Congressman Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate on Monday. Tuesday, he sat down for a lengthy interview with APR‘s Brandon Moseley.
Stephen Miller, who has been known for both his service to former President Donald Trump and to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, endorsed Brooks. Brooks said that Miller’s endorsement “is huge because he is symbolic of the support that I have with those who are part of Donald Trump’s inner circle.”
Below is a Q&A.
APR: You are 66, if elected, you will be in your mid-seventies by the end of your first term. This is an age where most men begin thinking about retirement. Why are you embarking on a new career?
Brooks: First I have long genes in my family, my mom and dad both lived into their nineties and my grandmother lived past one hundred. Second I am running because my country needs me.
APR: You have been pilloried in the national press. If you are the nominee is there a fear that your candidacy will draw more national attention and Democratic donor dollars to the general election race?
Brooks: I hope so. We need to divert that money from races where the socialists can win to where they can lose. No Republican in the history of Alabama has won more general elections carrying the Republican banner than Mo Brooks.
APR: Is there the possibility of you and the Republicans in Congress coming to common ground with the Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress on a comprehensive immigration reform package?
Brooks: I sure hope not, because the socialists support open borders and have no intent to compromise on border security. Any compromise with them would be a sellout. We had a compromise with the socialist Democrats in 1986. President Reagan gave amnesty and the socialists then broker their word and never gave the promised border security. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
APR: Immigration, both illegal and rampant legal immigration, hits young people and minorities hardest; making it very difficult for people just starting out in their careers to find jobs and to advance in those positions due to immigrant competition yet those demographics have been historically difficult for Republicans. Why is that immigration message not swaying more young people and minorities to the GOP side?
Brooks: Unfortunately, with young people, it takes time for them to figure out when the socialists are lying to them and figure out the damage that is being done to them.
APR: The national debt is in excess of $28 trillion and with the recently passed COVID-19 stimulus and the talk of an infrastructure bill being brought by the Biden administration we could blow past $30 trillion by early summer. Is there anyone in Washington who has the force of will to tell the American people that the spending, much of it on healthcare and Social Security has to be cut back for the future financial solvency of the nation or do we just ride along and hope nothing happens bad soon?
Brooks: I don’t single out those two programs, but I frequently tell about the dangers of insolvency and bankruptcy if we do not come to terms financially with the debt. Unfortunately, there are not enough members of Congress who are not debt junkies to win any votes.”
APR: Are Democrats trying to undermine the integrity of our elections?
Brooks: Absolutely, not trying, they do.
APR: Are the gun bills that passed the U.S. House of Representatives recently, which you opposed, unconstitutional?
Brooks: In my judgment, yes, but I am never surprised how far liberal activists Supreme Court Justices will go to stretch the law away from what the plain language of the Constitution means.
APR: Are mass gun confiscations likely if Democrats are able to keep the presidency and continue their hold on Congress?
Brooks: The socialists certainly hope so. Congressman Eric Swalwell came to Alabama in 2020 and said exactly that. You either give up your guns or he will have law enforcement seize them from you.
APR: You have defended your speech to the pro-Trump crowd on January 6th. Looking back on it, is there anything that you wish you had done or said differently?
Brooks: The people who I have talked to who were at the Ellipse that day have unanimously told me it was a great speech. If there was anything I would have done differently, I would have emphasized so that even the fake news media can understand it that I meant in the 2022 and 2024 elections.
APR: In your opinion, will we ever conclusively know who won the 2020 election.
Brooks: That reminds me of the time that Sen. Daniel Inouye said ‘How America stole the Panama Canal fair and square.’ Biden and his team stole the election fair and square, but now he has been sworn in as President so he won.
Brooks replied that he would be in favor of a constitutional amendment protecting the lives of all Americans from the moment of conception to the point of a natural death.
APR: In the last election, you and Doug Jones were the only Alabama Congressional incumbents that the Alabama Farmers Federation did not endorse. In fact, they even went so far as to endorse your Republican primary opponent? Have you patched things up with them or are there lingering issues between them and you that could pop back up in this Senate race?
Brooks: My positions are unchanged. I don’t support flooding the American labor market with cheap foreign labor hurting struggling American families nor am I comfortable with the tens of billions of dollars in food stamps and farm subsidies that farm bureau insists I support at a time America suffers from a debt burden that risks a debilitating national insolvency and bankruptcy that would do great damage to American lives.
APR: As a cancer survivor, you were a vocal supporter of the Right to Try bill, many medical marijuana advocates argue that cannabis has some medical applications, particularly for children with severe epileptic seizures and for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Do you support the descheduling of marijuana as a class 1 controlled substance?
Brooks: I support allowing doctors and patients to decide which medications that they use to treat the ailments from which they are suffering.
APR: Has President Biden made a mess of this border situation?
Brooks: Absolutely, but he has had help from many other socialists. The current crisis has been in the making for more than three decades. Joe Biden just made it abruptly worse.
APR: Are Democrats putting their own electoral interests ahead of the national interest by giving citizenship to millions of illegal aliens and encouraging other people to come across the border, even while our own economy is in shambles and we are still battling the COVID-19 global pandemic?
Brooks: Yes.
APR: Are you in favor of keeping ten to twenty thousand National Guard troops in D.C. protecting the Congress from the people indefinitely or was this an overreaction to what happened on January 6?
Brooks: It was a gross overreaction. There is not any intelligence to suggest that the U.S. Capital needs military forces or a razor wire-topped fence. Our Capital Police if given proper rules of engagement are fully capable of providing capital security.
Brooks said that he had no confidence in the Biden Administration’s ability to deal with Iran and prevent them from getting nuclear weapons.
APR: As tensions have risen with China, do we have a sufficiently large and capable enough military to effectively deal with the Chinese army if there is an armed conflict?
Brooks: Yes. As of today. I can’t speak concerning the near or long-term future. Time will answer that question. By way of example if we suffer a debilitating insolvency and bankruptcy there may be no money for national security so there would be no way of stopping China, Iran, or North Korea.
APR: Do you hope to have President Trump’s endorsement in this race?
Brooks: Every Republican candidate does. It is like gold in Alabama.
APR: Is the Space Launch System and Orion still on course to vault the U.S. to new heights in space exploration?
Brooks: That is the direction we are headed. The only restraints are the will to persist and the money to make it so.
Brooks is running in the Republican primary for the seat currently held by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama. Shelby is retiring when this term ends. Currently, Brooks’s only opponent is former Trump administration Ambassador to Slovenia Lynda Blanchard.
Brooks is in his sixth term representing Alabama’s 5th Congressional District. He is a former Madison county commissioner, state legislator and prosecutor. Brooks has been married to his wife, Martha Jenkins Brooks, since 1976. They have four children.
The Republican primary is tentatively scheduled for May 2022, but that could be moved back so that the Legislature has more time to do redistricting as the Census results have been delayed.
