Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Better Together with Will Hurd

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

Presidential Candidate Will Hurd joins Sharon to chat about engaging voters in primary elections to ensure stronger candidates in November. The country is ready to have thoughtful conversations about what issues matter to them in a way that unites, rather than divides. Whether the district was ruby red or a deep blue town, people share the same frustrations and goals. Everyone wants systems that operate fairly and efficiently, from the justice system to immigration. But how might our government address these issues in lasting, meaningful ways that represent what the majority of Americans truly want? Will Hurd shares what solutions have worked in the past, and how he plans to work with leaders from both sides of the aisle to shape the future. Host/Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Guest: Will Hurd Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Available now until November 24th in Ontario only. Woo-hoo! small latte. Available now until November 24th in Ontario only. Hello, friends. Welcome. I have a very exciting episode for you today. It is an interview with presidential candidate Will Hurd. And I think you're going to find this conversation very interesting. Whether you are a Republican primary voter or not, there is still so much good to take away from this discussion. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I am really excited to be joined again by Will Hurd. Welcome back. Hey, how many like second time participants have you had? No, it's a special club.

Yeah, this is I think our third time talking. We've talked on Instagram live before and after Uvalde. We've talked on the podcast before after your book came out. And now we're talking again because you decided to run for president. So, you know, well, anytime you decide to run for president, I'll be happy to chat with you. How was, first of all, congrats on your candidacy. This is an experience that few Americans will ever have. Few Americans are ever going to be like, I'm running for president. I mean, you've run a campaign before, you were in Congress before, so this is not the first time you've ever campaigned for something. In what ways do you

think running for Congress and serving in Congress has prepared you for running for office now? And how do you think it prepared you if you were to become president? How has it prepared you to be president? Look, it's a great question. And what has always been fascinating for me in the transition, and so I was in CIA before I started business and then Congress. When I was in CIA, my job was to recruit spies and steal secrets, right? My job was to inform policymakers, right? We didn't set policy, we informed policymakers. But then being a policy maker, I was on the other end. So to your point, right, like my district won the size, it was roughly the size of Georgia. So my operations was more like a senator than it was a member of the house because it was so big. And I had everything from Native American issues to nuclear power related stuff. It was every issue imaginable.

And so I got to be able to handle a diversity of ideas. What is your governing philosophy? What is your first principle? And then talking to folks, right? So the size mattered, the number of issues mattered. And then the key insight I got from the 23rd Congressional District of Texas is way more unites us than divides us. I'm a Black Republican that represents a 72% Latino district. Nobody thought I had a chance to win. And whether I showed up to ruby red districts or deep blue towns, people talk about the same things, right? I don't moderate my message. I don't give a different message in a Republican crowd or a Democratic crowd. And so that lesson, that experience has translated here. And so now just be honest, treat people with respect,

have a take. People don't expect to agree with you 100% of the time, but they want to know where you're coming from. And so all of those experiences have prepared me. I also know how the government works, right? And so a lot of times people make claim like, we're going to do this. It's like, it's freaking impossible. You actually don't have the power to do that. Okay. When you're running, this is a big pet peeve of mine, Will.

When people run for something on a platform that they have actually no power to control, that's so disingenuous. All they're trying to do is rile up their base when they actually cannot deliver on that at all. That annoys me greatly. 100%. But it gets even worse, right? Because what I call the professional political class, the people that run races, pollsters, all that kind of stuff, they're the ones that encourage that kind of behavior. And having been a legislator

and being in a tough district, I looked at it when I first won. I gave my constituents a promise that I'm going to do these things. So I wanted it two years later to be like, roll out my piece of parchment and been like, here's what I said I was going to do. And then like cross them all out or draw a line through them. Right. And so I wanted to run on a record. That's why I got seven pieces of legislation signing the law in my first year. It was the most of any freshman. Actually, I think it was the most of any freshman in history. So don't say something that you can't follow through on. This is just human psychology. You shouldn't do it in a workplace. If you're a boss, don't promise people

things you can't deliver on. Like everyone's gonna get a million dollar bonus if we hit the mark this quarter. Well, unless you actually have that money and the power to spend it, don't make those kind of promises. All those promises do is build up resentment when you can't deliver on them. That's why there's a lack of trust in so many of our institutions is because the government hasn't followed through, right?

And let's take one simple thing. the government hasn't followed through, right? And let's take one simple thing. Imagine if it didn't take months to get your passport renewed. It should be able to take minutes, right? These are the kinds of little things that people start getting frustrated with. Why does it take a veteran months to set up an appointment at the VA? It shouldn't, right? We should be able to provide a better service. And when you do that, that's how you build trust. And so whether it's our educational institutions or media, we want to find people that are ideologically consistent. And what I always say, your audio and your video needs a match, right? The things you do need to be reflected in the things that you say. And if we had more people doing that, we'd all be better off. I think there's some like to your point about

it shouldn't take months and months and months to get an appointment at the VA. It shouldn't take five years to get an initial immigration hearing. I mean, and that's an average amount of time. And I understand that that's a much bigger issue that we're not going to solve on this one podcast. But it shouldn't take two years to get your tax return and you have to wait on hold for eight hours at the IRS to talk to somebody. It shouldn't be that way. And when you compare the types of customer service that the government is offering its constituents to what they can get in private industry, it becomes especially galling when you're like, why do I have to wait eight hours

on the telephone only to be disconnected and have to call back the next day? It actually increases frustration, decreases participation in democracy, makes people feel more cynical, makes people feel more like, makes people feel more like, you know what, I don't care about any of that. Right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. And I also say this often, that the more complicated rules are, and the more arbitrarily, the rules are applied, the more you encourage people to cheat, and the more you encourage people to opt out of the process. Like if you want rules to be followed, they need to be simple to understand, and they need to be fairly applied. When things are way too convoluted and complicated, a confused mind says, no. A confused mind is like, listen,

it's not worth it. I'm not filing that tax form. I'm just going to, you know, like, it's not worth it. Amen. I agree with you 100%, right? And the things that I've learned the last two years, you know, I've been in investment banking last two years and I've been on the board of OpenAI and work with some really amazing companies. The only way you can hyperscale and working with a number of venture-backed companies, that one principle, the only way you can hyperscale is with a level of simplicity. And we have lost that in government. One of the reasons is we have failed to decentralize decision-making. And this is where a lot of Republicans have gotten away from small government or local control or these kinds of issues. We should be pushing decision-making down to the

lowest level possible so things can move faster. And look, we can do all these things. It doesn't require that much effort. And I think the use of artificial intelligence within the government, this would be one of the things like if I'm on a day one, we're going to have to do a nine month sprint to make sure that we're using tools like AI, especially in the customer facing and constituent facing decisions, because we can do better. We can make the government more efficient. And ultimately, this is about using our tax dollars in the wisest way possible. And, you know, sometimes people are like, well, you know, you get too in the weeds. But the weeds freaking matter. Like how you do things actually matters.

And having people that understand that in the end, it's about delivering a service or a product to your constituents. I feel like if somebody were to take office with this posture of, I'm going to focus on things that will actually improve your life. I'm going to spend the first year talking about things that actually are going to make a difference in your life. I'm going to propose some legislation so that we can deal with the immigration situation where it should not take five to 10 years to get your case heard. And people who are not, anybody who's listening to this and knows anything about the immigration system knows that it is deeply broken.

I do not know one person who's like, things are going swimmingly. Zero people, regardless of what your opinion on what should happen to fix it, nobody thinks it's working correctly. That is something that would dramatically improve the lives of millions of people, the people who are trying to immigrate and the people who are already here and love them, et cetera. I think everyone wants a justice system that operates fairly, right? That imprisons the guilty to protect the community, but does not imprison the innocent. Like that is something we can all agree on, right? Like, let's not put people in jail who didn't do it, but let's also not have serial killers walking

free. We can all agree on that. We can all agree that there should be a way to reasonably come to the United States, offer, you know, your advanced education, your services, etc. People do not. No, no. The whole system is set up on the backs of immigrant labor. We need to have a way for people to come here legally in a reasonable timeframe that doesn't cost $100 zillion and intimate knowledge and lawyers. You know, like the system is so backlogged and broken that it encourages people to break the rules. 100%. The 5.5 million people that have come into the country illegally in the last three years have paid on average $10,000. So that's $55 billion. That's $55 billion that's going to human smugglers. And now to put that number in context, the entire U.S. intelligence budget is $35 billion that's going to human smugglers. And now to put that number in context, the entire US intelligence budget is $60 billion.

And the majority of those folks that are coming here, coming because they want to improve their life and they want to work and send stuff back to their families at home. So when you need that kind of employment and that work, we should be able to figure this out. But to your point, too many people want to use this issue as a political bludgeon against each other than solving it, right? DACA kids, right? I shouldn't call them kids anymore. They're not kids. They're dreamers. These are the only people that have ever known the United States of America as their home. Nobody thinks that they should be kicked out, right? It's like 85% of even Republican primary

voters think there should be a legal pathway for them to stay in the country. This shouldn't be hard. And here's how you solve these problems. Because we can identify all the problems, right? And say why they keep going. How do you solve this? I got 22 pieces of legislation signed into law in six years. That's more than most people do for multiple decades. And how did I do it? I always had a partner. Before I put pen to paper, I always found a Democrat as a partner to say, hey, here's the idea. Here's what we should work on. And do you agree with the concept? Yes. And then we would draft the legislation and say, okay, can we both get behind it?

And then when we did, we would go find a Republican, Democrat in the Senate before we began. And so unfortunately in Washington, D.C., too much debate. People come up and say, hey, here are the 100 things I want. And they get whittled down to three and you feel like you've lost. That's not how a herd administration is going to work on. down to three and you feel like you've lost. That's not how a herd administration is going to work on. We're going to start with having leaders from both sides on whatever the issue is and talk about what is the objective, what's the vision that we're trying to achieve. And then you can start working out the mechanics rather than starting with the mechanics.

And it sounds so simple, but it doesn't happen in Washington, DC. And when you do it, you see success. And I have experience with that. I hear from almost nobody who is like, I'm really happy with the way things are going in Washington. That's not a sentiment many Americans have. And I'm sure you're familiar with this. I'm really happy with the way things are going, said no one ever. Few people feel that Congress and the president, regardless of if it's Biden or Trump

or whoever, that they're working together to improve the lives of ordinary Americans. What they see and what is happening is just a lot of mudslinging and power grabbing. And nothing is improving for the average American. That is how most people experience government right now. Like, why does it just need to be some members of Congress holding up pornography in a committee hearing. And then we're all like, well, that was crazy. But how about X, Y, and Z? And it just like, it literally ping pongs from one ridiculous thing to another ridiculous thing. Meanwhile, nothing of substance is occurring. So if you were to become the president, how would you address this situation?

Because obviously the president's in the executive branch and you don't control the legislative branch. But what would you suggest as a solution to this issue? So those folks that you're talking about, I'm going to become president because of them. And your success is heartwarming to someone like me because it proves that a thoughtful, engaged, polite, kind dialogue is what people want and are interested in. I used to say when I'd give a speech, I'd always be like, raise your hand if you've ever clicked on an article that said Congress worked. Nobody raised their hand. Nobody raised their hand. Everybody would laugh, right? But it's like, we also got to reward the behavior that we want to see. When there's people that are doing things, and look, they may be on the opposite political spectrum as us, we should encourage that, right? So one, as individuals,

that's what we need to do. How would I address this? And part of my thesis is that you're going to know where I'm coming from and why I'm coming from, that way more unites us and divides us, and that we're better together. We've had this conversation before. When you think about all the pieces of legislation that we can remember, the American with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Act, the First Step Act, we can go through. All of these were done when Congress had different parties controlling the House and the Senate. So we're better together. And it starts with capturing that. The reason we have the problem, only 23% of Americans vote in primaries. I hope that your listeners, your subscribers, they recognize that if you're frustrated with your option in November, it's because you didn't do enough in January, February, March, or April, whatever your state's primary is.

And there's always better options. So we need more people engaging in the primary. And then we need elected officials and people that are running for office like me to talk to those folks. So my campaign is based on this concept that, guess what? When you're working on legislation, I'm not just going to have the Republican ranking members of a committee come in and talk about it, you got to bring the Democrats over as well too. So start with that conversation. Start with, okay, before we put out a budget, how about you have a conversation with the appropriators, Republicans and Democrats, to talk about, hey, what are we going to try to achieve this year? Can we do it over two years?

So those conversations have to begin and be engaged with people before you come out with whatever that posture or policy is when it comes to that kind of legislation. Yeah, I totally agree with you about the primary situation. I've said that so many times myself. If you feel bad taste in your mouth, check in one of those boxes in November. It's because only a tiny percent of people showed up to choose who was going to be on one of those boxes. percent of people showed up to choose who was going to be on one of those boxes.

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stockings, and fashion like slippers to mistle their toes. Shop great deals on Amazon. One of the things, first of all, getting on the debate stage. This is a Republican primary, and the debate is controlled by the Republican National Committee. And they have set criteria for who is allowed to participate. And some of the criteria has to do with an individual with a number of donors. And some of the criteria has to do with an individual with a number of donors that you need 40,000 individual donors to demonstrate some kind of like broad support around the country. And, you know, they need to be divided up in certain ways around the country so that it's not just like one person writing a check for 40K.

It's not necessarily about the money raised. It's about the broader support with a unique number of donors. So in the debate, the debate is what day again? It's August 23rd, right? And there's another requirement to sign a loyalty pledge. And I've said I'm not going to sign it because it's not about not supporting whoever the Republican nominee is. I just can't support one.

And I'm not going to lie to get access to a microphone. I took one oath, and that's to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States when I was 22 years old when I started at the CIA. I take one pledge. That's when I put my hand on my heart and pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States. And seven months ago, I took one vow, and that's to my awesome wife. But I want to hit the requirements. Part of this is being honest, right? My dad's 90. He always told me he learned this from a gangster in Atlanta. The one person you can't fool is the person you're looking at when you're brushing your teeth in the morning. And so you got to be honest. This campaign has been fun

because I'm being honest. I'm not conforming into pretzels. I'm not licking my finger and sticking it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. I'm just being honest. And so that's another thing that's going to have to be addressed before August 23. I have a few other things that I wanted to ask you about. OpenAI, if people don't know, is the company that started ChatGPT, which is a very powerful large language model AI system. Different AI systems do different things. This one writes stuff. And it writes stuff very convincingly. And you can feed it some examples and then say, now write a 500-word essay about grape jelly, and it'll write it in the style that you

just told it. It is capable of doing some very interesting things. AI in general is very capable of doing some very interesting things And let me tell you, a lot of my listeners are concerned that Congress is the wrong group for the job. That there needs to be some guardrails to keep people's jobs from getting sucked away, to keep it from becoming sentient and like learning the nuclear codes. But meanwhile, not getting left behind by the technological advances of other countries who are our adversaries. who are our adversaries, what should the government be doing about AI? And how do we keep it in the guardrails, make use of it in a good way so it doesn't take over the world and kill us all? Great question. Great setup. I wish I could tell all your fans and listeners and subscribers, don't worry, they got under

control. I wish I could say that. That's not the case. Let me say this, right? In the AI world, we often use words to make scary things less scary, right? We talk about hallucinations. Now, the thing's freaking lying, okay? It made it up. It's not hallucinating,

it's made up. But the biggest challenge and problem in AI is called alignment. And what does this mean? And here's what we have found. The more powerful your algorithm gets, the less likely it is to follow human intention. Like let that soak in and wash over you. And so how do you prevent this from being misaligned? So first principle, AI must follow the law. So let's not carve AI out of the existing laws. Knowing what we know about social media today, we have a cybersecurity industry because we did not put product liability on software. So let's not do that with AI. So we have tons of good laws on civil rights and civil liberties. AI has got to follow them, period, full stop. It's not

different. It's not unique. So if a banker is using an AI tool to issue loans and that banker uses the algorithm wrong, it's the banker's fault for discriminating. However, the banker is using it right. And it was the algorithm itself that discriminated. It's the manufacturer of the algorithms fault. Period. Full story. So rule one, AI has to follow along. Rule two, any algorithm of a certain size and power, and we can have some debates on what that means. I would probably say, you know, right now, like Claude II and GPT-4 and all of these systems, they're getting close to being really freaking powerful. So saying something over a certain power, you need a permit before you release it to the public. Sharon, if you and I wanted to go build

a nuclear power plant, we would have to get a couple of permits, right? If we wanted to build a parking lot, we would have to get a permit. So NIST, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, saying, hey, over a certain size, y'all got to check, right? Because we know some of the things we should be doing now to check to make sure this doesn't take control of the world, right? So that's point two. Point three, first nine months, government's got to use AI to provide better services, right? So that's point two. Point three, first nine months, government's got to use AI to provide better services, right? We got to use this stuff to make it easier to interact with the government. And then four, AI tutor for everyone. I was lucky. I was lucky to have a mom and dad

that helped me with my homework. I was lucky to have a big brother and a big sister. Well, actually, I'm going to be honest with you, my big sister that helped me with my homework. I was lucky to have a big brother and a big sister. Well, actually, I'm going to be honest with my big sister that helped me with my homework, not my big brother. I was lucky. Not everybody has that. So imagine you have an infinitely patient tutor that teaches you to fish rather than gives you a fish. So anybody who's learning gets an AI tutor in their pocket, period, full story. Do those four things. We're going to go a long way to making sure we take advantage of technology before it takes advantage of us. It's not going to kill innovation, and it allows us to compete with the Chinese government, who we are in a new Cold War with. And that new Cold War, the playing field is a number of advanced technologies to include artificial intelligence. So those are all things

that can be done in a very short period and will go a long way. And it has to be done soon. It has to be done soon. Because the problem with those elected officials, and I'll end with this, everybody gets in their face and being like, oh, this is going to kill innovation or this is going to do this. No, no, no. You need people that understand this so you can be like, eh, this is what we're going to do, right? And so this is why I talk about this so much because it's going to impact every single industry in two or three years, not 10 years. Yeah. This is not an issue that we'll be like, let's put a pin in this and we'll come back later. This is not a put a pin in it situation. Come back in five years after we've thought some more about it. No, no. These

are things that need to be addressed now and they need to be addressed by somebody who knows the difference between TikTok and Wi-Fi. I have a couple of more fun questions that you don't get to answer on CNN, right? Because they only got so much time. Let's say you get elected and inaugurated and you walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and you're like, here we are. Welcome home to your wife. And, you know, you meet your butler. Your stuff's already moved in upstairs because that's what they do. They move your stuff in during the transition time. You get there and you're ready to go. Your pajamas are already

in your drawer. What is the first thing you will want to ask? Because now you will have a top secret security clearance again. In the CIA, I'm sure you had a top secret security clearance, but it doesn't mean you have unlimited access to all information. You can't just be like, how much money does Bob have? Let's just take a peek. You can't just look up any old thing you want. But as president, you can have access to all the information. I have heard tell that other presidents have been very curious about aliens. They really want to know about UFOs, like give me the deets. What kind of things will you be like, I can't wait to find this out? My first question would really be is, is TikTok Wi-Fi?

Do you have Wi-Fi here at the White House? Will it connect to TikTok? You talk about in the CA, literally there's a class called CA 101. When it's your first three weeks, you're in this in-doc class, right? And they literally tell you there's certain things you shouldn't be asking, right? You're like, is this a test? Is this a test to see if when I get access to the database, I can ask this question? So the first question would probably be the nuclear codes, probably. It's like, man, I want to make sure I got that. Yeah. Yeah. Let's brief me on that first, because I feel like that is probably one of the most serious things that a president can do. And it's just like, I don't want to be caught with my pants down on that one.

Yeah, right. Because you were too busy setting up the Wi-Fi router. What would be the next question I would ask? Can a brother get some breakfast tacos in the morning? That may be. Probably, yeah. You can get your own shit. The new menu at the White House would be breakfast tacos in the morning. We'd have old fashions and margaritas at night. You'd have to have vanilla bean ice cream. But in all

seriousness, the deployment of where our troops are, Where are people potentially in harm's way? And what is the understanding of those situations so that you're not caught flat-footed when something happens, right? And I think that's the... Having been in tough situations and... Look, I'm the only person in this campaign that's been shot at, chased, or people try to blow up. And so the fact that there's thousands of men and women every single day and every single night putting themselves in harm's way and understanding that, like we've seen that recently with all this stuff going on in Niger and what's happening there. And so I would want an early, where are Americans in harm's way? And then what are they doing and how do we make sure

that we're prepared to react. I'd want to get an update. Look, I know where some of the special programs are just in case things really hit the fan and we need to get somebody out quick. I'd be like, I'm a little stale on that understanding. Can y'all help a brother get up to speed on that one? So those would probably be those first nights before I go to bed because I don't want to wake up and be like, okay, what's the situation now when you're dealing with something like that? Yeah.

And of course, I'm sure as a national security person, you know that your adversaries are constantly looking to exploit your vulnerabilities. And that transition period is one that is more vulnerable where somebody is still in the process of getting up to speed. What kind of people would you want to have in your cabinet? Not necessarily like names of like, I'm definitely hiring Bob, but you know what I'm saying? Like what, what kinds of people would make the grade? In some key positions, you got to have people that have had some experience in managing very large enterprises, right? If you think of Uncle Sam as Fortune Zero, right? The largest company in the world. Having people that have

experience in managing, growing, operating complex organizations, I think that's something that's super important. I think you got to have someone on the team that's like a finance genius, because I think when you look at jobs in the economy are the single most important thing, but I want people that are willing to challenge conventional wisdom. One of the frustrations I've often had is we think the next war is going to be like the last war, and we're not preparing for that next thing, right? So having people like that, and one of the first long form articles that were written about me when I was in Congress was by a guy named Tim Alberta. And he interviewed my staff, and we're like, yeah, sure, he interviewed my staff.

And the report came after a quarter of my staff in my district were Democrats. And people were outraged. And I'm like, oh, I didn't know they were a Democrat. One of the guys did all my veteran stuff. He understood the veteran community. So I don't care what that philosophical thought is. I need people that are going to be able to, how do you solve some of these problems? So it's not about having yes people. It's about having people you can trust, where you can have an honest conversation and not get your feelings hurt or feel like you're being attacked. Yeah, totally. Because you know what? It's an arrogance to think

that any one individual can possibly be an expert on every facet of a country of 330 million people, an incredibly diverse country with a huge geographical area and influence and station around the world. It's so arrogant to think that one person would be able to know all of those things. You would only know them at such a surface level that you would actually not be a very useful leader. And so being a useful leader in this scenario involves surrounding yourself with people of character that you trust, but that are willing to say, actually, well, I disagree with you on that. And here's why, because there's a good chance they know something you don't. And being willing and able and to want

to learn from those people, I think benefits the entire country as a whole. Instead of pretending like, I know all the things there are to know about everything that's ever existed. When you explained that, the phrase that popped in my head was lifelong learners. For me, people that are interested and have a value in learning, because that I think achieves what you're talking about. You recognize, you know, we know what we know, we know what we don't know, but what we don't know we don't know is the largest of those three categories. And we need people that understand that, but then are also always trying to shrink that third category. And people who are humble enough to learn from other people. When a leader has a toxic level of arrogance, where they believe that nobody could ever know

better than them, that actually puts the country in harm's way. And it does not benefit the American public at large. Because first of all, it's just silly. That's not even realistic. That's not even logical. But secondly, it means that you are absolutely blind to your own vulnerabilities. If you think you know everything there is to know, you're blind to your own vulnerabilities because you don't. And that's not a strong position to lead from where nobody is checking your blind spots and nobody is like, hey, you got to think about this thing. And you can be like, you know what? Good call. Thanks for that cover. Oh my gosh. We could keep talking about this forever, but I would love for you to just wrap up by giving somebody who is new to listening to you, has never listened to you before,

what would you say is some of your big picture takeaways from your candidacy and what you would like to achieve as president? Yeah. So we are living in complicated times and we need common sense in order to make sure that this experiment called America exists for another 247 years. It was called an experiment because nobody thought it was going to work. There hadn't been a democracy on this planet for over 2000 years, and that one was Rome, and Julius Caesar screwed that up. It was another 60 years for another democracy in Switzerland.

It's only been 14 countries that have been in democracy for more than 100 years. Democracy is fragile. It always has been fragile. It always will be fragile. And we can ensure that America continues to uplift humanity for 247 years, but it's require us to do something very simple. It doesn't require us to do what some of our forebearers did and fight in the streets of Lexington or on the plains of Gettysburg or marching in the streets of Selma or Jackson or fighting hand-to-hand combat in the mountains of Mazar-e-Sharif. It just requires us to vote,

and not just vote in general elections, but in primaries. And for me, this is about tackling these generational defining challenges. How do we win this new Cold War with China? How do we harness technologies like AI that leads to better jobs than unemployment? How do we make sure that this trend of our kids having the worst grades in math, science, and reading this century, how do we change that? These are the things that we have to do. And the only way we're going to solve this problem is if we understand that we're better together, way more unites us and divides us. This is my belief system. This is what we're working towards. You know, I've been lucky to be able to serve my country in a number of different ways.

And this is what I'm trying to do. And guess what? As you said, can't do this alone. I need people's help. I need folks. The first thing is to get on that debate stage or meet the requirements, hit the debate stage, because this is the kind of conversations we should be having. And you can do that at heardforamerica.com. Thank you, Will. I really appreciate your time today. I've loved chatting with you as always. Thanks for knowing the difference between TikTok and Wi-Fi. I appreciate that in a candidate. Well, Shanna, look, what you are doing and your movement and what you've been able to build is an example of how the country is ready for something different and that the

country is ready to have thoughtful conversation and you don't have to go to these ideological fringes. And so you're an inspiration. You are a role model. You're awesome. So thanks for having me on. That's very kind of you. Great to chat and enjoy New Hampshire. Enjoy some, it's probably a little cooler there than it is in San Antonio. Yeah. I admire you. I admire you. Thanks, Will. Awesome. Bye-bye. Thank you so much for listening today. If you want to donate a dollar to Will Hurd's campaign

so he can be on the debate stage on August 23rd, you can go to hurdforamerica.com. It's H-U-R-D, hurdforamerica.com. It's H-U-R-D, heardforamerica.com. And I really appreciate you listening. This show is researched and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And if you enjoyed this episode, would you consider leaving us a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform. That helps us so much. And we always love to see your shares and tags on social media. We'll see you again soon.