Sen. Graham on migrant surge and Biden's effort to tie infrastructure, spending bills
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., argues those that voted for Joe Biden 'thinking he would be a moderate voice and would lead us to a centrist agenda,' must be 'sorely disappointed.'
This is a rush transcript from "Sunday Morning Futures," July 18, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Good Sunday morning, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to "Sunday Morning Futures." I'm Maria Bartiromo.
Today: facing off on corruption and communism.
Senator Ted Cruz, the son of a Cuban immigrant, on why the Biden administration is slamming the door on Cubans begging for freedom, while keeping the Southern border wide open for one million migrants traveling through Mexico so far this year.
Plus: Biden family ethics. Jen Psaki claims this administration is the most ethical in history. Then why won't they tell us who is ponying up half-a- million bucks for Hunter Biden's newfound hobby, art? Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer is here on the ethics behind the $3.5 million dollar payout from the mayor of Moscow's wife and the millions more from Chinese companies tied to the Chinese military and Xi Jinping.
Then: Is it economic policy or a shakedown? South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham on the infrastructure plan and whether it's tied to another wildly expensive tax-and-spend blowout, with the Democrats' new scheme now to throw an amnesty component in there as well.
Plus: Joe Biden's attack on Facebook.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: What's your message to platforms like Facebook?
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They're killing people.
I mean, it really -- look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And that's -- and they're killing people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTIROMO: Yes, the finger-pointing has begun, as President Trump's lawsuit looms over censorship.
FOX host Mark Levin on the threat of Marxism raging through the country. Is it coming from the Chinese Communist Party. And do progressives understand who they are getting in bed with?
All that right here, right now on "Sunday Morning Futures."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Former national intelligence folks who said that what this -- he's accusing me of, is a Russian plant.
They have said that this -- has all the -- four -- five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he's saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it, except his -- and his good friend, Rudy Giuliani.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You mean the laptop is now another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax? You got to be kidding me...
BIDEN: That's exactly what -- that's exactly what was told.
TRUMP: Is this where you're going? This is where he's going. The laptop is Russia, Russia, Russia?
KRISTEN WELKER, MODERATOR: Gentlemen, I want to stay on the issue of race, OK?
TRUMP: You have to be kidding.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: That was Joe Biden at the final presidential debate back in October dismissing stories about son Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation, a narrative former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe debunked on "Mornings With Maria" on FOX Business.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN RATCLIFFE, FORMER U.S. DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Let me be clear.
The intelligence community doesn't believe that, because there's no intelligence that supports that. And we have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden's laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign. It's simply not true.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTIROMO: Joining me right now is investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, who has been exposing Joe Biden's China ties for years.
Peter, thanks very much for being here this morning.
You have that laptop in your possession. You have been mining through it. Set the record straight. Is this Hunter Biden's laptop?
PETER SCHWEIZER, AUTHOR,"SECRET EMPIRES": Yes, there's no doubt it's Hunter Biden's laptop.
And, really, what we did, Maria, when we obtained the files from the laptop is, we compared it to existing information that we already know is accurate. So, for example, the Senate committee released Hunter Biden's Secret Service travel records that show where he traveled overseas with Secret Service protection.
We took that information and correlated it with a Hunter Biden e-mails. So, when the Hunter Biden e-mails say he's in Dubai or that he's going to Beijing, is that actually reflected in the Secret Service travel records? One hundred percent they correspond.
We then took the Bevan Cooney e-mails. That was one of his business partners who went to jail. He gave us access to his Gmail account. So we were actually going through his Gmail account. He corresponded with Hunter on a pretty regular basis. They were copied on a lot of e-mails together. Do those e-mails match up? One hundred percent.
I could go on and on, the wire transfers that the Treasury Department released. The bottom line is, the information lines up completely 100 percent. And it is fundamentally dishonest to insist that the laptop is not accurate.
I think that debate is done. And I think that's why Hunter Biden himself is not even claiming that the laptop is not his.
BARTIROMO: So, Peter, right now, Hunter is getting ready to sell art. He has told us that this is his new job. He is a first-time artist, no training, of course.
The pieces are being priced between $75,000 and a half-a-million dollars apiece. You call this scheme genius. Why?
SCHWEIZER: Well, it's genius, because -- in a very corrupt way, because what was the criticism of Hunter's previous moneymaking schemes?
When he worked went to work for Burisma, the energy company, the criticism was he was getting a million dollars a year. He had no background in Ukrainian energy regulation, no background in energy. Well, art is different than the business world. It's entirely subjective.
So, if somebody is prepared to send half-a-million dollars to an artist for a piece of art, who can question it? So, in that sense, it's very genius. But this opens the gateway to massive corruption, Maria, because the art owner, the art partner that he has that's going to be marketing his art has been very clear that he's going to market these things overseas.
He's been wanting to break into the Chinese art market for years. And the Senate, actually, in 2019 issued a report talking about how the art world is rife with money laundering and corruption involving foreign oligarchs, because it's so hard to trace.
So it's a massively troublesome problem. And their explanations simply don't carry any weight.
BARTIROMO: Well, the White House is saying that, in an effort to be -- quote, unquote -- "transparent," they are not going to tell anybody who's ponying up half-a-million dollars to buy Hunter Biden's art. What's to stop a Chinese company, or an Iranian company, a Chinese company tied to the Chinese military and the Communist Party to pay half-a-million dollars for art, and then say, wink, wink, take this company off the blacklist, further my efforts here, further my efforts there, I just bought your art for half- a-million bucks?
SCHWEIZER: Maria, let me underline and underscore what you just said. That's absolutely correct. There's nothing stopping them from doing it.
And, in fact, the White House's proposed ethics solution -- I will put that in quotation marks -- is the exact opposite of what's called here -- called for here. Their solution of transparency is to actually hide who is engaged in the transaction. It's ludicrous.
Look, I have been critical of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their foreign deals over the years. You have to give them credit. When Hillary Clinton was in the Senate and later as secretary of state, Bill Clinton was collecting a lot of speaking fees from foreign entities. They disclosed those. And to their credit, they disclosed those.
In this case, I don't think Hunter Biden should be doing this to begin with. But if he's going to do it, they need to disclose and have an independent party verify who is actually paying him for this artwork.
BARTIROMO: Yes, it's very concerning, particularly with the partnership that this administration and the Democrats have with social media, and pretty much the media broadly speaking, because you're not seeing any of this.
And, ordinarily, you would expect that the media would really scrutinize this. They're not doing it because they don't want to. It's absolutely outrageous. They have been censoring things like treatments for COVID. They censored Hunter Biden's deals right before the election, the -- Twitter banning The New York Post.
Your assessment of what's happening in the media and the inability for the American people to truly understand what's taking place?
SCHWEIZER: Well, so, Maria, let's go back to 2017 and the Trump Tower meeting, where Trump family members met with some people from Russia that they had never met before, met with them for about 20 minutes.
TIME magazine ran a cover called "Caught Red-Handed." And it was about that 20-minute meeting. So, weigh that 20-minute meeting and the widespread coverage it got everywhere, not just TIME magazine, with what we know objectively -- nobody's disputing -- as it relates to the Bidens.
Aside from the art deals, you have got that fact that Hunter Biden, while his dad was vice president, was securing multimillion-dollar deals in China with CCP-connected businessmen, in Russia with Russian oligarchs. That apparently doesn't warrant really any coverage from the media.
So, a 20-minute meeting in Trump Tower, which, in my mind, should have been covered as a news event, but they blew it up as this money massive thing, and you weigh that on balance with what we know about the long and lucrative nature of the Biden family's deals with China, and yet they blow that off as if it's not important.
It is truly Orwellian.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
SCHWEIZER: That's not a word I use a lot, but it's Orwellian.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
Meanwhile, here's Jen Psaki explaining this away at the White House press briefing recently. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, let me say first, that we have the highest ethical standards of any administration in history. A number of ethics officials have conveyed that. And we're proud of that.
We have also staffed up at an unprecedented pace, and that -- and this is the most diverse administration in American history. So we certainly expect that everyone will abide by those high ethics standards. That applies in how we operate. It also applies in how hiring is done.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTIROMO: Peter, no words.
(LAUGHTER)
BARTIROMO: What is your reaction to what she just said, the most ethical administration in world history, as we put up this graphic here of the Hunter Biden business deals across the world?
Five million dollars from the Chinese oil companies CEFC. Created a billion-dollar investment fund, BHR, with state-owned Bank of China. Received $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow. This list goes on and on.
Your reaction to Jen Psaki, as we look at this list?
SCHWEIZER: Yes, saying you're the most ethical doesn't make it true.
And here's the problem when it comes to the Biden family. They have lied. And I don't use that word loosely. They have lied consistently about Hunter Biden's dealings. So I don't give a lot of credence to what they say. The question is, what are they actually going to do?
Initially, when we first reported on Hunter Biden in January of 2018, they said it wasn't true, he didn't have foreign deals. Then they admitted he had foreign deals, but they said that he never talked about it to his dad. Then, of course, evidence came out that he did, in fact, talk to his dad about it. Then they shifted to the fact, well, his father never met with any of his business partners. Then evidence was shown that was the case, and on and on and on.
The point is, they have consistently lied. And you can't simply take them at their word.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
SCHWEIZER: And that's, I think, again, the mistake that the media is making. That's what they have done, and they need to stop doing it.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
Real quick, Peter, I know that the top federal prosecutor in Delaware decided to pause a criminal investigation of Hunter Biden months before the 2020 election to prevent the public from learning about this, according to a new report.
My question to you is, has the FBI interviewed Hunter Biden under oath?
SCHWEIZER: My understanding is that -- I don't know under oath, but my understanding is that they have had conversations. There have been discussions.
I don't have any inside knowledge of where the investigation is. But, look, here's the thing that I think frustrates people to this larger issue. When it came to the Trump administration, there were all kinds of leaks. There was all kinds of announcements that were made at politically, let's say, awkward times.
The notion that you're going to freeze a criminal investigation because you're afraid it might influence a political campaign only when it comes to one side of the political aisle speaks to the disparate nature of the criminal justice system we have. And there's a different set of rules for different people, not only depending on where you are socially, but, apparently, where you are on the political spectrum.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
SCHWEIZER: And that is a huge problem that's undermining the faith in our criminal justice system.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
Peter, I know you're working on a new book. And I want to talk to you about China the next time we meet.
It's good to have you this morning. Thanks very much for all your reporting, Peter. Thank you.
Peter Schweizer joining us there.
We will take a break.
When we come back, Senator Ted Cruz is here on the White House's admission that it is in fact colluding with Facebook to censor information about COVID-19, what this means for the technology giant's protection as a private company. The lawsuits have begun.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARTIROMO: Welcome back.
Censorship and surveillance, a page right out of the Chinese Communist Party playbook.
This week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted what we all knew. Social media and the Biden administration are working together to dictate what you see and what you hear.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PSAKI: We are in regular touch with these social media platforms. And those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team, given, as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic.
We have increased disinformation research and tracking within the surgeon general's office. We're flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We're working with doctors and medical professionals to connect -- to connected medical experts with popular -- with popular -- who are popular with their audiences with accurate information and boost trusted content.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTIROMO: This comes just one month after Anthony Fauci's e-mails showed he was plotting with Mark Zuckerberg on a so-called information hub to censor key information about the origins of COVID-19 and the treatments for COVID, something that Texas Senator Ted Cruz told us suggested collusion and could set up Facebook for damages.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): These latest breakthroughs have real consequence, because it now is clear that Facebook was operating at the direction of and in the direct benefit of the federal government, and operating as the government censor, utilizing their monopoly position to censor on behalf of the government.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTIROMO: Senator Ted Cruz joins me now with reaction to the White House's brazen censorship admission.
Senator, it's good to see you. Thanks very much for being here.
So, was this collusion?
CRUZ: It was undoubtedly collusion.
It's good to see you this morning, Maria.
It's striking. Since that interview that you just aired a minute ago, where I laid out that the Fauci e-mails really showed how big tech was in bed with the Biden administration, with the government, censoring on behalf of the government, there have been two significant developments.
Number one, Donald Trump filed a class-action lawsuit against big tech, against Facebook and Twitter and big tech, based on exactly the theory you and I discussed, that they were engaged in censorship that is unconstitutional, that is contrary to the First Amendment.
And the theory behind President Trump's lawsuit is exactly the theory you and I discussed.
Now, the challenge his lawsuit faces is the following. The First Amendment applies only to government action. The beginning of the first words of the First Amendment our,"Congress shall make no law." And so it applies to the federal government. It has since been incorporated and applied against the state government.
And so the argument that a lot of the talking heads put out immediately after President Trump filed his lawsuit is, they said, well, Facebook is not the government, Twitter is not the government, so this lawsuit will get thrown out.
Well, the Supreme Court has long recognized a line of cases that, when government uses a private company as a tool, as an arm to implement a government policy, in this instance, when government explicitly asks a private monopoly, censor the following speech that we disagree with, that that private company can be treated as a state actor.
And I got to say, watching Jen Psaki this week, it is amazing. I kind of wonder if Jen Psaki is on the payroll of Donald Trump, because her press conference strengthened President Trump's lawsuit against big tech. It makes clear that everything we thought about the Biden administration, about their willingness to trample on free speech, to trample on the Constitution, to use government power to silence you, everything we feared they might do, they are doing and worse.
And I think President Trump's lawsuit got much, much stronger this week.
BARTIROMO: Yes, I mean, we're going to talk with Mark Levin coming up in the program. And he said Psaki's admission makes Trump's big tech lawsuit a slam dunk, that she should be a defendant, she should go and testify in that suit.
CRUZ: So, let me give you an example, Maria, to understand it.
Imagine if the Biden administration went to, say, a private paramilitary organization and said, we're going to ask you to knock down people's doors and take their guns, and we're going to ask you to do this explicitly.
And then we're also going to pass a law to immunize you, so, if this private organization kicks down your front door, takes all your firearms, we're going to give you immunity for many civil liability.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
CRUZ: Now, nobody in their right mind would argue that private organization behaving essentially as storm troopers trying to confiscate guns, nobody would argue that that is not state action...
BARTIROMO: Yes, OK.
CRUZ: ... and that that doesn't violate the Second Amendment.
What the Biden administration is doing with Facebook and Twitter and Google is the same thing. They're going to monopolists and saying, you are our tool to censor views we disagree with.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
CRUZ: And, by the way, what's ludicrous is, they have been censoring views that we now know are true.
BARTIROMO: Exactly.
CRUZ: For months, they were censoring, for example, where the virus originated.
BARTIROMO: Oh, we have a whole list of them, yes. Right.
Hold on. Hold that thought, Senator. We have got a whole list of them. I want to talk more about this and other subjects when we come right back.
We're talking with Senator Ted Cruz. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARTIROMO: Welcome back.
We are back with Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
Senator, we were just going through all of the censorship that we have been seeing. It's really disturbing to me that Facebook and all these other social media companies are censoring information that's actually true.
They really are letting down the American people, right before the election censoring the Hunter Biden story, banning The New York Post from Twitter, and then going on to censor early treatments of COVID. We had on Senator Ron Johnson and Dr. Pierre Kory, who went through things like ivermectin, which was off-patent, and nobody was making any money on it because it's off-patent.
But it actually could have been a very important treatment for early days of COVID. They took all of those posts down. They wouldn't allow you to talk about hydroxychloroquine. I mean, this is not just censorship for politics. They're actually letting the American people down in so many ways.
Why? Is this the Communist Party's influence?
CRUZ: Well, listen, you're exactly right that the censorship has been over and over again silencing things that are true.
They banned, for example, any arguments that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, China. It now appears the overwhelming weight of the evidence suggests that's, in fact, where it originated, in a Chinese government lab.
You mentioned The New York Post. As you know, I do a podcast every week called "Verdict With Ted Cruz." I just filmed a podcast about an hour ago where I sat down with the editor of the editorial page of The New York Post. And we talked about their story in the fall of 2020 about Hunter Biden's laptop. They broke that story.
And big tech silenced it, took it down. And we now know that story was true. You covered at the top of your show how that story was true. And I got to tell you that the New York Post editorial page editor told me that, even when he tried to direct-message the story to other people -- people were asking,"Hey, what's the story?" -- big tech would block his direct messages, because they wanted to silence a story.
The only justification for silencing the story is that it hurt Joe Biden and it helped Donald Trump. And big tech was behaving as the partisan enforcers to try to skew an election. And they did, in fact, skew an election. And they're continuing now to censor information if it disagrees with the official government line.
I got to say it's the same thing you see happening in a communist country like China, in a communist country like Cuba, where, if there are facts that are contrary to the government orthodoxy, the dictatorship prevents you from sharing the facts. Big tech is doing the same damn thing here in the United States.
And it is a frightening threat, not just to free speech, but for the ability of the American people to learn the truth on a host of issues.
BARTIROMO: Yes, I'm very disturbed.
I want to get to Cuba. I know that you have witnessed the effects of this communist regime firsthand with your father and your aunt.
But, first, on China, I mean, Joe Biden says he's the one leader that knows Xi Jinping best on the world stage, and that Xi Jinping truly believes he's going to acquire America and overtake America within 15 years.
I mean, they're following our political debates. They're piling on. Do the progressives understand the dangerous situation they're putting this country in, that the CCP has goals, their Belt and Road Initiative, their civil-military fusion? They want to overtake the United States.
Is the Biden administration enabling it with all of this censorship?
CRUZ: So, unfortunately, they are.
And one of the sad realities today is, the Democratic Party is structurally pro-China. The Democratic Party today is funded by -- their biggest funders are big tech. And big tech is in bed with the Chinese communists. Among the biggest funders of the Democratic Party are the giant corporations.
And many of the giant corporations, the Fortune 50 and Fortune 100, are in bed with the Chinese communists. And you look at the Biden administration just six months into it. Joe Biden named as his U.N. ambassador an individual who last year gave a paid speech for a Confucius Institute paid for by the Chinese communist government praising the Chinese communist government.
Just a couple of months in, the Biden administration reversed the State Department policy. And they now ban Taiwan, any Taiwanese official from displaying a Taiwanese military uniform, from displaying a Taiwanese flag on U.S. government property. Why? Because it offends the communist government overlords in China.
And I got to tell you, we really saw just how pro-China today's Democrats are in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where we were debating Joe Biden's Green New Deal executive order. I introduced an amendment that said, all right, you can't buy electric cars from the region in China where the Uyghurs are being held in concentration camps, are being tortured, are being murdered.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
CRUZ: You can't buy electric cars that were made with Chinese slave labor. And every single Senate Democrat on the committee voted no, because they're much more committed to their radical environmental agenda than they are to not funding slave labor from the Chinese communist government.
BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.
Senator, you have got a lot of people behind you. I know you're going to be speaking at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit this afternoon. We're going to be covering it on FOX Nation. So we look forward to those comments.
Before you go, real quick on your colleagues in Texas blowing off their work, getting on a flight, so that they don't have -- they don't give the Republicans a quorum with their new voting laws in Texas.
Now we understand some of them have COVID. Real quick on that.
CRUZ: Listen, what they're doing is a political stunt.
I think it is sad just how much today's Democratic Party has decided that voter fraud is integral to helping them try to win elections. This political stunt is going to fail. It is clear -- there is clear legal authority under the Texas Constitution to arrest legislators who flee the state trying to defeat a quorum.
The governor has rightly said he will call special session after special session.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
CRUZ: These guys are going to come back to Texas. They will get arrested. They will get physically put on the floor of the legislature.
And I believe the legislature will do its job and pass commonsense election integrity laws.
BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.
Senator, thank you. Thank you so much, Senator Ted Cruz.
We will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN BARRASSO (R-WY): There's not going to be a single Republican in the House or Senate who's going to vote for it.
They're going to be left to try to get every Democrat in the Senate. They will need every one. And they can only afford to lose four in the House to get this passed, which is a massive tax increase, including raising the death tax. Everyone will end up paying more if they do this.
BARTIROMO: OK.
BARRASSO: So, it's going to be a long, hot summer for them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTIROMO: And the summer just got hotter.
That was Senator John Barrasso on this program last month on President Biden's plan to tie a bipartisan infrastructure agreement to another pie- in-the-sky tax-and-spending blowout. Does he have the support of all Senate Democrats?
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is with us. He is the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee. He voted against that. He joins me now.
Senator, it's great to see you. Thanks very much for being here this morning.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Thank you, Maria.
BARTIROMO: So, are we -- where are we at this point, Senator? Are the two -- are these two bills tied, the $1 trillion, or less-than-$1 trillion infrastructure plan and the $3.5 trillion spend-and-tax plan?
GRAHAM: No.
I would support a $950 billion infrastructure plan for roads, bridges and ports. President Trump had a $1.5 trillion plan. It's got to be paid for. I'm in the bipartisan group. We're having a hard time paying for the $958 billion, because we're not going to raise taxes. But everybody's trying really hard.
As to $3.5 trillion reconciliation package designed to pass without a single Republican vote, Joe Manchin has said that has to be paid for. And the only way you can do that is through a massive tax increase.
And the reconciliation package is not infrastructure. It's big government, a liberal wish list, paid family leave, all kinds of new social programs unrelated to infrastructure. So, we will see if they can get Democratic support.
But before Republicans beat up on the Democrats in Texas for leaving Texas too much, if, for some reason, they pass reconciliation, a budget resolution to bring that bill to the floor of the United States Senate, the $3.5 trillion bill, you got to have a quorum to pass a bill in the Senate.
I would leave before I would let that happen. So, to my Republican colleagues, we may learn something from our Democratic friends in Texas when it comes to avoiding a $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend package: Leave town.
BARTIROMO: Wow.
So, you just see them leave, and you're saying, fine, they were effective in not giving the Republicans a quorum. You will do the same thing on a $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend?
GRAHAM: Hey, Vice President Harris, if you think these people are heroes, well, then I expect you to show up and pat us on the back.
Hell, yeah, I would leave. I'm not -- I will use everything lawfully in my toolbox to prevent rampant inflation. A $3.5 trillion infrastructure package that's got nothing to do with infrastructure, that is a tax-and- spend dream of the socialist left...
BARTIROMO: Yes.
GRAHAM: ... if it takes me not showing up to stop that, I will do it, because, if we pass that bill, you're going to have inflation through the roof.
And if they put legalizing illegal immigrants in that bill, you're going to have a complete run on the border. It would be throwing jet fuel on a fire called illegal immigration. It would lead to an invasion of illegal immigrants if we put amnesty in the $3.5 trillion bill.
So I'd do anything I could to stop that.
BARTIROMO: Well, this is where we are.
(LAUGHTER)
BARTIROMO: This is what it has come to.
GRAHAM: Yes. Yes.
BARTIROMO: I mean, you all have a responsibility to do the work.
And yet there's so much hatred and upset.
GRAHAM: Yes.
BARTIROMO: Tell me about that amnesty element, because now they're just trying to throw whatever they can, including the kitchen sink, into this $3.5 trillion bill.
They want to actually make illegals legal as part of this. Is that even a legal thing to do? I thought a reconciliation budget package must include federal money-related items. Can they put amnesty in here?
GRAHAM: I don't think so. But they're going to try, because they don't want to work with us.
In 2013, I was part of a bipartisan group that passed a comprehensive immigration bill, and we spent $40 billion to secure the border. Schumer and Durbin voted for a $40 billion border security bill that built walls, did away with catch and release.
To my Democratic colleagues, if you want to provide legal status for the DACA population, I will work with you. Here's what I want. I want you to finish the wall, which needs to be finished, and end catch and release for the asylum seekers, which will shut off a wave of illegal immigration, and I will vote for DACA legalization.
The reason they're not working with us is that the party of reasonable border security, securing the border on the Democratic side is dead and buried and replaced by the party of open borders. AOC and Elizabeth Warren will not allow the Democratic Party to do what they were doing just a few years ago when it comes to border security.
If you voted for Joe Biden thinking he would be a moderate voice and would lead us to a centrist agenda, you have got to be sorely disappointed, because there's nothing moderate about the Biden administration.
BARTIROMO: Well, we have extraordinary new numbers.
Now we understand that already one million people have been apprehended this year at the Southern border.
GRAHAM: Right.
BARTIROMO: You have been to the border. Let's talk about this, because look at these numbers that we have, in June, 188,000 people crossing the border, taking the total number to 1.1 million encounters, apprehensions so far this year, 188,000 in June, on top of 180,000 in May, Senator.
GRAHAM: You will...
BARTIROMO: And this does not include the got-aways.
GRAHAM: Right.
BARTIROMO: We know that there are tens of thousands of others who have been seen on surveillance video. And they have entered this country.
GRAHAM: Yes.
BARTIROMO: They have come, and they have gone into the interior of the country.
GRAHAM: Yes.
BARTIROMO: We don't know what their intentions are.
GRAHAM: Well, we don't know what their intentions are.
We don't know how many of them there are. But I know this, that, if you start legalizing people without first securing the border, you will -- you will incentivize more illegal immigration.
We have never in the past legalized one person until you first secured the border. If they put amnesty in the reconciliation package, then the numbers you're talking about are going to double by the end of the year. And they're also talking about eliminating the ability to deport people who came here illegally based on COVID concerns under Title 42.
BARTIROMO: Yes. And...
GRAHAM: So, if you put amnesty in the reconciliation package, and you do away with Title 42, there's no defenses left, and you will have an invasion of illegal immigrants in this country like you have never seen before.
BARTIROMO: Senator, real quick before you go, President Biden continues to call all of these voting bills Jim Crow.
GRAHAM: Yes.
BARTIROMO: I believe it's now 16 states that have come up with new voting bills, new voting laws...
GRAHAM: Yes.
BARTIROMO: ... trying to clean up what they saw in 2020.
GRAHAM: Yes.
BARTIROMO: Why does he keep spewing out misinformation?
GRAHAM: He's trying to change the subject, because he can't talk about his policies. His policies are failing at the border.
Rampant inflation. You can't walk out in the streets without worrying about getting shot or your child kidnapped. Radical Islam is on the rise. So he can't talk about policy, because he's failed on the policy front. So he's trying to make all of us racists as Republicans.
I have known Joe Biden for 20, 25 years. I have never seen this Joe Biden. This is demagoguery. It's offensive to me and every state trying to shore up their voting laws. What Joe Biden is telling you about what we're doing is a lie. And the reason he's doing it is to change the subject to try to talk about anything but his failed presidency.
We're coming back in 2022.
BARTIROMO: Wow. Senator...
GRAHAM: And I hope to God that President Trump runs in 2024.
BARTIROMO: All right, Senator, good to see you this morning. Thanks very much, Senator Lindsey Graham joining us.
GRAHAM: Thank you.
BARTIROMO: Stay with us.
We will be right back with Mark Levin.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: I mean, my lord, if I get elected president of the United States, with my position on health care, my position on global warming, my position on foreign policy, my position on the middle class, this will go down as one of the most progressive administrations in American history.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTIROMO: Oh, yes, that was then candidate Joe Biden in February of 2020 revealing his intention to become the most progressive president in U.S. history.
He is well on his way, ruling by executive order, majorities in both chambers, ramming through the most radical and expensive agenda this country has ever seen, all without a single Republican vote. That's called unity.
Mark Levin's new book,"American Marxism," examines how we can protect our democracy from this kind of government overreach. He is also the host of "Life Liberty & Levin," which airs on FOX News on Sunday nights at 8:00 p.m. Eastern.
We are all viewers.
Mark, it's good to see you. Thanks very much for being here this morning.
MARK LEVIN, HOST,"LIFE LIBERTY & LEVIN": It's an honor.
BARTIROMO: Your reaction to the agenda, as you see it?
LEVIN: My reaction to the agenda is that Joe Biden and his merry group of proletariat supporters there in the White House are destroying this country.
If I'm communist China, and I'm communist North Korea, and I'm communist Cuba, and I'm communists Venezuela, if I'm the regime in Iran, and so forth, all of our enemies, I'm sitting back and I'm laughing, because Joe Biden is destroying this country from within, and I don't have to raise a finger.
He is a human pandemic. He's done more damage to this country in six months than communist China could ever do to us. And he is a grave threat, and his administration is a grave threat. They're a threat to our civil liberties and free speech. They're a threat to our economic system. They're a threat to our sovereignty, open border.
This man hasn't even traveled to the Southern border to see what his policies are doing, because he doesn't give a damn. He knows what they're doing, this push for critical race theory and this -- and this LatCrit, and all the other things I talk about in "American Marxism."
I heard Lindsey Graham said: I have known Joe Biden a long time. This is a joke from Joe Biden.
Maybe he should talk to Clarence Thomas and some of the other people who were abused and very badly mistreated when he was on the Senate Judiciary Committee, how he lied about them, how he smeared them. Maybe we ought to look at this man's career. It's a career of lying and plagiarism and a political chameleon.
He was never a moderate. He would do whatever he had to do to draw attention to himself. And, right now, he's in legacy mode. How can he -- he met with these liberal historians. He wants to be bigger than FDR. He wants to be bigger than -- how about you pay attention to what's going on in this country, Joe? How about you pay attention to what your policies are doing to this country?
We have inflation that's shooting through the roof. And, as I was watching your show earlier, Maria, $3.5 trillion in human infrastructure? Human infrastructure? We call that socialism.
BARTIROMO: Right.
LEVIN: And then $1.2 trillion in hard infrastructure, and they have a $6 trillion proposed budget.
In the next 30 days, they want to spend $10.7 trillion...
BARTIROMO: Unbelievable.
LEVIN: ... on top of the $2 trillion they already spent, and the $2.3 trillion before that.
They're going to destroy this economic system for our kids and our grandkids. They're destroying our classrooms with his damn executive orders and the NEA and the AFT. They're destroying the border. We know why they're doing it. They're importing what they hope will be Democrats...
BARTIROMO: Yes.
LEVIN: ... while they're excluding the Cubans, because they think they will be Republicans.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
LEVIN: In the meantime, what else do they want to do, Maria?
They're attacking our constitutional system in the Senate, the courts, the filibuster rule, and the Senate itself.
BARTIROMO: Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
I want to talk more about this.
We're going to take a break. And then I want to get into your book, Marxism, and I want to see if you think it's the CCP or progressives.
Back in a minute with Mark Levin.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BARTIROMO: We're back with FOX News host Mark Levin.
He is the author of the new book, a must-read,"American Marxism," which examines the fight to pressure our constitutional liberties, in the face of government censorship and socialist ideologies.
Mark, look, a couple of examples of all that you have just said happened just this week. Biden agreed to lift all sanctions on Iran, OK, as Iranians tried to kidnap a journalist in New York. That -- no comment on that.
They eased sanctions on Venezuela. Look at that economy. We have got video of the Taliban executing Afghan soldiers who fought for us in the U.S. And we abandoned them. And yet Mayorkas is saying to Cubans, don't come here.
What's the motivation for all of this?
LEVIN: First of all, Joe Biden is worse than Neville Chamberlain.
Neville Chamberlain said peace in our time. Joe Biden is actually funding our enemy. I mean, you have to say that Neville Chamberlain didn't give billions of dollars to the Third Reich. And yet Joe Biden is giving and wants to give tens of billions of dollars to the Iranian regime, which has as its purpose to wipe out the Jews in Israel, wipe out its neighbors, and build ICBMs with nuclear warheads that can reach our cities.
It's insanity. We have an insane administration that is pushing these radical Marxist agenda movements. You can see he has more hate for the Republican Party than he does for the regime in Cuba.
And what's the motivation? I will tell you the motivation, decade after decade indoctrination on these college campuses, these front think tanks that are -- some of them are funded by the Chinese, but some of them are just leftists.
They -- they are having the run of the place. They're having the run of the administration.
BARTIROMO: Right.
LEVIN: They are secreting themselves into the departments and into the various offices to -- you know what my attitude is, Maria? I know we're near the end.
I don't care why. They need to be defeated.
BARTIROMO: OK.
LEVIN: They need to be crushed, or we're going to lose this country.
BARTIROMO: Yes, but he keeps spewing out lies about these voting bills.
Real quick, 20 seconds. What is he talking about that he's got this constitutional right and it's Jim Crow? Sixteen states have come up with new laws for a reason.
LEVIN: And there's a reason he's not specific and the media aren't specific, because none of these proposals are Jim Crow.
And yet Joe Biden would know about Jim Crow, since, early in his Senate career, he was buddies with segregationists and separatists in this country.
BARTIROMO: OK.
LEVIN: So, he will go one way if he has to, the other way if he has to.
BARTIROMO: Mark, it's great to see you.
We will see you tonight on FOX.
That will do it for us. Have a great weekend, everybody. I will see you this...
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