Editor’s note: this is part two of a two-part interview with Mr. Prather. Part one can be read here. The interview took place via zoom on Friday, September 24th, 2021.
Garrit: Yeah, absolutely. So, continuing, President Trump announced that he would be endorsing Governor Abbott. How do you convince Republicans to vote for you?
Chad: Yeah. Well, you know, President Trump, came out a while back and he said he was going to endorse sitting incumbent Republicans. That was going to be his policy. That’s what he was going to do. He’s got a relationship with Greg Abbott. But how much of that is real? How much of that is lip service? How much of that is true support? When President Trump spoke at CPAC a couple of months ago, in Dallas, never at any time in his quite lengthy speech did he ever mention Greg Abbott. You would think that if he was wholeheartedly supporting Greg Abbott and knew that his audience was supporting Greg Abbott that he would have brought Greg Abbott up. I mean, that should have been some cheap applause, right? But I think Donald Trump, at the end of the day, knows the plight that we are in as Texans, and Donald Trump hasn’t always endorsed the best people. He hasn’t always appointed the best people. So again, I go back to where we started. I think we have to stop taking these people that we’ve made into political icons and treating their words and endorsements as full-blown gospel truth. I would much rather have the average everyday Joe and Jane that are out there working hard to endorse me, and that’s what we’re seeing. Again, that’s no disrespect to President Trump. I appreciate him. I appreciate his influence. I appreciate his relationship. But, you know, President Trump also just issued a letter admonishing Greg Abbott about this border situation and about how it’s time to kick things into gear. So, he’s still attempting to, at least with his words, hold Greg Abbott’s feet to the fire because we’re a pinnacle spot here for the crossroads of America. Texas is the gatekeeper. Honestly, that’s very literal. We are the gatekeeper to the future of America right now. So, I appreciate him standing next to his policy, but I think, at the end of the day, Donald Trump is one of those guys who is going to support the person who, like himself, is for freedom for business and commerce, for America First, for American nationalism, and in our case, Texas sovereignty and Texas nationalism, where we stand out and we say, “Hey, Texas is the highest priority.” I appreciate those endorsements, and I’m not out there looking for big-name endorsements. I never have been. I haven’t asked for them. I’ve had some that were offered, but at the end of the day, that’s up to you. I’m not going to name-drop, but I do know that there are tens of thousands, if not millions, of everyday normal working folks that do support me. And I’m prouder for that. So hopefully there’ll be more.
Garrit: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve noticed this when talking to you, listening to you speak, watching your show, and talking to people that support you. You know, as I told you, my dad likes you. The people back home, from where I live— so I’m in Austin right now for college, but I’m from East Texas— I get the impression that a lot of people out there to watch your show, listen to you speak, watch your videos, and really like you. As I told you, you know, you’re like if my dad was running for governor. And, in the words of my dad, these are his words, “he’s like somebody that works all day, goes home, and drinks a beer.” And, after that event in Austin, where we met, I really thought about that. And I get the impression that you, out of all the candidates running in this race, probably represent the base that Trump appealed to back in 2016 and 2020—people who aren’t as involved in politics and the working-class. Do you think that that would be a proper assessment?
Chad: I think that’s fair to say, you know, somebody said, years ago that I’m like a modern-day “Will Rogers,” and I took it as a great compliment. It kind of stuck and people have caught on to it. Now, again, that’s a huge compliment. I appreciate people saying that, and the family of Will Rogers— I’ve met them— concur. They said that they feel that my so-called “wit and wisdom,” my humorous take on things, and my cynicism that’s translated into humor, you know, it kind of reminds them of that folksy way of Will Rogers. But the thing that I think is an even greater compliment is when people will introduce me, and a lot of times it’s been written up that I am the voice of the “everyman.” I hope that’s true, you know, I have fun with people and sometimes people don’t really know how to have fun. But I’m the guy who will when we have a campaign event, hang out afterward, or we’ll meet at a bar, or something afterward and visit with people. Most politicians are ushered off to the hotel or back to the plane or back to the bus or whatever they do, and they’re on to the next stop. I don’t do that. I’m that guy that you can actually approach, you can get close to me, we can hang out, and we can have that beer. And I hope that translates. And if people understand that I’m that guy that actually likes you. Like, I really do want to spend some time with you. I want to hear your heart. I’ve got a person, I won’t say their name, but I got a person who came to one of my events early on because they had an issue with something that I had said a while back. And we visited for a little while and she got some clarity on what was either miscommunicated or misunderstood. She then hosted me for an event in another part of Texas and just the other day she sent me a text message about a certain issue, and I said, you know, I’m crafting that, I’m trying to figure out the best ways to communicate what I believe on that particular issue that’s happening in Texas. She said, “can we talk on the phone,” so we spent an hour and a half on the phone. I wanted to hear her heart. I wanted to hear what her convictions were. And the beauty of what this campaign and this race are for me is I’m spending a lot of time listening, spending a lot of time absorbing, and kind of evolving with it because I really want to get to know the beat of the heart of the Texans that are out there and the issues that they’re facing. And it’s amazing how you approach certain things, and you realize that there are issues that folks are really dealing with that you didn’t know existed. I appreciate your dad saying that. I hope that the takeaway that people have is that I’m that guy that just wants to sit down, hang out with you, have a beer, and let’s have an honest conversation.
Garrit: Yeah, absolutely. So, before moving on to some of your policy positions, let’s talk about your new book. Do you have a book coming out?
Chad: Yeah, I do. It’s called “Am I Crazy.” It was supposed to be out in August but apparently, there is a paper shortage. Now, it’s coming out on October 3rd. People can preorder it. It’s called “Am I Crazy” and the subtitle is “An Unapologetic Patriot Takes on the Insanity of Today’s Woke World.” So, it’s my musings. It’s my rant. Every chapter is another musing about where we are as Americans and how we have bowed down to woke culture and we’ve turned ideologies into these very sanctimonious ways of looking at the world. It’s got great endorsements, Glenn Beck, Dave Rubin, Andrew Wilkow, Sarah Gonzalez, Graham Allen, and even Dinesh D’Souza. There are tons that have read the book, and they loved it. And it’s going to be a lot of fun. I think it’ll awaken a lot of people. But it also will help them to mix in humor in how we deal with this woke culture that’s out there. So, again, I hope people get it.
Garrit: So, moving on to your specific policy positions, let’s start with border security— that’s always a big issue every election cycle. We have, I believe, a mass influx of Haitian refugees coming across the southern border. What are your thoughts? What is your plan for the border?
Chad: Well, first and foremost, we’ve got to enforce the laws that are on the books. We’ve got to enable these agents that are on the border to do their jobs without their hands being tied. We’ve got to hold Washington D.C. accountable so that those federal agents will enjoy the same liberty and to do the jobs that they took an oath to do. So, we need to be enforcing the laws on the books. Somebody asked me in an interview the other day, “well what laws are not being enforced.” I said, “Well, illegal aliens are coming across our border and being shipped into the interior of our country via plane and bus.” That’s got to stop. We’ve got to enforce the law and say, “no more!” That’s illegal. I am all for legal immigration—100%. I don’t care about the color of your skin, your country of origin, your religion, or where you were born. I don’t care about any of that. But illegal immigration is something that again, the woke mob has told us that we have got to openly embrace because these are poor folks from these other countries and they need a new home in America. Well, these folks come in here and they have no desire to assimilate into our culture. They have no desire to assimilate to the Constitution, believe in the Constitution, trust the Constitution, abide by the Constitution, or obey our laws. Now, take, for instance, Haiti. Now, Haiti is an island nation. It’s the largest island nation in the Caribbean, and it’s not very close to the Mexico border or to America. How did they get over here? They didn’t walk on the water. They got to South America and Mexico, somehow, someone brought them here. And they walked up to the southern border of Texas, their mission was to get through the border of Texas. We’ve left the light on for them. That’s been telegraphed to all over the globe. We’ve got to disincentivize that. We’ve got to turn the light off. We’ve got to shut those ports of entry, or those illegal ports of entry, down. So, we’ve got to stop them. We’ve got to stop that by disincentivizing that and we’ve got to ask ourselves, “why are they leaving their countries?” Because, let’s face it, America is doling out tens of billions of dollars to these various countries every single year. We’re very altruistic in that regard, but we don’t hold these governments of those countries accountable for what they do with our tens of billions of dollars. And it’s certainly not going to the benefit of their citizens. Their people are leaving, and they’re coming to this place where they believe there’s an opportunity to thrive more. Now, these Haitians that are coming here, this is a different sort of migrant. If you were to Google Haiti, one thing you would find out is if you were scrolling down, and you see a question that says, “is Haiti a safe place?” Are there any safe places in Haiti? And the answer is there are virtually no safe places in Haiti. You should not go to Haiti because if you go there, you will probably be a victim of violent crime, homicide, murder, rape, or any number or combination of those. It’s not a good place. It’s a very violent country. They don’t speak Spanish; they speak French Creole. So unless folks know French Creole, these are not normal migrants coming across the southern border. These are potentially violent people. These are people who have mixed animism, spiritualism, and, for a lack of better terms, white magic, and Voodoo into their “Christianity,” and they’re bringing that with them. They have no desire to assimilate to American ways of life, and certainly not Texas. So, we have some very violent people. So you saw the picture the other day, the now-viral image of the border patrol agent who was on horseback. And of course, anybody that knows anything about horses, they know that when you’re using split reins, and you’re around people, you will circle that rain, it keeps the people away from the horse, and it keeps the horse from trampling the people that keep them safe. Okay, so they weren’t whipping people. But then you see the image and I know this particular border patrol agent, I won’t call his name because there’s already a hit out for him by the cartels, but he’s reaching out and he’s grabbing at the sleeve of this Haitian migrant who’s holding his box lunches in a sack. So, what the media is not telling you is what happened there. That man was down by the river, he was with a group of women and children, and down there by the river, there’s an actual known fact that there’s prostitution happening, there are rapes that are happening. And he was down there, quite literally, verbally abusing some of the women and children. This border patrol agent went down, and he was separating this man out from that group of people. He was doing a very altruistic thing. But now we want to vilify our border patrol. We will make our border patrol the enemies—we simply need to stop this. We have to support these agents who are doing their job. Now they’ve taken horse patrols off the border. This is insanity man. We’re allowing these illegals to dictate to us how we protect our own borders. To that, I say hell no! That has got to end. This is a different type of illegal and it’s only going to get worse. Val Verde County, that 120 mile stretch of border with Mexico and South Texas, has already apprehended the representation of 84 different nationalities this year alone, and they’re not coming from Finland or France. So we’ve got to shut that down. I do believe we need to build a wall. It needs to be a Trump-style wall because they did the science and the research on that to see what the best type of wall was. We need to build it, if it comes down to it, we need to build it ourselves. But we also have to create a human wall. We’ve got to engage human resources to make sure that those people aren’t coming across—so all the full resources of the DPS both the human resources as well as the material resources. National Guardsmen, we don’t send 500 or 1000 down there, we send all 25,000 down there. And we put a stop to this right now. Texas has the ability to protect its own border. We’re in charge of who immigrated through our land or who comes across—not the federal governments. The federal government oversees naturalization, but we’re in charge of who immigrants are across our border. We can stop this right now. To enforce the laws on the books, we’ve got to turn the lights off, we’ve got to hold the federal government accountable, we’ve got to build a wall, we’ve got to create a human wall, and we’ve got to give people the power to protect their own property and protect their own borders. Because if you believe in a state or national border, you should believe in your County’s border. We’ve got to encourage people to be able to protect themselves without fear of recourse that’s going to be negative to them. This is our lane. This is our land. And people can “bitch and moan” about how we came about having this land, but at the end of the day, this is our land, and we’ve got to protect it or it will not be our land anymore. And that’s quite honestly the truth.
Garrit: Absolutely, so another big issue is property tax reform. Senator Huffines has stated that he plans to abolish property taxes in this state. Where do you stand on the issue?
Chad: So property taxes, to me, is a big issue because people never truly own their homes. They’re paying property taxes forever. Property taxes have done nothing but go higher under Abbott’s governorship, and they’re exorbitant at this point. It’s becoming a major plight that we rank somewhere around 41st in the nation in property taxes… My conviction comes from the fact that property taxes are unbiblical. You know, God in the Old Testament, told the people that “the land is your inheritance. I’m not going to tax you for the land that I gave you. It was the promised land.” But people work hard to buy land, and they own that land, and they pass that land on for generations. It’s a very sacred thing. It’s a spiritual thing, in fact, and we have people in Texas, they’ve owned their land and ranches for multiple generations, and now we’re seeing folks that…especially that on the southern border right now, I know ranchers, they said, “you know, this property has been in our family for six, seven generations and now my children don’t want it because they can’t afford it. It doesn’t benefit them to work it. It doesn’t benefit them because of the open borders and the encroachment and invasion we’re seeing.” So we’ve got to fight that. I do want the abolishment of property taxes. And you know, Senator Huffines, has gone on record of saying it would take him about probably eight to 12 years to get rid of that. It’s going to take time because these property taxes have been ingrained in us like a tumor. I use the cancer example again, which has gotten around to a healthy organ, and you have to carefully extract that because we’ve grown so dependent on big government and what it provides. Now my solution is we have to start cutting from the top down. We have to clean house in Austin. We need to have— you know they have the Boston Tea Party in 1773— an Austin Tea Party. We need to push back against some of these crazy tyrannical things and this overreach of government that we have, even as conservatives, we’re not conserving anything. We just passed 666 new laws. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “man, I need 600 more laws to govern me.” We’re not controlling spending. Spending in Austin has gone up by $48 billion since Greg Abbott has been in office—wild things that are unconstitutional like $295 million spent on contact tracing. Those are the kind of things that have to stop. So at the end of the day, we have to cut spending. And we’ve got to make sure that the government gets small again. And that trickles down to the counties, it trickles down to the municipalities, and they start to see we don’t have to spend these exorbitant sums to educate our kids, and to give them football stadiums. There’s a lot of ways to cut spending. So the property taxes don’t have to be so high. And then if a county or municipality wants to pay more money to fund these things, then they vote on it—that’s actually a law. If it’s more than 3%, you should require the vote. And unfortunately, that’s not happening in Texas right now. People don’t want to improve the properties because they know that their rates are going to go higher. Well, now the logical question is, where’s the money going to come from? Well, let me tell you, if you cut the spending, you don’t need the money that you think that you need. If you cut…I mean, we don’t need $60 million in football stadiums on high school campuses. We don’t need that. Let’s face it, our educational system, which is a whole other issue, has gotten so far out of control. It’s embracing Communism and Marxism. It is a product of Humanism and Marxism, of getting God out of our schools, and so what do we do? We just keep pumping more money into these brainwashing institutions and public schools, and then we complain about the product that we receive when our kids get out of them. So why are we continually spending this much money on all of these things? So, where does the money come from? Well, you can increase the sales tax by a percent or a penny, something like that, you know, there’s, there are various ways we can do it. But at the end of the day, my big issue is that we cut spending. We don’t need to be spending the money that we think we do. But again, we’ve become mentally obese by thinking that we deserve all these various things. When it comes to the price tag, you can’t get these things, spend all this money, and then complain about the price tag. If you want to buy a Lamborghini, it is going to cost what it’s going to cost. But if you’re willing to cut some things, and you’re willing to drive a car to get you from point A to point B, that’s okay. We’ve got this luxurious mindset in the state of Texas and think we deserve all these things. I don’t think all these things are necessary.
Garrit: Absolutely! So, my last question to you is, do you have any final words as we end this interview?
Chad: Well, you know, I think that we often say “God bless Texas,” right? If you say that enough over the course of your adult life, sometimes it loses its meaning, but God has blessed Texas, and I pray that God will continue to bless Texas. We are a jewel—we really are. I don’t think there’s anything in America that quite rivals how great Texas is and can be. So, we need to protect it, we need to do it, and we need to make sure that our people stay free, our liberties stay protected, and that we continue to honor those legacies in the history that made us great. Let’s work hard to keep it that way. It’s going to be hard work. But I think that people like you and me use our platforms, using our voices, and using our influence, to continually open people’s eyes and educate them and help them see the greatness of Texas. Our founding fathers knew that we could disagree and we could discuss things and we could debate but at the end of the day, we can come back together because we had this common thread. And I believe that Texas has a fantastic common thread that we’ve enjoyed for many generations and that we need to enjoy for many, many more. So, thank you for doing what you’re doing, and God Bless Texas!
For more information on Chad Prather, you can check out his website and book.
