Governor Beshear on Bringing the Country Together

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2:41I once was gone.

2:50Ben Meiselas:Now, that was former President Obama after the horrific anti-Black mass shooting and hate crime in Charleston, South Carolina, the Charleston church shooting by an individual by the name of Dylann Roof. Former President Obama brought the nation together, even while we knew the motivations of that killer were obviously clear. Contrast that, by the way, to what J.D. Vance and Donald Trump have been doing. But I want to show you this as well. This was the press conference that former President Obama had in 2015 after this horrific shooting in Charleston. Let's play a little bit of it. Let's play it.

3:31Ben Meiselas:Communities like this have had to endure tragedies like this too many times. We don't have all the facts, but we do know that once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.

3:52Ben Meiselas:Now is the time for mourning and for healing. But let's be clear. At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries.

4:12Ben Meiselas:It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency.

4:20Ben Meiselas:And it is in our power to do something about it. I say that recognizing the politics in this town Foreclose A lot of those avenues right now

4:37Ben Meiselas:But it'd be wrong for us not to acknowledge it Now contrast that with Vice President J.D. Vance's statements From yesterday Here play this clip That is not a both sides problem My friend is dead because of left wing political radicalization. And if you want to cut that out, then be honest about it and look yourself in the mirror. And here was what Donald Trump said the day before that. Let's play the killing of Melissa Hortman, the attack on Paul Pelosi, the attack on Gabby Giffords, the attack on the Pennsylvania governor's mansion. Why make the case that violence is only on one side? It seems to be taking.

5:18I didn't say it's on one side, but I say the radical left causes tremendous violence and they seem to do it in a bigger way. But the radical left really is caused a lot of problems in this country. I really think they hate our country. OK, yeah, please.

5:33Ben Meiselas:Do you see the contrast between Obama? You see the contrast between Trump and J.D. Vance and how they behaved and how the president should be someone who brings us together, who condemns violence and doesn't use assassination as a pretext to push a political agenda and further divide the country. I want to bring in a Democratic governor in a red state in Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear. And Governor Beshear has been an important voice right now and always about bringing people together. Let's bring in Governor Beshear. Governor, what do you make of what you're seeing out of the Oval Office right now during a time where I think the nation needs healing?

6:21The nation does need healing and it needs leadership. The nation saw and sadly far too many people saw in graphic detail on video the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It was an incredibly violent act. No one should ever be taken from their kids and from their wife in the way that we saw. Now leaders have a choice. They can condemn violence and political violence against anyone, anytime, full stop period and bring the country together. Or they can choose to just condemn violence against people that look like, sound like and believe like them and further divide a country that is that is boiling. This is the moment.

7:06And sadly, this White House isn't reaching or making or living up to that moment. This is the time to bring people together. This is the time to push back against violence, because if one thing shouldn't be partisan, shouldn't have Democrat or Republican partisan politics pushed into it, it's murder. And it's not that hard. Just say that it's wrong. Condemn it every time. Make sure you're condemning it just like you should be condemning the murder of the former Speaker of the House of Minnesota or the firebombing of the governor's mansion in Pennsylvania or the plot against Gretchen Whitmer or the multiple assassination attempts against the president.

7:48It doesn't matter who they're against. They're all wrong. Period. Full stop.

7:54Ben Meiselas:What do you do, though, right now where even when the identity of someone gets out there, like the individual who engaged in the assassination attempt of Trump, his background came out and it was from a Republican family and the person was not like a Democrat, but they still use the language. I mean, they being Trump and everyone and say they did it. They tried to kill me and say it's the Democrats and left. Even when the information comes out, Melissa Hortman, we knew that it was a right. It was a right wing guy, you know, who had a list of other Democrats. That's I'm even hearing today you have, whether it's Fox or whether it's people in the Trump regime, they still keep on saying, well, you know, I think I saw Ted Cruz say it on Fox last night as well.

8:38Ben Meiselas:No, no, no. It was a leftist. It was someone who's a Governor Walz person. And there's just a deluge of that over and over and over again. You know, when I feel like on a platform like ours, I call for healing, come together. But then I feel like they're playing by a different set of rules and they're provoking it. So how do we deal with that when we're saying come together and they don't they don't seem to want to come together with us? Well, you're doing the right thing. And it's exactly what we need to be out there saying. What we see from some people, the manipulation of a horrific act to further anger politics is the last thing that we ought to be doing.

9:16And it's the last thing that's going to reduce violence. I think the way we face violence and cruelty and anger and hostility is through humanity. It's that idea that we are all human beings first and members of a political party second, third or fourth. When you see someone as a person, when you don't allow people to dehumanize them, then you see that these acts of violence are simply just wrong. And the idea that someone would take something like this just to pursue political purposes that they were pushing before, you know, it shows how low and how bad some things have gotten. But I still think most people out there are tuning that out, are turning a lot of it off.

10:06They're worried that their kids saw that video. They're wanting to make sure that their families are safe. And so I think it's really important at a time when some people are speaking out in the wrong way that we are speaking out in the right way. And we're supposed to love our neighbor as ourself. And if you walk out onto your street that you live on and you look at six houses on your street, at least one of them is going to be a person of a different party. And listen, you care about all of them. You want their kids to do well. We've just got to make sure that we can take that from the street we live on and apply it to everybody we interact with.

10:42Ben Meiselas:You know, look, unless you're a billionaire right now or a deca millionaire, a lot of the struggles that we all have, whether you're in a red state or a blue state or a purple state, whether you're in Kentucky or a state like mine in California or whatever, we share a lot of the same issues. housing. People can't afford homes. People are living paycheck to paycheck right now. Grocery prices are higher than ever, even though Trump promised they were going to go down on day one. But he and everyone in that administration say it's absolutely perfect. We're seeing people in record debt. The job market right now is one of the softest we've seen in a while.

11:20Ben Meiselas:So what are you seeing in Kentucky right now? And how are all people doing, regardless of political party. What are you doing to help them right now? People's struggles aren't political. The things they care about the most aren't political. People care most about their job and whether they can support their family and pay their bills. They care about their next doctor's appointment for themselves, their kids, their parents. They care about the roads and bridges they drive, the school they drop their kids off at, and whether they feel safe in their community. And one of the ways we heal this country, that we bring people back together, is on those issues.

11:57We offer to work together, not in a bipartisan way because that's some type of swapper deal, but in a nonpartisan way of pushing all the rest of it out. I think that Donald Trump is president in part because he convinced the last group of undecided voters that he was more focused on the economy, more focused on helping them pay that next bill than his opponent. But the way he's governed has only made it harder. Donald Trump's tariffs have taken my state, which was booming, which had an economy that was really surging. And we just announced that we're going to have about a$300 million budget shortfall that's projected right now.

12:37That is almost all because of tariffs and their impact. You saw that last jobs report, fewest number of new jobs in a long time. First time that another month had been revised to actually lose jobs, wages, the growth had significantly slowed, but costs were still rising. Real concerns inside that report. Again, they're all connected to tariffs. But you know, let's be non-political for a minute. I'm not the only person in Kentucky that's saying it. Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell are both out there saying tariffs are bad trade policy, and they're ultimately a tax on the American people. So if this Democratic governor and Republican senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul agree tariffs are a tax on the American people, it's because they are.

13:24Ben Meiselas:You know, and then just talk about, I mean, you are a Democratic governor in a state that would otherwise be described as fairly overwhelmingly red. Now, Kentucky has its own culture of independence, but if you looked at it on a map, you would say that's a red state. But you have never shied away from supporting marginalized communities. You've always said, I'm going to support the trans community, LGBTQ community, gay community. I support civil rights. You've never even hedged. In fact, you've been very passionate and outspoken. And so I've always thought if you could do it in Kentucky, what people seem to be looking for is just leadership and people who say, here's why I feel this way.

14:13Ben Meiselas:And I feel strongly versus kind of cowering and being wishy-washy and seeing which way the wind blows. I think that's where people feel betrayal. What do you see? How are you doing it? What's the secret? Well, I believe that people respect conviction. Even if they disagree with it, they want to see people who are passionate and stand up for their beliefs. So I think there's two reasons that I can do this in Kentucky, and Democrats should be able to do it anywhere. First, I'm going to stand up for my beliefs, but the next day I'm going to be opening that new factory. I'm going to be cutting the ribbon on the new road that saves people 20 minutes driving each way.

14:52I'm going to be doing everything I can to improve public education. My kids, both public school participants. I'm going to be doing everything I can to increase public safety. And I'll be going about all of that in a nonpartisan way. So people may disagree with me on some things, but they know every day I'm working to make their life better on something that impacts them directly. But the second piece is I show them respect. And I show them respect by explaining my why. You know, a lot of the decisions I make are based on my faith. We talked about the last time. One of the reasons that I vetoed every anti-LGBTQ bill that's come to my desk is I believe all children and all people are children of God.

15:34And I'm going to stand up for those people. I think that they are made in the image of God and are perfect just the way they are. They deserve to be able to love who they love, discrimination being wrong in all of its forms. But I actually talk to the people of Kentucky, not just about my what, but about my why. And sometimes that creates the space for people to look at things a little bit differently. And if there's another piece, it's that I also talk like a normal human being. The advocacy speak that's crept into so much of the language, especially at Democrats, just makes it sound like we're talking down to people.

16:12Like that phrase, voting against your own interests, is offensive. I mean, it makes it sound like your people are dumb when people say it. it's something that we should take out of our lexicon entirely and then just speak to people as people and recognize that most people you're talking to, even if they have voted a certain way a bunch, they don't wake up thinking, I'm a Republican. They wake up thinking, I got to pay the bills at the end of this week. So if you tell somebody you vote against their age,

16:42Ben Meiselas:you're calling them stupid to them. Are you stupid? You're voting against their own age. You're so right. You're so right about that. That's what I hear. And people may say it about Kentucky and I get mad. Why? Because I'm governor of Kentucky. These are my people, regardless of the way they voted. Before we go, anything, you know, we have 6 million subscribers here. This channel is now, you know, more people are watching this than Fox. There's things that I don't see, obviously, that you see as a governor and that our audience doesn't see. And, you know, we come in with certain questions we're going to ask, but is there anything out there that you think is not getting enough attention or should be getting more attention that you're focused on that you want all of our listeners to hear.

17:21Well, I know you talk about it a lot, but that big, ugly bill, the impact is coming, and it's going to be devastating. Dr. Oz just gave some testimony or provided commentary that that$50 billion fund that they said would support rural hospitals isn't going to be for it. It's going to be for some type of transformation, which, if it's just telehealth, means the jobs in rural America are going to be gone. Think about it this way. The rural hospital in every one of our communities is the largest payroll and the second largest employer. And if you want to talk about devastating a rural economy, take out the largest payroll, because then you're going to shut down the restaurant, the coffee shop, the local bank, and so much more.

18:06While tariff policy has been detrimental, detrimental to our farmers in Kentucky, detrimental to our manufacturing, It's causing people to pause big projects, to pause the reshoring that the president wants because the cost of a project could float 30 percent because of tariffs. The big, ugly bill is actually going to do worse. Health care is one of the fastest growing parts of our economy and of our rural economy. And they just removed a huge amount of revenue from it, which means it's going to be harder for you to see your doctor, harder for you to see your specialist. A whole lot of people you know in healthcare are going to lose their jobs and a lot of rural economies are going to suffer.

18:46Ben Meiselas:Governor Andy Beshear, thanks for joining us as always. Thanks for having me. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's hit that 6 million mark by this month.