Mizusawa backs Trump’s Iran actions, but says "time to end it"

He is a retired Army Major General, now Burt Mizusawa, is the Republican nominee in Virginia, challenging Senator Mark Warner, and he's up late with me tonight here on the Final Five to talk about the campaign. Welcome back. You've been on the show before, but I was not here the last time, so thank you for coming in again. Well, it's great to be here with you, Jim. Appreciate it. We are 21 days away from the midterm elections here. There's a lot going on in the world right now. You have unique perspective from the military end of things, from the government end of things. The big story over the last couple of days, of course, it continues to be the economy. It continues to be gas prices, Iran. And you've said as far as President Trump's concerned, you support the actions we're seeing playing out in the Middle East. Sure. Number one, I do want to wish a happy birthday to the United States Navy. It's the 251st birthday. And we love the Navy every day except for the Army and Navy game day. But they've been on watch all over the world for our country over the centuries, but especially now in the Middle East. They're doing a great job out there. And I just want to wish them a happy birthday and thank them for that. As I mentioned, the military operations, that's the toughest decision our president makes in his role as a commander in chief. So getting into it, I think it was very important that at some point we preempt Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And if you agree with that, I haven't found anybody who thinks that Iran should have one, especially given their stated intentions, even going back years when they took American hostages. The only question is, when do we actually do something about it to prevent it? And so now that that die is cast, and now that it's cast, I think we should do everything we can to make sure it doesn't affect our economy. I know Americans, especially here in Virginia, are really focused on the pain from the gas prices. And so I want to be part of the solution for that. And I think part of the solution, longer term, is becoming more energy independent. And one of the reasons I'm running is I think talk is cheap. People have been seeing these issues out there, but they have not done anything about it to this point. One of the ways the president has addressed this in recent days is striking this deal with Russia to buy diesel from Russia right now. Is that the right course of action? Is that something on the right path? Well, I think it is because, number one, it helps the American economy. Our economy, a lot of our construction equipment, our trucks, our locomotives, and our shipping runs on diesel. And so getting more diesel fuel in, and a lot of that issue was because Ukraine interdicted some of the refining capability in Russia. I think it will be good for our economy, but more importantly, I think this is part of a framework for working with Russia to negotiate and end to the war with Ukraine. Is Russia trustworthy in that regard? Can we trust Vladimir Putin? Well, I think one of the key attributes of a deal, a good deal, is one that you can reverse and terminate. And so I think actually beginning to buy some diesel from Russia will give us actually more leverage, not only on Russia but also on Ukraine, because if we pull out of the deal, of course we're going to be hurt a little bit, but I think Russia will not want to end that deal. So I think it's a good bargaining chip to get Russia and Ukraine back to the table to start negotiating, because I think people are tired of this war, and I think it's time to end it. You know, when you look at the Senate right now, it is still up. I mean, both chambers are up in the air here, but the Senate seems more like it's very likely Republicans can hold the Senate going after after the midterms. And obviously you would like to flip one more one more of those seats along the way. But as you look going forward, let's say you are elected on November 3rd here. What can you do? What can you do if the Republicans hold that majority? What do you do day one or your first actions as a U.S. senator? Well, you know, our founding fathers in their brilliance designed staggered terms for the house with two years the president for four years and the senate with six years the senate is supposed to be uh the deliberative body that thinks long term and one of the problems i see is that there's a shortage of longer term thinking from that body my opponent has been there for 18 years uh two-thirds of the time there's been a democrat in the white house but now he's coming up with solutions that if they were feasible they should have been done a long time ago so i think it's time that we focus on some of the longer term issues uh including the national debt being one. I mentioned energy self-sufficiency because we knew that Iran was not going to be doing things in our longer-term interests or even our short-term interests. We have the energy potential to produce more oil. We have the refining capability here, and we've got strategic petroleum reserves, and now we have Venezuela. And so I want to make sure that we are not put in this position again in the future. When you look at Virginia, I mean, obviously, come election, there's always attention paid to northern Virginia, but it is such a such a wide commonwealth, and there are so many different backgrounds, and people are coming from different positions and places in life. What's the unifying message? What's the unifying topic that unites everybody, whether they're, you know, out west or up in northern Virginia or beyond? Well, I think we're all proud to be Virginians, number one. Virginia is the state most responsible for birthing this wonderful concept called America. If you go back to our founding fathers' era, including the first legislative body in the New World in Williamsburg. And right now, Virginia has more operational and administrative military of any state. If you give Hampton Roads, look at all the operational military there. And I grew up there. And, of course, in northern Virginia, we have a lot of our national leadership, and we have our military and intelligence institutions there. But Virginia also gets more defense dollars per capita than any other state. So I think it's very important for Virginia to have a veteran, especially a retiree. I've got 40 years of experience. I'd be the most highly decorated combat veteran in the U.S. Senate. And so I think I would do a great job representing Virginia's interest, not only from a national security perspective. And I mentioned Iran not getting the bomb. Virginia would be high on their target list. But also on the economic side, you know, Americans essentially want the same two things. They want security and they want prosperity. And I think national security in Virginia and the defense dollars we're spending, I think I'll be able to represent Virginia as well on both counts. So much more we could talk about. And there's still time before the rest of the campaigns. We'd love to continue the conversation. Great to see you tonight, Bert Muzasawa. Thank you, Jim. Thank you very much. My honor to be here. My honor to talk with you. And my honor to have you here on The Final Five. Stick around. We're back after this.