Good to see you, all right, how are you folks, how go sit here, how are you, good to see you guys, all right,
Hello, Tom.
Your name.
I'm Mike.
I'm just here for some.
Good.
Well, hey, thank you, thank you very much, Mike.
Hey, I'm going to warn you all, I might tonight, so if you come up and talk to me,
remember you're going to be recorded, so just an FYI to all of you.
Hey, what a great night, and how about a big thank you to Pops for hosting this.
Yeah, just awesome.
Are we going to stop big government socialism right here in Wisconsin?
Yeah.
Yes, yes, are we going to turn Wisconsin red in November, huh?
Yes, we are.
Yes, we are.
It's crazy what's out there, isn't it?
This is truly going to be crazy versus common sense in this election, isn't it?
You know, are we fly over country?
No, we're not fly over country.
Are we the backbone of America?
Yes, we are the backbone.
You betcha.
We are the backbone of America right here.
You know, our foundries, they defended America, our farms fed America, and our forests built
America, didn't they?
America's success is intertwined with Wisconsin's success, isn't it?
Yes, it is.
And, you know, I think about the life that my wife, Chris, and I have been able to lead
up in the beautiful Northwoods of Wisconsin after growing up on the farm in western Wisconsin.
Hey, by the way, how do you like my mom?
Yeah, yeah, I know.
We've had a lot of fun doing those commercials with my brothers and sisters and my mom
and all the rest.
But yeah, I settled in the Northwoods.
That's where I met my wife, Chris, and we built a life in the Northwoods.
We've been able to achieve the American dream here in Wisconsin.
We owned our own business for 20 years when we served tens of thousands of people on
wilderness cruises out in one of the most beautiful places you'll find in Wisconsin
up on the Willow Flow Age.
We were just so blessed.
We were blessed with three daughters who are now all out of the house.
But they were able to go to the local public schools.
Got a great education.
And we were just so blessed to have raised them up in Wisconsin's Northwoods.
We achieved the American dream right here in Wisconsin and the commitment that I make
to all of you is that your children and your grandchildren are going to be able to achieve
their dreams in Wisconsin also when I become your next governor.
But that dream is slipping away here in Wisconsin, isn't it?
Yes, it is slipping away.
You look at what our current governor has done.
He's vetoed bills like preventing child sex grooming.
He's voted or vetoed bills that would allow China to be able to buy farmland that would
prevent China from buying farmland here in Wisconsin.
He has stopped audits of all of our state agencies as we've seen the mass of fraud
across the United States, including in our neighbors over in Minnesota.
And when I sent a letter to him, he refused to enforce those anti-fraud measures
that are stealing your money as taxpayers.
But more than that is stealing the future for people who are disabled and stuff like that
that may not get those services now as a result of the fraud that goes on.
But buckle up, buckle up if we get one of the candidates that they've put up.
Because if you think it's bad now, just wait.
Think about Mandela Barnes, one of the leading candidates.
He said the founding of America was awful.
Terrible.
And the leading candidate that's out there right now, she has said,
she's going to, she supports abolishing the Senate, abolishing prisons,
abolishing the police, abolishing our borders.
That is who is leading the Democrat primary right now.
And I can tell you, I refuse when I become your next governor,
I refuse to allow Minnesota's madness and Illinois's insanity to become Wisconsin's way of life.
It ends.
It ends when I become your governor.
But it is the difference between crazy and common sense.
That's crazy, I'm going to bring common sense.
First thing we're going to do, very first day, we're going to end the 400 year property tax increase.
We're going to get control of your property taxes.
Yes.
We're going to, we're going to audit every corner of the state government.
We're going to root out the fraud and waste that steals from you and steals from people who need those services.
Audits for all of the state agencies are coming.
We are going to make energy affordable in Wisconsin.
We've had skyrocketing energy prices, over $2 billion of increases in the last eight years.
And it's because we've went to intermittent sources of power, destroying our farmland.
We are going to stop the destruction of our beautiful farmland in Wisconsin,
turning it into those intermittent sources of power like wind and solar.
It's done when I become your governor.
We're going to protect our farmland.
We're not going to close any base load sources of power and we're going to embrace nuclear energy once again,
here in Wisconsin, using the latest new technologies that are out there.
Moms, you are going to be called moms in the state budget, not inseminated persons.
Yes.
Yes.
And we are going to make home ownership affordable.
We're going to make home ownership affordable by reducing your property taxes,
making sure your energy rates do not go up, and we are going to do a red tape reset
so that we can save you money on your permits and your building costs
by raining in the Department of Natural Resources and the other agencies that drive up our costs
by having excessive permitting.
We're going to do all that.
You betcha is right.
So, we're going to take some questions here, but if you want to get results,
if you want to get results that are informed by Wisconsin's good old common sense
from places like Mosquigo and my hometown of Elmwood way over on the west side of the state,
and if you want those results with common sense and have the leadership,
the leadership you deserve that can unlock the potential of the state of Wisconsin,
then follow us, follow us as we make Wisconsin one of the great states in America once again.
Are you ready?
This is great.
All righty.
Hey, whenever we do these tavern talks, I always like to take questions.
So, I'm happy to take a few questions from all of you.
If you have anything you'd like to ask and be happy to answer your questions.
Yes, sir?
I have only 15 of the hundreds of thousands of legal loans have been prosecuted.
His question is, only 15 of the hundreds of thousands of illegal votes have been prosecuted.
His question is, only 15 of the hundreds of thousands of illegal votes that have been cast have been prosecuted.
Is that correct?
Yes.
Yes.
We are going to make sure that we have election integrity here in the state of Wisconsin.
You saw what happened out in New Jersey, right?
Last week, the story that broke.
6,600 illegal aliens registered to vote in the state of New Jersey.
400 of them have already cast ballots.
And that's why I voted for election integrity.
When I was in the legislature, including with some of my colleagues that were here tonight that I used to serve with,
that's why we passed photo ID to make sure that we have election integrity.
And I also believe the Save America Act should pass that provides for both photo ID
and that you make sure that you're a citizen in the United States to be able to vote here.
You bet.
I would like you to break down what socialism is and show me along because people don't know.
I don't know if you have an opportunity to do that on stage.
Let me just talk briefly about what you talked.
So the question by this woman here was in regards to explain what socialism is.
Let me paint a picture for you of what socialism is.
The last major country in the world that adopted socialism was about 30 years ago.
It was Venezuela.
And within 10 years, people were so destitute that the average Venezuelan had lost 17 pounds.
In other words, they were almost starving to death.
But you know what was even worse than that?
They were eating the zoo animals.
Does that tell you everything you need to know about socialism when the people have to eat the zoo animals in their country?
Let's not do that in Wisconsin.
I live in Franklin and I'm wondering if you can get a law passed in Wisconsin to keep us from getting Sharia law.
Amen, amen.
So the question is in regards to Sharia law, we've seen some communities try to adopt it around the country.
I don't know if it's happened here in Wisconsin. Not that I've seen yet, but...
So, yeah, Sharia law is antithetical to the founding of this country.
And so we should not adopt that.
We have one law in the state of Wisconsin and that is the laws of the state of Wisconsin that follow from our constitution in the state of Wisconsin.
And we should always do that.
Regardless of what anybody tries to impart on is whether it's communism, socialism, whatever, we need to make sure that we save free people.
Free people with opportunity equals prosperity and that's what I'll be fighting for every day.
Thank you. Thank you.
All right, so I had a question basically about the campaign.
Obviously this year is going to be a tough year for Republicans because obviously, usually the party is powered into the season of Congress and all that.
And also, you know, I've been concerned about my life.
I'm very upset with Trump when it comes to Iran war and stuff.
How would you campaign win people like independence?
You're going to need them to win this and win this governor's race.
I mean, I've probably agreed to get an eight year and I need some stuff.
And you've got my vote. You've got my brother's vote, my dad's vote, my mom's vote.
My sister, he's a Democrat, so probably not.
But anyway, yeah, but you're going to need to win independence.
And I know a lot of people are very upset about the Iran vote.
I don't like to either. I think it's useless and stupid.
But at the same time, you know, you're going to need to win those people to win.
And you really need to win. Because for me, I'm terrified of the Democrats taking over.
The second of the event is a few issues for me.
And if Francesco Hong gets the Democratic State Senate, the State Assembly, with her being governor, she'll ban everything.
And I'm scared of that.
Yeah, let me answer your question there.
So this question is, how are we going to win over voters?
How are we going to get to 50 plus one, right?
How are we going to get a majority of voters to be on our side?
And it is to deliver a very clear message to people.
So there's three critical components to a campaign in my mind.
Money, messaging, manpower.
First of all, the manpower, it's right over there.
All those guys and gals over there that have been knocking doors and all the rest.
You know, we... Yes.
Yes, give them a hand.
And by the way, if you want to sign up to help them, they'd be happy to take your name down.
Am I right?
Yes.
We have done over 200,000 doors.
We're closing in on a quarter million doors that we've done already in this campaign.
We expect to be up to a million doors by the end of this campaign, going out meeting people, and specifically the people that you mentioned, someone that's undecided, someone's independent.
They may be someone that is...
They may identify as Democrat, but they're not a crazy Democrat.
We're going and we're knocking on their doors and delivering the message that we can have a prosperous Wisconsin if we just do the right things here and reverse course from the things that are failing us.
So we're delivering that message every day with the manpower that we have.
Second of all, is the messaging.
We're very clear in our messaging.
We lose as Republicans when we play the Democrat-like game.
Because they're going to vote for the real thing, right?
So I hope you follow our social media.
We paint the clear contrast every day.
And we point out when our opponents say something that's untrue.
Because I pointed out how Francesca Hong said she would abolish the Senate.
She said it.
She wrote it.
And they came out today.
Her spokesperson came out today and said, no, she never said that.
She doesn't believe in it all right.
We did.
We brought the goods.
We showed.
She said that she wanted to abolish the Senate.
We do that every single day to make sure that the truth is getting to the people of Wisconsin.
And the truth is going to win in November.
Yes.
And finally, the Democrats have had a big advantage on money in many of the campaigns in the last decade, right?
I mean, there's many campaigns we Republicans have been outspent.
We give the Democrats credit.
They went to Silicon Valley and they went to Hollywood and they got millions and millions of dollars.
Well, I can tell you, we're going to compete.
And the main reason we're going to compete is because of people like you.
We have over 10,000 people from all corners of Wisconsin that have contributed to this campaign,
amounts large and small.
I look at those donor lists every week.
There's people giving $25 and $50, hundreds of them from across the state of Wisconsin.
They know what's at stake.
They're giving everything that they can.
And that's one of the ways in which we're going to win.
And also, we have a 72-county strategy.
We're not ignoring Milwaukee County.
We are not ignoring Dane County.
There's times that we have not competed in Dane County.
Where was I today?
I was in Dane County winning votes.
All righty.
Who's next?
Yes, sir.
What's your position on the data centers?
What's my position on data centers?
It's very similar in regards to wind and solar.
We will not convert any of our farmland.
We should not be converting it when it's subsidized like it has been.
Our farmland is so precious in Wisconsin, we should make sure that it's used for agriculture.
But no data centers, unless they, first of all, we should end the subsidies that Governor
Evers signed into law a couple of years ago.
The people that are on the data centers, they do not need subsidies.
Subsidies come from you, the average taxpayer in Wisconsin.
They should not be getting money from you in order to be able to build a data center.
We're going to make sure that there's no non-disclosure agreements.
You have to be transparent in regards to the negotiations that go on about this.
And there must be local control.
Local input is required.
You should have a say on whether a data center is being built or not.
And of course, no subsidies to convert productive farmland here in Wisconsin.
Yes, sir?
No, no, no, no.
Way back.
We got to get through the first round.
A minute or two again, he said, yeah, I got to give him credit for raising money.
The Democrats, you said you have to give him credit for that.
Yes, credit for anything.
Because more than half of that money is ours.
And that's how Trump got elected.
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
Okay, we'll take right here.
Yeah, go ahead.
What impacts positive or negative have local tariffs brought to Wisconsin farmers?
The question is, regardless of what positive impacts have cut, what's that?
Positive and negative.
One of the good things in regards to tariffs for farmers is we finally had a president that
was willing to take on countries that have foisted unfair trade on America.
Did you know that Canada has up to 300% tariffs on dairy products?
Up to 300% are one of our leading trade partners, and they try to keep Wisconsin dairy out of their country.
Let's give you a couple of success stories.
I was just over in Dane County, as I mentioned earlier.
Now, this is not agricultural, but they talked about how they do powder coating over there.
They said one of the primary people that they work for has brought more of their manufacturing
back from Europe here to America.
Harley-Davidson just announced two weeks ago they're going to bring more of their manufacturing
back to America, including to the plant up where I live near where I live up in Tomahawk, Wisconsin.
So it's time that somebody stood up for American workers here in America, and that's exactly what has happened
rather than having this so-called free trade that has cost us so many jobs.
Look at the Janesville factory, the GM factory.
I think about the cabinet maker up in Sheboygan that had to close as a result of that so-called free trade.
I think about the paper mill up in Niagara, northern Wisconsin.
Free trade was not fair trade, and it's about time the people of America had someone that would stand up for them.
And by the way, we also, and I was one of them that stood up for the working people of America,
when we put in place no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, and no taxes on your social security at the federal level.
And I'm going to do the same thing when I become governor.
We're going to put no taxes on tips and overtime for working class people here in Wisconsin.
Alright folks, I'm going to close it up here.
Thank you. Thank you so much that all of you would come up.
Find a way to help us. Wisconsin's at stake here in 2026.
We're going to decide. Are we going to go the route of Minnesota and Illinois?
Are we going to be like California and New York where people are bailing out of those states left and right?
Are we going to be one of the great states in America?
I believe we can be one of the great states in America once again.
Follow us. We're going to take you there.
Thank you so much.
We've got a couple questions for you.
Can we do that now?
I have a concern about foreign nations purchasing large swaths of land in Wisconsin.
Is there some type of legislation that's begun or that you would support?
We're going to stop it.
Yeah, we're going to make sure that especially some of the sensitive places,
make sure that especially China or Chinese interests are not buying up our land,
especially our farmland.
And you're a country still.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, good to know. Thank you so much.
Thank you for all you're doing. I have a question for you.
What would you think about eliminating the unions from our public schools?