Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins joined me today:

Audio:

03-28hhs-rollins

Transcript:

HH: Secretary Rollins has joined us. Hello, Secretary. How are you?

BR: Well, hello, sir. I’m so good. It’s great to be on with you.

HH: It’s great to talk to you. You know, first thing I wanted to ask you, people do not know you. You are our secret weapon. You’re a hell of a lawyer. Did you have Lino Graglia when you were at U.T. Law School?

BR: You know what? I did. Actually, I had Charles Alan Wright, who was sort the godfather…

HH: Oh, my gosh.

BR: Yes, and then, in fact, Constitutional Law was one of my fastballs. It was an amazing, amazing run. But yeah, they were just, what a time, and now to see it all kind of come to full circle has been just such a blessing.

HH: Well, I’m so glad you’re in the administration. Texas Public Policy Institute does such good work, and I knew as soon as you came back, you were in Trump I, that you were going to swing for the fences. Can we start with the woke seeds, because you know, government should not be messaging in a non-viewpoint neutral way. That’s why I brought up your Con Law background. I couldn’t believe what I saw you put online. This is a small thing for a department of 100,000 people with 27 agencies, but it’s very indicative of how broken the federal government was when you got there. Tell us about the woke seeds.

BR: Well, first of all, I mean, the stuff we have canceled, the contracts of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars for transgender farmers and food justice, whatever any of that means in New York and San Francisco, the study of menstrual cycles in transgender men, trying to expand diversity, equity and inclusion into the pest management industry, I mean, you just can’t even believe the crud that we are uncovering every single day. So put that kind of as a frame of reference. So one of our awesome staffers that came in with me to U.S.D.A. was wandering around one day and found a box behind a door in one of the offices. And you know, we’re trying to clean out, metaphorically, figuratively, and literally…

HH: And literally, yeah.

BR: …at the U.S.D.A., and he opened the box. And inside the box was a whole packet of tomato seeds that were branded for diversity, equity, and inclusion – United States Department of Agriculture. So what in the world, how are we using taxpayer dollars to brand? I guess they thought tomatoes were racist. You know, they kind of think everything’s racist. I guess they thought tomatoes were racist.

HH: I couldn’t believe it.

BR: And then they needed to brand it.

HH: I couldn’t believe it.

BR: I know. It is crazy.

HH: I say the Biden regency hid much more than it revealed. We don’t really know who was running what during the Biden regency. But that is indicative of a department that’s out of control. Let’s talk about the real job, which is helping America’s farmers sell their stuff abroad. You’re going abroad pretty soon, and you’re going to be out there making the pitch for American farm products. Where are you going?

BR: Well, I am. The first thing I think is really just one more insanity left over from Joe Biden, that when we left in the first Trump administration, we had a surplus on our agriculture exports, meaning our farmers were not just, you know, making money here in the U.S., but the export piece was a really important part of it – selling our incredible goods across the world. When we took back over just a few months ago after four years of Joe Biden, that surplus had not only turned into a deficit, it had turned into a $49 billion dollar deficit, meaning we were selling $49 billion dollars less in four years of our Ag products overseas. And we lost a lot of farms in those four years, a lot of bankruptcies. It’s just been devastating for a lot of reasons. So yeah, so just this morning, we announced we’re hitting the world. Not hitting the country, but hitting the world to begin to expand again and getting our goods and services back across America through Vietnam, Japan, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and India. I’ll be hitting all of those countries in the next few months, again, working to expand those markets and hopefully getting our farmers back into the profit margin, which they haven’t seen in a long, long time.

HH: Now Madame Secretary, good luck on that. Hope you get your sleep down, because you’re going to go through a lot of time zones, but you’ve got a lot of great American farm products to sell. I want to switch, if I can, and we’ve got to go to a break and send a signal down, but I’ll keep talking to you. I want to talk to you about endangered species. The Forest Service is yours, right? You run the Forest Service.

BR: That’s right. That’s exactly right.

HH: And I don’t know if you’ve got a Forest Service director, yet. Have you put someone in charge of it, yet?

BR: We have. We’re making significant changes at the top. We’ve announced our undersecretary is a businessman from Western America, Idaho. And he’s going to bring a whole new…now he still has to get confirmed. He’s going through the Senate process right now, but we are. We’re making significant change.

HH: Okay, what I want to talk to you about, let me pause here for a moment, is the spotted owl, the fire management risk, and the devastation of our national forests because of environmental extremism that dates back 20 years. I’ll be right back with Secretary Brooke Rollins. Don’t go anywhere. I’m Hugh Hewitt.

— – — –

HH: Okay, Brooke Rollins, she leads the Department of Agriculture. Within the Department of Agriculture is the U.S. Forest Service, meaning the millions and millions of acres of timber. And you wouldn’t know this, Secretary Rollins. For 27 years, I’m retired, I was an endangered species lawyer. And I went after trying to get 10A permits for things like the spotted owl and the Stephen’s Kangaroo rat, and all this different stuff.

BR: Ooh.

HH: But I always watched in amazement at the federal government letting our forests burn down. Do you think you can develop, with your new director, a 10A permit, with Doug Burgum’s help, that is just a forest management fire prevention permit that is off the shelf and available to any U.S.D.A. contractor to use without fear or favor so we can stop our fires, our forests from burning down so wantonly?

BR: Absolutely. There is no doubt about it, and here’s the thing. You know, this whole cabinet, we’re all, we don’t care what’s next. We’re all called to help save the country. We’re obviously going very bold and very fearless, not just last month, this month, but for the next four years. And that’s what’s really important. And Doug is a great friend of mine. We both understand how devastating the Endangered Species Act has been, and how much just, you know, how silly all of it is at this point. There’s probably some of it that’s worth saving, but most of it, we’ve got to redirect. So yes, we’re on it, and I think you’ll see some pretty significant changes moving forward quickly.

HH: Very last question. You served President Trump in term one. You’re back in term two. I sense a seriousness of purpose, and a calmness, and a resolution in him that, you know, first time you go around, you’re just learning everything. What do you think – Trump I versus Trump II?

BR: Well, I was there, Year 2, Year 3, and Year 4 of term one. I lived it. I lived the impeachments. I lived the COVID. I lived the weaponization, you know, against him while we were in office. I lived the bureaucracy. I lived the administrative state. I was running his domestic policy council. This is different. We now know what we’re doing. We’ve assembled the team. I hate that the President had the four years of dealing with, you know, almost dying, right, from assassination, from facing a thousand years in prison, I mean, that he had to go through that. But I think God may have had a bigger purpose, and that four years and the ability to prepare and to organize and to understand what we were being called to do and to meet this moment, will never happen again in American history. But I think that’s why you see the President so serious and so intentional, but also with joy, right?

HH: Yeah.

BR: There’s joy in his heart now. And our cabinet is just joyful. I mean, we’re obviously facing some of the biggest challenges our country has ever faced, even from the beginning 250 years ago. But we’re ready for the challenge, and I think we’re meeting the moment.

HH: I think you are, too, and Secretary Rollins, thank you for your time today. When you’re back from your travels, call and give us a checkup on how it went. And anytime, anywhere, I’ll talk to you at length, because I love serious lawyers in big jobs, and that’s you. And good luck to you. Let us know how we can be of help, because you’re in a big job at an important time not just for our farmers, for our country. Thank you for serving.

BR: Well, listen, any interview that starts off with Lino Graglia, my old law school professor, I’m in forever. So you, I will be a regular guest on your show, and very happily so, sir.

HH: Thank you, Madame Secretary. Safe travels to you.

BR: Thank you. You, too. Thanks, Hugh. Bye bye.

End of interview.