Dan Caplis Show, Cory Gardner, July 17, 2019
Station: KHOW, 630 am
Show: Dan Caplis Show
Guests: Gardner, Cory
Date: July 17, 2019
Topics: President Trump’s Controversial Tweet, Go Back to Where You Came From, Rep. Omar, Rep Tlaib, Rep. Pressley, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, African American, BLM Headquarters, Bureau of Land Management, Mesa County, Border Crisis, Border Security, Fake Crisis, Border Patrol, Secretary of Homeland Security, Decriminalizing Border Crossing, Nation of Laws, Human Dignity, Kim Jong Un, North Korea, Sanctions, Iran, Denuclearization, United Nations, President Obama, Middle East, West of the Mississippi, Asylum, Tax Cuts
HOST DAN CAPLIS [00:00:00] We do have Senator Gardner, so that’s the best news of the day. Senator, welcome back to the Dan Caplis Show.
U.S. SENATOR FROM COLORADO, CORY GARDNER [00:00:07] Hey, Dan, thanks for having me on. And I’ll try not to give you that busy signal, here.
CAPLIS [00:00:12] [laughs] Thank you. Well, people give me worse than that every day, I guarantee you. But, no, hey, [I] appreciate the time. I know you’re slammed. But, [I] wanted to get your take on a number of things. First of all, I’m sure everybody is asking you about the president’s controversial tweet, and for those who haven’t heard you or your views on it yet, where do you come down on it?
GARDNER [00:00:31] Yeah, you know, I have said that I disagreed with the tweet. I wouldn’t have sent them. And I do think that there are so many things that we ought to be focusing on that we’re doing good as a country that that’s where we ought to be — ought to be showing and showcasing.
CAPLIS [00:00:43] Yeah, and no, I think that’s a critical point. And a caller was making that point earlier. In fact, she self-identifies as African American. And she was just saying that that she hopes that people put this in context with all the good that’s being done and some very courageous positions you have taken in support of the president on things he is doing very well. So, let’s talk about some of those things. I mean, I know one of the things you’ve been working hard on — maybe not a lot of folks have heard about — is the relocation of the BLM headquarters. What’s up with that?
GARDNER [00:01:18] Yeah, this is an exciting thing for Colorado. If you look at the Bureau of Land Management over the years, I hear so much frustration from county commissioners and advocates for public lands about what’s happening in Washington, and relative satisfaction with what’s happened out of the local Bureau of Land Management office. And so, I think in an agency that has 245 million acres, 99 percent of which are west of the Mississippi River, then if that’s the problem — [if] Washington is the problem, then why don’t we just move Washington out. Let’s move the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management to the west, to places that understand public lands. And that’s exactly what we’ve done. The President [and the] Secretary of Interior deserve great credit for moving the headquarters of the Bureau of Land management to Grand Junction.
CAPLIS [00:02:06] Well, and that’s a real coup for you, and I’m glad that it’s happening. What’s the timing on it?
GARDNER [00:02:11] So, I think by — the announcement was made official yesterday by the Secretary of Interior. I think by this fall we’ll have that Grand Junction office — the director, the deputies all working out of the Grand Junction headquarters and office. This is is going to be a good thing for Colorado. And I think — you know, 70% of Mesa County, where Grand Junction is located, is publicly held by the state and federal governments. And so, you’re in a community that’s surrounded by public lands, it just makes sense to have the headquarters there.
CAPLIS [00:02:43] Amen to that! Senator Cory Gardner [is] our guest. It says — you know better than any of us, because you’re in the middle of it every day — so much back there in D.C. just is counter-intuitive, counter-common sense. Speaking of which, the border: and you’ve been proven correct on this. Well, when you came out and said, “Hey, this is a real crisis at the border,” back when the left was claiming that it was concocted. And you were right, and there is [a crisis]. And so, what needs to happen down there right now to have, you know, the basic human dignity of all the folks involved, on both sides of the border, protected?
GARDNER [00:03:19] Well, I think you’re exactly right. I mean, just a couple of months ago, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer — they were all saying that this is a fake crisis. This is made up. There is no crisis on the border. And finally people realize that this is a crisis. There is a crisis. There is a humanitarian crisis. There’s a trafficking crisis. And so, those are the things that need to be addressed. That’s why we tried to get the money for the security and the situation months ago. That was denied, and that’s why I’m glad that we were able to get it in the last couple of weeks. But more needs to be done, including not just helping to correct the immediate crisis at the border, but also to prevent this from happening again. And that means improving our laws, improving our security, creating a system that can actually work to protect people, both in this country and people who want to come legally to this country.
CAPLIS [00:04:08] Right. And tell us about the problem right now, the way the current asylum law is written, is being interpreted, etc. Because the way I see this — and you tell me if I’m wrong — is we have a largely heroic Border Patrol which is doing tremendous security work but it’s also doing tremendous humanitarian work at the border. But at a certain point, if a human endeavor gets flooded, gets overwhelmed, it’s not going to be operating perfectly. And it seems right now that just sheer numbers are flooding that border. So, how does the current asylum law fit into all that?
GARDNER [00:04:46] That’s exactly right. And you have people like Obama’s — President Obama’s own Secretary of Homeland Security saying that this is a crisis and the numbers are just not manageable. And you know, I think that’s the big challenge, in the way asylum can work right now is somebody coming into the country, declaring asylum, basically given, you know, either in detention or released with a court date, is simply overwhelming with the numbers that we have — tens of thousands of people coming in at record rates. And so, they’re either held, and you have a family separation which is unacceptable and we’re trying to fix that. Or, you have this release into the country and nobody shows back up for the asylum hearing.
CAPLIS [00:05:27] Right.
GARDNER [00:05:27] And if they did show up, we have a backlog of 700 or 800 thousand cases in our immigration courts right now — systems — that needs to be addressed.
CAPLIS [00:05:35] Wow! Wow.
GARDNER [00:05:35] Yeah, nearly a million case backlog. And so, this all has to be a part of a fix, a part of a solution. And so, we put money toward it, but more needs to be done. And the laws need to be addressed, refreshed, updated, agreed on to actually prevent this from happening again and never in the first place.
CAPLIS [00:05:54] Well, Senator, isn’t the problem that the left doesn’t want to fix it because they want open borders, and a fix would mean we could then control our border in a sensible way while treating people as God’s children? But they don’t want to fix, do they?
GARDNER [00:06:07] Well, you saw the presidential candidates raise their hand on decriminalizing border crossing — illegal border crossing. And so, I think that right there gives you all of the information that you need, that they basically want to make it easier to do that. And you know, that has ramifications for any number of things. What does it mean for our airport security? What does it mean to our ports — those things? And look, this is — this is a country that is a rule –we are a nation of immigrants, no doubt about it. But we’re also a nation of laws. And I hope that that common sense that is in the American people–. I believe the majority the American people don’t believe that — don’t believe you should decriminalize it, don’t believe you should have open borders. I hope that common sense is what prevails.
CAPLIS [00:06:56] What does this mean for the politics of all this? Obviously, you’re up in this cycle and this race is being watched all over the country. But it seems to me that the left has done you and the rest of us a big favor at this point by going from a position that I think you know so many of us can agree on: “Hey, wait a second, these are all God’s children. We have to enforce our borders but respect basic human dignity,” to a point where now whoever you end up running against is going to be correctly identified as caring more about folks who are not citizens of the country — who are trying to get in illegally — than the folks who are citizens. So, what does that mean politically?
GARDNER [00:07:37] Well, I think this is a very hard sell. I don’t even think the majority of Democrats agree with many of the positions that the Democratic candidates are taking right now on immigration, or many other issues before, for that matter. I think they are going too far. I think you’re starting to hear that and see that across the country. And I think that as people make their decision over the next year and a half to vote, they’re going to vote for reasonableness. Reasonableness means that, yes, you agree we have an immigration problem that needs to be fixed — the immigration system that is broken. But reasonableness also means that we provide security, that we provide a system that actually prevents people from coming into this country without documentation, that prevents them from entering illegally into the country. I think that’s part of that reasonable test as well.
CAPLIS [00:08:28] Senator Gardner, [is] our guest. And Senator, you’ve always been three or four steps ahead on this North Korea business. Right now, it’s not in the headlines because so many other things are. But we know the next whatever is around the corner. So, what’s going on? What do you think is really going on there? And are we headed to a good place or a bad place?
GARDNER [00:08:48] You know, I think we’re in a period right now where Kim Jong Un is clearly testing the resolve of the United States and our allies, testing us from a standpoint of trying to renege on some promises that he has made. That — this is not a surprise. They have a generational habit of breaking promises. Right now, he’s talking about withdrawing from the talks that some of the lower level staff are having right now — are holding with the United States and South Korea — if certain military exercises aren’t canceled or certain other provisions are not made. I don’t think we can give in to him. I think he’s trying to see whether or not we will flinch, and if we do then I think he’s going to try to take even more of the rope that he would be given if we were to flinch in something like that. So, you know, I think that we’re very cautious and skeptical of Kim Jong Un. He made a promise to denuclearize. Now the president needs to make sure that we’re putting the pressure on him to do just that.
CAPLIS [00:09:50] Would you approve of any kind of deal that did not involve full, complete, total denuclearization?
GARDNER [00:09:59] Denuclearization is the law of the United States that is the complete verifiable irreversible denuclearization. That’s the law. That’s not just the international sanctions. That’s not just the United Nation[s] resolution. That is the law of the United States. And so we need complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization. And we haven’t even seen a single step toward that at this point from North Korea. North Korea talks about sanctions relief, but we haven’t even seen a willingness at all to make a concrete significant step toward that. So, this is something that I think we have to demand. Something that we have to continue to expect is the fulfillment of U.S. law.
CAPLIS [00:10:43] And while we’re on that, Iran [is][ also on that spectrum. Where do you see that headed? And do you draw that line at nuclear weapons? Is this a, “Hey, last resort, whatever it takes to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons?” Where’s that’s headed?
GARDNER [00:10:58] Well look, I think we need to do everything we can to build more pressure on Iran. Unfortunately under the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear agreement that President Obama had basically entered into without the consent of Congress, you basically have a route — without the ratification of Congress, you basically have a situation where Iran was guaranteed a patient pathway to a nuclear bomb. That’s an unacceptable outcome.
CAPLIS [00:11:23] Right. Right.
GARDNER [00:11:23] And you had Iran’s defense, security apparatus that was enriched by billions upon billions of dollars because of the sanctions relief that they received. You have people who were desanctioned that were very bad actors in Iran, who were responsible for a lot damage to the U.S. interests and our men and women in uniform in the Middle East. And so, you know, we cannot accept a nuclear Iran. And that’s why the United States needs to continue its work with our allies in Europe and beyond to continue pressuring Iran into doing the right thing, and actually giving up the nuclear program.
CAPLIS [00:11:59] And Senator, you’ve been very generous with your time. In the last 30 seconds or so that we have, as you travel this state, what is percolating up as the most important concern of the folks in Colorado, as you see it?
GARDNER [00:12:12] I think we’ve touched on many of them tonight. You know, immigration issues, so we hear about affordability issues, what we’re doing to make sure that we address traffic and housing concerns, the cost of a house in Denver, what we’re doing to give people more time with their families because they’re not stuck in traffic, what we’re going to do to drive down the cost of health care, how we can continue to make sure that the economy is strong, in Boulder and Denver — yes– but what are we doing about Burlington and Craig to make sure — and that’s where I’m focused on, is making sure that all four corners of Colorado succeed. And that’s why the tax cuts, our economic growth, and the BLM move — things like that — are so important.
CAPLIS [00:12:48] Well, hey, [I] really appreciate the time. Keep up the great work and we’ll talk again soon, I hope.
GARDNER [00:12:52] Thanks for having me, Dan. Thank you.
CAPLIS [00:12:54] Thank you, Senator. [I] appreciate that. That is Senator Cory Gardner.
