#2222 - John Fetterman

Speaker 0 Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

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Speaker 2 All right, well, we're rolling. What's happening? Nice to meet you.

Speaker 1 Oh, hey, man. It's awesome to be here, man.
Really? Like, I got to say hi to my son. It's just so thrilled.
He's like, you know, he's 15 and he literally freaked out.

Speaker 1 Like, oh my God, it all, and all of his friends are going to definitely listen to. Yeah.
What's his name? Carl with a K.

Speaker 1 And I met a I met a Carl in the lobby, but it's a C, but that's not a human, a non-human Carl. Yeah, well, what's up, human, Carl? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, first of all, are you the only guy that figured out that you don't have to wear suits when you're a senator?

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, it's it's uh

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, what does that say?

Speaker 2 I said, are you the only guy that figured out that you don't have to wear suits as a senator?

Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I well, I know it might, it seems uh strange, but it's like,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I'm a bigger guy and I don't really can't afford custom anyway. And I hate, I'm claustrophobic and I hate them being in that kind of shit.
And I've always dressed like shit. And,

Speaker 1 you know, and I know, and then that whole thing kind of got away of us.

Speaker 1 People assumed that there was a dress code issue there.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, no, I wasn't behind that, behind that. But of course, everybody pointed at the dude that dresses like a slob.

Speaker 1 And then the whole, the whole nation just had like a meltdown, like, oh my God, the Senate's on fire because I dress like a slob.

Speaker 1 But my life is just much better in DC that unless that I'm going to be on the floor, that I'm not going to be, you're never going to see me in a suit.

Speaker 1 And I think that's a more authentic kind of way that I live. And I don't judge anybody on how they dress or those things.

Speaker 1 I just dress this way. And there's also practical issues as well, too.
Like

Speaker 1 I have chopstick legs and I have no ass and I can't keep pants off

Speaker 1 and and hoodies and hoodies it's like I don't have to iron that shit you know so it's just like easy it's comfort and it's like I just feel like that's I mean, and if somebody judged me, and people have said that, but it's like I'd rather have somebody know.

Speaker 1 And I promise you, a lot of people and dudes, especially in western Pennsylvania, love to wear suits all year. I mean, excuse me, shorts all year and dress like that.

Speaker 1 But to me, it's about comfort and practical.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, it makes sense. The whole

Speaker 2 dress code thing of wearing suits and you're more serious because you have certain clothing on, it seems pretty silly.

Speaker 1 Sorry, what's that?

Speaker 2 Are you so let's let's tell everybody what's going on with your iPad. So because you had a stroke, you have

Speaker 2 difficulty do you have difficulty hearing or well no I can hear just

Speaker 1 perfectly right now.

Speaker 1 But there's just the one kind of a lingering issue. There's a lingering issue.

Speaker 1 And sometimes I lose just a couple steps on time. And then now after that, that's the only thing.
And thankfully, the stroke never touched my intellect things.

Speaker 1 But the stroke nearly killed me. And again, I don't.

Speaker 1 But I use captioning in situations just like this, in interviews.

Speaker 1 So that's why I can really make make sure exactly what's being said. And then I can able just participate.
If somebody wears the glasses, it doesn't mean that they're illiterate.

Speaker 1 It just means that's a tool that allows them to participate or drive or those things. And it's that same thing.
And a lot of people across America use captioning to watch movies and TV.

Speaker 1 And that's really no different than that.

Speaker 2 So it doesn't affect your intellect, but it does affect your hearing? Is that what's going on?

Speaker 1 No, I can hear and I can listen to music. The difference with music, for example, is that as long as there's muscle memory,

Speaker 1 I can remember all of those kinds of music things. But it seems unlikely at this point that there are not going to be any kind of new favorites emerging like that.
So you essentially

Speaker 2 can listen to the same old music forever.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, it's, yeah, it's, yeah,

Speaker 1 I mean, all of the classics, like, you know, Metallica,

Speaker 1 Motorhead,

Speaker 1 the cult, all those kinds of things. Like, I haven't lost any of the the

Speaker 1 deaf lip and those things. Well, and I saw

Speaker 1 the record of

Speaker 1 white snake,

Speaker 1 but all those things. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think we're both in the 50s, right? And we grew up with

Speaker 1 the crew and all those kinds of things. So

Speaker 1 some people might judge me based on my taste on music, but I mean,

Speaker 1 that's kind of where it's.

Speaker 2 Listen, people are going to judge you no matter what. You're a big giant guy who wears hoodies and you're a senator.

Speaker 2 No matter what, they're going to judge you, who cares?

Speaker 2 But I'm just trying to like understand like what is going on with the captioning because you can hear, but so there's some sort of a disconnect between hearing and

Speaker 2 understanding. Like, what is it?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I wouldn't say it's necessarily a disconnect. It's just, it's, it's just about being precise,

Speaker 1 just to make sure that. So if, you know, if like for an interview, just to make sure of those things.

Speaker 1 So it's really just about captioning.

Speaker 1 Really, it's just a tool, no difference. I mean, this is like my eyes in the sense for glasses.

Speaker 1 Right, but understand.

Speaker 2 So it just gives you a little bit more precision in what you're saying. Yeah, understanding.

Speaker 2 What was it like running for senator right after recovering from a stroke? That had to be a nightmare.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't recommend that.

Speaker 1 I don't recommend that.

Speaker 2 Because you seem to have recovered quite a bit since then.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, no.

Speaker 2 During that time, you were really struggling.

Speaker 1 Oh, sure, absolutely. Like,

Speaker 1 it was a rough

Speaker 1 conversation after that.

Speaker 1 They brought me into the hospital, and then I went under, and then I woke up,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 they said, hey, we got it. We got it.
We got the clot. The clot that essentially just killed me.
And I'm like, oh, that's good. uh and then just kind of went back under

Speaker 1 and uh at that point i had no idea where we were at on those things and then i had um the next morning i woke up and then they uh a doctor came on and he had kind of a a grim kind of a look on his face and things

Speaker 1 and my dad was there sitting next to me at the bed and i was like well hey doc i mean what's uh what things

Speaker 1 what do you think what do you like uh and he's like, well,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 your heart is functioning at an incredibly low kinds of percentage.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, well,

Speaker 1 what do you think? And he was like, well,

Speaker 1 you know, I mean, there's some issues.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, well, are we talking...

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Speaker 1 Maybe a year, a year

Speaker 1 And I'm like,

Speaker 2 and this was all while you were running for Senate?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 This was three days before the primary.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I was on my way to an event, and my wife, Giselle, she's like, you're having a stroke, because they had that classic kinds of

Speaker 1 where, you know, half of my face. I didn't know that, but it kind of just

Speaker 1 slumped. slumped.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And and and then they hotlined me over to the hospital, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't have survived if we were in a different, I mean, there's parts of Pennsylvania, and that's it, that's part of the tragic, that if I wasn't close to the kinds of hospital that I was, it's 100% that I wouldn't have survived that.

Speaker 1 Wow. And it got me there in enough time, and they were able to, there was an expert there.
And I actually had, I met that doctor that literally saved my life.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, oh my God.

Speaker 1 And he usually wasn't based in that hospital. He was usually out of Delaware, but he happened to be there.

Speaker 1 And he was here to give me an award for

Speaker 1 being that kind of an advocate for those things. I'm like, no,

Speaker 1 you deserve the award on that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that's incredibly lucky.

Speaker 1 And then I asked, really looking for like a countdown of like, well, what's the prognosis? And I really, there wasn't much there on that. And I had to, like,

Speaker 1 was I going to survive for long or what's that going to look? And then, of course, the entire majority on the Senate really was on the middle of that. And that's a big responsibility after that.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 so the primary. it happened.
And then I actually had a really strong win. And I won all of 67 counties.

Speaker 1 Pennsylvania has 67 counties. And we carried every county,

Speaker 1 Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and all across Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 But at that point, I had a responsibility. It's like, am I able to recover? Or where a kind of,

Speaker 1 am I going to be okay? And I wouldn't recommend being in that situation, but I made a commitment

Speaker 1 more than anything. I was more worried about

Speaker 1 being around to be a dad. I mean,

Speaker 1 I have three young kids and my wife, you know, she lived through all of this. So

Speaker 1 at that point,

Speaker 1 it started, I was in the hospital for about 10 days.

Speaker 1 And yeah, and I start to get better and better. The strength started to come back a little bit, but it was still rough.

Speaker 1 And it was very, very clear, though, that I had a capacity to, it's been impaired on hearing and those kinds of interaction and those things

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 but but but that's the thing but but I had to decide by August 15th and that's actually that's my birthday ironically that if I I step down by then or before then they're going to have to find somebody to replace me on the primary and that was going to be my drop

Speaker 1 my dropout day on that

Speaker 2 so what was the operation how did they do it how did they remove the clothing

Speaker 1 well it

Speaker 1 it's on. I mean, I had to originally, I had to go back to, I have to learn how to talk and speak.

Speaker 1 You know, I went to a speech therapist and have interaction and those kinds of things.

Speaker 1 And my hearing and those kinds of things were still impacted by that. And they had to monitor my heart because

Speaker 1 it effectively stopped. I found out after the fact that it actually stopped.
And then that my heart had to recover. So there was two kinds of things working there.
You know, my heart.

Speaker 1 And then right before the primary, they walked in and they said, well, here, here's what I suggest. Here's what I suggest.
Now, we are going to put a pacemaker. We're going to put in a pacemaker.
And

Speaker 1 we're like, hey, that's the best thing. So they put that device right here.
And for anyone, if you're not really with that, is a pacemaker. But

Speaker 1 that manages your heart, you know, because I had a significant issue with a fib and and that's really what what did that to my heart and they put that in and then that was that was

Speaker 1 that was right before the primary and they put me under and I

Speaker 1 what year was this

Speaker 1 this was 22

Speaker 2 20 22 and before you had this stroke had you ever had any issues before with clotting or anything like was this like a not with clotting, not with clotting.

Speaker 1 You know, my, I have, for good re for good things and for for bad things, my heart was just like my father's, you know, and he had an issue with AFib and he was in the hospital for

Speaker 1 a genetic. And

Speaker 1 but I didn't, it was never an idea, it was never an idea that I was going to even having a stroke. That wasn't part of the, at least my thinking.
I knew that I was in distress.

Speaker 1 You know, I could tell that my heart was

Speaker 1 was was in problem, and I was just going to get through this primary. I mean, there's a lot running on that.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 it didn't work out because the stroke hit three days before, and then that forced me, and that put me on an incredibly different kind of a path after that.

Speaker 2 And so where do they go in when they're removing the clot? Do they have to cut your skull open? Like, how do they get it out of there?

Speaker 1 They went up

Speaker 1 in your vein, in your leg. And they went up in, And it's a remarkable technology that through your leg.
Yeah, all the way up to your brain. And they just sucked it out.
And

Speaker 1 they actually had

Speaker 1 an x-ray or whatever. And you could say, hey, we got it out.
And I actually got to see,

Speaker 1 although I really was still kind of out of it. But that was the clot that all but took my life.
And

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 I mean, there were a lot of things there.

Speaker 1 Suddenly, your mortality was kind of like put right there in front of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And through that.

Speaker 2 Do they have any idea what caused the clot?

Speaker 2 Do they understand like what happened to you? I'm always, my grandmother had an aneurysm, and it was a horrible situation. They didn't find her

Speaker 2 for several hours afterwards. My grandfather came home and she wasn't in the house and then he found her in the backyard.

Speaker 2 She had collapsed and they gave her 72 hours to live and she lived for 12 years like that. It was horrible.
My My grandfather had to take care of her.

Speaker 2 It was really, really rough. So I'm always like really concerned with that kind of stuff.
Like, I don't, like, what causes it?

Speaker 2 Do they know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, it's,

Speaker 1 I mean, I had for the first time in my life, and I hope it's the last time, that I'm confronted by this idea that the doctors weren't able to provide any kinds of certainty, or it's like, oh, yeah, man, you're going to be okay or things are going to be okay.

Speaker 1 That wasn't.

Speaker 2 So they don't know what caused it?

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, it was a fib,

Speaker 1 and my heart weakened. And the stress of the primary and on the ongoing kinds of issues, it was already weakened about that issue earlier, and everything kind of came together.

Speaker 1 And I guess my heart deteriorated to the point where that caused the clot. And then the clot, that's what nearly took my life.

Speaker 1 Whew.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 then you have to go to work. So now you are an elected senator and you have to go to work in the middle of recovery.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's

Speaker 1 I think,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 it's so diff it's I had a significant responsibility

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 stay in that and winning through all of those things.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that was difficult enough.

Speaker 1 It was an important conversation. And we had to run a campaign.
We had to run a campaign when it was difficult and I wasn't working at the kind of capacity that was necessary.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 we had to run up to

Speaker 1 the 15th of August to decide if we're going to stay in that because there's a lot writing on that.

Speaker 2 And you were also competing against Dr. Oz, which was weird.
You know, this guy who's a celebrity doctor who's

Speaker 1 at least a little shady.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 it necessarily was the

Speaker 1 yeah, I think

Speaker 1 we were talking about captioning early right now, and

Speaker 1 I think we're having an issue with some of the captioning right now here.

Speaker 2 Is it not showing up?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think there's a little bit of a delay.

Speaker 2 Well, maybe it's the the way I said shady. Yeah.
He's a little shady. Like, he had been in trouble for talking about miracle diet remedies that weren't miracles at all.

Speaker 2 And I believe he got brought in front of Congress. So it was a little odd that that guy was running for Senate at all.

Speaker 1 Was he from Pennsylvania?

Speaker 1 Yeah, well,

Speaker 1 Dr. Oz, yeah,

Speaker 1 I think from a technology, I think we have to address the captioning.

Speaker 2 Oh, is it messing up right now?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think the captioning.

Speaker 1 The captioning is running a little bit behind on

Speaker 1 so can we make some technological stop and have her sure fix it yeah okay we'll have her come fix it yeah okay we'll pause here ladies and gentlemen we'll be right back yeah i think we're i think we are good i think we're good to go we'll take that yeah we put this on the wi-fi so and it's it's working great all right we're back so what i was just saying that it was odd that you were running against dr oz and he was this kind of dr oz yeah i mean dr

Speaker 1 yeah and and he's uh he used to be you know people used to thought he was like really brilliant i mean he was like he was like an amazing kind of surgeon,

Speaker 1 celebrity. And then he turned his career into like on TV.
And then he started to pitch more kinds of questionable kinds of things and kind of bullshit kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 And I don't understand why somebody would change his reputation. I mean, he was really revered in that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I would have been comfortable to him

Speaker 1 operate on me.

Speaker 1 But he kind of lost that. And what was also pretty funny is that he clearly, he lived in New Jersey.
And so we were just like, hey, we need to use that and point out that. So

Speaker 1 we just decided early on that we're going to just like, hey, you know, it matters.

Speaker 1 It's like, I mean, there's nothing wrong with living on New Jersey, but there probably is an issue if you're running for the Senate. So and I really have like an ethos is that I'm

Speaker 1 not ever going to be mean and I'm not going to be personal about that. So we tried to have a lot of fun with the fact that he lives in New Jersey and we just really just kept hitting him, hitting him.

Speaker 1 And we had Snookie did like a cameo saying, gee, Mehmet, good luck. You know, I know things are going rough now, but you're going to be able to come back to New Jersey.
And that got viral.

Speaker 1 And we did a lot of those viral kinds of moments.

Speaker 1 And, you know, they have this thing where they have what's really penetrated. And, you know, they have circles on things like what's really part of like people asking about Dr.
Oz.

Speaker 1 And one of the zeros, the O's was, he's weird. But the biggest one, New Jersey.
I mean, literally, New Jersey was. That was the biggest one? Yeah, like

Speaker 2 Pennsylvania, New Jersey, even though they're neighbors, they do have a bit of a rivalry.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, of course. And people have to understand that it's like that funny thing.
And I mean, it borders with Pennsylvania. And

Speaker 1 it really matters. It matters that.
And of course,

Speaker 1 Dr. Oz was

Speaker 1 strange in some sense. And we always try to have fun with making fun of him.
Are you a fan? Are you a fan of The Simpsons? Yeah. Yeah.
But we matched up perfectly with Dr. Nick.
You know, Dr.

Speaker 1 Nick, Dr. Oz.
And we found all the weird shit that Dr. Nick would say.
And then they have a clip of Dr. Oz saying those kinds of things.
And then

Speaker 1 that's where it was. And we had a lot of fun with that.
And things,

Speaker 1 we all figured out, well,

Speaker 1 we have, we essentially, we chose to kind of empty the clip metaphorically and really start hitting him. You know, we went up on TV throughout the summer and he was really put on his back.

Speaker 1 And he was essentially thinking he could kind of take the summer off. And then our polling, we got up about 10, 11 points.

Speaker 1 And things, you know, if anyone's listening ever heard of the 538, you know, they track on those races. And the highest percentage we had to win was, I think, about 84%.

Speaker 1 And things kept went great, really, really

Speaker 1 great. And then I had to decide on my birthday on August 15th.
And things were going so well. And I thought things, I'm like, okay.

Speaker 1 Then we decided to stay on that race. And that's what we did.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, post-Labor Day, when, and, oh my gosh, we just got, we got nuked in a way that it's never been

Speaker 1 experienced that before. And then how so? What do you mean?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 $100 million

Speaker 1 of paid media to destroy you. I mean, just just tear you apart.
Every aspect of your life.

Speaker 2 $100 million they spent.

Speaker 1 $100 million.

Speaker 2 For a job that pays how much?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, just, oh, it came from PACs, from Dr.
Us. Dr.
Us put in $20, I think, $28 million.

Speaker 2 How crazy is that? Because, like, what is Senate, what does it pay being a senator?

Speaker 1 Pay being a senator? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's $174,000.

Speaker 1 Can I talk about this? Please. I don't understand why

Speaker 1 some incredibly wealthy dudes will spend tens and tens of millions of dollars just to take that. And I try to tell people, there's no glamour here.
I just talked about that in an interview.

Speaker 2 Do you think he wanted to become president and this was like a step to being president?

Speaker 1 I guess everybody wants the Iron Throne, I get, but it's

Speaker 1 really not.

Speaker 1 But it also,

Speaker 1 it's a different kinds of skills.

Speaker 1 And it really doesn't transfer over very well on that.

Speaker 1 But right now, in Pennsylvania, right now, David McCormick, a Connecticut man, Connecticut man, he's running in Pennsylvania and he lives in Connecticut, and he's incredibly wealthy.

Speaker 1 I think he's worth three or four hundred million dollars, and he's spending the same race in Wisconsin.

Speaker 1 They're dropping crazy, and really, like, that's an important conversation that the real problem in American politics for me is

Speaker 1 Citizens United and unlimited money

Speaker 1 when they decided that money is speech. And now that turns the whole thing into an incredibly damaging

Speaker 1 right now there's been at least more than half a billion dollars, half a billion dollars on the table in Pennsylvania just for president,

Speaker 1 not just the Senate races in other House states. And I was the most, at least at that point, was the most expensive Senate race in history.
And it was over

Speaker 1 $330 million

Speaker 1 for that one seat.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 all of those dollars, they're spent to destroy and tear you apart. And then Fox News, I was their top target for four months.
And social media, and I stayed out of that.

Speaker 1 I didn't enjoy, but social media, all the conservative influencers, everything.

Speaker 1 And it just tore me apart. And at that point, at the end of September,

Speaker 1 it was,

Speaker 1 I mean, I couldn't get away from it. And it really, it's like, until you've had $100 million

Speaker 1 to destroy you,

Speaker 1 it's a next level kind of thing. And then everyone was, they were saying, well, he's a vegetable, you know, he's a retard, or he's lost his brain and all kinds of things.
And then that wasn't true.

Speaker 1 But the kinds of terrible things and those kinds of very personal things, and it just got incredibly ugly in a way.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that has got to be a terrible experience to realize that there's so much money being spent just to attack you and that you're a part of this very, very large and corrupt machine that's going after you just because they want to control this state.

Speaker 2 And it's a giant swing state, of course.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the Senate, the whole Senate.

Speaker 1 The whole Senate was.

Speaker 1 In fact, we actually flipped flipped that seat. And that's the first time, I think, in the 40s or 50s that we've had two Democratic senators in Pennsylvania.
Usually it's been a Dem and a Republican.

Speaker 1 And now, because we flipped that seat, that's mathematically possible to retain the majority in the Senate.

Speaker 1 But it's going to be still fairly difficult because we have Montana, very, very red state, obviously.

Speaker 1 And that's really what the Republicans have put a significant bet to make sure that they can flip Montana.

Speaker 1 And then if Montana falls, then they're going to keep the majority or they're going to get the majority unless there's like a really surprise one. But

Speaker 1 that it may be more kind of difficult.

Speaker 2 Do you think that money is

Speaker 2 the biggest problem in American politics? This ability to spend insane amounts of money?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, just imagine if you were a movie studio and you're putting out a you're you're going to put out a movie and a rival studio has a hundred million dollars to tell America that movie sucks.

Speaker 1 That's shit, and it's crazy. And

Speaker 1 it just, there's always going to be unlimited money because it's all about the control of the Senate or the House or the presidency. And when money is

Speaker 1 speech, it's going to be unlimited. And

Speaker 1 what happens? It's like, well, that's TV and on social. And it's going to be, how can I destroy and break

Speaker 1 this individual? And that's where it is. And it gets incredibly personal.
And

Speaker 1 it has an impact. And certainly it has for me.
And until we have unlimited money, it's going to get more and more mean, personal, and expensive. And if you look at the

Speaker 1 billions of dollars that's spent, how what we could have done for our society, the kinds of reals that we could build and other things, if we didn't spend all those money to tear each other apart.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's very strange, and it sets a terrible tone for the rest of the country.

Speaker 2 Because these races, even though when they're over, people go back to a certain level of civility, it's already been established that this is on the table.

Speaker 2 These personal attacks, this evil, vicious propaganda, taking things out of context, conflating people's words.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no,

Speaker 1 you have, you know, you take any a quote, take it out of context, click that shit, put $10 million behind that, and that's in front of, you know, millions of eyeballs right there spontaneously on that.

Speaker 1 And it just, it's directly right at you. And there's, it's, it's unlimited money.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, when you look back on this race, it's like you are going to be stunned just how much money is put in that, how crazy those ads are, and just you can't get away from it. Like Montana.

Speaker 1 Montana has, I think, six or seven hundred thousand

Speaker 1 voters, and they've dropped a quarter of a billion dollars. I don't know how you could even spend a quarter of a billion dollars in Montana.

Speaker 1 It's like if you have $100,000 in cash, you have to pay that in going to a McDonald's.

Speaker 1 I don't know how they do that, but I promise you, everybody in Pennsylvania or in any of these kinds of contested states, they just can't get away from that shit.

Speaker 1 And at this point, they just stop paying attention to it. It just, it's like

Speaker 1 it's noise. It's toxic kinds of noise.

Speaker 2 And it does, it sets a tone for the whole country that we're willing to engage in this way.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. No, it's like, that's the thing.
It turns everything into a night feist

Speaker 1 or worse. And it is about trying to destroy that person and to convince other people that you are the worst thing in the world.

Speaker 1 You're a Marxist, you're a communist, or you're...

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Rated M for mature.

Speaker 1 It's just all kinds of things, and it's the lowest, lowest denominator. And if you really want to fix American politics, I mean, there are issues, but I promise you, if you removed that,

Speaker 1 that would be a dramatic kinds of thing. And we all have to play that game.
Some of us, like myself, I got a lot more of my money from small dollar donations, like Bernie.

Speaker 1 Bernie, I know he's been on the show. Bernie.
But then other ones, it's like everyone chases the bigger checks. It's undeniable there, too.

Speaker 1 And it's so disingenuous, and there's PACs, and there's other kinds of organizations. One way or another,

Speaker 1 it's just the way to funnel tens of million dollars to just tear someone apart.

Speaker 2 What was your background before you got into politics?

Speaker 1 I was a social worker

Speaker 1 and I came to

Speaker 1 a very deeply broken and fractioned

Speaker 1 community and I actually started helping young men and women get their GEDs and just kind of getting their lives back on track in that sense.

Speaker 1 And then that's why I

Speaker 1 did that for

Speaker 1 several years. And then I decided I wanted to run for mayor and mayor of

Speaker 1 a small town. And

Speaker 1 we had problems with inequality in a community that had 90%

Speaker 1 of the population abandoned the community and left. And if anyone's aware of the U.S.
steel, I mean, I live right now across the street from that iconic steel mill.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's really, that used to be America's Silicon Valley. Like, about half of the world's steel used to be manufactured there.

Speaker 1 But now so much has changed. And then I ran for mayor and a small town mayor.

Speaker 1 And then that turned into, well, I decided like the kinds of issues that were meaningful to me and the personal kinds of experiences.

Speaker 1 I just thought, hey, I want to project my kinds of experiences and my values. And I started,

Speaker 1 I ran for, I ran for the first time in 2016. I ran for the Senate.
I mean, it's pretty kind of strange that you have a small town mayor running for the United States Senate.

Speaker 1 But I mean, we had no money. I mean, zero, zero money on that.
But we just, we had a really like grassroots kind of a thing, and we got out across Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 And, you know, we came up a little short, but we pulled in 20% of the votes, which that was pretty, pretty, people thought that was pretty remarkable. And I carried my home county, which is Allegheny.

Speaker 1 That's the second largest. And that really kind of set the stage to run for lieutenant governor a couple years later after 2016.
But 2016, though, that was where America met Donald Trump. And

Speaker 1 I was early, you know,

Speaker 1 turning the alarm off, saying, hey, we have to be concerned here. Like, you know, Trump has connected with people in ways that it's like, we have to be concerned.

Speaker 1 And I'll never forget, it was June in 2016, and

Speaker 1 I was a surrogate

Speaker 1 for Clinton.

Speaker 1 And Trump announced, hey, I'm showing up in a town called

Speaker 1 Manessen, which is a small steel town in the valley down from ours. And I'm like,

Speaker 1 why is he showing up in that? I mean, that's not.

Speaker 1 So either he's crazy or they've plugged into something. And I have to see that.
So I tried to get into that just to kind of see what was going on.

Speaker 1 But they recognized me and they said, yeah, get the fuck out.

Speaker 1 Well, you're hard to hide. Yeah.
And so, but there, like, they figured out that they have to connect and to make that kind of an argument to go to these kind of places. And

Speaker 1 it did, it resonated. And you started to see a lot of the signs and a lot of the energy.
And it's like, hey, you know,

Speaker 1 there's a problem.

Speaker 1 And the Clinton campaign, everybody assumed that she was going to run away with it.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they made the mistake of just showing up in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, and assumed that they were going to be okay.

Speaker 1 But a lot had slipped. And now, the margins, Trump created margins that were unheard.
Like, you know, we referred to them as Romney margins. So in other words, you have red counties and Romney would

Speaker 1 cover those by about 60 to 65%.

Speaker 1 And Trump did. He created 80s, 80s.
We were losing 80, 20, 80, 20. And like, well, yeah, that's a small county, but yeah, you multiply that by 57, 57 other counties, and that's how they scale up.

Speaker 1 And that's how he won. And he won by 45,000 votes.
And that's why he captured the blue wall, and that made him president. And here we are right now.

Speaker 1 The blue wall is they're both fighting on the blue wall, and the blue wall is Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Speaker 2 When you were running

Speaker 2 during 2016, what were you trying to accomplish? Like, what did you want to do that you felt like you could uniquely provide a service for?

Speaker 1 Well, it wasn't, I just think it was just different. I'm like, hey,

Speaker 1 I was running for about forgotten places, people where America's turned their backs on them, and talking about those kinds of important issues like living wage,

Speaker 1 abandoning the industrial parts of America. You know, some people watching what things have been left behind in places like Braddock, it's like

Speaker 1 it's astonishing. 90% of people left and 90% of the buildings are gone.
And that whole region has just been just

Speaker 1 thrown away. So I just wanted to, and I didn't, you know, there was a path.
I mean, there were two other people in the primary.

Speaker 1 And I thought I could maybe split. I could split the other two and just sneak by and get 33% plus one extra vote.

Speaker 1 But I came up a little short because I had no money because it's always going to be about money.

Speaker 1 And then Katie McGinty, she won, but she lost. And then that was that same cycle.
And then

Speaker 1 the same year that Trump won.

Speaker 2 And so since you've been in, since you've gotten into the Senate, what meaningful change have you been able to accomplish there?

Speaker 1 Well, again,

Speaker 1 you're a freshman. And, you know, my colleague and one that was just here,

Speaker 1 Senator Vance, I mean, we were both in the same cycle. We both ran in 22.
So we both there for less than two years.

Speaker 1 And it's really based on seniority. And it's just kind of like, hey, get on the end of that line.
You know,

Speaker 1 so you are a freshman and it's, you know, your influence is, you know, at least in the institution are limited in some sense.

Speaker 1 But if you have a bigger platform, and I did, and I try to have those kinds of impacts and having those conversations. But my first couple,

Speaker 1 first half of that first year, that was a little, took a different detour because

Speaker 1 I was dealing with

Speaker 1 depression. I was in the depression and I realized that I was in a bad place.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 having to make those kind of choices, and I signed myself in to Walter Reed to get help because of the depression.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so I think

Speaker 1 It's an important conversation. And I knew, I thought at that time it could be politically, it could be difficult,

Speaker 1 but I thought it was important and now if that costs me something politically I'm okay so that's why I'm continuing so how I've the impact I've had I never fully expected that that voice would would break through and I'm I'm in contact with people constantly saying thank you for for talking about this I chose to get help or I chose not to to follow that path on self-harm and

Speaker 1 so I've had active conversations with member of Congress or fathers with younger kids, and they're like, hey, can you please talk? And I do that. I'm happy to talk to anybody.

Speaker 1 And so that's a way I've had an impact through all of that. And also my voice through after what happened on 10-7th,

Speaker 1 October 7.

Speaker 1 And I've decided I was going to be a very consistent voice for Israel through that.

Speaker 1 So that's why kind of like the platform, but in terms of if anyone's being honest, whether it was Senator Vance or any kinds of freshman senators, it's very limited because otherwise there's people that have been there for 25, 30 years.

Speaker 1 They're the ones that are going to be the chairman. And if you're a minority party, you have incredibly limited kinds of ability to

Speaker 1 move an agenda.

Speaker 2 So the depression thing, I think it's very important that you talked about that. I think transparency is something that people really appreciate.

Speaker 2 So many people suffer from depression. It's such a normal part of being a human being.

Speaker 2 And for a guy like you, who's a senator, who's already gone through being attacked, already gone through all these horrible things that they said about you while you were recovering from a stroke, it takes a lot of courage to come out and discuss that.

Speaker 2 I think it's really important. I'm really glad you did it.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't, well, thank you, but I don't think there's really courage. It's like I only had a choice.

Speaker 2 But it is courage because you know you're going to be publicly attacked, and it's a vulnerable point.

Speaker 1 point.

Speaker 2 But I think it's not because I think so many people suffer from it.

Speaker 2 I think there's courage in coming out and talking about it openly and realizing that people are going to use it as an attack vector and saying, you know what, this is important to talk about.

Speaker 2 This is important to acknowledge and to show people that you can recover from something like that.

Speaker 1 Well, originally I was just going to talk about depression.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 there's a paradox. You know, you might be a place in your life that you've actually kind of won, but depression lies to you and it convinces you that you've lost.

Speaker 1 And my depression got far more worse after I won.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 it was a downward spiral. And then

Speaker 1 if you don't check your depression, then you go down a dangerous slope about self-harm. And I started to have, I got to

Speaker 1 occupy that kind of a dark place. And

Speaker 1 that's when I realized that I have a choice.

Speaker 1 It's like if i don't address this uh then um i i had i had an emergency break you know i it's like i i have to stop i have to stop i have to and that was my kids i'm like i i i'm like i cannot be i can't be the example and when you're gonna be get older in life and you're gonna have those kinds of challenge well hey dad decided to to leave oh that must be the right thing and i'm like i will i cannot allow myself to be uh the example for that so i i stayed in the game and I was able to get help and I got much better.

Speaker 1 So like for me, it's like I originally didn't want to talk about self-harm because

Speaker 1 that's definitely not a great political winner. But I was like, I have to be honest.

Speaker 1 Excuse me. I have to be honor about that and honest.
And

Speaker 1 people, that really resonated with people. I was, I think, the first person, I was the first politician, especially at that level, talking about self-harm.
And, you know, if people

Speaker 1 are suffering, people that, I mean, you have a huge, a huge audience, I'm willing to bet plenty of them are suffering from that or looking through those kinds of things. No doubt.
No doubt. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I promise people, whatever your path, whatever your path is for recovery,

Speaker 1 and I'm not an expert, but if you promise yourself to stay in that game, stay in that game, that you are ready, you're almost guaranteed to get better because I promise you it will get better.

Speaker 1 And I was at the point where I was really, you know, in a very dark place and I stayed in that game and I am staying in

Speaker 1 front of you right now and having this conversation. And so that's what I try to tell everybody, whether they're listening today or in other times when I've had that.

Speaker 1 It's an honest conversation, but it is a red and blue conversation and it's a rural and urban or suburban conversation. It's men or women or even younger kids.

Speaker 1 I've had conversations with teenagers, you know, with their parents, and they've even tried to take their lives.

Speaker 1 And I can't think of anything much more tragic than especially a young person taking their lives over some of the things that...

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I never thought that that voice would penetrate, but it did. And that's why I'm willing to have that conversation.
Well,

Speaker 2 apparently it's very common for people that undergo major surgery. to have depression afterwards.
And there's a bunch of physiological reasons for that, that, they believe. My friend Dr.

Speaker 2 Mark Gordon, who's done a lot of work on traumatic brain injuries and depression amongst athletes and soldiers, he did a lot of research on that.

Speaker 2 And one of the things that they found was that people that undergo like a long period of anesthesia and either heart surgery or any kind of major surgery, there's a disruption of your endocrine system afterwards that leads people to be just weary and broken down and I could imagine that along with the Senate race and all the other chaos and all the stresses involved with that it plays a significant factor well I'm sure it must have been a factor

Speaker 1 I I discovered that I had I had two friends they're roughly my age and they had young kids and they took they took their lives and they were both in the in the media and both one was worked for an incredibly elite organization and another one had a really strong position.

Speaker 1 One had a heart attack and the other one had a stroke years earlier and I found out and

Speaker 1 I wish I could have talked to them and I did talk to

Speaker 1 them but it doesn't mean they were weak or that they gave up.

Speaker 1 It's just I got lucky and I found my emergency brake and and and if you have any kinds of study on people and and self-harm, there was an individual he jumped off the Golden Gate and he survived and immediately after he says,

Speaker 1 as he crossed over the rail and he, I want to live, I want to live. What have I done? It's like I've made a terrible mistake.
And

Speaker 1 you hit the water going 75 miles an hour and it's very against chance of surviving, but he did.

Speaker 1 And now he became obsessed with this idea and he looked out for everyone that survived and about 45 people out of 1800 people that have jumped over, they survived.

Speaker 1 And it was unanimously, people immediately like, oh my god, I want to live, I want to live, I want to live. And not one single person thought, well, I wish I was more successful.

Speaker 1 So, like, that's I try to put that forward.

Speaker 1 And I can't imagine how difficult because they had children the same age as mine, and trying to explain to a 10-year-old son, like, well, why did daddy leave?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 those are dark conversations. And

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 it's not about weakness. It's about trying to get away from that.
People that are suffering from depression,

Speaker 1 if anyone's been there, it's like your mind is on fire. And you just want to get away from that.

Speaker 1 Please, I need relief from that kind of a thing. And every now and then you have kind of like the eye of the hurricane, or you finally thought maybe things could get better, but

Speaker 1 it roars back in, and it's like you get back to that very dark place.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I just tell everybody,

Speaker 1 I'm begging you, stay in that game. I promise you it can get better.
And the depression is lying to you. It is absolutely lying to you.

Speaker 1 But don't make the kind of choice that you can't come back from.

Speaker 2 I have a friend who jumped off the bridge and died that way.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's a terrible...

Speaker 2 Just a terrible thing to find out and you always feel like you could have talked to them. You could have helped.
You always feel like, you know, I didn't know. I didn't know he was suffering.

Speaker 2 And then I found out that he died a few days later, and it was just like,

Speaker 2 it just leaves you feeling so lost.

Speaker 2 It's such a terrible way to go, too, that bridge. God, how many people, like, would you say how many people have jumped off that bridge, the Golden Gate?

Speaker 1 I think they reference about over 1,800 people.

Speaker 1 And a small, small tiny survived.

Speaker 1 And really,

Speaker 1 being faced that idea that you're not going to come back, it's like spontaneously curative. Like, oh my God, I want to live.
I want to live. I want to live.
Like,

Speaker 1 it was unanimous about it.

Speaker 1 And that's such an important kinds of research

Speaker 1 that he did.

Speaker 1 And it's like, and again, like, that's my message. It has to be very simple.
Stay in that game. It's like you can't do this.
You can't do this.

Speaker 2 And you need support.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. You need support, whatever that is.
And some people have different kinds of resources. I mean, I would want that for everybody, the resources that I had.
And that's not fair.

Speaker 1 It's not fair.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I got lucky. It's not because I'm like, I'm so much stronger or better.
It's like, no, no, I just got lucky on that. And I promise you, you're not going to regret staying in the game.

Speaker 1 And you can get better. And that is probably, I think, in

Speaker 1 my opinion, that's about 75% of

Speaker 1 getting back better.

Speaker 2 What have you done to help? What has helped you?

Speaker 1 My family.

Speaker 1 That's really what, like, every person needs to have like

Speaker 1 that emergency, I call that like an emergency break. It's like, you know, you're out of control.

Speaker 1 You know, you're having the darkest conversation you'll have with yourself, and you have to have something to stop that.

Speaker 1 Otherwise, you're going to go over the edge and and everyone needs to have that whatever that is whether it's your family whether it's your wife or your husband or whether it is

Speaker 1 or this that there has to be some it has to get better it's going to get better you know that's why I say stay on the game and I'm not an expert I'm not trained in that but when people reach out to me and say well I feel like this and and I'm like hey it's like you know help works I promise you it will get better.

Speaker 1 And I can't guarantee what your path will be. But what I can say is that stay in that game and you are going to find your way on that path.
And you're never going to regret. It's like, oh, you know,

Speaker 1 it just,

Speaker 1 the finality, the finality of that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 some things, you can make a bad choice and, you know, well, that might set you back in life, but but that's the that's the one the one choice you can't come back from and you will leave people in your life that they'll never understand or you wish you could reach back and you could let them know

Speaker 1 and it

Speaker 1 stay away from that kind of blackness because you're I promise you you would regret and if you can't come back

Speaker 2 so what what has helped you counseling medication like what it what did what are the things that got you back on track other than just your family?

Speaker 1 I, um,

Speaker 1 the election and everything, I was convinced that I've lost everything.

Speaker 1 Uh,

Speaker 1 I had, you know, it was difficult to fully speak. And my, my kids, they got pulled into the social media kinds of invective.
And

Speaker 1 it's like I've destroyed my health. I've,

Speaker 1 And now I've,

Speaker 1 against odds, I won. And now am I going to be able to do this job? And

Speaker 1 would I have been better off if I didn't survive?

Speaker 1 And I got to that kind of a dark place.

Speaker 1 And then I just had this like that spontaneous, where it's like,

Speaker 1 my kids, it's like,

Speaker 1 no, I love you. It's like, oh my gosh.
It's like when they were visiting, I didn't want them to visit me at Walter Reed.

Speaker 1 I was like, why would they want to be around this?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 But they did. And it was like this kind of spontaneous kinds of love.
And

Speaker 1 it just was like a shot. And it's just like, I can come back.
I can come back. I thought, it's like, well, why would they want this mess back?

Speaker 1 And then, you know, just working through a lot of those things and other kinds of techniques and things, it was like, but that was probably the single most transformative event where it's like, I realized that I can come back to my life.

Speaker 1 Otherwise, it's like I thought I've lost everything. Would I be able to even do my job?

Speaker 1 And it's like, do I even have a career? I mean, I'm talking about like that was a significant national story when after I signed myself in. And that pulled my kids in through that.
I mean, this idea.

Speaker 1 And after we announced that we're signing in, and there were news trucks outside their house, and

Speaker 1 they had the trauma of thinking that dad could have lost after the stroke. And now he is, it's just,

Speaker 1 it's put them through so much. And that's why I was convinced that they probably don't want me around.
And then I made the stupid mistake of,

Speaker 1 I went on social media and things. I'm like,

Speaker 1 and just, I read some of that shit. I mean, it's just, it's,

Speaker 1 it's just, oh my God, millions and millions of views and videos. And it's just like, you know, going after my family and it's saying that, you know,

Speaker 1 hey, he's a vegetable. He's, you know, he's a retard.
And,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 Slingblade and all kinds of things. And

Speaker 1 it wasn't the individual kinds of insults. It was the volume and just how widespread it was.
And I'm like, who jumps online to go after a stranger that's never really done anything to you personally?

Speaker 2 Well, I think it's not just individuals. I think it's targeted.
I think there's a lot of that stuff, especially when there's something that is significant as a Senate seat. And I think there's.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I mean, it's like

Speaker 1 if I have $100 million to convince you that you're a terrible person and you're the worst thing ever, and

Speaker 1 that inspires a lot of people and they, hey, that's the mission. It's like he clearly, he must be those things.
And, you know, we're now, there is no, there's no tap out. There is no tap out.

Speaker 1 It's like even after we won, after I won, in some sense, it actually accelerated.

Speaker 2 Right. It's not the war is not over.
It's just begun.

Speaker 1 No. Oh, no, no.
And

Speaker 1 the second you step into that kind of arena on the federal level for like a Senate seat, if it's like a purple state like Pennsylvania, You know, I promise you, there will be tens and tens of millions of dollars, and their mission is is to turn you into the worst thing in the world.

Speaker 1 And whoever survives, that's the one that's going to be in that seat.

Speaker 1 And I still will never understand why someone, you know, independently wealthy kinds of people will spend, you know, incredible amounts of money. And I try people, I'm like, there's no glamour here.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm in a 500-square-foot apartment, and I'm like here with my phone. I'm like, hey, Grubhub, what's it tonight?

Speaker 1 And then it's like, I'm like, I watch, you know, TV on Netflix and things. And

Speaker 1 I ask my colleagues, I'm like, hey, is there kind of secret society? Like, you know, like, you know, crazy parties or, you know, sitting around with cigars and, you know, all this.

Speaker 1 And they're like, well, no, I kind of have the same version of that.

Speaker 2 That's the perception, though, right? The perception is that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the perception is we all.

Speaker 2 You divide it into a club. Yeah, that you control the world.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that we all have witty kinds of dialogue on West Wing, you know, like talking like how

Speaker 1 kinds of turn, you know,

Speaker 1 and really it's, it's just like, and I describe that as a lot of it's just bad, it's just bad performance art. Oh, yeah, thanks.
That's usually what it is. It's just bad performance art.

Speaker 1 And some people, like

Speaker 1 if you're in

Speaker 1 a safe state or a safe seat, you, and especially if you have the resources and they're incredibly wealthy people, they buy a house and they move their life there. So you're able to kind of things.

Speaker 1 But like, like I don't have those resources and I'm in a very, very, the ultimate purple.

Speaker 1 And so I spend more than 50% of my time away and I miss my kids. It's it's it's rough for that.
I mean, I signed up for that,

Speaker 1 but I promise you, there's no glamour in that.

Speaker 2 Well, there's certainly no glamour if you're honest.

Speaker 2 But I think there's a lot of people that look to certain members of the government that have jobs that pay $150,000, $170,000 a year, but somehow or another acquire hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of their career, usually through some kind of insider trading.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, of course. I mean, I don't own any of those stocks or anything.
And definitely, like, if you have any kinds of impact or you know that there's something civic

Speaker 1 coming. Yeah.
I mean, yeah,

Speaker 1 it's like you, you need to.

Speaker 2 How is that legal?

Speaker 1 It's, well, no, we should have the kind of legislation to make sure that you're not, like, if you are on Congress, you shouldn't have any kinds of stocks because you are going to be passing kinds of laws, et cetera, et cetera, that you have to separate that.

Speaker 1 They really shouldn't be a part of that kinds of a thing. And

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I'm all out. I'm open.

Speaker 1 All of us, we have to have our wealth and

Speaker 1 all that there.

Speaker 1 And if I'm not

Speaker 1 the poorest, I have probably the bottom five. And other people there are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Speaker 1 So we can't have that situation where

Speaker 1 if you're going to be involved on those kinds of legislation, that you can't be enriched by those kinds of, and there has to be some kind of influence.

Speaker 2 That seems simple. That seems like

Speaker 1 logical.

Speaker 2 Like most people would agree to that. Yeah,

Speaker 1 there's a lot of inertia. It's the same thing.
I think if any one of us were being honest,

Speaker 1 money is destroying our democracy and and that that's that some people that might sound trite or it's a cliche but it's it's a hundred percent though i think most people who are objective would agree with you it is i promise you it is it is absolute it is a scourge of american democracy and money is king and what's that money for that money is for tearing you apart and that creates more and more and more kinds of incivility and cruelty.

Speaker 1 And then now, when I went through, when I was in graduate graduate school for that stuff, I mean, there was no social media and there wasn't, you know, there wasn't podcasts, there wasn't all kinds of things.

Speaker 1 So that made it more difficult. But now there's all of those things and social media is an accelerant and count, you know, just unlimited money.

Speaker 1 And that has what, you know, like, I'm sure you, you know, you're, you're an athlete and, you know, if you've heard that NFL players, it's like, wait, would you want your son to play?

Speaker 1 And sometimes say, well, no, I wouldn't wouldn't want that for my son.

Speaker 1 And it's like, I'm relieved that my oldest is like, he has no interest in being in politics.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I can't imagine it's going to get better until we address this idea that unlimited money is unlimited

Speaker 1 attack and it's

Speaker 1 unlimited cruelty and hyperbole and just all kinds of poisoning the well

Speaker 1 that, you know, half of us are going to hate your guts and the other half, hey, that's my team. Yeah.
So.

Speaker 2 Well, I strongly feel that the internet should remain the way it is in terms of people being able to post on social media anonymously if they so choose.

Speaker 2 But the problem with that is it can be captured by money and it can be captured by these enormous groups that have bot farms, whether it's state actors, whether it's other countries, other nations that are doing that to try to attack our system and to try to promote certain narratives, or whether it's our own country itself doing it, because I think we do it too.

Speaker 2 And I think that PACs do it and it's just.

Speaker 1 People hook themselves up. It's like you self-select your cocoon.
Yes. You know, and like I'm a big fan of Apple News, and it's like 13 bucks a month.

Speaker 1 But I read everything across the spectrum, you know, very, very left and very, very right in between.

Speaker 1 And I think it's really, I think that's your responsibility, especially if you're an elected leader,

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 be challenged, to challenge yourself on the ideas. And it's like, clearly, one side doesn't have all the answers and the other side can't be 100% wrong.

Speaker 2 And it's just like being challenging and living or taking in other kinds of perspectives, I think that's a responsibility because otherwise, if you only just just cocoon yourself into and it's just it turns into one gigantic circle jerk and this episode is brought to you by dodge the 2026 dodge durango srt hellcat is all about one thing unlocking performance with 710 horsepower 645 pound feet of torque and a supercharged 6.2 liter hemi v8 under the hood the dodge durango srt hellcat is the most powerful SUV in the segment.

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Speaker 2 Terms apply.

Speaker 1 And that's why it just turns people to just kind of dig in and it's like, hey, you know, the problem is them, and we have to.

Speaker 2 Well, it's a problem with human beings in general is that we tend to be very tribal and we tend to commit to an ideology whether comfortable. Just comfortable.
Sure.

Speaker 2 Especially when you're in an echo chamber. Everyone's agreeing with you.
You get social credit from saying the things things that these people all agree with and you feed off that.

Speaker 2 But it's when it's being captured by, it's not just these people exchanging ideas. It's also a bunch of people that are manipulating people's ideas.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't know if you've ever paid attention to like Renee DeRest's work with the Internet Research Agency.

Speaker 2 What they uncovered, what they were doing was using, this was like during the 2016 election, using social media, and it was a lot of Russian troll farms and troll farms in other countries it's it's pos it's possible but but but but to be honest I I that that election wasn't turned on I think Russian interference I know I'm not I I what what happened in 2016 was Trump you know he plugged into like kinds of a of an energy or you know like it was just like kind of looking uh to to make that kind of a of a connection there well he's a legitimate outsider this is the appeal The appeal is that people think that this system is completely rigged and it's captured by money and special interests and enormous corporations and that here's a guy who's outside of this system completely.

Speaker 2 And the evidence of that is how the system turned against him and how you got to see people on television every night talking about Russia Gate, talking about how he's a puppet of Putin, talking about the steel dossier, talking about all these different things that turned out to not be true.

Speaker 1 And it furthers.

Speaker 1 I never bought into some of that kind of a stuff. Because if anyone that spent any time on the ground in one of those states, it's like it's very clear that wasn't because of some small kinds of

Speaker 1 tweets and things, like whatever.

Speaker 1 It's undeniable. And also,

Speaker 1 remember, like he was,

Speaker 1 you know, the Republican Party was like, hey, this is a joke. And I remember Jeb Bush, you know, and he had like $100 or $200 million.

Speaker 1 And he just went by. He ticked him off.

Speaker 1 And even then, people thought he was going to win, but he did. But remember, though, overall, though, that was 75,000 votes.
That's a mathematical, like, you know, I mean, think of that,

Speaker 1 160 million votes, 75,000 spread across three large states, including my own. That transformed American politics and then the world as well.

Speaker 1 And it just came down to 75,000 voters in those three states. And that's kind of where that's where we're at.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's an extraordinary time in that regard, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, it's

Speaker 2 uncharted territory.

Speaker 1 Well, I reference a movie,

Speaker 1 like Bullworth.

Speaker 1 I remember that movie. Bullworth.
And, you know, it was Warren Beattie, and he was a senator, and he kind of had like a breakdown, and he started saying provocative things.

Speaker 1 He used to get up in front of his audience and kind of like

Speaker 1 the gaffe of accidentally speaking, you know, telling the truth. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it was kind of like, it was an absurd, I mean, when I was in grad school, that was like put up as like, well, that, I mean, people enjoyed that.

Speaker 1 And now that became a term in politics saying, oh, we affect even President Obama was like, hey, we all want to secretly go full bullworth, full bullworth.

Speaker 1 But that's what really he channeled in, where he would say,

Speaker 1 you know, it's kind of like he projects kind of like, well, I don't give a fuck, and just say all those kinds of a thing. And people have responded to those kinds of things.
And

Speaker 1 a lot of people,

Speaker 1 that's the bug. But you have to understand that for enough people, that's the feature.

Speaker 1 And that's kind of what they want. And whatever that is, it describes

Speaker 1 a brand that, you know,

Speaker 1 it's not, I don't admire that, but you still have to kind of marvel at

Speaker 1 the level to say

Speaker 1 crazy kinds of things that, that it, you, I'm old, well, I guess maybe we're both old enough to remember when George, in the George Bush,

Speaker 1 Al Gore, he is like,

Speaker 1 oh my God, this guy. And that moved the polls.
People were like, he rolled his eyes at Bush, you know, like things. And like, you know, like, it used to be much more staid.

Speaker 1 And now think of what's been said now and all of this stuff. And

Speaker 1 I don't think people aren't paying attention. Some of the whatever the latest outrage is.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's,

Speaker 2 I think, one of your appeals is that

Speaker 2 you speak like a normal human being. You speak like a person who actually cares about these issues.
And you seemingly speak from the heart. You don't seem polished, which is a good thing.

Speaker 2 And I think people...

Speaker 1 I wish I was more handsome.

Speaker 1 I don't think that's a good. No, no, no.

Speaker 1 I'm honest. Yeah.
I'm honest. I think I'm in touch with what I'm limited.
I wasn't blessed with model looks.

Speaker 2 But it's not looks. It's the polish of speaking like a congressman, like a senator, like a presidential candidate.

Speaker 2 But it's this kind of bullshit way of communicating that's inauthentic, that even though it's effective, even though it's polished and smooth, people get a sense of who that person is as a human being.

Speaker 2 Trump is not polished. He's not polished in that sense, but you get a sense of who he is as a human being.
There doesn't seem to be a veil. There doesn't seem to be this

Speaker 2 disconnect between a human being and the thoughts. You might not agree with him.
You might think he's crass or rude, but at least you know that he's the guy that's talking. These are his thoughts.
And

Speaker 2 people trust that way more than they trust someone who's

Speaker 2 polished but full of shit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, it's it's that scarface. It's like you know, word and balls.
Yeah, you know, I'm not gonna,

Speaker 1 you know, and that's you're losing politically if you're telling people to not believe what their eyes are seeing, right? You know, like these kinds of issues.

Speaker 1 And it's like, I'm not gonna lie, or I'm not going to toe a line if I don't, if I don't believe, if I don't believe in that.

Speaker 1 But in terms of

Speaker 1 the conversation um i i think it's like it's it's all i've got and uh and it's not because i don't care it's actually i'm very committed and i really do care but but i think people are you know like i i think authenticity that's the that's the last that's really that's one of the last uh meaningful currency in this shitty business

Speaker 2 uh so i was having a conversation this morning with a friend of mine and we were talking about voter ID and he was shocked that you don't need voter ID

Speaker 2 in, I believe it's 15 states. 15 states require no ID.

Speaker 2 20, I think it's 24 or 25 states require ID, but only,

Speaker 2 I think, 11 of them require you to have photo ID.

Speaker 2 This is a weird one in this election that I've tried to look at as objectively as possible.

Speaker 2 And I can't see any reason why you would not need ID to vote unless you wanted people to vote that aren't qualified to vote.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I mean, like,

Speaker 1 honestly,

Speaker 1 I would like to remind everybody, and it's not like a talking point, it's actually

Speaker 1 in a fact that voter fraud is incredibly, incredibly rare. It's really hard

Speaker 1 to get away with that successfully. And in 2020.

Speaker 2 At scale, you mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's not scalable, yeah. It's like, I mean,

Speaker 1 it's like, and usually

Speaker 1 it's kind of local kinds of communities and people, they either know that person or

Speaker 1 it's never going to be organized in a point where

Speaker 1 you can pack

Speaker 1 a box or you can't determine that kind of a thing.

Speaker 1 It's just that, you know, after election, election, election, it's just never been, you know, in 2020 out of over millions of votes in 2020 in Pennsylvania, there were five or six

Speaker 1 ones. And what happened is that they turned out to be the Republicans, and they used their deceased, their dead moms,

Speaker 1 to vote for Trump through that. And

Speaker 1 that was documented, and they were all...

Speaker 1 They were

Speaker 1 caught, they were charged, they were convicted, and all those votes, that would have been six votes out of all of it.

Speaker 2 Do you think that that's the only voter fraud that exists?

Speaker 1 Well, people also, we need to remind that, you know,

Speaker 1 the voter database, they're cross-checks against deaths and, you know, who's moved or what's their status or like, oh, like, you know, all that's cross-checked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Speaker 1 So it's a living kinds of thing where it's continually updated and all of those kinds of things. And it's self-checks.

Speaker 1 And remember also, in 2020, you know, Trump, they was like, yeah, wait, there's cheating, there's all these things are happening. And remember, there's probably 57, 58 red counties.

Speaker 1 And all of those commissioners that are in charge of that, they were like, hey, no, there was none. There was none.
And even in Georgia, even in Georgia,

Speaker 1 Governor Kemp, Governor Kemp, like, hey, you know, Georgia, you know, it was very close, but it was honest.

Speaker 1 There was no kinds of fraud in that. And that's a Republican.

Speaker 2 But other than

Speaker 2 making things a little bit easier to cheat, what would be the logic behind not having voter ID?

Speaker 2 Like, what? I've tried to look at this as objectively as possible.

Speaker 2 I can't find any reason why you would not require someone to be able to prove that they're the person they say they are when they're putting in their ballots.

Speaker 1 It's not a hill that I'm saying. We have to die on that, too, again.

Speaker 1 But it's a vulnerability, clearly, right?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 it's also there.

Speaker 1 Some people may not believe that in a lot of these kinds of communities, you know, ones that I live in,

Speaker 1 for some people,

Speaker 1 they don't have an ID necessarily, or they've lost it, or whatever.

Speaker 2 But you need one to get a driver's license, you need one to get a car.

Speaker 1 They don't have a D.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they would have to get an ID or it costs X amount of dollars or those kinds of a thing.

Speaker 1 It's a barrier, and it usually tends to skew more towards people that are coming from those kinds of communities.

Speaker 1 And the Republicans understand that they're usually going to they're going to skew towards Democratic voters through that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so that's kind of the argument on that. And there's never been any evidence that there is widespread kinds of

Speaker 1 voter fraud. And that's...

Speaker 2 But we really didn't have widespread mail-in ballots to the extent that it was done in 2020. We really didn't have that.

Speaker 1 All of those were. All of those were.

Speaker 1 Those five or six dead moms that were voting,

Speaker 1 those were all,

Speaker 1 well, actually, one. One guy, one guy went in, he voted, you know, and then he went up to his car and he put on sunglasses and a bob cap and he walked in.
He's like, hi, hello, I'm here to vote.

Speaker 1 And the guy's like, you were just here. What are you doing?

Speaker 1 And then they called the police.

Speaker 1 And then it's like, yeah, he was trying to double vote.

Speaker 2 Did you see the story about the Chinese national who was arrested because he voted and then he tried to get his ballot back? And that's how they caught him.

Speaker 1 It's possible, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this this is a thing that just happened. And unfortunately, once he's voted, even though he was not eligible to vote, his vote is going to count.

Speaker 2 Texas removed some, I mean, there's lawsuits about it, but Texas removed somewhere in the neighborhood of a million people that were ineligible to vote, that could have been voting.

Speaker 1 Well, everybody knows who's voting and who's not voting on that. And then that's why

Speaker 2 what do you mean by everybody knows?

Speaker 1 Well, and remember also, too, Dominion. You know, people

Speaker 1 on the Trump side, they all said that Dominions was corrupt,

Speaker 1 and that cost Fox $800 million.

Speaker 1 They had to pay $800 million about defamation for saying that it was rigged, or if it's not, and there was no evidence, and they had to just acknowledge that this was the honest thing.

Speaker 2 But Dominion is

Speaker 2 a computer program, right? It's a computer. Like, that's what you're doing.
You're doing electronic voting. Yeah,

Speaker 1 that was a system that,

Speaker 1 you know, mostly, and often it was red states that were using those. Do you remember?

Speaker 2 Well, that is true, because do you remember the documentary, Hacking Democracy? Did you ever see that?

Speaker 1 Again, there's always going to be people that are going to try to have an influence on that.

Speaker 2 Right, but did you see that documentary? It was about the Republicans doing it.

Speaker 1 I haven't seen that documentary.

Speaker 2 There was a documentary during the Bush administration, and one that they showed that the Diebold machines,

Speaker 2 and Diebold was a significant contributor, I believe, to the Republican Party. They showed in the documentary that you could use a third-party input to change the results.

Speaker 2 And they actually proved it in the documentary. And people were pointing to this as, oh, my God, the Republicans are cheating.

Speaker 2 And the Republicans have used this to try to rig the election for George Bush.

Speaker 2 It was an HBO documentary.

Speaker 1 I'm not accusing. I've never accused the Republicans.

Speaker 1 Like, well,

Speaker 1 in 2016.

Speaker 1 No, I'm not saying you did.

Speaker 2 What I'm trying to say is that this is not a thing that's only been leveled against the Democrats using it. This is not like an accusation that only applies to Democrats.

Speaker 2 In the past, a similar accusation was applied to Republicans.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I mean,

Speaker 1 I think we can all agree that we need to have a secure, just like our border, we need a secure border and we need an absolutely secure

Speaker 1 voting system as well, too. I mean, that should never be considered controversial.

Speaker 1 And in 2016,

Speaker 1 a lot of Democrats were outraged that we lost.

Speaker 1 But I never claimed that there was, you know,

Speaker 1 the Republicans cheated or do all those kinds of things.

Speaker 1 And it's like, you know, the problem, the problem for accusing that there was voter fraud is that if you don't like the outcome. Right.
You know, so, and I have never witnessed

Speaker 1 an election if they've won that they claimed, well, there might be, you know, we might have

Speaker 1 to be cheated. Yeah, no, we're not cheating.
So that right. So I think that's that's kind of that's that's I think that's kind of the underlying truth about that.
And of course,

Speaker 1 you know, I think I was the first Democrat saying, hey, we need a secure border.

Speaker 1 It's a significant issue. And if I thought there was any kinds of issues, and I've been very vigilant throughout, I've been actively involved in those kinds of things.

Speaker 1 And I've never witnessed those kinds of a thing.

Speaker 2 What do you mean by issues? Like what kind of issues are you talking about? You're talking about people letting people in in order to get votes?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 there's not that level kinds of, I don't think there's that level of kinds of organization.

Speaker 2 But there is an organization that's moving these people to swing states.

Speaker 2 There's a significant number of these people that are illegal immigrants that have made their way to swing states. And then there's been calls for amnesty.

Speaker 2 There's been calls for allowing these people to have a pathway to citizenship and allow them to vote.

Speaker 2 The fear that a lot of people have is that this is a coordinated effort to take these people that you're allowing to come into the country, then you're providing them with all sorts of services like food stamps and housing and setting them up

Speaker 2 and then providing a pathway to amnesty.

Speaker 2 And then you would have voters that would be significantly voting towards the Democrats because they're the people that enabled them to come into the country in the first place, first place, and provided them with those services.

Speaker 2 This is a big fear that people have and that you're rigging this system and that this will turn all these states into essentially locked blue like California is.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 immigration is always going to be a tough issue in our nation. You know, I had, as a professor in grad school, Alan Simpson, Alan Simpson, and he was

Speaker 1 a United States Senator. He was of Wyoming, and

Speaker 1 he was actually a pro-choice Republican. I mean, how rare that would be.
Well, it doesn't exist now. And he said, you are never going to have any meaningful immigration kinds of legislation.

Speaker 1 He's like, because both sides,

Speaker 1 that's useful for them, and it's going to be back and forth, back and forth. And he said that 25 years ago.

Speaker 2 Useful, meaning the debate, having it always

Speaker 1 somehow political. It's useful for one side or the other.
It's useful. And

Speaker 1 he said, they were never going to be. And he said that in 1999.
And

Speaker 1 I voted for the border deal. And that went down.

Speaker 1 And that's ⁇ I mean, he said that 25 years ago, and that was absolutely true now,

Speaker 1 that they had an opportunity to do a comprehensive border bipartisan, and that went down because Trump

Speaker 1 declared that that's a bad deal after it was negotiated with the other side.

Speaker 2 But didn't that deal also involve amnesty? And didn't that deal also involve a significant number of illegal aliens being allowed into the country every year? I think it was 2 million people.

Speaker 2 So it was still the same sort of situation.

Speaker 2 And their fear is exactly what I talked about, that these people will be moved to swing states, and that that will be used to essentially rig those states and turn them blue forever.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I'm not really sure if that's

Speaker 1 what's in play. I think it's really like it's important that we have to have an honest conversation.

Speaker 2 But doesn't that seem logical, though, if you have a significant number of people that are being moved into swing states that have come across the border illegally and then you've provided them with all these services, you provided them with food stamps, EBT, you've provided them with housing, you could, if you gave those people amnesty and allow those people to vote, and it was very organized, you're talking about 75,000 votes over a few counties that switched everything over to the Republicans.

Speaker 2 You could see how you import 10 million people over the course of four years

Speaker 2 illegally and then move a significant number of them to swing states and then provide them with all these services and then give them a path to citizenship.

Speaker 1 You could essentially rig those states. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Undeniably, immigration is changing our nation.

Speaker 1 I mean, I haven't spent a lot of time in Texas, but it's very clear that immigration has remade Texas. And I think it's generally

Speaker 1 for a good thing. And like my wife, my wife's Brazilian and she was she was her family was undocumented

Speaker 1 and she was seven years old when she was brought here and and I and I'm the big pro

Speaker 1 immigration guy that there was but it's also has to be true that we need a secure border and we have to work this out because we are pretending that you have millions and millions of people you know living in the shadow and they are here and we have to work together and figure out a way to get forward because they're here and it seems incredibly a difficult kind of logistics thing and I think it's it's also un-American to to to round everybody up and who in the vast majority of them are just living legal lives and doing a lot of the jobs that other people here would never do.

Speaker 1 I think we can agree on that. Well J.D.

Speaker 2 Vance actually talked about that the other day when he was here. He was explaining how there are CEOs of large corporations that want these people to come across because they need cheap labor.

Speaker 2 And the way to get cheap labor is have people that are illegals working for less than what would be our minimum wage

Speaker 1 well i i'm not aware i mean you know minimum wage really it's it's i think it's it's most incredibly difficult and and violent kind of jobs like you know like and and that's like that's you know me jobs that a lot of people don't want a lot of those those are kind of really rough meat processing yeah construction very you know rough right and this is the thing that's been said about springfield ohio that these haitians that have moved to Springfield, Ohio, people are complaining about them.

Speaker 2 But the people that have employed these people have saying, listen, these people are taking jobs that other people that lived in this community don't want.

Speaker 2 They work very hard and they're very happy that they have this pathway to be in America now. I think most people that come here come here because they want a better life for their families.

Speaker 2 And America is essentially a country that was founded by immigration.

Speaker 2 I'm a grandchild of immigrants.

Speaker 2 I'm here because of immigration.

Speaker 1 We all were.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is an immigrant country, essentially.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it's like, it's again, and like

Speaker 1 the Haitians, the Haitians, you know, that they're referencing in Ohio and Springfield, I mean, they're not eating dogs, they're not eating pets and those kinds of things. Now, it's reasonable.

Speaker 1 I mean, I've said the same thing that we have to have a secure border, but it didn't even apply to that situation. That was all a legal situation.
That was

Speaker 1 amnestity, excuse me.

Speaker 1 And that's because Haiti was

Speaker 1 terrible. Yeah, a terrible situation.
Terrible situation. And to me, they were doing those jobs.
And Republicans, even

Speaker 1 the Republican governor was saying, like, these are good workers. And this is not the problem.
They aren't eating geese.

Speaker 1 And it's just like, you can be very pro, pro-border, like I am, or you can be very, you know, strict on immigration, but you don't have to demonize or try to turn a group of people in that they're eating your dog.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 2 they're eating ducks and eating things. Look, I'm sure some people have done that.

Speaker 2 You know why I know that? Because some people do that in places that are just Americans. Ducks are edible.
And some people want to eat a duck. And it's just, like, you're not going to stop it.

Speaker 2 But that's not the major problem that people face. So this is the pro side of it, right? The pro side of it is you give a pathway to people that are from very unfortunate circumstances.

Speaker 2 And I think we would both agree that if we were living in those countries and there was a pathway to citizenship in the United States, all you had to do was make it across the border.

Speaker 2 We we would both do it.

Speaker 2 If it was better for our families, it was better for our future, if we were living in a place that had no hope and no future, and all you had to do is make it to America and you could work.

Speaker 2 We would all do it. I would do it.
You would do it. I bet everybody listening to this would do it if they found themselves in that circumstance.
That's the best aspect of it.

Speaker 2 The best aspect of it is... Good people that are ambitious, that want a better life, which is how this country was founded.

Speaker 2 The worst aspect of it is Venezuelan gangs that are taking over apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado, and San Antonio, Texas. That's the worst aspect of it is that they're letting in gang members.

Speaker 2 Venezuela's emptied out their prisons and essentially, according to the president of the-Mario boatlift, you know, the whole right, what happened in Cuba. Yeah, the same kind of deal.

Speaker 2 Emptying out their prisons and instructing these people to make it to America. This is a significant problem with the open border.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and that's why we need a secure border. And there's also, and all of this is about a truth, is that America is a beacon to the world.

Speaker 1 Millions of people.

Speaker 1 The demand to become a citizen here or to participate in our amazing society, the demand outstrips the space there. And we're already the very pro-immigration.

Speaker 1 We allow more kinds of a path more than any other nations in the world on that. And people are willing to die and they put themselves at risk just to kind of get here, to be able to participate here.

Speaker 1 So America isn't the problem.

Speaker 1 America is one of the great hopes in the world. And that's why so many people want to come be a part of that.
And that's why it has to have an effective border.

Speaker 1 And it's like, if, you know, we had a real issue here, and we wanted to address that. And that's why, you know,

Speaker 1 my former professor said that you're never going to have the kind of a deal because it is useful for both sides to weaponize that and to demonize one side.

Speaker 1 or turn the other thing in there because it's a serious important issue.

Speaker 2 It's a political talking point that they're always going to use. That's what you're saying.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's useful. I mean,

Speaker 1 it's weaponized. And that's why you have to have an honest conversation.
And that's the thing I've always, you know,

Speaker 1 I was reaching out saying that was referred to HR1, and that was like kind of like the dream kind of immigration law coming out of the House.

Speaker 1 And I was like, hey, if that border deal goes down, then it's like, hey, we should continue to have that conversation.

Speaker 1 It's like

Speaker 1 they're parts.

Speaker 2 But what's contradictory is that, say, if you're coming from Canada or Europe and you're a highly skilled college educated person who wants to live in America and become a United States citizen, the path to citizenship is incredibly difficult.

Speaker 1 It's hard.

Speaker 2 You have to go up for review. You have to show that you're doing something that Americans can't do.
You have to be a person of significant talent or ability.

Speaker 2 There's something about you that we want you in here.

Speaker 2 Yet, if you just make it across the border and walk in, people want to give you amnesty and they want to allow you a path to citizenship quickly without any of those hoops.

Speaker 2 You don't have to take tests. You don't have to go up for review.

Speaker 2 Not only that, but once you get here, once you apply for amnesty, there's a significant wait period where you're allowed to maintain your residence in this country.

Speaker 2 It's between seven and sometimes longer years.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, yeah, we have to figure out what's the way to do it.

Speaker 2 Well, that's kind of crazy, though, isn't it?

Speaker 1 But the fact is, we have an issue. We have millions of people here, and

Speaker 1 the vast majority of them are living legal kinds of lives.

Speaker 2 What would you do if you were the president? Let's imagine President Fetterman has to deal with this issue. You want to address the American people.
What do you think should be done?

Speaker 1 Aaron Powell, again, having that, I would have the same conversation to the Congress and to the American people like I'm having right now as well, too.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, I think it's two things can be true at the same time. You can be very pro-immigration.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't have the beautiful family that I have if it wasn't for challenges and issues with immigration.

Speaker 1 But then we have to figure out a way that we can marry

Speaker 1 a successful way that we can combine.

Speaker 1 I personally, I do think immigration is really one of our secret weapons. I think that's what makes America so strong.
I agree with you. Yeah, I do.
That's made it.

Speaker 2 Ambitious people want a better life. I mean, that's literally how we're founded.

Speaker 1 I mean, do you see people trying

Speaker 1 to live illegally in India or Russia? You don't see people trying to speak into nations like that? I mean, that's a good point. I mean, in some sense, it's in a weird way, it's

Speaker 1 kind of a

Speaker 1 significant but a good problem to have because

Speaker 1 we're such an amazing nation.

Speaker 1 Agreed.

Speaker 1 But if I'm President Federal, I'm like, hey, we've got to figure this out. We've got to figure this out.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to demonize the Republicans and say that you're a xenophobic.

Speaker 1 I mean, the second you start calling somebody you're a xenophobic, it's like, well, then the conversation is going to shut shut down.

Speaker 1 And I'm saying,

Speaker 1 it's like

Speaker 1 a serious conversation requires serious people.

Speaker 1 And the second, the second, and that's when you talk about unlimited money. And it's like suddenly you're like, I mean,

Speaker 1 I had gigantic billboards saying Fetterman equals, you know, open borders and Federman, you know, like, it's just like, you know, I get turned into, you know, like.

Speaker 2 A Marxist.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Just all these kinds of things.
And it's just like, and of course that was never true.

Speaker 1 And then when I had the opportunity, because, you know, as I'm a senator and we have that kinds of legislation in front of me, I'm like, yes, we need to.

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Speaker 1 They have serious ones. And now people are like, we're shocked.
They're like, oh, wait a minute. I thought they told us that he was all like border in, opening up and whatever.
And it's just not true.

Speaker 2 Well, that's the problem with people building a fake narrative around your actual opinions. And I think people have been shocked by you.

Speaker 2 And we've actually talked about it on the podcast over the last couple of years. You say very reasonable things, very reasonable, honest things.

Speaker 1 That's the thing. But it's rare for politicians.

Speaker 1 I'm eager to talk to anyone. And it's like,

Speaker 1 I mean, I was thrilled to be here, and I've been a longtime fan of yours.

Speaker 1 Thank you. And it's like, these are the kinds of,

Speaker 1 you know, like we've parts of the times we become too fragile. You know, like, oh, they're not allowed to talk about those things.
You're not allowed to have these kinds of conversations.

Speaker 1 I never understood why that

Speaker 1 that's that's really a problem. But

Speaker 1 but it's like when people discover it, it's like, well, hey, he seems to be kind of reasonable. Or me, I disagree with some things, but he's not what $100 million

Speaker 1 trained me to think that that's what's true about it.

Speaker 2 Right, the propaganda. So, like, what do you think could be done if you were President Fetterman? Let's bring it back to that.
What would you do about the border?

Speaker 2 Like, how do you secure the border, but also allow a pathway for people to pursue their hopes and dreams in the United States?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I would, I would have, you know, for me, I would have started with the HR2.

Speaker 1 And there are elements that are just not palatable to, there are members of my colleagues that, you know, they come from, you know, more, more deep blue states.

Speaker 1 And that becomes, it's not palatable to some people.

Speaker 2 How do you secure the border? How would that be done?

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, it's, it just, it's got to have, it has, you know, the best border deal

Speaker 1 is the only one that can pass. And it's, you know,

Speaker 1 HR2, HR2 was described as like kind of like, you know, I joke, I call that the only fans list of what Republicans want for immigration. Why is it? The only fans wish list.

Speaker 1 You know, they're kind of like, this is what we all want. You know, it's like the only fans,

Speaker 1 this is what we want.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 that was never going to pass. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 1 That was never going to pass. That was never going to pass.

Speaker 1 That was like what every Republicans on the House, you know, the hardliners,

Speaker 1 that's what it was. And they passed it because in this cycle, the Republicans have the majority in the House.
And now they put that up.

Speaker 1 And that's never going to pass in the Senate because we have control. And then that kind of got

Speaker 1 sidelined. And then when everything kind of came together, and that was the aid deal, that was for Ukraine, for Israel, and for China.
A lot of other stuff.

Speaker 1 And then the Republicans tied the border to passing that.

Speaker 1 And there were some people that were frustrated saying, hey, no, no,

Speaker 1 that's not.

Speaker 2 Well, that's one of the more frustrating things about bills, is that you can take a bill about an issue, say energy or whatever, immigration, and attach a bunch of other stuff, like support for foreign aid, support for specific wars or whatever it is.

Speaker 2 You could throw a bunch of stuff in there that really shouldn't be in there. And then you have these bills that are 2,000 pages long and no one's really reading them.

Speaker 1 I thought, well, I thought it was reasonable. I thought it was reasonable to have that conversation.
I'm like, yeah, let's have that conversation.

Speaker 1 I mean, because for me, it was about security.

Speaker 1 And for that aid bill, that was, for me, and I think

Speaker 1 that was our global war on democracy. Right.
You know, whether it's Ukraine or whether it's in Israel and China and clearly what their intent for China is on Taiwan. And all that's coming.

Speaker 1 And that's really what's under assault. It's undeniable that democracy is under attack.
And that's why I'm like, hey, we got to stand and we got to push back against that.

Speaker 1 And now, and like, hey, we need to have a secure border. So let's put everything together.
And we reached that. We actually reached that.
And it took months. It literally took months.

Speaker 2 But give me your utopian version of it. Like, let's assume that you could just get this passed.
What would you do?

Speaker 2 What would you do to secure the border, but also provide a pathway to people that want a better life?

Speaker 1 It's only going to have to be a negotiating way that's palatable to both sides.

Speaker 2 I understand that, but what would you do if you knew you could just get something through without this negotiation? What do you think could be done? What's the best version of it?

Speaker 2 What's the utopian version for John Fetterman?

Speaker 1 Well, again, I think eventually, if you are living your best lives and you're following the law and you're, you know, and you really just showed up because, hey, I have no path

Speaker 1 for a life that I would want for my kids.

Speaker 1 And to me, that's very American. And remember

Speaker 1 what's inside the Statue of Liberty. It's like, send us

Speaker 1 our tired, huddled masses, too.

Speaker 1 It wasn't just, hey, send in the PhDs and

Speaker 1 those kinds of things. I mean, that's what really made our nation.
And the steel industry, the steel industry,

Speaker 1 in my part of the state, that came from, it was European. It was all kinds of immigrants.
They all came in. They couldn't build the houses fast enough.
And that was all foreign labor.

Speaker 1 And a lot of them were sacrificed because it was an incredibly dangerous business in the steel industry.

Speaker 1 And that built our nation and that became part of our society. And that's really every kinds of wave

Speaker 1 in that. And to me, America has to be open and a path for anyone.
that's playing by the rules because the group that you're from or the part of, you all started the same kind of a process.

Speaker 1 It's inevitable.

Speaker 1 That's the enduring truth. And that's what made America special and that

Speaker 1 make us strong.

Speaker 2 I agree with you. So but what could physically be done to secure the border?

Speaker 2 I mean, the wall was sort of dismissed during the Trump administration, but it was also discussed during the Obama administration.

Speaker 2 Even Bill Clinton talked about the importance of having secure borders. What could be done physically to secure the border?

Speaker 1 Yeah, well,

Speaker 1 again, because

Speaker 1 that becomes like a third rail. We can't talk about this or

Speaker 2 let's just, I understand that politically, but let's just assume that that's not an issue. What would you want to do?

Speaker 1 It's like I would want to make sure that we first we have to acknowledge the truth.

Speaker 1 It's like immigration has been an issue because America is an amazing country and they're coming from broken countries where they've all recognized that there's not a meaningful path for them to have a quality of life.

Speaker 1 And they're willing to risk their lives. And sometimes they even drown.
And it's like, I can't imagine turning, turning, like, could you imagine turning your children over to a coyote?

Speaker 1 And, you know, they're going to, you know, go, like, like, if you're trying to leave, imagine, I like, hey, in Pennsylvania, it's like walking to North Carolina with your kids on your back.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's like, these are desperate kinds of situations.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't an invasion in that sense. It was just people wanting to have a part of the American dream.
100%. And acknowledging where that's at, and it needs to have a path.

Speaker 1 Otherwise, you're going to have to round up, and that's not realistic, and there's not the resources, and that's going to be incredibly disruptive, and it's going to be damaging economically as well.

Speaker 2 So, how do you provide a pathway while also

Speaker 1 secured in my respect?

Speaker 2 How do you provide a pathway while also securing the border?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 to me, I think we can

Speaker 1 chew gum and walk at the same time on this. And it's not going to be perfect.
It's going to be messy. And it's not going to be.

Speaker 1 Right, but what would that look like?

Speaker 1 Whether

Speaker 1 it's actually a barrier or hiring thousands and thousands of more agents and whatever that it takes on that.

Speaker 1 And it's like the best border deal in that situation is the best one

Speaker 1 that can pass. Right.
Because otherwise,

Speaker 1 boy, if I could wake up with a perfect head of hair or I could, it's like, you know, but it's like, you know,

Speaker 1 practicing the possible. And we were as close as we've ever game in years and years.
And that never came

Speaker 1 into.

Speaker 2 I understand what you're saying, that it has to pass. But what I'm saying is, imagine that wasn't the case.
What could be done?

Speaker 2 Like, if we could all agree, we could put politics aside and say, you know what? Everything John Fetterman is saying makes total sense. We have to put

Speaker 2 we do need a pathway for these people. It is a beautiful part of America.

Speaker 2 The reason why people come here in the first place is because it's the land of opportunity, but yet we also have to keep Venezuelan gangs and prisoners from coming across and murderers and gang members and cartels.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and we have to weed them out. And

Speaker 1 we have to deport them.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. It's like this isn't.

Speaker 2 So how do you find them and how do you deport them?

Speaker 2 What's up? How do you find them and how do you deport them?

Speaker 1 Well, again, that's just like

Speaker 1 taking some kind of an inventory of who's actually here on this. And we have to figure out who's actually here on those kinds of a thing.

Speaker 1 And there are going to be, you know, statistically, that's a fact that out of X million people, for example, you know, it's a fact that statistically that some

Speaker 1 things terrible things are going to be perpetrated by those things.

Speaker 1 And, you know, statistically,

Speaker 1 in some sense, that Native Americans,

Speaker 1 not the

Speaker 1 American citizens,

Speaker 1 and the criminality, if anything, the criminality is slightly higher

Speaker 1 in immigration communities as well. And some of the most pro-pro-American kinds of views

Speaker 1 that's projected in those kinds of communities. I mean, just like the community that brought my wife and their family to this country.
country.

Speaker 1 And that's kind of where we're at. And I think what we're seeing now in this cycle, there are more and more Latinos that are, you know, they're changing their views on some of those.

Speaker 1 They're like, hey,

Speaker 1 we do need a secure border on that. It's not necessarily assumed that because you are a member of a demographic that

Speaker 1 it's not necessarily consistent that it's going to be strong blue kinds of.

Speaker 2 Well, we all want safety, right?

Speaker 2 We all want safety. We all want to minimize crime.

Speaker 1 Everyone. Of course.
Everyone.

Speaker 2 Of course, yeah. So you want a secure border to keep criminals from coming over here.

Speaker 2 That's

Speaker 2 the major impediment.

Speaker 1 Of course. And a secure border with more and more resources put on that.

Speaker 1 And that makes it, but it's impossible to make sure that, of course, you're going to have members of the immigration community that are going to commit kinds of terrible kinds of crimes.

Speaker 1 And you're going to see, and those are going to be. talked about in the popular media as well.
It's undeniable. And I mean, they're incredibly tragic, and

Speaker 1 it's a fact. And that's actually the truth of the American story.
Immigration made our nation, and there were hard truths, and we have a hard truth right now, and we need to have a secure border.

Speaker 1 And we have to find a way to celebrate our immigrations and the kinds of what immigrations and the contributions that they made to this nation, and also to weed out or to minimize the kinds of negative kinds of things and those kinds of resources, because we can't possibly support an unchecked kinds of a situation that we had.

Speaker 1 And I described that. If you had 300,000 people showing up at the border, well, that's the side of Pittsburgh, you know, in a month.
Like, where are they going to go?

Speaker 1 You know, how are we going to give them an American dream already? Because they're all going to need to use certain kinds of resources.

Speaker 1 And that should never be controversial to say it's like we can't, that's not sustainable.

Speaker 1 And it's like, if we want for every immigrant their American dream, it's impossible if it's unchecked like that. And it shouldn't be controversial

Speaker 1 to anyone politically.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, no, it's just reasonable. What you're saying is reasonable.

Speaker 2 What could be done, and who do you think is going to do a better job to boost our economy?

Speaker 1 Well, I think it's undeniable, too. And,

Speaker 1 you know, I'm certainly not going to discount some of the experience of some people that have been hit by eggs or other things or inflation.

Speaker 1 But right now,

Speaker 1 our economy right now, it's really the world's envy throughout all those things. By any metric, it's our unemployment, the stock market,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 the hundreds of thousands of new jobs that are being created throughout all those things. And our inflation now has been kind of eased back into check.
But it's undeniable that there was an incredible

Speaker 1 inflation that hit certain kinds of families hard through those things.

Speaker 1 And I think that the next kinds of wave, whether it's AI or those other kinds of innovations, whether that it's green energy or those kinds of a thing, that's going to continue to juice

Speaker 1 our

Speaker 1 economy.

Speaker 2 Well, AI is a big fear, right? Because AI is going to come with automation and automation is going to come with removing jobs.

Speaker 1 That is a challenge. On my walk here, well, I didn't walk here, but I saw a Waymo.
A Waymo drove by me, and I'm like, wait a minute, there's no one in there.

Speaker 2 No one in there there was no one in that car did you see that that's the first time traffic jam yeah that's the first time i've ever seen a car uh and had literally no human was in that vehicle and i was like wow there's a bunch of them around austin and there was a traffic jam in austin where they all got together to hit an intersection and no one knew what to do yeah because all the robots were just like clogging up this intersection.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 like we, a lot of that came from Pittsburgh, too. And you would see those kinds of cars, but it always had a human in there.

Speaker 1 But that was the first time I I saw like a robot car driving around in Austin. And yes, that creates, there's a lot of dislocation that's possible.

Speaker 2 And that's just the beginning. It's going to be shipping.
It's going to be truckers. I mean, that was a big issue with the longshoremen and the Teamsters that were going to go on strike.

Speaker 2 Yeah, please have some more water.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Welcome.

Speaker 2 I mean, that was a big part of one of their demands was that they see what's going on in China.

Speaker 2 They see that they're using automation to completely control shipping yards, that it's all done with machines and computers now. And this is going to displace a lot of people.

Speaker 2 This is something that Andrew Yang talked about in depth when he was running for president because he was talking about the need for some kind of universal basic income to provide people with money and food and housing because jobs are going to be non-existent in a lot of different sectors, a lot of different markets, a lot of different things that have traditionally been done done by people, specifically driving.

Speaker 2 Driving is going to be a gigantic one. It's all going to be done by computers.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I mean,

Speaker 1 universal guaranteed income.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure. I don't know, because you're going to have to have, that's a lot of resources to provide a lot of that.
And that creates all kinds of other issues and dynamic. But

Speaker 1 I'm not afraid of technology, but... It's also acknowledging that there are going to be kinds of changes in those things.

Speaker 1 And I'm a big believer in technology takes us into a more productive kinds of economy and they're going to help solve some of the challenges that we have in our society

Speaker 1 for those kinds of things but I think we have to find the perfect balance that we we don't stifle innovation but we also but we also have to remember that there are going to be people that might be left behind or they're not they're going to struggle I mean hey I'm I was mayor for 13 days and I live in a community that was left behind by some of those things and now the steel workers the steel workers I live across the street from the steel mill.

Speaker 1 And then it was announced that Nippon was buying U.S. steel.
And basically all those steel workers were, they were done.

Speaker 1 You know, they used euphemism saying, well, we're going to honor current label, excuse me, labor deals. That's a euphemism saying as soon as that's up, you're done.
Right.

Speaker 1 And then that's going to be, you know, thousands of union jobs. And if you think it's going to be easy for those men and women to pull down six figures or those kinds of an income.

Speaker 1 It's like, you know, how

Speaker 1 insensitive to say, well, hey, learn coding or whatever. It's like, well, hey, it's no, it's not.

Speaker 2 Coding's useless anyway. When AI, learning to code is going to be useless.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. That's how quickly things change.

Speaker 1 It's basically kind of like a fuck you, like good luck kind of thing.

Speaker 2 Well, it's a dumb fuck you, too, because even when they said learn to code, like that was like, you know, they're saying you can learn to five.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to learn how to read it.

Speaker 2 But here's the thing. Even if you did, that's how quickly things change.

Speaker 2 Even if you did, now they're telling kids learning coding in universities is not necessarily going to be a pathway to a job because all coding is going to be done by artificial intelligence.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, but, you know, they never even told us that they were going to sell that.
And then

Speaker 1 a staffer sent me a picture on CNN saying that they're selling UST. And I'm like, fuck that.

Speaker 1 And so I just went up on my roof and I had a video saying, hey, I promise I'm going to do anything I can to jam that up. And it's like, that's what we did.
And we worked with the White House.

Speaker 1 And then suddenly all of that got jammed up.

Speaker 1 And suddenly, I'm so surprised, wink on wink, but Nippon found extra billions of dollars to make the kinds of upgrades to secure a future for those facilities in the Mon Valley.

Speaker 1 And to me, it's about following the union way of life. You know, to me, steel is national security.
And to me, if you turn your back on the working union families, I mean, it's like this,

Speaker 1 those are really hard to replace those things.

Speaker 1 And so for me, two things are true at the same time. You know, our economy has evolved.

Speaker 1 But when we have an opportunity to stand for the union way of life and we can't ever just outsource, you know, our steel industry like that, I refuse to do that.

Speaker 1 So, and that's why we're in that situation right now, that it's like, hey, it's like that that's what's true about some of these industries.

Speaker 2 One of the things that I was reading that was really crazy, and I'd love to find out how much of this is accurate, Jamie.

Speaker 2 One of the things was this guy was explaining how scrap metal in the United States is shipped to China, where they make things with it instead of making things here.

Speaker 2 Because, and then we buy what they make with our scrap metal, which seems to me kind of insane.

Speaker 2 The death of American manufacturing is a significant problem that we faced. And it was really highlighted during COVID, right?

Speaker 2 Where there wasn't ships coming in because everything was kind of locked down for a while. And people realized, like, hey, so much of what we need, particularly computer chips and

Speaker 2 medicine, so much of what we need is being made overseas.

Speaker 1 I agree. And then that's why, you know, Congress came together and

Speaker 1 President Biden led the whole chips, the whole chips, you know, legislation. And it's like,

Speaker 1 we got to make shit in America.

Speaker 1 And it's like, of course, the future is in those kinds of industries and those things. So

Speaker 1 we have to protect the American economy for that thing.

Speaker 1 And that's why that's a bipartisan kinds of

Speaker 1 a push for that.

Speaker 1 And COVID, that relieved a lot of

Speaker 1 vulnerabilities.

Speaker 1 It's like, where are a lot of these things come from?

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 going forward on that it's like we can never just surrender that American manufacturing we can't assume and we can't allow that to turn completely outsourced no it's it would be horrible and it would be nice to bring things back and it's also you know one of the things we've been discussing a lot is that so many of the things that we need today like particularly phones are being made in an unethical way like where we would never allow the working conditions that exist in in these factories overseas where American corporations are having their products made in a way that you would never legally be able to do in America, and yet they're doing this just to make more money.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I mean, let's also talk about rare, rare, rare, rare, rare earth minerals.

Speaker 1 The Chinese have strategically just snapped up that markets. I mean, that's really, that's a significant security issue.

Speaker 1 We're going to have to address that. And thankfully, we have identified some large deposits.
I think it was Nevada.

Speaker 1 But rare earth kinds of minerals.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's a a serious security issue because the new economy and a lot of the new technology is going to depend on those kinds of incredibly, I think a lot of kinds of minerals that some people have never even heard in their life, have no idea what that even, why that's important.

Speaker 2 Right. And then oil as well.
I mean, we have significant oil reserves in the United States. Apparently, we have more oil than other countries do.
It's just a matter of accessing it.

Speaker 1 So are you in favor favor of drilling for oil and fracking and all these different things to yeah 100% and and that that that that's uh that that's what's also true uh is especially what happened after uh uh after um Russia in invaded.

Speaker 1 And it was very clear that uh Europe had have Russians kind of by the shorthairs that a lot of their Europe was they were dependent on some of the Russian gas.

Speaker 1 That's a fact too. And you know,

Speaker 1 it's also what's true is that fossil fuels are part of our energy stack. You know, our energy has to evolve, whether that's hydrogen or nuclear.
Now, even nuclear, that conversation is re-emerging.

Speaker 1 You know, I grew up in South Pennsylvania. Maybe you've heard of

Speaker 1 Three Island.

Speaker 2 Sure, Three Mile Island.

Speaker 1 I had to evacuate when that happened.

Speaker 2 I was nine.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I had to evacuate. Wow.
Because

Speaker 1 they could have turned, you know, we could have never returned. I mean, that was really tense.
Now they're reopening that because

Speaker 1 Microsoft is going to buy the electricity because now that's going to be nuclear

Speaker 1 to run

Speaker 1 the data centers and those things. It's an important conversation.
So if you are committed, and I think it's, you know, I do believe

Speaker 1 that you really have to make sure that nuclear is part of that conversation too, because, you know,

Speaker 1 zero kinds of emissions, and that's dependable kinds of energy that doesn't depend on the wind or the sun. But ironically, some people pretend that you have to have a conversation.

Speaker 1 So, but you know, for the foreseeable future, that fossil fuels are part of our stack. And for me,

Speaker 1 energy security is

Speaker 1 very important.

Speaker 1 You know, national security. I mean, like, if

Speaker 1 we can't power our economy, then it's going to it's a significant risk for our economy and our American way. And

Speaker 1 now we, I think we're a net exporter of energy.

Speaker 1 So I think that's a good thing.

Speaker 1 I think that's a great way to be.

Speaker 1 And it's being honest about that and the path forward.

Speaker 1 And I think

Speaker 1 everything has to be on the table because we have to have a portfolio that produces the kinds of energy that we're going to need to power our economy.

Speaker 2 Another significant issue that a lot of people are concerned about is government interference in online censorship. And

Speaker 2 what was exposed during the Twitter files, that the FBI had contacted the original owners of Twitter and prevented that or instructed them that the Hunter Biden laptop was rushing disinformation, was trying to get certain accounts banned that were talking about COVID vaccines and the dangers of side effects and what the actual research was showing.

Speaker 2 And that this was a significant interference in the First Amendment and that these corporations that were running these social media companies were being directly influenced by the federal government.

Speaker 2 And they were using this power to silence people from speaking out against certain things.

Speaker 2 This is very concerning to a lot of people.

Speaker 2 This idea that the government would infringe on our ability to be whistleblowers, to expose issues that have been hidden from the American people because of greed and money and politics.

Speaker 2 What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 1 Well, of course. I mean,

Speaker 1 I'm a free speech kind of person.

Speaker 1 And I think social media

Speaker 1 is kind of difficult to control.

Speaker 1 There's a difference between misinformation or just outright lying, or it's an agenda of a foreign nation that's trying to sow all these kinds of sentiments and those kinds of

Speaker 1 things. And

Speaker 1 it's kind of difficult to police all those things. And it's a lot of, it's an ongoing kind of

Speaker 1 situation.

Speaker 1 But I'm always going to try to err on the side of free speech. And then there's incredibly more and more kinds of platforms, just like one I'm on right now, talking about these kinds of things.

Speaker 1 And I'm not, you know, clutching my pearls if there's having conversations that I may or may not agree or disagree on what's being talked about those things.

Speaker 1 But I think people are also, there's also a level of responsibility to be, you know, to discern what you're hearing.

Speaker 1 It's like, you know, I think that's true, or I think that's trash, or it's like those kinds of things. And just because always asking myself, in what I'm read, is that just true?

Speaker 1 Or is there a perspective? Where is it coming from? Who's behind those kinds of a thing?

Speaker 1 So, I mean, it's a difficult kind of, what's the appropriate kind of balance, but it's absolutely, it's also a fact that there are bad actors behind some of those kinds of conversations or some of those kinds of misinformation as well, too.

Speaker 1 And absolutely, incitement, incitement is not free speech.

Speaker 1 Encouraging people

Speaker 1 for violence or those kinds of a thing.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a dangerous thing. It's

Speaker 2 dangerous, yeah.

Speaker 2 But what the fear is that the government was interfering when you had 51 former intelligence agents that were testifying that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation when it seems pretty clear that they knew that to not be true and that Twitter actually listened to these people and they did block that and it did probably have a significant impact on the 2020 election.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, but the other thing that had a significant impact was in 2020,

Speaker 1 I forget his name, but he had to investigate Clinton's about the English.

Speaker 2 Come here.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like, you know, two weeks out. That was like the ultimate October surprise as well.
Right. And that, undeniable, that had a significant impact as well, too.

Speaker 2 That was a 2016.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it absolutely did as well, too. So, I mean, that's why there's both sides and they have agendas to suppress some kinds of a thing or to bring something to the front.

Speaker 1 And it's undeniable that it can have an impact on that as well, too. I never went down either of those rabbit holes, whether it was the Clinton emails or if it was the Hunter Biden's kind of laptop.

Speaker 1 But it hasn't really changed overall the dynamic that in our cycles, the last three cycles, it's really about, for me, it's about a referendum on what we want, a vision for America.

Speaker 1 Is it a Trump kinds of a vision or do we have an alternative? And I've always been very clear. It's going to be incredibly close and it's going to be incredibly at times very divisive.

Speaker 1 And here we are now and it's still back to a coin toss.

Speaker 1 And I've always predicted that it would be, you know, even back to 2016 because, you know, we're really going to have a lot settled out before this election.

Speaker 1 It's going to take America in a very two stark and distinctive kinds of directions.

Speaker 2 What do you think about Elon Musk's idea of creating a government efficiency agency?

Speaker 1 Well, hey, I flagged

Speaker 1 when Musk, when Musk got involved,

Speaker 1 I flagged that. Anyone can look online, I can say that.
It's like, well, you know, endorsements

Speaker 1 and surrogacy doesn't really mount for much. It doesn't count for much a lot, and sometimes.
But

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 that was a significant,

Speaker 1 and he's getting involved and he's showing up at those kinds of uh of events i mean you know in some sense i've said this publicly that he's even a bigger kinds of star than than trump can be and for some people in pennsylvania like that's tony stark right he's involved in undeniably kinds of of important things like space x or he was one of the uh original uh

Speaker 1 charter he was in the charter of open ia

Speaker 1 he was involved in that too uh I mean, that's significant. And I don't agree with

Speaker 1 some of his views on politics, but it's undeniable that he can move the needle in some sense of convince some people that it's like, hey, if he says that he's the right choice for president, that

Speaker 1 that's going to resonate

Speaker 1 in some circles in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 And I've warned that.

Speaker 1 And acknowledging it,

Speaker 1 it's just like, hey,

Speaker 1 I know people and they admire him, and you may not agree with his politics, but you really, it's impossible to ignore that he is going to have a level of

Speaker 1 impact on that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But what do you think about the idea of trying to make the government more efficient and that this hasn't been audited before?

Speaker 1 I mean, of course,

Speaker 1 I'm open to any kinds of ideas and all those kinds of a thing, on all of that.

Speaker 1 One side doesn't have a monopoly on good ideas ideas or important kinds of issues that

Speaker 1 are matter to them. So,

Speaker 1 and it's like the choices and the kinds of things and how he's chosen to participate, especially and very personally in Pennsylvania. I'm like, hey, here's where we are.

Speaker 1 That's part of the dynamic here. You know, calling it out and acknowledging that.
I'm not moving against that. I'm not criticizing whatever.
It's just like, hey, it's happening.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 and that, I think that's part of why things continue to get tighter. And

Speaker 1 that's kind of

Speaker 1 where we are.

Speaker 2 Well, I think what a lot of people are excited about with Trump is this possibility of change. The Elon Musk edition is one of them, or RFK Jr.
is another one.

Speaker 2 This idea of making America healthy again, removing additives from foods that have shown to be toxic, that are illegal in other countries.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is, I think, a significant issue that shouldn't be a partisan issue. This should be something that we all should be concerned with.

Speaker 2 Why do we have ingredients in our food that is illegal in a bunch of European countries because they found out that these things are dangerous?

Speaker 1 I agree.

Speaker 1 Go to McDonald's and like the UK.

Speaker 1 The French fries has three ingredients, potatoes, salt, and I think maybe oil. And look at what's in America's side on that.
It's much different.

Speaker 1 I support that. But if anything, if anything, more of, and I know your city that we're in now, Austin has an amazing food kinds of scene.
And again, again,

Speaker 1 if anything, more of the crunchy, more liberal side, we're on part of the whole organic kinds of a thing and more impurity and things. I don't think that's an issue.

Speaker 1 And honestly, I don't think that that's going to be the kind of mantle that somebody like RFK Jr., that's not his.

Speaker 1 So I think having a more pure and safe and abundant kinds of food in our country, I absolutely support that. And

Speaker 1 I'm selective

Speaker 1 what I

Speaker 1 feed my children. I mean, when we were, were, you know, when I was a kid, it was like Velveeta, you know, like, hey, now we have real cheese.

Speaker 1 Or, did you ever have like ecto cooler, like that green, like antifreeze kind of color of high-sea?

Speaker 1 And some of the kinds of foods that we had when I was a kid, um, that would be unthinkable, kinds of now. And I think, I think the quality of our food and kinds of more impure,

Speaker 1 I think that's been an ongoing conversation. Uh, and uh, organic can't become elitist.

Speaker 1 It can't be too expensive. And I fully support making it more and more

Speaker 1 pure and more safe on that end. And more available.
And I would absolutely, I would celebrate if I could buy the same French fries that you get in the UK.

Speaker 1 You don't need more than three

Speaker 1 ingredients.

Speaker 2 I have a buddy of mine who lives in Australia, and he came over to America, and he loves quarter pounders in Australia because he said quarter pounders in Australia, it's grass-fed meat that's just fried with cheese and a bun.

Speaker 2 And he said he got a quarter pounder over here. He's like, what the fuck is this? He said, it tastes like shit.
It was just, it was bland and it didn't taste.

Speaker 1 It was taste of Royale with cheese.

Speaker 2 I don't know what they call it in Australia, but he said it's grass-fed beef. You get like, you know, they're not even feeding their cows grain.

Speaker 1 Well, you know, a lot of

Speaker 1 the grass-fed beef

Speaker 1 in our nation are coming from Australia.

Speaker 2 I mean

Speaker 1 yeah that's that's a fact and I'm very pro-pro-American rancher.

Speaker 2 Well not only that it's it's really fucked up because you could make it a product of America if you butcher it here. So if you import cattle from Australia, say,

Speaker 2 and then you bring it to America and then you cut it up and then package it, because you've cut it up and packaged it, it's now a product of America. So you could write that on the label.

Speaker 2 You know, I had Will Harris who runs White Oak Pastures, which is a regenerative farm.

Speaker 2 This guy spent 20 years and untold dollars changing an industrial farm that his family had and turning it into a regenerative farm.

Speaker 2 And in doing so, provided people with a much more natural and healthy choice. And he's also done a great job of exposing these practices.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, grass-fed beef. I mean,

Speaker 1 I think that's very,

Speaker 1 in some sense. I mean,

Speaker 1 that absolutely supports better health. I mean,

Speaker 1 I followed before he even appeared on your podcast,

Speaker 1 Sean Baker. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, like

Speaker 1 carnivore. And, you know, even those kinds of insights helped me personally and allowed me to kind of

Speaker 1 drop some weight through all those things. And, you know, it's like that's an important conversation too.

Speaker 1 It's like, you know, and but but Democrats, some people think that we're declared a war on hamburgers and

Speaker 1 beef, but we're definitely going to lose that. They're going to lose that if that really becomes part of that.
And I

Speaker 2 don't think that's Democrats. I think that's very wealthy people that have a financial interest in feeding people fake meat.
That's what I think it is. And I think they've captured the system.

Speaker 1 I said

Speaker 1 it pains me to agree with DeSantis, you know, because they passed the ban in that in Florida. It pains me to agree with him.
But it's like, I mean,

Speaker 1 I would never feed that slop to my kids when you can buy quality American grass-fed American beef. Like, I mean, that's what I purchased.
I use that at Costco. I buy the three pack of it.
And

Speaker 1 my oldest son, he knows how to prepare his own ribeye. And he

Speaker 1 makes that a part of like a, I think it's like a healthy kinds of diet.

Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 What other issues do you think we should discuss before we wrap this up? Is there anything else that's on your mind that you think is significant that needs to be discussed?

Speaker 1 Oh, well, before you wrap up,

Speaker 1 well, I think we have a situation, whether it's the situation

Speaker 1 on Israel. or

Speaker 1 there's a lot happening about the election right now,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 it's really a strange place in our nation right now.

Speaker 1 But I promise you it's going to be, depending on whenever people hear this conversation, our world's going to be about to change or maybe it has changed.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so I just hope, though, I just hope though that we're going to be able to respond in a way for an order

Speaker 1 kinds of transfer of power and we are going to be heading into a more peaceful and a more productive and collaborative kind of direction throughout that.

Speaker 1 But we're in an incredibly divisible place right now.

Speaker 1 And I just want to be part of a conversation to make sure that we can be more constructive. But right now, we're kind of,

Speaker 1 it's a difficult place right now, and we're coming down to a coin toss election.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I agree. I hope we can all relax and work together cooperatively.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, listen, man, thank you for being here. I really appreciate it.
Thank you for taking the time time to come here and talk. It's been great to get to know you and have a conversation with you.

Speaker 1 No, hey, well, hey, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 As a fan, it's great to kind of visit. And so thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 My pleasure. All right.
Best of luck to you. Thank you.
All right. Bye, everybody.