The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2245 - Rod Blagojevich

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 How are you, sir?

00:00:12.000 I'm good.

00:00:13.000 Nice to see you.

00:00:14.000 Nice to meet you.

00:00:14.000 I really enjoyed you on Tucker Carlson's show.

00:00:17.000 Shout out to Tucker.

00:00:19.000 It was a very eye-opening podcast.

00:00:21.000 And, you know, whenever someone is convicted of, you know, any political figure, any person of power that's convicted of corruption, you automatically assume that they're guilty.

00:00:34.000 And after listening to you on Tucker's show, I was like, oh, Jesus.

00:00:39.000 Like, It was such an eye-opening podcast and such a disappointing one, too.

00:00:45.000 It was so disturbing to hear your version of the story, which was so different than the version that was, you know, put out on the media.

00:00:53.000 And it was just, oh, corrupt politician goes to jail.

00:00:56.000 He went to jail.

00:00:57.000 He must be guilty.

00:00:58.000 And then you hear your take on it, like, oh, God.

00:01:01.000 It's very disturbing.

00:01:03.000 And I just wanted to show you this just before we get rolling.

00:01:06.000 Biden just released A bunch of people.

00:01:11.000 Multiple Chinese spies and an individual convicted of possessing child pornography.

00:01:17.000 I think he's released...

00:01:25.000 How many people has he pardoned today?

00:01:28.000 I saw number 1,500.

00:01:29.000 He's going ham.

00:01:30.000 Everybody can get their...

00:01:33.000 Sign your checks.

00:01:34.000 Let's go.

00:01:34.000 Send them in.

00:01:35.000 Wow.

00:01:45.000 Possession of child pornography should be like, you shouldn't be able to pardon for stuff like that.

00:01:49.000 It's like, there's certain things.

00:01:51.000 It's like, come on.

00:01:53.000 You know, I spent almost eight years in prison for politics, not for crimes.

00:01:57.000 I'm happy to answer any questions you have about any of it, because I didn't do it.

00:02:00.000 It was all politics.

00:02:02.000 But the first three years, almost three years, they put me in a higher security prison and I'm in there with Crips and Bloods and Gangster Disciples and Sinaloa Cartel drug dealers.

00:02:10.000 Why would they do that?

00:02:11.000 They were squeezing me and pressuring me because they wanted me to basically say I did something that I didn't do.

00:02:16.000 They wanted me to plead guilty to non-crimes.

00:02:17.000 So they want to scare you by putting you in with dangerous people?

00:02:21.000 Yeah, and they really punished me because I fought back in a way that no one really does except for Trump.

00:02:27.000 I mean, I was fighting back when they brought those charges against me everywhere, and I was calling them criminals, and they are.

00:02:32.000 What did they expect you to do?

00:02:33.000 Did they expect you to just take a sentence, a lower sentence, and confess?

00:02:37.000 Exactly.

00:02:37.000 What did they offer you?

00:02:39.000 They tried me twice after the first trial where they failed to convict me on their fake corruption charges.

00:02:44.000 They were floating 18 months.

00:02:46.000 And, you know, there were a lot of people in my team, like my lawyers, who thought that might be the prudent thing to do because you really can't beat these people.

00:02:55.000 The system is rigged.

00:02:56.000 And when they really want to get you, they'll just keep trying you and they'll get their judge to work with them and they'll ultimately convict you as they did me by using unlawful standards to criminalize things that are legal in politics and government.

00:03:08.000 So the prudent thing, the safe thing, was to, you know, cut your losses and, you know, take the short period of prison time.

00:03:16.000 But I felt, you know, I wasn't a businessman.

00:03:18.000 I suppose if I was a businessman facing something like that, you'd make a business decision, you cut your losses, you realize...

00:03:24.000 They're bleeding you financially.

00:03:25.000 You can't afford lawyers.

00:03:27.000 This is going to be an endless thing.

00:03:28.000 It was already three years at that point that we had been fighting it.

00:03:33.000 But I was the governor, twice elected by the people.

00:03:35.000 And the United States Oats don't mean a lot to some people.

00:03:38.000 It sounds like a bunch of bullshit to say I swore in the Holy Bible.

00:03:43.000 I just couldn't do it.

00:03:45.000 I knew it was all bullshit.

00:03:47.000 It was all corrupt.

00:03:48.000 They knew it was all corrupt.

00:03:49.000 And it was all an effort to try to get me to admit it.

00:03:52.000 And if I admitted it, then the truth would never come out.

00:03:54.000 They can never be exposed for what they did.

00:03:56.000 And because I wouldn't do it, and I fought back, because if I'm right, and I know I am, and they were doing to me what they ultimately ended up doing to Trump, weaponizing their uncontrolled power and unlimited resources to Well,

00:04:18.000 we saw that the head of the FBI just stepped down and Kash Patel is going to come in and he wants to clean house.

00:04:29.000 Let's take it back to the beginning.

00:04:32.000 So I know they were bugging your phones, but you kind of knew they were bugging your phones, right?

00:04:38.000 You know, when you come out of Chicago politics, which is a politics that probably has a larger proportion of corruption than...

00:04:44.000 That's how they got JFK elected.

00:04:46.000 Other places, yeah.

00:04:47.000 Right?

00:04:48.000 The mob was involved in that.

00:04:49.000 Yeah, that's well done.

00:04:51.000 The River Wars made the difference.

00:04:52.000 Mayor Daley, the first Mayor Daley, was holding back the counting of those votes until he saw what Southern Illinois Republican area came up with.

00:04:58.000 And once those votes were counted, then he let those River Wars come out.

00:05:02.000 And Giancana, people like that were really instrumental in electing Kennedy.

00:05:06.000 And then when Bobby Kennedy started going after Giancrona.

00:05:09.000 As the Attorney General, they felt betrayed.

00:05:11.000 Right, Lusso.

00:05:12.000 Yeah, of course.

00:05:14.000 A deal's a deal, right?

00:05:17.000 I mean, apparently, the father made the deal, right?

00:05:21.000 But with me, I always felt that there was a possibility that not only would they be listening, but that somebody would set you up.

00:05:28.000 And through the years in politics, people would.

00:05:30.000 They'd come to you and offer you things that you knew were illegal.

00:05:32.000 And you didn't do it because it was illegal.

00:05:35.000 But also you felt this could be a setup.

00:05:37.000 This could be the FBI trying to entrap you into doing something.

00:05:40.000 And that's a common thing?

00:05:41.000 Not an uncommon thing.

00:05:43.000 So what was the first charge that was brought against you?

00:05:48.000 Or if you could just bring us back to the moment when you knew they were coming after you.

00:05:53.000 I was elected the first Democratic governor of Illinois in November 2002 after 26 years of Republican governors.

00:06:01.000 I first learned that they began to look into my administration and people around me in December of 2003. And I had been governor for 10 months and they were already looking.

00:06:14.000 And I knew it, which meant we got to be super extra careful because these people are scrutinizing us.

00:06:19.000 On the one hand, I felt good.

00:06:21.000 That puts pressure on people around me.

00:06:24.000 People are doing work for me to do the legal things and not cross lines.

00:06:28.000 I never imagined that the FBI and the Department of Justice...

00:06:31.000 And these U.S. attorneys who come out of the best schools would be so corrupt and dishonest.

00:06:36.000 I felt like, okay, they'll look and see how we do things.

00:06:39.000 If we make some mistakes along the way, we'll make adjustments.

00:06:41.000 So they chased me for five years.

00:06:43.000 And by the time they taped my phones, it was no surprise.

00:06:47.000 There was all kinds of pressure at that time because they'd gotten a guy...

00:06:50.000 Who was close to me and Obama, a guy by the name of Tony Oresko, who they probably convicted him of things that weren't crimes either.

00:06:56.000 They were squeezing him to say things about me and Obama.

00:06:59.000 He wouldn't do it.

00:07:00.000 They put him into solitary confinement for three years to get him to invent crimes against us.

00:07:07.000 He wouldn't do it.

00:07:08.000 This guy's a stand-up guy.

00:07:09.000 Obama sold him out, and he did more for Obama than he ever did for me.

00:07:14.000 But I knew all of that.

00:07:15.000 And so at the time when they began wiretapping my phones, which was late October 2008, everything I talked about doing with regard to the appointment of Obama's successor to the United States Senate, I felt it was very possible they were listening.

00:07:27.000 How could they not?

00:07:28.000 Because they were chasing me.

00:07:29.000 They so much wanted to get me.

00:07:31.000 And Obama and I both were in their crosshairs in the very beginning.

00:07:36.000 But I think the politics of the changes, his political fortunes improved, and he looked like he was going to be the next president.

00:07:41.000 I think we're good to go.

00:08:03.000 What they wanted me to do was to basically say that I was guilty of trying to sell a Senate seat, and I was trying to sell it to another guilty party, who was the guy who started the whole thing, by the name of Barack Obama, who wanted to buy that Senate seat, because that's where the whole thing began.

00:08:16.000 It was Obama on election night.

00:08:18.000 He sent an emissary to me to suggest a political deal, because he wanted this woman named Valerie Jarrett to be appointed to his Senate seat, the governor appoints the Senate. 1.00

00:08:25.000 Pause for a second and hold that thought.

00:08:26.000 Jamie, there's feedback.

00:08:28.000 You hear that?

00:08:32.000 Do you hear that vibe?

00:08:35.000 It was on the last podcast, too.

00:08:37.000 Yeah, it's gone.

00:08:39.000 Just ended.

00:08:40.000 What was that?

00:08:43.000 Yep, that's it.

00:08:44.000 Okay.

00:08:45.000 Alright, we're back.

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00:10:44.000 So, Obama was...

00:10:47.000 So how did he try to negotiate?

00:10:49.000 When he wanted this person to take his Senate seat, what was set?

00:10:55.000 How did it go down?

00:10:56.000 How do things like that work?

00:10:58.000 You use third parties, emissaries, to treat two people.

00:11:03.000 So he doesn't have to meet with you, so you can say, Obama asked me.

00:11:07.000 You have other people, so there's plausible deniability.

00:11:09.000 To some extent, that's part of it, of course.

00:11:11.000 But there's other dynamics that also, it's just a little bit easier to kind of test the mood of the other person if you have a third party who both the people like or respect.

00:11:20.000 In this particular case, it was a labor boss.

00:11:22.000 By the name of Tom Balinoff, he came up to me election night in November 2008. That was the election you voted for, Obama.

00:11:29.000 You and I are both guilty of that.

00:11:32.000 And I was there that night.

00:11:33.000 Chicago was magical, you know, historic.

00:11:36.000 And it was great in the sense that finally America, you know, crossed a significant barrier.

00:11:40.000 A black person can be elected president of the United States.

00:11:42.000 Every black child growing up can now look and say, one day maybe I can be that.

00:11:46.000 You know, there's the American dream and opportunity.

00:11:49.000 So in that sense, it was a beautiful thing.

00:11:51.000 So this Balinov guy comes up to me and he says, Barack called me last night.

00:11:54.000 He said I was pumping gas in this gas station in the South Loop area downtown Chicago.

00:12:00.000 Barack called me last night.

00:12:01.000 He said it was around – he even told me at the time like around 6.30 or 7 at night.

00:12:05.000 And he asked me to come to you.

00:12:07.000 He would like you to appoint Valerie Jarrett as his successor to the Senate.

00:12:10.000 He wanted me to know what you want.

00:12:12.000 I wonder if I can come and see you so we can discuss this.

00:12:14.000 I said, sure, call me tomorrow.

00:12:16.000 Now, that's totally legal and appropriate.

00:12:18.000 He's not suggesting anything illegal.

00:12:20.000 Obama just wants to make a political deal.

00:12:22.000 But what happened was they criminalized it against me.

00:12:26.000 So they criminalized Barack Obama trying to force his pick for Senate seat and you accepting it.

00:12:35.000 Obama wasn't trying to force it.

00:12:37.000 He was trying to make a deal to persuade me to do it.

00:12:40.000 Or what would you get out of that?

00:12:41.000 That's what we discussed for six weeks, and the FBI was talking about that.

00:12:44.000 And we discussed all kinds of crazy ideas, a lot of good ideas.

00:12:47.000 Spent two days talking about the possibility of appointing Oprah Winfrey.

00:12:52.000 What?

00:12:52.000 You might appreciate this.

00:12:54.000 Yeah, I know.

00:12:55.000 She's from Chicago. 0.97

00:12:56.000 Do you remember when Trump won?

00:12:57.000 Was NBC or one of these fucking people tweeted out, this is our president and it was Oprah?

00:13:05.000 No, I didn't know that.

00:13:06.000 Yeah, see how you find that.

00:13:08.000 Like, a major network tweeted out, this is our president.

00:13:15.000 Wow.

00:13:16.000 I was like...

00:13:19.000 Okay.

00:13:19.000 So we spent six weeks talking about all kinds of ideas because this was, to quote me, fucking golden.

00:13:25.000 I'm not giving it up for nothing.

00:13:26.000 We got a chance to do something with this.

00:13:28.000 And all of these ideas and thoughts were discussed with my governor's lawyer on all those calls largely because I knew these people were chasing me.

00:13:36.000 I wanted to be sure whatever decision I made, it was legal.

00:13:38.000 We didn't cross lines or make a mistake.

00:13:40.000 Maybe I missed something.

00:13:41.000 And, you know, this was unique.

00:13:43.000 And so I explored all kinds of ideas.

00:13:46.000 I even spent one conversation.

00:13:47.000 I think you might appreciate this.

00:13:49.000 They played this accord in my first trial.

00:13:51.000 My wife's sitting there, loving, dutiful, devoted, faithful wife.

00:13:55.000 Sitting in a courtroom every single day at both trials.

00:13:57.000 And the media's in there every day.

00:13:59.000 And they could do whatever they want, these prosecutors.

00:14:02.000 The judge was their guy.

00:14:03.000 And so they're playing all these tapes out of context.

00:14:07.000 They're not allowing me to play tapes we want to fill up the context.

00:14:10.000 They only play 2% of the tapes.

00:14:12.000 They denied 98% of them.

00:14:14.000 To this day, those tapes are covered up.

00:14:16.000 Because all kinds of people are on those calls.

00:14:18.000 There wasn't anything illegal about it, but Rahm Emanuel, Harry Reid at the time was the Democratic leader.

00:14:26.000 Every possible big time Democrats on those calls with me.

00:14:30.000 But to go back to some of these crazy ideas.

00:14:34.000 You know, I was trying to appoint someone who was black but not in politics. 0.98

00:14:38.000 I was looking for a military hero of some sort.

00:14:42.000 Everybody wanted me to make them senator, as you can imagine, in politics.

00:14:46.000 I wanted to think outside the box, and we were testing all these ideas, including Oprah.

00:14:50.000 And I'm talking to my lawyer, Quinlan, and I say, hey, Quinlan.

00:14:53.000 There it is, NBC. Nothing but respect for our future president.

00:14:58.000 If that's the case, I'm going to do what Ellen DeGeneres did. 1.00

00:15:01.000 I'm going to move to England.

00:15:03.000 I'm not going to move to England.

00:15:05.000 I'm just going to mock NBC. So what does it say?

00:15:08.000 Yesterday, a tweet about the Golden Globes and Oprah Winfrey was sent by a third-party agency for NBC Entertainment in real time during the broadcast.

00:15:15.000 It is in reference to a joke made during the monologue and not meant to be a political statement.

00:15:18.000 We have since removed the tweet.

00:15:20.000 Right.

00:15:21.000 Okay.

00:15:23.000 So anyway, so I'm at the first trial they're playing these tapes and they had to give you these transcript books so you can see in writing what you can actually hear when they play the tape.

00:15:33.000 And by then I had gotten used to trying to know what was coming so I can brace myself, you know.

00:15:38.000 And, you know, they pick all the unflattering stuff.

00:15:41.000 But none of it's criminal.

00:15:42.000 And if you add it, you put the rest of the calls in there, it fills out the context.

00:15:46.000 Of course.

00:15:47.000 So in this one particular call, I asked my lawyer Quinlan's name.

00:15:51.000 Hey, Quinlan, what's the rule again on residency requirements?

00:15:54.000 How long do you have to live in Illinois to be a senator?

00:15:57.000 And he said, just one day.

00:15:59.000 And you got to be 30 years old and you can be a naturalized citizen or American board citizen.

00:16:04.000 So I say, because we were not finding the black military hero, why doesn't somebody go to California, ask Halle Berry if she'd like to be a United States senator? 0.72

00:16:13.000 She comes to Illinois for one day, I'll make her a senator and maybe I could fuck her. 1.00

00:16:18.000 I'm joking around.

00:16:19.000 Right.

00:16:19.000 Well, they play this, you know, in court.

00:16:21.000 And there's my wife sitting right there, you know. 0.99

00:16:21.000 Oh, boy. 0.99

00:16:23.000 And I look ahead, and I'm looking at the clock, and there's like 10 minutes to go before noon when the judge is going to recess for lunch.

00:16:23.000 Oh, boy.

00:16:29.000 And I'm thinking, if I could just get there before they play this tape, I could at least, you know, kind of prepare her for what's coming.

00:16:35.000 Right.

00:16:36.000 And I made it.

00:16:37.000 And so I tap her on the knee, and I kind of showed her the book, and I said, look, I was just kidding.

00:16:41.000 And her reaction was, what are you, 16?

00:16:44.000 Yeah.

00:16:47.000 Well, that's the same thing as the grab-em-by-the-pussy comment. 1.00

00:16:51.000 It's like, guys talk like that.

00:16:52.000 It doesn't mean they mean it.

00:16:54.000 Guys talk like that all the time for fun.

00:16:57.000 It's not, you know, you could say it's misogynist, it's this, it's just shit-talking.

00:17:03.000 It's what guys do, and they know that the other person doesn't mean it, that's why it's funny to say.

00:17:09.000 Yeah, and let's face it, most of us like that stuff.

00:17:13.000 Yeah, we like joking around about stuff like that.

00:17:15.000 It's fun.

00:17:15.000 No doubt.

00:17:16.000 And the object.

00:17:17.000 And everybody would laugh.

00:17:18.000 And even if you never did anything or never even intended to do anything, you'd say something like that to get a rise out of your friends.

00:17:25.000 So years would go by and I'm sitting in prison.

00:17:27.000 I'm making one of my nightly calls home and my wife's on the phone and that Billy Bush tape came out. 0.98

00:17:33.000 What a slimy thing to do to Trump, right?

00:17:35.000 It comes out and everybody's writing him off as a president.

00:17:37.000 He can't win.

00:17:38.000 Pressure by his party to get out of the race.

00:17:40.000 And my wife was offended by it and she's telling me, you have two young daughters.

00:17:44.000 How could you possibly defend this?

00:17:46.000 And I said, let me take you back to a day in court, okay?

00:17:50.000 Before you judge somebody else, look at your own husband.

00:17:53.000 And I told her about the Halle Berry thing and what I said.

00:17:56.000 And I said, this is, you know, as you explained it.

00:18:00.000 And I think people have to realize that so many of these things that are taken out of context are taken out of context for a reason.

00:18:05.000 It is to mislead the public and prejudice them against things.

00:18:09.000 And that context aspect of it is very important because there is such a difference between a statement and someone tapping a phone while people are having a private conversation and talking shit.

00:18:22.000 And did they read it or play it when you said that?

00:18:25.000 Both.

00:18:26.000 Yeah.

00:18:27.000 People talk shit.

00:18:29.000 You can't pretend that that's what they actually mean.

00:18:33.000 It's one thing if you get someone planning a crime, but everyone knows that people talk that way.

00:18:40.000 You just pretend they don't because they don't in a professional setting.

00:18:44.000 Look, I spent 2,896 days because of what they did and how they did it.

00:18:44.000 Yes.

00:18:50.000 So if you just went along with whatever they asked and didn't ask for any political bartering, you think nothing would have came of this?

00:18:58.000 Oh, no, no.

00:18:59.000 I would have – oh, you mean just political bartering?

00:19:01.000 If they came to you and said Obama would like you to put this person in as senator, if you just agreed to it, you think none of this would have happened?

00:19:09.000 No, I think they were going to do whatever they did to get me no matter what.

00:19:12.000 Why?

00:19:13.000 Because they had spent so much time and money, five years.

00:19:16.000 But why did they do that?

00:19:17.000 Why did they come after you?

00:19:19.000 I think part of it has to do with, a lot of it has to do with the actual U.S. attorney.

00:19:24.000 His name is Patrick Fitzgerald.

00:19:26.000 He and James Comey are real close.

00:19:28.000 It's this sort of FBI, DOJ type people who've become part of today's Department of Justice, and they feel like they're a power center of their own right.

00:19:38.000 That they're this new political place in American government.

00:19:41.000 They are so dangerous to our freedoms in this country.

00:19:44.000 I think it was largely that.

00:19:46.000 He had convicted the previous governor, Republican governor, Ryan, of crimes that he had committed when he was the Secretary of State of Illinois.

00:19:55.000 And so now he could be the first guy in history to get two straight governors.

00:19:59.000 And I think it was that.

00:20:01.000 I think he wanted to leverage Obama to keep him in office so he could finish the job and get me after investing five years And he came up with nothing.

00:20:09.000 That's why they invented the crimes from those conversations.

00:20:12.000 And if anybody doubts this, and I fully understand why people would, the question I'd ask people is, will you tell me what side is lying?

00:20:20.000 The side that refuses to play 98% of the tapes that they made?

00:20:24.000 Or the guy that's saying, play them all?

00:20:26.000 Warts and all.

00:20:27.000 There's unflattering calls where I say stupid things, or, you know, I'm angry, or whatever the case may be, or I'm using profanity.

00:20:32.000 They replayed those.

00:20:34.000 But play those tapes.

00:20:35.000 What are you hiding?

00:20:36.000 The side that's hiding is the side that's lying.

00:20:38.000 And they're hiding it to this day.

00:20:40.000 They covered up all those tapes.

00:20:41.000 They wouldn't even let me play them in court in the second trial, even though they promised that I would.

00:20:45.000 I could play them if I testified at the second trial.

00:20:49.000 And so I got up on the stand, Joe, and the judge had promised, on the 20th of May 2011, I thought this was the day I'd be vindicated.

00:20:55.000 He said, look, if he agrees to testify, he can play the tapes to corroborate his testimony.

00:21:00.000 Because I was a lawyer, and I was also a prosecutor at the state level, Cook County prosecutor.

00:21:05.000 And I know how the system works, and I know that if you get up there and you're saying certain things, and one side has tapes of you saying something, and you're saying stuff, but you don't have tapes to corroborate what you're saying.

00:21:15.000 The prosecutor is going to simply tell the jury in closing argument, go back to the jury room and see how many times you hear what he testified to corroborated by those tapes.

00:21:23.000 And if you don't find any tapes, then you know who's lying.

00:21:26.000 I knew this, but when the judge said I can do it on the record, I felt beautiful.

00:21:30.000 I'll testify, and then we'll play the tapes to back up my testimony.

00:21:34.000 So I get up there, I testify.

00:21:36.000 Then when it's time to play the tapes, the judge won't allow them.

00:21:38.000 It was a setup.

00:21:39.000 And then the prosecutor does exactly what I knew they would do if those tapes weren't heard.

00:21:44.000 He says, go back into the jury room and see how many times he talked about the Madigan deal, because that was the big deal I was about to make before they arrested me.

00:21:52.000 You won't hear a single tape, even though there were 102 conversations on that subject.

00:21:56.000 They were all covered up, and the jury didn't know those tapes existed.

00:22:00.000 It was a total fucking frame-up in a rigged criminal justice system in a court that was rigged.

00:22:06.000 And that's today's America.

00:22:07.000 And why?

00:22:09.000 What happened to Trump is so important, they did it to him in those different courts where they got the convictions for things that weren't crimes.

00:22:17.000 Yeah, there's multiple things that have changed our timeline and one of the big ones is him being elected because that means they dropped those cases and all that weaponizing of the justice system didn't work.

00:22:31.000 If it did work, That is such an insanely dangerous precedent to set.

00:22:37.000 When you see things like the documents case or the real estate case, which is the most disgusting one, pretending that Mar-a-Lago, that somehow or another someone was a victim because he overvalued Mar-a-Lago even though he paid all those loans back and the banks profited from it.

00:22:56.000 There was no victim at all.

00:22:58.000 And yet they fine him this fucking insane amount of money and try to say that Mar-a-Lago was worth $18 million.

00:23:03.000 That is just such a slap in the face of anybody that understands...

00:23:08.000 First of all, anybody understands property values in that area.

00:23:10.000 It's preposterous to say that place is only $18 million.

00:23:14.000 It's a fucking enormous property in the most expensive real estate in the United States or one of the most expensive places for real estate.

00:23:20.000 And there was just so many of these cases over and over and over again that just right in everyone's face.

00:23:26.000 And very little pushback, no pushback from the media at all.

00:23:30.000 They went along with it as if these 34 felonies for a bookkeeping error that is essentially a misdemeanor that's passed the statute of limitations, and now you're marking it up as a felony, but you can't even identify the felony?

00:23:45.000 The whole thing is madness.

00:23:48.000 And all these news organizations Because they don't like Trump are going along with this insanely dangerous precedent.

00:23:55.000 Because if that goes through, well, what happens if Republicans get into office and you have some new Democrat that you really love, and this Democrat is a real challenge and a threat to the Republican, and they start doing the same fucking shit that you did?

00:24:08.000 Is that what you want?

00:24:09.000 You want us to be a banana Republic just because you don't like Trump?

00:24:12.000 I mean, it just shows you how many people were willing to sacrifice all of their ethics.

00:24:17.000 All the things that they believe in, what the Bill of Rights stands for, what the Constitution stands for, fuck all that.

00:24:22.000 We don't want this guy to win.

00:24:23.000 Throw it all away.

00:24:24.000 And then you throw everything away.

00:24:26.000 Then we have no freedom of speech.

00:24:27.000 We have no nothing.

00:24:28.000 It's all gone.

00:24:29.000 The whole thing is so mind-boggling how short-sighted people are in the name of wanting their side to win.

00:24:37.000 Well said.

00:24:38.000 I don't want to sound like an egomaniac, but I got to tell you, they got away with it with me, and they got emboldened then to say, we can do it to a democratic governor, the fifth largest state in America, we can get away with it.

00:24:50.000 Non-fucking crimes that we make up shit and call them certain things that are sexy sounding, sale of the Senate seat.

00:24:56.000 That eventually was reversed by the appellate court.

00:24:58.000 They could never uphold that unlawful standard.

00:25:00.000 Three fundraising requests where there was no quid pro quo.

00:25:03.000 I got convicted of that.

00:25:04.000 None of it was personal corruption.

00:25:06.000 Nobody said I even took a penny.

00:25:07.000 And they gave me 14 years because I was fighting against them and exposing them.

00:25:11.000 So it started, I really believe, with me.

00:25:13.000 And they got away with it with me and some of the same people, Comey, Fitzgerald, those people were doing it to Trump with Russia collusion stuff.

00:25:19.000 And some of the same people that went on and have been doing it as part of a, get this, organized political campaign that came right out of the Oval Office, out of the Democratic National Committee, the DNC, into the DOJ.

00:25:33.000 They've corrupted the Department of Justice and the FBI, and they've corrupted the rule of law and the Constitution, and this is no small thing.

00:25:40.000 And just because Trump won, because the American people are beginning to get it, doesn't mean we're safe.

00:25:47.000 The Trump administration, God willing, is going to do something very serious about this.

00:25:51.000 If there's anything that this administration can do to make America great again is to protect our rights and our freedoms and to hold the people that do this accountable and make an example of them, not to be vengeful, but because it's just and because it sends a message to these unaccountable prosecutors who have no check and balance that if they do this and frame innocent people, they're going to be treated the same way as a dirty cop who plants a murder weapon to frame an innocent man.

00:26:16.000 As they should be.

00:26:17.000 Look at this guy Andrew Weissman on CNN. He's got a big spot at CNN, the legal expert.

00:26:21.000 You ever see this guy?

00:26:22.000 No.

00:26:22.000 Anyway, he was a former U.S. attorney, and he made his name by destroying Arthur Anderson, a company that had all these people working for him, an accounting company nationwide, one of the biggest accounting firms in America.

00:26:33.000 He used a standard that wasn't lawful to get convictions on them.

00:26:37.000 Eventually, the United States Supreme Court took the case, and they ruled nine to nothing, unanimous, that the standard that Weissman used to prosecute Arthur Anderson was an unlawful standard.

00:26:48.000 But the damage was done.

00:26:50.000 That company went bankrupt.

00:26:51.000 All those people lost their jobs.

00:26:52.000 And this Andrew Weissman gets promoted and becomes this legal expert and scholar on CNN.

00:26:58.000 That guy, Fitzgerald, Comey, and people who do this, Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, they ought to go right to fucking jail.

00:27:07.000 Well, What were they accusing this company of?

00:27:12.000 Obstruction of justice, that they were destroying records and stuff.

00:27:17.000 And that would have been a crime had they done it after they'd been subpoenaed.

00:27:21.000 But they weren't subpoenaed.

00:27:22.000 They had a right to do whatever they wanted with their records before anybody compelled them to produce them.

00:27:27.000 It was obstruction of justice.

00:27:29.000 And what was the accusation?

00:27:30.000 What were they trying to get them on?

00:27:32.000 Saying that they were destroying documents and evidence.

00:27:36.000 About what, though?

00:27:37.000 About the accounting work for Enron, which was a real scandal.

00:27:42.000 I saw the smartest men in the room.

00:27:45.000 Anybody who doesn't believe in conspiracies, watch that.

00:27:51.000 Jeff Skilling was in the prison with me.

00:27:53.000 Oh, really?

00:27:54.000 Wow.

00:27:54.000 Yeah.

00:27:55.000 Yeah, he got a big sentence, and then eventually they found procedural wrongdoing, and he was able to reduce it down from something like 26 years to 14. But he was there with me.

00:28:06.000 Along with Smelly and Sox and Mr. B and V and G and all kinds of guys.

00:28:11.000 I bet you met a lot of characters.

00:28:13.000 All kinds.

00:28:13.000 I'm writing a book about it.

00:28:14.000 You know, it's a story that starts with one president and ends with another.

00:28:17.000 And there's a governor in prison with gangster disciples, seen in the lower cartel drug theaters, pedophiles.

00:28:22.000 That's what I meant to tell you.

00:28:23.000 I was in there with something like 400 pedophiles.

00:28:25.000 Jesus.

00:28:26.000 Murderers, bank robbers.

00:28:27.000 What do they do with the pedophiles in jail?

00:28:29.000 They're a protected class in prison because everybody would fuck them up because of the nature of a lot of their crimes.

00:28:35.000 Some of them are worse than others.

00:28:37.000 Some are like this guy that got pardoned by Biden, which is unbelievable, where they're into child pornography.

00:28:44.000 But some were far worse than that.

00:28:47.000 They harmed children.

00:28:48.000 So how do they protect these people?

00:28:50.000 You get more than canceled if you even say something bad to them.

00:28:56.000 You can't offend them.

00:28:58.000 You can't call them a name.

00:28:59.000 What?

00:29:00.000 That's their way of policing the other inmates who hate them and resent them.

00:29:05.000 So they're protected?

00:29:05.000 Really?

00:29:07.000 Yes.

00:29:08.000 Because the thing that people always loved about pedophiles going to jail is like, oh, there's going to be some jail justice.

00:29:15.000 Right.

00:29:16.000 Well, there is, notwithstanding their policy, the BOP's policy.

00:29:20.000 The guy that was Jared, the subway guy, he ended up going to the same prison I was in after I worked my way out of that higher security prison, the one behind the barbed wire fence, and got to a camp.

00:29:34.000 Jared got to my prison because it's a prison that has a lot of pedophiles.

00:29:38.000 Out of the 950 guys, roughly, that I was in prison with there, there were about 300 to 400 pedophiles.

00:29:46.000 And then there were drug dealers, bank robbers, some guys who committed murder.

00:29:49.000 There were 2% white collar.

00:29:51.000 Skilling one of them, one governor, me, right?

00:29:55.000 But those pedophiles, the sex offenders, you can't call them pedophiles.

00:29:59.000 And the derogatory term...

00:30:00.000 You're not allowed to call them pedophiles?

00:30:02.000 You can't call them pedophiles.

00:30:02.000 You can't call them chomos.

00:30:05.000 That's the inside prison name for these guys.

00:30:08.000 Chomo. 0.96

00:30:08.000 Chomo? 0.96

00:30:09.000 So I'm there day two in prison.

00:30:12.000 I got 14 years ahead of me.

00:30:13.000 They gave me a 14-year sentence.

00:30:15.000 I mean, Trump pulled me out of there after eight.

00:30:17.000 And...

00:30:18.000 I'm in there second day.

00:30:20.000 As you can imagine, I write about this in the book.

00:30:22.000 It's a hard experience, a long, hard journey.

00:30:24.000 It's heartbreaking in so many ways for me and my family.

00:30:27.000 And hard.

00:30:29.000 But I'm learning the ropes.

00:30:32.000 I've got all my fellow inmates there.

00:30:34.000 And I'm hearing this phrase, this term, it's called chomos.

00:30:39.000 Fucking chomo. 1.00

00:30:40.000 That guy, he's a chomo. 1.00

00:30:42.000 They say that.

00:30:43.000 And I say, what's that?

00:30:44.000 And they told me.

00:30:46.000 And so I was with one of my, the case manager or somebody.

00:30:51.000 They were giving me more of the information I needed for the stuff I had to learn as a new inmate.

00:30:56.000 And I mentioned, so who are these chumos?

00:30:59.000 And she goes, you can't say that.

00:31:02.000 It's not chumo. 0.97

00:31:03.000 And she whispered, it's chumo. 0.66

00:31:05.000 You can't say that.

00:31:06.000 That's strictly forbidden here.

00:31:08.000 If you say that, you'll go to the SHU. Now, what's that?

00:31:13.000 I have to ask her.

00:31:14.000 Well, the SHU was a special housing unit, S-H-U. The vernacular was SHU, solitary confinement.

00:31:21.000 And the way they police the inmates and punish them to varying degrees is you get thrown in solitary confinement.

00:31:27.000 So if you just say CHOMO, that'll land you in solitary confinement.

00:31:30.000 For how long?

00:31:31.000 Maybe a week.

00:31:34.000 Yeah.

00:31:34.000 Jeez.

00:31:35.000 So how...

00:31:36.000 That's so crazy that they protect pedophiles.

00:31:40.000 Yeah.

00:31:41.000 Now, I don't want to sound like I'm too liberal or something, but they have to.

00:31:49.000 Because if left to their own devices, these guys would get so fucked up by the general population who are outraged by their crimes and are also outraged by the fact that a lot of them, a lot of them, got special treatment in their sentencing.

00:32:03.000 So you see this guy that Biden just pardoned or gave clemency to.

00:32:07.000 Let's hope it was just clemency and not a pardon, my God.

00:32:10.000 But these sex offenders are getting lighter sentences than the drug dealers or the bank robbers.

00:32:16.000 And if you look at a system of punishment that's supposed to be just and fair and hopefully always tempered with mercy, you'd like to think that there's equal application of the law and that there's some sort of fairness and that when you measure the victims of the certain crimes, that that should be a part of the sentencing.

00:32:34.000 So drug dealers would argue a lot of it non-violent and they're right.

00:32:38.000 Their stuff was non-violent.

00:32:39.000 These guys really harm children.

00:32:42.000 The ones that touch children, not the ones who just looked at the pornography.

00:32:47.000 How did they justify you being in this high-security prison?

00:32:52.000 Like, why would they put you in with pedophiles and murderers and gangbangers?

00:32:58.000 Why would they do that?

00:32:59.000 Obviously to squeeze you, but how do they pass that through?

00:33:05.000 Anybody who gets a sentence of over 10 years has to do time, and you can't be in a camp.

00:33:11.000 Certain people can't be in camps.

00:33:13.000 For example, any kind of violent offender cannot be in a camp.

00:33:17.000 Pedophiles cannot be in a camp.

00:33:18.000 That's good.

00:33:19.000 And camps don't have, you know, fences.

00:33:22.000 There's not iron gates that lock you in.

00:33:24.000 I mean, I went from a 50,000 square foot governor's mansion to a six foot by eight foot prison cell.

00:33:29.000 I mean, it's real prison like in the movies.

00:33:31.000 Those iron gates shut you in, you know.

00:33:33.000 And you're restricted in your movements.

00:33:36.000 And you're with some badass guys, you know?

00:33:38.000 They're interesting guys, and I met a lot of guys I really liked.

00:33:41.000 But they did it because they purposely gave me a sentence above 10 years to force me to go into a shithole prison.

00:33:50.000 And to try to not just squeeze me, but to punish me.

00:33:53.000 And the punishment was because I had the temerity to fight back.

00:33:57.000 You know, who was this guy?

00:33:59.000 He was only twice elected governor of the fifth largest state to challenge us.

00:34:03.000 And I fought back.

00:34:05.000 And, you know, frankly, the beauty of it is that had I not fought back the way I did, Trump would have never known me.

00:34:12.000 He saw me on television fighting back.

00:34:14.000 I mean, I fought back in ways that predated him the way he does.

00:34:18.000 And it wasn't by design.

00:34:19.000 It was just I felt like, Jesus, I didn't do anything wrong.

00:34:21.000 And they know it.

00:34:22.000 This is politics.

00:34:23.000 And, you know, this is wrong.

00:34:26.000 Bad for our country.

00:34:26.000 I can't give into this.

00:34:28.000 And by the way, if I'm right, they are criminals.

00:34:30.000 I have to fight back.

00:34:31.000 And so I was on all these TV shows, everything.

00:34:33.000 And Trump saw me in the David Letterman Show, I think.

00:34:36.000 And by the way, when they do this to you and they arrest you like they did, they arrested me at 6 o'clock in the morning in my house.

00:34:42.000 And it was a super sensational press conference.

00:34:45.000 It was international news.

00:34:47.000 Back then in December of 2008, there were two assholes.

00:34:50.000 The two biggest assholes in the world were me.

00:34:52.000 And Bernie Madoff.

00:34:54.000 Because they arrested him like a day or two after me.

00:34:56.000 I don't even remember this.

00:34:58.000 And it was, you know, I just had to fight back.

00:35:01.000 And so I was.

00:35:03.000 But you can't make a living.

00:35:04.000 They threw me out of office.

00:35:06.000 And you learn who your friends are in politics.

00:35:08.000 And not a single one of them.

00:35:10.000 You know, they all ran for the hills to protect themselves.

00:35:12.000 They all voted to throw you out.

00:35:15.000 Because the politics of it was...

00:35:18.000 Bad at that time.

00:35:19.000 Boy, that's a time where podcasts would have come in handy.

00:35:22.000 Yes.

00:35:23.000 Imagine you can go on a podcast and just lay out the whole case and exactly what's going on and even play tapes.

00:35:29.000 Can't play tapes.

00:35:30.000 I'll tell you why.

00:35:30.000 You could never because they're recorded?

00:35:32.000 Because they put a court seal on it.

00:35:34.000 They arrested me.

00:35:35.000 They play me saying this is fucking gold and I give it up for nothing.

00:35:38.000 But they don't play what comes after it.

00:35:40.000 Right.

00:35:40.000 Right?

00:35:40.000 If it says I want $100 million in a Swiss bank account, which by the way, The current governor, Pritzker, had called me to ask me to make him senator because he inherited a billion dollars.

00:35:49.000 That's the one you'd sell it to.

00:35:50.000 But if I said that, that would be a crime.

00:35:52.000 But there was none of that.

00:35:53.000 They covered that up.

00:35:54.000 So they go to court a couple of days after I'm arrested and they go before their judge and they get a sealed order.

00:36:00.000 They put a gag on it.

00:36:01.000 So the tapes cannot be played publicly in court and I can't talk about what's on those tapes.

00:36:08.000 Unless it comes from my independent recollection.

00:36:10.000 I can't release them.

00:36:12.000 It's a crime.

00:36:13.000 So you can't talk about what's on those tapes unless it comes from your own personal recollection.

00:36:18.000 Right.

00:36:18.000 So you can talk about the tapes.

00:36:20.000 You just can't play them.

00:36:22.000 Correct.

00:36:22.000 And you can't quote them.

00:36:24.000 I can quote what I remember personally, and I remember some of it, of course.

00:36:27.000 But at least you could have laid out your version of it so people could hear it.

00:36:32.000 And it would put pressure on them.

00:36:32.000 Correct.

00:36:33.000 And I was doing it, not on podcasts, but I was doing it on the Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Morning, Nightline, Dateline, all the shows.

00:36:42.000 It's such a short segment.

00:36:44.000 That's right, exactly.

00:36:45.000 You don't have enough time to lay out the environment, how it works, what really goes on in politics, what's normal for how these deals are made.

00:36:55.000 Well said.

00:36:56.000 Yes, exactly right.

00:36:57.000 So this person that Obama wanted, whatever happened to that person?

00:37:01.000 She became like a top advisor for Obama in the White House.

00:37:06.000 Now there's a school of thought, there's a theory that's plausible.

00:37:10.000 Obama publicly said he did not send this labor guy to me.

00:37:13.000 But Balinov, the emissary, in two trials testified twice under oath that Obama called him.

00:37:20.000 Obama then was interviewed by the FBI the day or two after I was arrested.

00:37:23.000 And if you lie to the FBI, they call them 302s, these interviews, it's a crime.

00:37:28.000 But I've learned that the FBI is really the FBI lie.

00:37:31.000 And you sit down like I did stupidly.

00:37:33.000 You talk to these people.

00:37:35.000 They say you lied and you say they lied.

00:37:37.000 Who are you going to believe if you're a jury, right?

00:37:39.000 It's a big mistake to ever trust them, to be honest.

00:37:42.000 So my advice to anybody out there who's getting chased by the FBI, don't talk to them.

00:37:45.000 I thought they were the good guys, so I sat down and talked to them.

00:37:49.000 Well, Obama talked to them.

00:37:51.000 And every defendant is entitled to relevant evidence that could help him or her defend themselves against criminal prosecution.

00:37:58.000 But to this day, they would never give us Obama's 302s.

00:38:02.000 So did Obama really send this guy, like that guy testified to?

00:38:06.000 Or did Obama Not do it like he publicly said he did.

00:38:10.000 He said he didn't do it.

00:38:11.000 So somebody's lying.

00:38:13.000 Somebody broke a law.

00:38:14.000 Either Balinoff's lying and he purged himself at two trials, or Obama is lying on those FBI 302s, or he lied, which is a crime, or he lied to the public, which all too often politicians do all the time, and Obama's one of them who does it a lot.

00:38:28.000 He does it a lot.

00:38:29.000 Balinoff, this guy, what would be his motivation for saying that Obama wanted you to do that?

00:38:36.000 The theory is, among a lot of political insiders who know how it works, that he was an emissary for Rahm Emanuel, who became Obama's chief of staff.

00:38:47.000 He was a member of Congress.

00:38:48.000 I had a pretty good relationship with him.

00:38:49.000 He's all over the FBI tapes with me.

00:38:50.000 And so that Obama never said anything about it, but Rahm Emanuel said something to him.

00:38:56.000 Rahm Emanuel asked him to do it and instructed him to tell him that Barack himself had asked him to come.

00:39:03.000 A theory.

00:39:03.000 This is just a theory.

00:39:04.000 And the theory is plausible in that what would be the motivation for Rahm to do that was that as the new chief of staff with Obama and in the power game of politics, which is something he knows real well and I know, People want to be close to the king.

00:39:22.000 And Valerie Jarrett was Michelle Obama's best friend.

00:39:25.000 And she was a threat to the influence of Rahm and others.

00:39:29.000 And if you get her kicked upstairs to the U.S. Senate, she won't be in Rahm's way to have more of a voice and more say in Obama, in the direction of Obama's administration. 1.00

00:39:39.000 Now this is a theory.

00:39:41.000 It's a theory.

00:39:42.000 Interesting theory.

00:39:43.000 So what's day one like in prison?

00:39:48.000 I write about that in detail in my book.

00:39:50.000 It's like chapter 3 or chapter 4. Have you published this book yet?

00:39:53.000 No, it's coming out.

00:39:53.000 It's going to come out, I hope, by spring.

00:39:56.000 I hope I get it done.

00:39:57.000 I'm almost done.

00:39:59.000 Do you have a publisher and everything?

00:40:01.000 It's interesting, the politics of the publishing companies.

00:40:03.000 I've pre-sold about over 8,000 already.

00:40:05.000 I haven't even put it out for pre-sale yet.

00:40:07.000 I'm about to do it.

00:40:08.000 Blago something books.

00:40:10.000 Rod Blago books or something.

00:40:11.000 We haven't done it yet.

00:40:14.000 But I've pre-sold some to people, friends and others, about 8,000 of them already.

00:40:18.000 So it's helped me be able to self-publish and create my own little publishing company.

00:40:22.000 And the reason I'm compelled to do it is because I've gone to some of the New York publishing houses and they are so anti-Trump that if you say something nice about Trump, and he comes across really well in my book, I was on his show.

00:40:36.000 He's a kind guy.

00:40:36.000 He was great to me.

00:40:37.000 I'll tell you stories about him if you want.

00:40:39.000 He pulled me out of there.

00:40:41.000 I love Donald Trump for a lot of reasons.

00:40:43.000 Of course, because he gave my daughters their father back.

00:40:46.000 So I write well about him.

00:40:48.000 He comes across very well.

00:40:49.000 Obama doesn't come across so good.

00:40:51.000 He doesn't come across as evil, but he comes across as a very selfish, very calculating politician who missed an opportunity to be a great president and instead divided our country, and who's a snake, and an ignorant, and who sold out his friend Tony Resco, who bought him a lot.

00:41:05.000 This guy bought him a lot next to a mansion that he bought after he was elected to the United States Senate.

00:41:10.000 Obama's, at that time, only had $750,000 they could afford for a mansion.

00:41:14.000 They wanted to buy the adjoining lot in this real upper-class neighborhood called Kenwood, Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago, by Obama's library.

00:41:23.000 And they couldn't afford the other lot, so he went to his friend Resco.

00:41:28.000 And Resco's a kind-hearted person, and he wants to help his friend Obama.

00:41:28.000 Obama did.

00:41:32.000 So he pays, like, seven, he pays the list price, like $750,000 for the lot.

00:41:38.000 The Obamas paid less for the lot with the improvement on it, the big mansion.

00:41:42.000 Obama now is running for president.

00:41:44.000 That comes out.

00:41:46.000 He's got to fix his political problem.

00:41:48.000 He goes to Resco, and he says, I got to put a fence between the lot and the mansion.

00:41:54.000 So I can explain to the media that it's your lot, not mine, right?

00:42:01.000 And he prefers he asks for a wrought iron fence, not just any old fence, not a chain-link fence.

00:42:06.000 He wants a wrought iron fence because it matches the mansion.

00:42:09.000 And then he hands Resco a bill for $13,000 for the Rhode Iron Fence.

00:42:13.000 And then when Resco suppers for three years in solitary confinement because he won't lie about Obama or me, he sends a letter to the federal sentencing judge saying they're squeezing him to say stuff about both of us.

00:42:23.000 Makes the front page of the Chicago Tribune in August 2008 that he won't do it.

00:42:27.000 They put him in solitary confinement for three years.

00:42:31.000 He saw the sun one hour a day.

00:42:34.000 And then when he got out of there, he tries to do a burp beep, and he faints because he's so skinny and so weak after three years of that.

00:42:41.000 And this fucking Obama did nothing to help him.

00:42:44.000 Jesus.

00:42:45.000 It's unbelievable.

00:42:46.000 So opposite of the kind of guy Trump is.

00:42:48.000 I mean, I didn't do anything for Trump, but he helped me.

00:42:49.000 He just saw something wrong.

00:42:51.000 And I think he kind of liked me on Celebrity Apprentice.

00:42:54.000 He liked the way I was fighting back.

00:42:55.000 I know that.

00:42:56.000 But he fired me on that show and freed me from prison.

00:42:58.000 He's historic.

00:42:59.000 He fired and freed the same guy.

00:43:01.000 Even Lincoln didn't do that.

00:43:03.000 Day one, do you have hope it's going to be overturned in an appeal?

00:43:09.000 Like, what are you thinking when you get in there?

00:43:11.000 Yeah.

00:43:12.000 Boy, it's a great question.

00:43:14.000 Look, the hardest period during this whole thing was the months after the conviction to the day that you surrender because now you know you're going away and you're fearful it's going to be long.

00:43:23.000 In fact, days, a couple of months before the sentence came down, I'm jogging, I'm running through the neighborhoods and I see it.

00:43:30.000 That was newspapers back then.

00:43:31.000 It's a newspaper box, front page, big colored picture of me.

00:43:35.000 I see it.

00:43:36.000 I'm running past it.

00:43:36.000 I saw the headline briefly.

00:43:38.000 I came back running in place.

00:43:39.000 I see it.

00:43:40.000 30 years to life.

00:43:41.000 The prosecutors are asking for 30 years to life on me.

00:43:44.000 Life?

00:43:44.000 Yeah.

00:43:45.000 Jesus Christ.

00:43:46.000 I never took a penny.

00:43:46.000 They don't even say I took a penny.

00:43:48.000 It was all talk about politics.

00:43:51.000 So I got home faster.

00:43:53.000 That sort of stuff quickens your pace a little bit, you know?

00:43:56.000 Yeah.

00:43:57.000 But that period was the hardest.

00:43:58.000 The moment I stepped into prison, I write in my book that one advantage of crossing the threshold in the prison was that with every now, with every tick of the clock, you're one second closer to this nightmare, this Kafka's nightmare finally being over.

00:44:14.000 One second closer to coming home to your daughters and to your wife, even though it might be 14 years.

00:44:20.000 And one less second.

00:44:22.000 You know what I mean?

00:44:22.000 But at least it's starting now.

00:44:24.000 You've hit the bottom and now you're trying to get your climate back up just from a time point of view.

00:44:29.000 But that first day, I'll work backwards.

00:44:33.000 I'll never forget the first night after that long, long day that I went through.

00:44:38.000 You know, the media was covering me like I was O.J. Simpson.

00:44:41.000 They were at my house at 5.30 in the morning when I kissed my little girls goodbye.

00:44:45.000 My little Annie Banani was eight years old at the time.

00:44:48.000 She's in her pajamas and she hugs and squeezes me.

00:44:50.000 And my daughter Amy, she was a sophomore in high school.

00:44:52.000 She was 15. And we're all in the foyer.

00:44:55.000 It's all dark because you got all these media trucks around your house.

00:44:57.000 We live in a neighborhood, a normal neighborhood, just not gated.

00:45:01.000 And they're all over the place.

00:45:02.000 And so they look into your house.

00:45:04.000 So we had to keep the lights off.

00:45:06.000 Kiss my wife goodbye and my two daughters.

00:45:08.000 Hardest thing I've ever did was saying goodbye to them.

00:45:11.000 But you've got to be strong for them.

00:45:13.000 And you can't show those assholes in the media that you're dying inside.

00:45:18.000 So you've got to be strong when you step out.

00:45:20.000 There's all kinds of film footage of that when I left.

00:45:22.000 And there's a helicopter that follows me.

00:45:24.000 A news helicopter from my house all the way to O'Hare Airport in Chicago.

00:45:28.000 Like I was O.J. Simpson in that white Bronco.

00:45:30.000 I called the chapter my white Bronco moment.

00:45:33.000 And then when I got at the airport, there was this big gaggle of media there.

00:45:38.000 And then when I get on the plane, these motherfuckers were on the plane. 1.00

00:45:42.000 They bought tickets.

00:45:43.000 So I can't even, like, you know, give it a second to think about what just happened, me saying goodbye to my family.

00:45:49.000 I'll be gone for, worst case scenario, 14 years.

00:45:52.000 But if I behave myself, it'll be 12 and a half years, right?

00:45:54.000 Good behavior.

00:45:56.000 And then I land in Denver.

00:45:58.000 And they're there.

00:45:59.000 And so I'm trying to leave the plane.

00:46:01.000 They're all waiting there at the gate.

00:46:03.000 And then the people in Denver were really nice at the airline.

00:46:07.000 I think it was United Airlines.

00:46:08.000 And they got me out a side door.

00:46:11.000 And they had a car waiting.

00:46:13.000 So I was able to leave.

00:46:15.000 And for a moment, I thought I was away from the media as I'm about to drive to prison.

00:46:19.000 But no, they caught us.

00:46:20.000 They caught up with us.

00:46:22.000 And I got there a little bit early to prison, so I told one of my lawyers who was driving me, you know what?

00:46:27.000 We're like a half an hour early.

00:46:29.000 I'm already giving him 14 years.

00:46:31.000 I don't want to give him 30 minutes more.

00:46:32.000 Let's stop for a cup of coffee or something.

00:46:34.000 So we went to this little restaurant, a little fast food place called Freddy's in Denver, the Denver area, Littleton, Colorado.

00:46:40.000 And it was really surreal because, you know, people knew who I was and they were really warm and loving.

00:46:45.000 I'm signing autographs.

00:46:46.000 I'm about to go to prison for 14 years.

00:46:46.000 You'd never know.

00:46:49.000 And then the time came to walk in.

00:46:52.000 And I learned later that Trump was watching this because it was all live on television.

00:46:57.000 And he had tweeted about it that day.

00:47:00.000 I mean, I got a million reasons why I love Donald Trump.

00:47:03.000 I was so alone.

00:47:05.000 Everybody, a prominence in politics and government and in the media, you know, were calling me all these nasty things.

00:47:13.000 And here's Trump, the only guy who had some authority and had a following.

00:47:18.000 Was the only guy saying positive things about me.

00:47:21.000 They were compassionate.

00:47:24.000 He was saying that I denied it and I'm entitled to a presumption of innocence.

00:47:29.000 But there was compassion with Trump.

00:47:31.000 And he tweets that day.

00:47:32.000 I learned later.

00:47:33.000 I didn't know it then, but I learned when I came home that he tweeted that I see him walking into prison.

00:47:37.000 He gets 14 years.

00:47:38.000 Murders and rapists get four years.

00:47:40.000 Do you think this is justice?

00:47:41.000 I don't.

00:47:42.000 Just a loyal guy to a guy that was on his show because I don't really know him that well.

00:47:46.000 But to me, it says a lot about who he is as a person.

00:47:50.000 But then I walked in.

00:47:52.000 I get greeted by all these inmates.

00:47:55.000 People ask me, were you afraid?

00:47:56.000 I wasn't afraid of anything.

00:47:58.000 My life was so beaten down by what they did.

00:48:02.000 I was so disillusioned.

00:48:03.000 I was angry.

00:48:04.000 There was bitterness, but I was mostly heartbroken and sad, missing my children, fearful of my children, my wife.

00:48:10.000 They were left alone.

00:48:10.000 I couldn't protect them.

00:48:12.000 People knew where we lived.

00:48:12.000 The media made sure that everybody saw where we lived because they were always in front of our house.

00:48:16.000 I was worried about their safety.

00:48:18.000 I knew I had all those years to do.

00:48:23.000 Now I'm in prison and all these guys are watching me coming into their world on live television.

00:48:29.000 So I had two things going for me in terms of my stock with the fellow inmates.

00:48:35.000 Number one, I was a celebrity inmate.

00:48:39.000 They just saw me coming into prison.

00:48:41.000 Nobody walks into prison on live TV. And the bigger part, the more important part was I got what they call a 14-piece.

00:48:49.000 That's the vernacular of how inmates talk.

00:48:50.000 He got a 14-piece.

00:48:51.000 It means he didn't snitch on anybody.

00:48:53.000 See, anybody who gets a long sentence means they're getting punished because they wouldn't talk about anybody.

00:48:59.000 The guys who walk in with light sentences become immediately suspect by the inmates, it's the culture there, as snitches.

00:49:05.000 And they hate the snitches. 1.00

00:49:07.000 Snitches are bitches who get stitches. 1.00

00:49:09.000 That's what they said.

00:49:09.000 Right?

00:49:10.000 Sure.

00:49:11.000 So I walked in there and I had immediate street cred with those guys.

00:49:14.000 And they were nice to me.

00:49:16.000 They actually gathered together what little beans they had and went to the commissary to get me necessities for my first week, toothbrush, toothpaste, shower shoes, just a very nice kind thing to, you know, me.

00:49:32.000 These were drug dealers and bank robbers and, you know, tough guys, all tatted up, tough guys.

00:49:36.000 You know, their gangs would be tatted on their heads and stuff or on their, you know, biceps.

00:49:40.000 Did you have to join a gang?

00:49:42.000 I write about how the correctional officers wanted me to actually join the white group, the Aryan Brotherhood guys.

00:49:51.000 The correctional officers?

00:49:52.000 Why did they want you to do it?

00:49:54.000 So in one of the chapters, the early chapters, I wasn't in prison for 27 hours before I broke my first prison rule.

00:50:03.000 And they called me inmate Plagojevich, you know, to report to the lieutenant's office.

00:50:07.000 And it had to be explained to me.

00:50:10.000 This was my first full day.

00:50:11.000 It was my second day there.

00:50:13.000 It was after my first full day when I walked in.

00:50:16.000 And I got a chance to see the prison yard.

00:50:19.000 And I walked around the yard with a couple of black guys.

00:50:22.000 One of, both from Illinois, one from the south side of Chicago, gangbanger drug dealer.

00:50:28.000 Name was Slim.

00:50:30.000 And another guy named Walter Hill from East St. Louis, Illinois.

00:50:33.000 And I was their governor.

00:50:35.000 And they were really nice to me.

00:50:37.000 And we walked around the track and we were talking about, and I was interested in the facilities, you know.

00:50:41.000 One of the things I was determined to do in prison was to work out a lot and to read a lot.

00:50:46.000 And eventually I read the Bible a lot, like if you want to talk about that at some point, because that was so meaningful to me.

00:50:53.000 They called me in the next day because the word got out that I was walking the track with black guys, and it was explained to me by the authorities there that prison's a very segregated place, that the unwritten policy in order to keep order is that people need to be part of their own cars.

00:51:10.000 They called the euphemism for gangs in prison is cars.

00:51:13.000 What car do you ride in?

00:51:16.000 And that they thought that for my own safety, that number one, I shouldn't be walking around with black guys. 1.00

00:51:22.000 I need to be part of a car and I need to join the white car and go see these two guys, Cole and Sadness.

00:51:30.000 Sadness.

00:51:31.000 Sandness.

00:51:31.000 I thought it was Sadness too.

00:51:34.000 Exactly.

00:51:34.000 Because I'm looking around, who's Sadness?

00:51:36.000 I'm looking for Sadness, right?

00:51:36.000 Who's Sadness?

00:51:38.000 His name was Sandness and Cole was the leader.

00:51:41.000 I think he was from Texas.

00:51:44.000 And they told me that I should go see them.

00:51:47.000 So out of respect for the police officers, the correctional officers, I said, okay, I'll go see them.

00:51:51.000 But I made it clear to them, listen, I don't give a fuck.

00:51:53.000 Because they told me, look, when you get into a conflict with somebody and it's inevitable because you're in prison with a bunch of guys for a long time, there's going to be all kinds of disputes.

00:52:01.000 You want the window open, the other guy wants it closed.

00:52:04.000 You didn't put the weight back in the weight room like he would have wanted.

00:52:07.000 There's all kinds of shit that's going to happen, conflicts that develop between guys living close like that.

00:52:12.000 The way we keep order is we keep the races and the different ethnic groups separated. 1.00

00:52:17.000 They all become part of their individual cars.

00:52:21.000 You sit with them in a commissary.

00:52:22.000 I mean at the cafeteria, they call it the chow hall.

00:52:25.000 You work out with them.

00:52:27.000 You walk the track with them.

00:52:29.000 You're polite to the other groups, but you don't really get friendly with them.

00:52:33.000 Because if you have a conflict with somebody, your car will protect you.

00:52:36.000 Especially if it becomes a conflict with somebody from another race or another group of people.

00:52:41.000 In the prison I was in, there were a lot of black guys, a lot of Latinos, a lot of guys from Mexico, seen a lot of drug cartel people, a lot of Native Americans.

00:52:50.000 There were Pacific Islanders and, of course, white guys and sex offenders. 0.94

00:52:54.000 They were their own group.

00:52:55.000 And so they all pretty much rode in their own cars, their separate cars.

00:53:00.000 But I told them, look, I don't fear anybody.

00:53:02.000 If somebody wants to fucking kill me here, in some ways they'll put me out of my misery.

00:53:06.000 I'm not going to be doing some kind of thing like that.

00:53:11.000 It's racist.

00:53:12.000 I'm not doing that.

00:53:14.000 Whoever's nice to me, I'm going to be nice to them.

00:53:16.000 And I'll respect your rules.

00:53:18.000 I won't sit with the black guys or with any Latino guys. 1.00

00:53:20.000 I'll sit with the white guys. 0.90

00:53:23.000 But I'm not going to...

00:53:25.000 Unless you're ordering me and telling me I can't walk with those guys or talk to these guys, I'm going to keep doing it.

00:53:31.000 And they say, well, we can't do that because this is an unwritten way that we operate and keep order in prison.

00:53:37.000 And then they told me something, which I respected.

00:53:39.000 They said, look, you're not in the real world here anymore.

00:53:42.000 This is not a place where you could be a civil rights advocate or an activist, a civil rights activist.

00:53:47.000 This is prison.

00:53:48.000 You don't have the same rights here that you have out there.

00:53:51.000 We can't order you not to have relationships or conversations with people from another race.

00:53:56.000 But we can't order you to stop doing stuff that could be counterproductive to us keeping safety.

00:54:02.000 So if you're going to sit with somebody outside your race in the chow hall, that's a direct affront to us. 1.00

00:54:08.000 And there are measures that we can take to make sure that you don't do those sorts of things.

00:54:13.000 And I respected the fact that they said it was to keep order, and it was the culture, and pretty much everybody in the prison system accepts it anyway.

00:54:22.000 Eventually, I sat with some of the black guys as time went by, and we actually made a little...

00:54:26.000 An elder black guy by the name Mr. B. He was originally from Chicago and from Detroit.

00:54:31.000 He was like the most respected inmate.

00:54:33.000 He got a 25-year sentence.

00:54:34.000 He looked like Morgan Freeman, the actor.

00:54:36.000 He was a lot like him, actually.

00:54:38.000 Very mature, responsible.

00:54:40.000 He was the guy a lot of the guys went to for their legal questions because he knew everything.

00:54:45.000 A real nice man and a gentle man.

00:54:48.000 And by the time I got there, he had already done like 20-something years.

00:54:51.000 So he was close to going home.

00:54:53.000 I'd stay up late at night with him talking in the dormitory portion of the prison where I was first before I got my cell.

00:55:04.000 But it was important to him that before he left, after 20-something years, that he could actually sit at the child hall with a white guy.

00:55:12.000 And he liked me because I was from Chicago.

00:55:16.000 So we did that one day.

00:55:18.000 I was there probably a year and a half by the time we did that.

00:55:21.000 And I sat there and everybody looked at us.

00:55:23.000 We're sitting there.

00:55:24.000 I'm sitting with the black table.

00:55:26.000 And then this great movement for civil disobedience and civil rights petered out.

00:55:30.000 No one gave a fuck.

00:55:31.000 Really?

00:55:32.000 Yeah.

00:55:32.000 Yeah, it didn't matter at all.

00:55:34.000 Wow.

00:55:34.000 Yeah.

00:55:35.000 Well, was it because that guy was so respected?

00:55:37.000 Yeah.

00:55:38.000 I think that was a lot of it.

00:55:39.000 And, you know, not everybody likes him.

00:55:42.000 Some people really dislike him.

00:55:43.000 There were guys in prison who really didn't like me.

00:55:46.000 But for the most part, I had a lot of, you know, I had low approval ratings after I got arrested as they were investigating me when I was governor.

00:55:53.000 But I had pretty high approval ratings in prison with my fellow inmates.

00:55:57.000 Yeah.

00:55:59.000 So, how did you get into the Bible?

00:56:01.000 Because that was a big part of your conversation with Tucker.

00:56:04.000 Yeah.

00:56:04.000 You know?

00:56:06.000 Well, you know, so that first night, you know, the stark reality really hit me.

00:56:12.000 That first night.

00:56:14.000 When around 10 o'clock at night I hear this big boom.

00:56:18.000 And then you hear the gates shutting.

00:56:21.000 Because they were now locking you in.

00:56:23.000 It's all iron and it's loud.

00:56:25.000 Fuck!

00:56:26.000 And then the lights go down.

00:56:27.000 The lights are out.

00:56:28.000 Now suddenly you're swallowed up in blackness and darkness.

00:56:32.000 And we're locked in.

00:56:34.000 Iron bars.

00:56:36.000 You can't get out.

00:56:38.000 And here I am with all these prisoners and inmates, you know.

00:56:41.000 And I just left my family at 5.30 in the morning.

00:56:45.000 I'm not going home tonight or tomorrow night or next week or next month or next year, right?

00:56:52.000 God willing, I win my appeal, but that might be three years.

00:56:55.000 But even that I was fearful after seeing the criminal justice system and how rigged it was.

00:57:00.000 Deep down, I knew I was a dead man.

00:57:02.000 I knew that from the beginning when they did what they did.

00:57:05.000 I just felt like I had to fight...

00:57:06.000 Do you think there's anything you could have done that would have gotten you out of all of this?

00:57:11.000 I could have pled guilty and got less of a sentence.

00:57:13.000 There's no doubt about that.

00:57:14.000 But what about if you just, when they came to you with that senator, if you said, sure, we'll hook that up?

00:57:21.000 No, no, no.

00:57:22.000 I don't think that was— They were still coming for you.

00:57:24.000 No.

00:57:24.000 And they wanted me to snitch on Obama.

00:57:28.000 And they arrested me at 6 in the morning, and I read about that, too.

00:57:32.000 In my house, SWAT teams, 24-member SWAT team around my house.

00:57:36.000 I'm the sitting governor of the fifth-largest state in America.

00:57:38.000 I've got a security detail of my own.

00:57:41.000 But if four hours later I'm in their custody, it's good cop time and they're not being nice to me.

00:57:47.000 You know, you're not a bad guy.

00:57:48.000 We hear all these tapes.

00:57:49.000 You're just a part of Chicago politics.

00:57:50.000 We think you can help us.

00:57:52.000 We'd like you to talk about Obama.

00:57:55.000 We know he wanted to make a deal with you.

00:57:57.000 Stuff like that.

00:57:58.000 They're telling me.

00:57:59.000 It was clear what they wanted to do.

00:58:00.000 And I said, look, I didn't do anything wrong, and as far as I know, he didn't either.

00:58:03.000 There's really nothing to talk about.

00:58:06.000 And then their mood changed, and they sent me to another facility, and they put me in this little cell.

00:58:12.000 And they had me next to this angry guy that was all fucked up on PCP or something.

00:58:17.000 He was like a raging or wild animal to send me a message, you know.

00:58:22.000 And I think they were never going to go after Obama.

00:58:27.000 But what they wanted to do was they wanted to go to him and say, I was willing to cooperate against Obama and then leverage that and have Obama then tell him, look, just leave us alone.

00:58:36.000 Let us get this guy.

00:58:38.000 Keep us in office when you get sworn in on January 20th.

00:58:41.000 Don't bring in new U.S. attorneys.

00:58:43.000 Don't bring Democratic U.S. attorneys in. 0.92

00:58:44.000 Keep us Bush U.S. attorneys here.

00:58:47.000 And you stay out of this and we'll leave you alone.

00:58:50.000 That's what I think they did.

00:58:51.000 So it's a lot of chess.

00:58:52.000 Yes.

00:58:53.000 There's a lot of moves and countermoves and people used as pawns.

00:58:58.000 Correct.

00:58:59.000 They're political power centers.

00:59:01.000 Here's the danger to the American people and to our democracy.

00:59:04.000 They're not supposed to be that.

00:59:05.000 They're supposed to do justice.

00:59:08.000 They're supposed to go after real crimes.

00:59:10.000 They're supposed to represent the people.

00:59:10.000 They're not supposed to be a political power center.

00:59:12.000 Right.

00:59:12.000 You know, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Libertarians, yes.

00:59:16.000 House members, Senate members, the executive branch presidents, yes.

00:59:19.000 The Supreme Court and the courts, yes.

00:59:21.000 Checks and balances.

00:59:22.000 Founding fathers had the wisdom to create a system like that because they know the corruptibility of man.

00:59:27.000 Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

00:59:29.000 So they divided power.

00:59:31.000 That's the beauty and genius of what they did in this country.

00:59:34.000 They did not foresee coming out of the executive branch would be this tumor, this cancer, that really started picking up steam in the 1920s, federal law enforcement, and that it would grow and that the tactics and the methods they used to go after Al Capone or later on, you know, Carlos Escobar and El Chapo and people like that, that they would actually use against governors and presidents.

00:59:58.000 They didn't foresee that.

01:00:00.000 The problem is, as a practical matter, because they have such power, the politicians are scared shitless of them.

01:00:05.000 They don't want to stand up to them because they're afraid these people will trump up shit against them and just make shit up or get something they might have done and made it bigger.

01:00:14.000 So everybody knows how the game is played, so everybody has to play the game.

01:00:17.000 Correct.

01:00:18.000 And then when you get, you're the one on the wrong end of it, all your friends in politics, they run for the hills, they abandon you, and then all of a sudden, they're kissing your ass the day before you're arrested, and the next day they're maligning the shit out of you.

01:00:30.000 Sounds like Hollywood.

01:00:31.000 Is that right?

01:00:34.000 Isn't it kind of the same thing?

01:00:36.000 I mean, that's what they do whenever anybody gets in trouble in Hollywood.

01:00:39.000 Yeah, you're right.

01:00:40.000 Yeah.

01:00:41.000 Well, that's just cowards.

01:00:42.000 There's a lot of cowards.

01:00:44.000 And a lot of people have a reason to be cowards.

01:00:46.000 It's fearful.

01:00:46.000 They're scared.

01:00:47.000 It's a dangerous system, especially the justice system.

01:00:50.000 It seems very dangerous.

01:00:52.000 And this is not to malign good people because I know people.

01:00:57.000 I've met people in the FBI. I met great people in the CIA. I know them.

01:01:00.000 They're great people.

01:01:02.000 It's just...

01:01:03.000 What you were saying, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

01:01:06.000 And when people get into positions of power and influence and this chess game starts getting played, they can make all sorts of rationalizations if there's no checks and balances.

01:01:16.000 This is why there has to be checks and balances and there has to be oversight to keep people from their own devices, to keep people from their own horrible instincts that we have as human beings.

01:01:26.000 Especially if you've done some shady shit because other people have done some shady shit and that's how everybody sort of worked their way up the ladder and then all of a sudden you get to a position where like, hey, you're gonna have to do something that you really don't agree with but this is how the game is played and then next thing you know...

01:01:42.000 Right.

01:01:43.000 Rod's in jail.

01:01:44.000 It's like your chief of staff and your governor's lawyer and all your friends, people that worked with you and got rich on you.

01:01:44.000 Yeah.

01:01:51.000 That choice is, I have to look at my little boy who's three years old and his future, or do I try to defend my boss?

01:01:58.000 Right.

01:01:58.000 Of course.

01:01:59.000 And they make the decision, understandably, for their families.

01:02:01.000 Yeah.

01:02:02.000 Well, and I think a lot of people go into, whether it's politics or law enforcement or Into the federal government.

01:02:09.000 There's a lot of people that go into it with very good intentions, but then you see over time they get corrupted by the environment that they're in.

01:02:16.000 That's right.

01:02:16.000 They become part of a buddy system.

01:02:17.000 It happens with politicians all the time.

01:02:19.000 You get elected back home in Austin, Texas, and then you go to Washington.

01:02:22.000 You get co-opted by the system because you're young and you don't really know, or you're new and you don't know.

01:02:27.000 They show you the ropes, and the ropes are controlled by that deep state, that establishment, you know, of...

01:02:32.000 Of the long-term members of Congress, the people in the different agencies, the staffers.

01:02:38.000 And it's a whole different world there, and it's basically them against us.

01:02:42.000 There is a deep state.

01:02:43.000 In state government, federal government, it's really almost...

01:02:47.000 Even in law enforcement.

01:02:48.000 I mean, especially corrupt law enforcement.

01:02:51.000 Did you ever see that documentary?

01:02:53.000 What is it?

01:02:54.000 District 75?

01:02:55.000 Is it Precinct 75?

01:02:57.000 I think it's the 5-7.

01:02:58.000 The 5-7.

01:02:59.000 Is that what it is?

01:03:00.000 The 7-5 or the 5-7?

01:03:02.000 There's a gentleman named Mike Dowd.

01:03:04.000 We had him on the podcast as well.

01:03:06.000 And, you know...

01:03:07.000 7-5.

01:03:08.000 7-5.

01:03:09.000 On first day...

01:03:12.000 He's a cop.

01:03:13.000 He watches the cops kill a guy.

01:03:15.000 And, you know, they essentially say to him, he jumped, right?

01:03:19.000 And he's like, okay, he jumped.

01:03:21.000 It's like one of those situations where, like, okay, I guess this is this business that I'm a part of now.

01:03:26.000 I wanted to be a cop.

01:03:27.000 Now I'm a cop.

01:03:28.000 Yeah, and then he runs with it.

01:03:31.000 Next thing you know, he's selling drugs and kidnapping people.

01:03:34.000 It's a fucking crazy documentary.

01:03:36.000 He's a fun guy.

01:03:37.000 I mean, it's obviously did terrible things, went to jail, but the documentary is so fucking crazy.

01:03:43.000 What's it called?

01:03:44.000 The 7-5, right?

01:03:45.000 The 5-7?

01:03:47.000 75. You just told me.

01:03:50.000 That's it.

01:03:50.000 That's the documentary.

01:03:51.000 Michael Dowd.

01:03:53.000 It's fantastic.

01:03:54.000 It's a really good documentary.

01:03:56.000 And, you know, you just realize, like, Jesus.

01:04:02.000 Obviously, the...

01:04:04.000 Cocaine Crisis in Miami is another great example of that.

01:04:07.000 And one of the best documentaries about that is Cocaine Cowboys.

01:04:11.000 Fantastic documentary.

01:04:13.000 I can't recommend it enough.

01:04:15.000 One graduating class of the police academy in Miami, they all either went to jail or were murdered.

01:04:23.000 The entire graduating class.

01:04:27.000 That's how corrupt it was.

01:04:28.000 It was just off the charts, cocaine and money everywhere, chaos and murder everywhere.

01:04:35.000 Yeah.

01:04:36.000 You see, here again, the stuff we're talking about, it's so important that this justice system gets reformed.

01:04:43.000 I'm so excited about the fact that Trump, the people he's picking, Pam Bondi, he's a great person, he's got a good record, Patel.

01:04:51.000 Because if we don't trust the criminal justice system, when you tell me a story about those dirty cops, and I'm sure that's absolutely what they were, and that those who prosecuted them were right to do it.

01:05:02.000 Oh, they definitely were.

01:05:03.000 They were dirty cops.

01:05:04.000 But what if you don't trust those prosecutors, right?

01:05:07.000 Suddenly the whole system breaks down.

01:05:08.000 You can't trust anything.

01:05:10.000 So much at stake in this.

01:05:11.000 I failed to tell you what that first night was like, and I just should wrap it up very quickly.

01:05:15.000 But, you know, there I was in this darkness and so all alone and so heartbroken, so fearful and worried about my kids and my wife and what it was like for them, imagining in my mind...

01:05:24.000 My wife comforting my daughters as if I had died because I kind of did.

01:05:28.000 I was gone.

01:05:28.000 They were going to grow up without their father.

01:05:30.000 So all of that's going through my mind.

01:05:33.000 And then I reached for the Bible that my wife gave me to leave for prison, to take with me to prison.

01:05:41.000 They don't let you bring anything else in, but they'll let you bring the Bible in.

01:05:44.000 I've always had a belief in God.

01:05:46.000 I always believed in prayer.

01:05:47.000 I was raised in the Serbian Orthodox Christian church church.

01:05:49.000 But I never read the Bible.

01:05:51.000 I was just so busy trying to get ahead in life.

01:05:53.000 You know, I had to go out and make campaign promises, give speeches, kiss babies, shake hands, raise money.

01:05:58.000 I tried Genesis.

01:05:59.000 I'd get stuck in Genesis, so-and-so's beginning, so-and-so.

01:06:02.000 I'll put this on this side.

01:06:04.000 I can't.

01:06:05.000 Right.

01:06:06.000 Now suddenly here I am in this deep fucking dark valley and I'm facing 14 years of this.

01:06:11.000 I'm so alone.

01:06:12.000 I'm not going to fuck around with Genesis or Deuteronomy or Leviticus or any of that stuff.

01:06:16.000 I'm going to something right away that might give me some hope.

01:06:19.000 And I went to the 23rd Psalm.

01:06:21.000 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

01:06:22.000 It makes me lie down in green pastures.

01:06:25.000 And then I kept reading the Psalms.

01:06:27.000 And I know the story of David.

01:06:29.000 And I associate myself with him.

01:06:30.000 I know I get criticized and maligned by people in the media for saying I'm like David.

01:06:34.000 I'm not saying I'm not.

01:06:35.000 I'm not saying I am.

01:06:36.000 I'm simply saying I looked at his example and I got strength from that because he was being chased by Saul and he's in the caves for like 11 years or chasing him.

01:06:43.000 I'm thinking he endured that.

01:06:45.000 Maybe there's hope.

01:06:46.000 And I'd read his Psalms because they're just prayers to God is what they are from him.

01:06:50.000 And they were helpful to me.

01:06:51.000 So I kept reading and I went to Isaiah and the fiery furnace of affliction and how...

01:06:55.000 Adversity in hard times is God's way of testing us.

01:06:58.000 It can make us stronger and better.

01:07:00.000 We learned through those hard lessons, the fiery, you know, through the fire of hard times.

01:07:05.000 And, of course, then eventually the Gospels.

01:07:07.000 And the best story of all, in my mind, as a Christian, is the story of Jesus.

01:07:11.000 And, you know, here he is in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he's saying to God, because he's so afraid, because he knows what's coming, what they're going to do to him.

01:07:17.000 And he says, O Father, please lift this cup from me.

01:07:21.000 I mean, I get choked up just thinking about this.

01:07:23.000 And he says, but no God, no Father, not my will, your will.

01:07:28.000 And then he steals himself for what he's got to face, takes on all the suffering that he goes through, and the humiliation, everything else.

01:07:35.000 So I read it every day for 2,896 days, and I know it in a way I never knew it before.

01:07:41.000 And I love it, and it brought me so much closer to God.

01:07:45.000 There were moments, as crazy as this sounds, and I'm not running for anything, so I'm not here to try to win Christian evangelical votes or anything.

01:07:53.000 But there were moments years into the process, not those first early years, because they were so hard.

01:07:58.000 But after I was there for year six, year seven, and I'd read the Bible like that every day, And I was really working out.

01:08:05.000 I was reading a lot of other books.

01:08:07.000 And I'd get visits maybe a couple times.

01:08:10.000 In the beginning, it was like two or three times a year in the beginning.

01:08:13.000 And then as time went by, it was hard for our daughters.

01:08:16.000 And I would encourage them not to come because they were in school.

01:08:18.000 And we were hopeful that we'd get justice in the courts.

01:08:21.000 And only another few more months, the appellate court will come through.

01:08:23.000 Don't come.

01:08:24.000 So now suddenly I'm seeing less and less of them.

01:08:26.000 But I'd have moments, and I was lucky because I was in Colorado, which is a beautiful place with great weather and blue skies and snow-capped foothills of the Rockies.

01:08:36.000 That's where the prison was.

01:08:37.000 And then when it would rain, there'd be rainbows.

01:08:41.000 I believe these are godly things, and I'd sometimes get done with a run or something, and I'd walk that track stretching a little bit, and I'd see that beautiful rainbow, and I could almost feel the presence of God.

01:08:52.000 I know it sounds like bullshit for people who don't know that, But when you've been beaten down so much and you're so fucking alone, I look for God and I really believe I found Him.

01:09:02.000 And I feel like I'm at a place now where I'm grateful in a weird way for that experience.

01:09:07.000 I wish it never happened and I have bitterness still.

01:09:10.000 And I hate the motherfuckers that did it to me and I know I'm not supposed to hate them.

01:09:14.000 I'm supposed to forgive them.

01:09:15.000 I'm not that good a Christian.

01:09:16.000 I hate the motherfuckers.

01:09:18.000 They belong in jail.

01:09:19.000 But I have to say that that experience, reading the Bible that way, Maybe it serves a higher purpose.

01:09:26.000 Maybe in some ways it was good for me.

01:09:29.000 Well, I think you got the most out of that horrific situation in that regard, right?

01:09:37.000 And sometimes you have to experience horrific tragedy to experience incredible love.

01:09:42.000 That's a weird thing to think of, but I think this battle that we have constantly with good and evil and It's a real thing.

01:09:53.000 Sometimes in your darkest, deepest moments is when you recognize a truth.

01:10:00.000 There's something there that we all...

01:10:03.000 Every culture believes in a higher power.

01:10:06.000 It's very strange, isn't it?

01:10:08.000 Almost every culture has some sort of belief system about a higher power.

01:10:15.000 It's something you could say...

01:10:18.000 You could be very cynical and you could say that's just human beings looking for order in an orderless, chaotic place and that your creativity and your inquisitive nature leads you to constantly search for a daddy in the sky.

01:10:35.000 You could say that.

01:10:37.000 But I've talked to too many people that have had these sort of like you've had these breakthrough moments in life where you come into contact with something by opening yourself up to it.

01:10:50.000 And it's so cynical just to disregard that.

01:10:54.000 Everybody wants to pretend that they're smarter than they really are.

01:10:57.000 It's a terrible trait that we all have.

01:10:59.000 And that prevents you from, especially secular people, atheists, people that are like acknowledged atheists, prevents you from even considering the idea that there's something to this that you're not getting.

01:11:13.000 And your simple little mind, your desire for order, and to look at this and go, no, you just live and you die.

01:11:21.000 You don't really know.

01:11:22.000 You should probably listen to some people that have had profound experiences.

01:11:27.000 Because there's been a lot of them.

01:11:29.000 And there's been a lot of them throughout human history.

01:11:32.000 And to just completely dismiss them as all nonsense, it's just like, that's such a cynical perspective on human beings.

01:11:40.000 And then there's also the fact that Look, I'm not saying bad things haven't been done in the name of religion because they most certainly have.

01:11:48.000 People have been slaughtered, wars have been started, people have been demonized and othered to the point where you're allowed to kill them because they believe the wrong thing.

01:11:56.000 It's not universally good.

01:11:59.000 But it's a scaffolding for ethics and morals that I think shapes society in a way that's not really possible with just anarchy.

01:12:10.000 You need law and order.

01:12:13.000 You need something you believe in.

01:12:16.000 That's what keeps us together.

01:12:18.000 You could be a brilliant, intelligent person who's just unusually compassionate and live your whole life without religion and still be an excellent contributor to society.

01:12:27.000 God, the people that I've met.

01:12:28.000 And one of the things about coming to Texas is I meet so many avowed Christians.

01:12:33.000 So many really proud and intelligent and vocal religious people.

01:12:43.000 And they're some of the nicest people, like, you could ever meet.

01:12:46.000 Like, a real Christian? 1.00

01:12:48.000 Like, I've met some real Christians, like this, my friend Alan, who runs a homeless, like, rehabilitation community here in Austin.

01:12:58.000 It's like, the guy's just a real Christian.

01:13:00.000 I mean, he lives with these people.

01:13:02.000 That's right.

01:13:02.000 He's just, like, really walking the morning.

01:13:04.000 He's not doing it for money.

01:13:05.000 He doesn't have a mega church.

01:13:07.000 He doesn't drive a Rolls Royce.

01:13:09.000 He's a regular person who really is acting...

01:13:15.000 Like the Christian from the Bible, like the best example of a Christian from the Bible. 0.88

01:13:22.000 Bible talks about false prophets because people are human nature.

01:13:27.000 Yeah, there's a lot of us who are false prophets.

01:13:29.000 Well, but I mean, some of these, we call them in prison jailhouse Jesuses. 0.99

01:13:33.000 Some of these guys, you know, they'd walk around with their Bible, tote their Bible, and they were stealing, you know, and rip you off.

01:13:38.000 We talk about that.

01:13:39.000 We talked about that in terms of psychedelics the other day, the spiritual narcissism.

01:13:43.000 I think the same sort of spiritual narcissism that encompasses these Preachers that talk in front of stadiums filled with people and fly private jets and drive Rolls Royces.

01:13:52.000 That's the same sort of thing as a guru who wants to take you to the jungle to give you drugs or someone who wants you to join their sex cult or someone who wants you to join their yoga thing where no one works anymore and you all grow your own food and this is your guru.

01:14:10.000 There's a shit ton of documentaries on these folks.

01:14:13.000 That's the false prophet. 1.00

01:14:13.000 No doubt. 1.00

01:14:15.000 It's a danger.

01:14:16.000 It's a real danger that we have in looking for someone smarter than us.

01:14:21.000 It's a normal pattern of behavior from tribal societies.

01:14:26.000 All tribal societies had the wisest person who was the leader.

01:14:30.000 This is the person that everybody trusted.

01:14:32.000 He's the guy with the most scars.

01:14:34.000 He knows where the food is.

01:14:35.000 He knows how to get the fuck away from the enemies.

01:14:37.000 He knows how to keep order, and he's reasonable in how he governs the village.

01:14:41.000 Until someone overthrows him, that's your guy.

01:14:44.000 And we have this hierarchy that we look for in everything.

01:14:48.000 We really do.

01:14:49.000 We look for it in all sorts of things.

01:14:51.000 And if we find it in a false prophet, we'll go with it. 1.00

01:14:55.000 I bought a building out here.

01:14:57.000 You know, my comedy club is in a place called the Ritz Theater.

01:15:03.000 It's this beautiful theater from 1927. But before that, I had bought another building that was owned by a cult.

01:15:10.000 It was a building called the One World Theater.

01:15:12.000 I didn't buy it.

01:15:13.000 I was under contract for it.

01:15:14.000 I spent a bunch of money and got out of it because I watched the documentary on the cult.

01:15:19.000 I was like, oh, my God.

01:15:21.000 It was a guy who was a gay porn star and a hypnotist. 0.93

01:15:24.000 who started this cult in West Hollywood.

01:15:27.000 And then after Waco popped off, this guy had escaped from West Hollywood because they were looking for him because the Cult Awareness Network, and they started, after Waco, they're like, "Jesus Christ, how many of these cults are out there?" They were targeting this guy.

01:15:38.000 So he changed his name, moved to Austin, and built this theater.

01:15:42.000 And the cult had already disbanded a bunch.

01:15:45.000 And my friend Ron White, the comedian, told me, because he had performed it, he turned it into a concert venue, this theater, that this guy had his cult followers build him so he could dance in front of them.

01:15:55.000 It's a beautiful 300-seat theater, gorgeous place.

01:16:00.000 And this is the same thing.

01:16:02.000 It's just a person who convinced all these other people that he had the answers and he was a hypnotist.

01:16:08.000 He was really good at fucking with people and really good at like talking people into certain states of mind and they all believed in him and they wasted decades of their life.

01:16:16.000 That's literally in the Bible.

01:16:18.000 That's a false prophet. 0.95

01:16:19.000 That's right.

01:16:20.000 By the way, congratulations on your magnificent success.

01:16:23.000 And you're a comedian too, huh?

01:16:23.000 Thank you very much.

01:16:25.000 Yeah, you do a lot of different things.

01:16:26.000 Yeah, wow.

01:16:27.000 You know, I was stuck when you were on the rise.

01:16:31.000 So when I came home, I didn't know who you were.

01:16:33.000 I hope you don't kick me out of the room.

01:16:34.000 No, no, I don't care.

01:16:35.000 I'm happy now that people don't know who I am.

01:16:37.000 When I can talk to someone and they don't know who I am, I'm like, this is great.

01:16:41.000 But it wasn't long before I got home.

01:16:42.000 I would say within a couple of days that I got this thing called an iPhone.

01:16:45.000 What's this?

01:16:46.000 And this guy Joe Rogan had this big deal on this podcast.

01:16:49.000 I said, Joe who?

01:16:50.000 And they told me.

01:16:51.000 It's remarkable.

01:16:52.000 That's crazy.

01:16:53.000 So you went to jail before iPhones?

01:16:56.000 Yeah.

01:16:57.000 Wow.

01:17:00.000 What a fascinating blip in time that is, if you really look at it in terms of impactfulness, like a piece of technology that completely changed the world.

01:17:08.000 Yeah.

01:17:09.000 That might be one of the most—that's bigger than the laptop, I think.

01:17:12.000 I think it's the most impactful.

01:17:14.000 I think the invention of the iPhone is probably one of the most impactful things human beings have ever created.

01:17:20.000 Not necessarily in a great way, but sometimes in a great way.

01:17:23.000 You know?

01:17:23.000 Oh, yeah.

01:17:24.000 Yeah, no, no.

01:17:24.000 There's a lot of great things about it, but the invention of the smartphone— For all good or bad, you missed it.

01:17:31.000 And that's really crazy.

01:17:33.000 Yeah, it's crazy.

01:17:34.000 Can I go back just briefly to the spiritual end of it?

01:17:36.000 You can go where you want.

01:17:37.000 I just want to say that, look, I consider myself...

01:17:39.000 I think I have testicular virility.

01:17:42.000 You know what I mean?

01:17:43.000 I think I can...

01:17:43.000 You have balls.

01:17:44.000 Yeah, I really do.

01:17:45.000 I know I do.

01:17:46.000 And I have a certain toughness to me.

01:17:48.000 But I'll tell you something.

01:17:50.000 I wasn't strong enough to get through prison by myself.

01:17:53.000 I needed God.

01:17:54.000 And it was that, my love for my daughters and my wife, I could never possibly give and I had to survive and somehow find my way home, however long it might take.

01:18:03.000 And I had to do it in a way where I could be so strong and be constructive and actually plant seeds for a better life later on where whatever I did, my little girls can see that, you know, God forbid when tough times come, because it comes to all of us.

01:18:17.000 How do you deal with those hard times?

01:18:18.000 Do you embrace the adversity, try to turn it into something good, or do you just give into it?

01:18:22.000 And so that gave me the purpose I needed in prison.

01:18:24.000 And I spent a lot of time not just reading the Bible, but reading all kinds of books, because you've got time.

01:18:29.000 I mean, you've got a lot of time.

01:18:31.000 I read a book three times, and I talked about this to Tucker Carlson called Man's Search for Meaning by a guy named Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who had gone through Things a million times worse than anything I went through.

01:18:42.000 He lost his wife, his family, through genocide.

01:18:45.000 He was at Auschwitz and survived it.

01:18:47.000 But he said that the last of the human freedoms, after everything's been taken from you, the last of the human freedoms is our freedom to choose our own attitude in any given set of circumstances.

01:18:58.000 And that if you could find a why to live, You can find the how.

01:19:05.000 And my why was my little girls and my wife.

01:19:07.000 No matter how hard this was going to be, I had to survive this, I had to endure it, and I needed to do it in a way where it would be the best possible way to do it that could help raise my daughters from afar.

01:19:18.000 Because I didn't raise them.

01:19:19.000 I mean, my wife raised our children, our little girls.

01:19:19.000 My daughter did.

01:19:23.000 And so that gave me real purpose.

01:19:25.000 And I had those moments when despair would creep in.

01:19:27.000 It's very natural.

01:19:28.000 I mean, a lot of blue moments, as you can imagine.

01:19:30.000 I could never, ever, ever let myself get so down that I would not be active in any given day.

01:19:37.000 I had to go out there and run those miles and lift the weights, do push-ups, whatever it was, read those books, do the stuff I would write about.

01:19:44.000 Because I love my daughters and I'm doing it for them.

01:19:47.000 That was my purpose.

01:19:48.000 I'm not running for government anymore.

01:19:49.000 I'm not trying to be, you know, successful in the real world because I'm not in it anymore.

01:19:53.000 My success I'll measure by whether or not I'm strong and tough and I'm productive because I'm doing this for my kids.

01:19:59.000 Does that make sense?

01:20:00.000 It does.

01:20:01.000 Do you think the experience of being in jail as horrible as it is made you a better person?

01:20:07.000 I like to think that it did.

01:20:08.000 I think I'm more humble.

01:20:10.000 I think.

01:20:11.000 I was never good at that.

01:20:16.000 Sometimes that's what bites people in the ass.

01:20:18.000 I always say that about Trump.

01:20:20.000 That's also why he kept running, even though everybody was coming after him.

01:20:25.000 You have to be a very particular type of person that has all those legal cases thrown at him.

01:20:31.000 I mean, if he lost, and he lost those cases, and then he lost the run for presidency, he very well might wind up in jail.

01:20:39.000 They can't have him at 82 years old trying again.

01:20:44.000 They're not interested because he became more popular.

01:20:48.000 When he was gone than when he was president.

01:20:51.000 And people sort of like towards the end of the four years of Biden had like completely reversed.

01:20:57.000 So many of my friends, me included, completely reversed how they looked at him.

01:21:01.000 And then also a lot of it was getting exposed to watching how this propaganda machine marches in step All throughout the media with everything.

01:21:11.000 You know, me in particular having turned on me during the COVID years for being someone who got healthy without taking the vaccine and they wanted to get me removed from Spotify.

01:21:20.000 I'm like, this is crazy.

01:21:22.000 This is wild to watch.

01:21:24.000 And that was, you know, minor league stuff compared to what happened to him and certainly compared to what happened to you.

01:21:30.000 But just, I think people are less likely to believe mainstream narratives now.

01:21:37.000 And we're so fortunate we have other ways, like Tucker's show, where I saw you.

01:21:43.000 Like, things that aren't approved, you know?

01:21:45.000 I mean, look, when Tucker was on Fox News, I'm sure there was a lot of things that he wanted to cover that he couldn't.

01:21:51.000 Like, there was no way, when he was on Fox News, he could have interviewed that guy who says he blew Obama.

01:21:56.000 Right.

01:21:58.000 Tucker Carlson is such a wild boy.

01:22:02.000 He's got a guy on for like, how long was that podcast?

01:22:05.000 Find out how long the Tucker Carlson podcast was with the guy who claims he blew Obama.

01:22:10.000 Because just even being able to sustain a conversation with a guy who wants to talk about smoke and crack and blowing Obama How many minutes can you do?

01:22:22.000 I want to know.

01:22:23.000 I'd be hard-pressed to think I could squeeze an hour out of that guy.

01:22:28.000 Like, what the fuck are you going to talk about?

01:22:30.000 How long is that podcast?

01:22:34.000 Alright, he hung in there as long as he could.

01:22:37.000 But my point is, again, I'm not standing up for him having that guy on.

01:22:43.000 I'm not saying that was a good thing.

01:22:45.000 That's not what I'm saying.

01:22:46.000 What I'm saying is, that's what he wanted to do.

01:22:48.000 You know, I watched a little of it.

01:22:51.000 So that's Tucker with no one telling him what to do.

01:22:54.000 The Tucker Carlson show, he does whatever he wants, he interviews whoever he wants, he comes up with the questions he wants, he has real conversations that didn't fucking exist before.

01:23:04.000 And now that it does exist, and a guy like Tucker, who was the number one guy in news to begin with, now he's independent.

01:23:11.000 Along with independent journalists like Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi and Barry Weiss and Glenn Greenwald.

01:23:18.000 You have all these people that are honest.

01:23:21.000 And you know they're honest.

01:23:22.000 They're always honest.

01:23:23.000 They're always giving you the full version of the truth and it's spread like wildfire.

01:23:29.000 And then you look at the narratives that you see in mainstream media, and like, you're leaving so much out.

01:23:35.000 You're not talking about that.

01:23:36.000 You're not talking about why people were upset.

01:23:38.000 You're not talking about what started it.

01:23:40.000 You're not talking about the government intervention that was behind it all in the first place.

01:23:43.000 That was a planned organization, and they leave out everything, because that's not what they're supposed to do.

01:23:48.000 What they're supposed to do is sell as many stories as they can, but stay within a very confined narrative.

01:23:56.000 And most of that narrative is heavily progressive, left-leaning, until that's not popular anymore.

01:23:56.000 Exactly right.

01:24:02.000 And when that falls out of favor, folks, when that becomes non-profitable, they're gonna go the other way.

01:24:08.000 The country will move more right.

01:24:09.000 It'll be more right in the media, even, if it becomes profitable.

01:24:14.000 Well, that's why what you're doing – I'm not here to kiss your ass, but I am grateful for being on your show.

01:24:18.000 It's very nice of you to have me so I can talk about my stuff.

01:24:21.000 But no, this is what you're doing and Tucker Carlson and so many of you podcasters who are out there offering another place for people to get information in the free exchange of ideas in a free country that cherishes free speech supposedly but no longer does.

01:24:35.000 I think most people do.

01:24:36.000 People do, but the government and the power centers...

01:24:39.000 It's just when it's not convenient for them.

01:24:41.000 And the fact that there's these rules...

01:24:47.000 We should have rules that apply across the board if we want to progress as society.

01:24:54.000 And one of those rules, the most important rule, the reason why it's the First Amendment, you have to be able to talk about things.

01:25:00.000 You're going to get things wrong.

01:25:03.000 You're going to be poorly informed.

01:25:06.000 You're going to have biased opinions.

01:25:09.000 Hopefully, someone who is more informed has a more objective and more honest opinion, more accurate opinion, and then hopefully you're strong enough.

01:25:21.000 That resonates with you, and you can put your ego beside you and go, you know what?

01:25:27.000 This is me wanting to be right.

01:25:29.000 This is my ego.

01:25:30.000 The correct thing is what these people are saying.

01:25:33.000 Let me tell you why I thought what I thought and how I was wrong and apologize.

01:25:38.000 That doesn't mean you're weak.

01:25:40.000 It just means you, like everyone else in the world, sometimes is wrong about things.

01:25:47.000 Like, I have a friend of mine.

01:25:48.000 I don't want to say his name.

01:25:49.000 Very, very nice guy.

01:25:51.000 One of the smartest fucking people I know.

01:25:54.000 And I have these fascinating conversations with him.

01:25:57.000 And then one day, he tried to explain to me why something works in the UFC, why something else doesn't work anymore.

01:26:04.000 I go, stop.

01:26:06.000 Because stop.

01:26:07.000 You're gonna ruin my opinion of you.

01:26:08.000 You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

01:26:10.000 Don't say this.

01:26:11.000 Don't say this to me.

01:26:12.000 I've been working for the UFC for 25 fucking years.

01:26:15.000 Don't say this to me.

01:26:16.000 You don't know what you're saying.

01:26:17.000 You're saying nonsense.

01:26:18.000 He's like, really?

01:26:19.000 This is total nonsense.

01:26:19.000 I go, yes.

01:26:21.000 Here's an example why it's nonsense.

01:26:22.000 This guy violates that rule.

01:26:24.000 You can't tell.

01:26:25.000 There's a specific group of movements that are all designed to fuck people up.

01:26:31.000 Any one pattern can be successful given the individual and his abilities and his competency in whatever skill set that is.

01:26:40.000 There's no one skill set.

01:26:41.000 You can't run around saying one skill set trumps all.

01:26:43.000 It doesn't work like that anymore.

01:26:45.000 That's interesting.

01:26:46.000 This is brilliant people.

01:26:48.000 So this is a brilliant person talking out of his ass.

01:26:50.000 Because they're people.

01:26:51.000 They have their own prejudices and their biases.

01:26:53.000 Also, they like to be smart.

01:26:54.000 Smart people like to be smart.

01:26:56.000 They want to be the smartest guy in the world.

01:26:56.000 Exactly.

01:26:58.000 Always.

01:26:58.000 They're smart about some things.

01:26:59.000 There's a term for that.

01:27:03.000 Where, like, really intelligent people erroneously believe they're intelligent about everything?

01:27:08.000 Conceited ignorance.

01:27:09.000 It's like that, right?

01:27:10.000 Socrates called it conceited ignorance.

01:27:10.000 Yeah.

01:27:12.000 And by the way, they made him drink the hemlock and kill him because supposedly he was corrupting the youth of Athens and Greece.

01:27:18.000 He probably was, too.

01:27:19.000 But he was also challenging confessional thinking.

01:27:21.000 Yes, of course.

01:27:22.000 Which is what we're talking about, which is necessary in a free society.

01:27:25.000 Yes.

01:27:26.000 Dunning-Kruger effect, that's right.

01:27:28.000 Cognitive bias when individuals with high competence in one area overestimate their knowledge and abilities in unrelated fields.

01:27:34.000 Yeah, it's exactly what it is.

01:27:36.000 Well, I don't have that problem.

01:27:37.000 It's super common with people that are very good at things.

01:27:41.000 People that are very good at things, any one thing, like if you're a wizard at basketball, you probably think you're way better at playing pool than you really are.

01:27:49.000 Interesting.

01:27:50.000 There's a lot, like, I'm the fucking man.

01:27:53.000 Sure.

01:27:54.000 If you're a guy who's just cracking home runs every day and someone wants to play ping pong, like, motherfucker.

01:28:00.000 I'll figure this ping-pong shit out in about five minutes, and then I'll start fucking you up. 1.00

01:28:04.000 And it's just not true, you know?

01:28:07.000 There's a lot of people that are really smart people, unfortunately.

01:28:10.000 And this happens with tough people, too.

01:28:12.000 Tough people want to pretend they're the only tough person.

01:28:16.000 They all want to pretend that.

01:28:17.000 Everybody has this weird thing where they think they're different than everybody else.

01:28:22.000 And that's what leads them to be champions, but that is also what makes it incredibly difficult to come back from a devastating loss for some of these guys.

01:28:31.000 So if they fight a guy and, you know, they've been the fucking man for years, and all of a sudden they're in there with this guy and you're like, oh my god, I'm getting hurt right now.

01:28:40.000 I'm getting hurt and I'm probably going to get stopped.

01:28:42.000 And you see it in their eyes.

01:28:43.000 You see they can't believe it's happening.

01:28:45.000 They never envisioned a time where this guy's gonna knock them out.

01:28:49.000 And then they're against the cage and you see them getting lit up and you, in my mind, I'm seeing the sparks in front of their eyes.

01:28:55.000 Because when you get hit, you see sparks.

01:28:57.000 And if you get hit with like a big shot, like you can't, you don't know where anybody is for a couple seconds.

01:29:02.000 Your legs aren't working.

01:29:03.000 I'm seeing it in this person that thought they were so good they could fight this other person.

01:29:10.000 They didn't see it the way everybody else saw it.

01:29:13.000 They didn't see that they were past their prime or they didn't see that this was a bigger weight class or whatever the variables are that lead to a devastating loss.

01:29:23.000 Yeah, like Duran and Hearns in the 80s.

01:29:25.000 They mismatched the size and Hearns knocked him out in the second round.

01:29:29.000 Yeah, that was Tommy Hearns in his prime, man.

01:29:32.000 Because you've got to realize Duran did go full 12 with Hagler when Hagler was in his prime.

01:29:38.000 But Hagler had a respect for Duran that I think almost was unfortunate.

01:29:49.000 He was too small.

01:29:50.000 He was small compared to them.

01:29:51.000 It wasn't just that Hagler in his mind.

01:29:53.000 Duran was like one of the legends.

01:29:56.000 Rightfully so.

01:29:57.000 I mean, the quitting with Sugar Ray Leonard was horrible and it ruined his reputation.

01:30:01.000 But if you could just take that fight away and look at his body work.

01:30:06.000 What he did to Ken Buchanan when he was a lightweight, people don't even understand.

01:30:10.000 Roberto Duran started out his career at 135 pounds, went up and won the middleweight title.

01:30:16.000 You have to understand how fucking crazy Roberto Duran was.

01:30:18.000 When he beat Davey Moore, was that super welterweight?

01:30:21.000 It was either 154 or 160. He beat Davey Moore who was in his fucking prime.

01:30:27.000 That was in LA, wasn't it?

01:30:28.000 I don't know where it was.

01:30:29.000 I remember, I watched it on TV. June 20th, 1980. Duran, Leonard in Montreal.

01:30:33.000 Do you remember that?

01:30:33.000 Yeah, sure.

01:30:34.000 I love Duran.

01:30:35.000 I met Duran once when he was training for that Davey Moore fight in LA. And what you're saying about martial arts and boxing, there's so many life lessons experiencing that in the ring.

01:30:45.000 I'm not here to say that I'm some great fighter like you were, but I fought the Golden Gloves when I was in high school.

01:30:50.000 First time I ever got my name, the Chicago Tribune.

01:30:52.000 That's amazing.

01:30:53.000 Last time they ever said anything nice about me.

01:30:54.000 See, that's a hard thing to do.

01:30:56.000 You learn about life because you're no teammates.

01:30:58.000 It's just you in there.

01:30:59.000 If you won the Golden Gloves, that is a very- I didn't win the Golden Gloves.

01:31:03.000 Even fighting.

01:31:03.000 I fought in the Golden Gloves.

01:31:05.000 Even just getting into the ring, having the courage in your fucking underwear to step through those ropes with those stupid shoes on and big pads over your head and you realize you're gonna just throw your hands at some other dude who's trying to KO you.

01:31:16.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:31:17.000 The other dude's trying to kick your ass.

01:31:18.000 It's such a weird feeling.

01:31:20.000 How old were you when you started?

01:31:21.000 I started fighting when I was 15. And what was the impetus?

01:31:24.000 What got you interested?

01:31:25.000 Well, I got picked on a lot.

01:31:26.000 I was a small kid, and I was always moving.

01:31:29.000 We were always moving to new neighborhoods, and we had moved to this new neighborhood.

01:31:33.000 Nobody really hurt me.

01:31:34.000 I'll be real clear about that.

01:31:35.000 I got pushed around a little bit like teenage boys do to each other, but I didn't like it.

01:31:41.000 I didn't like it at all.

01:31:42.000 And so I was like, look, I'm not growing.

01:31:44.000 So it's like, what can I do to stop this fear that I have of conflict?

01:31:52.000 I was terrified of conflict with kids because I did not know what to do.

01:31:56.000 I had no training, no martial arts, and the only sport I'd ever played was baseball.

01:32:01.000 And so I started doing martial arts, and I became obsessed.

01:32:06.000 Was it taekwondo?

01:32:07.000 Yeah.

01:32:07.000 Well, I first started with karate.

01:32:09.000 I was going to this place called Esposito's Karate in Newton, Massachusetts.

01:32:13.000 He might still be there.

01:32:14.000 He was like the town legend.

01:32:16.000 He was this black belt guy who was awesome, who taught this very popular school.

01:32:21.000 But it was hard for me to get there.

01:32:23.000 I didn't have a car.

01:32:24.000 I was a kid.

01:32:24.000 And so I would have to take a bus and walk a mile.

01:32:28.000 It was like too much, especially in the winter.

01:32:31.000 But I found this Taekwondo place in Kenwood Square, Kenmore Square rather, in Boston, and the T would go right to it.

01:32:38.000 I'd only have to walk a mile to get to the T, and then I'd get on the T. So I would do that every day.

01:32:43.000 The T is public transportation?

01:32:44.000 So every day, I'd walk a mile, get on the T. After school?

01:32:44.000 Exactly.

01:32:49.000 Soon as school's over, I'd go right from my house, I'd grab my gym bag, and I'd go to the gym.

01:32:49.000 After school.

01:32:54.000 I went every day.

01:32:55.000 Great.

01:32:56.000 So then, when I was in high school, I was traveling around the country fighting in tournaments.

01:33:02.000 It was the weirdest shit.

01:33:03.000 I went from being terrified of fighting to fighting all the time.

01:33:08.000 All the time.

01:33:09.000 We were flying to Ohio.

01:33:11.000 I couldn't drive.

01:33:12.000 I was 16 at the time, so I was with all these other guys.

01:33:16.000 Most of them were grown men.

01:33:18.000 I was competing as a grown man.

01:33:21.000 I was competing as a grown man when I was like 15. What weight class were you?

01:33:24.000 I won the state championship the first year at 140, but it was way too hard for me to weight.

01:33:30.000 And I was doing it like a moron.

01:33:31.000 The guys who do it today, they really know what they were doing.

01:33:33.000 I just stopped eating.

01:33:34.000 I just stopped eating and stopped drinking water.

01:33:36.000 And then I'd get in the shower and I'd shadow box in the shower when it was steaming hot.

01:33:42.000 So I was trying to drain my body of weight.

01:33:45.000 And then I'd have to fight that day, by the way.

01:33:47.000 You'd have to fight the day you want.

01:33:48.000 And you're so tired.

01:33:49.000 Yeah.

01:33:50.000 So I won the States one year doing that, but I realized, like, I can't do this anymore.

01:33:54.000 And I also tried being a vegetarian.

01:33:56.000 I tried a bunch of stuff.

01:33:58.000 And then the next year, when I was 18, then I started eating.

01:34:01.000 Then I went up to 150. I think it was 55 or 54. I forget what the weight class was, but it was 50-something.

01:34:07.000 I went up to that, and then I got way better.

01:34:09.000 I was much, much, much better.

01:34:11.000 What was a typical training day like?

01:34:13.000 Hours.

01:34:14.000 So when would you do it?

01:34:15.000 The whole day.

01:34:16.000 It was all day.

01:34:17.000 The moment I would get home from school, I'd usually eat something real quick, grab my bag.

01:34:23.000 What would you eat?

01:34:24.000 Like a banana?

01:34:25.000 I didn't eat good.

01:34:26.000 I was retarded.

01:34:27.000 I would eat a bowl of cereal.

01:34:28.000 I was a kid.

01:34:29.000 And I didn't have a lot of guidance.

01:34:31.000 My parents both worked, so I'd fend for myself.

01:34:34.000 Whatever's in the house, I'd eat that.

01:34:36.000 And then I'd get on the tee and head out and go train.

01:34:40.000 So how much time between when you ate and when you actually got working out?

01:34:44.000 An hour.

01:34:45.000 Yeah, so while you were traveling, you're digesting.

01:34:47.000 Yeah, because it takes like an hour to get there at least.

01:34:50.000 It takes like a half hour to walk and then 20 minutes on the train.

01:34:53.000 So you got a trainer there, you got a coach?

01:34:55.000 You got other guys?

01:34:55.000 Yeah.

01:34:56.000 Well, yeah, yeah.

01:34:57.000 And then I started teaching.

01:34:58.000 That was a big thing, too.

01:34:59.000 But what would you do?

01:35:00.000 What would your workout be?

01:35:01.000 Well, you would always start up, but mostly we'd start with technique, right?

01:35:06.000 So most of the time, you would start with just straight kicks.

01:35:11.000 You would just practice kicks.

01:35:13.000 And you're also warming up, so you go through a whole warm-up routine.

01:35:16.000 You'd practice your kicks, like, mostly just for form.

01:35:19.000 So you'd practice kicks, and then you would practice kicks with, they would call it like a one-step exercise.

01:35:25.000 Like you would come at me with a thing and I would practice stepping to the side and countering.

01:35:30.000 You'd practice that way.

01:35:32.000 Then you would do sparring.

01:35:33.000 And we sparred almost every night.

01:35:35.000 And some of the sparring was fucking horrific.

01:35:37.000 We just spar like rounds?

01:35:39.000 Yeah.

01:35:39.000 Three minute rounds?

01:35:40.000 Three minute rounds, generally.

01:35:42.000 And you're sparring, you know, these people that are bigger than you, stronger than you.

01:35:42.000 Yeah.

01:35:46.000 And I was a kid.

01:35:47.000 Right, right.

01:35:47.000 And then you would have heavy bag work.

01:35:49.000 Heavy bag work was always at the end.

01:35:51.000 When you were exhausted, you'd work on your power.

01:35:53.000 And then there were some days we just came in and only worked on technique.

01:35:57.000 You didn't spar.

01:35:57.000 Those are good days.

01:35:58.000 You could just only work on your power, like heavy bag work, drills, speed, speed drills, focus mitts.

01:36:05.000 You could have these pads, these paddles that people hold, and you throw kicks at the paddles.

01:36:08.000 And you're just all working on making it so it just has no telegraph.

01:36:13.000 It just goes off.

01:36:14.000 You're trying to have it just go off like a switch.

01:36:18.000 And so you're just constantly drilling it as if you're competing.

01:36:21.000 And then you'd go on the weekends, you'd go compete somewhere.

01:36:23.000 Would you run at all?

01:36:24.000 Do any road work or push-ups?

01:36:25.000 Yeah, I ran.

01:36:26.000 I did.

01:36:27.000 But, you know, honestly, I hated running.

01:36:29.000 And I spent so much time training already that my endurance was fine.

01:36:33.000 And I would do rounds in the bag.

01:36:34.000 I always felt like rounds in the bag were better endurance anyway because that was like what you were going to actually do.

01:36:39.000 No doubt.

01:36:39.000 Other than getting hit.

01:36:41.000 Of course.

01:36:41.000 But would you do like ab work and stuff?

01:36:43.000 Get that strong?

01:36:43.000 Work your core?

01:36:44.000 Yeah.

01:36:45.000 Yeah, I would do sit-ups, and I would do push-ups, and I'd do chin-ups and shit like that, but not a whole lot of things.

01:36:50.000 Most of it was heavy back training and sparring.

01:36:53.000 That alone is a great workout.

01:36:54.000 It was quite a while before they started accepting even the idea of weightlifting.

01:37:00.000 For a long time, boxers, we were just talking about this the other day with Bert Soren from SorenX, and he was saying that boxers were told that if they lifted weights, they would be really stiff until Evander Holyfield came around.

01:37:13.000 And Evander Holyfield kind of changed everybody's opinion of it because he lifted weights, moved up to heavyweight from cruiserweight.

01:37:19.000 It was awesome.

01:37:20.000 Yeah.

01:37:20.000 And I was like, hey, maybe weightlifting just makes you stronger.

01:37:23.000 Yeah.

01:37:24.000 And then now they all do it.

01:37:25.000 It's kind of funny.

01:37:26.000 Like almost all those guys have some kind of strength and conditioning routine now.

01:37:31.000 Yeah.

01:37:33.000 So what do you do now?

01:37:34.000 What do you have to stay in shape?

01:37:35.000 You're addicted to it because it's your lifestyle.

01:37:37.000 I think I'm addicted to it for mental health reasons too.

01:37:41.000 Me too.

01:37:41.000 I know what you mean.

01:37:42.000 I think doing something difficult is very important, especially if it's like self-administered.

01:37:46.000 Do something really hard and it makes the rest of your day easier.

01:37:49.000 And it also is just, you know, Andrew Huberman has talked about this.

01:37:53.000 There's a specific area of your brain And when you do uncomfortable things, that area of your brain grows.

01:37:59.000 And when you're sedentary and you're not doing shit, that area of your brain actually shrinks.

01:38:05.000 So it enhances your ability to do difficult things by doing difficult things regularly.

01:38:11.000 So it's not just like, oh, I'm addicted to it.

01:38:15.000 It's like, no, it's a vitamin.

01:38:16.000 Like, you should do it.

01:38:17.000 Like, you should do it.

01:38:18.000 It makes your brain more resilient.

01:38:19.000 Like, doing hard things, like, oh, I like to just lay on the couch.

01:38:23.000 Bitch, I do too. 1.00

01:38:25.000 Everybody does.

01:38:26.000 Everybody likes to lay on the couch.

01:38:27.000 That's not the point.

01:38:28.000 The point is, it's not good for you.

01:38:31.000 Listen, what you're saying is so true.

01:38:33.000 Again, back to my prison experience.

01:38:36.000 Among the things that helped me get through it was that emotional pain and the heartache that you're feeling.

01:38:40.000 Yeah.

01:38:41.000 I found by throwing myself into hard physical exercise, it really helped me soften that, lessen that emotional pain, that heartache, and it just made me feel less hurting.

01:38:53.000 I hurt less by feeling Forcing physical pain on myself by running 10 miles, for example, on my first Christmas day because it was so brutal emotionally that I had to be at this shithole place for Christmas.

01:39:03.000 You know what I mean?

01:39:04.000 So what you're saying makes perfect sense to me.

01:39:04.000 Yeah.

01:39:07.000 Obviously, your situation was very extreme, and you needed relief in any way you could find it, through Jesus, through exercise, through everything, through constantly being aware.

01:39:17.000 But for just any person listening to this, do something hard.

01:39:21.000 Just make yourself do something hard all the time.

01:39:23.000 Just trust me.

01:39:24.000 You'll feel better.

01:39:25.000 Your life will work better.

01:39:26.000 You'll be able to handle things better.

01:39:28.000 You'll be able to handle disputes better, conversations better, interactions with people better.

01:39:33.000 Do something hard.

01:39:34.000 You'll have more love in your heart and less hate.

01:39:36.000 Yes.

01:39:36.000 The friendliest people that I know are all killers.

01:39:36.000 Yeah.

01:39:40.000 Interesting.

01:39:40.000 They're all killers.

01:39:41.000 That's interesting.

01:39:42.000 The friendliest people that I know.

01:39:43.000 If you met, like, some of my friends that fight in the UFC, if you didn't know who they were, and you met them, they're the most lovely people.

01:39:51.000 Like, Daniel Cormier, my...

01:39:53.000 He does color commentary with me, so it's me and Daniel and this guy John Anik.

01:39:58.000 We're all very tight.

01:39:59.000 Daniel was a light heavyweight champion and heavyweight champion.

01:40:04.000 He was a two-division world champion and was dominating in a weight class that In Strikeforce, he didn't even belong in heavyweight.

01:40:12.000 He's like 5'11".

01:40:14.000 He's not a big guy.

01:40:15.000 He's just such an insane tank of a human being.

01:40:19.000 And his wrestling was so insane and his just will was so insane.

01:40:23.000 He was dominating.

01:40:25.000 Dominated two different divisions.

01:40:26.000 He was a killer.

01:40:28.000 The nicest fucking guy you'd ever meet in your life.

01:40:30.000 If you're hanging around with him, you would never believe.

01:40:32.000 You would never believe that he could pick up anybody in the room and smash them on their head.

01:40:37.000 You would never believe it.

01:40:38.000 You would think he's just a sweetheart of a guy.

01:40:39.000 Mm-hmm.

01:40:40.000 So, because of my limited, very limited boxing experience, I got to know boxers.

01:40:45.000 And recently, I helped Tommy Hearns, helped Trump get Tommy Hearns' endorsement.

01:40:51.000 And Hearns spent some time with me in Chicago.

01:40:53.000 The nicest guy.

01:40:54.000 This guy was such a fucking badass fighter, as you know.

01:40:57.000 Oh my god, Tommy Hearns in his prime was an assassin.

01:41:00.000 Yeah, but on a personal level, gentle, God-fearing, soft-hearted, what you're describing with the guys that you know.

01:41:07.000 And a lot of the guys I knew from the boxing world in Chicago, a lot like that.

01:41:11.000 The guys who had a lot more success than me because I was just a best, I was a middling guy who did it for one year.

01:41:17.000 But I know exactly what you're saying.

01:41:18.000 Can I say something about tough guys and Trump real quick?

01:41:20.000 Sure.

01:41:21.000 To go back to Trump because the point you made I thought was really interesting that you got to have that kind of self-love to endure all of the shit they threw at him and you got to.

01:41:28.000 Well, you have to be a psycho.

01:41:30.000 He's kind of a psycho.

01:41:32.000 You have to be the type of person that tweets, I hate Taylor Swift.

01:41:35.000 Just a maniac mindset.

01:41:39.000 But without that, you don't keep fighting.

01:41:43.000 They tried to kill him twice.

01:41:44.000 That's right.

01:41:45.000 And one of them nicked his ear.

01:41:47.000 And there were literally people online doubting whether or not he got hit.

01:41:52.000 You see blood coming off of his ear?

01:41:54.000 People were saying it was staged so that he could avoid prison.

01:41:57.000 I mean, I heard prominent people say these things.

01:42:01.000 Yes.

01:42:02.000 Some prominent woman tweeted that he got shot because he's trying to get out of jail.

01:42:09.000 I don't care what you were trying to say.

01:42:12.000 That's such an insane take on a former president who's running for office again being assassinated.

01:42:18.000 You should be against assassinations.

01:42:20.000 Assassinations are horrible.

01:42:21.000 It's against the law.

01:42:22.000 It's one of the most horrific.

01:42:23.000 No matter what did he do?

01:42:24.000 He paid off a lady? 1.00

01:42:26.000 Is that what he did?

01:42:27.000 You think you should get shot in the fucking head for that?

01:42:29.000 Wilson.

01:42:29.000 Like, what did he do?

01:42:30.000 What did he do that you think he deserves getting shot in the fucking head?

01:42:34.000 And this complete lack of appreciation that the whole thing is rigged.

01:42:34.000 Yeah.

01:42:40.000 The whole thing is corrupt.

01:42:41.000 That's not good for you either.

01:42:43.000 It's not good for anybody.

01:42:44.000 Just because you label yourself a liberal, you can't watch them throw the Constitution in the toilet.

01:42:49.000 You can't just sit back and watch them because, yeah, that's good.

01:42:49.000 Right.

01:42:51.000 They're doing it against Trump.

01:42:53.000 Oh, you got shot?

01:42:53.000 That's it.

01:42:54.000 Good.

01:42:55.000 Are you fucking crazy?

01:42:56.000 People getting shot is good? 1.00

01:42:58.000 How are the love people, the progressive people, the people on the left, how are they like, I wish that guy didn't miss?

01:43:06.000 How are they doing that?

01:43:07.000 Because that's how lost we've gotten with this mainstream political narrative.

01:43:12.000 They feed you what you're supposed to think and you never have the ability to think it out for yourself.

01:43:16.000 It's like groups of people just going through the information and coming to a conclusion as a country.

01:43:21.000 Instead, you have to be on fucking a car Yeah.

01:43:24.000 Like in prison.

01:43:25.000 That's right.

01:43:26.000 And you've got to be with this group.

01:43:27.000 A thought car.

01:43:28.000 It's basically the same thing.

01:43:29.000 You're in a gang.

01:43:29.000 That's exactly right.

01:43:30.000 You're just not in the Aryan race. 1.00

01:43:32.000 Well said.

01:43:32.000 You're in the fucking left-wing progressives.

01:43:34.000 Right.

01:43:35.000 And they'll fucking turn on you.

01:43:35.000 Exactly.

01:43:37.000 They'll all turn on each other.

01:43:38.000 They do it all the time because they're all just scrambling for stature.

01:43:41.000 Joe, can I just say one more thing about Trump on this subject?

01:43:44.000 Self-love, personal toughness, for sure.

01:43:47.000 But can I say something else?

01:43:48.000 This man, I honestly believe this, truly loves America.

01:43:52.000 He isn't just doing this because he wants to be the president.

01:43:56.000 And he's got all this great success.

01:43:56.000 He's already been that.

01:43:58.000 How do you live the life he's lived?

01:44:00.000 Give that up.

01:44:01.000 Go into that shithole business I was in that I know all too well to have to deal with all these phony fucking politicians and suffer these assholes, these duplicitous hypocrites in your party and the other party, which is what most of them are.

01:44:13.000 There's a lot of good ones, but more of them than not are full of shit, they're weak, they're cowardly, and they go along with the kind of trends that you were just talking about.

01:44:22.000 When you go through something what Trump went through and you keep doing it, it's more than just his own self-love.

01:44:27.000 I truly believe he has a genuine, abiding love in his country.

01:44:30.000 I think in his mind, I'm guessing, I'm putting this in his mind, kind of thinking about my own kind of experience.

01:44:37.000 He's saying to himself, if I have to go down fighting for my country, I'm going to do it, and I think that helps motivate him to get stronger and tougher.

01:44:45.000 When he is convinced that it isn't just about his ego or himself, but it's something higher and bigger, like what America's supposed to be.

01:44:52.000 Does that make any sense?

01:44:53.000 And anybody that would push back against that, I would say, listen, before you even form an opinion, I want you to think about what happened when he got shot.

01:44:53.000 It does.

01:45:03.000 So he gets tackled.

01:45:04.000 He's got blood coming out of his ear.

01:45:06.000 Guns grow off.

01:45:07.000 Guy behind him's dead.

01:45:08.000 Guy got shot protecting his family.

01:45:11.000 He stands up and he throws his hand up in the air and says, fight, fight, fight.

01:45:15.000 That's not fake.

01:45:16.000 Right.

01:45:17.000 Like, that's in the moment after getting hit by a bullet, covered by the Secret Service, guy behind him's dead, how many gunshots had wrung off?

01:45:28.000 Nine shots?

01:45:29.000 Between the snipers killing him, him shooting, I think he shot three times?

01:45:33.000 Yeah, right.

01:45:34.000 And then he, fight, fight, fight.

01:45:36.000 Beautiful.

01:45:36.000 That's in the moment.

01:45:37.000 That's in the moment.

01:45:37.000 That's right.

01:45:38.000 That's right.

01:45:40.000 Everybody loves America, including people that aren't in America, which is why so many people are sneaking over to America, okay? 0.93

01:45:48.000 There's not a whole lot of people sneaking into Libya.

01:45:50.000 Everybody loves America.

01:45:52.000 Why?

01:45:52.000 It's the shit, but it's the shit because of personal freedom.

01:45:55.000 And because you can be somebody here.

01:45:58.000 That's it.

01:45:58.000 No matter who you are.

01:45:58.000 You can be Joe Rogan, a kid who's 15, getting on their public transportation to do kicking and martial arts and become what you are.

01:46:05.000 You can be me.

01:46:06.000 You can be anything you want.

01:46:07.000 You can be a doctor, a lawyer, an author, a painter, a musician.

01:46:12.000 You can do anything you want.

01:46:13.000 And no other place in the world offers it like this place does.

01:46:15.000 And this place celebrates it.

01:46:17.000 That's right.

01:46:18.000 I have a friend of mine from the UK. When he moved over here, one of the first things he said was, in England, they try to push you down if you try to get ahead.

01:46:18.000 Opportunity.

01:46:26.000 They'll try to dismiss you.

01:46:27.000 It's like tall poppy syndrome.

01:46:29.000 They don't want anybody rising above everybody else.

01:46:32.000 Very discouraging.

01:46:33.000 Well, that's the socialist mindset.

01:46:34.000 That's the new Democratic Party today.

01:46:36.000 It isn't about celebrating somebody else's success and saying, hey, I want to be like him, or that guy's success has actually created more opportunities for me to be better off than what I am now.

01:46:45.000 It's instead, pull him down so we can make everybody equal.

01:46:48.000 It's generally very energetic people who don't have any ambition.

01:46:53.000 So they have all this energy and they put their energy into this nonsense instead of like sorting your life out and pursuing something for yourself.

01:47:01.000 There should be...

01:47:02.000 This is how it should all work.

01:47:04.000 Everybody should have an equal opportunity to be educated and to pursue their dreams.

01:47:10.000 But we're not going to have equality of effort.

01:47:14.000 It's not going to exist, okay?

01:47:16.000 I can't tell you to do what I do, but I'll tell you what I do, and you could either listen and pay attention.

01:47:22.000 You could say, oh, look at all the effectiveness.

01:47:24.000 Look at how he's been able to do so many different things.

01:47:27.000 How is that possible?

01:47:28.000 Well, it's all simple.

01:47:29.000 It's all just hard work.

01:47:31.000 Not everybody wants to do that.

01:47:33.000 So if you want a quality of outcome and you don't have a quality of effort, then you have tyranny.

01:47:40.000 Because then you have people who are a bunch of energetic people who don't have a lot of ambition and they don't have any talent and they want to control people.

01:47:47.000 And they don't like when people achieve a higher social status than them or economics.

01:47:52.000 They get angry.

01:47:53.000 Why not me?

01:47:54.000 There's a lot of that.

01:47:54.000 Hmm.

01:47:55.000 That's a part of what the whole appeal to socialism.

01:47:59.000 Of course, there's like the beautiful appeal that like there's a lot of things that are socialist in this world that are great.

01:48:04.000 Like the fire department is essentially a socialist establishment, right?

01:48:08.000 We all pay for the fire department.

01:48:10.000 We all agree that the fire department should act immediately when there's a fire.

01:48:14.000 We're all paying into it and it's great.

01:48:16.000 We can have other things like that, too.

01:48:17.000 That should be how education is.

01:48:19.000 That should probably be how the police force is.

01:48:21.000 But as soon as you want a quality of outcome, you're ignoring a quality of effort.

01:48:21.000 That's all great.

01:48:29.000 Right.

01:48:30.000 Of course some people are born rich.

01:48:32.000 Of course it's not fair.

01:48:34.000 Of course some people are born in broken homes and it's harder for them.

01:48:37.000 Of course.

01:48:38.000 The fucking game's rigged.

01:48:40.000 It's not fair.

01:48:41.000 Right.

01:48:41.000 But everybody, even given the worst of circumstances, they're at least not stopped from pursuing dreams.

01:48:50.000 You see, in my life experience, what I've learned, the fun part, really more the fun part is the journey, less so the destination.

01:48:58.000 When I look back on the success I've had in different places in life, like being the governor of Illinois, not so easy.

01:49:05.000 Yeah.

01:49:05.000 It was nice to be that and have that power and be able to do it for serve good purposes.

01:49:09.000 But it was more fun actually trying to get there, working hard and overcoming the obstacles.

01:49:14.000 The quest.

01:49:14.000 Yeah, and the competition of it all, right?

01:49:16.000 The quest.

01:49:17.000 In any aspect of life, I think it's, frankly, embrace the quest.

01:49:20.000 And if you love what you do and you pursue what you love, success will ensue.

01:49:24.000 You don't have to chase success.

01:49:26.000 Just be great at what you do.

01:49:27.000 Hopefully.

01:49:27.000 There's no hold fast rules, but hopefully, success will come.

01:49:31.000 Yeah, well said.

01:49:32.000 But even if you don't have success, the fact that you gave your best at something should be a version of success that you can be happy with.

01:49:39.000 Well, for sure.

01:49:39.000 At least you learn from that and maybe you could apply those lessons to other things.

01:49:43.000 It's not like there's an end to this.

01:49:45.000 And everybody wants to look at it like there's some sort of a finish line.

01:49:48.000 I'm telling you, it's not real.

01:49:50.000 There's no finish line.

01:49:52.000 It doesn't exist.

01:49:53.000 You should just enjoy this moment and enjoy the whole process of whatever you're trying to do in life.

01:49:58.000 Because there's never going to be a time where you're like, I did it.

01:50:00.000 It's over.

01:50:01.000 That's not real.

01:50:03.000 I'm here to tell you, as someone who's had the number one podcast for like six years or something like that, it's not real.

01:50:09.000 There's no end.

01:50:10.000 There's no, like, I made it.

01:50:12.000 It doesn't exist.

01:50:13.000 And if it does exist, you're missing out on the whole point.

01:50:16.000 The point is you're supposed to be getting better all the time at everything you do.

01:50:19.000 It's a constant thing.

01:50:19.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:50:20.000 That's right.

01:50:21.000 And physically, there's going to come a point in time when you can't really get better at things because you're getting old.

01:50:25.000 But you can still do it mentally.

01:50:26.000 You can still learn more.

01:50:28.000 You can still pursue hobbies and interests and dreams and things that stimulate you and work towards stuff.

01:50:33.000 It's a better way to live your life.

01:50:35.000 Mm-hmm.

01:50:36.000 And, you know, some people never get a chance to understand that, and you go through your whole life, and maybe you're following the guru who's the gay porn star, and then all of a sudden you realize, like, I've wasted my experience here. 0.70

01:50:48.000 I haven't learned from it.

01:50:50.000 I haven't grown from it.

01:50:51.000 I don't have anything to show for all my time here.

01:50:53.000 I've just been making mistake after mistake, and I never really figured out how to control my mind, and I never really figured out how to discipline myself into action, and here I am.

01:51:03.000 Never figured out puzzles, and here I am.

01:51:05.000 Fuck.

01:51:06.000 You know, and those are the people that want equality of outcome.

01:51:10.000 Those are the people who want equity.

01:51:12.000 Those are the people that want to shut all the...

01:51:14.000 Look, there's a lot of hedge fund people that are pretty creepy.

01:51:17.000 There's a lot of billionaires that are doing shady shit.

01:51:19.000 And a lot of greed, of course.

01:51:20.000 Right, and it's not fair.

01:51:22.000 It's not to deny that.

01:51:22.000 I mean, for sure, we should keep an eye on people who want to change the weather, for sure.

01:51:26.000 But at the end of the day, We're all just supposed to be human beings with an opportunity to try to succeed.

01:51:33.000 It doesn't mean everybody's going to succeed.

01:51:34.000 That's what's so crazy about this open-ended agreement you have with life.

01:51:39.000 You don't know what's coming up.

01:51:41.000 You don't know what's next.

01:51:43.000 It's just like, how do you respond to it when it happens?

01:51:45.000 And for you, it's one of the most difficult things that a person could go through.

01:51:50.000 And especially because you feel you were innocent.

01:51:52.000 No, yeah.

01:51:53.000 And so I have purpose in life at this stage.

01:51:56.000 You know, they took everything from me.

01:51:57.000 They passed laws saying I can't run for anything in Illinois.

01:52:00.000 Believe it or not, just me.

01:52:02.000 It's unconstitutional.

01:52:03.000 You could probably run in Vegas and win.

01:52:05.000 You could be the king of Vegas.

01:52:07.000 It's a good place, I hear you.

01:52:09.000 They would love you!

01:52:10.000 You could totally be the king of Vegas.

01:52:12.000 But, you know, I could...

01:52:15.000 I have a new beginning.

01:52:16.000 A lot of my friends are retired now, you know, and they're retired, and that's fine.

01:52:21.000 But I'm excited about this new beginning I've had.

01:52:24.000 Could you run for president?

01:52:25.000 Yeah, the irony is I could run for federal office.

01:52:27.000 I could run for president of the United States, but I can't run for alderman in the city of Chicago.

01:52:32.000 Imagine that.

01:52:34.000 Damn, you're missing out on an awesome gig.

01:52:37.000 Wow.

01:52:38.000 That's crazy.

01:52:39.000 But I have something to get up every day and chase.

01:52:41.000 I'm lucky that way.

01:52:42.000 Do you have any desire to be in politics anymore?

01:52:44.000 Is it just too gross?

01:52:46.000 How do you think about it now?

01:52:48.000 My wife, who is a remarkable person, when I think about all these different heroes that I've known, that I've read about in history books, I think about my wife and her quiet way, her heroism, how she kept her home, you know, raised our daughters.

01:53:04.000 They're both good kids, our daughters.

01:53:05.000 My older daughter, Amy, is a therapist, good education.

01:53:08.000 She would like me to advocate for the Puppy Protection Act.

01:53:11.000 I told her I'd try to get it on.

01:53:12.000 What's the Puppy Protection Act?

01:53:14.000 Protects puppies.

01:53:15.000 We love dogs.

01:53:16.000 Something to have your listeners consider the puppy protection.

01:53:19.000 How does it protect puppies?

01:53:20.000 I don't know, but it's got to be good.

01:53:21.000 I didn't read it.

01:53:22.000 Well, anything that protects puppies.

01:53:23.000 But to me, that sounds like the Patriot Act.

01:53:25.000 Well, it's got to be good.

01:53:26.000 You're right.

01:53:27.000 Bernie Sanders was right on that.

01:53:28.000 He was the only one who voted against that.

01:53:30.000 I'm looking at him when that happened because I was with him in Congress then.

01:53:32.000 Well, they named it the Patriot Act.

01:53:34.000 How are you going to say no to that?

01:53:35.000 You named it the Puppy Protection Act.

01:53:35.000 I know.

01:53:37.000 It's got a good chance of passing it with a name like that.

01:53:37.000 Right.

01:53:39.000 What's in there?

01:53:40.000 And a younger daughter, she's a big Taylor Swift fan, a Swiftie.

01:53:45.000 They both are, but they're good kids.

01:53:46.000 They're honest kids.

01:53:47.000 They do good in school, like their mother.

01:53:48.000 She raised them great without a father.

01:53:53.000 They've suffered through the politics in my career, and so public.

01:54:00.000 And the name is not a common name, Blagojević.

01:54:02.000 There's just not a lot of us here.

01:54:04.000 There are in Serbia, but not in America.

01:54:06.000 So everybody knows who their dad is, you know, in the political context.

01:54:10.000 So my wife, Patty, you'll find this interesting.

01:54:13.000 Two days after I was arrested, which was the 9th of December 2008, The Thursday of that week, Vegas was betting.

01:54:19.000 They were taking bets.

01:54:20.000 What are the odds the first lady of Illinois is going to leave the governor of Illinois after he just got arrested? 0.96

01:54:25.000 And it was 9 to 1 she was going to leave.

01:54:28.000 Wow.

01:54:28.000 And she not only defied those odds, but she defied the stats, which is...

01:54:32.000 Could she bet on it?

01:54:33.000 Looking back, we should have.

01:54:34.000 Oh, 100%.

01:54:35.000 I know.

01:54:36.000 Oh, my goodness.

01:54:37.000 You should have made so much money just empty your bank accounts.

01:54:40.000 Let's go, champ. 0.99

01:54:41.000 It crossed my mind, actually.

01:54:43.000 Would that be illegal?

01:54:43.000 Maybe they put you back in jail for that.

01:54:45.000 That's what prevented me from even pursuing that.

01:54:47.000 They might criminalize that. 0.99

01:54:48.000 Yeah.

01:54:49.000 Yeah, that's a good question.

01:54:50.000 But when a guy's in prison for more than four years, especially when he has a long time in prison, in more than 90% of the cases, the wife or the significant other leaves.

01:54:59.000 So Patty defied all the odds. 0.95

01:55:01.000 She's made it abundantly clear if I ever run for office again, I'm doing that with my second wife.

01:55:07.000 You don't have to, you know, in this day and age.

01:55:09.000 What are you going to do other than this book?

01:55:12.000 Well, I do different work.

01:55:13.000 I do some business stuff.

01:55:15.000 I'm actually trying to do some public awareness on issues that are important, like some criminal justice reform stuff, because I've learned the hard way how just unjust the system is.

01:55:24.000 And there is a bias in the criminal justice system that disproportionately has impacted the black community in a grossly unfair way.

01:55:31.000 Have you ever seen any of my podcasts that I've done with Josh Dubin?

01:55:34.000 No, but tell me about that.

01:55:36.000 That's criminal justice reform?

01:55:37.000 Yes.

01:55:38.000 That's his main objective.

01:55:41.000 Just through the podcast that we've done, multiple people have been released.

01:55:45.000 He's always highlighting these fucked up cases where people were innocent and massive corruption in the prosecutor's office.

01:55:55.000 You hear about these things, they're so heartbreaking.

01:55:57.000 You just can't believe that someone would be willing To have people go to jail for 25 to life for something that they know is a lie.

01:56:05.000 But you see it over and over and over again.

01:56:08.000 Right.

01:56:08.000 The more common thing, Joe, is the over-sentencing part of it.

01:56:13.000 Those eight years in prison, I mean, the overwhelming number of the guys I was with, they did it.

01:56:18.000 They were guilty.

01:56:19.000 The prosecutors got it right.

01:56:21.000 What they got wrong was the sentences are ridiculously unfair and wrong, and they don't match up.

01:56:28.000 And you got a nonviolent offender who first time did something wrong, whether it's a bank robbery or a drug offense or whatever it might be, and they're giving these guys 15, 20, 25 years because they have these One size fits off sentencing guidelines that the politicians pass.

01:56:43.000 But every case is different.

01:56:44.000 Every person is different.

01:56:45.000 Their backgrounds are different.

01:56:46.000 Their cause, the reasons for doing things, they're different.

01:56:49.000 So the system's broken in the sense that they don't take into account other considerations than just these like...

01:56:56.000 Formulas they follow.

01:56:57.000 And so as a result, you got these people, disproportionately black but not exclusively, who are doing these long sentences for first-time offenses.

01:57:04.000 Trump pardoned a woman named Alice Marie Johnson, first-time nonviolent offender, drugs.

01:57:09.000 They gave her a life sentence. 0.90

01:57:10.000 It was probably a lot of drugs.

01:57:12.000 A life sentence.

01:57:13.000 And after 20 years, Trump pulled her out, saved her.

01:57:16.000 And a lot of this came from the 1994 crime bill that Joe Biden sponsored and Bill Clinton passed.

01:57:21.000 The Democrats did this in the black community.

01:57:23.000 So I think I do some of that.

01:57:23.000 Yeah.

01:57:25.000 My father came from Serbia, and I'd like to try to do what I can to raise public awareness about the place of Serbia in the Balkans, because it's a country that we bombed in 1999, the United States and NATO bombed Serbia without the United Nations approval.

01:57:40.000 The way Russia's invaded Ukraine.

01:57:42.000 Why did we bomb Serbia? 0.91

01:57:44.000 Because they were trying to force the Serbian government to give up a part of their country, Kosovo.

01:57:49.000 Give it up.

01:57:50.000 That'd be like NATO threatening to bomb us to say, give up Texas to Mexico.

01:57:55.000 And the Serbian government said, we're not going to do it.

01:57:57.000 And so the United States decided to bomb them if they didn't sign an agreement that was made in France called the Rombolet Agreement. 0.55

01:58:03.000 Jesus Christ.

01:58:03.000 That would have put it up to a referendum.

01:58:05.000 It's really that simple?

01:58:08.000 There's more to everything, but the complication is the geopolitics of Europe and the Middle East, because Serbis and the Balkans is sort of a gateway to the Middle East.

01:58:21.000 It's in Europe, but it's a gateway to the Middle East, and a lot of the political dynamics internationally are at play there.

01:58:27.000 But the Serbs and the Serbian people were allies with the United States in both world wars.

01:58:32.000 They love America.

01:58:34.000 They want to improve relations with America today after we bombed them.

01:58:38.000 The Clinton administration did that.

01:58:39.000 Took that part of their country away. 0.77

01:58:41.000 What did they bomb?

01:58:42.000 They bombed Belgrade.

01:58:43.000 They bombed all the big cities.

01:58:45.000 They just indiscriminately bombed the cities or they bombed military bases?

01:58:48.000 The electrical grid, they bombed military bases.

01:58:51.000 This was May of 1999. And I went, I was a young congressman there.

01:58:55.000 I was the only Serb.

01:58:56.000 The Serbs are a small group of the United States and they don't have any political clout.

01:59:00.000 But Jesse Jackson, the Reverend Jackson and I went there because three American soldiers were taken prisoner by the Serbs during the war.

01:59:08.000 And no one knew what was going on with those soldiers, and so Reverend Jackson had this stature, and he was close to Clinton, and he went there.

01:59:18.000 I went there because I speak the language, because my father came from that country, and I was able to assist him in getting the release of the three soldiers.

01:59:26.000 This was the Milosevic government at the time.

01:59:30.000 And we got the soldiers home.

01:59:32.000 But what I like to talk about with regard to Serbia is it's a country in the Balkans that follows a Judeo-Christian tradition.

01:59:39.000 It's very much like Israel in the sense that it's in a place where they're standing up for those sorts of things.

01:59:48.000 And the Serbs have felt very betrayed by the United States for choosing to be on the side of countries that were with the excess and with the Nazis in World War II. And those wars down in the Balkans and throughout Europe are wars of ethnic cleansing.

02:00:02.000 All the sides do it.

02:00:04.000 There's no one side that is...

02:00:08.000 Crystal clean on those issues.

02:00:10.000 They're fighting for borders and they're fighting for villages and places where historically one group claims they had a claim to and another group claims they had a claim to.

02:00:19.000 So these are complicated issues.

02:00:21.000 But the United States decided to pick sides and forced this country to give up a part of their country with a lot of significant religious monuments there.

02:00:29.000 And this government that's there today very much wants to reopen relations with the United States and have better relations.

02:00:36.000 It's a growing economy.

02:00:37.000 They're doing very well economically because they're good, hardworking people.

02:00:40.000 And it's interesting.

02:00:41.000 In a poll recently of European countries, in this presidential election, Trump versus Kamala Harris, the Serbian people had the highest support of Trump.

02:00:55.000 Something like 59% of the Serbian populace supported Trump in the last election, better than any other European country.

02:01:01.000 And so whatever I can do to be helpful to my, you know, the place my father came from.

02:01:05.000 I'm American-born.

02:01:06.000 My mother was American-born.

02:01:07.000 Sounds like you're bucking for an ambassador to Serbia position.

02:01:11.000 Oh, no, I'm not.

02:01:11.000 Oh, no.

02:01:11.000 No.

02:01:12.000 Would you take it?

02:01:12.000 What if he gave it to you?

02:01:14.000 Unlikely.

02:01:14.000 Oh, come on.

02:01:15.000 No, unlikely I would take it.

02:01:16.000 Come on.

02:01:17.000 No, unlikely.

02:01:17.000 Come on, fella.

02:01:18.000 No, only if he said to me, look, I really need you, which he won't do.

02:01:21.000 He's going to sit you down with a Burger King.

02:01:23.000 No, he's into Big Macs, right?

02:01:26.000 McDonald's.

02:01:26.000 He likes McDonald's.

02:01:27.000 Sit you down.

02:01:27.000 Yeah.

02:01:29.000 He likes McDonald's.

02:01:31.000 But there's a new opportunity with Trump and his administration to rethink sort of our policy and some of those old relationships.

02:01:37.000 You know, you understand politics far more than most.

02:01:40.000 What difficulties do they face in implementing real change?

02:01:44.000 So there's all these ideas, the DOGE idea, the Department of Government Efficiency, you know, RFK taking over, HHS, right?

02:01:53.000 Health and Human Services, is that what it is?

02:01:55.000 And so then Kash Patel with the FBI, Tulsi Gabbard, what is her She's the director of national intelligence. 0.99

02:01:55.000 Right, that's right. 0.99

02:02:03.000 Yeah, that's a huge, huge, huge position.

02:02:06.000 So they all have these ideas to eliminate corruption or at least mitigate it and root out all the bad actors and find out what went wrong, right?

02:02:06.000 Yes.

02:02:17.000 What's in the way of that?

02:02:18.000 What would stop them from being able to do all that?

02:02:22.000 You're talking about an almost immovable object.

02:02:25.000 You're talking about the deep state.

02:02:27.000 You're talking about entrenched interests within government and outside of government.

02:02:32.000 You're talking about what I call the political-industrial complex.

02:02:36.000 It exists in Washington.

02:02:38.000 It exists in state governments like in Springfield, Illinois.

02:02:41.000 It's the usual people.

02:02:42.000 And the two parties are split on some issues, but they play the game within certain parameters.

02:02:49.000 And if somebody wants to think outside the box and challenge that and actually try to shake that up and change the priorities of how it operates, frankly, to actually benefit the people more, because the mindset there, and I know this because I was a congressman for six years and I was a governor for six years, the mindset isn't what we can do for the people back home.

02:03:07.000 The mindset really is what the people back home can do for us and for all the different special interest groups that operate and are lunching up on this system.

02:03:14.000 This is very real.

02:03:15.000 It's very real in every part of government.

02:03:17.000 It's very real in the military-industrial complex, which is something Tulsi Gabbard and Hexeth and the others who, if they get their positions, are going to be addressing.

02:03:26.000 The weaponized Department of Justice, very real.

02:03:29.000 I'm a living testament to that, and so is Trump.

02:03:32.000 Very real.

02:03:33.000 The bureaucracy that's entrenched, that you have a hard time moving, these government employees, many of whom now are even going to the office.

02:03:41.000 They're working from home.

02:03:42.000 They are entrenched.

02:03:43.000 They're hard to move.

02:03:44.000 So this is going to be real hard.

02:03:47.000 It's going to be constant war.

02:03:49.000 They're going to fight back, and they're going to keep trying to do to Trump what they've been doing.

02:03:53.000 And I think the opportunity for the Trump administration, for President Trump, Trump and Lincoln are the only two presidents who never got a honeymoon.

02:04:23.000 In Lincoln's case, the southern states seceded and left.

02:04:27.000 Trump wasn't quite that bad.

02:04:28.000 But no one's been treated as a new president as terribly as Trump has been treated by the Democrats in Washington.

02:04:34.000 Because he's a real threat to change things.

02:04:36.000 And he's a guy who's actually trying to keep his promises.

02:04:38.000 And these appointments, they're very different.

02:04:40.000 They're very unusual.

02:04:41.000 But they show he learned the lesson that you can't trust those Washington insiders because they'll infiltrate your government.

02:04:46.000 And they'll be the ones who will try to not carry out your orders.

02:04:50.000 You know what you really can't trust?

02:04:52.000 The people who make the polls.

02:04:52.000 Yeah.

02:04:53.000 That's right.

02:04:54.000 Those fucking people, they might as well be psychics.

02:04:57.000 They might as well be that person with the neon sign that's reading cards.

02:05:01.000 You guys were so off.

02:05:03.000 It was so wild because people were so emboldened by them being so off.

02:05:09.000 You know, I'm sure you've seen a lot of these hilarious videos of Democrats who are absolutely sure she was going to win.

02:05:14.000 We're going to win this.

02:05:15.000 And they're all fired up and cocky and hooting and hollering and making fun of people.

02:05:21.000 And then, bam, you see this landslide.

02:05:25.000 I'm pretty good at patting myself on the back.

02:05:27.000 I was in that business, so I'm going to pat myself on the back.

02:05:30.000 I called it.

02:05:31.000 I think I was Tucker.

02:05:32.000 And even before that, I was saying Trump was going to sweep all the battleground states.

02:05:35.000 I thought it was going to be a lot closer.

02:05:37.000 Because I thought, you know, until she kept making blunders. 0.94

02:05:41.000 Like, if she just never did any interviews and just only did speeches like that first one that she did.

02:05:50.000 That first one she did, like, have you got something to say to me?

02:05:52.000 Say it to my face.

02:05:53.000 And the whole place goes nuts.

02:05:54.000 And you're like, whoa.

02:05:55.000 Like, she was young and energetic in comparison to him.

02:05:58.000 Like, oh my god.

02:05:59.000 And then they all got behind her.

02:06:00.000 And the...

02:06:01.000 You see all the wind behind the sails of the media.

02:06:04.000 They were all moving in march step.

02:06:05.000 They were all marching together.

02:06:08.000 They were all telling us, she's the best.

02:06:10.000 She's number one.

02:06:11.000 She's gonna fix it.

02:06:12.000 And I thought it was working.

02:06:13.000 I really did.

02:06:14.000 I was like, this might work.

02:06:16.000 Which I was fascinated to see.

02:06:18.000 I was fascinated to see the whole machine turn in support of her.

02:06:22.000 The people that had mocked her approval ratings just six months ago.

02:06:25.000 They're making fun of her and how she's largely been quiet.

02:06:29.000 And then all of a sudden, she's our answer.

02:06:32.000 Yeah.

02:06:33.000 That was propaganda.

02:06:35.000 It was wild.

02:06:36.000 It was wild.

02:06:36.000 Yeah.

02:06:37.000 They were propping her up.

02:06:38.000 It was really thin.

02:06:39.000 They did that with Obama.

02:06:40.000 They got away with it then.

02:06:41.000 They propped this guy up to be this demigod that he's not. 0.97

02:06:45.000 Did you see Jill Biden dunking on her in that speech today? 0.99

02:06:49.000 Was it today?

02:06:49.000 I think it was yesterday.

02:06:50.000 She was talking about joy.

02:06:51.000 Is that the one?

02:06:52.000 Oh, my God.

02:06:53.000 It's amazing.

02:06:54.000 Jill Biden subtly does a Kamala Harris impression, and the audience knows it, and the audience starts laughing.

02:07:02.000 Yeah.

02:07:03.000 Which is just like, I want to be a fly on the wall.

02:07:07.000 I would have loved to see how...

02:07:09.000 It's essentially a coup went down.

02:07:11.000 That's right.

02:07:12.000 That's right.

02:07:12.000 This is the first time ever someone who didn't get elected through a primary is somehow or another the representative for the Democratic Party.

02:07:21.000 It's kind of dangerous.

02:07:22.000 If you really think about it in that regard, it's kind of dangerous.

02:07:25.000 Right.

02:07:26.000 And it's lies.

02:07:27.000 It's based on lies.

02:07:28.000 But it's not the will of the people.

02:07:30.000 It's not the world of people and they're just lying to you.

02:07:32.000 Lying to you.

02:07:33.000 They're hoping that your compliance that you showed through COVID and everything else, they're hoping that's going to go along with this and you're not going to stand up and go, hey, why don't you have a primary?

02:07:45.000 What about Shapiro?

02:07:46.000 What about all these different people?

02:07:48.000 What about them running?

02:07:49.000 Let's see what their solutions to these things are.

02:07:52.000 She's already said she's not going to do anything different.

02:07:54.000 This is kind of crazy.

02:07:56.000 What are we doing?

02:07:58.000 Right.

02:07:59.000 They took away the rights of the people and the Democratic voters to choose their nominee and picked them in the back room.

02:08:05.000 There's this one crazy video of this poor girl. 1.00

02:08:07.000 She's like hysteric and she's talking to Kamala Harris and Kamala Harris is talking to her and she's like, don't worry, we're going to win.

02:08:14.000 We're going to win.

02:08:15.000 And she's like saying this to this poor girl, like a college girl, was like full of anxiety and all freaked out and just...

02:08:24.000 I just get so upset when I watch that because what got in your head that got you thinking that some horrific end to women's rights is coming?

02:08:34.000 What happened?

02:08:36.000 I'll tell you what happened.

02:08:37.000 You've been lied to over and over again by the establishment Democrat Party and their allies in the media.

02:08:44.000 That's a very serious threat.

02:08:46.000 My daughters are fearful of some of this.

02:08:49.000 And that Donald Trump is this rotten guy and he's not those things.

02:08:54.000 They've been demonizing him for so long and this is on purpose.

02:08:57.000 This is part of the political strategy.

02:09:00.000 And eventually, most of the people saw through it.

02:09:03.000 And you don't give yourself enough credit, but when you had Trump on here and then you eventually made your decision, you swayed a lot of people and made a real difference in that election.

02:09:11.000 So thank you for that, because I think that's part of saving America before America could become great again.

02:09:17.000 Which is a good thing, isn't it?

02:09:18.000 Why wouldn't America want to be great again? 0.92

02:09:20.000 Well, it certainly should be.

02:09:22.000 I mean, it's all...

02:09:24.000 And it is great, isn't it?

02:09:25.000 Why do the Democrats seem to think America's not so great?

02:09:28.000 We've had a lot of problems.

02:09:30.000 There's wrongs in our history, of course, and the original sin of slavery, Jim Crow and segregation and the treatment of black people in America, that's all very real.

02:09:38.000 They've been screwed.

02:09:39.000 But in spite of it all, this is a country that offers the opportunity we talked about and corrects those mistakes.

02:09:45.000 But the problem, I think, in some respects today with the Democrat Party is now it's a question of reversing.

02:09:50.000 It's no longer – let's judge people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

02:09:56.000 Now it's – Let's overcorrect.

02:09:57.000 Let's overcorrect.

02:09:58.000 Exactly.

02:09:59.000 I think it's a cult.

02:10:00.000 I really do.

02:10:01.000 And I think the Republicans didn't do themselves any justice by reversing Roe v.

02:10:08.000 Wade.

02:10:09.000 Because I think wanting that reversed is what put this fear in everyone that you're coming after women's reproductive rights.

02:10:16.000 That men, based on religious ideals, are going to tell women what to do with their bodies.

02:10:23.000 If that didn't happen, I think it would have been an even bigger victory for Trump.

02:10:28.000 Because I think that was one of the most important Subjects when it for women that was one of the most important things that they were willing to draw the line on Because they know where that goes they don't you as soon as you let someone have control over what you can and can't do with your body just like Just to a smaller stem, 1.00

02:10:49.000 but like we've talked about with COVID with so many different things when people have power and control over people they abuse it and they manipulate it and if you all the sudden have laws so Whether these were unfounded fears or not, women were worried that people would get data from their fertility apps, right?

02:11:07.000 So you have ovulation apps, and these ovulation apps you say when you had your period, and it keeps track of when you're ovulating.

02:11:16.000 That if a woman had one of those apps and was living in a state because Roe v. 0.98

02:11:20.000 Wade's been reversed where abortion is illegal and then she travels to another state and has an abortion that she could be prosecuted based on the laws of the state. 1.00

02:11:30.000 Which is...

02:11:31.000 To me, that's terrifying.

02:11:33.000 I agree.

02:11:33.000 Giving people that kind of power over other people, especially if they're doing something that's legal in that state.

02:11:38.000 The whole idea of states' rights is supposed to be, first of all, we don't need passports to travel from state to state.

02:11:45.000 But every state is essentially almost like a little different country that speaks the same language.

02:11:49.000 This is a very different country than California.

02:11:51.000 I lived in both places.

02:11:52.000 Yeah.

02:11:53.000 You know, there's other places.

02:11:54.000 New York's a very different country than this, but we all agree that we can travel back and forth.

02:11:58.000 So then you leave me the fuck alone.

02:12:00.000 You don't know what I'm doing in this state, and I don't want you...

02:12:04.000 If someone has a miscarriage, and then they go visit a state that has abortion laws, and then they get visited by jackbooted thugs that think that they can impose the law and put some girl in jail to send a message... 0.60

02:12:16.000 Yeah.

02:12:16.000 That's fucking terrifying, and that I think cost a lot of votes.

02:12:20.000 And maybe it's a wrong perception, maybe it's an extreme version of it, and I'm exaggerating, but I don't trust people.

02:12:27.000 I don't trust people that have power over people.

02:12:29.000 And I think the less power people have over people, the better.

02:12:33.000 I think if you want people to have less abortions, make more birth control available.

02:12:39.000 Make it available everywhere.

02:12:40.000 You know, education, but that's not going to help because kids are crazy.

02:12:43.000 You get horny, you go nuts.

02:12:45.000 But there's a lot of people that make mistakes that if a man could get pregnant, if men could get pregnant, I always said abortion would be an app on your phone.

02:12:54.000 We would have them at the gas station.

02:12:56.000 We'd get abortions everywhere. 1.00

02:12:58.000 Like, there would be no babies.

02:12:59.000 It's a very complicated decision for someone to make.

02:13:05.000 And Joe Biden ironically said it best a long time ago.

02:13:10.000 He said abortion should be legal and rare. 0.77

02:13:16.000 I have a long history as a Democratic governor and congressman supporting a woman's right to choose.

02:13:21.000 I haven't changed my view on it.

02:13:23.000 I'm a huge Trump supporter, but I haven't changed my view on it for the same reasons that you just explained.

02:13:28.000 Not to mention the fact that who am I as a man to tell someone what she could do with her body?

02:13:33.000 It gets so complicated.

02:13:34.000 Yeah.

02:13:35.000 No, it's very complicated.

02:13:36.000 And the people on the other side, the pro-lifers, these are good people who genuinely believe that this is the killing of a baby.

02:13:43.000 What Roe v. 0.78

02:13:44.000 Wade had said in this decision, you know, it broke it down into trimesters.

02:13:50.000 And within the first trimester, that's a life and being, but it's not a human being.

02:13:55.000 And that always seems sensible to me.

02:13:57.000 But the idea of government doing what you just described, can you imagine a guy like me who's gone through what I've gone through with the government, what it did to me and to my family, not being sympathetic to what you just said about the fear women have?

02:14:09.000 It's very, very real.

02:14:10.000 I don't think you should let the government ever be involved in the choices you make with your body.

02:14:14.000 Yeah.

02:14:15.000 I don't think that.

02:14:16.000 And I understand the pro-life perspective.

02:14:18.000 I get it.

02:14:18.000 Yeah.

02:14:19.000 You know, I've talked to very intelligent, reasonable people that believe that life begins at the moment of conception, even in the case of race.

02:14:25.000 That's right.

02:14:26.000 I'm like, okay, I don't agree with you, but I understand where you're coming from.

02:14:30.000 I could put myself in your mindset and I could see that.

02:14:34.000 I could see how you would think that.

02:14:36.000 I could see how you'd say two wrongs don't make a right.

02:14:38.000 I could see it.

02:14:39.000 I just don't agree with it.

02:14:40.000 And, you know, I don't agree with it because I would not want to be a woman carrying a rapist baby. 0.87

02:14:45.000 I don't give a fuck what you say.

02:14:47.000 And if you want to impose that on a person because you have a different set of beliefs in a person, where does that end?

02:14:54.000 Where does that end?

02:14:56.000 Yeah, right.

02:14:57.000 It gets fucking weird.

02:14:59.000 It gets weird when you let people control people.

02:15:01.000 Think about how many people are yelling at people to wear a mask outside.

02:15:05.000 Where's your mask?

02:15:06.000 People are fucking weird, man.

02:15:08.000 When you give them any kind of control over people, I don't trust them.

02:15:12.000 And that's not like a pro-abortion position.

02:15:15.000 That's a pro, I don't trust people and their decision-making ability.

02:15:20.000 And their abuse of power decision.

02:15:22.000 That's what that is.

02:15:23.000 That's my position.

02:15:24.000 Yeah, and a lot of those people who were demanding those masks and would deny your right to choose whether you have a vaccine or not, the same ones who are very much pro-choice when it comes to a woman's right to choose, but they don't apply the same standard to other things.

02:15:36.000 And it's that inconsistency.

02:15:36.000 I know, it's so fascinating.

02:15:37.000 My body, my choice.

02:15:39.000 Yeah.

02:15:39.000 Yeah, right.

02:15:40.000 Right, exactly.

02:15:41.000 Which I agree with, with fucking everything.

02:15:43.000 Right.

02:15:44.000 You know, if you want to get face tattoos, I wouldn't recommend it.

02:15:46.000 I have a bunch of friends who have face tattoos.

02:15:48.000 Yeah, I don't know.

02:15:49.000 Jelly Roll's got a bunch of them.

02:15:50.000 I love that guy to death.

02:15:51.000 Post Malone's got a bunch of them.

02:15:53.000 I love that guy to death.

02:15:54.000 Listen, I did all those years in prison with guys like that.

02:15:56.000 A lot of nice guys with face tattoos.

02:15:57.000 How many fighters I know with face tattoos?

02:15:59.000 Yeah.

02:15:59.000 Fucking great guy.

02:16:00.000 Sean O'Malley, shout out to my man Sean.

02:16:02.000 Face tattoos, awesome guy.

02:16:04.000 There was a guy in prison named Crow.

02:16:05.000 He was clearly a Dodgers fan.

02:16:07.000 How did I know he had a tattoo?

02:16:08.000 Dodgers, right on top of his head.

02:16:09.000 And I sang to this guy and about 110 others at the GED graduation of my prison band G-Rod and the Jailhouse Rockers.

02:16:16.000 Oh wow, that's hilarious.

02:16:18.000 Did you record anything?

02:16:19.000 No, they didn't allow that.

02:16:21.000 Oh, that's too bad.

02:16:22.000 That would have been amazing tapes.

02:16:24.000 You can get that on the internet?

02:16:25.000 But you couldn't allow that.

02:16:27.000 You couldn't get that in.

02:16:28.000 Damn!

02:16:28.000 Let them have YouTube channels.

02:16:31.000 You know how great that would be?

02:16:33.000 YouTube jail channels?

02:16:35.000 Tell the jail, listen, you can make profits off of this.

02:16:39.000 Why don't you split the profits with the emits?

02:16:41.000 No.

02:16:42.000 Look, I met a lot of guys.

02:16:44.000 A lot of these guys are not bad guys.

02:16:46.000 They broke the law and they should be held accountable and have justice, but also mercy and a chance at a second chance.

02:16:53.000 Also mercy and redemption.

02:16:54.000 Absolutely.

02:16:55.000 Please, let's have more of that.

02:16:57.000 We don't have enough of that.

02:16:58.000 Rehabilitation.

02:16:59.000 Whatever happened to that?

02:17:00.000 Some of these guys have such good hearts.

02:17:01.000 There was this bank robber in prison, Michael Torres.

02:17:04.000 Good guy.

02:17:04.000 His name is Socks.

02:17:06.000 Robbed a bank.

02:17:07.000 Could he put Socks over his face when he robbed a bank?

02:17:09.000 You know, I don't know that, but I have a chapter about him because I taught history with him.

02:17:09.000 Is that why?

02:17:14.000 He loved General Grant.

02:17:15.000 He wanted to be a lecturer in my Civil War history class.

02:17:19.000 But what he did was he robbed a bank in Central California.

02:17:21.000 We appreciate this.

02:17:22.000 His father was a Pentecostal minister.

02:17:24.000 Oh, my God.

02:17:25.000 And he walks into this bank.

02:17:26.000 His father taught him to always respect the values of respecting your elders, okay?

02:17:30.000 So he storms into a bank with an assault weapon, shouting, motherfuckers, everybody go to the side.

02:17:35.000 I'm robbing this fucking bank.

02:17:36.000 I'll kill anybody and blow your heads off.

02:17:38.000 If you don't comply, get...

02:17:39.000 You don't follow my orders.

02:17:41.000 He didn't say comply, right?

02:17:42.000 So they all scatter around, but he spies out of the side of his eye, this little old lady in a corner trembling, standing there.

02:17:49.000 And at that point, he recognized her, and he puts his bank robbery on pause, puts it on hold.

02:17:55.000 And all of a sudden, he goes from this Mr. Hyde character, where he's screaming motherfucker with his assault weapon, to a gentle Dr. Jekyll.

02:18:04.000 Jekyll, right?

02:18:05.000 Goes to the woman. 1.00

02:18:07.000 He calms her and soothes her and tells her, ma'am, don't worry.

02:18:09.000 This won't take too long.

02:18:11.000 No one's going to hurt you.

02:18:13.000 I won't be long.

02:18:14.000 Let me get you a seat.

02:18:16.000 And so some guy's sitting in the chair and he says, get up, motherfucker, or I'll fucking blow your brains out.

02:18:22.000 And he ushers her to the seat.

02:18:24.000 Oh, my God.

02:18:24.000 Sits her down.

02:18:25.000 Oh, my God.

02:18:26.000 Then he goes back to the bank robbery.

02:18:28.000 Gets all the money.

02:18:30.000 Stops by, says goodbye to her, leaves, didn't plan his getaway so good.

02:18:34.000 They get him within, I don't know, 10-15 minutes.

02:18:36.000 Didn't take long.

02:18:37.000 He's apprehended.

02:18:38.000 He's got no defense.

02:18:39.000 There's all these witnesses.

02:18:40.000 Saw it all.

02:18:41.000 So his lawyers correctly say, we better just ask for mercy.

02:18:43.000 Don't even pretend you didn't do it.

02:18:45.000 Plead guilty.

02:18:46.000 Prosecutors want 20 years in prison for socks.

02:18:49.000 Okay?

02:18:50.000 And they mostly always get what they ask for, these federal prosecutors.

02:18:54.000 The defense lawyer recognized the judge was like 83 years old or something.

02:18:59.000 They bring this little old lady in as a witness in what they call mitigation, a mitigation witness to say that Sox, the bank robber, had some good qualities. 0.97

02:19:09.000 She tells the story about how kind he was to her in the midst of this bank robbery.

02:19:14.000 And the judge gave him 10 years.

02:19:16.000 Wow.

02:19:17.000 So his kindness to the old lady and respecting the values of his father saved him 10 years.

02:19:23.000 And he was a great guy to do prison time with.

02:19:26.000 If you got to do time in prison, Sox was your kind of guy.

02:19:28.000 Fun.

02:19:29.000 And he lectured in my class and he talked about General Grandis Shiloh and he kept telling these guys, the motherfucker was a badass, dude!

02:19:36.000 LAUGHTER This guy was a badass, dude!

02:19:40.000 That's hilarious.

02:19:41.000 Yeah, there's good people that make bad choices.

02:19:43.000 Yeah.

02:19:44.000 Yeah, and we got to throw people away.

02:19:46.000 That's crazy.

02:19:47.000 There's so many people I'm sure that you met that have a lot of potential.

02:19:50.000 And I've met a lot of people that have been in jail that are amazing people.

02:19:53.000 Amazing people.

02:19:54.000 They're very resourceful, very enterprising, very smart.

02:19:56.000 One of my favorite guests that I've ever had on is Freeway Ricky Ross.

02:20:00.000 Tell me, is that the singer?

02:20:01.000 No.

02:20:02.000 No, it's the real one.

02:20:03.000 The real Ricky Ross who was selling cocaine, getting it from the government, and selling it in South Central Los Angeles, and not even knowing what he was a part of, funding the Contras versus the Sandinistas.

02:20:17.000 Holy shit!

02:20:18.000 No kidding, in the 80s.

02:20:19.000 The whole Oliver North thing.

02:20:20.000 Yeah, right.

02:20:20.000 That's Freeway Ricky Ross.

02:20:21.000 He was a legend.

02:20:22.000 He was making millions every week, every week, millions of dollars.

02:20:27.000 Couldn't read.

02:20:28.000 Right.

02:20:29.000 Couldn't read.

02:20:29.000 Was a tennis player, really good tennis player, but not good enough to be pro, but illiterate.

02:20:34.000 Goes to jail.

02:20:36.000 Becomes a lawyer in jail, teaches himself to read.

02:20:39.000 Was it state prison or federal prison?

02:20:41.000 I believe it was federal prison.

02:20:43.000 Yeah, okay.

02:20:43.000 I believe it was federal prison.

02:20:46.000 Goes to jail and finds out that, because he understands law, that they had used the three strikes rule incorrectly.

02:20:54.000 Oh.

02:20:54.000 And that it's supposed to be three separate incidents of felonies.

02:20:58.000 This was three felonies in one incident.

02:21:01.000 Yeah, right.

02:21:02.000 And so he got off.

02:21:03.000 Beautiful.

02:21:04.000 He got himself out of jail.

02:21:05.000 How long was he in?

02:21:06.000 Oh, he's in a long time.

02:21:07.000 How long is Freeway Ricky Ross in?

02:21:09.000 But he's the nicest guy.

02:21:11.000 He's funny.

02:21:12.000 He's like, you're telling me this guy didn't deserve a second chance?

02:21:16.000 He's a young kid surrounded by drug dealers.

02:21:16.000 Yes, exactly.

02:21:19.000 He's the only people that had any money.

02:21:21.000 Life sentence was reduced to 20 years.

02:21:23.000 I think he did 20 years.

02:21:24.000 Got out in 2009. Wow.

02:21:27.000 Where's he at now?

02:21:29.000 He's back in LA. He just did the podcast recently.

02:21:31.000 How long ago did he do it?

02:21:35.000 Was it last year?

02:21:37.000 I feel like it was this year.

02:21:38.000 Yeah, I know it was this year.

02:21:40.000 What month?

02:21:41.000 Six months ago.

02:21:42.000 Six months ago, yeah.

02:21:43.000 You know what I'd like to do with my new beginning?

02:21:45.000 Make enough money where we can have financial security for my family and my law.

02:21:49.000 I was making $62 a year every year for eight years, right?

02:21:55.000 I'm a lawyer.

02:21:56.000 I went to law school.

02:21:57.000 This is what I get from going to college in law school.

02:21:58.000 What do they pay you for in jail?

02:21:59.000 What do you get paid for?

02:22:01.000 I was a tutor for my first couple years in the higher prison.

02:22:05.000 And then when I got to the camp, you know, orderly where you mop floors, you sweep floors.

02:22:10.000 Worked in the library for a while.

02:22:11.000 I had all kinds of jobs.

02:22:12.000 Worked in the gym.

02:22:13.000 How rude is that?

02:22:14.000 They give you a dollar a day.

02:22:15.000 The worst job was in the kitchen.

02:22:17.000 And I write in the book about the day it looked like I was going to go home in August 2019. Trump was pulling me out.

02:22:23.000 But he's getting all this pushback from the politicians.

02:22:26.000 And he had a problem because he had called Zelensky in Ukraine.

02:22:30.000 And the Democrats were going to impeach him over that telephone call, which was absolutely the right thing for him to do. 0.97

02:22:35.000 Because there was evidence, videotape evidence of Joe Biden talking about Burisma and Hunter Biden, his son, and prosecuting, firing the prosecutor, or he's going to withhold a billion dollars of federal money, U.S. money, to Ukraine.

02:22:49.000 That's probably...

02:22:51.000 Perhaps probable cause of a crime, but it's at least reasonable enough for the chief law enforcement officer, the president, to ask this guy, would you look into it?

02:22:58.000 That's all he did, and they impeached him over it.

02:23:00.000 So now I'm on hold.

02:23:01.000 But when it looked like I was coming out, I was literally transferred out of my camp, and they said, you're going home, Trump's sending you out, sending you home.

02:23:11.000 I had to go back.

02:23:13.000 Understandably, Trump did the right thing for political purposes.

02:23:16.000 The White House did.

02:23:17.000 But they put me back in the kitchen.

02:23:20.000 One of the cops there felt like, who's this guy?

02:23:22.000 I think he is some special inmate because the president almost pulled him out.

02:23:26.000 We're going to show this asshole.

02:23:27.000 He ain't no big deal.

02:23:28.000 They put me back in the kitchen at 4 o'clock in the morning.

02:23:31.000 You got to be there.

02:23:32.000 You wake up at 3.30 washing pots and pans for eight hours a day.

02:23:35.000 They called me the governor of the dish pit.

02:23:38.000 Yeah, so that paid $5.25 a month.

02:23:44.000 That's so crazy!

02:23:46.000 But here's what I like to do.

02:23:47.000 I want to be successful, make money, things are good, have a best-selling book, maybe God willing, who knows.

02:23:52.000 I'd like to meet your guy Rick Ross and others, and I'd like to have a foundation that actually does something meaningful, like maybe some sort of vocational training, culinary training for inmates who are coming home, have no opportunities, to learn a skill that they don't teach in prison, but they should.

02:24:07.000 You should talk to Josh Dubin as well.

02:24:10.000 Yeah.

02:24:11.000 You'll help me get a hold of him?

02:24:12.000 Yes, absolutely.

02:24:13.000 I feel like that's my calling.

02:24:14.000 I feel I should do that.

02:24:16.000 Yeah, I'll connect you guys.

02:24:17.000 I love that guy to death.

02:24:18.000 And that's his main quest in life, you know, to help people.

02:24:23.000 And then he's got so many stories of these people getting out and doing incredible things and helping other people as well.

02:24:29.000 Turning it back around, giving it back, trying to work and educate these young guys and also trying to stop them from doing bad things.

02:24:37.000 Just give them some life skills so they can make good decisions instead of bad decisions.

02:24:43.000 Because some people are just...

02:24:44.000 There's a reality of being trapped by your circumstances.

02:24:47.000 And if you have not experienced that, and luckily I haven't, and I'm very fortunate, but there's a lot of people that do.

02:24:54.000 And to discount that is fucking crazy.

02:24:56.000 And we take people and we just put them in cages and we forget about them.

02:25:00.000 And it's convenient for us.

02:25:01.000 And just lock them up.

02:25:02.000 Just lock them.

02:25:03.000 Lock everybody up.

02:25:04.000 Stop locking people up.

02:25:05.000 What we need to do is understand that we lock more people up than anybody anywhere.

02:25:09.000 And it doesn't make us safer.

02:25:11.000 What we got to do is get to the root of why so many people are getting locked up.

02:25:15.000 Yeah, that's right.

02:25:16.000 And we've ignored that.

02:25:17.000 We've ignored that.

02:25:18.000 It's like we're constantly cutting cancerous tumors off.

02:25:21.000 We're not going, hey, why do we keep getting cancer?

02:25:23.000 Like, is there something we could do different?

02:25:26.000 There's a lot we could do different.

02:25:27.000 Think about just the money that we have sent to Ukraine.

02:25:31.000 Imagine if that money just went to rehabilitating the cities in North America.

02:25:34.000 There you go.

02:25:36.000 How much good could you do with $200 billion in America in a year?

02:25:41.000 You want to hear a real cynical thing about the Democratic Party?

02:25:44.000 Don't forget, I was a Democratic governor.

02:25:46.000 I was the first one to endorse Obama.

02:25:48.000 I supported Nancy Pelosi in the House, okay?

02:25:52.000 I support her stock trades.

02:25:53.000 Yeah, I didn't know about any of those.

02:25:55.000 Did you go to Pelosi's Stock Tracker?

02:25:57.000 No.

02:25:57.000 You ever seen it?

02:25:58.000 Oh, it's so good.

02:25:58.000 You're kidding.

02:25:59.000 Oh, my God.

02:25:59.000 Yeah.

02:26:00.000 I'm not really a stock market person.

02:26:00.000 No kidding.

02:26:02.000 I don't pay attention.

02:26:03.000 But I do know people that are very invested in the stock market.

02:26:07.000 And Pelosi's Stock Tracker is legit.

02:26:09.000 Like, you could find out what she's buying, and you should buy it.

02:26:13.000 That is really, really interesting.

02:26:16.000 She's a really good stockbroker, Rod.

02:26:19.000 I'm going to do that tomorrow because I told you.

02:26:20.000 She's super good at it. 1.00

02:26:22.000 I don't know how she has the time considering she's so busy serving the people. 1.00

02:26:26.000 But, you know, if she was just a pure stock trader, she'd probably be the biggest of all time. 0.98

02:26:32.000 She's that good.

02:26:33.000 Well, probably not.

02:26:35.000 Because she doesn't have the inside information she has.

02:26:37.000 She's a psychic.

02:26:37.000 No, no, no, no.

02:26:38.000 She's got talent.

02:26:40.000 She gets it.

02:26:41.000 She gets it.

02:26:41.000 I got you.

02:26:43.000 In any event, we were talking about what?

02:26:46.000 Criminal justice reform?

02:26:47.000 What were we talking about?

02:26:48.000 Oh, and the black community in particular, and the cynical part of the Democrat Party. 0.99

02:26:48.000 Yes. 0.99

02:26:52.000 And it really started here in Austin, from a guy from this area here in Austin, Texas, named Lyndon Johnson.

02:26:58.000 And there were so many good things about his Great Society programs, but he was motivated by politics.

02:27:04.000 Yes, there's poor people that we must help.

02:27:07.000 But it wasn't just that.

02:27:09.000 He said, this will ensure that we get the end vote for a whole generation.

02:27:13.000 We'll get the end vote.

02:27:14.000 He didn't say it like that.

02:27:15.000 He said the whole word.

02:27:17.000 And that's how the Democrats have approached the black community ever since.

02:27:21.000 And it's, yes, we'll help only so much, but we're not going to give the tools or the means to be able to have the same kind of chance and opportunity in the economy where you can actually get up and get out of the neighborhood, get out of the hood, get out of the poverty, and join the middle class, you know, have a business, those sorts of practical things that most everywhere else in America, we have those chances, but ironically, not in the black community, because the Democrats don't want to leave.

02:27:49.000 They cannot afford to lose.

02:27:51.000 90 to 95 percent of a safe vote for them if they're free.

02:27:55.000 Well, I think they lost a lot of it during this election.

02:27:58.000 Because a lot of black folks looked at all these illegal aliens that are coming in here getting all these benefits and getting put up in the Roosevelt Hotel and getting free food and getting EBT cards.

02:27:58.000 Some of it.

02:28:09.000 And they were like, what the fuck is this?

02:28:11.000 Like, what about us?

02:28:12.000 Like, there was a lot of people in Chicago that were up in arms about that.

02:28:15.000 Yes, very real.

02:28:17.000 Very right.

02:28:18.000 They're 100% correct.

02:28:20.000 This is like 100% evidence that these people who are pretending to be on your side don't give a fuck about you.

02:28:25.000 There you go.

02:28:26.000 That's the reality of it.

02:28:27.000 Now, if Trump can demonstrate that he gives a fuck, it'll change the whole narrative.

02:28:31.000 If he can do real things while he's in office, and he seems like a guy who's motivated to do real things.

02:28:38.000 If you could just get 10% less people winding up in jail, imagine what that is.

02:28:42.000 Imagine what that is.

02:28:43.000 10% more people that are contributing to society.

02:28:45.000 And that's a minor goal.

02:28:47.000 That's a totally doable thing.

02:28:49.000 That's not unrealistic at all.

02:28:51.000 But if you can get 10%, 10% probably would give birth to 20 or 30 eventually.

02:28:56.000 I think people would recognize like, oh, there's a path that I can get my children into that will give them a real secure future outside of this.

02:29:04.000 And then you've got to do something about law enforcement.

02:29:07.000 You've got to mitigate all the gang activity and violence.

02:29:10.000 You can't have people growing up thinking that violence is the way and that drug dealing is the way and shooting people is normal.

02:29:16.000 You can't let that flourish and grow.

02:29:19.000 You can't let that happen.

02:29:22.000 For whatever reason, have never fully addressed it.

02:29:26.000 They've never addressed it with the kind of resources that we address so many of our problems.

02:29:32.000 Because of the politics.

02:29:33.000 And the old Republican Party, they were fine with it.

02:29:36.000 Just let the black community be where it is. 1.00

02:29:38.000 Let the Democrats have all those votes, and we'll just scare the shit out of white suburbanites. 1.00

02:29:42.000 Tell them that those gangbangers on the south side of Chicago are coming out to your suburb, right?

02:29:46.000 And they get votes that way.

02:29:47.000 Trump is a very different guy, and he's rebuilding this Republican Party.

02:29:51.000 It's a political realignment, and he got more black votes than any Republican candidates gotten since 1976. He's still a long way from it.

02:29:58.000 Well, I think the whole he's racist narrative just died.

02:30:01.000 It is such an outrageous accusation by people that project because they're racist.

02:30:05.000 Some of these Democrat policies, they're dressed up as being pro-black, are fundamentally anti-black.

02:30:12.000 Look at the education issue.

02:30:14.000 Schools suck.

02:30:15.000 I went to public school in Chicago.

02:30:16.000 I wasn't exactly setting the world on fire.

02:30:18.000 Instead of making the schools better, they lower the standards.

02:30:20.000 And they just pump all kinds of money into it, and they need money.

02:30:23.000 But they don't deny a mother, a single mother with a young child in the black community, a chance to have some choice on where she might want to send her child to school.

02:30:32.000 So they're locked into that special interest politics and control of the teachers' unions that have that kind of influence.

02:30:38.000 There should be some real concerted effort to raise the standard of all schools, all of them, significantly.

02:30:47.000 And again, I keep going to Ukraine, but if we're a country that's like, what are we, a trillion dollars?

02:30:52.000 How many trillions of dollars in debt are we?

02:30:55.000 Whatever it is.

02:30:55.000 39 trillions?

02:30:56.000 Whatever crazy number that doesn't make sense in my head.

02:30:58.000 Whatever the number is.

02:30:59.000 Right.

02:31:00.000 We have so much money to send to all these countries in foreign aid.

02:31:03.000 We just gave a billion dollars to Africa in case they get hit by storms for natural disasters.

02:31:09.000 What?

02:31:10.000 How much would it cost?

02:31:12.000 How much would it cost to fix every school in the country?

02:31:15.000 How much would it cost?

02:31:16.000 It can't be done.

02:31:18.000 Okay.

02:31:19.000 Are you telling me it can't be done with $39 trillion?

02:31:22.000 If I gave you $39 trillion, do you think that you could fix every school in the country?

02:31:26.000 I bet you could.

02:31:27.000 I bet you have a lot of money left over.

02:31:28.000 Okay.

02:31:29.000 So let's forget the $39 trillion because that's ridiculous.

02:31:31.000 But what's the number?

02:31:34.000 How much would it actually cost to just with Like proper planning, a real strategy, and hire the best professionals you possibly can, compensate them well with a goal entirely focused on fixing the education system in America.

02:31:51.000 Taking our standing where we are internationally, which is very low now, and raising it back up to the top.

02:31:57.000 How do we do that?

02:31:58.000 How much would it cost?

02:32:00.000 Just help me out.

02:32:02.000 It's not insurmountable.

02:32:02.000 Help me out.

02:32:03.000 Like, if I said $39 trillion, you'd be like, yeah, you could definitely do it.

02:32:06.000 Yeah, you could definitely pay people so much money.

02:32:09.000 You can't do it for $39 trillion.

02:32:11.000 You know why?

02:32:11.000 Why?

02:32:12.000 Because there's all kinds of entrenched obstacles that won't let you do the necessary reforms to make the teachers teach the kids better.

02:32:17.000 Of course.

02:32:18.000 So money is a part of it, sure.

02:32:18.000 Okay?

02:32:21.000 But it is less of a part than actually...

02:32:24.000 Having some sort of system of accountability so that there's actually results.

02:32:30.000 Unfortunately, in the education system, at least in places like Chicago, for example, the public school system of which I come from, the priority of that union, the teachers' union, is less the children.

02:32:43.000 It's all about their members and the teachers.

02:32:45.000 And so they resist any kinds of changes that would maybe make for the classroom environment to be more conducive to teach a child.

02:32:53.000 Things like merit pay, which is controversial, but they resist even out of hand the chance that maybe you provide bonuses to teachers who are successful in raising up a child's test scores.

02:33:04.000 And then test scores alone aren't the best evidence of whether or not a child is learning.

02:33:07.000 So there's these are complicated things.

02:33:10.000 You have to have the money necessary to do it, but it doesn't have to be an astronomical sum.

02:33:14.000 They've got to change the way they are teaching our children.

02:33:16.000 And I think you can learn from other countries and see what other countries are doing successfully and try to bring that here.

02:33:21.000 The problem you get is the politics in America and the Democratic Party.

02:33:25.000 It's controlled by many different interest groups and the teachers unions, the education association.

02:33:34.000 Those unions have an unbelievable amount of sway and Democratic candidates are afraid of them, plus they need them to win.

02:33:42.000 So the complications are more administrative than they are money.

02:33:47.000 And the concern of taxpayers that you keep throwing money, good money after money that's not working, is a legitimate one.

02:33:53.000 Look, I could have done more on this issue when I was governor, when I had that power.

02:33:56.000 We put a lot of money to the schools, but it was hard for me to be able to get accountability in the politics of it.

02:34:02.000 So you think that even if there was some sort of a executive order or some sort of bill that gets passed where they concentrate entirely on raising the standard of education at whatever it costs, like this is a priority for our country.

02:34:19.000 The more people that we have that are highly educated, the less losers, the less crime, the less everything.

02:34:23.000 The more people participate, the better the dream gets, the more competition there is.

02:34:27.000 We all strive.

02:34:28.000 Rising tide lifts all boats.

02:34:30.000 Let's fucking go.

02:34:31.000 If they did that, you think the teachers union would be the biggest impediment to actual success?

02:34:31.000 I love it.

02:34:38.000 The teachers union would be the first place, but they see the way the special interest group in government, the special interest groups work in government is...

02:34:48.000 They build coalitions.

02:34:50.000 So the teachers union is a powerful group.

02:34:53.000 By themselves, they would have a hard time stopping that, but they would enlist the support of other groups that they have supported in some of their issues.

02:35:01.000 And suddenly you've got not just the teachers unions, but you got the AFL-CIO, you got, you know, the United Auto Workers, you got all these different unions lining up.

02:35:10.000 And then couple that with some of the, you know, some of the more progressive interest groups, the LGBTQ perhaps.

02:35:16.000 The women, you know, the pro-choice group, Planned Parenthood, those are organizations that have those alliances with the unions, even though their interests, their issues are far apart.

02:35:30.000 The concerns they have are very different, and they don't match up, but they've got these coalitions.

02:35:34.000 So you have to get over all of that in order to be successful, not to mention the fact that you've got You know, natural resistance to, you know, significant change.

02:35:42.000 But if you're looking for a place that's crying out for major reform, all you got to do is look at the performance of kids that come out of public schools and poor neighborhoods and say there's something really wrong here.

02:35:52.000 And it's black kids who are disproportionately getting screwed.

02:35:54.000 And then there's also the factor of they're growing up in crime-ridden neighborhoods and they're probably not getting enough nourishment.

02:36:02.000 There's a lot of factors that would also inhibit your ability to even absorb information, the stress and the trauma.

02:36:09.000 So what you really got to do is fix all that in cities.

02:36:12.000 That's another thing.

02:36:13.000 How much would it cost to significantly put a dent in crime in all cities and do it in a way where people didn't think you're sending the military in to clean up?

02:36:21.000 It's not a militarization of cities.

02:36:24.000 There's got to be a way to do it.

02:36:25.000 How much would it cost?

02:36:26.000 How much?

02:36:28.000 Put some of that money towards more police, and that's the other irony.

02:36:31.000 But you need that.

02:36:32.000 Gangbangers in Chicago outnumber police officers 75 to 1. And where's most of the crime?

02:36:37.000 It's in those poor black neighborhoods.

02:36:39.000 75 to 1. Yeah.

02:36:41.000 And the Democrats are...

02:36:43.000 You know, motherfucking cops and police.

02:36:45.000 So stupid.

02:36:46.000 But not in their neighborhoods is where the crime's taking place.

02:36:48.000 It's in those poor neighborhoods.

02:36:50.000 They're the victims of the crimes.

02:36:51.000 It's so upside down, it's so wrong.

02:36:53.000 But you know what's happened?

02:36:55.000 Because of the politics of things and their relationships, they've ignored or actually butchered common sense.

02:37:04.000 And one of the things about the Trump administration that offers hope is that there'll be a restoration of common sense in terms of its approach to things.

02:37:12.000 And one of the good things about this last election and with podcasts like yours and these other alternative places where people can get information is that you can think outside the box and start to do new things that are different as opposed to the same old things that give the same old results.

02:37:30.000 And I would suggest that if you want to stop crime and end the mass incarceration in America, educate the kids when they're young and give them a chance to have the skills they need so they can do something other than sell drugs.

02:37:42.000 Absolutely.

02:37:42.000 The question is, how would you do it?

02:37:44.000 If you were a part of the administration, if Donald Trump heard this conversation and said, you know what, I think he's right, and I think we can do something about it, what would you do?

02:37:54.000 On education or on something else?

02:37:56.000 Well, both of them are connected, right?

02:37:59.000 Crime and education, they're connected.

02:38:01.000 And the lowest income, most crime-ridden communities has the lowest education levels, right?

02:38:07.000 So they're inexorably connected.

02:38:10.000 You can't just deal with education without dealing with crime.

02:38:13.000 So you'd have to do both.

02:38:14.000 Right.

02:38:16.000 I think I'm an expert on the crime part of it, you know, because I've seen it from both sides.

02:38:21.000 I've lived in both places.

02:38:24.000 I think, you know, look, I'm happy to volunteer my services and to share my experience.

02:38:31.000 But I think on the issue of weaponized prosecutors and the corruption of the DOJ, I don't think anybody knows that subject better than me.

02:38:40.000 And I'm happy to provide any kind of free advice or suggestions I can have.

02:38:44.000 So that's the job you want?

02:38:46.000 But in addition to that, I would say...

02:38:47.000 What job would you take?

02:38:49.000 What's the dream one?

02:38:50.000 What's the dream conversation?

02:38:52.000 Well, it's not a job.

02:38:53.000 You ask me, what would I do?

02:38:55.000 Right.

02:38:55.000 What would I do?

02:38:56.000 But isn't there like a title that would allow you to do what you want to do?

02:38:58.000 I don't know, but I'll just say it isn't just that, though.

02:39:01.000 See, I think I can bring my own experience from the time I had in prison with my homies in there.

02:39:06.000 Like I said, yeah, most of them all did it.

02:39:08.000 You're like one of the few former governors with homies. 1.00

02:39:08.000 You have homies. 1.00

02:39:11.000 Like legit, you can say that unironically.

02:39:14.000 If my friend Spade, you know, Joe Nairmore is listening, shout out to Joe Nairmore or Walter Hill or G, Gregory Blalock, drug dealer from South Side of Chicago.

02:39:21.000 Imagine any other guy who is a former governor saying homies and having it be authentic.

02:39:27.000 Was it authentic?

02:39:28.000 100%.

02:39:29.000 You feel me, bro?

02:39:30.000 Yeah, like for real, a guy who hadn't done time to say my homies, like shut the fuck up.

02:39:35.000 Those guys you play pickleball with?

02:39:37.000 Shut up. 0.95

02:39:37.000 Yeah, right. 0.95

02:39:38.000 But you have actual homies. 1.00

02:39:40.000 Yeah, and I try to help them as much as I can now within my limited ability, but the way I can really help is I think I can bring a perspective on how merciless our criminal justice system is, and how we do have a country of mass incarceration, and how this woman, a black woman, wrote this best-selling book called The New Jim Crow, and how it's an excuse and a reason to discriminate against black people based upon their felony convictions.

02:40:07.000 How they go to prison, but they're not guided to actually learn the skills that they could use one day when they get out of prison.

02:40:13.000 All these things can be corrected.

02:40:15.000 I feel like I can be helpful in something like that.

02:40:17.000 I think you're the perfect person to ask this about, how do you feel about private prisons?

02:40:22.000 I don't know enough about all the details, but I'm very suspicious of that, the profit motive in private prisons.

02:40:30.000 For example, the commissary stuff, that's been privatized, things along those lines.

02:40:35.000 I don't know enough about that.

02:40:37.000 My feeling is probably not, but maybe you can do some version of that.

02:40:43.000 By contracting out to some private companies to come in and educate inmates, which might be interesting.

02:40:49.000 Bring some private companies in that could teach vocational training, particularly culinary skills, which is very much something where you can get out of prison and have a chance to get a job, maybe get your own restaurant, start your own business.

02:41:02.000 Practical things.

02:41:03.000 Privatize some of that, that might be worthwhile.

02:41:05.000 That could work.

02:41:06.000 But as it is right now, government doing it, they're not doing it.

02:41:09.000 By the way, if you want an argument against, you know, socialized medicine, and I believe healthcare is a human right, and I believe I was the healthcare governor, I frankly think, Joe, even though I'm the only governor impeached in Illinois history, and they won't even let my portrait up there in the state capitol, I'm the only one.

02:41:24.000 Really?

02:41:24.000 I feel like I was the best governor in Illinois history for the shit that I did for regular people.

02:41:28.000 Healthcare for every child, free public transportation for our seniors, for the disabled.

02:41:32.000 Mammograms and pap smears for underserved women.

02:41:34.000 And if we find cancer, we get it treated and save their lives.

02:41:38.000 This thing called open road tolling where commuters can go without, you know, having to pay tolls.

02:41:42.000 They've got a transponder where they can go all across the country.

02:41:44.000 We're the first in the country to do that.

02:41:46.000 All kinds of stuff where an average citizen says, this governor did this for me.

02:41:51.000 I can't think of a fucking thing any of my other governors have ever done for anybody I know.

02:41:55.000 If you can think about, you know, what has Governor X done for me that I feel in real life?

02:42:00.000 So I think I did those things.

02:42:03.000 But to brag on myself, I just got off message.

02:42:06.000 What were we talking about?

02:42:08.000 Well, we were talking about what would you do?

02:42:10.000 Yeah.

02:42:11.000 What would be your dream job?

02:42:13.000 Helping along the lines of that, and again, even volunteering.

02:42:16.000 But you were talking about criminal justice reform, because who would know about it more than you?

02:42:20.000 Correct.

02:42:21.000 That makes a lot of sense.

02:42:21.000 Yeah.

02:42:23.000 You've got to go to Congress.

02:42:24.000 You've got to change those laws.

02:42:25.000 You've got to undo some of those guidelines, because these judges are required by law to whack a guy. 0.99

02:42:31.000 Because he fits certain criteria, but they don't look at the other stuff in his life, that this guy's never had a crime before, that he's got a family, that he's actually done good works.

02:42:40.000 Those things are taken into consideration when they have these guidelines that the judges have to follow.

02:42:46.000 They were pushed by prosecutors to give them the tools to go after criminal behavior.

02:42:52.000 How much of an effort, once you actually get inside, is there to rehabilitate you?

02:42:58.000 Almost none.

02:43:00.000 Maybe none at all.

02:43:02.000 It's adult babysitting.

02:43:02.000 None.

02:43:04.000 But is it all self-motivated?

02:43:06.000 If you do want to improve yourself, it's self-motivated.

02:43:08.000 Yeah.

02:43:08.000 And there's resources where you can do that.

02:43:11.000 I mean, there are places where you can learn not enough vocational stuff, not nearly enough.

02:43:16.000 But you can do that.

02:43:17.000 But there's no guidance in terms...

02:43:19.000 Do you get counseling?

02:43:21.000 So that is guidance in some way.

02:43:21.000 Counseling, yes.

02:43:23.000 Not really.

02:43:23.000 No?

02:43:24.000 I mean, like guidance, what?

02:43:25.000 They don't teach you anything.

02:43:27.000 They'll, you know...

02:43:28.000 Well, in your situation, you...

02:43:30.000 But they didn't teach the other guys.

02:43:31.000 I mean, I know enough about that to know that they weren't getting any kind of guidance.

02:43:36.000 The counselors are just giving you guidance on how to deal with the world we're in.

02:43:40.000 You know, that place.

02:43:42.000 And also no motivation to try to improve yourself or to figure out why you got in there.

02:43:46.000 Yeah, there's some motivation.

02:43:47.000 So, for example, I'm sitting at Jailhouse Rock before 110 inmates who the day before I see in the yard are all muscled up.

02:43:55.000 They're all big muscle guys.

02:43:56.000 They got tats all over, right?

02:43:57.000 And they got interesting hairstyles.

02:43:59.000 You know, some of them, Fu Manchu, you know, they look like Genghis Khan, some of them, right?

02:44:04.000 You got these racist Nazi guys with swastikas tatted on them, right?

02:44:09.000 And they're all of a sudden on this particular day, they're wearing caps and gowns.

02:44:13.000 And here me, the former governor of Illinois, once thought about, believe it or not, as a presidential candidate, I'm about to sing Jailhouse Rock to these guys, right?

02:44:21.000 The warden's there.

02:44:24.000 Oh my God, that's so crazy.

02:44:25.000 We had practiced for a year, because there was a way to get your bind out of prison was embracing music, and they have a music room there with good acoustics and there was a guy who was I had the head of the music department, an inmate.

02:44:36.000 A drug dude who went to Berkeley, the music school in Boston.

02:44:41.000 Really great musician.

02:44:42.000 His name's Ernie.

02:44:43.000 I don't want to say his last name to embarrass him.

02:44:44.000 Great guy.

02:44:45.000 He was like my music mentor.

02:44:47.000 And I learned that if you practice singing, I'm not a singer, but you can actually improve.

02:44:51.000 And it was like a way where we would practice for hours a day where I wasn't in prison for those five hours.

02:44:57.000 I was focusing on trying to get good at something.

02:45:00.000 Right?

02:45:00.000 Right.

02:45:01.000 So there we are a year later.

02:45:02.000 We had auditioned and won the gig for the Jailhouse Rockers to perform before the GED graduates.

02:45:08.000 And there's the warden, all the brass in the prison, 110 of these badass guys.

02:45:12.000 They had an outside guest speaker to give a motivational speech.

02:45:16.000 I'm stepping up about to sing my first song by Clint Black called A Better Man, you know?

02:45:21.000 Leave in here a better man.

02:45:23.000 You ever hear that song?

02:45:24.000 Country song.

02:45:25.000 I don't know if I have.

02:45:25.000 Yeah.

02:45:26.000 Yeah.

02:45:26.000 But before I do, I catch the warden, and I had been told sometime before that the warden has the power in a federal prison under certain circumstances where he could actually release an inmate without the court.

02:45:38.000 And in one particular case, some guy was slicing up another inmate, almost killed him, and a third inmate intervened and stopped the fight and saved the guy's life.

02:45:49.000 The aggressor got more criminal charges against him and got sent to an even higher prison.

02:45:55.000 The victim, thank goodness, survived.

02:45:57.000 Fucked up.

02:45:58.000 He was bloodied up and all of that.

02:46:00.000 The third party that intervened, the peacemaker, saved a life.

02:46:04.000 The warden sent him home.

02:46:05.000 Wow.

02:46:06.000 He had the power to do that.

02:46:07.000 So I was told this.

02:46:08.000 Now suddenly I'm about to sing jailhouse rock, right?

02:46:11.000 There he is.

02:46:13.000 I figure, I think I'll go off the program and live a little bit.

02:46:16.000 Because I've been on stage before, I know how to do that.

02:46:18.000 So I look at the warden and I say, I'd like to dedicate this song to the warden.

02:46:22.000 Please release me, let me go.

02:46:26.000 Because I don't want to be here anymore.

02:46:29.000 Right?

02:46:30.000 That's hilarious.

02:46:31.000 Nobody laughed.

02:46:32.000 Really?

02:46:32.000 Nobody laughed.

02:46:33.000 The warden's staring at me.

02:46:35.000 All the inmates don't know what to make of it.

02:46:36.000 They were afraid to laugh, you know.

02:46:39.000 That's hilarious.

02:46:40.000 But GED is one way where you can get a reduction.

02:46:44.000 You can get good time.

02:46:45.000 So you can spend a little less time in prison.

02:46:47.000 I'll give you maybe, I don't know, several months or maybe a year off your sentence or something.

02:46:53.000 So there are some incentives.

02:46:54.000 Okay.

02:46:54.000 Yeah.

02:46:55.000 Something like that.

02:46:56.000 There should be more of that.

02:46:58.000 Yeah.

02:46:58.000 Listen, man, you had a wild life, and I'm glad you're out.

02:47:03.000 Thank you.

02:47:03.000 And I'm glad I listened to you on Tucker, and I got a different sense of who you were than what the narrative was that I saw over the media.

02:47:09.000 Obviously, I don't know what happened, but I think you're a good dude, and I enjoyed talking to you.

02:47:14.000 I appreciate you, Joe.

02:47:15.000 God bless you, and congratulations on your great success.

02:47:17.000 Thank you.

02:47:17.000 God bless you, too.

02:47:18.000 And this book, is it done?

02:47:21.000 Is it almost done?

02:47:22.000 Do you have a publisher?

02:47:23.000 We kind of glossed over that a little bit.

02:47:25.000 Yeah, so it's Vindication Publishing, my own little publishing company.

02:47:28.000 I pre-sold 8,000 books, so far so good.

02:47:30.000 The reason I have to do it myself is the New York publishers don't like the good Trump stuff.

02:47:35.000 Do you have an audio version that you're going to do?

02:47:38.000 I'm going to do an audio version.

02:47:39.000 You'll do it, right?

02:47:40.000 Absolutely.

02:47:40.000 Okay.

02:47:40.000 Alright, thank you.

02:47:43.000 Thank you very much.

The Joe Rogan Experience - December 18, 2024

Joe Rogan Experience #2245 - Rod Blagojevich

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript