Gov. Chris Sununu: Pelosi outsmarted Donald Trump

More holiday shopping, travel, and connecting online can expose more personal information. With LifeLock Identity Theft Protection, you won't face drained accounts or fraudulent loans alone. Go to lifelock.com slash foxpod and save up to 25% your first year. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more connecting online, and more personal information potentially being exposed to identity thieves. But with a LifeLock US-based restoration specialist, you don't have to face drained accounts, fraudulent loans, or other financial losses from identity theft all alone. If your identity is stolen, they'll work to fix it, backed by the LifeLock Million Dollar Protection package. Spend more time on more holiday fun, not identity worries.

Go to lifelock.com slash foxpod to save up to 25% your first year. Information you want. Truth you demand. This is the Brian Kilmeade Show. Go back to August. Before any of the Republican debates happened, Donald Trump was in the low 50s. Four debates later, after having not attended any of those debates, he's in the high 50s. The other candidates all stuck there in either the low double digits or mired in the single digits without a lot of motion for any of them, despite the fact that a bunch of candidates dropped out.

This field winnowed a lot faster than most people thought it would. So that's Rick Klein of ABC. Thought we'd bring that in to kind of lay the down, lay the groundwork for Kristen, who knew the 82nd governor of New Hampshire, who has just endorsed Nikki Haley.

We're going to get into that. And he knows the band is, the circus is coming to your town. The circus is in town and I got a front row seat.

You should all come up and see the show. And now, first off, your response to what Rick Klein said. You can't really criticize Trump for sitting at the debates. It's been a good strategy for him. There's no doubt.

He doesn't want to engage in the conversation. And apparently he doesn't have to yet until it becomes one on one. And I think the Republican Party can get there. Let's make it a one on one race.

Let's give people that, get rid of that psychological mess of choice, right? When it becomes one on one, folks really will engage at a much higher level. All right, now I'll tell you the good news. I'm going to go to New Hampshire to cover the primaries.

So you have something to look forward to. Bring your skis, brother. We got snow.

We got fun. We got snowmobiling. The only time I'm in skis, I had to do two shoots and they wanted me to do a stand up. And I stood there in skis. I'm not really a big skier.

Yeah. How about a snowmobile? We'll get you on a snowmobile. That's just fun. Because, you know, you bring your, you bring your beer with you. That'll be great.

But how do we encourage that? Right. But you don't disco. It might be out there, right?

You might disco. But you actually had a ski resort. Yeah. So I put a group together.

We ran Waterville Valley Resort very successfully. My family is still involved. As governor, I have to keep complete arms length from it. How old were you then? Six years before I became governor. So 36. All right.

36 to 42. And then I became governor. And then you, so it was successful and. Yeah. Well, as long as God gives you snow, you can be very successful.

If God says we're going to give you rain on Christmas, that's when the ulcer comes. Have you thought about a snow machine? What do you mean? Like a snowmobile? No, a snow machine.

Oh, have I groomed the trail? No. Yeah. I mean, can't you do that?

So what's the big deal? Just make it. No, I'm, oh, oh yeah. But you need, you need to have the temperatures. If it's 36 degrees, you can't make snow. Oh. You know. You can't even make fake snow. No, it's not plastic.

We're all natural. See, I did not know that. You need about 27 and a half degrees dry, dry bulb temperature to make snow and. This is why you didn't have me as a partner.

Because that would have been absolutely no help. Just go make the snow. I know it's 42. Just turn that sand machine on. I know it's July. Don't make excuses. Get it done. So why are you, I'm going to talk about, I cannot believe you're not running for your election. Now, number one, you're not running for president and not running for your election. Why both those things?

Well, a couple of things. I fundamentally believe in term limits. We don't have them in New Hampshire, but I've done four terms.

I've done eight years. You gotta, you know, leave. Because every two years you gotta run. It's every two years I have to run, which is hard in itself and be the 24-7 governor. But, you know, the job is to leave big shoes to fill and find someone to fill it. We have a great candidate. Kelly Ayotte is running for, to replace me, the former senator.

She's going to do a great job. So that's it. And I want to re-enter the private sector and do fun stuff and send Fox Nation a resume and see if they'll, no, I don't know what I'll do next.

I have another year here to figure it all out. But do you, would you love the commentating party? You like the horse race. You like the strategy.

You like this stuff. Look, I'm the governor of New Hampshire. And with all due respect to everyone else, we are in the political mix every single day, right? Because we have local control, right?

Local politics, local debate, what's happening, first in the nation primary, you know, the value of grassroots support, what that means, how to build advocacy and coalition groups. So I love that. And I think there's a smart way to do it.

I think there's kind of a nationalistic bad playbook that people follow a little too much of the time. So I'm always happy to add my two cents. And I'm a Sununu, which means I'm really arrogant and I'm probably correct.

Right. And smart, right? How smart was your dad? Wicked. We say he's wicked smart. What kind of degrees did he get?

He got his Ph.D. in a year out of MIT. So yeah, yeah. So your dad is going to be angry at you.

Was he angry at you? Doesn't he love the political process? And now that you're stepping back. He likes the Brian Kilmeade show. I'll tell you that. He loves it. Oh, thank you.

He does. He's texting me every day with ideas. Hey, you should say this. And have you talked to them about that?

What about this? And then when as governor, because I'm still managing the state 24-7, you know, we'll talk about budgets and balancing budgets and, you know, how to drive jobs and all that. He always gives advice. My dad will give advice. And I'm like, wow, that is a great piece of advice if it was 1987.

I have to kind of turn it into the 2023 version, clean up the language a little bit, you know, modernize it a little bit. But he's still... But you were the one who kept him in the game.

Well, and vice versa. I tell you what, you know what he says to me all the time? He goes, man, he goes, it's going to be great when you stop being governor because I can finally open my mouth again publicly.

He says, and rightly so, he goes, look, I don't want to put my foot in your mouth, Chris. Right. And and but he's brilliant at this stuff.

He knows not that he's just smart, but he knows people because as a governor in a small state like New Hampshire, you've got to connect with people. You've got to have a customer service approach to this stuff. I understand. So let's hear from Nikki Haley. This is what she's talking about, feeling like she's on a bit of a roll. She has just, by the way, said yes to the CNN debate.

Cut one. Right now, look at the game that the media is giving you. They are going to continue to show you national polls. You know, because you do this, that the polls that matter if you want to talk about them are the ones in Iowa, the ones in New Hampshire, the ones in South Carolina, and all of you are now getting involved and getting focused and now handling that. So nothing is what the press tells you.

Everything's what we want. You just got to be tough enough to keep pushing through regardless of what they say. And you got to be louder about it.

And I asked my husband, I have no problem being loud. Right. So let's just look at those polls, Chris. In Iowa, the average, real clear average is 50 to 19.3 for DeSantis. Haley's got 16.7. In your state, Trump 44.3 to Haley 18.7 on average.

Christie 13. That's why he thinks he's got a shot in New Hampshire. But that's a huge gap. Oh, no, there's no doubt it's a huge gap. But when you talk to the voters, they'll move about a third of Trump voters said that consider someone else. The number one reason why folks are sticking with Trump is they think, well, he's going to get elected. It's inevitable.

So if we can show that it's not inevitable that we do have a one to one choice, and I think that happens in New Hampshire, we can hit a big reset button as everything consolidates around Nikki in New Hampshire. Her numbers were moving before I got involved, right? She was moving them.

Why? Just as she said, where the conversation is happening, people are going, oh, wow, this is real. This background that she brings to the table, the connectivity. And again, it's not here's my answer. We're going to do a one size fits all out of Washington and everyone cell obey big government solutions, because even Republicans have a problem with that sometimes. She really, from a governor's perspective, say, let's send it back to the states, let's send it back to the voters. Let's get people more empowered. And that's that's in for New Hampshire and the live for your die thing. Boy, to have a live for your die state and almost like a live for your die president, right? She talks about that.

That idea is very exciting to people. So here's the thing that we noticed so far, is that she's able to get people that are not never Trump or that are Republicans. No question. Along with DeSantis, right?

DeSantis goes where you improve it. I don't know many people that have who are firmly Trump that say, I'm going to go with Haley just because he's better, because she's better. So how do you and that's why I think she's not attacking. Yes, she's not. That's why she's not going after Trump.

And she doesn't have to write. I mean, everybody knows if you're if you're really anti Trump, you're already there. What she's doing is she understands there's a 35 percent floor.

Right. That's about as low as Trump is going to go. But that means there's 12 or 13 points of Trump's current voters that can move over to her.

They're going to move over to whoever's in the lead, whoever inspires them and excites them. You know, Chris, God bless Chris Christie. I mean, he's a great friend and he's got like that nuclear version against Trump.

And that's his style. They kind of like him in the state. They have on average.

Well, he does. I think you're going to see a lot of those voters come. I think you're going to see a lot of the DeSantis voters come things. Her numbers are moving. They're going to consolidate. So 18 today. You're not going to see anything move in the next couple of weeks.

But I think by early January, we're going to see her up in the in the potentially in the low 30s. Now it's a game. Are you going to ask Chris to step out? No, I don't need to do that.

No. Look, I if I were Chris, I'd watch the polls and see what happens and he'll make his own decisions. He's a smart guy. So independents can vote, undecideds can vote. But now the Republicans obviously can vote in the primary.

Got it. Just a few days after Iowa, too, which makes you you have to do your groundwork prior. And we're going to look at those numbers in Iowa and find out.

You know, it's not it's not happening. A Democrat. The Democrats are not letting you guys do for the first time ever in modern politics that you guys are not the first primary or are you still holding?

Of course, we're the first in the Asian primary. Oh, yeah. But Joe Biden says, keep me off. Yeah. And no one cares.

I mean, no. Joe Biden is just choosing not to participate. But we are the first in the nation primary for Republicans and Democrats.

One hundred percent. He's just he tried to make such a stink about it to put himself on the ballot right now would be embarrassing to him because he lost that fight. Right.

So he wanted to go to South Carolina. They're not going to do their their vote count because they do it all by mail till like weeks after ours. So, no, we are the first in the nation primary because there's really no race on the Democrat side. All the undeclareds are going to participate on the Republican side. So how do you have record turnout?

Interesting. So what does that mean? Well, that means all those voters. What it could mean is the vast majority of those folks are not Trump voters.

They're usually not or massively undercounted in polls. And they're going to come out in droves when they see that Nikki Haley has a shot to do this. It's not just winning for the Republican Party in New Hampshire. Like I said, it's hitting that reset button for the whole country where everyone goes, oh, wait, it's not just Trump Biden because nobody wants that ticket. You know, 70 percent of America doesn't want the Trump Biden ticket. The party that moves off from their presumptive candidate first. Right. If Republicans move off from Trump first or Democrats move off from Biden first, they win.

Whoever does it first wins because that's where America goes. Thank you for not giving us yesterday's news. Thank you for not giving us a couple, you know, 80 year old millionaires that are really just out of touch. Trump has done a good job connecting with kind of that gut anger. I mean, let's face it. You know, you have all these folks that built this country, many folks on the manufacturing line, military families who protected this country, law enforcement. They're pissed off and they have every right to be pissed off because you got a bunch of elitists out of Washington, D.C., standing on the shoulders of their families that built this country, telling them how to live their lives.

That and from the live free or die, lowercase L libertarian in us, we get angry. You know, it's going to get worse. It's going to get worse. In New York, they're talking about your ovens and they're talking about your refrigerators.

They're telling you in California you can't get a gas. So you want it fixed, right? You want inflation fixed.

You want those issues fixed. You can't elect the guy in Trump that is mass, that brings chaos, massively distracted and will never be able to get Congress to do anything. But, Governor, how much I feel disrespectful. I apologize for that.

I'm Chris. But, Governor, how much of that is just people coming after him? You know, some of these attacks on Trump are unbelievably ridiculous. They're completely ridiculous. They're politically driven, but they're real. Right.

They're still there. You think any Democrat, if we had a massive super majority in the House and the Senate and he could actually build the wall, but he didn't build the wall. He never even tried to drain the swamps. I get frustrated. I'm a very I'm all about efficiency. So I get really frustrated when I hear you don't think he fired a bunch of people. You know, he got rid of is a government smaller today than it was. Did he shrink the size of government? Zero. I literally I think that's a good point. But also, did he give you a right to fire these?

Sure. You know how you get rid of positions? You balance a budget. See, when I balance a budget in New Hampshire, I have to do it every single year. That's where I say, hey, your department has 120 positions. We're going to cut that back to 110.

And we're going to fill these positions here. So you think you could have done a better job shrinking it? He didn't know how to do it through a budget process. But instead, he spent seven trillion of your of our money more than we had.

He's the most. But you know, the pandemic, the pandemic, they made they shut down. You thought you thought seven trillion.

Well, put it this way. Seven trillion. Would you say it doubled during the pandemic? What the debt? The spending. They told the whole country to stop working and basically gave us money not to work. Yeah. But again, we spend, what, five or six trillion a year in this country?

Like he put seven in four years like that. That's really bad. That's really, really bad.

I would like to see the pandemic. It was. And if you did you like the tax reform? Oh, sure.

Of course. Because the tax reform was supposed to you cut the taxes, then you build the revenue. It wasn't immediately.

Reagan did the same thing. That's right. So you cut it.

In the beginning, you have a little bit of red and it's supposed to come back. And next thing you know, the pandemic hit. I think that's that's a solid economic argument I just made. It is. But if you can't work with Congress, what's the point?

Right. You know, he says, well, Congress, people say, well, as Congress stymied him from building the wall, leadership gets it done no matter what hand you're dealt, man, whether you will probably could have a Democrats in Congress, we could have Republicans. Who knows? You better get leadership that knows how to get something done regardless of what they're dealt.

He always complained that he couldn't work with his own Republicans. So what's going to happen when he's given Democrats? Nothing.

It's going to stall. You put Nikki Haley in there. Well, now you got something. Now you got something. And I think that Kevin McCarthy for anybody would know how to work Congress.

But I agree. The weird thing is I talked to Speaker Ryan in his very first budget with Trump and he called up. He says, we only got one point four billion for the wall. But look who we got for defense.

They don't want to give a dollar for the wall. But I'm just giving you an idea of he's going to blast. He's going to go on blast. We'll let you know. So then finally, after two years, Trump goes, we're repurposing defense spending. That's a resourcefulness.

A little bit. But look, let me give you an example. In New Hampshire, I have the largest legislature in the country. Four hundred people. Two hundred one Republicans. One hundred ninety nine Democrats.

Right. A slight majority with Republicans in the Senate. I passed a budget, balanced budget. Unanimous.

Unanimous. I got virtually every Republican and every Democrat to say, yes, we're on board. There's always a way to do it. Never let Congress tell you that we're too close. It's too tough to get stuff done. And a president can drive that, can use those powers of leverage. He just didn't know how to do it.

Why would we go backwards? That's all I'm saying. But you do know the Nancy Pelosi. If you talk to George W. Bush, even though he's nicer about it, she was a impenetrable wall to know anything to him. Exactly right.

And the next one will be, too. So why would we hire a guy who gets outsmarted and outdone by Nancy Pelosi? Let's get somebody in there that can actually drive it forward. Well, she does control the House. She was an impenetrable wall. So she was a stronger wall than Trump could overcome. Then Trump wasn't doing the job. I'm not trying to bet. Look, I'm not anti-Trump. No, I'm just trying to bring that Republican party together. Then you don't like JFK either because JFK got like basically, where did he get the UNICEF passed or where did he get? Well, this is a little before my time, brother. But I'm just saying that there are certain criticisms on Trump obviously are valid.

I just don't think that the wall with DeSantis brings up all the time. And Chris Christie, I was there in the play by play of it. They were sacrificing one thing for the other. But I want to get you on the other side. Also, you got the good news already that I'm coming to New Hampshire.

So you have a reason to be great. And now you're also going to be on One Nation this weekend. It's a lot of Brian. It's a lot of Brian. Never enough though.

It's a lot at the same time. One Nation Saturday night at nine o'clock. I can't wait to talk to you there. We're both going to wear I'm going to wear a different outfit.

Yeah. Well, can we go cash? I'm wearing a tie right now. You don't have to. I don't wear a tie. Okay, good. All right. Well, I like your tie today. Right. Unlike yesterday.

Big disappointment. And a couple of things. If you want to see me live on stage tonight, I'm going to be outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania talking about all my books. I should have brought your dad.

Yeah, he'd love that. I've got to do New Hampshire. And then on Saturday, I'm going to be in Holland, Michigan. Basically America great from the start. Just talking about our history. Are you amazed, and you probably don't get much in New Hampshire, how much we have to fight for our history these days?

Unbelievable. I've just passed a law that says you have to teach civics in our school. And we're like rebuilding our entire textbooks around the New Hampshire and the U.S. Constitution.

It's everything. It's the foundation of everything. And that is fundamentally, people say, why is this happening in our universities and our young people? Because frankly, my generation, I think it's our fault, right? We didn't instill that in our kids. We didn't insist on it in our schools. And so I blame the kids, obviously. But let's also take it on a little bit as parents that we didn't drive this stuff early enough. We're only kind of talking about instilling civics and the value of that today where we should have been doing it 15 years ago.

But just knowing our past, you bring up Jefferson and slaves, absolutely Washington and slaves. That's part of our story. You got to tell it. And then you get to the Civil War. And then what happened after? So what whatever happened to that, that situation where you got Ron DeSantis getting labeled for banning books, not banning books, saying appropriate books for the age.

That's right. And then again, I think the tip of the the tip of the iceberg right now is the antisemitism in the universities, which I'm astounded by. You always know it's there a little bit, but the level at which it is coming out is unbelievable. What about in New Hampshire? No, we really have kept it under control. We have a new president over at Dartmouth considering it's an Ivy League. She's done a great job of letting people have a voice, but saying we're not going to tolerate hate and violence and all of this sort of thing and intimidation. Did you see in Syracuse Jerry Seinfeld performing? They decide to protest because he is pro-Israel. He's Jewish anyway.

He should be pro-Israel. Jerry Seinfeld. It's insane. I mean, people, you know, I love it when they go back and they're like friends and Seinfeld and all these shows where, you know, a racist and all this kind of stuff. It's like, give me a break.

It's just they're searching for anything they can. But again, I think we have to take it on as parents. I think we have to constantly instill it in our kids. I don't care whether your kid is 6, 16 or 26. Have the conversation this Christmas. Civics matters.

America matters. All right. And if your dad says you talk too fast, I think he's wrong. I thought he was the perfect face. He's 85. He just can't keep up. You know he's smarter than you, still.

My phone literally just buzzed on that one. So Governor, I'll see you tonight. Saturday night. It's going to be great. All right. Thank you. Brian Kilmeachill, keep it here. Listen to this show ad-free on Fox News Podcast Plus on Apple Podcast, Amazon Music with your Prime membership, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.