Chris Buskirk: Where the Republican Party Goes From Here 43:04

Welcome to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Sam Stone. With me in the studio today, my co-host and very good friend, Chuck Warren, who's also president of DotVote. Hello. How's everybody doing today? And Chuck, one of the things we're going to be talking about today actually kind of gets into how important it is to protect your name. Exactly. Exactly. And we're going to be talking about the

Republican Party's current branding crisis. It is a branding crisis. What makes you a Republican? Is there room for people who don't agree with you if you think you're a pure Republican 100 percent of the time? And, you know, what is Ronald Reagan's old statement? Anybody agrees with me 70 percent of the time doesn't make you an enemy. It makes you a friend. Yeah. And, you know, I consider myself, as you do, I know very strong conservatives. We've been doing this for a very long time.

And when you look at some of the things that have happened in recent years, actually, one of the things we've talked about before is the fact that Donald Trump brought in a lot of policies that previously were in the domain of the Democrat Party. Absolutely. Whether it be on China, on trade issues, foreign relations, people forget the Democrats used to be the defenders of Israel.

And they have definitely not portrayed that defense of Israel in quite some time. Donald Trump is the only president in recent memory, maybe longer, who has not sent foreign troops to start a new war. Which is pretty astounding. I mean, really, in my lifetime, and I'm 45, the last president not to start a new war was Jimmy Carter. Yeah.

Is it that Jimmy Carter's been that long? Yeah, it's quite remarkable. And it's amazing the campaign, frankly, did not push that more. I do not send your sons and daughters in harm's way. I, you know, America first also means I don't send our children.

which is really America's inheritance, which is really what makes America great, is our young people. I did not send them in harm's way. And the fact that they did not push that more baffles me. Yeah, just a minute. We're going to be bringing in Chris Buskirk. He is the editor, founder of the Center for American Greatness, a contributor at The New York Times, one of the smartest people in politics. And we're going to be asking him some of these questions about some of the, frankly, the shifts in the Republican Party that we've seen. Are those permanent?

Exactly. Is this is Trumpism or what people are calling Trumpism the new republicanism or is it going to go back to some of the more traditional conservative roots?

It's going to be interesting. I still tell people, I had a meeting this morning with a couple of legislators, and we're talking about Arizona. Is Arizona a red state still? I will submit to you, Arizona is a red state. But each district, each legislative district, each congressional district, each statewide, we are a candidate-based red state, and candidates matter here. Absolutely, they do. And I think...

One of the most interesting facts to me about the last election was you had 30,000 people here in Arizona who cast a ballot, who voted down ballot, but left the presidential line blank. Was it 30,000 people? Yeah, it was 30,000 people here in Arizona that left the presidential line blank. Now, are any of those Biden voters or potential Biden voters? Probably. They may have gone and voted for the Green Party if they had been there. Okay. Okay.

But I would guess that that is a tiny percentage of that 30,000, that most of those were people who voted conservative, Republican. I would agree. Down ballot. I would agree. But for one reason or another, we're not willing to vote for the president. A friend of mine at the RNC said that they had the top seven –

One of the top seven Republican performing counties in Wisconsin had a 5% drop off for Trump from down ballot Republicans. That's a big deal. So in just a moment here, are we ready to bring Chris in? Great. Sounds like we've got him on the line. We're going to bring Chris in. We're going to talk about this with him as well, because I'm very interested in his viewpoint. Where do we go from here? Chris, are you there?

I am. Yeah, I am. Thanks for having me on. Fantastic. Thank you for joining us. For those who don't know, again, Chris Buskirk, founder of the Center for, I was about to say something completely wrong. I was about to say Center for American Progress, which would be an enormous insult. Kind of the opposite of what you do.

Yes, exactly. Editor and publisher of the journal American Greatness, Center for American Greatness, a contributor at the New York Times, one of the smartest people in politics, someone you certainly need to be listening to and following on Twitter, the Chris Buskirk. Did I get that right? You sure did. Fantastic. Well, Chris, welcome to the show.

Well, thanks for having me, Cash. I was just listening. I don't want to get off topic. I was listening to that. I think I had not heard that number of users were just saying that there were 30,000 people who left the presidential slot blank on their ballots in Arizona. That seems like a lot. I don't know what the normal number is. Well, Chris, it is a lot. That seems significant. Chris, this is Chuck. It is a lot because usually what happens is you don't leave the top off the ballot. You leave the down ballots off.

Right, right. So that is really something, and that would be an interesting number to get in other states, Sam. We probably should try to find that by our next show. I think that is a really interesting number to find for other states, and I think Arizona might be a little more extreme in that example because you have a lot of folks here who, whether they are supporters of McCain or...

family or Mitt Romney and his family and all their supporters. You have very strong bases for those parts of the party here. As much as some folks might want to ostracize or push them out, they have a significant presence. And I kind of think that was the leading driver of that effect. Chris, where does the GOP go from here? I have always felt that

You know, our party, like all parties, sort of follows the policy direction of who the presidential nominee is or if you have a strong governor that has a real agenda, policy agenda, which you don't seem to have a lot of times. But where does the party go from here in your mind? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's the question, right? And I've been thinking about this a lot. I mean, as you have and lots of people have been, and I think about the Republican Party platform in 2020 that was put forward at the convention, and there wasn't one, right?

It was blank. And there's kind of an interesting think piece to be written about that. And that is, for good or bad, everything was subsumed into the candidate. Which we've not had before. Yeah, which we've really... I mean, it really became a...

A fan club of personality. To me, it had a lot of echoes of the support for Obama and the support for Bernie Sanders, quite frankly, where it was really much less about policy than about personality.

Yeah, I think, I mean, the Obama thing, that's a parallel that I've thought since it was true since like 2015 or 2016. I mean, if you look back, if you remember at the 2008 and 2012, in those elections, like Obama was having those massive rallies. Who else had massive rallies? Trump. Right, yeah.

And people, if you recall, people were fainting at the rally. Like that was a thing that was happening regularly and was being reported on because it was happening so often. You know, people would be just so excited to be in Obama's presence that they would pass out. And, you know, it was just this phenomenon. It was more of like a sort of this cultural epiphenomenon more than it was that kind of was manifesting in politics.

And there's sort of a parallel with Trump, but, you know, with no Trump and no sort of... There's nobody else with that big of a personality in Republican politics, or quite honestly in politics in this country right now at all. And so the questions come back to, well, who are we and what are we doing? What are we trying to even achieve in politics? And that's why I think we need to focus on

I think we need to focus on what we want to be the outcomes, as opposed to, well, are we this type of a conservative or that type of Republican? What do we actually want the country to look like? What should our policies be driving towards? And, you know, I think that what Republicans really need to embrace is the fact that this is like a middle class, working class party.

And we exist to represent the interests of the middle and the working class because the Democrats basically, first of all, that's the heart and soul of the country. That's number one. But number two is that the Democrats are basically an alliance of coastal elites.

and basically people who are dependent on government. And so, you know, it's kind of like they've got the strategy of high-low versus the middle. And we're the middle. And the middle is the one that has basically been shrinking and being under pressure. It's like, you know, hammer a dam bowl. And the middle class is getting smaller and poorer, and we need to figure out how to reverse that.

Yeah, I think, Chris, one of the things that's concerned me most throughout the COVID crisis is the effect that it's having on small business owners who tend to be fiercely independent minded and lean Republican. The effect it's having on that middle class. And you look at some of the policies that have come out of the Biden administration on day one. It looks like it's really designed to, frankly, eliminate Democrats.

that working middle and make them dependent on government. And I think they've understood where their base comes from a lot better than we do.

Yeah, no, absolutely right. And what we need to realize, I think, as Republicans, is it's not only dependency on government. That's part of it. It's also, you know, crushing like smaller independent, smaller slash independent businesses. Yet this is about very large corporations consolidating their power, you know, and, you know, the largest corporations in this country have effectively merged with the state.

Yeah, they have. Go ahead. Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. Go ahead.

Well, I was going to say, you see this most dramatically with the big tech companies. You know, that's been that's kind of at the forefront of everybody's mind right now, for good reason. I mean, they're the largest and they are the most powerful. I mean, you think back to the big, powerful trusts that were busted in the early 20th century, like the oil trust and the railroad trust and the other things that brought about antitrust legislation.

They were far less powerful than the biggest companies that exist as effective monopolists in this country today. And so, you know, go ahead. We have so much of these big companies now that depend on their revenue from the federal and state governments, right? Yeah. I mean, for example, I do work, have done it for years. I was one of the real early people at Overstock.com. Yeah.

We actually got a spike in stock prices the day we announced that we had a contract now that the federal agencies had the ability to make orders $10,000 or less without approval, and we are one of the preferred vendors. Yeah, I don't think- Fairly big deal. I don't think most people realize that Amazon Web Services, Cisco Cloud Systems, all those, their biggest clients for the most part are government entities or government-tied entities.

Well, yes. I mean, Amazon has had a federal presence in D.C. for years. There's dozens and dozens of articles on it, but they had a federal presence before they had state presence in the lobbying world. We're going to be going to break here in about 45 seconds. So before we do, I just want to get in one last thought. And then, Chris, thank you for sticking with us. Look forward to having you come back after the break and talk a little bit more about this. But is it

good for the Republican Party for Trump to be the leader of that party going forward? And is that something that is going to be a real hamstring in the next couple elections, which otherwise I think we would win very easily given the dramatic left turn of the Democrats? Come back in just a moment here on Broken Potholes. Chris, we're looking forward to your answer on these.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Sam Stone, in the studio with my business partner and good friend Chuck Warren. On the line, Chris Buskirk from American Greatness. Chris, when we went to break, we were talking about Donald Trump still being effectively the leader of the Republican Party. Is that a good thing? And how do we rebuild some of the big tent that we have at least given lip service to in the past? My...

The question I keep asking myself is what type of grip or what type of power Trump has over the Republican Party right now. And I don't say this as somebody who's anti-Trump. I'm well known for having supported the president. But I do wonder...

I really do wonder how much influence he has. He certainly has influence. He's the ex-president. He's been, I think, temporarily silenced by having his social media accounts taken away. I think he will find outlets to be able to start speaking to the public again at some point. I don't know if that'll be sooner or later, but it will happen.

But a lot of it depends on him and what he wants to do. And that, to me, is a little bit...

That to me is a little bit unclear. And I think we really wind up in a situation where he is influential for sure, but you wind up very quickly into this scenario where people are thinking about 22 and 24, then it becomes about who the candidates are. And I'm not convinced that, especially with regards to 24, I'm not convinced that Trump is a kingmaker.

There's going to be too many candidates. All of them in some ways are going to... I see this dynamic coming up where people are going to try and simultaneously claim the Trump mantle and also keep it at arm's length. It's going to be such an... It's going to be an amazing balancing act. There will be books written for decades after 2024. Those...

claiming to support, inherit the Trump legacy if he does not run. And at the same time, trying to keep an arm's length, it will be an amazing jiu-jitsu we're going to see. Yeah, I think it brings us to a point we've talked about a little bit on this show, which is one thing that Trump did was change the direction of the Republican Party pretty significantly on trade issues, on foreign relation issues, on all these things.

He has made a pretty significant change in the Republican Party. Are those policies here to stay?

Yeah, I think a lot of those policies are, those are now Republican core policies. You know, there's some that, you know, how those, what the contours of that are, I think, obviously, that is still sort of a work in progress. And there's going to be kind of a diversity of opinion on some of that stuff. But there is, you know, there's just, I felt this for a while, but, you know, one of the places where Trump had more influence was,

perhaps than a lot of other places, is how we think about trade in China. Right. You know, and this, you know, people say, well, gosh, that's kind of repudiating, you know, conservatism. Not really. What that is is a change back to a

a more historic version of where the Republican Party, where the American right was. I mean, Reagan himself had his protectionist moments. And prior to that, the Republican Party, and quite honestly, the Democrats, too, for a long time, had always had a single, fairly unified view on

on trade, which is trade exists to enrich America, period. Exactly. And that is the goal of American trade policy. And I think returning to a policy like that is appropriate. And that kind of rubs the super kind of libertarian market fundamentals people wrong because they think, well, I don't know, that doesn't match with the theory. You know, but...

The theory, basically when you're shipping your manufacturing overseas and your middle class or working class are getting poorer, that's what your theory leads to. Most people don't want it. Exactly. This is Chuck. Let's talk about the party branding or the party big tent. So

A good friend of Sam and I's often says that independent voters are prodigal Republicans. You know, they're waiting for someone to invite them back. And right now, if you follow social media, specifically here in Arizona, there's a lot of activists who are just fantastic people, work their guts out, who say we have got to rid the party of the Romneys, Flakes and McCain's.

So I had our crack researcher, Elijah Rusk, look up how they voted in alignment with the president. Now, realize some of these votes are just nonsense, but there's still a given amount of support for what Donald Trump's agenda was. And Jeff Flake voted with Donald Trump 81% of the time. Most people would not know that because there's a lot of Republicans that say he's a communist. Mitt Romney votes with Donald Trump 79% of the time. That's versus Mike Lee, who only votes with Trump 73% of the time.

And then John McCain, before his passing, voted with Trump 83% of his time, whereas Lindsey Graham, who is seen as a prolific and champion of Donald Trump in many ways, also, I think, the one person who can really talk to him. Stood at his side throughout the presidency. It's at 86%. So if you take care of the Obamacare, which we'd all say is a big deal, but they're not much difference. Where is the room in our party for people that...

They're not kissing the ring. I think that's probably the easiest way for me to say it. Is there room in the Republican Party going forward for people who do not kiss the ring, that we still, our party, believes in independent thought? We do believe in the First Amendment, because I know Democrats don't anymore. Is there a role for these people in the party? Are we going to have to complete, you're with me 100% of the time, or you're nowhere with me? Yeah, I think, you know, I think I maybe just think about Jeff Flake as an example here.

So, Jeff Flake, is there room in the party for somebody who holds those positions that he held? Probably. I mean, I think so. Where he got himself sideways with voters wasn't because maybe he wasn't 100% on board with Trump's view of trade. He got himself sideways because he went out of his way.

to be with his personal animosity towards Trump. At every turn. At every turn. And so that, I mean, if you're going to have a political party, the whole point of it is you're on a team. And it goes both ways. So, you know, if you have a dominant position in the party and you have a president in the White House, you don't need your senators undercutting you at all times. And voters get that. They react and say, hold on a second. Like, we control the Senate. We control the White House.

You may not like this guy, but we have to work together. It goes top to bottom, but it also goes bottom to top. And so what we need is we can have a diversity of opinion on these issues, but everybody needs to say the same thing, which is when it comes right down to it, we're going to work together. Which is an interesting point. There's a great biography right now on James Baker. And James Baker, which came to my surprise, much to the Bush family's chagrin, voted for Donald Trump.

But he made – there was a comment there by the author said James Baker's beliefs are if you're not – it's all about accomplishing things, not just winning. It's about accomplishing things. You can't accomplish anything if you're on the outside looking in.

And that's what Romney and Flake in particular just didn't really seem or don't seem to care to understand because they want to have this moral high ground, which it's funny. They get criticized for it, and they should because it is like literally at every turn, can I poke this guy, right? But our activists do the same thing a lot of times to other people. But if you're not inside working with – and I think that's what's made Lindsey Graham so interesting, which is absolutely irritated –

We have to go back to break here in just 30 seconds. But, you know, one of the things that I thought with Flake that was the biggest problem was cowardice. And I know that's going to offend some people. But if he believed the things he was saying about Trump and about America in general, why didn't he stick it up, run that election out and see what happened? I can't forgive that. Broken Potholes, we'll be right back. We fall apart.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Sam Stone. In the studio with me, Chuck Warren. On the line, Chris Buskirk from American Greatness. Chris, you brought up a brilliant point that I think we wanted to explore a little bit more about the outcomes going forward.

Yeah, Chris, I did. This is a real good question, which I don't think people ask a lot. I think in businesses that succeed, they ask, what do I want the outcome to be? I want to make this much money. I want to grow this much. But we don't seem to answer that in politics a lot. So if we support a certain policy, what do we want the outcome to be of that policy? How do you think we go and start bringing this more into the conversation here in the next two, three years?

Yeah, I think we need to make our goals much more concrete. I've got a friend who's very smart, he's been very successful, he says this all the time, and you're sort of talking about this sort of very big picture thing, and he'll always say, you know, you kind of get to a point of sort of general agreement, he'll always kind of sit back and he goes, okay, now concretize that for me. And

He's exactly right, because it's like it's one thing to have these big sort of grand unifying theories of whatever, but what does it actually mean in the real world? And that's where we get into these discussions of, well, I don't know, that's not, you know, I'm a libertarian or I'm a conservative or, you know, I'm a progressive or whatever. If we want to make our case...

Number one, if we want to make our case to the public in a way that makes them want to vote for our candidates, if we want our candidates then when they win and they get into office to actually be able to accomplish something, we've got to be very specific. And so, you know, I think it is really, really important for all of us to think about what are the actual outcomes that we want? What are the things we're trying to achieve?

to achieve. And, you know, Trump did some of this back in like 2015 and 16 where, you know, he'd say, well, I'm bringing manufacturing back. Like, I want more jobs. I want more high-paying working class, middle class jobs. You know, and that's relatively concrete. I think that's good. You know, the big theory isn't like who's the most, for me anyway, the way I think about it isn't like who can be the most conservative, right? It's what are we going to do with that? And so, like, one of my metrics, I say this all the time,

to people is, you know, if we get into office, what we're going to try and achieve, you know, this is one goal, what we're going to try and achieve is we want a country with an economy that where somebody who is like dead center in the middle of the middle class, somebody who's earning the median wage, that you can support a family of four on one wage. You can buy a house, you can send your kids to school, you're going to be in the middle class, you can have health care, you can afford all those things.

on a single wage. You don't have to have two people working. And people kind of look at me like, I have this discussion with people, I've had it a hundred times in the past year because I've been saying this a lot. They look at me like, that's impossible. Really? That actually was the situation in this country until about 1985. Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. You know, the other point you bring to when you talk about outcomes is

We may not know, but a lot of our listeners may not know as well, that I have a day job with the city of Phoenix as chief of staff for city councilman Sal DeCiccio. One of the things that I've been focusing on is the impact of the concrete policies both parties have pursued on the local level. And I think you can make a very strong and easy case.

that liberal Democrat policies are failing all of our big cities across this country, failing them massively. And where you do still have some Republican influence, some balance, you have much, much better living environments. And yet we do not turn that into concrete policy that people can get behind, that they understand this is what's happening. You know, Sam, you see that with education policy a lot. It's

It's one of those things that kind of seems boring to talk about, but it's really important to people because it touches their kids. And they can see the outcomes in their lives every single day. It's one of the things that, for instance, the school choice movement became very popular because people said, you know what, these schools, they're not working for my kids. I don't know what it is. I don't know how to fix it. But if there was a better option, I would do it.

And that was something that was very concrete. You know, we're going to let, you know, with school choice, we're going to let other schools exist. And if you want to take your kid out of the public school, you know, there's actually going to be a mechanism so there are charter schools or whatever. You know, and that's something that is

very, very tangible. It's very close to home. You know, one of the theories on how Ron DeSantis won governor of Florida is basically he carried an unusually high percentage of African-American women in southeast Florida, basically in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, because of his school choice position. Right, right.

Right. That, to me, is a very concrete example of how these things work in politics. Exactly. Chris, we have less than a minute here. Why don't you tell our listeners where they can find your writings about your website and what to look forward to from you this next year?

Yeah, they can come to American Greatness at amgreatness.com. You know, we've got all kinds of good stuff up there. My writing's there. You can find me on Twitter, at the Chris Buskirk. You can, when Parler comes back, I'll be there at Parler. And then I write at the Times, you know, about once a month. Chris, have a great weekend. We appreciate you, my friend, and we look forward to talking to you very soon. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Sounds good. Thanks a lot, guys. Bye-bye. Keep on writing.

Welcome back, gang. Sam Stone, my friend and co-host, and this is Chuck Warren for our final segment today on Broken Potholes. There's so much negativity in the world right now. Sam and I want to, on occasion, bring up something that's good that's happening in the country that's not government-oriented, but just people doing it on their own free will because they have good hearts and

Sam and I are suckers for the belief that most Americans are decent people and they want to help their neighbors and their community and our country quite a bit. At least when they're not on Twitter. At least when they're not on Twitter. And so what we have today is our associate producer, Mackenzie Semerad and Kylie Kipper. And they're what we're going to call the sunshine moment.

They're going to tell a story about something good that's happening in our country that we should all be proud about. And you may want to look at it more. And when people tell you America's going to hell in a handbasket, you'll have examples that this is not happening. Mack, why don't you tell us what you found this week? Sure. Well, thanks for having me. And I just wanted to talk briefly about the generosity and sportsmanship of the Bills Mafia and what they're doing to raise money in support of their opponent's favorite show.

charities. If you're not an NFL fan, you probably don't realize the Bills are on the verge of the Super Bowl for the first time since they lost four straight. Absolutely. I am fully aware of this and I'm a big fan. And this actually all started last week after the Ravens and Bills game when a single Bills fan came up with the idea of supporting the injured Lamar Jackson concussion by helping his favorite charity. And since then, this has become a massive fundraiser and they've even gotten the Chiefs Kingdom involved.

And how much money have they raised so far? And what's the fundraiser for? What are they supporting? So it is his Blessings in a Backpack Foundation, which started, dated back from when Lamar Jackson went to school in Louisville. And it's basically he is providing 125,000 hunger-free weekends for the kids that are not getting proper meals during COVID. And so far, the bills alone have raised $445,000 a year.

And it's only going up from there. How much is it per meal? I know when the Arizona food shelter here contacted me, I think they said they can feed a person on, was it $2 a day? Is that a correct number? Yeah, you can do it. It's about 75 cents a meal with the food banks and some of these programs. Folks, if you're looking for someone to give to in any season, food banks are about the most efficient charities in the world.

in the world. They take almost none of your money, they turn it all into food at extremely good value. They are probably the most efficient nonprofits any community has by far. Yeah, no question. So we have this now, so he's going to feed this to children in Louisville who are what they call food insecurities, is that correct?

It's blessings in a backpack. Blessings in a backpack. And it's probably two bucks a meal. And the Bills fans have raised $400,000. That's amazing. And Mackenzie, I can tell you, I mean, that's just amazing because I can tell you from the city of Phoenix here, one of our biggest concerns, one of the issues that has been most difficult to deal with

It's food insecurity for children who don't get to go to the school and get, you know, often it was two meals, breakfast, lunch, and they would be given a bag dinner to go home. And on Friday, they would have food, you know, available to take home as well. And those kids aren't there. A lot of them don't have transportation. This is just an incredible program.

No, it's definitely a big deal, and the money keeps getting raised every single day. And so with the half-million-dollar goal, they're getting pretty close. Is there a website people can go to if they're listening in right now and they want to, I guess, join the Bills Mafia? You know what? We'll have McKenzie look it up real quick. We'll find that website and share it with everybody. Let's talk about one. He's a Patriot fan. That hurts me a little.

Well, the Patriots, you know, they're more giving people in Buffalo than they are Boston. But McKenzie is going to look up this. And let's talk briefly here about, it's not politics, but the passing today of Hank Aaron. Hank Aaron, as you will know, was, as of a few years ago, the all-time home run leader. Now he's second, batted .305 for his career, 25 all-star appearances. He was truly one of the great athletes in our country. And what people don't realize is as he was breaking Babe Ruth's record,

the amount of racist venom that was directed his way and the security he had to have and all of that. Yeah. I mean, people don't realize that he was breaking that record while being forced to eat on the bus while his teams were in the restaurant. And I have kind of an unusual story. My father actually was a batting practice pitcher for the

Braves and the Dodgers in the 60s and became good friends with Hank Aaron, he and Joe Torre would actually stay, especially during spring training in the South, would eat on the bus with Aaron while the rest of the team was in the restaurant. But this particular story I thought was amazing. And my father's probably going to get a little mad at me for telling this one, but I'm going to go ahead.

The other great star of the Braves at that time was a Cuban named Rico Carty. And for folks who don't know, there is a rather astonishing amount of animosity between Cubans and African-Americans, especially in the South. It's really pretty dramatic. And Carty was routinely awful to Aaron.

you know, calling him the N-word, saying all these terrible things, just absolutely on his case 24-7. And Aaron, about the nicest guy on the planet, would never ever respond, would just take it. And one day they're on a flight coming back from a road trip, and Cardi really got in Aaron's face, leaning over his seat, saying all these things, you know, over and over and over. And

No one would stand up to Rico Cardi because in addition to being the second best player on the Braves and a major league all-star, he was the Cuban gold gloves heavyweight boxing champion and was known to be incredibly tough and a bit violent. And so this day he's getting on Aaron like this and everyone's kind of now watching this on the airplane. And my father said it was the most amazing thing he'd ever seen because he never even saw Hank Aaron's hand move.

He never got out of his seat. He didn't shift position, and he knocked Cardi cold in the aisle in the middle of that plane with one swing. Knocked him cold. Well, quick hands are how you lead a team.

the Major League Baseball and home runs and hits and batting average and so forth. You're talking about one of the greatest athletes and one of the greatest people in American history. And you bring up something, too, that he was often attacked for his race by this individual. And it reminds me a lot of Jackie Robinson. And people don't realize the fortitude and strength they had

to keep focus on what they are doing. There will be people who disagree with this, said they should have been in their face, you know, X, Y, Z. But it really is an amazingly strong person who can just

bite their tongue and keep their eye on the prize, which Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron changed the lights for so many people. You know, this actually ties back to something else for me. I used to get a lot of grief in the Republican Party because I beat the Democrat Party, Barack Obama, and just about everyone else there to the post on gay marriage by about 15 years because I grew up, my parents had some gay friends, and I just didn't understand why the government should be able to tell them how to live.

So one of the things that I really took from that was that at the end of the day, when you can get beyond certain barriers with people, you find common ground with them. And Aaron did that in a way that was really important. And so did Robinson, not by fighting back.

but by putting their heads down, working through the abuse, and setting an example that people who might have been a bit racist still had to respect. And if you look at the GLP-TQ movement, they were very careful up front to do the same thing. In other words, they took those initial pride parades that got totally out of control and crazy, pulled them back, and all of a sudden you had some very respectable-looking banker types walking in front of the thing. How you present yourself when you're pushing for cultural change

is incredibly important. And I think it's the great failure of the Black Lives Matter movement in our current moment. Well, and one more point here. We talked earlier today, Chris, about outcomes.

Hank Aaron knew what the outcome he wanted to be. Yes. And he did not let that distract him. Mac, did you find us the website people can visit on this great charity? I did. And if you just click in blessingsinabackpack.org, that'll send you directly to this charity's website where you can make a one-time payment or even be a monthly donor at that. Have they said how many children they've been able to help so far?

You know what? I do not have that information right now. Well, let's assume it's $202 a meal. There's 200,000 meals so far. It's amazing. Right? There's 200,000 meals for something, and food insecurity is something that really should not be happening in America whatsoever. This is a big, big deal right now all across this country. Because of COVID, the situation has made things so difficult. I mean, even if you're

don't have reliable transportation. For instance, here in the city of Phoenix, we've cut our bus schedule back to essentially like a holiday type schedule.

We don't have the use. People are staying home. So there's all sorts of new barriers that are popping up for people in that situation. This is just an incredible program. Well, that's why like St. Mary's Food Bank in Phoenix, which is tremendous. I think they raise $20 million a year. What I've heard, I could be wrong, like 90% of the money goes to food. Yeah. And they've because of the pandemic, they have to deliver the meals. It's not people can't come in anymore. You got to deliver them.

And it's really a logistical nightmare. So, folks, if you want to help people and you have some extra money, we've got this great one today that we can talk about, the Ravens Quarterback or St. Mary's Food Bank here and so forth. Blessinginabackpack.org, St. Mary's. If you can just Google St. Mary's Food Bank, you're going to get the link. These are really, really good charities. I don't care where you are on the political persuasion. These are not political organizations. These are organizations that deliver food.

every single day for our citizens all across this country. Well, I think the biggest lesson we've discussed today, we've talked about before, but the biggest lesson takeaway today on any aspect of life is what is the outcome do we want?

So if you are a Republican, what is the outcome you want your policies to provide? And what do you want that outcome to make America look like in 10 years? And same way here, we have this wonderful charity. The outcome obviously is you give me X, I am able to feed X amount of children who don't have meals in Louisville. Mm-hmm.

And we fortunately, as is shown, there are so many good hearted people of all political persuasions in this country. We have to start going and providing these outcome type based opportunities for them to participate. And the interesting thing, and I've had this discussion, as I know you have with people on the left and for others.

in all honesty, McKenzie is not entirely aligned with the politics that you and I share, Chuck. So we're going to out her right on this program right now as the most liberal person who's been in this studio probably in a long time. And by the way, people, please do know that Kylie does talk on occasion. Thank you, Kylie. But at the end of the day, I think if you and I sat down or if I sat down, Chuck, or you sat down with any liberal here in the country and you said, here's the outcomes that we want to see,

I think we would agree on six or seven. More than that. More than that. Eight out of ten of those outcomes. Absolutely. And a lot of times we're getting tied up in how we get there and the policy names that go behind it rather than the outcome. And I think that was a great point that if we focused on delivering outcomes,

What's a deliverable? That's what we have to start asking. What do we want long term? So that is something as we go forward, probably just not only in politics, but our personal lives when we have communication. Okay, what do we want the outcome to be? Right. Right. You're a business guy. I'm a business guy. You never go into a business situation without thinking through what the outcome is. I don't care what type of business. A perfect example is McKenzie drives like an 80-year-old woman. Right.

Oh, well, you didn't have to tell me that. And she drives like any other woman. And one day I mentioned this to her. She says, we'll get there alive. She knew the deliverable to get us both there alive. As much of my criticism was she was going to get us there alive. It only took us double the time, but we got there. So I'm just warning you, Mackenzie, you do not want to be in my passenger seat ever. I would probably be terrified, huh? Yeah, no, we're going to get you a three-point harness and a helmet. Oh, gosh. You know, we've got just about 45 seconds left on here, I think, for

You know, Chuck, this has been, I think, a really good show to talk about and kind of maybe lead into the next show about what do people want to see in the next two and four years? What policy outcomes are there? And also talking about how far the Republican Party has shifted into what were previously Democrat positions. On trade. On trade. Foreign policy. Foreign policy. How do we connect that shift with the voters who have traditionally supported those issues?

Well, it goes back to saying, what type of America do you want to see? And what type of America do you want for your loved ones and you? And until we get to that point and understand that, and that's probably the conversation America needs to have more. What type of America do we want? I think right now, if we were to give it a broad stroke, is we want people to respect everyone's individual choice. We want to be able to have people have good jobs.

I think there is a major movement about education being reasonable, why there is people saying forgive everything. Most people are not there. Polling shows that. But you have come to a point in our country where higher ed is just out of the reach for a lot of people. Yeah, it's interesting. We can talk about this next week, but it's basically three things, education, housing, and education.

education, housing are really the two things driving the income inequality that we're seeing. Well, it does, and it provides fear. It keeps people up at night. All right. Great conversation today. Thank you so much to everyone. We will be back next week for Open Potholes. Thanks, Kylie. Turn my head.