Mandy Connell Show, Ken Buck, March 26, 2019
Station: KOA, 850 am
Show: Mandy Connell Show
Guests: Buck, Ken
Date: March 26, 2019
Topics: Second
HOST MANDY CONNELL: I’m not going to go tell him to pound sand, because he’s Congressman Ken Buck! Congressman, welcome to the show, my friend!
UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE FROM COLORADO’S FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT AND CANDIDATE FOR CHAIRMAN OF THE COLORADO REPUBLICAN PARTY, KEN BUCK: Thank you very much. I appreciate it! It is good to be with you, Mandy!
CONNELL: It is good to have you. But I want to tell you, I didn’t get to my theme for the day. I was still kind of unrolling the show, but I wanted to go ahead and bring you on because I know you’re on a tight schedule. But the theme for today’s show, Congressman, is, “Let’s not gloat on a Tuesday. Let’s have compassion for our devastated friends across the aisle who are trying to pick up the pieces of their shattered two years of wasted time, and figure out how to move forward while trying to rein in their out of control emotions as they deal with the shattering Mueller report and all of its ramifications.” So, we’re coming at this with love, Congressman – from a place of love. That’s where we are today.
BUCK: I only slightly disagree with you, Mandy. The problem I have right now is — I don’t know if you’ve ever smelled burning hair.
CONNELL: Oh! No.
BUCK: But the smell is not pleasant.
CONNELL: Yes, actually, I have. Yes.
BUCK: And the hair – the people, their hair is on fire all over Capitol Hill, right now.
CONNELL: Mm-hmm.
BUCK: It is really tough to deal with.
CONNELL: What exactly – now, I would understand – and Congressman, when this report dropped Friday at 5 [p.m.] on the east coast, I was on the show, obviously. It’s three o’clock our time. And I said Friday, “There is nothing in this report, or they would have never rolled it out Friday at 5 p.m. on the east coast!” You knew from that moment forward that this was not only nothing, it was less than nothing! And I immediately began to get concerned for my friends who have been in a lather for two years waiting for President Trump to be – not just impeached – but indicted over his role as a Russian informant. And I’ve been trying all weekend not to start laughing every 5 seconds, but it’s hard! It’s hard to be a good winner, in this case. But I’m trying! But when you say everybody’s hair is on fire, was it shock and now anger? Are we moving through the stages of grief? What’s happening?
BUCK: It’s a great point. I don’t know. I think they are probably still in shock, right now. There are so many people –. I expected, when I went into the Judiciary Committee today, that I would see a lot of people in track shoes because they were backpedaling so fast.
CONNELL: [laughing]
BUCK: But they don’t even want to do that!
CONNELL: No.
BUCK: They don’t even want to admit that what happened was disappointing to them. They want to instead go on the offensive and say, “Well, we haven’t read the full report,” and, “The Attorney General summarized it – we don’t trust the Attorney General, like he’s the handpicked Attorney General of President Trump.” I just kept hearing more and more nonsense. And it’s pathetic! And I am absolutely sure that those voters in the middle that make the difference in elections are looking at this and saying, “Enough is enough, you guys! Admit that you lost and let’s move on to more important things!”
CONNELL: And that seems to be – I actually have seen enough – you know, here’s the thing: the more seasoned Democrats are already on record — Nancy Pelosi: “Okay, let’s move on. We’re going to move on with our agenda.” I have now seen the more seasoned Democrats come out and say exactly what you just said. But unfortunately they have the renegade younger version of Democrats that they’ve been cultivating for 20 years who are not in a mood to sit down and shut up. So I think they’ve created this problem for themselves. And though I’m being a gracious winner today, Congressman, I just wanted to point out that you reap what you sow, and the chickens have come home to roost on this one!
BUCK: Oh, I think that’s absolutely right. And I think that Nancy Pelosi has a very difficult time controlling her conference. And the reality is that there are a lot of people – in spite of what Nancy Pelosi says – there are a lot of people going on TV saying the exact opposite. The word ‘impeachment’ has come up a number of times. I saw something – if it wasn’t so ridiculous, it would be funny — but one of the Congressman – I think it was from Texas –said that the president should impeached because of bigotry. Now, now –.
CONNELL: Wait. Wait, what?
BUCK: Bigotry! The standard in the Constitution is a high crimes or misdemeanor. And this Congressman evidently thought that we didn’t need a high crime or misdemeanor, that some allegation that the president has misspoken on some issue is fine. It’s just unbelievable how they are trying to pull anything out of the hat that they can get. And Nancy Pelosi — when we have to say on air, Mandy, that Nancy Pelosi is the adult in the room, we truly have problems in this country.
CONNELL: Yeah, I would say so. Now, you know, Congressman, here is the thing. I’m going to talk about this after I have this conversation with you, because I remember – and I was trying diligently to remember what the catalyst was for this transformation for myself. But I cannot for the life of me remember what the story was — the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back for me during the Obama administration. The first three years, especially when Obamacare was shoved down the throats of the American people, I was so emotionally invested in his presidency. And I’ll say it that way: “emotionally invested.” And again, I don’t remember what the catalyst was, but all of a sudden, I had a lightbulb moment. And I said, “Okay, if I take my emotions out of this and I look at what this president is doing and how he is doing it, what is a better use of my time than making an emotional reaction?” And it changed the way I covered the Obama presidency. I then dropped back to a much more dispassionate view, and it made it easier for me to sort of figure out what the strategy would be long-term. Not that it was incredibly effective, because obviously he got elected to a second term. My point in all of that story is this: too many people are emotionally invested in bringing down President Trump and some of them are in Congress. And there is not a rational line of thinking about that, other than angry bitterness over losing the last presidential election to a guy that they thought should be a walk in the park. But how do you – as a member of Congress – would you presume to look at someone – I mean, Maxine Waters is completely unhinged on this. I mean, somebody needs to look at her and say, “Maxine, you need to walk your emotions back to the door and think like a legislator, and do the job of the American people and get over your little hissy fit!” But you can’t do that, can you?
BUCK: I certainly wouldn’t do that with Maxine Waters. I’m afraid of what would happen. She could beat me any day of the week in a fight, so I’m not going to do that. But I will tell you what I said today in the Judiciary Committee, Mandy, and I think it is very similar to what you’ve just been saying. I said that –. First, I quoted a bunch of the Democrats when they went overboard, suggesting that the President should be impeached or indicted or serve jail time. And then I said the Democrats made a mistake by saying that George Bush was an illegitimate president because he stole the election in Florida. The Republicans made a mistake by saying that President Obama was an illegitimate president because he didn’t have a birth certificate or wasn’t born in the United States. And now the Democrats are making a mistake by saying that this president is an illegitimate president because he colluded with the Russians and stole this election. The reality is we need to get beyond legitimacy of presidents, and acknowledge that this president is the legitimate leader of this country. We can agree with him or disagree with him on policy issues, but we’ve got to act more maturely if we are going to, 1) invigorate this country, and, 2) gain the credibility that we should have as members of Congress and also as policymakers. We can’t put forth a rational policy if people think that we are acting irrationally all the time. And so, I am pleading with my Democrat[ic] friends to move beyond where we are right now and let’s get to the point where we have disagreements about gun control or gun rights, or we have disagreements about healthcare, we have disagreements about international trade. But we should not be arguing about whether this is a legitimate president.
CONNELL: See, you actually did say exactly what I said, only you said it in terms that mean that you’re in Congress and I’m not.
BUCK: [laughs]
CONNELL: Because essentially – well, it is an emotional reaction to say that our president is illegitimate without proof! You know, it’s not as if we have a Banana Republic and we can point to armed men at the polls who force people to vote a certain way. The reality is that all this speculation about the legitimacy or the illegitimacy of a presidency is based on emotion. So you and I are absolutely in lockstep. You’re just really good at making it sound good, in this case, whereas I tend to be a smidge on the blunt side, perhaps.
BUCK: [laughs] They pay me to use big words, I guess.
CONNELL: And you do a fine job. So, what is next, here? Honestly, Congressman, what is next, because Democrats are not going to let this go. What are they going to [do] – subpoena the 500 people that Robert Mueller investigated?
BUCK: I don’t think so. I think what they’re trying to do now is they are talking about the obstruction. They have moved on from collusion. They are talking about the obstruction. But I think what they are ultimately going to try to do is to –. I was in a committee hearing the other day where we were talking about a merger of two major U.S. corporations, and the line of questioning from the Democrat side was, “When you arrived in town, did you stay at the Trump Hotel?”
CONNELL: Oh, my God!
BUCK: Yeah! No, I’m serious! This is the United States Congress! This is the Judiciary Committee! And they were questioning these corporate executives on where they were staying, and whether they thought that by staying at the Trump Hotel they were somehow influencing the Department of Justice to sign off on this merger.
CONNELL: Oh, my God!
BUCK: And so, it was unbelievable! But I think what they’re going to try to do is to go after family members, and conflicts of interest between the corporation and the President. And I think it’s very – it’s a sad day in America when we go down that path.
CONNELL: It – here’s the question, Ken, because you know as well as I do, at some point the pendulum will swing and the Republicans will be back in charge, and there are a lot of Republican voters who want to see a pound of flesh exacted. And I’ll be perfectly frank: the investigation that I would be the most interested in, right now, is an investigation into James Comey, James Clapper, James Brennan, all of these people that have been out in front of this for two years, from a position of knowledge from the intelligence community, telling people that there’s a possibility [that] our president could be a foreign agent. I would like an investigation into where they got the information when they – you know—they shouldn’t have been involved in it, and why they were out there. That’s the kind of stuff that Republican voters want to see! It’s not necessarily revenge. But to you point about, “We have to stop this,” we also have to stop the people that have politicized and weaponized our intelligence agencies. Because in my mind, there is more than a fair bit of that that went on.
BUCK: So, if they are still in the intelligence agency, I agree with you. If they are on the outside, if they are private citizens, and they are speculating based on life experiences, I disagree with you. I think we have a First Amendment and it lets people say a lot of stupid things. And as Americans, we have to understand that sometimes people say stupid things, and we’ve got to look through that, get past it, and move on. And I am so disappointed that the media puts a lot of those stupid statements on, but that’s the reality. That’s how we transmit information. And Mandy, I’ve got to run. I apologize, but it’s been great to be on with you today.
CONNELL: No problem! Go do your job! No problem! That is Congressman Ken Buck. Go do Congressman things. We’ll talk to you again soon, sir!
BUCK: Thank you.
CONNELL: Thank you very much, Congressman Ken Buck.
KOA NEWS BROADCASTER, SUSAN WITKIN: He did do Congressman things. Just before he came on with you, the House voted down to override the President’s veto.
CONNELL: Nice!
