Gov. DeSantis & Fmr. VP Pence Speak at "The Gathering" in Atlanta : CSPAN : August 12, 2024 6:20pm-7:27pm EDT : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive (2024)

conversation with you. we will be here all weekend. thank you also much for listening, and thank you for the opportunity. mr. erickson: absolutely. thank you, patrick. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] mr. erickson: so, this is where you get a 15 minute break. and then if the governor of florida and the former vice president of the united states, then you get lunch. so we will take a quick timeout here. i will go run to the restroom. i will come back and we have a great lineup this afternoon. so we will be right back. announcer: florida republican

governor ron desantis and former vice president mike pence also spoke at the same conservative forum. during his remarks the former vice president explained his decision to not endorse former president trump in the upcoming election, while governor desantis highlighted his education policies in florida. this is about one hour. mr. erickson: i got the lights up. welcome back to the program. if everyone wants to remember your receipt. remember your cell phones. so, i have good news and bad news about this afternoon. we actually are going to be able to get a break now, but the bad news is because one of the flights for one of our speakers got canceled. but we will manage this schedule well. the congresswoman from florida, her flight got canceled i think because of the storm from where she was coming from. but that's ok.

it will give us a small break for me to step out and run to the restroom this afternoon at some point because i really was not looking forward to sitting here with you all from 1:00 to 5:00. right now, however, i want to introduce you to my next guest who is one of the best governors in the country. i am bias for my own governor but inarguably, one of the greatest governors in the country who a friend of mine actually refers to because of his fight with disney as the rat slayer. he has been incredible. i hate to use the word holistically, it is one of those buzzy words, but i mean, balancing his state which has a massive environmental concerned everybody cares about, from the everglades to the freshwater springs, to bringing in massive amounts of business. handling just this massive

influx of people from all of these states that are fleeing. and also having to deal with hurricane debby, then the inevitable florida man. and he balances it all with grace and humor, and is just such a great governor. it is my pleasure to introduce you to governor ron desantis. [applause] thank you so much. gov. desantis: it is great to be back in georgia and of all the accolades in florida i am proud of, but i grew up in florida, born and raised. and we worked for -- and we were for a long number of years the college football center of the universe. that is not true anymore. i am now standing in the college football center of the universe in the state of georgia. these things change. but as a conservative, i understand my job is just as much to prevent bad ideas from going into place as it is to

facilitate good. you want to do good but you have to stop the bad stuff. a couple years ago i had some people come to me with an idea and they said, governor, we have calculated that we could make more money for the university of florida if we moved the florida georgia game from jacksonville to a home and home series. i said, well, that very well may be true, i am not going to be the governor that loses the world's largest outdoor co*cktail party. denied. mr. erickson: i would be remiss, since you started there, that y'all are losing such a great president at the university of florida with former senator sasse. that was a great pick, and what you have done with colleges in florida overall has been just tremendous to push back on so many of the far left academic issues, where college canvassers around the country have been tools of indoctrination, forget about education. gov. desantis: we have a radical

idea that the tax dollars that floridians pay should not go to fund universities that are hostile to our freedoms and way of life, and that they should actually fund -- [applause] they should actually fund institutions that are pursuing the classical mission of the university. pursuing truth. having high academic standards. and preparing our students to be citizens of our republic. and so what we have been able to do -- first of all, since i have been governor we have not raise tuition. so, tuition for in-state is about $6,300. grandparents can actually qualify for in-state on behalf of their grandkids under certain circ*mstances, we are proud of that. we have bright future scholarships, similar to what georgia has, where good students go to school for free. if you are a notch below that, you get 75% often wish and, so we are making it affordable. you basically have no debt. what we have said is you

basically have --- you cannot just say we don't want it. there are reasons why, there are incentives built in. so we did reform that all tenured professors must undergo review every five years and can be terminated for poor performance. so you are now seeing -- and this isn't even -- apart from the indoctrination nonsense, you talk to anyone at those universities, probably the biggest deadweight cost is unproductive tenured faculty. so you want to be able to do this. it also helps identify, if you are there for politicking and not for academic rigor, we are going to do that. so we did that, that is now being done. there was just an article, ben sasse really did this, to identify. they have the bottom 20% that are going to be filtered out. but we have also empowered presidents of our universities, almost like free agency. there is someone good at hillsdale or m.i.t., we give you a pot of money, just go hire them.

do not let the hiring be held captive by the current faculty. why? because if you are -- at almost any university in this country, if you don't toe the ideological line, are you going to get tenure? probably not. i would say 95% not. now we don't have to worry about that. they see people who are talented, they bring them in. we brought in a lot of professors for our universities. and it is funny, we have this post-tenure review, people are being processed out. some people have looked at what we have done at like new college in sarasota. this is a small liberal arts college, publicly funded. i didn't even know what it was night became governor. i remember the speaker of the house and said governor, i want to talk to you about new college. i was like, why we need a new college? no, this place in sarasota. it was like a marxist commune, left of the left, no grades. look, if that's what you want to pursue, you have every right to

do that. but not at the taxpayers expense. so i put seven conservatives on the board of trustees. [applause] so i put seven conservatives on the board of trustees, they fired the president, hired a conservative president, they abolished gender studies department. they were the first university in america to eliminate de and i. [applause] and they reframed the mission of the college to be the nation's top publicly funded classical liberal arts college, similar to a hillsdale college. so, when we did that -- even though enrollment was terrible, some of the students wanted to leave, but so many more wanted to apply. and many of the faculty wanted to leave, and honestly they should have. the media was saying there is a brain drain because professors are leaving. let me tell you, if marxist professors are leaving the state of florida, that is good for the state of florida.

that is not bad. but just the larger issue though is, conservatives worked hard on k-12, we have universal school choice, hopefully georgia will get there someday. but it's good, it's important. i have young, i was just telling you before we came out here, we are in the last dog days of summer vacation. next week we have our daughter going to second grade, our son going to first, and our youngest daughter going to pre-k. we are ready for them to go back to school. so we are very sensitive to k-12.you are a parent , maybe you have a great k-12 school, maybe you are homeschooling, working hard to fulfill values. you do that for 18 years and then your kid goes to a university where they work to undo that with indoctrination? that is not good. i think this higher education issue is critical. we're now, because of what has happened at columbia and all this other stuff, they tried to take over lawns at university of

florida, florida state. they lasted seven minutes and i got dragged out of their. we are not putting out of this -- putting up with this stuff. [applause] but part of the problem with our country, and things that have gone wrong as a result of all the nonsense that you have seen at these universities over the last 20, 25 years. i was a blue-collar kid growing up in florida, i was a baseball player, so i ended up being recruited to play baseball at schools like princeton and yell. i remember showing up the first day at school like a good floridian with flip-flops and jean shorts on and a t-shirt. that is not how these kids acted, so i was a fish out of water. i didn't even know colleges were liberal when i went. i was just very wet. but i always said, it was shocking to me and it is much worse now. i was like, when these kids get into the real world, none of this stuff is going to fly. this doesn't work. now looking back, the joke has

been on me because all of that, yeah, it didn't happen right away, but it has now permeated corporate america, the bureaucracy, all these different things. so if we do not have a counter with higher education, we are ultimately going to lose a lot of the battles that lie ahead of us. i am just proud in florida, no state has done more to reclaim the historic traditional mission of higher education than the state of florida. we do not cede those institutions to the political left in the sunshine state. [applause] mr. erickson: also, i do have to say on the football comment, looks like the university of florida is a great baseball school. gov. desantis: florida state and florida, 2023, number two i the nationn, lost to lsu who has one of the best pitchers. this year florida and florida

state both made it to the final four, neither of them made it to the championship. university of florida had a first-round pick, florida state had two first round picks. i'm a baseball guy, so that is my love. at the same time i remember my first year as governor when national signing day happened for the football recruits. i told my staff, give me letters for all the kids, i will sign them letters say congratulations. and they did. we have a lot of great high school football talent in florida. i am signing these letters. dear johnny, congratulations on signing with the university of georgia. dear michael, congratulations on signing with alabama. dear johnny, congratulations on signing with clemson. wait a minute, why am i congratulating them for leaving the state of florida? we used to keep all the blue chips in state. but yeah, our state in terms of big events, just since i have been governor we have hosted two super bowls, college football

national championship, we have another one of those coming up. we have hockey stanley cups. i mean, who would have thought florida would have that? i was just in miami helping them build a new stocky stadium. they have messi down there. we are helping with the arteries going into that. there is a lot going on in our state, and hopefully we can get back to where we are competitive in college football. mr. erickson: you bring up a sore subject for my son, they are both tampa bay lightning fans. for the life of me i cannot understand why florida has two ice hockey teams. when i get emails and see people with quebec license plates headed down to florida for the winter, it kind of makes sense why. gov. desantis: interesting fact. i grew up in don't need in florida, near clearwater, west of tampa in the peninsula. we were the spring training home of the toronto blue jays. one, it was good because the

city owned all those facilities. as a high school baseball player, my home field was the blue jays spring training stadium. that is where we practiced, that is where we played. and so i played four years division i baseball all over the country. never played on a better field than my high school's home stadium, which was really cool to be able to go up. but i remember growing up as a kid, every february, you are out and about and it was 50/50 whether the car in front of you would be a florida license plate or an ontario license plate. there were a lot of canadians. mr. erickson: we have got someone here from canada, and he said in his email, he's one of the people who drives every year and winters in florida, lives in halifax, is there for the summer. he just wanted to ask his favorite american governor about his least favorite canadian

prime minister trudeau. [laughter] gov. desantis: all i can say is this. justin trudeau, since he has been prime minister of canada, number of stanley cups for canada, zero. governor ron desantis, number of stanley cup for the state of florida since i have been governor, three. who is winning that battle? [applause] mr. erickson: well played. so, on a serious note, you guys, georgia, the carolinas and virginia have had to deal with debby. how has recovery been? gov. desantis: we are proud of our strong response in florida. when i became governor this is something we dealt with for many years and i said ok, and there have been a lot of strides made particularly under governor bush, who had to deal with a lot. i was like, ok, what can we do better? every time we get in these seasons we are looking to do better. my first thing as governor was, you know, we cannot have

situations where people are without power for weeks on end if we can help it. sometimes the damage may be so bad. we started pre-positioning lineman to be able to go as soon as that storm passes, these guys are there connecting people. debby hit the other day, the number of people without power in the state of florida is effectively zero as we sit here today. that was not true in some of these other places that have been hit. not that this was a category five, but being able to do that. we were able to do that. there are some pockets of flooding. we may see some more, because when georgia gets a lot of rain in the south at comes down into north florida, so we are monitoring that. but we have been able to lean in and have a very robust response. it is just something we take a lot of pride in. we mobilized everyone the week before the storm, before it was even an organized storm. because we see there is a possibility, we do it. i would rather have too many resources ready and have a better outcome than not have

enough and get a worse outcome. so we are going to do fine on it. look, i don't want to have to get hit, but if i had to get hit with a debby every year, we can handle that. we are in really good shape. we will see what happens for the rest of the hurricane season, but ian was a category five. we had over 3 million people restored with power within 72 hours. like, that has never happened, anything like that before. we had entire bridges that were knocked out, taking you from mainland lee county, fort myers, to some of these barrier islands, sanibel and pine island. and these are not state bridges, so this is a county deal, and they were basically being told the residents and people at businesses, it will probably be six months before you'll be able to get out there, maybe you can take a boat or something. these guys came to me, we can't do that, can you help us?

so i got my guys together. i want no bureaucracy, i want no red tape. we have these missions, we have to do it. the pine island bridge they said would be out for months, we took it over. three days later it was back open, reconstructed for business. sanibel, two weeks after we took it over it had three breaks in the causeway, repaired, back open for business. and that basically is the business -- difference between those businesses being able to come back or withering on the vine. there is always something different about each one of them, but the preparation is key. and just being able to make decisions. some people are so worried that they may make the wrong decision. when you are in this fog of a crisis, you may not make every great decision, but you have to be decisive. you can always be able to shift resources or do what you need to do. i think we are going to be fine and we will see what happens for the rest of the hurricane season. mr. erickson: before i get into your thoughts, i want to ask you

this question. i have been thinking about how to oftentimes questions in interviews you may not necessarily get. one of the things that always strikes me when i go to florida, i take the kids down there, you have these enormous freshwater springs. you have the everglades. you have this tremendous environmentalism republicans often get knocked as mythology that we are somehow bad for the environment. but you as a conservative governor who supports free markets have really done a good job of balancing business commerce, trade tourism, and also no degradation of the environment in florida. how do you balance those concerns from a conservative perspective to ensure the environment in florida is pristine, but also you are not sacrificing trade and industry, commerce and tourism? gov. desantis: fortunately in florida a lot of that is reinforcing. our economy is strong because we have great natural resources. we are the number one boatings and fishing state in the

country, and it is not even close. and people come from all over the country for that. heck, they come from all over the world to be able to do that. so our everglades, it is not a swamp, it is actually a river. it is a river of grass, and man created different types of blockages for the water for coming down for a variety of different reasons. but over many decades it starved that system of the water it needs, which is a natural water filtration system. it has caused water to go in different directions that cause problems. we set out when i became governor to restore the flow, to think about what god gave us and get back to that and do it in a smart, cost-efficient, and intelligent way. but that has helped our economy for what we are doing. if you look at florida bay, the fishing is better today than it was when i became governor. you look at what we have been able to do to combat algae and some of the things. we've mitigated that.

things like red tide happened, that is just natural. but mitigating the effects. so that is good for the hotels, it is good for our travel industry, for our restaurants, it is good for all of that. i just had to lay the marker down. our party really wasn't leaning in on it, because i think they think -- and i agree with some of it. when you hear things about environment, you think, hey, the left uses that to try and advance their agenda. they don't really care about the environment, they care about controlling your behavior. i think there is a natural aversion to that, but i'm not trying to control your behavior. i am trying to restore the beauty of florida, and we are doing it. but then let you enjoy it as a floridian or as a tourist. i want more activity. i want people out and about. i want them doing that. it is a different approach. the left has given us an opening, because their whole thing about the climate ideology, that's basically they want to impose very controlling,

destructive policies on the american people. they tell you the world is going to end unless you adopt their entire political agenda. gee, imagine, how convenient that it just works out that way. you have to do everything they want otherwise the world is going to end. we've rejected that. oh, the media got so mad at this. we did an energy bill this year that said the state of florida, our energy policy is we want reliable energy and affordable energy. and we specifically said our policy should not be based on climate ideology. that causes people to pay more and it is less reliable. they got so mad about that. but you think about it, part of the reason we were able to get the power on in florida after a storm is because we've embraced reliable energy. and even though we've done that, our emissions are way down over the last 10, 20 years. so we are going about all of this i think in a very sensible way, and that's part of the reason why we've gotten so

much broad support in the state of florida. all the different issues we face, we are addressing everyone, we are just doing it from a conservative perspective rather than adopting liberal policies. mr. erickson: you mentioned the left wanted to control us. there is this governor you may have heard of from minnesota who, while you were opening your state for covid, was keeping his locked down, and also doing a rat line for neighbors to rat each other out. i understand there are a lot of floridians now who have minnesota accents. gov. desantis: yes. i have known about walz for a long time because people tell me why they fled. i would have strangers give me a big hug and say thank you, we escape from california and new york. a lot of them escape from minnesota, and minnesota has lost population since he has been governor. i think the policies have been very destructive when you are driving out people. think about the stick he is doing. this is just unbelievable. he will give this stump speech and he says, you know, our

neighbors can do what they want, it's none of your damn business what your neighbor is doing. this from the guy who set up a covid snitch line imploring minnesotans to tattletale on their neighbors for leaving their house. what, to relieve the dog, walk the dog, or go out and shoot hoops or something? he wanted you reported to the authorities. that is not in minding your own damn business. that is a total abuse of government power. then he will say things like, well, these republicans are weird. this is a guy who used minnesota tax dollars to put tampons in the boys bathroom throughout the schools in minnesota. are you kidding me? [applause] then he talks about trying to say, i want people to be able to make your own health care decisions. fine, i agree, but he's the one who mandated the experimental covid mrna shot. there were a lot of people who didn't want that and he forced

that on state employees. so this whole shtick is totally contradicted by the record. now, the media, they are going to present him as oh, he's a coach, he's a veteran. they are not going to talk about these policies. even when they have to address it. this knock on him for putting tampa palms, in the boys locker room how the media is for training that is, republicans criticizing walz for putting tampons in schools. they are emitting why we think it is so ridiculous. so they don't want to address the actual criticisms of it. i don't think ultimately these vp's probably are going to affect the election. but how he's being presented versus the actual record, it is a stark, stark contrast. and i have got people in florida that lived to tell the tal about what happened in minnesotae. iowa is getting population.

they are doing very well. minnesota is losing population, they are struggling. and it's all just a difference of philosophy and difference of policy, and that is a stark contrast. mr. erickson: you experienced this on the campaign trail in 2023, 2024. and it really has been remarkable how a press corps that put joe biden in a bubble, attacked anyone who stated the obvious until they couldn't, now doing this with kamala harris. there are so many conservative activists i talked to say, well, we cannot win, they are so out to get us. and yet look at you in the state of florida, republicans able to win. what do you tell conservatives who think the deck is stacked against us, we cannot win? gov. desantis: first of all, the deck is stacked. i don't whine about that, that is just the truth. i have been dealing with biden the whole time he is in. i've seen the decline. i saw him when he first took

office six months in. he came down when we had a condo collapse in florida. this was obvious. and yet a day before that debate in june, if you had said biden doesn't have the wits or the sanity to be president, forget about even now, the corporate media in this country would have said you are a conspiracy theorist. that this is right wing propaganda. then he went on stage and it was basically at that point, we ain't putting lipstick on that pig. everyone knew he couldn't do it. then they basically worked to get him out of the race. i've been predicting this for a long time. i thought actually the move to get him out would happen after the midterms, but what happened was that was not a red wave. so he could say, wait a minute, i can beat these republicans. all the bad things we are talking about, there was no red wave. but then when it got to the point here, he was going to lose, and so they did it. so now, and i said this too,

whoever they get -- and kamala is probably the best one for us. if i had to pick who to run against, i would rather pick her than others. but they are manufacturing this candidacy out of whole cloth. they are trying to create this excitement. look, the thing is sometimes that can create excitement. sometimes it can create momentum. and so this is all manufactured. there's no there there with kamala. she doesn't answer questions for good reason, because she will talk about the passage of time and being unburdened -- i mean, it is just nonsense. but in florida, no governor in this country faced more incoming than me from the corporate media. not even close. your governor has been hit, others, but it was relentless on me because, one, i beat their

rising superstar gillum in 2018. they were very upset about that. then two, i got in after winning a narrow race and i said, you know what, i am not trimming my sails. i am going to go and be bold and we are going to really move this state. and then when covid happened, people were so mad, they said we were killing kids by mandating schools be open for in person instruction, all the way down the line. that was constant. then we stood for reelection after having more incoming. and not only did we win reelection, we took a state that had traditionally delivered one point victories, rick scott's two governors races, obama winning in 2012, donald trump in 2016, and me in 201, even less than 1%. and we won by 20 points, 1.5 million votes. no one thought that was possible in florida. [applause] when i got elected we had third

through -- 300,000 more registered democrats than republicans in florida never had more r's than d's. by the time i got reelected we had flipped that, and that generated a 1.5 million vote margin because we won independence overwhelmingly. but just since my reelection we have gone from 300,000 more registered r's than d's, to now one million more registered r's than d's in the state of florida. and that is in the teeth of 99% hostile media denigrating florida, attacking me but also the state. and people in the dark days of covid, we were being pilloried, and yet people were coming. and so what tells me is there is a desire for truth. it is not easy. there is a lot of static out there. but people do want to see the truth. and so, we showed how it is done. now, for the balance of this

national campaign, they are going to act as an arm of kamala harris/walz campaign. it's a huge part of the democratic party, that is just what it is. i think about how do you combat it. as a governor it is a little easier because i can just go out and do things and so people can see with their own eyes, wait a minute, this guy saved my job. it is harder just being a candidate. i think to myself, the corporate press in this country has never had a lower approval rating amongst americans than they do now. we have a fragmented media environment where a lot of people don't even need to deal with these people, you can get your news other places. yet, even though the estimation of them is at rock bottom, even though there are so many other outlets, in some respect these narratives are more powerful today than ever have been. part of it is is is a little harder to counter. if they were doing narratives against reagan in 1984, there

were like five television stations, he could put ads, morning in america, just fight back. now, the stuff that gets into the zeitgeist gets there. so it's not easy to do but ultimately i think if you're standing for is right and true and making the case, there is a desire for truth out there, and this was a great test. because they are taking somebody who nobody thought could do the job of president and trying to create a cultural phenomenon around this candidate and around her running mate. and i think the american people are ultimately going to see through that. but make no mistake, i hear so many republicans whining, oh, they don't go after them. they are not going to do that. just understand, they are not going to do that. they wanted biden out, not because they didn't like democrats, it was because they didn't think he could win. they are now trying to engineer a victory, that is what they want to do. so be prepared about doing that and go out and fight the good fight. mr. erickson: last question for you. you've got small kids, you are

in your second term in florida, you see the lay of the landscape. what gives you hope about the country, your state, where we are headed? gov. desantis: well, if you look at kind of the maladies around this country that we face, to me, it's all rooted in leftist ideology in the leftist agenda. and we have seen them overtake k-12 education with school unions. we have seen them overtake federal bureaucracy. we have seen them overtake even corporate america. it is almost like, if you are an american who just believes in those core american values that these are timeless principles and enduring truths, it's like, where do you turn? well, florida shows not only did we fight these people, we beat them on issue after issue. we beat the teachers unions when it came to being open during covid, for having universal school choice. and we even have paycheck

protection for teacher union dues. no more automatic deduction. now you're in a situation where miami-dade teachers union doesn't have enough signing up and they will be decertified. [applause] we beat fauci and the bureaucrats on covid. yes, we beat disney on woke agenda in schools and woke ideology, and we are proud to do that. we've taken all the debt florida has had from 1840's to the present when we became governor. we paid off 36% of it in just 5.5 years and we have the lowest per capita debt in the entire country. so all these battles can be won. we have shown it can be won. when i was standing for election the first time people were saying florida was about to become a blue state permanently, and there is no way republicans could win elections nationally because of that. now, in 2020 i am like, putting things on for my kids, and i could not put on any cartoon

without there being a biden ad. it was nonstop. now in florida, you don't have presidential campaign ads. some of the ones might be bought nationally on cable, but in terms of our local markets, florida is off the board. so we showed it can be done. and i think it can be done throughout the united states. as conservative people say, what does it mean to be a conservative? on the one hand, i don't want to conserve the current state of things where we have woke corporations, indoctrination's in the schools, prosecutors letting criminals out of jail, all that. so what i think florida represents and what we can do nationally is a great rediscovery, where we are restoring the timeless truths that have made this country great. because when we show fidelity to those founding principles, you have to apply it differently than james madison did or lincoln or reagan to new circ*mstances, but when we have fidelity to those founding principles, we do well as a country. please are not just timepieces,

these are things that endure. we have lost that over recent years, but i absolutely think we have got a pathway to be able to get it back. mr. erickson: governor ron desantis, thank you. thank you so much. [applause] mr. erickson: ladies and gentlemen, thanks again for governor desantis for coming up, particularly in light of having the hurricane situation down in florida and being able to get up here. appreciate that a ton. i have got to tell you, my next guest is someone i always hate to bother because he is so busy. bless you. he winds up oftentimes reaching out to me because i don't like to bother people. when i got started in politics

and started writing at red state , i got a copy of the conservative mind in the mail with a note, if you are going to be a voice for conservative, be sure what you believe. and it was from my next guest, who i had never met. i went up to d.c. and spent time with him. at the time he was running the republican study committee, which at the time was the conservative voice in congress. and then he became a governor and then he became vice president of the united states. and through it all, he has always been guided by his faith and by a real commitment to truth. and not his truth, but the truth. like i say on radio all the time, if jesus says i am the way of the truth and the light, then truth is objective and knowable, and he has always been committed to knowing not just christ, but real, objective knowable truth and grounding himself in the timeless principles of truth. and so he has never been willing to compromise on the principles that i think have guided the

nation for so long. and it's just, i love being able to call him a friend, and also someone who regularly praise for my family, particularly my wife. and that is the vice president, mike pence. [applause] thank you so much. so, i gotta start with asking you how your vastly better half is. mr. pence: well, karen sends her regards. probably looking on from our home in indiana. she is doing wonderful, mostly because in the last three years since i was with many of you, we have seen the birth of not one, not two, but three of the most beautiful granddaughters ever born in the history of the world. [applause] so, karen is happy.

we've got one more on the way, our son who just made major in the united states marine corps. [applause] thank you. he and his wife have two of our granddaughters stationed in arizona. then our daughter charlotte, who is expecting, is married to one of my unworthy son-in-law's. and they have one and one on the way. and he is a fighter pilot in the united states navy. flies the f-18 and they are stationed in california. so, we're blessed. mr. erickson: let me get this question out of the way. as you assess what is happening in the country right now, how do you view the way the landscape is shaping for this presidential election? mr. pence: well, i have to tell you, it's -- we're living in a very challenging time in the life of this nation. and i couldn't be more proud of the record of the trump/pence

administration. i want to thank the people in the room for the privilege of being your vice president. it was an honor. [applause] but to see the way joe biden and kamala harris not only have undone all the progress that we made, at the border, in the economy, and in our military, social fabric of the nation, peace, promise to the world. but literally see, beginning with that disastrous withdrawal and afghanistan, how joe biden and kamala harris, with support --- it is important to remember, she always said she was the last person in the room for every major decision. joe biden has weakend this country at home and abroad and kamala harris owns the record of the biden/harris administration and all its failings.

but the way the disastrous withdrawal from afghanistan happened it emboldened the rush attack and the kowtowing to iran. as we stand, we're literally waiting hour by hour for news on a wider conflict in the region, the back and forth and support for israel. if the world knows nothing else, the world should know this, america stands with israel. [applause] mr. pence: also, you know, this administration has literally -- the biden-harris administration has cut defense spending every year they've been in office. at a time china is engaged in an unprecedented military buildup and continues to threaten taiwan. and then here at home, of course, the gusher of spending that launched the worst inflation in 40 years of

throwing aside every policy we put in effect, including the remain in mexico policy i negotiated on behalf of the president through wide open borders and a crime wave. i've seen people defecting to the other side and wondering where i would come down on the campaign. let me go here on record at the gathering. i never could vote for kamala harris as president of the united states and tim walz as her running meat, period, paragraph. i think it's important we understand exactly what's coming down the tracks from the other side. but in the same breath, we also need to think about who we are as conservatives. i mean, i'm very humbled at that overly generous introduction, eric. but you've known me a long time. as my days in congress and my

days as governor. and people who know me know i'm a conservative. i'm not in a bad mood about it. people who know my heart know i'm a christian, a conservative, and republican but in that order. my faith is the most important thing in my life, the most important decision i made in my life is when i put my faith in jesus christ as lord and savor in 1971. [applause] mr. pence: but it was the voice of ronald reagan after he was elected president of the united states in 1980 that drew me to the conservative movement. i heard him speaking about the principles of a strong national defense, of american leadership in the world, of limited government, fiscal responsibility, and a commitment to traditional values and the right to life. and i joined the reagan revolution and i've never looked back. true.

so for me, while we have to make it clear to the american people what's wrong and what's failed about the biden-harris administration, and the new harris-walz team, we have to make sure that we hue to our roots in this conservative movement. and for my part, i'm staying out of the presidential campaign. for the reason i just cannot endorse this growing abandonment of our allies on the world stage that's taken hold in parts of our party. i cannot endorse ignoring our national debt that reached $35 trillion just within the last week. i cannot support marginalizing the right to life in as we saw on the national platform. and between me and my former running mate, i cannot endorse president trump's continuing

asource that i should have set aside my oath to support and defend the constitution and acted in a way that would have overturned the election. in january of 2021. the republican primary decided who they're for. i'm going to spend my -- i debated kamala harris and know her well. and as they say in the movies, you don't know anyone really well until you fight them and we fought in a debate on national television. but we have to hold them accountable and make sure the american people know what they're offering. i'm going to spend my energies on what we're for because i think it's just as important. ronald reagan said years ago we

need to paint in bold colors and not in past ems. we do well -- pastels. we do well as we did in our campaigns, we offered a clear conservative alternative to the democrats' vision for america. and in 2016 we won, and in four short years we changed the country. and i think now more than ever we need to hue to our roots. stand with principle on the conservative agenda. that's how we'll not just win elections but we'll win a boundless future for the american people. mr. erickson: when you left office, i was asked in an interview what i thought your future would be and i said my preference would be if i could pick your future, it would be the voice and the conscience of the conservative movement that i felt like was missing. and here you are, i think, now with what you're doing in washington where you are and my frustration with a lot of the

conservative movement is how we are forgetting the tried and the true and we're getting distracted by shiny objects that lure us in and never seem to work. mr. pence: it's one of the reasons i'm an erick erickson fan. anybody else there with me? [applause] mr. pence: what it means to be a conservative is to stand your ground and stand on the principle. that's what you do on the airwaves every day without apology and i'm grateful for that. if i could play that role later on, it would be an honor to do it and for the sake of the country. we're living in something similar, the bible says there's nothing new under the sun what has been before. and some of you aren't old enough to remember the 1970's but i am. and i have to tell you, we had a president in 1978 in jimmy

carter who gave what he was famously called the malaise speech in which he told the american people things of bad, long gas lines, energy shortages, record inflation. and president carter told the american people, they're bad now and they're just going to stay bad. and then the american people started listening to someone who had taken a run at the presidency a few years earlier and come up short in the republican nomination. but he was someone talking about standing without apology on a conservative agenda. ronald reagan wins the nomination and he goes on to win the election and there he stands in his first inaugural address and he says, he spoke of an optimistic view of the future and said something to the effect of, and why shouldn't we dream great dreams? after all, we're americans. and everybody was standing a little taller, everybody was

feeling better and reminds me of 2017 when the country had the same sense, we set aside eight years of the failed obama-biden administration and we cut taxes, roll back regulation, we secured our border, rebuild our military and appointed three conservatives to the supreme court of the united states that have created a durable conservative majority. and we didn't -- but we didn't hesitate on those things. we were clear. we offered a clear choice. and for my part, there's a lot of talk about what the agenda of a future trump administration should be. i'm thinking of launching project 2017. [laughter] mr. erickson: well done. mr. pence: why don't we go back to what we did before in that campaign i ran for president

last year, last time i was here at the gatherings in that campaign. i was telling people my concern was not only the former president but others in the field were not running on the agenda we governed on p. i gave a speech in new hampshire at sta new republican time for choosing and where i warned against the republican party moving away from a conservative agenda and embracing what i call a populism unmoored to conservative principle. and i must tell you all the way through the development of the republican platform recently, i've seen that take place. now, i should mention, because this is my first time in a public forum to address it. i thank god that president

donald trump was spared in butler, pennsylvania. i do. karen and i were in a plane and just landed and got a text from someone watching it at the time and took my breath away when i heard of a shot had come from 150 yards away, having lived with secret service for four years, i couldn't believe it. but i also knew that while the president had stood -- and i truly do, i wasn't surprised but truly admired the way the president stood up and raised his fist and walked off that stage. but i reached over on that airplane and grabbed karen's hand and i said we're going to pray right now, because while they were reporting he had gotten off safe, i knew --

reagan didn't know he was shot when they put him in the limo and we just prayed ernestly and urged people around the country to pray. and i understand that shaped the environment going into the development of the platform which would be minted a couple days later. but i have to tell you, the fact we have a platform that removed 50 years of pro-life language, made no mention of the national debt, advocated massive taxes at our borders. and abandoning commitments that we have to allies around the world is deeply troubling to me and deeply disappointing. but i honestly believe, and make no mistake about it, you have people all over the country and people watching all over the

country, we can help our candidates at every level. i'm speaking the truth to them respectfully. i have some familiarity with that. i did it for four years. at the white house. i lost count, probably, erick, the president had me seated. i usually sit to the right. and i never gave my opinion to the president except on a few occasions and in front of nobody else. i thought as vice president i owed him my opinion but in private. because unless it was a matter of moral or constitutional principle, whatever the president decided was the right decision, right? it's the role of the vice president. but i lost count of the number of times the president would kind of look over at me when somebody was making a pitch

about one thing or the other and he'd look at me and i'd just kind of go -- and he'd say, well, let's talk later. you all can play that role. look, president donald trump was not only my president, he was my friend. for four years. it's part of what the way our administration ended much more difficult because we developed a close working relationship. and i'll say it before and i'll say it again, i'm incredibly proud for what we accomplished together for the american people because that relationship worked. but i do know the president, his favorite term is common sense, it really is. he's not someone that necessarily feels drawn to the term "conservative." it's not a part of his lexicon, if you will.

but he listens. and i saw the way the president listened intently as leaders came in to speak about the right to life, as leaders came in to speak about the importance of broad-based tax relief. we have voices in our party, erick, who are talking about raising taxes. when the trump-pence tax cuts lapse at the end of 2025, they're talking about raising corporate taxes p. and i get it. all the frustration with woke corporate america, i understand it. i hear the same frustration. i wrote the first editorial in "the wall street journal" calling out e.s. is g. in the spring of 2021. there's a great op-ed in the paper today on this issue. we've made great progress pushing back on woke america because the american people have stood up and pushed back. but i want to tell you, this is a time when the ticket is still

forming. i will tell you, i'm encouraged by some movement that i've seen. i heard the president recently not only reject raising corporate taxes but he called for moving the corporate tax rate to 15% which would put us in a truly competitive environment in the world. but i never underestimate the power of the voice of the american people and leaders in this movement come alongside and encourage the president and just, if nothing else, just let's -- how about we govern the way we govern for four years. it created seven million good paying jobs and reduced illegal immigration at our southern border by 90%, stood with our allies, stood up to our enemies and put justices on the supreme court that sent roe vs. wade to the ash heap of history where it

belongs. four more years. we need four more years of that. and you know -- mr. erickson: never has mike pence asked a preview of questions so i'll throw you a wild card you can completely take on. at the republican convention there was a statement j.d. vance made about the nation being a nation of ideas but it's a nation blood, soil, people, people die for the nation. and then when joe biden gave a speech, he talked about actually the american idea. and it seems like conservatives have always been able to balance that it's both. we are a physical nation of people, blood, sweat and tears but it's an idea other people died trying to get to. and how we should balance what america is.

mr. pence: well, i think america is, with maybe one exception, the only nation on earth that was first with the notion that our rights don't come from the sovereign. they don't come from a charter. that we are endowed by our creator. with inalienable rights. and we put that on paper and we fought a war p. and we won a war. and i would tell you -- next time you see me, you'll have to call me professor, maybe, because i'm going to be teaching a college course this fall at a great christian college called grove city college in pennsylvania. but we're going to talk about civics and citizenship because if there ever was a time we ought to communicate to the rising generation -- you are not an american because of where you were born. you are not an american because

of your ethnicity. you're not an american because of who you're related to. if you are a citizen of this nation, you are an american because you believe in a set of principles and ideals that are enshrined in the declaration of i saidence and the constitution of the united states of america. declaration of independence and the constitution of the united states of america and that makes us unique. and it's also -- i was listening to ron desantis back there. i wish he'd show more energy. he did a great job. you asked him a question in the end, where does home home come from? and i know i'm the only one standing between you and lunch. i hope to get a chance to visit with a lot of you. but i'm very optimistic about

the future. and i hope you are, too. because look, the failed leadership in the white house today, this will pass. the principles remain. if we hold to them. if we hold the leaders of our party to them. not only will we win but america will win. i don't stand for these things because i think they're good for republicans. i started in politics because of what i believed in as i was raised by my veteran combat dad. these were things i knew as around american were in my heart. and i'll tell you this by way of encouraging each one of you. just be confident about the

future even in these tumultuous days and frustrating days where it seems like you turn on the television with a stick every morning because you don't even know what's going to be there, right? in all my years in public life and my four years as your vice president, i can honestly tell you, my opinion of government bureaucracy went down. but my opinion of the american people went up every day. i mean, i've seen our soldiers downrange. i have visited communities, including in this state beset to natural disaster. and i walked through church members who lived through the most heinous violence. and through it all i've seen the

goodness and the courage and the generosity of the american people at large. i mean, the truth is this big storm just roll through florida and i know the governor and first lady -- how great is governor brian kemp? can i just get a -- [applause] mr. pence: i know they're off to visit and see storm damage. i guarantee you, you won't be able to find anywhere in the country where there's a natural disaster, flooding, hurricane, tornado, wildfire, the only thing you won't be able to find in that area after the storm passes is a parking space because when things go wrong, americans come from everywhere. they load up the minivan with coolers full of water and food. and they just drive and pull up to homes with people they've

never met before and never will see again and help put their lives back together. i just want to tell you, the american people are the most generous, principled, innovative, courageous people the world has ever known and some day soon we'll have government as good as our people again. and have faith. have faith in the american people. and those charters i just referred to. and finally, have faith in him that has ever guided this nation. and that speech i gave back in september, there's a verse in jeremiah, chapter 6: 16, i think should southbound a watch word to conservative -- should be a watch word to conservatives take and essentially says stand the

crossroads and look, find the an in that way. and you'll find rest for your souls. now, i'm not saying we should go back to the leadership of the past but we should cling to those principles. of freedom and limited government and traditional values of life and family that represent the well spring strength of our nation and we should trust him who has ever guided and articulated those ideals to the american people, faith in him and faith in all of you. i know the best days for the greatest nation on earth are yet to come. so help us god. mr. erickson: i can't think of ending any other way than that. that was perfect. thanks for your friendship.

[applause] >> my husband and i were very excited in the summer of 2022 to be pregnant again with a third baby. and much like you said, charles, you went to the hospital thinking you were going to come out with a beautiful baby and a healthy wife. i went to my second ob/gyn appointment hoping to look at the ultrasound screen to see a healthy pregnancy and instead i saw a pregnancy without a skull on the brain. that was a watershed moment for me. and realizing that i was diagnosed with a pregnancy with

anacephaly which was a fatal anomaly and was going to have to three my state to get care. >> last month journalists and activists gathered to look at the supreme court term and included rulings that impacted emergency abortion care, immunity for former president trump, voting rights, and administrative agencies, from the georgetown university law center, watch tuesday nights, starting 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, on our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org. >> next up, for c-span's coverage of this summer's political party conventions, we head to chicago for the democratic national convention. watch live beginning monday, august 19 as parties support their nominee and hear about them talk about their

administrative's track record and their vision for the next four years as they seek to retain the white house. the democratic national convention live monday the 19th live on c-span, c-span now or online at c-span.org. don't miss a moment. visit the website for the latest updates and watch the full coverage of the republican national convention. you also can catch up on past conventions any time on demand. at c-span.org/campaign or by scanning the code. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government, funded by these television companies and more, including midco. >> where are you going or maybe the better question is how far do you want to go? and how fast do you want to get there? now we're getting somewhere. so let's

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