Rep. Tim Burchett’s Interview on The Tucker Carlson Show (Transcript)

And I picked up the UFO book, started reading about it and it just fascinated me.

And I read the Bible. I’m a Christian. I’m not a very good one, obviously by my chosen profession. But, you know, the Bible talks about Ezekiel, saw the wheel, and people always say, “Well, that was a dream.” You know, they always try to over-explain things in the Bible and I just think it’s written for simple folks like me.

And it was a translation though. And at the time, the most technologically advanced item that they had was a wheel. And it describes a wheel within a wheel and describes a landing gear and all these other things that we would today say are modern-day flying saucers.

TUCKER CARLSON: And it’s pretty specific and it’s a pretty—the Ezekiel passage you’re referring to is—it’s not just like a parenthetical note, it’s like a whole description?

TIM BURCHETT: Oh yeah, he goes into it. He describes, I think, the landing area. In some translations it talks about it being hooves of an animal, like the hoof of an animal, which if you see—you know, you see when we went to the moon, that there’s the landing gear, the—you know, it’s got a pad. If we actually went to the moon. I know there’s a lot of people there that don’t believe it, but I’m—

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m arching my eyebrows, but we’ll refrain from comments.

Getting Involved in Congress

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah, yeah, but the—so I’m laying on my couch. Fast forward, I’m in Congress. I’m laying on my couch and I’m getting ready to go to sleep. I sleep in my office and shower in the gym. I’m not—as my banker says, he called me one day and said, “Brother, I’m pretty sure that you’re the most honest member of Congress, but I know you’re the poorest.”

So I do that. And so I was watching—there was a thing on UFOs and they were talking about some former members were involved in some stuff, trying to find out something. And I thought, you know, I’m going to start asking some questions.

And then I’m walking down the street and the center of all media in Washington D.C.—TMZ, his name’s Colin. He’s a good friend of mine. We’ve been to lunch and hang out some. But he stopped me and I didn’t know who he was. And he said, “Hey, I’m with TMZ. What do you think about this UFO report that’s getting ready to come out?”

And I said, “Brother, it’ll look like it was shot with a shotgun because it’ll be all redacted.” And I said, “And it won’t come out when they say it’s going to come out.” And he said, “Really? Why?” And I said, “Well, probably because the original report is probably going to have something in it and they’re going to pull it back.”

And sure enough, they did. And it was heavily redacted and it was just a big fluff piece, nothing. And then I said the magic words, which end up putting on one of my T-shirts, which I sell on my website: “More people believe in UFOs than believe in Congress,” and for good reason, and for great reason.

And so people started calling me—all these national figures that you see, reporters, legitimate reporters like yourself, people from all over the country. And so I start asking questions and I get with Luna and some other folks. Matt Gaetz was involved in it at the time. And we went to the chairman and said, “Let’s have a hearing.”

And I think they really, Tucker, I think they just patted us on the head and said, “Sure, we’ll have the hearing,” you know, and they’re going to make fun of you and go on. Turned out I talked to some old-timers that were there, reporters. They said that was the most attended hearing they’d ever had. They had to open up another room and there were people lined up down the hall.

When I walked out—I see it was, I guess in the morning—I walked out. Office had to be on an early show about it. At 4:30 in the morning, people were already lined up outside the building and they came from all over the country. One guy came on his vacation and there were ministers there, there were people. So it really touched a nerve.

TUCKER CARLSON: You know, hoping for disclosure.

Stories from the Public

TIM BURCHETT: That’s exactly right. The truth. And they’re tired of being told they’re idiots. And you know, the funny thing about it all is that when I go to speak to groups, it never fails that somebody of prominence will come—a doctor, a lawyer, a PR person—will come up to me and say, “Hey, I had an experience.”

I was sitting at a house helping out a colleague. I rarely go out of town. This is kind of unusual for me. So this is kind of an interesting deal for me up here. But I went to another congressman’s district to help him run for reelection. We were sitting in a country club and I’m not a country club type, as you can probably tell. Jackie Gleason said, “I wouldn’t join a country club that’d have somebody like me.” And I’m sort of like that way, you know.

And I sit next to this lady and she was classy. You could tell she was old money, she wasn’t new money. She had nice jewelry on and she had the clothes you could tell were nice. And she was just a classy lady. And she said, “Congressman, about those UFOs.” And I thought, well, here it comes, you know, I’m going to get popped.

And she said, “I had an experience when I was in college.” She talked about going to pick up her brother and this thing followed them down for several minutes. You know, it was cylindrical shaped and it followed them. It was—I think it was close to dark, and it was kind of lit up with a—I think a bluish tint to it or something. And it flew. It followed them for quite some time, and then it just took off. And they were like, “What in the world was that?”

And, you know, this was in the 70s. And she said, “I really haven’t really told many people that.” And I get stories like—I had a—when they film you—when I was early on in Congress, I had plenty of time, obviously, being the 435th most powerful member of Congress.

And, you know, these History Channel, all these folks would come interview me, and they would do—one time, they interviewed me for like an hour. So they would take segments of that and put that out for just multiple issues, you know, of their TV show, “Hunting UFOs” or whatever.

And I remember I was in Nashville at the time, and a colleague, a former state legislator, a guy was in leadership, called me up. And I remember he and I—it was kind of ironic that he was back in East Tennessee and I was in Nashville for a get-together I was throwing for our state legislators, because nobody ever, when I was in legislature, nobody ever did anything for us from Congress. And I just get down there and throw them a spaghetti dinner or something, you know.

And the phone rang and it was him. And he said, “Timbo, I just saw you on TV on the UFO show.” And I said, “Really?” And I thought, here it comes, he’s going to pop me. He said, “Let me tell you a story about when I was in the Navy.”

And he’s older. He was hollering back at his wife, “What year was that?” And she would holler. It was, I think it was in the late 50s. And he was on a—I believe it’s a tin can, but that’s a destroyer. You probably know more. But anyway, he was in the Navy, and he said they were—it was early on when they were first putting nuclear missiles on subs. They were unloading a missile for the sub.

And he said the sub got out there and then this thing just flew over the top of them. He said, “Remember, Timbo, if that thing was two city blocks, it was. It had to be two city blocks wide.” He said it was cylindrical and he named it and he described it. And then he said it—he said, “And it just took off. No noise, no heat, no vapor, nothing.”

And they all just stood there and were talking and going, “What the heck was that?” Yeah, you know, and then they get back on shore. They go back to shore. And he said that, you know, the man in the suit—he said, “I figured it was CIA or something.” And they said, “If y’all don’t—this is national security. If you ever talk about this, you’ll be busting rocks for the rest of your life if you’re lucky.”

Why the Government Lies

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, there’s nothing like ending the day by the fire, book in your hand, dogs at your feet, cup of coffee at your side. So that attitude has not changed, not one bit.

TIM BURCHETT: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: And the question is why? You know, why would the US government have an interest in lying about something that’s visible to millions of people around the world? So many people, as you just said, have had the experience of seeing them in person. Why would they have an interest in hurting those people? Calling them crazy, threatening them, et cetera. So tell us about your experience as you’ve pushed for more disclosure. What kind of reaction have you received?

The Control and Greed Factor

TIM BURCHETT: I think the arrogance from the federal government. There’s a control thing that you see in every aspect of government. Everybody in power wants to keep you out of their little circle of power. And I think the monetary concern is there.

Could you imagine if they had something that could heat homes in the winter and cool them in the summer and had zero cost? I mean, something that we could—it would put everybody out of business. The war pimps at the Pentagon would have to go out of business. We wouldn’t have to be in wars all over the world which are—if you get down to it, it’s about oil. It’s always about oil.

And so you’ve got the greed factor, you got the power factor, and then you got just the arrogance. The Bible talks about professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. That’s right. And there’s nobody in Washington that doesn’t think they’re wise.

TUCKER CARLSON: I wonder though. I mean, for sure. So you think this is an effort to hide the existence of superior technology because it’s a threat to existing industry?

The Motorcycle Analogy and Technology Compartmentalization

TIM BURCHETT: I think that’s part of it. And also, but it’s like this. We’re motorcycle guys. Say if I took a, say I took a brand new Indian or Harley Davidson down to back in time to, you know, the Mayflower or whatever.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

TIM BURCHETT: And gave it to them, you know, they would maybe shine it. They wouldn’t know how to do anything. I mean, of course they didn’t have carb. We don’t have carburetors. They wouldn’t know how to do anything with fuel injection. They probably couldn’t ever make the fuel high enough octane where it kick it off. They maybe could get it started if they got lucky at some point. Right. But that would be a rarity.

I think that’s sort of if there is something that they can’t, they don’t know what it is. And I think too they have compartmentalized this stuff. So you think FOIA, I’m going to Freedom of Information. Everybody says we just Freedom of Information at Burchett, go to Area 51. There’s nothing at Area 51. They’ve moved it to Wright-Patt or something else since then.

But the point is, is that everybody in government is looking down the barrel or looking in their little area and to their knowledge most of those people are telling the truth and they sent it off to these. There’s five or six corporations that’s been disclosed in hearings that we think probably has some of this technology, but it has been so compartmentalized the people.

I mean, there’s nobody alive that was around in Roswell of ’47 and instance that happened in Texas and others all over the world. And so they don’t really know what they’re looking at. They’re looking at something and they’ve associated it or given it to these corporations that have a quasi-governmental connection, but they’re far enough apart where I can’t go FOIA. I can’t go FOIA Ford. I mean, I could, but they’re just going to tell me, go jump in the lake. I’m not going to tell you, but.

The National Security Classification Problem

TUCKER CARLSON: I guess I’m stumbling over kind of the most basic claim that they make, which is that all this information is classified.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: On what grounds could the federal government justify classifying reports of things that its servicemen have seen?

TIM BURCHETT: Every time it’s national security, Tucker.

TUCKER CARLSON: What does that mean?

TIM BURCHETT: I don’t know, but they, but you have a group of people that are so afraid of the, well, the industrial war machine that funds their campaign. So you go to these, you look at all the people that stop when I have a disclosure bill, I just want to know. You know, I’m not saying they’re out there, but we’re spending tens of millions.

Every department, FBI, CIA. I’m pretty sure DEA doesn’t, but they probably should. But there’s probably every, every alphabet agency in the country has a, have a, has a wing that’s investigating these things. NASA, they are all doing it. They’re all doing, they’ll admit that they’re looking at something, but then you come to them, they say they don’t exist, but we need the money to do it. And now the interesting thing is.

TUCKER CARLSON: And that’s in the budget.

TIM BURCHETT: Oh, yeah. And now the interesting thing is, is that the, is that they’ve seen that the opinion polls are showing that over half the people in the country believe something else is going on.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course.

TIM BURCHETT: And so now they’re saying, hey, we need money to study this. I mean, it’s the cat going after its tail, really. And it’s just a circular thing that they just, after money and they don’t really care.

The UAP Disclosure Act and Congressional Oversight

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course they don’t, that’s for sure. But there is a process by which the Congress demands disclosure, and that process has been thwarted, and I’m just interested in getting details on how that happened. So the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023, I think.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Required disclosure. That passed. Right.

TIM BURCHETT: Allegedly. But again, who’s going to enforce it?

TUCKER CARLSON: So, but what did that, do you remember what that act required?

TIM BURCHETT: It is. I do not believe it passed. The one that I’m thinking about did not pass in the Senate because you remember, I had the bill, it was two pages long for disclosure.

TUCKER CARLSON: What did it say?

TIM BURCHETT: And then it just said if it dealt with UAPs, UFOs, disclose it. If it, if a file contains it, America has the right to see it unredacted. And Chuck Schumer’s was several hundred pages long and it was celebrated by everybody. And it set up a commission very similar to the Kennedy assassination, which here we are, you know, 60 plus years later and still, you know, they’re telling us this single bullet that was in your gunman that they found on a gurney that was basically unscratched, you know, an hour and a half after the assassination in the hospital at Parkland.

TUCKER CARLSON: After going through two bodies.

TIM BURCHETT: After two bodies and bone and everything else. And it doesn’t. It just.

TUCKER CARLSON: But, so, but Schumer’s solution was we needed a Warren Commission to tell us.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah, who can decide? And that basically would just cover it up. And I trust America.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course, of course there’s. But why would Chuck Schumer do that? Like what’s his motive? Do you have any idea?

The Swamp, Staffers, and Special Interests

TIM BURCHETT: I think his staffers drew up the bill and I think honestly in their, in their mind they probably thought it was the right thing. But here’s my thing about staffers. Everybody wants to talk about, you know, the swamp. And I always go through this. A swamp is something pretty cool. God created a swamp. I grew up frog gigging and fishing around swamps. They’re pretty cool. They attract animals for good reason. And so Washington D.C. is not a swamp. It is a sewer. It is a man-made creation.

Now figure this, you’ve got a staffer. And Republicans were supposed to be less government. I look at these stag. We get these pictures made every year, every couple years. I don’t know why I’ve never seen the picture. I’m not going to hang it up. My dadgum office of your committee, you know, and all the people on the committee and then all the staffers behind it. I counted one time on ours, I think it was close in one of my committees, close to 50 people. And I guess so the Democrats would get 49 people. You know, we’re supposed to be less government.

So you have a staffer say that that is. And the committees are just too big and too many of these chairmen. The biggest mistake they make is we’re going to be different. We’re going to be different. And what do they do? They keep on with every dadgum staffer and the staffer is already plugged in with the lobbyists, with the K Street crowd. And they’re the ones probably getting a little trip somewhere, maybe going out for a steak dinner, going out for drinks and they’re compromised. And so how many. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a good bill become a study bill.

TUCKER CARLSON: I completely agree. Except in most cases, it’s, like, obvious why industry would want to subvert the legislation. Like, they don’t want the regulation, they don’t want competition. You know, there are a lot of different obvious reasons. And you sort of see how the staffs are paid off. I get it. But UFOs, like, is there a UFO lobby?

TIM BURCHETT: Like, who wants that?

TUCKER CARLSON: Who’s paying for that?

TIM BURCHETT: I think.

TUCKER CARLSON: And why.

Defense Contractors and the UFO Cover-Up

TIM BURCHETT: I think you’ve got major technology corporations, aeronautics, some of our missile defense people, for some reason, they do not want this released.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s very weird, because whatever’s going on is clearly or would seem to be a threat to them.

TIM BURCHETT: Well, look at the.

TUCKER CARLSON: You don’t control your airspace, which we don’t. Right. Why is that not a problem for Raytheon?

TIM BURCHETT: Look at the financial disclosure of the people that always fight me on these bills. That’s what I would tell you to do.

TUCKER CARLSON: And if we were to do that, I can think of one.

TIM BURCHETT: You see the names of a couple of those. With those. A couple of those corporations.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it’s defense contractors are. The bottom line is, I think what you’re saying is the defense contractors, for some reason we can only speculate, don’t want this information disclosed.

TIM BURCHETT: That’s correct.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s a very powerful lobby.

TIM BURCHETT: Of course. It’s one of the most powerful ones. That’s why we’re sending $600 million to Ukraine and the national defense authors, which I didn’t vote for. I wanted to give our military more money. Military fighting men more money. But I didn’t want to give the war pimps any more reason to Ukraine or any of these other wars we’re in. No.

And the interesting about the $600 million, I was told by our leadership and in our conference that the President had requested that. And then I talked to the White House, and guess what? The President had not requested that every $600 million. So, but what’s that? What are they going to do with that?

TUCKER CARLSON: I watch people jump. I mean, I’m not the world’s great Trump expert, but I feel like I paid pretty close attention. I hear these people jump up and down. Trump. This is in the name of Trump. It’s like, that’s the opposite of what I think he wants, but whatever.

TUCKER CARLSON: So I’m not surprised by anything that you’ve said, but I do think it raises like the core question, which I still am confused by. It’s like, why would Raytheon be so opposed to the disclosure of this information? So what exactly happened? Where are we with disclosure?

Corporations Possessing Non-Human Technology

TIM BURCHETT: A lot of people think that they’re, that these folks are the ones that have the material from whatever craft or whatever it is. That’s what I’ve been told by people in government and that are in the know. And you know, it’s funny, it was.

TUCKER CARLSON: Like, he goes like, these companies have benefited from technology from whatever these things are, apparently.

TIM BURCHETT: That’s what they’re telling me. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And informed people. Not just people.

TIM BURCHETT: No, not just some guy on the street. And it’s funny, I’ve had a Deep Throat moment, you know, where Nixon was overthrown and somebody comes up to me in the hallway, in a crowded hallway. Somebody who I would be consider a friend and subman. “You really don’t need to be doing this stuff, don’t you? Man? You’re kicking the hornet’s nest on this thing, you know, on the UFO stuff.” Yeah, oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And I’ve had them try to use it against me in campaigns and things, but, you know, they don’t, we don’t ever raise enough money to matter anyway.

TUCKER CARLSON: Use against you in campaigns.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah, the whisper campaign, or they put it on the Internet. “Burchett’s, you know, all he cares about is this.” No, I just care about where’s the tens of millions of dollars going. I have a right to know.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, like, this is the biggest story in our, in human history. Yeah, I would think. I mean, like, what is that?

TIM BURCHETT: Are we alone?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, clearly not. And so you’re satisfied just to get to basics here quickly? You’re satisfied that whatever we’re seeing in the skies and have since at least the Second World War, since at least the development of nuclear weapons.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Since Hiroshima, whatever that is, is not foreign military.

The Technology Isn’t Russian, Chinese, or American

TIM BURCHETT: No, because here it is. If it was Russian, I mean, honestly, Putin with his ego, he would ride bare-chested down Pennsylvania Avenue, get out of UFO, you know, wrestle a bear on the front porch of the White House and get back in his UFO. I mean, he wouldn’t be bogged down in Ukraine.

If it was China, they would own us. They clearly partially own us now. And if it was America, you wouldn’t see Trump standing on an aircraft carrier and a jet flies by and breaks a sound barrier and everybody thinks that’s the coolest thing in the matter. I mean, it would be something a lot cooler than that. And so I just don’t think we have that technology or we’re able to utilize it.

TUCKER CARLSON: So in the course of your probing into this, no one’s ever taken you aside and said, “Hey, Burchett, back off a little bit. This is our stuff. We don’t want to disclose it”?

TIM BURCHETT: Pretty close to that. Pretty close to that.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you don’t believe it. You don’t think this is our technology?

TIM BURCHETT: No, I do not. There’s no way it’s our tech, no way it’s our technology. I’ve talked to too many pilots. Why would we risk our best? I mean, I’ve talked to the best pilots in the world that are ours. Some of them, not all of them.

Close Encounters from Military Personnel

One guy, I remember I was at the Capitol Hill Club. It was just an unusual encounter. A guy spoke to a group and he followed me out and said, “You know, Tim,” or “Congressman,” or whatever he said, “that thing was 14 feet.” He went like this from my canopy. And I thought to myself, why didn’t he say 15? Why didn’t he say 20? But he said 14.

And then he just said this thing wasn’t ours. He said, “I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t ours.” And that’s all he said.

And I had a very high-ranking member of the Navy describe some underwater experiences they’d had with something that was doing 200 miles. And the best thing we got is probably 40.

TUCKER CARLSON: He’s doing 200 miles an hour underwater?

TIM BURCHETT: Underwater, big as a football field. And that’s no fish.

TUCKER CARLSON: So is it possible, given our current understanding of physics, for any man-made machine to go anywhere near 200 miles an hour underwater?

TIM BURCHETT: Not with our technology, no. The best we have is probably in the high 30s. And he was converting it. Of course, knots is what the Navy guys would do.

TUCKER CARLSON: If I fire a .36 or any high-caliber rifle underwater, it doesn’t go 200 miles an hour. I can probably catch it in the length of a swimming pool or so.

TIM BURCHETT: Or just falls down.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, yeah. I mean it’s like…

Deep Water Sightings and Scrubbed Evidence

TIM BURCHETT: So we’ve got… and this was described to me in areas and I was quoted on time, I was just… all I do is quote people that have knowledge. But this was one that was, he was talking about, there are five or six, I think, deep water areas of the ocean. You’ve traveled a lot. I have not. There’s not a lot of deep water areas around East Tennessee at Fort Loudoun Lake or anything.

But you know, talking miles deep. And of course you’ve heard this before. We know more about the surface of the moon than we do the surface of the ocean. And he said these are areas where we see a high propensity of these UFOs.

And there was a case where it was fairly well documented. They had multiple sightings. They were doing maneuvers and had the ships or boats, whatever you want to call them, out there. I’m not a Navy guy. And there was the sighting in the air. And the pilots radioed back and said, “Hey, is there something going on? Is there another operation? We got some secret technology stuff we’re working on?”

They said, “We don’t have any.” And the Pentagon, nobody knew about anything. And they pulled it back and then they pulled everything back, scrubbed the mission. And then the next day all their Internet traffic had been scrubbed. But this guy was kind of a wonk and he’d made copies of it.

But you know, the point I have there is why would we risk multimillion-dollar apparatus? Why would we put something in the air around our best pilots that could have a crash? Because these guys are talking about there’s actually, you know, they’ve come close to collisions. Why would they do that? They would not do that. That would be stupid.

I mean, there’s even… you know, I always say military intelligence a whole lot like congressional ethics. I don’t think it really exists much anymore. But anyway, I just don’t think that we’d be risking that. So that’s my proof that it’s not ours.

Military Witnesses and the Disinformation Campaign

TUCKER CARLSON: So how many military personnel have you spoken to about their personal experiences with these things?

TIM BURCHETT: I’d say, I don’t know, eight or nine, 10 maybe. You know, but I have to be real careful because I’m clearly somebody out there, and I’m not backing down on it. I’m not ashamed of it or anything, but I don’t…

TUCKER CARLSON: You have no reason to be ashamed of it.

TIM BURCHETT: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why would you be ashamed?

TIM BURCHETT: Well, that’s what they try to do is they try to shame people. Oh, are you…

TUCKER CARLSON: Are you hiding relevant secrets from the American public? I don’t think you are, no. But why aren’t they ashamed?

TIM BURCHETT: Well, I have to be careful about the white flags, the stuff they bring. People bring me stuff that’s not real.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s why we’re talking to you.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah, well, that’s…

TUCKER CARLSON: A lot of people come to me with stuff like that.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah. And I’ve got these pictures and I want to show you this. I’ve got this. You know, I’m always afraid I’m going to end up in a refrigerator up in North Carolina or freezer in North Carolina somewhere, you know, because I’m not going up there and checking out some guy’s finds he’s got, you know, and I…

TUCKER CARLSON: But do you think so? I think what you’re saying is the disinformation campaign run by whomever, that’s real. Well, it’s definitely real. And I assume it’s run by the US Government or its satellites and the defense contractors. But part of the way that they discredit people who are interested in finding out what this is is by telling them false things. And then they try to destroy their careers.

Destroying Whistleblowers

TIM BURCHETT: They did that to one of our guys, one of the very first person, the first hearing we had. If you remember, some weekly newspaper reporter found out that one of the guys suffered from PTSD because of his military career.

You know what? In Tennessee, we embrace that. My daddy put on Peleliu in Okinawa. Until the day he died, I never woke him up over the top of him. I always woke him up by his big toe because he might have woke up on one of those islands and pinned me up against the wall. And so, and we celebrate our heroes.

But Washington D.C. just destroys them. And to think that a weekly newspaper found out this guy’s medical history, which is a total violation of the law. Somebody should go to jail for it. But nobody did. They tried to destroy this guy. And that’s what happens to people in Washington D.C. That’s what happens to our military heroes when they step out of line because of the sewer or deep state or whatever you want to call it. But that’s what they are and that’s why we need real whistleblower protection for them.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I agree with that completely. Which we don’t have. And by the way, I know two whistleblowers who are living outside the country because they can’t come to the United States.

TIM BURCHETT: Sure. And I’ll have people… actually, I’ve had people call me. One last thing. I’m in the Longworth building. It’s no secret, it’s public record. But I’ve had people that’ll call me or send a message to me and want to come by and they won’t come in that building, ask me if I can come outside.

I’ve had people call me and want to come to the house in East Tennessee because they don’t want to come to Washington D.C. and talk to me. There was a well-publicized television show that was on for a while that I didn’t know they were coming. I mean, they said some people wanted to talk to me and it was a trusted friend. And I said, “Sure, send them. Bring them up to come on up to D.C.” And I said, “Well, they don’t want to come to D.C.”

And they drove from wherever to my house in East Tennessee on a Saturday afternoon and then they put some stuff on a screen that was pretty compelling.

TUCKER CARLSON: What was it?

TIM BURCHETT: It was aircraft flying. It just crazy stuff that we can’t do that would turn you or me into basically a ketchup package.

TUCKER CARLSON: No human being could handle the G forces?

TIM BURCHETT: No, not with the technology we have. The G force would just have torn us apart. And you know, was it unmanned or whatever? I don’t know. But these guys, and one of them was a… well, they were scientists, several of them were scientists.

TUCKER CARLSON: And they came to see you?

TIM BURCHETT: They came to see me, yeah.

What to Do With This Information

TUCKER CARLSON: So what do you do with that information?

TIM BURCHETT: I try to understand, try to grasp it within my very small brain. What am I supposed to do with that? I ask God all the time, “What do you want me to do with this stuff, Lord?”

And right now I’ve just got to get enough disclosure. I’ve come to the realization that nothing is ever going to happen, Tucker, until we have somebody in the White House that says enough is enough and just discloses it. And I hope President Trump… and I have discussions with him privately and other times and I’m not… I’ve talked to his people.

But at some point there’s several of us, Luna, myself and several others that are concerned about this issue and we want some answers.

TUCKER CARLSON: We’ve got none.

TIM BURCHETT: We’ve got none. Zero.

TUCKER CARLSON: Zero.

The Industrial War Complex Running Out the Clock

TIM BURCHETT: I think that is the sewer. That is the industrial war complex. I think I stated that in the committee. I think part of the thing they do is they outrun the clock. They outrun the clock. You know, we either stumble, one of us gets in trouble or they get us in trouble or they lose or they move on to another object, you know, another shiny object somewhere else.

We Americans want their pizzas in 30 minutes or less. And that’s about Congress’s attention span, you know. Because we’re always on one, and then it’s the hot issue. And then the news cycle changes. Two weeks later, we’re on to something else.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you guys are often… members of Congress are often briefed in SCIFs. You know, it’s a secure location that they immediately go and call CNN and tell them, you know, everyone does. But if a member of Congress received, quote, “classified information” about UAPs and then immediately held a press conference and said, “Here’s what I just heard and saw, and yes, I’m breaking the law, but like, tough shit, why don’t you do something about it?” What would happen?

Government Secrecy and Congressional Oversight

TIM BURCHETT: I don’t know. They say they can imprison us, but I don’t. You know, that’s what we’re told at the beginning. We’re not even supposed to discuss. Some people will tell you, you can’t even tell them that you’ve been in a SCIF. But the press is waiting for you as soon as you walk out.

TUCKER CARLSON: Who told. Who says that? Leadership of the party.

TIM BURCHETT: Oh, yeah, leadership. Yeah. And they’ll. And I’ve been in a SCIF before where they’ll say, anything discussed in here, we remind you, is punishable by law. It could be a felony. But the problem you get in there, a lot of times, it’s the arrogance and the lies that are told to us. They contradict. I mean, they’ll contradict what another department has said. They’ll say, this didn’t happen. This doesn’t exist. And another one will say, this is one we don’t know, but we can’t figure out. There’s just no answer. It defies all of our reason.

TUCKER CARLSON: And these are the briefers from various federal agencies that you’re talking about?

TIM BURCHETT: They’re generally arrogant. You know, there’s one kid with a man bun. I always remember him. He was very arrogant. And then I asked him about some specific instances. You know, there’s one where we had a nuclear facility, something buzzed it, and the actual facility shut down.

TUCKER CARLSON: Famously. Yeah.

TIM BURCHETT: Documented. And he—

TUCKER CARLSON: In the Dakotas, I think.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah. I can’t remember exactly after I read so many of these things, but he said, I remember, he said, “We have no data points on that.” And I thought, and I said, “Dude, it’s in all. Google it. It’s everywhere.” And I just, I get very frustrated, Tucker. A lot of times I won’t go to these classified briefs, and part of the reason you go to a classified briefing is to get information, which I’m sure that’s where a lot of the stock trading goes on.

But I think they bring you in and tell you stuff you already knew, so you can’t even talk about it. I think it’s a trap. That’s why I don’t go to a lot of the classified briefings, because, again, I can just pick it up on the street.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right after Congress funds the agencies that are briefing you.

TIM BURCHETT: That’s correct.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you could say to the man bun kid, you know, “Son, I pay your salary, so maybe you—”

TIM BURCHETT: Well, it’s during the Biden administration, so I was a little bit out of—

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I mean, at this point, Republicans control the Congress, so, like, allegedly. I don’t understand. I just, I’m honestly baffled as to why there’s—

Bipartisan Interest in UAPs

TIM BURCHETT: It crosses both lines. I think, you know, that money runs deep and they contribute a lot to a lot of people.

TUCKER CARLSON: So of the issues, and some are well known, I won’t even bring them up here, but they’re very well known that have bipartisan consensus, you know, like both parties agree on this issue. You would say UAPs are one of those.

TIM BURCHETT: I would say they are. I mean, AOC’s in there. I mean, they’re all in there. You know, it’s just—

TUCKER CARLSON: Does AOC show any interest in this topic?

TIM BURCHETT: She does. She does. I think, you know, she’s concerned like everybody else. Where’s the tens of millions of dollars going? And I’m sure she could think about—

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, what the hell are these things? That’s like an even deeper concern. Yeah, the money’s fake. We just make it.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah. We just print it. Yeah. But we’ve had, you know, what are they? We’ve had sworn testimony where they’ll tell you. They’ll say, “Yeah, I’ve seen beings.” There’s a movie coming out, and the—

TUCKER CARLSON: The testimony says this is foreign testimony?

TIM BURCHETT: Testimony. They’ve got their beings, and there’s saucers or some craft or something. But there’s a movie coming out pretty soon, if it’s ever allowed to come out. I was in it a little bit. And they have former members of the CIA. You have others that positively say they were there and they identified these things, they diagnosed them, and they saw them. I saw the craft.

And, you know, there’s enough people out there saying it, but they’re just so suppressed, and the media moves on so fast on something. And, you know, I’ve been on so many of these interviews, and they’re playing the theme from some crazy TV show or something before I come on, you know, and they’re just making a joke out of it. And I get it. People want to laugh about it.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t get it at all.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah, I mean, I get the fact it’s like an—

TUCKER CARLSON: Absolutely.

TIM BURCHETT: I mean, they just want to humiliate me.

TUCKER CARLSON: And it’s a deadly serious topic, objectively speaking.

National and Global Defense Implications

TIM BURCHETT: And if it’s a national defense issue, it’s everything. It’s everything. I mean, it’s not national. It’s a world defense issue.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s a lot more serious than Black Lives Matter or any other nonsense that we’ve, you know, become obsessed with over the past generation. So, yeah, there’s, I mean, that tells you right there, that’s part of an operation designed to discredit people who ask questions, right?

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah. And I’ve had military personnel call me and tell me they’ve chased these things. They’ve been in the water. I had one guy tell me a story. He was an officer, and he was in the water fishing off, I think it was on the East Coast. And this huge craft flew over them. And then these several jets were flying, trying to keep up with it. And he identified the jets because he was obviously an Air Force officer.

And he said, “Look, I just want you to continue on this thing. A lot of people have seen stuff.” And he said, “I have.” And, you know, and, I mean, he had a distinguished career, but it just continues on and on and on. And it gets, you know, we get patted on the head and say, “Okay, you can have another hearing,” and then we do it.

But until somebody in the White House says disclose or somebody walks out of one of these labs with something and shows it and puts it on YouTube before he’s allowed to commit suicide, I think you’re going to, that’s the only way we’re going to get to the bottom of it, because it will never. It’s so deep. The layers of the onion is so deep, you just keep peeling it off. And it’s just a different person, a different story.

You go over here and, and, you know, the naivety of Congress, you have members telling me, “Well, let’s just get a, let’s go over here and get a, you know, we’ll get a tour of where you think these things are.” I think once we announce that, you know, the U-Haul vans have already been there and gone, you know, it’s not that way. It’s not going to work that way. Congress is not going to walk in there with all its magnificence and arrogance and find something.

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Government Accountability and Transparency

TUCKER CARLSON: If the public is being lied to by the government, if there’s a continuous, ongoing, publicly funded campaign to lie to the American public by its own government, that is justification for overthrowing the government. That’s my opinion. They can’t do that in a democracy. Because we own the government. They don’t.

And so that alone, leaving aside the reality of UAPs is, you know, it’s enough for, I mean, why is it so hard for somebody in authority, either in the White House or in congressional leadership to say, “We want this information, we want it by the close of business today or else you’re fired. Or we’re going to send soldiers in and get the information.” Why is that hard?

TIM BURCHETT: I just don’t think it’s profitable for them. I think there’s too much money and it goes too deep. And you have a lot of soldiers, they’re not literally soldiers, but people just follow orders and they think, and they said it’s national security, they think it’s national security.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it sounds like you have no confidence that this stuff’s going to emerge.

TIM BURCHETT: No, I have zero confidence on this side of when I leave this earth. I’ll probably, I’ll know then. But you will instantly, instantly. But I don’t have any confidence in anybody in Washington currently. I have confidence in Trump, I really do. I think if we can talk to him seriously about this for a short amount of time, I think he’ll just tell them to jam it. We’re going to do it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I mean we had, you know, these sightings last year over New Jersey, over the whole mid-east coast that the entire country saw and they were on video and we were going to find out what those were. And then it was like, “Nah, it’s totally for, we don’t need to know what that,” like, what was that?

The New Jersey Drone Incidents

TIM BURCHETT: Well, I still think it was part of Chinese influence. I think when they flew the balloon over, it was 50s or 60s technology. They didn’t have anything. I mean they got enough spies on the ground in every university and every think tank and every national lab, whatever, they got them there. But they wanted to see what our response was. They saw a political response which was zero, our military response which was zero and our press response. And the only thing was the people were outraged about it, you know, then they shot it down off the coast of Myrtle Beach.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you think the drones, the so-called drones over New Jersey last fall were a Chinese operation or something?

TIM BURCHETT: Very similar, somebody experimenting to see what our response would be. Because you know, you fly an airplane over the country and somebody’s going to pick it up, but you fly a drone, make it a small nuke, could have been a biological agent. And I think now they know they could do that. At least under Biden they could, they can’t do it under Trump.

TUCKER CARLSON: So if that was the Chinese who did that and the US government did nothing in the world—

TIM BURCHETT: I think they had contractors here that provided them with that. That’s my theory.

TUCKER CARLSON: Any idea as to why the US government would want to keep that secret?

TIM BURCHETT: No idea. Either the current administration doesn’t know because the people that knew are gone. I just think the past administration was smoking mirrors. I mean Joe Biden, if you ever had any conversations with him, I mean, it was clearly very clueless and it was very scary. If we’d have been in a position, whoever was calling his shots from the Obama administration scared me a lot.

And of course they were the puppet masters. I feel like under Biden, and I felt like he and the people around him just ran amok. I mean you saw it.

TUCKER CARLSON: But why not? I don’t understand. And I’m trying to keep my growing rage under control. Like why not tell—

TIM BURCHETT: I’m outraged.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why not tell the public something true once in a while? Why the constant lying? Because if you’re constantly lying, then by definition you’re evil. And you don’t want to think that of your government, especially people you like in government. But like, why can’t the public know anything ever? Do you have any theories?

TIM BURCHETT: Tradition, I think.

TUCKER CARLSON: Tradition, okay.

TIM BURCHETT: I just don’t. The more and more I know about government, you know, I’ve been in this gift before and I’ve walked out. And I remember one time I called my wife, I said, “Honey, go to the store and buy canned goods. We’re completely wide open.” She said, “All right, sweetie.”

TUCKER CARLSON: So what do we get for a trillion dollars a year to the US Military? We get anything in return?

Congressional Stock Trading and War Profiteering

TIM BURCHETT: We got some enhanced stock portfolios. And I’ll give you a great example. When Joe Biden gave our military, excuse me, our missile defense system. You know, I haven’t voted for a penny for Ukraine. I’m proud of that. It’s not my dad gum war. I’m not sending my 18 year old daughter to a country that most members of Congress couldn’t find on a dadgum globe.

And so you have, we give them our missile defense system and then we have to replenish ours, which we should. We can’t be left naked without any of that defense. And guess what? Some of those contractors we described get a multi, multi billion with a B dollar no bid contract.

And who do you think has bought stock in that company? Members of Congress two weeks prior to the President making that official notice. And you see it time and time again. I mean, do you honestly believe members of Congress are making… You’ve met some of these guys. I mean they can’t come in out of the rain. Some of them. Yeah, I mean I’m guilty of that as well.

But 600%, yeah, a lot of really damaged return on their 5 and 600% return on investment and in war is great for business. It’s great for the economy, but it’s not good for, I don’t think it’s good for ourselves.

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s nothing worse. Killing people is not good. I know that’s a controversial statement.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: But why is it impossible just to ban stock trading for members of Congress?

The Failed Attempt to Ban Congressional Stock Trading

TIM BURCHETT: It’s a great idea. I have the bill to do it. And that’s why, you know, we have a bipartisan group again. Myself and Rand Paul and I never get her name right. But Cortez and me and Chip Roy and a bunch of others, you know, we’ve got a bill, but it’s not going anywhere.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why?

TIM BURCHETT: Because too many members of Congress. I mean, we were told by leadership that, you know, these guys can’t afford to be here. You know, what if you can’t afford to be in Congress and go get another dad gum job? More people have played professional baseball in the major leagues. It should be an honor.

TUCKER CARLSON: The idea is they should be allowed to do insider trading, which is a felony, because they don’t get paid enough?

TIM BURCHETT: Well, all you got to do is disclose it, and then if you don’t disclose it, it’s a slap on the wrist. You know, I make skateboards, and it’s cheaper than a psychiatrist. I make them out of bamboo and banana fibers and crazy stuff, and it’s great.

TUCKER CARLSON: Skateboards out of bamboo?

TIM BURCHETT: I do.

TUCKER CARLSON: A lot of congressmen do that?

TIM BURCHETT: No, I’d say one does. I’m pretty safe in betting that. I would say it’s cheaper than a psychiatrist. It’s good, but, and I gave one to Tulsi Gabbard, and, you know, and it gets views and people over the country wanting to buy these things.

So I’m a capitalist. I’m thinking, you know, I’d like to sell a few skateboards. I go to the ethics people. I take my DC chief with me. And she’s very smart, my Knoxville chief, the lady. They’re both incredibly smart ladies. So I take the DC lady with me, and she’s making notes. I mean, you know, I got to get an attorney involved in this thing. I have to have a business plan.

You want to do insider trading, be a member of Congress, you want to sell skateboards, you better get you a dadgum lawyer. And that’s what I’m having to do right now. I mean, I’m building a business plan.

TUCKER CARLSON: Leadership actually said to you, we can’t stop insider trading because they need the money?

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah. And they’ve, in both parties. I mean, it’s one of those, you talk about one of those issues that both parties agree on, both party leadership does, and because they don’t want to upset the apple cart and America. That would be such a great thing to show America, hey, we’re going to try to do what’s right for once.

Congressional Arrogance and Disconnect

TUCKER CARLSON: Do they know how much America hates them?

TIM BURCHETT: No. Every one of them. I always remember in my hometown when they did away with term limits. Excuse me. And they were interviewing some of the office holders. I remember one office holder said, “I just don’t know if this county is going to exist without us. I don’t see how they can go ahead.”

And I thought it was like, I checked my calendar. Is this April Fools? I thought it was a joke. I thought they were actually kidding, you know, I mean, that is the county do. We’re still there.

TUCKER CARLSON: Still there.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah. Great bond, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: Wasn’t consumed by fire.

TIM BURCHETT: No, no. Lord didn’t come down and crush us like Sodom and Gomorrah. But, you know, but anyway, they’ve continuously for to us and now we’ve pushed them. Now the head of the treasury says, you need to do it. Trump says to do it. And so Luna says, “I’m bringing Burchett’s bill to the floor. I’m going to do a discharge petition, and we’re going to bring it to the floor and get enough members to sign on.”

I don’t know if we can or not, but we’re going to try. But here’s the thing, Tucker. We’ll pass a bill if we do, if leadership shines on us, and we’ll pass a bill, and then it’ll be a tough bill, and then the Senate will pass one a little tougher on something we can’t agree on.

And then we’ll say, “Look at those guys in the Senate. You know, they’re 150 years old. They can’t, they’re so crooked.” And they’ll say, “Look at us. We’re a bunch of cretins. You know, we don’t know what we’re doing.” And then it’ll go away. And, well, we tried. And that’s just the game they’re playing. That is a game they play with everything.

Either that or it’s a study committee. So many bills. And I was talking about that with the staff, you know, they’ll get you to, “Oh, don’t do this bill. Let’s do a study bill and then come back next year with all this information.”

You know, Tucker, have you ever seen that last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where they’re going into that warehouse? You know, it just goes on and on. I’m pretty sure that’s where all the study committee bills go to after they pass them. And you put in your local newspaper, “Oh, look at this great bill,” because it has the same title but it doesn’t do anything.

And then you don’t, and then the next year you don’t pass anything, you don’t come back with anything because you’ve already so called passed your lame bill. And that warehouse is full of all those reports. Because I’ve never seen, I’ve never ever seen one of those reports after we pass those bills.

The Public Knows It’s All Fake

TUCKER CARLSON: No, of course not. I just wonder though, I mean, the details of this are interesting, but I think the broad outline is already known by the whole public, which is this is fake. And these people are in it for reasons that have nothing to do with the public interest. And I, you know, everybody wants to rail on Pelosi.

TIM BURCHETT: She’s not, if you go on the unusual whales website, she’s not even in the top 10 for insider trading. Yeah, she, I think she’s number 11. But, you know.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I know some of the people on that list.

TIM BURCHETT: I do too. I know every dad got one of them and there’s a list of 100 and my wife always checks it every year. She said, “Honey,” I said, “I know, sweetie.” I mean my $12,000 portfolio. My buddy Tommy Sailer manages my $12,000 portfolio. Everybody do like I do, put it in mutual fund.

I pulled it out last year. This recently just pulled it out so I could pay for my daughter’s school, which is what I established it for in the first place. But it’s, you know, and that’s, and when this airs, I’m going to make a lot of enemies. And here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to tell you without a doubt, maybe not, since I’m going to tell you.

TUCKER CARLSON: How can they be mad at you?

TIM BURCHETT: Pointing out the obvious? Somebody will come down and sit beside me, somebody in leadership or somebody I’m friends with in Congress and say, “Man, some of the guys are really upset with you on this.” I say, “Well, I’m what?” And they say, “On this, what you said on such and such.”

And I’ve said this before I said, and this will be a chapter of my book if I ever write it. And I said, “But you know it’s the truth, right?” And they go, “Oh, yeah, we know it’s the truth. We just wish you wouldn’t say it anymore.” And I can’t tell you, many times I’ve had that conversation.

Voter Apathy and Congressional Self-Preservation

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s no shame. We’ve all done bad things.

TIM BURCHETT: 12% of the population votes, Tucker. Nobody listen. It’s a game we need to start. People start needing to get their grandkids to educate them how to get on the computer and read these bills that we’re passing and look at the game we’re playing with y’all.

These 3,000 page spending bills that, you know, fund whatever you need for your lab or whatever. Then you read down and it’s funding circumcisions in Madagascar. I mean, things like that. Literally drag shows or abortion or abortion, which is abhorrent.

And so I, you know, it’s just a game. And it’s a, and America needs to start paying attention. And Congress, members of Congress, look, people, they always say, we need more people to vote, but as long as they’re winning, that’s what leadership’s about in either party is staying in power. It’s having the suburban. It’s being three deep with security. It’s never standing in line at a movie theater or going to a ball game or a concert. You know, it becomes self preservation.

January 6th and Congressional Disconnect

TUCKER CARLSON: I remember when January 6th happened, and I was shocked. I was completely shocked by it.

TIM BURCHETT: And I was the last House member to leave the floor on January 6th.

TUCKER CARLSON: Good for you. And I was like, wow, this is, I hate vandalism, whatever. Now I look back and I’m like, I understand exactly why they did that. I’m not mad about it at all. I think that Congress should have taken notice that people are really, really mad at Congress.

And instead they just ignored it and are like, “No, everyone who did it is a Nazi and we need more security.” Really? That’s your takeaway? You need more security? Maybe you need to act in a way that people respect so the country doesn’t hate you because you’re supposed to be representing the country.

TIM BURCHETT: And the hundred plus federal agents that were intertwined.

TUCKER CARLSON: The whole thing was fake. Obviously. I was, yeah, I don’t get into it. Yes. No. I spent a lot of time fighting about this at Fox News when they, you know, people resigned when I said, “I think this was like a setup.” “Oh, I can’t work with a Nazi.” It turned out to be true.

TIM BURCHETT: But again, it’s how many years later and nobody cares.

TUCKER CARLSON: Nobody cares. So it’s not, I’m sorry to make it about me. I didn’t mean to do that. It’s just, I’m mad about that topic.

TIM BURCHETT: It’s your show, brother.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, no, it, no, but it’s just, it’s about the Congress. And I think you need a legislative body, not against the Congress in theory. What I’m worried about, here’s the point that I’m attempting to make in a long winded way, which is if you don’t pay any attention at all to how people feel about you when your job is to represent those people, that system can continue and you’re going to get a January 6th. But for real, at some point, if you keep acting this way, it will.

TIM BURCHETT: Be unarmed, actually, actually.

TUCKER CARLSON: And a lot of people will applaud it. I’m not rooting for that at all. I’m just saying that’s going to happen. Do members of Congress get this? They understand how hated they are. Do they care?

Congressional Arrogance and Disconnect

TIM BURCHETT: I think there’s an arrogance associated with being in Congress. I think there’s a complete arrogance. I always remember one time I was at a UT football game when I was in the legislature and a former member, well, they’re all dead. Most of the people I served with, a lot of them are pulled up, parked illegally, got out of their car and just come strutting across the parking lot.

My buddy said, “Who the heck is that?” And I said, “He’s a pretty big deal in Nashville.” He said, “Tell him he ain’t in Nashville, he’s in Knoxville.” And I always remembered that because now that guy’s a judge who was telling me that, my best friend. But it was just a wake up moment that I realized early on that everybody has got this fiefdom type mentality and it’s “who can represent better than me? Nobody.”

And I can tell you right now, there’s probably 200,000 people in my district that could probably do a better job than I am. I’m just hard headed enough to stick my head out.

TUCKER CARLSON: A lot of people don’t want it because it’s frustrating.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah, they see the security issues now too.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is there ever a moment in, you know, like at lunch with your colleagues where somebody says, “Man, have you looked at the numbers? People really hate us. This is a problem.”

TIM BURCHETT: I usually don’t eat lunch with my colleagues. So.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay.

TIM BURCHETT: But I mean, I have a few close friends.

TUCKER CARLSON: During the course of the day at work, in the U.S. Congress where you do work, does anyone ever note that, like, we’re more unpopular than like chlamydia and that’s not good?

TIM BURCHETT: No, yeah, I’d say we’re, I’d say chlamydia outranks us.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, no, definitely. Chlamydia has its defenders. No.

TIM BURCHETT: No defense. No, no. But yeah, there’s a bunch of us. I mean, we see what’s going on, we just shake our head. But it’s a lot of frustration though, Tucker. You know, we’re in a minority. You look at spending bills and then look at the opinion polls on things like Ukraine, other things, and you look at the board and you’re wondering, where are we at? Yeah, what’s going on?

And for guys like me, though, it gets incredibly tough because the big boys start calling and the bank account dries up pretty quick. It’s hard to raise money for somebody like me. It is incredibly tough to raise money. Most of my contributions are just hard work and God fearing people. They’ll send me $10 in a Bible verse, you know. The billionaires usually are for me the day after the election.

The Billionaire Problem

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I noticed. And they’re out in force against a couple of your colleagues said things that are totally consistent with what the public wants.

TIM BURCHETT: Right, but the billionaires don’t want it. They don’t want it and they control a lot of the media. But fortunately, now for the Internet, we can bypass people like you and I can bypass that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I’m grateful every day. Can I ask, so you represent eastern Tennessee, which is much more conservative than say the Memphis area or even than actually I.

TIM BURCHETT: Did one point better than President Trump. But if he were here today, I’d say that was in fact an error and that you carried me over the finish line, Mr. President.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think you would have to say that, yes, sure. But see, your threat is not in the general election. Like, it’s, it’s an R plus whatever.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah, it’s primary, but it’s just be a primary. Right, but they could drop big money in and the dark money and.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, so that’s. A member like you is vulnerable in.

TIM BURCHETT: The primary and someday I’d like maybe if I had the opportunity to get to the US Senate, I wouldn’t mind doing that. But that would be Katie, bar the door, they’d pour the money and all over the country to beat me, so.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course. But you’re even seeing with a couple of your colleagues are getting primaried by billionaires because they’ve said things that are, you know, true but not acceptable, I guess. But are you worried about being primaried?

Running Scared and Unopposed

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah. There’s only two ways to run: scared and unopposed. And I’m a product of the primary. The first race I won, I made an incumbent in a state House race. Ninety-nine House races that year. I was the only person to beat an incumbent. And I won with just 21 and three-quarter percentage points ahead. I knocked on over 6,000 doors. I’d been run out of town, run out of business by the government, and it was a great lesson.

But I did knocked on over 6,000 doors. And I think I raised around 8 or $9,000. I can’t remember. And I thought, “How am I going to spend all this money?” You know, every morning I’d wake up. My mom and daddy, of course, were living then, and I would throw up because I had this horrible taste of peppermint in my mouth. And the reason I had peppermint, because I licked all my stamps. That’s back in the day you had to lick stamps.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

TIM BURCHETT: And I remember one morning I woke up and I was rolled up in them. I was like in a cocoon of stamps. But I’d wake up every morning, I’d throw up, and mama would make me a turkey sandwich on white bread and give me a Sprite, and I’d get right back. I’d knock on doors for breakfast. Yeah. That’s all I could hold down.

And I’d get out and knock on doors all day long. And, you know, I lost over 20 pounds, got bit by a dog, took off my shirt. I look like a target. I just red on the rings and white in the belly, you know. But it was, I learned, wore out a pair of New Balance shoes and the only shoes at the time that were made in America. So I’m kind of big on that.

And so we won and spent four years in the house. And then I just come off of a business deal. I had a mulch business, had a composting business. And I’m a capitalist. But I can remember that scene in the Godfather, right before he dies, the original Godfather, and he’s spraying that on the tomatoes and the little grandbabies running around him.

The Mulch Business Story

My daddy had one of those sprayers. I mean, he grew these tomatoes. And at the time I remember, I think he spent $20 on tomatoes and fertilizer. And we got, like, three of these gnarly tomatoes. Of course, this is in the 70s, and we’re family of public educators, so 20 bucks is righteous bucks. I said, “Daddy, I’d like to try that. I want to try organic gardening.” And he said, “All right, you go ahead.”

And at the time, KUB used to come by the house and a chipper truck, and they pick up all your brush, you know, throw them in the back of one of those big chippers, and they’d spit it in the back of the truck. And I said, “What do y’all do with that stuff?” “We take it to the landfill.” I said, “Really? How much they pay you for it?” And they said, “They don’t. We pay them to take it.”

This was in 1978. I was in the eighth grade. And so the wheels started turning. I was like, “Man, that’s a business idea.” I said, “Dump that stuff here.” So they dumped it, and I composted it, and I had a crazy, incredible garden. Squash, beans, strawberries, tomatoes, of course. And I fed the church, the neighborhood. Everybody come by the house. I had friends, enemies. I give my sack of tomatoes.

Well, fast forward. Went to college. Six years of undergraduate studies at the University of Tennessee. I thoroughly enjoyed my college career. Six years of studies. I didn’t drink or smoke pot, and it still took me six years.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s pretty good.

TIM BURCHETT: Ended up agreeing to technological adult education. I was certified to teach shop. Took a few art classes, and apparently I got an art certification, I think, on my certificate, I believe. But anyway, so I can weld and fix motors, and I can burn your house down if you need it wired. I can’t do that very well, but all the other machine shop stuff, I can do that, or I could at the time.

So I came up with this idea, taking all the city’s yard waste. And I presented it to then the city mayor. I said, “What are you all doing with it?” I said, “We take it to the landfill.” And they could pay me a reduced fee of what they take it to the landfill. I would grind it and then sell it.

Well, we had a blizzard that year, so we did about, seems like we did 30,000 tons that first year. And they paid me around, it was under 20, but just say $20 a ton. So I was making $600,000. And this was in 91 or 92. I was, been out of college for a little while. Worked in the business world, and.

TUCKER CARLSON: Literally.

TIM BURCHETT: I would have been a millionaire. I became very wealthy, but I had to grind it. So it cost me about a half a million dollars. So I was still clearing $100,000, living at home with my family, who’s public educators. So $100,000 was pretty righteous bucks.

But then I sold it. I sold it for, I think it was $20 a pickup truckload. So I was selling between, I would sell 4 to 5,000 pickup truckloads a month. So I mean I was raking it and it was all cash. And I reported everything and had accountants. I made sure that I was crazy honest. I gave half of it away to churches and schools.

Government Shutdown

Well, somebody decided they wanted that business when I think ended up happening. And they accused me of taking toxic waste. They said there’s bacteria in that newspaper articles. “There’s bacteria in his mulch.” Well, human body contains a half a pound of, a quarter pound of bacteria. I mean, it aids in digestion. If the earth didn’t have bacteria, it’d be a cube. I mean, we just press, you know, nothing would. So Smoky Mountains, there’s not in these parks out here. There’s nobody running around in a white suit collecting every leaf, you know, and put it. So God had a plan and bacteria is part of it.

Well, of course it had bacteria in it. And they would test it and they did a faulty test and finally it just got ridiculous. EPA even came in and oddly enough, the day after they closed my business, I got the EPA report and it cleared me. Said, “In fact, there is bacteria in there, but there’s not abnormal amounts. There’s nothing.”

And the head of UT’s microbiology department, I’ll never forget this, he, Tucker, he ate my mulch on the news to prove that this was just bogus. This is crazy. And the state would come in and shut me down. They’d get.

TUCKER CARLSON: How was it, huh? How about the mulch?

TIM BURCHETT: Delicious. Yeah, delicious. Tastes a lot like chicken, I bet.

So anyway, I end up losing that business. I remember my dad told me, he said, “Put an American flag on top of that mulch pile.” And I did. And he said, “This thing’s bigger than that.” Daddy’s World War II veteran. Nothing. He’s calm under fire. And him and mama both were wonderful people. Mama flew an airplane during the second World war, depression era. Didn’t have electricity. She’s senior in high school. They were tough people and they didn’t like what they were doing to me.

And apparently the public didn’t either because I knocked on, I said knock on over 6,000 doors and beat a respected incumbent, I guess, in the primary. And I never looked back. Then I became, I was in the state House for four years, state Senate for 12 years.

And that’s sort of been my thing, even with the UFOs. My thing is when people come to me because you can hire a lobbyist, you can hire a lawyer, but the average working guy, they call the, they call the front desk and asked, “Can I speak to Tim?” Because they think they know me because they’re, you know, the government’s ripped them off.

And I always remember during that time, it was when, do you remember Travelgate under the Clinton administration?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

TIM BURCHETT: And it seems like I think Hillary and Bill, they, if I remember correctly, they, these people that were running the travel operation at the White House, in Congress, they ran them out of business.

TUCKER CARLSON: They so put their friends in there.

The System and Personal Battles

TIM BURCHETT: So they can put their friends in there. And those people travel the country because I remember they had half a million dollars or had $300,000 in legal expenses. I had more than that in the mulch business. I mean, they were threatening a felony. They were going to throw me in the federal penitentiary over this thing because I wouldn’t give up.

And I remember the University of Tennessee, this liberal professor gave his kids extra credit if they would come picket me. And they came down there and they brought the neighborhood, they brought neighborhood people down there and they had misspelled words in their signs, you know, and they parked their BMWs around the side and they could come picket me to look like they were just. And they all dressed down. It was the most pathetic thing.

And I remember the person at the city that was really orchestrating it all against me was—I remember seeing them hug the reporter that was writing all the nasty articles about me. And I just, you know, the whole thing was just. And I saw, I see Americans getting run down the road and I think that’s why people like me appeal. There’s not a lot of folks like me, obviously, in Congress.

Folks like me appeal to people because they’ve been run over and they know they can call me and I’m not judgmental. I just say I don’t care if they vote for me or not. I have people that are convicted felons, people have killed people before and I’ve helped them out because I don’t care. Because I see the system, it ran over me and I was just some white middle class kid from West Knoxville and the system ran me over.

Threats of Primary Challenges

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, speaking of someone I’ve got two questions before I forget one. Have you ever been threatened since you’ve been in the US Congress with a primary challenge by your own party? Has anyone your own party said, knock it off or we’ll fund a challenger?

TIM BURCHETT: They flew. From what I understand, a couple people were flown to D.C. I know one apparently was, and I think the other one was. And they either called me or called somebody else and said, you know, no, Tim’s a good—

TUCKER CARLSON: Why? Why?

TIM BURCHETT: Because I rock the boat. I’m not—

TUCKER CARLSON: In what way?

TIM BURCHETT: Question leadership. I don’t. I call them out. I can remember one time, was it—

TUCKER CARLSON: The UAPs, do you think, or no?

TIM BURCHETT: Well, I mean, they use that. They think they can use that against me. It’s other things. It’s much deeper than that. I can remember when I went in conference, we were at the Capitol Hill Club, and they meet over there legally so we can talk about fundraising. And then we’re in the Capitol, have our conference meeting to talk strict politics.

And I asked the head of the committee that was carrying the bill. I said, “Ma’am, I said, how much money is in this bill?” And she said, “I don’t know.” And I said, “No, I mean, the bill that you’re talking about right now, the one that we’re getting ready to spend all this money on, how much is in it?” And she said, “I don’t know.”

And leadership said, “Man, you can’t. What are you doing? What are you doing?” I was like, “What do you mean, what am I doing? I come from Tennessee. We run a balanced budget in Tennessee. It’s a crazy concept. We have zero debt. That’s why everybody’s claiming leadership.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Didn’t want you to ask how much.

TIM BURCHETT: It just made everybody uncomfortable, I guess. I don’t know. But things like that. I get it. I get it. I ask questions, you know that. It just. It’s just part of the system. They beat you down. They beat you down.

And then you see them, and then, you know, next thing it’s like. That’s like in Cool Hand Luke, where Paul Newman is. He comes back, they beat him down and beat him down, and he becomes the warden’s boy. But then in reality, it was all an act. And he ends up stealing a truck and getting killed. But I don’t plan on stealing a truck, and I don’t plan on getting killed. I’m not suicidal.

The Financial Crisis and Congressional Priorities

TUCKER CARLSON: Congress won’t continue to exist if they keep acting like this.

TIM BURCHETT: I mean, this country will not continue to exist if we don’t get our financial ship in order, we will sink. And it is. We’re $36 trillion in debt. Nobody cares. All they care about is getting to that next election. That’s bottom line leadership. Anybody else? These people are all my friends. I’m not making any friends doing this.

TUCKER CARLSON: I notice people who have a different view or say things like you’re saying. So Massey, above all, Marjorie Taylor Greene, you. I’m not saying you guys agree on everything. I don’t think you do.

TIM BURCHETT: We’re all very close friends.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you have a similar orientation, which is actually pro America. Is this good for the country or is it not? And all three of you are either dismissed as crazy or really, really hated. In the case of Massey, it’s like, you know, he’s the target of a very serious—

TIM BURCHETT: Oh, that’s happen. They’ll dry his money up and spend millions against him.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is he going to win, do you think?

TIM BURCHETT: I don’t know. I don’t have any idea. I don’t, I haven’t looked at the numbers. I don’t pay much attention to polls except election night. If it’s close, then I question those.

Compromised Members of Congress

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, you have every reason to. You said it earlier in our conversation that members of Congress were compromised. What did you mean by that?

TIM BURCHETT: Well, I was on. Can I name a rival of yours or maybe. I don’t know.

TUCKER CARLSON: I want you to name anything that comes to mind.

TIM BURCHETT: I was on the Benny show and it was early on, and Benny and I become friends. I didn’t realize he was so close to Charlie, Charlie Kirk. But he had me on early on and I did. Honestly, I didn’t know who he was. And he asked me about that and I said, “Well, here’s the way it works. It’s the way it’s worked in the past. The Russians even have a name for, you know, the honey pot.”

You and I don’t go on overseas trips much. I’ve been to one trip and that was prior. I’ve been on one codell, that’s. I went to the Mexican border and I went down one day with Andy Biggs, who’s a good Mormon, who’s hopeful maybe be the governor of Arizona. But he said, “Burchett, we’re going on this trip. I know you don’t go on these things, but it’s just, it’s just, it’s one like you’d like. We’ll go down there and back, stay in an awful motel, we’ll eat some cheap Mexican food, some barbecue, and we’ll put you on a plane back to Tennessee.” And I said, “All right, Andy, I’ll do it.” And, but you know, that’s about it that I’ve done.

And so what happens is you’re overseas, you’re being told how great you are, you’re sitting at a bar and somebody—and they know what you’re into, guys, gals, combination thereof, drugs, whatever, and they’ll hook you up. And you’re thinking, you’re the stud.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re the—

TIM BURCHETT: You’re, you know, your wife’s away, nobody will know. Halfway around the world, you end up sleeping with somebody. And then, you know, you’re out. Next day, you’re flying back to America. You know, you’re back front row at the church, you know, and then you’re getting ready to make a key vote, and somebody comes up and whispers in your ear, “Hey, man, are you in a motel room with a girl? And, you know, Istanbul or something?” “Oh, crap.” He goes, “Man, we don’t want that out.” He goes, “No, no, no, no, no, we don’t. We’re not going to put that out. If you can help us on this little bill, though, you know.”

Now that’s the way they used to do it, and I’m not so certain they don’t do that now. And it’s funny, when I did that show with Benny the next. And, oh, I caught hell, I caught him.

TUCKER CARLSON: You said that?

TIM BURCHETT: I said that. And members said, “Oh, you can’t be saying that stuff, Burchett.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Why?

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah, truth hurts, I guess, for some people. And other people—

TUCKER CARLSON: Have you ever, by the way, just parenthetically ever been attacked for saying something false or only true things?

TIM BURCHETT: Only true things. Yeah, only true things. So I’m. It’s funny, the next week, Tucker, there was this huge. And I said, it always gets covered up, and everything gets covered up, and then somebody owns you. That’s compromise. That’ll be the title of my book, if I ever write a book. Tim Burchett’s Compromised Washington. Because that’s what happens. Or it has happened in the past.

The very next week, a Chinese prostitution ring was busted in Washington, D.C. and who are the—and it was listed in the paper. Who is their client list? High ranking officials in government, elected officials and lobbyists. Now, to me, that’s all kinds of red flags going up all over the place. Well, and then the next week, the story disappeared.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, of course it did.

Modern Methods of Compromise

TIM BURCHETT: But I think what they do now mostly is they have jobs. You look at these guys and gals and you know, they have a wife and, or girlfriend that’ll work in one of these industries. I mean, $100,000 to a multibillion dollar corporation is nothing. I mean, it’s extra supply paper clips or something. I think that’s how they do it now.

You have them in political offices, you have them in business offices, you have them all over and you have what? They’re employed and so they own your ass. See, they’re employed by these people. I’m sorry.

TUCKER CARLSON: Get my wife a job, get my—

TIM BURCHETT: Girl a job, get them both a job, you know, and keep them separate. And you know, I know of. I mean, it’s just common. I mean, I hear about all the time. I hear about—

TUCKER CARLSON: Very common.

TIM BURCHETT: I hear. I mean, it’s, I mean, they just talk. “Oh, she works over at Defense. She works over at Justice. She works for this case.” Or he does, or somebody does, or they work back in the district for such and such. I mean, it’s just human nature.

TUCKER CARLSON: People that members of Congress are sleeping with, either legally or not, are employed by forces that want to control members of Congress.

TIM BURCHETT: That’s what they used to do, and now I’m pretty sure. You know, I knew of instances where that happened when I was in the legislature, and now they do it through the employment agencies.

TUCKER CARLSON: Through employment agencies.

TIM BURCHETT: I mean, just. I mean, they employ them is what I’m saying.

TUCKER CARLSON: They employ them. Yeah. No, I mean, I know a bunch of members of Congress I can, right off top of my head, I can think of with spouses in this or—

TIM BURCHETT: And they might be incredibly qualified, but the reality is America’s not buying that nobody should. But again, 12% of the population votes. This is what you get.

The Changing Nature of Washington

TUCKER CARLSON: I have noticed just having spent my life in D.C. that people’s personal lives are getting weirder in the Congress. Have you noticed that? Without implicating anyone by name. I don’t think I’m imagining this. It’s not just sleeping with your scheduler. It’s weirder than that. Now. Have you noticed that?

TIM BURCHETT: I try to stay in my office as much as possible.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I just want to say for the record, I never heard of anybody participating in an orgy in Washington D.C. in my entire life. And I’ve heard a lot about it recently. So that is. I wasn’t there. I’m not going there, but I think that’s real so I’ve never been—

TIM BURCHETT: I don’t know if it is or it isn’t. I’d hope that it isn’t, and I’d like to think that it isn’t. But I never been invited. So.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I—

TIM BURCHETT: When I was at the state legislature, we used to talk about that, how we knew some people were pretty shady and. But, you know, they never. They would never come to somebody like me and offer me anything because they knew my background.

TUCKER CARLSON: No. And they know you’re making skateboards in—

TIM BURCHETT: Your garage, so you’re busy in my barn.

George Santos: A Sacrificial Lamb

TUCKER CARLSON: One of the members of Congress who all of us were encouraged to think was weird and to hate, he was almost like a ritual sacrifice for the sins of the entire body, I felt, was this guy, George Santos. George Santos was not even a full term congressman from New York who was, like, a serial fabricator, made up all these kind of amazing stories about his life. And he played on competitive volleyball. He worked at Goldman Sachs. And it was all kind of—it was all fake. He was both Jewish and something else, I can’t remember. Anyway, it was all made up. He wound up—

TIM BURCHETT: We always say Jewish. I think I heard Schumer say that.

TUCKER CARLSON: I was amused by the whole thing.

TIM BURCHETT: Maybe I was, too. But I just thought, who is Congress to stand in judgment anyway?

TUCKER CARLSON: But I don’t—well, that’s it. But I don’t remember George Santos ever advocating for, like, killing innocent people, which is, like, very common.

TIM BURCHETT: George Santos had one of the most conservative voting records in Congress across the board. Conservative. I mean, sometimes I’d look up there and think, dad gum, George. That’s a—that’s a little harsh for me. He’d vote against something that was right, and I’d say it cost $5 billion, we’re broke. I go, all right, George, you’re good. I’m good with it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Interesting.

TUCKER CARLSON: So George Santos went up in prison, and I spoke to someone this morning who’s close to George Santos, who visited him in prison this weekend. Right. And told me that he saw George Santos shackled in chains. And he’s been in solitary since he got to prison. He did an interview.

TIM BURCHETT: He’s doing time in a federal lockup, too.

TUCKER CARLSON: In a federal lockup, in solitary confinement.

TIM BURCHETT: Twenty-four hours a day. He gets out, I think one hour to maybe eat and take a bath.

TUCKER CARLSON: What is going on? How did George Santos wind up in prison for like seven years and now he’s in solitary?

TIM BURCHETT: What’s P. Diddy doing? Four, maybe.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I know actual criminals who I know were like celebrated on the front page of the newspaper, so I know a lot of them, so whatever. Not—I don’t want to lecture with the deep unfairness of life, but like, what is that? Why? I think he was—

The Republican Party’s Abandonment

TIM BURCHETT: A sacrificial lamb and I think our party and everybody else just kicked him to the curb and said, “Look how righteous we are.” And I just don’t—he’d always sit with me on sinner’s row. That’s what I call it. Every time somebody would get in trouble, they would or perceived to be in trouble because I’m not, man, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it publicly.

George was under a heck of a lot of pressure and I call myself a Christian and if I sat there and watched him kill himself over something and he went to hell, I’d have that on my soul. And I just don’t want that. My chief of staff called me one day and said, hollered, “Hey boss.” I said, he goes, “I know what you’re going to say.” And I go, “What is it?”

And he said, “Nobody wants to take George as their mentor. Would you be his mentor?” I said, “Sure, sign him up.” And he just shook his head and I said, “Yeah, he’ll do it.” And then, and George and I just became fast friends.

His office was catty-cornered to mine and the press would be just lined up down the hall and I, some kid would walk by close in stature, down the other, holler, “Hey, there’s George Santos.” And they’d all run down there and chase him and I’d have fun with that. And then George would come in the office and I would talk to him about that and I talked to him about my faith.

And I’d say, “This ain’t—this is not reality. George, don’t.” And I’d say, “Promise me, if you think you’re going to take your life, you’d call me anytime, night or day.” He said, “I will, Tim.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Don’t worry.

TIM BURCHETT: And he never did, but when he’d call me from time to time and—

TUCKER CARLSON: But who is like, how did he wind up in prison? That’s so long.

TIM BURCHETT: And to me, I just don’t understand that. We just turned our back on him and the Republican party leadership did. Oh, absolutely. They don’t anywhere near it. We have to, I guess.

TUCKER CARLSON: Like he’s creepier than they are. Sorry that’s not true.

TIM BURCHETT: Well, no, that’s—

TUCKER CARLSON: So I’m just—you don’t have to say that. You work there. But they’re—they are way creepier than George Santos.

TIM BURCHETT: Fact, George is a very interesting guy. And yeah, he fabricated a lot of stuff, but he’s literally doing more time than—than P. Diddy or what it Combs or whatever his name is.

TUCKER CARLSON: Solitary confinement.

TIM BURCHETT: Solitary confinement. And generally solitary is where they put the violent people, the people that have committed heinous crimes. And I hear people say, “Good, good. I hope they lock him up for the rest of his life.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Someone say that about George Santos?

TIM BURCHETT: Oh, yeah, I’ve heard it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Where?

TIM BURCHETT: In Congress. I’ve heard him talk about it and how bad it made it look for us. I was like, “For us?” I said, “Have you not read the papers? We do a pretty good job of making it look bad.”

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t think George Santos started the Ukraine war.

TIM BURCHETT: I mean, what? No, we just—I don’t know. I think, again, we’re a little big on ourselves sometimes.

The Punishment Doesn’t Fit the Crime

TUCKER CARLSON: It does. See, he’s clearly being punished. He clearly has powerful enemies. I’m not sure who they are, but—or maybe I don’t understand the whole thing, but how this person called me this morning to say, “Can you save George Santos?” I mean, I said, “I’m a podcaster. I can’t save anybody.” But I—I don’t know. That’s—this is like—this is truly wrong, what’s happening to George Santos.

TIM BURCHETT: It is completely wrong. Yeah, he—he committed—I guess he took money he shouldn’t have, but—

TUCKER CARLSON: Was a campaign finance violation.

TIM BURCHETT: Yeah, a campaign finance violation. Correct.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. The whole category is—

TIM BURCHETT: And they stack so much up against him. I think the amount of time he was going to do was just incredible. If he’d have stacked them on top of each other.

TUCKER CARLSON: But then to torture him once he gets to prison—

TIM BURCHETT: I think is—he’s—if he—if he—if he lives through it all, he’s going to—he’s going to have one heck of a story to tell.

TUCKER CARLSON: You don’t want to live in a country that does that to people. I don’t think. I mean, so only Trump can save him? Is that kind of where we are, do you think?

TIM BURCHETT: I think so. I think so. And they can commute—you know, they did these reality TV show people that he didn’t even know. We happen to know George. Give him community service, home lockup or whatever. But I just think it’s a waste of taxpayers money, and it’s a waste. It’s just—it just doesn’t seem right. I just don’t—unless everybody else is going to go to jail for a longer amount of time for the crimes they committed.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I mean, I remember very well Bill Jefferson. I mean, I’ve just watched a lot of different scandals in the Congress. Almost all Democrats and the Democratic Party stood behind those people till the—till sentencing.

TIM BURCHETT: Oh, yeah, the leadership, you remember, they all walked out of Congress when Clinton was—and they, I was saying it was there. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. 1998. I’ll never forget it. So the Republican leadership with Marjorie Taylor Greene, with Massie now and with Santos just like immediately. “We’ve never heard of the guy and we hope he dies in prison.” Like, what is that? Why can’t the Republican Party have leadership that stands by its people and stands by its voters? Is that too much to ask?

TIM BURCHETT: I think we read our opinion polls too much and not our souls.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I mean, what’s your sacred duty? It’s to represent the people who elected you. That’s the whole purpose of being there.

TIM BURCHETT: I always thought too our anger—if we had to be angry at anybody, it should have been the Democrats who did the opposition resource. I mean, opposition research on George. I mean, you could have googled and found out that stuff. You could have called the school and said, “Hey, is he in school here?” Or whatever.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, the guy’s like an epic artist. I get it. I mean, I don’t—I’m not defending lying.

TIM BURCHETT: Is that federal? Is that a federal crime?

Putting Deception in Perspective

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, you just spent an hour telling me how they’re lying about UFOs, which is a pretty serious thing to lie about. They’re shutting down military bases because they can’t, because they don’t control the airspace. So that’s very serious. They’re lying about the Kennedy assassination. They lied about September—yeah.

TIM BURCHETT: The funny thing about Kennedy, we had him in on our committee. Luna chairs at and this oversight subcommittee. And we had a doctor in there who was in the emergency room with Kennedy and he said there was clearly an entry wound, an exit one and an entry wound and an exit wound going the opposite direction.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

TIM BURCHETT: And one bullet supposed to—that magic bullet did that shot John—

TUCKER CARLSON: Connolly and the President simultaneously. Those files have not been fully released, as you know.

TIM BURCHETT: No, no. And they never will be. They never will be. Just power, control and—and these in the CIA or whoever would have to admit that they were wrong. They’d have to admit that they were wrong. And the arrogance is just I think once you take the oath, you get an oath of arrogance, that you got to protect us, our past and we’ll protect you kind of thing in the future. And I just think that carries on with them all. And they, for whatever reason, okay, but—

TUCKER CARLSON: George Santos pretending to be a high level volleyball player is the real crime.

TIM BURCHETT: That is the crime of the century.

TUCKER CARLSON: He said he worked at Goldman Sachs. Kill him. Okay, just put, just to put deception in perspective here because I think they’re, not all lies are the same.

TIM BURCHETT: I agree.

What Are UFOs Really?

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, final question. Since you more than any member of Congress have thought about this, as candidly as you can answer, what do you think based on what you’ve heard UFOs are actually?

TIM BURCHETT: I think again, God created the heavens and the earth. And every night I go out with my dogs, usually at 4 o’clock in the morning, they go to the bathroom and look at those stars and I see the light from those stars and it’s hard for my very small brain to comprehend this. A light from those stars left there before the time of Christ. And some of those stars don’t even exist that we’re looking at today. Which is hard for me to fathom, or as a good old voice would say, Harper made a phantom.

But I—I think there’s something else out there. I do not think we are the best that God can do. Now is there something here as this, proposed to me with these deep sea areas? I don’t know. Is something been here? But the—the way for me to comprehend anything traveling light years, I mean, it’s just beyond belief. That is beyond belief.

But now there’s this quantum, I’ve been explaining quantum physics and I really don’t understand it. How something can be here and instantaneously be here, simultaneous, almost simultaneously. And that, that to me begs the question of how does that fit into all this? And if something’s here in these deep sea areas, has it been here for, thousands of years? And that’s the other question. That’s what, these folks in the Navy, kind of—and I have to be real careful.

TUCKER CARLSON: With the folks in the Navy, what—

TIM BURCHETT: That—that I’ve talked to about this undersea type.

TUCKER CARLSON: And what have they said?

TIM BURCHETT: They said we don’t know what’s down there. And they said there’s, we think there’s a reason that they’re over these deep sea areas that we cannot get to. And so I don’t—

TUCKER CARLSON: Their belief is whatever these things are, they’ve been here.

The Limits of Human Understanding

TIM BURCHETT: And obviously if there was, if they meant harm to us, we’re doing a pretty good job of harm to ourselves. Just look at our political structure. But the truth is, is that we just don’t know. And I don’t know. My thoughts are kind of evolving on it, Tucker, to be honest with you, because I get to the point sometimes where I’m kind of beat down. I think, wow, this is crazy. There can’t be.

But how many of these people got to come forward to me that I know and respect, tell me what they’ve seen, and there’s no explanation for it? And so I just think it’s another one of those things I’m not going to know till I’m in heaven. I mean, I know that sounds weird.

TUCKER CARLSON: It doesn’t sound weird at all. It sounds entirely true. And that’s true for a lot of things, including understanding people’s motivations, including your own motivations. Like, we don’t understand anything.

Science and the Unknown

TIM BURCHETT: I mean, of course we don’t. I mean, it’s every, you know, and science can’t get out of its own way every time they find something new. You know, it’s like the coelacanth, for instance. It was a lobed fin fish caught off the coast of Madagascar, I believe it was. And it’s supposed to have been extinct 50 million years ago, but all of a sudden it’s here. And then they, well, you know, there was this, but they can’t explain it.

And I again go back to that Bible verse: “Those professing themselves to be wise became fools.” And I think it’s, I was on a show the other day with a guy named Loeb. He’s a UFO guy. Yeah, I think he’s at Harvard, I believe. Anyway, he was talking about how science, what he likes about science is that it’s changing and it’s evolving. But a lot of scientists, it’s like, you know, this is a brick wall. This is the way it is. It’s not going to change.

And I think with the UFOs, that’s kind of the situation we’re in. I just tell you I’ve talked to too many people that have just sworn to me what they’ve seen. And some that I can’t disclose. But I would hope that eventually that those people are able to come forward.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. And in general, that people would start telling the truth.

TIM BURCHETT: It’s—

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s an act of liberation when you do. Congressman Tim Burchett, I appreciate your coming on. Thank you.

TIM BURCHETT: Thank you, Tucker.

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