Burgess Everett

And if other Republican women are coming to you and saying they don't feel comfortable with rhetoric like that, that can be a problem for you as the speaker.

Well, traditionally, the Republican Party did not put an emphasis on trying to elect women.

And they always said, listen, we don't want to play identity politics.

We just want the best candidate to win.

But at some point, Republicans realized, hey, sometimes the best candidate is the woman.

And they're not getting the same opportunities as the men, particularly in primaries.

This is where it's a huge issue because women do have young kids and families, and they have bigger challenges to be able to run.

It's very difficult to run a campaign.

They need resources.

They need the fundraising.

They need the sort of party structural tools and resources behind them in order to succeed in a primary to get over that finish line.

And Republicans for a long, long time just were not placing an emphasis on that.

But in recent years, in recent cycles, there was a recognition and Elise Stefanik actually played a huge part in this.

I think we need to have a tone that reaches out to women.

And that's something that I've been very focused on.

That they need to elect more Republican women and that women can actually flip key vulnerable seats, which they did.

After 2018, we saw historic lows in terms of the numbers of Republican women represented.

here in Congress.

And they made a huge effort to recruit more women, to get them over the finish line in primaries.

And guess what?