I'm thrilled this afternoon to be joined on the warning by a great American and a great Texan,

the founder of the Texas Tribune, the Texas Tribune Festival, Evan Smith. Welcome.

Steve, thanks very much. Happy to be with you.

So I'm married to a Canadian, and I explained Texans to a group of Canadians. I said that, well, as you know, all Americans are special, but Texans are the most special of all of us.

Right. Just ask us. We're happy to tell you how special we are. Right. Yeah, we have we have absolutely no end to, you know, how exceptional and how different and how much better we are than everybody else. That's true.

In a serious, in a serious note though, Texas is a state that is iconic, like California, like New York.

It is singular.

It is exceptional.

And it is a microcosm of the country because Texas is an idea. California is an idea.

America is an idea. Now, there are manifestations of that idea, that American idea found in

all of our states, right? But there's not a New Jersey

ideal, right? New Jersey's not an idea, right? Ohio isn't an idea. But Texas is. There's no

question about that. There's no question about that. What is that idea? Look, I think first and

foremost, this idea, the idea that I've known for the 32 years I've been here, right, is that

the answer to every question is subject, verb, liberty. Back before people were talking about

liberty in the context of our politics, Steve,

people here understood that not telling people what to do or how to do it, leaving people

to determine their own fates, their lives, the way they run their businesses, the way they

raise their families.

That has been baked into the cake here.

This is a state that prides itself on being independent, being independent of other states.

We have an electric grid that is ours. We're not connected to the national grid.

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