00:00My last communication that night with the president, it's not verbatim, but pretty close,
00:05I told the president, I said, Mr. President, if I prove anything else to you in the next year and a
00:11half, I hope that I can prove to you that I care about your legacy and you have people around you
00:19who don't. There are people who are surfing his wave until they go to the next one. They're young
00:25people that have never served in office and don't understand the consequences of looking around
00:31corners and protecting this president. There are people that are more concerned with their next
00:35job and the next presidential campaign that they may be able to get on than making sure that this
00:40president is as successful as possible. So I decided by just making a decision not for run for
00:47re-election, I can speak truth to a president that I hope goes down in history as the most successful
00:53Republican president in the history of this country. He has that potential if he starts to
00:58recognize advice that he's getting, but I think is bad advice and won't age well. And I'll get to a
01:04few. I'm going to keep my temperature down. I told everybody this isn't cranky, Tom. This is Tom
01:11trying to explain a very serious subject. Ladies and gentlemen, the thought of the United States
01:18taking the position that we would take Greenland, an independent territory within the kingdom of
01:26Denmark, is absurd. Somebody needs to tell the president that the people of Greenland up until this,
01:34these current times, were actually very, very pro-American and very, very pro-American presidents.
01:40We had as many as 17 military installations in Greenland at our height, and frankly, I'll bet that
01:47the, you know, once we get through this tension that we have today, that they would be willing to
01:51accept us. So we've got the power projection capability in Greenland, and we haven't necessarily
01:57put a 75-year alliance in NATO and dissolving it in the mix. That's the smart, sustainable way to
02:07achieve the president's goal of securing the Arctic. The not smart, unachievable way is whoever told the
02:15president that this was a viable path. It doesn't make sense. I'll give you another example. Over the
02:22weekend, the president and the question yesterday had to do with Chair Powell. And I made the statement
02:30that I felt like, now that the Fed chair is potentially under indictment, I will not support
02:37any vote for any Fed board member until this matter is decided. Why? Well, because the whole argument
02:47about Fed independence comes into question, right? If all of a sudden, the Justice Department,
02:53apparently, according to the president, unknown to him, he reported it was a surprise to him,
02:58since then, he's been briefed. And he's standing by the Justice Department on this indictment.
03:04But ladies and gentlemen, unless there is a really compelling reason, unless the prosecution succeeds,
03:11and I think it's unlikely, virtually impossible, that Chair Powell will be found guilty of anything,
03:17this is all about the testimony in a banking committee hearing. That's all it is. And if they succeed,
03:26then they really have created a device that really will put the Fed's independence in question
03:34and could cause serious problems for us in the future. I think one of the reasons why the financial
03:42markets did not react precipitously in a negative way with the revelation of Chair Powell is because
03:51many people stood up in Congress and said, this seems to be crossing a line. I believe if the
03:57financial markets thought that it was almost certain that Jay Powell was going to resign or
04:02be prosecuted, I believe we'd have had a very different reaction. So this is another example of
04:07where, look, Jay Powell, I think, has made decisions that I disagreed with, similar to decisions that have
04:13been made by conservative justices that I disagree with, but I think they did it for the right reasons.
04:18And so it's just another example of where, in this case, according to the President's public
04:24comments, he was surprised about the indictment. It's another example of who in there thought this
04:30was a good idea. Now, because it's a current investigation, we'll just have to wait and figure
04:37it out after it's either been, they proceed with an indictment or they decide to dismiss it.
04:43And then the final thing, Mr. President, I'm in a position now, without question, to say that
04:51anyone who thinks that President Trump adopting Elizabeth Warren's idea on capping credit card
05:00interest rates, it is literally what the President said over the past week. It's not
05:08the conservative that I thought they were. Anybody that thinks this is a good idea will not speak
05:14truth to this President to say, you can't do that. If you want to unbank or underbank people,
05:22then not allow interest rates to be set based on the risk. And you'll see what will happen.
05:28I told Senator Warren on the floor yesterday, I said, good on you. Senator Warren and I have a good
05:33relationship. We don't hardly ever vote on the same stuff. But I said, good on you. You've convinced
05:38the President of the United States to actually embrace something you've been pitching for as long
05:42as I've been here. I also told her, she said, does that mean you're going to set the policy? I said,
05:46no, I'm going to work hard to kill it. But I really, I like good execution, even when it's not policy I
05:51like. And that was good execution. You convinced the President to embrace your policy. And then finally,
05:58the Credit Card Competition Act. It's another example, ladies and gentlemen, other countries
06:04have tried it and it's failed. The industry is trying to work to come up with a compromise that
06:10is working. But once again, somebody in the President's orbit thought capping interest rates
06:16was a good idea and told them. I don't expect the President to be an expert and the consequences of
06:21that. Somebody thought during the Credit Card Competition Act after it's been unsuccessful here because
06:27Republicans have thought it is a good idea. It's still a bad idea. So to the President,
06:33Mr. President, I'm going to live up to my promise. I'm going to do everything I can to point out
06:39advice that you're being given by people who are not thinking about your legacy. They're not thinking
06:44about good policy. And from time to time, they are fading far out of the realm of what I consider to
06:50be good, conservative, free market ideology. Thank you, Mr. President.
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