In this episode, Ron DeSantis sits down with his good friend Patrick Bed-David to talk about how he got his start in politics, why he s running for Governor of Florida, and what it s like to be an entrepreneur in the world of new media. Patrick also shares the story of how he went from being born and raised in Iran and how he ended up in the insurance business, and why he decided to go back to college to pursue his dream of becoming an actor and how that led him to become the first black man elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida in nearly 80 years! He also talks about why he thinks it s a good idea to have a fireside chat with the American people and why it s going to be a regular fixture when he s in the White House, and how important it is to have an honest conversation with the people in order to build trust and build a better relationship with them. And, as always, thank you for tuning into another episode of the Ringer! -R.I.P.E. Podcast. Timestamps: 1:00:00 - Why I m running for governor of Florida 3:30 - How he got started in politics 4:15 - What it takes to become a politician 5:00- Why he s not interested in running for president 6:20 - How much money does it take to run for governor? 7:30- How he s got? 8: What is it going to take? 9: What s he got from Iran? 10:40 - What s his background? 11: How he grew up in Iran 13:20- How did he end up in politics? 15:00 16:10 - What is his story? 17:10 18:40 19:30 21:00 | What s the difference between being an entrepreneur? 22:30 | How he started in insurance 23:15 What s going on with his background in the business 24:10 | What are you going to do with his family? 25:00 // 26:40 | How does he plan for the rest of his life after college? 27:15 | How to get to Florida? 28:30 // What s a governor s path to becoming a governor 29:00 / 32:00 What s next?
Transcript
Transcripts from "Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. You can also explore and interact with the transcripts here.
00:00:23.000So, hanging out with my friend today, Patrick Bed-David.
00:00:28.000We just had a long conversation with his crew at the other place, and now we're here in South Florida.
00:00:34.000And this is a conversation that we were just beginning to discuss as going to be a regular fixture when I'm in the White House.
00:00:42.000Presidents used to do fireside chats with the nation, and I actually think that was a good thing when a U.S. president would take the time to say, okay, out of the hustle and bustle of the day, I'm going to talk directly to the American people.
00:00:57.000Called a fireside chat because there's a fireplace in the background.
00:01:02.000I think that age is behind us, and it would be a little fake if Joe Biden or Donald Trump did that every week.
00:01:10.000But that leaves missing the room for actual open conversations where you are able to level with the American people and tell them the truth about what's going on and rebuild trust.
00:01:20.000And so that's why we launched this podcast on the campaign trail.
00:01:35.000Honest with them where my head space is and pick great Americans across this country to invite and tell their stories along with it.
00:01:41.000And so we're already practicing what we preach on the campaign trail and today I am glad to be joined by my good friend now Patrick Beddavid and We actually spent a lot of time, Patrick.
00:01:53.000You've always been asking me the questions, and you know my story, I think, better than I realize I know yours, and you have an interesting one.
00:02:01.000And, you know, I thought it would be interesting to kick off with...
00:02:04.000We'll get into issues and everything in a little bit, but...
00:02:08.000What led you to be doing what you're doing now versus the business background that you have in your day job in the insurance world and otherwise?
00:02:19.000Maybe talk about that insurance company in the background and what led you to have the insight you have as an entrepreneur that led you now to doing what you're doing in the world of new media?
00:02:31.000It's a pretty interesting story, and as a guy who's doing something totally different than where I began my career as an entrepreneur as well, I'm kind of interested to hear your version of it.
00:02:39.000Yeah, so thank you for having me on your show.
00:02:43.000We literally, if you're watching this, we finish.
00:03:39.000Last minute I get out, I decide I'm going to be the next, you know, bodybuilder, Mr. Olympia, Arnold, you know, win a couple Mr. Olympias, be an actor, marry Kennedy, and then one day run for governor.
00:03:49.000It's kind of what the plan was back in the days.
00:03:53.000But did you actually go with the weightlifting thing?
00:03:54.000No, because I went to Mr. Olympia, one event, and I hung out with the guys that were competing, and I just told them, I said, guys, tell me what I need to take to compete.
00:04:02.000And they told me, I said, I'm not going to do that.
00:04:04.000I'm too tall, and I'm going to be off-season, 400 pounds.
00:04:13.000Numbers is something that learning about how numbers and money works is very interesting to me, especially coming from a guy that we didn't have that.
00:05:49.000Three months after that event, I put an event together in JW Marriott Palm Springs in 09, July 15, called Saving America, Doing the Impossible.
00:06:01.000I've got a 40-foot American flag on the stage.
00:06:04.000I had Michael Reagan, Ronald Reagan's son come and talk about his father.
00:06:07.000I had Larry Greenfield talk about capitalism, and I had Dudley Rutherford talk about Star Spangled Banner.
00:06:13.000And then boom, from there it takes off.
00:06:14.000I don't create content for a few years.
00:06:16.000And while I'm doing the insurance thing, I'm seeing what's going on with media, the manipulation, the gamification, all this stuff that's going on.
00:07:11.000I mean, what do you think that What were your motivations when you started, got in the insurance business versus your motivations now when you're getting into new media?
00:07:21.000Motivation for insurance business, I noticed, I read Blue Ocean Strategy in 2008, 2009. What is that again?
00:09:12.000Who is the next big media mogul that's building and competing and loud and Able to impose and challenge and recruit and make people think and create opportunities for others to sit there and say, okay, I never thought about that.
00:09:58.000You know, you can't find a lot of power players today.
00:10:01.000You know, DW is trying to do what they're doing.
00:10:02.000A lot of independent guys are trying to do what they're doing.
00:10:05.000But yeah, I think the marketplace is wide open and we want to disrupt it in our own way.
00:10:11.000Yeah, I mean, I think it's funny because my first company I started, first major company, I started a small company in college, but the first real company I started was a business in the biopharma industry where you look at It's a monopoly profit industry.
00:10:38.000But they start behaving like governments, actually.
00:10:42.000When you're government regulated, when you've been running as monopolies like big pharmas do, they behave with the bureaucracy of a government.
00:10:48.000And so I've actually talked about this that much in the campaign trail, but more of maybe a business conversation.
00:10:53.000There's something that interesting that happens is they leave certain areas behind at the exact same time.
00:11:01.000So let's say there's different therapeutic categories, like you've got dermatology or cancer or women's health or bone health, etc.
00:11:10.000The way it works in big pharma, it's kind of interesting the way opportunities come up, is If you fail in one of those areas and you're the only one doing it, then you look bad.
00:11:21.000But if everybody else in the industry is failing in the same area and you're the head of R&D and you fail there, it's okay because you're failing with the pack.
00:11:31.000And the problem is those people aren't participating in the upside.
00:11:33.000So even if they take the risk and they succeed and you're the head of R&D at one of those industries, you don't participate in the upside of inventing Lipitor or whatever, right?
00:11:42.000But if you take the downside risk and you fail, you might get your budget cut, you might get fired, and you look like a fool if you're the only one who took that risk.
00:12:23.000You know, it's interesting because when you then become a public company, there's this other further inefficiency for pharma companies where they have a lot of cash on their balance sheet.
00:12:32.000But the way public markets work is they want you to deliver consistent earnings year over year, which means that even if in one given year you have to take an extra R&D expense, but that makes you less profitable, even if that makes sense from a value perspective, these companies weren't doing it.
00:12:48.000So there was all of these reasons why there were these drugs that a lot of pharma companies decided they weren't going to develop because it either hit their P&L too much, even though it had inherent value.
00:12:59.000The people who worked there didn't have any incentive to do it because as an individual, if I take that risk and I succeed, I don't participate in the upside anyway.
00:13:06.000If I lose, I end up getting penalized and blamed for it.
00:13:09.000And so all of them pursue the same areas that are popular or hot at the same time.
00:13:14.000So back when I started my career as a biotech investor in 2007, cancer wasn't hot.
00:13:19.000So everybody shifts to cancer, but they leave women's health or whatever.
00:13:23.000Different other areas, dermatology behind.
00:13:25.000So I said, what if there's an interesting opportunity to start a business that does the exact mirror image in the opposite of what they're doing?
00:13:34.000Which is to say, we'll give somebody's skin in the game.
00:13:37.000A scientist can make millions of dollars, upside, uncapped upside, in their own project if they actually succeed at it.
00:13:42.000We'll pick the areas that the other pharma companies are dropping.
00:13:45.000To say, I don't care if one year the profit and loss statement is high and low versus the next year.
00:14:03.000And you end up being able to, you know, one case is after I left the company, I mean, I founded the company and got it off the ground for seven years as CEO, but even after I've left, they're doing the same thing.
00:14:13.000You know, case of being able to develop a drug for $15 million, you pick it up, you sell it for $7 billion because another pharma company needs to fill that hole.
00:14:23.000It's sort of an opportunity that was founded on a kind of value disconnect, a sort of arbitrage in the market.
00:14:32.000And that was sort of my motivation for my first company.
00:14:35.000But when I got to my second one, or endeavor with Strive, which was the first time we met and talked about taking on the ESG space, it was a slightly different, it was a different motivation, right?
00:14:44.000And, you know, kid of immigrants, you were an immigrant, kid of immigrants as well.
00:14:51.000For me, it was a different life journey after we hit that first milestone about what comes next.
00:14:58.000Do you ever have that kind of insecurity growing up from like the perspective of not knowing that you or your family had financial freedom and how much of a motivator was that for you for that first company?
00:16:07.000Yeah, so when I went to Sizzlers the first time, I came back, I was in high school, I came back, I said, hey guys, you know, we went to a high-end restaurant yesterday.
00:17:28.000Is the hero today somebody that complains and whines and blames everybody else for what's going on?
00:17:33.000Or is the hero what we once used to have in America where the son of the founder of Forbes magazine, the guy who actually grew Forbes magazine, Before China bought 95% of it, he had a plane on the corner, on the plane it would say capitalist tool.
00:17:49.000He had a helicopter, on the corner of the helicopter it would say capitalist tool.
00:18:29.000To us, we also gave equity, which got people incentivized to want to treat the company like their own.
00:18:33.000So either go build a company, build a business, be a salesperson, start something that you can get passionate about, a product, or go work with a guy like you, Bring value, own a piece, participate, profit sharing, you know, in a way that you're contributing above and beyond everybody else.
00:19:12.000So out of all the, you know, 195 whatever amount of countries that we have worldwide, only two of them allow big pharma to advertise on TV. It's us in New Zealand, right?
00:19:34.000Pfizer's paying for it or some of these other guys are paying for it.
00:19:37.000What do you think about the idea, and could you even do this as a president, what do you think about the idea of saying, moving forward, because I'm asking to see who would have the audacity to do this, and it's not really being brought up.
00:20:01.000And if somebody were to move with that, how catastrophic would that be to Big Pharma and how catastrophic would that be to media?
00:20:08.000Well, actually, the latter question is actually more interesting.
00:20:12.000I'm not sure it would be catastrophic to Big Pharma.
00:20:15.000Actually, they just do it because it's a habit.
00:20:17.000I personally believe that there are probably, just from a business standpoint, forget American public policy for a second, we'll come back to that.
00:20:25.000Just from a pure business standpoint, I told you the pharmaceutical industry behaves like it's a government, sort of in packs.
00:21:11.000So normally in an industry, you would never find it would be ridiculous if you're in the consumer product industry or if you're in like a tech, high tech industry for me to say something like, oh, it's not a high ROI motive of internal investment.
00:21:24.000We'd say, well, that's a crazy thing for you to say because that means a competitor would be doing it better and you'd be out of business.
00:21:29.000Not so in the pharma industry because it is a monopoly profit industry where if you get your product to the finish line because of the patent system and because of not just the patent system but the statutes, the laws of this country, literally give you a monopoly to sell it for at least 12 years.
00:21:42.000So when you have a true monopoly profit industry, you don't have an incentive quite as much with the same competitive market pressure to release yourself from old habits.
00:21:53.000And so as old media has sort of died away, the fact that big pharma is advertising as much as they are in television, I don't even think is a good...
00:22:01.000So is it kind of like, you know, these guys work at these Fortune 500 companies and before they want to pitch an idea to the board, they first go spend $500,000 with McKinsey.
00:22:08.000Then they come back and say, here it is.
00:22:14.000But then it's also even like one step I would double click here, which is...
00:22:20.000in the psychology of like the person who's like the chief commercial officer of a product launch or whatever, as I said, they're incentives.
00:22:27.000They're not like they're making millions of dollars on the upside if their project succeeds or whatever.
00:22:34.000They just want to do things the standard way.
00:22:37.000So if somebody tries launching that product without the TV ads and that ends up being a flop, but you're the only one who did it, then you get second guessed.
00:22:44.000And it's also pretty cool to be a guy who actually your product that you're working on is your ads on TV.
00:22:49.000So the psychology of it is more of a bureaucrat swamp type mentality.
00:22:53.000Oh yeah, I got to advertise at the Superbowl.
00:23:57.000That's the real problem with pharma, because then they lobby in these special, like with the vaccines, the whole controversy is, and I think it's idiotic and it's wrong, that Normally, if you're a product manufacturer and something hurts you, I don't know, this drink or, you know, I don't know, your furniture breaks and you get hurt or your car breaks down, you get to sue the manufacturer as a tort.
00:24:28.000It's product liability, basic feature of just common law and state law.
00:24:33.000But for pharma companies, there's a special federal blanket of immunity that say, if you're a vaccine manufacturer, you can't be sued even if that harms you.
00:24:57.000For kids, you have to actually have separate rules that protect children.
00:25:02.000But if you're a freely grown adult, you know, I think I'm a freedom-oriented guy, and so regardless of the industry, I don't want to get in the business of you can tell this person that or that thing, or you can ban her.
00:25:14.000What you say, if you're telling adults truthful things and you're not lying to them, then that's fine.
00:25:17.000Why do you think the other 193 countries don't?
00:25:19.000I mean, forget about the 50%, you know.
00:25:28.000Yeah, but I think they also don't let cigarette companies advertise.
00:25:30.000They also don't allow lots of other categories of companies to...
00:25:33.000I mean, there's a lot of things that other countries do that the United States don't do.
00:25:37.000And the United States, at least historically, has been the bastion for freedom, for liberty, for embracing...
00:25:42.000Capitalism through liberty and economic freedom.
00:25:44.000So it's not that like I think the motivation of it is is spot on.
00:25:48.000The motivation is pharmaceutical industry because of its connectivity in the government is fundamentally corrupt and everyday citizens are left holding the bag as a consequence, higher costs for health care, etc.
00:25:58.000My point is knowing what I know from, you know, at least the time I was in the industry, if this market were more competitive, A, the TV advertising is sort of not really a smart source of expenditure anyway.
00:26:10.000And the real problem is they've erected barriers to competition by lobbying those governments, by hiring congressmen as their rent-a-rent-a-politician to be able to get special protections like the product liability for vaccines.
00:26:25.000The product liability immunity for vaccine manufacturers that are just playing by a different set of rules because of the lobbying.
00:26:31.000So that's what gets me worked up, and that's where I'm more focused from a public policy perspective.
00:26:36.000And then from a pharmaceutical industry perspective, most of these companies can be run far more efficiently.
00:26:40.000We were talking on your show just a little bit ago about an analogy that I would bring – about something that I intend to bring to the U.S. government.
00:26:48.000If I'm the chief executive of the U.S. government as the U.S. president, there's millions and millions of federal employees.
00:26:54.000I would literally take somebody the last – We talked about it over there.
00:26:58.000The Social Security number, if it ends in an even number, you stay.
00:27:30.000Because otherwise it's too hard to figure out, like, you know, by the time you wrap your arms around it, you think you're actually making the more micro-thoughtful decisions with a chisel.
00:27:41.000And there's a time for a chisel, but there's a time for a chainsaw.
00:27:44.000A lot of these bureaucracies, both in the federal government and even some of the private sector bureaucracies, have become bureaucracies where now is the moment for a chainsaw and not a chisel.
00:28:00.000Yeah, to me, the reason why I bring this up specifically with you is you've been in this space before.
00:28:07.000And you almost think about these big pharma companies that indirectly own these media companies because these media companies need to take the accounts.
00:28:15.000It's almost like a podcast or YouTuber you watch, right?
00:28:34.000Versus somebody that's like, no, we're not doing that because that's not part of our brand.
00:28:39.000And a part of this concern is from COVID because we were told this is the way to go because the guys were giving the media company money, so they were the mouthpiece.
00:28:49.000So how do you prevent that from happening again when we experienced those two and a half years during COVID? Yeah, I mean, I think that competition is a big part of the answer.
00:28:59.000I mean, because again, if there's one industry that's saying, I'm going to buy and own you, that's the answer, because you're effectively tethered to it, then that's one thing.
00:29:07.000But presumably, if that's a useful mode of advertising, it's going to be a useful mode of advertising for people that have different agendas as well.
00:29:13.000So I think the real root cause of the COVID cultural censorship that we saw in this country, again, comes back to the relationship between big businesses and government.
00:29:24.000So pharmaceutical companies have these special blankets of privileges that the government has granted them through lobbying.
00:29:30.000I mean, this is part of what stifled dissent during COVID. It wasn't just we own you as a cable network.
00:29:36.000It's that we own you as a social media company, too.
00:29:39.000Look at what the advertisers tried to pull on Elon, which is by saying that unless you have certain restrictions on speech, we're not going to advertise with you.
00:29:46.000So this is just a problem as it relates to commerce.
00:29:48.000But the problem here is when the government gets in on it and starts coming down on the side of saying that If you don't take down certain kinds of speech or if you don't promote the kinds of speech that we, the government, want, then there's going to be consequences for you.
00:30:02.000I think that's really where the real problems emerged during sort of the COVID era.
00:30:08.000And the orthodoxies is the invisible hand of government forcing a lot of companies to do what those companies otherwise wouldn't have done.
00:30:17.000But if it weren't for that, then if you're a company and you need to sell ads, sell the ads to anybody.
00:30:22.000But if you don't want to be owned by somebody, then don't sell them all of your ads.
00:30:27.000And if you really have a value proposition for people to be able to sell more products, they should be able to sell more products.
00:30:33.000A lot of people should be able to sell more products by doing it.
00:30:36.000Yeah, I'm trying to think, because, okay, so Nikki Haley, whom you guys are best friends with, so Nikki Haley, you know, back in 40, you guys said it's fantastic watching to see what's going to happen there.
00:30:47.000But, so she leaves her job and goes, works at Boeing, and she becomes a millionaire, the whole allied, you know, Department of Defense that you were talking about earlier.
00:30:59.000We want to know what the contracts are.
00:31:01.000Okay, but so you said the solution would be lobbyists.
00:31:04.000Okay, Harry, didn't Harry become a chief executive of some kind of a company, a C-suite of a company that they hired him?
00:31:11.000I don't know if it was Visa or MasterCard, one of those companies that hired, I'm talking Harry, Prince Harry, he got hired.
00:31:17.000So if you can't hire him as a lobbyist, they'll find a way around it.
00:31:20.000They'll find a loophole and put him as a high-paid employee and say, we're paying $4 million a year, we're paying $3 million a year.
00:31:25.000And it's really another job as a lobbyist.
00:31:27.000Yeah, I mean, he's not able to, I mean, he should not have, and it should be criminal to have contact with government officials in any capacity.
00:31:35.000Now you say, how are you going to detect that?
00:31:36.000Are you going to have secret dinners, etc.?
00:31:37.000Well, I mean, that's an enforcement issue, and that's that.
00:31:40.000But at least right now, we haven't even drawn the lines.
00:31:42.000Right now, our entire system blesses those people being able to, I mean, let's take the Nikki Haley example.
00:31:48.000She literally was scratching the back of Boeing, did special favors for them, unique favors just for that company while she's governor of South Carolina.
00:31:56.000She joins the board of Boeing when she's done with her time in government.
00:31:59.000So that's perfectly not only within the rules.
00:32:05.000It's standard operating procedure today.
00:32:06.000I think if you actually put a clear ban on your ability to do that, that at least says, okay, if you're going to violate that law, you're going to be a criminal.
00:32:15.000but it at least criminalizes the behavior that's the actual root cause.
00:32:19.000Then there's always a question of execution, right?
00:32:20.000Just because you have implemented a law doesn't mean that it always gets followed.
00:32:24.000That's a question of execution and enforcement.
00:32:26.000But I do still think that that's the right next step, is eliminate the governmental special privileges.
00:32:34.000You got the Section 230 issue in tech, right?
00:32:37.000The equivalent of the pharma liability shield for vaccine manufacturers is a special liability shield that tech companies win through lobbying.
00:32:45.000Which is to say that even if there are state laws, and they exist in this state, in Florida and other states, that say you cannot take down content that is politically a product of discrimination.
00:33:00.000Many states, even California has such a law actually.
00:33:02.000California worried about discrimination against liberals in the post-Bush era.
00:33:06.000That even if those laws exist at the state level, that Big Tech got a special benefit, Section 230C2, specifically that part of it, that says you are not liable under those state laws.
00:33:20.000You have a special blanket of immunity from the federal government if you're an internet company that removes content that is otherwise constitutionally protected.
00:33:30.000There's no reason for that special blanket of liability except for the product.
00:33:59.000Super PACs are the cancer in American politics.
00:34:01.000I can explain how this works, actually.
00:34:03.000A lot of people probably have heard the word but may not be familiar with how it works.
00:34:07.000So the rules of the road are this, normally.
00:34:11.000We don't want our politicians to be corrupted, so you can only give $3,300 to a presidential campaign for a primary.
00:34:21.000Except that's not how it actually works.
00:34:23.000You can only give that directly to the campaign.
00:34:25.000But the way all of these campaigns are funded is a small group of wealthy people give money to these independent groups called super PACs that are basically affiliated with a candidate.
00:34:37.000Everyone knows that there's an affiliate.
00:34:39.000And they'll say, because we've spoken to them, they'll say, yeah, we don't talk to the candidate.
00:34:42.000This is, you know, we're independent of the candidate.
00:34:45.000Yet, I mean, in Ron DeSantis' case, I mean, let's just get real.
00:34:48.000The literal campaign bus they travel around on.
00:34:51.000Is arranged by the Super PAC. The private jets flights that they take are paid for by the Super PACs, right?
00:34:57.000The Super PAC is the one that sends the cameraman, oh, it's a funny thing, by the way, to my events.
00:35:02.000There's a little, there's like a guy in his 20s.
00:35:03.000He follows me around all my events to see if there's ever a flub with an audience member or whatever so that they can pass it over to the folks over there to distribute and make a competitor look bad.
00:35:14.000And I'm not blaming, the kid's a good kid actually doing his job.
00:35:47.000What matters is the people who are writing the multimillion-dollar checks.
00:35:50.000So if the candidate is literally spending their time with them to raise the money, goes to the Super PAC, and the Super PAC is actually just propping up the candidate, even paying, not in normal cases, but now in this cycle, Ron DeSantis' private jets and buses, tell me that's not having some corrupting influence.
00:36:06.000Yet we tell this farce that it's $3,300 that an individual can donate because we don't want to corrupt the politician.
00:36:12.000Well, the politician's meeting with the people who are writing $10 million checks.
00:36:17.000And knowing that those checks are directly going to help the campaign and having meetings about what their objectives are, that's a joke.
00:37:00.000So if there are entities that are specifically supporting individual candidates by name, you're capped at giving $3,300, just like to a campaign.
00:37:10.000Let's say you want to give to a cause, right?
00:37:12.000You're advancing, I don't know, educational freedom, or you're advancing healthcare access.
00:37:18.000We have free speech in this country, and I believe in that.
00:37:20.000You can give an unlimited amount, right, to express yourself and your view.
00:37:24.000But we've already said that the government and the state and our society has a compelling interest in preventing corruption, which is why we have a $3,300 maximum for giving to a campaign.
00:37:34.000Well, if that same corrupting influence exists at a super PAC, it's a joke if the entire system is run without applying that maximum.
00:37:45.000But applied the same set of rules we're already applying for the campaign to just write, if you're going to write the check to an entity that is supporting a campaign, make it $3,300 maximum.
00:37:58.000There was a Supreme Court case called Citizens United versus FEC. Actually, an interesting case.
00:38:03.000It was a non-profit group that, anyway, it's a long story relating to a documentary of Hillary Clinton.
00:38:09.000But that was the case after which the left used to complain and say, corporations aren't people.
00:38:14.000Because the core holding of that case is, well, corporations still have free speech rights and these corporate super PAC then became the corporation, an entity.
00:38:21.000And so after that, it became a tortured interpretation of the law.
00:38:25.000But back in 2010, if you told those justices, the basic holding of the case was that The government can restrict you from expressing your opinions through speech in giving specific money to a candidate because the government has a compelling interest in preventing corruption, even though you're allowed to speak your mind freely however you want and give money to whatever cause you want.
00:38:45.000If it's donating to a campaign, we want to put limits on the absolute maximum you can give.
00:38:53.000But if there's an independent cause, like you want to make a documentary or, you know, pursue climate change fanaticism or whatever, you're free to do that.
00:39:00.000It's a free country and no one's going to stop you from spending how much money you want to do that.
00:39:04.000What they never imagined was that that independent entity that's advocating for some climate change policy or some, you know, whatever, gun rights policy, that that entity Right.
00:39:20.000And then those entities provide the campaign bus that takes you from place to place, pay for the private jets from take you from place to place, pay for the ads that are on television, pay for 90 percent of the expenditures of your campaign are paid for by most of your employees for the Ron DeSantis effort to become president or employed pay for 90 percent of the expenditures of your campaign are paid for by
00:39:40.000The people who wrote the Supreme Court case in the majority opinion in Citizens United never imagined that would actually be the case today because there's obviously a corrupting influence.
00:39:59.000If you find the numbers of what happened after 2010, you'll see 430 million and then it goes to 1.4 billion All of a sudden, the amount of money that went into it.
00:40:11.000You're making a very good point here, but let's go back.
00:40:38.000Kelly, can you check to see what industry is not allowed to advertise on TV? I'm not going to trust the first thing that comes out of here, but I'm just curious what at least the facial answer is.
00:40:50.000Advertise on TV. He says there's additional restrictions or disclosure for tobacco products, for alcohol under 21. Political and controversial matters.
00:41:05.000So tobacco products cannot be advertised on television.
00:41:31.000But many times when I bring up this conversation about New Zealand and US, people say, well, you know, that's not fair because, you know, capitalism, you got to let them out.
00:41:52.000The only thing I think about where it's a clear, indefinite way that stops the gamification and the manipulation is if I go to the doctor, doctor tells me, here's the vaccine, take it, fine, the doctor's telling me.
00:42:09.000If I go to whoever, but if a media company...
00:42:12.000It's getting tens of millions of dollars per year from Big Pharma.
00:42:16.000I almost have to go dance around in a syringe, and my name is Stephen Colbert saying, hey, take the vaccine.
00:42:28.000I mean, you could talk about the same thing as BlackRock advertising on television too, right?
00:42:34.000I mean, they're basically the company that controls, as a shareholder, All major publicly traded companies as the top shareholder of those companies that when they advertise on a given network, the influence they're going to have is disproportionate because they not only do they own the company literally as shareholders, but they own it directly as well.
00:42:53.000And so I think it strikes me as a form of where to use the pharmaceutical analogy, like a symptomatic therapy.
00:43:00.000Because there's going to be still so many other ways, as we're saying, legacy TV is dying anyway.
00:43:03.000So that means you can't advertise on digital either.
00:43:05.000And what counts as an Internet advertising or otherwise?
00:43:08.000Maybe we don't want advertisements at all.
00:43:10.000But then now you're then beholden to the expert class.
00:43:14.000I mean, think about like, you know, what the FDA says a doctor can and can't tell you.
00:43:19.000Now you're getting your information through a different source that's captured versus, for me, the right answer is more competition in the marketplace and get the government out of the business of indirectly using these companies as pawns.
00:43:35.000The companies capture the government to keep out competition and to get in bed with government is with these special lobbying-based measures.
00:43:42.000I mean, they lobby the government, hire lobbyists who have left their time in government, and then they...
00:43:47.000Go through the front door of Super Packs.
00:43:49.000Did you ever watch the movie, Insider?
00:44:12.000Is that the one where there's like the reporter and he kind of have like a relationship even though she's the one supposedly exposing the whole thing?
00:44:35.000If I'm Philip Morris, I'm coming, I say, listen, guys, hey, Vivek, hey, President XYZ, if that's the case, you guys should allow us to advertise on TV. What's wrong with that?
00:44:52.000I'm processing what the logic there is, and so we want to look more into this.
00:44:55.000But I think that cigarettes are banned for any kid under the age of 18. So if kids are using the platform they're advertising on, I think that would be the justification.
00:45:24.000All I'm thinking about is being a devil's advocate for Philip Moore, saying, if I'm a guy saying you're taking that position, I'm coming in and saying, fine, I agree with you, Vivek.
00:45:32.000We'll put, you know, a billion-dollar year of ads going back to making people realize cigarettes are cool again.
00:45:38.000Yeah, I mean, I think that that would culturally fail, actually.
00:45:43.000I don't think the reason that cigarettes have gone down dramatically in popularity is because they don't advertise on TV anymore.
00:45:53.000You don't think that's a leading factor?
00:45:56.000I think a leading factor of it was massive, massive, massive tort suits that found people got lung cancer and made them culturally unpopular.
00:46:04.000People realized that their kids are actually going to be dying much earlier.
00:46:11.000Money that's out of TV. That's not taking place anymore.
00:46:17.000You make me want to look into this, actually.
00:46:20.000And the reason why I'm talking to you about it is because you're the guy that, if there is a candidate, like let's just say on Alabama debate, okay?
00:46:28.000You take the next 30 days and you're looking, nah, Pat's not, I'm not going to entertain this.
00:46:33.000But if you get convicted about this, like if there's a guy that gets conviction behind what we're talking about, and you go drop this bomb at the Alabama deal, and next thing you know, you know who else is coming after you afterwards.
00:46:46.000Now you got it because people are like, if there's one company or industry you don't want coming after you, it's Big Pharma.
00:46:52.000But I think that's a whole different conversation where you have the moral authority because you've been in the industry to say, here's how it would happen.
00:47:00.000You make me want to, you have given me a motivation.
00:47:03.000First of all, you made me curious on this because you make, you raise some really good points on the entire inconsistency between the regime for tobacco advertising versus alcohol advertising versus farm advertising.
00:47:14.000And so it's a good set of questions, but I think there's a deeper question where we do have, I mean, actually one of the areas where, you know, the issue I do talk about this relates to is why do you think we shuttered psychiatric institutions in the United States?
00:48:33.000Yeah, so you asked this question, and one of the enemies that I think Nixon did a lot of good, you know, everybody, when you think about Nixon, they think about Watergate, but Nixon also did a lot of good.
00:49:59.000And so maybe we chose the wrong enemy.
00:50:02.000When you're talking about what you're talking about, I think that's another one of those cases where we chose the wrong enemy, the wrong solution for a problem, and we're paying a price for it today.
00:50:17.000Now, why did we choose the wrong enemy?
00:50:20.000It comes back to one of the points you were making.
00:50:22.000I think big pharma played a big role in it.
00:50:24.000See, when the psychiatric medications came out, which were some of the biggest blockbuster medicines, they said, wait, these people are stuck in there.
00:50:32.000They could be out in the world actually using these antipsychotics and otherwise.
00:50:36.000And so that was a product in part of Lobbying.
00:50:40.000To say, you know, there's many arguments for it.
00:50:42.000There are psychiatric abuses, and those are real at those psychiatric institutions and otherwise.
00:50:46.000But it's not a coincidence that it's precisely over the period that you see blockbuster antipsychotic drugs coming out, that you also see the shuttering of psychiatric institutions in this country, right?
00:50:58.000And so that gets back to, you know, when you think about picking the enemy from my vantage point, it's all about the merger of of state power and corporate power most bad things in the economy that look like they're failures of businesses or that's something we need to fix through government intervention into a business to fix a problem that exists in the society most i'm not saying all the time but most of the time you can trace and pull that string all the way back up to
00:51:29.000some other form of special government protection That comes from, it never happens automatically.
00:51:35.000It's always the product of some form of corruption.
00:51:37.000Either the influence of money on an election process, indirectly or through lobbying or otherwise.
00:51:44.000I mean, it's a different Big Pharma problem.
00:51:47.000Big Pharma lobbied for a result that created the shuttering of psychiatric institutions that, in part now, is responsible for a wave of violent crime as psychiatrically ill people were able to be dangerous.
00:52:06.000It's a dark move, but it's the right move they made.
00:52:08.000But this is the part that, you know, I'm sure you've read this and I'm sure, you know, Big Pharma book about how heroin used to be sold by these big pharmaceutical companies and how they sold it.
00:52:17.000Even fentanyl today, it's, you know, 50 times more potent, more powerful than heroin, killing 150 people a day.
00:52:28.000If you go right now Google fentanyl FDA approved, it would say fentanyl is FDA. How is it even possible for it to be FDA approved?
00:52:35.000So to me, that enemy, it would be an enemy that I'm sure knowing how you're wired and how you think, you're going to have to be very methodical and meticulous whether this is an enemy.
00:52:45.000Yeah, but if you go after that enemy and your background on how you made your money Is this space, and you saw the good, bad, and the ugly, the dark side.
00:52:55.000I mean, I'm sure you saw who Tucker had on his show a couple weeks ago.
00:52:59.000The guy that bought the patents of this pharmaceutical, this drug, and he was selling it for $5,000.
00:53:12.000So all I'm saying, I think if you go that space...
00:53:17.000I really think it's going to trigger a lot of mothers, a lot of family, a lot of people that were forced to do certain things to their kids that are hurt, that were not happy.
00:53:29.000There's a reason why RFK's book on Fauci did so well and got 27,000 reviews on Amazon, a self-pub book.
00:53:35.000It's not a self-pub, but it's not through Simon& Schuster or Penguin.
00:53:40.000Some buttons there to be pressed where any of the candidates today, take RFK out, environmental lawyer, this is what he's going after with the whole vaccines.
00:53:49.000I think you're the most qualified to hit this hard.
00:53:53.000But just be ready before you do it because you're going to have a lot of powerful people coming after you if you do that.