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May 3, 2023 - Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy
01:11:38
The Real Cost of Diversity with Gov. Tom Wolf | The TRUTH Podcast #22
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I've frequently said that the dividing line in American politics today is not between Republicans and Democrats.
Certainly not between black and white.
Certainly not the divisions that they would have you believe in this country.
I think it has to do with whether or not you are pro-American or are you anti-American.
And I think there are strains of both in this country.
To me, being pro-American means that you believe in the ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago.
Do you believe in basic ideas like merit, free speech and open debate?
Do you believe in the importance of self-governance over aristocracy?
This is part of what it means to be American.
Are you willing to stand behind policies that advance those principles?
Or are you, as I think many people in this country, some people in this country increasingly are, anti-American insofar as it means that you're apologizing for the existence of those values.
Unwilling to stand behind principles that advance those basic principles.
even if radical ideas that set our country into motion two and a half centuries ago?
I think that there are Republicans who stand on the side of apologizing for those values.
I think there are a rare few Democrats and certainly a lot of politically unaffiliated people who will happily advance those ideas, too.
I think the partisan distinctions matter less than what do you actually stand for and why do you stand for it?
Do you agree with those values?
Great.
If so, we're on the same team.
And if not, great.
Let's have an open conversation about it.
I think that's the spirit with which we're approaching this campaign.
And with that in mind, one of the things that I'm aiming to do with this podcast is not just to bring along a lot of people who facially agree with me on matters of public policy, even people who pledge affiliation to the same political party that I do.
I'm a Republican running for U.S. president.
But I think that if it's really true that we don't believe in these artificial distinctions nearly as much as they'd have us believe.
Then we have to be engaging in conversations that go beyond our respective echo chambers.
That's something we're going to regularly do on this podcast, and we're going to be doing it today.
To that effect, I'm pleased to welcome today's guest to the podcast, Governor Tom Wolf, who most recently, until a few months ago, served as the governor of Pennsylvania.
We're going to talk a little bit about his experience, his perspective, some of his views on leadership in ways that have nothing to do with partisan politics, and then I want to take off our gloves and get into some dialogue on some areas where I think he and I have some different points of view, but to air it so we can advance the conversation for the better.
Tom Wolfe, Governor, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you.
It's very great.
Great to be here.
So I thought before we get into some of the areas where we might have some, I think we do have some different points of view as a matter of policy, we'll get there.
I thought you're hot off the heels of being a governor.
Take your Democrat hat off.
Take your partisan affiliation off.
What are some of the lessons you learned about leading, about governing in a state?
And I think I'll ask you kind of a challenging question to start because no one wants to hear from any politician about what their standard talking points are.
I'm not saying that that's something you would do, but let's get into the meat of it.
What's something that now you've had the distance of a few months That you wish you had done differently as a governor, and what did you learn from that experience?
Talk to me a little bit about that.
I think it'd be a great way for our audience to get to know you, and then we'll go from there.
Well, let me talk about what I did.
The thing that I was a business person like you for most of my adult life And I ran for governor because I understood that, as I think you do, we need to make sure that we bring, I think, good leadership to the public sector.
And my platform was basically honesty, integrity, and competence.
And that's what I did for eight years.
And the people of Pennsylvania seemed to like it.
The last election, Pennsylvania actually had a blue wave.
And I think the key point of my administration was that I was honest.
I had a gift ban from the day I started serving.
I took a big deficit to a big surplus without raising anybody's taxes, actually lowered some, and invested a lot of money in things that I thought were important, like public education, early childhood education, and so protected women's rights, LGBTQ rights.
I did those things, and I'm very proud of the eight years that I had as governor.
Let me ask you actually, just even off the bat there, you said honesty, integrity, competence.
I find that interesting because honesty was distinct from integrity.
Of course, honesty is part of integrity, but I'm glad you drew that distinction because I've actually spent my career before my nascent life as a political candidate in the world of business.
And one of the things I've talked about is the integrity of a corporation.
What does it mean to have integrity?
Being honest is being honest, speaking truth and not speaking falsehood.
To me, and this is going to get to some of the areas where I want to put some pressure on some of your policies here, but to me, integrity means that you're true to the purpose of the institution that you're leading.
So if you're a company operating with corporate integrity means...
You have a mission, and you got to be honest about what your mission is.
But corporate integrity means staying true to your mission, even when that involves making trade-offs.
So my career, like much of your career, was in the business world.
That's what it meant to me there.
Talk to me about what that definition means in terms of running a state.
I think running a state has a purpose.
What does running a state with integrity mean, above and beyond just being honest, which was a separate part of your leadership style?
What does integrity actually mean to you?
To me, when I was running my business, it was being fair and open, transparent and honest with my employees, my customers, my vendors.
And I expected the same thing from each of them.
My experience in business and my experience in politics is that if you treat your constituents in politics, your colleagues in politics and in business, your customers, employees in business, With the integrity, treat them fairly.
They're going to treat you fairly.
And so I made every effort in my business to be open and transparent to the point where my company, we made a fetish of not even allowing people to ask, may I ask who's calling?
Go right through.
I gave every employee my direct dial number.
We all shared email.
We had a sharing of profits every year with employees.
So we shared financial statements.
We're a private company.
What kind of company was it?
What did you guys do?
Building materials.
Residential building materials.
And you started it?
Well, it was a family business, but I built it up.
My two cousins and I bought it in the 1980s and then built it into a fairly large company.
And we ended up being best known for kitchen cabinets, wolf cabinets.
And so the lesson I took from business and the lesson I brought to politics and the lesson I come away from politics is that if you treat people fairly with honesty, but also integrity, that you actually are true to your word.
You're not just faking it.
That you get repaid.
In politics, you win elections.
In business, your employees treat your customers really well and your customers treat you well.
Those things...
What was your company?
Did your company have a mission statement?
Yeah.
What was it?
It was to be the best provider of building products in the United States.
But our biggest product line was kitchen cabinets.
And I guess when I sold the business, we were in 38 states.
When did you sell the business?
2015. Okay.
And that's what led you to your...
I mean, that's what naturally led to the doorstep of the next phase of your life.
Well, I was...
We actually sold my two partners and I sold the company in 2006. And then I was retired.
And we did it in a way that allowed the employees to really control the business.
And then in 2015, I was Secretary of Revenue in Pennsylvania because I knew the governor and he needed somebody to be Secretary of Revenue.
So I did that for a year and eight months.
And then I decided, I think I'd like to run for governor.
I had been active in the community in York and South Central Pennsylvania.
And I realized that of all the good things that we were doing in the community, that government played a big role in making my community better.
So I ran for governor.
And in the end of 2008, early 2009, my old company that I had sold was going to declare bankruptcy.
So I bought the company back at 100 cents on the dollar.
I didn't play the games that a lot of folks play.
And realized that I wasn't going to...
The dream of running for governor, that wasn't going to happen.
So I went back to the company.
We're still in the middle of a pretty big recession, especially in housing.
But lo and behold, changed the business model and turned the company around.
And so by 2014, I could run for...
Do what I was going to originally do.
And I ran for governor and lo and behold, I won.
Interesting.
You know, I'm going to come back to the political component of this, I promise.
But on the business side, so be the best provider of building products in the US. That's interesting.
When you were running this business, it was before a major trend in American business today, one that I've been fascinated by, critical of.
You could say it's the rise of ESG, environmental, social and governance factors that now pervade public company boardrooms.
Was that Part of the ethos of your own business taking on environmental issues, social issues like racial equity?
I mean, talk to me about whether that was part of your business or not.
Yes, it was.
And what I found was, I went beyond that.
Can you give some examples, actually, just to make it real?
We hired the best people regardless of color of their skin, their gender, and it actually went even beyond that to returning citizens, people who had been in prison.
We didn't dismiss them, as most businesses do, out of hand.
And what I found was when you do that, It actually makes for a stronger company.
I think McKinsey's done a study where they looked at C-suites in companies and the most diverse C-suites tend to be the most profitable because you have a diversity of opinions.
It happens in good companies.
One of the things that we were known as a good company to work for, we paid really good compensation.
As I say, we shared 20 to 30% of our net profit in annual cash bonuses.
We had great benefits, life insurance, health insurance, great pension plan, all those things and more.
If we just did nothing and didn't really pay attention to doing something consciously about diversity and equity and inclusion, everybody would look like me.
They'd be white guys.
And so you have to make, especially in good companies, you have to be intentional.
About making sure that you are open to the best people you can possibly find.
Can I just double click on that?
It's a great discussion.
It's a rich discussion because you've talked about two strands there.
As you may be aware, I have some different points of view than you on this, but I want to see how different they really are, actually.
Maybe they are, maybe they're not.
On one hand, you say that And this is a great conversation between two, you know, former business leaders who are now wearing different political hats here.
On one hand, you say we wanted to hire the best people to advance presumably the mission of being the best provider of building products in the U.S., regardless of skin color, gender, sexual orientation, as you said.
On the other hand, and I'm putting a fine point on this because so many business leaders like you say the same thing.
And, you know, there's McKinsey reports say the same thing.
That you have to be intentional about making sure that everyone doesn't look like you.
Those two statements aren't exactly the same thing.
I'm not automatically claiming that they're contradictory, but they're not the same thing.
To say that you have to be intentional about making sure that everyone doesn't look like you is a different thing than saying regardless of skin color, you could hire people like they do a blind orchestra in New York.
You know what the blind orchestras look like?
An orchestra, if you want to advance the mission of producing the best classical music, it doesn't matter how the person looks.
They just do a blind orchestra audition based on how well somebody plays the violin or the cello.
And when they did that in the city of New York or in other places around the country, it turned out that you actually did get a lot of people who look the same.
A lot of them tended to be Asian and a subset tended to be white, but that's actually what yielded what produced the best music according to a blind audition.
So I just want to put some pressure on that because, of course, everyone wants to live in a hunky-dory world where everything aligns, but I don't think those two things are the same thing.
And I think it's convenient to say both at the same time, but what if those goals are in conflict with being intentional means taking into account skin color while not taking into account skin color means not taking into account skin color, just being blind to that possibility.
What's your response to that?
I think it's the latter.
My point is, if you're fair, and if you're honest, the results will be what they are, but for the most part, You will end up with a fairly diverse-looking group of people working with you.
You might have a concentration in one area or another, depending on what exactly you're doing, but you're not going to all look exactly the same, I don't think.
And is that an objective, or is that just a means to the end?
I think the objective should be to be the best company you can possibly be.
And you should not allow your prejudices to stand in the way of that.
And that is what I think, at its best, diversity, equity, and inclusion really means.
If you're just doing it, to put a gloss on it, I think that's ridiculous.
But you're doing it because it actually makes sense.
That's why I did it, and it worked.
What's your response?
And you had a private company, but suppose you were at the stage where instead of selling it, you wanted to take it public, and you showed up at the board of Goldman Sachs.
And Goldman Sachs tells you, as they do now, that, you know, suppose your board did not meet their standards for what was diverse, and that you needed to meet that standard in order for Goldman to take you public.
What's your view on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for a firm like Goldman Sachs to be playing that role as a gatekeeper to public markets today?
Well, as you say, I had a private firm, so I didn't do that.
But I was a public CEO when I was governor of Pennsylvania.
I had 13 million people looking over my shoulder, not just Goldman Sachs.
And I brought the same passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion to that job as I had in my company.
And the way I looked at it was this.
Think about, and this was a Republican senator who told me this, and I think he was right.
He said, I come to work each day thinking about that family living down the street or down the road.
They have a mortgage.
They have insurance payments.
They have car payments to make.
And they're two children.
They're looking for good schools.
And one of them needs braces.
They have to save for college.
What is it that we can do for them?
And that's like being the best company and building products in the United States.
That's the goal.
So how you get there, I think, is important in that if what you do is selectively What I brought to state government.
Was a belief that this actually made sense.
That it was not just something fluff.
It was not just something where you're affecting sainthood.
That you're actually trying to do something that is going to make a difference in the lives of those people living down the street.
And if you are discriminating in who you bring into your government, To help you administer it.
If you exclude a certain group, any group of people for whatever reason, you're really not helping that family down the road.
On the other hand, if you're bringing people in just for show, and what you're doing for show isn't helping those folks down the street, that's wrong too.
Well, here's where the rubber hits.
It actually works.
Here's the rubber hitting the road here, though, because I don't think that anybody disagrees with what you laid out, or most people, Republican, Democrat, certainly me.
I don't disagree with what you just said.
How could you, really, to say that to advance the goal of a business, you don't want to be engaging in discrimination on the basis of race or gender?
First of all, it's actually even unlawful to do exactly that.
But I think the place the rubber hits the road, I think it's important not to elide this distinction.
And maybe you have an issue and you're with me and you disagree with some of these behaviors, or maybe you agree with them on different grounds, is you take a company like Pfizer that says that it is making a commitment To ensure that 25% of certain of its higher executive ranks are Black or persons of color by a certain year point in time.
You take a company like Apple that initially did not want to make a racial equity commitment based on outcomes of who they fill, but BlackRock and State Street and others vote in favor of a shareholder proposal that demands they do that.
and now Apple's conducting a racial equity audit to pave that way.
I don't think most Americans agree with the idea that we should allow, or even want, companies or state governments to engage in purposeful discrimination that allows them to be less good at what they otherwise would do versus getting the best talent, which is the view you've articulated.
I further don't think that most Americans, certainly I don't, believe that we've always been perfect at that for most of our history either.
There are clearly demonstrated periods for much of American history where most institutions, including businesses, did engage in discriminatory practices that had nothing to do with advancing their mission, say being a provider of building products or like me, being a developer of medicines.
But I think where the rubber hits the road now, I'm not talking about, you know, 30, 50, 60, 70 years ago, but today, in the year 2023, is diversity with a capital D, equity with a capital E, and inclusion, and equity as distinguished from equality.
Really does call for, and if you take a lot of the proponents of this movement at their word to say that, you know, I'm quoting Ibram Kendi, who makes a lot of money given lectures at corporations about diversity, equity, inclusion, says that the answer, and I applaud him for being honest about this, the answer to past discrimination is present discrimination.
The answer to present discrimination is future discrimination.
That's what you see codified in a lot of policies.
Executive Order 11246 in the federal government requires you to, if you're going to do business with the federal government, to adopt certain race-based distributions in your workforce.
And my question is, if you did the blind orchestra for people who are participating in orchestra, you don't end up with an even racial distribution.
The question is, when there's a trade-off between saying that we're going to be actually colorblind and truly stay meritocratic without discrimination, That is in conflict with the essence of what many of the modern capital DEI demands make upon institutional leaders of corporations and governments.
And I guess the answer you gave, I think, would be appropriate 50 years ago, which is to say we need to end discrimination.
But in the moment of today, I just think that elides the reality of what's going on in many universities, many companies, and even many governments.
Like, do you at least recognize the tension that I'm pointing out in the reality of today, the racial quota targets that we set?
And if I'm to read between the lines of what you're saying, it sounds like you'd be against that.
Is that a fair premise?
I am for diversity, equity, and inclusion in substance, not form.
It should not be done for form's sake.
And it should be done with an honest view.
It should be an honest effort.
And so the tension that I think you're talking about is when people are trying to fake it.
If you're faking DEI, then yeah, that's wrong.
But if you're doing it in a way that companies weren't doing it 50 years ago, because it actually makes sense, then I think that's improvement.
That's an advance over where we were.
And that didn't come because we were just sort of gliding.
If we glided, we'd be doing the same thing we did 50 years ago.
So setting...
Specific racial percentages in a workforce and hiring rank.
Is that something that you, I mean, that's part of the modern DEI agenda as adopted by many companies today.
Is that something that you'd be in favor of?
Are you talking about quotas?
Yeah, I'm talking about targets.
It's actually the word they've used is 25%.
I don't think quotas make sense.
I think an honest effort to be open and equitable does make sense.
And you've got to, what is it, Caesar's wife?
You've got to have the virtues.
You've got to show that you have the virtues.
And so I think a lot of the things that people are doing in business and in the public sector Along the lines that you're talking to us, to make sure that they actually show that they have the virtues that they in fact have.
If you go into this faking it, either way, that's wrong.
You got to do it because it actually makes sense.
It made sense for me in the private sector and business, and it made sense when I was in the public sector as governor of Pennsylvania.
You know, one of the puzzles to me is, so I'll tell you a little vignette.
I happen to have the benefit of the last few years of having studied this issue in depth.
I wrote a couple of books about it.
It's been a core area of focus of mine, so that's where I'm sort of pulling some of these facts.
But one I'll share with you is NASDAQ implemented a requirement that in order to list on NASDAQ, Your board would have to have at least one person of color and or woman and or sexual orientation minority.
And if it did not, and you did not provide an adequate explanation for why, that you could not list on NASDAQ as a company.
And because the SEC regulates NASDAQ, that had to be adopted as a rule by the SEC, which governs the exchanges, which means it's subject to notice and comment from the public.
You're familiar with the Administrative Procedures Act.
You have to take notice and comment from the public.
That's something you're familiar with, I think.
Yeah.
So the comments that came up during that period said things like, Oh, okay, well, why don't you include veteran status?
Why don't you include disability status?
Since part of the justification for this is it's a heuristic for diversity of thought, why don't you include political expression and political viewpoints as expressed?
If you want diversity of thought, let's include the parameters that better screen for diversity of thought in the boardroom.
And NASDAQ and the SEC's answer to that was...
After careful consideration of these comments, we've actually concluded that the research supports that including greater indicia of diversity would have the counterintuitive effect of reducing the desired forms of diversity.
And so they did not include veteran status or disability status or otherwise, but they stepped to race, sexual orientation, and gender.
What's your reaction to that?
Well, talking here to a student of that, I would, I think, be taking this too far to try to pretend that I could know everything that you know.
But it strikes me that you can take anything.
To an extreme, and it becomes absurd.
But the fundamental point remains that fairness has to be something that you take very seriously.
If you don't, you're not being fair to yourself, your company, your employees, your customers.
Your vendors.
And if you're a public company, you're not being fair to your stockholders because you're not bringing the best possible people in.
How you define that and how you actually implement that and push people along and shepherd them to a point where they're actually doing that, you and I can disagree over what the best way to do that is, but it sounds like we both agree that one way or the other, We really ought to be doing that.
And so, yes, you can take issue with some of the specific policies NASDAQ has or The signer of the executive order, the federal executive order has.
But neither you nor I seem to be taking issue with the general idea that we ought to be hiring and putting people in positions of leadership in a way that advances the fairness idea.
Well, I think that you had me until the very end where...
I think it is to advance the mission of whatever institution and organization it is.
And that means corporate integrity, right?
As you said, what allows you to be the best provider of building products in the US. And to be the best, you probably have to be meritocratic and inherent in the idea of merit is being fair.
So in that sense, through that cascade, you know, I think we get to a similar place there.
But I do think that, look, I do think that The reality of the modern, maybe not in the sense that you mean it, but the modern capital DEI agenda as advanced is effectively about advancing quota systems in some way or another.
And I think beyond that version of it, I mean, you just listen to the corporate proclamations that have been made, and maybe you would criticize that as just being for show, which I think is a fair criticism.
But I go even further in this just philosophically, where let's just take someone like me, okay?
It so happens I'm a vegetarian by choice.
I was raised that way, but part of it is about grounded in a belief for not wanting to kill animals for my own culinary pleasure.
It's just a choice I make in my life.
If it's for my survival, I absolutely would.
But if it's for my culinary pleasure, I'd rather not.
It has to deeply philosophically link to my pro-life views and everything else.
But why do I bring that up?
Let's say you're a steakhouse and you're hiring employees.
I don't believe that it is your job to be diverse for the sake of being diverse, even when it relates to the ever-prized diversity of thought, right?
This is where it gets controversial because everyone will say, oh, diversity of thought is good.
Well, I mean, a diversity of thought is usually good, but what kind of thought it should be in service of advancing the mission of that institution?
Which of your steakhouse is to serve good-tasting steak to your customers who come there for delight.
And so my view is, if you're a steakhouse...
You shouldn't necessarily want diversity of thought in your waitstaff when it comes to diversity on whether or not the essence of that business, serving animal meat to customers for their culinary pleasure, you probably don't want and shouldn't want an employee like me.
That would be one of the reasons why I would not make for a good employee of the steakhouse, even though I would be adding to the diversity, even diversity of thought, Of that workforce.
And I think that I use that example because it's first personal, the rubber hits the road.
But I don't think that there's any other question that should matter for that restaurateur than what makes him best positioned to advance his mission.
And I think that that's fundamentally intention with the modern diversity, equity, inclusion, capital DEI version of that.
And I think it would be I think you're a smart guy.
I think you know what I'm saying.
I think you would wish for there to be a difference and not a conflict there.
But I think that it would be helpful to recognize that in the way it's being applied today, there can be a tension between actually serving the mission of the institution and simply advancing a separate, maybe worthy social objective, but a separate social objective that sometimes intention, maybe worthy social objective, but a separate social objective that sometimes intention, they're not always the
And I think the more honest we are about that, the more we're able to smoke out areas where we disagree so we can see it rather than suppressing those disagreements which then bubble up and show up in weird ways.
So I think if I... At the time, I could come up with the same absurd lengths to which you could take anything that is out there.
But I think we really need to return to the basic premise that do we, would you, and certainly not I, but would you think that it would be right to go back to where we were in terms of our companies 50 years ago or 60 years ago?
Shouldn't we have made progress over the last 50 or 60 or 70 years in terms of having more people of color, more women, more gays in positions of responsibility in the private sector and the public sector?
That life in the 50s was not all that it should be.
That American life that you're celebrating, and I think rightly so, wasn't open to so many people.
Now, how we get from there to where we are now and saying, have there been excesses in terms of maybe trying things that have taken us too far or that could be abused?
I think you can make that point.
But if the alternative to these excesses is not doing anything at all, then I think it would be wrong To avoid doing these things that have maybe some excesses that don't necessarily comport with everything to do with fairness.
But we have certainly moved a long way from where we were 60 years ago, and I think that's a good thing.
You know, I'll pick one last example here that I'd like for you to respond to.
These aren't hypothetical examples.
I mean, these are real-world examples.
And then I want to tie this to your philosophy of governing in the state of Pennsylvania, which I'll get to on a different matter.
So what's happened after one of the big things that changed in the last 60 years in this country is we did have civil rights laws.
We had a civil rights act in 1964 that said you can't discriminate based on race or sex.
Now, sex includes sexual orientation after Bostock, religion, national origin, and so on.
But the way those statutes have since been interpreted and applied in corporate America is to say that not only can you not discriminate on those axes, I think companies tend to be better versions of themselves when they don't.
It's in their self-interest not to.
But anyway, the law also requires it, as it turns out.
But those laws have been interpreted, including by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including even voluntarily by many businesses, to mean that you can't create what's called, as you well know, a hostile work environment for a member of one of those protected classes.
Now, the place that's gone in recent years is to say that there's an example of a mom.
She's a military mom who wore a red sweater every Friday and would organize a group of military moms in that company.
And to the human resources ranks, an employee of color, to part of the lexicon of the day, I think he was black, but I don't remember the details of the exact race, complained to say that that made him feel uncomfortable.
The company's HR ranks then say, hey, we don't want military mom Fridays anymore.
Don't wear your red sweatshirt to work.
So she doesn't like it, but she starts wearing a red sweatshirt, but she hangs it on the back of her chair in the workplace, after which said employee still said to feel uncomfortable, after which she's then forced to take it off of her chair, sues the employer, but the employer appears to be on firm ground on the sues the employer, but the employer appears to be on firm ground on the grounds Is that to you?
I mean, you keep using the language, which, you know, I want to understand what you mean by it, of going too far.
Is that going too far?
Again, I don't know the example that you're saying.
Yeah, but just on the facts I shared, is that going too far or not?
For 25 years, I was running a business, and we went through over the 25 years of 30 years, really, between 1985 and 2015 when I sold it.
The nation and the workplace has gone through massive transition.
I never really had a problem with it.
I ran a successful business.
We grew fivefold.
You were done in 2008, though.
I mean, you were doing that through 2008, right?
The first time, but then I was only away for a year and eight months, and then I bought the company back because it was struggling and took back control and back ownership of it.
Until what, 2014, 2015?
2015. Yeah, a lot of the trends I'm talking to you about, Tom, are This is a new phenomenon.
I mean, this is a last half decade kind of phenomenon.
And so I just think it'd be helpful.
You're a Democrat.
I think you have an opportunity.
And by the way, as somebody who identifies as Republican, I'm a fan of preaching to my own tribe all the time about challenging where they are.
But Assume for the purpose of this discussion that I gave you the facts correctly.
You're not accountable for that, okay?
On that set of facts, does that strike you, though, as falling in the category of going too far or not, creating viewpoint discrimination expression?
Because this is the reality that people experience.
It's not people fathoming up on cable media that diversity, equity, inclusion is somehow a problem in creating a boogeyman.
I think that that creates more division in our country where we fail to recognize the actual, to borrow the parlance, of lived experience.
This is the lived experience in today's workplace, in today's economy.
And I just think it's helpful for people to hear, especially from somebody who has been a Democratic governor otherwise, If your answer is yes or no, it doesn't matter.
I just think I would love to, I mean, just be good to hear it.
On that side of the fact, is that going too far or not?
Let me point out that I did sell the company in 2015, but I was an employer right up until two months ago.
And we faced the same EEO issues and hostile workplace that you're talking about.
So it's not something that I have not lived with.
Up until my retirement two months ago.
So I think the problem I have with the argument that you make is, which taken in isolation, are there excesses?
I'm sure there are.
But is that an excuse?
Is that a reason to do nothing?
To sit back and say, okay, we're absolutely going to do nothing and we're going to let ourselves drift back to where we were in the 1950s.
And I think the answer to that has to be no.
You cannot have a good company.
You cannot have a good state if basically you're Stand to the folks that you're responsible to, but I'm going to make this work for a very small subsection of the population.
You're a white guy like me?
Fine.
Otherwise, you're out of luck.
That's the way it was back in the 50s.
There were an agreement.
There were an agreement.
I don't think anybody sensible wants to glide back to that state of the world.
The question is, what does gliding forward look like?
Okay.
And that's where we can have all kinds of debates as to what the best way forward is.
The problem is that so many people arguing against DEI and all this stuff really are looking for reasons to glide back.
Not me.
Let's put them to one side.
I know.
I know.
You're not.
You're being very honest.
And I think that's great.
But I think so many people in your party basically are just looking at that and saying that is the reason why we should never have...
We should never have opened up our companies to equity and fairness and diversity and inclusion.
And that, I think, is wrong.
We need to be more diverse.
We need to reflect the population that's out there.
And when I'm back in my company and when I was governor of Pennsylvania, when I wanted the best people, shame on me.
If I had said, and I'm going to exclude you and you and you because of the way you look, because of your gender, because of who you love.
Yeah, but not many people think you should do that.
There's a tiny, tiny minority in this country.
But I think you have to be clear that in arguing against some of the excesses of the things, the policies that have been enacted to try to move this country forward, that you basically...
Risk showing yourself in opposition to all that.
And as you said just now, you're not.
You believe that's really true.
And the disagreement might be over what the best way to move forward is.
I get that.
But you and I have to agree, and I think most right-thinking people Yeah.
the best way to move this country forward, the state forward, the company forward is, is to actually open yourself up to as many different forms of expertise, many different people, the best possible people, regardless of who they are, what they look like.
Yeah.
No, it's, it's interesting.
I think that, I'll tell you the essence of what I think is going on.
Then I want to move to an issue unrelated to diversity, equity, inclusion, but a different issue in how you govern in Pennsylvania, which I think will be interesting to delve into.
is I think the essence of what's going on, if you take the best intention to people on different sides of this debate, put aside cynical intentions, but the best intention people, I think the essence of what's going on is that there is a current in the country that says there have I think the essence of what's going on is that there is a current in the country that says there have been racial and gender and sexual orientation driven injustices in the past and that we have to expressly correct for
those in order to move forward, even if in the short run, that means sacrificing the best person individually at the individual level for that
So to say that if somebody was going to test higher to get a spot in college, if somebody played the violin better to get into that orchestra, if somebody on day one were going to produce more revenue in that sales role, even if we're trading that off in the short run, We have to pay for the sins of the past by actually expressly using the counter-reversing tactics of discrimination.
I think that's the essence of what's going on versus where I would land, which is, I think, a well-intentioned recognition that we have never been perfect, that we don't want to revert back to 1800 or even 1950 for that matter.
But to say that the best path forward is to not look backward and to acknowledge that merit, colorblind merit, is itself an ideal that the best way we can live up to it is by just starting today on imperfect ground as we may to move forward.
I just think that, if we're being honest about it, is the heart of the well-intentioned, non-cynical versions of the debate on both sides of it.
I still think that's a very real debate.
That shows up that we can't just glide over.
And how would you show progress toward that goal?
Yeah, it's a good question.
So the way I show progress towards that goal is...
A, applying colorblind merit.
B, examining where there are differences in results across different demographic groups.
I mean, it's not just about race and sex and sexual orientation.
That could be part of it.
It is part of it.
And then go to the root causes.
And I think the root cause is, I think one of the things that bothers me, and this is maybe transitioning to your role as a public leader and as a governor here.
So I'll give you an example that's first personal to me.
I've talked about it in a separate context before, but I went to a racially diverse, I think majority black or close to majority black public school, first through eighth grade, right?
Now I've gone on to found multi-billion dollar companies and my whole success story is known to our audience, but there isn't a single one of those black kids that First through eighth grade, some of whom were two years older than me because they were held back one or two years even, that couldn't have achieved everything that I have if they hadn't been given at a very early age the same privilege,
true privilege that I enjoyed, which was a stable two-family household with parents who were committed to education and the opportunities to realize it.
And you know what's really funny is we don't talk about one area of not wanting to go back.
Actually, most black kids in this country, even in the 1960s, were born into, 70% of them were born into stable two-family households.
Many of them were economically, maybe black Americans were on average economically better off in the 1960s than they are today.
And what changed in the meantime was among other things, I don't think we're more discriminatory as a country today than we were in 1960.
In fact, I think we're far less discriminatory as a country than we were in 1960.
The Great Society and Affirmative Action and the very kinds of policies that even with the best of intentions were designed to, say, achieve black mobility, actually stopped fostering that at the earliest stages, where what we really need to do is we're not going to in certain cases, achieve equity.
My bet is, and this is a controversial thing to say, but my bet is if you apply purely meritocratic policies, you probably would see greater racial disparities than if you were using race-conscious policies today.
But that's a band-aid to stop us from going upstream to the root causes of inequities that begin when we're like three years old or four or five years old entering kindergarten in public schools versus in one region versus another, that it stops us from bearing the responsibility of fixing that By creating a cosmetic equality in the back end by saying, because you look like somebody who was harmed 200 years ago and you look like somebody who committed that harm, not because you're the person who did it, that you're actually correcting for that.
That's part of what animates me on this subject, to be honest with you, is I think we're creating more of the very harms that we purport to solve by using these Band-Aid solutions on the back end when, in fact, we should be focusing on the front end, schooling, even family formation, At a very young age, or else we're going to still be spinning the same wheels 50 years from now.
Well, I still think that you're ignoring the central problem.
You're looking at these, again, abuses that might have happened and might be apparent in the efforts to move forward.
But you're overlooking the grand theme, which is we have to make progress.
We've got to move from the past into an era when all Americans have an opportunity to do what you've done.
And what I did.
And recognize that we all start from different places.
And so some of the decisions you might make might look like you're actually not...
I mean, you mentioned affirmative action.
Affirmative action is often pointed to as something that is an abuse.
But if you're a college admissions director and you're trying to create the perfect Where did you go as an undergraduate?
Yale?
I went to Harvard for undergrad and Yale for law school.
Yeah.
Because you couldn't get into a good school?
Is that the problem?
I guess so.
Something like that.
Yeah.
So the idea, I'm sure, at Harvard was that they were going to try to make the best possible class campus.
And they might have made some decisions that wasn't everybody who got 800 on the SATs.
And you could look at that and say, gee, well, they actually didn't do a meritocratic point here, I think.
But in the minds of the admissions directors, they were making meritocratic.
They just weren't going according to the definitions that you were going for.
And in their minds, as a result, Harvard had a better student body, people who ended up doing better things and maybe contributing more to the college than had they just simply taken the people who had the best SAT scores.
So I think we've got to recognize that You can't use the absurdities that sometimes happen because people are misusing the things,
the means to get to a fairer end, to use that as an excuse to basically cast away Throw away the idea that we need to make progress and we need to create a much more equitable society than we had 50 or 60 years ago.
So to wrap this section of the discussion up here, I think the question for the House, okay, question for you is, do you come out on supporting more race consciousness in hiring as a way of, as you put it, moving forward?
or is the right way to move forward to abandon race consciousness and be colorblind about the whole thing.
I come out expressly and unapologetically on the side of embracing colorblindness.
If we could make an interview colorblind, auditioned, like a blind audition, or even if it was a Zoom interview to use avatars or technology to be able to not even know what the race or gender of the person you were talking to, to be able to get to the essence of whether or not you were getting the best person for the job, all else equal, I to be able to get to the essence of whether or not you were I would stand for that.
I'd just love for you to just take a position on either side of that, because I think that there's thoughtful advocates on both sides.
Tom, more race consciousness or pure color blindness?
How do we move forward?
Having this conversation with you, so I've known you now, what, 20 minutes?
You strike me as an honest person.
You would really like to move forward with this.
I think there are too many people who...
Use the objections that you point out as an excuse not to make progress at all.
And I think that's what I'm against.
Put them to one side, though.
Put them to one side.
Just like I'll put to one side that people are excesses on the other side.
We're still going to have to figure out how we show progress.
Now, you mentioned NASDAQ a few minutes ago.
And NASDAQ had what you called a quota system on their boards.
And if the boards, private companies didn't live up to that, they had to explain, you said, why they had.
So NASDAQ sounds like, from your description, that they're making an effort to be Fair about this, that they're asking their companies to list, who list with NASDAQ, to show that they're making progress.
And if they can't show it in the way that you say, and in some cases might actually be a very surface sort of acceptance of this idea, that they have the opportunity to explain, you know, how they're actually doing.
But I don't think that they're...
They are saying this is not important.
They're saying it is important.
And if you don't like the way we're measuring it, you tell us what you're doing.
But we have to agree that we have to be making progress in the area of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
However, you want to measure that.
And if you have a different way than we do, we're okay with it.
So it sounds to me Like NASDAQ is trying to do the right thing, trying to do what you think is right.
They're not resorting to this sort of casual, empty, sort of formal accountability or measurement that says, you know, here's a few ideas here of people to show that we're making progress.
No, we really want to make substantive change.
And if you show that, we're okay with it.
That's what you said.
I think you said NASDAQ is doing.
Yeah, so an easy thing for me to do would be to misrepresent what NASDAQ said to make my point, but I wanted to accurately represent it, and that's exactly...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I appreciate that, and I think that's...
That's exactly what they said.
I still disagree with it, but that is what they said, and they would say what you said, in fairness, okay, is that you get a chance to explain it, even if you don't meet that criteria.
However, I think what bothers me about it is itself, even the criteria are only race, sex, and sexual orientation as a proxy for viewpoint diversity in the boardroom, while they rejected, in the first instance, veteran status, disability status, or actual viewpoint difference, such as political viewpoint difference, as a similar criteria, which I think smokes out what's going on.
It's not really about just viewpoint diversity.
I think all of us, you included, would be fine if we come up with a different measurement that is better.
What we can't do is say the measurement as it's given to us is bad, therefore the whole idea is wrong.
And I don't think that's what you're saying.
I would say measure corporate progress against your mission and against your goals.
And the best way to do that is for each company to decide what form of diversity best allows it to accomplish its goals, just like a steakhouse shouldn't hire a principled vegetarian to work on its weight staff.
Yeah, I think, again, there are better ways to do everything and we ought to be looking for how we continuously improve the process.
What we can't do is backslide on the idea of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
If there are better ways to approach it, I'm all in.
I'm sure you are too.
What you can't do is get to a point where people think of you as someone who's just against diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Forget about the people who will, on either side of this debate, cynically use an argument as a smokescreen to advance a respective agenda that's more discrimination of some kind.
There's maybe cynics on either side who might adopt that in principle.
Let's accept that and put that to one side.
But I just think that, again, back to the first word you said, which I respect, is honesty.
I think that in the interest of honesty...
I here's where I stake out my position is that I don't want discrimination of any kind.
I don't want unwanted discrimination or undo or inappropriate discrimination of any kind on the axis of race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc.
In the workforce.
And that's why I think colorblindness as a goal is the right way to go.
And it sounds to me like though, I think I'm going to represent your view and you tell me if this is right or wrong because I've pressed you on this, but I think it's important for even people who follow you to understand where you land on this.
Even though maybe in an ideal state, you would agree with me on that, that it should be pure colorblind meritocracy.
You nonetheless accept and maybe even embrace and endorse the use of explicit color conscious or race conscious hiring policies if that is a metric for demonstrating what you call progress.
Like that's a different point of view than mine, but it sounds like that's where you end up landing is some race consciousness is going to be required in order to rectify injustice of the past and demonstrate progress.
Whereas for me, I would say that the right way to move forward Is be colorblind and actually the best way to end discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race full stop.
Fair to draw that distinction.
Yeah, I think you're right.
We both agree that we need to stop discriminating when we hire for whatever position.
And The problem is, we also have to figure out how we're going to show that we're doing that.
If I'm a CEO, and you're a CEO, and you want to know how the hiring process is going, what are you going to look at?
And if what you're going to look at is someone saying, well, I think we're doing a really great job, that's like trying to run a business from a financial point of view without financial statements.
You don't want to hear, yeah, I think sales are really going well.
You want to see the results, right?
And I think when it comes to something as important and fundamental to business success is making sure you're hiring the best people, not just your brother-in-law or your cousin, that you actually have some way to measure that.
Now, is the measurement that is out there maybe the best that there could be?
No.
We can improve it.
So let's keep improving it.
The question I think we have to ask ourselves is, are we going to use that as an excuse to move away from...
No one wants to go back to 1950. We agree on that.
Okay, we agree on that.
So then let's stop using the measurement system as an excuse for doing that and say, okay, the measurement system has some flaws.
Let's make it better.
And that's where we ought to be.
I think you and I are...
Full agreement that we're never perfect.
You know, continuous improvement is a journey, not a destination.
And in terms of making efforts to be more open, to be less discriminatory, we need to make progress, but we need to also show that we're making progress.
And that seems to be where the problem is in terms of your embrace of Diversity, you got to do both.
You can't just sort of say, yeah, our sales are going to be increased.
We're going to grow those sales and then not measure it.
You got to do both.
You got to say, I want to increase sales.
Here are the things I'm going to do to do that.
But I think you also have to be able to show that you're making some progress.
And however you want to define that, We can argue about that, but it can't be an argument that is based on the idea that the best way to solve this problem is just not to do it at all.
And I think that would be wrong.
I think it's fair to say that we have a distinction of views, even with, I think, a shared spirit of wanting to move forward.
I think it would do differently.
Before we wrap out of time, though, I want to channel this to actually one topic that stood out to me about it wasn't the biggest part of your tenure as governor of Pennsylvania.
It was just a part that stood out to me that I think takes the same philosophy of what does it mean to pursue integrity of an institution here in the case of a state government that interested me.
And I think we had probably different points of view on it.
I just wanted to smoke out before we wrap up.
That has nothing to do with diversity.
It has to do, in this case, with climate change.
I think you were one of the governors who took an express step in favor of effectively putting a price on carbon.
We could talk about the mechanics of how you did it.
I thought it was fascinating.
I thought it was interesting.
I happen to disagree with it for a lot of reasons that go beyond the scope of what we're talking about here relating to my views on the anti-impact framework itself being misguided versus a human flourishing framework that actually matters.
But the question I think that's more narrow and interesting for us is, is that even the job of a governor of Pennsylvania to take into account?
Right.
Is the job of the governor of Pennsylvania or state government to look after the interests of that state or is taking on this other potentially and we can debate it, but let's say potential global challenge.
The job individually of a governor of an individual state in that union, especially when you have coal miners and fossil fuel producers and natural gas producers in that state who are in the short run adversely impacted by a decision like that one.
You lived that decision.
I think we have some different views, but I want to hear you respond to that narrow aspect of it.
it?
Clearly, you believe the answer is yes, because you did it, but why is that an appropriate use of a state government's authority to carry out something that doesn't directly relate to that individual state's interests?
So, here's the problem, and I know you're a big fan of the free market, as I am.
One of the problems with the free market is it has things called externalities.
You know what an externality is?
Of course.
Yeah.
So an externality is something that the market finds it absolutely, not hard, impossible to price.
And so if it's impossible to price, then if the market is left alone, it doesn't get priced.
So if I put sewage into your drinking water upstream from where you take your drinking water out, I'm disposing of my waste for free, but there is an externality.
There's a real price there, but I'm not forced to pay it unless somehow somebody forces me to do it.
That's where government can play a role.
When it comes to carbon, which is a problem.
That is an externality in the generation of electricity.
So if I'm paying my electric bill based on the generating companies and the distribution companies' idea of how much it costs to get it to me, and they're not factoring in one real cost.
Of providing my electricity, that's a problem.
So in the free market, these externalities typically get priced by governments, which are democratic, which are open to people to complain, to argue, to vote out the people they don't like.
But it's one of the central roles of government in making a free market capitalist system work.
Pricing these externalities.
If we don't do that, we just ignore it.
And we recognize it's a problem and we ignore it, then we are not doing our job.
So that's why I did that.
So I understand the philosophy of negative externalities and the role for government to contain negative externalities.
I think we have a...
Probably fundamental difference, and this is not one we need to discuss today because it's an hours-long discussion that I'm airing in other formats about whether carbon and the release of carbon is itself a negative externality at all.
But we'll save that discussion.
You're on the current consensus side of this that takes a view that it is a negative externality.
I'm in the minority view, although it's a closely held minority view, a strongly held minority view of mine, that it is not.
But even if we're adopting your view for the purpose of this discussion, carbon is a negative externality, even if you adopt that view, which I don't espouse, for the planet as a whole, because it contributes to climate change.
It's not sewage.
So the whole question about me asking about this in the Pennsylvania context is I share your view.
If you're dumping chemicals that relate to clean air or clean water, let's say clean water is the cleanest example, then yeah, you've got a case for making sure you can't just dump in somebody else's backyard.
But the thing that fascinates me is what is and isn't the appropriate role of the governor of a state, not the leader of the country as a representative at the UN or whatever, but as a leader of an individual state in the union to take steps that arguably, and there were people but as a leader of an individual state in the union to
you'll know, who would say that it makes Pennsylvania less competitive, who would say that the coal miners or whatever in Pennsylvania are less well off because of it, to nonetheless say that this negative externality for the world is something that it's an appropriate Action for a governor to take on, and I ask this because it's philosophically similar to the similar question we were talking about, even in the case of the CEO taking on diversity, equity, inclusion.
Just on first principles there, you know, offer a defense of that, and I want to hear the opposing view to mine before we wrap.
Yeah, no, you're right, and thank you for bringing it.
It rests on the assumption that we both agree that carbon is a negative externality.
If we don't agree on that, then that becomes real.
But if you think, as I do, The carbon is a negative externality.
The movement of air and carbon does not recognize state boundaries or even national boundaries.
So if I pollute the water, I mean, we run into this, say, with the Chesapeake Bay.
The Susquehanna River actually starts in the state of New York, but it ends up in the Chesapeake Bay, which affects Maryland and Virginia.
So if I decide, or a governor of Pennsylvania decides, that they don't want to play any part in making sure that Runoff does not degrade the quality of water in Maryland and Virginia.
You could say, well, I'm looking out for the farmers and the sewage.
No, I agree with you on water.
On water, I agree with you.
But this is not about water.
That goes into other states.
So does the air.
I'm not sure how you draw a boundary.
It's not a pollution issue, really.
The essence of the argument of carbon as a negative externality and pricing it accordingly.
One of the factors putting a price on it relates to climate change, which is quintessentially not a Pennsylvania-specific issue.
Right.
Pennsylvania is part of this earth, so it becomes a Pennsylvania issue just as it is an Ohio issue.
You cannot sort of put yourself in splendid isolation from the rest of the world and say...
Now, again, if you disagree that carbon is a pollutant, then that's a different argument.
But if you agree as...
With me, that carbon actually is a pollutant, just like acid rain was a pollutant that transcended state boundaries, and different states worked on that together, including Pennsylvania.
But if you agree that carbon is a pollutant, there ought to be some way that we try to attenuate the exposure of the world to carbon, and Pennsylvania needs to do its part.
Can I ask a blunt question, actually?
It's relevant.
You haven't been asking blunt questions here?
Well, it's not personal as much.
I've been about as blunt as I can.
So, fair enough.
Do you aspire to future political office, potentially national?
No.
I don't get the sense that you do, actually.
I'm 74 years old.
I have three grandchildren.
I'm looking forward to spending time with my wife and I. We've been married almost 50 years.
We're looking forward to spending time with our families.
That's the sense I get from talking to you, and I think that's a good thing, actually, because philosophically, I've just had a different place than you in terms of whether that's the proper role of a governor of Pennsylvania.
Also age, you're in a different place than I am.
I'm 37. We're different generations, but that's okay.
We're able to have – we have different shades of melon, and we're from different places.
We're still able to have a great conversation.
This is what America is to me, okay?
I love this.
Even though I'm philosophically different on the foundation of whether carbon's a negative externality, and even if it were a negative externality, which I don't agree with, I still disagree on whether it's the proper role of a governor or not.
I... I think that's an authentic disagreement, which is actually why I have a bigger issue with someone like Governor Ron DeSantis, who does have future political aspirations.
He's running for president through a shadow campaign right now.
I think the thing that bothers me is the use of a state to take on issues that have nothing to do with that state.
It's not even a Republican or Democrat issue here.
I just think it's an inappropriate use of a state's resources to say I'm going to shoot my own capabilities in the foot to address global climate change in the hopes that every other person in that collective action game does the same thing when I'm still hurting my people in the short run.
But at least if you're doing it on your own authentic convictions and first principles as opposed to as a path to a presidency, at least there's authentic.
And even though we can disagree and disagree deeply, it's authentic versus using state funds to fly people from one state to another state, neither of which is mine, who are designed to create a news cycle and earn media in conservative circles as part of a pedestal for running for presidency and using state funds to do it.
That's an inauthentic and cynical version of it.
I call that out because there's plenty of democratic versions of that I could call out, but I think it's important that people call out people in their own tribe if we're actually to make progress as a And so, you know, I think on that distinction, I think that you have one up even to say that if you're really honest about it, that you're not doing the things that you did in Pennsylvania as a means to the end of running for higher office by signaling your virtue.
I think that in that sense, you're doing better than some of even my colleagues who are already in this presidential race without admitting it, which I think is a good thing.
So anyway, that's my two cents to wrap this up.
Thank you.
I think you just gave me a compliment.
So let me just say that as you run your campaign, one of the things I found that was really heartening was, you know, Pennsylvania has a reputation as a purple state.
We actually had a blue wave in the 2022 elections.
We actually took back the State House of Representatives.
Gained a seat in the state Senate.
And my successor, the first time a member of the same party, after eight years of one party being in the governor's office, I think in decades, maybe a century.
So it's been a long time since this has happened.
And I think what people in Pennsylvania were responding to was that honesty, integrity, and confidence.
I think they looked at the fact that I didn't take any gifts.
I didn't take my salary.
I didn't even live in the governor's mansion.
We actually got votes because of that.
I think that they looked at Pennsylvania that has been flat on its back financially for decades.
I mean, you go back into the 50s and 40s, Pennsylvania was always straining for money.
We now have billions of dollars in our rainy day fund.
We have billions of dollars of surplus.
I've had surpluses since 2019, even before the ARP money started flowing and the money out of the Trump and the Biden administration from Washington.
And I think people responded rationally to that.
And I think that's the lesson of the 2022 election.
And I think as you go forward, you know, by all means, be honest in the things that you stand for.
The voters out there are really looking for authenticity.
They're looking for honesty.
And if they see it, they take it.
In Pennsylvania, a lot of voters who voted for Barack Obama voted for Donald Trump.
And a lot of the same voters voted for me.
And I'm supposedly the most liberal governor in the United States.
So, I mean, it's do what is honest and authentic to you, and people will respond to that.
I'll tell you this.
I mean, it sounds like it isn't a Republican or Democrat idea.
I would rather say everything I believed without apology and unvarnished and lose this election rather than to play some game of political snakes and ladders to say the right thing and win.
And there are professional politicians, career politicians, even in my race, who I think are taking that approach.
And my bet is that taking the other approaches, I know this won't give you much satisfaction, but will probably, if I'm successful in the nominee, turn Pennsylvania back red in 2024 in the presidential cycle, at least.
But anyway, Tom, this is a real pleasure.
And we need more of this in the country.
Frankly, you and I don't agree on the DEI issue.
We don't agree on the climate issue.
We don't even agree on what the philosophical approach to governing with integrity means.
But we can respect each other and have an unvarnished conversation, which I think we hide from too often in this country.
And, you know, I'll give you some credit.
You know who I am and you still came on this podcast.
I wanted to treat you with respect accordingly.
And hopefully that sets an example for how we can have more dialogue like it across the country.
So thanks a lot, my friend.
I appreciate it.
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