ICYMI—Hagerty JoinsThe Scott Jennings Show on Salem News Channel to Discuss Midterms, Iran, Memphis, BLADE Act

DALLAS-On Thursday, United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations, Appropriations, and Banking Committees, joined The Scott Jennings Show on Salem News Channel to discuss the upcoming midterm election, the latest in Iran, the Memphis Safe Task Force, and the BLADE Act.

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Partial Transcript

Hagerty on the RNC Convention: We have had a great delegation from Tennessee and frankly, great delegations from all over the country. There's a lot of excitement, a lot of enthusiasm. People loved [President Donald Trump's] speech last night-a lot of energy there. And frankly, a lot of people that weren't here, but I've heard from across the country that are very pleased to see the energy turnaround. And frankly, to be drawing a contrast finally against Democratic candidates. I think people are tired of reading New York Times headlines running these generic polls, Republicans versus Democrats. And now that we actually see what a Democratic socialist stands for, there's a huge contrast to be made. I think if you just step back and look at what the Democrats have accomplished this past 18, 20 months, they've delivered the two longest government shutdowns in history. What they seem to want to deliver is nothing but chaos, shutdowns, and acrimony. The American public hasn't seen anything positive coming from the Democrats.

Hagerty on Iran: The Iranian regime is holding on to see what happens on November the third. It certainly worked out well for them back in 2020. Back at that point in time, I was the U.S. ambassador to Japan. I got the Japanese and my colleagues around the world… to stop buying Iranian crude oil… We brought the Iranian economy to a difficult place. It's even worse right now, but the Iranians held out to see what would happen in the election. Having [former President Joe Biden] in the Oval Office was a gift extraordinaire to the Iranian regime, because immediately the Biden [administration] stopped enforcing all sanctions. Money began to flow by May 2021. We had the 11-day war break out in Israel-you know what happened on October 7th of 2023. Terror breaks out through the entire region because Iran [was] in a position to fund it. We have shut that down now… they're hanging on by a thread.

Hagerty on the Memphis Safe Task Force: I don't think you could see a finer contrast in America than the difference between Memphis, Tennessee, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. And the one difference there, the one singular difference is that in Memphis, we worked together. We cooperated; we coordinated.

Hagerty on the creation of the Memphis Safe Task Force: When [FBI Director Kash Patel] called me in December 2024, he said, 'Sir, the President is about to make his decision on the FBI director, and I would really appreciate your support.' I said, 'Kash, I'm happy to support you, but I'm going to need your support in Memphis, too.' And Kash kept his word to me. We began working on this right after Kash came into office and put together, very quietly, a task force. [The task force] first entered the city working with local police and very quietly came in and took out 154 of the worst of the worst criminals. These are gang members. Through the summer, we took that number up to well over 500, and President Trump is watching our progress all along the way, and said, 'Okay, we're going to put the full menu in place.' Meaning 16, 17 different crime enforcement agencies, including the [U.S. National Guard]… People in Memphis today would tell you, 'Thank you, thank you, and thank you again, President Trump,' for doing it. Crime has gone through the floor. Memphis is a great city-now it's one of the safest cities in America. We're going to continue working on this. My hat is off to [Memphis Mayor Paul Young], who has cooperated with us, to [Tennessee Governor Bill Lee], who has now taken what were eight state troopers up to 100 in the area. And President Trump has done a magnificent job.

Hagerty on the cooperation of state and federal agencies: It shows what happens when you have cooperation between federal government, state government, local government-cooperation between Republicans and Democrats. It shows that it works in these other cities. We know Chicago has been resistant to this idea… where the Democrats will not cooperate. Violent crime continues to proliferate over Labor Day weekend in Chicago-scores of people were shot and murdered. They just won't put their people first. They cannot get over the politics. It's so sad that they're willing to sacrifice their own citizens to stand on some ideological point that obviously doesn't work. But again, Memphis stands as a shining example, and my hat is off to [Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller] at the White House, to the president, of course, to Kash Patel, to the [U.S. Department of Justice], and all of the agencies that are there on the ground.

Hagerty on the BLADE Act: My experience in Asia goes back to 1988, when I worked for Boston Consulting Group. They sent me to the region for three years. What I have seen evolve is an industrial policy that the Chinese deploy where they steal our intellectual property. They don't play by the same set of rules. They use our IP, come in, cut costs, and try to push American companies out of business. They're doing the same thing in AI. Their distillation models are stealing from us, basically. They're stealing intellectual property from us. They're using those to come in and offer a cheap alternative to take over the AI marketplace. We cannot let that happen. We've got to lead in this arena. We need to do it responsibly. But the BLADE Act gives us the tools to put in place sanctions to come in and deal directly with those companies that are involved in this illegal distillation, and sanction them in a way that will stop it.

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