The Bulwark Podcast - Asa Hutchinson: Why I’m Doing This

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

The presidential candidate and former Arkansas governor wants to take the Republican Party in the direction of public service and conservative principles—and away from Donald Trump, who has made it a losing party that is only about him. Gov. Asa Hutchinson joins Charlie Sykes. show notes: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/elaine-massacre-of-1919-1102/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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few Republican candidates who's been willing to take on Donald Trump directly. Now, I'm not misleading anyone here that I think that Asa Hutchinson is going to be the nominee. He's not. But one of the things that I hope to do with this podcast is to expose people to some of those voices that are still within the Republican Party and willing to take on Donald Trump. Does not mean that he is no longer a conservative Republican. Asa Hutchinson is very much a conservative Republican, and we do talk about that on today's podcast. But I want to thank Sonny Bunch and Mona Cherin for sitting in. And if you have not been listening to Will Salatan's fantastic series on Lindsey Graham, I strongly urge you to do this.

As we're doing the podcast this week, of course, we are still on indictment watch waiting for the next indictments to drop from Jack Smith involving not just January 6th, but Donald Trump's entire conspiracy to overturn the election. And then, of course, there is the indictment out of Georgia, which is perhaps also imminent over the next couple of weeks. And this morning, there were a couple of developments. Rudy Giuliani now admitting, I'm going to use the word admitting that he lied about Georgia election workers. You know, his flags are trying to spin this saying, no, no, he didn't admit anything. He is just conceding it for the purpose of this litigation, which is just so much eyewash. Rudy Giuliani forced to concede that in fact, yes, he was

completely full of it. So we are waiting on those two developments. And maybe that's one of the reasons because we're in this weird midsummer hiatus, waiting for the next big story to drop, that it does feel like we are in this endless, silly season loop. And I wrote about that in my newsletter, Morning Shots. I mean, for years, you know, in the middle of the summer, there would be these periodic silly seasons where the media would become obsessed with frivolous stories, outlandish stories, bizarre stories. You have lots of stories about shark attacks and things like that. But I was thinking about this over the weekend, long weekend where I wasn't doing this, which is that the season of unseriousness has now become year round, right? I mean, because we don't live in serious times.

And I wrote about this. It is interesting when you step back and you look, okay, what is actually the dialogue? What is the debate? What is America talking about? And I think historians will look back on this and think, okay, so given all of these major world-changing crises we are facing, what were Americans obsessing about in late July 2023? Well, the right is melting down over the Barbie movie, which I will confess I have not yet seen, but I will. They had no discernible impact at all on the box office. Apparently, Ben Shapiro, who at one time actually thought of

himself or wanted people to think of him as the philosopher, young conservative out there, apparently spent like more than 40 minutes railing on Barbie and then filmed himself, taped himself throwing Barbies into a trap, whatever. And then, of course, we apparently have had a, and I'm glad to recuse myself from having to spend a lot of time on this debate over whether slavery actually taught valuable life skills. Ron DeSantis, the fanciest dive that we have seen since the Scott Walker campaign. That's actually getting worse. And this, of course, was from the Florida education standards. And then Greg Gutfield from Fox News said, hold my beer. You

know, people in the Holocaust also had to, you know, make themselves useful. So whatever. New York Post actually ran a whole cover story about dog bites in the White House. I'm not making this up. Kevin McCarthy is floating a performative impeachment of Joe Biden that would accomplish absolutely nothing nothing but would suck up all kinds of attention and perhaps succeed in normalizing and trivializing the impeachments of Donald Trump. I ain't going to ask Asa Hutchinson about that. Over the weekend, Elon Musk murdered Twitter. I have to admit, I really did enjoy the piece by Oliver Darcy over at CNN where he wrote about the murder. He writes, Twitter, the text-based social media platform that played an outsized role in society by serving as a digital town square, was killed by its unhinged owner, Elon Musk, on Sunday.

It was 17 years old. A zombie Twitter known only as X reluctantly endures. This is where you think, okay, we are living through the simulation. This can't be real. A warp and disfigured platform, Darcy writes, X marches on like a white walker, an ugly shell of its former self under the command of a loathsome leader. Really good Game of Thrones reference there. Whereas Twitter was once a fountain of authoritative information. X is a platform where trolls can pay a small fee to have their ugly content boosted ahead of reputable sources. I guess I'm never going to look back on Twitter as, you know, this was the garden halcyon days of Twitter. But in any case, yes, the decision by

Elon Musk to transform Twitter into X for reasons that I think it's safe to say that absolutely no one understands at all. Nobody understands that. And meanwhile, Republicans are really working very hard not to notice that their front running candidate for president of the United States is losing what is left of his mind as he's waiting for the next indictments. I mean, you know, every single day, multiple all caps screeds. Meanwhile, apparently there was a funnel cloud over the Capitol, which was a metaphor alert, and the seas may be setting new temperature records, but we're talking about the Barbie movie. And I wrote something over the weekend, in case you missed it, a public service announcement, kind of followed up on something that I talked with Will Salatin about last week. This is a good moment to just remind yourself that you are not the ones that took the crazy

pills. It is just the news cycle. And I'm still blown away by this, that it was a week ago today that a federal judge confirmed that a jury had ruled that the former president of the United States was a rapist. I mean, this federal judge declaring there was ample, arguably overwhelming evidence that Trump is a rapist by the word's most common definitions, and even some federal and state criminal statutes. Now, okay, this is not locker room talk. This is an actual sexual assault committed by one of the most powerful men in America. And yet this ruling by a federal judge, Judge Kaplan, was not nearly the top news story of the day. And you look around in the news today and it's like it didn't even happen. It's just another data point in our deeply deranged political moment. And despite all of that, Donald Trump remains the clear front runner for the 2024 Republican nomination.

So, again, happy Wednesday. I'd also urge people to go back and read our coverage of what's been happening with the Ron DeSantis campaign. I mean, it feels like it's a little bit overkill to point out that Ron DeSantis' campaign is going nowhere. JVL had a great piece earlier this week that DeSantis' reset is really a death rattle. And in fact, things are getting worse. Ron DeSantis had to fire a staffer who had retweeted a video with Nazi imagery. And what makes this interesting is this is a guy named Nate, I think it's Hochman. He'd retweeted the video over the weekend. They've now deleted it, but you can find it. This is a guy who has written for National Review. The New York Times at one point published him because he was considered to be this

up-and-coming thinker on the right. So he's been fired by the DeSantis campaign after doing all of this. And as I wrote in my newsletter, if only they had been warned about this. Wait, because Tim Miller in the bulwark called this shot four months ago. And I linked to this story. DeSantis finds his voice, a NatCon, this is National Conservative, a NatCon culture warrior who praised a prominent white nationalist. And he did a complete takedown of this guy who was hired as the comms guy for the DeSantis campaign, this Nate Hokeman, and how he had participated in Twitter spaces with white nationalists, including people like Nick Fuentes, who's an actual neo-Nazi. The Dispatch had written about this, and then Tim

went back and listened to some of the tapes. None of this should have come as a surprise. I mean, what Tim wrote back in March was, Nate Hokeman's hiring sends a signal of what the Florida governor Ron DeSantis wants for his campaign. And yeah, it did. And DeSantis got it good and hard. So that's where we are at on this Wednesday as we wait for the indictment that is more likely than not, ironically, to strengthen Donald Trump's hold on the Republican Party, which does not mean that it is a bad idea. It does not mean that it is a mistake. It's just a recognition of reality that this is going to be an extraordinary week despite the triviality of our debate. So we did want to talk to one of the last remaining holdouts, a Republican candidate for president who still seems to believe that Republican voters

want to go back to pre-Trump conservatism and are actually concerned about things like public policy. So listen to our discussion. Governor Asa Hutchinson is a Republican presidential candidate, former two-term governor of Arkansas from January 2015 to January 2023, also a former member of Congress. He held two positions in Bush 43's first term administrator of the DEA and then undersecretary for border Security at the Department of Homeland Security. So a long and storied career. First of all, welcome to the podcast, Governor. Well, thank you. It is great to be with you today. Well, let me just start with the basic existential question. Why are you doing this?

Why are you running for president in a Republican primary that clearly wants a different kind of Republican than the kind of Republican that you have been for the last 40 years or more. Why are you doing this? We'll see about what the voters want. But the reason I'm running, of course, is that I think Biden's policy takes our country in the wrong direction. We need to have a pro-growth energy policy. We need to control federal spending-growth energy policy. We need to control federal spending, move toward a balanced budget. The border is a great concern to me. And so all of those issues indicate to me we need a new direction. And now you look within the Republican Party, yes, we need a course correction. And I have been engaged in building

the Republican Party in Arkansas for decades. We've built it. We've become the majority party. And I want to make sure that we continue to be a party that invites people in, that we expand our base, we don't shrink it, that we stick with conservative values and not just become the party of discontent. And that's my message. I think there's a vast majority of Republicans that agree with that. We need to have leadership in the White House and not chaos. And that's demonstrated in my leadership over the last eight years as governor,

but also through my career where I've had to deal with numerous crises, and I've handled those. I've kept us on track. That's the kind of leadership that we need in Washington. Okay, so you use the term course correction, which is somewhat mild considering that this right now appears to be Donald Trump's party. It has been dominated by Donald Trump for the last seven years, and polls would suggest that a majority of Republican primary voters are okay with Donald Trump as their nominee, even though he is about to be indicted once again. So in terms of running for president, are you running in a party that you still recognize? Donald Trump has changed the party, and he's changed it into a losing party.

We've lost the last election and we lost the last presidential election. And that is at his feet. And it's because it's become about him. It's about ego. It is not about ideas. It's not about our conservative principles. And so he has changed it. And I'm passionate about needing to change it into a different direction from Donald Trump. We will lose again under his leadership.

So I want to make that perfectly clear. And public service to me is about service. It's about not about yourself, but it's about the country. It's about others and what we can accomplish. And I know that a second Trump administration would be about revenge. It would be about him. And I want it to be about our country. I want to be about bringing out the best of America. And that's my theme. That's what leadership is about. And we've always had times of division in our country, but we don't need leaders that capitalize on division.

We need leaders that heal division and try to reduce that. That takes a change in direction for our party. So let's talk about this very peculiar moment we're in right now. This is not a normal political campaign. This is not a normal political campaign. This is not a normal political season. The former president may be indicted in the next 24, 48 hours. Those indictments may have come down before people actually hear our conversation. So let's talk about the indictment for his role in trying to overturn the election. You have suggested that he should withdraw from the campaign. So give me some sense of the impact of these indictments. So far, it appears that with every indictment, he strengthens his hold

on the Republican Party, that his numbers actually go up the more crimes he's charged with. Well, that's been the pattern. And it started with the indictment out of the state of New York, Alvin Bragg's case, which most legal scholars said didn't make sense, was a stretch. And so that gave the sense to the American public that our justice system is not working well. And then you have Jack Smith's indictment for the classified information, that is much more serious. And now it's set for trial May 21st. In fact, it is very serious because it deals with our nation's secrets and former President Trump who used those secrets for entertainment value. And so that is set for trial in May. And so let's just think about this for a second. This is the most unpredictable political season in my lifetime because no one can predict the outcome. And whenever you look

at Trump, that's running high now, but we're asking the voters to have to vote in Super Tuesday in New Hampshire, in Iowa, when these cases are pending and they don't know whether they're going to be voting for somebody who will be ultimately convicted of serious felonies or whether he's going to be acquitted. We don't know the outcome of that and it puts the voters in a terrible position. And that's why I've said he should step aside for the good of the country because no voter should have to be put in the position. It's going to be an issue. We're going to talk about the fact that these cases are pending and it puts the party, it puts the country in a very difficult position. But that's where I think things will change.

People will start realizing we can't win with this chaos, with this uncertainty, and they'll move in a different direction. Okay, so this argument about whether or not he could win or not, I just want to clarify this. Even if the, so this argument about whether or not he could win or not, I just want to clarify this. Even if the polls would suggest that, in fact, he could win, would you support Donald Trump in November if he is the Republican nominee? I'm going to support somebody who is convicted of serious felonies. I'm not going to support Donald Trump under those circumstances

because we knew, one, it's just flat wrong. That's not what our country is about, not what the Republican Party is about. And secondly, it would lead us to sheer disaster in November. And so I want to be on the debate stage. And we've met the polling criteria, but they have a pledge that's required. And I'll pledge to support the nominee of the party because I'm confident it will not be Donald Trump. And that's not what I expect. That's not somebody that deserves a nomination.

Okay. But if it is Donald Trump, I just want to clarify this because I think Chris Christie said, look, I'm going to sign the pledge because I want to be on the debate. But I'm going to take it about as seriously as Donald Trump took his pledge. In other words, like, no, I'm not ever going to vote for Donald Trump. What is your position? So you've made it clear that if he is convicted of a felony, you're not going to vote for him, which just think about how five minutes ago, that wouldn't have been a controversial statement. But if he is not convicted, I just want to kind of pin you down on this. Would you vote for Donald Trump in November if he has not yet been convicted?

Well, I want to do it this way because I want to be on the debate. And so the debate says you're going to support the nominee of the party. I will sign that pledge because I'm confident that Donald Trump will not be the nominee of the party. Now you're pushing me a little bit further, but that would disqualify me for future debates. So I want to take this a step at a time. I'm not pledging I'm going to support Donald Trump because I do not believe he will be the nominee. That's an important point to get me on the debate stage. I thought it was really one of the more extraordinary moments of this extraordinary political year, I believe, was when you asked the Republican National Committee to clarify this pledge saying, now,

would there be an out for someone who is convicted of a felony, like, for example, violating the Espionage Act? And my understanding is the Republican National Committee said, no, absolutely not. You have to pledge to support somebody, even if they have been convicted, which gives you an indication of where the RNC is on all of this. Well, it's disappointing. They have set some artificial barriers to get on the debate stage to begin with. They're trying to narrow it very quickly. And I view that's the responsibility of the caucus goers in Iowa and the New Hampshire voters to narrow the field, give the candidates a chance to make their case. And the debate is an important

part of it. Everybody's waiting to make a decision until they see the debate. So we want the candidates on there. That helps the voters, and to me, that's the whole role of the party, is not to narrow the field artificially, but to give the voters a chance to decide. It's going to narrow. It could narrow quickly after the Iowa caucuses, but we need to give the voters a chance. So you issued a statement last week that Trump likes to say that he's a victim in the January 6th investigation, but you questioned that. Donald Trump is not the real victim here when

we're talking about January 6th, is he? No, he's not the victim. In fact, the victims are our democracy. The victim would be the police officers who were injured and the deaths that were caused at the attack on the Capitol. And I've said from the very beginning that Donald Trump bears responsibility. He summoned the people there. He misled them. That resulted in an attack on the Capitol. As to whether they can get a criminal conviction is another matter.

I don't have the level of evidence that Jack Smith has, but clearly, in my view, he's morally responsible. He's certainly not a victim. And that's what he's going to be talking about over the next six months is, woe is me, woe is me. And he brought this on himself. And it does not demonstrate leadership and the kind of president that we need or commander in chief. Okay, so we all saw what happened on January 6th. I'm not going to relitigate it here. You watched what was happening.

It has been documented extensively. Can you explain, because you're out there on the hustings, why are so many Republican voters and leaders reluctant to, number one, hold Donald Trump accountable for it, and number two, to recognize the gravity of what happened. Why has there been such a tendency, do you think, to minimize this? What do you hear when you go out and you talk to Republican voters about January 6th? Because it does feel as if we have alternative realities, that when you talk to many of these folks, it does seem that they have a completely different view of what we know happened at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. How do you explain that? Well, because they have trusted Donald Trump and what he has said,

and he has misled them, and that has created a false narrative about January 6. Now, the vast majority of Republicans understand completely that was an attack on our democracy. It was unacceptable. The fact that not enough leaders are speaking up about that reflects right now the hold that Donald Trump has on the party and the fear that candidates have about him coming against them. Nobody wants that. But this is a time for leaders to step up and speak for our democracy, to speak for America, and to be clear that Donald Trump's conduct is unacceptable. Unacceptable in our democracy, unacceptable in the Republican Party. And so right now we have not enough voices.

I mean, I'm out there and I'll continue to be out there speaking the truth. And the few others are out there, but we need more that counter the victimization that Donald Trump is espousing, the misleading facts about January 6th that he is putting out. So you have been venturing into hostile territory. You actually went to the Turning Point USA Action Conference recently, and this is a super MAGA, super Trumpy organization headed by Charlie Kirk. So first of all, what were you thinking when you said, okay, I'm willing to go there. I'm going to accept their invitation. Why did you go? Well, I went there because it's an important audience. It's young people that are coming up and want to be engaged in the political system. And I don't want them just to hear from Donald Trump. I want them to see other leaders in the party and particularly ones like myself that's got a breadth of background and service, but also in building the Republican Party. And so that's why I went there. And it's very important to note that there was booing there, but it was clear to me and to others that the thousands of young people

were listening and wanted to hear what I had to say. It was the adults that they led into the room that were all about Trump that started the booing. It wasn't the students. And so I kept going because I knew the students were listening and had a great time with them after my speech as well. But that's why I went there. I mean, I personally give you credit for going into the lion's den. I mean, so you also went to the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa with Tucker Carlson, and you had to know what that was going to be like, right? But you went. And right off the bat, he goes after you about your veto of a ban on gender affirming care for transgender youth in Arkansas back in 2021. This has now become one of the hot button issues in Republican politics right now. So talk to me a little bit about this, because I mean, right now, this seems to be the issue. I mean, you have Ron DeSantis, who is his campaign is putting out ads, essentially implying that he would be the most anti transgender candidate ever,

that he would challenge their existence to live. And here you are, you're running for the Republican nomination. And you actually vetoed as the governor of Arkansas vetoed a ban on gender affirming care. So first of all, tell me why you Arkansas, vetoed a ban on gender-affirming care. So, first of all, tell me why you issued the veto and how you feel about this issue. Well, first of all, had I been able to pick a different moderator, I would have picked a different moderator than Tucker Carlson. But that wasn't my choice. And this was an important audience. These are evangelical leaders in Iowa.

And I wanted to make sure I could make my case and defend my position. And of course, it's difficult with a moderator that is more interested in expressing his views than learning someone else's. But why did I veto it? Because I support parents, and there's always a line to be drawn. I don't believe there should be a transgender surgery for minors, and we don't believe there should be a transgender surgery for minors. And we don't have that in Arkansas. And I would sign a law very quickly that prohibited that. That's a permanent change. But if you're looking at temporary treatments that parents decide with their doctors are necessary, I stand with parents. And so I vetoed that bill. I was overridden, but the courts have held that as unconstitutional, which affirms what I did was the right thing. And so I believe in making my case. I'll go to The View, which is not always the most friendly audience. They were to me.

And I believe in going where people are listening and I can make my case, defend my positions. So I do want to focus on the top lines of this campaign, but other things in the news cycle, I think, that I want to give you a chance to address. Rhonda Santus has been going through some things. I think it's safe to say that this campaign has not been going well, but very specifically, you've dealt with issues of educational standards for many, many years. You have these new guidelines that have been issued by the Florida Board of Education. These are the new rules for teaching Black history. And it includes the line, instruction includes how slaves develop skills, which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit. So your thoughts, fellow candidate Willd, has pushed back strongly on

that. I think Chris Christie has as well. Do you think that slaves develop skills that could be applied for their personal benefit? The whole language acts like there's some benefit to slavery, and that is impossible. It is wrong. They should never be conveyed in a textbook or in a lesson. So it's just flat out wrong. It's like taking us back to the 50s or the Jim Crow days, and that's the wrong direction for America. It is critically important that our young people understand what happened in the civil rights movement, what happened in the oppression of African-Americans all across the country during the days of Jim Crow. In Arkansas, we had the Elaine Race Massacre. And in Tulsa, you had the bombing of the African-American community.

These are things that cannot be ignored. And it's not any different than the Holocaust. The Holocaust is not fun exercise. Some people are going to feel poorly about learning of those tragedies, and we've got to teach them. That's how you stay away from that kind of attitude, violence in the future. And so I don't like changing our instruction. It has to be taught, particularly when you're looking at what happened during the days of our civil rights struggle and in the days of slavery.

So let's go back to the whole issue of why you are running. You are a conservative Republican. In the anti-Trump world, there are folks who believe that you have to align yourself with liberal Democrats or even become a Democrat. I've been listening very carefully to you. I think it's very, very clear that you remain a conservative Republican. So briefly, can you define what your ideology is? When you say that you want to adhere to conservative principles, what do you mean? And then I'm going to follow that up by asking you where you disagree with Donald Trump. But let's start off with a definition of what you think conservatism should be, what it should mean to be a conservative Republican.

Well, a conservative is someone who believes in individual responsibility, equal opportunity, and a limited role of government. That's fundamentally a conservative position. In addition, a conservative has a view of America that is one of strength, and that strength helps keep peace in the world. And those principles go back to Abraham Lincoln, but they also echo back to Ronald Reagan, which I served as United States Attorney, the youngest one in the nation under Ronald Reagan. And he espoused that, and that's what drew me to the Republican Party. And those conservative principles are true today. I applied those when I was governor. I lowered taxes from 7% down to 4.9% individual income tax rate. When it came to shrinking the size of government, we had 3,000 fewer state

employees when I left the governorship than when I started. So we reduced the size of state government and we continued to invest in education and raising teacher pay. Those are all conservative principles. I had a fundamental view that we ought to grow the private sector of our economy more than the public sector. That's a conservative principle. We did that in Arkansas. We need to do that as a nation. Those are the values and principles that are conservative that I carry forward into the future. So if we were having this conversation in 2015, what you just articulated would have been the position of almost every conservative Republican

in America. Does that party exist anymore? And I don't want to be unfair by saying you're a Reagan Republican or a Bush Republican. You can describe yourself however you like. I guess the question is, does that party exist? Do you honestly think that we can ever go back to that kind of pre-Trump conservatism or has the party in the base just moved on? Well, the debate today is, do we use the power that the left has always used, which is using the power of government to enforce your social mores? And the left has always done that, and using the levers of government to accomplish their agenda. Republicans, there's some that push that. Ron DeSantis has pushed that to say, we don't like what Disney said, therefore, we're going to

use the power of government to punish them. To me, that's not conservative. And that's a fundamental debate today. Some people disagree with that. They say the left's got away with it, so we're going to do the same thing when we get in government, and we're going to use the power of government to enforce our values. And there's always some gray areas there, but that's a debate that's important. And so that's part of what this campaign is about. Part of what 2024 is about. What direction are we going to go as a country? And I want to make it clear that I'm going to reverse Biden's policies when he's pushed the social agenda from the left. I'm going to reverse that.

But we're going to take a neutral position and let local school boards and parents be involved and decide. And our values should be shaped by our individuals in our country, by our houses of worship. And is that a popular message for today? We will see, but it's the right message that's conservative. So I think that that's a fair description of what people like Rhonda Sandis are pushing here. In fact, you know, Jonathan Shade has a very interesting piece over at New York Magazine saying that there is, in fact, this new sort of master theory among some Republicans that

radical leftists had conducted this long march through the institution seizing control of American culture, education, and business, and that Republicans now need to retaliate by using the same tools, use the full power of government, you know, to punish their enemies and to reward their friends and to dislodge their power. And clearly, Donald Trump is embracing this as well, saying, I am your retribution. I don't think that there's any question about that. So let's talk a little bit about, you've described yourself as a pre-Trump conservative Republican. What is your fundamental ideological difference with Donald Trump, leaving aside the criminality, the lying, the misconduct, and all of that stuff? On what issues do you disagree with Donald Trump, leaving aside the criminality, the lying, the misconduct and all of that stuff.

On what issues do you disagree with Donald Trump? Well, first, Donald Trump and his team did some good things while he was in office. But I disagree with him on spending. He did not control federal spending. He challenged the Democrats to spend more rather than less, and he added trillions of dollars to our national debt. So he did not do well in that regard. Secondly, I disagree with him on how he handled the pandemic. I think he made mistakes during that, mistakes of leadership. And also, I disagree with him in areas of foreign policy. He's an isolationist.

He wants to pull back America's strength and role in the world. He will effectively disband NATO and the alliance that has served our European allies and the United States well. And so there's a number of policy disagreements, and it's illustrated by his lack of support for Ukraine and wanting to end the war by giving Russia what they want. And then secondly, how they pulled out of Afghanistan. He started, even though the pullout was under President Biden, that was disastrous. The negotiation with the Taliban started under President Trump. And that was a mistake. And it just illustrates his view of the world that America ought to shrink in its leadership versus maintain a leadership role.

So now back to the horse race issue. You want to be on that debate stage. You need a certain number of donors. You need to hit a certain threshold of polling. You've acknowledged that you're short of the number of donors. You need 40,000, correct? That's right. I need 40,000. We're not there yet. And we're pulling out all the stops to get there. It's ASA2024.com is how everybody can go to that website and help us out.

Dollar counts as a donation. So the candidates are using a lot of different means to get there, and we're working hard to do it as well. So I guess the question is, in this large Republican field, there are three of you who have been willing to challenge Donald Trump to go at him both ideologically and in terms of his character. There's Will Hurd, there's Chris Christie, and then there is you, Asa Hutchinson. Is there room in this party for the three of you? Let's leave aside whether or not you represent a viable faction within the party. I would certainly hope that the three of you at least would.

But is there room for, in your mind, aren't you cannibalizing one another? Well, sure. I was the third one in the race and I was the first one really to speak out against Donald Trump as a candidate. And since then, we've had nine more join us. And so, sure, that dilutes the message, the strength. And, you know, Chris Christie's someone that's got a powerful voice out there, and he's, I'm sure, divided up to a certain extent the non-Trump vote. But that'll sort out over time. Those who want

different leadership are going to have to decide who's the best one to carry that message into the fall campaign that could bring in independents and suburban voters. I'll make the case that I'm the right one to do that. Others will, and we'll see what the voters say. So there's an op-ed piece, which I'm sure you've seen in the Wall Street Journal by Mitt Romney, urging, particularly it's aimed at the donor class, donors do not fund a Trump plurality and hearkening back to 2016, where Republican candidates wouldn't drop out soon enough. And he writes, despite Donald Trump's apparent inevitability, a baker's dozen Republicans are hoping to become the party's 2024 nominee for

president that is possible for any of them if the field nominates to a two-person race before trump has the nomination sewn up for that to happen though republican mega donors and influencers large and small are going to have to do something they did not do in 2016 get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed, that decision day should be no later than, say, February 26th, the Monday following the contest in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. Do you agree with that? Well, he has some good points there, and I agree that we have to shrink the number at some point in this campaign. But he

picked the date of February 28th. And the problem with that is it's before Super Tuesday. You know, I'm from Arkansas. And so it's before Arkansas votes. It's before the Southern states vote. It's before California votes. And those are key voters and opportunities for someone who's from the South to be able to garner support. And so his point's well taken. And I think everybody will be self-evaluating as we move into next year. But don't set an artificial time frame that precedes the Super Tuesday and the vast majority of states that's going to get to vote on that day. So if you are not able to make the debate stage, would that be the moment where you would make the go-no-go decision? It depends, and not necessarily, because even though you might not

make the first debate stage, you've got a second debate opportunity. And so they're going to change the criteria for it, but you have an opportunity to make that criteria. So you've got to measure whether you can and be successful with the tools that you have. Let me emphasize again, I intend to be on that first debate and we're working hard to get there. So you're a former member of Congress. You have watched your former colleagues and you've seen what their priorities are. Give me your sense of Kevin McCarthy's leadership, particularly

his decision to begin floating the idea of spending several months now on an impeachment of Joe Biden. And this comes just as it appears that Republicans are on the path to force another government shutdown this fall. Let's start with the government shutdown. What would you recommend your colleagues in Congress to do with spending? Well, I thought Speaker McCarthy did a very good job negotiating with President Biden on the last debt extension, which did set some priorities for reducing spending over time. Obviously, conservatives say it's not enough, but he pulled that together and I thought he did a masterful job of it.

You know, he's got a difficult environment there in the House with the Freedom Caucus, with those that are pro-Trump, that are demanding, you know, an impeachment of the president. So he has to navigate that. He's got to have some room to do it. But when it comes to an impeachment of the president. So he has to navigate that. He's got to have some room to do it. But when it comes to an impeachment case, there's obviously concerns that I have about the whistleblowers and the allegations that have been made that include questions about President Biden.

He's got to do a better job of answering that. Was he in the room? He is still not clear. Was this just Hunter Biden blowing and going and bragging, or was the president involved? Those are legitimate questions as to how you get those answers. One, the president needs to be more forthcoming, but there needs to be some ground truth there. Obviously, I don't think impeachment is right. It's not good for our country. But let's see where those facts go. And they haven't been developed yet.

Yeah, I mean, just to remind people, I mean, you go way back with the Clintons. When you were a federal prosecutor back in the 1980s, you actually sent Bill Clinton's brother to jail. And when you were in Congress in the late 1990s, you were very involved in the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton. Do you think that was a mistake back then, looking back on it? No, because you had serious allegations of obstruction of justice, which is a case that I presented, and lying under oath. So those are very substantive criminal actions that had to be dealt with. And so, no, I don't think it was wrong, but the Constitution worked. And just like I don't think it was wrong for us to pursue the

impeachment, I accept the verdict of the Senate when they acquitted him. And in the same way, though, as we look at allegations that half the administration ought to be impeached, we've got to reserve impeachment for serious wrongdoing and misconduct and things that cross the line into corruption and not simply policy disagreements. And that's where we've got to really draw the line and make sure we don't cross. Otherwise, it diminishes our Constitution. And I think that that seems to be the moment that we're at right now. Tell me whether you disagree with me. The Republicans seem to be pursuing sort of a two-track policy regarding impeachment, pushing for the expungement of Trump's two impeachments and then an impeachment of Biden, which would basically have the effect of normalizing and trivializing impeachment,

right? I mean, if every president is impeached, then it becomes no big deal. I agree completely with you. It diminishes it as a serious constitutional tool and outcome, and it diminishes the institution of Congress, that they're simply playing politics constantly, and they're always going to impeach the opposing party if they're in power. So here again, there's talk about Secretary Mayorkas, whether he should be impeached or not. He accomplishes the policy of the administration. That's what elections are about. And I disagree with how they've handled border security, but I don't believe it rises to

the level of the kind of conduct that our founding fathers envisioned that would justify impeachment. Governor Asa Hutchinson, thank you so much for joining me on the Bullwork Podcast. And that website is again? Asa2024.com. Thank you so much for your time this morning. Great to be with you. And thank you all for listening to today's Bullark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown. This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. October is the season for wearing masks and costumes, but some of us feel like we wear a mask and hide more often than we want to, at work, in social settings, around our family. Therapy can help you learn to accept all parts of yourself

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