Audio:

10-07hhs-hogan

Transcript:

HH: Joined by the governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan. Maryland is going into the Shoe this weekend, Governor. I’m afraid it’s going to be tough for your Terps when they run into the Buckeyes.

LH: Well, you know, we’re going to give it our best shot, but you’re right. It’s a pretty tough game.

HH: It’s a tough game. Speaking of games, I know the Governor’s got this palatial suite over there at Ravens stadium. And on November 28th, the Browns are in town. There are three Hewitt men in the area who, the tickets haven’t arrived, yet, Governor.

LH: Well, Hugh, you’ve got it. You know, I, consider it done. I’d love to have you guys with us.

HH: You know, there’s nothing like shaking down a governor on air.

LH: Yeah.

HH: It’s really wonderful.

LH: Yeah, on the spot. We’ll have some hot dogs ready for you.

HH: But now, to put you (laughing) look, what I really want to talk to you about is your Fox opinion piece. But I have to, news happens.

LH: Yeah.

HH: In fact, Roy McGrath is on the front page of the Washingtonian this morning, your former chief of staff. And they conveniently, while he has been charged with fraud for his time at the Environmental Services Agency, it says, it buries, though the actions in question aren’t related to McGrath’s time in the governor’s office.

LH: Yeah.

HH: The stench of the allegations is sure to waft into a potential bid by Hogan for president. Now I think that’s about the unfairest thing in the world. But would you for the record explain you didn’t know anything about what Roy McGrath, I assume you knew nothing about Roy McGrath’s…

LH: Yeah.

HH: …perfidy, alleged perfidy at the Environmental Services Agency?

LH: Well, of course not. More than a year ago when these allegations first arose about some things that happened in his previous employment, within days, he was gone from the office. And it’s been a year-long state and federal investigation which came up with 27 counts of fraud and other things. But number one, it didn’t have anything to do with his job with us. He only worked here for two months. But it also was something that we had nothing to do with and no knowledge of.

HH: Well, that is what I assumed, but everyone at the Washingtonian decides to blow it up. It will dog whether you run for president or the Senate.

LH: Well…

HH: So it’s better to talk early and often about that. My next question, go ahead, Governor.

LH: Yeah, no, I mean, I don’t know that I’ll be running for anything. But I can’t imagine something that some employee’s former activities in his former job would have any bearing in me.

HH: No. Now you haven’t ruled out either of those races, have you?

LH: You know, I’ve been saying for a long time that I don’t have a lot of interest in the Senate. It’s just not the kind of job for me. I’m more of an executive. I’m running a $50 billion dollar a year budget with 60,000 employees and making decisions every day. And you know, I’ve spent my whole life as a business executive. And being one of 100 people yelling and arguing in Washington and getting nothing done doesn’t have a great appeal to me.

HH: Well, I look at Joe Manchin and I think Angus King, Joe Manchin and a center-right Republican would be pretty powerful along with Susan Collins.

LH: Yeah.

HH: I also look at…

LH: A lot of people are making that argument to me, I’ll tell you that.

HH: Well, are you listening?

LH: Well, you know, I don’t throw them out of the office, I guess.

HH: Okay, that’s good to know. That’s a maybe. Because you know, Chris Van Hollen, who’s running for reelection, I swear if I rode with Chris Van Hollen from both ends of the Red Line, which begin and end in Maryland, no one would know who he is. He’s like the invisible man in Maryland. You could beat him, Larry Hogan.

LH: Well, you know, you probably know who he is if you were riding with him, so…

HH: Well, if I was with him, more people would come up to me, and I’m not well known. And they would talk…

LH: There’s no question about that.

HH: Yeah, so…

LH: Maybe you ought to run instead.

HH: No, I’m a Virginian. I’m helping Glenn Youngkin join you at the RGA, and I assume you’re helping Glenn Youngkin do that as well.

LH: Yeah. Well, I’m trying to do that as well. Mike Pence and I did an event together for him a couple weeks ago, and he’s a great candidate. And we’re looking forward, I’m on the executive committee of the RGA, and we’re looking forward to welcoming him as a new member.

HH: People need to get out and vote in Virginia. I already have. Now Governor, next story, how tight is Trump’s grip on the GOP? Take a look at the Ohio Senate primary. It’s in the Wall Street Journal today. Does Donald Trump have anything to do with whether or not you will run for the Senate or the president?

LH: No, that wouldn’t have any impact on me at all. But there’s no question that Donald Trump has a pretty tight grip on a large portion of the Republican primary base. It’s rapidly shrinking from where it was. I mean, it went, it dropped from 85 or 90% down to, I think the most recent Politico poll had him at 59, which is still substantial. But I think, you know, that the peak of his power was in November, and it’s precipitously declined since then.

HH: Governor Hogan, a lot of people tell me that he will be nominated if he runs again. I don’t believe that is necessarily so. He certainly will be formidable. I will interview him and every other person who runs for office, and I hope to moderate debates. But do you believe it is a foregone conclusion if the former president seeks the nomination, he will get the nomination?

LH: You know, I think if, you know, six months is an eternity in politics. And we’ve still got nearly three and a half years. So I just think it’s far too early for anyone to speculate about what might happen. Just look at past history of every presidential race, and I think every single time someone was on the cover of a magazine saying they were going to be the next president, they never were. So I just think we ought to just take a look at what things look like after next year’s races in 2022. And you know, the race is in 2024.

HH: You know, Governor, if you were both a former governor and a currently sitting senator, you’d be very formidable. So I want to go back to that Senate race for a moment. I really think you ought to do that for the good of the country.

LH: Well, I think you and Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott and a bunch of others would probably agree with that. And you know, look, as I said, we’ve got a long time to figure that out. Right now, I really am, this is not, it sounds trite, but I’m really focused on my day job. And I’ve got an important job here running the state of Maryland. And I don’t like it when people focus on their next job rather than doing the one they were elected to do.

HH: Well, provided you do your job and get those tickets to the Browns game, I’m all for you.

LH: You got it.

HH: But let me actually turn to the reason…

LH: If that’s all it takes, you know…

HH: (laughing) I’m a cheap date. No, that’s not true. Governor Larry Hogan, President Biden abandoned his word at home and abroad. This is your Fox News op-ed that caught my attention. In the Wall Street Journal also this morning comes news that there was a secret gate at Karzai airport through which the CIA, Delta Force and elite Afghan commandos led American citizens, LPR’s and at-risk Afghans for a week prior to our bugout. If we’d stayed another month, we would have saved thousands more, Governor Hogan. What do you make of what the President did?

LH: Well, there’s no question about that. It’s an unmitigated disaster. You know, the President apparently didn’t listen to any of the advice from his military advisors. And look, you know, I don’t consider myself to be a military expert, but it’s pretty simple that you have to get the folks out of there first before you pull out all the guys with the guns. And we did it almost completely backwards by removing all the troops, and then having this, you know, not understanding that the situation was going to collapse. And it could have been, look, you can argue that we needed to get out of Afghanistan after 20 years, but you should have had a real plan to gradually make sure that we get all of our Americans and our allies out before you take out all of the military presence. And we should have never given up the airbase ahead of time. We shouldn’t have, you know, everything that you could possibly do wrong, they did wrong. And he just was completely, you know, misguided or, you know, his decision making was terrible.

HH: Now two nights ago, the Nixon Seminar gathered. It’s chaired by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security advisor Robert O’Brien, and 15 very sharp national security specialists who are across the political spectrum, including two former deputy national security advisors. All of them said the problem wasn’t the Doha Agreement. The problem with the Doha Agreement was conditional. The Taliban broke the conditions, and Biden didn’t do anything. What did you make of the original Doha process, Governor Hogan?

LH: Well, you know, I think having a discussion and a process about how we get out of there, I was okay with. But certainly, there was not a thorough plan about how to do that effectively. I can’t speak to exactly what happened, but you know, Joe Biden’s just complete failure, his assessment that a Taliban takeover, he said it was highly unlikely. It happened almost immediately. You know, he claimed that al Qaeda was gone from Afghanistan. You know, he kept, you know, he didn’t have a basic command of the facts. And he was being evasive and contradictory, and you know, I’m not sure who didn’t do what, or who dropped the ball at a national security and military level. But it certainly, I don’t think if you planned to screw it up, you could do it any worse.

HH: You know, my friend, John Ondrasik, Five For Fighting, went up to an Annapolis music venue, and my buddy, Larry O’Connor, who is on opposite me, I crush him every morning, but we still like Larry, performed the song Blood On My Hands. And Blood On My Hands has become a rallying cry for Afghan vets, because they feel like their efforts have been thrown away. 20 years of American and Afghan blood thrown away. Do you share that sense of my God, what did they do with them, Governor Hogan?

LH: I think most people feel that way. And you know, I have a daughter and a son-in-law who both served in Afghanistan. And I can tell you, they both feel the same way. It’s, you know, how can you spend 20 years and all the countless lives and the blood that was shed, and accomplish nothing? I mean, we’re almost in a worse position than we were when we started the whole thing.

HH: Governor Hogan, whether you are a senator in 2023 or a president in 2025 or simply a private citizen with influence, we have to do something about China which ran 48 fighters and bombers into Taiwan airspace this week.

LH: Yeah.

HH: What do you think we ought to do?

LH: Well, there’s no question that China is the biggest threat that we face on just about any front, you know, economically, militarily, the cyber threat that’s very real. And we, you know, we’re getting beat at every turn. They’re outsmarting us, they’re making, you know, they have long-term planning and strategic efforts that are ahead of schedule while we kind of sit and twiddle our thumbs and pretty much ignore what’s going on. So you know, China is starting again. This is just the latest iteration of it with the flights over Taiwan. But they’ve been taking all kinds of actions, even with vaccine diplomacy, where they’re sending all kinds of vaccines to countries that we haven’t helped and putting themselves in a position where those countries are indebted to them. And they’re flexing their muscles in Australia, where they own the ports and they’re the biggest part of their economy. And now, they’re trying to direct what they do. China is a very real present and future threat.

HH: So Governor Hogan, last question. When you see the profligate spending in D.C. that the Democrats are proposing, what will that do to the Maryland economy? A lot of people think blue states, and you run a blue state. You manage and govern a blue state as a red governor.

LH: Yeah.

HH: What will that do to your ability to actually stimulate economic growth if the feds flood another $5 trillion into the economy and fuel inflation that way?

LH: Well, I think inflation is the real scare. Look, our, we have one of the best economic recoveries in America, the fourth-fastest job growth. Since I’ve been governor, we went from 49th out of 50 states in economic performance to number 6. So I think we had the best economic turnaround in America. But we’re threatened by actions in Washington, and it’s completely frustrating to me that we’re talking about jamming through this $3.5 trillion dollar, you know, boondoggle of a bill. I wrote another op-ed talking about this where we, you know, we’ve reached, I know it was very involved, in bringing everybody together as the chairman of No Labels and the Problem Solvers caucus. We’ve got Joe Manchin. We got President Biden to agree to take all of that stuff out and focus on infrastructure. And then he went back on his word. He abandoned the deal and tried to tank his own, what he was touting as a bipartisan accomplishment to try to waste $3.5 trillion dollars that there’s no support for and no agreement on, not a single bipartisan vote. So it’s just a battle. You know, look, if we can’t even come to pass a bill that everyone, you know, agrees on in a bipartisan way, I don’t know what we’re going to do about them jamming through. They have the votes, unfortunately. You know, we lost the White House, the Senate, and the House. And now, they’re in control. So we can do what we can to stop it, but it’s a pretty scary thought.

HH: I’m going to close by where I began, almost, Governor Larry Hogan. Chris Van Hollen is an impediment. He is simply a yes vote for Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden. He absolutely has no presence on the Hill, no presence on committee, no ability to get anything done. You can beat him. The good of the country is, run for both. Run for Senate and president, but run.

LH: Yeah…

HH: When are you going to make that decision by?

LH: Well, you know, the Washington Post did a poll that said I would beat him by 12 points, but again, it’s not where my focus is. And we can talk about it at the Browns game. How about that?

HH: Oh, all right, provided that I get safe passage in and out of Ravens stadium, because we’ll be wearing orange and brown, Governor, because we are the original. You know, the Ravens are not a fun, friendly match like the Steelers.

LH: Oh, here we go. That’s a good way to end the interview. Come on.

HH: All right, my friend. Thank you, Governor Larry Hogan. Good pieces in the Fox News and everywhere. I always appreciate talking to you. Governor Larry Hogan, thank you.

LH: Thank you, Hugh. Have a great day.

HH: Be well. You, too.

End of interview.