Washington state’s Evan McMullin makes his presidential pitch
Aug 31, 2016, 1:34 PM | Updated: 3:15 pm
While Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein are the most well-known non-Trump and Clinton candidates, there is another third party candidate running for the White House. And he’s from Washington state — Evan McMullin.
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Evan McMullin, a former member of the CIA who grew up in Auburn, Wash., declared his candidacy on Aug. 8, based on the statistical fact that most people are dissatisfied with both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He gave KTTH’s Todd Herman his pitch for the White House.
Highlights from Evan McMullin’s interview with Todd Herman
Why he decided to run?
“I love this country. I love the people of this country and I just see that we’re struggling as a nation right now in so many ways, and I just see a couple of major-party candidates who are just terrible for their own reasons.”
On Hillary Clinton
“Hillary Clinton is a corrupt politician. I realize she’s even more corrupt now than I did even two weeks ago. It seems like every day or every week another story comes out (and) we learn a little bit more. At a time when it feels like so many Americans feel like the government isn’t hearing them, we just can’t have a president who believes she is unaccountable to the American people and a president who puts herself before the interests of the American people.”
On Donald Trump
“Donald Trump, I mean, this guy, I spent 10 years with the Central Intelligence Agency, a lot of that working overseas. I worked against and around and among authoritarians and dictators. I know what they’re made of. Donald Trump is cut from the same cloth. It’s sad to say I believe he’s a bigot. He’s dividing Americans against Americans along racial and religious and other lines. We can’t have that. He’s doing enormous damage to the country and I just cannot sit on the sidelines and watch it happen. And I hoped somebody else would step forward, somebody who was maybe more well-known than me, but that just wasn’t happening and I learned it wasn’t going to happen, and finally I decided that I needed to go ahead and do this if nobody else was going to.”
Are you comparing Donald Trump to an actual Middle Eastern dictator?
“Absolutely. He, himself, admires Saddam Hussein. He admires Vladimir Putin, he admires the authoritarian regime in Communist China. He, himself, speaks in these tones of admiration for these authoritarians. Most of our leaders through time have looked up to great leaders of Democracy or who have strengthened the cause of Civil Rights here in the United States. Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln – these are the people who our leaders should look up to. Donald Trump looks up to people who deprive people of their universal rights and we just cannot have that in the United States of America.
Do you think Hillary Clinton is that far away from being a dictatorial-minded person?
“I think it’s authoritarianism in different clothing, right? It’s the idea of a large centralized government that pushes down one-size-fits-all for people across the country and deprives them of their individual liberties. In Hillary’s book she wrote, she said she thought the government had primary responsibility over teaching and training children and that the parents have secondary responsibility in that regard. I mean, that should raise red flags for all of us. So I think, yes … they’re two sides to the same coin.”
What he would fix in his first year of office?
“The first thing is the economy; we’ve got to get the economy growing again. We’ve been growing at about 2 percent or under 2 percent in real terms — in terms of GDP growth — for the past 10 years on average. It’s just not enough for us to have the kinds of opportunities we need. So what do we need to do to get the economy going again? I think, first of all, we’ve got to scale back over regulation. Some regulations are good. I’m not arguing that we don’t need regulation but we’ve got a situation in our country where we’re overregulating people and companies where also we’ve got an administration that has created an environment of regulatory uncertainty, which also, you know as a businessman, you know that regulatory uncertainty can be even worse than over-regulation because you don’t know what situation you’re operating in and therefore you can’t invest capital and grow your company and take risks, etc. So we’ve got to reform that. We’ve got to reform the crony capitalism. We need to create a competitive environment and keep the environment open to innovators and people who would come in and disrupt industries for the better. Right now, too often our laws favor established companies and keep the little guy. The little guy often has the best ideas and we’ve got to make reforms there. There’s also the question — education feeds into it, too. We’ve got an educational system that’s 100 years old. It was made for when our country was transitioning from the agriculture and agricultural-based economy to an industrial-based economy. We need something different now.
“Another piece of it is immigration reform. We’ve got to make sure that this remains the best place on earth for people around the world with the best ideas in science, in technology and in other areas, to come and build their idea and build their companies. We need investors, too, to come in as well. But we’ve got to make sure that our immigration policy is friendly to our economic interests. …. this is particularly important for Washington state where so many jobs are underpinned by trade.”
On a scale of 1 to 10, how concerned is he about ISIS or other sleeper cells planting very big attacks in the United States?
“I would say I’m concerned at the level of a 10 about ISIS in general, that is. We’ve got to be very concerned, obviously, with the threat of sleeper cells and people being remotely radicalized and trained and then they go out and execute these lone-wolf attacks, or attacks in small teams of two or three. We need to be very concerned about that. But we need to be more concerned about is that we are allowed the largest terrorist army that we’ve known in modern times to have a massive safe haven in the heart of the Middle East, relatively unchallenged.
“… We need to be more serious about taking the fight to them on the ground. Defeating ISIS shows the world, shows everybody who would be radicalized by them, that they are not winners, they’re losers, which makes them less able to radicalize and recruit people around the world. …We’ve also got to be better about fighting the war of ideas. Just like in the Cold War, we had to win the battle of ideas against Communism, and we did.”
Is Barack Obama’s heart in the ISIS fight?
“Barack Obama does not believe that the United States’ historic role of leadership in the world post-Word War II is a positive thing. He thinks it’s been a destructive thing. I vehemently disagree with this. Let me make clear, we’re not perfect. We’re the greatest nation on earth but we’re not perfect, and that’s OK. But our leadership in the world post-World War II, has led to a period in which we haven’t had additional world wars, hundreds of millions of people around the world have been lifted out of poverty and Democracy has spread from about 14 countries to over a hundred in that time.”
Steve Largent or Russell Wilson?
“Oh, man, you’re killing me. Oh my goodness. Both great men. I guess I’ll say Russell Wilson because he’s our guy right now and I want to keep winning. Both great men and I grew up watching and dreaming about imitating Steve Largent every time I stepped out in the yard.”
