Vivek Ramaswamy joins us on the show to talk about his campaign to become the next President of the United States. We also hear from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who shared explicit photos of Sen. Hunter Biden in front of a House Oversight Committee hearing, and alleges that he violated the Mann Act. Jason Aldean's new music video has been pulled for being racist, and RFK proposes backing the US Dollar with Bitcoin and gold.
00:01:56.000I am filling in for Tim, who wrote us a letter saying he's having a lot of fun at camp.
00:02:02.000Before we dive into tonight's stories, I want to make two really awesome announcements.
00:02:06.000I think you guys are going to be very excited to hear both of these things.
00:02:09.000The first announcement is great, not as good as the second one, but my YouTube channel and my access to my YouTube channel and all of my channels has been restored as of earlier today, so Freedom Tunes is back.
00:02:21.000Thank you to the people at YouTube for getting this cleared up.
00:02:23.000Thank you to Tim for helping me get in touch.
00:02:27.000And also, the second bit of good news I want to share is that a little while ago on the show, I mentioned that there was a young boy, a little child at my church, who was born with skeletal dysplasia, who needed a very difficult and dangerous surgery.
00:02:52.000In terms of tonight's stories, Marjorie Taylor Greene shares explicit photos of Hunter Biden in front of a House Select Committee and also alleges that he has violated the Mann Act.
00:03:05.000Jason Aldean's new music video has been pulled for being supposedly racist.
00:03:11.000Then again, what doesn't the left call racist?
00:03:13.000And RFK proposes backing the US dollar with Bitcoin and gold.
00:03:19.000Before we get into all those things, I want to ask you all to smash the like button, please
00:05:07.000Alright, yeah, so we have Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene holding up explicit images of Hunter Biden during a House Oversight Committee hearing.
00:05:15.000So the hearing featured two IRS whistleblowers who alleged that the President's son received special treatment during their investigation into his business dealings.
00:05:22.000Those of you who are regular watchers of the show will probably remember that we talked
00:05:25.000about this story a few weeks ago, at least the story in reference to the two IRS whistleblowers
00:05:29.000who were saying Hunter was receiving special treatment.
00:05:32.000The investigation was being slow walked and every effort was made to ensure that it wasn't
00:05:35.000taken care of effectively and competently.
00:05:38.000Marjorie Taylor Greene showed pictures that were leaked from Hunter Biden's laptop.
00:05:43.000She also alleged that he purchased a ticket and essentially brought this woman across
00:05:49.000state lines, which she argues would be a violation of the Mann Act, which is obviously a massive
00:06:06.000No, especially not when you're the president's son, right?
00:06:08.000I mean, I think James Comer pointed this out that the testimony that we heard today isn't necessarily going to say anything we didn't already know, although I argue that it's important to have an official record of these things.
00:06:20.000But rather, these two IRS agents were able to say or testify to the fact that the DOJ did intentionally slow walk their investigation and treated Hunter the way no one else would get to be treated.
00:06:33.000Well, I mean, I think there are definitely two standards of justice in this country right now.
00:06:38.000And this is not specific to Biden and Trump alone.
00:06:41.000I mean, there's one standard for Julian Assange, who sits in a foreign prison, still in exile.
00:06:46.000I'm going to try to see him later this year.
00:06:49.000Another one for Chelsea Manning, who is the government agent who actually leaked information to him because she's transgender.
00:06:57.000So then I see one standard for Hunter Biden, a different one for somebody who has a different last name, be it Trump or otherwise.
00:07:03.000Part of the problem is we have this bureaucracy, the IRS is one example of it, but a bureaucracy that really abandons the rule of law to decide what it feels like doing on a given day.
00:07:15.000And so those two stories between what Marjorie Taylor Greene saying about Hunter Biden, about the testimony of the two IRS whistleblowers, These are deeply linked.
00:07:25.000They're both symptoms of a managerial class, a bureaucracy in this country that does whatever it sees fit and is going to effectively politically protect whichever party is actually protecting them and preserving them and their existence.
00:07:42.000And right now that's the Democrat Party, so they happen to be protecting them.
00:07:45.000If that changed in the future, they'd protect whoever paid for their continued existence.
00:07:52.000I think some people who are just waking up to these things think that it's the first time any of this has happened.
00:07:56.000I mean, this goes back a very long time, but just to give a specific example, 10 years ago, I believe a little longer ago than that, we knew that the IRS was targeting conservative groups for audits.
00:08:53.000It's like a creation, a monster unto itself that existed long before we arrived as somebody who ever got elected and long after we're gone.
00:09:02.000And so I'm not going to make that false promise to say that I can reform that bureaucracy.
00:09:08.000But what the president can do is actually shut it down.
00:09:13.000And I think this is where, you know, even Trump, who was the closest we ever got to at least identifying this problem, stopped short because the traditional wisdom is that there are these things called civil service protections, which say that members of the bureaucracy cannot be fired Absent some extreme finding of misconduct.
00:09:38.000Actually, if you read the rules carefully, it doesn't work that way.
00:09:41.000The way it works is you can't fire individuals, right?
00:09:43.000You can't have backlash against, you know, any one individual in that bureaucracy at one at a time.
00:09:50.000But that's why what I'm bringing to Washington DC is mass layoffs, because the civil service protections do not apply on their own terms to mass layoffs.
00:09:58.000And mass layoffs is what we're bringing to the federal government.
00:10:01.000I think it takes somebody who's willing to break the glass coming in from the outside without inhibition.
00:10:07.000And I think Trump brought an element of that.
00:10:59.000I'm talking about how we get to the start line of at least restoring political power to the people who are actually elected by the governed to actually exercise it.
00:11:11.000It's like a hydraulic pump or like a water balloon.
00:11:13.000You squeeze it into one place, it'll pop up somewhere else.
00:11:16.000But at least with acknowledging the rules of the road being the people who we elect to run the government are actually the ones who ought to run the government.
00:11:23.000Yeah, this managerial bureaucracy, they'll find their own private sector version of that that emerges or some quasi governmental version that emerges even at the agencies that exist.
00:11:41.000If the it is the Department of Education, I'm not going to replace it with anything.
00:11:45.000If the it is the FBI, I'm going to shut it down and I'm not going to replace it with anything.
00:11:49.000A lot of those functions are already being performed by the U.S.
00:11:51.000Marshals, by the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency.
00:11:55.000And so you go on down the list, that's the reality.
00:11:59.000There are certain other functions like, you know, that you would say have to continue to exist in some form, say the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
00:12:07.000I said I would shut that down because we haven't had a nuclear power plant built in this country in 35 some odd years because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is fundamentally hostile to it.
00:12:17.000In that case, I think you can't reform the culture of that agency.
00:12:20.000You have to shut it down, but we'd rebuild from scratch an agency that was actually committed to a rational evaluation of the risks and benefits of a given nuclear power plant.
00:12:55.000What made the American people so willing to have such an bloated administrative state?
00:13:00.000Yeah, it was a sort of laziness in our culture.
00:13:03.000It actually started with laziness of the elected officials, right?
00:13:07.000Initially, the way it was supposed to work was the people who showed up in Congress and in the U.S.
00:13:11.000Senate, they're supposed to have the actual lawmaking authority, but also accountability.
00:13:19.000They started to get a little lazy with that accountability.
00:13:21.000These bills, getting into the specifics of those details, that's a little too hard to deal with.
00:13:25.000Presidents who we elected in the White House started to similarly get lazy, saying that, well, you know, the budgeting process, I'm supposed to ask Congress for permission to spend money.
00:13:39.000The President of the United States started to get a little lazy.
00:13:40.000Congress started to get a little lazy.
00:13:42.000They said, let's just create this third-party apparatus, three-letter agencies, where we don't actually have to be accountable for the result because we can blame it on them if things go badly.
00:13:55.000But if things go well, we're still the people who the public knows.
00:13:59.000And I think they started attracting very attention-hungry people to those roles as well.
00:14:05.000That's what created it, is people who wanted the glory without the accountability.
00:14:10.000They shunted the accountability to a third unspoken class.
00:14:13.000So the Capitol is a beautiful building.
00:14:17.000Department of Education or the IRS or the FBI, these are drab government buildings.
00:14:22.000Nobody visits that when they visit Washington, D.C.
00:14:24.000Let's put the real accountability over there.
00:14:27.000But then the people who actually say, OK, we're going to assume that position, they're not the people who actually needed the fame or the glory.
00:14:32.000They're the people who actually needed the exercise of power.
00:14:35.000And so in a certain way, everyone got what they needed out of the trade, right?
00:14:39.000The people who are running for elected office today, many of them just want to get on cable news on a given night of the week.
00:14:45.000Well, the same principle applied to actually the people who didn't necessarily care about getting attention, but just actually wanted to exercise raw power.
00:14:54.000And so there was a division of those who got attention, that's what they wanted, versus those who got power, because that's what they wanted.
00:15:01.000And that's steadied in this new equilibrium of having this administrative state that said, okay, we'll exercise all the power.
00:15:07.000You guys just get to get to pretend like you have it and get your dopamine hits from getting on television or getting your attention along the way.
00:15:13.000That's a long story short a big part of what happened.
00:15:16.000Part of what I really appreciate about that explanation is you mentioned it just starting with a little bit of laziness.
00:15:21.000Elected representatives not wanting to do their job to the fullest and most rigorous possible extent and essentially abdicating by trying to delegate to people it shouldn't have been delegated to in the first place.
00:15:33.000And so part of what I try to stress and a thing that I've talked about pretty frequently on the show is that simply slipping a device and having a people who are not aspiring to something higher in a spiritual and moral sense ends up creating a tangle of problems that you never would have anticipated.
00:15:48.000Who would have thought at the time That an elected leader just being a bit lazy, just not wanting to do what he had to do that day, could result in such a massive and bloated bureaucratic state to the point where we ended up having a duly elected president being unseated, or at least having an attempt to unseat him, committed against him by the administrative state.
00:16:10.000Well, I mean, I think that there is something deeper going on in our culture.
00:16:13.000It's probably the deeper explanation to the question you asked as well.
00:16:18.000Which is that we are all so starved for purpose and meaning and identity right now that, you know, if you don't bend the knee to the real thing, you're gonna bend the knee to something, right?
00:16:32.000So, you know, a lot of us, myself included, right, get into this habit of complaining about tyranny in the United States.
00:16:41.000Abuse of governmental power, but that trick only works if you have a population that quietly is hungering to bend the knee to something.
00:16:48.000You don't pledge allegiance to that flag, you're going to pledge allegiance to something.
00:16:52.000There's an old saying, it goes, if you have a hole the size of God in your heart and God does not fill it, something else will instead.
00:16:59.000Like the Israelites are lost in the desert.
00:17:01.000Book of Exodus stuff here, what do they say?
00:17:05.000We want to go back and be ruled by the Pharaoh.
00:17:08.000So in a certain sense, absolutely, absolutely.
00:17:11.000Moses comes down from the mountaintop, what do they do?
00:17:13.000By the time he's come back, they've already got the golden calf.
00:17:16.000So part of this is a culture that sort of demands obeisance.
00:17:23.000And when we think about freedom from the administrative state or the autocracy of government, We owe ourselves a long hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves how we achieve freedom from our own impulse to bend the knee because we are hungry for a higher purpose that we're lacking.
00:17:38.000I think that's the deeper answer to your question.
00:17:51.000No, I think what you're saying is so interesting in context of this whistleblower testimony.
00:17:55.000You know, Joe Ziegler came out and said, you know, I'm a gay man, I'm a Democrat, and I have received threats.
00:18:01.000I've been told I'm a traitor to the Democratic Party because I am disrupting the order and I'm creating division in our country by bringing forth this information.
00:18:09.000And I can't imagine what kind of pressure you must feel, especially because so many people, right and left, but definitely a lot of people on the left, feel as though their membership to the Democratic Party fills these voids.
00:18:20.000It gives them a sense of purpose and identity that really they crave.
00:18:23.000You know, I would say the left has been masterful at filling this void of identity and purpose.
00:18:31.000I don't agree with the prescription, but race, gender, sexuality, climate.
00:18:39.000These are the left's prescription for that void.
00:18:44.000And I think where conservatives have erred, to be honest with you, this is part of what pulled me into this race, where conservatives have gone wrong is that we've gotten complacent with saying that Well, we're going to criticize that vision and point out all of the things that are endlessly wrong with it.
00:19:48.000You were sort of mentioning people looking at political tyranny and not their own lives.
00:19:51.000Augustine said, a man has as many masters as he does vices, and we as a people have unlinked Freedom and virtue from each other, as if freedom has nothing to do with your individual capacity to choose to do good and is merely the circumstance of having many alternatives.
00:20:09.000And then the final quote that it reminded me of was when Solzhenitsyn said, the battle between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.
00:20:18.000Why just look at the administrative state?
00:20:23.000When the evil exists inside of you as well, and you have to do the work to become a more virtuous person if you ever want to fight the evil in the system.
00:20:31.000That said, you made another point here about the left doing a very good job of offering up this counter-narrative to people so they can fill that void.
00:20:42.000I would argue it's even a bit more malevolent than that, and I don't think it's necessarily intentional on the part of all left-wing people who are promoting this, but all of the structures that they've Taken away from us and tried to shame us for caring for
00:20:54.000whether it's a sense of patriotism Whether it's a faith in God and divine revelation
00:21:00.000Whether it is the cherishing of your own family unit all of these things are very important
00:21:06.000They're things man needs but they're also things that man has come to an
00:21:10.000understanding of being important through the exercise of virtue all of these other things like sex or
00:21:18.000race or even this strange kind of reversion to a weird worship of the weather and in signing intentionality to
00:21:24.000climate events is Really incredibly primitive
00:21:28.000I think these are the things that human beings just fall back into or When they don't have a rational way to orient themselves towards the good.
00:21:37.000And as we've torn away the social conventions that have helped us to behave more virtuously, we're falling back into things like group identity or seeing weather patterns as an indication of immoral behavior that needs to be settled, even through things like population reduction, which is really another method of human sacrifice in a somewhat abstracted sense.
00:21:58.000I actually think there's a lot to that because In a certain sense, the thing that separates us from animals is our ability to believe in something bigger than ourselves.
00:22:11.000Animals, as best we know, or non-human animals, don't have that same ability to have faith.
00:22:18.000And so, the fact that that's essential to our humanity, also, the flip side of that, makes it something that we really badly need to fulfill.
00:22:26.000So long as we are actually fully human beings.
00:22:30.000And if we're not going to fill it with the real thing, we're going to fill it with something else.
00:22:33.000And so, my definition of a cult is, in many ways, a religion that has not withstood the test of time.
00:22:41.000And I think that we have the rise of these different secular cults in America that have oddly arisen at the same time in our national history.
00:22:51.000You think it's a coincidence that we bow to the god of climate, as you said.
00:23:06.000It's a separate question of, do you see that at the same time that your identity is based on your race, your gender, your sexuality, and that you're on some intersectional pyramid, higher or lower, based on the combination of those attributes you inherit on the day you're born?
00:23:20.000Or a religion that says the sex of the person you're attracted to is hardwired on the day you're born at the same time that you have to believe that your own biological sex is completely fluid over your life?
00:23:30.000I bring that up because what is a faith-based system or a religious system?
00:23:34.000It's a system where you could espouse otherwise illogical beliefs, right?
00:23:39.000Logic and reason could not lead you to these beliefs, but it has to be a different way of believing them.
00:23:44.000That's what we as a human being have a need for.
00:23:48.000We have a need to have beliefs that defy logic.
00:23:51.000And so if it's not going to be grounded in belief in a traditional religion, belief in God, even belief in a nation, a commitment to a nation is not something that flows out of logic, flows out of something that we as human beings have a desire for, a need for, something bigger than ourselves.
00:24:08.000We're going to channel that impulse to something else.
00:24:12.000But the problem, and this is the danger of it, is not that it's not the time-tested faiths.
00:24:16.000It's the fact that we then trick ourselves into thinking that it isn't faith at all.
00:24:25.000You're exercising a side of your brain that's different than that which you're exercising if you're pouring chemicals in a lab and measuring things.
00:24:33.000But I think what's happened is, in absence of traditional faith and traditional beliefs, where we recognize that we're exercising our faith to believe in these things, we see the rise of new secular religions, secular cults instead, which we fail to recognize are actually religious belief systems.
00:24:51.000And I think the most dangerous religions are the ones that we fail to recognize As religions in the first place, and delude ourselves into thinking that it's actually logic or reason that led us there.
00:25:04.000And that's exactly what's happening in the country today.
00:25:05.000Well, there's a few things I'd say in response to that.
00:25:08.000Firstly, ultimately I do agree with the point that these ideological systems are more or less religions, but rather than having a personal god, they have a much more abstract god, and it generally ends up boiling down to a form of self-worship, usually.
00:25:21.000But I would push back against one part of this.
00:25:23.000I agree that there are many religious systems where the faith does conflict with reason.
00:25:27.000I don't believe faith has to conflict with reason, and I would say part of what's so insidious about this kind of left-wing cult we're seeing and a lot of these bizarre new ideas is it directly does conflict with reason.
00:25:37.000I think there are elements within divine revelation that a person could not have reason to on
00:25:41.000their own, but it doesn't contradict reason.
00:25:45.000Or it's not asking you to accept something which is completely and totally absurd, such
00:25:48.000as your biological sex can change on a daily basis.
00:25:54.000It gives you, ideally, the tools, and this isn't its singular purpose, but it does give
00:25:59.000you the tools, if it's the right system, to interact with the world in a way which is
00:26:24.000And so what I said is a cult is a religious belief system that has not withstood the test of time.
00:26:28.000Part of withstanding the test of time is that I think you do, you withstand the test of time better if it is compatible with reason.
00:26:35.000It's not totally incompatible with reason.
00:26:36.000The problem with these near-term cults, right, the same cult we talked about, the biological sex being fluid versus sex of the person you're attracted to being fixed, call that the cult of LGBTQIA+.
00:26:47.000The cult of climate effectively says that carbon emissions are bad if they come from the United States, but not if they're coming from China.
00:27:31.000This is why I'm obsessed with pulling the carbon dioxide out of the air.
00:27:34.000It'll create another climate crisis where we start to pull too much carbon dioxide out of the air and then we start to compete with the trees and we need like a united global coalition that's working together to not pull too much methane and carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere because that is a valuable resource.
00:27:52.000I think kind of touching on this concept of old ideas and new ideas that Vivek was mentioning, I'm curious, Ian, where do you sort of stand?
00:28:03.000I'll sort of launch into my perspective on this, but I've talked about it before, so I'm curious where you are on this.
00:28:07.000When someone says this is a new idea or that idea is old and conservative and retrograde, what's your response to that?
00:28:13.000Well, often people will try to label liberalism and conservatism as a war between old ideas and new ideas, and conservatives just like the old ideas and liberals like new ideas.
00:28:28.000We can see things from different perspectives with microscopes and telescopes and things.
00:28:32.000Like, when you get a radio telescope and you see the cosmic microwave background radiation, for instance, it's this web of radiation left over from the Big Bang out in the universe.
00:28:56.000So that's like an old idea that is now seen in a new way.
00:29:01.000It doesn't have to be liberal or conservative.
00:29:03.000It's like we're just human, seeing things from different perspectives.
00:29:06.000And if you can I don't know, maybe if you can accept that some people don't see it the way you see it, it'll be a lot easier to convince them of the way you see it.
00:29:16.000Obviously, I would disagree with some of the spiritual proposals that you're making there about the nature of the universe, but what I will say is, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said there's nothing new, and I firmly believe this.
00:29:28.000There's nothing new under the sun, and Vivek, you described a cult as a religion that has not passed the test of time.
00:29:34.000I think that that is a very good way of describing it and it's certainly a helpful way of understanding it.
00:29:39.000The way I've always sort of conceptualized the, you know, war between traditionalism and progressivism is not that you have, you know, old ideas trying to fight new ideas.
00:29:49.000It's that you have ideas that have stood the test of time against ideas that have been tried and have failed so miserably that people forgot about them and now they're trying them again.
00:29:58.000I think it's very hubristic to say that man has been Thinking about such matters for virtually all of human history, and now we've discovered something which is totally unique and totally new.
00:30:07.000I think in terms of technological development, there are certain things we can discover that are unique to our place and time, but when it comes to human moral behavior, these things are constants.
00:30:16.000But you know the problem, and you mentioned this too Vivek, that the big problem that's happening in the conservative movement I see right now is that people are screaming no at these things that are rallying people in the liberal, whatever, economic movement that are like climate science, whatever, whatever, and rather than offer another idea it's just no that's bad, that's bad, and that's not functional, it's not inspiring.
00:30:36.000That doesn't move people towards Being the true version of themselves they want to be, which is what we all hunger for.
00:30:43.000And so, you know, when I say the left offers this narrative grounded in race, gender, sexuality, climate, well, what I'm in this race doing, hopefully, is articulating a different vision, grounded in the individual, the family, nation, God.
00:31:23.000Why do we need those pillars of identity?
00:31:24.000The way I look at it is we are, in many ways like human beings, the analogy I would use, we're like blind bats, lost in a cave, trying to figure out where we are.
00:31:37.000So how does a blind bat figure out where it is?
00:32:06.000Off of my belief in this nation, that I'm a citizen of this nation, not some nebulous global citizen somewhere, but that I'm a citizen of this nation, in our case, the United States of America.
00:32:50.000And the conservative movement is a bit of a paradox here.
00:32:55.000Because we're supposed to be conserving something, but when the thing we're supposed to be conserving does not exist, Now we have to be in the business of actually recreating something.
00:33:04.000Or if it exists, but the signal is blocked or distorted because of pharmaceuticals like 14-year-olds on Xanax or something crazy.
00:33:13.000You can't experience God properly if your mind is tweaked by drugs.
00:33:17.000I mean, I don't think you can have a healthy baby if you've got amphetamines flushing through your system.
00:33:23.000Like, how can you even learn to love if you're in pain?
00:33:28.000So, not only is it if something is missing, but You need a clear mind.
00:33:32.000What do you think about colonizing Mars?
00:34:10.000To say that I'm going to find my sense of meaning by going somewhere else when I actually could have it right here at home, right?
00:34:19.000There isn't anything we couldn't understand at the atomic level that wouldn't be more edifying and liberating for us that would require us to go to Mars to do instead.
00:34:28.000I'm not denigrating the value of going to Mars.
00:34:31.000I think as a spirit of human advancement and human achievement and a down payment on a future that's much longer than I believe our past has been, that's great.
00:34:41.000But I do, whatever the case may be, I see one serial substitute after another arising saying that, oh no, maybe the thing that's going to give me fulfillment is going to Mars.
00:35:11.000Take care of the people around you, right?
00:35:13.000I think that we'll hear a lot more people worrying about taking care of somebody in the Congo, which I have no problem with somebody in the United States taking care of someone in the Congo, but What's your relationship with your own family?
00:35:28.000And I think that in the same way there's an impulse to say, let me go to Mars as a substitute for self-discovery here at home.
00:35:34.000I'm going to Mars to look for something that I could have found by just taking a long, hard look in the mirror myself, which is actually a deeper journey into the harder question of who I really am and who we really are.
00:35:46.000And I think that's the hard work we sometimes sidestep in terms of talking about the climate or talking about curing hunger on a continent halfway around the world before we actually ask ourselves who we really are and what we're really doing here at home.
00:35:59.000And I think that characterizes the American moment, characterizes why much of the modern left is lost.
00:36:05.000But it also characterizes the work cut out ahead for conservatives, or you don't have to use the label conservatives, but leaders who want to fill that vacuum of purpose and meaning in our country.
00:36:17.000And piggybacking off of what you said here about looking at home for problems that you can solve, this is something I believe that Mother Teresa said when someone asked her about traveling to some other part of the world and helping the poor.
00:36:29.000She was she your response was basically to say what about the spiritual poverty that exists around you?
00:36:35.000What about helping to meet the spiritual needs of the people in your own life who are impoverished in that sense?
00:36:41.000Another thing that you mentioned was caring a lot about your Country having some sense of patriotism and a national identity people having certain values that they stand for As a result of their citizenship in a nation as great as the United States and how a lot of that has been taken away from us Recently there was a song that was released by Jason Aldean he
00:37:07.000He had this music video he put out there.
00:37:09.000It's really making the rounds, and there's been a lot of controversy surrounding it.
00:37:13.000And the song is called Try That in a Small Town.
00:37:16.000And the whole purpose of the song is basically to say, if you're behaving in the disrespectful ways which are generally tolerated in large cities, in which we have been told as a population for decades are morally acceptable, you're going to have some trouble in a small town.
00:37:30.000So the lyrics are, cuss out a cop, You know, he's describing doing things that are violent or unacceptable.
00:37:39.000And then he says, try that in a small town and see how far you make it down the road.
00:38:00.000There are people in the media who have literally referred to this as a pro-lynching anthem, which is the most bizarre, insane, and ridiculous stretch of an interpretation I could possibly imagine.
00:38:15.000So, this idea that traditionally American values are racist, that wanting to protect your community and your town means that you're in favor of lynching and that we need to abandon our American values is so pervasive that a song like this is criticized, whereas you have gangster rap which talks about committing actual crimes and harming innocent people and treating women poorly and doing drugs, and the media never decries that.
00:38:40.000It looks like these lyrics should have had the word if.
00:38:45.000If you cuss out a cop or spit in his face, if you stomp on the flag and light it up, you're gonna pay for it in a small town.
00:38:52.000But the way it sounds, stomp on the flag, cuss out a cop, stomp on the flag, you're gonna pay for it.
00:38:58.000It doesn't have the supposition, so people might be reading into it as if he's telling people to do that stuff.
00:39:05.000They're upset me saying don't do that because gangsta rap tells people to do horrible things like that all the time and there's never a controversy.
00:39:10.000Right, I think part of the problem is we live in a culture where we're not supposed to expect our neighbors to share values with us.
00:39:17.000We're supposed to live and let live and I used to love that phrase when I was younger, right, because it's libertarian ideals and it's not that I don't now but I think Ultimately, the fabric of our society is strong when we have an understanding of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.
00:39:32.000So some of the stuff he's describing here, right?
00:39:34.000Like, don't come to my town and attack law enforcement.
00:39:38.000And we can have all kinds of debates about law enforcement, but we should all mutually agree that we expect one another to preserve our safety, right?
00:39:45.000We don't want that as a social contract to be violated.
00:39:49.000All of these ideas that he's promoting are actually completely reasonable.
00:39:53.000It's just that He is presenting them in a way that people don't like.
00:39:56.000And you're not supposed to tell other people, well, you're not supposed to do this.
00:39:59.000This is against what we're allowed to do.
00:40:01.000We're supposed to let people live and let live however they see fit, which is just toxic ultimately.
00:40:06.000We function the best when we are able to say, I know that my neighbor shares my values and therefore will not look at me and say, well, I'm allowed to do whatever I want and I'm going to.
00:40:17.000Yeah, so I want to ask Vivek how he feels about this, and what your response to this song has been, and also, just in general, the denigration of American values into national identity and how it's brought us to this point.
00:40:32.000Yeah, so I think there's the superficial element of this, which, you know, frankly, others have covered over the course of today as well, which is something I agree with.
00:40:42.000is that anytime you have a song that actually celebrates who we really are, something that a majority of Americans, by the way, at least until very recently, the values enshrined in that song would have united all Americans.
00:40:57.000That's actually what is subject to censorship and cancellation, when in fact, songs that glorify violence or other kinds of undesirable behavior are the ones that we actually end up culturally venerating.
00:41:11.000I do think there's something deeper going on, and it ties to our earlier conversation in the country, which is this idea of whether we believe in concentric circles of loyalty or not, right?
00:41:23.000The song was about a small town, and I think that we were having a discussion earlier about the community.
00:41:30.000I mean, how do you take care of yourself or your family before you're solving global poverty in Ethiopia or whether you're addressing the climate?
00:41:41.000And I think that that's one of the questions we have to regain alignment on.
00:41:51.000But I think that there's a legitimate question of saying that, no, no, no, we don't necessarily have to solve problems at home before we solve them somewhere else.
00:41:58.000Or do we actually take care of the problems on our own street?
00:42:02.000If you try that in a small town, it's like almost, I'm going to stand for my people first.
00:42:06.000I'm going to stand for my family first.
00:42:09.000I'm going to stand for my nation first.
00:42:11.000Is that the right way to think about our commitments or do we have transcendental commitments that go beyond those traditional boundaries somewhere else.
00:42:20.000And I think that's in many ways, it's not a right or left question, it's an interesting question to ponder.
00:42:26.000And I think that that's part of what's going on when we make up these new abstract religions to substitute for the hard thing, which is look in the mirror and ask myself who I am.
00:42:35.000Actually do something kind for my parents or for my family members or my neighbors.
00:42:42.000In some ways, Ukraine has actually become a substitute for this, right?
00:42:51.000Because what are we trying in Ukraine or Russia?
00:42:55.000On one hand, last year, the thing that we said, cluster bombs, that were going to be war crimes are now the very things that we will send over to Ukraine.
00:43:17.000Can I give you an outward symbol that I line up the way that a dominant culture wants me to?
00:43:23.000And I think that's why songs like this are so interesting, is because They make people so- I mean, Variety has this article out saying that it's the most cynical song when really it's a call to action and actual protection.
00:43:34.000This is- I mean, like, look, if you want to argue there's something wrong with the song, I think you're incorrect, but this is the most cynical song of all the songs on air today, of all the songs on the radio?
00:43:46.000It seems like a psychological... I don't want to be too, like, conspiracy, but it seems like a psychological operation with the internet now.
00:43:52.000We've got all the nations of Earth influencing our nation.
00:43:56.000We're all influencing each other, of course, but there are, like, overt applications to corrupt and disband the United States because it's the global leader.
00:44:04.000Who's seeding this, that that's a bad thing to protect your neighbors?
00:44:28.000It's almost so bizarre that that is a very fair question to ask.
00:44:32.000In some ways, China is absolutely responsible for a lot of this, right?
00:44:36.000Because China, you know, the game they have played, I'm going to come back and say that's not the entire explanation, but I think there's a lot of truth to it, though.
00:44:43.000Because China has played this game on our culture for the last 20 some odd years, which is they want our psychic insecurities to flourish.
00:44:51.000They want us to be psychologically insecure, and here's how they do it.
00:44:55.000The spread of global capitalism in the 1990s was actually their way of accomplishing this, where we fell into this trap that said we were going to export Big Macs and Happy Meals, and Western music was a big part of this too, to places like China to spread democracy.
00:45:10.000That was our vision of democratic capitalism in the 1990s.
00:45:13.000Bipartisan consensus, by the way, Republicans and Democrats alike.
00:45:18.000What they realized is, oh, wait a minute.
00:45:20.000We can use these vehicles as a way to actually spread our values back to them.
00:45:27.000They thought they could use our money to get them to be more like us.
00:45:30.000China says, okay, we're going to use access to our market to get America to be more like us.
00:46:03.000So this idea of self loathing of large companies, institutions, entertainment institutions in particular, relentlessly criticizing the United States, while actually staying silent about the actual human rights atrocities in places like China, that started in some ways as a form of a psyop, right by China on the United States to say, we're going to get those institutions that you guys venerate over there, many of them are companies, Or entertainment providers to relentlessly criticize the US because the more you do that, while also staying quiet and criticism on China, the more they're going to roll out the red carpet for those companies and institutions to be able to expand into the Chinese market, which means more money.
00:46:47.000So certainly there was a PSYOP component to this, but that trick only works If we have a culture that's still willing to buy up what they're selling, which goes back to that earlier absence of purpose and meaning and identity in our culture.
00:47:05.000I think you're absolutely right about the fact that the Chinese government has a much better grasp on what is going to tug at the heartstrings and what will upset the sensibilities of the American people, as opposed to the American people's understanding of what is going to upset people in other nations.
00:47:23.000So one story I usually bring about the Biden administration with respect to how effective I think he's been as a leader on the foreign stage is he told this story and again this is him telling this story.
00:47:39.000The story was he met with Vladimir Putin and he said to Vladimir Putin, I don't think you have a soul, man.
00:47:46.000And according to him, Vladimir Putin responded, we understand each other.
00:47:51.000Okay, I hear this story and I go, the President of the United States just told a foreign leader who was waging a war that he thinks he's mean.
00:48:00.000This is not going to upset that foreign leader if this ever even happened.
00:48:05.000On the other hand, what is China doing?
00:48:07.000China tells the United States of America that the United States of America is racist and needs to apologize for being racist, despite the fact that in order to market a film in China, you have to reduce the size of black characters on the poster.
00:48:21.000China doesn't care about racism, but they know that the United States has a hyperfixation on it, so they try to manipulate us with it.
00:48:30.000You touched earlier on- They turn our psychic insecurities against us.
00:49:00.000But as soon as someone in Vietnam says, hey, by the way, that's actually a claim to land that belongs to us, a bunch of Americans suddenly have to go, oh, wait, I've never ever thought about anything that affects you because I take the information that is provided to me without question.
00:49:15.000I mean, there's a lot of reasons why someone in America may not be aware of the territorial map of the South China Sea.
00:49:21.000On the other hand, how interesting that the Barbie movie is suddenly this thing that calls attention to the subtle claim from China to this historical area.
00:49:46.000And by the way, the old Top Gun, the Maverick jacket that had the Taiwan and the Japanese flag on it, in the revised cut of the movie, that had disappeared.
00:49:58.000In the original cut, you know, it was actually real.
00:50:00.000In the original movie, it was actually the original version.
00:50:03.000There was actually an identified enemy nation.
00:50:04.000We're talking about the US and USSR, an actual rival.
00:50:10.000China's first read was that this movie was too patriotic for the US to be played in China.
00:50:17.000So they come back and make those concessions.
00:50:18.000So part of that, that's micro, that's at the margin, right?
00:50:22.000Well, the Japan flag and the Taiwan flag no longer show up.
00:50:25.000It's a nebulous, alternative enemy arrival, as though it was disconnected with the present reality in the United States, made it slightly less patriotic than it otherwise was.
00:50:37.000Is it any surprise that you then see the same types of reactions from the same movie industry associations or recording industry associations that then are engaged in self-flogging here in the United States, even as they will expand into the Chinese market without a peep?
00:50:54.000So I do think that there is a cynical force at work here, Ian.
00:50:57.000I think you're totally right about that.
00:51:00.000But I don't think it's the whole explanation.
00:51:03.000That just amplifies A deeper insecurity that still existed in the first place.
00:51:08.000Yeah, I think a lot of insecurity comes from drug abuse from the pharmaceutical industry.
00:51:11.000We've been broken by the opiate crisis in the nineties into whatever's going on now with fentanyl.
00:51:15.000I mean, I've been through drug abuse, I know, and it wasn't hard drugs, it was weed for the most part, and I've been through alcohol, some alcohol abuse.
00:51:24.000I had to find, I started minds because I didn't know I was asked to be a part of it, thank God, and I found purpose and I'm beginning to claw my way back to be Being able to love myself again, but these kids that are on the drugs!
00:52:16.000All right, I think we have to actually re-enter some of the deals we exited, trade deals we exited, with places like Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, Vietnam.
00:52:27.000You go straight around the Pacific Rim.
00:52:29.000I think we have to re-enter that to say that I'm now in a position to sit across the table
00:52:34.000from Xi Jinping and say we're cutting the cord.
00:52:36.000There was one though, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
00:53:15.000That then puts me in a position as the president to sit across the table from Xi Jinping and he'll know I mean it when I say we're cutting the cord.
00:53:37.000Unless you either radically reform and play by the same rules, no IP theft, no data theft, but also no turning companies into your one-sided cultural and political lobbying pawns in the United States, And if you don't meet our conditions, then we're out.
00:53:53.000I actually think Xi Jinping meets our demands.
00:53:56.000Yeah, and I think that's a very good point.
00:53:59.000There's something you mentioned there a little bit earlier about global capitalism and how this neoliberal vision has resulted in us allowing ourselves to be susceptible to the economic leverage of hostile nations.
00:54:12.000There was this idea that was very popular that I became familiarized with heavily in my libertarian phase.
00:54:17.000Known as the Golden Arches Theory, basically this idea that two nations with a McDonald's have never gone to war with one another.
00:54:22.000Well, surprise surprise, Russia and Ukraine both have McDonald's there in operation.
00:54:28.000Now on this question of countries that we are allied with decoupling or just tension growing with nations that we're hostile to, it seems as if we're seeing something similar in the U.S.
00:54:42.000just with respect to our own States, which is kind of a segue here into a story about another bus of migrants which was carried from Texas to Los Angeles.
00:54:53.000So this is something we've seen in the news repeatedly.
00:54:57.000In this instance, the bus left Brownsville, Texas on Monday at 425 local time and arrived at Union Station at 630.
00:55:02.000It had 45 asylum seekers from various countries, including Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Venezuela, according to the coalition For humane immigrant rights, I apologize.
00:55:16.000mentions here in the article that the bus included 37 adults and eight children with the largest group of
00:55:20.000migrants 23 people hailing from Venezuela, so it seems to me as if people who are in states
00:55:28.000that are more wealthy and further from the border Don't have as much of a problem with unfettered migration
00:55:34.000And of course people in border towns who are actually directly affected by it do have an issue with it
00:55:41.000Now what we often hear from left-wing activists on this issue is there's simply a failure of empathy on the part of
00:55:46.000people who believe The federal government should have any oversight over who's
00:55:50.000crossing the border or that border patrol should be able to do its job in securing
00:55:53.000our border. Of course, the irony is they're totally incapable of being compassionate towards people
00:55:59.000who live in border states and actually have to wrestle with the struggles of unfettered migration.
00:56:04.000You know, look, it's actually an area for national unity that I see here.
00:56:08.000So I ended up visiting a couple months ago now I visited the south side of Chicago.
00:56:37.000If you were making $90k a year and spending all of it each month without saving anything, and not paying your taxes, that's how much you'd be spending each month.
00:56:46.000Because these are illegal migrants by definition.
00:56:48.000And so people in that town—and by the way, this is far-left, supposedly far-left territory, hard Democratic stronghold, not a place where Republican politicians go.
00:56:58.000Frankly, not even a place where many Democrat politicians go.
00:57:01.000Who were probably more strongly in favor of closing the border than even many traditional Republican donors who I meet with on a given basis.
00:57:13.000And that's interesting to me because that's that's an America first principle, right?
00:57:19.000It doesn't fit in the Democratic Republican boundaries, but they're asking a legitimate question which goes back to that earlier conversation.
00:57:25.000We were having why are we taking care of somebody else first instead of starting right here?
00:57:42.000Which I think is not an unreasonable question to ask.
00:57:46.000And so anyway, this issue around border security, I think there is far more consensus in this country across traditional boundaries than the media would have you believe.
00:57:57.000Traditional media would have you believe, certainly.
00:57:59.000I think that most Americans who I've met support the idea that I've advanced, which is that building the wall isn't enough.
00:58:06.000I mean, look, you want to talk about how fentanyl gets into this country?
00:58:09.000There's cartel-financed tunnels underneath those walls now.
00:58:14.000Much of what people think they're buying is Percocet or weed or whatever is often even laced now with fentanyl.
00:58:21.000But the way we solve that problem and the migrant crisis along with it is use our military to secure that southern border.
00:58:28.000We're now using our military equipment and resources to secure somebody else's border halfway around the world.
00:58:34.000Let's use our own military to secure our own southern border.
00:58:36.000I think we do it for our northern border too.
00:58:39.000That's how you address the actual crisis.
00:58:42.000And I think that there's broad consensus around that because just walk down the list.
00:58:46.000Do you believe that nations should have borders?
00:58:49.000Some people haven't... It's not a nation without borders.
00:58:53.000That's certainly my belief, but there are certain people who will say we shouldn't have borders and whatever.
00:58:56.000Okay, fine, let's smoke that out and get that on the table.
00:58:58.000But that's a tiny fringe minority of people.
00:59:01.000Most people in this country say they want borders, but then if you want borders, then... Okay, if you believe in a border, then have a border.
00:59:07.000And if we can't use our own military to secure our own border, that means we don't believe in the existence of the importance of that border in the first place, which is why I said I would close that loop.
00:59:18.000I see birthright citizenship as a danger to the people who are being trapped across the border, right?
00:59:23.000This promise that if you are born in America you get to stay means that you're going to be willing to take huge risks to get here, which we know are incredibly dangerous to everyone involved.
01:00:02.000So I'm strongly opposed to policies that would separate kids from their parents.
01:00:09.000I think that that was discussed even in the Trump administration and otherwise as a tactic for deterring people from coming.
01:00:18.000As a pro-family leader, I will not adopt such a policy, but we will send back the family unit as such.
01:00:26.000And I think that if you came to this country illegally, the right answer is you have to be sent back to your country of origin, come back through the same legal means, getting in the same line that everybody who's coming into this country legally is already pursuing.
01:01:05.000That's why the Romans invaded their neighbors, because you had to create a perimeter of defense.
01:01:09.000And I don't want to see, I don't want a war with Mexico, but if they're going to allow an invasion, it's like, what other choice have they left us with?
01:01:18.000So I think there's a couple things that I would make as hardline policies here.
01:01:23.000End any form of foreign aid to Mexico or Central America until the border crisis is dealt with period.
01:02:44.000Are you going to make a contribution to this country?
01:02:47.000And then crucially, there's a second element to this too, for me.
01:02:50.000Do you actually know something about this country and demonstrate a desire to be a part of it?
01:02:56.000And so this was where the question of birthright citizenship goes deeper for me, is I don't think citizenship should be something that anybody automatically takes for granted, born here or not.
01:03:07.000I think every 18-year-old should have to pass the same civics test that an immigrant has to pass in order to become a naturalized citizen in this country.
01:03:57.000And then just because you're born here, doesn't mean that the act of just being born today,
01:04:02.000born and happened to have arbitrarily been in the United States of America.
01:04:06.000There's something beautiful about birthright citizenship in the American experiment, which is to say that your citizenship in this country is not based on your ethnicity or your allegiance to a monarch or even your religion.
01:04:20.000That it's anybody who's born here can be a citizen.
01:04:23.000I would take that to the next level to say it's not just about being born here, but anybody who truly makes contributions to this country and pledges allegiance to this country and knows something about the country.
01:04:33.000They're the ones who actually are the true capital C citizens.
01:04:37.000And that's, I mean, many people find that view radical, maybe it is?
01:04:45.000Yeah, well, this is something I've heard you say in the past, that you would have people who are over the age of 18 take a civics test before they're able to vote, and then once they get to 25, they can vote in general, but you would restrict voting between that age gap.
01:05:00.000I actually happen to think that that's a good idea.
01:05:02.000I don't know that I'm saying I would specifically endorse that exact policy or how it would flesh out, but when I hear it, it sounds right to me.
01:05:08.000Because historically in this country, the voting age was 21 years old, and this was at a time when you were expected to be on your own taking care of yourself at the age of 16.
01:05:16.000So by the time you got to voting age, you knew a thing or two about the world.
01:05:41.000Eighteen-year-olds are not in a position where they know enough about the world where they're qualified to vote, and if they are in that position, they are a minority, and we should have a kind of test to vet for those people.
01:06:19.000And so the implementation of this proposal, it's been a little while since I talked about it, and it wasn't Believe me, I think people will believe me when I say this.
01:06:28.000I was not doing this to score political points.
01:06:31.000This did not poll particularly well as an idea.
01:06:34.000My job is to persuade people that this is what we need to revive in our country.
01:06:39.000So right now, I'll remind you of something that a lot of people forget.
01:06:44.000We have a selective service requirement in the US.
01:06:48.000Men between the age of 18 and 25 have to, on pain of criminal penalty, that means potentially going to jail, register for selective service.
01:07:07.000I don't think that that should be the way we do things here.
01:07:10.000But in replacement of that, I say, you're free.
01:07:12.000You're not going to jail whether or not you register for selective service.
01:07:15.000But if you want the ultimate civic privilege in this country of voting before the age of 25, then pass the darn civics test.
01:07:22.000And if tests aren't for you, then serve the country for six months, either in the military or in a first responder role.
01:07:28.000And I think that is an absolutely fair thing to ask.
01:07:32.000But it's also, and I'm going to make a prediction on this, voting rates in this country amongst young people, which are already really low, We'll skyrocket after you actually make the act of voting mean something.
01:07:48.000It's been a long time since we've done that.
01:07:51.000And one thing that I find particularly suspicious about the Democratic establishment today is that so many of their efforts are catered towards people they know are going to be uninformed voters.
01:08:01.000So, for example, you see these get out and vote commercials on television where a celebrity tells you that you should go select a certain candidate, and they won't necessarily tell you to vote for the Democrat.
01:08:10.000But the question is, if a person wasn't going to vote until Will Ferrell told them to, is this really someone we want voting in our elections?
01:08:19.000And I think the answer to that question is genuinely no.
01:08:22.000If you're only going to vote because a celebrity told you to, You probably don't know or care enough to be in the voting booth.
01:08:27.000So we're constantly hearing about the civic duty to vote.
01:08:30.000Well, what about the civic duty to be informed?
01:08:33.000And I think it's a really good idea to have a test that tries to select for people on the basis of how much they actually know about the system.
01:08:41.000Yeah, and I think studies bear out that when people are bought into something, when they have to govern it and protect it, they have to participate through civic participation, they have to take a test to show that they are part of the system, they are more likely to feel the sense of duty.
01:09:19.000I say that if you want to vote between the ages of 18 and 25, you either have to pass the same civics test that every
01:09:27.000immigrant has to pass in order to become a voting citizen of this country.
01:09:31.000Or else, serve for six months, either in a military or first responder role.
01:09:36.000Okay, because there's like a, I don't want to call them an underclass, but there's people with low nutrition that their parents have been very poor, raised the descendants of slaves, for instance, that didn't have access to money, wealth, education, and nutrition.
01:09:48.000And the IQ, I mean, that can affect IQ, you know, not having good nutrition.
01:10:18.000It's one that's active in place today to say that if you're an immigrant to the country, even if you've paid taxes for 10 years or whatever, There's a process required to go through being a voting citizen of this country.
01:10:29.000For 99.9% of people, it means taking that test and passing it.
01:10:32.000Are there 0.1% exceptions, you know, handicapped of various kinds?
01:10:37.000Follow the same rubric that you do for immigrants.
01:10:40.000But my point is, at the age of 18, you shouldn't just passively age into citizenship, just like someone who comes to this country doesn't passively get to enjoy the privileges of citizenship.
01:10:51.000And I want to use that to just raise a deeper point.
01:10:53.000I haven't brought this up before in conversations about this, but I like this format.
01:10:57.000We're actually having a real conversation, and this is not like a two-minute TV hit where we're just checking off boxes.
01:11:13.000I think this is the direction of where we're going to have to go, if we're reviving the country, to actually have open and unfiltered conversations.
01:11:22.000What you should do as president is have these things daily.
01:12:47.000What I say to people who might disagree with me, and I try to practice what I preach too, is you get a new idea, try it on like a set of clothes.
01:13:07.000Maybe citizenship is actually about duty.
01:13:09.000Maybe that's actually what the whole thing is about in the first place, is to say that, you know what, I live in a free society that allows me, people like me, a kid of parents who came to this country as immigrants with no money in their pocket, who goes on to found multi-billion dollar companies at the age of 37 and self-finance a presidential run by putting tens of millions of dollars of my own hard-earned money to it.
01:13:54.000I think there is a culture that demands that it be given and it be allowed to take, but it does not give back.
01:13:59.000And so I completely agree with everything that you just said there.
01:14:04.000There's a conception of rights which was, I would say, much more common historically than it is today, but it's basically the idea that rights are a product of duties and not vice versa.
01:14:18.000So today, our understanding is basically as follows.
01:14:22.000Well, you have rights, and you just have them.
01:14:42.000There are things you are made to do as a person.
01:14:44.000And because you are made to do these things, you have an obligation to do them.
01:14:48.000For example, a man has an obligation to care for his family.
01:14:52.000Because he has an obligation to care for his family financially and provide for them, that means He has a right to seek out licit methods of providing for them uninterfered with, or a person has a duty to protect themselves.
01:15:04.000If you have a duty to protect yourselves, then you have a right to the best possible tool necessary for protecting yourself, which is why we have something like the Second Amendment.
01:15:12.000But I find that almost everyone in politics gets this entirely backwards.
01:15:16.000They say you have the right and then the duty, but the truth is, no, you have the right because you have a duty.
01:15:21.000Yes, and that is, so in a simple framework, that's what I'm saying is, At the age of 18, you think about, OK, I have an obligation to at least serve or at least to know something about the country.
01:15:30.000And then I have an equal voice and vote in determining that direction.
01:15:35.000But that policy, like, you know, I've gotten into a lot of discussions in the last few months about it.
01:15:39.000It's almost obsessing over the detail with false precision about one idea that's part of a broader worldview that I bring to the idea of citizenship in this country itself.
01:15:52.000I think we need to revive that idea of civic duty.
01:15:57.000Fallen into the trap of thinking that American identity is all about individualism, right?
01:16:04.000And I don't apologize, by the way, for free market capitalism.
01:16:07.000I'm an unapologetic embracer of free market capitalism, the best known system to man to lift people up from poverty.
01:16:14.000But I just don't think that's the whole story.
01:16:15.000I think there's a separate and important equally co-equal story that we're also part of a nation that's bigger than the sum of its parts, that we as citizens, not as capitalists, But as citizens owe a duty to that nation.
01:17:30.000Christ gives himself up willingly to death for us.
01:17:33.000And that idea is woven into the idea of citizenship itself, is that there's a certain sacrifice required to be a citizen.
01:17:40.000That's an example of a Judeo-Christian value woven into, not a direct democracy, but a constitutional republic, which involves those civic duties.
01:17:55.000And I think something very insidious has happened here with a decoupling of markets from an understanding of what man is.
01:18:02.000The fact that man is not merely matter.
01:18:05.000He is matter and spirit and he has spiritual needs.
01:18:09.000Capitalism, stripped of any reference to the supernatural, to our creator, to spirituality, and communism both suffer from a massive flaw, which is that they essentially promote the idea that if we just rearrange matter properly, we will unlock utopia.
01:18:31.000The physical world is just a combination lock.
01:18:34.000And if we can arrange things in the exact right manner, we're gonna unlock the gates of heaven and everyone will be happy for the rest of history.
01:18:41.000We'll reach this kind of Hegelian, pseudo-eschatonical end to everything.
01:18:47.000And of course, that's complete nonsense.
01:18:49.000If you ignore what man is and you only focus on production and moving forward raw economic forces without reference to what is good for man, you end up in an A horribly, unbearably spiritually impoverished environment, and often a very materially poor environment as well, because when people don't cultivate those virtues, as it turns out, they don't even end up retaining their ability to produce as well.
01:19:13.000You talked about Judeo-Christian values.
01:19:15.000I was thinking about the second commandment.
01:19:24.000And so these international banks, the Bank for International Settlements, the Federal Reserves, Bank of England, Bank of Australia, they're waving us around with like a carrot.
01:19:34.000You want to be part of this false idol?
01:19:36.000Like, they're dangling the false idol there.
01:19:38.000So, I've heard you talk about redirecting our investments away from indexes that play the black rock game and into some sort of, I don't know what you call it, a national index or something that is like a, that values Not Christian values, but just values like – not even American values, man.
01:19:54.000Values that incur freedom, like natural American-born freedom.
01:19:59.000Yeah, so let me – this is such an interesting topic here.
01:20:04.000So let's just pick up from – Adam Smith's first book was actually about ethics.
01:20:08.000The second book was actually about the wealth of nations and his view is there has to be a moral society for capitalism to be able to work its magic on.
01:20:19.000And I believe the same thing, by the way.
01:20:21.000I think that capitalism is the best system known to organize a society's affairs if our, it's the perfect system, if our wants actually match our needs.
01:20:35.000And the difference, the little daylight between our wants and our needs might be a crude definition of this thing we call virtue.
01:20:42.000So I think capitalism against the backdrop of a virtuous society for organizing stuff, you know, Things, tangible material goods.
01:20:51.000It's a perfect system for organizing the distribution of goods against the backdrop of a virtuous society where our wants match our needs.
01:20:58.000But modern social media or otherwise has called that bluff.
01:21:01.000That our wants, the modern pharmaceutical market, drug market, our wants don't always match our actual true needs as human beings.
01:21:09.000So then, this is actually what temptingly led to the birth of a movement that I strongly disagree with.
01:21:15.000A movement that had an answer to that question, nonetheless.
01:21:18.000That was what gave birth to the rise of stakeholder capitalism, right?
01:21:23.000I say this as someone who's a critic, probably the most unsparing critic of stakeholder capitalism in America in the last four years, but I say this to give the best shake to the view, is it says that capitalism was made for moral people, and so we need to re-infuse the morality into capitalism itself to say that when we're allocating dollars, we're taking environmental or social factors into account, not just the fetishization of green pieces of paper, that there's more to the story.
01:21:56.000I'm giving as charitable and, you know, true, truly empathetic account as I can.
01:22:03.000I have a different worldview of how to deal with it, right?
01:22:06.000My view is let the green pieces of paper be the green pieces of paper.
01:22:14.000But there's a separate sphere of our lives in our body politic, in the civic sphere of our lives, or the spiritual sphere of our lives, Where that money ought to have no influence whatsoever.
01:22:29.000And so, I'm one of these people who resists the idea of infusing those moral judgments into how the dollars are allocated, but instead to make sure the allocation of dollars in that sport of capitalism is just one of many spheres, maybe even one of many small spheres, of a total life well-lived and a society well-functioning.
01:22:50.000And so part of my objection to stakeholder capitalism is that it wrongfully marries our body politic with our system of allocating goods and services and stuff, when in fact I don't think we need Capitalism and democracy to share the same bed, what I think we actually need is a clean divorce.
01:23:10.000And both of those are part of what it means to be American.
01:23:13.000So anyway, to your question, what was happening with these index funds, BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard, what they said is, not only are we going to use your money to buy stocks in the overall stock market, but we're also going to use your money to vote for certain environmental and social agendas that it turns out many people, most people in this country do not agree with.
01:23:34.000Racial equity audits, we could go down the list.
01:23:40.000And that's co-mingling a social agenda into capitalism, where you're supposed to, your investment dollars are supposed to go to the best investments they could find and vote for the best policies they can to maximize profit.
01:23:52.000So actually what I started was a separate way of creating index funds, a company called Strive that said the same investments but with a different philosophy of voting, focusing on excellence over political agendas.
01:24:06.000Yeah, so this is an important question.
01:24:09.000So at the individual level, I think excellence or meritocracy refers to any system in which you are free to realize your maximal potential without anybody standing in your way, whatever your God-given potential is.
01:24:26.000Maybe it's on the basketball court, maybe it's As a musician, maybe it's in the classroom or in mathematics, that you're able to achieve your maximal potential.
01:24:34.000That's what excellence means at the individual level.
01:24:36.000At the level of a company, I think it means that you have a mission, a worthy mission, and that your job is to exclusively excel at that mission.
01:24:47.000That doesn't mean that there aren't other worthy missions for other companies or institutions to pursue, but let another company or another institution pursue it.
01:24:55.000But your company Your job is to achieve your mission, and yes, unapologetically, create value for the people who back you in the process.
01:25:05.000If their mission is to, you know, stop climate change, like, these vague or weird, like, racist missions, do you still support the excellence of those?
01:25:15.000So those are very unlikely to survive in a system of capitalism because the way capitalism works is you have to provide something of tangible value to someone that exceeds the cost of what it takes for you to provide it to them.
01:25:55.000Whatever it is, if it's a worthy mission and you stick to your mission, Great, that's how you actually maximize long run value for shareholders.
01:26:03.000But my problem is you say your mission is to develop medicines to save people's lives, or to develop notebooks that people can capture their thoughts in.
01:26:13.000And yet, you're also claiming to solve climate change and racial injustice at the same time.
01:26:20.000That is something other than what I would call the pursuit of corporate excellence.
01:26:24.000When you are looking for corporate excellence, like a bigger return than what you're putting into it, what's the time scale?
01:26:29.000Because a lot of people argue, well, we're just going to put money in at a loss for 20 or 40 years until you see that the world is now better because there's less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
01:26:39.000So I think each investor has to define for themselves what their time horizon is, but I believe that we're talking over long-term time horizons.
01:26:46.000Now, this long-termism argument has become A cover, a smokescreen for effectively advancing agendas that had nothing to do with excellence or value creation, but in the guise of saying, but 500 years from now, when we and our kids and our grandkids are dead and gone, it will have created value.
01:29:36.000I mean, I ended up getting, I know things worked out for me, but a lot of my peers who entered the workforce at the same time are jaded and cynical, saying that, hey, it was supposed to be that if you worked hard, and you did your part, that you could get ahead through your own dedication.
01:29:49.000Well, that's not the way it worked out.
01:29:50.000And the guys who got bailed out weren't the guys who did any of that at all.
01:29:53.000So I do think that there's a jaded generation that has good reason.
01:30:01.000I was told that I get a four-year college degree, I take on all this debt, I'm going to get that job, enter the workforce, pay that back through my unheard work, but then there's this 2008 financial crisis.
01:30:09.000Oh, and the guys who get bailed out are the guys who actually made tens of millions of dollars to their drivers, drive them home from the 85 Broad Street downtown to Goldman Sachs or wherever it is, musing about how terrible the financial system is while they go to their penthouse on the Upper East Side in their car service while I'm still just joined Without with college debt, no money in the bank being told that if I work hard, I just got laid off.
01:30:29.000So I think that there's a there's a version of this that the seer timing of when many millennials.
01:30:38.000They were given good reasons to be jaded because they were promised and told one thing about the American dream, and what they actually lived was another.
01:30:48.000And so that's the charitable and sympathetic account.
01:30:50.000The cynical account is, well, we're still in this hating your prior generation of baby boomers that you're not going to stack up to, so you might as well claim to be morally superior to them.
01:30:59.000I think it's a little bit of both going on.
01:31:03.000My own philosophy, and I'm not tooting my own horn here, I'm just saying this in the small hope that this gives some inspiration to people who may be able to live the same dream that I have.
01:31:20.000Hardship is something that happens to you.
01:31:21.000My parents actually encountered plenty of it as we were growing up.
01:31:25.000My dad faced You know, I think a ruthless round of layoffs at GE under Jack Welch's tenure when my dad was, you know, 10 steps down the totem pole in their org chart.
01:32:20.000And hardship is not the same thing as victimhood.
01:32:24.000And I share that because there are legitimate grievances that many Millennials and Gen Z members growing up in our American economy can have.
01:32:31.000But honestly, for most of human history, most people of any skin color or whatever, we all have some grievance we can latch on to.
01:32:38.000But I think a big part of where we landed in this case of self-loathing was this deeper psychic insecurity, that we're actually afraid of trying to realize our full potential, because if we fail, we're afraid of that failure.
01:32:53.000We're afraid to match up to the standards set by the great man or baby boomer generation that came before us.
01:32:59.000That's a long answer to your question, but...
01:33:02.000I think the idea of choice is really important.
01:33:04.000I think, you know, I'm also a first-generation American and I think about that regularly when you have the choice to be here, when you have the choice to be in America and to live your life this way and to raise your family here.
01:33:14.000So I think that's such a good theme to close on.
01:33:20.000So it's English speaking for sure, but definitely there are cultural differences.
01:33:24.000And I think growing up without family support, it's just a whole mindset that you chose to be here.
01:33:28.000And I remember this idea of young celebrities saying, well, if Trump wins, then I will move to Canada and being like, You have no idea what you were born into.
01:33:36.000You guys are so privileged you can't see it.
01:34:03.000It is a hollowed out husk of this thing we call capitalism.
01:34:06.000Is it capitalism where we're engaging in global free trade with a mercantilist actor in the form of the Chinese Communist Party that has non-financial political demands as a condition for expanding and doing business there?
01:34:18.000Is it capitalism for Airbnb to hand over the user data of American users as a condition for expanding into the Chinese market?
01:34:25.000It's not, but let me answer your question.
01:34:27.000Is it capitalism when you have the Federal Reserve printing and raining money from on high like mana from heaven?
01:34:33.000It's like, is it really skiing if you're skiing on artificial snow?
01:34:37.000Well, you're not skiing anymore if they turn off the snow machine, which is what's happened now with tight monetary policy.
01:34:41.000So, as a side note, and I think I'm the only, certainly on the Republican side, the only presidential candidate talking about this, I think we have to restore dollar stability as the sole mandate of the U.S.
01:36:01.000Yeah, the way I like to think of it is it's almost like we're running this casino and then we're going, people aren't spending enough money at the casino.
01:36:09.000It's like, no, that's not how this works at all.
01:36:11.000So in the fall of ancient Rome, right?
01:36:14.000There's some deep parallels to what we see in the United States today.
01:36:18.000So Septimius Severus, well, it's a fun story about Septimius Severus.
01:36:23.000He's weirdly an emperor that now, in contemporary modern, contemporary Western history, we've somehow decided to celebrate because HBO, or I can't remember which network it was, created the series calling him the Black Emperor.
01:36:35.000He apparently had darker skin than the other Roman emperors.
01:36:38.000And so, anyway, we remember him really well.
01:36:41.000They made the series that's the first Black man to walk on England soil came not as a slave, but as a conqueror.
01:36:51.000But actually, it turns out he was a disastrous emperor.
01:36:53.000As a side note, the Romans didn't see him as a black emperor.
01:36:56.000They just saw him as a guy who had slightly darker skin, just like, you know, we have different shades of eye color today.
01:37:01.000That's the way they looked at people who had different skin colors.
01:37:02.000They were all Romans as citizens, by the way, to tie up our earlier conversation.
01:37:08.000But anyway, this guy, he was a terrible emperor.
01:37:09.000One of the reasons he was terrible is he just kept diluting the value of silver in the denarius.
01:37:14.000And he would just go on spending sprees for money they didn't have, and it was like 160th, and then it was like 1,600th of the amount of silver was left in the denarius.
01:37:25.000But back in his day, the way they would do it, replenish it, was the Black Emperor would go to Northern Africa and just plunder a bunch of silver, you know, rape and pillage, and then come back.
01:37:35.000We don't do things that way anymore, and so in a certain sense, The parallels between the end of the Roman Empire or, you know, one of the many ends of the so-called ends of the Roman Empire and where we are today are somewhat striking, but we don't even avail ourselves of the same tactics that Septimius Severus or others would have used in the ending days of the Roman Empire today.
01:37:56.000So this is timeless principles is my point.
01:40:42.000I take a lot of inspiration from Nelson Mandela.
01:40:45.000Okay, Nelson Mandela was a guy who brought together a nation who was far more divided than ours is today.
01:40:53.000And one of the things, I mean, I've been very vocal about this in this presidential campaign.
01:40:57.000I've said that I would pardon Donald Trump if I'm elected president.
01:41:00.000I do not want to see my competition eliminated.
01:41:03.000I want to win this election by convincing the voters of this country that I'm best positioned to take the America First agenda forward, not by having the federal administrative state eliminate my competition.
01:41:15.000I think there will come a time when once we have spoken the truth, and I don't think we're there yet, I think there are truths that yet still need to be exposed, where I would be willing to say that we go around the table 360 degrees, we acknowledge the truth, we will not lie, we will not sweep it under a rug.
01:41:37.000But we will lay down arms and say we are moving forward as one nation.
01:41:42.000And I know a lot of people aren't going to be thrilled about me saying that, right?
01:41:45.000Because I think we're in a mood, a national mood right now to say that, no, no, no, our goal, we are at war internally in the country and we want to pummel the other side into the ground using the same means that they've been exploiting in the other direction.
01:42:27.000And so in my journey, take office of January 2025, I'll be leading a nation and not a political party.
01:42:38.000And that is an idea that I am very open to after we've gotten to the truth of the matter of all of the ways in which the government has actually lied to us.
01:43:20.000That is what the United States is all about.
01:43:22.000But yeah, so did you have an answer to that?
01:43:25.000I think you kind of addressed a lot of that during the show.
01:43:27.000Yeah, I mean, I am fundamentally anti-government.
01:43:33.000But a limited government that we the people cause to come into existence, that's the bargain of its existence.
01:43:39.000And my problem today is that we tell ourselves we live in a three-branch constitutional republic when in fact the political power is exercised by that fourth branch of government.
01:43:50.000So actually I'm flying literally minutes after that we're done here to New Hampshire where tomorrow I will be delivering a speech laying out exactly how I will shut down the administrative state on strong constitutional and legal authority.
01:44:06.000And I don't like to boast and brag and whatever, but I'm just going to state something that I think is true.
01:44:09.000I don't believe in false humility either.
01:44:12.000I think I'm the single presidential candidate who has run in this country in either party in the last 30 years who has the best understanding of how to actually shut down that fourth branch, shut down the deep state, shut down those three-letter agencies.
01:44:26.000And that's what I'm going to be talking about in a pretty extensive speech in New Hampshire tomorrow night.
01:44:32.000Um, we have, oh I'm so sorry here, um, from Alberto Chipres, um, or Chipress, I'm sorry, uh, I'm still, I'm still, excuse me, carrying up in episodes, or I think they meant to say catching up, yeah, I'm still catching up in episodes from last week and couldn't believe how surprised the crew was at the thought of Vivek running as VP.
01:44:56.000I'm still learning about him, but I see him as Trump's VP running mate.
01:45:00.000Well, I don't think you're running to be VP, but I'll let you speak for yourself here.
01:45:04.000Yeah, so I'm not running to be anything other than Vivek President.
01:45:08.000So maybe that's the VP they were talking about.
01:45:21.000I just don't do well in a number two position, right?
01:45:24.000And I think we've all got to each look ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves, how are we going to make a maximal contribution to this country?
01:45:32.000Believe me, there are meaningful ways, big, maybe even more meaningful ways of impacting this country than doing it through politics, including even through the presidency.
01:45:40.000I've written three books in the last two years.
01:45:42.000I built Strive to compete against BlackRock.
01:45:45.000I've built other companies in the past, employed thousands of people in this country.
01:45:49.000There's many ways of driving change in this country.
01:45:52.000And there are actually a lot of other talented politicians in the Republican Party that, you know, I think has a deeper bench than it gets credit for.
01:45:59.000One of those people should take all of the cabinet slots if it's not me.
01:46:04.000I think one of my unique gifts is the ability to be a successful builder and executive and leader.
01:46:11.000And I can't do that from a position where I'm reporting into somebody else.
01:46:14.000I don't think Donald Trump would be particularly effective in a cabinet position either.
01:46:19.000I think certain people are just wired and cut out to do things in a certain way.
01:46:23.000And so when I think about how do I want to use my talents best to advance the interests of this nation?
01:46:29.000And the conclusion I came to is, I think I'm best positioned to reach the next generation, to deliver national pride, to, as an outsider but also somebody who understands the Constitution, shut down that deep state, administrative state, in a way that Trump didn't quite get to.
01:47:15.000Now I'm actually thinking more about cabinet level positions and then also who I'm going to put in positions like the Office of Personnel Management and who's going to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
01:47:25.000Those two positions I think are more important than cabinet level positions.
01:47:28.000They're like the plumbing of the federal government and there I don't want policy wonks.
01:47:34.000I want bulldogs who are going to not try to mediate between me and the administrative state.
01:47:39.000I think this is where some other Republican presidents have fallen short.
01:47:42.000They end up putting people who are ambassadors for the administrative state back to them.
01:47:46.000These people are going to be my bulldogs.
01:47:48.000They need to be fundamentally anti-government.
01:47:51.000I think to succeed in shutting down the administrative state, the person who runs the Office of Personnel Management, the person who runs the Office of Management and Budget, they need to be in their bones fundamentally anti-government to be able to see that through unidirectionally.
01:48:05.000And I don't even want to hear what the administrative state has to say back and using them as a back channel to get back to me.
01:48:11.000That's what I think what happened to Trump, happened to Reagan.
01:48:14.000Happened to many other presidents with the best of intentions.
01:48:16.000These people are going to be bulldogs.
01:48:17.000They're going to go in there, intentionally break it.
01:49:03.000I may have just happened to have seen him in Iowa a few days ago, but deep insight into What's really going on in the American psyche?
01:49:13.000And that's part of the psyche I share.
01:49:15.000And so, you know, I think that you could think of someone anyway, like that sort of a A political priest style figure, right?
01:49:24.000You could then have somebody who's actually going to be a supplement to the Office of Management and Budget or OPM, an executor.
01:49:32.000So you're just bringing additional muscle in.
01:49:33.000I think that's an appealing way to use that position because you're going to need – it's going to require more people who are actual muscle doers to shut down the federal government The executive branch of it than people who are just pontificating about it.
01:49:49.000So I think that's the second model that I think I could use.
01:49:52.000And then the third model would be somebody who's just a domain expert in an area where I lack domain expertise the most.
01:50:00.000And I think that's another model that's worked for me.
01:50:16.000I'm not going to be taking secondhand advice from China to how to end the war in Ukraine, to rethinking our alliances with the UN or NATO, both of which I think have outlived their purposes there.
01:50:26.000But when you think about the other areas of foreign policy, our relations with South America, parts of the Middle East, You know, these are just areas where no human being is going to have expertise in everything.
01:50:36.000But we might bring somebody who has a similar worldview but is able to channel that to other parts of the world.
01:50:40.000So those would be the three different models for Vice President.
01:50:43.000But I want to staff out what the rest of the apparatus looks like because then it'll show which of those three is really the rate limiter that I need.
01:50:51.000And I think any one of those three is a viable choice for the type of person that I'd put in a VP
01:50:57.000We have from Joshua Braugh, the leftist cult worships at the altar of Planned Parenthood.
01:51:04.000This is definitely something I agree with. I've been saying this for a while.
01:51:07.000I would not say that I'm the first person to have come up with this observation, but to
01:51:12.000the left, abortion really is kind of their blessed sacrament.
01:51:15.000It's the thing that they hold in highest esteem I think it it embodies a lot of these values of selfishness and rather than sacrificing One's own pleasure or or comfort or you know lack of desire to face adversity one simply throws another person into the flames or maybe a better way of putting this is Effectively fails to consider the well-being of another, and
01:51:44.000particularly a person who they actually have a strong connection to on the basis of a
01:51:47.000parent-child relationship so they can pursue their own selfish ends. To
01:51:51.000me, that's kind of at the core of everything that leftism values.
01:51:54.000I don't think it's a coincidence that that's the issue that they seem to get most worked up about.
01:52:24.000I think there's something deep in what you say.
01:52:26.000I mean, I think that labels are confining, actually.
01:52:30.000And I think that we should, if I'm getting your point, your point is talk about the content of what your actual beliefs are, don't use the labels to describe it, because then you end up in a circular loop.
01:53:33.000It's always this trade off between yes, you can always be a little bit confining and a
01:53:37.000little less than precise when you use that label but I understand where Seamus is coming
01:53:42.000from where he's crudely getting to a basic concept.
01:53:45.000And so don't fixate on the use of the word leftist, but of the people who have made a fanatical movement around Planned Parenthood as their golden calf.
01:54:00.000It's an interesting observation to make.
01:54:01.000And then as a crude heuristic, we're going to call them leftist for the purposes of now, even though we shouldn't let that label sink in too deep.
01:54:09.000Well, I mean, what I would say is the divide there a little bit.
01:54:12.000Yeah, no term is perfect, at least when you're dealing with politics in the United States where things change so quickly.
01:54:19.000And just because someone's on the right doesn't mean they're doing good things.
01:54:22.000I understand all of that, but it's still a label I believe applies there.
01:54:27.000Noah Sanders says, Yeah, so thank you for that.
01:54:29.000You're an outsider who is independently wealthy, making one of the hurdles that candidates
01:54:45.000You know, it's something I struggle with because one of the main problems, and I've only seen
01:54:50.000this since I've entered this race, is what kind of chokehold the donor class, the mega
01:54:57.000donor class has over the Republican Party.
01:54:59.000I'm the only candidate in this race who certainly will be on that debate stage who is entirely independent of a class that views themselves as puppet masters for politicians who they view as their puppets.
01:55:13.000But then that leaves the option of, you know, limiting the people who are actually truly independent to being those who have actually succeeded at a scale that shouldn't be a requirement for entering public service.
01:56:07.000So in some ways, I'd give you that general category of advice, whether it's to succeed as a capitalist, which then puts you in a position to maybe independently serve the country in many ways, philanthropically, politically, or otherwise.
01:56:18.000But even if you're not choosing the self-money-making track, I think one of the ways of having an impact, period, including as somebody who may be an aspiring public servant, is to be contrarian and make sure you're right while you're doing it.
01:56:31.000No point in being contrarian and doing the wrong thing.
01:56:33.000But there's really no point in entering public service if you're just going to say the same thing that everybody else is saying, even if it is the right thing, because somebody else could do it instead.
01:57:02.000I actually have to admit, this isn't one of the areas where I've dived deep, but any institution that separates Parents and their children and that has cynical interests behind it.
01:57:16.000Fueling that is a corrupt institution and so denounce it.
01:57:20.000Yes, what I need to do more homework on is what I can actually do about it because a lot of that is actually at the state level.
01:57:32.000President means there are certain problems that bad as badly as you want to to solve them, you have to because the 10th Amendment in this country, the way we're set up, the right thing to do is to leave it to the states to solve that problem.
01:57:43.000But in terms of calling attention to it, And the question was, denounce it?
01:57:49.000Sanctuary Cities was another one you mentioned earlier that I was like, how are you going to federally knock out California's Sanctuary City?
01:57:55.000Yeah, so one of the things is, again, that has to be driven by the states.
01:57:58.000However, there you do have the federal purse power, right?
01:58:01.000These states are all receiving large block grants from the federal government.
01:58:05.000I don't like that system, but so long as we have the system, I'm going to say that you're not going to get money as a municipality or state if you're propping up sanctuary cities.
01:58:16.000Especially because it relates to an issue the federal government ought to be concerned about, which is immigration at the southern border, which is a national crisis, and so any state That's using and creating the incentive for that national problem, that nationwide problem.
01:58:30.000That's a legitimate use of a practice that I also already just don't like, block grants and using the power of the purse with respect to states to drive behavior.
01:58:38.000I'm generally a skeptic of that, but in that limited circumstance, if there's a use case for doing it on proper authority, that would be it.
01:58:53.000I mean, I think we do need a new governor in California, too.
01:58:56.000And I think they'll be much more effective at directly ending the sanctuary city problem there than what I'm going to do as president, but I'll do my part.
01:59:02.000Do you also think that it'll help with immigration at the northern border?
01:59:05.000I've been so stunned to see the rapid increase of illegal immigration at the northern border through Canada.
01:59:16.000I think when we look at the undeployed troops or troops that are deployed in places they shouldn't be, we absolutely have enough to be able to seal the Swiss cheese of a southern border and to secure most of the vulnerable parts of our northern border as well.
01:59:30.000And I actually think this is one of the ways we revive pride in our military.
01:59:35.000It's one of the things we've lost is the purpose of that institution.
01:59:39.000Fought pointless wars for a long time.
01:59:42.000Young men and women going to die, spending hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
01:59:46.000Now, 25% of young people, actually, young people don't want to serve the military.
01:59:50.000We have a 25% recruitment deficit in the US military last year.
01:59:56.000Part of the way we fix that problem is let's use our military to actually, who would have ever thought, protect the lives of Americans, starting here on American soil.
02:00:06.000So I think that's also one of the ways we solve that crisis of purpose in our military.
02:00:10.000And when the military lacks purpose, that's when wokeism and gender ideology substitute and fill the void.
02:01:14.000We've grown so habituated to celebrating our diversity and our differences That we forgot all of the ways we're really just the same as Americans, bound by a common creed.
02:01:31.000And so what's the parting pitch I want to leave with people?
02:01:35.000It is this, it is E Pluribus Unum, the founding creed of this country, from many, one.
02:01:43.000And if you share that vision with me and you want to see that revived in our country and a national identity around it, Then help me do it.
02:03:21.000Yeah, pleasure meeting you, my friend.
02:03:23.000I didn't get to speak to you previously, and I was really looking forward to it, so it's nice to finally close the loop, I guess you could say.
02:04:06.000We're going to be uploading a lot of streams next week that'll be premiering live if you guys want to check that out.
02:04:12.000And also, if you want to support me financially, become a member at freedomtunes.com and you'll get an extra cartoon each week as well as behind-the-scenes content.
02:04:18.000So, what I want to ask you all to do is smash the like button on this video, share the video if you enjoyed it, and become a member at TimCast.com.