INTERVIEW: Rep. Tom Emmer on his bipartisan Israel trip, government funding, crime in D.C., and more

Rep. Tom Emmer (R., Minn.) had a hectic District Work Period, headlined in part by leading a bipartisan trip of freshman lawmakers to Israel with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

In an interview with the Washington Reporter, Emmer spoke about the importance of seeing firsthand what Palestinian “animals” did to civilians on October 7th, 2023 — which was also the worst terrorist attack on American citizens since September 11th, 2001.

“We had one of the more revealing and troubling experiences there [in southern Israel],” Emmer said. “We met with a resident of Kibbutz Be'eri, which was attacked by some 350 of these animals on October 7, and he described how they came in and went from building to building, murdering, raping, burning people alive. I mean, just awful stuff…It was pretty amazing during the experience the explosions are taking place in Gaza. Why? Because they're still blowing up the tunnel system that these guys built.”

“Imagine,” Emmer said, “over the last 20, 25, years, if they would have taken all the money that they spent to build a tunnel system underneath the city, which, by the way, is usually accessed through hospitals, through schools, through anything that puts civilians at risk, big enough for semi tractor trailers to drive through, imagine what a beautiful place Gaza would have been had they been investing that into the actual infrastructure, whether it be roads, sewer, water, buildings, it would have been a completely different place, but they were bent and directed for one thing: hate the Jew, kill the Jew, that's what they were about.”

But Israel’s importance goes beyond just the Middle East, Emmer explained. For terrorists in the Middle East, “this is not about destroying the State of Israel,” he said. “This is about destroying Western civilization from the Ayatollah and these radical, crazy Muslim extremists. Their goal is to go through Israel to get to the United States.”

Despite a handful of Emmer’s GOP colleagues emerging as fierce critics of Israel — and in one case, falsely accusing America’s closest ally in the Middle East of a non-existent “genocide” against Gazans, the GOP Whip said that intra-Republican divisions on Israel are virtually nonexistent.

“We've got a couple of members of our conference who have a different point of view,” he said. “I think with everyone else, it's just a matter of degree. They're already with Israel.”

That’s part of why Emmer said that AIPAC’s bipartisan trip is “really smart” to do. AIPAC also brings members’ spouses to Israel, which Emmer said is a wise move, because spouses are the most important voices for members to listen to.

While in Israel, Emmer met with senior Israeli leadership, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog. He gave the Reporter a peek behind the scenes of his conversation with Netanyahu, and with his subsequent phone call with President Donald Trump.

Following his meeting with Netanyahu, Emmer said that “I did have to call President Trump when I got back, because I told him that Prime Minister Netanyahu says really complimentary things about the president in public, he does that in private too. I told him I had a chance to sit with him for, I don't know, about 10-15, minutes, and one of the things that stood out to me is that Prime Minister Netanyahu said ‘I've worked with a lot of your presidents. Specifically, I've worked with Clinton, I've worked with Obama, I've worked with Biden. Your president, Donald Trump, is the only one who gets it. He's the only one that has ever gotten it, and of course, the president goes ‘that’s great, that's fantastic. Spread that around!’”

Emmer also drew a strong contrast between Trump’s leadership, especially on matters of tackling crime in D.C., with that of the Democrats who run his home state of Minnesota.

“What you hear, if you're talking to actual people in Minnesota, is that they’re more aligned with what Trump is doing in Washington, D.C., than they are with what they've seen in Minneapolis, Minnesota, under the leadership of not only our failed governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, but the immature Minneapolis mayor, who just has no leadership skills whatsoever,” Emmer said. He also called for Mary Moriarty, the Democratic County Attorney of Hennepin County, to be disbarred because she would rather prosecute law enforcement officials than criminals.

When it comes to domestic policy, Emmer said that it’ll be up to Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) on whether another continuing resolution is needed. But, he said, “the idea is to get that appropriations process done. This is what the whole goal has been for the House in the last several years, is to get back to not only regular order, to do a budget, to get it done.”

“I don't see how you get to that September 30 date if next week we are voting to go to conference,” he said. “I think it's probably going to take a short term CR.”

Below is a transcript of our interview with Rep. Tom Emmer (R., Minn.), lightly edited for clarity.

Washington Reporter:

Why was it important for you to go to Israel as part of August work period?

Rep. Tom Emmer:

I was invited by AIPAC to lead their freshman trip, which is where all the new members and their spouses are invited; it’s really smart by AIPAC, because some of these people have been to Israel and understand how special it is. Others have never been there, and they're listening to this TikTok-driven nonsense about who's actually responsible for what happened. They're trying to rewrite history. But it was barbaric animals that crossed over into Israel on the morning of October 7 and brutalized human beings like we haven't seen, perhaps since the Middle Ages. It was so awful and disgusting, and yet they're trying to say that somehow we need to respect Hamas and these others. I think it was really good of AIPAC to set this up, and it's also good to have spouses accompany us, because who's the most influential person in our life? It's going to be our spouse. It’s better that you both see what's going on, the schedule was so packed, Matthew. When people are complaining about a schedule, that is actually a good sign. We landed on a Monday morning at eight o'clock or so, and by one o'clock, we're in the City of David. We're doing stuff until 10 o'clock at night on Monday, and then it's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. You go from Jerusalem to the Golan Heights to the Sea of Galilee; they do some amazing things. You meet with the Prime Minister, you meet with President Herzog, and then we travel to what they call the Gaza envelope. We had one of the more revealing and troubling experiences there. We met with a resident of Kibbutz Be'eri, which was attacked by some 350 of these animals on October 7, and he described how they came in and went from building to building, murdering, raping, burning people alive. I mean, just awful stuff. And he told the story. He starts with a pair of sunglasses, and it's clear that he's told the story before and given a lot of tours. But I was convinced, because the sunglasses came off after about the third stop, where he stopped in front of a place. He told us who lived there, and he told us the great things that the family is now doing, trying to remember them. And this gentleman lost family, friends, neighbors. But the glasses came off, and it's clear to me that he's about how life is for the living. Don't forget what happened, honor their memory, but we've got to make sure that we move on, that this thing is safe and secure for others to come. It was pretty amazing during the experience the explosions are taking place in Gaza. Why? Because they're still blowing up the tunnel system that these guys built. Imagine over the last 20, 25, years, if they would have taken all the money that they spent to build a tunnel system underneath the city, which, by the way, is usually accessed through hospitals, through schools, through anything that puts civilians at risk, big enough for semi tractor trailers to drive through, imagine what a beautiful place Gaza would have been had they been investing that into the actual infrastructure, whether it be roads, sewer, water, buildings, it would have been a completely different place, but they were bent and directed for one thing: hate the Jew, kill the Jew, that's what they were about. And look, we heard those explosions. We actually saw in process a food drop going into Gaza. We talked a lot about the misinformation that's out there. Hamas is using civilians, especially children; now they try and make the argument that Israel is committing genocide. That could not be further from the truth. Let's put it this way: if Hamas put down all their weapons today, how many people would die?

Washington Reporter:

All of Hamas.

Rep. Tom Emmer:

If Israel put their weapons down today, what would happen? How many would die?

Washington Reporter:

There are 10 million people in Israel, so 10 million. You were talking about this misinformation and President Trump was recently talking about a minor uptick, but somewhat noticeable one, and you see it with one of your colleagues, in anti-Israel sentiment with some in the Republican Party. You're the Whip; how do you get everyone on the same page on an issue like this?

Rep. Tom Emmer:

Well, we've got a couple of members of our conference who have a different point of view. I think with everyone else, it's just a matter of degree. They're already with Israel. It's just, how much do you know about Israel? How much do you know about the startup nation? How much do you understand not just about the innovation, the amazing things that the Israeli people are doing, not only on their own, but in combination with the United States of America? How much do you know about the fact that the Ayatollah came to power back in 1979 when I was a senior in high school? This is not about destroying the State of Israel. This is about destroying Western civilization from the Ayatollah and these radical, crazy Muslim extremists. Their goal is to go through Israel to get to the United States. And how much of that do they know? I think this trip is great at really giving people more context for what's going on. And I have to tell you, I did have to call President Trump when I got back, because I told him that Prime Minister Netanyahu says really complimentary things about the president in public, he does that in private too. I told him I had a chance to sit with him for, I don't know, about 10-15, minutes, and one of the things that stood out to me is that Prime Minister Netanyahu said ‘I've worked with a lot of your presidents. Specifically, I've worked with Clinton, I've worked with Obama, I've worked with Biden. Your president, Donald Trump, is the only one who gets it. He's the only one that has ever gotten it, and of course, the president goes ‘that’s great, that's fantastic. Spread that around!’

Washington Reporter:

On the other side of the aisle, one of your Democratic colleagues spent recess at a conference filled with people so radical that Marco Rubio was denying some of the invited speakers visas to enter the United States of America. How do you see the Democratic Party evolving on this issue? You were with Democratic freshmen in Israel, but some of their most vocal people could not be on a more opposite side of both this issue and basically everything else that you guys are on.

Rep. Tom Emmer:

First off, they're Democrats, and it's the Democrat Party. There's nothing democratic about that. They're socialists, they're Marxists, they're anarchists, they have gone so extreme they make the fight that is on the Republican side in the last decade or so about whether you're constitutional enough or not, look like a disagreement at a coffee shop. These guys are so far off the edge. It's un-American, but not all of them. There are still left of center Democrats who are more like my grandfather, who was a very proud Democrat. There are some who are fiscally conservative. They just have different ideas about how we should be deploying resources, etc. They're still there, but because of how radical the far left has gotten, with people like Ilhan Omar in my home state, they’re being drowned out. That girl, she actually shouldn't be so hateful. She should be a little grateful about the fact that she ended up in the greatest country on the face of the planet when she was five years old and was allowed to grow into a public servant, and she might want to remember that she is an American and that she should put America and Americans first. She doesn't represent any place else, even though she'd like to claim she does. The radicalization of the Democrat Party is well underway, and I think this is a struggle on their side of the aisle right now, right the disagreement has been engaged. Are the more free market, constitutionally inclined Democrats going to win this battle and pull their party back, or will the Marxist socialist the Ayanna Pressleys, the Rashida Tlaibs, the Cori Bushes, going to win? Cori really was just a noisy mouth. They're not leaders. I mean, you gotta have legislators. It's the argument I have on our side all the time. It's gotta be good policy and politics. But a lot of these people now just play good politics, even if it's bad policy. So theirs is something totally different. I think there's a group that is hiding behind the title ‘progressive’ that believes we should look like Venezuela or communist Cuba or something that is centrally controlled. This is the very thing that Hayek wrote about during World War Two, called the Road to Serfdom. They want exactly what he told us all to watch out for. They want a central authority controlling who gets what, who gets to do what, and who they get to do it with. And if you just condense that whole book down into a couple of sentences, he said ‘be very wary of that, because the central authority, it works pretty good if you're part of the central authority, if you're the one making the decisions, but if you're the one that's not making the decisions and you complain about the decisions being made, first they take away your liberty, and then they might take away a lot more.’ So that's why the free market, constitutional republic that our Founders envisioned and that has developed over the last almost 250 years, is the best model that you can possibly have. But we have to be responsible.

Washington Reporter:

Can you compare and contrast the leadership from Trump with D.C. crime that we're seeing in the summer of 2025 and that of your home state governor, Tim Walz, in 2020 and how this has been registering with voters and your constituents on the ground in Minnesota?

Rep. Tom Emmer:

So it's interesting on the ground. What you hear, if you're talking to actual people in Minnesota, is that they’re more aligned with what Trump is doing in Washington, D.C., than they are with what they've seen in Minneapolis, Minnesota, under the leadership of not only our failed governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, but the immature Minneapolis mayor, who just has no leadership skills whatsoever. He's more like an entertainer or an actor without a core. The only core is his personal ambition and advancement. Or Mary Moriarty, who actually should be disbarred as the district attorney. She would rather prosecute state troopers for doing their job than she would prosecute a 27 year old government employee who causes thousands of dollars of damage to a bunch of Teslas in his car, but she won't prosecute him. It's one thing to listen to people on the ground. The other problem we have is our media. We have the most worthless journalists on the face of the planet. The local paper is actually run by Tim Walz’s former Commerce Commissioner. They don't even hide it anymore. There is never any critical reporting. There's never any honest reporting. Do you think they're reporting in the Minneapolis Tribune right now that since the beginning of the year in Minneapolis they've had 44 homicides — and, by the way, in the last week they've had six. Not a word. Not a word. Do you think they're commenting about what's happening in Washington, D.C.? I've been watching, I haven't seen them write an article about how even Muriel Bowser, who is anti-Trump, anti- Republican, had to acknowledge that this is actually working, and ‘I'm going to sign an order, and I'm going to say, we want to fully cooperate and work together and get this done.’ I was down in Navy Yard yesterday, and I had this African American woman as I was walking by, turn around, look at me, and say, ‘thank you,’ because she heard she heard me talking to the National Guardsmen, saying ‘we're really grateful you're here. You've made a huge difference. And I'm really I want to say thank you. And I know if the president was here, he'd be saying the same thing.’ And as I walked by, she goes, ‘thank you.’ So Tim Walz should actually put his hateful rhetoric aside, recognize that he's created a big problem. You talk about 2020, think about this. He should have called the National Guard out the night of the George Floyd incident. Why didn't he? Anybody who had been paying attention in this country would look at what happened in Missouri, look at what happened in Maryland, would look at similar incidents and how the violent rioting spills over, because there's so much anger built up, you should have known that there was a risk that that was coming. And if you were to put a National Guardsman on every corner in Minneapolis and St. Paul, you never would have had anything. No. Instead, he not only doesn't do it immediately, he waits for the better part of that work week to do it. In fact, it's interesting. I don't think he called the National Guard up until Donald Trump threatened him minutes before midnight on Wednesday that he was going to call the National Guard up if Tim didn’t. And then Tim did, but I don't think he ever gave them authority to do their job, because the next two days, the rioting, the burning, the destruction of Minneapolis, just continued at a record pace. This is where you heard those stories that Tim Walz’s wife, the First Lady of Minnesota, just opened the windows of the Governor's Mansion so she could smell Minneapolis burning. What is wrong with these people? The public that they represent, that they work for, has been terrorized by out of control crime. Donald Trump was showing you and he campaigned on making America safe again. He's honoring another campaign promise, and he's showing these loser leaders that this is how you do it. And their response is to say, ‘we hate you so much, we're not going to help our own constituents.’ I hope Tim Walz, in my home state, the newspaper is worthless, but I hope he starts to take a look at the results in Washington, D.C., acknowledges that he's got a problem in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and that he calls in the National Guard. You, Tim, can take credit. He doesn't need the president; you've got a National Guard in Minnesota; you do it and you take the credit.

Washington Reporter:

You were talking about dishonest media. We're honest media. What's next for Congress now that you're back here? What are your projects with your colleagues to get done after you did so much in first reconciliation? What's there left to do?

Rep. Tom Emmer:

I think right now, because everybody knows there's a funding deadline at the end of the month, my hope is that Speaker Johnson is getting everybody in that narrow lane of conferencing. We passed the MilCon-VA bill, sent it over to the Senate in July, the Senate actually amended it and passed the amended version. They added ag to it, they added a bunch of approps. They amended that and passed it. And now both of these have been passed off the respective floors, which means that the vote on a motion in the House and a vote on a motion in the Senate, you could go to conference. We've got to find a solution for funding the government that advances the America First agenda. That has to be a mission. The goal is by September 30. I don't see how you get to that September 30 date if next week we are voting to go to conference. I think it's probably going to take a short term CR; I'll leave it to the Speaker to make that call on what it is, how long it is, but the idea is to get that appropriations process done. This is what the whole goal has been for the House in the last several years, is to get back to not only regular order, to do a budget, to get it done, and then we've got a whole host of other things, Matthew, once we get through that.

Washington Reporter:

Fantastic, Congressman Emmer; thanks so much for chatting.