Mike Gallagher went on the Pat McAfee Show with a Spotted Cow and talked UFOs, China and Elon Musk

WASHINGTON – Mike Gallagher traded his blue suit and maroon tie for a Spotted Cow and a T-shirt portraying the former wrestler John Cena as Chinese Communist Party founder Mao Zedong during an appearance on the Pat McAfee Show Tuesday afternoon.

The nearly hour-long conversation in McAfee’s studio in Indianapolis was wide-ranging and light-hearted as the Green Bay Republican congressman discussed everything from UFOs to countering China to the problems with Congress.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the conversation:

First, the shirt

Gallagher’s T-shirt featuring a superimposed image of Cena’s face on a portrait of Mao was a shot at the actor, who in 2021 apologized to his Chinese audience for calling Taiwan its own country.

“I love and respect China and Chinese people. I’m very, very sorry for my mistake,” Cena said in a video message at the time.

Gallagher brought the apology up in his first appearance on McAfee’s show in May 2022: “Cena, who played a Marine in a movie called The Marine, by the way, so I find this doubly insulting,” Gallagher, a former Marine intelligence officer, said. “I mean, c’mon, Dude.”

Gallagher as chairman of the House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party has made preventing a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan a top priority.

Earlier in the day, Gallagher spoke at the Northeast Indiana Defense Summit in Fort Wayne, Indiana, hosted by Indiana Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Banks.

They talked UFOs

Asked questions about UFOs and aliens, Gallagher touted an amendment he led to last year’s National Defense Authorization Act — which he referred to as the “Alien Bill” on the show — that created a secure system for reporting information related to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAP.

Gallagher contended the legislation has prompted whistleblowers to come forward with reports of such phenomena and argued that the amendment, as well as hearings about UAPs on Capitol Hill, led to the “de-stigmatization” of talking about unidentified aerial objects.

After McAfee, his crew and Gallagher threw around speculation about extraterrestrial life, including that objects would be from past or future civilizations, Gallagher took a more serious tone, saying the bigger issue surrounding UAPs is “people losing trust in government, trust in institutions.”

“This should be an opportunity for the government to be transparent,” he said. “If we have information that disconfirms the extraterrestrial hypothesis, or all these other ones, at least it shows the government doing something competent and being forward-leaning by declassifying information to the public.”

He added: “So for those two reasons alone, I think it’s worthy of investigation. And, the third one that I’m probably the most interested in is whether it’s adversary technology, particularly from China.”

Gallagher said he was approved to visit Area 51, a classified Air Force facility in Nevada often associated with alleged extraterrestrial and UFO sightings, and plans to go eventually.

Gallagher mentioned his main focus: China

Of course, countering the Chinese Communist Party came up.

Gallagher, who has made U.S. competition with China his main focus in Washington, told McAfee that the main issue for the country when it comes to the Chinese military is what Gallagher called China’s “anti-Navy” — a “rocket force” that China built up that he said can target ships.

“Over the last decade, they took long-range missiles… and for relatively cheap, we’re talking millions of dollars versus billions of dollars, they can keep our ships out of the region or target them at very low cost because they have thousands and thousands of advanced rockets,” Gallagher said.

“Do we have a rocket force?” someone asked.

“We do not have an official rocket force,” Gallagher replied.

Then Elon Musk came up

“Get Elon on that,” McAfee said of creating a so-called rocket force. “Can we not get Elon on the rocket force?”

Gallagher then suggested Musk, the founder of SpaceX who recently bought Twitter, could use his Starlink satellite system mainly used for internet access to help target China.

“He could do something called orbital bombardment, otherwise referred to as Rods from God.” Gallagher said. “The idea is you'd be able to just like tie up with tiny tungsten rods, target anyone on the face of the earth from satellites. This is actually a serious idea that was talked about in the late 60s.”

“I don't think Elon wants to weaponize Starlink,” Gallagher added. “But, hey, the Chinese would do it.”

Asked what he thought of Musk’s Twitter takeover, Gallagher said Twitter is “better for sure” under Musk but said he’s “not on social media at all.”

He lamented inaction in Congress

McAfee, who said he still doesn't know "what the (expletive)" a congressman is, asked a few questions about why Congress "can never get (expletive) done."

"Isn't that kind of what the whole thing about Washington is?" McAfee asked. "You guys just yell at each other the entire time?"

Gallagher at one point said when he first ran for his seat in 2016, he thought “the problem with Congress was just it’s all corrupt and super old people.”

“I actually think there’s a lot of people that come in and want to do the right thing," he said. "I’m not sure the problem is just the people, per se, but the people find themselves in a process that sucks, where you basically have to choose: Am I going to do 20 years in order to get to a position of influence… or they’re just like, ‘I’ll just be a bomb thrower on social media or on cable news and I won’t be constructive at all.”

“So it’s the process that I think takes good people and just chews them up and spits them up.”

Gallagher said some members of Congress who want fame and influence are using social media and becoming “kind of like C-List social media celebrities as politicians as opposed to constructive legislators.”

“I would not say Congress is a repository for the smartest people,” he added later. “I would say there are some very smart people there. It’s a cross-section.”

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Mike Gallagher went on Pat McAfee and talked UFOs, China and Elon Musk