President Ronald Reagan once famously said that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. For many Americans, it feels as if that time has come. The radical Left, led by the Biden administration, has put forward the most progressive and out-of-touch agenda in American history; the American people have had enough.

Ken Cuccunelli, former Attorney General of Virginia and a Trump administration senior official, joins The Kevin Robert’s Show to break down and expose the channels the radical Left has used to attack America as we know it. From the security of the southern border to the integrity of our elections, the Left and the public have never been further apart.

Ken Cuccinelli: ... our immigration system should serve our needs and interests.

Kevin Roberts: Imagine that.

Cuccinelli: Imagine that. And the radical left thinks that is radical. Thinks it’s selfish, as if we owe the world welfare or some version of whatever they might say. They want to erase our border in part because they do not believe in American exceptionalism.

Roberts: Welcome back to The Kevin Roberts Show. It’s now a year or so that we’ve been doing this show, and thank you for being part of it. Thank you for subscribing. If you’ve not subscribed, please do so.

But every once in a while, there’s a guest who’s a really special friend and it’s particularly exciting to sit here and interview him or her. And this is one of those weeks. And so if you’re like me and my family and you’ve been a fan of Ken Cuccinelli for a long time, which I mean very sincerely, then you’re in for a treat. And if you’re someone who hasn’t been a fan of Ken Cuccinelli, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, so you get to tune in.

So I’ll give Ken all the proper introductions that he’s owed. But the best thing that I can say about you, my friend, is that you’re a wonderful husband and father and patriot, and it is great for you to be sitting in here with me right now.

Cuccinelli: Well, I’m glad to be with you as well and always at Heritage, but especially here with you. So-

Roberts: Thank you.

Cuccinelli: ... I look forward to it.

Roberts: Yeah. Well, thanks. So you continue to be a really important part of the conservative movement. You had an important role in the Trump administration, which we’ll talk about. Before that as many people know, you were the attorney general of Virginia, came ever so close to being the governor of Virginia, which we’ll talk a little bit about, but we’re going to focus today in today’s conversation about Homeland Security, about the border, and also about elections.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t say you are a senior fellow at The Center for Renewing America where our friends are, leader of the Election Transparency Initiative as well. You’re just one of those guys who’s important to know. So thanks for being here.

Cuccinelli: Well, my pleasure like I said, and it’s honestly an honor for me to make the cut for The Kevin Roberts Show.

Roberts: It’s a tough cut. It’s a really tough cut.

Cuccinelli: I understand. I’m just glad there’s no singing or dancing-

Roberts: Oh, trust me.

Cuccinelli: ... I wouldn’t have made this cut.

Roberts: My colleagues off camera are saying, well, I was going to say they’re hoping there’s no singing or dancing, but then they would say, “Kevin would humiliate himself so much, maybe we should hope for it.” So all that to say, you’re involved in a lot of important questions and we’re going to get into those, Ken.

But I try to start each conversation with a real conversation about how our guest got to do whatever they’re doing. And so what’s your story up to this point of your professional career?

Cuccinelli: It’s wide and varied for sure, and definitely unusual. And people who asked me who were not supportive of Donald Trump in 2016, “How did you get in?” Because I supported Ted Cruz in the nomination. “How did you get in here?” And I said, “It’s a unique path. No one else can duplicate this one.” He hired people who did well against him, and I did. So if you’re not in that category that you’re looking at a different path.

But farther back than that, really, I’m just a person who always had strongly held opinions coming out of college where I developed a lot of them, finalized a lot of them, and was not political per se, in college, not partisan political, voted for Doug Wilder and went and worked in his governor’s office as an intern, before the internet when people had to go figure out what happened to bills. And that was the last Democrat I voted for.

And he was a wild guy, but I figured out who I was ideologically, intellectually over those first years out of college. And I was married right out of school too. So that has a real impact in people’s lives, and I was no exception. And that very quickly put my wife and I on a more serious faith course as well.

And that the combination of those things led me to be realize I was a conservative and the strongly held opinions were kind of the get me off the couch type, you see people get upset and go do something in their neighborhood. That’s why we have all these school board races that have been so interesting in the last year or two.

That phenomena happened to me many years ago, wasn’t a particular issue, it was more generally all of them. And I was a big aficionado of the founders and of history and of the founding principles. And I still am. I’m still a student of them and a fan of them. And-

Roberts: It’s often our conversations are about this.

Cuccinelli: Yeah. Well, and that led me through, I mean, I helped other people run, and then one day, Teiro’s, my wife said, well, I was complaining about a pro-abortion, pro-tax Republican. And she said, “Well, why don’t you run against him?” Literally out of the blue. And so I did. And the rest is history as they say on that front.

But ironically, after I was attorney general where I worked with Greg Abbott in Texas, your home state, well, where you were before Heritage, you’ve done a lot of great things and helped organize that group of people to fight the Obama administration where they were breaking the law and they were doing it all over the place. Really recast what a Republican attorney general has thought to be and that has stock that has held, unless-

Roberts: You really did set the standard. I mean, you’re not here to say that phrase, but I will.

Cuccinelli: Yeah, no, its-

Roberts: And being the first to sue an Obamacare.

Cuccinelli: Yeah. And ironically again, the history, so that was March 23rd, 2010, which was the 235th anniversary of Patrick Henry’s, “Give me liberty, or give me death.” Speech, and we filed our lawsuit on the same street he gave that speech. So then it was known as Henrico Parish, it’s now called St. John’s Church on Broad Street in Richmond, as is the federal court.

And we filed it 35 minutes after the president signed it because we knew what the bill was going to look like after Scott Brown won his election. We knew the house couldn’t change it, so it was either voted up or down. So we were ready. And we were also the first to have it held unconstitutional. And the Florida case is the one that went all the way up. And to his, frankly, eternal shame, the chief justice ruled it was a tax and sided with the liberals 5-4 with no case support. And the rest of that is history as well.

But fights that grew out of that, Republicans who said they would fight Obamacare, whether it was Mitch McConnell or whether it was Donald Trump and didn’t, has been a central theme of dictating which side of contests I’ve been on over the years and of what I’ve done working at the Senate Conservatives Fund for years after I left the attorney general’s office.

And then even going back in, going into the Trump administration, meaning going back into government, though my first time in federal and pursuing strong immigration policies and protecting America and securing our elections against foreign interference, which is the federal role, states deal with the domestic side of that. And even after working again at CRA on immigration work and with the Election Transparency Initiative to improve our elections, which have improved a lot in the last two and a half years, but we still have a long way to go.

Roberts: We do. And we’ll take stock just objectively about what’s improved about elections. I want to hone in on your move into federal government because to your point, it was a surprise for many because you were not just associated with the cruise campaign, but very late in the campaign, including at the convention. And President Trump deserves credit for hiring good men and women who were on different teams. That’s what great leaders do.

But what was your experience like? In other words, Ken, what I’m asking you is the first 72 hours you’re in the administration, you’re taking stock, what the administration’s doing, as well as taking stock of what’s happening in immigration in the southern border. Give us some insight there.

Cuccinelli: Yeah. So I came in the beginning of June of 2019, and that was in the midst of the worst border surge that occurred in the Trump administration. And I came in to run USCIS, and that is the legal immigration agency. There are three immigration agencies.

The border patrol is in Customs Border Protection, CBP, they’re the biggest. ICE does internal enforcement. They also have Homeland Security investigators. And then USCIS does the legal immigration, all the visas and immigrant management as well as asylum cases and so forth. And much less known USCIS essentially is the quarterback for all immigration regulation. So I was running that as well.

And when I came in, and it was quite a time to come in and it was a very throw together effort to deal with what happened at the border, which we thought were horrific numbers, and they were. They broke 150,000 in May that year started to bring them down the following months. But now, under the Biden administration, I mean 150,000, I’m not sure they have a month that low.

Roberts: We would be applauding that.

Cuccinelli: Oh my gosh.

Roberts: In a weird way.

Cuccinelli: And they’re inviting it. I mean, this is an invited invasion of our country. The border states are not stepping up and protecting us as they are capable of doing. Texas has just within the last two months, started to take some of those steps and that’s it. Arizona never did, when Doug Ducey was there as governor. I don’t count stacking a couple of shipping containers on one small part of the border as really meaning much.

And so we’re continuing to suffer under that. And much unappreciated of that suffering is American poor people lose job opportunities. The wage, the demand for labor is reduced because that pool is so overwhelmed. So the potential for those who have jobs to see pay raises goes away and they stagnate as they have for 50 years.

And just like the green agenda, the radical left does not care about poor people and conservative and rule of law policies protect poor people, not just the rule of law and not just opportunity for all, but people that... I think our movement doesn’t talk about enough how good our policies are for the poor. We don’t do it enough.

Roberts: That’s right. I mean, we too often, and I’m certainly guilty of this, plenty-

Cuccinelli: Really we all are.

Roberts: We all are.

Cuccinelli: We all are.

Roberts: Hopefully not that the world begins and ends with election cycles, but by virtue of this election cycle 2024, where there’s so much time spent not just by campaigns, but I would argue more importantly for the long-term entities like Center for Renewing America Heritage, so on, there’s a large conservative ecosystem on messaging. That’s the point. That as we reject the narrative framing of the left, which is the first thing any conservative needs to do.

Cuccinelli: It is.

Roberts: We also have to build, and you’re excellent at this, we have to build and implement our narrative framing on our side.

Cuccinelli: The positive one.

Roberts: The positive and it’s all about what you just said, which is that our policies are pro-human, they’re the best for poor people, they’re the best for disadvantaged people. And one of those key policies is getting a handle on immigration.

And so walk us through that, maybe even chronologically, what happens, what needs to happen at the border? And then let’s move into what a common sense fair legal immigration system ought look like.

Cuccinelli: Yeah. So let’s start with the basic. Every country, this is true for every country, but our immigration system should serve our needs and interests.

Roberts: Imagine that.

Cuccinelli: Imagine that. And the radical left thinks that is radical. Thinks it’s selfish, as if we owe the world welfare or some version of whatever they might say. They want to erase our border in part because they do not believe in American exceptionalism. And they want to intentionally drag America down to the level of every other country.

And part of how you do that is you erase the border. So we look at the border, you and I look at the border and we see a disaster today. This is intentional policy. This is not an accident. This is what they intend. The only thing the White House is concerned about and they’ve used the word, is optics, doesn’t look good.

So a Republican wins the mayoral ship in McAllen for the first time in 60 years. It has political consequences sometimes, certainly has in Texas and in those border areas. A lot of what might have otherwise been blue dog Democrats or coming over. And you and I were walking down here, we were talking about some of my experience pridefully swearing in new American citizens. And it’s a moving experience that any American born here should go see. You should attend this and remember what you take for granted and what a blessing it is, with people who don’t take it for granted.

And as of course, you and I were talking about new citizens who were just aghast at the notion of non-citizens voting, “Why on earth would you do that? And I spent so much time and I played by the rules and you’re watering down what it means for me to be a US citizen.” And it’s a really interesting perspective to hear, but that’s the American immigration should be for America. That’s a starting point. And it sounds like a truism, but you must secure your borders or you really don’t have a nation. And that’s where immigration starts. It starts at zero.

Okay, we protect our own borders. The people who are here get to stay here and come and go and we decide who comes. And that’s of course, typically if they agree to go because most of those are traveling and visiting and so forth. And then there’s who’s coming here longer term, but all of that begins with a secure border.

There are things that bypass it like these high-tech visas and seasonal visas and so forth. And they’re so abused. They were set up to be abused. They’re effectively abused. Even many of our friends in Congress support their abuse. Some of my favorite people there. And it undermines, goes back to the earlier point.

It undermines Americans who are already here and their opportunity to really make their American dream. And one of the great things about the American dream is every Americans American dream gets to be whatever they decide it is. We aren’t told what it is, the pursuit of happiness. It is what we choose it to be. But when our own policies essentially crowbar Americans unfairly out of those opportunities, then our own government is getting in the way of our own people. And we have never fixed that.

We tried hard on the illegal immigration front in the Trump administration in the latter portion. I mean the dilly-dallying with Congress in the first half was very frustrating. But we did show that you can have an impact. But we didn’t take on the cartels, we didn’t do anything to take on the cartels and we didn’t build as much wall as had been promised. Of course, Mexico was never going to pay for it, but we have more to do there.

What was done was good and it was helpful. If you’re a border patrol agent having additional solid, real physical support in the form of a wall and technology makes it easier for you to do your job.

Roberts: Lets you focus on those gaps.

Cuccinelli: It still comes back to those people.

Roberts: Yeah, that’s right.

Cuccinelli: Because if those people aren’t committed to keeping invaders out, all the wall in the world doesn’t make a difference. You can build a tall enough ladder to get over the wall.

Roberts: What are the prospects if in 2024 there’s a conservative president, whoever he or she would be, and conservatives control both houses, both chambers, tall order in the Senate, is that posited that conservatives control it, not just Republicans, because Republicans-

Cuccinelli: That is a difference.

Roberts: ... are better than Democrats on this, but they’re not perfect on this by any stretch.

Cuccinelli: No. And they tend to mouth it in campaign mode, just like the Obamacare example. I mean, Mitch McConnell ran 36,000 anti-Obamacare ads in October of 2014 alone. And nobody fought Ted Cruz and Mike Lee harder to keep Obamacare alive than Mitch McConnell.

Roberts: That’s just one of the unfortunate realities of Washington DC still nine years later. So in spite of-

Cuccinelli: It’s true.

Roberts: ... how pessimistic that reality might make us. I’m positing some hopefulness here, Ken. And that hopefulness is that we’ve got some conservative men and women and all of these important positions and they’re focused on immigration.

If that happens, what are the prospects for finally fixing the system? And by that, I don’t just mean, now the really tall order of closing the border, but also to your point about building a legal immigration system, the process of getting to that, including articulating the positive vision that is for the American worker. Because it’s a huge opportunity.

Cuccinelli: It is huge opportunity and I think there’s three parts to it. And some of them are easier than others. Securing the border for a president really willing to do it can be done. Honestly, you just keep moving military folks down there until you’ve closed the border. And by close the border, we should probably define our terms.

Roberts: Yes. We probably should.

Cuccinelli: We’re talking about in between the legal ports of entry and so that what’s coming in is known to us. That doesn’t mean bad people or people who don’t belong here won’t slip through. They will, so will products. But there are ways to deal with that that have bipartisan support that haven’t really been, we haven’t really poured it on in those sorts of solutions, for example. But that is one, I believe a determined president can control the border and control those gaps.

Two is internal enforcement, which has gotten stickier and stickier as the left is litigated more and more. But there’s a way around that. And the way around that is that due process for those who come here illegally is determined by Congress and the courts have acknowledged this. So you use a budget bill and you point out accurately that we are so far behind in our backlog of cases that we can’t financially, and by the way, we’re bankrupt. We can’t financially afford to stay behind like this.

So as a matter of budgetary convenience, we are going to say that every person who comes here illegally or is determined to have come in here illegally, if they’re determined to have come here illegally at any level, whether it’s a border patrol agent, an immigration officer, an immigration judge, or a federal judge that’s final and they must leave. No, they don’t stay here while that process rolls on, they go home and if they want to appeal, they can appeal remotely through the consulate or embassy in their home country when they prove they’re there.

And we will wipe out our case backlog. And you eliminate the also through budget, the excuses for people to stay. And literally you start, you grow ice by tenfold and you take people home and you suck it up and take the political hit that will come with it because these are real people. I can look at any one family and my heartstrings are tugged, but if you’re going to solve the problem, you actually have to treat everyone fairly, which means the same. And people who aren’t here legally must leave.

And then we get to actually dealing politically with passing laws that you need 60 votes for because they have to go through over the Senate filibuster. And there does need to be some compromise and agreement. But between the DACA folks and getting rid of the diversity lottery and expanding economic opportunity in this country driving and getting rid of chain migration, they’re an awful lot of 70% issues that shouldn’t be passed in an omnibus bill.

I think a president who insists on doing them one at a time, and of course you don’t get to dictate to Congress when you’re in the Oval Office, but if your allies are willing to lead on this, then you do them one at a time. You get rid of the diversity lottery, which is literally a worldwide lottery to come and become an American citizen. It’s the craziest thing in the whole system.

Roberts: Just in case someone needs a reminder of what that is. Explain that for us.

Cuccinelli: So I want to say it’s 50,000 essentially literally it’s a lottery. It’s a random pick of names from around the world who put their name in the mix, whether they, no matter what their background, including terrorists, and I’ll come back to that, who if they are one of the 50,000 pick that year, get to get on a citizenship track, they get a green card and they get on a citizenship track. When you get a green card, you are on track to citizenship. So that’s the gateway.

But in many of these countries, Syria, Afghanistan, and we can go around the world, we have no way of really vetting these people. And so the left wants to err on the side of accepting them all. And I want to err on the side of you prove that you are absolutely safe to this country that you don’t believe Sharia should be implemented in to pick Syria as an example. You don’t believe Sharia should be implemented in America that’s political, not religious, and that you’re no threat or criminal.

Well, if we can’t talk to the governments where you’ve lived, we don’t know if you have a record. How do we determine that? And it’s not an obligation on us to send our investigators out into the wild of the world to figure out if you’re telling us the truth. “I’m sorry. You don’t get to come in.” That’s the proper, in my view America first approach. And this diversity lottery, it is just the craziest thing of all the crazy things. And we have a lot of them in our legal immigration system. This is a legal way into this country. It’s crazy.

Roberts: There’s a lot to change. I suppose we’ll move on to a related question, but I suppose one of the things that adds some wind in the sails to real significant reform, conservative reform is how frustrated the American people are over this system, center-right probably even getting in a little bit to left of center. And that leads up to a related question that you and I have had many conversations about now for several years. And that is the inadequate response by border states.

Cuccinelli: Yes.

Roberts: To this problem. And this is a Heritage show. Heritage has a one voice policy, but this show in particular invites differing perspectives. So that’s a way of saying, feel free to say whatever you want to say. You don’t have to tow the Heritage line on this, but you and I have talked in particular about the inadequacy of the Texas response.

Cuccinelli: Yes.

Roberts: Even though the Texas response has been good, it’s not been sufficient and it’s not been quite as far as you or I would go if given the chance.

Cuccinelli: Well, it’s only good measured on a curve.

Roberts: Yes. That’s correct.

Cuccinelli: It’s not good measured objectively. It’s a failure. What is success? Success is slowing down the flow. It has absolutely not done that, until the last few weeks. There has been some impact on that. And by that I mean two months now, not quite, seven weeks maybe. And so let’s spell that out.

At the very end of article one of the Constitution in what’s called The Compacts Clause. It lists things states may not do except with congressional permission. One of them not surprisingly, is wage war. Makes sense, right? You want the whole country in on that. But there’s an exception to that except when actually invaded.

So the American people believe that’s what’s happening on our border is an invasion. That’s not even a close call among the American people. When that happens, those states being invaded, the border states have war powers. And what I and others have suggested is that they particularly use the prisoner of war power. We’re not talking about tanks and planes and violence in Mexico. Were literally just talking about using war powers to utilize the constitutional authority, to remove people who tried to or stop them in the first place, who tried to cross the border illegally in between ports of entry, legal ports of entry. They have the power to do this. And Texas has denied they’ve had this power.

We all grew up and our mothers told us with responsibility, with authority comes responsibility. So the Greg Abbott approach has been to deny the authority to avoid the responsibility. So he said, “No, no, no. We can’t do that. We can’t do that.” Of course now he’s doing it and he’s declared an invasion. He’s explicitly referred Article 1, Section 10. He did that a long time ago. By the way, billions with a B of Texas dollars ago. So he’s been spending an awful lot of money on Operation Lone Star. And they always give it cool names.

Roberts: That’s a pretty cool name.

Cuccinelli: Yeah. It sounds very swaggery. It’s not operation we’re going to watch you walk right by us. Which is what they did. Operation photo op. And he’s had a lot of photo ops and very little effect, until they started putting barbed wire down and actually backing that up with DPS or National Guard Manpower to actually stop people from coming into the country and into their state, which is a benefit to all of us.

And you’ll notice governors all over the country responded, “Oh, I’ll send you people to do that. I will send help to do that.” Which they also did at the beginning of Operation Lone Star. They quietly disappeared because all those governors realized this was a photo op.

Roberts: Just a photo op. That’s all it was.

Cuccinelli: That’s all it was. It was, “Reelect me over Beto O’Rourke.” And he is better than Beto O’Rourke, of course, in many ways. But it has always offended me what a show this has been, as opposed to real meaningful effort to protect 60% of the US border is Texas with Mexico. And Greg Abbott has the constitutional power, it resides solely with him.

The attorney general of Arizona at the time, Mark Brnovich entered a legal opinion saying the same thing. Ken Paxton declined to issue an opinion. He ducked the issue. And I like Ken, but, and he’s a fighter against federal overreach, but he ducked this issue. And that’s unfortunate and it hasn’t served America well. But I will say on the good side of the ledger, in the last seven or eight weeks that Governor Abbott’s efforts have been positive, have made a meaningful impact on the flow of people illegally into the country and into Texas. And I hope they keep it up.

I hope that Governor’s DeSantis and Youngkin and Noem and others around the country who are willing to send, I always quote the Warren Zevon’s songs Lawyers, Guns and Money. It’s not exactly right, but it’s in this case, law enforcement and money because these other states are paying to support those folks and putting them in the chain of command in Texas and supporting this effort, and it’s worth supporting now.

Took two and a half years to get to this point. And lots of us, including some folks at Heritage and myself said at the beginning, “This will do nothing if you don’t stop these people and either stop them from coming in or return them. All of this other effort is meaningless.” It’s like building a wall but not having people behind it who will actually enforce the law. The wall doesn’t matter. You can build a tall enough ladder and concertina wire that’s no higher than my waist will do the job if behind it stands a law enforcement officer who will not let you in.

Roberts: Thanks for that explanation. Another threat to the American Republic is what has happened with election integrity.

Cuccinelli: Yes.

Roberts: And picking up on a brief but important comment you made at the beginning of our conversation, there has been some significant progress made.

Cuccinelli: There has, yes.

Roberts: That sure enough election integrity and there is also some work to do. Give us an assessment of both sides of that ledger sheet as it relates to election integrity.

Cuccinelli: Conservatives tend to look at this at the center of the Cartesian coordinate plane here is 2020.

Roberts: Spoken like an engineer.

Cuccinelli: Yes. Engineer before I went to the dark side, went to law school. But the left, George Soros has been funding election efforts. And by that I mean process, election process. I’m not talking about campaigns. Well, some campaigns like secretary of state campaigns, and we’ve seen it more recently as he’s moved into law enforcement and prosecutors and so forth, Ten Soros prosecutors. And only one of those has ever been removed. And that was by DeSantis in Florida.

But in the election space, they’ve been doing this for closing in on 20 years. Paying attention to really owning the election offices across the country and controlling the process and rewriting it. And we’re late to the game, but we’ve been in it since the 2020 election. There was very little preparation done by either the Trump campaign, none by the Trump campaign, and not enough by the RNC. They have improved. RNC has improved in their approach to this. It’s still not robust enough, in my view to contend with the left. But we’re not as far behind on the litigation front.

And in many swing states, Iowa, Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania, we’ve seen meaningful progress made. About half the states have gotten rid of Zuckerbucks. And for those who don’t know, Zuckerbucks are the nonprofit dollars. About 400 million of them that funded election offices and was scattered around the country to make it look like they were helping everybody, but was concentrated in high Democrat areas where they literally paid the government to do voter turnout in 90-10 Democrat areas like Philadelphia. And those dollars and the statistical difference made by that turnout effort flipped the election.

You don’t need Trump’s fraud allegations, you don’t need any of the rest of it. Zuckerbucks alone changed the outcome of the election, and now about half the states have banned Zuckerbucks. Now, that doesn’t mean the Zuckerberg dollar people aren’t still trying to find ways to finagle in there and use government to essentially do political operations. But the awareness is half the battle and the success in stopping it in so many key states has been really a wonderful success across the country.

Like I said, we still, half the states means we still have half more to do, but this also goes along with better ballot security. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled drop boxes illegal entirely. They will not be part of the 2024 election. That’s a makes for a more secure, it’s harder to cheat. And that’s our saying, easy to vote, hard to cheat. That’s what we’d like. We want every legal voter to vote, but we want it hard to cheat so that people can have faith in the outcome.

The Election Transparency Initiative that I lead at electiontransparency.org, I would be remiss if I didn’t point that out. Our gold standard is that an election is run so well that even the losers have confidence in the outcome. That’s how I judge courtrooms. If you lose a case, you should at least believe you are treated fairly enough that the outcome was legitimate. And people have a hard time feeling that way about our elections from 2020. But they are improving. They are improving.

Roberts: It’s a great, that would be a great metric of success, if at the conclusion of the next election cycle, a majority of Americans, so majority on both sides of the ideological spectrum, say the election was fair, and transparent and honest, because the absence of that is a significant symptom of an unhealthy polity, right?

Cuccinelli: Yes.

Roberts: This is not something that, and not to be overly dramatic, it’s not something that we can sustain very long. This is-

Cuccinelli: Well, no, I don’t think it’s overly dramatic. It’s philosophical. I mean, what did you give us, Mr. Franklin, “A republic, if you can keep it.” And that’s up to us. And it isn’t enough to have the paper, we have to all invest ourselves in it to maintain it.

The Reagan quote, “Freedom is not passed down in the bloodstream. It’s never more than one generation away from extinction.” And we’re not dealing with Tip O’Neill leading the left today. 40 years later, the lead of the left, in my view, would be quite comfortable with a French Revolution type outcome. They’d put you and me under a guillotine.

Roberts: There’s no doubt.

Cuccinelli: I have no doubt. They don’t believe in God by and large, and they don’t answer to a higher power. They answer to power. The ends justify the means. And so back to your point, if ordinary Americans don’t have faith in the process laid down to sustain this republic, what’s their alternative? And the answer to that question is not a pleasant answer. I don’t think it’s overly dramatic. And it’s part of what we’re working to do is to avoid that.

Roberts: Yes. I mean that’s the recognition of what’s at stake, right?

Cuccinelli: Yes. And we’re working for everybody to do that. This isn’t a right versus left element. This is a sustained America by doing your citizenship duty approach.

Roberts: So a couple of final questions. I’m tempted to sort of go through every agency of the federal government, every policy area and get your diagnosis. Maybe we’ll do that over the years, Ken. I know you would be game and I would be game. This is fun. But I’ll limit myself to two final questions.

Cuccinelli: I think there might be some other people. Might not be as enthusiastic.

Roberts: We’ll call this part one.

Cuccinelli: Yeah, there you go.

Roberts: Yeah. It’s particularly temping to talk about the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Cuccinelli: Oh, yeah. I have my thoughts for sure.

Roberts: I bet you do.

Cuccinelli: Yes, I do.

Roberts: We’ll save that for the next conversation. The first of the final two questions is kind of the homework assignment question for the audience. People will often write to me, or I’ll see them at events and say, “Kevin, keep reminding us what we can do one or two things in our community, in our state.” What would you suggest?

Cuccinelli: Well, I’m glad you asked that because it rolls perfectly out of the election issue. So in Virginia, we have odd year elections. So when we were talking about my early days, I was campaigning every year for people. None of this lazy year off stuff that most of you get.

We are doing it all the time in Virginia. And 2021 was immediately upon us after the 2020 election. And the Democrats had gotten control for two years and they did over 60 changes to our election laws. And you can imagine none of those were very good. We have a 45-day election season in Virginia. It’s terrible. No excuse, early voting. It’s way too much. There’s no reason for that. One could make an argument for early voting. You can’t make an argument for 45 days.

Roberts: Not for 45 days.

Cuccinelli: And really what it’s to do is to unsecure the election. It’s hard to watch it. So the grassroots in Virginia, no national organization can take any credit for this. Ordinary Virginians get credit for this. They just rose up. They started creating organizations. They latched onto already existing ones like the Virginia Institute for Public Policy that Lynn Taylor runs was and is a tremendous leader of this.

Roberts: She is.

Cuccinelli: And they started training themselves to be not poll watchers, but election officials, because no matter who’s watching and where their local government hires ordinary citizens to run the election, because it’s just too big to keep a full-time staff to do that. And most state laws require balancing between Republicans and Democrats and setting aside kind of the duopoly there. But that kind of parody provides a deterrent to bad acts.

And it also, over time, people get good at it. You move up the ranks like you do in any other organization. And by the way, you can be paid a little bit of money, in most states to do this no one will get rich. But this is one where folks can get off the couch. If you are concerned about election security, you can do something about it and you can do it today, and you should do it today. Don’t wait till October of 2024. Go do it now. They’re continually bringing people in and training people up.

And in Virginia, in 2021, about 4,000 new election officials over and above the already existing ones who were entered into the system via Republicans. They weren’t all Republicans, but they were conservative and what have you. And they still didn’t match the number of Democrats operating within the system.

It freaked the left out. They really felt like it was an invasion. And yet we just went from sort of here to here. We didn’t catch them, but we covered over 90% of the shifts of concern around the state and over a 45-day period, that’s quite an accomplishment. We need to cover a hundred percent in 2020. But that plan isn’t reliant on changing laws, it’s just reliant on citizens getting involved. So it’s something everybody watching can do.

Roberts: Be an election official.

Cuccinelli: That’s right.

Roberts: And there are at least a couple of other states that have elections this fall. So people can do that.

Cuccinelli: Yes. Oh, yeah.

Roberts: And to your point, even if you’re living in a state where gubernatorial elections, legislative elections will be in the even-numbered year, go get trained now.

Cuccinelli: Yeah. The election officers are still well, they’ll still take you in and they’ll do all of that.

Roberts: Yeah. It’s perhaps the single most important thing that someone listening or watching through this can do. So I know you well enough, Ken, to know that you are a realist. To my point earlier, we could sit here and talk about all the problems in education, we could talk about the problems in society and culture and so on. We don’t want to depress the audience, but ultimately we wouldn’t because I know we’re both hopeful.

Cuccinelli: That’s right.

Roberts: And that leads me to the proverbial last question that I ask all guests. And that is, in spite of all of those problems, why did you wake up hopeful about the American future today?

Cuccinelli: Well, I sort of feel a Christian obligation to be hopeful. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I can be wrong about what that will might be, but I make my determination and it’s my obligation to pursue it. And I believe if we all do that, that doesn’t mean we’ll all come to the same conclusions, but I believe that we will overwhelmingly be working in similar directions.

And as I tell grassroots folks, particularly fellow Christians, “Our job isn’t to win. Our job is to fight.” So when I combine those two things, I feel like I’m fulfilling my obligation in this world to advance the chances for really the whole world. Because America really is still that shining city on a hill by preserving America and the freedom that we’ve been bequeathed to future generations.

And I’m only encouraged in that with every other grandchild I have. I’ve got two and two on the way. So that looks like future to me, and that looks worth preserving to me. That’s worth fighting for. And you and I aren’t being asked to sacrifice anything like people before us have had to.

Roberts: That’s right.

Cuccinelli: To fight for the very same principles. And that’s true for most of the people watching. Not all, but most of the people watching. And I think that puts an obligation on us and on everybody watching to not just sit there and listen and think, but to do.

Roberts: Thanks for that response.

Cuccinelli: Sure.

Roberts: And Ken Cuccinelli, thanks for everything that you do for America with a smile on your face. And thanks for joining me today.

Cuccinelli: I try on the smile. It can be challenging.

Roberts: It can be challenging, but you do it. Thanks a lot.

Cuccinelli: Yep. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Roberts: Of course. So thanks for joining this episode, to The Kevin Roberts Show. If you’ve not yet subscribed, please do so. And of course, I hope that you have enjoyed this conversation with my good friend Ken Cuccinelli, as much as I have.

With that, we will sign off and we’ll ask you to take care and be ready for the fight. Until the next time.

The Kevin Roberts Show is brought to you by more than half a million members of The Heritage Foundation. The producer is Philip Reynolds. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Guiney, and Tim Kennedy.