As Georgia’s Gubernatorial primaries kick off, Liberty Nation’s Mark Angelides caught up with one of the Republican candidates, state Senator Michael Williams. They spoke about his run for Governor, his thoughts on President Trump, and the now-infamous “Deportation Bus” that has made this a most unusual campaign.
Mark Angelides: Senator, we’ve all heard about your efforts as the Trump campaign co-chair and the work you’ve done in Georgia’s Senate, could you tell us a little about your run for the governorship and why you’ve placed illegal immigration at the top of your campaign?
Senator Williams: I announced my candidacy for governor primarily because I was tired and fed-up with an inept government ran by politicians that are too scared to tackle a lot of the tough issues because they’re backed by lobbyists, special interests, and big corporations. I took office about four years ago and after having a first-hand look at what’s happening, I decided it was time for someone to get on this and so started my campaign.
Immigration is an issue that I’ve been asked about everywhere I’ve gone for over a year now when traveling around the state talking about other issues. And as we were trying to figure out how we were going to do our bus tour during the last leg of the election, we didn’t want to do a “traditional tour;” one of the boring ones. We wanted to do something exciting that was going to highlight a very important issue and so we came up with the Michael Williams Deportation Bus Tour
MA: Your “deportation bus tour” video has caused some major uproar. Do you think that YouTube first censoring and then relaunching it has helped or hindered your campaign?
Sen.MW: It absolutely helped, because what we have seen for a while now is the media, the companies out on the West coast, and the liberals, they are trying to silence the conservative movement. We saw this with Google and with YouTube who decided my video was “Hate Speech.” Then they came back after news outlets started to cover it, people, our supporters here in Georgia, and conservatives around the country reached out and said, “it’s not, put it back up.” It was a rallying call for conservatives to say: “Look! We are tired of being silenced, we’re not going to be bullied, and we need somebody like Michael Williams who is going to stand up and fight or us.”
MA: Your 287G deportation plan, it’s something that has a wide appeal across the country, could you tell our readers a little about how it will work in practice?
Sen.MW: Yes. We’ve gotten a lot of criticism because they claim that immigration is just a federal issue, and that’s partly correct in that federal law governs immigration into our country. However, one of the plans that the federal government has put out is 287G, and that allows for Sheriffs and Deputies to become certified. They can sign a contract with ICE that allows them to have the authority of an ICE agent.
Right now, in Georgia, only six counties implement 287G, and I want 159 counties to have their Sheriffs and Deputies to be deputized as ICE agents so that they will have the ability to identify when someone is in our country illegally, and have committed yet another crime, to put them on a bus and send them home.
MA: In modern politics, we have a huge amount of division, with each side claiming that this specific group of voters “belongs” to them. Without attempting to draw battle lines, who would you say are your CORE voters?
Sen.MW: My core voters are those that absolutely love America, that love our Constitution, that love the opportunities that are available that wants to come and be a part of what we have. It’s your gun-lovin’, Constitution totin’, people that just love America and who are willing to stand and fight for us!
MA: On a personal level, how do you feel president Trump is doing dealing with the immigration crisis as a whole? And do you think that some of the battles he is facing now will be similar to those you may face if you win the primary on May 22nd?
Sen.MW: I think he’s doing a tremendous job. One of the things that I love is that he called out the Democrats on their hypocrisy. He gave them everything they wanted and more when it came to the DACA recipients. All he wanted was money to build the wall. He’s a smart man, he knows that we’ve been here before. Back when Ronald Reagan was president, we had an illegal immigration problem, and Reagan gave amnesty to millions of people. Now we’re here twenty, thirty years later and we have the same problem.
We have to cut off the inflow. We have to build that wall, stop them from coming in across our southern border. And once we can stop that massive inflow, then we can deal with those people that are here in our country illegally. But we have to stop the inflow before we can effectively fix the problem.
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