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Dec. 18, 2023 - Doug Collins Podcast
49:08
From Arkansas to the White House, small town dreams matter
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority, and it ain't going to be that fun.
All right.
Hey, everybody.
Doug Collins here.
Glad to have you on the podcast.
Now, I've got a good chance to talk to a good friend, Hogan Gidley.
Hogan's going to be with us today.
We're going to talk about his time in the White House, the Trump White House, also his time beforehand, and really sort of how he got to be where he's at today.
But also, we're going to hit on the issues of the presidential race coming up, the issues in Congress, things that are going on as we go forward.
But again, it's going to be a great time on the podcast.
Right after the break, we'll be coming back, and we'll be ready to go with my friend, Hogan.
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All right.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back.
We're here now.
Hogan, glad to have you on the podcast, buddy.
Doug, it is great to be on here, even though I had to shame you on another podcast for your guest hosting to get on your podcast, but I'll take it.
Yeah, yeah, I know.
I was going to express, I was guest hosting for Seb Gorka the other day on the radio show for three hours, and then all of a sudden at the end, we come in, everything's going well, and I said, you've got a podcast?
Yeah, fine.
Also, I won't bring this up officially, but seeing how he and I both work for a certain place in a certain time, they have a podcast, which I haven't been on either, but that's okay, you know.
We'll deal with that as we go forward.
So fair.
So fair.
I'll walk into that one.
That is good.
It's good to see you this morning as we get started on this.
Lots going on.
But one of the things, and I told you offline I wanted to do is I always do this, and I've done it with countless people from congressmen to others as well.
It's sort of talk about where you come from, because everybody will see you, and a lot of people will know you from the White House.
They'll know you from the campaign.
They'll know you from the stuff that you're on TV all the time with now.
But a lot of it's where you came from and how you got to where you are now is always an interesting part to me.
And I have found out this morning that I pronounce your hometown as El Dorado, Arkansas.
It's where you're from.
A lot of folks that we were just talking about, Lamar Hunt is actually from there.
Lou Brock, a baseball player.
A lot of folks.
Daniel Gafford with others.
And also the Murphy Oil issue.
Tell me about growing up in small town Arkansas.
Well, you know, I was born in North Carolina.
Most of my family is from North Carolina, if not all.
So I have kind of some roots there too.
But I moved to El Dorado, Arkansas at a really young age.
Moved away second, third grade and lived in Tyler, Texas for a few years and then back to El Dorado.
So finished out my high school time at El Dorado.
You know, really hadn't been back in 25 years, but ironically enough, the Speaker of the House in Arkansas, someone who works closely with Sarah Sanders, the governor there, was my best friend from high school.
And he's the longest serving speaker.
In the history of the state.
And he called me and asked me to come back and give a speech at one of his little Republican dinners there.
I don't mean to, I'm not belittling it.
I mean, little, because I'm just thinking El Dorado, just a little small town.
But I mean, there were, you know, 250 people there.
It was a nice, large group.
And people were excited.
And I had been back in 20 some odd years.
And it was really nice to go back and see people and see what has changed and see what hasn't changed.
But El Dorado is a really great small town, a great place to grow up, about, I want to say 25,000 people-ish, somewhere in there.
You know, I played tennis in high school, played tennis in college at Ole Miss for a couple years, too, and grew up there.
Just, you know, a lot of good friends, a lot of good folks who kind of helped shape who I am today.
I wouldn't be where I am today without kind of learning so much from so many there, and like I said, we're still good friends.
I'm on a text chain with my four closest friends, and we You know, drop each other Saturday Night Live clips that we used to kind of act out and do when we had sleepovers back in the day and stuff like that.
So we're still close.
And it's really cool to have that kind of friendship.
And that's what you get in kind of a small town.
And Murphy Oil kind of started there.
I taught some of the people who were execs there.
I taught their kids tennis growing up and I got to be friends with them, too.
And whenever you go to a Walmart or a Sam's and you see those Murphy Gas Pumps.
That's Murphy Oil.
That's El Dorado.
In fact, outside, when you're driving into the town, it says El Dorado.
And I think it says something like Arkansas's original boomtown because it was an oil town for so long.
And so, you know, it's a really cool place, really beautiful place.
The downtown is very idyllic around the square.
There's a courthouse and the Christmas lights and the whole thing.
So it's really cool.
And it was a great place to grow up.
That is pretty cool.
One of the things you mentioned here, and I have similar roots, but Gainesville is a little bit bigger, you know, as I was growing up.
We probably had, we were closer to the county and the city itself is where we're probably, you know, in the 100,000 range when I was growing up, 90, 100,000 range.
So you still, and it's still to this day, it's sort of, even though we're at 250,000, probably 1,000 in the area where I grew up.
It's still you know who was here and who wasn't here.
And you can tell by, and probably you can do the same thing, if somebody names a street or names something, you can tell if they're original or not.
Yes.
Because they know what was there.
But there's something about that.
And how many little towns across the country have you had a chance to go to, and I've had the chance to go to, that, and it's sort of a sidetrack, and that's why I love doing this podcast, is you go to these towns and you want, one of my first thoughts is, I would love to have been there when.
Yeah.
Is that way you sort of see your hometown?
Would you love to have been there when it was a boom town, so to speak?
Oh, sure, sure.
And it's still great today, but there was a time, obviously, when there was some revitalization, when it was really growing and kind of making itself known throughout the state and even nationally.
Because, I mean, look, presidents used to come through.
Presidential candidates used to come through on those private jets and meet up with the folks who ran Murphy Oil and get checks.
For their campaigns, right?
I mean, so people knew where it was and people knew how important it was.
It was a Democrat stronghold forever.
In fact, a guy who lived around the corner from me, who my mother was best friends with his wife.
His name was Jody Mahoney.
He passed away from cancer a while ago, but he also was in the state legislature and was very powerful, was there when Clinton was kind of king.
And so they were very close too.
And I'll never forget, this is a side note too, as we go down a podcast wormhole.
They're so democratic that they love like the New York Times was their thing.
That was their paper of record was the New York Times.
And so my mother's friend saw me quoted in the New York Times one time and freaked out and called my mom like, why is he quoted in the New York Times?
And my mom told her what I was doing.
And she's a big fan of Maureen Dowd, okay?
Now, I've known Maureen for a while.
We had a little meet-cute that we're not going to talk about here a long time ago.
We've been friends ever since, and we text or whatever.
Friends is a loose term, but, you know, D.C. friends.
I know this thing.
And she had a book that said something.
The book title was something like, Do We Really Need Men or Men Really Important or whatever?
And I got her to sign a copy for my mother's friend that said, If the title of the book is real, if we're talking about Hogan, the answer is yes, we need men.
And I thought that was really kind of funny and it blew her away.
So it's kind of those weird little tracks you take on the pathway that kind of resonate with so many people.
But just being in that town when it was so important because Clinton was from, you know, Hope, which is somewhat close to El Dorado.
But it made Arkansas what it is.
I mean, you go back today and there's a different they have a state house, which is a state house.
And then they have the Capitol, which is different.
The state house is where Bill Clinton took his where he won the election that night, came out on the balcony, waved to people.
My best friend's parents took us there, not because they were Democrats.
They weren't.
They were Republicans.
But they took us there because they said, this is history.
You need to see this.
So I got to go up the night Bill Clinton won the election and was standing right there to watch him come out and address the crowd.
So those kinds of things are really memorable for me in that state.
And it really is kind of a cool place.
It's the natural state.
A lot of things that are there.
I grew up duck hunting there.
I've been doing it my whole life.
And I'm never...
Nowhere am I more comfortable than in the woods.
I go back to duck hunt every year.
I'm actually getting to go back twice this year.
I'm really excited about that.
It's just a cool place to be and a wonderful place to grow up.
On an entirely separate note, you're going to have to get in there between you, Joey Jones, and some others who have really gotten the guy from Fox and all who I've gotten to know real well from Georgia.
Y'all talk about duck hunting.
I have never been duck hunting.
Offline, Offline, let's talk about this because I've got something coming up at the end of January I want you to be a part of.
Okay, we'll see if we can do that.
It'll ruin you, but you can do it.
I love it.
You know, it is sort of funny, though.
You come from towns, and I sit here and I talk about this a lot.
I mean, I'm a trooper's kid from North Georgia.
I mean, we, you know, went to high school.
Books and music were the thing that got me out of Gainesville, so to speak, literally.
And now, like you said, when I have friends who say, I see you on Fox all the time.
I see you in, you know, the Times.
And, you know, it's like...
Yeah, you sort of pinch yourself a little bit.
I used to get off the plane in Washington.
Every time, walking down Washington National, coming in from B Terminal, where Delta was, you could see across the Potomac, you see the Capitol.
And every time I looked over, I thought, well, are they going to let me in this time?
You know, it's just like, you know, it's a pretty special thing.
You left there, though, stayed in the SEC, went down to Ole Miss.
There we go, the Rebels, Wayne Kiffin.
The paragon of Twitter virtue coach.
Hey.
But top 15, hey?
Hey, hey.
We have made the playoff two of the last three years had there been a 12 team.
And we play Georgia again next year, Doug Collins.
I know that's your team.
And fair enough, the East team is – Georgia is my East team.
So I'm a fan of Georgia.
All my friends from Ole Miss are from Athens or from the state of Georgia.
So we're really close with them too.
But, you know, I was looking at the schedule.
And we play, you know, we pick up Oklahoma and then we play Georgia again.
We lose Alabama and some others.
So I look at where Georgia was on the schedule.
I was like, you know what?
It's a trap game.
We're going to be 12-0 unless we fall for that trap weekend against Georgia, you know, because that's kind of the walkover team.
You don't, you know, you sometimes overlook because they have no real talent.
They have no real record of success there in Georgia.
So, you know, it's tough, you know.
The last few years we've been begging people to come to the game.
They're so good.
Gosh, they're a good football team.
And Kirby has done an outstanding job kind of building out what he was doing at Alabama with Saban into Georgia.
And they've got the talent.
They've got the support base.
It is an incredible college football atmosphere.
And so I'm so glad they get to come to Oxford because our friends always make those games when we have them.
And it's so rare because it's a rotating team in the East.
And since we're playing them again next year in Oxford, I think everybody's going to come over for it.
You should come too.
It's going to be a blast.
I've heard nothing but rave reviews of The Grove.
It's something else.
It is pretty wild.
But again, Athens has got a pretty good tailgate scene as well.
You know, and Athens really is a larger Oxford.
Like, I was walking around, and we were all saying, it's like, you forget how similar the towns are.
It's just yours is bigger.
But the same downtown square, the same activity around there where everyone goes out, everyone enjoys the football games.
Look, and the Grove is famous, and I understand that.
It's always a top three thing you have to do in college football before you die.
And our saying, of course, is...
You know, we may not win every game, but we ain't never lost a party.
And so you guys win more games, but I think we win a lot of parties.
But y'all hold your own in that regard, too.
So it's always a good time.
We can do a party.
Well, you know, and a funny thing is, because I was one of those sort of, you know, you talk about East-West kids in football.
My grandfather, who was a dairy farmer in Greene County, 50, 60, I mean, he thought Bear Bryant was just, you know, The man.
I mean, that was- Yeah.
He watched and even though the farm was like 40 miles as far as he was.
Do I now?
He's from Fordyce, Arkansas, by the way.
Bear Bryant.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
But my grandfather's farm was not far from Athens.
He loved University of Georgia, but he loved Bear Bryant.
It was just that thing.
So I grew up on both.
So I sort of lived with both Alabama and Georgia for years in doing this.
But I will say this one thing, and it'll get my Alabama folks that I respect and love.
But going to Alabama's tailgate is like going to a church or a hospital or something Well,
the Grove is a 10-acre plot in the middle of campus, and it is, I'm going to say, 400 yards, 500 yards from the stadium.
So everyone goes to this place, and they used to allow cars in it in the 80s.
They stopped all that.
Then it became tents, and they wouldn't allow tents.
Now you can have tents.
And the Grove rushed the day before at 5 a.m.
where they hire companies to set up your tent at your place.
So if you're from Hernando, Mississippi, they have a little spot for you.
If you're from Clarksdale, Mississippi, and so you can kind of pop around.
It's almost like you're traveling the state in one little spot, and you get to see everybody.
It's a very interesting place, and they've really made the game experience, I will tell you, I could not believe that Georgia, like the in-game experience in Oxford is way better.
And I don't know what we've done or how we've...
You have a better team and you have a better product on the field.
But it's always interesting to see how different stadiums do different things.
And there's a lot that you guys can boast about.
But I felt like Oxford has a little different there.
And you'll see it when you go if you get a chance to go.
But Lou Holtz, who's someone you and I work with, too.
Yeah.
I was at an event with him in Florida.
We were talking about football teams, etc.
And someone was in the room who runs horses in like the Kentucky Derby and the Triple Crown, Freakness, Triple Crown stuff.
And the question was asked of Lou Holtz, what's harder to do?
Win a national championship like you did at Notre Dame or win the Triple Crown?
And he said it was so perfect.
And he said, didn't even miss a beat.
He goes, well, I think it's harder to win the Triple Crown.
But either way, you need the horses.
And I thought, what a great college football breakdown he just gave us.
Because, you know, you've got to have the players.
Georgia has the players.
And it's so good to watch them.
I mean, it's just like music, watching Alabama and Georgia play football.
Because they just have it all kind of down pat.
The pregame, the fun, the friends.
It's so, so much...
Camaraderie and fun in the SEC. I know other conferences have that too, but it's just something else.
I don't know why we're talking about college football, but it's just so much fun to do.
One of the things I want to do on this podcast, Hogan, we've been doing a couple of years now, is that so many times conservatives get put into this box, especially political conservatives, that all we want to do is talk about this and how bad them liberals are.
But we have lives.
In fact, I think many times conservatives have more lives than liberals do.
You know, we're out earning a living, going to work, and we do the other stuff.
So it's good to talk about this in football.
But I will say this one last plug, though.
There's no way we fall five spots, number one, for losing to Alabama by three points.
Number two, Texas, give me a break, okay?
Until they come to the SEC and prove it, I don't care.
I'm sorry.
I'm more upset probably with Washington in that mix than Texas.
Because Texas does have a road win against Alabama.
But, you know, I have a problem with Washington over Texas.
To say Georgia's not one of the top four teams in the country is insane.
That's just insane.
Look, I think this set up Alabama for another national title.
I think that's what it did.
I think Alabama will take Michigan by a couple of touchdowns possibly, and then it doesn't matter who's on the other side in the championship game.
Alabama's got to be favoring.
If they get to it, if they beat Michigan, and Michigan's a good football team, if they beat Michigan, I don't know how they lose a second time.
I think Texas is going to roll over Washington.
So, I don't know.
Yeah.
It's going to be interesting.
Well, and then you look at it from a perspective, for those of us in the SEC, technically Texas will be with us next year, which I'm still getting used to, but, you know, that's two SEC teams in the, you know, I mean, look, SEC, it's just a, it's just me, as the old saying, the slogan, it means more.
I mean, it's just different down here.
Let's move on.
Okay.
So, when did you get the political bug?
That's the question I have.
Was it in Arkansas or is it Ole Miss or where?
I was a political science minor in college, which at the time meant nothing to me.
Okay, just nothing.
It was something to do on the backside of my journalism degree, which Propelled me to a job after school where I was an anchor and reporter.
I mean, I did on-air work in Little Rock.
I did on-air work in Jonesboro.
And at the time, remember, Huckabee had stepped in as governor because Jim Guy Tucker was indicted, basically.
He got arrested and convicted.
So everyone thought he was going to run for Senate again, where he ran for U.S. Senate and lost.
The second time around, he was going to cruise to victory.
But he was sitting in the governor's seat.
But Huckabee's one of those guys who said, look, I took an oath of office to do these things.
I can't bail in this time of tumult here in the state.
So I was pinging their guys because when I was in Little Rock, I covered the Capitol because our Capitol correspondent went to cover the McDougal trial about Whitewater.
This is all for anybody listening out there is old stuff.
So I got to cover the Capitol.
So I got to meet Huckabee and some others and I thought it was great.
And one time I just told him, if you ever need anything for me, I'd like to get out of this one day and work for you guys.
Because at the time, here's a blast from the past.
Chris Matthews, who had a show called Hardball on MSNBC, was can't miss TV for me.
He wasn't radical left then.
He was more blue collar, down the middle, both sides type guy.
So it was a thrill for me to even get to go on his show multiple times.
I thought to myself, someone like Chris Matthews got to where he did, not by going from Little Rock to Amarillo to Dallas to New York on TV. He just went to work for politicians.
So I thought to myself, I'll go work for a politician and then get back into TV and learn some stuff there.
So I'd called up Huckabee staff and I was like, guys, when are you going to run for Senate so I can quit this TV gig and start working for you guys in a campaign?
And they said, we're not running for Senate, but we are running for governor reelect.
We'd like for you to come down and talk about it.
At the time, they had a lot of old newspaper guys on staff, no TV guys.
So when they hired me, I got to kind of build out a TV show that Huckabee had once a week or once a month that was a 30-minute TV show and do some of my editing like I would do on TV. And they really liked some of that.
But then I became in the comms group with him.
And I mean, no one's better than communicating to the people than Mike Huckabee.
So I learned a lot from him.
And then when he got reelected, you know, that's kind of when everyone bails.
And I went to South Carolina.
And got in with a firm there.
And, you know, for presidential politics, it goes from Iowa to New Hampshire and then South Carolina.
And while I think seven of the 12 eventual nominees have won Iowa, 11 of the last 12 won South Carolina.
So it is kind of like the we pick president's state.
And I got to learn a lot in politics there.
I was executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party when we had two debates in 08. You may have been there.
One was in Myrtle Beach and one was in Columbia, South Carolina.
Big.
That was when the first time really you had like 15 candidates on a stage before that was like in vogue.
And no state really did a debate.
We partnered with Fox.
We did two huge debates.
They were wildly successful.
I had to go into other states to help them because they wanted to do debates.
Fox You know, worked so well with me, I got to help other states.
It was kind of an interesting dynamic.
And then I went to work for Elizabeth Dole after that, who was up for re-election.
She got wiped out in that Obama wave in 08, too.
And then in 12, I was looking to get involved back in the national scene because I'd done so much work in 08 with the debates and stuff.
You know, in South Carolina, all the candidates come through because they're testing out their jokes, they're testing out their messaging, because that's where the rubber meets the road in an early primary state like that.
And I met them all, and I talked to them all, some of them just weren't good fits.
And then there was a guy named Rick Santorum who came through, who was really, seemed to be honest, seemed to be a fighter, seemed to be kind of on the outside, kind of like a Huckabee type.
And so I got to be friends with their staff, and they hired me to do comms for them.
We won 11 states, but for 3,000 votes in Michigan, he probably would have won the nomination, and went all over Iowa.
And so I started doing that, and then I've kind of been in that space ever since.
And then in 16, When Trump was running, I didn't work on the campaign, but I was a contributor for CBS, and so they flew me up to New York every week.
Direct flight from Columbia, South Carolina.
I was living in Columbia.
I'd been there 15 years, and it's an hour and 20 minutes to New York and an hour and 20 minutes back, and they would fly me up.
I would do on air stuff for them about the race.
And they were trying to place me in the administration somewhere, you know, some agency or something.
And I'd interview with several.
It just wasn't a good fit.
And then about that time, that's when Sarah took over as the press secretary.
And since I've known her since she was 19 years old, because I worked for her dad.
She called and said, look, you don't need to be in the agency.
You need to be here.
I need someone that I can trust.
I need someone the president can trust.
I need someone who's good at their job and can kind of keep this stuff running on time.
And so I said, of course.
And so now, sadly, that decision has stuck me in D.C. ever since.
But I've been here for several years, and that's kind of the track I took.
Yeah, it is.
Now, how did you, and just curious, because you was in South Carolina, you worked for Huckabee when he was governor, how did you avoid getting, and I don't say avoid, that's the wrong word, how did you not get drawn back into Huckabee's 08 campaign, which in many instances would say, most people would say it was his best campaign.
It was his best campaign.
Well, a couple things.
I did run his PAC after that, by the way.
Yeah, Huckabee.
After the Elizabeth, or before the Elizabeth Dole thing, somewhere in there, after Elizabeth Dole.
Anyway, Here's why.
We had talked about it, but at the time, you'll remember the powers that be were really trying to prop up Romney.
And I was the one who said, wait a minute, this isn't right.
We have to make sure that Ron Paul, not Rand, but Ron Paul at the time, that Gilmore, who was a former governor of Virginia, the RNC chair or whatever he was, not RNC chair, was What's the governor's group?
RGA. RGA. NGA, RGA. The National Governors and Republican Governors Association.
I had to make sure those people got a fair shake because I didn't like what was happening and what they had done to help McCain from the party in the state level and the federal level before Huckabee's run, and this is 2004, 2006, whatever it was.
2004. So I said, all right, I'm going to be there and be kind of the bulwark.
So I was the one that...
I don't want to over inflate it, but I was the one when other campaigns tried to roll the party to do what they wanted them to do for their candidate.
I was the one who just said no.
I had planned.
The plan was to go with Mike Huckabee after he won South Carolina, which he was on track to do, but that unholy alliance between Fred Thompson and McCain at the time Siphoned off enough votes from Huckabee, and it snowed in the upstate.
And that's the northwestern part of the state, which is where the old people and evangelicals live, and they were 100% all Huckabee, but it snowed.
So they didn't go to the polls that day.
It hurt him in two ways.
He does not lament the alliance between Fred Thompson and McCain, who worked together to keep Mike Huckabee at bay, because he'll tell you to this day, that's politics.
It's clean.
It's tough, it's bare knuckle, but it's not dirty.
It's, hey, here's my strategy, and they used it and worked, and they used it to win.
Had he won South Carolina, he'd have been the nominee, no question.
Yeah, I agree with you.
Fred Thompson, and that's a whole other podcast you and I could have.
The man who had everything to be president except one thing, he didn't want to be.
He didn't want to be, and he didn't work at...
I mean, I got into a big fight with one of the campaign guys who now I know really well, working in the White House, but they just parked their bus in front of the hotel in Myrtle Beach for the debate.
It was two in the morning, and I said, guys, you got to move the bus.
And we got into this big argument.
I said, we'll move it tomorrow.
I said, no, move it now, because it's unfair for everybody else.
You guys are up here.
And I basically said...
Oh, I told him, I said, look, I know your busy schedule of doing two events a day is wearing you out, but that driver needs to come move that bus.
I had it towed.
They were hooking it up to tow it at like 6 in the morning, and they called me screaming, yelling.
I said, I told you to move it.
I don't know what to tell you.
I think they ended up getting it off the tow truck.
But still, that was a guy who did not want to run, did not want to win, and it was obvious.
I'll be very kind about this.
I think Fred's family wanted him to run.
And I was up close and personal with a lot of that.
It was interesting.
It was my first real brush with what you'll call, with really the presidential.
I was involved.
I was in the state legislature at the time in Georgia, and it was interesting to see.
What was most amazing to me is everybody who came through.
Huckabee did great in Georgia.
And Thompson came in, was Fred, several others.
You know who the worst one to come before the Georgia legislature that year was in his presentation to the caucus?
Tell me.
John McCain.
Was he?
It was awful.
Oh, wow.
He came in.
I don't know if he was sick.
I mean, he had a cold or something.
He came in and it was just bad.
I said, I can't see.
So later on in the year, when you started seeing the struggles of their campaign, it became very obvious.
I mean, you could see.
I said, well, I understand why this was happening.
Moving back on, you're in D.C. now working with AFPI. Of course, you and I run across each other all the time on TV and doing things as well.
Where we're at now is really an interesting sort of perspective.
You and I both got into politics.
I mean, I've been in it probably about 10 years longer than you have, maybe a little bit longer from Georgia perspective in the early 80s, mid 80s.
And let's take it apart for a second.
Do you ever miss those days?
And you've brought up some stuff.
In fact, I can look over here on the wall of my bookcases, and I have the original.
And again, it's a shame that he went off the rails, but I have the original Hardball book by Chris Matthews.
I mean, I read that book.
And his time with Tip O'Neill and all this, it goes into it.
What are we missing now, Hogan, in politics?
And I know you and I both have very strong preferences for what's coming up this year and how we're going forward with President Trump and everything else.
But I believe there's a generation growing up, not like you and I, that saw politics as what Mike Huckabee used to say.
That's just politics.
That's how we do this.
To where now it's become more I want to say bloodsport, but that's not even the way it is, because after that, they shake hands and they move on.
This has become a different kind of political environment, and I would just love to see your take on that.
It's such an interesting question because there's so many things.
I don't think it's just one issue.
People always say that Donald Trump killed politics.
Give me a break.
It was broken and destroyed for a long time.
He wasn't the assassin.
He was the coroner.
He showed up and was like, this is all dead and we're just going to do it a different way.
Honestly, Doug, something you said at the beginning of this that I think I share with you, you said you would go to Congress and you'd see the Capitol and you'd wonder if they were going to let you in.
We talked about my upbringing in El Dorado, Arkansas.
Great town, but it's not known for its political prowess, per se, nationally.
It's not New York.
It's not a hub.
It's not Los Angeles, right?
Not Atlanta.
The mentality, I think, of people in this country is broken for so many reasons.
We can get into that.
But look, I was raised by a single woman.
I had a great relationship with my father.
He just passed away, and we always saw each other and hung out, talked every day.
But I was raised by a single woman.
I mean, I don't have the last name of...
Bush or Kennedy or Clinton.
Well, thank God I don't have Clinton's last name, but you know what I'm saying.
I don't have a blue blood, silver spoon last name.
And I walk by that building down the street, the White House.
I shouldn't even be able to walk by it and smell the grass clippings.
But I got to go into that thing every single day.
Walk through the gates, give a hat tip to my Secret Service friends who I got to know and scanned in.
I walked down that world-famous colonnade where, if you don't know what it is, it's right by the Rose Garden.
You could see pictures of Reagan in his tan suit walking there with world leaders.
Trump did it.
Every president does it.
Walk right through those doors and go into my desk that was 80 steps from the Oval Office.
And I got to walk into that room every day and stand in front of the Resolute desk and give the President of the United States advice.
Now, he never took it.
But that's not the point.
The point is, only in this country would I get to give it.
And I think our side understands something the left doesn't.
That America is still a beacon of hope and of freedom and of goodness and of democracy and strength all over the world.
And I think the deterioration of the understanding that you serve the people in this country when you come up here.
It's not a mechanism for you to gain and maintain political power.
At least it shouldn't be.
But for too many on the left and some on the right, that's what it's become.
So it behooves them To be self-aggrandizing, to draw lines in the sand, to go on TV, to do podcasts, to do tweets, to do shows, and say all these things, and to hell with the people, okay?
Now, I would argue the left has always treated politics as a religion.
We just talked about how Campaign cycles come and go, we get worked up, we do our thing, and then we cast votes and leave.
They never stop doing it.
This is their livelihood.
And so there's a reason you don't have poll watchers and poll workers and things like that, county clerks doing elections at the local level, that are Republican or conservative because Democrats have been doing it as a career for so long.
When you begin to threaten kind of their fiefdoms that they've built, that's when they bristle at it.
And so COVID comes along and we got to see behind the curtain what we're teaching our kids in school while we're trying to trans children behind parents' back.
The war in Israel comes along and now we get to see what they've been teaching our college kids in school too.
I think the same thing with Trump where he peeled back the curtain and you got to see just how raw and angry And vitriolic and power-hungry.
The left is in this city with these three-letter agencies and the federal government weaponizing it against people if you like the wrong podcast or download the wrong speeches or watch the wrong YouTube channel.
I think one of the problems, and again, I'm kind of trying to unpack this in real time because I hadn't thought about this question.
There's a lack of, and this is going to sound so Pollyanna-ish, There's that Mr. Smith goes to Washington mentality.
And if listeners haven't ever seen that movie, you should.
It's a thought that this country is still so good.
You don't want to be naive, but it still should work the way it was set up to work.
And right now, it doesn't work that way.
And so I think that's added to the erosion of that foundational principle.
When you get rid of God, You become godless.
When you get rid of selflessness, you become selfish.
And I think that's kind of what's contributed to that overall decline in the current state of affairs that some people are in this for the right reason, but it's a very infinitesimal group.
Everybody else is in it for their own self-interest, and that's really what I think hurts the overall conversation.
Yeah.
Well, I think you're right, and I think we're moving away from it more and more to where, again, when you hear terms like, if we don't do what I say, the world's dying.
If we don't do what I say, that it's the end.
And only up until, and I attribute it to several different things.
One, I attribute it to the internet, number one.
I attribute it to social media, number two.
And the 24-hour news cycle, which started basically in the early 90s.
So they have to feel it.
And you've been in that rat race.
I mean, they have to feel something on TV where you have...
How many times have you...
Okay, this is a funny one.
Maybe it'll bear my bias.
How many times have you been on TV shows, and I've been on multiple TV shows, and we get paired with somebody or somebody gets on and they list themselves as a Republican whatever...
And you and I, who would probably be legitimately in the top, at least 4% or 5% in the country, of understanding who the players are where, say, I've never heard of this person.
Yeah.
And yet, because they need the content, they just keep rolling it out.
Or, they pair you with someone who's a quote-unquote Republican, but they're one of those self-loathing, base-hating, You know, apologetic for conservatism type Republicans.
Look, there's always been a game in this town, Doug, and when I first got into this 20 years ago, 25 years ago, you got the game, right?
Our guy's okay.
He's got some problems.
Our girl's good.
She's got some problems, but so do y'all.
And the left would say, yeah, y'all got a lot of problems.
We got some problems too.
There's some common ground.
Now it's, hey, all right, I remember this in 16. 16?
Romney.
16?
No, 12. 12 was Romney.
All right.
I don't like Romney.
He's no good.
Here's why.
But still, he's going to be better than Obama, for example.
Then they kind of shifted to, yeah, your guy's bad.
They never said, they stopped saying, yeah, we got some problems.
It was everything they did was right and everything we did was wrong.
And so living through that now in a White House with Trump, I understand the mentality of those on our side who go, no, if that's your mentality, screw you.
Everything we do is right now, too.
You can't do anything wrong on our side anymore because nobody does anything wrong on your side.
So you're not going to condemn Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib for anti-Semitic comments?
Then we're not going to condemn George Santos.
Whatever.
Screw you then.
It becomes a mutually assured destruction situation.
And I understand that mentality.
I don't know how we shake it.
But it has become so ingrained now where Republicans have been called subhuman for wanting to stand up for life or marriage or low taxes or a southern border.
They've been vilified, they've been pilloried, mocked for decades now for simply holding different policy positions that, by the way, a majority of this country holds And so I understand a lot on our side, including myself at this point, instead of going, no, I'm not taking that anymore.
I'm sorry.
I don't trust you.
I don't believe you.
There's a reason that, you know, the media, for example, their popularity sits somewhere between Congress and COVID? Because they've been lying to us for so long, no one believes them.
And they've contributed to that vitriol.
And who controls all the levers of power and influence in this country?
Hollywood, big tech, colleges and universities, the mainstream media.
It's liberals.
So I'm sorry, you're going to have to take some blame here.
Yep.
And I think that's what it is, and especially when it gets into Congress.
And when Congress, you know, you go to see it on the presidential side, you can see it in the, you know, governor's side, you know, where there's a single point of, but when it gets to legislative, when it's actually ingrained in our legislative, a house, our Senate, where you can't, I was privileged enough in eight years to pass 18 pieces of legislation, some of which were huge.
First Step Act, Music Modernization Act, Trade Secrets Act, $60 billion bills that were bipartisan with Hakeem Jeffries, actually.
I mean, we passed this stuff.
That's just not possible these days.
We got to go here in just a second, but I do got to get real quick on this.
You know you've came to sort of the end of the rope when you have presidential campaigns, and I'll be blunt, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and some of the others who are now Telling their supporters, don't trust the polls.
There's several red flags for me for candidates.
Number one, the one who says, I don't need to raise money, I'll run a grassroots campaign.
Well, thank you, you'll never get elected.
Number two, I'll just get enough yard signs and that'll be right.
Okay, that's not going to get elected either.
But one of the last vestiges of a campaign that's in trouble is saying, don't trust your eyes on the polls because, by the way, my polls internally show the same thing, but it's just this miracle's going to happen.
You agree with that assessment?
Well, there's one other group in there.
What about the self-funder?
He goes, don't worry, I don't need to raise money and build out coalitions.
I got money.
I'll just throw money at it.
I don't work either.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting because, listen, for the listeners out there, for you, I have no problem with people in Iowa being at 1%.
I work for Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, okay?
They won the nomination...
Excuse me, they won Iowa.
They won the caucuses.
So I get...
The mentality that you can catch fire.
The difference in those years is that you didn't have a former sitting president with a proven track record of implementing policies that improve the lives of all Americans, regardless of race, religion, color, or creed, and the nostalgia.
Remember, you used to have to point back to Reagan and be like, remember how good it was in the 80s?
Not really.
This was two years ago we were energy independent.
Two years ago we had a southern border.
Reasonable prices for gas and for groceries.
The world wasn't breaking out into wars and devolving into chaos.
Because we had a different person in the White House.
And I remember I was watching a clip from someone who made the comment, it turns out it matters more who the President of the United States is than just to the people in America.
It matters around the world too.
And so Understanding reality is something that politicians rarely do.
And it's one thing to say, look, I know where the polls are, but we have a groundswell of support, and what I'm counting on are the people out there to get out and support this message I'm bringing forward of XYZ in Iowa, for example, or New Hampshire, South Carolina.
It's another thing to just say, no, I don't trust that.
I don't believe those polls.
Now, we had a president who didn't believe those polls in Donald Trump, and he was right, but you weren't down by 40. You weren't down by 50, okay?
Yeah.
The fact that a lot of these campaigns aren't recognizing that reality makes them sound like they're living in a fantasy land instead of confronting it.
It's like Romney in his campaign trying to say he wasn't rich.
Own it!
Trump was like, yeah, I'm rich.
I want everyone to be rich.
What's the big deal with that?
Yeah.
Yeah, we're down in the polls.
So what?
It's about the people.
Whatever.
Pivot off of it, but just to ignore it and pretend like they're not real, that's ridiculous.
That is.
I think the last thing on that is, I think the other thing is that, and this is, I think it's just become more and more fact now.
Several of these campaigns are still in it for one reason.
They do not believe Donald Trump will be the nominee.
They think somebody's going to take him out and it's the only reason they're there.
It's for the funny, Hogan.
You ought to see some commentators when I say that on Fox or I say it on others.
It's like that's the unspoken rule.
Nobody talks about that because they don't want to know they can't win it on their own.
Because they're simply waiting for something that the left is trying to take out Donald Trump on.
Well, they're all running in the lane of, I'm Donald Trump's policies without his personality.
Okay?
Crowded lane.
Now, I would argue with how bad things are in DC and nationally, you need Donald Trump's personality a little bit to kind of push through some of the BS. Yeah.
But at the same time, what they are counting on is for the legal system.
to take down Trump because if they had, if Ron DeSantis, for example, had Fatally wounded Trump's campaign by something he had done or said or ads or whatever.
The base would be furious at him and wouldn't support him.
If the courts take out Donald Trump, then you can stand there and hold out your hands and try and catch his voters and go, see, I was for Trump.
I would protect Trump.
The DOJ is wrong.
The FBI is wrong.
They're coming after all of us.
They went after this president.
I'm the one who can champion this from now on.
So he doesn't lay enough hurt on Trump to To wound him in the polls.
If he did, it would hurt him.
So the only result, the only path, as you just pointed out, is to wait for the courts to hurt him.
If they do, I don't know if the base would be demoralized so much that they wouldn't come out anyway.
So I'm really confused about where this is.
But by the time the courts act, he's the nominee.
If he wins Iowa, let's put it like this.
If DeSantis doesn't win Iowa, he's put all his eggs there, he's going to have a tough time moving forward because Nicky's going to beat him in New Hampshire.
Nicky's going to beat him in South Carolina.
Then he'd be 0-3.
If Nicky goes ahead of him in Iowa, then he's done for sure.
Trump doesn't have to win Iowa, but it would be a big statement if he did because DeSantis had that big apparatus and all the endorsements and all that.
So again, I don't know where that goes because it is about turning people out and they're supposed to be able to do that.
We'll see.
But if they're 0 for 3, anybody but Trump, if Trump is 3 and 0, what state is he going to lose that knocks him off the pedestal?
And by then, he's a presumptive nominee in February.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, he is.
The court case is in March, May, June...
Too bad.
He's already the nominees.
I don't know how they're going to stay around long enough to even be relevant if the courts did hurt him at that point.
Does that make sense?
I agree.
It does.
It does.
And I think that's something we're going to talk about.
And as now we've gotten started on this thing, folks, Hogan Gilly will be back more.
You know, we're going to have him back on.
We're going to talk more about this as we go.
Because it's been fun.
It's actually been really fun to talk about, you know, similarities in past and where we're at.
And there's a lot more to be discussed as we go forward.
So, Hogan, number one, thanks for being on today.
We'll look forward to some more comments after the holidays.
We're going to get ready for Iowa.
I'd love to get your input onto that as we go forward.
Thank you so much, Doug.
I really appreciate it.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to you.
Everybody, just remember, keep watching the Doug Collins podcast.
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