The Bulwark Podcast - My Conversation With Paul Ryan

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

The former Speaker of the House tells Charlie Sykes a Reagan 2.0 candidate would have a shot in '24. He also discusses his relationship with McCarthy, how the base has evolved, and how he thinks Fox has "proper" conservative voices despite Tucker Carlson. Ryan and Sykes spoke at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. It is February 28th, 2023. We have made it through the month of February. I'm Charlie Sykes. Thanks for listening to the Bulwark Podcast. We're going to do something a little bit different on the podcast today. As you know, last Thursday night, I sat down for a one-on-one interview with the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan. It was part of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Distinguished Lecture Series. It was sponsored by the Tommy Thompson Center. It was a friendly conversation, but I also have to say that there were some moments that were a little fraught. I asked him a question from the audience that he thought sounded like it was too much MSNBC.

And I pressed him on a variety of questions, including his relationship with Kevin McCarthy, what he means by never Trump. Since that interview, though, as many of you probably know, there's been a lot of news. We had that Dominion filing that described how Ryan, as a member of the Fox board, we spent a lot of time talking about his role on the Fox board. But the Dominion documents show that, you know, he said in his deposition that he had told Rupert Murdoch and Murdoch's son Lachlan, the Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories and that the Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories and that the Fox News should pivot and move on from Donald Trump and stop spouting election lies. Fox was trying to navigate this dynamic between a core group of Trump loyalists

who were ignoring the truth, Ryan told lawyers for Dominion. Here's a part of the filing, what it says about Ryan. As a board member, Ryan believed that the period immediately following the 2020 presidential election was a pretty important inflection point, not just for the company Fox, but for the country and for the conservative movement itself. And he shared this view as a fiduciary with Rupert and Lachlan. He was asked, and you thought it was in Fox News interest to separate out these fringe claims of voter fraud, correct? Ryan answered, yeah, that is my fiduciary duty. He confirmed that the inflection point was not just one day, it was the whole time in the post-election November, December timeframe. And Ryan knew

that these conspiracy theories were baseless and that Fox should labor to dispel conspiracy theories if and when they pop up. So what the court filing showed was that Paul Ryan played a much more active and vocal role behind the scenes than I think had been previously known, and that he had used his position for being in the room to urge the Murdochs to push back against the flood of election lies on the network. But, and we discussed this during the podcast, he remains on the Fox board, even though the network continues to push baseless conspiracy theories about the election and January 6th. So here is the audio version of my conversation

at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with Paul Ryan last Thursday. Now, please join me in welcoming Charlie Sykes. I don't feel that I need to introduce Paul Ryan at any length. I think you all know for years I used to introduce Paul Ryan as that rare figure who was his party's political leader and intellectual leader at the same time. Of course, that was before Donald Trump came along. As you know, Paul Ryan is a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Congressman from Wisconsin, and in 2012 was the Republican Party nominee for Vice President of the United States. And he continues to be one of the most provocative speakers in America because he's one of the few people in America that still wants to talk about the looming debt crisis and the need to

reform entitlements. So it's my honor to introduce to you the former speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan. Evening. And actually Paul reminded me that we have known each other since 1993. 1993. So that's coming on 30 years. So a lot's happened. We need to catch up on a lot. I want to ask you, like, what the hell happened, Paul?

I mean, what happened with us? But let's start with a little bit. Your experience as speaker is one of the most, I mean, that is a unique experience in American politics. So I'm interested to know, as you watched Kevin McCarthy make one deal after another, give away one power after another, empower a lot of the people that you were, you know, you were able to keep in a box for a while. So what advice would you give to Speaker Kevin McCarthy about how do you handle the Freedom Caucus?

How do you handle the bomb throwers in his caucus when he only has a five vote majority? Yeah, I mean, we spoke as recently as, I don't know, six hours ago or something. So we still keep in touch. You know, it's funny. I actually wasn't looking for the job. As you remember, I was the job I wanted was chair of the Ways and Means Committee to do entitlement reform and tax reform.

And the reason I got the job is sort of similar to what just happened. John Boehner was sort of taken out by the Freedom Caucus at the beginning of the term. Kevin was majority leader next in line. I was actually on my way to nominate him for speaker in our party conference. It's a room like this with, you know, members sitting there. And he called me and said he didn't have the votes, the Freedom Caucus, he was going to nominate me. I said, the age you aren't. I didn't want to do that. And long story short, I ended up getting the job because he didn't have the votes then. And I became the consensus person that everybody agreed to support. And that's how I ended up becoming speaker. I did that for two terms.

And then we lost the majority. We've got it back. and then it came again. And the same kind of dynamic occurred. He didn't have the votes at the beginning, well, for 15 rounds, and there really wasn't another consensus person. So because there was really no plan B, no other person that everybody agreed to go to, he just sort of grinded it out and ended up getting it. And all those things that he had to concede is simply because we had a razor thin majority. And there are people who will leverage that no matter what. And that's what ended up happening. So what's going to happen is it's going to be a hard majority to manage. He's not going to be able to pass many bills with just Republican only votes, messaging bills. So he's going to have to bring bills to the floor that are going to be bipartisan. And he's going to have to manage

expectations on those things. The advice I give, and I won't get into all our private conversations, but the public advice I give is our party needs to start standing for things. We need to have a policy agenda. We need to have a vision to take to the country. And there's really no better place than what I call the boiler room of American politics, the House of Representatives. We're like the engine room. And I think it's important that we have a few things they got to get through, debt crisis, appropriations. We'll get to that. But after that, you know, that stuff happens, you've got a lot of time for the committees, and they're going to do oversight

hearings and all of those things. But having a gavel gives you the computing power, the intellectual power, the command of Congressional Budget Office and the Congressional Research Service and the Joint Tax, build an agenda, build a vision, build an agenda, solving problems, applying our principles, then taking it to the country. Don't wait for a nominee to arrive to then all of a sudden cobble something together. Work on it now. And that's what I did in 15. You know, when I started working on our agenda,

I thought Jeb Bush was going to be our nominee. So we built a very comprehensive agenda, got it drafted, written, scored, ready to go in 2016 if we had won the White House. So I'm basically recommending we do that again, because frankly, we've been adrift with like no platform. I mean, we literally had no platform in the 2020 cycle. So I think it's incumbent upon us

to build a platform and a vision. So you need to have a serious governing philosophy and approach. And policies that come from that to show how we're going to tackle the country's problems. Have you seen these guys? I mean, seriously, Paul. I know them all very well.

Honestly. So I managed the same. I mean, they're new people, but I managed the same caucus, and we did all of those things. You had a bigger majority. I definitely had a cushion. So I didn't have – most of those Freedom guys were there when I was there. And the thing is, I had a better vote cushion. So I didn't have it nearly as tough as Kevin is now.

So how did we get from, say, 2015, 2014, where you were the face of and the most well-known member of the House of Representatives? How did we go from Paul Ryan being the face of Republicans in the House to Marjorie Taylor Greene? I think it's the digital age we're in. I think we have a new wing of our party. I think the Democrats have the same thing. We have the entertainment wing of our party. You know, I actually go back to a, there's a few inflection points in time that I saw where this was starting. I get into it if you want me to, but about a decade ago, members of Congress at that point made a different calculation of what it is like to be in Congress and why I'm in Congress and what you do in Congress. And in the old days, like more than, you know, 11 years ago, I thought when I, you know, when I knew you and we went,

I picked you up at TMJ and then we went over and had breakfast one, no, lunch after your show one morning. I don't know if you remember that, 1987. I thought you scaled the meritocracy. I thought you were 17 years old. Yeah, you thought I was, you didn't think I was old enough to be in Congress. Well, I was 27 at the time. Yeah, I was two years. So I thought you scaled the meritocracy,

which means your measurement of your success is persuasion and policy. Can you come up with good ideas? You can persuade people, your constituents, your country, your colleagues that this is the right way to go. So I was raised in persuasion politics. What happened, honestly, I think it's the advent of decentralized media, hits and clicks, digitalization, all the rest, was performers came to Congress and realized, I don't have to spend all those years toiling in the committees, legislating, compromising, being a good legislator. If I'm really good with my thumbs on my digital presence, I can get great cable hits. I can become famous really fast.

I can raise a ton of money in small dollar donations online. And I can leapfrog this meritocracy. And look, Trump got the nomination in 16. Ted Cruz finished second. Jeb Bush finished like 12th. You know, so what happened was the beers overtook the doers, the performers over the legislators.

And that brought a whole raft of people to Congress saying, oh, I want to do that. And the Democrats got the same thing too. So I think that's sort of what kind of came in place. But it's not just the performers. I agree with you there. I mean, about the incentives. But you're also talking about something else that used to happen. There used to be guardrails, right? I mean, that if you had a congressman from Iowa who said nice things about white supremacy, the Republican Party would discipline him, would kick him off the committees. If you had a conspiracy theorist, somebody who trafficked in racism and anti-Semitism, they would not be promoted. Yeah, I kicked like five or six people out of Congress.

Would you put Marjorie Taylor Greene on the Homeland Security Committee? What I don't want to do, you're going to ask me a bunch of McCarthy. I don't want to Monday morning quarterback my successor. John Boehner didn't do to me. No, I know. You put him on. Thanks. Nice.

Cute. Cute. I am not going to Monday morning quarterback my successor. It's a tough enough job as it is. Boehner didn't do it to me. I'm not going to do it to Kevin. We're different people. We make different decisions. But I'm not going to do it to Kevin. We're different people. We make different decisions,

but I'm not going to go through and take for tat what he's doing or isn't doing. I just don't think that's good for him. But to your point, the whole culture is degraded. Should Marty Taylor Greene be a leader of the Republican Party? I think idea people should be the leader of the Republican Party. People with vision, principles, and solutions should be the leader of our party.

And you know, I think that. Well, you just mentioned you didn't want to second guess Kevin McCarthy. One of the things that he did. But you want to ask me another second guess? Well, I mean, you know, there are things happening in the world. Kevin McCarthy has had an evolving position on what happened on January 6th. Okay. So let's set him aside for a moment. I won't ask you about his decision to give 40,000 hours of surveillance tape to Tucker Carlson at Fox News. What I would ask you, though, is like, what do you think happened on January 6th? And what should Republicans say about it and do about it going forward?

Yeah, that's an easy one for me to call. It was terrible. It was an insurrection. It was violent. We should have done a bicameral bipartisan committee in the first place. So I would have, you know, and there I just Monday morning quarterbacked a guy.

I believe it was a travesty. Trump is to blame. He should be held accountable for it, at least politically speaking. And the last thing we should do is try and whitewash it. We should castigate it. We should call it for what it was, say it should never happen again, make sure that you've made adjustments in security and things like that to make sure it never happens again, and condemn the heck out of it.

And the one person who did that was Liz Cheney. It's more than just Liz. And Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans engineered her ouster from leadership and then engineered her defeat. Is there any room in the Republican Party for someone who says that? So that's a good question. So I'd say it was more than Liz. Six people, I think, voted for that second impeachment. I may get the vote wrong.

Adam Kinzinger. That's who I've campaigned for in this last—I don't do a lot of campaigning. I went and campaigned for those people. I went down and campaigned for Tom Rice and campaigned for these folks. We helped Peter Myers campaign. You know, Jamie Herrera Butler, good friends. I wanted to make sure that those people survived and they didn't. Almost every one of them lost. A couple of them won. So what does that tell you about? Or they left. Gonzalez, I love that guy. You know, I recruited him. So what does that tell you about the future of this party, your party?

You know, it reminds me, when you and I, when you would say Rhino on TMJ in, say, I don't know, 2004, actually, whenever Glenn ran against Mary Panzer, you were really vocal in that race. We're going way back now. And you used the word rhino, and we all use it. And what the word rhino back in those days meant, I'm actually getting an answer to your question. What rhino in those days meant was, it stands for Republican in name only, just for people who aren't diehard Republicans. I assume you're all diehard Republicans, right? I'm just kidding. So what rhino meant in those days was a more moderate liberal Republican

versus conservative on a philosophical scale. Not a temperament, but a philosophical scale. What RINO means today is it's a pure fealty index to Trump. So if you have low fealty to Donald Trump, you're a RINO. If you have great fealty to Donald Trump, you're a perfect Republican. That's kind of what's happened. And so we've gone from measuring people based on their philosophy or even their temperament to like a fealty index. That to me is very wrong and dangerous. So what they did, what the Trump crowd did was they went after all of these people.

Liz is just the one everybody knows about, but there's about six or seven others who either just didn't run again because they didn't want to deal with it or they got beat. And that to me is a very bad trend. I'm thankful and hopeful that this is going to pass through. I just hope it's in time for the next cycle. How shocked are you by what happened and how fast it happened? Yeah, you're not talking about just January 6th, but the party? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm sorry. I am pretty shocked. You know, when I took the job as speaker, I did it because I wanted to get policy stuff done. And it was a job that needed to be done. We prepared this great agenda. At the time, the field was like 14 or 15 people. And nobody thought Donald Trump was going to get the nomination.

I mean, I thought we actually stopped him here in Wisconsin. When Cruz won by like 13 points, I thought, okay, he's leaving. And then he won Indiana and got the nomination. And then his campaign was very interesting. I didn't think he was going to win. I don't think he didn't think he was going to win. So none of us actually thought the guy was going to win. Then he won. So then a lot of us, people like Mitch and myself said, well, we got to make this work. I mean, it's the country,

you know, so let's go figure this out and make this work, get this agenda passed. And we had a pretty good two-year run of getting a lot of good stuff done and passed. I built this big Gantt chart that I showed to him on what we're going to do for the next two years in Congress. And he just deteriorated. And he obviously won 16. He did not win 20. He didn't win it here. He didn't win it in the country. And our party got taken over with this wave of populism so quickly that it did shock me. My personal experience in theory on this, to give you a quick answer to your question, is when Mitt and I lost in 12, our pollster was telling us we had a very good chance of winning. They weren't telling us we were going to win for sure, but they were

telling us they thought we were going to win. I won't go through hurricanes and stuff like that. Our base thought we were going to win. So Republican voters and our base voters believed we were going to win win and we didn't. So I think the conclusion for the next cycle was enough of these nice guys, enough of these policy people. I want an apex predator. I want a middle finger to the establishment, to everybody else. And so it's not by coincidence, Trump got the nomination, Cruz, you know, a real, you know real kind of bomb thrower, got second place. So I think the base just got fed up of losing

and decided to throw the greatest entertainer, the greatest disruptor they could at it, and it was Trump. And I think that that's basically what happened. And then he built this sort of kind of cult of personality movement, sort of speak around it. But you also have the transformation of the base, as you're talking about, what the base wants, what they're willing to put up with. And one of the things that we found out is that they wanted somebody who was going to punch somebody in the nose. But it turns out they were not interested in deficit reduction, in entitlement reform.

They didn't care about this. They didn't want immigration reform. They were very, very different than I think a lot of people thought they were. And many of the things that, you know, that you talked about, the base just kind of shrugged off. I mean, and that hasn't changed and won't change necessarily, right, when Donald Trump leaves. Yeah, the real whipsaw to me was right before that was the Tea Party. And the Tea Party movement was a limited government, anti-tax, low-spending movement. It was a fiscal conservative movement.

And so then we switched to what you just described. So that whipsaw happened so fast. So in this digital age, populism is getting digitized. And what worries me the most is it's a populism untethered to any coherent principle or governing thesis. So populism is great if it's principled. I want our principles and policies to be made popular. But if it's populism solely for the point of just winning an election or advancing a personality, then that's kind of where we've come. Let me finish. I don't think the base is quite a miss or a drift or a cork on the ocean like you're saying. I really do believe that there are core roots of conservatism properly understood, of classical liberal conservatism, limited government conservatism. I do think there is a beginning of a new

appreciation for our fiscal situation, for our debt and our deficits. You see, the fight over the debt limit with populists in Congress is overspending. The fact that they're waging the fight, you may not like the way it's being done, but the fact that it's overspending and debt tells you many of our base believe that that's a popular position to take. So I think it is coming back around full circle. But the conservative movement, as you well know, has gone through so many churns and machinations. And we, you and I have been a piece of the fight in that conservative movement from our sort of corner of it. And right now, the sort of the dominant wing is sort of the more populist wing right now. So let's talk about fiscal conservatism and whether it's coming back. That was obviously,

you know, front and center at the State of the Union address where Republicans were saying, no, no, no, we're not going to touch Social Security and Medicare. Donald Trump's made it very clear that he's going to oppose any sort of reform. I want to read something that Catherine Rempel wrote from the Washington Post, because you're out with a new book about fiscal conservatism. It's really important that we get a handle on this. I think I'm correct that you were asked, what is the greatest threat facing the country in the debt crisis, which we've been talking about. So the debt crisis is the number one threat facing America. This is what Catherine Rempel wrote. Breaking scientific news.

Researchers have identified a previously unknown species in Washington, D.C. Like cicadas, this species stays underground for years at a time, typically in four or eight year intervals. Its members hide away until there is an auspicious change in the ecosystem. Then they bust out and wreak havoc. This species, Republicans who say they care about deficits. So, Paul. It's pronounced cicada, just so you know. Cicada, okay.

Yeah. All right. So, you guys were in charge for a while. You had been saying that the debt, you know, and yet you leave office, entitlements untouched, deficit exploding. Donald Trump adds $7.8 trillion, third highest amount.

Your, you know, signature piece, the big tax cut added about 1.8, $1.9 trillion to the deficit. Those actually, yes, it was didn't bear true actually,

but, but yes, go ahead. I'm with your thread. Those actually estimates didn't bear true, actually. But yes, go ahead. I'm with your thread. So there are people who will go, wait, so the Republicans said they were for deficit reduction and they were for all of this stuff, but then when they were in power, they were not at all interested.

And now you want to come out and say, like the cicada, that, hey, no, really, we are. We're back here. We're fiscal concerned. You know me, and you know I've been remarkably consistent on these issues. I did the Murray-Ryan agreement. I put the budget caps in place, the BCA, you name it. I put the biggest entitlement reform bill that Congress in the history of our country had ever considered, cutting trillions in deficit and debt reduction in the first 10 years, multiple trillions in the second 10 years.

And that was a bill that reformed the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid, much like the way we propose to do in this book that we just put out at AEI. And that vote passed the House, biggest debt reduction plan ever considered by Congress. And it failed by one vote in the United States Senate. I won't get into that, but it was that one vote, which frankly, we thought we had the vote, and then we lost the vote. It failed by one vote. So it was not for lack of trying. It's not as if we didn't put bills on the floor and try and get these things through. And the way we got Trump, I think, on that was he, it was replacing Obamacare, so he was there for it. But once that effort did not succeed, he absolutely lost any

appetite for fiscal conservatism, for debt reduction, to the point where he, you could take a quote today from Joe Biden or Donald Trump and switch the names to the quotes, and it will sound the same. They are both saying the same thing.iden and trump are both acting so incredibly unpresidential on this issue they are demagoguing entitlement reform they're they're playing scare senior politics right now and the worst of that is is the very people they claim to be supporting saying we're not going to touch anything how dare these people people? That courts bankruptcy. What we do know, because the trustees of these programs are telling us, is within a decade, both Medicare and Social Security go insolvent. What does that mean? That means in a decade, today's seniors, when they're on Social

Security, they get a 23% across-the-board benefit cut from there on after, if we do nothing, when insolvency happens. So stepping in front of this problem, knowing we have a debt crisis coming, doing something about it now, and by the way, the reforms that we're all talking about don't change the benefits for today's retirees. It's for those of us who are ex-generations on. But is there any political will at all? You're saying stepping in front of it. I mean, that's like stepping in front of a train. Yeah, I mean, this has been my Sisyphus thing. I got two big issues that got away, immigration reform and entitlement reform. Good luck.

Yeah, thanks. I'm out of office. But it was really clear to me that Trump had no stomach or interest because it wasn't, in his opinion, popular. And so he is engaging in this populism. Biden's engaging in this populism. It's literally the opposite of what leaders should do. It sounds like House Republicans are as well. I mean, no, no. So Joe Biden said you guys are going to. Now, that was just a. OK, that was that's that's just don't read into that.

You're going to put cuts to these programs for current seniors on the debt limit. Nobody's talking about that. That was Biden trying to bait people into a trap to go after them politically. But the fact that he's going after them politically to try and demagogue this issue is, to me, just a low point in leadership. And you do have House Republicans. We passed four budgets when I was there, when I was budget chair to speaker. Four times we passed four budgets that balanced the budget and paid off the debt, that reformed our entitlement programs, that moved the retirement age, that means-tested Medicare, that did premium support, that did all of these things. We've done this. We voted for these things, and we lived to tell about it. Remember those ads they ran against me here with this throwing a gram off a cliff, this guy who looked like me pushing a woman with a wheelchair off a cliff? We survived all of that

and did fine politically. So we didn't lose our elections because of entitlement reform. But this seems like a throwback to the before. I think they're getting better. We've got a good guy named Jody Arrington, head of the budget committee, Brian Stile. I mean, we got really good people who understand this issue, who care and are passionate about it, who I think are going to go at it again.

The question is, are they going to do it in the face of both party leaders, Biden and Trump? And I'll concede Trump's probably the leader right now. Both party leaders demagoguing this issue, ducking this issue, trying to scare seniors in a very irresponsible way. Are any of the presidential candidates, do you think, going to step up on this issue? I think so. I know Mike Pence knows this issue well, agrees on these things. I'm not going to speak for the guy. I do. I think Trump's the one. I don't think, you know, I know pretty much every one of them pretty well. And I think they all understand the magnitude of this problem and understand the need to address it. And they, in the House, you know, Pence voted for these things.

Tim Scott voted for these things. Mike Pompeo voted for all these budgets I just described. Many, many years ago. I'm just telling you, I think. In the old world the pre-trump world okay i'm kind of dancing around this but you announced within the last month that you are never again trump yeah one want to parse this never again trump means so never I wasn't like you, a never Trumper. Yeah. You all know Charlie is a never Trumper. So I was not a never Trumper like you. He won in 16. I did vote for him in 16.

And I worked hard to make it work. Yeah. And watched what unfolded between now and then. And so that's why I'm a never again Trumper because I want to win. We're going to lose with him. Look, the evidence is pretty clear. We lost the House in 18 because of Trump. We lost the presidency, obviously, in 20 because of Trump. We lost the Senate in 20 because of Trump. Then there are, by my count, five Senate seats this cycle in 22 we lost because of Trump. And by most sort of smart people in our

party, by most of their measurements, we lost about 12 to 15 seats in the House because of Trump. So Kevin McCarthy would have had a nice 20-some vote cushion had it not been for Trump. So the point I'm making is we know we lose with him. And so we know we will lose with him again if we nominate this guy, especially in January 6th happened after the 20 election. So you think he became more popular with swing voters in the wild counties, you know, since January 6th? So my point is we're going to lose with the guy. So let's move on. But a lot of Republicans who have said we need to move on, been very, very critical, agree with everything you just said, though, when they get to this question, if he is the nominee of the Republican Party, will you support him?

Yeah, no, I didn't vote for him this last time. Okay, so never means never. Yeah, I mean, look, I agree he's unfit for office, but that's not the point I try to make, because I don't think that point is as compelling to people who would vote for Donald Trump. I think the more compelling point is, you may like this guy, but you know we lose with him, so let's go with somebody else. That's not a compelling argument, that he is unfit, that he tried to overthrow the government. Not with Trump voters.

We're talking primary politics here. I'm not talking about the national, I'm talking about the primary election. The future of the Republican primary. I would like to beat the left. I would like Republicans to win. I don't want the progressives running the country. I don't want Joe Biden to have a big another term and a big vote count to ram through a progressive agenda. I want our party to be a conservative party and win the election. And in order to do that,

I would say, yes, a good practical argument that gets us past Trump in a primary. And by the way, I think if we nominate someone not named Donald Trump, we will win the election. I feel pretty strong in saying that. So if it's a year from now and he looks like he's going to be the nominee and he's 10 points up in the poll because Joe Biden's not a failure. Oh, you mean, are you talking about president or primary? No, no. General election. He's leading Biden.

And therefore, Republicans think this guy can win. He's going to win. What's left of your argument if it's all about winning and losing? It's a tougher argument to make. Is it a tougher argument? Then I'll switch to the fitness argument. How's that sound for you? How about the lying and the sedition?

How about his position on Ukraine or with Vladimir Putin or the fact that he tried to shake down Volodymyr Zelensky for weapons? How about, you know, the whole comment about shithole countries or telling Democratic congresswomen of color that they should have to go back? Charlie. How about all of that? Charlie. It seems like compelling arguments. Who we have to convince are the people who would vote for him again.

Yeah. So I don't think I have to show Charlie Sykes he's the wrong guy. I won't name names, but I can think of a lot of people in the first congressional district of Wisconsin, people who knocked on doors for me for 20 years, who would vote for him.

So what I want to do is convince them on an argument that is compelling to them. I don't want to insult them saying, you're a bad person for voting for this guy. I don't think that's a good way to talk to people. I don't think it's a good way to respect people. I want to tell them we lose with him. We win with whoever the other name. That to me is a better argument. And it's more respectful of those voters that we can get to vote for somebody else. So we're about to go into the primary season. We have Nikki Haley's in the race. It looks like

it looks like Rhonda Sanders is going to get into the race. Mike Pence clearly is thinking about getting into the race. Can you move the Republican Party past Donald Trump? Can you beat him in a primary without actually challenging him, without saying his name, without saying, this is what he says about Ukraine. This is what I say about Ukraine. This is what he says about Ukraine, this is what I say about Ukraine, this is what he says about these issues. I mean, are we going to have to get that? Or are Republicans engaging in the magical thinking

of just sort of hoping that he's going to disappear? Yeah, that's what happened the last time. Yes. And that was the result. Most people in the last one thought, the guy's going to implode, I'm going to draft behind him, and then I'll receive these votes. And so let's just leave him alone,

and then I'll be the recipient of his supporters by not going after him. And that, look what happened. I don't think that's going to be the game again. That's a different story. That's the last election. He is the front runner. You got to give him that. I think there are going to be people that shoot at him. I think it's different kinds of personalities that get in the race, but I think there will happen. I think there's two lanes. So there's probably more than two lanes. In this parlance, people talk about lanes you run in. And I have my own personal opinion. But I think where people,

so let's speak in good Wisconsin hockey terms. Where the puck is right now, people are skating to a Trump 2.0 candidacy, fight the culture war, tap the anger, entertainment, and win the primary that way. This is, remember, we're talking primary. I think personally, it's going to be a really ugly two years here between just investigations, just polarization and politics.

I think the puck is going to be somewhere else in 2024. Now, there's a bunch of wishful thinking in this. You can hear me out, though. And the more or less crowded lane from the Trump 2.0 lane is going to be a Reagan 2.0 lane. Somebody who is a verifiable, proven conservative on the right side of the woke wars, so to speak, but is pitching themselves as an aspirational, unifying figure. That person, I think you could make a great argument, is far better to win the general election, a Reagan 2.0 than a Trump 2.0.

And you have to use that argument in the primary to say, I can win the whole thing. That's a harder argument to make. It's more of a bank shot, but it's gonna be a whole lot less crowded field. Because I think you're gonna have a handful of Trump 2.0 people. But I do believe, to your earlier question, they will go after him and do the contrast. It's different personalities. I mean, it's just Nikki that's in the race right now, I think, right? So it's different personalities because they have no choice but to do that. Because he's going to shoot at them anyway.

So they're going to have to start shooting back. So in 2016, he benefited from the crowded field. And a lot of states, you have a winner-take-all primary. So he can win, rack up a lot of delegates with just a plurality of the vote. I mean, you could have 60, 70% of Republicans voting against him, but he would still be the nominee. So does he benefit from a crowded field? He does. He does. And do Republicans, including the candidates, understand how that worked in 2016? Do they understand that dynamic? Yeah, they do, they do. And like I said, most of these people

are pretty good friends of mine. Yes is the answer to your question. So primary process is a pretty good sorting mechanism. But remember Scott, he got out, was it after New Hampshire or Iowa? Scott Walker. Yeah. No, he didn't even make it that far.

He didn't make it to Iowa? No. Okay, so he got out and then encouraged others to do the same, and then everybody thought, no, no, no, I'm going to be the one to get this. So I think that dynamic is going to be far more powerful. So I would say, and look, you have to study the Electoral College a little more closely, and it always changes every cycle. After, say, the first three,

Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina before super Tuesday. Yeah. My hope and goal, let me go. My hope for this would be you have a massive constriction of the, of the field.

So you're going to have, let's just say eight people run that aren't Trump. And those eight people are going to spend all this time between now and the first caucus in Iowa, seeing how valuable they are, seeing how much money they can raise, what their polls are looking like. And then come one or two elections, you know, Iowa, New Hampshire, they can just get the heck out of the race. I think there'll be tremendous pressure, tremendous pressure from just the party, from people, donors, you name it, to really crimp

this field down pretty damn fast. But I think it's too much to ask that only a couple people run that aren't named Trump right now. You got a year to go. So I think you're going to have a relatively crowded field for a year, seeing if they take or not, get through a couple elections, and then before it's too late, when the Electoral College really starts racking up, you know, get out of the race. I think that would be the prevailing dynamic at the time. I think this actually relates to it. How confident are you that the Republican Party will continue to support Ukraine?

I raise this because this campaign is going to be divided between people like Donald Trump, who have expressed, we know where he comes down. Kevin McCarthy has said no more blank check. Ron DeSantis seems to be echoing a lot of the Trumpian rhetoric. On the other hand, you have very, very strong supporters of Ukraine, Nikki Haley and others. So how confident are you? I feel good about it. I feel good about it. Just look at the vote count in the last $40 billion supplemental.

98 votes in the Senate, and it was like 382 in the House. That's a really good vote count. And that's with this crowd. So I feel very good about it. And more importantly, the leaders who write these bills, the four Mikes, we have four guys named Mike in charge of our foreign policy committees, you know, Gallagher, Turner, McCall, and I'm missing the other one. So we got all the people in charge of those committees passionately for Ukraine, McConnell and his leadership team, and McCarthy as well, and his leadership team. So I'm not that stressed about it. We started talking about the changing nature of the Republican Party and the entertainment wing

and the influence of the entertainment wing, which also sometimes has been the id for the Republican base. Feel free to disagree with me. I mean, you can see where the party is going sometimes by listening to some of these hosts. And I would say that one of the most active anti-Ukraine, pro-Putin voices in America today is on Fox News. Who is that? Tucker Carlson. Okay, I'm just setting you up there. We should talk about Fox News. Who is that? Tucker Carlson. Yeah, okay. I'm just setting you up there.

We should talk about Fox News for a moment. We should talk about this because Donald Trump sitting down in Mar-a-Lago is convinced that you are pulling the strings at Fox News. So tell me a little bit about what responsibility as a member of the board you have. So the board, you don't decide content and personnel. You don't decide who goes on the air, who doesn't, what they say. That's not what you do in the board.

I mean, it's a big company. It's got, it has WITI here, you know, in Milwaukee. It's got TV stations across the country, NFL contracts, Fox Sports, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, a television station, you know, The Simpsons, lots and lots and lots of stuff. So the board, you don't do that. Do I have disagreements with different personalities on Fox? Of course I do. It's a big tent. It's a huge conservative movement. You'd probably ask me why I'm on the board. I think that's probably where you're going next. I think it's really important in society that we have strong cultural private institutions that can stand up toward what I would call sort of a woke conformity. I think it's really important for the sake of

pluralism that you have alternative voices that are readily accessible and are strong enough to stand up for pluralism, then get sort of pushed down. So for, if only for that reason alone, I think it's very important to have an institution like that. Do I disagree with Tucker on this stuff? Of course I do. Yeah, absolutely disagree with him. We're different kinds of conservatives. I don't agree with that part. So you probably didn't get it, but I wrote an open letter to you in Politico magazine about Fox. I brought one for you. Okay, thanks. I brought you a copy. When was this? Was this recently? And he basically said, you know, look, I mean, at this particular moment, you have Tucker Carlson spreading the great replacement theory about race, you know, some of the rawest racism that we have in American culture. We had disinformation about the pandemic.

We had an ongoing revision of January 6th, you know, actually undermining democracy. And I guess the point was, okay, I understand the need to have another point of view, but if you are on the board of directors of a company that is pumping toxic sludge, racism, disinformation, and attacks on democracy, if you don't stand up now, then when? So what do you really think? Well, and that's what I, and I'm sorry I got lost in the mail, but so do you have any responsibility?

I do. I have a responsibility to offer my opinion and perspective, and I do that, but I don't go out on TV and do it. Right, I understand. So I have a responsibility. But do you? I do, I do. I offer my perspective and my opinion often.

I'll just leave it at that. Okay, so you have raised these particular questions. I'll just leave it at that. Okay, so you have raised these particular questions. I'll just leave it at that. Is there a red line for you at any point where you said, I cannot be associated with a company that does this? I want to see the conservative movement get through this moment.

And I think Fox is a big part of the constellation of the conservative movement. And I want to see, it really is. Is it the solution or the problem? Oh no, I think it's going to have to be a part of the solution if we're going to solve the problem of the conservative movement. And I want to see, it really is. Is it the solution or the problem? Oh, no, I think it's going to have to be a part of the solution if we're going to solve the problem of the conservative movement, because there isn't a bigger platform than this in America. So I think the conservative movement is going through a lot of churn and a lot of turmoil. And I don't like where it is right

now. You know that. You know the kind of of concern I'm a classical liberal constitutional, you know, limited government, free enterprise, conservative, a Jack Kemp, Ronald Reagan, conservative. So I want to make sure that we get through this moment, the screed you just made on Fox on, I think that was probably just Tucker. Um, I could go four times as long about other stuff that I think are really good that are on there that are being advanced and voices that are being heard on Fox News that are giving voice to what I would call conservatism properly understood. So it's a long process, a big institution, but I do want to make sure that we get the conservative movement in a good place in America again. Now, I'm for a Reagan 2.0 candidate. I want to see a Reagan 2.0 type of movement. I hate hearkening back to the past,

but I think that was such a principled, philosophically grounded movement that I think doing it for the 21st century is what is in store, in order for this country. And our major cultural institutions that back up conservatism have got to be a part of that solution. You used a word that virtually every conservative and Republican has used, and I use it a lot as well, but I'd be interested in having your definition. What do you mean by woke? So that's a divergent views.

That is what I mean when I say this wokeism. So, you know, if you want to dissect, you know, individual slogans and issues and statements and phrases and blah, blah, blah, that's not really what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is this rigid, progressive orthodoxy that is anti-pluralistic, that seeks to stifle dissension and enforce bludgeon people into conformity. That's what I mean when I say that. Okay, I mean, it's also an attack on free speech. That's what I mean. Is it? Yeah., and it's also an attack on free speech. That's what I mean. Is it? Yeah. And yet Republican governors and legislators

all around the country are banning books. I'm not a fan of doing that. I'm a limited government guy. I don't think you ban squat, just stand up. That's why I think you have to have cultural institutions to stand up for these things, not laws. We have the laws. We have the First Amendment.

Cultural institutions that stand up for these things. I actually remember, you'll remember this, where you got into a little bit of trouble by some people when you described yourself

as a classical liberal. Yeah. And of course, Nobody understood what the heck that meant. I don't know if it was somebody on Fox, but it was like,

see, Paul Ryan has declared that he's a liberal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there is, I think that was actually Tucker Carlson, now that memory serves. Oh, was it?

Yeah, I think it was. So, do you guys know what serves. Oh, was it? Yeah, I think it was. So do you guys know what we mean? So we've known each other a long time. Classical liberal is, can I give me two minutes? Yeah, please. So the progressives in here, in this state,

in the early 20th century, called themselves progressives. They kind of blew up the label. It became unpopular. It didn't work. They went Bob LaFault and Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. They blew through it. And liberals then were like Calvin Coolidge and conservatives. So classical liberal is sort of the renaissance. It's like the founders. The classical liberal is limited government, a liberal free society.

What the progressives did in the early, correct me if I'm wrong because you're a big study of this. The progressives grabbed the word liberal. It was a more popular word and used that word and became liberals. And conservatives shifted over and grabbed the word conservative. What conservatives, as I describe it, want to do is conserve those critical founding principles like natural rights and natural law on which our country's founded. So a classical liberal is a person who believes in those core founding principles of natural law and natural rights. Our rights come from nature and nature's God, to quote the Declaration of Independence, not from government. They're pre-government. They're ours as sovereign individuals, not governments. And so a government with a constitution instituted to defend those rights so that we can enjoy our lives, have free society, where the role and goal

of government is the equality of opportunity, not the equality of outcomes, is a very different kind of government. That's what a conservative wants to conserve or more specifically, a classical liberal. But this discussion has been lost in the conservative movement for a long time. Well, and I was going to mention, there are a lot of conservatives who now are rejecting the idea that America is an idea. These are the blood and soil conservatives.

Yeah, I totally disagree with those guys. That to me is a big fight in the conservative movement. It is a huge fight in the conservative movement going forward. Big time. Europe has the same problem. So you look at the center-right movement in Europe like the center-right movement here in America. I just want to make sure we're not losing people with this. It's hyper-nationalism.

It's hyper-nationalism that believes. So this country is a country. The only one ever founded on an idea, the one I just described. Our rights are ours as sovereign people. country is a country. The only one ever founded on an idea, the one I just described. You know, our rights are ours as sovereign people. And you don't have to be born here to become an American. In this country, the condition of your birth doesn't determine the outcome of your life. And we have this system of the rule of law where we can make great lives for ourselves. And we're going to have different outcomes of our lives because we'll have different talents and different

efforts. And that's what free society gives you. What these nationalists want to do is talk about whether you're born here or not. You know, they fight over land and birthright. It rejects the entire concept of natural rights and natural law. Most European countries were founded this way. And so a lot of these right wing movements in Europe have kind of gravitated over here to where people think manifest destiny, you know, the melting pot, whatever, you know, all these terms are bad terms. This country as an idea is no longer, you know, what we want anymore. And that is a big fight in the conservative movement that we're going to have to win. All right. Let's go to some of these questions, including some of the people who, you know, want to take issue with some of your public policy. And so let me summarize

this. You talk a lot. You're very, very concerned. And I think, you know, have distinguished yourself by being concerned about poverty. And yet, of course, your signature legislation are tax cuts for the rich. So the question is, do you believe that America's debt problem is created because rich people don't have enough money and poor and elderly people have too much money. Is that the question? Are you actually reading the question? This is the rap that, you know, I mean, this is the intellectual backdrop

to the, you know, pushing granny off the cliff. So how do you answer that? Because if the answer to the deficit is, let's keep cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy and find a way to not give so much money. You got too much MSNBC in you, Charlie. You got to chill out on that. These people want to know the answer to this.

So, okay. I mean, how much time do you want me to answer that? I could go on and on. So, first of all, life and the economy is not a zero-sum game. The economy is not a fixed pie where the government then has to sit around and decide who gets what slice. That is not how a free society works. And that's actually not how life works or the economy works. It's dynamic. A rising tide can lift all boats. You can have win-win situation. Everybody can do well. And so what you want to do is have an

economic policy that allows for that to happen. And by the way, that tax bill, it cut more taxes percentage-wise and the bottom of the income scale than the top end by far. It led to the fastest wage growth for the bottom two income quintiles, meaning that the poorest of the poor did the best percentage-wise, growth-wise, after those tax cuts. It was the best wage gain we've seen in a generation, non-inflationary wage gain. It was tremendously successful. Oh, and by the way, it stopped all these US companies from inverting. Miller is a US company, but Bud is a Belgian company.

I can go on and on and on. We were about to see a raft of US companies moving overseas because of our tax laws. So it was a great thing to do. It put a solid foundation on our economy. It led to more productivity, higher wages, higher living standards. The key is economic growth, opportunity, upward mobility. The stuff I do in poverty, whether it's through my foundation, my work at Notre Dame, or the American Enterprise Institute, is using the field of economics to find what works in fighting poverty in order to reignite upper mobility. Half of this book

is about how to get people out of poverty, how to rewrite and redesign the social safety net so that it doesn't trap people, make people into lifetime dependents, but gets people up and out of poverty, independent, on their own, you're doing well, living the best version of their lives. There is a lot we have learned in economics and in policy on how to go at root causes of poverty in order to break the cycle of poverty. And it starts by measuring our poverty policies based on outcome, not based on effort. And so to me, I think we're going to have a breakthrough in this area because I think we've made great, great policies. It's what I spend most of my time on, entitlement reform and poverty reform. So I'll take my record any day over what the left has

offered on the welfare state that have been failed, that we've had. Okay. I'm just a messenger now. Yeah, I got it. I thought it was MSNBC talking. it. Has your stance on the privatization of Social Security changed or evolved since leaving office? No. And by the way, it's not privatizing Social Security. It's making personal accounts. Privatizing Social Security means, you know, here's your FICA taxes. Good luck. Go find a nice broker.

That's privatizing Social Security. What I have long proposed is that— let's back up for a second. I'm 53 years old. At my age, the best Social Security could pay me, if it could pay me my benefit, which it doesn't have the cash to do, is between a 0% to 1% rate of return on my FICA taxes over my working life. For these students here, they are looking at a negative 1% rate of return on their money. So my point is, why don't we allow people to have a property right over their benefit, take their employee side of the FICA tax, and put it in accounts that are run just like the federal Thrift Savings Plan that federal employees have,

where they can have their money be put into the market, stocks and bonds, indexed for their age, as safe as it can be, so they can get about a 6% to 7% return on their money instead of a negative 1% return on their money, make it their private property. So unlike my family, when my dad died, my mom had to pick her benefit or his, not both. It can be transferred to your family and then finance the current benefit. That's a longer conversation. So I think it's a really good idea. I don't think it's our idea ready for prime time. So I haven't abandoned my idea at all. I think it's the best way to go. You can fix Social Security without doing that. And what you'll do

is either, you know, trim the benefits. I think means testing is a smart way to do that. Raise the retirement age because life expectancy is bigger. Change the way taxes are paid. But all that means is those kids now getting negative 1% rate of return will get less than that if that's all you do. What is your greatest piece of unfinished business from your speakers? Entitlement reform and immigration reform. I broke my pick on immigration reform, three different efforts. They were spectacular failures. I think if you fix the immigration laws in this country and you fix our entitlement problem and avoid a debt crisis, we're going to have an awesome century. Speaking of a debt crisis, how worried are you about the debt ceiling and whether or not we're going to have a default?

I'm not too worried about it. There'll be a lot of hysterics. The market may flutter a little bit. But because of what Treasury and the Fed can do, I'm not concerned that we will violate our full faith in credit. It's not asking too much to get some kind of budget reform paired with it. I did two of them with Obama, so that's not a ridiculous ask. Didn't one of them result in us having our credit rating lowered? That was momentary.

That was the BCA in 2011. It was for about a – not permanently. What came out of the BCA were spending caps, basically, and we cut a lot of spending. And then Patty Murray and I did a deal two years later to replace that with's going to be hysterics. It's going to be a little panicky, but I think at the end of the day, we'll get through it. So what do you think is working well in higher education? What needs to improve and what role should the government play in supporting this public education? But let's stick with higher education. The whole question of affordability, student debt, the Biden administration wants to forgive student debt. You know, the Biden administration wants to forgive student debt. Yeah, that's not even constitutional. But, and I think he'll lose in court on that. But I believe, like in healthcare, that you need more transparency on what you get for your money, more transparency, accreditation reform, and get at the root causes of academic inflation, meaning tuition inflation, which is high, higher than normal inflation. And I did a lot of Pell Grant bills. What happens is

if you goose up funding, it just goes into higher tuition and bigger debt for kids. So I really think you've got to get at the root cause of inflation, which is all these spending increases. I think a lot of transparency and then measuring what do you get for the degree and how much does it cost? So having connecting the metric with the result of the education, the placement of people in their chosen professions, what they end up making after it. I think Mitch Daniels has probably put the best, most comprehensive reforms in this issue out there. So let me just, you know, pass you over to Mitch Daniels, who just left as the Chancellor of Purdue, really good reforms, and that go after academic tuition. That's what needs to happen. Higher ed's not doing well. Having said that, you know, we know we got

to win STEM if we're going to compete in the world, if we're going to do well with our competition with China, more STEM. UWM's great at STEM. I mean, I love this freshwater science school. I've toured that thing a couple of times, the Luminology Center here. So more STEM and more classics. And, you know, frankly, I think we do pretty well in that area. So you mentioned China.

We haven't gotten to China yet. How serious a threat does China pose? You know, one of our, you know, Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher is now the chair of this select committee. So how worried should we be about the ongoing competition? And what strategy should we employ? Yeah, I think it's a major, major challenge.

It's like I see three really big issues for us, China, entitlements, and immigration. I think there's major issues there. I think China is a serious, it's a serious issue because I see the country being tested in two major ways from within with the polarization, whether we can get our mojo together and fix our problems before they get out of control, like a debt crisis, and the challenge to democracy and the model of democracy itself from without. And so China is the challenger. Not only are they stealing our technology through espionage, joint ventures, and lots of other tactics, that's got to be dealt with. I see China as a one through 20 year problem. After 20 years, when their population implodes

and the demographics turn inward, they're in serious trouble. I think they know that. That's why they think their back's against the wall and they're in a race. So I think they're trying to dominate through hegemony, you know, the world. I think it's bad for trade. I think it's bad for the economy. I think it's bad for liberty. It's bad for democracy. So only the United States can really lead

and stand up to this. So I think we have a real challenge to stand up to this. Having said all of that, I think when we do decoupling, which we're doing decoupling, it's going to be smart decoupling. It can't be crude and unintelligent. Let's have global trade and trade with China Having said all of that, I think when we do decoupling, which we're doing decoupling, it's going to be smart decoupling. It can't be crude and unintelligent.

Let's have global trade and trade with China on the things that do not affect our national security. You know, car seats or something like that. Goods and services that do not affect national security and then decouple on the things that do affect our national security. And, you know, I'm actually heartened about this issue because I think it's sort of the one bipartisan thing left. And, you know, Mike, Mike is going to run a committee with Democrats. He's got tremendous respect for the other side of the aisle. He's going to be like the George Kennan of our time, a Milwaukee guy who basically articulated Soviet containment policy. This Green Bay guy is going to be one of the architects of this China policy that I believe will be bipartisan. And so I'm actually optimistic on this issue.

To quickly answer, I think Taiwan is more of a five to ten year problem, not really a one to five year problem. But it is a problem. So not to trigger you on this one, but if I remember correctly, though, you were a big advocate for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which would have isolated China in terms of American trade in Asia. That's right. And that was canceled in the first days of the Trump administration. Huge mistake. I mean, he and I had lots of arguments about that. Huge mistake. I was with Obama on that. I mean, that just outs me, I guess. So I wrote the TPA law so Obama could go negotiate TPP. He negotiated a pretty good deal. I would have done this and that differently. I mentioned this to the students in the other room. It was one of the smartest

things we could do with a China policy. Have America with our democratic allies in Asia write the rules of the global trading order. Trump and Clinton came out against that thing and it killed it. So Biden's worse than Obama by far on this issue. Biden is doing zero trade, nothing. And it's one of the biggest faults he has with his China policy. It's a gaping hole in his China policy,

not engaging our allies with trade. So did Donald Trump understand that that was not a deal with China? Yeah. I don't know the answer to your question. Because there seemed to be a sort of a... He and I spoke about it a lot, and I didn't make much progress. A disconnect.

Okay, so this is a question from the audience. If you had a magic wand, which you seem to be required for many of these policies, if you had a magic wand, you could wave and change anything in your time in Washington, what would it be? Yeah, everybody asked me that question. I mean, I fought for China to enter the WTO.

I debated Nancy Pelosi on the floor for like two days on that. This is like 2001. Because I believed at the time, liberalizing and opening up China to the global economy that would bring them an exposure to freedom and free markets and that they would demand it of their government. It would help them embrace capitalism and freedom. I was wrong. And so what they ended up doing is taking advantage of the system, cheating in the system, and using it against us. So there is one, you know, we all thought that. I mean, we Republicans thought that. Before Xi, you may argue the leaders before Xi were moving

that direction, but that's not where they are now, and that's not where Xi is. So I think we sort of got that wrong. We miscalculated on that one. So if I was going to rethink a vote, that's probably the one I would rethink, knowing now what I know now. But, I mean, I voted for 20 years in Congress, probably 30 or 40,000 times. I mean, good grief. So it's hard to rethink all of those things. Immigration, we got really close on that issue and it got so vexing. I had the votes when I was speaker on a Thursday for building the wall, reforming our asylum laws, converting

non-nuclear family immigration visas into economic immigration visas, and giving dreamers green cards. I had the votes for that out of the House Republican Conference. McConnell was going to put it on the floor if I got it out of there. I got Trump to come to our conference on a Thursday. Conference is what we call a meeting of members saying, I'm for this. I'm behind you guys a thousand percent. Get this done. So I had my votes. This was going to be enormously, I mean, it was like three-fifths of what you need to do to fix this problem. Some guys in the Freedom Caucus got to him on a Tuesday night because they were worried, because they agreed to vote for it.

They were worried that they're going to have to vote for this. You know, yeah, they get the wall, but then the Dreamers are going to get, you know, they thought they're going to get hit in primaries. So they convinced him that he was going to get hurt by the base. He was going to hurt his base, and his base was going to go against him. So the next morning when I had the vote on the floor, he said on a tweet saying, nevermind, don't bother. Let the red wave fix it. We'll do it another time. And the votes blew up within a matter of two or three hours. And I kept the bill on the floor. I'm like, I'm not pulling this from the floor. I kept it on the floor and it went down in flames. What year was this? 2018. So this was

the year you decided that you wanted to move on with your next phase of your life. So what is the next phase of your life? You mentioned you're 53 years old. I'm enjoying it right now. You're a former speaker. Okay. So what do you anticipate? What is next for Paul Ryan?

I mean, are you ever going to run for public office or go back into government? I'm not planning it, that's for sure. I don't know. I'm too planning it, that's for sure. I don't know. I'm too young to say never. So I've got a vocational portfolio, teaching at Notre Dame, my poverty foundation on poverty economics, and my AEI work, which I really enjoy.

I'm on more than just the Fox. I'm on the Shine Board, which is a nuclear technology company we have in Janesville we're real excited about. I'm a partner at a private equity firm that invests in founder-owned businesses and grows them. I'm vice chair at Teneo, which works on big, giant problems that large companies face. I'm scaling great learning curves in business, in entrepreneurship, in growing founder-owned businesses. I'm working on the issues I care about. And most importantly, I have a damn good family life. I make everything.

I'm there for spring break. I got to coach basketball, which I'm not good at, and I got all my plays from YouTube. But, you know, I never got to do any of that stuff. When I was speaker, I was home on Sundays. That was it. So I have a great family life, two in college, one in high school. So I'm really, really enjoying this phase. So I got stuck on the never say never part. Yeah, but I don't, I mean, yeah, I'm 53. I don't,

I mean, I mean, look, the stuff I just said about Trump makes me unviable right now. Completely. You know this, right? It makes me unviable anyway. So even if I had the ambition, it wouldn't, I wouldn't bother because I couldn't get elected because I'm pretty clear what my opinion of Trump and Trumpism is. I think that will change and churn. But I don't think it's— How long will that take? I don't worry about me being that person. Okay, so I need to end with a note of optimism.

You're anticipating—we talked about the before times. There will be an after time. I really don't think he's going to get the nomination. I really don't believe that. And that's the best page-turner there is. Somebody else being our nominee, hopefully getting the White House. I mean, we keep losing with the guy. I mean, how many more losses do we need to rack up before we learn a lesson? And do you think the Republican Party, though, is okay even after Trump?

Well, we're going to, like we did in the early 90s, and you and I were involved in this, we're going to have a big family discussion, a churn inside the conservative movement for the soul of the conservative movement. That's almost always settled by whoever becomes president. Bush, 43, settled it at that time. That's just what happens, and that's how it's going to happen. Thank you so much for your time, and thank you all for coming to this event at UWM. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. So that was my conversation with Paul Ryan last Thursday. Thank you for listening to the Bulwark Podcast. We'll 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.