As the governor of South Dakota, there's a few things when I watched when you were leading the state.

It was so impressive. I think you were the state that was the most open.

At first you got criticized a lot and then you ended up getting a lot of credit for making the right moves.

A lot of other states kind of followed your lead.

I remember there was a story about being offered $300 a week of unemployment.

They wanted to send it.

He said, no, no, we don't want to take the payment.

You know, we're doing okay.

Your unemployment is low.

What was your processing as you were going through a season that none of us had gone through before?

Yeah, well, my background is that I'm a business person, a farmer and rancher who took over

our family businesses after the death of my dad. I became the general manager at age 22. So

making decisions for me in South Dakota was just common sense, looking at the facts on the ground

of making the best decisions for people around me. When I got elected to be governor,

our state kind of was dying. People were moving out of South Dakota. Our economy was drying up.

Jobs were drying up. Our kids were leaving the state to go get an education, and then they tended to

stay in another state to get a job and pursue the future. So I ran on making sure that we were

open for business. In fact, that was my state of the state title before COVID ever hit

South Dakota or hit our country, was that South Dakota was open for business. So when that came

forward and we were sitting and seeing that virus situation, I brought a few of my advisors together, my general counsel, you know, some of my lieutenant governor and some of my staff and just said, you know, tell me about what happens if we shut down our businesses, if we shut down our schools, you know, and talked about the

constitutional rights that people have and that businesses have over a state, over the federal

government, and every decision that we made in South Dakota was based on the Constitution,

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