The Megyn Kelly Show - Scott Walker on Taking on Unions, Leftward Drift in Schools, and the GOP in 2024 ｜ Ep. 91

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00:00:30.620 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show,

00:00:32.540 your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:41.880 Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:43.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:44.840 Today on the program, we've got Scott Walker,

00:00:47.880 former two-term governor of the great state of Wisconsin

00:00:52.000 and former presidential candidate as well.

00:00:54.900 And now he is on a new and also important mission,

00:00:58.920 running the Young America's Foundation.

00:01:02.220 He is the president of this group,

00:01:03.720 YAF as it's known.

00:01:05.460 And he's taking it on with gusto and dividing and sort of directing,

00:01:10.100 I should say,

00:01:10.540 this group to take on the crazy culture on college campuses

00:01:14.400 and try to get a conservative or even just sane,

00:01:18.980 patriotic message out to these students to fight back against the anti-Americanism we're seeing,

00:01:25.100 the Marxism that we're seeing,

00:01:27.140 the division of people on the basis of skin color,

00:01:30.320 on the basis of what their gender is,

00:01:32.220 on the basis of whether they're a male-female couple or a female-female couple, etc.

00:01:35.920 And we'll get into what he's found so far,

00:01:38.900 because some cases have been on Earth that are troubling,

00:01:42.260 and what his plan is,

00:01:43.320 because you know this is not an easy mission.

00:01:44.740 Plus, we're going to ask him about how did he take on the unions and win,

00:01:48.040 those same unions that are keeping half of the country's schools

00:01:51.160 closed at least full or part-time from in-person learning?

00:01:54.460 How did he do it?

00:01:55.500 And is there a roadmap there for how others can do it

00:01:57.740 so our kids can get back in the classroom?

00:01:59.820 So he'll be with us in one second,

00:02:01.200 but first, this.

00:02:02.040 Scott Walker, how are you?

00:02:10.320 I'm outstanding. Great to be with you.

00:02:12.720 Oh, it's great to have you. Great to catch up.

00:02:15.380 I've been watching what you've been doing and cheering you on, as you know,

00:02:20.480 and to me it has particular relevance because I'm dear friends with this guy named Mark Joseph,

00:02:25.940 who is currently in the middle of wrapping his movie,

00:02:30.080 Regan, in which Dennis Quaid plays Regan.

00:02:33.520 And I know that's a personal hero of yours as well.

00:02:35.960 I can't wait until the movie comes out.

00:02:37.940 And you know what's weird?

00:02:39.420 Is some buzz about this movie is,

00:02:41.620 is it going to get distribution?

00:02:43.160 Are people going to distribute a movie about the very controversial Ronald Regan?

00:02:48.700 I mean, how messed up is that?

00:02:51.240 You're right.

00:02:51.440 One of the, one of the icons of the 20th century,

00:02:55.620 when you think about all the changes, not just in the United States, but around the world.

00:02:59.660 I had the pleasure, in fact, when we were doing the little video for the long game proposal,

00:03:04.400 we did it the first week of February, right around Ronald Regan's birthday, ironically.

00:03:08.960 And Mark was out at the Regan ranch about the same time.

00:03:11.920 So I stuck around an extra day, saw Dennis, saw Penelope and Smith, or Penelope and Miller,

00:03:18.300 excuse me, and a few of the other folks on the crew,

00:03:21.320 because they were filming some of the last shots of the movie,

00:03:24.520 which are at the Regan ranch itself.

00:03:26.340 So pretty amazing.

00:03:27.180 But yeah, he was totally worried about it.

00:03:29.620 We're thinking we're going to try and do with our students,

00:03:32.440 little mini premieres all across the country,

00:03:34.700 where we get students on campuses out and try and get them to get tickets or give them tickets

00:03:39.900 to go out and see this incredible movie about this spectacular man.

00:03:43.740 I want to help you.

00:03:44.740 I've seen just a bit here and there,

00:03:46.760 and I actually interviewed Dennis out there at the Regan ranch

00:03:49.620 when they were just starting the filming.

00:03:52.720 But it's, to me, it's like, so people who are involved in Young American Foundation,

00:03:56.800 that America, is it Americans or America?

00:04:00.360 Young America's Foundation, yeah.

00:04:02.700 All right.

00:04:02.940 So people who are involved in that,

00:04:04.680 which sort of is one of the few outlets for budding conservatives,

00:04:08.680 or even just non-liberal thinkers, I'd say at this point,

00:04:12.420 they know about Reagan and they love Reagan.

00:04:15.460 And it's not that he was a flawless man, who among us is.

00:04:19.040 It's just that not only was he a true blue conservative when it came to policy,

00:04:24.500 he was the best cheerleader for America we've had in several generations now.

00:04:29.100 That's the thing that even if you love Trump,

00:04:31.900 I think, you know, I missed that.

00:04:34.280 I missed having a strong leader who could articulate why America is special,

00:04:39.520 why it's the greatest country ever formed, why it's worth defending.

00:04:43.340 We haven't had that since the 1980s.

00:04:46.720 And it's a real loss.

00:04:47.940 And I think it's damaging.

00:04:49.820 Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat,

00:04:51.000 if you love the country, not having a strong spokesperson is damaging.

00:04:54.400 Yeah, it was such a night and day difference.

00:04:56.320 I try to tell young people all the time what it was like.

00:04:58.980 I was a kid in the late 1970s.

00:05:02.120 In fact, I was 12 when Ronald Reagan ran for president.

00:05:05.060 And I try to explain to them, it's hard to even imagine.

00:05:08.720 Obviously, we had some bad years, you know, back.

00:05:11.780 It just so happened that when Barack Obama was president,

00:05:13.940 but it was not just his doing.

00:05:15.240 Of course, there was a major recession, all sorts of problems.

00:05:17.640 But I remind young people about the 70s.

00:05:21.380 And you think about not only the oil embargo, the gas lines, the malaise,

00:05:27.260 but just the sense with – we knew Kevin Hermoning,

00:05:31.260 the youngest hostage held in Iran, was from Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

00:05:35.340 In fact, still know.

00:05:36.000 He's in Washington, north central Wisconsin now.

00:05:38.400 But I remember having a yellow ribbon in front of our house

00:05:41.160 around our big tree for all of those 444 days.

00:05:44.160 It was just – we felt so defeated.

00:05:46.340 And when Reagan came in, you're right, he wasn't just a conservative.

00:05:49.580 He was an optimist.

00:05:50.620 I mean, that was what I think was drawing him more than anything,

00:05:53.160 was just that incredible sense of optimism.

00:05:55.780 It's one of the neat things about going to the ranch.

00:05:57.860 You see this guy who, you know, was a movie star, a governor, a president,

00:06:03.240 hung out with world leaders.

00:06:04.300 And it's this – as you know, having been there,

00:06:06.140 it's this small little ranch house, about as simple as could be.

00:06:09.960 But I said that, you know, that ultimately explains his frugality

00:06:13.840 that started in the Midwest during the Great Depression

00:06:16.180 and never changed who he was.

00:06:18.420 But at the same time, the ranch embodied his belief in freedom,

00:06:22.940 this eternal optimism in the American people,

00:06:25.240 these big, wide-open spaces that I think in many ways personified his sense of,

00:06:30.480 you know, America was boundless in our opportunities.

00:06:34.300 And you're exactly right.

00:06:35.280 Donald Trump was a great president on policy.

00:06:37.500 He did amazing things, things I never dreamed were possible in terms of strict policy.

00:06:43.280 But in terms of setting the stage for the future,

00:06:46.740 Ronald Reagan during his time, and I think even today,

00:06:49.880 his words still reverberate with those of us trying to make the case

00:06:53.580 about that shining city on the hill that we still aspire to be.

00:06:56.800 And you know what's crazy is his speechwriter, Peggy Noonan,

00:06:59.460 is still alive and well, thank goodness,

00:07:01.440 and could be used by a smart politician looking to sound like Ronald Reagan.

00:07:05.800 And so far, not really.

00:07:07.940 She hasn't been.

00:07:08.680 But here's just an example.

00:07:10.500 We pulled a great soundbite of him speaking about, you know,

00:07:14.720 sort of seeing buds of the problem we're now experiencing,

00:07:18.240 this anti-Americanism within our own country,

00:07:20.440 this unwillingness to understand how special this country is.

00:07:25.060 Back in, I'm not sure what the date of this was,

00:07:27.440 but it was obviously the 1980s.

00:07:29.060 Oh, it was from his last address from the Oval Office,

00:07:31.300 which would have been, I guess, 87, 88.

00:07:33.660 Okay, here it is.

00:07:34.220 An informed patriotism is what we want.

00:07:37.620 And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is

00:07:41.000 and what she represents in the long history of the world?

00:07:45.140 Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America.

00:07:50.900 We were taught very directly what it means to be an American.

00:07:54.440 And we absorbed almost in the air a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.

00:08:00.220 If you didn't get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood,

00:08:05.740 from the father down the street who fought in Korea,

00:08:08.940 or the family who lost someone at Anzio.

00:08:11.360 Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school.

00:08:15.120 And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture.

00:08:19.940 The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special.

00:08:27.580 TV was like that, too, through the mid-60s.

00:08:30.860 But now we're about to enter the 90s, and some things have changed.

00:08:35.140 Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America

00:08:40.340 is the right thing to teach modern children.

00:08:43.620 And as for those who create the popular culture,

00:08:46.760 well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style.

00:08:50.360 Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it.

00:08:55.300 We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom.

00:08:59.700 Freedom of speech.

00:09:01.440 Freedom of religion.

00:09:02.980 Freedom of enterprise.

00:09:03.900 And freedom is special and rare.

00:09:07.540 It's fragile.

00:09:08.900 It needs production.

00:09:10.600 Yeah, it needs protection.

00:09:12.720 This is, you cited this in talking about your mission now,

00:09:16.980 and why you really want to take up this cause.

00:09:20.640 You want to take up the mantle of making well-grounded patriotism our style again,

00:09:25.920 of doing a better job of getting across that America is freedom,

00:09:28.980 and it's special, and it's fragile, and it needs protection.

00:09:33.300 Yeah, just such powerful words.

00:09:35.240 We've invoked that time and time again.

00:09:36.940 That was his last address in the Oval Office, hard to believe, 32 years ago, January of 1989.

00:09:43.180 He was so prophetic because, as I talked about, remember how bad things were in the 70s before he came in?

00:09:49.280 And he comes in literally as policies helped turn this country around, not only in terms of restoring a sense of being proud of the Americans,

00:09:57.060 but the economy, unprecedented economic growth at the time, all these other good things.

00:10:01.740 He could have clearly slapped himself on the back and said, way to go.

00:10:04.800 But beyond just celebrating what had been accomplished during those two terms, he sent out this very real warning.

00:10:11.680 As you said, freedom is fragile.

00:10:13.760 It's special.

00:10:14.340 You have to protect it.

00:10:15.740 He, in the past, prior to just that address, had often said that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

00:10:23.440 You don't get it passed on to you through the bloodstream.

00:10:25.880 And you literally have to stand up and fight for it and defend it and then pass it on to the next generation to do the same thing.

00:10:32.560 And so I thought in that address, he also gave us a charge to do more to teach American history and to be involved in shared civic ritual.

00:10:44.000 Megan, I don't know about you, but I remember growing up, he alluded to the guy down the block from Korea.

00:10:48.500 I actually had a guy that lived down the block who went to our church, who was my assistant scoutmaster when I was in Boy Scouts, who was a World War I and a World War II veteran.

00:10:59.620 His name was Claire Condon.

00:11:01.340 And he would take all of us kids out every year on Memorial Day, on Veterans Day and Flag Day in this small little town we grew up in.

00:11:09.340 And we'd put all the scouts and Cub Scouts would put flags on the tombs of all the veterans, on their tombstones, all throughout this small little cemetery we had.

00:11:20.820 And it was things like that that taught you that when you stand for the flag when it comes by in a parade or you sing the national anthem and you put your hand over your heart, that wasn't because you're Republican or Democrat.

00:11:30.880 That was because you're American.

00:11:31.880 And when Mark Cuban a few months ago was talking about not playing the national anthem, it made me think back to that warning and that charge that Reagan gave and how prophetic he was that if we don't take these things seriously, we don't teach American history and have a greater emphasis on civic ritual, we'll fall trapped to falling away and not remembering anymore what those things were about.

00:11:54.320 Those things with the flag weren't just about a flag, they were about shared values that were as clear as the threads in the flag itself bound together, they bound us together as Americans.

00:12:05.880 And sadly, I see too much in our culture that wants to pit one group of people versus another, instead of finding ways to have those shared rituals and traditions and bring us together as a country.

00:12:16.900 So what happened?

00:12:46.900 And I think to myself, how did we get here?

00:12:49.760 Because this generation, this is supposed to be the 9-11 generation.

00:12:52.600 This is supposed to be the generation that saw our country, our ideals attacked. 0.67

00:12:56.880 We stood up for ourselves and went back and fought against the guys who caused it in Afghanistan.

00:13:01.640 The Iraq war, I think, is generally considered to be a massive mistake, but shouldn't have created a bunch of America haters inside of our borders.

00:13:09.440 So how did, what happened between then and now?

00:13:12.140 Well, a number of things.

00:13:13.800 One, for this generation, particularly for my kids are 25 and 26, so they're the tail end of the millennial, literally the very end of that.

00:13:21.360 A lot of people blame millennials, and there's certainly a lot of things to blame that you can attribute to that.

00:13:26.440 But in some ways, kind of like Reagan's warning, I don't blame just them.

00:13:30.180 I blame their parents, which includes my generation and those a bit older than me, because as Reagan talked about, we didn't, you know, those parents going into the 90s did re-institutionalize this belief in the American dream and what that means and entails.

00:13:45.160 Certainly, it goes back in many ways back decades ago.

00:13:49.940 What we see today, not only in our college campuses and our schools, but in our culture, even in the censorship from, in many ways, from big tech, all that didn't start overnight.

00:13:59.900 It goes back in many regards, way, way, way back, but you can specifically tie much of this to even Saul Alinsky's work back in the 1960s, where they had this long-term view.

00:14:12.000 They weren't just engaged in the battles of the moment.

00:14:14.200 They were looking far into the future.

00:14:16.180 Remember in the 80s, Bill Bennett warning about this, that if the left had a clear plan to take over education, higher education, communications, Hollywood, all the, you know, the fundamental means of getting information out to people.

00:14:30.980 And if they controlled that, his warning was even back then when he was serving for Reagan, was that, you know, they at some day would, would, would dominate.

00:14:39.340 And that's where we're at today.

00:14:41.280 Bill Bennett, then education secretary for Reagan.

00:14:43.360 Yes.

00:14:43.740 Yeah.

00:14:43.980 He very much was concerned about that spell that I remember talking to him a couple of years ago about that, about, you know, how I, I wished I loved, obviously when our kids were little, we'd read the book of virtues, which I thought was great.

00:14:57.120 But I wish that, that warning that he gave as well, specific to those fundamental areas, wish it did not come true.

00:15:04.420 But, but he, like others kind of spell it, this is where they're headed.

00:15:07.900 Now, the optimist in me that still comes from Reagan.

00:15:11.400 You know, I'm a conservative, not only because my parents and my upbringing, but without a doubt, coming of age during Ronald Reagan's presidency.

00:15:19.040 But I also like to think of myself as an American optimist.

00:15:22.640 And I look at how things are stacked really against a conservative or even a middle to right point of view, so radically towards the left with even the earliest videos that kids see these days to school, to textbooks, to curriculum, to certainly left-wing professors, but increasingly more than them, activists on campuses, to all the push on social media and Hollywood and everything else.

00:15:47.660 It's, it's amazing to me that there are any kids left that aren't socialists.

00:15:50.820 And so I just think if we, if we talk, if we find a way, it's why cancel culture is so prevalent, because people on the left don't want our ideas to even get a chance.

00:16:01.780 They don't even want us to get a hearing.

00:16:03.160 What we find in the polling is both fearful, both frustrating, scary, whatever term you want to use for young people.

00:16:13.360 But at the same time, there is a glimmer of hope.

00:16:16.160 The fearful part, of course, is the socialism.

00:16:19.080 You go up and down the list of left-wing ideas.

00:16:22.220 Not only do so-called progressives, but even other more reasonable students, you know, buy into a lot of these lies of the left.

00:16:29.980 But what's interesting is it all boils down, in many cases, to young people, to fairness.

00:16:35.760 And if you peel away, I'll give you a good example.

00:16:38.020 People, young people, not surprisingly, say, oh, we should have, the government should, should take care of my student loan debt.

00:16:45.480 But if you say to them as a follow-up, do you think that taxpayers who never went to college should have to pay for that?

00:16:52.500 Suddenly the number drops dramatically.

00:16:54.780 Because they get the sense of fairness.

00:16:56.360 But in a vacuum, if it's just about, yeah, I want the government, you know, some random person is going to pay for this.

00:17:02.360 So one of the things I think we've failed at is conservatives are really good.

00:17:07.060 We're good at telling, speaking, and talking from our head.

00:17:11.320 Liberals think and talk from their heart.

00:17:14.360 We shouldn't concede the logic of our mind, but we should tell it in ways that are emotional, that talk.

00:17:20.100 Why should the left own the issue of fairness?

00:17:22.820 I think the things we talk about can be fundamentally fair, but we're so reluctant to get beyond just the logic, the facts, that we sometimes don't add the emotional component that not should substitute for facts, but augment and, I think, reinforce our point of view.

00:17:39.800 Do you think, I know that you're, you got your eye on education and try to, you're trying to help students, trying to help teachers, professors fight back against this far left bent that we're seeing grow, fester, get even worse than, it's not just liberalism, it's not progressivism.

00:17:58.100 I wish it were that, that'd be so much easier to deal with.

00:18:01.520 This crazy, woke ideology is just downright dangerous, and that's, that's what you're fighting against.

00:18:07.220 But do you think that battle is winnable on a cultural level, outside of the education?

00:18:13.120 I can see how the fight could be launched in the education arena, but how do you take back, as Reagan was saying, television, movies, sports are gone now, corporate America and its messaging.

00:18:25.660 Look how many corporations are now signing on to say George is terrible because of its voting law, right?

00:18:29.980 Like, how, I, I have been thinking up until now that reasonable people, they just need to create their own lane.

00:18:38.280 You can't, we're not going to turn CNN into what it used to be.

00:18:41.780 We're not going to be able to wrest control of Hollywood from these virtue signaling producers and try to get some more patriotic films in there.

00:18:49.560 You just got to create new lanes.

00:18:50.800 But what do you think, could, could we, are we exceeding the fight, uh, to, too easily?

00:18:57.560 Well, we, we're, we are not fighting and we've got to fight on every level.

00:19:02.640 Uh, you know, some people say, oh, this area is gone.

00:19:05.420 Education's gone.

00:19:06.160 Higher education's gone.

00:19:07.100 Holloway's gone.

00:19:07.760 Media's gone.

00:19:08.800 No, I, I think we can't concede anything.

00:19:10.920 I think part of the problem we've had in the last couple of decades, because again, I go back thinking about even when I was in college, the professors were overwhelmingly liberal,

00:19:19.960 but you can still have a discussion.

00:19:21.420 I still have professors today, many of whom are retired from teaching, but who, you know, still disagree with me, but they still like to say I was once their student, uh, because we had good discussion.

00:19:32.060 We had good debates.

00:19:32.740 Probably doesn't hurt.

00:19:33.560 They can now say they taught at someone who was once a governor, but, but, uh, you know, we could have those kinds of debates.

00:19:38.700 You don't have those anymore.

00:19:40.000 And then it went into the nineties with political correctness where that started to change things.

00:19:44.140 As you alluded to today, it's just outright cancel.

00:19:47.660 And, and so we've got to change that.

00:19:51.020 Part of that means getting a stronger presence in terms of just simple things like invoking the first amendment, uh, using winning in the court of public opinion for sure.

00:20:00.420 But when needed, winning in the court of law, uh, particularly in schools and campuses, but elsewhere that are a voice out.

00:20:07.060 But I think for too long, too many conservatives slash Republicans, not that every Republican is a conservative, but too many right of center, particularly in those in office have just conceded the language that, uh, well, they'll modify their language in hopes that somehow that will just pacify, uh, some of the media and some of the left.

00:20:27.440 Um, no, you need to call it out.

00:20:29.780 I, you given a good example of this week or the last couple of weeks with Georgia, not only is it hypocritical that major league baseball pulls the all-star game from a state that just passed new legislation that obviously requires photo identification and has, uh, uh, a certain period of time for early voting, but they move it, obviously the Colorado state that has voter identification requirements and less time to vote early.

00:20:53.920 So absolute hypocrisy.

00:20:55.480 I, I, I added to that, you know, the oddity, of course, I knew it well, having signed the voter ID law in Wisconsin, but the DNC, the Democrats held their national convention in Milwaukee last year, abbreviated as it was because of COVID, but they picked Milwaukee knowing full well that a decade ago, I signed a very strict photo ID requirement.

00:21:14.360 And our early voting is only 14 days.

00:21:17.280 So one, you can point out the hypocrisy of this, the contradiction, the big lie in all this, but I think more important than that lost in that as well as beyond just their, their double standard.

00:21:29.760 It's the fact that photo ID makes sense, just the inherent idea in itself that overwhelmingly Americans believe it.

00:21:36.800 Every poll shows it not only amongst Republican or even independent, but even a majority of Democrat identified voters think photo ID makes sense.

00:21:45.680 And at least I think Rasmussen's poll showed that 69%, I think another poll was over 70% of black voters think it makes sense.

00:21:53.220 So sometimes we get caught up not only in pointing out the hypocrisy of the woke warriors on the radical left, but we've, when we complain about the hypocrisy, we don't do enough to actually explain to people why the original idea, which in this case was about voter integrity, made sense to begin with.

00:22:12.420 And it does.

00:22:13.040 And we shouldn't concede that or any other issue like it.

00:22:15.580 But it's very hard to get the message out when the, that group controls all forms of information, you know, the papers, the magazines, the online sites, the, the television news, all of the messaging, for example, on Georgia has been racist, racist, racist companies pulling Jim Crow 2.0, right from the president on down.

00:22:37.760 And yes, the conservative ecosphere has an alternate narrative and we'll point out the facts that you just raised.

00:22:44.680 But man, it's very hard to get to anyone who's not consuming conservative media with the truth.

00:22:52.300 No, there's no doubt about it.

00:22:53.340 In fact, that's, again, part of the long game, which applies not just to education, but to everything we're doing in culture and media and communications.

00:23:01.360 We've got to look at this as not just the battle of this moment, but really two, two ways that too many of us look at it.

00:23:08.480 One, people just throw up their hands and give up or say, I'm just not going to view this anymore.

00:23:13.260 And not engaging in society and culture, I don't think is a good option for us because we've still got to compete to get, you know, the few.

00:23:22.960 And I think there are more than we think minds that are open to at least hearing more than what they're hearing.

00:23:27.560 But we've got to find a way to get into that for the others who just want to try and correct it now, as opposed to saying, no, this is probably going to take more than what's certainly going to take more than a new cycle.

00:23:37.320 It probably takes at least through a couple of presidential cycles.

00:23:40.780 It's not going to take 100 years, but I'm just confident, just as the left did systematically moving the bar, that we need to have, and that's part of our long game plan, a longer strategy, not just for young people, but for society as a whole, to how we get back to a more conservative, realistic view of the world.

00:24:01.060 Which, again, like I said before, in the polling, not that everything's about polling, there is hope even amongst this current youngest generation that when you explain to them ideas over, you know, once you follow up and you say not just, you know, what do you think about this issue or that issue, but then you give them more information, they are willing to digest it.

00:24:24.140 And the problem, as you correctly note, is right now, almost all those sources of information come from one view and one view only.

00:24:31.580 It's why even in the last year, racism, racial conflict has jumped to the top of the list on almost every poll, particularly amongst younger people, although society in general.

00:24:41.760 I think that's part of a larger plan, frankly, that goes back to, again, you think decades ago, Marxists tried to infiltrate the United States and they weren't successful.

00:24:54.340 Why? Because our society is not based on class, that you can be born into the most poor family in your community and still rise up and do whatever you want, that the class you're born into doesn't limit your potential in life.

00:25:10.320 We're all given and God given freedoms and we take those freedoms and opportunities here in America and apply them.

00:25:17.280 And with hard work, determination and maybe a little bit of luck, we can succeed in almost anything.

00:25:22.060 That's why some Marxism failed.

00:25:24.260 Now, I think they're coming back with another swing and trying to impose Marxism based on race and gender and sex.

00:25:31.680 It's why you've seen for years BLM, which they're self-admitted.

00:25:35.140 But, you know, there's three founders, although I guess one of the images I just saw the other day is one of the founders at least buying a pretty amazing mansion.

00:25:43.100 So currently that's taking a page out of Castro or Chavez or others where promised power to the people.

00:25:50.480 But in the end, the people live in poverty while the elite few hoard all the power and the riches of that.

00:25:57.600 Exactly. She's got four houses, four houses worth worth three point two million dollars. 1.00

00:26:02.760 So, you know, capitalism, as it turns out, is working out OK for her.

00:26:05.940 It's working out just fine.

00:26:07.440 Exactly.

00:26:08.140 Bernie Sanders is the same. He's got three houses.

00:26:10.340 Yeah.

00:26:10.540 And now and now you have even people within BLM coming out and saying this is BS and we need an accounting of where the money's gone and of the 90 million dollars they've taken in.

00:26:19.800 You know, it looks like three went someplace, you know, to support her lifestyle. 0.98

00:26:24.420 This this person who thinks that America is terrible and, you know, capitalism sucks.

00:26:29.080 Coming up after this break, we're going to talk to Governor Walker about what they discovered out of Ames, Iowa, right in the heartland of America when it comes to BLM's teachings. 0.90

00:26:39.220 And I mean, straight out of the BLM manifesto, a week of indoctrination of children in Iowa. 0.84

00:26:47.400 We're not talking about Manhattan, folks, or San Fran in Iowa and what's going to be done about it.

00:26:53.120 And not just in Iowa, but elsewhere. Stay tuned.

00:26:59.080 It's so hard to break through. And not only does the media not let it happen and Hollywood not let it happen.

00:27:04.580 But as you well know, the education system, not only are they not teaching patriotism or even straight civics anymore, you get punished.

00:27:12.820 So many students come forward and say, if I if I write a paper that is anything other than like in the progressive voice, I'll get punished.

00:27:20.180 I'll get I'll get downgraded.

00:27:21.460 And there was an example of this in the news recently, not even just a downgrade, Scott, it was the guy was suspended.

00:27:30.680 He was essentially kicked out of a med school.

00:27:33.460 Do you hear about this guy?

00:27:35.300 Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

00:27:37.000 His name is Kieran Bhattacharya.

00:27:38.800 And it happened in 2018, where he went to a panel discussion on the subject of microaggressions, which is just like that's made up offense.

00:27:48.100 But I can't see an explicit offense.

00:27:49.720 I just I'm just going to make one out.

00:27:51.220 Something in your words offended me.

00:27:52.660 I don't know what it was.

00:27:53.760 And he didn't really appreciate the definition of a microaggression offered by the presenter and assistant dean there named Beverly Cowell Adams.

00:28:02.540 And sort of stood up and said, can I ask you about your definition?

00:28:09.240 You know, I don't do I have to be a victim of a of a marginalized group in order to be a victim of a microaggression?

00:28:16.380 Is that what you're telling me?

00:28:17.240 And she was like, no, it's not a requirement.

00:28:19.380 And then he kind of confronted her and said, well, you know, you said earlier it would be a requirement.

00:28:23.460 And it was a polite exchange.

00:28:26.100 He didn't back down.

00:28:27.380 After it was over, another professor filed a, quote, professionalism concern card, which is a an accusation of that he violated university policy by being, quote, antagonistic toward the panel.

00:28:43.180 Now, you might just laugh this off and say, oh, God, you know, grow a spine.

00:28:47.140 No, no, no, no.

00:28:48.820 The whole academic standards committee met to discuss the concern card.

00:28:52.740 They sent him a reminder in writing that he needed to show respect for faculty members and express himself appropriately, which he 100 percent did.

00:29:01.080 He wasn't even close to the line.

00:29:03.600 They wanted him to get counseling this med student for saying, I don't think you're you're defining that term correctly.

00:29:10.340 I want to challenge you on it.

00:29:11.640 Then they said he had to be evaluated by psychological services before he came back to classes.

00:29:17.800 And they ultimately suspended this guy and ordered him to leave campus.

00:29:24.000 It's insane.

00:29:25.660 They ordered him off campus.

00:29:28.000 So to his credit, he filed a lawsuit and he's winning.

00:29:31.960 They tried to get it kicked and the judge declined to dismiss it on their motion to dismiss.

00:29:37.940 So he's doing what he should do, which is if you can't, you know, fight them in in the school, you take them to court, as they used to say on the people's court.

00:29:46.800 And that line is the most promising line we have right now, I think, for fighting back against this lunacy.

00:29:52.680 Oh, there's no doubt about it.

00:29:53.800 We had a good example.

00:29:56.060 We've talked about this in our long game, but we we really trying to expand what we're doing.

00:30:00.440 But we had a good example of why I have worked with Alliance Defending Freedom.

00:30:04.480 Similar situation.

00:30:05.600 This case, it wasn't just a student.

00:30:06.980 It was students wanted to bring in this case, Ben Shapiro to University of California, Berkeley.

00:30:11.800 So UC Berkeley prides himself in free speech, but they really don't.

00:30:15.940 So what what did they do?

00:30:17.620 They put up these just ridiculous barriers saying you couldn't have the speech after three in the afternoon.

00:30:24.660 You couldn't advertise.

00:30:27.060 And oh, by the way, they were going to charge the students.

00:30:28.900 I think it was about three times the security fees that they charged a similar group on the left to have one of the U.S.

00:30:35.360 Supreme Court justices.

00:30:36.440 So someone who obviously does require necessarily so security.

00:30:40.820 So we helped them go to court over this.

00:30:43.920 We ultimately won more than winning.

00:30:45.760 The court battle was getting them to rescind their policy.

00:30:48.760 But this is the sort of nonsense they're involved in.

00:30:51.220 The only way you can win in many of these cases is to win, to invoke the First Amendment, to invoke the Constitution, to win in the court of law.

00:30:58.780 And once you do, then that gives us the larger opportunity to win in the court of public opinion.

00:31:03.940 But it is a huge warning, I think, for not just students, but for anyone.

00:31:09.240 These the sort of things you were talking about with the med school student are the sort of things we have historically seen in communist run countries that we see today, even in socialist countries.

00:31:20.660 And it's, you know, if our children in particular are so sheltered from this, they don't realize what's at stake.

00:31:27.360 We just had, back a couple of months ago, our first conference of the year in person, full capacity in Miami, Florida.

00:31:35.980 We went to Florida, obviously, because thanks to Ron DeSantos, who, by the way, I think is the best current governor in America.

00:31:41.880 Thanks to him, the state was open.

00:31:44.400 But we went to Miami in particular because we brought a number of speakers in who could talk about their family's experience coming from Cuba to the United States.

00:31:54.820 Or in one case, it was someone coming from Venezuela to the United States.

00:31:58.640 Boy, that's that passion.

00:32:00.180 The logic was still there with the head, but they could tell from the heart.

00:32:03.140 And I just think that whether it's on campus, whether it's in the media, whether it's in social media, the more we can find people to personally tell those riveting stories, the more we can point out just how unfair situations like this student had.

00:32:18.180 It matches the logic, but then it puts in place real emotion, real people.

00:32:22.620 And I just got to believe in a fair and a just world.

00:32:25.600 There's going to be, particularly amongst young people, enough people that go, that's just not fair.

00:32:29.420 That's not right.

00:32:30.140 But it's what I experienced years ago when we had all the protesters in Wisconsin.

00:32:34.040 The big mistake, if I look back, that I made early on in my tenure when all the protesters came out was I was so eager to fix things.

00:32:43.360 I didn't talk about it enough because most politicians talk about it, but don't fix it.

00:32:47.740 So I guess I wasn't going to err on the side of fixing it.

00:32:50.020 But what I realized is once I started telling stories about a teacher who was laid off the year before I was governor, because back then they too cut funding for education because of the budget problems they had.

00:33:04.280 The only difference was you're the last hired as the first fired seniority played the role.

00:33:09.800 And even though this young teacher was named the outstanding new English teacher the year in the entire state, she was one of the first people laid off.

00:33:16.140 When I told that story, people went, well, that's not fair.

00:33:18.460 I said, that's what I'm trying to fix.

00:33:20.540 So the more we can tell stories that back up our logic, the better off we're going to be.

00:33:25.560 Well, and I definitely want to talk to you about Wisconsin and the fight against the unions, because I know you say you fought and won.

00:33:32.120 You know how to do it.

00:33:32.760 And that is true.

00:33:33.540 I remember covering you wall to wall back in 2011 when this was happening and you taking on the unions and beating them.

00:33:40.340 I mean, at every turn you beat them, which sadly is pretty rare.

00:33:44.780 And I think people are kind of ticked off at unions right now, especially the teachers unions in these states where they refuse to let the teachers go back into the classroom.

00:33:52.260 So I want to get to that, but I do want to ask you in terms of the campuses, one of the things you guys are now going to try to do at YAF is try to get more sort of chapters, I guess, open on more college campuses so that what?

00:34:07.540 So that young students have an open, acceptable alternative to all the dogma that's being spoon fed them, right?

00:34:15.980 Because like right now, they don't really see a lot of people don't even see a meaningful alternative to what's being spoon fed them and told them is the only way of being an acceptable, decent, moral human being.

00:34:26.720 They can get more people on campus who are acceptable, decent, moral human being saying, hey, we've chosen a different way.

00:34:32.680 We think a different way.

00:34:34.160 Could you at least listen to us?

00:34:35.940 I mean, that could be half the battle.

00:34:37.560 A hundred percent right.

00:34:38.440 Yeah, the whole strategy of the left, even beyond just cancel culture, is to marginalize, to minimize.

00:34:44.800 It's exactly what they tried to do us years ago.

00:34:46.820 I don't know if you'll touch on the details, but with even trying to surround us with protests and that is to make you feel isolated, to make you feel alone, that whatever sense you think you have, you try to convince people that, no, they're alone, they're outcasts, they're outliers.

00:35:02.020 That's the epitome of all this.

00:35:04.720 And so we're on about 2,000 campuses where we support students right now, but there's over 4,000.

00:35:10.740 I want to be in all of them.

00:35:11.840 That's part of our long game.

00:35:13.360 We want to be not only in undergraduate campuses.

00:35:16.080 I think there's tremendous opportunity to reach out to young people who are getting associate degrees at two-year campuses.

00:35:21.820 I think it's not only about being in college with membership and chapters and gatherings.

00:35:27.040 It's bringing more speakers in.

00:35:28.340 It's fighting First Amendment battles, not only for our chapters and our speakers, but for any conservative, rational voice that wants to go on campus.

00:35:36.140 I want to partner with ADF and others and say we'll go anywhere, anytime, anyhow, to defend the rights of students to speak up and speakers to speak up on campus.

00:35:46.520 I think part of it's going beyond just college into not just high school, but even middle school.

00:35:52.460 And even as early as elementary school, helping parents counter so much of this curriculum that's focused on hating America.

00:36:01.260 You know, today's time, you know, today's teachers, even if they don't buy into this, the curriculum they get, the stuff that they're handed.

00:36:10.540 I even saw this with my son, Matt, who's 26.

00:36:13.120 I remember years ago, he had a great AP government teacher.

00:36:17.280 She was super. 0.98

00:36:17.920 She tried to be fair.

00:36:19.180 You go in her classroom, there were Republican and Democrat signs.

00:36:22.700 She'd bring speakers in from every different angle.

00:36:25.400 But one day he brought home an assignment and his textbook actually told was about how Ronald Reagan's tax cuts brought about the deficits of the 1980s.

00:36:36.040 Well, of course, that's hogwash. 0.98

00:36:37.040 That's ridiculous. 0.99

00:36:37.740 That's just not accurate. 0.51

00:36:38.760 The tax cuts in the 80s, both in 81 and 86, actually saw increased revenue as the economy grew to the federal government.

00:36:47.880 It was the spending of Tip O'Neill and the others in the Congress that brought on the deficits.

00:36:52.640 But, you know, here this poor teacher had a textbook that said something different.

00:36:55.800 So I went and got a different book off my shelf and gave it to my son.

00:36:59.160 But most parents, most teachers don't have the, you know, don't have the resources, don't have the ability or even amongst teachers, many of them feel somehow that they, too, are alienated if they don't go with the liberal dogma.

00:37:14.660 So it's part of letting students, educators, parents and others know that they're not alone.

00:37:19.100 What did you guys, because you've already now been trying to reach out to parents at the local level, at the elementary school level and say, let us know if you see something problematic.

00:37:29.260 And I know something happened in Iowa along those lines.

00:37:32.160 Tell us what happened and tell us what you plan on doing about it.

00:37:35.080 Is it just a matter of exposing it, like shaming the school out of behaving in this way?

00:37:40.240 Or could it lead to litigation that you guys are going to help in?

00:37:43.340 Well, in many cases, it varies.

00:37:45.040 But, for example, folks have their own tips.

00:37:46.900 So I'll give you an example of one that came from this, but yaf.org slash tips is a tip line we have.

00:37:52.340 It's amazing.

00:37:53.200 You'd be overwhelmed.

00:37:54.260 Your listeners would, we could talk for, you know, 100 hours on all the ridiculous things that come up with, like the young man we were talking about before, or professors who say if you're pro-life and you speak out on campus, you're going to get kicked out of the class.

00:38:08.400 Or segregated housing for resident advisors and dorms and just different graduates.

00:38:14.720 So all these crazy things.

00:38:15.820 But one of these came up at Iowa State, a tip from a student about the local school district.

00:38:20.500 So not the college.

00:38:22.060 The local government-run school district.

00:38:24.520 For Black History Month, the first week they partnered with BLM.

00:38:28.080 That should be the warning right there.

00:38:29.760 For something that had nothing to do with black history.

00:38:32.540 Everything to do with liberal indoctrination.

00:38:35.140 And they did a week of action.

00:38:37.060 It started in preschool and went to 12th grade.

00:38:39.340 And for preschoolers and kindergartners, they literally had coloring pages of transgender characters.

00:38:45.860 And the kids were told, as part of that, that they could pick whether they wanted to be a boy or a girl or something in between. 0.53

00:38:52.300 Now, this is just the kind of ridiculousness beyond just that issue itself.

00:38:57.380 What in the world are they teaching, you know, kindergartners who should be learning how to play nice with each other and maybe count and do the alphabet?

00:39:05.300 That just shows you how warped these situations are, not in San Francisco or New York, but this is in Ames, Iowa.

00:39:14.480 So part of our pushback to your question was, yeah, we exposed it.

00:39:17.960 We didn't just put it out there publicly.

00:39:19.740 We went into Iowa.

00:39:21.160 We got people on talk radio talking about it.

00:39:23.840 We did it with the local media as well as the national.

00:39:26.020 We reached out to ministers and clergy.

00:39:27.700 I let Kim Reynolds know and Joni Ernst know and Chuck Grassley and others know so that they could put the pressure on to have them pull back from that, to stop it from spreading elsewhere, to pull back in that district.

00:39:40.380 And then to talk about it nationally, because we figured if they're doing it in Ames, Iowa, it's coming to your local school district next.

00:39:46.840 Absolutely.

00:39:47.800 Because it's not just limited to one place.

00:39:49.360 So part of it's exposure and where necessary, you know, it's helping parents counter not just that particular curriculum, but particularly all the stuff that's about hating America, about misleading people, about our founders.

00:40:04.400 You know, last week was Thomas Jefferson's birthday.

00:40:07.240 That's just a good example where you get people who just totally distort what the founders of this country did and what they believed in.

00:40:14.760 It doesn't mean they were perfect.

00:40:15.780 I mean, I can say all the time, the last person I know who's perfect hasn't walked on the earth in about 2,000 years.

00:40:21.560 So for the rest of us, we've got a long ways to go.

00:40:24.380 But they did have amazing ideas that are still relevant today.

00:40:28.240 We should be grateful that there were people willing to risk literally their lives, not just their livelihood or their political ventures, but their lives, the freedoms that we have today.

00:40:37.500 Not a day of getting bashed on Twitter.

00:40:39.900 I think it's easy to suck that up if they could go through what they went through.

00:40:42.740 But I like this idea of these lawmakers, this lawmaker network, you know, governors, former lawmakers and senators and so on to sort of get the word out.

00:40:53.000 Like if you could get that kind of thing going where it's a network of lawmakers who are willing to fight these battles and draw attention to this nonsense, that that would be very helpful.

00:41:04.380 Well, I want to just piggyback on what you said.

00:41:07.080 This is from what you guys exposed.

00:41:08.760 I'm looking at the article in front of me for the for the week of action.

00:41:12.240 Again, as you point out, this is for Black History Month.

00:41:15.040 This stuff has absolutely nothing to do with black history.

00:41:17.840 And this is what the week of action, the lesson plan to prescribe different topics, readings and activities.

00:41:23.140 Reading now.

00:41:23.940 Monday, students will learn about restorative justice, empathy and loving engagement.

00:41:26.900 Tuesday, lesson on diversity and globalism, with students urged to read Afro Latinx books and then audit their classroom library to judge diversity and learn how they are impacted or privileged within the black global family.

00:41:41.800 Wednesday, lesson on transgender, queer affirming and collective value has absolutely nothing to do with Black Lives Matter unless you look at the Black Lives Matter mission statement,

00:41:50.560 which specifically says they want to dismantle the nuclear family and be more queer affirming and they want more of that and transgender families than they do want traditional male, female families. 0.62

00:42:03.460 And then we get to Thursday where they say we're going to talk about the disruption in the nuclear family and spaces free from ageism, black families free from patriarchal practices, plus black villages.

00:42:15.660 And then Friday, you complete it with something centering black women and fems completed with I love myself affirmation chant.

00:42:24.020 And of course, the footnote is unless I am white.

00:42:26.840 It's just unbelievable.

00:42:29.080 It's crazy.

00:42:30.620 But see, this is their next test.

00:42:32.120 Before it was, like I said, before it was, you know, they wanted to pit one against each other, an economic class based, traditional class view of the world status.

00:42:41.300 But they found a more important weapon now.

00:42:43.900 It's pinning each other based on race and to a certain degree, sex and gender.

00:42:48.020 And as you and I both know, we've experienced this, that, you know, it's a pretty powerful attack.

00:42:52.400 If you even question anything they're talking about or sometimes make even some of the most ridiculous references is somehow means for the R word. 0.93

00:43:01.620 And you can see why students, parents, even teachers, other educators are afraid to question any of these things because who wants to be called a racist or a sexist or a transphobic or homophobic or whatever, you know, neanderthal. 0.83

00:43:15.620 But that's the whole strategy.

00:43:17.280 And it's so disappointing because I can remember some of my best teachers were people that years later I learned were not politically at all aligned with me, but were people who challenged me, who made me think critically, who didn't shove things down my throat, but rather made me think about what I thought about.

00:43:33.660 And any of those sorts of teachers, not just conservative teachers and conservative professors, but just ones who don't want to be dogmatic, who just want to teach something objective, are so villainized these days that you can see why this stuff just slides through and rarely a hand goes up to challenge because people don't want to be on the front end of, you know, that sort of attack.

00:43:57.080 But we have to. And I found some of the best ways to attack it is not just head on, you know, in terms of speaking out aggressively, but just questioning.

00:44:07.380 The other day when the CDC director came out and said, you know, that that racism is now a public health issue, you know, to me, the easy question was how, you know, the response will be, well, you know, there's all this data about underserved populations.

00:44:23.380 There is, but that's, but that doesn't explain why is that racism? Is there a doctor somewhere that's purposely not serving people because of the color of their skin? That would be racism.

00:44:34.480 Now, there are other factors. And what I worry about is that someone who is formally involved in public policy is when you invoke racism all the time, as an example, then the other things that really are causes that need to be addressed largely get glossed over.

00:44:48.720 Because everybody's over here looking at, you know, how, how much they can react to whatever racism is or isn't, as opposed to saying, well, what are the other causes, economic, societal, family structure, you name it.

00:45:01.420 Those are all things that play into many of these situations. But people don't want to talk about those because those are harder to deal with than just saying.

00:45:07.400 Black Lives Matter is an anti-American organization. It's very clear. You know, lowercase Black Lives Matter is a totally different thing than the movement, than the actual group Black Lives Matter, which is run by this, you know, so-called Marxist center, $3.2 million, four homes.

00:45:22.560 And people need to be okay saying that. They actually do want to dismantle the nuclear family. They actually, their rhetoric is extremely racist, extremely racist. And I don't support them. And I think if you look at the polls, a large majority of Republicans do not support Black Lives Matter.

00:45:40.220 And I think people need to be more bold about saying, I don't support that group. I don't support that group. It's okay to say that. You don't have to donate your money to them. It's a very fraught mission. It's not about Black Lives. 0.94

00:45:51.460 It's about an agenda of dismantling systems that we happen to love here in the country, namely capitalism and a nuclear family that has two parents and is loving.

00:45:59.600 It doesn't mean you can't have an alternative version that we can also support and love, but one doesn't have to be displaced, right? It's like, that's the last thing we need is to start demonizing nuclear families with a male and a female parent, which is particularly when the science, yeah, particularly when the science overwhelming it.

00:46:17.800 In fact, Brookings Institute years ago, I invoked this often when I was governor, Brookings Institute or Brookings Institution, which is by no means nothing close to a conservative think tank, just, yeah, fairly left of center.

00:46:32.740 But they put out an interesting report that we often refer to as the success sequence, where they showed the overwhelming data that people who graduate from school, by school I just mean graduating through high school, get a job and then wait until they're married and over 20 to have children.

00:46:51.340 The data overwhelmingly shows that in over 98% of the time, those people never live a day going forward in poverty.

00:47:00.060 It just shows you there's a clear and concise recipe.

00:47:03.180 If you want a blueprint of how to get out of poverty, it's graduate, get a job, and then wait until you're married and over a reasonable age to have children.

00:47:12.760 If people did that, and again, people say, oh, that's preaching, that's morals.

00:47:16.620 Oh, yeah, it is.

00:47:17.520 There is a fair amount of morality in there.

00:47:19.220 It's things our parents and our pastors and clergy and others have been saying for decades, not just because it's something biblical, but because it actually works.

00:47:28.160 And to your point is, for things that make sense, we've got to stop ignoring things like that just because we think we're going to get some pushback.

00:47:36.020 It doesn't mean that there, as you alluded to, there aren't legitimate cases where people have been successful, where people have been, for example, single parents have done a phenomenal job.

00:47:44.780 I give a hat tip to a lot of single moms who've done remarkable things with their kids. 0.99

00:47:49.440 But the science, the data overwhelmingly shows us that people are better off if they go through this sequence.

00:47:56.640 And that runs flat out contrary to what BLM, the organization, and other left-wing radical groups are saying.

00:48:02.340 Yeah, well, and I always say this, but I want to remind people that the spokespeople, like for BLM, for the trans rights activists, they do not speak for the vast majority of the people who happen to fall within the categories they purport to represent.

00:48:17.960 I'll just give you one example.

00:48:18.800 I have two dear, dear friends.

00:48:20.900 They're two lesbian women who are married and have four kids together.

00:48:24.760 And they're amazing parents.

00:48:27.000 You could ask for no better.

00:48:27.940 They have no wish to dismantle any nuclear.

00:48:30.880 They don't want to end or discourage or in any way judge or diminish male-female unions.

00:48:37.420 They want to be accepted and people to recognize that they, too, are amazing parents.

00:48:41.480 Most sane people totally get that.

00:48:43.620 They're not out there and they wouldn't support people out there saying, dismantle, dismantle the pre-existing nuclear family, replace it with something else.

00:48:49.980 And that, you'll get pushback from the mainstream media that that's even a goal of Black Lives Matter, even though it's in their mission statement.

00:48:59.260 They've now since scrubbed their website.

00:49:01.540 But as you point out, it was in the papers released in Ames, Iowa.

00:49:05.180 Like, it's absolutely part of their mission statement.

00:49:08.680 Up next with Scott Walker, we're going to talk about 2024.

00:49:12.080 Does he think Trump will run again?

00:49:14.220 Does he think Biden will run again?

00:49:16.580 And will he run again?

00:49:18.520 And now it's time for another edition of From the Archives.

00:49:22.240 That's a feature where we look back at our library and bring you a little taste of something you may have missed.

00:49:26.980 For today, we are going back to October and episode 15.

00:49:31.400 I love that we got the brilliant Chloe Valderay on early. 0.76

00:49:35.700 And we should have her on again because she's just, she's the answer to so many of our problems.

00:49:40.560 It was a totally refreshing conversation.

00:49:43.100 She's amazing.

00:49:44.140 And if you haven't heard it, you need to.

00:49:45.380 Now, Chloe runs a practice called The Theory of Enchantment. 1.00

00:49:50.440 Just let that, just let that hang.

00:49:53.660 The Theory of Enchantment.

00:49:56.140 Just makes you want to know more, doesn't it?

00:49:58.520 This provides a whole new spin on anti-racism versus what the typical woke leftist world puts out there.

00:50:05.700 Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo.

00:50:07.560 She's the opposite of them. 0.78

00:50:08.500 And we heard that after our episode, she got a whole lot of new interest in Theory of Enchantment, which we love.

00:50:15.140 That's fantastic.

00:50:15.960 But the conversation we had at the time is still very timely, especially with all that's happening in Minnesota over the past week and beyond and the media coverage of it.

00:50:23.700 And so here is just a small clip on spiritual impoverishment.

00:50:28.160 I read what you've said about wokeness, you know, this wokeness craze.

00:50:32.880 And you said one of the things you think is driving it is there's sort of a lack of purpose going on for some folks now and that people, while they may be materially enriched, maybe, maybe not these days, they're spiritually impoverished.

00:50:46.260 How is spiritual impoverishment leading to wokeness?

00:50:49.700 Yeah, so I think that there's a great deal of alienation that we're forced to contend with.

00:50:56.140 And I don't think there's anyone, I don't think anyone is like at fault, per se.

00:51:01.220 Again, I think it's a crisis of modernity.

00:51:04.780 Timothy P. Carney wrote about this in his book, Alienated America.

00:51:08.360 And this is a challenge that has really affected everyone in the country from the left to the right.

00:51:15.460 And what's unfortunately going on, I think, is people in the reactionary right and people in the woke left are suffering from alienation, but are oftentimes implementing policies, implementing solutions that actually perpetuate alienation even more in the name of trying to stop it.

00:51:35.680 And this includes otherizing people.

00:51:37.920 And this is something that we as human beings have always done.

00:51:40.440 This is like the, we tend to think in either or ways of thinking, especially when we think our security or safety is under threat, whether perceived or real.

00:51:52.900 And so we're prone to start thinking in those very shortcut, reductive ways.

00:51:56.220 But the challenge here, I think, and this speaks to the spiritual issue, is to create solutions that take away that sense of alienation, that bring back that sense of community.

00:52:06.300 Again, that bring back that sense of reconciliation and the beloved community, as Dr. King spoke of.

00:52:13.920 And this requires that we sort of rewire our brains and rewire our, how we choose to be in relationship with each other, which to me, again, begins with being in a healthy relationship with yourself.

00:52:26.640 And this is even more of an issue because of COVID, because we're neurobiologically wired for connection and we're experiencing, you know, long periods of isolation and disconnection.

00:52:40.820 And so we have to work overtime to really keep ourselves in check and make sure that we take the steps that we can take to foster connection with one another.

00:52:49.620 Chloe has actual solutions and a way of bridging divides in this country without further alienating everybody. 1.00

00:52:57.220 So go back, check out that full episode, You Won't Be Sorry, and we will keep bringing you more clips from the archives.

00:53:04.000 And now back to former Governor Scott Walker.

00:53:06.920 But first, this.

00:53:14.520 The strength of these unions, the way they pressure lawmakers and win,

00:53:18.880 especially in blue states like mine, New York, and our our legislators and governors tend to just bow down to them, give them what they want.

00:53:27.140 And that's one of the reasons why I just had friend dinner with my close friends last night.

00:53:32.440 New York City schools are still not in session full time for us.

00:53:36.140 Tons of kids.

00:53:36.780 My friend's son, who's a middle schooler, he's about he's 13, goes to school one day a week still for four hours on that one day.

00:53:48.880 And that's it.

00:53:51.020 It's totally unacceptable.

00:53:53.060 There's a zero percent transmission rate in schools where they will not send the teachers back in to these public schools, no matter how much data they have.

00:54:02.220 And so when I saw you making news on the YAF stuff, I was like, I want to talk to him because you're one of the few people.

00:54:09.300 Chris Christie is another who has taken on unions in one.

00:54:13.940 And just to refresh the audience's memory, because we have a lot of young listeners who probably babes in the cradle back in 2011.

00:54:21.280 Hopefully they weren't worrying about it back then.

00:54:23.080 Yeah.

00:54:23.400 No, let's hope not.

00:54:24.360 But you I remember covering this on a day to day basis.

00:54:28.600 And I you you crack down on these unions because you had done it already in several of your sort of state lawmaker positions where you you fixed your budget.

00:54:37.540 You took a budget deficit.

00:54:38.520 It was like three point five million when you were at the lower state level.

00:54:41.660 And then when you became governor, it was three point six billion budget deficit.

00:54:45.440 And in both cases, you turn it into a surplus.

00:54:47.340 And you got very realistic about how to bring back jobs, how to cut taxes, but how to get rid of these deficits and create surpluses.

00:54:55.360 So you know how to do it.

00:54:56.480 And one of the things you could hard look at was unions.

00:54:58.880 So in a nutshell, tell us what you did with the Wisconsin unions that caused you so much trouble knowing that you ultimately won.

00:55:06.540 Yeah.

00:55:06.720 The easiest way to explain is we took the power out of the hands of the big government special interests, which are the big government union bosses, and put it firmly into the hands of the hardworking taxpayers.

00:55:16.720 More specifically, what I mean by that is having been not only a state lawmaker, but a local was called a county executive time.

00:55:24.320 And I knew in those years when we faced our own budget challenges because of law state aid and the economy that the only real way to balance the state budget, if you weren't going to raise taxes, which I was not going to, not just because I said I wasn't going to, but because it would have been like a wet blanket on economic recovery.

00:55:43.780 I wasn't going to cut billions of dollars from Medicaid because, well, I wanted to reform it.

00:55:47.980 I wasn't going to hurt seniors and kids and families.

00:55:50.260 And I wasn't going to lay off 15,000 employees, even though I want a smaller government.

00:55:55.680 You don't get there through random pingslips.

00:55:57.560 So as you look at all the options, I knew the only way to balance that $3.6 billion gap you just mentioned was you had to reduce the amount of money that flew from the state that was sent to the local government.

00:56:09.760 But having been a local official, I knew the flip side of that was the only way you could offset that without just devastating cuts and layoffs at the local and school district level was to give us tools that many of us had asked for for decades.

00:56:23.640 Under collective bargaining, even simple things, not just paying pension and health care contributions.

00:56:29.360 But, for example, most schools before I did this had to buy their health insurance from a company that just happened to be connected to the teachers union.

00:56:38.620 Once we got rid of it, they could bid it out.

00:56:41.280 Many of those districts saved millions of millions of dollars just by bidding out their health insurance on the market and saving money that could go back into the classroom.

00:56:50.740 So what we did was get rid of collective bargaining as they knew it.

00:56:54.560 We took the power and put it into the hands of not just the state, but really the local officials, meaning the taxpayers, were in charge.

00:57:03.060 They elect someone to a school board, city council, county board.

00:57:06.700 They now can make decisions, not just about budgets.

00:57:09.800 But the last thing I'll just say on this that tied into long term, the biggest benefit beyond just the money,

00:57:14.960 is we got rid of seniority and tenure so that in doing so, schools can now hire based on merit.

00:57:22.360 They can pay based on performance.

00:57:24.120 They can put the best and the brightest in the classroom and keep them there.

00:57:27.160 I remember earlier this past year when the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot,

00:57:31.960 who politically she and I wouldn't be aligned on much, but on this we were,

00:57:35.960 she wanted to reopen the Chicago schools.

00:57:38.740 The unions basically told her what she could do with it.

00:57:41.280 But I said at the time, if she was in Wisconsin instead of Illinois,

00:57:46.300 her schools would have been open last fall when she wanted to, 0.96

00:57:48.940 just like the Catholic and the other faith-based schools were open last year completely successfully.

00:57:54.400 And that's what's at stake here.

00:57:55.800 Anyone who's watched this knows, even the CDC under Biden has acknowledged that students and staff are safe to go back.

00:58:02.560 It's the union bosses that have blocked them from doing it.

00:58:06.000 And my response was simple.

00:58:07.400 You're not an essential worker if you can't show up when it's essential.

00:58:11.640 And I think most teachers, not most union bosses,

00:58:14.100 most teachers actually did and still do want to go up to school because they're sick and tired of Zoom.

00:58:19.160 They want to be in the classroom with their kids.

00:58:21.360 Can you explain that?

00:58:22.480 Can you explain why is there such a gulf or at least perceived gulf between the way the teachers feel

00:58:28.660 and what they want and what these union representatives are demanding and get?

00:58:33.060 Well, because the unions are set up, particularly public sector unions,

00:58:38.120 and the private sector, it's a little bit different because they actually,

00:58:40.800 particularly in states like mine, where you have a right to choose public or private.

00:58:45.020 So the private sector ones actually have to offer something of value, trending or otherwise.

00:58:49.340 But typically in the public sector, it's why even Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

00:58:53.800 I got fact-checked, political fact on this, but it's 100% right.

00:58:57.460 FDR oppose public sector unions, which will be a shock even to some of your listeners,

00:59:03.280 because his view was who you're protecting yourself from yourself.

00:59:07.460 The public is the government.

00:59:09.460 But with the power that unions have, the union bosses, particularly in the government arena,

00:59:15.880 is it's concentrating and protecting the weakest link.

00:59:19.880 So the people who want to be a part of the union overwhelming are the people who don't want you

00:59:24.060 to ever make a reasonable concession, who don't want to have anything based on merit,

00:59:29.460 who don't want to give up any benefits or anything else.

00:59:33.380 It's the great teachers, the great public employees, the good public servants that were willing to make concessions.

00:59:40.600 I'll give you an example, not with a teacher, but years before I was governor, when I was the county executive,

00:59:46.500 Democrats controlled everything in the state government.

00:59:50.000 Recession, they had to cut because they didn't have enough tax revenue.

00:59:53.460 They cut money to local government schools, counties, cities.

00:59:57.260 I'm the county executive.

00:59:58.460 It's the middle of the year.

00:59:59.720 The budget's already been set.

01:00:01.100 So I offer to do 35-hour work weeks for four weeks spread out, one a month for four months.

01:00:10.540 And I include myself.

01:00:11.620 I said, I'll take the pay reduction for a 35-hour work week.

01:00:15.420 I've been offered to do it at the end of the week on a Friday afternoon for any non-essential workers.

01:00:21.600 They could go home and at least get a longer weekend out of it.

01:00:24.060 But that would be my way to avoid layoffs.

01:00:26.780 Seemed like a pretty rational, reasonable discussion.

01:00:29.240 The unions basically told me to take a long walk off a short pier.

01:00:34.020 They actually said much worse than that.

01:00:36.540 And I remember people coming to me crying with new workers, typically young parents, who'd say,

01:00:45.080 what am I going to do being laid off?

01:00:46.500 And their co-workers would say, I'd gladly do a 35-hour work week.

01:00:50.260 Why can't we do it?

01:00:51.060 I'd say, go talk to your unions to do it. 0.65

01:00:53.020 It was the union contracts that blocked it.

01:00:55.360 And so what we did in Wisconsin and others did variations of this.

01:00:58.760 Nobody went as far as we did.

01:01:00.140 We just take that power away from those union bosses and put it back in the hands of the people we elect to run our local governments.

01:01:06.960 And it's been transformational, not only in terms of saving $13 billion since then for the local taxpayers,

01:01:14.920 but more importantly, now those people can run things the way they want to.

01:01:18.780 And for all the hype about how awful it was going to be to education, Wisconsin still continues to have some of the best ACP scores in the country and some of the highest graduation rates.

01:01:28.680 So the proof was in the pudding.

01:01:30.060 It actually works.

01:01:30.720 Well, you saw, you know, the the failure to unionize that Amazon shop down in Alabama.

01:01:39.000 And that was I mean, that was that was really interesting, right?

01:01:42.360 Because it was like they needed I think it was they needed something like 1500 plus votes in favor of the union.

01:01:48.160 Instead, there was almost 1800 votes against and the the people down there.

01:01:54.520 And it was a largely black like plant and the employees were saying, number one, we did not believe the nonsense.

01:02:04.020 This is about BLM because that's what the union organizers was trying to say.

01:02:07.400 Everything's about BLM now.

01:02:08.720 They were like, we did not believe that.

01:02:10.560 And this isn't a black white thing.

01:02:12.520 And then they said, number two, Amazon gives us good benefits and high pay comparatively starting at 15 bucks an hour opportunities to advance.

01:02:20.660 And we don't we don't think we're going to do any better.

01:02:22.800 I think the Democrats don't understand how it happened.

01:02:25.800 Like, but what do you mean?

01:02:27.840 You know, it's largely black employees.

01:02:29.600 They're supposed to be with me. 0.65

01:02:30.680 The union is going to make your life better.

01:02:32.360 But it gave me hope that people are starting to see through some of this rhetoric and this.

01:02:38.360 I don't know, group think of like the Democratic way is the best way you will join the union.

01:02:43.720 You will support BLM or you are a bad person.

01:02:46.420 You know, here you've got a bunch of minority employees in the deep south saying no.

01:02:51.660 Well, it shows that what I was saying earlier about young people give people the facts.

01:02:55.880 If there's a way to even come close to matching the radical rhetoric on the other side, if you give people the facts, I have far more faith in the American public than I think a lot of people do, including a lot on our side of the equation.

01:03:10.260 Because I think if you give people the facts, they're going to gravitate that way.

01:03:14.520 But we've got to find new and unique ways.

01:03:16.320 We can't just run into brick walls with the ways we've been talking about it and not make adjustments to how we communicate.

01:03:22.680 I think in this instance, it didn't hurt that, you know, Amazon's obviously got a pretty expansive opportunity to provide their own side of the story.

01:03:34.320 Although I did find a little bit ironic.

01:03:36.000 I don't know if you did that, that they were all about making sure the ballots were legitimate and making sure that they could verify signatures and things like that.

01:03:46.040 But they didn't think that's a big deal in Georgia and elsewhere when it comes to actually voting.

01:03:50.760 But that aside, I think the same thing in California when you had this nonsense where they were going to clamp down an Uber and Lyft and other rideshare.

01:03:59.500 Those are good examples of where we've got to, particularly with the younger generation, we've got to spell out what's at stake in things that matter to them.

01:04:07.200 And, you know, California trying to say that, you know, change the franchise law so that every single person, you know, could unionize an Uber.

01:04:19.220 Well, that would that would get rid of things that Uber and Lyft that young people rely on. 0.97

01:04:23.420 So there are, I think, glimmers of hope at the end of the sun light at the end of the tunnel.

01:04:30.760 We just got to find better ways to communicate.

01:04:32.340 OK, so I watched you as you took on the unions and won back in 2011.

01:04:37.360 I covered you when you were governor of Wisconsin for many years.

01:04:40.980 Now you're no longer governor of Wisconsin, but I also covered you when you were running for president.

01:04:45.720 And in the end, of course, Trump got the nomination and then won the presidency.

01:04:48.880 So but you're a young man.

01:04:50.340 You're 53 years old.

01:04:51.720 You could have a long political future ahead of you.

01:04:54.880 I mean, we just elected a man who's 77 years old as president.

01:04:58.280 So what do you think about 2024 when it comes to your own, you know, hat in that ring and when it comes to the Republican Party in general next time around?

01:05:09.580 Well, I joke about this, but there's truth to this.

01:05:11.900 I'm a quarter century younger than Joe Biden.

01:05:14.640 So I figured he and to a certain extent, even Trump, have kind of kind of changed.

01:05:18.260 Yeah, isn't it funny how you express that?

01:05:19.900 A quarter century, literally younger than Joe Biden.

01:05:22.760 So I don't think I'd wait that long if I ever did run.

01:05:26.220 But but in the context, there's plenty of time.

01:05:29.740 The reason I'm here and this isn't just being magnanimous, but part of the reason why I'm at Young America's Foundation is I look at a state like mine in Wisconsin,

01:05:36.400 realize if we don't do something to make inroads, particularly with the younger generation of voters,

01:05:42.320 a person like me, a conservative like me, male or female, doesn't matter who it is,

01:05:46.580 is not going to carry a state like Wisconsin for any time into the foreseeable future.

01:05:50.820 And if you don't, if you can't carry Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia,

01:05:57.920 we're out in the woods, you know, out in the wilderness by ourselves for quite some time when it comes to electoral politics,

01:06:06.480 at least on the national level.

01:06:08.520 And so what I'm doing here isn't just about, you know, a feel good thing to get more conservative voices in the campus.

01:06:15.420 It actually has, I think, a link into the future in terms of whether or not the values we care about are even going to be articulated

01:06:22.620 in our in the halls of our federal government, at least at the majority level.

01:06:28.780 In terms of 2024, I think it's wide open.

01:06:32.820 Again, as you know, I mean, everything, the multimillion dollar question is whether or not Donald Trump chooses to run again.

01:06:39.440 And I think if he does, it would be almost nothing's impossible.

01:06:45.160 His own nomination in the first place proves that.

01:06:48.040 But I think it would be extremely difficult for anyone else to knock him out of the nomination in 2024.

01:06:55.820 And then a lot depends on where Biden and Harris and the rest of the team are at that point.

01:07:01.400 And my gut tells me, though, that I don't think Donald Trump runs again.

01:07:06.920 I think particularly if he finds some leverage in terms of whether it's his own cable news network or some sort of social media platform,

01:07:15.420 some way of influencing and can ultimately be a kingmaker, not just in the presidential,

01:07:20.200 but in terms of still having influence with all of that grief.

01:07:23.900 Obviously, this is a guy who spent all but four years of his life in the private sector.

01:07:28.400 He might just enjoy that.

01:07:29.880 And if he's not running, then I think it's wide open.

01:07:33.220 Conventional wisdom are two of my—

01:07:33.880 Who do you think the front run is?

01:07:35.560 Well, conventional wisdom, two of my former colleagues, former governors when I was in office,

01:07:41.160 Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, obviously in the polling, if you just do random shows up.

01:07:46.360 But—and I still think they'll both be formal, particularly if Trump's not in.

01:07:50.620 But I also would rule out, you know, there's a lot of senators out there, many of whom are friends of mine,

01:07:56.160 but I'm biased, I guess.

01:07:58.220 I tend to think executives make better presidents, and I think voters generally would as well.

01:08:03.960 So I would say beyond Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, I think Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott,

01:08:09.080 maybe a couple of the other governors who largely kept their states open,

01:08:13.000 with my money right now being on DeSantis, being the top of that list,

01:08:16.980 just because he's done not only an effective job in keeping the economy open,

01:08:21.600 but he got his particularly seniors and vulnerable people vaccinated very quickly.

01:08:27.280 His health numbers are very strong compared to other states.

01:08:30.760 And as you've talked about, as we've all seen, you know, specifically with the target from CBS,

01:08:36.420 which is just an outright lie,

01:08:38.740 I love how they even PolitiFact in Washington Post called it deceptive editing.

01:08:44.380 I mean, that's a convenient way to say they were lying.

01:08:48.360 But the fact that he's targeted, to me, and that he doesn't back down,

01:08:53.580 that's the kind of, whether it's him or someone like him,

01:08:55.540 I think that's the kind of leader people, at least right of center, are going to want to take on Joe Biden.

01:09:01.180 Do you think it will be Biden again?

01:09:03.440 Well, particularly a guy who's run three times.

01:09:05.940 I mean, this is, you know, people forget we talk about Reagan.

01:09:09.360 And when I was at the Reagan Ranch Center a decade ago, just coming off the big protest

01:09:14.540 and the beginning of my recall, came out to speak, there was a brand new exhibit in the center

01:09:19.720 that was a video exhibit up on the wall, not too far from where the Jeep was that Reagan took Gorbachev around on.

01:09:28.060 But this was probably the most important one for me at the time, being under all this pressure and attacks in the media and elsewhere.

01:09:35.280 It was Reagan, and it showed all Sam Donaldson, Tom Brokhoff, Dan Rather,

01:09:41.600 even politicians like, ironically, Joe Biden and John Kerry and others attacking him at the time for standing up and doing what he was doing.

01:09:50.100 Obviously, years later, public opinion gravitated, rightfully so, to what a great president he was.

01:09:55.980 But it reminded me, seeing Joe Biden, that, you know, this is a guy who's been at this forever.

01:10:01.220 You know, this is a guy who wanted to run in the 80s and then, again, when Barack Obama was running and now.

01:10:06.260 So I don't see him freely giving power up.

01:10:09.660 I think he wants to hang on to this as long as he can.

01:10:13.560 And, frankly, the performance that Harris has given, I helped Mike Pence prepare for the debates four years ago and again this year.

01:10:21.600 And I got to tell you, I was surprisingly shocked as to how poorly Harris was in the debates.

01:10:29.040 And since then, I mean, why would you put someone in charge of the border and then never have them even get close to it?

01:10:36.280 I just think, you know, it's a horrible, by the way, why would you have open borders but closed schools?

01:10:41.840 There's just a lot of crazy things going on in the world today.

01:10:44.160 But I think Biden still runs, assuming his health, and I know people joke about this, but I just personally hope nothing happens to his health because I think that's a horrible thing for a country to get through if something bad did happen.

01:10:57.980 But I think he doesn't give it up.

01:10:59.220 I think something is happening to his health, right?

01:11:01.640 I mean, it's very obvious that there's some cognitive decline there and there's a debate around just how bad it is.

01:11:07.180 But there's no doubt it's happening.

01:11:09.440 I mean, you saw, I mean, I joke that, like, if I got to sit down with him, my first question would be now, Mr. President, there's a building.

01:11:16.500 It has five sides.

01:11:17.600 It's right in the middle of Washington, D.C.

01:11:19.220 What is the name of that building?

01:11:21.220 I'll give you A, B, and C, right?

01:11:23.560 And then I'd say, and there's a guy inside that building who runs the Defense Department.

01:11:28.140 It's, I'll give you, it's Lloyd, rhymes with Boston.

01:11:31.560 Come on, you can do it.

01:11:32.960 Because he couldn't remember that Secretary of Defense.

01:11:35.180 He couldn't remember the word Pentagon.

01:11:36.260 I mean, these are real problems, and they're not going to get better as he goes from 77 to 81.

01:11:41.900 So, realistically, he may be forced not to run.

01:11:45.420 And I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but I think the Democrats are in a lot of trouble if Kamala Harris is their nominee.

01:11:52.600 I mean, I just think there's a reason why she didn't make it through the primaries.

01:11:57.140 And people worry about her being radical. 1.00

01:12:00.420 Yeah, she had the voting record that Newsweek showed was further to the left than Bernie Sanders in 2019. 0.98

01:12:06.340 But worse off for them than that is just, well, we saw it when she was talking about some serious topics.

01:12:13.220 She has this bizarre tendency to laugh at the most, you know, unopportune time. 0.78

01:12:18.880 Yeah, so it's just very unusual.

01:12:20.700 Let's not forget, as somebody who helped prepare Mike Pence for that debate, you must have been turned off by the,

01:12:25.940 Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking, I'm speaking, Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking, like once, fine, twice, all right, over and over and over throughout the night.

01:12:34.660 And it's obviously a tactic, and you just look small.

01:12:37.380 Well, the other thing we knew from watching and having talked to some of our Senate colleagues, this was interesting.

01:12:42.600 You'll appreciate this from a legal standpoint of your background.

01:12:45.480 Now, we knew from what happened in Kavanaugh, there was a point in the Kavanaugh hearings where obviously she was on, she was on office.

01:12:54.880 She was going to be aggressive.

01:12:56.200 But where she asked Kavanaugh, Justice Kavanaugh, about someone at a firm where he had been and thought it was like one of these aha moments.

01:13:06.140 And he just asked, well, who are you talking about?

01:13:09.080 I know several people at that firm.

01:13:11.260 And she clearly had not been briefed beyond that one line of attack and so kind of stumbled.

01:13:17.860 And so we knew going into that debate, if she was questioned about something that she wasn't prepared for, she was not really not capable of handling that.

01:13:26.800 And everybody thought going in, they remembered the summer before when Biden and her had gone at it over the bus.

01:13:35.080 And she delivered that very, very well.

01:13:37.360 As a prosecutor, she slowed down. 0.89

01:13:39.700 That's something people don't get.

01:13:41.040 But prosecutors, when they're making a point in front of a jury, they're good at it, will slow down so that the jury clearly gets it.

01:13:48.280 She had been very effective at that.

01:13:50.000 But that was a line she was prepared for going in.

01:13:52.880 That wasn't something that just came off the top of her head.

01:13:54.980 That's right.

01:13:55.440 When she's questioned, she really has some very specific challenges.

01:14:00.320 And she's lucky right now.

01:14:02.260 She gets next to no scrutiny.

01:14:03.640 But I think you're right.

01:14:05.280 If somehow, for whatever reason, she was elevated, that would be a real problem, not just for her, but for the far left.

01:14:12.980 They've got to be a little concerned about their odds there.

01:14:15.580 As you point out, she didn't even make it to the primaries.

01:14:17.480 So it's, you know, what are the odds now?

01:14:19.920 It's not exactly.

01:14:21.020 I mean, the vice president doesn't usually make a lot of news or get a lot of get beaten up an awful lot in the press.

01:14:26.240 But as soon as she has to stick her neck back out there, if she, in fact, has to be the nominee, it's not going to go well.

01:14:31.820 We're going to be back to where we were.

01:14:33.400 Anyway, listen, I'm excited about what you guys are doing.

01:14:35.920 I think I love Young America's Foundation.

01:14:37.980 I met them when I went out to the Reagan Ranch.

01:14:40.380 A bunch of kids from them and some of the leaders there was very impressed.

01:14:43.480 And I think this is an important, like, we need more of these groups, not fewer.

01:14:47.900 And we need more people, whether you're a Republican or conservative or not, just standing up for a reason.

01:14:52.100 That's what this group is doing.

01:14:53.500 I say go get them.

01:14:54.840 And I, for one, would like to see your hat back in the mix in 2024.

01:14:58.980 I think you were always an honest, ethical guy who told it like it was and stood by your positions, whether they were controversial or not.

01:15:07.820 And that's really admirable, especially in today's day and age.

01:15:10.980 Well, I appreciate that.

01:15:11.760 I don't know if it would be 24, but maybe someday.

01:15:14.080 Although I got the title of president now, so it's a lot easier to do this job, getting this job as president.

01:15:19.200 You just got to convince your board to go along with that than, you know, a couple hundred million voters.

01:15:25.640 And everybody loves you.

01:15:26.560 It's not nearly as polarizing as when you're president of the United States.

01:15:30.180 Oh, read my social media, which I stopped doing about 10 years ago.

01:15:35.240 Best advice for any candidate is don't read the comments on social media.

01:15:38.160 There are people who hate me, that's for sure.

01:15:39.780 But that's all right.

01:15:41.280 They're the kind of people that I'm not too worried about.

01:15:44.060 But ultimately, we're hopeful at the long game.

01:15:46.300 In fact, if any of your listeners want, I'll send them a free copy.

01:15:49.260 They just go to yaf.org slash long game and we'll send them a free copy and see what we're up to.

01:15:55.540 Yaf.org slash long game.

01:15:58.760 Love it.

01:15:59.500 Thank you.

01:16:00.020 Great to speak with you.

01:16:01.160 Good to be with you, too.

01:16:05.960 Don't forget to subscribe to the show.

01:16:07.880 Do it now so that you will not miss our next show.

01:16:10.400 We are taking on climate change.

01:16:13.480 And where we are in that battle, you hear a lot of rhetoric on this in the mainstream press.

01:16:18.240 And what's real, right?

01:16:19.920 Like, I'm a mother.

01:16:21.400 I don't want to leave my my kids on Earth.

01:16:23.880 That's a disaster that we just didn't take care of and sort of pass that baton.

01:16:28.040 But how bad is it?

01:16:29.340 Because you sometimes get the feeling you're getting pushed into bad information corners by people who have an agenda.

01:16:35.020 What's Bill Gates saying?

01:16:36.260 What's Joe Biden saying?

01:16:37.420 What's John Kerry saying?

01:16:38.560 And what's the truth?

01:16:40.000 Because those things may not necessarily be aligned.

01:16:43.220 That's next show.

01:16:44.260 Don't miss it.

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01:17:08.560 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 19, 2021

Scott Walker on Taking on Unions, Leftward Drift in Schools, and the GOP in 2024 ｜ Ep. 91

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