With less than a month to go before the presidential election, former Hewlett-Packard CEO and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, is among the growing list of Republicans backing the Biden-Harris ticket.
‘[Joe Biden] is the only one who’s prepared to actually reach his hand across the aisle, sit down, listen to people who don’t agree with him, and work together to solve problems,” Fiorina told Cheddar’s Closing Bell. “That’s what our nation needs now.”
Fiorina first announced her support for Joe Biden in June. She told Cheddar it was the end of 2019 when she realized she could not support President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. “As a businessperson, I judge someone on the results they produce, their leadership, and their behavior,” Fiorina said. “I think he has honestly failed most leadership tests that have come his way.”
When it comes to the 2020 election, Fiorina says it’s more than just various issues at stake; she called it a matter of the nation’s unity. “This country has got to come back together otherwise we cannot move forward.”
Unsurprisingly, Fiorina said she doesn’t agree with everything on the Democratic platform. She also admitted she doesn’t agree with some policies “the Trump Republican Party” has pushed. Specifically, Fiorina pointed to the administration’s handling of immigration and what she described as the growing consolidation of power in the executive branch. As a businessperson, she also pointed to the country’s growing debt and deficit and Trump’s foreign policy record.
When it comes to foreign policy, relations with China are top of Fiorina’s mind. It’s one point she agrees with the president on. “I think it was right for Donald Trump to say we are going to have to challenge China.” But she did have criticisms for the way the Trump administration went about negotiating with the superpower. “If we're going to be successful in challenging China, we need to be consistent, persistent, and strategic,” Fiorina said. “Donald Trump has been extremely inconsistent.”
Fiorina highlighted China’s increased aggression in the South China Sea, its actions against Taiwan, and continued theft of U.S. intellectual property. She said the only way forward is for the government and businesses to find a way to work together. “Which we’re not doing right now,” she added.
As a former tech CEO, Fiorina knows about the power the tech industry has in the marketplace and with consumers — and the response Washington has to that kind of largely-unregulated power. She stated that the pandemic’s acceleration of trends around the tech sector's influence is concerning lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. “Big tech is not going to have an open field going forward, in my view, no matter who wins the White House.”
After the Chicago teachers union voted to work remotely due to what they say is a lack of safety protocols amid the COVID-19 surge, the school system canceled classes on Wednesday, citing harm that remote learning has done to the city's children. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, joined Cheddar to discuss the issues surrounding the latest dispute between educators and schools. She said that the return to in-person learning would likely be halted until more COVID tests could be provided for districts. "This is a terrible situation for everybody, and we need the testing, and we need the masks," she said. "It's the omicron surge that has created this disruption, and we are trying to do the best we can. And this is the only school district that has this kind of action right now." The teachers might not be returning to their schools for at least two weeks amid the ongoing tensions.
Illinois State Senator Robert Martwick joins Cheddar News to discuss the new bill he co-sponsored allowing students in the state to take 5 mental health days without a doctor's note.
On Monday, President Biden announced his new plan to take on inflation by taking down the big meat monopolies - turning to the federal government's antitrust authorities to investigate the major meatpackers that control a significant share of the market. The White House plans to devote one billion dollars to aiding independent meat and poultry producers in an effort to undercut the few powerful meat producers that have control of the sector. Austin Frerick, deputy director of Thurman Arnold Project at Yale, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
As the pandemic drags on, so does the widespread great resignation. In November alone, 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs, marking a new record high, and showing a 9 percent jump from the month prior. On the flip side, the number of people filing tax paperwork to start new businesses is surging, with over 430,000 new businesses launching in November. Rhett Buttle, the founder of Public Private Strategies and national business advisor to the Biden for President campaign, joined Wake Up with Cheddar to discuss.
New York Attorney General Letitia James is ramping up a civil investigation into The Trump Organization. The AG's office has subpoenaed Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. They have refused to comply with the subpoenas. Bradley Moss, national security attorney, joins Cheddar News to discuss the next steps in this investigation.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has officially reduced the 110-year prison sentence of truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos to 10 years, calling the initial lengthy sentence “unjust.” Dan Gilleon, constitutional attorney at Gilleon Law Firm APC, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
Former Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams was sworn in as the newest Mayor of New York City. Adams is now expected to work on a number of issues such as crime and coronavirus. Erin Durkin,, reporter at PoliticoNY, joins Cheddar News to discuss more.
California's new composting law will affect what residents do in their kitchens. As of this week, Californians will have to recycle excess food in an effort to reduce emissions caused by food waste. Cities and counties will turn recycled food into compost or use it as a renewable energy source. California's new law is the largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program in the country. Rachel Wagoner, Director of the California Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery called the law 'the biggest change to trash' since recycling started in the 1980s. She joined Cheddar Climate to discuss.
As the U.S. comes up on the first anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.,A.C. Thompson, investigative reporter at ProPublica, joined Cheddar's Baker Machado to discuss updates to American Insurrection by FRONTLINE, ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. The documentary investigates the attack on the Capitol touched off by the lie that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump but with new information gleaned since the event including interviews with lawmakers and law enforcement and the evolution of groups like the Boogaloo Boys and the Proud Boys behind the attack. "In some ways those groups that were kind of the vanguard of January 6 are maybe no longer relevant because their message is everywhere," he said.
