Meet the Press - February 12, 2023

Interview

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Well, Mr. Todd, look --

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Chuck, there is a divide, for sure, and we see more of that. I think there is a choice between the extremes and the exhausted majority, and that's the conversation we've been having this week with Republican governors and Democrat governors coming together. We're the people who have to get stuff done. And I think there are extremes on the left, for sure, that are driving a large part of our culture. I will admit that there are extremes on the right too that are hurting our nation and tearing us apart. And we believe that, that this exhausted majority still exists, that they're out there, and that they actually want us to work together to solve stuff, but the stuff that matters. Let's stop fighting about the stuff that doesn't matter, and actually get to work.

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Yes.

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Well, I think it is a growing number. In fact, it's a vastly growing number. If you go back just ten years ago and look at the numbers -- and here's the problem, this has become such a toxic issue that it's hard to have a rational conversation around it. I actually had to look outside the United States to get data. I looked at what happened in Sweden, looked at what happened in Finland, looked what the French are saying about this, the explosion that they're seeing in those numbers, and some concerns about this. It's not just about providing care or not providing care, it's about whether we might potentially be harming young people, not having enough evidence to see what the long-term results of this are, and providing better psychiatric help for those young people who are going through this.

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Well, we take power away from, on a lot of things involving our young people. If there is potential long-term harm for our kids, we need to find that. And what Utah did was just push pause until we can get better data. We have a mandate in the bill to go out and look at the best data all across the country and then make a decision.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. And that's the hardest part of this. That breaks my heart. What we're doing is we're increasing funding for our LGBTQ community to help with these issues. And so, again, if we could get outside of the culture war piece of this and have these kind of rational conversations, I would feel much better. But I fully admit, there are people on my side of the aisle that are targeting these -- that do not have their best interests at heart, right? I think there are people on the left that are promoting these things who also don't have the best interests of some of these kids at heart. And I think we should be able to sit down, and that's what we've been doing this week, is having rational conversations.

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Terrible headline.

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I don't know what the --

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-- definition of woke is.

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Look, there are extremes, and people are feeling this. I hear it all of the time.

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Does it matter?

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I don't know if it matters. You know, I think there is some reality to it. We go on college campuses, and there's some data that came out this past week that showed that, especially conservatives, we don't know how to disagree anymore, Chuck. This is the problem.

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We passionately disagree, and we're best friends.

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Like, we actually like each other. We had a debate, I wish you could've seen it. It was Jay Inslee from Washington, very, very liberal environmentalist, and Doug Burgum from North Dakota, about energy. And it was so respectful. And they stayed after for 20 minutes just talking to each other, figuring this out. Like, this isn't hard. We used to do this stuff.

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Sure.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is definitely not happening.

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I am running for reelection --

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--in the state of Utah, yes. So yeah, I prefer governors. That's the easy call for me. So the governors' names you've been throwing around like --

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Sununu's fantastic --

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-- DeSantis, a great record --

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Asa's a good friend.

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All of those guys --

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Former governor, yeah. I like governors, I like Republican governors --

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All fantastic.

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I would love a governor, yes.

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Every day of the week.

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Thank you, Chuck.

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