But right now, let's bring in Governor Glenn Youngkin, the 74th Governor of Virginia. Governor, always great to hear from you. Thanks for calling in.
Brian, great to be with you. And again, welcome to Virginia. I know your show is now broadcast all over the Commonwealth, and thanks for keeping Virginians fully informed.
Yeah, thanks so much. And the quality time, too. We just got word yesterday, WNIS is now taking all three hours, and that's Virginia Beach, and of course Richmond and Charlottesville, and just about everywhere else. So Governor, I got to ask you, the last time I spoke to you, it was before the switch out of Biden and Harris. For a while, Virginia was in play. It was like a flat-footed tie with Biden and Trump. Has Harris pulled away since she took control of the party from Trump? Yeah, Brian, first of all, the latest public poll has Kamala up a bit, but in the margin of error. And so Virginia is competitive.
Let's be serious. And the fact that we're having this conversation that Virginia is competitive when Joe Biden won by 10 points in 2020 is stunning. And I think it's reflective of the fact that the key issues on voters' minds are the economy and the border. And those are big issues in Virginians' minds.
And that's why they have seen, by the way, that common sense conservative leadership works. Listen, we have been roaring in Virginia for the last two and a half years when we turned around the failed policies of the previous administration. And Virginians saw what President Trump did when he was president in his first term, where he built this rip-roaring economy that lifted up all Americans and they won it again. And that's why Virginia is competitive when and you look at the other battleground states.
I mean, listen at Arizona and Nevada and Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Georgia and even North Carolina. Listen, you know, the number one issue is the economy. And the second issue is the border and immigration.
And he has 20 plus leads on Kamala Harris on those top two issues. So this is going to get to issues and policy and the future of America and Americas. Americans want strength back in the White House. Virginians want strength back in the White House.
And that's why this thing is going to be so tight and so hard fought over the course of the next 90 days. You know, Governor, you never hesitated. You went from the business world to political world, but you never thought to yourself, I better not do interviews. You were everywhere. So and there was a risk to that. Because if you showed if you showed that you were a rookie and if you showed naivete on these issues or you ever said, I don't know, they would have been like, oh, that guy Glenn Youngkin is not ready for primetime. But instead, you beat Terry McAuliffe, who was trying to get another four years as governor.
And and you became one of the fastest rising stars on the right. Here's an experienced politician that will only do an interview. One interview with her with her running mate, Tim Walz.
How do you explain the reluctance to sit down with an interview? Well, I think first and foremost, the fact that it has been thirty seven days and she has not sat for a real interview to talk about anything of substance. And in fact, they've been using anonymous sources to float all the flip flops is stunning.
And I just want to be really clear. Kamala Harris has not changed her position on any of the left liberal views that she has always had. And they are literally floating these ideas that she's going to flip flop on these topics almost because she can't stand in front of a microphone and actually defend her position. And at the end of the day, she wanted to ban fracking at the end of the day.
She wanted Medicare for all. She wants to not hold illegal immigrants accountable by prosecuting them. She wants to fund them.
There's no jail time. She wants literally free health care for them. She absolutely never saw a spending bill that she didn't support. She she at the end of the day was the last person in the room with Joe Biden on the failed evacuation from Afghanistan.
And God bless President Trump for standing with those Gold Star families this week and recognizing the three year anniversary of horror that that withdrawal represented. She was the one that signed the last signed the deciding vote in order to unleash spending on America. Her track record, her track record is the Biden Harris track record.
Americans know this and that's why that is why she cannot go in front of folks and explain it because she knows these are all loser issues in Americans eyes. I mean, can you believe that number one, she's no longer for an EV mandate. She ran on that. She is no longer for the new Green Deal. She co-sponsored it. She's no longer supporting Medicare Medicare for all. She ran on that in twenty nineteen.
She never explained why she didn't want that, how that's going to alienate a lot of people on her left. And then what I think is the craziest thing ever, the thing that she called a medieval vanity project. She is now for finishing the wall.
I mean, are you kidding me? Finishing the wall. I said that sarcastically when she came out and stole Donald Trump's idea to not tax tips. She did it without apology, as if she came up with it. And I said, what's next? Is she going to say I'm going to build the wall?
And that's what we woke up till today. She's actually going to do this. Well, Brian, let me reiterate, you've not heard her say any of that, because we all firmly know that she believes that there should be a Green New Deal and that there should be a ban on fracking. And she believes that illegal immigrants should not be prosecuted. She wants them to have free health care. She believes that there should be that we should abolish the filibuster.
She believes this stuff. And therefore they're having anonymous sources float these ideas in order to temper people's beliefs how left liberal she really is. You know, it's interesting to end up when she has to stand up and express her true views. I believe I believe that she will be unable to avoid the truth that she believes in all of these progressive left policies. That's where Kamala Harris has always been. That's where she will be. And that is why she won't do a media interview.
You know, when you were you, you were co-CEO, I think of the Carlyle Group when President Trump starts running in 2016 and he came outside. Got to build the wall. Immigration is the problem.
Mexico is not sending us their best. We are going to crack down on that. We're going to build up America's defense again.
We're going to. So, OK, some people were for that. Some people were against it. Hillary Clinton didn't take any of his issues except for she. She backed off that trade deal, the TPP. Besides that, Hillary Clinton just ran. You know, Joe Biden pretended to be a moderate, but he just ran. He never stole Donald Trump's issues. They realized that Trump's issues are now more popular now in 2024 than they were in 2016. In fact, now 53 percent of the country want the wall finished when he was running was 42 percent.
So instead of admitting it, they're just taking it without acknowledging it, instead saying they're involved. So this is stunning while doing very few interviews and only committing to one debate. Governor, have they reached out to you about being an active surrogate over these next 70 days?
Yes. So, of course, I have fully endorsed the president and stood strong for him. I just so appreciated the opportunity to speak at the convention and express my clear view that America is ready for strength back in the White House and is tired of weakness. And this is an election about strength versus weakness. And as we discussed, Virginia's competitive. And I look forward to enthusiastically working to do everything we can in order to make sure that Donald Trump is our president next and Kamala Harris is not. So I imagine they'll be smart to tap into you to do just that. So, Governor, you've got a lot going on in your state.
Number one, I got to salute you. You're pushing also for a ban on cell phones in schools. Where are you at with that?
Yes. So our executive order is in place that we are issuing draft policy now that's in that's being circulated to enable to enact cell phone free education. Bell to Bell. We want the cell phones not in school. And it is going to be an absolute revolution in the mental health of our kids, in the learning capability of our kids, and on top of that, combating the crime that goes on in schools.
You know, so many, if not 100 percent of the illegal drug trades that happen around schools happen on cell phones. And so this is a great opportunity for us to put boundaries around children and protect them from what social media has been doing to them, from from a behavioral standpoint, depression standpoint, to increase academic outcomes, and most importantly, to allow them to be kids again and to fully enjoy relationships with each other as opposed to with an electronic device. We're pressing forward aggressively on this. What I'm most encouraged by, Brian, is that in advance of finalizing our order, we're already seeing 113 out of 131 school districts even run faster and say, Governor, we agree with you and we're going to put these in faster than you've even asked us to do. And that, I think, reflects the fact that America is just, Virginians are just tired of what cell phones and social media are doing to our children. There's no doubt about it. I think it's a great move.
I don't think it's going to be much pushback on it. In terms of election integrity in Virginia, you guys really have not been a problem, but you've taken it to another level. What are you doing in terms of making sure who's voting as legally here and legally a citizen?
Well, the reality, of course, is that the voter motor law that was passed, you know, two decades ago forced DMVs to offer the ability to register to vote to everybody that does business in a DMV in our division of motor vehicles. And therefore, whether it was purposeful or by accident, non-citizens have ended up on voter rolls. And so we went to work aggressively to make sure that we are using all of the data scrubs that we can, the Social Security Agency and all of the identification data that we have to scrub non-citizens off the data rolls.
And gosh, we had 6,300 of them that came off. We've also done the same thing with regards to the national data on on on deaths. And we found in 2023 nearly 80,000 people who had sadly died in Virginia that were still in the voter rolls. And I think at the heart of all of this is using all the tools at our disposal to make sure that we have the cleanest voter rolls in the country.
And I've been really encouraged by the efforts across the nation, particularly by Republican governors, to do exactly this. Listen, at the end of the day, America's elections should be decided by American citizens. And my job as a governor is to use every tool in my toolkit to make sure that our elections are trusted, that they are transparent and they are secure. And I will say that one of the great things about our elections, Brian, is we have paper ballots. We do not have votes.
We have counting machines. And across the Commonwealth, there are signs posted this this year because of my executive order that will make it very clear that if you are voting as a non-citizen, you are violating the law. And that was successful, Governor DeSantis, too. If you do this, you fake, you vote twice, you're going to go to jail. 100% paper ballots.
That's huge. We've got to take a step back to make people feel secure. I don't care who wins.
I just want the right person to win. And I think most of the country also wants voter ID, blacks, whites, Hispanics. It's an insult, I think, to say a certain race or a certain gender is not able to get ID. We can't function. I can't get in this building. You can't get on a plane or a bus, Amtrak or anywhere with that ID.
Can't get a credit card, I think. And there's other things you could have regardless of how much money you have. So I hope people get with that.
But I'd be remiss if I didn't bring you to this. On one nation over the weekend, I'm going to be talking about both economic plans that we know. And Governor Harris is doing something that many people think is good for the economy. She wants to raise the corporate tax rate.
What I've always understood and you did international. You did international business is that when you lower the corporate tax rate, you make it more desirable for companies to come to America. We were at 35 percent. Trump dropped it to 21. She wants it to ratchet it up to 28, saying greedy corporations have had it too good for too long. Can you tell us the reality of the ripple effect of that? Yeah, if I can, Brian, in a big picture, what the progressive left wants to do is raise taxes and they want to raise them on everybody. And do not be confused by the fact that a tax raise on corporate America is going to be a tax raise on everyone. Don't be confused when they start talking about allowing all of the great tax reforms that were put forth in the first Trump administration to expire. It's a tax raise on everyone. And we recognize, finally, that when they increase taxes on everyone, it is a blow not only to our economy, but we already have Americans living. Sixty six percent of Americans living paycheck to paycheck. They can hardly make it work because of the inflation that was unleashed by the unbridled spending by the Harris Biden administration. Let's be clear who was pulling the strings.
I think Connell was pulling a lot of them. And so when we begin to focus then just on corporate taxes, the reality is businesses have brought more money home because of the tax cuts and Jobs Act changes. We've seen much more investment in the United States because of this. And therefore, any increase in taxes that makes America less competitive with the world damages American business. We want businesses to build in America.
We want them to invest in America because it is the best place in the world to be right now before Kamala Harris tries to ruin it. We've seen it in Virginia. Let me just be clear. We immediately came in and said we're open for business. We streamline regulations. We provided tax relief.
And guess what? We have had record job growth. We have had record investment. Nearly 80 billion dollars of companies that are here or coming have committed to invest in Virginia, which is multiples of anything we've ever seen before.
When we allow companies and Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money, they invest it and they spend it and that is good for the economy. Governor, do you want to run for president less or more since you've seen it up close with President Trump and you've seen this process? Right now, Brian, I am so happy with the job I'm doing as governor.
I have to say, Brian, I can't I can't express how purposeful I feel every day going to work. Virginia is warring. It's exciting to see, notwithstanding the fact that I fight against the legislature that is controlled by the Democrats. We get an enormous amount done because common sense conservative policies work and people want more of them. And I think we've all got to go to work this fall to make sure that President Trump wins and that America has strength back in the White House. Yeah, I know you two really hit it off. I know from his perspective anyway, and I think you feel the same way. And I've seen you in action, Governor.
You truly love this job. Governor Glenn Youngkin, 74th governor of Virginia. And it's you cannot get reelected. It's not allowed. So we'll see what happens next. And hope to talk to you again soon, Governor. Thanks so much, Brian.
God bless you. Thanks for having me from the Fox News podcast network. I'm Janice Dean, Fox News senior meteorologist. Be sure to subscribe to the Janice Dean podcast at Fox News podcast dot com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And don't forget to spread the sunshine. Listen to the show and free on Fox News podcast, plus on Apple podcast, Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
