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--:-- John Bickley: This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID, and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info. And if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash podcast. Terms apply.
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--:-- John Bickley: Kamala Harris's choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate has resulted in a lot of scrutiny over his record as governor and the state's increasingly left-wing direction under his leadership. In stark contrast, the state of Oklahoma has aggressively moved in the opposite direction. It's implemented a series of laws to protect children and families, opening up school choice, blocking schools from hiding so-called gender transitions from parents, and even defining what a woman is. Standing firmly behind these laws is the Republican governor of the Deep Red State, Kevin Stitt.
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--:-- John Bickley: In this episode, we sit down with the governor to discuss what steps his state has taken to combat what Republicans say is a war on kids and families. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Sunday, August 11th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire. The following interview was conducted during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Joining us now in our Morning Wire booth at the RNC is Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt.
--:-- Kevin Stitt: Governor, great to meet you and have you here at the booth with us. Well, thank you so much. It's such an honor to be here. And it's, man, the atmosphere is just unbelievable at the RNC. You know, I haven't talked to anyone who hasn't said something like that. And we've all felt that it's felt different this year. and a lot of people that have gone to a lot of conventions have said this is a significant, maybe historic convention. And in many ways, it is because of the events of this week.
--:-- John Bickley: First, I want to talk to you about your own state. You've done a lot for your state. You spoke earlier this week at the Heritage's Policy Fest about what your state has done to protect children and families. This is something that's been a major focus of the Daily Wire. In fact, that's a central issue for Republicans here at the RNC. Can you tell us about some of your efforts in the state on that front?
--:-- Kevin Stitt: Yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, everything I do, I come from the business world. It's really just common sense. So, for example, I was the first governor that had to define what a woman was. And I'm like, this is crazy. I'm like in the twilight zone here because what I saw in other states was, you know, men going into women's prisons, women's shelters. And I'm like, this is just nutso, right? And so I had to do that, sign an executive order. Then I got the legislature to codify that that just says, hey, we're going to keep women safe.
--:-- John Bickley: And then the save women in sports bill is probably the favorite bill that I signed because I just said, hey, boys aren't going to be playing in girls sports. And yeah, you see other people doing it, but that just the difference between our side of the aisle versus the other side. They think it normal that a biological male can compete against girls in sports and you seeing records be broken.
--:-- Kevin Stitt: Also, there was a movement, as you know, and I protected and said, hey, boys aren't going to go to girls' restrooms. So those are some of the things we've done to protect our young ladies, so common sense in the school system. But I think one of the best things we've done is for education freedom. We signed the best school choice bill in the entire country. And so I tell people all the time, rich people already have school choice. They have options. They can put their kids in private schools. If your kid is in a bad environment or maybe getting into the wrong crowd, you can pull them and send them somewhere else.
--:-- John Bickley: But we wanted that for every single family and create some competition in the school system. So we actually got a refundable tax credit now for every single family, regardless of income, to go to the school of their choice.
--:-- Kevin Stitt: That's terrific. I want a question about passing these kinds of laws. You have a Republican-led state. You're the leader of the state. You've also got Republican-led Congress. So some of these things are easier for you to do than some other states. But have you seen fallout from some of these policies? There's all these warnings about what might happen if you pass something like defining what a woman is and separating men's and women's sports, etc. What have you seen in terms of the response and the actual rolling out of these kind of policies?
--:-- John Bickley: I mean, listen, our economy has just been exploding. And right now we're top 10 and people moving to Oklahoma. I just met a guy that's one of the security here that just came up to me and said, hey, I'm one of the guys that moved from California to Oklahoma because of your policies, because of your freedoms. And so, no, we're not seeing it at all. Oklahoma was never like a destination state. But now people are moving here, not per capita top 10, but in true numbers, Oklahoma is becoming a place to be.
--:-- Kevin Stitt: So it's helping in our business world. Our economy has never been better. I have the largest savings account we've ever had. We've cut taxes. So our policies are definitely working. And so the left saying, hey, oh, you're going to drive people away from your state. Simply not true. You know, because I believe we're tapping into this common sense. Even Democrats know that this is getting really weird when you think you can take a minor and not tell the parents and do like the sex changes and different things that are happening, the transition surgeries.
--:-- John Bickley: We stopped that in Oklahoma. I think that's pretty common sense that if you're under 18, we've got to protect our young people. And I tell people all the time that, listen, if you're an adult and you want to have an elective surgery, go knock yourself out. I'm I'm not going to let taxpayer dollars be spent on that, but go knock yourself out. And that's just different than some of these liberal states that are trying to they have to kowtow to every single special interest groups. And it's getting weird. And I think the American people can see that and they just go, hey, this is so far from family values and what's normal that I think people are really flooding back to the Republican Party.
--:-- Kevin Stitt: Yeah, you mentioned California, and Governor Newsom just signed into law a policy banning schools from having any policy that allows them to tell parents if the kid is transitioning if the kid does not allow it. Just think about that for a second. They think that the government should be raising children over the parents God gave kids to parents not to the government. This is just getting crazier and crazier.
--:-- John Bickley: The more that we see what happens in California, and those things have consequences, and we see people moving. You just saw Elon pulling them out and said, hey, I'm leaving from now on. I'm pulling every company out. I want Oklahoma to be the most business-friendly state. So some of my policies on the business front, we set up business courts because we want businesses to know that we're going to protect you. We saw what happened to President Trump's business in New York. And I don't care if it's President Trump's business or President Biden's business. You can't have courts come in and basically arbitrarily say, oh, let's $350 million fine. This is just nonsense. This is not free markets.
--:-- Kevin Stitt: And we want Oklahoma and the red states are where people are moving to. I want to ask about the federal government's role in a lot of this. Have you found as a governor of a state that the federal government is making this difficult for you? Is it making it more difficult to implement policies like you've just described?
--:-- John Bickley: 100% it is. But we push back and we'll sue the federal government every chance we get. The 10th Amendment says that basically whatever power is not specifically given to the federal government belongs to the states or the people is what it says. And so I will be the first to tell you that Oklahoma is different than California. I represent the 4 million Oklahomans. We're the 28th largest state and we're different than Texas or Florida. And that's the way this thing is set up. It's 50 different examples of laboratories of democracy. And so we're going to push back when the feds come in, but the feds will come in and sue us or they'll try to say, well, we're going to withhold money if you're not going to offer, you know, we want to mandate that you offer abortion services or you counsel people. And we just say, no, we're not going to take your money then. And then we're going to sue you over that.
--:-- Kevin Stitt: So they try to do those kind of things. Right. We're seeing that with the Title IX changes. Title IX changes. Coming very soon, right? That's right. That's right. And I think there's 20-something states that are now joined in that action against the federal government saying, listen, this is not right, and we're going to protect our young ladies in sports. And to have biological males coming in and taking scholarships and track, you know, Riley Gaines is a great, great ambassador for this issue. But I have OU track athletes, these young ladies that came to me and just said, thank you, Governor, for protecting my scholarship. The only way I got to college, and if I had to compete for the team against a biological male, just think about how ludicrous that is.
--:-- John Bickley: And so anyway, that's the way we think about it in Oklahoma. Everything we do is common sense, and it's really being attractive, and I think Oklahoma's the spot to be right now.
--:-- Kevin Stitt: Final question, one on everyone's mind this week. What was your reaction to the events of this weekend? How has it changed things for you? Has it changed anything for you? And what do you feel like the impact on the election has been from this sequence of events?
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, like most Americans when I saw that the shot fires the assassination attempt on President Trump life just got super emotional It was just really an emotion just coming over you and then how God just had to have been protecting President Trump life just got super emotional It was just really an emotion just coming over you And then how God just had to have been protecting President Trump because the way he turned his head just a little bit sharper to look at that monitor and then to clip his ear with a high-powered AR-15 rifle. Think about it. If his head would have been turned just three degrees back the other way, it was going to clip the back of his head. I mean, it would have been just catastrophic. It was catastrophic.
--:-- Kevin Stitt: So that's one feeling is, man, God was protecting him. But then the emotion of that, of somebody taking a shot at the former president of the United States, just unbelievable. So just thank the Lord that he was protected. He's ordained for this moment. And so I'm just excited about him and J.D. Vance. And I just feel like there's a lot of momentum right now. The Hispanic population is so focused on Trump. We've got your Rust Belt, your workers. though, those people know that the values, conservative values are who lifts up the middle class. It's the elitist that separates rich from poor and tries to have more government mandates, which by the way, is costing the American people $1.7 trillion in extra cost by their attack on the energy industry. I mean, this is just unbelievable.
--:-- John Bickley: I was just telling my son who's with me today, he's 14. I said, we believe son, that if you're going to go drill an oil well, You should be able to do that. You're investing in your capital. It may not be successful, but it is. You're going to get rewarded for that. But you're also contributing to the economy and you're providing a need. That's the way free markets work. You're providing a need for the consumer that then drives down the cost for everyone. And that's the free market principle. And the other side believes that they should stop you from doing that or put more regulation and more permitting and take 10 years longer than it takes in Europe or China. And they're just running circles around us, laughing at us because we just don't have an all of the above approach.
--:-- Kevin Stitt: And we've got this government trying to mandate what stoves you use in your house and what vehicles you drive. That's so un-American. That's a brilliant summation of the moral case for capitalism.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah. Governor, thank you so much for sitting down and talking with us. Great to meet you. And we hope to talk to you again soon.
--:-- Kevin Stitt: Absolutely. Great to meet you too. And thanks so much for just putting common sense out there for the American people and letting people choose that sort of democratic process is, hey, it's a difference of ideas. And we know that our policies are the right policies for freedoms and for upward mobility and for the American dream. And we're a meritocracy. There's no such thing as equal outcomes. We want equal opportunities for all of our young people. And we want them to go achieve and work hard. I tell my son and I've got six children, guys, you got to go compete and you got to earn it. Just because you're the governor's son doesn't mean anything. This is a meritocracy. You better go obey your teacher, say yes, sir, no, sir. Go work your tail off and go achieve whatever God puts in your heart that you want to do in life. Do they do it? Some of them do. Some of them don't. Good enough. Hey, thank you so much. Thanks, man.
