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Sept. 23, 2021 - The Charlie Kirk Show
40:10
'I Wouldn't Ask the Federal Government for Permission' — Texas Gubernatorial Candidate Don Huffines
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Defending Texas Borders 00:14:51
Hey, everybody.
Today on the Charlie Kirk show, someone who's running up against Greg Abbott.
We have not endorsed anybody in this race, but I find this to be a super interesting conversation.
I've known Don Huffines for years, and he believes that Texas is not being run well.
And he makes the argument about the southern border and what needs to happen in Texas.
If you want to send us your questions, you can do so at freedom at charliekirk.com.
And if you want to support our program, you can do so at charliekirk.com/slash support.
Don Huffins is here.
Buckle up.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
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Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
Turning point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
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Hey, everybody.
Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
God bless Texas.
And I know our guest completely agrees, a friend of mine who is deciding to do something rather remarkable.
Don Huffines, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
Hey, thank you, Charlie.
It's great to be here.
Now, I just want all of our listeners to know what you have now decided to embark on.
You are running for governor in Texas, and you are primarying a sitting Republican governor.
Is that right?
That is correct.
Now, in a state like Texas, the very conservative state, tell us why you decided to do this.
Well, I can tell you that I like most Republicans in the state of Texas, we are really just tired of being lied to.
We're tired of the broken and empty promises, and our border is wide open.
Locally, here in Texas, we have some of the highest property taxes in the nation, if not the highest, and they keep going up and up.
Texans are tired of renting their homes and their property from the government.
And we don't have confidence their votes aren't being stolen and they're not being properly counted.
And I can just go down the list forever.
And I've got good solutions for those issues.
I was in the state legislature.
I saw how big and deep the swamp is.
It might not be quite as wide as Washington, but it's sure just as deep.
Now, Texas has become kind of the center of a lot of political conversation in the last couple of years, especially in the last couple of months, I should say, passing a pro-life bill, a constitutional carry bill, voter integrity bill.
Talk about that and talk about how you feel about those things and where you think Texas fits into the national conversation.
Well, absolutely.
But look, let me just talk, if you don't mind a minute about our current leadership and then I'll set the table for your listeners.
I mean, a lot of people think Texas is conservative.
And maybe if you're comparing it to something like California or New York or something like that, yeah, we are conservative, but we're not near where we should be.
I mean, our governor right now is a 30-year career politician.
He's never really signed a paycheck in his life.
I'm a business guy, and I just have a different way of seeing things.
I want to make sure we solve the issues.
I don't care about a political career.
And Charlie, you don't know this, but when I was in the Texas Senate for four years, from 14 to 18, I got knocked out by a Democrat in Dallas County, serving in Dallas County.
I'm the only elected office holder in the history of the state of Texas, never took any money from the government.
No pay, pension, health care, per damn reimbursements, nothing.
And I'm going to do the same thing as governor.
I say that because it just shows the difference in who I am and who he is.
Yeah, so let's talk more about that.
You know, I follow Texas politics loosely, and some people are very angry at the governor here in Texas.
Some people are kind of just in the middle.
Kind of talk more concretely of what kind of compelled you to run in the last year, because this is a big effort.
I mean, Texas is a beast.
This is a big deal.
What really motivated you?
What crossed the line where you said, okay, Governor Abbott, this was too much.
Now I must run.
March of 20.
All right.
Tell me why.
I can tell you everybody knows what happened in March of 20.
I warned everybody when I was tweeting out what was going to happen that he was going to shut us all down.
He shredded the Constitution.
He just absolutely shredded it.
We all swore allegiance to it.
And in one day, he put 3 million Texans out of work.
3 million Texans.
That's more jobs, Charlie, than we've created in the last 12 years combined.
And it's really not even comprehensible.
It made them all dependent on the government.
These are great patriot Texans, hardworking people.
He unilaterally picked winners and losers.
Tens of thousands of businesses went out of business forever.
And then the worst thing he did, Charlie, he closed our churches.
He closed our churches on the holiest week of the year, Easter.
You couldn't bury the dead properly.
You couldn't get married.
You couldn't get baptized.
And I can go on and on.
He kept a mask mandate on us for nine months.
And then people thanked him for taking it off.
That's like thanking a thief for bringing your stolen goods back.
So look, that was the catalyst to make me get in it.
I would never have done any of that.
I never will.
The Constitution doesn't give me the authority to do that.
It's not the lens I look through.
The lens I look through to be governor of Texas is simply the question, the rhetorical question, what is the proper role of government?
And I ask myself that all the time.
And I can answer it like everybody in the United States could answer it for over 100 years.
And it's always to defend our God-given liberties.
Our liberties come from God and not the government.
And that's why we have the Constitution, of course.
It was written specifically to protect those natural rights or natural rights or God-given liberties.
And another way to say that is to say that the purpose of government is to defend us from government.
And so talking about Texas in general, the issue that you kind of alluded to that has a lot of people upset is the issue of the poorest southern border and what's happening there.
The governor, amongst other Republican governors who I have criticized greatly, say that there's no power that states have to defend their own border.
Is that true?
Of course that's not true.
So what can governors do?
Well, I can tell you, we can read the Constitution.
That's all they got to do is just pick it up and read it.
No, no, states wouldn't join the union if they didn't have a right to defend themselves if they were being invaded.
I mean, it's just common sense.
I mean, if South Carolina was invaded by Spain and the federal government never came to their rescue, of course, South Carolina's got the authority to defend themselves.
And that's written in Article 1, Section 10.
You also have Article 4, Section 4 that some people point to is where the federal government's required to defend us from an invasion, but that's not the one that I'm going to rely on.
I'm going to rely on Article 1, Section 10.
So what does that say?
And so what could the governor of Texas do?
There's 10,000 Haitians on the southern border.
1.8 million people are crossing the southern border every single year on average.
How many in Texas are crossing?
Oh, thousands.
We think Border Patrol, I've been at the border three times last 90 days.
Right now, Border Patrol is saying up to 2 million unapprehended illegals will cross into Texas in a little over a 12-month period.
12 million just into Texas?
2 million.
So 2 million in 12 months just into Texas.
That's correct.
That's extraordinary.
Oh, it's a total investment.
But what power could you use?
Could you mobilize Texas Rangers?
Could you build a wall?
What could you do?
Well, of course, I'm going to build a wall.
I'm going to spend about $3.5 billion to do that.
And we've got the money to make that happen.
I'm a business guy, so I know a good trade.
That's a good trade.
That's a one-year payback for what it's going to cost us.
But the most important thing is I'm using Article 1, Section 10 to engage the entire Texas military, our National Guard, all of them, just 20,000 of them.
We have incredible assets.
We really do.
There's 25 crossings over the river.
I'm going to shut those down strategically to stop the commercial traffic, inbound commercial traffic from Mexico.
Outbound can keep going.
If you've got your proper paperwork, you can keep coming in back and forth.
But I'm going to stop the commercial traffic, and that's to put the economic pressure on Mexico so they secure their side of the river.
And they love making money like everybody.
And we're going to stop them from making money until they, look, we can never have a secure border if Mexico doesn't cooperate.
That's just, we can build all the walls we want.
Mexico must secure their side of the river.
And let me tell you, the most significant ingredient on this recipe is I'm never asking permission from the federal government to secure the Texas border.
I don't need to.
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So let's just, let me pretend to be Abbott for a second.
Sure.
You'd say, I don't have that authority.
Biden is doing this wrong.
This is DHS.
This is Border Patrol.
Why is that the wrong way to view what's happening on the southern border?
Well, the only thing I could say is that about that, the main thing is that he's a political windsock.
He's just going to blow in the wind, do whatever he needs to do.
He's reacting to everything our campaign's up to.
I know that, but like, why constitute, like, why does he not?
Because he doesn't have courage.
Okay.
He just flat doesn't have the courage.
He doesn't want to upset the apple card as much.
He's not willing to stand up for Texans.
The only thing I can say is he just doesn't have the political courage.
I don't know why he won't do it.
I begged him to do it.
We put out press releases for him to do it.
And they might end up having to do it.
I hope they do do it.
But I can't tell you for sure why.
So you could mobilize Texas National Guard 20,000 people and you could close the 25 river entries.
Is that legal traffic that you would close off?
Yes.
Okay.
And then what would you do to help stop the flow of illegal, you know, narco-trafficking, gun trafficking?
That would also, you would try to do that.
Well, the 20,000 troops would be up and down the river to secure it.
If we want, if Border Patrol wants to cooperate, that's fine.
And, you know, they also have the authority to solicit support from other states, from their guards.
Yes.
So if we don't have enough assets in our 20,000, I'll be soliciting support.
If we have to stand 200 yards apart, we'll make sure that no one gets across that river.
And if they do, we'll load them back up and take them back to the other side because Texas really does have the authority to enforce immigration law or we could ignore immigration law.
It seems, though, that the Republican orthodoxy has been, that's not our role.
We're not doing this.
Even Rick Perry would say that.
And Rick Perry, who is a friend of mine, and he's a nice guy, but he gave driver's licenses to illegals, in-state tuition for illegals.
Why is it?
Where did Republicans go wrong here?
Let's just kind of go back.
You're a lifelong Texan, right?
If I'm not mistaken.
Yes, I was born and raised fifth generation.
How did Texas all of a sudden get kind of ruled by Republicans that were okay with these porous open borders and a destruction of sovereignty?
I think it all, you got to remember that Texas, most Texas Republicans 15, 20 years ago were Democrat Party switchers.
Really?
Tell me more about that.
Well, Texas was a Democrat state.
Yeah, Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Yeah.
But in the last 20 years, Republicans have controlled the legislature.
We control the House, the Senate, and the governor's office for 20 years.
So theoretically, we could get any bill done we want, and the governor could get any bill done he wants.
And basically, we can pass any legislation we want, but we don't.
We very rarely get our conservative legislation done.
But I think what happened when Perry was in office and others, it was the Chamber of Commerce.
It was the big crony capitalists.
They wanted cheap labor and they didn't complain about it.
And they all thought, well, these people were going to vote for Republicans.
And they listened to that message and that rhetoric and they kept the border open.
And, you know, the federal government's never going to secure the border.
No, this is why I'm so fascinated by this and why I think it's such a perfect conversation for a theme we've been building on our show, which is willingness.
Yes.
Like, do we have the willingness to use the assets at our disposal to do what we know, to do what we know needs to be done?
Because what I am really, you know, really tired of is excuses.
And it's kind of funny.
There's your no excuses.
What's your website really quick?
Just so we can gethuffins.com.
Okay, DonHuffins.com, where I get excuses all the time.
It's spelt H-U-F-F-I-N.
H-U-F-F-I-N-E-S.
Sorry.
There you go.
That's okay.
We've got to be precise with you.
But I get excuses all the time.
All the time.
Charlie, I don't have the power to do that.
But what you're saying is not only do we have the power, we have the precedent.
This is not even a tough call that you're trying to tell me that Governor Abbott could secure the southern border now is what you're saying.
Tomorrow, today, right now.
He could have secured it seven years ago or seven days ago.
He's got the border the way he wants it.
And you say he has no courage.
I've never met him, and I'm not on, you know, kind of a mission to unseat him like you are, right?
I got other things to do.
But I'm very interested in this.
Whereas, is there a set of donors that are whispering in his ear?
Are there corporate interests?
Is there some sort of deal?
Can you just help me fill in the gaps here?
Well, I can't tell you what goes through the man's mind, of course, but I can tell you that he's never been in the legislature.
I can tell you that he's by trade a judge and an attorney.
He was on the Supreme Court, an attorney general.
He's not a businessman.
Like I said, he doesn't see an issue and want to solve it.
He sees an issue to further his political career.
He's a career politician.
So that's probably where he's coming from.
Federal Intervention Risks 00:03:35
I mean, I just want to solve the problems.
I'm not looking for a new career.
And I think it's crystal clear.
I've had a lot that we can, that the governor can enact, use the military and use the Constitution to close the border.
And look, all hell is going to break loose when that happens.
There's no doubt about that.
Well, I mean, what do you mean by that?
The federal government?
No, I think corporations are going to scream bloody murder.
We do $250 billion worth of trade with Mexico annually.
Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of goods pass across those bridges every day.
They're not going to come across the bridge.
You're going to hear them squeal from Canada down to New York all over.
I mean, General Motors ain't going to get their Chevys in and no more Corona beer for a while.
But I can tell you this: that border is going to be secure because Mexico is going to screen.
Now, the federal government might try to intervene.
Then what?
Well, we kind of have a good old Texas standoff.
What would that look like?
Well, we will.
Unfortunately, I think we will.
If I was Mexico, I'd be calling the State Department immediately.
And they'll either call you or issue an injunction or try to get a federal judge.
Will.
And then what?
Guess what?
We have three branches to our government.
One's the legislative and one's judicial and one's administrative and executive.
I mean, so look, I'm the executive branch that enforces the law.
Judicial just interprets the law.
So I have a right to interpret the Constitution, and I have a right to enforce it myself.
I'm not worried about the lawsuit.
I'm worried about Texans and what's best for Texas.
That border was defined with the blood of Texas patriots, and we're not giving it back to Mexico, and we're not going to let the United States keep it wide open.
It's simple as that.
I'll take the risk all day of the federal government coming down because they're going to have to use force against my force.
Really?
I mean, that's what it amounts to.
Yes.
Which I don't think they're willing.
No, look at the political ramifications of that.
Yes.
They're going to come open the border against Texas's wish.
Yes.
And which is obviously not popular and is unprecedented.
And this really kind of goes to a broader question of whether or not Republicans are willing to kind of use what we have at our disposal to save the country.
Am I right?
Of course.
What other ideas do you have with this?
Because immigration is one of them.
But there's all sorts of sovereignty issues that are happening right now, from oil and natural gas issues to the Keystone XL pipeline, which I believe we should resume construction immediately of.
I've been calling for that, and I'm going to try to continue kind of a campaign on that to vaccine mandates, to federal mask mandates.
Where else can states push back against this regime and Texas in particular and say no more?
All of it.
Tell me how.
Let's go through it.
Well, it's simply making them come down and enforce it.
So it's a good old 1832 Wooster v. Georgia, let Marshall send his army.
That's right.
Okay.
I mean, it's simple as that.
And we'll see what the political ramifications are for that.
I mean, everything, a lot of things come back down to politics.
And I think there's a lot of people that are on our side on this issue.
And a lot of Texans.
Look, when I win, I'm going to have the people behind me.
They're going to have my back.
And I'm counting on it.
So let's talk about, just, I want to get into more detail about that, though.
So you're willing to, and basically what you're saying, just, I don't want to put words in your mouth, is that this will end up in a standoff between the states and the federal government.
State vs Federal Standoff 00:02:08
Well, I think the state, I think the federal government.
And I don't mean to be too dramatic about that.
Yeah, no, it very well could be that way, but I think they will negotiate.
I mean, they think there's some middle ground to be had, but on the border, there's really not.
I mean, we clearly have the authority to stop this invasion.
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So let's talk about your other issues like EPA and other people.
Yeah, just I want to actually talk more about your love of the Constitution, how this applies.
Talk about how much power states do have, not just constitutionally, but broadly, talk philosophically on how you came to this position of understanding state sovereignty.
Well, let me just rewind a second on that.
This is the most important election in the United States in 22, the governorship of Texas.
It really is.
Taxing Universities and Property 00:13:35
I think history will show this could be one of the most important elections in the history of our country because this is a premeditated attack on Texas.
And, you know, the Biden administration has proposed amnesty for every illegal, every illegal in the United States of America, and with the reconciliation budgets going down in the next six weeks in Washington.
And that's going to be checkmate for Texas.
And anybody thinks there's 11 million illegals in this country is crazy.
It's more like 35 or 40 million.
There's like 3 million in the state of Texas.
So Texas will be gone.
The free world will be gone, not just the United States.
And my goal has always been not just to prove to the United States what it means to be sovereign, but to prove to the whole world what it means.
Look, the states created the federal government.
The states created it.
And I can tell you this: that we're not going to get pushed around in Texas.
It's imperative that Texas flexes its muscle to buck up all the other states.
We're the last hope, really, really and truly the last hope for freedom and liberty or economic liberty, our personal liberty, and all the liberties we've lost.
We lost so much liberty in 18 months.
And I tell everybody, it's so unprecedented and so disgusting.
And it all happened with Republicans.
Yeah, so you served in the legislature.
Yes.
Talk about how just because someone had an R in front of their name didn't mean that they were going to fight for what's right.
Oh, that's for sure.
Tell us about it.
Okay, I'll tell you.
Some of our listeners are still new to politics.
They just started to get involved.
You know, we have listeners that literally are six months into this.
Their kids started to get masked, critical race theory.
They found out our podcast.
They're learning.
So help educate our audience on that.
I certainly will.
I went to the legislature.
I was in the state legislature from 14 to 18 in the Texas Senate.
There's only 31 senators, and there was only 20 Republicans when I was there.
I got a Ph.D. in the swamp is what I got.
My biggest battle was mainly always with the rhinos, Republicans in name only.
They work so hard not to be accountable to take the hard vote.
I mean, I got cussed at and screamed at more in the Texas Senate than I've ever been in my adult life.
And they would just do everything possible to make sure they didn't have to take a hard vote, whether it was permanently security for our handguns.
I was the first senator to file that bill or getting rid of taxes.
And it's because they campaign one way and they want to govern a different way.
They really do not believe in the Constitution like I do.
And most Republicans, they believe in their political career, and they are the cancer for the Republican Party.
You see it in Washington.
You see it in Austin.
You see it across the nation.
So when you were there in Austin, you started to realize that there's a difference between conservatives and Republicans, but your voters are very conservative, but these people kind of play a game.
Can you talk about how a lot of what happened in Austin was kind of theater with a lot of these Republicans?
I certainly can.
And it really is a big hustle.
That's what it all is, unfortunately.
Not all of it.
I mean, it may be exaggerative, but a lot of it's a hustle.
And I say that in the Texas Senate, and not one bill failed in two years.
It came to the floor to vote.
All the votes are counted in the back room.
We know exactly who all the votes are, but yet, Charlie, we still have hours of debates on the floor.
Lots of show and tell.
Everybody gets all this debate going down.
It's all for show.
We already know what the votes are going to be like.
And they all think of themselves as being in this exclusive club.
They're all, and they call themselves members and they're members of the, and they're the elitists.
They're the know-it-alls.
And that's what matters to them is their fellow club members and leadership.
Yes.
And that's how they move up in the food chain in their club is by beholding to the leadership.
And so Republican governor has a lot of power over the agencies and kind of these commissions.
Texas is known for having all these appointments that you can have, including the Board of Regents, right?
And so the colleges in Texas are far from fair.
Let's not even say conservative.
They have gone way liberal.
Would you be involved in this?
Would you be interested in this kind of from a personnel standpoint?
It would be one of my top priorities, besides the other things we've talked about.
The power of the governor in Texas is I, of course, can veto every bill.
I get last call on every bill.
I get line item veto power in our budget, which is massive, $125 billion annually.
But the other thing that's so important as you just mentioned is the appointments.
The governor is going to make thousands of appointments.
It's an incredible amount of appointments in Texas.
It really is, like 1,000 a year.
What are some of these jobs that they're going to do?
Well, the most important ones you just mentioned is our universities, our state-supported universities.
It could be colleges or universities.
And there's dozens and dozens of them.
Is this why Texas governors raise money so effectively?
There's a theory behind that, right?
Because there's, I mean, I'm not trying to make a joke out of it.
It's just giving you a thousand appointments a year.
Yes.
I mean, even if just every single one of those people give you $1,000, you raise a million dollars a year.
Yeah, they don't even have to give that much.
No, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's just, it's a remarkable thing.
No, it really is.
Yeah, they'll give more than that, actually.
You give a lot more than that to get on the board of regents, spend something.
Which university do you have?
Yeah, and I'm not implying there's pay to play or that there's any of that.
I mean, but there is.
Okay, that's for you.
I'm just saying, just from a way that politics works, that's a lot of appointments.
That's a lot of appointments.
It is.
And some are paid, some aren't.
But they all have prestige in some way, which is what people want.
Yeah.
Of course.
But let's just talk about the board of regents, for instance.
Our university is overrun with socialists and Marxists.
There's everyone, almost everyone without exception.
And they have been for years.
The Marxists have done a very good job of taking over our education system across the nation.
Texas is no exception.
And our seminaries and our politics and media too, of course.
But right now, the Board of Regents said I would get to a point, run all the universities.
Of course, they hire all the faculty and the administration.
And I'm going to make sure that those people are in power and running these universities out.
We get them out and really put real patriots in their place.
And that way, because here's what the chain reaction is, as you know, the universities teach these new teachers.
Yes, that's right.
And they teach in all the faculty.
They're now going into government schools.
And now they're all brainwashing universities into socialism and Marxism.
And then they go to the high schools to teach it and spread that poison.
And all of our government school systems now has been polluted by socialists because of the universities.
So we have to, where we need to start changing the culture of Texas is at our universities.
I totally agree.
But this is all tied together, isn't it?
So you mentioned something early on that caught my attention.
So I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago that is neck and neck with Texas in one thing, property tax.
It's New Jersey, suburbs of Chicago, and Texas with some of the highest property taxes in the country.
For our national listeners right now, give an idea of how high the property taxes are in Texas.
Well, most major metropolitan areas of Texas, which is where three-quarters of the citizens live, it's about 2.4% of appraised value.
Of appraised value.
So it's as much as your mortgage.
It's extraordinary.
How did it ever get to be that way?
Well, it's just you have a lot of rhinos run in Austin, and they just love to spend money.
And local and local governments do.
So that there's no income tax, corporate or personal, in Texas.
Correct.
We have a business tax that's a little complicated, but it's about three-quarters of one point on your revenues.
So we do have that business tax, but no income tax to speak up for personal.
God, I thought it was zero on corporate, so that's good to be correct.
I must have been thinking of Florida, which is, I think, zeros across the board.
But so, but property tax is the main funder of the Austin budget.
Is that right?
No, it would be sales tax.
So you have a, how high is your sales tax?
Eight and a quarter total.
Is that too high for you?
No, no, because I've got my plan to eliminate property tax is going to go up a little bit.
Okay.
So talk about how you said here, people are tired of renting their homes from the government.
Correct.
Sure, I mean, absolutely.
I like to point out to most people, if you think about this and your listeners, that you really never own your own home.
You never own your own real estate.
Any real estate, office buildings, land, ranches, farms, whatever, all across the nation, you're renting it from the government.
The rents just varies which state you're in and which area you're in in that state.
But they have a first lien on it.
They can foreclose on it if you don't pay it.
And you really don't have a say in what that rent's going to be.
It just goes up and up in Texas with inflation.
It's going up 10% more a year.
There's properties out there.
They'll go up 100%, 200% in value.
So your taxes go up that much a year.
So this is not just about the money we're going to save.
It's about our economic liberty.
Yes.
I mean, property, owning real property is fundamental to who we are as Americans.
Tell me why.
Because this, it's about having ownership and wealth.
It's about being free and independent and not being a slave to the government.
I mean, I can go all the way down that trail if you want me to.
And I mean, if people really think about it.
Please do.
Okay.
Do you own your own wages?
Do you own your own labor?
You don't.
The government owns your labor.
The government tells you how much you can charge for the minimum price you can charge for your labor.
And the government tells you how much of your labor you've charged for you can keep, what wages you can keep.
And now the government really owns all of your property.
They own your real estate.
You own your own home.
You never can own it.
They tell you what school to go to.
They tell you what government tells you what curriculum to study.
Government tells you hires the government teachers.
So I can go on down the list, but we are under a lot more control than we think by the government.
And is that really what we want?
This is something that we can get done in Texas.
And my team tells me this.
They say, you know, hey, Huffins, every state's got property tax.
And they said, you know, we looked it up.
Almost every country's got property tax.
And I say, yes, finally, Texas is going to get its swagger back.
So you want to get rid of it completely.
Completely.
I'm going to phase it out.
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So does the property tax fund local schools and stuff?
It does.
Half of it.
Some of the stuff.
So you have to figure that out.
We have it all figured out.
This is not a whimsical decision.
It's been a priority of the Republican Party for years.
This is a very bad tax.
And we've got it all worked out.
It's a numbers.
It's all about the math.
And I'm a number of people.
So you prefer a transaction tax, basically.
Yes.
So we'll move some of it over to sales tax.
But the most important thing is to get rid of it is not to spend all of our money.
Let me just give you a quick example.
Our overall state revenues go up at about seven to eight percent annually.
And if you cap states, the increase in state government spending, say at 2%, now you can take that difference, 6%, and buy down property tax.
And that's like $7 to $8 billion a year.
And over time, that buys it all down.
And so it's very doable.
And also, the important part of my plan is that we're going to have a constitutional amendment.
So that means every voter in Texas will get a chance to weigh in on it and vote, whether they want the plan or not when I get it up.
Sure, it'll be very popular.
So I want to finish this conversation and we can go wherever it leads us.
Where the willingness question, where I am really, quite honestly moved by you wanting to run for this office because you are saying you are willing to spend your own money.
You're a businessman.
Talk about your career and business really quick.
Well, I've been in commercial real estate since I graduated from Austin in 81, and it's been very good to me.
I love it.
And I'm putting a lot of money in this campaign and obviously don't need a career.
Fighting Against Evil 00:03:34
So you weren't a career politician.
You weren't a bureaucrat.
No.
You created wealth.
Right.
And it hired a lot of people.
So, but I want to use you as an example, though, because you're willing.
And that's my big word, which is the will, right?
Which is will conservatives be willing to sacrifice something?
And you say, you know what?
I'm upset at these certain things and I'm going to do something about it.
Can you talk about that from kind of more of a kind of whatever, a spiritual level, a philosophical level of kind of how you got to the place where you say, you know what?
I could be in, you know, Key West, you know, reading novels and drinking pina coladas, or I could be in Aspen, you know, complaining about systemic racism, whatever rich people do nowadays, right?
Not all of them, but you know what I mean.
But yeah, you know what?
I want to go wake up at 6 a.m. and challenge an incumbent governor to save the country.
That's really moving to me.
Can you just help me understand that?
Well, I can, and I can't, because it's hard to explain.
But the reason I want you to is because you might motivate others to do dramatic, like bold and heroic things.
That's why.
I would say this: and I say this in my talks, there's always been an internal flame burning in me ever since I was a teenager.
And I call it the flame of liberty.
And when I read, and when I was 17, I clearly remember it reading some books by Murray Rothbard and others on classic liberalism.
And I said, Yeah, I've got to get out and do something.
And I really, and it's always been in me.
Sometimes it burns brighter and hotter than others.
But I think that's in a lot of people.
And once people feed that flame, they got to scratch that itch to speak, I guess.
And so I'm not going to go to my grave without fighting with everything I've got to save the United States and save Texas.
And so for someone that's listening right now in North Dakota or in Maine or Washington or Idaho, what's your message to them?
Because obviously you want to see this kind of action happen in other places, right?
You want people that might have some form of success.
They say, man, what do I do?
Well, you've answered that question.
You're not actually waking up every single day wondering, what do I do?
You've kind of figured that out.
Now it's a question of let's get that done.
Right.
Well, what they can, you're asking me what they could do.
Well, yeah, just like wisdom for them and just like, hey, let's get off the couch.
Let's get into the arena, you know, from your own personal experience.
Like, come on in.
The water's fine.
Let's do this.
Absolutely.
I would say that as C.S. Lewis basically says, courage is the tip of the spear for all virtues.
It is.
And you have to have courage.
And we have to have a virtuous society for that matter.
But courage is everything.
And you just got to get up and get after it every day.
And only a fighter wins a fight.
And if you're not fighting, you can never win the fight.
And you got to figure out, why do I want to win the fight?
What am I doing this for?
And you're doing it because you don't want to live in the horrors of socialistic tyranny.
You don't want to be told what to do by the government.
The horrors are unimaginable.
And it's always not about you, but it could be about your neighbor.
It could be about your friends and what can happen to us and what's going to happen to us.
I just say this: evil's on the move.
Leading Without Excuses 00:02:24
It really is.
It's out of the trenches.
Evil never sleeps, never gives up, never shows mercy.
And it's a constant battle we have always to defeat evil.
And socialism is evil.
It always leads to communism and tyranny.
And when we have enablers of it and our own Republican Party that enable it, that is really sinful.
It's a restriction of the human spirit.
Anyone who mentions C.S. Lewis makes me very happy.
And as George S. Patton says, moral courage is the most necessary yet absent characteristic in men.
And Aristotle said, without courage, there are no other virtues.
Say the website again for everyone.
DonHuffins.com.
And in 45 seconds, give us the last and final sales pitch.
Oh, I appreciate that.
How do I make it fast?
I would just say that, look, I'm going to prove not only to the United States or to the socialists in New York and San Francisco what it means to be sovereign.
I'm going to prove it to the whole world.
Texas is going to be sovereign.
And I want to encourage everybody, our greatest days are coming.
Our time is now.
But remember, if you believe in liberty, our personal liberty, our economic liberty, there's no cavalry coming over the hill.
We are the 911 call.
We are the rescue squad.
And we're going to make it happen.
Our greatest days are coming.
It's donhuffines.com.
2Fs.
Yes.
H-U-F-F-I-N-E-S.
I have to make sure I'm staying right.
And everybody, thank you for listening.
Check out the Charlie Kirk Show podcast and hit subscribe.
Don Huffins, you got a big task ahead of you, but it looks like you got some momentum.
Yeah, we got tremendous.
The campaign is on fire.
Thank you, Charlie.
Remember, leadership, no excuses.
I'm the actual Republicans actually going to do something on this deal.
Very good.
And I was inspired by what you said.
And honestly, I learned a lot.
20,000 Texas National Guard to the southern border.
It's a question of the will.
And that's the question ahead of Texas.
Thank you, Don.
I enjoyed this.
Thank you, John.
You bet.
God bless.
Thanks.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
And if you want to support our program, you can do so at charliekirk.com slash support.
Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.
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