Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sees a parallel between the strength Donald Trump showed in the wake of the shootings and the boldness of young conservatives standing up to left-wing indoctrination, he told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview at the Young America’s Foundation National Student Conference.
Jordan spoke to Breitbart News shortly after addressing a packed room of committed young conservative students at the conference.
“It’s good to see young conservative students taking the risk of being conservative on college campuses today,” he told Breitbart News. “God bless their courage. And courage is contagious, so let’s pray that it’s contagious.”
He praised and encouraged the students, promising them that their perseverance will be rewarded.
“I learned a long time ago that good things in life don’t just happen,” Jordan said. “If you want to accomplish something important, it takes time, effort, work, sacrifice, but most importantly, you have to be willing to take risks.”
“There’s a risk of failure and, perhaps more importantly, in today’s politics, there’s a risk of attack. You don’t even have to get your name on the ballot or run for office — just being a conservative can make you vulnerable to attack.”
Jordan told Breitbart that Democrats will struggle in November no matter who they appoint to advance their failed policies, and offered his analysis of where Republicans should focus their attack.
“What it all boils down to is we can bounce back from all the stupid things the Biden administration has done,” he said. “You know, we went from secure borders to no borders, from safe streets to crime records, from $2 gas to $4 gas, from stable prices to record inflation. We can address all of that. We can get back on track in these important policy areas. But what if the government takes away our freedoms? That’s what’s at stake in this election: your First Amendment, your Second Amendment, your privacy rights, all of those things. So I tried to emphasize that that’s really what matters and what I think it all boils down to is what’s going to be on the ballot in November.”
FILE – Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Jordan offered his views on Kamala Harris, who Democrats catapulted to the top of their candidate list after forcing President Joe Biden to abandon his struggling reelection campaign.
“I don’t think it matters who runs, because the facts remain the same,” he told Breitbart. “They got rid of the president of the United States and they picked Kamala Harris as their candidate. They made a border agent into a borderless border. I think the American people are smart and they have common sense, and they’re going to realize this.”
He contrasted the threat the Biden-Harris administration’s policies pose to Trump’s policies, as well as the candidate himself.
“You look at the policies, and you look at the attacks on freedom. And you look at the leadership and the integrity that President Trump showed on July 13th, the calm of leadership under literal attack.”
He continued:
In fact, when I spoke with the president, I said, “The composure you showed in those few minutes was just incredible.” So I think that’s what’s going to stick with the American people. And I said that to my students. President Trump’s response was an American response. Americans are not wimps and cowards. Americans are tough. And they saw that in a leader, a true leader. Leadership, character, composure, confidence in a time of crisis. So that was the American response. And it was very powerful.
And on top of that, people remember how good things were under President Trump, despite all the very bad policies that we’ve had. So that’s the only choice in this election, and the American people are going to have President Trump as their president and J.D. Vance as their vice president. I think we’re going to win the Senate and we’re going to keep the House.
Jordan, who chairs the powerful House Judiciary Committee, spoke about his role in congressional efforts to investigate Secret Service failures that led to the assassination attempt on President Trump.
We held a hearing with the Director of the Secret Service. [Kimberly Cheatle] He then resigned, and the Homeland Security Committee held a hearing with local law enforcement on the 13th. Yesterday [FBI] director [Chris] Mr. Ray provided valuable information before the Judiciary Committee about the drones, including how many times the perpetrators were on the scene. And we [a bill] All they need to do is set up a task force to investigate and release a report later, and I think the facts will become clear.
Jordan also wants to prioritize an investigation into the Secret Service’s response to the shooting.
“Frankly, what concerns me most is that they lied to us after it was over on the 14th or 15th,” he said. “A Secret Service spokesperson said, to quote directly, that it’s a total lie that we denied President Trump’s request for additional resources from his security force.” [Alejandro] Mayorkas said it was a blatant mistake that they had not provided the additional resources they requested, and then five days later said they had “in fact, in several instances declined requests from President Trump’s security forces.”
Jordan continued, “You can’t have both. It’s a 180 degree turn. I mean, you lied to us the day after, literally hours after, the attack on President Trump. You lied to us. And then the fact that they didn’t give additional resources to President Trump’s security force when they knew Iran was going to kill President Trump, that’s just nuts. To me, that’s the biggest problem.”
“We all need to see what happened during the rally,” he concluded. “But they lied to us. This is our government. They shouldn’t do that.”
Bradley Jay is Capitol Hill correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter. translator.
