Charlie Dent
speaker
80 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Charlie Dent’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Jessica, great to be with you. Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, for me, look, I feel... You called me a conservative. Some people call me center right or common sense conservative. I mean, moderate, pragmatic, choose your favorite term. But what drove me away was, you know, I always said this wasn't a these these elections with Donald Trump were not about right or left from a policy perspective. I always thought they're about right or wrong.
I often thought that what the MAGA movement represented in the form of Donald Trump was a particular type of protectionism, isolationism, nativism, at times nihilism, and what I would call a dangerous populism. And it really, it's not particularly ideological. It's really about loyalty to a particular individual. It's not about fidelity to any type of principles.
If you were to ask me what kind of person, you know, I kind of view myself as an Edmund Burke type. That if, you know, if we're going to be Republicans, that we should be about incremental change. And we believe in evolutionary systems, not revolutionary systems. We believe in measured statements. We believe in, you know, discipline. And that's kind of where we got stability and order.
I mean, that's where I think a lot of sort of center right folks come from or center right conservatives come from. And I don't think that's where the party is right now. It's taken on a form of, you know, radical positions like on tariffs that are completely antithetical to.
to free markets and certainly represent a type of revolutionary change that should really appall people who would kind of embrace that center-right or conservative ideology.
Well, Trump's tariff policy is essentially very similar to what the AFL-CIO would be proposing. The AFL-CIO Democrats, Sean Fain at the UAW, is very supportive of many of these tariffs, apparently. And I guess what I find remarkable is that Democrats have not been able to articulate a strong, forceful opposition policy To the Trump tariffs, because many of them agree with the basic policy.
They might not like the way Trump is doing it. But for years, you know, I've been in politics. I've heard plenty of Democrats from Bernie Sanders and others, you know, who've embraced this idea of protectionism in a very naked form. And that's what I guess disturbs me most about where my party is, is that we were not that party.
We were the party that was embracing opening markets for American producers. We had a forward looking aspirational view of the world. that we could actually compete. And many of those who were advocating this type of protectionism had thrown up their hands and said, boy, you know, we're just not good enough anymore.
And, you know, look, I'm all for using tariffs and countervailing duties on a very targeted basis, but in response to problems, you know, illegal dumping or illegal subsidies, certainly people, countries that are using child labor, you
And other forms of what we would consider to be real trade abuses are in the case of China, where they coerce technology transfers, which is a big problem, or steal intellectual property. Okay, that's how you use them, but we don't use these across-the-board tariffs against friend and foe alike. and think that this is somehow going to grow our economy, it'll just have the opposite effect.
It'll be very negative and it'll punish American consumers as well as manufacturers and farmers. And it's pretty self-evident to me, and just look at how the markets have reacted, if we need any further explanation. But you're seeing it all across the country, people are reacting.
Just the other day in the Allentown Morning Call, Mack Trucks said they're laying off 250 to 350 employees, largely over the tariffs. I mean, this is what we're dealing with. It's
First, Democratic approval ratings are in the tank as well. I mean, their numbers are not very good. Many people I saw a poll recently suggesting about 70 percent of voters thought they were out of touch with the American public.
But at the end of the day, what I do think motivates those voters who would prove decisive in a presidential election, these are the voters who are not firmly in the Trump camp or firmly in the Democratic or Kamala Harris camp. These are people who are persuadable. And it's quite clear to me that many of them were motivated by economic issues.
And so to the extent that we are having this debate about where Trump said he was going to lower prices on day one, and here we are going into a trade war. that is having real-world impacts on people's 401ks. They're worried about their jobs. A recession seems probable at this point. And I think economic issues will drive the day.
And of course, what we're hearing, none of this policy is lowering prices. So even though the president is, I think, largely in step with where the American people are on border security, where they clearly want the border controlled. They might not like the way Trump does things.
I think at the end of the day, these economic issues are going to motivate those other, what I'll call swing voters, what's left of them. And, you know, remember too, I also looked at some polling recently too, you know, on this 100 day anniversary, there must've been a dozen polls. And so I'm kind of pulled out. I try not to talk about polls too often, but
They all came out and it showed the generic congressional ballot, I think, was about minus seven for the Republicans. So, I mean, in other words, the Democrats were doing better there. And remember, midterm elections are usually not about the party out of power, even though Democrats are doing very unfavorably. Luckily for them, the election is not going to be about them. It's going to be about
Donald Trump and the Republican Party. That's how midterms typically go.
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