April 28th, 2026 (Continued): "..In a Zack Schultz interview, you mentioned supporting nuclear energy. How would you embrace this to solve Wisconsin's Wisconsin's energy bills and reduce our carbon footprint. So, yeah, let's talk about energy a little bit because energy is at the heart of our prosperity. When we have low energy prices, we are prosperous as a country, when we don't, we aren't. And Wisconsin used to be among the lowest energy prices. It is now among the highest, and first of all, we should not be closing baseload sources of power. We need to stop the conversion to intermittent sources of power that are destroying our beautiful farmland. We have some of the finest finest farmland in America in the world that is being converted to other uses, including intermittent sources of power when its highest and best views is to grow food and I think that's a very it's a very poor public policy decision, especially when we have something like nuclear that is available to us. And when you look at the new technologies that are out there, thorium, things like that, in regards to nuclear that put out very little fur emissions, if anything, and the small modular reactors, we should be embracing nuclear because it will bring us low cost, affordable, reliable, carbon free energy for the future. Why did you decide to run for Congress and get involved in politics? Well, let's do the last part. First, why did I get involved in politics? It was 2010 and running our business wilderness Cruises with my wife, Chris, and I was getting frustrated because the state of Wisconsin had a $3 billion deficit, red tape was strangling us, I saw, as a small business owner, and said, "We got to do something about this. So I ran for office and came in with like minded people and Governor Walker, and we turned things around. I decided to run for Congress almost 10 years later after Sean Duffy resigned his position in Congress, because I wanted to do the same thing in particular in fiscal responsibility. What a lot of people don't realize is the main piece that I ran for the state Assembly back in 2010 is I could not take that we had a $3 billion deficit that we need fiscal responsibility. Same thing out in Washington, DC. We are not fiscally. Congress has not been fiscally responsible. For the first time, we had some reductions in spending with this last budget that we did in 2025. There's so much more to do, but there's the first signs that we may be heading in the right direction, but we got a whole lot of work to do here as we go forward. But that's a big thing for me, it's always been fiscal responsibility. What are your thoughts on flock cameras and their use, hey, Erika, I'm going to sound ignorant on this. What are flock cameras?”
“I don't know how to describe them. It's been in the news lately, where it's like things. Oh, my camera's moving. Things on, like, the street where, like, people, it's like cameras to, like, watch traffic, basically. I don't that's probably not very accurate super fan.”
Okay, so I'll answer it. Thank you so much for that, Erika. I'll answer it this way, like traffic cameras, if it's similar to that, that they catch people that are breaking the law. I have a deep skepticism of that because I take. I think our right to privacy is one of the most important rights that we have as Americans. And if we're taking away that ability to have a right to privacy, I think we need to be very careful to go down that path. I hope I'm hitting the mark on that question. It also, like records vehicle data, so, like license plate numbers and stuff like that, it's the, like, police use it, mostly. But people have been, like, hacking into it lately. Yeah, I mean, okay, I get it. Sometimes you catch a bad guy with it, but we all have a presumption of innocence, and if it's just being used to as a money generation tool for law enforcement or things like that, then I do not support it. I would want really tight controls on it, if it's being utilized. What is your thought on the income tax? Well, in Wisconsin, it's too high because it's higher than Illinois. And.. I've always believed in the flatpacks. I think that's the best way in which we tax people a sticking example. Let's say let's say you have two people. What makes 50,000 a year, the other one makes $500,000 a year. And let's say the flat tax is 4%. So that person making $50,000 will pay $2,000 in taxes. The person that makes $50,000, they're going to be paying $20,000. So they're going to pay significantly more. I think that is the route that we should go is something along the lines of a flat tax. How can we bring manufacturing jobs back to Wisconsin and them into us at large? Is it even possible to bring it back to the capacity and of the past? So this is a really good question, Cole. You know, are we going to restore 30 to 40 years ago? I suspect not. You know, I think about the paper industry, which has been really big up in my neck of the woods in the north woods of Wisconsin, and so it's not going to come back the same, but I do believe we can bring manufacturing back, and I'll give you an example. Over in Green Bay, there's an industrial manufacturer. They brought a business and not of a plan that they own or Europe and 3 to make equipment witness. Take about all tourist over the last couple days, decades, where equipment was broken down and a manufacturing facility in Wisconsin and left the country. heartbreaking. Well, this reversed that, where the manufacturing equipment to Wisconsin. And I do think that we could do that, and that was part of the reason for President Trump's tariff's policy, and hopefully we can do that. So a few things need to happen, we need to make sure that we have fair trade, not just what has been what people call free trade. It needs to be fair in terms of America getting a fair shot. The second thing is, we need to make sure that we have lower taxes so people believe that they can stay here and keep what they earn. But the other big thing is regulatory. I can't tell you how many stories I've heard of red tape just binds up people, and they say, I can't. build here in Wisconsin, because I got to jump through so many hoops. It makes it so expensive, it's going to take me three years to be able to build this factory or this addition onto my planet. And I can't wait that long for three years, and by the way, I can go to a neighboring state and they'll get me the permits in six months or a year. We're at a real disadvantage. The red tape reset that we're the red tape reset that, like Virginia did, and that could be done, would really be helpful. And by the way, some of that is happening at the federal level as a result of the work we've been doing in Congress the last year. Should schools be more focused on trying to have better food options and healthier food options? Yes. We should be we should have whole milk in our schools. We should have butter in our schools. This whole thing that happened and this predates all of you. This goes back to like the ' 80s and '90s, where they said, you gotta cut the fat out of all foods. That is just flat out wrong, you guys. There's nothing wrong with drinking whole milk. There's nothing wrong with consuming butter. It's good and healthy for you. And so we should bring those choices back to our food service. The biggest mistake that they made, like 10, 15 years ago is when Washington, D.C. said, "We're gonna micromanage schools as far as what they serve on their school lunch menu, just butt out federal government and let those local schools decide what they're going to serve kids and let them choose the good options and follow the new food guidelines where there's nothing wrong with having a little fat in your diet OK, I am concerned about recent discussions regarding the potential for teachers to indoctrinate students in our schools. Can you pride insights on what measures are being taken to ensure that education means neutral folk on critical accounting thinking as well as how the state plans to address any verified instances of bias teaching in the classrooms. It is a real problem. I mean, think about it. What is the date today? I'm gonna look at. calendar April 20th. I believe it's May 1st. My understanding is that Madison school district is going to have a walkout, where students walk out in the school, and I mean, why in the world are you doing that? Why are you indoctrinating kids rather than educating them? I can tell you me and my wife with our three daughters just expected one thing a neutally based education that takes care of educating not indoctrinate teach them to read teach them to write teach them how to do math teach them civics that talks about the greatness of America, including the warrants in all, but do it job of educating our kids and schools have gotten away from some schools, some schools have gotten away from that and we need to make sure that we fix it. And I know all here Linda McMahon of the Department of Education. She's all for that, and it's giving the states more liberty to make sure that they're delivering good educational program, because we're seeing some schools that are are excuse me, some states that are improving their educational outcomes, Wisconsin is not one of them. Wisconsin needs to turn that route..."
[POST SPLIT IN MULTIPLE PARTS DUE TO CHARACTER LIMIT]
