Don Bacon
speaker
127 appearances
7 recordings
5 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 30 Apr
Don Bacon’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Nov 2025 with 2.
Appearances
There's two or three possibilities. I think one I've read too, like you say, they see Xi, Putin, and him as the three big spheres of influence. Mm-hmm. People will fall within one or the other. I think he sees us as North America, which is a shame if you're a European and you want to be under the sphere of Putin. But I don't know that that's really true.
That's what some people think that other people see strictly as transactionalist, like you already mentioned. It's clearly a total realist. and that he doesn't have an idealism DNA in there.
I think 100% realism is not good, though, I don't think. I'm the guy that you have to have realism because you've got to defend your country, know your interests. But I also want to make country. stands for good. You know, the free markets, democracy, freedom, rule of law, those are things that we believe in, and we have been the largest proponents of in the world after World War II.
We've built, you know, roughly 80 years of this international rules, and they've worked. And it's what we like.
This is Chuck. It's been America's century. It's been our century. And we should not feel ashamed at all about it. God's been good to us. And so I totally agree with what you're saying. Even this balance of trade, I mean, you could dig into that, that The fact is, we're the wealthiest nation in the world. We have the ability to buy things we want. We like scotch. We like Bordeaux wine.
We like Central American cigars.
Probably a 15%... increases the cost of coffee, which is a shame. But, you know, that's your point. This is America's country, and I don't want to walk away from it. I'd like to see America remain the leader of the free world, a humble leader of the free world, where we work with NATO, Japan, Australia, to counter Russia and China, Iran.
We can't do it by ourselves, but we can do it with Japan and NATO. And I see us right now sort of walking away from that, that we're going to be isolationists. We're just going to worry about ourselves. And it's going to be us against the world when it comes to the economy and tariffs. That's the more dangerous world. And I don't see that as a positive direction at all.
Well, it's increasingly more and more that Turkey can't call themselves a democracy. Erdogan has become the big man, just sort of like, you know, Putin and Xi's done, but they never had a democracy. You know, it's Putin or Xi, but you see Turkey... walking away from its democracy roots that allows it to become a NATO ally. And we should rethink the future of Turkey when it comes to NATO.
And we've had these issues with the F-35 and other things. But Turkey has also been not a good friend of Israel and been very assertive in that area. They were a bit of a malign influence in Syria when we were there, too. So it's hard. Turkey's... an off and on friend and very unpredictable. Friend's a tough word to use there, but OK.
I would say, though, they've been a little more bold in support of Ukraine against Russia. So I would say it's hard to say they're not always on the wrong side. So it's like I say, they're they're a little bit on and off again on this stuff. But I appreciate how they spoke up.
When it comes to Ukraine's sovereignty and pushing back on our president, some of the peace or some of the negotiations where Turkey feared that Trump was forcing Ukraine to make too many concessions, it was Turkey that spoke up.
Absolutely. I think we're an alliance of free democracies that have a value system that we don't always have to, you know, you can have a parliament or a Congress or it could be different forms of democracy, but it should be where the governments reflect the will of the people.
You know, I met with him early on, and I was sitting with him privately in his office. He reminded me of my uncle, very kind, warm-hearted, gregarious. His dad was the congressman from Omaha in the 1940s. He was a very conservative, anti-Roosevelt Republican. So I did ask him, I said, hey, Warren, what happened?
happened and became a free trader right no it was fun to fun to talk to him about his dad his dad started the nebraska breakfast which we do every wednesday in washington dc we took it about 200 nebraskans every wednesday and we and all the delegation gets about 12 minutes to see what they're working on and it's a tradition going back to 1943 which is incredible i you know
Warren has helped bring a good economy into Omaha, so we've got to give him credit for that. But truth for me, he doesn't get too involved politically. He's pretty nonpolitical, apolitical. He was a verbal supporter of Hillary Clinton. But beyond that, he hasn't got too involved. His son, Howard, I've developed a pretty good— Well, a great relationship with him.
Him and I share concerns about Ukraine. I visited a military unit on the front line. Boy, he's done a whole bunch of stuff on his own with Ukraine. I mean, just amazing work. I visited a business one unit in Kharkiv last September. I was on the front lines. First American congressman. I was with two others to really get that close on the front lines.
It was the unit that he's helped close and give weapons to. So he reached out to me, and we talk about every week now. And so I have a good rapport with them. Warren's daughter is a little more on the Democrat side, but we still have a good relationship.
I have more of a rapport with... Susie and Howard. That's who I talk to more. I really talk to Howard about every week. And I enjoy it. You know, the guy has invested in Ukraine significantly. And I appreciate, you know, he puts his money where his heart's at and his mouth. He's walking the talk.
I think we'll actually be growing the military. We're going to have a significant plus up in the military spending. I don't mind cutting some. We should review an audit. No, but we're going to actually grow our budget. We're going to try to get our military spending up to 4% GDP. So I don't think we're going to be going backwards on that. What I'm a little more worried about is the
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