May 9, 2021 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
01:03:00
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| What they would say is they wanted us to lead because they don't want to follow Russia. | ||
| They don't want to follow China. | ||
| They do see us as the moral authority there. | ||
| And you know, it's perfect example is when Trump finally, you know, when Syria crossed the red line | ||
| and did chemical weapons. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And Trump did the first shots back and did the missiles. | ||
| The number of ambassadors that came to me and said, it's so good to see the United States lead again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
(upbeat music) | |
| I'm Dave Rubin and believe it or not people, I am live in studio with a guest. | ||
| She is the former governor of South Carolina, the former U.S. | ||
| ambassador to the U.N., the author of the book right here in my hands right now, and a real human being. | ||
| I can't believe it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Nikki Haley. | |
| This is so fun. | ||
| Welcome. | ||
| This is great to be with you. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| I mean, first we just gotta do this part. | ||
| We're sitting just a few feet away from each other. | ||
| I have not done a live interview in person since July. | ||
| My last one was Ted Cruz, so you gotta follow up Ted Cruz. | ||
| We'll see how that goes. | ||
| But just to sit with another person. | ||
| It's so nice, right? | ||
| I mean, we've been through a lot. | ||
| The country's been through a lot, but I think the country can't wait to just be open again and be moving and, you know, start to live life again. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Are you shocked how long it's been? | ||
| I mean, a year and a half later, it was two weeks to flatten the curve, and here we are. | ||
| I mean, I think if you had told us all of this was going to happen, you know, prior to 20, nobody would have believed it. | ||
| But to really see all the forces at play, you know, the fear tactics, the idea that they, you know, keeping kids from school, the masks, You know, just the over-exaggeration of everything. | ||
| I hope it's taught a lesson, which is, look, we all want to keep people safe. | ||
| We all want to do our part. | ||
| But there is a role that government has, and there's a role that government doesn't. | ||
| And the idea that small businesses, that we lost thousands of them through this, the idea that people were not allowed to make their own decisions, that's a real mistake, and we shouldn't let that happen again. | ||
| So, as a conservative, do you think, in a weird way, as terrible as this has all been, this has been the best argument for sort of small government policies, that people are kind of waking up, look, we're here in LA right now, in California, you know my feelings about this place, that real world examples have sort of led people, I think, to fall more in the conservative bucket? | ||
| Look, I think we have to see this for the opportunity it is. | ||
| It was a reminder that states should be able to control what happens, you know, in terms of laws. | ||
| We don't need the federal government mandating down. | ||
| States know their people best. | ||
| If you look at, you know, whether it was Georgia when they were the first ones to open up and people were screaming about it, a governor knows where their hot spots are. | ||
| A governor knows which areas they have to be careful of, so allowing governors to decide that. | ||
| But if you look at the states that stayed open versus the states that closed down, you had more deaths in the states that closed down. | ||
| I mean, there is something to personal responsibility. | ||
| And when I was governor, I always thought when we had hurricanes, you educate, you give people the facts. | ||
| Then let them make the best decision for them and their families. | ||
| Government doesn't need to make that decision for them. | ||
| And this was a real lesson during COVID of, you know, it does go too far. | ||
| And when you watch the economy and what we've been through and the number of people out of work and the small businesses that have closed, it didn't have to happen that way. | ||
| Yeah, so you don't think that governors should just pick arbitrary dates like June 15th, as Gavin Newsom, who is now being recalled, should do? | ||
| You don't think that was the best idea? | ||
| I think it's pretty crazy. | ||
| I mean, I really do. | ||
| I think that the idea that, well, first of all, I think he knows a recall is on the way. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Shockingly, California needs to open up. | ||
| Yeah, no. | ||
| I mean, I think, look, people can make good decisions. | ||
| I still believe in the goodness of people. | ||
| I still believe that they are perfectly capable of knowing what's best for their children and their families and what they're willing to do. | ||
| And government needs to just move out of the way. | ||
| It's always been that way. | ||
| I mean, people have to remember, government breaks more than it fixes. | ||
| Always has. | ||
| What did Ronald Reagan say? | ||
| The worst, what was it? | ||
| The worst eight words. | ||
| I'm going to slightly butcher it. | ||
| I'm from the government and I'm here to help you. | ||
| Pretty much that's where, okay. | ||
| I know we could do, we could probably do an hour and a half just on COVID and all that stuff. | ||
| But you sent out a tweet yesterday in the midst of this John Kerry firestorm that is erupting. | ||
| Right now, so I actually want to read the tweet and then we'll give a little context to what happened. | ||
| You said, this is disgusting on many levels. | ||
| Biden and Kerry have to answer for why Kerry would be tipping off Iran, the number one sponsor of terror, while stabbing one of our greatest partners, Israel, in the back. | ||
| And what this is in reference to is audio has leaked of the foreign secretary of Iran basically saying that then Secretary of State John Kerry told him about Israeli strikes in Syria. | ||
| This seems like a massive scandal, but in the 24 hours since it got out there, like, yeah, the right is talking about it, but pretty much nobody mainstream, nobody on the left. | ||
| But this seems big to me. | ||
| It is big. | ||
| I mean, Biden and Kerry have to answer for this. | ||
| I mean, this is, you know, first of all, if it's true. | ||
| He can't be in the National Security Council. | ||
| He shouldn't be a cabinet member. | ||
| Biden should answer for it. | ||
| Kerry should answer for it. | ||
| I happen to believe it. | ||
| And the reason I happen to believe it is Kerry and Zarif were very close. | ||
| They worked on the Iran deal together. | ||
| Obama and Kerry never liked Israel. | ||
| They basically stabbed Israel in the back even after the election was over in the UN at the Security Council. | ||
| And so the idea that you would go and support and help our number one state sponsor of terror around the world, but stab our friend Israel in the back, Is as unconscionable as anything I can imagine. | ||
| But it's so typical of the Obama 2.0. | ||
| It's so typical. | ||
| And I think it's dangerous. | ||
| And I don't trust Kerry. | ||
| I don't trust him to not have done this. | ||
| I don't trust Biden to make Kerry answer for it. | ||
| And I think we still have to be loud about it because this is not OK. | ||
| What do you make generally of John Kerry? | ||
| Because it seems like he's gotten pretty much everything wrong forever. | ||
| There's videos that go viral every now and again of just like all the things that he has said that he has just predicted to be wrong. | ||
| I mean, I just think, you know, he was the one that said peace in the Middle East would only happen if it went through the Palestinians. | ||
| He felt like that we had to be in the Iran deal because otherwise bad things were happening. | ||
| Yet, when I questioned him on it, I said, you know, you knew that this deal wasn't going to last long. | ||
| You knew that within 10 years they'd be, you know, Doing nuclear warheads again. | ||
| And he said, well, yeah, we just knew it was a stall tactic. | ||
| Well, stalling is not okay. | ||
| Fixing is the way to do it. | ||
| And so, you know, even if it's Biden getting on this electric bike, you know, after he gets off his private plane, it's just hypocritical at best. | ||
| And that's why I don't think we can trust him. | ||
| That's why I think anything that he gets involved in, he's an elitist. | ||
| He's an elitist liberal who thinks he knows better than everybody else and talks down to everyone. | ||
| Right, well, there's that video of when he was getting on his private jet. | ||
| He said, well, I have important business to do. | ||
| That's why I can be on a private jet. | ||
| Not you peons. | ||
| You guys are all just doing nothing, right? | ||
| It's just, it's so hypocritical. | ||
| And it's, I mean, the idea when we all heard John Kerry was going to be back in the cabinet, in the National Security Council, I think we all took a breath back because we knew how much he wanted that Iran deal. | ||
| And even though he's supposedly, you know, the climate envoy, he's going to always be weighing in on all issues of Iran. | ||
| That's why I think Biden needs to answer for it. | ||
| This is really serious stuff. | ||
| But do you think the media will do anything? | ||
| I mean, that partly, you know, I talk on the show all the time now about that we're basically just in this reality war. | ||
| It's like half the people will see that story and be like, oh, there's something here. | ||
| And then the other half just won't see it. | ||
| And then it's like, well, now we're just fighting over what's actually true. | ||
| That's the reason nobody trusts media anymore. | ||
| I mean, why should you? | ||
| You're getting one side of the story. | ||
| You go to any cable network and you're getting what they think, you know, on one side or the other. | ||
| What happened to the days where you just gave us the facts and we decided what we wanted to think? | ||
| And I think the days of those are gone. | ||
| So you'll never see CNN talking about Kerry doing this. | ||
| You'll never see MSNBC talking about it. | ||
| And, you know, I think we still have to be loud. | ||
| I think we have to push it. | ||
| But it's the same thing with the border and Kamala at the border. | ||
| You know, we can talk about how many days she hasn't been there. | ||
| But, you know, even though you know they're uncomfortable with the situation, they won't say anything. | ||
| Well, when they cover it, they'll say, Republicans pounce, right? | ||
| That's what they always say. | ||
| Oh, Republicans pounce on the thing that we should have been talking about. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's let's shift away from that. | ||
| And we'll come back to like straight up politics and all that stuff. | ||
| But I just thought for a second, we could just talk a little bit about just like your family history and just like the stuff that people don't really know. | ||
| So what's the Nikki Haley story that that people don't know? | ||
| Give me give me the bio. | ||
| Born in South Carolina, small rural town, two stoplights. | ||
| You couldn't think about something, you know, doing something wrong without somebody telling your mom. | ||
| We were the only Indian family in that small southern town. | ||
| We weren't white enough to be white. | ||
| We weren't black enough to be black. | ||
| And your parents were first generation, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| My father wore a turban. | ||
| He still does to this day. | ||
| My mother wore a sari. | ||
| They didn't know who we were, what we were, while we were there. | ||
| And I remember when I would get teased on the playground and I would come home, my mom would say, your job is not to show them how you're different. | ||
| Your job is to show them how you're similar. | ||
| And it's amazing how that lesson I learned on the playground at five played out in my life in the corporate world, as governor, as ambassador. | ||
| Because when you're faced with a challenge, if you first talk about the things you have in common, everybody lets their guard down. | ||
| Then you can go in and start working on a solution. | ||
| Yeah, so technically you are a brownish skinned woman, but you are a scary conservative to the mainstream. | ||
| Do you find that frustrating that you don't get that little bit of bonus credit that they might give to you if you were a Democrat? | ||
| You know, it's always kind of been tough. | ||
| When I was elected governor, there was a conservative that called me a raghead, and there was a Democrat that said I was just a conservative with a tan. | ||
| I mean, you know, it's never enough for anyone. | ||
| But the thing is, minorities in particular get really offended when there's a minority that's a conservative. | ||
| And so, yeah, we fight battles from all sides. | ||
| But at the end of the day, you have to stay true to yourself and you have to, you know, talk about what you believe. | ||
| And I feel like that through my life, even though there's been hate from different sides, if you push for the right thing, you know, people see that. | ||
| So you think that American dream, it kind of works if you play by the rules. | ||
| It's why I get so upset when they say we're a racist country. | ||
| I mean, did we have racial issues when I was growing up? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But that's the same state that allowed my dad to be a professor. | ||
| That's the same state that supported my mom and her small business. | ||
| It's the same state that allowed me to be governor. | ||
| You know, it's the country that allowed me to be ambassador. | ||
| And I'm one of millions of cases like that where only in this country can you do or be anything you want to be and government will stay out of your way. | ||
| At least for now. | ||
| We have to make sure for always. | ||
| But you know even being at the United Nations, there's something amazing when countries would come and be amazed at how we had freedom of speech and freedom of religion and the opportunities awarded regardless of where you were born and raised. | ||
| That's special and that's why it bothers me so much when people criticize America. | ||
| We are the best Are you shocked that it feels like so many people are kind of folding right now and just being like, oh, this thing, whatever it is, wokeness, Marxism, cancel culture, it's just encroaching and encroaching, and it doesn't seem like a lot of people are fighting. | ||
| And you've been fighting for a long time, and we'll get to the U.N. | ||
| Are you shocked that it feels like so many people are kind of folding right now and just | ||
| being like, "Oh, this thing, whatever it is, wokeness, Marxism, cancel culture, it's just | ||
| encroaching and encroaching." | ||
| And it doesn't seem like a lot of people are fighting. | ||
| And you've been fighting for a long time, and we'll get to the UN stuff in a little | ||
| bit. | ||
| If you've been to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they use rape as a weapon of war, when you've been to South Sudan where I've sat with crying mothers whose babies were taken from their arms and thrown into fires, when you've been on the Simon Boulevard Bridge watching thousands of Venezuelans holding the babies in their hands for hours in the sun to go get the one meal they might get that day. | ||
| You know, my husband's a combat veteran. | ||
| He served in Afghanistan and he said, I wish people in America could just spend one day in Afghanistan because they, even the homeless here, have it better than what they have in Afghanistan. | ||
| That's what I want people to remember is, you know, even on our worst day, we are blessed to live in America. | ||
| Do you sense we're suffering from our own success in a weird way then? | ||
| I think we're taking a lot for granted. | ||
| There's a reason if you look at, if you speak with legal immigrants, they are in some ways so much more patriotic than people that were born here because they get it. | ||
| They get what's on the other side. | ||
| What I want us to remember is we're not perfect. | ||
| We're a work in progress. | ||
| But boy, we've gotten it better than any other country. | ||
| And the second you let this woke culture and this cancel culture start bullying people out of what they believe and what they think and what they want to do to succeed, don't tear down the one part of us that's so great that other countries envy us for it. | ||
| And yet, here we are. | ||
| And we're here. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| Elections have consequences, and we're feeling the burn. | ||
| But sometimes you have to feel the burn to know where up is. | ||
| And we've got to start looking up. | ||
| We've got to start pulling out. | ||
| This is not the time to whine. | ||
| This is not the time to complain or get lazy. | ||
| This is the time to fight. | ||
| This is the time we fight back, we push back for what we believe in, and be proud. | ||
| Be proud of this country because it's given us so much and there's so much more it's going to give our kids and our grandkids. | ||
| All right, so that probably could have been your closing statement, but I'm not letting you out that easy. | ||
| So let's back up for a little bit. | ||
| When did you decide to go into politics? | ||
| And I guess more importantly, why did you decide to go into politics? | ||
| So I was never that political kid. | ||
| I never cared about politics in high school. | ||
| I was never in student government, not in College Republicans. | ||
| I had started doing the books for my family business when I was 13. | ||
| And didn't know that wasn't normal until I went to college. | ||
| But really, when times were tough, I learned how to stretch a dollar. | ||
| I had to figure out what we were going to pay and what we weren't. | ||
| And when times were good, we never celebrated because you knew bad times were going to happen again. | ||
| Ended up going to Clemson, go Tigers. | ||
| Graduated with a degree in accounting and then worked for a company and six of its subsidiaries as the accounting supervisor. | ||
| And then I got tired of working for the guys down the hall. | ||
| And so we came back home to the family business and one day I was complaining to my mom about how hard it was to make a dollar and how easy it was for government to take it. | ||
| And she said, quit complaining about it, do something about it. | ||
| I did not know you weren't supposed to run against a 30-year incumbent in the primary. | ||
| I truly didn't. | ||
| Ignorance is bliss. | ||
| But once I realized he was related to half the district and I had thrown my head in, the only option was to win. | ||
| So my husband got in the driver's seat, I was in the passenger seat, we put our two little ones in the back seat and I started knocking on doors. | ||
| And was able to win that state house seat. | ||
| And truly, it was, I thought there were way too many lawyers at the state house, and they needed a really good accountant. | ||
| Yeah, so then, that was just the beginning of your political career, really. | ||
| So when did you decide to take the next step? | ||
| So, interestingly enough, in South Carolina, legislative votes, they counted legislative votes by voice vote. | ||
| All in favor, say aye. | ||
| All opposed, The ayes have it. | ||
| But one day there was a piece of legislation that was read across the desk that would give legislators pay raises. | ||
| All in favor say aye. | ||
| All opposed silence. | ||
| And they passed it, and yet to this day you can't find one legislator that said they voted themselves a pay raise. | ||
| You don't say! | ||
| Republican House, Republican Senate. | ||
| I went to our Republican Speaker of the House and I said, this is why people don't trust us. | ||
| And I filed some legislation that said anything important enough to be debated on the floor of the House or the Senate is important enough for people to have votes on the record. | ||
| So the speaker pulled me aside and he said, put the bill away. | ||
| We don't need to have it. | ||
| We will decide what the public needs to see and what they don't. | ||
| And I remember going to my husband that night saying, if I can't even get legislative votes on the record, what am I doing here? | ||
| And he said, then fight. | ||
| So I went around the state of South Carolina and said, did you know of all the bills passed in the House? | ||
| Only 8% are on the record. | ||
| Did you know of all the bills passed in the Senate? | ||
| Only 1% was on the record. | ||
| So if you didn't know how your House member voted 92% of the time, if you didn't know how your Senator voted 99% of the time, how did you know who to vote for when you went to the polls? | ||
| The people of South Carolina were shocked. | ||
| Now to put this into perspective, my first year in office I was chairman of the freshman class, my second year I was majority whip, my third year I was on a powerful business committee, my fourth year I was subcommittee chair of banking. | ||
| The year that I didn't put the bill away, they stripped me of everything. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I was completely blackballed. | ||
| I could take the well. | ||
| No one would listen. | ||
| I could sponsor a bill. | ||
| No one would co-sponsor. | ||
| So I ran for governor. | ||
| And one of the first bills we signed into law is now in South Carolina. | ||
| Everything debated on the floor in the House and the Senate has to have a vote on the record. | ||
| And we took it a step further and did every section of the budget as well. | ||
| And you had a pretty solid record in South Carolina. | ||
| You're pretty proud of that record. | ||
| Yes, very proud. | ||
| I mean, we went from a 13% unemployment rate to the fact that South Carolina didn't have any industry. | ||
| All our jobs were in the textile market and they had all gone overseas. | ||
| And we had to wake South Carolina up. | ||
| And so I went in there and said, if you're costing a person or business time, you're costing them money. | ||
| That's no longer acceptable in South Carolina. | ||
| And we got to work. | ||
| And by the time I left, we were building planes with Boeing, more BMWs than any place in the world, five international tire companies, the largest carbon fiber producer in the world. | ||
| They were referring to us as the Beast of the Southeast. | ||
| And I loved it. | ||
| And no unions. | ||
| I was a union buster the whole time. | ||
| If there was a company that wanted to come in that was unionized, we strong-armed them and said, we don't want you. | ||
| So what would you say your guiding political principles are because it's interesting to me like you're 13 years old doing the books so like there's numbers and those things matter and now we live in this bizarre time where everyone's like two trillion for this and I just saw this morning they want they want to pass another 80 billion to fortify the IRS. | ||
| Like, what? | ||
| Like, does anyone look at math anymore? | ||
| Do calculators exist? | ||
| Like, what's going on here? | ||
| But did you have a sort of guiding political principle? | ||
| Like, when did that sort of all come together? | ||
| I mean, I really think at 13. | ||
| I mean, I learned the value of a dollar. | ||
| And I learned that that dollar, you can only stretch it so far. | ||
| And so really understanding the value of a dollar. | ||
| Appreciating small and limited government so that people can be successful without government getting in the way. | ||
| Understanding the importance of a good education, and that education not being government responding to money, but government actually responding to kids and allowing families to decide their education. | ||
| And then allowing job creators to do what they do best, which is create jobs. | ||
| You know, if you give a small business, if small business makes money, they don't go on vacation. | ||
| They hire more people. | ||
| And so the goal is you want small businesses to have cash flow so they can spread the tentacles out and do that. | ||
| You want a strong foreign policy where you're, you know, making sure you're safe overseas and it's not coming here. | ||
| These are basic principles. | ||
| It's not rocket science. | ||
| But it's core values that I think are at the heart of the Republican Party, but they're at the heart of a good America too, if we do it right. | ||
| Yeah, so what was it like the day you got the call? | ||
| Let's flash forward a little bit. | ||
| The day you get the call, would you like to be the ambassador to the UN? | ||
| I can only imagine because it's there's a very Legion of Doom scary feeling over at the UN. | ||
| The thing people don't know is Donald Trump and I knew each other before. | ||
| When I won the primary for governor the first time, I got this envelope with this great gold trim and in it was a support check and there was a note that said you're a winner. | ||
| And so I got on the phone and we chatted and we were acquaintances throughout the years. | ||
| And then 2016 happened, and we had a great slate of talent on that stage. | ||
| I put my name behind a different horse. | ||
| Wait, who'd you back originally? | ||
| Rubio. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| And then that's when Trump tweeted Nikki Haley's embarrassment to South Carolina. | ||
| And I turned around and tweeted, bless your heart. | ||
| So we always had a great respect for, I knew if you kicked him, he kicked back. | ||
| He knew if you punched me, I punched back. | ||
| And so there was a respect there. | ||
| But after the primary, I threw all my support behind him and he won. | ||
| So when we got the call, Reince Priebus said he wants to talk to you about, he said, don't say anything, US ambassador to the United Nations. | ||
| I said, Reince, I don't even know what the United Nations does. | ||
| I just know everybody hates it. | ||
| And so he said, well, he's going to call you. | ||
| So when he called me, he said, all right, Nick, are you going to do this? | ||
| And I said, well, I said, there'd have to be some changes. | ||
| And he said, what? | ||
| I said, well, I've been a governor. | ||
| I don't want to work for anyone else. | ||
| I would want to work directly with you. | ||
| So I'd want to be a cabinet member. | ||
| He said, done. | ||
| I said, well, I'm a policy girl. | ||
| So I'd want to be in the room when decisions are made. | ||
| So I'd want to be on the National Security Council. | ||
| He said, done. | ||
| I said, well, I'm not going to be a wallflower or a talking head. | ||
| I need to be able to say what I think. | ||
| And he said, Nikki, that's exactly why I want you to do this. | ||
| And he was true to his word from the first day to the last day. | ||
| We had a great working relationship. | ||
| So what was it like going into the UN? | ||
| Because I think you just described it perfectly. | ||
| I mean, it seems like the most backwards, at least the Security Council stuff. | ||
| I know they do some, I suppose they do some good humanitarian stuff. | ||
| Maybe you can comment. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| All right, well, you can comment on that, obviously. | ||
| But, like, to just go in there and try to at least defend freedom, try to get some of these insane votes that they're constantly doing reversed and change some of that stuff. | ||
| Like, I'm guessing you were walking down the hallway. | ||
| People were not like, oh, yay, there's Nikki Haley. | ||
| I mean, the U.N. | ||
| is not for the faint at heart. | ||
| I mean, every day it felt like I was putting on body armor. | ||
| And you knew we'd have a fight, you just didn't know which country we were fighting that day. | ||
| But how blessed was I to defend the country I love so much? | ||
| And I was not going to let them criticize us about anything. | ||
| I purposely went in not knowing the do's and don'ts of the U.N. | ||
| because I wanted to kind of be able to ask for forgiveness and really go in with fresh eyes. | ||
| But I also knew I wanted to be very black and white. | ||
| I wanted to make sure they knew what the United States was for and what we were against, and there was no gray area. | ||
| I didn't care if they liked me, but I wanted them to respect America, and I wanted them to know where we stood. | ||
| Obama had really created this scenario where they didn't know what we were for. | ||
| You know, and he tried to appease everybody by criticizing the U.S. | ||
| and he would just throw foreign aid out to everyone to buy friends. | ||
| I didn't want any of that. | ||
| I wanted to make sure that we really put our line down in the sand of this is where we are. | ||
| If you want to join us, we will partner with you. | ||
| And if you don't, we're going to call you out for it. | ||
| And so that's why I said we were taking names at the U.N. | ||
| They thought that was like unbelievable that I would say something so undiplomatic. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| But the point was, If you go around saying death to America, we're going to take down names. | ||
| But if you're our friend and ally, we're going to have your back and take down names and protect you, too. | ||
| And so, look, it was a great experience. | ||
| It's challenging to deal with the Chinese and to have the Russians always trying to stir the pot and to have everybody talk negatively about America. | ||
| But I wasn't going to stand for it. | ||
| I went and take one second of it because I know how great we are. | ||
| And I knew what they were telling me in the corridors of how great we were. | ||
| Yeah, so that's actually exactly what I wanted to ask you. | ||
| So, like, I would imagine that the countries secretly believe that, most of the countries. | ||
| Like, they secretly must be like, yeah, if the U.S. | ||
| doesn't exist and freedom, then we're all kind of screwed. | ||
| But then they rarely vote that way or publicly they say all these... | ||
| No, they bash us publicly, but what they would say is they wanted us to lead because they don't want to follow Russia. | ||
| They don't want to follow China. | ||
| They do see us as the moral authority there. | ||
| And you know, it's a perfect example is when Trump finally, you know, when Syria crossed the red line and did chemical weapons, and Trump did the first shots back and did the missiles, the number of ambassadors that came to me and said, it's so good to see the United States lead again. | ||
| That's what they want. | ||
| They want us to call out evil. | ||
| They want us to do good. | ||
| They want us to show something. | ||
| And that's why I've always said the United States leadership isn't going to war. | ||
| Sometimes, just when the United States says something, countries follow. | ||
| You know, when we mention this is what should happen, they do tend to move with us. | ||
| And so there's good that we have there, but we have to continue to use that voice and be a force for good. | ||
| Can you explain either your philosophy or Trump's philosophy or both of your philosophies just generally on when you should use the military? | ||
| Because I think a lot of people think somehow if you're for the military, that means you're for war. | ||
| And that's not the case at all. | ||
| And it's actually the reverse, yeah. | ||
| I mean, the key is, look, I'm in a military family. | ||
| So the last thing I'm gonna say is, with my brother was full-time military, my husband is, the last thing you want your family members to go to war. | ||
| But the military is there for a reason. | ||
| And what you do want is, for example, you know, with Biden wanting to pull out of Afghanistan, well, my husband served in Afghanistan. | ||
| I know what was happening there. | ||
| We don't need thousands of troops there, but you do need some there for intel purposes. | ||
| That's really what you want, is military for intelligence, to tell you on the ground in Syria whether they're getting ready to do a chemical weapons attack, to tell you on the ground in Afghanistan Whether there's another plot for 9-11. | ||
| So the only thing I'll say is that Biden's foreign policy is really backwards in the way that Look at how much has changed from the Chinese delegation comes to Alaska and humiliates our American delegation. | ||
| You know, Putin's challenging Biden to a debate. | ||
| How ridiculous is that? | ||
| Kim is starting to test off ballistic missiles again, and here Biden's falling all over himself to do business with Iran, but is boycotting Georgia? | ||
| You know, like these things, and then all- Georgia the state, not Georgia the country. | ||
| Absolutely, and all these things, and he's cutting our defense spending. | ||
| You know, I'll be the first one to say the military's bloated. | ||
| It's bureaucratic. | ||
| There's a lot that we shouldn't be paying for. | ||
| But if we don't modernize our military, China and Russia are already moving. | ||
| Iran is already speeding up. | ||
| We look so distracted right now. | ||
| And making sure we modernize our military, making sure we have strategic military on the ground in certain places to keep us safe and to keep bad actors from doing more harm, that's an important thing. | ||
| So what do you think is behind Biden and the decisions he's making? | ||
| This is the question that everyone gets asked all the time, like, because I think most people don't really believe it's Biden leading this thing anymore, that it's either the Obama machine behind it or something that's left of the Clinton machine or something else altogether. | ||
| Like, to me, it seems like if you would have asked Joe Biden 10 years ago if he agreed or disagreed with some of the things you just said there, he probably would have agreed, where now it's like, Who knows what he believes? | ||
| What it feels like to me, coming in the transition from Obama to the Trump administration and | ||
| foreign policy and now where it's going, it really does feel like Obama 2.0. | ||
| I mean, the idea that they're already trying to make friends with Iran, that was very much | ||
| something Obama would do. | ||
| The idea that they're starting to pick fights with Russia in a strongman sense but not in | ||
| real result sense. | ||
| That's something Obama would do. | ||
| You know, the Paris Climate Agreement, the Human Rights Council, all these things, these Trump reversals are very much Obama stances. | ||
| And so I think that That's the approach Biden's taking. | ||
| He's surrounded himself by Obama people, whether it's, you know, Secretary Blinken or Jake Sullivan or any of those. | ||
| Those are all Obama people that would be advising him on what Obama wants. | ||
| So what can be done at the international level, like with the UN at this point? | ||
| Like if you were there right now, which probably ain't going to happen, but if you were there right now, I mean, this, this just in the last couple of days, Iran got put on the, the, what was it? | ||
| The Women's Rights Council? | ||
| I mean, how ridiculous is that? | ||
| And it wasn't just Iran, it was also China. | ||
| Like this is like an absurd. | ||
| But who makes these decisions? | ||
| Like someone goes into a meeting and they're like, yes, yes, let's put Iran on the Women's Rights Council. | ||
| Like, how does that even happen? | ||
| It's why the United Nations doesn't have credibility. | ||
| It's why they struggle. | ||
| First of all, if I was at the United Nations right now, I would immediately call a Security Council hearing and hold China accountable for what they did to the world with COVID. | ||
| I would ask what the World Health Organization knew. | ||
| I would call out Iran for all of the violations of UN resolutions that they're doing, and say, how can you turn around and get into an Iran deal when they're violating multiple resolutions? | ||
| You know, there's a lot of things that could be done and should be done, and instead what we've seen is the UN ambassador went and basically criticized America for being racist. | ||
| Was there any speech that you had heard in the last couple of years that was more awful than that? | ||
| Mortified. | ||
| That here I was defending America, and here The Chinese delegation goes and humiliates the American delegation and the UN ambassador basically gave them all the fuel to do it. | ||
| You know, I mean, you don't go, we're not a racist country. | ||
| We are the least racist country. | ||
| And so the idea that they would say that is, it's such a, I can't even understand what Biden or the ambassador think that will do to help America. | ||
| That doesn't, that's apologizing for America. | ||
| I don't think they want to help America at this point. | ||
| That's what I mean about Biden. | ||
| I don't know what Biden believes, but I think the machine that's under him or behind him or whatever it is, like, do they want to help America? | ||
| It made, it made me sad. | ||
| I mean, you talked about what is, what can the UN do? | ||
| What is it good for? | ||
| The reason presidents struggle with staying in the UN is not because of any Great actions by the U.N. | ||
| We see that all the time. | ||
| I think the reason they stay is because of the veto. | ||
| There are only five countries that have a veto on the Security Council and the U.N. | ||
| Russia, China, U.S., U.K. | ||
| Who am I missing? | ||
| France. | ||
| So if you look at those, if bad things happen, if Russia and China try and get together and do something bad, the U.S. | ||
| can stop it. | ||
| That's the reason that we're on the Security Council, is we can stop bad things from happening. | ||
| But they waste more than they should ever. | ||
| I cut $3 billion the first year off of that budget, and that was just low-hanging fruit. | ||
| And the lights didn't go out. | ||
| The building still existed. | ||
| And people see that big building and they think there are ambassadors in there. | ||
| That's all staff. | ||
| They've got elevator operators in there. | ||
| I would say, do you know how many vaccines you could give kids with what you're paying these elevator operators? | ||
| They doubled their staff in the last 10 years. | ||
| And don't they, wasn't there some massive scandal where they were like racking up something like a hundred million dollars worth of parking tickets in New York City? | ||
| Like it's just crazy over there. | ||
| It's so ridiculous. | ||
| And China is infiltrating the entire UN. | ||
| They are trying to really, I think they now control four different agencies within the UN. | ||
| Russia controls the cyber agency, believe it or not. | ||
| China almost started controlling the intellectual property and we were able to stop that from happening. | ||
| But I mean, it's just the UN will not be relevant until they start talking about the things | ||
| that are uncomfortable to talk about. | ||
| The Uyghur genocide that's happening in China. | ||
| You know, the fact that-- | ||
| But they won't even have a meeting about it. | ||
| They won't even do it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So what do we do with China? | ||
| 'Cause, or what do we do with China? | ||
| But what, like, are we on some inevitable collision no matter what here, just because of debt, if nothing else. | ||
| Like, if they just call in, hey guys, you gotta pay us back for some of this stuff, and then it's like, well, we can't, we don't have the money, and we do have missiles and bombs. | ||
| It's actually pretty scary what's happening right now, because China is our number one foreign policy threat. | ||
| But the concern I have is America looks so distracted right now. | ||
| All these countries see us as distracted, but China is in this for the long haul. | ||
| And the U.S. | ||
| at some point has to quit thinking about things in terms of presidential elections. | ||
| We've got to start thinking 20 and 30 years out, what does our foreign policy look like? | ||
| If you look at China, they have the largest naval fleet in the world. | ||
| They have more missiles than we do now. | ||
| They're building up their military. | ||
| We've got to start modernizing ours. | ||
| They are continuing to steal intellectual property. | ||
| We've got to start holding them accountable for every time they steal that intellectual property. | ||
| What does that actually mean though? | ||
| Because what do we have at this point beyond the threat of military action? | ||
| We're not bombing China tomorrow probably. | ||
| No, but look, sanctions and stopping business with China is a big deal to them. | ||
| Humiliating them and calling them out is a big deal. | ||
| They have a million Muslim Uighurs that are in concentration camps. | ||
| If you saw what was happening there, it's horrific. | ||
| It's rape, it's sexual abuse, it's physical abuse, it's forced slave labor. | ||
| I mean, making them change their name, change their religion, drink alcohol for the first time just to break them? | ||
| I mean, it's a horrible situation. | ||
| We swore years ago, never again would we turn our eyes away from genocide. | ||
| And it's happening right now and no one is calling China out for it. | ||
| It's the reason why I think it's so important that we boycott the Chinese Olympics. | ||
| It's because in the last Olympics, The way Beijing looked at it was the last one that they hosted was their coming out party. | ||
| This one, mark my words, this one is them saying, we are the new superpower of the world. | ||
| And after that Olympics, they will go and try and take Taiwan. | ||
| And if they take Taiwan, that's a total game changer around the world. | ||
| And so they're trying to get as much good press as they can. | ||
| If we call them out, they hate that. | ||
| So Making sure that we call them out on genocide, making sure that we actually hold them accountable on intellectual property, modernizing our military, which scares them, or having a military presence anywhere scares them. | ||
| You go and you look at what President Xi did. | ||
| He started a commission that basically said any company that does business with China has to cooperate with our Chinese military. | ||
| Now think about our tech companies. | ||
| Think about all the information they have on our habits, on our pharmaceuticals, on everything we do, and now know the Chinese military has access to that. | ||
| Think about that. | ||
| Like, that's dangerous. | ||
| And we watched this play out in real time with COVID, that when we were trying to save millions of lives, What was China doing? | ||
| They called two American companies, 3M and Honeywell, who have business in China, said you are not allowed to sell any of your PPE. | ||
| They bought it wholesale and they would only give it to countries that agreed to do business with Huawei, their 5G network. | ||
| This is a country that is out to really take over the world and do all that. | ||
| That's what all these investments around the world are. | ||
| It's when they're running up this debt, Then they go and they say to these little countries, OK, give us your military installation. | ||
| Give us your utility. | ||
| And the debt that we are in, it's the first time our debt is bigger than our economy since World War II. | ||
| Do you know what that does? | ||
| Makes China so happy. | ||
| Because when you weaken the dollar like that, that's a national security threat beyond anything else. | ||
| There's a reason China and Iran just got into a bank together. | ||
| Is they're trying to make sure that the U.S. | ||
| dollar is no longer the world's reserve. | ||
| And we're sitting back and watching this happen and not doing anything about it. | ||
| So do you think no one in the administration gets it? | ||
| Because I think most people watching this are probably, even if they're not that in the weeds on all this, they're probably like, yeah, that does feel like basically what's happening. | ||
| That China is saying we're going to be the new superpower and they're setting up all the pieces in play. | ||
| But do you think anyone, do you think the administration cares? | ||
| I think the U.S. | ||
| is playing to symptoms. | ||
| So they see what China's doing, they're treating it like symptoms, but they're not treating the disease. | ||
| That China is a disease that we have to stop thinking if we're nice to them, which Kerry just said, oh, we should be nice with China so we can cooperate on the environment. | ||
| We have to stop thinking that if you're nice to China, they'll want to be like us. | ||
| They don't want to be like us. | ||
| They want to be communists. | ||
| They're going to continue to do whatever it takes. | ||
| They're laughing at us right now. | ||
| What we have to do is let China know we're on to them. | ||
| And we have to act accordingly. | ||
| Now that doesn't mean that they can't buy grains and poultry from us. | ||
| or we can't buy t-shirts and light bulbs from them. | ||
| But it does mean they don't get to control our pharmaceuticals. | ||
| We don't need to go in so much debt that they own us. | ||
| Like there's certain things we just need to be smart about, strategic about, instead of just curing | ||
| the little symptoms that come up along the way. | ||
| Do you think part of the problem with some of this stuff is that now, | ||
| and I think you were alluding to this, that now, so much of our conversation is about race, | ||
| it's about all of this internal stuff here and wokeness and cancel culture and all this, | ||
| but the idea of this big problem that like sits there is just like, people are just like, | ||
| oh, I don't know, we got enough problems here, even though I think in many ways | ||
| our problems here are completely fabricated. | ||
| We do have big problems here and we do have big problems overseas. | ||
| We should be able to handle both at the same time. | ||
| It's not an either or scenario. | ||
| There's something to be said for balance and prioritizing and making sure that everything is in its order. | ||
| You talked about the race aspect. | ||
| One of the things that was so appalling to me is what happened with the Georgia bill. | ||
| You know, South Carolina, when I was governor, we passed voter ID in 2011. | ||
| Much tougher than the one Georgia did. | ||
| And I said at the time, if you have to show picture ID to buy Sudafed, if you have to show picture ID to get on a plane, you should have to show picture ID to protect the election process. | ||
| I was vilified at the time. | ||
| They said that I was trying to disenfranchise voters, that, you know, a lot of people couldn't get picture IDs, and I said, okay, fine. | ||
| If that's the case, I will send someone, we will pick you up, we will take you to the DMV, we will get you a free picture ID, and we will return you home. | ||
| I know the number, so I'm going to set you up. | ||
| How many people went in on that program? | ||
| After 5 million people, 25. | ||
| 25 people asked for a ride. | ||
| The number of people that now vote in South Carolina is higher. | ||
| The part that was so offensive Don't assume minorities can't get a picture ID. | ||
| Don't assume we can't go get a picture ID. | ||
| Don't assume we can't pick the schools we want our kids to go to. | ||
| It's actually Democrats that are racist, that treat us like we are inferior, incapable, and it's offensive on so many different levels. | ||
| Well it's also specifically racist to black people because even though you're saying we, you know they don't mean Indian people, right? | ||
| Like that's part of the odd position that Indians are now in, that Indian Americans are now in as a successful minority. | ||
| But look at this, so they're sitting there and they're going through all this stop Asian hate, all of this, but why was it the Democrats that shot down the part that said stop discrimination of Asians in schools? | ||
| Just in the last couple of days. | ||
| I mean, you know, so it's just hypocritical in terms of what they think is racist and what's not. | ||
| You know, when you're brown, it's almost worse because they think you're not black enough or you don't count or, you know, they can discriminate against you in schools, but hey, don't don't mess with them when they're trying to vote. | ||
| All of these things. | ||
| But all of that does is it assumes minorities are dumb. | ||
| And it assumes minorities are less than. | ||
| And it's Democrats that are doing that. | ||
| And we have to keep calling them out on how racist they are. | ||
| They see what too many Republicans do, too many white Republicans frankly do, is when they call you racist, they just back down. | ||
| They go into a corner. | ||
| Don't do that. | ||
| We're not racist. | ||
| It's the reason why I'll say this until my last breath, is we are not a racist country. | ||
| Do we have some bad eggs? | ||
| Always. | ||
| But so does everyone else. | ||
| But we have progressed over the years, over and over again. | ||
| You can see it through all the things on how women are empowered, on minorities are empowered, everything. | ||
| People have been lifted up in total. | ||
| That's what you want to continue to see happening. | ||
| How badly did the Republicans just screw up the messaging on this? | ||
| Like, do you have any sense of sort of when it happened? | ||
| Because as a guy that's kind of new to this side, let's say, the right or the conservatives, whatever it is, I went to a ton of Trump rallies. | ||
| I've been to anti-lockdown rallies. | ||
| I've spoken at Turning Point USA things. | ||
| I have never once I swear to you, ever heard anything remotely racist. | ||
| Ever. | ||
| And in Q&As, when someone might ask a question that could kind of sound that way, they shoot them down. | ||
| I mean, I never, but it's like, how did Republicans just become such wet paper bags and just fold over this? | ||
| It's actually what Democrats did. | ||
| So when Democrats ran out of excuses, they started saying that they were racist. | ||
| And they immediately saw Republicans cower. | ||
| They immediately saw Republicans cower. | ||
| The thing is, Republicans are too nice. | ||
| They're too nice. | ||
| Is it nice or is it just thinking that the government's not the answer, so you just don't want to be in that fight in a way that they do? | ||
| They're too nice. | ||
| Like, you fight back. | ||
| If you know we're not racist, say you're not racist. | ||
| If you know we're a good country, say we're a good country. | ||
| Don't let them yell us down. | ||
| Because we're the ones that are right. | ||
| So go back and fight for it. | ||
| And that's the only part is, I don't want people to get tired. | ||
| We don't have time to get tired. | ||
| We have to get strong and we have to fight back. | ||
| Because if you let them get away with this, they will only continue to do it more and more. | ||
| I mean, look at what has happened because of this racist conversation. | ||
| The idea that we've gotten into defunding the police. | ||
| The idea that you want to now hold police officers liable. | ||
| These are the kinds of things, but they're doing it all in the name of racism. | ||
| And there's a miscommunication there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I do think... And by the way, they're reversing it right after they do it, right? | |
| Portland is now reversing a lot of the policies. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And look, I do think that race is an important issue in America. | ||
| It's one that needs to be dealt with with respect. | ||
| It's one that needs to be understood. | ||
| And it's one that you need to have a A good conversation that's educated and respectful that can move the ball. | ||
| And there's a time and place for that. | ||
| I had to do that in South Carolina multiple times. | ||
| But when it's shouted down and done in judgment, that's not goodwill. | ||
| That's just sitting there fighting to fight. | ||
| So this is my million dollar question then. | ||
| With that in mind, what do you think the future of the Republican Party looks like? | ||
| Because I've been saying something for a few months now that in essence right now the war, let's say, is sort of woke or conservative. | ||
| And I don't mean conservative meaning you have to have a picture of Ronald Reagan next to your bed, but that we know what woke is. | ||
| And then it's sort of everybody else and we can disagree on tax rates and I think we can actually disagree on abortion and a slew of different things. | ||
| But what do you think that that big chunk actually looks like? | ||
| Like what kind of diversity in a political sense can we get out of that? | ||
| So what I would like to think that the Republican Party will be is it won't go back to the party before Trump because that was a really important move that we made. | ||
| So many people like where I grew up in rural South Carolina who felt unheard, misunderstood, not paid attention to, suddenly came into the fold and they made our party better. | ||
| The problem is we lost women. | ||
| We lost the suburbs. | ||
| But more importantly, we have to expand our tent. | ||
| We've got to reach out to Hispanics. | ||
| We've got to reach out to the Jewish community. | ||
| We've got to reach out to Asians and make sure that we have that conversation. | ||
| African Americans. | ||
| I did it in South Carolina. | ||
| It can be done. | ||
| But you don't go to them and say, you should be one of us. | ||
| You go to them and say, what do you care about? | ||
| And when you have that conversation, suddenly they realize you care about the same things. | ||
| And then you have a conversation. | ||
| I know if I went and spoke to several hundred Indian Americans right now, 70% would be Democrat. | ||
| But if I just showed up with respect, had a conversation, we'd win half of them. | ||
| It takes more work. | ||
| It takes more time. | ||
| It takes more effort. | ||
| But if we do it, we will be a better party. | ||
| Do you know we've lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president? | ||
| That means we're doing something wrong. | ||
| If we grow our tent, if we grow our party, we will be a stronger country and we will be able to move the ball. | ||
| Not for the next presidential election, but for 20 and 30 years down the road. | ||
| We have to do it. | ||
| Do you think some of that stuff can actually be healed? | ||
| Like right now, and you can't judge things by Twitter, I know that much, but there does seem to be this tension | ||
| between whatever the sort of MAGA camp is and then the pre-MAGA people. | ||
| And it's like, how do you get these people to kind of, like you seem to me to be like a kind of like, | ||
| like a synthesis of those things. | ||
| How do you do it? | ||
| Because there seems to be a lot of resentment from the MAGA people to the old ones and then the old ones to the MAGA people and the whole thing. | ||
| I mean I think the first thing is the judgment has to stop. | ||
| There's way too much judgment of people. | ||
| There's an unforgiving side of... | ||
| Just toxicity that's happening right now. | ||
| And so what I think we have to understand is every day Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are in office is another day we should come together. | ||
| But we are better together. | ||
| You can fight each other all you want. | ||
| It is not productive. | ||
| We are better together. | ||
| We have a bigger enemy out there. | ||
| And that's socialism. | ||
| And it's going to happen. | ||
| If we sit there and keep fighting, all it's going to do is open the door to socialism, and we're going to end up having to walk right through it. | ||
| And then we won't have time to go back and say, oh, we should have. | ||
| So come together. | ||
| I respect both sides. | ||
| It goes back to... | ||
| In South Carolina, when we removed the Confederate flag. | ||
| You know, we had had a terrible tragedy. | ||
| It was a tough time. | ||
| And in that removal of the Confederate flag, when I called for it to be removed, I was very aware of two things. | ||
| Half of the state saw the flag as heritage and ancestry. | ||
| The other half of the state saw it as hate. | ||
| My job wasn't to judge either side. | ||
| My job was to get them and move the ball forward. | ||
| And so when you take judgment out, then all of a sudden people's defenses are not there. | ||
| Then they listen. | ||
| And I worry right now that there's a lot of judgment going back and forth. | ||
| Don't shoot your sisters and your brothers. | ||
| We're in this together. | ||
| We're one big family and we've got to move forward. | ||
| But we move forward in the conservative ideals that we all hold dear. | ||
| We move forward because we know socialism is bad. | ||
| We move forward because we know big government's bad. | ||
| We move forward because fiscal responsibility matters. | ||
| And all of those things can work together if we're on the same page. | ||
| What kind of pushback did you get from your own people when you started talking about the flag after Charlottesville? | ||
| A lot. | ||
| I think that anytime you do something, you're never going to please 100% of the people. | ||
| And that can't be why you do it. | ||
| You do it because you can see something bigger. | ||
| And a better place forward for all people. | ||
| And so, you know, South Carolinians, there were many that were very upset with me that I did that. | ||
| But at the end of the day, South Carolina is a better state for it. | ||
| And they saw that afterwards. | ||
| And we didn't have riots. | ||
| We had vigils. | ||
| We didn't have protests. | ||
| We had hugs. | ||
| I mean, we did it in a way that the national media didn't tear us down. | ||
| We did it in a way that was respectful. | ||
| We did it in a way that moved the ball. | ||
| And that's what you have to do. | ||
| There was another, a month prior to the church shooting, we had the shooting of Walter Scott. | ||
| Killed, shot seven times in the back, unarmed black man. | ||
| This was right after Ferguson. | ||
| I just was so worried our state would fall apart. | ||
| The first thing I did was call the Walter Scott family and say, we will get answers for you. | ||
| If you will allow me this time, I will get you everything you need to know and we will make sure his life wasn't in vain. | ||
| The next call I made was to law enforcement, saying, we've got to fix this. | ||
| Let's do this together. | ||
| A month to the day, South Carolina passed the first body camera bill in the country. | ||
| And when I signed that bill, I had the Scott family on one side, and I said, never again will a dirty cop do to someone without us having proof. | ||
| And then I had law enforcement on the other side, and I said, never again will a good cop be accused of something bad. | ||
| You have to be willing to see the greater good. | ||
| And you have to be willing... I mean, one, leadership is not letting the two sides kill each other. | ||
| Not letting the two sides blame each other. | ||
| But getting the two sides to understand we all are trying for better things, and that means we've all got to give a little. | ||
| Do you think oddly that a lot of the Democrats now are doing the complete reverse, which is sort of nodding to the violence that we're seeing on the streets and they don't mind when this chaos is erupting? | ||
| It's a real problem. | ||
| I mean, when you go, it doesn't make sense when you have these violent protests and you're tearing down you know, an African-American small business, or you're | ||
| seeing an African-American police officer shot. | ||
| Like, these things, you're hurting your own people. | ||
| I mean, at the end of the day, the protests and the violence, if you're upset, I get it. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| But do it productively in a way that we move the ball. | ||
| You know, because hurting the community, you know, whatever color you are, that's not moving | ||
| That's only hurting more people. | ||
| But are you shocked? | ||
| Are you shocked that no Democrats, I mean, really no Democrats or Joe Biden is still only saying Antifa is an idea, an idea that's caused about $2 billion worth of damage. | ||
| No, I think that they fail to see what they don't want to see. | ||
| And they immediately judge and go after what they want to assume is the culprit. | ||
| And it's harmful for our country. | ||
| And something has to change. | ||
| And, you know, our job is, again, not to sit back and say, it's done, we can't do anything. | ||
| No, you keep saying something, you keep correcting them, and do it unapologetically. | ||
| Do it with courage. | ||
| Do it with strength. | ||
| And do it with passion, because when you do that, they don't have the standing to really keep going. | ||
| Because if you were to question what's racist and what's not, or question protests, they can't say more than a second sentence, because they have no other explanation after that. | ||
| That's kind of why they're into that censorship thing too. | ||
| There's a little something to that. | ||
| So to that point, we sort of touched on this, but one of the reasons that I came around on Trump was I saw that it wasn't just Republicans fighting Democrats, it was Republicans versus Democrats and the media. | ||
| And he was just like, I'm not going to take it. | ||
| What do you think Republicans can do in that fight? | ||
| Because I get a lot, I hear a lot of people now that are really regretting, my few good liberal friends that'll still talk to me, they're not happy with Biden. | ||
| But what they're saying is we still had to get rid of Trump because of his, you know, the way he spoke and all that kind of stuff. | ||
| But to me it was like he knew how to fight that thing and you're not going to get the perfect guy to do that. | ||
| Like, what do you think Republicans can do? | ||
| Like, you can see them doing this with DeSantis now, that awful 60 Minutes hit piece and everything else. | ||
| Like, what do you think Republicans can do in that arena? | ||
| Because that's not the political arena, that's more the media arena. | ||
| Well, I mean, I think we've seen, look, I've been hit recently by a liberal reporter that will go out and they'll do profiles and they'll try and shoot you down. | ||
| There were so many untruths in that story, but that was meant to be a hit job. | ||
| read it this morning that was like we'll post I don't even want to give them I | ||
| don't want to give them the clicks but but I read it this morning the first | ||
| paragraph alone well first off it's fiction they actually write as a fiction | ||
| story there were so many untruths in that story but that was meant to be a | ||
| hit job yeah they knew exactly it didn't matter what I said they wanted to fit it | ||
| into their narrative And that's what the media does, is they take it and they've already got the story written before you say the first word. | ||
| And what we have to do is call it out and say, this is a lie, this is wrong, you know, whatever. | ||
| But, boy, we have to keep pushing back. | ||
| And, again, that's why the media is not trusted. | ||
| But it's a real problem. | ||
| It's a real problem because there's more liberal outlets than there are conservative outlets. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I don't want to link to the piece but maybe we'll put an image up or something from the piece because it was so extraordinary. | ||
| I mean it's literally written as fiction. | ||
| you down and they're gonna find some way to do it. I don't want to link to the | ||
| piece but maybe we'll put an image up or something from the piece because it was | ||
| so extraordinary. I mean it's literally written as fiction. | ||
| It's the worst. And you know the amazing thing is... | ||
| Because it's hard to it's hard to really make me be like whoa at this point | ||
|
unidentified
|
because I've been through it but like I was really... Not only that, 95% of what I | |
| said about Trump was good and he was angry about it. Yeah. | ||
| He was combative about it. | ||
| And then the 5% that I said related, they acted like I woke up with an epiphany that something happened. | ||
| The problem with articles like that is they are trying to change the political dynamic on their own. | ||
| They're trying to create the story on their own because they know the Democrats don't have a bench. | ||
| They know that they don't have strength behind them. | ||
| So they think the best way to do it is just tear everybody down and do it in different ways. | ||
| And we're watching it happen to all of our Republicans. | ||
| They'll just tear you down one at a time. | ||
| They'll find some way to do it. | ||
| And I don't know what the answer is. | ||
| I just know that we don't cave. | ||
| We keep fighting. | ||
| Do you think that basically conservatives, and again I mean that in sort of the wide sense of it, just have to start building completely new things? | ||
| I mean, this is sort of a new idea that's out there now, which is like, in essence, conservatives will have to have their own banks, they'll have to have their own places of journalism, they'll have to have their own educational institutions. | ||
| You know, that at some level these things are just irreparably damaged, and we should just let them have it and the rest of us will build better things. | ||
| I mean, I don't know that it's irreparably damaged. | ||
| I mean, I think that the media misses Trump terribly. | ||
| I think they're so bored. | ||
| I mean, I was in the airport the other day and a reporter's chasing me down the airport and I'm like, this is what we have left? | ||
| No, I mean, I think that the idea is they miss his tweeting. | ||
| They miss the stories because it provided something every day and their ratings went through the roof. | ||
| Now the ratings are not going through the roof. | ||
| People are watching less news because they're tired of it. | ||
| People are not getting as much benefit from it because there's no substance. | ||
| It's more opinions than it is facts. | ||
| And I think people are done. | ||
| But I do think conservatives should support conservatives, right? | ||
| Whether it's businesses, whether it's media outlets, whether it's something else, or whether it's creating your own. | ||
| Don't feel like you have to deal with it. | ||
| Let's find ways to make our own side better. | ||
| Let's find ways to fix it. | ||
| So when I've talked to my, let's say, left-leaning friends about this new conservative movement, the two that still get them, it's always the same two. | ||
| It's abortion and belief. | ||
| That most of them come, not that they're all purely atheists, but they have this real thing about, oh, the right is just too religious, or something like that. | ||
| So could you kind of soothe them, perhaps, on either one of those? | ||
| My example, I'll just... | ||
| Tell you is, well, Rudy Giuliani is obviously a conservative, and he was obviously a Trump supporter. | ||
| And not only when he got divorced, oh, because then they'll also say the gay thing a little bit, which I think the ship has sailed on that. | ||
| Well, he lived with two gay guys after he got divorced. | ||
| He's pro-choice, and he was a Trump supporter. | ||
| So it's like nobody's doubting that he's a conservative. | ||
| So I see a wider tent there. | ||
| What would you say about that? | ||
| Look, I mean, I think we all have our views. | ||
| And I think, again, lack of judgment is important as you go forward. | ||
| I just don't believe in being a judgmental person. | ||
| I don't think anybody else should allow them to go into that negative energy either. | ||
| But, look, I mean, conservatives are, you know, I'm a person of deep faith. | ||
| I think that God has blessed us in so many ways. | ||
| But I use mine as, you know, It's like my parents always said, you know, the best way to appreciate your blessings is to give back. | ||
| So it's more of like a service that you feel that you give back. | ||
| If you've been blessed with goods, you try and pass it on, you try and hold the ladder down, you try and help other people, and you know that There's a higher power. | ||
| Some people don't believe in that. | ||
| And that's okay. | ||
| It's not something that I would ever judge someone for. | ||
| Same thing with the pro-life. | ||
| I'm pro-life not because the Republican Party tells me to be, but because my husband was adopted and I'm blessed every day for him. | ||
| And so, I think experiences are what form us, but at the end of the day, we have to look at the greater good, right? | ||
| And figure out how we get there. | ||
| And so, I also don't think we're all one-issue people. | ||
| I mean, the way the Democrats always assume women are so divided on the pro-choice issue. | ||
| They're so for women, but they're not for Nikki Haley. | ||
| They're so for women. | ||
| They're so for black people. | ||
| They're not for Candace Owens. | ||
| My thing is, that's just ludicrous to think that one issue should make or break us. | ||
| I don't agree with my husband 100% of the time. | ||
| It doesn't mean that I don't love him. | ||
| And I think that anytime they try and one issue us off, that's again desperation to do that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you think part of this is sort of just the politics as religion? | ||
| That something has shifted in the way we talk about politics now? | ||
| That everything is political everywhere? | ||
| You know, I don't watch, I got a basketball behind me, I don't watch the NBA anymore because I couldn't, I partly was because of the China thing. | ||
| I'm watching LeBron won't say a word about China and they have Black Lives Matter on the court. | ||
| I think politics has gotten too involved in everything. | ||
| And that's the thing is, I feel like it's all about sound bites and it's not about substance anymore. | ||
| So people are just spouting off things that are hateful. | ||
| I don't know if COVID exacerbated that. | ||
| I don't know whether it's social media that's done it, but people are so quick to say hateful things, but they won't do it in person yet. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| But they will do it through the media. | ||
| They'll do it in every other way. | ||
| So I do hope that calms down. | ||
| Politics should never be 100% of anyone's life. | ||
| Politics for a lot of years may have been my job, but I never took it home. | ||
| I have friends that are Democrats. | ||
| I have friends that have different views than I do. | ||
| I watch movies with actors that are Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not one of those that says you can only listen to... | |
| You know, conservative musicians. | ||
| I mean, I appreciate all of those things. | ||
| I think there's a place for politics, and I think that's at the voting booth. | ||
| And I think that's in making sure that you're supporting candidates, and that's making sure that you're moving the ball on policy. | ||
| But the rest, don't forget to love your neighbor. | ||
| It still matters. | ||
| Gosh, I really forgot how much I love just sitting across from somebody and not staring into a screen all the time. | ||
| So before I ask you the one that you probably don't want to be asked, the last question, I didn't look at my notes this entire time. | ||
| I was with you the whole time. | ||
| Is there anything else that you want to get off your chest perhaps at the moment? | ||
| Anything else that's on your mind before I get to that question that you know I'm going to ask that you probably don't want me to ask? | ||
| No, I just want everybody to remember how blessed we are. | ||
| And we've just gone through what was a traumatic year, you know, from school closings to maskings to deaths to, you know, everything in between. | ||
| But that doesn't mean we have to sink down with it. | ||
| I think we can rise up above that. | ||
| We just showed how resilient we are again. | ||
| We just showed that in Operation Warp Speed that they found a vaccine in less than a year. | ||
| We just showed the goodness of our first responders. | ||
| So much good and blessings came out of it. | ||
| Take that energy and let's carry that forward. | ||
| Don't let all of this negativity and everything else bring us down because we've got a lot of work to do. | ||
| That could have been 2022. | ||
| We got a lot of 2022. | ||
| I want to talk about two years after that for a second. | ||
| You know, I have to ask. | ||
| I have to ask. | ||
| What? | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Give me something. | ||
| It'll go viral. | ||
| I just don't think I have to make that decision. | ||
| I don't. | ||
| I don't. | ||
| I think that the way I look at I've never been one that's thought too far out. | ||
| But I do think 2022 is really important. | ||
| We have to win the house. | ||
| I think we can win the Senate. | ||
| I'm an optimist. | ||
| We've got to win some governor's races. | ||
| We've got Virginia and New Jersey up this year. | ||
| And so I think there's a lot of work to be done. | ||
| I think that I don't have to make a decision before then. | ||
| And I think afterwards we'll kind of see where the chips fall. | ||
| But it's not something that I grew up saying, oh, I have to do this. | ||
| Oh, I have a family. | ||
| You know, you think twice about it when you have a family. | ||
| You think twice about it when you know other people will be affected. | ||
| And it's not, you know, politics is a blood sport. | ||
| It's not fun right now. | ||
| It's, you know, it's a tough time to be in it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| But right now I feel like I can do the greatest good by making sure we win the House and the Senate back. | ||
| And so we're campaigning here. | ||
| We're going to be campaigning for Michelle Steele and Young Kim. | ||
| We've endorsed Marionette Miller-Meeks and Julia Letlow from Louisiana. | ||
| We're going to be helping candidates all over the country, and we're going to try and recruit some really good ones, because the ones that won, you know, in this past congressional races, man, they're good quality people. | ||
| I mean, they're going to run circles around Nancy Pelosi, and we need more of that. | ||
| All right, well, ambassador, governor, undeclared presidential candidate. | ||
| It's Nikki. | ||
| Those were moments in time. | ||
| It was a pleasure. | ||
| It was just so nice talking to you and actually seeing a person again. | ||
| Oh, this is a great time. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Well, thank you so much. | ||
| We are not going to link to that political piece down below, but we will link to Nikki's book, With All Due Respect, which I've got right here. | ||
| And we'll do more of these in person. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics instead of nonstop yelling, check out our politics playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist all right over here. |
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