The Dispatch Podcast - Gov. Sununu: Why New Hampshire's Different

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu stops by Dispatch HQ to talk with Steve about his record, from pandemic response to school choice. With eyes towards 2024, they discuss The Granite State's role in primaries, Sununu's own presidential prospects, and his unfiltered thoughts about former president Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. I was joined this week by Chris Sununu, governor of New Hampshire, for a fun and engaging conversation on a variety of topics. We talked about the idiosyncrasies and charms of New Hampshire in governance and politics. We talked about his wins and losses during his tenure as governor. I asked him whether the Republican Party is a friendly place for a limited government conservative like Sununu, given what we've seen over the past several years. We discussed New Hampshire's First in the Nation primary and the role that will likely play in 2024. And we discussed his sort of open contemplation of a presidential run and whether he was serious when he called Donald Trump effing crazy during a dinner in Washington

last spring. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Governor Stoodoo, great to have you. Nice to have you in the very fancy dispatch podcast offices, and good to sit across the table for me for this conversation. Washington, D.C., my favorite place on Earth. Now, I don't, I'm not very good of picking up on the obvious, but I think you were being sarcastic there. I just got off the airplane and already I need a shower.

So let me, this is a good place to start. Let me start there. You spent some time here. You grew up here. You went to high school outside of D.C. Thomas Jefferson High School, very prestigious high school, well regarded, often ranked the best high school in the country. It's been in the news a bit lately. It has. Have you followed this controversy? So this is the school where administrators didn't give a heads up to national merit. commendees and triggered this investigation, which has led to the discovery of a lot of schools, not having done that. Have you followed it? Are you surprised that this is happening? I'm following it. A lot of my former classmates are, you know, we kind of chat about it. We still stay in contact a bit. From what I've read and from what I understand, it's an absolute disaster. The fact that it's not just a high school. I mean, if you're holding, withholding test information or merit information from a student, that in itself is deplorable. horrible. But the whole purpose of this high school is, I mean, it's really a high school

of nerds, right? Let's just kind of own what it is. It's like a little MIT. And so, you know, that stuff is really important to a lot of these students. They put so much effort and so much into that and to think that you would have a principal or whoever was behind it, holding back results as their own responsibility to have an equity of outcomes, right? This country is not based on equity of outcomes. This country is based on equity of opportunity. And if that's the way it all really bears out, I think they're doing a whole investigation. It's just, it's absolutely crazy. And as a parent, I have two teenagers in high school right now.

If I found out that for some reason, the merit results of my teenagers were being withheld from them and me to basically hold my kids back because we have to make everybody on the same playing field, it's beyond just getting fired, right? It's really, you've got to kind of have a bit of an upheaval of the entire system and say, what are we doing? What is the training going on within the Fairfax County system that would drive that? It's a public school. Yeah, I mean, this has real world implications for these kids. I mean, they work hard. They achieve this thing, which is not easy to achieve. It's something that you use in college admissions.

It will have potentially, even now that it's been discovered, it might not, and they've retroactively scrambled to let the kids. But what if they hadn't discovered it? Right. It really can have impact on where those kids go to college, what they major in, that first major step in adulthood and their career path and their life path. It is life-changing for those kids. And to think that one or two individuals behind the scenes are going to effectively hold kids back from their opportunities to equate outcomes,

which, by the way, doesn't work, right? We all know that. Not only is it inappropriate and wrong in itself, but it doesn't work. And look, I come from the live-free or die state, where individual liberty and freedom and opportunity is everything that we do. But again, we create the opportunity, not just the government, but our communities. But you have to kind of to drive through that. But you do it with transparency. You do it with lifting people up, not holding people back. So you referred to Thomas Jefferson as sort of a nerd factory. You went from one nerd factory to another. You went to MIT. You're an end for punishment. Engineer by training. Yeah. You've run successful businesses. Presumably, given that background in engineering,

you're sharp reasoning, logical. Why would you choose to go? go into politics. I know, right? I always said, and my wife asked me this all the time, because there was never a sense of going into politics. My dad was a former governor in the White House chief of staff. My brother was in politics. But I also have seven brothers and sisters. So three of us have gone into politics. We're not a political family. By New Hampshire standards, that's nothing. In New Hampshire, everybody runs for office. That's just absolutely the way it is. So the two drivers for me were, I started having, I had kids, and they started going through public schools, as I did through New Hampshire, and we have great public schools in

New Hampshire. But something wasn't the same. The common core stuff was happening. This was back around 2014 and 2015. This wasn't quite the public tools that I had grown up in. And I was getting complaints from teachers when we were talking about it. At the same time, I was running my own business. I put an investment group together. I ran a resort, Waterville Valley Resort, and my family is still involved in it. I've since pulled myself away. But I was the chairman, CEO, general manager on the ground every day. And I was in the live for your die state, but there were all these massive state regulations bearing down.

And I worked very hard to follow every rule. And I thought, man, if I have to struggle this hard to fill out all these forms and go through these review process that just seem mundane and pointless, what does the little guy do, right? In New Hampshire. In New Hampshire, in the Lefrey or Dye state,

I said, this is just not right. So what I realized it had happened was years, every year, it's creep, right? Government creep, a little bit here and a little bit there and a little bit there. And after 20 years of basically Democrat governors, we hadn't had a Republican governor except for one two-year term in 20 years. We had kind of become like everybody else.

But we're not. We're so different. And I'm really proud since I've become governor in the past six years. We are, look, we're the diamond in the rough up in the northeast. We're the red state. We champion our individual freedoms. We manage COVID better than anyone. We stayed open.

We stayed flexible. We did it in a reasonable way. We didn't ignore the virus at all. We just put reason and common sense and transparency to everything. and it's worked out well. Strongest economy. Only state in the Northeast that's actually growing in population. So we have all these wonderful metrics now. There's still a lot of challenges. No, don't give me wrong. But we've really been able to put the teams in place, the metrics and most important, the sense of accountability. That we're in government. We have to get something done, right?

I'm not putting my family through all this public scrutiny to not get anything done. That's, it boggles my mind that so many people are willing to do that. And I've had Republicans run my legislature. I've Democrats run my legislature. We always find a way to do it. We always cut taxes. We always get rid of a little more regulation every year. And we're always creating opportunities. So I love it. And I just, I love my job. I'm not going to lie to you. I really love it. So you're at the beginning of your, your fourth two-year term. Fourth, yeah, fourth term. Fourth two-year term. And you talk about these accomplishments. What's your single proudest accomplishment on a policy level over that time? What have you done? Well, boy, that's a tough one. So I got to tell you, we talked about school choice in New Hampshire for 40 years. I got it done. I was told that I could, we don't have sales tax.

We don't have income tax. But we did have this pesky thing called interest and dividends tax. And even Republicans said, you can never get rid of it. Guess what? It's going away. It's gone. It'll be gone. And we're rolling it out.

I passed a lot to actually get rid of that. So, but then overall, if I might, I was most proud of my team over COVID. I really was because everyone disappeared. Legislature disappears. Everyone disappears. Most of the government all disappears is basically the White House and 50 governors. And to the White House's credit at the time, we had former Vice President Pence who had been a governor. And he is the one that probably doesn't get nearly enough credit as he deserves in making sure the White House let states do it as the states wanted to do it. Right? It wasn't, here's the CARES Act money and here's the 10,000 pages of rules you have to follow. It's look, here's the guidelines. You guys got to help, you know, really figure this out because what is good for New Hampshire might be different. different than Arizona or New York or even Massachusetts. And because of that, we were able to really shine. And I say we, because it really was a team effort. And it was my team, I think, that had to take, you know, I mean, I could write a whole book on those first early days of COVID, but I said, look, guys, whatever this goes, because we don't know what's going to happen,

I'm probably done politically, right? Let's just accept that I'll never get elected again, because I realized early on I was going to have to make decisions that got everybody upset. I just assumed that that would eventually happen. With respect to the vaccines, with respect to mandates, we didn't even know there were vaccines this is back in March. We didn't know if that everybody was right. Right. When you first heard, yeah. So I said, you know, there's some people, it was clear that some people want to complete

shutdowns, right, lock in orders and all that kind of, which we obviously weren't going to. And some people wanted to ignore it completely, which we weren't going to do that either. So we were going to have to walk a fine line, which means everybody was going to get upset with us. At the end of the day, we did it really well. Our secret sauce, if you will, was I made sure that every time we made a decision, We brought the business community in. Restaurants would come to us and say, look, we want to stay open. I said, great, stay open.

And they said, but we want our customers to feel safe. So let's work on some guidelines together. So the customers feel safe like we're acknowledging it, but they still know that they can come in and we can stay open and still make money. And that's what we did. So then we did it with hair salons and then we did it with car dealers. And we let them, them, not the government, we let them design their own successes through the COVID pandemic.

Like, it was a massive amount of work. We were kind of standing on our own on it, and it really worked. And so overall, I'd say how we handled that in its entirety. Also, the transparency piece. That was the most important thing. Through a crisis, you have to maintain public trust, right? Because they were, and by the way, the White House was terrible at that at the time, right? And Fauci and all that kind of nonsense.

But then the guys, governors, we had to stand up and say, look, this is the data we're seeing. And I would show, I'm a data, like, I'm a nerd. So I'd show my data. I'd show the trends and why this is the decision. you're making and here's the data that's supporting that decision. And I would stand up there and I would let the press ask any question they wanted until they had nothing left to answer. Every, ask every day. Very dangerous. I went on live TV. This is another one. My staff was like, don't do this, but I said, we got to be transparent. We got to own everything. So I went on live

TV on WMUR in New Hampshire a few times, like once a week, and they would just shoot at me questions off of Facebook, like just the most sane and to the crazy questions. Things we had answered or not answered. And sometimes I'd have to say, that's a great question. I don't know. And then the next day at the press conference, I'd come back and say, I was asked this and here's the answer. So you just have to own, you know, we can say we're all in it together. Or you can make sure that the community really understands we are all in it together. So that was a very unique way of governing. I loved it. It was a great example, I think, of how to do it and how to manage a crisis. And yeah, probably one of my more proud moments that we really came through it well.

So you mentioned also school choice, the educational freedom accounts in New Hampshire, certainly we've seen lots of progress on school choice, for those of us who believe in school choice, lots of progress nationally over the past few years. The educational freedom accounts pay for or are available to families, children and families, earning 300% of the poverty level. Yep. That's not everybody. No, no. Are you prepared to push? Yeah. To broaden it? We can. Is that a priority for this? I can tell you, I'm going to have a budget presentation. in about two weeks and we're going to look into broaden it. So, you know, for years they tried to do just the kind of voucher program and school choice

for everyone. I said, look, guys, let's get in the door. Let's prove the model that it works. And let's focus on those that have the least access to school choice, you know, low-income families, right? A lot of them are inner-city families. A lot of them are families that have never even been asked. What do you want for your kids? And we're going to change that paradigm.

And we did. Really exciting. So we started at 300% of the federal poverty level, a massive. number of families took advantage, way more than we thought. Very successful program, and we'll broaden it. If I say, look, we're just going to make it available for everyone, that'll never pass, right? So the amazing, and we can talk about this in a minute, the amazing aspect of my legislature right now, I have 400 members in my House of Representatives, 400, the third largest parliamentary body. It's pretty evenly split, too. It's 200. It's 201 to 199. It's crazy.

So nothing too extreme is going to get past, but we can get stuff done. And so, yeah, I'm going to propose an expansion of the program because it's been so successful. And there's so many families that, again, just were never told and never offered that they had a choice. And now they're taken advantage of which is really exciting. When you look around, you spent a lot of time talking to other governors, your colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, when you look around and survey what other governors have been able to accomplish, is there anything that you look at from another governor and you say, I wish I could do that? Or this has been successful. I'm jealous. So let's just start with school choice, right? So I look back what Jeb Bush did with school choice back in Florida.

I look at what Doug Deucey did. He really expanded it in Arizona. He did a great job. Even in West Virginia, they did a really good job, you know, expanding school choice. And we've looked at some of those models. You know, it's funny, at least with the Republican governors, all the governors get along very well, generally speaking, compared to what you see in Congress, right? There's a lot of bipartisanship because we're not at each other's throats. We're really trying to, If anything, there's a friendly competition, and especially amongst Republican governors, I mean, I love working with those. Those men and women are incredible, and that's my team. That's one of the main reasons I didn't want to run for the U.S. Senate, because I knew I wasn't going to get a team like that again. If I needed a health care question, I'd call Charlie Baker in Massachusetts. That was his background, right?

If I needed a question on energy, I'd call Doug Bergam from North Dakota or Mark out in Wyoming. we talk about mining and minerals. I'd call Spencer out in Utah. So I think everyone understands where they have their expertise, if you will. I don't know what my expertise is. Individual liberty, freedom, and really good government. The number one question I get is, wait, you keep saying you have no income tax, you have no sales tax. How is that possible? And we're ranked as the most efficient government in the country. And that's really one of the best rankings I can think of, that you get the biggest bang for your buck for the few tax dollars you put in.

When we talk about efficiency of government and kind of getting back to local control and what I think is the best government, which is not a top-heavy government, not a heavy hand from the top, that's probably where we'd come in a little bit. You know, there's some governors that are great on education, and we've tried to, I've got to really change my education formula in New Hampshire. You know, over across the country, one of the dynamics, it's going to hit everybody soon, really, except for maybe a few states in the south, but there's, Gen Z is having less kids, later in life, which means our schools don't have as many kids in them, right? And that is going

to continue to decline, which means a lot of the funding models that are based on number of students in the classroom are going to start kind of collapsing, if you will. So you're going to have schools going, wait, I keep losing money, well, because you lost five more kids this year and 10 more kids next year. So how do you create more sustainable models? I'm not a believer that, look, those that say, well, if you just put more money into education, you'll get better results. No, wrong, not the case. But obviously, you do need some core, you know, base, there is a fixed cost to keeping the lights on in the classroom. And so you've got to make sure you're maintaining that. And you're also being enticing in an

attractive place for teachers to come to, not just because of pay, but because it's a place they want to work. They feel like they have a voice. So really stretching on that. So every governor kind of has their specialty. Some Democrat governors do as well. Gina Romando isn't a good one from Rhode Island, former governor, Rhode Island. We work together quite a bit. And she was just, She was always a really straight shooter to work with. Would you have been happy to call Carrie Lake and ask her sort of what she would have done? I never met Carrie Lake. I can't.

Doug Mastriano. I never met him. Never met him. So we'll use that as our transition into some politics. Into what? Into some politics. Well, we could do into crazy. Doug Mastriano is now our transition into the abyss.

The transition into what not to do. Would it be the first time he served that role. Not long ago, I saw someone go through. a sudden loss and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance

fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through ethos. It builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's eth-h-os.com dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. You've been pretty open about the fact that you're thinking about running for president,

which is, that doesn't happen all the time. I mean, a lot of people play sort of coy. You haven't been. Well, look, maybe it was the COVID thing. I don't know what it was, but I really, you asked me a question. I'm going to give a straight answer. I'm not here to couch my words. I'll be, for the most part, as polite as I can be. I'm probably, my wife reminds me I'm not nearly as funny as I think I am. I don't think any politician is. But, you know, I'm just going to give you a straight answer. And so the straight answer is, yeah, of course. Yeah, people are talking about it. So, of course, we're having those conversations as well. But I would never get into a race like that unless, A, I really thought we could move the dial. Obviously, we'd want a chance to win.

A lot of folks get in and run because they want to be vice president. They run because they want to sell their book, which are mostly god-awful, by the way. Have you read politicians' books? Too many of? Yeah. Dry and- You're not writing one then? If I wrote a book, it would be a really, I would make sure it was really good. I'd probably write a funny book more than anything on the hypocrisy of government that I'm witnessing all over the country, the hypocrisy of bad policies on both sides of the aisle. But no, we're definitely talking about it.

But my biggest concern and the reason I'm doing a lot of national stuff lately is, A, I don't know, it just seems like a lot of these would-be candidates are trying to be so coy about everything. It's like, come on, guys, they're all my friends. Nikki Haley and Pompeo and Pence these guys are all really good people and they're all my friends. And as kind of the referee of the first in the nation primary, I do have a responsibility and an opportunity

to make sure that we do it right. It's not just about how much money you raise or your name ID. You better get in the room and shake some hands and look some people in the eye because that's what good government's all about. That's localizing your policies. That's listening to someone and saying, look, you have all these great ideas

up here at 30,000 feet. But at the end of the day my kid's struggling in his classroom. Oh, okay. Not that the government can, not that a governor just solves that by waving a magic wand, but understanding what those issues are and then hopefully creating policies that create those opportunities for that family. Not telling them what they have to do or where they have to go, but look, my job is to create as many doors of opportunities as possible. I'm not here. I'm the governor and I am not, I'm telling you, I ain't here to solve your problems. The government is not here to solve your problems. We are really here to create those opportunities. Now, when you get at that grassroots level and you campaign at that level, great stuff can happen and real conversation can happen.

And if I can drive that, all the better. So let me jump in on a policy level, actually. That's an interesting point. You said government is not here to solve your problems. There are echoes of Ronald Reagan, certainly, in that. But that hasn't been, I would argue, the main argument from national Republicans over the past seven, eight years. I mean, you look around, and certainly at the federal level, it's hard to find a limited government. I know.

And it's disappointing. And I'm not giving up on it. I just, look, people say all the time, well, the Republican Party didn't do as well in November of 22 as they should have done. So don't you need to change? No, we just got to remember what we are truly about. Get off the headlines, get off the political stunts, get off the big government authoritarianism where I say, well, that guy doesn't agree with me. So I'm going to pound down on them. Hold it, guys.

we are about limited government, local control, individual responsibility, low taxes. Let's just start there. That's 80, 90% of what we can all agree on. But is it, is it, is it the case that 80, 90% of Republicans agree on that? It's not sexy. It doesn't raise money. I mean, the big government, it seems to me that the sort of big government republicanism, the big government authoritarianism, to use your phrasing, is becoming

more and more popular in a political culture where it seems as important or more important, not to get policy results, but to go after the bad guys and to be disliked by the right people. How do you get past that? I mean, the people who are, look, I mean, this has been true in your primary endorsements, right? You've done very well in general election, popular governor, 60% approval. You haven't had success, as much success in your primary endorsements. I would say, in part, because of that exact dynamic. Yeah, so, I mean, nationally, Republicans and Democrats, I think the core values of what we're about we can agree on, but the process at which we get those results,

we start fracturing because it becomes more about the fight. You can raise money on the fight. You can get a headline on the fight. Look, you're in fifth grade. You hear that there's going to be a fight after school underneath the jungle gym at 3 o'clock. Where is everybody at 3 o'clock underneath to watch the fight? And social media figured out this model early on,

and they said, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's let people have at it. Let's the people scream and fight and have it out because we're going to sell more of our product and we can advertise and make money. And a couple years later, mainstream media caught up and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, why are we getting left behind? It's all about the fight. It's not, nobody wants to...

But the Republican base you used to take your metaphor of another step would not want you to go and watch the fight. They would want you to go and be one of the combatants. And their criticism of Republicans in days past, they were too polite. They were fight watchers. We need a fighter.

I mean, I would argue that's perhaps the main reason Donald Trump won. Of course, of course it is. He connected at a gut level with folks' anger. And he was fighting about, in some cases, he was fighting on the other side of things that Republicans have argued for years in some cases. You mean, former Democrat Donald Trump? Right. Remember the days when, I mean, this is, remember when Donald, there was a day when Donald Trump was a Democrat and Bloomberg was a Republican, right? There was actually a day when those, that New York bizarre.

world existed. But now, obviously, the former president is just the quote-unquote darling of the conservatives, but whether he really holds those values and everything is something totally different to be debated because, to your point, and it's the right point, our anger kind of, excuse the pun, trumps everything. People enjoy the political stunts. Now, I hear people all the time say, oh yeah, you know, we don't want big government telling us what to do, but yeah, when, whether it was DeSantis or Trump or whatever, you know, put their finger and put their thumb down on that town or that school board. Wasn't that awesome? And I say, no. I mean, I might agree. I hate wokeism. I think this cancel culture stuff is terrible. But are we actually

saying that conservative cancel culture is okay? That as conservatives we can do it? Is that what you see from DeSantis on some of these school issues? No, not just Ron, but from a lot of folks. You've been critical of him in the past. You've suggested that he is in some ways an avatar of this big, big government. He's 2.0. He's the new version, the 2.0. What? whatever it is. So no, of course he is. And look, he's a good governor. I don't mean, I think people see me as critical of DeSantis because people ask me and I'm happy to talk about it. I don't shy away. And I'm sure people are very critical of me. That's fine too. I love, you know, love the constructive feedback. But at the end of the day, people want that fight over

being reminded that that isn't what we're about. I might hate a company for what they're doing, their wokeism and all that kind of stuff. But if it is a private company with private employees private share? Who am I? I'm the government. Who am I to tell that company who they can hire and fire? I ran a company. I ran my own company for a long time. If the government ever came in and said, you should do this or shouldn't do this, or we're going to penalize you because we don't agree with you politically. Because my big fear is this. I'm not worried about what happens in 24. I'm still, I consider my, what am I, 48? I probably act like I'm 18. But I'm more worried about 28, 32, 2036, because if we're all about the five,

we're never going to expand our party. We're never going to get those Gen Z independence or Gen Z, what should be solid Republicans that are kind of Democrats right now. We're not opening ourselves up. And we don't have the leadership and the voice out there that's saying,

hey, it ain't about attacking people. It's really about bringing people together. And I think the Republican Party has so much to offer, but we're missing the opportunity because we get excited by a headline for a couple days. So I'm just trying to be that.

I don't want to say the voice of reason, but really their voice of optimism and hope. I understand there's a fight that has to happen. But I just think that's a short-term win. I'm a Republican that is trying to build for the long-term, for the long-term strategies. I mean, it's such a striking change. I mean, just talking to you and listening to you and having talked to you before, the optimism comes through.

It doesn't feel forced. No, I love it. But in a way, it's like that's not where the Republican Party is right now. I don't think it's where America is. It's a grievance party right now, no? It's not just Republicans, though. Let's be fair. The Democrats are just as negative and dower. And you walk out your door. Most of America is in an incredibly fortunate, blessed place right now. Let's wake up every day. Let's start every day. Clap our hands and say, whoa, thank God I live in America.

And I don't have to see my kids go off in a Ukrainian war or whatever it might be, right? Being scripted in Russia or deal with the craziness you see in parts of Africa or North Korea. I mean, there's horrors in this world. It doesn't mean we don't have our problems, but let's be blessed about our core of Americans first and be excited about it and then build off of that optimism. I get excited about that. And if I can, you know, try to drive that message a little more, I think there just needs to be, I'm not saying everyone has to agree with me politically. Or, you know, I'm not rainbows and unicorns either. I mean, this morning I was in the statehouse working on some insanely tough issues.

You know, rebuilding mental health and working on our opioid challenge, which is a crisis across the country, dealing with. immigration issues, which again is not a Texas issue. It is a 50-state crisis that Biden has blown it on. So we got to take our challenge on the problems, but there's so much economic opportunity right now. I mean, you know, we really are blessed. So let's grab onto those and then build from there, as opposed to saying, just like Democrats, this country is going to hell and capitalism and free markets don't work. You bet they work. They are everything. Nothing works but a free market. And that's me. just try to be a principled, free market conservative. And I'm trying to make sure people understand that that isn't just a couple words, that we live to that. And if I got to hold a few

people accountable along the long way, so be it. What, as you think about this, as you think about a possible run, what are the factors that will push you in one direction or another? Yeah, well, again, I'm all about accountability and results. So if I could, if I think I can get the results that we're looking for, absolutely I'll do it. If I think that I'm just going to get in the way and be another candidate, then no. How's it going to affect my family? I'm a governor of a state. I'm not, I don't, not like some of these guys that just can spend 24-7 for the last couple of years running for president. My state comes first. New Hampshire comes first. The best part about being governor is I get to be super selfish. And by that, I mean, my job is to put

the 1.4 million people of my state first every time without prejudice and just try, I want all the other 49 states to look at New Hampshire under any circumstances and say, God dang, how are they doing it? How was that guy doing it. I love that. I love that sense of competition. Designing systems. Understand how they work from the ground up. It's one of my other big complaints. I think a lot of this, a lot of this negativity and the fight and all of that would dissipate if more politicians, more public servants, would understand how these systems work. So I can't tell you how many people vote for things. And I have had conversations with U.S. senators, Republican and Democrat, Congressman, Republican and Democrat. When you say, well, you guys passed a law or a rule or funding that says X, Y,

and Z, and they have no idea, literally, no idea what you're talking about. And it's like, wow, we have a mental health crisis. You don't even know how an average family accesses mental health, right? My job is to design that system ground up and power that local control. So parents feel empowered with what, go back to what we started with, those doors of opportunity. A mom is in a mental health crisis. Her son is having issues, whatever it is. I want every mom to know, what is my first two steps that I can take.

because you're not thinking straight, right? In a mental health crisis, you're panicked at the family issue. There's stigma around it. What do I do next? Maybe it'll go away on its own. But I want every family to know what to do. Or if there's an opioid crisis, or if there's a health care crisis, or if there's a pandemic, or if there's a question about, you know, what their choices are for school.

I just want every citizen to understand their options. But I only know that, and I can only create that. If I understand how those systems work ground up, these guys in Washington are a joke when it comes to that. Well, you look at the disconnect between, I think, governors. and other elected officials at the state level and politicians in Washington and one of the most obvious places is on debt and deficits, right? They don't have. We've seen this sort of orgy of spending, certainly under the Biden administration, first couple of years of the Trump administration, well before COVID. Oh, yeah.

Donald Trump was spending more than Barack Obama. Were you surprised by that, though? Not at all. Not at all. That was his history. But this was the, I mean, this is, I guess, what goes back. to the question we were talking about just a moment ago. I mean, where are the fiscal conservators? Right now we're seeing a potential fight over the debt ceiling. And what you're

hearing from many Republicans who want to make this a fight. And I'm an enthusiastic combatant if it comes to restraining the size and scope of government. But you've got to actually get at the stuff that's causing the problem in the first plate. And that is entitlements. That's driving our national debt. Would you look at reforming entitlements? Will that be part of what you would run on? It's the supposed third rail of American politics. Everyone panics about, oh, well, you have to reform entitlements or not reform them.

They're missing a couple of huge pieces. So let me take one step back because you're absolutely right that so few people in Washington have any sense of any of this. I won't say who it was, but I'll tell you when I was thinking about running for the U.S. Senate and for the 22 election. And all these senators are calling me, and I was actually out at a conference and I was sitting with one U.S. senator who I know fairly well. And I said, look, just explain this to me. Why doesn't, why don't you guys, why doesn't one Republican senator stand up and just try, say, here's a first start at a balanced budget, right? Well, it'll never pass. Well, have the discussion. Force the vote. See what will work and what won't. Get the easy stuff done,

you know, but they won't even have the discussion. And they make it. like that is absolutely impossible to do. No, governor, you just can't do it that way. And I get ticked off as a governor. I have to balance my budget every two years. And every two years, I cut taxes. And every two years, I have a surplus, right? And that creates more opportunity to do new things and all that. And there's no sense of that. And I had a Republican U.S. Senator, a very high-ranking member of the U.S. Senate, tell me, balancing budget is just isn't that important because American public doesn't care. And I went, you, I just, I got really ticked off. And I won't say exactly what I said, but I'll summarize it.

You can say exactly what you said. You're welcome to tell us who it was, too. No, no. There are a couple. Doesn't this go back to the authenticity point that you were? Look, I'm not here to throw people under the bus, but he lives in town. So, but I got really upset. And I said, man, I said, you don't get it. I said, well, you know, if we, if we did these types of reforms, then we would be killed politically. And I said, no. I said, you're such cowards. People will stand up and champion you for doing things that haven't been done before. Even it might not be in their interest and they might not agree with every policy or change that you made, they'll understand, they'll say, look, finally, I have to balance my home budget, my business has to balance its budget,

and finally the government is standing up and saying the same thing. Does it need massive entitlement reform? No. You know what the key is? The 10th Amendment. States rights. We are a republic. Send it back to the states. You can cut massive amounts of and create mass amounts of saving, cut massive amounts of spending by sending effectively bigger block grants back to the states and letting the states decide what to do. The amount of bureaucracy that gets caught up in this stuff, the rules, all of these things that then translate to bigger costs on states and localities, because now we have to follow your inane rules because Washington still has a mentality of one size fits all, as opposed to saying,

look, what's best for New Hampshire is not necessarily what's best for anybody else and vice versa. So if you send it back to the states, you create massive amounts of efficiency. You can maintain pretty much all of the entitlements. You really can. I mean, you might have to create reforms way down the road for new members coming in, but you don't need to change anybody's entitlements for those that are currently in the system. And it's the, again, look at all the discretionary spending. We just spent this $1.7 trillion bill.

I ask everyone to go. I have a whole list of it. Every state, you should see the pork that is in that bill. It is out of control on the dumbest stuff. Just on a relative basis, discretionary spending in pork is just nothing compared to Medicare, Medicaid, now interest on the debt. Social Security is sort of its own problem. If you wait to make reforms so that they don't affect people in the current system, don't you risk not attacking with the urgency that it requires? I mean, you read the trustee's reports.

They're sounding the alarms. As loud as they possibly can. These things are going to go bankrupt. And it is the case. I mean, I think the challenge for so many Republicans is these are popular programs. People don't want them cut unless you make an argument, unless you try to persuade people. And, you know, I think a lot of folks see, George W. went out in 2005, I think, right, with a lot of Social Security Forum ideas and all that and just got pounded. And I went back and looked at that.

He got pounded less by the public and more by his own part and more by just the politicians that said, please don't do this. We don't want to stand up and make the argument. So I don't think you need mass. I really don't think you need massive entitlement reform because we will continue to grow. We are going to have a strong economy. You know, with this, inflation gets under control and it could rail on the Treasury

and who should be fired at the Treasury, starting with Janet Yellen and go right down the line for what they did with inflation because that very well could have been controlled. But let's start with leadership that understands fiscal responsibility. None of this is going to matter. If you don't elect a president, that actually understands and cares about balancing,

a budget. Or even talks about it. I mean, this is the thing I think that's been missing. It's really not part of the conversation. People don't want to make it part of Congress. But I do. It's pretty extraordinary, given that we're $31 trillion. And we're Republicans. And we're fiscal conservatives first. So that look, that's one of the reasons I'm trying to push and stay out there as hard as I can because I think, you know, I was told we were going to get immigration reform in 17 and 18. And we had Republicans in the Senate, Republicans in the House and a Republican president, we got nothing. Health care reform got nothing. You know, balancing the budget, obviously got nothing. You know, debt management, we hired a guy who lives on debt and doesn't believe in

debt management, you know, and knows how to take advantage of those systems. We could keep going down the line of all these things we should have gotten done. Would we be having the crisis, the immigration crisis today if we had just done some of the reforms in 2017 and 2018, like Republicans said they were going to do? Why don't that, why don't those reforms happen? And we've been talking about comprehensive immigration reform for decades. I got to be that one I can't figure out because you definitely have Republicans on one. side and Democrats on another that would come together. Not on a whole bit, not on, not on every last thing you want, but you put it all on the table. Like, this is what I do in Hampshire. Okay, here's the

10 things I want and the 10 things they want. In immigration, the first five on both sides are pretty understandable, right? Maybe their side doesn't want to build the wall. I think we should. I think you have to secure the wall. But their side wants other things that we want. And again, you give a little, you get a lot, you negotiate it out. And if you can't get everything you want, don't put it on the bill. Take some of it out of the bill and get a first phase down. I agree with that analysis on sort of top level. Doesn't your analysis depend on the assumption that they want to get it done? That it's not more useful as an issue? No, I don't. Who's winning on that issue right now? I mean, you know who's winning? Republicans running in primaries and Democrats

running in primaries. Right. And they can't close the deal in November. They can run, but they can run on that. They can win primaries. They can win primaries and be losers in November. And And that infuriates me that as a party, we keep nominating people that have no chance of winning in November. And if anything, you can disagree with my politics all you want? But please, can we all agree that none of this matters unless you win in November, right? None of it does. And if you're electing somebody who can't cross the line, then this is just, it's futile. So I just, I try to live by the example of we've gotten a lot done.

I've gotten it with Republicans and Democrats. I get politically rewarded. It doesn't mean everyone agrees. Does every Democrat agree with what I'm doing in New Hampshire as a conservative? No, of course not. But they trust me. There's a sense of trust there. They know what I'm about. I'm super transparent. And when I said what I was going to do on school choice, which obviously the teachers union and a lot of the Democrats hate, that's exactly what I did. And I worked very hard to get. And when people said it couldn't get done, I didn't accept that. And again, our Democrats coming around to it, no, but it's less of an issue today than it was two years ago. And it'll be less of an issue two years from now. So you got to learn to take the incremental wins with it, and then you build off of those wins. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex.

Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca.org. I ask you about Trump. Who? You knew it was coming. So you gave this speech, the Grid Iron Dinner, this appearance at the Grid Iron Dinner last spring, and you said Trump is, quote, effing crazy, but you didn't clean it up the way that. You don't tell the joke like I do.

Who's telling the, though, I feel like Michael Scott watching somebody not tell the joke the right way. Tell it. No, it was a very good joke. And look, it was a roast. That's what the Grid Iron Dinner is. Of course. And it was, look, that was a very fun night. I made fun of Biden.

Really? Tell the joke. No, I'm not going to tell me to tell the joke. I love it. I think it's great. The spontaneity of the moment. It's kind of a, I'll tell you, this is why the joke went over so strong. Because I got the, I got, I mean, it's a pretty liberal room.

And I'm the one Republican that has to get up there. And I got the room, I got the room thinking I was going in a different direction. And you could have heard a pin drop. And then I dropped the punchline and the place roared, right? And it was kind of more of a shocking thing than I think. And also I know the F word had never been used before in that. And I'm not a big, you know, I try not to. I'm the governor. I try not to use foul language, but it's a roast. And I, look, I made

fun of my father right before that. I made fun of myself. I made fun of Biden. Jen Saki was sitting right next to me. I was making fun of her and MSNBC. I made fun of everybody. And then I made fun of Trump. It's a roast. That's what you're supposed to do. And everyone had a good time with it. So it was great. But look, the other have a, no, he's not, he's not effing crazy, of course. But when it comes to the former president, I'm not pro-Trump. I'm not anti-Trump. I'm like most Americans, I'm just moving on. Right? I think he did some really good things, and I was very strong about standing up as president. When he would do something that I agreed with, I'd say, this is terrific. The vaccine, the regulatory form, the tax cuts, he did it.

And he deserves all the credit in the world for doing that. But when he would stand up and say something that I disagreed with or, no, not the right tone, or it was insensitive or insulting, I'd say that too. Yeah. These are just the ABC to me. But on the crazy question specifically, there was a second part to your joke. And you added, I've got it. I've got it. I was not there. I'm not violating any confidences. Don't worry, Governor. Whatever you say. I'm not violating. I read this. I read this in a publicly available place. I'm not there. I'm not part of the off-the-record agreement. You said the press will often ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy. And I'll say it this way. I don't think he's so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution. But I think if you were in one, he ain't getting out. So that's a good line. I think that's a pretty good line. I think that's a pretty good line. I'm just laughter that you're hearing from me is genuine. Yeah, it's funny. Are you serious? Are you serious? Do you think that's real? No, look, the former president, everyone knows he's got a very big ego and all of that sort of thing. And there's some narcissism in there, of course.

And that's what kind of creates the funny parts of those types of jokes, right? Because, you know, he's all, like, everybody knows. There's no secret. He's pretty much all about himself and what he wants to do and, you know, what barriers are in front of him to achieve his goal. He's not the first politician to be like that. He's quite loud about it. You know, one thing I'll say, would he take questions from MSNBC and CNN? Yeah, he would always take questions.

I mean, that guy was not afraid. That was part of how we learned that he actually is crazy. I mean, look at the things that he was arguing in the context of the election. Oh, well, that's a whole different thing. Now you get to the election in January 6th. That gets way out there. It was crazy. You look at the stuff he's talking about now.

He wants to suspend the Constitution so that he can be reinstalled. I'm sorry, that is to you. Use your phrase, effing crazy. Why not say that he's crazy? Yeah. Well, I did. But now after touting yourself as authentic and as saying what you mean, you're walking it back. Oh, no, I'm not walking anything back.

It was hilarious. It was absolutely hilarious. So look, I would never say something someone's crazy, like in a serious way. I think that's, look, I try to say positive. I really do. And I'll poke jabs at people and they poke jabs at me and I'll make jokes and all that sort of thing. And obviously every good joke has some truth behind it. Right. But you know what was amazing about, I mean, there's a lot of stories that came out of that gridiron night. But what was really amazing is for the days after everyone was talking about it and that I made this joke. And all the significant, I'll say the significant political talking heads of the Republican Party were dead silent. They were all just watching what's going to happen. What is Trump going to say? What? You know what Trump said to me about that? Nothing. Oh, really? No, I talked to him a few months ago. I talked to him in September. I was trying to get him to endorse a candidate running for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. We had a great conversation. It was great. He's never said anything negative about it. Look, what he thinks about? I don't know what he thinks of the whole thing. But I'll tell you, the guy does have a sense of humor. I mean, he's not completely humorless. Maybe with the media he is and all that because it's a real fight with him. So, look, I don't know exactly what he thinks of the whole thing, but it was a funny joke. So if he, I know you love hypotheticals. I know you love hypotheticals about Trump. As an engineer, I I do not like hypotheticals. I like to go on the record.

It would be great to test this if we could. Maybe it wouldn't be great to test this if we could. But he runs. I mean, do you think he's a frontrunner right now in 2024? Well, top two. It's him and DeSantis, right? And then there's just everybody else. But no, it's the two guys running that are clearly running for president or running for president. Yeah.

If Trump's the Republican nominee, do you support him? If he's the nominee? Yeah. I would fully plan on supporting the Republican nominee. He's not going to be the nominee, though. I mean, that is a real hypothetical. But isn't that, isn't that, I mean, given your critiques of him over the past, isn't that, walk me through how you get there if you think that, you know, if you've been as critical as he's been, if you've, let's look at the-joked and sort of half-joked that he's crazy. Well, look at the alternative. No, look at the alternative. The alternative, do I agree with how he says things and all this kind of stuff and whatever? Look at, we're going down a path of like, not theoretical socialism, but the Democrats have been absolutely brilliant about how they've, I'll go to that next generation. the Gen Zs, the IGen, whatever you want to call it, they aren't advertised.

Republicans are so bad because we advertise, and that's not how you do it. Democrats have been influencing, and not just influencing with traditional. And we're talking left-wing, progressive socialist stuff. We used to make jokes about socialism. I mean, you imagine, you know, that guy's like a socialist. And if you even said that to someone like Obama, he would be like, that's crazy, you know, we don't want socialism. And now it's mainstream conversation. And they've done a brilliant job.

getting us there. That is my fear. I'm scared of where we are today from a government standpoint. I'm very proud of our country. I think we have lived in the greatest country in the world and all this opportunity. But that is without a doubt going to a road. You can't be $31 trillion in debt. You can't have a mindset of bigger government all the time and government's here to solve your problems and all of that. And this generation, that's why I work so hard on the next generation because I said to about 400, 500 kids came into the state house once. And there were these volunteers. And I said, but let's just have an honest conversation. We, I introduce myself. And I said, can you guys explain to me how you're kind of the first, you know,

young, up and coming generation that I've ever seen in American history that isn't saying, you know, fight the power, fight the man, fight the government, we're independent. We know better than you old, you know, boomers. You're actually saying, no, give us more taxes, more government. That's our, that's our answer. I said, can you explain that to me? Like, what do you guys, I'd love to know, what are you thinking? You know, why do you want bigger, why do you want more government? What was their answer? And the dead silence in the room. And then this young girl in the back goes, that's a good point.

And again, I think the problem is we're living here at 30,000 feet with headlines, with emotion, as opposed to allowing ourselves. And being an example as kind of adults and parents and leaders in our community, forcing that next third and fourth level of discussion about, wait, what are we really talking about here? What are the repercussions of what you're talking about? I mean, just look at those polls. When you pull young people, what do you think of communism, right? And what is it? Like 25% of young people say communism is probably a pretty good model.

Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, can we look at Russia? And they're deeply skeptical of capitalism too. Deeply skeptical of capitalism and free markets. And folks like AOC can raise millions of dollars on this nonsense. And the most shocking part is we actually have a real world example of communism, whether it's in Venezuela or whether you're seeing what's happening with Russia, you know, this dictatorship style or what's happening in China. It's right there in front of us how bad these systems are, how oppressive they are to the individual, how they strip you of your rights in your voice.

There's an historical answer. There's an historical answer now. We know, we know. I know you got to run. No, I'll see here all day. I couldn't do this. This is awesome. I want to get to...

I usually, after like, if you want to bring in like rum and Coke, in about 20 minutes, I will really open up. We have some scotch on the floor here. I just started drinking scotch, by the way. Scotch or whiskey. It was never my thing. And you like it now? Is that just an age thing? I do.

I do. Isn't that weird? I can't drink scotch. I have a theory about scotch. I've debated it. Jonah's a big scotch drinker. David French drinks scotch. I think nobody actually likes scotch.

I think it's like it's a thing because it tastes so terrible. I mean, the people who drink scotch obviously will come at me. So I will tell you, I was right with you a year ago. I'm like a rum and Coke guy. Just give me kind of a sweet rum and Coke, great, whatever. Gin and tonic, okay, fine. But regular scotch, I would never touch it. But I tasted really good scotch.

And I had maybe two. I gave myself two or three of them. And I started going, I get it. Now, I can't tell the difference. And I don't care about all that stuff. What is a 50 year and a 12 year or whatever, McClellan? I don't even know. But I get it.

It was pretty good. I like sipping on it. I mean, we have some. It was warm. You literally have some here. And it was just a very easy drink to have. An easy drink to kind of carry around in my hand. Jameson Black Barrel.

You know. I should have, oh, it's Irish whiskey. And also, you know what else I liked it, but I drank it slowly, and I didn't mind drinking it slowly. I haven't, look, I'm not so into it that I figured out with, do I like it on the rocks? Do I like it neat? I don't know. I'm not a very big drinker at all, by the way, at all. But, no, I just started this thing.

But I started with good stuff, and that kind of got me hooked. So next time we do this, we'll do it in New Hampshire, and we can each bring a drink of choice, and then we'll have this. So what's your anti-drink of choice? Like, what did you, I'll, if you don't mind me, what did you likely throw up on the first time you got drunk, and therefore, where you can never touch again. So I don't have one of those. I honestly don't have one of those. I'm not, I don't drink hard liquor, really.

I drank some bourbon in college, and I still don't mind bourbon, but I don't, I mean, it's like three times a year. Are you a beer guy? Maybe. I grew up in Milwaukee, so it was definitely a beer guy growing up, but I can't, as this is an old guy thing, and probably way too much,

too much information to include in a podcast. I can't do it. My body just doesn't like beer anymore, and it's painful because I love a good. a good beer as much as the next guy. No, my thing is Spanish wine. I lived in Spain for a year, and I think Spanish wine is...

Where do you live in Spain? In Madrid. Madrid. My wife lived in Cordoba down... I love Cordoba. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful area. She grew up in a Spanish-speaking town, so she speaks very fluent Spanish.

I grew up in a Spanish-speaking town, and I do not speak... I'm not a wine guy, though. I lived in... You know, I went to San Francisco for three years. We had never lived anywhere else. I was about to get married. My wife and I moved to San Francisco just to see what it was like.

And it was beautiful. I mean, we spent all our money on rent and food. And you could do that before we had kids. But I tried to get into the whole Sonoma, Napa thing, not my jam. I would like to live out there for that reason. Boy, I mean, it was, you'd go out and you get guys and you'd be doing these tastings and you have these insanely wealthy people that you didn't know that had just bought like a thousand dollar bottles of wine and wanted to share it with you. It was insane. You know, we were like 20-somethings.

and I would be drinking this wine going this could be two buck chuck and I couldn't tell the difference it's all the same to me I felt bad I've become a little bit of a snob I hate to admit that but do you like hold your ear when you smell the glass I don't hold my ear

but no I can taste the differences and I know the grapes and yeah I get notes of asparagus and pumpkin here wet asphalt let's end on New Hampshire let's end on on first in the nation.

Really interesting stuff happening on the Democratic side right now. National Democrats don't want New Hampshire to go first. New Hampshire Democrats really want New Hampshire to go first. But interestingly, neither of the Democratic senators from New Hampshire are really doing much. Shocking. I haven't done anything since they took office. Are you expecting them just to wake up now? I teed you up for that, didn't I?

But I mean, it's a 51, 40,000. Senate. I mean, they could make some of President Biden's priorities a challenge if they said, hey, we want you in New Hampshire. Look, there are two Democrat senators sitting there. They have all the leverage in the world to say this ain't going to happen, and they're not using it. And I've never, they're like terrible used car sales when they don't know how to make a pitch. What has happened is this decision was going to be made to strip New Hampshire the First Nation primary back in August. And then they delayed it because they thought Hassan might lose on it, which who knows what would happen. So then they said, we're going to make the decision in November. They delayed.

December, delayed. January. They delayed. Now they're saying, we have till June. They asked me, the governor, the Republican governor, to send them a letter confirming that I would change my state law to conform with the National Democrat Party's demands. And I ever so politely told them to go screw. So this is their crisis, though. They're realizing the arguments we've made are quite valid. The fact that you have candidate Joe Biden saying, I'm going to take it from New Hampshire and bring it to South Carolina. Let's talk about South Carolina. for a second. The voter turnout in South Carolina is 16%. New Hampshire sets records with our voter turnout. In 2020, they didn't even have a primary for Donald Trump. When you're the incumbent,

they traditionally just anoint the elite. They don't have to have a primary. So Joe Biden has taken the first-the-nation primary from New Hampshire to move it to a state that will not even hold a first-in-the-nation primary. Why? It's just personal political payback to his buddies that resurrected his... I mean, that was where he was reborn. And look, he went 100 days in And he didn't do. What did he get 8% in New Hampshire? Oh, he got crushed. Oh, yeah. He got on a plane at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on election day and flew out of there on, uh, because he knew he was, he did, but he had earned that disastrous result because he wouldn't answer questions. He wouldn't be personal.

Um, he wouldn't look people in the eye and they tried to protect him too much. And we don't, it doesn't fly. South Carolina there, it's more about the political elites and he was able to be successful there. So he's just rewarding them. Now nationally, the Democrat National Committee is realizing, wait a minute. This goes, quote unquote, to South Carolina, what's going to happen? You think no one's challenging Joe Biden? Of course they are. There's no way some of these progressives are going to stay out of this race.

The liberal, I've said this before, but I think it's a pretty good line. You know, I always say, what does the left-wing elite of Washington, D.C. say about Joe Biden behind his back. Exactly what they said to his face on the primary stage, that he was an old, out-of-touch white guy that didn't represent the future of the Democrat Party. you think they're going to let that guy sit there for six more years and run this? No way. They're not going to stand for it. New Hampshire is the opportunity. Biden says he's taking it to South Carolina. Believe you me, candidates on the Democrat side are coming to New Hampshire because we're going first. Whether they like it or not, our law says we are.

The Republicans are going first in New Hampshire. So all these Democrat candidates are likely going to go. Then you're going to have a couple winners come out of, you know, the first or second place person comes out of New Hampshire on the Democrat Party. They have all this momentum. They have all the media. They have all the attention. Biden's on it. heels and you could potentially have progressive candidates run right by Joe Biden because he was so insistent on skipping New Hampshire. The point is this. It's going to be a great show. It's going to be a lot of drama on the day. And what about the Republican side? It's going to be, look, we crushed it last time. In 2020, both on the Democrat and Republican

side, Iowa screwed up. Remember that whole debacle in Iowa? They were still trying to figure out who was winning. New Hampshire was up and the whole country was holding its breath going, wait, is this whole primary process? Is it all screwed up? Can we trust this thing anymore? And to our state's credit, we worked really hard, and we nailed it. Every vote was counted. We got a winner that night, the whole nine yards, a lot of integrity in the system. We moved forward, and the whole country took a big sire relief. Oh, okay, we can do this, right?

Not every system is screwed up. And so I think we've earned it. If you can get our voter turnout, if you can get our metrics of, you know, accessibility to the candidates, if you can get our metrics where it doesn't matter how much you're spending in advertising, you've got to meet the citizens at their level and on their issues, that's the great first filter that everyone in America wants to see. They claim that South Carolina is more diverse than New Hampshire. What does diversity matter if only 16% of your population actually votes?

What's the point of... Don't you think more people will show up and vote if it's really the first? I mean, I would imagine that number. No, because the elites still pick the winners. And by the way, again, in Joe Biden's case, they're just going to anoint him because he's the incumbent. They're not even going to hold a primary. Because they just won't. especially if you have, you will have other candidates come out of New Hampshire.

If they have a head of steam and then they do the South Carolina vote and they let those other candidates on that ballot, they'll likely beat Joe Biden in a state that he thought he was the anointed winner of. So they're going to make sure Biden gets his win and they're going to go to the next state wherever that is. So there's a lot of drama there. They didn't think it out. They're trying to delay it all. But we're going to go first, no, in regardless of what the National Democrat Party. On the Republican side, there was a poll out University of New Hampshire poll this week. had Ron DeSantis at 42, Trump at 30, you were at four, Liz Cheney was at four, Larry Hogan was at four, is DeSantis the frontrunner? In New Hampshire, yeah, sure.

And how important is it for you if you decide to do this to win your own state? Oh, if I decided to do this, if I don't win my state, I'm done. Look, people say that, oh, if Sunniu runs, he'll have an advantage in New Hampshire, actually just the opposite. Yeah, expectations would suggest. That's right. Because you have to win. I have to win or I'm done.

And by the way, even if I win, they'll be like, oh, he didn't win by enough. It doesn't matter. He didn't win by enough. He only won by 12 points. He should have won by 80. So no, there's actually a huge disadvantage to that, frankly. But the same goes for Nikki Haley and Tim Scott in South Carolina, another early state. Or Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, Rubio, Scott, whoever else decides to run in Florida, right?

So it's going to be those early states are going to kind of filter everybody out of this race. Now, Desantis and Trump are really the only two people running. So obviously they're going to do, should do best. in all the polls. I was shocked that I was even in a poll. That's kind of cool. I mean, it was a New Hampshire poll. It was. Well, look, I mean, people know me as governor. They know I emphasize a lot. My first attention is always on New Hampshire, of course, as governor. But no, we'll see. There's still a year. That's the other thing. People are like, oh, are you going to get in the race? You've got to decide now.

But debates are like, we're talking about the first debate in July. July, August. Maybe there'll be some candidates in the race by then, but I don't think everyone will be in the race by then. You don't, so how they determine who stands on that stage will be interesting. Remember, these folks have all been running for president for two years, and they're not announced to announce candidates. When you announce as a candidate, all the rules change. Everything changes. And not for the better in terms of these big fundraisers.

DeSantis is raising hundreds of millions of dollars, as is Trump. Well, Trump is a candidate now. But DeSantis as a non-candidate is raising a lot of money in a 501C-4s or whatever they do. So, you know, there's just a long way to go. A lot more politics to be played here. Well, Governor, thanks. for playing some with us. Happy to have you.

Did I earn my dispatch HQ? Did I earn a spot back? And next time we'll be in New Hampshire. And we will, maybe we'll do it over a glass of scotch and a glass of Spanish wine. Red wine. There you go. Thank you, man.

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