Transcripts For CSPAN2 South 20240702

Addresses the immigrant experience and womens issues at the time. Melissa homestead, english professor at the university of nebraska lincoln has talked for many years and will join us on the program. Watch books that shaped america featuring my antonia. Free mobile video app or online. Be sure to scan our qr code to listen to forked cast. You can learn more about the authors of the books featured. South carolinas republican governor kristi noem outlines priority speaking at Steamboat Institute conference in colorado and what else she hopes to accomplish, this is just over an hour. Good afternoon. I am so excited to be with all of you. Thank you so much for inviting me and getting a chance to spend with friends is absolutely remarkable. I love her. Have you gotten a chance to know her a little bit. Shes amazing, isnt she . Yeah. She gave my whole speech for me so now the i dont have to say anything real important. I just get to spend some time with all of you sharing a few thoughts. Listen, im the governor of the great state of south dakota but i think the most important thing for all of you to know about me today is that im a grandma. So i, theres a couple of things that happens when you become a grandma. I was frankly for years was irritated by all you grandparents in the room because you would always go on and on about how amazing it was to be grandparents and i kept thinking, theres no way it can be that great and then my daughter cassidy and soninlaw kyle had miss addie, everything changed. Shes brilliant. Its amazing. Shes 2 years old and has brother named branch who is six months old but the other day we had a chants to go to chance to go to my mothers birthday party. Im sorry, im telling a grandma story right away. Addy spent half an hour with me on the floor trying to get me to teach her to tie her shoes at age 2. She kept saying, tie, tie, at 2 years old i said to the cassidy, she is so much smarter than you kids were. [laughter] cassidy, said, no shes not, you are paying a lot more attention to her than you did us. You were working all of the time when we were growing up but i thought at 2 years old if she knows how to tie her shoes, she gets to be the next president of the United States, right . The best thing about being a grandma is you get to lose your filter. And i think that whats going on in this country right now all of us are ready to lose our filters, arent we . We are looking for little more normal human beings that are genuine that will tell the truth. Today im going to have a conversation with all of you. I want to share with some of you my background, my stories, some of you how many of you never heard me speak before . Quiet a few. I will tell you who i am because im guessing most of you in this room have never even heard my name until probably 3 or 4 years ago when it was during the covid pandemic and night after night on the National News the liberals were kicking me in the head and they were kicking me in the head for the decisions i was making in south dakota, Rachel Maddow Elizabeth Warren were calling me irresponsible for the decisions that i was making. But i tell you, my people were happy and they were happy because they were free. So im going to give you a little bit of a background and an understanding of how i make my decisions not just as governor but as a person and i think in order for you to know that you need to know me and how i grew up. I grew up as the daughter of a rancher and his wife my dad was very, very tough. In fact, he was the kind of guy that woke us up every single day by yelling get up, more people die in bed than anybody else. I remember lying in bed thinking is that true. We got up and worked with our family. We were always together. He taught us work ethic and the value of being together as a family and created children that knew how to tackle problems. Obviously just remember not being able to figure him out and what he was doing. He never once taught us to do anything. He just had us do it. For instance, i was about 12 years old when my dad and i were leaving the field, we were big farmers and ranchers in the state of south dakota, one to have largest operations at the time and we were leaving a field after harvesting corn with a semi load of corn and i was sitting in the passenger seat of semi and dad turned to me, i forgot i have to bring the other truck home. Here, christy, jump over here, make your corners wide and i will meet you and i immediately start today cry and started to drive home the 7 miles that i had to do get to the farm. I took the widest corners you have ever seen. I didnt even shift all the way home because i didnt know how and i remember when i got back into the farm yard i didnt know how to stop the semi. All i could do is turn it off and let it drift to a side. As it slowly drift today a stop the first thought that went through my head is i can not believe that i lived and the Second Thought that went through my head was i bet i can drive anything now. Thats what i think was the greatest gift that my dad gave me. He gave us impossible things to. Do he gave us hard things to do that we never dreamed we could accomplish and by doing that he developed children that became Problem Solvers, in fact, one thing that he did to me when i was younger too we were out fixing fence one day and where is the post pounder, have you ever built a fence with post pounder, i said its in the pickup, he said go get it right now and i can tell that he was mad that i didnt have, i ran to the pickup because all you did with dad was run and when i handed to him, he said you should know what i need before i know what i need and i remember standing as a 10yearold need how would i ever know what he needs before he knows what he needs but he was teaching us to think 3 steps ahead of him. , to always be prepared to whatever situation, he never had to lose time and he could be efficient and solve problems before they became a problem. As an adult, as a business owner, as serving in the state legislature n congress and as governor, over and over again i have learned that thats the greatest gift my family gave me was to helping me think strategically, think ahead 3 steps from everybody else was, be a Problem Solver and the fact that they gave me the confidence to tackle bigger things all of the time i think was a great gift. Thats what we need in the country for our kids frankly. We are crippling our children in this country and we are crippling them [applause] we are crippling them because you have people doing things for them. Stop doing kids for your kids. Our job is not to do everything for them and solve their problems, its to prepare them for life and they should have to do hard things. They should have to do hard things to give them confidence to take the on the biggest things to come. Its not always that fun to challenge them but the best gift you can give them is to prepare them for life because if you look out across the landscape in this country right now weve got some challenging times ahead. But the one thing that i wanted to talk about today is hope. I talk about freedom. Governor, all you ever talk about is freedom. Ive never seen a time in history where we saw the government in such a short period of time take freedoms. People rolled over and gave them freedom of a ly. The government during the pandemic told people that they couldnt go to church, they gave up their freedom of religion. Because the government is letting social media forms and the media tell them what people can say and what they cant say, they are giving up their freedom of speech. So ive never seen our freedoms more challenged and ive never seen people use fear to try to control people the way we have seen the last several years. Freedom is important and we need to remind people about the greatest gift that freedom is to us and to this generation and previous generations but right now people are desperate for hope. Themas jefferson in his inaugural address talked about us being the worlds best hope. Abraham lincoln said we were the last best hope. Where will we go if we lose this country . Where else is there somewhere better than the United States of america . We are still the hope to the world. The rest of the world looks at us, watches us, our actions and now how we speak and they gather hope from that or they lose hope. So while its so hard to define really what hope s today i want to the talk a little bit about it because from now on we dont have to guess what hope is. All you have to do is look at the state of south dakota. You see, i have learned in many, many years of lessons that i have seen that leadership has consequences. All you have to do is to look from state to state the last several years and saw that it really mattered who was in leadership during those times the and every state is doing differently according to who was in leadership, all we did in south dakota the last several years and i will talk a little bit more about that is that we just did what conservatives have always said that they believe. We just did it and it worked. My background growing up in a farm, in a ranch and business was critical to forming the person that i am but i also think for all of us we need to tell our stories bus thats how we inspire people to do better. I tell people every day when i leave them, i just say be better, today we can be better than we were the day before. Yesterday we may have failed, yesterday i may have screwed up but today we have the chance to be better. Now, growing up all i wanted to do was to be a farmer and rancher like my dad. He was tough, he was a cowboy. If you thought of john wayne, that was pretty much my dad. I knew even when i went to college that i wanted to grow up and end upcoming home and taking over familiar businesses and work beside him every single day. The only problem that when i was in college my dad was killed inside our farm. I remember sleeping all night long, how are we ever going to get through this, one person in my life that i thought was irreplaceable. I could not see the next 24 hours without him. Then we learned within the several weeks and the first couple of months after he passed away that we were going to be hit with a death tax, the estate tax. So at the time i was 22 years old. I was married. I was about 8 months pregnant when my dad passed away because i had gotten married when i was 20 and we were farmers and ranchers and thats what you do you have kids that help you work in the farm, right, so we were on it. We were making babies. So i was 8 months pregnant when my dad passed away and i learned that we owed death taxes. At the time the federal estate tax was 55 of whatever you owned. Now if you can imagine my dad at age 49, we were farming thousands of acres, we had hundreds of cattle, we had large operation, but we didnt have any money in the bank. We were like a lot of Business Owners in this country especially small Business Owners, we had assets but that didnt mean that we had cash flow readily available. I could not believe we had tragedy that occurred to the family and all of a sudden the federal government was threatening, taking away our Family Business because of their tax policy. In fact, i learned very quickly what an unfair tax it was. The only place in tax code where we doubled tax someone and it made me angry. I ended up quitting college, coming home, taking over the operation and took me ten years to pay off those taxes. I went from banker to banker trying to get them financed and to the get them financed all by one banker. I finally got one that took a chance by me and he went out and found wealthy farmers that would loan me the rest and i went out and starting a Hunting Lodge to make more money off of the asset that is we had so we could farm it, ranch it and hunt on the property. We started custom harvesting business. My mom went out and bought a restaurant because she thought it would be fun. I dont know if any of you are in the restaurant industry, within six months i was managing her restaurant for her as well. Kristi, i thought i would sit in the front booth and have coffee with my friends all day. In ten years we did pay off those taxes but it made me angry. So people ask me all of the time how i got involved in government and politics, it was through that, that i knew if we had owned a gas station, if we had owned a different small business, the only way that we could have pay taxes was to sell our Family Business and i knew that that shouldnt be the story of the american family. So i started to show up at meetings. At the time the u. S. Senate majority leader was mr. Tom dashell from the state of south dakota. I became a thorn in his side. I showed up at all of his meetings. I was passionate about tax reform and after a period of time he appointed me a committee that oversaw all the federal programs in the state and with usda ran the programs and ended up recruited to run for the state legislature. I decided to run because in south dakota you can be a citizen legislator, south dakota has legislature thats only in session for 40 days a year. So theyre all citizens, they show up, its wonderful as governor because as governor they are there for a month and a half and they leave again for the rest of oh the year but i decided i could, you know, my husband and i together with our three kids at the time that i could still run our businesses, be the general manager but i could go and contribute to our legislature and do that and do them all well so i ran for the legislature, was there about a week and i recognized the leadership controlled everything. And decided if i was going to be away from my family and if i was going to be away from our businesses then i was going to be as impactful as possible and i ran to be majority leader in the house and elect today that. While i served in the legislature [applause] while i served in the legislature i rewrote our property tax system in south dakota. [applause] we had a lot of people at the time being taxed off their property and couldnt afford property taxes. Remember, south dakota doesnt have income tax. We dont have a personal property tax. We basically have a 4 and a half cent sales tax which this year we cut but at that time our property taxes were overpriced and many people were struggling with it so i wrote, rewrote our property tax system and people started to the talk to me about running for congress. My husband and i had no desire to go to congress. In fact, for two years we kept saying no. We had a democrat that represented south dakota in the u. S. House and most people dont think about south dakota being a state that would a lot of democrats but we are, we are very populist state. We are pretty conservative now but previously even back then we had a full democrat delegation that represented us in congress. We had a blue dog democrat that the represented the state and senator john thune knew that she was coming after him and his next election and thought that if the someone could beat her in her first reelection for the representative job before she would challenge him that that would take care of his problem too. So his folks kept recruiting me for a couple of years to try to run for congress and kept sending people to me frankly from all over the country to say, would you run against her and beat her although she had a 90 Approval Rating in south dakota. She was one of the last few blue dog democrats, did not vote for obamacare, did not vote for the stimulus package, the only thing that she had done that i really could talk about in the campaign against her was that she voted for nancy pelosi. [laughter] so when brian and i finally decided to run we talked about nancy pelosi a lot. [laughter] but that was really the decision that we made, listen, maybe we should just run and if we lose then they will leave us a lender and they wont wonder us anymore with this idea of going to washington, d. C. We got into that race and it became very competitive and ended up being one of the top five racers in the nation that year and i ended up winning that race and getting elected to represent South Carolina in the u. S. House. That was in 2010. [applause] when i got to congress, of course, i was passionate again about tax reform. Sponsored a complete repeal of the death tax but served on many different committees, served on the ag committee, education and Workforce Committee on Armed Services committee which i appreciated very much because i had to chance to go to many different countries, dmz war zones, afghanistan, took a lot of those trips with the Leadership Team in the house because i was elect today the Leadership Team there but then ended up on the ways and Means Committee which is the committee that many people describe to me as the one that have the most ways it can be mean. [laughter] so the ways and Means Committee has jurisdiction over all tax policy, a lot of healthcare policy, trade policy about 80 of what goes through the house goes through the ways and Means Committee and i was excited to get put on that committee so i would have the chance to do tax reform and was absolutely thrilled when we elected President Trump who was passionate about tax reform too. Had the chance to work on that bill [applause] had the chance to work on that bill for two years and to see it signed into law was a wonderful opportunity for me. And then the i decided that after being there for eight years and getting the chance to work on several National Defense authorization acts to do tax reform, do farm bills, that i really wanted to look at the opportunity to become governor of south dakota. People had asked me to consider it and i realized that being a governor is being different than serving in congress. In congress you get the chance to work on bills, you can talk about policy, you can give a lot of speeches and press conferences but governors, governors are ceos. Governors get up every single day and get the chance to make decisions, to have an agenda and state of south dakota had been dying, our state had been shrinking, people had been leaving, kids and grandkids were having to leave to get careers somewhere else, our economy was stagnant. We didnt have new industries that had come in in the last 30 years and i recognized that we needed a governor, a ceo that had a vision for the future, building stronger families but also growing our state. So i decided to run for governor and went into a race that we did all the polling before i made the decision to run and i remember i had about 2 or 3 hours to make the decision on if i was going to run for governor because my paperwork had to be filed to get it done and i got the polling results back just those two hours before i had to make the decision and filed the paperwork. I called my husband and he said, well, what does the poll say and i say well, frankly its in the good, it says im going the lose the primary by 12 points and im going to lose the general bill points. That it says that theres no way i can win and frankly the polling showed that while i had done a good job in congress that south dakota wasnt ready to have a female governor, that it was a big factor for them to have a young woman come in and to see her as the ceo in the state was going to be a big hurdle to overcome. And my husband brian said to me, well, what do you think, what do you want to do and i said i think we run anyways, he said, okay, lets do it. Because i wanted to be home in the state, i had a passion for our state, i knew that there were some big things that we could do so i filed the paperwork, decided to run for governor, we ran hard. I ran against our attorney general in the state in the primary and won that and then got into a very tough election, i ended up winning by 3 points against a Bernie Sanders democrat which you would be surprised that one could do that well in south dakota but that tells you about the power of a story and media and campaigning but we won and i had the chance to serve as the first female south dakota governor. [applause] i remember being sworn in the rotunda and not really hitting me about the fact that it was the 100th anniversary of south dakota of women getting the right to vote, the same time i was being sworn in as the first female governor and i had never been a feminist. I had never been a person who is really focused on men or women or differences, i do believe there needs to be diversity of opinions around the table and a diversity of experiences around the table. I learned when i was in business and i learned when i was serving in congress, whatever position i was in that we ended up with better decisions, we ended up with better policies. If you had a diversity of debate around that table, in fact, one of the bills that i had gotten done and accomplished and signed into law when i was in congress was one that required when the United States goes in peace negotiations in any war dispute within countries it requires that there must be a woman at the table in the peace negotiation. The reason was because statistically it showed that those peace negotiations that had a woman at the table during those talks was 30 to 40 more successful for a longer period of time because many times in many of these countries when the men are off to war or fighting it was the winning home running the businesses, taking care of families, knew what it would take to maintain peace there and were stepping up in incredible ways and everybody needed to be at the table to make sure that all of the elements were there to maintain peace that would last longer and be where the country needed to be successful. Diversity of opinions was incredibly important to have but i also recognize standing in the rotunda seeing what it meant to people in that state to to see this different kind of a person in the leadership role in our state and i remember thinking i better not screw up. This is a big deal. We went to 2019 and almost when we got through legislative session, i was only on the job for a couple of months. When we got hit with a bomb cyclone. Had anybody seen a bomb cyclone . 6inches of rain on the eastern half of the state and it was all on frozen ground which meant that everything immediately flooded. 63 of our 66 counties were declared federal disaster areas. All i did for 2019 was flooding and fema and put communities back together and replaced infrastructure and we spent incredible amount of time helping people and families and businesses get through that difficult situation. I thought for sure 2020 is going to be so much better. [laughter] we got into 2020, got through our first legislative session by the first week of march and we had learned a couple of months before that about the virus that was overseas. That was coming to the United States of america and i opened an Emergency Operation center in january preparing for it and our first cases of the covid virus came to st. On march tenth which happens on the when my dad passed away. On the first case we reported the case was the day we had losses. I remember thinking throughout that time period about all the challenges that we had and i remember talking to other governors and other leaders during this time and im sure for many of you wherever you were in whatever state you were in, were watching things from a foreign field like the world had lots its mind but we made very different decisions in south dakota than virtually than every other state. I came back on every decision on what authority i had as governor and what authority i didnt have. I think i did every single thing that every other governor in this country did. We all talked to our experts, we brought in healthcare officials, researchers that understood maybe what we were facing, we all talked to those individuals that were working in our communities, those around the country and around the world that could give us insight and wisdom. I believe what i did different was i tabling it a step further. I spent a lot of time talking to my general counsel to constitutional attorneys. I really wanted to understand what my ole was as governor and what authority i had but also what authority i didnt have. Because im a Firm Believer that when leaders overstep their authority especially in a time of crisis that thats when we lose this country, that thats really when we lose what makes America Special and i didnt want to be that governor that overstepped my authority and set a precedent that couldnt be drawn back. So, for instance, in our state we never once closed a single business in our state during the entire pandemic. In fact, i didnt even define what an essential business was because i dont believe the governors have the authority to tell you that your business isnt essential. [applause] we never once mandated anything. What i did was i stood up in front of the people of our state and told them that we were going to get this through together and use personal responsibility and that we would take care of each other. Overwhelmingly we did. We saw incredible things during that time and we saw federal government come in with different assets and resources that would be necessary. One of the things to this day that im the most grateful that President Trump was in the white house during that time because he let me do my job. If joe biden had been in the white house at the time he wouldnt have let me do my job as governor. President trump made me do my job and let me do decisions that were right and good for our people and let me trust our people. In fact, if you all remember when the president offered those elevated Unemployment Benefits to everybody in the country, we were the only state in the country that never offered those elevated Unemployment Benefits. I said to the president , thank you for the flexibility but our people want to work and they did. Today we have the lowest Unemployment Rate in the entire country. In fact, we have the lowest Unemployment Rate in the history of our nation at 1. 8 because everybody in our state kept working and understood the value of working. [applause] today as a result of what we did during the pandemic we had an opportunity to tell our story. Now as a result, we are one of the Fastest Growing states in the country. In fact, we have been growing up to ten times faster than any other state in this country, incomes are going up faster than anywhere else in the nation, womenowned businesses are doing better than anywhere else in the country, our birthrate is going up faster than anywhere else. Our Housing Developments are number up with one in the nation for number of houses that we are building. We had tens of thousands of people move into south dakota and hubs and hundreds of businesses that picked up and came to our state and they came because they wanted to be free. They came because they wanted to be trusted and they recognized that there could be opportunities and whats the most interesting about all of that story and all of those amazing statistics is that also during this time our Mental Health challenges went down, our suicides dropped and our drug overdoses are continuing to go down when every other state is going up and we proved that when you give People Freedom and when you give them liberty and you talk to them about taking care of each other and personal responsibility that there happier, you see, we were created, our purpose was to serve people, that when we served people every day we get up with a purpose on what we are to do and we are happier not just physically but also mentally and spiritually because we have a purpose every day thats beyond us and the people of south dakota understand that and recognize the value of that and what that can bring and benefits to them and to their family. In fact, what i think the story is of our state that is so powerful is that all we did in our state is what conservatives have always talked about that they believe, we just did it and we proved that it works. So many times im curious about why we get attacked or why i get attacked so much or why i get so many negative news articles or why so many activist groups are constantly suing us or coming after us and i think its because we are dangerous, the state of south dakota and what we have been able to do is dangerous to the liberal thought in this country and what they tried to perpetuate for lies of what america stands for because we actually did it and we dont have to talk about hope anymore. We can prove that it exists, that it exists an it exists and the policies of free market and personal responsibility and liberty and low taxes and cutting regulations and all of that is perpetuating in abundance in south dakota that you dont see in this country and Economic Growth that other states arent enjoying. Its been fantastic to see what has happened in our state. Weve had historic revenues and broken every renew dollar amount that the state has had in south dakota because of benefits of people coming in and our largest industry is agriculture but our second is tourism and we have broken every tourism record. Most people that came to visit us in 2020, do you remember those commercials we put out inviting everybody to come and visit south dakota when the rest of the country was shut down . Well, people overwhelmingly came and then they went home and got their families and moved to our state and they live with us now. [laughter] but we think its absolutely wonderful. In 2020, while everybody else was shut down, we kept hosting events that brought people together. Im hear many remember about the surgess bike rally. We had spectators fully held after the pandemic was announced. We had the first pga tournament that was held that had spectators in it in the state of south dakota. We had the opportunity to show that people could still be together, they could still be wise and smart and responsible but that life could go on normal and that you could protect peoples Constitutional Rights. We stood for so many ofous in our state that i think people understand the benefits of. One of the very first bills as governor in 2019 and introduced was a civics bill. A civics bill that said that our kids and our k12 system needed to know more history and they needed to understand our background and our foundational beliefs. Did you know that first legislative session, my republicans overwhelmingly killed that bill . They said it would be too much work to change curriculum and teachers didnt need to have more responsibility and that it was going to be too hard. Look at how the conversation has shifted just a couple of years later. Now overwhelmingly theyre on board. Theyre helped me make sure that we readied our standards and have the best standards in the nation now for our kids but its amazing how most of the time those first couple of years the people that we have to convince to get on board are republicans. Convince them to make sure they are standing for principles and benefits. The first bill that i sign intoed law was constitutional carry. It was so that our Constitutional Rights to protect our Second Amendment rights would be protected. In fact, we waived all fees in south dakota for any requirement to carry any kind of firearm and i also pay for your background checks. So i believe we are the only state in the nation that it wont cost you a penny to exercise your Second Amendment rights as well. [applause] during the riots and violence that we saw in 2020 when the rest of the world was melting down and disrespecting Law Enforcement officers it made me angry. So i instead decided to do a National Advertising campaign to Law Enforcement that said if you want to live somewhere where people respect you and wrap your arms around your family and love you, then come to south dakota. That very first week over 800 Law Enforcement officers raised their hands and said we want to move to south dakota and since then, thousands of them have come to our state to make themselves at home. If we become known as a state that is filled up with Law Enforcement officers then im okay with that. I think that is absolutely amazing. [applause] and again, when we started to see president bidens policies starting to impact inflation, starting to impact the National Economy and we saw states start to withdraw and in south dakota we decided to make a different choice. Perhaps you have seen commercials recently. Have you . [applause] when everybody else was out there trying to figure out how they were going to be able to keep, deal with the workforce shortages in the country, how they were going to fill open jobs and get people off their butts and back into a job, i decided that we need today go on steroids and Start Talking about the value of a work ethic and recruiting people to come to our state to fill our open jobs because our businesses were thriving so much in south dakota, i needed workers and i know that the state that has the workers is the state thats going to thrive. The state that will win the economic race, so we started this National Advertising campaign and youve had the chance to see me up close and personal be a very bad electrician and a really lousy plummer and welder and dentist but they are working, working in incredible ways. Weve had since then over 5,000 families that have gone through the process of moving to south dakota and are continuing to advertise to more and more people going out there and say, if you want to come to south dakota come here and we are working with them oneonone to make sure we are answering all their questions and what kind of a School District they want their kids to be in, what kind of a community do they want to live in and facilitating them to come and move their families to our state. That Advertising Campaign called Freedom Works here has only been going for a couple of months but weve already seen over 5,000 different people and families respond to say we want to make south dakota our new home and we are going to keep it up. [applause] it has been its been by far the most successful Workforce Campaign in the history of our state and it has got our Business Owners thankful that we have people that recognize the value of having a job and the value of being a part of our state and recognizing what a privilege it is. If any of you want to be a welder or a plummer or an electrician, the lights did come back on on the capitol dome by the way, but south dakota is an incredible place to do it. In fact, what we did was licensing reforms and apprenticeship reforms so now people can move to south dakota and we will recognize virtually every single license that they have. If they want to come be a nurse, a teacher, the very first day they can get to work and then i fixed our Apprenticeship Program so that even people can come and be in a job and be trained while they are earning a wage and receiving health care and Retirement Benefits. So so many people that may be are 30 years old, 40 years old wanted to go from making a 20, 25dollar an hour job to being a fully licensed plummer, a teacher in a classroom, they can work in that classroom or on that job and continue to earn their wage and we will facilitate them getting the education that they need so that they can end up getting their certificate and career that they dreamed of. This year a hundred individuals that have been teachers aids that will be licensed teachers while on the job working with our kidos and theyre receiving health care and Retirement Benefits and be able to have their own classroom in the future because of the streamlining and the efficiencies that we have built into that process. So theres incredible opportunities going on that i think every other state just needs to look at in order to build onto be successful and to help families. Here is my story, is that weve watched a lot of the debates and elections and whats going on with the narrative that the rest of the country is having and many people would turn on the news or read a newspaper or website and get discouraged. I want to be here today to give you a bit of encouragement, that there is no reason to be discouraged because i believe for the very first time in a long time we have reallife examples that we can point to that shows that what we believe works, that what we have for policies really does create opportunities, does help lift people up, that the American Dream is still out there and theres people in this country that are living it every single day and thriving because of it. Thats the a powerful tool that we can use to make sure that we have the right leaders in the right positions at the right time because leadership has consequences, its more important now than ever that we dont get drug down of ugliness of election season and forget to tell stories that have proven out that what we believe as conservatives, as americans isnt divisive, isnt something that is negative, its something that that lifts people with a hope that has been proven out. Into hope. The division that he cast for us needs to be something that we grasp again. I had one time i will close with this i had a pastor tell me many years ago he talked about giving a sermon but talked about being offended and he said to me afterwards when i was talking about his sermon he said we have the chance to get offended every single day. He said people are going to walk by and youre the one to decide if you want to carry it around with you. He said you have the opportunity when someone throws an offense to walk by and let it lay there and not pick it up. We have quit having conversations. We cant even have a civil discourse anymore because weve been so offended by people in our lives or people in our church or in our family. We start having those conversations again and we dont have to have all the answers. Nobody feels like they are being listened to anymore. Start listening, asking questions and not pick up those offenses thats how we bring the country back together and thats how we start using the examples weve seen how the leader in the state made a difference. In positions over states during the pandemic did better. The states did a better and their families did better and they thrived. Lets be the hope that they all want to and brace to the hope that we have each and every day. Thank you so much for allowing me to be with you today. [applause] i was taking notes during your remarks and theres a lot of followups i want to get to and in preparation for this interview i was looking at your record on covid and what you did and didnt do. I went back and it looks like at your congressional voting record but the thing i keep coming back to, and i want an answer to this question the definitive yes or no on the record [inaudible] you own this . Thats the one that made me want to own one. [laughter] why . Do any of you have flamethrowers . If you want one you never have to ask that question again. I was at a Hunting Lodge. I finally got one for christmas this last christmas my staff gave it to me but if you get a flame thrower its a little bit like getting your first chainsaw. I remember i kind of walked around like what else can i cut. Theres not a reason to need a flame thrower they are just fun and come with accessories. They have an extra gas tank so they last longer and now ive got accessories. They call you the queen of covid. A lot of conservatives about protecting the most vulnerable and not trying to limit cases overall and they say but you did the right thing how did you get it right when the white house and dc republicans got it wrong. We would talk about different information. There wasnt anybody that was defending what i was deciding. On those calls we had very candid conversations when a governor would say im going to shut the businesses down im not going to have these events, i kept asking how do you determine that you have the authority to do that and for most of them it was my folks are telling me i need to. Officials dont have my back they say i need to. It wasnt based in a Constitutional Authority that they had. So i understand it was a very scary time. For all of us it was up to us to decide. I had an amazing executive team. They would look at me and say you just need to decide and that was a heavy responsibility. What i did to plaintiff survived that time i didnt watch the nightly news and then you have all these wonderful friends that feel like they have to call you the next day and say did you see what Elizabeth Warren said to you and know im trying to stay away from what she says about me. But that was challenging because every other governor had to close their businesses. He set up in front of a room of 300 people and said i want christy to know that during covid when she didnt lock down her state and she was the only one i want to thank her for that publicly because she gave us cover that we could then start opening up our states again. Because you had been so firm on that and gave the rest of us the chance to say okay. What most people didnt know is how isolating it was. You wouldnt have kept them around . Ultimately, doctor fauci had the authority given. Was it a mistake for donald trump not to tell fauci youre fired . At what point a lot of people would look back as we got into summer for instance these large old outdoor gatherings its frustrating for me i didnt understand why it worked. Leaders have different information in the room making their decisions. I felt like many times President Trump didnt necessarily have a team around him. He put the Vice President in charge of the pandemic and so the Vice President was making a lot of decisions on who spoke at press conferences and who we gave credibility to. I had seen them running around washington, d. C. With all the liberals as their friends. Why would we give them that credibility . I want to move quickly hear the freshman liaison i want to go quickly here and get your reactions on a few questions. First lets see on that a debate stage was there anyone that disappointed you . Its hard because you criticized the debate. Its hard to step up in the run for office. A very hard to debate and i will make it clear i dont enjoy debates. When i have to do them, i grabbed them and preparing it over prepared and dont sleep so its very challenging. For people to sit back and criticize i think is okay. You can give and an analysis but its courage to step on the stage and i give props for doing it i do not conduct my job interviews for staff that way. We are a leader of the free world so what i watched happen on that stage and the yelling and the crowd and the lack of respect for the moderators was very disheartening. It made it hard to watch the rest. Provided some substance we didnt hear on the debate stage. Are they taking their eye off the ball with regards to threats to china . Its sending the message that it isnt our number one threat. Our Foreign Policy isnt onedimensional which is that the conversation they had on the stage that night. We can still support ukraine defending itself from russia without just talking about it in dollars and cents. Theres a dozen different ways we can show strengths. We can start drilling on the lands and waters again and all of the above American Energy supplies. We can crush them in the Energy Sector tomorrow if we had a leader in the white house that decided. But china is the elephant in the room that is about to step on our throat. They not only have been building up their military but manipulating the currency. Ive been talking about the building of the entire food supply chain. Thats the majority of the ingredients for the drugs that are manufactured in india. They are not taken seriously and its devastating to the United States of america. Should there be a National Abortion ban or is that just a possibility . The fact that she said that is alarming to me because weve seen in possible things happen. Before there is strong changes into differential representations that may be more of a realistic dynamic. They are using this to divide people when the spirit of what she was saying is people coming together on a policy. I dont get to wake up in the morning and be a dictator. It was automatically implemented. Everybody knows that i am prolife but i had no authority making over that and i dont get to decide because the people in the state got to decide so theres federal policy being debated on if its possible or not possible. I think they will continue to talk about that. The value of the people on the policy and the law. One of the elephants that was in the room. This was a question i want to point to you by certifying the election . I think that the fact he still feels the need to be so crabby about it is sad. Hes feeling the criticism but if youre a patriot you would be satisfied in the fact you did the right thing. Move on, do something big, tell us why we should vote for you. There was National Attention to some of the decisions that you made with the sports. I want to ask what happens when tomorrow someone like leah thomas a biological male showed up against south dakota we have the strongest bill in the country to protect girls sports and womens sports. [applause] to look clearly at what you were told by the media and what happened in south dakota. It was criticism. You issued a style informed vito contrary to the policy they could take punitive action against your state and then using similar legislation into law and had a big press conference. Why would economic pressure which you cited why was that even part of the consideration . Why would they keep it out of south dakota why is that even part of the consideration . Back when i was in Congress Years before the girls sports conversation even started, they came after the sport of rodeo. Usda came out with a policy that said you could no longer have womens events and rodeo and mens events instead they had to be eliminated so in Congress Like already filed thought 2017. To be able to protect boys and girls events. I sent back to them with the changesi would sign immediatelyo law. But nobody talks about is the same day that my legislature killed that a bill i signed an executive order to protect girls sports. When it was lighted into law i had an executive order protecting girls sports the entire year to make sure where boys were in girls sports and had the chance to normalize it i dont get the luxury of signing something into law. If i find something that has poor language that i cant defend in court and then immediately had i signed at they the legislature gave it to me and it would have gone and lost all ability to protect girls sports and it would have sent my argument backward in this state of south dakota. I would be giving them a narrative and i had to do the right thing. It would strengthen the argument. You were right on the principal a conservative would say. If we sign bills that have walls into them and we lose the challenge in court. We see that in so many different issues if you build up a precedent and lose an important one is used for multiple decisions after that so its important for me. I have literally in my office they have to do a bill in analysis and tell me what happens if the bill becomes law or doesnt become law. The last sentence they have to answer to tell me the last question is what happens to the next generation if the bill gets signed into law thinking how well the governor get attacked. I want them thinking what happens to our kids and grandkids. We could stay here all day. First i want your analysis on this because carrie lake while social issues are important. What do you make of that dichotomy. Its a National Security issue that should be the biggest consideration because we are at such a dangerous unprecedented the time. They are going to be because people will use them as a weapon to try to destroy people. You made headlines when you invited former president donald trump. You also made headlines saying you would consider the vice presidency. I know you do tick tock pretty frequently. Have you talked with the former president about joining the ticket . We havent talked about that topic. I was asked if i would consider it. Its such an unprecedented the time and if you were willing to be all in on doing everything that you can to protect the United States of america then you should start questioning whether you appreciate what the gift was that you were given. I meet people every day that tell me im not going to do that. Thats too hard. And i would say that is how we ended up where we are today. About the very public divorce that we should point out between trump and pens that gives because as you make that consideration. Yes because i have always been the boss. So for me and my personality, ive known from the beginning that my personality as i like to be the one making the decisions. So i do think that that is a consideration i would have to fully think through but for the position to be part of a ticket like that im glad i got you on the record about the flamethrower. [laughter]