Vice President Mike Pence Makes His First Visit to C&B

CLAY: We are joined now by former vice president Mike Pence, who has founded Advancing American Freedom, a 501(c)(4) organization advocating for conservative values and policy proposals. And I want to start, Mr. Vice President, appreciate you joining us.

We want to start here. You had your own battle over the First Amendment here recently at the University of Virginia. This has been a huge topic on this show, Elon Musk buying 9.2% of Twitter. What should happen, what needs to happen for the full marketplace of ideas to be protected in our country? And thanks to the University of Virginia for letting you speak, but what are you seeing as you travel around the country in terms of freedom of thought, freedom of expression in this country?

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: Well, we’ve gotta continue to take on and challenge cancel culture, woke America, and — and you both have done an extraordinary job stepping into big shoes. Now, been some time, but congratulations on all your success and being such great champions for conservative values around the country.

But, no, last night I was at University of Virginia, but a few weeks ago the student newspaper on campus wrote an editorial saying that I should be banned. This is nothing new. We’ve seen conservatives attempted to be canceled all across the country.

But I must tell you because of the great young people with the Young America’s Foundation chapter on UVA’s campus and, frankly, because 17 faculty members stepped forward on behalf of freedom of speech, we went forward last night, we had hundreds of students turn out. I think it was a very diverse crowd. We had a great discussion. And I said to them, I’ll say to your listeners, the antidote to cancel culture is freedom. The antidote to woke America is freedom.

And we need look no farther than the Bill of Rights, we need look no farther than the American founding to know the pathway forward for America is freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to peaceably assemble, it’s all there in writing, and last night I challenged them to come together, whatever their political perspective, come together.

Let’s rally around freedom in America and the ideals that have made this country great. And we had a big night. And I’m gonna continue to visit campuses around the country. Anybody who’s understanding the great work of Young America’s Foundation should check them out their website, check them out on Twitter, myself, Ben Shapiro, Scott Walker who leads the organization, we’re taking the conservative cause to campuses, and I’m honored to be part of it.

BUCK: You should invite Clay and Buck at some point to join you on this campus tour. We’re pretty good at that stuff, Mike.

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: Hey, you’re on. You are on. You know, I tell you, I was at Stanford. I gave a speech at Stanford about a month ago, guys. And I tell people “Almost everybody stayed,” you know. (laughing)

CLAY: That’s a win.

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: We had protesters in the — you know, in the auditorium, hundreds of people outside, but, you know, that’s what — that’s what freedom sounds like, right? I mean, it’s all right. We’ve really got to challenge woke America. We’ve got to challenge the woke left in this country with the fundamental principles of freedom.

But I gotta tell you, we ended up having a great night last night at UVA and I’m truthfully grateful to the school and really proud of the conservative kids on campus that made it happen.

BUCK: Mike, this obviously is with you, with us on the notion of free speech and just individual freedom as a general foundational idea for this country we live in. How do we win, though? How do we actually take it beyond knowing that we are right, knowing that this is intrinsic to our founding, to our most basic freedoms in this country to actually being able to exercise free speech right in a world of social media platforms, megacorporations, cancel culture.

I mean, you’ve seen some of the things going on. It feels like in Florida there’s been substantial pushback against those who tried to attack Governor Ron DeSantis for the parental rights bill. You’ve seen other places where you had conservatives fight back. Elon Musk who’s not really a conservative but a free thinker, has taken a big stake in Twitter. It felt like at the end of the Trump presidency of which you were obviously vice president Section 230 got a lot of attention pickup I think that that’s fading a little bit and now it’s just, how do we win ban the culture? How do you think we do that?

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: Well, I actually think we do it just the way you described. First and foremost, I think we’ve gotta speak out on behalf of freedom. I talked to some young people on campus last night who feel a little put upon being conservatives in a largely liberal student body, largely liberal faculty, they said, “What do you suggest?” I said speak up and smile. Right?

That was one of the great things about your predecessor on this program was an inspiration to me and to millions of Americans for decades. You know, he was a conservative, but he wasn’t in a bad mood about it. You guys are the same, right? We have the right ideas. Let’s go out and advocate them. It’s part of why my organization in Washington set up what’s called a Freedom Agenda.

People can go to AdvancingAmericanFreedom.com. We worked with people, like Newt Gingrich and Kellyanne Conway and Larry Kudlow, and we literally assembled a comprehensive agenda of what conservatism is all about from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. And it gave us a place to really go and remind ourselves of what our positive agenda is.

But at the end of the day the real answer, guys, is what Vince Lombardi said. Sometimes, you know, there’s no substitute for just going out and winning the ball game. And we got big elections this fall. And I’m campaigning around the country supporting great conservatives running for the House, for Senate, running for statehouse seats and governorships.

And I’ll just tell you, it has maybe never been more important in the life of this nation for us to elect men and women at every level who will stand for freedom. And I know that millions of listeners of your great broadcast are gonna do just that.

CLAY: We’re talking to former Vice President Mike Pence. I think you probably expected things in the Biden and Kamala Harris administration would be bad. Are they worse than you anticipated they would be?

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: I thought it’d be bad. I never imagined it’d be this bad. I mean, President Joe Biden has done more damage to this country in 14 months than any president in modern history.

I mean, think about where we are, the crisis at our southern border, gasoline prices up 70%, inflation at a 40-year high, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that clearly emboldened our adversaries around the world. North Korea is firing missiles again, Iran is threatening their nuclear program again, and, of course, we’re continuing to watch the horrifying Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I just — I think that all of it — all of it cries out for people that believe in this country, people that saw a stronger and prosperous and secure America during the President Trump-Pence administration to be willing to step forward and get behind candidates that are gonna make a difference.

But, look. We’re gonna get it all back. Right? People stop me in airports, they stop me on street corners all the time with a worried look on their face. And just — you know, I’m an optimistic guy but I tell you from everything I see as we travel across this country we’re gonna get it all back and then some, we’re gonna win back the Congress in 2022, we’re gonna win back America in 2024.

BUCK: Wanted to ask you this one, former Vice President Pence. Appreciate you being with us here, by the way, as always.

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: You bet. It’s an honor.

BUCK: Vice President Pence, Clay, I actually interviewed him on my mom’s birthday and he did a quick happy birthday video for my mom which was like the coolest birthday present he was ever able to give anybody. So, I appreciate it.

CLAY: That was pretty good. Yeah.

BUCK: I appreciated that. You always remember people who do nice things out in the world.

But I want to know what do you think the Democrat play is — I’m gonna be talking about immigration here in a second — what do you think the Democrat play is for just essentially flooding the country with illegals and — I know the long-term reality of they want amnesty, they think these are Democrat voters, it’s gonna enlarge the state. I get all that. But between now and Election Day to end Title 42 and to put us on track for a million in six weeks possibly?

Not in six months. Six weeks. It just feels like electorally suicide. Is it just they’re so incompetent they can’t figure out how to stop it, they can’t stand the way the left-wing base or what? You know their mind. What’s going on?

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: Look. President Donald Trump put border security at the center of the national debate. And in three short years we reduced illegal immigration at our southern by 90%. We built hundreds of miles of border wall that the Biden administration, you know, stopped the day they came into office.

I negotiated with Secretary of State Pompeo on behalf of the president what came to be known as the Remain in Mexico policy where we got Mexico to agree that people that are applying for asylum wait in Mexico while they apply, literally ended asylum abuse at our southern border. Day One, President Biden gets rid of Remain in Mexico, even though it’s been challenged now in the courts, the order to put it back into effect.

But the very idea that they’ve announced that they’re gonna rescind Title 42, which allows us to return illegal immigrants immediately across the border, it makes absolutely no sense. I mean, we literally are seeing record numbers of people coming across the border every day. The number about a week ago was about 8,000 people a day, but I actually read in the New York Times one official estimate that after they repealed Title 42 they expect that to go to 18,000 people a day.

Now, what’s their play here? Look. I think you’re giving them too much credit. I think it’s an open borders crowd. We know that a nation without borders is not a nation. I don’t think they buy that. I think they are an open borders crowd. They’re an amnesty crowd. And I don’t think — certainly some of them may think of the long-term implications of that. But I think the reality is in our administration, we made enormous progress in growing support among Hispanic-Americans.

We got the largest percentage of votes from Hispanic-Americans in 2022 than any Republican ticket in history, and that’s because we stood for law and order, we stood for border security, we stood for free market economics, the American dream, the right to life, traditional values. So I don’t know if they’re thinking the long-term play. I just think they’re open borders people and you need to understand what’s happening down there is not a result of incompetence. It is the designed work a lot of left-wing open borders agenda that is driving the Democratic Party and the Biden administration today.

CLAY: Mr. Vice President, I’m sure you’ve seen 15-day extension on federal mask mandate for airplanes and airports and trains and everything else. When you look back now, it’s been a little bit over two years since “15 days to slow the spread,” Dr. Fauci is still there directing a lot of the guidelines and national response.

Should he still be there? In your mind is he one of the most, if not the most, destructive bureaucrat in history? How do you assess him? I know you know him well personally, but two years after the fact that we’re still extending things for 15 days, what are your thoughts?

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: Well, I must tell you, that day in the end of February of 2020 when President Trump asked me to lead the White House coronavirus task force, we only had a handful of covid cases in America and no fatalities. But I’ll always be proud of the way the people of this country responded.

You know, we reinvented testing from a standing start. We developed billions of supplies for doctors and nurses and the American people. We developed therapeutics in record time. Developed not one but two vaccines and were vaccinating a million people a day. Along the way, in the midst of that historic pandemic in those early days, you know, we stepped forward and we asked the American people to essentially take a pause for, as you said, first for 15 days, and ultimately extend it another 30 days so that we would have time to stand up the largest national mobilization since World War II.

But I must tell you, lockdowns were never intended to be a long-term solution to covid. I mean, what we intended to do — and we did. I mean, I grieve for every life that was lost in that first year. I’m saddened that more lives were lost in the first year of the Biden administration, covid.

But I think it’s a testament to the American people that no one, no American ever went out, went out a hospital bed, no one ever went without a ventilator that needed one. But it was because we bought time at the beginning.

But in my season of service in the covid task force, I’ll tell you, we had a broad range of people at the table. We had the doctors there. But I also had our economic people like Larry Kudlow. I also had the secretary of Treasury, Steven Mnuchin. We balanced and developed a balanced approach, made recommendations, and let governors and states and local communities decide what was best for them.

When the Biden administration came in, I think they put the doctors in the lead chair. And to no surprise, we got the doctors’ prescription ever since. And the heartbreaking results in their first year really speak for themselves.

BUCK: Mr. Vice President, we so appreciate you coming to join us. What’s your initiative, again, the name of it?

VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: Yeah, it’s called Advancing American Freedom. You can go to AdvancingAmericanFreedom.com. Check out the Freedom Agenda, all the work that we’re doing around the country.

BUCK: Thank you so much, sir.

CLAY: Appreciate the time.