 100%. Folks, Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be back with more here in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. We're continuing on now with House Majority Whip Tom Emmer. He has a B.A. in political science from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Grew up in Minnesota where he attended St. Thomas Academy and practiced law for several years before opening his own law firm. Next 20 years were spent balancing family business, coaching hockey, which might be the most interesting part. I think we're going to have to get to that.

Minnesota, hockey is serious. Well, you've got a hockey game here tonight at ASU between the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Sun Devils. There you have it. There you have it. I used to go to Arizona Ice Cats games versus Sun Devils, and those were maybe the most fun of any sporting event in Arizona. 100%. Hockey games are a blast in person. I would agree. So your majority whip?

I feel like in that position, you're always herding cats. Just not cats. You're herding feral cats. Is that fair? It's not just cats. It's feral cats. No, I would say that we – I wish they were all cats. Chuck, I – You're actually herding a variety of exotic animals. I was going to say people know that I adopted two feral cats. They're much easier to handle than Congress. I can see that from afar. Just give our audience –

What is the day in the life of a whip? Say you have a bill coming up. I don't think they understand what it is, but it's a very important position. You have lots of conversations. You have to show a lot of patience.

And so tell me, what is a day in the life of a whip? You have a bill coming up. What happens? So just to put, so listeners understand, most people won't ask this question because they think they're stupid, that they don't know it. But most people don't know. The speaker, number one, in charge of everything, including the Capitol Police, the grounds, all of that stuff, the architect of the Capitol, the majority leader, which this is a great job ordinarily, the majority leader sets the calendar for the year.

and then works with chairs of committees to schedule legislation that's ready to come to the floor.

I would argue that in this Congress, the best job is the whip's job because our job is the one to get the stuff across the floor. And let's face it, you've got to do it in reverse order. Our job is a customer service job. Every member, whether you like them or not, is our customer. We need to make sure that person is satisfied with what the information is that we're giving them. And then we need to communicate from the members up.

So the best job in the House right now, even though everybody says, oh, 222, and last week it was a 218, which, by the way, I just got off the phone with Steve Scalise. He will be back on Tuesday night. Fantastic news. A clean bill of health, and that helps a lot. That is great news. But the whip's job literally is communicating back to the speaker and the majority leader, this is the possible.

So you can't shove something down the throat. You deal with reality. Yes. The debt ceiling. Perfect example. We spent January, February and March working with our members to find the intersection of both ends of our political spectrum. It's something that I presented to then Speaker McCarthy right before we broke for Easter break. And I said, with this one page, this is the intersection and I believe we can pass it.

They tried to mess with it a little bit when we got back, which almost caused us some big problems. But we did pass it.

Obviously, the negotiated debt ceiling deal was not quite the same when the Senate and the White House were involved. But that's how you do it, is you listen to the members, you hear their concerns, you address their concerns, you find out what they can and can't do. And there's another attitude that I took when I got the job, because everybody thought because of the way I handled the NRCC that I'd be the hammer, the new hammer, right? Then come in and tell you you've got to do this. I have no leverage to do that.

I tell every member, because this irritated me when I went to Congress, your first responsibility is not to the team. Just because you have a Republican jersey on...

Your first responsibility is the people who put you here. You take care of the people at home first. You take care of yourself second, because if you're not taking care of yourself, we're not going to have you anyway. If you can do those two things, then you can work with us and we can figure out how to move things forward. And it worked beautifully for 10 months. We had a blip with the speaker's race that frankly was an embarrassment to us all.

You don't vacate a speaker without having a plan as to what you're going to do going forward. Unfortunately, we lost a month. Some would argue we lost probably two months out of that deal. I'm here to tell you that regardless of what you think it looks like, it's not.

It's kind of like the national news media. They're never going to cut us a break. It is moving forward. There is negotiation between the House and the Senate. Spending bills are going to get done, I believe, and we're going to move forward to the election because it is imperative that we not only hold but expand our majority in the House. We win back a majority in the Senate, which I think we are poised to do, and we put Donald Trump in the White House. We do those three things, we can save this country. Let me ask you a question here. So regarding the new...

immigration bipartisan bill of the Senate. Did they even communicate with House leadership? I mean, what is the true story there? So our speaker, Mike Johnson and James Lankford, are good friends. And our speaker, I believe him when he tells me I was in touch with James, but he wasn't telling me this is what they were doing.

I explained it to you that we sent over a border bill, the strongest border bill in 20 years last spring. And for the listeners, it included five things. It included finishing the wall. It included reforming parole, which is the president's ability to determine who and how many come in.

reformed asylum, it ended catch and release and it restored remain in Mexico, which our border patrol has said if you just do the last one, remain in Mexico, you will staunch 70% of the inflow overnight. Yeah.

What this so-called bipartisan bill did, and I just don't know what happened to James because he's a good guy. He's a really good guy. Yeah. What happened was there's nothing in it about the wall. There's nothing in it about parole. There's nothing in it about asylum. There's nothing in there about remain in Mexico. And they're codifying catch and release. They have been...

They're supposed to hold people and adjudicate it before they release them into the public. They've just been releasing them, and this 5,000-a-day garbage?

That's what they are trying to do is justify their illegal actions and make it law now. So it's a non-starter. And that 5,000 a day, that doesn't even count people coming from Canada or Mexican nationals. Yeah, well, it's more than that. It doesn't count gotaways, which we can see. It doesn't count minors, I believe. There's an exclusion for minors. There's an exclusion for minors. And there's an addition for a family. So a family counts as one. So James Langford's been to a...

legislative district meeting in Oklahoma, I'm sure. I'm sure he's been to the state convention. How did he think that was ever going to get even a consideration by the House? I mean, he's been to meetings, right?

James was a House member. Yeah, I mean, that's what I don't understand about it. He's a good guy. I don't understand why he thought, oh, yeah, they'll take this. Well, I think, you know, the Democrats sometimes are very good at hoodwinking well-meaning Republicans. This is the problem. It's when I took over the campaign operation yesterday.

We've got Democrats that play to win and they don't care what the rules are. They will do whatever they need to do to win. Republicans have always had this attitude that, well, we're better than that.

Yes, we are. We have a higher standard. And the higher standard is we will always maintain our integrity and we're always going to be honest. But you know what we need to change? We need to start being brutally honest about their dishonesty and showing these things for what they are. James Lankford's a great guy. Anybody who's listening to this, do not condemn somebody who is trying to do something the right way. It didn't turn out, I know, the way he wanted. And the way you can tell it didn't turn out. This isn't a Senate House thing.

All these senators that tend to be a little light on these issues started running away from it the second they saw the actual language. And then, of course, one of his counterparts in this negotiation, Chris Murphy from Connecticut, is a true hardcore partisan. And that, I've got names for him that I won't use on the air. He walked out of the deal with the thing and told all the Democrat partisans, this agreement will not shut down the border.

Well, so you weren't negotiating in good faith. He basically put the lie to the things that Lankford and Sinema and some of the others were saying, which I actually appreciated. But we're going to be coming back with more here in a moment from House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, Breaking Battlegrounds, back in just a moment. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. We're continuing on now with House Majority Whip Tom Emmer. So following up on that...

Could we do instead of hitting a home run on immigration, could we start doing singles like saying, OK, here's one bill on the border wall. Here's one bill on return to Mexico policy. Can we start just having the House send passing bills that we would view in baseball parlance as singles and send them to the Senate and let them pass?

or not, instead of doing the grand slam? Well, I think what our speaker is already doing and what many of our members are already doing is we have passed the bill with the five elements that need to happen. This is where you get the different flavors of Republicans. I...

As the whip, I know that if you had remain in Mexico and we could get our right flank to say, all right, that's good for now because we only have one half of one third of government. We got to get something that is substantive to stop this incredible, this invasion, as Al Sharpton calls it, at our southern border. Of all people, Al Sharpton called it an invasion. Well, it's everybody but the current Democrat elected officials who recognize this issue and even local Democrats recognize.

Like Eric Adams in New York, they may object to certain elements of what Republicans want to do, but they're admitting to the scope of the problem. Which leads to my question. What are Democrats in Congress not getting about the gravity of this issue? Well, I tell you the story of a special election that we have going next Tuesday in Long Island. This is a very difficult seat for us to win.

We have a former incumbent who has almost universal name ID against our candidate, who's a relative newcomer with an amazing story. When this thing started, his favorables were extraordinary. But he ran it. He is running a campaign based on MAGA and abortion, which we've seen all across the country. They're attacking her for being part of MAGA and for in the abortion issue.

She is running ads on immigration in Long Island, New York, and how he is part of the problem. And Joe Biden's not solving the problem. He's caused it. And guess what? There's one poll that I'm aware of that in a month they drove his negatives up 29 points. And his is not having any impact on her. So, you know, what aren't they getting? Remember, we have a president.

A White House that would not acknowledge this was a problem until the last few months. And the only reason they're acknowledging it now is because it has risen to the level of a huge political liability. This is no longer just Republicans. This is Republicans, Democrats, and others. This is like one of the number one issues across the country. This is a polling issue. Now it's important because it's polling. And these guys, you know, it's funny how Washington, especially some of these Democrats, are so insular and so tribal.

Rather than listening to their people at home, they're listening to Hakeem Jeffries. They're listening to Chuck Schumer. They're listening to the White House. And they just like the Pied Piper of politics, they just all get behind them and follow them right down into the bay. And I'm hopeful that that's what they're going to do this year.

I think you brought up a good point that the first duty of a member of Congress should be to be responsive to the people that elected them in their own district. And often on our side, we forget that there are big variations between those groups of people, whether here in Arizona or in other states, issues that are important to one may be not as important to the other. And we don't give enough room.

Democrats seem to be ignoring their own voters almost across the board to pursue an MSNBC constituency. Well, it's ActBlue donors. I mean, they are led by ActBlue donors. Well, I think it's even more than that. I think it's a philosophy, Chuck. I agree with you. But I think while we, when we talk about representing the people who put you here, we believe in representing Americans here.

The Democrat, socialist, Marxist, progressive party of today is representing big government. That's their client. That's their customer. That's their constituent. It makes more sense. We've talked about this on the show before, but if you add it all up, the people who work for government at every level make up 30% of the total workforce in this country.

So that's a big voting block you can get just by spending money. But they actually believe, I would suggest, Sam, that the government is much better at taking care of us and protecting us that we can do all by ourselves. And this is the fight of our age. As we wrap up the segment, about a minute left, what is the issue or two that keeps you up at night? And do you wake up in the morning and say, what fresh hell am I going to face today?

I really don't. Well, the fresh hell could be, you know, who's on social media? What are they doing? Who are they torturing? The thing that's bothering me right now, I have no problem with a difference of opinion with a debate within our party. I think we're very fortunate in the Republican Party to have individuals with their own point of view that are willing to speak up and have this debate internally, unlike the other side where if you don't get in lockstep, you are out. They will crucify you.

We are going through a growth stage. And the hard part for us is we go through that growth stage, which I will add. It's my belief that Congress, the representative Congress, is about 10 years behind Main Street.

Because you have to have these cycles and you're bringing in people that are more in tune to what's on the ground. We're just going through that change right now, not just as a party, but as a country. Because we didn't get to it on this, and hopefully I can come back and talk about it. It's the administrative state that is killing us. Correct. Absolutely. 100%. And this is the fight. Tom Emmer, thank you so much. I apologize. I have to cut you off, folks. Breaking Battlegrounds will be back here in just a moment. Thanks, guys.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, you've been hearing us talk about Y Refi for a while now, but you need to check them out. Go to their website, invest, the letter Y, then refy.com. Learn how you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return on your investment. You have total flexibility. Anytime you need your principal back, you can get it. No penalties, no fees. This is an unbelievable opportunity to secure your family's financial future, so check them out.

888-Y-REFI-24 or on their website, invest, the letter Y, then refy.com. We're with Mark Rodd on this segment. He's a Capitol Hill reporter from the Jewish Insider. Previously, he's reported on politics for CNN and also for CNBC. Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me on. So,

We've been over two months. No, we've been longer than two months since October 7th. Do you feel there is a lessening appetite in Congress to be supportive of Israel full throttled? Or do you think you're going to start being conditions placed on aid and so forth?

So that's an interesting question. I think there's a lot of different factions that are emerging. Right after October 7th, you saw pretty much across the board in Congress very solid support for Israel in response to what had happened on October 7th. Since then, as the Israeli military campaign has gone on, that has fractured a bit. There's

60 or 70 or so lawmakers now who have called for a ceasefire, although that means different things from coming from different people. And there was a push coming from some senators as part of the defense supplemental bill to place some conditions on aid to Israel. That actually is not going to be receiving a vote because the administration has

implemented in a new memo that they released last night. That would be Thursday night. A number of new guidelines that essentially are along the lines of what these lawmakers were seeking. So essentially, they now require not just Israel, but all U.S. allies who are receiving military aid to

to provide written certifications that they're going to comply with international humanitarian law and with U.S. efforts to provide humanitarian aid into conflict zones.

And those are things that are already required under U.S. law, but this is a new requirement that there be this sort of formal written certification. So, Mark, let me stop you there. So before, this has always been requested, but you just have to say, by accepting and depositing this check, we're going to do these things. Now what Biden is suggesting in the memo is that you have to give me written assurances. Is that correct? Essentially, yes. Okay. Go ahead. Continue.

Yes. And so the lawmakers who are supporting this, particularly Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland, who was the the main sponsor of this, this push for these conditions is is essentially calling this a victory lap. He's saying that this is going to give the U.S. more leverage.

towards Israel as well as other U.S. allies, but he specifically mentioned, talking to reporters last night, more leverage towards Israel as far as impacting the conduct of their military campaign and what sorts of humanitarian aid they're allowing into Gaza.

Is this likely to have any real impact on U.S. involvement in Israel's quest to eradicate Hamas? I mean, is this going to put any actual brakes on the state of Israel as some of the Democrats might want?

I think that remains to be seen. To an extent, Israel has obviously always maintained that they are already complying with all of these international humanitarian laws and that they're doing everything that they can to let as much humanitarian aid in as they reasonably can while also thoroughly inspecting it. So I think it's really dependent on

Recently, you had a piece and covered the fact that the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to cut off U.S. aid to UNRWA.

For people who aren't familiar, what is the background on that issue? Because this is something Chuck and I have been on, but I don't think a lot of people are aware of what's been going on with this particular agency. Yes. So UNRWA, which is the United Nations Humanitarian Agency for Palestinians that provides the majority of the aid that's been going into Gaza, was found around a week or two ago in

They acknowledged that around a dozen of their employees had been allegedly involved in the October 7th attack on Israel, that they'd actually taken part in it. And those employees were dismissed. And in response to that, the administration put a temporary hold on all future U.S. aid to UNRWA. And that is a move that has been followed by a lot of other countries around the world that were also UNRWA donors.

But the issues that a lot of lawmakers have seen with UNRWA go well back further than October 7th or this latest incident. There's been a long history, and this is something that's been seen again during this conflict.

of humanitarian supplies, or sorry, of military supplies, rockets, weapons being found inside UNRWA facilities like schools. There's been longstanding concerns about the curricula that UNRWA teach in the schools that they run in Gaza. To clarify for folks, they run all the schools in Gaza using UN international U.S. support, right? Yes.

I'm not sure it's all of the schools in Gaza, but it is a very significant number of the schools for children and teens. And the materials you're referring to, these are also printed and produced by UNRWA?

There's a mix. What UNRWA will tell you is that they are bound to use the materials produced by the local host governments. So that would be the Palestinian Authority and the other authorities in Gaza. But there have also been a number of cases that have been uncovered by independent watchdogs where UNRWA teachers themselves are producing content that is anti-Semitic, that is not being directly provided by sort of another outside host government.

Explain to our audience, what do you think happened on the bipartisan, I'm using air quotes, border agreement that the Senate came up with? What went astray there? Because as conservatives, the House passed something earlier this year, which was quite strong. This doesn't match it at all. Was the Senate even communicating with the House? What are you hearing on your tour of duty on Capitol Hill?

So there's a lot of different views that have emerged on that. There have been some lawmakers who were involved with the talks who have said that the House was invited to participate and was not really willing to do so. The House obviously has, you know, Speaker Mike Johnson and others have said that they view this deal as just severely insufficient. And

Obviously, also there have been some folks who have admitted that there are some political concerns happening here in terms of not wanting to give the administration a win in an election year. But also there's been a feeling from some lawmakers that essentially this would have been futile because they feel that the administration wouldn't have enforced the powers anyway, and

And they feel that the administration isn't using the powers that it already has. So there's a lot of sort of conflicting narratives that are going around about this on the Hill. But long story short, the deal was not what a lot of Republicans and especially House Republicans were looking for and wanted.

Ultimately, that prompted Republicans to walk away from this deal. And now the Senate is moving forward with a shrunken down version of that same aid package that essentially just removes that border deal. We're with Mark Rodd, Capitol Hill reporter at The Jewish Insider. Mark, how long have you been reporting on Capitol Hill with this and CNN, CNBC and so forth? Coming up on four years now. Okay.

Does Washington seem more broken now than it did four years ago? Or is this just because we have news 24-7 now? Because it seems broke, right? It doesn't seem like it works.

I mean, certainly this is a time of some real dysfunction in Congress between in the House, obviously earlier this year, expelling the speaker, in the Senate on these much-vaunted bipartisan talks pretty quickly. After months of talks, the deal very quickly fell apart. So certainly it does look like there's a lot of dysfunction going on.

But that said, I've been on Capitol Hill all of these last four years have been sort of a very wildly chaotic time in American politics. So I'm not sure if I'd say that it is substantially more dysfunctional than it has been the past few years. But certainly there have been a lot of very high profile events.

issues over the past couple of months, especially. As you've interviewed various members on Capitol Hill, what is one common denominator you find about them that people would be surprised about? Like, are they curious? Are they just stuck in their ways? I mean, what is a common denominator you find as you interview members on both sides of the aisle?

I think one thing that might surprise people is the extent to which members, even members who vehemently disagree on certain issues, are able to work together very closely on other issues. There's a lot of work that happens on Capitol Hill that doesn't always make the top headlines, that isn't just people screaming at each other across the aisle or screaming at each other within their own parties. There's a lot of

of bipartisan work on critical issues, especially in the national security space that happens every day. And I think, you know, a lot of people, if you're not here every day, you don't get to sort of see members having those one-on-one conversations and really doing that work. We're with Mark Rodd, Capitol Hill reporter at the Jewish Insider. Mark, talking about, referring to what you were just talking about,

Should both sides be doing a better job of highlighting those instances and finding ways to get that to the public to show that, quite frankly, that there is less dysfunction than maybe the major news media would seem to present because everything's a top line issue?

You know, that's a good question. I think there are probably certainly opportunities for that, but, you know, I leave the issue of messaging up to the politicians and their consultants. Very good. Mark, how do folks follow you and your work and stay in touch with everything you're doing?

Yes. So you can find all of the work I do at jewishinsider.com. We also have a daily email newsletter that goes out in the morning with reporting from me and my colleagues both here in the United States and over in Israel, covering sort of everything that's going on with regard to this conflict in the Middle East. You can also find me on Twitter or X at Mark, M-A-R-C-R-O-D-9-7.

And you can find Jewish Insider at j underscore insider. Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today, Mark Rod. We really appreciate having you on the program. Look forward to having you back here in the future. Obviously, Chuck, I don't think these issues with Israel, Iran, and the Middle East are going away anytime soon. No, Mark's going to be busy for a long time. Yes, indeed he is. Folks, before you sign off for today...

You need to go to our website, BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. You need to go there right now and get signed up on whatever your favorite podcast program is because this show is growing by leaps and bounds. We really appreciate having all of you. But there is always an extra segment there for you, right, Chuck? There's a podcast bonus. There's a podcast bonus on there. Also, we are adding new stations this week.

We are. We're adding KSVC, 980 AM and 100.5 FM, the talk of mid-Utah, and KIXR, 1400 AM, the talk of Utah County. So how many stations total are we on right now, Kylie? 13. We're going to have to get Kylie to pull the microphone back in front of her face here. So 13, how many have we added now this year?

Well, these are the first two this year, but we added about... In the last 12 months. Yeah, in the last 12 months, we've added eight. We've added eight.

Does that make us the fastest growing weekend program in the country right now? I think it does. I think it does, too. It probably does. It probably does. I think Mark has a fascinating job and it's interesting to talk about the bipartisanship. There is a lot that gets done. I mean, the real is things still work. Doors still open. Lights get turned on. People are still helping people. And I wish I know it's not his place to, you know, suggest on messaging, but our side, Republicans. Yeah.

We do such a bad job of this, Chuck. Oh, and you know, we really do. And why we do not use talk radio more, have our members go talk to editorial boards. We're really missing opportunities to communicate with the American people. And you and I talked about this specifically right now with this border bill issue. Every Republican member should have been out on the radio, on TV, one unified message about what's going on with that bill and why it went down. And we didn't see that. Exactly. Exactly.

Folks, make sure you stay tuned. Get that podcast only segment. Also, thank you so much today to both of our guests, Mark Rodd, Capitol Hill reporter at Jewish Insider, and obviously the majority whip, Tom Emmer. Thank you so much for joining us in studio. We really appreciate having you both. Breaking Battlegrounds back next week. The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024.

If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web. With a yourname.votewebdomain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds. Fantastic guests today, really. It's always amazing to have someone like the Majority Whip come in studio here, take that time out of his schedule to talk to all of us. Yeah.

But folks, talking about taking some time out of your schedule, Saturday morning, 9 a.m., you need to be taking some time out of your schedule, especially if you're up in Utah where we have two new stations joining us, a.m. 980 and a.m. 1400. Folks, I'm sorry, we're actually Saturday at 8 a.m. up there, are we? 8 a.m., yep.

So first thing in the morning, get your coffee, get your battlegrounds. You're driving the kids to soccer, their soccer games or baseball games. Their hockey games. Their hockey games. That too. Okay. I hear, you know, it's been a long time since we've had a sunshine moment. Sunshine moments have evolved into Kipper's Corner. Yeah.

Yeah, because sunshine was too sunshiny for me. Yeah, well, and Kipper's Corner is a blood-drenched, vile place that we all love. Yeah, but every once in a while we have those weeks where, thankfully, it's a little slower. People didn't lose their mind too much. We did not have a mass axe killing this week, hence we're going to have to go with something positive.

Yeah, positive, fun, that kind of thing. Okay. Yeah, Super Bowl related. This came up and I thought it was interesting. Two different things. Wait, Kylie just told us, by the way, that someone pulled the fire alarm on the Niners last night. Yeah, that was actually Jeremy who said that, but I didn't get a look into it. No, I read it this morning. It was actually there.

Well, that's unfortunate. As someone who roots against the Niners, I approve. And I'm rooting for the Niners. And I will get into that why. Okay. Because we have a little torn household right now. My husband is from Kansas City, so he is actually a Chiefs fan, and I'm going to be a 49ers fan this weekend because McCaffrey brought me my first fantasy football championship. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I've got to back you up here, Kylie, because this is an important thing based on your husband's career path development. Yeah.

Your husband now plays for whom? The Red Sox. Yes. What city are the Red Sox in? I'm supposed to be a Patriots fan now. That's correct. You can kind of get away on this, but let's be clear for Isaiah. He is now a New England Patriots fan. Bruins, Celtics, Isaiah, if you're listening, understand this.

We do not give mulligans on this issue. There is no split household here. I will be sure to inform him on that. Yeah. Look, you're messing with the religion. That's exactly right. That's what I heard. The only approved religion in Massachusetts. That is the only approved religion in Massachusetts. And look, it's been that way for a long time. I went to some my sister's friends were older. Their wedding when I was a four year old kid.

Two and a half hours of Catholic Mass, an hour devoted to the glories of the Red Sox and the evil of the Yankee Empire, and that place was rapture. I remember years ago, I was probably about 12, I had a church activity, and they had a young man who had never been to church, he came, and they asked him to say the prayer. He gets up and says, Oh, dear Lord, give the Dallas Cowboys a Super Bowl victory this weekend. Amen.

All right. Kylie, what do we got? Yeah, so this is a little fun fact that I did not know. However, speaking of Christian McCaffrey, championship win, thank you. His father is a three-time Super Bowl winner. And his coach, while he won all three Super Bowls, was Mike Shanahan, which is the father of Kyle Shanahan, who is McCaffrey's coach this year going into his Super Bowl. Ed McCaffrey. Ed McCaffrey was a head coach. That's a fantastic tidbit. Isn't that kind of fun? So anyways, as we know, this is the most expensive Super Bowl game

So far, the average ticket price is about $8,600. However, there was a man, Dion Rich. He passed away in 2022. But he was successful in sneaking into 35 Super Bowls. And how he would do so is just money wasn't an issue. He said that wasn't his problem. It was the fact that he just wanted to live life and do fun, outrageous things. He one time pretended to be one of the refs and they believed him.

He pretended to be the team doctor, came with stethoscopes and all of the materials you would need. He pretended to be with the band, the press. Oh, my gosh. One time he pushed someone in a wheelchair pretending to be the help of like helping them in. How much of this happened after 9-11? So he said after 9-11, I have a little tidbit about that, that it did become a little more difficult. However, that first year after 9-11, it only took him six minutes to sneak in. All right.

But with doing all of this, he was in some of the most historic photos that you guys may have seen. He was on the podium for the first Super Bowl in 1967 when the commissioner presented the championship trophy. Oh, my gosh. He's actually holding up Vince Lombardi in – or not Vince Lombardi. I'm sorry. The Lombardi trophy? Yes, he's holding up the trophy. He's also holding up – there is a photo of him holding up the –

Cowboys coach one year when they had won the Super Bowl. He has photos with, he also snuck into other things like the Oscars to which he got a photo with Oprah. So total he, well not total because there wasn't a list of completely everything, but he snuck into eight Oscars, 14 Olympics, 35 Super Bowls, the Kentucky Derby. He's in the winner's circle of a Kentucky Derby photo. He snuck into the Playboy Mansion to Frank Sinatra's memorial and

And just thought it was a fun thing. I feel like that's something Tom Bilston can do here from Phoenix. Oh, yeah, for sure. I have a friend who's an electrician who sneaks into sporting events here locally because he wears his electrician's jacket in the thing. And nobody will question an electrician in a yellow jacket walking in. It makes me feel really good about security at these events I go to all the time now. Right? Yeah.

Apparently, we just had to... One time he pretended that he had a missing child and they just let him back in. I'm not sure if they helped him search for the child. However, they let him back in. Oh, boy. Yeah. So, that was my little fun story. Take that to your Super Bowl party this year. That is a fun story. A couple of items that came across the news that you're probably not hearing about, folks. So...

Basically, being stoned makes you a bad driver. The University of California, San Diego has shown that marijuana stays in our system and impacts driving ability for a long time. People should wait four hours after smoking a joint to get behind the wheel if you take an edible six to eight hours.

Okay. I mean... And I'm sure people toking up and taking edibles are not waiting that long. Oh. No. No, look. I mean, Arizona being a state that legalized, right? You see people driving down the road all the time smoking marijuana while they're driving. So you wonder if there's going to be legislation...

with these facts now but if you get pulled over is there a way to test it like you're like high now well so if they if they can determine that you were smoking driving down the road they can take it you but that's bad that's about the only other only way because there is no easy test you're going to need some legislation on this for sure the problem is is i understand it is that all the testing will catch anything that you've done in like the last 30 days right but

And so from a court standard, it's really hard to make the argument if someone says, well, I smoked marijuana 20 days ago. Yeah.

You know, they're not going to be impaired at that point, but there's no way to prove when they really did or didn't. Well, that's a tough one. That's a big problem. No, that is a problem, and it's going to get worse and worse. Well, and there is data I have seen previously which shows that highway fatalities have gone up more in states that have legalized marijuana than in states that haven't.

So there is data now that suggests a strong tie. It's like all time. You just need years of a certain behavior to start monitoring and collecting the data. And so I think probably here in the next three to five years, we'll probably start seeing state legislatures attack this issue. I would think so. As they should. And I would think someone would actually make a bundle of money by coming up with a test that somehow accurately assesses within some reasonable window when you did consume it. Exactly. Exactly.

So I always like to talk about when possible the idiot thing Seattle, Washington is doing. I mean, do they do smart things? No, no, no, not really. I always crack up with cities like this who think, well, look at our growth. Look at our, you know, look how much money we've got in taxes. Well, because you had Amazon created there, because you got Boeing outside, it has nothing to do with the government of Seattle. None. And so they take advantage of capitalism that has propped this up.

It was part of what they were doing, Portland, Seattle, all these places in the 90s and the start of the 2000s. They were well-run cities. Mm-hmm.

You can debate Republican, Democrat, but those were well-run cities in the 90s and the early 2000s. Well, I think Seattle, a year or two ago, actually kicked out their city DA and elected a more moderate person. And I haven't heard about crazy crime, people being let out on probation and so forth up there. No, they appear to be course-correcting some. But that's because they have a big corporate influence, which has put their foot down on a lot of things. Yeah.

Seattle and their progressive council had a great idea to get more money in the pockets of food delivery drivers. So they added a special $5 tax officially called pay up on top of every food order. But of course, those taxes never work. And good intentions go to die. The food delivery drivers are seeing business crater and their incomes literally fall. Matter of fact, one driver put it,

It's definitely backfiring. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Which is not surprising. Without that tax, I can't even afford to use those delivery. I do not use those delivery apps. I will drive out and go pick it up. And I like that lots of restaurants that didn't do takeaway in the past are now doing takeaway because as a sports guy, especially like I can't watch a Red Sox game in a crowded bar.

I'm afraid of my response. I do not want people to see the tears. How many Red Sox games do you watch a year? I watch at least half of them. All right. I will, too. I am obsessive about it. Maybe. Maybe. Well, I literally have the MLB TV subscription for that and that only.

Yeah, and I use my MLB, but there's several teams I follow. It depends on who's pitching and so forth. Another news, Washington, D.C. hit a 20-year high in homicide rates, up 36%. That's our nation's capital. So if you want to know if progressive governance doesn't work, just look at Washington, D.C.

Right? I mean, they're a perfect example. But something interesting, you both know what Nextdoor is, right? The app where you report things and so forth. The app that sends me more emails per day than any other app. So neighborhood communication. Well, their stock's tanking. And the reason for it is the engineers at Nextdoor don't approve of people reporting crime. Okay? So when they do it, they block...

People reporting crime. Well, people now are just getting off it and just saying, well, we'll find something else. Hey, look, great market opportunity, right? Because the number one – Ring. Right, Ring. Ring recently coming out and announcing that they will not cooperate with police investigations anymore. What's the point of a Ring camera? They used to literally – as recently as a couple of years ago, like when I was working at the Phoenix City Council –

We had a program where the city subsidized residents to buy ring cameras specifically because the police would then have access to that footage. Correct. What's their defense of saying I'm not going to provide you this footage or not work with them? Because because they say it's discriminatory now.

The camera only works on certain people or what? I mean, it's discriminatory against criminals. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Like, this is who they're complaining about us discriminating against. Yeah, criminals are who's caught on camera. Yeah. Doing that. Yeah. So what's the point of having a ring camera now other than to, like,

Talk to somebody who shows up at your door when you're not there. I mean, there's some features it has, but the primary purpose is security. Exactly. And they will not share with police this data. You can't even, as a homeowner, send it to the police. Oh, wow. I need to change mine. My ring camera in Florida always tells me about alligators on the loose, which is pretty cool. In Florida, I feel like this is a legitimate alert. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Well, folks, great show this week. Yep. It was great having the majority whip on. It was fantastic. I love it when we can get folks like that in the studio. Yeah.

the conversation's just always that much better. And so for folks out there, especially other members, if you're in Arizona and who doesn't want to be in Arizona and, you know, knock a golf ball around once in a while, you need to come in studio here. Absolutely. On behalf of Sam, Kylie Kipper of Kylie's Corner, and this is Chuck. Thanks for joining us. Follow us on BreakingBadGrounds.vote on our sub stack and anywhere you get your podcasts or on the stations listed on our website. Have a great weekend.