CLAY: We are set to be joined now by Tudor Dixon, who is the candidate for Republican governor, great state of Michigan. She had a debate this week with Gretchen Whitmer, where Gretchen Whitmer said that schools were only shut down for three months. And that comment is echoing across all of Michigan. Tudor, we’ve had you on before. Appreciate you joining us now. And my wife’s family is all from Michigan. They are fired up to get out and vote for you. What sort of impact are you seeing from the debate and what are you hearing from people as you cover the entire state here 11 days from the midterm?

DIXON:  Well, thank you for having me. We are getting a lot of momentum. We’re seeing people really fired up. That comment alone made parents crazy. But it was funny to me because yesterday, as we’re on the campaign trail, I had parents saying to me, when you said there was an audible gasp, there was in our house, it was the kids who went. “We were out of school for longer than three months.” And it wasn’t just our elementary school kids. It wasn’t up through high school. It’s our college kids. College campuses did not go back and those were the kids that were paying for school and they were kept out.

Every parent knows their children were out of school longer than 3 months. Gretchen Whitmer lied to us. Again.

No one is falling for Gretchen’s attempts at stretchin’ the truth. pic.twitter.com/gsIqPARu8c

— Tudor Dixon (@TudorDixon) October 27, 2022

So, the fact that she said that it was outrageous, it was ridiculous and it was very smug. She had a smile on her face. She looked right at the camera and said, “Our kids were only out for three months.” People are irate because we have had some of the most significant learning loss of any state in the United States. What the records show from our fourth and eighth grade reading results are that our fourth and eighth graders lost 30 years of progress in the state of Michigan. That is crazy to think about the fact that they are that far behind, that we have we have gone back in time that far for our kids. And how are we going to catch that back up? How are we going to get our kids back on track? Well, the surrounding states that had kids out for not as long because not many people had kids out for as long as Michigan, but somewhere close to what we had, they have already implemented tutoring programs in their state, but Gretchen Whitmer has not implemented this tutoring program. In fact, she has done the opposite of helping kids.

She had the opportunity to pass reading scholarships in the midst of covid. She vetoed that, did not help families in the state. And I called her out on that when she was on the debate stage. Why didn’t these budgets that have a reduction in the personal income income tax, have a child tax credit, reduction in retirement income? Her response was it wouldn’t have happened until spring. Oh, wait, what? Once you and Biden have a full blown recession going on, then people would get money back in their wallets. That doesn’t sound like a good deal. What is going on?

Gretchen Whitmer told us Joe Biden was “proven.” His policies are a proven disaster and the first step in holding him accountable is defeating Gretchen Whitmer on November 8. pic.twitter.com/vAP6bXv6Fj

— Tudor Dixon (@TudorDixon) October 28, 2022

BUCK:  So, just just to be clear and appreciate you being here with us again and we’re really obviously rooting for you and trying to mobilize Michiganders on your behalf, as I think it is. It is an issue of simple sanity and justice to make sure that Gretchen Whitmer is no longer the governor, that you’re in there to do a much better job going forward. How long were kids and you may have said this when you’re giving a fulsome answer here on the policies and the issues of learning loss. But how long were kids out in Michigan? We know it wasn’t three months, but wasn’t it one of the longest durations of any state in the country?

DIXON:  This will likely shock you. But the kids in Detroit, the kids in Flint and the kids in Ann Arbor were still out of school — they shut down again — at the beginning of 2022, this year.

BUCK:  That’s right.

CLAY:  It’s absolutely crazy. Tudor, I don’t think I’d be doing the show if covid hadn’t happened because I was a dad. I was doing sports talk radio, and I just got so fired up about all the failures that I was seeing in blue states and from blue state politicians, and I just couldn’t be quiet any longer. You’re a mom of four, and I know your family had a lot of challenges during covid, as many different families did out there. Do you think you’d be running for governor if Gretchen Whitmer hadn’t been such a disaster with covid?

DIXON:  No, because the covid policies were what opened our eyes to how significantly bad the state is doing, how we are on the wrong track in a way that very few states are. Her policies, it’s just kind of peeled back the onion to what she’s been doing with business. When she went into office, she used her agencies to go after farmers. Farmers for the target. What governor goes after the farmers? So, our farmers have struggled under Gretchen Whitmer’s reign. This idea of being anti-American energy, the Biden-Whitmer anti energy. She is trying to follow in Biden’s footsteps and shut down one of our pipelines in the state of Michigan, which would be catastrophic. We’re already seeing increased prices in heating homes and this is the source of propane. Michigan uses more propane than any other state. This is our source of propane to heat homes. It’s outrageous to think she is so married to what we’re seeing in the federal government in the state of Michigan. It’s devastating.

But then the education portion of it, you’re right. I have four kids. They’re all school-aged. I saw this happening. I saw it coming because it was in the news and I knew that she would be horrible. But she I couldn’t have even predicted how horrible the lockdowns would be for our kids. You know, in 2019, Gretchen Whitmer was sued by Detroit public school kids for a civil rights violation because they said that she violated their right to have a chance at literacy. Look at what she went after that lawsuit and settling with these kids and promising that this would never happen to Detroit again. Ninety percent illiteracy rate. The reading scores in Detroit went lower than any other part of the state.

She doesn’t care. Now she’s bringing Barack Obama into Detroit to try to convince these folks to vote for her again. Why would you ever vote for her again? And how can Barack Obama stand there? How disturbing to think that he is willing to go into Detroit and say, yes, vote against yourself again. That’s disgusting.

BUCK:  We’re speaking to Tudor Dixon. She is in a critical race in Michigan for the governor. And I’m wondering, as all this is playing out, the national media and the outside donor forces, what are they afraid of or what is that array like right now? How are they coming after you? What are they trying? Are they pretending that Whitmer wasn’t in favor of BLM? Like, what are some of the lies that are being peddled and some of the ways that big money from the coasts are trying to determine who the next governor of Michigan is?

DIXON:  It’s not even just big money. It’s the media who came out, came to her rescue and said technically schools were only closed for three months. And we’re all like, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” that you think that I mean, you are holding her water. That is how sick the mainstream media is that they would come to her rescue. But big money has come into the state. We just saw the latest report. It’ll be $48 million of a Democrat spend in the state of Michigan. Think about that. Here we are. We have nowhere near the resources that she’s had. And I think she thought, “Well, what is she going to do? I’m going to crush her.” Ultimately, we have a much better message. We could use all the help we can get. The website is TudorDixon.com if you can help us out. We have to go against this Democrat machine. And the Democrat machine is working overtime in the state of Michigan right now because they’re like, “How did this happen? How did we spend millions, multi-millions of dollars? And Tudor Dixon is still going to beat her at the end of this election.”

Schools need to get back to the basics of reading, writing, and math.

Instead, they have made sexual content a part of teaching without informing parents, and Gretchen has been silent.

That will not be tolerated in a Dixon Administration. #VoteDixon pic.twitter.com/GPdmUq7XH8

— Tudor Dixon (@TudorDixon) October 26, 2022

I think it’s funny, I love to tell people when they they ask me, how did this happen? I say at the beginning of the general election, I had a reporter say to me, “How do you think you could possibly do this? Gretchen Whitmer has such great name ID,” and I said, “Don’t worry, everybody in the state is going to know my name and Gretchen Whitmer is going to pay for it.” And then they said, “How are they going to know that you’re a woman. Tudor is such a weird name.” I said, “Don’t worry. She’ll put my picture next to my name.” And sure enough, she did. I bet she’s regretting that now.

CLAY:  She’s regretting in a big way. And you’re going to win this election. TudorDixon.com. I’m going to end with a very light question for you here. Halloween is Monday. You’ve got four kids. What is it like to be in the middle of a campaign like this and also have Halloween coming up, will you dress up with your girls? Will you go out? What does Halloween look like when you’re a mom who’s also running for governor? The election’s just a week away.

DIXON:  So, historically, I’ve always been able to run my husband into being the person that has to go out in the street, because in Michigan, it’s always cold and rainy and then I hand out candy. So, I’ve gotten out of it. But you definitely as mom, you have to be there and get all the costumes on and paint all the faces and everybody wants to be something different and then everybody has to have their face painted. So I think we’ve got a giraffe, a piglet. We have I don’t even know what one of them is, something pink that I have never seen before. And then an old woman.

BUCK: Tudor, what’s your favorite Halloween movie to watch with the kids? Is it like where do you go? Because I gave Clay a suggestion that he’s a fan of now. But wondering if you had watched?

CLAY:  I asked Buck yesterday on the show because my boys, I wanted to watch a Halloween movie with them, Tudor, so we watched The Monster Squad, which came out in ’87. Somehow I hadn’t seen it at all. The kids loved it. It wasn’t that scary, but it was good enough for them. Do you have a favorite Halloween movie?

DIXON:  Oh, I’m going to have to watch that with them. No, we we don’t. You know, they love the Transylvania movie, the Hotel Transylvania movies. My sister in law turned them on to Hocus Pocus and has told them that they have to watch this. And it’s funny to me because I said this the other day, “You know, the characters in the show in real life, I think they hate me.”

CLAY:  We hear that a lot for what we do too. We watch movies and then we find out that the people who are in the movies hate us. But it doesn’t mean the movie can’t be entertaining.

DIXON:  That’s right. Yeah, exactly.

BUCK:  Yes. TudorDixon.com, everybody. She’s got to win this one, folks. Don’t let Gretchen Whitmer get away with the madness. Tutor is going to be fantastic. Tudor, thank you so much. And we’re hoping to have you back on soon so you can tell us how you’re going to govern in the state of Michigan.

DIXON:  Absolutely. I look forward to it. Thank you.