The Exchanges

Q really stood up to our cities to save our cities recently. And it's obviously doing something that's similar to what President Trump has been pushing as well. This is becoming an idea as time has come. And we really appreciate your leadership. Tell us about the situation in Tulsa prior to taking action, and how did the city officials feel to take responsibility? Why did you have to step in?

A Yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, it's great to be with you, and I'm a big fan of yours, and as an entrepreneur and leader and everything you're doing with Cicero Foundation, and so, ah, just super pumped to be here with you and have this conversation. Um, you know, Tulsa, so the business community really reached out to me, and the homeless situation was getting out of control. Um, you had people that felt unsafe going to their businesses. They would, they would, ah, pull into the parking garage, felt unsafe. We had incidences where People were walking down the street, and they were getting hit by homeless with a brick. We had muggings, we had people pulling knives on business leaders going to a restaurant, and so it was getting out of control. Um, our mayor at that time, the current mayor in Tulsa, um, basically said, well, I'm gonna fix homelessness by, 2030. And I'm going to fix it by building houses. And I'm like, I called him. I'm like, listen, you can never build enough houses for homeless because you're just going to keep attracting more and more and more people.

AI assessment note: “business community really reached out to me, and the homeless situation was getting out of control.”

Q you know, crime. So I think this was called Operation Safe in Tulsa. I want to hear more of the details because I'm, I think we actually do have a few other governors and legislators who watch our show and follow these things. And I understand you've already removed over 1.9 million pounds of trash and hazardous materials. Is that, is that true? That's a lot. The Tulsa house works.

A Yeah, it was amazing. We literally, through our Department of Transportation, we got it all organized. I sent my highway patrol out, which is the state police, and then we contracted through our Department of Transportation, and we got a vendor, because some of this stuff to clean up, um, you know, these are hazardous, hazardous things, and so we found a 55 gallon drum we filled up with, with used needles, and we can show you some of those pictures, but We removed about 1.9 million pounds of trash and debris, needles, drug paraphernalia. We found stolen credit cards, scrap metal, stolen bicycles. So it's just unbelievable. There were 64 different camps, and you'd be shocked, like literally right off the highway in some wooded areas, some encampments behind people's houses. We had ladies and, and single moms crying, thanking us. For cleaning up, because they had called the police over and over again, and nothing had happened. Car dealerships were having their cars set on fire, and they came to us just thanking us for finally coming in. Because think about it this, Joe, who's thinking about the business owner? Who's thinking about the people that used all their savings to open a dry cleaner, and now nobody's coming to their shop because you've got homeless laying on the street? Who's thinking about the school kids walking to school? So everybody always thinks about the people bre…

AI assessment note: “We removed about 1.9 million pounds of trash and debris, needles, drug paraphernalia.”

Q They want a place where they can get free stuff and free drugs and, and, and not have to work. I mean, our data shows a lot more mentally ill. A lot of them, a lot of them are on drugs, but, but, but, but yeah, they're still making the choice, aren't they? In many cases.

A We believe so. We don't think it's compassion. Everybody's like, well, governor, you're not being compassionate. Well, it's not compassion to live people, to let people live on the street. And, and, and I've, I had somebody explain it to me like this. If you saw an elderly person, uh, with dementia, Alzheimer's walking around, you would never say, well, that's their civil right. Let's let them, you know, walk around and get abused and sexually abused and, and get robbed and harmed and, And live on the street. Of course we wouldn't do that as a society. We'd be helping those people. And so I think by us just simply putting, laying the law down and say, we're not going to allow you to do drugs, live on the street, break the law, do these camps. Um, you're seeing it cleaned up right now. And so the business community is, is very, very thankful, uh, that we stood up because the politics of the, of the left is not, or they're not doing anything.

AI assessment note: “We believe so. We don't think it's compassion.”

Q what's your message, Mr. Governor, because a lot of red state leaders in the past, you talk to them and they say, listen, Joe, ah, that's a blue city. It's a Democrat mayor. It's a Democrats fault. It's not my problem. Uh, what's your message to these other red state leaders who may be on the fence about whether or not they're going to take action and save their cities?

A Yeah, you know, I think it's the, I think it's the government's job to, ah, protect public safety. You know, first and foremost, as governors, um, I'm not gonna let, ah, a million person city like Tulsa is, and, you know, kind of go off the rails. We're trying to grow our state. The businesses that are moving here, we have an obligation to, ah, make sure that they have, the public safety is, is, ah, at the forefront of what we're doing as government leaders. So, ah, If you're, if you're a governor and you see a mayor that's going off the, you know, going off the rails, I think you have an obligation to protect the citizens of your state. So that's basically what we did. And, um, we haven't taken anything off the table. We could declare an emergency and we could go in and do some other things on even city property. Um, but now we've kind of turned it back over to the mayor and the city leaders and said, hey, you're going to have to now enforce the law or we'll come back. Um, and I, and I think you, you're seeing them move. We saw our mayor, uh, sign a bill that, that, uh, uh, you know, banned the panhandling and some of the stuff that we were seeing. The other thing, Joe, that I think is interesting, from our, from our surveys, around 45% of the homeless in Tulsa were from out of state. And, you know, and to your point earlier, nonprofits, the way they make money, Is not by solv…

AI assessment note: “If you're a governor... you have an obligation to protect the citizens of your state.”

Q we would call socialism, right, and the dangers of big government. That's literally the reason our founders thought we had to have education. It's funny to me because it feels like public education is the opposite right now. It, like, teaches them about big government to hate our country and to want, CRT and DEI and all this nonsense. Like, what else can we be doing there to fight it?

A Obviously, I signed an executive order that banned DEI teaching in our, in our universities. We've done that. Ben Carson has a great program called Little Patriots that we're rolling out through the state of Oklahoma for elementary kids to teach this patriotism and teach about our founding fathers and the greatness of our country. Um, so, but I think the other thing that I want to, I want to talk about real quick in education Is we've lost our way. I'm telling you, it's pretty simple. When I sit down with, with our higher ed, with our career techs, with, with common education, and I'm saying, guys, it's really simple. Let's get every kid, uh, ready for the workforce. And let's, let's mirror the businesses of what the workforce needs they have with our education system.

AI assessment note: “I signed an executive order that banned DEI teaching in our, in our universities.”

Q and they tend to want to, like, make problems worse, because that's how they justify more funding, so it's a, It's a very, very broken system in our country. And of course, because of that, they really attack anyone who goes after them. And so you had just protesters in your office trying to intimidate you. Like, why was this important to you? And then take us through that saga.

A Leaders have to lead. So I, I, I remind my staff, they're like, you know, governor, there's this many people that are, don't want us to do that. And I'm like, listen, there's, there's some people are going to complain if your ice cream's cold, right? You cannot please everybody. Uh, but in this situation, it's pretty, pretty straightforward to me. Um, we want Oklahoma to be the most business friendly state, and if you've got homeless camps, if you have, you know, uh, people camping out on public places around your city, it's super hard, uh, for people to want to go do business there, to want to bring their family there, and we don't want to be, we're not being cavalier, we're not going to be hard on that, we just, we just do not believe in building hammocks, we want to build a trampoline for people for these, some of these services, right? Well, uh, I don't think throwing money at this problem is the right solution, and so we banned obviously campments on any kind of public, public, uh, public places, um, and then we had to change the law where our police, because a lot of this is mental health, it's addiction, and, and so our police at first could not, weren't allowed to take anybody except to jail, so we had to write different laws to make sure that they could take them to a treatment center, Et cetera, et cetera. And so we put more, we put a lot of money in mental health. Um…

AI assessment note: “we want Oklahoma to be the most business friendly state, and if you've got homeless camps”

Q red state, and I'm curious, so we, you know, we're a non-progressive organization. Obviously, the Liberty side tends to align with the right much more often, but I feel like there's special interests in our country on both sides, and I'm curious, being a deep red state, what are the biggest obstacles you face? Are there Are there special interests? Are there things that go against you from that side?

A I tell people, uh, in business, it's such a, such a pure, um, you know, way to make decisions. You get together, and I believe businesses are trying to take care of their customers, their employees, uh, they're trying to take care of the environment, trying to do the right thing. Um, and in what, what I've realized, because I've never been in politics, that you could hire a lobbyist, and you could go to the state capitol, And you could get legislation written that would be supportive of your business or your industry. And it's just so disheartening for me, uh, to think about, um, when, when the right decision is really clear what to do, uh, and the money is always on the yes side. And I'll give you a couple examples. Uh, but when I, I mean, what I mean by the money's on the yes side, I tell people all the time that, that, that, you know, Oklahomans aren't coming to me and, and hiring a lobbyist, lobbyist to say no. Right? Only the money is on the yes side that's going to benefit someone. They're the ones that have the money to hire the lobbyists to go whip up the legislature to get stuff passed. I'll give you a perfect example of this legislative session. So pension plans for police, right? Uh, we support our police in Oklahoma, and I can give you story after story. I've given them pay raises. We love our police. We're a law and order state. Okay. They have a 75% Pension plan. …

AI assessment note: “you could hire a lobbyist, and you could go to the state capitol”

Q to sunset clauses, for example, on regulations? Like, what else can we do to stop the regulatory state? Have you, have you looked into some of those things? It's one of our new policies is, We think their regulations should just automatically go away every eight to 10 years, unless they're justified by the staff with the data, because there's just way too many of them. What do you think?

A Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Son, you, we should be putting in a sunset provisions for state agencies. Uh, there's way too many boards, commissions. Uh, but even on the sunsets, it's so frustrating for me as governor that a sunset will come up and they'll send me a legislation that says, well, let's keep it going for like another three years. All right. And I veto it. And my favorite one to do, and I don't know how, how this crowd's going to like this one, but O E T A, right? So state public state, uh, state funded television. And I'm like, why are we in the television business? Why do I spend taxpayer dollars? And then they just attacked me. Well, you're not going to be able to Sesame street and big bird. And, and I'm like, I don't know. I'm sure that other stations are going to pick that programming up. I don't know why I have to fund this. And then it's just super liberal. Uh, the, the programming that they do, the indoctrination of the kids.

AI assessment note: “Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Son, you, we should be putting in a sunset provisions”

Q States, like you're a businessman and a leader by a background. I think a lot of them are afraid to just get involved in controversy. They just, it's much easier just to blame it on someone else and actually go in and fix it themselves. Like what, What has to change culturally in our society and our party for leaders to stand up and actually do the right thing here?

A Man, that, that's a question I've been, been wrestling with, and trying to think about, and how do we encourage, you know, the right people to get involved in politics, and I think it comes down to what are you, you, you elect your, your leaders to do a job, right? So you elect them to be the governor, or be a mayor, or the attorney general, or, or the person that's running education, um, or your U.S. Senator, and what's so frustrating, the reason people hate politicians is because they can see right through them. As soon as they get to that position, They start running for their next deal, or it becomes, how do I stay and get reelected? How do I stay in power? How do I make friends with all of the funders so I can, uh, all the nonprofits and all the Um, you know, the folks, so I can stay in power, and, and I mean, I, I just totally think that's, that's not what our founders envisioned. They envisioned you to be a public servant, and you're gonna be a successful business person, or rancher, or farmer, or teacher, and you leave that for a time to go serve your state or your country. And when you have that mentality, like, hey, I'm gonna go back to the private sector, and I am leaving this a better place, and my job as governor, Is to protect public safety, to improve education, to make sure we're the most business friendly state, and then I'm going to go back to the private sect…

AI assessment note: “should be focused on the public service and not on getting reelected”

Q You began your career in the private sector, right? You founded Gateway Mortgage in 2000, built into a national company. I think you started with a thousand dollars in a computer. Tell us about your entrepreneurial journey.

A Yeah, so, uh, I grew up in Norman, Oklahoma. I wanna first, I gotta introduce my wife. I'm gonna get in big trouble. Sarah, stand up and wave at everybody. 26 years. And we have six, six kids, uh, from, yeah, 26 years, uh, 24 down to 10, and, uh, so I, I grew up in Norman, dad was a pastor, and then I moved to, uh, went to school in Stillwater at Oklahoma State, uh, was always entrepreneurial, wanted to have my own business, and so, uh, started my company, like a lot of us, uh, entrepreneurs with a thousand dollars and a computer, and then grew that over the next 20 years, and, uh, grew it to over a thousand employees, Uh, bought a bank, um, and, you know, just was kind of living the American dream. Uh, and then, really, the reason I ran for, for office, 2018, I'd never ran for office before, uh, but I started seeing my state struggle, and we were having billion dollar bud, budget deficits, we were having teacher walkouts, as I traveled to other states, I saw all the state pride in these other states, and, and then I started thinking and looking and see who was running, And it was just more of the same, just the same career politicians, and, and then I, I realized our founders never envisioned politics to be like a profession, like a climb the ladder. They thought you, you know, you were gonna be a successful business person, or farmer, or rancher, and you go leave that to go s…

AI assessment note: “and then, really, the reason I ran for, for office, 2018”

Q You began your career in the private sector, right? You founded Gateway Mortgage in 2000, built into a national company. I think you started with a thousand dollars in a computer. Tell us about your entrepreneurial journey.

A Yeah, so, uh, I grew up in Norman, Oklahoma. I wanna first, I gotta introduce my wife. I'm gonna get in big trouble. Sarah, stand up and wave at everybody. 26 years. And we have six, six kids, uh, from, yeah, 26 years, uh, 24 down to 10, and, uh, so I, I grew up in Norman, dad was a pastor, and then I moved to, uh, went to school in Stillwater at Oklahoma State, uh, was always entrepreneurial, wanted to have my own business, and so, uh, started my company, like a lot of us, uh, entrepreneurs with a thousand dollars and a computer, and then grew that over the next 20 years, and, uh, grew it to over a thousand employees, Uh, bought a bank, um, and, you know, just was kind of living the American dream. Uh, and then, really, the reason I ran for, for office, 2018, I'd never ran for office before, uh, but I started seeing my state struggle, and we were having billion dollar bud, budget deficits, we were having teacher walkouts, as I traveled to other states, I saw all the state pride in these other states, and, and then I started thinking and looking and see who was running, And it was just more of the same, just the same career politicians, and, and then I, I realized our founders never envisioned politics to be like a profession, like a climb the ladder. They thought you, you know, you were gonna be a successful business person, or farmer, or rancher, and you go leave that to go s…

AI assessment note: “and then, really, the reason I ran for, for office, 2018”

Q uh, in horror, the murder of Irina Zarutska with, in Charlotte, right? This was a criminal who'd been out after 14 different arrests, repeated violent career criminal, and, and there's these, routinely these judges that are incompetent, or worse, putting these guys back on the streets. Like, like, how do we solve this? Is this legislation? Like, like, what is it to, to stop letting these violent criminals out again?

A You know, I mean, I've used that exact example. Like, here's why we are cleaning up Tulsa. We're not going to allow this, this stuff to happen. We're not allowed. These people are going to be here. That person obviously had a lot of mental issues, but he's a murderer and, uh, it needs to be punished to the full extent of the law. But a couple of things, number one, there's a group of people Um, that have these mental problems, and quite frankly, they need to be institutionalized. They need to be long term, uh, in some kind of system where they're not going to be roaming the streets. So I think we need to really look at that, and that's one thing Oklahoma's looking at is, if you have some serious mental issues, we are going to get you into, we're going to prosecute you, that's part of Trump's, um, executive order, we're going to commit you long term. But then there's a group of people that literally, uh, are just, you know, they're addicted to drugs and, and we need to get them the help that they need. So that's a group of people. But then there's a group of people that literally this is their lifestyle. And as long as you enable them to live on the streets, to do drugs, to move from community to community, and you give them three meals a day and you talk to them about housing, uh, you're going to have people that they're not hitting rock bottom. They want that lifestyle.

AI assessment note: “they need to be institutionalized. They need to be long term, uh, in some kind of system”

Q Amazing. More money to school choice than anyone else, too, relative to size of your state. What would you say to your fellow business leaders who don't want to get involved in politics? Do we need more of these guys to step up?

A Absolutely. I'm so excited. I mean, on Tuesday night, I mean, Wednesday morning, it felt like the sun was a little brighter, didn't it? Um, yeah. And what I remind Oklahomans and really Americans is, uh, I mean, if you, if you look at the resumes of the people running for office versus President Trump, I mean, running state government specifically is really a lot like running a business. There's 30,000 state employees in Oklahoma. Uh, we, we're a state of four million people. We have a twenty-two billion dollar budget. And that's why we love, you know, President Trump because of, I mean, it's a win for free markets. And it's so much bigger than just the people at the top of the ticket, and if you think about, you know, personalities that people kind of vote for this person or that person, but really you have to think about energy policy, you have to think about regulation policy, foreign policy, you mentioned that, um, you know, sanctions on Iran, all the good things that are going to happen with the Trump administration, uh, it's so much bigger than one person. It's actually the free markets that we believe in, uh, that we, it was a huge win Uh, for the American people. Uh, inflation going down. All the things that we believe in. Uh, it's gonna be a great next four years. Look at the markets. The markets were up, like, 4.4% just over the last three days, uh, with the Trump pre…

AI assessment note: “running state government specifically is really a lot like running a business.”

Q for Western civilization. I think this battle is, is a really tough one, and, and we really have to fight to win it. I think there's really dangerous ideological cancers. How can we be more bold in this fight, and are you seeing this even in your state? Is there, are there ways that woke nonsense gets into things in Oklahoma, and, and how are you thinking of fighting it?

A I mean, there's just a, everything is a fight, and you said it best when you were up there talking, if you're, if you're moving the needle, if you're actually making change, they're going to come out of the woodwork and they're going to fight you. I mean, it is just unbelievable. Our school choice plan. So I, I tell people all the time, I say, listen, rich people already have school choice. They could put their kids at any school they want. Uh, they can, they're going to move to a certain district based on the school. If your kid started getting into, you know, um, hanging out with the wrong crowd, if your daughter was hanging out with the wrong crowd, if they got into drugs, you would do whatever you could to pull your kids. But I'm telling you guys, if any of you were governor and you would have to talk to the single moms or the single dads that were like, Governor, what am I supposed to do? I don't have the resources. I can't move my kid. And then during COVID, um, I was one of the only governors in the country, by the way, that refused to do a mask mandate statewide. But we had, we had a couple big school districts, and like a lot of states, you know, it's kind of the independence of the school districts, that were closed down. Tulsa Public Schools was closed for 355 days. I hammered them every day because the moms that would tell me, Governor, my first-grader's not learnin…

AI assessment note: “Tulsa Public Schools was closed for 355 days. I hammered them every day”

Q for Western civilization. I think this battle is, is a really tough one, and, and we really have to fight to win it. I think there's really dangerous ideological cancers. How can we be more bold in this fight, and are you seeing this even in your state? Is there, are there ways that woke nonsense gets into things in Oklahoma, and, and how are you thinking of fighting it?

A I mean, there's just a, everything is a fight, and you said it best when you were up there talking, if you're, if you're moving the needle, if you're actually making change, they're going to come out of the woodwork and they're going to fight you. I mean, it is just unbelievable. Our school choice plan. So I, I tell people all the time, I say, listen, rich people already have school choice. They could put their kids at any school they want. Uh, they can, they're going to move to a certain district based on the school. If your kid started getting into, you know, um, hanging out with the wrong crowd, if your daughter was hanging out with the wrong crowd, if they got into drugs, you would do whatever you could to pull your kids. But I'm telling you guys, if any of you were governor and you would have to talk to the single moms or the single dads that were like, Governor, what am I supposed to do? I don't have the resources. I can't move my kid. And then during COVID, um, I was one of the only governors in the country, by the way, that refused to do a mask mandate statewide. But we had, we had a couple big school districts, and like a lot of states, you know, it's kind of the independence of the school districts, that were closed down. Tulsa Public Schools was closed for 355 days. I hammered them every day because the moms that would tell me, Governor, my first-grader's not learnin…

AI assessment note: “Our school choice plan. So I, I tell people all the time... And then during COVID”