My guest today on RIGHT IN DC is Chip Roy. Chip is a longtime friend of mine and I would call him an ideological compadre as we both revere the US Constitution, and our civil liberties and rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We both attended the University of Virginia together and he went on to be very involved in politics. Chip worked as the First Assistant Attorney General of Texas under Texas AG Ken Paxton, who I had the honor of meeting at the recent Federal Society conference in DC a few weeks ago. Chip was a senior advisor to Texas Governor Rick Perry and was Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. Chip is a former federal prosecutor, having served as Special Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Texas. Congratulations are now in order for his exciting victory in November to represent the 21st District of Texas to the US House of Representatives.
In my interview with him, we discuss:
- Secure borders, building the wall and illegal immigration
- Why it is in the interest of immigrants that we secure the borders and follow the rule of law
- Why he decided to get involved in politics considering so many conservatives don’t because they are so disgusted by what happens in Washington, DC
- How will he avoid getting “swamp fever” when he gets to Washington and become part of the entrenched establishment
- Why it would be better for the power to come back into the states so we wouldn’t all have to be at each other’s throats so someone from one state wouldn’t tell someone in another state what to do
- Why, during the new Congressman orientation session he attended, the entirety of the talk the Republicans were having, from leadership on down was how do we get the power back instead of focusing on accomplishing what we were elected to do
- Why the push to “out-Democrat the Democrats” is a bad idea to getting Republicans back in power
- Why he was running against Congress during his campaign
- How important it is to support conservative women and help them get their message out
- Impact of Ted Cruz trying to stop Obamacare on the House floor
- Why the Republicans, when they had the power, did nothing on Obamacare and other issues people elected them to do
American people are hungry for people who will stand up and do what they say they will do.—Chip Roy
- His views on the Second Amendment and the right for people and families to defend themselves
- The Kavanaugh hearings and why the Supreme Court is not functioning the way it should be functioning and that we need to stop waiting around for judges to tell us what we can do—they shouldn’t have that much power
MORE
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TRANSCRIPT
Gayle Trotter
This is Gayle Trotter, host of Right in DC. Today I am so excited about my guest, Chip Roy. Chip is a longtime friend of mine, and I would call him an ideological compadre. Chip, congratulations on your exciting victory to represent the 21st District of Texas to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Chip Roy
Well, thanks, Gayle. Thanks for having me on. It’s really great to be with you. It’s a long ways from the mean streets of Richmond, Virginia, and our misspent youth right after college and law school. It’s great to be on with such a great friend and somebody who is a great patriot and standing up for all the things we believe in. Thank you.
GT
Yes. Chip and I have worked on a lot of these issues over many years, and I would say that we both revere the constitution and our civil liberties and rights under the constitution and the Bill of Rights. We both attended the University of Virginia, which, of course, was founded by Thomas Jefferson. Chip has gone on to be really involved in politics. He worked under Ken Paxton, who I had the honor of meeting at the recent Federalist Society conference in DC a couple weeks ago. You also worked with Rick Perry and another perennial favorite, Ted Cruz.
Some of these issues, I think that you have really focused on, are coming to a fore right now. You are representing Texas and we see all the issues about secure borders, building the wall, illegal immigration, the idea that a nation cannot be a nation if it cannot regulate its borders and determine who qualifies to be a citizen or not. So this is the huge news this week. Pictures of moms with their children and tear gas and reporters standing behind them with cameras. You’re going to come to Washington — this is one of the issues you want to tackle.
What do you think could help with this very important issue?
CR
Well, I appreciate that. Of course, that’s a big question, but it’s one that I’ve been focused on a lot in my career and over my life. Both as a lawyer on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I worked on these bills as many as ten years ago, on legislation involving immigration. I was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecuting people who are here illegally. As you mentioned, Senator Cruz’s Chief of Staff, and then as First Assistant Attorney General. We sued in federal court to stop the previous president, President Obama’s, illegal executive amnesty. So I’ve been immersed in this for a long time.
Here is the thing that I think we should all come back to as conservatives. We all believe as conservatives, that we have a duty as a sovereign nation, a basic duty to secure our border. That it’s fundamental. That the president has the authority in Article II to defend our border, and that it’s just a basic proposition that as a sovereign nation you should defend your border, but we also recognize that we’re a nation of immigrants. We have laws that allow people to come here legally, and we have laws on the books for asylum for people who are seeking refuge. As a welcoming nation, that’s a good thing. The problem is it’s being abused. We know it’s being abused. Everybody knows it’s being abused. Left, Right, doesn’t matter where you are on the political spectrum.
I think the first thing we need to do, the order of business is to be honest about what we’re dealing with, with a caravan. The vast majority of the people that are in this caravan are not seeking asylum. They’re walking right past border patrol agents. They walk right through places in Mexico where they had security and safety. This is a political statement for the vast majority of them. There are a few, no doubt, who would like to seek asylum, who are being left by the wayside.
This is the point that I want to make, Gayle, that I think you’ll agree with and appreciate. I’m sick and tired of real people getting hurt. Little girls getting sold into the sex trafficking business along the border. Mothers dying in the desert trying to come across our border and being out in the middle of the desert and dying from dehydration. Children dying because they’re on the top of train cars trying to come to our country or in the case of the few photos that we’ve seen of a mom with little kids on the border just south of the California border.
All of this is stuff that is caused by people who bury their head in the sand, and don’t want to do the basic duty that we should as a country to defend our borders, secure our borders, and send a strong message to the world that you’re welcome to come here, but you’re only welcome to do so if following our laws. That we’re not going to have this false compassion that people put out there. Frankly, a lot of people, people of faith, that put false compassion out there that somehow open borders is good for immigrants. It is not. It’s endangering immigrants and we’re seeing it right now. Right now, today, the southern border of Texas, southern border of California, Arizona, and Mexico, a little girl, or more than that, will get sold into the sex trade, because we’re allowing cartels to have operational control over our border, and we’re doing so because liberals in both parties and people that don’t want to enforce our borders are allowing it to happen.
GT
It’s really important that you brought this up. Ken Paxton spoke about this. Ken Paxton, who is the current Attorney General of Texas, who you previously worked for, he spoke about this when he was at the Federalist Society conference about how his office realized that there is a huge human trafficking problem, and he allocated part of his resources to setting up division or an office that could really address that issue. I’d like to underscore that point that you said that open borders is not helping immigrants. I think, unfortunately, what you hear from Democrats and their allies in the media is that Republicans don’t support this core principle of American values. We are a welcoming nation, and we do thrive from the influx of people who support American values and want to come here and have a better life for their families and contribute to the welfare of this country.
How can conservatives fight back against that caricature and complete falsehood about how conservatives view legal immigration and immigrants and other cultures?
CR
I think it starts by just focusing on the facts of what we’re dealing with on the ground, and making sure that everybody, the American people, know the truth. When I went out and was campaigning in Texas 21, which for your listeners is the district that stretches between Austin and San Antonio and then out through a good part of the hill country. So what would you call central Texas, maybe slightly south central Texas, but central Texas. The Western end of my district is only about 100 miles or so from the border. As you can imagine, border security and immigration is very important to the people of this district.
Now, to be clear, there are a lot of people of faith in this district who believe that we should be welcoming. There are a lot of people in this district who own businesses, who know that we need a steady stream of labor and not all of that is necessarily coming from the United States, and that it’s good to have some labor from other parts of the world, when it’s appropriate. So there is a lot of needs here, and people get it. But it’s still the number one issue, and it always starts from top to bottom, with a few exceptions, it starts with a basic understanding that it is in our interest to secure the border, and in the interest of immigrants.
I think this is what we don’t do a good job of as Republicans or conservatives, is explaining the extent to which it is far better for immigrants around the world, that they know the rules, that they follow the rules, that it’ll be safer and better for them coming to our country. It also sends a message to the world that we defend the rule of law. What differentiates the United States from every other country in the world or most countries in the world, particularly, our neighbor to the south, Mexico, and some of our neighbors in Central America? It’s that we follow the rule of law. Not always exactly like you and I would prefer, by the way. But as a general matter, the United States follows the rule of law. You can know that when you invest your money in a business, you’re going to be able to get it. If you own property, you’re going to be able to keep it. The government is not going to confiscate it. Cartels are not going to come undermine your ability to do your job, take care of your families. You’re secure, generally.
If we abandon the rule of law, in the false name of compassion to have open borders for people to come here, and then in the process we’re making it difficult on them anyway, and they’re endangering their lives, that is a losing message. It’s much like us winning the battle for life. Democrats are on defensive that they’re for the extermination of life. We’re winning that argument. Let’s win this argument. We’re for human flourishing. We’re for people doing well, and for a secure nation and I think we win.
GT
Chip, I love that you talk about human flourishing, because that’s from Aristotle and that is a motto of mine. That is a purpose of my mission and I think this is really fascinating, because the title of this podcast is called Right in DC. You and I know so many people run for Congress, this is even on your website. I recommend everybody go to your website and see what issues you care about and which ones you’re going to come to Washington DC to talk about. How many conservatives campaign that they are pro Second Amendment, pro borders, pro free market? Pick any issue. Then they come to DC and they get swamp fever. They become part of the swamp. They become part of the entrenched establishment in Washington DC, even the ones who speak the best game, and maybe they’re sincere when they do it.
My question for you, good friend, is how did you decide to get involved in politics? I think the reason a lot of conservatives don’t get involved in politics is because they’re so disgusted by what happens in DC, and you will be coming to DC from Texas. You’ve been here before. What do you see the pitfalls are for you and anyone else like you, of strong conservative principles, and how are you going to fight the influence of the swamp?
CR
Well, there is a lot to unpack there, but I think if you want to cut to the chase, you ask the first question is: Why did I or why am I involved in politics? It’s a great question. I’m sitting down here right now in an office with a bunch people who created a lot of jobs that I’m currently involved with until I was sworn in in Washington. There is a lot to be said for being out in the private sector and being out trying to create jobs or even in the public sector being back in Texas, not being in Washington where, at least, in Texas we’re surrounded by Texans and doing Texas things, and I’m proud of being a Texan.
I’ll tell you this, you know and some of your listeners may know, I’m a cancer survivor. Seven years ago I was declared cancer free. This last October, seventh anniversary, after going through Stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I promised myself, I promised my wife, and then my kids, who at the time were 2 years old and 3 months old, that I would leave everything on the field. Try to preserve and protect the republic for them. I believe it’s our duty to try to work hard to pass down to our kids, a better country than even we inherited. We have problems. We have issues. We have concerns. You and I both have a, I think, well-founded fear that we’re losing the very freedoms that gave this country its prosperity and its greatness and a faith in the All Mighty. These are things that you and I share. We also, I think, share the idea that it’s the greatest country the world has ever known. It remains the greatest country the world has ever known and our job is to preserve and protect it.
Look, I’m optimistic. I wrote a peace in National Review two years ago, almost exactly two years ago this week, maybe last week, in National Review called “Unity Through Federalism.” In it, I talked about how in the response to Trump being elected, the Left was losing their mind. Now look, in fairness, not terribly unlike our losing our mind when President Obama was elected, then he was doing projects and passing Obamacare and racking up debt. My point was simply this: We should all agree that it would be far better if we were to devolve power back to the states and to people so that we didn’t have to live at each other’s throats and have to try to come up with one-size-fits-all solutions from Washington for 330 million people, but rather agree to disagree. Let Texas be Texas; let California be California. California wants to ban straws or try to single payer healthcare or go with a high tax kind of a structured environment, let them. Let Texas do the same thing and flourish.
We will not be able to solve all the world’s problems and try to have one-size-fits-all solutions for America. I believe that’s the way we get unity. If we can just get people to agree in this environment. Look, I have no interest in telling people in New York or California what to do. I don’t, in the slightest bit. I just want to be free in Texas without people in Washington or San Francisco or New York telling me what to do. That’s what motivates me.
How do you avoid the swamp? By going up there and just being honest and being truthful about what you ran on, and then honoring that commitment. That’s it. Then recognize that your life doesn’t rise or fall on winning or losing an election.
This is the last point I’ll make and turn it back over to you: The week before Thanksgiving, we had our, I don’t know, orientation or whatever they call it. Congresscritters and sit up there on your bleachers and take your pictures and go get shuttled around. It’s all fine; it’s great; it’s fun. You meet some of your freshman class, but really what was interesting about it to me was the entirety of the conversation that Republicans were having from leadership on down was: What are we going to do to get power back? What’s the plan in 2020?
Look, if your response to getting your bottom handed to you a couple of weeks prior, when we have a 4 percent economic growth environment is to just suddenly go back and say, “Well, we just go to figure out how to raise more money and how to come up with a system so that we can get elected and win and win in 2020…” that’s the wrong thing. Get back to what you were elected to do. Why you ran in the first place and go back and win minds and hearts and talk to the American people about why a limited government and freedom and free enterprise are good for them. Why free market healthcare will provide them the far better healthcare options that they could possibly have anywhere else. Talk about how a secure border is good for our country and immigrants. Don’t run away from your views and your beliefs because you’re trying to figure out a way to manipulate a Rubik’s cube to figure out a way to win votes. Go run and do what you want to do and then if you lose, you lose. I think we’ll win more if we do that.
GT
This is such a great point, Chip, and you and I have been part of so many conversations that have been autopsies after Republicans have lost different elections, national elections, power in various ways and there is always bifurcated response to that type of loss. I remember after Romney lost and there was the RNC, the Republican autopsy about why Romney lost and there was a push to what I always call “out-Democrat the Democrats.”
You have the people on one side who feel like the Republicans are not liberal enough, and if they would just become more liberal and be more like the Democrats. They wouldn’t have to be as extreme as the Democrats, but they would be able to have a little bit of free market principles in opposition to someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York. The other people are saying, “No. Republicans are not being true to their principles.”
I think you and I have seen this over and over again when Republicans lose that there is this argument between these two factors. I think you and I probably share the opinion and I think you just very articulately put it, you can’t out-Democrat the Democrats. If Republicans are trying to change their core principles, that doesn’t seem like a path to victory to me.
CR
I completely agree. I can tell you that the autopsy has already started and as a general matter where I’m hearing people go with it is something in the ZIP Code of ActBlue and money that we need to fight that machine. In other words, it was a structural problem, not a philosophical one or one of honoring your commitments. I disagree with that. There are obviously things we need to improve structurally, but people will give you money if you give them a reason to give you money. Frankly, while, you know, I don’t always agree with everything that Trump says or does or the way he does things, but you can’t argue with good judges, getting out of the Clean Power Plan, getting out of the so-called Paris Agreement, eliminating regulations, and those kinds of things. What you can recognize is that Congress was falling to do what it said it would do. Frankly, I ran against Congress.
A lot of people don’t understand that, but when I got back and explain it, I say, look, the vast majority of my time, from the time I was in the primary all through the general election, I was running against this Republican Congress. Against trillion dollar deficits. I was running against socialized medicine that was their watered-down version of Obamacare. I was running against open borders. I was running against the centralization of power in Washington at the expense of Texas and liberty and limited government. All of these are things that were occurring or expanding on Republican watch. I think you’re exactly right that we need to not be trying to sell Democrat light, but rather sell something that would win minds and hearts and make people excited to get behind a conservative agenda.
I’ll make one other point if you’ll let me. It’s so important what you’re doing, and I talked to my wife about this, who is a conservative woman as well, about how important it is for the narrative to get out of conservative women who are moms or work in the workforce and/or a mom or just work in the workforce about how many conservative women there are out. This gender gap is overstated. The reality is we’re allowing the Democrats to win areas where they shouldn’t win, but I think the gender gap is overstated. We just don’t have a good narrative out there explaining why freedom works and why freedom sells for moms and for working women.
GT
I’m not going to push back on that. I’m going to agree with you, Chip. I’m going to challenge people in the conservative movement to support conservative women more. I don’t think it’s a gender bias thing. I don’t think it’s that something is negative about conservative women, but I think there is a missed opportunity when you have support going for lots of interesting thinktanks and this and that. But I think there is a real need to support conservative women and conservative women organizations that sometimes seem like the forgotten stepchild and don’t get the kind of support that they need. I’m not sure what the fix is to that, but I’m sure you will be on top of that, since you’ve mentioned that in our very first discussion before you’ve even come back to DC as an elected official! Thank you for that, Chip.
You mentioned Obamacare several times. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you were working as Senator Cruz’s Chief of Staff when he — it was not actually a shutdown, everybody gets this wrong. But he stood up on the floor of the Senate and kind of yelled, “Stop!” standing athwart history about Obamacare. I interviewed Matt Lewis, who is a columnist at The Daily Beast and a CNN commentator. He is a strong ideological conservative, but we saw this very differently. He wrote in his book about that particular episode with Senator Cruz. Matt Lewis’s interpretation of that was it was so wrongheaded and it was so destructive to the Republican Party, that it helped the Republican Party because then they knew not to do that. I told him my interpretation of it was just the opposite. That because of that strategic decision by Senator Cruz in the fall of 2013, the Republicans were able to win the Senate in 2014. I thought it was because Senator Cruz was able to distinguish the Republican position on healthcare versus the Democratic position on healthcare.
But like you said about President Trump, we can agree or disagree, (sometimes President Trump disagrees with himself) you talked about you running against Congress. This has to be one of the best examples of how you can run against Congress. They finally had the House, and they said, “Give us the Senate,” they got the Senate. They said, “Give us the presidency,” they got the presidency and what? What happened with Obamacare? Nothing. Nothing that was as substantial as should have been done.
CR
A couple things on that and I’m glad you brought it up, because that was something very important to me, near and dear to my heart. Both, because I’m a cancer survivor, but also because I’ve been in the thick of the fight. You mentioned the time when Senator Cruz was on the floor in his first year in the Senate, and you rightly differentiate the whole description of him, I think wrongly that this is all about a shut down, as opposed to doing our level best to try to defund Obamacare. Rewind the clock to 2013. What we knew was coming was full implementation of Obamacare. It was coming right around the corner. This was our last chance to do what we could to restructure Obamacare while we had President Obama in the White House and set the stage for repeal knowing full well that premiums were going to double and triple. So with all due respect to Matt, whom I like and I’ve known for a long time, and I certainly respect differing opinions in all of this, with all due respect, I don’t really care what the political result would have been.
Let me just start there. What I care about are the premiums for Americans that were going to go up. For the families that can’t afford healthcare because Republicans are too gutless and cowardly to actually stand up and fight for healthcare freedoms. So that you can afford to go to the doctor of your choice and be able to get the healthcare of your choosing and get the medicine of your choosing, instead of this watered-down government-run nonsense that we, as Republicans, are allowing to occur.
Number two, I believe it was politically beneficial. I believe, as you point out, we did very well in 2014, we did very well in 2016, after we actually stood up and fought. American people are just hungry for people to stand up and do what they say they will do. People were energized, mesmerized by what we were trying to accomplish and trying to do. Did we do everything perfectly? Of course not. But what you’re trying to do is stand up and fight and give a message for people to get behind. So I think politically it’s beneficial to do that, but I also think it’s more important than that.
Democrats knew in 2009, ’10 when they jammed Obamacare through with a razor thin 60-vote, Kennedy, and the whole votes and all that. They jammed it through knowing there would be political repercussions. They knew it and they didn’t care because they have a view for the long game. They were, like, look, we’ve got the opportunity right now to take a giant step toward socialized medicine. They saw the ability to do that and they were willing to take the hit. They did take a hit and they lost 60 seats in the House and we know where things then shifted. What did Republicans do? We just started selling watered-down healthcare with Obamacare. I get so mad at Republicans who just run around like chickens with their heads cut off talking about, “Well, our bill provided coverage for preexisting conditions and our bill would keep these pieces Obamacare.” But it would make it better and fix it this way and individual mandate and the employer mandate. Do you think anybody in America cares about any of that?
GT
No.
CR
What they care about is having affordable healthcare. So you either got to get busy selling why competition in healthcare will work and drive down costs and give you opportunities to have direct primary care. Go to your doctor so you can actually get somebody who does house calls and you pay him 50 bucks a month and they come take care of you, because you don’t need insurance to have regular healthcare. It’d be a lot cheaper than the copays and the deductibles that you’re currently paying with your astronomical health insurance plans. Have health sharing ministries and health sharing organizations defray costs. Have actual insurance that is catastrophic coverage that would be really affordable.
If you do all of that and coupled with other changes that drive down drug costs by getting rid of that safe harbor protections that are enriching the middleman in these large companies at the expense of citizens, you can do extraordinary things to have the access to the best healthcare in the world, but we are at a critical point right now. We’ve got to choose whether we’re going to have healthcare freedom, I’m not talking about Obamacare repeal anymore, I’m talking about healthcare freedom. We either want that or we can go down the road of government run, bureaucracy run healthcare.
By the one, one last point, this idea that this regime we’re in right now is good where we subsidize insurance companies, enrich insurance companies to basically be the provider of care for us, so you have to call some 25-year-old in Nebraska, on the other end of a phone, looking at schedule of payments to tell you what your healthcare is, it’s absurd. Yet that’s what Republicans go out there and say, “Well, don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of your preexisting conditions.” No, you won’t. You’re causing the cost to go up so much that it makes it impossible for me to get the care that I want in the first place. You’re not taking care of anything. Our job is to win a narrative about what we can achieve if we free up the markets and I’m not going to just sit back and let these guys kind of run to the hills like they normally do.
GT
Right. I think you make a great point that health insurance is not the same thing as healthcare. When people are trying to push government run central command health policy, medical policy, they’re pushing the insurance. Instead of trying to figure out what’s the best way to deliver healthcare to the most people for the most economical system.
I have two final topics for you. This is the lightning round. First, you’re going to Congress to serve with people who don’t understand what a semiautomatic weapon is and yet they want to make laws that affect 300-plus million Americans. One of your new colleagues talked about nuking his fellow American citizens — not literally. But it’s so funny that he jumped to that on Twitter when someone was talking about different gun regulations and then someone on Twitter responded to him that that would be over his dead body or something to that effect. He responded “The government has nukes. So it’s going to be a short fight.” So you’re going to go have to work with these people.
How is that going to work on the Second Amendment?
CR
It’s an important question and it’s one that obviously the new Democrat House is going to go down that road. There is no question about it. I’ve been in this fight before. It’s nothing new. You have to make a choice as to whether you believe that the Second Amendment, the constitutional recognition of our God-given right, by the way, it doesn’t give us that right. It simply recognizes our God-given right to be able to defend ourselves and defend others, not just against somebody intruding in your house and not just somebody in your community, but defend yourself, for example, if the federal government were to fail to do its job to secure our borders.
Say, hypothetically speaking, MS-13 gangs or terrorist organizations on the border of Texas were to be strengthened because of a federal government that is not doing its job. My God-given right to defend myself, my family, and my community. Let’s talk about that or let’s talk about to the point of the comment that was made about nuking the people, which I realize was a response, well, you can’t do anything against the great power of the government when they can just nuke you. I think that undermines the reality of history and what we know when you’ve got citizenry that is armed and is able to take care of itself and secure itself. I think that’s what’s lost in this. It’s, like, well, it’s either the government and we’ve got to give them the power and too many people are doing bad things with guns, so we’ve got to eliminate all those. They forget that when you do that and you separate that you’re giving government all of that authority, all of that power. But more importantly, you’re taking away that element of a person, a family, a community caring for themselves and defending themselves in the way that our militias were created, in the way that our government initially formed its armies and calling the armies, and the standing army together. You know it was because every able-bodied man had his musket and his weapon. The fact that those weapons have advanced and modernized, doesn’t change that reality.
I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there about weapons. There is a lot of misinformation about school security and about what we’re seeing today. What we’re seeing today with respect to the abuse of guns is a tragedy that has more to do with the breakdown of families, the breakdown of our culture, the breakdown of, frankly, our drug policies and what’s happening with respect to addictions. These are the things that are causing the hopelessness and despair that you’re seeing unfold with some of these tragedies. So I think we need to focus on where the problem actually exists, and not attacking law-abiding citizens’ right to defend themselves.
GT
I couldn’t have said it better myself. You hit all the highlights.
So the final topic to ask you about, you were counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee and you, like the rest of America, watched in rapt attention, I’m sure, to the confirmation process for Justice Brett Kavanaugh. I remember reading on your Twitter, and re-Tweeting several times, comments that you made about how absurd it is how contentious this becomes, because it underscores that the Supreme Court is not functioning the way that it should be functioning. Can you expand on that a little bit?
CR
Sure. I think it’d be two things. Do you want a glimpse of what the House of Representatives is likely to look over the next two years? Then look no further than the Senate Judiciary Committee in September. Unfortunately, some of us are going to have to deal with that firsthand, but that’s okay. That’s what we’re sent up there to do and I’m happy to go fight the fight.
But to your point, the reality is simply this: The idea that the country was hanging on with bated breath as to the confirmation of one man, to one court, in Washington DC tells you everything you need to know about the extent to which the Supreme Court now has too much power over things that affect our daily lives. It simply was not meant to be that. You don’t have to be Thomas Jefferson, who was obviously one of the earlier Presidents and members of our founding class that were hostile to a powerful judiciary. You can be somebody that was somewhat more pro-judiciary if you go back and look at Federalist Papers, and still recognize today that we’ve got courts that are stretched well beyond where they were supposed to be.
Remind your listeners, Article I, which granted power to the Congress, was the first article for a reason, because Congress is supposed to reflect the wishes of the people, and, obviously, the House of Representatives is the people’s house within that bicameral Article I legislature. We need to steal a line from Trump. We need to make Article I great again. Congress needs to do its job.
GT
Yes.
CR
Congress needs to actually legislate. Congress needs to limit the extent to which bureaucrats are making laws through the bureaucratic process and the regulatory state and they need to step in and limit the extent to which judges are overreaching. They can do that. It’s not a big deal. I mean, it is a big deal, but it’s not something that should be earth-shattering that there should be a robust debate among our legislators who we send there to represent us about who is making decisions upon our behalf. By the way, I say that without a desired outcome.
In other words, there will be times when a judge might make a decision that is going to enrage the Left.
GT
Yes.
CR
Take a decision that Roe v. Wade was bad law and they’re going to overturn it. Maybe they’re going to make a decision that Obamacare is unconstitutional, and the Left doesn’t like those. The question here is: Who should be making decisions? The judiciary should be there to check Congress and check and overreach and make sure that they’re not trampling on clear rights in the constitution that are enumerated, but also the powers that Congress are exercising to go pass laws.
But at the end of the day, we need to stop waiting for judges to tell us how we’re living. What schools we can go to, whether we can pray, and when we can do it, what marriage is defined as. All of these things that should be just we should decide as people rather than judges.
GT
Absolutely. Chip, congratulations again. If people want to follow you on Twitter. What is your Twitter handle and what is your website address?
CR
Sure, chiproy.com is my political website, and chiproytx is my Twitter handle. We’re on Facebook as well. Although I don’t really do that. I’m pretty much always just on Twitter or reading the news.
I appreciate everything that you’re doing it. Let’s keep up conversation when I’m in DC Let’s get together. I’m optimistic. We’re in a good place and we got to just keep winning the narrative out there and getting people to understand that if the people stand up, we win.
GT
We are excited to have another happy warrior coming to DC to fight the good fight. This is Gayle Trotter, host of Right in DC. You can follow me on Facebook. You can like me on Twitter. You can subscribe to my YouTube station or you can support me on Patreon. This is Right in DC.
