| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
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| Next, Democratic Governor Andy Bashir of Kentucky on his lawsuits against the Trump administration for their spending cuts and voicing concern over potential cuts to Medicaid. | ||
| The governor also gives his take on how Democrats could approach the issue of immigration and the impact of President Trump's tariffs on small businesses. | ||
| This is 20 Minutes. | ||
| Governor, thank you so much for your time today. | ||
| Why don't we start with what is in your special sauce? | ||
| You are the two-time governor of the state of Kentucky, a state that Donald Trump won handily. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So what's so magical about you, sir? | |
| Well, I appreciate the question. | ||
| You know, I think it's about focus. | ||
| It's about a recognition that while I run for political office, most people when they wake up each morning aren't thinking about politics. | ||
| They're not thinking about the next election. | ||
| They're thinking about their job and whether they make enough to support their family. | ||
| They're thinking about their next doctor's appointment for themselves, their parents, or their kids. | ||
| They're thinking about the roads and bridges they drive each day, the public school they drop their kids off at, and they're thinking about whether they feel safe in their community. | ||
| And I think as you look back at Kentucky in the last five and a half years, we've moved the needle on all of those areas. | ||
| And yes, people care about different issues, but if you're struggling to afford that next prescription for your child, it's hard to get to anything else. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But where's the disconnect? | |
| Because when you mention the roads and bridges, I think about Doge cuts and all the cuts the federal government is making. | ||
| When you talk about dropping your kids off at school, I think about the Department of Education getting gutted. | ||
| And when you talk about jobs, I think about these trade tariffs and what they are doing to small business, big business, and obviously the markets. | ||
| How do you put all those things together and speak to what do the people in your state tell you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because they are still deep-red Donald Trump supporters. | |
| Well, but I think what you're seeing nationally are numbers significantly changing because of exactly what you're talking about. | ||
| I believe that Donald Trump is our president because at nearly at the end of that election, he convinced the last group of movable voters that his opponent was distracted while he would focus on prices and helping you get by at the end of the month. | ||
| But there is no question that he's done anything but that since being in office. | ||
| I've never seen anything in politics more attributable to one person and one person alone than it's tariff decisions that are devastating our economy. | ||
| So what I'm seeing are small businesses that have supported this president that are pulling back, that get materials in from China that they can't source in the United States. | ||
| And so what it means for their margins is they're going to have to lay off 10% of their workforce. | ||
| Those are people they know in small communities. | ||
| What I'm seeing about families when they see these studies that say it could cost them $4,700 more a year, that doesn't just hurt the budget. | ||
| It blows a hole in the budget. | ||
| But I tell you what will move people more than anything else, and that's the potential Medicaid cuts that could come out of Congress. | ||
| Medicaid covers the people we love the most in this world, our parents and our kids. | ||
| 50% of all Kentucky kids are covered by Medicaid. | ||
| 70% of all of our long-term costs are covered by Medicaid. | ||
| And rural health care will cease to exist if they do major cuts. | ||
| So think about how we've expanded health care in Kentucky. | ||
| We now have two pediatric autism centers in eastern Kentucky, in Appalachia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm happy about that. | |
| Parents used to be told. | ||
| Me too. | ||
| Parents used to be told that they needed to drive to Lexington a couple hours, or even more painfully, they needed to move for the health care of their children. | ||
| All of that, we would lose. | ||
| These rural hospitals are typically the second biggest employer in any community behind the public school system. | ||
| And what it would mean is whether you have private insurance or on Medicaid, you drive hours to get the care you need from the same doctor who lost their job in your community. | ||
| I'm seeing it on the ground right now. | ||
| This will cause the American people to nearly revolt if they make these cuts. | ||
| What about when I think, when you talk about your regional hospitals, I think about what Doge cuts are going to do to regional economies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| When you think about what a massive employer your hospital systems are, the University of Kentucky, you don't have lots of big businesses there. | ||
| But if we suddenly see huge cuts to NIH, huge cuts to public universities, and just lots of federal jobs get cut, what will that do to your economy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we haven't even touched business yet. | |
| It'll have a major impact, both from jobs and from people struggling to get by. | ||
| So there's been an announcement that a social security office in Hazard, Kentucky, also in Eastern Kentucky, is going to close. | ||
| At the same time, they're going to shut down the call-in number for people to call that have questions. | ||
| So what they're going to have is a senior having to drive from Hazard a couple of hours to another office, and they're not going to have all the paperwork they need because they weren't able to call the number and figure out what they needed. | ||
| And what that means is someone who paid into the system, who's entitled to it, and who relies on it just to get by, will not be able to get that payment for that month. | ||
| You look at NIH cuts, and it's significant for the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville, but it's also significant for a lot of our families. | ||
| As governor, I've appropriated more money to childhood cancer research than any other governor in our past, and I meet these families. | ||
| These families have to be told sometimes that there is no cure and that there are no other possible avenues to pursue, and no parent should ever have to hear either of those. | ||
| The idea that we would stop the research into something afflicting children like that is just wrong and it's cruel and we wouldn't let some tech intern determine the health care for a child suffering from cancer, yet they're getting to decide what research to cut. | ||
| It's totally upside down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're suing the administration over the Doge cuts. | |
| Where are you in this process? | ||
| So I am in two lawsuits, at least. | ||
| It depends on the day. | ||
| What we have here are just to set kind of the legal framework. | ||
| This isn't a president's discretionary spending. | ||
| These are all acts of Congress, meaning they're laws on the books, just like any other law. | ||
| On top of that, an appropriation has been made that says here is the money to follow through with this law that we passed. | ||
| And then the federal government has entered agreements with us, contracts that say we will provide this money for this service. | ||
| And often the state has already floated the money out there. | ||
| So this is this administration saying, we're not going to keep our word. | ||
| We're going to break our contract. | ||
| We're going to ignore a law passed by Congress. | ||
| And we're going to ignore the appropriation. | ||
| There is not a legal ground that they can stand on. | ||
| I used to be an attorney general. | ||
| And this idea that they're floating, even for, we call them the COVID dollars, but they're really public health dollars to help make sure we are better prepared for any future pandemic. | ||
| What they are claiming as their cause is pretty laughable in legal terms. | ||
| So I'm guessing Elon Musk and the Doge team don't know very much specifically about Kentucky voters. | ||
| Nor the federal government. | ||
| But members of Congress do, who represent Kentucky. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And Congress could stand in the way. | |
| A Doge. | ||
| They could stand in the way of what the president is doing on tariffs. | ||
| Are you speaking with Republican members of Congress that represent the state of Kentucky? | ||
| Because I would guess the interests you're talking about, they share with you. | ||
| We have a real challenge here in that we're supposed to have three branches of government that all check. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hold on, is it a yes or a no? | |
| You're talking to members of Congress and you're statement? | ||
| We're talking to members of Congress every time we see a funding cut. | ||
| We're making sure that they know about it. | ||
| And many of them work to help. | ||
| I'll tell you, to give credit where credit's due, Mitch McConnell's out there saying tariffs are bad and are attacks on our people. | ||
| Rand Paul's out there saying tariffs are bad and attacks on their people. | ||
| I'm out there saying tariffs are bad and attacks on our people. | ||
| So if Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, and I all agree on something, it's probably because it's true. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But is that, that's what I wanted you to get, is that a model for kind of the rest of the country, right? | |
| We talk every day about how divided we are. | ||
| But what Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell and you are doing collectively is representing your state together. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that, in theory, is government working. | |
| And all we're doing is our job. | ||
| We take that oath of office to serve our Commonwealth. | ||
| We also take an oath of office to uphold the U.S. Constitution and for me, the Kentucky Constitution. | ||
| If you are allowing a president to ignore a law that you passed as Congress, you are not meeting your oath. | ||
| You're not doing what you have to for us to have the functional government that our founders created. | ||
| I mean, do your job. | ||
| Your job isn't to be the best Republican or the best Democrat you can be, but to be the best representative of your people. | ||
| I'll give you an example. | ||
| My job is to be the best governor I can be. | ||
| And so I'm speaking out here today against a number of policies of this administration because they're bad for my people. | ||
| But if you ask me how FEMA has done responding, especially to our February flooding, it's the best response I've seen. | ||
| And we've had 14 federally declared disasters since I became governor five and a half years ago. | ||
| We've been hit harder than anybody. | ||
| But if you're going to have credibility to speak out on what this administration is doing wrong, when it does something right, you've got to be willing to admit that too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So how do you work with this White House? | |
| If the president invited you up for a visit, would you go to the White House? | ||
| If a president invites you for a visit, you go. | ||
| That's the respect you ought to show to any president. | ||
| Now, would I disagree with that president in private or in public? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Because again, that's my job. | ||
| But I can't let the difference in parties or disagreement we had yesterday potentially impact progress that could be made tomorrow. | ||
| And when I speak out on tariffs or anything else, it's my hope they'll change their mind. | ||
| And we should want any federal administration to be successful because if they're successful, it's good for our people. | ||
| And so I'm being as, well, I'm probably just loud by nature, but I'm being this loud because we really need them to rethink this tariff policy that would so harm the people of my state. | ||
| You've said the tariff policy is the president and the president alone. | ||
| He stood up there with the big poster. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He did. | |
| Bourbon is one industry that is unique to Kentucky that I know you care a lot about. | ||
| The president has made his view on tariffs clear. | ||
| He has a very strong opinion, but he's open to talk. | ||
| And he's basically saying, come on down, we can negotiate. | ||
| Can you see yourself, or have you, reached out to this White House on behalf of the bourbon industry? | ||
| We've reached out to not the president directly, but a number of different points in the White House that will talk with us and talked about how important this is for that industry. | ||
| Now, our largest industry in Kentucky is aerospace. | ||
| Most people don't know that about us. | ||
| And then it's automotive, but 95% of the world's bourbon is made in Kentucky, and the other 5% is counterfeit. | ||
| And none of the world should be deprived of great Kentucky bourbon. | ||
| But when you look at the actions of this administration, they go beyond what we saw in the first term. | ||
| Look at Canada. | ||
| I mean, Canada's been an amazing ally to the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they love bourbon. | |
| They do. | ||
| And they have followed us into just about every international conflict we've been in, regardless of probably whether they thought that we were right. | ||
| And for the president to be kicking Canada and talking about the 51st state or any of that stuff is so disrespectful that they're not just looking at reciprocal tariffs, they're taking American products off the shelf. | ||
| And it's hard to blame them based on the way that they're being treated. | ||
| And so all of this wrong tariff approach is not just hurting us economically, but I worry about security and world security. | ||
| I think about how important our alliances with Europe have been for world security and what it means the way this administration talks about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But are all tariffs bad tariffs? | |
| Because Kentucky is a state that's been hurt by globalization. | ||
| And there are a lot of Trump supporters in your state who buy into this idea, short-term pain, long-term gain, even though we haven't heard about what the long-term gain plan would look like. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you say to those voters? | |
| Because they are struggling. | ||
| Yeah, the answer is no, not all tariffs are bad, but we're not talking about nuance in the approach of this administration. | ||
| You know, if somebody's hitting you with a baseball bat, you tell them to stop. | ||
| You don't say switch to a ruler. | ||
| And that's what we're seeing. | ||
| This approach by the administration is the wrong way to approach tariffs. | ||
| You think about trade policy being complicated and taking an approach that is nuanced and that takes time to implement and is carefully implemented. | ||
| But we're not seeing any of that from the approach of this administration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It sounds like from everything that I'm hearing, you try to take the politics out of politics. | |
| Every time we can. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So another big business in your state is Toyota. | |
| They've got one of the largest manufacturing plants in the country and they specifically expanded their electric vehicle manufacturing. | ||
| How is it that electric vehicle production has become so politicized and how do you solve for that in a state where it's really important to you? | ||
| It should have never been politicized and it will hit people who voted for this president the hardest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tell us why. | |
| Because we're building the two biggest battery plants on planet Earth. | ||
| They are Ford and SKON. | ||
| The smaller one is 0.9 miles from beginning to end. | ||
| Together it's a $5.8 billion investment with 5,000 new jobs. | ||
| Just down the road, AESC is building a $2 billion battery plant with 2,000 jobs. | ||
| We just announced a new battery storage plant that a company called Canadian Solar is building. | ||
| What matters most to people who fill those jobs isn't that it's a green job theoretically, it's a green job that helps their family, that puts food on the table. | ||
| And a lot of people have tried to fight the future, and no one's ever won. | ||
| And electric vehicles are definitely the future. | ||
| And supporting these factories would fall into everything else the president's talking about. | ||
| He's talking about reshoring things that are made elsewhere in the United States. | ||
| We are doing more of that with EV batteries than anything else, yet it's being attacked because of politics. | ||
| Taking politics out of something is so important. | ||
| Somehow, pre-K has become political in Kentucky. | ||
| And we have 50% of our kids that show up not ready for kindergarten. | ||
| We can afford universal pre-K, but it's somehow become this back and forth red and blue battle in Kentucky. | ||
| Maybe it's that I'm for it because I am. | ||
| Every child deserves that good start. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When you think about what worries you the most, is it the Doge cuts? | |
| Is it the tariffs? | ||
| Is it our approach to immigration right now? | ||
| I would say it starts with those potential Medicaid cuts because what it would mean to so many communities and the health of our people. | ||
| I think right with that has to be tariffs that are going to devastate small businesses and big businesses alike. | ||
| We have a company called Martin Rail, which is a Canadian company, and their parts go from Canada to Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to Mexico, and back again. | ||
| So that's almost an exponential tariff on that company that has about 500 jobs in one of our communities. | ||
| But small businesses that get materials that are so necessary from other parts of the world, it's a huge challenge for them. | ||
| The Doge cuts, I'm worried that they're not trying to fix, but to break government. | ||
| We can all act more efficiently. | ||
| We can all try to fix something. | ||
| But laying off 40% of people from a cabinet or an agency isn't fixing it. | ||
| It's trying to break it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You didn't mention immigration. | |
| Immigration has been a winning issue for the president. | ||
| He still thinks it will be, despite the fact that maybe these mass portations are illegal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How do Democrats tackle this? | |
| Because it's been a really challenging one and still is today. | ||
| So border security is national security. | ||
| You should be for secure borders, regardless of what party you're in. | ||
| Illegal immigration is illegal, and we do have to enforce our laws. | ||
| But these individuals are human beings. | ||
| And the way that they're being treated and the due process that folks aren't getting shackles on people's legs. | ||
| I mean, these are children of God, regardless of where they're from, and even if they broke the law coming into our country. | ||
| So the way we go about everything we do ought to support the rule of law, which is not happening here, but also ought to show our humanity to the world. | ||
| You can do a tough thing, but you can try to do it in a humane way. | ||
| Everything I'm hearing from you is sort of rooted in the idea of decency and goodness and family values. | ||
| Why is it that family values voters are so difficult for Democrats to peel from Republicans? | ||
| Democrats stopped talking about their why a long time ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought you were saying wives. | |
| I'm like, wow, where are we going? | ||
| But I will talk about Brittany anytime you'd like. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have to stop talking about our wives. | |
| Okay, sorry, back to it. | ||
| We talk about the what, and we get into the nuance. | ||
| We get into subsection A, point I, on our policy, but we never talk about why we make the decisions that we do. | ||
| For me, it's my faith that drives me and just about everything I do. | ||
| I remember back in my reelection year, I vetoed the nastiest anti-LGBTQ bill that I'd ever seen as governor. | ||
| And when I explained why I did it, I said I believe all children are children of God. | ||
| And I don't want our General Assembly picking on these kids. | ||
| Now, they're showing them hate. | ||
| I want them to show that somebody loves them and cares about them. | ||
| And it's my job to do the tough thing, especially when it's the hardest. | ||
| And I'll never forget the next day I'm at an event, and I got a guy walking up to me, and I thought, oh, my. | ||
| But he sticks out his hand and he says, Governor, I'm not sure I agree with what you did, but I know you're doing what you think is right. | ||
| So if we can get to that why, maybe we can have the grace and the space to have real conversations and maybe argue a little bit less. | ||
| All right, I know I'm out of time, but then let me just ask you, you're also taking a different approach than some of your other Democratic colleagues in who you speak to. | ||
| You spend a lot of time speaking directly to Trump voters, but not sort of right-wing elites. | ||
| When we look at the governor of California, right, he, like you, has a new podcast out, and he is speaking to the Steve Bannons, the Charlie Kirks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're not going with it with, you're taking a different approach. | |
| Can you explain? | ||
| Well, thank you for the plug for the Andy Bashir podcast. | ||
| My goal on this kind of goes back to COVID, when there's such scary news that's out there or difficult, stressful news. | ||
| Right now, the news hits you minute after minute after minute. | ||
| And people started talking to me about how we would do a daily update where we would work through it, but do it in a calm way to where people felt like they had the information that they needed, but felt refreshed and ready to take on the world at the end of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is it to combat misinformation? | |
| Because without that daily update, the vacuum of misinformation, especially in states like Kentucky, is huge. | ||
| And so we take the topics of the day and we try to have a conversation amongst friends. | ||
| We have some important guests that come on, but then I have a friend on there, of mine who's a Democrat and a friend who's a Republican. | ||
| But we all have the same values and we talk through the challenges that are out there. | ||
| And I'm hoping it helps everybody else process that too, because this is a tough time on all of our health and our mental health and just the chaos that feels like it's coming out of D.C. | ||
| I wanted to create a space where people could come, learn a little something, but ultimately get that recharge they need to face the day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Standing in the light. | |
| Governor, thank you for your time. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks. | |
| This afternoon, Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts will give updates on his work on Capitol Hill and the Trump administration agenda at a town hall meeting. | ||
| Live from Scotts Bluff, Nebraska. | ||
| You can watch it at 4 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at cspan.org. | ||
| Saturday, watch the White House Correspondents Association dinner live on C-SPAN from the Washington Hilton Hotel. | ||
| First, join us online for exclusive red carpet arrivals at 6 p.m. Eastern at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Then our live coverage of the White House Correspondents Dinner starts at 8 p.m. | ||
| Former Trump White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and veteran journalist Frank Cessno will join us in studio during the dinner to discuss the annual event, the role of the Press Corps, and its relationship with the Trump administration. | ||
| And we'll take your calls to get your thoughts on the president's decision not to attend this year. | ||
| Watch C-SPAN's live coverage of the White House Correspondents Association dinner Saturday, starting at 6 p.m. Eastern with arrivals online. | ||
| Then at 8 p.m. Eastern, live dinner coverage on C-SPAN. | ||
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| Where are you going? | ||
| Or maybe a better question is, how far do you want to go? | ||
| And how fast do you want to get there? | ||
| Now we're getting somewhere. | ||
| So let's go. |