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We're joined now by Charlie Dent.
He's a senior advisor to the group called Our Republican Legacy, also a former U.S. Representative, a Republican from Pennsylvania.
Charlie Dent, welcome to the program.
Thanks, Mimi.
Great to be with you.
So you're an advisor to the group called Our Republican Legacy.
What is it?
What are the mission?
What's the mission?
And how are you funded?
Yeah, we're a 501c4 organization.
We are not a lobbying group.
We're not really even advocating for against anyone in a particular election.
What we do, we are a group of, I'll say, dispirited Republicans who want a better direction for the Republican Party.
We want to create an alternative narrative to MAGA.
We think too often that those of us in the party who want a different direction have been far too quiet.
And so what we've done is we've laid out five core principles, five core principles that we think have guided the Republican Party in the past and should guide it going forward.
Those principles being the Constitution.
We believe in the rule of law.
We believe in the peaceful transfer of power.
We think January 6th was an abomination.
We believe in the Union.
Abraham Lincoln was our founder.
And his objective, of course, was to keep this great country together.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump and many of the MAGA movement want to divide it further.
We also believe in a peace through strength of foreign policy that embraces allies, rejects autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.
So we're in a very different place than the MAGA movement.
We think there should be constructive international engagement.
We are also for free markets.
Now, we're not talking about going back to 1850 or 1920s.
We understand you need modern, reasonable regulation, but at the same time, we think things like these absurd across-the-board destructive tariffs would really wreak havoc on the country and our economy and are not in keeping with the tradition of where we as Republicans should be.
And finally, fiscal discipline.
We think we have to start having that conversation once again in this country.
We will talk about tariffs and fiscal discipline.
When was the organization created?
Oh, it was created, I believe, back in April or March.
That's when it was first created.
Our former senators, Jack Danforth, Alan Simpson, and Bill Cohen.
Danforth of Missouri, Simpson of Wyoming, and Cohen of Maine are our original founders.
And we thought it was time to really create a strong voice as an alternative to MAGA.
The Republican Party is divided.
It's not evenly divided, but it is divided.
There are many Republicans who do not like the direction, and we want a different direction.
I mean, what's the ultimate goal?
Are you going to try to run another candidate for president in the next cycle?
Well, we haven't even gone there.
What we are trying to do is just create a groundswell of support.
We're looking not just at this election, we're looking beyond this election, frankly, about how do we get this Republican Party into a better place.
The principles I just laid out, we believe, have sustained the party for 170 years.
MAGA has been around for under 10 years.
Their roots are rather shallow.
Ours are rather deep.
Now, no one's naive here.
We understand that we're not going to go back to where we were.
But we need to get to a better place.
And so we want to help shape this conversation going forward for those of us in the party who have stood for certain principles, that those principles will still be respected and, frankly, driving what should be the Republican Party.
This isolationism, nativism, protectionism, I think many of us think this is a dead end.
But what caused that?
I mean, given the deep roots, as you say, of the Republican Party, what caused it to go in the quote, MAGA direction?
Well, there's a lot of anger in the country, and there always have been some dark elements within our nation.
And sadly, I think Donald Trump in many ways helps bring that out with his incendiary rhetoric.
He talks to people in ways that he kind of, frankly, will bring out the worst in some people.
There's no restraint.
And we've always had these isolationist and protectionist tendencies in this country.
This is nothing new.
But what's happened is he's the first Republican president who has actually embraced those.
And I think that's part of the reason why the party has shifted, because the leader of the party, and that is Donald Trump, has taken these positions.
And frankly, what we need is an alternative voice.
We need Republican voters to hear something different than what they are hearing today.
You have announced that you have voted early in Pennsylvania and you have voted for Vice President Harris.
Elaborate a little bit on that.
Was that a vote against Trump or do you believe more firmly in her policies than his?
No, it was more of a rejection of Donald Trump.
I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016.
I wrote in Evan McMullen.
And in 2020, I voted Joe Biden because I just wanted to return to normalcy.
And I said at the time I didn't expect to agree with Joe Biden on many of his policies, but at least he was going to bring back some sense of normalcy and stability to the White House.
And in the case of Kamala Harris, look, she is trying to pivot to the center, and I hope she does embrace that going forward.
We'll see.
I will certainly have policy differences, but she is a decent, honorable person, and I think we'll put the interests of the country ahead of her own.
So the Vice President is making a speech at the National Mall tomorrow.
We'll be covering that here on C-SPAN.
But what would you like her to address?
What is it that she needs to say that will get Republicans like yourself that are not comfortable with Donald Trump?
Well, I think what she needs to say is that this pivot towards the center is real, that it is sincere.
And I think there are a lot of Republicans out there who say, okay, she's from San Francisco.
She's taken positions that many of us have disagreed with.
In Pennsylvania, for example, she was opposed to fracking.
Now she's obviously changed her position.
And there are other issues where she has maybe gone too far to the left and made statements in the 2019 campaign.
I think she has to continue to demonstrate that she will try to govern from the center and resist the urges of many of the extreme elements within her own party.
I know that's very difficult, but I think she needs to do that.
Now, some will say that might quiet her base, but her base is motivated to beat Donald Trump more than anything else.
So I think she has a tremendous opportunity, not having gone through a primary, to be able to govern from the center, which is what many Americans want right now.
They're tired of these rather shrill, extreme voices.
And there are a lot of Republicans out there who do not like Donald Trump, but are just nervous that the vice president will be pulled further to the left by those more extreme elements in her party.
So she's got to assure those voters that she's going to govern from the center.
One of the big issues is the economy.
And you mentioned tariffs.
You wrote an opinion piece in The Hill with this headline, Donald Trump's Tariff Plan Could Bring Us Back to the 1930s.
Explain that.
Well, if you remember the 1930s, in 1930, a law was passed, Smoot Hawley, that imposed broad tariffs across the board.
It was passed at a time not long after the stock market crashed in 1929.
And actually, the market was beginning to recover.
Smoot Hawley passed in the market tank.
Global trade just dropped from, it crashed from $3 trillion to $1 trillion.
Just about every economist of every stripe will tell you that Smoot Hawley exacerbated the Great Depression.
It made it much worse.
I would argue something similar could happen now, that if we had across the board tariffs, as Donald Trump is talking about, 10 to 20 percent on just about everything, 60 percent on goods from China, he's using it across the board, which means the price of everything goes up.
One, it's inflationary.
Two, you know, it's going to harm American manufacturers and American growers.
And I'll give you an example from Pennsylvania.
Go to Hershey.
I represented that community.
You know, they made, at peak production, 70 million Hershey kisses a day, which is a lot of loving.
So that's a lot of chocolate.
Well, how do you make chocolate?
You have to get cocoa.
Well, last I checked, we don't grow it in the United States.
We have to import it from West Africa.
Well, the price just went up 20%.
Okay, so there's no substitute.
So that's just one example.
I could find, you know, people like coffee.
Well, you know, we have to import that too.
Your cup of coffee just went up in price.
You like a banana?
Same thing.
I'm just saying everything's going to go up.
And let's take it to the Chips Act.
We want to make semiconductors.
This country is making a commitment to compete with China.
A lot of those big machines are made by a Dutch company to make these chips.
They cost a few hundred million dollars a pop.
Well, the price just went up 20 percent.
I mean, this is real stuff.
It's going to affect American manufacturers because a lot of what we import is used for making things.
And so this is what we have to deal with.
So ultimately, consumers will pay more.
You know, they'll pay for in a lot of ways.
And we're going to lose jobs over this.
And it's going to particularly have a devastating effect on manufacturers.
And of course, the farmers and the ranchers are very worried because when Trump talks about punishing John Deere and slapping big tariffs on Mexico, well, what are the Mexicans going to do?
They're going to retaliate against American corn and other agricultural products.
And that's what we saw with the Chinese when Trump did all the China tariffs back in the first administration.
We ended up paying more out in subsidies to farmers than we collected in tariff revenue.
Now, look, I get it.
There are times you should use tariffs and countervailing duties if there is slave labor involved, if there are unfair trade practices, dumping, illegal subsidies.
I get it.
Targeted.
But across the board, devastating.
And I think most of us will get that.
By the way, in the Great Depression, you know, we ran trade surpluses, but we had unemployment rates over 20 percent.
It really didn't feel that good.
If you'd like to join the conversation with our guest, Charlie Dent, you can do so.
Our lines are bipartisan.
So Republicans are on 202-748-8001.
Democrats are 202-748-8000.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
A lot has been made of former people that have worked in the Trump administration not endorsing him.
John Kelly, his former chief of staff, saying that he praised Hitler and has textbook fascist.
The flip side of that is people saying, well, he was fired and he's got an axe to grind.
JD Vance has said it's because they couldn't control him and they didn't share the same worldview.
What's your response to that?
Well, first, John Kelly is an extraordinary American, a four-star Marine general.
I think that man, you know, for him to come out and say the things he said wasn't easy because these are military guys and they try to avoid getting in the political fray.
I believe everything John Kelly has said.
I think John Kelly was doing his duty as a chief of staff and as a Homeland Security Secretary, doing his best.
And he witnessed up close and personal what many of us have seen in our interactions with the former president, that he's unfit and he is at times unstable.
And, you know, we've all seen the narcissism, the ADD, the impulse control issues, the temper, a lack of interest in policy.
And these are the kinds of things that John Kelly has talked about.
And he saw it probably more than anybody else.
So, I mean, we should believe him.
Not just him, believe him.
Believe Rex Tillerson.
Believe Mark Esper, John Bolton, McMaster, Mattis, all these people who worked around him, at least the first few I mentioned, have been quite public in their concerns.
And it's obvious why they're concerned.
I mean, he's embraced Vladimir Putin.
He's embraced Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un.
But explain the word embraced.
What do you mean by that?
Well, he seems to be much more comfortable talking to these autocrats than he is with allies.
There was this lack of, you know, in other words, he didn't distinguish between friend and foe.
You know, he was more critical of Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau than he was of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.
I mean, you know, we have allies and friends and shared interests and values.
You'd think we would embrace them more than people who are trying to undermine American foreign policy interests all around the globe.
I mean, that's what I find so stunning.
I think that's probably what those individuals found stunning, too.
All right.
Let's talk to callers and start with Bob in Atlanta, Republican.
Good morning, Bob.
Good morning.
Thank you for your program.
Sir, I served in the military and I'm 78 years old.
I just got one question for you.
Are you a communist?
No, absolutely not.
Are you, sir?
Well, Kamala Harris is so far to the left, you can't even see her.
Okay, we'll get a response.
Well, look, I get it.
You know, I have policy disagreements with Kamala Harris, just as you do, sir.
But, you know, sometimes elections are not about right or left in terms of policy.
Maybe it's sometimes about right or wrong.
I think one candidate here has demonstrated his unfitness repeatedly.
And the other, whatever you think of her policy positions, it strikes me as normal and honorable.
And I hate to say it, but that's where we are right now.
And I'm going to choose honorable over dishonorable.
Here's Mark in Austin, Texas, Democrat.
Good morning, Mark.
Good morning, Mimi.
How you doing?
Good.
I'd just like to ask, I'm a convicted fellow, Mr. Dent.
How is it that I can't vote, but Donald Trump can, and he's also a convicted fellow.
Could you please answer that question?
Well, that's a good question, actually.
That's a great question.
Now, he's been convicted, Trump, but he's not yet been sentenced.
So I don't know when that sentence takes effect.
Now, he's a resident of the state of Florida, and I think these rules on felons voting is really determined at the state level.
As we know, election law is governed at the state level, and so I'm not sure where Florida's law is on that.
I think it might be a bit more permissive, though, than is the case in Texas.
So it's a matter of, it's a function of state law, sir.
And let's talk to Derek in Lakeland, Minnesota, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Good morning, America.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
All right, I have a couple points here.
I want to walk down memory lane with you, Charlie.
We had a governor that his name is Tim Wallace, who's the vice presidential candidate.
He said that he was going to make one Minnesota and bring everybody together, just like Joe Biden said in saying that he'll bring normalcy and save the soul of the nation.
Well, let's see what happens.
Minneapolis burned.
We surrendered a police station.
We now, they took total control of our legislature, so we now have a brand new flag that nobody likes.
So they switched their whole flag.
Joe Biden, which you said you voted for for those reasons, he has bragged that he's the most progressive presidential president ever.
So that didn't really work up.
Now you're doubling down, and you're saying that Harris is the one that's going to come to the center.
Well, let me give you some news on that, buddy.
They've said they want to make Washington, D.C. a state to get two more senators.
They said they wanted to make Puerto Rico a state, get two more senators.
They want to jam-pack and add Supreme Court justices to pack the court.
They want to end the filibuster.
Is that normalcy?
Is that going to the center?
You're a useful idiot.
Hey.
And good morning to you, too, sir.
Let me just take a few of these issues.
Look, I'm for divided government for a good reason, to put a check on both parties, frankly.
I think that would be the best thing that we could have happen in this country.