CPAC Live | 2.27.21

Episode of CPAC Live with all that noise. I hope you heard that this is day one of 2021 CPAC here in sunny Florida. We have got a great show for you. We have Josh Hawley who just got off the stage here at CPAC, a great senator from Missouri. We have Kevin Sorbo whose wife Sam has written a great book and we're going to talk to him about his amazing Twitter feed. We have the very tall T.W. Shannon from the less good state of Oklahoma because I am a Kansan and we are superior. We're going to talk to him and we're going to get it all started with somebody I consider the standard of conservatism in the United States, Senator in the United States Senate, Senator Mike Lee. How are you sir? Doing great. Honored to be here with my friends Matt and Mercy. Now Mercy, we had some Twitter action ourselves today, huh? We did actually from the former chairman of the ACU. I won't even mention his name. Don't mention his name. The press came out and called CPAC a cult. Okay ladies and gentlemen, is CPAC a cult? No. No. Because we stand for freedom, right? We are the cult of freedom is what I would call it. What's your reaction to that? Look, if it's a cult of freedom, if it's a cult of awesomeness, then heck yeah. That's right. Look, it's a slur. Being a Utahan, it's a word that I've heard thrown around from time to time. Always by people who are just haters. That's right. Who hate you for who you are, not just what you do. So, badge of honor. So let me ask you, you responded to the tweet. I did and because I'm getting so old and I can't read a screen without like a couple pairs of glasses and the rest. You've been old since you were like 30, so I know what you're talking about. It's the truth. As my wife always says, I was born in the wrong century. Yes. She means I should have been born in a previous century. But basically, when you have these conservatives who tell you, these Republicans, you serve with some, who tell you that they're conservative and then they lecture you when you're being a little too rambunctious because that's just not how conservatives do things. What they really mean is when you say you're a conservative, it doesn't mean you actually want to get the stuff done. You just want to talk about it. And so what I say to folks that even in our organization who have been chairman and on the board and here's this great conservative institution, but all of a sudden when they see of folks like Donald Trump getting stuff done, conservative stuff done, overwhelmingly wonderful conservative achievements, eight years of achievements in four years, they're going to call him a cult. And just so happens, those people who do try to disparage the work of conservatives, always look at them. I think it's amazing people in the media who say, well, Donald Trump, how could he be a conservative? He's been married three times. Look at every one of those people on MSNBC and CNN making that criticism. I don't know how they do that. They kind of look inside their own house. And anyway, we're very proud of who we are and what we are and what we're doing here at CPAC. But one of the things we've learned, and Senator Lee, you know this, you didn't agree with the president a hundred percent of the time. You sometimes were, you know, had your, you brought things up to challenge some of the things that the president did, but did he, did, were we able to advance the conservative agenda in the last four years? Yeah. And they wouldn't be challenging him if they didn't know that, if they know that and they hate him. Look, there is a rigid pro-government orthodoxy that's taken control of the mainstream media in this country, the educational establishment, and so many other institutions. And that orthodoxy was met up against something that they regard as blasphemy. Anytime you, you undermine the sacred role of government and the dominance of government, they get mad. And so look, some of those same people, what would they have said of the Founding Fathers? A revolutionary cult? A freedom cult? Yeah, yeah, they were. And it won. And we are all the beneficiaries of their good work on that effort. So one of the things we've done at CPAC this year is we believe that there's a reason why no Democrat ever wants to amend the Constitution. They just go to judges. We actually want to have amendments. We always offer them because it's the honest way to change the Constitution. And I'm really beginning to realize is, and the question we're asking here at CPAC, do they believe in these constitutional principles at all, including the Bill of Rights? And you kind of got this whole conversation started today. Give our listeners an idea of what you said at CPAC. Yeah, this morning I talked a little bit about the fact that freedom and government power are at odds with each other. Anytime government acts, it does so at the expense of individual liberty. Doesn't mean that government's bad. We need it to protect life and liberty and property. But the further afield we go from that, the harder it is to make the case that it's worth government action. At the center of our freedoms, our ability to protect freedom itself depends on the affirmative commands of the Bill of Rights, that thou shalt not so the Constitution. The center of that is the First Amendment. And at the center of the First Amendment is the freedom of assembly. This is one of the most underappreciated, uncelebrated features of the First Amendment and the entire Constitution. But it's upstream from everything else. Our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, so many other core freedoms are downstream from and ultimately depend upon our freedom of assembly. And yet that's what's under assault with the global pandemic. We've got to push back against it. We're here to assemble. CPAC is in the Constitution, not in so many words. But when people come together to talk politics and to learn to have a point of view, that should be protected. It should be protected from government action. Now, look, if people are concerned about that, understandable, for one health reason or another, then individuals should exercise due caution. Maybe organizations will decide not to meet at all. It should never, ever be the place of government. People should do that, never government. And we've allowed governments, including many states and municipalities, to go far too much into that domain, which is not theirs. So this week you introduced the Legislation Promise Act. Can you walk us through what that means? Social media companies have brought people in. The commoditization of clicks and eyeballs has been rampant and it's been interesting. But they've lured people in with the promise of political evenhandedness, of political neutrality. They profit off of people's belief in that, which has turned out to be false. Their policy statements on content moderation, the public statements of their CEOs, have been false, demonstrably false. I've asked the CEOs of these companies in hearings and the Judiciary Committee and the Commerce Committee, I've said on both, can you name a single instance where you've done the same things to prominent liberals as you have to prominent conservatives? They couldn't name any because there aren't. And so it's the right of a leftist if a leftist wants to build a leftist enterprise. And there's nothing that the government can or should do about that in the abstract. But if they're lying to people in order to get them to participate in it, in order to win their clicks and their eyeballs, there's going to be accountability. That's what the Promise Act is about. It directs the FTC to take action against those entities that promise to be underhanded, to be evenhanded. And then they undercut that by directly weighing in for the left and I guess the right. Look, we have a real live example here at CPAC. Twitter used to come here in the early days and try to get us to use Twitter. And they say, we'll help you learn how to use it. And we'll get all these fine people to get on Twitter. They were in the back, in the nucleus of CPAC, helping us to grow our footprint on Twitter. And now it seems they want to do just the opposite. Now, I don't know whether it was fraudulent before or whether there was like an honesty that's coming out that they always had this intention. But what your legislation basically says is you got to hold to your promise. Yes. If you state a policy, if you state that you're going to be evenhanded, and that's how you get your clicks and your eyeballs and your users, and then you go against that, the FTC is going to go after you under my bill. So let me ask you, Senator, do you think that we should break up big tech? Is that the solution? Under the right circumstances, our competition laws might kick in. Under the right circumstances, breaking them up might become a possibility. I'm not at all sure that we're there yet, but there are investigations underway. There are legal actions underway that could result in that. In the meantime, I think there are other things we can do in order to direct them to stop this kind of misleading, dishonest behavior. It's appalling what they're doing, because so many Americans now get so much of their political information from social media. They need at least a source that will tell them the truth about whether they're going to tell them the truth. You look at what happened to Parler recently. So Parler came on the scene. They had a different business model. Parler said, we're not going to get involved in this at all, in politics at all. And they meant it. And they had a more relaxed content moderation policy, but they've stuck to it and they have means of enforcing it. They got deplatformed. They got taken off of Amazon's cloud services, shutting them down altogether for a while. They've been taken off of Apple's app store and Google's app store. Why? Well, perhaps it might have something to do with the fact that they treat people even-handedly. That's messed up. That's a big problem. That's the key. And I think what we're looking at is, I remember Jack Dorsey would meet with the conservative leaders. Remember that? He would meet with conservative leaders, listen to conservative leaders, and yet you feel like no action is being done. But we thank you for taking these bold steps. We thank you for your incredible work in the Senate. We are so blessed to call you and your lovely wife, Sharon, friends. You are fighters, warriors, and constantly on the front line, helping to defend our constitution, helping to defend Americans' freedoms. And with that, we are going to be right back. But remember to download that CPAC app. We are live streaming the whole entire conference. It's a great way to get wonderful information. There's just such an array of people. There's a diverse group of people. I don't care if you're white, black, Spanish, gay, straight, whatever the case is. Everybody's here. It's nothing but love. You have all the media outlets that we love to watch here. It's just an atmosphere of love. It's an atmosphere of education. And just seeing all the different speakers, it's just an incredible experience. I'm just so thrilled about our next guest. Okay. Yes, we do have Hollywood here. I don't know why you're thinking that we don't have great actors who support the conservative causes here. But with us is Kevin Sorbo. He is not only an actor, but a producer, a director, an author. And we, I can't even tell you. And a really nice guy. That's what I hear. And as Schlapp says, you were saying he's got the best Twitter in town. Oh my God. Now don't tell Donald Trump because apparently he was banned. So, you know, we don't want it to get contagious. I don't know you should be banned. No, we put very funny. I'm not, I don't get as crazy there that I did on Facebook. Facebook took me down a week and a half ago. They took 550,000 followers away from me. I'm gone. And the reason was they didn't like my posts about voter fraud and COVID and things like that. I post the truth, but the left hates the truth. They do. They love to live in darkness. And I try to bring light into their world, but they don't like it. I love the light. No, they don't like it. So how did you like fall into social media? Like it was just like a voice and it was just like, it had to get out of you. Yeah, I guess, you know, everybody was doing it anyway. So I started kind of dove into it and said, okay. And then I, you know, you get those movie sets and you hear people say that. And the other thing I will give me some proof of what you're just saying because they love their labels, right? You're a racist. You're a homophobe. You're, you know, and I go, well, how am I these things? I mean, just being a conservative is enough for them to say those things. They have no proof behind it. It's like the years they were calling president Trump a Nazi. I said, how was he a Nazi? And like Antifa, for instance, they're against fascism. They're the fascists. It's all about projection about us. I got tired of it. So I started going after people and saying, come on guys, let's look at the other side of the issue, but they don't like doing that. Well, you have a powerful voice, but I do feel like, don't you feel like they put Post-it notes on you? Like you're a racist. You're this, you're that. And it's, I think so discouraging because what's happening is people are scared. There are a lot of Americans out there who feel that they're being bullied on social media, that they can't speak up, that they're going to lose their job. As I say, the cancel culture equates the destruction of the individual. How do you fight back? Like, how do you develop the thick skin to be like, sorry, I am not shutting up. I can say two plus two is four and I'll get 10 guys going. I hope you die. It's just, if you don't like me on social media, then don't follow me. I mean, I hate that they hate the facts and the truth, but here's the thing. Facebook took me down. I'm still on Twitter. I love cloud hub. I'm doing a thing with a cloud hub. I'm on there now. And I think they're absolutely phenomenal. And I got to give them more plug. There's not one called free space. Free space is a whole different sort of vibe. So people will check that out because that's where I moved to those two places. They're awesome. But the reality is Hollywood said to me, my manager and agent about 10 years ago said, we can't promote you anymore. And I said, why is that? Because of being a Christian, being a conservative. And I said, aren't you the guys that believe in tolerance and freedom of speech, but it's all a one way street. And it gets very, very frustrating. So I hate the fact that I kicked out of Hollywood, but I'm still part of a Hollywood because I do movies like God's not dead. So super. What if left to be light? I just booked, I just finally, we raised money for the next left behind movie. So you people are fans of left behind books. We're doing left behind. We're going to start working with you a lot more because our network needs to know about your content. And my favorite fraudulent issue out there is the climate hoax stuff. Tell folks very quickly as we close up about your documentary and where they get it. Climate hustle to the number two climate hustle to.com. Go there. We're promoting it right now. I narrate it. I'm on camera at this documentary showing that there's a huge amount of scientists and people that are scholars on the other side to show what climate global warming really is. It's called weather. There's a hundred years, there's a hundred year study. There's a hundred year study of the average temperatures around the world. Do you know how much we've grown up in the weather and the temperature? 0.41 degrees, not even a half degree in the last century. But let's spend trillions of dollars and keep people in fear. Just like we're doing with the face mask and all this thing right now. We're using this as fear as a weapon to control our lives. People, apathy is the biggest killer. Fight back. Yeah. You know what we have to understand is we can't control the weather. What a shock. My wife's latest book, Words for Warriors. Check it out. It's an amazing book. Perfect for what's going on CPAC right now. Learn to fight back. Stop being afraid of being people bullying. There's a lot of cyber bullies out there, but trust me, their lives aren't perfect either. Kevin Sorbo, thanks for being with us. Thank you for being at CPAC. It's been fun, huh? It's been fun. I'm having a blast. We've got a lot more coming at you. We'll be right back with you after this short break. Bye. Really a fun time. I've had a blast with my friends. I met a couple of friends. It's very hype, very excited, and I'm really looking forward, especially to Sunday when Trump's coming. It's definitely going to be the highlight. Welcome back to CPAC Live. I am so thrilled to be spending time with you. This is what we call our date, not only date night, but date during the day, and we don't really get to see each other much, but you're having a good time so far. What's been your impression? I did kind of pass out last night because I don't think I've ever walked so far in my whole life. The thing about Orlando is these hotels are big. They're big. They're really spread out. They're like indoor cities. It's kind of amazing, but we love what's going on here. The people are great. I had so much fun on the campaign trail. I didn't like how it ended, but I had so much fun on the campaign trail. I met so many I hope to be lifelong friends, and one of them is going to join us, T.W. Shannon, the former Speaker of the House of the great state of Oklahoma and the CEO of the Chickasaw Bank, running things. Like all great conservatives, he can do his politics, but when he drops out of politics, he knows how to run things. We're just trying to survive the Biden economy. That's all we're trying to do. Just trying to survive. But anyways, if you decide to run again, just call the slaps. We're coming with a big pink bus or the big red bus. Seriously, we're all behind that. We're campaigners. I'm big fans of yours, Mercy, as well as Matt. I got to know him over the campaign. I tell you what, you guys have been on the front lines fighting for the conservative values for a long time, and it's just an honor for me to be here with you, honestly. T.W., let me ask you because- My full name is Tarahan Wayne, so that's even more difficult. It's a Chickasaw name. I'm Chickasaw. I'm named after my great, great grandfather. What does it mean? My mom told me a long time ago it meant great leader, but I can't really substantiate that anymore, but I'm just going to go with it. I don't know. Let me tell you, slap does not mean great leader. That's not what the last name means. I had the opportunity to watch your panel, and you were with Lawrence Jones, who's one of the Fox News contributors and hosts. Wayne Dupree was on, and Spencer Brown as well. You all really touched upon what is happening in these cities. How are these cities that are run by Democrats have, in essence, been destroyed? I think one of the interesting points you made is the essential versus the non-essential. What are we on? The point I was making is when we're talking about this mob mentality, which is what we're seeing dominate, whether it be the media or even the state government mob or the federal government mob, where people feel a sense of hopelessness. That's why mobs are created, whether it's on the right or on the left. It happens when people feel a sense of hopelessness. Hopelessness is caused by governments. When governments grow too big, people lose hope. Unfortunately, the left's message, their answer for hopelessness, is more government. I think our challenge as conservatives is it's not enough just to be right. We're right on taxes. We're right on life. We're right on defense. We're right on the Constitution. It's not enough to be right. You've got to be right, but you've also got to go out and tell your message to people that haven't heard it before. That's a little bit of the problem with CPAC. People assume we're just talking to other people who agree like this, but it's really not true. If you only knew, there's so many young people here, high school students, college students, maybe they're here because their parents urged them to come. There's a lot of people in the audience who don't necessarily know where they are. We had a former reporter from the New York Times speaking earlier today who's not a conservative. He was in shock. He said that I was standing on the CPAC stage. Then you have the millions of people that are watching around the globe, because we go around the globe now, but all over the country. It's a big audience. What do you think people want to hear? What I said before, I opened up this morning by saying this. Number one, make no doubt about it. Donald J. Trump is still the leader of this party. That's the first thing we have to understand. He is the leader of our party, but that doesn't mean we're like Democrats. It doesn't mean that we all get in line and think exactly the same way and that we follow. No, Republicans, it's not in our DNA to do that. We're going to have a debate. We're going to have a spirit of debate, but there's no civil war in the Republican Party. We're one party. The civil war is what AOC and Nancy Pelosi, that's where the real civil war is. I might have to disagree with the boys here. I think that there is this tension in the Republican Party right now where you have those people, those Republicans, whether they be never Trumpers to say, President Trump doesn't have a role in the party. How do you reconcile that divide, that tension that we're seeing right now? Tension is good. We like tension. As conservatives, we like tension. We don't want everybody thinking exactly like I do now. I know I'm right. I know I'm right, that's exactly right. But at the end of the day, I'm not trying to cancel you. Where we may disagree, that doesn't mean that I think you're not valued as a human being. That's what the left does. That's why the left, when we saw this as the pandemic, the pandemic has exposed so much about who the left really is. When you have people waking up every single day as Americans and they're having to think about, am I going to watch and listen to my local mayor to decide if I am an essential or non-essential person? My constitution, my Bible tells me that every single individual is essential. There's no such thing as a non-essential person. That's why we're different from the left, because we believe that, that every person is with inalienable rights, that they're given to us by God. That's what makes us different from the left. And we value the idea of differences of opinion. But at the end of the day, just like we did before, Donald Trump united this party like nobody else. Now we've always had a never Trumpers. They were never with us. The swamp is not going to be with us. We don't need them. We did it before without them. We'll do it again. Yeah, but we got to win these elections. I mean, that's going to be key from local to state to federal. We got to keep our eyes on the ball as we move forward in the next couple of years. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but TW, I think you ought to give it a shot again and run for office. That's my view. Feel free to announce it, CPAC. What TW is saying is nobody's irredeemable and actually nobody's deplorable. And it's a great message. And we love you being with us. We're going to have you back. Thank you. Anytime. Thanks for being with us on CPAC Live. We're going to be right back. Being with like-minded people, meeting such great conservatives, I'm meeting candidates, potential candidates. I've met so many of the political figures that are already in office that really want to help and make America great again. To CPAC Live, we are having a great time here at CPAC. And as I alluded to earlier in the day, we had a great time on the campaign trail. We didn't love how everything ended, obviously, but met so many great people. Takes a lot of courage to run for office. And our next guest had that courage. He's actually had the courage to do a lot of half-crazy things. Big D, Dan Rodimer. Great to be with you again. Matt, thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. What a great event. Hey, I got a question for everybody out here. Who's excited about being at CPAC? I got a question for you. Out of Congress right now. I'm getting nervous. Okay. I'm just a little bit nervous. Go ahead. We're actually going to do a WWE match right after this, by the way. So Matt, right now in Congress, we have all these new congressmen coming in. Who's the breakthrough congressman, congresswoman that you're the most fired up about? You know, on the House side, which is where Big D ran for the House out in Nevada, and you won. You're another one of the casualties of illegal voting. But this guy, this young man who's around here in these hallways, who I've gotten to know a little bit, Madison Cawthorn, just really seems like a great guy. So that'd be like the name that comes right off the top of my head, probably because I've seen him here. He's young. He's polite. He seems very conservative. The left wing is having a trouble hating that guy. You know, Madison, I became very, very close with him. And did you know, you know, he got into a car accident. Yeah. And the money that he got in his lawsuit, he put all that money towards his race. I didn't know that. That's how much he believed. Yeah. That's how hard he pushed. So I love Madison. Great, great kid. Here's why I think he's got character, because ACU actually endorsed his opponent. And it was one of these big vigorous primaries and there were probably multiple good candidates. But Madison won that primary. And then usually when that happens, that person kind of hates you forever in politics. And Madison sent me a text and said, hey, I'd like to talk to you about the race. And I thought he's got character and class. And we need a little bit more of that in the swamp, wouldn't you say? We need to keep draining it, brother. We need to keep draining it. And, you know, when you were out in Las Vegas, about right after the election, Matt called me, called me up and he says, Dan, I'm going to be out here and we're trying to fix this voter issue. It's all mail-in ballot. And you busted your butt for three weeks, four weeks you were out there? That was a couple trips. Yeah. Four weeks. So I guess that's, you know, that's going to be a major issue coming in, you know, for 2022. You know, what do you think we're going to be able to do for the, you know, the swing states like Georgia and Nevada, you know, make sure we take these back? So it's really simple. And we're spending a lot of our agenda talking about what happened in these states. And it's a really easy solution. You should only be able to vote if you're legally allowed to vote. You should be registered to vote in order to vote. In order to show that you're legally registered, you should have to show an ID. And if you have to vote by mail, and some people need to, you simply just have to have the security on the other end by having signature verification. Those things were not done this cycle. We don't go, if we had voted like we did in 2016, Donald Trump would have four more years and you'd be in Congress. There's no doubt about it. There's no doubt about it. We have a question. I do. One of our great volunteers. It's good to see you again. Thank you for having me here at CPAC. I'm curious, how is CPAC 2021 going? And are we coming back to Orlando next year? That's a good question. She's putting me on the spot because we have a signed contract in the swamp. So we'll have to see how all that goes. But I have been really impressed. First of all, I feel less stress here. When we have CPAC in Washington, DC, it just feels like there's double, triple, quadruple the stress. Maybe that's indicative of everything that goes through Washington, DC. And the vibe in Florida has been wonderful, but I think- Florida. Yes, that's right. That is Florida. But Carrie, the reason why I think it's so special here at CPAC 2021 is because everybody's so happy to be with each other. We all miss each other. We want to be with each other. We want to see your beautiful face and we all want to share and talk. People were meant to be together. And if you want to be with a lot of people, just go to the Rodeimer family. I mean, that's a lot of people. We only have six. I only beat you by one. You have five girls. We're done. Well, maybe we're not done. You never know. Hope springs eternal. Yes. Well, this is a great event. I couldn't believe how many people we have here. People are fired up. They're excited. And every year, it's a great year here at CPAC. Big D, thanks for being with us. Thank you all for watching. Thank you everyone for joining us on CPAC Live. I'm so sorry that Mercy abandoned me, but there's so many exciting things happening at CPAC. She's actually on the stage as we speak. And what a great first day we've had. And we're going to be back at you tomorrow night. Thanks for joining us.