Exclusive — Rep. Chip Roy: Republicans Lose Because They ‘Govern by Fear’

Republicans lose key policy battles because they “govern by fear,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said during a Wednesday appearance on Breitbart News Daily, detailing the battles over the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) as a prime example.

Roy explained that Congress passes the NDAA, which authorizes all things within the Defense Department, every year.

“We passed a good one in July in the House of Representatives. It does all that it needs to do with respect to defense. But then, importantly, it makes a whole lot of changes with respect to key issues that have been breaking down our military, breaking down our morale, [and] lowering recruiting,” he said, offering a list of things such as “ending the abortion tourism, ending the transgender surgeries, eliminating chief diversity officers, eliminating Critical Race Theory, eliminating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, ending the drag show nonsense, [and] ensuring that we’ve got our military being able to be fully returned to status after having been fired for COVID shots and so forth,” he said.

However, many of these issues were “punted” due to negotiations not going the GOP’s way in the Senate.

“To be fair, we got a couple of things out of that, but most of the stuff was punted. We think we should have held the line on that, but most important of all, we shouldn’t have taken a bill like that. And then, on top of it being watered down, [they] added to it a so-called clean extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] 702 program that collects data, you know, electronic surveillance data, and throw that on top of it, which means it would extend it until April of ’25,” he said, explaining that the defense and intel world “always want to get what they want.”

“The defense and intel world, they always want to get what they want; that’s what’s happening right now. And on this, you know, I gave a lot of credit to Mike Johnson for holding the line and pushing back on [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky. On this, I just disagree with him. I would not do this. I would just put a clean extension of FISA on the floor for a couple of weeks, force [the] judiciary, and then tell people in the House of Representatives and the Senate to get together and do a true reform bill,” he said, adding, “That’s how you get things done in this town.”

“You don’t govern by fear: ‘Oh my God, it’s going to expire.’ You govern by saying, ‘We’re gonna get this done. Here’s how we’re gonna get it done,’ and then make it happen,” he said, adding that bills are combined in D.C. to “force them through on deadlines.”

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In truth, the intel community, Roy said, “look[s] out, and they look across their nose, they say, ‘Well, we know best. We know the information that’s out there. America would be in danger, don’t you understand?’” he said, explaining that they use different scare tactics, even going to the media.

“They jam it through so that Republicans who like to have a checklist of things they can go campaign on can go say, ‘I stood up for the defense. I stood up to make sure that we can protect the American homeland.’ When in truth, our civil liberties are now very much in question,” Roy said, explaining further that Republicans lose in these battles because they govern by “fear.”

“We lose because we govern by fear. We govern by accepting that we have these tough odds, like, [do] you know how many times I’m texting with a colleague — right now, literally, right before this radio show…arguing about this?” he said, noting that his colleague suggested that they cannot win because the GOP does not have the Senate.

“Like, I know, but guess what? They don’t have the House,” Roy said, recounting the conversation. “That’s supposed to matter. Right? But we always start with — it is almost like if the people who are in Congress today had been a part of going to Normandy and D-Day, they would have said, ‘But Chip, that’s a really tall cliff. And, you know, there’s stormy seas. And when you get to the top of the cliff, they’re going to be shooting at us. And then we’ve got to get from there and then go all the way to Berlin.’ I mean, it’s every reason for why you can’t do something instead of saying, ‘Look, we’ve got an obligation to go do this,'” he said.

While Roy said it does not mean that you do not compromise on these measures, he made the point that Republicans appear to settle for getting virtually nothing,

“And our only point here is: I know I can’t get everything. Ok? We may not get both abortion tourism and transgender surgeries, [but] can we get one of them? Those are kind of the big ones that people have been paying attention to. I know we can’t get everything that we’re gonna want on every issue, but can we get, you know, a true significant” change that makes the Biden administration feel uncomfortable and say, “We got frickin’ worked on that one,” he added.

 Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.