BREAKING: Rep. Jeff Van Drew Running for Re-election in the House of Representatives, Heading Trump’s NJ Campaign
Jeff Van Drew, U.S. Representative for New Jersey, joined guest host Harry Hurley to announce some exciting news from his campaign. Rep. Van Drew announced his reelection bid for his district (NJ-2), and he also discusses his recent appointment to Donald Trump’s election campaign as chair of his NJ Presidential campaign. Van Drew and Hurley discuss all of this and more in a news making interview today on the Guy Benson Show. Listen to the full interview below.
Full Interview:
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Full Transcript:
Harry Hurley: Is one of the most consequential members of Congress in America today. Congressman Jeff Van Drew from New Jersey, second Congressional District. We’re going to break two major items and talk about a bunch more in the time that we have. Congressman Van Drew, welcome.
Rep. Van Drew: It’s great to be with you, Harry. One of the most consequential radio hosts in radio today.
Harry Hurley: Well, thank you for that, sir. And let me just say and let in Guy Benson Universe listeners on the fact that it was my honor to stand with you and Congressman Jim Jordan last night.
Rep. Van Drew: It was great to have you. We really enjoyed having you there. It was a wonderful evening. You know, Jim Jordan’s a good friend of mine. He’s my chairman. And Judiciary Committee is a dynamic individual and he is a true, real American. And having you there, I was honored to have you introduce me and my introduce, Jim Jordan. It was all around a good event, good people, good time, a holiday festival, but also just really talking about the real issues and how important it is to keep our republic. It is, as I said that night and I say over and over again, this is not a dress rehearsal. Dress rehearsal. This is the real thing. And we need people like you and Jim and many, many others, your listeners to just stand up and do the right thing to make sure we keep our United States of America and bring it home.
Harry Hurley: You usually always talk about other people, and, you know, that’s just a great quality of yours to not talk about yourself. If you’ll indulge me, I have to have you talk about yourself at two levels. There’s two breaking news items. The first is you have made a decision about whether you will seek reelection for 2024. Tell guys, listeners, your decision.
Rep. Van Drew: Well, I have decided that I will seek reelection as a congressman, you know. I think this is a unique time in New Jersey history. And hopefully there will be a good Republican who will come forward and actually get into this fight because we don’t need Tammy Murphy. We don’t need more of the policies of her husband. We need somebody that really cares about them, men and women in this state that are working hard, breaking their back, trying to make a living, dealing with inflation, dealing with open borders, dealing with our cities crumbling, dealing with our military, being woke offside and hurt, dealing with our children, having all kinds of issues thrust upon them prematurely at a young age, just dealing with all of this ultra left destructive agenda. And it all really comes down to Tammy Murphy because she believes in all that. So somebody does have to step forward. However, at this time, what I’m doing is, I believe, important in the House of Representatives. I’m proud to be a congressman. I’ll tell you this, with Kevin McCarthy, he’s going to be leaving the House with Bill Johnson from Ohio. He’s becoming a president of a college. And, of course, with George Santos being expelled, we may be down to just a plurality, a majority of one in the House of Representatives on the Republican side. So for me not to be there campaigning for the United States Senate, for me not to be there, doing my job as much as I believe that I’m needed there, it’s just not the right time. It’s not the right time for me. I have a responsibility in this fight. I’m very busy in the Judiciary Committee working alongside my friend and colleague, Jim Jordan. There is so many issues that we are dealing with right now, and I imagine we’ll talk about some of them. It isn’t time for me to do this. Second part of this, we have two big announcements within 24 hours. President Trump has asked me to head up his campaign in the state, in New Jersey, statewide, and I am going to do that. I’m proud to represent him, work with him, and put forward his ideas. We should not take for granted that New Jersey is going to go blue, no doubt. It’s a blue state in the northern half of it. The southern half. President Trump will win. Well, but we’ve got to get him to even win bigger down south and to really hold the Democrats off the record, Democrats up north. Again, New Jerseyans are hardworking people. They break their back, making a living, paying high taxes, having all kinds of issues. We need to ensure that they have a real choice. President and President Trump is their choice. He loves New Jersey. He is in New Jersey a lot. He’s invested a lot in New Jersey. And it’s important to him to win it. It’s important for me to ensure that he can win it. So we’re going to do everything we can. So I’m going to be his face in this state and I’m going to fight for him. Stand up for him. We’re going to get him here. He’s going to have rallies. As he said. He put out a very nice statement. I was very appreciative of it. And we’re going to do everything we can. So it’s going to be a very, very, very busy time for me.
Harry Hurley: No question. You’re listening to United States Congressman Jeff Van Drew on The Guy Benson Show. There are 9 million people in New Jersey. What did it mean to you that President Trump, who could have picked anyone, you know, the person that you pick to be your campaign chairman for an entire state is really I mean, one of the highest compliments. And for those who don’t know and we’ve written about it and we have talked about it with Congressman Van Drew in interviews that we’ve done, it’s my understanding you were on a short list for vice president of the United States as well. But on the on the on the point of the president picking you, he could have picked any of 9 million people. What does that mean to you?
Rep. Van Drew: It means a lot. It means a great deal. It’s a tremendous responsibility. And I am very proud to do it. You know, we developed a real relationship, as many of your listeners know, going on five years now ago. I chose to no longer be a Democrat. I was a Democrat throughout my political career, throughout my life. Democratic Party has changed. The Democrats we used to know I was speaking with a gentleman the other day. I was visiting him in at his home. He’s ill, but he was speaking about and he was a Democrat. And he said, what has happened? What happened to the party that cared about working people, about people who were really, you know, loving America, working hard, but just wanted to have a fair chance. That’s not the Democratic Party we have now. The why changed for a lot of reasons. When they tried to impeach Donald Trump, they did it. Wrong way on the wrong reasons. There was nothing factual. I stood up then in my first year in Congress and said I wasn’t doing it. President Trump called me and said, I think we need to talk. We did need to talk. I was in the Oval Office with them. I decided to become a Republican. And I am a very proud, very conservative Republican. And, you know, it’s almost like an immigrant, Harry. You know, when you’re an immigrant, you come to this country and you realize how good it is. You’re very proud to be an American. Well, I’m very proud to be a Republican. We’re far from perfect. Far from perfect in the Republican Party. But we are the answer. We hold the future of the republic in our hands. I’ll share this with you. There’s two endgames. The endgame for the Democrats is to substantively change the structure of the United States of America, to change the fabric of this country from what it’s always been. And the endgame for Republicans with all your fault is we still love the United States of America. We want to keep it. We love this country. This isn’t about saving the Republican Party. This is about saving the republic itself. President Trump realizes this. He’s a great American. He may not like what he says. Once in a while he can be blunt. But you know what? I’ve never met any. And I mean it. And there’s never a conversation I have had with them and I speak to them on a weekly basis where he doesn’t speak about his tremendous love for this great country.
Harry Hurley: If President Trump came to you and said. Congresswoman, I need you to be my running mate. I need you to run for vice president of the United States. Do you have an answer to that right now?
Rep. Van Drew: I don’t. But, you know, he needs to have a balance. And I think he’s going to he’s from the East Coast, spends a lot of time in New Jersey. So I don’t know if we need another person from that exact location. He’s going to probably want somebody from the Midwest or the West or some maybe a woman, somebody that, you know, represents the diversity that we do have of conservatives. You know, we have conservative African-Americans in our Republican Party. We have conservative women. We have people who want to keep this republic. There’s a lot of good choices. I will do what I’m called upon to do. And I am just so proud to serve in Congress. But we’ll worry about one thing at a time. Right now, my job is to get this House of Representatives through tremendous challenges that we have right now. We’ve got a lot of big personalities in the House, and it’s incumbent upon me and I always try to do it. And I’ve expressed this many times in the Republican caucus what I just said to you. It isn’t about any individual person. It isn’t about the Republican Party. It isn’t about ego. It is about saving this country. If we go down the route that we continue to go down with the Democrats, we will lose America. And I want people who are listening to you who are moderate, hard working Democrats, independents, undeclared Republicans, whoever you are, that this country has been great to us. It is the beacon of hope for the world and we cannot lose it. And it is that serious. We’ve never seen a time like this maybe since the Civil War. So it’s very, very important. And that’s my job now, and I’m not going to run away from it. I’m going to run into it and I’m going to give it everything I got and we’ll just see what the future brings.
Harry Hurley: Two quick comments not even to respond. I just want to put them on the record on the Guy Benson show. Number one, No one in American history has ever turned down running for vice president if it’s been offered. Number two, Bill Clinton of Arkansas picked Al Gore of Tennessee. Sometimes it’s the person and not the geography. Let’s move on. I want to talk about Hunter Biden. I want to talk about the fact that David Weiss charged in California. Messrs. Shapley and Ziegler said he wanted to charge years ago, but he wasn’t allowed to. I believe we’ve been lied to when they say he had all the powers of a special counsel, so he didn’t need to be a special counsel. But it turns out, I guess he did need to be a special counsel, because if he had the power all along, why would he need to be a special counsel? And if he had the power all along, why wouldn’t he have charged? So is this for real or do you think somehow this is an okey doke of sorts?
Rep. Van Drew: Look, I don’t trust these people. And. And you know me. You’ve known me many years. I don’t say things like that lightly. This is there are so many lies. We’ve heard it all in Judiciary. Again, let’s understand what happened here. Hunter Biden did a lot of bad things. He evaded paying his taxes. And by the way, from the very account that he used to evade paying his taxes, he also transferred money on a monthly basis to then Vice President Joe Biden. And there’s a lot of links. There are dummy corporations, shell corporations, bank accounts, email. He can’t build. He can’t make this stuff up. It’s like a movie. It’s unbelievable. Many how much Hunter Biden really did bad things. One, he got he bought a gun for the part for falsifying a federal application while he was high and then had the gun dumped in a dumpster. And first he said, oh, no, that’s not true. It’s not real. Of course, now we know that it is true. And not only did he do that, he evaded taxes. There’s all kinds of other issues. So he they appoint David Weiss, who is the person who worked on setting up the plea deal. Correct. Which we’ve never seen one like this before. The plea deal, which said that Hunter wouldn’t be basically be exonerated from all that and any future crimes that we might find. Even the judge in Delaware that said basically she had never seen anything like this before and she just couldn’t stomach it. She couldn’t do it. Thank God he was reasonably honest. So then they said, okay, we the plea deal broke down because it was so absurd, so crooked, so set up. Then they move forward and they decide, well, maybe we will have to appoint because Garland, you know, Merrick Garland was caught in his own lies. He’s perjured himself as the FBI director has done as well, by the way, in front of the Judiciary Committee. So they decide that, well, you know what? We’re going to have a special counsel and it’s going to be, guess who, David Weiss leading the plea deal. Can’t make this stuff up.
Harry Hurley: But he did present them to a grand jury. Is that for real? Or is there some kind of. They wanted to have them charges so that President Biden can pardon his son. They’re just. I don’t trust them either. Let’s put it that thought and say we will continue that the next time we are together. But I want to I want to get a minute from you. And we’re kind of on a on a hard break coming up on The Guy Benson show. But I want to get get this out there. You had counsel, Congresswoman Malliotakis, say to the presidents of these different universities, whether it’s Harvard, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, they all answered it the same way. They couldn’t answer it. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your code of conduct? And they gave this impossible answer of context dependent decision. Maddening. While the University of Pennsylvania appears, there’s some Fox News reporting that she may be fired or asked to resign. Rather Let me make that clear. Ask to resign. That hasn’t happened yet, but there’s reports that that may happen and a donor is pulled $100 million. Are we finally going to see an end to some of this madness?
Rep. Van Drew: Well, we’re going to have to keep flying. We’re going to have to keep bringing this to light. She did a great job with that question. I like those types of questions.
Harry Hurley: Yes, me too.
Rep. Van Drew: You lose certain things in life and you saw me do it with the attorney general. You see me doing with the FBI director? Answer yes or no.
Harry Hurley: With my works.
Rep. Van Drew: Yeah. My work is the same thing.
Harry Hurley: 30s or.
Rep. Van Drew: Line. They can’t answer that question. Now, you could answer that question. I can answer that question. Your listeners answer that question and absolutely say that is unacceptable and we will not accept that. And the answer is we we we reject that notion completely. It’s a simple yes or no, depending on how the question is posed. But they couldn’t do it. It’s just like before our Judiciary Committee, we had some college students and a couple of individuals that were writing books about prejudice in America and asking, Do they believe in American exceptionalism? I will take you down the whole trail of why I got to that point. Three college students said, We do. We do. We do. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yes. They couldn’t answer the ones that it was an inappropriate question. The reason they can’t answer it is because they just they want to say the wrong thing. They refuse to say the wrong thing because they’re worried about losing their job, but they won’t say the right thing. There you go. They believe in the wrong thing.
Harry Hurley: Congressman, congratulations on all of yesterday and today’s great news. And we’ll talk again soon.
Rep. Van Drew: You got it. Thank you, Harry.
Harry Hurley: You’re welcome, sir. Congressman Jeff Van Drew.