Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning.
Speaker 2: Breakfast Club.
Speaker 1: Morning.
Speaker 3: Everybody is DJ Envy Charlamagne the guy. We are the
Speaker 3: Breakfast Club. You got a special guest in the building.
Speaker 3: He's back, Vivik Ramaswami. Welcome back.
Speaker 1: It's good to see you. Man.
Speaker 3: I'll say your name right this time.
Speaker 1: Thank you for asking. It's vivec like vivic like cake. Okay, Vivik,
Speaker 1: you got it. Well.
Speaker 3: Last time you were here, you were running for president.
Speaker 3: That's right in that ancient past, ancient past, but six
Speaker 3: days ago.
Speaker 1: Must have been feels like an eternity of this.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, but now your your roles have changing and
Speaker 3: you're no longer running for president.
Speaker 1: That's right. So for people that.
Speaker 3: Don't know, why are you not on that run anymore?
Speaker 3: What made you pull out?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, look, the people of Iowa spoke loud and clear.
Speaker 1: I got about eight percent, which I started at, not
Speaker 1: zero percent, but I started at zero point zero percent
Speaker 1: and we made it to eight percent in Iowa. If
Speaker 1: you looked at who were the second choice to Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and Iowa, so if he weren't on the ballot,
Speaker 1: I would have been number one. But the people spoke
Speaker 1: loud and clear they wanted not only in America first candidate,
Speaker 1: but they wanted the one who they voted for before,
Speaker 1: and they want him to get back in there and
Speaker 1: get that job done. And So for me, the first
Speaker 1: moment that it became clear that I was not going
Speaker 1: to be the next president, you know, absent terrible things
Speaker 1: happening in this country that we don't want to see happen,
Speaker 1: I pulled myself out of the race, gave support to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. And I think that's the right thing for
Speaker 1: the country, is to allow the people of this country
Speaker 1: to make a choice. It's the beauty of our country.
Speaker 1: It's not a monarchy, it's not an autocracy. The people
Speaker 1: of this country get to decide who runs the country.
Speaker 1: And the people spoke loud and clear in Iowa.
Speaker 4: And so that night you said you was number one
Speaker 4: behind Trump.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, among second choice to Trump. So among the
Speaker 1: people who voted for Trump, who would be who would
Speaker 1: be their second choice? That would actually have been me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: America first, right. And I don't use the word Republican anymore.
Speaker 1: I think that label has lost its meaning. I think
Speaker 1: the Republican Party, I think both parties really need to
Speaker 1: rediscover who they are. But the movement that I'm part
Speaker 1: of and that I was aiming to lead, was one
Speaker 1: that says, we put the interests of American citizens first.
Speaker 1: America first includes all Americans, but we put our interests,
Speaker 1: our citizens interests first. Anyway, I got about eight percent
Speaker 1: of the vote. Donald Trump got what well over fifty
Speaker 1: percent of the people who voted for him. Most of
Speaker 1: them would rather see me than anybody else, but they
Speaker 1: were crystal clear about who they wanted to see representing
Speaker 1: that movement and representing this country in the White House.
Speaker 1: And so that night we were prepared to go to
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. I could tell you for a fact we
Speaker 1: were not in the head space to drop out. But
Speaker 1: we saw the results come in, we were going to
Speaker 1: go to the campaign office. Instead, I just took some
Speaker 1: time with my wife. We went we had an apartment
Speaker 1: in Des Moines. We took about twenty five minutes. Try
Speaker 1: to look at it every which way. We're squinting at
Speaker 1: you know, different statistics that would say, okay, here's the
Speaker 1: path forward. Then we just took a step back and said,
Speaker 1: all right, what is what is God's plan here? It
Speaker 1: has revealed itself and it doesn't include me being the
Speaker 1: Republican nominee for US president. Personal money close to thirty
Speaker 1: damn yeah.
Speaker 4: Out of your own potez.
Speaker 2: And so what happens with that money is the tax
Speaker 2: tax right off or it's gone and it's gone. Wow.
Speaker 1: And I've donated, I mean, I've gotten in the habit
Speaker 1: of donating my money to charitable causes over the last
Speaker 1: you know, five years or so. After we've done I mean,
Speaker 1: we've done well in this country. I didn't grow up
Speaker 1: in money, but I also have been pretty clear. I
Speaker 1: think the inheritance we want to give our kids is
Speaker 1: in a bunch of green pieces of paper. We see
Speaker 1: what that has, what that does to people. It's a
Speaker 1: country that is the same one that allowed me to
Speaker 1: live the American dream that I have. And so we
Speaker 1: were looking at this charitably for a while. Is there
Speaker 1: a way to be philanthropic? Is there a way to
Speaker 1: be a political donor? I put all that to one
Speaker 1: side and said, the best way to do this is
Speaker 1: to actually put your effort and put your not just
Speaker 1: your money where your mouth is, but your effort where
Speaker 1: your mouth is. And so the biggest sacrifice we made
Speaker 1: wasn't the money. I mean to take a year doing
Speaker 1: what we did. My wife is the hero of this story.
Speaker 1: To tell you, the truth is she was. She's a
Speaker 1: surgeon at a hive state. She did not compromise on
Speaker 1: her schedule wants. She's one of the few people in
Speaker 1: the country that does a special form of throat surgery
Speaker 1: where most of the people she's treating they haven't swallowed
Speaker 1: food for years. She's one of the few people in
Speaker 1: the country who does a surgery where she can actually
Speaker 1: fix them they can swallow food after years of not
Speaker 1: having swallowed food. And early on in the campaign, I mean,
Speaker 1: we know this is going to be grueling. We looked
Speaker 1: at different options. Should she change her schedule. She was
Speaker 1: pretty firm, and I respect her for it, saying that
Speaker 1: these are people who depend on her for doing what
Speaker 1: she does. But she's going to go all in, side
Speaker 1: by side with me without compromising on her career and
Speaker 1: what she's doing. That's excellent for people that depend on her.
Speaker 1: And we made that work. And so with two kids,
Speaker 1: one is about to be four years old, one is
Speaker 1: about a year and a half old, the sacrifice of
Speaker 1: actually put in the effort in was even I would
Speaker 1: say more significant than the financial investment.
Speaker 4: What's the most you ever lost in just an investment
Speaker 4: in life?
Speaker 1: Oh, the ups and downs on a given day or
Speaker 1: even in a given month would be greater than thirty million,
Speaker 1: just based on how the market goes. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: within the it's within if you look at it. Actually,
Speaker 1: that makes me feel better when you put it that way.
Speaker 1: It's within the margin of error of how it goes.
Speaker 1: But I'm not one of these people that is, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to hoard and figure out how many of the
Speaker 1: green piece of paper can pass on versus what's the
Speaker 1: point of generating wealth if you're not actually using it
Speaker 1: to advance your own convictions? And so if we've gone
Speaker 1: deeper in this race, we were to put more in
Speaker 1: as well. So it wasn't a financial decision, but it
Speaker 1: was a decision that the people of the country had spoken,
Speaker 1: made their well known clearly. There's many ways to change
Speaker 1: the country, and I'm all into yes, what I believe
Speaker 1: is good for the country, and we'll do that. You know,
Speaker 1: whatever way we can going forward.
Speaker 3: This will make money for you. I'm sure you write
Speaker 3: a book. I'm sure you'll be ANALYSTOK.
Speaker 1: I don't really make serious money I've written. I've written
Speaker 1: best selling books. I mean the They're not needle movers
Speaker 1: for me. But I've written books because I care about
Speaker 1: expressing the ideas in there. I don't particularly care to
Speaker 1: monetize this experience. I mean, if you, if you're sitting
Speaker 1: in my shoes, you would sort of understand, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean some people politicians have come out give you,
Speaker 1: you know, give speeches and make a million and a
Speaker 1: half bucks on a given year. We put thirty into
Speaker 1: this campaign without really thinking about it, you know, in
Speaker 1: a big way. And so I'm not I'm not in
Speaker 1: this to monetize the experience. But I do want to
Speaker 1: make sure that what we began, which I do think
Speaker 1: is a different movement outside of the traditional bounds of
Speaker 1: the Republican and Democratic Party, but I believe could be
Speaker 1: a vehicle to unite the country, continues, And so I'm
Speaker 1: not going anywhere. I haven't decided what I'm doing next.
Speaker 3: What's your relationship with Trump?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have a good relationship, mutual respect from time
Speaker 1: actually from time to time, yeah, I mean, especially over
Speaker 1: the course of this campaign. I met him a few
Speaker 1: years ago when I wrote my first book, Wokink. We
Speaker 1: ended up having dinner, and I think, to both of
Speaker 1: our surprise, we actually hit it off. I didn't expect to.
Speaker 1: I don't think he expected to. And so since then
Speaker 1: we've been in touching. Over the course of the campaign,
Speaker 1: we've obviously gotten to know each other pretty well, and
Speaker 1: so I'm going to be as helpful as I can
Speaker 1: to him and.
Speaker 2: Hopefully make sure. Well.
Speaker 1: It's because the public impression of what you see of
Speaker 1: the man, right, it's filtered through the media.
Speaker 4: Public impression.
Speaker 1: So I'll just give you so one of the things
Speaker 1: that struck me well, I mean, I didn't buy that stuff,
Speaker 1: but what I would say is that he's not detail oriented, right,
Speaker 1: Like you get an impression of a guy who's just
Speaker 1: floating out around in the clouds. But the people who
Speaker 1: do the real work must be other people. And that
Speaker 1: first dinner we had, I was actually pleasantly shocked by
Speaker 1: him going into the details of different deals he had done,
Speaker 1: each of the trade deals, and I pressed him back
Speaker 1: and forth just because I wanted to get a feel
Speaker 1: and this guy, definitely on the things he cared about,
Speaker 1: was pretty deep in the details. And I'm a details
Speaker 1: guy too, and so I said, oh, okay, That's interesting, right,
Speaker 1: because the public perception, and this is back you know,
Speaker 1: even before this presidential run, was some guy who was
Speaker 1: running some type of chaotic, bumbling White House didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: have a handle for the details. I'll tell you on
Speaker 1: details relating to US funding of NATO, specific country's obligations,
Speaker 1: one of his trips to South Korea, and the details
Speaker 1: of how he actually negotiated some of our arrangements over there.
Speaker 1: It struck me as a guy who's looking after the
Speaker 1: United States interests like it's his business, which I thought
Speaker 1: was impressive and interesting, and so that made me want
Speaker 1: to continue to at least Okay, this is somebody who
Speaker 1: I can actually converse with over time. I think he
Speaker 1: was probably surprised when I started running for president, but
Speaker 1: I think over the course of the process you running
Speaker 1: each of the candidates, I've gotten to know I would
Speaker 1: say pretty much all of the candidates pretty well. And
Speaker 1: my relationship with Trump has been positive. I think we
Speaker 1: respect each other.
Speaker 4: One more question about your business.
Speaker 2: Are you worried that you know, people hear your political view,
Speaker 2: your ideologies on things, and he think that it'll you
Speaker 2: think it'll impact your business in the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So That's why I stepped down from all of
Speaker 1: my businesses before running for president. I think that so
Speaker 1: this is just me speaking for me, not for anybody else.
Speaker 1: I think if I was elected president, I would have divested,
Speaker 1: And if I ever do become president, I think the
Speaker 1: right thing to do is to divest all of your
Speaker 1: holdings so you're not thinking about what advances your business interest.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking for myself. Yeah, and so I think that
Speaker 1: that's what I would do if I were the president.
Speaker 1: And it also is actually better for your businesses too,
Speaker 1: because one of the things I did even before running
Speaker 1: for president was all the boards I was on either
Speaker 1: stepped off or went on hiatus, nonprofit for profit, across
Speaker 1: the board because I saw this actually happened to me
Speaker 1: a few years ago. So my first book was I
Speaker 1: think I gave it to you last time we were here.
Speaker 1: I can't remember. Woke, Inc. Was my first book. I
Speaker 1: was a biotic CEO here in New York City back then,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was minding my own business, wasn't
Speaker 1: really involved in you know the kind of stuff we're
Speaker 1: talking about today. George Floyd died. There was the demand
Speaker 1: that every CEO, including a demand of me to make
Speaker 1: a statement on behalf of BLM. And you know, I
Speaker 1: looked at the website the Nuclear Family statements. I couldn't
Speaker 1: really get behind dismantling the Nuclear Family structure. I didn't
Speaker 1: think it was the job of a business to be
Speaker 1: waiting into this anyway, and so I decided not to
Speaker 1: make make a statement and said, you know what, our
Speaker 1: business is unified in the pursuit of medicines to treat
Speaker 1: patients who need them. And that actually, surprisingly that statement
Speaker 1: generated a lot of controversy. Multiple advisors to my company
Speaker 1: resigned about six months later. And so back then already
Speaker 1: I had the lesson learned. But either you're going to
Speaker 1: speak your mind freely as a citizen, do it separately
Speaker 1: from your business interests. And so I actually stepped down
Speaker 1: from my job as CEO back then to write that book.
Speaker 1: But for me, that was kind of an early warning anyway,
Speaker 1: that you don't want to mix business and politics. And
Speaker 1: so I stepped down from all my jobs as a CEO,
Speaker 1: stepped off all the boards before running for president. If
Speaker 1: I ever become elected president, were to have become elected president,
Speaker 1: I would have divested across the board voluntarily. And I
Speaker 1: do things a little bit differently than other you know,
Speaker 1: business people might be advised to when they're running for president.
Speaker 4: Do you go back now that you're not running, go back,
Speaker 4: meaning to business? Do you go back on some of
Speaker 4: those boards?
Speaker 2: Do you go back?
Speaker 1: I got to think about it. You know, it's been
Speaker 1: only a few days, and it has been a long time,
Speaker 1: Charlomane since I have been in a position where I
Speaker 1: actually had a clear card, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So I want to take advantage of that and the
Speaker 1: few times I've been in that position before. I can
Speaker 1: be a restless person. But one of the things I've
Speaker 1: learned is taken at least a breath to understand. And
Speaker 1: I'm still you know, collecting and processing everything that happened
Speaker 1: over the last year. I mean as a life experience,
Speaker 1: it's a hell of an experience. I mean, the kind
Speaker 1: of people you've met, the way you've changed as a
Speaker 1: person through this process. I still want to process that
Speaker 1: and land that first before I decide what exactly comes next.
Speaker 1: But I think whatever it is, it's going to be
Speaker 1: focused on having the impact on the country that I
Speaker 1: wanted to have going in and we're going to figure
Speaker 1: out what.
Speaker 2: That is you have to explain something to me, right,
Speaker 2: because when I watched the GOP nominees with the exception
Speaker 2: of Chris Christy, and always thought, how are any of them,
Speaker 2: you know, ever going to beat Trump if they're not
Speaker 2: even willing to challenge Trump? Yeah, anything.
Speaker 1: Well, I will say that I do have about ten
Speaker 1: percent of policy areas where I'm different from Trump, but
Speaker 1: that was that wasn't actually ever going to be the
Speaker 1: difference for me. The case I made to the voters
Speaker 1: was if you like Donald Trump's policies, but you want
Speaker 1: a leader from the next generation, with fresh legs who
Speaker 1: can reach and lead the next generation of Americans, Nobody's
Speaker 1: going to do that. Like I am forty percent of
Speaker 1: our donors to this campaign, and we had whatever six
Speaker 1: figure numbers of small dollar donors. Forty percent of them
Speaker 1: were first time ever donors to the GOP, and most
Speaker 1: of them were young, actually many of them were young.
Speaker 1: And so we're reaching a different generation in a way
Speaker 1: that nobody else in the Republican Party, including Trump, really was,
Speaker 1: And I also do think that's what's going to be
Speaker 1: required to really take our America First movement to the
Speaker 1: next level. So that was the case I made to
Speaker 1: the voters, and I think a lot of people found
Speaker 1: that resident. A lot of people love that who ended
Speaker 1: up voting for Donald Trump anyway, say we love you.
Speaker 1: But for now, this is still Donald Trump's turn to
Speaker 1: get his job done that he wasn't able to get
Speaker 1: done fully the first time around in one term, when
Speaker 1: you know they bogged down as presidency and everything else.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was the clear message from the voters.
Speaker 1: But that was the case that I made. Every other
Speaker 1: candidate had their own, you know, shade of lemonade that
Speaker 1: was slightly different, But for me, it was if you
Speaker 1: want the same basically the same policies. In some ways,
Speaker 1: I'm going far further than Trump did with that America
Speaker 1: First agenda. But if you want the America First of
Speaker 1: the future, then pick the candidate of the future with
Speaker 1: fresh legs coming in from the outside, unencumbered and able
Speaker 1: to reach the next generation. And I would have been
Speaker 1: the youngest president ever elected if elected.
Speaker 4: But why vote for the second rate version of something?
Speaker 1: Why don't think it's second rate?
Speaker 4: The reason I say the second rate is because y'all
Speaker 4: act like.
Speaker 1: You said, the fresh, the fresh version, which y'all.
Speaker 4: Don't act like that though y'all act like Trump is
Speaker 4: keen like, and you'll act.
Speaker 1: Like I disagree with that. Actually, I mean, you saw
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and the late phase of the race. You know,
Speaker 1: we had some we had some healthy friction, and it's competition.
Speaker 1: It's in the heat of competition. But I don't I
Speaker 1: don't bet the need anybody.
Speaker 2: Man, Cause when you look at the numbers in Iowa
Speaker 2: and you see that about half the Republicans did go
Speaker 2: out there and vote for the Santists, voted for Nikki,
Speaker 2: some even you know, voted for you. So clearly there's
Speaker 2: some Republicans looking for something different. But it feels like, yeah,
Speaker 2: everybody was too busy trying to either be Trump's VP
Speaker 2: or buying to be for a position in Trump's cabinet.
Speaker 4: Some of y'all just looked like Trump's lackey.
Speaker 1: So I can't speak for the others.
Speaker 2: So it's hard to look at you as a leader
Speaker 2: if you're moving like a lackey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think I disagree with that characterization. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that the right answer to the bottom line
Speaker 1: is Donald Trump, I think did advance a lot of
Speaker 1: the right policies for this country. He kept us out
Speaker 1: of war and grew the economy. So I don't disagree
Speaker 1: with the policies one bit. But the question is how
Speaker 1: do we actually reunite a country and reach a next
Speaker 1: generation on that basis? And I ran for president because
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to be best positioned to
Speaker 1: do that. Not as anybody's lacking that's some Republican Party
Speaker 1: pawn lackey, not Donald Trump's lackey, not anybody's lackey, but
Speaker 1: as my own man, reaching the next generation, honestly speaking
Speaker 1: hard truths that nobody else was able to speak in
Speaker 1: the campaign. Yes, that's what I was doing in the world. Well,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of I mean you could, you
Speaker 1: could think Chris christ Chris christ So, Chris Christie was
Speaker 1: lobbying Donald Trump and licking his feet about three years ago,
Speaker 1: after Donald Trump's first term.
Speaker 4: He was, and y'all doing a lot of looking at
Speaker 4: the feet.
Speaker 1: That's I disagree with you. That I just I just
Speaker 1: disagree with you. I think it's true for some people.
Speaker 1: I mean, these people have been asking all the politicians
Speaker 1: in this race have been asking for money and endorsements
Speaker 1: for Trump for years and then Monday Morning quarterback, in
Speaker 1: some decision he made you know Chris Christie, he was
Speaker 1: a lobbyist. And by the way, this is a side point.
Speaker 1: I don't think any politician should be allowed to be
Speaker 1: a lobbyist for at least ten years after they've left
Speaker 1: their position in government. But this guy ends up becoming
Speaker 1: a lobbyist on behalf of special pharmaceutical clients in New
Speaker 1: Jersey for coronavirus cash from Donald Trump, licking his feet
Speaker 1: doing his debate prep while lobbying him, and then suddenly
Speaker 1: decides and has an epiphany, this after Trump's first term,
Speaker 1: for God's sake, decides is going to make it a
Speaker 1: shtick to do the to do the anti Donald Trump thing.
Speaker 1: My view is, I've been clear. I love Trump's policies.
Speaker 4: I love policies. His conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: Well, actually, to be clear, a lot of what I've
Speaker 1: actually stated on behalf of my views of what happened,
Speaker 1: the truth of what happened, on a lot of what
Speaker 1: the government has I think suppressed. They're not conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: They're realities that even Donald Trump hasn't touched. So I'm
Speaker 1: speaking with my own convictions what they are. And I'm
Speaker 1: not a political analyst either, right, you guys probably be
Speaker 1: better at that than me. No, maybe you are, but
Speaker 1: that's not my job anyway. I'm sharing my convictions, and
Speaker 1: my whole view of this whole campaign is I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell people who I am and what I stand for,
Speaker 1: and if they want to vote for that, I will
Speaker 1: volunteer to be the next president. And if they don't,
Speaker 1: then I'm not going to be the next president. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put my head on the pillow at night and
Speaker 1: know that I at least shared with you what my
Speaker 1: true convictions actually are.
Speaker 3: Have you told them about being possibly a run of
Speaker 3: meet Have you had that conversation.
Speaker 1: No, I think that we've had an open conversation about
Speaker 1: the fact that I'm in for the country to make
Speaker 1: change in a lot of different ways, you know. I Mean,
Speaker 1: the truth is, I think it's important that everybody know
Speaker 1: what they're getting with me, and I think there's ways
Speaker 1: to drive change in this country that don't just come
Speaker 1: through government. That's what I've been doing my whole career. Anyway. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of speculation out there, and you know,
Speaker 1: if that came up, it would be a serious conversation
Speaker 1: that I'd be willing to have and I'd want to
Speaker 1: make sure that we're on the same page to deliver
Speaker 1: for the country. One of the things I've learned is
Speaker 1: from building businesses is the people who you work with,
Speaker 1: you know, the chemistry between them, alignment on the vision.
Speaker 1: That's really important. And if you have you know, if
Speaker 1: you have a little bit of daylight early on, that
Speaker 1: can become you know, wide open gaps later on in
Speaker 1: the course of building a business. I think it's not
Speaker 1: going to be any different in running the government. So
Speaker 1: I believe that he and I are deeply aligned. But
Speaker 1: I think that if that were a serious conversation, I'd
Speaker 1: want to make sure it was the right choice for him,
Speaker 1: just as it was the right choice for the country
Speaker 1: and for me. And if it was, that's something I
Speaker 1: would be willing to evaluate.
Speaker 4: I read you're not on the short list anymore.
Speaker 1: But I heard him say, y yeah.
Speaker 4: I heard him say he said that y'all would be
Speaker 4: working together for you.
Speaker 1: I think I think that I'm in this for the country,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna do whatever allows me to have maximum
Speaker 1: impact on the country. I believe there's lots of ways
Speaker 1: to have impact in the country that don't come just
Speaker 1: through government service. But that is something that's required right now.
Speaker 1: I do think the government bureaucracy in Washington, DC, what
Speaker 1: we call the administrative state, the permanent state, the shadow government,
Speaker 1: the deep state. I do think that that is the
Speaker 1: real threat to liberty in this country. I do think
Speaker 1: it's the real threat to prosperity in this country. Goes
Speaker 1: beyond black versus white or Republican versus Democrat. I think
Speaker 1: this is about the permanent state, the managerial class, the
Speaker 1: bureaucracy versus the citizen. And so if that is a
Speaker 1: focus of Donald Trump and believes that he needs to
Speaker 1: actually shut down that deep state, as I believe we
Speaker 1: need to, I think he has that conviction. I definitely do. Then, Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go in there and do everything I
Speaker 1: can to make that happen. But that's what my focus
Speaker 1: was in this race, and I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of ways to drive change even outside of government, to
Speaker 1: at least kill the swamp outside of government as well.
Speaker 1: And so that's what I'm evaluating right now. Haven't made
Speaker 1: any solid plans on what comes next.
Speaker 2: You set the record for the most campaign events ever
Speaker 2: in Iowa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4: Why do you think that didn't translate the voice.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, if you look at where we started,
Speaker 1: I think the law most people started zero percent stayed
Speaker 1: zero percent. Most people started zero point zero percent stayed
Speaker 1: zero point zero percent. And so for me coming out
Speaker 1: as a guy whose name most people couldn't pronounce at
Speaker 1: the start, didn't know, some of them still can't pronounce
Speaker 1: in a state like Iowa, and you know, I'm beating
Speaker 1: former vice presidents, US senators, multiple governors in that same race.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of what we accomplished in a short period
Speaker 1: of time. I only decided about a year ago. Is
Speaker 1: actually exactly when I even decided seriously to run for president.
Speaker 1: I declared for president less than a year ago. And
Speaker 1: so to go from being there to be in the
Speaker 1: solid number four candidate in this race, beating out governors
Speaker 1: and former vice presidents and senators, I think we accomplished
Speaker 1: a lot. And I think the people of this country
Speaker 1: that doesn't usually happen. And so I think that was
Speaker 1: a testament to a distinctive message and a distinctive candidate
Speaker 1: who was willing to be unshackled as I was in
Speaker 1: this race. And so did I expect to do better? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I expected to be the next president. That's why I ran.
Speaker 1: I did not This is not an exercise in futility.
Speaker 1: I didn't write a thirty million dollar check or close
Speaker 1: to thirty million of my own because I believe that
Speaker 1: this was going to be a second place endeavor. But
Speaker 1: am I proud of what we did. Absolutely. And I
Speaker 1: think that the people of Iowa if you asked somebody
Speaker 1: at the start of this race, when I declared what
Speaker 1: I have even made it through the fall, let alone
Speaker 1: through where we did in Iowa, they would have said,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. And you know what, I think that we're
Speaker 1: just getting warmed up.
Speaker 4: That's what you said something earlier that I agree with.
Speaker 2: You said that, you know, you feel like Democrats and
Speaker 2: Republicans both need to figure out what their party are. Yes,
Speaker 2: And I agree, And I think that starts with Democrats
Speaker 2: moving away from President Joe Biden. I think that starts
Speaker 2: with Republicans moving away from Donald Trump. So it makes
Speaker 2: me wonder, like, why have you chosen to endorse Donald
Speaker 2: Trump as a polled to somebody like a Nikki Haley.
Speaker 1: Yes, So I think this goes to the ideological divide
Speaker 1: in the GOP. Actually, because I do think that there's
Speaker 1: a choice on the table. It may be that I
Speaker 1: come out on a different place. I think I do
Speaker 1: than you do. Within the Republican Party is one direction
Speaker 1: of the Republican Party is a belief that it is
Speaker 1: the job of the US government to play the role
Speaker 1: of global policemen, to establish a surveillance state here at home,
Speaker 1: to be able to defend what they will call national security.
Speaker 1: I'm not criticizing it. I'm just describing with the views
Speaker 1: and that whatever it takes fighting those foreign wars, having
Speaker 1: people who have interests in them running the government and
Speaker 1: people who are adopting a surveillance state here at home,
Speaker 1: that that's the right vision. We've had that Republican Party before.
Speaker 1: I didn't vote for it. This is George Bush, Dick
Speaker 1: Cheney back in two thousand and four. I voted libertarian
Speaker 1: because I did not want to vote for that agenda
Speaker 1: in the time of the Iraq War and otherwise. Nikki Haley,
Speaker 1: I believe is a representation of that George Bush era
Speaker 1: Republican Party. There are people in the Republican Party that
Speaker 1: want to see that be the future of the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: that want to fork over more money to Ukraine, that
Speaker 1: believe and agree with Nikki Haley that for our national security,
Speaker 1: we do need to require every citizen to tie their
Speaker 1: social media account and their Internet profiles to their government
Speaker 1: issued ID and driver's license. I disagree with these things,
Speaker 1: but that is a view I think Dick Cheney would
Speaker 1: agree with that. I think the post nine to eleven
Speaker 1: Patriot Act proponents would agree with that. I think that
Speaker 1: the George Bush era, Karl Rove era, Lindsey Graham Republicans
Speaker 1: would agree with that. And that's one vision for the
Speaker 1: Republican Party. It's not mine. My vision for the Republican
Speaker 1: Party is one that you could call a libertarian nationalist vision,
Speaker 1: which says that two simple ideas. The people we elect
Speaker 1: to run the government should be the ones who actually
Speaker 1: run the government, not the bureaucracy. The people we actually
Speaker 1: elect should be the ones that actually make the laws,
Speaker 1: not a bunch of bureaucrats. And number two is the
Speaker 1: moral duty that they owe. The sole moral duty of
Speaker 1: the US President and every elected official is to the
Speaker 1: citizens of this country, not another one. That's a very
Speaker 1: different vision than the Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Nikki Haley,
Speaker 1: George Bush, John Bolton view which exists in the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: That's the choice.
Speaker 4: That don't look like Trump's Republican Party either.
Speaker 1: Though. Well, I think I respectfully disagree with you there,
Speaker 1: because I was to lead that to the next level
Speaker 1: with clarity.
Speaker 4: But I think that Donald co owner and you know,
Speaker 4: they're beholding.
Speaker 1: So I'll tell you what I favor. I'm not speaking
Speaker 1: for anybody else but myself here. I'm here as a
Speaker 1: private citizen today, not even as a political candidate. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what I stand for. I don't think that
Speaker 1: we should have super PACs in American politics. I think
Speaker 1: the super packs. I don't know if you're familiar with
Speaker 1: this concept, there are cancer on American politics.
Speaker 2: It's called eighty eight. Should watch it, okay on Stars
Speaker 2: and Hulu right now?
Speaker 1: All right, sounds good? Back to my that'll that'll probably
Speaker 1: be my inaugural movie. I'ven't watched it on in a
Speaker 1: long time. I think that the super packs are cancer
Speaker 1: on American politics. I think lobbying is a cancer on
Speaker 1: American politics. As I said, I don't think you should
Speaker 1: be able to leave the government and lobby that same
Speaker 1: government ever, but at least for ten years after you've left.
Speaker 1: If you've done special favors for a company. I don't
Speaker 1: think you should be able to join the board of
Speaker 1: that company. This is my issue with Nikki Haley. Right
Speaker 1: she's scratched Boeing's back, gave hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: of special benefits in South Carolina. As soon as she leaves,
Speaker 1: government has a board seat waiting on none other than Boeing,
Speaker 1: the company that apparently can't even fly planes in the
Speaker 1: sky anymore. I think that I don't think congressman should
Speaker 1: be allt to trade individual stocks. I don't think bureaucrats
Speaker 1: should be allowed to trade individual stocks. Actually, my first
Speaker 1: job was in New York City at the hedge Fund World.
Speaker 1: I worked with some pretty smart people here, and I've
Speaker 1: met most Congressmen. I could tell you they would be
Speaker 1: better off not trading individual stocks unless they were actually
Speaker 1: using inside information from Congress and from their bureaucracies to
Speaker 1: their advantage. I don't think that should be allowed. Now,
Speaker 1: these aren't Republican ideas or Democrat ideas. I think we
Speaker 1: need to.
Speaker 4: Get the influence everything you described both parties, for.
Speaker 1: Both parties, I mean, if you look at I mean,
Speaker 1: I hit Nikki Haley on this, but you take Elizabeth Warren,
Speaker 1: you everybody knows what her salary is, and now her
Speaker 1: net worth is disclosed to sixty eight million bucks. I
Speaker 1: know how you makes sixty eight million bucks, and it
Speaker 1: is not from collecting the salary of being a US senator.
Speaker 1: And so if you look at the networks, it's actually
Speaker 1: an interesting exercise. If you look at the net worth
Speaker 1: of people who have spent their entire career in government,
Speaker 1: that math does not add up. And so that's one
Speaker 1: of the core elements of my campaign. I think it
Speaker 1: drew a lot of people to us, which is the
Speaker 1: people we elect to run the government. The congressman, the senator,
Speaker 1: is the president. Say what you will agree or disagree.
Speaker 1: They should be the ones who actually run the government.
Speaker 1: It's not too much to ask today. That's not the case.
Speaker 1: They're all puppets. It's really the permanent state, the bureaucrats
Speaker 1: that are running the show. And the second thing is
Speaker 1: the moral obligation they owe as to the citizens of
Speaker 1: this country, not another one. So yes, I come down
Speaker 1: on the side of saying that we should be using
Speaker 1: our taxpayer resources, we should be using our military resources.
Speaker 1: Radical idea to protect an invasion across our own border
Speaker 1: sooner than we're using it to protect an invasion across
Speaker 1: somebody else's border. I don't think that's too much to ask,
Speaker 1: But the fact that that's controversial, both in the mainstream
Speaker 1: media and narrative of American politics today and even in
Speaker 1: the Republican Party says that, yes, the thing we need
Speaker 1: to decide in the Republican Party is not me or
Speaker 1: Ronda Santis or Nikki Haley versus Donald Trump. Forget the personalities,
Speaker 1: Who are we and what do we actually stand for?
Speaker 1: I think the Republican parties should become the Party of
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy six, the party that says we stand for
Speaker 1: the ideals of the American Revolution, self governance, free speech,
Speaker 1: open debate, that you get to speak your minds openly
Speaker 1: as long as I get to in return.
Speaker 2: You know, we weren't included, and none of that though
Speaker 2: black people, brown people like yourself, yeah, age people like envy.
Speaker 2: We were never including black men.
Speaker 1: But let's celebrate the progress we have made towards those ideals.
Speaker 1: Because here's the thing about the United States of America.
Speaker 1: We're a nation founded of I don't mean this as
Speaker 1: a joke. We're not a nation of gods. We're a
Speaker 1: nation of men. The difference between man and God is
Speaker 1: that man is imperfect. Yet we're a nation still founded
Speaker 1: on ideals, but always is That's the problem. That's in
Speaker 1: the past.
Speaker 3: Man, that's not in the past.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The other day, I can't remember to site what he said.
Speaker 3: I think that we referred to as a seven eleven
Speaker 3: worker at the White.
Speaker 4: House Babylon like this is this is this is sad.
Speaker 3: But that's how they look at us, sad sight, that's
Speaker 3: how to look at you, and that's how I look
Speaker 3: at us.
Speaker 1: Can I what do what do you think it was
Speaker 1: a joke? I took it as a joke. It actually
Speaker 1: if you read it into the article, which I did,
Speaker 1: it was actually it was actually poking fun at a
Speaker 1: lot of the left doing self awareness here. What do
Speaker 1: you think Martin Luther King would say? We just had
Speaker 1: MLK Day, we celebrated. That was the day that I
Speaker 1: wad call us.
Speaker 4: What do you think he.
Speaker 1: Would say about where we are as a country today?
Speaker 1: He said, I hope my four children grow up in
Speaker 1: a country where they're judged not on the color of
Speaker 1: their skin, but on the content of their character. When
Speaker 1: he said that about sixty years ago, and he woke
Speaker 1: up to the country. Let's say he just tell a
Speaker 1: transported to the country we're in right now. Do you
Speaker 1: think he would say that, oh, my gosh, we have regressed,
Speaker 1: or that, oh, I'm very upset about where we've landed.
Speaker 1: Or he sees a country where everybody's able to go
Speaker 1: to the ballot box and cast their vote, anybody's able
Speaker 1: to start a business, everybody start from the same place.
Speaker 4: Now, a lot of voter depression that keeps up black.
Speaker 1: I'm asking you a question, though, if you just snap
Speaker 1: of a finger from nineteen sixty three or nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: whenever it was, he would.
Speaker 4: Say it is sixty years he would say that progress.
Speaker 1: But still he would say to the and so is
Speaker 1: there racism today? Yes, there is, of course there is.
Speaker 1: I have a theory on how to deal with it
Speaker 1: at this point, which is different. Tell from nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: which is different from eighteen seventy, but today, because there's
Speaker 1: different stages in a nation's life, I think require different response.
Speaker 3: How would you deal it? Because obviously it's not a
Speaker 3: racist country.
Speaker 1: So I think right now I'm not saying this is
Speaker 1: the answer sixty years ago, but right now today, I
Speaker 1: think the right answer is actually to let it atrophy
Speaker 1: to irrelevance. It's like the equivalence. I'm a biologist by background,
Speaker 1: that's my background. If a virus gets so low, right,
Speaker 1: racism is the virus. If it gets so low in
Speaker 1: the bloodstream at a certain point, the natural host immune
Speaker 1: system can just take care of it, and an atrophy
Speaker 1: is to irrelevance. But sometimes the way people actually die
Speaker 1: COVID is an example of this. The way people die
Speaker 1: of a virus isn't actually from the effect of the virus.
Speaker 1: It's from an overactive immune system that kills the very
Speaker 1: host organ in the name of fighting a virus long
Speaker 1: after it's gone. And I think that that's close to
Speaker 1: what we're happening in this country with the fight against racism.
Speaker 1: Is we're creating new racism today that I believe would
Speaker 1: not exist if we at a certain point would say
Speaker 1: we're going to let it go and move on.
Speaker 3: Was an example, It was an example.
Speaker 1: New anti black racism, a new wave of anti black
Speaker 1: racism that I think is beginning in this country because
Speaker 1: of people's feeling that they are being denied something on
Speaker 1: the basis of their skin color in the name of
Speaker 1: these day policies, I think that that's actually existing.
Speaker 2: Og anti black racism.
Speaker 1: Just I'm not talking about I'm talking about Gen two
Speaker 1: is what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: Example, I've run a company, and I've both in my
Speaker 3: campaigns and my companies.
Speaker 1: And I don't say this like, oh, I hired black
Speaker 1: people or black women and put them in roles of positions.
Speaker 1: I don't care what skin color they are. But it
Speaker 1: so happens that in multiple of my company's enterprises, businesses,
Speaker 1: even campaign people in significant positions of authority leadership happened
Speaker 1: to be black and black women included. All right, so
Speaker 1: what they're the best people for the job is why
Speaker 1: I put them there. One of my companies, I mean
Speaker 1: you turns out was of the hight paid, if not
Speaker 1: high paid person of the company. Okay, you hear what
Speaker 1: the other people will say who weren't as good to
Speaker 1: get that job, which is to say, oh, she only
Speaker 1: got that job because she's a black woman, which is
Speaker 1: unfair to her, It's unfair to the company, it's unfair
Speaker 1: to the people who led the company to make meritocratic decisions,
Speaker 1: and yet they are able to say that and have
Speaker 1: that impression because we do live in a corporate America
Speaker 1: where pharmaceutical companies and other companies say that we need
Speaker 1: to have quota systems that twenty five percent of our
Speaker 1: workforce and vice president ranks are above need to be
Speaker 1: people of a certain skin color. Imagine if we didn't
Speaker 1: say that, but we just did it by merit, we
Speaker 1: would probably get to the same place or something darn
Speaker 1: close to it anyway, without that second wave of race.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you out of my self interest is why
Speaker 1: I did it right. I grew up in this country,
Speaker 1: came from nothing, built multi billion dollar businesses in part
Speaker 1: by hiring the best person for the job. So it
Speaker 1: was self interest that guided me to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the reason they have to have those twenty
Speaker 2: five percent quota is because of systemic and structural races.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you. One of the most best interactions
Speaker 1: I have in Iowa was with a black pastor not
Speaker 1: that many of them in Iowa. I promise you. He
Speaker 1: came to one of our events. The first thing he
Speaker 1: says is, before I ask my question to do a
Speaker 1: push up challenge with you, can you actually handle ten
Speaker 1: push ups? So we hit ten push ups on the spot.
Speaker 1: Then he asked me the hard question.
Speaker 4: I don't believe you did on the spots.
Speaker 1: I did thirty push ups on the spot. Why not
Speaker 1: do it? Hit it right now, right now? I did
Speaker 1: thirty this morning.
Speaker 4: Let me see you're gonna do with me?
Speaker 1: Pop them out, Let's do it, Let's do it.
Speaker 4: You get the blood man, All right to.
Speaker 3: Go v vic All right, let's do it, he says,
Speaker 3: some burpy's let's go one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, push ups man, Oh wow, he's just gonna
Speaker 1: push ups final pound him out.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm at twenty. It'll be so tired. I mean,
Speaker 4: you fought it.
Speaker 2: It did.
Speaker 3: Oh my good.
Speaker 4: What kind of far was it?
Speaker 1: That's thirty.
Speaker 4: He's beat rays beat ray. Good job, good job, job.
Speaker 2: Job good.
Speaker 1: Just one of the things I missed from the campaign.
Speaker 4: Nice and ask him the hard questions.
Speaker 1: That's what he got me out of breath. And then
Speaker 1: he asked me the hard question, which is one of
Speaker 1: our ten truths in the campaign, was reverse racism is racism?
Speaker 1: And the thing he asked me is which the question
Speaker 1: you would ask me? What does that mean in the
Speaker 1: context of systemic racism and historical inequality in the US? Water. Yeah, healthic, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't fall so easily to pay a pressure.
Speaker 1: But I ad man, I'm trying to peer pressure you
Speaker 1: into the birpe. But he's but he's a usual. It
Speaker 1: was just a healthy but skeptical question. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what I told him, which is.
Speaker 4: You're still trying to catch it.
Speaker 1: You definitely got to get a certain point. We gotta
Speaker 1: we have to embrace because he's a pastor, right, And
Speaker 1: so I was trying to think about how to speak
Speaker 1: the language that we both share in common, the virtue
Speaker 1: of mercy forgiveness. So this is not to say that
Speaker 1: we're going to deny something that's happened in the country,
Speaker 1: because I think that is an approach some people try
Speaker 1: to take denialism, right, Oh that didn't happen. No, I'm
Speaker 1: not taking that approces.
Speaker 2: Nicky did last week or two weeks ago or whatever
Speaker 2: it was. That's what Tim Scott has done, that's what
Speaker 2: the Vice president has done, Joe Biden has done. They
Speaker 2: all say, oh, America is not a racist country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and order the history, right. But at a certain point,
Speaker 1: I think here's the approach to national unity is I
Speaker 1: believe and I think it's the truth. At a certain point,
Speaker 1: the right answer is Clemency is mercy. There's a time
Speaker 1: for mercy and there's a time for justice, and sometimes
Speaker 1: those are intention with each other. But I think then
Speaker 1: now is the time for mercy. I think we have
Speaker 1: reached not the ultimate promised land. MLKA say, I may
Speaker 1: not get there with you, but we will get there
Speaker 1: one day. And I think that at a certain point
Speaker 1: when you get there, it's when you're closest to the
Speaker 1: promised land that there's a temptation to actually focus on
Speaker 1: where you were at the start. But I think that
Speaker 1: we have to resist that temptation and say that, you
Speaker 1: know what, at a certain point in time, it's like
Speaker 1: when that virus is almost cleared. It's still a little
Speaker 1: bit of a left, but it's almost cleared to say
Speaker 1: that we're going to let it atrophy to irrelevance. And
Speaker 1: I think that's the point we're at right now, or
Speaker 1: else I worry we're creating more race consciousness in a
Speaker 1: way that creates more division rather than less right now.
Speaker 1: And that's my that's one of my core issues with
Speaker 1: the with the so called deigen So it's not to
Speaker 1: deny anything else. But and it's a hard thing to say,
Speaker 1: well I was wrong. Well, how can you just say
Speaker 1: clemency and forgiveness now? And now I'm gonna say some
Speaker 1: things that might make you up. So then, but then
Speaker 1: you could have a bunch of other people that make
Speaker 1: a claim on something that they were wrong with Japanese
Speaker 1: people were internment camps, or Jewish Americans or anybody else.
Speaker 1: We can all play that game.
Speaker 2: And the reason you need the that becomes a currency
Speaker 2: is because of systemic and structural racism. Can you admit
Speaker 2: I just agree that this country there is systemic and
Speaker 2: structural racism in this country.
Speaker 1: I have to know what those terms mean, Charlemagne to
Speaker 1: be able to answer systemic racisms.
Speaker 2: Use I said racism, you said systemic in structural racism,
Speaker 2: you said you said structure.
Speaker 1: In stating the argument for the other side of what
Speaker 1: what's used, I don't think systemic racism. It's it's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a cop out, right. I know what
Speaker 1: racism is.
Speaker 2: We know that any healthcare system, we know that inequalities
Speaker 2: and the justice system.
Speaker 4: We know these things are right.
Speaker 1: So has there historically been in this country? Right? And
Speaker 1: I think that what we want to do is amentivil
Speaker 1: rights movement right? And actually a lot of what I'm
Speaker 1: standing for, for example, is I think that there are
Speaker 1: civil rights inequalities right now when it comes to your
Speaker 1: political beliefs. I think that that's actually something that exists
Speaker 1: right now. So the same FBI that was going after
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King sixty years ago on the basis of
Speaker 1: incorrectly collected tapes, it's a mystery to me that much
Speaker 1: of the left that should remember this from sixty years ago,
Speaker 1: somehow believes that that same FBI is a saintly organization.
Speaker 2: That is somehow we've never thought that. We've been telling
Speaker 2: you all the FBI is corrupt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good, So why does everybody what does everybody somehow
Speaker 1: now believe that just because it's Christopher Ray or James
Speaker 1: Callmey who's leading again says, so everybody believes that if
Speaker 1: you praying and bring that same point up suddenly that
Speaker 1: that's a conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Is an investigation, and if there's evidence in that investigation,
Speaker 2: you make in arrest, and then that's why we have
Speaker 2: a judicial system is due process. So what we're seeing
Speaker 2: now is somebody going through due process.
Speaker 1: So I think that I think that I'm in a
Speaker 1: different place than you, which is I think the FBI
Speaker 1: was corrupt then and I think the FBI is corrupt today.
Speaker 4: I'm not disagreeing.
Speaker 1: And so the idea that.
Speaker 4: They don't I don't mean that they don't even vabtigate people.
Speaker 4: And if you have committed a crime, that.
Speaker 1: Right, I think. But I think we can't talk out
Speaker 1: about sides of our mouth, right for a lot of
Speaker 1: these institutions that have been corrupt in the same way
Speaker 1: in our past, have they gone There have been two
Speaker 1: standards of justice based on your skin color? Absolutely there
Speaker 1: have been. If you look at other points today, are
Speaker 1: there two standards of justice today based on your political beliefs?
Speaker 1: I think the answer to that questioning.
Speaker 4: Biologic the FBI.
Speaker 2: That means everybody they've ever arrested it was it wasn't
Speaker 2: they should.
Speaker 1: I'm saying that, but I'm saying that there's there is
Speaker 1: a by anybody's logic. But you could say that sixty
Speaker 1: years ago the same thing that wasn't true then that
Speaker 1: isn't true today. But is there a fundamentally corrupting influence
Speaker 1: and bias today that is based on your political belief
Speaker 1: I think the answer is yes, and I think that's
Speaker 1: as wrong today as it was sixty or eighty years
Speaker 1: ago for it to be based on your skin color.
Speaker 1: And what I've seen on the modern left is now
Speaker 1: questioning that fundamental corruption in the FBI. And I favor
Speaker 1: shutting down the FBI. And that's a different place than
Speaker 1: pretty much every other Republican who says maybe fire Christopher
Speaker 1: am the only Republican in this field who thinks that's
Speaker 1: a good idea. I think shutting down the FBI is
Speaker 1: a good idea because the only way you're going to
Speaker 1: reform a corrupt bureaucracy isn't just by reforming it, it's
Speaker 1: actually by shutting it down. And so you know, we
Speaker 1: got thirty five thousand employees at the FBI. Twenty thousand
Speaker 1: of them are back office bureaucrats. Okay, fifteen thousand of
Speaker 1: them are cops on the front lines. I'd say send
Speaker 1: the back office bureaucrats home. The twenty thousand, we could
Speaker 1: send them home. Fifteen thousand on the front lines. We
Speaker 1: will move them. We'll move them to the US Marshals,
Speaker 1: We'll move them to the DEA, both of which, by
Speaker 1: the way, have been far more effective at fighting child
Speaker 1: sex trafficking rings, far more effective at fighting the fentanyl epidemic,
Speaker 1: far more effective. You can move them to the financial
Speaker 1: Crimes Enforcement network, go for the financial fraudsters, the sbfs
Speaker 1: and the ftx's of the world, more specialization than they
Speaker 1: have at the FBI. So that's the fifteen thousand cops,
Speaker 1: but the twenty thousand back office bureaucrats send them packing.
Speaker 1: That's how how you actually tackle corruption in the United
Speaker 1: States and in the administrative state, in the bureaucracy. I
Speaker 1: think we should be able to unite around that the
Speaker 1: same FBI. You know what the name of the building is.
Speaker 1: You know what the headquarters name is of the fdat
Speaker 1: Jaeger Hoover Building. So the same guy who committed, I
Speaker 1: would say, in many cases racially charged investigations and breaches
Speaker 1: of power sixty years ago is still the legacy that
Speaker 1: the current FBI is celebrating today. And yet when I
Speaker 1: say things like this, people will put that now in
Speaker 1: the category of right wing conspiracy theories celebrate In fact, yes,
Speaker 1: of course, they celebrate the founding fathers.
Speaker 4: The founding fathers were rapists and.
Speaker 1: Murderers, Charlemage. So I think we're going to have a
Speaker 1: deep disagreement on this one. These are people who set
Speaker 1: Without the ideals that they set into motion, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: be where we are today. Tell me about John Adams,
Speaker 1: how much, how familiary with his story. He was an
Speaker 1: abolitionist in his own time. He was the second president
Speaker 1: of the United States. He did not own slaves on principle.
Speaker 1: Not only that, he actually fought for the liberation of
Speaker 1: slaves as the second president. Jefferson, I mean, look, a
Speaker 1: lot of these, a lot of these guys and majamas.
Speaker 1: Jefferson one of my favorite presidents'.
Speaker 4: Favorite one person to make a point, but no.
Speaker 1: No, But I'm making the point that the people today
Speaker 1: who are going to go decry or founding fathers for
Speaker 1: being slaveholders would have been back then the people who
Speaker 1: were slave holders. What you do, right That's what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: because they're just following you at.
Speaker 2: What you're doing right now, with what you're accusing everybody
Speaker 2: else are doing. Because you support Donald Trump. You think
Speaker 2: that the FBI is targeting Donald Trump, and you think
Speaker 2: Donald Trump has been unfairly prosecuted.
Speaker 1: I think not only Donald Trump, but it's because you
Speaker 1: support dontru I think, no It's not because I support
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. It's because I believe the FBI has been
Speaker 1: a corrupt institution for the last seventy years. I was
Speaker 1: against the Iraq War back when this wasn't a Republican position.
Speaker 1: So the mystery to me is actually a lot of
Speaker 1: the modern left. I was libertarian. I told you I
Speaker 1: voted libertarian in my first election in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: when I'm nineteen years old. The mystery to me, though,
Speaker 1: is that the same left that was correctly I think
Speaker 1: correctly skeptical of the federal police state, the national security establishment,
Speaker 1: that believed that they're infringing on our civil rights and
Speaker 1: liberties with the Patriot Act after nine to eleven in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, with the incorrect collection of tapes to
Speaker 1: go after civil rights activists, that that left somehow has
Speaker 1: abandoned its long standing skepticism of the Trump it is,
Speaker 1: which is to say that anybody who then questions that
Speaker 1: same FBI or apparatus has dismissed as some conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 1: when in fact I think that we should from the
Speaker 1: left and the right finally, and the right used to
Speaker 1: be the ones that defended the federal police state if
Speaker 1: you question it, shut up, sit down, and do as
Speaker 1: you're told. That was the George Bush Dick Chene era,
Speaker 1: which is my problem with Nikki Alia as a representation
Speaker 1: of that. But today it's shut up, sit down, and
Speaker 1: do as you're told. If somebody questions that same federal
Speaker 1: administrative police state, and so Isaiah's dismantle that bureaucracy. And
Speaker 1: that's how you actually revive integrity. And that should not
Speaker 1: be a left wing or a right wing point. But
Speaker 1: for my part, and I don't know where you were
Speaker 1: where your views were back then, I was against the
Speaker 1: Iraq War, I was against the Patriot Act then, I'm
Speaker 1: against it now. I would repeal every remaining vestige of
Speaker 1: the Patriot Act. Today. A lot of those vestiges are,
Speaker 1: indeed what are being used by Joe Biden found up
Speaker 1: the people who would otherwise be labeled as insurrectionists or
Speaker 1: white supremacists or otherwise that are threats today, many of
Speaker 1: whom I think are being wrongfully arrested in the same
Speaker 1: way that civil rights activists were wrongfully arrested and spied
Speaker 1: on by the I think Trump. I think these politicized
Speaker 1: accusations against Trump would not exist were he not running
Speaker 1: for president. So yes, I believe they're absolutely politicized. It's
Speaker 1: going to be such a tired discussion because everybody's beaten
Speaker 1: this dead horse to death. But if you take something
Speaker 1: like the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot, right, that hasn't been
Speaker 1: beaten to death. Remember this story, Yeah, so it actually
Speaker 1: began as a storm on the Capitol in Michigan, a
Speaker 1: plot to storm Capitall in Michigan ended up being headed
Speaker 1: in the direction of a kidnapping plot for Gretchen Whimmer.
Speaker 1: Multiple of the defendants are acquitted. First, there's a hung jury.
Speaker 1: They retry them. After retrying them, multiple of the defendants
Speaker 1: are acquitted at trial. Why on grounds of entrapment. Literally
Speaker 1: a third of the people involved in this, if not more,
Speaker 1: were FBI agents. Gave them five thousand dollars credit cards.
Speaker 1: These are poor people. One of these guys is going
Speaker 1: to a Mexican restaurant across the street to go get
Speaker 1: hot water. These are poor people in a tough spot.
Speaker 1: They happen to be white. Sixty years ago could say
Speaker 1: it's black skin color. Take it out of the equation.
Speaker 1: Five thousand dollars credit cards to go by munitions, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Multiple people acquitted, and the juror at the trial after
Speaker 1: the acquittal comes over to the defendant, gives one of
Speaker 1: them a hug and just apologizes for what they had
Speaker 1: seen and been put through. And so, where is the
Speaker 1: I don't say right, right wing, left wing, where is
Speaker 1: the accountability for a federal administrative police state that has
Speaker 1: put people up to do something that they otherwise wouldn't
Speaker 1: have done. They're under poor circumstances, exploited, they're angry, paid
Speaker 1: for by the government, tried to put them in jail
Speaker 1: for it. Except for thank god, we have a jury
Speaker 1: system that is the final, last bastion of defense acquitted
Speaker 1: those men who were put up to do something the
Speaker 1: otherwise never would have done. I think it was wrong.
Speaker 1: What's happened in the nineteen sixties. I think it's long
Speaker 1: if it's happening today. And so again, that's why a
Speaker 1: lot of the principles I'm standing for, I don't think
Speaker 1: they should be viewed as Republican versus Democrat principles.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: Do you think there are opponents to what I'm saying
Speaker 1: in the Republican Party?
Speaker 4: Do you think some people are should be above the law.
Speaker 1: No, okay, We're a nation of laws, not of men.
Speaker 1: That's one of our founding principles, which I give credit
Speaker 1: to our founding fathers for setting in motion. By the way,
Speaker 1: So what's.
Speaker 2: The problem with Trump having ninety one criminal charge? If
Speaker 2: he's innocent, then it'll be proven in a court of law.
Speaker 1: I think it will. They've proven in a court of law.
Speaker 1: But I think it's wrong for the country in terms
Speaker 1: of what we're going through in the meantime, and.
Speaker 4: You just tainting the course of the show him in
Speaker 4: the capitol.
Speaker 2: What about the attempted coup that happened on January sixth?
Speaker 1: Do we want to go down this rabbit hole? Because
Speaker 1: I think that I'm at a again. I was a
Speaker 1: private citizen three years ago when it happened. I was
Speaker 1: biotech CEO, consuming just I like to think of myself
Speaker 1: as independent, but consuming what a lot of the news
Speaker 1: media feeds me. As a presidential candidate, you have a
Speaker 1: responsibility the country to dive deep into the facts, and
Speaker 1: a lot of new facts have actually come out since
Speaker 1: then three years ago. If you had told me that
Speaker 1: January sixth was some type of government entrapment, I would
Speaker 1: say that was crazy talk. I don't believe it's crazy
Speaker 1: talk today.
Speaker 4: Government and trap mean, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that again the same people. What I
Speaker 1: just told you happened in Michigan.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So here we go. All the way through trial. Multiple
Speaker 1: of the people were acquitted because it was found that
Speaker 1: the FBI put them up to do something that Dells
Speaker 1: wouldn't do. The head of the Detroit Field Office there
Speaker 1: was a man by the name of Stephen d'antono.
Speaker 2: Well, people weren't quitted it on January six, people would.
Speaker 1: Depend I'm lets let me just draw the line said
Speaker 1: you want to go down the rabbit hole. You know
Speaker 1: it's going to take about five minutes to do it
Speaker 1: at least, but we'll go down the rabbit hole if
Speaker 1: you want to, if you want to open that door.
Speaker 1: The head of the Detroit Field Office of the FBI
Speaker 1: is a gentleman to man named Stephen d'antono. In late
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, Christopher Ray, the head of the FBI, moves
Speaker 1: him to be the DC Field office head. So let's
Speaker 1: get this straight. The Detroit Field Office has created a
Speaker 1: fake plot to storm the Michigan Capital. Multiple people get fraimed,
Speaker 1: through that, several get acquitted on grounds of entrapman. The
Speaker 1: person who is heading the Detroit field officer of the
Speaker 1: FBI that masterminds that now moved to DC several months
Speaker 1: before what happened on January sixth. We all saw what
Speaker 1: happened on January sixth. What turns out was that the
Speaker 1: video footage we saw shortly after did not include, as
Speaker 1: video footage has now come out in the last year,
Speaker 1: did not include shooting rubber bulletin tear gas into a
Speaker 1: peaceful audience. And then you actually see the response to
Speaker 1: that and didn't include Capitol police officers welcoming people into
Speaker 1: the capitol, and one of the people on jan six
Speaker 1: it turns out, Charlemagne was acquitted because he came in
Speaker 1: with the Capitol police officer waiving him to come in.
Speaker 4: What they got to do Trump's speech.
Speaker 1: But I'm not saying I'm not talking about Trump at all.
Speaker 1: I'm talking You asked about the two, but you asking
Speaker 1: about the people who were on the grounds on January sixth.
Speaker 4: The grounds because Trump called for them to be on
Speaker 4: the grounds.
Speaker 1: Which is their right to do as long as they're
Speaker 1: doing it peacefully and protesting. Because the tradition in this country.
Speaker 1: The civil rights movement wouldn't happen after Martine.
Speaker 2: Washington, right, we saw him stole them the Capitol. We
Speaker 2: saw the video. It's right there for you to see.
Speaker 1: We saw of the video. And anybody who was violent,
Speaker 1: it's a different category. But if you were a peaceful
Speaker 1: protester on January sixth and you ended up in the
Speaker 1: Capitol because a Capitol police officer let you in and
Speaker 1: you took some selfies and walked around and then left,
Speaker 1: I don't think you should be sitting in prison. And
Speaker 1: I think that that is an application of a different
Speaker 1: standard of the rule of law, which is why I've
Speaker 1: said any peaceful January sixth protester would have gotten a
Speaker 1: pardon on my first day in office. I don't know
Speaker 1: if Trump brothers have made that commitment. I can't speak,
Speaker 1: but you do.
Speaker 2: Believe that some people were there to attempt to cool
Speaker 2: with his country.
Speaker 1: If you were violent that day, you need to be helped.
Speaker 1: You need to be held accountable for that violence. Now
Speaker 1: was there I think a lot of unanswered questions that
Speaker 1: need to be answered, and I think it's up to
Speaker 1: good journalists to step up.
Speaker 2: And understand though did Donald Trump inside?
Speaker 1: I don't think Donald Trump insided a violent cool if
Speaker 1: you just look at the words of what he said.
Speaker 1: He specifically said peacefully.
Speaker 4: Did you got a fight like hell? He said, you
Speaker 4: got to fight like hell, and.
Speaker 1: He was using the word peacefully. But there's at his speech.
Speaker 1: This is about. This is about a deeper sure of
Speaker 1: people who are in prison today. And I think that
Speaker 1: if you're in prison for peacefully expressing your views on Washington, DC,
Speaker 1: no matter what your views are, I don't care if
Speaker 1: you're a black civil rights activist in the sixties, I
Speaker 1: don't care if you're a white January sixth peaceful protester.
Speaker 1: You should be held to the same standard of the
Speaker 1: rule of law, which is that peaceful protest, peaceful and
Speaker 1: the expression of your viewpoint should never be criminalized in
Speaker 1: this country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you're talking about two totally different things. That
Speaker 2: you're talking about peopleho're not talking about right, and you
Speaker 2: know you're talk about people who are trying to overturn redolis.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, regardless of what your views are, regardless of
Speaker 1: what your views are, you should be able to peacefully
Speaker 1: express yourself. And once you lose that, we don't have
Speaker 1: a country left.
Speaker 4: I argue with those people want a lot of people
Speaker 4: on January sixth, more.
Speaker 2: And peaceful at all.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm drawing a distinction.
Speaker 4: Some of them were literally saying they were looking for
Speaker 4: a vice president.
Speaker 2: To hang them.
Speaker 1: I'm drawing a distinction for countless peaceful protesters who are
Speaker 1: in prison today for trespassing unlawfully entering the Capitol when
Speaker 1: you have Capitol police officers opening the door to them. Atum,
Speaker 1: we should all be able to agree that those people
Speaker 1: should not be riding in a prison cell. Not only
Speaker 1: is that a violation of the standard of the rule
Speaker 1: of law. Let's talk about just the project of uniting
Speaker 1: this country, and right now we have a major divide
Speaker 1: in this country. And at a certain point, we're going
Speaker 1: to have to look three hundred and sixty degrees across
Speaker 1: the board and say, all right, we're all laying down arms.
Speaker 1: We're going to agree to be one nation. We're going
Speaker 1: to agree to disagree on the issues where we disagree
Speaker 1: most profoundly, to say that we are still going to
Speaker 1: be bound by a common set of principles. As Americans
Speaker 1: take abortion right, this is one where they say there's
Speaker 1: going to divide the country to a breaking point. I've
Speaker 1: stood for policy, and that's the mystery. Man. I'm the
Speaker 1: only Republican who has advocated for this. I think it's
Speaker 1: a winner politically, but I think it's also the right
Speaker 1: thing to do. They say, Okay, you can't find common
Speaker 1: ground and abortion, how about this one. Tell me. We
Speaker 1: got three guys here at the table. Let's talk from
Speaker 1: man to man on this. I think that if a
Speaker 1: woman brings a child to to this is.
Speaker 2: What you fucking up at. You find up because there's
Speaker 2: three men and you're saying you're having a conversation in
Speaker 2: all women, you should bring to women to the table.
Speaker 2: This is why you're talking about found some bullshit.
Speaker 1: Well to make most women no, no, most women here
Speaker 1: like what I'm about to say, most men don't have them.
Speaker 1: We have actually and and and we've had a conversation.
Speaker 1: I think I think you're I think you makee worried
Speaker 1: about what I'm about to say, which is that I
Speaker 1: think if a woman brings a child to term, she
Speaker 1: should be able to make the man financially responsible for
Speaker 1: both her and the child if she does it, period,
Speaker 1: and that should be the law of the land. That
Speaker 1: happens though, no, it doesn't. It doesn't happen today, not
Speaker 1: not not to the scale I'm talking about full financial
Speaker 1: it's you do fifty to fifty, you got forty percent.
Speaker 1: For the man, I'm talking about one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: its two x over. He's fully responsible for the woman
Speaker 1: and fully responsible for the child ability because she has responsibility.
Speaker 1: She took nine months to actually bring the child to
Speaker 1: term if it's confirmed with the genetic paternity test.
Speaker 3: So right now today, four years ago, he has full
Speaker 3: responsibility for the child's eighteen.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and full responsibility for the woman during that time.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's I don't think it's bad either,
Speaker 1: because I think that part of the criticism of Republicans is, oh,
Speaker 1: you're just throwing women under the bus. I say, let's
Speaker 1: actually that's a fair criticism. Let's actually take that seriously
Speaker 1: and say, we're all in this together. If you believe
Speaker 1: that under life, agree with that. I think most women
Speaker 1: absolutely for the child and for me, most women would
Speaker 1: agree with that, right, And that's not and that's not
Speaker 1: the state of look for that. But but then men
Speaker 1: should think about that in the front end. That's the
Speaker 1: whole point. Because women can't afford that either that's the
Speaker 1: whole this this gets to the heart of the abortion point.
Speaker 1: It gets to the heart of the abortion.
Speaker 2: But what you say it is you think about that
Speaker 2: on the frontd exactly which got the whole point.
Speaker 4: Remember young Doug was like, Yo, if you broke, shouldn't
Speaker 4: be having baby?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Things happen and don't.
Speaker 3: But if you think it's going to work out, and
Speaker 3: it obviously does it now a man, if it's confirmed
Speaker 3: by the thousand dollars a year, you want him to
Speaker 3: to to pay for the woman and the child.
Speaker 1: That's not the wildest thing because she's actually got nine
Speaker 1: months of carrying the child. So this is when I'm
Speaker 1: talking back about the project of uniting the country. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's a Republican idea, democratic idea, or whatever,
Speaker 1: but right now one of the criticisms is one of
Speaker 1: the things I believe as a leader. You talked about
Speaker 1: being a leader. What does what does the leader do?
Speaker 1: One of the things the leader does is listen to
Speaker 1: the best arguments for the other side, understand them deeply,
Speaker 1: and then give the best possible response to that you can.
Speaker 1: I had eleventh grade teacher you taught me. If you
Speaker 1: can't state the best argument for the other side, you
Speaker 1: don't know what you actually believe yourself. And I think
Speaker 1: that that's true. And here on this question, the best
Speaker 1: argument for the other side is how are you only
Speaker 1: putting this responsibility on women, to say, okay, you stand
Speaker 1: for life and all of that, but how come that
Speaker 1: only falls on the woman. My answer is it shouldn't.
Speaker 1: So nature has made a decision. And some people will
Speaker 1: be offended as saying this the women only women as
Speaker 1: only women have children. Okay, that's I believe that's a
Speaker 1: biological fact. Some people might disagree with that. But if
Speaker 1: you have two X chromosomes, you have children. But we're
Speaker 1: going to do everything we can to even that responsibility
Speaker 1: out by saying that if the man is making a
Speaker 1: sexual decision, it's not just the woman that's responsible for that.
Speaker 1: The man actually pays for the woman and the child
Speaker 1: for the next eighteen years.
Speaker 4: I'm not mad at that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So so I'm giving you an example though, the
Speaker 1: same thing we're bringing up with the FBI recognized. Now
Speaker 1: don't say the FBI wasn't racist or whatever. Sixty years ago,
Speaker 1: it was acknowledge that same institution that we're celebrating with
Speaker 1: the Jadgar Hoover Building. How do we suddenly believe that
Speaker 1: somehow it's immune from corruption today? And so I think
Speaker 1: part of what's happened in this country is are partisan
Speaker 1: goggles have gotten so far in the way of us
Speaker 1: actually just having actually a conversation amongst citizens without the
Speaker 1: black label or the white label, or the red label
Speaker 1: or the blue label, and just say, actually, let's have
Speaker 1: a conversation among citizens where there's almost a certain guilt,
Speaker 1: right Like, if you're among your liberal friends in New
Speaker 1: York City and you're saying something that Donald Trump said,
Speaker 1: but you're also saying the same thing about the border
Speaker 1: or whatever, you have to be guilty and flogged yourself
Speaker 1: for saying it. Just forget about the guilt and just
Speaker 1: locate what are our actual principles. And I think I
Speaker 1: come back to two basic ones that unite us as Americans.
Speaker 1: The people we elect to run the government should run
Speaker 1: the government, not the bureaucracy. Those elected leaders owe a
Speaker 1: moral duty to the citizens of this country, not the
Speaker 1: citizens of Ukraine or another one. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: we all get to expels press and speak our minds
Speaker 1: freely and in the open whether or not we disagree.
Speaker 1: You get to speak your mind, and you do and
Speaker 1: I do too, as long as each of us gets
Speaker 1: the same right in return. I think those are basic
Speaker 1: rules of the road that most of us, ninety percent
Speaker 1: of us in this country agree on.
Speaker 4: And you know Trump doesn't agree with that though.
Speaker 2: Trump I was speaking Trump Wardy said he wants to
Speaker 2: shut the media down for speaking about him if he
Speaker 2: becomes president of again.
Speaker 1: I think that. Here's here's what I've noticed happening in
Speaker 1: the country. I've had a front row seat to the media,
Speaker 1: okay for the last year. Believe me, they've twelve of
Speaker 1: them follow me around everywhere I've gone for a long time.
Speaker 1: We do interviews at the end of every day, and
Speaker 1: I've granted more, you know, media access or press access
Speaker 1: than anybody else for full transparency. Actually, you know, we've
Speaker 1: become friends with some of them, young people actually, not
Speaker 1: the people who are their bosses up the chain. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of them have lost their way. But
Speaker 1: the young people twenty two years old, who have you know,
Speaker 1: earnestly got a job, think they're actually doing a good job.
Speaker 1: Several of them. Actually we became I became personally quite
Speaker 1: friendly with and I expect to remain friends with over
Speaker 1: the course of life. And the best ones I think aren'
Speaker 1: I hadn't end up even standing.
Speaker 4: Trump wants to show I'm.
Speaker 1: Gonna I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you something else.
Speaker 1: Is what I've seen happen is because I get questions
Speaker 1: on this regularly. Trump will say something. There will be
Speaker 1: one word they pick out. Vermin was one. They followed
Speaker 1: me around about that for a week. What do you
Speaker 1: think about the Donald Trump called his opponents vermin? And
Speaker 1: it's a whole game that the media plays where they
Speaker 1: will pick Hitler, they will they will they will pick
Speaker 1: they will pick one word he says, and then actually
Speaker 1: have you respond to it as opposed to taking action.
Speaker 1: But the obsession over picking some word that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: said and making that the news story versus actually asking
Speaker 1: about the substance. I mean, Charle Man, I think I've
Speaker 1: saw some of some of your own commentary recently where
Speaker 1: you agree with me on the border being a crisis
Speaker 1: and it's ridiculous what's happening on this other.
Speaker 2: What did he say?
Speaker 1: What did he say? The quote Hitler, let's actually just
Speaker 1: just go go to the specific let's let's let's just
Speaker 1: let's just go to the specifics and do this because
Speaker 1: this is exactly is exactly what happened. Pull it up
Speaker 1: word for word, Read me the whole paragraph, what comes
Speaker 1: before there after. I don't even know what you're referring to,
Speaker 1: but I enough of how the game is played that
Speaker 1: I just want to play this out.
Speaker 4: And he also said that he didn't know Hitler had
Speaker 4: used the term.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, and that was the poisoning the blood term
Speaker 2: that's straight out of the manifesto.
Speaker 1: Just because somebody says a word that also appears to
Speaker 1: the translation of the manifesto with some totally weird game
Speaker 1: of gotcha. Just just re read to me the full paragraph.
Speaker 4: Say immigrants poison the blood of.
Speaker 1: There give me, give me Donald Trump's quote, We're not
Speaker 1: going to do the game of the secondhand. You know,
Speaker 1: NBC News distillation of it. Just get to the primary source,
Speaker 1: because I know Donald Trump and he's not somebody who
Speaker 1: goes around quoting Adolf Hitler. It's just not a thing
Speaker 1: that happens. I don't have this country is taught to
Speaker 1: believe by the media that that's what he does.
Speaker 2: But that's the Trump I think the real number is
Speaker 2: fifteen to sixteen million people into our country. When they
Speaker 2: do that, we got a lot of work to do.
Speaker 2: They're poisoning the blood of our country, Trump told the
Speaker 2: crowded the rally in New Hampshire.
Speaker 4: That's what they've done.
Speaker 2: They poisoned mental mental institutions and prisons all over the world,
Speaker 2: not just in South America, not just the three or
Speaker 2: four countries that we think about, but all over the world.
Speaker 2: They're coming into our country from after, from Asia, all
Speaker 2: over the world. And he kept repeating the phrase poisoning
Speaker 2: the blood of our country.
Speaker 1: Here, just doing one fair because we got it. I
Speaker 1: think this is so valuable. Just read exactly read the.
Speaker 4: Whole Immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation.
Speaker 1: Okay, and read the rest of it as you did.
Speaker 1: Just just just go the whole paragraph, because I think,
Speaker 1: just do one more time, just everybody. Can everybody hear
Speaker 1: what he actually said versus the news.
Speaker 4: Term blood poisoning was used by him.
Speaker 1: What Donald Trump said, now size.
Speaker 4: Immigration in the mixing of all races. Trump is doing exactly.
Speaker 1: Said, they're poisoning the mental health institutions, They're poisoning the
Speaker 1: prison of our country. That was one line from a
Speaker 1: broader Hitler. And I'll tell you this man. I went
Speaker 1: to the South side of Chicago in this campaign against
Speaker 1: the advice of my campaign advisors, because they said, why
Speaker 1: are you going there in the middle of a primary.
Speaker 1: I'm running to unite the country. You know what they're
Speaker 1: doing in Chicago right now, or at least at the
Speaker 1: time I went there, they were converting South Shore High School,
Speaker 1: a poor high school in the south side of Chicago,
Speaker 1: into an encampment for migrants who were in this country illegally,
Speaker 1: at a cost of seven thousand dollars per migrant per month.
Speaker 1: There were things said in the room that I was
Speaker 1: in that were far more incendiary than what you just
Speaker 1: read right there. And I don't hold it against the
Speaker 1: people who are in that room with me, because America
Speaker 1: first includes all Americans. And I think it is dead
Speaker 1: wrong that we are rewarding mass numbers of people who
Speaker 1: have entered this country illegally, breaking the law as they
Speaker 1: do it, coming in by the millions, and rewarding them
Speaker 1: more than we are our own fellow citizens right here
Speaker 1: at home. Why So, that's a major problem affecting people
Speaker 1: black and white Democrat, Republican, poor and middle class across
Speaker 1: this country. And yet we're sitting here obsessing over one
Speaker 1: word in a long paragraph that said poison the blood
Speaker 1: when it included a reference to mental health institutions in
Speaker 1: jails and other public resources in the United States. That
Speaker 1: is everything that's wrong with our media right now. People,
Speaker 1: You guys who are actually going to help lead the
Speaker 1: media out of this because you are actually not beholden
Speaker 1: by the same partisans talking about the actual substance.
Speaker 2: But when what we need to address, it's hard to
Speaker 2: when you've got a guy who said he wants to
Speaker 2: be a dictator for a day you got. It's hard
Speaker 2: with just a guy who says it's a guy who
Speaker 2: says you got to terminate terminate the constitution in order
Speaker 2: to overturn the results of an election.
Speaker 4: It's hard when it's a guy who's.
Speaker 1: The country for the derangement syndrome. And focus on the
Speaker 1: actual problems we have to solve as a country, and
Speaker 1: you look at actually the border, the economy, you want
Speaker 1: to look at staying out of foreign wars. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: will take a president who has sharp elbows, who is
Speaker 1: actually able to accomplish those things.
Speaker 4: Words don't matter over somebody.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying words don't matter, words matter, but words
Speaker 1: taken out of context in a way. Am I going
Speaker 1: to say everything the same way that Donald Trump did?
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm sitting here being questioned again
Speaker 1: with the entire media loves to do on picking some
Speaker 1: word Trump said, and we're sitting here talking about that
Speaker 1: rather than a vision for the country, talk about the
Speaker 1: actual country, talking about the actual issues were dressing as
Speaker 1: a country, and yes, exactly, we'll talk about the actual country.
Speaker 2: Just the point of the GOP attaching themselves to Trump
Speaker 2: the way they have when he hasn't won anything since
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: The GOP attaching themselves to Trump is I think a
Speaker 1: bizarre framing where the GOP is electing a leader to
Speaker 1: lead our America first movement to the next level, and
Speaker 1: they're saying in drove that Donald Trump should be that leader. Now,
Speaker 1: how do we actually use that to accomplish something for
Speaker 1: our country? Our country? I think made a poor decision
Speaker 1: in putting Joe Biden in office. I think the results
Speaker 1: speak for themselves. I think a lot of the economic
Speaker 1: numbers are a fallacy. Prices are higher, wages, haven't gone
Speaker 1: up to the same degree. More gage rates are higher,
Speaker 1: people live in tougher circumstances. We've got millions more who
Speaker 1: have entered this country illegally, taken up public resources that
Speaker 1: should be used on other purposes. And yet somehow we
Speaker 1: are still focusing on some word that Donald Trump said,
Speaker 1: as opposed to asking ourselves, how are we going to
Speaker 1: trust that underlying.
Speaker 4: Yahn won anything since twenty sixty.
Speaker 2: From sixteen and I think what you lost the House
Speaker 2: on electionen you lost the House twenty twenty, you lost
Speaker 2: the White House.
Speaker 1: I think he's going to win in a landslide this.
Speaker 4: Year, But what about in a haven't won any fair
Speaker 4: conducted election.
Speaker 1: I think he run wins in a landslide this year. Look,
Speaker 1: I think people voted for the policies, and at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, look, I'm looking to take many
Speaker 1: of those policies to the next level. That's what I
Speaker 1: was doing in my candidacy. But the people were clear
Speaker 1: they want someone who's tried and true, and they want
Speaker 1: the policies we had from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: That's what we're gona happen in this country now.
Speaker 3: Vivig let me ask you a question. Now here's a
Speaker 3: regular citizen, you said today?
Speaker 2: Correct?
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, Now you're a cool guy. We could
Speaker 3: play basketball, pickle ball, whatever you want. What is next
Speaker 3: with vvig? Why are you here? Are you here to
Speaker 3: promote Trump?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Why is VVIG here today? I thought you were going
Speaker 3: to announce something like why is VVICK here today?
Speaker 1: So to tell you the truth, I was over the weekend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean pretty much. We I was with family over
Speaker 1: the weekend. Haven't seen them in a long time. We
Speaker 1: got we're here with my kids. We saw friends and
Speaker 1: family over the weekend. We haven't seen in forever. We've
Speaker 1: been living in Iowa and New Hampshire and braving the
Speaker 1: campaign trail. And you know, honestly, I think that we
Speaker 1: need to have more open conversations in this country because
Speaker 1: I know I'm going to blood, because I know that
Speaker 1: we don't you know. And I also actually to tell
Speaker 1: you the truth. I don't know if you remember this.
Speaker 1: Last time, we had a little bit of a more
Speaker 1: contentious exchange with with the third friend who joined by
Speaker 1: a screen. But you said, are you going to come back?
Speaker 1: I bet you're not going to come back? I said,
Speaker 1: I bet you, I will, and so.
Speaker 3: I remember your challenge was like I'm gonna come back.
Speaker 1: I a challenge, it's a promise. I mean, your promise.
Speaker 1: We're going to come back and close the loop on
Speaker 1: the conversation. And that's what I want to do. And
Speaker 1: I have a feeling, you know, if you guys will
Speaker 1: have me, we'll do this again, you know, six months
Speaker 1: or whenever we come back to New York again.
Speaker 4: Do you think a person of color could ever be
Speaker 4: a GOP nominee?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, because I read an.
Speaker 2: Article in the Nation that said you and Nikki Haley
Speaker 2: can't escape gop racism. And the article says you two
Speaker 2: are boxed in by the bigotrea that you deny exist.
Speaker 4: What are you think of that?
Speaker 1: So I'll tell you what probably the bigger obstacle was
Speaker 1: for me. It wasn't skin color, and I still don't
Speaker 1: think it's irresolvable obstacle, but it was religion. I'm Hindu,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think the easy thing you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do as a politician is, even if you're not
Speaker 1: claimed to be Christian, check the box. Maybe shorten your
Speaker 1: name a little bit, make it easier to pronounce. Would
Speaker 1: that in the short run help my electoral chances. A
Speaker 1: lot of people were professionals at this certain say it would.
Speaker 1: But as I told you, my whole approach to politics
Speaker 1: is I'm gonna tell you who I am and what
Speaker 1: I stand for. And I'm a religious.
Speaker 4: Person, religion of the reason of jop No.
Speaker 1: No, not at all, not at all. But I'm saying
Speaker 1: that if I had to pick even between the two factors,
Speaker 1: it's not even race one. I'm not making this up
Speaker 1: because I got a lot of earnest people in Iowa
Speaker 1: who told me they loved everything I say, and I
Speaker 1: don't begrudge them for this, but it was difficult to
Speaker 1: vote for me because I'm not Christian and I respect
Speaker 1: that honesty and the kinds of conversations we had about
Speaker 1: faith in Iowa. I mean these were including with the
Speaker 1: with the pastor the gentleman who you know, put me
Speaker 1: through the push up ringer before asking me the question
Speaker 1: about systemic Rayson was actually one of the people who
Speaker 1: came down the side of I know the difference between
Speaker 1: a pastor and a president, and I think he ended
Speaker 1: up becoming a supporter of mine. Actually, he became a
Speaker 1: precinct captain, which was funny how that story ended. He
Speaker 1: came back a few weeks later to an event, even
Speaker 1: though he disagreed with me on some of or thought
Speaker 1: he disagreed with me on some of the views initially
Speaker 1: that I had on illuminating affirmative action. Came back a
Speaker 1: few weeks later, ended up being one of our precint
Speaker 1: captains in Iowa, and he's a Christian pastor black coming
Speaker 1: out with disagreeing with me on the politics at one
Speaker 1: point and a different religion on the other and became
Speaker 1: a priestinc captain. So it's not insurmountable, but I think
Speaker 1: that was a bigger question and understandably on people's minds.
Speaker 1: Right the nation is founded as a matter of history
Speaker 1: on Judeo Christian principles. But one of the things I
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to share with people was actually and
Speaker 1: it almost forced me to take a step back and
Speaker 1: really locate, like, what are my actual faith convictions. Most
Speaker 1: of us think we are whatever religion we are, but
Speaker 1: when you're really pressed on it. It's one of the
Speaker 1: things in this campaign is it really brought me back
Speaker 1: in touch with my own faith and I shared with
Speaker 1: people what my faith is. There's one True God. He
Speaker 1: puts us here for a purpose. He works through us.
Speaker 1: It's not being done by us, it's being done through us.
Speaker 1: But we are still equal because God resides in each
Speaker 1: of us. That's the heart of my faith, which is
Speaker 1: slightly different than the way you'd say it is that
Speaker 1: we're we're equal because we're all made in the image
Speaker 1: of God and were equal in the eyes of God.
Speaker 1: But it's making the same point. And I also learned
Speaker 1: a lot about the difference in how to talk about
Speaker 1: the difference between being a president and a pastor. So
Speaker 1: you brought up Thomas Jefferson, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: left likes to cancel part of his legacy because he
Speaker 1: was a slaveholder. There's actually something coming from the other
Speaker 1: side that I saw as well, and I had a
Speaker 1: chance to educate people on and even refresh myself on.
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian, not a traditional Christian.
Speaker 1: He was a Deist. Actually, he made a part of
Speaker 1: the Old the New Testament. He didn't like all the
Speaker 1: stuff about the miracles and everything else, but he liked
Speaker 1: the philosophy and the teachings of Jesus Christ, and so
Speaker 1: he took a razor blade, and he cut out the
Speaker 1: parts of the New Testament that had the philosophy that
Speaker 1: he thought spoke to him. He used glue to glue
Speaker 1: them together. That constitutes the Jefferson Bible today. And so
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about that is I would meet a
Speaker 1: lot of people on the campaign trail who would be
Speaker 1: frankly disgusted, and I have to admit part of me
Speaker 1: is also disgusted with the view that we can't respect
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson's legacy, guy who at the age of thirty
Speaker 1: three wrote the Declaration of Independence. I'm sitting in a
Speaker 1: swivel chair right now. This was invented by Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: the man who was thirty three when he wrote the
Speaker 1: Declaration of Independence. He invented the swivel chair right around
Speaker 1: the same time that man, the unafraid, the guy in
Speaker 1: the Lewis and Clark expeditions, that we can't celebrate him
Speaker 1: today because he was a slaveholder. From that angle, to
Speaker 1: also tell a group of people that who believes that
Speaker 1: only Christian can be the US president who loved Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: who loved the signer of the Declaration of Independence, who
Speaker 1: hate the left for saying that we can't celebrate Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson because he was a slaveholder who actually believe that
Speaker 1: only Christian can be president. And yet Thomas Jefferson wasn't
Speaker 1: a traditional Christian.
Speaker 2: At the time he became the president, was a slave
Speaker 2: holder because he created the swivels chair. No, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm saying that we are imperfect human beings. Yes, and
Speaker 1: that you know what, two hundred and fifty years from now,
Speaker 1: somebody will look at something that each of the three
Speaker 1: of us have done and criticize that two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years from now and say, can you believe these
Speaker 1: people shit?
Speaker 2: They doing it now?
Speaker 1: No, but they're really good. If they're doing it now
Speaker 1: and they're doing it for him, then too. But if
Speaker 1: they're doing it now, they're really going to do it
Speaker 1: two hundred fiftyears now and right now. If we really
Speaker 1: thought about it, and we took a few hours or
Speaker 1: a few days to reflect on it, we could probably
Speaker 1: figure out what that is. But if you ask you
Speaker 1: on the spot right now, no, I don't think you
Speaker 1: could tell me on the spot right now what people
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty years from now going to come here
Speaker 1: and tell you that you were an immoral man for
Speaker 1: and all the other truths that you spoke that we
Speaker 1: should reject them because you did some small thing that
Speaker 1: the people two hundred fifty years from now disagree with.
Speaker 4: Well, being a slave owned a small thing, but I
Speaker 4: know you got to go.
Speaker 1: But back then it was actually and that's the thing.
Speaker 1: In seventeen seventy six, it was the.
Speaker 4: Nature of the nature to be.
Speaker 1: And so right now, don't be the person who was
Speaker 1: the slaveholder back then, Be John Adams. That's what we
Speaker 1: should call ourselves, to be the person who bucks the
Speaker 1: trend of their time, to say I'm going to speak
Speaker 1: on my own conviction and do what's different than being
Speaker 1: the product of my own time. Because anybody can pare
Speaker 1: it what the slogan is of their day. But the
Speaker 1: hard thing to do is to say the pack is
Speaker 1: running this way, and I'm going this way instead anyway,
Speaker 1: because it's back on my conviction. That's what we need.
Speaker 4: People like John Adams. Arter reason. You can point at
Speaker 4: it and say it was wrong, though, because John Adams
Speaker 4: knew it was.
Speaker 1: Well. A lot of people are going to be doing
Speaker 1: things today that are different than the way that each
Speaker 1: of us is going to be living our lives and
Speaker 1: say the same thing. In two and fifty years from now,
Speaker 1: somebody else will conversations. Abe Lincoln wasn't around then, man,
Speaker 1: that was still later on. That was still later on.
Speaker 1: And we'll just take the story down. We'll just pass
Speaker 1: this lineage down. We don't talk American history enough. Actually
Speaker 1: irritates me. A lot of consertives talk about the importance
Speaker 1: of knowing history without actually just talking about history. Let's
Speaker 1: talk this through. So John Adams, you know, his son
Speaker 1: is John Quincy Adams. He's the first non founding father
Speaker 1: who became a president. Here's a funny fact about him.
Speaker 1: He was the first outside of the founding fathers. He
Speaker 1: was the first one who was elected president. He actually
Speaker 1: wasn't a great president he had He was elected out
Speaker 1: after one term. People didn't love him, and so he
Speaker 1: tried to find everything else he could do. He went
Speaker 1: and tried to write some books, and he went and
Speaker 1: tried to start some nonprofits, and none of that spoke
Speaker 1: to him. He is the only presidence, John Adams's son
Speaker 1: who went back to Congress after being a president. So
Speaker 1: he's elected to multiple terms of Congress. And you know what,
Speaker 1: he went back to Congress with was one thing he
Speaker 1: regretted not doing as a president was abolishing slavery. This
Speaker 1: long before Abraham Lincoln comes along. Okay, so he wanted
Speaker 1: abolish slavery. His father was an abolitionist. He didn't accomplish
Speaker 1: much during his tenure as president. He was a good
Speaker 1: Secretary of State, but he was not a very good president.
Speaker 1: Think about the humility to say, I'm not even gonna
Speaker 1: go to the Senate. I'm going to go become a
Speaker 1: congressman and get re elected multiple times with the mission
Speaker 1: of abolishing slavery. Now here's what happens. There was a
Speaker 1: rule that Congress passes, it's called the gag rule, which
Speaker 1: stopped people from using the word slavery. Like they literally
Speaker 1: couldn't use the word slavery because they don't want people
Speaker 1: to utter the word because it made them uncomfortable. So
Speaker 1: this guy's already been the US president, Okay, so he
Speaker 1: has nothing to lose. So he's just a congressman. Now
Speaker 1: he says, I'm gonna say the word. I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: it slavery, slavery, slavery, slavery. There, Congress has set the
Speaker 1: rule that you can't say the word slavery. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to say it. So they censure him and have
Speaker 1: just like they have today George Santos or whatever, they'll
Speaker 1: have the equivalent of kicking him out of Congress. So
Speaker 1: they have his trial in Congress, and he uses his
Speaker 1: own personal trial, because this guy's got nothing to lose.
Speaker 1: They use his own personal trial for saying the word
Speaker 1: slavery when you're not allowed to say the word slavery
Speaker 1: to make the case for abolition from the stand of
Speaker 1: his own trial to being kicked out of Congress. At
Speaker 1: the end of that, they get rid of the gag rule,
Speaker 1: so you're allowed to say slavery, which opens up the
Speaker 1: debates that you're then allowed to have. So a year later,
Speaker 1: about a year or so later, he's given a speech
Speaker 1: on the Congress floor. It means, it's amazing this guy
Speaker 1: with this humility. He's given a speech on the Congress floor.
Speaker 1: He has a stroke in the middle of his speech.
Speaker 1: He dies right there. He doesn't die quite yet. They
Speaker 1: take him up to the upstairs room, keep him alive
Speaker 1: for another couple of days, and eventually he dies up
Speaker 1: in that ante room outside in the same Congress where
Speaker 1: he then devoted that later stage of his career, and
Speaker 1: they took volunteers for who's going to be the person
Speaker 1: who carries out his funeral rights and carries him out
Speaker 1: and the guy who raises his hand and does as
Speaker 1: it was a first term congressman nobody had heard of,
Speaker 1: hadn't said a word by the name of Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 1: And so these are the stories of our history. Man,
Speaker 1: we don't tell these stories anymore. We celebrate. We would
Speaker 1: put back our founding fathers and would talk about how
Speaker 1: these people are, how these people are slave owners who
Speaker 1: want to dismiss the ideals they said into motion without
Speaker 1: recognizing that, like us today, these are imperfect human beings
Speaker 1: that still strived and to be the best that they
Speaker 1: possibly could have, just as we do today. And so
Speaker 1: it bothers me deeply for us to just lazily reject that,
Speaker 1: as opposed to saying we acknowledge those imperfections, but were
Speaker 1: founded on the pursuit of a more perfect unit, absolutely
Speaker 1: the pursuit of liberty and justice.
Speaker 4: Dismiss it and s I'm not dismissing.
Speaker 1: Do it sound like I'm dismissing at charlet mane, I
Speaker 1: disagree with you, man, and I I agree that put
Speaker 1: me in the category of the conversation we had, and
Speaker 1: saying that I just dismissed it out of hand, I
Speaker 1: think that that's I think that's unfair. I think that
Speaker 1: that's unfair. I don't think I dismiss it, but I
Speaker 1: acknowledge the totality of what a human being is, which
Speaker 1: is an imperfect and flawed human being who we can
Speaker 1: still celebrate.
Speaker 2: I'm fine with that, but you can have to be
Speaker 2: but you can't tell people just to ignore the fact
Speaker 2: that Thomas Jeffson.
Speaker 1: I'm not telling people to ignore it, though, And this
Speaker 1: is what I think we I'm in this to unite
Speaker 1: the country, and I think if we're going to take
Speaker 1: this seriously, every one of us has to acknowledge the
Speaker 1: full nuances of our history in every direction. To say
Speaker 1: that we're not going to listen to Thomas Jefferson or
Speaker 1: there are founding was illegitimate because they were deeply imperfect
Speaker 1: and flawed is every bit as bad as somebody who's
Speaker 1: going to say that I'm going to entirely dismiss the
Speaker 1: fact that they were slave owners. I think that both
Speaker 1: of those are mistakes that could lead lead to the
Speaker 1: failure of our country as we know it. I think
Speaker 1: our country will cease to exist if either side of
Speaker 1: our debate is that one hand willing to say, oh,
Speaker 1: slavery was some made up myth, and actually I don't
Speaker 1: know it was in the interest of people could say
Speaker 1: such things, It was the interest of black people to
Speaker 1: be slaves. Whatevericulous. Okay, Well, I think that if we
Speaker 1: have a different side that says our founding fathers, who
Speaker 1: wrote a declaration of independence founded on the pursuit of
Speaker 1: a more perfect union, right, the pursuit of liberty, quality
Speaker 1: and justice for all, not claiming were perfect, but that
Speaker 1: our nation founded on freedom for all who aspire to
Speaker 1: have them. That were imperfect, but we eventually got there
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty years And as darn close as
Speaker 1: we've ever been to reject that and say that we
Speaker 1: can't celebrate that founding because they made a mistake of
Speaker 1: being slave owners, I think that that is every bit
Speaker 1: as bad for the future of our country versus acknowledging
Speaker 1: that we are still pursuing that more perfect union.
Speaker 2: What I would say is what you talked about with
Speaker 2: Thomas Jefferson when he took the razor, and he took
Speaker 2: out some of the philosophies that he agreed with. We
Speaker 2: should take some of those things that we agree with,
Speaker 2: but then everybody should come to the table, because all
Speaker 2: was not at the table when those people wrote those documents.
Speaker 1: We got that we have too much under our country.
Speaker 1: We understand that, okay, But my point is my point
Speaker 1: is not rejecting that or taking a hammer to it.
Speaker 1: It's more of a different response. It's like, we got it,
Speaker 1: like totally. Like at a certain point we've got to
Speaker 1: say we've got it. We don't do no, but I can,
Speaker 1: but we don't. We got it. And now and now
Speaker 1: it's time for three hundred and sixty degree mercy, clemency,
Speaker 1: forgiveness across the board and that we're moving forward as
Speaker 1: one nation under God. And I think that I think
Speaker 1: that moment is now actually and that's why I ran
Speaker 1: for president, and it clearly I did not succeed to
Speaker 1: the scale that I wanted to. I'm proud of what
Speaker 1: we accomplished. As I said, started as ordinary guy, kid
Speaker 1: of immigrants, came to this country with no money. They
Speaker 1: would have never imagined that I'm self funding a presidential
Speaker 1: campaign to try to try to reach the people with
Speaker 1: this message. But I'm not stopping now, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what form that's going to take in this next phase,
Speaker 1: but I'm all in for that. And even for people.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys are on the left
Speaker 1: or not, how you'd characterize yourself, but people have different views.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna asking you, okay, I mean, whatever it means
Speaker 1: right and these labels, what do these things mean right? You know,
Speaker 1: hard right, hard left? I think these things actually mean
Speaker 1: a lot less right now in an era where we're
Speaker 1: closer to World War three than we've ever been, and
Speaker 1: the only bipartisan consensus in the establishment of both parties
Speaker 1: is to march us closer. Forget the labels. I'm asking
Speaker 1: those of you who care about the country, and I
Speaker 1: believe you do. You wouldn't be doing what you're doing
Speaker 1: every day if you didn't have a care for this country.
Speaker 1: And I don't think you would be either, man. I
Speaker 1: mean you could. I know you like cars, you could
Speaker 1: be talking about cars the whole time, but you're not.
Speaker 1: You're talking about this and I think it's because you
Speaker 1: care about the country.
Speaker 2: How can you.
Speaker 1: I think it is because you support Trump? I do
Speaker 1: care about the country. And I think the Trump I.
Speaker 2: Want to be spend the constitution, the overturn the results
Speaker 2: of an election.
Speaker 1: Charlemagne, I think, I think that, I think that a
Speaker 1: lot of democracy. Here's what I will say is.
Speaker 4: How can you respect the country?
Speaker 1: If don't make democracy, I'll make I'll make a deal
Speaker 1: with you can even do this off one because we're
Speaker 1: not gonna do it here with an open mind. Take
Speaker 1: a look at the totality of government entrapment in the
Speaker 1: lead up to the twenty twenty election and even afterwards,
Speaker 1: and then you look at the same cases from sixty
Speaker 1: years ago, and what you realize is this is just
Speaker 1: history continuing as it has for the last six years.
Speaker 1: A good book, I'll give you. My wife actually read
Speaker 1: it when I told her I wanted to shut down
Speaker 1: the FBN. She's not a terribly political person at all,
Speaker 1: but I told her I want to shut down the FBI.
Speaker 1: She thought it was crazy. She thought a lot of
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about here sounded like crazy talk, because
Speaker 1: I would have believed three four years ago myself. She
Speaker 1: read a book herself. She doesn't take it from me.
Speaker 1: She's an independent student. She reade a book called g
Speaker 1: Man and if everybody is watching this right now. I
Speaker 1: would recommend taking a look at it too. It's not
Speaker 1: some right winger wrote this book. It's some as far
Speaker 1: as I know, some sort of liberal Yale historian. But
Speaker 1: it's a Politzer Prize winning book, not some right wing screed.
Speaker 1: G Man stands for government. Man gives you the history
Speaker 1: of JEdgar Hoover's FBI, And once you read that, I
Speaker 1: think you will likely most people, I think probably ninety
Speaker 1: percent of people will actually come around to having the
Speaker 1: same views that I do about the tortuous impact of
Speaker 1: that federal bureaucracy. And I think part of a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff that we might argue against, what I'll
Speaker 1: call the woke stuff or whatever, is really just woke
Speaker 1: smoke to deflect accountability for the failures of that bureaucracy. Right,
Speaker 1: you take the Federal Department of Education, Right, you know
Speaker 1: what the woke smoke is. Math is racist. You've heard
Speaker 1: people say this, it's forget about the forget about the smoke.
Speaker 1: Don't fall for the smoke, fall for the reality that
Speaker 1: they have failed to teach our kids how to do
Speaker 1: math for those last forty years.
Speaker 2: You want to rise and fall of the third Reich,
Speaker 2: and you'll see how what's going on right now in
Speaker 2: this country is too close to comfort.
Speaker 4: What happened.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people would hear you say that,
Speaker 1: Charle Mane, and I'm one of them who worry about
Speaker 1: all right, forget about the labels. If we have a
Speaker 1: country that says that, you know what, if you say
Speaker 1: something on social media and you like to retweeted a
Speaker 1: post of one particular political candidate, you're the subject of
Speaker 1: a subpoena. And we have a candidate of a different
Speaker 1: party who says that we need to tie your social
Speaker 1: media account to your government issued ID, and the government
Speaker 1: gets to see every time you've liked or retweeted a
Speaker 1: social media post. That that would be pretty frightening. Yet that's
Speaker 1: exactly in the Jack Smith investigation of Donald Trump. The
Speaker 1: subpoena includes literally on Twitter. You guys use Twitter, anybody
Speaker 1: who hit like or retweet you want the government to
Speaker 1: be able to include that as part of a subpoena.
Speaker 1: And you've got Nikki Haley coming over from the so
Speaker 1: called right saying that actually you need to actually have
Speaker 1: used your.
Speaker 4: Social media period.
Speaker 1: And I don't think the government officials should be able
Speaker 1: to intrude on what you're saying on the internet if
Speaker 1: you're actually saying it with your expressing your opinion, and
Speaker 1: have the ability to actually come up to you and
Speaker 1: question you based on what you said. Either. That sounds
Speaker 1: a lot like the third Wreck of Germany to me.
Speaker 1: So you could cut this a lot of different ways.
Speaker 1: The infringements on free speech. To say that if you
Speaker 1: said the COVID pandemic originated in a lab in China,
Speaker 1: We're going to lock your account. You can't say that.
Speaker 4: That's what Trump wants to do to media who goes
Speaker 4: against him.
Speaker 1: Well, why I'm talking about something very specific here during
Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen pandemic. It wasn't it wasn't Donald Trump
Speaker 1: that that wanted this.
Speaker 2: Hit.
Speaker 1: I think that both political parties are full of shit. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: both political parties are full of shame. I think both
Speaker 1: political parties are full of shit. I agree with you
Speaker 1: on that the repub and that's you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of the influence, actually the influence of money that's really
Speaker 1: the problem, because it's some of the same donors who
Speaker 1: are writing multimillion dollar checks that are pulling the strings
Speaker 1: of both of these people. Like puppets. They're like pawns
Speaker 1: on a chess board. And so that's why I spent
Speaker 1: I mean, I got probably more connections to be able
Speaker 1: to raise outside money into superpacks or whatever, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. I'd rather put thirty million
Speaker 1: of my own money. I'd rather do that than to
Speaker 1: be somebody else's circus monkey or pawn on a chessboard,
Speaker 1: which is what basically, both political parties have become.
Speaker 3: A shame full of sh its, like both sides and
Speaker 3: call salespeople. Nothing ever changes. We had the same thing
Speaker 3: over and over.
Speaker 1: I don't think it has to say that one first,
Speaker 1: But don't you think it's a shame that we're not
Speaker 1: even Canada anymore? A shame that every.
Speaker 2: Presidential election we're voting for the lesser of two evils.
Speaker 3: It's the same thing over and over again.
Speaker 4: And I will say is cons when I hear you,
Speaker 4: and here.
Speaker 1: We preach to the Republican Party for a second, because
Speaker 1: this is what I said, This is my whole last
Speaker 1: message in the last two months of the campaign, troll,
Speaker 1: the Republican Party has become lazy, Bucklin Barty has become
Speaker 1: lazy because we are just criticizing the vision of the
Speaker 1: other side, and then let's start. I'll give you a
Speaker 1: vision of you know, we we'll complain about I'll complain
Speaker 1: about it, race, gender, sexuality, climate correct, complain about that
Speaker 1: without offering an alternative vision of our own. What do
Speaker 1: we actually stand for? And I'll be the first person
Speaker 1: acknowledge that is missing in the Republican Party today, an
Speaker 1: actual alternative vision. Biden bad is not an agenda. And
Speaker 1: yet the reason why we got trounced in that midterm,
Speaker 1: relative to what should have happened, I wasn't. I don't
Speaker 1: think it was because abortion. I don't think it was
Speaker 1: because of Trump. Those are all things that people failed
Speaker 1: to you know, just blame game stuff. The real reason
Speaker 1: is Biden bad is not an agenda. We have to
Speaker 1: offer an alternative vision of what we stand for. So
Speaker 1: if we're talking race, gender, sexuality, and climate over here,
Speaker 1: we'll talk over here about individual, family, nation, and God.
Speaker 1: It's an alternativision. You could agree or disagree with it.
Speaker 1: The value of each individual, the value of the family
Speaker 1: as a grounding institution, the value of the nation. I'm
Speaker 1: a citizen of this nation, not some nebulous global citizen.
Speaker 1: Fighting climate change in Davos. No, I'm a citizen of
Speaker 1: this nation, and I have an obligation to my fellow
Speaker 1: citizens and God in the same way as a leader.
Speaker 1: As I'm a father of two sons. My moral obligation
Speaker 1: as a father is to my family and to my
Speaker 1: son's period, and I won't be shaken in that. Well,
Speaker 1: then my moral obligation as a president of this nation
Speaker 1: is to the citizens of this nation, not another one,
Speaker 1: not just to people who agree with me, people on
Speaker 1: the South side of Chicago to Kensington, to everywhere else
Speaker 1: that I've visited in this campaign. All of those are
Speaker 1: equally included as Americans. But that's still what it means
Speaker 1: to be an American. And yes, we are one nation
Speaker 1: under God. And you know what, if more of us
Speaker 1: acknowledge that, do you think we'd be more united or
Speaker 1: more divided. I think we'd be more united. And I
Speaker 1: say this as somebody who has been hit for having
Speaker 1: a slightly different relation than the most predominant religion in
Speaker 1: the country. I still think it's a good thing for
Speaker 1: us technoledge that we were one nation under God. You
Speaker 1: could agree or not with that vision. I think it's
Speaker 1: a winning vision. For the Republican Party, that you are
Speaker 1: an individual and I'm an individual. We're not riding the
Speaker 1: tectonic plates of group identity. You're Charlemagne and you're DJNV,
Speaker 1: and I'm me, and I'm an agent in this world
Speaker 1: that can achieve whatever I want, not writing somebody else's
Speaker 1: tectonic plate. That I'm a family and a member of
Speaker 1: a family, and that there's a mother and a father
Speaker 1: involved and that's inherently a good thing, and that the
Speaker 1: nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mad.
Speaker 2: After Republican Party, though they've been the party in the
Speaker 2: Confederacy forever.
Speaker 1: So listen, I'm coming in. I've said this since day one.
Speaker 1: I was using the Republican Party as a vehicle to
Speaker 1: advance a pro American agenda, and it made people mad
Speaker 1: when I said it. Roni McDaniel, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know she is. She's the chairman woman of the RNC.
Speaker 1: She after the third Debate or whatever, said I would
Speaker 1: not get another scent of funding from the RNC. I mean,
Speaker 1: almost proven my point about the managerial interest, and so yes,
Speaker 1: I will admit it. I was and am and if
Speaker 1: there's a future we'll be using the Republican Party as
Speaker 1: a vehicle to advance a pro American agenda. It's not
Speaker 1: about Republicans and Democrats. I think it is about the
Speaker 1: managerial class. We can talk about what that means. It's
Speaker 1: the bureaucracy in government. Outside of government, the people you know,
Speaker 1: staffing the boards of some nonprofit, the associate dean of
Speaker 1: God knows what at a university, the undersecretary of something else.
Speaker 1: In the administrative state. It's the managerial class versus the
Speaker 1: everyday citizen.
Speaker 2: I think we need multiparty systems. And the reason I
Speaker 2: think we need multiparty systems is because those terms Republican
Speaker 2: and Democrat both are too radioactive. The only thing I'll
Speaker 2: say about multiparty system as soon as you hit one,
Speaker 2: you already label a person. As soon as you hit
Speaker 2: oldest person's that you label. As soon as you hit
Speaker 2: this person that you label them.
Speaker 1: We need a multipartiesis the only thing I'll say about
Speaker 1: multiparty system. Is you go to a place like India
Speaker 1: or whatever. Right, My myand parents immigrants from India, and
Speaker 1: you think it's bad here, It's like horrific over there.
Speaker 1: You got a multi party system. But people will just
Speaker 1: be shipping TVs into people's houses as a way to
Speaker 1: just get their vote. And I think it's less about
Speaker 1: two party versus multi party. It's more about actually us, right,
Speaker 1: So we can all blame the system, but I think
Speaker 1: part of the problem is we as people were conditioned
Speaker 1: to behave like sheep. Actually, I think all. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's an inner part of us that's a lion, and
Speaker 1: an inner part of us that is a sheep, and
Speaker 1: I think right now we live in a moment where
Speaker 1: the inner sheep has taken over. I think it's a
Speaker 1: big part of it. In kids, I would ban social
Speaker 1: media in kids under the age of sixteen. I would
Speaker 1: get phones out of the high schools. I mean, let's
Speaker 1: just start with basics that we can agree on. Out
Speaker 1: of the board. The algorithms train you to behave like
Speaker 1: a sheep, because the more you behave like a sheep,
Speaker 1: the more it is you're likely to click buy. Actually,
Speaker 1: that's what That's what Mark Zuckerberg's basic insight was. You
Speaker 1: know what the site was on Harvard's campus. I was
Speaker 1: a year behind him in college when Facebook came out,
Speaker 1: But you know what the predecessor site was to Facebook,
Speaker 1: was youre familiar the story is hot or not? That
Speaker 1: was the that was original Facebook. So he was a sophomore.
Speaker 1: I was a freshman, and I was one of the
Speaker 1: early you know, people who got in the what became Facebook.
Speaker 1: But the first thing was he would just blast it
Speaker 1: out to you, rip pictures from the Harvard directory, get
Speaker 1: two pictures, and then there'd be all kinds of games
Speaker 1: they'd make it. And the whole game was how quickly
Speaker 1: you would click on one of them versus another, and
Speaker 1: that would be his window into your soul. Actually, like
Speaker 1: that was the insight. Now they got him for inappropriately
Speaker 1: using Harvard property, and so he left and just decided
Speaker 1: this is working so well, I'm just going to do
Speaker 1: it separately. That became not only Facebook, but became the
Speaker 1: backbone of an entire industry designed to prey on your insecurities,
Speaker 1: on our insecurities, to open a window into your soul
Speaker 1: that is deeper than you have into your own. And
Speaker 1: that's the whole game. And so the more you behave
Speaker 1: like a sheep, and that's what modern AI is actually
Speaker 1: going to be very good at doing. Is you know,
Speaker 1: the best antidote to AI is people going to call
Speaker 1: me crazy person for saying this and misquote me, take
Speaker 1: it out of context, but I don't care. The best
Speaker 1: antidote to AI actually is I think a revival of
Speaker 1: faith in the country because I think that part of
Speaker 1: what actually these algorithms do is they prey on an
Speaker 1: inner vacuum, and that I think has created this nation
Speaker 1: of sheep. So in some ways we can blame two
Speaker 1: party systems or this or that. Nothing's going to change
Speaker 1: until we all actually have an honest introspection about who
Speaker 1: we really are.
Speaker 4: Listen, I got a piece. We got to wrap this
Speaker 4: up for.
Speaker 2: I think what you just said is great, but you
Speaker 2: need to start with yourself because you have better ideas
Speaker 2: than a Donald Trump's.
Speaker 4: So there's no need to be his sheep.
Speaker 1: Need to be the best person to lead this country forward.
Speaker 4: There's no need to be his life. I disagree with
Speaker 4: your characters. I believe you're better than that personally.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the conversation we're having here, and I think
Speaker 1: that we need more of this in the country. I
Speaker 1: don't think we need people continue to just talk and
Speaker 1: feed their own echo chambers. I think we need more
Speaker 1: of this, And so next time we're in New York
Speaker 1: with some time. You have my word, I'll swing by
Speaker 1: if you'll have me pop up.
Speaker 2: We did a whole podcast. How long is that right?
Speaker 2: I went already, Mass you gotta go on my guys
Speaker 2: show too, Man Flagrant with sho Okay, oh the Shultz.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you was supposed to do it, but I think
Speaker 4: you had to reschedule.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, okay, I think I'm seeing him soon.
Speaker 1: Be vake that, I say, right, vi veke the vac.
Speaker 3: All right, Ram Swam, and we appreciate you for joining
Speaker 3: us again. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Good to see man wake that ass up in the morning.
Speaker 2: Breakfast Club