Kelly Tshibaka: 0:08
Welcome back to Stand where we help make courage contagious. I’m Kelly Tshibaka, your host, Alaska’s chair for the Trump campaign, former US Senate candidate in Alaska, and I’m joined today by my amazing daughter and co-host, Denali Tshibaka. This is your first time joining us, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. I hope you nail it and slay it. I think that’s a word you said. I’m not allowed to say oh my goodness. So here we go.
Kelly Tshibaka: 0:29
It’s going to be a roller coaster. You can be one of our standouts by joining us at standshoworg. We take a stand for freedom, truth and government by the people, so join us there. You can see our social media and check out our YouTube channel, where we’ve got all of our amazing episodes, and today we have got a wonderful show in front of us. You’ve already heard him laughing, because he’s got nothing but joy in his heart. We have our friend and our amazing Alaska House candidate, Nick Begich, soon to be our congressman. He is our favorite not just our favorite, but Alaska’s favorite in this election, running for house.
Kelly Tshibaka: 1:04
The election is in just a couple weeks, the first week of November. If you have not planned to vote, make a plan to vote, whether that is through an absentee ballot or going to the polls. Voter turnout is so important. The most important thing about this race in particular is that this Denali, if you didn’t know, is one of the top 10 races in congress there are. Uh, I’m going to just pop quiz you because you are a graduate in political science.
Kelly Tshibaka: 1:25
How many House seats are up for election every two years. Half of them, no, all of them. 435 seats are up and there are 10 top races and Nick Begich’s race is one of them. So all eyes in the nation are on this race. Nick Begich, welcome to stand. His website is alaskans4nickbegichcom. Nick is spelled N-I-C-K Begich, B-E-G-I-C-H nickbegichcom. Nick, we are so happy to have you here. Welcome to the show.
Nick Begich: 2:02
Thanks. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be back on Stand with you. Kelly and Denali. Welcome to the first podcast. I’m sure we’ll be first of many.
Nick Begich: 2:06
Yes, we do have a really important race, there’s no doubt about it. I mean, there’s 435 seats in the House and Alaska only gets one voice because we have a small population. Big state, small population. So it’s really important that the person that we have representing Alaska in the House shows up for work, represents all the people of Alaska and represents the factors of Alaska that make us unique.
Nick Begich: 2:30
You know we’re a resource state. I think that’s something that everyone who’s been in Alaska for longer than five minutes knows and understands. We have a lot of potential as a state and it’s really important that that single voice that we do get in the House represents to the other members, to the other 434 members, just how important Alaska is, not just for us but for them, for the entire nation, for the people that they represent in their districts. And you know that’s what I want to do on behalf of Alaskans is represent the opportunities of this state so we can open it back up and play that important role that we should be playing in national security, energy security and mineral security.
Kelly Tshibaka: 3:09
You said that really well. A lot of people in the United States what we call the lower 48 affectionately don’t have a great appreciation for the fact that nearly all the fish they eat in their restaurants come from Alaska waters, that the frontline of national security for our country is actually Alaska, we are closest to Russia and China and North Korea and that we have to have the most military defense in our country is actually located at our shores if we’re going to have strong defense against our biggest adversaries. So much of what happens in Alaska for energy security and, I would say, energy dominance in our country actually is dependent on what we do with Alaska and the Biden administration and what we’d call the Harris administration, because it’s not a misunderstanding or secret to Americans anymore that Biden really hasn’t been in charge. The last four years the Harris administration has really targeted Alaska for a shutdown, with more than 60 executive actions and orders targeted against us.
Kelly Tshibaka: 4:06
So one of the challenges I think for you as congressman is going to be that one voice in a sea of 435 standing up for Alaska. It’s also a challenge the fact that your footprint geographically is two and a half times the size of Texas and getting to all of your constituents. Meeting everyone and campaigning is a challenge. The last time we had you on the show, you had another really strongly funded and supported Republican in the race. That person has since dropped out, but I wanted to toss the question to you and say at this point, with only a couple of weeks to go, what do you see as the strongest challenges to your race?
Nick Begich: 4:41
Yeah, you know, at first let me, just before I get into the challenges in this race, let me just give all the credit to Nancy Dahlstrom. She chose to get out of the race and this is one of the one of the strange things about ranked choice voting and I think we’ve all learned this over the last couple of years is that when you have more than one person on our side of the aisle, side of the aisle, on the Republican side of the aisle, you end up eroding one another’s votes because a lot of voters about 30%, it turns out won’t rank a second choice. So this gives us an opportunity to consolidate support, contrast the policies on my side of the aisle, on the Republican side, with Mary Peltola’s record, and what we know is that when we have that opportunity for a direct debate, we win Because at the end of the day, we’re a red state, we lean conservative and that’s what reflects our values as Alaskans. But there are challenges in this race. There’s a great deal of money that’s being poured in to our state from outside. We see that in the ranked choice voting ballot initiative scenario, where you’ve got something close to $10 million coming in from outside of Alaska trying to tell Alaskans how we should vote. We’re seeing the same thing in the congressional race.
Nick Begich: 5:58
90% of the money that Mary Peltola has raised has actually come from outside of Alaska, and here again, you’ve got people outside Alaska trying to dictate to Alaskans who they should send to Washington DC. And look, there’s a substantial imbalance. Right, more than half of my money is coming from in-state and again 90 percent of her money is coming from out-of-state. She’s raised close to $10 million. We’ll raise probably $2 million, and so there is.
Nick Begich: 6:27
There’s a major challenge when it comes to funding campaigns. There’s also a challenge that’s exacerbated by the fact that there’s a funding imbalance in who’s telling the truth, and Mary Peltola has been, and her campaign, her allies on her campaign, have been spinning lies about my record and misrepresenting her record in the Congress. You’ve heard, probably at this point, many statements about her saying that she was responsible for approval of the Willow Project. What we know is that Joe Biden himself, weeks after approving that project, was asked by a reporter as he, interestingly enough, stood next to Justin Trudeau of Canada, and someone said why did you approve Willow? And what the president said was look, I approved Willow because my lawyers told me that if I didn’t approve Willow, I would lose in court and then I wouldn’t be able to do what I really wanted to do, which was to take millions of acres of land offline from from Alaska for future development which is exactly what they did.
Kelly Tshibaka: 7:29
So we got a portion like what is it? 60 percent of the Willow Project, which you know when we do grades in our house. That’s a D Willow project, and instead we lost all of ANWR and all of NPRA, which is where the real oil fields are, and if Mary wants to take credit for that, well then that is on her. We lost all of our oil future for a D on a small project.
Nick Begich: 7:55
You’re 100 percent right. I mean she she wants the credit for Willow, but she doesn’t want the credit for all of the other 66 executive orders targeting Alaska and growing. They’re not done yet. And what I’ve told folks is, if, god forbid, harris become the next president I don’t believe it’s going to happen, but if it did happen, what we’ve seen under Biden is just a preview of what we would see under a Harris administration. And I’ll tell you look for folks out there that are worried about the future of the state of Alaska. You know it matters who we elect for president. It also matters who we send down to DC on our behalf, because the entire House is looking for that one voice from our state to understand what do Alaskans want?
Kelly Tshibaka: 8:36
What do we want to?
Nick Begich: 8:37
see for our state, and what we’ve seen from Mary Peltola is a mixed record at best.
Nick Begich: 8:43
On resource development, right, she wants to take credit for Willow, but what she’ll never tell the public I will, but she’ll never tell the public is when she had an opportunity to stand up against those executive orders.
Nick Begich: 8:56
There was a bill that moved through the House Resources Committee called the Alaska’s Right to Produce Act. It wasn’t a bill that she started, it was actually a bill introduced by a member from another state for our state’s benefit. She co-sponsored a dear colleague letter. She sends a dear colleague letter out to all of her colleagues on the Democrat side of the aisle and she says look, I want you to vote no on the bill. So she urges people to vote no on her own co-sponsored bill and then doesn’t vote yes or no herself. She votes present, and that’s not a record we can be proud of. It’s a record that really upsets the other people on her committee and I know this because I’ve spoken with them personally and it does not represent the political will of the people of our state, and so that’s another challenge that we’ve seen through. The campaign is an obfuscation of Mary Peltola’s true record in the House and that record has been abysmal for Alaska.
Kelly Tshibaka: 10:00
That’s right, we had a little bit of a blip in the internet there. So just to summarize that’s right, we had a little bit of a blip in the Internet there. So just to summarize, the Alaska Rights to Produce Act Paltola co -sponsored it and then sabotaged it in her caucus, went into the Democrat caucus and wrote letters and told it’s important that we had this flip in the president’s endorsement. So before the president had endorsed the other Republican that was in this race, Nancy Dahlstrom, and then she backed out, and then the president has now I mean, we call him the president President Trump has now endorsed you. We’d like to hear the story about how that happened. How did you get the president to change his mind and come around and endorse you?
Nick Begich: 10:45
Well, I’ll tell you what this seat is so important for making sure that we retain majority control in the House, and I think people across the country, including the president, recognize just how important that is. I’ve been a supporter of President Trump since 2016. I was proud to go to his presidential inauguration in 2017. I’ve donated to the president. I’ve even spoken at Trump rallies in the past, so the president and his team know that I support him and have supported him for some time.
Nick Begich: 11:13
I did receive a phone call from President Trump, and what was amazing about this phone call was that it happened the same day of that second assassination attempt. Same day of that second assassination attempt. He called me yes, he called me after that attempt, late in the day, and we had a conversation for about 10 minutes. And I said Mr President, you’ve had just an incredibly eventful day. And he said you have no idea. And he said but we wanted to end it on a positive note and tell you that you’re and I won’t do a great Trump here. But he said we’re going to do a very big endorsement. It’s going to be very big, you’re going to love this endorsement. And and he did he delivered.
Nick Begich: 11:52
You know, we had a great conversation, though, about the state of Alaska, and I use that opportunity to talk about just how much Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who seems to be the one running the show right now has actually targeted Alaska. So we talked about those 66 executive orders, and he asked me specifically about the King Cove Road, about the Ambler District Mining Road, about ANWR, about NPRA. These were on his mind mind, and what he wanted me to tell the state of Alaska on his behalf is that day one, he’s going to get to work repealing the executive orders that have targeted the state of Alaska. That’s why we need President, one of many reasons why we need President Trump in office.
Nick Begich: 12:37
As Alaskans, he was the best president our state has seen in our lifetimes, for our state, and we need him back so that we can open up the state and provide the resources that our country so desperately needs, whether that’s minerals, energy or, as we mentioned earlier, national security. So these things are front and center for President Trump. I believe he’s going to get back in office. I know that he’s going to deliver on his promises, as he did in his first four years, and I’ll tell you he has a deep-seated love for Alaska, and he made mention of that several times in our call.
Kelly Tshibaka: 13:15
Yeah, if we want to vote Alaska, we definitely want to vote President Trump, and I appreciate hearing that story. It’s a really great story. It’s definitely consistent with who I know him to be. So we’re on with Nick Begich AlaskansForNickBegichcom. We’re going to take a break. Stand by, we’ll be right back with Nick.
Denali Tshibaka: 13:36
Begich, welcome back to Stand. You’re on with Kelly and Denali Tshibaka, and our guest today is US House candidate Nick Begich. So, Nick, as you well know, election integrity is a really big deal to us in Alaska up here, and there’s been a lot of concerns raised with it, especially because recently the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that Eric Hafner, a felon currently incarcerated on the East Coast, never been in Alaska, never been in Alaska and he’s somehow on our ballot as one of the top four finishers and he’s a serious contender for House.
Kelly Tshibaka: 14:11
Yeah, compete against you. He could be our next US congressman.
Denali Tshibaka: 14:14
Yeah, so I wanted to get your thoughts on that, on the Hafner Affair, and also what your thoughts are on increasing election integrity in Alaska and the rest of the United States, should you win.
Nick Begich: 14:26
Yes, these are great questions. First of all, I was surprised to learn I remember the first time that I learned a few years ago that in fact you can run whether you’re a resident of a state or not. For Congress it really doesn’t matter. And we see, because of ranked choice voting, we see more and more people from outside of Alaska registering to run in Alaska. They’re not residents and in the case, as you point out, of Eric Hafner, he’s never lived in Alaska, never been to Alaska. But there’s nothing constitutionally that prevents somebody from doing that as long as they live in the district before they take a seat in Congress. So what he’s doing is constitutional. It’s a little odd and I think in most cases around the country people see that they recognize that that’s not truly reflective of who they are. You know, typically people are going to be electing people that are from the district that they’re in and certainly from the state that they’re representing.
Denali Tshibaka: 15:27
But yes, so.
Nick Begich: 15:29
Eric Hafner did make the ballot, and this is one of the strange wrinkles of ranked choice voting. You had some folks drop off and he received enough votes that he became one of the top four finishers in the end in the general election. And you saw what the Democrats did. They took this all the way to the Supreme Court because they didn’t want to see a second Democrat on the ballot, and it wasn’t anything to do. It was interesting. It wasn’t about whether Eric Hafner was a resident of Alaska. It wasn’t about really whether Eric Hafner was a felon. It was about for them whether they had a second Democrat on the ballot. And they acknowledged. They acknowledged in their court filings for the first time as a party that a second person from their party could create problems for their preferred Democrat candidate. And so finally, we have an admission from the Democrat Party in Alaska.
Nick Begich: 16:24
Ranked choice voting is problematic for them. We know it’s problematic for others, and so that was progress, I think. But look, at the end of the day, they’re going to have to defend their record. Mary Paltola has got to defend her record. She has not been forthcoming about which presidential candidate she would like to see in the president’s office in 2025. And so Eric Hafner has, and that’s one of the interesting things about running elections you get to find out who people really are and what they believe and what their positions are, and, from what I’ve understood, eric Hafner is a strong supporter of Kamala Harris, and I assume that he’s giving some Democrats an alternative choice.
Kelly Tshibaka: 17:08
That’s right. She said she was open to supporting President Trump because obviously President Trump’s going to sweep the state of Alaska and she has not committed to supporting Kamala Harris. She’s since backtracked on the support of Trump because she got such backlash for it. However, I think you’re right that when she’s in DC, mary Poltola is a far-left Democrat, but when she’s in Alaska, she has to play moderate to right of center because that’s what her constituency is, and so we’re seeing that same flip-flopping that’s really hurting Kamala Harris right now with the base that would otherwise support her, and I’ve also seen the polls that show Eric Hafner has a lot more support in Alaska than he should, and I agree with you that this jungle primary that has come in with ranked choice voting the problem is that it’s taken us away from protected primaries where the parties actually got to screen and vet candidates.
Kelly Tshibaka: 18:02
So we have these charlatans running that have no screening or vetting, and we know a good number of Republicans there’s been media coverage on this who went and voted for Eric Kaffner to put him on the ballot so that it would weaken the Democrat base and quite likely give you a victory, in the same way that we know that there was a run on the Senate candidate in 2022, who was the Hollywood actress.
Kelly Tshibaka: 18:22
All of her donations were from outside. She never got a penny from an Alaskan because she was here posing as an Alaskan with a fake name and a fake Alaska address to try and win our Senate seat, and that’s what happens when you have these jungle primaries and this ranked choice voting. That actually doesn’t represent Alaskans at all. But it’ll be interesting to see what happens with this. As you said, this wrinkle and rank choice voting could actually play in our favor, where Republicans have actually gotten together on this, if you will, and have said let’s just treat this as a normal primary and we are consolidating the base and choosing to drop out, and I’m really happy about the choices that we made in this congressional race and instead put one candidate forward, and it’ll be really great to see that the will of the people is actually reflected in the choice of the election.
Denali Tshibaka: 19:08
But, Denali, you had another question right, I did Absolutely so. Speaking of Mary and how poor her representation of Alaska is, I wanted to ask we’ve noticed that she’s missed approximately 40, 45 percent of the votes that she’s supposed to show up for in Congress. She’s sabotaged bills that she’s put forward. She’s clearly not doing what’s best for Alaska while she’s down there in the DC swamp and I wanted to ask you how do you plan on making up for what’s essentially two years of representation that Alaska has lost? We have one House seat and we’ve basically lost two critical years to pick up our state and turn things around for us. So how will you make up for that, Should you win?
Nick Begich: 19:49
That’s a great, great question, you know. Let me just start by saying there was a survey that came out this week from WalletHub, and WalletHub did a survey on the hardest working states in the country and Alaska was number two behind North Dakota. And when you look at the numbers more closely, you see that actually Alaska is number one in terms of hours worked per worker, right At 41 hours a week on average, so number one in the country for hours worked. And we have a representative right now that is often not showing up for work and that doesn’t really represent the hardworking people of our state. You know, the hardest working people in America are not being represented by someone who’s working hard, and so there is going to be a lot of work to be done to catch up.
Nick Begich: 20:38
Over the last two years and what I’ve done in every opportunity that I have I mentioned the opportunity with President Trump to speak with him about the executive orders targeting Alaska. I’ve spoken with Speaker Mike Johnson, I’ve spoken with House Majority Whip Tom Emmer and I’ve had conversations extensively with Steve Scalise, the majority leader in the House, about this issue, and I’ve told them to a person look, we need to not just push back against the executive orders. I want President Trump to repeal these orders 100 percent. But we have to do more, ok, and what we need to do is we need to lock in Alaska’s right to produce its resources into law. So there are opportunities in the Congress. Budget reconciliation is the first major opportunity for us to find as many of these priorities that we can that will have a budgetary impact.
Nick Begich: 21:30
That would pass what’s called the Byrd Rule in the Senate, so that we can move this through budget reconciliation and lock in more tightly Alaska’s sovereign right to produce its resources, and so that’s the number one priority that I have for Alaska, going down to DC, is to work with the Republican conference, the Republican majority in the next Congress, to lock in Alaska’s ability to produce so that that pendulum doesn’t swing so far for our state every time that a Democrat gets into office and decides they want to turn us off.
Kelly Tshibaka: 22:05
It’s a really good point. It seems, even when it is locked into law, there’s executive orders that overturn it. But I really like the way that you just captioned that we have a hardworking state represented by a congresswoman who’s hardly working, and that is a problem because it’s not going to do us well. We’re just going to have to work harder to make up for what’s not being done or how the government overreach is absolutely oppressing us up here in Alaska. But speaking of oppression, it feels like the young generation feels particularly oppressed because they cry about it a lot, and I know that Denali just experienced a lot of that in college.
Denali Tshibaka: 22:42
Oh yeah, I mean, I even went to a conservative school, just graduated from Texas A&M, gig’em, aggies, gig’em. But one of the things I really noticed down there, even being a political science major, was it was really, really difficult to get any of the Republicans there to say, oh yeah, I lean right. They were super secretive about it, always like, ok, well, I mean, like I’m not for Kamala, I guess I would vote for Trump or conservative as a point of shame.
Denali Tshibaka: 23:06
Oh yeah, it was almost like a secret message kind of thing. Like, oh yeah, I lean right, wink, and it was so interesting because you know the Democrats are running around campus with the blue hair and the Biden-Harris t-shirts and vote Beto and all of this stuff, and I wanted to ask you is Basically You’d be one of the younger members of the House. What are your thoughts on this? Why do you think the younger generation feels so repressed to say I am a Republican, and how do you think you could lead by example to change that?
Nick Begich: 23:36
Boy, I love that question because you know there’s so much pressure put onto people through mainstream media sources and what we’ve seen and interestingly enough, we’ve seen the Democrats pay influencers, social media influencers on TikTok and Instagram and other social media platforms to promote their messages. These are paid actors, paid influencers who are going out into their target demographics and presenting a message to the youth, and it’s not surprising. But it is disappointing to see Democrats resort to this because they recognize their ideas are failed ideas, their ideas don’t have facts on their side and their ideas require deception in order to be sold to the public. And that’s what they do. And so they put a lot of pressure on folks through those, through those indirect methods, to try to influence public opinion. But I think what happens and I’ll tell you, I’ve known many people, many young people, friends of mine, who when I was younger they kind of leaned left or they identified sort of more with the left side of philosophy they get their first paycheck.
Nick Begich: 24:52
Hey, wait a minute, what happened to all of this money that I’ve made? Oh well, it had to go to this bucket and that bucket and this tax and that tax and pretty quickly people start to lean a little more conservative because they recognize that they’re not getting their money’s worth. The government’s taking that money and what are they doing with it? What benefit do they see? And so I think when people graduate and they hit the real world and they start to have to make tough decisions about budgets and about how much they’re going to have to work in order to pay for the lifestyle that they were hoping to have, those things start to get people shook loose of some of the indoctrination that happens even in a conservative university.
Nick Begich: 25:34
You went to Texas A&M, I went to Baylor down the road, I mean, I was at a conservative school too, but I could see, you know, the same trend lines that you’re describing happening even then. So I can remember going down and visiting the campus here a number of years ago and seeing Beto O’Rourke signs on that campus and I was very surprised to see it. But yet Texas remains a Republican state. Ted Cruz is going to win that state again, and I think the reason is because when we encounter real life, we get out of the collegiate bubble and we start to have to work and build our own families and do those things we recognize. Actually, these policies on the left don’t work for regular people.
Kelly Tshibaka: 26:19
Yeah, I think that that’s right, and one of the things we’re doing is encouraging our kids to speak up now because, as I’ve told them, there’s a lot more people in your classes who think the way you think and they don’t know how to articulate it and they don’t have the courage to. They don’t know that when they say something, there won’t be any responses back, and so one of the easy ways to speak up is just to simply ask questions, and if you ask questions, you’ll be surprised to see that the liberal indoctrination is really only one layer thick Well, and the amount of people that come up to you after and go listen.
Denali Tshibaka: 26:51
I wasn’t going to say it, but I totally agree with you.
Kelly Tshibaka: 26:54
That’s right and the professors often don’t have professors and teachers often don’t have an answer beyond what they were trying to just drill into people’s heads, and so it starts to unravel really quickly, which I think is a good way to start. Well, this has been a great conversation with Nick Begich. We’re going to pick up on the other side of the break and talk about really interesting policy conversations. Policy means the things that affect our pocketbooks, so let’s pick up with that. Alaskansfornickbegichcom, you’ve been on stand with Kelly and Denali Tshibaka and you can find us at standshow. com Denali’s first show. Denali, you’ve been doing fantastic. Why? Thank you, mom? Yeah, and we’ve talked a lot about economics because you are starting out life just having graduated from college. Yep, how has bidenomics affected you? I?
Denali Tshibaka: 27:56
don’t like it. I want Trump back.
Kelly Tshibaka: 27:59
Nick Begich, let’s talk about the economy, because you’ve got really great policy positions on this. How do we get the economy back in the four years that Trump would be president when you’re in Congress?
Nick Begich: 28:10
There’s so many things that need to be done. Let’s just go through a list One interest rates need to come back down. Interest rates are far too high. What happened was that the Federal Reserve, in attempting to address a hot economy, decided that interest rates, which is their old standby, would be the mechanism, the lever that they would pull in order to slow things down. The problem is that the root of our issues wasn’t low interest rates. The root of our issues was the fact that the government was spending too much money and printing money in order to do it, and so the Fed accommodated that, blew up their balance sheet to historic levels in order to finance this excess government spending. And all that extra money started flowing through the economy, and as the velocity of the economy picked up, it heated the economy up too much. What they needed to do was reduce the size of their balance sheet, reduce some of the liquidity occurring in the economy and keep interest rates low, and so, instead, they made a policy mistake, and a lot of people have paid for it, especially young people, right?
Nick Begich: 29:18
Young people who are saving for their first home or who are taking out those student loans at high interest rates, and so this high interest rate environment penalizes youth far more than it penalizes older Americans who’ve already locked in their mortgage rates at low rates and what we’ve seen is that they’re just not moving. People aren’t moving out of their homes, they’re just staying where they’re at, they’re locked in at a 2% rate, saying in fact they can’t afford to move. So mortgage payments. Here you have young people. I’ve met them all over the state. They say, look, I’ve saved money for my down payment but now I can’t afford the house payment because it’s up 60% because of these interest rates spiral that we can’t get out of as a nation.
Nick Begich: 30:16
We’ve seen this in Japan. Their currency has devalued 30 percent in the last 18 months because this same set of policies that we’re pursuing today they pursued 20 years ago and they’re paying the price now. And it impacts our ability to maintain the American way of life if we abuse the privilege of being the world’s reserve currency. If you go back in time and you look, we weren’t always the world’s reserve currency. There was Great Britain and Portugal and France and Spain, and these nations made the same mistakes that we’re making now when they lost their reserve currency status. So we have an exorbitant privilege in having the world’s reserve currency. If we spend more money than we’re taking in over time we’ll lose that privilege and the American way of life will suffer.
Denali Tshibaka: 31:08
So I tell people go to your closet.
Nick Begich: 31:10
Go to your garage, tell me how much of that stuff was made in America. There’s going to be a few things, but there’s not a lot. And the reality is the people in these other nations are trading their labor and raw materials for our dollars. They value our dollars quite literally more than they value that labor and those materials, and so we make a trade. Well, if we don’t have that ability to make that trade, a lot of the things that we enjoy in this country will not be available to us in the future.
Kelly Tshibaka: 31:39
Yeah, that’s right. So well, speaking of so, it’s more than go ahead. That’s good. Speaking of things spiraling, another thing we’ve noticed is spiraling, according to reports, is IQ rates. IQ rates are dropping, yes, and a lot of that comes back to our education system. What’s your take on parental rights and education? It seems like this is a big concern across the country.
Nick Begich: 32:01
It’s a huge issue and you know this is a big issue. In our specific campaign, Mary Peltola voted against a bill that would ensure that parents have some just fundamental basic rights when raising their kids. We trust the public school system to educate our kids, to protect our kids and as a parent of a 12-year-old I do. I put a lot of trust in the school system to do that. I’m not there in the classroom. I’ve got things going on.
Nick Begich: 32:31
Parents all over the state. Many of them are two-income households. They don’t have time to watch everything that’s happening inside that classroom. So there’s a lot of trust that goes in to the schools to ensure that those kids are being taken care of and they’re being educated properly. Well, this bill would simply just say look, as a parent, you have the right to know what’s being taught in the classroom, what pronouns are being used to refer to your child when they’re at school, what books are available in the school libraries but you’re paying for it. And what right does the state when I say the state, I’m talking about the federal government or government generally what right does the state have to stand between you and your child?
Kelly Tshibaka: 33:22
It’s almost like turning a public school into a prison when that happens, that when they go into school you lose all rights to them and they lose all rights to you, and I don’t think we want to turn public schools into prisons or children into inmates.
Nick Begich: 33:37
Yeah, you’re. You know what You’re right. The truth of the matter is and I want to be real clear it’s not all educators, it’s not most educators, it’s a handful of educators that are using that privilege, abusing the privilege that’s been given to them, to take time in a classroom that should be dedicated to math, science, reading, writing, accurate history. They should be using that time for those things, not using that time to indoctrinate children in the latest Democrat political fads, and that’s what we’re seeing the classroom become in a few instances, and it’s not for that purpose. And parents need to know that they continue to have the right to raise their child the way they see fit, not the school system.
Nick Begich: 34:21
And so she voted against that. She also voted against protections for women’s sports in Title nine, and this was our late Senator Ted Stevens, one of his priorities. He was a big part of the reason why Title IX advanced in the Congress and was signed into law, making sure that women are competing against other women and not men in their sports, and this is universal. When you look at the information, you look at the data, most moderates, conservatives and even Democrats agree that protecting women and women’s sports is really important. But Mary Peltola voted against that and it’s very surprising because when you see her ads, she talks a lot about rights and women’s rights and freedom, and yet she’s taking those freedoms and those rights away with these actions.
Kelly Tshibaka: 35:11
Well, when we talk about the school context, we’re not talking about grown women like me, which I do have an issue with that we’re often talking about girls, little girls, and you know, having had a couple of girls you’re sitting next to me, you’re grown now, but I’ve got a little one at home. I’m not okay with boys and men being in the locker room with her pretending to be girls. That’s not okay. It’s just never okay, and so that’s what we’re talking about. It’s a major policy difference with major real-life consequences that result in major harm. So, speaking of things dressed up as freedom, let’s talk about one of the major policy differences that seems to be really contentious, and that’s the issue around abortion. And there’s this whole idea that’s come up. It just enrages me in the presidential and vice presidential debate, this concept that Democrat leadership has not supported aborting children up to the time of birth and after they’re born. And I just want to toss that easy softball pitch to you on what Mary Peltola has actually voted on this issue.
Nick Begich: 36:13
Yeah, you know, you saw it. For those who watched the vice presidential debate, I watched it as well. Tim Walz tried to dodge this question and suggest that his bill in Minnesota did not allow for late day of abortion. It does. It does allow for that, and even further. It allows for a physician to walk away from a baby that’s born Um their position is any abortion is a right to a successful abortion.
Kelly Tshibaka: 36:46
So if an infant happens to be born alive, they do not support the infant’s born alive act, which is a separate patient on a patient table. And they absolutely abandoned the Hippocratic Oath of you know first, do no harm, and they instead let this living person stay there to die and walk.
Nick Begich: 37:07
And that’s so, folks. I mean that’s just wrong. I mean I think that’s something even for folks who believe in abortion rights. That’s wrong. And I mean I think that’s something even for folks who are, who believe in abortion rights, that’s wrong. And most Alaskans agree. When you look at the data, 26 percent of Alaskans believe that that’s OK and the rest say no, it’s not OK, right. So the vast majority of Alaskans, even in one of the one, in one of the most pro-choice states in America, believe that that’s wrong.
Nick Begich: 37:34
And Mary Peltola voted for that. She voted for that. She supports abortion all the way up until the moment of birth. And folks, these are human beings. These are human beings. They can live outside the womb. This is clearly a person. And for Mary Peltola to take that radical position, you know it flies in the face of what freedom really does mean. Individual liberty goes down to the person and in fact, we have to protect our most vulnerable the most, because they don’t have the ability to speak for themselves. But that’s a human being. And for Mary Peltola to take that extreme position, it’s just. It’s out of step with where most Alaskans are, where where most Americans are, but, even more importantly, with what’s right, what’s truly right.
Kelly Tshibaka: 38:22
I think one of the ways Denali has successfully communicated this to her friends is actually explaining what this means a baby who is being born and delivered and coming out normal delivery process and taking its first breath that they can terminate they would say, terminate that life and the way that they do this for people who have never actually studied abortion. There’s two ways abortions are done. The one is you stick a needle into the child’s head and you suck out its brain. A nine-month-old baby is too large to do that. The other is you dismember it limb from limb, so you take a little scalpel knife and this way it would have to be much bigger and you would cut off this baby’s limbs, shoulders and legs and then ultimately its head, as this thing’s coming out. In order to end, the quote fetal tissue. But this is a live person.
Denali Tshibaka: 39:09
You literally are blending babies. When you do that, right, it’s horrible.
Kelly Tshibaka: 39:13
Decapitating and dismembering a child in order to, in the name of having a right to a successful abortion a right to an abortion is a right to a successful abortion. So, as this person is being born alive, you are giving these doctors and these patients the right to dismember another person, and that is what Mary Peltola and, to be clear, all the Democrats in the House voted for this last session, and so I think that’s a major policy difference between you and Mary Peltola, right, mr Begich?
Nick Begich: 39:40
It’s a huge policy difference and I’ll tell you in most of most of the countries around the world, particularly in developed nations, the practice you just described is is 100 percent against the law.
Kelly Tshibaka: 39:51
It’s illegal to be considered a human rights crime.
Nick Begich: 39:55
That’s right.
Kelly Tshibaka: 39:55
Yeah Well, I appreciate you being on today. Thank you so much, Alaskans, for NickBegichcom. Nick needs all the support that he can get because he is up against a fierce dark money outside funding battle against Mary Peltola and all of the outside groups that are supporting her, and if we want this person in Congress. This is not just a cry for Alaskans, but I know that a lot of people outside of Alaska are watching this show. Please support him. Alaskansfornickbegichcom, there is a very, very narrow majority in the House At times. This last session’s been down to one person. This could make all the difference in the world. Alaskansfornickbegichcom, we so appreciate you having on the show, Nick, and we wish you all the best in this upcoming election.
Nick Begich: 40:34
Thank you so much. Thank you for sticking with this podcast. It’s so important for people to understand the issues of the day from a conservative perspective and the good news is we’ve got the facts on our side. We’ve just got to be willing to have the courage to take a stand. Get out there, tell our friends, tell our neighbors, have those conversations with family. Stand, get out there, tell our friends, tell our neighbors, have those conversations with family, because, again, the facts are with us and when people understand the facts, they’ll find out they’re conservatives too. Denali, great job on your first podcast. Thanks for letting me be your first guest.
Kelly Tshibaka: 41:04
Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Nick. You have a great day on the campaign trail. We’ll be right back after this on Stand with Kelly and Denali Tshibaka.
Denali Tshibaka: 41:21
Welcome back Standouts. You’re here with Kelly and Denali Tshibaka, where we just finished interviewing Nick Begich, our Republican candidate for the House. You know, one thing that I think is really interesting, that is so controversial this election is the abortion question, and as someone who just graduated from college, of course that’s one of the dominant topics on campus. Someone who just graduated from college, of course that’s one of the dominant topics on campus, but what I think is really fascinating is just how the pro-choice movement has spun all of their arguments to get the younger generation in support of it. But I’m noticing a lot more people my age are falling for it less and less. What are you seeing?
Denali Tshibaka: 41:57
Well, one thing that I’ve noticed is that they’ve started talking about abortion as if it’s some kind of plan C, almost like a contraceptive. Yeah, like if your plan B pill doesn’t work or your condom doesn’t work or you just refuse abstinence. Well, here’s abortion. You can just terminate your pregnancy, like this. And one thing I’ve noticed is a lot of the women my age are saying that’s not how that works. They’re not looking at abortion as a contraceptive. They’re looking at it as usually like a Hail Mary, but also often a path that shouldn’t actually be pursued at all, that’s interesting.
Kelly Tshibaka: 42:32
That seems like a real change in how your generation is seeing it, and abortion and birth control and contraceptives are not the same thing. They’re very different and I think it’s really important that your generation is understanding that. How do you feel about birth control?
Denali Tshibaka: 42:49
I’m for birth control. I think there’s any number of reasons why a person might take it and I know you are too, despite those rumors that were coming out during your election. But yeah, I think that contraceptives in and of themselves are totally fine, but abortion is not a contraceptive yeah, it’s a very different choice.
Kelly Tshibaka: 43:07
The other thing that we started to chat about in our family is the idea of choice, and that choice is it’s the slogan phrase.
Kelly Tshibaka: 43:17
You know, people will kind of plant their camps around basically one word. Yeah, this whole debate comes down to one word, but I remember when I worked in a crisis pregnancy center and had these conversations with vulnerable women in crisis pregnancies behind closed doors. Most of them were not in a situation where they didn’t have a choice in getting pregnant. They’d had a choice, but they did not feel like they had a choice about having a baby. Most of them felt like they did not have the support. They wanted to have a child that’s why they were at the center, but they did not have the support they needed to follow through on having a child. So they either didn’t have their relationship support or financial support or support within their family, and so it almost felt to them like they actually didn’t have a choice. And we have to be really honest about the fact that there is a huge billion dollar industry that pushes and encourages women towards abortion because it makes money. Yeah, it does, and that is actually not supporting choice. It’s actually supporting abortion.
Denali Tshibaka: 44:23
Yeah.
Kelly Tshibaka: 44:24
And there are so many women who are vulnerable behind closed doors, crying every day because they don’t feel like they have a choice, and society is definitely not supporting a choice to keep a child.
Denali Tshibaka: 44:35
Yeah Well, and like, let’s talk more about that word choice because it’s so nuanced. Nowadays People try to make it seem like it’s black and white.
Kelly Tshibaka: 44:46
My body, my choice, which I support when it comes to A statement you and I both agree with. I don’t want the government telling me what goes in my body or what happens in my body.
Denali Tshibaka: 44:50
Right, you don’t get to tell me what to do with my body. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that statement. The problem is is that it does not apply to the abortion debate, because when you are claiming my body, my choice, you are neglecting to acknowledge the fact that there is a second body that has entered the mix, and that is the body of the child. It is not a cluster of cells. Science has proven that life begins at conception. This is true across every species on this planet, including human beings. So when you’re saying we have the conversation, do dead things grow?
Kelly Tshibaka: 45:18
no, they do not. And so then we’ve just agreed life begins at conception, because those cells are growing. So that’s life. So then, what kind of life is it? If you leave it uninterrupted, it becomes a human. So that’s human life, exactly.
Denali Tshibaka: 45:33
And choice Again coming back to choice, why do women get to make the decision, but men don’t have a choice themselves?
Kelly Tshibaka: 45:40
So there’s three people involved in the choice. There is the mom, there’s the baby, who has a hard time expressing choice when there’s not very many people who have been born alive after abortion to let us know, like Gianna Jessen Right, who has been on our show, to let us know what the abortion process is actually like as a human being, to be burned alive or dismembered, or to go through those processes that are so inhumane. And then you have the father.
Denali Tshibaka: 46:09
Yeah, the father, who is often ignored until it comes to his wallet. So the woman can decide I will not have this child and she doesn’t have to even tell him, not even him.
Kelly Tshibaka: 46:21
But also it’s time to collect child support.
Denali Tshibaka: 46:22
But also there’s stories out there about women who don’t tell the father that she is pregnant, and then she has a child and she goes by the way. You owe me child support. How, in what world is that fair, like you’d haven’t.
Kelly Tshibaka: 46:34
So he doesn’t have a choice in whether or not you have this child, and then he doesn’t have a choice and whether or not he has to pay for the child which he can go to jail if he does it right, but it just doesn’t make any sense to me and and it’s easy to make this abstract until you think about that could be one of your sons or one of your brothers exactly has a long-term relationship with a girlfriend.
Denali Tshibaka: 46:54
Well, then, and when that happens, all of a sudden she’s the bad guy.
Kelly Tshibaka: 46:58
Well it, but you defend her when it’s not her Right In an abstract policy debate, this is her choice. But then when it’s your family, and he’s on the line he gets married and has another family, but that girlfriend is still entitled to 18 years of child support under our law. It destroys men’s lives when you do that, that’s right.
Denali Tshibaka: 47:19
And they never have a say in it. Actually supportive of choice when we think about the totality of the circumstances Exactly, it all falls on one party to make that choice which isn’t a choice, that’s a unilateral decision.
Kelly Tshibaka: 47:32
Well and again, when we think about what’s actually happening, a unilateral decision in which she feels like she doesn’t really often have a decision. Oh, of course.
Denali Tshibaka: 47:40
Yeah, I’m not trying to make women out to be the bad guy, just to be clear. I understand they go through so much with pregnancy we do like as a whole, and it can be so terrifying and so stressful, especially when you don’t have that support Right and I understand that completely. It just it angers me so much to see because you know, I have three brothers and I have a boyfriend and I have male friends and it just I’ve heard stories, including in college, from a guy I used to work with whose girlfriend terminated his baby and he didn’t even know she was pregnant until much later. So when you hear stories like that and you consider how it could apply to people in your life and what that could do to people in, your life he.
Denali Tshibaka: 48:18
He still tears up when he talks about it Honestly, like it happened a couple years ago. He still gets choked up and it’s just like it’s so hard to see that impact on men and that they don’t get to have a choice and the entire industry is based in racism and eugenics. That started with Margaret Sanger. We know this, and she started her abortion cry by at first basing it in eugenics and white supremacy.
Denali Tshibaka: 48:45
What is eugenics. For people who don’t know, eugenics is basically believing that one race or kind of human being is genetically superior to the other.
Denali Tshibaka: 48:55
So it’s basically bringing around Darwin’s theory by human action by human action and you terminate every other species or race that isn’t up to par with what you believe is superior. So she was a white supremacist eugenicist in Hitler’s inner circle and she started abortion in America, originally in white supremacy. But her timing was off, because that was around the time that civil rights started to pick up and people started to see blacks as equal in America and treating them more and more like regular human beings. And so she had to pivot and she changed it to the feminist argument, because that was also picking up.
Kelly Tshibaka: 49:29
And now when you look around, yeah, and sexual freedom, right. Sexual freedom because she also started birth control and stuff.
Denali Tshibaka: 49:34
But when you look around nowadays you see that Planned Parenthoods are in low-income neighborhoods where ethnic women like me tend to end up, and that’s on purpose. You don’t see abortion clinics on the bougie sides of town. They’re in the broke sides of town because that’s where the minorities tend to reside. It’s still in their documents to this day.
Kelly Tshibaka: 49:53
Oh, 100%, that’s part of the mission.
Denali Tshibaka: 49:55
So they get money from it. It’s based in racism. It’s such a dirty, dirty industry that continues to destroy people’s lives on all sides.
Kelly Tshibaka: 50:03
The child’s, the mother’s and the father’s. So let’s pivot to the hard question why is it okay for advocates of the life of a child to support the life of an unborn child, but also to support the death penalty?
Denali Tshibaka: 50:17
Ooh, that’s a great question. You know, I have a lot of Catholic friends who are pro-life and anti-death penalty because they argue that the sanctity of life applies to all sides. But here’s my thing right, a child is innocent in every way. They have committed no acts against humanity, they have never harmed another person in their life, so as far as I’m concerned, they do have the right to continue living and they have the right to be born. However, an inmate who has taken lives, destroyed lives, done horrible things, they have demonstrated that they will act against society and harm society as a whole when given the option.
Denali Tshibaka: 50:55
And so it’s really just best to take justice and apply it there, just best to like take justice and apply it there. The innocent should be allowed to live and have that right. And the guilty, you know, depending on the crime I’m not saying petty theft deserves a death penalty. But like serial killers, like they, they’ve they’ve made their choice about how they want to spend their life and it’s not product, it’s not productive to society, it’s harmful to society. And you know, you see it in the bible too. God has actually said that in Exodus if a thief enters into the night and is killed, then the fault is not on the person that executed them, it’s also biblical.
Kelly Tshibaka: 51:30
So there’s this concept that justice at the hands of governing authorities in order to maintain a safe society where crimes against humanity are not allowed because they are punished. If you violate civil rights and human rights, then you have forfeited your own, your own, your own rights in society and they have to be dealt with in a just way, and we have different ways of dealing with that.
Kelly Tshibaka: 51:57
whether that’s life in prison or death penalty, different states deal with it differently but your rights have been suspended your rights for freedom, your rights to life, et cetera. And that hasn’t been applied to an unborn child who has not done anything to deserve a penalty from the government Right.
Denali Tshibaka: 52:15
It is an unnecessary penalty being inflicted on an innocent life.
Kelly Tshibaka: 52:18
And instead the government has a right or not a right, an obligation, to protect that citizen. I see what you’re saying. Yeah Well, good discussion. I appreciate you offering a perspective, especially of a young voter. This will be your First presidential election, your first presidential election.
Kelly Tshibaka: 52:36
You’re voting, and that’s a really big deal. Vote for Trump. And another wonderful episode of Stand. You can become one of our standouts at StandShoworg. I thought I’d throw that one to you at StandShoworg and we would love to have you join us, follow us and be with us on social media. Today you’ve been with Kelly and Denali Tshibaka and we’ve been happy to have you on Stand. This is where courage is contagious, when we take a stand for freedom, truth and government by the people. Join us next time on standstandshoworg. We’ll see you then.