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Pod Force One
Sen. McCormick: We need answers on Butler assassin and regime change in Iran is certain
01:08:33
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome back to the Pod Force One podcast. I'm Miranda Devine. Today we are with Senator Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania. Senator Dave McCormick, thanks so much for joining Pod Force One.
- [00:14]
B
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
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A
I wanted to just congratulate you for being the first senator ever to go to Groundhog Day in your home state.
- [00:24]
B
This was something else. I mean, I've heard about this for years. And of course, the movie Bill Murray. Yeah. Really sort of brought it into focus, but. But I'd never been. Yeah, and this was, this was four degrees, something like that. A hundred thousand or, I'm sorry, 10,000. People scream been there since, you know, the middle of the night. Many of them college kids. They drove from everywhere through Texas, Florida. I met a couple kids that had driven in from California. And, you know, they're all waiting for. For Punxsutawney Phil. And my mom had actually grown up in Punxsutawney. So I remember going back as a kid and, you know, there was a couple really famous places that I remember going for lunch and my dad had been a student teacher in Punxsutawney High School. That's how they met. So this is, this is like full circle.
- [01:13]
A
It's in your blood, it's in my blood. And just the groundhog. I can't get it. I mean, having grown up in Australia, not really understanding. So its shadow has to fall. But how do you know that it can see its own shadow?
- [01:27]
B
Well, there's a. There's an inner circle of Punxsutanians and one doesn't, one doesn't apply. One is tapped. And these have to be native. And they manage this whole thing. And the president apparently can speak to the groundhog. This is the tradition. It's been around 140 years. And so Punxsutaw comes out. If he sees his shadow, it's six more weeks of winter. And apparently he then conveys that.
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A
So through esp.
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B
But there's a real Punxsutawney Phil. My dad called me and said, no. I said on. I was interviewed on Fox. I said, well, the punks tiny field is 140 years old. It's 140 year tradition. And my dad called me and said, you know it's not the same groundhog, don't you? My dad, my dad's 87 and he, he follows all this very closely.
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A
That's so cute.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so you have now had a year as a senator. And I just wondered if you had any sort of interesting insights into the difference between the Senate and say, Wall street, where you spent a lot of your career.
- [02:37]
B
Yeah. Well, first of all, I really, what I'm about to say, I really feel, I feel a real privilege to be able to have the opportunity to do this. I ran twice. I lost the first time in 2022 by 900 votes of 1.5 million cast. It was a primary. I won the second time by 15,000 votes of 7 million cast. So this was very close. But the reason I'm so honored to do it is to be the senator from Pennsylvania at any time is a consequential thing. I'm the 54th elected senator from Pennsylvania. I'm the ninth senator in Pennsylvania's history. I'm sorry, in America's history from West Point. So I really feel like that, that in and of itself is, you know, incredibly.
- [03:22]
A
And you knocked off a three time Democrat. Incumbent Democrat, royalty, a real dynasty.
- [03:29]
B
But, but the reason I'm particularly honored to do it is the moment, the moment we're in and my vote really matters. If you go in over the last year, every time there's been a tiebreaker, where JD Vance, whether it was the Working Families Tax Cut act or some of the nominations, every time, we wouldn't have had that vote had I not won this seat. And President Trump won. There were seven swing states. President Trump won all seven.
- [03:55]
A
Yeah, amazing.
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B
But we only won one for the Senate, and that was Pennsylvania. And so the timing is such that it's really an important moment. And I feel like I'm able to contribute to the future direction of the country.
- [04:10]
A
I mean, it's a real swing state. And so it's a difficult kind of juggling game, I would imagine. And you have managed to have this, forged this friendship with your Democrat counterparts, Senator John Fetterman, which I suppose reflects the nature of Pennsylvania being kind of not one thing really or the other.
- [04:33]
B
It does. You know, think about this way. 14 million people, almost 7 million voters, half of them didn't vote for me. So that's the starting point. So you're served. You know, you serve everybody whether they voted for you or not. So I come into with that frame of reference. But I also ran on a very clear agenda, very aligned with President Trump. Securing the border, energy dominance, creating opportunity for working families. So I'm in that unique position that I'm, I voted for the most part, every single time with the Trump agenda. I've introduced more bipartisan legislation than just about any other senator, whether it's nuclear power or fentanyl or antisemitism and with senators of variety, Chris Coons or Ruben Gallego, a number of senators, John Fetterman. And then I forged this incredible relationship with Fetterman, which is a byproduct of our state, but it's also a byproduct of, I think, him and me, to be honest with you, because he's a very decent person. And when we first, he campaigned against me, but when we first sat down after I'd won, he said, listen, let's look at the things we can agree on, the things we disagree on, let's just disagree agreeably and let's focus on the things. And we've done that. And so we forged a relationship which is very trusting. I trust him, he trusts me, and it gives us a lot of opportunity to work together.
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A
He's one of the last of those kind of decent old school Democrats. I can't see very many of them now left in Congress. I mean, among your Senate colleagues. I guess the Senate's a little less crazy than the House, but still, I mean, how do you. I'm sure that the country looks at your relationship and wishes that everyone could be like that.
- [06:28]
B
You know, I think, I think the Democratic Party has moved very far to the left. There's no doubt about that. But I think, you know, Fetterman's interesting for a couple reasons. I think he actually starts with the question of what do I think is the right answer? He really does, to his credit. And I think this near death experience, I think, really influenced him and we've talked about it a number of times. I think he has lost the appetite for the political gamesmanship, the theater, the nasty attacks, and he just wants to get things done. And that's my mindset as well. I want to get things done for Pennsylvania. I want to be uncompromising on the things I believe on I believe in, but I also want to look for opportunities to just get things done. I think that's the business person orientation. So I feel like I've got a. I drew a good hand in having him as my, my partner.
- [07:23]
A
Is it frustrating for you, though, in the Senate trying to get things done? Because Washington is just so hidebound and the way the Senate works is so difficult. Things like spending, getting spending under control. Have you been disappointed or had some of your ambitions trimmed a little?
- [07:41]
B
Well, I am. You know, I'm in the first year, so I'm, I'm learning. But I wrote an op ed which, which, which I'm, they may have shared with you, but it's, it was like a Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Here we are, we're talking with this $37 trillion debt we have, you know, our interest payments are bigger than our defense budget. It's unsustainable. Our entitlements are growing like crazy. And we get into the negotiations around the big, the big beautiful bill, the Working Families Tax Cut act and we're making some modest changes to Medicaid. I mean, Medicaid has been in Pennsylvania. It's grown by 80% in the last five years while the number of recipients, 3,3 million have stayed about the same across the country. It's grown by more than 50%, about 30% more than inflation. And this, this is out of control. And so we introduced some very modest reforms to essentially slow the growth. This wasn't cutting. Yeah, this was to go from 6% growth a year to 3%. And the main way we did that was work requirements. Someone who was able bodied and could work had to work 80 hours a month, not a week a month. Volunteer work would qualify, education would qualify. And that's the bill that was passed. You would. And it doesn't go into effect, by the way, until 2028. You would have thought we were taking babies out of incubators and putting them on the street. The amount of misleading information, the outright lies, the difficulty of doing the most modest thing was a wake up call.
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A
It almost makes you think you should actually do, go for maximalist because the outrage can't be any bigger.
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B
The outrage can't be any bigger. It's absolutely right. And so my disappointment is, and the notion of the peace, this was mostly directed at the Democrats because if you're not going to embrace the most modest reforms, these programs might. You know, I made the point that my pop up, my granddad from Pennsylvania was Indiana county. He was a county commissioner. He was a fdr, New Deal Democrat.
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A
Right.
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B
And I mean he want, we, I want to help people who are vulnerable. I'm not trying to take away benefits for people who really need them, but those benefits are going to go away because we're going to be insolvent and unable to support them. So that was the point. But, but I was also directing it to sort of everybody in elected office. And the, the last line of it, which I really believe when I was a CEO, if I'd have gone into my board meeting and said, listen, we're headed towards bankruptcy, I've got no plan to slow the growth of spending or any new strategic direction, I would have been fired on the spot. And I end the article by saying, listen, maybe for our public officials, that same principle should apply. If we're not going to really go after these difficult problems, why are we here?
- [10:28]
A
Absolutely. I mean, I guess one of your ideas to set term limits, I think you limited yourself to two terms, would be part of that. I mean, that's kind of a firing process where you're not sitting there for life. No matter how well you perform or how well you do for the American people, you still have that job.
- [10:47]
B
Yeah, well, you know, we're in the 250th year. Our founders would have not recognized our Congress. They had this vision of people who were successful doctors, lawyers, harness makers would serve their country in some form or another. But this was not a career. This was a way to give back. And we now have a system which creates incumbents who are like Bob Casey, my opponent, who had been in public life his entire life, an elected official, had been in the Senate for 18 years. He was going for his fourth term. And we have that all over the place. And so my view was, you should be on a contract. You should be limited to two terms. Two terms is a long time. It's 12 years. I proposed legislation that had six terms in the House, 12 years there, too. And that's a long time. And if you can't make a real contribution in those 12 years, then you're probably not the right person.
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A
How popular was that?
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B
This was not popular. Two things. One person came up to me and said, well, you're just starting to get seniority. That's when you can really start to have the impact is in the third term or the fourth term. And I said, what a broken system we have. If that kind of thinking is what. Remember our founders, most of them, Benjamin Franklin was the exception. Most of them were in their mid-20s.
- [12:08]
A
Yes.
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B
And they formed this incredible country. No, 12 years is a long time. And so I'm not sure my legislation's going to pass. I don't have a lot of support for it, but. But it was something I promised. And I've said, regardless of whether this becomes law, I will limit myself to two terms for sure if I. Even if I decided to run for a second term.
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A
Another very unpopular piece of legislation that I know you have co sponsored is the SAVE act to try and insert voter integrity at the ballot box. Tell us what it entails and why are the Democrats so illogical in their opposition?
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B
I think for the wrong reasons. And I'll describe what I mean by that. But, you know, listen, you're Talking to a guy in Pennsylvania. You probably can't win the presidency without winning Pennsylvania. It's 19 electoral votes, so it's ground zero.
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A
Yeah.
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B
There's been all sorts of questions about election integrity even in my own second race. I mean, there was a county commissioner on tape, on video in Bucks county saying, it doesn't matter what the law says, we're going to count those ballots. So I feel this very personally. And remember, I lost by 901, by 15,000. So every vote counts. Every vote clearly counts. But it's the most basic principle, which is what our founders imagine, which is you have to be an American citizen to vote.
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A
Basic.
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B
That's what the SAVE act requires. And right now there's a constitutional question between the federal versus states, who's responsible for overseeing elections? The states oversee elections, but in many states, you can get a driver's license without being an American citizen, and then you can vote with a driver's license.
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A
Yes.
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B
So this isn't a loophole. This is a huge gap in our electoral system. And I think it's connected to why the Democrats would talk about closing borders, but were wide open under the Biden administration, and somewhere between 10 and 15 million illegal immigrants came into the country. So the SAVE act is essentially requiring proof of citizenship when you register. When you register to vote. And. And then you have to. And so it ensures that only legal and photo id.
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A
Photo ID shop at the ballot box.
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B
Which the most space you can't buy. You can't buy beer.
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A
No.
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B
Without photo ID, you can't get on an airplane. Without photo ID, you can'T cash a check. This is.
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A
You can't get food stamps.
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B
This is basic.
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A
Yeah.
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B
It's got a close cousin, which is also very important, which is the census. Yeah. So the census under Joe Biden, they changed to be able to allow illegal immigrants to count in the census. This is also hugely consequential because the census determines how congressional seats are allocated. So if there's 3 million more people in New York who are illegal that are counting the census, that means New York gets another congressional seat. That's, of course, so important when you think about how close the margins are in the House, it also affects the electoral votes. So there's another piece of legislation that Bill Hagerty's introduced to ensure that the census should only include legal citizens. The most basic thing. Why don't the Democrats want to support it? I think it's because it gives them such electoral advantage not to support it, which is cynical. But I. But I think but it's cheating. It's true.
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A
It's absolutely pure and simple cheating.
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B
And I think there's some in my party that haven't totally come around to this yet. And one of the things I'm trying to do is, and I'll do that later this week on a floor speech, is make the case of why this is so crucial to. This is not a partisan issue. This is crucial to the integrity of our elections. And whether you think there's a little bit of cheating or a lot of cheating really doesn't matter, because there's a huge loss of confidence.
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A
Yes.
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B
And so we need to fix the problem and we need to reinstill confidence in our electoral system. That's the essence of democracy.
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A
And so, I mean, it seems that it won't get through the Senate. You know, the House has already passed a similar act. So why is it that the Senate is so constricted and that there are so many Republicans or that there are enough Republicans who just refuse to nix the filibuster, which is what Donald Trump's been asking for. The only explanation I hear from them is that, oh, if we do it, then the Democrats will, you know, but the Democrats are going to do it anyway. They've as much as promised it so they can stack the pack, the Supreme Court, bring in two new states, et cetera.
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B
Well, you know, I campaigned against getting rid of the filibuster as a candidate because I was. It was just so clear if the Democrats kept the majority.
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A
Yes.
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B
They explicitly said two new states, four new senators stacked the Supreme Court, as you said. I mean, this would have been this.
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A
Catastrophic.
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B
Catastrophic. And had they done so, see, if those four sentences would probably never get the majority back again.
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A
I think it was. Who were they? It was Kirsten Gillibrand and another Democrat that stood in the way.
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B
Just mansion and cinema.
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A
Mansion and cinema.
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B
Yeah, that's right. Mansion, cinema stood in the way.
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A
If it wasn't for them, that would have happened.
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B
Absolutely. So the. So as a candidate coming into the saying, geez, I, I can't support that.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Now I'm here and, you know, honestly, my, I'm, I'm very torn on it because I just lived through this government shutdown 43 days. And what is the logic for that? It was pure political theater. And with the SAVE Act, I mean, the first thing we gotta do on the SAFE act is to get all the Republicans on board, because right now we don't have all the Republicans. So the question will be. And I think the why is that. I Don't know. We're gonna have a debate about that, I think as early as this week in our weekly lunch. But we've got about 30 plus Democrats that have Republicans rather that have co sponsors to SAVE Act. So I think we gotta take stock of where we are as Republicans. But then I think we need to bring this to a vote and force the Democrats to say why they're against voter ID and my opposition, I think I'm more and more convinced by what the President said, what many. I think the Democrats probably will a little bit. So why not do it first? And I think the question will be what do we want to do as Republicans? Because we have this window. What's our agenda? Because we're in a whole different world. If we eliminate the filibuster. My agenda, I think, would be the SAVE Act. The second thing I think would be permitting reform, because permitting reform is the biggest economic boom we could make. And I'm not sure we have 60 votes for that. But, but, and what is that? The permitting reform is essentially right now, it takes anywhere between five and 10 years for most big infrastructure energy projects, whether it's natural gas or, or nuclear power or even solar. So this essentially streamlines the process for getting permits. And that's such a big deal because there's a trillion dollars of capital on the sidelines waiting to come into the game. If we accelerate it, it'll be great for the economy, it's great for job creation. It helps us win the AI race. So it's a huge strategic thing. It's energy, but it's more than energy. It's the economy and it's our, it's our geopolitical position. So this is something that many of us have been working on. It's. So I think the SAVE act, permitting reform, those two things are big things. And you know, I'm.
- [19:41]
A
And they're worth losing the filibustic.
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B
Yeah, no, I don't know. I think there's, there's a big debate even within the Republican caucus whether people will support, you know, you'd have to have all Republicans on board to do this, so it wouldn't make sense to. You can't do it without the majority. But, but I think the argument that the Democrats are likely to do it is, is, is true. And I think the thing that if Republicans are going to support eliminating the filibuster, we need to be able to say and the things that we're doing it for are so consequential that it's worth it.
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A
And they'll safeguard the future.
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B
Safeguard the future. And the SAVE act, of course, is key to that.
- [20:21]
A
Now, you were at the fateful Butler rally where Donald Trump was almost assassinated. You were in the first row, and in fact, Donald Trump had just called you up to the stage because, of course, it's in Butler, Pennsylvania. It really, I think the rally was for you to help you win. And. And then he changed his mind at the last minute. You would have been up there on stage.
- [20:46]
B
Yeah, it was amazing. He, you know, I flew in, got there in front of him and, and talked on the stage. And then I went back behind and I spoke with him. We chatted for a few minutes. And I think I was probably the last person he spoke to before he went up on the stage. And I was sitting, as you said, in the front row, probably not more than 15ft, something like that. And just as you say, I think I was on his mind because we talked about my race. And within five minutes he said, we got to win this Senate race, got to beat Bob Casey. Dave, why don't we have Dave come on up? So I don't know, it was 11, 12,000 people, was a big rally. And so I walk up on the stage and I get pretty close to the lectern, and he says, wait, wait, I want to talk about the board. He goes in front of everybody, he says, dave, go sit back down. I'll have you come up in a little bit.
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A
I remember you were standing up.
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B
I was standing up up there on the stage and I. So I went and sat back down. And within a minute or so of sitting down, I heard the shots. And I knew I'd been an army guy, I'd been in Iraq. I knew what, I knew what the shot. I knew what the sound was. Everybody went down and. And he was right in front of me. So I saw the whole thing where the Secret Service on top of myself and grab his ear. I saw him get up. I saw the phalanx of Secret Service around him. I saw the fist fight, fight, fight. Behind me at about the same distance was Corey Compertore, who. I didn't know who that was. I knew somebody had been hit. And as you, you probably know the story, he bravely threw himself over top of his children. I. At the subsequent Butler rally, I sat next to his. His freedom, his widow and his two daughters. So it was just heart wrenching. But that was a moment. You think that it was like standing next to the limo when JFK was shot. It was all in front of me and Think about had that bullet been another inch, it would have been catastrophic for the country. It would have been obviously a disaster to have a former president killed. But to have Donald Trump killed, it would have put, you know, the nation would have been torn apart on it. It was just a catastrophic moment.
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A
Are you satisfied with the answers that we've had about the lone gunman, 20 year old Thomas Crooks?
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B
Yeah, I'd say two things on it. One, just let me finish a funny story on Trump and then I'll answer that question. But President Trump now, you know, I've been in many audiences where he's told the story about, about Butler and the story now he goes, just as he said, and then he says, I saved his life. I mean, think about it. I mean, Dave, I saved his life. You know, Dina, wouldn't you agree? I saved his life because I mean, if I had him up there. So he's always saying funny things to you.
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A
He really, he said, I remember during the last election, he said, your beautiful wife Dina, he said, she'll divorce you if you don't win.
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B
He said that. And Dina was like, come on, Mr. President, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't do that. And then finally she said, well, I like winners. I'm not like you. I'm like you, Mr. President, I like winners, but I'm not satisfied. And I'm not satisfied about what happened. Because when you go to the place and you see how close it was, the idea that a lone gunman, I'm typically not one who's prone to conspiracy theories, but the fact that a lone gunman could get up there at that distance, it was less than 150 yards. So prominent you now see all the people with the cell phones taking pictures. Seems just hard to imagine such a breach and such a breach in security, such a breach in protocol and such.
- [24:19]
A
A feat for a 20 year old with no supposedly social media presence. Although we did find that he did have it, but it was kept from us.
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B
Why, I'm not sure, but I think it's one of those, one of those things that I am unresolved. And the reason it's so important is these things, when they're not, you have two problems. We go back to the public trust, public confidence. When things aren't fully wrestled to the ground, even if there's legitimate answers, you breed mistrust. So I think there's a problem where all of us, you, me, we're just.
- [24:54]
A
Corey Comperatori's family is not satisfied. I've Spoken to them. So how do you resolve that? Because the FBI hasn't really been able to do. So I don't know if there's reluctance there or just they don't have anything. But how do you resolve those mysteries and stop them turning into destructive conspiracy theories?
- [25:13]
B
Yeah, Well, I think I came from a firm called Bridgewater. We had this concept which was radical truth, radical transparency in the way we ran the company. And the truth is always better when you just bring air onto it. And it's, you know, the American people, they can take it. They can take the truth, whether it's about, you know, JFK's killing or whether it's about the Epstein files, or whether it's about the. The attempt on President Trump's life at Butler. The American people, you know, unless it's a matter of national security, where something is going to compromise our capacity to protect the American people, I think we should. More. More is better.
- [25:55]
A
Yeah.
- [25:56]
B
And that's. That's the philosophy that I've tried to bring to things, including. This sounds like a small thing, but. Including owning up to my own mistakes or owning up to when. Because I think people. People understand everybody's imperfect, and I think mistakes well. So I did an annual report, right? Which in the annual report, I tried to have a section which says, you know, lessons learned, things that you know were unacceptable and.
- [26:22]
A
Annual report for your constituents?
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B
For my constituents, yeah.
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A
Oh, that's a good idea.
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B
So I'm a. When I'm a CEO, I, you know, every quarter I had to address my shareholders. Every year I had to plan. What did I do relative to the plan. So I did an annual report. We can get you a copy of it. And the annual report said, here's what we promised. Here's where we are. Relative to the promises. We've done a lot of good things. Here's where we still fell short. Then it said, here's the big initiatives and progress we're making. And then it said, okay, here's the things we fell short at. So, you know, I've been one. If you've seen anything I've said, I'm out there saying, you know, we gotta tone down the rhetoric. We've got to stop dehumanizing people. I think that's the path. We start calling people Nazis. That's the path to political violence. That's the path. So sure enough, during the government shutdown, I'm getting interviewed by cnn and I call the Democrats terrorists, right? Because they're holding the government hostage. And I was like, wow, that's the thing I just said I wouldn't do. So I.
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A
It's contagious.
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B
So I owned up to it. Or when first got in here, I was. We were overwhelmed. We had like 150,000 emails or phone calls or letters a week. 150,000. And we had four months, five months, where people weren't getting responses. Embarrassment, I'm ashamed of it. But that. It was just. We couldn't get in front of it. Now we're at it. We have a metric. It's every two weeks, everybody. I review it every week. If you, if you reach out to my office, you will get a response within two weeks. We're getting tens of thousands a day. But things like that were just unacceptable and you own it and you say, we learned and here's what we're going to do to make it better. And I think that's. I don't think people expect perfection. I think they expect authenticity, integrity. Working your butt off on behalf of them. And whether, you know, whether there was some breakdown in the attempt on President Trump's life, knowing how that went down, I think would give us all much more confidence.
- [28:19]
A
Absolutely. And also stop this mistrust of institutions that just is festering and doesn't seem to.
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B
I'm sure you've seen the polling. It's unbelievable. Journalism, the church, the federal government, the Congress, the FBI. Yeah, the FBI. It's all low 20s. I mean, in the Pew polling, confidence, people of 100 people surveyed, 20, 30 people.
- [28:45]
A
Not healthy.
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B
No, it's not healthy if people don't trust in the institutions that have such a huge impact on their lives.
- [28:53]
A
And are you concerned from the Butler assassination attempt on. It seems to have opened up this sort of cycle of violence, violent rhetoric, particularly. You're just mentioning whether it be the assassination in New York of the Medical Health Fund executive and just the, the, the, the threats against ice, someone actually shooting at ICE people. And that just, you know, the rhetoric just escalates.
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B
It really does. And, you know, and it is coming.
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A
From, from the one side, from the.
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B
Left, there's an enormous amount of negativity. You think about how many times, I mean, you go to my social media, I mean, people, the things people say about you, Nazis and things like that, it's so horrifically bad. And I do think it's a slippery slope. I think it's a slippery slope to violence. And think about it. If you dehumanize someone, if you keep calling them something where, you know they're pure evil.
- [29:54]
A
Yeah.
- [29:56]
B
Begins to rationalize any Action, whether it's against, you know, the horrible killing of Charlie Kirk.
- [30:01]
A
Yeah.
- [30:02]
B
And it, it justifies. If someone is Hitler, it justifies taking action. And so I think we've got to dial that back in the country. And I agree the language on the left has been horrible. There's been some on the right that. The language has been horrible, too. Unfortunately. I was right there on the stage with President Trump. I was also, ironically, on the phone talking to Governor Shapiro about a business transaction we were trying to get to happen in Pennsylvania a few hours before there was the attempt to burn down the governor's mansion. And so, unfortunately, the hate, you know, the violence is across the board, and we've got to stop it.
- [30:49]
A
How do you get on with Governor Shapiro?
- [30:51]
B
You know, we have a very functional relationship. You know, he's, to me, the biggest thing I can do. And you were there. That Energy and Innovation Summit was a good example. I think if we can bring economic activity to Pennsylvania, if we can bring jobs and huge investment. Pennsylvania has been in decline. We've been losing people. If we can make this an engine for economic growth, that's going to lift all boats. And I think I can do a lot to help that. But I've got to be able to work with the governor, no matter who it is, because the governor has a big influence in that, too.
- [31:25]
A
Who do you think would be a more formidable opponent in the presidential campaign? Shapiro or Gavin Newsom?
- [31:33]
B
You know, I, I don't know Gavin Newsom. I've. I've heard him on podcasts and so forth. He is a. I think he's a formidable person, really, because he's. He's got a terrible track record, but he's got. He's got a lot of charisma and boldness. You, if you listen to his podcast, you'd think this guy is a. This guy, you know, he grew up in school of hard knocks and, you know, dug himself out and, you know, he's got. And that's completely inconsistent with what his real story is, but I think he's formidable. I think Governor Shapiro would be formidable, too. So I'm of the camp you always assume your opponent is going to have a lot to offer. I think the bigger question probably applies to both of them is, is the radical extreme fringe of the Democratic Party that we see appearing in ascendancy going to drive who their nominees are in 2028, which makes them unelectable? Unelectable. I mean, what's happening in New York? I don't know if you might have seen it, but I got a lot of attention at the time. But when Mayor Mamdani was elected, I did a video and I talked about all the great things about Pennsylvania. And you know, I said, don't, don't, don't, don't believe those socialist ideas. Come to Pennsylvania. We're creating jobs and we have, you know, all these good things. And then I said, and we also have winning football teams and, and all my friends in New York who were jets fans came after me hard. But I think, I think we're experimenting in America in some of these big cities with socialist ideas that have proven themselves to be completely bankruptcy. But every, they get recycled every 50 years. And if that part, that anti Semitic hatred, you know, driven into, you know, the intifada side of the Democratic Party is in ascendance, then they're going to pick somebody who is representing that and that's going to be someone who can't lead America.
- [33:36]
A
Well, I mean, it comes back to voter integrity because again, you've got these captive populations in these blue cities and these blue states that once the Democrats have got control, look at Minnesota and Tim Waltz, the fraud there, it's obviously feeding.
- [33:54]
B
Absolutely. It's a flywheel. Yeah, it's a flywheel because the money is self reinforcing of the ideology which then pays protesters. I mean, during the campaign I went to Penn's campus, I was the first one publicly to say, you gotta fire Liz McGill at University of Pennsylvania because you got this horrible protest on campus. The Jewish kids are being attacked. And you go through those camps that they had on campus, they had those tent cities. More than half the people in those 10 cities weren't kids, they weren't students. These were people that were brought in, they were paid protesters and they were just trying to create mayhem. And, and that like, like in Minnesota. Exactly. Same people. And the leadership of University of Pennsylvania and the leadership of Philadelphia at the time, Larry Krasner being the worst of the bunch, were unwilling to prosecute blatant violations of the law on Penn's campus. And the university president was unwilling to enforce the, the, the university's regulations. And if you embrace lawlessness, you're going to get lawlessness. And that's exactly what happened.
- [35:10]
A
And anti Semitism, you've been very vocal. And your relationship with Israel goes back a long way. After October 7th massacre in Israel, you and Dina, your wife, flew there, didn't you? Tell me why?
- [35:28]
B
Well, I had been to Israel a number of times over the years. I think I went for the first time Right after I got out of the army, which was in 1991. And then I went there as a official. I served in the Bush administration and went there as an official. So I knew, I knew a bit about Israel. And then Dina had worked for President Trump in the first term and had been involved in the Abraham Accords, right? She was deputy, she was deputy National Security Advisor and she is Egyptian. So we had gone to Egypt a number of times. So when that happened, we live in Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh. We live right around the block from the Tree of Life where it was this horrible massacre, which was now, I guess eight years ago, was just a horrific. So we live in that community that lives with that every day. And when that tragedy happened, we felt a need to go and show allegiance, show support for Israel, as was going through this tragedy. It affected families in our neighborhood in Squirrel Hill because they had cousins and so forth that were killed or captured during the, during October 7th. And when you go and bear witness, you see firsthand what happened, the nature of the evil that could kill 1200 Israelis and Americans the way that they did. I mean, it was butch, absolute butchery. People beheaded, homes set on fire, family set on fire. I mean, it was just absolutely horrific. We talked to families of hostages, we talked to people that had survived, we talked to the military that had been there and seen it that day. And when you, and then we watched the video, which you probably have seen, but there's a 40 minute video that the IDF has put together. Once you see that pure evil, it gives you the clarity that you need to demonstrate the strength required to eradicate that evil in the form of Hamas, in the form of Hezbollah, and in the form of showing strength against Iran, which is the, is the, the financier of all that terrorist activity has been for the last 30, 40 years, the, the underwriter of terror has been Iran. So seeing it firsthand gives you the conviction. Now, October 7th, we really. Two surprise attacks on that day. The one that we saw in Israel. The other was the antisemitism that lurks beneath the surface in America. And I'm not, the next day, I'm not Jewish, so I of course know that there's antisemitism, but I never would have imagined the depth, particularly on our college campuses.
- [38:02]
A
And I mean, it's interesting that it's crept into, we all think of antisemitism as being on the left, but it's now crept into elements of MAGA of the right. And I mean, you are on the, on a number of Senate committees Banking, energy, but also the Foreign Relations Committee. And you lead a subcommittee on the Middle East. How do you manage the sort of discussion in and controversy really and polarization within the Republican Party about Israel? It's coming up now with Iran, but also there's some sort of creeping antisemitism that seems to be behind it.
- [38:45]
B
Yeah, well, I think, you know, the President, I think, has been a good role model on this in the sense that I think people misunderstood what he was talking about when he was talking about America first and there was some view that it was isolation, he was an isolationist. I think he's demonstrated that he's for promoting America's strength and interest around the world. And he does that through economic policies, he does it through energy dominance and he's doing that through using our military in a very effective way.
- [39:16]
A
But he doesn't want wars.
- [39:17]
B
He doesn't want another Iraq, doesn't want wars, but is willing to use the military very selectively to promote America's interests. It's a very calibrated approach. He's using, I think that's the best word for it. And he's done that, I think, beautifully in the Middle East. I think that will be the place that goes down in history is where he's had the most consequential, I suspect.
- [39:38]
A
So what's going to happen with Iran though?
- [39:40]
B
You know, I think, I think if we were sitting here a year from now, I think there will have been a regime change in Iran.
- [39:47]
A
I think there was a missed opportunity for regime change back when the students first came out before they were massacred and when President Trump kind of implied that America would be there.
- [39:59]
B
I don't think so. I think it's like a tightening news. And what, what the Iran has shown is how bankrupt it is, how bankrupt it is economically. 80% of the people live in poverty. How bankrupt it is morally, killing and repressing, suppressing its own citizens, how bankrupt it is militarily. I mean, the Israelis went in and devastated its air defense capability. America came in and took out and dramatically delayed its nuclear cap. So I think you have an 86 year old Ayatollah who's grasping to try to hold on and I think we're tightening the noose. The President's created multiple options with by moving military capability into the region. So I'm not sure how it will happen, but I think that we're continuing to apply pressure. That doesn't mean we're going to send in the 82nd Airborne, which I served in and put Boots on the ground. But it does mean that I think we're in a position to give a lot of pressure. And I would not underestimate the power of the President of the United States saying, we are with you. And I was reading something recently and you remember this name, Natan Sharonsky, who was a Soviet dissident and he was in the Gulag when Ronald Reagan said, Russia or the Soviet Union is an evil empire and we stand with those political prisoners and we stand for freedom. President Obama didn't do that. When the students were protesting and Iran was killing its own people, Obama stayed silent. Trump did not stay silent. He spoke loud and clear. He's putting additional pressure. So I think that pressure will come to bear. I think the size of the protest is beyond what's ever happened in the past. And I think it's a matter of.
- [41:42]
A
And what does regime change look like? I mean, are we going to have the same sort of collapse that we saw in Iraq or in Syria?
- [41:51]
B
You remember that great line from Ernest Hemingway, which bankruptcy happens slowly and quickly. I think that's what will happen here. And this is what we've seen. Think about Syria, right? We had the Assad regime, which seemed impossible that you'd have a regime change. We've seen in Libya, we've seen regime changes before and they can happen in a very chaotic way where the society disintegrates, or they can happen in a more measured way, which is, I think, why the President and his team are handling Venezuela the way they are. I think we ideally want this to happen in a, in a, in a more orderly way and a more orderly way, which ultimately you're not going to have elections the day after. It's going to be, have to be some transition to self determination and I'm not quite sure how that'll happen, but that may be one of the reasons that the, the President, his team, his ally, the allies of the United States have, have gone in a more calibrated approach over the last month or so.
- [42:46]
A
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- [43:20]
B
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- [43:39]
A
Don't face the health care system alone. Find solace. Visit solacehealth.com today. Do you have any insight into Russia, Ukraine? It seems to be not much sort of movement on the peace talk front.
- [43:56]
B
Well, you know, I, I was visiting, I guess three or four months ago, Estonia, Finland, Denmark, Norway and those countries are all deeply involved. I met with the commanding general of U.S. army forces there. I did not go to Ukraine. But I think there's a couple things. The president laid out a framework. That framework is still, I think, the right framework, which is to say there needs to be a cessation to the killing, to the fighting. That's probably going to be along some line of demarcation where the troops currently are. This is going to be a North Korea, South Korea, North Vietnam, South Vietnam. We're not going to move a lot of land back and forth. Probably second was that there needs to be a security agreement. And the security agreement is the Europeans standing up and saying we will ensure Ukraine's future sovereignty. Post the deal, post the end of the fighting, it's not going to be the United States leading the way. The United States probably will support it in some way with intel or munitions. But that is Europe, Europe's responsibility to do that. We can help, but that's Europe's responsibility. The third piece of is some economic bargain that ultimately ensures that America's economic interests are aligned. So if we have American companies on the ground in Ukraine, if we have an economic interest, that's going to be a further deterrent to Russia in Russia as well.
- [45:18]
A
I think the president talking about economic investment there.
- [45:21]
B
Exactly. So that framework makes sense to me. I think the biggest question is Russia and Putin. And I'm of the mind and you know, some disagree with this in our party, I'm of the mind that it's clear that Putin was the aggressor in this particular situation. And so the question is, is he going to acknowledge and move into some framework along the lines?
- [45:45]
A
Doesn't look like it at the moment and.
- [45:47]
B
But it won't until it does. Right. That's the nature of these things, there's not. There's no sign of agreement until there's actually agreement. There's not like you're going to get public about 80%. So I've got a lot of faith in the president on this one. I think if anybody can get a deal, he will.
- [46:03]
A
So a year from now, where do you see it?
- [46:05]
B
Well, I'm hoping that we will have a framework that we're implementing along those guidelines. And the question is Russia's tolerance. Both sides, but Russia's tolerance for pain in particular. And the history would show that Russia has a huge tolerance for pain and casualties. Um, but even Russia and even Putin had their limits in terms of that. We, when we were visiting there, two, two interesting things came out of it. We were told that Russians who lose someone, Russian families that lose a soldier on the front get $100,000. Wow, that's a. In the Russian economy, an enormous amount of money. One of the incentives to have people serve that, that tells you something about the difficulty of continuing to man an army that's losing casualties at the rate they are. The second lesson for America, whatever happens in Ukraine, is that the nature of warfare is changing dramatically.
- [47:02]
A
Drones, right?
- [47:03]
B
Drones, Autonomous. Autonomous drones, Swarms of drones, robots on the battlefield. What's happening there is. It's a merger of traditional warfare. They're firing 155 rounds that are 50 years old that are made in Scranton, Pennsylvania, right near where I went to.
- [47:22]
A
High school, where Zelinsky visited.
- [47:23]
B
Where Zelinsky visited at the same time with, you know, these swarms of drones that are driven by AI manufactured data that's showing them the right swarm patterns to be able to have the most efficacy on the battlefield, it's frightening. The nature of war is changing. And the question, I think for us, because in the overall scheme of things, Ukraine's important, but geopolitically, it's not going to be the place that America is going to be most challenged. The battle for leadership with China is the place. And the question is, are we learning enough about the new nature of war and are we adopting quickly enough? And that's one of the reasons I was so glad that the President's budget and what we did in the reconciliation and the. And also in the working families tax cut was plus up defense in a dramatic way, because we not only need more of what we have, but we need to reinvent the way we go to war.
- [48:18]
A
I want to get on to China and AI but just briefly, going back to this polarization, which you could almost See, shaping up in the Republican primary for the 2028 election, the sort of Vance Rubio metric. And rightly or wrongly, JD Vance is seen as being on the side of the isolationist wing. They're not really, but they're isolationist adjacent, I guess this new sort of surging America first idea. And then Marco Rubio again, not really, but he's more of a hawk. Not really a neocon, but he's still from that mold. So how do you see the Republican Party going in the future? I. You're a hawk, I take it.
- [49:10]
B
Yeah. Well, I'd say first of all, they're both supporting the President's agenda and the president cast a large shadow over this. And I think both of them wisely are focused right now on serving the President. The president's got a huge agenda. It's the most consequential agenda in my lifetime for any politician. The first year. If you just go through an objective way, the accomplishments, the scope, the scale, it's remarkable.
- [49:36]
A
He's only got four years.
- [49:37]
B
That's right. He's only got four years. But they serve his pleasure. So in other words, I think they wisely. I don't, you know, if there's no, there's no deviation, no in the way. JD Speaking or Mark. Nor should there be. And I think so. I think first and foremost they're serving the President. And I think so. I wouldn't want to speculate where either one of them are on anything. They're serving the president. And you know, I think, I think right now we got to go through these midterms. We gotta ideally, and hopefully keep the majority in the House and the Senate so we can keep the momentum on this agenda. And you know, I'm 20, 28 will be here sooner, sooner than we know. And you know, my. I wouldn't even, I mean, even the hawk versus isolationist. I mean, I think there's much more nuance now into what, you know, what people are. I have a back to mistakes you made. I was in Pittsburgh when 911 happened. And I was a former, you know, a former army guy. I'd been in Iraq. What happened to 911 infuriated me. And I wrote an op ed and this was after the reports of 9 11, after reports of finding the chemical weapons and nuclear weapons. Chemical weapons. Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
- [50:56]
A
Yeah.
- [50:57]
B
The speculation, the intel that. Yeah. And I read an op ed for the Los Angeles Times and the title of that says let's roll against Saddam Hussein. I mean, we could meet. We got to Go there. We got to kick down the doors, we got to go get those.
- [51:10]
A
And we all felt like, right.
- [51:11]
B
But I mean, I was.
- [51:12]
A
Colin Powell went to the UN and showed.
- [51:14]
B
I was. But I was so certain. Yeah, I was. So we got to go. I was so certain this was the red blooded, red boiling blood.
- [51:22]
A
Yeah.
- [51:23]
B
And I have that framed and I keep it now because that led to what I think was 20 years of disaster, disaster for the military that was served there over two decades. The loss of life, the remnants still. I just saw the report earlier this week from the VA we still lose 17 and a half veterans every day to veterans suicide. The trillions of dollars of treasure. So the reason I say that is, I mean, I think I've got strong views in America promoting American interest abroad, but that was catastrophic. And so I think those of us that are want to have a strong, robust American presence in the world have been chastened and humbled a bit by what happened there. And I certainly have a much greater appreciation for being careful and calibrating how and when we use American military force. And I think probably President Trump has been greatly influenced by that as well. So that's only to say there's a lot more nuance today than I think there maybe was in the past. And I think appropriately so.
- [52:36]
A
Now China, do you think it's our greatest threat?
- [52:39]
B
I do. I think I have a book over here, Superpower and Peril, which I wrote. I wrote it, I started before the first campaign, I finished it after I lost the first one, before the second one. And the essence is we are in a geopolitical battle for supremacy and China is the rising power. Even when the book was written, the scope and scale and pace of AI is not as clear then as it is now. It's remarkable. That's going to be the long pole and the 10 of the geopolitical. Geopolitical power and strength.
- [53:14]
A
Are we as certain of winning that race?
- [53:17]
B
We're not certain to win it. But the best way I can say it is whether we win or lose depends much more on what we do than they do. In other words, they are, you know, China has, has innate strengths. It has a top down control which gives it certain advantages. It is enormous willingness to subsidize and enormous size and so forth. But the American system and our capacity to innovate as we're seeing right now, is unmatched in the world. So if you were a betting person and you could put money on their system or our system, I would put money on their system. On our system, rather every time. But it depends on what we do. So we've got to continue to deregulate in the way that I was describing, because AI and energy are the different sides of the same coin. You can't be an AI leader without being an energy innovator and energy leader.
- [54:05]
A
Because it sucks in absolutely all the data pressure processing sucks in so much energy.
- [54:10]
B
Exactly. We've got to be a meritocracy of ideas. We can't have some sort of liberal ideology driving when good ideas come to the fore or something like that. It's got to be driven by. We've got to continue to have the research enterprise. That's why I've been a strong supporter of basic research. And continue to make sure that we're funding the NSF and the NIH and things like that. Those are core. And we've got to have the place where the best town in the world still wants to come to America. And that's not inconsistent at all with saying we need to be unbelievably tough on illegal immigration, tough on the border. But we also, in my opinion, at least need to be the place where the best scientists in the world, the smartest people, come. We're 400 million people. The world is 8 billion, so we're 5%. So it's probably unrealistic to think all the smartest people are just here. So we need to be the place that's always been our benefit, always been our strength.
- [55:05]
A
And how do you make that more so? I mean, do you feel that, particularly in the four years under Biden post pandemic, that America's reputation in the world really went slow?
- [55:19]
B
I do. And even America's, despite still having really remarkable universities. I think our universities have taken a hit because of all the sort of ideological driven things that we're seeing and what are some of the finest universities or historically have been. So I think if you think about the building blocks of winning that battle that I talked about, education's one of them. Having a basic education system. I think legal immigration is making sure that it doesn't have to be. It needs to be reformed dramatically from what it is. President Trump actually proposed a legal immigration agenda in his first term, which I think we need to revisit at some point. We probably need to make sure we've sort of slayed the challenge of illegal immigration. We're still in the midst of that. But there will be a moment where I think we need to come back to making sure that our legal immigration system is Working and it's got a whole range of things associated with that. We've got to make sure we continue to have a place that has capital flowing to the best opportunities. So not, not become socialist, continue to be capitalist. What I like to say, I said to the governor that I mentioned, like we're not just competing against China, we're competing against Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Texas. And capital and talent are like water. They flow to the path of least resistance. So for America to be at the forefront, we need to be the place that the capital and the talent want to come.
- [56:47]
A
Now, China, we now find that there are two dangerous biolabs with all kinds of pathogens in them, from HIV to Covid to Ebola. One discovered in California a couple of years ago, one just recently, last month discovered in Nevada. Chinese national is in jail charged with various offenses over that. But he used to work for a Chinese state owned enterprise. He's been paid millions of dollars by China. That seems to me to be an incursion.
- [57:23]
B
Insidious. Absolutely.
- [57:24]
A
Yeah. So why is there not more? I would have thought the ambassador would be recalled or there'd be some kind of diplomatic retaliation. Why not?
- [57:33]
B
I'm not sure the thinking behind that. But I agree with your premise, which is that there's a series of things that the Chinese have done very strategically, I think to undermine America and undermine America's role in the world. One of the things they do abroad, I mean the belt and road is as sort of placed Chinese workers, Chinese investments in some of the most important strategic places around the world where there's rare metals and so forth. This is a, it's been a part of a long term.
- [58:02]
A
And enriched the Biden family.
- [58:04]
B
And enriched the Biden family. Good, good point. But there's also been a lot of evidence of different cases where you've had Chinese scientists come here and then ultimately be part of some sort of intelligence operation to extract intel or to, you know, who knows, sleeper cells. I mean, this is a real risk. So there needs to be an enormous amount of scrutiny, I think on all these sensitive areas. But particularly if China is our primary adversary, which I believe it is. Absolutely. We need to be very tough minded.
- [58:37]
A
Do you feel that's happening? I mean, with everything else that the administration has to keep its eye on? Do you think that there is sufficient guarding off of Chinese encroachment?
- [58:48]
B
It's a good question. I think it's a good question to ask. I'm not sure, I'm not certain. But it's a good question to ask, particularly around the most cutting edge semiconductors, the most cutting edge biological genetics, things like that. I think you're right. I think that's where there's probably some sort of latent risk that we may not be handling enough.
- [59:10]
A
Now let's talk about your personal. Who you are. Dave McCormick, born and raised in Pennsylvania, a Pennsylvania boy. You are the son of two academics, college professors, college president. How did you end up being conservative?
- [59:27]
B
As I said, my pop up was that county commissioner and my dad was a teacher. My mom and dad were both teachers to start, and they jumped around a bit. So I was born in western Pennsylvania, but they moved and my dad got a job at an incredibly early age. It was a teacher's college that then became a college, state college, and then a university called Bloomsburg. And at the age of 34, he became the college president. So we went to this campus and it was incredible. Beautiful town, Beautiful little town.
- [59:55]
A
Yeah.
- [59:55]
B
And this, this is a, a really special place in the sense that 70, 80% of the kids at the time were first generation college go goers.
- [60:02]
A
Oh, wow.
- [60:03]
B
So their folks were, you know, minors or worked in the mill. My, my town had a carpet mill which had about 2,000 workers at the time. It's got about 200 now, but, but these were first generation. I remember going to the commencement and I was a commencement speaker years ago. And you look out of this audience and the parents would be tearing, I mean, just crying because this was their dream that their kid could go to college. And this was a place that allowed them. So these were kids from the coal region. These are kids that were the, the kids of minors or, or construction workers. This was, this was their, their shot. And we used to walk through campus three or four times a week. We'd go to the student dining room and we'd eat with the kids. And so I grew up, me and my dad would go, he raised hell if he saw that there. You know, the, the flower bed wasn't clean or the garbage. I mean, he was just top minded the kid. He needed to take care of the kids. And that was the family I grew up in. Very exacting. My father's very exacting man. Very difficult. And I wasn't a great student. So that was a huge source. I got to West Point as a wrestler and a football player. Not as a, but, but I grew up sort of agnostic to politics. Yeah, we'd see politicians come and go because of the college, but I wasn't hardcore. I was, I, I was a reg. I. When I left the army as a registered Democrat. But I was not particularly political just.
- [61:20]
A
Because everyone else was.
- [61:20]
B
Yeah, yeah. And when I let. When I left the army was going to send me to grad school. I went to graduate school at Princeton and there were three conservatives on the faculty. Two of them were my doctoral advisors. Aaron Friedberg, who's a very well known China hawk, and John Diulio, who was kind of a faith, wrote a lot about faith. And those two guys became my friends and they encouraged me to do a PhD and I really started to wrestle.
- [61:50]
A
Yeah.
- [61:50]
B
But I was still a Democrat. I didn't change party affiliation. And then I moved to Pittsburgh and took a job. And the first year I was there, I started, got a little bit involved in politics and I could not stand dealing with the Democratic Party. It was old school, it was not meritocratic. And there was this young, not young. He was a retired business guy, he was a telecom guy who ran for county executive. And this was in the mid-90s. And I changed my party affiliation and helped him. And he won, right? He won in a Democratic county, Allegheny county, which is 60, 40. He won. And he just brought common sense. And from that point forward, I was a Republican and I helped campaign for President Bush and, and then have been active in Republican politics and active conservative, wrote a couple conservative books. It was always presented as Democrats are more empathetic and want to help people and Republicans sort of not want to help people and are much more for big business. And when I started to actually engage on the ideas, the best way to bring people out of poverty in the world is to give them opportunity through school choice. The best way to help them have economic prosperity is to make sure that they get most of their money back. The best way to create opportunity for people in poverty is to have capitalism, which lifts all boats. So the ideas that were most appealing to me were the ones that were conservative ones.
- [63:18]
A
And wrestling. We can't not talk about wrestling. What is it about wrestling that's special and that you learned?
- [63:25]
B
I wrestled at West Point. I was the captain.
- [63:28]
A
You got to scholarship.
- [63:30]
B
Well, everybody's. West Point's free. I was recruited to wrestle. I probably wouldn't have gone into West Point without wrestling.
- [63:36]
A
So what is it about wrestling that.
- [63:37]
B
Wrestling is the greatest? I've talked about a lot about in my. A lot about it on my campaign. There's no place to hide. You walk on the mat and the spotlight's on you. And it's literally a battle of will. It's. It's not a battle just of. Of Physical strength, it's a battle of mental strength. And you know, there's nothing like exhaustion and fatigue. And fatigue is the old line, makes cowards of us all. You have to find an inner strength to prevail. And it's literally who can prevail over, over another person. And there's no, there's nowhere to go. And that builds a toughness, a resilience. I mean, it's frankly great training for politics because when you're out there, there's no, it's just you, you, you have to be able to kind of carry the day. Pennsylvania has been always a great wrestling state. Gritty, you know, those, those folks that were. Made things with their hands, had kids that made things with their hands and were, you know, strong and.
- [64:37]
A
Is that why Penn State's the champion?
- [64:39]
B
I think that's why Penn State and you know, so it's had a great tradition, but then I guess 10 years ago now they, they hired this coach, Cale Sanderson, maybe more, maybe 15 years ago, who was an Olympic gold medalist, was a national champ, four time national champ, undefeated in college. He's just a remarkable wrestler. And so he not only was a great coach, but he was a great recruiter because people wanted to work with him. And there's been this tradition of Olympians, gold medalists that have come from Penn State. And so he's created the greatest, the greatest Division 1 college sports franchise in history. I think they're going for their 13th national championship. It's amazing. So we're going to go out and see them wrestle next week and it's going to be a great, great time.
- [65:25]
A
Wonderful. I've been to that ring and just seen the excitement in the crowd. Last question, and it could come from wrestling, but secrets of success. What would you tell people? The secrets you've seen in yourself, but also in others.
- [65:41]
B
Yeah, well, the thing I tell my. We have six daughters, Dean. I have six stars between us. And I tell them which I believe in my heart has been. My experience is people look at somebody like me or my wife and they just see success. And the reality is there's been a lot of failure. And failure is the thing that always happens before success. Because through failure you learn, you grow, you become resilient. So I was the CEO of a big firm called Bridgewater. I originally took that job earlier and got fired. It was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And I stay, I stayed in a lesser role and I came back and I became the CEO and had a very successful CEO ship same with running for office, I lost my first campaign. So part of succeeding is constantly learning and growing and being fearless. Fearless to try and put yourself in a position. And there's no shame in failing. The shame is in not growing and learning and going back at it. And so that's what you know, we all have failure. We all have moments of weakness. The key is, can you overcome that and continue to grow and prosper? And that's been the thing that I've learned most in my life. The thing I'm most proud of is not that I've been successful, but that I've overcome failure.
- [67:00]
A
Wonderful. Thank you so much.
- [67:01]
B
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [67:04]
A
Thanks for joining Pod Force One. I'm Miranda Devine. Tell us what you thought of today's podcast in the comments below and please hit like and subscribe. You're not going to want to miss next week.