Morning Wire - VP Mike Pence on Twitter, Trump & GOP Future | 1.1.23

Episode Date: January 1, 2023

Former Vice President Pence sits down with Cabot Phillips to discuss his thoughts on the debate over free speech and big tech, the future of the GOP, and the lessons learned from the government’s pandemic response.  Plus we discuss his new autobiography, So Help Me God, which chronicles the importance of his faith in his political career. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

National debates continue to rage over policies impacting constitutionally protected liberties, including freedom of speech and religion. Debates heightened by recent revelations about big tech collusion with the FBI and post-mortems on pandemic policies. For this episode of Morning Wire, senior editor Cabot Phillips sits down with former vice president Mike Pence to discuss his thoughts on the debate over free speech in big tech, the future of the GOP, and lessons learned from the government's pandemic response. I'm Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howl. It's January 1st, 2023. Happy New Year. This is your Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Hi, everyone. I'm Cabot Phillips, senior editor at the Daily Wire. I'm joined now by former Vice President Mike Pence,

who's written a new autobiography, So Help Me God, which chronicles the importance of his faith in his political career. He joins us now to discuss a host of issues that have come up repeatedly on this show. Mr. Vice President, thanks for coming on. Oh, great to be on Morning Wire. So first, let me ask you about something. something that you didn't get a chance to write about, at least directly in your new book, because it just happened more recently. The purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, it's getting a lot

of attention right now with all these so-called Twitter files appearing to show collusion between tech executives and the federal government and officials with the FBI. What do you make of the situation unfolding at Twitter? Well, I must tell you, I did write in the book about the waning days of the 2020 campaign when the Hunter Biden laptop was reported by the New York Post, and then we saw Twitter, other social media platforms, and major networks literally suppress the story in the weeks leading up to our campaign. It was a disgrace. And I said so, and so help me God. And the fact that's more than 50 former intelligence officials said that it had all the earmarks of Russian disinformation was appalling. And I think Congress would do well to continue to look deeply into that. And I welcome

Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and the fact that he is he's turning on the lights and exposing to the American people the kind of politics that was being played on what was supposed to be an open platform. Look, we've got to have an open public square. Daily wire, morning wire, do an extraordinary job bringing information to the American people. But what we're learning because of the disclosures by Twitter is that social media platforms in recent years have literally been suppressing conservative thought, the Hunter Biden laptop story just being one of them. And I think it's absolutely a benefit to the nation that Elon Musk is revealing those things. And while the new Republican majority in Congress is going to be working on border security

and on tackling inflation, laying out a vision to bring this country all the way back, I think it's also going to be important for them to use the oversight authority. Congress has to put even more daylight on this pattern of censorship of conservative thought that's occurred in recent years, particularly on the Internet. I want to get to that more specifically it seems like there's two schools of thought. One side saying it's a private company, these tech platforms should be able to run their platforms however they like, ban whomever they choose. If you don't like it, build your own or in most case buy your own. And then the other side saying there is a role for government intervention. There needs to be

a response, stepping in, forcing them to allow everyone on. Where do you fall on that spectrum? How much of a role should the government have in regulating these platforms? Well, I served on the Judiciary Committee in the Congress for 10 years. And I think the fact that we did not regulate the Internet has been a great benefit to the nation and to the development of information technology and access of information for the American people. But one of the aspects of that was we created a shield, a liability shield for companies. And I think Congress, rather than regulating, I'm not much into regulation. I'm not much into using governments heavy hand to bully private companies. But rather, I think Congress ought to seriously reconsider whether or not we need a liability

shield so that when people are wronged, when fraud occurs, when things that would otherwise be actionable in any other setting occur on the internet, that these companies be held accountable. I have great confidence in the American people's ability to sort these things out, but I think there should be a fulsome debate about what went on. It ought to be exposed to the American people,

not just Twitter, but all these other companies that engage in the kind of censorship of conservative thought, that now we know the shadow banning that was taking place on Twitter. But then I think we ought to have a very serious debate about whether we need to continue to create some sort of a liability shield for these companies and otherwise just allow for the

normal legal processes for people to gain relief when they're wronged. So looking back a little bit last month, the midterm elections wrapped up. Yeah. Not the final results that a lot of conservatives were hoping for. Some positive ground gained in the House, obviously with the majority there, but not when many people are hoping for in a big red wave. What do you attribute for that relative lack of success among the GOP? Well, I think there was a red wave in pockets, if you will.

The state of Iowa now has, every member of Congress is a Republican for the first time in 80 years. We saw landslide reelections in Texas, in Florida, in Georgia. The state of New York sent four new Republican congressmen to Washington, D.C. in the wake of Lee Zeldon's courageous campaign for governor. But there were disappointments. I would have liked to see us win the Senate. and win more seats in the House. And there were governor's races that were just out of reach.

The common denominator that I see, though, is that where we had candidates that were focused on the future, that were focused on the challenges the American people are facing today, those candidates did very well. I mean, talking about the record of the Trump-Pence administration, people that were saying, we can secure our border, we can create jobs and tackle inflation,

you know, we can deal with the crime wave in our cities, we can defend our liberties and our families, and those candidates did well. But candidly, the candidates that were focused on the past, focused on relitigating the last election, did not fare as well. And so, you know, when I was campaigning for Governor Brian Kemp in his primary in Georgia, he was literally being challenged on that issue, his conservative record versus someone that wanted to relitigate the last election. And I said that night before his primary that the Republican Party needs to be the party of the future.

And that Georgia voters had an opportunity to send a deafening message across the country that we're the party of the future. Governor Brian Kemp won that primary by 50 points and went on to defeat the most formidable Democrat candidate in the country, Stacey Abrams, by seven points. And it was all because he focused on the challenges people are facing today and real conservatives. solutions for the future. And that's that's the pathway to success, not just for our party, but for the country. We did see a divide in the primaries seem to unfold in the GOP, especially, where there were conflicting, you know, kind of strains of conservatism. So looking ahead, what do you think the future of the GOP will be? Is it this more nationalist, you know, sort of America first strain? Is it the Ronald Reagan, more neo-conservative, traditional conservative

strain? Is it the libertarian strain of the GOP? What do you view as the future of the party? I think the Republican Party is the conservative party. It has been since Ronald Reagan was during the days of Donald Trump. But things were added to the bucket along the way. Reagan comes to power. I met him as I write in my book in 1988 when he was still in the White House. And Ronald Reagan literally revived the economy and changed the world by rebuilding the military and cutting taxes and standing for traditional values. The Bushes both added to that in their own ways and continued that legacy, but Donald Trump is the one changed the national consensus on China. I brought our party to a place where we recognize that trade deals have to be not only free,

but fair. And I truly do believe that the movement for educational choice sweeping across the country that we also sought to advance in our administration is part of the agenda. I honestly think that broad and expanding conservative agenda is still the foundation of our movement today. And at the end of the day, we're going to have a debate in the next two years about who our standard bearer will be. My family's going to be sorting out what our role in that will be. But I have every confidence that Republican primary voters are going to choose a standard bearer who will hold up that conservative agenda on fiscal and social issues, on national security and border security. And we're going to have a great year in 2024.

So we'll get to 2024. When it comes to the debate stage, I think a lot of our listeners would be fascinated if you do indeed run, as people have thrown your name out there plenty. What would you do to differentiate yourself from President Trump on the debate stage? Obviously, there would be others as well, potentially,

but what do you expect that to look like? Well, I've been on a national debate stage a couple times. So I have some familiarity with the environment. And I'll tell you, my personal approach, if we were called into a contest that had the former president and other candidates on the stage with us is, I wouldn't be running against anybody. I'd be running for the things I've always stood for. You know, I'm pro-life. I don't apologize for it. I believe in a strong national defense, low taxes, balanced budgets, educational choice, secure borders, religious liberty. I'd be on that stage talking about what was wrong with the other side.

and what was right about what we'd done in our vision for the future. So I'm someone that really, really believes, as the Bible says, without a vision, the people perish. And I think what the American people long for in the days ahead is to get back to the conservative principles that were working under our administration before that hundred-year pandemic struck and create an unprecedented security and prosperity at home and abroad. But I also think they want to get back to a problem.

politics that's focused on the challenges they're facing and that's practicing the kind of soility that that Americans show one another every day. So a few more questions. One, when it comes to your time on the COVID task force, clearly you worked very closely with Dr. Fauci, a member who is not as popular with many on the right these days. What did you make of your time working with Dr. Fauci? From very early on, Dr. Fauci was on the task force before I was tapped, deleted. But from very Early on, Dr. Fauci emerged as a comforting voice to millions of Americans. And I will tell you that in my time in the situation room, leading task force meetings almost every day in those early months, as I write in my book, Dr. Fauci really stayed in his lane,

which was the scientist lane. But around the table, we had people that represented interest in the economy, people that represented interest in the broader issues affecting the American people. And in those early days, I will tell you, he was among the first to say, look, I know the president's got to consider a lot of different factors. I'm just going to tell you the scientific view. But as time went on and his celebrity grew, I sensed more and more that he was advocating the kind of policies and at least practices that many Democrat governors were doing in the form of lockdowns and closing schools. And when the Biden administration took over and essentially put Dr. Fauci in charge of the COVID response, I wasn't very surprised that the only thing they focused on was vaccines and ultimately tried to mandate vaccines on the American people,

which we would never have done. And Joe Biden said he would never do. They neglected the manufacturer of testing. They didn't develop additional therapeutics. They ran into supply problems because there's the old saying, when you're holding a hammer, everything's a nail. And I wasn't surprised as I write in my book that when Dr. Fauci took over the leadership of the White House response in the Biden administration, that everything was about vaccines, which I was proud we made the vaccines available to the American people,

but always held the view that that was a choice for every individual American and every family. I'm glad to see that the new defense bill has ended the mandate for vaccines among members of the armed forces, of the United States. But the next step is the Republican Congress now should also demand the Biden administration reinstate every member of our armed forces who was discharged for refusing to take a vaccine and restore 100 percent back pay to each and every one of them. But those are my reflections on our efforts before. All right. We'll leave it there, Mr. Vice President. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Great to be on Morning Wire. And for our listeners, you can pick up the vice president's autobiography. So help me, God, anywhere you get books. I'm Cabot Phillips with

Morning Wire. Thanks for listening. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.