Wake Up! with Randy Corporon, Cory Gardner, February 8, 2020
Station: KNUS, 710 am
Show: Wake Up! with Randy Corporon
Guests: Gardner, Cory
Date: February 8, 2020
Topics: State of the Union address, Trump Rally in Colorado Springs, Broadmoor World Arena, BLM, Grand Junction, Space Command, Joe St. George, KDVR Fox 31, Fort Morgan, Morgan County, Town Halls, Yuma, Sell Tractors, Main Street Tours, Colorado Secession Movement, Media Bias, Bypassing the Media, Taking Your Message Directly to the People, Don Lemon, Literacy of Trump Supporters, Looking Down on Trump Supporters, CNN, Acquittal, Impeachment Vote, Separation of Powers, House of Representatives, Revenge Majority, Attack Ads, carbon emissions, Arkansas Valley Conduit, Pueblo Reservoir, Our Cars, Our Cows, Our Straws, David Burnhardt, Secretary of Interior, Democrats Spiking the Football, Closing Coal Mines, Craig, Safe Injection Sites, Drug Safe Zones, Blue State, Blue Wave 2018,
HOST RANDY CORPORON [00:00:00] So much going on, a historic week for the president, the United States, a historic week for Republicans in general. And our next guest was a part of it. Senator Cory Gardner, welcome back to 710 KNUS. Good to talk to you in the 21st century.
UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM COLORADO, CORY GARDNER [00:00:16] Hey, good morning. How are you?
CORPORON [00:00:17] Good. Are you back in town?
GARDNER [00:00:19] I am. I was all over the front range of Colorado yesterday and the day before. And today I’ll be out and about again. Today, we were in Colorado Springs and Pueblo and Fort Collins. So it’s been good to be back home.
CORPORON [00:00:30] Well, not according to Joe St George of Fox News [referring to local TV station, KDVR, Fox31]. You don’t really get out in Colorado very much. I –.
GARDNER [00:00:39] [laughing] Well! Only if I go where Joe St. George wants me to go is he happy. Apparently, the people in Morgan County aren’t important enough to do town meetings with.
CORPORON [00:00:46] Yeah. Let me play just about 30 seconds from that [interview]. It’s just — it’s unconscionable to me how rude some of these reporters are. Let’s just let people have a quick taste.
AUDIO RECORDING OF GARDNER’S INTERVIEW WITH FOX 31 KDVR REPORTER, JOE ST.GEORGE [00:00:56] REPORTER JOE ST. GEORGE: Colorado — many Coloradans want to ask you questions in person about impeachment. You have not held a town hall — public town hall in our state — for two years. Will you commit–? US SENATOR CORY GARDNER: That’s not true, Joe! We were just out in Fort Morgan this summer. We did a town hall. We were out — I know that may not count in terms of the Front Range. ST.GEORGE: But not –. But not–not–. But not — well, exactly: Front Range, people in Denver, [unintelligible], in Douglas–. GARDNER: Oh! So, the people in Fort Morgan don’t tell us. ST.GEORGE: No, people in Fort Morgan count, sir. But people in Denver, people in Douglas County, people in Cast–. GARDNER: Well, that’s where we did a town hall, Joe! If you’re going to– You can’t tell people of Colorado that they don’t matter. And I think that’s what’s frustrating with so many people across the state.
CORPORON [00:01:30] Yeah, you must get so tired of the bias that you get, that’s built in, inherent in so many of these questions.
GARDNER [00:01:38] Well, it is incredible. You know, I get told by certain media personalities that I should just go back to Yuma and sell tractors. I have — you know, you hear from somebody like that who said, “Well, you haven’t done a real town hall!” Well, a real town hall, apparently, is only in the cities. And you see CNN — I don’t know if you saw this. It was in — It was astonishing! A Don Lemon episode where somebody went on and started making fun of people for not being able to read or write or spell because they supported Donald Trump. I mean, and they wonder why parts of the state wanted to secede years ago. This is — it — it’s — it’s embarrassing to think this country has reached a point where certain segments –half the people — look down on the other half of people because of where they live and who they support politically. That’s just not who we are as a country.
CORPORON [00:02:29] Well, it goes back to Barack Obama who talked about people who cling to their religion and their guns. And it really seems to me that Donald Trump is kind of showing the way for many Republicans, especially in difficult states like Colorado. [I’d] like to get your comment on anything you might have learned from Donald Trump’s approach to really exposing the hatred and the biases of the left leaning media. It just seems to me in 21st century politics, it’s almost impossible to try and, you know, thread the needle and just be liked by everybody. Instead, you’ve got to expose them. And I I don’t want to play that whole interview, but I thought you really did a good job, there, with Jeff St. George [sic] — not taking it anymore.
GARDNER [00:03:09] Well, thank you. Look, I think one thing that we have learned is how we can’t just be filtered by the media because the media approaches this with their own hopes and desires for an outcome, right? And so, what the — what the president has taught all of us — I don’t care what party you are — is that you’ve got to be able to reach the people directly. And that’s what I continue to do, whether it’s town halls at people’s businesses, town halls in Fort Morgan, whether it’s tele-town halls, whether it’s Main Street walks, whether it’s countless economic roundtables we’ve done over the past several years. We’ll continue to do all of those, and while what we do may not line up with any particular media agenda, it’s what we believe is the best way to reach all four corners of the state.
CORPORON [00:03:49] Have you and your staff talked about some way to do a Boulder or a Denver kind of town hall, but make everybody that comes in sign something that says, “Look, this is going to be conducted civilly. I understand that I can be asked to leave and be removed at any time. And knowing that, I come in–,” and have enough security there to make it so? Because, Cory, I have been to town halls for Democrats where I wanted to sit, learn, listen, kind of get the arguments of the other side, ask questions if I’d had the opportunity. That has never happened. But I didn’t jump up and yell and scream and disrupt. So many of these leftists — many of them paid — come to these town halls to make sure that you cannot have your message to the people heard.
GARDNER [00:04:32] Yeah. And that’s why we continue to try to find ways that we can hear the people who are really wanting the conversation to lead to a positive policy outcome. And we’ll continue to do that and look for ways to make it happen everywhere.
CORPORON [00:04:46] You’ve been a part of history this last week. Of course, we’ve got the president –highest Gallup approval in his history, four points higher than Barack Obama at this time in his presidency, and he won reelection pretty handily. You were part of the historic vote to not permit additional witnesses and documents into the Senate trial and, um, and then, of course, voted to acquit the president. And I’d like to play just 30 seconds, maybe, or so, from your floor speech last Wednesday, the day of the vote, because it was phenomenal.
AUDIO RECORDING FROM THE U.S. SENATE IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS [00:05:20] US SENATE PRESIDENT, CHARLES GRASSLEY: […] Senator from Colorado. US SENATOR FROM COLORADO, CORY GARDNER: Thank you, Mr. President. Over the last several months — several weeks — the American people have watched Washington convulse in partisan accusations, investigations and endless acrimony. That division reached its high watermark as the United States Senate carried out the third presidential impeachment trial in our nation’s history. We saw over the last two weeks an impeachment process that included the testimony of 17 witnesses, more than 100 hours of testimony, and tens of thousands of pages of evidence, records and documents which I successfully fought to make part of the record. I fought hard to extend the duration of testimony to ensure that each side could be heard over six days instead of just four. But what we did not see over the last two weeks was a conclusive reason to remove the president of the United States, an act which would nullify the 2016 election and rob roughly half the country of their preferred candidate for the 2020 election.
CORPORON [00:06:23] I’m going to stop it there. You got into the history — and I just encourage everybody to follow you on Twitter. They can find the speech there, YouTube, wherever. What was it like? You’re an attorney. You’ve been you’ve seen trials. You know what it’s like to be involved in a trial. What was it like to have to sit there — especially those first couple of days — and hear the same so-called evidence and the same spin on that evidence over and over and over into the wee hours of the morning?
GARDNER [00:06:52] Well, it was interesting, because you’re exactly right. Just because you say it a whole bunch of times doesn’t make it any more true or relevant than it was the very first day you heard it. Throughout this case, as we, you know, got to the end and heard the questions and reached the closing arguments and finally the vote, it became clear that this was a result in search of evidence, and that the House [impeachment] managers had an airtight case that — they kept saying that over and over, “airtight case” — that they brought to the Senate in search of more tightening. And that’s just not the way it works. Now, there’s a couple of things that the House managers would have you believe. They would have you believe that there is no such thing as separation of powers. They would have you believe that their right trumps the executive right — no pun intended there, sorry about that — that their right is higher than the executive branch rights and that they can then dictate to the court what the court should do to interpret their rights, and then they would tell the Senate how to conduct a trial. This really was a House of Representatives, in all of its partisan glory, wanting to shred so many elements of our constitution that would have set a partisan precedent for years to come, that ultimately would’ve been very destructive for our country.
CORPORON [00:08:05] [I] heard you on an interview that you did on Fox and Friends last Thursday, and you coined the term “revenge majority” when you were asked about the impeachment. What did you mean by that, and what does that mean for us going forward into the November elections?
GARDNER [00:08:19] Well, and I have said that term before. I think that the House is — has — when they won the majority of 2018, they immediately became a revenge majority. They said that they would do anything they could from the day the president was elected to impeach the president. When they took over in 2018, they started the investigations that led to their effort to impeach the president. And you had Al Green from Texas recently saying, “We need to impeach the president today because we may not be able to beat him in the election.” You know, that’s revenge. That is all about what they did. And that’s what they’ll continue to do. I see no reason why they will change. And the American people want it to stop. I mean, you pointed out the president reached his highest levels during the middle of the impeachment. The president — the people of this country want the Congress to focus on things that matter: continue driving the economy forward, continuing to put great judges on the courts, continuing to reduce regulations, and stop this — well, probably can’t say it on the on the air, here — stop this stuff that’s going on. [laughs]
CORPORON [00:09:19] [chuckles] But it rhymes with –. Well, people know what we’re talking–.
GARDNER [00:09:21] We’ll both get — somewhere the FCC is listneing. [laughs].
CORPORON [00:09:21] Yeah. And they had they go after the president so hard for that. I just think about LBJ and some of the other cursors that have been in the White House. [facetiously] Big deal, these days!. We’re talking with U.S. Senator Cory Gardner and Cory, if you listen to 710KNUS on the 710KNUS app or online, it seems like almost every commercial break there are two commercials that are pounding you. And one says that Cory Gardner voted to block limits on carbon emissions, provide subsidies for big oil, basically implying that you apparently want poisoned water, poisoned air for your family, your daughters and for the American people. What’s your response to that attack ad?
GARDNER [00:10:07] Well, first of all, these are attack ads by people that no matter what I do, they would oppose me. I mean, heck, I could turn the whole country into a wilderness area and they would still oppose me for something. But the reality is, the president — thanks to the work we were able to do — just announced $28 million to provide 50,000 people in southeastern Colorado with clean drinking water — the Arkansas Valley conduit. That’s what I was able to go into Pueblo the other day and talk about. That’s something I’ve been fighting for, for decades. [chuckling incredulously] It’s something that President Kennedy authorized in 1962 and didn’t get under construction until we were able to get this money secured now. You know, the oil and gas industry in Colorado has 200-and-some thousand jobs responsible for it in this state. I think it’s an incredibly important part of our economy. There are some, including John Hickenlooper and Andrew Romanoff, that want to destroy that most important economic driver of our state. And I’m just not going to give in to the fear mongering and the radical left who would take away our cars, our cows and our straws simply because they drive a political agenda.
CORPORON [00:11:08] [llaughing] “Our Cows, our cars–.” That got to play well in Yuma — “our cows, our cars, and our–“, or, “our cows, our trucks and our straws.”.
GARDNER [00:11:15] [laughing] That’s right!
CORPORON [00:11:16] That’s brilliant. And that’s such an important thing –this pipeline that you just talked about. I saw a video clip — it might have been on your Twitter feed — a video clip of JFK actually talking about and authorizing this pipeline almost 60 years ago. So, what is it about this time in history, this president and administration, your relationship with him or whatever it is that allowed this to happen now?
GARDNER [00:11:40] Oh, yeah. I’ll tell you, a couple just absolutely — just stunning, sort of spine-tingling moments as we’ve done this. But you’re right! I mean, President Kennedy came to Pueblo, Colorado, gave a major speech where he talked about signing the Arkansas Valley Conduit — excuse me, [correcting himself] — the Frying Pan Arkansas Project and some of the associated works that have gone along with that over the past many, many years, [and he] talked about authorizing the Arkansas Valley Conduit. This is a pipeline that will go from Pueblo Reservoir all the way out to Lamar, Colorado — well over 100 miles in an area that has a river that is loaded with natural selenium and other conditions that make it more and more challenging for these rural small communities to provide drinking water to their communities. And so — but for decade after decade, I remember fighting on — starting to fight on this in 2001 and 2002, and we didn’t get anywhere. And then I started getting a little bit of funding for it, maybe around 2010 or so, and [money] trickled in here and there. And only until we were able to go talk to Russ Vogt, President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, [and] David Burnhardt, his Secretary of Interior, Brenda Berman, President Trump’s head of Bureau of Reclamation, did they really realize this is something great that should have been done a long time ago that they can do. And they took it seriously. They listened to us. They listened to the people of southeastern Colorado and said here’s a need that should be fulfilled. And they did it! Twenty-eight million dollars [is] on its way. This will get the pipeline under construction to the first town in need. And, you know, the relationship that we have made this made this possible. And so — the other thing, Randy, I wanted to mention, though, is when I was in this meeting in Pueblo, the gentleman who was working with us — with me — for like, almost 20 years on the Arkansas Valley conduit, he was at that speech. He was 10 years old when President Kennedy gave that speech. And he cried the moment I told him we got 28 million for the Arkansas Valley conduit to begin construction.
CORPORON [00:13:34] That is a phenomenal story. And you’ve been involved in a lot of — bringing a lot of good projects, money, jobs into Colorado with the Bureau of Land Management, the Space Command for the Space Force, the brand new branch of our military. All of those things are very, very exciting, of course. I do hear from folks — activists and others — who talk about, you know, “Where’s Cory on our local issues?” We’ve got red flag that we’re up against now. We’ve got heroin injection sites coming back into downtown Denver, perhaps, the takeover of education, national popular vote. Oil and gas, you’ve already addressed. National popular vote, you’ve been very outspoken against. And it will be on our ballot, here, in November in Colorado. But how do you decide as a U.S. senator dealing with international policy and national policy, what, if any, local issues you can devote some time, energy or resources to?
GARDNER [00:14:29] Yeah, you know, we’ve got to have our hands full at a variety of levels. And, you know, we just want to help everywhere we can, but also be the most effective we can everywhere. And it looks at those existential threats to our state. You know, you talked about needle exchanges, gosh, I would think — or those safe zones, whatever they are — I think that they’d be devastating to our communities. And, you know, I don’t want these sort of drug-free safe zones in our communities, and what it would mean to our state. And if you look at the oil and gas, what it would mean to our communities, look, I live in an area — I live in a community that has profited and benefited and you know, kids have come back and stayed in our community because of natural gas development. They’re not evil people because they found those jobs. They shouldn’t be looked down upon because they decided to do a good job for their family in providing income and health insurance. You know, I called county commissioners and mayors and leaders in Craig, Colorado when the coal mines were shut down, when there were many Democrats across the state spiking the football in the end zone, celebrating the loss of hundreds of jobs in northwestern Colorado that were the equivalent of nearly 100,000 jobs in Denver. I mean, they’re killing communities with no remorse. Randy–! So, sorry. I’ll get off my soapbox, here.
CORPORON [00:15:44] I get it.
GARDNER [00:15:47] We — we — we have a lot to fight about. And the stakes for 2020 couldn’t be higher, because we can be led by a group of people that decide they want to lead from their ivory towers and tell us all how to drive and how to live and how to decide every choice for us out of the government. Or we can choose what we have been, what we have now, a government that’s getting out of the way, putting constitutional minded judges on the courts, getting regulations back where they should be — off the backs of the American people and off the backs of American families and workers. Incomes are rising. Wages are growing. You know, that’s all done. Without the Green New Deal. That’s all done without dictates and mandates from government. But that’s the choice we have in 2020.
CORPORON [00:16:29] And just a heads up to [the show’s producer], the whippersnapper, we’re going to push this segment a couple of extra minutes because we haven’t even talked about the Trump rally and your upcoming election. Senator Cory Gardner, we live in a state that — where Barack Obama beat John McCain by, gosh, almost eight points, [he] beat Mitt Romney by over five points. Donald Trump closed that gap to a little over four-and-a-half percentage points against Hillary Clinton. Yet we saw 2018 — kind of the blue wave, the rebound that you’d expect. You get newspaper articles, editorials, the Denver Post columnists actually writing you letters, warning you to distance yourself from the president. And yet here we go, 12 days from today, President Donald J. Trump and U.S. Senator Cory Gardner will be onstage at the Broadmoor World Arena, the first rally here in Colorado, the ‘ 22 election season — [correcting himself] the 2020 election season. How do you combat this constant pushback, trying to separate you from your party, your values and the president, Whether people like him personally or not –and I really have come to love the way he approaches things — but whether they like him or not, he is delivering the results for people of all political persuasions except for the radical left. But how do you deal with that in a state that appears to be driving ever bluer?
GARDNER [00:17:51] Well, here’s here’s the undeniable truth: that we’ve moved things, like you talked about, to Colorado; U.S. space command operating out of Peterson Air Force Base; the Bureau of Land Management headquarters now in Grand Junction, Colorado; USGS opening up significant new offices, operating more and more out of Golden, Colorado that nobody’s really even talked about. We’ve returned energy money through Anvil Points to western Colorado. We’ve now funded the beginning of construction of the Arkansas Valley conduit in southeastern Colorado. We finished the V.A. hospital in Aurora that people said wouldn’t be finished, that wouldn’t get done. We changed the rules. So that will never happen again. We won’t have to repeat what we learned in Aurora with the replacement facility for the V.A. hospital. We’ve — we continue to do more and more. Those are all good things for every corner of our state. And the people of Colorado have 2.5% unemployment. That is the record lowest unemployment Colorado has ever seen. Wage growth is growing faster than it has in decades. The lowest earning workers in our country are earning wages at twice as fast as the highest wage earners in our country. Those are undeniable things that have happened in our country. Now, does the left want to take away 170 million people — their insurance from 170 million people? Yes, they do. Do they want to increase taxes on households by thousands of dollars? Yes, they do. Dp they want to end 200,000 jobs in Colorado in the oil and gas industry. Yes, they do. Will we talk about that in Colorado Springs in twelve days? Yes, we will. Because I think that’s the clear choice we have coming up.
CORPORON [00:19:26] It’s going to be fascinating. You don’t have an identified opponent yet. And it seems like you’ve been kind of keeping your powder dry. But with election season upon us now, — gosh, I can’t believe it’s nine months away — when will we start maybe seeing Cory Gardner ads attacking Democrat policies or opponents — if that’s your style or your approach? And I don’t want to get into your campaign strategy. But people have just wondered, since there’s so much being lumped on you, really without response, you know, when you plan to start reacting to that.
GARDNER [00:20:02] Yeah, well, look, here’s the –. The left has an endless supply of money, a bottomless pit. The party that stands up against big money and dark money in politics is the party of big money and dark money and politics. Just look at Michael Bloomberg and how he’s buying his way onto the presidential ballot. And so, they have endless money that they will be infusing into Colorado. And — but there was a story not too long ago that says that their attacks haven’t worked on me, that those negative dollars haven’t moved my numbers. You know, John Hickenlooper, I’m sure, will start campaigning soon, once his ethics trial is over. And, you know, depending on what happens with that, I think he’s planning on testifying why it’s okay to take private jets and have your friends pay for them. So I’m not sure what will happen with that when he’s going to get on the trail. But I look forward to it.
CORPORON [00:20:49] Excellent. Well, there’s a hundred other things I’d like to talk to you about. I know you’ve got a lot to do today. I understand you may be back with Jimmy Sengenberger tonight, too, so maybe you can pick up where we left off. Is that right? Are you coming back to–?
GARDNER [00:20:59] You know, I have no idea. I haven’t seen the schedule for tonight. So that could be news to me!
CORPORON [00:21:03] All right. Very good. Well, I do appreciate your time. I know family time is precious when you’re home and you’ve got a lot of politicking to do. But [it is] really a great kickoff to 2020. It’s hard to imagine, given where the president is, where the Republican Party and Republican unity is, and just with your skills, personality and accomplishments here in Colorado, that we’re not going to do very, very well coming up here in November. Thank you very much for joining us this morning on 710 KNUS.
GARDNER [00:21:30] Hey, thanks for having me, Randy. Thank you! Take care!
CORPORON [00:21:31] All right. You better believe it.
