The Epstein files, social stigmas and prison reforms were among the topics Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear spoke of during his two-day visit across South Carolina this week.
Over the course of July 16 and July 17, Beshear spoke at a South Carolina AFL-CIO conference in Greenville, private meetings of South Carolina legislators and Democratic leaders in Columbia and Charleston, respectively; and the Georgetown County Democratic Party Dinner in Pawleys Island.
A rumored potential presidential candidate for the Democrats in 2028, Beshear has not denied his interest in running for higher office. Beshear’s second and final term as governor ends in December
2027
A 2028 presidential run
“I’m out there, crisscrossing the country, just trying to be a common sense, a common ground, get-things-done voice, not just for the Democratic Party but for all of America,” Beshear said. “If I believe that I’m somebody that can heal this country, then it’s something I’ll consider
“What mainly drives me is I don’t want to leave a broken country to my kids, but if someone else is in the best position to heal this country, I will always care more about the United States of America than any future for myself.”
The Democratic Party
“If you want to govern most effectively, you’ve got to be willing to admit when sometimes your party has done something that goes a little too far. What we saw in the last several years was an over-regulation in some areas that kept us from accomplishing goals that are good for the United States. The BEAD [Broadband Equity Access Deployment] program is one example where so many different regulations were put into place three years later, we don’t have an inch of fiber yet in the ground. We as a party have to be about results,” Beshear said.
Destigmatizing political issues
“We don’t decrease stigma by changing words; we decrease stigma by changing hearts. And when we change and sanitize our language, things have less meaning,” Beshear said. “And I’ll give you an example that’s personal to me. In Kentucky, we were hit harder by the opioid crisis than just about every other state. Every Kentuckian including myself knows about a dozen people that are no longer with us, a child of god taken far too soon. I didn’t lose one of my friends to substance use disorder, I lost them all to addiction
“Addiction is mean, it’s nasty. It’s hard to beat. It kills people. And when you lose somebody, when you talk about losing them to addiction, you feel it. But what about the other side, when someone triumphs over addiction, they’ve beaten something that is so hard and so deadly it gives them the triumph that they deserve. And because we approached it that way in Kentucky, thank God we saw a 30% decrease in drug overdose deaths last year.”
Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”
“That big, ugly bill is not only going to gut rural health care and hit our rural economies, it’s going to decrease food assistance all over this country,” Beshear said. “We’re not going to be able to change and push back on that if we say it’s going to increase food insecurity. What it’s going to do is make people go hungry. They’re gonna feel hunger pains at night when they go to bed and hunger pains when they wake up in the morning. And the two groups most at risk for hunger are the two groups covered by Medicaid the most are our parents and our kids.”
Prison reforms
“The Bible teaches me that second chances aren’t just the right thing to do, they’re what we’re called to do,” Beshear said. “We’re teaching a trade in every single Kentucky prison and trying to help people get good jobs when they leave. But you know what inmates call themselves? Inmates. And so we gotta make sure that the ways that we’re communicating as public officials and as folks that are running are the same ways we talk to our friends and our family – that our words have meaning.”
AG Pam Bondi’s handling of Epstein files
“As (Kentucky) Attorney General, I believed in transparency,” Beshear said. “When you look at a file, you have to redact information that protects victims, and that’s incredibly important, to not re-traumatize victims that have been through a lot. But otherwise, we should be as transparent as possible.
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