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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 Maine and 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, you know, How do we get this Republican Party into a better place?
The principles I just laid out, you know, we believe have sustained the party for 170 years.
You know, 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.
Well, 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 make, 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%.
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%.
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 his 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 a 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 are you doing?
Good.
I'd just like to ask, I'm a convicted fellow, Mr. Dante.
How is it that I can't vote, but Donald Trump can, and he's also a convicted felon.
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 you 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 of points here.
I want to walk down memory lane with you, Charlie.
We had a governor that his name is Tim Wallace, who is 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.
You can talk about a number of policy positions.
I agree with you on some.
Others I disagree with.
But the point I've made is that this country, my party, the Republican Party, needs to move away from this type of MAGA movement.
It is alienating much of the country and, frankly, a lot of Republican voters.
That's where we need to get back to something that I think is grounded in principle, things that our founder, Abraham Lincoln, and many of the others who led this party over the years will be proud of.
And that's where we should be looking forward.
And, you know, and again, I don't agree with the Democrats on a lot of these policies, some of which you mentioned.
But at the same time, we got to get to a better place as a party.
And I don't think Trump's the right guy.
And I'll just remind our callers that we don't take personal attacks on our guests.
We don't allow those.
James, in Buffalo, Kentucky, Republican, good morning.
Yes, ma'am.
Thank you for taking my call, and I really enjoy your show.
As for this fella here, he has no clue what he's talking about when it comes to the economy.
He's a rhino, and he's a disgrace to the Republican people.
James, James, let's stick with the policies.
What policies are you talking about?
Well, I'll give you an example.
I grew up in San Francisco, and Harris, when she was there, she made a mess out of things.
Her and Nancy Plowski, Nancy Plosky's district was falling apart the whole time.
She's more worried about going to a luncheon and getting her hair done.
This guy here has no clue what he's talking about.
It's amazing that he got himself in office.
That's the only thing that he did.
Created a suit and tie, got him in office.
A lot of vitriol from Republican callers there, Charlie.
Yeah, well, hey, that's life.
You know, just a couple things.
What I find right now is if a person doesn't agree with you on a particular policy, you know, he didn't argue with me about the tariffs.
He just calls you a rhino.
I mean, that's, you know, he calls you a squish, a bedwetter.
I mean, okay, great.
You know, we're all rhinos now, okay?
If you don't agree with Donald Trump, you're a rhino.
And so, you know, who cares?
I mean, so some of these folks out there, you know, just simply don't have the capacity to make an argument.
So they've just embraced whatever Trump says, whatever it is.
If he changes his opinion tomorrow, they'll change their opinion as well.
Many, not all of them, but many of them.
But there are a lot of people who are voting for the former president.
I know them.
They're friends.
And they're uncomfortable, many of them.
But they want to hear something different.
They want something better for the party.
Now, there have been Republicans in this cycle who were vocal critics of the former president and then ended up endorsing him anyway.
For instance, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, they have endorsed former President Trump.
Well, you know, they're doing their duty as functionaries of the party.
They're both sitting governors.
And, you know, and I get that they feel they have to do that.
I suspect they too want a different direction for the party.
I mean, Governor DeWine has been very powerful in his condemnations of what Trump and others have been saying about people eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, which is a fabrication.
It's not true.
And Sununu was a strong supporter of Nikki Haley.
He wants a different direction for the party.
But I think some of them are trying to protect their options going forward within the party if they want to run for something.
But of course, in the Trump world, if you're not 100% there, they're never going to be with you.
So if they ask my opinion, I would say don't try to split the difference.
Take a strong stand.
It's pretty hard to walk back some of the things some of the folks have said.
If Nikki Haley was the Republican candidate, would you be voting for her?
Yes, absolutely.
I voted for her in the primary.
And absolutely.
And frankly, she'd be winning this election right now if she were the candidate.
Joyce in New York, Democrat.
Hi, Joyce.
Yes, good morning.
Question for Mr. Dent.
How long do you think it would take to rebuild the Republican Party moving forward?
I mean, how much, if Trump gets back in, how much damage do you think he'll do to the rhinos?
Well, rebuilding a party is never easy.
We've gone through a bit of a political realignment, as you can see.
But rebuilding a party is going to take work.
It's going to take time.
It's going to take an effort to, again, get back to something, guiding principles and values.
And we have to have those conversations once again.
And part of the challenge, too, is some of the think tanks out there, and I'll pick on one of them, like Heritage, was always known as one of the strong conservative think tanks.
And now many of them have just kind of just gone all in.
And they basically have changed their values.
They've adjusted their values to suit Donald Trump.
And I think we have to get back to more principles-based conversations.
That's the only thing I can think of that will help us.
But that's going to take time.
It's going to take a bit of a movement.
And truthfully, how much losing can my party take?
I mean, I've said one thing about Donald Trump.
He has made losing great again.
And what I mean by that, you know, since 2016, the Republican Party lost, they lost the House in 2018.
They lost the Senate in 2020 as well as the presidency.
In 2022, Republicans significantly underperformed.
And Donald Trump has been leading this party, and now he's the nominee.
And I would argue, if we had any other nominee, anybody, like Nikki Haley, for example, Republicans would be walking away with this election.
And parties exist for a reason to win.
And why do they want to win?
So they can govern.
So if the party continues to lose, well, maybe that will force the types of changes that I'm talking about.
And Jeff and Kent, Ohio, Democrat, good morning.
Good morning, Mimi.
Good morning, Charlie.
I just, when I listen to Mr. Dent, I can't help but think about all the things in the past that the Unit Party, both the Republicans and the Democrats, have done.
NAFTA, that hollowed out our middle class and hollowed out our nation's smaller towns.
Millions and millions of people streaming across the border at taxpayers' expense, impacting our great cities and our small towns.
Troops in over 168 countries, military people all over the world, billions in offshore wars while our people are sleeping under overpasses.
My point would be, Charlie, that I'm not sure, I know you don't like this guy, but I can tell you right now, there's a group of us in America that have simply had enough of our towns and our people being fleeced by a uniparty.
And from what I see, Charlie, you represent that uniparty, and people are simply tired of it.
And I am a lifelong Democrat.
And Charlie, I don't know you, and I don't have any animosity towards you.
Let's get a response.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, a uniparty.
Well, I don't really think there is a uniparty, with all due respect to the caller.
There really isn't.
And hey, I am concerned about the border, too.
And by the way, I was one of the original co-sponsors of the Secure Effense Act of 2005 or 2006 that actually authorized that 700 miles of pedestrian and vehicular barriers all along the southern border.
So I strongly believe in border security, and I certainly think the Biden administration was very slow getting to that issue.
But bottom line is, you know, I'm not, you know, our communities have struggled for a variety of reasons.
And, you know, you can, and we can have this great debate about what should the role of the United States be in this world.
I mean, yeah, we can walk off the stage, as the caller suggests.
Well, we'll cede it all to China.
And the China will set the rules.
And we'll be listening to the Chinese, if that's what you really want, sir.
If you want the Chinese to basically lead this global order along with their friends, the Russians, and the Iranians, okay.
I mean, you think we're going to have a better world?
You think it might be better if the United States and our friends and allies in Europe and in Asia and Japan and Australia and Korea, South Korea, and elsewhere?
I mean, I think that order is much better for Americans than the one that I think you are leading us towards, sir.
And here's Rick in Colorado, Republican.
Hi, Rick.
Hi.
You know, you act like the mega party is a few people.
Have you seen Trump's rallies, how many people show up to his rallies?
I would say that the Republican Party has left you.
And most of the people that are Republicans now are the mega party.
It's the future.
I mean, you either want our country to be taken over by other people or you don't.
You say that China is going to take us over if Trump gets elected.
Sir, I think you're very wrong on that.
Yeah, can I respond?
Well, first, sir, I was responding to a question where that gentleman seemed to suggest that our engagement throughout the world is what's costing this country terribly.
In other words, he wants us to retreat.
Bring them all home.
I said, okay, you can bring them home.
But you're creating a vacuum.
Who's going to fill the vacuum?
Are we naive enough to think it's not going to be the Chinese or the Russians or some other country that's hostile to our interests?
Do we think this is going to be a better world?
And I guess whatever the faults of this international order that was established after the Second World War, you know, there has not been great power conflict.
We have not gone to war with, we didn't go to war with the Soviet Union.
You know, we somehow kept the peace.
Had there been wars, absolutely.
But there was not great power conflict.
I mean, I'm old enough to remember, at least my parents' generation, you know, remember, we're part of World War II.
And I don't know that we want to go back to great power conflict like that again.
So I guess what I'm saying, sir, is that if your view is if we just draw up the walls, put up the walls, that was the America First agenda back in the 1930s.
You know, we were, you know, stay out of it.
You know, Hitler won't cause us any problems.
Well, he did.
He declared war on us, as I recall, not the other way around.
And so let's think about this very clearly.
If we want to let these autocrats in countries that are hostile to us determine the international order, that will have an immediate effect on the American economy and we as Americans.
If we think we're going to all be as prosperous as we always were, well, I got news for you.
It isn't going to happen.
Charlie Dunt, there's an article from Reuters in August with the headline, How Trump's Intimidation Tactics Have Reshaped the Republican Party.
It says that he's purged his Republican Party of lawmakers and officials deemed as disloyal.
Do you, I mean, you're a Republican.
Do you feel the threat of intimidation, of revenge, anything like that?
Not really.
I mean, although he certainly talks about it, you know, he talks about going after all his enemies.
That's a pretty long list.
He's going to be awfully busy going after his enemies.
But no, I mean, I don't feel, I personally don't feel it.
But I think, you know, disloyalty, I mean, what does that mean?
Disloyal to what?
To whom?
To him?
Okay.
Disloyal to him?
I mean, this is, I mean, I think that's a sad state of affairs in this country where we can't even have debates about policy anymore.
It's hard to have debates about policy.
It's about whether or not you're loyal to him.
If you disagree with me, I somehow disapprove of you, and I'll use the arms of the Justice Department to go after you.
I mean, this is America.
We don't do that here.
And here's Keith in Hawthorne, Nevada, Independent.
Hi, Keith.
Hi, good morning.
Yes, actually, Congressman, the Constitution says either foreign or domestic, there are enemies within, and that's what Donald Trump is talking about, is the domestic enemies of America.
They hate the Constitution.
They are un-American in that regard.
That's what he's talking about.
He's talking about the people who are saying that who are you talking about?
I mean, who are the enemies within?
I'm talking about all the neocons.
Maybe you're part of it.
I'm not in the middle of the day.
Newt Gingrich said live on television many years ago, he said, the reason why the left and the people of the deep state hate Trump is because he's never been initiated into the dark arts.
And also, I want to just mention his hand is protecting people.
What are the dark arts?
I mean, I'm not talking about the dark arts.
I'm talking about the secret societies that control much of the world that we're dealing with now with the think tanks, the Rockefeller Institution, the billionaires that rule the world with the Rothschilds and stuff.
So that's on your dollar bill.
There's a pyramid, the all-seeing eye.
That's all Masonic and it's literally satanic.
Sorry, Keith.
Thank you.
Cuckoo.
That's all wild conspiracy theory stuff.
You know, he's going about the billionaires.
Well, you know, Elon Musk is standing up there on the stage with Donald Trump.
I mean, okay.
I mean, it's not a conspiracy theory.
He is.
I mean, Donald Trump has billionaire support.
He's a billionaire himself.
I mean, this guy's talking about billionaires in this conspiracy.
Well, which ones?
Which ones?
Connie in Dover and New Hampshire, Democrat.
Good morning.
Yeah, good morning.
So I have, you know, I was looking at the differences between Biden has a 3.4% unemployment rate at the end of his term and Trump had 6.4% unemployment rate.
And I was like, I don't understand why people don't note that when they're saying, you know, everything was better under Trump.
You know, almost a million people died from COVID.
He put his son-in-law in charge of put his son-in-law in charge of COVID response and nothing happened for months and months.
And so I was watching the interview from Fox, and when they didn't show Trump saying that about the enemies within, I thought, well, no wonder they don't know, because not only are there misinformation delivered, there's also an omission of information.
And so I just, you know, I don't know how to overcome the differences.
And just anyhow, I mean, you know, everybody cares about employment.
That's how we build our nation.
All right, Connie.
Yeah.
Well, look, look, there's a lot of economic discomfort in this country, mostly because prices have gone up significantly and very dramatically a couple years ago, especially on food.
Food prices went up at a record rate.
And of course, housing prices are also very high with interest rates high and there's not enough supply of housing.
There are a lot of people who are feeling the pain, even though you're right, unemployment levels are low and other economic indicators are strong.
But people feel like their money isn't getting them as far as it did.
And that's why there's the economic angst, and that is a real issue.
So the question is, what are you going to do about it?
And so let's have a policy conversation.
Look, each candidate maybe has put forward policies that could be construed as inflationary, but none probably more than Trump's on tariffs.
That would actually add to inflationary pressure fairly significantly.
So I wish I had a simple, easy answer for you on the economy, but there is real economic angst in the country, and that's driving a lot of the motivations of many, many voters who might be uncomfortable with both candidates, frankly.
On this program on Friday, we had Gannon University American Political History professor Jeffrey Bloodworth, and he was talking about the rural-urban divide in Pennsylvania and the Rust Belt states and how it's impacting the Republican Party.
I'll play it and then get your response.
You know, we have a rural-urban divide.
We have an urban America, you know, dominated by people like myself, the knowledge worker elites.
I mean, the economy is working really well for us.
And so, you know, what many people in my demographic, when we hear the different left or right populists, we think, well, what's the problem?
Our lives are good.
And out in rural America, where the economy is not working for the same number of people, they are more open to both populace of the left and right.
I mean, Bernie Sanders did well, you know, better than Hillary Clinton did in Rust Belt areas.
He won Michigan in the 2016 primaries, for instance.
And so Pennsylvania points to the at least near-term future of an American politics that's defined by a rural-urban divide between the college and the non-college.
And I would argue non-college Americans, and I can fully understand this, what they're saying is that they want the American dream to work for them as well.
This is not every Trump voter, as we heard from the caller in Georgia.
There's lots of social conservatives out there.
Their economic concerns are, you know, that's different.
They have a different reason for voting for Trump than others.
But in Pennsylvania, what we see with the state moving towards the Republicans, it's in small towns and small cities that are not enjoying the fruits of prosperity in the same way that Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
I mean, we see this in Wisconsin and Michigan.
We see this across the nation.
To get out of this hyper-partisan spiral, I think what we need is we need to have a more shared prosperity.
Your kids should not have to move to a big city in order to get ahead.
We need small cities in small-town America to enjoy the fruits of the prosperity the same way that big cities do.
Knowledge worker elites kind of have to look in the mirror and say, you know what, maybe the economy works well for me, but it also should work well for people without a four-year college degree.
What do you think, Charlie Dent?
I think that the caller is, the speaker was correct in that the dividing line in American politics right now, it's maybe less about race and gender and maybe more about educational attainment levels, those with college degrees and those without.
And he's right, that there are a lot of people who feel left out in this economy.
They want something better.
And that's why I think we need to do more to help people with non-college degrees have access to more jobs.
I mean, we basically tell people you can't apply for a job because you have a college degree, even in jobs that we really don't need a college degree.
So we need to do that, and we need to continue to invest in, I'll say, these smaller markets, these middle markets.
Absolutely.
I don't like seeing kids leave their homes and go, hey, by the way, this isn't a new phenomenon.
I graduated college in 1982 when unemployment rates in Pennsylvania over 12 percent.
And, you know, in my area, the steel industry was collapsing at that particular moment.
We've seen it before.
And this has been going on for a while, but the point is, we've got to stick around.
We've got to invest.
And I'm pleased too with the CHIPS Act.
Much of the significant amount of that investment is not going into those knowledge areas in those big cities, but being spread around the country, which I do think is encouraging.
Let's talk to Suzanne.
She's in Annville, Pennsylvania, Republican.
Suzanne, are you there?
Hi.
I'm here.
Hey, I just wanted to say that Mr. Dent used to be my congressman when he was in Congress.
And even at that time, Charlie, you weren't really in my ⁇ I guess the difference for me is between Republican and conservative.
And you've never been a conservative to represent my views as a conservative Republican.
So now, so I'll be honest with you, I never voted for you because of that because you were not a conservative Republican.
But my question is, even if you don't like Trump, and I understand that, his personality, I get it, okay?
However, why would you vote for the opposition who is so anti-Republican and in my book, anti-conservative, just don't vote for president?
That's what I did when you were up for election.
I didn't vote for the Democrat against you because I didn't share their values either.
However, I just don't understand why you would vote for the opposition.
Suzanne, give us an example of what you mean by him not being a conservative.
Well, his stance on abortion, and I'm extremely pro-life, and he is not.
And that happens to be the one issue that I vote.
Yeah, that's the same thing.
He's the one-issue voter.
I'm one of these white suburban masters-educated women who is staunchly pro-life, and that is very important to me.
All right, we got it.
Got it.
Yeah, look, I appreciate your call.
And her definition clearly of a conservative is somebody who's right to life.
And I was, you know, I supported women's right to an abortion.
I did.
And I was one of the few.
Now, post-Dobbs, that position isn't looking so radical.
In fact, it's embraced by, in my district, by the way, I never won an election in my district by less than 10 points.
I usually won by anywhere from 10 to 20 points.
So somehow I survived.
I was a more center-right type of member of Congress.
And that's how I presented myself.
And so, you know, obviously some people on the far right didn't like that.
You know, the far left thought I was a right-wing nut.
That's what the far left thought.
The far right thought I was a total squish and rhino and a left-winger.
But most of my constituents thought I was sort of center-center-right.
And so, and I somehow prevailed.
But she brought up the abortion issue.
And frankly, I think this is a real challenge for the Republican Party.
It is an issue where it is a liability.
The party no longer knows how to speak about this issue.
We were told it's a communications problem.
I would argue it's not a communications problem at all or a messaging problem.
It's a policy problem.
They have to figure out the policy.
And frankly, what some of the states have done, in Texas and others, where they've gone to these bans, and there are near-total bans with no exceptions except for the life of the mother, well, that enjoys the support of maybe 5% of the American people.
And if Donald Trump loses this election, that will probably be a significant part of the reason why.
Here's Liam in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Democrat.
Hi, Liam.
Good morning.
Good morning, Mr. Day.
Good morning.
I called this morning watching this segment because you was getting a lot of income.
And I wanted to lift you up and let you know I have observed you from time to time.
And when you come on television, and you're right in my wheelhouse.
You know, we don't govern from the far edges of the left or the right.
We have to come together in the center.
I love the way you have, over the years that I have observed you, have gone through a pragmatic process of trying to solve problems.
You know, what the problem is, what is our solutions, and trying to bring everybody to the table because we all can't get what we all want.
You know, but we can get something for everybody for the bigger good of our country, and that's how I see you.
So, you know, we got it, Liam.
Thank you.
Very kind.
You're very kind, Liam.
Thank you for those nice remarks.
But I think you're right about something, Liam, that we as a country, we need to get back to pragmatic governance.
People want us to solve problems.
They don't want us to ignore them.
I mean, it's hard, you know.
I witnessed this during my time in Congress.
It seemed like so much of the time in my last few years we spent just trying to get the basics done.
Can we fund the government for three months at the current level?
I mean, this was dramatic.
Or can we make sure the country doesn't default on its obligations with a debt ceiling?
And we spent months and months and months dealing with these issues of fundamental governance.
It prevented us from actually doing things that people want us to address.
But when you have a lot of people in the Congress who are really good at telling you all the things they can never do, can't get the yes, well, then we got a problem.
So at some point, people have to get the yes, at least enough of them, to at least advance the interests of the nation, whatever they may be.
All right, Charlie Dent, former Republican U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania, he's a senior advisor for the group Our Republican Legacy.
You can find out more about them at ourrepublicanlegacy.com.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you.
Great to be with you.
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