In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the legendary comedian and podcaster joins us to talk about what it's like to be a member of Congress and what it s like to run for re-election in 2020. She also talks about why she decided to step down as a congresswoman and why she thinks it s a good idea to take a break from politics until the mid-term elections. She also explains why she doesn't think it's a bad idea to go back to being a full-time politician and why it s better than running for office as a part-time job. And she also gives us her thoughts on insider trading and why we should all be worried about insider trading by members of Congress, and why you should be worried if your spouse is insider trading too. Thanks for listening and Happy Listening! -Joe Rogan and Sarah Downey Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Rate, review and subscribe to our new podcast, The Podcast by searching for , and we'll send you a brand new episode of on the next episode of the podcast! Subscribe, review, and subscribe on iTunes! Thank you for listening and share the podcast with your friends and family! Love ya, bye! Timestamps: 0:00 - What's Cracks? - 1:00:30 - What do you think of the podcast? 3:00 | 5:00- What's your favorite thing you're listening to? 6: What are you listening to the most? 7: What would you like to see me talk about? 8: What s your biggest takeaway from this week? 9:00 - What is your favorite moment of the past day? 11:00 -- How do you re-listening to me? 12:30 -- What's a good thing you re listening to right now? 13: Is it a good deal? 15:00-- What's the best thing that you re going to do? 16:00 & 17: What you re gonna do next? 18:30 | What s the worst thing you think you re looking at? 19:00 + +1:30 - Is it better than that? 22:00 Is it possible to be an insider trader or not?
00:01:23.000And people who come and ask me, they're like, oh, I'm thinking of running for office.
00:01:26.000And that's literally what I tell them.
00:01:28.000I'm like, are you ready to quit everything else in your life and have the support of your family and dedicate all your energy towards this mission of service?
00:02:01.000How are you going to do that if you're like, yeah, by the way, I got this side gig or that side gig or this, you know, other loyalty that is something other than you, you know, the people, the voter?
00:02:14.000I think more and more people are starting to pick up on that and question that in both people who are running for office and their electeds.
00:02:52.000And look, I think this is one of the good things about social media is, of course, the mainstream corporate media is hardly covering it at all.
00:03:01.000But because of social media, things like that are spreading like wildfire, like, hey, Paul Pelosi is doing these trades within this period of time of Nancy Pelosi voting on this bill or bringing a bill to the floor because we've got to remember...
00:03:15.000Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, nothing happens without her knowing about it or giving her stamp of approval.
00:03:23.000So regardless of whether it's happening in the Judiciary Committee or the Commerce Committee or the Armed Services Committee, if there's a bill coming to the floor and there's major legislation that's being passed or is being squashed, That is happening with her say-so.
00:03:39.000And so just in these last few days, once people started making noise saying, hey, you as a member of Congress or your spouse or your adult child should not be allowed to conduct insider trading on issues that Congress is dealing with,
00:03:55.000which really covers every issue under the spectrum, they can't pretend anymore that they haven't been doing it.
00:04:02.000And yet, even as a Nazi policy like, okay, okay, fine, we'll draft legislation.
00:04:08.000But Congress is about to take a break as they head into the general elections.
00:04:11.000And once again, she's refusing to bring the bill to the floor for a vote saying, oh, well, you know, we're not going to bring it to the floor if it doesn't have support.
00:04:20.000Put people on the freaking spot, make them cast that vote.
00:04:24.000That is the last thing she wants is to lose that honeypot.
00:04:28.000First of all, she doesn't want it becoming a big, important thing that people are talking about.
00:04:34.000Where people start looking at it and say, how much money have you made?
00:05:10.000That's nothing compared to what she's doing.
00:05:12.000And she's not the only one, obviously.
00:05:15.000And this is where the quote-unquote uniparty in Washington has been blocking this kind of legislation from being passed because they're both benefiting from it.
00:05:26.000We had, I think, Republican and Democrat senators in the lead-up towards COVID-19.
00:06:13.000It's like this chummy insiders club in Washington.
00:06:19.000A common term that's being used now is called permanent Washington, which really fits when you think about it.
00:06:26.000It kind of encapsulates that whole swampy ecosystem of both those who've been elected into positions, those who are longtime appointed or powerful bureaucrats, and the corporate media.
00:06:40.000They all go out to the same parties, the same social functions.
00:06:43.000You know, passing information to each other.
00:06:46.000And so, you know, if the anchor of a big-time news show says, hey, guys, guess what?
00:06:53.000Nancy Pelosi and her husband are insider trading, then they have to think about, oh, well, am I burning a bridge?
00:07:24.000Congress said, okay, we're going to take action to stop insider trading and make sure that elected leaders aren't benefiting off of insider information.
00:07:31.000And so they passed the Stock Act, which did nothing.
00:07:35.000Essentially, it just said, okay, if you are going to trade in stocks or buy or sell stocks, you have to report it.
00:08:06.000This is kind of like one of those things that should give us all a glimmer of hope, where if enough people, we the people, make noise about it, they're forced to pay attention.
00:08:21.000We were talking about like chumminess and like sort of like the hidden rules.
00:08:26.000What about if you do right wing talk shows?
00:08:30.000Like if you're a Democrat and you decide to go on Tucker Carlson, for instance, like what is that like?
00:08:39.000It ranges from people kind of like giving you a cynical look like whose side are you really on to people just outright ending that friendship or that professional relationship because they don't want to have anything to do with you.
00:09:16.000More people watch Fox News than any other cable news channel.
00:09:19.000So my audience is speaking to the American people.
00:09:21.000If I have the opportunity to do that, and by the way, Fox News, more than CNN and MSNBC over the last decade, has been more fair to me in providing me that opportunity to speak to the American people, I'm going to take advantage of it.
00:09:37.000Well, it seems like one of the things that Fox News does well is if they have a Democrat on, they don't attack them.
00:09:42.000They allow them to express themselves.
00:09:47.000Whether the host agrees or disagrees, that's not the point.
00:09:50.000Because when a right-wing person seems to be, if they're on MSNBC or if they're on CNN, it's like they have these weapons ready to go, the blades are sharp, and they attack.
00:10:01.000And they're trying to discredit that person, trying to mock them.
00:10:21.000It's not even limited to those who bring like a so-called right-wing perspective or conservative perspective.
00:10:28.000It's really anyone who brings a voice, a view, a perspective that is different from whatever the mainstream narrative is at that point, whatever the cause of the day may be.
00:10:41.000And so as a Democrat serving in Congress, I experienced that over and over and over again.
00:10:47.000Exactly that reaction that you're talking about In, you know, not allowing me at least just to come and present my view.
00:11:39.000Because, you know, they don't want the weakness or the insecurity of their own argument to be exposed and also they immediately judge you as someone who may bring an opposing view, regardless of your political party, as the enemy, as a threat, as somebody who is less than and doesn't deserve a voice,
00:11:58.000which is really, really dangerous for our democracy when you really think about it.
00:12:02.000Yeah, it's very spooky and it's spooky how prevalent that That mindset is, and how many Democrats, not even just politicians, just people that are Democrats, how many people share that position that you should silence people that you don't agree with?
00:12:18.000It's such a foolish perspective, and it plays out historically over and over and over again in a terrible way.
00:12:26.000I just don't understand why people don't learn that lesson.
00:12:30.000I think that the Democratic Party leaders, people like Hillary Clinton, people who've been in charge for a very long time, foment this kind of culture of fear and like, hey,
00:12:49.000You have kind of the very loud activists who don't represent, I think, even the majority of the Democratic Party, but the AOCs of the world who are almost like these radical religious zealots.
00:13:06.000And they are ideologues, and whatever they choose is the battle of the day.
00:13:30.000See if you can find this, where she's talking to the heads of these banks, where they're talking about funding fossil fuel projects in the future.
00:13:39.000And she asked them point blank, will you fund fossil fuel projects in the future?
00:13:44.000And they said yes, and if we didn't, that would be devastating to the United States.
00:13:49.000And then she goes on – we'll play it for you.
00:13:54.000It's so bonkers because the first thing she goes to is – We gave student debt forgiveness and those people have bank accounts and we're going to urge them to take their money out of your bank account.
00:14:06.000So it's like we bribed these people by giving them 10 grand.
00:14:11.000If you really want to help them, make it so that you can get out of student debt.
00:14:46.000Meanwhile, she does not understand the incredibly complex variables that are involved in the elimination of fossil fuels or how many fossil fuels are involved in every single thing you do, including electric cars,
00:15:02.000the construction of solar panels, Like everything, the transportation of goods and services.
00:15:06.000This idea that you're just going to stop all future projects because you think that that's what your ideological group wants.
00:15:30.000We're committed, as you all know, to transition the emissions from lending and investment activities to line with pathways to net zero in 2050. Do you know what the International Energy Agency has said is required to meet our global 2050 net zero targets of limiting global temperature rise to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit or 1.5 degrees Celsius?
00:15:53.000So no new fossil fuel production starting today.
00:17:43.000That is the example of exactly what we're talking about.
00:17:46.000This whole mentality of wokeism, of being ideologues, that not only doesn't make sense, but if you don't agree with it, you're wrong, you're the enemy.
00:18:38.000And the irony is here we are sitting now with a lot of these same people who like, oh, well, I don't know how to define a woman.
00:18:44.000And there is no such thing as a woman.
00:18:45.000And But all of these examples point to the hypocrisy, the fact that they don't believe in truth, and that whatever their cause of the moment is, is whatever they decide, is the truth and the thing that must be measured against for you.
00:19:04.000Like, you're either with us or you're against us.
00:19:06.000And if you're with us, you've got to prove your zealousness for the cause.
00:19:24.000I mean, when you're coming to, with wokeness, and you can identify as a woman, you get to use the female restroom, like, okay, but what is it?
00:21:41.000And that's what was so powerful about that documentary was both Matt Walsh's demeanor and, frankly, his respect with whoever he was questioning and the spectrum of people that he spoke to on this.
00:21:53.000From, you know, psychiatrists, psychologists, doctors, professors, and even the woman who transitioned hormonally to become a man.
00:22:31.000Look, if there was a way where we had some sort of genetic engineering, some super-advanced form of CRISPR, where I could just decide, I want to be a woman now, and then, bam, now I have a double X chromosome, I have a vagina,
00:23:01.000And that stuff seems to be where all the problem lies because that is purely experimental, especially when it comes to children.
00:23:09.000We're now finding, when they're talking about hormone blockers, they were saying hormone blockers are reversible and there's no side effects.
00:23:23.000It's so dangerous that the Biden administration's Health and Human Services Secretary is openly advocating for this.
00:23:34.000Parents and schools and the community need to support this quote-unquote gender-affirming care and treatment for kids.
00:23:43.000Knowing what we know, even the limited knowledge of what we know about the impacts of these hormone treatments, the impacts of these irreversible surgeries, both physically as well as mentally, as more and more even of these kids who come forward who've gone through this with incredible regret and talking about the long-standing symptoms and problems and illnesses they're now having to deal with.
00:24:07.000We have the person who's supposed to be in charge of federal health policy for the country.
00:25:01.000You know, transgender care is nuanced and goes into this speech, and Rand Paul says, just let it be said on record that the person is not answering these questions.
00:25:12.000I don't know how well known this is, but I saw a brochure that the Department of Health and Human Services put out on what is gender-affirming care.
00:25:24.000It basically says that if parents refuse or fail to provide this gender-affirming care, then Child Protective Services will have the authority to step in and try to intervene for the sake of the child.
00:26:47.000She works at a school that had to install a litter box in the girls room because there is a girl who's a furry who identifies as an animal and her mother badgered the school Until they agreed to put a litter box in one of the stalls.
00:27:05.000So this girl goes into the litter room or to the girl's room and urinates or whatever.
00:27:37.000You're a fucking human being and you prefer a litter box.
00:27:40.000You want to piss into a pile of sand rather than use a bathroom that you could flush the toilet, wipe yourself like a normal person.
00:27:49.000Like you're so crazy with what you think an animal is that not only have you said this, but you've conned the school into putting this fucking litter box in a girl's room.
00:28:28.000If you knock your teeth out, if I go lift weights and hit myself in the face with a kettlebell and knock my teeth out, they'll replace my teeth with fake teeth.
00:28:38.000But if I have these teeth that are my real teeth and I put fake teeth over them, those are fake, fake teeth.
00:28:45.000So this person, these are not fake boobs like they went and got an operation and had breast augmentation.
00:30:05.000The Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose, and James Lindsay seeded peer-reviewed journals with absurd critical studies papers, which was amazing, that they'd simply made up.
00:30:15.000Caused a huge stir, but neither academia's...
00:30:18.000Perverse incentives nor the often ridiculous stances on critical studies have noticeably changed as a result.
00:30:24.000Academia is still publishing, apparently sincerely, autoethnographic studies about pedophilic masturbation.
00:31:02.000Manchester University launches inquiry into ethical standards after paper details masturbation sessions.
00:31:08.000A leading university has launched an inquiry after it emerged that one of its PhD students has written a research paper about sexual attraction to young boys.
00:31:19.000Carl Anderson spent three months recording his thoughts and feelings while masturbating over images of young boys in Japanese comic books.
00:31:30.000In the abstract for the paper, Anderson, who's interviewing fans of Shota, I guess, S-H-O-T-A, comics for his PhD, said he wanted to understand how they experience sexual pleasure while reading Shota.
00:31:48.000His 4,000-word study, which detailed his sexual habits and sexual encounters between boys in the comics, was published in the journal Qualitative Research in April.
00:31:58.000It provoked outrage from academics and MP and others after it was circulated on Twitter this week.
00:32:50.000This is exactly, you know, when you don't believe in truth and, you know, you're talking about the furries, like, you know, the accommodations for this child who identifies as a cat in the school,
00:33:05.000then you have the minor attracted persons.
00:33:59.000And in much of the same way, if Lemieux is attempting to force an absurd anti-discrimination law to breaking point, the attempt has failed.
00:34:08.000Rather than forcing the school to confront the grotesque absurdity, Of letting a male wear prosthetic boobs to a teaching job, it simply promoted a debate on what size and shape the prosthetic should be.
00:34:27.000The school, exacerbated at the international attention they've garnered, has simply approved a new dress code that would force Lemieux to wear slightly smaller fake boobs.
00:34:40.000But what if you actually have real augmented boobs that are that big?
00:35:19.000I had to go back to the article first.
00:35:21.000Yeah, me and Duncan were actually going back and forth about it yesterday trying to figure out how much of a hoax it was and laughing hysterically.
00:35:28.000Because if it is a hoax, along the lines of the Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossi and James Lindsay studies, it's really funny.
00:35:46.000Like if a small child, like if a six-year-old was in the fetal position and they hung from your neck, that would literally be the size of one of these breasts.
00:37:25.000Kayla Lemieux is conclusive proof that trans women are women and that there's absolutely no connection between trans activism and mental health issues or misogyny.
00:37:40.000I would have never imagined if we went four or five years ago.
00:37:44.000I remember when I had Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay on the podcast years ago, people were saying to me, like, why are you concentrating on this?
00:37:53.000Like, this is some stuff that's happening at universities.
00:38:05.000It's like, if we have barbarians that land in Hawaii, and they start attacking, marauding, and they get in their boats, and they start moving towards America, and you go like, well, hey, I think this is coming here.
00:39:24.000We started this by saying, how did we get here?
00:39:27.000What you just outlined is exactly how we got here.
00:39:29.000So much of this has been happening already for decades in some of these incredibly, I don't even know what you call them, in a lot of the universities.
00:39:39.000And then you start seeing it, okay, well, here's the boundary today.
00:39:53.000And that's where the thing that people warned against in the past, but it's hard to imagine that it would be possible, certainly within our lifetimes, the normalization of pedophilia.
00:40:18.000And how a lot of these same people who are saying, hey, if you refuse to use pronouns, you're fired.
00:40:26.000A friend of mine in a huge New York law firm Corporate policy is you have to put your pronouns in your email signature block or you will have to talk to the HR department.
00:40:38.000And he's like one of the partners at this law firm.
00:41:26.000But according to Abigail Schreier, who wrote that book, Irreversible Damage, with young girls, it's up An extraordinary amount, like a preposterous amount, where they have these clusters of girls who identify as trans in school, where you get like eight,
00:41:41.000nine kids that just all, in a friend group, identify as trans.
00:41:45.000And she's like, there's a very distinct possibility that this is a social contagion.
00:41:50.000And that there are, and without denying that some people are trans, because there are, but it's like, how do you know now?
00:42:00.000Incredibly bizarre human issues where it's open to interpretation like this guy or woman whatever with the giant rubber boobs can just say that they are a woman and everyone has to back off right because of that Because of a lack of an ability to prove something,
00:42:18.000now you're in this area where it's open to how someone feels.
00:42:36.000That's how you get male athletes who want to compete in women's sports, and when the women complain, they get kicked off the team and forced out of the locker room, which we're seeing.
00:42:48.000Which is nuts, because it's just how you feel.
00:42:53.000I talked with Carla Esparza recently about this issue specifically, and I gave her great credit because she has been and continues to be very outspoken about how dangerous it is Especially in mixed martial arts,
00:43:09.000to have biological males competing against biological females.
00:43:12.000And she grew up competing on the boys' wrestling team in high school because there was no girls' team.
00:43:19.000And at that age even, she was just like, yeah, I experienced the unfairness of it because obviously these boys are built very differently.
00:43:27.000And she's like, I'm stronger than the average girl my size, but still.
00:43:31.000I couldn't compete at a level playing field.
00:43:34.000And then you take that forward to mixed martial arts.
00:43:36.000I know you've talked about this a lot, about how actually dangerous it is.
00:43:39.000But the fact that it takes a whole lot of courage for a female UFC champion to speak out and say, hey, no, biological males should not be competing against biological females.
00:43:52.000That's an act of courage in this society rather than just like, yeah, of course, she's stating fact.
00:43:58.000But this is the problem is when you have this, you know, it's the Democratic Party leadership, it's the progressive left that is so ideologically zealous about this cause because it's the cause today,
00:45:30.000And this is targeted towards 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds.
00:45:35.000It's so strange that we've gone this far, like, into cuckoo land.
00:45:39.000It seems like it's happened so quickly, but that's where if we actually stop and think about it, it has been very intentional and the groundwork has been laid over time.
00:45:51.000Do you think it's intentional, like planned out, or do you think that there is an ideology that gets accepted and then that ideology, it's like a forest fire.
00:46:02.000It feeds off new fuel, so it has to expand its boundaries.
00:46:06.000I think it's probably a combination of both.
00:46:09.000So if it is intentional, whose intention is it to spread this?
00:46:16.000People who, I mean, it's the very same people who are doing it now, I think, over time, trying to see how far they can push, you know, I mean, the sexualization of our kids and our society.
00:46:32.000You know, I don't know exactly who the person is or the group is or whatever, but we can't have gotten to this place by accident.
00:46:43.000Because it's happened so methodically and so quickly over time.
00:46:48.000But if it's a mind virus, which is what I think it is, and I think that these ideological perspectives that are not grounded in reality get accepted by people and then they promote it.
00:46:59.000These people are promoting it without any conversation with some cabal of evil leaders.
00:47:05.000It's clear there's a mechanism in play.
00:47:07.000And that mechanism is very easy to follow.
00:47:10.000You could see where it starts in universities.
00:47:14.000You can also see that in these universities, these people that are promoting these things and teaching children also grew up in the university system themselves, and most of them don't have any real-world experience.
00:47:27.000They have experience going from being in a university to teaching in a university.
00:47:50.000I think just by observing that, just by observing the fact that these people that are promoting these things, they're not being paid to do it.
00:49:16.000And these are people who, as you said, they're not connected to reality, don't have any kind of personal experience.
00:49:23.000I was shocked when I saw Megan Rapinoe basically say, I don't know what her statement was, but basically it was like, yeah, you know, there's no real difference.
00:49:33.000Like, okay, well, you already won your Olympic gold.
00:49:38.000So are you saying that you could have gone and won that gold competing against men on the soccer field?
00:49:44.000You know, I have a friend who's a gay guy who's a powerlifter, and he was upset that people were upset that trans women want to compete as women.
00:49:51.000And I was like, dude, out of all the Fuckin' people.
00:49:57.000Out of all the giant people, or all the people rather, that know there's a difference between biological males and females, it should be you.
00:50:03.000But in that LBGT, whatever the other extra words are...
00:51:47.000Entering into what is, in their mind, feminist spaces and then running things.
00:51:53.000And running things like a man and running things with threats and with aggression and insults and treating people the way biological men tend to treat people when they're behaving at their worst.
00:52:07.000And, you know, that's a real giant issue because if you're a woman and you're a feminist, you're supposed to be ideologically left, you know, maybe even like far left in some of their eyes.
00:52:20.000And now all of a sudden you get lumped in with something you completely disagree with.
00:53:13.000And the bill was very, very simple in upholding the original intent of Title IX. Can you explain Title IX to people?
00:53:21.000Title IX was passed, gosh, I think in the 70s, if I'm not mistaken.
00:53:29.000And it was a huge landmark piece of legislation because it delineated, it provided a level playing field on the basis of sex.
00:53:39.000Meaning males have opportunities, females deserve those same opportunities, whether it be in sports or in college, and in a public funding realm, essentially.
00:53:53.000Where the federal government can impact it, it said there has to be a level playing field and equal opportunities.
00:53:59.000So people like my mom who grew up, she's very athletic, the only thing that was available to her in high school was cheerleading, and she did it.
00:54:42.000So our legislation basically just said, hey, we want to uphold the original intent of Title IX in recognizing the biological differences between males and females.
00:54:53.000They should not be competing against each other.
00:54:56.000The legislation didn't move forward for obvious reasons.
00:55:00.000We were excoriated for having the audacity to uphold the original intent of Title IX. I think?
00:55:36.000Not running through Congress, not allowing the people's voices to be heard, but trying to backdoor this through and making threats to publicly funded educational institutions as a means of trying to implement this.
00:55:50.000Now, why do you think they're doing that?
00:56:27.000And trying to placate them in their radical policies and their extremes rather than actually standing up and saying, you know what, no, this is science, this is biology, and this is what's right.
00:56:41.000And oh, by the way, it would also be politically beneficial given where the vast majority of Democrats and Americans are on this.
00:56:51.000But it's just wild that no one's pushing back.
00:56:55.000It's really wild, especially no one in the Democratic Party.
00:56:58.000They seem like they're captive by the furthest left.
00:57:04.000And that doesn't make any sense to me.
00:57:05.000Because if the majority of Democrats, and I agree with that, the majority of people that I know that are on the left don't think it's fair.
00:57:22.000Like, if you're a daughter and you're competing in that Connecticut track and field team where those two biological males are breaking world records, like, that's crazy!
00:57:54.000And that's the danger of it, is the people in charge of the Democratic Party, whether they actually hold positions or they just are influential in the Democratic Party, Have created this cult-like atmosphere and fomented this fear so much so that people who are really in a position to impact this,
00:58:13.000to stand up against and say, hold on, guys, this is literally insane and needs to stop.
00:58:20.000They're too afraid to do so because of what the ramifications will be.
00:58:26.000The Democratic Party of the past, the Democratic Party that I joined doesn't exist anymore.
00:58:31.000The party that was, you know, the party of JFK, of Dr. Martin Luther King, the party of inclusivity, the big tent party that Welcomed and encouraged this marketplace of ideas and conversations and people who held different views, the party of,
00:58:46.000you know, the championed women and equality and the rights of people in our society, that party just, it doesn't exist anymore.
00:58:55.000And instead, we have a party that's being led by people who have gone insane with this ideological fanaticism.
01:00:34.000I've been trying to fight against within the Democratic Party back when I was vice chair of the DNC for years and it's gotten to a point where Those who have been in charge for a long time, remain in charge,
01:00:50.000are not willing to change, and so I'm leaving the Democratic Party.
01:02:29.000I mean, it was a big deal at the time, but it seems like so minor now compared to, you know, our vice president standing at the DMZ saying we are great allies with North Korea.
01:03:20.000And that is, for you, that is where everything sort of soured with you and the Democratic Party was when during the debates where you accurately pointed out her record.
01:03:35.000And you basically sank any hope that she had of being president because you opened up this discussion that many people are not aware of about her prosecution record and the things that she's done that are absolutely illegal, like forcing people to work as labor,
01:03:51.000as cheap labor for the state to fight wildfires after they're supposed to be released.
01:03:57.000They did their time and she kept them in prison to use them essentially as slave labor for the state, putting their own lives at risk forcibly.
01:04:06.000The thing about my exchange with her on that debate stage, when you take a step back, you got a question like all of those things I brought up on her record, You easily Google-able on the first page when you look at Kamala Harris's record,
01:04:26.000I'd have to dig very deep to see what those issues and problems were with her record.
01:04:31.000So then the question is, hey, why didn't anybody in the media ask her these questions about the record that she said, I'm so proud of my record as this and as that, as that?
01:04:46.000There's no other candidate on the debate stage who had the balls to bring that up.
01:04:51.000How are voters supposed to be able to make their best informed decision when the media and fellow Democratic candidates who are running, who are opponents in that race, don't have the courage to ask a very factual question on a record that she says she's proud of?
01:05:11.000Do you think that there's a concerted effort to hide that information, or do you think that people recognize that that's a trap?
01:05:21.000Like, if I do that, then it's gonna fuck up my future.
01:05:25.000They're gonna not want me to participate in certain things, which most certainly happened to you.
01:05:34.000I don't know why no one had the courage to ask her those questions, why I was the first person to do it.
01:05:41.000If I had to guess, I would imagine it's because she's got friends in high places.
01:05:45.000I would guess it's because she's a woman of color and no one wants to be seen as the person attacking a woman of color who's running for president.
01:05:54.000They got no issues attacking me on a whole host of fronts.
01:05:59.000But because, again, she was connected.
01:06:21.000And, you know, she'll be a great new face of the Democratic Party, all these things.
01:06:26.000But then very quickly they realize, like, I mean, I've always been an independent Democrat.
01:06:31.000Every race that I've ever run, whether it was for city council in Honolulu or for the state legislature or for Congress, I was never like the party pick ever.
01:06:40.000I never won any of those races with the Democratic Party saying, all right, hey, we're going to back you up.
01:06:49.000It has always been a truly grassroots campaign of the people, which is amazing.
01:06:55.000They found out very quickly like, okay, she's not somebody that the puppet masters can control.
01:07:00.000She's not just going to read the talking points when she goes on TV or stands on the house floor.
01:07:05.000And that's where things started to take a turn, where those who are in those positions of power said, okay, she's somebody who could expose our weaknesses, expose our So our insecurities exposed the hypocrisies in our arguments and started to create that distance and then resorted to the smear and the discrediting and the attacks and then ultimately like total media blackouts.
01:07:32.000It's amazing when I talk to people and it happened recently with Alex Berenson.
01:08:02.000That's how they do it is like, hey, let's just plant a seed of doubt or suspicion so that most people, I mean, as a journalist, he's got no excuse, but most people don't have just, I mean, honestly, they don't have the time.
01:08:25.000And you want me to do research from multiple different platforms so that I get an unbiased perspective or at least an objective perspective based on multiple sources of information.
01:08:38.000It's like it's Such a bizarre system that we have and it's so easy to rig because there's only two parties and both parties are controlled by these gigantic special interest groups.
01:08:53.000Gigantic special interest groups, corporate, for-profit, media, big tech, and then the powers in both parties.
01:09:05.000And that's where I'm glad you used the word rigged because it's an important word and usually when you use it, people aren't thinking of it in the way that we're talking about.
01:09:16.000It's what I experienced during that campaign is that collusion between those very, very powerful entities I think we're good to go.
01:09:50.000Or if people are noticing them, we're going to do everything that we can to smear them and undermine their credibility so that when they do speak, you get that kind of reaction from Berenson.
01:10:03.000Did you notice an immediate change in the way people communicated with you before that debate versus after that debate?
01:10:20.000The interesting thing to me was that I heard from some friends who were sitting kind of in the green rooms and backstage for some of the major cable networks at that moment, live, when it happened on the debate stage.
01:10:33.000There was a whole bunch of people cheering and like, holy crap, that just happened.
01:10:40.000But probably within an hour, maybe 30 minutes of the debate being finished and going into the media room where you've got the post-debate, all the interviews and all those things happening, immediately it was like, okay, no, we've got to change the narrative because we can't allow that to stick.
01:11:01.000Is there any courting of you by the Republican Party?
01:11:11.000I mean, look, the Republican Party, I mean, what is the Republican Party today?
01:11:16.000You know, I've got Republican friends who don't like to be associated with each other because they're in different factions of the Republican Party.
01:11:28.000I think that, you know, when you look at the two, I think there's potential there for that party.
01:11:35.000The Republican Party has kind of turned more towards populism and actually fighting for working people.
01:11:45.000You look at a recent vote that was taken on the issue of foreign policy and war and peace.
01:11:52.000The Republican Party had like, I think it was 50 members of Congress voted against that massive multi-billion dollar bill.
01:12:24.000Is very strongly within the grips of the military industrial complex and advocating for more war and you have more Republicans.
01:12:32.000And I think even Trump, this was Trump's instinct when he ran for president and he was president, was like, hey, we shouldn't be going and being the policemen of the world.
01:12:41.000We shouldn't be going around the world and starting all these wars.
01:12:45.000I think the problem with him was he surrounded himself with people who held a diametrically opposed view.
01:12:53.000You know, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, John Bolton, people who never saw a war they didn't like and advocated for.
01:13:18.000I mean, I think if they had someone like Ron DeSantis, who seems to be like the most reasonable amongst the potential candidates, he seems to be, you know, a pretty no-nonsense guy, not without his flaws, but he's more reasonable than anything that I'm seeing on the left.
01:13:36.000At least with the way he handled COVID. Yeah.
01:13:41.000It's one of those things where as it's all playing out, there's this sense of hopelessness because there's not a clearly defined path where this country's ship gets righted.
01:13:55.000It's like I just see a lot of chaos and a lot of confusion and a lot of infighting and I don't know how this plays out.
01:14:05.000It doesn't seem like there's a real clear, oh, this is our path to sanity.
01:14:13.000And I think the first step towards that path, though, is people recognizing what the insanity is and the problems.
01:14:26.000And I think that more and more these things are coming to light.
01:14:31.000I can tell you, I mean, I know there are a lot of Democrats that feel the same kind of frustration that I feel with the Democratic Party leadership.
01:14:53.000And so I think that that creates opportunity for us as a country to get out of just this two-party system mindset and this mindset of fear that drives so many of the elections where instead of saying like,
01:15:11.000hey, I'm running for president because this is how I'm offering to lead the country.
01:15:17.000This is how I'm offering to serve the country.
01:15:32.000And really treating voters like we're idiots and we don't care or have the intelligence to actually look at, okay, here's where you stand on this issue.
01:15:44.000Here's where this other person stands on this issue.
01:15:46.000I'm going to make my decision not based on party.
01:15:49.000But actually based on, hey, who best reflects my values?
01:15:53.000Who is actually going to put the country first, the interests of the American people and the country first?
01:15:59.000And not just the people who say the words, but the people who actually have the record and the policies to back that up.
01:16:07.000And so I hope that this is the direction that we're moving in as more and more people get disillusioned with Leaders in both parties who care more about their own political ambitions and their own party's power than they actually do care about the American people.
01:16:27.000It seems like part of the problem is that that attack style of politics works.
01:16:34.000Like, just think about someone saying, oh, she's crazy.
01:16:45.000Is that instead of – to make it – like if there was an incentive to say these are our plans and this is how we can implement this and just ignore negativity on the other side.
01:17:02.000You know, when I was running for president at town halls that we held across the country, it didn't really matter where we were, whether it was a small town or a big city, middle America, East Coast, West Coast.
01:17:15.000One of the things that—one of the media-embedded reporters that would, you know, kind of follow us around everywhere we went— I think?
01:17:46.000And it was because we talked about different issues.
01:17:50.000We talked about, you know, the threat of nuclear war.
01:17:55.000We talked about this new Cold War, the dangers of continuing down this path.
01:17:59.000We talked about things that they – education.
01:18:02.000We talked about how – we actually talked about these things most days.
01:18:23.000And that was their only goal was like, hey, how many lines against Trump can we use that we know are going to piss people off?
01:18:30.000And motivate them through anger and fear rather than through hope and inspiration for what we can do together as a country.
01:18:42.000That's the direction that we need to go.
01:18:45.000And there are a lot of things that are issues that are of concern.
01:18:50.000And treating people with respect and like they have intelligence and actually tackling those issues Breaking through and being able to deliver that message to the American people I think is the challenge.
01:19:04.000I think people want it, but the media does a really great job of kind of reducing things to their lowest kind of standard.
01:19:16.000Do you think that the biggest challenge or one of the...
01:20:02.000What can be done I think we're good to go.
01:20:22.000To all the political decisions that get made in this country, particularly when it has to do with foreign policy.
01:20:28.000When you're talking about, and you have been a very outspoken critic of interventionalist foreign policy and wars that are unnecessary and that put lives in danger and cost incredible amounts of money but enrich the coffers of all these corporations.
01:20:46.000And that undermine our own interests and security interests.
01:21:13.000Like, how much money are we talking about?
01:21:15.000So with things like funding the Ukraine war with Russia, please explain to people what that means and why we're sending so much money over to Ukraine.
01:21:36.000It is these massive defense corporations who make all these different weapons systems from the smallest to the most powerful nuclear weapons and missiles.
01:21:50.000When we are at war, they make a lot of money.
01:21:55.000When politicians, even if we're not at war, but are threatening that we may go to war, they make a lot of money.
01:22:02.000And these decisions are not made within the context of, hey, what does our military actually need?
01:22:08.000What do we need to ensure that our military is ready to defend our country and our national security interests?
01:22:16.000It is very often what members of Congress are advocating for, even more than the military is asking for sometimes, because of those cozy relationships with the military industrial complex, with these massive defense contractors and their lobbyists.
01:22:33.000So there's a direct correlation as the money is changing hands there.
01:22:41.000The problem is not with the Democratic Party, the Republican Party.
01:22:45.000On this issue, when you see so much divisiveness on tons of other issues facing our country, everything from infrastructure to education, all these other things, you see like, oh my gosh, Democrats and Republicans can't agree on anything.
01:22:57.000This issue of putting our country in a continual state of war is supported by leaders in both parties and the majority of people in both parties.
01:23:08.000And it's directly tied to the military-industrial complex's influence and tied to people who, you know, want to act and look tough, but aren't asking the most important questions like, okay, if we do this, will this help the American people or hurt the American people?
01:23:26.000If we vote to, you know, send these billions of dollars to Ukraine, is that strengthening our national security or undermining it?
01:23:37.000You'll hear a lot of rhetoric, especially recently, saying, hey, if we've got to send all this money to Ukraine, otherwise Russia's going to come and attack us.
01:23:50.000Otherwise, our national security will be undermined.
01:23:52.000So they say all these things to foment fear in people's minds, but they're not rooted in reality.
01:23:58.000So what we're seeing play out now is essentially a proxy war.
01:24:04.000U.S. is engaging in a proxy war with Russia using Ukraine as their military.
01:24:11.000So the U.S. and some European countries, predominantly the U.S., though, are providing We're good to go.
01:24:34.000Years before, obviously, Russia's invasion in Ukraine, this anti-Russia sentiment has been building up by the permanent Washington establishment and laying the groundwork and this was the opportunity that they saw.
01:24:52.000It's put us in the most dangerous position we, the American people, and the world has ever been in, in that a nuclear war could break out in a week,
01:25:09.000We are staring over the precipice of that nuclear brink now more than ever before.
01:25:16.000We're hearing language coming from Putin, from Medvedev, from different Russian nationalist leaders saying, no, Putin, you should go and use those nuclear weapons.
01:25:28.000Whether they're the tactical nukes or the strategic nukes, doesn't matter.
01:25:38.000It would spark World War III. And the result of that is destruction of the world.
01:25:44.000It is destruction of the world as we know it.
01:25:47.000And, you know, I hate to paint such a bleak picture, but people need to know that this is the reality that we're facing, that our leaders have pushed us and led us to this brink of nuclear war.
01:26:01.000They have their own bunkers and ways to protect themselves.
01:26:07.000There is no shelter for the American people.
01:26:32.000There's no place where you can take your loved ones and your kids to be protected not only from the blast but the fallout and the lack of food and water and everything else that comes after.
01:26:46.000New York City recently put out a PSA. I don't know if you saw it, but it is literally a video ad that they put out saying, hey, here's what you do in the event of a nuclear explosion.
01:29:44.000Who's gonna tell you it's okay to go outside during a nuclear blast in the United States, something that's never happened ever and that we're completely woefully unprepared for?
01:30:28.000I was in, I think it was after my second deployment.
01:30:34.000When I came back from the Middle East, I went on a trip and did some travel through Eastern Europe and went and actually visited Chernobyl.
01:30:41.000And it was astonishing to me even decades after that happened.
01:30:47.000I'd heard about it and I was like, okay.
01:30:52.000Went on this little bus and went out there.
01:30:55.000They gave us these radiation monitors, these handheld radiation monitors, so that wherever we were, you know, you could kind of test and see where the radiation still existed.
01:31:06.000They're like, oh, you're going to see apple trees and things like that?
01:31:10.000Don't eat any of the fruit because it's contaminated.
01:31:13.000It is still contaminated decades later.
01:31:17.000Walking through the middle of the town, I know everyone's seen the pictures and obviously now with that Chernobyl series, I think that Netflix did.
01:31:25.000More and more people know the story, but walking through the school and the classrooms where the desks and the books and the kids' shoes and the deflated basketballs, everything is still there in the way that it was when people fled and had to evacuate.
01:31:48.000It was so eerie walking through there.
01:31:52.000You could almost kind of feel the heaviness of what happened there.
01:31:59.000And then as we were leaving after we left and were crossing back into Ukraine, Before we got on the bus, we had to go through these radiation, kind of like the thing you walk through in TSA,
01:32:15.000except it tests for radiation to make sure you're not actually bringing any contaminants with you back into TSA. All of that is to say, this is what we're talking about.
01:32:25.000So you see that kind of video, and you see how completely out of touch it is with the reality of what could happen in the event of a nuclear attack.
01:32:36.000And the fact that Russia's got, what, over 6,000 nuclear warheads.
01:32:41.000The United States has over 5,000 nuclear warheads.
01:32:44.000Both countries making up 90% of the total number of nuclear warheads that exist in the world.
01:32:52.000And literally it would just take the flick of a match to spark this war off.
01:32:57.000And that's where say, okay, well, you hear President Biden say, well, this is Putin's war.
01:33:30.000And in doing so they are failing the American people and putting us in this position of Not knowing where we're going to be in the event that this kicks off.
01:33:42.000Do you think that whoever the powers that be and whatever the influence is from the military industrial complex, that they are trying to prolong this in order to profit?
01:33:54.000So they're trying to continue to fund Ukraine.
01:33:57.000This gives them an excellent reason to Ramp up budgets and keep shipping over weapons and arms.
01:34:05.000They keep making more and more profit and just get us right to the point where it gets squirrely.
01:34:29.000I am concerned that we may have passed that point already.
01:34:39.000You're talking about people pushing us right up, right up to the line and then just saying, well, you know, the whole theory of nuclear weapons is one of mutually assured destruction, right?
01:34:50.000There's no way Putin will ever launch this.
01:34:53.000Because of that fear of like, okay, well, we will all be destroyed if that happens.
01:35:00.000And they're saying, you know, Putin is many things, but he's not crazy.
01:35:08.000They changed their nuclear weapons policy so that according to their laws, they would be authorized to use a nuclear weapon if they are facing any kind of existential threat, whether it's coming from a nuclear source or not.
01:35:22.000And you look at the situation that Putin is in right now.
01:35:33.000He is in a place where he may feel like he has nothing else to lose.
01:35:42.000And you find that same kind of mentality in people who are suicidal or people who are bullied or people who feel like they're Their best option is a way out.
01:35:56.000And so to be so dismissive and say, well, you know, Putin's not crazy.
01:36:41.000The opposing argument is, hey, if we don't stop Russia now, then they will take over all of Europe and come at us,
01:36:57.000and then we'll have to deal with them later.
01:36:59.000The problem with this is, you look at all the intelligence reports and things that were coming out in Russia first, Was preparing to invade Ukraine and then invaded Ukraine.
01:37:10.000Is they're going to do shocking on Ukraine, take all of Ukraine and then move on to, you know, other NATO allies and then to the West as a whole.
01:37:21.000That has all been completely disproven and the intelligence community failed us as a country with those reports because we've seen how Russia's military has been depleted and destroyed in many cases.
01:37:33.000And as far as, you know, taking over, they're having a hard time holding on to a little sliver of a non-NATO country that is directly their neighbor right now.
01:37:44.000What to speak of being able to go and take over Ukraine and move into other countries.
01:38:05.000And it's undermining our national security and putting us and the world in a place where nuclear war and World War III could be imminent.
01:38:25.000Our leaders are completely failing us because they've got the power and the ability to be able to deescalate and pull us back from the brink, but they're failing to do so.
01:38:35.000And do you think that they're failing to do so because that would cut off the gravy train?
01:38:43.000This is something, and I'm bringing this up because no one else is talking about it.
01:38:50.000I ran for president in 2020, warning of this outcome, seeing, hey, this is what's around the corner if you continue to wage these new cold wars.
01:38:58.000I talked about it virtually every single day, brought it up in virtually every single interview, and the media refused to talk about it.
01:39:06.000It was never brought up in any of the debates.
01:39:09.000And I was even told by a reporter, like, come on, why do you keep talking about nuclear war?
01:39:28.000We don't know what's going to happen next week or next month with this war.
01:39:33.000The only way to stop this now is for the American people, people in Europe, people around the world, Taking that direct action to make sure that our voice is heard and holding our leaders' feet to the fire to literally bring about an end to this insanity and save our future.
01:39:55.000Did you ever see the video of, I forget who it was from the State Department, who was on the Colbert Report?
01:40:00.000We played it the other day during the Dave Smith podcast.
01:40:05.000And there was a guy who wrote a book, and this was in 2014, and he was on the Colbert Report back when it was on Comedy Central.
01:40:13.000And he was essentially bragging about how they are trying to lure the Ukraine.
01:40:22.000We'll play it for you just so you can watch it.
01:40:28.000First of all, before we play it, one of the things that's crazy about it is that they're essentially bragging openly about foreign policy shenanigans that are just designed to try to undermine Russia.
01:40:46.000And they're doing it on Comedy Central in a joking way while this guy's selling a book.
01:40:52.000And this guy, we'll play it so you see.
01:41:59.000Countries have to develop over time, and Ukraine basically, after the end of the Soviet Union, faced two tracks.
01:42:05.000It could stay a sort of stagnant, corrupt, authoritarian country tied to Russia, or it could essentially join the West.
01:42:12.000It could modernize, liberalize, become a democracy.
01:42:15.000At the last minute, when it looked like it was going to trade up from its sort of abusive relationship with its boyfriend from the hood to a nice, yuppie...
01:42:23.000You're not loading these choices in any way whatsoever.
01:42:37.000And the president, who himself was tied to the old elites and the eastern part of the country who ties to Russia, decided to back off the change and go join Russia.
01:42:47.000Do you know how many pirate-themed restaurants you can buy with $15 billion?
01:42:50.000The problem was the western parts of the country and the younger parts of the country and the more modern liberal parts of the country basically knew that they had no future being Russia's vassal, and so they took to the streets.
01:43:01.000Is America taking sides in this in any way?
01:43:04.000If these people, the rebels are winning right now, right?
01:43:08.000Why isn't Obama spiking the ball in the end zone and calling Putin and saying, hey, you might have won the medal count, but we won the country count, biatchi?
01:43:17.000It's actually a very good question, and the answer is that we don't want Russia to intervene and kick over the table like a game of risk and take Ukraine back.
01:44:13.000When we talk about the military-industrial complex, it's not just the United States, because the longer this goes on, the more NATO is strengthened.
01:44:25.000I think two other countries, was it Finland and Sweden, have just joined NATO as a result of this.
01:44:31.000These big arms deals are also happening with NATO. The major producers of these weapons systems are coming from the military industrial complex here.
01:44:43.000So there are a lot of interests that are pushing to build and strengthen this whole NATO complex.
01:44:51.000And this war is giving them a great opportunity to do it.
01:44:56.000There should have been a very direct and full-hearted attempt to de-escalate and try to negotiate an outcome to this conflict before it started or very quickly after.
01:45:12.000But instead, what we saw was an influx of money and weapons systems There doesn't seem to be any clear path to removing money from influence,
01:45:34.000When you're talking about $1.7 trillion for 2022, that's so much money.
01:45:39.000It comes down to who we are choosing to elect, really.
01:45:42.000Like, yeah, okay, we could, you know, yeah, Congress should pass legislation to prohibit lobbyists and PACs from giving money to members of Congress and candidates.
01:45:59.000There are candidates from both parties right now who are running saying, hey, I'm running to serve you in Congress and I refuse to accept a single penny from a lobbyist or a corporate PAC. There are choices out there.
01:46:12.000We need more of those choices of people who are not just saying, yeah, America first, I'll put country first, but then are going in the back door and making these shady deals.
01:46:21.000People are actually backing up Saying, yes, I'm here to serve you and only you, the American people, and backing it up with their actions.
01:46:28.000So moving forward, like, you know, even Trump, one of the things, like, I don't know, I believe it was with Steve Hilton.
01:46:37.000He was having this interview, and he started talking about the military-industrial complex, about how these people want to go to war.
01:46:44.000And you've never heard a sitting president say something like that.
01:46:50.000And it was one of the things that I think is kind of interesting about Trump, is that he is such a loose cannon that he'll say things like that, which is no one's going to say that.
01:47:00.000But how do you stop that influence once a person gets into office?
01:47:05.000Because it seems like, obviously you never got into that spot, but it seems like once you get into that spot, there's so many moving pieces, and there's so much influence, and there's so much money, and there's a lot of you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours,
01:47:21.000we're working together on this, so that we can work together on that, and we can open up the pathway for this, if you open up that.
01:47:44.000You see it with a lot of these different—Wall Street— By electing a leader who has the backbone and courage to stand up for the American people, that's how we start to make this change.
01:47:58.000Because then that person who's elected as president, commander-in-chief, then makes the decision of who's going to be the director of the National Security Council, who's going to be the secretary of defense, who's going to be the secretary of state.
01:48:09.000Who's going to lead all of these federal institutions, including the national security state, law enforcement, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, making those decisions and then going down.
01:48:21.000So it's not only those who you're pointing to those positions, but recognizing that those bureaucrats who've been there for a really long time and who are very cozy with all of these special interests actually bring about that institutional change that we need I'm not saying that this is an easy task at all.
01:48:43.000It is a tough task, which requires a tough, strong leader to be able to do it.
01:48:47.000That's why I ran for president, because I've lived through experiencing the cost and consequences of presidents and members of Congress who don't give a shit about the cost of war.
01:49:02.000Not only on our military and our veterans, but on the American people and on the people in the countries where we've gone and waged these regime change wars in the name of spreading democracy and humanitarianism.
01:49:15.000Meanwhile, we're destroying those countries and harming those people.
01:49:19.000A leader who can actually fulfill that responsibility of Commander-in-Chief is what we need.
01:49:27.000What insight, if any, do you have on what it must be like to take office?
01:49:45.000I want to say like 93 or 94. He had this bit about what it's like the day you take office, that he thinks you're in a smoky room and they show you an angle of the Kennedy assassination that you've never seen before.
01:49:58.000And then they stop the projector and you just go, any questions?
01:50:08.000Because this is what people think, is that once you get into office, then Because so many people had promises and campaign slogans and you go, okay, was Obama just lying?
01:50:20.000Did he never have intentions to do those things?
01:50:23.000Or once you get into office, do they appraise you of all the threats to the world?
01:50:28.000Do they tell you what kind of influence the military-industrial complex really has and how impossible it is to get the barbs out of the skin of the American people?
01:50:40.000Obviously, I have not sat in that chair.
01:50:44.000But what I will say is if we elect a president who cares more about the title and the reelection and the power than they do about actually doing the job To serve the American people in our country,
01:51:03.000then yeah, we will end up with a president who is easily bullied and kowtowing to these special interests, whatever they may be, told, oh, hey, look, if you make this decision that we don't like,
01:51:20.000whether it be the military-industrial complex or big pharma, we're going to pull our support from you.
01:51:26.000Or we're going to do this or we're going to do that.
01:51:43.000Are you going to run as president as an independent?
01:51:48.000The system as it sits today, that's not a viable option.
01:51:53.000It's not a viable option because I think it was back when Ross Perot ran for president.
01:52:00.000I think he was an independent, if I'm not mistaken.
01:52:03.000And he was beating Bill Clinton in the polls.
01:52:08.000You know, both parties saw that as a direct threat to themselves and got together and rigged the system to, practically speaking, shut out a third option.
01:52:20.000Well, they shut him out, the Commission for Presidential Debates, which is a privately funded institution, which most people don't know.
01:52:34.000And then also they changed the electoral college to make it so that if you have a viable third option, basically none of the parties will get the minimum number of electoral votes through this winner-take-all system needed to actually win.
01:52:52.000And then it goes to Congress, and then Congress will make that selection.
01:52:56.000So the electoral college system itself also needs to be reformed to one that is proportional.
01:53:03.000So if I were to run for president and win 60% of Texas, I would get 60% of Texas's electoral votes rather than if you win a state, you get- All of them.
01:53:40.000It would be great to live in a world where that were not the case, but when you look at the practical application of our electoral system right now, it's not a viable path.
01:53:54.000Are you going to run for any kind of office as an independent?
01:54:02.000I am deeply, deeply concerned about this very real and imminent threat of nuclear war that no one is talking about that no one is preparing the American people for that people are kind of sitting ducks because of the decisions that our leaders have made.
01:54:23.000If I felt that there was a way that I could Stop that and make a difference and impact that and pull us back from the brink Then yeah, I'd seriously consider running again my concern though is like We don't know what's gonna happen and you know,
01:54:45.000we don't know if it's gonna be too late I There's no way to argue with that.
01:54:54.000That's that As you're saying this I'm like yeah Yeah.
01:55:16.000Again, the media hardly covers it, and if they do, they're talking about it as though it's like, you know, one missile system against the other.
01:55:27.000They're talking about the waging of a nuclear war as though it can be won, or as though there's some kind of limitation to the destruction and devastation that it will cause.
01:55:41.000You know, going back to Reagan, he talked about how a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
01:55:49.000You go back to, you know, JFK recognized the serious danger and risk of a nuclear war.
01:55:54.000We go back to these leaders in the past from both parties who saw how dangerous a nuclear war would be and therefore took action to try to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons in the world and try to put these I think?
01:56:32.000As we sit here today, that's the only thing that'll make a difference at this point, is people here in the United States, people in Europe, people around the world stepping up, speaking out, making sure that our voices are heard,
01:56:53.000Our leaders need to look out for our lives, our futures, our country, this planet, and negotiate an end to this war and prevent destruction of this planet, a nuclear holocaust.
01:57:08.000There's also these very simplistic narratives that are going out now.
01:57:31.000Don't ask how that money's being spent.
01:57:33.000Don't question the corruption that everybody knows exists in Ukraine.
01:57:37.000Don't question where those weapons are going.
01:57:40.000Don't question what the actual real life ramifications are to our national security as a country.
01:57:49.000To our future, given nuclear war is on the line, what to speak of the direct economic implications we are already feeling with, you know, gas prices hiking in many places in the country, increased inflation, you know,
01:58:05.000supply shortages, food shortages, the U.N., The UN's food guy, I can't remember his official title, but he's already sounded a warning saying that this war is causing an unprecedented threat of global starvation.
01:58:26.000So the ramifications of this, people are just like, okay, go to war and here's more guns and here's more weapons.
01:58:33.000And instead of actually being leaders and advocating for peace and a negotiated resolution where, yes, Ukraine's going to have to give up something.
01:58:42.000Russia's going to have to give up something.
01:58:43.000That's literally what happens when you negotiate an end to a war.
01:59:10.000If we continue down this path where we have seen this war continue to escalate since the invasion happened, we will end up in World War III and a nuclear holocaust.
01:59:33.000If nothing else changes and we continue down this path, This is where that path leads.
01:59:41.000And it's not some far-flung possibility.
01:59:49.000It's very difficult for people to live in a world without nuclear war, to live in a world where you get up, your alarm clock goes off, you go to work, you drive the same way every day, to imagine the eradication of all civility,
02:00:05.000of all the things, all of our structure in terms of All of our just everything from all of our civil liberties to all of our roads and utilities being gone.
02:00:22.000Everything eradicated almost instantaneously.
02:01:00.000And so we're in a position where, you know, I'm sure the billionaires of the world have their, you know, deep bunkers with food sources and water sources.
02:01:15.000I know there are contingencies in place for our politicians at the highest levels, should this situation occur, so that they can continue to manage and wage the war from another location.
02:01:33.000What do you make of the pipeline blowing up?
02:01:38.000Because now people are saying that the pipeline, whoever did it, they did it intentionally.
02:01:45.000And what do you think that's all about?
02:02:00.000I haven't seen any evidence to point in one direction or another.
02:02:06.000You know, Russia's got the financial investment in that pipeline.
02:02:11.000So, I don't know, somebody's done the numbers, I don't remember what they are, but how much money they lost in that, with that explosion, and that pipeline being sabotaged.
02:02:23.000So I don't know who is responsible, but we should not be surprised that as this war escalates, that this sort of thing happens.
02:02:31.000And it should cause everyone to wonder, okay, so this week it was a pipeline, a major energy pipeline being sabotaged, cutting off the ability for, you know, major countries in Europe as they head into winter from having that option.
02:02:50.000Internet cables, deep undersea internet cables, GPS satellites, other necessary pieces of infrastructure, not only to the United States, but to the world.
02:03:03.000What's next in this escalation of war?
02:03:07.000And again, this is not just about something happening in Europe, because again, we've already seen in this past week At least on the West Coast and other parts of the country, how gas prices have gone up 50 cents, 70 cents.
02:04:16.000Yeah, I'm concerned about all that, and I'm concerned about the lack of understanding that people have about the implementation of things like a digital currency that is centralized, that's controlled by the government.
02:05:09.000It's all within the realm of possibility.
02:05:11.000And you look at that and what is the recent thing of...
02:05:14.000I think Elizabeth Warren was pushing for credit card companies to start tracking people who buy ammunition and firearms and report that to the government.
02:06:59.000You know, lobbyists and PAC money infecting or corrupting our politics, you know, election integrity, making sure that, you know, people are actually trusting the system and that their votes will be counted as they were cast.
02:07:12.000So there's work to do, but these changes can only come about when we are all informed and engaged in the process.
02:07:39.000I can say four sentences in that period of time.
02:07:42.000But to actually take a deep dive into examining like, hey, here are the challenges that we're facing.
02:07:49.000Here's how we identify what the problem is and the cause and here are some of the things that we need to be able to do to solve these problems.
02:07:57.000Yeah, that's the reality of conversations.
02:08:00.000And, you know, I think it took until podcasts existed where people realized the value of talking about one particular subject for over an hour.
02:08:37.000And really when you think about it, all of these different things, you might see a headline here, a sound bite there, there's always so much more to it.
02:08:46.000And looking at different people's views and actually encouraging those conversations and helping people just to understand each other as people.
02:08:59.000The good news is people recognize that.
02:09:01.000And that's one of the reasons why podcasts are so huge.
02:09:05.000The numbers that we get off of this conversation will be so much bigger than any other conversation that you can have anywhere else, which is weird.
02:09:16.000It's because people recognize like, hey, this is not, it's not satisfying to watch these five minute chunks on CNN where people talking over each other with three different screens, you know, three different boxes on the screen and everybody's yelling over each other, alright, well thank you for your input, bye!
02:09:44.000And it's not an accident that you never hear people on those channels saying, hey, you should be careful about what Pfizer is telling you because of the drugs or the vaccines or whatever it is they're trying to sell you and then cut to the Pfizer commercial.
02:09:59.000It's not an accident that, you know...
02:10:01.00075% of all television advertisement is pharmaceutical companies, which is insane.
02:10:14.000And I mean, this is a huge other topic.
02:10:17.000I know you've talked about it a lot before, too, is like people talk about healthcare reform in America, but most people who talk about it aren't identifying The root cause of the problem, which is our entire system incentivizes sickness and obesity and people being unhealthy.
02:10:50.000And, you know, the problem is these corporations are always trying to make more money every year.
02:10:56.000And if they go around telling you, hey, you know, we'd make less money, but you'd be happier if you stop eating sugar and garbage and start exercising every day.
02:11:33.000And I think this was censored around, I think the CDC was saying that people who are obese are more likely to have severe health consequences if they catch COVID-19.
02:11:46.000And so the reporter asked, and I don't know, I don't remember which outlet it came from, but the reporter said, so are you the White House therefore then advocating for nutrition and health in order to try to prevent that?
02:11:59.000And she just said, we take all of our guidance from the CDC and the CDC says get vaccinated.
02:12:07.000She couldn't even just say, well, yeah, of course, try to be healthy.
02:12:49.000I mean, the percentage of people in this country that eat fast food primarily on a daily basis is crazy.
02:12:56.000And that we've done nothing to, especially for lower income people, to make real healthy food available to them easily and readily.
02:13:03.000And this goes back to that information where these norms have been created.
02:13:08.000And I've had conversations with different people recently.
02:13:13.000Somebody who was telling me about his experience, like they were overseas and deployed and it was somebody's birthday and like one of the guys knew how to cook and he made this amazing orange cake.
02:13:25.000He actually went to the market and got oranges and made this cake from scratch, like not even from a box.
02:13:31.000And it was better than a cake from Walmart.
02:13:52.000And things that you just make out of actual food are not, even when it comes to something like cake, which is not even good for you anyway.
02:15:09.000I think the fact that politicians in the media are not talking about it should be a major red flag and a warning to everybody.
02:15:20.000There's a reason why they refuse to talk about it.
02:15:23.000And so it's up to us to learn about it and to use our voices to get them to do the right thing.
02:15:31.000I think they're terrified that if they do talk about it, that it makes all these decisions and opinions very unpopular, and that people are going to be scared about it.
02:16:00.000Which is because it's just a political game of football versus people that are actually trying to change things for the better to make the country a healthier, happier place to be.