The Dispatch Podcast - Larry Hogan Looks to the Future

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan had some blunt criticism for the incumbent president of his own political party on the latest Dispatch Podcast, and all but ruled out supporting Donald Trump in November. ��This week the president said he was going to cut funding for testing,” said Hogan, in conversation with Sarah Isgur and Steve Hayes. “That was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.” Hogan continued: “My biggest criticism was at the beginning the president didn’t take it seriously enough, and was downplaying the severity of the crisis.” Hogan believes that the Trump administration has since made progress with its coronavirus strategy, and he’s encouraged that Trump finally donned a mask in public and spoke publicly about the importance of wearing one. But, he added, the federal government is still months behind on testing and tracing and appears to be no closer to coming up with a national testing plan, an inexcusable oversight. Hogan went further than he has before in discussing whether he intends to support his fellow Republican in November. “Probably not,” Hogan said. Hogan also believes the GOP has a lot of work to do to recover in a post-Trump era. When pressed on whether the president has grown the Republican Party, he said, “No I don’t think he has at all,” pointing to Haley Barbour’s truism that politics is about addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division. “Quite frankly, I think the president has really been focused on, you know, dividing and subtracting.” Listen to Hogan, Sarah, and Steve discuss the ins and outs of coronavirus strategizing from a policymaker’s perspective and his hopes for the future of the Republican Party. Show Notes: -Hogan’s recent book, Still Standing: Surviving Cancer, Riots, a Global Pandemic, and the Toxic Politics that Divide America Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our special Friday Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Steve Hayes. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit Thedispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts. Make sure you subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. And we'll hear a little later from our sponsor today, Keeps. We're joined today by Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, with one of the highest approval ratings of any governor in the country.

He has been leading his state through this virus, going to South Korea, to procure tests and has been an outspoken critic of what he believes are the current administration's failures in combating the pandemic. We'll talk about that is new book, still standing, surviving cancer riots, a global pandemic, and the toxic politics that divide America, the future of the Republican Party, and a lot more up ahead. All right, let's dive right in with the governor. Governor, I want to start with what may be the trickiest issue that states and localities are facing right now, school reopenings. On the one hand, you have a Kaiser study that found one quarter of teachers that's 1.5 million folks nationwide face a heightened risk from the virus, either from age or preexisting conditions.

On the other hand, you have some enormous socioeconomic disparities if schools don't reopen. For example, we've seen stories now of wealthy parents creating pods. with other wealthy parents so their kids don't fall behind. That could be $75 an hour to have those teachers. And if the 2008 recession was a man session without schools, this will undoubtedly hit women much harder, preventing them from reentering the job force because they're so often the primary caretakers,

even if they work, leaving so many middle class households without a large share of their usual income this fall. How are you balancing those issues for your state? Well, you know, this is probably one of the most difficult challenges that we were trying to deal with. And we've had a lot of things that we've had to try to figure out during this global pandemic and this economic crisis. And, I mean, it's just an unlimited number of decisions that were critically important. But this is probably one of the hardest ones. we all want to try to get our kids back into the classrooms as much as we can, as quickly as we can.

We also want to do it in a way that we can keep our children and our teachers safe. And so it's very hard to accomplish both of those things in the middle of the spiking health crisis that we're faced with. So we're just relying on the best input, what we did in our state, about a month. ago, it was actually back to the end of May, our state superintendent of schools and the State Board of Education put together sort of a roadmap for the recovery and reopening of our schools and laid out a lot of different options and considerations about how we might go about that. And then from there, spent a lot of time with all of our local jurisdictions getting input from the local school board. and county leaders from teachers and parents and spending a lot of time with our coronavirus task force made up of some of the smartest doctors and epidemiologists, public health officials in the state. We looked at the CDC guidelines. We had a great discussion with the vice president,

with all the governors, with the head of the CDC and folks from HHS to get their guidance. And, you know, there are certain people that feel very passionately that we ought to get everybody back in the classroom right now, regardless of the health challenges. And then a lot of folks, including many of the teachers unions, who are concerned about the safety of the teachers, who are wanting to do all remote learning. And what we've come down with, and we're still not finalized because we've given all of our local school boards until August 14th to come up with their. recommended plans by county, and we've got a flexible system that's going to take in all that best advice, set guidelines, guideposts, and basic requirements to give a kind of a menu of flexibility for local jurisdictions. Some of our largest jurisdictions have submitted plans, our most populous areas, where they're leaning towards at least starting the school year with all

distance learning. Many of our other less populous jurisdictions, rural areas, are trying to get kids back in the classroom sooner. They're also less impacted at this point with the virus, less positivity, less cases. But in many cases, it's going to be a hybrid situation where they bring kids back in a staggered way, maybe not every day, so you can distance kids and not have as many kids in the classroom. But in every case, there's a long list of safety. precautions. And we've invested a lot of money, including using CARES Act funds to help get those communities up to speed with respect to getting the technology they need and to do distance learning. But it's not going to be easy. And it's a very difficult challenge for those

parents, for the kids. And it's something I think we're going to continue to grapple with as we see this virus spike back up. Steve, you're a constituent. I am a constituent in the school district in our area just decided they were going all virtual for the first semester, which actually makes a lot of sense to me, given all the factors that you just discussed. I want to talk about what we might consider the other hot button issue or one of the other hot button issues, and that is testing. You went to South Korea, you and your wife called on South Korea, bought 500,000 tests or components of test kits from South Korea, made a lot of news at the time, in part because you

had taken the step and procured the tests, in part because then President Trump very famously attacked you for having gotten those tests. I was at your press conference that day in Annapolis, and one of the things that was interesting and that I've been trying to pry from your AIDS ever since was a comment that you made about being concerned that the federal government might step in and try to block the delivery of those tests. Can you tell us more why you were concerned about that? And if that, if you got any resistance from the federal government and bringing those tests to Maryland? Sure. Well, just a quick recap there, you know, back in early March, at the time when the president was saying that anyone who wanted

a test could get one. And I pushed back and said that that simply wasn't true because on behalf of all the governors, we were pushing to try to get a national testing strategy and we were all scrambling around to figure out how to do our testing and our states. The president said we were sort of on our own that it was up to the states to do that. We had only done a couple of thousand tests nationwide. There was not an availability of a massive quantity of tests anywhere in America. And we spent 22 days negotiating with eight of our state agencies with a company in Korea with the help of the Korean government and jumping through all kinds of hoops, we flew a plane in, a passenger plane, a Korean air, the first time they ever landed at a BWI because we did not

want these tests going through Customs and Dulles Airport where they would normally have gone, surrounded by the National Guard who unloaded the half million tests off the plane and our state police because we had a number of instances where the federal government actually had confiscated things coming into the country that other states had ordered. So we had 50 states scrambling all around the world for desperately needed things that were in very short supply in a constrained market that we felt like we needed immediately in this health crisis. One example, my friend Charlie Baker, the governor of Massachusetts, had an order of, I think,

3.6 million N95 masks coming from China, which the plane was basically hijacked when it landed in Boston. And all those masks were taken to a different state that I think a federal government thought was in more need than Massachusetts was. But Massachusetts had already paid for them and ordered them and going through all the work to get them when the federal government was not doing that. Do you don't mean the federal government did that? I guess it was FEMA. Probably it was the that was doing the distribution, but I heard this horror story from Charlie Baker while we were in the negotiations with Korea. And I said, this is not going to happen to our half a million tests. So, I mean, it was a little bit gutsy and maybe outside the box, but we really had no choice.

And I said, I don't care about that one customs official that's going to be standing out there on the tarmac. You know, we're going to have several, you know, trucks full of National Guard soldiers and state police. And we're going to take those half a million tests to our secure refrigerated warehouse. Now, it didn't, it did not become a problem and we worked with the FDA. We, we, everything worked out fine. It was just a caution based on the craziness of the time. We didn't know what was going to happen. We've seen positive tests come back in a lot of states now resurging. And a lot of that is happening with GOP governors who are now seeing their approval ratings, you know, go down, some in double digits. Governor DeSantis, Greg Abbott,

Doug Ducey, Brian Kemp, do you have advice for them? Well, I give them advice as much as I can. They're all friends, and we talk fairly regularly, you know, and I chair the governor. So we have at least weekly calls between all the governors. I think just in the past three or four months, we've led 46 different calls with the governors. Some of them, a little more than half of them are with the president and vice president, their team. The other ones are just with the governors talking amongst ourselves.

So we share best practices. We share what's going on in our states. And we've reached out to offer help to all of those states. But I've been telling them all along what my thoughts were and my advice. And I think many of them are now taking different, putting different strategies out in their states. And maybe, I think they've said, they wish they had done this earlier or done this differently. But, you know, I think it's not just the virus doesn't recognize, you know, political affiliations. I don't think it's, you know, just the Republican states. I mean, California is seeing huge spikes and they took early in aggressive action and it's a Democratic governor. But the virus has spiked back up and we've got it's by no means behind us and we have to stay vigilant. And it's very concerning that this is we're going to, it looks like we're back in the same position we were back in March and April and it could get worse. You've been reluctant. to play Monday morning quarterback, as you've called it. So let me ask you a forward-looking question. If you were president right now, what would you be doing that's different than what the president

is doing to end this or to control this virus? Well, I think the president is starting to take some of the actions that I think he should have taken before. I'm not to go too far back, but my biggest criticism was at the beginning, the president didn't take it seriously enough and it was downplaying the severity of the crisis. that they didn't develop a national testing strategy. But he's now shifted. He says wearing a mask is patriotic, and everybody should do that. He's canceled the Republican Convention.

He seems to be more seriously focused on this crisis than ever before, and I think that's good. He's got a great team of people around them, all of whom are working hard and trying to do a good job. They're doing really well. They did a great job on ventilators, which we encourage them to utilize the Defense Production Act, to produce ventilators, which we're in great shape on. And I think they're making great strides

on a vaccine, which the federal government has been helped to ramp that up in record time. But we're still having the same problem with testing shortages, people now waiting 10 days to get a test. This is, you know, this is back to let the states do their own thing. And private labs, this is where we need to get federal investment and a federal strategy to ramp up production. we're not going to get this under control until we can get our testing. A test that comes in 10 days late is basically worthless, and that's where we are right now. So this week, the president said he's going to cut funding for testing. I was one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

I mean, this is probably the most critical point right now to invest more in that. So that's what I think we don't want to talk. If you were to take this step tomorrow, what would that look like? Well, we should have taken the step about five or six months ago when we first knew that this virus was coming. So it's a little bit hard to catch up. And I'm not sure the exact steps, but there are, I think there are capacity problems. We're running out of reagents. You know, they caught up on, there was no swabs anywhere in the world.

It sounds like a simple thing. We finally started producing swabs here. Now we're running out of reagents and we're running out of capacity in these labs, private labs. I think some federal investment to pump up. these labs, to hire the people, to buy the machinery, to be able to handle a higher volume that's out there supporting all these states. I mean, I've been on the phone with governors who are saying, you know, we're waiting a week, 10 days, two weeks for tests. The virus is going to be out of control if we can't find out who has it for two weeks. As I mentioned in our

intro, you are out promoting a new book, still standing, surviving cancer, riots, a global pandemic, and the toxic politics that divide America, which is coming out next week. this is seen as one of those things that politicians do when they're contemplating a run for some office. And at this point, that's seen as 2024, but you had publicly discussed running in 2020. Given that, if you were considering primary in the president, how should we ask you about how you see this presidential race, who you're voting for, and if you're supporting the president? Well, first of all, I know that it seems like. you would only write a book, and a lot of politicians certainly write a book as a precursor

to running for office. And there's been a lot of that speculation. But in all honesty, that wasn't the purpose of me of writing the book. And the timing, I won the biggest upset victory in America in 2014. And some folks, friends of mine, said, hey, you should write a book about how you pulled that off. And I said, I haven't really accomplished anything. I'm not going to write a book. And then when we started, we overcame the riots in 2015. which was an interesting story. They said, you know, it was probably a good story there that you should tell.

And then I overcame life-threatening cancer and people that were going through cancer struggle said, man, I'd love to have you share that story. You should write about that. And then I became the second Republican reelected in 242 years in Maryland in a big blue year with a blue wave and we won in a landslide.

And people said, you have to write a book. And so I thought it would be worthwhile to share some of those stories about overcoming challenges and adversities and talk about how we've got some things done. And I'm hoping the book will be interesting to folks. It's not a heavy, deep political read. I do talk a little bit about my philosophy,

about how I want to see the Republican Party grow and what I see for the future of the country of my concern, which I... Do you think, if you don't mind me interrupting, do you think that the president has grown the Republican Party? No, I don't think he has at all. And that's where our biggest difference is. I think and has been.

You know, I've focused on and been very successful at Reagan's theory of a bigger tent and reaching out and trying to attract more people. You know, I'm in a state that has 26% Republican that doesn't usually vote for Republicans, but I've gotten overwhelming support among suburban women from independence, from crossover Democrats, and even in the black community. That's something Republicans have to figure out how to do if we're going to be more successful in winning and winning races. We can't keep shrinking. Reagan talked about a bigger tent. We're shrinking it more and more every year. We're not going to be successful in the future. So I think Haley

Barber, when he was chairman of the RNC, another Reagan guy like me, I love his quote when he said successful politics is about addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division. And quite frankly, I think the president has really been focused on, you know, dividing and subtracting. Will you endorse the president before election before November? Probably not. How would you say you've governed? Do you consider yourself a conservative? And would you say that you've governed as a conservative?

I'm a lifelong conservative. I was a chairman of Youth for Reagan or Reagan delegate twice. But I'm in one of the bluest, most liberal states in the country. I've governed as a pragmatic, I'm a right of center, pragmatic, who's reached across the aisle and tried to come up with bipartisan common sense solutions. I think, you know, I'm frustrated that in the politics today, we have people on the far left and the far right, that all they do is argue with one another and call each other names and never accomplish anything.

And we've got nothing but divisiveness and dysfunction. I have, out of necessity to accomplish anything, had to work with a legislature. that's 70% liberal Democrats in both houses. And we've had some tremendous success and gotten things done, which is why I think the voters of my state reelected me in a really tough year. As we lost the Congress this 2018, and we lost the House of Representatives. We lost a number of my fellow governors who were good friends. And we lost five open seats governor races.

We lost, I think, 380 legislative seats and seven legislative bodies across the country. I managed to get things done and get reelected in the worst, most hostile environment possible. Let's pause for a word from our sponsor, Keeps. Guys, two out of three men will experience some form of male patterned baldness by the time they're 35. You either know them or maybe you are in that group. The best way to prevent hair loss is to do something about it while you still have hair left. You used to have to go to the doctor's office for your hair loss prescription. but now thanks to Keeps, you can visit a doctor online and get hair loss medication delivered

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That's k-e-e-p-s.com slash dispatch to try keeps. You've talked about the future of the Republican Party building that bigger tent. But, you know, to some extent, this has been tried before. There was the autopsy report after 2012. John Ksick's race in 2016. And Donald Trump won. And he seems to have pretty high support in the Republican Party. Is there a future for the Republican Party that you're describing? Or has that been tried and failed? You know, I think time will tell. I'm not really sure, quite frankly. And, you know, I said that I think after November, which is going to be upon us pretty quickly, in about 100 days or so, I think we're going to know what happens, whatever happens in November, I think the Republican Party, and quite frankly, the Democratic Party as well,

are going to take a hard look at themselves and say, what does the future look like? And for the Republicans, it's going to be, are we going to continue in this direction? Are there, are is Donald Trump president, first of all? And then what do we do after Donald Trump? He's either going to be leaving in a couple of months or he's going to be leaving in four years. But either way, there's going to be some future after President Trump. And then I think we're going to have to take a hard look.

But I'm not really sure what the future is. I just know I want to be a part of that discussion. I think I have some thoughts to offer. And not everybody's going to agree with me, that's for sure. But I think we ought to have that discussion. And, you know, I think it's important for the party. Given what we've seen over the past four years, if the polls today tell us what's going to happen November 3rds. Let's say it's November 4th, this has been a bloodbath for Republicans, lost the Senate, lost seats in the House, lost the presidency, big margin.

It looks like shalacking. And you are asked by the head of the RNC, or you become the head of the RNC the day after the election. what's the first thing you do? What's the first change you look to make? Well, that's a really good question. First of all, I don't want to be the head of the RNC. So can I give you a little background on the question? Thank you for nominating me, though.

I stole the question. We did a live discussion with some of the members of the dispatch last night, about a thousand of them. And this was one of the questions that was posed to us, to the panelists. It was such a good question. I'm stealing it, and sending it your way. Well, thanks for giving them credit for it. But it is a really good question.

I never really thought of it that way. And it's hard to sum up into one thing. What would you do first? But I think if, and by the way, I think the scenario you just laid out is certainly possible. I think if the election were held today, that would be the result. We can still turn things around and things could change over the next 100 days. But I think that will demand that the point.

party, sit down and have this hard look at itself and to say, how do we go about building a party with a message, with a strategy, focused on issues that's going to help us continue to govern and continue to be able to win elections in the future? I believe that, you know, the things that we've been, if we've been able to accomplish some of that in Maryland, if they can work here. There's almost no place in America where they won't work. It's not easy, though. It's not just, let's change our message. It's a slow rebuilding process. But look, I'm old enough to remember, and my dad had a role in the Watergate situation with the impeachment of Nixon. I remember after Nixon, everybody said it was the death of the Republican Party. And it was pretty devastating.

They lost seats everywhere. People said it was never going to come back. And then I was part of the Reagan Revolution, where it was the strongest time of Republicans ever. And we redirected and rebuilt the party with a positive, hopeful vision for America, you know, standing up for our allies, turning the economy around. And people felt good about the country and where we were heading. It was a message that appealed to all of the independence and a huge chunk of those Reagan Democrats. And, you know, I was thrilled and excited to be a part of that. That's kind of the rebirth, I think, that we're going to need to see, perhaps after this. How do you engage with either your own media diet or when constituents ask you, you know,

how they should be getting their news, what's going on social media, how technology is affecting our politics and, you know, sort of this balkanization of America as we sort of each go to our corners and don't talk to. people who disagree with us anymore? I think it's critically important. And, you know, I think it's one of the problems that we have today. Obviously, I think that you, I know you all believe that, and that's why this is such a great discussion and appreciate the forum that you provide.

I think the divisive politics is certainly the way we get our news and the way we move into our warring camps and only talk in the echo chambers of either, I only talk to people that are on the far right or on the far left, and I only get my news filtered by that. I think it's a big problem today. I mean, it's almost as if we're living in different worlds and we're watching different things happen. And I talk to some folks. And I try to, out of necessity in my state, I reach, I go everywhere and talk to everyone and go into different groups. And I get this perspective. But I think a lot of people don't get that chance. And it seems as if we're just talking past each other, yelling at each other, and not, we're getting different news,

that's for sure. And I think it's important to somehow figure that out. I mean, maybe, maybe you guys have the solution to that, but I don't know how to solve it. We're trying. I know, I know you are. I know you are. I appreciate it. Have good faith discussions. That's a big part of it. Have good faith conversations to people who don't agree with you and take in their media. That's what we desperately need. I really do think that's important. All right. I have a last, Steve, why don't you ask one last substantive question?

Then I've got our ending question, Tina. Well, I'm interested. I've got your book. I've read in the book. And you describe your battle with cancer. And what that was like trying to balance, you know, staying ahead of this horrible disease and recovering, but also continuing to run. the state. How is your health today? And what did you learn from having to go through that?

Yeah, well, thank you, Steve. I'm 100% cancer-free and have been for quite some time. And other than being overweight, my health is great. You know, I put on the corona diet, I think. I've been putting on a few pounds, but cancer's all gone. And it's truly blessed and appreciate it. every single day. It was a tough battle. I'd only been governor for five months. I had just gone through this huge election, upset victory, my first legislative session. I went through the riots in Baltimore, and then I went on my first trade mission, and I got the news that I had this very aggressive and life-threatening cancer all over my body, and I fought that for a total of about 18 months, but five months of 24-hour day chemotherapy while being governor. It was a tough

struggle, but I met so many incredible people that were going through tougher battles and met their families. And it's changed me. I've got a new perspective on life about what's important and what's not. And I'm going to continue to fight to try to raise awareness until we find a cure for some of these terrible diseases. All right, Governor, last question. You made big news in May of 2018 as you were running for reelection. It's even included in your Wikipedia page that you adopted two Shih Tzu's named Anna after Annapolis and Chessie, short for Chesapeake. A, now, now that it's been two years, have they fully adjusted to life in the governor's mansion? And as someone who worked for, I worked for Carly Fiorena, she also had two

small dogs that occasionally dressed up for Halloween. I'm curious whether your two ever don Halloween costumes. Well, I'm embarrassed to say yes, they have Donned. Halloween costumes. I did not do that. My daughters did that. I did not put the costumes on the little dogs. But yeah, it's a cute story. I'm a dog lover. We had lost the dog and didn't nobody to replace it or not. But we had a bunch of rescue dogs come down for a bill signing to encourage adoption and to protect, you know, stop puppy mills and things like that. And I just fell in love with these little puppies that were from a rescue in Baltimore. So these little dogs came from the streets of West Baltimore to the jail at the shelter to living at the

governor's mansion and having this beautiful yard to play in. So yeah, they've adjusted pretty well. It sounds like a Disney movie. Yes. It's like it's like. Maybe that's your next book. You know, puppy power strikes again, the Cinderella dogs. It's a great. I'm going to write another book. Yeah, children's book about Anna and Chessie. I think I will. You've given me a great idea, Sarah. What did they dress up for for Halloween? Oh, they do it every year. So I don't know. You're so goofy. I'm, you know, I'm embarrassed. He won't make news.

He's ducking the question, listeners. I refuse to answer. Yeah, I refuse to answer the hard-hitting questions about his dog's Halloween costumes. Thank you so, so much for taking the time to join us. We know how busy you are fighting this virus on behalf of Maryland, and we wish you all the best. Thank you all very much. Thanks a lot. I'm going to be able to be.