Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) discusses tariffs and a possible third term for President Trump.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Oh my God, it's my favorite.
00:03How you doing?
00:04It's great to see you.
00:05How you doing?
00:06What's going on?
00:07Yeah, I'm good.
00:08Good having you show.
00:09I didn't get to see it this week.
00:10That's great.
00:11That's good.
00:12I was on a downed airplane.
00:13You should DVR it and go watch it anytime you want.
00:14And they don't have replays of it?
00:15They do.
00:168 and 11.
00:1711 a.m.
00:18How concerned are you and your constituents about these tariffs that are going to go into
00:24effect on Wednesday?
00:25Yeah.
00:26I think everybody's concerned.
00:27Obviously, my constituents in Alabama, we have a lot of car manufacturing in the country,
00:33which is good, because if they're made here, you don't have to pay the tariff.
00:37Obviously, there's parts going in and out that will be tariffed.
00:40But I think Wednesday, President Trump will communicate, hopefully from a big press conference,
00:47and give a speech about what he's doing and why he's doing it, what direction we're going
00:52to go.
00:53I think it will calm the American people down.
00:56It will calm the economy down a little bit, the way I look at it.
00:59And I'm not an economist, but I don't see any other path for us to pay down our debt
01:07unless we get more people back in this country with manufacturing, with jobs, to pay taxes.
01:12I don't see it happening.
01:14I don't see any other way.
01:15So President Trump, it's not a gamble.
01:19He understands tariffs a lot more than most people, along with a very good team around
01:23him, Scott Bessett, Kevin Hassett, all these people that understand how we can get people
01:29in this country working, making more money, and also getting enticing manufacturing to
01:35come back.
01:36He said prices could go up.
01:38Are you concerned about that?
01:39Yeah, I think there's going to be some slow pain, but I think there's going to be a lot
01:43of gain from it.
01:45What else are we going to do?
01:46We've got a $37 trillion deficit.
01:49We're not going to be able to keep this same direction we're going without adding more
01:55jobs to pay down this debt.
01:57It's not going to happen.
01:58I mean, something's got to be tried.
02:01It's like in a football game.
02:02If you're running the ball all the time, it's not working, sooner or later you've got to
02:04pass the ball.
02:05OK, here we have run ourselves into the ground with $37 trillion in debt.
02:11Now it's time to change the game plan here a little bit and try to do something different
02:16to make something work for everybody.
02:18He said he couldn't care less if foreign increase.
02:23Do you agree with that?
02:24Well, here's the deal.
02:27The American taxpayers, over the years, have built China because of unbalanced trade.
02:33Same thing in Canada.
02:35Same thing with the Middle East.
02:36Same thing with Europe.
02:37Now it's time for the party to come back to the United States and us make more money.
02:42If they're going to tariff us, we're going to reciprocal, and we're going to do the same
02:46thing to them.
02:48We've got to change course here.
02:49We can't continue to run into a wall.
02:52We've got to make a decision.
02:53Is it going to work?
02:54Who knows?
02:55But we've got to do something different to pay down this $37 trillion, because our kids
02:59and grandkids are not going to have the same life that we've had if we don't get this going
03:02in another direction.
03:03Senator Bitterkoop.
03:04Go ahead.
03:05Coach, over the weekend, Elon Musk had said that he wants to go after the rich lawmakers
03:11here on Capitol Hill, millionaires.
03:14How are they making $200,000 and leaving millionaires?
03:17So he wants a formal investigation in that.
03:20Your thoughts on that?
03:21Well, I'm all for it.
03:22I mean, we're very outspoken up here how things should be run.
03:29And I'm not hiding anything.
03:32If people are hiding things, it should be looked into.
03:36We don't make a lot of money here.
03:37It's a lot of money compared to a lot of people all around the country.
03:40I think the average salary is $50,000 a year, and we make $174,000.
03:46Some make a little bit more because of leadership, but at the end of the day, there's a lot of
03:51people in my state that are saying, wait a minute now, $174,000 and people are putting
03:56millions of dollars in their pockets.
03:59Something's going on here.
04:00Now, is it right or wrong?
04:02I don't know.
04:03But if they need to be investigated, so be it.
04:05Come look at mine.
04:06I'll be glad to show them.
04:07Senator, are you concerned at all about the possibility of Republicans not doing as well
04:12in the special elections tomorrow in Florida and also this judicial race in Wisconsin?
04:17Yeah, we all got our fingers crossed.
04:19Obviously, this is a big one in Wisconsin.
04:21There's one in Florida, and you hear that most of them are pretty close.
04:27Again, it's like any other election.
04:29I hope people just look and vote for the right reasons.
04:32But I mean, if you guys do worse than expected, will that be a concern for the GOP?
04:37I don't think it'll be probably an immediate concern, but not a long-range concern.
04:41We'll still have a majority in the House and the Senate and, of course, have the White House.
04:47It could make a difference in a year and a half from now when we get to midterms.
04:51But right now, we can't worry about anything other than trying our best in all these elections.
04:56And then, as we said earlier, we got to get this economy going in the right direction.
04:59We got to get our debt down.
05:01We got to get the jobs and tax cuts done.
05:03This week, we can't wait any longer.
05:05I'm hearing we're going to get it done, but we'll have to wait and see.
05:09Trump also is keeping open the option of a third term.
05:13Should he try to be president for a third term?
05:16I think it's always good talk, but the Constitution says one thing.
05:21But, you know, never count him out.
05:25A lot of people counted him out. You counted him out.
05:27But I didn't count him out last time.
05:29So you think he could actually do a third term?
05:31No. Well, I don't know.
05:32I mean, I don't know enough about how we'd go about changing the Constitution.
05:37It would be a hard pull.
05:40I don't think that's going to happen.
05:42But, again, never count him out.
05:44Would you vote for him?