How China Funds the American Left + Sen. Cornyn Joins The Progrum

Summary

Ruthless Podcast | Episode Summary

Episode Title: How China Funds the American Left + Sen. Cornyn Joins The Progrum
Date: February 12, 2026
Hosts: Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, John Ashbrook
Special Guest: Senator John Cornyn

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Overview

This episode of the Ruthless Podcast dives into two main topics:

1. The influence of foreign—specifically Chinese—funds on far-left activism and protests in the United States
2. A spotlight interview with Texas Senator John Cornyn as he faces a contentious GOP primary

The hosts blend sharp, irreverent banter with deep-dive analysis, discussing how "astroturf" activism, funded by foreign actors like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has shaped left-wing protest movements. They also kick off their midterm coverage by interviewing primary candidates, starting with Cornyn.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. China’s Influence on the American Left

A. Well-funded, Foreign-backed Protest Movements

• Michael Duncan starts by describing the protests as “well funded, well organized, essentially like riot on demand that China has built inside of America.” (00:00)
• Holmes adds that these groups are “funded in a large part by foreign influence operations... that try to attack the United States from within.” (00:10)

B. State Department Report on Chinese Funding

• Hosts discuss a new State Department report identifying groups like Code Pink and the People's Forum as CCP influence agents, spreading pro-China messages and undermining U.S. interests.
  • Holmes notes significance, saying: “...when you get that from an official spokesperson from a State Department, that's a big deal.” (12:37)
• Smug observes: “their messages are stop ICE... very, very different from what the average American is interested in...” (12:58)

C. Paid Protests and Astroturfing

• Holmes: The same far-left activists keep appearing at multiple protest sites, regardless of issue, showing “they just care about opposing Republicans... or in this case, President Trump.” (10:00-11:00)
• Duncan points to People's Forum branding on coordinated protests: “This is well funded, well organized, essentially like riot on demand that China has built inside of America specifically to divide Americans and to destroy America from within.” (15:00)

D. Historic Perspective and Funding Tactics

• Ashbrook outlines a shift starting in the Obama era, where overt astroturfing emerged and foreign actors “orchestrated” left-wing protest operations.
• Holmes and others summarize how the left learned to use dark money NGOs, often skirting disclosure rules, attracting not just domestic currency but foreign—especially Chinese and European—funding through umbrella organizations (e.g., Arabella Advisors).*
• Holmes: “As long as it is undisclosed, well, then it's not a part of an election, is it?” (21:00)

E. Concrete Examples

• Holmes reads from the State Department and New York Post: trips for left-wing activists to China, “study the revolutionary history,” and return with anti-American attitudes:
  • “They got funded on a trip to go to China and be like, wow, isn’t America an awful place?” (22:59, Duncan)
• Duncan: “Every single time ... you see somebody with a message that it's like, no normal person... is gonna get out there at 8:30 in the morning with pre made signs with this message... that's coming from China.” (28:00)

F. Spill-over to Other Policy Issues

• Environmental activism also cited as previously the domain of Chinese-funded/advocated groups.
• Rare earth mineral disputes in Minnesota and opposition to domestic energy promoted as benefiting China, making U.S. resource policy an issue of national security.

G. Congressional Hearings and Potential Remedies

• Ways & Means Chair Jason Smith is investigating the “money trails” and foreign influence cases, vowing: “for any organization allegedly breaking nonprofit tax laws, we are coming for you.” (32:11, quoting Smith)
• Smug: “I cannot wait to follow everything they're doing.” (32:12)

H. Political Consequences & Public Perception

• Hosts bemoan that these State Department findings won’t get mainstream media coverage (23:00+).
• Holmes: “This will not get covered. This is a massive deal.” (21:29)
• The drop in public support for deportations following orchestrated pro-illegal immigration protests is discussed as a symptom of these influence operations.

I. The "Useful Idiot" Phenomenon

• Running joke about the “guy with the dildo on his head” at protests as the archetypal “useful idiot,” acting on foreign-funded directives he doesn’t understand. (23:12-25:11)

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2. Midterm Coverage and the Texas GOP Primary

A. Principles of the Ruthless Podcast for Primary Debates

• Holmes: “Every time there is an election... all of the candidates in a Republican primary hop on the show ... we are the fairest platform of all.” (07:38)
• Duncan: “This audience... is some of the most engaged, intelligent, conservative, grassroots and policymakers... There’s no one you would benefit more from to reach than our audience.” (09:16)

B. Preview of the Texas Senate Race

• Holmes, Smug, and others outline the candidates:
  • John Cornyn (incumbent, featured guest)
  • Wesley Hunt (coming up in a future episode)
  • Ken Paxton (in ongoing talks for an interview)
• “The most contentious primary in all of America... it’s in the great state of Texas.” (05:44)

C. Strategic Importance

• Holmes and the hosts emphasize Texas’s centrality; spending resources on Texas means less for competitive races elsewhere.
• Cornyn leverages his record, emphasizing effective legislating and the dangers of performance-only politicians (72:35).

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3. Interview: Senator John Cornyn (63:50–82:25)

A. Personal Introduction & Political History

• Cornyn gifts “Baby Blue” corn whiskey from Waco, TX. (63:52)
• Discusses the early days of his Senate career and the evolution of both the chamber and GOP politics.

B. Reflections on the Senate & Stalemate

• Describes Senate as “polarized,” recounts the fights over judicial confirmations including Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett.
  • Cornyn: “Judiciary Committee ... helping confirm the president’s judges ... will be the lasting legacy really for his administration.” (66:26)

C. Texas Primary and Trump Relationship

• Cites a 99.3% Trump-aligned voting record, but notes some primary voters don’t see him as “angry enough.”
• Points to past general election wins and stresses that his staying atop the ticket helps all down-ballot Republicans:
  • “If I'm at the top of the ballot, it'll help down ballot, particularly with the five new congressional seats and we won’t have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to save me.” (69:52)

D. Critique of Performative Politicians

• “[T]oo many performance artists in politics... But then when it comes to rolling up your sleeves and doing the hard work, they're nowhere to be found.” (72:35)
• Uses “workhorse, not a show horse” (quoting Phil Gramm).

E. Policy Positions

• Border Security: Describes Texas’s efforts, Abbott’s fight for federal reimbursement, and the importance of supporting ICE against rising leftist opposition. (76:27)
• NGO and Nonprofit Fraud: Focuses on foreign and domestic fraud perpetrated by NGOs, referencing the Somali daycare scandal and billions wasted (73:41).
• Legislation and Appropriations: Describes key wins for Texas and the challenge of pushing needed funds and policies past Democratic obstruction.
• Criticism of Democrats: Calls Schumer “led around by his tie” and says current Democrats are more focused on “seeking and holding power” than governing. (80:43; 80:58)

F. Electoral Message

• Cornyn’s pitch: “Effectiveness matters... If you can't explain it, you probably shouldn't do it.” (68:29 & 68:33)
• Campaign URL: johncornyn.com (82:05)

G. Tone and Farewell

• Friendly, good-natured, with an emphasis on “fair” coverage for all Republican primary candidates.
• Holmes: “We’re going to hear from everybody... there’s a lot of shit talk that is going to be... I’m going to try to prod along the way.” (82:45, paraphrased)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This is well funded, well organized, essentially like riot on demand that China has built inside of America.” – Michael Duncan (00:00 & 15:00)
• “The only way to destroy America is to turn America against itself from outside.” – John Ashbrook (04:20)
• “When you get that from an official spokesperson from a State Department, that's a big deal.” – Josh Holmes (12:58)
• “There's always a Benedict Arnold, folks. Yeah, there's always the Benedict Arnold price.” – Josh Holmes (24:11)
• “The CCP is taking advantage of our tax-exempt sector... For any organization allegedly breaking nonprofit tax laws, we are coming for you.” – Jason Smith (quoted by Holmes, 32:11)
• “Cornyn’s not a show horse. He’s a workhorse. And I, I can live with that.” – Senator Cornyn (72:36)
• “Too many performance artists in politics these days. People who want to be famous and they want to get the most clicks on social media and then they want to raise money. But then when it comes to ... the hard work, they're nowhere to be found.” – Senator Cornyn (72:35)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–04:32 – Open; China’s funded protest infrastructure inside the US
• 10:00–17:36 – Details on NGOs, paid protests, State Dept report, Code Pink, People’s Forum
• 21:00–23:00 – How Dems embraced undisclosed foreign money
• 25:11–28:31 – Environmental activism, rare earths, foreign manipulation of domestic policy
• 29:16–32:21 – Congressional hearings: Ways & Means Chair Smith investigates foreign NGO donations
• 63:50–82:25 – Full Senator Cornyn interview
• 82:31–84:21 – Wrap-up of Texas GOP primary coverage, invitation for remaining candidates

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Tone

Consistently irreverent, direct, and a blend of rowdy humor and well-informed analysis. The hosts mock “performance art” in politics, deploy inside baseball for conservative listeners, and take pride in being both entertaining and substantive.

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For Listeners Who Missed The Episode

This episode exposes how foreign money, especially from China, supports disruptive activism on the American left, with extensive examples from recently released government reports. The hosts argue that these influence operations create chaos, stoke anti-American narratives, and muddy the political waters, often to benefit adversarial interests. They discuss Congressional responses and the weaknesses of permitting foreign-funded NGOs to operate with minimal oversight.

Shifting to the 2026 midterms, the Ruthless crew asserts their commitment to fair coverage for all GOP primary candidates—no-shows beware—kicking off with a candid, wide-ranging interview with Sen. Cornyn. He reflects on legislative battles, criticizes the Democratic obsession with power at the expense of policy, stresses results over showmanship, and appeals to Texas voters (and the wider conservative movement) for continued support.

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Suggested Listening Segments

• China’s Influence on American Protests: 00:00–28:31
• Congressional Hearings on NGO Funding: 29:16–32:21
• Senator John Cornyn Interview: 63:50–82:25

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Next Up

The hosts tease more primary candidate interviews, promising sharper contrasts, deep dives on state and national issues, and plenty of their signature banter on the Texas race and beyond.

Transcript

[Michael Duncan]

This is well funded, well organized, essentially like riot on demand that China has built inside of America.

[Josh Holmes]

But they're now part of a group that's being funded in a large part by foreign influence operations that have decided that it is more important to try to attack the United States from within than you could ever try to attack them externally.

[John Ashbrook]

It became very clear that there were outside forces that were driving all of this. Astroturf acting for years, the big health insurance companies have been raising the price of insurance, denying care and delaying treatments while making record profits and receiving trillions of America's tax dollars through federal programs. When they get asked why health insurance prices keep skyrocketing, the big insurance companies dodge, distract and blame everyone else. But the American public isn't buying it. Recent national polling shows that voters are concerned about affordability and most importantly, want Congress to prioritize lowering the cost of health insurance. That's why Congress recently grilled the CEOs of the big health insurance companies to answer questions. After years of denying responsibility and pointing fingers everywhere but at themselves, the big insurance bosses are finally being asked to answer for skyrocketing premiums while they make record profits. It's an important first step, but Americans are demanding action and accountability, not more excuses and denials from big health insurance companies.

[Comfortably Smug]

Learn [e-mail] Washington politicians are always getting in your wallet. Now they're messing with your credit card. Your credit card and the security it offers are under attack. The Durbin Marshall credit card bill would change the nation's payment system to benefit corporate megastores like Wall Street, Walmart and Target at the expense of everyday Americans. Credit cards keep your payments secure and provide rewards that families use to help make everyday purchases more affordable. The Durbin Marshall mandates would let corporate megastores cut corners on credit card processing, routing transactions over cheaper, untested networks with weaker security and fewer protections. That means higher risk of fraud, greater chance of stolen personal data and the loss of rewards programs just so corporate megastores can pocket billions of dollars in higher profits. Tell Congress to guard your card. Visit guardyourcard.com to take action and learn more. Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.

[Michael Duncan]

Keep the fate, hold the line and own the lids.

[Comfortably Smug]

It's time for our main event. Good Thursday to you.

[Josh Holmes]

Welcome back to the Ruthless Variety Program. I am Josh Holmes, along with comfortably smug Michael Duncan and John Ashbrook. Left to right across your radio dial. As always. Look, it's one of those weeks where there's stuff all over the place. Some makes You a little depressed and some that you're just like, I can't believe this isn't public consciousness. One of those things is what we've been talking about for the last, I don't know, six weeks on this program about the paid protests and all of the uprising of the left of Donald Trump executing the law that has been on the books for generations about illegal immigration, fraud, things like that, putting federal agents in because states can't do that. And there being a paid protest to try to muddy the water in some ways, take our eye off the ball, try to distract people from the reason that federal agents are there in the first place in some ways. And we have some meat on the bone to put on that that we're going to do this very episode that you're gonna be shocked by. Honestly, I was a little bit shocked by this. I didn't think it was this cut and dry.

[Michael Duncan]

It feels kind of like a shock, but not surprised.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. It's the thing that John Ashbrook has always said here on the Ruthless Variety program. The only way to destroy America is to turn America against itself from outside.

[Josh Holmes]

It's from. Yeah. Try to get it from within. We also have extremely exciting kickoff in this program to, to what we were doing throughout the midterms, which is interviewing candidates in primaries, in general elections that are gonna be the people who are asking for your vote next November. We have a strong opinion about whether or not Republicans hold majorities. There's a lot of people who are sort of like confused, frustrated, whatever, by a whole bunch of things. We're gonna take you through the whole process all the way. We'll be with you because we have all the same feelings about whether or not you should get engaged in this kind of thing. But we figure the best way to start all of it is to just talk to the candidates that are asking for all of your votes. One of the most contentious, and this is why I love Ruthless, the most contentious primary in all of America, which if you ask a Republican about who's an elected official, they're gonna be like, oh yeah, no, we'll see what happens.

[Michael Duncan]

Yep.

[Comfortably Smug]

Right?

[Josh Holmes]

Oh yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

They don't wanna talk about it.

[Josh Holmes]

They don't wanna talk about it. Cuz it's like the biggest elephant in the room. It's in the biggest Republican state in the union. It's the state that if you had to actually fight out a general election, my God, you have no chance of winning a midterm election. It's in the great state of Texas. And so unlike Every other program that you're gonna deal with, we're gonna talk to all of them. In this episode you will hear from Senator John Cornyn, somebody I've known for a long time. All of you known for a long time, been on our program before. I think last time we talked to him was at the convention.

[Comfortably Smug]

I think that's right.

[Josh Holmes]

Wesley Hunt, who's been an OG Ruthless guy.

[Michael Duncan]

Yep. He's been on a few times. At least three.

[John Ashbrook]

Couple ride alongs.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, a couple ride alongs. A good friend of the program. I talked to him personally the other day about coming back on the program. You will get him in short order to give his pitch. Ken Paxton. My understanding, Johnny, is that we've been in contact with, with his guys, reached.

[Comfortably Smug]

Out to his guys and we're really hoping he comes on. I actually met him before. Oh yeah, I have too nice conversation with him. The guy's obviously conservative, you know, been working in the state for a long time, so would love to have him here on the show.

[Josh Holmes]

Got a serious constituency, to borrow a.

[John Ashbrook]

Parlance, in the great state of Texas. The eyes of Ruthless are upon you.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, exactly.

[John Ashbrook]

We're asking for all of you.

[Josh Holmes]

Exactly. Now, I don't want you to all think that we're going to cast a non judgmental eye about anybody who chooses not to participate in this discussion. We're not.

[Michael Duncan]

And we have so many new listeners and viewers on YouTube. Every time there is an election, we always invite especially Republican primaries. All of the candidates in a Republican primary hop on the show and generally every single candidate shows up. In the rare occasion they don't, it's not great because our audience wants to hear what you're about, what you believe, what you're gonna fight for directly from you. And I think that is. I'm so proud to be part of this program because we are the fairest platform of all. We're not gonna say what an attack ad says. We're gonna. We're not gonna say what a pro ad for a person says. We're gonna let them do the saying.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. And you either impress our audience or you don't. I mean, ask Bruce Jenner how that worked out.

[Comfortably Smug]

I forgot about that until just this moment.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, that asshole don't.

[Michael Duncan]

No show.

[Josh Holmes]

This show confirmed and no showed like 10 minutes before and then it didn't. Well, it didn't work out.

[Michael Duncan]

It wasn't great.

[Josh Holmes]

It was a national story.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

It was picked up everywhere.

[Senator John Cornyn]

So.

[Josh Holmes]

So we've extended invites. They all know this because it's in not only press secretaries, but chiefs of staffs and consultants, inboxes. And I know in Texas it's in good hands because we know all of these people in all of these campaigns. We're friends with all of these people in all of these campaigns. I know that it's gonna be handled well. And we're gonna get an interview from Wesley and Paxton. And so you get the full panoply, which is what we try to provide here on the Ruthless Variety program.

[Michael Duncan]

And also, I want to express the carrot, not just the stick, but it's like this audience that we have is some of the most engaged, intelligent, conservative, grassroots and policymakers and movers and shakers and voters and people across this country. There's no one you would benefit more from to reach out to than our audience.

[Josh Holmes]

100% smart people doing smart things. So thank you all for tuning in. You can look forward to the first installment of that at John Cornyn here at the end of this episode. But let's get right into the junk here because I'll be frank with you guys. From a Minnesota perspective, you heard me say it, and I said it to Stauber the other day, like, what's happening in Minnesota, I don't recognize. I didn't grow up with any of that. It's very, very difficult for me to believe that somehow over the last decade, the estate that I know, the people that I know have just become crazy. I have to imagine that some of this is paid for. And then you look at the back end of what they've done with whether it's the anti Semitic campus rants or the George Floyd burning down of cities, or whether it's the extreme environmentalism or whether it's, you know, the issue of the day that motivates the extremes on the far left. They all kind of show up where the fight is no matter what. And it's the same people, it's the same organizations. It's the same, like they don't care about anything. They just care about opposing Republicans or opposing, in this case, President Trump. And so this is why this part of the conversation is super interesting, because it turns out China. And I don't think they're alone in this. We've covered the Hansberg vis, the far left of the European side of things, infiltrating our nonprofit organization. But if there's an interesting report from the New York Post. State Department. The State Department. So this is not, look, we're not talking about like study fines, the State Department who deals with all of these people. One on one every single day of the year, State Department has identified Code Pink and other far left groups as vectors of Chinese influence operations.

[Michael Duncan]

Think about that.

[Josh Holmes]

Let me just read a couple of paragraphs, then we can react to it. The U.S. state Department has submitted a report to Congress labeling far left nonprofit organizations, including Code Pink, the People's Forum, as vehicles for Chinese influence operations. The report claims that these groups help spread pro China messaging and undermine U.S. interests. Partisan hacks spent years peddling phony Russia collusion hoax while turning a blind eye to the sprawling web of far left organizations who spread the agendas of the Chinese Communist Party. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers said in a statement. I can't. Let me just say, and you all don't know this because it's. This part of, this is just being a part of government at some point. When you get that from an official spokesperson from a State Department, that's a big deal.

[Comfortably Smug]

It's a huge deal. And it also makes sense. I mean, if you stop and think about the messages being delivered by these NGOs, the messages aren't focus on the murderers. Their messages aren't get the people out who are trying to cause problems in America. Their messages are stop ice. And it's very, very different from what the average American is interested in for these ice operations.

[Josh Holmes]

Which is why most people are confused by all of this. I mean, I talked to a vast majority of my buddies in Minnesota and it breaks into two categories, right? One of them is like double down. This is insane. I don't know these people. Like they are not from here. Nobody that I know could possibly relate to what Governor Walz and everybody else is talking about. The other side of it, the non political people that I grew up with are like, dude, can we just stop? I can't actually take my kid to the softball game because there's all kinds of like roadblocks. And so it's reflected in the numbers, by the way of the poll numbers of people who are like, I want this all to stop. It's not a judgment on the ideology. It's not the judgment on the value prop of having illegals in your city. It's a value judgment on whether or not they can live their lives normally. Which again, that's basically what politics revolves around, right?

[Comfortably Smug]

And for those of us who aren't from Minnesota or who aren't friends with guys who grew up in Minnesota, what we learned about the state came from the movie Mighty Ducks. And coach Gordon Bombay would have never put up with this stuff. Under any circumstances, he would have never put up with this stuff.

[Michael Duncan]

A couple of things. First off, one of the groups, one of the groups that was listed People's form might sound somewhat familiar. It's because when the ICE operations first started in Minnesota in Times Square, you saw this like, massive demonstration, like the morning after. And all those folks you saw were wearing these hats that said People's Forum and shirts that said People's Forum. And the signs that they had were printed out and said People's Forum on a corner of it. This is well funded, well organized, essentially like riot on demand that China has built inside of America specifically to divide Americans and to destroy America from within. And you're hearing this individual, Sarah Rogers, who's extremely well respected when it comes to diplomacy, straight up, call them out by names, Code Pink and the People's Forum, and straight up say, this is China, Chinese funded an attempt to destroy America from within.

[John Ashbrook]

It's interesting because, and I'm sure you guys feel the same way, is it feels like things switched, you know, in the sort of Obama era of this, of this sort of left wing activism, you know, and when you saw people come into an office on Capitol Hill from like a Code Pink or wherever, you're like, oh, well, you know, I disagree with these people, but I'm sure their heart's in the right place and that sort of thing. Or like that woman who would protest outside of George W. Bush's ranch in Texas.

[Michael Duncan]

Right?

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

And it was like, all right, well, these people, they got a different opinion on the thing. But these people are here because they care about the thing, free speech. And then at some point during the Obama administration and the rise of these left wing NGOs in this hall of mirrors of funding, right, that it became very clear that there were outside forces that were driving all of this astroturfed activism. And there was a moment there in 2020 during the riots in Minnesota where a Democrat would slip up and acknowledge that fact and be like, these people aren't from Minnesota. The people who are burning down these are outside agitators, people, maybe foreign actors who are taking part in these riots that are burning down police precincts and things like that. And they got real quiet real fast. And the reason why they did is I think this entire organ of the left wing is. Is orchestrated outside of America.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, dude, all right, so if I can do just a quick history lesson on this, it's that. So the Obama administration was taken entirely broadsided by Citizens United and the open flow of cash into the Issue advocacy place. And what happened was the rise of places like the US Chamber of Commerce, which has since become a absolute, like, hellhole. I mean, it doesn't do anything for anyone. But at the time, for six long years, it was literally at the center of opposition to Barack Obama and Democratic Party politics. Did that mean they spent a lot of money? Of course it did. And that got the attention of the Obama administration. So they started introducing things like the DISCLOSE Act. You have people like Sheldon Whitehouse is now very interested in keeping all of the donations to him and his wife disclosed, but at the time, decided to make the DISCLOSE act, which would require everyone who contributes to nonprofits to be.

[John Ashbrook]

Disclosed to the world so they could intimidate and harass conservatives.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, it's the Docs Act. They were like, if we can get the names of conservatives, we can show up outside their homes and we can harass their families and we can threaten them.

[Josh Holmes]

And it wasn't just a threat that they didn't follow through with. At the same time, they had Lois Lerner and the IRS coming in behind it to literally subpoena and audit all of the conservatives who made considerable contributions to conservative nonprofits.

[John Ashbrook]

And to put a finer point on it, because I was involved with this, this is at the time of the Tea Party movement. What Lois Lerner and those folks at the IRS were doing is finding organizations, local organizations like the Naples Tea Party, you know, like, small organizations that just registered with the IRS for nonprofit status. They would search all of those incoming registrations for 990s, search for terms like Tea Party Patriots, things like that, and then fucking audit those people.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, well, and then spend. And make them spend hundreds of thousands.

[John Ashbrook]

Of dollars that they did not have. People, like, got together for coffee to talk about the Constitution, and the Obama administration targeted those people.

[Michael Duncan]

So.

[Josh Holmes]

But knowing what we know, because we've been involved in this, the lesson from the Democratic Party is, okay, we're gonna introduce the DISCLOSE Act. We can't get that done in large part because it was like, McConnell at the time who just like, absolutely not. You're not gonna do that. For the same reasons that we wouldn't disclose the donors to the NAACP in the 1960s.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, there's an entire Supreme Court case about that.

[Comfortably Smug]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

Because you can't have a federal government at war with people who are advocating their personal position. And they knew they couldn't win. And so what they decided to do was broaden the aperture. You can go all the way back to Al Gore, a bunch of allegations about Dollars coming into his bank account from Europe, from everywhere else, where Democrats were sort of skirting the line, all this. And their lesson was, well, as long as it is undisclosed, well, then it's not a part of an election, is it? And so they turned around and started soliciting dollars in a major way through places like what's the Arabella.

[Michael Duncan]

Arabella visors, which they've like renamed. And like, that's the thing is like, they've turned what was a free speech issue of trying to allow people to express their opinion into a cottage industry. They're like, why don't we just make this a business?

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, exactly. And so what they did is turned all these big money operations. And while doing so what the State Department is contending, they also have state actors involved. They're like, well, if you're going to take a billion dollars from Hans Borg Wyss, how about a couple hundred million from the ccp? Which is exactly what's happened here. And they have sent this up to Congress as a legitimate report. This will not get covered. You are not going to hear about this in your newspaper. You are not going to watch this on the evening news. This is a massive deal. This is not done haphazardly. If you're a State Department, you're accusing countries, you're doing yourself a disservice in the process. You don't wanna do it because you're.

[John Ashbrook]

In charge of diplomacy.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. You don't wanna do it right, but when you do, you mean it. So the group tout a trip. A trip. This is one of the groups that they've itemized here as taking Chinese money, where participants, quote, studied revolutionary history of routine. I don't know what that is exactly, but I bet Michael does. And explored villages transformed by poverty alleviation programs. On its website, one participant reflected on the trip and made him think he must, quote, defend China from our government's aggression.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. So they got funded on a trip to go to China and be like, wow, isn't America an awful place? We're gonna send you on this trip to learn the revolutionary history of China. China. This is happening as we speak. This is.

[Josh Holmes]

But this is. Guys, when you see a guy put a dildo on his face in the middle of Minneapolis and you're like, man, I can't believe that these people exist. They don't really. Like, these are folks who've been indoctrinated into a crazy. And I don't know how they got there. It could be a bad upbringing, it could be a Lack of opportunity. It could be a mental health disorder. I don't know what it is. But they're now part of a group that's being funded in a large part by foreign influence operations that have decided that it is more important to try to attack the United States from within than you could ever try to attack them externally. They've made that decision, and these are the people who are willing to go along with. There's always a Benedict Arnold, folks. Yeah, there's always the Benedict Arnold price.

[John Ashbrook]

Just useful idiots is what it is.

[Josh Holmes]

I don't think so. I think it's more than useful.

[John Ashbrook]

If you're putting a dildo on your head, you're a useful idiot.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, okay, there's useful idiots, but there's also Benedict Arnold. Yes, the useful idiot that's putting a dildo on his head reports to somebody there's a reason why he knew where. Where to show up, why to show up and to try to make a menace out of things. And the whole goal out of what it is that he's trying to do is to draw attention away from the fact that they stole $8 billion from the American people and that they have a sanctuary city and state policy that has allowed hundreds of thousands of rapists, pedophiles, murderers, scammers, scammers, all these people to live in their midst, making their lives demonstrably worse. You can't make that argument politically. So what do you do? Well, you gotta find a guy to throw a dildo on his head. And that, I suppose, is the guy who's the useful idiot. But there's somebody who's telling him to be there. Yeah, and that is the.

[John Ashbrook]

But it's always a blend of those two things. Right. Because China being involved with this issue isn't the first time. I mean, you can go all the way back in the environmental advocacy space. Well, yeah, because they wanted the same thing.

[Josh Holmes]

They want it.

[Comfortably Smug]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

If we shut down. That's what is so amazing to me about that entire environmental argument. If we shut down the greatest resourced country in the world from producing our own energy, then we'd be entirely dependent on China. So let's get a political movement internally to decide that it is unhealthy for all of us to try to invest in our own mineral resources and rely exclusively on the people who have no environmental concern whatsoever.

[John Ashbrook]

And it's not just about energy or solar panels. Right. They wanted us to stop domestic energy production so we'd buy Chinese solar panels. But like, we had Stauber in here to Talk about a whole range of things. Mainly hockey. The guy's a hockey legend. Hockey's a great sport. But he was talking about this mining issue that's up there in the iron range. And they're discovering not only that they can mine, you know, for metals, but these rare earths.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

And boy, oh boy, wouldn't love China, would love for us to be dependent on them for all of the rare earth.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, they thought, they thought this district was dead, by the way.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, exactly.

[Josh Holmes]

They thought, they proclaimed it dead. That everybody's going to have to move out of it.

[John Ashbrook]

Learn. Because iron.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

Cause iron is gone.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. And that's the thing is it's almost too obvious the way that these foreign actors are trying to cause this division within the country to benefit themselves. They're like, if I spend like 10 million on a bunch of idiots, it'll be billions of dollars for me. And then they give another example, the State Department did here, where the People's Revolution organized pro Maduro protests because they're like, listen, we've got a good thing going with Venezuela where we can get their oil and we can. Illegal oil.

[John Ashbrook]

Yes.

[Michael Duncan]

Which they're not allowed to be selling. We can get that going. But if we can convince Americans to fight for our right to have this illegal oil, wouldn't that be great?

[Comfortably Smug]

Right? Under what circumstances is your average person who cares about so many different things? There are a lot of Democrats too in this scenario I'm describing. Under what circumstances is somebody waking up nine hours after Maduro is captured, marching in the streets for Maduro with a.

[Josh Holmes]

Venezuelan sign.

[Michael Duncan]

A People's Revolution hat and sign and T shirt like, this is totally organic.

[Comfortably Smug]

Exactly. The Venezuelans who are here are here because they hate Maduro. They're trying to be somewhere else. And the normal people who are here have so many things they're thinking about before. Like sticking up for Maduro 12 hours after the guy is captured. And I'm just, I'm telling you, every single time I'm talking to the audience here, every single time you turn on your television and you see somebody with a message that it's like no normal person, even the Democrats I talk to, the libs I talk to, no normal person is gonna get out there at 8:30 in the morning with pre made signs with this message that's coming from somebody else that's coming from China.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

It's well organized, well financed, no question about it. So the question for all of you that you're listening to this, it's like, okay, yeah, and that checks. I'm looking around my community and I'm like, I don't really recognize any of this. Useful idiots or whatever. Like, this doesn't make sense because we don't believe in any of this. But it does do a useful thing for Democrats to try to muddy the water. But what are you doing about it? What are you doing about it? Well, I got good news on that front. So according to Fox News and I watched a little bit of this yesterday. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, friend of the program.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Remember he came out and told you exactly what it is that he was gonna do with the big beauty and then did exactly, exactly what it is that he said he was going to do. So I trust this guy. This is not somebody who is making it up as he goes along. He hauled them all in and it was on a malign foreign influence is the way that he categorized it. Inside. This is, according to Fox, inside room 1100 of the Longworth House Office Building. Smith warned US nonprofit sector had become a vulnerability exploited by foreign adversaries. Outside the hearing room, across the social media, far left organizations tied to Marxist tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham Ashwick brought.

[Michael Duncan]

Up like a month ago that this guy when, when Fox broke this.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, the girl, the, the woman who participated in writing the story. Astronomy has been on this from day one. She's very, very sharp. Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

So this guy was born in the US he's living in Shanghai. And he pressed forward with rhetoric vilifying the United States for its alleged colonial policies, quote, unquote, and imperialism, quote, unquote, and amplifying narratives aligned with what he was doing was amplifying narratives aligned with the Communist Party.

[Michael Duncan]

And think how often, word for word, think how often you're hearing that out of the left today. Even people like aoc, where they call fascists US Actions like that's imperialism. These are colonial.

[John Ashbrook]

What do you think? What do you think? No one's illegal on stolen land.

[Comfortably Smug]

Exactly.

[Josh Holmes]

There you go. All of a sudden you can start to connect the dots here a little bit. Is that somebody that someone you grew up with would come up with? No, of course not. There's no one who was born in the 80s, 1990s, 2000s teens, or today who could ever come up with the idea that where you live for generations of your parents, grandparents, whatever is stolen land stolen. But if, but if somebody was paying for it. Yeah, well, perhaps you could come up with that kind of thing. He said, quote, this is not politics. It's about national security. Smith Said he totally agree with. With that, he opened the hearing titled Foreign Influence in American Nonprofits, the Unmasking Threats from Beijing. He said the committee was investigating, quote, unquote, money trails behind tax exempt groups accused of sowing chaos and fueling anti Semitism. Totally right. And interfering in elections. During the hearing, Smith sharpened the warning, quote, the CCP is taking advantage of our tax exempt sector, he said, and for any organization allegedly breaking nonprofit tax laws, we are coming for you.

[Michael Duncan]

Thank God.

[Comfortably Smug]

I'm really glad Jason Smith, Ways and Means is getting to the bottom of this. You know, they're going to stay on it this year and I cannot wait to follow everything they're doing.

[Josh Holmes]

It's an important thing and it's not the seat like, look, his focus here is on the circumstances. Ccp. I have seen it personally on the Hamas front and the Iran front, and I've seen it personally on the liberal left, European psychotic socialist front. And it's a real problem because it does take the combination of people who are your useful idiot with people who are like the profiteering fuckwits that think American politics is a game to profiteer off of rather than your way of life. You listening to this? Your way of life. And it gets. It's disheartening. Here's where it makes me most mad, and I'll end with this. I've watched the poll numbers in this ICE situation where people from the election in 2024 were 75% approval of deporting anybody who is here illegally to 35 today, 40% drop. You know what the only difference is? It's not. I mean, look, there are some things the Trump administration could have done differently. And I do think they've made some necessary changes, necessary changes to try to make sure that they're not doing anything to unduly rile communities. But what they're trying to do is just enforce the law at some level. And these people's whole goal is to try to differentiate their effort from that of Barack Obama, who did the same thing and deported four times as many people that we've deported. The Trump administration. Why is it, why is it that we have riots in the streets? Well, it's this, right? It's what we just talked about.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. I mean, China didn't care about Barack Obama deporting people because Barack Obama was selling out American energy in favor of China.

[Josh Holmes]

That was the whole goal.

[John Ashbrook]

Because he was selling out our interests in the Middle east to Iran.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes.

[John Ashbrook]

So all of the foreign actors who would otherwise be involved were getting exactly what they wanted, so they didn't care.

[Josh Holmes]

And don't get misconstrued by saying, like, look, did they all hire Hunter Biden? Sure they did. They paid him $20 million. That's fine. That's a rounding error in what the government of the CCP is dealing with. It's that fundamental policy change of exterminating American energy production and eliminating all of those jobs and making the entire country our transportation system, everything else within our country, reliant on China, that they were in love with.

[John Ashbrook]

Loved it.

[Josh Holmes]

They loved every second of it. And they done it deliberately.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, yeah. And dude, I mean, I think you were kind of getting to this. Republicans and Democrats have always had disagreements in this country. They will always have, have disagreements in this country. It's just the way it goes. But when you introduce foreign influence into the politics of this country, it has a completely different effect. And some of those connections are very clear. Like in the case of this Marxist tycoon Singham, and you know, he's, his spouse runs Code Pink. So some of those connections are very clear. So some of them are much, by.

[Josh Holmes]

The way, like your, your spouse runs Code Pink.

[Comfortably Smug]

I mean, yeah, some, some of these connections, some of these connections are, I'm sure it's not always greatest conversation. You know, you're not just talking about.

[Josh Holmes]

Careful about that cocktail party.

[John Ashbrook]

What do you think dinner's like?

[Comfortably Smug]

But some of the connections, some of these foreign connections are hidden. And, and I'm telling you, the impact of foreign influence on American society is corrosive no matter what form it takes.

[Josh Holmes]

Yep.

[Comfortably Smug]

We should fight amongst ourselves.

[Josh Holmes]

That's exactly right. So coming up, there's good news for Trump. But not surprisingly, the media is framing it in a certain way that is all too familiar for all of us. A wild headline after this.

[American Petroleum Institute Announcer]

Energy is all around us. It's how we move, how we build, and how we make every day a little easier. We're all around America's oil and natural gas, supporting 11 million good paying American jobs across the country and powering our way of life. But energy demand is growing and fast. That's why we need to overhaul our broken permitting process to unleash America's abundant natural resources, strengthen national security, and create a future where American energy leads the world. What America builds today will help secure a more affordable, more reliable future. With enough energy to go around for generations to come, our country can't wait. We must pass permitting reform now to help secure American energy dominance. Because when America builds, America wins. America's oil and natural gas paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.

[Josh Holmes]

Okay, so the, the Axios had a tough week and I generally like these guys. I like Van Hei, I like Mike Allen. I know that's going to come as a consternation.

[Michael Duncan]

And you'll see why in.

[Josh Holmes]

A second, but I like those guys generally. But you know, this is an amazing thing. So a headline that they wrote yesterday, they had to delete, which has got to be the most.

[Michael Duncan]

They're getting ratioed.

[Josh Holmes]

That has to be the most embarrassing thing for an editor. Crime plunges in major cities Despite Trump's crackdown.

[Comfortably Smug]

Despite rhetoric, despite.

[Michael Duncan]

But despite Trump's crackdown, crime went down. What?

[Josh Holmes]

Well, what it goes on to explain is like the difference between 24 and 25 is quite significant. What happened? I don't know. We had a presidential election. It turns out you had a president who was pretty serious about cracking down on crime and they just blew her through all of that, but put up.

[Michael Duncan]

A headline and it was amazing. Cuz they put that chart up that we had on the screen a second ago and they're like, wow, murders in D.C. just like plummeted.

[Comfortably Smug]

Right.

[Michael Duncan]

After all the media was giving him grief about activating the National Guard. And like, despite Trump's crackdown, turns out enforcing laws causes crime to go down, but definitely not Trump.

[Josh Holmes]

Never mind the fact that they weren't even reporting murders before Trump.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, we talk about it on the show where they're like, if you committed a murder, they'd be like, that's not a felony murder, that's a misdemeanor.

[Josh Holmes]

It sounds like a disagreement, some kind of a domestic.

[John Ashbrook]

And just for everybody listening to this or watching this, that isn't us saying that those are whistleblowers within the D.C. police Department who are like, I showed up on scenes and I was told to downrank what this crime was.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

This was a culture of corruption to hide the crime in this country.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. So you overcome that and decrease.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

Amazing, amazing, amazing. So big hat tip to all that, Jill Philippe. I think this is the one.

[John Ashbrook]

I surfaced.

[Josh Holmes]

This surfaced. Mike, would you like, guide us through this one?

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. I mean, one of the most wonderful things about being a liberal in this country is that you can proclaim things your entire life and then when reality hits you in the face, do an about face. Like a child. Like a child who's learned information for the first time. And this one is very interesting because it's about Metro subways. Right.

[Josh Holmes]

And that and the whole Mamdani backdrop of everything should be free.

[John Ashbrook]

You just make all this public transportation free. And that's how you stop all these interactions between bus drivers and people who are paranoid schizophrenics who want to stab them. Right. Like you just don't. You don't have to pay money.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

And there's a study that has been done. Can we put that graphic up here of her tweet? So she's responding to this graph about anti fair hopping. So, you know, people would jump the turnstiles in the subway in New York and things like that. And of course the premise on the left was like, let's just stop making people have to pay for the subway.

[Josh Holmes]

Then no crime.

[John Ashbrook]

Then therefore no crime. And it's your sort of classic thing. And this is why I fucking hate the left in America. And there's this famous line from the George W. Bush administration, the soft bigotry of low expectations. And that is, let's treat minorities, let's treat poor people like children. And instead of enforcing the rules of society, we're gonna change society for people who break the law. Because it might be somebody who's black or it might be somebody who's poor. And of course, when you do things like that, all you do is make all of society shit.

[Josh Holmes]

Yep.

[Comfortably Smug]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

And so Jill now has suddenly had an about face and realized. Can we put that back up? One of the things I've really changed my mind on is public order enforcement. I think a lot of liberals like me assume people doing things like turnstile jumping were poor or just kids. But it seems like actually a small number of people just do a lot of antisocial shit.

[Comfortably Smug]

Wow, what a surprise.

[John Ashbrook]

If only maybe fucking 40 years ago, there was a mayor of New York named Rudy Giuliani, who I don't know, who wrote a whole goddamn book about the broken window theory of running a city. That when you let petty crime happen, all you do is encourage crime. That maybe the recidivism rate of the criminals in our city, letting them back on the streets encourages more crime. That the idea that there's crime is permissible in your society allows more crime. It's so goddamn simple. And the left has never understood that. Cuz they're too busy worrying about, oh well, maybe if I point this out, somebody on Twitter's gonna call me racist.

[Comfortably Smug]

This is the thing about the left. They have been doing this over and over and over again. And sometimes, Michael, I feel like people like her have been handing us this poison apple for thousands of years. And I just wonder if you think there is.

[Josh Holmes]

I see where this Is going.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah. Do you think there is a way for people to stop taking a bite?

[John Ashbrook]

He wants me to go back to the good book. He does.

[Josh Holmes]

It's in. Right there in the first chapter.

[Michael Duncan]

Michael.

[John Ashbrook]

It's a warning.

[Josh Holmes]

It's a warning.

[Michael Duncan]

What do you call them? Like Daughters of Eve or.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, that. That is a term. Daughters of Eve. And there are certain liberal women who refuse the account accountability of that fact.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, but maybe that's part of it.

[John Ashbrook]

No, it's.

[Josh Holmes]

It's different a little bit.

[Comfortably Smug]

This is a lib fest.

[Josh Holmes]

No, it's different.

[Michael Duncan]

Some point, we'll unveil the plaque for.

[Josh Holmes]

Him, but not today.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, because that's not what this is.

[Comfortably Smug]

What this is a lib thing.

[John Ashbrook]

What this, what this is is the performance.

[Michael Duncan]

Have the courage. I thought he was gonna have the courage.

[Josh Holmes]

No, no, it's not.

[John Ashbrook]

Actually.

[Michael Duncan]

Duncan was on fire. I was like, here we go. He's gonna do it. He's gonna tell the people the truth.

[John Ashbrook]

You want me to attack women? Is that what you guys.

[Josh Holmes]

No, no, but it's not. But it's not. It's not that the same.

[John Ashbrook]

They've known what. What crime is in this country. And in fact, their entire political ideology is just a performance to hide that fact. And that's an entirely different thing, I think.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, true.

[Josh Holmes]

I think that's exactly right. But look, Axios wasn't done this week. They decided they were gonna weigh in on the SAVE act, which has become.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, man, this was good. This was good.

[Josh Holmes]

And they're like, well, let's tell people what's in the Save Act. So what they tweeted out is if the Trump backed Save America act passes, quote, millions of women whose married names aren't on their birth certificates or passports, unquote, would face extra barriers to voting.

[Michael Duncan]

Insane. A lie. Insane and crazy. Take where they're like, so don't you folks know that, like, once a woman is married, her last name doesn't match her birth certificate? Like, you show up to the poll site like, here's my birth certificate. Like, first off, this is all just made up gobbledygook. Like, women who get married, don't you know they're not allowed to board planes anymore because their name is changed? Like, they're making up this. This again. They're trying to couch essentially lives, wanting to run amok with the laws in this country under, oh, but this would hurt women. Or they've already tried the minorities thing. And then they got the polling this week where it's like 99% of black people said that you should have ID when you vote. Like, they can't try to run behind that made up shit anymore. And now they're like, don't you know that married women are at risk? No, that's an absolute lie.

[Comfortably Smug]

It's exactly right. And we learned in 2008 that birth certificates are irrelevant when it comes to eligibility in America.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, yeah, yeah, we learned that.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, yeah, he did have the courage. He's got the courage today.

[Josh Holmes]

I didn't see that coming. But, I mean, it's all nonsense. I mean, what we're talking about is all of the requirements that required you to get a real ID that allows you to get on air airplanes in this country.

[Comfortably Smug]

Right?

[Josh Holmes]

And it seems to me if it's current law, and it has been since April of last year, that millions of women, as Axios has categorized it, don't have the ability to vote, that them not having the ability to travel this country would have been a story. It seems to me like that would have come up at some point and been a topic of discussion amongst, I don't know, the media. Like, we've passed a law that was delayed 20 long years that we then enforced in April of last year and allowed somehow has not allowed married women to fly.

[Comfortably Smug]

It's insanity.

[Josh Holmes]

I know what you're gonna go. I know what you want to do.

[Michael Duncan]

I saw it. I'm not gonna say it. What are you gonna.

[Comfortably Smug]

You're gonna say they shouldn't?

[Michael Duncan]

No, I just. I started seeing this, like, daydream in my head of, like, you've seen that meme of it. It was like, society if, like, something happened and it looks like this, like, tech utopia. And I was like, what if we pass Save America Act Part 2, where it's like, actually we are just taking the vote away from them and it's.

[John Ashbrook]

Just like, my God.

[Michael Duncan]

Turns out, although, like, you know, you see the like, everyone knows that the most dangerous terrorist in modern society, the furthest, most off the wagon radical, you know, is not a dude in Afghanistan. It's the lady wherein, like Lululemon who's gonna try to hit you with her car, like, that has changed.

[Josh Holmes]

And you know what they hooked their wagon to? It's people like Todd Belt. He's a professor at George Washington University right here in the District of Columbia who researches campaigns and elections. I'm sure he does a whale of a job. He told Axios that if the Save America Act. Save act was passed, quote, people without government issued ID will no longer Be able to vote.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, damn.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, my gosh.

[Michael Duncan]

Good.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, my gosh.

[Comfortably Smug]

That's the point.

[John Ashbrook]

Thank you.

[Michael Duncan]

Actual good analysis.

[Josh Holmes]

Hey, Todd. Todd, hats off.

[Michael Duncan]

He's like, no, no, no, you don't understand. I want people without IDs voting in election. Don't you understand? You kind of slip a bit too much, Todd.

[Josh Holmes]

Maybe you missed the argument about a whole bunch of illegal people voting. That's what this is about.

[Michael Duncan]

He's like, the problem here is our elections have become reputable. I'm a professor.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, you know that they would have that. I mean, what would happen is if you made people prove they were Americans, they would actually have to prove they were Americans.

[Michael Duncan]

It's amazing.

[Josh Holmes]

That's amazing. We can't have that.

[John Ashbrook]

And we call that a tautology.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, there we go.

[John Ashbrook]

That's an SAT word for the day.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Oh, man.

[Michael Duncan]

It's a good word. Good word.

[Senator John Cornyn]

There you go.

[Josh Holmes]

I love it. Okay, so it leads to our question of the day. What's the most obvious revelation a liberal has had in a Trump era? This is good because we had both. The crime is like, maybe criminals do crime. Maybe it's not just racist. Maybe criminals do the crime. And then you've got Todd here who's like, yeah, you actually have to prove you're an American to vote. And he's like, thinks that goes one way or it doesn't go another.

[Michael Duncan]

Can I quickly say one thing? I don't know if you saw in the news this week. Somalia passed a law this week requiring IDs in their elections.

[John Ashbrook]

Are you kidding?

[Michael Duncan]

That was the funniest shit of all time. It's like they're openly trolling us. That's the funniest shit I ever saw.

[Josh Holmes]

So what's the most hilarious revelation that you have seen? Will you like and subscribe to the Ruthless Variety Program? We read all of your comments. We get a kick out of absolutely everyone. We read them all and we get back to you the very next episode. This one is what is the most significant revelation that a Democrat has had during the Trump era. It could be interesting. It could be interesting. When we come back, we're going to talk to you about last week's comments, which are about Bad Bunny right after this.

[Comfortably Smug]

Okay.

[Josh Holmes]

When you like and subscribe to the Ruthless Friday Pro, read all of your comments to the question of the day. This one was Bad Bunny's half time show was absolutely terrible. Who had the best halftime show? You guys had a trip down memory lane. It was fantastic. And to do that, we always start with the voice.

[Comfortably Smug]

First one comes from Evie Boy. Evie Boy writes, I think Prince's performance in Miami is legendary for its timing and artistry. The moment he performed Purple Rain in a literal tropical downpour. When asked if he was okay with the rain, he famously replied, can you make it rain harder? He also had a set list that included appearances by Foo Fighters and Jimmy Hendrick. I mean, think about that. Tell us. That's just.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, he. He could play so many instruments, but guitar, he could.

[Josh Holmes]

The guy was just such a great artist. And that was a unbelievably memorable deal.

[John Ashbrook]

And Colts won.

[Josh Holmes]

That's incredible. Sure.

[Michael Duncan]

You were gonna add there were some downsides.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Coming to dunks.

[John Ashbrook]

All right, this one is from Sheila Marie. Sheila writes, hands down, the very best halftime show was U2 in 2002, right after 9 11, where the streets have no Name was played. And all the victims of 911 were displayed on huge white sheets behind the band. Then when all the names were done, the sheets fell just like the towers fell. It made me so proud to be an American. You two was honoring America. And I miss those days when politics were not in our sports. God bless America.

[Josh Holmes]

So good.

[Comfortably Smug]

I think she's right. I think that was the best one. This is my own opinion. Remember when he opened up his coat jacket? On the inside, he had the stars and stripes.

[Josh Holmes]

I do.

[Comfortably Smug]

I mean, like, people in the stadium, people at home were all crying when the guy did that. It's. I mean, to say nothing of the showmanship.

[Josh Holmes]

Yep, totally. Comment 3.

[Michael Duncan]

Comment 3 is from Bruce Wayne. Bruce writes, Bruno and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were sick. Sir Paul having 70,000 plus sing along was awesome. Michael Jackson killed that ship of Prince singing Purple Rain in the Rain was the best ever.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it's so good.

[John Ashbrook]

You know, I'm surprised we didn't get a single Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction.

[Comfortably Smug]

They were afraid to see boobs.

[Josh Holmes]

There's not a lot till you can see boobs.

[John Ashbrook]

You remember that with Timberlake?

[Josh Holmes]

Do I remember? Remember it?

[Comfortably Smug]

Well, they had. They didn't have the courage.

[Josh Holmes]

Timberlake had the courage.

[John Ashbrook]

He did.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it's a big deal. It's Thursday, which means we have to play a game. It's our signature game here on the ruthless variety program King of the Hill. I believe I'm judge this time around. Who are our competitors?

[Michael Duncan]

I am the champion, and I'm bringing Adam Kinzinger.

[John Ashbrook]

And I'm the challenger. And I got Bill Crystal.

[Michael Duncan]

Okay.

[John Ashbrook]

And you are Bailiff.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yeah, I'm bailiff. This time. So it's gonna be a free for all.

[Josh Holmes]

Let's kill ringside.

[Comfortably Smug]

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. It's time for King of the Hill. In the red corner, fighting from Pierre Omadier's checkbook, Bill war now, war forever. Crystal. And now in the blue corner, fighting from an empty congressional office, and current champion of the world, Adam K. Kingsinger. That's who we got.

[John Ashbrook]

It's beautiful.

[Josh Holmes]

It's beautiful.

[Michael Duncan]

I'm ready to go.

[Josh Holmes]

Let's do it.

[Michael Duncan]

Could I get Exhibit 7, please, from Adam Kinzinger? Exhibit 7. And he says Kid Rock, who is heading up the definitely super cool and hip halftime show by TP USA, is 55 years old. I think Adam is doing a great job of missing the point here. You look at the ratings numbers, it's an insane amount of people who tuned out of the official super bowl broadcast tuned into TP USA's broadcast. The numbers are insane. It's like the largest viewed event in the history of YouTube. And honestly, I think what he also misses because he's a loser and he got voted out. No one likes this guy. He misses that. The coolest thing about that event was everyone was united in remembering Charlie and the work that he did bringing us together. And even after he was murdered, even after he's passed, he's still bringing us together to this day. And there's nothing cooler than that.

[Comfortably Smug]

Your Honor, can I ask to have this put back up on the screen just very quickly? Because I'm curious about the graphic. How old would you have to be to understand the relevance of this particular case?

[Josh Holmes]

Minimum of 45. Minimum of 45.

[Michael Duncan]

The more, you know, thing for the more.

[Josh Holmes]

The more, you know. If you're listening, is the graphic, which NBC thing that they did in the 90s. Okay, good point.

[Comfortably Smug]

Okay, thank you.

[John Ashbrook]

Okay, Challenger, let's do exhibit number nine, please. This is from Bill Crystal. Is there anything in Trump's past that suggests he would willingly relinquish an asset that is valuable to him and his family? I don't think so. I expect he will attempt to maintain his position as Republican capo di tutti capi.

[Senator John Cornyn]

What?

[John Ashbrook]

Until his dying breath.

[Michael Duncan]

I think that's what Italians call like, head of the mafia family. Right. Like the capo is one of the terms. Maybe that's like the capo of the capo.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. Well, so this is a thing.

[Josh Holmes]

Explanation on that.

[John Ashbrook]

So this is some artistry.

[Josh Holmes]

Put that thing back up. I want to see that from capo di tutti capi is what I'm Most interested about.

[Michael Duncan]

Is anyone here Italian?

[John Ashbrook]

Well, so there's a couple.

[Michael Duncan]

I think it's a crime thing. I think it's like, crime thing.

[John Ashbrook]

He's like the head. Head of the family. Anyway, so this is a bit of artistry from. This is why I played it. There's a bit of artistry here from Bill Crystal. And that is. This is a man who is a world class midwit. Nepo baby. Who's exactly where he is because of who his father was. And so there's a desperation in a lot of his commentary that requires him to prove how smart he is.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes.

[John Ashbrook]

And I find that absolutely fascinating.

[Josh Holmes]

Me too. That is one of my favorite genres. So wait, so he's doing the di capo di tutti?

[John Ashbrook]

Well, he's linking to this article what happens when Trump loses, which has become, I think, sort of a. A fetish of the left.

[Josh Holmes]

Because they couldn't beat him.

[John Ashbrook]

Because they couldn't beat him. Right. And so, like, they. They fantasize about what happens after Donald Trump because he kicked their ass again.

[Michael Duncan]

And again and again.

[Josh Holmes]

This is tough because it runs cross current with an awful lot of my preconceptions. I think more than likely than not, I would be willing to go with where smug is headed on this. I do feel like it's rote. I do feel like the idea of making fun of Kid Rock is basically standard fare.

[John Ashbrook]

Low hanging fruit.

[Josh Holmes]

It's low hanging fruit in a lot of ways. I like the rhetorical flourish and in this case, the Italian.

[Comfortably Smug]

Mm.

[Josh Holmes]

Is.

[John Ashbrook]

There we go. Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Is what gets me going. And so for that reason, Duncan, you're the.

[John Ashbrook]

Let's go.

[Josh Holmes]

Let's go.

[John Ashbrook]

Okay.

[Michael Duncan]

What a rip off round. Ridiculous.

[Comfortably Smug]

Dude. It's not a ripoff. When did you ever expect Bill Crystal to chirp up when you're here, your family in Italy.

[Michael Duncan]

I want you to chirp up. First off, nobody knows. That's ridiculous. He had to pull it back up and he's like, what did he even say?

[John Ashbrook]

Okay, okay, round two. I go first. Exactly. Exhibit number 11, please. So I'm calling this the SEO keyword stuffing. The SEO keyword stuffing tweet. That's what I'm calling it. Bill Kristol. The Olympic athletes are better Americans than their maga critics. My God, Dems. I mean, apropos of nothing, he just switches topics. Dems should go on real offense over the DHS Bill.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, my God.

[John Ashbrook]

And pursue defunding. Jon Ossoff.

[Comfortably Smug]

Good speech.

[John Ashbrook]

Even National Review can't defend Trump's corruption and I suggest Tim run for Senate. Tim Miller should run for Senate.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, that's unimpressive. You don't think that he's just copy paste. So good luck for our listeners.

[John Ashbrook]

Hold on.

[Michael Duncan]

He's linked it to, like, a podcast episode that they're doing. Bailiff, and he's just like, listing their topics.

[John Ashbrook]

Bailiff.

[Michael Duncan]

That's what he's doing.

[John Ashbrook]

Bailiff. This commentary.

[Michael Duncan]

There's no bailiff.

[Comfortably Smug]

I believe your play.

[Michael Duncan]

There's no bailiff here.

[Josh Holmes]

Okay, Smug.

[Michael Duncan]

Exhibit one from Adam Kinzinger. He says, hey, also to all the quote, this is our speak English crowd. English is from England, not America. We likewise borrow it.

[Josh Holmes]

Okay, Kinzinger wins. That's all that is. I don't.

[Michael Duncan]

That annoying Lib. I don't have the dumbest.

[Josh Holmes]

I don't have to. I don't have to.

[John Ashbrook]

Josh Holmes supports Tim Miller running for Senate.

[Josh Holmes]

There is no thing that pisses me off more than that.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

The idea that somehow America can't be America, that we've borrowed whatever we're borrowing, so therefore we need to lend it to some other culture in some other country and some other language. That is a level that I simply can't abide as judge and jury and so forth. Reasons among wends.

[Comfortably Smug]

That is so funny.

[Michael Duncan]

And I'm gonna go for the knockout here. Exhibit three from Adam Kinzinger. Adam Kinzinger says he's trying to do a poll on Twitter. How much do you hate the constant nonstop, annoying, childish whining, complaining, and perpetual victim ness of Trump and his lackey and his choices are only super hated, extremely hated, very much sick of it. And I love being a victim, which is hilarious because people even voted for. I love being a victim, which I love. I love so much.

[Comfortably Smug]

I wonder if that's the kind of poll he had his congressional pollster do when he was running for reelection.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, well, he decided not to do that. Duncan, what do we got?

[John Ashbrook]

All right, so I'm going to go back to theme of the first tweet about Bill Kristol being a Nepo baby who's obsessed with explaining how smart he is. Exhibit number eight. So this is, you know, linking to another bulwark piece about Donald Trump and, you know, corruption or whatever. And this is Bill Kristol. The public is increasingly alarmed about the dangers of Trump and Trumpism. The elites are slowing slower their behavior. Brings to mind.

[Josh Holmes]

No.

[John Ashbrook]

The alleged remark from Alexandra ledru Roland in 1848. Of course. That's, of course, top of mind for all of us. There go the people I must follow them, for I am their leader.

[Josh Holmes]

I don't have any choice. This judging jury is given no choice. That level of faux intellectualism simply cannot be ignored by this judge and jury. He wins.

[John Ashbrook]

Yes. Let's go.

[Josh Holmes]

He wins.

[John Ashbrook]

Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

It's outrageous, the fart sniffing. It has a, by the way, close parallel to the fat man. Yeah, the fat man does the same thing.

[John Ashbrook]

And you play the fat man a lot.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. Which I appreciate this genre specifically because the idea that you can't actually make an argument without making people feel dumber and like they don't know as much as you is a genre. It's not an actual argument that persuades anybody. It's a genre to try to elevate yourself above all else.

[John Ashbrook]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

And that is a champion. That is a champion.

[Comfortably Smug]

Very funny.

[Senator John Cornyn]

I love that.

[Josh Holmes]

I love it. Every second of it. All right, so this is our first. First in what will be, I think, I imagine, for many of you controversial discussions with people. Primary season. I love primary. A lot of people think primary season is just like, we're just so mad. We're just going, we hate somebody. We hate. We love it because we live that end of the world forever. We lived in the primary season of, like, you know, Republicans arguing amongst themselves on small differences over larger things. You all agree on personality tone, whatever, but, you know, it makes a difference because ultimately, in the end, you get the kind of governing you vote for in this one. We're gonna end up with John Cornyn going first off in Texas. Want to welcome to the program a guy that we've known for a very long time. He is a great senator for. From the great state of Texas, John Cornyn. How are you, sir?

[Senator John Cornyn]

I'm doing great, and I came bearing gifts.

[Josh Holmes]

I know this is. This is. You also had the wherewithal to know that we have a Kentucky bias when it comes to our.

[Senator John Cornyn]

So I didn't get bourbon. This is corn whiskey.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Senator John Cornyn]

So Waco.

[Josh Holmes]

From Waco, Which I think basically means you get halfway through the bottle. You can't remember most of anything.

[Senator John Cornyn]

That's up to you.

[Josh Holmes]

Baby Blue from Waco. I love it. Listen, you've got a big race. We've known you forever. In fact, your first election to the Senate 2002, was when I first got started in politics with Norm Coleman.

[Senator John Cornyn]

I remember having Norm Coleman. Wow, that's a blast from the past.

[Josh Holmes]

I remember having. I think you had better accommodations than we did in the basement of, like, Dirksen and Russell.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Yeah. You remember every. If you were a House member or A governor.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes.

[Senator John Cornyn]

You got precedence.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[Senator John Cornyn]

But since I was only an attorney general and Norm was a mayor.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it didn't work out. Correct.

[Senator John Cornyn]

I was 99 and he was 100.

[Josh Holmes]

You were from, you're from Texas though, so you had some kind of a corner suite. And I remember us basically just with fold out.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Seemed like a double wide.

[Josh Holmes]

It's probably right. But since then, you've done an awful lot of incredible work. Been a, a part of a conservative renaissance not only in, in Texas, but nationwide. A partner of President Trump throughout. Tell me what this last year, obviously 2025, a big one in terms of the President's agenda and everything else. But you know, Democrats are pushing back. What's the Senate like these days?

[Senator John Cornyn]

Well, it's polarized. I know that's not a shock to you, but you notice what happened on the nominations for ambassadors or sub cabinet positions. Positions and judges. We, we couldn't get them to support any of them, even non controversial ones. So the majority leader in our conference had to use the nuclear option, as it's called in in the Senate, to change the rules so we could actually get the president's team confirmed. But no, it's been a great ride. You know, being on the Judiciary Committee and, and helping confirm the president's judges. I've seen some stuff, you know, Brett Kavanaugh, his confirmation hearing is burned forever in my memory, 100%. And what a wow, that was crazy. And you know, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett and of course all the other judges that President Trump has nominated and we've confirmed make these will be the lasting legacy really for his administration.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, I remember when McConnell went on the limb with the Obama appointment for the Scalia replacement and it was really sort of out on a limb. And I remember thinking and talking at that time about we better check in with Cornyn to see what his view.

[Michael Duncan]

Of all this is.

[Josh Holmes]

Because if you can't figure out if Cornyn thinks this makes no sense, we are really all alone on this deal because he was always pushing the edge of the ombre.

[Senator John Cornyn]

That was a bold move.

[Josh Holmes]

But you were. And I remember you digging in and helping, trying to figure out a pathway to keep that conference together at that point. And people, it's all retrospect, right. Nobody remembers how shaky it was, how shaky it was to try to convince a Republican conference to hold the line on that deal.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Well, it was very aggressive, but boy, what a big impact it made. Obviously Justice Scalia was a lion in the Supreme Court and US Judiciary and Going to be hard to. Hard to replace. But the Democrats, as you can imagine, as you know, were dead set to oppose anybody who was nominated. And then this, you know, the idea that we'd be able to get a somebody like Neil Gorsuch through who. Extremely talented guy. The. All three of the Supreme Court nominees have done a, done a magnificent job. But, but none of it's easy these days. Yeah. Because the Democrats just reflexively oppose everything.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. No, no question. Johnny and I used to joke, the Judiciary Committee Democrats just basically put their most firebrand folks on the Judiciary.

[Senator John Cornyn]

What does that say about us?

[Josh Holmes]

Well, we, we would. We would. We're a step behind on that, except for we had Cornyn, who could always explain stuff in a way that made some sense because you guys deal with some tricky stuff. It's not just judges and everything else. I mean, there's a lot of things that go through the Judiciary Committee. And we always used to laugh. I don't know. Cornyn will figure that out.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Well, if you can't explain it, you probably shouldn't do it.

[Comfortably Smug]

That's fair point.

[Josh Holmes]

Very fair point. Listen, you're locked into a reelection battle. We've seen you deal with this a number of times over the years successfully. Tell us what's happened in Texas.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Well, you know, I've been doing this a while, as you pointed out, and our politics have changed. Today, President Trump has a dominant influence not only here in D.C. but in Republican primary politics. And because I've been doing this a while and people kind of, you know, wonder am I really a MAGA warrior or not. I point out that I've supported the president throughout his term of office. And, you know, the 1 Tax Cuts and Jobs act in 2017, we've talked about Supreme Court, and I've got a 99.3% voting record with the president and his policies. But because I'm not angry about it, people don't think I'm. I'm aggressive enough sometimes. But, yeah, I've been through these races before. This happens to be the absolute weirdest one ever.

[Josh Holmes]

That's fair.

[Comfortably Smug]

I'm.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Well, I mean, in 2020, I won the primary by 76% of the vote against multiple opponents. I won the general election by 10.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Senator John Cornyn]

And that's one of my arguments to, you know, the business case to the White House is, look, if I'm at the top of the ballot, it'll help down ballot, particularly with the new five new congressional seats and we won't have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to save Me?

[Josh Holmes]

Well, and you were, you had the perch as a former NRSC chairman where you know what the battle is and you know, there's a finite amount of resources dedicated to state states that you should ordinarily win because you've got these contentious primaries. And as we know, in 2010 and 2012, when you were there, we had a few of these situations pop up. And if you're dedicated into these primaries expending resources on candidates that ultimately can't win, not only do you have a problem on the top of the ticket, but all the way down.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Yeah, well, and you know, there's a number of opportunities we have. And in this next election, New Hampshire, Michigan, you know, Georgia, North Carolina, and if you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to save a flawed candidate with a lot of baggage, that would be our attorney general, by the way, then he may not win. And if he does win, then that'll be money that won't go for these other races. And he also is not going to win by his significant margin, which will help keep the majority in the House, which I know is something near and dear to the president.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, no question.

[John Ashbrook]

So the interesting thing about this race, and we were talking about this a little bit before the show, is you could end up in a runoff scenario where there's a top two finishers in the race.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

And then you got to go and campaign again, you know, sprint to the finish. You know, how do you look at something like that in appealing to the electorate? Because, you know, to your point, you sort of alluded to there are some voters in the Republican primary who would say, yeah, but, you know, it's just, it's time for a change. We need somebody new. What is your message to those grassroots Texans, you know, who vote in a Republican primary and also will show up for, for that runoff?

[Senator John Cornyn]

Well, you know, effectiveness matters. I know it's not top of mind really, for a lot of Republican primary voters, but for example, Texas spent about $11 billion to help secure the border during the Biden open border policies. Governor Abbott called me and he said, you know, we'd like to get repaid. And I said, okay, I'm on it. So working together with the Texas delegation, we in the one big beautiful bill, or the Working Family Tax Cuts act we call it now, we got reimbursed $11.1 billion.

[Josh Holmes]

That's not legislating.

[Senator John Cornyn]

That's not nothing.

[Josh Holmes]

How about that?

[Senator John Cornyn]

Yeah, it's legislating. It's, it's, it's what I thought we were supposed to do. You know, the other part of it is I just think we have too many performance artists in politics these days. People who want to be famous and they want to get the most clicks on social media and then they want to raise money. But then when it comes to rolling up your sleeves and doing the hard work, they're nowhere to be found. And so, you know, it's not. As Senator Phil Graham, my predecessor, said, cornyn's not a show horse. He's a workhorse. And I, I can live with that.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, on the workhorse side of things, you've dug in on the Somali fraud, which, you know, there's a lot of us, I'm from Minnesota, I'm watching all this that's happening. And like, you know, it's hard not to be so of despondent about a lot of it because you've seen these things come and go over the years. Feels like nobody's ever really held accountable and just kind of move on to the next. You decided in this one not the case. We're digging in.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Well, it's a real problem and everybody acknowledges this is the tip of the iceberg. But if you think about it, I know you guys know this, but you know, when the federal government spends money, it goes to government agencies that then contract or grant with non governmental organizations, NGOs, and there is very little accountability there. And unfortunately, the fraudsters take advantage of it. The Somali daycare disaster was just one, one example of that. But it is just the tip of the iceberg. We're going to be having a, a hearing soon that on the other instances, like on immigration fraud generally, where taxpayers are being built billions of dollars and come up with some, we think some, some solutions or at least some remedies that will address it. You know, thank goodness we got Russ Vaught, you know, who's a very tough guy, as you know, who is looking at the federal spending and know whether it was USAID or whatever, that they hit the pause button and Marco Rubio and others were looking at, okay, are we spending taxpayer dollars in foreign aid? And if we are, you know, it ought to be for a specific purpose, not just, you know, spreading crumbs on the water. So I just think it's, with $38 trillion in debt, something's got to give. And this seems like such an obvious area to deal with it. And plus it's, you know, there's people taking advantage of the generosity of the American people. Americans are enormously generous for worthy causes. But this is just, this is Just a kick in the teeth.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Comfortably Smug]

You know, I know that border security has been a huge priority of yours through your entire career. I know this because I've seen it with my own eyes. I've watched work on this.

[Josh Holmes]

We dealt with it personally.

[Comfortably Smug]

And, and I do remember you. I mean, Texas, of course, border state. I do remember you warning every other senator from other states in the country that your state can be a border state too, if we're on this right away. And of course, now you have a president who is taking the border very seriously. So it's only natural that the two of you get along so well, because that's an issue that is important to both of you.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Right.

[Comfortably Smug]

But now we're all, we're, we're sort of experiencing that dynamic where, where every state is a border state in its own way. We're seeing the left lose their minds in some of these interior states and they're fighting against ice, and ICE is out there trying to do their job to deport these criminal illegal aliens. And I know you've got some stuff you're working on to try to protect ICE and try to make sure that they're able to do their job.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Yeah. You know, first of all, President Trump got elected because of the Biden open border border policies and inflation. I think those are, to my mind, two of the main reasons. And obviously being a border state senator, as you said, we got 1200 miles of common border with Mexico that had a disproportionate impact on my constituents. And you know, I think Democrats had this crazy idea that Hispanics would love open borders. And that proved not to be true because many of these local communities were overruled, run by people. When you don't vet anybody and just open it wide, you get all sorts of, maybe you get some economic migrants, but you also get traffickers, drug runners.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, it's so funny, you talk to folks from Texas or any place really, that has multi generational Hispanic communities. They think that's the most laughable proposition in the world, that open borders are good for them.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Absolutely. Well, if you know the Hispanic community in Texas like I do, I mean, they are culturally conservative, family oriented, usually religious and hardworking entrepreneurs, usually in their own small business. And this was enormously disruptive. But now that President Trump has gotten the border secure, now it's a matter of removing the people who never should have gotten here in the first place. To my mind, this is sort of an extension the Democrats position of defund the plan police. Yeah, I mean, it's Completely disrespectful.

[Josh Holmes]

The same.

[Senator John Cornyn]

It's completely disrespectful of these, you know, great Americans who are doing the job we've asked them to do and are entitled to our respect. They're not doing this on their own. So at first it was defund the police. That didn't turn out well and for them. And then it's abolish ice and now they are attacking ICE for going in and enforcing the law law. But none of this, what we saw in Minnesota would be, would be happens in Texas, for example, because they're not. Texas doesn't have a sanctuary jurisdictions or a governor. So what happens? Yeah, you don't have a crazy governor like Governor Waltz. I mean just in the mayor, Minneapolis just. Yeah, just, I mean calling, you know, calling ICE the Gestapo and all that stuff. It's, it's just, it's, it's horrible stuff. So. But in, in non sanctuary jurisdictions, when somebody's arrested in an illegal alien for some crime, they are then the federal government issues a detainer which says hold on to him until we get there and then they hand him over to ice. And so you don't have any of this public interference or any reason for this to play out in public. It happens, you know, from jail to ICE to removal.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, I know you're focused on that. This DHS thing, obviously Democrats don't want to fund it or at least their base. They want to placate their base at some level. Where do you think that thing pans out?

[Senator John Cornyn]

I mean, I think we're going to need another short term continuing resolution or something. You saw the wish list that they.

[Josh Holmes]

Schumer is just entirely behind, being led around by his tie.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Absolutely.

[Josh Holmes]

By the far left.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Well, Schumer's scared to death he's going to be deposed by the Bernie Sanders AOC wing of the Democratic Party. And so he is trying to play as much as he can to the Bernie Sanders of the Democratic Party. But you know, they're not really serious about solving the problem. It's all about show. It's like when they shut down the government for the longest time I think in Senate history over health care.

[Josh Holmes]

Then they don't care about that. The second.

[Senator John Cornyn]

No, they don't care about that now that it's the next shiny object. But instead of trying to work with us to try to come up with solutions, really they want the issue that they can then run elections on. That's, that's who they are.

[Josh Holmes]

Is this the most cynical? I mean, look, we've you've dealt with a fair amount of cynical Democratic leaders. Harry Reid comes to mind. But this seems different in that Schumer literally will do anything, and that includes really putting the American people in a tough position via shutting down the government or trying to defund law enforcement or whatever just to cater to this 10 12% base. Is it as bad as it looks from the outside looking in? Yep, it is.

[John Ashbrook]

Right?

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, I'm not crazy.

[Senator John Cornyn]

I mean, to me, what's so sad about today's Democratic Party, it's about seeking and holding power. It's really not about how do we make the American people's lives better, how do we solve hard problems like, you know, the immigration issue, health care, how do we deal with our $38 trillion in debt? I mean, there's not, it's not like there aren't serious problems we couldn't work on, but all this thing about, you know, short term continuing resolutions and spending cliffs, you know, the press has been, all the press wants to write about is the next government shutdown. And just think about the opportunity cost of messing with this when we should be doing other important things, dealing with the housing crisis we have, trying to fix the health care system, trying to bring down prices at the kitchen table, which is, you know, which is going to be a, a really important issue going into the midterms, of course.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. No question about it. For all of our listeners who want to help you out, where do they go?

[Senator John Cornyn]

John cornyn.com okay.

[Josh Holmes]

And that's easy. Take care of it right there. Just the name in the dot com.

[Senator John Cornyn]

That's right. It's.

[Comfortably Smug]

Yep.

[Senator John Cornyn]

You got it.

[Josh Holmes]

That's great.

[Michael Duncan]

All right.

[Josh Holmes]

Senator John Cornyn, thank you so much for joining us.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Good to be with you.

[Josh Holmes]

Appreciate it.

[Senator John Cornyn]

I notice the Mullen Ranch hat.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Senator John Cornyn]

Mark Twain Mullen.

[Josh Holmes]

I like the fit. They make a nice hat.

[Senator John Cornyn]

It is a nice hat.

[Josh Holmes]

Is it? Take care.

[Comfortably Smug]

I mean, great way to kick off primary season, right? I mean, he had a lot of great info and there is so much going on in Texas as you laid out at the very beginning of the program. And I feel like there is so much more good stuff to come.

[Josh Holmes]

We're going to hear from everybody and I imagine there's a lot of shit talk that is going to be he's not like Cornyn's not a shit talker. Like, that's just not his M.O.

[Comfortably Smug]

Gentleman.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. So he's not going to give us exactly what we want. But I'm going to try to prod along the way as we get into this, to make people really explore their differences in some ways, because I do think, look, there are differences, and Texas is gonna be foremost amongst them. You got a big choice in Texas. If you're listening to this, folks, you got a big choice. And this isn't just about, like, your preference. It's, you know me. Cornyn, lay it out. Like, if you have to spend money in taxes, you better make sure you don't have to spend money in Texas. Let me just put it that way. Like, Georgia is sitting there like, dude, please, please, no. You know, North Carolina. Watley's sitting over there like, oh, God, no, please don't. Don't do this. Rogers. We've had him in Michigan. The first place you cut funding if you have to spend money in Texas is him. We haven't won since 1999. Like, that's the first place. So you got to consider an awful lot of things when you're considering the Texas Senate race. Hope you enjoyed the first installment of that. We're going to have all of them in, and I think it's like a March 11th or it's 3rd, 3rd, 3rd. So it's quick.

[Michael Duncan]

Right around the corner.

[Josh Holmes]

It's quick. Just a reminder for all of you candidates who have been begging to come on the Ruthless Friday press program that now all of a sudden, you've got, like, a short timeline and you're concerned about whether you'll say something. We take this thing personally if you don't show up. I can't promise anything. I can't promise I will react to that. So come on in, enjoy the conversation. We'll give everybody a fair interview. I think we've proven that over the years. There's not anybody that comes in here that we don't have a legit conversation with, and we're going to continue to do that so you get a good idea of what it is that you're voting for with that. Fellows, I think we did it.

[Michael Duncan]

I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, thank you so much to Senator Cornyn and thank you to the Minions. Remember, if you have not yet, go to the YouTube and hit subscribe because it's more fun in video. So until next time, Minions, keep the faith, hold the line, and own the libs. We'll see you on Friday. Stay ruthless.