EXCLUSIVE Part II: Dan forest Sits Down With First In Freedom Daily

RALEIGH – First in Freedom Daily had the exclusive privilege to sit down with current lieutenant governor and likely 2020 Republican nominee for governor Dan Forest and get his take on the most important issues facing North Carolina and the nation. (This is Part II of a series, so be sure to read Part I for Forest’s full take.)

From the success and continued merit of Republican tax cuts on the state and federal levels, Roy Cooper’s misguided opposition to sensible policies like school choice and energy exploration, to judicial tyranny, Rule of Law, and immigration, and how he views President’s Trump first year – Forest shared his thoughts and previewed how conservative policy and leadership like his will be a welcome choice when North Carolinian’s head to the polls in 2020 to elect a governor and president.

Especially when it comes to illegal immigration, and North Carolina’s own apparent issues with ignoring the state and federal laws on the books regarding DACA and state certifications because of ‘feelings.’

Specifically, that the N.C. Secretary of State has been caught certifying illegal aliens as notaries, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction has been certifying them as teachers, and the N.C. Department of Insurance has been approving them for insurance licenses – and the leadership in the N.C. General Assembly has done nothing to hold them accountable.

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“I’m always going to stand on the side of Rule of Law. You don’t get to break the laws just because of your feelings. You don’t get to break the law because you have some emotional attachment to somebody or something. The law is the law. If you have those kinds of feelings or those attachments you need to change the law. So go through the process, go through the legislative process to do that.

[…]

I think we’ve found in general the legislature has been abdicating it’s responsibility to the judiciary and that’s why you get these problems that we’re having because now the judiciary thinks they can create law, at least through their opinions, and the general public is not versed enough on the constitution to understand how that works anymore.”

National Immigration 

“Related to the national level and what the president is trying to do with congress – you’ve got to build the wall first. I’ve said all along the wall has to be the top priority. Even if there are other conversations in there about you want to do with the DACA program folks, what you want to do with anybody else that’s here.

The president was being far more generous than I would have been in his negotiations with the Democrats, but at the same time what you’ve seen was that [Democrats] don’t really care about solving the problem. They use this as a political wedge to hammer between voters and us.

[Democrats] want to keep that fuzzy line there as long as they can. They could have solved that by passing the bill and accepting the president’s negotiation and they chose not to do that.

The only thing I would say to the president is build the wall first before you make any promises.[…] President Reagan got caught by this. He was promised a wall and he made a strategic error that cost about 12 million illegal immigrants coming into this country. So I think the president is doing a good thing by removing the family attachment, by removing all the strings that have been added on the immigration through the years, I think he’s doing the right things.

[…]

Point being, you can’t change all your immigration policy before you build a wall, because any decision you make is going to change the flow across an open border. You just can’t do that”

Judicial Tyranny

The judiciary has increasingly wielded power not afforded it by the constitution. What solution exists to bring courts back in line with their proper constitutional role?

“Easy remedy – congress does its job. The remedy is not hard at all. Will they do it? No, but they need to. The remedy is: congress created the courts.

The constitution states that the supreme court is the only one they can’t fiddle with, they can’t get rid of the supreme court. It’s one of those branches of government that’s there for a check and balance at that higher level, but all those other district courts that are sitting out there they can reconstitute them, they can tell them what their role and responsibility is, they could get rid of them if they wanted to. So, they need to do their job. […]

I don’t who’s paying attention up there [in D.C.] but we’re sitting back her in North Carolina saying ‘what in the world? Why are there no real checks and balances?’.

Isn’t it interesting that event he Democrats clamor about checks and balances but they’re only really talking about the judiciary. They want the judges to be the check and balance for everything and that’s not what our founding fathers ever said. They looked at the [U.S.] Supreme Court as the lowest of the branches. There are not three co-equal branches’ it never says that anywhere. It says there are three branches, and here’s why, but it doesn’t say three co-equal branches of government.[…]

Under the previous administration, if you went out to the supreme court’s website, it said that there are three co-equal branches of government on the front page of their website and that they are the final arbiter of all decisions and they’re not. Congress is the final arbiter in the decisions. They’re the one that pass the laws, and the supreme court gives you an opinion, and an opinion doesn’t mean your opinion is the law. We sit around and believe, for some false reason, that it’s the final opinion and it’s not.

Redistricting Judicial Actions

“Here in North Carolina in redistricting they didn’t even give an opinion. They looked at the redistricting again and basically said ‘We don’t like it so we’re going to have this special master in California redraw this districts’ but they never even gave an opinion. That’s as backwards as you can get from what the judiciary is supposed to do.

Regarding Board of Elections Reform Struck Down By Courts

“You don’t have to like [the reform], but if it’s constitutionally legal, if the authority rests in the legislature to create either one of these entities, they can create them, get rid of them, move them around, reconstitute them all they want to.

Just because the governor doesn’t like it and he feels another way, doesn’t mean that the courts get to rule on the governor’s feelings. They have to rule on the constitution. What does the constitution say? It says the legislature has this authority to do this and then the governor is the executor to execute those laws that they pass.

What the they did was say, ‘well, the governor feels this way and we agree with him.’ That’s not right, either.

Judicial tyranny is a massive issue all across the country right now. It’s obvious as to why – Republicans are winning all over the place, it’s a political issue. This is the way the Democrats know they can get there will done and they’re going to continue to push.”

On Left’s Attempts to Smear His Fundraising

“They even said int here own articles that what we’ve done is legal. You are allowed to solicit for donations to these entities. One’s a political entity, one’s the Council of State caucus, one’s an independent expenditure. The law is very clear that as a politician I can ask people for money and we can do that, but we can’t coordinate anything.

That’s the thing that [the press] note[s] too: We can’t tell them how to spend the money; Once they have it, it’s theirs to spend. While we can raise it for them, that’s where it stops.[…] You hope that they spend it the right way and we trust that they do, but we don’t have any control over it. Completely legal everything that we’ve done and we were very clear in our release that we’re being completely transparent.

[…]

Our governor has dark money groups that he goes to fundraisers for and he admits that he’s at those fundraisers with those folks but says he doesn’t solicit.

[…]

They’re not telling anybody who their donors are – we are. We are being completely open, and honest, and transparent as we are with everything.”

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First in Freedom Daily looks forward to more chances to interview the lieutenant governor as the campaign for 2020 heats up. After offering North Carolinians a stark contrast with the incumbent Leftist Roy Cooper, it will hard to wait that long for some relief.