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He earned a reputation as one of the most polarizing governors in the nation. And he’s not done yet. This week, on Firing Line.
VO NAT SOUND PROTEST: Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Scott Walker has got to go!
Reviled by some, revered by others, Governor Scott Walker became a darling of the conservative movement thanks to his reforms in Wisconsin.
SOT WALKER: We have bill collectors waiting // it’s time that we step up…
After his Presidential campaign went South,
SOT WALKER: Mr. Trump, we don’t need an apprentice in the White House… Walker reluctantly got behind Donald Trump. But his reputation in his home state was damaged, he lost the governorship, and in his last days in office, he was accused of a power grab against the incoming Democratic governor.
NAT SOUND LOCAL NEWS: Republicans after the loss of Governor Scott Walker accused of the legislative coup.
As he gears up for new battle,
SOT WALKER: How do you take on big challenges? How do you push big reforms?
What does Scott Walker say now?
Firing Line with Margaret Hoover is made possible by The Margaret and Daniel Loeb Foundation, The Robertson Foundation, The Asness Family Foundation, The David Tepper Charitable Foundation Inc., Marlene Ricketts, Spencer B. Haber. Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. and by Pfizer Inc.
HOOVER: Governor Walker, welcome to Firing Line.
WALKER: Thanks for having me on Margaret, appreciate it.
HOOVER: You were a presidential candidate, you were a two –
WALKER: Short lived as it was (laugh)
HOOVER: A two-term Republican governor of a state that is eminently important for Democrats to win back in 2020. And you implemented some conservative reforms in a state that voted Democrat in seven straight presidential elections. You have been in state politics for many years there, I wonder if you can just explain to me and to the audience what made you think that Wisconsin, a state that is very blue on paper, would be right for the kind of conservative labor reforms that you implemented as soon as you got to the statehouse.
WALKER: We had both an economic and fiscal crisis. And I had really governed like I had one term. I figured, I gotta fix things. Most politicians talk about ‘em and don’t fix ‘em. I’ve fixed ‘em and didn’t talk about it as much. I learned in the end you gotta do both. We had a 3.6 billion dollar budget deficit. Remember 8, 9 years ago, the economy was in the tank. Not only in Wisconsin but across the nation. And so I wasn’t gonna raise taxes, ‘cause that would hurt the economy. Wasn’t gonna lay off 10 to 15,000 public employees because that would be devastating. So instead we changed collective bargaining, which actually started in of all places, Wisconsin. The progressive movement, collective bargaining, all of that started in Wisconsin. But yeah we knew that was the only real alternative we had. And what it really was about was taking power out of the hands of the big government special interest and transferring it into the hands of the hardworking taxpayers.
HOOVER: You are the only governor who has survived a recall election. And in fact, you won your recall election by a larger percentage than you won your first election for governor. But given your resiliency,
WALKER: (laugh)
HOOVER: were you surprised at what happened this November when you lost by 29,000 votes?
WALKER: I knew it would be close. And that was just because you got the larger dynamic of what’s happening nationally. You’ve got all this hate and anger on the left, and we needed to be able to counter it.
HOOVER: What’s different in 2018 than was different in 2014? Let me give you a hint.
WALKER: Yeah, well I think it was focused on Washington, right?
HOOVER: You’re being polite when you refer to Washington. But, the President Trump is
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: a factor. I mean do you –
WALKER: There’s no doubt about it. There’s just a lot of anger that goes beyond results. Maybe I’m old school. I look at actions more than I just look at words. And I may not like the tweets or the words sometimes of the president, but when I look at the tax cut saves a typical family my state more than twenty five hundred dollars. I look at the regulatory reforms that help farmers and manufacturers. I look at the benefit it’s had on the people of Wisconsin and across the nation. What he’s done in his administration is very good.
HOOVER: Let’s talk about your legacy in Wisconsin.
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: One of the first things you did when you got to the statehouse is you proposed legislation that conservative reformers really admired.
WALKER: Mhm.
HOOVER: And what that legislation did was it asked civil servants to pay a portion of their pension benefits and their health benefits.
WALKER: Right.
HOOVER: And this was viewed as a massive power grab from the unions. And to the extent that you sustained weeks and weeks of more than just colorful protests in the statehouse.
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: Do you feel even looking back that is your major legacy?
WALKER: What ties into everything else since then. I mean we saved just schools alone, billions and billions of dollars that could pour right into the school districts, right into the classroom, uh because of our reforms out there. It wasn’t just about saving money though. Schools can now hire based on, on merit. They can pay based on performance. That is transforma – It is probably, arguably the last twenty five years or more the biggest education reform in the state, one of the biggest in the nation out there. And I look back, if I had it all over to do again, I’d do it. I just went in and just tried to fix the problem I saw. For eight years I was a local government official, and I knew how difficult it was when your hands were tied as local official because of the unions. We wanted to put the power not only back in the hands of the taxpayers, but of the individual workers who had the freedom to choose.
HOOVER: I wonder, do you think that if the protesters had been less colorful,
WALKER: (chuckle)
HOOVER: and less outrageous, that you may have had less success.
WALKER: It was really over the top. A number of death threats against me, against my family, against some of our state senators, and people from all across the country. I was thinking about that being here today, to come in for this show, I remember about a month after our reforms had been passed, and I signed them into the law. I was here in town for something else, I get out of the vehicle, a guy across the street yells, Hey, Governor Walker! And being from the Midwest, I said Hey, how are you? And he said, You suck! You are scum of the Earth, I hate you, I went to Madison to protest you. And the poor guy
I was with I thought was gonna pass out, he was so embarrassed, and I just looked at him and said, See? They weren’t all from Wisconsin.
HOOVER: They weren’t even from Wisconsin. That’s the thing –
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: I mean that was – The point I think is that the extremes of either side end up alienating a reasonable force in the center of the country, um certainly in the center of Wisconsin. And, and that’s why for most of your gubernatorial tenure, independent stayed with you.
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: Is there a roadmap in what you did in Wisconsin for other blue states?
WALKER: Oh, absolutely. Oh I think anywhere could do it. I think they’re starting to do something in Iowa, they’re starting to do something in Kentucky, and something elsewhere. This just says, Hey, the people we elect to run our cities, our towns, our villages, our school boards, and our state government, they should be the one that we’re accountable to, not some special interest off on the side. Those common sense conservative reforms can work.
HOOVER: What is your view about the future of labor unions in the United States?
WALKER: Well I think they can be very positive if they offer something positive for their members. See, to me this wasn’t about being anti-union. It was actually being about pro-worker and pro-taxpayer.
HOOVER: What is the right role for a labor union in the twenty first century economy?
WALKER: Well I think particularly in the public sector, remember even Franklin Delano Roosevelt opposed public – in fact, I got PolitiFact on saying that ‘cause nobody believed that that was true. But FDR opposed public employee unions because –
HOOVER: Until JFK
WALKER: he said, who are you protecting against but yourself? But in the private sector it makes sense. Today, uh I think the most effective unions at least in our state and the ones I see around the country are in the trades where they actually offer some value. Training, expertise, ways that do that as opposed to what too often the public sector is its ways to defending the weakest link. I mention in my book, one of the worst examples of what I was trying to fix was a teacher a year before I was elected governor. She was the teacher of the year, the outstanding new English teacher in the state. And yet she got laid off. Why? Because she was one of the last hired. Last hired, first fired. Last stand, first out. That makes no sense whatsoever. That is gone in the state of Wisconsin. That makes a state better and any other jurisdiction that does the same.
HOOVER: You must know that Governor Chris Christie who was on this program recently suggested in his transition plan to President Trump that you would be a suitable labor secretary.
WALKER: (laugh)
HOOVER: Would you be labor secretary if you were asked? Would you serve again?
WALKER: Oh I got talked about it, but back then it was more important for me to stay governor because there’s no better job in America if you want to have a positive impact not just in your state but the country as a whole than being governor. And right now I think, you know to me, you shouldn’t join the cabinet in a spot unless you think you can really make a difference. And uh for now, the best difference I can make is speak –
HOOVER: As a private citizen? (laugh) As a private citizen living in Wisconsin?
WALKER: Well, and I actually think one of the biggest things missing out there is, there’s this huge gap at least on those of us center right talking about economic and fiscal policy. It’s one of the things I loved about Ronald Reagan wasn’t just that he did it but that he inspired people like me and Paul Ryan and Ryan’s previous who all grew up in Southcenter Wisconsin. To really be not only conservatives but optimists um, because of the way he governed and the way he spoke about it. And that’s the sort of thing I want to talk about going forward because the results work. I just think Republicans, myself included, have done a lousy job of reminding that we’re the ones that believe in you the individual. We’re the ones that want to get government and other things out of your life. We’ve just done a bad job of articulating that.
HOOVER: Well you said you want to talk about federalism
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: and then you mentioned Ronald Reagan. Federalism emphasizes the idea of returning federal power back to the states. Ronald Reagan is one of your idols.
WALKER: Mhm.
HOOVER: You and your wife were married on Ronald Reagan’s birthday.
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: So you celebrate your anniversary and Ronald Reagan’s birthday every year.
WALKER: That’s exactly –
HOOVER: And Ronald Reagan –
WALKER: I’d like to say I remember Ronald Reagan’s birthday ‘cause it’s my anniversary.
HOOVER: And your wife likes to joke the opposite.
WALKER: Yeah, she likes to say it’s the other way around.
HOOVER: So in 1967, Ronald Reagan, when he was governor of California, was on this program with William F. Buckley Jr. And he talks about the importance of federalism with William F. Buckley Jr. let’s watch it.
WALKER: Yeah.
BUCKLEY: American conservatives like to talk about states’ rights because there is still a certain glamour to the argument and a certain scientific exactitude to the whole notion of
pluralism and federalism and so on. But that in point of fact, the states haven’t historically acted in such a way as to provide the essential services of the people.
REAGAN: If conditions are so terrible in one state, the federal system of fifty states gives the citizen the right to vote with his feet. As long as the rules and the regulations and the taxes are not uniform, there’s a kind of built-in control on how bad a state government can get, because if it passes a certain point, the people just back up and move to another state where things are better.
WALKER: So right. Five months before I was born couldn’t have been said better today more than half a century later.
HOOVER: So why do you think the case for federalism isn’t being made right now?
WALKER: I talk about it all the time but I don’t call it federalism. Because unfortunately, Americans think that federalism is more a federal government. I tell ‘em it’s as simple as this. Where do you want this dollar sent? Do you wanna sent it to Washington or do you wanna keep it back at home? You wanna sent it to Washington where you get pennies on the dollar back or would you rather keep it back at home to fund your schools, to fix your roads, to take care of your seniors, your parents, your grandparents and others. I think most Americans would rather keep that money right back at home. Unfortunately, though, the federal government is taking on more and more, and they do it so lousy. State government, local governments much more effective, much more efficient, much more accountable. It’s just not sexy enough. You really want to drain this swamp? We hear all the time. Drain the swamp, drain the swamp, drain the swamp. The best way to do it is to send power to the people in the states.
HOOVER: That dollar that you just held up.
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: And you said that dollar going to Washington.
WALKER: Mhm.
HOOVER: Republicans just had control of the House, the Senate, the Presidency. And I’m curious because you really fashioned yourself Especially early in your career, as a fiscal conservative.
WALKER: Mhm.
HOOVER: And you instituted fiscal conservative reforms. How would you grade the Republicans at the federal level in terms of their fiscal stewardship. In Washington.
WALKER: Oh I think if I had to pick a grade it’s probably a C plus, B minus.
HOOVER: Not an F?
WALKER: I wouldn’t give an outright F. I mean I think comp – well it’s all a relative curve, right?
HOOVER: I just want you to know Mitch Daniels gives them an F.
WALKER: Well, I’m a huge fan of Mitch Daniels and a lot of things we, we supersize out of Mitch. Uh, I suppose I’m being generous. I mean I think that in the last few years the tax cuts have been good, but they need to match that with changes in terms of spending out there. And not just spending but I would –
HOOVER: Well that’s exactly my point. Because they haven’t been conservative fiscally when it comes to spending. Right? They did the tax cuts
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: But they’ve added to the national debt.
WALKER: The 10th amendment says, it’s not spelled out in the Constitution, it is inherently the rights of the states and more importantly, the people. So, my argument with that is, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, National Defense, ensuring our border is protected, I’d sent almost everything else back to the states.
HOOVER: Why do Republicans do it too, when we get to Washington –
WALKER: Oh I think it’s clear that anybody who goes to Washington, I mean it’s part of the reason why I’ve advocated for years for things like term limits and other things out there. Because once you get in the office, no matter what party, some is worse than others, but in the end you get in the office, and you start justifying reasons to keep you around. You better be –
HOOVER: Do you think that’s the case with Paul Ryan? I know he’s your friend and he’s been on this program. But he was the proponent, I mean the guy who advocated for Entitlement reform
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: his entire career. And ultimately ended up supporting a Trump agenda that said there’s no way he was gonna touch social security. Here’s my question. Is there a constituency in the Republican party anymore and I’m looking at your state as well.
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: For fiscal conservatism.
WALKER: I think there is, without a doubt.
HOOVER: But where? With Trump in the White House, he’s not advocating for it. And tone does come from the top.
WALKER: Uh huh.
HOOVER: The Republicans in Congress, when they just had both branches of government,
WALKER: Right.
HOOVER: didn’t make those decisions, the ones that you and I are talking about right now. Where is the constituency for fiscal conservatism on the right?
WALKER: This past year when they asked me about the election, I said, well I hope to be remembered as a reformer. On budget reform, tax reform, wealth reform, education reform. Quite frankly, I might have reformed myself out of a job. And what I meant by that, as much as I
got a chuckle from the press at home and elsewhere, is the fact that voters, particularly in the middle, tend to go toward the big bold ideas.
HOOVER: I’m still asking where are the fiscal conservatives?
WALKER: Well I think they were there, I just think they became complacent. They just said –
HOOVER: But the ones in Washington?
WALKER: Well Washington is whole another matter and –
HOOVER: And they’re representing people all across the country. Constituencies, conservative constituencies across the country. And those constituencies are not the same tea party uprising that’s demanding fiscal conservatism that it did in 2010 after the government bailouts.
WALKER: Well I think there’s no doubt about it. And I think there was a pushback and there was some reigning in early on. But the president hasn’t made that the priority. I hope going forward, particularly in the 2020 election –
HOOVER: I think he’s made political calculation that there is no support for that – those set of ideas. That’s my concern. Who is – I mean because these are hard decision that have to be made. And you know about making hard decision.
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: I don’t see anybody coming up in the horizon on the conservative side, the party that used to be for fiscal’s sole responsibility making the case. In fact, I see Howard Schultz, prospective independent candidate, calling out the left for some of their egregious fiscal policy.
WALKER: If you take almost everything else they do, what the federal government currently does beyond social security, Medicare, Medicaid, although Medicaid I would send back to states. So really just social security and Medicare, which I think are two commitments the federal government has made to the American people particularly over certain edge. Combine that with national security,
HOOVER: That’s it.
WALKER: in the purest of sense I’d send it back to the states. And I don’t know what the president’s one way or the other on that it’s just his priority has been about border security and about dealing with trade. He hasn’t been saying no to those things it’s just he hasn’t lifted it up to the top of the list.
HOOVER: He’s just not a fiscal conservative. You talked about how independents had stayed with you for most of your term as governor and it seems to me that it was after your 2015 foray into the presidential field when independents began to fall away from you. You took some positions that were in contradiction to some of your earlier positions when you were a governor. Specifically on some of the social issues.
WALKER: Mhm.
HOOVER: Is it possible that some of the statements you made about LGBT equality, you called the supreme court’s decision to allow marriage between same sex couples a grave mistake. That that’s part of what helped lose independents’ support for you.
WALKER: I don’t think so in the 2018 election. I think it was more around –
HOOVER: I don’t think that –
WALKER: a couple, I mean it was always-
HOOVER: The number began softening in 2016.
WALKER: Well I think the biggest thing in the presidential election is that if you decide to run for an office and you pull back, that people are upset. They’re saying, hey wait a minute, we thought you were this, now you’re running for that. Our numbers were in the tank back then –
HOOVER: So you think it was because you ran for president too quickly after winning your reelection in 2014 –
WALKER: I think a little bit of that.
HOOVER: Did your actual personal views change when you ran for president?
WALKER: No –
HOOVER: Or was that for political calculation? I just observed you as a governor not talking about these issues until you ran for president. And –
WALKER: Well there’s no doubt about it because when I ran for governor, the two biggest issues I had to tackle were economic crisis and fiscal crisis.
HOOVER: But you were not a social warrior.
WALKER: Well when I ran for office at a different level, the questions that people had were beyond on just those issues because people wanted to know where you stand on every issue out there. They want to know where you – I mean as governor I didn’t talk about the problems I had with Syria or Iran or other places around the world, because that’s a whole different universe if you’re running for federal office.
HOOVER: Foxconn is one of the largest technology companies in the world.
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: It’s a Taiwanese company that has made a very significant economic deal with the state of Wisconsin on your watch and with with President Trump’s help.
WALKER: Right.
HOOVER: To bring as many as thirteen thousand manufacturing jobs back to Wisconsin and invest billions of dollars in the state. Do you believe that through deals like this, manufacturing will return to the midwest like the glory days?
WALKER: There’s no doubt about it. As long as we have a workforce, That’s the – I think that’s the number one challenge.
HOOVER: Foxconn is now saying that labor costs are just going to be too high in the United States. And there’s been some back and forth between the president, and I’m sure you are
previewed to those conversations and the CEO of Foxconn. Can a technology company afford to make products in the United States with our high labor costs?
WALKER: Well I think those things are starting to level off. You go to places I’ve been on trade missions in the past even places like China, you see a rising middle class. Previously part of the appeal for many manufacturing company, global companies was to go there because of lower costs. Well those costs are starting to go up. Technically we’ve got more positions open than there physically are people unemployed looking to fill them. That means you’re not only gonna have to do more to train people to fill those positions, there’s gonna have to be automation, there’s gonna have to be artificial intelligence.
HOOVER: Are those jobs not gonna be instead in engineering and research and development? Rather than actual –
WALKER: Oh there’s –
HOOVER: So what working with your hands manufacturing?
WALKER: Well that, I think that changes not just in terms for companies like Foxconn. The job my grandfather had as machinery for forty two years, that’s not gonna be there. It’s gonna fundamentally change, right? Instead of operating one piece of machinery, you might be in charge of four or five out there so it’s gonna take a whole different level of skills and training.
HOOVER: Let me ask you about one last controversy in the last days of your administration.
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: There were two pieces of legislation that you signed. One that constrained the powers of your successor Tony Evers as governor. And I wonder if you could respond to the criticisms that you are changing the rules on your way out the door in order to keep him from having the same power that you had as an executive.
WALKER: Well the interesting thing is, most of what we signed into law codified what we had done for eight years.
HOOVER: The question is, why didn’t you do it before? Right –
WALKER: You didn’t need to, because I did it. This just says you have to do that going forward. So this really doesn’t constrain in the sense that the legislature still even when I was a governor had to sign off on a budget that included those things –
HOOVER: The legislature was gonna sign off on what you wanted because it was a Republican legislature and you’re a Republican governor. And this –
WALKER: Well it prevents egg on the face of state of Wisconsin in the sense that if you asked the federal government for something, and the Republicans in the legislature weren’t gonna go along with it, it really makes Wisconsin look bad.
HOOVER: There’s still no doubt though that, that bill curtailed the powers of the incoming governor, right?
WALKER: I don’t think there’s anything the governor wanted to do that has fundamentally changed with those changes in law, other than it makes them work together now, instead of having a blow up about it later.
HOOVER: It’s your administration making decisions for the next administration.
WALKER: Well, except for the fact that the voters didn’t elect me to finish on November 7th, they elected me to finish on January 7th –
HOOVER: That’s your justification for jamming something through in a lame duck session –
WALKER: Anything he wants to do is not prohibited, he just has to work with the legislature to make it happen.
HOOVER: Okay, there was one other piece that was about voting.
WALKER: Yeah.
HOOVER: And this second piece of legislature that was controversial and it made national news. Constrained early voting in some districts in Wisconsin. And it seems to me Republicans –
WALKER: It made them fair. It actually made them fair and I’ll tell you why.
HOOVER: Tell, okay.
WALKER: So the previous law said you can have as many as six weeks of early voting but it could be in some cases as little as two. So big jurisdiction –
HOOVER: And it was not even all over the country, all over the state.
WALKER: Yeah big jurisdictions that had a lot of money and could afford it would start as early as six weeks out. Smaller, typical rural communities that couldn’t afford it, didn’t have the bodies that built to do it were constrained to two. One vote should be the same in every jurisdiction anywhere in America, not just in Wisconsin. This just says, if you’re gonna do it, two weeks early voting is the same for everywhere else, you can do it, you know you can full range out there –
HOOVER: I’m just thinking, the guy is making the argument for federalism. Don’t you want the local communities to decide when to have their elections?
WALKER: Not when it’s not fair to the same voter. Can anyone look us in the face and honestly say that two weeks is not enough time to do it out there?
HOOVER: Republicans generally have an optics problem.
WALKER: Sure.
HOOVER: When it comes to um, voter participation and voter engagement.
WALKER: But we were making –
HOOVER: And making voting easy, and accessible for everyone.
WALKER: We want to make it, well we want to make it easy to vote but hard to cheat. So when we’ve done voter I.D. –
HOOVER: But how much voter fraud do you have in Wisconsin?
WALKER: We’ve had significant amounts. Even if you have one, that’s the only – and you’re right about the optics. Many many people in the media make it sound like they’re targeting certain folks out there, I’ve said time and time –
HOOVER: But the truth is what we also know as Republicans is that early voting, when it is extended, tends to help Democrats more. And, and that’s just true. I think as Republicans we need to figure out a way to make votings accessible for everyone and even if they’re not gonna vote for us. And so the optics of shrinking the early voting, makes it look like it’s a Republican power grab.
WALKER: I would agree that’s how the media has portrayed it. I would tell you, I don’t care whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, Republicans need to do a better job of going out and aggressively getting people to vote early, which we’ve done in the past in Wisconsin, And signing up new voters. You know, you’re right. It’s difficult sometimes to argue the logic of something when someone else plays on the emotion of trying to say that this is taking away their ability to vote. What people forget, that for most of the time I’ve been alive, the only day I could vote on was on Election Day.
HOOVER: Right.
WALKER: We change –
HOOVER: But we have expanded the franchise. Let me turn to 2020. What is your advice to Donald Trump in terms of holding Wisconsin in 2020?
WALKER: Well I think a key part of it is uh, show up. I mean it’s a, might sound silly –
HOOVER: But does showing up in Wisconsin if you’re Donald Trump help?
WALKER: The reason I say that is, in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton never came back to Wisconsin after she lost the primary that spring to Bernie Sanders. And I gotta tell you, in a swing state like Wisconsin, it sounds silly but there are voters who just say, if you don’t care enough to show up, you’re not gonna earn my vote. So first off is show up. Secondly, my argument would be make the case on the economic side of things. I think no matter what you think about the president’s comments on occasion or his tweets out there, it’s hard to argue the merits about the economy if you spend more time talking about the real benefit to actual working class American citizens in Wisconsin and across the country. I think that really connects up.
HOOVER: Is talking about the economy gonna be enough or are there other issues surrounding Donald Trump that make him vulnerable? Highly vulnerable in the state that seven presidential elections previously voted for Democrats?
WALKER: Well I think it’s the economy, and it has to tie that, and it’s a contrast. When you look at people like –
HOOVER: So it depends on who the Democrats nominate.
WALKER: Well I mean Senator Harris is talking about eliminating, entirely eliminating your healthcare insurance.
HOOVER: She had to walk that back.
WALKER: I mean, my goodness. Most citizens of my state would say, you’re gonna take away my health insurance coverage? No way, no how. When you talk about Medicare for all, people like that until they say how much your taxes are gonna have to go up. Well suddenly if you’re saying, my taxes are gonna go up, people walk away, way, way back from that. I think it’s gonna be incumbent upon the president to talk about what he’s done, what he wants to do going forward, and then the contrast that with I think some pretty scary policies that the people in the front – who are getting pushed further and further to the left are pushing amongst the likely Democrat candidate.
HOOVER: Do you think his character is a vulnerability in the upcoming election?
WALKER: Well no more so than it was in sixteen. And so I think the bigger problem people have on issues like that is if someone pretends to be something that they aren’t. If someone pretends to be certain way and then you see evidence that they’re not. If these are things that you said, hey, I know what I’m getting with this person –
HOOVER: Hypocrisy is the unforgivable sin in politics.
WALKER: Yeah, no matter who you are. And I think in the end that’s what people just didn’t get about this. It doesn’t mean – I’ve said for years when people asked about the president. He wasn’t my first choice.
HOOVER: You are –
WALKER: I was my first choice. I didn’t even help him win –
HOOVER: But you know what he was? He wasn’t your second choice or third choice. In fact, you bailed out of the race. Arguing –
WALKER: That’s true.
HOOVER: making a case that Republicans should unite against Donald Trump.
WALKER: That’s absolutely true and in the end though, there’s just no way, no matter what I thought about anybody personally, that I could justify voting for Hillary Clinton or staying out, which by de facto is a vote when a close election in a state like mine –
HOOVER: Hillary won’t be on the ballot this time. Will you campaign for Donald Trump?
WALKER: Yes, but I think in the end, if you look at the long list of Democrats running, that they’re the same or worse than Hillary Clinton on the policies.
HOOVER: Scott Walker,
WALKER: Thank you.
HOOVER: Thank you for coming on Firing Line.
WALKER: Good to be with you.
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