Rep. Mike Gallagher reacts to the Iraqi parliament's vote to expel US troops

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Rep Mike Gallagher reacts to the Iraqi parliament's vote to expel US troops

Congressman Mike Gallagher joins 'The Next Revolution' to discuss Iraq's reaction to the US airstrike that killed Qassem Soleimani.

This is a rush transcript from "The Next Revolution," January 5, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

STEVE HILTON, HOST: Breaking tonight, President Trump warns Iran, Iran threatens America. And moments ago, President Trump speaking to reporters after returning to Washington, with strong words after Iraq votes to expel U.S. troops.

The president saying, quote, "We have an extraordinarily expensive airbase that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build, long before my time.

We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it. If they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It will make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."

I think we can all agree, classic Trump there. Next quote, "So with Iraq, we've spent a lot of money in Iraq. I told you Iraq was the worst decision, going into the Middle East was the worst decision ever made in the history of our country. Iraq, by the way, they didn't knock down the World Trade Center. That's been very nicely proven. But we went in and we're there."

"We're pulling out, pulling out of a lot of different areas. With Syria, I pulled out because I'm not going to guard his border. Why should I be guarding the border? They've got troops. Let them guard. That border has been under siege for thousands of years. They've been fighting on that border."

More in that vein from me later on, as you will see. We've got this and more covered for you with the latest news and the smartest analysis.

In a moment, we'll go to former Marine and intelligence officer Congressman Mike Gallagher, there he is. Plus, here with me for the hour, Jason Chaffetz, Tomi Lahren and Katrina Pierson. How good is that?

All right. Happy New Year, everyone and welcome to "The Next Revolution."

I'm Steve Hilton. And this is the home of positive populism: Pro-worker, pro-family, pro-community and of course, pro-America.

Also in the show tonight, more good news on the economy, more embarrassment for Joe Biden, and in Loony Left, we bring you the strange death of the reasonable Democrat. How even the so-called moderates in the presidential race are way to the left of anything we've seen before.

But first, I want to lay out for you how I see the issues with this whole Iran situation.

Over the past few days, we've heard a lot of superficial, simplistic and self-serving grandstanding from the usual suspects. Trump-hating Democrats and their stooges in the ruling class state media have made complete fools of themselves with wildly inconsistent positions.

Apart from one thing, of course, whatever Trump does is, by definition, wrong. One of their favorite talking points for days was that President Trump's action was unconstitutional, illegal blah, blah, blah. But that argument was destroyed this morning by President Obama's Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEH JOHNSON, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: If you believe everything that our government is saying about General Soleimani, he was a lawful military objective and the President, under his constitutional authority, as Commander-in-Chief had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without an additional congressional authorization.

Whether he was a terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged in armed attacks against our people. He was a lawful military objective.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILTON: I suppose I should apologize for NBC's sound problems there. But you get the point.

But the award for most humiliating idiocy of the week, probably goes to Democrat Senator Chris Murphy, who on Tuesday, after the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was attacked, but before the Soleimani strike said that President Trump had, quote, "rendered America impotent, just hoping bad guys go away."

But when that actually happened, when one of the bad guys, indeed one of the worst guys in the world did in fact, go away, as a direct result of President Trump's action, Murphy criticized it, literally complaining about the fact that Soleimani he had been taken out. He wasn't the only one.

Ever since Donald Trump won the election, his opponents have lost their minds and without any ability to make a coherent argument. If Trump's for it, they're against it.

Just look at their policy pirouettes on the Middle East, all of it driven by anti-Trump hate when he pulled back from the Middle East. It was a disaster.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TAMMY DUCKWORTH, D-IL.: Trump has broken America's solemn promise to those who sacrifice so much on our behalf.

I am tired of Trump wrapping himself in the flag in the morning, then abandoning our troops and our values by the afternoon.

JOE BIDEN, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I would not ever throw in the troops and I would not have drawn that additional thousand troops in Iraq.

REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF.: Yesterday, on the floor, 354 members voted in a bipartisan way to oppose the President's dangerous decision in regard to Syria.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILTON: Right. Got that? Getting out is dangerous, so dangerous. But wait. So is going in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, D-N.Y.: The President's decision may add to an already dangerous and difficult situation in the Middle East.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are going to end up in an escalation -- a military escalation around the world.

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST: We appear to be without, by the way, I'd say without congressional authorization entering into another Middle East war.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN D-MA., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They have taken a step that moves us closer to war. A step that puts everyone at risk.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILTON: They have no coherent position. They have no strategy. They just have more of what they gave us when they held the White House -- appeasement, weakness and establishment predictability. Exactly what kept us in these endless costly stupid wars.

But we've also seen simplistic knee jerk nonsense from the isolation nuts.

What's Trump doing? He promised to get us out of wars, not into them. We shouldn't be intervening abroad. Focus on our problems back home. You know the script.

It's easy enough to luxuriate in simplistic ideology and superficial slogans, but in the real world, an American President can't just disengaged from the world for the very obvious reason that what happens in other countries can affect us here.

That's why we care about trade deals, for example, they affect us here at home. And yes, that's why we care about projecting military power abroad.

The question is not whether we should intervene internationally. But how.

America first doesn't mean America alone, nor does it mean America stays at home. It means America's policies, domestic and foreign, should be determined by what's best for the American people and the isolation nuts don't seem to understand that.

They take a stand against any international action, even when it is in America's interest.

And next, they'll want us out of the Olympics because it's a foreign competition. And speaking of international competition, the other bunch of usual suspects who have pooped off against the Soleimani strike are the Europeans: The British, the Germans and the French of all expressed their grave concerns, and are calling for restraint. You bet they are.

They're still trying to revive the rotten corpse of the Iran Nuclear Deal, which funneled billions of dollars directly to Qasem Soleimani to fund terror and mayhem throughout the Middle East.

The British are now in a panic over their energy imports, sending Navy ships to guard tankers in the Gulf. But that's because they've allowed themselves to become dependent on energy imports.

And unbelievably, despite estimates that fracking could help the U.K. towards energy independence, the British government has just banned it, and that neatly brings us to the real story here.

As we reported a few weeks ago, for the first time in history, thanks to President Trump's pro-enterprise agenda, America has just become a net exporter of oil and gas.

The truth is that oil has been the driving force for the West's involvement in the Middle East for over a century. It drove British imperialism then American imperialism and the inevitable resentments that followed.

Driven by the energy imperative, the West has tried to remake and reshape the Middle East, creating nothing but a costly, bloody disastrous mess.

Along the way, the establishment in Washington has cashed in with some of the most obscene corruption of the modern era. Vice President Dick Cheney, pushing a catastrophic invasion that put billions of dollars into the pockets of his former company Halliburton. Vice President Joe Biden's brother, cashing into just like so many in the swamp in the military industrial complex in the establishment, who are addicted to endless war in the Middle East.

Now, we see the same geniuses in the swamp, think tanks and institutes for strategic whatever, gravely expressing their concerns about how President Trump's actions will hamper the prospects for Middle East peace or the fight against ISIS or some other illusory goal. What planet are they on?

There are no prospects for Middle East peace as long as we are there.

We're never going to defeat the ideology of Islamist terror, as long as all these countries are basket cases. And one of the main reasons they are basket cases is that our preposterous foreign policy establishment with monumental arrogance have treated the Middle East like some chess game played out in the boardrooms of Washington and London. They are a joke.

Nothing they've ever proposed has ever worked. Everything has failed. The West's involvement in the Middle East has been a disaster from the start.

And finally, with President Trump, America is in a position to bring it to an end. We don't need their oil and we don't need their problems.

Finally, we have a U.S. President who gets that and wants to get out. That doesn't mean doing nothing. It means intervening only in ways that help America. It means responding to attacks on Americans disproportionately, as a deterrent, just as we saw this week.

It means pulling out of missions that are doomed to failure, as we saw the other month with Syria, and it means finally accepting that it's not our job to fix the Middle East from afar, that trying to do so has infantilized the whole region.

The best thing Americans can do to put the Middle East on a path that leads to more democracy, less terrorism, human rights and economic growth, is to get the hell out of there, while showing an absolutely crystal clear determination to defend American interests, with force wherever they are threatened.

The real threat to America is not Iran or anything else coming out of the Middle East, but China. The real strength of America is always underwritten by a strong economy and that must always be the priority.

I believe President Trump understands that and if he sticks to that strategy, he will have our support.

All right, tell me what you think @SteveHiltonX and @NextRevFNC.

Let's go now to Wisconsin Congressman, Mike Gallagher who is on the House Armed Services Committee. Well, it's great to see you. When we were putting the show together, I said to my team, I want not just some random Member of Congress, but someone who really knows what they're talking about. And here you are.

So what I want to do is just put to you, as someone who has really supported very strongly what the President's -- the actions of the President in the last couple of days, some of the arguments that have been made against it, and I'd love to get your response. First of all, a lot of people have just been saying, look, America, as leader of the free world can't just go around killing people in other countries in this manner.

That's a terrible example to set. What's your response to that?

REP. MIKE GALLAGHER, R-WIS.: I would say that this Qasem Soleimani was the head of a designated terrorist organization. He had the blood of over 600 of my brothers and sisters in uniform on his hands, and the world is now a safer place because of the President's courageous call to take him and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis off the battlefield.

I would further say that for those in the media, who seem to be parroting the Supreme Leader's talking points by blaming the Trump administration for needless escalation, they are ignoring, willfully ignoring the past years' worth of history, whereby Iran has systematically escalated, and the Trump administration's response has indeed been very measured.

Throughout it all, the President and his advisers said do not kill Americans. Do not kill Americans. Soleimani and the Iranians and the Iranian proxies in Iraq disregarded that red line, and this President, unlike his predecessor, reinforced that red line, so can we all not unite the country around the simple idea that if you kill Americans, we will kill you?

HILTON: Very clearly put, completely agree there. Let's go to the next argument. And you're seeing this really taken to absurd proportions now by a lot of people, which is that what the President has done has put us on the brink of war. He is taking us into a new Middle East war.

My view as I have just expressed it is that that doesn't need to follow at all, but with your experience in these issues, could you just explain why this doesn't have to lead to war?

GALLAGHER: Well, my experience is that every time we show credible resolve, every time we demonstrate American strength and willpower, the Iranians back down, and that's not just recent history, that goes back to Ronald Reagan getting elected in 1980, and then releasing the hostages.

That goes back to 2003 when they suspended their nuclear program, the list goes on and on. I think to believe that argument you also have to ignore what's going on throughout the region right now.

Both within Iraq, we've seen consistently since October, protesters risking their lives in Tahrir Square to protest Iran's influence in the country.

The media isn't telling you about the people that are celebrating the death of Soleimani right now, nor about the protests that are happening in Lebanon, or within Iran itself. All of this suggests a simple and obvious thing, Iran is in an increasingly weak position, and we have ignored their militia building for the last 10 years.

But now for the first time in a decade, we are not ignoring it. Now, will this work out? I don't know, we have to have the Iraqis choose themselves to expel Iranian influence from their country. But if they do, we should be prepared to work with them. Because after all, that is our most important national security interest in the Middle East. It is resisting Iran's domination of the region.

And by restoring our credible deterrent, which I believe the President has gone a long way towards doing, this gives us the best opportunity of the long term to reduce our force presence in the Middle East and focus on other areas of the world, particularly Asia that are far more important for our national security.

HILTON: Really interesting. Last quick question and we don't have a huge amount of time, but I just wanted to address the ISIS point, which I touched on earlier, which is a lot of people have been saying, well, actually, the Iran -- because they oppose ISIS were helpful in our fight against ISIS and this is going to undermine that. What do you say to that?

GALLAGHER: I would say they're two sides of the same coin. Salafi jihadists have flocked to places like Syria and Iraq in order to fight Shia extremists on the other side, and so what gets squeezed out is all of our potential partners in the middle and we have to be interested in working with people that not only want to push back on the Sunni variant of terrorism and extremism, but as well on the Shia variant of terrorism and extremism.

And we know that the Iranian regime is the world's foremost sponsor of terrorism, and so there is a sensible path in the middle where with a very light footprint, we can have a high impact working by, with and through our partners on the ground in the region and not have to do everything ourselves.

HILTON: Well, there you go. You see, I told them you knew what you were talking about. Congressman, really great that you could be with us tonight. Really appreciate it and hope to see you soon.

GALLAGHER: Thank you, Steve.

HILTON: All right. Let's see what our friends around the table have to say. With me, former Utah congressman and Fox News contributor and author of "Power Grab," Jason Chaffetz; Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren and Trump 2020 senior adviser, Katrina Pierson. All right. Who wants to kick us off?

JASON CHAFFETZ, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: I'll jump right in, if that's all right. Look, there was a clear and present danger and the President took decisive action. That's what a President gets empowered to do.

It is sickening and disgusting to see these Democrats try to say, oh, he didn't get congressional approval. Steve, that's not how it works.

The President just doesn't call up Adam Schiff and say, hey, do you think I've got permission to do this? That is not how the Executive Branch works. It's not a how a President leads.

And I would remind those Democrats who are so critical of that, what about when Barack Obama went to war in Libya? Operation Odyssey Dawn, they didn't go to Congress to get that. And by the way, Barack Obama, after eight months of bombing Libya, he came back and said it was the single worst mistake in the history of his presidency. That's Barack Obama's own precedent. It's what he said, and he didn't ever go to Congress to get to permission to do it.

HILTON: Tomi?

TOMI LAHREN, FOX NATION HOST: I think we're all just very happy that we have a President Trump presiding over this and instead of some of our other choices, of course, the Democratic candidates.

I think what's funny, though, is even if God forbid we had a President Hillary, I think she would have done the same thing that President Trump has done because she, unlike a lot of the Democrats that are running right now understands that you do need to protect the United States.

So I will give her that. That's the only thing I'll ever really give Hillary Clinton.

HILTON: So she is thrilled to have your endorsement on that point, Tomi.

LAHREN: I'm sure she is watching and I am sure she is excited. Her pant suit is jumping. At the end of the day, this President is trolling Iran and the rest of the world, you don't want war with the United States of America.

We're not going to send you money. We're not going to give you sanction relief. We're going to come down on you with a full force of the United States military and what this President is presiding over, thank goodness, we have a leader in the White House once again, I can't imagine if we still had a Barack Obama or a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren or any of them.

HILTON: Yes. Absolutely. We'll get into that later in the show. But that was my other -- especially Warren actually, when you saw her, she was out and about today on the Sunday shows.

She literally had nothing to say about it. It was just embarrassing. All she could do is, she would literally go back to Ukraine. She was talking about Ukraine.

LAHREN: Well, they will blame climate change for this, too. Just wait for it. They'll spin it. They will spin it.

HILTON: I mean, it was embarrassing. But, Katrina, I mean, the point I was trying to convey in the open there is there's no contra -- a lot of people jumped on and said, he's taking us to a war he promised not to do.

There's no contradiction between a tough strike from a drone, and I think what the -- as in his remarks tonight, the President is incredibly clear that he doesn't want to get bogged down. He wants to get out of the Middle East.

KATRINA PIERSON, TRUMP 2020 SENIOR ADVISER: Well, the President has been clear, you know, whether it be on the 2016 campaign, he has made many statements saying that he does not support regime change. He does not support interventionism.

He has been saying this for very long time. So it's no surprise that all of the politicians who have literally handed President Trump 40 years of failed foreign policy, are now complaining about the results of their own action or inaction.

I don't think Hillary Clinton would have made that decision. I mean, having a bill passed on killing Osama bin Laden. And then we have Hillary and Benghazi. I don't think that she would have taken the decisive action.

But what we do know is we now have a clear distinction of what drawing a red line means when you use a Sharpie versus an erase marker.

So what we have now is all this chaos and you mentioned this in your opening about the constitutionality, the legalities of everything. But the reality is, it's all a false narrative. It's just noise.

You have everyone projecting everything onto President Trump. Now, perhaps, if we had a Democrat in office right now, we probably wouldn't be going to World War III. If we had an established Republican, we would be invading, we would be regime changing and rebuilding their nations.

But this is President Trump. He has said those are not options. He doesn't subscribe to the libertarian view of turning the other cheek, especially after he already laid out the consequences for killing an American citizen. He is keeping his promise.

HILTON: Yes, I agree. Look, sorry. Not too much time. But quick comment from you, Jason. Just on what President Trump said tonight, about if they are going to get us out of there, they are going to have to pay for it, the Iraqi base.

CHAFFETZ: I want to bring our troops, you know. They're there. We've got the biggest, baddest military on the face of the planet. Give them a job.

They'll get it done. But nation building, staying there in perpetuity.

That's not what we should be doing.

I think Donald Trump is moving us in the right direction there. But if there is a clear and present danger like there was with Soleimani, take them out. That's exactly what they should be doing.

HILTON: There you go. Thank you for that. Thank you all. Coming up, more on the Iran situation and how will it affect our politics here, including impeachment after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILTON: All right, welcome back, everyone. Let's talk about how this Iran situation is going to affect our politics. Obviously, the 2020 presidential race, impeachment. We've got a lot going on. And I just want to start with -- I can't resist it, I have to start with this from Joe Biden, because, you know, it's one of those ones we could have saved for the end of the show in our Joe Biden comedy segment, but you know, it's quite a serious matter.

So we're going to play it for you now. This is Joe Biden last night talking about how he is the man for this perilous moment for our nation.

Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: We need to have a -- provide a steady, stable experienced leadership. With all due respect, I think I'm best prepared to do that than anybody running for President of the United States.

[APPLAUSE]

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILTON: Best prepared. You know, watching him there, he is like -- he is prepared -- he is best prepared for bed, I think and that was like -- let's talk about, you know, Sleepy Joe. I mean, I thought he was actually going to fall asleep in the middle of that. What's he talking about?

I think that when people see him respond like that -- I mean ...

LAHREN: Well, he always says that he is the best prepared because he has been around a long time. Remember that? That was the last time he was at a Town Hall before he called the man fat. He was reminding him that he's been around a long time. He can do a lot of pushups, more so than you know Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

So that is what he believes is his biggest qualification is that he has just been around a long time, but again, if corn pop was a bad dude I think Soleimani was the worst dude. So --

HILTON: You say it very nice.

LAHREN: Yes, we should debate that.

HILTON: I just think that the way -- you know, the candidates are all jockeying around on this. I mentioned it earlier, Elizabeth Warren today, she absolutely hopeless. I mean she literally couldn't respond in any coherent way to the actual substance of the issue.

Literally, she was going on about -- she went entirely political straightaway. She started talking about how President Trump always does what's in his own interest, starts going on about Ukraine and impeachment, and actually really, clearly, made the argument that President Trump is doing this as the wag the dog story. You know, to get away from his domestic political woes, and he is purely doing this for his own personal interest.

PIERSON: Well, I think she's just confusing President Trump with President Clinton because that's what he did during his impeachment process.

Look, the reality is, the reason why she is struggling is because she has backpedaled off of her own policies, as her fundraising is drying up and her numbers are dropping in the polls.

Otherwise, you'd have to actually agree with President Trump on what actually happened, and we've seen and we've talked about this before, but we see them actually defending Iran, defending the terrorists.

So her way of not actually defending Soleimani or supporting Trump took her into this downward spiral of nothingness.

HILTON: And it's interesting when -- you know, you can really tell something about a candidate, the way they respond to something and the news is not -- and the other one that was out today was Pete Buttigieg.

And he started going on about his experience that he was out there in the Middle East deployed there, and then how he has experienced running an -- like, as if South Bend prepares you for dealing with the crazy Iranians.

It was just laughable, really, and the thing I really took from his response was, it was so boring, it was totally predictable. It was completely kind of boilerplate establishment, blah, blah, blah. And you just think these candidates are not up to it. They're not up to respond.

And actually a moment like this reveals that.

CHAFFETZ: No, it does. I think authenticity wins elections. And if you can't show emotion and support for the flag for the United States of America, for the fact that our sovereign territory there in Baghdad, our Embassy was attacked, and you can't show some emotion and some belief that we're going to get behind the men and women, that we're going to rally together as a country. We're going to make country before your own political agenda. Come on.

And when you have Jeh Johnson, this is -- you showed that clip, right?

Barack Obama's Homeland Security Secretary saying the President did have a legitimate legal argument to do this. Where are the Democrats? Because as Katrina points out, there really quick to defend Iran, but they're also the same party that sent Iran $150 billion, the biggest and largest state sponsor of terrorism on the planet and Barack Obama and the Democrats gave pockets full of cash, literally put the pallets on airplanes and sent these people cash.

HILTON: So what do we think about the impeachment aspect? I mean, it is just feels so ridiculous and irrelevant now. Are they going to even go ahead? What do you think will happen?

PIERSON: Well, I think that's a great question. You know, Nancy Pelosi won't send over the Articles for whatever reason. Maybe she is just trying to hold it over the President's head. Obviously, it's not distracting him from doing his job.

But I think it's also worth pointing out what Jason just mentioned, the Democrats' role in all of this. It was the Democratic Party with their passive approach to foreign policy, who gave rise to this terrorist regime who overthrew the legitimate government of Iran.

And so here we are, 40 years later, being lectured by Democrats on what should or shouldn't be done when the President is just protecting America's interests.

HILTON: I thought Mike Pompeo, by the way does a really great job of that, you know, making that argument that actually what they're doing is clearing up the mess that they left behind with respect to Iran.

LAHREN: Well, absolutely, but when you talk about people like Elizabeth Warren, the reason she doesn't have a lot to comment on, I think it's because she doesn't quite frankly know.

I think that she is so focused on her plans and her redistribution plans and going after billionaires that she doesn't really know what to do on an international stage. And again, they're all -- I think the next bit what you're going to hear them say over and over again is, well, we need diplomacy, not war.

What they fail to recognize is that you can't have diplomacy with people that are chanting "Death to America," "Death to Israel" that want to kill you. You cannot coexist with those people.

But again, they're going to say, well, we could have used diplomacy and wait for it, they're going to say, well, you know, we got out of the Iran nuclear deal. So that is what made this happen. That was the catalyst for all this.

It's like at the end of the day, they don't understand because they don't want a strong America. They don't believe in America first. They don't believe in a strong America. They believe in a weak America. They believe in diplomacy and cowering in the corner and sending cash to people.

HILTON: Cowering. That's the word I was -- exactly -- as you were speaking. Exactly. Right. All right. There we go.

Coming up. The media's hostility towards the President is unprecedented, yet they're still trying to make him seem like the bad guy when he stands up to them. There was a truly insane example over the Holidays and we'll show you what it is after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILTON: Welcome back. Over the last three years, we've seen the ruling class media lose their minds of every little thing that this President has done. They obsess over the food he eats, the foreign leaders he meets and the punctuation of his tweets, but there was one line I read in a piece over the Holidays that tipped into total insanity.

He was arguing that the administration's decision to give a Department of Defense cloud computing contract to Microsoft instead of Amazon was somehow an attempt to literally close down the free press in America.

Here's the quote, "If Trump's message of intimidation of Bezos stands, and it serves as a pattern, he can replicate against other independent media and may eventually be seen as the first step in an Orbanesque ..."

That's the Prime Minister of Hungary by the way, you don't really need to focus on that.

" ... an Orbanesque campaign," listen to this, "to gain a functional control of the media." Functional control of the media? What planet are these people on?

It's hard to imagine a more hostile media onslaught than the one this President has had to deal with. Then when he quite rightly fights back, they accuse him of some authoritarian effort to end freedom of the press.

If it wasn't for Fox and "The Wall Street Journal," America would practically be a one-party state. These toadying establishment licks petals are as much the voice of the ruling classes Pravda was in the Soviet Union.

CNN and NBC News with their arrogant insularity and intolerant divisive campaign to delegitimize any anti-establishment point of view, whether from the right or the left. They're not the defenders of democracy, but its enemies.

As you might say, democracy dies on CNN and NBC.

Functional control of the media? I mean, how could they even write something like that about this President? It's mad.

LAHREN: Well, what's interesting is, didn't Bloomberg say that he is not allowing his media companies to discuss him or any other Democrats, but they will continue to investigate President Trump. It's funny that they don't want to grab a hold of that and talk about how ridiculous that is.

But yes, the fact that the media is, you know, all in line with President Trump, and he is really destroying them. He is by way of his charisma and his way of going on Twitter and circumventing them.

HILTON: Yes, bypassing them, exactly. I mean, Katrina, you've been right at the forefront of all this, you know, for years now with the President, and this is what I find so arrogant and pompous, the way that when he points out that they're being biased and unfair and fake news, or whatever.

That's just criticizing the press, but you can't criticize them. You're kind of anti-Free Press just by criticizing them.

PIERSON: And well, they think they're immune, but I mean, why wouldn't they? I mean, you know, forever they've been able to destroy political candidates regardless of the political aisle that they're on.

They've been able to really tell the public who a person is and who they aren't and destroy political careers and they have been unsuccessful with Donald Trump thus far.

And it's not working, obviously, because we do see President Trump's numbers rising. His approval is increasing. He is gaining with minorities and he is winning with all of his campaign promises. So what they're doing is not working, doubling down on it just makes them look worse.

HILTON: Really. But I mean, it's interesting, Jason, I was just back in the U.K. over the Holidays, and my friends there are journalists and they think the American press, the White House press corps that they often encounter, when we had the State Visit or whatever, they think they are so pompous.

You know, in the U.K., whatever else are the faults it has, there's a kind of totally robust relationship between the press and the politicians. They sort of yell at each other and that's fine. Here, they're so pompous about their role and you can't criticize them.

CHAFFETZ: Well, they probably think that because they are and I mean, remember when the impeachment thing happened, and then you saw -- I believe, it was "The Washington Post" reporters getting together and tweeting out that they were celebrating impeach-miss.

Remember, they were so happy and excited about that. I mean, there is a laundry list. I mean, there's not enough space on the internet to document how many times the media has overstepped its bounds and tried to push the scale in one direction or the other.

But the genesis, this base of this -- that quote that you had, is based on a Pentagon contract for web services that went to Microsoft instead of Amazon.

Donald Trump isn't involved personally making that decision. That's by Pentagon career officials making a decision on a cloud computing contract.

It is a big one. But just because Jeff Bezos didn't get it doesn't mean that Donald Trump suddenly controls the world like Dr. Evil.

HILTON: He is controlling the media. Exactly.

CHAFFETZ: I mean, it's just laughable.

HILTON: It is laughable, but they just carry on with this stuff. It's just -- I don't know.

LAHREN: But they also criticize this President and his administration for giving tax breaks and cozying up to Amazon too much. I mean, you hear AOC, that's one of her main talking point is Amazon.

Elizabeth Warren says it all the time, too, but now it's like she is too much for Amazon. Now, he is too much against Amazon. At the end of the day, Katrina, is absolutely right. They are failing to get at this President. He will not crack. He does not care. And that bothers them because they spent so many years with a President that they loved, Barack Obama. That was their idol, their Anointed One.

And now they have someone who's beating them at their own game, and as the President of the United States, what do they do? They cry.

HILTON: They dish it out the way -- the vicious language they use against the President. And when he, you know, fights back, they just can't take it?

PIERSON: Well, no, because he fights back, you know, and they're just not used to that. And not only does he fight back, but as Tomi said, he is beating them at their own game.

He has been able to now paint a picture of the press to the public, and they are just falling into this trap over and over again.

CHAFFETZ: Yes, this whole idea of fake news is so real. Look at what Ted Cruz did about five months ago. There was Senate testimony, it didn't get enough attention out there. We'll need to tweet it back out there.

But they had this independent analysis of how the Googles and the social media sites of the world are really manipulating things and pushing things towards the Democrats. That's what we should be really scared of. And I get a lot of credit to Ted Cruz for pointing it out.

HILTON: All right, thank you very much. Good discussion. Coming up, the establishment wants to scare you with predictions of World War III, so you don't pay attention to the good news in the real world. We will tell you what they won't offer the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILTON: As you know, we like to keep you updated with news especially economic news that's ignored by much of the media, but which actually affects your life.

We know that the pro-growth, pro-enterprise, pro-worker policies of this administration are working for American families and that the Trump economy is historically strong, but I saw an example recently that was truly amazing.

So meanwhile, in the real world -- we know the stock market has performed strongly over the past three years, but I had no idea it had performed this strongly.

The S&P 500 has had a return of over 50 percent during President Trump's first three years, more than double the average return of what past Presidents have achieved three years into their time in office. It's the best performance since 1928. That's nearly a hundred years.

This wasn't an accident. Our booming economy is a direct result of the President's pro-growth policies. He cut corporate taxes, so companies could invest more in themselves and their workforce, slashed overbearing government regulations to unleash innovation, doubled the child tax credit to support working families, directed investment towards distressed communities through opportunity zones and of course, as we report so often because it's so important work with Ivanka Trump to recruit more than 370 companies to pledge over 14 million new training opportunities so that our workers are prepared for the jobs of the future.

So what do we have to look forward to in 2020? Perhaps a short term trade deal with China, definitely the new USMCA to replace the job killing NAFTA, and even the playing field for our manufacturers and, of course, President Trump's reelection, with signal to businesses that they are guaranteed another four years of a pro-growth President.

That in turn, will spur more capital investment leading to higher productivity, more jobs, higher earnings, more of the positive economic story we've seen for the past three years.

All right, coming up, people are saying the moderates are regaining momentum in the 2020 Democratic race. But how moderate are they really?

Here's a clue. Loony Left is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILTON: With the Iowa caucuses less than a month away, pundits are saying the race to be the Democrats 2020 nominee is coming down to a choice between the far left progressive, Warren and Bernie and the so-called moderates Biden and Buttigieg.

But how moderate are they really? We will show you in tonight's Loony Left.

Yes, it looks like we may need to put a couple more faces on there because the media may lazily describe Biden and Buttigieg as moderates, but have they bothered to actually look at their policy positions?

Joe Biden is against charter schools and wants to use taxpayer dollars to make Community College free. Pete Buttigieg wants to hike the top individual tax rate to close to 50 percent and spend over a trillion dollars fighting climate change.

Biden wants free healthcare for illegal immigrants and take a look at Buttigieg's that is hard to say, Buttigieg, I've got my head around, but Buttigieg is difficult.

He has recently released immigration plan. He wants to end quote "asylum cooperation agreements" with El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, provide a path to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants living here and according to his plan, quote, " ... maximize immigrants contributions by eliminating the five-year waiting period for green card holders to gain access to public health insurance and food assistance programs, removing immigration related eligibility and documentation requirements for access to health coverage on the marketplaces and expanding access to Pell grants for students with DACA."

Now, while President Trump is fighting to fix the border crisis, these so- called moderate Democrats have pledged to incentivize illegal immigration and encourage asylum fraud.

All the Democratic candidates are far to the left of where Obama was in 2008 and 2012 and where Hillary was last time. The Democrats lurch to the Loony Left has been astonishingly rapid and will be a massive liability for them whoever they pick for 2020.

LAHREN: I think we need to focus on immigration, number one. Illegal immigration because every single one of these Democrats provide a pathway to citizenship. They will provide amnesty and they will allow these people to vote.

We have 10 to 20 million, who really knows. They've been saying we have 10 million for the last 10 years, hardly believe that since we were having thousands by the day surge over here, but every single one of these Democrats who is running will incentivize illegal immigration, and they will give illegal immigrants amnesty, and then they will be reliably voting Democrat for the foreseeable future.

And that is what they are staking everything on. They know that they cannot win on their plans, their policies, and their records. They will win if they allow illegal immigrants to vote or through voter fraud, and that is the real threat to this country.

HILTON: That's right. I mean, it's interesting, because let's say healthcare, you know, there is a division between them, and again, they still are all to the left of where Hillary was before, all of them.

But on this issue of immigration, it's wildly extremely left, all of them.

CHAFFETZ: It is radical. They want to provide reparations to people that are here illegally that American taxpayers will have to pull money out of their pockets and give it to people that are here illegally.

There is a huge difference between Donald Trump and what these people want to do. But let's remember that you know, these people are so far to the left that even their leader, Senator Sanders is not even a registered Democrat. He's a self-avowed socialist.

And this is crazy town. Pete Buttigieg wants to put I think, 15 people on the Supreme Court. I mean, they have some crazy ideas and they are moderates? Come on.

HILTON: That's right. I mean, they've really been pulled -- I mean, it's just happened so quickly how they've been pulled to the left, you know, Biden changing his position on so many things, abortion and so on, it's amazing.

PIERSON: Well, I mean, they're all over the place. Some of this doesn't surprise me, you know, looking back at 2016 and New Hampshire asking who are you going to support? It was either Trump or Bernie. And you're thinking, how is that even possible?

But they're trying to figure out what's going to get them the most votes from the base because it's all about the primary right now. And so they're trying all of these ridiculous ideas. And it sounds like Castro handed off his immigration plan to Buttigieg.

HILTON: Right.

PIERSON: But what I want to see on January 14th in that Democratic debate is a sign hanging on the wall that says if you're black, Latino or Asian, we just want your vote, but you can keep your candidates.

HILTON: Exactly. I mean, it's just really? That's right. All of this talk of the most diverse field ever that they've ended up.

CHAFFETZ: Yes. But I think they're screaming towards a brokered convention. And then I think everything will break loose from there. It is going to be absolutely nuts in Wisconsin when they have their convention because if you don't get the majority of the votes on the first ballot, guess what? Then the super delegates kick in in ballot number two, and I don't think a lot of people from the Sanders camp and whatnot are going to put up with that.

LAHREN: Bernie Bros.

HILTON: Bernie -- yes, well, let's pick that up after the break because we've got more on 2020. Coming up, Joe Biden has been out and about, and you know what that means? The weekly Joe Biden comedy segment is up next.

Don't miss it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILTON: All right, so we started doing these funny Joe Biden clips at the end of the show. You know, it's all a laugh, but it makes a serious point.

And, you know, we started calling it the Joe Biden Comedy Segment and every single week without fail, he provides us with new material. It's absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much, Mr. Biden, for doing your service to us in terms of the Joe Biden Comedy Segment.

Tonight, we have two. First of all, this actually isn't so funny. It relates to the Iran conversation we started the show with, but just look at this. This was Joe Biden with our own Peter Doocy earlier this week, talking about ordering raids to take out enemies of the U.S. Just look at this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER DOOCY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL REPORTER: As commander-in-chief, if you were ever handed a piece of intelligence that said you can stop an imminent attack on Americans, but you have to use an airstrike to take out a terror leader, would you pull the trigger?

BIDEN: Well, we did. The guy's name is Osama bin Laden.

DOOCY: Didn't you tell President Obama not to go after bin Laden?

BIDEN: No, I didn't. I didn't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILTON: No, he definitely didn't. Absolutely, didn't. He didn't tell President Obama not to take out Osama bin Laden, did he? Did he?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: He got to me. He said, Joe, what do you think? And I said, you know, I didn't know we had so many economists around the table. I said, we owe the man a direct answer. Mr. President, my suggestion is don't go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILTON: It's just unbelievable. Okay, this one, I thought, is he just a total liar? Is it the senility that we talked about so often? What's going on? Is it both?

CHAFFETZ: Well, it's the repetitive nature of this. Remember when he first ran for President back in 1988, he had a drop out of the race because of plagiarism charges. And his whole career has been riddled with these types of weird things that he does that are so -- and it's easy to document. It's easy to check on them. But this is just so wrong.

PIERSON: I think it's both. I think it's the senility and I think he is just lying. Because again, they are all trying to figure out where they stand with the base and how they're going to move forward.

And this is just so blatant, though and on something that's so serious.

We're talking about a decision that a United States President has to make in order to save lives, and he can't even be honest about that.

HILTON: Oh, that's exactly right. Unbelievable. Okay, Tomi, this one's a bit more -- a bit less serious, but funnier. This week, let's have a look.

This is from one of his events earlier this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: We don't need another old white man running for President.

BIDEN: All right. I agree with you, man. I agree.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILTON: We don't need another old white man running for President. I agree with you, man.

LAHREN: Maybe he is identifying as something else these days. That's a very Democratic thing to do.

HILTON: That's right. He self-identifies as a young woman, African-American woman.

LAHREN: He saw Elizabeth Warren do it, she was successful. She identified as a Native American. So I think he's going to, you know, turn that record player on and be wherever he wants to be. I support it. Let his freak flag fly.

HILTON: It's just the, I agree with you, man. What's he doing?

CHAFFETZ: I don't know. He's got an audience of like eight. Like compare that to --

HILTON: And they are just as old as he is.

Pier So at the end of the day, no one remembers.

CHAFFETZ: Yes, I mean, look, he is still the front runner and it is hard to believe, what are we? Twenty eight days before Iowa -- and we don't -- there is not that feeling like you had with Barack Obama that oh, my goodness, this person is really going to pull that off. I don't think Joe Biden is actually going to win there.

HILTON: Well, it's actually -- it's what you said earlier that is very relevant because it feels like you know, that you've got Buttigieg ahead apparently in Iowa, then Bernie and Biden in South Carolina. You're not going to get anyone and so you're going to get to the convention, as you were saying, and it won't be clear and then it's just a mess.

CHAFFETZ: Yes, the super delegates I think are going to be offensive to the lot of the Democrats out there, a lot of shenanigans going on with those folks.

HILTON: Yes, but Bernie Bros, you mentioned earlier. They're going to be happy.

LAHREN: They are violent, you know, in some points and in some places.

They're very -- at least, they're excited though. You can't say the same for the supporters of the others, so --

HILTON: All right, but we'll be watching it. Thank you all for being with us. Thank you for joining us tonight. Jon Scott is up next with a Fox News Special showdown with Iran. See you next Sunday when "The Next Revolution" will be televised.

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