ABC "This Week" - TRANSCRIPT 'This Week' Transcript 2-5-23: Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Marco Rubio, Gov. Chris Sununu & Adm. Mike Mullen

Interview

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KARL: All right. Let's get the Republican response now from New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu.

Governor Sununu, thank you for joining us. Before we get to politics, I've got to ask you about the -- the big story over the weekend, over this past week, the Chinese spy balloon. Did the president make the right call to shoot it down?

SUNUNU: Too little, too late. Look, at the end of the day, they saw this balloon coming. This is all about China poking at us. This is all about China testing the American resolve, whether it's with TikTok or the balloon or whatever the thing is going to be next month. They know that tensions are escalating, and they want to see what kind of leadership we have. And, no, the president failed on this one, should have been a lot more transparent, should have taken action a lot sooner and gotten it done.

But, believe me, this is not the last we're going to see of China. I know the president wishes that, but it's not.

KARL: But -- but the military advice he had was to wait until it was over water. Do you think he should have disregarded the military advice?

SUNUNU: There were clearly opportunities to take care of -- to take care of the balloon before it finally got over the Atlantic. They -- there were reports that they saw it coming in from the Pacific, that it was coming in over the forest, that it was coming in over the Aleutian Islands.

So, there was a lot of opportunity to take care of this before it ended up in Montana and they realized, oh, gee, we have a problem.

So, again, you have to have leadership. You have to be transparent. You have to be fast-acting.

They weren't. They weren't at all.

KARL: OK. So the president's State of the Union Address Tuesday, what -- what do you want to hear from him?

SUNUNU: Look, I'm a -- I'm a free market principled Republican. I'd love to hear that he's sending -- focusing on an efficient budget, sending more opportunity back to the states, actually believing in locals, believing in individuals and individual liberty.

But I know what we're going to hear. We're going to hear him take credit for, you know, adding more jobs than ever before. After a pandemic, that wasn't -- that wasn't very hard.

He's going to kind of talk about, oh, we have unemployment finally coming down and inflation coming down. Well, it was inflation was at a record high. Of course, it's coming down. It couldn't have gotten any higher.

So, look, the president is going to do what he does, try to take credit for all of this stuff. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter about the speech. It matters what's going on around this country, it matters just talking to people.

Go into a store, go into a grocery store and just talk to people in the cereal aisle. What are they feeling? You know, do they feel confident about this leadership that the president -- no. Your polls -- your own polls just showed that, right?

So at the end of the day, the best leadership is one that looks inside, says, what are we doing right? What are we doing wrong, right? If we don't acknowledge the problem, so we can't fix it.

It's what I do as governor. It's what a lot of folks do. You need to see more of that out of Washington.

KARL: But there are signs of a turnaround here, aren't they? I mean, inflation is down. Gas prices are, you know, way off, about $1.50 off their high.

And you can't ignore that unemployment number, 3.4 percent, the lowest in decades. I mean, that -- that matters, doesn't it?

SUNUNU: A turn -- yeah. A turnaround from where we were? Of course, that was going to turn around. But believe me, we're going to be in three or four years of stagflation.

They're pulling $80 billions out of the economy with quantitative tightening, which they should have started two years ago, by the way. They're finally getting their arms wrap around interest rates and controlling that, which again, they should have done two years earlier.

I've been very vocal. I think Janet Yellen should have been fired. She played politics knowing what the macroeconomics results were going to be.

So, you're going to get -- you could still get a lot of cash out there in the economy. You're still going to have this inflation. Inflation doesn't go down, right? Just the monthly number gets better.

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KARL: The increase is less, right.

SUNUNU: But our prices are not going to start dropping, that's not the way it works. That's right.

The prices are not going to go back to where they were. I know the Biden administration likes to pretend that. You just had secretary Buttigieg on.

They put a trillion dollars into infrastructure and transportation so we can build more roads, but it costs twice as much to build a road.

KARL: OK.

SUNUNU: So, all they did was create an inflationary problem so we didn't have to deal with the inflationary problem at the government level. It's just backwards macro economics.

KARL: So --

SUNUNU: And we need leadership that understands this stuff at a real level, to make real difference, not try to take credit for, you know, point in time talking points. And, oh, we got -- we got down a couple -- tenth of a percent on unemployment.

That's not what this job is about. This job is about creating long-term benefits, long-term structure that we can all kind of drive into.

KARL: So, I understand and it sounds like it here that you're considering running for president. What's the deciding factor going to be for you?

SUNUNU: It sounds like it from this interview?

KARL: Yeah.

SUNUNU: I'm not sure about that but --

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KARL: Yeah. It sounds like -- it sounds like your message, right?

SUNUNU: There are conversations.

KARL: But you're thinking about it?

SUNUNU: Yeah, the message is new leadership. Look, well, yes. I'm definitely thinking about it, and having those conversations.

But at the end of the day, you're going to have a lot of Republicans that get in that race. They're all really good people. They're really good candidates. You have Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo and Governor DeSantis and a lot of folks that are going to get in.

And you got to have that discussion about where we're going to go, both as a party and make sure we're going there as a country.

Now, like I said, I'm kind of that live free or die individual liberty. I believe government has to get out of your way.

And we've done it really, really well here in New Hampshire. We're sharing that model across the country. No sales tax, no income tax, most efficient government in the country, number one in individual liberties. All those statistics.

But how are we doing it? How does the system work? And then, how does it translate into real world things like mental health, opioids, what's happening with education, right?

We all despise and hate this woke cancel culture, but what -- what can we actually do not just at a government level, but making sure those changes are happening in our community?

KARL: You saw what our poll said about Trump/Biden. Do you think Donald Trump can beat Biden?

SUNUNU: No. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, November of '22 showed us that, right? Trump is going to be seen as a very extreme candidate. The country is going to push back against it.

If we -- just look at the results of three months ago, and that shows you where extreme candidates are going to end up falling. It can't -- it can't get done. He could get the nomination, but he can't get it done.

And what I tried to espouse to Republicans is, look, we want to vote for the most conservative candidate that can win in November and get stuff done in '25.

KARL: OK. Governor Sununu, thank you for joining us. We appreciate your time.

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