Now on cspan2 book tv, television for serious readers. Welcome to heritage. Thank you for joining us. We will have a fun discussion today about the new book power grab and to introduce them is senator mike, a great friend of heritage and a best friend of the constitution. Hello. Its a pleasure to be with you. This merges several of my interests. The constitution, conservative politics, books about the things the Heritage Foundation and my friends jason and julie chafe this. Ive known them for a long time. I first came to know jason over 30 years ago when he became a place kicker at byu. Hes really good. Till this day he holds some records including the most successful scored in a single game and i think in a single season, and he was also famous for the fact that immediately after he picked a field goal the helmet would come off and then he had this awesome job to the sideline and he became famous for that. I think it resulted in something called the chafe its rule. I think it played a key role in his success as a statesman in the state of utah. People came to know him. They knew who he was. I remember many years later, long after he had played for byu and had a successful career as a businessman, i met him in person for the first time. I was quite starstruck because he was a big deal. I met him while he was running a campaign for governor huntsman before he was governor huntsman. Jason chafe is himself convinced me that he was the man to become the next governor in 2004. We had a long conversation about it at the republican convention. Several months after that, he called me and informed me i was under consideration for a position and he said i didnt imply an he said i dont care we want to talk to anyway. We went over and had a chat, we headed off and we ended up working together. I ended up serving as his general counsel when he was chief of staff, but my most important goal was when i became his chauffeur. He and i lived closer together than any two member of the senior staff at one point jason broke his foot, long story we wont get into that, because it sounds like the punchline to a joke but it was actually quite serious. He fell and broke his foot and had to be in a cast and i would go and pick him up at his home in alpine utah. He would sit in the backseat so he could keep his foot elevated. I asked if you want me to it get a hat, a chauffeurs hat and i didnt charge him anything for it. The only thing i charge him was he had to agree to be subjective to my rants on constitutional issues and to listen to taperecorded Supreme Court arguments which, who wouldnt want to do that. But i digress. Were not here to talk about any of that, we are here to talk about the fact that he is a hero when it comes to defending individual liberty and fighting against Big Government. He someone who is willing to call out the left, both those who identify themselves as part of the left and also those who just want to build Big Government. He is someone who understands the fact that there is something of a zerosum game when it comes to defending liberty. If you are a government, as you get bigger, as you become more powerful, you do so with the expense of individual liberty. He understands the fact that government itself is not and never can become and never will be completely prevalent. They are the use of collective force, organized force and its run by fallible mortal individual. Consequently we have to carefully constrain its power and we have to make sure its not abused. In his latest book, power grab, jason explains how the lovers of government power have been orchestrated in such a way as to effectively weaponize the threatening power of government in a way that advances the political agenda of the left or another way of describing it might be the political agenda of those at the expense of individual liberty. He blows the whistle on how he has. [inaudible] to be clear as he makes clear in power grab, this isnt a simple question of the red team versus the blue team. This is a question of liberty versus centralized government power. We fought a war over that and we won the war and we shouldnt be eager to go back to a system in which government knows best and government holds all the power. We the people are the sovereigns and we cant go back to a time where that is not the case. Thats why his book is such an important tool for those who want to live in a land where they are free. Whether you call yourself a conservative or a liberal or libertarian or something else, it shouldnt matter to you. What should matter is the concept of liberty that government exists for limited purposes to make sure we are secure and to make sure we have an enterprise that uses collective force for the purpose of defending life, liberty and property. The more we deviate from that, the more we run into a real risk of a paragraph where we become less free and less secure in our liberty and our property. There is not a day that goes by that i dont miss having jason serving in the house of representatives. He was someone who, in addition to being a trusted friend and colleague, he is someone who i came to trust and love working with when he was serving in the house of representatives and during my term in office at the senate. Its hard for me to it remember an issue where he and i took opposing viewpoints. He and i worked together on countless issues. I take comfort though, in the fact that he is able to do an enormous amount of good where he is in informing the American People about the risks of Big Government and keeping them informed of whats going on in washington. He is exercising a lot of influence by writing books like power grab which i highly recommend. With that, please join me in welcoming jason, the author of power grab. [applause] thanks for having me, thanks for being here. Thank you to senator lee. He had a vote and now he has to hustle back because he has another vote on the floor. Probably best that he does that. Now i get to tell my story while hes not here. Thats even better. I first met mike, this is amazing to me because we were at the utah county convention. Theres literally a thousand people at this event and this gentleman comes up and we Start Talking and he introduces himself as mike and i said you have a card or something, whats your full name and he said mike lee. I knew, he was the spitting image of whose father who was the president of Brigham Young university and i said likely and i said any. [inaudible] he had argued a hundred plus cases before the Supreme Court. Fast forward to when the chief of staff, general counsel, one of the best things i did while i was chief of staff, it is true and i broke my foot, i broke my right foot so i couldnt use the accelerator. I tried to convince my wife i could drive leftfooted and she said youre not doing that. He would drive me to it and from every day what he didnt tell you is that he had a cassette tape player in his car and he would like to listen to his dad argued the Supreme Court cases so he would literally put the cassette tape in there. Thats how much the guy loved the law and we would listen to the oral presentations before the Supreme Court. I learned a lot, but thats what mike does for fun. Hes not listening to music or Something Like that. Youve gotta love a guy that is not committed to it. Mike is going to walk us through a few things. I want to acknowledge my wife julie who is here with me, i appreciate her being here, i appreciate all of you being here, i wanted to thank the Heritage Foundation for making this all possible, the good that heritage does in terms of informing people, being a resource while i was in congress, even after i had been in congress, its such a great resource, so many minds thinking through tough issues. Its so helpful. The quick of why i wrote the book, as i said the beginning, steven covey who wrote seven basic habits of highly effective people, seek first to understand and then be understood. I wholeheartedly believe that. I also believe what Margaret Thatcher said and that she said first you need to win the argument, then you can go when the vote. I always felt, even before i came to congress and before i ran but republicans, conservatives, we were very pathetic in our communication. First of all we were doing no help from the media. They were not going to be a conduit to help us get our message out there and be a platform or have the time to be able to do that. It was compounded by that. Ive always felt like we, as conservatives, have the right message, we just didnt say very well. We didnt say it enough and i remember when i was first in congress i met with eric who had a senior position at the time because i had been invited to be on fox news and i had, i couldnt believe it. So i called up eric and i said are you all right if i go on fox news and hes like jason, are you kidding me, you need to go out there as much as you possibly can to get out our message and go on every other message you can possibly get on and talk about why you believe what you believe. It was the right answer, it was good advice and i would argue we need more people who can get in front of those cameras to go on all the networks to talk about what it is we believe and give that perspective. I dont buy into the idea that you need to just sit back and say theyre not gonna give us a fair shake. I probably did more interviews on msnbc and cnn, you probably didnt see them, not that many people saw them, then i did even on fox news. Eight and a half years in congress and i left and im very blessed to have this contributor relationship with fox, but i always felt i can still contribute in the Public Square because now, more than ever, i can get out there and talk about issues that matter, that matter for our country, at least from a conservative standpoint, ive been very blessed to have this relationship with harpercollins who did my first book called the deep state, it was a New York Times bestseller and we Just Launched this book seven days ago, power grab which is sort o of, it bifurcate scented to different areas, how is it that the democrats are using the leverage of power that they currently have to do things that you all wouldnt necessarily see unless you have maybe been in congress or youre really, really paying attention, but you need someone to draw your attention to them, and then what are the things youre doing outside of congress to change the dynamic in the narrative. Those of the first two chapters of the book that should scare the living daylights out of you because they are doing some things on the left that will affect all of us whether you realize it or not. We as conservatives and republicans dont play offense nearly enough. Democrats are always on offense and thats what i think i articulate here. Mikes going to walk it through us and then i think were going to do some q a. Lets get after it. We can open it up to q a at the end. Full disclosure i worked for the former congressman when he was chairman of the House Oversight committee. We made some memories of the good times we had when he was running the committee. We will go through a couple. I like to start off with your final town hall, right after trump was elected, things got ugly. I think thats a good table setter for what the environment looks like now. Can you just tell us a little bit about that. I write about this in the forward. I had one my fifth term in the congress, i was blessed to get 73 of the vote, this was roughly four or five weeks after donald trump had been sworn in so were talking the heart of winter, in utah and all of a sudden im having town hall meetings. I had had, i dont know how many town hall meetings. I love town hall meetings. Usually a group about the size, people can interact and i learned a lot about the questions are asking. Its a good format. The quick of it is, democrats got a hold of this and they have this group called indivisible utah which had a National Presence but they had a specific manual about how to take over a town hall meeting. This thing blossomed and blew up into a thousand plus people that were showing up and they wanted to create this allusion, its a recurring theme, but they wanted to create this allusion that a conservative republican in this district who just happened to be the chairman of the Oversight Committee with the newly minted president of the United States donald trump was that his voters were mad and they needed to do his job and hold the president accountable and he needed to do this and do that they had this long list of demands of things they wanted me to it do. Much of which i didnt think were within the purview of the United States congress. So much so that i got out of control and you gotta read the account but there is 30 plus police officers, people openly carrying weapons in the parking lot, we had swat teams, it turned into quite a fiasco. The highlight of which i will give you is that there were two members of the National Media that had shown up. Now, i dont remember ever having National Media show up to my town hall after i won my fifth election with 73 of the vote. We are weeks into the 115th congress, really, this one reporter she insisted that she interview me. I said well, let me talk to her on the phone first and i said to her why are you here. And she said well we have a source in San Francisco that says theres going to be a riot and perhaps a fire and i said really, i said did you ever think that, did you tell Law Enforcement about that, did you call my office about that, youre only telling me this because i asked you why youre here and she said no and i said youre going to literally put a thousand people in danger. If you think theres going to be a riot and a fire, potentially you telling me people might die, you believe theres enough credibility and thats why youre here and these people are doing live shots for my town hall meeting. It just, it was the last one that i ended up doing but this is how these people play. There is this kind of recurring theme in here that they really do believe on that radical far left side, they throw all these labels like fascist and all these really negative terms on donald trump, but what i see them doing is exactly what they claim the president was doing that in order to protect our freedom they need to take it away, in order to make sure the First Amendments in place, they need to take away our right under the First Amendment. Its just a recurring theme but i could go on and on about this particular town hall meeting being used as a tool and a prop. They paid people to come in, there were people from all kinds of states there. They wanted to create this media allusion that it was an organic utah phenomenon in a district and that theyre gonna run all the stories and say look, knee problems donald trump is creating which was not true. In your book you get into a lot of examples of double entry and double standards are hypocrisy. One of the most telling is how you first came to Congress Republicans were referred to as the party of no, but now the media and others like to call the left the resistance this kind of mythological name. What you make of that. Think about it. How often have you heard the republicans were the party of no that because were somehow opposed to a Public Policy position that barack obama and the democrats are championing that we were the party of no but if all the sudden now you dont where they ca liberal could credentials unless you are anti trump, no matter what position you possibly take their gonna take the opposite one. I did that when i was like in third grade. Yes you did, no you didnt, its very true. I sesame today on the street wearing a black shirt with white lettering that said resistance and they were part but they they were proud that they were part of the resistance movement. Lets tackle it like an adult, issue by issue and lets have that debate. I do believe the more conservatives have the debate and they win the debate. Ive been going around the country telling people, and i want to share this message with you, i really do believe we cant be afraid of having that discussion, but lets also talk from our hearts. Im tired of competing the compassion card to the democrat. They are not the more compassion caring group. What im worried about is that we want to smother people with statistics and numbers and the study, i think we also, as conservatives, ive got my campaign hat on a little bit but we need to talk about why we believe what we believe. I think we were partly successful because we talk about the prison principal. My guess is if you are here at this meeting, you have a set of principles that you believe in, but i think a lot of conservatives forget that step one, lets talk about why you believe what you believe. Then we can argue about how to get there in the individual policy, but democrats want to shut down the debate. They want to create this evil appearance on how dare you. Thats why i think all this polling we do day after day on television and in the newspapers, its just a bunch of hogwash. People dont want to admit out loud that theyre going to vote for donald trump as opposed to Hillary Clinton because they dont want their neighbors or somebody else to beat them over the head with it and that is part of the strategy. They want to embarrass people. One of my favorite parts of the book is when you put your investigator hat on and start digging through the tax returns of the big nonprofits on the left. What did you discover in how these operations are financed and some of the shading accounting tricks. Full disclosure im glad i learned about the tricks for the first time in this book because we dont do any of that. This is what i think people need to understand. If you look at the priorities they have put forward in congress and you look through any poll thats out there about one of the most important issues, youre going to hear about healthcare, the economy, immigration. they have to reconfigure how we do voting in this country in order for them to win l