I'm happy to welcome a guest into our studio tonight.
He's a former CIA Operations Officer
who ran as an Independent
during the 2016 presidential election.
Please welcome Evan McMullin.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
All right.
Evan, welcome to the show.
Great to be with you.
This is our first interview that we've done on the show.
I'm thrilled.
I know you've been on a lot of shows.
No one's asked you some hard-hitting questions.
I never get hard questions.
Okay. So, let's start.
All right. Here we go.
You're a Mormon. What's all that about?
[ Laughter ]
Where to start? Where to start?
You can have several wives and [bleep]
No, no, no. That's not true.
Back in the day, that was true, yeah.
Was that Tuesday? Was that the day --
Is that the day you're going back to?
-You sound interested. -I am.
Look, there are places you can go
where you can still find people practicing polygamy.
And where would that be?
And do I have to get a special license to do that?
And how do you get rid of just one of the wives?
-It's illegal. It's illegal. -It's illegal?
Yeah, so you'd have to brave the law.
All right.
Okay, Evan, so, you ran for president against Donald Trump
in the 2016 election in the state of Utah.
That's true.
You had a female running mate. You had Muslim staff members.
I did.
What other things did you do to [bleep] up your campaign?
[ Laughter ]
Well, I'm actually very proud of the diversity in our campaign.
For us, it was important to stand on principle
for liberty and equality in America,
and that's what we did.
[ Cheers and applause ]
I -- Look. I like you. We're the same.
Well, that's -- I wasn't sure.
No, no, I do. I do.
Oh, you should see the way I treat people I hate.
[ Laughter ]
So, you're a conservative.
And a lot of people on the left like you
because you're anti-Trump.
That's safe to say, right? You're against Trump.
That's why you ran against him.
That's true. Yep.
But is that enough?
What makes you more than just a conservative
that doesn't like Trump?
Well, it's a good question.
The media focuses a lot on my opposition to Trump.
But really, as I said before,
this is a fight about liberty and equality in America.
But not only here, but around the world.
Right now there's a rise of authoritarianism
in Europe and elsewhere, in Asia,
and here in the United States.
And what I mean by that is
governments that don't respect the truth
that all men and women are inherently free and equal.
And so we have governments
that are now attacking the free press,
attacking independent judiciary systems,
and doing other things to erode our basic freedoms.
You know, in this country, we choose our own leaders.
And our leaders are accountable to us.
Well, we don't really do that.
The Russians do that. This is my point.
That's right. That's right.
So that would be I think
one of the primary freedoms
that we're at risk of losing right now,
is the ability to have access to truth, to facts.
If you have foreign governments
spreading fake news, spreading lies about
different, you know, groups of people,
or politicians, leaders, would-be leaders,
we lose our ability to make wise decisions
about who our leaders are.
Is it just America who is under threat of this?
Or are there other countries? It's not just us.
In fact, what we're seeing here in America
has been happening in Europe now for years.
Poland, for example,
the free press there is not so free anymore.
In Hungary under Orban --
So, would you say that Poland's
going through its worst stage in history?
[ Chuckles ] I wouldn't.
But hopefully our worst days in humanity
hopefully are not our standard for the future.
That's a good answer.
[ Laughs ]
I still have it.
Quintessentially, I'm still a fairly left-wing guy.
I have a lot of right-wing views. Of course.
I go back and forth on different subjects.
But, you know, there's things that
we still fundamentally don't agree on.
So, like, same-sex marriage, abortions.
What do you think about abortion?
Well, I'm pro-life.
But I do believe that there is common ground on this issue
that is rarely represented by either party.
Most Americans would rather see less abortions.
I'd like to see less. Exactly.
But my argument is this. So, you're a Mormon.
I'm not going to get into it, but the chances are you haven't
had a lot of sex because of your religion.
[ Laughter ]
Why is it up to you to talk about abortion?
Isn't it up to me, a guy who's got a lot of chicks pregnant?
That I should be the one who gets to judge this.
[ Laughter ]
All right, so, when Donald Trump ran against you,
he had a nickname for you.
He called you Egg McMuffin.
That's right. That's right. I thought it was pretty good.
Why did he call you that?
Because I guess my last name is McMullin.
Oh, I thought it was because you looked like an egg.
[ Laughs ]
You're probably right.
It's smarter now. It's smarter now.
It's smarter now that you said it.
Did you have a nickname for him?
No. I thought of some.
But I never got the chance to deploy them.
Give me one of -- your best one.
I thought maybe I'll get a chance to debate Donald Trump
and then I'll have a nickname for him,
and maybe he would ask me what it was.
He would never ask you. Who does that?
"You have a hurtful name for me? What would that be?"
Mine wouldn't have been hurtful.
I think it should be "Handsome" or "Genius"
or something like that.
You were going to call him Handsome Trump?
Oh, yeah, I can't see how you lost this election.
You would have really stung him.
"Hey, Egg McMuffin."
You would've gone, "What's that, Handsome?"
You gotta go with the irony.
No, I tell you, the secret to comedy --
The secret to comedy, you don't --
People overcomplicate things.
They do something about his comb-over.
He's got the fake tan or something like that.
You know what you should've done?
He goes, "You're Egg McMuffin."
And then you go, "Shut up, [bleep] head."
[ Laughter ]
-I'm telling you. -Okay.
It's a throwback.
Any time you call someone a [bleep] head,
it [bleep] startles them.
-It works. -Try to say something to me.
-Uh... -Shut up, [bleep] head.
See?