20 Questions for Nikki Haley (& Why Her Biggest Mistake Is Playing Identity Politics)

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So before we went on air today, I was having a conversation with my husband that I want to relate to you this. We were talking about inflation because the new inflation numbers are out. It’s 6.4% inflation that we are suffering. Joe Biden claims that he’s solved this, but he has not.  

And my husband made this really good point that I wanted to share with you. He said, listen, this is the official government number that’s telling us how much inflation there is. This is this, is the, the government calculating this and telling us this number, 6.4%. And he said, when has the government ever accurately portrayed a number that’s fairly negative to a presidential administration? And the example, the comparison here was unemployment numbers.  

When, when we, when we hear unemployment numbers from the federal government, it’s not usually reflective of the real unemployment number because if the unemployment is say, like 5%, 6%, it doesn’t generally take into account or just that number in and of itself doesn’t reflect the labor force participation rate. So you could have a, unemployment number that appears to be getting smaller, but it’s not because more people have found jobs.  

It’s actually because fewer people are in the workforce because fewer, because more people have given up looking for jobs altogether. But when you lose people out of that workforce, and then you make that calculation of how many people who want to work are working, it makes it appear as though the unemployment rate is shrinking.  

So it’s not, it’s not a very accurate number at all. And my husband’s point was, well, I wonder if this is the case with the inflation numbers, because when the government tells us this number, is it really indicative 6.4% is bad? It certainly is, but is it really indicative of what we’re facing? So I wanted to talk a little bit about some of those numbers, the real inflation numbers. And I also wanna talk to you about Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolinannounced her run for president. And I’m fine with this.  

I don’t like any politician, so I don’t get excited or agitated or emotional about anybody announcing that they’re running for president or not running for president. I just kind of analyzed the situation. What are they here for? What, what purpose are they gonna serve? Are they gonna do a good job? But I had a thought about Nikki Haley announcing her run for president.  

And my thought was, in this day and age, meaning in the political environment that we exist in right now, there’s actually no real way to vet presidential candidates. We used to have, we used to have a way to vet presidential candidates. There used to be town halls. There used to be debates. There used to be interviews both in print and on on camera, journalists that were asking questions of both the campaign and the candidate themselves.  

But there’s not really, that doesn’t happen anymore in debates. We have a bias moderator that’s, I mean, what were the presidential debates in 2016? CNN was literally giving questions to Hillary Clinton ahead of time to let her prepare for them, that that’s the state of our debates. Journalists don’t care about anything. Journalists aren’t even asking Pete Buttigieg about the Ohio trained derailment, even though he’s the Secretary of Transportation.  

The best we got from him was him telling us that we could solve our country’s problems if there were just not as many white men that worked in construction. And then a tweet about the largest environmental disaster that we’ve ever faced in the United States. Suffice to say we don’t have a really good way to vet these politicians anymore, but it is important to vet them even if you don’t like politicians and you’re fundamentally skeptical of them all, like I am, I do view politicians as still being useful, because as you and I are fighting this fight for our country, politicians are supposed to be fighting on our behalf, and we want them to fight in a way that’s going to lead us to victory.  

We want them to actually defeat the political enemy that we’re facing. We want them to fight effectively for our nation. So what I wanna do today is I wanna propose a different way to vet these politicians, especially the ones that are running for president, especially the ones that have announced so early. They have given us a year and a half more than a year and a half a year and eight months before the presidential election actually happens. This is something that I can do because I have this incredible platform, but this is also something that you can do over the course of the next year and a half before, before the presidential election. So let’s get to it.  

Okay, so let’s talk about inflation for a second. I thought my husband brought up a really good point that the inflation number that we get from the government isn’t really indicative of the inflation that we’re all facing. Meaning when we’re spending money, whether it’s on groceries, whether it’s on gas, whether it’s on housing, it’s not really indicative. 6.4% is bad.  

If you told us a couple years ago that we were gonna be facing 6.4% inflation, and that that 6.4% number was not actually representative of how awful the price hikes, how awful the inflation was on so many products, I think many of us would’ve been really shocked. We would’ve been like, wait a second, 6.4% inflation sounds horrendous, but it, the real inflation is better illustrated. If you look at the individual categories, some of these individual categories, it’s jaw dropping. So let’s walk through them. So the overall year over year inflation is 6.4%, but fuel oil year over year is up 27.7%.  

Our electric bill, our energy bill at my house has tripled in the last two years. And they actually sent us notices telling us that the prices were going to double and triple. We’re not alone here. I know this has happened to a lot of y’all too. Shelter. So this is rent is up 7.9%. Electricity itself is up 11.9%.  

Groceries are up 11.3%. That’s the most significant one for me because at, we’ve compartmentalized our house somewhat in the middle of winter, we’ve said, okay, well if we’re gonna be paying triple for our energy bill, then you know, the whole guest suite, we’re not gonna heat unless we have guests here. We’re gonna keep the doors closed in different, in different rooms and segment the heat accordingly, just to try to reduce the cost of how much we’re paying to heat our house. And, and it is a, it’s been somewhat effective.  

I mean, you can’t avoid the fact that it still costs more, but we have been able to reduce the cost overall just by doing that. But groceries, you can’t eat less. You can’t eat differently. Flour is up 29.4%, 29.4%. Chicken is up 10.5%, milk is up 11%. I know everyone’s been making a to do about eggs, but it’s to justified to do because eggs are up 70.1% year over year. They are almost twice as expensive as they were one year ago. This is why I, this is why I don’t think that the 6.4% inflation number overall is indicative because these are things that people rely on. We rely on this stuff. Bread is up 14.9%. Potatoes are up 12.4%, baby food is up 10%.  

And then outside of food, airline fares, airline fares are up 25.6%. All of this is not arbitrary. This is not economic cycles. This is a result of deliberate political decisions made by Joe Biden and Joe Biden’s administration. This is the airline fares are results of the vaccine mandates, especially the vaccine mandates for, for pilots. Pilots that not only left their jobs as pilots because they didn’t want, they didn’t wanna get the vaccine, but also the recruiting classes of incoming pilots.  

This is not something that’s going to go away because pilots that were entering flight school didn’t enter flight school because they didn’t wanna comply with this vaccine mandate. Therefore, the shortage is not just temporary, it’s not going to regain its equilibrium and go back to normal. This is going to be, this, the ramifications of this, the consequence of the vaccine mandate for pilots is going to be really long.  

It’s gonna be very far reaching. And it’s not arbitrary. It’s not because of covid, it’s because of government officials, politicians, and bureaucrats response to Covid 19. So then of course, you compare it. Joe Biden claims, I think, I believe he claimed in the State of the Union how well people were doing that wage growth was increasing. The real average hourly earnings is, is negative 1.8%. That means even if your paycheck is increasing, it can’t keep up with how much faster inflation is increasing. And the result is that the actual value of the money that your paycheck represents is shrinking.  

This is the real impact of inflation. I, like I said, I had this conversation with my husband either earlier today or yesterday, and it’s a great point. It’s exactly like when they claim that unemployment is dropping, but not, it’s not really dropping because of how the numbers are calculated. These individual categories of inflation, whether it’s fuel, which is one of the biggest ones, 27, percent eggs, 70% airline, 25%.  

This is what impacts people the most. And that’s not 6.4%. And I’m kind of laughing even when I say this because 6.4% is still abysmal. It’s still something to be, to change your vote over, but it’s not anything compared to what these real inflation numbers are. So I wanted to share those numbers with you before we talked about Nikki Haley’s presidential run, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, did announce that she’s going to throw her hat into the Republican primary for president. She’s going to challenge her former boss.  

She was the ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, and she is going to challenge him in the primary. Her announcement, she didn’t mention anything about him, she just said, it’s time for a new generation of leadership. And this was her announcement video. Take a look.  

The railroad tracks divided the town by race. I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants, not black, not white. I was different. But my mom would always say, your job is not to focus on the differences, but the similarities. And my parents reminded me and my siblings every day, how blessed we were to live in America. Some look at our past as evidence that America’s founding principles are bad. They say the promise of freedom is just made up.  

Some think our ideas are not just wrong, but racist and evil. Nothing could be further from the truth. Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections. That has to change. Joe Biden’s record is abysmal. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Washington establishment has failed us over and over and over again. It’s time for a new generation of leadership to rediscover fiscal responsibility, secure our border and strengthen our country, our pride and our purpose. Some people look at America and see vulnerability.  

The socialists Left sees an opportunity to rewrite history. China and Russia are on the march. They all think we can be bullied, kicked around. You should know this about me. I don’t put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more. If you’re wearing heels, I’m Nicki Haley, and I’m running for president.  

Okay? So there’s nothing per se, wrong with her presidential announcement video. And I don’t feel some of the emotion that a lot of people are expressing about, oh, we have a challenger in the, in the Republican primary. I’m totally fine with the crowded primary field. The more the merrier. Go ahead, fight it out. Prove to us, courts our votes. Prove to us why you would be the best representative as chief executive in in, in the White House in the Oval Office. I have zero problem with somebody challenging Trump and, and Trump. By the way, I think Trump did a great job as president except for the final year, except for C O V. But he’s not entitled to the presidency. Again, nobody, nobody is entitled to the presidency. So he’s not the incumbent. I know he feels he was unfairly, it was unfairly taken away from him.  

Um, I know a lot of people feel like that, but he’s not entitled to it. So I have zero problem with a crowded primary field. Just make your arguments. Nikki Haley, she did great when she was ambassador to the United Nations. Zero problem with that either, I will say a little bit of advice for Nikki Haley as she starts this presidential run. I don’t know who Nikki Haley is. I can’t sit here and easily define Nikki Haley’s political ideology.  

The way that I could easily define Trump’s political ideology, or the way that I could define very easily define Rhon DeSantis political ideology, or the way that I could define Ted Cruz’s political ideology, the way I could define Rand Paul’s political ideology, and the same on the other side. I can define Elizabeth Warren’s political ideology. I can define Bernie Sanders political ideology.  

I can define Pelosi’s political ideology. I can define Biden’s political ideology, kamala’s political ideology. Most politicians, I have a pretty good grasp on what they believe and why they believe it. And I don’t, for Nikki Haley, I don’t think that she has been transparent, not about what she believes and why she believes it. And that’s, a symptom of being insulated. That’s a symptom of being surrounded by consultants and advisors instead of showing up yourself.  

And so a piece of advice for Nikki Haley would be move that, move that stuff to the side. Allow the American people to see who you really are and how you think your judgment is part of how you think. And if, if voters aren’t confident in your judgments, meaning how you speak on the fly, not just your, your pre-created presentations like a video presenting yourself as president, then they’re not gonna feel comfortable voting for you.  

So, I don’t know who Nikki Ailey is, and this is what I do for a living. The other piece of advice that I would give Nikki Haley is leave the identity politics stuff out of it. That, that line, I found particularly cringey in her video when she said, oh, I stomp back at bullies. And it hurts even more when you’re wearing high heels. No, no, just, no, absolutely, absolutely not.  

Here’s the thing. The Left tries to play identity politics. They try to define us by all kinds of immutable characteristics. Race and sex and whatever, whatever else, whatever else, socioeconomic status. You know, how much money our parents had. That’s, that’s a very nasty, very insidious type of political ideology. And, first of all, no man wants to vote for a woman who is saying, vote for me because I am a woman.  

And me as a woman, I don’t wanna vote for someone who says, vote for me because I’m a woman. I wanna vote for you because you are. Or, I wanna vote for a politician, I should say, who is, who has convinced me that they’re going to do the best job in the role that I’m hiring them to do. And I don’t care at all about what they look like.  

I don’t care how tall they are, how short they are, how fat they are, how thin they are, if they’re black, if they’re white, if they’re man or if they’re a woman. I don’t care about any of that. And if you present an identity politics, or if you present identity politics as the reason I should vote for you, I feel very turned off by that very turned off. It’s not just a matter of personally feeling turned off, although I suspect I’m not the only one that feels like this.  

I suspect this is a very widespread feeling in the conservative movement in the Republican Party. But there’s a more important reason not to do this. There’s a more important reason not to play identity politics, not to play by the rules of the Left. It’s a turnoff. As a voter, as as a constituent, as someone who I consider myself to be, interviewing pre potential presidential candidates.  

That’s your job and my job as, as voters to make sure that this person is qualified, that we want to hire them to, to serve in this position. I feel very turned off by identity politics. I don’t wanna see that from Republican candidates, even if the policy proposals that they’re offering, even if I generally agree with that, I don’t wanna see identity of politics. But more important than that, it’s never going to work politically to play by the rules of the Left.  

Because even if you play by the rules of the Left, and let’s be very concrete here, even if Nikki Haley plays by the identity politics rules that the Left has tried to impose on us all, nothing will ever be good enough for Democrats. It doesn’t matter if you, if you accept their terms, unless you entirely pledge allegiance to their neo-Marxist ideology, then you will be painted as evil by the Left.  

This is a tried and true political phenomenon that first you’re given a set of rules to play by, by the Democrats and even the, the Republicans that say, okay, we’ll play by your rules, even if the Republican plays by the rules, the Democrats still rejects the Republican because they’re a Republican. So it’s very naive to fall for the idea that, oh, if I just play by their rules and defeat them on their own terms, then then the Democrats will respect me and like me, and accept me ev and respect my differences.  

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You will be painted as evil unless you have pledged your entirety to your, the entirety of your allegiance. And Neil Marxism, and actually this was proved, this was proved just hours after Nikki Haley announced that she was running for president. Whoopi Goldberg on the view demonstrated this principle. Take a look.  

So Nikki, you know, since you have been asleep all this time and you just woke up, you are just finding out that there are things about our country that are not perfect. And for us to pretend that it is, and that nothing happened is ridiculous. So you’re not saying anything new, and you of all people should know better because you used to actually have some sanity and knew right from wrong. Yes, she, and then you lost your mind and, and went in some new direction. So don’t do that.  

So you see what Whoopi did there? You see what she did there? You used to be sane, you used to have some common sense. You used to know what you were talking about, but then you went off the deep end. Oh, well, what does that mean, Whoopi? What is going off the deep end, going off the deep end is running, running for president, not because there’s something inherently insane about running for President . 

Although I guess you could argue that there is, that’s not what whoopee means. What whoopee means is you have decided to fight against the radical leftist agenda. Therefore, even if you are respectful of us, even if you play by some of our rules, we are still going to vilify you. We are still going to demonize you. We ha we’ve seen this play out in all of the recent presidential elections from John McCain.  

John McCain was not a conservative Republican. John McCain was a liberal Republican. John McCain’s friends were more liberal than conservative, and his policies weren’t conservative socially. And yet he was painted as the devil when he was running against Barack Obama, even though Democrat, his Democrat colleagues could generally count on him to, to flip votes or flip party alliances when casting votes on things that they wanted to be bipartisan.  

The same with MIT Romney. MIT Romney was not a conservative Republican. MIT Romney brought government run healthcare to the state of Massachusetts, MIT Romney what was at one point, not even pro-life. And yet this very centrist, very vanilla politician who also was a good family man, was painted as the devil by Democrats as if he was so far to the extreme right. And a man of bad character, like of all the people MIT Romney really like, you can think he’s an, I know a lot of Republicans being included, think he’s an idiot as a senator for buying into the radical leftist stuff.  

But that actually proves my point. He buys into the propaganda from the radical left. And that’s not enough for the radical left. He, you can’t just buy into their, their propaganda, which leads you to participating in, in their coup attempts. Remember, Romney voted to impeach Trump. That’s not enough for the Left. If you don’t discard and abandon the entirety of the Republican platform and become a Neil Marxist, then we will paint you as the devil. We’ve seen this happen a billion times.  

So this is going to happen to Nikki Haley, regardless of whether she tries to play identity politics, regardless of whether she tries to pull this girl power stuff, which I hate it. I hate the girl power stuff. I do not like it. I think Nikki Haley has a record that she could stand on, but not if she comes at it through, not, if she comes at it through this, this prism of identity politics.  

Politico is another example. They did the same thing, even though Nikki Haley is talking about her racial identity, which should not be relevant in a presidential election. Politico writes an article called Nikki Haley’s Complicated Racial Dance. And they’re reiterating this, attack on Nikki Haley that we’ve seen on the View before, where they’re like, well, Nikki Haley’s real name isn’t Nikki. S 

he’s tried to whitey her name so that she fits into the United States. That’s, it’s her legal first name is not Nikki, that’s actually her middle name, and that’s true, by the way, Nikki is her middle name, but it’s her real middle name, and it’s also an endearment, it’s an endearment in Indian culture to call someone, to call someone Nikki. So, but what are they trying to do? They’re trying to use, use those aspects of her racial identity against her.  

The only reason that they’re doing that is because she’s running for Republican for the nominee, for the Republican party for president in 2024, and therefore they have to vilify her, all of this is to say there’s actually no way that we vet candidates anymore. What we’re doing right now, sitting here and talking about the media response to Nikki Haley’s announcement, and Nikki Haley’s announcement itself, and my, my perspective that I don’t think Nikki Haley is being, I feel like she’s behind a fence.  

She doesn’t let us see who authentically Nikki Haley is, how her thought process works, how her judgment works, because she’s surrounded by consultants and advisors who are essentially running her as a politician, all of this is to say, we used to have a way that politicians had to face their potential constituents. And that way was we’d put them in debates where there, there would be moderators that would essentially encourage candidates to go at it.  

Not not just to, not just to fisticuffs, but go at it meaning unpack different political policies. Give us your worst, give us your best. And they would encourage that instead of trying to insulate Democrats and pose, hit questions to Republicans. So debates are not an adequate form of vetting a candidate. The media itself sit down. Interviews are the same way.  

It’s just the bias of the media town halls the same, the bias of the media. And so we get to the point where we wanna cast a vote for someone, and we don’t know where they actually stand on the most controversial issues, which are the most important issues to know about a candidate. Because the most important thing to know about a candidate is to know how they intake information, what algorithm they insert that into in their mind, and therefore what they’re going to output.  

Because you can’t predict every single scenario that a politician will face, especially a president. And you wanna have faith in their judgment, faith in their thought process. And so you have to know exactly how they think and how they judge past controversial issues and events in order to apply that to what you expect from them in the future.  

And so, what I wanna do right now is I wanna propose a new way to vet presidential candidates. Since the corporate media, the legacy media no longer does it. Debates are rigged, and town halls are useless, and interviews are staged. So this is something that you and I can both do. We can do as citizens, we can do as potential constituents, we can do as voters. And if we do it collectively, it will trickle, it will trickle into the candidate’s sphere and they will be prompted to answer some of these questions.  

So, I have about 20 questions that any presidential candidate, this could be Nikki Haley, this could be Donald Trump, this could be anybody else that throws their hat into the ring, Ted Cruz or Rhon DeSantis or Rand Paul, or, you know, I’m sure there’s gonna be a bunch of them.  

These are the questions that they, that we should ask, that they need to answer. Okay? So this vetting process that I’m proposing today is essentially all of us in the conservative movement, all of us who are hoping to cast our ballot for the best qualified presidential candidate, both in the Republican primary, but then obviously in the general election, this, I suppose, applies mostly to the primary because hopefully by the general election, we will have selected someone that we can more or less trust. But here are some of the, here are some of the questions that I propose.  

We ask relentlessly on every platform, whether you’re on Twitter, whether you’re on Instagram, whether you’re on Facebook, whether you go to town halls, whether you email campaigns, whether you call them, whether you are in independent media yourself. These are the questions that if we ask relentlessly, it will impact the framing of how these potential candidates, talk about these issues.  

And it will help us secure for ourselves an idea of the judgment of each of these candidates. So let’s start here. This is one of the first questions. This is maybe the most pivotal question going forward to ask Nikki Haley or any other candidate, what happened in the presidential election of 2020? What happened? Give me a narrative. Tell me exactly what happened. Why did Donald Trump lose? Why did Joe Biden win?  

After that question, ask them, how do you define electioneering? And what do you think the Republicans should do in response to this? Should Republicans build an apparatus for ballot harvesting? If so, how? The next question that should be asked is these, there’s actually a three part question, a four part question related to Covid 19, but not really the virus itself, government policy. And the question should be, were the government mandated lockdowns, the ones that shut down our businesses, prohibited us from going to church, forced social distancing, destroyed jobs and livelihoods?  

You know, the lockdowns, you lived it just like I did. Were those lockdowns justified even for the first 15 days? Is there any circumstance that a lockdown of that nature is legal and justified, and then move to the Covid 19 vaccine and ask very simply no other information? Is the Covid 19 mRNA jab effective?  

And follow that up by asking our face masks effective? You see why these questions are necessary? Because these questions, it’s not so much that I care personally what the politician thinks, but these questions will illustrate for us the thought process and the judgment of the politician and show whether this politician is uncomfortable answering these questions.  

Whether they dodge the questions and try to dance around it, or whether they understand the reality of the political enemy that we face, should Pfizer be investigated, is a question that Nikki Haley and Donald Trump and everybody else who wants to run for president should be asked. And this is perhaps a question that I would not only like the answer to, I would like this cardio this question to be videotaped, because I wanna see the look on the candidate’s face when they hear this question and when they answer it. And here it is. On a scale of one to 10, how serious of a problem is the administrative state?  

I suspect many of our politicians aren’t aware of this. I suspect many of our politicians, even those who aspire to be chief executive, don’t know the history of the administrative state. Where did it come from? Is it constitutional? What, what’s the entomology of the idea of this so-called neutral class of bureaucrats that are unelected, unaccountable and virtually unfillable? And how did it actually occur? How did, how did it happen that the separation of Power’s doctrine was violated? How is this not stopped?  

I wanna see the look on their face when they’re asked this question to see if they understand where this question is coming from. And then I wanna ask them, will you dismantle the administrative state? And if so, how? Explain how, because there’s a number of steps that should be taken, and I wanna hear whether the politician, whether this aspiring chief executive knows what that is.  

I also wanna ask what federal agencies, which are part of the administrative state, which ones would you abolish first? This is one of my most favorite thought experiments and exercises, by the way. And I can never, I can never decide when I give myself a number, 2, 3, 4, or five, Nope. I always run into about, about 20 that I wanna abolish.  

I wanna hear what these politicians think of this, and on, on our philosophy on governance, right? There’s this huge divide in our country right now on, especially within the Republican party, on what it means to be free. What is liberty? What, what, what is the governing philosophy of a conservative politician? I know it’s a very heady type of thing. It’s not a practical solution for something, but it informs the formation of the practical solutions. And I wanna know, what is your philosophy on liberty?  

Whose philosophy on liberty? Does your philosophy most resemble the philosophy of John Locke? The philosophy of Edmond Burke? Where are you on this spectrum? From, from absolute liberty to ordered liberty?, I also wanna know defi, define your foreign policy. Define to me how you make decisions, because this is a huge divide in the Republican party as well.  

We have isolationists like Rand Paul, we have interventionists, well, I don’t need to name all the interventionists, we have interventionists, these forever war neocons, and that it’s an entire spectrum of really, really different philosophies on foreign policy. And I want to understand in a chief executive, when there’s something that happens around the globe, whether it was Venezuela two years ago or a year and a half ago, whether it’s Ukraine, now, whether it’s the inevitable attack on Taiwan from China, I wanna know what factors go into your calculation of whether the US should be involved, whether the US should not be involved, and what that involvement entails.  

How do you calculate that? Because it can’t be calculated just based on the reaction to the event as it’s happening. There has to be a framework for full air and policy that you input this data into in order to make sure that your foreign policy responses, your actions are in line with the philosophy of the thing. I wanna hear a defined foreign policy from these candidates.  

I also wanna hear an explanation about why we lost, why Republicans, well, technically we won the 2022 midterm elections, but I wanna hear why, we did not experience this, the red wave, the red tsunami that so many of us expected and predicted, why did that happen? I wanna hear a very nuanced answer on that, I also wanna hear about Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. And I want to hear from candidates, should there be any exceptions to bans on abortion?  

Should there be exceptions for rape and incest and life of the mother? Or is life absolute and therefore, the properly ordered moral response to abortion is to ban it outright? I wanna hear, I wanna hear that. No dodging, no, no smooth vague rhetoric. I wanna hear about, the Equality Act. Do you support the Equality Act?  

This is gonna be something that Congress is battling in the next couple of years, couple of years. Do you support it? Do you support the Respect for Marriage Act that was just passed by the Congress? If so, why? If not, why not?, can you define the political enemy that we face? And you know, when Nikki Haley’s ad, for example, she showed pictures of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi. Can you, can you define their ideology? Do you understand what it is that we’re facing?  

It says like the same thing that we talk about all the time, acknowledging the reality. Go ahead, define it for me, this might be my favorite one, and I hope all of you guys, if you have the opportunity to meet these candidate, these candidates, ask these questions. Here’s the question. You ready for this one? Would you use transgender pronouns when referring to someone? If they ask you to and they ask you?  

Respectfully, that question right there, my friends will tell you almost all you need to know about whether a politician will fight, fight in the way that we need to fight to win, or whether a politician is actually just a squish who doesn’t fully understand and acknowledge the reality of the political enemy that we face, I guess going back to foreign policy for a second, I wanna know, would you keep giving money to Ukraine or not?  

Do you think that there should be any strings attached to the money that we give to Ukraine? How would you prevent a war with China? Would you ban TikTok? Now, I know this TikTok question seems a little bit less than, less serious than some of these other questions, but again, these questions are intended to illustrate the understanding of the political situation that we’re in.  

So, TikTok, for example, if you don’t think we should ban TikTok, you don’t understand what the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy is against the United States. How they’re waging information warfare, psychological manipulation against our people in order to hope that our nation implodes so that they can supplant us as the world’s superpower. And in order to find out if a politician understands that, you don’t have to go into the explanation like I did. All you have to do is ask, do you think we should ban TikTok?  

I’d be interested in hearing the answer to this. I also want to hear these politicians who want to be chief executive define ESG. Define it for me. What is it? What is it? Define it. Would you abolish it? If so, how? How would you get rid of ESG? This is maybe one of those, one of those, questions that would seem obscure. It would seem like, okay, maybe don’t waste, waste a question on that because 85% of people in our country don’t know what ESG is. So why waste a question about something that’s not gonna, not gonna change people’s minds?  

If you don’t know what ESG is, you somebody’s position on it’s not gonna impact the way that you vote, but it will tell us the judgment of this politician. This one is particularly, this one’s particularly relevant to Nikki Haley, although it should be asked to everyone. Would you defund the United Nations? And if not, why not? Would you defund the World Health Organization? If not, why not? I don’t wanna hear, oh, it’s important to have a consortium of nations. I wanna hear whether they understand the role that the United Nations is playing in our cultural decay. Should transgender surgeries be banned for children under the age of 18? Yes or no?  

Very simple question, yes or no? Is the culture war important? If it’s important, then tell me what that means. What is the culture war? How do you fight the culture war? That one, I think is given everything that we’ve been talking about on this show for the past week and a half now, starting with the Grammys and then the Super Bowl stuff, all of this. And in the conversation we had with Dr. James Lindsay about the definition of wokeness and how, how it’s infiltrated, this cult has infiltrated our culture.  

I wanna hear what these politicians, how these politicians define a cul, the culture were, cuz the culture war is uncomfortable. You have to talk about sex, you have to talk about marriage, you have to talk about relationships, you have to talk about birth control, you have to talk about abortion, you have to talk about gay marriage, you have to talk about topics, social issues that can be a little uncomfortable to talk about. I wanna hear a politician like Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Rhon, DeSantis, whoever else wants to run for president. I wanna hear them define the culture and tell me why it’s important to fight it and how it’s fought.  

I also want to hear, and this actually, I was reminded of specifically when I watched Nikki Haley’s ad, I thought it was a well done ad, it was well put together. It was interesting. But how do we change the toxic Republican brand? This is the new thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately because it’s not just a matter of convincing voters to be dissatisfied with Joe Biden to be dissatisfied with the Democratic Party.  

It’s not just a matter of convincing them that the Republican policies or policies that are better suited to helping them live a prosperous life. If that were the case, we would’ve won 2022, the midterms and a landslide. But, and even taking election integrity out of it, we still wouldn’t have one in a landslide because the Democrats in the Left have done such an effective job at vilifying Republicans, demonizing Republicans, not, not just from the political pulpit.  

I mean, I think a lot of us, this is what I think of when I think of, oh, vilifying Republicans, you think of Joe Biden’s, GA, gates of hell speech where he called all Republicans. Extremists, essentially accused us of being domestic terrorists if we questioned the integrity of the 2020 election. But that’s not even what I mean. I mean, everywhere that there’s mention of politics, Republicans are branded as evil, as racists, as sexists, as bigots, as homophobic, as transphobic, as xenophobic.  

And any association, people, any association that people might consider with the Republican party, they back away from because they’re afraid. And this is just human nature of being accused of these things that they know they are not. And so someone who is not a Republican ideologically who doesn’t work in Republican politics or in the mediand isn’t used to those false accusations and can’t look at those accusations and say, oh, I don’t care because you are a Marxist and this is what Marxists do.  

They try to ruin your reputation, but you’re just a liar. Most everyday American people don’t know how to do that and therefore don’t want to be ostracized culturally and socially. It’s been a very effective strategy by the Left to demonize Republicans because it makes people not vote for Republicans even when they agree with Republicans, policy platforms.  

So Nikki Haley’s ad showed me that she was essentially appealing to boomers. She wasn’t addressing the vilification of Republicans, the demonization of Republicans or the entire perspective of the millennial generation and Gen Z, none of that. She wasn’t appealing to them at all, or else she would’ve addressed. Listen, you may be told that you’re not you, that you can’t vote for Republicans or else you’re X, y, z, but parties change. People change and listen to what the Republican party of today is for you. If you don’t hear that kind of verbiage from politicians, they don’t get it.  

They don’t get how toxic the Republican brand has become because Democrats vilified it and Republicans neglected to fight back. So I wanna hear from these politicians, how do we change, how do you change, how do you plan to change the toxic Republican brand in your campaign? Because otherwise you have zero hope of getting any votes that are not already entrenched Republican votes.  

Those are my questions for potential Republican candidates for president. And this is what I propose as a new way to vet these candidates since our old way of vetting just doesn’t exist anymore because the media is corrupt and politicians are insulated by their advisors and their consultants, we have to do it. Citizen, journalists, constituents, voters.  

We have to ask these questions on social media, in person at town halls. If we ask these questions in this way, phrased like this, without all of our data, without our arguments, without our opinions first presented, if we just ask the questions and listen for the answers from the politicians, the politicians’ answers will illustrate their judgment.  

And when we understand the judgment and the thought process and the willingness of politicians to be honest about the reality of the political enemy we face, we will understand whether they’re qualified to serve in this position or not.  

This is something I think is really important for all of us to keep in mind as this Republican primary, which now has two candidates, moves along. We will be getting more candidates. Mark my word and this is how we should treat all of them. 

Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. I’m Liz Wheeler. This is the Liz Wheeler Show.