WASHINGTON – United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) joined America Reports and spoke with John Roberts about his meeting last week with the 45th President of the United States Donald J. Trump.
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Partial Transcript Below:
Hagerty on the 2022 elections: “The president is energized, he’s very engaged. Again, he’s very focused right now on the 2022 elections. We talked about 2024, but he really pivoted back quickly to 2022 and what we need to do to regain the Senate, to retake the House, and to position ourselves for a very strong 2024, whomever is heading the ticket for us.”
Hagerty on the success of Trump’s policy: “The policies that President Trump put in place did so much to put our economy and great footing. Art Laffer was just talking about this—the blue collar boom that President Trump put in place has been an enormously successful effort. And to see the Biden Administration come in and routinely go through the process of undoing policies that have been successful, I think are going to underscore the fact that Republican leadership is necessary now more than ever. If you look at what’s happening at our border, if you look at what’s happening with our position relative to China, Iran, everything that’s happening right now is making us less competitive, weaker as a nation. We need to step up and stand strong. And I think President Trump’s policies are coming fuller into focus for the average American and they realize that he had us on a path, particularly after putting Operation Warp Speed in place. He’s put us on a path to recover from this pandemic faster than any other major economy.”
Hagerty on Trump’s role in the 2022 elections: “John, I think the president could be very involved and very unifying to our party to make certain that we’re putting the absolute best candidates on the field and that we’re energizing Republicans to get out and vote. That’s where the president can make a huge difference because he did so much to build our party. Look, he got 74 million votes. That’s more than any Republican candidate has ever attained.”
Hagerty on his relationship with Trump: “I believe I’m the only administration official that served in the Trump administration that’s in federal elective office right now. And we’ve stayed in close contact.”
Hagerty on his election integrity legislation: “Well, President Trump knows that I stepped up and tried to put a commission in place that would come back and take a very hard look at what happened in 2020. It would take a hard look at that election and really put it back to the states to fix the problem once and for all. But I never intended for the Congress to federalize the election process. That needs to be left to state legislatures just as it’s provided for in the Constitution. That’s what my legislation does, and I think that’s why President Trump likes it. It would force an audit, it would uncover those places where the constitution was violated, and it would ensure that no federal funding goes to those states that violated the constitution until that situation is repaired.”