Meet the Press - July 9, 2023
Interview
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Chuck, great to be here and special gratitude from all of us in North Dakota for you and your team traveling all the way to Fargo.
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Well, first of all I would describe them not as silent but exhausted. There's a broad spectrum of Americans that are really frustrated with the discourse that's happening at the edge. And part of the reason they're frustrated is because there aren't candidates, there aren't choices on the ballot, to talk about the things that matter to them. And when the First Lady and I are in New Hampshire and Iowa or here in North Dakota where we've been leading the last six and a half years, the things that people are concerned about, price of food on the table, the price of gas at the pump. You know, and you wouldn't think that in North Dakota that national security would be front of mind, but whether it's Chinese spy balloons, whether it's the price of soybeans and tariffs, or whether it's China building spy bases. These three things, the economy, energy policy, and national security, are things that people really care about and they touch every American. And they don't just touch Republicans. They touch independents, they touch Democrats. If we can unleash the best of America, if we can get our economy sprinting instead of crawling, that lifts the boat for everybody. We know that. That's always been. And when -- we are in a cold war in China, we just won't admit it. But the way you work your way through a cold war is you win it economically.
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Well, I think we know a little bit about winning Republican primaries because we've won two here in North Dakota, in a state that is --
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Yeah.
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And New Hampshire is a very important state. So it is an opportunity here, again, for this exhausted majority to say look, there's so many people in our country that don't want a rerun at the presidential race of what we had in 2020. It's not up to the pundits, it's up to the voters --
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Well, I would leave that, there's a whole industry that talks incessantly, nonstop about these kinds of questions. And our --
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Well, here in North Dakota people that voted for Donald Trump also voted for us. And so we know a lot about Donald Trump voters. But we also know that Republican primary voters, they want to win in 2024. And how we're going to win is we will present ourselves, when we get to next January and next February when the voting starts, is that we have the best chance of beating Joe Biden.
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It should count enormously, particularly when you're talking about the jobs of being a governor or being a president. Because the executive branch, different from the other branches, but specifically legislative. If you're a legislator you put on your jersey, you fight for your side, you vote oftentimes along party lines. You -- if you don't vote with the party, you vote at your peril. The president of the United States, as this balancing third branch, is the one that's supposed to unite people. It's supposed to bring people together. It's supposed to paint a vision about a powerful, positive future. And somehow we've gone astray on that, where the presidency has also become hyper-partisan, no matter which party is in office.
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No.
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No.
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And I'm sure we will. But I --
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Absolutely. That's how I was raised and that's how I've gone forward.
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Well, I grew up in a town of 300 people, Arthur, North Dakota. In a town like that, in the business that my grandparents started was the grain elevator business, and the grain elevator business, farmers bring you grain. Every truck they bring, you take a sample. And in that sample, the way you take that sample, you can have is it going to be 99% wheat and 1% chaff? Or is it going to be 95% wheat and 5% chaff?
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Every -- every transaction, you build trust on every transaction. And when I was about six years old, my dad walked me up in the driveway of the elevator and he said, "This is how we take the cleanest possible sample. This is how we get the highest amount of wheat and the least amount of chaff when we take that sample. Because if we don't, this family is going to haul their grain six miles down the road to the other community."
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I -- I don't think so.
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I just think that it's important that you're judged by the company you keep, and I --
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No, I wouldn't.
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Well, every governor has got to deal with the legislature they're dealt with. In North Dakota we've got legislature that's 90-10, 90% Republican, 10% the other party. And some in the other party feel the same way the Republicans do. So it's a little bit like a uni-party in North Dakota.
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Well, I think that we want to make sure that all voices are heard. I think every state legislature is really slanted. You know, ours is like 80% men, 20% women. I think you might have different outcomes across all state legislatures --
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-- if you had more women involved, if we had more youth, the age. People say, "Hey, I'm young and I'm building a family. I can't do it." So the average age in North Dakota is 35. The average age in the legislature is older. North Dakota's 50-50 men and women, that's not our legislature. But that's the same across our whole country.
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Well, my position is that I support the Dobbs decision, and this is the decision that should be left to the states. And what's going to pass in North Dakota is not ever going to pass in California and New York, and wouldn't even pass in the state of Minnesota. I -- that's why I'm on the record saying that I would not sign a federal abortion ban.
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No, I wouldn't, because it should be left to the states. Now, I think people can say Republicans are extreme, I personally think that having a late term abortion, having an abortion one day before a child is born, that's abhorrent to me. Some states allow that. I think that's extreme. But states get to decide where they want to fit on that spectrum. The states --
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The states created the federal government, not the other way around.
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Where I'm at is I believe in states' rights, and I believe that the president of the United States has got a defined set of things they're supposed to work on, and it's not every culture war topic. These are things that are left to the state. As president, things that you're supposed to focus on, things like the economy, like energy policy, which is completely tied to national security, and part of national security is the border. And these are things that the president right now, President Biden, has completely abdicated his responsibility on. Every state's become a border state, 110,000 overdose deaths in this country last year, again. That's -- and that's a statistic, but that's 330 a day.
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Uh-huh.
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Well, I'm comfortable with those battles happening at the state level because if people don't like them they've got an opportunity to get engaged and try to change that. At the federal level it's not anything I'm going to be pushing because I believe in freedom and liberty. And I believe that if we believe that as a party then we have to think long and hard about if we believe in freedom and liberty, then why are we trying to restrict certain things as a party? We should be the freedom and liberty party and we should believe in the states' rights party. And you have to have some consistency around that.
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Any time that -- when I was in private sector and I had the chance to start from the tiniest startup, less than ten people, build that into a 2,000 person company, I then had an opportunity to work at large, global companies. Anytime you're the CEO, if you're spending time on something that can be done, you know, in a sales office out on the front lines dealing with customers, you're not doing your job. You've got to be looking to the future. We need a president that's focused on the challenges that we're being faced as a nation, not -- not a president that's going to decide whether a book is in the right section or not in a library in a small town somewhere in America. That is a -- and that's part of what is going wrong now. The reason why we've got issues with our economy, with our energy policy, with national security that are just raff, it is because we are somehow, through culturally, media, whatever, trapping the presidency or expecting them to weigh in on every single thing. It's not -- it's not the place that a CEO should be spending their time. It's definitely not the place where the president should be spending their time.
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I have had an incredible opportunity as governor to appoint judges, somehow through the fate of Baby Boomers retiring. I'm the 33rd governor of North Dakota. I just yesterday was working through the decision process for my 18th judge appointment. Two of those have been North Dakota Supreme Court, the others, district judges. And we don't have litmus tests. We try to find the people that are most qualified to do the job, and I think that, again, if there is any kind of litmus test, it's are they going to follow the Constitution and follow the law, and not legislate from the bench?
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Like I said, I have interviewed thousands and thousands of people in my life for jobs. I think that the process of selecting people for a job also depends on the team as well as the individual. And this is the -- you, know, who wins the Super Bowl? People that win the Super Bowl are people that have a -- the right team on the field. And if that opportunity comes forward, that's one of the biggest responsibilities of the president. But I think my track record of picking people of high character, high integrity. Every company I've ever been involved with, I've been surrounded by people of exceptional talent, exceptional commitment, exceptional character. I don't think that's going to change. And whether it's in the administration, whether it's Cabinet leaders, or whether it's appointing federal judges at any level, that's not going to change.
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Well, I'm struggling there because, again, as a governor, what I've seen in terms of the overreach of the federal government is -- and my heart goes out, I mean we --
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Well --
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Well, I mean, and I can -- Okay --
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No, but initially, I'm like, "Hey, as a person that's spent time in software, and we had a tremendous dependence on foreign manufacturers for chips, the CHIPS Act started out like a great idea." And as Governor, I'd say, "Hey, I never comment on a bill until it's on my desk in its final form." And people said, "Wow, we're going to try to get onshoring for critical aspects of what we need, for communications, for transportation, for military equipment." That made a bunch of sense. Well, then you pile a bunch of ideology on top of that and say, "Yeah, you can get these dollars to help onshore here. But you've got to use union. You've got to do this. You've got to do that." And you pile your ideology on.
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Absolutely.
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Well, I'd call him a brutal dictator. I mean look at the rights record that they have. So that's a --
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I think he's running a large criminal organization. And I think we're seeing the tip of that with the Wagner Group. I mean, it's like we can't think of Russia today under Putin like a country.
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Oh, absolutely.
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The Wagner Group was operating 65 shell companies all over the world. They controlled gold mines in Central African Republic. When they were down helping out in Syria, there's contracts where they took over 25% of the oil production in Syria. That's -- that's a large criminal organization.
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Well, we have to win the war in Ukraine.
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Period. We have to do that. And it's unfortunate that we're even in this spot. I've said many times, before I even announced, we wouldn't be in this spot if we hadn't allowed our allies, and think about all the Americans. We talked earlier. We've both been to Normandy. Think about all the Americans that died fighting in World War II, and then we adopted a policy where we're trying to shut down the U.S. energy policy, shut down the U.S. energy industry so that all of Western Europe could be dependent on Russia for their oil and gas. That's what allowed, that's what gave him the --
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Absolutely. Absolutely. They were completely --
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-- dependent on Russian oil and gas. I mean, German manufacturing is off 25% now.
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Right. But we had, up until just recently, we had an oil export ban. We've still got the Jones Act. We have a bunch of red tape and regulation that's completely outdated. If you care about the environment, you should want every drop of energy produced in the United States. We produce it cleaner, safer than anyone else.
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Chuck, thank you for being here.
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