Tennessee U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty joined The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy Thursday, where in a stunning statement of clarity, exposed the Biden administration’s intention to repurpose ICE from an immigration enforcement agency to a resettlement bureau through a manipulation of the Continuing Resolution budget.
TRANSCRIPT
Michael Patrick Leahy:
6:33 a.m. – in-studio, all-star panelist, good friend, Clint Brewer.
On the newsmaker line right now, we are delighted to have as our guest, United States Senator Bill Hagerty.
Good morning, Senator Hagerty.
Bill Hagerty: Good morning.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Briefly, last night the Senate voted 83-11 to confirm C.Q. Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He’s been criticized by conservatives as being sort of a social justice warrior. I think you voted to confirm him. Could you briefly tell us why?
Bill Hagerty: Well, I did some due diligence on this with my friend [Senator] Tom Cotton. Who has great military experience, and we dug into it and found out that these policies that we’re all upset about, the wokeism in the military, coming out of the personnel department at the DOD, a very leftist political appointee over there, a failed political candidate actually, that they’ve put in office, and the Biden administration has done this across the administration, putting activists and radicals in the organization.
The men in uniform like the general were put in a bad position, I think, and compelled to sign orders and letters of this nature to put forward the Biden administration policy. But I’ll tell you, this is a position that we’ve needed filled.
You know, I served as U. S. Ambassador to Japan. I dealt with Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that point you know, on a regular basis – on a weekly basis – and we’ve got threats around the world now that are higher than they existed when I was serving as ambassador dealing with North Korea and China.
Now we’ve got what’s erupted in Ukraine; you’ve got the Taiwan Strait – it’s an unstable world and we need to have these positions filled, so I think the majority that’s why the vast majority of my colleagues wanted to see this get done.
Michael Patrick Leahy: You have been highly critical of the Biden administration’s plans with regard to how they’re dealing with the southern border. They have some really crazy plans to remake parts of DHS, ICE, I guess.
What are your thoughts on that?
Bill Hagerty: Michael, it’s just amazing that this administration will stop at nothing to achieve their goal of transforming America. Joe Biden talked about it in the 2020 race. You’ve seen the Democrat Party, again, just completely hijacked by the radical Left.
And their notion of defunding the police, defunding ICE continues. And what we’re seeing right now is the Biden administration trying to use the fog of this ginned-up crisis around keeping the government open on September 30th as a means for them to come in and finish off ICE.
The way they’ve done it is slipped in language in a body of legislative language that’s appended to the Continuing Resolution that they’re calling “a clean Continuing resolution” – something that would keep the government running without any serious policy changes.
But if you read the fine print on page 51, to be precise, what you see is their request to the authority to reprogram the entirety of ICE’s budget. And just to remind our listeners, ICE is the only law enforcement agency we have left that’s charged with defending our border, with deporting criminal aliens who’ve entered our country illegally, many of them with violent criminal records.
They’re supposed to be buying plane tickets to send those people back to their home countries to deport them. What the Biden administration wants to do is turn ICE into a resettlement agency. $8. 2 billion of their budget – all of their budget, as a matter of fact – to turn them into a resettlement agency.
So they’ll be buying plane tickets instead of sending them back to their countries of origin. They’ll be sending to a town near you or me.
It’s just absolutely ridiculous. It would be the end of ICE.
Michael Patrick Leahy: That is the most concise explanation that I’ve heard about Biden administration policies with regards to the southern border.
“They want to turn ICE into a resettlement agency,” and you see that happening all the time.
Clint Brewer’s in-studio here, Senator Haggerty, and he’s got a question for you.
Bill Hagerty: Good morning, Clint.
Clint Brewer: Hey, good morning, sir.
Question: I want to tap into your vast knowledge of economics and, and get your opinion on this narrative that’s out there now about a so-called “soft landing” for the economy coming out of inflation and dodging recession – there’s some headwinds for that, the rising price of oil.
What do you think about this narrative that’s developing that that’s possible?
Bill Hagerty: It’s very difficult to do, very rare in history that it’s happened and what we’ve seen is the most rapid increase in interest rates we’ve had in forty years.
The market is not accustomed to this; we’ve seen already some early bank failures, Silicon Valley Bank caught – I think there’s great concern that the economy’s in a very weak position.
You see what’s happening right now with the UAW workers strike. Why is this happening? This is happening because workers have seen their wages decline in real terms.
Inflation is eating the average American’s wages alive. They’re down negative 5 percent in terms of their buying power. At the same time, you’ve got the Biden administration spending massive amounts of taxpayer money on these Green New Deal fantasies, driving up inflation, waging war on oil and gas here in America.
Again, most people have to drive to work. Energy is a major input factor to most things that are manufactured, driving prices up and you know people are suffering tremendously.
With this type of inflation wages aren’t keeping up you get dislocations like we’re seeing right now in the automotive industry.
That’s going to continue to manifest itself in more and more shutdowns.
Clint, you and I worked together on the automotive industry so much in Tennessee. I think this is just part and parcel of more bad policy under the Biden administration, achieving a very bad result, making it even more difficult for this “soft landing” to be a potential reality.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Senator Hagerty, this is not exactly a policy issue, but I think it sort of represents how the entire United States federal government has gone downhill.
So the Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, to accommodate Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who apparently still has some – I don’t know, behavioral problems, I guess – has changed the dress code.
And now you can wear whatever you want on the floor of the Senate. He’s there with a hoodie and sweatpants. Doesn’t that diminish the respect people have for the United States Senate?
Bill Hagerty: It absolutely does.
Michael, you hit the nail on the head, and this is a symptom of the Democrat Party’s continued degradation of all of the institutions in Washington.
And it’s also taking public confidence down in the process.
If you think about our law enforcement agencies like the FBI you know, the politicization of that entity at the top. Horrible results.
You think about what’s happening at the Department of Justice, again, massively politicized, being used by the incumbent president of the United States to go after his most likely opponent politically – people see this around the world.
I mean, I think about how does, how does MBS [Mohammed bin Salman, the Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia] look at this when he’s been criticized for some very bad things, but he sees Joe Biden using the Justice Department to go after mothers and fathers who go to PTA meetings and complain about what the teachers union is doing to their children.
What degradation of institutions and institutional trust across America.
And now, the icing on the cake is Chuck Schumer trying to take down the decorum of the United States Senate. It’s degrading to the institution. I don’t think any of my colleagues are going to fall along with it. In fact, Susan Collins jokingly said she’s going to wear a bikini on the floor just to demonstrate how ludicrous this is.
We’ll see what happens with it. I think it’s just a downright shame.
Michael Patrick Leahy: So, this didn’t happen yesterday in the Senate, but in the House, they grilled Merrick Garland. He was not a particularly good witness, and I looked at that, and it seemed to me that his answer – it seemed to me, it looked like he perjured himself.
Bill Hagerty: Well, this is not the first time, Michael.
I encourage you to go back and look at his testimony with me a year ago. That testimony is what brought these whistleblowers out. I questioned him directly about whether or not the DOJ was interfering with the U.S. Attorney in Delaware whether the U.S. Attorney in Delaware needed a special counsel in order to achieve what he wanted to achieve.
Garland, there, assured me that Weiss had every latitude, every authority, that he needed to prosecute this case in any way he saw fit. He kept going back to the fact that Weiss had been appointed under Donald Trump as if that was some sort of inoculation for him.
I want to remind you that Weiss was appointed in Delaware. The two senators from Delaware, Joe Biden’s home state, by the way, the two senators from Delaware, both Democrats, they had to give their permission for the appointment of Weiss. This is not a “Trump” U.S. attorney. This is somebody that the Trump administration was able to get through the two Democrat senators.
Weiss has been all over the map in terms of his public statements, but these whistleblowers came forward and said, when they saw Garland testified to me, that why is that complete latitude that he wasn’t being interfered with by the DOJ, that was entirely false. The DOJ political appointees were stepping in and blocking Weiss’s efforts to prosecute the case.
They let the statute of limitations run out on the real evidence that would have. You know, implicated Joe Biden, that’s the money laundering, that’s the most serious charges and focused on some sort of ridiculous charges on, did he fill out a form properly for a gun – which frankly, if you or I did the same thing, we’d be in jail.
But they focused on giving Hunter a plea deal there where they’re going to slap his wrist and let him walk. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. And I think Merrick Garland has put himself in an extraordinarily bad position with the answers that he’s given me in the past and the answers that he gave yesterday at the House.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Last question for you, Senator Hagerty: Are you having fun in your job?
Bill Hagerty: Well, it’s gotten a lot better since the Republicans took over the House. I was back with them yesterday again last night. And during the day yesterday, they are pushing hard to put a more conservative number on the table in terms of a Continuing Resolution to keep the government open.
They’re working on border control – we have got to get our arms back around our budget – the runaway spending.
We’ve also got to bring sanctity and security back to our country.
So, I’m thankful that they’re in a position to do it. I’ve encouraged them to give us something that we can get behind in the Senate and really put Chuck Schumer in a corner and ask Schumer the question: ‘Do you want to go for border security or do you want to shut down the government over this?’
Let’s see what Schumer’s answer is. I am optimistic that they’re going to get to an answer in the House and that’ll give us something to work with.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Well, Senator Hagerty, thanks so much for joining us today.
And let me just remind our listeners, Senator Bill Hagerty, the hardest working guy and the most prompt guy I’ve ever dealt with.
If you’ve got to call in at 6:30 a.m., you call in at 6:30 a.m., exactly – and we appreciate that discipline, Senator Hagerty.
Bill Hagerty: Oh, thank you. Always great to be with you, Michael. Clint; great to hear your voice.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Thanks for joining us.
We’ll be back with more after this.
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