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I'm Ben Dominick. You're listening to Fox News Radio. I had the opportunity to talk today to Senator Tommy Tuberville. He has been at the center of a controversy that's been playing out over the past several months regarding his hold on a number of different
promotions within the Pentagon structure. Obviously, this has affected a number of different military promotions, and he's been getting increasing pressure from the pro-military wing of the party and of the Senate over the fact that he's refusing to allow these promotions to go forward. Now, just to put this in perspective,
Any senator has the ability to put a hold on legislation or on these promotions. And it's because, you know, essentially in the modern era, they don't expect for senators to sit in their seats the whole time. They can simply dictate that, you know, hey, if if I was there, I would put a rejection of unanimous consent on this type of promotion.
And it effectively works as a whole. We see it all over the place in terms of the way that Democrats, for instance, have treated nominations under Republican presidents.
In this case, Tommy Tuberville is fighting back because he believes that the Pentagon has deployed a policy which is both immoral and illegal as it regards their funding of abortions among members of the military. In the post-Dobbs reality, the Biden administration decided that rather than, you know, sort of a
allow the law to play out at the state level, that they would find ways to essentially go around the Hyde Amendment, which has been the policy of the United States, you know, for as long as you can probably remember, and which prohibits any kind of taxpayer funding for abortions. The
The way of getting around that, though, was through the form of a memo. It was not something that was a law that they passed. It was not anything that actually went through the formal process. It was not something that was included in any piece of legislation. They just decided with a phone and a pen, as Obama used to say, that they would pay for not just the process,
the amount of time that people would, that various members of the military would take in order to travel to get abortions, but also for their travel. And that's something that Senator Tuberville found to be objectionable. He saw that it was illegal. He saw that it was unconstitutional. It's not something that the United States of America, you know, invests in the power of the presidency to have the authority to do. And so the way that he thought that he would fight back against this is putting holds on a number of different Pentagon promotions.
During peacetime, this was something that he could do with only a handful of members really pushing back against him. But obviously, as things have gotten more and more heated around the world, not just the war in Ukraine, but certainly now with the conflict in Israel, the level of holds has created a situation where there are a number of different people, including people in his own party, who have gone after him for doing this.
One, Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska, used remarks that were so pointed that they were actually seized upon by the Biden White House and used in social media ads against Senator Tuberville. From my perspective, this is an act of cowardice. There are actually no members of the Senate who I believe have espoused themselves as being pro-life who are really standing up with Senator Tuberville the way that they ought to be with the
possible exception of Mike Lee. There are several people who have given him support or small notes of support over the course of this period, but really they ought to be lockstep on this issue. It's clearly a violation of the law. And even if you aren't pro-life or strongly pro-life, it's something that you should be opposed to if you believe in constitutional government.
Now, Senator Tuberville has put has had the screws put to him in terms of the pushback from the Republican conference. They believe that they're going to, you know, put him in a position where essentially it's he's incapable to maintain these holes that they, you know, have a situation where they're willing to compromise with Democrats in order to get around them, including potentially a nuclear option to allow these nominations to move forward. And I want to say again,
These holds, by the way, they do not prevent the promotions. They simply prevent the Senate from promoting these people via unanimous consent, meaning that they would have to go through the whole process of actually debating and voting on each of these promotions as opposed to just giving them a rubber stamp. In other words, they would have to work. They would have had to stay here in August as opposed to going back home and raising money. The Senate...
is notoriously opposed to having to do the work of any kind. And therefore, they find Senator Tuberville
in his freshman way, incredibly infuriating. So Senator Tuberville talked to me about the situation, about his plans going forward, his anticipation of a lawsuit against the Pentagon and others within the authority system that have allowed this illegal activity to take place, and what he expects going forward. We also talked about this season of college football, the Michigan scandal, what he expects to see from the coming college playoff, and more. Senator Tommy Tuberville coming up next.
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Senator, it's great to have a chance to talk to you again. And I know that you have been facing a lot of attention in these past couple of weeks, including from your own party.
I just wanted to. Yeah, I've been trying to stay out of the line of fire, but it seems like I've gotten a line of fire on both sides, Democrats and then a few Republicans have come at me. But, you know, that's fine. You know, I'm standing up for what I believe in. And it's just it's been a long nine months. I'd like to get this over with. But you can't get it over with unless you get communication from the Pentagon and the White House. And they don't want to talk. They don't want any discussion on this. They just want to.
Just keep our military beat down with no promotions. They blame it on me, but actually it's the White House and the Pentagon. Well, it seems to me that there's a very simple calculation here going on. If this is the area where your own colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle feel that things need to move,
then where do they feel like they can fight instead? Because this is clearly a justified fight. The Pentagon under Joe Biden is doing something that is clearly unconstitutional and illegal. So are they going to give on something else? Are they going to find some other thing to sort of move on to if they believe that these need to move now? Or are they just going to give up?
Yeah, well, I understand that, too. And, you know, I think a lot of us on the Republican side are between a rock and a hard place, but we're really not because as Republicans, we're for pro-life.
We're for the Constitution. And we are strong for the military. I hadn't figured out yet what the Democrats are strong on. I know they're strong on just squeezing the life out of our country because every decision, Ben, in three years that I've been here, has been detrimental to the citizens and Americans in the United States of America. It is absolutely strangling the life out of what our parents and great-grandparents have built. Look, the pressure on you has to be immense.
what are you going to do now? What's the situation? How do you guide, how do you go forward on this? And, and what's the, you know, your preferred answer on this and what will, are you willing to accept as an answer on this? Just given that, you know, it seems like, you know, as much as I and many other strongly pro-life Americans support you. And I just have to say, you know, you know, military family on both sides also support you in this, you know, that what,
how do we find a path through given the challenge that we're facing in terms of the fiery nature of the world at the moment?
And what a lot of people don't really understand, I'm a military brat. My dad actually died on active duty. He was in the military all of his life. And so there's nobody stronger for the military than I am. But here's what we got to work this out. And everybody thinks it's about pro-life. It's really more. And again, I'm a 100% pro-life person, but it's really more for
for the executive overreach of the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense. Because 1984, we passed a law for the military to have an abortion policy. Then a couple of times later over the years, we changed it, amended it in the NDAA, and it has been absolutely one of the best things probably that the military has done in terms of policy because there have been zero complaints. I mean, nobody's complained about it.
So here comes the White House and the Pentagon after Roe-Wade went down. They can't handle the states, but they can handle federal employees. So we're just going to change it with a memo. Now, they're going around the Constitution. Now, the other thing is they changed it where the taxpayers had to pay for part of this. And that is against the law. So we'll probably start a lawsuit soon.
We'll file a lawsuit against whoever to get to the bottom of this. I think the biggest thing that might happen for us is the House NDA language has exactly what we want in the policy. It goes back to the old one. And so what happens is if we can just keep the same language in the Senate version,
which I think we'll have a good chance to do, then it will go to the White House. And I don't think Joe Biden is going to veto an NDAA, not because of this. And so I think it would work out just fine. You know, one thing that I'm curious about with that is, isn't the simplest and most obvious kind of compromise here
that the White House could have done from the get-go is to say that they would give people the time off to travel, but without that taxpayer funding, which is clearly illegal under the existing law. Exactly. And it's very simple. Just take the taxpayer out of it. You know, the abortion policy is because of rape, incest, and harm to the mom. There are states that will give abortions. The problem is they put taxpayer-funded travel on it.
And there's no reason for them to do that. It's absolutely stupid for the Pentagon to put themselves in this position. They are actually the ones holding up all these promotions. I'm just asking for them to go back to the policy, just take the taxpayer name out of it, and let's go back to work. In terms of the response that you've gotten from your own fellow members, and I'm not asking you to diss specific senators or anything like that,
It does seem, though, that the level of animosity towards you for a fight that seems very simply about enforcing the law and not letting the administration get away with breaking the law, that there's been just a heck of a lot of vinegar thrown at you from your own fellow members. Was that surprising to you? And do you think that that's just kind of telling in the sense that there's not more vinegar directed at you?
the administration itself for doing this. Well, exactly. I think sometimes people get the cart before the horse here. And I understand Dan Sullivan.
and Johnny Ernst. They're military people and they're fighting for the military, but they also ran on being pro-life. Yeah. And so you, you, but you can be for both. You can, and the pressure shouldn't be on me on the floor. I've gone to the floor 13, 14 times and we'll go back again tomorrow against the Democrat.
and object to the UCs that the Democrats will bring up all these nominees. I've spent hours on the floor, hours, the last nine months of myself down there. Mike Lee's been some. We've had a few other senators. But, you know, I don't mind that. I'll go down there and object to the end.
I don't know what's happening in the Pentagon. I don't know what's happening in the White House. I don't know who's making these decisions. But there's an obvious loss of communication over there because if they really wanted to get back to work and promote these generals and admirals and really do what's right for everybody,
they would just change. Hey, no more taxpayer money. Let's go back to the policy and let's go back to work. But they care nothing about that. Has this been an experience for you in terms of understanding both the strength and the limits of an individual Senator in the sense that you have done something here that I think really stands out to a lot of us who've been around the Senate. I'm a former staffer myself for Senator Cornyn. You know, I know a lot of, you know, staffers who are there currently, you know, and, and one of the things that's been impressive about this is, Oh,
oh, this is a guy who's come along and because he doesn't know or doesn't necessarily care for the simple sort of backroom deals, the way that people kind of normally act, he's just following the rules as written and using them to his advantage in an impressive kind of way. And I think that that's something that is pretty unique because not a lot of senators come to Washington and just sort of say, well, what does the rules allow me to do? Well, I'm going to do it.
Yeah, and you brought it up. You have to have good staffers. You really do because there's so many things that hearings you have to go to, so many things on your plate. It's not like offense, defense, and kicking game in football. I mean, there's 15, 20 different items every day that you've got to pay attention to. But we jumped in on this one just to bring to light –
you know, how bad this administration is in terms of the constitution. They could care less. Uh, and again, it goes back to, uh, executive overreach here. And if we continue to allow this to happen, my gosh, where is this country headed? And, uh, you know, it just, it, it concerns me that, uh,
that they're squeezing the life out of this country every day. And this is, this is not a small thing. This is a big thing, but there's a lot of these big things that's gone. That's going to just overshadow our country as we go along. Well, one thing that I think is a dynamic, especially coming out of these, you know, off year elections. So I think people are over reading it a bit. You know,
you know, is this a fear on the part of the DC consultant class and a lot of donors, uh, that, you know, Republican, the, their allegiance to the pro-life cause, uh, is something that is proving to be a significant detriment. Now I know that that's something that, you know, is, uh,
something that they've tried to peel away in a lot of different ways over the last couple of decades. Obviously, you're someone who's become prominent for standing and fighting on this issue. What do you say to your colleagues who basically say, can't we just tamper things down? Can't we just avoid talking about this? We'd rather talk about, you know, popular things like
like cutting Medicare for people or something like that, you know, pick, pick your poison. Um, what's, what's your response to the folks who basically just say, uh, you know, you're highlighting an issue we don't want to talk about. Yeah. How about stopping the people coming across the border? That would be a good, that would be a good, good beginning. Uh, but yeah, but you got to hit everything being, to be honest with you. And again, uh,
I've had a couple of reports say, now, have you changed your stance? You know, it looks like all the Republicans lost because of abortion. No, they didn't. And again, this is not really about abortion. This is about the Constitution and overreach of what this administration is doing and taxpayers. I mean, the Supreme Court did the right thing. They kicked Roe Wade back to the states and said, we're going to take politicians and judges out of this. You vote on it. You vote
You vote on what you want in the state. And that's the way it should be in 100 percent. And and but what happened is is Biden and his cronies behind the scenes, wherever they are, said, you know, we can't handle the states, but we can we can sure do what as much as possible can for for federal employees. And that and that's the tactic, by the way, goes back to the Obama administration of basically we're going to do this thing we know is illegal and then we're going to dare you to sue us.
And then we're going to fight it out in court and trust our trial lawyers and everybody else to try to, you know, muck up things to the point where this policy becomes more permanent. That's a real danger for you here. Yeah, well, exactly right. But there's there's really no danger in this because they've changed it with a memo. It didn't go through the it didn't go through Congress. And again, I told the secretary of defense nine months ago, you move this back and then send over what you want to vote on. And no matter which way it goes.
I'll lift my host. It's not about winning or losing the battle on this on this policy. It's about how they're doing it. And and we continue to allow this administration circumvent Congress, go around the Constitution. It's over. You know, you can sack the bats. More of the Ben Domenech podcast right after this.
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I have to ask you just a couple quick questions about college football. First off, I have to get your take on what's going on in Michigan. I don't know if you've had any time to read about Connor Stallions and the situation up there with Coach Harbaugh. I'm curious as to your take on it, especially given the level of success that they've had this year.
Yeah, you know, it's unfortunate. It's overshadowed their football team. And that's what you don't want to happen. It should be about the players and the team, not about coaches, what they do behind the scenes. The one thing I can say is I change my signals every week, okay? And if you change your signals every week, you have no problem. Don't worry about it. But there's so many of these people that don't do that. I mean, for some reason, they just continue to go by the same over and over signals. They don't want to have to teach it.
that it becomes something that people could steal. Everybody tries to steal the signals during the game. I mean, you've got people in the press box looking down with binoculars trying to – that's the reason they put all these signs up around the signal callers on the sideline. That happens on every team. But some things about sending people on the road and video and stuff or standing in other teams' coaching gear and watching signals, that's a little overboard right there. They're going to get –
get spanked pretty good on this, but, uh, you know, uh, it, you know, you got to take the punishment with the crime and that's really not a crime. It's just an ethics law. Yeah. I mean, uh, and you know, obviously, you know, Michigan fans, you know, uh, I'm sure there'll, there'll be a lot of people saying, you know, flags fly forever at the end of this, if they come out with a championship, uh, if you were, if you had to predict today,
Who do you think ends up in that final playoff before we move to the 12 situation next year? Yeah, this is as equal as I've seen the team probably in 15 years. Alabama's not great. They're good. They're getting better. Georgia's not great. They're good. They lost their best player. Big 10 team, Michigan, Ohio State, they're going to be right there. There's not a lot of difference between them. The surprise to me this year is the West Coast and Oregon, Washington. They both have good quarterbacks.
I would think that either one of those two teams could run the table, Oregon or Washington, how they can score points because if they stay healthy. There's not a lot of offense in the SEC this year. It's mostly defense. And they could get outscored by some of those teams on the West Coast. So a lot of parity there.
And the NIL is not what I like. I don't like the new rules where players can make all this money. And I'm not against them making money. Joe Manchin and I are trying to – we came up with a bill trying to help this. But we're not going to be able to get it passed because, you know, the Democrats want to unionize everybody. What else is new?
But, you know, again, I think it's going to be a great playoff year. I think you're going to have a national champions team at the end of the year that nobody expected. I think that's what's going to happen. Do you think that there is a situation, though, where –
These West Coast teams, they do that, and then they still let in. If Bama beats Georgia or something like that, the selection committee just sort of feels that itch to say we can't put a West Coast team in here over a bigger eyeball draw.
Well, I know for a fact that they take teams that turn on televisions. We know that TV pays the bills, and hopefully they stay out of it. But I don't think there's any doubt Oregon and Washington, if they continue to win all the way to the end of the year, they should be, obviously, and have an opportunity to play for a national championship. Good.
Thank you so much, Coach, for taking the time to talk to me today. And good luck in terms of navigating this in the coming days. We'll all be watching. All right, Ben. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Ben Domenech Podcast on Fox News Radio. We'll be back soon with more to dive back into the fray. Listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.
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