We are back now with Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, who we think he's going to be the Republican Party chair.

You heard the governor speech last night.

Was there anything that you liked?

I loved her talking about the Lions.

I'm a U of M fan.

I went.

I'm a graduate of the University of Michigan.

I was thrilled that she acknowledged that the University of Michigan is the.

Yeah, they are.

They're the NCAA football champions.

So, yeah, you must have been deeply disappointed that the Republicans did not stand at that point.

Yeah.

Why the pause congressmen don't really care.

Okay.

That that's not that's not the important issue.

Whether they stood or stood or sat down, I went through enough State of the Union speeches.

We are with Republican presidents and Democrat presidents.

And if you've got a Democrat president, you know, the the other side is going up, down, up, down.

And there are there's reporters out there counting.

How many times did they stand up?

And if it's a Republican president, okay, yeah, I'm going to wear my I'm going to wear my running shoes today because I will have to go up, down, up, down, up, down.

And people are counting.

And so, you know, come on, let's talk about the real issues.

Come on.

And a substantive basis, the content of the speech, apart from the sports angle, was there anything you liked?

It's no.

I mean, there are two remarkable differences of opinion here.

And it came up in the earlier segment of the show when you were talking about a targeted tax break for seniors, a targeted tax break for this, a targeted tax break for that.

And it's kind of like now we're not into this identity politics.

You know, I don't want to fall into a group and say if I can get if I can just kind of wiggle into this, I get another tax break, lower the overall tax rate.

Okay.

Her strategic investment fund, where, you know, I'm going to give money to Gretchen Whitmer, the governor and the state legislature, so that they can decide where to, you know, what's a promising industry and all of that.

No I don't want her doing that.

She has no risk.

And, you know, she's got no skin in the game.

There's no risk for state government.

The this this whole electric vehicle fiasco.

Okay.

The Chinese battery plants, a technology that's not ready for prime time.

Okay.

You know, the you can't drive from West Michigan to Detroit and back in your F-150 or whatever they call the supercharged vehicle without finding a place to charge it.

Oh, and by the way, if it gets cold, you know, the biggest parking lot of dead vehicles is the Tesla charging station in Chicago.

And we're pouring all of this money in and we're forcing the state to buy these vehicles.

And it's like, sorry, this is not ready for prime time yet.

And she the people that made that decision, they're not going to pay the price because if cattle goes down or Goshen goes down now, it'll be future taxpayers that pay it, pay the price.

They'll be gone doing something else.

To that point, though, she brought up a revamped basically version of good jobs for Michigan, the Snyder era payroll tax cut plan.

There's going to be a little bit of changes to what Snyder did eventually put into law, which, you know, sunset in 2019.

I mean, do you see any Republican appetite for like you're talking of more broad tax relief?

It does this not sort of fit that bill?

Or do you see areas where.

Yeah, but I mean, we did this when we balanced the budget in Washington.

You got to do a couple of things.

You can do broad tax cuts and where we've got a mandated you need to balance the budget.

Okay, let's identify where we're going to have some spending cuts, where we're going to retrench the size and the influence of of big government.

Yeah, I'm all for cutting taxes and restraining the growth or slowing the growth or actually shrinking government somewhat.

If you are the leader of the Republican Party in Michigan, this is a question going to be when?

Yeah, this is a question I've been thinking about, though.

There's this issue going on at the border in Texas and there's a power struggle going on between the federal government and the government in Texas.

I'm sure you've been following this and there's this chatter.

And I'm curious, is there room in the Republican Party for people who are openly rooting for a civil war, for people who believe in Q-anon do you welcome those people into the Michigan Republican Party?

What I welcome is, you know, working forward and going toward solutions.

And I'm well aware of the debates.

I mean, the I'm reading the opinion pieces that are out there this morning.

And, you know, everybody knows what's happening on the border.

You know, Governor Abbott, what he's trying to do and other states are trying to do by sending National Guard down there and closing the border.

And someone wrote an opinion piece that said, let's federalize Texas National Guard Whoa Let's let's I'm all open for that debate.

Okay.

I know.

I know where the people in the state of Michigan and where the people in Texas and a lot of states are, because the Supreme Court ruling now that says, hey, Texas, what you're doing.

I mean, these are Republican jurists who said Texas, what you're doing does not line up with how our nation works.

And you're saying that Joe Biden should just say, oh, we've got a Supreme Court rule, we've got the Constitution.

But, yeah, Texas.

Go ahead.

No, I want I want Joe Biden to actually enforce, you know, the rule of law and secure the border.

It's very simple.

What we want.

We want Republicans.

And actually, I think there's a lot of Democrats who want a secure border.

Take a look at Chicago.

There are people now that are calling for what?

Getting rid of their status as a sanctuary city because they've now welcomed in 31, 32,000 people.

So they can't afford it.

So you're in favor of the US Senate passing some type of bipartisan immigration reform measure right now?

Take a look at the content.

Okay.

Take a look at the content.

Get a get a good border deal.

You know, and, you know, there's a lot of other dynamics going on in Lansing or in Washington.

I recognize that.

But take a look at exactly what the content of a border plan is.

We expect that, you know, we're going to have a Republican president.

We're going to have a Republican Senate.

And those types of things, we're going to keep the House If we can get as good of a deal as what we will get with a president, a Senate and the House, and you can get that now.

You're probably go for it, but you know, you're not going to get that deal.

So just back to my first question.

I just want to I want to nail you down on this.

If someone comes to you and says, I believe in Q-anon and I want a position as a district chair within the Michigan Republican Party, should I run or not?

They're welcome to run.

You you would say you should run?

No, I would say you are welcome to run.

And you know what?

You know, because we're also having this debate now about whether we want candidates chosen by caucus or by precinct delegates and those kinds of things.

No.

I know what would have happened when I ran for Congress and I said I would gone to the delegates and said, hey, I'd like to run against a 26 year incumbent who's chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, who has all the sentimental attachments right to you and the district here.

They would have said, sorry, Pete, you don't qualify.

All right.

Because I know that's what they did.

They you know, they didn't welcome me to their events or those types of things.

We went to the grassroots and I ran a campaign with the grassroots, and we beat the establishment.

Okay.

If folks want to come in, I won't.

So are people welcome to come in to the party and compete for positions?

Absolutely.

All right.

You know, the I'm sure there are people that voted for me who said, you know exactly what they stand for and all of that.

You know what?

No.

But, you know, you've got to win on Election Day.

We'll give Emily the last word.

Yes.

Well, we're talking about this big tent of a party here who's welcome.

I think there are a lot of people who didn't feel welcome under Kristina Karamos Republican Party.

This American Life had an interview with some Muslim leaders within the party that felt a little bit disenfranchized at times.

You know, certainly some people who aren't Christian could have been turned off by her overtly Christian message, particularly Jewish members of the party.

What kind of repair work do you have to do to make sure that everybody feels like they can be a part of the party?

Well, you go out, you tell them what our agenda is.

You talk about what our philosophy is and we don't talk about, you know, you're a good Republican or you're a bad person or you're in this category, you're not welcome.

Okay.

We did this when we did the Contract with America the first time we took over Republican control of the House of Representatives in 40 years.

We didn't say, you know, you're welcome, but you're not.

Although we have, we might reconsider that.

The But know you're welcome.

But you're not.

What we did is we put together an agenda of ten items, Contract with America, and said when we get elected, these are the things that we are going to do.

And we'd love to have you join us on this path to implement this agenda.

And we made we had a historic election, and that's the model that we will fight and that's the model that we will put forward for the voters in the state of Michigan.

An agenda, a positive agenda, the results and the vision that we expect to achieve.

Come on.

It's going to be a great ride.

You know, after 94, what did we do?

We balanced the budget.

We cut taxes and we grew the economy.

That's the that's the kind of vision and the message that people will embrace, not this other stuff that has gone on.

Mr. Hoekstra make it clear you're not using this position as a stepping stone to run for office again.

Correct?

You know, everybody's got to negotiate.

I have to negotiate with my wife.

She does not envision me being on the ballot again, as I probably would not support it.

Is that a Sherman statement?

Probably as pretty close as you can get.

Yeah.

Thank you, sir.

It's good to see you.

Good to see you.

Appreciate it.