🔰SEN. MULLIN- 'We could end this in 5 minutes.' - America's News Room

Mark Wayne Mullins, sir, thank you for your time. I want to take you to MSNBC on Wednesday. Here's Elizabeth Warren talking about the dire straits that Republicans are putting Americans in right now. Watch here. There are going to be people who are going to have to make decisions about whether to make rent or pay for health insurance. They're going to be people who are just going to let their health insurance go. There are going to be people who are going to die because of these decisions. So, Senator, I'll allow you to respond to that. Americans will die because of the decisions you're making in Washington. Bill, sometimes you just can't make sense out of crazy. I mean, how many times they pulled that fire alarm. Remember, OBB was going to kill thousands and and thousands were going to lose their health care and and hundreds of rural hospitals were going to go out. I mean, they cry this this ridiculous war cry, rally cry that does nothing. They continue to lie to the American people because they can't actually fight on substance. They can't fight on facts. What they know for a fact is they have voted for this CR 13 times. In fact, they voted for this clean CR 13 times. I read Biden. They voted for this exact clean CR, this exact language, exact numbers a year ago. They voted on it in December. They voted on it in January and they voted on it in March. And now they're saying that they're going to hold the American people hostage unless they get one point five trillion dollars to defund basically everything that Obamacare ripped or not Obamacare, but one big, beautiful bill pulled out of the fraud, waste and abuse. And they're saying now they want to put it back in. It's a really hard argument to make. And by the way, what they're wanting one point five trillion dollars for, which is six hundred billion dollars above the defense budget is only to open the government up for four weeks. Mm hmm. It is. It's very hard for them to explain. So instead of actually arguing about facts, Dana, what they do is they go out there and they make ridiculous claims like this. And at some point you have to ignore them because Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer, they've lost their ever loving mind and they're saying the most ridiculous things possible because they're pandering to this extreme left. And when sometimes when you're in the middle of a fight, it's harder to pull up out of it and look more broadly. But National Review said this about the Democrats, saying that Democrats cynical shutdown strategy, that they can use the conflict to energize their demoralized base heading into an election year. But there is also a risk that this will backfire, given that they will almost certainly have to cave and agree to fund the government eventually. All their tough talk now will only reinforce the sense of disillusionment among their base. That's I imagine that's how it will ultimately go. And I wonder how many of these Democrats are thinking that Chuck Schumer's political future is more important than the overall goals that they want to reach as a party or for the country. Dana, you're absolutely right. This has all happened because the Schumer shutdown, because he's fearful of AOC running against him in 2028. If the Democrats are really concerned, they could open the government up in five minutes, literally five minutes. We already have a bipartisan bill that three Democrats have voted for. We have we just need five more of them to join with us and we can open the government up and literally we could open it up. Senator, on that point, then apparently yesterday had at least a dozen senators, some report up at 20 senators talking in the well, the Senate about negotiations. You're in the Senate. Did you see that? Did you hear that? You see that as a possibility of breaking the ice here? Well, where do you negotiate? Yes, I did see that. We have had a group working for about three days meeting yesterday. We met at six o'clock in the morning the day before that. We met at six o'clock in the morning. We met at eight o'clock at night. And what the deal is now, it isn't you know, we're not negotiating on trying to reopen the government. We we've already said this is a clean CR. You can vote to to open it right now and we'll negotiate on what the long term funding bill is and we'll talk to you about it. But we're not going to allow you to hold the American people hostage because your political fears. What we have to do is make sure that we continue to move forward. And I think this I kind of agree with Vice President J.D. Vance. I think at some point this isn't going to be that long as they're going to cave in. What wrote the rest of the vote did yesterday is he went ahead and paid the military in full. Today, he went ahead and paid all federal employees in full. And I mind you, he didn't have to do that. The White House didn't have to do that because effectively we went to a shutdown on twelve oh one yesterday morning. But he went ahead and chose to do that. Now he runs out of money and he can't do that on the 15th and on the 16th. So on the 15th and 16th, the Democrats are going to have to choose. Are they going to continue this political fight for Chuck Schumer to be because of his fear of AOC or are they going to decide to go ahead and pay the military and and pay the federal employees? I think there I think their spirits will break at that point and say Chuck Schumer is not leading for the American people, but leading for his political agenda. Can I just get a quick comment from you on something? Maybe this is something for a longer discussion later, but health care costs are an issue. People keep talking about it. Obamacare didn't solve it. And now we are in this situation where they think that these temporary covid era extensions, they want to have them permanent forever. Do you think it's time for the Republicans to think about figuring out a way to get back to more some free market principles or at least some plain talk about just how expensive health care actually is? Well, we know Obamacare, affordable health care didn't work because it made the health care prices go through the roof. If we want to solve this issue, how about we use the president that's in office right now because he's the art of the deal. He knows business. He knows how to negotiate and he knows what free market can do. If they want to if they want to solve the health care crisis and actually take care of the American people, then use the business guy that's in office right now to set away your hatred and your bias towards him and realize he's the business guy that can may be able to help the American people solve this health care crisis and bring the free market back into looking for the health care. I might be for that. I think that therefore the government solving it and we are just in Europe. I don't think it's a great idea. No. Well, that's what I said. Free market. Let's have the free market. I agree. Not government. Senator, thank you for your time. We'll put a lot of these questions to Caroline Leavitt coming up next hour. Thank you.