I was joined this morning by Energy Secretary Rick Perry:

Audio:

10-23hhs-perry

Transcript:

HH: I’m pleased to welcome back United States Secretary of Energy, Governor Rick Perry. Governor, always a pleasure to talk to you. How are you this morning?

RP: Hugh, I, it is a beautiful day in Washington, D.C. from a physical standpoint. And you know, the swamp is still here, though. So, but otherwise, a beautiful day over on the East Coast of the United States.

HH: You have announced your retirement. I want to congratulate you on serving the country for these three years and doing a very good job. We’ve got a lot to talk about.

RP: Yeah.

HH: But I have one request. When you go into retirement, if you land on any oil and gas boards, and they need someone who knows absolutely nothing about the business to come for $50,000 dollars a month, and just sit there, and I’m available.

RP: You’re going too cheap from what I hear.

HH: (laughing)

RP: (laughing)

HH: Well, okay, I’ll raise my price. You tell them they can have me for $150,000 a month, and I’ll still know nothing about the oil and gas business.

RP: There you go. There you go.

HH: Governor, I read your interview with the Wall Street Journal, and I’ve just got to cover this. It’s in the front page.

RP: Sure.

HH: Were you ever involved in anything that looked like a quid pro quo with the Ukraine concerning, with Ukraine concerning aid to them?

RP: No. You know, it’s one of the fascinating things. Did we tell them day in and day out in our conversations with the previous president, I might add. I met with Poroshenko a number of times before Zelensky won that election and came on board. But I told them both, I said listen, the United States would love to come and help you. As a matter of fact, we want to. But we cannot do it if there’s going to be corruption, if there’s going to be non-transparency, if you’re not going to respect the rule of law and the sanctity of contracts. I told Poroshenko that multiple times. I told Zelensky that multiple times. That’s not a quid pro quo. That is just good common sense, and that’s what they heard time and time again. Clean up the corruption in your country before United States companies are going to come and invest in your oil and gas industry. Simple and straightforward.

HH: Now having been governor of Texas for, you were governor for, what, 14 years, something like that?

RP: Yes, sir, 14-plus years.

HH: You were governor for the entire time I’ve been on the radio. No wonder I’ve talked to you so many times. So in all that time that you were there, you dealt with a lot of oil and gas companies, and you dealt with a lot of people who were making a lot of money. Did anyone ever end up on a board who didn’t have a clue about what an energy company was doing? Is that in your experience?

RP: You know, I’m sure there have been one or two. I never knew them, though. I mean, most of these boards are pretty focused on we want people that bring a particular talent in the industry that we’re involved in. So you know, I can’t think of a time that anyone’s come to a board that I had interaction with, and I’m, look, I’m sure that somebody can go back and say well, right here, this person did not have an expertise. But we know exactly what you’re saying here, Hugh, that an individual to go on a board just because, I can promise you if my son went on a board in 2006 when he graduated from college, and he knew nothing about it, the uproar would be loud.

HH: You know, Governor, my son came to D.C. He worked for Scott Pruitt. He’s working for Mike Pompeo now. In between, he worked in the private sector. I told him the one thing not to do was to work for a foreign government. Never work for a foreign government. Just don’t to it.

RP: Yeah.

HH: Because you can’t get, you can’t get it off your resume ever, and he didn’t.

RP: Yeah, and I’ve got friends who have been offered massive amounts of money to work for a foreign government, and they listened to your type of advice and said you know what? It’s just not worth the juice. It ain’t worth the squeeze.

HH: And now my last question on this before I move onto serious, important stuff, because I think this whole quid pro quo stuff is as nutty, I mean, the Louisiana Purchase was a quid pro quo. I can’t just get over the idea that we’ve got an impeachment inquiry. Did President Trump in the almost three years you have worked for him ever ask you to do anything illegal or unethical in your eyes?

RP: No, and I’ll take it a step farther here. In our conversations dealing with this issue, I never heard the President say the words Biden. I never heard the word Biden mentioned, not from him, not from staff, not from the EU ambassador, not from Kurt Volker. Never one time was that said. I have no idea, you know, when the President said it on that phone call, the idea that somehow or another this was the main focus of his effort here, we talked about corruption almost every time we had a conversation with the Ukrainians to clean their country up so that we could have confidence that American companies that came there would be treated fairly, openly, transparently.

HH: You know, not many people will remember this, Governor Perry, but I do. You were unjustly indicted by a Travis County grand jury. You have been the victim of due process off the rails, and so you know what it’s like when due process goes off the rails. As you watch this entire impeachment charade unfold, and it’s illegitimate in my view, it’s a complete sham, does that trigger the memory of you, of what happened down in Travis County?

RP: Oh, absolutely. As a matter of fact, I mentioned this to the President as we were going in right as this was breaking. We had a meeting with Zelensky at the U.N. General Assembly. And prior to that, sitting in front of a Fox News TV program that this story was just breaking, I told, the President asked me, he said what do you think about this, Perry? And I said Mr. President, you need to remember you’re talking to a governor who was indicted, a sitting governor who was indicted for doing his job in Travis County. Now we know why it was done. It was done to distract, to make it hard for me to go raise money while I was running for president in 2015. This was in 2014 when this happened. And that’s exactly what’s going on with this president. It is totally and absolutely, number one, not following precedent and not following the law. And that’s one of the reasons that my office has said listen, if you want to follow the law, Democrats in Congress in this impeachment issue, follow the law and follow precedent. But I’m not going to participate until you do that. So it’s an important message for the American people, is that you truly have an effort going on here that’s not following the law. And why in the world would anybody want to participate in something that is not following the law and precedent?

HH: I agree. Now let me turn to some substance. You’re about to leave, and one of the things that you have done that I have praised you greatly for is trying to reinvigorate the American nuclear industry. And I heard Bud MacFarlane, former national security advisor, ask last week, do you people know that the Chinese are building nukes all over, the civil power nukes, all over Africa, all over the world? We don’t even have a nuclear power cycle. I thought this month you were supposed to provide the President options that would yield to the reinvigoration of the nuclear power cycle, including to a large pile of unallocated, enriched uranium. Are we going to get there? Are you going to get that done before you leave?

RP: Yeah, we are, and here’s one of the other things, Hugh, and I’m glad you brought this up. I literally got back from Brussels yesterday to travel with the President to Pittsburgh today to talk about the shale gas revolution that’s happening in that Appalachian region. Look, we were in Brussels with the leadership. I think there were, I want to say 20-plus countries represented around the table as we talked about small modular reactors. The next generation of civil nuclear power that is incredibly safe. I mean, nuclear power is safe. I mean, not one person’s ever died from a nuclear accident in the United States. And this next generation is even safer. It is substantially more economical. It is zero emissions for those in the European theater that want to go to a zero footprint by, I think, 2050. You can’t get there without nuclear power. And small modular reactors are the next gen of that, next generation of that. The Department of Energy and New Scale, which is a West Coast company, we have a public-private partnership, and you know, by 2026 or thereabouts, we will have the first pilot program out, and people are going to see that. I think a real potential for the world, and obviously with American technology, American supply chain, American innovation, we can lead the world to a new form of clean energy that will, I think, really have the potential to change the world, Hugh.

HH: I think you’re going to be remembered for this. And one other thing. If you can guarantee that our military 50 years from now has enough unallocated enriched uranium fuel for our weapons, for our reactors, for our ships, Rick Perry is still going to be the hat tips for you in 50 years if we get that nuclear fuel cycle rebuilt.

RP: Yeah, and we will. I’m confident we will. And let me say one thing else, Hugh, in the shorter term. The national defense of this country is inextricably intertwined with our ability to have the fossil fuels delivered around the world, particularly LNG. So what we’re doing up in the Appalachians, you know, as the governor of Texas, I used to really worry about a category 5 hurricane coming up the Houston ship channel, shutting down, not to mention the loss of life, which would have been horrendous, but the petrol chemical footprint in the United States could have been impacted for literally months, I mean, bring this country to its knees not being able to have that refining capability. If we were to duplicate that in the Appalachian region, which is sitting on the third-largest oil field, or energy field, I should say, with oil and gas, in the world on that Marcellus and Utica formation, that makes so much sense plus all the jobs that get created in a part of the country that suffered economically for years. So the President’s vision of being able to develop that shale gas, that formation, to create a value added chain, and then move that product outward is a stunning impact on this country.

HH: Two recommendations for you, Secretary Perry. First of all, wear your Cleveland Browns hat when you’re down there today, because it’s very popular in that part of the country, very popular. And then number two, make sure they understand the Democrats want to shut that down. Do they know that? They want to shut down that revolution for that part of the country that has so long been the caboose, and often not the caboose.

RP: I use California, or excuse me, I use New York as an example all the time of the difference between mentality. You cross that line between Pennsylvania and New York, and you can see the economic impact. Pennsylvania doing pretty darn good. New York, in those rural areas, absolutely stunning poverty because the lack of, the lack of vision, I think, the lack of political will to help this country be energy, not just independent, but energy dominant in the sense of being able to develop that resource in that region.

HH: What are you going to do when you retire, Secretary Perry? You’re not really the retiring type.

RP: Well, you know, I failed retirement once miserably. I suspect I will do it again. But it’s time for me to go home. I’ve been working on this for eight or nine months, actually, my offramp, so to speak. I love my wife, and I love my beloved Texas more than I do staying up here in Washington, D.C. I’ve got the agency in great shape, philosophically. It’s going to move along. Dan Brouillette, who’s going to be the new secretary of Energy, is going to do a fabulous job. And you know, frankly, I want to be able to help the President in Texas get reelected and have a strong showing. So I’ve got plenty of things to do. I don’t know whether it gets into the retirement category or not.

HH: Well, thank you for all you’ve done both as governor and as Energy secretary. And just remember, when they’re looking for those board members who don’t know anything about what’s being discussed, I am available.

RP: You are there. You’re one of those. Okay, I’ll tell you if I find any.

HH: I’m one of those. It’s $100,000 a month. I’m pretty cheap, too. Thanks, Secretary Perry. Thank you.

RP: All right. So long, Hugh.

End of interview.