Thomas Massie Is Railing Against the 'Virtue Signal Vote'

"I have a history of being the only vote that was a 'no,'" says Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.). "I've developed some trust with my constituents on those lone votes."

In the second episode of Reason's new video podcast Just Asking Questions, Massie joined hosts Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe in mid-December to talk about his recent votes against aid to Ukraine and Israel and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Reform and Reauthorization Act, as well as his attempt to force an in-person congressional vote on a $2.2 trillion COVID-19 relief bill in March 2020, a move that prompted former President Donald Trump to label Massie "a third-rate grandstander."

Reason: In light of the vote on the FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act and the reauthorization of Section 702, which essentially allows the government to surveil communications between American citizens and foreign targets without a warrant, there is a push to attach it to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with a temporary extension. What is at stake for Americans?

Massie: We're not trying to eliminate the FISA 702 program. It was established to allow our intelligence agencies to spy on foreigners without a warrant. In order to qualify to be spied on without a warrant, you have to be outside of the country and you have to be not an American citizen. If you're inside the country or if you're an American citizen outside of the country, you can't be spied on by this program. Sounds great, right? But we've got 250,000 people on that list that we're collecting information on.

If you talk to a businessperson in France, for instance, your emails may get caught up in this data collection. What they've been doing is going into this giant ball of data and they put in your name and search it without a warrant, without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. They are using this not to investigate suspects, but to create suspects.

Let's say that you are at a protest and they develop some nexus. They say, "Well, we think these protesters were inspired by Russia. We're just going to run all the protesters' names through this database." Now, even though the intel community doesn't concede that they need a warrant for this, they've admitted that they violated their own protocols hundreds of thousands of times when they searched for U.S. persons' data in this haystack. They say, "Well, it was created legally, so we don't need a warrant to go search it."

There are two proposals to reauthorize this program. By the way, the only chance you ever get to reform these programs is when they expire. So it's important that they do expire occasionally, and this one expires in January. In the Judiciary Committee, which [Rep.] Jim Jordan [R–Ohio] chairs, and on which I serve, we've marked up a bill that would require them to get a warrant. It would create criminal penalties for people in the executive branch who abuse the program. Because there's never any culpability or blowback for anybody that's abused this program.

And then the Intel Committee has created a bill that is less than ideal. It doesn't have a warrant requirement. It doesn't have many of the reporting requirements back to Congress that the Judiciary bill has. In fact, it expands their ability to collect information. For instance, if you had free Wi-Fi at a café, that service provider would be treated like Google or Verizon now and they would have to create a direct pipeline to the intel agencies for any of the communications that go through that.

So you've got two proposals out there, and we're running out of time.

In the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations about inappropriate government surveillance a decade ago, there were some lonely dissenters, but most just rubber-stamped this stuff. Now, it seems there's more resistance, possibly influenced by the way FISA was used against the Trump administration. Do you feel the political tides have shifted to the advantage of people who care about privacy?

The tides haven't just shifted; the stars have aligned. We've never had a chairman of either the Intel Committee or the Judiciary Committee who made reforming this program one of their priorities. So with Jim Jordan, we're very lucky to have him as the chairman of this committee. One of his signature agendas is to get this reform because we have seen abuses that have been used against President Trump.

A lot of conservatives have woken up to the fact that this program is being used against them. You have liberals who are upset about the program. Obviously, the FBI's using this against Black Lives Matter as well.

So you do have this coalition of the left and the right. It used to be a coalition of a dozen people. It was me and [former Rep.] Justin Amash [L–Mich.], [Rep.] Zoe Lofgren [D–Calif.], and [former Rep.] Tulsi Gabbard [D–Hawaii] who were concerned about this. We used to come together and we would offer amendments to try to fix this in the funding bills. We would try to defund some of this stuff, which is a really blunt instrument. It's a lot easier to write legislation that affects the laws than it is to just defund something. And they would pat us on the head and say, "Well, you know, we appreciate the sentiment, but this isn't the time or place to do what you're doing. And you shouldn't be mucking around with the funding." But now is the time and place: The program is expiring. We've got a chairman who's sympathetic to the cause. This reported out of the Judiciary Committee 35–2. There were only two dissenters.

During his recent visit to Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought more U.S. funding to support Ukraine's war against Russia's invasion. There's also a complex foreign policy situation in the Middle East right now between Israel and Hamas. You have called funding Ukraine and Zelenskyy "economically illiterate and morally deficient." Why oppose this form of funding?

The economic illiteracy is in reference to a letter that the White House sent to the House of Representatives. In two or three of the paragraphs of the letter, they espouse the virtues of spending money with the military-industrial complex and sending that to Ukraine as a job creation program. That it would re​invigorate our military-industrial complex. You've got to believe in the broken window fallacy to think this will be an economic stimulus for the United States.

Meanwhile, the moral deficiency comes from some of the senators who have said that this war is a great deal for America because all we have to do is supply the weapons and Ukraine supplies the soldiers, and we're grinding down the Russian army. We're degrading their capacity to do this elsewhere or to commit war against us. The problem with that is the number of people who are dying. Zelenskyy allegedly told the senators that he's raising the draft age to 40 and admitted that they are running out of soldiers either through attrition on the battlefield or from people who've defected and left the country.

You would think if this were a war about the existence of Ukraine and protecting a democracy and such a fine government that people would sign up, would volunteer to fight for their country. But the reality is that hundreds of thousands of them who had the means and the money got out of the country. Some are dying, trying to escape over mountains and through rivers to get out of the country. And far too many have died on the battlefield. We can keep supplying them with weapons. We can keep depleting our treasure. But they're going to run out of fighting-age males pretty soon.

Regarding individuals leaving Ukraine, do you take that as an indictment of Ukraine's democratic system or a perception that the war is unwinnable?

I think it's both. They lived in a country where they know that bribery and corruption are part of the culture and the current government isn't immune to that. If you're fighting for your country, that's one thing. But fighting for the government that's in charge of your country is another thing. I believe that's part of it. Obviously, self-preservation is going to be part of it as well.

When it's over, there's going to have to be some negotiated peace settlement. Nobody, I think, believes Crimea is going to go back to Ukraine. So why spend all the lives when the lines are going to be where they were when it started? Realism is a third factor in that.

You've been on the lonely end, certainly on the Republican side, of several votes pertaining to Israel, including House Resolution 771, which is entitled, "Standing with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists." Could you explain your stance on Israel, where you're coming from, and what you think some of these critics might be missing about your position?

Today, we're going to take our 19th virtue signal vote here in Congress. I guess I got off on the wrong foot early and have been voting consistently ever since. The title of that bill is wonderful. I have no disagreement with the title of that bill, but there are four or five pages that go after that title.

The first objection I had was that there is an open-ended pledge of military support for Israel. We never declare wars anymore. The administration just kind of goes and does it. And Congress keeps funding it, but they find the imprimatur for their activity right there in these resolutions. The open-ended guarantee of support for that war that's contained in the text of that bill, but not the title, could have implied boots on the ground. And that may be the only vote we get to take in Congress on whether we're going to do that or not. So, number one, I don't support that notion.

Number two, in that resolution they mentioned Iran. In the very first resolution, they're already trying to expand the war and incorporate as much of the Middle East as they can. There's some people that just can't wait to attack Iran, and they want to use this as the nexus to get there. So that was in the resolution, a condemnation of Iran. I think we should be trying to constrain the conflict, not to expand it in the first resolution of support that we passed.

Part of that resolution wanted stronger sanctions on Iran. I don't support sanctions, never voted to sanction a sovereign country in the 11 years that I've been in Congress. I think it leads to war. Sanctions actually create crimes only for U.S. citizens, because we're not going to put somebody in jail in another country who trades with Iran. What we're proposing to do when we pass a sanction is to make a federal law that would result in the imprisonment of a U.S. citizen who trades with Iran. And it hurts the people who are in the country. I think it actually edges us closer to war instead of getting us out of war. Even though I support Israel and I condemned Hamas, I did that on my own. I put out a statement. I support Israel's right to defend itself and I condemn these attacks. But that wasn't enough.

You've taken heat for what you would describe as a "virtue signal" bill that is essentially the House reaffirming the state of Israel's right to exist and recognizing that denying Israel's right to exist is a form of antisemitism. Where are you coming from on these sorts of bills that aren't directly tied to any sort of military aid?

I recognize Israel's right to exist. I have to preface all of this stuff with that because people would imply from a vote that I don't. But when they passed that, I said, "You're basically saying that anti-Zionism is antisemitism." And people argued with me about that.

What's interesting is the next week they passed almost the same resolution and they replaced Israel's right to exist with Zionism. Maybe I'm just giving them clues for how to write their bills more directly because the next resolution said that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. There are hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who disagree with that statement. In fact, [Rep.] Jerrold Nadler [D–N.Y.], who's the most senior member of Congress who's Jewish, went to the floor and gave a five-minute speech, which is a long speech in the House of Representatives, on why that's untrue to say that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

There are a lot of people who are antisemitic who are also against the state of Israel, but you can't equate the two. I think these 19 votes, after today, are sort of part of the war effort for Israel to make it hard for anybody in the United States to criticize what they're doing.

Every two or three days here in Congress, we're taking these votes. A lot of what's in the resolution is just obvious and doesn't need to be stated. It's kind of like Black Lives Matter. You have to say "black lives matter." They're doing the equivalent with Israel. Now Israel matters. I agree that Israel matters, but we don't have to take all these votes. And some of them are going into campuses and trying to limit free speech by withholding federal money if you allow things that are considered antisemitic.

I've been called antisemitic for merely not supporting the money that goes to Israel. [The American Israel Public Affairs Committee] spent $90,000 in my district running ads implying that I was antisemitic, then in a tweet said that I was antisemitic for not voting for the $14.3 billion to go to Israel, even though I've not voted for foreign aid to go anywhere.

You have a reputation as the guy who's willing to take the unpopular vote. One of the prime examples of that is back during the depths of COVID-19, in March 2020, when everyone was pushing for a $2.2 trillion COVID relief bill, including the president. It was you who said, "If we're going to have a $2 trillion vote here, let's follow the Constitution and have everyone come back to D.C. and actually do it in person."

President Trump's response to that was, "Looks like a third-rate grandstander named Rep. Thomas Massie, a congressman from, unfortunately, a truly great state, Kentucky, wants to vote against the new Save Our Workers bill in Congress. He just wants publicity. He can't stop it." He goes on to say that "the Republicans should win the House, but they should kick out Thomas Massie." What was that like having the Eye of Sauron on you for insisting on an in-person vote in March 2020?

I'll have to write a book someday. Those tweets happened about 60 seconds after a phone call ended between me and President Trump, where he basically burned my ear off, screaming at me for probably three minutes and said he was coming at me, he was going to take me down. That's a sobering proposition when you've got a primary election eight weeks away and you've been trying to keep the president out of your race. The person running against you says you don't support the president enough. The president had a 95 percent approval rating among the primary voters who were going to vote in my election. But I just stood strong. I said, listen, if truckers and nurses and grocery store workers are showing up for work, then Congress should show up for work too. And that was, I think, an unassailable message. Ultimately, I was just trying to get people on record.

The reason I was trying to get people on record is because I knew this was one of the worst votes in history and nobody was going to be accountable for it. Here we are three years later, and every bad thing that I said would happen as a result of doing that has happened. And even my colleagues here in Congress, a lot of them admit to me that they were wrong about that. They won't say it too loudly lest anybody hear it.

The reporters came up to me as I walked out of the chamber that day and said, "Your own president just called you a third-rate grandstander. What do you have to say?" And I said, "I was deeply insulted. I'm at least second-rate."

How much COVID policy remorse is there among your colleagues in Congress?

Not enough. Not nearly enough. The policy isn't just the spending, the vaccine mandates, the shutting down of our economy, the compulsory masking, the way people were treated like cattle. There should be far more remorse. But frankly, that's a reflection of the voters as well. If you poll this, most people have moved on. Even a year ago, most people had moved on and it wasn't in the top five issues that people care about in any congressional district.

Look at [Florida Gov.] Ron DeSantis. That was part of his signature issue. He most famously opposed a lot of this COVID nonsense after it became obvious what we were dealing with. He rode that wave and he was polling better than Trump. But I think people have moved on and they've got other issues to think about now. So have my colleagues. I think it's really unfortunate. I wished that I had been able to get that recorded vote that day. We'd have a lot more people who wouldn't be back here in Congress perpetrating bad ideas like FISA.

You were elected during the era of the Tea Party's emphasis on reining in government spending: "We can't have the money printer constantly printing forever. We have to be prudent because the bill always comes due." Do you think that message has any hopes of having any sort of revival in the coming years, especially given the runaway inflation that we've seen? Is it a lost cause?

Let me assign a 95 percent probability to that last proposition. I'm here with a 5 percent chance that we can save it. And in the 30 percent chance that if it all goes to hell in a handbasket, I can still be here and have some credibility to put it back together.

I think what's starting to curb the appetite for spending and bring some realism into the discussion is the only thing that was ever going to curb our appetite for spending, and that is our creditors are starting to balk. The rates at which the government can borrow money now aren't what we want them to be. When we go out to do an auction or a sale for treasuries or bonds, what we're finding is the appetite isn't there, even at 4.5 percent. To get a guaranteed 4.5 percent return on your money from the government backed by the U.S. military? That's not enough to loan that money to the government. They want 5 percent. The private sector and the other countries, the sovereign funds, usually have the appetite for our debt—when they're losing their appetite, that's a sign that things are going south.

I wear this debt clock that I built in Congress to remind people of it. One side effect of me wearing this is that I've noticed the rate at which the debt is increasing is going up. For the math nerds, that's the second derivative. Today, the debt per second is an average of $78,000. I don't think people realize. It feels like we're going over Niagara Falls right now. The rate of these bad things happening is increasing now.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.