Carly Fiorina

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with a class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Welcome to The Ticket.

I'm Isaac Dover.

President Trump is flailing.

His poll numbers are way down.

All the empty seats at his Tulsa rally left him to trudge back to the White House as people made fun of him.

And Republicans have begun to signal a kind of worry about him that has been rare in the past four years.

All the same, few have taken big public stances against him.

On today's show though, we have someone who's publicly opposed the president and is now ready to go the full step further.

Carly Fiorina is a conservative Republican who ran for the 2016 nomination.

You may remember her duking it out with Trump, facing down a sexist attack from him, and being announced as Ted Cruz's running mate in a last-ditch attempt to stop the reality star from winning the Republican nomination.

Even before politics, Fiorina had quite a background.

She rose from working as a secretary to being the first woman to run a Fortune 50 company as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

Now she runs Unlocking Potential, a group that works to encourage diversity among corporate leadership.

She joined me to discuss President Trump, the Republican Party, and how her thinking has evolved recently.

Take a listen.

Hi, Isaac.

Hi, Carly.

How are you?

I'm good.

How are you?

However, any of us are at this point.

Yes.

Well,

although here, I have to say, you know, we have to find our moments of joy where we can.

And here it's a beautiful summer day.

Yeah,

you're in Virginia, right?

Yes.

Our offices are in Alexandria, and my home is in Mason Neck, which is, you know, down the Potomac River a little ways past Fort Beltwore.

So if I have to shelter in place, it's a lovely place to do it.

As we've all been trying to figure it out, I guess that gives you a better way than than some other situations could be.

Your life has been one that's been out dealing with people all the time.

It must be weird to be socially distanced.

Yes, it's a perceptive point.

It was, of course, from the point of view of the organization, concerning because everything just stopped.

And so.

While on the one hand, it was personally kind of refreshing to be home every day and cook dinner for my husband every night and, you know,

be here on the beautiful Potomac River.

Organizationally, it was a bit concerning.

How do you keep people focused?

And what do we need to do?

And how do we work with our clients?

I think we've found a rhythm as a family.

I think we've found a rhythm as an organization.

And they've given us an opportunity to rethink some things as well.

Well, let's talk about some of that rethinking, I guess.

Let me start with

Tom Nichols, who's a professor and a writer.

He's a Republican, but he is someone who very clearly distanced himself from Trump.

He tweeted a few weeks ago, I'm not sure who my people are.

You ran as a Tea Party candidate yourself for Senate in 2010.

You ran for president in 2016.

You were briefly a candidate for vice president.

As you've reflected over this time and over these years with what's been going on in the Republican Party, Do you know who your people are?

Well, I've never really thought about it that way, honestly, because I don't think our first loyalty belongs to our party.

And I wouldn't describe myself as a Tea Party candidate.

Let me just start with that.

If you look back at the things I've said over many years, I've been very consistent.

People closest to the problem know best how to solve it.

Power concentrated is power abused.

Small business is the engine of innovation and growth in this country, not big concentrated businesses that use big concentrated government to get what they want.

I've been very consistent in those things.

And I've also been consistent in saying that while I

am a registered Republican, I don't believe I owe loyalty to a party.

I believe I owe loyalty as a citizen to my community, to the Constitution, to other Americans.

And I think we have witnessed, witnessed, particularly in the era of Trump, but prior to that as well,

what George Washington warned us about, which is that the trouble with political parties is people will come to care only about winning and they'll forget about values and governing.

So I'm unconcerned about whether I'm a loyal Republican or not, and I'm unconcerned about where, quote, my people are in a party structure.

I feel like we should just get this out of the way.

Have you made up your mind about who you're going to vote for in November?

Well, I've been very clear that I can't support Donald Trump.

And, you know, elections are binary choices.

I will say this.

I think,

I hope,

that Biden understands that this moment in history calls for him to be a leader, not a politician.

But so you are voting for Joe Biden.

Well, it's not till November, is it?

I'm not voting for Trump.

But if it's a binary choice.

It's a binary choice.

So,

you know, if faced with a binary choice on a ballot, yes.

But I'm making, I think, just as important a point,

which is he will get a lot of pressure, as all politicians do, to be a politician.

And yet I think what the nation is looking for is a leader.

What's the difference?

Well, politics is about win-lose.

I'm right, you're wrong.

It is, unfortunately, often about an argument between extremes.

Leadership, on the other hand, is about problem-solving and making progress and changing the order of things for the better, which means it's about humility and empathy and collaboration.

And I think this moment calls upon Joe Biden to be a leader.

I am encouraged that Joe Biden is a person of humility and empathy and character.

I think he's demonstrated that through his life.

I want to juxtapose that to something that John Bolton has been saying as he's been promoting his book in the last couple of days.

He has described President Trump as

a mortal existential threat to America.

He says he hopes that Trump loses, that he doesn't have any real lasting impact on America.

He's also said he is not going to vote for Joe Biden.

He's going to write in a conservative Republican.

And so, what do you make of that?

Because what I'm confused by is: if you know you're not voting for Trump and it's a binary choice, then you are voting for Biden, which puts you in a different spot from where Bolton is, right?

Yeah,

I don't really know what to make of that.

You know, I think,

I mean, I can't read John Bolton's mind,

but

I think John Bolton is

desperately trying

to

preserve some position in the Republican Party as a conservative Republican.

And maybe that's what causes him to say that.

I don't know.

I can't read his mind.

But that thinking

is not just his.

And it seems to me, it seems to a lot of people that if it,

especially given what we saw in 2016, when President trump won 46 percent of the vote but because of both the electoral college and before that because there were two third-party candidates that people voted for in addition to a number of write-ins that that was enough to win that uh if you don't want donald trump to be president then you

must be voting for joe biden it like it just by

you can blame our two-party system but that does seem to be the situation here right i agree i agree with that but elections are,

at least right now, it's a binary choice.

Look, I voted for Donald Trump.

I wasn't happy to vote for Donald Trump.

I did it with great trepidation.

It's why I campaigned for Ted Cruz, because I thought he was the only Republican who had a chance of beating Donald Trump.

And I thought Donald Trump was going to be devastating over time for our party.

But I also thought that Hillary Clinton was a politician who had been around way too long and whose policy positions I didn't agree with.

And I think

what I have seen since my vote is a person who

lacks character

and does not have a set of principles.

And I think character and values and principles are actually even more important than policy

because policy gets worked through the political system.

But character and values and principles are the guardrails on the most important decisions that are made.

And the most important decisions that are made are those that we don't see.

And people talk about the judges or tax reform or those sorts of things.

Yes, look, I applaud his Supreme Court justice picks and the justices that he's appointed to the lower courts.

And I'm pro-life and I didn't agree completely with his tax reform package.

I didn't agree with the bailout of big companies.

I mean I don't always agree.

with the positions the Republican Party has taken, but yes, there are plenty of policy differences that I have with Joe Biden, and there are plenty of policy differences that I have with the more progressive wing of the Democrat Party.

And yet,

I think when Biden talks about the soul of the nation,

I think what he's talking about is values and principles and character.

Principles like co-equal branches of government.

Principles like

problem solving should be a collaborative process, a bipartisan process.

Humility and empathy really make a difference in leadership.

And I think Biden has demonstrated both humility and empathy.

Do you have a relationship with Joe Biden at all?

Do you know him?

I've met him over the years, but no, I would not describe myself as having a relationship with him.

Have you spoken to him recently?

No.

I guess he'll get a surprise from hearing that he's got your vote.

You brought up the issue of abortion, which I think is

one that obviously for many people is

very visceral and

goes beyond politics.

As you said, you are pro-life.

You are opposed to abortion.

Donald Trump has he was just speaking the other day about how he participated in the March in Washington against abortion, that he has appointed judges who would

restrict abortions.

That is an issue of life as far as you're concerned, right?

Those are not fetuses, those are lives.

How does one reconcile that in thinking that if Joe Biden is the president, he, at least in terms of the policy that he is backing, would be for expanding abortion rights, would it appoint judges who would also be

in favor of protecting Roe v.

Wade,

but much more than that, too?

Well, I think it's a great question because I have many, many pro-life colleagues and friends who believe that this issue is

more important than any other issue.

And it is one of the reasons that they, as

people of values and character, are willing to overlook everything else about Donald Trump.

And I don't

judge them for that.

It is, however, also

a great example of why I say, I hope that Joe Biden will be a leader, not a politician.

So one of the things that I have said to the Republican Party on the issue of life is, let us not start at the extremes.

Problem solving is different than politics.

There are real opportunities.

to limit abortion in real ways.

And somehow Republicans and Democrats have never come together on something that the vast majority of people agree on.

The vast majority of Americans agree that abortion for any reason at all after five months is wrong.

And yet, we haven't made progress on that, despite having pieces of legislation in front of us.

That's because playing politics on the extreme.

You're either pro-choice and any abortion anytime is okay, or you're pro-life and there is no middle ground and we have to pass amendments on personhood, we're not making progress.

And so

let's focus on making progress where people agree and actually solving a problem.

Let's start there.

I would also say this, that if we care so deeply about unborn life, and I do because I think every life has enormous potential and is gifted by God, and I think abortion is used discriminately against poor people and people of color.

But if we care about life that's unborn, we need to care about life that's in this world too.

And that means we actually have to make progress on criminal justice reform and police reform.

And we have to stand up and recognize systemic racism and structural racism and make real progress on that.

Because too many lives that are here are being wasted and ignored and dismissed and overlooked and sadly murdered in broad daylight.

Let's take a quick break.

We'll be back with more.

Carly Fiorina talking about where this all heads to in a moment.

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I feel like even though it's been 10 years since you ran for Senate, there was an ad that you had that stays in people's minds forever, which is known as the Demon Sheep ad.

It's worth watching for anybody who may not remember it, but part of what it was was criticizing your Republican opponent for being a fiscal conservative in name only and FCINO.

That in name only was a play on rhino, Republican in name only.

I'm guessing that a lot of Trump supporters might listen to what you've said about him and what you've said about voting for Biden and say, you're a rhino.

What would you say to them?

I'm not concerned by it.

We are not asked as American citizens to pledge allegiance to a party.

We are not asked to pledge loyalty to any public official, including the president.

I am not asked as a citizen, nor are any of us, to play on a team other than the team of our nation or our community.

And so they can call me whatever they'd like,

but I think it misses the point.

And I think this is why people are so tired of politics.

Politics has become a game of winning and losing.

And whose team are you on?

And what?

That's right.

Whose team are you on?

And, you know, it's like worldwide wrestling.

It's like football.

You know, it doesn't matter what my team does.

I'm for my team no matter what.

That is not advancing American interests.

So

I've been called worse, I guess.

We're in a period where there's a lot of interest in rethinking the economy because of what has been exposed by the pandemic.

In your mind and the way that you see fiscal conservatism, what's the fiscally conservative way to rethink the economy?

Well, I think it starts with this fundamental principle.

Power concentrated is power abused.

What's happened over decades and decades is big companies have used the power of big government to make their businesses bigger and more powerful and profitable.

That's just a fact.

It's true in many, many industries.

Washington, the way it's structured, favors the big, the powerful, the wealthy, the connected.

And so that means, in my view, that wherever possible, we block grant money to states instead of keeping it in Washington, D.C.

I think we should have done that in the CARES Act as we deal with the coronavirus.

It means that we have to have reasonable regulation that holds big companies accountable.

And that's true whether it's finance or energy or frankly technology.

And it also means, I think, that we have to take extraordinary care to help small businesses survive

and to make sure

that hourly workers have the opportunity to earn a living.

I think all those things are required.

Now, there are a lot of people who would listen to all that and say, boy, you don't sound like a Republican.

Okay, fine.

And maybe I don't sound like a a democrat either but i think those are the things that would actually work

look i agree with elizabeth warren for example

that the financial industry has concentrated too much power

i agree with bernie sanders that our health care system does not work for everyone.

Where I disagree with them profoundly is their answer is a big government program.

If we continue to create vast government bureaucracies to control everything, the big are going to get bigger and the wealthy are going to get wealthier because they know how to play the system.

And meanwhile, the small get crushed and the disadvantaged are no better off.

This pandemic has exposed how inequitable our economy is.

When Ted Cruz picked you as his running mate, that was

a strange moment in politics just because the primaries weren't done and a running mate was picked and it was late in the primary campaign.

I wonder,

when was the last time you talked to Senator Cruz?

A couple of years ago, I can't remember exactly, but it's been a couple of years.

Can you make sense of what's become of him these days?

Because he, like a lot of others who were opposed to the direction that President Trump seemed to be taking the party seems to now have signed on pretty much entirely to that direction.

See, I think that's all about politics.

Yeah.

Look, I don't excuse it.

It disappoints me.

I've been public in my disappointment about how few politicians have been willing to stand up, but I understand it.

I just wonder what it means about where the Republican Party might go after President Trump.

There are some people who think that it will be Donald Trump's Republican Party and he'll be part of politics

even if he's not president for a long time, even maybe for long after he's alive, that he's lit up a sort of nationalist, populist,

aggressive, personal

approach to politics.

And then there are some who feel like should he lose, there'll be this kind of waking from a dream moment where people will say, like, Donald Trump, like, it's sort of the way that President Trump talks about people who have turned on him.

Like, I don't really know that guy.

And

when you see

the politicians who have attached themselves to President Trump over the course of this time, and Senator Cruz is one who obviously has made a very

abrupt and clear turn in his approach, what that means of what the future holds.

What do you think it would hold?

You know, Isaac, honestly, I don't know.

Yeah.

I just don't know.

Here's what I do know.

Whatever party people attach themselves to,

I do think that

as we look out in our country and we see where we are,

What all the polling data says is that the majority of Americans now think we are headed in the wrong direction.

And so I guess my plea

to Americans is

let us not

have the poison of politics

infect

everything

we do.

We have to find a way.

This is what we teach through my business and my foundation.

This is what I've learned over decades of problem solving and leadership.

We have to, at some point,

say,

the most important thing here is not whose team you're on.

The most important thing here is that we as Americans have to start solving some of these problems and holding our

political representatives accountable, not for party loyalty, but for problem solving and character.

One thing that we do know is that Joe Biden's running mate is going to be a woman.

He's made that very clear.

The only people who are being vetted are women.

You had that experience of running as a woman for president and then briefly for vice president.

What do you think we still don't get about how politics

is different for women running and different for women running at the national level?

Well, you know, I would liken it honestly to the experience I had when I became the first woman to lead a Fortune 50 company.

It's different when you're different.

It's different when you're first.

And what I mean by that is, and I say that with no bitterness, no resentment

at all.

It's just a fact.

When you're different

or first,

the scrutiny is different, the criticism is different, the expectations are different, both much higher and much lower.

There isn't the benefit of the doubt granted, there isn't the presumption of competence granted, the margin for error is far smaller.

There must have been moments when

you were leading the company when you felt like if I were a man, this wouldn't be an issue in the same way.

Of course, there were.

Is there one that sticks out?

I remember as a presidential candidate being on national TV

for an interview.

And

the interviewer said to me,

we have a viewer in Texas who asks,

don't a woman's hormones prevent her from serving in the Oval Office?

In other words, isn't a woman too emotional?

And I paused on national television and I said, gee,

can we think of a single instance in which a man's judgment was clouded by his hormones, including in the Oval Office?

Now that's a funny example,

but it's a very telling example, I think.

Men are some of the most emotional creatures I have ever met, and they are driven in no small measure by their hormones.

And yet we are always worried about women's emotions.

It's different when you're different.

And Donald Trump is a pretty emotional person.

So much of the story of his presidency in one way or another boils down to what kind of mood was he in?

And yet you can imagine that that would be much more of a topic of conversation if it were a woman who was acting as erratically and moody as he often does.

Yes.

You know,

I had people say to me, you don't smile enough on the debate stage.

No one would make that comment about any man, any man.

Well, so then let's

maybe this is the way to wrap it all together.

What you've said today,

when people hear it, you I'm sure will be attacked for it like I

like we were discussing.

You've been attacked before.

Some of it has been very gendered.

The Donald Trump said to you look at that face or didn't say it to you, said about you.

And just wonder when that is happening, when you're living through

whether it's that kind of attack or or that interview you discussed, what it feels like and

how you process that

in then obviously not letting it deter you from what you want to do and what you want to say and what you feel you need to say and need to do.

You know, it's interesting.

When we develop leaders, The first characteristic that I talk to people about is courage.

Criticism is the price of problem solving and leadership and it is why so few politicians are prepared to lead because you have to be willing to be criticized.

So if he tweets at you or tweets about you let him tweet.

Honestly let anybody tweet.

I don't spend my life trying to upset people.

I spend my life trying to have a positive impact by working with other people.

And that means that when I'm wrong, I hope I can admit it.

When someone teaches me something I needed to learn, I hope I incorporate it.

But it also means that I have to be forthright about who I am and what I believe and what I have learned over a lifetime of problem solving actually works.

I think that's a good place to end it.

Carly Fiorina, thanks for being here on the ticket.

Thanks, Isaac.

That'll do it for this week of The Ticket, Politics from the Atlantic.

Thanks to Kevin Townsend for producing and editing this episode, and to Catherine Wells, the executive producer for Atlantic Podcasts.

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