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>> coming up, freshman senator john curtis discusses what he expects president-elect trump to accomplish during his first 100 days in office. senator curtis also talks about the character of the president-elect's political appointees. this was hosted by politico playbook. [laughter] >> well, thanks for sticking around for the overtime session. >> i know what you're thinking, yes, it was me. i was just out here. [laughter] well, listen, you've touched on a number of the important topics of the new administration if already, and the event is about the first the hundred days of the new president. i want to take a couple minutes the talk about the outgoing president. and i'm curious your experience with the biden ad administration. how engageded that has the president be been with you? have you heard from him? have you met with him? >> no. i think as a republican in the house, i didn't expect to. but we had -- as a republican in the house, i would say it's

close to zero interaction. i was invited down to the white house, i think, for one bill signing -- >> what was the bill, do you remember? >> it was early on in the administration, i don't. i'll just brag, we passed 27 bills in that the time, and so pretty a active. but there was not a lot of interalaska. >> you've never spoken to president biden? >> oh, only in a very formal setting where there were lots of other people. >> i mean, i understand what you're describing. i'm not sure it makes sense to me, right? i i understand that you're a house republican. there's an awfully tight a majority, right? and you have expressed interest in -- you have a record of working on a bipartisan basis on a number of issues that are of some significance to this administering. did you truly have zero expectation there'd be a phone callsome. >> zero. >> really? >> yeah. sorry -- [laughter] >> no o no, no no. >> no. i think a lot of it comes if

from,, look,s in house there's 435 of you. as a republican, you know, you're not on the first part of his call list the begin with. and i would -- i don't know, but i would assume most of my colleagues don't wake up in the morning thinking the president's going to call me today. >> you were the only one that founded the conservative climate caucus though, right? >> yes. >> do you feel like there would have been an opportunity to work together concern. >> and i will tell you john kerry was amazing. so john kerry was very, very in tune with the work that i was doing. you met -- he met with us, he talked t with us. secretary granholm was very engaged. so to be fair, while the president wasn't himself, there were several people on his team who were really watching what we were doing and wanting us to be successful. >> what do you think the role is for that group of republicans in this administration? >> sos just in case everybody's not totally familiar withhi tha, maybe i can just do a top line.

a number of years ago there was concern that republicans weren't engaging in the climate conversation. so i did what everybody suggested i shouldn't do, and i jumped in with both feet. i founded the conservative climated caucus to get republicans engaged. people kind of patted me on the backck and said you'll get five republicans that will join, and i'm here to tell you today there's 87 house republicans that are part of the conservative climate caucus. now to answer your question, the role is incredibly important. and the reason why is if you have a conversation, something as significant as policy, i don't think you can separate climate policy from energy policy. and in the last conversation we just had about energy, it's so critical. ifou you just say one-half of congress is going to show up to that conversation, you're not going to get the best answers. so if republicans aren't showing up for that conversation, if we're not showing up for the climate conversation, we're not showing up for the energy conversation. and i think it's incredible to

get the the best policy that republicans are there and we're articulating our solutions and we're debating their solutions and we're coming to the best conclusions. >> do you think president trump -- >> i have a feeling i know where this is going. >> when you say if you're not showing up for the climate conversation, you're not showing up for the energy conversation, it doesn't seem that's the way president trump sees it himself. >> you know, it's hard to know. but i will tell you if you look at his appointees, we're going to have some real serious energy/climate conversations. and i'm just here to tell you the narrative has been that to be clean, you have to give up affordability, reliability, you have to give up energy denial nance. and iiv think this is where the- dominance. and i think this is where the republican voices is important. wait a minute, you don't. you can be clean. you can hang on to affordability, reliability, energy-dominant and clean at the same time. and while you may not hear the

president say that, i think if you look at his appointees, that resonates. i mean, whether they're related to energy or not as they come to me in my senate role, i'm having this conversation with all of them about my work on the climate and how i'm hope they can help -- hoping they can help me.op >> who do you see among those people that are among the broader cast of characters in in this administration as many tune with the clean part of that conversation? if. >> yeah. well, you know, i just came from the house. it was an energy and commerce committee. and when i showed up seven years ago, if climate came up in a hearing, it was a debate about the science. by the the time i left if climate came up, it was now a debate about methods. and how do we get affordable, reliable clean. that was the conversation. and i think you're going to hear that more and more from republicans. i think you going to see that. and maybe to be more specific with your questions, everybody that comes in whether it's lee

zeldin with epa, obviously, a lot of connection there, but even pete hegseth on dod, i'm talking the him about that role and the role of energy and all of those things, and it's hard to find one topic that spans every part of the administration as much as energy. >> tell me a little bit more about your conversation with pete hegseth. >> oh, shoot. i shouldn't have brought that up. [laughter] listen, to me, i take very seriously the role that the senate has in the constitution for add vise and consent. advise and consent. so when mr. hegseth came to see me, i had done quite a bit of research on him but not enough. and so i asked him, i said give me four or five names of people that you want me to talk to who can tell me who the real pete is. and i'm very well aware as an elected official that what's out there in the news may if or may not be accurate. and i wanted to a know exactly what was accurate. icc called them all, and i've

called some additional people that he didn't give me because i want to know who he really is. i smile at him and said i've written a number of books, you tell me which one you want me the read k.ou and i've done tha. and so for me, i can't make a good decision whether it's somebody as controversial as pete hegseth or noncontroversial as marco rubio ifn't i don't look at the entire sheet of music. and participant of that will be hearings, fbi, right? i don't even yet have all these pieces together, and i hope all of my colleagues take that same seriousness in our constitutional responsibility. and the reason i think that's important is that's not going against the president. in my view, that's actually helping the president. i tend the view my role as if you think of a board of directors, who would hire a board of directors and say i want you to say yes to the everything or i propose? >> a lot of people, actually. >> g well, that's not a good way to runwr a business.

it's not only consent, it's advice. i can't give the president add advice if i've not thoroughly investigated and understood every moving part e to this nominee. >> how important not just with pete hegseth, but with nominees generally, how important to you is personal character? >> it's huge. i try the hiv my life, you know, going back to to my if constituents, i would put that out first and foremost. and so it is a big deal. now, we're all flawed. and the w question is, at what point do you cross that line? if because none of us are perfect. i'm the first to tell you, you know, that i have things in my if past that if i were a nominee would be coming up. that's the u burden, i think, on us is to decide where that line is. >> if you were to be reviewing a nominee who had a superb if -- superb professional credentials, a track record of good judgment on policy but some profound personal character issue, that would still give you pause.

>> so, yes, because you have to balance, like, all of those things that you laid out there could be in degrees. farce degrees of qualifications and degrees of flaws. and that's the burden, is trying to decide where these were. there was aci nominee, you all know who i'm referring to, that a didn't make it. and i think universally it was felt that that equation was way out ofel whack, right? didn't even get off the ground. and it was just too easy of a decision that the gap was too far. >> could g you give us any insit into how you're thinking about tulsi gabbard a as a nominee. >> yeah. a so tulsi is the biggest problem for me. she's been so so low profile. she hasn't -- the others have come to my office. and so if i, if you go back to that analogy of a sheet of music, her sheet's pretty blank for me, and i need more information to start filling that in. and, look, if i can't fill that in, i can't vote for her.

so i've f got to find a way of getting informs to make that decision. >> what's your assessment of the notes that are already on the page? >> well, all i have is what's out there in comments. and like i said before as an elected official, i'm the first to understand, like, you can't really -- you got to be careful, like, with what you're hearing about somebody. and so i want to do the research. ly do the research -- i will do the research and put the energy in before iea cast that vote to make sure i fully understand what the package is. >> inul the past you've introdud legislation to limit the president's ability to -- not any particular president, but limit the presidential power to issue tariffs for national security reasons. i wonder, as you're looking at the way tariffs have been used by president trump in his first term, by president biden in his term looking ahead to the first hundred days of this this term, how much are you concerned about

the president having unchecked authority in national security? >> yeah. and let me say, you know, i want to be agnostic to republican or democrat president, and just as a general rule, executive orders are a terrible way to run a country. and we'll see in a very few days a rapid swinging of policy as executive orders are put into place just as we saw rapid policy four years ago. that's a terrible way to run a country. and so the problem is when we don't do our job in congress, it makes it more tempting for the administration to do those things. and i think it's incumbent on us to do our job. and take away that temptation from a president. >> how do you do that in the trade space who? well, i've got a bill called the prove it act, and it's amazing how simple it is. it's simply canning for a study on carbon intensity, a study. it's a tiny, little swing, and

it's a heavy lift, right, to get it done. and here again this is why i think thedo president often goes the executive orders, because by nature the way the founders set it up it's really hard for us to to get things done. i think i wouldn't change that, but it is hard. but at the same time, you know, i'm working on months just to get a simple study done. >> someone who's talked a lot about using executive authority is elon musk. >> right. >> we're going to transform government, make if it more efficient, cut $2 trillion concern and we're going to do it heavily using executive authority. how plausible is that to you? if.o >> when i became mayor of provo, i was -- one of my favorite positions ever was the mayor of provo. and we need more mayors in congress, by the way. i inherited a budget that because of the crisis is, the financial crisis back many 2007, i had to cut the budget. we did so very carefully, but we cut a substantial part of our

city budget and increased employee to real and increased quality of services delivered to our residents. and i bring that up because whether it's business or government,ec there's always waste. there's always particularly when you go decades without going back and analyzing it. so i welcome the evaluation of that waste. and i welcome the evaluation of programs that are no longer needed. and if we do it correctly, we'll come out the other side with increased morale among federal employees and betterth services delivered to our constituents. if we do it wrong, we'll destroy morale, we'll destroye the quality of services that we're delivering. and if so to the extent i have any influence in that process, i want to make sure that we do it right. and i m think, quite frankly, ts is one of the things the american people are say, please, goay do this. -- saying, please, go do this. people canan see there's waste, the debt is too high. so i think there's broad

consensus something needs to be done, and let's go do it right. >> and whatld does doing it rigt look like in the context of doge? >> so i can just tell you for me and my experience is if you come in and say we're going to cut, let's just say hypothetically, every program in the federal government by 20%, hen you cut the good programs and you don't cut the bad programs as much as you should. to answer your question, you have tosh get into the weeds on everything we do and say could it be cone better. done better or should it not be done at all. right now i'll give you just a glaring example. the number of empty office buildings around washington, d.c. withf federal workers not coming to work begs the question, should they be coming in to work in and if not, why do we have the buildings? if one of those two -- does that a make sense? of those two needs an elon musk to blow it up because it's gone for years in the state that it has, and it'll just continue. and that's where the american

people can see, oh, something needs to be done. >> do you think democrats are ready to the deal? if. y so i'm really happy with the tone in washington, d.c. right now.w. eight years ago it was as a stereotype more we're not going to work with the president, he's not my president we're going to stop, you know, do what we can to stop him. it is a not the tone a right now. the tone right now is there are things the american people expect to see get done, and they'reri not all a partisan. the americann people do expect o the fix the border. the american people expect inflation to come down. and i think -- i just sense from my democratic colleagues many of them want to be part of the solution. that's a good place. i just feel like, look, it's never perfect, right, republican, democrat. but we have the potential the really find some synergy here and do some things that the american people are expecting us to do. >> because it strikes me that in the past couple administrations in have been meaningful

bipartisan accomplishments. they haven't necessarily been on issues that are top of the mind for the average voter, a right? say what you will about the chips act. i don't think on main street in provo there are people revved up about semiconductors. maybe i'm underestimating your constituents. but on something like inflation, on something like immigration, what's your optimism level that you can put together something that's going to get, like, not 51 votes, some cute reconciliation view, but 70 votes, generational accomplishment? >> i think if we're talking about border specific andge not overall immigration, very, very high. i think if we're talking about bringing peace and stability overseas,bo very, very high. and, you know, there's -- if you kind of go back to the campaign and find those issues where i think the american people were just frustrated, i think you'll find a lot of my democrat colleagues willing to say let's find a path forward.

and i think it's incumbent on both republicans and democrats to find those places, agree to disagree on some. if you go to immigration, if you start with, okay, here's the border right here and here's mass deportation of 20 million people, like somewhere between there you're not going to agree. that's not hard to see. but what about over here? right? let's go for example on this, and then we'll deal with this later. >> and we heard vice president trump can -- where would vice president -- why would president trump be? >> he's going to do what he's going to do. but my advice to the senate and the house, that's our job. let's go find those places. let's work together. i think my biggest us from thation is that those in the house and in the senate who are willing and who like to work together with other people, i tend to call us boring. we don't make the headlines, right? and we've got to find a better way to showne