00:00:09.000Boy, do we have a treat for you on this show today?
00:00:14.000Exclusive, in-depth, unedited interview with the governor of South Dakota, the governor who's hosting the Prize of the United States at Mount Rushmore.
00:01:04.000We need more Republicans like Christy Noam.
00:01:06.000Email me your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:01:09.000If you like what you hear on this episode, please shoot a tweet or an email or a Facebook post encouraging Governor Noam because she gets so much negative out there.
00:01:18.000She needs to hear from us, the conservative base, that we are with her and that we support her.
00:01:22.000Thank you to our supporters that make this specific episode commercial-free.
00:01:53.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:02:01.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:03:05.000The people of South Dakota are fantastic.
00:03:08.000And remember, before I became governor, I spent eight years in D.C., which was not fun for me.
00:03:14.000And especially being a part of Congress, the ability to come home and be a governor and set an agenda and to make decisions every day that really impact people's lives.
00:03:23.000I think that fits my personality a little bit better.
00:04:08.000And at that point in time, we were prepared.
00:04:11.000And I had gotten briefed not only by my public health officials, my Secretary of Health, but also my attorneys.
00:04:17.000I talked to some constitutional lawyers.
00:04:19.000I spent a lot of time with my economic development folks, finding out really the details on what my authorities were as governor, and then really self-evaluating why I ran for governor and why I was in this position at this time.
00:04:35.000So I really, when it came to making decisions on if I was going to order businesses to close or order people to stay in their homes, I knew that I had to live with myself and that we had a nationwide crisis on our hands and that that is a perilous time because if you have leaders that overstep their role, that's when you lose your country.
00:04:56.000When you have them take more authorities than what they're granted by the oath that they've taken, that's when you lose your liberties and freedoms.
00:05:03.000And I knew that in South Dakota we weren't going to take that path.
00:05:06.000It's refreshing to hear a leader that actually goes through the decision-making process of why am I here and what can I do.
00:05:12.000So you actually didn't have the constitutional authority to tell people the shelter.
00:05:16.000You don't have the constitutional authority and none of these governors do or to close businesses.
00:05:20.000You know, frankly, they can all be sued for a taking of their business because they don't have the authority legally to shut them down.
00:05:28.000So I went through all of those discussions and also realized that I had never seen a situation where people were so gripped by fear and that what we really needed was information in people's hands and give them the opportunity to make the best decision for their family.
00:05:44.000So I talked a lot about personal responsibility.
00:05:47.000I talked a lot about the flexibility that they were going to have to make the decisions that they were comfortable with.
00:05:55.000I think we did 60 press conferences in a row every day.
00:05:59.000Some days we did two because we had new information.
00:06:03.000We had more things I wanted to share with them.
00:06:05.000But I think that communication, but also recognizing that they were wanting me to make decisions that they should be making and then using it as an opportunity to remind them of our values and what makes us special here in South Dakota really made the difference.
00:06:21.000So you used the press conferences as an opportunity not just to give case updates, but you actually explained what liberty is and personal responsibility is, something that so many leaders, I just think, ran away from that conversation.
00:06:35.000And also once I got off of those press conferences, I spent hours on the phone with mayors and with county commissioners who were freaking out and scared and wanted me to be making the decisions that they were to be making in their local communities.
00:06:52.000South Dakota is so diverse and this country is so diverse that a blanket approach to an entire state wasn't appropriate in any shape or form.
00:07:02.000And that they really could look at their community and make a decision on how to bring people to the table to take care of folks.
00:07:08.000So we had some communities here that I feel like didn't handle the situation as well, but we had some rock stars that pulled together task forces and if they had a hotspot, went in and addressed it, took care of those people, did more testing that really showed how a community can cooperate and not have to put in these draconian measures that really take away people's freedoms.
00:07:33.000So you actually it's interesting people are saying, well, we have to reopen.
00:07:37.000That really wasn't a phenomenon for you, right?
00:07:42.000So that's what we talked about when we were going to have a discussion on telling people that they needed to get back out and needed to start attending activities and doing things.
00:07:53.000I couldn't say reopening our state because we'd never closed.
00:08:10.000We're 11 weeks out about from when people truly went back to normal in South Dakota, and we've only seen our cases go down.
00:08:18.000We only have 65 people in the hospital today.
00:08:21.000At this point, the CDC and the models that Dr. Fauci told us to follow, we would have 10,000 people in the hospital because of COVID-19, and we have 65.
00:08:30.000So I even did a press conference on how wrong the models were.
00:08:39.000Yes, we'd have 10,000 in the hospital that we needed to build capacity into our health care system to take care of that many patients with COVID-19.
00:09:30.000But the people that needed health care when they got the virus was who we needed to protect.
00:09:35.000So if you were vulnerable, if you were elderly, if you had a health care condition that made you more susceptible, that we would take care of you.
00:09:42.000But I said people will get infected, and that will be something that will work this virus through our state.
00:09:49.000But what we needed to do was prepare and then make the decisions that work for you.
00:09:53.000You probably, and the science will show this in the next couple months, you probably had South Dakota develop some form of herd immunity or at least be able to develop antibodies.
00:10:03.000And I'm sure we're going to see that in the coming months because when you just shelter in place, you have essentially typically the way we have viruses hit flat is you have young people in particular that are able to develop that system.
00:10:19.000Are you encouraging schools to open in the fall?
00:10:34.000So we think it's beneficial to have kids in the building, just to have those teachers and administrators, you know, knowing where they are, how they're doing, and to see if we can assist those families.
00:11:27.000I think we're outperforming every other state.
00:11:29.000And I think it's because we let our business owners make decisions that allowed them to keep bringing revenue in and to take care of their employees and allow them the opportunity to put food on the table.
00:11:40.000So, you know, I think I had the hardest hit month was a 0.3% decline in revenue.
00:11:46.000Now, remember, in South Dakota, the only funds that we bring in to make sure that we're paying our state government bills is a sales tax.
00:11:55.000We don't have an income tax, personal organization.
00:12:29.000So we do have costs that we incurred because of COVID-19.
00:12:34.000The federal government did send us some money, but we're going to use that to really aggressively help our small businesses and to develop.
00:12:41.000I told my team I wanted them to use whatever revenues that were here, that we needed to use those to prepare South Dakota to be successful for the next 20 years.
00:12:51.000I don't want them looking short term, but that we need to be looking long-term to how can we use this to facilitate better efficiencies and to make our state more stable and grow the next 20 years.
00:13:02.000So how's South Dakota doing on employment numbers?
00:13:05.000Yeah, we have our people are going back to work.
00:13:08.000You know, we saw quite a few people unemployed right away, but we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation.
00:13:14.000And we still have, it's higher than normal, obviously.
00:13:18.000But I think we're rebounding quicker than everybody else as well.
00:13:21.000And what's interesting about what happened here was that tourism is our number two industry in South Dakota.
00:13:28.000They relied a lot on H-2B visa workers to come in during the tourism season.
00:13:33.000We're seeing young kids get jobs that haven't had it before that are working, families that are doing things together that never have before to run the family business.
00:13:42.000I think it's reinvigorated a cooperation.
00:13:45.000And I talked a lot about strong families throughout this, too, that we've recognized the importance of families spending time together and working together.
00:13:54.000And that's what's happening in South Dakota.
00:13:56.000And I think they're recognizing that going back to this tradition of family values and work is really what we want to keep.
00:14:14.000And some of our elderly folks that have always done certain jobs, you know, they're still out there doing some of that.
00:14:19.000But those that have chosen to stay home have been filled by younger workers that maybe they were busy running around doing a dozen different activities before, where when those stopped, they started filling in other areas.
00:14:30.000And it really inspired them to the value of work.
00:14:33.000Well, I have to say that's a point in the category of the president's recent immigration policy saying that Americans can step up and do these jobs.
00:15:02.000I mean, being here, it's I'm back in my country again, seriously, where I go to New York or L.A. and it's some sort of dystopian nightmare.
00:15:10.000So the president's coming here very soon.
00:16:26.000And that this is why we're in the positions that we're in.
00:16:29.000And every single person has an opportunity, whether you're at the gas station, a grocery store, go into church.
00:16:37.000Ask the people next to you what they think of the situation that's going on.
00:16:40.000Use it as an opportunity to educate them.
00:16:42.000I think for so many years, we did talking points and used one-liners on social media, and we didn't educate people about why we need to value what we value in this country.
00:18:19.000Well, Calvin Coolidge was here in South Dakota.
00:18:22.000He spent his summer here in South Dakota.
00:18:25.000In fact, the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park was built for him.
00:18:29.000And the Rapid City High School was used as his offices.
00:18:32.000Every day he would go into Rapid City, but spent the entire summer here.
00:18:37.000And Gutz and Borglum was going to carve the mountain but did not have enough money and wanted to do this carving of Mount Rushmore and dropped a wreath from an airplane to Coolidge when he was here at the State Game Lodge explaining what he wanted to do and talking about it and asking him to come see the mountain.
00:18:56.000And ultimately, that was the vision that was planted in Coolidge's heart to advocate for getting the funds and the federal funds necessary to complete the project.
00:19:08.000And I think that it was the vision of the people here to really complete it and know that it would be something that would be here forever.
00:19:15.000That's when America, I think we need to get back to this, used to do really big ambitions.
00:19:36.000And what he means, the man in the arena poem is something I'm going to reference tomorrow in the little speech that I get the chance to give.
00:19:44.000And that those people need to be valued.
00:19:47.000But that was something that he stood on.
00:19:49.000And he recognized is that we should be in the arena fighting these fights because it's important.
00:19:55.000I look at the four men on Mount Rushmore, and each one of them plays a different role that we can all learn something from.
00:20:02.000Washington was, and it's interesting because Washington's most prominently displayed, right?
00:20:07.000And it's not that it's the most important, but it's obvious that he's the front facing, which is the founder of the country and the man who could have been a king.
00:20:15.000The only one unanimously elected, and everyone agreed needed to lead our country.
00:20:22.000And he could have served infinite amount of terms.
00:20:25.000And could have been king, like you referenced.
00:20:26.000And he set the precedent of two terms.
00:20:29.000FDR decided to disobey that precedent.
00:20:32.000Serving three, getting elected to a fourth, dying in the fourth.
00:20:34.000Truman becomes, and then eventually they put in an amendment.
00:20:37.000And then you see Lincoln, who, and it's very interesting because Lincoln, I believe, is on the other side.
00:20:42.000Almost they're looking tangential to each other, where you saw the country at a crossroads.
00:20:48.000So you can almost see that physically represented.
00:20:50.000And Lincoln put us in an even greater direction, you could say.
00:20:55.000And then you see Jefferson, who's kind of uniquely put right behind Washington.
00:21:00.000And I think that's interesting because a lot of ways Jefferson was the philosophical author of the country, and it's represented in there.
00:21:08.000And then you kind of see neatly tucked there is Roosevelt, right?
00:21:11.000Not to de-emphasize him, but in some ways to show that we're all following in the footsteps of these giants and Roosevelt being the most recent.
00:21:20.000See, that sort of archetypical analysis is totally lost on the left.
00:21:23.000Well, and also Lincoln was a very unpopular president.
00:21:27.000I mean, he didn't think he would get reelected.
00:21:30.000And so that is something that I think we can learn something from each of these men and the way that they led and the challenges that they faced and even apply it to our most recent presidential election.
00:21:51.000And that is what we need to be focusing on in these presidential elections is what will these individuals be doing for our country that will give us the opportunity to have a more fair, a law-abiding and value-driven country.
00:22:06.000And so I want to ask you about the 2020 election.
00:22:08.000But before I forget this thought, you're actually going as far to say we're going to try to put up new statues in the state of South Carolina.
00:22:16.000I don't know if we could talk about this publicly.
00:22:18.000Well, we have at the state capitol in Pier, South Dakota, the rotunda was built originally to have four statues on the four corners of the rotunda outside displayed facing north, south, east, and west.
00:22:33.000And my vision is to raise the funds so that we could put the four presidents that are represented on Mount Rushmore, put their statues and monuments on our Capitol rotunda so that while the rest of the country is tearing down monuments, that South Dakota is putting them up and not just putting them up, we're putting them on our Capitol building proudly, showing what these men meant to our country and that we still value the gift that they gave us.
00:22:57.000So when they're taking down Lincoln in Boston, they're taking him to Washington and Portland.
00:23:36.000I think you just learn to solve your own problems and to focus on what really is important.
00:23:41.000I had somebody tell me quite a while ago: they said, Governor, do you want to feel good or do you want to do good?
00:23:50.000And so, every time I'm making a decision, that still runs through my head: that I don't ever want to be a governor that does things that just feel good.
00:24:00.000And I'm not interested in what this job gets me.
00:24:04.000I think that I care about my kids and my grandkids.
00:24:08.000And what kind of an America are they going to grow up in?
00:24:11.000Do you think that part of that clear-eyed perspective you have is because you were in Congress for eight years, because you kind of saw the flash and the pizzazz of politics?
00:25:51.000In Congress, I could have a bill, and I may never get a hearing for 20 years.
00:25:56.000The only way you can get a bill heard in a committee hearing is if the chairman likes you.
00:26:00.000If he decides, oh, this is important enough, I'll talk about it.
00:26:03.000If it passes through committee, there's no guarantee that it's ever going to get to the floor.
00:26:07.000The only way it's voted on on the floor is if you can get the majority leader to decide it's important enough to put it on the floor and talk to the Speaker and have them put it as a part of their agenda.
00:26:17.000Even if you pass it through the House, no guarantee the Senate was ever going to pick up that piece of legislation.
00:26:23.000And I won, one member from South Dakota out of 435, I recognized I am here away from everything that I love to be one person in a broken system when, and I'm spinning my wheels.
00:26:38.000And I got the chance to do some big things.
00:26:40.000You know, I got the chance to do tax reform with President Trump.
00:26:43.000We had the chance to do several different farm bills and environmental things that I wanted fixed.
00:26:48.000But thank God I got the chance to do tax reform because that's really why I went.
00:26:53.000But I recognize as governor, as a governor, you can come back, you can set an agenda, you can make decisions, you can implement them.
00:27:01.000And the opportunity there and then to be home was so much better than being in Congress and that I could push policy much more effectively than I could in that broken system.
00:27:18.000The speeches, the press conferences, the wanting to be heard, and I get it.
00:27:23.000I mean, people there would say, well, you did it too.
00:27:26.000Yeah, you talk about the issues that are important.
00:27:30.000But I knew if I stayed there, I was going to get bitter.
00:27:34.000And I was either going to not care and like it too much, I was going to start to buy into it, or I was going to become a bitter and angry person, and I decided to make a change.
00:27:46.000And I think part of the issue is that we have senators that should be elected by the state legislatures, not by the people directly.
00:27:52.000And I know it sounds counterintuitive.
00:27:54.000People say, why wouldn't you want the people to do it?
00:27:56.000Well, they elect the state legislatures because I think the rise of a populist senator has just totally contributed to the downfall of our country.
00:28:04.000So, Governor, also, can you speak to this?
00:28:06.000A lot of young people listen to this podcast, especially young women.
00:28:09.000And right now, we are in a cultural crisis in our country.
00:28:33.000They're calling the worst things you could possibly be called.
00:28:35.000We just had an event recently in Rapid City where a young Native American girl came up and she's like, I'm getting kicked out of every social circle and family circle because I wear this shirt and it was a Trump shirt.
00:29:44.000And I just have to surround myself with people who really do value me and recognize that if you're not on Team Christie and you're not here to give me honest answers and honest feedback, that it's not going to be valuable to me making wise decisions.
00:30:00.000So for those that are really feeling impacted by the criticism that you're getting, the last thing I would say, and I've shared this, I think, at a couple of your turning point conferences before, is that we live in a world that is addicted to being offended.
00:30:17.000This world loves to get offended every day.
00:30:20.000And I had somebody tell me 20 years ago that people are going to throw offenses at you every day by what they say and what they do.
00:30:28.000It's your decision if you want to bend over, pick it up, and carry it around with you.
00:30:33.000But then at the end of the day, if you keep doing that, you're the one carrying the burden, not them.
00:30:38.000So when they throw those offenses out, just walk by them.
00:32:06.000Scripture specifically warns us about double-minded men, that they are unstable in all their ways.
00:32:13.000And when you see these politicians bouncing back and forth, I look at them and I say, unstable.
00:32:19.000I cannot let them impact me or make my decisions for me because for generations and hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years, we've been specifically told that double-minded people are unstable in all their ways.
00:32:31.000So now is the time to figure out what you believe and, boy, go to war on it because it's important.
00:32:54.000President Trump will win South Dakota.
00:32:56.000There are other states where there are people that still need to remember all that he's done for this country and go through the conversations that we would be having if he wasn't president.
00:33:08.000Think about how your life would change with Joe Biden and the White House.
00:33:11.000Just spend a little bit of time recognizing you're going to have less money in your pocket.
00:33:14.000You're going to have a lot more regulations that are going to be driving up the cost of your home, your cars.
00:33:19.000You're going to have more money coming out of your paycheck.
00:33:21.000You're going to have less opportunities for your kids to start their own businesses if you want, and you're also going to have less choices.
00:33:28.000You will not have choices in health care where you want to get it, decisions and prescriptions, what you'll be able to do as far as opportunities to really choose what kind of lifestyle you want to live.
00:33:40.000So this president has given us an incredible opportunity to tell that story for the next several months about what he has done for us in this country, and that's really what we need to be telling.
00:33:51.000But he will not win unless it's all hands on deck.
00:35:02.000I know we're still going to have challenges in our future, but I'm hopeful that our story will be told and be remembered as one that really helped the people here be more successful.
00:35:31.000Get involved with Turning PointUSA, tpusa.com, tpusa.com.
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