Fox News "Fox News Sunday" - Transcript: Interview with Gov. Greg Abbott

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

And joining us now, Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Governor, welcome back to "FOX News Sunday".

ABBOTT: My pleasure. Thank you, Chris.

WALLACE: Let's start with the voting bill that Casey was talking about.

That became the big issue when Democrats were successfully able to block it

in a regular session. Here is the -- a Democratic state legislator. Take a

look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GINA HINOJOSA (D), TEXAS STATE REPRESENTATIVE: We do not have a voter

fraud problem in the state of Texas. Our secretary of state testified that

elections in Texas were safe and secure. The 2020 election was safe and

secure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: The Texas attorney general's office spent 22,000 man-hours

looking for evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election and they

apparently came up with 16 cases -- 16 -- of people filing false addresses

on their voter registration.

So, my question, Governor, is, is this a problem in search of a solution?

ABBOTT: Absolutely not, Chris. Remember this, and that was before that I

was governor, I was the attorney general of Texas and I prosecuted voter

fraud cases in the entire state and my successor, Ken Paxton, has been

prosecuting voter fraud across the state, including the most recent arrests

and indictments just taken place this past Friday.

However, I have to disagree with the statement that was just made as well

as the public perception because I'm going to give you the words of a

federal district judge appointed by Barack Obama and the federal district

judge said that voter fraud occurs, quote, "in abundance" as it involves

ballot harvesting.

On top of that, Barack Obama and the Biden demonstration, when they were in

office, they came down to the state of Texas to send an FBI team as well as

a U.S. attorney to investigate and to prosecute a voter fraud scheme where

cocaine was being used to buy absentee ballots.

I will tell you this also, Chris, and that is even Democrats in the Texas

House of Representatives, they agree that as it concerns mail-in ballots,

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that is an area where improving the mail-in ballot system is a way to

achieve greater election integrity, so what Texas is doing is we're making

it easier to vote by adding more hours of early voting then we had in

current law, but also making it harder to cheat with regard to mail-in

ballots.

WALLACE: Well, Governor, let me ask you, though, about two other things

that the GOP bills would do. I want to put them up on the screen. They

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would ban 24-hour voting and they would ban drive-through voting. Now,

there was no allegation of any fraud in either of those. Harris County, the

Houston area, employed both of those and more than half of the voters who

showed up were people of color. So, you say you want to make it easier to

vote, that's going to make it harder to vote and the question is why make

it harder for some Texans to vote unless the point is to suppress voting by

people of color?

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ABBOTT: So you mentioned a couple of things that need to be responded to.

One, you mentioned how Harris County did this and it was Harris County --

for your viewers, Harris County is where Houston, Texas, is located. Now,

let's go back to Article 1, Section 4 of the United States Constitution

where it says in there that it is the states, not counties that have the

authority to regulate elections.

And despite that constitutional mandate, this past election, Harris County,

a county, tried to create its own election system that had never been used

in the state of Texas. It was not used in the other parts of the state of

Texas, and so what the state of Texas is doing --

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: But, Governor, why not -- why not let it go on?

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Governor, I guess the question is if 24-hour voting worked, why

not continue it?

ABBOTT: Well, first, I can tell -- I'm going to answer questions

specifically, but you need to go back to elections before now because the

same allegations were made when Texas passed a voter ID law, and everyone

said the exact same thing, this is going to disenfranchise people of color,

it will reduce voting. And the fact of the matter is, after we passed voter

ID, we increasingly saw every election cycle, more people go voted, they

did not make it harder to go vote. It was easier to go vote.

And the same thing applies here and that is with 24-hour voting, one thing

that we want to make sure that we have is integrity in the ballot box

system and we need to have poll watchers and monitors and, candidly, it's

hard even for a county to get people to be watching the polls 24 hours a

day. We are providing more hours per day for voting to make sure that

anybody of any type of background, any type of working situation, is going

to have the opportunity to go vote.

With regard to the drive-thru voting -- listen, this violates the

fundamentals of the way voting and for integrity has always bee achieved

and that is the sanctity of the ballot box. Now, if you do drive-thru

voting, are you going to have people in the car with you and it could be

somebody from your employer, or somebody else, who may have some coercive

effect on the way that you would cast your ballot which is contrary to, you

go into the ballot box alone and no one there watching over your shoulder

so that your -- the way you vote, only you will know what that vote will

be. And to allow other people to pile into a car with you, it will alter

that.

In addition to, it would violate state law because in state law, we have

prohibitions on electioneering close to where people cast their votes. If

you're doing drive-thru voting, this is going to be electioneering. It

could be on the bumper sticker in the car right in front of you.

We do still, however, Chris, provide what's called curbside voting for

those who qualify for curbside voting, that continues to be in place.

The bottom line, Chris, is Harris County, under the Constitution, is not

allowed to come up with their own rules. What Texas is doing where, by

adding more hours, we're making it easier for people (ph) to go vote.

One last point, Chris, and that is if you look at the hours of voting that

Texas provides, it is far more hours of voting than exists in the state

where our current president voted in where they had exactly zero hours of

early voting. It's far easier to vote in the state of Texas than it is in

Delaware and yet nobody is claiming that there is some type of voter

suppression taking place in Delaware.

WALLACE: Governor, let me ask you about the special session in general

because some Democrats say -- and this is the word they use -- that you are

using it to pander to Trump supporter's on the far right of the Republican

Party.

I want to put up some of the key agenda items: voting reform, as we talked

about. Border security, social media censorship, transgender student

athletes, critical race theory, abortion.

And your critics point out that what isn't on the agenda for the special

session is the electrical grid in Texas, which broke down during the deep

freeze last winter. A hundred -- more than 150 people were killed, more

than 4 million Texans lost their power during that.

And the question is, why wouldn't you address an issue like that that

affects people's everyday lives?

ABBOTT: So, you raised two issues and let me answer both of them. One is

if you look at all these issues that are on the special session agenda.

These aren't new items. All of these items were up on the agenda during the

regular session. They got close to the finish line and the only reason why

they didn't get across the finish line is because, as you pointed out

earlier, the Democrats decided to abandon their job and walk off the job,

did not give us the time to get those other items across the finish line.

So, all we're trying to do is to continue to achieve exactly what we were

trying to achieve during the regular session.

I need to point out to you, Chris, exactly why the power grid is not on the

special session, and that is because during the regular session, there were

robust laws that were passed by the Texas legislature that provide all the

changes that are needed to make sure that we will have an effective power

grid.

I must point out, Chris, one very important thing that most people do not

know, and that is, what was the main cause of the power grid failure in the

wintertime, and it's nothing what anybody knows. The main cause of the

power grid failure of the state of Texas actually was a failure by the

power generators in Texas to file a simple document with ERCOT, the

Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

WALLACE: All right.

ABBOTT: And let me -- Chris, I need to explain this very quickly, and that

is in Texas, like in many other states, whenever there's going to be a

temporary shutdown of power in a state, there are certain areas that are

exempt from being shut down, such as hospitals, such as downtowns, such as

police stations. In Texas before the winter storm took place, power

generators and power transmission entities, they were not subject to not

being shut down. When ERCOT shut them down in the winter storm, they froze.

Had ERCOT not shut them down, this would have been a four-hour event as

opposed to a four-day event.

Now, what is required --

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Governor, I've got limited time -- sir, I've got limited time.

And the question -- no, sir, the question I have is the power grid isn't

fixed. You talked about it being fixed by the legislature, but you had over

a thousand unplanned outages in June and ERCOT, the agency regulating is

already asking people in Texas to voluntarily conserve energy because it's

been in danger of being overloaded. So you haven't solved the problem.

ABBOTT: Real quickly, Chris, well, what happened in June did not have

enough time for all the changes that were made during the regular session

to go into effect. (VIDEO GAP) problem whatsoever what happened in June,

there were mechanical repairs that needed to be made to about 15 percent of

the natural gas and --

WALLACE: OK.

ABBOTT: -- coal-fired power plants. And during those repairs, there was no

blackouts, no rolling blackouts or anything like that. Just for a few hours

a day, calls for conservation.

WALLACE: Sir --

ABBOTT: Here's the important point, Chris, and that is turned out that

during the summertime, there were exactly zero people who lost power in the

summertime showing that the power grid does work very effectively.

WALLACE: All right, one last question. You've got 30 seconds to answer it.

You're up for reelection next year and you may face a real high-profile

challenger. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, ACTOR: Something I'm trying to look in the eye and

give honest consideration. What an awesome privilege and awesome

responsibility and awesome position of sacrifice and service, something to

consider.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Governor, how seriously do you take Matthew McConaughey as a

possible opponent?

ABBOTT: It doesn't matter what the name is, I take everybody very

seriously, and it shows -- I will tell you two things, and that is if you

look at my polling numbers, they are very, very strong. In addition to

that, I have $55 million in the bank already, and I'm a very aggressive

fund-raiser.

So I will have the resources and the backing of a lot of people across the

state of Texas to ensure that whoever decides to run against me, we will be

able to win.

WALLACE: Governor Abbott, thank you. Thanks for your time. I got to say,

some of your fellow Republican governors stick to friendly venues as life

preservers. I appreciate you coming on and being willing to answer all of

our questions, sir.

ABBOTT: Thank you, Chris.

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