Talking Campaign Strategy With Ed Rollins
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Well, welcome to the Jason and the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and thanks for joining us. We're going to talk about some things in the news. We're going to highlight the stupid because, as you know, there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. And then we're going to phone a friend, this time Ed Rollins. Ed has an amazing background, being very close and very tight with politics.

Thank you so much for having me.

with one of the greatest presidents that certainly in my lifetime and certainly I think throughout the history of time, more and more people will recognize the tough times and the right decisions and the way Ronald Reagan did things and how he did things because I think how you do things does matter and it matters to the American people and the future and the beacon of our country.

If we're going to continue to be that beacon, we've got to prove through our soft power the strength of America. And I think nobody personified that better than Ronald Reagan. All right. Let's talk about a few things in the news before we get to my call with Ed. First of all, there's been some discussion in the news about committee assignments. I'm talking about the House of Representatives assignments.

Should Kevin McCarthy prevail and be the next speaker of the House, he has said that he is going to do what Nancy Pelosi did. She's the one that broke the iceberg on this one and not appoint Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff and Elon Omar to some pivotal committees that they have previously been on.

Here's my take on this. I believe that the minority has rights and that they should be able to appoint whatever person they want on their committees, with a couple of exceptions. I think when you start talking about our national security, particularly the Intelligence Committee, of which Swalwell and Schiff are on, I think you need to earn that. And certainly there can be a presumption that

And a background check that can be given to grant such a high security clearance. But if you break that trust, if you misuse that classified information, if you characterize classified information in an incorrect way, guess what?

You no longer get to be on that committee. I do not understand why Schiff and Swalwell still have a security clearance, period, let alone be on the Intel committee. I think it is a travesty that Nancy Pelosi has Adam Schiff as part of the Gang of Eight, given what he's done over the years.

to misuse and abuse that level of trust and come out before the American people and say that he saw this or he saw that. And then we learn over the course of time that it was a complete fabrication, that it was an absolute lie. And he used that as a political weapon and a political tool to go out and tell people that he had seen and experienced things. And, hey, I know things because I get to see classified information and you don't.

So I think Kevin McCarthy would be right there. The other exception I would make is on foreign affairs. And this gets to be to Ilhan Omar. Her comments in the past put in context of our foreign policy are very problematic, to say the least.

So I think there are other committees that you can serve on. But in those particular committees, and there's other committees and subcommittees where national security is pivotal, then I think there needs to be some more thought into that.

but by and large, I think people should be appointed to committees and it's up to the minority to appoint them. I think with the January 6th committee, that was the fundamental problem that I think, um, certainly Adam Kinzinger and,

Liz Cheney should have walked away from that table and never been a participant when Nancy Pelosi decided that she and she alone was going to appoint the people that served on the January 6th committee. It's not just a party of one. That's not how our country operates. It's not the bipartisan approach that everybody preaches, but so few actually practice. So...

I always when I was chairman of the Oversight Committee, I always took the opinion that, you know what, when there's five minutes for questioning and a gentleman from Maryland wanted to ask a question, they could ask the witness whatever they wanted, with the exception of revealing classified information in a non classified setting. And we had that problem once.

But by and large, they can ask whatever they want. It's up to the witness to answer the question. So that's my take on it. It's been in the news. It will continue to be in the news, but that's my take on it. I also wanted to highlight something that the Border Patrol Union put out. This is not the Border Patrol themselves, but Brandon Judd, who helps run that union,

the union. So I don't know who's running the Twitter account, but they highlighted something that's really affecting us on the border. They highlighted eight USC in the United States code 1325. Okay.

And this is what they wrote. 8 U.S.C. 1325 is an easily provable criminal statute. Every illegal alien crossing between points violates it. It can be enforced, prosecuted regardless of whether someone later applies for asylum. This is a great point. We have literally millions of people flowing through our borders. You would hope that they would go through the checkpoints in a car.

in an orderly fashion. And if they want to claim asylum, they can do so at that border point. But they're not. They're crossing the river. They're putting themselves and Border Patrol agents in danger. They're bringing drugs and fentanyl and guns and who knows what. Some of them aren't doing those types of things, but we still have a statute on the books that claim, that says you must declare yourself and bring yourself through a point of entry. Otherwise, it

It is a violation of a statute. Further, that tweet said applying for asylum does not expunge the crime they commit to get here. Leftists lie. All right. Let me actually kind of go a little deeper into the statute. Improper time or place avoidance of examination or inspection, misrepresentation and concealment of facts.

Any alien who, one, enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or two, eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or three, attempts to enter or obtain entry into the United States by a willful false or misleading representation or willful concealment of material facts shall, for the first commission of sense, and then it goes on and on from there.

It's a violation of law. Every single one of them should be charged and booked, fingerprinted, everything. But you know what? The Biden-Harris administration, they're not doing that. And it's wrong. They should all be in our criminal justice system. The very first act that they did coming in the United States is against the law. Book them. Put them on the books. But you know what? They're not doing that. And I think it's just so wrong.

All right. So now it's time to bring on the stupid because, you know, there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. All right. I have to go back to the day before Thanksgiving. Ron Klain, who's the White House chief of staff, he came up with a list. You could actually the way it was formatted, you could go and print this list.

He said he tweeted out one last item for your Thanksgiving dinner. Some talking points when, quote, that uncle, end quote, comes at you about POTUS. And then he listed out all these different things that

of what's so great about the Biden administration. The last one just drove me nuts and like, oh, by the way, Republicans are, they play dirty pool essentially is what he was saying. And he kind of had to remind them of all the bad things Republicans are doing. I was like, you know what?

Everything doesn't need to be political all the time. I think the American people need a break every once in a while. My goodness. Can't you just have a Thanksgiving dinner and just enjoy the time with family? And as we turn the corner coming into Christmas, you don't need to talk about something political all the time. We get enough politics. There should be a little free time away from it. Except, of course, you know, when you're listening to this podcast.

But I thought, all right, Ron Klain, this is, uh, that's just, come on. That's just being a little stupid. All right. Uh, the other one I really thought was really pretty funny was Jimmy Fallon. He didn't do something stupid, but he pointed out something that was pretty stupid. He appeared on Fox and Friends first and he said, and I just think this is so funny because it just is so true that, uh,

The administration now appears to be giving Vice President Kamala Harris pretend jobs. And I hope you saw this because this is what I think is really stupid. It was coming into the holiday here and there's that video of Kamala Harris standing on the banks in the Philippines. The Philippines.

As fishermen came back to the dock and they've got buckets full of these fish. They obviously had a good day fishing and she's over there greeting them. Hello. Thank you. Hi. Welcome. Ah, well done. You know, it was the stupidest video. I cannot believe we got a border crisis going on in the U S and she's over in the Philippines welcoming fishermen as they come back for catching their fish and

That is just flat out stupid. Good job, Jimmy failure for highlighting what is truly stupid. All right. Time to bring on Ed Rollins. Ed, you got to look up his background. It's amazing. He was the campaign manager. He worked in for Ronald Reagan's second campaign. He worked in the Reagan White House. He's been a political operative pretty much his whole career.

And he's just a fantastic wealth of information and look forward. Let's call up, uh, Ed Rollins. Hello. How are you? Hey, Ed, Jason Chaffetz.

Jason, how are you, buddy? What's going on? Thanks so much for answering the phone. I've had the fun and the pleasure of getting to know you and spend some time with you. You know, fits and spurts, right? You know, two minutes here and ten minutes there. But I've watched you from afar for a long, long time, and I'm just glad to have you on. Thanks for joining us on this Jason in the House podcast. I do appreciate it. My pleasure. You don't realize this, but you and I grew up very close to each other. You grew up in Palo Alto. I grew up in Vallejo.

I did not know that. Well, let's go back to the beginning here, because you reached the pinnacle of Republican politics and have done and seen so much along the way. But I want to start with sort of the earlier days, because I think a lot of people want to do what you have done and maybe aren't even aware of everything that you have done.

So I want to kind of go through that, but I want to go back to the beginning and the start where, you know, hey, you were growing up in Northern California and just kind of walk us through how you...

Those early days and to the time you had to make some good decisions, and you made all the right decisions because you certainly got to the pinnacle. Well, the reality is I grew up in a town called Vallejo, which is a shipyard town just north of California, built nuclear submarines. It's a town of about 35,000 people, which 15,000 men worked in the shipyard. So...

I never met a Republican. Everybody was a Democrat. Everybody was Labor. My parents and I were born in Boston. We were Boston Irish Catholics. They were Democrats, lifelong Democrats. And John Kennedy was the family hero. Pictures everywhere in the house. And my first campaign that I actually got involved in a presidential campaign was from Robert Kennedy and was with him the week before he got assassinated, which obviously changed my whole thought process on a lot of things.

I set out to be a high school football coach. I wanted to teach civics and play coach football. I went to Cal State Chico, which is a great PE school, a lot of other things, but had a great, very strong athletic department and a strong education department.

But at the time that I got out of school, which is in the 60s, mid-60s, there weren't many teaching jobs. So I was the student body president. I got invited to come down and do an internship in Sacramento at the State Assembly for the speaker, a guy named Jesse Andrew, this legendary Democrat. And Reagan had just become the governor and president.

He was sort of my first exposure to Republican. I was hearing Ronald Reagan, hearing what Ronald Reagan talked about. And obviously, I was in the opposite camp, but he made great sense to me, and I admired what he did. So along the way, I got a lot of experience running assembly races. The old days, the way you used to do campaigns is –

congressional or assembly or state senate is everybody worked for the government until about September break. You go off the payroll, you go out and you run a campaign for two months. The highlight of the campaign may be laying out the new billboard or the new mail piece. And then in November you come back as a winner or as a loser. And then January starts the process all over again. But it wasn't these year-long, two-year-long, multi-million dollar campaigns. So

The Cummins did well, obviously, as they always do. And the reality is I love behind the scenes politics. I didn't want to be a campaign manager. I wanted to be above a coliseum. But I always seemed to – I think because of my athletics, I had a very good strategic mind. I was very focused on a game plan, how you get to the –

Like football, how do you get down the field? You've got 11 guys, they've got 11 guys. How do you basically score? And I always sort of viewed politics the same way. One of my partners once said to me, Henry Rollins has never seen a tree in his life. He's always looking at the forest. And I think that was the... No, that's a nice compliment. But you're growing up, you're loving football, you want to be a coach, but come on, jumping to politics, that's a whole other level of contact sport that, I mean...

Where did that exposure come from? Like, take us a little deeper into what happened where you said, oh, yeah, you know, that's I like this and I'm pretty good at it. Well, I liked it early on. I was a poverty worker for a couple of years in college and worked for the Office of Economic Opportunity and dealt a lot with young kids and youth.

And that was very political. I was sort of the token white, pretty much black leadership. So I would be used to do all the political briefings before city councils and what have you. And,

And I got some nice mentors along the way, from Andrew to a guy named Bob Monaghan, who was a Republican speaker, who took me on when Monaghan lost the leadership, lost the majority. And he went to Bob Monaghan, who was a Republican leader. You talk about speakership battles all the rest of it.

And he said, Bob, you have no good staff. I'm going to give you the two best guys I have. Vic Fazio became a longtime congressman and now passed away. And Ed Rollins. These guys are not as partisan as some of the others. They're good government guys and they've helped me a great deal. So.

I got to work for a Democrat speaker and a Republican speaker. Uh, I don't know who sort of, and, and put me in the Kennedy camp. Uh, and again, natural inclination being from Boston and being a young, uh, kid, uh, Bobby Kennedy was an exciting man. And so, uh,

I liked it. At the end of the day, I didn't set out to be a campaign strategist. I liked the public policy part of it. But unfortunately, or fortunately, whichever the case may be, I had a pretty good ability to run campaigns because it was very organized, very structured. But I got it in my blood. I'm now 79 years old. It's still in my blood after 50 years, 55 years, 50.

And it's still a very exciting entity. I'm a little disgusted with it today because of the process and the lack of, when I grew up, there was bipartisanship. You basically, you fought on issues, but you'd go out and you'd drink after work, you'd eat dinner as you'd

where I played softball together. You know, it was sort of like being a Giants. I live in New York, being a Giants and a Jets fan. You both love football. You may love different jerseys from different teams. But at the end of the day, there was good relationships. And I think a lot more got done then. I'm not sure if I started out today as partisan as it is today. I would like it as much.

Yeah, well, there's a lot of us that don't like how hyper-partisan it is. But, you know, one of the political heroes I have along the way, and I got a chance to spend two days with them, okay? And I don't want to overstate how much time and interaction I had, but I got to spend a little time with Ronald Reagan. And

And the older I get, the more I study and listen and understand the world of politics and and see what Ronald Reagan did and how he did it. I just stand in amazement. But you got to see him really up close and personal. Tell it. Give us a glimpse into the Ronald Reagan that that you got to interact with.

I have a very long history with Ronald Reagan, both in Sacramento when he was the governor and then in his campaigns. And then I was the White House political director, spent five, six years with him in the White House. And then I had the privilege of running his campaign, his reelection campaign in

Ronald Reagan was a guy who developed his philosophy over a period of time. He started out as a liberal Democrat. He evolved. He was a thinker. He was a reader. He would write everything out on longhand. He had yellow pads and he'd take notes. And so he'd think on paper. And over time, that thought process became his ideology. And his ideology was always summed up in three or four things, right?

I always thought the Russians were bad, the Soviets were bad. Communism, which was their brand of politics, was terrible and did great bad things to people. We saw that in the Hollywood scene.

He believed national defense was very, very important. We needed strong national defense. We needed a strong military. He felt as a movie star, they were all taxed too high. He said to me one time, he said, you know, all the big stars, I wasn't a big star. He said the big stars were the John Waynes and the Robert Mitchums and what have you. And they would only make one or two pictures a year because they were taxed. Everything over $100,000 that they would make was taxed at $93,000.

So they didn't want to make movies and they didn't work, we didn't work. So I sort of decided you got to create an incentive to make people work, which is obviously what I was tax policy about. The last thing is that government is too big and too involved in people's small business, particularly small their lives.

And so those are, those are sort of the overarching themes. And he articulated them extremely well. He, he sensed them. Uh, he, he, there was no meanness to Ronald Reagan. I've been with hundreds of candidates in the course of my lifetime. Uh, he was the finest by far. And, and, uh,

he was a decent human being and all the years I was around him, which was about over a 16 year period. I never saw him ever lose his temper with anyone. I never saw him ever mistreat anyone. Uh, he always was very kind to people. Uh, and you know, he'd get mad once in a while about something that was stupid, uh, but he'd always apologize and never yell at anybody. I never saw him yell at anybody in the whole time I was around him. And, uh,

when I was running his presidential campaign, I said to him, "I've never run your campaigns before. "I've been involved in your 80 campaign, "but tell me what you want." He said, "Ed, you're my director."

I want you to go out and direct me. I spent 25 years making movies, and when I had a great director, I did well. So you tell me what you want me to do. I'll tell you if I don't like it, and we can try and deal with it from there. But the bottom line is you tell me what to do and where to go, and I can tell you it was the most extraordinary campaign experience I ever had.

And he was a tremendous candidate. And we never had an argument. Never had an argument about anything. So my sense is he made it very easy for me to become a very staunch conservative Republican. I just wish there were more people like him. He had incredible integrity. You never find Ronald Reagan ever lying. And it would harm him, the whole Iran-Contra thing.

when they accused him of lying, it hurt it. You know, he said, I just, I didn't have all the information and all the facts, whatever, but he would never lie about it. And, you know, we now live in an era where,

And in politics in those days, if you lied, the one given was if you lied about anything and you're a politician, you're gone. You're dead. You run for Congress, you lie, you run for the Senate, you run for the State Assembly. You get caught in a lie, you're done. Today, it's a way of life and it's unfortunate. It's a way of life. Yeah, it is sad that way. But Ronald Reagan's ability to communicate was, I mean, it really was...

something special. And, and maybe it was just innate and it's just kind of born with it. You know, I read a book once about Reagan and was talking about his time at, at GE and how he crisscrossed the country and he was speaking. And it's really how he kind of got to know Reagan.

and get the cadence of being able to speak in front of groups. You know, speaking on film and acting in film is going to be different than doing something on radio, which he also did, which is going to be different than being able to, you know, deliver a speech and participate in politics. But you got to see that up close and personal. What's your take on Reagan's ability to communicate? Yeah.

there was never a better communicator and he could, he could do it with great ease, but it all started. Uh, uh, he, he went to Eureka college, a very small little college, four or 500 kids. Uh, and he followed a girlfriend there. Uh, and it was, uh, he had no money. He played football, but the bottom line is it was a student protest. Uh,

And I actually gave a speech there a couple of years ago for his birthday party. And they were taking me around. They showed me this little stage, which is a tiny little stage. It's about 10 feet wide. And this is where Reagan got up and gave his first speech. And he got off. He was a freshman. And he got off the stage and he said to the speech teacher, he said...

I kind of like that. He said, there's a power to words. And after that, he took every drama course, every speech course, spoke at every opportunity he had the chance. But he realized there was a power to words, and he worked on it. And again, as I said, he wrote everything down. I saw every speech that went into him. I saw every speech that came out from him. And there wasn't a one that he didn't make better.

and before he became president, he wrote most of the speeches himself. Uh, uh, and he had people who knew how, what he wanted and how he wanted it. And, uh,

And he just had, I remember one time we were filming some commercials for him, because you don't have any tape commercials or what have you. It's not a natural thing. It takes reading a teleprompter or what have you. So we had two commercials. We had a minute commercial and a 30-second commercial that the RNC wanted. And I said to him, you know, do you want to spend some time? Do you want to memorize it? He said, no, just give them to me. I'll read them quickly.

So he gets up and he said, let me do the minute speech first. He said, what do you need? You need like seven seconds. We do 53 seconds. So I give you seven seconds for the tag or whatever. And I said, sure, absolutely perfect. So he went through it and he ran a little bit over and I said to him, let us shorten it. He said, no, no, no, just let's do the 30 and I'll come back. What do you need on this 30, 30, 32, 23, 24 seconds.

Went through that, went perfect, came back, did the 60 seconds Perkin. He was out of there in five minutes. He did two incredible, perfect commercials. And, you know, he used to do every member of Congress that wanted a commercial, which could be two or three hundred challenges. He'd do that in an hour, hour and a half. And everyone thought it was the best commercial they ever had. And he just had a real gift. But the gift was from his, I said, his soul and his heart because he

What he said up there, he believed, and he could project it to the country. And he cared deeply about human beings. He loved this country deeply. And one story that I tell, we're coming back from a campaign visit and flew back on Air Force One, landed at Andrews, got on a helicopter to come back to the South Carolina White House.

And he, Paul Axel, who was a great senator, his chairman, his best friend in Congress, four or five other people on the plane.

And I said to him that he was tired and he had pictures on his bulkhead of where he had his ranch. And he said, oh, I wish you could have tapped. He said, I wish you were going to the ranch instead of back in the White House, not knowing what to tell the leader of the free world who had to go back to work. I said, I said, Mr. President, history would be very kind to you. And he said, Ed, he said, I don't care about history. He said, yeah.

They're going to distort it. It'll be distorted before I die. And they certainly, what I care about are those young people we saw out there on the campaign trail today.

the great opportunities that you and i had that your dad was a shipyard worker paul axel's father was an immigrant sheep herder my father was a was a shoe salesman and a drinking problem and here we are sitting in a helicopter with great ability to affect people and particularly those young people so that's every day i get my mission that's my mission is to go out and do good for those young people

give them the opportunities that we had. And he believed it. That wasn't rhetoric. That was three or four people who were all his people. And I think that's what made him so sincere was that he...

and there was no meanness to him he basically uh you know he wanted to win and he wanted to you know he he but it wasn't like this there was never a period of where he's a sore loser or or never appeared where he was being to his opponents uh and and even walter mondale you know mondale spent it was a lovely man he was a long time senator vice president uh his opponent 1984.

And Mondale kept going to California. Why, I don't know. But it would drive the Reagan friends crazy. They'd call Mrs. Reagan, and she'd call me, and she'd say, you know, we're taking California for granted. We've got to get out there. We've got to get out there. And so everybody wanted to say, let's go to Minnesota. Let's go sit in Minnesota. Let's go drive him crazy. And, you know, I went along with it. I made the argument. He said, Ed, he said, listen, Walter Mondale's a nice man. He said, if we're going to do well, let him win his home state.

So I spent no money. I gave Congressman Ben Weber, who was our state chairman, I gave him $10,000 to open a headquarters for a year. And no money. We never went there. You know, we could have gone in there and won all 50 states. We lost by 3,000 votes. But that's the kind of man he was. He was a man who loved his country. And people came in, Ben Weber and others came in and said, we can do a recount. They stole that 1,500 votes from us. And I said, no, no, no, we can't do that. We can't do that. He said...

49 states is a lot of, a lot of states. And I'm very grateful for that. You're listening to Jason in the house. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Ed Rollins right after this. From the Fox news podcasts network, stay on top of the latest news and information from Fox news, listen and download the Fox news hourly update on your time, the trending stories you need anytime you want it. Listen and download now by going to Fox news podcasts.com. I think you, you touched on a part that's, that's so true. Um,

which is authenticity, right? I've long argued that voters, one thing they're really good at is sniffing out authenticity. And I think that's in part what made Donald Trump so electable and Hillary Clinton maybe not so electable. And I think people, they get that. They gravitate to it. They understand it. And if they don't trust you, they're not coming your way.

No, I think that's, you know, today we spend millions and millions of dollars on campaigns and we try and alter the image. And what I've always argued is two things that I would do differently if I was still in the business. One is you tell the story. The story is a whole series of commercials.

Today, you go out and you trash your opponent. And if that doesn't work, you trash him more. And that's not good for the country. It's not good for your candidacy. The second thing is building structure, building organization, getting people not just to walk in and vote for you, but get people to be committed to you. And the great feeling today, again, spending millions and billions of dollars, is you're not building a grassroots. And to me, the grassroots was all important. And what we did is the difference between

1980 and 1984 is we went out and registered 7 million new voters, most of them Democrats. And then we took, we had 600,000 volunteers. And what we said to our volunteers, would you take 10 of these 10,

we have 10 of these new voters who live in your neighborhood. And when you make the, your project, you go talk to them, we deliver stuff to them. You go make sure they vote on election day. And we built a massive grassroots organization, uh, you know, that won this enormous victory. And that's what it was about. It wasn't, it wasn't about money. It wasn't about good morning in America, advertising and all the rest of it was very good, but it was, it was really those people, the people, uh, and my sense is we don't do much of that anymore. It's, uh,

We've lost three elections in a row now, which we get beat by the same thing every day. They're early voting. They're going to vote early. We need to get out there and vote early. You know, abide by the rules. And at the end of the day, you've got to make people feel a part of the process besides just going out and voting. So we don't do that very much. Yeah, I know. Democrats have figured out that they... I heard somebody say, you know, they're really good at going after ballots and...

Republicans try to go after votes and there's a difference and they've figured out how to target and how to organize and go get those ballots into the box and

that are going to be most favorable to them. And the game has changed, but I worry that, yeah, that the Republicans are a bit behind. Well, Republicans are all about the consultant world today, and it's all about, you know, they're all multimillionaires. We're getting to be multimillionaires. One of you are multimillionaires. Democrats approach it as a vocation. They're there. They've got their unions. They've got their environmental groups. To them, it's a full-time vocation, right?

They have to win. Ours is okay. We win, we win. We don't win. We still cash the checks. And we have to have a whole change of thought process. And maybe the next generation of younger people will be that way. But right today, we do the same thing over and over again. Again, we're not here. They spend billions of dollars and you can't tell me what the message is on any of these. And I know they're failing somewhere. Let me go back to Ronald Reagan because I don't want to lose that because I see all these parallels to...

Learning the lessons of what worked really well at its pinnacle versus where we're at today. What was Ronald Reagan like in the debate prep and getting ready for a debate? I mean, as certainly that most one of the most memorable lines ever delivered in a debate was Ronald Reagan against Walter Mondale. This is.

But debate in general, how did Reagan approach that? Well, by the time he did the 84 debates, you know, he had been president for four years and he knew the subject matter. He had a near photographic memory. He didn't brag about that, but anything he read, anything he read, he pretty much remembered. And

So what you try to do is to not over challenge them in the sense of not here's 35 briefing books we want you to read tonight before we go to debate. You talk them through it and just sort of like in the first debate, they over prepped them.

Jim Baker and Dick Darman, who were the chief of staff and the policy director of the White House, decided that they were gonna take that part away from the campaign. They were gonna do it themselves. And they drilled them and drilled them and drilled them. And at the end of the day, he was tired. It was a different time clock. We were, and at the end of the second debate, we just came in and said, "Mr. President, just relax.

You know all the substance. Just go out there and do what you've always done. He did. He did it very well. So, you know, he could give good speeches. He could add good speeches. He could – you know, my sense is you have to know what your candidate can absorb and wants to absorb. And sometimes they don't want to. I don't think Trump wanted to be brave for his debates and showed. So I think the reality here is you have to –

What is the candidate? What is it that he likes? What is it that he needs? And talk to him. Have a communication with him. What is it you need? Where don't you feel comfortable? The other thing that we don't do enough of is we don't study the Democrats. Every campaign I've ever been in, I always assume I have the smart people in the room because I try and build a team of smart people.

And I always say to them, first thing I said, you guys all think you're the best and the brightest across the room somewhere on the other part of a hotel or somewhere else down the street. There's another group that's best and brightest as the Democrats. You have to figure out how they're going to run their campaign in order to get prepared for you to run your campaign. So what I would always do, like with the Reagan campaign, I took people who had been around Reagan. Stu Spencer had been his

consultant when he was in California, Dick Worthen was his pollster. Lee Atwater was my young deputy. I said, take four or five people, go out and spend two weeks and put a campaign together and come back and show me how you can run against Ronald Reagan. And I promise you that campaign was 10 times tougher than the one that Mondale did. And then you're prepared. You basically know what's coming at you or what you think could be coming at you and you're prepared for it. It's like, even though I've been a contributor as you are on Fox for 10 years,

I watch a lot of Fox, but I watch a lot of MSNBC and a lot of CNN too. I suffer through them. But needless to say, I know what they're saying. I know what they're doing. I know who their people are. And that's very, very important to do. I know what Fox is going to say because it's pretty much in tune with what I say. But at the end of the day, I don't need reinforcement on that. I need new information. I need to know what the other side is going to do and why they want to do it.

So what do you say to the young person who says they either want to get involved and engaged in the political process, maybe as a, you know, working on campaigns or even more so as a candidate? What what what advice do you give them?

Well, what I give them is advice as a candidate. First of all, I always say to me, well, why didn't you be a candidate? I said, because I didn't want to serve. Right. You know, I didn't want to go. It's a terrible job. Terrible job. It's a hard job. It's not, you think it's prestigious. You'd be coming back in four years and tell me how prestigious it is. Yeah. Tell me about that one. Yeah. Go ahead. Keep going. But at the end of the day, well,

what is it that you want out of this? Do you want this as a vocation? You want this as an interest? You know, do you want this to, people say, I want to, I want to do what you do. I see nothing to do with that. Mine was a lot of luck. Mine was a lot of luck along the way. It was like the surfer in Hawaii. I hopped on the surfboard. I kind of got a great ride. But you know, the end of the day, you don't, you don't go out and plan to be the white house director or run a campaign or all the rest of it.

You work very hard at what you're doing every day. And the one thing about campaigns that's nice is if you are willing to work hard, you can move forward fast. If you can write, if you can fill in a void, if you can basically become very important to somebody, you know, you can become a player much quicker than going and trying to be a CEO in a business or a commentator or what have you. So, you know, the key thing I think, and what I try and tell people, just as I used to tell on the congressional committee,

I used to bring all the candidates for the opening, which I'm sure everyone's the same thing. And I'd say, understand that in this room, there's 500, 600 people. There's probably 20 of you going to make it. The rest of you are not going to make it. You're going to destroy your lives. You're going to affect your friends. People are going to see you coming and think you want money and run the other way.

If you're not careful, you'll destroy your kids. And the chances of winning are very slim. And it's the reality. And you have to be from a good district. You have to be a good candidate. Candidates are most important. You have to put a good team together. And you have to get on the phone every day and raise money, which is the hard part. And

I used to be proud of the fact that I would discover a large segment of the people that I brought back here recruiting to go home and say to me, thank you for being honest with me and tell me what it's like. And then you've got to basically candidates that are there who do get elected. You got to kind of live with it. You got to make sure that they're, they're getting everything they need. It's a, it's going back to that coaching. Uh, and it's, uh,

You know, there's some thrilling things. But the reality is, you know, you've been there. You've had an interesting career. It's not ended, I'm sure. But, you know, it didn't turn out all the way you wanted to. You know, it's just hard work and the criticism today.

the attacks on families and all the rest of it it's just uh it's a very tough process so my sense is lots tell young people there's lots of other things you do you don't have to you don't have to do it when you're 25 don't forget elected congressman 25 you go out and do something else for a few years and come back with some real experience 40 40 i gotta spend 20 30 40 years in congress that day is over uh but if you go there and serve for four or five years or four or five terms uh

you know, that's, that's going to make a mark and be historic figure and you can make, make a difference, but always want to make a difference. If you're not going to make a difference, don't bother. Cause there's a lot, a lot of other things you can do that a lot more. Yeah, no, no, it's true. I, you know, if a real young person asked me, Hey, I want to run for office. Oh, great. And, uh, he said, what should I do? I said, well, uh, don't get involved in politics. And they're like, what? And I said, he,

go out and get some real life experience. Then you have something to bring to the table and you have something that can be appealing. I don't even care necessarily what it is, but if you don't have outside experience to bring to the table, what do you bring to Congress? I mean, you've got to be able to do stuff. Go out and have those other experiences. Then you can get there and make a big, big difference. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more right after this.

And you have been involved and engaged in some of the biggest campaigns and seen a lot along the way. But I have some rapid questions for you. So I don't care how many campaigns you have managed. I don't know that you're ready for my rapid questions. We want to get to know you a little bit better. And this is the way we do it. I hope that's all right. All right. All right. Here we go. What was the first concert you attended?

Well, I went to lots of concerts. I grew up in the Bay Area. So Sly and the Family Stone. Sylvester Sly was my fraternity brother in Vallejo Junior College. Really? Great, great talent. So I went to all his concerts. And then through him, I got to go to the San Francisco scene, Big Brother, The Holy Company, Grace Slick, all that crew. Yeah, the Bay Area people and people in L.A., New York, they have a little bit of advantage because they have so many to choose from. Yeah.

And they were free. They were free. Most of them were free. Oh, really? Yeah, not so much. Talk to Ticketmaster about that one. Right. What was your very first job? So you're growing up. You've got parents. I'm not talking about mom saying, hey, take out the garbage there. I'm talking about the first job away from mom and dad where they actually paid you to do something. My first political job was I got to cut tules in the sloughs of Lael.

They would chop down the weeds and a lot of tulies would grow there. I think I got a dollar an hour and stand in three feet of muddy water and spend eight hours a day out there chopping weeds. And that was a political job. I worked at the gas station for a buck and 25 cents an hour. I did a lot of labor. I got $10 a week to clean the church.

And that was when I was in eighth, ninth grade. That was not a bad job. But most every other job has been, you know, as I tell my daughter, I have a wonderful daughter who's 26, 27 years old.

She said, Oh daddy, I don't want to go to work tomorrow. It's cold. It's hot. This is, this is nice. Why do you think they call it work? No one's going to pay you for play unless you're one of the unique baseball players. Work is work to try and get something out of it, but above and beyond the paycheck. So if you're not, when you're, we'll find something else. What's your, what's the Ed Rollins, what's your superpower? What can you do better than most people can't do?

Well, I was a national boxing champion, and so I had a confidence in that. I was a Golden Gloves champion in San Francisco. I did not know that. I had 167 amateur fights. Wow. So that gave me a different confidence. I didn't want to be a boxer just like I didn't want to be a congressman, but I was good at it, so I stayed in it.

So it was kind of a, I could sit in a room and not be intimidated by anybody no matter. As you know, Washington is about intimidation. People with power try and push you around. There aren't many nice guys. There are some good guys, but not many nice guys. And sooner or later, power corrupts them. So I was never intimidated by the power. I'd sit there and say, you know,

We're in a back alley. I could punch your lights out. We're not in the back alley. So I got to deal with the year, but you're not going to intimidate me. You're not going to run me out of the room. I love it. That is great. Um, so if you could invite one person over, say to your wife, Hey honey, uh,

You know what? I got a special guest coming over. Who would that one person be dead or alive? Anybody in history, who would you want to come over and have break bread with and, and just have an evening's conversation with John Wayne, John Wayne. Did you ever, come on, did you meet John Wayne along the way? Sure. Lots of times. John Wayne was a bigger version of Ronald Reagan. Uh, fabulous guy, very conservative, uh, no nonsense kind of guy. Uh,

If I had one other choice, one political force, the guy that's behind me, Teddy Roosevelt, was next to Reagan. He was my favorite president. I'd love to have dinner with him. I'd love to sit. He was so multifaceted and did so many things well that I'd enjoy his company. No, that would be a treat, too. That's interesting. Pineapple on pizza, yes or no, Ed? Absolutely not. Oh, well. Salami on pizza.

There you go. See, you know, the judges like this answer. I'm glad you got that answer right. All right. Best advice you ever got. Best advice I ever got was don't be afraid to say I'm wrong. Interesting. Interesting. When you're wrong, don't be afraid to say I'm wrong. Always be willing to say I'm sorry when you deserve it. Yeah. I mean,

You try hard, you're working hard, you're pushing the envelope, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to overstep, you're going to say something stupid, you're going to walk out of it, and you're going to know. And you're right. The sooner you get that behind you and say, ah, whoops, I shouldn't have done that, then the better your life will be. I think that's very true. Yeah.

Ed, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. I really do appreciate it. And thank you. And thanks for all the service and being at the right place at the right time and helping the people that really, truly changed the world. The only thing I'll say is when people say, what was it like to run Ronald Reagan's campaign? I say it was like riding Secretariat. All you had to do is not fall off the horse. He was the best horseman.

Well, it was an honor for me to shake his hand and say hello. And it's so fun for me and honored to know you and got to know you a little bit. And again, thanks for joining us on the podcast. I really do appreciate it. My pleasure. You take care, my friend. All right. I can't thank Ed enough for his dedication to our country and his work with Ronald Reagan really, truly did make a difference.

Thanks for listening to this podcast. You can listen ad free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple podcasts and Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad free on the Amazon music app. I hope you're able to subscribe to it. Like it. We need you to check that like box if you could. And then you can go over to Fox News podcast dot com if you like some other podcasts as well.

But like it, review it, subscribe to it. And we'll be back with more next week. I'm Jason Chaffetz. This has been Jason in the House. The Fox News Rundown, a contrast of perspectives you won't hear anywhere else. Your daily dose of news twice a day. Featuring insight from top newsmakers, reporters and Fox News contributors. Listen and subscribe now by going to FoxNewsPodcast.com.