Nikki Haley: The Path To The Presidency with Michael Knowles
Michael Knowles sits down with Nikki Haley to discuss her primary campaign to be the Republican nominee for 2024.
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Nikki Haley has served as the 116th Governor of South Carolina.
She has served as the 29th U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Now, she is seeking the presidency.
And after Donald Trump, Nikki Haley is the first declared Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential nomination.
And now, she is sitting down with me to discuss her campaign.
The last time I saw Nikki Haley, she was teaching me how to be a U.N. ambassador.
I am still not the U.N. ambassador, but she is now running for president.
Nikki, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, and you almost had the veto down, but not quite.
It's not my hand, was it?
Yeah, yeah.
I'll keep working on it.
Maybe in a Haley administration, I'm just putting it out there.
I'll keep practicing.
Who knows?
Who knows?
So, Nikki, congratulations on entering into the race.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
I've got a list of ten questions.
Okay.
Answer them however you like.
They're from a smattering across policy, philosophy, history.
First question, real hardball.
Who's your favorite president?
I have two, Lincoln and Reagan.
Lincoln and Reagan.
Good choices.
What book has most influenced the way that you view politics?
The most recent book, because I feel like I've read, but the most recent book really was J.D. Vance's book.
I just related to it so much because I grew up very similar in the way that, you know, you lived with people who didn't know what we didn't have.
And to not forget their voices and to understand that they matter.
Is really important.
You know, because in rural South Carolina, you know, you've got schools that are challenging and you've got companies don't come always where they need to.
And that's why when I was governor, I focused so much on every single part of South Carolina.
And I think we need to focus on every single part of the country.
But you have to look at the cultures.
You've got to look at the people.
You've got to look at...
You know, what they do and how they live.
And I thought that JD did an amazing job of really describing who they are, what they care about, and what we need to do as a country to make sure that we let them know we've got solutions that lift up everybody.
Well, speaking of reaching out to people that one does not typically reach out to, you have had a lot of crossover appeal, more so than many of the candidates who have been talked about as potential nominees.
What is one time that you have reached across the aisle, successfully or unsuccessfully?
And what is one issue on which you most likely would not be able to reach across the aisle?
The hardest issue, I think, of having to deal with reaching across the aisle was after we had the shooting at Mother Emanuel Church.
And you had a white supremacist come in to a church.
It was the first time we'd had a shooting in a place of worship.
And these 12 people did what so many South Carolinians do on a Wednesday night.
They went to Bible study.
But somebody else showed up.
He didn't look like them.
He didn't sound like them.
He didn't act like them.
And when they bowed their heads in that last prayer, he began to shoot.
And South Carolina was devastated.
Three days later, he had his manifesto out and he was showing the Confederate flag.
And this was on the heels of Ferguson.
And you were watching riots on TV, you were watching that, and I knew that I had to somehow protect the state.
And really pushing for the flag to come down was something that you had to be really respectful about.
Because half of South Carolinians saw the flag as heritage and service.
The other half saw it as slavery and hate.
My job wasn't to judge either side.
My job was to get them to see the best of themselves and go in a different direction.
It took two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate.
But what we were able to do is tap into the best part of people and say, let's put this Confederate flag, instead of the front of the State House, where it's a living, breathing symbol, let's put it in a museum where it belongs.
And then move on as South Carolinians.
And South Carolinians did that.
The next push they, of course, were like, what about monuments?
What about street signs?
And I was like, we're not doing that.
And I strong-armed and said, we will never do that because you can't erase history.
You can add to history.
So instead, they're adding a monument for the Mother Emanuel victims.
They built an African-American museum.
And so that was one that was really not just hard but emotional for the people of South Carolina.
Yeah.
And it was, you know, part of who they were.
And so getting them to see there's a better place we could go, but you don't have to hate each other to do it, was really important.
Now, what would be one issue, because obviously you successfully were able to affect that policy, what would be one issue where you think, I probably couldn't work with the other side, if there is one?
I mean, the one thing I would love to do is term limits.
Because I don't think that that's an issue for Republicans or Democrats.
I think that's an issue for Americans.
I mean, look at D.C. Look at how long everybody's been there.
And so, do I think Congress will ever pass a term limits bill on their own?
No.
But what we have to do is get...
You couldn't work with either side on that.
That's exactly right.
But what we have to do is get the American people to say, when every single congressman decides to run, are you for term limits?
And make them do it at that moment.
And when America goes and puts them to where they have to answer and they have to sign a pledge and they have to follow through with it, that's how I think we're going to get it.
But I think that's going to be incredibly tough because they don't want to leave the power of it all.
And that's a Republican or a Democrat.
Right.
Neither side has any interest in that, at least of the officeholders.
Yes.
According to the polls, the top issue for everybody is the economy, and not just the economy, but cost of living, which is through the roof right now.
But it's a very thorny issue because any policy that you can undertake is going to have consequences that you don't want to see.
So how does President Haley deal with record high inflation without harming employment?
Yeah.
Very much like what we had to do in South Carolina.
You know, when I took on as governor, we had double-digit unemployment, and everything had kind of fallen to the wayside, and I had to build the state back up.
What we need to do in America is, first, stop the spending binge that's happening in D.C. I mean, it's ridiculous how much they're spending.
And it's Republicans and Democrats.
Why did they open up earmarks?
Why are we spending $12 million on a baseball stadium in New York, or $15 million for New Jersey to get the World Cup, or $6.5 million for golf courses in Colorado?
Stop the spending.
Secondly, balance the budget.
I did it as governor in South Carolina.
Many governors do it.
Why is it that D.C. doesn't do it?
We should really push to balance the budget.
Then look at 15% of our budget is interest.
Well, stop borrowing.
We're now borrowing money just to make our interest payments.
We need to actually focus on pushing the debt down because our kids are never going to forgive us for this.
But the big sting of what we're going to have to do is look at the supply chain and understand that we've got to start building things in America again.
And that means when we build things in America, that's what's going to help with inflation.
And then for all the people who say we can't talk about entitlement reform, guess what?
You've got to talk about entitlement reform.
But that means you don't have to take away things that have been promised to people.
But you do have to look at that new group coming in and say you're going to have to play by different rules.
I had that situation in South Carolina with pensions.
We made sure that those that were promised got But we told the new ones coming in, it's a different game for you.
And they know they're not going to get it anyway.
And so we've got to start doing something.
So it's those hard decisions.
I'm not a lawyer.
I'm an accountant.
So it's those decisions that are tough.
But we shouldn't pass any bills that do anything that raise the spending level that we have.
Every bill has to work towards bringing down the debt.
When we do that and commit to that, then it'll be a different day in America.
That would be another issue where you're taking on both sides, because obviously the Democrats have no interest in entitlement reform.
And then the House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, just came out and said, entitlement reform, dead on arrival.
President Haley says, too bad.
We're going to run out in 2028.
Like, we have to do it.
But I don't think we have to raise taxes to do it.
I think you just have to go back and look at the system and say, let's try something new.
On another big issue that people are focused on, immigration.
Mm-hmm.
Assuming that you want to put an end to illegal immigration, which most reasonable people do, what do you do about the people already here?
Do you put them on a path to citizenship?
Do you not put them on a path to citizenship?
And furthermore, when it comes to legal immigration, do you restrict it?
Do you expand it?
Or do you keep it about the same?
So I am the daughter of legal immigrants.
They came here.
They put in the time.
They put in the price.
They are offended by what's happening on the border.
The very first thing is we have to secure the border.
We have to stop catch and release.
We have to go back to remain in Mexico.
But more than that, We have to understand we're a country of laws.
The second you stop being a country of laws, you give up everything this country was founded on.
And we right now are watching Biden give more money to illegal immigrants than we're seeing given to citizens these days.
So I think we have to acknowledge that we have an immigration problem when it comes to immigration reform and DACA. Everybody's quick to want to talk about DACA. We don't talk about DACA until they do immigration reform.
Congress loves to complain about it.
They need to get in a room and do it.
And it's time for a change.
We need more processors.
We need to look at who's coming in.
But more than that, we should look at what will make our country better.
Do it on merit.
Do it based on the talent we need, not just bringing people in.
And do what I did in South Carolina across the country.
We passed an Arizona-style E-Verify program.
That said no business could hire anyone that was in this country illegally.
They all left South Carolina because they couldn't get a job.
Let's have them all leave America because they can't get a job.
We've got to start making sure that we focus on the Americans that live here and not the illegals that are coming in, feeding off the hospitals, feeding off our schools, feeding off the economy, and giving law enforcement more issues.
So we have to do that.
But we do have to have immigration reform.
But I think it should absolutely be on merit.
Now what about legal immigration?
This is one area that a lot of people don't talk about.
According to whichever polls one looks at, a lot of Americans, including many Democrats, want to reduce the number of legal immigrants who come into the country everywhere.
Would you touch that?
Would you say let's only focus on illegal immigration?
That's when you have to focus on your economy.
What I did in South Carolina is I knew what our manufacturers needed.
I knew what our small businesses needed.
I knew what our farmers needed.
Look and see what they have.
Look and see what Americans can fill.
Then you look at immigration.
You should only be bringing in what you need, not what you have.
I think the problem for too long has been they're looking at numbers.
Well, the numbers don't work.
Instead, do it on merit.
Do it based on what will make America better.
And look at the things that we're doing.
You've got kids that come in from overseas, we train them in our colleges, and then we turn around and send them home.
Why are we doing that?
Just focus on educating the ones you need and then keep them if that's the talent that you have to have.
Rather than looking at a firm number, just say, okay, what do the companies need to fill the jobs?
And we're not going to bring in more than we need to fill those jobs, but...
No, because there are times where if we've got plenty, then you can slow that down.
If there's times that manufacturers say, we need this talent, we need this skill, you can pick it back up.
Now, among the presidential field, one expects lots of governors.
You've been a governor.
One expects lots of senators.
Very few people in the presidential field will have foreign policy experience.
You do happen to have foreign policy experience.
Tomorrow, China invades Taiwan.
What does President Haley do?
Well, if we're smart, China doesn't invade Taiwan because we have to focus on how we're handling Ukraine.
It's a big issue.
You know, many people think this is about Ukraine.
It's bigger than Ukraine.
It's about freedom.
And that's a war we have to win.
We don't have to put more money in it.
We don't have to put troops on the ground.
But we do need to get with our allies and send equipment and ammunition that they need to win.
If Biden would have done this sooner, If you look back, this actually was with Obama.
When he went into Crimea, he didn't do anything.
It gave Putin the green light to say they don't have the will to do this.
Then they go and invade Ukraine, and Biden was slow to the take.
If we would have been strong and firm in the beginning, it would have made a big difference.
But look at what the Ukrainians did.
Here these men went to the front lines to fight for their freedom and their country.
They put their women and children off to the side.
The women said, no, that's not going to happen.
They made Molotov cocktails.
And they have gone when they gave them five days to save their country.
Look at them now.
They are gaining ground back.
And you know how far Putin has fallen when they're getting drones from Iran and missiles from North Korea.
They've raised the draft age to 65.
They've lost thousands of soldiers.
So Putin knows that there's not a place to go.
But the lesson in all of this is when a dictator says they're going to do something, we need to believe it.
President Xi said he was going to take Hong Kong.
We watched it.
Putin said he was going to take Ukraine.
He's done that.
Xi has said Taiwan is next.
We better believe him.
Putin has said Poland and the Baltics are next.
If Ukraine loses and Russia moves in, We're looking at a full-on world war.
We're trying to prevent war at this point.
We've got to prevent war.
We don't want China moving into Taiwan.
So the best thing is make sure Taiwan is strong, make sure we're strong with Ukraine, and we finish this, and then we'll tell every enemy not to go further.
If Ukraine loses, then we're in a world of hurt.
Very often these problems compound on themselves.
Vladimir Zelensky agreed with everything you just said when he said, had If Joe Biden not taken the sanctions off of Russia, Russia would not have invaded.
Had Joe Biden not actually said if Russia takes on a minor incursion into Ukraine, we won't do very much, Russia very likely would not have invaded.
So you see that weakness from the previous administration creating problems.
For whoever the next person.
But let's also remember, Russia never would have invaded if we wouldn't have had the debacle in Afghanistan.
Right.
The idea that we left Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of the night without telling our allies who stood shoulder to shoulder with us for decades because we asked them to be there.
Think about what that told our friends.
More importantly, think about what that told Putin and Xi.
Right.
They knew they'd never see another weak president like this.
But what if...
Well, this very likely would be the case.
You inherit an America which had this debacle in Afghanistan, which is projecting weakness around the world, which has fumbled the Ukraine war from before it was a war.
And so you get in there.
Through no fault of your own, America's looking very, very weak.
And Chairman Xi, to whatever degree he wants, is aggressing into Taiwan.
How do you deter further aggression?
So first, a strong military doesn't start wars.
A strong military prevents wars.
We have to strengthen our military.
We've got to modernize it.
We've got to let China know we're on to them.
Look at how they have the largest naval fleet in the world.
They have more air defense systems than we do, and they're modernizing their military.
They're stealing our intellectual property.
No one is doing anything about it.
They're committing genocide.
Everybody's silent because they're too scared to deal with China.
But President Xi started a commission that said any company that does business in China has to cooperate with the Chinese military.
Think about our tech companies.
Think about our financial data.
Think about our healthcare data.
Think about our kids' lifestyle data.
And know that the Chinese military has it.
But what is America doing?
We're not strengthening our military.
Instead, we're making them take gender pronoun classes.
I know that.
My husband's a combat veteran.
We're not doing anything about the intellectual property.
We should go tell our universities, you either take Chinese money or you take American money, you don't get both, and make them decide.
We should not be allowing China to buy 380,000 acres of American soil that we know they're buying next to military installations, recently at Grand Forks Air Force Base.
That's where our most sensitive drone technology is.
It's ludicrous to do that.
We have yet to hold them accountable for COVID. Which think, they close their borders to people coming in and they open their borders to people going out.
And of all the drug issues we have, who's saying anything to China about the fact that the fentanyl is coming from them and they know exactly what they're doing?
So when we do that, and when we start to be strong, it makes a difference.
But we are giving 46 billion dollars.
In aid to countries and most of them hate us.
Why are we giving money to China for the environment?
Why are we giving money to Pakistan?
Why are we giving money to communist Cuba?
Why are we giving money to Zimbabwe, the most anti-American African country there is?
We have to stop giving money to countries that hate America.
And when we start to say this is different, we're going to be strong.
We'll have the backs of our allies.
And for those that even try and mess with us, We're gonna take names.
That's when life changes.
That's when we have to tell those countries what we expect of them instead of being reactionary.
It's very interesting you say that because you have a reputation, whether this is deserved or not, as more interventionist when it comes to foreign policy.
And here you are talking about cutting foreign...
I'm the wife of a military...
I'm a military wife.
Do you think I want my husband to go to war?
It's the total opposite.
What I want is our military to be so strong nobody wants to touch it.
And that's where we have to go.
Everything we do should always be about preventing war.
We should never...
But you don't prevent war...
By cowering.
You don't prevent war by looking weak.
You don't prevent war by being scared of the enemy.
You prevent war by being strong and letting them know what you expect, and you tell them not to doubt you.
That's what we did at the United Nations.
I told countries what America was for and what America was against.
I didn't care if they didn't like me, but I wanted them to respect America.
That's what we have to do.
Well, speaking of China and speaking of the best defense sometimes being a good offense, which sounds like what you're describing, When it comes to trade, there's been a big shift in the way that Republicans have talked about trade.
For the early part of the Republican Party, it was a more protectionist party.
In fact, it was founded in many ways on tariffs.
For much of recent Republican history, it's been the Free Trade Party.
And you saw that especially during the Reagan era and after the Reagan era.
Recently, it's turned back a little bit more toward a protectionist party, or I'm just not quite sure.
It's in flux.
So, President Haley, looking at trade...
Does she make trade freer, more protectionist, or about the same?
You look at national security first.
When COVID came, they told us to put on masks.
They were made in China.
They told us to take COVID tests.
They were made in China.
If you go and get your medicines, guess what?
They're made in China.
We have to go and start looking at our national security.
I don't care if Americans buy t-shirts and light bulbs from China any more than I care if China buys agricultural products from our farmers.
But I don't want We want us to be dependent on an enemy for things that Americans need for security.
That's the lens you want to look at.
Yes, of course we want free trade, but when it comes to an enemy, don't ever be dependent on anyone else.
And that's why we need to build more things in America, and what we can't build in America Go to our allies.
Go to India.
Go to Australia.
Go to Japan.
Go to Israel.
Those are the ones we need to be going to.
We shouldn't be dependent on China.
So yes, you want free trade, but national security comes above all else.
It's about protecting Americans and making sure you're doing things that are smart.
And we haven't done things that were smart in a long time when it comes to our foreign adversaries.
In order to encourage manufacturing in America, would you do that through, say, protective tariffs?
Would you do that through deregulation to encourage companies through the market to come back to America or some combinations?
I would do what I did in South Carolina.
We had double-digit unemployment.
All our jobs were in textiles and they all went overseas and we didn't have anything.
And so I started recruiting foreign direct investment because I wanted to make things in America again.
We went to all of our agencies and we said, if you're costing a person or a business time, you're costing them money and that's no longer acceptable.
We pulled back regulations.
We made sure that things were free-flowing.
We cut all the red tape.
By the time I left, we were building planes with Boeing.
More BMWs than any place in the world.
We brought in Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, five international tire companies, and they were referring to us as the beast of the Southeast.
And we had the lowest unemployment we had had in 15 years.
The key was we didn't just bring the companies.
We retrained South Carolinians to do those jobs.
We made sure that it was helping the people that I was serving first.
And I think that's what we have to look at when we look at America.
You want business.
We want to be able to build things.
We want to be able to have trade.
But do trade with friends.
Don't do trade with enemies.
And that's the biggest.
Look at the Europeans.
They learned that the hard way.
Speaking of protecting Americans, on the social front, beyond the economic questions, even beyond national security, The social fabric has frayed.
You're seeing marriage rates plummet to all-time lows.
You're seeing birth rates plummet to all-time lows.
You're seeing abortion continue to remain high even after the Dobbs decision.
The family is in trouble.
What would the Haley administration do to help to restore the American family?
Stop paying them to not get married.
I mean, people right now, you get more money if you're single.
So you'll see two singles and they'll have a baby.
But on their taxes and in terms of getting aid, it's better off for them not to get married.
We need to reward the family unit.
So first of all, get all the bureaucrats out of education and quit trying to teach anything to our kids because parents need to decide it.
I look at, honestly, the critical race theory that they did.
Think about it.
If a five-year-old girl goes into school, if she's white, you're telling her she's bad.
If she's brown or black, you're telling her she's never going to be good enough and she's always going to be a victim.
Right.
Sort of a lose-lose.
It's terrible.
And then you've got the don't say gay bill that everybody was up in arms about.
And basically it said don't talk about gender before third grade.
I don't think that went far enough.
When I was in school, you didn't have sex ed until seventh grade.
And even then you had to have your parents sign a permission slip and my dad wouldn't sign it.
So I was the uncool kid in the classroom next door.
Great dad.
That's stuff that needs to be handled at home.
We need to go back to faith, family and community and allow those things to happen.
We need to go back to every school saying the Pledge of Allegiance and remembering what it means to be patriotic.
We need to allow all the things that government wants to be involved in, we need to remember that government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people.
It was never meant to be all things to all people.
When we pull that out of the lives of people and allow them to be free, and when we reward a family unit, that's when good things happen.
And you also have to look at those that have challenges.
When I was in South Carolina, we had so many people on welfare.
And what I did was I went to the businesses that needed workers, and I said, I will give you this person.
I will pay for them for X weeks if you train them.
And at the end of that, you decide whether you want to keep them.
We moved over 20,000 people off of welfare to work.
Because when those people saw what it meant to have a job, when they felt that dignity, when they felt that responsibility, and when the business owner trained them and put the time and effort, it was a win-win.
We've got to start doing more things like that.
That's hugely important.
So you're saying, even before thinking about things that the government can do proactively to encourage families, First, stop the bleeding.
I don't want government involved in our families.
I think that's the problem.
You've got government and schools trying to teach kids about what a family should be.
You've got government welfare going to people telling them they shouldn't get married.
You've got things like that that are making people more dependent on government.
I actually want less of that.
That's when we pull government back, I think we could start to heal the family unit and start to go back to community and family and churches, and that's where it should be.
One threat to the family would be the criminals that are marauding all over the streets.
There are some people in the country who say that we have an over-incarceration problem and we need to actually arrest fewer criminals and get rid of certain prisons.
Others look around and they say murder rates have spiked to recent highs in cities around the country.
Actually, maybe we have an under-incarceration problem because there are so many criminals out there.
What does the Haley administration and the Haley Justice Department do about crime?
You go deeper than that.
And again, it's what I did as governor of South Carolina.
We went, first of all, law and order matters.
You need to have the backs of police, and they have to enforce laws, and district attorneys have to prosecute them.
So we need to make sure that we're doing that.
But the second thing is, I took time to go into our prisons and figure out how they were getting in there and what was happening when they got out.
We went, we started teaching them financial planning, we taught them family planning, we offered them faith-based classes if they wanted them, and then I took equipment from our businesses, put it behind the fence, we trained our inmates so that now in South Carolina when someone leaves the fence they've got a job to go to the next day.
We have the lowest recidivism rate in the country now.
We did that by making sure they never go back in.
So enforce the laws.
Let the police do their jobs.
Give them the penalties.
They get a punishment.
You do the crime.
You've got to pay the time.
But let's train them on something else so that when they leave, the first thing is not to go out there and sell drugs again, not to go out there and commit another crime.
Let's actually give them a job so that they can get to work and start rehabilitating who they are themselves.
Final question.
Patriotism is at what would seem to me an all-time low.
And not just on the left.
The left for a long time has been unpatriotic, I think, and has said that the country is evil and oppressive and has a terrible history and we shouldn't like it.
Many on the right now are beginning to believe that America is a woke empire, that we're spreading all sorts of crazy values and transgenderism and whatever all around the world, and that we've lost our way.
And it's very difficult, even for a conservative who used to bleed red, white and blue, to feel pride and satisfaction in the country right now.
How would President Haley restore patriotic love of country on both the left and the right?
And that's why I'm doing this.
That is why I'm doing this.
Because when my parents came here, they came to a country that was confident and growing and bright and full of opportunities.
And now I look at a country that's covered in national self-loathing, where people are saying we're bad or we're woke or we're racist or all these other things.
We have to go back and restore patriotism.
We have to go back and have love of country.
And our kids need to know that America deserves their love.
And when we go and do that again, that's when I think we'll get back on track.
You have to have kids saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school every day.
We have to go remind people that every individual needs to bring back the spirit of what our national purpose is.
And you look, as a military wife, I can tell you, like, you see that sacrifice and you see the courage that our military men and women go to defend it.
I think we're good to go.
Fixing our economy, teaching our kids the right education we need to be teaching them, and start being strong again on the world stage, that patriotism will come in.
But you have to bring out the best of people.
That's what's been lacking.
We're not bringing out the best of people.
We're bringing out the worst in people.
We have to go back to remind them love of country.
And that happens when they see production, when they see people moving, when they see people working, and when they see people living with a good quality of life again.
I really like that word distracted.
It's a really precise way to describe what's going on.
In fact, I've heard sin described as not just the rejection of God and evil in itself, but it's just a distraction.
It's a total distraction.
So...
One issue that has crept up is what religion has to do with all of this.
You know, John Adams says the country is built for a moral and religious people and it's not fit for anybody else.
Religion has completely declined in the country.
People don't really know what they believe at all anymore.
You mentioned the spirit of America.
What's the spirit look like?
I mean, the spirit of America is built on faith, family, and community.
That's always been the spirit of America.
And so, you know, I think they say that less people are going to church than ever before.
If you combine all of these things, it all adds up.
We've got to go back to where, yes, we see each other as neighbors.
We understand we're one American family.
We want our children to live better lives than we live.
We've got to go back to what the men and women who sacrificed their lives fought for.
They fought for that.
They fought for us to have an America that was patriotic and loved country and didn't fall into socialism and didn't fall into national self-loathing.
We owe it to them.
To go back and find our purpose in America.
And I think that's hugely important.
And I think what we're seeing is with all these distractions, people are finding reasons to hate each other.
But what we have to remember, too, is Republicans have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president.
We have to look in the mirror and means that we're doing something wrong.
We should want to win a majority of Americans because our policies are right.
Our solutions are right.
We focus on lifting up everybody, not just a select few, but look at how we've been acting.
We lost the midterms.
We didn't lose it because of one person.
We lost it because when you had independents and those that weren't sure where they wanted to vote, they saw Republicans hitting each other and hitting Democrats.
They didn't want to be part of that chaos.
Let's remind them that Republicans are patriotic.
We're freedom-loving people that believe in that our best days are ahead of us.
But we have to get back to that.
And we should do it by addition.
We need Hispanics.
We need the Jewish community.
We need Asians.
We need African Americans.
We need women.
I know we can do it because I did it in South Carolina.
You don't go to them by saying you should be with us.
You go to them by saying, what do you care about?
And guess what?
They all care about their kids' education.
They all want school choice because they want to be able, as parents, to be able to decide where to send their kids to school.
They all care about making sure their kids have opportunities they didn't have.
They all want a safe America that's strong abroad.
When you have those conversations and you communicate it that way, people will come.
If you're tired of losing, that's why I'm telling Americans to stand with me.
America deserves better.
Families deserve better than how we're living today.
I don't want my children to grow up like this.
I mean, I see my daughter and how hard it is for her and her fiance to buy a home.
I see my son having to go and take tests and write things that he doesn't believe in just to get an A. I don't want that for my children, but I don't want that for anybody's children.
And I think we owe it to everybody to all invest and say, we're going to be part of the solution.
We're not going to whine and complain about it anymore.
