Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - George Floyd, Mental Health & Being Blacklisted by the NBA | The TRUTH Podcast #41

00:00:00.000 I was a kid that came up an only child, watched mom work and struggle.

00:00:03.000 We're in the middle of a mental health epidemic in this country that I personally believe is driven by the vacuum of national values.

00:00:13.000 Don't let anybody hold you back.

00:00:15.000 Amen.

00:00:15.000 Just do it.

00:00:16.000 Presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy.

00:00:18.000 Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican running for president.

00:00:20.000 We should not be apologetic to stand up and speak for the truth.

00:00:25.000 Let's talk truth.

00:00:28.000 I'm here in our home base in Columbus with somebody I've been really looking forward to talking to.

00:00:34.000 NBA star turned activist and freedom fighter, Royce White.

00:00:40.000 Yeah, thanks for having me, man.

00:00:41.000 I appreciate it.

00:00:41.000 I'm glad you're here.

00:00:42.000 Thank you.

00:00:43.000 First of all, you're a big guy from NBA. How tall are you?

00:00:46.000 You said...

00:00:47.000 6'8".

00:00:47.000 6'8"?

00:00:48.000 That's good.

00:00:48.000 Is that a chair comfortable for you?

00:00:50.000 It's great.

00:00:50.000 I got one.

00:00:51.000 Yeah, it's a size for, you know, 6' tall people, but...

00:00:54.000 I got one in my podcast studio, so they're great.

00:00:57.000 They're great.

00:00:58.000 Good to talk to you.

00:00:58.000 So, I'm excited about your story.

00:01:00.000 Some people are familiar with it, but I thought we'd dial at least a couple minutes, even to your pre-NBA days, and then we'll spend a lot of time...

00:01:09.000 In your experience of how you got drafted and what came after that.

00:01:14.000 But tell me a bit about your upbringing and what led you in the path that ultimately got you to the dream of many kids in this country joining the NBA. Well, I think my childhood and upbringing is a very important part of my story and helps people understand the uniqueness of my position now to be able to speak on the things that I speak about politically, culturally, societally.

00:01:36.000 I was an only child to a single mother, working class single mother.

00:01:42.000 She was an esthetician.

00:01:43.000 She did makeup, eyebrows, wax. 0.91

00:01:46.000 I come from a family of women that were In the beauty care industry, right? 1.00

00:01:51.000 So you're talking about a lot of women who are in a cash business and they pay bills with their tips, often have to make ends meet, live check to check. 1.00

00:01:59.000 My mom paid rent with her tips, right?

00:02:02.000 And to see your mother...

00:02:03.000 Did you ever meet your father?

00:02:04.000 My father wasn't really in my life until I was 13 years old.

00:02:09.000 Oh, really?

00:02:10.000 Okay.

00:02:11.000 That's your biological father?

00:02:12.000 Biological father, yeah. 0.94

00:02:13.000 But I was fortunate, although I was an only child, I was a part of an extended family that had multi-generational roots across the Twin Cities area.

00:02:24.000 And the Twin Cities is a unique metropolitan area.

00:02:27.000 If you know anything about the Twin Cities demographically or geographically, Minneapolis, which is the biggest city in our state, is only a 400,000 person population, right?

00:02:39.000 So it's not even...

00:02:40.000 It's not giant.

00:02:41.000 It's not giant.

00:02:41.000 But the metropolitan area is 15th in the country.

00:02:45.000 So we have suburbs that go on and on in neighborhoods and small cities, and I was fortunate enough, because of my extended family, to grow up in neighborhoods all across that place, which gave me a lot of cultural diversity in my perspective on a number of things.

00:03:02.000 So, you know, I was a kid that came up an only child, watched mom work and struggle to make ends meet, but I had an incredible group or community of men That also helped guide me through my journey in becoming a sportsman, but also a young man in general.

00:03:20.000 What did you think you were going to do when you were in junior high school?

00:03:24.000 NBA was always on your mind?

00:03:26.000 No.

00:03:26.000 Not at all?

00:03:27.000 No, I was a late bloomer basketball-wise.

00:03:29.000 I wasn't the best player on my team until I got to about the eighth grade.

00:03:33.000 Okay.

00:03:33.000 And then in the ninth grade, I really took off.

00:03:36.000 So you didn't do the whole AAU circuit?

00:03:38.000 No, I did it.

00:03:38.000 I did it.

00:03:39.000 Late, okay.

00:03:40.000 No, and I did it as a younger kid.

00:03:42.000 You weren't among the best.

00:03:44.000 No, my success came from hard work, dedication, and getting with the right coaches who helped me understand the importance of practice, right?

00:03:52.000 And so I was a guy who, once I started to really get the ball rolling athletically, I prided myself on my body, being in shape.

00:04:01.000 I used to do a lot of core conditioning work on my own, push-ups, sit-ups at home at night, toe-raisers, we call them, wall squats, things to help me be strong.

00:04:10.000 Driven by yourself?

00:04:11.000 By myself.

00:04:11.000 Not somebody, no trainer driving you or nothing like that.

00:04:14.000 Nobody needed to tell me.

00:04:15.000 I had a chip on my shoulder.

00:04:17.000 I wanted to succeed.

00:04:18.000 And once I realized I had the potential, once I was given the encouragement, you could say, from somebody who I respected that said to me, you could actually do this if you do ABC, I was self-motivated then.

00:04:32.000 Before that, I was just a regular kid with family and was enjoying being a kid, you know?

00:04:38.000 So then you get to high school, then you bloomed a little bit, found yourself.

00:04:42.000 I mean, it took off.

00:04:43.000 In the ninth grade, I was a top 25 player in the country in my class.

00:04:49.000 Good for you.

00:04:50.000 It took off quick.

00:04:52.000 What did that do for your self-confidence?

00:04:55.000 Well, you know, it...

00:04:56.000 Which one came first?

00:04:57.000 It was a gift and a curse.

00:04:58.000 Yeah?

00:04:59.000 It was a gift and a curse, right?

00:05:00.000 I mean, in one sense, you're getting notoriety from a national basketball community.

00:05:07.000 Yep.

00:05:08.000 And basketball coaches, colleges who are recruiting, people who you've grown up watching on television, coaching high-level...

00:05:15.000 At the age of 15?

00:05:16.000 Yeah.

00:05:17.000 Coming at you, yep.

00:05:17.000 At the age of 15. So you're getting to see Tom Izzo's meet these people.

00:05:22.000 So it was exciting.

00:05:25.000 But it was also anxiety-inspiring, right?

00:05:27.000 Because now, you know, the magnifying glass is on you to perform.

00:05:33.000 And then your own expectations to perform.

00:05:35.000 And am I good enough, but also will I be good enough at the right moment to succeed?

00:05:40.000 So a bit of both.

00:05:42.000 And we'll come back to that theme later on, but even early in your life, do you think that that early exposure to being in that spotlight Played a role in creating that anxiety that stayed with you later in life.

00:06:01.000 Well, anxiety is an interesting thing.

00:06:03.000 The human mind is an interesting thing.

00:06:05.000 The human psychology is a very interesting thing.

00:06:08.000 It's hard to say, did the chicken come before the egg?

00:06:11.000 I don't know.

00:06:11.000 It's hard to know, right?

00:06:12.000 It's hard to know.

00:06:13.000 You know, it's one of the places where exploration and research will still pay dividends for humanity.

00:06:19.000 But I can say I remember early struggles with anxiety well before the spotlight was ever on me.

00:06:25.000 It had to do with my own internal thinking, the way that I looked at the world and feeling that something wasn't right or that danger is ever present, which it was in the communities I came from.

00:06:35.000 It all starts from somewhere.

00:06:36.000 But it all starts from somewhere.

00:06:38.000 So that's, you know, hard to pinpoint.

00:06:42.000 But I will say this.

00:06:45.000 By the time I was 16, I had my first full-blown panic attack, which came from smoking marijuana for the first time.

00:06:53.000 It was when you smoked for the first time that you had your panic attack.

00:06:56.000 Yes, I was fortunate that in my household, my mother was adamant about not letting people in the household that did any form of drugs or alcohol.

00:07:05.000 She was not a drug or alcohol user herself, and she kept that out of the house.

00:07:09.000 So it wasn't until I was a little bit older and had the chance to move around on my own more that I encountered the opportunity even to smoke marijuana.

00:07:17.000 And when I did it for the first time, I had a full-blown massive panic attack.

00:07:21.000 That's interesting.

00:07:22.000 Do you think it was in any way the loss of control?

00:07:26.000 I mean, in the sense that your experience of going through an intoxication or a high, do you think that's...

00:07:32.000 Because you just described yourself as somebody who's been in control of your body.

00:07:36.000 You brought that up.

00:07:38.000 No train or nobody else driving you.

00:07:40.000 Do you think that might have been an element of it or do you think it's something else?

00:07:43.000 No.

00:07:44.000 Yeah, that was part of it.

00:07:47.000 I was somebody who had an acute awareness of society as a whole.

00:07:52.000 Very young.

00:07:52.000 I was fortunate enough to have my mother impress upon me the importance of reading, so I was very well read.

00:08:00.000 Read across a number of things, not just fiction, Harry Potter and whatnot, which was our era.

00:08:06.000 Not just what they gave me in school.

00:08:07.000 Not what they gave me in school, but I was...

00:08:10.000 In the know about societal things.

00:08:13.000 And one of the things that kind of was a thorn in my side was I realized that me and my mother didn't have good health care.

00:08:22.000 Or at least in my mind then, I thought that was a big deal at 16. And so when you get your first panic attack, well, we can discuss if it's a big deal, but when you get your first panic attack and it feels like you're having what many would describe as a heart attack, and you know you haven't necessarily had all the proper checkups, your mind goes to...

00:08:42.000 Is this a possibility, right?

00:08:44.000 And not only that, I had had a childhood friend who fainted in a fourth grade AAU basketball practice.

00:08:52.000 Really?

00:08:53.000 Yeah, and he fainted because all of us thought he had asthma.

00:08:58.000 They labeled it activity-induced asthma.

00:09:00.000 But really he had an artery that was being restricted by two valves that was causing him to not be able to have the proper flow of oxygen-rich blood.

00:09:12.000 And so it was effectively asthma of a sort, but it was from a birth defect, not normal asthma.

00:09:18.000 Activity induced, really.

00:09:19.000 Right.

00:09:19.000 And so he almost died.

00:09:21.000 At eight years old, they had to cut his chest open.

00:09:23.000 So that struck you.

00:09:24.000 So, you know, 16, you have your first panic attack, you're like, I had smoked weed.

00:09:28.000 Was there something in it?

00:09:29.000 Am I going to die?

00:09:30.000 And after that, I would have panic attacks for about four months straight, three times a day.

00:09:35.000 And so, for anybody who's ever had panic attacks, it's kind of laughable to those who don't really deal with it because they don't understand how physical it is.

00:09:43.000 But I tell people I've looked death in the face thousands of times because it actually feels like you're dying.

00:09:49.000 In fact, it's it's so much simulates dying that if you go to the ER with classic panic symptoms, they have to do a variety of tests to rule out that you're having a cardiac event, which speaks to how magnificent the human body is right in the mind.

00:10:03.000 It is interesting.

00:10:04.000 I mean, do you think you've taken something away from those experiences that's positive?

00:10:08.000 Absolutely.

00:10:09.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:10:10.000 Number one, it's not always as bad as you think.

00:10:13.000 It's not always as good as you think, right?

00:10:14.000 To try and stay even in situations of crisis.

00:10:18.000 So I've somewhat perfected that, to hone that emotional evenness in times that seem critical to many others.

00:10:28.000 So that's one thing for sure.

00:10:30.000 And so, when did you get drafted out to the NBA? Was it...

00:10:33.000 2012, I'm sorry.

00:10:36.000 Two years in college?

00:10:38.000 I spent one year at the University of Minnesota, and then I had to sit a year at Iowa State.

00:10:45.000 That was back when you couldn't transfer for your penalty.

00:10:48.000 Yeah, red shirt.

00:10:48.000 Well, now you can transfer once without any penalty and play right away.

00:10:53.000 Back then, you had to sit.

00:10:54.000 Unless you got a waiver from the NCAA, which they denied me.

00:10:58.000 Okay.

00:10:58.000 Why did you transfer, if you don't mind me asking?

00:11:00.000 I was at the University of Minnesota and ran into a little bit of trouble.

00:11:04.000 Some cultural community issues there at the University of Minnesota.

00:11:07.000 Interesting things.

00:11:08.000 Long story short, I come from the neighborhood, right? 0.87

00:11:11.000 I come from the black neighborhood.

00:11:13.000 And, you know, I don't want to say anything that seems culturally...

00:11:17.000 You can say anything you want.

00:11:20.000 Misleading.

00:11:21.000 Well, no, I'm just careful because I come from a real neighborhood.

00:11:24.000 Okay.

00:11:25.000 Where...

00:11:27.000 Much of what black people who have a chance to talk on a platform like this would have real criticism about, right? 0.97

00:11:33.000 The crime. 0.97

00:11:34.000 Let's just say it.

00:11:34.000 The black-on-black crime.

00:11:36.000 I come from a place where black-on-black crime is serious. 1.00

00:11:38.000 It's a real thing.

00:11:39.000 It's horrifying.

00:11:40.000 It's sad.

00:11:42.000 But because I come from that place and because I was at the University of Minnesota, which was already then predominantly liberal, They didn't like that my childhood friends from the neighborhoods they claim they're trying to protect followed me and hung out on campus with me, which is very interesting.

00:11:59.000 That is fascinating.

00:12:01.000 Oh, yeah. 0.67

00:12:02.000 It's a little bit of hypocrisy. 0.88

00:12:04.000 It's a lot of hypocrisy. 0.83

00:12:06.000 It's why I'm running for Senate in Minnesota, because I saw it first. 0.97

00:12:09.000 I've seen the liberal hypocrisy up close.

00:12:11.000 That's interesting.

00:12:12.000 So you felt like because your childhood friends were showing up on campus because you were going to college close to where you grew up, You were also something of a star by then, I suppose, on the basketball team otherwise, right?

00:12:22.000 Yeah.

00:12:23.000 But they would hang out there that that was somehow unwelcome.

00:12:28.000 Completely unwelcome.

00:12:30.000 Why do you think that was?

00:12:31.000 Well, it's very simple.

00:12:32.000 Black men are accepted by liberals if they can be the symbol of white liberal resent and vendetta against white men, or Americanism, or Christianity, or any number of things.

00:12:49.000 It's an instrument that you can use.

00:12:51.000 It's an instrument, yeah.

00:12:55.000 We like black people.

00:12:56.000 We want to protect black people.

00:12:57.000 We want to include black people.

00:13:00.000 But only if you made it through the application process of our university.

00:13:05.000 Only if you have a student ID. It's funny that they don't want us to have voter ID, but in order for black people to come hang out on campus, you would need a student ID. Fascinating. 1.00

00:13:14.000 These are things I saw close.

00:13:15.000 So it puts you off and you're like, I'm getting the heck out of here.

00:13:16.000 Yeah, so I got in a little bit of trouble that was involved with that.

00:13:20.000 Like what?

00:13:21.000 So, for example, I was at the Mall of America.

00:13:24.000 It's a famous Minnesota Mall of America.

00:13:27.000 And me and my friends were playing a prank.

00:13:28.000 It wasn't really a prank.

00:13:29.000 It was more of a on the spur of the moment, spontaneous snatch and run kind of thing.

00:13:34.000 You know, that was... 0.81

00:13:34.000 We came up in the jackass era. 0.81

00:13:36.000 Okay. 0.99

00:13:37.000 So you're like fooling around.

00:13:39.000 It's not what it was today where guys are going into a store and I'm going to take a $1,000 bag and then go get cash for it.

00:13:46.000 Wasn't that kind of thing back then.

00:13:47.000 It was more genuine prankster stuff.

00:13:51.000 And so that situation happened.

00:13:53.000 I ended up getting in a little bit of trouble with that.

00:13:55.000 And then like a week later, two weeks later, three weeks later, there was a huge party on campus at the freshman dorm.

00:14:01.000 We had like a freshman dorm neighborhood where there were seven story freshman dorms all in one little area.

00:14:09.000 And a young girl had her laptop stolen.

00:14:10.000 They came to ask this young woman, were there anybody here that, you know, doesn't live here or doesn't live on your floor?

00:14:17.000 And because I had been in the air that night, I'm highly visible, obviously.

00:14:20.000 I'm 6'8", and I got seven black kids with me, right?

00:14:24.000 She said, oh, well, you know, Royce and his friends were here.

00:14:27.000 Huh.

00:14:28.000 And she never said that she thought I took it.

00:14:29.000 In fact, her laptop was returned on the following Monday.

00:14:32.000 This was a weekend party on a Saturday.

00:14:34.000 And her laptop had been returned to her already.

00:14:36.000 Well, the University of Minnesota Police Department thought it fair and wise to accuse me of doing it anyway or having something to do with it.

00:14:42.000 And then they drug this case out while they investigated me being a possible suspect.

00:14:47.000 Okay.

00:14:48.000 Possible suspect.

00:14:49.000 Over a long period of time.

00:14:50.000 Over three months.

00:14:51.000 Okay.

00:14:52.000 While the season basically finished.

00:14:55.000 Oh, so you didn't get to play?

00:14:56.000 Yes.

00:14:57.000 You didn't get to play?

00:14:58.000 I didn't get to play.

00:14:59.000 Oh, okay.

00:14:59.000 They held the investigation open until the season concluded, and our AD made the statement that I could not play until this was resolved publicly.

00:15:08.000 So they knew that if they kept it open, I wouldn't.

00:15:12.000 And at the end, they came back and they charged me with trespassing at a dorm I lived in.

00:15:16.000 Yeah.

00:15:17.000 Yeah.

00:15:17.000 And also a high crime of trespassing itself in another campus dorm, let alone it be the one you actually lived in.

00:15:23.000 Let alone it be the one you lived in.

00:15:24.000 It felt a little bit dishonest and alienating.

00:15:27.000 It was very dishonest.

00:15:28.000 You made the decision you're out.

00:15:30.000 Went to Iowa State.

00:15:32.000 Filed for a petition to be able to play right away.

00:15:35.000 Didn't get that granted, so I had to sit an entire year and watch my teammates play without me.

00:15:39.000 And then the next year, I played at Iowa State, and I was the only player in the country to lead my team in all five major statistical categories.

00:15:46.000 So the year off didn't hurt your skills?

00:15:49.000 No, it was great for me.

00:15:50.000 Good.

00:15:50.000 You practiced.

00:15:51.000 I got to see all the teams I was going to play against.

00:15:53.000 Oh, amazing.

00:15:54.000 Yeah, I got to scout all the teams I was going to play against.

00:15:56.000 Did you like being a Cyclone?

00:15:57.000 It was great.

00:15:58.000 Yeah.

00:15:58.000 It was great.

00:15:59.000 Nothing like Aims.

00:16:00.000 It seems like the spirit there is pretty high.

00:16:03.000 Hilton Magic.

00:16:03.000 Yeah, even better than Minnesota, if I had to guess.

00:16:07.000 Yeah, well, yeah, it's different.

00:16:09.000 I haven't been to the University of Minnesota, but I have been to Iowa State.

00:16:12.000 It's a different dynamic, right?

00:16:13.000 Because Minnesota has five professional sports teams.

00:16:17.000 Iowa has zero.

00:16:19.000 None, yep.

00:16:19.000 So to them, their college towns are professional sports.

00:16:22.000 Totally.

00:16:22.000 And they treat it that way.

00:16:23.000 Yeah, we get a little bit of that here in Columbus, Ohio.

00:16:27.000 Anyway, so that was good.

00:16:28.000 So then you get drafted after one year or two years?

00:16:31.000 First year I played.

00:16:32.000 First year you played and then you just get straight up drafted by the Rockets, was it?

00:16:34.000 Yes.

00:16:35.000 So tell me about that.

00:16:37.000 What that experience was like.

00:16:40.000 Well, let's go back.

00:16:41.000 First, I have to explain that during my time at Iowa State, in the year that I played, we were not expected to finish high.

00:16:51.000 We were not necessarily expected to have great success.

00:16:54.000 Fred Hoiberg was our coach.

00:16:55.000 This was his second year.

00:16:56.000 I was a part of his first class that he recruited himself.

00:16:59.000 He came in, he had somebody else's players.

00:17:01.000 Now I was a part of the first group of players he had himself recruited.

00:17:04.000 Okay.

00:17:04.000 But yet still, nobody in the Big 12 The other coaches, you know, they polled before the season.

00:17:09.000 We were picked to finish in the bottom three of the Big 12. Okay.

00:17:12.000 Now, these are the coaches who recruited me.

00:17:14.000 So, I took it personal, and I played with a chip on my shoulder, and we ended up finishing third in the Big 12. That helps you.

00:17:20.000 They did your favor.

00:17:21.000 It does.

00:17:21.000 And so, along the way, you know, the media is heavily, let's say, they place a lot of They place a lot on what the coaches predict.

00:17:32.000 Right.

00:17:33.000 So now as we start to have success, the media is like, oh, this is a Cinderella story.

00:17:36.000 That's right.

00:17:37.000 Right?

00:17:37.000 So it played in our favor.

00:17:38.000 Absolutely.

00:17:39.000 Okay, so while that's happening, I'm getting interviewed one day in Ames before a game, and it's just a regular ESPN, we're covering the Cyclone success, and I let slip that I was dealing with anxiety.

00:17:52.000 Totally by accident, you know, because the guy was asking me what my pregame ritual was, and I said, you know, this is what I do, boo, boo, boo.

00:17:58.000 I wake up, I go and watch the last game and try and reference things I want to do better, and go and watch a little bit of this team so I can scout them and see what they're going to do.

00:18:07.000 And he goes, what about, do you eat?

00:18:09.000 What kind of things do you like to eat?

00:18:11.000 And I go, I don't eat before games, you know, because of my anxiety.

00:18:15.000 And he was like, wait, wait, wait a second.

00:18:17.000 What did you say there?

00:18:18.000 And in that moment, I realized...

00:18:20.000 Whose report, which album was this?

00:18:22.000 This was ESPN. It was ESPN. Yeah, it was ESPN. And so, but at that moment, when I said anxiety and I caught his reaction, I realized that I had, that the anxiety thing...

00:18:30.000 Tripped it, yep.

00:18:31.000 Tripped the wire.

00:18:32.000 And so, it became one of the biggest and most covered stories of that college basketball season because no players had really talked about struggling with anxiety It's not one of these you're supposed to talk about.

00:18:44.000 Huge stigma.

00:18:45.000 Sweep under the rug.

00:18:46.000 Huge stigma around it still.

00:18:48.000 Right?

00:18:48.000 So by the time I had got to the draft, there were huge questions now with the GMs of the NBA. Unbelievable.

00:18:54.000 Where I would be drafted because the NBA had never had to draft a player.

00:18:59.000 Deal with that.

00:19:00.000 With anxiety.

00:19:01.000 Yes.

00:19:01.000 Right.

00:19:01.000 So this is the narrative.

00:19:03.000 It's amazing.

00:19:04.000 The parallels to politics, I will tell you.

00:19:06.000 If you're entering politics now, this is great training for you.

00:19:09.000 It was.

00:19:09.000 For a time such as this, right?

00:19:12.000 Your time in the corporate world as well.

00:19:13.000 Yeah, totally.

00:19:14.000 It prepares us.

00:19:15.000 We understand.

00:19:15.000 I get what that's like.

00:19:18.000 So then that happens between the time you're entering the draft, so then it's kind of in the bloodstream.

00:19:22.000 That's the narrative.

00:19:23.000 So I get drafted and the consensus on me is...

00:19:26.000 By the Rockets.

00:19:26.000 The consensus on me going into the draft is I'm one of the five most NBA-ready players in the draft.

00:19:32.000 And I had just come off of playing an NCAA game against Anthony Davis, who had three other projected first lottery picks on his team.

00:19:42.000 And I dominated that game.

00:19:44.000 I mean, people can go back and watch it on YouTube.

00:19:45.000 I had like 25. So it's like an automatic should-be first-round pick.

00:19:49.000 Well, yeah, but even close to the top.

00:19:52.000 But I'm just saying, table stakes would be first round pick.

00:19:55.000 No doubt.

00:19:55.000 So I'm sitting there on draft night.

00:19:57.000 First off, I go through this draft process, and everywhere I go in the draft process, we go to these cities and we have these individual workouts where you go against a set of other three or four other guys that they're comparing you to in the draft.

00:20:10.000 So I'm going city to city, and they're pulling me in the bag to do my individual interviews, and all they want to ask me about is anxiety, which I'm welcome, open.

00:20:17.000 But I'm like, hey, I'm 21 years old.

00:20:19.000 I'm sure you guys have doctors or something that could give you much better information than even I could.

00:20:23.000 Because they were asking general questions about anxiety, not really about my anxiety specifically.

00:20:28.000 And there were even things that I really didn't feel equipped to tell them, right?

00:20:32.000 Like to predict into the future.

00:20:33.000 Like one of them is, well, what if you have a panic attack before a game?

00:20:38.000 I don't know what to tell you.

00:20:39.000 Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know if I break my ankle in practice, too.

00:20:43.000 That happens, too, right?

00:20:43.000 I have no answer for you for that.

00:20:45.000 So, by the time the draft comes, this is a huge story.

00:20:49.000 I end up getting drafted 16th in a draft where many people thought I should have been a top three pick.

00:20:54.000 So the anxiety had already affected my draft position.

00:20:57.000 So you got drafted 16th?

00:20:58.000 Get drafted 16th.

00:20:59.000 I get to Houston.

00:21:01.000 16th in the first round.

00:21:02.000 In the first round, yes.

00:21:03.000 I get to Houston, and...

00:21:09.000 I was advised by my...

00:21:10.000 Who was the GM of the Rockets at the time?

00:21:11.000 Darryl Morey.

00:21:11.000 Was it Darryl Morey?

00:21:12.000 Okay.

00:21:12.000 Yes, he was.

00:21:13.000 All right, interesting.

00:21:14.000 I want to ask you about that in a second.

00:21:15.000 Please do.

00:21:15.000 I would love to dive into that rabbit hole, too.

00:21:20.000 So, a child, my family physician that first diagnosed me with anxiety disorder, we had conversations leading up to training camp, which is held October 1st, coming up here for the NBA. And...

00:21:35.000 She wanted me to reach out to the team and try and open up a dialogue to create the same type of Program, for lack of a better word, agreement, understanding that I had had with Iowa State.

00:21:47.000 And that agreement with Iowa State in regards to my anxiety, which she also helped build, was just to have a real direct line of communication with my coach and the team doctor and the team trainer about where I was on a daily basis.

00:22:01.000 Because sometimes with anxiety, for example, I have anxiety, free-floating anxiety.

00:22:05.000 I don't sleep all night.

00:22:07.000 So when I come in the morning to practice, I might need sugar pills.

00:22:10.000 I might need a pick-me-up.

00:22:11.000 Or I might need to...

00:22:13.000 My post-practice massage may need to focus on something different.

00:22:18.000 Integral health, right?

00:22:19.000 The whole comprehensive health model.

00:22:22.000 This was way before they were talking about it in sports at all.

00:22:25.000 We were doing it.

00:22:26.000 We had practiced it.

00:22:27.000 And it paid dividends because I played well and we had success.

00:22:30.000 So she told me to try and do the same thing with the Houston Rockets.

00:22:33.000 Well, there's all this red tape.

00:22:35.000 All this administrative red tape, much like we see in...

00:22:38.000 Every sphere of life, but government included.

00:22:40.000 In American government, right?

00:22:42.000 But this exists in every sphere of life.

00:22:44.000 It does.

00:22:44.000 The deep state is not just in the government.

00:22:46.000 That's exactly right.

00:22:46.000 The swamp doesn't just exist in the government.

00:22:47.000 And we'll talk politics, yeah.

00:22:49.000 But I'm just trying to give people the...

00:22:50.000 The swamp in the NBA, yeah.

00:22:52.000 I saw it.

00:22:53.000 These are the same people.

00:22:55.000 They're not different people.

00:22:56.000 They're the exact same people.

00:22:57.000 Absolutely right.

00:22:58.000 So anyway, I go to them and I say, hey, I read through my collective bargaining agreement.

00:23:04.000 There's not a single mention of mental health in the entire agreement.

00:23:08.000 Not a single mention.

00:23:10.000 They have a full banned substance list that, by the way, includes anti-anxiety medication, which I was prescribed for, benzodiazepines, Xanax, for flying, right?

00:23:21.000 For flying, specifically, is when you use it.

00:23:23.000 Or anytime you have anxiety.

00:23:24.000 Yeah, but you use it for flying.

00:23:26.000 Yes.

00:23:27.000 Which I tried not to use it for flying because I knew the dangers of it.

00:23:30.000 Yeah.

00:23:30.000 So my question to them was like, okay, somebody informed this banned substance list.

00:23:35.000 Probably doctors or, you know, drug specialists or whoever.

00:23:39.000 How did you come up with a whole banned substance list, but there's no mention of the domain of health that this list is informed by?

00:23:47.000 Yes.

00:23:47.000 Like, how is there the drug list at the end of the tunnel And penalty for being on those drugs, but there's no upstream attention to the thing that leads people to do drugs.

00:23:59.000 I heard crickets.

00:24:02.000 And then shortly after, you know, we got into a huge public standoff about the need for mental health policy in the NBA. And basically what they brought me behind closed doors and said is, you're right about mental health.

00:24:18.000 We're way behind on this issue.

00:24:20.000 They being the Rockets or the NBA? The whole NBA. Okay.

00:24:23.000 Including the Rock.

00:24:24.000 Yeah.

00:24:24.000 We're behind on this issue.

00:24:25.000 We don't know what we're doing.

00:24:28.000 But here's the thing.

00:24:29.000 If you don't agree to play, in about 15 minutes, who's going to listen to you?

00:24:35.000 Nobody's going to care.

00:24:36.000 If you play and do what we say, we'll help you do everything you want.

00:24:40.000 You know, they treated me like I was doing it as a gimmick.

00:24:43.000 Yeah.

00:24:43.000 Like, I wanted to become an advocate for mental health.

00:24:46.000 And you can do your gimmick and we'll give you the platform.

00:24:49.000 We'll give you everything you need.

00:24:50.000 Actually, they said, you know, you're handsome, you're charming, you're articulate.

00:24:53.000 You could do well with this.

00:24:54.000 You know, they had that gleam in their face like they saw the path for me.

00:24:58.000 We could use you.

00:25:00.000 Yeah, this could be great.

00:25:01.000 And I said, told him, I'm not doing it for that reason.

00:25:04.000 I have anxiety.

00:25:06.000 Me.

00:25:07.000 I'm dealing with this because I'm dealing with the situation we're talking about.

00:25:11.000 This isn't a gimmick.

00:25:11.000 As an individual.

00:25:12.000 As an individual.

00:25:13.000 Yeah.

00:25:14.000 Now, do I recognize the moment that this thing I deal with is also something...

00:25:18.000 And there can be good that comes to the center.

00:25:19.000 You recognize it.

00:25:20.000 Great.

00:25:21.000 But you are dealing with this now.

00:25:22.000 I'm dealing with it right now.

00:25:23.000 Mm-hmm.

00:25:25.000 Blackballed me. 1.00

00:25:26.000 They blackballed me, right? 0.95

00:25:27.000 I mean, after that year, they promised that they, they promised if I return to play and stop the standoff about mental health policy, which all their doctors, this is another interesting one.

00:25:37.000 I'm trying to paint a picture of why I came to where I am in this liberal edifice, this edifice of liberalism in American politics.

00:25:46.000 This is another interesting one.

00:25:48.000 All of their experts, medical experts, agreed that not only was a policy possible, but it was necessary and that it would be easy to create one and it would be very limited liability for them because everybody's worried about liability.

00:26:02.000 Of course, yeah.

00:26:02.000 We're in the most overly litigious society in human history.

00:26:06.000 No doubt about it.

00:26:07.000 Everybody's worried about getting sued.

00:26:09.000 So, you know, the doctors are saying, hey, we can create a policy that simply states mental health is equal to Physical health, right?

00:26:18.000 The two have to be managed next to each other.

00:26:22.000 And they told the experts, go take a hike.

00:26:26.000 Yeah.

00:26:27.000 Oh, unabashedly.

00:26:29.000 Oh, you're an expert when we tell you you're an expert.

00:26:31.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:26:32.000 Selective use.

00:26:33.000 Yes, yes.

00:26:34.000 And so, you know, I basically dug my heels in and went, you know, if you guys are going to play this game, then I was right.

00:26:41.000 Man.

00:26:42.000 So this is what, 2013?

00:26:43.000 This is 2013. 2013. So the standoff was, they want you to play.

00:26:46.000 You say, I'm not going to unless I get to do the things that you need to do to take care of yourself.

00:26:51.000 No, not really.

00:26:52.000 It wasn't even really specific at the end.

00:26:54.000 It was, can we have some mention of mental health policy put in the collective bargaining agreement?

00:27:00.000 Okay, that was what you said.

00:27:02.000 Yes, because the danger is...

00:27:03.000 So the basic disagreement was, they say, hey, you can play, you can use your story as a platform, educate people, etc.

00:27:09.000 And you're like, no, I'm dealing with something.

00:27:10.000 Here's the policies that govern the collective bargaining agreement.

00:27:13.000 I need a mention of mental health in there in order to play.

00:27:16.000 It was a policy argument.

00:27:18.000 It was a policy argument.

00:27:18.000 They wanted to make it a propaganda or commercial...

00:27:22.000 And we're now talking fall of?

00:27:24.000 Fall of 2013. Which would have been your first year to play.

00:27:29.000 Yes.

00:27:29.000 And then what happened?

00:27:33.000 Never got to play.

00:27:34.000 Okay, so they just said we're not going to do it.

00:27:36.000 Not doing it.

00:27:37.000 Despite the fact that they had plenty of basis to do it, their advisors, etc.

00:27:40.000 Oh, it gets better.

00:27:41.000 Yeah, okay.

00:27:41.000 Now I'm out of the league.

00:27:43.000 Can't get a tryout.

00:27:44.000 They won't even...

00:27:45.000 Remember now, I'm a top five talent, no physical injuries, no legal problems, never been to jail, never been convicted of a crime, no rape charges, allegations.

00:27:54.000 It's an undervalued asset right here.

00:27:55.000 Okay, right, yeah.

00:27:56.000 And so now I can't even get a tryout.

00:28:01.000 After you dropped from the Houston Rockets?

00:28:03.000 The behind-the-scenes part is David Stern and those guys basically sent their emissaries to come and talk to me in a room and say, look at all the money you're going to pass up on.

00:28:14.000 And I gave them the finger.

00:28:16.000 It's not about the money.

00:28:18.000 What was the size of your contract, if you don't mind me asking?

00:28:21.000 It was a rookie-scale contract.

00:28:22.000 It was like $1.1, $1.2 million.

00:28:25.000 But they're walking you through, hey, here's the...

00:28:28.000 15 years, $200, $300 million.

00:28:30.000 Easy.

00:28:31.000 This was before the TV deal inflated the contracts, right?

00:28:35.000 So it could be $700 million.

00:28:37.000 I mean, it could be five years for $300 million like guys are getting right now.

00:28:41.000 But I told them I didn't care about the money.

00:28:43.000 So that was what the pretense was for...

00:28:46.000 So they didn't have the lever they wanted to use.

00:28:47.000 Me being a free agency and them basically saying, you're not even going to get a shot because we told you.

00:28:53.000 We told you that if you played ball the right way, Then we would help you, but now we're gonna cut your water off.

00:29:01.000 We're gonna cut your microphone off. 0.71

00:29:03.000 And so, yeah, in 2016 now, Kevin Love starts to have panic attacks.

00:29:09.000 Oh, wow.

00:29:11.000 Of all places.

00:29:12.000 Was he on the Timberwolves still?

00:29:14.000 He was on the—no, he was now in Cleveland.

00:29:16.000 Oh, he's not in Cleveland.

00:29:16.000 Okay, okay, got it.

00:29:17.000 But he was—he had played in Minnesota.

00:29:19.000 Yeah, no, I know, I know.

00:29:19.000 Okay.

00:29:20.000 This is Cleveland days now.

00:29:21.000 He started to have panic attacks, and he spoke about— He talked about it.

00:29:23.000 I remember that, actually.

00:29:25.000 DeMar DeRozan first talked about dealing with depression.

00:29:27.000 Now, these are guys I come up with.

00:29:29.000 DeMar DeRozan's one year older than me.

00:29:30.000 We came up through the Nike circuit together.

00:29:32.000 You know these guys?

00:29:33.000 I know them.

00:29:33.000 Yeah.

00:29:34.000 Kevin, I don't really know personally, but we're in the same circles.

00:29:38.000 You guys still haven't met yet?

00:29:40.000 Kevin and I have never met.

00:29:41.000 We spoke a bunch of times, but we haven't met.

00:29:44.000 You spoke about similar issues.

00:29:46.000 Yes.

00:29:47.000 And it opened Pandora's box to where many players started to speak out.

00:29:51.000 Oh, now it's a much different environment today.

00:29:55.000 You helped create that.

00:29:56.000 And they even put a policy in place, and the policy they put in place was the one I wrote with one catch to it.

00:30:02.000 I'm going to explain it to you.

00:30:03.000 Let me show you how people pull the double-cross and triple-cross with policy and propaganda.

00:30:08.000 I said every team should have a mental health professional on staff.

00:30:13.000 It's obvious.

00:30:14.000 Now...

00:30:15.000 Well, you had a lot of physical health professionals on staff with every team, right?

00:30:17.000 So you said one.

00:30:18.000 Of course.

00:30:19.000 But also, players should be able to seek out their own independent mental health professionals, right?

00:30:25.000 because there is an obvious conflict of interest that you could point to if the professional is hired by the team.

00:30:32.000 So a player should have the ability to dispute that opinion and go get their own independent opinion or a couple of independent opinions that come to one consensus.

00:30:40.000 Democracy.

00:30:42.000 the protectors and progenitors of democracy of the great NBA woke alliance.

00:30:46.000 But they don't like democracy from the end of the worker.

00:30:50.000 Yeah, not in the home turf.

00:30:51.000 Yeah, somebody else's.

00:30:52.000 Right.

00:30:53.000 Not in my backyard.

00:30:53.000 So now they create the policy that basically mandates every team have a mental health professional.

00:30:58.000 But, and Adam Silver went on Bill Simmons' podcast back in 2017 when this whole crisis was popping off and said, we want players to use our mental health services, but I can't guarantee that if you use our mental health services, it won't come to be, it won't, it won't be held against you come free agency.

00:31:18.000 Mm-hmm.

00:31:19.000 This is how people who are in positions of leadership miss the very important role of leadership in governance.

00:31:27.000 The NBA office and Adam Silver as the commissioner is a governing body.

00:31:31.000 What Adam Silver should have used his pulpit to say is, we believe mental health is a very integral piece to the overall health of our players.

00:31:38.000 And we are making it a priority by ensuring that they have access to mental health professionals as players in their workplace.

00:31:45.000 But if they don't want to use it, that's fine.

00:31:48.000 However, If I, as the commissioner, find out that any of these teams in our NBA community are going to weaponize mental health against their players in free agency, I'm going to come down with the full power of my position.

00:32:00.000 What is the policy on this?

00:32:03.000 I'm always a fan of getting the best arguments on the table and then addressing them.

00:32:07.000 I don't know what the policy is on physical injury, but I suspect what he might say.

00:32:13.000 So it had been Stern before, but then now we're talking about Adam Silver having taken over as commissioner of the NBA. Just for people who aren't following the NBA to know.

00:32:22.000 So these are the guys.

00:32:23.000 David Stern was the commissioner when I was there.

00:32:24.000 Now Adam Silver is.

00:32:25.000 But now Adam Silver has taken over, so he's the NBA commissioner.

00:32:29.000 And he might say, let's say he were here, that, well, if you're suffering a knee injury or Achilles heel tear or whatever, that that would be held against you in free agency.

00:32:43.000 Yes.

00:32:48.000 why shouldn't that be allowed to be held against you as well?

00:32:51.000 Oh, and no, my point wasn't that it, that it shouldn't be held against.

00:32:55.000 Oh, okay.

00:32:55.000 Yeah.

00:32:56.000 Like if you have panic attacks and you can't play because you have panic attacks, that's like having a knee that doesn't allow you to play.

00:33:01.000 I agree.

00:33:01.000 That's the same thing.

00:33:04.000 The point was none of these, none of these NBA GMs or, or, um, owners or scouts had any general basis of information about mental health to be able to determine whether a mental health issue is incapacitated.

00:33:20.000 Is the equivalent of your ACL. Yes.

00:33:22.000 Right.

00:33:22.000 Because I think that's a consistent position to say that You know, you're going to be valuable to a team based on whether or not you're able to play and perform.

00:33:32.000 But the irony is that for all of the emphasis put on protecting the physical health of a player as an asset for that team, there's a deep underinvestment of both resources and just basic knowledge to be able to do the same thing for somebody that can stop them from playing.

00:33:48.000 It's almost the self-interest of the team, right?

00:33:50.000 Here's the irony.

00:33:51.000 Here's the most ironic part.

00:33:53.000 The most ironic part is the individuals like you or I who are outspoken naturally, right?

00:33:59.000 We would be more likely in the pool of players to step forward and be honest about what we're dealing with to give them the data to be able to form their opinion and attitude and protocols around mental health.

00:34:13.000 Right.

00:34:13.000 Now, do most of these teams have sports psychologists?

00:34:16.000 Are they like a joke?

00:34:18.000 Not a joke, but no.

00:34:20.000 I mean, yeah, it's a joke.

00:34:21.000 Okay.

00:34:22.000 I mean, that's what I'm asking.

00:34:22.000 Yeah, no.

00:34:23.000 Actually, now that it occurs to me, my first think would be, let's say I'm an NBA owner.

00:34:27.000 To me, if the league is going this way, this is an opportunity as part of building a high-performance culture that protects its players to really double down here, right?

00:34:34.000 We're going to get down to it.

00:34:35.000 I'm going to show you how duplicitous this establishment is.

00:34:38.000 Okay.

00:34:39.000 And for everybody who's listening up to this point, this is not a boo-hoo story for Royce White about the NBA. These are your leaders.

00:34:44.000 These are the people who make policy decisions for your country.

00:34:48.000 These are the people who have undermined the value of your citizenship.

00:34:52.000 Almost hand to hand.

00:34:54.000 When they go to give $250 million for Raphael Warnock in a runoff, who do you think the money came from?

00:35:02.000 Corporations who have partnerships with you.

00:35:04.000 Have you read Woke Inc?

00:35:05.000 It's my first book.

00:35:06.000 You read it?

00:35:07.000 Yeah.

00:35:07.000 Oh, you did.

00:35:07.000 Okay, good.

00:35:08.000 This reminds me of that story.

00:35:11.000 This chapter is in there called The Managerial Class.

00:35:13.000 The Managerial Class.

00:35:14.000 I mean, it's a horizontal phenomenon from government to NBA to politics to non-profit sectors.

00:35:22.000 It's interesting.

00:35:22.000 It's the same Adam Silver progeny types that populate.

00:35:26.000 Who are coalesced in the legal sphere mainly.

00:35:30.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:35:31.000 Yeah, there's the professional realms that pull them together.

00:35:35.000 Yes.

00:35:35.000 Even though they're technically operating in different states of our lives.

00:35:38.000 The NBA is unique because the NBA office is ran by lawyers.

00:35:42.000 These people are all lawyers.

00:35:44.000 Adam Silver's a lawyer.

00:35:45.000 Oh, is that right?

00:35:45.000 David Stern was a lawyer.

00:35:46.000 It doesn't surprise me.

00:35:47.000 No, they're all lawyers.

00:35:48.000 Mark Tatum, he's a lawyer.

00:35:49.000 So let me tell you how this went down.

00:35:53.000 So, again, I wasn't saying, you know, Royce needs special treatment.

00:36:00.000 It's fine if people want to make the claim.

00:36:04.000 Mental health, physical health, if you can't mentally get out of bed to come to the gym, you can't.

00:36:08.000 Here's the irony.

00:36:09.000 You and I would be more likely out of the pool of players to step up and go, hey, this is what I'm really dealing with.

00:36:14.000 Proactively, I'd like to create a dialogue or an open conversation so you know what you're dealing with.

00:36:18.000 I know we can create a clear line of expectation.

00:36:21.000 They like that the line wasn't clear.

00:36:24.000 And so what they actually did was they weaponized the lack of knowledge around a topic like mental health to be able to weaponize it arbitrarily whenever they so choose.

00:36:34.000 So they didn't want to draw a hard line.

00:36:35.000 The blur helped them in their desire for corruption when necessary because...

00:36:41.000 Most of the players are dealing with mental health issues, but they would never say it.

00:36:46.000 So now you're actually going to end up penalizing the one guy who told you about the problem in free agency, and you're going to miss all the people who are dealing with the same issues.

00:36:56.000 Now they're going to resort to other things.

00:36:58.000 Like gambling.

00:36:59.000 Drugs.

00:37:00.000 Drugs and alcohol.

00:37:01.000 Sexual, you know, risky sexual behavior.

00:37:04.000 Thrill-seeking.

00:37:05.000 Ride the motorcycle.

00:37:06.000 Get injured in the off-season.

00:37:07.000 Happens.

00:37:08.000 Don't tell the team about it.

00:37:09.000 Hide it.

00:37:09.000 Guy comes back.

00:37:10.000 All of a sudden, he's running weird and his injury won't heal.

00:37:13.000 What had happened?

00:37:13.000 He's never going to tell you he was in a motorcycle injury.

00:37:16.000 Right?

00:37:16.000 So this is the problem.

00:37:17.000 This is the...

00:37:19.000 The moral hazard of that type of fast and loose governance.

00:37:24.000 Yep, yep.

00:37:25.000 It's very, very interesting.

00:37:27.000 So then you ended up, that was your out from the NBA? Yeah, done.

00:37:31.000 I mean, I've been fighting them for, I mean, I was, I'm 32 now, I was 22 then.

00:37:35.000 What was your experience in your time leaving the NBA watching the Daryl Morey incident that we're talking about now?

00:37:46.000 What was his tweet?

00:37:47.000 Fight for freedom, stand for Hong Kong.

00:37:49.000 Stand with Hong Kong. 0.95

00:37:49.000 Stand with Hong Kong and then seeing what played out in the aftermath of that. 0.95

00:37:53.000 I want to say this was maybe four years ago or so.

00:37:56.000 There was so much to it.

00:37:58.000 There's so much to pull apart.

00:38:00.000 But in short, because I want to get to more political stuff with you, I wouldn't.

00:38:04.000 But this relates to some of that.

00:38:05.000 This is the perfect segue.

00:38:07.000 This is the U.S. relationship to China.

00:38:08.000 And this is a great example.

00:38:09.000 I mean, probably one of the best examples of how somebody can say a thing that would be in alignment with some people on some side.

00:38:15.000 And their real position is not in alignment with some people on some side.

00:38:19.000 It's the wild, wild west of ideological warfare in our society.

00:38:26.000 I mean, just to set the stage, I mean, we've got protests in Hong Kong, pro-democracy protests.

00:38:30.000 China has an agreement that says that they're not going to have their tentacles invade Hong Kong's system.

00:38:36.000 Those are those pro-democracy protests.

00:38:37.000 I think this is around 2019 or so.

00:38:39.000 And Daryl Morey tweets, fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.

00:38:43.000 And then he goes through his own version of, it's almost, maybe it's a version of karma, but he goes through a whole version of being cast as a pariah by LeBron James.

00:38:53.000 Right.

00:38:53.000 Somehow weighing into this, you know, who else was in this?

00:38:57.000 The owner, Nike, the NBA, Adam Silver.

00:39:00.000 Everybody.

00:39:00.000 Yeah.

00:39:01.000 James Harden.

00:39:02.000 But he apologized first.

00:39:03.000 Did he?

00:39:04.000 He walked his comments back first.

00:39:05.000 Oh, that's, that's, that's, that's, okay, I missed that part.

00:39:08.000 No, yeah, right away.

00:39:10.000 They brought the hammer on him.

00:39:11.000 He didn't realize.

00:39:12.000 See, here's the thing about Dillmore.

00:39:13.000 He just walked into a mess.

00:39:15.000 Look, when you put Twitter in everybody's hands, not everybody is their own PR manager.

00:39:20.000 That's right.

00:39:21.000 In the middle of the midnight whims, you think you're on the right side of a thing, which he theoretically would be.

00:39:26.000 He was speaking his mind.

00:39:27.000 Let's talk about it from a geopolitical standpoint.

00:39:31.000 Theoretically, he was on the right side of the people that he's over there getting political money with.

00:39:36.000 The NBA is a woke, pro-democracy, non-authoritarian, freedom anywhere is freedom everywhere, corporations.

00:39:46.000 So to him, he's thinking...

00:39:47.000 I'm standing under the party line here.

00:39:49.000 It may not even be his conviction.

00:39:51.000 That's actually a good point.

00:39:53.000 He thinks he is doing the thing that's part of the...

00:39:56.000 I'm just speaking what the NBA would expect you to say.

00:39:59.000 And he gets a call early in the morning like, buddy, not that though.

00:40:01.000 Not that one.

00:40:02.000 When we want it.

00:40:03.000 Just like back to...

00:40:04.000 So then he walks it back.

00:40:06.000 See, okay, that's interesting.

00:40:07.000 But see, I experienced that because it's just like back to the doctors where it's expert medical advice only when we want it.

00:40:12.000 That's right.

00:40:13.000 It's freedom-fighting political ideology only when we want it.

00:40:16.000 Right.

00:40:16.000 And right then is not the time.

00:40:17.000 China's off-limits. 0.98

00:40:18.000 Because we're expanding into the Chinese market and the CCP's about to tell us...

00:40:21.000 Oh, by the way, Daryl, you should know that because the inception of the NBA China movement was predicated on Yao Ming.

00:40:27.000 Yeah, Yao Ming.

00:40:27.000 You should know China's off-limits.

00:40:29.000 So he walks the comments back.

00:40:31.000 And then, yeah, the Piranhas descended.

00:40:34.000 Right.

00:40:35.000 Yeah.

00:40:35.000 And so what was your takeaway from watching all that happen?

00:40:38.000 Oh, these people are fucking sellouts. 0.99

00:40:40.000 What are you doing at this point in life? 1.00

00:40:42.000 I was in Canada.

00:40:43.000 I had just come back from Canada.

00:40:45.000 Okay.

00:40:45.000 I was played two years in London, Ontario.

00:40:47.000 Oh, so you played in Canada.

00:40:47.000 Okay.

00:40:48.000 Yeah, I played two years in London, Ontario.

00:40:49.000 Was there when Bill's 16th thing went down with Jordan Peterson.

00:40:53.000 Okay.

00:40:53.000 In the Ontario province.

00:40:56.000 And I was on my way back from Canada to come play in the Big Three.

00:41:00.000 Oh, you were?

00:41:01.000 Yes, in 2019, 18, yeah.

00:41:03.000 Oh, you were on your way to playing the Big Three, meaning?

00:41:06.000 The Ice Cube's Big Three.

00:41:07.000 Oh, you were?

00:41:08.000 Yeah.

00:41:08.000 Oh, that was in 2019?

00:41:10.000 I played it now.

00:41:11.000 Okay, but that was you on your way, and that's when the Daryl Morey thing broke?

00:41:14.000 That's when it broke.

00:41:14.000 Okay, okay.

00:41:16.000 So, you know, it was a...

00:41:17.000 I had already started to see this avalanche of fake woke politics.

00:41:23.000 I lived with it.

00:41:24.000 I came up...

00:41:24.000 Did you speak out on it at the time, or were you kind of just...

00:41:26.000 Of course, yeah, of course.

00:41:27.000 I mean, I said, you know, First of all, let's talk about the Hong Kong thing for a moment.

00:41:34.000 Hong Kong...

00:41:35.000 China is a convoluted problem that has many, many layers.

00:41:40.000 But effectively, Hong Kong is the left...

00:41:45.000 The pro-freedom democracy Hong Kong movement is the leftist BLM movement here in many senses, right? 0.66

00:41:55.000 And China, who I am vehemently opposed to, the CCP and their influence in our country, Their problem with Hong Kong is that it was a bastion to Western power in China.

00:42:06.000 The same way they had earlier gotten Shanghai, they had dealt with their Shanghai problem.

00:42:12.000 In many ways.

00:42:13.000 Because Shanghai used to be the epicenter of American Thai and American ambassadorship and power to China, the CCP. So Xi Jinping cut that off.

00:42:21.000 Right.

00:42:22.000 And then Hong Kong becomes his hotspot and he brings the hammer down on them.

00:42:25.000 Now, post-COVID, they double back to make sure that the Shanghai-Western Thais are... 0.99

00:42:30.000 Doesn't retake off again.

00:42:32.000 Which is why they had extensive lockdowns.

00:42:35.000 Yeah, the lockdowns had nothing to do with COVID. In Shanghai.

00:42:37.000 Of course.

00:42:38.000 It was a complete geopolitical move.

00:42:39.000 So, you know, watching it from that angle.

00:42:41.000 And that was also specifically in the moment where he was about to take over his unprecedented third term.

00:42:47.000 That's right.

00:42:48.000 As chairman of the CCP. That's right.

00:42:50.000 Right.

00:42:50.000 Yeah.

00:42:51.000 So when you watch it from that angle, you can tell that the average American citizen who's watching Twitter and NBA Twitter and the reactions that many times cross over in politics, They have no clue what to make of Hong Kong, let alone Daryl Morey making that comment.

00:43:04.000 So that's the political spectrum we're dealing with today, is many of these things have such deep roots that when these surface sparks pop up, people are pinballs.

00:43:13.000 They don't even really know how to...

00:43:15.000 Totally.

00:43:15.000 It's like, yeah, exactly.

00:43:16.000 I mean, I think, and I think the funny thing is you see the same thing in politics, too.

00:43:19.000 You'll experience this.

00:43:20.000 Most politicians are like, use pinball analogy, billiard balls, right?

00:43:24.000 They're just going to be rolling in whatever direction they're hit without actually asking who's doing the aiming.

00:43:29.000 Right.

00:43:30.000 And so don't be one of those billiard balls. 0.94

00:43:32.000 You're not one of those billiard balls. 0.61

00:43:33.000 But that's what I tell young people across this country, the same thing.

00:43:36.000 So that was in 2019. 2020 is when the George Floyd, post-George Floyd BLM issues come up.

00:43:41.000 You're familiar with my version of this in the corporate world, having read the book.

00:43:45.000 Tell me about what your reaction was at that time and what your journey was through that.

00:43:52.000 I'd already come through the NBA 10 years of fighting the landslide of liberalism that had corrupted the NBA. And would you call yourself at this point in time a conservative or not necessarily?

00:44:03.000 I was born and raised a Catholic.

00:44:04.000 You were, okay.

00:44:05.000 I was always a conservative.

00:44:05.000 So that was consistently?

00:44:07.000 I mean, well, let's say this.

00:44:09.000 I was believing God.

00:44:11.000 Yeah.

00:44:11.000 You weren't always practicing hard Catholic at every point in time, but you came back to it.

00:44:16.000 No, but I was baptized, born and raised at Catholic Church.

00:44:19.000 All the wakes and funerals were at the Catholic Church.

00:44:21.000 Are you practicing now?

00:44:23.000 Yes.

00:44:23.000 Okay, you came back to it.

00:44:24.000 Yes.

00:44:25.000 Well, I didn't really leave, but I'll just say in my own personal life, you know, there's a metric, a measure of what a practicing Catholic is supposed to be doing on a daily, weekly basis.

00:44:34.000 And then there's people who are still going to church, and then there are people who don't believe in God at all, right?

00:44:38.000 Yeah.

00:44:38.000 There's a huge spectrum there.

00:44:40.000 But anyway, I'll say that I'd already seen this landslide of woke politics and liberalism through my fight with the NBA. And I had a huge problem with it.

00:44:50.000 I had a huge chip on my shoulder against the entire mainstream liberal establishment because I saw mental health.

00:44:56.000 Which I don't like to even say mental health.

00:44:58.000 Mental health is another way to say the human condition.

00:45:00.000 Where mind, body, and spirit converge into our perceivable existence.

00:45:04.000 This is what mental health is.

00:45:05.000 And when you say we don't care enough to make policy about the human condition, what you're really saying is we don't really care about humanity, which is in alignment with their technocratic sort of post-human society movement, which is really what we're dealing with at the highest levels of globalism, right?

00:45:21.000 Is we have to find a way to live forever.

00:45:24.000 So I've spent 10 years dealing with that.

00:45:26.000 The George Floyd thing happens.

00:45:28.000 I grew up in the Twin Cities.

00:45:29.000 I grew up in Minneapolis.

00:45:30.000 I grew up in St. Paul.

00:45:31.000 I'm very familiar with many of the mishaps and misconduct of the police department.

00:45:35.000 I'm very familiar with the crime in the neighborhoods and some of the criminals.

00:45:40.000 I know the dynamic.

00:45:41.000 You of all people.

00:45:42.000 I know the dynamic, right?

00:45:44.000 And I thought watching the video, because the Black Lives Matter movement had This was a buildup.

00:45:53.000 George Floyd was the buildup after Trayvon Martin.

00:45:56.000 George Floyd was the climax of what began with Trayvon Martin.

00:46:01.000 And I had watched Black Lives Matter Do their political moves.

00:46:10.000 And I had watched the NBA players jump on board at different times, but then sell out when it mattered most, where the hard lines should have been.

00:46:18.000 So I'm already hawking this movement.

00:46:20.000 George Floyd is killed, and I feel the same sense of...

00:46:26.000 Sadness and outrage that every American citizen should have felt watching the video.

00:46:30.000 The government is too big and the police state is dangerous.

00:46:34.000 And they've been dangerous for a long time.

00:46:36.000 It's only now you get to see it on Facebook Live.

00:46:38.000 And it doesn't matter what that man did.

00:46:42.000 Within context, right, if you rob a bank woman at gunpoint and you're fleeing with the gun and you got it pointed at an officer, when you're handcuffed with your chest on the pavement and you have no chance to run, let alone be a harm or danger, am I an American citizen?

00:47:01.000 Am I a Roman citizen, as they would say in the Bible?

00:47:03.000 Do you have the right to beat and bind a Roman citizen without a fair trial? 0.99

00:47:07.000 And I know George Floyd was on fentanyl, and I know he had a previous criminal history, and so too may be the same circumstance for all of us, including yourself, if you continue to tell the truth the way you do.

00:47:17.000 The truth will be deemed illegal.

00:47:19.000 And when the truth becomes deemed illegal, you will want a person like me out there in the streets that looks at a situation where the police state reaches too far and goes, that's not right, I don't care what you say he did.

00:47:30.000 We've lost that in America.

00:47:31.000 But anyway, I'm watching this and I say, I gotta do something.

00:47:37.000 For a moment in time, my hometown, my home is going to be the center of global politics.

00:47:47.000 And it was.

00:47:48.000 Minneapolis during 2020 was the center of global politics all around the world.

00:47:56.000 So I went to go lead protests.

00:47:59.000 The city was on fire.

00:48:00.000 There was anarchy.

00:48:01.000 Antifa was definitely doing their thing.

00:48:03.000 There were other groups out there doing their thing as well at night and causing chaos.

00:48:07.000 And me and my other fellow athletes, some other young black men, didn't agree with the narrative around this situation.

00:48:16.000 So I led a bunch of protests, non-violent.

00:48:18.000 We did about 11 protests, I'd say, over that summer.

00:48:23.000 Maybe 150,000 to 160,000 people.

00:48:25.000 We didn't have one fight, one fire, or one arrest in an 11, 12 protest.

00:48:31.000 A more throwback to your standard traditional liberal protest, right?

00:48:41.000 The anti-war movement, which is a huge criticism I have of the conservative movement right now.

00:48:45.000 Oh, I share one with you.

00:48:46.000 He has a leading voice.

00:48:46.000 Yep.

00:48:47.000 We're on our way to nuclear war and you guys aren't in the streets.

00:48:49.000 Sleepwalking our way into it right now.

00:48:50.000 What are we doing?

00:48:51.000 So this was the precursor.

00:48:53.000 Yep.

00:48:54.000 George Floyd was the precursor to nuclear war.

00:48:56.000 Interesting.

00:48:57.000 Yeah.

00:48:57.000 Interesting framing.

00:48:59.000 So I'm watching this and I go, I'm not going to let them control the narrative.

00:49:02.000 I'm taking my protests to the Federal Reserve.

00:49:05.000 Because to me, the Fed and this sort of economic Ponzi scheme that's been run on both black people and white people a few neighborhoods away, but conjoined by economic policy, is the whole system is guilty that you guys are chanting at the rallies.

00:49:23.000 You just don't understand that the Fed should be a target because your Marxist liberal professors down the street the other way at the university have intentionally taught you not to look at the economic...

00:49:33.000 By design.

00:49:34.000 By design.

00:49:35.000 You look at the police departments.

00:49:36.000 I look at who pays them.

00:49:37.000 And I look at why they pay them.

00:49:39.000 I look at that as the incentive away from why police officers are not upholding their oath to the Constitution and the flag.

00:49:47.000 Interesting.

00:49:48.000 So what...

00:49:49.000 I mean, that's quite a...

00:49:50.000 I'm deeply sympathetic to this.

00:49:52.000 I think the Fed has been responsible for the lack of inflation-adjusted wage growth in this country over the last 25 years.

00:50:00.000 But that's quite a pivot for you to make, to say, okay, I'm protesting here.

00:50:02.000 We're doing peacefully really different than the way some of these other people are going about it.

00:50:07.000 What was the...

00:50:09.000 Aha moment for you to say, okay, now I'm going to actually focus on the Fed.

00:50:15.000 Oh, it wasn't an aha moment.

00:50:16.000 It was just obvious.

00:50:17.000 It was obvious to you.

00:50:18.000 Yeah.

00:50:18.000 I mean, because my thing was, okay, we have a corporatocracy.

00:50:23.000 We have a bunch of young, affluent, educated white liberals that are infatuated with this conversation about justice and freedom.

00:50:30.000 But somewhere in their education, There was a glass ceiling or a threshold placed on them venturing over the line of what many would call conspiracy theory or accepted narrative about the institutions that preside over us.

00:50:46.000 And the obvious one is the Fed.

00:50:49.000 Okay.

00:50:49.000 Central Banking.

00:50:50.000 So what did you do with that insight?

00:50:52.000 Um, I said, if we're going to talk about justice, if we're going to talk about the system, if you guys want to talk about the system, if you want to talk about policing, if you want to talk about the military industrial complex, because to me, policing is the lowest rung of the military industrial complex.

00:51:06.000 Not to say that police officers are doing the bidding of the military, knowingly, but the police are the lowest rung of the military industrial complex.

00:51:15.000 So you're saying let's ratchet this up one rung and go to the...

00:51:18.000 Three rungs.

00:51:19.000 Three rungs.

00:51:19.000 Police.

00:51:20.000 So you go to the Fed.

00:51:21.000 Military industrial complex.

00:51:22.000 Fed.

00:51:23.000 Fed, right?

00:51:24.000 Or let's go police.

00:51:26.000 Corporatocracy that makes money every time a police kills a guy.

00:51:30.000 They're out there with the cameras just...

00:51:32.000 Shaping the narrative.

00:51:33.000 Above them is the military-industrial complex that really sets the stage for much of what our modern society is.

00:51:38.000 That's the real third rail.

00:51:39.000 And on top is the Fed.

00:51:41.000 They're the ones pointing the fingers, giving the directions.

00:51:46.000 Diversity, CEI, Corporate Equity Index, right?

00:51:51.000 Absolutely.

00:51:51.000 So, you know, and I did this.

00:51:53.000 So did you lead some protests at the Fed?

00:51:56.000 15,000 people.

00:51:57.000 Oh, really?

00:51:58.000 Yeah.

00:51:59.000 To the Fed.

00:51:59.000 In D.C.? In Minneapolis.

00:52:01.000 When was...

00:52:01.000 Okay, the Minneapolis at the...

00:52:03.000 The Minneapolis Fed.

00:52:03.000 U.S. Fed, yep.

00:52:04.000 The U.S. Fed Division in Minneapolis, yeah.

00:52:06.000 Yeah, and I was standing up there talking about the Fed and a lot of the...

00:52:10.000 This is in 2020?

00:52:10.000 Yes.

00:52:11.000 Okay.

00:52:11.000 Oh, this was six days after George Floyd was killed.

00:52:14.000 Fascinating.

00:52:15.000 See, I missed that.

00:52:15.000 I missed this part of it.

00:52:16.000 Not by accident.

00:52:18.000 Because the same corporate liberal media that protects the Fed, they somehow missed that 15,000 people showed up at the Federal Reserve.

00:52:26.000 I missed it.

00:52:27.000 I gotta tell you that too.

00:52:28.000 That's interesting.

00:52:29.000 So you led that.

00:52:31.000 This is summer 2020 we're talking.

00:52:33.000 This was June 6th.

00:52:35.000 How would you describe the composition of people who showed up there?

00:52:37.000 Oh, mostly, you know, 20-year-old white liberals.

00:52:43.000 Interesting.

00:52:44.000 This is common cause with, I think, what many libertarians in this country and I think what many conservatives in this country feel now, too.

00:52:50.000 That's interesting.

00:52:51.000 It's interesting how some of this doesn't track partisan boundaries.

00:52:53.000 There were black people out there.

00:52:55.000 Oh, let me be clear.

00:52:57.000 They didn't know why we were at the Fed or why we were going.

00:53:00.000 They weren't in the spirit of protesting at the Fed.

00:53:04.000 Oh, the 15,000 people.

00:53:05.000 No.

00:53:06.000 Oh, I see, I see, I see.

00:53:07.000 I unwillingly brought them...

00:53:09.000 To the Fed.

00:53:09.000 This is where we're going, guys.

00:53:11.000 In the height of George Floyd.

00:53:12.000 Yeah.

00:53:12.000 Oh, I see.

00:53:13.000 To show them the connection.

00:53:14.000 And did you speak and explain it?

00:53:15.000 Absolutely.

00:53:15.000 And what was the response?

00:53:17.000 They looked at me like I had three eyes.

00:53:18.000 Oh, really?

00:53:19.000 Yes.

00:53:19.000 Okay, okay, okay, okay.

00:53:20.000 I was waiting for the happy ending where they're all...

00:53:23.000 But the bright spot was...

00:53:24.000 Persuaded.

00:53:25.000 ...there were individual people out there.

00:53:27.000 Who...

00:53:28.000 Yep, clicked.

00:53:29.000 You could see it click.

00:53:30.000 You could see it click.

00:53:31.000 And I mean, I held up a sign on July 4th.

00:53:33.000 This was a month later.

00:53:34.000 We went back to the Fed again.

00:53:36.000 Could have had Ron Paul there.

00:53:37.000 He would have loved it.

00:53:38.000 I love Ron Paul.

00:53:39.000 I love Rand, too.

00:53:40.000 He's one of the few patriots left in the Senate, which is why I'm running for Senate to come back him up.

00:53:44.000 But we kept the same route of our protests.

00:53:49.000 I got you.

00:53:49.000 For the whole summer.

00:53:51.000 And it always went by the Fed.

00:53:52.000 So we stopped at the Fed 12 times.

00:53:55.000 And on July 4th, the night, we did a silent protest on July 4th.

00:53:58.000 This was in the heart of the pandemic.

00:53:59.000 We're supposed to be locked down.

00:54:01.000 We're supposed to be social distancing.

00:54:03.000 And I said, Governor Walz says, sir, your authority is null and void at the moment, right?

00:54:11.000 We have some...

00:54:13.000 We're citizens.

00:54:15.000 You don't own us. 0.99

00:54:16.000 Damn sure don't own me. 0.99

00:54:17.000 Yep. 0.99

00:54:18.000 You want to come arrest me?

00:54:19.000 Fine.

00:54:20.000 But we're going to the Fed.

00:54:21.000 Okay.

00:54:22.000 So on July 4th, we're at the Fed and we have this huge 30 by 30 canvas and the word sovereignty is painted on it.

00:54:31.000 Oh, interesting.

00:54:32.000 In red ink.

00:54:33.000 Right?

00:54:33.000 And then I get a call from Bloomberg and they say, you mind telling us why you're leading protests to the Federal Reserve?

00:54:39.000 This is like six protests in.

00:54:41.000 Late to the party.

00:54:42.000 Bloomberg Financial was the only one that ever even covered it.

00:54:45.000 Interesting.

00:54:46.000 Yeah.

00:54:47.000 And so I'll tell you, just to wrap up George Floyd, is eventually the BLM and Antifa community leaders who are there to sort of stifle and shape and direct the anti-establishment spirit of common folk in the metropolitan areas.

00:55:05.000 Eventually, they got wise to it, and they hit me with the litmus question.

00:55:08.000 And the litmus question is, all across the country, the LGBTQ. So I want to talk about the Fed and economic tyranny. 0.84

00:55:16.000 They're like, no, no, no, no, you got to check the box here.

00:55:17.000 No, the thing is, how do you feel about transgenders?

00:55:21.000 And I say exactly what I feel about the LGBTQ. They're citizens.

00:55:25.000 They have rights.

00:55:26.000 But they, under no circumstances, should be the center of our political focus, especially juxtaposed to the Federal Reserve.

00:55:33.000 So I don't really have time to talk about who you want to have sex with.

00:55:37.000 The Fed is running an unconstitutional tax on the American working class. 0.87

00:55:42.000 We need to abolish this place. 0.56

00:55:44.000 Then we can figure out who you're having sex with if you really want to have that discussion at that point. 0.96

00:55:49.000 Well, you realize these things are deeply related to one another.

00:55:51.000 Of course.

00:55:52.000 One is smoke to deflect accountability from the other.

00:55:55.000 Of course.

00:55:55.000 Yeah.

00:55:55.000 Of course.

00:55:56.000 And that's what I was trying to tell people.

00:55:57.000 But anyway, the nonprofit leaders and the BLM activists, you know, they kind of, you know, discarded.

00:56:04.000 They were not going to let Royce lead any more protests or don't participate with him anymore.

00:56:10.000 And so I kind of backed off because I knew that the damage had been done.

00:56:14.000 I had poked the hole in the wall that needed to be poked.

00:56:18.000 And then the 2020 election in January 6th.

00:56:21.000 And when January 6th happened, I looked and I tweeted, I said, you all are just mad that you didn't do it.

00:56:30.000 And I'm not saying every aspect of it.

00:56:34.000 This is how the pendulum swings and you and I both know how sophisticated the security state is in the intelligence community in the deep state.

00:56:41.000 They're sophisticated.

00:56:42.000 And the one thing they are masters of is social engineering.

00:56:45.000 Not every aspect is direct.

00:56:47.000 Some they let grow and then flourish at an opportune time.

00:56:51.000 If they do and they'll come across the field and they'll go, oh, let's pick that flower and use it. 0.99

00:56:55.000 Great.

00:56:56.000 This is what we want.

00:56:57.000 Other times they are direct.

00:56:59.000 Yep.

00:57:00.000 But in general, you know, when you look at just the overall attitude towards protest, I thought it was abhorrent what the Congress and the Senate had to say in the wake of January 6th.

00:57:12.000 Because what they effectively said to American citizens everywhere is, under no circumstances should your frustration with us, under no circumstances should your frustration with us and our corruption, our crony capitalism, ever come to our front door.

00:57:29.000 Under no, and they even said it explicitly.

00:57:32.000 Who was the black guy who helped lead the January 6th ex post facto?

00:57:36.000 I know who you're talking about.

00:57:37.000 His name was, was it something Bernie?

00:57:39.000 It was, I forgot, Thompson?

00:57:42.000 That sounds about right.

00:57:44.000 I think it was something Thompson.

00:57:45.000 We'll have to check, but they know what I'm talking about.

00:57:46.000 He was the black guy who was leading the January 6th committee.

00:57:49.000 And he goes, protests should never endanger, never endanger congressmen, United States congressmen.

00:57:59.000 Back to the not in my backyard all over again.

00:58:01.000 It doesn't matter what we do.

00:58:03.000 There's a version of this that traces back to the very beginning of the story.

00:58:06.000 Back in your days at the University of Minnesota.

00:58:08.000 Interesting, right?

00:58:09.000 Yeah, we like that concept.

00:58:12.000 Not in my backyard.

00:58:13.000 Never under any circumstances should our betrayal of the American people bring penalty upon us.

00:58:22.000 And so, you know, after the January 6th thing, I was on my way to the Big Three season.

00:58:28.000 I met Steve, Steve Bannon, and the rest is history.

00:58:33.000 Hmm.

00:58:34.000 Hmm.

00:58:34.000 Yeah.

00:58:35.000 Fascinating.

00:58:36.000 I'm tip of the mag of spear.

00:58:38.000 Yeah.

00:58:38.000 I'm the hatchet man.

00:58:39.000 They call me the hatchet man in the War Room Posse.

00:58:41.000 Yeah, I like that.

00:58:42.000 Because I come from the belly of the beast.

00:58:44.000 So, you know, I'm really as bipartisan as they come because I actually, like you...

00:58:48.000 Forget the partisan BS. Yeah, we see the party as a scam.

00:58:51.000 It is.

00:58:52.000 Yeah.

00:58:52.000 Now, Washington Post and Mother Jones and The Guardian and New York Times...

00:58:56.000 We'll try and paint me as a far-right wing Republican.

00:59:00.000 Republican Party.

00:59:01.000 Irrelevant in this conversation.

00:59:02.000 There is no Republican Party.

00:59:03.000 That's interesting.

00:59:04.000 So post-Jan 6, you say that, and then what happens?

00:59:10.000 Again, they can't say anything to me at the time because I just led 15,000 people to the Fed.

00:59:16.000 What are we saying?

00:59:17.000 Either we're protesting or we can't.

00:59:19.000 That's right.

00:59:19.000 It's one side or another.

00:59:20.000 For the conservatives, too.

00:59:22.000 Either we're in the last hour of freedom or we're not.

00:59:26.000 Let's be clear about it and let's talk about what's next.

00:59:29.000 So then what led you from there to the doorstep of your Senate race now, which I am Certainly after this conversation, I'm going to be following much more closely.

00:59:39.000 I'm intrigued.

00:59:41.000 Tell me about that journey.

00:59:42.000 Tell me what that looks like.

00:59:43.000 So in 2021, we come back to the Big Three, and I go viral for wearing a t-shirt and doing a post-game interview about the Uyghurs. 0.98

00:59:55.000 Free the Uyghurs. 1.00

00:59:56.000 I put on a t-shirt with the backwards Nike symbol on CBS Live.

01:00:03.000 And that goes viral.

01:00:04.000 So I wear the backwards swoosh, free the Uyghurs. 1.00

01:00:07.000 Me and Steve have a...

01:00:08.000 So then now I'm on Steve's radar.

01:00:10.000 You know, me and Steve talk.

01:00:11.000 Jeff Quadnitz, who is the co-founder of the Big Three with Ice Cube.

01:00:14.000 He's his partner.

01:00:15.000 Used to be partners in a business venture with Steve Bannon in their Hollywood Entertainment Days.

01:00:21.000 And so I connect with Steve.

01:00:22.000 And Steve introduces me to the War Room Posse and the MAGA movement.

01:00:25.000 And I get over and I'm like, you know, it's time to go.

01:00:29.000 Exactly.

01:00:30.000 And look, it's time to go.

01:00:33.000 But it's not just this lukewarm conservatism.

01:00:35.000 Oh no, yeah, forget that.

01:00:36.000 And even in the MAGA movement, MAGA's the tip of the spear.

01:00:40.000 Totally.

01:00:41.000 But there is this sort of...

01:00:43.000 Milk toast.

01:00:44.000 Milk toast, laissez-faire, don't swear, use profanity.

01:00:48.000 No, this is smash-mouth populism.

01:00:50.000 We are faced with an enemy that has undermined every aspect of our Constitution, of what it means to be American, undermined the value of our citizenship.

01:01:01.000 There is no more pleasantries.

01:01:03.000 Well, you can't win a war if you don't know you're in one.

01:01:05.000 Absolutely.

01:01:06.000 Absolutely.

01:01:06.000 So now, you know, I ran against Ilhan Omar in Congress.

01:01:09.000 I was railroaded by the GOP. Is that right?

01:01:12.000 Yeah, by the Minnesota GOP. Oh, really?

01:01:15.000 Oh, the Minnesota GOP is, we can't have any of these right-wing extremists.

01:01:19.000 So you didn't get the nomination?

01:01:21.000 I didn't get the endorsement.

01:01:22.000 You didn't get the endorsement, but you got the nomination.

01:01:24.000 I didn't.

01:01:24.000 I lost by 700 votes in the primary.

01:01:26.000 Oh, 700. Okay, all right.

01:01:27.000 So that was last cycle.

01:01:28.000 Fine.

01:01:28.000 It was a good noble task to take up.

01:01:30.000 You said, now screw it, I'm going for Senate.

01:01:32.000 Statewide.

01:01:32.000 Good.

01:01:33.000 Statewide, and now we're going against Claude Shaw.

01:01:35.000 It's less easily controlled, actually.

01:01:36.000 It is.

01:01:37.000 I think that that's actually a smart choice.

01:01:40.000 It becomes the bigger of a large scale.

01:01:42.000 Same thing at the presidential level, it's at that level.

01:01:44.000 The party apparatus starts to matter a lot less.

01:01:47.000 Right.

01:01:47.000 But the Senate, compared to a House race, that's going to be to your advantage.

01:01:50.000 Absolutely.

01:01:51.000 Well, I'm going to be watching that race very closely. 1.00

01:01:56.000 I am proud of you for having the courage to tell your story on such a Diverse range of issues over your career.

01:02:06.000 You don't need my advice on this, but I share this as a reflection, not as advice.

01:02:13.000 Don't shy away from the mental health element of this now.

01:02:20.000 We're in the middle of a mental health epidemic in this country that I personally believe is driven by the vacuum of national values, faith, patriotism, hard work, family.

01:02:34.000 And if you can play a role in helping to fill that void of purpose and meaning, but tie your own personal journey into it, I think there could be a really powerful conversation in this country, not just in Minnesota, but in this country that you can help spawn.

01:02:50.000 And I am happy to continue this one if this is helpful in elevating this, not just within Minnesota, but to a national stage about what's actually driving that mental health epidemic, not just amongst athletes or NBA players, but across this country today.

01:03:04.000 And I think there's something deeper going on at the heart.

01:03:07.000 Of our national soul.

01:03:08.000 There's a vacuum.

01:03:09.000 There's a void.

01:03:10.000 And I hope you can play an important role in helping us fill that void with your vision, man.

01:03:15.000 Well, you too, brother.

01:03:16.000 I appreciate the time.

01:03:17.000 Thank you for coming here.

01:03:18.000 Yeah, thank you, brother.

01:03:19.000 Godspeed.

01:03:19.000 I have a feeling we're going to be talking a lot more.

01:03:22.000 Thank you.

Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - October 18, 2023

George Floyd, Mental Health & Being Blacklisted by the NBA | The TRUTH Podcast #41

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