Trump Revoked His Security Clearance — Now Joel Willet Is Taking Him On in Kentucky

Speaker 1 Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Find Out podcast. We've got a great show for you today.
We have Kentucky Senate candidate Joel Willett with us.

Speaker 1 But first, we want to talk about a really urgent issue that is happening.

Speaker 1 This is just going to be for a second, but next week, there is an election in Pennsylvania that most people are not aware of in which three of the Democratic appointed judges are up for quote-unquote re-election.

Speaker 1 It's a little bit of a tricky situation because what they're doing is actually, it's almost like a vote of confidence or no confidence. So it's like a yes or no.
There are no other candidates.

Speaker 1 But if anybody gets under 50%

Speaker 1 of

Speaker 1 the vote, they are replaced. Luckily, it's a Democratic governor that would do it, but then that person would have to run in two years to hold that seat.

Speaker 1 So, this is, I think, this is for to keep another 10-year term. So, this is a really, really important thing to do.

Speaker 1 And so, we are actually asking people to donate to that campaign to make sure that they are getting the word out because it's one of those things that's very, very important, but not a lot of people talk about.

Speaker 1 We will put a QR code on the screen so that you can scan that. We will also put it in our show notes and

Speaker 1 in other places. And then, I'll just read off the URL where you can donate directly.
We have a special page for find out of listeners to donate. And you can do that at act.link slash

Speaker 1 GI

Speaker 1 dash PA court. So that's act.link slash GI

Speaker 1 dash PA court. And like I said, we'll drop that in the show notes too, but please do that.
These elections are super important.

Speaker 1 Pennsylvania has a Democratic majority right now. But if we lose some of these, you know,

Speaker 1 we will be in trouble with the rights that the Pennsylvanians have right now. So if you could donate to that, we would greatly appreciate it.
And that election is next week.

Speaker 1 Now, we're going to talk about an election that is happening next year,

Speaker 1 which is the Kentucky Senate race. Mitch McConnell is stepping down.
And so it will be...

Speaker 1 There will be a new senator no matter what happens. And today we are talking with one of the Democratic candidates today, Joel Willett.
So Joel, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2 Thank you guys for having me.

Speaker 1 Happy to be here.

Speaker 1 Actually, Tim, I think Mitch McConnell already did step down. Oh, boy.

Speaker 1 He's taken several steps down here in the last year or so.

Speaker 2 He's not going to run for re-election. He is still in office.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, he, yes.

Speaker 2 Oh, that was a false joke.

Speaker 1 So, Joel, that went right over my head. Yeah, that was a fault joke.

Speaker 1 I saw that basement video. Which normally, normally we do not make, we would not make fun of an elderly person falling, but somebody who has been as destructive as he is.

Speaker 1 I'm okay with it. He should have retired a long time ago.
But, Joel, tell us a little bit about yourself. I'm going to guess that most of our audience

Speaker 1 has not heard of you before, but you have a really interesting and compelling story.

Speaker 1 So I just would love to hear your background, and then we will get into how Tulsi Gabbard and Donald Trump have tried to mess with you. So if you could just go ahead.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you guys so much for having me.
So yeah, Joel Willett running for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky.

Speaker 2 Please go to joelforkentucky.com if you miss anything that I say or would like to learn more.

Speaker 2 But I grew up in Louisville, so it's the largest city in Kentucky, but I grew up in the southwest part of it, just up the road from Fort Knox.

Speaker 2 My dad was an iron worker, a union iron worker. My mom worked in hospitals, and they worked really hard to provide for me and my sister, but they had what I refer to as some Kentucky struggles.

Speaker 2 Lights didn't always come on when I got home from school.

Speaker 2 Car wasn't in the driveway sometimes because it got repossessed again. As I got older, realized both of them were struggling with opioid addiction.

Speaker 2 And they had been since a fairly early point in my life.

Speaker 2 And it's a story that impacted tens of thousands of Kentucky families over the past couple of decades where you get injured at work or your body breaks down from hard labor and doctors pushed increasingly potent pain pills that got people hooked.

Speaker 2 And my parents were a victim of that. I eventually lost my dad to a fentanyl overdose in 2019.

Speaker 1 But I was one of the lucky ones. Like literally every bit of that could have happened to me.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 I had incredible grandparents on both sides of my family. I had, you know, my grandmother's church.
I joined the Army National Guard when I was 17. It was a couple months after 9-11.

Speaker 2 My mom signed the paperwork.

Speaker 2 As a father today, I can't imagine what a gut-wrenching decision that was for her in a time of national crisis, but I'm glad she made it. I got a good Kentucky education.

Speaker 2 I went to the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky for grad school. I'm sure people are...
interested in what team I might root for there.

Speaker 2 But went on from that to a career in national security.

Speaker 2 I spent some time with the FBI working on counterterrorism and then spent five years in the CIA where I managed global intelligence collection operations.

Speaker 2 Spent my last year in government in the White House situation room providing intelligence and crisis support to President Obama and then Vice President Biden and other principals. And

Speaker 2 I left government in 2015 intent on recreating my life in the private sector. I've been living as a private citizen since then.

Speaker 2 I've been the CEO of numerous businesses that have put hundreds of people to work every day. So I truly got to live my American dream.

Speaker 2 But as you can tell from how I grew up, none of that story was inevitable.

Speaker 2 And I think we should be proud of our country, you know, not of me, but truly of America for making stories like mine possible.

Speaker 2 And I'm running for the Senate because families like the one that I grew up in, I feel are increasingly being steamrolled by a system that treats them like they're acceptable losses.

Speaker 2 And I think that working-class families are largely invisible to our political and economic system today.

Speaker 2 And I think the American dream needs to be be restored for people who grew up in families like mine.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 you glossed over one thing that I have to push you on: is

Speaker 1 which team would you root for in that situation? Are you willing to go on the record now with that? Or is that a like?

Speaker 2 No, I've been dodging that on the trail throughout all parts of Kentucky, and you're going to press me on it here.

Speaker 2 Man, this is the most weasly politician thing that I will ever say, I promise.

Speaker 1 Oh, God.

Speaker 1 You just saw both teams have a good time.

Speaker 2 But you can ask anybody who knows me. I have never wanted our state to do poorly.
If Kentucky is playing literally anybody else, I'm rooting for the Kentucky team.

Speaker 2 That seems pretty obvious, but not everybody in Kentucky will do that. You have Kentucky fans who will not root for the University of Louisville, no matter what, and vice versa.

Speaker 2 So I grew up a Kentucky Wildcat fan. I will always root for them in basketball.

Speaker 2 Louisville football did steal my heart while I was there at undergrad. So I know that's probably tremendously unsatisfying, but those are the facts.

Speaker 1 What was the reason Louisville football grabbed you when you were in undergrad? Because that's where I'm going to expose myself, not in a bad way, but Lamar Jackson went to Louisville, right?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. We can cut that out.
Cut that out.

Speaker 1 Nope, nope, nope, nope. Are you a Lamar? Are you a Lamar fan?

Speaker 1 What's the

Speaker 1 I like the Ravens and they're playing Tomorrow Night.

Speaker 1 I'm pretty sure Lamar went to Louisville, but it's later on. But anyway, we can skip this whole.

Speaker 2 It's an easy answer. I was a commuter student.
I didn't have money to live on campus. I was driving freaking 40 minutes to park in the 10-mile away lot and take the bus.

Speaker 2 So college was more of a survival exercise for me than it was anything.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 students on campus got really into football during those years while I was there. And that was just what we did.
It was how you had fun fun when you were on campus. So, you know, that kind of got me.

Speaker 1 It's all right. I'm not judging you.
I don't give a shit about sports at all. Like Taylor Jackson did go to Louisville.
I just confirmed. Okay, you got it.
Okay. Well, it's funny because

Speaker 1 the sports thing, not to get thrown off for a second, but the sports thing is always so funny because I remember, well, first of all, New York City has had two mayors that were Red Sox fans, which I greatly enjoy because I grew up in Maine.

Speaker 1 So I'm a Red Sox fan. So they always got shit, but they still won.
So it wasn't a big deal.

Speaker 1 But then also, John Kerry, when he ran in 2004, I think he said his favorite player was Manny Ortiz, Ortiz, excuse me, which is a combination of Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. So

Speaker 1 anybody in Boston knows that's a, that is a bad place to be. But I guess

Speaker 1 the guy who got caught windsurfing, maybe, you know, maybe we should have seen the signs before the results in 2004. But anyways, so Joel,

Speaker 1 Joel, tell me. So after you left

Speaker 1 government service, where did you go go after that?

Speaker 2 Immediately, I went to the University of Chicago. I went to business school up there, and then that was able to launch a career in the private sector for me.
As you can imagine,

Speaker 2 speaking Russian and having lived and worked in Russia or the Balkans, Baltic, Southeast Asia, and the White House situation, that all, I mean, those are incredible life experiences that I wouldn't trade for anything, but it's sometimes hard for people leaving government service or military service for that matter to translate that into something of economic value in the private sector.

Speaker 2 So the MBA at UChicago was just an incredible learning experience that really helped

Speaker 2 launch my career in the private sector. And I will say, if you ever want to feel dumb, go study finance or economics at the University of Chicago.

Speaker 1 To be honest, I would feel dumb if I studied it at Trump University. So that's perfect.

Speaker 1 But if you don't study anything at Trump University, you would be dumb.

Speaker 1 That's by design.

Speaker 1 That's fair. That's fair.
So, but Joel, then you, after your MBA, you, did you, you started your own business i believe is that is that where you went next

Speaker 2 i was yeah so um i went into executive search consulting for a year which is you know placing ceos cfos into uh you know private equity backed or large you know fortune 500 companies uh and then i went directly into uh the investment world myself i partnered with a fund uh to go acquire and invest in businesses and then i would go run those businesses as ceo and execute on the uh you know investment thesis whatever that might be and so we were a fund that was set up to provide a generational transition for owners, small business owners who had grown and built businesses over their careers, but perhaps didn't have anybody to hand it off to, either a management team or a family member.

Speaker 2 And so our fund would come in and help those small business owners receive some value from what they had built and worked on their whole lives.

Speaker 1 And then we would go in with

Speaker 2 the goal to preserve their legacy and to continue to grow the business. So, yeah, so I ended up in the government contracting space.
I ran a

Speaker 2 that helped the Navy

Speaker 2 determine the seaworthiness of destroyers and littoral combat ships once they were built and came out of the shipyards.

Speaker 2 Our company helped put them through sea trials and inspections and ensure that the Navy was getting what they were paid for and that these vessels were safe.

Speaker 2 Then I went on to run a software development company that had worked with the IRS and manages the updates to the code every time the tax law changes.

Speaker 1 So tell us, so recently,

Speaker 1 there were some waves made about

Speaker 1 you

Speaker 1 basically thinking about a run for Senate. And then I'm not even going to use your title because it's just embarrassing, but Telsey Gabbard and Donald Trump did something to you.

Speaker 1 Tell us a little bit about that and how that sort of has started your journey in running for the Senate. Yeah.

Speaker 2 To be clear, I was exploring a run for the Senate before the incident that you're referring to happened.

Speaker 2 I found it increasingly hard to sit on the sidelines while watching, you know, I mean, just I'll break it down, just my family, my parent, my mom, my sister, my niece, and all those, you know, that were, you know, still living those Kentucky struggles that I referred to earlier.

Speaker 2 And watching this system continue to just reward those who are close to power in a system that was increasingly corrupt. It was very hard for me.

Speaker 2 And like so many of us, I mean, we can sit and yell at our televisions. We can, you know, give to candidates to run, you know, bullshit campaigns.
We can,

Speaker 2 you know, March, we've done all these things. I personally have done all these things, and I didn't want to look at this point in history and ask myself, what else could I be doing?

Speaker 2 So I was exploring a run for Senate.

Speaker 2 And then I believe that I'm still unclear exactly what happened, but I believe that Tulsi Gabbard and Laura Loomer and others found out about that, somehow found out that I still had security clearance and that I was working in the government contracting space and decided that

Speaker 2 that was too much for them. That, you know, unless you were willing to have absolute fealty to Donald Trump and the administration, they wanted to impact your livelihood.

Speaker 2 I've been speaking out against Donald Trump since the moment I left government. I joined the Democratic Party in 2016.

Speaker 2 I was always an independent as I thought that was important for intelligence officers to

Speaker 2 not be partisan or not engage in political activities in that way.

Speaker 2 But I registered, I believe, for the first time that election cycle as a Democrat, had been speaking out publicly against Donald Trump since then.

Speaker 2 So they found some mean things I said about him six years ago or some letter I signed and then threw me into a list with many others saying that

Speaker 2 they were revoking my security clearance. And you didn't refer to Tulsi Gabbard's title.

Speaker 2 It's supposed to be the director of national intelligence, but she doesn't actually make any of the decisions or call any of the shots.

Speaker 2 She is completely beholden to Laura Loomer as it relates to staffing the government or the intelligence agencies.

Speaker 2 And you would think that these people have better things to do, but clearly they do not. They are just going down Trump's enemies list.
They're not focused on keeping the country safe.

Speaker 2 This is truly just a government that is focused on retribution for Donald Trump and fealty to Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 And these people are completely negligent in their duties and obligations to the American people.

Speaker 1 I'm shaking my head because I know Tulsi Gabbard.

Speaker 1 She was one of the original co-sponsors

Speaker 1 my first piece of legislation that ever became law and probably a handful more.

Speaker 1 One of the things that I know from my time as a lobbyist working on the Hill was that she had one of the only offices that would randomly just have its door locked and closed.

Speaker 1 Like no one would come to work.

Speaker 1 Like Tulsi Gabbard's leadership style was so toxic that she couldn't hold on to any staff at all whatsoever. And before, you know, she was confirmed

Speaker 1 into her position, I was raising whatever red flags I could as far as social media could get me about,

Speaker 1 just look at her history as a leader. Having her in charge of the entire intelligence community is going to affect us for a generation.
Like that kind of toxic leader,

Speaker 1 you know, prevents good people from being recruited.

Speaker 1 It

Speaker 1 hurts retention. And on an international stage,

Speaker 1 is just hurting our trust.

Speaker 1 You know, they're watching the relationship that Laura Loomer and Telsey Gabbard have, you know, everyone outside the United States, and they see that as something that's easily exploitable.

Speaker 1 I mean, Donald Trump is easy to manipulate. Everybody's known that for years.
But having a DNI who is exactly as exploitable and easy to manipulate is

Speaker 1 unprecedented for our country.

Speaker 1 There are no. adults in the room when it comes to intelligence now and that's very sad.

Speaker 2 There truly aren't. And this is the, you know, the chilling effect of actions like what happened to me, the weaponization of the federal government against Donald Trump's political enemies.

Speaker 2 I am confident this has already put our national security at risk. Some of those people on that list, I mean, Tulsi Gabbard and her office didn't even fact check this list.

Speaker 2 Some of those people hadn't had clearances in like 12 years. Their names were spelt wrong.

Speaker 2 They literally copy and pasted from Laura Loomer's Twitter over to a memo with the imprimatur of the director of national intelligence to go after these people and to attack people like me.

Speaker 2 And, you know, what does that say?

Speaker 2 The halls of the CIA on the wall you walk in, there's the seal.

Speaker 2 To the right is the wall of honor for the people who've lost their lives and those stars that are there and some of whom's names aren't even known to the public.

Speaker 2 And you look over to the to the left side and there's a Bible verse from the Gospel of John inscribed on the wall. It says, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

Speaker 2 And the agency's job is to speak truth to power. And I know many people have a lot of issues with things that the CIA has done over the years.
And certainly that's a conversation to be had.

Speaker 2 But at the end of the day, it is an agency that does a really hard job, a really tricky job,

Speaker 2 and does so mostly honorably, right? And we try to be accountable and we try to speak truth to power. We're not there to make policy decisions.

Speaker 2 We're there to ensure that policymakers have the best information. But if that information contradicts the party line and

Speaker 2 goes against Donald Trump or says something, you know, mean about him that he doesn't want to hear, what happens to you?

Speaker 2 You get fired. You get your clearing.

Speaker 1 So if you become a senator,

Speaker 1 what do you see as your potential to undo some of this harm and prevent us? from it in the future. I mean, the damage is done.
Telsey Gabbard's been confirmed. Donald Trump is the president.

Speaker 1 We're not going to get someone better.

Speaker 1 So what is there that you would be able to do as the senator from Kentucky to protect the intelligence community, protect our national security, and prevent us from having a generational loss in the intelligence field?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think you've...

Speaker 2 You've hit the nail on the head, though, that the damage is already done. And this is going to be a cleanup exercise.

Speaker 2 And it's likely going to be a decades-long effort to restore trust in the civil service, that it is, you know, a non-partisan entity. So, I want to say a couple of things.

Speaker 2 It's not just the intelligence community. This is happening to the military as well.
They are purging parts of military leadership that don't tow the party line.

Speaker 2 The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency had to step down.

Speaker 2 You've got the admiral that was in charge of the operations in the Caribbean recently, who didn't want to participate in what very much appear to be unlawful strikes against fishermen.

Speaker 2 So, this purge is happening in the intelligence community, in the military, in the EPA, in FEMA. It is government-wide.

Speaker 2 And so, we, and I just want to rewind, like, how did we get a non-partisan and professional civil service? A president was literally assassinated over this topic

Speaker 2 over 100 years ago because of the patronage system where the administrations doled out positions in government to people they were related to or as political favors.

Speaker 2 And then, Teddy Roosevelt and those guys come along and they build

Speaker 2 a system where we could have a meritocratic system of civil service that it was based on your expertise and what you knew and not who you knew and what your last name was.

Speaker 2 That took so, so long and so much effort to get it to where it is today. Is it perfect today? Absolutely, it's not.
But I can say that our politics never interfered with our job.

Speaker 2 I mean, me and my colleagues at the agency would give each other hell over political headlines and political opinions. And then we put our noses down and we did our work.
And

Speaker 2 I never in my life saw any kind of thing about like, oh, that kind of, I don't like that piece of intelligence because that cuts against my political view. So I'm not going to share it.

Speaker 2 Literally not a thing that happens. So what do we do?

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 2 there is reform needed around security clearances desperately. There have been organizations working on security clearance reform for years.

Speaker 2 So I think that one thing that needs to be codified into law is not giving the executive complete carte blanche as it relates to the issuing and the revoking of these uh clearances uh courts have found that these decisions uh right now are not reviewable uh by courts unless they are um unless those uh the decision to revoke had something to do with the protected a constitutionally protected right in in my case free speech because hey i'm exercising political speech and the government literally um

Speaker 2 retaliated against me for that.

Speaker 2 But I think that that would be an important first step, Chris, and for the military military and for the intelligence community specifically, to make some sort of review process there so that civil servants know that this can't just be used as the easy button to fire them.

Speaker 2 Because it is, right? Like you have protections as a civil servant from being, you know, from capricious terminations and things like that.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 they can literally revoke your clearance because they don't like the way you look.

Speaker 1 As long as it doesn't have to do with the color of your skin, they can do it.

Speaker 2 And that's the easy way to say, oh, well, you can't work here anymore. So I think that that would be an important piece of legislation that could immediately stop some of the bleeding.

Speaker 2 But there's going to be a long project to restore faith in our civil servants, service as a nonpartisan part of our government.

Speaker 1 I want to take us back up to the service because

Speaker 1 surface, because Zach isn't here. I'm going to channel my inner Zach.

Speaker 1 You're running in a red state, and it hasn't always been red, but it's been read lately and has been pretty loyal to Donald Trump. When I look at like, what are the things that have moved the needle?

Speaker 1 What are the things that Democrats have tried?

Speaker 1 The like Trump is corrupt, like he's surrounded by idiots. Like, these are all things that we've been saying for 10 years.

Speaker 1 He's ruining everything, and et cetera.

Speaker 1 This has been 10 years of us banging our heads against the wall. What we tend to hear from them is something like, well, he's draining the swamp.
It's the deep state.

Speaker 1 He deserves to have the people around him who are going to push through his agenda. Like, that's the sort of

Speaker 1 flippant response that we get. But I think what's going to happen here in the next couple of months is we look at

Speaker 1 the rise of health care costs.

Speaker 1 I mean, the absolutely devastating rise in health care costs that are going to be hitting states like Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, states that I think all of or mostly went to Bill Clinton not that long ago.

Speaker 1 These used to be reliable working-class blue collar union vote states, but we lost that. How do we exploit the opportunity that's ahead of us?

Speaker 1 Because all of this noise that happens in DC that comes from, that's coming through the media and the headlines, like it's easy to ignore when it's not hitting your pocketbook, when it's not hitting your family, when it's not hitting your body, as you referred to earlier.

Speaker 1 But when it does, that's when I feel like these kinds of voters, they really start to pay attention and then they just want change.

Speaker 1 So I think we're going to have this opportunity in the next six to 12 months to make a new argument. Um, how are you, how are you thinking of navigating that?

Speaker 2 Um, you know, as you prepare to make the case to voters that might just at face value be hostile to your candidacy, yeah, I think Kentuckians have shown a remarkable independence in the Trump era.

Speaker 2 Uh, Andy Bashir, our governor, is, I think, the most popular governor in America right now. He's won twice in the Trump era.

Speaker 2 Uh, he has shown a path where Democrats can show up, not try to hide from voters, not try to hide from your values.

Speaker 2 I think we have tried campaigns in this state at the top of the ticket where Democrats pretend to be, you know, just a little bit less Republican than the Republican, and that loses every time and by wide, wide margins.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's, you know, one exception

Speaker 2 in recent years, but

Speaker 2 pretty much that's the playbook we've tried here. But you are so right in pointing out what's at risk for Kentuckians.
I mean, we have 35 rural hospitals at risk in this state because of the

Speaker 2 big bullshit bill that was passed. I mean, the $4 trillion in tax cuts to go into the pockets of the already ultra-wealthy, 10 billionaires serve in Donald Trump's cabinet.

Speaker 2 Those billionaires are nothing like the average Kentucky voter.

Speaker 2 They do not like the average Kentucky voter, you know, and just have a disdain for working class people everywhere, be it in Kentucky or other parts of the United States.

Speaker 2 Those hospitals that are going to lose, you know, Medicaid reimbursements and funding and all of that, think about the follow-on effects when those hospitals close.

Speaker 2 It's not just that people are going to lose access to their health care.

Speaker 1 People

Speaker 2 who maintain the access through their employer plans are going to have to drive further to get care now because those

Speaker 2 are hospitals in their rural parts of the state. And not to mention, those hospitals are some of the largest employers in the counties in which they operate.

Speaker 2 And what is that going to do to the small businesses, to the restaurants, to literally all of the other services that happen there?

Speaker 2 The follow-on effects of cutting healthcare access in this country are going to be dire

Speaker 2 for Kentuckians. You move on from that.

Speaker 2 We've got trade policy that just is literally whether or not Donald Trump sees a commercial he doesn't like in the middle of the night, and then he increases tariffs, and then he takes them off the next day, and then he's back on tariffs with China.

Speaker 2 And, you know, he seems to be doing this just to enrich people close to him because they all seem to know that it's happening in the minutes and hours before he makes these stupid tweets or true social posts.

Speaker 2 They make a cool 100 million and your 401k gets hit.

Speaker 2 Farmers lose their income and their livelihood. Our bourbon industry gets devastated.

Speaker 2 I cannot think of a better set of policies to screw the average Kentucky voter than the policies that this administration

Speaker 2 is enacting and executing on every day. And so I'm not going to hide from voters who I am.
We'll probably disagree about quite a lot. But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 Poverty didn't care that I was a Democrat, right?

Speaker 2 You know, poverty doesn't care what letter you have next to your name. Fentanyl, for that matter, didn't care that I spoke to President Obama multiple times.

Speaker 2 uh during the course of the week because it was still uh infecting the community in which i grew up and eventually took took my dad from me.

Speaker 2 These are Kentucky struggles, and you need candidates that can speak to the heartache and to the challenges that people are having all across this state every day.

Speaker 2 And they just need to ask themselves one question. Do you think a man that has enriched himself by $3 billion since January is looking out for you?

Speaker 2 Costs are continuing to rise despite what he promised you. Wages are stagnant if they exist at all.
And he is $3 billion wealthier. That is not a man that is on your side.

Speaker 2 And I know that he made promises to you. And I get why you wanted to believe them.
That is understandable,

Speaker 2 but he's not delivering.

Speaker 1 So, Joe, let me, I want to go back. So, six years ago, their Democrats tried to knock off Mitch McConnell

Speaker 1 and politically.

Speaker 1 Politically, he's falling out of the south.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, you know, Amy McGrath, who's jumped into this race again, ran against him last time and lost by 20 points. And, you know, I think she tried to tack to the center.

Speaker 1 And, of course, Mitch McConnell, who, look, like, I think is a vile human being and will go down in history as a very damaging senator, maybe one of the most, but is a, is politically a brilliant guy.

Speaker 1 Like, he's not stupid. And he eviscerated her.
by

Speaker 1 just under 20 points. And this was a race that Democrats thought they could make competitive.
And 20 points in a statewide election in any state at this point is an obliteration.

Speaker 1 Like it's just, we're so polarized. So you've started to mention how you would do things differently, but

Speaker 1 how will you run compared to how she ran six years ago? And I think probably theoretically the same this time.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I think I would start by contrasting the choices that Kentucky voters have between the Democrats who are running and the Republicans who are running.

Speaker 2 On the Democratic side of the ticket, you've got myself, you know, a veteran, a business leader, a civil servant, you know, who came from working class roots, who, you know, I don't have to do the, I feel your pain, Bill Clinton thing.

Speaker 2 I lived the same pain that so many did and so many continue to do across the state.

Speaker 2 But we have other veterans in the race in the Democratic primary, including Amy McGrath, who has an incredible life story

Speaker 2 and years of honorable service to her country.

Speaker 2 We also, but on the right, you've got people who have done nothing but be political animals their entire life.

Speaker 1 They're all McConnell acolytes.

Speaker 2 They owe their entire political life and existence to Mitch McConnell. They have not worked in the private sector.
They've not worn a uniform.

Speaker 2 They don't know anything except trying to seek and hold on to power. And then you've got another guy, Nate Morris, who kind of breaks that mold a little bit.

Speaker 2 But again, no military service that I'm aware of, no service to government that I'm aware of, some very questionable business practices

Speaker 2 over his career. And he seems to be branding himself as a Trump guy.

Speaker 2 And so they are literally just saying they are trying to make themselves just be as Donald Trump as possible, thinking that that's going to be enough to carry them across the finish line with Kentucky voters.

Speaker 2 I don't think it will be because they have a lot to answer for the policies that they

Speaker 2 have supported.

Speaker 2 If they're Andy Barr, who voted for all of these cuts and all these things that are hurting Kentucky, but the others won't criticize Trump in any way and are only promising more of the same.

Speaker 2 So that is a stark contrast on our resumes, on our records, and on our positions that I think Republicans or that Kentucky voters have.

Speaker 1 between the Democrats and the Republicans.

Speaker 2 But you are right to point out that, I mean, Kentuckians will have a choice to vote for somebody who has, you know,

Speaker 2 who lost to Mitch McConnell worse than anybody ever had before after spending $94 million.

Speaker 2 I think if the Kentucky Wildcats were in the championship game or any game, really, and get blown out by

Speaker 2 that margin, we would be asking a lot of questions about

Speaker 1 the coach.

Speaker 2 And so I just think if you keep doing the same things, you're going to get the same results.

Speaker 1 I think that there should be a rule. If I was ever DNC chair, I would say you don't get to run for, you don't get to, if you spend $100 million and you lose

Speaker 1 more than 15 points, you don't get to run again. I think

Speaker 1 it's that's it. That's it.
You're done. There's a grading matrix or something that you can put together.
It's like, no, I'm sorry. But I think

Speaker 1 there's an interesting twist. I don't know if a lot of our listeners

Speaker 1 understand that

Speaker 1 Mitch McConnell is bad,

Speaker 1 but Trump is worse.

Speaker 1 There have been some instances where mitch mcconnell kind of meekly stood up a few times i mean he made the speech about the impeachment and he has voted against him a few times this year when he's one of two or three people voting no because i think he's kind of like i'm retiring whatever but i don't know if if people fully understand like somebody like andy barr would be even to the right of mitch mcconnell right like these guys that are running now are further to the right than mitch mcconnell which means they're even more more out of touch with Kentuckians than he is, which seems crazy because he's essentially lived in D.C.

Speaker 1 for the past 40 years.

Speaker 1 You know, are you, when you're on the campaign trail and you're talking to people,

Speaker 1 are you hearing concerns about that? Because that feels to me like a really important message to be driving home to folks and knowing that like there is no, like, it's, it's Trump or the, or no way.

Speaker 1 with these guys and there will be no little blips of independents sticking up and saying, no, this is wrong.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So let me answer that in reverse order.
I'll talk first about the campaign trail and then the purge of the Republican Party.

Speaker 2 On the campaign trail, I mean, people, look, Kentuckians have a lot that they're dealing with right now, whether it's health care access or, you know, the SNAP benefits, what used to be called food stamps expiring here in a couple of weeks, which are going to just decimate families across this state.

Speaker 2 And I know what that's like.

Speaker 2 I was on food stamps growing up and having food stamps meant that my mom didn't have to make a choice about buying food or putting gas in the car so she could get to work and get a paycheck to be able to afford groceries again.

Speaker 2 These are the things that are on people's minds across the state. It's their health care, it's their costs, it's their children's future.

Speaker 2 They are not as plugged in on average to all the political machinations in Washington as we are, as candidates are, or people that

Speaker 2 talk about this stuff for a living.

Speaker 2 And so on the campaign trail, to answer your question, people are talking about the pain that they're feeling every day and their fears about the future of our democracy.

Speaker 2 That has come up in numerous conversations. So that's what I'm hearing on the campaign trail.

Speaker 2 That's what we're running on. That's what we're focused on.
But as it relates to the purge of the Republican Party, this has been a 10-year

Speaker 2 effort by Donald Trump and Steve Bannon and Steve Miller to ensure that there are no Republicans that will be anything other than rubber stamps for Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 Our whole system of government is built on checks and balances. I mean, and it is sometimes

Speaker 2 mattingly, I'll choose a different word, sometimes extremely frustratingly so, right?

Speaker 2 Where we can't seem to get anything done because there are so many checks and balances. And Trump and his enablers have decided that they don't want that anymore.
They want rubber stamps.

Speaker 2 They've been chasing people out of the Republican Party for years. Well, that was Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger or Jeff Flake, if you remember that guy.

Speaker 2 Ben Sass is no longer in the Senate. These are people that you could

Speaker 2 used to count on to be statesmen, people who used to be able to backbone. I mean, people that I vehemently disagree with on so, so many things.

Speaker 2 But I didn't have to worry about them being corrupt. I didn't have to worry about them enriching themselves or providing a rubber stamp for Donald Trump in any and all instances.

Speaker 2 There are no John McCains in the Republican Party anymore. And so Mitch McConnell was never John McCain.
He was never anything than a creature who valued power above all else.

Speaker 2 I appreciate that later in his life he is finding some moments

Speaker 2 to show up and vote in a somewhat sane way. But I believe he's on record telling Republicans not to worry about history.
or how history will see them.

Speaker 2 So I'm not even sure that he cares about his legacy that much.

Speaker 2 So you are right to point out that the generation of politicians that come after the Mitch McConnells and the John McMahons and the Jeff Flakes are going to be orders of magnitude worse when it comes to their cravenness

Speaker 2 and their valuing of power and proximity to it above all else.

Speaker 1 Joel, could you were enlisted, correct?

Speaker 1 You signed up when you were 17. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I'm former enlisted. I was a soldier and made it to the rank of sergeant.

Speaker 1 Could you tell me how your experience as someone who was enlisted in the military might be different from candidates who are officers?

Speaker 1 I think when most people think of uh of veterans running for office, they think about these commanders who uh you know gave orders to huge battalions and they see leadership and strength and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 But something that I feel like I've noticed in former enlisted running for office is instead of running on that, like, I'm a leader and you must follow me, it's more empathetic.

Speaker 1 Speaking from my own experience, like I know what it, I know what it's like to serve,

Speaker 1 like to really serve and for it to kind of suck a lot.

Speaker 1 What was your experience like and how is that informing your candidacy? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I don't, you know, I'm a, I served. I signed up to serve in a, in a time of national crisis.
I, I never saw combat. I never deployed.

Speaker 2 I don't present myself to be anything other than a person who raised my hand in a time of national crisis and was willing to do all of those things.

Speaker 2 My military career, you know, I'm proud of it, but I joined as an E3 and got promoted all the way up to E4 and got yelled at a lot

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 did a lot of push-ups. But

Speaker 2 I believe so strongly in national service. I believe that our civil service and our military are some of the greatest tools for economic mobility in the world.

Speaker 2 But it does give you a different perspective.

Speaker 2 I know what it's like to roll up my sleeves. And there are good officers throughout the military in the Officer Corps who roll up their sleeves as well.
And they lead from the front.

Speaker 2 And there are a lot who don't.

Speaker 2 And that's not an optional thing to do when you're enlisted. So you know what hard work is like.
You know what it's like to work with your hands.

Speaker 2 uh even joined the laborers union at one point during my national guard service to dig pits and you know this is all while i'm trying to make my way through college or find a way to to pay uh for a root canal at the dentist because i didn't have dental insurance i mean these

Speaker 2 these are the types of struggles that people have in kentucky but these are also things that people uh you know enlisted folks are are constantly you know sending money back to their families um you know to help you know pay bills because they're the typically the first person in their uh

Speaker 2 in their immediate family to get um you know to have consistent income or consistent paycheck. I mean, at least that was my experience 20 years ago.

Speaker 2 The demographics of the enlisted parts of the military have certainly shifted in recent years, but that was my experience in the days immediately following 9-11 and the early days of the Iraq War.

Speaker 2 And so again, I think all of that just teaches you, you know, you've got to roll up your sleeves. You've got to be able, you know, be willing to do the hard work.

Speaker 2 And again, I think candidate voters deserve candidates who understand their lived experiences.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so pivoting slightly, so we're obviously in day, I don't even know what it is, 25, 26 of the government shutdown, 23. I don't know what it is, it lost track.

Speaker 1 There doesn't seem to be a lot of, is it 29?

Speaker 1 It's 29. It feels like infinity.
Because my son would suck in hell. Yeah, it's,

Speaker 1 you know, and I think one of the things that's most disturbing to me

Speaker 1 is that the snap benefits you mentioned, otherwise known as food stamps or food assistance, run out actually on November 1st, I believe, like if the government stays shut down.

Speaker 1 But the disturbing thing is that what the Trump administration is not telling people is that there's an emergency fund in

Speaker 1 at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is the

Speaker 1 agency that oversees the SNAP. There's two to three weeks of funding now, emergency funding that they can use.

Speaker 1 And I have not heard anybody on the Republican side, whether it's Mitch McConnell or Rand Paul, who of course doesn't want to give anybody anything.

Speaker 1 You know, what are you hearing from Kentuckians right now as far as like concerns around the SNAP benefits or the healthcare subsidies that

Speaker 1 are being threatened or are as of right now, eliminated,

Speaker 1 which is why the Democrats are fighting.

Speaker 1 But what are you hearing from Kentuckians as far as like their concerns about the shutdown and whether they're going to get the assistance that they need to, frankly, survive?

Speaker 1 Fear.

Speaker 2 It's as simple as that. People are scared.
They don't know what they are going to do. Because even with the SNAP benefits, I don't know if

Speaker 2 you've been to a grocery store lately.

Speaker 2 Prices are not coming down. They continue to increase.
The benefits that they do have aren't going as far as they did. And now those benefits are going to be eliminated entirely.

Speaker 2 So those are families on food stamps. Then you've got the grocery workers themselves.
What's going to happen when all this revenue leaves this grocery store?

Speaker 2 And I'm not even going to have a job at the checkout counter. None of these things happen in a bubble.
None of these things are free from the follow-on effects.

Speaker 2 So, fear is what voters are feeling across the state of Kentucky. And I suspect that that is consistent across the United States.
You mentioned the emergency fund.

Speaker 2 I think we spend $9 billion a month or something on SNAP.

Speaker 2 I think the emergency fund is $5 billion. Like you said, it's about two or three weeks of

Speaker 2 subsidy there that could help. Republicans don't want to pass any sort of stopgap measure or allow USDA to use those funds because then they think that's going to prolong some of this other stuff.

Speaker 2 And I believe they think Democrats will cave on this issue

Speaker 2 and open the government because Democrats have a heart.

Speaker 2 But at the end of the day, Democrats want people to be able to both eat and afford health care. That seems like a pretty noble.

Speaker 2 thing to be advocating and fighting for for me uh and something i would uh certainly uh be advocating for were I to be in the Senate today.

Speaker 2 So, if Republicans do some craziness and get SNAP benefits extended with the Emergency Front, great, do that.

Speaker 2 A simple up-and-down vote on extending or appropriating the SNAP benefits seems to be something very possible that they won't do.

Speaker 2 I know Josh Holly has come out in recent days because he's very concerned about his voters in Missouri and the impacts on them.

Speaker 2 But if Republicans use, you know, end the filibuster to reopen the government and they do it and they're going to try to frame it over, you know, snap benefits, understand what that means.

Speaker 2 That will, that will mean that they suspended the filibuster, reopened the government,

Speaker 2 and refused to negotiate with Democrats over extending the ACA subsidies and preserving health care access for 24 million Americans.

Speaker 2 So truly, they want you to choose between getting to eat or going to the doctor when you get sick. And Democrats are presenting

Speaker 2 a little bit of a different choice. Maybe you should be able to both eat and go to the doctor.

Speaker 1 Radical, right? Seems pretty obvious, right? I mean,

Speaker 1 to reiterate, and I'm glad people like you were speaking up about this.

Speaker 1 Republicans are willing to let people starve, including children, to make sure that they get to take health care away from millions of Americans. That is their position right now.

Speaker 1 Well, and let's make it very clear because we live inside this ecosystem.

Speaker 1 Republican leaders, 100%, are willing to let that happen. The Republican voters,

Speaker 1 I know we go back and forth on this in the Democratic side, but I firmly believe that 30 to 50%

Speaker 1 of them really thought that they were going to get lower prices and like prices were too high and we got to change things. And Biden's been in office, so now we got to vote for a Republican.

Speaker 1 Everything was fine in 2017. I'm like, that was Obama's credit.
But anyway,

Speaker 1 everything was fine in 2017 and 2018. If we give Trump a chance again, he'll make it feel like it did before the pandemic.
And I think that's the whole conversation they had inside of their head. And

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 I don't think they want this. I really genuinely don't think that that subgroup or that that half of Republican voters want what is happening.
And so, yes, it is.

Speaker 1 because of them that we are in this place and they need to understand that. But let's also give them permission to just accept that

Speaker 1 Trump is not doing and Republican leaders in Congress are not doing what they said they were going to do. And now you're going to pay.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm seeing crazy like 10X increases in healthcare costs for people just in my comment section.

Speaker 1 Marjorie Taylor Greene has turned on the big bullshit bill and turned on Republican leaders because she's like, my son's health insurance is going to double.

Speaker 1 Like this is, this is very, very real and very painful. And SNAP is one thing, but like the healthcare costs going up is going to be another.

Speaker 1 And this is our chance to say, okay, you guys tried a thing, and it definitely blew up in our face. So now let's learn from our mistakes.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And I think there's one other thing that Republican politicians seem to be harping on.
It's that, oh, these people don't deserve these benefits, or oh, why don't they just get a job?

Speaker 1 And like,

Speaker 2 yeah, they have jobs.

Speaker 1 They're working poor. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And we're these, this program is subsidizing their wages while their companies post records in some industries.

Speaker 2 And those profits are because they are not paying their employees enough to afford food

Speaker 1 or health care.

Speaker 2 And so what are we saying here?

Speaker 2 When you've got 15 million out of 40 people, 40 million people on these benefits who actually are working, and then the rest is a massive amount of disabled, elderly, or children.

Speaker 2 This is the most prosperous country on earth. We have the money.
We sent $170 billion

Speaker 2 to fund ICE and immigration enforcement, and we can't find even $12 billion for free lunch and after-school care in this country. We have the money.
What we don't have is the heart.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 Argentina is going to have great health care and food now. Well, right.
I mean, the thing is, like, we sent $40 billion to Argentina and...

Speaker 1 also closed off our market for soybeans so that the Chinese are buying it from Argentina. So they're getting it on both ends.

Speaker 1 But I want to also go back back to something you said a few minutes ago, which I hadn't even thought about.

Speaker 1 It's like when you cut SNAP benefits, you're not only just like taking food away from the most vulnerable people on here, but like you're also going to cut a bunch of grocery store jobs, which are minimum wage jobs, which then means if they can't do that, they're going to need some sort of state and federal assistance too.

Speaker 1 So it's not even a savings. It's passing the buck to the states who have less resources.

Speaker 1 But also like we have to stop this myth that there are these quote-unquote lazy, well, perfectly able-bodied people just sitting at home and, you know, watching,

Speaker 1 you know, the price is right. That's the only thing I can think of.
It's on during the day. And Judge Show.
It's been a long time since you've had a sick day.

Speaker 1 I haven't had a lot of sick days.

Speaker 1 You've watched Wheel of Fortune. Come on.
But anyways,

Speaker 1 but yeah, it's just like, it's this maddening thing, but Republicans have made a choice.

Speaker 1 They have decided that this country is better off by giving millionaires and billionaires tax cuts and taking health care and food assistance away from the most vulnerable people that we have.

Speaker 1 And I have to think,

Speaker 1 as Rich was pointing out, that there is a, I would say, a large percentage of Republican voters who want absolutely nothing to do with these like snap and health care cuts because it's going to impact them.

Speaker 1 I mean, you're from a state that actually has had a couple of very good governors, actually, a father-son duo that have helped.

Speaker 1 I think part of the reason they did so well was because they talked about access to health care. And it's exactly what you're talking about as well.

Speaker 2 It's because that's what Kentuckians care about and what they are nervous about, right? And

Speaker 2 look, let's stipulate that there are some people receiving

Speaker 2 some form of SNAP benefit or whatever that might not need it or might not be doing everything they can. Let's stipulate that.
But I would rather that, you know,

Speaker 2 we not have 100 people starve because one person might be cheating the system than the inverse, which is, you know, our judicial system is based on this principle. You know, you'd rather

Speaker 2 100 guilty men go free than an innocent person be convicted or lose their liberty. I think of our

Speaker 2 assistance that we provide to our most vulnerable in this population in a similar way.

Speaker 2 It is a population of people who fell on some hard luck, who can't work, through no fault of their own, ends up in these situations, or who are working and working hard, but their employers don't have to pay them much and they can't afford basics.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's a great example of this: that Republicans always want to drug test SNAP benefit recipients. And I think Florida was the biggest example where they implemented this.

Speaker 1 And you know what happened? They didn't catch anybody or almost nobody like abusing the system. But the system,

Speaker 1 it costs so much money to implement the drug testing that it actually costs the state far more than if they had just kept the existing requirements in place.

Speaker 1 And there is just not that much, like you said, Joel, I'm sure there is some waste, fraud, and abuse with anything.

Speaker 1 But do you then take it away from the 99.9% of the people who desperately need it to stop the 0.1? Like the math never ends up being right.

Speaker 1 And I'm glad we're talking about this because it's one of these things that it always comes up. And there, and we see it on TikTok.
I mean, there was a woman,

Speaker 1 she's gotten a lot of flack for this now, but was literally like on eating, eating last week. I think she did this, and being like, well, what did they do with last month's snap benefits?

Speaker 1 And it's like, hey, moron, they used it to buy food. It is not like, I don't know how much they think people are getting.

Speaker 1 If they think it's a windfall of thousands of dollars a month, it's generally not even enough to get by. Yeah, and it's just supplemental.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's it's like I think that's that's what the essence stands for, right? Supplemental to supplemental.

Speaker 1 This is not, this is not food budget for family. This is you're like, shit's already terrible.
You're already mostly fucked. Let's make you slightly less fucked.

Speaker 1 And that's too much socialism for Republicans.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And but but you guys bring up an excellent point about how, you know, the

Speaker 2 math never works out on these

Speaker 2 boogeymen issues, right? Like whether it's drug testing, the benefit certificates, like, or voter ID laws do the same thing.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's that, or Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what happened to that, right? What happened to that?

Speaker 2 Well, what happened to that is a lot of civil servants are now unemployed and probably need some of these benefits that we're talking about.

Speaker 2 But apparently, all of its, you know, all the waste fraud abuse is gone now, even though we see Donald Trump, you know,

Speaker 2 getting bribes from corporations to pay for a ball and spending.

Speaker 1 Christy Gnome's jets. Yeah, Christy Gnomes.

Speaker 2 Christy Noam's jets.

Speaker 1 They're neither waste, fraud nor abuse.

Speaker 2 But they're pros at this, taking some little kernel of truth and then acting like that one kernel is a whole bag of popcorn or whatever terrible analogy I could come up with next.

Speaker 2 But that's basically what happens, right? Yeah, sure. I'm sure we all know if you've worked inside the military, the government, that there are things that are inefficient.
Yeah, no shit.

Speaker 2 Like, yeah, let's try to fix them.

Speaker 2 And I'm sure that there are people receiving benefits who shouldn't have them, but to act like the entire system has to be burned down to the ground because of it is crazy.

Speaker 2 You've seen those memes where somebody's like, Yeah, I saw a spider in my bedroom last night, so had to burn down the house.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 That while I can absolutely relate to that as it comes to spiders, I can't really think that that is a competent way to govern.

Speaker 1 No, I mean, the opportunity, again, I'm trying to find opportunities in this world, but

Speaker 1 they've been papering over

Speaker 1 abuse and cruelty with efficiency arguments since Ronald Reagan. I mean,

Speaker 1 that was his whole thing was, I'm from the government and I'm here to help is like the greatest lie. Like that was his, that was his, his, his joke line.

Speaker 1 But they always papered over it pretty well. They, it was always kind of successful when they said, well, the government's really wasteful and the government's bloated.

Speaker 1 We're just trying to, it's a scalpel, not a hatchet. And they got away with that for a really long time.

Speaker 1 But now it's like, I feel like in the last year, I mean, the last 10 years, but especially this term, the cruelty is just on full display. And

Speaker 1 they're not trying to say, like, Doge is like not even hardly a thing anymore.

Speaker 1 I know there's like somebody who's calling themselves Doge or whatever, but efficiency, they're not even talking about efficiency or anything.

Speaker 1 It's just like, no, I'm going to go after Democrat programs because nobody told him that like 60%, 70% of some of these Democrat programs, yeah, they were probably put in place by a Democrat, but they were put in place to help people who are hurting.

Speaker 1 And right now, those people are mostly in red states. It's a lot of low-income Republican voters in red states.

Speaker 1 They don't want to talk about that. Well, the voters are finding out.

Speaker 2 But I think you're hitting on something else important that we used to be able to pass the torch in this country.

Speaker 2 I mean, from the New New Deal with FDR and starting Social Security or the TVA or any of that sort of stuff, right? Did Eisenhower come along and blow up the dams that electrified the upper south?

Speaker 2 Did he get rid of Social Security? No, he's like, I think we should have better roads. So I'm going to leave that stuff and now I'm going to go focus on this stuff over here.

Speaker 2 And then Kennedy did.

Speaker 1 He's like, no, let's just.

Speaker 2 you know, destroy. all of the interstate system.
Now, were there communities that got hurt by the interstate system? Yeah, there were, there were.

Speaker 2 And I mean, we can see some of that 40, 50 years later. But at the end of the day, we've been incrementally able to, you know, to build this country.

Speaker 2 Nixon comes along and is like, hey, LBJ and Kennedy, you know, you guys allowed companies to pollute the air and the streams and the water.

Speaker 1 I think we need an EPA.

Speaker 2 So he did that. And Carter didn't tear that down.
I mean, we used to be able to pass the torch. And right now, we have a political dynamic in this country.

Speaker 2 where we try to tear it down to the studs every four years. That is bad for America.
It is bad for the world.

Speaker 2 And I believe that the world is going to move on from America's leadership if we keep doing this.

Speaker 1 Well, Joel,

Speaker 1 we're just about at time here.

Speaker 1 I really wanted to thank you for coming on.

Speaker 1 And I think it's really, really important for us to highlight campaigns like yours to show people that there are really good people fighting for poor and working class Americans and showing a different path forward.

Speaker 1 So I just want to give you the last word here. Like, how can people support you?

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for that question.
Go to joelforkentucky.com. I know it is incredibly annoying to receive the text messages.

Speaker 2 Believe me, I receive them as well from other candidates.

Speaker 2 The emails and the text messages and the phone calls. And it's like, oh, all these politicians ever want is money.

Speaker 2 Our congressman from Louisville, Morgan McGarvey, in the Kentucky 3rd District, he said something the other day that stuck with me.

Speaker 2 He's like, I don't believe that money is the most important thing in politics, but whatever you think the most important thing in politics is, it takes money to get there.

Speaker 2 We've got to get this message out. We've got to get across the state.

Speaker 2 This is a campaign that is going to be run in 120 counties, talking to people that are going to hate me, talking to people that might be skeptical of me, but are going to want to listen.

Speaker 2 But we have to have people in charge of our government that speak for. all of the people, not just the connected, not just the ultra-wealthy.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, that's my commitment to this campaign across Kentucky and would be my commitment as the next U.S. Senator.
So please go to joelforkentucky.com, chip in whatever you can.

Speaker 2 I've been overwhelmed with the support from thousands of people who I've never met before

Speaker 2 who want to support this campaign

Speaker 2 and will need 3,000 more easily. So joelforkentucky.com.

Speaker 1 Joel, I've got the hardest question for last. I've got a short answer.
We let you go on the sports teams. You can have two favorite sports teams because I'm not a Kentuckian.
I don't care.

Speaker 1 I don't care about sports, but I do care about bourbon.

Speaker 1 What's the best bourbon in Kentucky? oh that's a harder question

Speaker 1 that's yeah that's that's potentially a classist argument too because if you say blantin's you're gonna get in trouble right yeah and my last name is willett

Speaker 2 so you know and willett is a bourbon uh from kentucky so so chris we are we are going to go with willett bourbon final answer but i all right all right I should leave it there, and I know you got to go, but I feel disingenuous for not mentioning that I am not a drinker.

Speaker 2 It's my water bottle and Diet Coke.

Speaker 2 I guess Donald Trump and I have that in common.

Speaker 1 This is a man I can understand.

Speaker 1 They made me try bourbon when we were in New Orleans and it tasted like fucking floor cleaner.

Speaker 1 That's because you can clean floors with it. It actually cleans your insides.
RFK said it on the internet the other day, like it's a sterilizer. It kills germs.
Like it's going to make you better.

Speaker 1 It's, you know, they're going to have a little thing that's going to get a little gay. It's science.
Luke, why do you hate science? Luke, you're also like.

Speaker 1 well, go ahead.

Speaker 2 No, it's an acquired taste, they tell me. And I'm like, I never had to acquire a taste for peanut MMs.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Those are just good.
I call Diet Cokes fridge ciggies because they're fucking wonderful. Actually,

Speaker 1 actually, my wife referred to those as fridge ciggies the other day, too, which I thought was really cool. Fridge ciggies.
But like with Luke, like problematic. Luke,

Speaker 1 once you turn 40, so you got a ways to go. Once you turn 40,

Speaker 1 you will be talking about garbage flips. You'll be talking about.
i will text you talk and you'll be talking about

Speaker 1 you're gonna be talking don't be wrong you're gonna be all excited about golf bourbon

Speaker 1 well yeah yeah we didn't we didn't talk about did i i don't know enough about it anymore to know but you know like that's just what happens man when you since we're talking

Speaker 1 sorry since we're talking kentucky and we're talking bourbon i if there's somebody from bullet bourbon listening um

Speaker 1 in the off chance we will i will read your ads for you if you want to advertise on our on our podcast. So just if anyone from Bullet Bourbon is listening, buy ads on our station.
Bye. Bye.

Speaker 1 Not for free. Buy.
Buy ads on our podcast. I will read them.
I will have a glass of bullet, probably Bullet Rye.

Speaker 1 I like the port casked ones. Those are

Speaker 1 a little like cherry in it.

Speaker 1 See, I'm a basil guy.

Speaker 1 I think that's good to know too, right?

Speaker 1 What the hell?

Speaker 1 Luke, I told you, 18 years from now,

Speaker 1 we're going to be here for her 40th birthday.

Speaker 1 When I was Luke's age i used to tell people i was allergic to bourbon i'm i i i swear it was the thing that like someone would hand me a shot in a bar you know in the military like that someone hands you just fucking take it if i if bourbon touched my tongue that was it the night was over i was not

Speaker 1 it was it i'm going home like i'm not i fun is over it's over but the only luke yeah over time it's coming it's coming you will be a crusty old man yep just like you're gonna you're gonna get a you're gonna get a you're gonna get a leather chair that's super comfortable.

Speaker 1 I have a leather chair. I know, of course I want.

Speaker 1 I can't wait till you guys see my new studio. Chris, you have one too.
I've seen it. So we know.
So I've got to get one. I'm actually sitting on a leather bench right now.
So I need a leather one. But

Speaker 1 anyways, we got way off track here. No, this is on track.
This is 100%.

Speaker 2 This is pretty, this is people what they want.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 1 Like I said, all those bourbon companies, we could even have a bourbon off. Maybe we should have a contest, you know, and they can like send all their people.

Speaker 1 like i did that with new york we did it when i was in the governor's office we did a great state of new york beer competition because there's all these micro brews in in new york and they got all of their fans to vote on the governor's on the website so we got to collect email addresses so we could tell people all about the wonderful things that they were doing so we could do a

Speaker 1 here we could do a beer competition and a bourbon competition and then a mixing bowl competition because that's what everybody uses to puke in after you get after you drink too much right you get the mixing bowl that you also use to put out candy for halloween it's it's a really like all-purpose bulk composition definitely sounds campaign a purpose

Speaker 1 so yeah sorry yeah notice that joel has not said very much in this part which is a very smart thing which shows that he is a good candidate so i just want to let last word oh my god i just googled bourbon willett because i had never seen it or will it bourbon and it's a very fancy bottle and i am i am going to give that a try i have had it and it is great that is a good choice by by Joel.

Speaker 1 I think that, Bullet, Basil, all of these are good.

Speaker 1 Woodford, you know, Luke, someday, maybe Luke, maybe a good video would be getting Luke, and we put five little glasses in front of him and see which ones.

Speaker 1 So if Coca-Cola is listening,

Speaker 1 you can run ads on this too.

Speaker 1 You can put bourbon and Coke, you guys. I know.

Speaker 1 That's cool. Maybe that's really helped together.
This much bourbon and Coke. God damn it, Luke.
We've held as

Speaker 1 well. We've done it.
We're wasting far too much.

Speaker 1 Joel, donate to his candidates. Everybody go to support his campaign.
We're super excited. We're going to, you know, hopefully we'll have you back again sometime soon.
We'll talk about the race.

Speaker 1 Everybody, go support Joel. And

Speaker 1 we will talk to you next week. Have a great weekend, everybody.