Hour 2 - President DeSantis?

Clay Travis (0:00)

Welcome back in hour number two, Clay and Buck appreciate all of you hanging out with us. We are joined now by our friend, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. We're gonna get into what exactly the Senate accomplished in the first two years, which was the critique that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been making over the past couple of days, very specifically. But Senator Johnson, let's start with this.

Where did you spend Tuesday? What's your reaction to Tuesday now that you're gonna be back in the minority? We're still waiting. I should mention, in Alaska, 637 votes with 78% of the vote in separates Mary Peltola, Dan Sullivan. The fake Dan Sullivan got 3,600 votes. So presumably, he is the difference in why the real Dan Sullivan is not winning in that race.

And so we bring in Ron Johnson now, and we're waiting obviously still on Mississippi as well. Your reaction to Tuesday, how did you spend the day, and what are you hearing, if anything, about Alaska and Mississippi?

Ron Johnson (1:13)

I watched the election at night with my family, and I will say nobody is more frustrated or more PO'd about the results.

I ran 2010 because we were more injured children's future, our nation was in peril. The Democrat socialist policies were destroying this country and are destroying this country. So now I could not be more disappointed in the result, the stunning defeat. And I know DeSantis said it was an extermination event. The one thing I've been trying to convey to my colleagues in the United States Senate, because I just don't think a lot of them recognize it, is that Democrats are out to cause our extinction.

They want to eliminate an opposition party. They're not interested in democracy.

Every leftist, their goal is power. They want power. And just like in Venezuela, you get one man, one vote, one time. They have elections, but they're not legitimate elections. And we know what Democrats would do now with these large majorities and the presidency in 2029 They're going to eliminate filibuster. They'll turn Puerto Rico and DC into states. They'll pass Supreme Court. They'll nationalize our elections with automatic registration, mail and balloting. There will be not a chance in you know what for Republicans to ever win again. That is the Democrats' game plan. They are ruthless in how they go about doing it. So, no, I could not be more upset about the result. And quite honestly, the opportunities we blew in the last Congress. You know, our accomplishments are just not a heavy lift.

Clay Travis (2:47)

Can you speak to that, Senator Johnson?

Buck Sexton (2:49)

That's what I wanted to ask you. Is that a fair? I mean, you just said it, but explain more because a lot of people, and I think this is fair, they're saying, okay, we're going to have it out now, which I think we need to as a party. We're going to lay it all out there. Tough truth, sit down with the coach in the locker room after you just got smoked in a big game.

What did the Senate miss? What did the Congress miss? What are your honest criticisms? Not about finger pointing, but we still have time here to do some stuff. Please lay that out for us.

Ron Johnson (3:20)

Sure. Let me first say, I'm going to lead a letter. Hopefully, it gets signed by a lot of colleagues calling for a conference meeting before we hold leadership elections. They're doing the same old Mitch McConnell thing. You hold an election no matter what the result.

The Tuesday we get back from the recess after the election, you hold leadership elections sometimes before you even know who's going to be in your conference. So we need to delay that.

We need a robust discussion. I always call them a post-mortem about what happened. You can't just go ahead and, oh, let's elect this leadership team by acclamation. That's unacceptable. So hopefully, I'll have the Republican conference agree with me on that, and we delay these leadership elections. But post-mortem, what did we accomplish? Well, we prevented a massive, automatic tax increase from taking effect. That's not a heavy lift. It's not a heavy lift. The rest of the elements of the one big, beautiful bill, obviously didn't move the needle. All the temporary tax cuts, that didn't engage the working people of this country because the working people of this country were experiencing record high diesel prices and gas prices.

All the promises, and by the way, I don't over promise, I under promise and hopefully over deliver.

I don't agree with let's officials that over promise what they can't even deliver. But that's basically what happened. They were over promised. The Trump coalition was over promised. We're going to bring down prices. How do you do that after we devalued our currency from this massive deficit spending? Yeah, you can bring down oil prices. You can bring down price of eggs because of stupidity in handling bird flu.