Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno, candidate for U.S. Senate, and Ric Grenell, former Trump administration cabinet member, told Breitbart News this weekend the U.S. needs Republicans who are fighters, not Republicans who have been sucked into the Washington media mob.
Moreno and Grenell appeared on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125, the Patriot Channel, this weekend to discuss Moreno’s run for the open U.S. Senate seat created by Sen. Rob Portman’s (R-OH) retirement at the beginning of the year. The pair also spoke about how the Republican party needs to be a group of fighters who are elected for the people and by the people.
Host Matthew Boyle, Breitbart News’s Washington political editor, spoke with the two about Moreno’s campaign and what it takes to win. Boyle spoke about Moreno’s impressive fundraising capabilities so far, which have yielded over one million dollars within one month of launching his campaign. Moreno was able to raise the money solely from individual donations and without accepting any corporate PAC money.
Boyle asked Moreno about his choice to run for office and the recent events that played out in the Ohio Republican Party, which voted to censure Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH), including a demand for his resignation.
Moreno said Grenell has, in the past, talked to him about running for office, but the deciding factor was President Joe Biden. Moreno said, “Ric has talked to me about running, and I never thought I would, but based on what happened, which happened in the country over the last 12 months and certainly at 100 plus days with Biden, I couldn’t sit on the sidelines any longer.”
In regards to the censure vote, Moreno said, “as Republican as somebody who – from my whole life of supported Republicans from a donor perspective, hosting events, advocating for these guys, they go to D.C., and they get sucked in a bubble, they think that their Republicans is when they get there. But, then they just don’t fight when the time comes, they choke when we really need them, and that’s exactly what happened with Anthony.”
Moreno went on to say, “We all know the impeachment was a complete sham, beginning to end of [the] investigation, seven days built in an entire lie, it was absolutely crazy, and he voted that the President should be impeached. Which gave the left what they wanted, which is to be able to call it a bipartisan impeachment, that’s what’s frustrating,” to all of the Ohio Republican Party.
Moreno said they are sick of the “Republicans who tell us what we wanna hear. But when we wanna hear it, but when the time comes, when it’s time to make that game to a decision, they choke. We don’t like, we just don’t want that anymore.” Moreno said this is why he endorsed Max Miller, who is the Republican looking to primary Gonzalez. Former President Donald Trump endorsed Miller earlier in the year. “All of us need to advocate for Republican candidates that will go down to D.C. and fight for the things that we say we like these people to do, and Max is gonna do that in the house, and I’ll be doing that in the Senate,” Moreno explained.
Listen to the interview here:
Grenell said to Boyle, “Bernie emphasized how important it is to have Republicans stand up and how frustrated we are to see – in the clutch Republicans cave and really, I would say, fall prey to the media mob in Washington, DC, that they’re around. They forget where they come from.” Grenell continued, “Then they’re saturated with a whole bunch of people in Washington that pressure them, and they come under that pressure because they wanna be loved or they wanna be accepted by the Washington crowd.”
Grenell went on to say, “What Bernie is talking about in terms of endorsing Max Miller, it’s hard to think about a candidate running for statewide office that takes such grave position than to say, ‘This sitting Congressman should not be reelected.’ When you think about that, usually it’s those politicians that have been around for 10 or 12 years that feel like, ‘Oh, I might be able to make a statement against a sitting Congressman.'” Grenell explained that most people would not have gotten involved and sat on the sidelines instead of speaking up against a sitting member of Congress.
Boyle said it sounds like Moreno and Grenell, along with the rest of the people from Ohio, really want to have conservatives elected to Congress who will fight. Boyle said, “Win or lose, we’re going in, we’re gonna fight for it, we’re gonna fight to the end, and we’re not gonna just cave to the swamp. We wanna see somebody that’s gonna go fight,” which is why Boyle said people loved Trump and other lawmakers are using that as the recipe for success.
“One hundred percent,” Moreno responded. “That’s the monumental frustration among Republicans that you’re seeing right now.”
Elected officials need to “keep in mind, a senator or congressman, any of these political leaders, you work for the people… It’s not the other way around it. That’s the one part of our form of government that we’ve made that our founding fathers made clear, is that the people who elect these leaders are… They work for you, Moreno said.”
Moreno explained, “Republicans, as we hire them to use that word, we hire them to go to D.C. to fight for conservative values, and like Ric said at those clutch moments, so many times they don’t, and that’s monumentally frustrating.”
Moreno told Boyle, “Imagine what we would have been able to do in this country if Paul Ryan, when we had the House, and we controlled the Senate and President Trump was there as conservatives, we said, ‘You know what, we’re going to fight and do the things that President Trump’s advocating for.’ But, in a way that wasn’t just President Trump out in front. That it was all the Republican party united to get the policy through. We would have a different country. We would have won in ‘18 overwhelmingly. We would have won in ’20 overwhelmingly.”
“That’s what the voters want,” Moreno said. “Conservative values is what the majority, vast majority of America’s fight for.” Moreno believes the problem is not that conservatism only represents a small fraction of the country.
Grenell told Boyle, “We need a fighter. I think probably 100% of the people are like, Yeah, we need a fighter, but when you are a fighter in Washington, DC, it’s not easy. First of all, you’re gonna get terrible press, so you gotta start from the premise that the media in Washington, DC, are not gonna like you, they’re gonna pick you apart, they’re gonna look at every little thing you do, because you’re going up against the propaganda.”
Grenell went on, “I don’t even think that we have media bias anymore. I think we have people who are willing to be propagandists for the Democratic Party. We have a system right now where big tech and the ruling party are combined to kick the leader of the opposition party off Facebook and social media.”
As someone who worked in the State Department for 11 years, Grenel said, “If we saw this at the State Department going on in another country, say the Balkans or in Latin America, we would say to the ruling party, stop it. You cannot try to cancel the leader of the opposition, and this is just basic principles, and yet because it’s happening in the United States, we have a whole bunch of media celebrating it, and we’re losing our credibility. So, a fighter is gonna have to go to Washington and pick fights that are not popular in Washington, but realize that they are popular in Ohio.”
Grenell said one perfect example is Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). Grenell said, Johnson “is truly fighting for the people of Wisconsin, not for the people in Georgetown and Capitol Hill.”
“He understands he’s not gonna be liked in Washington, and that’s Bernie Moreno. He is very confident in what he has been able to accomplish. I know this personally, I know him personally, and I know that when he goes to Washington, he’s not going to care that he and his wife Bridget are not being invited to all of the fancy social events in Washington, DC, because he’s fighting. He understands the implications of fighting,” Grenell added.