listen on the free c-span radio app. now, utah republican senator mitt romney takes part in a georgetown university ritual conversation on american leadership during times of crisis, specifically the coronavirus pandemic. he criticizes the governments initial response to the pandemic, saying he thought the world was surprised at the u.s. efforts. from earlier this week, this is over one hour. >> good evening and thank you for joining tonight's virtual form hosted by the to do politics and public services, commonly referred to as geopolitics. the school ofin public policy and the school of business. at georgetown, i've had the opportunity to attend many geopolitics fellow discussions and events. i'm also part of a team launching a new student organization, the mcchord refugee and policy organization. our guest tonight, senator mitt romney. it is a tremendous honor to introduce him. shipg up, -- growing up or saved -- his leadership saves dealer picks and helped the economy of my state. republicanthe nominee for president and out representing the great state of utah, he has exhibited the best of leadership and public and private sectors, getting results while maintaining character and integrity. senator romney, thank you for being here to share your perspective tonight. cosponsoredent is by the college republicans and the bipartisan coalition. matt, thank you for your introduction and continued participation at the institute and your leadership at the mcchord school. i want to thank the georgetown college up against and the bipartisan coalition for putting on this event. i want to thank you for spending your evening with us tonight. ofa our final virtual form the semester looking at american leadership during times of crisis. in a moment i will be joined by senator romney in conversation. thethe next hour or so, for first half, senator romney and i will have a conversation that will draw on his experience in the united states senate as a member of the foreign relations committee, as a governor, as a business leader, as a civic leader. and drying on some of those lessons to think through what american leadership during this crisis and beyond looks like. minutesthrough and 25 we will start to take student questions from those participating in this zoom webinar. if you look at the bottom of your screen you will see a q and a tap rate click on that and type in your question. when the time comes, someone from our team will notify you, using the chat feature that you are up. then, make sure you are tv ready. because we will bring you onto the screen to ask your question directly. feel free to start populating that q&a tap with your questions now or at any point during the program. this event is being recorded and livestreamed on our social media channels and the recording will be rebroadcast at a later time. that, i think that takes care of the housekeeping. would you join me and welcome senator mitt romney. thank you for being with us. mo, andney: thank you, thank you, matt, for that generous introduction. and someone from park city utah, that is unusual. matt is from a lovely place and it is nice to have heard his introduction. thank you for inviting me to join you and your colleagues. >> we are thrilled to have you. we have all been cooped up for several weeks and if you're like me, you are inundated with atormation, news that looks every angle of what is happening with the response to covid-19. i want to elevate the conversation to talk about american leadership during this time of crisis and what we can learn moving forward? you think about every major global crisis of the past wars, theoth world cold war, the great depression, the global war on terror, the economic crisis of 2008, and a host of others, the rest of the world looked to the united states to lead the way out. now, itally though looks as if in this crisis we are playing catch up in a lot of ways to the rest of the world and how we are responding. i wonder, i would love to get your thoughts on that. are we playing catch up or are we poised to provide the leadership united states historically provides in leading the world out of this crisis? sen. romney: there are quite a few phases to what is going on and that is up big question. i will take longer answering that then perhaps the other questions. the first phase, getting ready to respond, clearly, we were not in a position of extraordinary strength. we do not have the testing as fast as we could have or should have. we did not have the personal protective equipment we would have hoped to have. part of that is the recognition that in many cases american companies, multinational companies, are producing these products elsewhere. tivoli in china. they have the crisis first, so they got that ppe and we did not. and then in terms of crisis management, the willingness of the federal government to step in and coordinate everything from ppe, two testing. to testing. and to repair of our hospital systems, none of those moments stood out as being great examples of american leadership. i think the world was surprised by that. because they think a bus as the nation that first went to the moon, that is accomplished extorted i things in the new economy. that would it came to testing -- has accomplished extraordinary things in the new economy. but when it came from testing. it came to ppe. you look to south korea, germany, singapore, and even sweden to a degree. that first phase was not one that was stand out as being a great moment in american leadership. then as we get in the next phase of recovery, we have the potential to stand out in a positive way and the recovery area. and i'm talking about with regard to treatment said vaccines. that kind of research work is going on around the world. we may or may not be first. there is a lot going on that is not going on in other places and we may well be able to lead in that area. but then comes the time of stimulus. trying to get the economy going again. we will certainly be looked to the world to get the economy going. theconsumer will come to fore front as our consumer typically does. ashave financial resources, the reserve currency of the world, and as the dollar being the safest place for people to put their money, those resources give us the capacity to encourage the domestic economy, which also helps the global economy. yes, we will be a key leader in that regard. but in the area that is perhaps most long-lasting, which is post cover 19, because that will come at some point, i think the u.s. and china will be the two nations that really stand out, because technology will be seen as being more critical than we might have anticipated-post cover 19. -critical to threats- post covid -19. technology will be critical to meeting the needs for cover 19 and for consumers. we are a technology leader and china is technology leader and those are relying on yesterday's technology will find they are not able to keep up with us and the u.s. and, to a degree, china, will be stepping farther forward. in the first phase we did not look strong, and that is an understatement. after this is over, i think what we will be able to do and our technology base, will maintain the reputation we have as being a later, if not the leader of the world. >> let me ask a couple of follow-up questions. specificallyg on the covid-19 crisis. it seems a lot of time we hear about how we are dealing with it within our own borders, at the federal level, in various states and localities. what sort of american leadership and comingng on now up with a global response? because there needs to be a global response, right? there is no corner of the globe that is untouched by this. beyond the economics you mentioned, what is the appropriate role for us? and i'm curious, you have been critical, along with a lot of others, of the world health organization. the president has suggested pulling funding. is that the right approach? how do we work in a multilateral way led by the u.s.? sen. romney: i begin with a perception of global competition, geopolitics of the current environment. ago,f course, 25 years that personal freedom and free enterprise was the way to go and we figured the world was going to be copying us. china has a very different view. they have adopted free enterprise of sorts, capitalism. they have not adopted freedom. they are more authoritative -- authoritarian. and then you have the jihadists and the view that theocracy ought to rule the world. are we best just to turn inward and ignore what is happening in the world? i don't think so. in order to have a safer world, a more prosperous world with less poverty around the world, a safer world from a disease standpoint, a safer world in terms of having the freedoms we enjoy, we need to be involved in the world. i think there has been a tendency over the last decade or so for us to become less and less involved in international institutions. you will find the competitor being china stepping in and say, we will play a bigger and bigger role. as they play the bigger role, they tilt the communication, if not the strategies, of those various international institutions to their benefit. that is not in our long-term interest. whoever is writing the rules of the game will ultimately win the game. selfish america's interest to be involved in the world, to be writing the rules of the world, to make sure those who participate fairly and freely in trade are the ones who are successful, that the nation enjoys freedom. freedom is not on the advance. it is on the retreat. involved inore these institutions. it does not mean the who is doing a fine job. they are not doing a great job. they are more political than they should be, therefore bureaucratic. they have to be they should -- they happen to be the only institution we have globally to help the poorest countries in the world. we should try to get it to become more effective and efficient and use our financial resources and our global clout to get these international institutions to do a better job and to make the world a better place for our trade, technology, freedom, and for the values that have defined a fulfilling life. -- thinking in the context of post-covid phases, you recently wrote an op-ed in the washington post about how this could be a moment to reset our approach and the international community's approach to china. elaborate on that. sen. romney: china intends to eclipse us as the leader of the world, to write the rules of the world, to spread its form of authoritarianism around the world, to be the geopolitical leader of the role, to be the military leader of the role, and to be the economic leader of the world. it will surely have the largest gdp in the world just by virtue of its larger population. that is where it intends to go and most of the world has been thinking of china as being a developing country and a long wait to go. that is the furthest thing from the truth. their military investment in hardware is pretty close to our own. we spent a lot on retirement benefits, salaries, housing, and so forth. only 15% of our military spending actually is on procurement. china is spending a lot of money on procurement. geopolitically, they have asserted themselves -- inserted themselves into international institutions. economically, they have used a methods and of techniques that are illegal in the u.s. -- we outlawed them with our antitrust laws long ago. they have used those to koch industries in the west and become -- to crush industries in the west and become the dominant in the world. i think it came as a shock to us to find out all of our penicillin comes from china. what? we found out that our protective equipment, that comes from china. we do not have the reagents or the swabs that we need. that comes from china. i think people around the world were surprised -- not just americans -- but the british and french and germans to say, we really have let china get a hold of industry after industry and many of them critical to our health care. that is also true across our economies. there is a wake-up potential right now to say, wait a second, how far are we going to let china go before we say to them, you have to play by the rules the rest of them play by. you cannot continue to bribe or grabbing monopolies, the rare earth of the world so you can dominate and monopolize the products of the future. hold on. i think it is a chance for us to come together and if we collectively come together, i think we can dissuade china from the course they are on. if, instead, we focus and tenderly and only think about our domestic -- internally and only think about our domestic policies, we will have missed an opportunity to create the leverage we need to get china to play by the rules and to become a competitor as opposed to becoming a creditor. it is a creditor today which represents a long-term threat to freedom. i think this covid crisis has the potential to wake people up. when boris johnson comes out of a covid crisis himself, i think he will be more concerned about is going tot huawei be managing their major -- major parts of their telecommunications system. opportunitynts an for the free nations of the world and the nations that play by the rules to come together and put aside our minor differences and collaboratively develop a strategy and sit down with china and make sure they begin to play by the rules. >> let's turn our attention inward to the u.s. response domestically. veryvery broadly, what are we dg right right now? sen. romney: is your topic related to covid-19? >> yes, covid-19. sen. romney: that is a very big question. offerms of covid-19, we got slow in testing. no question about that. 20 of time to figure out why -- plenty of time to figure out why. i am not blaming this on administration. someone called it a black elephant. the elephant in the room suggests we should have seen it. it withnot prepared for testing, for protective equipment. i remember asking in the early days in our stockpile, how much ppe do we have for the needs of our health care personnel? healthid 10% of what care personnel needs. you have got to be kidding. at this stage, we are ramping up. i would have a far more centralized coordination effort in terms of manufacturing the devices, the reagents, the swabs, the tests that are necessary to find out where they are and getting them to the places that need the most. it is hard to say to all 50 governors, you guys do your own thing. it is more effective if you have a more centralized effort. doing our best to make sure the places that need the help most immediately get that help. the governors have been doing a good job. coordination has been less than my personal style. to bringund it helpful together various task forces with individual responsibilities being given to one task force after another. i go back to something which bob gates said. said, the key in leadership is recognizing you are not the smartest guy in the room. in a setting like this, it is important for the people at the top to recognize there will always -- there always people out there with more information. we are not where we ought to be. how is our private sector doing? the private sector is doing pretty darn well. it is not as coordinated as i would like it to be. people are working like crazy. whether it is to find a vaccine, cures, ppe. the american spirit, the individuals in our health care sector are inspiring. haphazardk a little to people around the world, not as coordinated as they might've expected from us, but the collective goodness of our people and the volunteers stands out to those of us who are watching it close and. -- close hand. >> a lot of americans who feel it looks haphazard and i'm struck by the fact that -- and you reference it -- reference it a moment ago -- if you look at the polling, the trust the american people have in their governors versus in the federal response, there is a pretty big gulf. inre is a pretty big delta trust in governors versus trust in federal response. are too we decentralized. what is the appropriate role of the federal government, vis-a-vis the states, and what can the federal government do to demonstrate its trustworthiness to the american people? sen. romney: you know, that is a big question. we are probably not going to change how the federal government is managing this crisis because we have the management style of the president, the management style of the people around him who he has brought in as his team, and they are pursuing this response in the way they think best. it happens to be a different management style than i employed in my prior responsibilities as a governor and private sector individual. i tend to be much more focused on bringing together and coordinating all the resources and trying to cut through the red tape and dividing the various tasks in clearly defined subgroups, taskforces forces, if you will, people being given specific responsibilities. reporting back on a daily basis. there are some things i think have to be done at the federal level or are best done at the federal level. there are things that need to be done much closer to the people. deciding which county to open when, that is probably best done by states and localities. deciding where the ventilators ought to go, that is probably best done at the federal level. first of all, finding where they are, and if they need more, looking to get more when you factored, and deciding which dates need them right now and which states get them later. governor, i do not want to be shorthanded when it comes to ventilators. more requests than the need exists. is, a skill of art to decide when things -- what things are done best centrally and locally. this is not our first rodeo. i would probably lean on the side of war federal coordination -- more federal court nation and then turn to the states to determine the best way to open up again in the best way to stimulate the testing. once they get the equipment, how do they get the tests done? that is something better at the state level. >> i will ask a couple of more questions and then we will open it up to student. zoom,ts participating via click on the q&a tap at the bottom. senator, you have been through every sector we have talked about, right? asa governor, as a senator, a member of the foreign relations committee, longtime business leader, civic leader, running the olympics right after a major crisis. i am wondering if you have got a lessons onigh-level think management that you we can all draw from to help deal with the covid crisis. sen. romney: there are a couple of things. when i was in business, we would often invest in or acquire a business in trouble. a turnaround, we called it. i wrote a book called "turnaround." the reason i was given the olympic opportunity was the governor of utah recognized i had done a number of turnarounds in my business career. outset, do what we called a strategic audit. not a financial audit. a currentok at situation and say, ok, let's learn everything we can about it. honestly, where do we stand? where's our equipment? where are the health professionals? where is the disease most aggressive? very thorough analysis of exactly where things stand. no baloney. i want a full analysis of every aspect of where we are. that is number one. number two, we call it the rule of three. focus, focus, and focus. determine what the most essential thing is to get right. depending on where you were, testing is the critical thing we've got to get right from the outset. you focus your resources on that. everything else gets pushed to the side until you really take care of that when first. number three, build the right team. sometimes you have one team and you look at what you are focused upon and look at your strategic audit and you say, i do not have the right people for this. i have some good folks and some of them can do one thing and some of them can do another that i need to bring in people with better expertise. if you are leading an enterprise , when i was at the olympics, i determined right off the bat, there are some skills that are needed here that i don't have. mine who waser of very good at that. i asked him to come out and join me and he became my partner in this. and if you are a governor and you are trying to figure out how to deal with the flood or , they build the kind of team that can respond to that type of crisis. for most of us, this is a new experience. sometimes you have to change up the personnel. in a setting like this, i need to get some real experts in crisis management. christie whochris -- theith hurricane terrible hurricane in new jersey. that is the approach. strategic audit, focus, and build the right team. question kind of takes it out of the realm of policymakers and more into the realm of the american people. i've been struck by some recent polling that shows americans attitudes and perceptions of the wildly based on their partisan identification and based on where they get their news from. viewers of cnn and msnbc are on one end of the spectrum. viewers of fox are on the other end of the spectrum. republicans over here and democrats over here. and i am wondering your thoughts -- you are right, we have been through a crisis before. are we to polarized at this moment -- too polarized at this moment in our history to come up with a truly unified response? how do we get past the polarization? sen. romney: are we to polarized? yes. how do we get out of it? i can only look at history. i can only look at civilizations in real distress. typically, there were two means by which a civilization pulled out of a downward spiral. alongs if a crisis came that was so severe and woke people up but not so severe that it killed the enterprise or the civilization. course, of where there is such -- a leader of such skill that this leader stood above the division and the anger and resentment and brought people together. i think of lincoln following the civil war and his approach to the country and even though he did not live long enough to -- thatt his vision, he image helped heal a nation, which had become more divided. i think of winston churchill whole world was ready to throw in the towel. downcastre very much and he stood and spoke and led in such a way that brought his nation together and help energize the entire world. ago, rome a long time was headed downward and three great emperors came along with vision and were able to reestablish rome's ascendance once again. if i look at this setting, i believe this crisis may be the kind of thing that helps get us past some of the polarization. i look to our leadership. whether that is the leadership in the white house but leadership in governor's offices, leadership in homes and churches and institutions of learning. there are a lot of leaders in our country and people who are willing to recognize we can disagree with each other and still respect each other. that is something i hope we see throughout our society but it will have to come from each of us. good pivot point to the questions from the student. ask i call your name, i that you introduce yourself. tell us who you are, your school, your year, what you are studying, where you are zooming from. try to keep your questions concise. let's start with maia. maia and i am a freshman studying math and government and i'm in the -- government. i am calling from the north suburbs of chicago. thoughtndering what you them up -- the future of moderate politics might look like. is there a future for political moderates? bringould politicians american dialogue back? sen. romney: thank you. that is an unusual combination. government and math. i wish we had more people like andthat understand numbers are adept at using numbers to develop trends and reach conclusions that can be acted upon. we have a future that includes, if you will, the center as opposed to just the extremes? what we found in the last five or 10 years is that there are juice torful political being highly divisive, to calling upon resentments, to looking for a scapegoat. populismright, the that suggest that our problems are because of immigrants, because of foreign goods and that life is not as we would like it to be because of these immigrants and they are coming across our border and the foreign goods coming into our country and that is a very powerful message which connects with a lot of people and led to in mycendancy of that ilk party. on the left, there has been a strong sentiment that our problems are all because of the rich people in the bankers and these billionaires and our life would be better if we did not have billionaires and did not have big banks and big companies like google and amazon. why our life is not as good as it could be. ofh visions play on a degree populism and resentment and anger and that turns off a lot of people. both divisions are wrong. the reason we are not growing as fast as we could is because we do not have as many highly skilled individuals that we could have. we should bring in more highly skilled individuals from around the world and have them stay. left, big companies like google and microsoft and amazon, those are the ones investing in new technologies that will help rescue us going forward and make america indeed the leader of the world. both sides are wrong. it will play out eventually. people will go to the extremes for a while and then finally, there will be a resurgence of a center-right or centerleft and i do not know whether that means the creation of a new party that draws from the centers of both or whether it is one party or the other that becomes more centrally oriented. i think there will be an ultimate rejection of the extreme simply for the reality that it does not work. the policies of the extreme do not make things better. winston churchill said, you can trust the americans to get things right after they have exhausted all the alternatives. we have not exhausted all the alternatives yet. we will try our hand at some of these extremes and they will not work. and when they don't work, we will return to some of the policies, whether they be republican or democrat, that i think have more potential to make life better for all of our citizens. thank you for the question, maia. >> next up, luke. remember to introduce yourself. >> thank you for taking my question. i am luke and i am from indianapolis and my question is returning to one of the things we talked about -- that you were talking about earlier, which is american leadership. i was wondering if you think there are ways in which state governors and congress are able to do their part contributing to american leadership globally. that is do you think something only a president can do? sen. romney: there is no question presidential leadership is the most effective. the president has the biggest bully pulpit and the president really conducts foreign policy. i am on the foreign relations committee. we advise the white house. i have the occasion to meet with a number of individuals so i can express my view. the president sets foreign try and push can and cajole and convince but ultimately, it is the president who makes those calls. i hope that as we go forward, there will be a greater recognition in art administration -- in our administration and throughout our institutions of government that it is in america's interest to be involved in the world. after the second world war, a long time ago, harry truman and his secretary of state developed a new american foreign-policy. prior to that time, we had been isolationist. the new policy, we are going to be involved in the world. we will be strong by virtue of not just our military might and economic might but also by linking arms with our friends. alliances make a stronger. and we are going to promote our values. we have been following that for the last 50 plus years. there is some question as to whether that is the right strategy. i think it is. a governor can go to other countries and speak with leaders and establish trade relations with other countries that are countries that abide by the rules of the road. whether that is malaysia, indonesia, vietnam, northern sen. romney: so whether that is , around thedonesia world. china's dana very aggressively. -- china is doing that aggressively. senators and congresspeople are wise to go on trips around the world and meet with leaders of other countries to talk about values that we share. promote those values and look for economic opportunities for us to be investing in other parts of the world. before i beat -- my colleagues before i became a senator created legislation called the build act which provides funding for enterprises to invest in south africa or the subcontinent. those are things we can do, even if a president is less inclined in that regard. those are things that we can do to establish stronger links around the world. if we do not play a role around the world, add things can happen , that will suck us in or make our products less competitive, or make us unable to compete around the world. in that case we would have not the kind of economic vitality and security that we aspire to. thank you. >> thanks, luke. abby, you're up. my name is gabby burnett from durham, north carolina, in the master foreign service program. my question is about our state department. due to covid-19, diplomats have had to be evacuated or returned stateside. this is happening as the number of crises are starting to increase. so we are seeing china exhibit more expansionist policies in the south china sea. the impact ofink the virus will be on our diplomatic arm and how can our diplomatic corps adapt to some of these changes? abby.romney: thank you, g kind it will aggressively seek to take it manage of the current circumstance. they will be able to state they were able to knock down covid-19, whether it is true or not. and then look at the united states, it is still running amok . and that will be convincing to many. and they will also try to blame us, somehow, as they continue to try to do. and they will make a very aggressive effort to expand their influence, particularly in the third world, not just with belt and road, but with economic investments of other kinds, as well as their involvement in geopolitical institutions. they will be aggressive in these ways. if we sit back and say we are entirely inwardly focused, they --l advance authoritarianism they will advance and authoritarianism will get a further laid, and freedom will be further in retreat. authoritarianism would get a further lead, and freedom would be in further retreat. a number of us have called on the administration to take a very aggressive effort to counter chinese propaganda. to promote the truth. and to promote our relationships with other countries. china got the first round, because they had masks when no one else had them. they had tests when the world needed them. so they are able to send it around. they're calling it mask diplomacy. we do not have that. because we do not manufacture the masks, like they do. but i think that is going to change. i do not know who will develop the vaccine next. but if we do that is something we can help provide to other nations, the technology if not the product itself. there is no question that coming out of this, that we will have an economy that helps rebuild the global economy. and we will have the technologies the world is going to look to, to keep their people safe. germany today said they are looking to google and amazon, as places developing social distancing technology they will look to. advantage of the circumstance, but we are starting in a whole. -- we are starting in a bit of a hole. and we have to a knowledge that. and we have to become aggressive in asserting our values and truth, as opposed to letting china get away with a story that is untrue. >> connor, go ahead. >> hello, senator. being accountable to the rules and in step with the international community. could you outline a tangible way to do that? were meant to hold china accountable to intellectual property laws. but the end result was damage to u.s. as this is an industry and it did not achieve a china-u.s. phase one. i want to know, how do we hold china to the rules while not sacrificing our economic efficiency, nor the welfare of our citizens? sen. romney: good question and i will tell you my view. we have a lot more capacity to get china to be dissuaded from a predatory approach, if we combined with our friends and nations that follow the rules. i am talking about japan, south throughoutan, and the pacific, as well as europe, eastern europe, western europe, the middle east. these nations come together and say, china, we are not going to allow you to have unfettered free access to any of our markets, unless you cease and desist from the following things. and it is describing what those are. we would have to work those out amongst ourselves first. we say, we sadly cannot let them come rushing into our market, particularly with prop -- products that are high-tech and essential to our perspective national security. we cannot let them come rushing in unless they are playing by the same rules. they cannot be allowed to price their products dramatically below cost. under theted states, sherman antitrust act, that is called predatory pricing. it is illegal. companies do that and they get find and penalized by the justice department. it is not illegal for countries to do that, however, in their own country. but we have to say to china, when you sell products below cost, we will not allow you to have access to our market. does that mean on a global basis, tariffs? probably. does that in some cases we say we are not going to let you sell that product into our country? yes. productot let huaweis into our telik medications network -- into art telecommunications network. it is so essential to national security. then we have a lot more leverage to negotiate with china. they are not going to pick up their marbles -- their marbles and go home. they want access to the world's markets but they are going to have to play by the rules the rest of us played by. data something which is hard for us to do. -- that is something hard for us to do but the covid crisis creates an opportunity to have a conversation with our friends. normally they look to america to lead that kind of effort. i do not know whether this the administration wants to be the one thing that, but some buddy ought to do it. because if it is divide and conquer, we are going to get conquered. and china is going to be assented -- ascendant economically and geopolitically. and that is not something that is acceptable to the cause of freedom. left.have 10 minutes ?anjay >> i'm a freshman studying from thet and zooming maryland suburbs of d.c.. i want to ask you, it seems since he ran for president in 2012, the republican party has changed a lot. -- since you ran. how do you view that change? what you think has shaped the party in recent years? how do you see, moving power -- moving forward, what is it going to look like? has romney: the party changed a lot since 2012. statistics which show a number of suburban women and college-educated men and women that were republican have become independent or democrat. at the same time, a lot of folks that were democrats, union household and so forth, have moved into the republican. cohort, it has changed its makeup. forparty used to stand fiscal discipline. balancing the budget. we have walked away from that. that has not been a priority in the last administration. we used to talk about how critical character was. we talked about moral character. we are not talking about that these days either. we considered russia to be the bad guys. china, north korea to be the bad guys. yet the president has taken a very different approach to those countries than we have in the past. and to their leaders in particular. think the party has changed in some respects. case, i believe we were pro-legal immigration. he saw immigration as a positive to our economic growth, and to our technology. i calculated at one point that half of our leading technology companies in america were founded by immigrants are the second-generation of immigrants. so, that was our orientation. that is less so today. where does that lead us -- leave us? in my opinion, the president has the extraordinarily unique skills at activating the base of the party that he has put together. he won, for pete's sake. that is a hard thing to do. what i do not know is whether there is anyone who has skills as unusual as his can keep that group together. down the road, post president trump, whether in one year or five years, post president trump, we will have a hard time maintaining a majority without being able to do a better job with young people, with minorities, with women, with college-educated whites. , but i tend tog be more mainstream republican than republican if you will. that is where i think we have to head, thanks. >> emily? hello, senator, thank you for speaking tonight. i'm a sophomore in the school of foreign service studying international politics and zooming in from west virginia. seeduty -- how do you principles of institutions being maintained during this crisis, keeping in mind a balance of health concerns? such as elections? sen. romney: i missed the first part of your question. see principles of our institutions being maintained through this crisis, especially regarding concerns for health, such as with elections? there is going to be a challenge. our institutions have been under from the left and the right for a long time. thatof the institutions were stable and considered above it all, have taken on some heat. other that is the media or the fbi or the intelligence community, even our public health community, is now fair game on the left and the right, to attack institutions which were, in the past seen as being relatively fair arbiters. clearly, the media has a point of view. that is the nature of a free press. you will have people on the right and the left. i think there has been a reduction in the confidence and credibility associated with many of our institutions. i think that is unfortunate. where there are mistakes and bad actors, point them out. but most of the institutions i have described, when they make mistakes they say, hey, we made a mistake. so, when public health said, look, our forecast as we are going to have 2 million people die from coronavirus, and then they came back and said it is more like 50,000-one how to said the1000, they input was not right and now we are looking at the right input in the right data. that should create more credibility. but in some circles it seems to detract. in some political circles people grab onto this and say, you see these people, they are not telling the truth, their people. it may beget politics but i think it is damaging to the health and well-being of our national psyche. not to mention our national spirit. . you raised a very important question. i hope we find on the left and the right people give more respect to one another than we are inclined to do. and what a handsome scotty. >> thank you. >> thanks, emily. antonio? i think your mutated grin -- i think you are mutated. -- muted. >> taking a broader approach, in consideration of different things we have talked about, i would like to ask about the upcoming presidential election. we have heard frequently that this is once again, the most important election in history. and that the stakes are so high. i would like to ask your perspective on that. what you think the stakes are, in consideration of american values? and combating this crisis? and china? what you think the stakes are, and what is your take on that? sen. romney: without question, the most important election in our lifetime was in 2012. [laughter] just kidding. yes, i think this is an important election. likely the incumbent will win. why do i say that? it is been 28 years since an incumbent lost in his bid for reelection. there is great power for and compensate. you set the national agenda. get to be time when your planet cannot. particularly in a crisis, you get a lot of tv time. it is likely the economy will be doing better than we are feeling now. we are headed down now, and it will probably be headed back up my november. that will augur to the advantage by the incumbent. say joete polls today biden is leading in a number of swing states. but we are far away from november and political life. ballthink it is a jump though i would give the advantage to the incumbent. there are two different visions. on what the challenges are we face in the world. president trump's vision is clear in most people's minds these days. and what he stands for and what he would do is pretty clear. i think vice president biden is less clear in people's minds, as minds, as would to what he would do. i think his political advisers will tell him what he should do is make the election a referendum on president trump. and only whether or not you think president trump deserves a second term. as opposed to, laying out his own vision for what he would do differently. that may or may not come. it is an important election. that oursee involvement in international affairs would be different, under the two individuals. the course, do mystically, on the priority of whether we are talking about -- domestically, on health policy, and immigration policy, they will have different views. i think it is critical on immigration to bring and more high skilled talent and individuals. whether or not we can get that done, i do not know. but i think that will be in the mix in this election. i think it counts. i'm not sure this is the most important election ever, or the last for a while. but it is important. in a nation like ours, i think every election is important. , whoe those like yourself are focused on these issues, will get out and vote, and encourage other people to vote. otherwise you will have people who will perhaps sit at home who could have had some thing very important to say about the direction of our country. good luck to you in that effort. one more student question. nick? i am joining on a social distance walk from dallas. i'm in the undergraduate business school, studying finance and accounting and minoring in government. what you have to say to young people as they face, and for the next five decades, an unprecedented level in the deficit. and probably increased taxes coming down the pipeline. what would you say to young business leaders in that type of environment? sen. romney: i know a number of people in this broadcast are planning to go into government and that is important. people going into the private sector may play at least as important a role. government only has money to spend if businesses are producing goods and services that people want to do by. our ability -- to buy. our ability to have value in our currency depends on the competitiveness and the relative quality of our goods compared with those that will be offered by china or germany or anybody else. so, being in the private sector i believe is essential to our vitality, and the preservation of american leadership on the planet. so i appreciate what you're doing. i am concerned about the amount of debt that we have. i do not think it will be backbreaking, i certainly hope not. in part, because interest rates are so low, i think they will stay low because the dollar is the reserve currency of the world and the safest place for people to put money. the interest is a burden but it is not backbreaking, yet. but we have to deal of that. the idea that we can keep on now , every year, adding an extra trillion dollars to the debt, that cannot be the case. we have to finally confront this. my generation has put in place more and more spending that benefits us, more benefits for us, and we are walking away leaving your generation with the bill. i think that is wrong, and i believe that we have to, in this upcoming cycle, finally deal with that. whether it is by increasing taxes on us-i hope that is not it-or by reshaping programs so they can stand on their own feet and become fiscally solvent, there has to be an approach that comes to grips with the excessive spending we have. we spent $4 trillion a year and we taken $3 trillion a year. that is during good times. this year our debt will be a lot more than $120 we add to the debt -- more than one trillion dollars that we had to the debt. i am one of the very few who considers this a really critical issue. i will be battling on this issue and hopefully getting colleagues to come along. thank you for the questions and i'm glad i have an ally. good luck in your business career. >> senator, i want to close with a final question. through every major crisis our country has faced, or leaders -- leaders have asked the american people to come together. there was a call to arms as a people to deal with the crisis. the call to arms and this one, is to stay home, to not come together, socially. even then, that message is complicated, as we have seen in recent days. there's a lot of anxiety out there. a lot of the students do not know if they have summer internships or do not know what they will do when they graduate. can you end tonight with a message to them, about what it is we can do, together, to get home.s time, beyond stay sen. romney: we are always tempted to look and see what the person or people at the top are doing. but far more important in a country like ours, is what is what each individual is doing. leadership is not something that happens just by one person at the top, or even by 50 governors or by ceos, or religious leaders and so forth. leadership really happens on a person-to-person basis. what i say day-to-day, which is encouraging, as young people and older people, acting in a way that shows the profound sense of humanity, of goodness, of care for others. that, i think, has always characterized our country. one thing i enjoyed about the chance to run for president is that i got to go across the country and i saw the people who do not make the evening news. the people who make the evening news typically did something bad. people who do not make the news are people doing really good things. that is character a stick our country. i am confident in our future. not because i think -- that is characteristic of our country. i'm confident in our future, not because i believe we always elect the best leaders. but we are a good people who care about their kids who care about their future, who care about the values that have always characterized united states of america. i am bullish on america. i want to tackle our challenges. but if i look to give you advice, it would be do your very best in the profession you have chosen. the a fundamentally good human being. romney, i spent most of my career on the opposite side of the aisle. sen. romney: i know it well, i worked directly against you. >> but i have voice respected your leadership, in every stage of your career. i want to thank you for your continued service. i want to thank you for sharing your thoughts on how we as a people can come together in dealing with this crisis. and what american leadership looks like. and can look like moving forward. i hope the next time you come and speak to the institute of politics and public service, it will be with us in person on campus. sen. romney: good to be with you. >> to everyone who tuned in, and the students who participated, are those who watched across social media and channels, thank , for joiningtime us on so many events since we shifted to this virtual model. i want to thank our partners, the georgetown college republicans, the bipartisan student coalition, for joining us and putting this on. and our technical partners, optimum, audio, and ai media, to help figure out how to do this. in pretty short order. students, we are done for the semester. you have finals. good luck with the finals but stay tuned. in the next few days we are going to be announcing a very full summer's worth of virtual programming, as our social distancing continues. we are going to give you a way to stay connected to campus and into one another, through events. please stay tuned and good luck with your finals. thanks to everybody. >> c-span has around-the-clock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. it is available on demand at sea.org/coronavirus. watch white house briefings, -- at c-span.org/coronavirus. what white house briefings, track the spread in the u.s. and around the world with interactive maps. watch any, unfiltered, at c-span.org/coronavirus. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> more live programming later today from the states and their pendant response including a theironference with pendant response including a news conference with the kentucky governor andy beshear. that is live at 5:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. ♪ >> washington journal primetime. a special evening addition of the washington journal, on the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. our guests are a clinical psychologist and president of the anxiety and depression association of america. joining us to talk about covid-19 and mental health in the u.s. of those directly and indirectly affected by the disease. the, the head of international humanitarian group, partners in health, will be on to talk about the scope of the pandemic and developing nations. also joining, pennsylvania publican congressman talks about how. coronavirus pandemic has been felt in his district. join the conversation tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. ♪ oh, yea, all persons having business before the honorable supreme court are admonished to draw near and give their attention. historyhe first time in , here that u.s. supreme court live. in may, the court is hearing oral arguments in 10 cases. c-span will provide live coverage of each of these. first, on monday, at 10:00 a.m. eastern, the justices here the case of u.s. patent and trademark office versus ok.com. -- versus booking.com. the case concerns the company's effort to trademark its website. listen to oral arguments heard by the justices, live on monday at 10:00 a.m. eastern at c-span, on-demand at c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app. >> sunday night, on q&a, health south sudanese videogame developer is bringing peace and conflict revolution -- resolution to refugees through a wider audience. has 73% of the population under the age of 30. these are young people born and raised up in war. [indiscernible] playgrounds, i was like, how about if these young people from south sudan start playing these videogames? not because they are violent, but because in the videogame, the same thing is happening in my country. howpeople will feel like things are done. and how about videogame for peace and conflict resolution? >> watch sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span q&a. >> the coronavirus pandemic continues. your member's of congress are working from their home districts. 30%, are iny folks, the automotive industry. the other, majority, i would call front-line workers. i hope people don't forget these are the folks that help with grocery stores, these are the are the folks who are demanding $15 minimum wage. it is important to highlight that they are the ones who are keeping us afloat. >> this is a very, very serious issue. what i've been telling people is please, listen to the federal authorities, the state authorities, the local authorities, the health experts, and stay away from people right now. i see this as a war. and the united states is at war with this virus. announcer: stay in touch using the newly updated c-span congressional darter -- directory.al it has all of the information you need to connect directly with your u.s. senator or representative. order your copy online today at c-spanstore.org. we've had the chance to talk with many legislators over the last couple of weeks about the pandemic, about how it affects their states. announcer: here on c-span, we go live to frankfurt, conduct -- kentucky where andy beshear is holding a briefing with reporters on the coronavirus. gov. beshear: we are going to get through this. we are going to get through this together. one last time, we are going to get through this, we are going

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