00:00:06.000We talk about African American studies not being part of the AP curriculum, the new College of Sarasota, the RNC race, why Florida's done so well.
00:00:13.000And is he running for president in 2024?
00:00:49.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:55.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:28.000So a lot of people were talking about how there was going to be a red wave in November, and it seemed as if it was a red ripple, except here.
00:02:19.000I'm going to deliver results for people.
00:02:21.000We obviously had to do that through things like COVID-19, where I had a chance to do things which were not popular with the media, but we stood up for parents, we stood up for business owners, we stood up for people's jobs.
00:02:32.000And so we were able, I think, to develop a record of achievement and really produce results that resonated with not just Republicans, which of course did strongly.
00:02:44.000We even want a decent chunk of Democrats.
00:02:46.000We had the highest percentage of the Latino vote in the history of the state of Florida for any candidate.
00:02:52.000And I got the highest percentage of the vote that any Republican governor candidate has ever gotten in the history of the state of Florida.
00:03:14.000And I remember watching the results coming out of Florida, and we were hosting our live show, and I was getting so excited because I thought they were going to be indicative of something that was going to unfold the rest of the country.
00:03:24.000And it seemed as if it became the outlier, not the trend.
00:03:28.000And not just like a little bit of an outlier, but a massive outlier.
00:03:32.000What was the final vote, Tyler, that you won by?
00:04:02.000The whole, the county itself is 70% Latino, and we were able to really, really dominate there.
00:04:08.000Yo, Palm Beach, I think, is a good example of we were able to really win a lot of the independence in Palm Beach.
00:04:15.000One of the reasons why is because I kneecapped these local governments that wanted to do all the incessant COVID restrictions.
00:04:22.000And so I think they really appreciated, hey, my kids are in school.
00:04:25.000I got a job, all this stuff because the governor had my back.
00:04:28.000So I think some of this stuff, I mean, I think we did some good stuff on the campaign tactically, and I think that that's important.
00:04:34.000But at the end of the day, really, substance, leadership, and results drive election outcomes.
00:04:41.000And I think that, at the end of the day, was the story in Florida.
00:04:44.000We galvanized our base voters, but we did that while also attracting independent voters and really demoralizing the Democrat base because they knew by the time the election came around, they knew their goose was cooked in this one.
00:04:59.000And so we were able to take credit for that.
00:05:01.000As one Democrat strategist said, he said, we're only going to invest in Battleground States from this point forward.
00:05:34.000And in fact, it very well had been decisive in the fact that now Republicans control the House.
00:05:39.000So we had a dispute about racial gerrymandering.
00:05:42.000The legislature wanted to racially gerrymander and take a district from Tallahassee and go 200 miles to go to Gatston County, which is west of Tallahassee.
00:05:51.000And that had just been something they had already always done.
00:05:54.000I don't believe that that's constitutional.
00:05:56.000And so we were really doing taking a stand about what's the appropriate constitutional principle here.
00:07:43.000So other Republicans are looking for answers right now.
00:07:45.000A lot of Republicans are looking for answers, and they look at Florida as one example.
00:07:51.000And I'm afraid that some lessons are not properly really being gleaned, one of which is that you in an election year were bold and courageous.
00:08:01.000Usually courage goes down in election years.
00:08:50.000And so that has no place in the schools.
00:08:52.000And so basically, the legislation was making sure that parents had the right to send their kid to school in the state of Florida without having this injected.
00:09:01.000You also had situations, you see it around the country.
00:09:03.000We did see examples in Florida too, where schools would, quote, change the gender of somebody's kid without the parents' consent.
00:09:16.000Now, the media, we benefit sometimes from how because they just have, it's like a tick.
00:09:23.000I do something, they have to have a knee-jerk reaction against it.
00:09:27.000So I think that they thought what they were criticizing me for, that they were in the right in terms of popularity with the public, because Disney came in and all that stuff.
00:09:36.000I honestly think they thought that they would defeat us on this.
00:09:39.000And my view on that is, is when the heat gets on you, when they start coming after you, that's when you need to stand your ground more than anything.
00:10:32.000It bothers a lot of parents in the state of Florida.
00:10:35.000So they have had a position in Florida where they have their, they control their own government.
00:10:40.000They've gotten all these special privileges over many, many decades.
00:10:44.000And so my view is just, okay, wait a minute.
00:10:46.000We're putting this one company on a pedestal who does not share the values of the state of Florida with respect to raising our kids.
00:10:54.000And so we work to say, okay, this self-governing, you're not going to govern yourself anymore.
00:11:01.000You're going to pay your debts and taxes and live under the same laws.
00:11:05.000And so, you know, Disney's not really being treated poorly, just being treated like everybody else.
00:11:09.000We're removing, though, special privileges.
00:11:12.000And I think as these corporations get into trying to impose a woke agenda on society, we just as conservatives got to say, wait a minute, okay, yes, it's bad if the legislature is trying to enact woke legislation, but if corporate America is doing that without any constitutional process, do we just say because it's corporate, they can do what we want?
00:11:33.000Or are we going to defend our folks against that?
00:11:36.000And I think we've just decided to say, we'll fight it in the boardrooms, we'll fight it in the legislatures, we'll fight it in the schools.
00:11:53.000And they never would have imagined that they would ever be treated fairly because they thought of themselves as the number one employer in Florida.
00:12:00.000I think that's actually, that might be true.
00:12:03.000But I do think, I mean, so since the 1960s, everything Disney has wanted from the state of Florida, they have gotten.
00:12:11.000I don't think they've ever lost anything major.
00:12:13.000And so until now, I mean, this is really the first time where we said, you know what, people are free to do business here, but you do not run the state of Florida.
00:12:21.000And let's just make that very, very clear.
00:12:24.000This transitions nicely to this emphasis on parents and parental choice and schools and education to another quote-unquote controversial thing the media focuses on, which I fully support what you did, which is saying that this African-American, AP African-American studies class, has no place in the core curriculum in Florida schools.
00:12:46.000The media, of course, immediately got reaction was that you're a terrible person, all this, but then you responded, wait, do you actually know what's in the course?
00:14:06.000So if you let the media or the left have a cudgel that they can veto you from doing what's right by just calling you names, then you're not going to be worth your salt as a leader.
00:14:17.000You've got to understand that that just goes with the territory.
00:14:20.000These are the tactics that the left uses.
00:14:22.000And I honestly view it as if the left's not attacking me or the corporate press isn't attacking me, I think to myself, am I not doing a good job all of a sudden?
00:14:32.000But here's what I think these other Republicans should understand.
00:14:36.000There's a hunger out there for just common sense.
00:14:39.000And common sense is, yes, you teach the Frederick Douglasses and the Booker T. Washingtons and the MLK, but you don't do black queer theory to high school.
00:14:49.000You don't do intersectionality or say that, advocate for abolishing prisons.
00:15:49.000I mean, this is just, we're looking at our higher ed writ large, and I'll get to New College in a minute.
00:15:54.000But I think the debate in this country is: what's the purpose of higher education?
00:15:59.000Is it to impose ideology and be kind of an instrument for social justice, quote unquote, or is it about the pursuit of truth and about equipping people with the foundations so that they can think for themselves?
00:16:11.000So we think it's the latter, but overwhelmingly, modern academia has gone in the direction of the former.
00:16:18.000They believe it's about imposing an ideology.
00:16:21.000And so we've been very strong on that.
00:16:23.000We did a bill last year that reins in tenure for university professors.
00:16:28.000All tenured professors must undergo review every five years and they can be let go.
00:16:53.000You know, they didn't have great test scores.
00:16:56.000They focused a lot on things like gender ideology.
00:16:59.000And so we said, okay, there was a movement in the legislature that I was working with, maybe to just close it or fold it into something else.
00:17:07.000So I said, okay, look, if this is something being funded by the tax stars, we wanted to follow our vision for what higher education should be.
00:17:15.000And so I appointed a slew of people to be on the boards of trustees there that share the vision.
00:17:20.000And it is going to be, and we're going to put money behind it.
00:17:23.000We're going to recruit great professors.
00:17:25.000You know, it is going to be what higher education should be: open inquiry, no political correctness, no CRT DEI embedded in the administration, welcoming the classics in Western civilization and giving people an education that's going to be lasting.
00:17:42.000You know, part of my problem with modern academia, yes, it's left.
00:17:45.000I don't like the left, but it's like a sugar high.
00:17:48.000You know, they get this, and then 10 years, there'll be other fads.
00:17:52.000When you're talking about real serious classical education, the things you learn from that, you carry that with you for the rest of your life.
00:18:00.000Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, they're not teaching that at many of these schools at all.
00:18:06.000I mean, how many classes could you get on the Constitutional Convention or true inquiries into like the creation of the Bill of Rights and all these things?
00:18:17.000They want to focus on identity politics rather than really the ideas that have stood the test of time.
00:18:22.000So the vision is to create new college as a shining city on the hill in a very, let's just say, depraved wasteland that higher education.
00:18:31.000Just the announcement, just the announcement, professors started to ask, how do I go to New College?
00:18:37.000Parents have been asking, How can I apply?
00:18:39.000I want to get my kid into new college.
00:18:41.000So I think what we're doing is it's the right thing to do, but just the reality from a dollars and cents perspective, this is an underserved market.
00:18:49.000It's the kind of the modern leftist view of academia is oversaturated.
00:18:54.000You go pretty much anywhere and get that.
00:18:57.000This, to have a college like this, and you know, it's not going to be exactly the same at Hillsville because it's publicly funded, all this.
00:19:02.000But I don't think there is a publicly funded liberal arts school who's really taken on the mission of classical education.
00:19:08.000So I think it's going to be very exciting, but I think we're going to have a lot of success with it because it's not just going to be Florida parents.
00:19:13.000There's going to be parents from all over the country.
00:20:13.000Check it out right now: relieffactor.com, relieffactor.com.
00:20:19.000Okay, so I want to now focus on right now.
00:20:22.000The RNC is meeting in Dana Point, California.
00:20:26.000And there are some questions of who should lead the RNC and whether it should be Rana for a fourth term or go a different direction with Harmeet Dillon.
00:20:36.000Well, we've had three substandard election cycles in a row, 18, 20, and 22.
00:20:42.000And I would say of all three of those, 22 was probably the worst, given the political environment of a very unpopular president and Biden.
00:20:51.000Huge majorities of the people think the country's going in the wrong direction.
00:20:55.000That is an environment that's tailor-made to make big gains in the House and the Senate and state houses all across the country, and yet that didn't happen.
00:21:05.000And in fact, we even lost ground in the U.S. Senate.
00:21:08.000And so, you know, I think we need a change.
00:21:11.000I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC.
00:21:14.000I like what Harmeet Dillon has said about getting the RNC out of DC.
00:21:19.000Why would you want to have your headquarters in the most Democrat city in America?
00:21:25.000It's more Democrat than San Francisco is.
00:21:28.000So I think you get it in real parts of the country.
00:21:31.000You attract people who want to live in those parts of the country, not DC insiders.
00:21:36.000But I do think we need some fresh thinking.
00:21:38.000And here's the thing: just practically speaking, you need grassroots Republicans to power this organization with volunteering and donations.
00:21:49.000I think it's going to be very difficult to energize people to want to give money, to want to volunteer their time with the RNC if they don't see a change in direction.
00:21:59.000Do you have any personal experience with the RNC?
00:22:02.000I mean, because they'll say that Florida was one of their great successes this last cycle.
00:22:07.000So we actually ran our election assuming we weren't going to be involved with the RNC at all because they weren't raising the type of money that they needed to be raising.
00:22:16.000And so our get out the vote, our ground operation, we funded that.
00:22:21.000We focused a lot on actually low-propensity voters and we turned out a lot of low props, which is very, very good.
00:22:26.000So it was very successful, you know, but that was really being driven by our agenda, our accomplishments, and us putting a lot of dollars behind this important ground game.
00:22:36.000Yeah, and there's, I'm talking to a lot of members, and we're going to see how it ends up.
00:22:41.000And people are kind of looking for direction and for answers.
00:22:44.000But here's what we do know: 92 to 98% of voters say this is insane what's happening here, this continued lackluster results.
00:22:52.000Why are we going to put our foot on the gas and accelerate in a direction that is really against us?
00:22:58.000And I would just say, hey, look at Florida.
00:23:00.000Maybe Florida's a path forward that actually could show us how we could do things.
00:23:05.000And so just kind of closing thought on that.
00:23:08.000The members are meeting, and you've said, you know, it's time for a change.
00:23:12.000What other ideas do you think the RNC could embrace, you know, regardless of who wins, to actually have a path forward that can achieve victory?
00:23:19.000It needs to be less consultant-driven.
00:23:22.000Okay, this money that's going in needs to go to ultimately winning elections and not to be lining the pocket of so many consultants.
00:23:47.000But you can't have incentives to where the campaigns and the operations are run with an eye to putting more money in the pocket of the consultant class.
00:23:55.000And obviously, they're very powerful in D.C.
00:23:58.000So I think if we can get away from that, have more transparency, and then really be in touch with our voter base.
00:24:05.000I mean, one of the reasons why we did well is because our base voters knew governor's going to do the right thing.
00:24:13.000There's not a lot of trust between the grassroots and the RNC up in D.C. In fact, when I would do fundraising, I'd raise money for the Republican Party of Florida.
00:24:23.000We would do good, but if I did a fundraising for me instead of for the party, we'd raise much more money because they trust the people that they see doing the job.
00:24:33.000When you start talking about Republican Party apparatus, a lot of our voters are like, yeah, I don't know about that.
00:24:39.000So we need to restore that trust because ultimately you want to have an organization that's going to be able to help in a lot of these key races.
00:25:55.000And I'll tell you, a lot of the low props who we ended up getting to come out, a lot of them voted with absentee ballots.
00:26:00.000So whatever the rules are, I think we need to go to the hilt on all of it because there's some people that may not go to a polling place, but maybe they'd be willing to put something in the mail.