This Past Weekend with Theo Von - #592

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00:01:04.220 We're coming into the last few dates for Return of the Rat Tour. We'll be in Philadelphia,

00:01:09.060 Rochester, New York, Detroit, Michigan, Los Angeles, Anaheim, and Oceanside. You can get your

00:01:15.860 tickets only at Theovan.com slash T-O-U-R. And thank you to everyone that has shown support.

00:01:22.900 Love y'all. Wanted to mention that Governor Tim Walls was going to be a guest on the podcast this

00:01:28.480 week, but there was a shooting amongst some of his co-workers, colleagues, Minnesota lawmakers.

00:01:38.000 And so they're obviously very bereaved up there, and we wish them peace and prayers and hope to

00:01:45.260 catch up with him another time. Just advising that this episode was recorded late last week.

00:01:52.300 I was on tour, and so we couldn't get it all put together, but we're happy to get it out today.

00:01:58.700 Today's guest is a congressman from Kentucky's 4th District. He is from Appalachia, and he got a

00:02:06.340 master's degree at MIT before he got into politics. He's a member of the Republican Party, but he's a bit

00:02:12.880 of a rogue guy. He does things his own way, and I'm fortunate today to spend time with Congressman

00:02:19.720 Thomas Massey.

00:02:38.060 All right, Thomas Massey, thanks for coming in, man.

00:02:41.660 Absolutely.

00:02:42.320 Good to see you, dude.

00:02:43.480 Good to be here. Just had to cross the state border to get here.

00:02:46.340 Yeah, that's what I see from Kentucky. And you drove, like, you just took me into your

00:02:51.480 home, in your camper home vehicle.

00:02:55.220 It's a F-250 with a truck camper, and I lived for two solid years in it in D.C., still occasionally

00:03:01.840 do.

00:03:02.940 And where would you park that thing at?

00:03:04.700 Well, I don't want to disclose where I park, but I did get in trouble. I parked the truck camper.

00:03:11.000 It's a super duty. It's got a, even though it fits in the back of a pickup, it's got a shower,

00:03:15.400 bathroom, stove, and a fridge.

00:03:16.860 Oh, it felt super when I was in there. That living arrangement in there, I could have definitely

00:03:20.700 cozied up. It felt very cool. The milk felt cold in there. We had a little cup of milk,

00:03:25.140 which is definitely raw milk.

00:03:27.140 Yeah, I'm sure. Hopefully.

00:03:29.160 Don't tell anybody across state lines with that. But, so here's a funny story. I was parking this

00:03:34.560 truck camper in D.C. in a congressional lot, and it got hotter than the hinges of hell in the

00:03:40.900 summertime in this parking lot. So, I ran a little extension cord over to the electric car charging

00:03:45.900 station so I could run the air conditioner on my camper at night. Well, the cops liked to park.

00:03:52.160 They didn't know I was living in this camper, and I would park close to a sprinter van, and the cops

00:03:56.900 would park between me and the sprinter van to take a nap at night.

00:04:00.480 Oh, so everybody's working together.

00:04:02.080 Yeah. I would look out the camper and do a wellness check on them at night. They didn't know I was

00:04:06.380 looking out for them. But anyways, one night- That's diplomacy. It's how it all works. It's like

00:04:10.400 everybody's kind of hiding a little bit behind the other group.

00:04:13.120 One night, it was like that movie Bridge Over the River Kwai. They found my 50-foot extension cord

00:04:17.920 and followed it over to the electric car charging station. They said, damn, there's somebody living

00:04:23.160 in this truck. So, my chief of staff got a call from the speaker's chief of staff, and he said,

00:04:29.380 we think your boss is living in Lot 28. And he said, what do you mean? In a pickup truck.

00:04:34.900 And I told my chief, don't call him back. Let me settle this. So, we have a don't ask,

00:04:40.140 don't tell arrangement. As long as I don't start a KOA or something in the congressional lot,

00:04:45.780 I can live there.

00:04:46.620 If the cops are getting a little bit of shut-eye, you know what I'm saying?

00:04:49.320 Yeah.

00:04:49.560 You're able to operate a grill, you know, or a little two-stroke motor in there,

00:04:53.120 something to keep the blender working.

00:04:54.300 Well, you know, I got to mix my medical margaritas in there and keep the raw milk cold. So,

00:05:00.220 what I eventually did was cover it in solar panels and took off the old air conditioner

00:05:04.940 and put a mini-split on the back. So, it looks like the Millennial Falcon now.

00:05:08.940 Oh, yeah. It definitely looks like the guy that's in there. It definitely seemed like you want to

00:05:13.520 get his fingerprints. That has a CODIS vibe outside of it, you know? But that's, isn't it? A lot of

00:05:20.040 your vibe is that you're off the grid. I've heard that.

00:05:21.860 Yeah. Off the grid, in the camper, and off the grid at home. So, I haven't bought public

00:05:27.960 utilities in 20 years.

00:05:29.720 Wow.

00:05:30.300 And that, you know, that kind of ties into when I go to D.C., that gives me some independence.

00:05:35.300 Because if all, if everything goes to hell, and I'm no longer a congressman, and I don't have a job,

00:05:41.340 I still got a house where all my own utilities are taken care of. It runs off solar, got a backup

00:05:47.940 generator, got a well that I dug. And it just gives you the sense that, okay, things, the worst day in

00:05:55.660 Kentucky is better than my best day in D.C.

00:05:57.820 Hmm. And this is you right here? This is some, oh, this is you right here?

00:06:01.780 Yeah. Yeah, that's one of my gardens, and there's some of my chickens clucking around.

00:06:06.520 Oh, yeah.

00:06:07.500 I built a mobile pen that moves with the chickens to keep the coyotes from eating them. Now,

00:06:14.120 it's like a Roomba. Think of a Roomba with 50 chickens in it.

00:06:17.220 Okay.

00:06:17.560 Moving around in my yard. It runs on solar, collects grain water, and it takes care of my

00:06:21.940 chickens when I'm not there.

00:06:23.140 And what makes it move? How does that even work? Bring that up, Trevin. Can you get me so we can

00:06:26.720 see what I'm looking at?

00:06:27.820 I don't have any footage of it on here, but I call it, so it first ran off batteries and a solar

00:06:34.120 panel, and the batteries went dead. And I'm like, this sucks. I don't like taking batteries to a

00:06:37.980 landfill because I was trying to come up with a green way to raise chickens. So I figured out a

00:06:42.400 way to do it with super capacitors. There's no battery in it, and the super capacitors never wear

00:06:47.140 out. And I call it the Clux capacitor.

00:06:50.180 Is this kind of an example?

00:06:51.280 Yeah, that's what it's like, except, yeah, except mine moves itself. Mine's like a Roomba version that's

00:06:56.120 robotic.

00:06:56.820 And so what is the point of it moving?

00:06:59.300 Well, you know, chickens poop, and you don't want them walking around in their own poop.

00:07:04.100 Oh, yeah.

00:07:04.700 They also like to eat a certain amount of grass and bugs. And so this gives them fresh forage,

00:07:09.580 and it keeps them out of their poop. They don't get disease. It fertilizes my yard. It mows my grass.

00:07:14.540 Everything's all happy in the Clux capacitor.

00:07:18.060 I got a good damn chicken, dude. Or a little batch of chickens. I got to get something. I almost bought

00:07:23.080 my mom two goats, but she like, for years, she's like, give me some goats. And then she didn't want

00:07:28.780 it. She just has a problem with everything. But anyway, so what is a flux capacitor?

00:07:34.240 Clux capacitor.

00:07:35.140 Okay, what is an actual, what is a...

00:07:36.520 It's the circuit that I designed. So I'm a EE electrical engineer by training. And I just had

00:07:44.080 to come up with some way to keep my chickens alive and keep them healthy while I went to DC. So I came

00:07:48.420 up with this circuit board that's got capacitors that trickle charge from a little solar panel the

00:07:54.280 size of a sheet of paper. And it's got an automotive winch in the front. So it can pull itself even if it

00:08:00.800 weighs 2,500 pounds along a cable.

00:08:03.860 So you don't have, you don't pay an electric bill?

00:08:06.180 No electric bill, no water bill, no sewer bill. I do have an internet bill because I use Starlink.

00:08:11.560 Oh yeah. And is that legal? Are you allowed to legally be a person like that?

00:08:16.100 Well, you know, they tried to bring more regulation to our county 20 years ago before I was a congressman

00:08:21.800 and I wrote letters to the editor and mobilized people and we stopped them from bringing more

00:08:25.780 regulation to our county. So it's still legal where I live.

00:08:29.020 Wow. Cause this is, it seems like a very like libertarian or almost like demo, like a lot of

00:08:34.160 the ideas seem almost very like something you would see like on the democratic party, which sounds kind

00:08:37.780 of wild, you know? Oh, I say I'm the greenest member of Congress and no Democrat has come after

00:08:42.980 me. No fact checker has ever tried to check that fact cause they know it's true. Wow. It's kind of

00:08:48.220 crazy that the greenest member, you know, with the term greens is now a Republican cause you wouldn't

00:08:52.720 necessarily think that. No, you wouldn't think that. I mean, I have a Tesla that charges off the solar

00:08:57.740 panels on my house, uh, collect rainwater. I dug a well, I've got a bunch of trees that I'm not

00:09:04.920 cutting down. They are bringing in all kinds of CO2. Although I like CO2. I wish I had more

00:09:10.520 because it makes my peaches get bigger on my farm. Uh, my, I raise grass fed cattle.

00:09:16.300 And what kind of, what kind of group do you have helping you over there? Cause I don't think you

00:09:19.640 can't get out there first thing every day and do it all.

00:09:21.740 I do it myself. 90% of it. I mean, if I'm in DC and the cattle get loose, I got a neighbor,

00:09:28.840 you know, you got to have some neighbors that'll help you. And the deal is I'll help them when they

00:09:33.160 need help. Oh, there's a picture of my cattle. They are Angus crossed with Wagyu. I call them

00:09:38.420 Wangus. Oh, wow.

00:09:40.200 Wangus beef.

00:09:41.200 It's a little, oh yeah. It's a little urban over there. Definitely. That's definitely, uh,

00:09:45.240 there's, there's the, you know, not the black sheep, but the white cow. Uh, he kind of stands out.

00:09:50.300 I say, I feel like that white cow in DC some days that like, do I really belong in this herd?

00:09:56.520 Yeah. Yeah. You seem like a little bit of like an outsider, I think like, or, you know,

00:10:00.160 like a black sheep or like a maverick. I feel like people say, if they talk about a maverick

00:10:04.180 and they say Thomas Massey, you know, um, how much money do you save by living the way that you do

00:10:10.060 like off grid?

00:10:11.020 You know, I don't think I've saved a dime. It costs a lot to do it. Uh, you can save money by heating

00:10:16.700 your house with wood, which I do, but you, if you start counting the, uh, how much you're paying

00:10:22.840 yourself when you chop that wood, it's probably about $3 an hour. Right. And I could go work a

00:10:27.700 dollar general and make more money than I do when I save money, heat my house with wood. So if I were

00:10:33.220 completely, you know, poor, I could keep living, but to set all that up took, took a large investment.

00:10:39.920 It will probably pay off by the time I die. So you just want to end the book with zero. Yeah.

00:10:45.260 Yeah. Just clear the tab. When I leave the bar, no debt, no debt. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you always

00:10:50.340 wonder like, okay, I want to live off the grid. I want to, but there's a, there's a real cost to it.

00:10:54.420 But a lot of that cost is sweat equity. Do you feel like?

00:10:57.040 Yeah. It's sweat equity and it'll, it'll pay back unlike what we're doing in DC. I mean,

00:11:02.860 if we were borrowing money in DC to fund the future, I could be for borrowing money. The problem is up

00:11:09.300 there. It's not like on my farm where you invest in fences and you invest in livestock in DC, we're

00:11:15.820 just pissing away the money and living on basically our seed corn. We are taking what should be saved

00:11:23.460 for the next generation and spending it now. Is that how you feel? Yeah. It's we're robbing

00:11:28.420 the next generation, but it's got so bad. We're robbing ourselves five years from now. Right. It's

00:11:33.520 getting that close. Yeah. I've heard you talk about, are you talking about the national debt overall?

00:11:36.860 Okay. I've heard you talk a lot about it and I see you got your,

00:11:38.860 um, this is my, my debt badge. Um, it shows I've got three levels of brightness. So if you wear it

00:11:45.440 to the movies, you can tone it down and not blind your date, but okay. So I've got on the brightest

00:11:50.520 level there. Hopefully your camera can see it. Yeah. Um, I wear this every second I'm in the house

00:11:55.880 of representatives. I wear it in hearings. I wear it in elevators with Democrats. They think it's how

00:12:01.100 many steps I've taken, but I built this using my electrical engineering degree. I came up with this idea

00:12:07.540 and I built it. It's got wifi once a day, it connects to the treasury.gov and calibrates to

00:12:14.040 the penny. So it's the most accurate debt, uh, representation that you can have. In fact,

00:12:20.220 you know, it's, um, let me make sure like Mark Zucker twain. This, this is, I brought you one

00:12:26.000 as a gift. Yeah, brother. So, uh, hell yeah, dude. You can just stare at the numbers, just

00:12:32.860 spinning all day long. It's, um, it's an, yeah, just clips onto your pocket. What kind of woman am I

00:12:37.980 going to meet wearing this though? Man, I don't know what kind you've been meeting, but you've really

00:12:41.940 upped your game with that thing. You think? Yeah. They're going to think I am way broke.

00:12:46.320 I had, I had a female congressman staring at my chest, uh, the other day and I had to tell her

00:12:52.520 my eyes were up here. And then she asked if I would make a belt buckle out of it.

00:12:57.460 Oh, damn brother. Yeah. People want it all nowadays. People just want to see your damn

00:13:02.100 wiener if they can for free. Sometimes I'm like, get away from me. Um, but let's talk about the

00:13:07.820 national debt. Actually. Uh, cause can you explain it to me? A lot of people don't even

00:13:11.980 understand the national debt. We hear about it. What is the amount right now too?

00:13:15.360 Well, we don't even really know. I mean, this is the regime number. The one that treasury publishes

00:13:20.580 is 36.2 trillion, roughly trillion dollars. Yeah. Now you see this one online. It's not that

00:13:27.340 accurate. Like it's off by a few hundred billion. We, we were shipping these debt clocks. I don't make

00:13:34.280 them, but my son-in-law makes them and sells them. And he had somebody go online and find this debt

00:13:38.840 counter and say, Oh, you sold me a faulty debt badge. And he's like, no, it's ours calibrates

00:13:43.740 with treasury every day. It's so sad that we can't even get a deal. Even our debt clock doesn't even

00:13:48.400 like at least invest in the fucking clock that shows the debt, right? Well, what they might be

00:13:54.760 trying to do there online is anticipate when we lift the debt limit. Like right now we've hit the debt

00:14:01.780 limit. So it's stuck at 36.2 trillion dollars every day. They sort of reset the number until

00:14:08.120 Congress raises the debt limit. Now you say, how did they do that? Well, they start selling off the

00:14:13.720 postal workers pension fund. They take the money that's been saved up to pay your postman his

00:14:19.100 retirement. And they use that to fund other parts of the government. They can only do that for a few

00:14:24.840 months. And that's what we've been doing for the first six months of this presidency. And pretty soon

00:14:30.000 we're going to run out of all those extra things we can spend. That we're leveraging basically. Yeah,

00:14:34.840 we're leveraging all that and they're going to have to pay it all back. So we're really probably

00:14:38.980 are closer to 36.6 or 36.8 trillion. And, but is that a common practice like leveraging like pensions

00:14:47.200 or I don't want to say like Medicaid and Medicare, they're not leveraging that, right? Oh, anything they

00:14:51.760 can get their hands on. They liquidate it and they spend it, for instance, to buy bombs and send them

00:14:57.260 overseas. That all that deficit spending right now is not funded by treasury bonds. That all the new

00:15:03.820 deficit spending is funded by, you know, the, the, the trust funds that have been established that

00:15:10.900 might have money in them. Okay. I'm a little confused on that. Um, well, it's like, it's,

00:15:16.260 it's like this, the, uh, let's say you saved up for your kids, uh, college. Okay. They've been going to

00:15:24.200 college and you got enough to pay the next semester of college. Uh, but your credit card

00:15:29.240 comes in and the, your credit card gets canceled. So instead of renewing your credit card, you just

00:15:35.360 spend your kids, you know, next tranche of tuition or something, but you got to find that money before

00:15:40.220 the next semester comes back or else they get kicked out of school. Okay. And so how do we find

00:15:44.760 that money? Like, cause obviously we repeatedly, well, Congress is going to pass a law here in the next

00:15:49.880 few weeks and, uh, and they're just going to say, Oh, well, there is no debt limit. It's now

00:15:55.660 $5 trillion higher than what we said. They move the limit up. They move the limit up. They get a

00:15:59.900 new credit card. They go out, they start borrowing new money to pay off the money they borrowed.

00:16:04.960 And it's a vicious cycle. Got it. And it's obviously it's a cycle that we've been in for a

00:16:08.360 long time. I think to the point where like the, uh, national debt doesn't even make sense to people,

00:16:13.360 right? It's like, here's my question is who do we owe the money to? Some of it is owed to

00:16:19.000 institutional investors like the big banks in the United States. Some of it is owed to sovereign

00:16:24.780 wealth funds like China, Japan, other, uh, countries that buy our debt for us. Um, it's,

00:16:32.640 and here's, here's the problem right now. They're telling us, um, we don't want to buy your debt at

00:16:40.240 2% or 3% or 4%. We want at least 5% return. And so everybody thinks the federal reserve is setting

00:16:47.420 interest rates. You know, there's all this discussion. Will the fed raise the rate? Will

00:16:50.680 the fed lower the rate? The reality right now is the fed can't do much because if they lower the

00:16:56.200 rate to, let's say 4%, the, that, and try to tell people to buy our debt at 4%, the people who

00:17:02.880 normally buy our debt, those foreign countries and those institutional investors are saying,

00:17:06.640 you're not a good investment at 4%. We want 5%. And, um, that's, that's a big problem because just to

00:17:13.980 put it in perspective on, you know, let's, let's round this number. If it were $30 trillion and we

00:17:20.120 were paying 5%, that's, that's, uh, that is $16,000 per family. I've already done the math. I'm not

00:17:29.700 doing all that in my head right now, but it's $16,000 per family of interest that we are paying.

00:17:36.140 Got it.

00:17:36.480 So when you pay your taxes for your family, the first $16,000 goes to nothing except for the interest

00:17:43.680 that's paid to those foreign countries and to the big bankers.

00:17:46.480 But we're never going to defeat this number.

00:17:49.420 Um, you know, we might get in a situation like Puerto Rico got into a few years ago where the

00:17:54.100 people said, we're just not loaning you anymore. And you know what happens that day? It's actually

00:17:57.980 kind of a, it'll be scary for a lot of people. For me, it would be a good day because that's the

00:18:03.920 day we have to balance the budget. When people say, we're not going to loan you any more money,

00:18:07.640 you're not a good investment. We don't trust that you'll pay it back. That is the day that

00:18:11.980 you can only spend as much money as you take in on any given week.

00:18:16.980 And are a lot of people in Congress aware of this and like battling it, or it just seems like it's

00:18:21.960 almost seems like we don't even hear about like, it seems like it's one of those things you hear

00:18:24.800 about during the election cycle. And that's about it. You know, uh, like we're going to balance the

00:18:29.620 budget and it never happened. No one ever balances the budget. Like, do you think anyone, even either

00:18:35.380 one of these parties even want to balance the budget?

00:18:37.680 No, they're not serious about it. It's why I built the debt badge to like shove it in their

00:18:41.820 face every day. And it's still, they're still not concerned about it. I mean, they're a little

00:18:47.020 bit concerned, but as long as they can get reelected, they're not that concerned.

00:18:51.340 Right.

00:18:51.800 And I don't blame them for all of it. I blame the American people who keep reelecting people

00:18:58.420 who, because they tell them you can have these things and it won't cost anything.

00:19:03.100 So I, I hear people talk about like, uh, mass deportations and there's a hundred billion to

00:19:09.700 DHS and, uh, and, uh, 50 billion to DOJ to do mass deportations. Well, we know we, it's not,

00:19:17.720 it doesn't cost that whatever Trump has intended to do. It's not going to cost $150 billion, but

00:19:22.920 people say, I don't care what it costs. And the reason they say, I don't care what it costs

00:19:27.940 is they don't think they're paying it.

00:19:29.400 Yeah. They don't care what anything costs. They don't care what war in the middle East costs

00:19:33.940 because they don't see that they're paying it.

00:19:36.560 Well, it's all gotten so confusing. And when you, when you start with communication with

00:19:40.280 people, even on a financial front of this Hogwartsian number, when you start, cause we

00:19:46.520 all learn basic math in school. Some of us learn algebra, some of us going to learn some higher

00:19:50.640 maths. Right. Um, but the, when you, when you starting with this, we, the regular person doesn't

00:19:56.240 know where to begin. You feel literally like numerically defeated out of the gate, right?

00:20:01.780 The average person, because it's like, how, what do you do? It's impossible. So this sets

00:20:07.800 everything up with impossibility, right? So I think that's why we've gotten so far, we've

00:20:13.400 gotten, you know, two generations now into complete impossibility of, uh, of, of numerical

00:20:19.380 reality when it comes to even having some of the discussions, I think. Does that make any

00:20:23.080 sense? No, that makes sense. It's virtual reality. Uh, right. You did the last five

00:20:27.400 digits on this deck counter. Uh, they change about $80,000 a second. That's like a cyber

00:20:33.580 truck being launched into the ocean every second, like boom, boom, boom, boom. That's how much

00:20:40.920 debt we're taking on. Well, so the, I hope the new model looks a little bit different. I have

00:20:44.880 a cyber truck, but, and the, yeah. And the camper in it, Oh, I don't know if we can fit it

00:20:50.440 in there. I don't think so. That's why I have it. F two 50 dude. Yeah. I think I need to get

00:20:54.380 something that fucking, I want something that it feels like it'll, you'll burn to death when you

00:20:58.320 hit something, you know what I'm saying? That's what I like about something that's got some real

00:21:01.600 fuel in it, but this thing, yeah, this thing definitely, there's one with a camper, but I think

00:21:06.300 the new Orleans will have camp, like better camper abilities. There's no way to get out of the

00:21:10.600 inside, like through the back window right now. Um, and it kind of feels like you just work for

00:21:15.280 Lowe's, but you never drop off what you're delivering. You're always like, where does

00:21:19.300 this go? You know, like how much meats in here? It just has that very like a whirlpool or frigid

00:21:24.860 air kind of energy, but it does go very fast. You almost feel like you could beat an email

00:21:29.420 somewhere like that bitch is fast, dude. Um, the big, let's, let's talk, since we're talking

00:21:35.000 about debt, let's talk a little bit about the, uh, the big, beautiful bill. Right. And it,

00:21:40.700 you, you oppose it. Yeah. Right. And there's reasons that I've learned recently that I

00:21:44.980 oppose it. I don't know a ton of them, but there's, I know some of my reasons, but I don't

00:21:48.720 know what everything that's in the bill. Um, why are you against it? Because, um, it's, well,

00:21:54.100 it's, it's not going to help our debt. No, that that's the first big lie that's told about the

00:21:59.940 big, beautiful bill. You can finagle the numbers. The big, beautiful bill looks at a 10 year spending

00:22:06.380 window. Okay. And what it does is in the next five years, it's going to add to the deficit. Like

00:22:11.780 nobody disputes that even the number of crunchers that work for the president know that's going to

00:22:16.580 happen. What they're claiming is five years from now, it will start to break even and reduce the

00:22:23.200 deficit. Uh, the problem is the people I serve with, a lot of them aren't going to be there five

00:22:29.800 years from now, right? The president Trump's not going to be there five years from now. This big,

00:22:34.880 beautiful bill doesn't force people five years from now to do that. It suggests that they should do

00:22:40.020 that. And it will do that unless somebody does something different, but they're going to do

00:22:44.060 something different five years from now. We'll get to that point and they'll say, oh my gosh,

00:22:49.140 that Congress five years ago, set up a fiscal cliff. We're going to be hit with tax increases on

00:22:56.660 seniors. We're going to be hit with tax on tips. We're going to be hit with tax on overtime.

00:23:02.120 Oh my gosh, the military is not going to get as much money as it got last year. We got to do

00:23:07.680 something about this. And so what they'll do is they'll cut taxes again and they'll increase

00:23:12.960 spending again. And this deficit will never go down. And I'm not even talking about the debt.

00:23:18.140 The deficit is how much you add to the debt every year. It's about $2 trillion. It's going to be

00:23:23.380 above $2 trillion next year. And for as far as the eye can see, but I got to talk with, uh, uh,

00:23:29.840 JD Vance a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking about, but that a lot of what's happening now is

00:23:34.560 still because of the last party that was in. Yeah. And a lot of it still because of what Trump

00:23:41.680 did when he was in last time. So I just wondering how far it's, it's, it's tough to like, as a

00:23:46.920 regular person, it's tough to correlate how far up or downstream you are from whatever,

00:23:51.440 who was actually responsible for whatever's occurring. Does that make sense?

00:23:54.940 It does make sense. But you know, in 2020, we had COVID hit and they put a $2 trillion spending bill

00:24:00.980 on the floor and they, I was the only one who would oppose it. I said, this is going to cause,

00:24:06.540 this was, Trump was president and Pelosi was speaker, but they were working together.

00:24:10.760 I said, this is going to cause massive inflation. You're going to have shortages in the stores,

00:24:15.020 and this is going to last for years. And the inflation, once it happens, the prices will never

00:24:20.580 go back down. And that's exactly what happened. They, they said, Congressman Massey, the president's

00:24:25.360 chief of staff at the time told me, he said, it was Mark Meadows, who's a friend of mine. We both

00:24:30.220 worked together in Congress. He said, the reason this is $2 trillion is so we don't have to pass

00:24:35.000 another one of these. It's just going to be painful once. Well, guess what? By the time December rolled

00:24:39.580 around under Trump, we passed another one of these stimulus packages that was over a trillion dollars.

00:24:44.660 And don't forget, people got a $1,200 check the first time, and they got a $600 check the second time.

00:24:50.760 I told folks, that's the cheese in the trap. That most of, you know, that $1,200 check, you multiply

00:24:56.880 that times the number of families in the United States, it wasn't 5% of the spending in that bill.

00:25:01.200 Most of that money went to corporations and banks, eventually. And so, everybody's responsible for it.

00:25:09.260 Everybody wants to point to the other party for it. But, you know, it's, I don't want to upset too many

00:25:16.820 people who like wrestling, but it's like the WWF, okay? Or...

00:25:21.920 Oh, it's felt like this for years. I think everything is turning into the WWE. Everything.

00:25:26.860 Yeah. Yeah.

00:25:26.940 It's all, it's all like optics and the way things are shot, and this is out there, and this is what

00:25:33.760 you believe. It's like interviews that are just to get the hype, and then they offstage, they're all

00:25:38.920 in the, you know, in the locker room, like, you know, rubbing GHB on each other's backs and stuff

00:25:43.900 like that and gramming out, you know? Let me, let me tell you something that probably will shock

00:25:47.980 your listeners, whether they're Republican or Democrat. Mike Johnson, since he's been the

00:25:52.620 Speaker, and he's only been the Speaker for less than two years, has put 183 Democrat bills on the

00:25:58.780 floor and passed them. What did he trade for that? Like, I thought we were breaking chairs over top of

00:26:05.340 the Democrats' heads in the back room. No, that's not what's happening.

00:26:09.000 Is that true?

00:26:10.020 Yeah.

00:26:10.240 How do I look that up?

00:26:11.760 Go to congress.gov.

00:26:14.700 Mike Johnson's out of Shreveport.

00:26:16.280 Yep. He's the Speaker of the House.

00:26:18.140 Oh, yeah.

00:26:18.660 But you can see, like, if you, I'm not sure how you look it up here at congress.gov, but

00:26:25.180 you, if you spend enough time here and look at every bill that's passed since he's been

00:26:29.760 Speaker, and I'm not talking about the special bills that reassign committee members.

00:26:34.920 I'm talking about bills that do something, 183 Democrat-sponsored bills. And you might

00:26:40.660 say, Theo, well, the Democrats have good ideas, okay? We should put their bills on the floor.

00:26:46.220 Well, if I had a good idea, what Speaker Johnson would do would take that bill from me, put somebody

00:26:52.280 else's name on it, and put it on the floor. Like, if there's something that needs to get done,

00:26:56.820 why would you let a Democrat get credit for it if you're in this mortal combat with the other

00:27:02.020 party? But has he made a lot of Republican bills passed, too? Yeah. There have been, yeah,

00:27:06.440 there's been way more Republican bills than Democrat bills, but why has he even passed one

00:27:10.560 Democrat bill? Well, I think, don't you want to work with the other team? And it's like,

00:27:13.740 isn't it, isn't there diplomacy and everything? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, you have

00:27:16.720 to, like, there's a give and take to everything, I feel like. We've got the majority. Like, why are

00:27:21.720 we putting their bills on the floor? Why would we go in that direction? I understand in the

00:27:26.260 Senate, you need 60 votes, so you got to have a Democrat. But some of the bills are good, right?

00:27:32.100 If Thomas Massey has a good bill, they'll put another Republican's name on it and pass it.

00:27:36.980 But I can't understand what you're saying here. I guess I'm a little bit confused. Are you saying

00:27:40.120 that Mr. Johnson, who is the Speaker of the House, that he, because bills get brought to him,

00:27:48.160 he puts them on the floor, right? He's the one who's like, okay, let's put this on the floor and

00:27:51.900 take it to a vote, right? And you're saying that he's done that with more Democratic-led bills than

00:27:57.540 Republican-led bills. No, he's done it with 183 Democratic bills. He's probably, there's probably

00:28:01.940 been several hundred Republican bills. My question, though, is why would you put one on if you're

00:28:07.220 engaged in this kind of mortal combat for the soul of the country and he acts like that? It's because

00:28:13.640 people aren't paying attention to what's going on there.

00:28:16.120 Oh, I agree that. I think people aren't paying attention. I think it's, there's so,

00:28:20.060 it's all so confusing, I think, to the regular person.

00:28:22.840 It is.

00:28:23.280 That it's, that it feels like, it feels like it, the ship sailed long ago from us being at

00:28:29.420 the dock, looking each other in the eyes with some sense of a hope.

00:28:33.420 Congress is this big, giant black box and people can't see what's going on inside of that black box.

00:28:39.440 They know they're electing their congressman and two of their senators and the president,

00:28:44.740 and they're sending them to Washington DC. And then they don't understand what comes out of that

00:28:49.320 box. I've been in that box for 12 years. And that's, I think that's sort of what my role

00:28:55.960 has evolved to, which is to just try to tell people what's going on inside of the box

00:29:00.580 so that they can do a better job of picking congressmen and senators.

00:29:04.760 That's what I always think. I'm like, if somebody would just get elected just to get in there and

00:29:08.500 tell us what's, we don't even fucking, we'll buy you a Volvo or whatever.

00:29:14.000 Fucking, you know what I'm saying? We'll give you some Taiwan semiconductor shares,

00:29:17.860 but just tell us what's happening in there. Somebody fucking look in there and just throw

00:29:23.620 a note out and be like, Hey, this is what's really going on. And now the problem we start

00:29:27.460 to get into is there's so much like pandering and everything and online, like so much social

00:29:34.060 media used to like try and disguise who the messenger is. It really turns into a game.

00:29:38.300 And I think that is one thing that's, that's the only joy of it is watching the, like the

00:29:43.420 masters of this, um, just game of, uh, thrones type of energy go on. But how do we, so the biggest,

00:29:50.740 I'll tell you right now, it's, this is, this would be 50% of solving the problem.

00:29:55.300 If it's not a silver bullet, but it's a lot of it. Get rid of the giant bills. Okay. You,

00:30:01.920 the omnibus bills, the continuing resolutions, and even the big, beautiful bill. Why not put that

00:30:07.580 shit on the floor one at a time? I agree. And, and then that way you're, you can go to your

00:30:13.760 representative or your senators and say, why did you vote for that? Right now they can say, well,

00:30:19.860 Theo, I had to vote for it. It had a pay raise for soldiers, right? They literally will put a pay

00:30:25.020 raise for soldiers in every freaking bill, giant bill. So that if you vote against it, you have to

00:30:31.320 go back home and watch TV ads that say he voted against a pay raise for the soldiers. Right. Even

00:30:37.380 though he may have voted for, uh, uh, for 90 other amazing things on the bill. Right. Right. And that

00:30:42.980 was the one, that was one thing that was tied in there that if you went this way, you know, it may

00:30:47.260 have been like oxygen for grandmothers, right? Literally there probably is that in there. But if

00:30:52.900 you vote for oxygen for grandmothers and you cannot, they're not going to give. So I see what you're

00:30:56.940 saying. I voted against oxygen for grandmothers so many times they can't even run that ad anymore.

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00:35:05.800 Netsuite.com slash theo. Has there ever been a bill that was like, okay, we want to stop these

00:35:12.540 omnibus bills. And bring up omnibus bill. We looked it up the other day when Mr. Vance was

00:35:18.200 here, but I just want to go over it again. An omnibus bill is proposed law that covers a number

00:35:23.020 of diverse or unrelated topics. Omnibus is derived from Latin. It means to, for, by, with, or from

00:35:29.300 everything. An omnibus bill is a single document that is accepted in a single vote by a legislator,

00:35:34.440 but packages together several measures into one or combines diverse subjects. So it's not even really

00:35:40.200 fair because you only get one vote on the bill? Correct. And, and, and, and so typically an

00:35:46.580 omnibus bill, it includes at least 12 other bills because they're the 1974 Budget Control Act. There's

00:35:53.260 a law that says we're supposed to do these bills separately. So we've already tried the law. We

00:35:57.480 already tried that, Theo. They just suspend that rule, those budget rules every year. Okay. So, but

00:36:03.420 take me through this moment so I don't, so I don't stray from it so people can be, so I can,

00:36:07.560 so I can understand it. So like, give me two examples of things that would be on an omnibus

00:36:12.740 bill that would be, that there's no way for a voter to win, that there's no way for a representative

00:36:18.700 to vote and win on. Okay. Well, the, the, um, the easiest, let me just take something topical,

00:36:26.040 the big, beautiful bill. Inside of that big, beautiful bill is a provision for artificial intelligence

00:36:31.560 corporations that says no 10 years, 10 years, for 10 years, no state or local locality can regulate

00:36:38.940 them. And then it talks about zoning and routing, which if you, you know, some of your listeners may

00:36:45.700 have seen this, like locally, somebody, some big corporation wants to put a data center in your

00:36:49.820 backyard. Well, that's what Congress is trying to do. They're trying to say that these corporations

00:36:55.340 can override local zoning laws, that the local zoning board should take a backseat and let this

00:37:01.140 big information center show up in your backyard that uses all kinds of water and all kinds of power

00:37:06.120 and puts out all kinds of RF and has, you know, oh yeah, your fucking cousin's going to be walking

00:37:11.340 down the street just fucking, you know, just fucking screaming out Amazon orders, you know, it's going to

00:37:16.180 be, the shit that's going to start happening is going to be crazy. You're literally going to be

00:37:19.580 driving on the road with your windows open and an old gust of a 5g remnants from blockbuster emails

00:37:26.460 that never got out of, got out of, uh, uh, got out of, got uploaded or just going to pass through

00:37:30.880 your fucking vehicle. Shit's going to get insane. You're going to have babies that are born with

00:37:35.760 advertisements, like birthmarks that show up as this fucking, this is a set of twins with Nike

00:37:40.840 logos on them. What is happening, man? So that's in the big, beautiful bill. Okay. And you can know

00:37:47.020 that's evil. You can know that's bad. And, and Trump never campaigned on that, but also in that

00:37:52.560 bill is to enforce our borders. Okay. To finish the wall. Right. So if you're a Republican and you vote

00:38:00.340 for that bill, okay. You supported enforcing the border, but you also let AI basically take over

00:38:06.760 your local and state governments. Okay. And then if you vote against it, well, then you're against the

00:38:14.040 AI provision, but Oh my gosh, you're for open borders. You know, you're for, you don't want to

00:38:18.960 support the military. There was a hundred billion dollars in there for the military. There was, Oh,

00:38:23.760 you want to tax seniors. There was a tax cut for seniors. There was an extension of the tax cuts

00:38:29.700 from 2017. I voted for the 2017 tax cuts, but I voted against this 2025 bill. Cause it's got a lot of

00:38:36.840 crap in there that doesn't belong and it's going to balloon our deficit. Right. So you can't win for

00:38:42.180 losing. And so I don't blame a lot of my colleagues. Like they, they come to Congress,

00:38:50.020 they have the best intentions and you get there and you're like, Oh my gosh, this whole game is rigged.

00:38:55.020 How am I going to play it? Am I going to call it out? Will that get, will that be the best for my

00:39:01.160 constituents who elected me or should I play along? And most of them choose to play along and you can't,

00:39:09.080 can't really blame them. They feel like, Oh, my fiduciary duty to the people who elected me is to

00:39:15.280 get as much as I can up here. And if I piss off the Trump and I piss off Mike Johnson, I can't get

00:39:21.480 any table scraps. But the reality is they're not even getting table scraps. They are trading. I say

00:39:27.500 every week, congressmen trade their votes for magic beans that never sprout like Jack and the beanstalk.

00:39:33.200 He trades a cow for magic beans. The difference is Jack got beans that sprouted. My congressmen,

00:39:38.940 they're not getting gas vouchers. They're not getting a Cracker Barrel gift certificate.

00:39:42.600 So, so explain to me how that part works. So that's a part that I don't understand. Cause

00:39:47.120 you mentioned a little while ago, you're like, I could have a bill and I put it forward. Cause

00:39:51.020 Mike Johnson seems like a good guy. He doesn't seem like somebody that would take something that

00:39:54.240 was yours and make it somebody else's. Like, I don't understand what you're, so I don't understand

00:39:59.000 what you're saying. Like, how does that work? And take me through like, like, how can you put a bill

00:40:04.140 out? And people would know what's your bill. I mean, obviously, is there information online that

00:40:07.760 says this is a bill that Thomas Massey made or that any person made like any representative made

00:40:13.100 you? The other thing they'll do with your bills is they'll stick them in another bill. Okay. Let's,

00:40:18.840 I'll give you an example. Yeah. Show me how you're saying that people aren't even getting the scraps

00:40:22.240 or whatever, you know what I'm saying? Right. Take me through some of that. Uh, well, they're not,

00:40:25.800 Theo, I tell people, I joke with my colleagues up there. They're like, man, see why you're not a

00:40:32.460 sellout. I'm just like, I look at him in the eye. I say, I'm the biggest sellout up here. Like I would

00:40:37.080 sell out for Snickers bar, but you guys aren't even getting a Snickers bar. You're not getting a bridge

00:40:41.000 in your district. You're not getting a new exit off the interstate. You're not getting anything for

00:40:45.260 your vote. Like the, nobody's ever offered me anything up there of value. I'm not, I don't even know

00:40:50.980 myself. I could be the biggest sellout there is. There's just no trade up there

00:40:55.180 that's, that's worth taking. And so mostly people are trying to stay relevant and get reelected.

00:41:02.540 Right. That makes perfect sense. Right. Everybody's looking out for themselves in a sense,

00:41:05.840 but you would think at some point that even that would lose its appeal. When you look around your

00:41:11.000 town or your community and you see that like, Oh man, by not really benefiting the people, it's

00:41:18.200 everything. It's all falling apart, you know, by not really benefiting the country, it's falling apart.

00:41:22.740 And I fuck, I'm starting to sound like a downer again. I don't want to do that. It should,

00:41:26.320 it should. But take me through, take me through what you're talking about, how you put a bill up

00:41:30.200 and it doesn't get labeled yours. That, so it's plagiarism or I don't understand what you're

00:41:33.620 saying. Well, and then if you do get something done by working inside of the system, they'll just,

00:41:39.180 you won't get any credit for it. So for instance, uh, when Ron Paul left Congress,

00:41:44.280 I came into Congress and I introduced Randy's daddy. Yep. Rand's dad. I introduced a lot of

00:41:50.180 Ron Paul's bills and one was the industrial hemp farming act because it was illegal. They treated

00:41:55.920 hemp just like marijuana. It was illegal to grow it according to federal government. Uh, so I

00:42:01.300 introduced that bill and I got a lot of co-sponsors and I, I figured out a way to work with Democrats

00:42:07.520 and get it into the farm bill. Now it was a Republican farm bill that I got it into, but I

00:42:13.460 needed Democrat and Republican votes to do it. And I got it in the farm bill, but now like people

00:42:19.460 online say, Oh, Congressman Massey. And it became law by the way, and people can grow industrial hemp

00:42:24.300 in all 50 States. That's the end of the, you know, that's the rest of the story. Oh yeah. A lot of

00:42:28.360 chicks that don't wear deodorant are working on those, working on those places. And no offense,

00:42:32.120 ladies, I don't mind it. But yeah, no, I'm glad that we have another

00:42:37.440 product in our country, you know? Right. Um, and so that became law. That was one of my bills,

00:42:43.540 but nobody ever gives me credit for it because it wasn't a separate bill that said, and by the way,

00:42:48.640 I voted for that crap sandwich, the, the farm bill, which is a big giant bill. And then I took

00:42:54.920 crap for voting for that because it had my thing in it, but now I don't get credit for it. But I've,

00:43:00.820 I haven't particularly had bills where somebody took my name off them and put somebody else's name,

00:43:06.380 but my colleagues have. Okay. So, so you haven't had that exact thing happening for Mike Johnson.

00:43:11.120 No, but you've seen it happen. Yeah. You're saying, and if it did, I wouldn't care that much. I mean,

00:43:15.160 if it's a good bill, right. It could happen. But a lot of people, you know, they, they need to go

00:43:20.660 back to their district and say, I got this done. Oh, I see. So a lot of times people don't know from

00:43:25.980 the, um, from their Congress people or their representatives that they actually got this thing

00:43:31.440 done. Right. Right. So there's a communication issue there. And then there's another thing that

00:43:35.620 happens. Like some Congressman gets to DC and they have this bill they wanted to pass even before he

00:43:41.820 was a Congressman. And they say, we'll put your name on it and then you'll get credit for it. And

00:43:47.420 then the Congressman has no idea about the subject or anything. So I had, there was a bill that came

00:43:54.420 to the floor. It was about opioids. Okay. And I voted against it. And the sponsor of the bill comes up to

00:44:01.060 me and says, why did you vote against my bill? And I said, well, I'm not against research or things

00:44:07.060 like that at the federal level, but this is basically a form of Obamacare. And I thought

00:44:11.080 we were against that. Like, cause this had treatment and stuff, which should be handled at the state

00:44:14.860 level. And he looked at me, said, you're right. He said, I'd vote against this too. If it weren't my

00:44:19.980 bill, he said, the leadership gave it to me and told me to bring it to the floor and it would help

00:44:26.440 me get reelected. Wow. I swear to the Lord above, that is an exact conversation I had on the floor.

00:44:36.000 Yeah. Oh, I believe you did. Congressman from Wisconsin. He's still there.

00:44:39.580 He is? Yeah. White guy, I bet, huh? Oh yeah.

00:44:41.640 That was a guess, dude. That was a guess. By the way, but not to pick on him because that year

00:44:48.720 we passed like 38 opioid bills. Yeah. They're all redundant. They just gave everybody they were

00:44:53.960 trying to get reelected. They give them an opioid bill. Oh yeah. I mean, they were renewing more

00:44:57.680 prescriptions for opioid bills than they were opioids. That's the craziest fucking part of it.

00:45:03.020 And the Sackler family never even went to fucking jail. And some people believe that the Sackler

00:45:07.780 family should be electrocuted. Allegedly. I don't know them. And I don't even know if

00:45:11.480 electricity would work on their fucking sick evil bodies. Is that slander for saying that? Can I go

00:45:16.440 to jail for saying that? That might be a death threat, huh? You can, but I can't. So maybe I

00:45:20.680 should say it. There's something in the constitution called the speech or debate clause. And so I can go

00:45:25.340 to the floor of the house of representatives and lie. I can tell every lie I want and nobody can do

00:45:31.960 anything about it. And it's called the speech or debate clause. Our staff, yeah, look this up.

00:45:38.160 The speech or debate clause found in article one, section six of the U.S. Constitution protects

00:45:42.640 members of Congress from being questioned in any other place for their speech or debate in either

00:45:47.440 house. So let me read it again. Protects members of Congress from being questioned in any other place.

00:45:53.040 Which means you can't be questioned in a courtroom. You can't be sued. No way. You can't be. Now read the

00:45:59.200 next sentence though, because there's a good reason for it. This clause rooted in historical struggles

00:46:03.780 for parliamentary independence aims to safeguard the independence and integrity of the legislative

00:46:08.820 branch by preventing interference from the executive or judicial branches.

00:46:15.460 So, uh, so when people, you know, even our founders, this is a, this is a hard pill to swallow.

00:46:22.460 Okay. But even. I'm still a bit confused at this moment.

00:46:24.680 Well, even our founders thought that there were some laws that shouldn't apply to congressmen because

00:46:30.700 if they did, they would get abused. And like a Democrat president would arrest members of

00:46:37.620 Congress for saying things on the floor of the house. Cause it had, that's what the King did back

00:46:43.020 in England. The King would arrest members of parliament if he didn't like what they said.

00:46:47.540 Ah, I see what you're saying.

00:46:48.420 Or you could get a private individual to sue a member of Congress for something they said.

00:46:53.740 And then that would, uh, basically freeze the debate and members of Congress would be afraid

00:47:00.320 to speak. They would send their speeches to lawyers before they said them, you know, if this didn't

00:47:06.600 exist. I see what you're saying.

00:47:08.000 So this is kind of a fascinating little part of our constitution. And even though it seems wrong to

00:47:14.380 give members of Congress extra first amendment protection, the founders thought this was the

00:47:20.780 best way to do it. It was so you could go to court right now and lie on the stand.

00:47:25.360 No, I can lie about anything, but I got to be on the floor of the house, uh, or it has to be

00:47:32.560 attached to my official business. So I'm probably covered on social media. Uh, and I could just say

00:47:41.020 defamatory things about you. I could release natural national secrets. Um, and, and this also covers my

00:47:49.180 staff as well. God, interesting. But can you, but am I going to go to Jeff for calling the Sackler

00:47:55.720 say they got electrocuted? Yeah, probably. Shit. So what do you do? Bleep it out? No, you need to

00:48:00.940 run for Congress. Oh, that's hilarious, dude. And I only say, I don't really even say those words

00:48:08.000 myself. I just say that on the, uh, this it's the spirit of hundreds of thousands of opioid addicts

00:48:12.900 who died channeling through me for just a brief second. Forgive me. I'm back. All right. Um,

00:48:19.280 it starts to feel like neither party. Wait, wait. So could I, I'm thinking about this. Could we ask,

00:48:29.860 could Mike Johnson, uh, put a bill on the floor about the omnibus thing? Yeah. And then we could

00:48:37.680 see who would vote for it and vote against it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He could, but he's not going to.

00:48:44.200 Right. Cause it would be too dangerous. It's, it's way too dangerous. I mean, the lobbyists love it

00:48:48.860 that way. Yeah. They, they love the opaqueness of that black box that Americans can't look into it

00:48:54.340 and see what's going on because they're inside the black box. They get to, they get to craft language,

00:49:00.240 language and special provisions in those big giant bills. And they're so big and we don't,

00:49:04.540 we're not given time to read them, but you got to remember the, like a lot of my colleagues wouldn't

00:49:09.520 read these bills, even if they were given three months to read them, what they're, what they're

00:49:13.500 doing by rushing these bills through is they're not who doing the congressman. They're who doing

00:49:17.940 the public. Of course. No, I think it makes perfect sense. It's like, cause we just send one set of

00:49:22.340 eyes and, uh, and brain up there to handle something, you know, or a couple sets if you have a few reps

00:49:27.040 and then it's, but it's so much information at once. It's all, it's, it's all the same thing.

00:49:31.680 It's literally like a bus passing by. It's like with a car passing by, you can get an idea of

00:49:36.760 what's on it. You can look at the wheels, you can check the exhaust, you know, I'd be able to see

00:49:40.320 who's in there. But when a bus goes by, you're like, fuck, I don't know. You know, was a driver

00:49:43.880 awake? You know, that's kind of like, you know, that's how it, that's how it certainly starts to

00:49:47.600 appear, appear. And the windows are painted black on the bus. And somebody wrote just married to a

00:49:54.420 trans man on the windows with chalk or whatever, with window paint. Um, here's my question. Is

00:50:01.260 anybody representing the people anymore? Cause it kind of feels like it used to feel like

00:50:04.980 you at the parties were against each other. And now it feels like it's the government versus the

00:50:11.200 people. That's what it feels like. I think it is. I mean, I call it the uniparty. Uh, uh,

00:50:18.820 last year, Marjorie Taylor Greene and I introduced a resolution to oust Mike Johnson after Mike

00:50:25.640 Johnson, uh, put a bill on the floor and was the tie-breaking vote to send more money to Ukraine

00:50:31.460 after he passed another omnibus after he passed another bill to spy on Americans using mostly

00:50:38.400 Democrat votes because a lot of Republicans are waking up to that and didn't vote for it after

00:50:43.420 he did like three or four really bad things. Marjorie and I put a resolution on the floor,

00:50:47.900 which you think are bad things, right? I think they're bad things. Spying, spying on

00:50:51.660 Americans sending all the money to Ukraine. Yeah, I think they are. I think they're not

00:50:56.060 Republican priorities. And so, and he's a Republican speaker. So we put a resolution on the floor to

00:51:02.920 vacate the speaker's office. And what does that mean to get a new speaker, get a new speaker?

00:51:07.820 Okay. And, um, typically no Democrat will vote for that. And if you, if he doesn't have enough

00:51:14.080 Republicans to sustain that vote, he will lose and he'll get a new speaker.

00:51:18.040 Why would no Democrat vote for that?

00:51:20.120 Well, for the first time in history, they did. Like they did vote to keep Mike Johnson

00:51:25.060 because it was as good as they've ever had it. They were getting everything they wanted.

00:51:30.280 You believe he was helping their party.

00:51:31.560 Yeah. He was helping their party. So they kept him in power. So it is really hard to change things.

00:51:37.340 You can occasionally get people to try, but the consequences of trying and losing can be great.

00:51:45.220 Like they call up all the lobbyists and say, quit giving money to that member of Congress.

00:51:50.860 They'll call up donors in your district. They'll call up constituents and have constituents call you

00:51:56.040 up. Or the new thing recently is to fund social media campaigns. The NRCC, National Republican

00:52:04.360 Congressional Committee. They spend money on Twitter influencers who then do things against

00:52:11.020 who knows what. I mean, they're directing them. That part isn't transparent, but, uh, it's directed

00:52:17.720 toward me. For instance, our own party is, is coordinating efforts against me.

00:52:23.420 Well, then at that point, that's what I'm saying. It's, there's a party that's, it's them against you.

00:52:27.500 Which is okay. I've got a thick skin.

00:52:29.560 Right. But I'm just saying, it feels like it's, it feels like it's, you guys are playing this game,

00:52:32.940 but it's all against the voter. None of it is for the voter anymore. It doesn't, you know what I'm

00:52:37.780 saying? It's like, it feels like, I don't know. It just feels like it's, it's, it's the voter against

00:52:43.680 the politicians. And it's, it just starts to feel really, really scary for sure. Um, have you thought

00:52:49.840 about becoming an independent or is that not a, is that too, is that, is that, is that death?

00:52:54.640 I, I've thought about it a lot. And, um, one of the things that surprised me when I got to Congress

00:53:00.700 is there's two of everything. So there's two cloak rooms. There's a Democrat cloak room.

00:53:06.700 Wait, say that part again. There's a Democrat cloak room and a Republican cloak room. This is

00:53:10.600 like when you show up to vote, there's a little clubhouse, two little clubhouses attached to

00:53:15.940 Congress. You can go back there and get a hot dog and a hot ham and cheese and ice cream sandwich.

00:53:21.980 Oh yeah. Get a hot blonde too, huh?

00:53:24.120 That is our cloak room right there on the right.

00:53:25.840 Is that really?

00:53:26.340 Yeah. You go back there, although there's some computers as well, that's looking in one

00:53:30.580 direction. If you look in the other direction, there's a sandwich. They're not showing the

00:53:35.100 sandwich bar. Um, oh yeah, I'd love it.

00:53:38.520 Oh, there's a sandwich bar. Yeah, that's it.

00:53:40.440 Oh God, that's it?

00:53:41.960 Yeah. Now that's the, that's the Democrat cloak room. The Republican one looks just the

00:53:47.380 same.

00:53:47.920 Okay.

00:53:48.240 Okay. But here's the thing.

00:53:49.780 Give you a little mortadella, huh?

00:53:50.880 There's only two cloak rooms. So if you were truly independent and you came to Congress,

00:53:57.820 there'd be nowhere to get a hot dog or to call, people go in there and call their lobbyist

00:54:03.840 friends.

00:54:04.320 Yeah.

00:54:04.640 Like during votes, you'll get a call and they'll say, hey, don't dare vote for this. Or maybe

00:54:11.020 they'll call up, a member of Congress will go to the cloak room, call and ask for advice.

00:54:14.680 Any case, there's also things called back rooms on every committee. You've heard of back room

00:54:19.420 deals. I couldn't believe it. When I got to Congress, people are using the word back room

00:54:23.980 because there are back rooms behind the committee rooms where you go back and do your huddle,

00:54:29.940 but there's only two huddles. There's the Democrat huddle and the Republican huddle,

00:54:33.740 and there's only two back rooms. So I say, if you were an independent, you're going against

00:54:39.380 the architecture. It's not just tradition. It's built into marble and oak. There can only

00:54:46.660 be two parties. That's how strong they have put it in. And if you're bipartisan, that means you

00:54:52.860 like both parties. I say that if you're, I'm not bipartisan, I'm transpartisan. Trans means you

00:55:00.560 can't identify with either some days. I don't know which cloakroom to go into. Some days they

00:55:05.220 don't want me in either cloakroom. So I feel like I'm a transpartisan.

00:55:09.180 Well, at least you can just be out in the van outside, you know?

00:55:11.720 That's right. Some days I have gone out to the camper and just like drink some raw milk and just

00:55:17.360 be like, we're so screwed. Let's go back in and try it. But I think it is hard. It would be really

00:55:23.460 hard to have an independent party or to get elected as an independent. I think-

00:55:30.920 Yes, that's true.

00:55:31.800 But never forget this. There's really like six parties up there in DC, and they've been shoehorned

00:55:37.740 into two different cloakrooms. Right. And so you got to pick, which-

00:55:42.740 So either way, if you had a separate party, you're kind of still in one cloakroom or the

00:55:45.800 other. You're kind of still in one huddle or the other.

00:55:47.980 Yeah. So there's a guy from Maine. His name's Angus King. He's a senator, and he runs as an

00:55:54.880 independent, and he gets elected as an independent. And then he goes in the Democrat cloakroom.

00:56:00.560 So yeah, that's him.

00:56:01.700 Oh, yeah. He definitely looks like a Maine guy. Undeniably wears a raincoat at night.

00:56:08.100 You may have heard the term rhino, Republican in name only. I have a friend who calls him an

00:56:14.120 I-no, an independent in name only, because he gets elected as an independent. And Bernie Sanders did

00:56:20.060 this too. And then caucuses with the Democrats.

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00:59:12.560 So one of the ways, and I wrote some of my questions down today, one of the big things that

00:59:16.600 people talk about all the time these days are lobbyists, right? And lobbies and how much of

00:59:20.320 an effect that they have on our elected officials. How much is it? I mean, how much are these packs

00:59:27.720 really controlling things? Quite a bit. There's some aspects of lobbying that people don't think

00:59:34.580 about. Like, for instance, I think there are just as many lobbyists over at the White House as they

00:59:39.640 are in Congress. So what do you mean that some people are almost just elected lobbyists?

00:59:44.240 Well, no. They spend their time talking to White House officials, because even though we're the

00:59:52.000 legislators, the White House sends recommendations for bills. And if the same party is in power in the

00:59:59.100 White House and in Congress, like the big beautiful bill, for instance, the legislation can initiate

01:00:05.260 over in the White House. And so lobbyists, I'm just saying, if you think of lobbyists talking to your

01:00:12.280 senator and your congressman, they're all over D.C. They're talking to bureaucrats. They're talking to

01:00:16.700 people, cabinet secretaries, because they know it's sometimes easier to get written into the budget

01:00:23.500 if they're over there lobbying. Another thing to know about lobbyists, I mean, there's lobbyists for

01:00:28.620 the Alzheimer's victims or people who have Alzheimer's. There are lobbyists. Yeah, there are

01:00:36.120 lobbyists for people with rare blood disorders, okay? There's lobbyists for the concrete association.

01:00:42.460 If there is a group of people, they have lobbyists. And some people's enemies, lobbyists' enemies are

01:00:52.980 other people's lobbying friends. There are pro-Second Amendment lobbyists who are up there fighting for

01:00:59.060 the Second Amendment. And the Democrats hate those lobbyists, but those are lobbyists the Republicans

01:01:04.580 kind of like. So the question is, you know, and sometimes my constituents, they don't know how to

01:01:12.560 get to D.C. and how to talk to all the congressmen from Kentucky and both senators. And so they hire

01:01:18.020 lobbyists to come and do that. I don't know that I would outlaw lobbyists. Sometimes they're actually

01:01:25.920 helpful. Like, let's say the concrete lobbyists. You got the concrete lobbyists fighting with the

01:01:32.260 asphalt lobbyists on what's going to be the road surface, okay? Well, if all you hear is from the

01:01:39.720 asphalt lobbyists, you would just buy asphalt. And then you hear from the concrete lobbyists. And so

01:01:45.800 it's really to get to the truth, you need adversarial opinions. The problem is I wouldn't blame the

01:01:54.480 lobbyists for advocating for their group of people. I would blame the congressmen who basically put

01:02:01.880 that crap in the bills. And again, I would go back to separating the votes. How do you know

01:02:09.680 that your congressman is sold out to Big Pharma, for instance, if Big Pharma is only one-tenth of the

01:02:17.600 bill? Right. And there's pay raises for veterans in there. Ah, so they can hide the fact that they're

01:02:22.240 selling out over here by buying in over here. Yeah. God! It almost sounds fun. Now, there's one group

01:02:31.480 of lobbyists I don't think really should exist or should have access to U.S. offices. And those

01:02:39.760 are foreign lobbyists. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard you talk about this before, and I've heard a lot of

01:02:43.720 people are talking about it now. It's definitely become a hot topic. And AIPAC is one of the big

01:02:48.000 ones. And that stands for American?

01:02:51.000 American, Israeli, political. It's not a fund. It didn't start out as a super PAC. So

01:02:58.660 Political Action Committee?

01:03:01.560 Public Affairs Committee. There we go.

01:03:02.860 Public Affairs Committee. American, Israel, Public Affairs Committee.

01:03:05.980 Now, a lot of times PAC stands for Political Action Committee, like you said. But these guys were

01:03:10.460 started before there were Political Action Committees. So it stands for Public Affairs Committee.

01:03:14.540 Got it. And they bragged that they've spent more on elections than any other lobbying group.

01:03:23.660 In the world?

01:03:24.520 In the United States.

01:03:25.800 In the United States.

01:03:26.380 In Congress.

01:03:28.020 Okay.

01:03:28.700 They now do have a Political Action Committee. And I forget what the name of it is. So AIPAC has

01:03:36.840 a subsidiary that spends money to basically crack heads of congressmen. So there's two kinds of,

01:03:45.360 by the way, there are two kinds of lobbying groups. There's access lobbying. That's where

01:03:51.220 they're all your friends. They're never mean to you. Even if they don't like you, they'll buy you a

01:03:57.520 steak dinner, and they'll try to get you to hear out their point of view. And they figure,

01:04:02.800 as long as I can get in that person's office, I'm doing well for the people I'm lobbying for.

01:04:08.520 But then there are confrontational lobbyists like AIPAC. And AIPAC has transitioned into a

01:04:15.900 confrontational lobbying group where if you don't do what they want, they come after you.

01:04:20.520 Wow. And what does it look like?

01:04:22.040 They spent $400,000 against me in my last election. And they are basically advertised themselves as just

01:04:30.560 all things Israel. They are lobbying for more money to go to Israel, which all the money we

01:04:36.880 give to Israel is military money. So they are basically lobbyists for the military-industrial

01:04:42.840 complex.

01:04:43.780 Got it. Understood. So, and I'll ask you some questions about that, the military-industrial

01:04:47.700 complex in a few minutes. But do you feel like Israel is a fair ally? Are they a good ally for us?

01:04:54.220 Well.

01:04:55.220 Or is that too general of a question?

01:04:56.580 Well, I think it doesn't matter. Like, there's no big, giant, Great Britain lobby. There's no

01:05:01.640 Australian lobby. There's no German lobby.

01:05:04.180 Oh, the other countries don't have them.

01:05:05.560 No, no, not like this. This is singular. This is unique. I mean, if you're an ally,

01:05:12.080 why wouldn't we work with you? Why do you have to convince us that you're our ally? Why do you

01:05:17.200 have to basically go into every congressional office and convince them? And it's because they want to keep

01:05:23.220 the money flowing. And they've got a good return on their investment. I mean, we send more foreign

01:05:30.540 aid to Israel than to any other country.

01:05:32.960 Yeah.

01:05:33.860 They're, you know, like 10 million people or something.

01:05:37.440 Yeah, I think this year-

01:05:38.380 Tennessee, I don't know if there's a population in Tennessee, but it's probably about, you know,

01:05:42.140 on that order.

01:05:43.140 Yeah, I think this year they said we spent like $12 billion, but that's not actual dollars.

01:05:46.820 It's in military aid, right?

01:05:49.140 Yeah. It's, well, it's, it's dollars that come out of the treasury. Yeah. But it's not like we

01:05:54.540 give them, it's a, it's a gift certificate that's redeemable at Lockheed Martin and your local

01:06:00.460 Raytheon, you know.

01:06:02.080 Okay. Got it. So that's kind of how that works.

01:06:04.200 Yeah.

01:06:04.460 Okay. Got it.

01:06:06.720 Why, yeah. Why do they have this carve out that's just for them? Like, what, like,

01:06:12.620 what do we get from Israel? Do you feel like? Uh, we got a lot of countries that hate us.

01:06:19.060 It's one of the things we get. Um, well, especially right now with this stuff in Gaza,

01:06:23.500 it's, I think it's Israel's, it's one of the worst PR campaigns I've ever seen in my life. If

01:06:28.380 they're even, I haven't, it doesn't make any sense to me. It's like, I just don't, it gives

01:06:33.860 their government this extremely evil look to me, you know? And I think to a lot of people, you know?

01:06:40.100 Well, rough numbers, there are 2 million people in Gaza and 50,000 have been killed. That's two

01:06:47.520 and a half percent. Like they've killed one in 40 people in Gaza. If you, if you did that in the

01:06:53.620 United States, if you did two and a half percent of, of 350 million, it'd be almost 10 million

01:06:59.880 people dead in the United States. Everybody in Gaza is at this point related to somebody who's

01:07:07.020 been killed. Like at least the first cousin you had killed. And then if you say how many

01:07:11.940 have been maimed, it's probably three or four times that. So everybody in Gaza knows people

01:07:17.740 who've been killed and maimed.

01:07:19.080 And we're supporting it, right? That's the, also the, also the part that makes it really

01:07:23.040 tough sometimes to just be a person. It's like, we are tax money is going towards this,

01:07:29.380 but I just hope that people in some of these other countries know that, you know, it's not

01:07:33.740 regular everyday people who would want to do these things, you know, that it's like

01:07:37.280 government's making these choices and it's a corporate interest that make these choices.

01:07:42.120 How do we, how would we stop it? Well, do we need this connection with Israel? What is it?

01:07:47.000 No one ever explains what it's for. I feel like, right. That would help everybody have a much

01:07:51.480 better understanding, you know, because it starts to feel like America is just a shell company,

01:07:57.160 an LLC for Israel. That's what it starts to feel like a lot of times, you know.

01:08:00.600 Um, do you feel like that that's realistic or do you feel like that that's off base?

01:08:05.220 I would, I wouldn't send them a dime. Like that's my position. I don't think whatever we're getting

01:08:10.820 isn't worth it. And, uh, don't ask me to articulate the benefit because I think the cost is greater than

01:08:17.460 the benefit. You're going to, everybody in Gaza is at this point has to hate Israel, right? And by

01:08:23.960 extension, those bombs, when they see American politicians go over there and like sign the

01:08:28.220 fricking bombs that are going to kill women and children. Uh, what are we actually, there was

01:08:33.560 just a clip with Ted Cruz that came up. Can you see if you can find that Trevin where, yeah,

01:08:38.780 where Tucker Carlson was interviewing Ted Cruz. Let me see. This is a scary interview during the

01:08:43.500 Tucker Carlson interview with Ted Cruz. It's confirmed Israel's version of the CIA called

01:08:47.500 Mossad spies. Oh, it's about spying. It's like what we get. Let's, let's just watch it for a second.

01:08:51.920 Yeah. Does Mossad share all of its intelligence with us? Oh, probably not, but they share a lot.

01:08:57.280 Um, we don't share all of our intelligence with them, but we share a lot. It's a close,

01:09:00.620 a lot. Do they spy domestically in the United States? Oh, they probably do. And we do as well.

01:09:04.940 And, and friends and allies spy on each other. And, and I assume, I assume all of our allies spy on us.

01:09:09.560 That's okay with you. You know what? One of the things about being a conservative is that you're not

01:09:14.740 naive and utopian. You don't think humans are all part of the reason socialism doesn't work is,

01:09:20.620 is the, the, the mantra from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs

01:09:25.020 doesn't work as a conservative. I assume people act in their rational self-interest to pay people

01:09:31.280 to spy on you. It's conservative to recognize that human beings act in their own self-interest

01:09:36.220 and every one of our friends spies on us. And I'm not, do you like it? That's my question. I'm not

01:09:41.140 asking whether they have motive to do it. Of course they do. I understand that. And I, and by the way,

01:09:45.560 I'm not mad at them, but you're an American lawmaker. So I just want to know, hold on. I want to know

01:09:50.120 your attitude. You said that your guiding principle, in fact, the only principle, the

01:09:55.640 only criterion. I said guiding, the, the, the overwhelming, I wouldn't say only. Is, is it in

01:09:59.620 America's interest? Is it in America's interest for Israel to spy on us, including on the president?

01:10:03.760 Um, it is in America's interest to be closely allied with Israel because we get. What do we get?

01:10:13.080 That's the thing. It's painful to watch that. So when I'm in a room with somebody and they say,

01:10:19.060 can I talk to you, you know, just frankly, is anybody listening? I say, well, there's three

01:10:24.080 nation States plus our own in my phone. Yeah. There's, there's going to be Russia, China,

01:10:28.960 and Israel. They're in our phone. No, not yours. Like it's a lot of effort to anybody can be hacked.

01:10:36.180 Okay. Oh, I thought one of the reasons I got to go to Qatar recently. I'm wondering if they hacked

01:10:39.300 my phone. I thought they were good. I don't know if that's crazy. I think it's probably continuously

01:10:43.460 hacked. Okay. That's what I'm thinking. I, it just seems like everything's hacked now. I get scared,

01:10:47.660 you know, but, but, um, if, if you're not the Israeli national anthem every 45 minutes,

01:10:52.160 look, Amazon and Facebook know what you're saying in your phone, right? But probably Israel and,

01:10:59.080 and Russia and China aren't devoting that effort and internet traffic, which can become detectable

01:11:06.440 to us to, yeah. Right. But, um, you're probably, you know, why wouldn't you be trying to hear what

01:11:14.520 the 535 people in Washington DC who vote on bills, what they are thinking? Um, and then,

01:11:23.080 you know, also there, uh, there are, um, allegedly some congressmen who indulge in insider trading,

01:11:30.300 but I would guess that there are probably some hackers who are also inside of congressman's

01:11:35.860 phones trying to figure out what the sentiment is in Washington DC and then trading on that.

01:11:40.980 Wow. So there's always this extra layer kind of going along going on. It feels like, um, but what

01:11:47.620 do you think we get from Israel? I think it's just a big question. I think it's okay as a regular

01:11:51.580 person and I might get killed or something by Mossad or something, but what do we get from them

01:11:55.840 as a country? Like, is there, I think there's just, that's a big question America has right now. Is

01:11:59.780 there something we just don't see? And if there is, just tell us what it is so we can, um,

01:12:04.120 operate accordingly, you know? No, I, I think they're the best, uh, lobbying group in Washington,

01:12:11.960 DC. And the reason they can do it is you have, uh, dual citizens, people who are American and

01:12:19.200 Israeli who are allowed to give money into American politics and because they're American. And by virtue

01:12:27.140 of that, you're allowed to participate. But if you're a foreign national, you're not allowed to.

01:12:31.480 So they're one of the few countries that can donate money to what?

01:12:36.040 To super PACs, to members of Congress.

01:12:38.860 Other countries aren't allowed to do that.

01:12:40.380 Well, I mean, they could if you were dual citizens, but there's not so many dual citizens

01:12:44.760 as it were.

01:12:46.760 But, but could somebody be a Russian and American dual citizen and serving, and serving, uh, in a

01:12:52.160 Congress or?

01:12:52.980 Sure. And donate to congressmen. Um, by the way, I have introduced a bill that would require members

01:12:59.680 of Congress to disclose if they are dual citizens. And I think that's only fair.

01:13:05.960 Right. Cause right now you could have allegiance to another country, not just the USA.

01:13:09.460 Correct. We swear an allegiance when you're a member of Congress to the constitution.

01:13:13.380 I always like to point this out. We're, we're not swearing it to the country. We're not swearing

01:13:17.720 it to the president. We're not swearing it to our party. We swear it to the constitution

01:13:21.580 and, uh, other countries have constitutions too. What if you've taken allegiance to two

01:13:27.500 different constitutions? Like the America, I'm not, and I'm not even, my bill wouldn't

01:13:31.840 even keep you from being a member of Congress. It would just say you have to disclose it

01:13:35.680 if you are. And it, and by the way, it wouldn't necessarily just be Israel members of Congress

01:13:42.580 who are also, uh, citizens of Israel. It could be other countries as well. I just think it creates

01:13:49.140 a conflict of interest. Uh, and you know, I have to disclose yearly, which stocks I own.

01:13:55.940 I have to disclose all my personal financial information so that the voters can, uh, decide

01:14:04.700 if I am unduly influenced by that conflict of interest. And so that's the structure of

01:14:10.360 my bill. My bill just, it's a, an election disclosure. Okay. You're running for Congress.

01:14:15.000 Bring it up.

01:14:15.220 Tell us, tell us which countries you are, uh, a representative Thomas Massey announces the

01:14:22.040 introduction of HR 2356, the dual loyalty disclosure act representative Massey's legislation

01:14:28.740 amends a federal election campaign act to require candidates for federal office to disclose both

01:14:34.440 their possession of dual citizenship and also the foreign country in which their dual citizenship

01:14:38.880 is held. So right now we don't have to, no, people don't have to disclose.

01:14:44.360 Nope, they don't.

01:14:46.180 You would have no idea.

01:14:48.260 Have you seen spies like us, dude?

01:14:51.320 It's also, by the way, it's a safety net, by the way, if you, if something went really bad,

01:14:56.760 you could just go live in your other country. I think you should be all in for this country.

01:15:02.140 I agree. This ain't the fucking hokey pokey, dude. I think you got to have both feet in

01:15:06.920 or both feet out. You know what I'm saying, dude? I just, and, but, but, but any country,

01:15:14.420 this could happen. It could be, it's, that's not just Israel.

01:15:17.320 Correct. It could be any country. It could be, but Israel is the only one that has a big lobby.

01:15:21.300 So for the Russian, like Russia pack or whatever, no, there is not. Like I say,

01:15:27.240 there's not even Australia pack or, or great Britain pack. I mean, because they're natural

01:15:35.540 allies. Why would they have to lobby Congress? They're also not on our teat, like asking for

01:15:40.840 money. Yeah. But I think it's also, there's this, it's a weird amalgamation of, of combined

01:15:46.920 interests. There's a military industrial complex that is all in for everything AIPAC is for. And

01:15:54.140 before I banned AIPAC from my office, we used to have conversations that would go something like

01:15:59.700 this. Oh, you should be for the foreign aid that goes to Israel because it all comes back to the

01:16:05.760 United States in the form of military spending. We're buying it all from American contractors

01:16:11.980 and be like, no, that's not a convincing argument to me. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean,

01:16:18.640 I don't even know what it's about, but it seems like bullshit to me. How, how does America make

01:16:24.220 money off of war? Right? Like I get that, you know, we sell things, this and that, but how is that such

01:16:30.840 a business? Right? You know, it's like, how do we let this happen? Well, the answer is America

01:16:35.600 doesn't make money off of war. A few people in America do make money off of war and they make a lot

01:16:41.540 of money off of war. So they want the music to keep going. They don't want the music to stop.

01:16:46.620 Right. And as soon as, you know, Biden was serious about getting out of Afghanistan and did get us

01:16:55.440 out of Afghanistan and we were spending, by the way, we were still spending $50 billion a year in

01:17:01.520 Afghanistan after 20 years. As soon as he got us out of there, guess what? We start spending an

01:17:07.580 average of $50 billion a year in Ukraine. And now that that's winding down, guess what? This

01:17:13.980 thing in Iran is heating up. And regardless of whether our troops engage directly, those are all

01:17:20.800 American munitions. And those stocks are, you know, the people who run those companies are excited

01:17:27.920 that now, you know, as soon as we deplete our stockpiles, we're going to have to fill them back

01:17:34.200 up. Like, it's not like they're holding a bunch of inventory, but the U.S. government does.

01:17:40.480 Ostensibly, those are weapons that are supposed to defend us that are now being used. And so they

01:17:45.780 know we'll buy them back. And I have this theory that there's about $50 billion a year of things that

01:17:53.020 need to get blown up and replaced in order for that segment of the economy to stay healthy.

01:17:59.860 And then there was a real push to get out of Ukraine, to quit spending money there.

01:18:06.200 And we almost succeeded. Like I said before, the tie-breaking vote was Mike Johnson. The bill

01:18:12.500 passed by just one vote. And a lot of times the speaker doesn't even vote, but he voted in that case

01:18:18.000 to make sure that Ukraine got that money. But isn't it, I mean, it's also, I think it's

01:18:24.740 admirable that a guy is willing to go against their own party's interests, right? Like that part

01:18:29.280 to me seems like a part of like, you know what I'm saying? Like not just to be in line all the

01:18:34.200 time with everything. Well, that could be me sometimes, right? Right. That's what I'm saying.

01:18:37.920 Oh, totally. Yeah. So that's what I, I think that's a little bit of the thing I don't get about some

01:18:43.100 of this stuff. Whenever we talk about Mike Johnson is like, if he like, there's admiration in going

01:18:48.060 against like, um, just what your party's going to do. Right. If you're, if you're staying true to

01:18:53.000 your party's principles, I think it's admirable. But when you're betraying your party's principles,

01:18:58.660 I don't think it is because you've campaigned on one thing and now you're doing something

01:19:03.260 different. Got it. And, and the reality is the speaker has so much power up there. He's in training

01:19:09.180 dozens of more people who rely on him to get reelected. And the, the, by the way,

01:19:14.920 the lobbyists, in addition to focusing on the executive branch, they spend a lot of their effort

01:19:19.400 on the, um, on just the speaker and the speaker's office.

01:19:24.820 What do you, what do you think has kept us in Ukraine so long? I mean, obviously, you know,

01:19:29.300 we want to be supportive of people that are struggling, right? We want to help out people,

01:19:33.200 you know, it feels like as an American, especially that's part of like our creed and what you feel in

01:19:37.580 your heart is like, if you can be helpful to another group, right? Um, so I certainly see

01:19:43.320 that as something that we want to keep involved in foreign conflicts, even though a lot of times

01:19:49.100 I'm like, why are we involved in these conflicts over there? What is it? I think that I don't

01:19:52.960 understand maybe about the, um, or about Russia and Ukraine, or do you think that that's part of

01:19:57.940 just the military industrial tab that we have to fill?

01:20:00.760 I think we have agitated Russia to the point by expanding NATO. Um, we, we just keep adding

01:20:08.820 countries closer and closer to their backyard that are in a military alliance with us. And,

01:20:15.440 um, the situation in Ukraine, we also toppled their government in 2014. The, the United States

01:20:22.500 did.

01:20:22.900 We did?

01:20:23.900 Yeah.

01:20:24.680 Bring that up.

01:20:25.320 Yeah. Bring that up. You can, uh, see that the, the government changed there and we, we had our

01:20:32.240 hands all over that.

01:20:33.960 Let me see. In 2014, Ukraine experienced a period of intense political upheaval culminating in the

01:20:38.260 removal of president Viktor Yanukovych. Uh, the event often referred to as a revolution of dignity or

01:20:44.480 Euro may Maidan involve widespread protests against Yanukovych's policies, particularly his decision to

01:20:50.520 reject the trade agreement with the European union in favor of closer ties with Russia. Um, so we didn't

01:20:55.900 want them to have closer ties with Russia. So we overthrew them.

01:20:58.360 Yeah. I mean, we went in and fomented those protests. Um, our CIA did our state department.

01:21:05.680 Um, you know, Victoria Nuland was part of that.

01:21:09.920 So this was just another thing you think we started laying the seeds in advance to get,

01:21:13.740 to get to this point.

01:21:14.820 Yeah. I don't think it would have ever happened if, if we weren't involved in fomenting this and

01:21:21.160 then talking about bringing them into NATO after we poked Putin in the eye here.

01:21:25.960 And the whole point was just to get to a war to help fill out the tab you're saying.

01:21:29.820 Yeah. Yeah. That's, and that's a part of it. Like that's, that's sort of Massey's law. There has to

01:21:34.540 be another, there has to be $50 billion of stuff that gets blown up that is made by American, uh,

01:21:41.780 military industrial complex in order to keep them going. And if it's not, they'll, they'll just

01:21:47.960 spend more effort in making that happen.

01:21:51.580 Got it.

01:21:52.300 Rather than go out of business.

01:21:54.040 Yeah. Oh, I think once you get used to something, you get used to it.

01:21:58.680 Oh, here's the thing I was going to say before. When, when we got close to not funding Ukraine

01:22:03.260 under Mike Johnson, uh, the Biden administration sent a letter to Congress, to each of us,

01:22:10.600 everybody in Congress got one of these letters listing all the States who had, they, they call

01:22:16.440 it the defense industrial base now because military industrial complex has a bad connotation.

01:22:21.520 You need to rebranding.

01:22:22.120 Yeah. So it's Dib, D-I-B, the defense industrial base. They showed how every, almost every state

01:22:29.080 in the union benefits from military spending and why you should, and that was their argument.

01:22:36.380 Not that there was some noble cause or to help out a struggling group of people. Like you said,

01:22:41.540 the argument that the Biden administration was making was it was in congressman's financial,

01:22:47.000 the financial best interests of their districts in order to vote for this bill.

01:22:52.660 So at least now they're just saying it's, it's a business.

01:22:55.300 Yeah. Give them an A for honesty.

01:22:57.320 Yeah.

01:22:58.220 They're at least saying, yeah.

01:22:59.320 Feed the machine.

01:23:00.200 Yeah. Feed the machine.

01:23:00.960 But doesn't that also cost human lives? Like if our military has to get involved?

01:23:05.200 It does. That's the, you know, these, now they're supposedly sanitary wars where our kids

01:23:12.080 don't have to die. But I think it's disgusting when, you know, we've had members of the Senate

01:23:19.220 at least say that this is great. We're grinding down Russia's military capability and we don't

01:23:27.040 have to spill any of our blood. But I mean, how perverted is that? That you're, you're grinding

01:23:32.680 up Ukrainians bodies in order to grind up Russian bodies. And that somehow that's in the best

01:23:39.040 interest of the United States. I'll give, I don't want to say his name, but I'll give that Senator

01:23:44.740 credit for being honest at least, but I think it's disgusting.

01:23:49.200 Yeah. I mean, I think it's, we just have so much capability to manipulate so many situations,

01:23:55.000 you know, and I don't understand, like, actually I, it's silly to say I don't understand anymore.

01:23:59.920 If I believe that part of the military industrial complex or the defense industrial base, industrial

01:24:05.920 base needs to keep, uh, keep collecting, you know, it makes sense. It's a business, everything

01:24:11.660 kind of, I mean, that's one of the downsides of capitalism, I guess, you know, in a weird

01:24:15.620 way is that everything kind of can become a business, you know, even like the beauties

01:24:19.180 of, um, trying to be, uh, supportive of other countries or trying to help out people, you

01:24:25.640 know, um, and that, that's in addition to the trillion dollars a year we're now spending

01:24:30.120 on the military in, in the United States. That's about what Congress allocates. And this,

01:24:36.600 this is all catching up to us because now the interest that we're paying is about a trillion

01:24:42.400 dollars a year. So because we've engaged for two or three decades and all of these overseas

01:24:48.980 wars, we've racked up such a tab that we're paying more in interest than, there you go,

01:24:55.880 than we are in the military industrial complex. And the, you know, on the screen there it says

01:25:01.280 849 billion. Don't forget there's another hundred billion in the big, beautiful bill that they

01:25:06.880 snuck in there and they sneak in another 50 billion somewhere else when, um, so it's about

01:25:13.160 a trillion, but look, look up the interest on the debt now too. We're, Oh, the interest on the debt,

01:25:18.260 it matches our GDP right now. I think it's about 35 mil, 35 trillion a year is our, that's the debt,

01:25:24.880 but the interest on the debt matches the, how much we spend on all of our defense. It's a trillion

01:25:30.400 dollars. If you look up interest, what's the interest on the debt last year? That's insane.

01:25:35.420 Um, do you think that we should have a war with Iran? I know you got you and Ro Khanna, which is

01:25:41.720 so crazy that he was here the other day. And then here you are. Cause it was just like, what are the

01:25:45.500 odds, you know? Right. And no, we didn't plan that because we didn't know Israel was going to bomb

01:25:50.700 Iran and that, Oh no, a month ago, I knew that you were probably going to come. We've been talking

01:25:54.740 about it, but then Ro, he and I just decided like five days ago. So it was just crazy before I even knew

01:25:59.380 that the bill that you guys had put that together. Um, he said that that made it so that the,

01:26:04.280 there had to be a 15 day moratorium before you went to war. Is that correct? Can you explain it to

01:26:09.080 me? Um, no, that we can get a vote within 15 days of, uh, of this bill being introduced unless

01:26:17.200 Speaker Johnson does something sneaky. So there's a law that says if Ro Khanna and I, um, in which we did

01:26:26.160 introduce this war powers resolution, the law says that Speaker Johnson needs to bring this to the

01:26:32.540 floor, uh, for a vote, if the committee doesn't act on it and the committee's not going to act on it.

01:26:38.140 By the way, I introduced this on Tuesday. Um, and it's just been a few days. We have 37 co-sponsors

01:26:47.160 already. Now it, whether you think we should be engaged in a war with Iran or not, I would hope that

01:26:56.300 your listeners understand that or agree that it's important that their members of Congress vote on

01:27:02.160 whether that happens or not. And before, just to give you some historical perspective, uh, before

01:27:09.260 George Bush senior went, attacked Iraq, there was a vote of Congress to do that. It wasn't a

01:27:17.420 declaration of war. It was to authorize use of military force before, uh, George Bush junior went

01:27:23.600 into Afghanistan. There was a vote of Congress. And before we went into Iraq again, there was a vote of

01:27:29.900 Congress. What's being discussed right now in the news is this notion that the president could just

01:27:35.720 join in on the bombing of Iran without a vote of Congress. It's the constitution requires Congress

01:27:43.280 to vote. Like that's our authority is to declare war. So why do you need this bill then if it's already

01:27:49.320 a law? Well, this is, uh, this is prescribed by that law. Basically somebody has to bring it to a

01:27:56.900 vote. And so I stepped up and I asked Ro Khanna if he wanted to join me on this and he did. And

01:28:03.520 we've been collecting like a dozen co-sponsors a day since then. So it's you guys just saying,

01:28:07.760 Hey guys, we have to vote on this. We have to vote. They can't just say it and we have to do it.

01:28:10.800 Correct. Right. And what's funny is whenever it's the other guy in the white house,

01:28:16.800 it's like, if a Democrat's in the white house, Republicans and the Democrat wants to wage war,

01:28:22.640 the Republicans agree with this principle that I'm saying. And if it's a Republican in the white

01:28:27.960 house, it's the other way, it's the other way. The Democrats agree with the principle that, uh,

01:28:33.180 Congress needs to vote on it. But we've got this interesting situation where there's a Republican

01:28:37.320 in the white house and Republicans control Congress. And so it's, I don't have a single

01:28:43.740 Republican co-sponsor for my bill yet for, for two reasons. Number one, they're afraid of AIPAC,

01:28:51.140 the, you know, American Israel, uh, uh, cause Israel has been wanting to fight over there

01:28:58.400 forever. Yeah. For two decades. I know there's videos of him saying like how he's been, yeah,

01:29:03.380 how he's been wanting to fight. Yeah. I've seen it anyway. It could be AI. I have no idea.

01:29:07.040 No, it's real for two decades. He's been saying they're weeks away from a nuclear weapon. Um,

01:29:13.060 so do you believe it? By the way, even if they are, Pakistan's got a nuclear weapon. India's got a

01:29:18.560 nuclear weapon. Nobody's talking about bombing them. Yeah. And the other reality is look, South

01:29:25.140 Africa, people forget this used to have nuclear weapons. A country of 30 million people developed

01:29:30.900 nuclear capability on their own in the seventies. Like we need to be preparing to defend our own

01:29:37.120 country. I agree. I don't know what the fuck we're doing over there. I don't understand it. And

01:29:41.760 we've almost dug so many holes over there and it's like, it just feels so far away from people.

01:29:47.340 Like, why is it over there starting all this shit? You know, when we have problems in our own

01:29:51.800 country and their basic problems and they never get told, it's the same thing. Instead, like

01:29:56.620 Hollywood creates like, what about the Diddy trial? That'll keep you entertained for fucking

01:30:00.600 three months, you know, or like some, here's some shit. Here's a pedophile. You know, it just,

01:30:06.460 it's always the same fucking thing. I call those weapons of mass distraction. Yeah. There's always a

01:30:11.540 weapon of mass distraction that comes up. Would you, uh, do you think that Trump wants a war in

01:30:16.780 Iran? No, I don't. I actually don't. And I've talked to him on the phone about this. When you

01:30:22.600 remember there was a Iran, uh, uh, uh, a general from Iran called Soleimani who was, uh, basically

01:30:29.680 taken out while he was in Iraq during the first Trump presidency. Bring up Soleimani. Yeah. There you

01:30:35.480 go. Interesting looking guy. He almost looks like two different people put into one head.

01:30:38.960 So they took him out when Trump was president. Was he a good guy or bad guy? Bad guy. Okay. Okay. And

01:30:45.980 then, uh, and I, I'm not here to litigate that, but Trump was talking about attacking Iran after

01:30:52.660 that. I think they shot down one of our drones. And so tensions were escalating and the Democrats

01:30:58.500 put a bill on the floor to say that, uh, you can't go basically like my bill this time. So you

01:31:06.260 can't go to war without a vote of Congress. And I vote, I was one of three Republicans

01:31:11.120 who voted for that resolution, but Trump found out I was going to vote for it. And he called

01:31:16.060 me up and tried to talk me out of voting for it. And in that conversation, we talked about

01:31:21.760 war with Iran and he genuinely, I do believe he genuinely didn't want war with Iran. His argument

01:31:27.680 to me was that if we, Congress gave him the authority to threaten them, that he could keep

01:31:34.700 us out of a war with the threat. I see. So that's a strategy. It is a strategy. The problem with the

01:31:40.840 strategy I told him was, okay, if I vote to give you that authority to declare war or on your own,

01:31:48.540 you know, preemptively Congress. How do I know it will happen? Well, what if they call your bluff?

01:31:54.680 And then now we're in a war and I don't get a chance to vote on it because I just said,

01:32:00.400 we don't need to vote on it. And, and, um, he was not happy with that reasoning, but. Well,

01:32:07.000 because I guess, I guess his thought would be, well, if I tell you, I'm not going to do it no

01:32:11.500 matter what, then why wouldn't you support me? Probably. Yeah. Um, but you can't know that he won't.

01:32:17.440 And by the way, he told me, he said, I'm more libertarian than you are.

01:32:24.460 Oh man. Donald Trump is an interesting guy, man. What are you, what an anomaly of a human being,

01:32:30.060 I think. He is. There'll, there'll never be another person like him, particularly not one

01:32:34.940 that becomes president. And I've been on his good side and I've been on his bad side. And it seems

01:32:40.320 like every couple of years it flips. Yeah. I saw, didn't you get uninvited to the picnic or

01:32:44.360 something? Was that a thing that, was that a real thing that happened? That was a real thing

01:32:47.420 that happened. A meme about it or something that you got uninvited to the, um. At the last minute,

01:32:52.020 I got re-invited. Uh, but this goes back to 2020 during COVID. I was the only one who

01:32:58.560 said, we're, you know, this CARES Act is going to bankrupt the country. Basically it's going to

01:33:04.300 cause massive inflation and shortages. So I opposed that. Um, and the president called me,

01:33:10.080 he was upset with me that I would force Congress to return during COVID and vote. And basically all I

01:33:15.660 said was, look, this was during COVID. They wanted to spend $2 trillion by, by unanimous consent. I

01:33:22.700 said, if truckers have to work and farmers have to work and nurses have to work, why, why doesn't

01:33:27.280 Congress show up and vote on this? Yeah. So he, at the time he called me a third rate grandstander

01:33:32.640 and said, I should be thrown out of Congress. Uh, the media immediately like descended on me and

01:33:38.880 said, what did I have to say for myself? Cause he was tweeting all of this. And I said, well,

01:33:42.720 I'm at least second rate. Come on. Uh, yeah. Help me out here. Two years later,

01:33:48.280 he endorsed me for a reelection. And then, uh, most recently Bobby Kendi, you know, joined a coalition

01:33:58.080 with the president, um, for Maha, make America healthy again. And you, you know, you can do that

01:34:04.740 through the, um, National Institute of Health and FDA and CDC and all that, but also our food supply

01:34:11.560 is a big, important part of that. So Bobby Kendi was advocating for me to be the secretary of

01:34:17.720 agriculture. And he and I have been talking about it for weeks. This was before Trump won the election

01:34:23.880 last fall. And there's a lot of agriculture out of Kentucky. That'd have been great. It would have

01:34:28.300 been something you were interested in. I would. Yes, definitely. Cause I think there are a lot of

01:34:33.000 things we could do to basically reinvigorate and empower small farmers to, to make healthy food and,

01:34:39.380 and grow local economies, things like that. And so I was all in and Bobby Kendi's team spent a lot of

01:34:46.100 time on it. And I told him this was like in October before the election. I said, I think there's one

01:34:51.580 problem with your plan. And he said, what's that? And I said, I've not endorsed Trump. And he said,

01:34:56.840 well, it sounds like you need to endorse Trump. Do you think that was a strategy or do you think

01:35:00.660 that it was? No, he was genuine. Yeah. And, and I agreed with him. So I said, well, how do we announce

01:35:06.580 it? And he said, we'll come out to Wisconsin Tuesday and Tulsi and I are doing this rally and

01:35:11.420 just come up on stage and announce it there. And I'm thinking, man, I don't want to go to Wisconsin

01:35:16.100 in October to, to do this. Cause I had a lot of other things on my plate at that time. And so,

01:35:23.020 um, I put it off for a day. I did look at plane tickets to go to Wisconsin. I typed out an

01:35:29.220 endorsement of Trump on my iPhone, read it back to myself. And I woke up the next morning and I thought,

01:35:35.280 this is the day I got to do this. So, uh, Trump, when my wife passed away last summer,

01:35:41.900 he had left a very nice message. I would have obviously taken his call, but when, you know,

01:35:47.100 I was inundated with calls, but he left a really nice message of condolences.

01:35:51.460 And that was thoughtful of him. And so it was, and that's a side people don't see,

01:35:55.580 right? I, I actually campaigned for Ron DeSantis and Trump felt compelled to leave that message,

01:36:01.800 even though I hadn't endorsed him. It was very thoughtful message. So I sit down, I'm in a hotel in

01:36:07.280 Orlando and I woke up and, uh, I went and I listened to that message and I thought, all right,

01:36:13.480 I'm going to talk to his staff about going to Wisconsin and doing this endorsement. So I dialed

01:36:19.260 the number and on the second ring, I hear, hello, this is Donald. And I was like, oh shit, that's his

01:36:26.480 cell number. And he's like two weeks from prison or president. Nobody knows. And he, and he's taking

01:36:33.760 my call to America and I was taken off guard. Cause I thought I was, I was like, how do you do?

01:36:39.320 What do you fricking do? I'm sitting here in my boxers in a Marriott. Oh God, at least go outside

01:36:44.900 and stand up. You weren't sitting down, were you? Cause your audio, your vault, your volume's better

01:36:50.280 if you walk around where you're talking to somebody. So, uh, the first thing I did was to

01:36:54.440 thank him for leaving the message about my wife. Cause I hadn't done that yet. And he said,

01:37:01.280 that's a hard one. That's a very hard one. You know, uh, Arnold Palmer, he played around a lot,

01:37:07.440 but he did love his wife. And when she passed away, it, it almost killed Arnie. I mean, it was

01:37:13.520 tough on Arnie, uh, but he's a tough cookie. Uh, you you're a tough cookie too. And, uh, you know,

01:37:20.500 you're like Arnie, you'll get through this. And he goes, I take it back. You're much tougher than Arnie

01:37:26.340 ever was. So then he goes, you're sharp cookie too. You know, you went to MIT. My uncle, uh,

01:37:35.120 professor John G. Trump taught at MIT for 41 years. It's a record. He said, Oh, what a,

01:37:43.300 what a God, what a, I've got the best genetics. Yeah. I'm like, I'm thinking, wait, this guy is

01:37:51.740 two weeks away and he's got to be busy, right? This is the election of his life. And so I thought,

01:37:59.380 you know, at some point they're going to grab him and say, look, who are you talking to? You got to

01:38:02.860 get back to work. Yeah. So I said, well, the reason I'm calling you is I want to, I've seen it's

01:38:08.340 close in these purple States and a lot of independents and libertarians who could be

01:38:12.420 influenced perhaps. And I'd like to endorse you. Oh, this is wonderful. This is great. This is

01:38:17.940 tremendous. And, and I said, well, how do I, how do we get it out there? And he goes, Oh,

01:38:23.140 just tweet it. I'll retweet you. So I saved myself a trip to Wisconsin. Oh, that's nice. Dude. I love

01:38:29.640 going to Wisconsin. Was it in La Crosse? I don't know where it was. Oh, you missed out, I think.

01:38:34.700 So he goes, uh, you know, I spoke at the Libertarian National Convention. Yeah, there it is. There's,

01:38:41.160 oh yeah. Um, there's a sentence in here. I got to explain. Okay. Uh, so he goes, I spoke at the,

01:38:49.040 the Libertarian Convention and they loved me. He said, when I mentioned, I was going to free that

01:38:54.300 kid that's been locked up a hundred years, they all applauded. And who was that? Not Travis Scott or

01:38:59.620 Ross Ulbrich. So I said, oh yeah, he's in for two life sentences plus 40 years for running a website.

01:39:05.880 Hmm. And, um, he said, yeah, put that in your endorsement. The Libertarians will love it.

01:39:12.620 Oh really? So if you look like, I'm like, he will make America healthy. He'll save America,

01:39:18.340 secure our liberties. I said, and he'll free Ross Ulbrich. Wow. So a lot of people were like,

01:39:23.440 we'll take it. Yeah. Ross's mom called me and thanked me for that. And then. Is he out? Yeah.

01:39:31.480 Wow. I took him to the state of the union. Is he a cool guy? He's super cool guy. And he never

01:39:35.780 should have been in prison, uh, for as long as he was. Yeah. What'd he get locked up for? Uh,

01:39:41.640 running a dark web website called Silk Road that allowed people to buy and sell things on the

01:39:46.840 internet. Oh yeah. And they're selling dope and shit on there. People are dying. Yeah. So, uh,

01:39:51.840 I say, so that's what he's holding for a year, but I mean, that's the thing. But it's like,

01:39:56.400 you can't lock him up. If you can't lock him up and not lock up, uh, all the perpetrators on the

01:40:00.880 website are free. Right. No, I'm talking about, you can't lock him up and not lock up the, um,

01:40:07.280 Sackler family though. You keep going back to that. I don't know what you're talking about.

01:40:12.380 Oh, they're the, uh, family that did the opioid epidemic or whatever. Oh, okay. They're the, uh,

01:40:16.440 Purdue pharma family. Oh, okay. Okay. Sorry. So anyway, yeah, I'm sorry. They just,

01:40:20.160 they're just like, uh, mass murders or whatever. Oh, I mean, they're allegedly mass murders that are

01:40:24.820 still wandering around. So anyways, um, the thing is, so I said, all right, I'll put that sentence

01:40:31.760 in. Let me, I want to run this by you. And he said, here, I'll give you to Dan Scavino. He's on

01:40:38.400 the plane with me. And I'm like, oh my gosh, he's on a plane. He's talking to me. He said, we're

01:40:42.700 going to go tape the Joe Rogan show. Then he like, I can hear him hand the phone. Oh, that was right

01:40:48.080 before the election, dude. Yeah. He hands the phone to Scavino and he's like, I don't think he knew I

01:40:54.000 could hear him, but he goes, Dan, this is a tough cookie. It's Thomas Massey. Uh, don't screw this

01:40:58.980 up. Then we worked out the endorsement. That's pretty cool, huh? It was cool. Cause then instead

01:41:04.820 of like a bunch of staff trying to figure out what to do, I just called him and we got it done in

01:41:09.820 like five minutes. Right. But, and I did endorse him and then I'm obviously I'm not the ag secretary,

01:41:16.260 but I'm, that's okay. I'm happy where I'm at. I would have done it if he needed somebody to do it.

01:41:21.700 But are you guys at odds? Do you feel like, or do you feel like there's so much going on in his

01:41:25.840 world? Uh, well, he came over to Congress a few weeks ago to whip us on the big, beautiful bill.

01:41:34.860 And so when that happens, you guys all get together in a room and he gets to speak?

01:41:37.940 Yeah. 200 people in the room. Okay. And so he's petitioning for the big, beautiful bill.

01:41:42.520 He's telling us how great it is. And then he's, she says something about me and then he realizes I

01:41:48.680 might be in the room. He said, is Tom Massey in the room? And I raised my hand and he looked at him.

01:41:54.500 He said, you know, the thing about Tom Massey is, um, he's very much like Rand Paul. They're both

01:42:01.700 from Kentucky. You can never get him to vote for anything. And they got the same hair.

01:42:07.560 That's pretty true. Then he goes, actually, I like Massey's hair better. So all my colleagues,

01:42:13.820 they, they were, uh, approving of me that day. That's hilarious. So there's, I mean,

01:42:20.220 people, people, people, some people hate Donald Trump. Some people love Donald Trump. I just think

01:42:24.560 you cannot deny that he is a, they is there as nobody like him. There's two, there's two forms

01:42:31.560 of Trump derangement syndrome though. There's, uh, there's the kind where you hate him so much,

01:42:38.600 it's irrational. And even if he's for something you support, you still be against him.

01:42:43.420 And, and a lot of liberals have Trump derangement syndrome and some Republicans.

01:42:47.960 Well, that's a general thing. I think that's just a political derangement syndrome too. I mean,

01:42:51.700 I have friends that's like, you could show them the same exact thing, but if it's a Republican

01:42:55.600 saying it or a Democrat and they'll choose the other side, you know?

01:42:58.840 Well, that's why there's the other version of Trump derangement syndrome, which is you love him so

01:43:03.500 much that when he goes against something he said he would do, or he does something that's against

01:43:09.860 your principles, you change your own principles to support him. And I think that's just as dangerous.

01:43:16.500 And I try not to have either of the Trump derangement syndrome, so just be for the people

01:43:23.620 of Kentucky.

01:43:24.340 Yeah. And look, Kentucky derangement alone is, that's a pretty good, you know what I'm saying?

01:43:30.000 That's not a bad, you know, that's, that's a, I mean, that's its own special 150 proof

01:43:35.840 derangement right there, you know? It's a one of a kind. I'm a man of my people.

01:43:41.700 It's one of a kind. You know, what's one of the most beautiful places I've ever done a show was

01:43:45.060 Pike. Pikeville? Pikeville, Kentucky. Yeah. Eastern Kentucky. It was a tough show. It was just,

01:43:50.860 I don't know if it was the acoustics place we played, but it was a beautiful little city,

01:43:54.480 great crowd. I mean, beautiful big town. I mean, one of the most beautiful places I think I've ever

01:43:58.760 been. It just blew my mind that what it even was. See, see if you can find a picture of Lewis County,

01:44:03.320 Kentucky. That's where I'm from. It's a, that's the town I grew up in right there.

01:44:08.620 What is that? I believe it's Vanceburg.

01:44:11.380 That's Vanceburg? Yep. And the courthouse with the red roof on the left with the columns. Oh yeah.

01:44:17.800 There's two courthouses, but one on the left, my grandfather hauled the stones for that courthouse

01:44:22.500 that were quarried locally. Dude, that is cool. How big is that place? It's about 2,000 people.

01:44:28.580 Hell yeah. Perfect size. And it's the county seat. It's the biggest town in the county.

01:44:32.960 So you go there to buy beer and to go to church and put your money in the bank or get a loan.

01:44:41.200 Amen. Lewis County. Yeah. So that's, the town is called Lewis County or the whole county is 12,000?

01:44:45.840 The whole county is about 13 or 14,000 people. And Vanceburg used to be 2,000. It's probably 1,500

01:44:54.900 people now, but that's where I grew up. And I, this is a true story. When I went to MIT, which is in

01:45:01.320 Cambridge, Massachusetts, across the river from Boston, you can see in Vanceburg, there's no

01:45:06.120 crosswalks. We had one stoplight and I lived there until I was 18. Then I would go to Massachusetts,

01:45:14.200 never visited in my life. And I landed on a plane. I'm going through a crosswalk, you know,

01:45:20.380 with the signs that say, walk and don't walk. And a car honked at me. And I thought, oh my gosh,

01:45:25.860 I'd been here six hours and already run into somebody from Kentucky. And I waved at them

01:45:30.020 because I thought the car honking knew me. No, they were pissed. They were waving back with one

01:45:35.560 finger because I was walking against a don't walk or something. Get out the street, honking.

01:45:41.040 That's hilarious, dude. Yeah, man. Going from a small town to a big place is definitely fascinating,

01:45:46.980 man. It's definitely. That was, and it was intimidating. Like to go from that little town

01:45:52.800 where everybody says, oh, you're uneducated, you're backwards, you don't know anything.

01:45:59.380 Oh, yeah. I went to public school, K through 12 there. And then, and then to go to MIT with all

01:46:04.920 these kids from private school and Bronx science. Were you just like a, were you just, I mean,

01:46:09.060 people must've think you was a real nerd or whatever. Oh, I was a nerd. Oh yeah. I built little

01:46:13.780 science projects in my room and, you know, that was, that was basically my ticket out of Appalachia.

01:46:20.140 Yeah. And went to MIT and, and started a company there. It, it was actually a virtual reality

01:46:27.000 interface that I invented that lets you touch three-dimensional objects and raise $32 million

01:46:32.980 of venture capital. Oh my God. From people like J.D. Vance. Yeah. Have you seen, well,

01:46:40.380 and some of your story is similar to Mr. Vance's, I think in some ways, you know, it's like,

01:46:45.220 and you don't hear a lot of stories about like, I mean, I think that they happen,

01:46:48.680 but you don't hear that many of them, you know, and maybe it's just because we don't talk to as

01:46:52.500 many politicians that are like, usually politicians were always like on C-span or somewhere where you

01:46:57.120 didn't really get to envelop much of their story. I think by J.D. having that movie that came out

01:47:01.600 about him probably helped. Well, the book, I mean, he wrote the book and it rings true for me. Like he,

01:47:09.180 he went to New England to school. I went to New England from school. I didn't know where the place,

01:47:14.420 what to do with a place sitting of, of, of silverware. I was waving at cars that honked,

01:47:20.180 but I tell J.D. when he was a Senator, we, we met a few times to talk about the Ukraine issue and

01:47:26.600 things like that. But I told him, I said, J.D., you've appropriated my culture. Like I'm from

01:47:32.080 Vanceburg, Kentucky, literally Vanceburg. And you're from Ohio and you're saying you're a hillbilly.

01:47:37.920 Like he's part of the, the hillbilly people that, like my people that left and went to Ohio. So I,

01:47:45.900 I have a brother and a sister. They both went to Ohio. We, and it was a big migration. Why was it?

01:47:51.220 Was it to work in the mills? It was, uh, there were shoe factories. Some of them went to Detroit

01:47:56.860 to work at car factories. But it was for employment. Employment. Yeah. And, and, and this continued for

01:48:02.680 generations as coal went down, but that we said, they teach you three R's in Eastern Kentucky,

01:48:08.260 reading, writing, and route 23. Oh yeah. Route 23 runs North, crosses the river and goes up

01:48:15.880 from Portsmouth to Columbus and on up that way. So, um, the difference between J.D. and I is

01:48:22.540 my mamaw didn't drop F bombs. Like he had, uh, I will say he probably had a rougher upbringing with,

01:48:29.520 you know, his single mom and whatnot. So he had overcome a lot. Yeah. I mean, he's an, I mean,

01:48:34.440 I think J.D.'s a great speaker. He's an interesting guy. You know, I've enjoyed the opportunity even

01:48:39.400 gets talked to him. The simple fact that even somebody like me is even going to talk to him.

01:48:42.380 I think it's all kind of fascinating. I think it's great. I think he's over there biting his tongue

01:48:46.400 so much though. Like, cause when you're the vice president. Oh, it did feel different when I spoke

01:48:51.060 with him the first time. Then the second time you, you, and he's a good guy. Like he's texted me.

01:48:55.720 Oh, I agree. Since he's been vice president and, um, he's a good guy, but I'm sure he's biting his

01:49:02.920 tongue on some of this stuff. Yeah. I bet it's interesting. You know, I bet the plot thickens,

01:49:07.260 you know, I bet the plot really, really thickens. Um, you talked about working in virtual reality.

01:49:11.580 How crazy, I feel like now, did you see Iran did that? Uh, there was a military video that they

01:49:17.080 had pushing their military. It was like, um, and we'll be done in a few minutes. Um, see if you can

01:49:22.080 bring that up, it was, uh, yeah. Did you see now it's like, there's like PR videos for

01:49:26.760 war and shit. Now, like what is even look at this shit?

01:49:37.400 Zoom in.

01:49:38.080 This looks like a video game. I mean, look at this. I feel like it's just getting really

01:49:59.180 bizarre. Look at that. I mean, that's good, but I think it's like, well, it's like we're,

01:50:09.200 it's like now, I feel like we're, we're getting so close to, you're going to be able to subscribe

01:50:14.140 online and stream, watch a stream of a war. Like you're going to be able to have drones

01:50:19.320 that are in the air watching war, right? Like probably Palantir drones or some company are

01:50:25.360 in the air and you can stream it from home, you know, but wouldn't it be better if just

01:50:30.080 like the drones killed the other drones and people didn't get killed and maybe that's it's

01:50:35.180 virtual reality and who can ever, who can build the best army in VR. That'd be a lot better

01:50:40.020 way than killing people.

01:50:41.920 I agree. I think it's gotten, I mean, it's like, you're going to be able to, you know,

01:50:45.900 it's going to be like, yeah, shit is just like you said earlier, everything is, feels merging.

01:50:50.700 It doesn't even feel real anymore. That's how unreal shit is. It doesn't even, you can

01:50:56.300 barely tell as a regular semi ignorant person, the difference between what's real and what's

01:51:02.800 not anymore. And that's when things get bizarre. It's like, I feel like next week, like I show

01:51:07.360 speed is going to like compete against Netanyahu's son or whatever that lives, I think in LA or

01:51:12.340 somewhere like, but, and they're going to compete in like the winner gets to, um, live in like

01:51:17.160 a, one of those like Congo cobalt mines where they're making iPhone like parts. It just,

01:51:22.380 you're just like, what the fuck is happening anymore?

01:51:24.880 It happens on both sides though. And truth is the first casualty of war. And you saw like,

01:51:29.800 there was the ghost of Kiev. Remember when that came out and there was supposedly this

01:51:34.800 aviator in Ukraine that was shooting down all these Russian jets.

01:51:39.340 Oh, it was, it was lore. Yeah. It was, it was all, yeah, it was all made up.

01:51:44.320 A popular, but ultimately mythical Ukrainian fighter pilot, an urban legend that emerged

01:51:49.660 during the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. So that a single MiG-29

01:51:53.980 pilot was shooting down multiple Russian aircraft, becoming a similar resistance. Yes.

01:51:57.720 So, and, and that was being reported as a real thing and congressmen were falling for that.

01:52:03.680 And so I have tried to be very judicious in all the videos I watch of everything that's coming from

01:52:10.720 all the countries, whether it's Iran or Israel or our own. And I actually caught the IDF,

01:52:16.980 the Israeli defense forces putting, using a, a clip that was from last year, trying to make it look

01:52:24.740 like that was, uh, Israel being bombed this, you know, this week. And I, this is, this is one of the fun

01:52:32.120 things about being a congressman with 1.3 million followers. Like I pointed it out and people started

01:52:38.720 looking at it and comparing it to the video from nine months ago. And they got community noted the

01:52:44.900 IDF for putting out a fake video. They didn't have to, I mean, there's plenty of live footage,

01:52:50.240 but they fell for it. Like we're just, we're in a loop. We're, we're consuming stuff on the internet.

01:52:57.160 And you know, the loop has been completed when the Israeli government consumes YouTubes that aren't

01:53:04.900 real and then puts them in their videos. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I could see them doing it just

01:53:11.440 because, but yeah, I think it's definitely the loop is like, we're spending the loop so long,

01:53:16.260 we're dizzy. That's where, that's where it feels like we are. If you can step out of it,

01:53:19.740 like I haven't had a TV in 20 years because. You're not missing anything. It just reinforces

01:53:27.000 the false. There we go. Breaking Bad was good. Did they? And. Oh yeah. Who knows? See? Yeah.

01:53:34.160 You can't tell what's really more raw footage, Iran. There. Yeah. There's the two videos. Look,

01:53:38.820 that's, that's the one they put out that said was happening in the past hours. Right. Okay. Now look

01:53:44.140 at the other one. The clouds are the same shape. The missiles are in the same formation. And that was a

01:53:49.580 YouTube from eight months ago. Wow. But the, the reason I caught it and nobody else did was I was

01:53:55.680 trying to verify everything before I took it as real. Yeah. And I saw that video from eight months

01:54:02.120 ago and figured out it was fake, but the IDF didn't, or maybe they did. And it just was more

01:54:08.160 dramatic than the footage they had. That could be more, but that sounds slightly more possible. But what

01:54:12.880 do I know? I don't know anything. I know this dude. Um, what can we do? Like, what can voters do

01:54:18.860 anymore? Do we, does it matter anymore what we do or are we done? It does matter. Uh,

01:54:24.860 you're going to. Does local level matter more than ever local level voting or what matters? Like,

01:54:30.160 what do we, what are we, what can we do? So the Congressman before me in my district

01:54:35.780 got a call at home one night and this older lady was upset that her trash hadn't been picked up.

01:54:42.340 Mm-hmm. And he's a U S Congressman. He said, ma'am, picked it up. He said, no, he said, I'm your U S

01:54:47.540 Congressman. I don't, I'm not involved with the trash pickup. Did you think about calling your

01:54:51.900 county commissioner? And she said, I was going to do that, but I didn't want to start that high up.

01:54:56.300 Yeah. So, um, it, I think local is, I started out in local politics and, and the local officials have

01:55:07.420 way more impact on your life than the, than the federal government does. And so I would take time

01:55:14.620 and pay attention and vote locally. And those are also people you can go find. When I was a local

01:55:19.380 government official and we would stop at the grocery store to buy milk, my kids would beg my

01:55:25.360 wife to go in to pick up the milk because I'd be in there two hours. And somebody talked to me about

01:55:29.980 a pothole and somebody talked to me about some weeds that need mowed at the intersection. And I wouldn't

01:55:35.180 get out of there. Now that I'm a Congressman, I can buy milk anywhere. Nobody cares. They know

01:55:40.140 Congress can't get anything done. Right. And so I think the people have figured it out. Definitely

01:55:46.300 pay attention local. When you do pay attention federal, don't get distracted by the weapons of

01:55:52.360 mass distraction. Um, don't call Nancy Pelosi. She's not, you're not going to change her mind.

01:56:00.340 Only call people you can vote for because the people taking those calls know that and

01:56:05.100 they'll discount everything you say unless you're a constituent. So everybody has two state senators

01:56:10.220 and one U.S. representative. So you only need to make three phone calls. I wouldn't write them a

01:56:15.200 letter. I wouldn't waste time on email. I would make a phone call and a real, more likely than not,

01:56:20.480 a real person in that office will pick up the phone and talk to you. And it'll be somebody who does

01:56:25.080 talk to the Congressman. Like we only, we have a staff of about 12 to 24 people. And I say hi to those

01:56:32.260 people that you are talking to every day. Now, I don't know that all Congressmen are this diligent,

01:56:37.140 but I have them write down who called about what and how many calls we got. Some days I get one phone

01:56:44.060 call and it's from the same guy that calls every day. Right. Michael, if Michael doesn't call, we ask

01:56:49.620 the local sheriff to go do a, you know, wellness check. Oh yeah. Don't, don't be a frequent flyer.

01:56:54.640 Don't call up your Congressman and say, I'll never vote for him again. If he votes this way,

01:56:59.260 because then they never have to take you seriously. But I would call up, I would only

01:57:03.920 call people you can vote for and be polite, be quick, get off the phone. The next one, your people,

01:57:11.660 I see people come up to lobby, let's say for their, for their grandma who has Alzheimer's and they spend

01:57:19.380 $300 on a plane ticket, a couple hundred dollars on a hotel room. They, you know, the food is expensive

01:57:28.560 in DC and they finally get to their Congressman's office and they talk to a staffer. Yeah. That

01:57:35.140 to me is a waste of money. I would, uh, find that Congressman locally and take half of what you

01:57:42.920 would have spent on the trip to DC. And if you could stomach that person's politics, make a donation.

01:57:49.220 That's why the lobbyist has the ear. I'm not saying America has to compete with lobbyists for giving

01:57:54.880 money, but I will tell you this. If you give a politician $500, you won't have to ask for his

01:58:00.720 phone number. He'll be calling you, uh, every week asking for more of it. And so, so, but that's

01:58:09.160 where we're at. That's where we're at. Cause we just have to compete. Money has to compete with money.

01:58:13.100 You think dark money. It doesn't have to compete, but you got to figure out a way to get their

01:58:18.020 attention. You know, if it's whatever the minimum is to get in the door that fund rate, if it's $50,

01:58:24.400 don't give them 500, give them 50 and go in and, um, just talk to them like a human being if you can.

01:58:33.220 But at a bigger level, like will we ever get, will the people, you know, will we ever get these

01:58:37.820 lobbyists out? Is it just a wrap? What do we tell us if we all just, here's the way, here's the way

01:58:43.440 you break free. No, well, you should definitely go to the beach and only spend about no more than

01:58:48.200 10% of your life thinking about politics because it ain't healthy. And, and, um, but the 10% that

01:58:55.740 you do, you should, you should ask your Congressman to, to advocate for separate bills on separate

01:59:01.940 topics. Yeah. I agree. That seems way more pertinent because then you get there's some, a level of

01:59:05.740 accountability. Yeah. And they can't hide behind, well, it had a pay raise for soldiers. Right.

01:59:10.600 Um, um, so advocate for that, uh, make phone calls. If you can be friendly and connect with

01:59:18.000 them, maybe you don't agree with them on everything, but a broken clock is right twice a day.

01:59:23.120 Yeah. Some diplomacy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a big thing I've been learning recently is

01:59:27.980 that there's a give and take to everything, every single, everything that, you know, and that's the

01:59:32.040 way that the world's built. There's like, you know, there's forces, there's a give and take,

01:59:35.220 there's a yin and yang. And even when you have, you want this party or this thing, it's like,

01:59:39.700 there has to be like, uh, um, you, you really need both forces a lot of times to get things done.

01:59:46.380 Um, I think that's about it, man. I'm trying to think of anything else. Oh, I did want to,

01:59:51.960 we were going to supposed to talk to Mr. Walls this week, Tim Walls, uh, on Thursday,

01:59:56.580 cause I have a show up there, but he can't, he is unable to go cause of they're doing services and

02:00:03.280 stuff for that. His constituents or his colleagues, maybe that were murdered up there.

02:00:09.840 I, you know, it's pretty heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking. And he seems like a guy with a

02:00:13.600 big heart too. I get death threats. I mean, I, and the hard part is knowing which ones to take

02:00:20.080 seriously and which one's not. I mean, it's definitely not the right way to do politics.

02:00:24.620 Um, it's just, there's no, there's no level of frustration that justifies violence.

02:00:32.900 Yeah. I mean, that just seems really bizarre. Um, there was, I remember there was rumors that

02:00:37.740 whenever your wife passed away, that there was like something bad had happened, like from a,

02:00:42.200 like a, like a, not a deranged person or something like that. Was that real?

02:00:46.180 No, she, she died unexpectedly, but of natural causes. And, um, I wasn't home. I was in DC,

02:00:52.320 which kills me to this day. Um, but my son was home visiting. So we know exactly what happened.

02:01:00.420 There's no conspiracy there. Although, uh, sorry to even ask you about it. Well, no,

02:01:04.760 I think it's good. Cause people ask that people want to know that I tell people she would, uh,

02:01:11.360 get a kick out of it. She would. Everybody wants to be a part of us. Yeah. Like anyway,

02:01:16.240 there was a conspiracy, but, um, I'm sure she's, she's up there laughing at that one.

02:01:21.920 Well, I know it's coming up on a year since she's been gone and, uh, yeah, just sorry to kind of,

02:01:27.700 maybe that was a little out of the box to say that, but, um, yeah, I'm sorry you and your family

02:01:32.640 had to go through that. So I appreciate you being brave and still being able to, um, honor your

02:01:38.240 constituents and your, uh, group even in the face of those types of things and, and still, uh, be able

02:01:43.720 to show up and, and, uh, do your best and, and be a maverick, I think for probably for her spirit

02:01:48.700 and for the people of, um, of our country. You know, I think that's one thing that's inspiring.

02:01:52.540 Some people were like, well, this guy's nuts or this guy's great, but I'm like, at least this guy's

02:01:56.720 his own fucking guy. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'd rather talk to that guy any day of the week.

02:02:01.580 Well, the other conspiracy that's interesting to me is, uh, people say, oh, he snapped. Like he's lost

02:02:07.780 his marble since he lost his wife and, um, he's off the chain, et cetera, et cetera. No,

02:02:13.720 I'm actually honoring what she wanted. Like she worked at home on our farm and raised four kids.

02:02:19.840 She also had an MIT degree and she was watching me from afar every day. She would watch hearings

02:02:26.840 and give me advice for questions to ask. And she wanted me to go up there and kick ass every week.

02:02:34.480 And, and that's what I do. And I'm still going to do it. I remember one time, uh, I introduced a

02:02:40.940 bill to legalize raw milk, like the kind I got out there in my camper truck, another swig off that

02:02:46.400 thing. As long as you leave the door open while we do it, we had alarms going off in there. The

02:02:51.100 gaydar in my camper was going off when you went in there. Two men got in that thing and suddenly

02:02:55.120 an alarm went off. I was like, this is a little too Republican for me. It's a little too old school

02:03:00.420 Republican for me. If two men can't even casually drink raw milk together in the back of a truck camper.

02:03:06.860 Oh, I know. I, so I introduced a raw milk bill to legalize raw milk and, oh yeah, there we go.

02:03:13.180 Oh, this is an honor of her kind of?

02:03:14.700 Well, this was, she was still alive and I introduced this bill and the, guess who came after me?

02:03:20.960 The, uh, the milk lobbyists came after me. They said there wouldn't be enough hospitals to take

02:03:27.660 care of all the people who got sick from raw milk, who were going to get sick from raw milk.

02:03:31.340 Is that true? Do you think? Oh, hell no. I've, I drink it every day. I, I know thousands of people

02:03:37.200 that drink it every day. I'm going to catch a fucking batch of it. It always looks like it's

02:03:40.700 a little warm. No, I pour mine in a ice cold glass, but anyways, uh, and it tastes like just

02:03:49.320 liquid ice cream. It's so good. I'll come have a little bit more. All right. Well, so I, I, I did this

02:03:55.880 bill and the milk lobby comes after me and my wife had Google alerts on or whatever alerts there were.

02:04:02.580 And it's like all this negative press over milk. And she texted me, OMG, I didn't realize the lactose

02:04:09.320 lobby was this intolerant. Well, I think he was just the name of, um, the lactose lobby was this

02:04:19.200 intolerant. That's cute. What was her name? Your wife? Rhonda. Rhonda. Yeah. Um, well, we miss you,

02:04:25.360 Rhonda. Just a nice thought of you there and a nice story. I love the fact that that's called

02:04:28.800 the interstate milk freedom act, which sounds insane, dude, right? It sounds like something

02:04:34.860 that happens at a rest area. You know, that's the problem with it. I think it's, it's easier to get

02:04:39.680 meth than it is to get raw milk. I'm not lying. Oh, and at least put birth control in the meth.

02:04:46.600 When do we make that law? Like, is that too much to ask? Like, give us something. That's my motto

02:04:54.120 these days. Uh, Thomas Massey. I, I, I just admire, I appreciate your time. That's what I

02:04:58.720 really appreciate. And, um, get out there and give them hell, man. Keep serving to the best of your

02:05:03.260 ability and just thank you for your service. And, uh, I really just appreciate it. Thanks,

02:05:08.160 Theo. Yep. You bet, man. Best of luck, dude. God. Yeah. Keep an eye on the debt. Yeah, I will.

02:05:13.500 It's about to go up. She will be, she'll call me every hour and she might go, my God.

02:05:17.920 It's about to go up. It is? Yeah. I'm looking for the jump. I'll be there.

02:05:23.320 Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be

02:05:30.040 cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found. I can feel it

02:05:41.000 in my bones. But it's gonna tell you.

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - June 24, 2025

#592 - Thomas Massie

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