TALK 94.5 Liz And Nick
TALK 94.5 Liz And Nick
RACE TO THE SENATE...... HERE IS MARK SANFORD ON WITH LIZ AND NICK 7/24/26
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Well thank you so much for joining us. It's an honor to have you here. I know that you served to give people a little background. You served the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001. Governor from 2003 to 2011. And then you went back to Congress until 2019. So uh why are you interested in going back into the world of politics? Or have you ever really left?
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, I've left. I've been in the logistics business uh since I left Congress for the last six years. And uh it's it's it's about as far as you can get from politics. Uh uh people don't care who you know, what you know, they care about one thing. You get you get stuff there on time. So yeah, I've definitely left politics. But in this case, I'm I'm gonna offer up and we'll see what the voters have to say. Because I I I genuinely believe let me say that anyway I genuinely believe that we are at a tipping point. I I I think our country's trajectory and sustainability is at stake. Um no country, n no civilization has ever been able to outrun math. And our math doesn't work right now. And the one thing that's been my passion project during my my my times in office has been how much Washington reaches into our pocketbooks or wallets and whether or not we're spending money at a sustainable level.
SPEAKER_00Now is you know, there's uh a lot of conversation right now, even in in the governor's race, about how money is spent. And one of the things you said in that uh commercial for your candidacy for Senate, as well as some other uh videos I've seen of you, you talk about how you are one of the most conservative, uh fiscally conservative uh governors of this state has uh has seen. What can you do if you are in the Senate seat uh to help the state maybe along those lines or or how indirectly uh you can do that. But also uh you know, I I uh wonder about we worry about the military and our strength and what is a financial debt, what our national debt actually how it actually impacts our lives. So let's talk about spending in general in the state um as governor also. Um are are do you feel we're on the right path there and what you can do in this from the Senate seat.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm not gonna try and impact the state budget at at the federal level. I mean my focus would be on obviously what's happening in in DC in terms of spending. I I would say this in terms of that second part of what you'd asked there. I you know, I think that the debt and the deficit uh is is ultimately a national security issue. I mean, think about this. We're now gonna spend as much on interest payments on our national debt as we will on our entire um defense uh and national security apparatus. I mean, think about that, think about aircraft carriers and planes and bases and all that stuff. We spend as much on interest as we do and and uh uh and all the personnel in our military as we do on all that. Uh you know, if you're to read Paul Kenney's book, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, what he talks about in that book is how economic supremacy is the precursor to military supremacy. So you cannot have one without the other. And again, if you look at the fall of uh, you know, um the former Soviet uh Union, it fell in large part because they just couldn't keep up. I mean, Reagan said, okay, you want to have an arms war? We'll have an arms war. And we'll race you and let's see if you can keep up, and they couldn't keep up, and it was part of what what uh ultimately had to do with their collapse. And you can, again, not to belabor this point, but look across the pages of time. I mean, you you look at the nuts and bolts of what went wrong in Rome in 476, you look at what happened to the Business Empire, you look at you know the British Empire. They used to say the sun never sets on the British Empire. Well, it did. Um I again, I I won't belabor the point I am now, but I I think the two are inexorably linked. Um, our ability to project and sustain power is tied to whether or not the the course is sustainable in D.C. And what can you do as a senator? A whole lot more than you can as a House member, and a whole lot more than you can uh anywhere else. I'm I'm not to say uh trying to say that you're in any way omnipotent in that, but but you have a real voice. And in this case, I think there are a lot of South Carolinians who want to have a voice for financial sanity in D.C.
SPEAKER_00So you're speaking to people here that are primarily Ori and Georgetown counties, and Orie County in particular has gone very strong for Trump, but you've been very critical of Trump over the years, you know, especially in from the seat of Congress. I think for a many that the concept of national debt and how it impacts our lives is a kind of a nebulous topic. Um do you believe that President Trump and what he's doing during the second term has failed conservative principles and his constituents in that way uh by increasing federal spending and maybe even adding to the deficit?
SPEAKER_01Well, l let's let's decouple that for a second. Um if you were to pull my voting record during the the couple years that I overlapped in the U.S. Congress when the president came in, what you'd find was that I voted with him um more than ninety-five percent of the time. Now, I I love my brothers and sisters, but I don't agree with them ninety-five percent of the time. Um, and that's okay. So I I would say uh it put everything in context, uh I you know, I I'd say you have a point if I voted with 30% of the time or 20% of the time or 10 50% of the time, but we're talking 90s uh in terms of percent of time. And you know, i if you're truly representing your area of geography, your part of uh of the country, there's gonna be natural differences between where folks want to go at the national level and where we might want to go at the state level. So I I again people have blown that up. Have we disagreed on some stuff? Totally. But again, I think that's the American way. At times we can agree to disagree and and and still have a relationship. I again I love my brothers and sisters, but I I don't agree with them 90% of the time. Um, but we're still brothers, and I guess our friends in the same boat. Um as to the second thing? No, I I I again I I like which is why I voted with him 90 plus percent of the time, much of what the president's tried to do, and I could go down a long list on that front. I I think what he needs reinforcements, and this is what you saw with Elon Musk in endeavor and push, is reinforcements on the financial front. We have a a ship that's sliding into a reef uh in our present financial trajectory. And I I think that's where I bring some unusual merit badges to the table in what I've tried to do over the years and what I've been consistent on on that front. And and and and so I would look to work with the administration on the finances of our country and getting it back on track. Because I think it's undeniable that we're on the the wrong track. And you could look at the deficit that's projected for this year, and I think that that would substantiate that notion.
SPEAKER_00We're speaking with uh Mark Sanford, former congressman and former governor of South Carolina running for Senate in this upcoming special primary to uh fill the seat of Senator Lindsey Graham. Um I wanted to ask you that we we know of that our fan base here at Talk Radio are uh really very supportive of Trump's first America, America first uh agenda for like securing the border and uh rebuilding American manufacturing, we're talking about power to get energy independence, uh there's kind of like this wavering we're not talking about data centers or anything like that. I was just wondering what do you agree with President Trump? Like where is he going to find you to be a very big trade leader, ally, supporter? And how are you going to uh in particular with whatever you're going to tell us right now, help us make those America First agenda items a priority in the in the Senate? You you know, you talked about your um your fiscal conservative background and approach to this. So how can you help? How how are you going to do that?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh I think a couple things. I I think that, you know, for instance, on immigration, uh he has a very strong ally here. And you could, again, poll my voting record. Don't take m and all the different folks that rate those kinds of things. Uh, you know, in again, going back to history, uh, the the saying is those who don't learn from it are destined to repeat it. I I I've had a very strong voting record on that front because no civilization across the pages of time, again, in the same way that a debt or too much spending will hurts you, an open border doesn't work. I mean, there's no sovereignty that goes with it. I think you'd have a very strong ally there. I think you'd have a very strong ally from the standpoint of reg reform um and and and and a a sensible bureaucracy. I think it it has a tendency to overreach. I've seen it both in Congress and in the governor's time, and I've seen it most importantly as a small business person, uh, where you're like, Why are y'all doing that? I'm just trying to make a living here. And you know, this doesn't help anything, it doesn't protect anybody, it's just another crazy rule. And so I I think you'd have a very strong ally there, and that's tied to America first in manufacturing, because if at the end of the day, we have a less competitive playing field than some other country around the globe, well, that's not gonna help us. I think it goes around a long list of those kinds of things. Um, and again, it's okay occasionally to disagree. That's I don't think you have true representation of an area if you have uh two different viewpoints. So I I give you an example of something that I disagreed with the president on. They'd wanted to open off the offshore waters of South Carolina for drilling. I respect the fact that many folks might um like that idea, but a lot of folks said no, we don't want to be looking at at oil rigs right off the coast because you know the manufacturing base of Myrtle Beach in the Grand Strand is in fact tourism and and retirement. And and this this will hurt our economic engine. And so uh and more to the point, uh when I was Congress uh in Congress at the time, every local municipality, every mayor had written me letters saying this is why we took a vote at the city level and this is why we oppose it. And if you believe in federalism, which is not all decisions that need to be made in Washington, D.C., that that that there should be local voice, then if I'm their federal representative, I have a duty to represent that local viewpoint and say, hey, every mayor and every city council that I represent has drawn up this resolution, therefore I I'm gonna be respectfully opposed to what you guys have proposed here. I don't think that's a bad disagreement. I I I I mean, I think it's representing home, which is what you're supposed to do in elected office.
SPEAKER_00All right, Mark Sanford, we're just about out of time here. Um I I wanted to I mentioned your book earlier, uh not during this interview, but before you came on. And uh I wanted to talk about just real quick, maybe you'd like to make a comment that some of the people texting us here are talking about second chances of the fact about the uh incident back in 2009 where quote unquote misleading statements regarding an affair. Um, you know, you've made amends with the taking responsibility and you talk about second chances about that. Can you just uh make a comment to people that may be concerned that that is that is uh an asterisk on your record?
SPEAKER_01No, that's completely fair. I you know, I I think in life um none of us want to be judged on uh our just our best day any more than we want to be judged on our worst day. That part of our our journey, it just the human journey is we're gonna mess up. And I I don't know where you've messed up, but I but whether publicly or privately, but I I think we've all messed up at some point. We wish we so much we could push rewind play. Um but that's not life. And the the notion of life is that we learn from it and we hopefully are the better person for it. And so I I I messed up. End of story. I fell in love with a woman I shouldn't have fallen in love with, but I did. But and I wish I could have you know have redone all of that chapter and all that came with it, but I can't. And and this goes back to sort of Satan being the great tempter to the great reminder. And so, in the wake of failure, what a lot of folks and we're all tempted to say is uh I'm messed up, I can never do anything again the rest of my life, and and and crawl into a cave and and and we waste this this this precious notion of life that we have for just a little while. So I would certainly feed the fact that I messed up uh that you wish you could hit rewind play, but I think I've learned a lot from it. I think I'm a better human being. I'm I think I'm a better, ultimately a better leader as a consequence of the empathy that you get. Yeah, I used to read the papers and think more and more on idiot, what were they thinking? Now it's like, but by the grace of God, go I. I'm not gonna worry about judging that person. I'm gonna worry about the the log in my own eye before I worry about the splinter in somebody else's. And it sort of changed my perspective on a number of things on that front.
SPEAKER_00Mark Sanford, do you have uh 20 seconds here to just ask for the vote?
SPEAKER_01Well, I I I I I represented the the the grandstand for a long while. I have a lot of friends back that direction. I would absolutely ask for your vote in the upcoming election on August 11th. I think it's an important one, and I think our country's at the financial tipping point, and I'd love to work on that on your behalf.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. Good luck to you. Oh, one question. Will you be participating in the debate?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. All right, excellent. All right, we'll see you on the stage there. Thank you.