The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1550 - Wesley Hunt

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:12.000 Mr. Hunt, welcome aboard.

00:00:14.000 Happy to be here.

00:00:15.000 Thanks for being here.

00:00:17.000 I really appreciate it.

00:00:18.000 Friend of Dan Crenshaw's is a friend of mine.

00:00:20.000 All of them.

00:00:21.000 So, Congress.

00:00:23.000 Yeah.

00:00:24.000 Running for Congress.

00:00:25.000 Yeah.

00:00:25.000 This is what I want my congressman to look like.

00:00:27.000 Jacked veterans.

00:00:29.000 I mean, that's...

00:00:30.000 Wouldn't the world be a better place?

00:00:32.000 I agree.

00:00:33.000 I think so.

00:00:33.000 I mean, it really would be.

00:00:35.000 So tell me what this has been like, running for Congress.

00:00:39.000 Is this the first office you've run for?

00:00:41.000 This is the first time, thank God.

00:00:42.000 What started this?

00:00:43.000 I know you're friends with Dan, who's also a congressman, but what started this journey?

00:00:47.000 Yes.

00:00:48.000 Great question, and thank you so much for having me on.

00:00:50.000 My pleasure.

00:00:51.000 This is awesome.

00:00:52.000 Really appreciate you.

00:00:53.000 And what started this was really just my family and how can we continue service just in a different capacity.

00:01:01.000 I come from a military family.

00:01:02.000 So my dad did 23 years in the Army, retired as a lieutenant colonel.

00:01:07.000 My sister went to West Point in my family first.

00:01:10.000 So she's 10 years older than me, did 23 years active duty.

00:01:14.000 She was a military intelligence officer, deployed to Iraq twice, did a few tours abroad as well.

00:01:20.000 I went to West Point in my family second.

00:01:23.000 We're 10 years apart, my sister and I, and then graduated West Point in class of 2004, flew Apaches in Iraq for eight, was actually active duty eight years, deployed to Iraq, did 55 combat air missions in Baghdad, and then did two tours of duty in Saudi Arabia as a diplomatic liaison officer.

00:01:42.000 My brother, who was 10 months and 8 days my juniors who were Irish twins, he also went to West Point.

00:01:49.000 And he did five years in the Navy.

00:01:51.000 Went to Harvard Business School for his graduate degree and now lives in Houston with his family.

00:01:56.000 There's about 60 years worth of military service just in my immediate family.

00:02:00.000 Wow.

00:02:01.000 Respect.

00:02:02.000 Thank you, sir.

00:02:03.000 That's a lot.

00:02:03.000 Thank you.

00:02:04.000 That's a serious, serious military family.

00:02:07.000 It is.

00:02:07.000 My mom's the best of us.

00:02:08.000 So she stood at home for two months in 2006 while I was flying combat air missions in Baghdad.

00:02:15.000 My sister was doing intel in the green zone and my brother was in the Arabian Gulf on a destroy for two months at the same time.

00:02:23.000 So even though she didn't serve in the military per se, she served those who served by lending her family.

00:02:29.000 So when people ask me why am I running for Congress, I always lead with that because that's the kind of service and sacrifice it takes for us to live in this free country.

00:02:38.000 So this is just a mindset that you were raised with.

00:02:43.000 Absolutely.

00:02:45.000 And what made you make the leap?

00:02:49.000 So, there's a lot of things going on in the country that we're seeing right now.

00:02:53.000 Really?

00:02:55.000 I thought everything was fine.

00:02:57.000 A few things we got going on in the country right now.

00:03:00.000 And my dad always taught us.

00:03:03.000 Leadership is not about when it's convenient for you.

00:03:05.000 It's about when your country needs you.

00:03:08.000 And our country needs us, I think, in this, which seems to be a dark time.

00:03:13.000 We've had some dark times in the past.

00:03:15.000 I'm sure we'll get into that.

00:03:16.000 But it's always my opinion that patriots always step up when our country needs us the most.

00:03:21.000 And that's kind of what we're taught to do, to give back to the country that gave us all that we have.

00:03:27.000 Now, to all the things that are going on in the country right now, what stands out to you as something that you feel like you can contribute and possibly help correct or at least get on the right track?

00:03:39.000 Yeah, so there's a lot of talk of a lot of racial injustices of the past, and this is something that I think I'm uniquely positioned to talk about.

00:03:48.000 My great-great-grandfather was a slave.

00:03:51.000 His name was Silas Crawford, born on Rose Down Plantation, just north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

00:03:57.000 Three of his great-great-grandchildren all attended West Point.

00:04:01.000 I earned three master's degrees from Cornell University.

00:04:05.000 Brother went to Harvard.

00:04:06.000 Sister has her advanced degree in applied mathematics.

00:04:08.000 We've had the honor of serving our country.

00:04:11.000 We've had the honor to live in a free country.

00:04:14.000 We are standing on the backs and on the shoulders of absolute giants.

00:04:18.000 And while we have a ways to go, by God, that's some serious progress.

00:04:23.000 And I like the idea of focusing on the future and not the past.

00:04:26.000 And I think as a black man in this country, I get some of the hardships.

00:04:30.000 Trust me on that.

00:04:31.000 But how can we begin to heal by focusing on the good that we have done and building on that instead of standing by idling and watching the country burn?

00:04:41.000 It seems like both things have to be addressed.

00:04:44.000 It seems like you have to concentrate on the good things and have to concentrate on the people like yourself that have made incredible progress in your life.

00:04:52.000 But I think we also have to concentrate on injustice.

00:04:54.000 Absolutely.

00:04:55.000 And racial bias and racial injustice and all the problems that we're seeing.

00:04:59.000 You know, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine.

00:05:02.000 We were talking about police and how important the police are, but also how important it is to, if you see something like the George Floyd situation, you see that video and then...

00:05:19.000 That one guy's horrible actions changes everyone's perception of the police.

00:05:24.000 But meanwhile, there's millions of interactions that police have with citizens that never go that way, that are positive.

00:05:30.000 There's millions of great cops.

00:05:32.000 I don't know how many.

00:05:32.000 I don't know if there's millions of cops.

00:05:34.000 I don't even know how many cops there are.

00:05:35.000 How many cops are there in the country?

00:05:36.000 Oh, that's a good question.

00:05:37.000 That is a good question.

00:05:38.000 How many police officers are there in the country?

00:05:40.000 Let's find out.

00:05:41.000 But either way.

00:05:43.000 Most of them, I feel...

00:05:45.000 First of all, it's an insanely difficult job.

00:05:47.000 Yes, it is.

00:05:48.000 And when you don't...

00:05:50.000 The good altercations, they don't go viral.

00:05:54.000 Of course they do.

00:05:55.000 So we have this distorted perception of what happens when cops meet people.

00:06:01.000 Here it goes.

00:06:02.000 In 2019, there's 697, 195,000 full-time law enforcement officers.

00:06:10.000 697,000.

00:06:11.000 Wow.

00:06:13.000 Okay, so it's not millions.

00:06:14.000 But I would say that you're right.

00:06:16.000 There are actually millions of interactions with our citizens every year.

00:06:20.000 Yes, millions.

00:06:21.000 And most of them don't go viral because they're fairly normal.

00:06:25.000 License and registration, here you go.

00:06:27.000 You were speeding.

00:06:27.000 I'm sorry.

00:06:28.000 Here's a citation or here's a warning or whatever the fuck the situation is.

00:06:32.000 That's right.

00:06:33.000 Those problems, like the George Floyd thing, they have to be addressed.

00:06:38.000 We can't have those anymore, especially when they can go viral because it's not just this one moment.

00:06:45.000 The problem is this one moment can change everyone's perceptions of cops.

00:06:49.000 And then you have all this crazy talk like we need to defund the police.

00:06:54.000 Right.

00:06:54.000 Yeah.

00:06:56.000 You lifted your hands like, please.

00:06:58.000 Stop that. 0.95

00:06:58.000 Because that's ridiculous. 0.95

00:07:00.000 And the people who end up suffering the most when you defund the police are actually minority communities with people that look like me in them. 0.82

00:07:07.000 And if you actually talk to a lot of minority communities, they don't want to defund the police.

00:07:11.000 They just want the police to do better.

00:07:13.000 Right.

00:07:13.000 Exactly.

00:07:14.000 Yeah.

00:07:15.000 And that's where the problem lies because, you know, I was talking to Jocko, Jocko Willink on the podcast about that.

00:07:20.000 And Jocko was like, this defund the police talk is the wrong answer.

00:07:24.000 The right answer is more funding and more training.

00:07:28.000 He said, I think they should be doing 20% of their time training.

00:07:32.000 Will he do the training?

00:07:33.000 He would.

00:07:34.000 Yeah.

00:07:35.000 Jocko would do it.

00:07:35.000 It would be awesome.

00:07:36.000 Yeah.

00:07:36.000 I mean, that's a leader.

00:07:39.000 I mean, he's a guy who- Bonafide leader.

00:07:41.000 100%.

00:07:42.000 Yeah.

00:07:42.000 Undeniable.

00:07:43.000 So his perception is that what we're dealing with is people that are untrained, Undermotivated, underappreciated, and some of them just bad people.

00:07:53.000 That's right. 0.99

00:07:53.000 Like the guy in the George Floyd case, whatever the fuck is, Derek? 0.99

00:07:57.000 It's a bad actor. 0.99

00:07:58.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:07:59.000 Bad human being that probably had been bad for a long time, had several instances on his record that were similar. 0.95

00:08:07.000 A guy who's been probably, you know, whether he's fucked up because of the job or before the job or a combination of both things. 0.97

00:08:13.000 Right. 0.92

00:08:14.000 We gotta figure out a way to weed those people out.

00:08:16.000 He's got to go.

00:08:17.000 That should be, like, this is the poster boy for what's wrong with the system.

00:08:23.000 It's not the system. 0.99

00:08:24.000 You don't throw the whole fucking system out. 0.99

00:08:26.000 That's right. 0.97

00:08:27.000 I mean, anybody who's ever been in a situation where you need the cops and they show up, there's a great sign of relief when you feel protected.

00:08:35.000 That's right.

00:08:35.000 And law enforcement.

00:08:36.000 And if that's ever happened to you, and I hope it never does, but if it has ever happened to anybody listening, then you'll appreciate the police.

00:08:43.000 Yeah.

00:08:43.000 This is personal for me too, Joe, because when I got out of West Point in 2004, it was during the Abu Ghraib scandal.

00:08:51.000 I don't know if you recall that, but we had a few idiots that treated some prisoners very poorly and posted the pictures up in the world, saw that.

00:08:59.000 And I entered the military at a time where that was the perception of military officers and soldiers, and that's not true. 0.97

00:09:05.000 Right, exactly.

00:09:07.000 Most of us would never behave that way, and we condemn those actions.

00:09:10.000 We condemn that behavior.

00:09:12.000 After the George Floyd event, I actually went down to the Houston Police Union to go talk to some of the police officers.

00:09:18.000 100% of them, all of them were disgusted.

00:09:22.000 Yeah.

00:09:22.000 With how George Floyd was treated.

00:09:24.000 So I don't think that's it.

00:09:25.000 That's not even an issue. 1.00

00:09:26.000 It's just that how do we then work with law enforcement to empower them to get rid of the people that we know are idiots? 1.00

00:09:32.000 Yes. 1.00

00:09:33.000 Yes.

00:09:33.000 Yeah, that should be the conversation.

00:09:35.000 But the problem is that conversation doesn't work on social media.

00:09:39.000 You know, it's too nuanced.

00:09:40.000 There's too many layers to it.

00:09:42.000 There's too much talking has to be done.

00:09:44.000 When you write defund the police, it's nice and clean.

00:09:47.000 Yes.

00:09:47.000 You know, it's three words.

00:09:48.000 It's easy.

00:09:49.000 And everybody goes, yes.

00:09:50.000 Headline.

00:09:50.000 And if you go along with it, you're on the right side.

00:09:53.000 Like, yeah, you're a good person.

00:09:55.000 Yeah.

00:09:55.000 You know, and you're like, no, we need cops.

00:09:57.000 Oh, you fucking piece of shit. 1.00

00:09:58.000 It's ridiculous. 1.00

00:09:59.000 Yeah. 0.92

00:09:59.000 You see what Charles Barkley said a few weeks back. 0.92

00:10:02.000 Yes.

00:10:02.000 He followed that.

00:10:03.000 Yeah.

00:10:03.000 And his logic is actually quite sound.

00:10:13.000 Yeah.

00:10:15.000 Yeah.

00:10:26.000 And that's the problem we have right now, Joe.

00:10:29.000 Like, we can have both conversations.

00:10:31.000 Well, I think the problem is, like, he said something, and then there's a lot of people that want to respond to that, right?

00:10:37.000 And they don't get a chance to.

00:10:39.000 So they just attack him on social media.

00:10:41.000 And it's like, the louder their voices are, the most...

00:10:43.000 And especially if you're someone of prominence, if you have a platform, you can attack him, and you get a lot of credit for it.

00:10:50.000 You know, and then people like you.

00:10:51.000 And this is one of the problems with social media is that people say things not just because it's their opinion.

00:10:57.000 They say things because they want to get a reaction.

00:10:59.000 That's right.

00:11:00.000 They say things for likes.

00:11:01.000 They say things for retweets.

00:11:03.000 Right.

00:11:04.000 And they hide behind it.

00:11:05.000 Yeah.

00:11:06.000 Well, it's easy to do.

00:11:07.000 It's an easy time to snipe at people.

00:11:10.000 It is.

00:11:14.000 First of all, that Breonna Taylor situation.

00:11:17.000 Tragic.

00:11:18.000 Horrific.

00:11:19.000 Complicated.

00:11:20.000 Complicated.

00:11:20.000 Here's the big problem.

00:11:22.000 The war on drugs.

00:11:24.000 That's the big problem.

00:11:25.000 The big problem is you're having these no-knock raids for...

00:11:27.000 I mean, what was he supposed to be selling?

00:11:29.000 Marijuana?

00:11:29.000 Right.

00:11:30.000 I think he was selling marijuana.

00:11:31.000 That was the idea that he was selling.

00:11:32.000 I don't even know if he was, but this was...

00:11:34.000 So you're breaking down a door or someone?

00:11:37.000 Is that what it was about?

00:11:38.000 I believe so. 0.99

00:11:39.000 Which is fucking insane. 0.98

00:11:41.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:11:41.000 Right? 0.99

00:11:42.000 Insane.

00:11:42.000 Yeah.

00:11:43.000 That's insane, period.

00:11:44.000 To break down doors for that. 0.94

00:11:46.000 I agree.

00:11:46.000 Insane.

00:11:47.000 This is how it all...

00:11:48.000 I mean, when you have no-knock raids...

00:11:50.000 Yeah.

00:11:50.000 And, you know, if you're a person who's a homeowner and you believe in the Second Amendment and you have a firearm and you hear someone kicking down your door, you have a right to defend yourself.

00:11:59.000 That's right.

00:12:00.000 So this guy shooting at the cops is a rational response to something.

00:12:04.000 He has no idea what's going on.

00:12:06.000 Yeah.

00:12:07.000 And if someone says, open up, it's the cops, and kicks down the door, it turns out to not be a cop.

00:12:12.000 It turns out to be a rival drug dealer or just a thief.

00:12:16.000 Is that what the investigation revealed?

00:12:18.000 Was it really, they really didn't knock at all?

00:12:20.000 I don't believe they did.

00:12:21.000 I've seen both.

00:12:22.000 I've heard that there was a knock that certain neighbors did hear, and then I've heard that it was a no-knock.

00:12:27.000 I don't know what they did or didn't, but here's the problem. 0.97

00:12:30.000 If you're a person that is alone in your home at night and someone says they're police, how the fuck do you know it's really the police? 0.95

00:12:38.000 That's true, too. 0.93

00:12:39.000 How do you know?

00:12:40.000 That's true, too.

00:12:40.000 Like, if I was gonna kill somebody and I wanted them to open up the door...

00:12:44.000 I just walk up the door and say I'm the police.

00:12:44.000 Yeah, open up, it's the police.

00:12:46.000 I mean, it's 100% been done before.

00:12:48.000 It's logical, yeah.

00:12:49.000 And if you're at home and you don't know, and also if you're a black guy and you're paying attention to the news and you hear it's the police, that doesn't put you at ease.

00:12:58.000 Right?

00:12:59.000 Right.

00:13:00.000 Right.

00:13:01.000 It's a horrible story.

00:13:02.000 It is.

00:13:03.000 It is.

00:13:03.000 And I think these are the kind of anecdotal stories that we need to build and grow on.

00:13:08.000 Yes.

00:13:09.000 Right?

00:13:09.000 Let's not burn the country down because of them.

00:13:12.000 Let's figure out how to write this and then change our doctrine and then train our forces better so that they can better serve our communities and we can better serve them.

00:13:21.000 Yeah.

00:13:22.000 What's really important to me is I heard a story when I went to go visit the police union, and there was a spouse that was there, and she told me, you know, Wesley, the best thing that I could hear every day is the sound of Velcro.

00:13:33.000 I said, what do you mean?

00:13:34.000 He said, at the end of the day, when I hear Velcro at night, it means that my spouse made it home alive.

00:13:41.000 So he's taking off his vest.

00:13:42.000 She's taking off his vest.

00:13:44.000 And then they have to, thousands, 600 and how many thousand people, families, have to deal with this every single solitary day.

00:13:54.000 And most of them do a really good job.

00:13:57.000 So the George Floyd instance, the Breonna Taylor instances, I want to use those to build and grow, but I want to really hug our law enforcement officers and tell them, hey, you're doing a good job, let's build and grow together.

00:14:11.000 When I made mistakes as a kid, my dad didn't just kick me out the house.

00:14:15.000 He taught me right from wrong so that I wouldn't make the same mistakes next time so we could all get better together.

00:14:21.000 Well, if you talk to anyone who has this defund the police narrative, I mean, and there have been conversations with these people, there's no real answer.

00:14:30.000 There's no real answer.

00:14:31.000 Well, what do you do about violent crime?

00:14:32.000 And if you look at what happened in New York City, murders have gone up some insane number.

00:14:37.000 I don't know what the...

00:14:38.000 I watched...

00:14:39.000 A breakdown of the numbers of robberies have gone up, murders have gone up. 0.99

00:14:44.000 It's fucking insane. 0.72

00:14:47.000 And communities are calling for the police to be reinstated in these areas. 0.98

00:14:52.000 And this is what happens when you have this Online activist perspective and you apply it to the real world.

00:15:03.000 You have this defund the police and everybody's like, yeah, yes, do it.

00:15:07.000 And then you go and do it.

00:15:09.000 Yes.

00:15:09.000 And then what happens?

00:15:10.000 Violence.

00:15:11.000 That's right. 1.00

00:15:12.000 You have to have the fucking police. 1.00

00:15:13.000 That's right. 1.00

00:15:13.000 When Trump tweets law and order in all caps, it's one of the rare times I go, yeah! 1.00

00:15:21.000 He went on a great tweet raid the other night after they juiced him up with steroids and let him out of the hospital. 1.00

00:15:26.000 Who's the fuck? 1.00

00:15:27.000 I get all of them. 1.00

00:15:28.000 Made me laugh.

00:15:29.000 It was funny.

00:15:29.000 I love the video.

00:15:30.000 He's like, maybe I'm immune.

00:15:31.000 I don't know.

00:15:33.000 Maybe I'm immune.

00:15:35.000 Maybe. 1.00

00:15:35.000 Shit. 1.00

00:15:36.000 I laughed. 1.00

00:15:36.000 I laughed at him. 1.00

00:15:37.000 He was like, this is the best I've felt in 20 years.

00:15:39.000 I was like, this is good. 0.86

00:15:41.000 He's a savage. 0.99

00:15:42.000 74, fat, and eats nothing but McDonald's fries. 1.00

00:15:46.000 He beat it.

00:15:46.000 Kicks COVID in a couple of days.

00:15:48.000 And people are like, yeah, but he's getting the right treatment.

00:15:49.000 Like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:15:51.000 But the treatment's available.

00:15:53.000 Can everybody get this treatment? 0.99

00:15:54.000 Is this treatment in a fucking gold mine in India somewhere and you have to send a guy and a llama down into a cave to get it? 0.99

00:16:01.000 No. 0.99

00:16:01.000 It seems like it's pretty common. 0.99

00:16:02.000 It's not.

00:16:03.000 And as somebody, and we were talking about it earlier, I had COVID. You had it.

00:16:05.000 Yeah.

00:16:06.000 My whole family had it.

00:16:06.000 But you had it like that.

00:16:08.000 That's right.

00:16:09.000 In and out.

00:16:09.000 That's right.

00:16:10.000 Never asymptomatic.

00:16:12.000 Never had an issue.

00:16:13.000 My wife and daughter, my wife had some symptoms as we talked about.

00:16:17.000 My daughter, who's 20 months old, no symptoms.

00:16:21.000 Yeah, little kids generally seem to have zero problem with it.

00:16:25.000 There's obviously exceptions.

00:16:27.000 But young folks like yourself seem to be able to just get through the breeze.

00:16:31.000 And healthy people.

00:16:32.000 Healthy people.

00:16:33.000 Yeah, this is the big thing.

00:16:34.000 Obviously, your fitness.

00:16:35.000 Fitness.

00:16:36.000 Yeah, where you have a strong body, strong immune system, healthy.

00:16:41.000 I'm sure you eat well.

00:16:42.000 Yes, I do.

00:16:43.000 Yeah.

00:16:43.000 I mean, that is what's wrong with this country.

00:16:45.000 We have a lot of people that are metabolically unhealthy.

00:16:48.000 And then when something happens, any...

00:16:51.000 The body can't respond to it.

00:16:52.000 Exactly.

00:16:53.000 Exactly.

00:16:53.000 Especially something new and weird like this COVID-19.

00:16:57.000 That's right.

00:16:58.000 Meanwhile, Trump has all those things wrong with him, and the medication still fixed him.

00:17:02.000 It still worked.

00:17:02.000 That's what's crazy.

00:17:03.000 It doesn't work out.

00:17:04.000 He thinks his body's a battery, and working out would drain some of the battery.

00:17:08.000 I heard him explain that.

00:17:09.000 I saw that. 1.00

00:17:10.000 What in the fuck are you talking about? 0.99

00:17:12.000 That's not how that works. 0.99

00:17:14.000 That's literally not how it works.

00:17:16.000 It's the opposite of how it works.

00:17:18.000 But meanwhile, he's okay.

00:17:21.000 And obviously, you've got to give credit to Walter Reed.

00:17:23.000 You've got to give credit to the hospital and all the doctors and all the amazing researchers that have put in the work to create those treatments.

00:17:32.000 But here's a thought.

00:17:34.000 He has been one of the people that has been pushing for those experimental treatments.

00:17:38.000 And there's been a lot of resistance to that.

00:17:40.000 Yes.

00:17:41.000 And I think he's probably now one of the best arguments for those experimental treatments.

00:17:48.000 At this point.

00:17:49.000 74!

00:17:50.000 Yes.

00:17:50.000 I got an email from a guy today, he's like, still 5%, a good person that I respect, still 5% likely to die.

00:17:56.000 I'm like, what are you talking about?

00:17:57.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:17:58.000 Fucking guy's doing speeches, he looks great. 1.00

00:18:00.000 By the way, when you're 74, you got a 30% likelihood of dying anyway. 1.00

00:18:04.000 Period.

00:18:04.000 Like, what is the average age people die?

00:18:06.000 I think it's like 76. The median, I saw this the other night, the median age is 78. Yeah, okay, so he's already 50% likely to die.

00:18:16.000 Is that what that means?

00:18:16.000 So what's the median age of our life expectancy in the U.S.? It's not high.

00:18:22.000 It's about 78. Yeah, so which would be his second term right when it ends?

00:18:25.000 Right when it ends.

00:18:26.000 It would be Joe Biden's first term when he would start.

00:18:30.000 Whoa, Jamie, what are you doing?

00:18:32.000 What were you about to play?

00:18:34.000 I was looking at something.

00:18:37.000 I've seen this being passed around online.

00:18:39.000 Some people are comparing his timeline of diagnosis or COVID to Herman Cain's because he passed away after going to a rally.

00:18:48.000 I have it on screen.

00:18:50.000 There was a time period when he said he was feeling good and the doctors all said he was great and then he died like a week later.

00:18:57.000 A week later.

00:18:58.000 Yeah.

00:19:00.000 I've just seen this getting passed around a lot, just for conversational purposes.

00:19:04.000 Test positive, 7-2.

00:19:06.000 Says he's improving, 7-8.

00:19:08.000 So that's 8 days later.

00:19:10.000 And then...

00:19:10.000 And then that's 28 days?

00:19:12.000 Yeah.

00:19:13.000 So...

00:19:13.000 13 days later, doctor says he seems happy.

00:19:18.000 And then...

00:19:20.000 12 days after that.

00:19:20.000 3 days before he died, he says he's really getting better?

00:19:23.000 Yeah.

00:19:24.000 12 days after that.

00:19:25.000 How old was Herman Cain?

00:19:28.000 Good question.

00:19:30.000 The thing about anyone, it's what else do you have going on?

00:19:36.000 That's right.

00:19:36.000 Do you have diabetes?

00:19:38.000 Do you have...

00:19:39.000 COPD. Yeah, there's a lot of different factors.

00:19:42.000 And even obesity.

00:19:44.000 Yeah.

00:19:44.000 75, I guess.

00:19:45.000 75. So he's in the neighborhood right there with Trump because he easily...

00:19:49.000 I mean, who knows what kind of treatment he got, though?

00:19:52.000 Maybe Herman Cain didn't get the same treatment that Trump got.

00:19:55.000 I wonder what remedies they gave him.

00:19:59.000 Either way, not good for 70-year-old people to get it.

00:20:02.000 It is not.

00:20:03.000 Also not good for 70-year-old people to get the flu.

00:20:05.000 It's not.

00:20:05.000 Not good for them to get anything.

00:20:07.000 It's not.

00:20:07.000 And I think the way that we responded to this is a bit overkill because I think there is a way for us to make sure that we keep the people who are at risk to get this virus and could potentially die from it, like my parents who are alive and well, 71, 72 years old, they should probably stay home.

00:20:23.000 Yes.

00:20:24.000 Stay home, wear a mask, keep away from people.

00:20:27.000 And the beautiful thing about today is we do have, well, at least here we have this rapid response test at the studio.

00:20:34.000 I hope they have this rapid response, or not rapid response, but rapid result test everywhere.

00:20:40.000 I mean, if we can get to a point where we can, I believe they're working on, I'd read some saliva test where you lick a swab and you can find out within minutes.

00:20:49.000 Within minutes, yeah.

00:20:49.000 Yeah.

00:20:50.000 I mean, if we can get to that point where you have a 100% accurate test, we can keep people away from sick people.

00:20:58.000 And that's the remedy to this whole thing, is the more testing we can do, the better.

00:21:02.000 Yes.

00:21:02.000 The more knowledge we have, the better.

00:21:04.000 The more we can track it, the better.

00:21:05.000 There's nothing wrong with that.

00:21:07.000 I think we thought it was going to be way worse than it is.

00:21:10.000 I think that's what I thought. 0.99

00:21:11.000 I mean, look, obviously, I'm a moron and I'm not a doctor. 0.89

00:21:15.000 But when March was rolling around and everything was shutting down, I was very nervous. 0.94

00:21:19.000 I was very nervous.

00:21:20.000 I was nervous for my family.

00:21:21.000 I was nervous for my mother and my father.

00:21:23.000 And I was nervous for older friends that I have.

00:21:25.000 And I was nervous for my obese friends. 0.99

00:21:28.000 I was like, fuck, this is not good. 0.99

00:21:30.000 I was worried we're going to lose people. 0.99

00:21:32.000 Looking this up, I forgot.

00:21:33.000 He was a cancer survivor in 2006. Is this Herman Cain, right?

00:21:38.000 Yeah.

00:21:38.000 30% chance of surviving stage 4 colon cancer that's spread to his liver.

00:21:42.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:21:43.000 He did maybe have a pre-existing condition.

00:21:45.000 Oh, for sure.

00:21:46.000 The CDC came out and they said 6% of those who did pass from COVID were COVID-only deaths.

00:21:53.000 Right.

00:21:53.000 Which is kind of something to point out, too.

00:21:56.000 We're talking about You know, our health and being healthy people and the obesity issue that we even have in America.

00:22:02.000 And there's a piece of also staying physically fit, staying mentally fit as well.

00:22:07.000 They coincide with each other.

00:22:09.000 Beating this virus, I think, a lot of it as well is your overall mentality.

00:22:13.000 How do you feel about yourself?

00:22:15.000 Mind over matter in certain ways is something that I'm a fan of.

00:22:19.000 Because when you go into a situation, I've read some studies, you've even heard about cancer, people that have an optimistic outlook actually have a higher chance of beating cancer.

00:22:29.000 That's interesting.

00:22:30.000 Yeah.

00:22:31.000 I would agree with that tentatively, right? 0.98

00:22:35.000 Because I think some diseases just fuck you up no matter what you do. 0.99

00:22:38.000 You got it. 0.97

00:22:39.000 Sometimes there's nothing you can do about it.

00:22:40.000 But there's a reason why the placebo effect works, and it's because states of mind do have a profound effect on the human body in a way that we don't totally understand.

00:22:51.000 That's why I think meditation and breath work is very important and people should do that all the time because it just helps alleviate anxiety.

00:22:59.000 And I think alleviating anxiety and alleviating a certain amount of stress is probably good for you.

00:23:04.000 And then also having as little burden in your life in terms of like... 0.98

00:23:09.000 Negative relationships, bad friends that you can't trust, people that are weighing you down, all that kind of shit.

00:23:15.000 All that stuff compounds and has an effect on your immune system, has an effect on your psyche, has an effect on your self-esteem, how you feel about yourself, how you feel about the world. 0.53

00:23:25.000 We have to work on all those things.

00:23:27.000 But we don't hear any of that.

00:23:28.000 All we hear about is wear a mask, stay home.

00:23:31.000 We've got to shut down restaurants. 0.98

00:23:33.000 Shut down gyms.

00:23:34.000 Gyms are the craziest ones. 1.00

00:23:35.000 That's the place where everybody should go.

00:23:37.000 Yes, to improve your body, to be able to fight and ward off these kinds of viruses and diseases.

00:23:42.000 That's the best part about it.

00:23:44.000 Yeah, what they should do is put these big...

00:23:46.000 We got that air filter down there on the ground.

00:23:49.000 It's supposed to filter out all the bad whatever.

00:23:53.000 We got it.

00:23:54.000 It's too loud.

00:23:55.000 The problem is too loud while we're...

00:23:57.000 It's on very low.

00:23:59.000 It's on very low. 0.99

00:24:00.000 But when we crank it up to full blast, it sounds like there's a fucking airplane in the room. 0.99

00:24:04.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:24:05.000 But you can have those at the gym.

00:24:07.000 You can have those all over the place at the gym.

00:24:09.000 They're not that expensive.

00:24:10.000 And to keep people outside of the gym, you are now compounding all those other things.

00:24:16.000 That's right.

00:24:16.000 You're giving people...

00:24:18.000 You're taking away this avenue that they have to alleviate stress, which for me is gigantic.

00:24:24.000 I'm a different human.

00:24:26.000 I'm two different people.

00:24:27.000 I'm the guy who doesn't work out.

00:24:29.000 I'm the guy who works out.

00:24:30.000 And you want to hang out with the guy who works out all the time.

00:24:32.000 I'm super friendly.

00:24:33.000 I hug everybody.

00:24:34.000 The guy who doesn't work out is cranky.

00:24:37.000 He's quick to judge things. 1.00

00:24:39.000 Quick to say, fuck that guy. 1.00

00:24:41.000 That's right. 1.00

00:24:41.000 All those negative aspects. 1.00

00:24:46.000 Yeah.

00:24:47.000 I don't like that.

00:24:48.000 I don't want to be that way.

00:24:50.000 I don't think anybody does.

00:24:51.000 And I think the best way to alleviate that is to clear the body of stress.

00:24:56.000 And when you tell people they can't go to the gym, like, come on, man.

00:24:59.000 Like in New Jersey, they were shutting down people working out in the parking lot, which is just bananas.

00:25:04.000 That's right.

00:25:04.000 You know, and the best thing for me, and even running for office, has been very busy with an 11-day-old daughter, 20-month-old daughter, and just running for Congress in general, and that is you have to carve out time to work out.

00:25:18.000 And I think it's important to me that I do something extremely difficult that might suck a little bit every single day.

00:25:26.000 It just keeps the mental edge.

00:25:28.000 It keeps the mental acuity up.

00:25:29.000 I had an instructor in flight school.

00:25:33.000 He would always say, and he was my Apache instructor, he would always say, you gotta kill something every day, even if it's an ant, no matter how small.

00:25:43.000 Just to keep the edge, right? 1.00

00:25:45.000 That guy's a fucking psycho. 1.00

00:25:47.000 Jesus Christ. 1.00

00:25:48.000 But that's the guy you want.

00:25:49.000 That's the guy you want.

00:25:51.000 That's the break glass in case of war, dude.

00:25:53.000 That's right. 0.99

00:25:54.000 You got to kill someone every day, even if it's... 0.99

00:25:56.000 No matter how small. 1.00

00:25:57.000 Holy shit. 0.99

00:25:57.000 Just to keep the edge, right? 0.99

00:25:59.000 Jesus.

00:26:00.000 And I feel the same way about working out.

00:26:02.000 You got to keep the edge.

00:26:03.000 You got to challenge your mind.

00:26:04.000 You got to challenge your body every day.

00:26:05.000 When you force yourself to do it...

00:26:07.000 Yeah.

00:26:08.000 100% of the time, don't you feel better after you've worked out?

00:26:11.000 100%.

00:26:12.000 100%.

00:26:12.000 Now, going into it, you're like, this is not the day that I really want to do this right now.

00:26:16.000 Yeah.

00:26:16.000 Well, the beautiful thing about, like, this is Sober October for me.

00:26:20.000 And one of the things that I pledge is that during Sober October, I'm going to work out.

00:26:23.000 I'm doing something every single day.

00:26:26.000 So when I know I have to, but when I know I have to, and then I do it, I get it done.

00:26:32.000 But I always work out.

00:26:33.000 But I take days off.

00:26:35.000 But now I'm wondering, like, do I take too many days off? 0.99

00:26:38.000 Like, maybe I'm being a bitch. 0.99

00:26:40.000 Like, maybe... 0.99

00:26:42.000 Maybe when I take two days off a week, I really only need one, and that other one is just a bitch day. 1.00

00:26:47.000 I'm not sure.

00:26:48.000 I'm not sure, because it's kind of amazing when you have a set schedule, when you have to do something, that you get it done, and you realize you can get it done.

00:26:57.000 You require more of your body.

00:26:59.000 That's right.

00:27:00.000 And then your body responds to stress and stimulus much better in other aspects that you don't even think about.

00:27:07.000 Even if it's just you got to do 100 push-ups and 100 bodyweight squats, that'll take 10 minutes.

00:27:12.000 That's it.

00:27:12.000 That's not that much time.

00:27:14.000 But you accomplish something.

00:27:15.000 But you can do it.

00:27:16.000 You can do that in 10 minutes.

00:27:18.000 Yes.

00:27:18.000 I mean, it can be done.

00:27:19.000 You do push-ups in sets of 20. That's it.

00:27:22.000 And in between, you do sets of 20 bodyweight squats and just bang them out left and right, left and right.

00:27:27.000 That's it. 0.99

00:27:27.000 You'll be tired as fuck. 0.99

00:27:28.000 Yep. 1.00

00:27:29.000 10 minutes, 15 minutes later.

00:27:30.000 You have a sweat going.

00:27:31.000 Yeah.

00:27:31.000 And so, like, I only have 10 minutes.

00:27:33.000 Good.

00:27:33.000 Go to work.

00:27:33.000 Do that.

00:27:34.000 That's right.

00:27:34.000 And you can do that.

00:27:36.000 And then you also feel like...

00:27:37.000 Then you've also accomplished something.

00:27:38.000 Yes.

00:27:39.000 And also, like, the idea of...

00:27:40.000 I just did something.

00:27:41.000 Or if you do this, I did something that actually...

00:27:45.000 How many people have actually just chosen to do this for 10 minutes?

00:27:48.000 Right.

00:27:49.000 That makes me different, actually.

00:27:51.000 Yeah.

00:27:51.000 It gives you an edge.

00:27:52.000 It gives you the edge.

00:27:53.000 It gives you an edge.

00:27:54.000 And it makes you feel better about yourself.

00:27:55.000 Of course.

00:27:55.000 Like, you did what you needed to do.

00:27:58.000 That's right.

00:27:58.000 Yeah.

00:27:59.000 I think that that's a great message that we can get out there to the world, and I've been promoting that message for a long time, is that when you challenge your mind and you force your body to do things, You increase your ability to do difficult things.

00:28:17.000 It increases your overall ability to do difficult things.

00:28:20.000 That's right.

00:28:21.000 The days that are the roughest for me on the campaign trail are the days that I didn't work out.

00:28:27.000 I'm sure.

00:28:27.000 And my campaign manager knows it too.

00:28:29.000 He could tell.

00:28:29.000 Now, what has the campaign trail been like?

00:28:32.000 In general, what do you have to do with this?

00:28:34.000 Yeah, so with COVID, things have obviously changed the way that we do things dramatically.

00:28:38.000 By the way, if everyone is noticing that both me and Wesley are sweating, the fucking AC in this room is shit out on us, and it's now, it doesn't even say. 0.90

00:28:48.000 Yeah, the thermostat's broken. 0.97

00:28:49.000 It was 78 degrees when we walked in here with all this equipment and then all this intense talking.

00:28:54.000 See, here's the thing.

00:28:55.000 But we work out, so we can handle it.

00:28:57.000 Yes.

00:28:58.000 It's a slow sweat.

00:28:59.000 We can do it.

00:28:59.000 Yes.

00:29:00.000 But I mean, people are like, what's going on?

00:29:02.000 These guys have a fever.

00:29:04.000 They're just sitting there.

00:29:04.000 Why are they sweating?

00:29:05.000 It's all about working out and they're not doing anything.

00:29:07.000 You're sweating.

00:29:09.000 I can open the door and get some airflow.

00:29:11.000 Don't worry about it.

00:29:11.000 We're good.

00:29:13.000 So tell me about the campaign trail.

00:29:14.000 What does it entail and how long have you been doing it?

00:29:17.000 When I met you in Houston was what, July?

00:29:18.000 That's right.

00:29:19.000 I met you with Dan Crenshaw at the Houston Improv.

00:29:23.000 Great spot with Willie D from the Ghetto Boys.

00:29:25.000 Great job, by the way.

00:29:26.000 Thank you.

00:29:26.000 Thank you very much.

00:29:28.000 When did it start and what does it entail?

00:29:31.000 What do you have to do?

00:29:32.000 So I announced, I announced about a year and a half ago.

00:29:35.000 And what you have to do is basically work every day, tirelessly to try to reach as many voters in the district as possible and as efficiently as you can.

00:29:43.000 And there's avenues in which you can do that.

00:29:45.000 So there's broadcast television, there's mail, there's digital, there's knocking on doors, there's person to person stuff.

00:29:52.000 What's really lacking because of COVID is the latter, the person to person stuff.

00:29:56.000 So you're not really allowed to have big gatherings like you used to be able to do for, you know, fundraisers and meet and greets and things like that.

00:30:02.000 So you have to get creative.

00:30:04.000 This has now evolved into a lot of more zoom calls.

00:30:07.000 It's evolved to what we're doing in Houston, some front yard meet and greets that are socially distanced.

00:30:12.000 And we make sure that we keep everybody safe and everyone's wearing a mask, but we are still out in the community actually talking to people because there's absolutely nothing like meeting someone in person.

00:30:23.000 Even meeting you in person at the improv is just way different.

00:30:26.000 I've been following you for years, but it's just a different touch when you actually see the person.

00:30:31.000 And so that's what the challenge has been.

00:30:33.000 So what we are doing is just lining up as many front yard, backyard, meet and greets throughout the district as possible and I think we've done a pretty good job at getting out in the community.

00:30:44.000 So when you say backyard or front yard meet and greets, how do those come about?

00:30:49.000 What do you do?

00:30:50.000 Well, we have people that reach out to us and they'll say, hey, look, we have a community here.

00:30:55.000 People want to meet you.

00:30:56.000 We can get 10, 15, 20 people out here that usually set up some chairs or just stand around.

00:31:02.000 I'll come over, meet everybody to best of my ability, give them kind of my talk, answer questions that they would have with me on how they want to see government run for the future.

00:31:11.000 How can I continue to be their humble servant?

00:31:13.000 What can we do to save our country?

00:31:15.000 What can we do to kind of quell a lot of the division that we're seeing right now?

00:31:19.000 And then I go off to the next one.

00:31:22.000 It's very efficient.

00:31:23.000 It's very good.

00:31:24.000 And I think a lot of people have been very receptive to it, too.

00:31:27.000 Now, what other issues do you think are concerns that people have that maybe you have a unique perspective on that you can help?

00:31:38.000 What other big issues do you see in the country that you think that need to be addressed in a way that you are not seeing being addressed currently?

00:31:46.000 So I'm a Houston boy, born and raised.

00:31:49.000 First football game I went to was for the Houston Oilers, back in the Love U Blue days.

00:31:55.000 I don't know what the Love U Blue days are.

00:31:56.000 Oh, get out of here. 1.00

00:31:57.000 It's the Houston Oilers when they have their light blue.

00:31:59.000 Oh my goodness.

00:31:59.000 I'm a sports commentator professional that knows nothing about sports.

00:32:04.000 It's embarrassing.

00:32:06.000 It's embarrassing.

00:32:07.000 Jamie makes fun of me all the time. 1.00

00:32:10.000 I don't know shit. 0.99

00:32:11.000 Jamie knows. 0.99

00:32:11.000 Tell me, what is it? 0.99

00:32:12.000 I saw Warren Moon play on his birthday back when I was a kid.

00:32:15.000 Did you really?

00:32:16.000 That's awesome.

00:32:17.000 I don't remember who won the game.

00:32:18.000 I was only like eight.

00:32:19.000 Oh yeah, that's awesome.

00:32:20.000 I've been to an Oilers game too.

00:32:21.000 That's awesome.

00:32:22.000 There you go.

00:32:23.000 Yeah, so they play in the Astrodome.

00:32:24.000 I've never seen a football game live.

00:32:27.000 You're making that up.

00:32:27.000 Nope.

00:32:28.000 You're dead serious.

00:32:29.000 No.

00:32:29.000 I've only watched the Super Bowl like twice ever.

00:32:32.000 That's it.

00:32:32.000 It's the only football games I've ever seen.

00:32:33.000 You've watched it.

00:32:34.000 You didn't go to the Super Bowl.

00:32:35.000 No, no.

00:32:36.000 I've never been to a football game live ever.

00:32:38.000 Do you plan on doing it?

00:32:40.000 No.

00:32:41.000 Is there a reason for this? 0.98

00:32:42.000 I mean, it's a great sport and everything, but I got shit to do. 0.89

00:32:49.000 I'm the wrong guy, man. 0.96

00:32:50.000 That's a good answer.

00:32:51.000 I'm just the wrong guy.

00:32:51.000 I know.

00:32:52.000 I get it. 0.99

00:32:53.000 People, they're like, what the fuck is wrong? 0.99

00:32:54.000 I bet Artie Lang yelled at me. 0.99

00:32:56.000 He yelled at me.

00:32:57.000 He's like, what do you mean?

00:32:58.000 He yelled at me.

00:32:58.000 I don't know anything about sports.

00:33:00.000 He's like, what the fuck is wrong with you? 0.99

00:33:01.000 I'm like, hey, man. 1.00

00:33:03.000 I mean, you want to ask me some shit about fighting. 1.00

00:33:06.000 I know a lot of shit about Muay Thai, a lot of shit about Jiu Jitsu. 1.00

00:33:09.000 I know a lot of shit about the UFC. But that's it. 1.00

00:33:12.000 That's it.

00:33:13.000 Sorry.

00:33:14.000 I'm a one trick pony.

00:33:15.000 That's too funny.

00:33:17.000 Well, Oilers, I basically call it Houston Oilers.

00:33:20.000 Okay.

00:33:21.000 And, you know, this is an oil and gas town.

00:33:24.000 And I am not a climate denier.

00:33:27.000 Like a lot of millennials, quite frankly, I do believe that human beings can influence the climate.

00:33:34.000 But, Houston is known as the energy capital of the world.

00:33:37.000 And encompassed in the energy capital of the world is the energy district of the world, which is Congressional District 7 where I am running in in Houston.

00:33:46.000 And the narrative that I am seeing about fossil fuels doesn't necessarily jive well with me at all.

00:33:52.000 Let's talk about that.

00:33:53.000 I'd love to talk to you about that.

00:33:55.000 California recently, the state that I escaped, I want to ask you about that, too, after this, actually.

00:34:01.000 Escaped!

00:34:01.000 I feel so happy.

00:34:02.000 Welcome to Texas, too, by the way.

00:34:04.000 Thank you, sir.

00:34:04.000 Appreciate it.

00:34:05.000 Yeah, when I saw you was right around the time that I made the decision.

00:34:09.000 Yeah.

00:34:10.000 Tom Papa, my buddy who was just here yesterday, sent me a picture of Los Angeles. 0.98

00:34:16.000 And obviously, this is because of the fires, but also, what the fuck is that? 0.98

00:34:22.000 Come on. 0.99

00:34:23.000 Look at that.

00:34:24.000 Look at that.

00:34:24.000 It's massive traffic and the sky is a weird shade of grey and brown.

00:34:31.000 And he said, you've poisoned my LA mind with that picture.

00:34:34.000 And I said, you're in the wrong place, my brother.

00:34:36.000 Now you know.

00:34:38.000 He's in the wrong place!

00:34:39.000 He knows where to go.

00:34:41.000 Listen, Texas, I've always loved Texas.

00:34:43.000 I filmed one of my specials here.

00:34:47.000 I did one of my CDs here back in 99. The first CD I ever did, I filmed at the Houston Lab Stop in 1999. The one on River Oaks.

00:34:55.000 I know the one.

00:34:55.000 Yeah.

00:34:56.000 It's not there anymore.

00:34:56.000 It was one of the best spots in the country.

00:34:59.000 I love Texas.

00:35:00.000 I've always loved Texas.

00:35:01.000 And it was one of the places where when I thought about getting out of LA, I was like, there's only a couple of places I'm interested in.

00:35:07.000 I'm interested in Montana because of the beauty and just the wildness.

00:35:11.000 And I want to live in a place with grizzly bears.

00:35:12.000 And Colorado, I love that.

00:35:15.000 Weed, legal mushrooms now too.

00:35:18.000 Woo! 0.99

00:35:18.000 And then Texas. 0.99

00:35:20.000 I just love...

00:35:21.000 I love people from Texas.

00:35:23.000 I love the attitude.

00:35:24.000 People are super friendly.

00:35:26.000 They have a distorted perception of what Texas is.

00:35:28.000 I think Texas, in a lot of ways, is what other people think of when they think of America. 1.00

00:35:34.000 Think of wild motherfuckers with guns and tigers in their backyard. 1.00

00:35:38.000 And big trucks. 1.00

00:35:39.000 And big trucks.

00:35:40.000 And big trucks.

00:35:41.000 And barbecue.

00:35:42.000 I mean, that is Texas in a lot of ways.

00:35:46.000 But...

00:35:47.000 So, let's get back to what we were saying though.

00:35:49.000 Yeah.

00:35:50.000 You were talking about oil when I was saying that I escaped Los Angeles.

00:35:54.000 One of the things that's going on is Gavin Newsom has passed this new law saying that they will sell no cars that run on gasoline that are new after 2035. And a lot of people are freaking out.

00:36:08.000 And one of the things they're freaking out about is, do you know how much lithium you're going to have to pull out of the fucking ground to make the batteries for all these electric cars? 0.95

00:36:15.000 And that this is not good for the environment. 0.97

00:36:17.000 That's right.

00:36:17.000 Yeah, the lithium mines, like mining.

00:36:19.000 There's a great meat-eater podcast.

00:36:22.000 I want to encourage everybody to listen to my friend Steve Rinella's podcast, and it's going on right now.

00:36:26.000 It's episode 241, Half-Life of Never, and it's all about the, I think it's called the Pebble Mine or the Pebble Beach Mine.

00:36:35.000 What is the mine that's going on that there's a project in Alaska that they're going to do?

00:36:41.000 I think it's called the Pebble Mine.

00:36:43.000 It's either the Pebble Mine, but Pebble Beach is like a golf course, right?

00:36:46.000 Yes, it is.

00:36:47.000 I think it's called the Pebble Mine.

00:36:48.000 Is that what it is?

00:36:50.000 But it's a crazy copper and gold mine that they're proposing.

00:36:55.000 One of the biggest mines in the world in Alaska.

00:36:58.000 And it's near Bristol Bay, which is like...

00:37:01.000 Which one is it?

00:37:02.000 You're right, you're right.

00:37:02.000 Pebble Mine?

00:37:03.000 Pebble Mines.

00:37:04.000 It's near Bristol Bay, which is the number one salmon fishing resource and salmon resource on the planet Earth.

00:37:12.000 And they're saying it will destroy everything.

00:37:14.000 And these people want to do that to pull minerals and to pull gold and copper out of the ground.

00:37:20.000 It's going to devastate the environment. 0.80

00:37:22.000 And sulfur as well.

00:37:23.000 You're going to have to get through a shitload of sulfur and then move and destroy it.

00:37:26.000 But the podcast is eye-opening.

00:37:29.000 It's really fascinating.

00:37:30.000 But...

00:37:31.000 You've got to mine to get lithium.

00:37:33.000 This is not good for the environment.

00:37:35.000 And I'm a person with an electric car.

00:37:37.000 I have a Tesla.

00:37:39.000 I love it.

00:37:39.000 Got it.

00:37:40.000 But this is not like one is awesome and perfect and the other one is terrible for everybody.

00:37:45.000 It's a combination of everything.

00:37:47.000 And that needs to be the solution for the future.

00:37:49.000 I'm also not a big fan of the government saying when an industry is supposed to end.

00:37:54.000 Yes.

00:37:55.000 I'm a big fan of the government empowering the private sector to innovate to get to the next...

00:38:01.000 You know, affordable, renewable source that's going to happen.

00:38:04.000 It's my opinion, if Jeff Bezos doesn't get there first, the first trillionaire, in my opinion, who's already born, is going to be the person that comes up with an abundant, renewable source for the future that everyone can't afford.

00:38:15.000 Now, I get the Green New Deal and the tenets of it, what they're trying to do, but what's not addressed in that is global warming and the operative word being global.

00:38:28.000 If we don't get India and China and Russia and Africa and South America to reduce their carbon footprint with us, you can literally destroy the oil and gas industry here in the US at no gain to the globe.

00:38:40.000 That doesn't make sense to me.

00:38:42.000 That is such an important point.

00:38:43.000 That's so important.

00:38:45.000 Nobody's talking about the other countries.

00:38:46.000 So China and India are building four coal plants per month.

00:38:51.000 And it's not a case of if we build it, they will come.

00:38:53.000 That's not how this works.

00:38:55.000 In fact, our energy independence is also an issue of national security as well.

00:38:59.000 We're energy independent.

00:39:00.000 Why?

00:39:01.000 Because of fracking that, quite frankly, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris actually want to do away with by 2035 as well.

00:39:08.000 It's actually a national agenda.

00:39:09.000 And so we are reducing our carbon footprint because of fracking, because natural gas burns cleaner.

00:39:16.000 But most importantly, Joe, 20 years ago, We would kill a bad guy in the Middle East. 1.00

00:39:22.000 And then we have to turn around and ask these same countries for resources and oil.

00:39:27.000 That's a conflict of interest, if you could imagine.

00:39:29.000 Of course.

00:39:30.000 So we don't have to do that anymore.

00:39:32.000 So when we kill Qasem Soleimani outside of Baghdad airport, who was a bad guy responsible for actually killing some West Point graduates actually in Iraq, we don't have to ask them for oil.

00:39:45.000 So this is an issue where we have to marry economics, innovation, and of course make sure that we are good stewards of this earth.

00:39:55.000 Right.

00:39:55.000 But right now there's roughly 1 billion, with a B, roughly 1 billion light trucks and vehicles in the world today that are gas powered.

00:40:04.000 And over the course of the next 20 years, the world is going to add another billion vehicles.

00:40:09.000 And of that billion, 750 million of them are going to be gas powered.

00:40:15.000 Again, it's not a California problem.

00:40:18.000 It's a global issue that we have to take a look at.

00:40:22.000 From a defense standpoint, I flew Apache helicopters, and we have a joke in the Army.

00:40:26.000 How do you know if somebody flew Apaches?

00:40:30.000 We will tell you.

00:40:32.000 We always do.

00:40:33.000 And what's funny about the Apache and about destroyers and about F-22s, and that's you can't fuel them on solar and wind.

00:40:45.000 We literally aren't going anywhere for the next few generations.

00:40:48.000 What I want to hear the conversation shift to is more of the idea of us working with these oil and gas companies to innovate for the future, and they want it too.

00:40:59.000 It's a matter of time until we get there, but let's bring them along with the conversation and not demonize them.

00:41:06.000 And as somebody that's Houston born and bred, this is the conversation that's near and dear to my heart because, again, it's the energy capital of the world.

00:41:15.000 And I am all for solar.

00:41:16.000 I am all for wind.

00:41:17.000 I am all for renewables.

00:41:18.000 I get it.

00:41:19.000 But it's a combination of all of the above, not an or conversation.

00:41:27.000 Now, what is the Green New Deal?

00:41:29.000 Can you lay that out for us?

00:41:30.000 What are they looking to do?

00:41:32.000 The Green New Deal, one big thing that Joe Biden talks about and what Bernie Sanders was talking about as well is being carbon neutral by 2035, which effectively is an end to the oil and gas industry in the United States.

00:41:44.000 That's one tenet of it.

00:41:46.000 Another one is fracking bans.

00:41:49.000 And again, as I just articulated, this is the very technology that's actually reducing our carbon footprint.

00:41:55.000 Also, just more restrictions on oil and gas companies to be able to drill and find resources as well.

00:42:03.000 And it is a job killer.

00:42:08.000 We're good to go.

00:42:30.000 And so we have to recover from this thing.

00:42:32.000 And the way to do it is not to employ more restrictions on an already hurting industry that, quite frankly, has got to be around, whether you like it or not.

00:42:44.000 Also, the byproducts of petrochemicals as well.

00:42:47.000 This microphone, this mug, your phone.

00:42:51.000 It's hydrocarbons.

00:42:53.000 The shoes on your feet is all byproducts of the oil and gas industry.

00:42:57.000 And so what people don't realize is that the chairs that they sit in, the silverware that they eat off of, where they eat, sleep, breathe, and live, the mattress that they're sleeping on is fossil fuels.

00:43:11.000 We literally aren't going anywhere.

00:43:12.000 I understand the benevolence of the Green New Deal. 0.96

00:43:15.000 It's always good in theory.

00:43:16.000 I got it.

00:43:17.000 I think if we could magically snap our fingers and the world could be just carbon neutral, that sounds great.

00:43:24.000 That sounds great.

00:43:26.000 But that's not how this works.

00:43:30.000 We are always about progression.

00:43:33.000 This country is always about innovation and progression.

00:43:36.000 We've been doing this for generations.

00:43:39.000 Let's continue that progression by enabling, again, the private sector to innovate to the next level.

00:43:45.000 If you're paying attention to what the Green New Deal says, it basically just demonizes an entire industry, and I think for lack of understanding what the industry does for the world.

00:43:55.000 Is there, in the Green New Deal, is there a solution for what they deem the problems of the oil and gas industry?

00:44:03.000 Do they have a replacement for those resources?

00:44:05.000 So therein lies the point.

00:44:10.000 Hydrocarbons are a storable energy that have a lot of power in them.

00:44:16.000 And that's actually the reason why the world uses them.

00:44:20.000 Bottom line is this.

00:44:22.000 You can't turn your lights on.

00:44:23.000 The world can't turn their lights on.

00:44:25.000 The US can't turn their lights on for the time being without oil and gas, without the oil and gas industry.

00:44:31.000 If we were able to miraculously even attempt to turn this entire country into a renewable source, it's just not possible.

00:44:40.000 I don't know exactly what the numbers are, but we would actually only be able to fuel less than, last I read, 8% of the United States' energy demands if we were able to completely transform to renewable resources.

00:44:52.000 So that's just wind and solar?

00:44:54.000 Yeah, wind, solar, and battery, lithium ion, these kinds of things.

00:45:00.000 But they also require something to charge them.

00:45:03.000 What about nuclear?

00:45:05.000 Because one of the things that is really uncomfortable for people is that nuclear power is one of the cleanest sources of power that we know of.

00:45:15.000 It's just we know about disasters.

00:45:17.000 We know about Fukushima.

00:45:18.000 We know about Three Mile Island.

00:45:20.000 We know about all...

00:45:21.000 Chernobyl.

00:45:22.000 Chernobyl, yeah.

00:45:22.000 We know about these disasters, which in many cases are indicative of old technology.

00:45:28.000 Yes.

00:45:28.000 Like Fukushima.

00:45:29.000 They really didn't know how to shut it down.

00:45:31.000 Yes.

00:45:31.000 Which is...

00:45:37.000 We'll figure it out.

00:45:38.000 We'll worry about it later.

00:45:51.000 But you just bring up nuclear power and everybody's like, we're going to die!

00:45:55.000 That's right.

00:45:55.000 Everybody freaks out.

00:45:56.000 Yeah.

00:45:57.000 And they think Chernobyl.

00:45:59.000 What do you think about nuclear?

00:46:00.000 So this is, again, the importance of innovation.

00:46:03.000 You brought up an excellent point.

00:46:05.000 You see, in past technologies, we didn't have the ability to be able to really create something without understanding what the worst outcomes could possibly be.

00:46:14.000 Do you think over the course of the last 50 years, we've actually advanced to know more and to be able to do better and to be more effective with how we do this?

00:46:21.000 Of course we have, right?

00:46:23.000 But it kind of goes back to the oil and gas industry as well.

00:46:26.000 When you have the over demonization of an energy source, people just, as we were talking about, they just shut it off.

00:46:32.000 Right.

00:46:33.000 It becomes a headline.

00:46:34.000 That's it.

00:46:34.000 I don't want anything else to do with it.

00:46:35.000 Oh, no, we saw a bad incident.

00:46:37.000 That's it.

00:46:38.000 It becomes headline news instead of us saying, wait a minute. 0.96

00:46:41.000 If you're going to try to tell me that 2020 was the same as the 70s and the 60s and the 50s from a technological standpoint, it's ridiculous.

00:46:50.000 I mean, look at your Tesla that you drive.

00:46:52.000 I mean, that is a technological marvel and advancement in itself.

00:46:57.000 And now we're producing it on a mass scale?

00:47:01.000 Thank you, Elon Musk.

00:47:03.000 And again, even the production of the Tesla.

00:47:05.000 That doesn't mean we do away with the oil and gas industry.

00:47:08.000 Hell, we could have both.

00:47:09.000 Let's continue to do both.

00:47:11.000 So from a nuclear standpoint, I also think that that's gotten demonized as well because of some incidences.

00:47:16.000 And we need to realize that from a technological standpoint, we are certainly further along than we were before.

00:47:22.000 Let's pursue this.

00:47:23.000 Let's empower these companies to come up with a safe way of building these plants and also making sure that everybody can stay safe in the future.

00:47:33.000 What I've actually heard discussed that's kind of fascinating is technologies that could be on the horizon that can actually pull carbon and pull particles from the atmosphere.

00:47:46.000 That they can develop essentially enormous air filters.

00:47:51.000 That can be used in high pollution areas and cities and urban centers, and they actually can pull pollution out of the air and potentially use that carbon, and it can actually be a resource.

00:48:05.000 That's exactly right.

00:48:06.000 It's remarkable.

00:48:07.000 Think about that.

00:48:07.000 Pretty crazy.

00:48:08.000 But it kind of makes sense, right?

00:48:10.000 Like, if you can put it out there, then it's there.

00:48:13.000 Well, if you can push it out, can you extract it?

00:48:16.000 It seems like you should be able to.

00:48:18.000 I mean, we extract nitrogen from the atmosphere, right?

00:48:21.000 I mean, that's how they make a lot of fertilizer. 0.80

00:48:22.000 That's right.

00:48:23.000 There's got to be a way to take that carbon out.

00:48:24.000 Of course there is.

00:48:25.000 And again, people want to look at where we are right now.

00:48:29.000 Maybe we aren't there now.

00:48:30.000 Right.

00:48:32.000 But we can easily be there in the not-so-distant future.

00:48:35.000 Sure.

00:48:36.000 About 150 years ago, we were riding horses.

00:48:38.000 Thank you.

00:48:39.000 Yeah.

00:48:39.000 And think about what you just said.

00:48:41.000 That wasn't that long ago, by the way.

00:48:42.000 That's pretty recent.

00:48:44.000 That's crazy recent.

00:48:45.000 I mean, in World War I, they were still using livestock.

00:48:49.000 Yeah.

00:48:50.000 Yeah.

00:48:51.000 Bananas.

00:48:52.000 I mean, think about that.

00:48:53.000 I know.

00:48:54.000 Yeah.

00:48:54.000 And now we're flying Apaches.

00:48:55.000 It's hard for people to, once they have it in their mind, that they are doing a good thing.

00:49:02.000 Like the proponents of the Green New Deal, they are doing a good thing. 0.57

00:49:05.000 And anyone who opposes that, or anyone who even has debate about it, is on the wrong side.

00:49:11.000 You are on the side of the fossil fuel industry.

00:49:13.000 You've been paid off.

00:49:13.000 You're a shill.

00:49:14.000 You don't care about the environment.

00:49:16.000 You don't care about our children.

00:49:17.000 And then they'll propose it this way, that this person does not care about the future of this country.

00:49:22.000 We're gonna burn.

00:49:23.000 Look what's happening in California. 0.90

00:49:25.000 This is Trump's fault.

00:49:26.000 We were discussing this on the podcast yesterday.

00:49:29.000 It didn't matter who became president in 2016. The exact same conditions would be in place here.

00:49:35.000 This battleship is an enormous thing.

00:49:37.000 It's hard to turn around.

00:49:39.000 You think that somehow or another, if Hillary Clinton was president, that California wouldn't be on fire right now?

00:49:43.000 Of course it would be.

00:49:44.000 The exact same thing would be happening.

00:49:45.000 Of course it would be.

00:49:46.000 100%.

00:49:46.000 There's no other way around it.

00:49:49.000 And what I always say to people that I have to have this conversation with, and again, I have two kids at the house, and it is my opinion at this point with two baby girls that it is incumbent upon us to make sure that we hand them a better world than we inherited.

00:50:03.000 Yes.

00:50:05.000 Again, the birth of a child is a spiritual thing.

00:50:08.000 We were saying this before the podcast.

00:50:10.000 It's a spiritual moment.

00:50:11.000 You're talking about your youngest and how crazy it is.

00:50:14.000 It's crazy.

00:50:16.000 It's life-changing.

00:50:17.000 My youngest is 10, but still, I think back and there's times when I'm alone where I just go, I can't even believe I have children.

00:50:23.000 I can't even believe that it's a thing.

00:50:24.000 That a person who comes out of your own DNA is now walking and talking and hanging out with you.

00:50:30.000 Yes.

00:50:31.000 Yes.

00:50:32.000 And destroying our living room.

00:50:36.000 As we live and breathe.

00:50:37.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:50:38.000 So of course I care about them.

00:50:40.000 And of course I care about the environment.

00:50:43.000 I just want to take a pragmatic approach to making sure that Yeah.

00:50:47.000 Well, we're so polarized today.

00:50:49.000 If you don't agree with me, you must be evil. 1.00

00:50:51.000 Or you must be naive, or you must be foolish. 0.99

00:50:55.000 These are the perspectives that are the narrative that you see on social media today, which is where so many people are forming their opinions and then arguing them, and it's insanity. 0.99

00:51:05.000 Yeah.

00:51:05.000 It's such a crazy time where people want people...

00:51:09.000 I was having a conversation with a friend of mine today.

00:51:10.000 They were talking about this new social media platform where this person was arguing, don't hear people's opinions.

00:51:17.000 What we need to do is de-platform them.

00:51:18.000 Right.

00:51:19.000 That's insane.

00:51:20.000 So everybody has to agree with you, and I don't even know if you're right.

00:51:24.000 You don't even know if you're right.

00:51:26.000 The way you find out if you're right.

00:51:27.000 You don't even know if you're right.

00:51:27.000 You got to talk to other people.

00:51:29.000 Right.

00:51:29.000 There's a lot of times I've talked to people and I went, huh.

00:51:32.000 Okay, yeah, I'm wrong.

00:51:34.000 That's important.

00:51:35.000 That's the whole point.

00:51:36.000 Yeah, you have to be able to have these conversations.

00:51:39.000 What the proponents of the Green New Deal, what are they proposing in terms of replacing fossil fuels and these things that we're relying on currently to power everything and have the country running exactly how it's running now?

00:51:55.000 And therein lies the problem.

00:51:56.000 They're not.

00:51:57.000 They're not.

00:51:58.000 So what are they saying, though, when they're questioning this?

00:52:01.000 What are we going to do in 2035 in terms of how are we going to keep the lights on?

00:52:05.000 I have no idea.

00:52:06.000 Really?

00:52:07.000 And this is literally part of my problem, and that is if you aren't going to tell me a substantive viable solution, so if you want to say, that's it, snap my fingers like Thanos, that's it, we're going to be carbon neutral here.

00:52:20.000 And okay, so what's the path to do so?

00:52:23.000 What resources are we going to use to get there?

00:52:26.000 How are we going to replace these resources?

00:52:29.000 And again, I'm not a climate denier.

00:52:32.000 I keep saying this over and over again, but nothing's being proposed that's rational and reasonable that's actually addressing global warming.

00:52:42.000 It completely leaves out the other countries.

00:52:44.000 It completely leaves out the globe.

00:52:46.000 And that's problematic to me.

00:52:48.000 Yeah, so they're not even discussing it at all.

00:52:52.000 No.

00:52:52.000 They're just conveniently annoying it.

00:52:54.000 It sounds good, and it does sound good.

00:52:57.000 It sounds amazing.

00:52:58.000 Well, get me wrong, it sounds great, but it's not how it works.

00:53:00.000 Green New Deal? 0.83

00:53:01.000 Who doesn't like green things?

00:53:02.000 It's beautiful.

00:53:06.000 But Biden says he doesn't believe in the Green New Deal, though, right?

00:53:09.000 So first he said he did, and then he walked that back ever so slightly and said, well, no, no, no, not the Green New Deal in its entirety.

00:53:19.000 Tenets of the Green New Deal. 0.69

00:53:21.000 Did he describe which tenets?

00:53:23.000 Translation to me.

00:53:24.000 It's the Green New Deal. 0.90

00:53:27.000 Are you troubled by the fact that the Democrats have this gentleman running for president that seems, at the very least, like his better days are behind him?

00:53:38.000 It got to the point where at first, when I watched the Corn Pot video, have you seen that one?

00:53:42.000 Yes.

00:53:43.000 The Corn Pot one. 1.00

00:53:44.000 What the fuck is that video? 0.99

00:53:45.000 It was the most bizarre thing. 0.99

00:53:48.000 One of the most bizarre things I've ever seen.

00:53:49.000 How about all the kids behind him talking?

00:53:51.000 They don't even pay attention to this guy.

00:53:53.000 It was the weirdest thing.

00:53:54.000 It was literally the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

00:53:57.000 And I sent it to my brother, Rendon, because he's my best friend.

00:53:59.000 We talk like four times a day.

00:54:01.000 I sent it to Rendon, and he's just like, is this even real?

00:54:04.000 I got hairy legs!

00:54:07.000 There's so many of those.

00:54:08.000 The blonde, and it was really weird. 0.98

00:54:11.000 That was back in December, and I thought it was funny.

00:54:16.000 And then now, I don't think it's very funny anymore, actually.

00:54:20.000 And this is very dangerous, I think, for the country.

00:54:24.000 And we need to be very careful with who we put forward.

00:54:29.000 There is a clear decline in Mr. Biden.

00:54:32.000 I think we can all agree with that.

00:54:35.000 I think we can all say that the reason why Kamala Harris was chosen was probably to make sure that someone of a sounder mind can actually run the country. 0.99

00:54:45.000 Young and healthy, and she's probably going to be the president. 0.99

00:54:49.000 If he wins, she will be really pulling the strings.

00:54:52.000 Now, you just came from California.

00:54:54.000 And again, politics, Democrat, Republican.

00:54:57.000 This is Texas.

00:54:58.000 Democrats, Republicans in Texas.

00:55:00.000 That's fine.

00:55:01.000 Do You understand this.

00:55:03.000 Do you know how left and how liberal you have to be to be a senator from California?

00:55:07.000 How left?

00:55:09.000 Extremely.

00:55:10.000 As left as you could probably be, if you think about it.

00:55:14.000 That's not where the values of Texas are, though.

00:55:17.000 And so what we have to be very careful is in the idea of making sure that if she's going to be running the country, you do understand that those values are going to be the issues that are going to be running Texas as well.

00:55:28.000 And that's just not where I believe Texas or really the nation is.

00:55:32.000 I think we are far more centered than that.

00:55:36.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:55:37.000 And I think the center is probably where the rational discussions are taking place.

00:55:41.000 But everyone's scared to be in the center.

00:55:43.000 Oh, yeah.

00:55:44.000 Because if you're in the center, you're not supported by the left, you're not supported by the right.

00:55:47.000 And that's the problem with this country right now is that we're so divided and people seek comfort in being connected to a certain ideology, whether you're full-on liberal or full-on conservative.

00:56:00.000 That's right.

00:56:01.000 So another reason why I'm running is because I always like to add perspective and add color to the history of this country.

00:56:08.000 That's why I bring in my great-great-grandfather.

00:56:10.000 And I always talk about the Civil War.

00:56:13.000 So one of my favorite stories about West Point is there is a monument.

00:56:17.000 It's called Trophy Point.

00:56:19.000 It's actually one of the most prominent pieces at West Point.

00:56:22.000 At one point, it was the largest single piece of granite.

00:56:28.000 We're good to go.

00:56:33.000 We're good to go.

00:56:39.000 Why?

00:56:40.000 Why?

00:56:41.000 During the Civil War, you had West Point classmates that were friends, that would train together, that were in class together, that would graduate, and depending on where you were from geographically, some would go and fight for the North, and others would go and fight for the South.

00:56:54.000 And you had West Point classmates killing each other.

00:57:00.000 The reason why trophy point or battle monument was created and the reason why those cannons are surrounding it buried into the ground muzzle first is to commemorate the notion of never aiming our cannons at our fellow countrymen again.

00:57:13.000 That's division.

00:57:15.000 When I think about the Vietnam era, when you had soldiers that were drafted, by the way, not volunteer, they were drafted.

00:57:35.000 Joe, I came home to a hero's welcome, and the first thing people tell me all day every day is, thank you for your service.

00:57:46.000 That's the vision.

00:57:48.000 My parents are alive and well today.

00:57:50.000 They're in their 70s, as I was telling you earlier.

00:57:53.000 My dad was born in 1949. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, so he spent a lot of his teenage years in a segregated South.

00:58:02.000 He's seen the back of buses, and he has seen colored-only water fountains.

00:58:07.000 He's alive and well today.

00:58:10.000 That's division.

00:58:12.000 So I want to add perspective to how far this country has really come.

00:58:17.000 And we've got to understand how do we build on these things and also understand that this pendulum shifts back and forth.

00:58:25.000 I think people like Dan Crenshaw are people that want to make sure that we bring this pendulum back this way by just being reasonable human beings.

00:58:33.000 Yes.

00:58:34.000 That's it.

00:58:35.000 We could disagree politically.

00:58:37.000 How can we be reasonable people?

00:58:39.000 That's one of his best qualities.

00:58:40.000 It is.

00:58:40.000 He's so measured and so rational and reasonable.

00:58:44.000 And when he talks, he says things that make sense.

00:58:47.000 Yes.

00:58:48.000 He's logical.

00:58:49.000 And, I mean, as well, I'm trying to tell him to run for president.

00:58:52.000 How old is he now?

00:58:54.000 He's 36. I think he's 36. So that's how old you have to be, right?

00:58:57.000 36. Yeah.

00:58:58.000 Yeah.

00:58:58.000 He'd be a great one.

00:59:00.000 I tell people this all the time.

00:59:01.000 People are like...

00:59:01.000 How about you two together?

00:59:02.000 How about that?

00:59:03.000 Oh, my goodness.

00:59:04.000 No, Dan.

00:59:05.000 You know how SEALs are.

00:59:10.000 No, tell me!

00:59:12.000 I got asked this.

00:59:14.000 I got asked this the other day.

00:59:15.000 I got asked, you know, what's the issue?

00:59:17.000 You know, I have an issue with the country, and Wesley, I'm concerned about where we're going to be in 10 years.

00:59:22.000 And I retorted, why?

00:59:24.000 Dan Kershaw could be the president.

00:59:26.000 And I think that would be an excellent thing, to be honest with you.

00:59:29.000 To have a leader like that as president.

00:59:31.000 I would vote for him.

00:59:31.000 I would vote for him myself.

00:59:33.000 And so I always look at Americans like him that get into the breach when it seems like it's dark, it seems like it's bad, we are the ones that step in and pull that pendulum back by just being reasonable people.

00:59:45.000 That's why he's here.

00:59:47.000 What's wrong with SEALs?

00:59:49.000 SEALs are intense.

00:59:51.000 Oh yeah.

00:59:52.000 SEALs are intense.

00:59:53.000 SEALs are uber competitive and they are very intense.

00:59:56.000 And they are my most favorite people on the entire planet.

01:00:00.000 Because what they do in their dedication to service, sacrifice, and if you ask a Navy SEAL to give their life for this country tomorrow, they don't even think about it.

01:00:11.000 They don't think twice about it.

01:00:13.000 They'll do it.

01:00:14.000 I kind of say that tongue-in-cheek because, quite frankly, I love them.

01:00:17.000 But that level of intensity is why America is always so different.

01:00:24.000 It's that passion.

01:00:25.000 It's that love.

01:00:26.000 It's that camaraderie that SEALs have.

01:00:31.000 We've been around quite a few of them.

01:00:32.000 I mean, I have too.

01:00:33.000 And it is hilarious to watch them compete against each other.

01:00:38.000 It's awesome.

01:00:39.000 Yeah.

01:00:40.000 But I love it too, because I think that's kind of the American warrior ethos that's somewhere in all of us.

01:00:46.000 They are just at the tip of the spear when it comes to exemplifying it.

01:00:49.000 And that's why when Dan Crenshaw calls me up and says, hey man, I got an idea for a video.

01:00:55.000 You in?

01:00:56.000 And I was like, okay, tell me more.

01:00:57.000 He goes, well first I'm going to jump out of an airplane.

01:00:59.000 And I'm like, sign me up.

01:01:02.000 Sign me up.

01:01:03.000 That video is crazy.

01:01:05.000 It's awesome.

01:01:05.000 It's great.

01:01:06.000 Can we play it?

01:01:07.000 Sure.

01:01:08.000 You know the video, Jamie?

01:01:10.000 Yeah.

01:01:10.000 Sure.

01:01:12.000 The text was reloaded.

01:01:14.000 Jamie will find it.

01:01:18.000 I don't think we'll get in trouble.

01:01:19.000 It's not about trouble.

01:01:20.000 They have to be known, notified, I guess.

01:01:23.000 Oh.

01:01:24.000 Well, we'll let them know.

01:01:28.000 I mean, yeah, it's not going to hurt.

01:01:31.000 It's only going to help.

01:01:32.000 Oh, yeah.

01:01:35.000 I made it, so can I okay it?

01:01:36.000 Yeah, I think.

01:01:37.000 Whoever owns it, I think.

01:01:39.000 Somebody own it?

01:01:40.000 Dan will let it go, for sure.

01:01:45.000 So anyway, keep going.

01:01:46.000 So he tells you he's going to jump out of an airplane.

01:01:48.000 He's going to jump out of an airplane, and then he's like, do you want to be in it?

01:01:51.000 And my next question was, can I wear my flight suit?

01:01:56.000 It's four minutes long, too.

01:01:57.000 We can't play the whole thing.

01:01:58.000 We can't?

01:01:59.000 Do you want to watch the whole thing for four minutes?

01:02:01.000 Is that bad?

01:02:02.000 I'm asking.

01:02:03.000 Probably the problem is there's not a lot of talking.

01:02:06.000 Yeah.

01:02:07.000 Yeah.

01:02:12.000 Crenshaw Command Center.

01:02:16.000 This is fun, too. 0.96

01:02:17.000 It's also kind of ridiculous.

01:02:18.000 Like, you can see things with its bionic eye.

01:02:20.000 Which, by the way, they're probably about three years away from giving him one of those.

01:02:23.000 Oh, yeah.

01:02:24.000 After this?

01:02:25.000 Yeah.

01:02:25.000 Save Texas.

01:02:29.000 Dun-dun-dun.

01:02:34.000 Well, people are genuinely worried about Texas going blue, right?

01:02:39.000 This is why we're running.

01:02:40.000 And there's a lot of people that are using this hashtag, turn Texas blue, as if that's going to fix things.

01:02:47.000 There you go.

01:02:48.000 Wesley Hunt.

01:02:49.000 And he's on the plane right now.

01:02:51.000 And that's him live, too.

01:02:52.000 Oh, yeah.

01:02:52.000 Of course it is.

01:02:53.000 There he goes. 1.00

01:02:54.000 That crazy fuck. 1.00

01:02:55.000 He's probably so excited to risk his life. 1.00

01:02:57.000 He's like, yay, something exciting.

01:02:59.000 This is great.

01:03:05.000 Oh, look at the landing.

01:03:06.000 The superhero landing.

01:03:07.000 The superhero landing and then all of a sudden he's got a suit on. 0.99

01:03:11.000 It's so silly. 0.93

01:03:13.000 It's great. 0.98

01:03:13.000 It's so silly and awesome at the same time. 0.98

01:03:15.000 Look at you! 0.92

01:03:16.000 You still know how to fly one of these things?

01:03:19.000 Dan Crenshaw.

01:03:21.000 I'm putting a team together, Wesley.

01:03:23.000 You guys are terrible actors! 0.54

01:03:35.000 Shows all your credentials. 0.71

01:03:36.000 I think August is going to want to come, too.

01:03:38.000 That's me, August Pflueger.

01:03:40.000 He's running out here, too.

01:03:41.000 Awesome guy.

01:03:42.000 August Pflueger is running for...

01:03:44.000 What is he running for?

01:03:46.000 He's running for a seat up in District 11. He's an Air Force Academy guy, F-22 pilot.

01:03:50.000 Amazing guy.

01:03:51.000 What were you doing working under a helicopter?

01:04:03.000 We get the point.

01:04:11.000 People can watch it.

01:04:12.000 It's available on...

01:04:14.000 Is it on Dan's YouTube page?

01:04:15.000 Yeah, it's at TexasReloaded.com.

01:04:17.000 Okay, there you go.

01:04:19.000 TexasReloaded.com.

01:04:20.000 It's on YouTube.

01:04:20.000 It's on his Instagram.

01:04:22.000 It's all over the place.

01:04:24.000 There you go.

01:04:26.000 Save Texas.

01:04:27.000 Yeah, people are really worried about all folks like me moving from California.

01:04:33.000 Yeah.

01:04:33.000 Worried.

01:04:34.000 They're worried about...

01:04:34.000 You know what's funny is that we want...

01:04:36.000 Come one, come all.

01:04:37.000 Give me your tired, your poor.

01:04:38.000 Come on to Texas.

01:04:39.000 But you got to understand something.

01:04:40.000 Yeah.

01:04:41.000 You're coming here because of low taxes and low regulation and you want to live your life in liberty and make sure that you can protect yourself and protect your family.

01:04:48.000 And that means you have to vote a certain way.

01:04:51.000 And that's why we kind of are Texas.

01:04:55.000 Don't turn this place into what you fled.

01:04:57.000 That's exactly right.

01:04:58.000 Yeah.

01:04:59.000 That's what Matthew McConaughey was telling me.

01:05:00.000 That's exactly right.

01:05:01.000 We have to kind of put that out there to people.

01:05:04.000 Exactly right.

01:05:04.000 And I understand.

01:05:05.000 People have their different views and whatnot, but you're here for a reason.

01:05:07.000 Yeah.

01:05:08.000 Well, the thing is, you can be socially liberal.

01:05:11.000 Yes, you can.

01:05:11.000 But also understand that there's certain things that are just not wise.

01:05:17.000 Yes.

01:05:18.000 And a lot of those things are ruining California.

01:05:21.000 That's right. 0.99

01:05:22.000 There's over-regulation in California that's off the fucking chart. 0.98

01:05:26.000 The taxes are so crazy there, and they're trying to raise them up to 16.8%. 0.98

01:05:30.000 And then what are you going to do with that money? 0.99

01:05:31.000 Fuck it up worse? 0.99

01:05:33.000 You're going to have more money to fuck things up? 1.00

01:05:35.000 I just don't understand their logic of opening and not opening things, especially now when you look at the deaths.

01:05:43.000 They want to talk about COVID cases.

01:05:45.000 The cases are low.

01:05:46.000 They're not that high.

01:05:47.000 And the deaths are very low.

01:05:50.000 We've kind of got a handle on what this is.

01:05:52.000 You can let people open up their businesses.

01:05:54.000 You can let people wear masks and be careful and take care of themselves and take vitamin D and zinc and vitamin C. And we can at least get back to some semblance of normality.

01:06:06.000 But they don't want to do that for some weird reason.

01:06:07.000 And this is the one that drives me crazy.

01:06:11.000 We're good to go.

01:06:30.000 It's not.

01:06:30.000 Again, this is what makes Texas, Texas.

01:06:33.000 We just believe in liberty.

01:06:36.000 Yes.

01:06:36.000 We believe in allowing and empowering the citizens to make your own personal informed decisions for your own life.

01:06:41.000 Yes.

01:06:42.000 If you want to take the risk, then we allow you to do so.

01:06:45.000 Go buy a tiger.

01:06:49.000 How'd you know I was going to say that?

01:06:54.000 Do you know the statistic about tigers here?

01:06:55.000 What?

01:06:56.000 There's more tigers in captivity in Texas than all of the wild of the world.

01:07:00.000 I did not know that.

01:07:00.000 There's more tigers in private collections in Texas.

01:07:03.000 Captivity in Texas.

01:07:04.000 In Texas than all of the wild of the planet Earth.

01:07:10.000 Sometimes a little bit too much freedom.

01:07:16.000 That's legit.

01:07:16.000 I had a whole bit about it in my 2016 Netflix special.

01:07:21.000 Yeah, that's a legit statistic.

01:07:23.000 I guess I'm not getting a dog.

01:07:24.000 I'm buying a tiger.

01:07:27.000 I had Mike Tyson on.

01:07:29.000 He was explaining to me his tiger.

01:07:30.000 Here it is.

01:07:31.000 How many tigers?

01:07:32.000 2,000 to 5,000 tigers living in the southern state of the United States.

01:07:37.000 That's unbelievable.

01:07:38.000 So what's even more incredible is 2,000 to 5,000.

01:07:41.000 That's a pretty big gap.

01:07:43.000 Could be more tigers.

01:07:45.000 Meanwhile, they don't know.

01:07:46.000 That means there could be like 3,000 unaccounted for tigers.

01:07:49.000 That we don't even know about.

01:07:51.000 Yeah, so there's roughly 3,800 tigers living in the world globally.

01:07:54.000 There's as many as 5,000 tigers living just in Texas.

01:07:57.000 Just in Texas, yeah.

01:08:00.000 And I'm sure that picked up after the Tiger King got...

01:08:03.000 Oh, I'm sure.

01:08:04.000 I'm sure.

01:08:05.000 People were like, hey, I didn't know I'd get a tiger.

01:08:09.000 I was appalled at how easy it was to get a tiger.

01:08:13.000 And not only that, how cheap it was to get a tiger.

01:08:17.000 How much does a tiger cost?

01:08:18.000 I think it was like, was it like 600 bucks?

01:08:20.000 It wasn't, yeah.

01:08:21.000 It was a...

01:08:23.000 Puppies, there are puppies that are more expensive, if I remember right.

01:08:25.000 Oh, for sure.

01:08:26.000 I believe I paid more than that for my dog.

01:08:29.000 Yeah, I thought for sure this would be, I mean, thousands of, minimum thousands of dollars. 1.00

01:08:33.000 Yeah, someone thought like $100,000 for a fucking tiger cubs. 0.97

01:08:36.000 He's walking around with these little tiger cubs, and it's just like, yeah, like 500 bucks a piece. 0.99

01:08:40.000 I'm like, are you kidding me?

01:08:41.000 Jamie's got something here.

01:08:42.000 Oh my goodness.

01:08:43.000 $500?

01:08:44.000 $500 you could buy an orange Bengal tiger and tie it up in your yard, no questions asked.

01:08:50.000 A white tiger will cost you $5,000.

01:08:53.000 It's all perfectly legal in Texas.

01:08:54.000 The exotic animal trade is a billion dollar industry.

01:08:57.000 Wow.

01:08:58.000 That's nuts.

01:09:00.000 They're endangered, but you can buy them for $500.

01:09:04.000 That's right.

01:09:04.000 That's bonkers.

01:09:06.000 Is this crazy?

01:09:06.000 I mean, what kind of regulation do they have on the size of your yard?

01:09:11.000 I don't know.

01:09:11.000 Wasn't there a situation where a bunch of kids were getting high and they went into an abandoned house and they found a tiger inside of it?

01:09:16.000 I thought it.

01:09:17.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:09:18.000 I'm like, that's the most Texas shit I've ever heard. 1.00

01:09:20.000 You're like, I'm moving to Texas after you saw that? 1.00

01:09:22.000 No!

01:09:23.000 That's not why. 0.99

01:09:24.000 But that is one of the most Texas things I've ever fucking heard. 0.98

01:09:27.000 It is. 0.99

01:09:28.000 You're in an abandoned house, it just happens to have a tiger in it.

01:09:31.000 It is.

01:09:33.000 That's absolutely it.

01:09:34.000 What does it say?

01:09:35.000 What's the title?

01:09:37.000 Cannabis Smoker Finds Tiger in an Abandoned House in Texas.

01:09:42.000 What'd you do if you saw a tiger?

01:09:44.000 Well, you would hope it's been eating.

01:09:46.000 Right? 1.00

01:09:46.000 You'd hope that motherfucker's full. 1.00

01:09:49.000 Your lunch is what that turns into. 1.00

01:09:51.000 I mean, you ever seen those ligers? 0.98

01:09:55.000 Absolutely. 1.00

01:09:56.000 That is the most weird shit ever. 1.00

01:09:57.000 They're massive, too. 1.00

01:09:58.000 Yeah, apparently the gene...

01:10:00.000 I don't remember if it's from the male or the female, which has to be which.

01:10:04.000 I think it has to be like a male lion and a female tiger.

01:10:06.000 And then, for whatever reason, the genes for growth regulation don't exist.

01:10:12.000 Right.

01:10:12.000 So you have this thing that can be like 15 feet long.

01:10:16.000 Yeah.

01:10:17.000 Massive.

01:10:17.000 It's so big!

01:10:19.000 They're pretty chill.

01:10:20.000 That's the other thing.

01:10:22.000 They don't necessarily attack people any more than a regular tiger.

01:10:26.000 So let me get this right, Joe.

01:10:28.000 You're gonna buy a liger.

01:10:29.000 No, no, no.

01:10:30.000 You're gonna buy a liger.

01:10:31.000 Bro, I got a golden retriever.

01:10:33.000 That's it?

01:10:33.000 I have the calmest dog of all time.

01:10:35.000 Look at the size of that thing in the upper left.

01:10:37.000 Gosh, look at that thing. 0.96

01:10:38.000 Look at that. 1.00

01:10:39.000 What in the fuck? 1.00

01:10:41.000 Goddamn, that's big. 1.00

01:10:42.000 Click on that, Jamie. 0.98

01:10:43.000 Yeah.

01:10:44.000 What?

01:10:45.000 What?

01:10:45.000 That's unbelievable.

01:10:46.000 Yeah, that's the dude from the movie.

01:10:47.000 Look at the size of that thing.

01:10:49.000 My lord, that is so big.

01:10:53.000 That doesn't even look real!

01:10:55.000 That lady's just feeding it a bottle. 1.00

01:10:57.000 Yeah, right?

01:10:58.000 That's like giving it a shot.

01:11:00.000 You give it a shot of milk.

01:11:02.000 A shot glass of milk.

01:11:04.000 Yeah.

01:11:05.000 Texas has got some wacky laws.

01:11:07.000 Yeah.

01:11:08.000 But again, freedom, liberty.

01:11:10.000 These are just tenets that we have here.

01:11:13.000 That we just adhere to.

01:11:14.000 And also friendliness.

01:11:15.000 People go out of their way to be nice here.

01:11:18.000 Drivers are more polite, I noticed.

01:11:20.000 They cut you off less.

01:11:23.000 Generally, they let you in the lane easier.

01:11:25.000 It's a more polite society.

01:11:28.000 And the thing about Austin that I really enjoy is it's just not that many people, too.

01:11:33.000 There's something about...

01:11:36.000 Enormous populations where you kind of lose your appreciation of people because there's too many of them.

01:11:40.000 They become a problem.

01:11:42.000 Like, oh, all these people on the highway.

01:11:43.000 All these people at the mall.

01:11:44.000 You don't appreciate them as much.

01:11:48.000 And another place that I find similar to Texas is actually Iowa.

01:11:51.000 So my wife is from Iowa. 0.90

01:11:53.000 And I have the most amazing mother-in-law ever.

01:11:56.000 She's great.

01:11:57.000 And when you go to Iowa, people are just flat-out kind to you.

01:12:01.000 Yeah.

01:12:02.000 They're just nice. 0.92

01:12:03.000 Well, it gets so fucking cold in the winter. 0.94

01:12:04.000 They got us together. 0.96

01:12:05.000 They got us together.

01:12:07.000 Yeah, I got a good buddy of mine lives in Iowa.

01:12:09.000 Shout out to John Dudley.

01:12:10.000 Okay, there you go.

01:12:10.000 Yeah, he lives in Iowa.

01:12:13.000 His reasons are the most nutty ever.

01:12:15.000 He's a deer hunter.

01:12:16.000 Okay.

01:12:16.000 And he has an enormous lease.

01:12:19.000 Well, he owns land and he leases land.

01:12:21.000 Altogether, he's got more than 700 acres, I believe, in Iowa just for deer hunting.

01:12:27.000 I don't think I want to say.

01:12:28.000 I don't want to give out his spot.

01:12:31.000 Gotcha.

01:12:32.000 Yeah.

01:12:33.000 But he's a rare dude.

01:12:39.000 He's a very famous bow hunter.

01:12:42.000 Okay.

01:12:42.000 And so he teaches archery.

01:12:44.000 He teaches bow hunting and teaches it online.

01:12:47.000 He's got this knock-on archery set up.

01:12:49.000 They set up bows for people and all this stuff.

01:12:51.000 He makes videos of bow hunting, but literally move to Iowa because the best white-tailed deer hunting in the world, arguably, is, you know, it's arguable whether it's Kansas or Illinois or Iowa, but Iowa's in the mix and his place is pretty special.

01:13:07.000 Yeah, I went hunting there a couple of years ago.

01:13:09.000 Hopefully I'll get to go back here late November.

01:13:11.000 It's pretty awesome.

01:13:12.000 It's amazing.

01:13:14.000 Yeah, it's pretty awesome.

01:13:15.000 It's amazing. 1.00

01:13:15.000 And when you drive down the road, you better go slow because those motherfuckers... 1.00

01:13:18.000 They're everywhere. 1.00

01:13:18.000 They're just darting out. 1.00

01:13:19.000 Everywhere.

01:13:20.000 All over the place.

01:13:21.000 Everywhere.

01:13:21.000 And they will destroy your vehicle.

01:13:23.000 They will destroy your vehicle.

01:13:24.000 He gets some big deer there in his place because he cultivates it only for bow hunting.

01:13:29.000 Oh my gosh.

01:13:30.000 Yeah, and he knows what he's doing.

01:13:31.000 He puts up food plots and stuff.

01:13:33.000 It's a part of the culture there that if you don't live in an area that has a culture that revolves around deer hunting, whether it's...

01:13:42.000 Wisconsin has it.

01:13:44.000 Other parts of the world have it, but it's different.

01:13:46.000 It's different there.

01:13:47.000 That's right.

01:13:48.000 Yeah.

01:13:48.000 It's absolutely incredible.

01:13:50.000 And I believe the state's actually buckshot only.

01:13:53.000 Oh, really?

01:13:54.000 Is it?

01:13:54.000 You can't use a rifle?

01:13:55.000 Nope.

01:13:56.000 Nope.

01:13:56.000 That's how Massachusetts was growing up.

01:13:57.000 That makes things challenging.

01:13:59.000 It's like shooting a cannonball, but... 0.99

01:14:01.000 Yeah, those slugs. 0.99

01:14:02.000 Those are kind of crazy. 0.92

01:14:03.000 Yeah.

01:14:03.000 Yeah, it's just, it is though, in that way, like you get a lot of farmers, a lot of hardworking people.

01:14:10.000 Yes, we do.

01:14:11.000 And generally, very nice.

01:14:13.000 They wave to you on the roads.

01:14:15.000 And again, not that many people.

01:14:17.000 It's a smaller population of people.

01:14:19.000 So my wife, she moved down here, and she fits in seamlessly.

01:14:23.000 She'll always say the kind of values of Iowa, like kind of the values of Texas.

01:14:28.000 Yeah, but without the black ice.

01:14:30.000 That's the worst, dude.

01:14:31.000 It's insane.

01:14:32.000 When you don't know, and then all of a sudden your car's like, whee!

01:14:34.000 And you're spinning around in circles.

01:14:35.000 Yeah, on the highway.

01:14:37.000 Yeah, I grew up in Boston.

01:14:39.000 So, you know, I experienced a lot of snow and a lot of black ice.

01:14:43.000 That's the weirdest one because it just rains a little bit and then it freezes over.

01:14:46.000 And then I was on the...

01:14:47.000 It was a funny thing when I was in high school.

01:14:49.000 Me and my friend John were on the roof of...

01:14:52.000 I lived on a hill, and we were on the roof of the garage drinking, watching people slide down the street and slamming the curbs and bounce off of each other.

01:15:03.000 Because one day the whole street became just like a skating rink.

01:15:07.000 Just all black ice.

01:15:08.000 And we sat up on that roof for hours just watching people slide.

01:15:11.000 So we called the cops.

01:15:12.000 And we're like, hey man, people keep slamming into each other here.

01:15:15.000 So the cops did it. 0.99

01:15:16.000 They came sliding down, and they slammed into the curb, and they bounced off the fucking... 0.99

01:15:20.000 It was terrible. 0.99

01:15:22.000 You're like, my bad.

01:15:24.000 We try to tell you guys. 0.98

01:15:26.000 You don't fucking look like, yeah, we got it. 0.99

01:15:28.000 No, you don't. 0.98

01:15:31.000 But that's a, you know, if you live in anywhere where it gets that cold, that's a common occurrence.

01:15:37.000 Yes, I was.

01:15:37.000 I was in grad school at Cornell up in Ithaca.

01:15:39.000 So, I mean, it was just the same.

01:15:41.000 It got to the point, I'll just stay off the road.

01:15:43.000 The one thing I do like about snow, though, is it makes everybody go mellow.

01:15:47.000 Everybody mellows out.

01:15:48.000 It chills you out.

01:15:49.000 Just drive slowly.

01:15:51.000 If you've got good tires and a four-wheel drive...

01:15:53.000 You'll be alright.

01:15:54.000 You'll be alright.

01:15:54.000 Yeah.

01:15:55.000 It also makes you feel more comfortable.

01:15:58.000 You huddle up in the home.

01:16:00.000 You appreciate the fire.

01:16:02.000 Cozier.

01:16:03.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:16:04.000 And the weird thing is the eerie quiet outside.

01:16:06.000 When you go outside and it's snow, because the snow acts as like a sound deadening for everything. 0.97

01:16:11.000 So if you've got 12 inches of snow on the ground and it's snowing outside, you don't hear a fucking thing. 0.68

01:16:15.000 Except for your steps as you crunch into the snow. 0.97

01:16:19.000 That's all you hear?

01:16:19.000 Shhh, shhh.

01:16:20.000 Yeah, but the quiet.

01:16:22.000 It's really awesome.

01:16:23.000 It's pretty amazing.

01:16:24.000 Yeah, but that's the problem with Iowa is the cold. 1.00

01:16:27.000 And it's flat as fuck. 0.99

01:16:30.000 It's a lot of corn, too. 1.00

01:16:31.000 Yeah.

01:16:32.000 It's a lot of corn.

01:16:33.000 Yeah.

01:16:34.000 There's good things.

01:16:36.000 Listen, a lot of people are exiting California and they're trying to find places to go and they're going to Bozeman, Montana and they're going to Arizona.

01:16:44.000 They're going all over the place and they're realizing that this situation, this COVID situation that we're in that's terrible, it's being handled differently.

01:16:55.000 Yes.

01:16:56.000 In different places in the country.

01:16:57.000 In those areas.

01:16:57.000 Yeah.

01:16:57.000 I have friends that come from California and they come out here and they're like, holy shit, it's like everyone's normal.

01:17:03.000 That's right. 0.98

01:17:03.000 I'm like, yeah, you can be normal, man. 0.98

01:17:04.000 That's right.

01:17:05.000 Wear a mask. 1.00

01:17:06.000 Don't be an asshole. 1.00

01:17:08.000 And yeah, you could go to a restaurant. 1.00

01:17:10.000 So the good thing about Houston is obviously we took it very seriously as we should.

01:17:16.000 And I would never tell anybody not to.

01:17:18.000 But you're starting to see glimpses of life again.

01:17:22.000 You're starting to see people kind of starting to go out.

01:17:24.000 There's restaurant rules. 0.57

01:17:25.000 So if you're walking around, you're wearing a mask.

01:17:27.000 But if you're sitting down, it's okay.

01:17:29.000 California, they want you to put your mask on in between bites now.

01:17:32.000 That's a new thing.

01:17:33.000 I mean, think about it. 1.00

01:17:34.000 Shut the fuck up. 1.00

01:17:35.000 Just shut the fuck up. 1.00

01:17:37.000 Think about what you just said. 1.00

01:17:38.000 Please, shut the fuck up. 1.00

01:17:39.000 So if you're outside, you have to eat outside anyway. 1.00

01:17:42.000 Do you have to do it outside?

01:17:43.000 Is that what the new rule is?

01:17:44.000 Outside, you have to put your mask on in between bites?

01:17:46.000 Come on. 1.00

01:17:47.000 It's just so stupid. 1.00

01:17:48.000 Come on. 1.00

01:17:48.000 They just want to control people in some weird way. 1.00

01:17:51.000 It's so dangerous.

01:17:52.000 They were trying to tell kids they can't go to Halloween.

01:17:54.000 They can't go trick-or-treating.

01:17:55.000 Yeah.

01:17:56.000 And then everybody freaked out.

01:17:57.000 They're like, okay, we changed our mind.

01:17:58.000 What kind of policies do you have?

01:18:00.000 What is the motivation behind these policies?

01:18:04.000 And how can you just change your mind because people get upset?

01:18:08.000 If it's so important that you really think children should stay inside on Halloween, and then everybody freaks out, so you go, okay, we changed our mind.

01:18:15.000 What are you basing it on, and who are you?

01:18:18.000 And why do you get to choose?

01:18:19.000 This is not what the Constitution was supposed to be enabling.

01:18:23.000 No, it is not.

01:18:24.000 And my other concerning thing, especially when it comes to young people and kids, we don't have these kids in school.

01:18:31.000 And the problem is that when you are young, when you're 18 years old, one year means a lot.

01:18:38.000 And I'm not talking about academics.

01:18:40.000 I am talking about social growth and social development.

01:18:44.000 We are stunting the social growth and social development of these kids.

01:18:47.000 Unquestionably.

01:18:48.000 Because when you are around groups of people, that's how you grow.

01:18:51.000 That's how your personality is formed.

01:18:53.000 And we're robbing them of that for roughly a year.

01:18:56.000 And I just feel like there's a way to do it to make sure that the kids are safe, which is our number one priority.

01:19:04.000 If there are instructors that are at risk, how do we keep them away?

01:19:09.000 And then allow the teachers, a lot of them that I speak with, Who actually really want to get back to work and teach these kids.

01:19:16.000 Because that's their passion.

01:19:17.000 And they're willing to take that risk because that's what they signed up for.

01:19:21.000 And that's what they told me.

01:19:22.000 And I feel like there is a way where we could accomplish all of the above.

01:19:26.000 But we don't want to have a conversation about it.

01:19:28.000 After the election, Wesley.

01:19:30.000 Let's just wait until after the election.

01:19:31.000 I don't know why you're rushing now.

01:19:33.000 You're going to put people at risk.

01:19:35.000 People's lives.

01:19:36.000 Someone died.

01:19:38.000 These kids.

01:19:39.000 We're hurting the kids.

01:19:42.000 Unquestionably.

01:19:43.000 And, you know, the other thing that people don't want to take into consideration or even don't want to discuss is how many people are dying during this COVID crisis because of depression, because of suicide, because they lost their business, they lost their income, they lost their livelihood, they lost their home.

01:19:56.000 It's devastating.

01:19:57.000 It's happening, and it's a factor, and it's not a factor that's being talked about.

01:20:01.000 You're not seeing charts that track how—the suicides have gone up so high— I have a friend who talked to a sheriff in Los Angeles who said, we used to see one suicide every week or so.

01:20:12.000 Now we see five a day.

01:20:14.000 That's exactly right.

01:20:15.000 And you're like, this is crazy.

01:20:16.000 And it's crazy because we have the technology to fix this and actually handle it.

01:20:19.000 I mean, for example, case in point.

01:20:22.000 Came to your studio.

01:20:23.000 Awesome studio, by the way.

01:20:24.000 It's good to see it in person.

01:20:25.000 Walk in.

01:20:26.000 What do you do?

01:20:26.000 You text me.

01:20:27.000 Hey, there's a nurse. 1.00

01:20:29.000 You're going to get COVID tests.

01:20:30.000 It takes 15 minutes.

01:20:32.000 Great.

01:20:34.000 We all find out we're negative, and we can get on with our day.

01:20:37.000 Yes.

01:20:38.000 Do you know how easy that is?

01:20:39.000 Yeah.

01:20:39.000 Well, it's not readily available everywhere yet.

01:20:43.000 Yet.

01:20:44.000 But it can be.

01:20:45.000 It can be.

01:20:45.000 Yeah.

01:20:46.000 That's the argument, that it can be.

01:20:47.000 Well, what I want to do with the comedy club is set up like 10 of those.

01:20:51.000 And just have everybody say, look, the show's at 8. Get there at 7. You get tested.

01:20:55.000 Once you're clean, 15 minutes in, you can go have a drink.

01:20:57.000 And the show will start at 8. And this way we could just sit down like humans, like we used to do, just 7, 8 months ago, and have a good old time.

01:21:06.000 We can still do that, I think.

01:21:08.000 Yes, it can be done.

01:21:10.000 And I think, more importantly, you have to let people take risks. 0.98

01:21:14.000 If you let people take risks, like Dan Crenshaw jumping out of airplanes for a fucking video, we're letting people... 0.96

01:21:21.000 And I understand that you're putting other people at risk, too. 0.98

01:21:22.000 I do understand that, by the way.

01:21:24.000 That's not lost on me.

01:21:26.000 Yes, it's not lost on me either.

01:21:27.000 But I do think that we need to take precautions about that.

01:21:31.000 That needs to be precaution. 0.98

01:21:32.000 But if you're a person, like, say if you're a 24-year-old and you live with another 24-year-old and you want to go out but you can't go out, that's bullshit. 0.95

01:21:38.000 You should be able to do whatever you want to do.

01:21:40.000 And just, it's up to you and we should really highlight your responsibility to get tested and not expose yourself to other people that are at risk, that are high risk or that are vulnerable.

01:21:52.000 We could definitely do this, by the way.

01:21:54.000 Yes, it can be done.

01:21:55.000 But it can't be done with over-regulation, and it can't be done with the kind of attitude that they have in California, where they think they could just shut everything down.

01:22:02.000 That's right.

01:22:02.000 And this is why I left.

01:22:04.000 I don't see this getting better anytime soon.

01:22:07.000 I saw it as being a thing where they weren't addressing the negative aspects of locking things down for right now.

01:22:14.000 We're at six, seven months.

01:22:16.000 What is it going to be?

01:22:17.000 Is it a year?

01:22:18.000 Is it a year and a half?

01:22:19.000 Right.

01:22:20.000 How are you going to deal with the negative aspects, the negative social, the economic, just the way people feel about the city?

01:22:28.000 How are you going to deal with all that?

01:22:30.000 Is there a strategy in place?

01:22:31.000 Seems to be none.

01:22:32.000 Seems to be none.

01:22:33.000 They're looking at everything with rose-colored glasses, and they keep getting paid.

01:22:36.000 And that's part of the problem, is all these politicians keep getting paid.

01:22:39.000 And I know Gavin Newsom was at one point in time saying he was going to take a pay cut, but he never did.

01:22:44.000 As far as I'm concerned, as far as I know, I don't think he did.

01:22:50.000 Well, I love what you said is you brought the Constitution.

01:22:53.000 And again, I've used the word liberty multiple times now because that's absolutely real to me.

01:22:57.000 I mean, they set this framework up to empower the citizens to have their own religion, to live where they want to live.

01:23:05.000 If you don't like your state, you can move as you did and vote with your feet.

01:23:10.000 If you don't like the tax rate in one state, you can move somewhere else.

01:23:14.000 I mean, we've built this country to allow people to make their own decisions.

01:23:18.000 And the second we start to erode that and take that away from people is when we're getting in trouble, and that completely flies in the face of what the construct of this country was supposed to be originally.

01:23:28.000 And that's where people like me, for example, you ask why I'm running for Congress, this is why.

01:23:33.000 Because we have to get back to empowering citizens to make their own decisions.

01:23:37.000 Yes.

01:23:38.000 Spent eight years in the Army, four years at West Point.

01:23:41.000 That's 12 years total in the military.

01:23:42.000 Love the military.

01:23:44.000 Thank God I did it.

01:23:45.000 Best decision I've ever made.

01:23:46.000 But we don't need more federal government and more regulation.

01:23:51.000 We need as little regulation as possible.

01:23:54.000 I understand the human condition every now and again can have some nefarious intent.

01:23:58.000 I understand that.

01:24:00.000 But really, it's about empowering the individual to make their own choices and make their own decisions.

01:24:05.000 Federal government is not supposed to tell people what to do and how to live.

01:24:09.000 People are fleeing their countries from all over the world to come right here to this country. 1.00

01:24:15.000 And I just sat with a woman from Taiwan today.

01:24:18.000 They are fleeing their countries to come here to live free. 0.99

01:24:22.000 And then here we are talking about regulation to take that very thing that makes us different away from our citizens.

01:24:29.000 My concern is that we're not going to get it back.

01:24:31.000 My concern is I understand that they have motivation to reduce these freedoms to contain COVID, but freedoms lost are rarely regained.

01:24:41.000 And my concern is that they're going to find other excuses to keep people locked down, other excuses to try to exercise these powers that they've learned how to use.

01:24:51.000 This is what's weird about this.

01:24:53.000 You've let a genie out of the bottle.

01:24:55.000 You've let people like that Mayor Garcetti guy in LA tell people what they can and can't do.

01:25:01.000 They're shutting off electricity and water if you have a party at your house. 0.99

01:25:05.000 This kind of shit is like, that's supposed to be, those are essentials. 0.99

01:25:09.000 When are you allowed to do that? 1.00

01:25:11.000 Since when can you do that?

01:25:13.000 And everybody's like, oh, because of COVID. Yeah.

01:25:16.000 Well, how do you get that back?

01:25:17.000 Does it have to be...

01:25:18.000 What if COVID is a returning thing?

01:25:20.000 What if COVID is like the common cold and people are just going to get it from now on?

01:25:24.000 Or like the flu.

01:25:25.000 Or like the flu.

01:25:26.000 Right.

01:25:27.000 So are we giving up enormous amounts of power to the government now?

01:25:32.000 Are we losing all of our liberties because of this disease that we're all dealing with?

01:25:38.000 And we're going to put our...

01:25:39.000 Faith in the hands of people who are elected that we never intended them to have these powers in the first place.

01:25:46.000 And now we're seeing these powers are used very differently in different parts of the country.

01:25:52.000 Yeah.

01:25:52.000 So this is the good thing about information, and we walk around every day with a supercomputer in our hands.

01:25:58.000 We're actually one of the first generations to ever be able to do that for the bulk of our lives.

01:26:02.000 And I think that people wake up and they realize that, so no, I don't want to be over-regulated, so I'm going to go somewhere where I am not over-regulated, so I'm going to move.

01:26:16.000 Exhibit A, right?

01:26:18.000 I think that people are awakened by stuff like this, particularly when government overplays their hand, and a particular population where they're like, no, we're not going to take it.

01:26:30.000 And then what happens?

01:26:31.000 People either A, move or they put somebody else and they elect somebody else and they fire the person who's in charge.

01:26:39.000 We're seeing a lot of what's happening in Portland and in Seattle and it's kind of interesting.

01:26:44.000 I'm very curious to see how those elections go in the future because those local leaders failed their people.

01:26:51.000 They failed their citizens.

01:26:52.000 I I think that area is so liberal that they're not gonna learn their lesson.

01:26:56.000 We'll see.

01:26:57.000 We will see.

01:26:57.000 There's a lot of Trump supporters in Portland, too, that are doing these big parades with American flags and Trump flags and driving their trucks and honking their horns.

01:27:05.000 I wonder if that's gonna have an impact.

01:27:07.000 I think it will.

01:27:08.000 Because the number one role of the federal government is to keep her citizens safe.

01:27:14.000 That's the number one goal.

01:27:16.000 And when in Portland you have a police chief that says to small business owners who are losing their businesses because they're getting rioted and looted, and the police chief says this, sorry, you're on your own.

01:27:29.000 Well, you have now failed.

01:27:31.000 Now, why are they saying you're on your own?

01:27:33.000 Because the mayor won't allow them to do anything?

01:27:35.000 Well, that's because they are now defunding the police, and then they're setting up areas where they won't allow law enforcement to even enter.

01:27:42.000 Like Seattle.

01:27:43.000 Yes.

01:27:45.000 And then now, the citizens are actually not as safe.

01:27:49.000 Well, that one was bonkers, where the mayor was on television saying, maybe it's the summer of love. 0.99

01:27:54.000 What the fuck are you talking about? 0.99

01:27:56.000 You found out. 0.99

01:27:57.000 The whole idea behind it is so...

01:27:59.000 My take on it was, you're doing something that has never been done before.

01:28:04.000 You're taking over blocks, you're putting up boundaries, and you're deciding it's yours.

01:28:08.000 But you set a precedent now, because you didn't earn any of that space.

01:28:12.000 You didn't earn that land.

01:28:14.000 You didn't earn those buildings.

01:28:15.000 You took it by force.

01:28:16.000 You set a precedent, and what's to stop someone from taking that from you?

01:28:21.000 That's right.

01:28:21.000 With the same strategy.

01:28:23.000 Saying, no, I think I'm right, so I'm going to come in with bigger guns and more people, and we're going to shut out all these businesses, and we're going to put up bigger barriers, and we're going to have more stringent policing.

01:28:33.000 They were beating people up for filming things.

01:28:35.000 Unbelievable. 1.00

01:28:36.000 It's so dumb. 1.00

01:28:38.000 You embodied the worst aspect of a dictatorship in a six-block thing, and you did it quick. 1.00

01:28:45.000 You became the worst country in America.

01:28:48.000 If that's an independent country, and then it's in the continental United States, you became the worst version of what America is.

01:28:56.000 That's right.

01:28:57.000 That's right.

01:28:58.000 Can't agree more with you.

01:28:59.000 And people see this, by the way.

01:29:01.000 People see it.

01:29:02.000 Yes, I think they do.

01:29:02.000 People see it.

01:29:03.000 I think they do.

01:29:04.000 I think there's a lot of people that are seeing it.

01:29:06.000 There are a lot of people that are seeing that these idealistic portrayals of what government can be.

01:29:13.000 Like this idealistic, we need to defund the police and put all the money into social programs.

01:29:17.000 Like, yes!

01:29:18.000 With no long-term solution.

01:29:20.000 You see, oh, Jesus, look what happens.

01:29:22.000 Oh, this is terrible.

01:29:24.000 That's right.

01:29:24.000 We don't want that.

01:29:25.000 No.

01:29:26.000 It's a wake-up call for a lot of people, I believe.

01:29:28.000 It is a wake-up call.

01:29:29.000 Yeah.

01:29:30.000 And then the mayor of Portland.

01:29:31.000 I mean, he's hilarious. 1.00

01:29:33.000 He goes outside and they're like, fuck you, resign. 1.00

01:29:35.000 Think about that. 1.00

01:29:35.000 He is the most progressive guy. 1.00

01:29:37.000 He got canceled.

01:29:38.000 Yeah.

01:29:39.000 Think about that.

01:29:40.000 Not enough! 1.00

01:29:42.000 Not good enough, bitch! 1.00

01:29:45.000 Like the price is wrong, right? 1.00

01:29:46.000 They try to light his apartment building on fire.

01:29:48.000 It's just amazing that literally the most progressive mayor in America, and they're like, not enough.

01:29:54.000 Not enough.

01:29:55.000 Resigned, sir.

01:29:56.000 Not good enough.

01:29:58.000 So where does it stop and where does it end?

01:29:59.000 I don't know.

01:30:00.000 They want 100% defund the police.

01:30:02.000 They want to give these people a year to...

01:30:04.000 That was their demands.

01:30:05.000 Give them a year to find alternative, meaningful employment.

01:30:09.000 And then no more police.

01:30:11.000 Yeah, okay.

01:30:12.000 Come on down. 0.94

01:30:13.000 We need you to come on down here to Texas.

01:30:14.000 Yeah.

01:30:15.000 Congratulations, folks. 1.00

01:30:16.000 You just fucked up your entire city. 1.00

01:30:18.000 You're welcome. 0.99

01:30:18.000 What are you going to do with that? 0.99

01:30:21.000 How do you plan on working that out with no police?

01:30:23.000 What happens if your car gets stolen?

01:30:24.000 You gonna call a social worker?

01:30:26.000 What are you gonna do if someone breaks into your house?

01:30:28.000 What are you gonna call?

01:30:28.000 Yeah.

01:30:29.000 What are you gonna do about murder?

01:30:30.000 What are you gonna do about rape?

01:30:32.000 These things happen, by the way.

01:30:33.000 They just don't miraculously go away.

01:30:35.000 Right.

01:30:35.000 Yeah.

01:30:36.000 Well, it's just these idealistic views of what the future should be and the way you think you're going to implement them today, currently.

01:30:45.000 We just need to get—there's bad cops.

01:30:48.000 We've got to get rid of all the cops.

01:30:49.000 Well, there's bad protesters, too.

01:30:51.000 Should we get rid of all protests?

01:30:53.000 Of course not.

01:30:54.000 Of course not.

01:30:54.000 Yeah.

01:30:55.000 When you see people smash buildings and smash windows, no one's saying you can't protest anymore.

01:31:00.000 No one's saying there's no more.

01:31:01.000 Well, obviously, that's a part of protesting because you got bad people. 0.99

01:31:05.000 And when you have a group that anyone can join in on, like anyone can join most of these groups, you're going to get a bunch of assholes. 0.99

01:31:13.000 That's right. 0.99

01:31:14.000 Unquestionably.

01:31:15.000 That's how it happens.

01:31:16.000 That's life.

01:31:17.000 Yeah.

01:31:18.000 And you need law and order to fix that.

01:31:20.000 Yeah.

01:31:20.000 You need consequences for unlawful acts.

01:31:24.000 And the best way to do that is with the police.

01:31:28.000 And they choose to do it too, by the way.

01:31:30.000 These people choose to get up in the morning and they choose to protect people.

01:31:33.000 They do.

01:31:35.000 And I always say this.

01:31:36.000 They don't always get it right.

01:31:37.000 We know this.

01:31:38.000 I recognize that.

01:31:40.000 Yeah.

01:31:41.000 But this is not the answer either.

01:31:43.000 Well, they're human.

01:31:44.000 Yeah.

01:31:44.000 And when you get a bunch of humans together...

01:31:46.000 Look, if you get 100 people in a room, one of them is going to be a fucking idiot. 1.00

01:31:48.000 That's right. 1.00

01:31:49.000 There's no way around it.

01:31:50.000 That's right.

01:31:50.000 If you get a bunch of cops, one of them is going to be incompetent.

01:31:52.000 If you're lucky, one of them.

01:31:53.000 If you're lucky, it's only one.

01:31:54.000 And here's the other deal.

01:31:56.000 How many of those poor folks are running around with PTSD untreated?

01:31:59.000 A large percentage of them.

01:32:01.000 They're seeing murders and violence and car accidents and you name it.

01:32:06.000 Child abuse and all this stuff.

01:32:07.000 You name it.

01:32:08.000 All the horrors of humanity.

01:32:09.000 They see it on a daily basis.

01:32:11.000 It's a part of their life.

01:32:12.000 Human trafficking.

01:32:13.000 That's another thing that we don't talk about.

01:32:15.000 That is another thing that just goes in and out of the news.

01:32:18.000 We were talking about on the podcast, the 39 or 35 kids that were rescued in Georgia, and it was a blip in the news.

01:32:25.000 But meanwhile, I saw a thousand articles on how mean Ellen is. 1.00

01:32:30.000 Ellen's mean. 1.00

01:32:32.000 She's so mean.

01:32:34.000 People are out there risking their life to stop human trafficking.

01:32:38.000 They're rescuing children from human trafficking.

01:32:42.000 What is this?

01:32:44.000 Wow, 72 million missing children across Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, and Georgia in the past several weeks.

01:32:58.000 In the past several weeks.

01:33:00.000 So this is where these...

01:33:04.000 So when you read an article like that, U.S. Marshals Rescued 72 Missing Children, this is where all the QAnon people get crazy because they think that Donald Trump is secretly working behind the scenes to stop child trafficking and that there's some secret cabal in the government that wants to enable this shit and then Facebook bans QAnon. 0.97

01:33:24.000 Everyone's going crazy now. 0.99

01:33:25.000 Yeah.

01:33:27.000 This child trafficking thing is real.

01:33:30.000 It has always existed.

01:33:32.000 Did you know that Houston is actually one of the hubs for child trafficking in the U.S.? Really?

01:33:37.000 Yes, it is.

01:33:39.000 Now, how do they find out about child trafficking?

01:33:43.000 How do they infiltrate?

01:33:45.000 So usually it's local law enforcement that recognizes some abnormalities in the behavior of some of the children.

01:33:53.000 Usually it's certain areas, certain shops, certain businesses that are kind of harboring these people.

01:34:00.000 A lot of them just get stopped because, I mean, it's kind of really odd if you're in a van or an 18-wheeler and then there's like 20 kids in it.

01:34:08.000 It's weird.

01:34:12.000 We, as a culture, have got to work with local law enforcement to start to curb this thing because that's where the rubber meets the road. 0.94

01:34:20.000 I don't know if you saw the story.

01:34:21.000 I don't know if you could pull it up, sir.

01:34:23.000 But if you saw the story about the flight attendant that helped out.

01:34:27.000 Yes, the girl.

01:34:28.000 That recognized the abnormality of a girl on a flight by herself and saved her life.

01:34:33.000 Yes.

01:34:33.000 And they had the authorities on the ground when the plane landed.

01:34:37.000 Waiting.

01:34:37.000 We have got to see more of that.

01:34:40.000 And so this is how we talk about the Army.

01:34:42.000 You've got to police your own troops.

01:34:44.000 We've got to police our own.

01:34:46.000 If we are just acutely aware of the abnormalities and the behavior of young children who clearly are under duress, we cannot turn a blind eye to it.

01:34:58.000 Why is this not a bigger story in mainstream news?

01:35:00.000 This is one of the things that concerns me.

01:35:03.000 I don't understand why you're not seeing this on CNN. Every day.

01:35:06.000 Why are we seeing this every day on CNN? That story right there should be leading on primetime news.

01:35:13.000 That should be leading.

01:35:15.000 72 missing children rescued.

01:35:18.000 So it can't be just that they're randomly discovering these kids in a truck or they see a kid on a plane acting weird and that's how they catch everybody.

01:35:28.000 How are they infiltrating?

01:35:30.000 Because there's also a bunch of guys that are former spec ops guys that are working to fight child trafficking.

01:35:38.000 How are they doing this?

01:35:41.000 The solution to this, in my opinion, I'll get the answer in a second.

01:35:45.000 The solution is, in my opinion, is actually, and I would be in huge favor of this, of literally starting a separate task force to address this in known hotspots.

01:35:55.000 The other way we're finding out, to answer your question, the other way that we're finding out as to how they're infiltrating is really if you go to hubs of the world, like Houston, you go to coastal cities where people are actually bringing people into the country, That's exactly where you're going to find a lot of it.

01:36:11.000 So if you just kind of hang out around these areas, then you'll see a lot more of it.

01:36:16.000 You'll discover a lot more of it.

01:36:17.000 And so Houston has become kind of one of those hubs because of its geographic locations.

01:36:22.000 It's actually near a port city.

01:36:24.000 And obviously, people are coming through port cities at a higher rate.

01:36:28.000 Cargo's coming through at a higher rate.

01:36:30.000 And so we're actually able to track that at a better rate if you just kind of hang around the hoop.

01:36:34.000 You'll find it.

01:36:35.000 Yeah.

01:36:37.000 So how are these people communicating?

01:36:40.000 Oh my goodness.

01:36:41.000 It seems like if the government can use programs like Edward Snowden revealed, how are they organizing these things?

01:36:51.000 And where are they getting these kids from?

01:36:53.000 They get these kids from actually all over the world.

01:36:55.000 A lot of them are coming from impoverished communities.

01:36:58.000 A lot of them are coming from impoverished countries.

01:37:01.000 And they're shipping them in.

01:37:03.000 A lot of them come from Asian countries, actually.

01:37:06.000 And A lot of them come from right here in the U.S. And this is something that dawned on me, particularly with having two girls now, and that is it's also my job to continue to protect them and all of these young people, and it's actually young boys as well.

01:37:21.000 It's not just young ladies. 1.00

01:37:23.000 It's actually incumbent upon them to keep them safe.

01:37:26.000 If we can't keep them safe, then what are we doing here?

01:37:29.000 Literally.

01:37:30.000 Like, that's our role now, you know, as fathers and as responsible human beings, is keeping our young people safe.

01:37:39.000 And the biggest thing is this, there clearly is an appetite and there clearly is a culture for it.

01:37:45.000 What I want to do is how do we place extreme punishment on those who behave in this and partake in this behavior?

01:37:57.000 I'll tell you what, it could be happening right next door to you to somebody that seems to be a normal human being.

01:38:04.000 But we have got to stop them.

01:38:05.000 We have to stop the predator from feasting on our children.

01:38:09.000 Yeah.

01:38:10.000 And it's got to be demonized.

01:38:12.000 Let's demonize that. 0.99

01:38:15.000 Yeah.

01:38:15.000 100%.

01:38:16.000 Yeah.

01:38:17.000 How are these people communicating, though?

01:38:20.000 Yes.

01:38:20.000 Are they doing it through the dark web?

01:38:23.000 Are they doing it through forums?

01:38:24.000 Are they using code?

01:38:27.000 How are they doing this?

01:38:28.000 I've heard all of the above.

01:38:29.000 Yeah.

01:38:29.000 I've also heard communicating through just open email inboxes.

01:38:34.000 They don't hit send, but they have the password for multiple emails, and they'll just go in, get the message, and then never open or close it, so it's impossible basically to track.

01:38:41.000 It's just like a draft.

01:38:42.000 Oh, I see.

01:38:43.000 And so other people have the login to the account and they check it out through the draft.

01:38:49.000 That makes sense.

01:38:51.000 And it's funny because this subject, because of things like Pizzagate, the subject became so taboo that no one wants to talk about it because it sounds preposterous because Pizzagate was so preposterous.

01:39:03.000 A guy shows up with a gun looking for kids that are tied up in the basement and everybody's like, oh my god.

01:39:07.000 There's nobody here.

01:39:09.000 Everyone's wacky, these child sex trafficking fanatics that are interested in this and that are trying to stop this. 1.00

01:39:15.000 They're all crazy people. 0.99

01:39:16.000 But that's not really the case. 0.95

01:39:18.000 The problem with something like Pizzagate is that it confuses everybody.

01:39:24.000 And you start thinking that all this stuff is nonsense.

01:39:26.000 But then these stories, they make it to these websites and you see that this is a real thing.

01:39:32.000 These are real news stories, but then they don't get talked about in mainstream.

01:39:36.000 And then we lose track of who the real enemy is.

01:39:38.000 Yeah, that's a real enemy, not Ellen. 1.00

01:39:40.000 That's dangerous, right?

01:39:42.000 Ellen being mean to her assistant. 1.00

01:39:44.000 Just fuck. 1.00

01:39:45.000 Just what we care about is so bizarre. 1.00

01:39:48.000 It's such a symptom of how sick we are as a culture.

01:39:53.000 And that our priorities are so skewed.

01:39:56.000 And that this is sort of accentuated by our addiction to social media.

01:40:01.000 And that people are concentrating so much on Things that are trivial and nonsensical.

01:40:08.000 What's up, buddy?

01:40:09.000 I found an article on Reuters that said that the mainstream media has been reporting on this.

01:40:15.000 I'm looking through pages to find out details on different reporting of this.

01:40:21.000 All I'm finding this on is local news sites.

01:40:25.000 What does that mean, though, that it's not being reported?

01:40:28.000 Well, you don't see it on CNN. You're not seeing it as mainstream television news where it's a big subject that gets discussed, that we have a giant problem like this in this country.

01:40:38.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:40:39.000 I'm digging through here, and then the human trafficking angle, according to what the U.S. Marshal's done here, it's one in four of these kids.

01:40:47.000 So if it was 25 kids picked up, that's six or seven of them were human trafficking.

01:40:51.000 The other 20 or so are kids that ran away or kids that were being abused.

01:40:57.000 They found them because they were missing.

01:41:00.000 Some have been missing for two weeks, some up to two years.

01:41:03.000 Not every kid is in a human trafficking situation.

01:41:05.000 That's those 72. The 35 though in Georgia, I think those were all the same kind of thing.

01:41:13.000 So they're collecting, and then they're like reporting the numbers.

01:41:17.000 So they're collecting these 35 kids over a period of time, and then they're reporting, we found 35 kids.

01:41:24.000 So it's a month later, they found 35 kids.

01:41:27.000 This one from September, which would have been reported five weeks ago, says that they recovered 25 missing and endangered children over the last month.

01:41:34.000 One in four was part of what they believe in alleged human trafficking situation.

01:41:39.000 Obviously, one is too many.

01:41:41.000 Obviously.

01:41:43.000 So it seems like they're finding missing kids and a percentage of them happen to be a part of human trafficking.

01:41:51.000 And now here's the question.

01:41:52.000 How many of the kids that are being human trafficked actually get discovered?

01:41:58.000 We're finding this five here, six here.

01:42:01.000 But how many actually are there?

01:42:03.000 How many of them actually are there?

01:42:04.000 Do we know?

01:42:05.000 We don't, right?

01:42:06.000 We don't. 0.99

01:42:07.000 Just the fact that it's a real thing is spooky as fuck. 0.98

01:42:10.000 It is. 0.98

01:42:11.000 And it's dangerous.

01:42:12.000 Yeah.

01:42:12.000 It's terrifying.

01:42:13.000 It's terrifying for fathers and mothers.

01:42:15.000 It is.

01:42:16.000 You know, it's like the fact that, or brothers and sisters, the fact that it could be someone close to you.

01:42:21.000 Yes.

01:42:23.000 What other subjects and what other concerns do you have about the current state of this country?

01:42:30.000 Maybe things that we haven't discussed before.

01:42:33.000 So, again, we're sitting here talking about the division in the country, which is something that I think it's a very real issue that we've been talking about.

01:42:41.000 But I also just kind of want to say, what's the solution to the division in the country?

01:42:46.000 We always talk about problems, but then what are we going to do about it?

01:42:49.000 And the one thing I got asked a few weeks ago, like, Wesley, what are you going to do when you get into Congress?

01:42:55.000 What can you do differently that nobody else has done to try to start to bridge this gap and bridge this divide?

01:43:01.000 2018, we had the fewest number of veterans in Congress and in the Senate since roughly World War II. And I think that's actually a part of the issue and a part of the problem.

01:43:12.000 So when I get to Washington is actually what I believe will be my personal mandate is to go find Democrats that are veterans.

01:43:20.000 And let's have a conversation.

01:43:22.000 And it actually won't be about policy or politics.

01:43:24.000 It would actually be more about where did you serve?

01:43:27.000 What did you do?

01:43:28.000 Who do you know?

01:43:28.000 What circles did you run in?

01:43:29.000 Maybe we have a common bond there.

01:43:32.000 Because people that are willing to give their lives for this country just view the world a little bit differently.

01:43:39.000 So, I want to be a part of that contingent that actually tries to bring military people to the table and to be a part of that.

01:43:46.000 You look at me, you look at Dan Crenshaw, you look at August Pfluger.

01:43:49.000 We're all military guys.

01:43:50.000 We all get each other on that point.

01:43:54.000 Now, we're all Republicans, but Democrats do as well.

01:43:57.000 Because we've taken an oath to defend this country against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.

01:44:02.000 I think that's the beginning to start to bridge the divide, and it lies with soldiers.

01:44:10.000 And again, you look at this time period, this is the time for soldiers that are, you know, Operation Iraqi Freedom, OEF, Enduring Freedom, you know, folks that actually have gone into private sector, gone and gotten, you know, a further education,

01:44:26.000 but still have that bug to continue to serve, still have that itch.

01:44:31.000 And I think they need, our country needs more of us than anything else right now.

01:44:36.000 I think that's where it starts.

01:44:38.000 I, Wesley Hunt, I'm going to be one of 435 congressmen and women that are currently serving this country today.

01:44:44.000 I'm one person.

01:44:46.000 One person can't change the entire system.

01:44:49.000 But two, three, four, five, six, ten, twenty can.

01:44:55.000 Mm-hmm.

01:44:56.000 But you can't get to two unless you have one.

01:44:59.000 Can't get to three unless you have two.

01:45:01.000 Can't get to four.

01:45:03.000 And so, even if I'm two or three or four, I represent the continuance of the coalition building.

01:45:13.000 It's going to take some time.

01:45:15.000 Well, when it comes to foreign policy, when it comes to decisions of military actions, when it comes to war itself, there's I think it's very important to have people who have actually served that are making those decisions.

01:45:31.000 And it's disturbing as hell when people making those decisions that have never served, don't understand it, never been in the military, and they're making decisions that are going to put our veterans at risk.

01:45:46.000 They're going to send them overseas to do these actions in a way that they do not personally understand because they don't have any actual experience.

01:45:55.000 The people like you, the people like Dan Crenshaw, Tulsi Gabbard, people that have served, these are the people that, in my opinion, should be the ones that we listen to.

01:46:07.000 So, it's personal because I lost 14 of my West Point classmates in a global war on terror.

01:46:13.000 And when I think about these brave men, way better men than me, paid the ultimate sacrifice, gave the eulogy.

01:46:19.000 This bracelet says David Frazier on it.

01:46:21.000 Wear it every day as a reminder as to why we are all here and why we have to continue to serve.

01:46:26.000 And we have to make sure that when we ask somebody to go die for their country, we got to make sure that we know exactly what we're doing and how we're doing it.

01:46:37.000 Regardless of what the cause is, dying for your country is the most noble death anyone can ever have, in my opinion.

01:46:44.000 I don't care what the war was.

01:46:45.000 I don't care what the reason was.

01:46:47.000 Those brave men died a noble death.

01:46:52.000 And moving forward, if we're going to ask somebody to pay that sacrifice, we as lawmakers and we as leaders better make sure it's for a reason that is the most high and most noble.

01:47:08.000 I think?

01:47:31.000 I like that.

01:47:38.000 I like using special ops.

01:47:40.000 I like using small teams.

01:47:41.000 I like using our brains and our technology.

01:47:44.000 I like all that.

01:47:45.000 I think President Trump is spot on on that.

01:47:47.000 And I do think that he's actually valuing the life of every individual soldier by making this decision.

01:47:54.000 And then when you do that, you build credibility.

01:47:57.000 Because when you do send people in harm's way, we get it.

01:48:01.000 We get it.

01:48:02.000 This guy is sending us here for this cause.

01:48:04.000 It's a worthy cause.

01:48:06.000 Get it up, let's go.

01:48:07.000 And that's the kind of confidence that you want to have in your leaders, not just the president, but across the board.

01:48:16.000 When you've been there, you know what it feels like.

01:48:19.000 When you've lost classmates, you know what it feels like.

01:48:24.000 And as a congressman, when we choose to send someone to war, and I look at that brave young man or that brave young woman, and I say, look, this might be it for you.

01:48:33.000 They look at me and they say, yes, sir, but if you're sending me, I trust you.

01:48:39.000 We've got to get that back.

01:48:42.000 The only way you're going to get that back is people like you.

01:48:45.000 Thank you, sir.

01:48:45.000 I really believe that.

01:48:46.000 I don't think anybody who's never served is going to be able to make those decisions and have the respect of the people that are going to be sent over there.

01:48:55.000 Yep.

01:49:00.000 What are the things we need to cover here?

01:49:02.000 I was going to talk a little bit even about social media a little bit.

01:49:06.000 Okay.

01:49:07.000 That's a good subject.

01:49:08.000 What makes this a very interesting topic for me is that while we are divided, I don't think it's as bad as everyone thinks it is.

01:49:16.000 It's not as bad if you get people in a room together.

01:49:18.000 It's not.

01:49:19.000 At all, actually.

01:49:20.000 Right.

01:49:20.000 If you're just not a talk, it's not bad at all.

01:49:23.000 20 years ago, an event would happen, something would happen.

01:49:26.000 Something bad would happen and you'd turn on the evening news and you might see it twice.

01:49:30.000 That's it.

01:49:31.000 You might see it on the news.

01:49:32.000 You might see it in a newspaper.

01:49:34.000 That's it.

01:49:36.000 Something bad happens today.

01:49:38.000 Your phone blows up.

01:49:40.000 It's on Twitter, it's on IG, it's on Facebook, and then it's on CNN app, your Fox News app, then it's on Fox News cable, then it's on local TV. So we have now seen the same incident like eight times on eight different platforms, which gives the perception that it's worse than it really is.

01:49:58.000 I got to thinking about this a lot, because my father is my hero, and he is a very, very wise man.

01:50:05.000 I got to thinking about this because he goes, son, do you really think it's harder to be a black man today than it was when I was growing up?

01:50:15.000 That was rhetorical.

01:50:16.000 The answer is absolutely not.

01:50:18.000 But it got me thinking about it because it gives the perception that it is, given all that we're seeing.

01:50:23.000 But quite frankly, we've always gotten better.

01:50:28.000 My brother and I always joke about America.

01:50:31.000 He's like, what's the best time to be an American?

01:50:35.000 Tomorrow.

01:50:37.000 Tomorrow.

01:50:39.000 Am I better off being in America right now than I was when I graduated high school in 2000?

01:50:46.000 Absolutely.

01:50:49.000 So what is distorting our view so much that gives us the perception that we're way worse off?

01:50:59.000 Well, over the course of the past 15 years, we have developed this social media system that, quite frankly, sends out just negative information and people then hide behind their words.

01:51:10.000 They hide behind their posts because they don't actually confront people one-on-one.

01:51:16.000 But is it really worse, Joe?

01:51:19.000 Really worse in what way?

01:51:21.000 So, like, so...

01:51:24.000 Let's just go back to the racial issues in this country.

01:51:28.000 Let's go back to that.

01:51:31.000 When I was in high school, I thought about some of the language that was used, some of the language that was said, some of the ways that I was treated.

01:51:39.000 When I compare that to the way I am treated right now, it's very different, actually.

01:51:45.000 It's way better.

01:51:47.000 Again, I'm actually running for Congress in a predominantly white district, overwhelmingly white district.

01:51:55.000 Would that have been the case 30 years ago?

01:51:57.000 Would they have nominated me?

01:51:58.000 Would they have elected me?

01:51:59.000 I'm not quite sure.

01:52:02.000 But now they have overwhelmingly.

01:52:04.000 And they don't even care that I'm black.

01:52:06.000 I think what people would push back on is for sure things are getting better.

01:52:10.000 Yes.

01:52:11.000 But what they would say is there's massive amounts of room for improvement and many, many, many things that need to be done to correct the way things are wrong in this country right now.

01:52:20.000 Of course.

01:52:20.000 That's why people have a hard time when people look at the bright side of things.

01:52:24.000 Okay.

01:52:24.000 They look at the bright side of things and they go, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:52:26.000 Okay.

01:52:27.000 But you can't just ignore all these problems that exist right now.

01:52:31.000 And that's what I refuse to do, which is why I tend to bring up the past and progress.

01:52:37.000 So when people ignore it is when they don't talk about their great-great-grandfather who was once a slave.

01:52:43.000 You see, I acknowledge that because I want to actually build on it.

01:52:47.000 What I don't like are people who just refuse to even mention that.

01:52:51.000 What I don't like are people who don't even want to acknowledge our past slavery.

01:52:55.000 I actually want to talk about it because when you talk about it, we can fix it.

01:53:00.000 What do you think could be done about injustices that are happening currently?

01:53:05.000 One of the things that I've discussed in this podcast many times is there are parts of this country, whether it's Baltimore or Detroit or South Side of Chicago, that are almost perpetually engulfed in crime.

01:53:18.000 And they have been forever, and there doesn't seem to be any effort whatsoever to reverse that.

01:53:25.000 How can you fix those?

01:53:27.000 I understand you're becoming Congressman in a specific district, but when you look at the country as an overall, and you look at these particular bad spots, what strategies can be used that aren't being used to fix this?

01:53:43.000 The strategy of empathy and understanding.

01:53:47.000 Not yelling at each other.

01:53:49.000 Not demonizing each other.

01:53:51.000 Not saying that your culture is so messed up and it's your fault.

01:53:58.000 Acknowledging that, particularly in the black community, the welfare state was created, and that's actually what has caused a lot of the consternation in our culture today. 1.00

01:54:09.000 That's not black people's fault, actually.

01:54:11.000 It's actually the system's fault. 0.86

01:54:14.000 Black people also have to take some responsibility for some of the cultural issues that we have as well.

01:54:21.000 It's not all white people's fault, actually.

01:54:23.000 We have to accept some of this, too.

01:54:26.000 If both sides can accept and take on the culpability, some of it, on the problems that we see today, and we can admit it, and we can talk about it, then that's how we can begin to heal.

01:54:38.000 But obviously some physical actions need to take place.

01:54:42.000 I can't actually agree more with you on that.

01:54:45.000 And physical actions need to actually take place for everybody.

01:54:51.000 The issue is that when somebody says, one side says, well, they should do this, but they should do this.

01:54:57.000 Well, you should do that.

01:54:59.000 We're pointing fingers and nothing gets done. 0.96

01:55:03.000 So the police are brutalizing us and a black person has a two and a half more higher chance of dying at the hands of police than a white person. 0.78

01:55:10.000 That's actually a fact. 0.93

01:55:11.000 It's actually a fact.

01:55:14.000 So we look at the police officers, but then the police officers and other groups can't say, well, that's because, well, there's a higher incidence of crime amongst brown and black people. 1.00

01:55:23.000 What did that accomplish?

01:55:26.000 Nothing.

01:55:28.000 Because nobody wants to assume responsibility that both are issues.

01:55:31.000 Right, both are issues.

01:55:33.000 Both are problems.

01:55:34.000 This is where someone like me is actually uniquely positioned.

01:55:38.000 Look, I have been discriminated against.

01:55:42.000 I have been profiled.

01:55:44.000 I get it.

01:55:44.000 I have been treated poorly by white people.

01:55:47.000 I've been treated poorly by black people and vice versa. 1.00

01:55:49.000 I understand all this.

01:55:52.000 So what?

01:55:53.000 What are we going to do to actually solve the problem?

01:55:58.000 And this is where it takes real tough leadership.

01:56:03.000 Because what happens is you start getting in a circular firing squad and everybody is firing on you from all sides.

01:56:08.000 And it gets tough for someone like me every now and again who's kind of stuck and caught in the middle.

01:56:13.000 But I always joke around and I say, well, I've also been in combat and I've been shot at before.

01:56:18.000 I can deal with it.

01:56:19.000 But somebody has got to take this on.

01:56:23.000 Instead of pointing the fingers at each other, who's going to bring both sides to the table?

01:56:29.000 And again, can Wesley Hunt do it by myself?

01:56:32.000 No.

01:56:33.000 But what I hope in my candidacy and in conversations like this, thank you so much, is that what I hope, what I hope is that people can hear the message and then say, ah, okay, I get that tone.

01:56:46.000 I accept this responsibility.

01:56:48.000 So now what can we do about it?

01:56:51.000 That's where we start.

01:56:53.000 And right now we are way over here.

01:56:55.000 I recognize that.

01:56:56.000 But we have to work incrementally to get us back together.

01:57:00.000 I am confident that this country can do it, because just like I've said before, we've been way worse.

01:57:09.000 We've been at war with each other, and we were able to overcome that.

01:57:13.000 We can overcome this, too.

01:57:15.000 It's just going to take some work, Joe.

01:57:17.000 What would you do?

01:57:19.000 I understand you're running for Congress.

01:57:21.000 You're not running to be king of the country.

01:57:24.000 But if you had a magic wand...

01:57:26.000 And someone could say, Wesley Hunt, what would you do about, let's just say South Side of Chicago, which is just one of the most murderous places in this country right now.

01:57:37.000 Yes.

01:57:38.000 Terrible.

01:57:38.000 Yes.

01:57:39.000 What would you do?

01:57:43.000 I give you the power.

01:57:44.000 Like, Wesley, you fix this.

01:57:46.000 How would you fix that?

01:57:48.000 So one of the issues, in my opinion, in Chicago, is the relationship with law enforcement and the citizens of that community.

01:57:58.000 We need to be in the business of building relationships with those that protect them and keep them safe, as long as we can again admit that there is a problem on both sides.

01:58:12.000 What can I, Wesley Hunt, specifically do?

01:58:15.000 You've heard so many different ideas on how to combat this.

01:58:20.000 What I say is this, we start off with conversations.

01:58:23.000 You have to start off with the community leaders who are, again, who are willing to accept culpability for some of the problems, culturally speaking.

01:58:31.000 And then you start with the law enforcement officers that are willing to admit that we actually want to be a part of the solution and not be a part of the problem.

01:58:39.000 And it takes one person to do that on either side to systematically fix the community one person at a time.

01:58:48.000 You can't take just one big bite of the apple on this thing.

01:58:51.000 It's going to take some time and it's going to have to be incremental.

01:58:55.000 Quite frankly, it's going to have to be generational as well.

01:58:57.000 Because there's so much distrust.

01:59:00.000 There's so much distrust on both sides that we can't even have a conversation about it.

01:59:07.000 So we have to start small and then go big from there.

01:59:12.000 And it starts right at the community level.

01:59:15.000 Do you think also an announcing intention...

01:59:22.000 To specifically work on this, and having this be a big conversation that takes place publicly, that law enforcement does want to communicate with community leaders, and that there's a direct effort to try to improve these places,

01:59:38.000 to let people know we care, we know it's a problem, even though it's been ignored for so long, it will be ignored no longer.

01:59:45.000 That's it.

01:59:46.000 That's it.

01:59:48.000 That's where you start.

01:59:50.000 That's where you start.

01:59:51.000 And I agree with you that it's a long process.

01:59:54.000 Yes, sir.

01:59:54.000 The frustrating thing is that it just really hasn't been addressed that much.

01:59:59.000 Sadly.

01:59:59.000 And I always said, if you want to make America great, you really want less losers.

02:00:04.000 That's right.

02:00:04.000 So you want more people with an opportunity to get past the situation they're currently in.

02:00:09.000 And so many people are trapped.

02:00:10.000 They're trapped in these crime-ridden, gang-ridden, drug-ridden neighborhoods where it's normal for people to be in and out of jail.

02:00:19.000 And this is what they grow accustomed to because they grow up with it.

02:00:22.000 Right.

02:00:22.000 And that's no way to grow up.

02:00:25.000 Yeah.

02:00:27.000 Social media.

02:00:27.000 Let's get back to that.

02:00:29.000 One of the things that drives me crazy about social media is this flippant nature, this Way that people think it's fine to just censor people and censor people that disagree with you.

02:00:47.000 One of the things is Unity 2020 was something that was created by Brett Weinstein and many other people.

02:00:54.000 Brett, who is very liberal, very progressive.

02:00:57.000 He was the guy that was the professor at Evergreen State and was run out by these crazy kids that wanted to take over and turn it into a utopia for leftists.

02:01:09.000 That's the very paraphrased version of the story.

02:01:13.000 But he created this thing called Unity 2020 and he wanted to have conversations between the left and the right and have these people talk and try to come up with someone who's a better solution to run this country than what we're currently being offered.

02:01:27.000 Twitter banned the account.

02:01:28.000 I mean, it was the most reasonable...

02:01:32.000 I don't know if they got it back.

02:01:33.000 Let's see if they got Unity 2020 back.

02:01:35.000 But the most reasonable...

02:01:37.000 Their take on it was, say no to Biden, say no to Trump, and let's come up with a better solution that this can be done.

02:01:45.000 And Twitter's like, no. 0.94

02:01:47.000 That's ridiculous. 0.98

02:01:48.000 It's completely ridiculous. 0.98

02:01:49.000 But the question is, the First Amendment... 0.81

02:01:55.000 What is this here?

02:01:56.000 Suspended.

02:01:57.000 Articles of Unity.

02:01:58.000 Is that what it is?

02:01:59.000 Articles of Unity.

02:02:00.000 Is that the same thing as Unity 2020?

02:02:03.000 Same thing?

02:02:05.000 Yeah.

02:02:06.000 The official account.

02:02:07.000 Articles of Unity.

02:02:08.000 Yeah.

02:02:09.000 Banned.

02:02:10.000 So they banned it.

02:02:11.000 And why?

02:02:13.000 Why?

02:02:13.000 Because they don't agree with the sentiment.

02:02:14.000 They think that maybe perhaps we should all fall in line and vote for Joe Biden because this is what they want.

02:02:20.000 Yes.

02:02:21.000 And if you are a progressive and you're a liberal, you just have to accept the differences that you have with Biden and Kamala Harris and their perspectives, and you need to just fall in line.

02:02:30.000 And there's no other third party. 0.97

02:02:31.000 And the idea that you're fucking carrying water for the two-party system in 2020 is bonkers. 0.98

02:02:38.000 Yeah. 0.97

02:02:39.000 Freedom of speech is supposed to be the freedom to discuss ideas.

02:02:43.000 This is not an enormous percentage of the population that's going along with this guy.

02:02:48.000 He's offering an educated perspective.

02:02:50.000 It's our constitution.

02:02:52.000 It is our constitution.

02:02:55.000 It's so important to listen to things that you disagree with to understand why you disagree with them and to understand if maybe there's some knowledge in there that you can acquire.

02:03:03.000 Maybe there's a part of their perspective that you do agree with.

02:03:06.000 Maybe you see the error in their ways and you can discuss it with them.

02:03:09.000 You can say, well, this is where you guys got it wrong.

02:03:11.000 Right. 1.00

02:03:12.000 That happens on this fucking show all the time. 1.00

02:03:14.000 So improve it. 1.00

02:03:14.000 You can improve it. 1.00

02:03:15.000 Yes. 0.95

02:03:15.000 I mean, discussing things, it's fucking critical. 0.95

02:03:19.000 But whether it's Facebook, whether it's Twitter, Facebook banning QAnon. 0.95

02:03:23.000 Look, I'm not a QAnon fan.

02:03:25.000 But how could you ban that?

02:03:26.000 Here's the problem. 0.99

02:03:27.000 If you ban them, why are you letting the flat earthers still have a fucking page? 0.97

02:03:31.000 Why are you letting the JFK people, the people that think the assassination was caused by aliens, where do you draw the line on what's true and what's not? 0.98

02:03:40.000 And The problem is you just started down a slippery slope.

02:03:43.000 And look, I don't even know what QAnon means.

02:03:47.000 I know a lot of people believe in it, but I don't even know what they stand for.

02:03:50.000 I just know there's a lot of wacky folks involved.

02:03:53.000 I know them personally and they're wacky, so I'm like, ah.

02:03:56.000 But the fact that Facebook wants to just ban it. 0.98

02:03:59.000 It's ridiculous.

02:04:00.000 I just don't think they should have that kind of editorial power. 0.76

02:04:06.000 The power to decide what gets discussed and what doesn't get discussed.

02:04:10.000 Do you think that maybe, perhaps, and this is my friend Kyle Kalinske had the suggestion that the First Amendment should be...

02:04:22.000 Amended to include social media.

02:04:24.000 And that social media should be treated as a utility.

02:04:27.000 A utility that everybody should be able to enjoy.

02:04:30.000 Interesting.

02:04:31.000 That, look, you can't do things like dox people or call for people's death or, you know, incite violence.

02:04:39.000 Obviously.

02:04:39.000 Yeah, yes.

02:04:40.000 Or threaten people.

02:04:41.000 But express opinions?

02:04:42.000 Come on.

02:04:43.000 You can't express opinions.

02:04:44.000 Yeah.

02:04:45.000 I mean, you can get banned on Twitter for some of the most preposterous things.

02:04:49.000 Yeah.

02:04:49.000 You know, for a while it was like, learn to code.

02:04:52.000 You say, learn to code, you would get banned.

02:04:53.000 You'd be banned.

02:04:54.000 Yeah, because they were saying, this was in response to people like coal miners, what are they going to do when they get out of there?

02:04:59.000 Someone said, learn to code.

02:05:00.000 And so then whenever anybody would get fired for any other reason, someone would say, learn to code, they'd be like, you're banned.

02:05:04.000 For life.

02:05:05.000 Like, come on.

02:05:07.000 It's nuts.

02:05:08.000 Come on.

02:05:08.000 But it is this thing where you're allowing people to censor people's voices.

02:05:13.000 And I think you should let all the nuts talk.

02:05:16.000 Let them all talk.

02:05:17.000 It's called freedom of speech, as long as you're not threatening somebody.

02:05:20.000 Yes.

02:05:20.000 And the question is, like, people say, well, they're harmful, and their opinions sway people in a certain way.

02:05:28.000 Sway who?

02:05:29.000 Sway you?

02:05:30.000 Is it swaying you?

02:05:31.000 Are they making you think the earth is flat?

02:05:33.000 No.

02:05:35.000 Not at all. 1.00

02:05:35.000 Swaying morons. 1.00

02:05:36.000 So what do we do? 1.00

02:05:37.000 We're going to regulate to stop morons from believing stupid shit? 1.00

02:05:40.000 Is that what we're doing? 1.00

02:05:41.000 It's impossible.

02:05:42.000 It's impossible.

02:05:43.000 And it's also un-American.

02:05:45.000 To stop expression, even expression that you don't agree with, is un-American.

02:05:54.000 It's the wrong way to approach it.

02:05:55.000 Yes, it is.

02:05:56.000 But there's so many people that believe in deplatforming and that that's the way to handle these things.

02:06:00.000 I think they're wrong.

02:06:01.000 I think the more conversation and the more discussion, no matter what, the better.

02:06:05.000 Because it teaches you about the world.

02:06:07.000 The problem is you have that switch and you can just pop them.

02:06:10.000 Just pop that switch and now they're off Twitter forever.

02:06:12.000 And that's it.

02:06:13.000 What did you say?

02:06:13.000 Unity what?

02:06:14.000 Fuck you. 1.00

02:06:15.000 Click. 1.00

02:06:16.000 Done.

02:06:16.000 Next.

02:06:17.000 And it's not, again, it's not even people harassing people.

02:06:21.000 It's not people threatening people.

02:06:23.000 It's just people expressing opinions that you don't enjoy.

02:06:27.000 What do you think should be done about this?

02:06:29.000 And why haven't they done something?

02:06:32.000 I mean, I know the president's discussed this.

02:06:35.000 But what can be done about this?

02:06:38.000 So...

02:06:41.000 This topic is near and dear to my heart because you could imagine somebody like me going to Ithaca, New York at Cornell.

02:06:48.000 I am a Texan.

02:06:50.000 I come from the energy capital of the world.

02:06:52.000 I am a veteran.

02:06:54.000 And in Ithaca, you would kind of solve the world's problems in coffee shops.

02:06:58.000 And I'd walk in wearing something like this and boots and a hat.

02:07:02.000 I'm a conservative guy and I'm black.

02:07:04.000 I don't know anything about Ithaca other than John Jones is from Ithaca.

02:07:08.000 Ithaca is a really liberal city.

02:07:11.000 Very liberal.

02:07:12.000 College town?

02:07:13.000 Yes, it is.

02:07:14.000 It's Cornell and Ithaca College.

02:07:15.000 It's a college town.

02:07:17.000 And great place, by the way.

02:07:19.000 Love it.

02:07:19.000 A lovely place.

02:07:20.000 Love my time there, actually.

02:07:22.000 And I would talk to people, obviously, that were very liberal, and we would meet up on weekends all the time, and we would just talk, and you could probably imagine that we didn't see the world the same way.

02:07:31.000 But we always got to talk and meet up the next week and the next week.

02:07:35.000 And they were my classmates and they were my friends.

02:07:37.000 And we got to learn how to respect each other.

02:07:39.000 One of my classmates, actually, who is a banker up in New York, who was a Bernie bro, very liberal guy, he sent me some money for the campaign and then sent me a note.

02:07:50.000 And he said, you know, Wesley, if I was down there, I don't think I'd even vote for you.

02:07:55.000 I said, thanks, man.

02:07:57.000 And then he goes, but I hope you win.

02:08:01.000 Because I know you're a good guy, and I know that you believe in this country.

02:08:05.000 Why wouldn't he vote for you, then?

02:08:07.000 Well, because...

02:08:09.000 How conflicted.

02:08:10.000 Probably, how...

02:08:11.000 He's helping you, but he doesn't want you to win, but he wants you to win, but he wouldn't vote for you.

02:08:15.000 But here's some money to win, so...

02:08:18.000 I'm so confused.

02:08:19.000 I don't know how to feel about that.

02:08:20.000 But it's complicated, right?

02:08:21.000 It's complicated.

02:08:22.000 He may not vote, but does want me to win, and so that's where we're actually missing that element of...

02:08:30.000 We might disagree politically, but I respect you as a person enough to hear you out.

02:08:38.000 This is why we have to stop canceling people.

02:08:41.000 This is why we have to stop quelling just opinions, because it's actually a form of disrespect to the very fiber of someone's human being.

02:08:51.000 We've got to get to the point where we start respecting each other again, and this has to stop.

02:08:56.000 And, you know, President Trump tweets a lot, as we see.

02:09:01.000 And it's dawned on me that he does a lot because that's his way to get his point across to circumvent everything else.

02:09:10.000 Now, do I agree with all of it?

02:09:12.000 No.

02:09:13.000 Do I disagree sometimes?

02:09:16.000 Sure, I agree with some of it.

02:09:17.000 I absolutely do.

02:09:18.000 But the whole point is this.

02:09:20.000 That's an attempt to go direct to the people with his voice and his opinion.

02:09:25.000 Rather you like it or disagree with it or not, that's actually beside the point.

02:09:30.000 This is where we start to break that down.

02:09:32.000 Because everybody should have the leeway to do just that.

02:09:37.000 So we have to lead by example.

02:09:39.000 And when I see stuff like this, it's actually infuriating to me.

02:09:44.000 Because if it's a very liberal opinion, knock yourself out.

02:09:48.000 In fact, I want to hear it.

02:09:49.000 I want to hear more about it.

02:09:53.000 But if it's a conservative opinion or if it's different from my opinion, then we ban it and it gets canceled?

02:10:02.000 Do you only fact check the more conservative points and opinions and not fact check the others because they disagree with you?

02:10:09.000 Right.

02:10:10.000 Or agree with you?

02:10:12.000 This is a very dangerous place to be in.

02:10:16.000 This is a valuable conversation to have because this is where legislators need to have a conversation about this.

02:10:21.000 What is freedom of speech?

02:10:23.000 What is freedom of assembly?

02:10:27.000 What is it?

02:10:28.000 Like, really, what is it?

02:10:29.000 And I think our founding fathers intended it, intended it for it to be exactly what you're talking about right now.

02:10:36.000 They never anticipated something like social media.

02:10:38.000 And I think that social media represents the current town center where people can get together and talk about ideas.

02:10:47.000 They just never anticipated one person be able to reach thousands and thousands of people with one individual opinion.

02:10:53.000 With one phrase or with one tweet or with one.

02:10:56.000 Millions of people.

02:10:57.000 But to stop that from happening because you disagree with it...

02:11:00.000 Is just...

02:11:01.000 It's unconstitutional.

02:11:03.000 Particularly if it's just political.

02:11:04.000 It's unconstitutional.

02:11:05.000 It's also...

02:11:06.000 It's abusive.

02:11:07.000 Yes.

02:11:08.000 You didn't...

02:11:09.000 No one anticipated that social media was ever going to be what it is now.

02:11:13.000 That's true.

02:11:14.000 That it would be this town center of discussion.

02:11:18.000 In the beginning, it was just people putting up pictures of their dog or something.

02:11:22.000 It was normal stuff.

02:11:24.000 But what it is now is it's the battleground for global communication.

02:11:29.000 It is.

02:11:30.000 And the fact that it's being run almost entirely by left-wing people is very problematic, especially with their penchant for censorship.

02:11:39.000 Right.

02:11:40.000 Right.

02:11:41.000 Well, I think Dan Crenshaw actually does a really good job with his social media.

02:11:45.000 And again, it's about going direct to consumer is what he does.

02:11:50.000 And even with, again, with the video and his Instagram account that has millions of followers on it, that's actually the way to combat this.

02:11:58.000 He has built a heck of a brand that actually allows him to speak to people differently.

02:12:06.000 Without worrying about whether or not he's going to be censored or not, because it's his opinion that he is putting on his brand on his page.

02:12:14.000 This is how you kind of start to take that back through social media.

02:12:18.000 That's actually what I intend on doing too here over the course of the next few years.

02:12:22.000 The problem is you can be shadow banned, you can be silenced, your tweets can be deleted.

02:12:27.000 And that's the problem.

02:12:29.000 Yeah.

02:12:30.000 And the fact that this has become a viable solution to a lot of people on the left, they think it's a wise thing to do.

02:12:36.000 Yes.

02:12:37.000 It's cancel people.

02:12:38.000 Yeah.

02:12:39.000 It's just not...

02:12:41.000 It's not acceptable. 0.99

02:12:42.000 It's also, a lot of these people are mentally ill that are doing this. 0.65

02:12:48.000 Legitimately, and when I say mentally ill, I mean overridden with anxiety and depression and spending hours and hours and hours a day getting in fights online. 0.98

02:13:00.000 That's an ill person.

02:13:02.000 I mean, look, we want to talk about mental health, and this is something where people would push back against this, but I want you to consider this.

02:13:09.000 Okay.

02:13:09.000 Peace of mind, like clarity.

02:13:12.000 If you are arguing with people on Twitter, I would say right now you're mentally ill. 1.00

02:13:17.000 If you're spending hours and hours every day, which a lot of these people are, just arguing and shitting on people all day long, you're probably ill. 1.00

02:13:27.000 That's not... 0.97

02:13:28.000 Optimal.

02:13:29.000 It's not healthy.

02:13:30.000 It's not a great way of communicating.

02:13:32.000 But these social media networks, they facilitate mental illness in a lot of ways in a lot of these people.

02:13:39.000 People that don't understand the negative consequences of engaging constantly in conflict.

02:13:48.000 And negativity.

02:13:48.000 Yes, and negativity.

02:13:49.000 It's not wise.

02:13:50.000 It's just not wise.

02:13:52.000 And a lot of them are depressed.

02:13:54.000 I've talked to people who, you know, I've talked to them after they've gotten off of these, like, Twitter binges.

02:13:59.000 And they're like, dude, I gotta stay off Twitter, man.

02:14:01.000 I get depressed.

02:14:02.000 I can't sleep.

02:14:03.000 I'm like, why don't you delete it?

02:14:04.000 Like, why don't you stop?

02:14:05.000 I can't sleep.

02:14:05.000 Think about that.

02:14:06.000 I can't sleep.

02:14:07.000 They get up in the middle of the night to pee and they check their Twitter.

02:14:09.000 They check to see if people are agreeing or disagreeing with them.

02:14:12.000 They check to see who's angry at them and who's...

02:14:14.000 Who's tweeting them? 0.98

02:14:16.000 Because they're neurotic. 1.00

02:14:16.000 Oh, they go crazy. 1.00

02:14:18.000 And it's just so unhealthy.

02:14:20.000 And then these people are the ones that think it's okay to silence other people, to disagree with them.

02:14:25.000 Wrong answer.

02:14:26.000 It's a wrong answer.

02:14:27.000 It's a wrong answer, but I think it needs to be—we need to figure out a way to regulate this like we regulate utilities.

02:14:36.000 I really do.

02:14:37.000 Interesting.

02:14:38.000 I don't think you could call—I don't think you could say, oh, it's a private company.

02:14:41.000 They can do whatever they want.

02:14:42.000 It's a private company that reaches billions of people.

02:14:45.000 That's right.

02:14:45.000 Like, it's a pipeline for communication.

02:14:48.000 I understand that they created it, but it's being used by so many people and it's responsible for so much discourse.

02:14:56.000 The argument should be made, I think, that this is one of the main forms of communication and to deny people Because of their political ideology, the access to this, I think is devastating.

02:15:08.000 And I think it's terrible for our country.

02:15:10.000 It's terrible because it promotes division.

02:15:13.000 That's right.

02:15:13.000 It promotes more of the people on the right that are getting censored.

02:15:16.000 They're going to hate the people on the left even more.

02:15:18.000 It creates that friction.

02:15:19.000 It creates more friction.

02:15:20.000 What can be done about this?

02:15:23.000 It's a tough one.

02:15:24.000 It's a tough one.

02:15:26.000 What can be done about it is, again, what I always retort and go back to, that's conversations like this.

02:15:31.000 So who's actually having conversations like this, by the way, about this topic?

02:15:34.000 Not that many people.

02:15:35.000 Not very many people.

02:15:36.000 So what can be done about it is we have to increase the conversations like this with what I believe can be reasonable people from all walks of life on both sides of the aisle.

02:15:46.000 We have to talk about this.

02:15:47.000 I think if there were reasonable people that were sitting here no matter where you were from, no No matter where you're from, no matter what race, color, religion, creed, political affiliation, if you're sitting here listening to this conversation and you've read the Constitution and you've been in this country for the bulk of your life,

02:16:03.000 you've lived in America for long enough to understand freedom and liberty, you'd hear this conversation and you would say, maybe we should push back on that.

02:16:13.000 Maybe we should.

02:16:15.000 So this is what you're doing, honestly, as a leader by just even having these conversations.

02:16:19.000 And we just need more of it.

02:16:22.000 And we need to have conversations with leaders in politics and in the entertainment industry.

02:16:30.000 We have to have conversations with foreign countries and other leaders.

02:16:34.000 This is how we start with leaders in industry and CEOs.

02:16:36.000 We have to have these conversations.

02:16:41.000 I feel like we're at a time right now where we've just flat out stopped.

02:16:45.000 We're just yelling at each other.

02:16:48.000 And we spent the better part of an hour, in my opinion, literally talking about the crux of the problem, which is unconstitutional and against First Amendment and our rights.

02:16:58.000 Let's talk about that, what that means.

02:17:01.000 And even in my opinion, maybe, I don't know, you know, maybe I see the glass half full.

02:17:08.000 Even the most liberal person, if they were sitting here as a human being looking at each other, would say, they have a point.

02:17:13.000 I think liberal people that are objective would see the danger in censorship.

02:17:19.000 Yes.

02:17:19.000 And if they didn't, I don't know how they'd call themselves liberal.

02:17:22.000 How are you going to call yourself progressive when you are anti-communication?

02:17:26.000 It's the antithesis of being liberal.

02:17:29.000 Yes.

02:17:29.000 By not wanting to hear other people's opinion because it doesn't agree with yours is actually opposite of the word liberalism.

02:17:36.000 Yeah, it really is.

02:17:37.000 But in this day and age, it's become so tribal that these people, they form these groups and then they live in these thought bubbles and they only want to communicate with people that agree with their ideology.

02:17:52.000 Yes.

02:17:53.000 And they want it to be confirmed.

02:17:55.000 They want confirmation bias.

02:17:56.000 That's what they want.

02:17:57.000 They want to be surrounded by people that think the same way they do.

02:18:00.000 And that we're more polarized now than ever.

02:18:02.000 It's so disheartening.

02:18:04.000 I always push back on people that start a question off like this.

02:18:08.000 Wesley, how could you?

02:18:11.000 Wrong.

02:18:11.000 Let me just stop you right there.

02:18:13.000 What do they say that about?

02:18:15.000 Lots of things.

02:18:16.000 Give me one.

02:18:16.000 How could you?

02:18:17.000 How could you be a black Republican? 0.92

02:18:20.000 Oh, that's an interesting one. 0.97

02:18:22.000 How could you?

02:18:23.000 Yeah.

02:18:24.000 It's just the wrong question to ask anybody.

02:18:26.000 Right.

02:18:26.000 The question is, is why are you or why do you?

02:18:31.000 Yeah.

02:18:31.000 Either you're seeking to condemn or you're seeking to understand.

02:18:36.000 If you're seeking to understand, you're asking the question why because you want to learn something.

02:18:39.000 Yes.

02:18:40.000 If you're asking how do you or how could you, you've already made your mind up.

02:18:44.000 Right.

02:18:45.000 You're casting judgment with your question.

02:18:47.000 You've already done it.

02:18:48.000 Yeah. 0.95

02:18:49.000 How much grief do you get for being black and being Republican at the same time?

02:18:55.000 I wouldn't say grief.

02:18:58.000 I do get a lot of pushback.

02:18:59.000 I get a lot of pushback on social media, as you could probably imagine, until somebody sits down and actually have a conversation with me.

02:19:06.000 Right.

02:19:07.000 And then all of a sudden...

02:19:10.000 You're reasonable.

02:19:11.000 All of a sudden.

02:19:12.000 Well, I can't imagine anybody listening to this conversation not thinking you're reasonable.

02:19:15.000 Right.

02:19:16.000 But if you look at a tweet or sound bites, you look at a brief thing, and you try to categorize someone, the absence of nuance is very dangerous.

02:19:26.000 Yes, it is.

02:19:27.000 And eliminating nuance from clearly nuanced discussions.

02:19:30.000 That's right.

02:19:32.000 Human beings are nuanced.

02:19:33.000 Yes, we are.

02:19:34.000 Yeah, I mean, there's no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

02:19:36.000 We are complicated.

02:19:37.000 Super.

02:19:38.000 So accept that.

02:19:39.000 Right.

02:19:39.000 And to try to boil someone down to a quote, or to a demographic, or to any simplistic interpretation of a person.

02:19:48.000 It's impossible to do that.

02:19:48.000 It's not wise.

02:19:49.000 Yes, sir.

02:19:50.000 And when people do it, they're being disingenuous, and they're being sneaky.

02:19:54.000 Yeah.

02:19:54.000 Yeah, but that's more often now than not.

02:19:57.000 It is.

02:19:57.000 That's the problem.

02:19:59.000 It is.

02:19:59.000 And we accept it.

02:20:00.000 And if it goes along with our belief system or our ideology, we're like, yeah!

02:20:05.000 We roll with it. 1.00

02:20:06.000 Fuck him! 1.00

02:20:07.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:20:09.000 Part of my, I don't know, I believe in serendipity, and I'm just, I don't know how I got here at this time, at this place, but I do think I'm here for a reason, because This is a courageous thing to be able to have these conversations and then take it out to the public,

02:20:27.000 specifically in politics and this climate today.

02:20:31.000 But it's kind of my mandate.

02:20:32.000 I have to do it.

02:20:34.000 Because if Dan doesn't do it and if I don't do it, then literally nobody's going to do it.

02:20:40.000 Well, I'm very excited about the entrance of all these veterans getting into politics.

02:20:46.000 Thank you.

02:20:46.000 I think it's very important.

02:20:47.000 It is.

02:20:47.000 And I think it's something that's been missing and lacking.

02:20:50.000 People with real-world experience on these subjects that we discuss.

02:20:55.000 Yes.

02:20:56.000 Yes, I agree.

02:20:57.000 I'm happy there's guys like you and Dan and many others that are entering into politics.

02:21:02.000 And I think people that have experienced the kind of things that you guys have experienced, there's an education that cannot be acquired any other way.

02:21:12.000 That's right.

02:21:14.000 Literally trial by fire.

02:21:15.000 Yeah, literally.

02:21:17.000 I'm just glad that no one's censored podcasts yet.

02:21:20.000 I don't think you let that happen, brother. 1.00

02:21:23.000 I'll try not to, but fuck, man. 1.00

02:21:26.000 People get crazy depending upon who gets into politics or who gets into power. 1.00

02:21:34.000 I mean, look, there are...

02:21:38.000 Dictatorships that are currently going on in this world.

02:21:41.000 The idea that that could never happen here is preposterous.

02:21:44.000 Human beings can fall into all sorts of traps and they have throughout history.

02:21:50.000 We are aware of those traps and we think, well, that won't happen to us.

02:21:54.000 We're always one generation away.

02:21:55.000 Yes.

02:21:56.000 Or one tragedy away.

02:21:58.000 Or one tragedy away.

02:21:58.000 Yeah, or one decision that we make to give up rights in order to have safety.

02:22:03.000 And then, boom, next thing you know, guess what?

02:22:05.000 We've lost it all.

02:22:06.000 Someone's checking all your emails.

02:22:07.000 Yep.

02:22:07.000 Guess what?

02:22:08.000 You can't express an opinion.

02:22:09.000 Or, guess what? 1.00

02:22:10.000 You can't talk shit. 1.00

02:22:11.000 Right. 1.00

02:22:11.000 Like, men like to get together and talk shit. 1.00

02:22:13.000 That's not what we do. 0.99

02:22:13.000 And we're like, yeah, and we say a bunch of shit that we probably don't even really mean, but it's funny to say. 0.99

02:22:19.000 Right? 0.99

02:22:20.000 Right.

02:22:21.000 Especially soldiers.

02:22:22.000 Dude, I've been around so many. 1.00

02:22:24.000 Seals have the most fucked up sense of humor. 0.99

02:22:27.000 Oh my god, some of these guys that work security for me? 1.00

02:22:30.000 Holy shit, they're hilarious. 0.99

02:22:31.000 It's dark. 0.99

02:22:32.000 But fun.

02:22:33.000 But funny. 0.99

02:22:33.000 Yes, but if you took some of that shit and put it in a quote, you'd be like, oh my god, lock that person away! 0.99

02:22:39.000 Out of context, yes. 1.00

02:22:40.000 That person's terrible!

02:22:42.000 This is what they're planning.

02:22:43.000 Like, that's not what he's planning!

02:22:44.000 No! 1.00

02:22:45.000 He's talking shit! 1.00

02:22:46.000 Don't you know what talking shit is? 1.00

02:22:48.000 God, especially with alcohol involved. 1.00

02:22:50.000 Oh my God. 1.00

02:22:52.000 And everyone talking shit knows it's talking shit, and that's why everybody's laughing. 1.00

02:22:56.000 That's right. 1.00

02:22:58.000 We are all in on the joke. 1.00

02:23:00.000 Yes, talking shit is a very important part of human beings. 1.00

02:23:03.000 It is. 1.00

02:23:03.000 It's a very important part of men. 1.00

02:23:05.000 Men and discourse.

02:23:07.000 That's right. 1.00

02:23:07.000 If a man can't talk shit with me, I can't talk to them. 1.00

02:23:10.000 I can't, because you can't talk shit. 1.00

02:23:14.000 Come on, man. 1.00

02:23:15.000 Come on, man. 1.00

02:23:15.000 Yeah, you can't talk a little shit. 1.00

02:23:18.000 It's fun. 1.00

02:23:19.000 Like the half smile while you're saying things and I'm smiling too.

02:23:22.000 You know what you're looking at.

02:23:23.000 We both know what we're doing. 1.00

02:23:25.000 We're talking shit. 1.00

02:23:26.000 Yeah, I think talking shit is very important. 1.00

02:23:29.000 That's okay. 1.00

02:23:29.000 It gets demonized so much and it becomes a part of this whole narrative of toxic masculinity. 1.00

02:23:36.000 Listen, if it wasn't for toxic masculinity, we'd all be speaking German. 1.00

02:23:38.000 So shut the fuck up. 1.00

02:23:39.000 That's exactly right. 1.00

02:23:40.000 Yeah.

02:23:41.000 That's exactly right.

02:23:42.000 Because it was toxic masculinity that stormed the beaches of Norway.

02:23:46.000 Yeah, it's not toxic.

02:23:47.000 In a barrage of machine gun fire.

02:23:49.000 It's just masculinity.

02:23:51.000 And by the way, here's the dirty secret.

02:23:53.000 Women love masculine men. 0.99

02:23:56.000 Sorry, guys. 0.99

02:23:59.000 Sorry, dorks.

02:24:01.000 You're not going to fix that.

02:24:03.000 You're not going to fix that.

02:24:04.000 You're not going to change that.

02:24:05.000 That's just how it is.

02:24:06.000 We're animals.

02:24:07.000 Human beings are animals.

02:24:09.000 That's right.

02:24:10.000 We are animals.

02:24:12.000 Yeah, we're complicated, though.

02:24:13.000 We are complicated animals. 0.98

02:24:14.000 And you can't boil us down to some fucking ridiculous, Disney-fied narrative that you'd like us to fall into. 0.98

02:24:21.000 But there's an inclination to do that today. 0.99

02:24:25.000 Roy Jones Jr. talked about it on the podcast.

02:24:27.000 He's like, they're trying to neuter men.

02:24:28.000 That's right.

02:24:29.000 And that is how it feels.

02:24:31.000 They're trying to socially neuter men to get them to fall into a pattern that they would like because it's easier to control people in that way.

02:24:39.000 And also, it eliminates the kind of competition that you can't win.

02:24:42.000 If you're a nerdy, feminine man and you view toxic masculinity, you view men who are very masculine as something you could never be, You want to try to eliminate that or you want to try to control that.

02:24:55.000 And you see a lot of that.

02:24:56.000 You see a lot of it from people that have had bad interactions with men.

02:25:00.000 There's a way to be tactful and there's a way to be respectful and still maintain your masculinity. 0.99

02:25:06.000 Yes, but you also, I was going to get to, you see a lot of shitty men that want to neuter women. 0.99

02:25:12.000 Which is absurd. 0.99

02:25:13.000 Yeah.

02:25:13.000 They don't like strong women.

02:25:15.000 They don't like power because they've had bad relationships with women or they've had women that didn't like them or that they feel bad about their relationships with them because the women dismissed them or weren't interested in them or just – it's just – See,

02:25:31.000 when you do that, then you don't have a Wesley and a Rendon Hunt because my sister went to West Point first.

02:25:38.000 She is a strong woman that actually set quite the example for my brother and I. That's why we all three win.

02:25:44.000 Yes.

02:25:45.000 So why would I want to take away her strength and her power and her individuality to actually lead men and women and also be a good example for her brothers?

02:25:55.000 Yes.

02:25:55.000 Who are two masculine guys.

02:25:57.000 But here's the thing.

02:25:58.000 Strong people appreciate strong people.

02:26:02.000 Period.

02:26:03.000 Weak people don't like strong people.

02:26:06.000 Yes.

02:26:07.000 That's where it comes down to.

02:26:09.000 The masculine-feminine thing, that's a trap. 0.98

02:26:14.000 There's a lot of strong women who love masculine men. 1.00

02:26:20.000 There's a lot of strong men who love powerful women.

02:26:24.000 They don't fear it because they're not weak.

02:26:28.000 A few days ago, I got to meet Nikki Haley in person.

02:26:32.000 She is remarkable.

02:26:35.000 She's a strong leader.

02:26:36.000 I don't know who Nikki Haley is.

02:27:04.000 That has nothing to do with her being a woman or me flying Apaches or Dan being a SEAL. She's a strong person.

02:27:10.000 She's a strong woman.

02:27:12.000 She is a leader.

02:27:13.000 Exactly.

02:27:14.000 Exactly.

02:27:16.000 That's what we need to know.

02:27:17.000 And that's what we need to get to.

02:27:18.000 Yes, that's what we need to get to.

02:27:19.000 We need to celebrate powerful people.

02:27:23.000 That's right.

02:27:23.000 People who are strong, people who are leaders.

02:27:25.000 And want to stand for something.

02:27:27.000 Yes, people who exemplify what we enjoy seeing in others.

02:27:32.000 That's right.

02:27:32.000 Great character, great intelligence, integrity.

02:27:35.000 Right.

02:27:36.000 Someone who's interesting.

02:27:37.000 Mental strength.

02:27:38.000 Yes.

02:27:39.000 Yes.

02:27:39.000 All those things, we should really reinforce that.

02:27:42.000 Celebrate those things.

02:27:43.000 Don't demonize it.

02:27:43.000 Celebrate it.

02:27:44.000 Exactly.

02:27:47.000 Exactly.

02:27:47.000 What else?

02:27:48.000 What other subjects do you think we need to cover?

02:27:50.000 I think you made an awesome point today.

02:27:52.000 I really do.

02:27:53.000 I think we covered it all. 1.00

02:27:54.000 I hope these motherfuckers vote for you. 1.00

02:27:55.000 I really do. 1.00

02:27:57.000 Yeah, me too.

02:27:58.000 I hope they get out.

02:27:59.000 I hope we get the word out and they see this podcast and they go, oh, okay.

02:28:03.000 Me too.

02:28:04.000 We're working hard at it.

02:28:05.000 And again, I just want to say always, always, always, I am an American first and I'm proud of it.

02:28:12.000 You can't tell me this is not the greatest experiment in history of this world.

02:28:15.000 And I'm just blessed to be a part of it.

02:28:17.000 You can't tell me that either.

02:28:18.000 You cannot tell me otherwise.

02:28:20.000 No.

02:28:21.000 No, I love it.

02:28:21.000 I love it.

02:28:22.000 I love it.

02:28:22.000 And I love the guys like you are out there.

02:28:24.000 Thank you, brother.

02:28:25.000 Trying to represent America correctly.

02:28:27.000 Thank you, brother.

02:28:27.000 I appreciate you.

02:28:28.000 Thank you.

02:28:29.000 My pleasure.

02:28:29.000 Tell people one more time what district, how to get after it.

02:28:34.000 Sure.

02:28:35.000 It's Houston, Texas, Congressional District 7. My website is WesleyForTexas.com.

02:28:42.000 Wesley for Texas.

02:28:43.000 Thank you, sir.

02:28:43.000 Thank you, brother.

02:28:44.000 Appreciate it very much.

02:28:45.000 Awesome.

02:28:45.000 Thank you.

02:28:45.000 Wesley Hunt, ladies and gentlemen.

02:28:46.000 You know what to do.

02:28:47.000 Get out there.

02:28:48.000 Vote for him.

02:28:49.000 Thank you, sir.

02:28:50.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - October 15, 2020

Joe Rogan Experience #1550 - Wesley Hunt

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Summary

Transcript