This is Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear
Weekday Afternoons on the Drive. Senator James Lank for joining us now, so
much to talk about, Senator, I know, I guess we need to
start with Israel and the aid that the President wants to give both Israel and
Ukraine. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable just to be able to walk through what's
happened in Israel at this point. Obviously all of us are grieved period on
that we're going to stand with Israel, that is our ally. And then
when I saw the President's proposal and the amount that he wants to do for
Ukraine, I'm trying to dig through the details. Much of the money to
Ukraine is actually to replacing American stock files to weapons systems we've already sent to
Ukraine, so we're trying to replenish those stock files. So I'm trying to
determine what's the difference between that and other things. We do need to stand
against this access of evil that all of us have talked about. Everybody wants
to talk about you Kraine as if it's in isolation. Ukraine is that war
right now is being carried out by Russia, funded by China, with weapons
systems from North Korea and Iran. That's just the facts. This is Russia,
China, North Korea, and Iran all attacking Ukraine. And for US
to sit by and to say that's no big deal, that's their war,
it doesn't affect us is ignoring an obvious geopolitical problem there. We as the
United States should not allow Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran to
slaughter their neighbors, just like we would not allow Hamas to be able to
slaughter their neighbors as well, who's fully funded by Iran with that crazy terrorist
mindset that they have. So I do stand with the people of Ukraine against
Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, but we do need to
be able to monitor how much money, how we're doing it, where it's
going. But we also need to ask the folks to be able to pony
up that are in the Middle East. Well, my thing is, I
know that a lot of this is hardware and it's not cash, but we
got to pay for it somehow. And if we're not figuring out how we're
going to pay for it, is it not going to eventually affect inflation.
It will affect inflation because it actually ends up going all into debt financing.
All this is currently being financed by debt. This is the challenge that I've
spoken to people about for years, and that is, if you continue to
run up big debts in that moment of crisis, we can't support ourselves,
we can't support something else. If China we're in to invade Taiwan right now,
we would have to go to the Chinese to be able to ask for
a loan for our debt, to be able to gear up our own military
to defend them. That's not going to happen, obviously. And so all
the two trillion dollars in debt that Biden has done this year, the additional
trillion dollars that they've added on a new spending that was just a pure partisan
spendings free from the Inflation Reduction Act that everybody's so excited saying, well,
we're getting free money from Washington. That money now is a trillion dollars and
just additional debt that was added on to the trillion dollars already there of deficit
spending, and that's going to continue to spiral. We can't continue to do
this. I mean, it just can't be more straightforward than that. Will
Biden's deal make it through the Senate? And then I don't know. The
House is still a mess, so we don't know where it's going to go
there. Yeah, hard to be able to tell. There's still a lot
of questions, not as is, there's no way that his request moves through
as is. There's also a couple of things there. He's asked for additional
dollars for the border. I have said, why would we give additional dollars
for the border. He's just going to use that money to be able to
facilitate more people coming in. That's what he did with the last dollars.
If he wants to talk about border security, which they've opened up in this,
I'm glad to talk about border security because I've got a bunch of proposals
out there dealing with asylum changes, how we're handling paroles that actually stopped the
number of people coming across the border. So if he wants to talk about
that and to say let's actually do border security and to shut down what's happening
at the border, I'm well to talk about a lot of things that we're
actually able to control our own border in this security as well. So there's
still a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of things that we're moving through
right now to say how do we actually get to a final resolution on these
issues. But in the meantime, there's no way that the proposal that he
sent over that is debt on arrival, that's not going to pass. So
you just mentioned the border too. I mean, right now, if you
are a Hamas or Hezbalah or pif all you have to do is say I
want political asylum and you'll get a ticket further into the United States, that's
correct. You know, a Daily Color has actually reported that in the last
day that CBP has put out a bulletin to all their folks saying, hey,
here's what a Hamas patch looks like. Here's what a Hesbela patch and
logo looks like. The implication there is these folks are coming across our border
and we know it. We want people to identify. But what's amazing is
in their notification and here's what it looks like. It doesn't actually include and
don't let them in. It just says, here's not a RECOGNI them the
problem is we need to stop these folks from coming in. I would give
an example of this. I was at the border a couple of months ago.
There were four Russians that came across the border. One of them was
identified on our terror watch lists. They were detained and deported. The other
three they were traveling with were released into the country because we had no other
record. They were on a terror watch list. So I don't know how
often terrists travel with Sunday school teachers, but apparently that's the assumption of the
Biden administration is the three other folks traveling with the Russian terrorists, they're fine
because we just don't have them in our record system. We've got to be
able to shut this down. There's been seventy thousand what they call special interest
aliens that have crossed our border in the last two years. Those are folks
from Syria, from Iran, from Iraq, from Yemen. These are folks
that are crossing, almost all of them single males, military age, that
are coming into our country that the Biden administration said, we don't have them
on our terror watch list, so they must be fine. They literally released
them into the country no questions. Asked. They're awaiting an asylum hearing somewhere
in the next decade, and that's a real number in the next decade,
and they're just releasing the country to travel where they want. This is the
issue with the Biden administration is they just don't take bord security seriously. Senator
James Langford, we could talk all day for why and how much, and
you know why it is the way it is. But there's so much else
going on here too, including that you called immediately for refreezing the Iranian assets
in Qatar. That is said to have happened, hasn't it. We're waiting
to get it in writing, okay, saying orally, oh yeah, we've
got a special deal, but we haven't seen that actually in writing to be
able to make sure that it actually has occurred. The Iranians they're saying that
has not occurred. So I'm at this point trying to be able to figure
out how do we get that in writing and print. It's kind of like
the raw nuclear deal. The Might administration is saying, oh no, no,
no, we're not for doing that anymore, really, but they won't
put that out in writing. They won't actually say that deal is dead.
They keep kind of floating it out there, and so this is a big
issue. It's same thing with Jack Lou that's coming through right now as the
ambassador at Israel. There are lots of folks saying, hey, in the
time of crisis, we need to get an ambassador in Israel. So who
the Biden administration picks is jacklu former Treasury secretary who literally did a secret deal
with Iran behind the scenes to be able to allow Ron to be able to
move dollars or move some of the reals into dollars, when at the time
Iran was blocked from being any any kind of access. So literally the Treasury
secretary was undercutting American policy working with Iran, trying to persuade them to get
into the Iran nuclear deal by cutting them deals and being soft on Iran.
That we do need an ambassador at Israel. We don't need someone who's soft
on Iran. Well, we're continuing to try to have relief supplies too,
to the folks of Gaza, and I my heart goes out to the folks
of Gaza as well, but I can help but believe that that's not going
to the people of Gaza. Yeah, there are two million people that are
in Gaza. Clearly they have no access to water, to food, to
all kinds of things. At this point, that's desperation for a lot of
children and such. My first question is pretty straightforward, what are the Egyptians
doing in aid? What are the Saudis, what are the Kataris, what
are the Imradis? What are they doing? And the question is nothing.
They're looking to the United States and saying you need to provide all this aid
to Gaza. Literally, the Egyptians will not allow those folks to cross their
border. People look at Israel and say there's a huge fence between Gaza and
Israel. They also forget there's a huge fence between Egypt in Gaza as well,
because the Egyptians don't want those folks in their country either, and they've
been pushing back relentlessly saying they cannot overflow into Egypt. The Egyptians don't want
them. They're not stepping up to be able to provide the aid the other
Gulf nations are not. And so my simple challenge is why does everyone look
at America to suddenly to be able to provide that aid when the Gulf states
are saying we are the defenders of the Palestinians, but not only will we
not let them into our country, we won't even send them a drop of
water. I thought fences didn't work, Senator Langford. The Biden administration is
a recent convert, as you know, into the area of fences. They've
suddenly started building fences on our southern border and have discovered they do work.
While we've got you, what is the Senate going to be doing here in
the next couple of days to go up against some of this. Several things.
We've got appropriation bills that are actually coming up this One of the things
we've been pushing for for weeks is to get more transparency in the appropriations process
to avoid a big omnibus at the end of the year. So we've got
three appropriation bills that are coming up this week for amendments in full process,
with full transparency. That's a positive thing after weeks to be able to move
that through. We've got several resolutions dealing with Israel and our support of Israel
that is worked its way through. We're working through any kind of supplemental that
made the financial support for Israel as well as border security I've been actively working
with Democrats, yes, with Democrats, to be able to get an immigration
proposal through. If we're going to have policy pieces, I've got to get
sixty people to be able to vote for it in the Senate. And while
a lot of my conservative brethren they never work with a Democrat on anything,
I can't get any law made without actually working with Democrats in the Senate to
be able to move some things through. So I've been working actively on what
things will actually make a difference, not just pretend they'll make a difference,
but what will actually make a difference that we can actually get through the Senate.
So that work will continue on this week as well. Senatord Langford,
thank you for carving out some time because I had a lot of questions and
I know you've been busy and we've all been busy, and I thank you
for joining us. You bet glad to be able to do it. Go
take care of keep praying for the nation, pray for the piece of Israel.
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