Valuetainment - March 18, 2026


“They Said I Was KILLING People” - DHS Sec Kristi Noem DOUBLES DOWN On DEFYING COVID Lockdowns


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

195.38148

Word count

1,726

Sentence count

68

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Former South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds talks about how he became the first black governor of a major U.S. state and how he handled the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He also discusses how he dealt with the media and the public's reaction to his handling of the crisis.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 As the governor of South Dakota, there's a few things when I watched when you were leading the
00:00:04.400 state, it was so impressive. I think you were the state that was the most open. At first,
00:00:10.260 you got criticized a lot, and then you ended up getting a lot of credit for making the right
00:00:14.420 moves. A lot of other states kind of followed your lead. I remember there was a story about
00:00:18.600 being offered $300 a week of unemployment they wanted to send. And you said, no, no,
00:00:23.360 we don't want to take the payment. You know, we're doing okay. Your unemployment is low.
00:00:26.940 what was your what was your processing as you were going through a season that none of us had
00:00:31.520 gone through before? Yeah, well, my background is, is that I'm a business person, a farmer and
00:00:37.680 rancher who took over our family businesses after the death of my dad. I became the general manager
00:00:42.520 at age 22. So making decisions for me in South Dakota was just common sense, looking at the
00:00:49.940 facts on the ground and making the best decisions for people around me. When I got elected to be
00:00:53.900 governor, our state kind of was dying. People were moving out of South Dakota. Our economy was
00:01:00.260 drying up. Jobs were drying up. Our kids were leaving the state to go get an education. And
00:01:05.620 then they tended to stay in another state to get a job and pursue the future. So I ran on making
00:01:12.840 sure that we were open for business. In fact, that was my state of the state title before COVID ever
00:01:19.280 hit South Dakota or hit our country was that South Dakota was open for business. So when that
00:01:24.600 came forward and we were sitting and seeing that virus situation, I brought a few of my advisors
00:01:31.520 together, my general counsel, you know, some of my lieutenant governor and some of my staff and
00:01:36.720 just said, you know, tell me about what happens if we shut down our businesses, if we shut down
00:01:42.920 our schools, you know, and talked about the constitutional rights that people have and
00:01:48.820 that businesses have over a state, over the federal government, and every decision that we made
00:01:53.600 in South Dakota was based on the Constitution, and that that was where our true foundation was
00:01:59.940 going to be. You know, in fact, even in COVID, we were the only state that never once closed
00:02:03.860 businesses. We never mandated that anybody stay home or wear masks. We kept life as normal. We
00:02:09.560 said that we are going to give people as much information as possible and then let them use
00:02:13.620 personal responsibility to take care of themselves and their families and that we would get through
00:02:17.880 it together. I talked about how I didn't have any right to go shut down a business in South Dakota,
00:02:24.120 that that would be a taking, reconsidered a taking of their business if they were to be
00:02:28.520 hurt economically by that. And then that business, that business owner would have the opportunity to
00:02:33.460 come back and to sue the state of South Dakota for that taking. And I didn't want to put us in
00:02:38.280 that situation where we would be taking an unconstitutional action against our residents
00:02:42.780 and then putting the state at a liability as far as making them whole again. So every decision we
00:02:49.340 made that I made was pretty matter of fact, although the rest of the world just rained
00:02:55.720 fire down on my head. I mean, I got every night, Patrick, if you remember, just destroyed on the
00:03:01.480 national news networks. You know, they said I was killing people. In fact, even the federal
00:03:06.380 government when they called me told me I would have over 300,000 South Dakotans die if I didn't
00:03:11.880 shut down my state that they would and was telling me that that was going to be the consequences of
00:03:17.680 it so even Saturday Night Live had their opening skit was me being a vampire killing people and
00:03:24.960 making decisions that that were not going to be good and we're going to be demonized by all those
00:03:32.180 Elizabeth Warren and other Rachel Maddow. Those folks were coming after me every day. But 1.00
00:03:36.540 we did the right thing. And we had a lower loss of life than most states. Our businesses thrived.
00:03:44.480 We grew like crazy. People moved to our state by the thousands. And we really benefited from 0.98
00:03:49.580 embracing our freedom. I think that a lot of times when you see a crisis or you see a tough situation,
00:03:55.360 people may be quick to judge what leaders are deciding. But it may take a while for them to
00:04:01.640 really realize that by trusting the citizens that that our country will thrive and that's really
00:04:06.980 what we need to do here as well trust in our constitution trust in our laws and make sure we
00:04:12.360 enforce them so that we can reap the benefits of that and and what that was is for for the rest of
00:04:17.200 us we saw you on the national scale because it was very impressive how you handled yourself with the
00:04:22.260 media when the attacks were coming and they said wait a minute she's got very strong leadership
00:04:26.360 of qualities how did this person become the way she is and uh obviously that led to the job that 0.97
00:04:31.500 you have today which is comes with a lot of different responsibility but i want to stay
00:04:34.920 with south dakota as well because it's important for the audience to know how many successes you
00:04:39.240 had there one of the concerns that you hear how china a lot of private companies in china tied to
00:04:44.260 the government buy a lot of land in america some 277 000 acres of land up to 300 000 acres we'll
00:04:51.320 see that number in south dakota being one where i don't know what the number is but it's 40 million
00:04:56.080 plus acres, which is dedicated to that. How did you handle China trying to come into South
00:05:02.440 Dakota? I know you guys have certain laws and things you put in place that they were not too
00:05:06.380 happy about. How did you manage the relationship with China in regards to agriculture?
00:05:11.940 Yeah, we were very aggressive against China, you know, recognizing. So I have businesses and
00:05:17.200 farming and ranching. So I had watched for decades as China came in and tried to control our food 1.00
00:05:23.060 supply. They bought up our chemical companies in the United States. They bought our fertilizer
00:05:27.520 companies. And we became reliant on China to make sure we could even grow our crops,
00:05:31.300 stole our genetics and our IP when it came to our agricultural economy and inputs. And then
00:05:38.720 as I watched them come in and start to buy up land across the country, I recognized that the
00:05:43.460 country that controls our food supply will control us. And that that is China's goal every day is to 0.99
00:05:50.120 control the United States of America. And the instant that they would be able to control that
00:05:54.840 entire supply chain system for our food is when they would control us. So we banned China from 1.00
00:06:00.840 being able to own farmland in South Dakota. I got aggressive on them as far as our intellectual
00:06:06.220 property and technology as well. And then I even was the first governor to ban TikTok and from them 1.00
00:06:14.040 to being able to be used on our state devices to run our government or being able to infiltrate
00:06:20.060 our systems. Now, President Trump has been very aggressive in TikTok and making sure that it's a
00:06:25.320 much safer system and entity for us to utilize. But being the first one to go out and to take
00:06:31.480 those actions, I think, gives other people an opportunity to really examine the issue, to look
00:06:36.400 at it. And the security of our food supply chain and how vulnerable we are to China, I think,
00:06:42.220 really started to come to light during that point in time when we were banning it from owning our
00:06:47.320 land we saw that many other states had already given up a lot of their land to to china and we
00:06:52.540 weren't willing to do that in south dakota were there other governors that were calling you saying
00:06:56.080 how are you managing it for them to be able to duplicate some of your policies i think so we did
00:07:02.620 the state uh we had the law as well that first banned you know men from uh being able to play
00:07:10.220 in girls sports and that that bill and that legislation was used in over a dozen other 0.98
00:07:15.980 states after that, that language that would withstand a challenge in the court system that
00:07:20.980 could give us case law that would be helpful in making sure we could protect it into the future.
00:07:25.820 So many times I learned during COVID, because we had phone calls and conference calls with
00:07:30.800 governors every single day, what are you doing? What decisions are you making? On what basis are
00:07:35.240 you doing that? I realized that even a small state like South Dakota, by being a leader and making
00:07:41.260 the right decisions influences the other states around you, other leaders around you. And so
00:07:46.640 that's one of the things that President Trump has been doing for us. And you've seen it across the
00:07:51.640 world. As he makes bold decisions to protect his country and to embrace freedom, he's influencing
00:07:57.580 other countries and other world leaders as well. We're seeing it happen in Europe and with Italy
00:08:02.220 and the UK with some of their decisions. We're seeing it in Central and South America with
00:08:07.140 leaders that are very pro-Trump. And that means that they're recognizing how the United States
00:08:12.680 does better when someone stands up and is strong for law and order, for secure borders, and for a
00:08:19.980 strong economy. That really makes a big difference, not just here in our country, but around the world.
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