Greg Abbott discussed his campaign for governor with Glenn Beck.
GLENN BECK: Hello sir, how are you?
ATTORNEY GENERAL GREG ABBOTT: Glenn, I’m doing great, such an honor to be with you.
BECK: Thank you. You are a guy—when Wendy Davis said, you know, the joke and, you know, she meant it that you wouldn’t stand; you’re in a wheelchair, and we wondered. So, are you a kind of guy that has fun with that, takes offense with that, or what?
GENERAL ABBOTT: I typically almost every speech I give making some kind of joke about me being in a wheelchair. My slogan is in this campaign that Texans need to roll with Greg, roll towards victory. But I have some great stories, when I tell people about the accident—you know I was a young man, I was 26 years old when I was out jogging and a big tree fell on me. It crashed down into my back, crushing my vertebrae under my spinal cord, and that is what has left me in a wheelchair. But typically when I tell stories like that people are shaking their heads wondering how slow were you jogging to get hit by a falling tree. But there is something more powerful that I lead this into because these doctors in Houston—where I was living at the time—they pieced my life back together by fusing my vertebrae back together and then inserted steel rods into my back that will remain in my back the rest of my life. The point, Glenn, is that you have spoken to countless politicians that say that if they are elected they will go into office and when they have to make tough decisions they are going to back a spine of steel. I really have a steel spine I use to fight for Texans every single day.
BECK: I don’t want to harp on this, but I just want to point out one thing. We have Greg behind a desk now because we are up on a platform, and I am not handy-capable here I guess, and so we put him at a desk, but I was struck by—behind me is the set of the oval office, and the only reason why that desk looks the way it does—do you know why that door is in front? Of that desk—the oval office desk?
GENERAL ABBOTT: Probably because of FDR
BECK: Yeah, he didn’t want to be seen in a wheelchair. How different are things now. I can’t even imagine a time when we wouldn’t elect a president because he was in a wheelchair, and they still don’t want to show that at the memorial. They still barely even show just a little bit of a wheel on him.
GENERAL ABBOTT: And you know that is very disappointing, but Texans may be different than the rest of Americans. Texans believe—and you talked about the Alamo at the very beginning, Texas got it’s birth as a known country of it’s own—its own independent nation, and then as a state of the United States because we had to fight and overcome adversity. Overcoming adversity is part and parcel of what it means to be a Texan. So, having an attorney general, as I am now, or having a candidate running for governor who has faced adversity—overcome adversity—is a quintessential trait of what it means to be a tough Texan.
BECK: I really truly believe—first of all you have described your job as I get up in the morning, and I go and sue Barack Obama, and I go home. If Texas doesn’t stand; we’re in trouble. And the government—we had Ted Cruz on (he used to work for you) earlier today, and he went over the lawsuits and the things we have had to file here in Texas just to keep the federal government from literally taking over. In Wyoming the federal government—the EPA—just took a million acres of their land. How out of control is the federal government and why should we actually believe that we can win this fight.
GENERAL ABBOTT: Well, I got to see a copy of the materials that Ted Cruz filed, and it reads pretty much like my biography because it is a listing of some of the law suits that I filed against the Obama administration for the last five years. All together, already, I’ve sued Barak Obama and his administration 33 times.
BECK: How many times have you won?
GENERAL ABBOTT: The final record, because there are so many cases still pending, is something like ten and five. Ten victories and five losses. And some are mixed, like in the Obamacare case for example, we won on our states based issue saying that the Obama administration and Congress violated the Constitution by forcing Texas to expand its Medicaid system contrary to what we may want to do. However, the case was a loss because Chief Justice Roberts re-characterized Obamacare as the Obama tax. But, here is the point that you were trying to draw, and that is, in my adult life, and during my studied life, I have never seen a president so cavalierly contradict and refuse to apply the Constitution and the laws of this country like we have the Obama administration. I wish I didn’t have to sue the president a single time because I wish we had a president who would follow and obey the law, but we don’t.
BECK: Give some examples—how many times did Texas sue George W. Bush? I know we did it with the case on the World Court.
GENERAL ABBOTT: The World Court—the Medellín case—there was another case involving—I think it involved the Depart of Interior, the ability of tribes to be involved in the process of the gaming industry and there may have been a third one—it was either two or three times during the 8 years
BECK: And that’s about normal, for Bill Clinton it was probably about the same thing?
GENERAL ABBOTT: Right.
BECK: Okay. Are other states doing this too, General Abbott? Or is it just Texas? Are other states fighting for their sovereignty as strongly as you are fighting for Texas?
GENERAL ABBOTT: Texas has the most law suits that have been waged against the Obama administration; however, our fellow states are involved in this process also, maybe not as high numerically, but certainly in spirit, and some of them have joined together with us in some of these fights, others maybe not so much. There is one factor that has elevated Texas even higher than other states, and that is the law lawsuits against the completely out of control EPA, and because Texas is such a centerpiece of the energy production in this country is a reason why Texas has more legal actions against the EPA.
BECK: So, let me go here. I just gave a speech to the GOP this last weekend, and I pretty much read them the riot act. I mean, there are good members of the GOP, but I mean, in the national GOP it is despicable what is going on. You’ve got to stand for the Constitution, but here in Texas there is a real concerted effort from the left to do what they did to California and do what they did to Colorado to Texas, and I don’t see a lot of Texans walking around the street saying we could lose our state. What they did to the rest of the country where it just slowly seeps in and you just don’t even recognize it until it’s too late is happening right now, and are there enough Texans that are saying whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a real problem?
GENERAL ABBOTT: Glenn, I announced that I was running for Governor of Texas back in July, and month after month after month I have been involved in a pitched battle against a very profound opponent, and my opponents’ name was complacency. A lot of Texans did not realize that there really was this pitch battle because they thought well, Texas is a conservative state; we will always be a conservative state.
BECK: No way
GENERAL ABBOTT: And they were asleep about the fact that the Obama administration itself is working with the Democrat candidate for governor. Barack Obama’s national field director, Jeremy Bird, is here in the state of Texas organizing neighborhoods and precincts to turn up the vote like the did in Colorado like they did in Ohio. Barack Obama’s finance director is helping to raise money. Barack Obama’s pollster is working for the Democrat candidate. Barack Obama’s campaign team is helping to manage the campaign. This is the Barack Obama administration that is basically relocated to the state of Texas to make Texas more like his liberal dream version of what the United States should be. This is extremely dangerous. There will be millions of dollars spent in this race, a lot of it raised from states outside of Texas that want Texas to become more like California.
BECK: So, I’ve said this to Rick Perry for a long time. He is going and he is doing a great job bringing new businesses here but I spoke to a group of CEOs here in Dallas and I said you guys know why you moved here but do the employees you brought with you, do they know? Because all they did is, they said, “oh the company’s moving to Texas,” and most likely their wives said, “Texas? I don’t want to live in the sticks with a bunch of cows,” and they were like, “no, honey, it’s not like that,” and they moved. They had no real connection to “we can’t do business in California” or wherever they’re moving from. And I’ve begged Rick, you’ve got to do a campaign: come to Texas, not for the taxes or the weather, come to Texas because you’re free; you’re free to pursue your own dreams. Are you concerned about the influx of—because I’ll tell you these carpetbaggers that just move in at the last minute—I’m more worried at times about the northern border than I am the southern border. Are you concerned that people are coming because of the jobs, but they don’t really understand Texas?
GENERAL ABBOTT: : Part of our campaign is talking about securing the border, and we are talking about the Red River, not the Rio Grande River when we do that. But, you know, let me give you one example that ties all this together. It is an example I talk about in my presentations, it is about Jay Adair, who is a CEO of a multibillion-dollar business called Copart, who moved from California, here to the DFW area, and he was talking about why he did it and that’s because taxes were too high, regulations were too high in California, but when he got here he realized that Texans have one thing that people in California do not, and that was freedom. We have a freedom that is incomparable around the country, but he said that the people that he is bringing here from California to work believe in that freedom. They love that freedom. The gun manufacturers that I have talked to from other states that are fleeing those other states because their ability to either manufacture, sell or have their costumers use guns in those states is being trimmed. These are conservatives who are relocating from these other states to Texas because Texas is the last bastion of freedom in this country.
BECK: I have a story that I will probably be sharing in the next month based around the Second Amendment that I think will blow people’s minds that I’ve kept my mouth shut for quite some time. But even in Texas, you know, we are—you know, we love our guns, but it’s not just because we are hunters, it’s because we have a right to carry guns. You know, there’s a reason the Soviets didn’t have an invasion plan through Texas because we knew our rights, we knew our Constitution, and we had our guns. What are you going to do to make sure we don’t lose the Second Amendment, no matter what the rest of the country might do?
GENERAL ABBOTT: Well, I’ve already been involved in two fights at the United States Supreme Court defending and guaranteeing the individual right to keep and bear arms. But we’re even looking at laws in the state of Texas, to find ways that we can even more broadly expand your guaranteed second amendment rights. One thing that I’ve talked about in my platform for governor, is bringing open carry to the state of Texas, because it is a guaranteed right under the second amendment.
BECK: I love that. That’s great. Your opponent, Wendy Davis, I can see as being an attractive opponent if you’re running for the Senate in Massachusetts. She would make sense in a state like that where they like when their candidates make up things in their biographies. But also, in addition to that, she’s known as a national person because of her stance on abortion. And as a guy who comes from the northeast, and I’m new to Texas, that stance, as she’s described it, as she’s stood up for it, seems completely out of step, with the people I know in Texas. I have a hard time believing she’s even a serious candidate. Which is not a good place to be. Because the money and power behind her makes her a very serious candidate But who is she appealing to?
GENERAL ABBOTT: Well, let me go to both questions, but Glenn, let me answer yours first. She is a very serious candidate, for two big reasons. One, because you have to Barack Obama machinery, at a national scale, working to both fund and organize her campaign. When Obama ran, both times, he had what I call mystery money. He would get seemingly hundreds of millions of dollars from these online contributions that came out of nowhere to fund his campaign. Wendy Davis is getting the same thing, and contributions that are too low to report, but more than 70,000 low dollar donations that add up to millions of dollars for her. But secondly, at the other end, you have a big time trial lawyer in Texas who gave her one check for $1 million. And he said there’s a lot more where that came from. So the money and the organization are there to make her a very serious candidate. But on the other issue, the thing that Wendy Davis is known for more than anything else is standing for one issue.
BECK: Abortion.
GENERAL ABBOTT: And that is late-term abortion. Her stance is contrary to the vast majority of Americans, and what a lot of Americans don’t understand is, her stance is contrary to the country of France.
BECK: Wow.
GENERAL ABBOTT: In France they will not allow abortion in the late term, the way that Wendy Davis is saying.
BECK: Is she for partial-birth abortion, too?
GENERAL ABBOTT: What Texas did in its last legislative session was to pass the Fetal Pain Law, so that when the fetus can feel pain, when a doctor is trying to abort the fetus, we’re saying no, that’s where we absolutely are going to draw the line.
BECK: She won’t even draw that line.
GENERAL ABBOTT: No. She’s against stopping abortion even though a fetus can visibly show signs of feeling pain.
BECK: That’s unbelievable.
GENERAL ABBOTT: The law passed in Texas says that after five months of pregnancy, a woman cannot have an abortion unless the health and safety of the mother is involved.
BECK: That’s a restriction that is more lenient than Roe v. Wade.
GENERAL ABBOTT: Yeah.
BECK: Greg is going to be on with me at five o’clock, give me a little bit more of a chance to chat to him. We wish you all the best of luck. What’s your website?
GENERAL ABBOTT: gregabbott.com
BECK: Okay, easy. Gregabbott.com. And this is a fight for the whole country, because millions are pouring in from the left. If Greg sounds like somebody that you can support, if you would like to help support Texas remaining free, and Texas, I’m telling you we lose Texas, we lose the country. Greg, we’ll talk to you at five o’clock today.