Former Energy Secretary Rick Perry weighs in Trump's nominees, Texas legislative session

AUSTIN (Nexstar) -- Rick Perry knows what it's like to work in Trump's Washington. The longest serving governor in Texas history, Perry joined the Trump administration as Secretary of Energy from 2017 to 2019. KXAN's Ryan Chandler caught up with Perry to hear his advice for new cabinet nominees, his hopes for Texas in Trump's next administration, and his work to help reelect embattled Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan to lead the House next session.

Read the transcript of the interview below or watch in the video player above. Some responses have been edited for clarity.

Trump's Cabinet

Ryan Chandler: These are very interesting times we're watching, and you have some unique insights from the statehouse to the White House as we watch the transition going on in D.C. I wonder what advice you might have for people hoping to join Trump's new administration like you did back in 2016.

Sec. Rick Perry: Well, the president is a unique person. That's an understatement, but an incredibly fast study. He's very, very intelligent. Loyalty is extraordinarily important to him, as it should be. I would always rather have someone who is loyal to where we're going to go, loyal to the cause, loyal to me, than having the smartest person in the room who's not loyal. Your goal is to find really smart people who are loyal. That's the perfect combination. I tell people, listen, if you want to go to work in Washington, D.C., then help with the campaign to help the individual get to where they want to go, and then you have put yourself in a good position.

Obviously, there are a huge number of people who are qualified, who would be great public servants who won't be chosen for whatever reason, but that's okay. I humorously tell people that I thought I wanted to be the president of the United States, and God had a different plan, and it worked out fine for me. My plan was not the one that happened, and God's plan was better. So don't ever argue with him, I guess is a good lesson there.

But I think the president will choose men and women who are talented in a lot of different fields. They'll go through the confirmation process and see whether or not they meet the standards of the Senate. That's how it's supposed to be, and it'll be an interesting process to watch, but I will say what President Trump has put together, from the standpoint of a transition team, is very, very efficient. They're moving quickly. I knew in December that I was going to be the secretary of energy, and I think I was finally confirmed on Texas Independence Day, the second of March of 2017 so, you know, it took a good six weeks, which is probably average for my announcement confirmation. There were some later than that. I think Sonny Perdue, who was the Secretary of Agriculture, he didn't get there until maybe the first part of April. And there were some confirmations that went way into the year and even into 2018 which I don't think you'll see this time, partly because you've got a Senate that's going to work very closely with President Trump to get his nominations across the line with some great expect or some great expedition.

Chandler: It looks like we're already set up for a bit of a fight in the Senate over some of these nominees. You look at Matt Gaetz, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard -- some more unconventional nominees. What do you make of those picks, and what advice would you have for them as they go into this nomination process?

Perry: They all bring unique aspects of where they've been. I mean, they're all talented in various forms and fashion. That's what the nomination process is for, though, and that's what the confirmation process is for. This is not a dictatorship. The president gets to pick, the Senate gets to confirm, and sometimes they're confirmed, sometimes they're not. So you may think that's fair. Other people may think it's not fair, but it's a pretty good system, so I'm not going to argue with it, and we'll let the Senate do its job. The president has done his. And we'll see how that all works out.

Chandler Trump is pushing for recess appointments. What do you make of the prospect of that?

Perry: I don't push back on him on that at all. If he can get it done, God bless him. I mean, he's like, 'Let's go right now'' We need to get to work. We got a lot of work to do. And he's right, we do. Whether it's in national defense issues, whether it's making sure that our our military is strong and diverse, from the standpoint of being able to deal with the new challenges that we have today. You know, we're going into a very dangerous world for one thing, or he is as the president, whether it's the war in Ukraine, what's going on in Israel, the pushback that we're seeing from Russia and China, the Middle East -- all of that is great concern. So we need to have the team together. We don't need to be sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for people to you know, look at their belly buttons a lot. We need to have decisions made as quickly as possible, obviously vetting these individuals properly. But don't let a bunch of politics get in the way here. Let's move with some haste. And the election was very telling in that Americans said, 'Hey, here's who we want, and here's the team we want with him. Let's get to work.'

The future of Texas under Trump

Chandler: Texas is going to be at the forefront of a lot of the major policy changes we expect to see in a Trump administration, from immigration to energy policy. In what ways do you expect or hope this new era of Trump's Washington will impact the state of Texas?

Perry: One of the reasons Texas is going to be at the forefront is because of Brooke Rollins. Brooke has been the head of a AFPI, America First Policy Institute. For the last three and a half years, she's been working with the historic Trump team, if you will. A lot of the old Trump cabinet employees of the Trump White House, Brooke, of course, was the domestic policy advisor, and she's peculiarly bright, capable. She was at the Texas Public Policy Foundation for some 15 years. Before that, she was my deputy general counsel, and I've known her for 30 years. Bright, bright, capable individual. And although she's been working on national issues, a lot of those national issues have Texas roots.

I think you're going to see border security and an immigration system that actually works, being at the forefront, probably some of the first legislation that's passed will deal with immigration policy, energy policy. We know that President Trump is very bullish on American energy sources, particularly our oil and gas industry and the nuclear industry, small modular reactors in particular. So I expect not only in Washington, but also in Austin, there to be a real focus on energy policy. Last session, there was a substantial piece of legislation giving incentives to the peaker plants, these are gas powered plants, to make sure that we have power if we had another one of these Winter Storm Uri issues with our with our grid, keeping the grid robust, you're going to see the same effort made with small modular reactors, which I'm very supportive of our universities in the state. Abilene Christian is building a research reactor right now as we speak, Texas A&M is going to be very involved with it. You know the University of Texas is going to be involved with the promotion of these small modular reactors. They're economically feasible, they're walk-away safe, they're zero emission. I think the next big step in energy will be SMRs, and I suspect the state of Texas will be leading the charge on that.

The Texas Legislature and Speaker Dade Phelan

Chandler: How confident are you that Speaker Phelan will remain Speaker Phelan?

Perry: Oh, he's got the votes to be elected speaker, I'm not concerned about that. What I'm trying to help these members focus on is, how do we move forward in this state? They had a great session last session. Obviously, one of the issues that's out in front of us is that of our public schools and school choice. I'm a big proponent of school choice, have been for 20 plus years, and I will suggest to you that these education savings accounts that's going to go forward, that's going to pass this session of the legislature. And, you know, just helping the members understand, here's the focus we need to have.

There's a Nuclear Caucus this session of the legislature. We've already talked about small modular reactors. Members of the Legislature are understanding that is important. Even in a state that has this great amount of fossil fuels available to us, we need to have an all of the above energy policy. I supported wind energy, I supported solar energy. I think the federal government's gone a little over the top on all of the subsidies that they give. Let the market figure this out, but all of those sources of energy are really important for a state growing as much as Texas is we're going to need it all if we're going to be luring artificial intelligence data centers in here, we're going to need a lot of power. So let's figure out how to make it available.

Chandler: You say Speaker Phelan has the votes, a lot of people are asking, where and who are those votes? We know Representative (David) Cook has put out a list of 48 Republicans who've pledged their support to him. How does that stack up with with your internal math? Will you be publishing a list of support soon?

Perry: I will suggest we'll just wait until the votes happen and and see who was right. I'm not sure I could pick Representative Cook out of a lineup. I'm sure he's a fine young man, and wish him well, but he's not going to be the speaker when the gavel comes down.

Chandler: Does the pathway for Speaker Phelan -- I would assume it would run through keeping Democratic support and then supplementing with Republicans. Does that make sense?

Perry: Yeah, it makes total sense. I've been dealing with the legislative process for 40 years now. I came in January of 1985 and there have always been Democrats as chairs when we had Republican speakers, I suggest that will continue to. We are a diverse state, and I think you sit down and you work with Democrats. I'm not going to change my philosophy. I'm going to keep my philosophy and my beliefs, but I'm going to work with you.

I'll give you a great example. Representative, Senfronia Thompson. She is as different as I am as you can be. She's a female African American, left-leaning trial lawyer from Houston, Texas. I'm a country boy, Anglo male and Republican. But we found things that we could work on together. And Representative Thompson, she and I don't agree on a lot of philosophical things in the grand scheme of things, but we found places we could work together. And this was on child sexual trafficking the last session that I was governor in 2013.

My point is this: saying to the Democrats, 'we don't like you and your your banned to the hinterland' is bad public policy, and quite frankly, it's just a bad look. We're the Republican Party. We're the majority party, but we need to be open to other people's ideas. Talk to us. You're not gonna run the show. You are not going to come and and brow beat us into doing things we don't want to do, but we'll work with you. We're all Texans, and I think that's a really important message

Speaker Phelan has basically said, 'Look, we're going to work with you.' You're part of this. We're going to need your votes for constitutional amendments that require 100 votes, and there's not 100 Republicans. So you're going to have to work with the Democrats, find out ways to do it in a thoughtful way. This idea of Texas turning into Washington, D.C. and we won't even talk to each other because you have the wrong initial behind your name. I think that's really bad long term policy, and I know it's bad short term policy .So I think Speaker Phelan properly has the right outlook. He's going to be the speaker. And we need to come together and, frankly, quit all of this fighting that's going on. And, what's best for Texas? That ought to be the question to everything that's out.

Sports Betting

Chandler: You're a spokesperson for the sports betting Alliance. What odds do you place on that issue being successful next session?

Perry: Well, I don't know. That's always up to the legislature. My issue with that always was, if it's going to happen, and it is -- I mean, you can go place a bet right now. It needs to be regulated. The state of Texas needs to regulate this and make sure that there aren't bad actors, that there aren't places that are coming into the state of Texas with the digital world that we live in and having an impact on our citizens. And we don't know who they are, we don't know where the money's going. We don't know how this is being overseen. So if you're going to have sports betting in the state of Texas, which we have. I mean, you turn on the TV and you see it. I'm a firm believer that we need to regulate it in the state of Texas and make sure that it's done properly. And the state should take its little cut off of that as well. They're getting exactly zero now.

25th Anniversary of A&M Bonfire Collapse

Chandler: Monday is the 25th anniversary of the Texas A& M bonfire collapse tragedy. I know you were lieutenant governor at the time, and you spoke to students in the community in the wake of that tragedy. Take us back to the feeling within the A&M community -- as a proud Aggie yourself, what that was like?

Perry: The most powerful thing that I saw during that period of time was the memorial in front of the University of Texas tower, the great opponent that we have had for almost 120 years, I think since Texas A&M was founded, was the University of Texas. You know, our song is even about sawing varsity horns off. Yet that event was so powerful, so overwhelming, that we saw our great rival really understand that what's important is coming together in a time of tragedy like that. And I will never forget that, just a clarion moment for me of understanding that, you know, we're all Texans, we may fight like cats and dogs, and that Saturday after Thanksgiving this year, we're going to really hate each other for about three hours, but then we're going to come back together and we're going to be Texans again, not unlike the Texas legislature needs to operate.