The Dispatch Podcast - Mick Mulvaney and the Reasonable Nutjobs

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

In a wide-ranging conversation spanning from his time working in the Trump White House, to his early days as a leader in the House Freedom Caucus (which we learned was supposed to be called the “Reasonable Nutjob Caucus), Mick Mulvaney talks with Sarah and Steve about his life in politics. During the conversation, Mulvaney opines on John Boehner’s new book, what being chief of staff is actually like, whether or not he would have voted to impeach Donald Trump after January 6 and more. Plus, stick around for some tough questions from his fellow South Carolinian Trey Gowdy. Show Notes: -Mick Mulvaney on Twitter -John Boehner’s book excerpt from Politico -If He Loses, Trump Will Concede Gracefully - WSJ -Indiana Jones character or Mick Mulvaney? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to a special Friday Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by Steve Hayes. And this week, we are talking to Mick Mulvaney. He was elected to Congress in 2010, became a founding member of the Freedom Caucus. Once Donald Trump was elected, he served as director of the OMB and then the acting chief of staff from 2019 to March 31st, 2020. From there, he became the special envoy to Northern Ireland until he resigned following the events of January 6th. saying, we didn't sign up for what you saw last night. It's going to be an interesting conversation. Let's dive right in. Nick Mulvaney. Thank you for joining us. The Biden administration has rolled out a $2 trillion infrastructure plan. What advice would you give to Ron Claim your successor if they actually want to get this done?

Well, they're going to get it done. I mean, they've figured out a way, and I think it's probably legal to do it with a new version of reconciliation. So they'll be able to do it with 50 votes in the Senate. And notwithstanding the objections of folks like Joe Manchin, they'll find enough money for West Virginia to get that vote. vote and they'll get it passed. So I don't think I need to give Ron any advice. He knows exactly what they are doing, whether that's a good idea is an interesting discussion, but they're certainly going to get it done. Someone asked me the other day, they went down the list of all

the things that were in the bill, and they asked me how much of these things will actually become law, and I'm like, I think probably most of them. When you're willing to run a government as if you have an overwhelming majority and a mandate when you only have a 50-50 split in the Senate. There's almost nothing you can't do. When it came to the American Recovery Act, Republicans didn't really message against it. They voted against it, but they didn't hit the airwaves. They didn't do what they did with Obamacare, really driving down the popularity of the legislation and the accomplishment itself. Instead, there was a lot of Dr. Seuss talk and some culture war stuff that they focused on during that time. We're seeing Mitch McConnell and others come out and say that

They want to make the point that, you know, what was it, the McCarthy said, only 6% of the money is actually going to go to roads and bridges. This is a progressive checklist. But of course, McCarthy and McConnell don't always control the messaging of the Republican Party these days. Do you think the Republican Party will message against this legislation? Or do you think they're going to stick to other topics, be at the border or Seuss-esque wars when it comes to the infrastructure? bill. Yeah. Spending is a real tough issue for my party because while most folks will pay at least lip service to some type of fiscal conservatism, many of them don't believe it. The rarest thing in Washington, D.C., the last 10 years, probably the last 30, has been a true fiscal conservative. I mean, you look back at the times when there were actually Democrats who were against running up the deficit back in the 80s and 90s. That's long gone. And the truth of the matter is that the first two years of the Trump administration when the Republicans had the House and the Senate, we raised spending faster than the last couple years of the Obama administration. So spending is

one of those things that Republicans, there's a reason that we, and I'm saying we, because I'm in this party, we default to the social issues, to the Dr. Seuss issues, to the border issues and stuff, because it's something that we sort of can all agree on. Spending is something that this party is going to have to reconcile within itself because it is a House divided on spending right now. All right, more fun stuff, Steve. Well, let me push back on that a little bit. I mean, I have a slightly different recollection of the last 10, 15 years of history because it seems to me that if you go back to the 2010-2011 time frame

when you come in with a bunch of people who are at least talking about restraining spending and talking about debt and deficits, you finally had, through Paul Ryan, in his efforts, the inclusion of entitlement reform in actual Republican draft budgets, budget proposals. And that was something that it seems to me was kind of a rare moment of political courage in Washington, where Republicans kind of grabbed on to these issues, long regarded as the third rail of American politics. embraced entitlement reform. We know that entitlements are driving the debt more than anything else,

and Republicans actually offered substantive policy solutions and owned it. And then five years later, 2016 comes around and Donald Trump is running against entitlement reform, makes very clear in the debates that he didn't have any patience for the other candidates on that big stage who wanted to run on entitlement form, ran against it. And then obviously, you're, you're, um, challenges inside the administration in pushing any kind of spending restraint are well known and well documented. Wasn't there a moment where Republicans actually did take this somewhat seriously, or was that basically just Paul Ryan pushing his entitlement reform proposals and other Republicans in the House who didn't really believe it going along?

A lot of questions. So let me see if I can break it down. Listen, I give Paul and our whole team credit for willing to raise those issues in 2011, 12, and 13. And one of the things that I think history has forgotten is that we actually did well in midterm elections following on those arguments. We got sideways when we started losing our message on health care, but we did well when we were talking about entitlement reform. We figured out a way, I think, to explain it to people and people had started to accept the fact that that entitlement reform was absolutely necessary. We did that when we were in the minority. And then we come into the majority and have a chance to actually do it. And we did not. When we were shooting with real bullets, we didn't. Yes, you're

correct. Donald Trump was against any changes to Social Security and Medicare. And my budget that I wrote, we wrote three of them, did not touch mainline Social Security or mainline Medicare. But we had more entitlement reform, I think it was in the budget of 2019 than any other budget ever offered before because we went to the other types of entitlement programs, Social Security, Disability, for example, all the other pieces of Medicare. Medicare pays for tuition scholarships for doctors. That's not what people think of as Medicare, right? They had become these huge funds of just pools of money that over the course of the last 30 years, politicians had turned to for their pet projects. So there was all of this waste in entitlement reform that we could have changed without touching old age

retirement and Social Security and mainline Medicare. And the Republicans on the Hill were just as fast to throw that budget in the trash as the Democrats were. When we were firing with real bullets and had a chance to make a change, we didn't. It's hard to do. It's always easier to tell people yes. It's also hard for most folks to explain why you have to spend less. It's not easy to message. It's possible. I'm still one of the most proud moments I have is the budget presentation in May of 2017, which I still offer as one of the best defenses of fiscal conservatism in the last five or ten years. And it was a team effort to figure out how to explain to people why it was compassionate to spend less. But it's hard to do. And you have to really,

really believe it like we did at the Office of Management Budget. But no, listen, we had a chance to at least free spending and what we ended up doing was spending more during the first two years of our control of this administration than the Obama folks had done in the last two years of theirs. We were great in the minority on spending and not so good when we're in the majority. So will Republicans make a case now for limited government for spending restraint that they haven't been making very consistently in the past? Or do they look to these other issues as sort of a dodge so they don't have to engage. And if I can add to that, why in the world should we believe them?

Well, I'll go back to Sarah's point, which is what did they say about the $1.9 trillion stimulus package? You know, they talked about other stuff, right? They didn't go to the heart of the economics. Economics is hard. And it's also hard, by the way, to talk to people about the risks of inflation when we haven't really had real inflation in this country for 30 years. So, again, most folks don't remember it.

I'm probably, I'm looking at Steve and he looks like he's older than I am, but he's probably not. Sarah's certainly not older than I am, but I remember when you had to pay 14% on a mortgage. No one, very few people remember that these days. It's hard to do. So it's always hard to be conservative. It's always much easier to be liberal than Democrat. It's a lot less taxing intellectually. It's a lot more fun at parties.

You get better coverage on the press. It's hard to be conservative, but hopefully we will get back to the basics and start talking about economic issues again. But truly, if Republicans all of a sudden, when the opposing party gets power, says now we're the party of fiscal restraint again, I find it offensive. How stupid do they think I am? They don't actually believe this. It's not an actual principle. It is politically convenient, politically expedient, which is its own justification. But make that justification then.

Why should I believe that anyone in the Republican Party at this point actually believes in fiscal restraint? Yeah, it's tough because, again, once you lose the moral high ground on any issue, it's hard to get it back. But you can get it back. And I think if you're going to start doing it now, you could still make the case. You could still make the case that if spending becomes an issue, that they are going to spend more than we do. And they will. We might have a little bit more disciplined spending than the Democrats. it's a tough sell.

And really, when the truth of the matter is that we like spending as much as they do, we just want to spend it on other things. We want to spend it on defense. They want to spend it on wealth transfer payments. That's what it comes down to. The Republicans could be making a case that deficits are not going to go away and that the best kind of deficits are deficits that allow people to keep their own money.

So tax reductions because that's the most efficient allocation of resources. The next best type of debt is that that goes to infrastructure because at least there's a return on that investment. And the worst kind of debt is that incurred on wealth transfer payments because that's the most inefficient allocation of resources. Again, once you start saying that, you put half of the audience to sleep. It's going to be difficult.

And the point you just made, Sarah, is why we haven't talked about it recently because it's hard. I love the bumper sticker, though, for 2024. Republicans, we probably might spend less than the other guys. Needs little work. And even that. Well, let me ask about public perceptions because, you know, it would be one thing if, I mean, I'm perfectly content to blame Republicans, and I do blame Republicans.

I think they bear a lot of, a lot of the blame for why we're in this position right now. But it's not as if you've got public outcry calling for less spending and more restraint and addressing debt and deficit issues, at least at this point. And I wonder, on I'm taking even a further step back, a sort of big picture look, should we think this is possible at all? I mean, we're $28 trillion in debt right now running deficits we've never seen before. And no real sense. I mean, what strikes me is the absence of the discussion of debt as we pile on trillion

after trillion after trillion. How do Republicans make people care about this anymore when we've been hearing about the coming debt crisis for years? We're not yet there. And this all seems to be working out. The economy's doing well. Stock markets up. Bank accounts are good.

401Ks are fat. Why can't we keep continuing to do this? Yeah. I remember a conversation I had walking through one of the tunnels in Congress when I was a new member of Congress and I was walking with one of the old bowls. The guy's been there for 30 years. He's on Appropriations Committee and he's been there through everything and we heard about me and we, you know, knew a little bit about my background. He goes, I just love you deficit hawks. I love you budget hawks. You guys are great. I was there, you know, when you all came in with Reagan and then

you left. And I was there when you came back in with Newt and then you left and you're here now and you're going to be gone soon and I'm still going to be here and we're going to spend the money. And that's sort of, that was a Republican, by the way. So how do you make the case? Something I'm working on in my own head, and I haven't figured out a way to sell it yet because it's just too complicated. I did an interview with some friends of mine. I was in the South Carolina Senate for two years, and some buddies of mine have got a podcast.

So I went down and chatted with them. And they asked me why was Washington government differing than governing in Columbia, South Carolina. And I said it was. And they said, why do you think that is? And the first thing that came into my head was because we have a balanced budget amendment in South Carolina. And it forces people to work together because you have to pass a budget. So there is a forced bipartisanship of sorts, even though in South Carolina we have a veto-proof majority in the House and a huge, maybe veto-proof majority in the Senate. I haven't done the math recently. But when you're forced to make difficult decisions, it makes people come together.

If you have a printing press and you're in charge, you can do whatever you want to do and you don't care what I think. And if I have a printing press when I'm in charge, I can do whatever I want to and don't care about what you think. So there is an argument, again, it's too convoluted right now that if you want to see Washington change and you want to see bipartisanship again and people working together make them make tough decisions because right now they don't have to do that and a balanced budget that would actually accomplish so can i let me follow up on on the internal congressional dynamics there you were an active and enthusiastic uh member of the house freedom caucus for years um made arguments the freedom caucus made arguments during the obama years um and you know took

i think tough stands i admired many of the stands that you all took even if i didn't necessarily agree with all of the tactics 100% of the time. I was with you in spirit. We've seen a dramatic change in the Freedom Caucus these days. I remember when we covered the President's, President Trump's first speech to Congress, and Mark Meadows, later Chief of Staff at the White House, gave it an A-plus-plus, plus, the president had spoken for 90 minutes and didn't mention debt or deficits. I mean, that was sort of the animating issue of the Freedom Caucus, and it didn't seem to matter. And as the Trump years went on, the Freedom Caucus, it seems to me, became more of an enforcer

of sort of not only party loyalty, but Trump loyalty and much, much less focused on the kinds of issues we're talking about with respect to fiscal restraint and whatnot. One, is my perception of that correct? And two, how much of that can I blame you for because they were doing what you were asking them to do? The Trump enforcer stuff is, that's easy to explain because, and I told the president of this, because I had been, you know, as a founding name of the Freedom Caucus, I think I was in Congress for two years. I think we started it in 14, although I'm losing track of history. I'm pretty sure that's right.

And when I got over the White House, even when I was, before I was chief and I was the office of management budget, the president's like, you know, tell me about these guys. And I'm like, these guys are going to be your very best supporters. And he's like, why? They're very conservative. And he knew he wasn't that conservative. And as Mr. President, at the core, they are your voters because at the core, the Freedom Caucus is anti-establishment. That's what it is. It's against Washington for the way Washington has been. It took the form of a conservative group, an ultra-conservative. group on some things. But the spirit of it was anti-establishment. So they had kindred spirits with Donald Trump. That being said, you are absolutely right when you say that the group changed. People forget when we started the group, the working title, and I am not making this up. We did not have a name for the group. Just Ramash had taken the Liberty Caucus, which we all kind of liked. And we didn't have a name for ourselves. So the working title was. the reasonable nut job caucus. We actually, I wrote the bylaws for the group as one of the founders.

And the bylaws were essentially, we had a test, okay? It was a working test. And this is a bore folks, but I guess if they're listening to this podcast, they're true Washington insiders. The litmus test was this. You had to be able to vote against a rule on the House floor, and you had to be able to vote for a short-term continuing resolution spending bill. Because those were the two extremes. Voting against a rule was the most anti-leadership vote you could take. It was outright mutiny. And voting for a short-term

CR was one of the most pro-leadership type of votes that you could take. And it had been something that caused a great deal of division within the party. The first, the whole time I was there was voting for short-term CRs. But we needed people to be able to vote both ways. And for that reason, there were a lot of folks who were not invited in. Steve King was not invited in when I was there. Louis Gomer was not invited in when I was there because we knew they could vote against rule. We didn't think they could ever vote for a CR. They were not capable, they were capable of being nut jobs, but not capable of being

reasonable. And we were looking for people for whom they could do both. And what I think happened was that after Trump got elected and the Freedom Caucus sort of move to front and center on Fox News is that they realize that there's a lot more energy behind being nut jobs than there is being reasonable. And the Freedom Caucus went hardcore over and I think moved away from some of our founding principles. Can I let me can I go one one question deeper on this because this is this you're touching on a lot of things that I've occupied way too much of my thinking over the past several years.

So I'm pretty sympathetic to the idea that Washington needed a major disruption. It's probably one of the reasons that I was sympathetic to a lot of the things that the Freedom Caucus stood for. To me, it sounds like you're saying they're in some ways a hinge point. And either I've just misunderstood what was the animating presence of the anti-establishment crowd or I just misunderstood the impulse toward fiscal restraint. But it seems to me you go back to 2010 and you've got the Tea Party. You've got the Republicans coming into Congress, you and your colleagues who are bringing this spirit of actual restraint. There's an ideological component to

the disruption. Yes. Donald Trump comes in and there's not really at all an ideological component it to disruption. In fact, in many respects, it was a non-ideological disruption. Did that, am I reading that right? And if that's the case, did the Freedom Caucus, was I wrong to have understood them as being ideological in the first place? And it really was just all about blowing stuff up? No, it was ideological. It absolutely was. Keep in mind, the reason the Freedom Caucus came into existence was because we felt, and I believe rightly so, that the Republican Study Committee had been co-opted by leadership. There were two successive elections, one I think Steve Scalise,

and all these people are not friends. I'm not saying they're bad people, but Steve Scalise was able to co-op leadership with John Boehner and Eric Cantor to beat Tom Graves in an election for the Republican Study Committee chairmanship in 2012. And then, oh, what's his name? Bill Flores from Texas was able to do the same thing to me in 2014. And that's when the conservatives looked around, and so we need our own place.

So it was both. The ideology was, we thought that there was not a conservative caucus, that if you were co-opted by leadership, you could not fill your role in the Republican Study Committee. So there was certainly that ideology. And there was the anti-establishment part of it because we were pissed at the way that leadership was treating our group. Did that change when Trump came into office? Probably, but didn't the Republican Party?

I mean, has the Republican Party been a lot less ideological the last four years? You're seeing that today. You're correct in that Trump does not have a political ideology the same way that Paul Ryan or you or I do. And it certainly if he does, it's not, it's not conservative. That being said, he was able to accomplish a lot of conservative things. Spending just happened not to be one of them. But again, the Republican House and the Republican Senate were blithe to go along with him on the road to spending more money. As long as they got their more money for defense, they were more than happy to pay their more money for the social spending and so forth. So the answer to your question is yes, on both fronts. It was ideological and it was

anti-establishment. It became less ideological because that's where our party went as well. John Boehner's new book on The House has come out with some excerpts. I want to read you a portion. He's talking about the class of congressmen that are sworn in in January of 2011. That's you. And he says, you could be a total moron and get elected just by having an R next to your name. And that year, by the way, we did pick up a fair number in that category. Some of them, they were just thinking of how to fundraise off of outrage or how they could get on Hannity that night. Ronald Reagan used to say something to the effect that if I get 80 or 90% of what I want, that's a win.

These guys wanted 100% every time. In fact, I don't think that would satisfy them because they didn't really want legislative victories. They wanted wedge issues and conspiracies and crusades. To them, my talk of trying to get anything done made me a sellout, a dupe of the Democrats, and a traitor. Some of them had me in their sights from day one. So I had a really fun time going back

through the history of Mick Mulvaney and John Boehner from 2011 on. You vote against him, of course. It was like a, I was like, oh, yeah, that was, oh, you vote against him for Speaker when you thought you had the votes. Some people reneged. Then in 2015, they never had the votes. You put out this really scathing statement, actually, of why you voted for him for Speaker that year. But saying the whole time, you know, he's not your guy. And then you are credited as being one of, I guess it was four you, five of you, who went to visit with Boehner the day before.

he resigned early and stepped down. And you said, you no longer believed he was the leader of the caucus. He had ceased to be a leader. That was your quote. This is a principal's disagreement, not personal. Was John Boehner right? Were you wrong in what your criticisms of him were? You were just talking about Donald Trump not being really somewhat of principle, being more a vehicle. Well, John Boehner, at least according to him, he was trying to get stuff done, conservative stuff, stuff that, you know, you maybe didn't agree with 100%, but was at least part of what you wanted. The result of the movement you created led to this moment and all the things we've talked about. So, yeah, where do you think of your John Boehner days now? I could talk about John for hours, even though he and I did not spend nearly as much time together as people.

might think, or I had wished. John Boehner and I have never played golf together. And I've always told people, I said, I just don't understand why John had such a combative relationship with our group. I'm a somewhat vulgar, golfing, drinking Irish Catholic. I used to pass John Boehner on the way to Mass most mornings when I was in Washington, D.C. He was going to breakfast. I was going to church.

I'd give him a hard time about not popping his. He's head in. He'd laugh and we go on. One of my favorite stories about John is that he called me one time and my phone rings and it says the speaker on it. So I go over to, I say, yes, Mr. Speaker goes, come over here. I want to talk to you right now. Okay. So I walk over and he's sitting in his office. He's just there by himself. He's got his legs crossed. He's reading the newspaper, smoking a cigarette. He goes, I just wanted you to know that I don't like you very much. And he said it with a smile on his face and I sort of smile. I said, well, thanks, Mr. John. I appreciate that. Why is that? He goes, you remind me way too much of me. I'll get the F out of my office. And I left. So that was the kind of relationship we had. And I think John saw, you know, John made his name for himself being a disruptor, being

anti-establishment. I mean, that's how he was what he was. I'll answer your question like this. John, I think, made one critical mistake that he never recovered from, which is that he did not understand what happened in 2010. He thought it was an ordinary election. He thought that the Republicans had put out some good stuff in the, and then they had done a good job of sticking together, and that because they had unified and because they had a really good policy paper called the Pledge to America, which is 87 pages and a piece of crap, that that is

what got everybody elected, which is exactly not what got everybody elected. The Tea Party was entirely different. John misunderstood that and came to Washington with the same attitude as incoming speakers had since the 1920s and failed to adapt to the new environment. And the one story I tell is that he called all 87 us to the second floor of the, to the Capitol Hill Club right after we got there, introduced himself. We're all facing him. He's at the end of the room. And he gives a little introduction. And then somebody, you don't even know who it was, because we didn't know each other at the time, says, Mr. Speaker, you know, we, we represent represent roughly a third of the Republican House caucus right now. And given the historic events

of what just happened and the talent in this room, we'd really like you to consider a proportional representation on the A committees because we don't want to wait to get stuff done. We don't want to be here for 30 years. That's not what we want to do. We want representation on ways and means and financial services right now. And he took a drag on the cigarette and laughed and said, well, that's never going to effing happen. What's your next effing question? And he lost more than half of the group that day. Now, granted, that's just John's personality, and I got it because, again, he and I are

very similar types of people, but he lost a group of people on that day and never got them back and never got anybody to buy into his system. I think he was a man out of time. He would have been a great speaker in 1968, but was not a good speaker in 2010. Was the job harder in 2010? Absolutely. Did Paul Ryan learn that the hard way? Absolutely. But you cannot, you could not go into the Tea Party movement, not realizing that it was something different. And if the leadership doesn't change, it will be replaced. But at the same time, did the Tea Party fail to accomplish its goals and turn into what it has become today, the successor to the Tea Party that's there today, what Steve and you were talking about with the House Freedom Caucus? because it also failed to grasp that it was in the House of Representatives,

which was a body with certain ways of getting things done and rules and that you couldn't just go to Hannity every night or Rush or Mark Levin and think that that was somehow going to accomplish things. We had all sorts of opportunities that we could have taken as a party that we didn't because I think we had unsound leadership. Now, granted, keep in mind, we're looking at this in hindsight, one of the things we've not talked about us, who was president at the time. It would have been very difficult to get anything done with Barack Obama because he was simply disinterested

in engaging at all on bipartisanship. But go back and give the one example that we could have maybe looked at positively, which was the Simpson-Bowles plan, could have been a foundational work that we could have put the energy behind the Tea Party behind. under different circumstances, different leadership, and we did not do that. And I think that was a lost opportunity. I lost votes in my, I lost a vote. John McCain refused to vote for me for the Office of Management budget in my Senate confirmation because I voted for every Simpson-Bowles amendment to the appropriations bills, including the Defense Department. And for that, he called me a chucklehead or something like that and refused to vote for me.

for OMB director. All right. Last point on this. You mentioned that it would have been exceptionally hard to get anything done with Barack Obama. I think that is probably true regardless, but did the Freedom Caucus,

are they somewhat responsible for that as well with the birth certificate nonsense and really different than what I think we had seen during the Clinton years or the Carter years, go back, a loyal opposition into really going on television, going to the media every day and saying that Barack Obama,

was morally corrupt, evil, un-American, an unworthy president? Yeah, that wasn't the Freedom Caucus in 2014. Again, it was the reasonable nut job caucus. I was on TV a lot. Jim Jordan was on. Yeah, we took them to task on some of the oversight issues. Benghazi comes to mind especially. But we were heavily focused on policy, heavily focused on spending.

And I never remember, I never remember talking. about the birth certificate a single time in my days in Congress. I don't believe that Jim Jordan did at that time. As it morphed into something else after Donald Trump became president, I think Steve made that case quite persuasively that it has. But in those early days, no, I do not think the difficulty was that we were focused on these fringe issues. I think the difficulty was we had a dysfunctional party. And again, it would have been very difficult to be functional if we were perfect because again we for a period of time that we didn't even have the senate or the white house so yeah it would have been difficult but we could have done much

better than we did imagine what we wouldn't like if we had thrown our weight behind simpson bowls was that ever a real consideration was that was that a discussion no paul ryan was against the tax increases 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

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I imagine that people who follow politics even casually can't quite comprehend what that meant to your life on a day-to-day basis. What was a typical day, sort of a cliche question, and I'm sure the answer is there was no typical day, but what was that like? trying to make that all work, working with the guy who, you know, by his own definition, by the, in the terms of his most enthusiastic supporters, governed in an ad hoc fashion. There's no simple answer to that. Was there a typical day? Yes, in terms of the schedule. No, in terms of the subject matter. I mean, I got to the office the same time every day.

I pretty much left the same time every day. We worked 14, 16 hour day. most of the time. I actually had to set it up in two shifts because the president only slept about four hours a night, and I don't work after 9 o'clock at night. I can't. I just, I'm not wired like that. So I'd get to the office about 6.30, and I'd work until about 8. And then the afternoon team, which came in about 10, would work until 11 o'clock. So we had to have constant sort of dealing with things and shifts. But the way I describe it to people is that, and it was Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who explained this to me when, after she left, I talked to her about, I guess, four or five months after she left. I said, how you doing? She goes, well, I'm finally sleeping

through the night. And I'm like, really? She goes, yeah, she was, Mickey, you don't realize how addicted you get. Your body gets addicted to the adrenaline. Everything you're doing every single day is important at a global scale. Everything you're doing is liable to be on the front page of the Washington Post or the lead story on CNN. It's just everything, every single thing. And, of course, all of your, all of your mistakes when you are in a Republican administration will be magnified. There's no question. I know I was half joking early on. It's much easier to be a Democrat. You can screw things up in this town and a Democrat, and the media will cover for you almost all of the time. As I've often said, if the mainstream media did not have a double

standard, they would not have any standards at all. And we knew it. And that was fine. It's a miracle, by the way, that Republicans ever win any elections given the media coverage. I think my friend Frank Luntz said that his analysis was that the media coverage of Donald Trump over the course of his four years was 94 percent negative. And we were dealing with that every single day. Now, that also, it did help build a rapport because you knew it was sort of you against the world. It was the West Wing against the world. And that did help. And for a period of time, it was one of the best places I've ever worked up until the first impeachment was really rough on the West Wing. And we talked about that another time, and really divisive in the

West Wing. But from January through about August, we had a blast. I thought we were doing some really, really good work, that the president was doing some excellent stuff. We had some legislative wins. And it was a fun place to work. Would I do it again? No, it's not the type of thing you go back and do. Someone asked you one time, Steve, I was actually with the president with a group of people in the West, in the Oval Office. We're just sitting around shooting the breeze like we did a lot of times. And he's president goes, Mick, make, why don't you tell these people what you do? And I just sort of pulled my hair back. And when I still had some, I said, Mr. President, I do all the, can I curse in this in this podcast? Yeah. I do all the shit you don't want to do. And I tell you all

the shit that nobody else wants to tell you. That's the reason that chiefs or staff don't live if you do it right, you can't stay very long because that is a hard place to be. I remember one morning he used to come down about 11. He gets up about 5 in the morning, but he didn't come down to the office to about 11 every single day. He'd read all the newspapers, watch all the morning shows and come down. And I'm waiting in Dan Scavino's office and one of the lawyers comes in and says, is the president down yet? So I got to have five minutes of his time. And, you know, that was my job, you know, sort of determining what deserved to get in and what didn't. And so what happened?

So we just had a great case and a great decision of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. It's a huge win for us. It was a huge win for us. I remember the case? I said, that's absolutely the type of thing that we need to get in this. So yeah, as soon as he comes down, you can have 10 minutes. Came down, goes through the decision, yay team, everybody's happy. No problems.

The same day, the same day, that afternoon, 630 or so. the same lawyer calls me on the phone and says, hey, are you going to see the president this afternoon? And I sort of paused and I said, you know I'm going to see the president this afternoon. I'm not seeing the president every afternoon. Why the hell are you calling me from upstairs instead of coming down to see me?

We just got a really bad decision in the 11th Circuit. And I was hoping you could tell the president because I'm leaving to go to the airport to go to the conference. It's okay. And that's what I did. But again, I don't regret it. at all. I do regret, not regret. I was sad to see that the systems that we had put in place to make sure that the president was surrounded by good information seemed to fail after I left. I don't think

you get the results that you got on the January 6th riots if the president is getting good information. The president was always, we always had fringe people in the Oval Office. You just did. I think many administrations do, when you like to talk to large crowds like President Trump does, and Reagan was the same way, by the way, you're going to get Peter, like Peter Navarro in there. You're going to get people who have bad information talking to the president. That wasn't going to stop, by the way. The key was to balance it with other people, and they actually knew what the hell they were talking about, who can provide him with good information so that he could take the good, the bad,

filtered through it, and ultimately, I was very pleased with the decisions that he made when I was chief of staff. It is apparent to me that broke down after I left and that only the crazy people were advising him. And I think that's the only way you get to how he handled the post election up to and including the riot on the six was that the only people left in the building who were talking to him were people who were telling him stuff that was not right. Anybody who told him that Mike Pence had the ability to unilaterally set aside that election did a great disservice to the country and why that person or those people were allowed in there on a regular basis. to convince the president is one of the things I think history needs to find out. When you look back at your time and you talked about you'll have some accomplishments, you probably have some day-to-day regrets, but overall, I think you believed what I believed as well.

I think I know John Kelly did, that we want good people in government, regardless of the flaws of the leader. We don't want him to be surrounded by crazy people, like you said, around January 6th. But knowing what you know now, knowing what came after, you resigned after January 6th from your position, do you regret going in at all? Do you think that perhaps it was a disservice to the country to, in some ways, shield the American voter from what a Donald Trump presidency would have looked like if he had been left to his own devices and had the presidency that I think he wanted in some ways?

Yeah, first of all, no regrets. Zero, not a single one. And I have no second thoughts at all about joining the administration. I disagree with John Kelly on the role of the chief of staff. John Kelly really did see himself as to be there as a shield

between Donald Trump and the country. He was protecting the country against Donald Trump. That's absolutely absurd. John Kelly wasn't elected by Jack Squad people. Not a single person ever voted for John Kelly for anything. Tens of millions of people voted for Donald Trump.

He was the elected president of the United States. The job of the chief of staff is not to protect the nation against their elected leaders. It's to try to figure out a way to make that elected person as successful as they possibly can. And, of course, everybody says, oh, what if it's illegal? No, if you say legal, if it's immoral, there's not even a conversation about that. That never even came up. He never asked me to do a single illegal or immoral thing ever. I had a fascinating conversation last night about withholding money for Ukraine,

a hundred percent legal. He never asked us anything that even approached what John Kelly sort of suggests the president was asking. So I disagree wholeheartedly with John on that. Our job as the staff was to make the president successful. And I thought that we did that. I thought that the staff failed to do that after we left. And I do not think the president was successful through the COVID crisis. I obviously wasn't successful on the election, was dismally unsuccessful on the lawsuits related to the election.

I had a fascinating conversation with a guy who worked for the Bush campaign in 2000. They said in 2000, we knew we were going to have a problem in Florida. I was down there six months before the election. We had lawsuits all during the period run up to the election. We had lawsuits on the day of the elections. We had lawsuits after the election. I didn't get a call from the Trump campaign. This is this guy talking out until three days after the election.

So it was poorly executed, poorly prepared. The president was not successful in the latter half of 2020 because I think a large part of the staff. So do you regret leaving? Well, no, I mean, he asked me to leave. I mean, you know, it was never intended to, the reason I was acting was it was never intended to be a full-time position in the first place. I actually asked for, I got the job at the chief of staff's office. when I asked for the envoy to Northern Ireland.

I had just finished my year as the acting director of the CFPB. I had set up the Office of Management Budget so that it could run with me gone three or four days a week. And now here I am with one job again, and I was bored. And I went into his office Friday afternoon and said, there's this other gig in Northern Ireland and I'm done at CFPB. I could do this part-time. It hasn't been filled yet. I'd really like to do it.

He's like, no, no, no. I love what you did, the CFPB. you turn that place around. This place is struggling. Kelly destroyed the place. The morale here is awful. You come in six months, six months, turning around six months acting, and then you could do the Northern Island, Irish thing. That turned into a year. And at the end of 2019, I was ready to go. I knew he was ready to go. And that was more important. And I would have stayed as long as he wanted me to stay. But I couldn't leave. And he knew he didn't want me to leave in the middle of impeachment. So we waited until after the impeachment was over.

And he actually, I encouraged him to hire Mark Meadows because Mark was a friend of mine. And then I got the job I wanted. So, no, I have no regrets about leaving the chief's position. I have no regrets about retiring, resigning in the office on the 6th. I think it was the only thing I could do to voice my objections. I do not think the president was successful on that day. I think he failed on that day to be president. I went home and talked to my kids and they said, why he's still working for him? And I said, that's a really

good question. But we were in a worldwide pandemic. The president, we needed a leader of the country in his fullest capacity, his most successful. You don't regret leaving and handing off power to someone who turned out to not be nearly as successful, as you put it. Didn't you owe it to us to stay then? Well, first of all, it's not my job to keep, right? It's his. To convince him? Oh, no, no, no. No, you don't convince the president. Once the president's made up his mind, you could always tell I had what used to be called the Trumpometer because the president thinks out loud, right? He just does.

A lot of people do. And he used to say, I want to do X, okay? And then one of the things I was good at was sort of innately. The president and I liked each other. We still do. We play golf together. I think I understand it he's similar to other men that I've worked with and four over my career. And I'd go back to the office and say, hey, the president just said,

X, and people look at me and go, well, where is that on the Trumpometer? And I'm like, that's about a 35 on the Trumpometer. So we're going to wait and see if it's still X again tomorrow. And then sometimes it was 98 on the Trump meter, and we knew it wasn't going to change. And when it came time to make the decision to replace me with Mark Meadows, he was at 100 on the Trumpometer. And I was fine with that. So no, you don't then get the chance to say, oh, Mr. President, I'm not leaving because we're in a middle of pandemic. And you can't, you can't do this. That's not, that doesn't enter into the equation. in the relationship between a president and chief of staff.

You go, thank you, sir. It's been a pleasure. I hope to be able to help you in another fashion. I will do everything I can to help Mark Meadows. And by the way, and this story never got written. Meadows and I were supposed to overlap about two weeks. I told Mark that I'd stay until the end of March and that he'd officially start April 1st, that he was good with that.

And we were going to overlap. Again, because Mark and I founding Freedom Caucus, our districts touch each other in the Carolinas. We travel together. We are friends. And this was a smooth transition, or it was going to be, until I got exposed to COVID and then had to lock down for two weeks. And then he and I had two days together, and then he got exposed to COVID.

And we had to get locked down for two weeks. So we really only had two or three days of that overlap, which was unfortunate. On January 6th, then the post-election period, you famously wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal in which you suggest that the president was likely to just fold when it was clear that he hadn't won the election. Obviously, that didn't happen. Question on that is, how much of that was you trying to encourage the president to behave that way because he responds to messages through the media probably better than he does

other kinds of admonitions? And how much of it was your belief that he actually was going to just graciously walk away and give up the game? Yeah, that is a really great question. and no one's ever asked me that. And the answer is both. The answer is both is I believe it, would not have put it in print and certainly not in the Wall Street Journal if I didn't believe it. So I believed everything that I wrote, and it was based upon the experiences that I had with and we could talk about that a little bit. But at the same time, I was worried that based upon

what had happened on the sixth is that the flow of information into the West Wing was clearly broken. There was no one telling the president anything other than you won the election. I can't I believe they stole this for me. We have to stop the steel. And that I was looking for another way to communicate with the president. That was one of the ways to do it. By the way, the traditional places that you would do that would be go on Lou Dobbs or Hannity, you couldn't do because they were contributing to the stop the steel narrative, right? So it was both. And I know you don't get, history doesn't work like this. But if you take January 6th out of the equation and you can't do it. But if you were,

to do a wave a match wand, and the Trump presidency from the election day up until the day he left Washington, but for January 6th was exactly as I said it would be in that article, was that he would fight and fight and fight and really be probably pissy and not go to the inauguration and not hone over the keys to the building, but he would leave. And that's exactly what happened, but for the 6. There's no defense for January 6, and I was flat out wrong in saying that it would never come to that. By the way, the reason I thought it would never come to that is I'd seen him under different circumstances where he ultimately was very presidential. There were circumstances where I actually encouraged him to do things that were a little more spectacular, a little bit more

PR, and he'd look at me and go, Mick, Mick, Mick, on the President of the United States, and I'd get into that petty shit, okay? And instead of my idea, he would go on and it was actually during the government shutdown and did one of his rare Oval Office addresses. So, So, yeah, he was always combative and sometimes difficult, but never irrational, never, ever, ever rational, not the whole time I worked for him. And that's why that period of time between the election and January 6th was turned out to be so different. Well, on January 6th, you sent a tweet in the middle of all of the chaos, encouraging the president to speak up, to tell his supporter, tell these folks.

to go home is what you tweeted. We now know I've had conversations with people who were privy to his thinking and with him that day. It's been widely reported that he didn't do this because he enjoyed it. He delighted in the fact that there was this attack taking place on the Capitol and saw it as a sign of strong support for him and this conviction that he had been wronged. Why didn't he listen to you or to anybody else? And what's your understanding of what the people around him in the White House were saying? Was anybody saying this? And you said

you had to deliver unpleasant messages to the president and encourage him to do things he didn't want to do. Did Mark Meadows do that? Or was he exacerbating the problems by not doing that and encouraging the president. Yeah, I don't know. I've not talked to, I've talked to maybe one person inside the building, and it was not Mark.

And I've heard, I've read the same press reports. You have the same stories about, you know, who is in the building and who is not in the building anymore. Where was the White House

Council office? Because as much of I, you know, I disagreed with Pat Cipollone about a bunch of different things. He was a voice of reason, at least when I was there, unclear as to what,

whether not he was even allowed in the room anymore. I don't know what Matt else was telling him. all I know is that is that it was too slow and it was too little and it was not presidential and I blame the staff as much as anybody if the office of the president of the United States is one of the most insular places in the whole world if not the most I mean maybe the Vatican but it is a really really tight even if you're an extrovert and you're on TV all the time the flow of information into that place is so tight and it's so hard to really understand what's happening

that if you're not having people bring you information, you can make really, really, really bad decisions. By the way, that goes back. I mean, throughout history, I mean, you go back to the, I mean, there's been great articles written about the Bay of Pigs invasion and the group think that existed there. There's time and time and time again, Iran-Contra, bad things happening when the flow of information into the Oval Office is bad. And if there's no one walking into that room and say, Mr. President, we tried really hard, but you lost this election.

We cannot prove that you won. Mr. President, there's a really, really dangerous situation right now happening on Capitol Hill, and we need to do something about it. The president, whenever, I'm not going to go too much into the conversations I had with him in private. It was just the two of us.

But there were a handful of occasions, where it was just him and me, and I had to tell him stuff that he really, really, really didn't want to hear and that would require him to change course. And he always took it seriously when I did. He never, he could tell when things were just, Mick, what do you think? Oh, I don't like that, Mr. President. Ah, you're wrong. Okay. That happened every single day. And you walk in to Mr. President, we have a problem. This happened today. This is bad. This is going to hurt and we need to fix it. And he would sit and listen. Now, he would often then call other people in and say Mulvaney says, X, what do you think? And he would get opinions from other people,

and that's people from New York and his family and Congress and everything. But he rose to the occasion on the really serious stuff. That didn't happen on January 6th. And I can only imagine the president hadn't changed. It was the people around him who had. So before we get to the really difficult questions, just a couple quick questions about the the future of the Republican Party, this post-Trump era that we're in. Obviously, we've seen lots of convulsions among House Republicans after the impeachment, folks who voted to impeach the president. Would you have voted to impeach him?

Not for incitement of riot. No, because I was surprised the Democrats so narrowly tailored their impeachment, because I don't think he incited the riot. I could vote against impeach for on that all day long. I've seen that speech a hundred times. He's given practically the same speech. Yes, he doesn't say, you don't go down the street and all that, but the same rhetoric, the same level of energy is one of his regular rallies,

and it never resulted in violence. There's no way that he incited riot. Do you vote to impeach somebody because you didn't think they were presidential? I don't think so. I think I took the step that was appropriate to me, which was to resign my position. I do not believe he committed any impeachable offense in inciting Orion. Broadly, more broadly, do you think he competed, do you think he, uh, uh, did he, did he do anything at all that was impeachable, uh, that day or in the days leading up to it in your mind?

I don't think so. Again, not being presidential, I don't think is an impeachable offense. Using bad judgment, I don't think it's an impeachable offense. thinking bad things about the vice president of the United States. Good disgrace. If that's an impeachable defense, I think most of them would be gone at some point or the other. I want me to make light of that, but I think you see my point. So now, listen, I think the system war.

I believe in the system. I'm conservative. I believe in the system, okay? And what does that mean? It means that he had his chance to prove he won the election. He went to the courts. That's the appropriate place to do it. He lost.

Joe Biden won the election. he has valued the President of the United States. The Democrats had a chance to impeach him. They went to the process. They didn't impeach him. It was not an impeachable offense. I think the system worked. The question now is, how are the public going to react?

That's going to be the really interesting thing. Is it did Donald Trump turn up? I resigned because I think the one line I had that I'm very proud of is I didn't sign up for that. I didn't sign up for riots. I signed up to fight and kick and scream and, and worked for the Republican agenda and I would do anything to defend this president

and I did. I was the chairman of the Republic of Catholics for Trump on the campaign for crying out loud. So, I mean, you can find people who worked as hard as I did for the president,

but you're probably not going to find many that worked harder for this president over the course last four years. But I didn't sign up for riots and I didn't sign up for a president who would not come out against violence,

violence against the constitutional processes that we are all sworn to protect. But you don't think that that's impeachable? I don't. Of what? What did he do that was impeach? Again, the charge, the charge was incite to riot. Set aside what they actually did.

But what you're describing is that a president of the United States, someone sworn to uphold the Constitution was undermining the Constitution is what you just said. No, no, I didn't stand. I didn't. I don't put words in my mouth. It's been a good interview. Don't do that. What I said was he didn't come out strongly enough against it.

That is a judgment call on my part. There are probably people who thought he was too strong against it. I do not think that as an impeachable defense. Do I think it's a failing? Yes. Do I think it merits some type of disapproval and reprobation? Absolutely. Do I think it may, you know, should it disqualify you from future office?

Not in a legal sense, but in an electoral sense. Should people think about how Donald Trump acted on January 6th if they're ever called upon to vote from again? Yes, I think they should. Do I think he should address it? Yes, I think he should. Do I think he should try and rebuild some of the bridges that were destroyed on that day, specifically between him and Mike Pence?

I think, yes, he probably should. Those are human things, though. That's not constitutional. You're asking a very serious question. Did the elected President of the United States commit an impeachable offense and should have even moved from the office? It's a very serious question. The answer has to be a very serious answer, and I think the answer is no. Of the several Republicans in the House 10 voted to impeach the president,

and there was, obviously, quite a backlash. In this whole discussion of a post-Trump Republican Party, you had movements to remove Liz Cheney from leadership. You've had fundraising groups spring up to run against them to push for their defeat people like Tom Rice, Anthony Gonzalez, Jamie Herrera Butler, Liz Cheney, and others. Can a Republican Party be, be successful if there are those kinds of purges.

I mean, what you're describing sounds like a pretty difficult, knotty issue. You decided that it, you suggest that it wouldn't be, his conduct wasn't impeachable, but other people obviously had a different view on that. Should they be sort of pushed from the party or pushed from leadership positions? No, you know, I know that the division within the Republican Party always gets a lot of attention. Again, people love talking about

fighting as opposed to working together. And that's certainly the case within the Republican Party. I will remind all of my friends, and I don't know if there's any Democrats, listen to this, their party is just as divided as ours is. It's just that they won the last election. And the party that loses the last election tends to be the one that gets a little bit nastier about its infighting. But we're in a country of 300-odd million people. We only have two primary parties. Neither of them is going to be monolithic. There's always going to be divisions within them. Do we need to handle ours better? Yes. Tom Rice is a good friend of mine. I can and will defend Tom Rice because he voted the best as he thought that he could and he can defend himself in his

vote. In that sense, by the way, even though I may have voted differently than he does, I respect people who can defend their votes and don't just vote one way or the other because it helps them raise money or it will get them a shout out on a television program. I respect people who vote on principle. I disagree with Tom's vote, but he voted on principle, and I would always rather have those type of people representing me. He's from my home state in Congress than people I agree with all of the time. Again, one of the reasons I like Lindsey Graham.

I can understand Lindsay. He and I disagree on things, but I don't think he's motivated by wrong purposes. We will have to figure out a way to do better in our party. Primaries are fine, as long as they are not so divisive. that it allows the other party to then step into a vacuum that we've created on our own accord. 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. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. slash Y Annex. Steve reached out to your arch nemesis before this podcast to get some questions that he might want to pose to you, Steve? Did you write them in crayon so you could read them? So I just sent a casual email to Trey Gowdy to ask if he had any interest in posing some

questions to you. He sent four. I would say they're all very much worth asking, but in the interest of time, I will limit them to two. Do you want to give four and do the like around and see which ones are interesting? So that you can pick and choose which ones you answer. The fourth has a graphic. It says, are you really major Arnold Pot from the Indiana Jones movie?

And it has a picture, which we will put in the show notes. But I won't make you answer that. I'll go easy on you for that. First question is, if the earth is really round, are we better off walking left or right to find your T-shot on the 17th T-box at Spartanburg Country Club? On any given day, it's probably left. That being said, Gowdy does not want to open up discussions about golfed because that would invite a discussion about how he had his handicap adjusted for failing to post scores, which is sort of a felony in the golf world.

But that's okay. We don't have to talk about that. So it didn't officially happen until he wants to know where my t-shut is at 17. Well, I have to ask a follow up. I've got to depart from the script here. Who cheats golf more, Trey Gowdy or Doug? Donald Trump. You know, I get, I get asked that a lot about the president. And I'll tell you this story. This is true. And if there's golfers here, they'll understand what this means, okay?

The president, when the president is playing on a regular basis, he is a true single-digit handicap. Okay. And I was, I've never beat him. And I don't let people beat me at stuff, as Trey will attest, okay? I was playing with him at Bedminster, which up until January 6th was going to host the 2022 PGA championship. It is a real golf course. And I had him tied. We're playing the back tease. I had him tied through the 15th hole.

We get up the 16th hole and I'm ribbed him pretty good. And I'm like, today's day, oh, man, I got you. I got you. You are going down today, boss. This is the day I got you. Looked at me, goes, you don't have an effing chance. And he finished birdie par birdie. And I tell the story that when you hit the ball 250 down the middle, you hit it to 15 feet and you make the put, when are you going to cheat?

Does the president take six foot or sometimes for gimmies? Yes. Have presidents taken those putts forever? Absolutely they have. But there's no reason to think that he cheats and that that's why he's so good at golf. I never beat him and it's one of the things that will stick with me now that my service is over. Okay, back to the lightning round. Final two questions.

How long did it take you to adjust to being the least talented of the force, South Carolina freshmen who came into office together in 2010? I'm still adjusting to it. Still adjusting to it. You know, it's pretty stiff competition. I mean, when you're dealing with people, you know, Tim Scott was in that group. He's a great guy. And Jeff Duncan was in that group and he's a great guy.

And Tom Rice was that group. So that was my freshman class in 2010. And it's a very talented group of people. There's no question about that. Final question. What did you give up from? I'm lying about that. You know that.

Gowdy was in the freshman class with us. Yeah, he, oh, I thought, I thought he was. I was a little surprised that you were accepting his premise. No, I'm pretending that I can't remember his name, so. Trip? Trip, Trip, Gowdy. Final question, what did you give up for Lent and why start back? By the way, do you know, do you know what his name is?

No. Harold. Harold Watson, Gowdy, the old. Okay? No. Yes. So I met his son one time. I didn't realize this until I go, I'm playing golf with Trey, and his son. A fabulous young man comes and introduces himself as Watson Gowdy. And I looked at him and I'm like, hang on, wait a second. Are you Harold Watson Gowdy the fourth? He says, yes, sir, I am. And I looked at Trey and I said, I know your dad. Your dad's name is Howe. What was your grandfather's name? He says, I think was Harry or something like that. Are you telling me you've had four generations of people in your family, name Harold and not a single one of them use the name. And he's like, yeah, I said, then why do you keep using the damn thing? They had no answer for that. So what did I give up for Lent? I gave up

dessert. What he's trying to get at is that I used to give up alcohol for Lent, just to prove to myself that I could. I stopped doing that because I got confirmed with the Office of Management Budget on just before Ash Wednesday of 2017, which is when my my my observance is supposed to begin. And there was no way that I was going to be able to do that job without having a glass of wine at the end of the day. So I have given up giving up alcohol. And mostly what I do is I give up beating tray and golf during Lent.

And with that, thank you so much for joining us and for giving us so much of your time, very generous of you. We really appreciate it. We hope to talk to you again soon. Thanks y'all very much. You know what I'm going to be. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online.

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