- 7 months ago
Former Governor and RNC Chair Mac Racicot, who now serves as chair of Our Republican Legacy, joined Brittany Lewis on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss the organization, the future of the GOP, as well as President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
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00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now
00:07is former governor and RNC chair, Mark Roscoe, who is now the chair of Our Republican Legacy.
00:13Governor, thank you so much for joining me.
00:16Well, thank you. It's a privilege. I appreciate it.
00:19I'm excited to speak with you today. So first of all, a big congratulations on the new position.
00:24You are now serving as chair of Our Republican Legacy. So to start off the conversation,
00:30can you talk to us about what exactly the organization does, because it has been described
00:35as the shadow RNC? Yeah, that's a bit ominous in my judgment. It is a very forthright and
00:44completely open, transparent attempt to try and grab back, bring back into our considerations in
00:52the political world, traditional Republican principles, things like respect for the rule
00:57of law and promoting responsibility through budgeting and every other part of the law.
01:04I'm using upon those typical things that were a part of the Republican Party when I first became
01:10a member and have since vanished over the course of the last few years.
01:16I want to rattle off some positions you've held. I want to rattle off some of your resume here.
01:20You've served as the RNC chair. You've served as Montana's attorney general and governor,
01:26and you managed President Bush's reelection campaign in 2004. So you were a big part of
01:33the Republican Party two decades ago. Talk to us about the trajectory and where you've seen it
01:37really change and develop in the past 20 years. Well, interestingly, sometimes to the surprising
01:45many, I was not involved in partisan politics early on in my career. Started out in the Army,
01:52obviously not much to do with politics in the Army. And I was a prosecutor and I worked with law
01:57enforcement for a very long time. And then ran for attorney general in 1988. And at that time,
02:05it was incumbent upon me to make a choice about where I sat on the political spectrum.
02:10I had a mother who was a good Republican and a father who was a good Democrat. So it was a mixed
02:15marriage and an open decision for me. And I decided, you know, although I wasn't enraptured
02:21with either party, to be honest, I found myself more comfortable as a Republican and what they
02:27stood for at the time. And of course, when I got to know then Governor George Bush in the 90s,
02:35I became, we became very good friends. And he, you know, compassionate conservatism wasn't the
02:41slogan for George Bush. It was, it was a political philosophy, trying to bring about, you know,
02:48conservative notions and thoughts that are reasonable and in the best interest of people,
02:52while at the same time bringing some compassion and concern for the people that we lived with.
02:58So that's the way he governed, not without mistakes, any of us in that process. But at the end of the
03:05day, it was a thoughtful, reasonable, predictable Republican Party that was focused upon serving
03:11the appropriate function to offer candidates and ideas into the political marketplace, and then to
03:18try and distill them into sound policy. And, you know, the hierarchy of values for me always was
03:25that my primary loyalty was to my country, to my nation, to my fellow citizens. And if it happened
03:32to coincide that that impact concern merged with a Republican Party principle, that was a happy
03:40coincidence, and I was delighted it did. But at the same time, if I had to choose, as Winston Churchill
03:47pointed out, between my party and my country, I was going to choose my country. And I found the
03:54Republican Party wandering off into oblivion and into darkness. And about 2007 or so, maybe eight
04:04during the campaign for president, with the infusion of the internet into the process, making it so
04:12brittle and so angry and so capable of distorting information, that was the moment where I saw the
04:19Republican Party take a steep right turn. And as a consequence, in 2016, I made it known and wrote
04:27about it that I was not going to support Donald Trump, because I didn't think he had the character
04:33or the value to serve as president of the United States. So that's the journey, a long one.
04:40I love it. And I think it's really striking that your parents had, I'm assuming a successful marriage,
04:47one's a Democrat, one's a Republican. I don't think you would see that much these days, because
04:52people are so bitterly divided when it comes to politics. And it sounds like you want to get back
04:58to that compassionate conservatism. So do you see any Republican right now, a current lawmaker serving
05:05now in this country that you would like to see as the standard bearer for the party? Or are you saying
05:10just mow it down and start anew? Well, I don't think so. I think a lot of us are capable of
05:17rehabilitation and to refocus upon really what should drive us in our political affairs. But you
05:23know, we live in a democracy, Brittany, that is dependent upon our consent, the consent of every
05:28citizen to agree. There's nothing that says that we have to be involved in a democracy. We choose it.
05:35Each one of us chooses it every day. And as a consequence, we have to have some concern
05:41for our fellow citizens. I mean, it's not just my way or the highway every day. It just simply
05:47doesn't work for a democracy to try to function like that. So respect for others, compassion,
05:53self-restraint, moderation, all of those virtues that were a part of the founders' belief being
06:00essential to the Constitution and ultimately to our democracy have dissipated in the Republican
06:0640s. So do I have friends and people that I have great confidence in or did have at one point in
06:14time in the United States Senate or the House of Representatives? Yes, there are people that I
06:18campaigned for. I recruited to run through office. And I traveled around the country to support.
06:26But frankly, they've lost their way. And I don't know whatever this adhesive is that holds all of
06:33these people that I knew as good, decent, thoughtful, capable, smart, so bound to Donald Trump.
06:41The only thing I can surmise is that they're worried about not getting reelected. And so as a
06:48consequence, they acquiesce. I think that's starting to change a little bit here and there. I know it is
06:55among the people across the country because they've kind of had it with this all or nothing philosophy
07:02and not trying to live in a way that allows for us in this free society to respect each other and to
07:10try to put policy forward that benefits all the people of the country. So, you know, there's so many
07:16signs that there's so much wrong. We'll see what happens with the big, beautiful bill, which frankly
07:21is a kind of a childish title in the first place and reflects on the approach I think that some on the
07:29other side of the river for me now think is cute. But it's, you know, it's a kind of a reflection of
07:36not treating the issue seriously. And it is going to decimate the country. So they've lost their way in
07:44my judgment. Can they make it back? Absolutely. Are they smart enough, bright enough, thoughtful
07:50enough? Yes, if they choose it. But they've got to have the courage to do it. They're not the only
07:54ones, Brittany, that that are involved in this process that where they've abandoned their reason
08:01for running, their reason to be elected, their reason to serve in a deliberative body. It's not
08:08impossible for them to rediscover what it was that urged them to run in the first place. And then to try
08:15and make a country that we all love even better than what it was.
08:21How if you think that some of these Republicans lost their way, how do you try to get them to find their
08:28way back to the Republican Party, you know, to the pillars you hold dear to being a Republican? Because as of
08:34now, because President Trump is the president of the United States, he's the leader of the Republican
08:39Party, he is the standard bearer of the GOP. What's your pitch then to those MAGA aligned lawmakers and
08:45voters? Well, I think it's very difficult to make the argument to our fellow citizens with 350 million
08:54people are hard to turn around on a dime. I do think, however, that there is a great deal of
09:00dissent with what's going on presently, and it's building over the course of time. Because there are
09:06policies tearing apart the government. There are policies that are focused only upon our own isolated
09:11concerns and imperatives. The selfish interest of the party gathering control constantly and
09:18continually wanting even more power and authority to drive only their imperatives to completion. All of
09:25those things are going to place the country in great peril. As a matter of fact, when you take a look,
09:30across the landscape, and you take a look at how they've disassembled all of the different functions
09:35of government at the federal level, how they're going to, with this big, beautiful bill, transfer
09:40huge requirements and responsibilities, fiscal responsibilities to the state, how that's almost
09:46a sleight-of-hand effort to keep people distracted. They're damaging the country, and in a great many ways,
09:55you know, it's easy to tear something apart very quickly, especially governmental organizations.
10:00It takes a lifetime to put them back together. So look at tariffs. Look at what's happening to
10:06agriculture. Look at what's happening in our schools, our colleges, our universities. I mean,
10:11all the Pell Grant system, the student loan system, all of those things have been attacked and undermined.
10:18And there's no way that we can, without an educated populace, without an agricultural system that
10:25functions to supply us food, without tariffs that make sense so people can afford the goods they need,
10:32those things will come home to roost. I just hope that there's not so much damage by the time we get
10:38to that point that we can't recover in a period of time that serves the American people very well at all.
10:44I want to pick your brain on some of those issues. But first, you talked about your respect for
10:50democracy. Do you think President Trump and the MAGA movement share that respect? And critics of
10:55President Trump say that right now we're marching closer and closer, inching towards authoritarianism.
11:02Is that a concern you have? There's no question in my mind that this is an autocracy in motion.
11:10It is happening right now. The assumption of responsibility for judicial decisions, the
11:17criticism that goes from the president of the United States, regardless of whether you like him or you
11:22don't, every president is in charge of a co-equal branch of government and defying court orders,
11:30castigating them with childish epithets, trying to find any way that they possibly can
11:38to get away with what it is that they think is important. They're tearing apart the separation of
11:44powers. When it gets to the point where the orders of courts are uniformly defied or simply ignored
11:55by the executive branch of government, that's the day that democracy crumbles. That's the day where we have
12:02huge a possibility for disruption, civil disruption in the country and where we start being, I think,
12:09out of frustration and out of a sense of desperation. Simply cannot expect that this free society, this
12:19union that holds itself together by our spark of sense and respect for each other can last. So the answer to
12:27the question is there's no doubt in my mind about the assumption of authority of every other branch and
12:32not just in federal government, this agency, but in the states as well. Look what happened in California.
12:39I mean, there's a marching into town with troops with no notice to the governor, no coordination with the state
12:45state, uh, commanded, uh, military force. I mean, these things are just, um, they mount up and, um,
12:53we're at a point of great peril.
12:55I think immigration is a point where people have thought that President Trump and the Trump
13:02administration perhaps have lost the compassionate part of compassionate conservatism because polling
13:09wise, President Trump's handling of immigration continues to be a highlight for him. Although the
13:13country split about half of the country, according to a recent poll, thinks President Trump's deportation
13:19policies go too far. And when, um, there were protests in the LA area over workplace ice rates,
13:26President Trump did send in the National Guard against Governor Gavin Newsom's wishes.
13:31As a conservative, as someone who is a Republican, how would you like President Trump to handle
13:37immigration? I mean, how would you grade his policies there? Well, I would not claim that we, um,
13:44have had a great deal of just dealing with immigration in this country. Um, you know,
13:49we in Montana share a 550 mile border with, uh, Canada. And, uh, frankly, it's probably a model of,
13:57um, of, uh, you know, the kind of immigration issues that you can confront and deal with in a
14:02constructive fashion. I mean, we have, this is, this is a multi-party problem over the course of time.
14:10And there's unquestionably the capacity within thoughtful, reasonable people who are principled
14:17and conservative, as well as those on the other side of the spectrum, uh, can't sit down and design
14:23a system that does not tear the country apart. Now, Trump's, um, calling card is to appeal to grievance
14:30and resentment and, um, to sloganeer his way through, um, problems. If he's not profane, he'll
14:38pick a slogan. And as, as a consequence of that, he does appeal to a certain segment of the population.
14:44I don't think it's anywhere near a majority that is concerned about immigration. But then when it
14:51starts to hit, to hit close to home, when people don't have, um, things on their table that they're
14:57used to, that, um, those who have come from another country are, are, um, processing and providing to
15:02them. Or when there are, um, possibilities for the, um, the entertainment industry or the,
15:10the hotel industry or whatever it might be, uh, where you cannot find labor, then you know that
15:17we, we've got an issue that we need to fix and we need to negotiate about is screaming and yelling
15:23and castigating and dehumanizing people is not what a president of the United States ought to proceed
15:30with as his primary effort. What would happen if he sat down and said, you know, we, we have to fix
15:36this in a way that makes sense. And how about we begin from the beginning and then try to get to
15:42an appropriate end? What do you think, in your opinion, is the way that makes sense? Because I think
15:48if, I think if anyone could answer that, that would be the winning answer because immigration has been
15:53a top issue for years now. People really took issue to the way President Biden handled immigration
16:00or his lack of a clear, consistent policy, a clear, consistent, um, handling of the Southern border.
16:07People think President Trump is there's a dehumanization effort. There's a, uh, a lack of
16:12due process. I mean, what do you think is the sweet spot to fix this situation? Well, first of all,
16:20I think we have to start out recognizing that virtually every single one of us, but for our indigenous people,
16:27are immigrants, um, or the sons and daughters and grandchildren of immigrants. So the country was
16:32built upon people looking for a better life. And I think that's still a dream. But have we maintained
16:40the Southern border with as much, um, circumspection and as much focus as we should have over the course
16:47of the last 30 years? Probably no, is the answer to that. So how do we, how do we go about fixing it?
16:53It's, I think what you do is you do have the ability, make inquiries about whether or not
17:00those who are coming are enabled or entitled to, um, ultimately immigrate into our country. Do they
17:06benefit the country? Do they bring with them attributes and possibilities for dreams of their own
17:12that are constructive and helpful? Um, we do better at, at the border itself without, I think,
17:18being so, um, so forceful and so angry about what's going on that I'm talking about a change
17:25in tone and a change in effort and a bipartisan acceptance of responsibility for how we deal with
17:32this. I mean, if you can do it with tariffs and that's really, he didn't do it that, um, frankly,
17:38it's such a mess. Now, God only knows what it is, but typically tariffs are settled upon a bipartisan
17:44basis and with negotiations going back and forth. If you can do that with goods and services,
17:50why can't you do that with people? The one big beautiful bill act is legislation that holds
17:55president Trump's immigration policies, as well as his signature tax policies. He wants it on his desk
18:01by July 4th and it narrowly eats through the house. Um, and it's right now in front of the Senate,
18:07Democrats and Republicans agree though, that there will be changes made. Some big points of contention
18:13here are the cuts to Medicaid as well as the trillions. It will add to the national deficit.
18:18I know you take issue with this bill's name, but what else do you think about it? What do you think
18:22about the meat inside of it? Well, it's, um, it's a slight of hand, um, in my judgment where you're,
18:31you're taking, um, allocated funds that have been previously allocated for
18:36things like Medicaid, um, and your, and educational, um, expenses or investments that we made over the
18:43course of time, the snap program, the food assistance program, and you're, you're skimming off the top
18:49of those, um, programs so that you can reauthorize what you already have was quite frankly, was not near
18:56the tax relief that the president thinks it was in most of my instances of understanding the tax
19:03situations of people. It didn't very, very little for the middle class in this country.
19:08So the notion that he's a champion of tax reform for the middle class is a fallacy. It's a, it's a
19:14pipe dream. It didn't, it never came true. So we're going to reauthorize that now with another,
19:19what, three and a half trillion dollars over the course of the next decade. And that, that, that is
19:25nuts to me. And it's so, in addition to that, what he's going to do is expand it even further by
19:30stealing away allocated funds from Medicaid, from education programs, from enforcers, from
19:38Department of Veterans Affairs, everything that they can possibly take money from, uh,
19:44which was determined by the way, not by people looking at it, but by feeding keywords into AI
19:50programs and anything that got kicked out of the computer is something that was cut or, or done away
19:56with. So at the end of the day, they're not good managers. They don't manage people. Well,
20:02they don't manage finances. Well, they don't manage government. Well, this is all a process of them
20:07charging, um, at the lightning speed and to disassemble as much as they possibly can to gather
20:15the fruits of their disassembly and provide another tax reform bill over the next 10 years,
20:20that's going to decimate the state. And it's going to, it's going to be a cruel impact upon
20:25the people that you and I live with. So that's what I think of it. And, um, why don't our great
20:32titans of industry who know this to be true, why don't they get engaged? That's my question. Why don't
20:38our fellow senators, the people I know, why don't they do it? Because they're afraid that this guy,
20:44because he's already done it once can, can keep them out of getting reelected. And if that's, um,
20:50what's happened to them, they, they fall in prey of, uh, of things that they didn't set out to,
20:56um, to honor when they began their careers. Something else that's been called a tax on
21:02the American people are tariffs. And that's been a signature of president Trump's trade policy.
21:09The U S announced a trade deal with the UK in May. They announced in June, a handshake for a framework
21:15to implement an agreement that was brought that, um, came about in May with China, but we're still
21:20waiting on dozens of trade deals with the other countries and the July 9th deadline for the
21:25reciprocal tariffs to go back into effect is looming. What do you make of the tariff negotiations,
21:31the tariff back and forth and overall president Trump's trade policy?
21:35Well, I think he fancies himself as quite a used car dealer, um, to be honest, in most instances,
21:42that he, um, his art of the deal, he thinks is a reverently, um, endorsed and, and utilized by
21:49people all across the country. It's, you know, frankly, that, that, that is a nonsensical way to try
21:55and do business with other countries or other corporations. At the end of the day, if you don't
21:59have some stability and some capacity to communicate, having, I was involved in the softwood lumber talk
22:06as a special representative when I was in Washington and we negotiated a timber, uh, tariff policy
22:13because we needed the timber in America. They needed to sell their timber out of Canada
22:18and finally came up with a, uh, process long, lengthy, exhausting discussion, offers back and forth,
22:25but efforts to try and understand the, uh, circumstances of each party because they were
22:31bound to represent their interests in a way that vindicated the interests of the people that they
22:36served. So this bears no resemblance to that. This, this is some, um, ridiculous, um, belief
22:45evinced by the president that this kind of dealing back and forth, which you might expect on a car lot,
22:52is not going to work, um, ultimately. And so I think that's, that's the issue is that, um,
22:59it's going to end up being a disaster and I hope it's not. I, I would love to see success for, for him,
23:07but, um, it's so confusing and, um, causing so much difficulty around the planet. Uh, we're going to find
23:14out, but my prediction is we're not going to be able to reach those agreements with, uh, with China
23:19and, uh, some other countries because they're so oppressive from their corner of view and that's
23:25going to damage the American people. I know you want some GOP lawmakers to find their way back home
23:30to the Republican party, you know, and love, but I'm curious if there's any effort to reach out to
23:34some Democrats because it really seems like since the 2024 election that Democrats are at a crossroads
23:40and there's a bit of an identity crisis within the party. There's a question of, do we go more
23:45towards the left? Do we go more towards the center? And I think that was encapsulated in a
23:50local race last night that made national headlines and that's the New York City mayoral race where a
23:56Democratic Socialist was the underdog against former Governor Andrew Cuomo. The Democratic Socialist,
24:03Zoran Mamdani, ended up coming out on top and Cuomo conceded pretty quickly last night. Is there an
24:11effort from our Republican legacy to maybe reach out to more moderate, more centrist Democrats who
24:17are saying right now, I don't like where my party's headed. I think it's going too far left.
24:21Well, you know, um, you know this landscape as well as I do. I'm pretty certain. And at the end of the
24:27day, um, I always keep remembering what George Washington said on the last day he was in the White
24:32House after two terms. He was just, um, incredibly sad and issued a very strong warning about political
24:41parties and how they end up in the end serving themselves and serving the cabal that ends up
24:48ruling them, guiding them, making decisions about which candidates they support, how they allocate
24:53the funding, all of those things that go on inside of the political committee. And both political
24:59committees in my judgment have become circular and insular and focused only upon the dynamics and
25:06the imperatives of the people who are on the inside of the party. They're not focused upon the people of
25:11this country. So we are very much inclined to try and recapture that primary focus upon the people of
25:20America. And if that means Democrats come, um, to our, uh, uh, you know, react to our invitation,
25:28if they, uh, want to be a part of something that we think has traditional values that reflect of the
25:34things that we knew were true of our party back, um, when we recognize it, great. We'll recruit anybody
25:41that is interested in making certain that we have a country that observes the respect for the rule of
25:47law, that they, they are concerned about fiscal responsibility, that they have confidence in
25:53the private sector and, um, are, are engaged in processes and policies that make sense for people
25:59to be working in this country. So yeah, um, we have no, uh, litmus test other than to join on those, um,
26:07basic principles that we think are important to the country.
26:11And I know you just joined the organization, but we're just, um, had got appointed chair rather.
26:18What is next for our Republican legacy?
26:22Well, we've been, um, obviously we have the privilege of being with you this morning
26:27and I'm having the chance to share, you know, our thoughts and our appeal, uh, with the people that
26:33are loyal viewers of yours. We were, we're working with individual states. I think we have 17
26:39state chairs now, uh, that are interested in getting engaged. It's not that old. Uh, the,
26:46the, uh, grouping of the committee, uh, of all those of us who are inclined have not been at this for
26:53a great long period of time. Um, you know, third party conversions, trying to start a third party is
26:59incredibly difficult. And we've seen independent candidacies and third party candidacies that, um,
27:05have had a struggle, um, going through this process. So what we're doing presently is advocating for
27:11a return to values that we think, um, were a part of our Republican party when we were actually,
27:17um, um, operative members of it, whoever wants to join us and God in heaven, we hope there's a lot
27:24of people now because I think frankly, about 65% of the people in this country, they can sense,
27:30they can feel it. Things are just not, um, marching in the same direction as they were. There's no rhythm
27:37to life. There's no feeling of stability within our political system and, uh, within, you know,
27:43world affairs. The world is in a, is in a place of, uh, great, um, concern for the kinds of things that
27:51are happening around the planet. So, um, we need to return to those values that allowed for us to get
27:58where we are to begin with. And those were the values of Lincoln and beginning, um, and they're
28:02lasting and eternal. And, uh, anybody who wants to walk that path with us, we're, we're delighted to
28:09share, um, share our time. Our Republican legacy chair, Mark Roscoe, thank you so much for joining
28:15me. I really appreciated the conversation today, your perspective, and I hope you can come back and
28:22join me sometime soon. Thanks for coming on. I'd be delighted. Thanks so much, Brittany. Take good care.
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