Ted Cruz Reveals What Trump Told Him Behind Closed Doors | PBD Podcast #851

0:00So I'm asleep and Matthew McConaughey comes rushing into our bedroom. He jumps on our bed on all fours and he's jumping up and down. Do you think there's anything you could have done to beat a guy like Donald Trump? There was a moment in the campaign that when I lay in bed and think back about, I think of as the most consequential world. So let me ask you, are you saying this to me because if you would have gone up against Hillary, you think you would have beaten her? Absolutely. You think you would have beaten her worse than Trump beat Hillary? The day of the meeting, Markov cancels the meeting.

0:34No explanation. No explanation, just I'm not comfortable. Has he said this publicly? If he has, I have not seen him say it. Who supports you on the Republican side that Trump doesn't have? Do you know why I'm asking that question? Do you want me to give you the reason why I'm asking the question? Sure. They know if they give their vote to the wrong person, a socialist could be a president in 2028. That's humanity. They just hate Donald Trump and they want to burn it all down. Why? It's confusing to me. Tucker is the single most dangerous demagogue in America. He now says Donald Trump is the Antichrist.

1:08That is a lot of things, but that ain't conservative and that ain't American. Why can't we just go audit everybody and find that out? The anti-Semitic protests on college campuses. Qatar and China are both funding them. How do you know that? Is that factual?

1:27I get frustrated out of my mind with people who say they're conservative. And they go to office and they turn into jellyfish. Show me what you've accomplished. Respectfully, that didn't answer my question. So I get what you want me to say. No, I don't want you to know. That's not what I'm asking. We're making the case to Trump. And in the middle of it, that is when Elon Musk tweeted that Trump was on the Epstein list. I learned some curse words I didn't even know. That's a moment I will never forget of just like, okay, there's a hand grenade thrown in the middle of everything. I'm a very easy guy to understand.

2:02I actually believe this shit. There is an advantage to building a reputation for being willing to blow things up. Nobody thinks you're bluffing.

2:12Okay, so it's great to be sitting down with a podcaster here. Very famous podcaster. He happens to be a senator as well, Senator Ted Cruz, but he's the only guy that's also a podcaster, so it's great to have you on. Pat, thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. Yes, likewise. I'm looking forward to the conversation for the folks that are watching. I know you just came out with a book going further. I think August 25th, the incomparable Clarence Thomas, already number one on Amazon. If you haven't ordered it, we're going to put the link below. There's also a great interview with him, which maybe we put down as well at the end.

2:44If you want to go learn more about him, I thought the interview was great. So I want to start off with some tough questions at first, and then we go to the easy ones. Okay, good. Let's go into it. You've been visiting Ohio, Iowa. You've been visiting some of the earlier states. You've been making endorsements. You've been kind of playing around, you know, with the stuff that's going on for 2020. I'm not going to ask you if you're going to be running or not. I think if I'm a betting man, I'm guesstimating you're going to be running for 2028. But if I were to hire you as a consultant, I'm going to run for office in 2028.

3:12I hire Cruz Consulting. Give me three to five issues to be running on in 2028. What do you think those issues should be? The fact that it starts with sitting down and talking to a little old lady who looks you in the eyes and said, are you telling me the truth or are you lying to me? I don't want to hear talking points. I want to know who you are. I want to understand what kind of man you are. That process is really important. Look, in Iowa, when I ran the last time, corn is kind of a big deal in Iowa. And I am against subsidies. I'm against mandates. I think that's a bad idea for the federal government to do.

3:54So I am opposed to the ethanol mandate. Now, there's a whole big lobby in Iowa that is really strongly in favor of the ethanol mandate. And I remain, to this day, the only person in history to ever win Iowa opposed to the ethanol mandate. And the way I did it, and I had a lot of those Iowa corn farmers who ended up, when they listened to what I had to say they ended up supporting me. And I said, look, we shouldn't have subsidies across the board. There's an exchange. You can actually find it, I think, still on the Internet. It's about a seven minute exchange where this big old farmer, I think in overalls, comes up to me and he says something like, I really hate you and I hate what you stand for.

4:39And I said, well, sir, I'm sorry about that. I'm happy to talk with you about it if you'd like. And he said, all right. And he was a corn farmer and he was mad uh that that i was against the mandate and i said well sir if you give me a minute i'll explain to you why and what's interesting is after that about that eight minute exchange where the guy started off saying i hate you that's how the conversation began at the end of it he kind of nods and looks at me and says well that makes sense i really like what you're saying and and it was that's i think that's what politics should be, is listening to the voters and having a conversation, not changing what you say or do based on just today's poll.

5:23Okay, so then question would be, you won Iowa against Trump, right? You won, I don't know how many states, 13, 14, 15 states. You won quite a few states. You won 12 states. Utah, Wisconsin, Texas was massive lead, and then it was Indiana, and then from there on it was, you know, he became the candidate. But you had 551 delegates. I think You had three times what Marco Rubio had at the time. But that's 2015, 2016. You guys went up against somebody that's an anomaly. One of one. You will maybe never have a guy like that ever again. Disrupted the whole thing. I went back and watched some of the debates with you and him just to kind of mentally get where you guys were at that time.

5:59How different is 2028 going to be? Because I think it's a free agency election. Absolutely. The big guy's out. How different is the approach going to be in 2028 than 2015? I think massively different. Uh, Donald Trump is a black swan event. There is simply nobody like him. I don't think there's ever been anyone like him that I'm aware of in history. And I don't think we're going to get another Donald Trump. Like, I just think he's one of a kind and he broke the mold. Going forward, I think debates are always, and elections are always a debate about the future, about what do we believe? Where are we going to go?

6:39Where's the party going to go? Where's the country going to go? You know, if you look back for a second to that 2016 election, when it started, we had 17 Republicans in the race, big crowded race, strong field. If you were laying odds at the very beginning, let's say March or April of 2015, who was going to win? And if you had 140 million to start off with, nobody, I think, would have bet on Donald Trump, and nobody would bet on me, we might well have been 16 and 17 in the odds. If you were in New York or DC, both of us, because I was a brand new Senator. I was at one or 2%. At the end of the day, the single best predictor of what would happen in that election was blue collar voters.

7:29You looked at the polling of blue collar voters, truck drivers, steelworkers, cops, firefighters, waiters, waitresses, blue collar voters in almost every single state. Either Trump was one and I was two. Or I was one and he was two. But not Marco. Marco couldn't compete with blue collar voters. Why do you think? Well, remember, he had been very vocal in support of the Gang of Eight Amnesty. And And amnesty is a great policy if you want to impress the Republican donors because Republican donors love amnesty. They view illegal immigrants as cheap labor. And Marco's strategy, he had joined up with the Democrats and the Gang of Eight to propose massive amnesty.

8:14I'd led the fight against the Gang of Eight amnesty. It was terrible. That's why all the donors like Marco. But the actual people whose jobs are being lost to illegal immigrants, they were pissed at him for it. And if you look at how that shook out, the states where I was one and Trump was two with blue-collar voters are the 12 states I won. The states where he was one and I was two are the 24 states he won. And no other Republican won more than a single state. Kasich won Ohio. Rubio won Minnesota. And Trump and I won every other state in the country. And it was blue-collar voters. and then you fast forward to the general you know I had had a million conversations where people say okay how do you win the general how do you beat Hillary and at the time people thought Hillary was this unbeatable juggernaut um and my answer was twofold I said number one blue collar voters and number two evangelical voters in 2008 and 2012 both of them stayed home when John McCain was the candidate, when Mitt Romney was the candidate, evangelicals and blue-collar voters, they didn't vote for Barack Obama.

9:27They just stayed home. They didn't like the candidates. They weren't inspired. They weren't energized. They didn't come out and vote. And my view was, if you turn them out, if you energize them, if you give them a reason to be excited, that's how you win. People would ask me, what states can you win in 16 that McCain and Romney lost, and I would say Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, right up and down the Rust Belt, those states, I remember on election day 2016, November 2016, so I'm out of it. I've been beaten. But we're having an election night party in Houston, and I'm sitting there with my team, and we're watching the results.

10:12and as Trump's general election results come in, those are exactly the states he's winning, and it just goes right down, right down the list. And my wife, Heidi, who is my best friend on planet Earth, as it's happening, she looks at me and she goes, I'll be damned. And I'm like, what? And she said, I've sat next to you a thousand times while you've told people, here's how you You win the general. You win these states. I never knew you were right. Like what you were saying is. She's telling you. She's telling. Yeah. Look, I mean. I totally get it. You're married. You know, your wife. You're like, like you say something.

10:48Your wife's trying to be nice. She kind of nods. Maybe. But I don't know. So this is election night. While they're announcing him winning the states. And she's realizing you were right about the states. Yeah. So let me ask you. Are you saying this to me? Because if you would have gone up against Hillary, you think you would have beaten her? Absolutely. You think you would have beaten her worse than Trump beat Hillary? I don't know. I will say this. Look, if you look at how the party has shifted, in the last decade, the most consequential shift has been a socioeconomic shift. That the old conventional wisdom was that Republicans are the party of the rich and Democrats are the party of the poor and the working class.

11:29Now, I don't know if that was ever true, But if it was, it is totally flipped today. Today, the Democrats are the party of rich coastal elites. They're the party of billionaire hedge fund managers and billionaire tech leaders and Hollywood and academics. And today, the Republican Party is a blue-collar party. That's something Trump accelerated profoundly. That's something I've been fighting for from the day I got there. My base from the very first day I ran has always been blue-collar workers. Those have always been my peeps. And the elites, the establishment, have fought like crazy against me from day one.

12:13That shift I think is really, really significant. I want us to be the party of workers, the party of jobs. And here's the path that is unbeatable. so blue collar voters moving right has made states that used to be purple more red you take a state like ohio ohio back in the bush years but was perennially purple it was like right on the edge missouri was another purple state the show me state both of them at least prior to this cycle and they're getting more purple this cycle but let's take let's take 24 the last presidential Both of them were bright red. Trump won them by a big margin. That's because they have a heavy blue-collar population and that dynamic moved them more right.

13:00There is a countercutting demographic move, which is suburban voters, particularly suburban women, have moved less significantly. And it's a lot of suburban women are not fans of President Trump. And you've seen that in states like Georgia and Arizona and Texas. So Georgia, one of the most suburban states in America, most of the population are in the suburbs surrounding Atlanta. You know, Georgia a few years ago had two Republican senators. Today it has two Democrat senators. Arizona, most of the population is in the suburbs around Phoenix, Maricopa County. Arizona a few years ago had two Republican senators.

13:43Today it has two Democrat senators. that dynamic, whether we win a state, depends on the intersection of those two vectors. If the blue-collar voters moving right outweighs the suburban women moving left, we win. But I'll say this, the killer general election coalition is if you can turn blue-collar voters out, but do it in a way that doesn't scare suburban women away from you. And if you can bring some of those suburban women back, that's an unbeatable general election. Okay, so two questions for you. One, when you go back, you know how anytime I go and I'm doing a deal and I lose the deal, we do a debrief and we say, you know, what could we have done and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

14:25Okay. Do you think there's anything you could have done to beat a guy like Donald Trump? Anything? Trump generated an excitement and ended up being seen as an even bigger disruptor than I was. So that was one piece that was unanticipated. And I don't know that we could have anticipated that. There was a second component, which is the free media in that election. So in the 2016 election, my campaign raised$92 million of hard money. That is still the most money any Republican has ever raised in the history of presidential primary. What I did not anticipate is the free media that the media would give Trump.

15:11Trump received over$3 billion, with a B, in free media. They just covered him constantly. And it ultimately, in the last 30 days of the election before I dropped out, Trump had$500 million of free media, 90 % of which was positive. And that proved to be a tsunami that you could not overcome. Do you think the Democrats at the time were thinking, you know, there's no way Trump's going to win. and let's give him so much because they're going to take out Cruz. Yes. You think that's what was the – and then it backfired on him? So we actually know that because if you look at the WikiLeaks from the Hillary campaign, the Hillary campaign talking to ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN said, elevate Trump because he's the worst candidate and we can beat Trump.

15:58So push Trump. And they did. And at the same time, Fox made the decision to go all in behind Trump. And so it ended up, it was just this,$92 million is a lot of money unless you have$3 billion on the other side. And that proved, that proved too much to stop. Now, that being said, when, you know, you asked about what could have been done differently. There was a moment in the campaign that when I lay in bed and think back about the road not taken, I think of as the most consequential road. which is coming into the Florida primary. We were getting ready for the Florida presidential debate, and the day before the Florida presidential debate, my team did some polling.

16:49And we polled in particular what happens if Marco Rubio and I join forces, if we run as a ticket with him as my VP. Marco doesn't know. You guys are speaking. You haven't approached him yet. First, we just do the poll to see what the numbers are. So we do the poll, and the numbers are compelling. I mean, remember, Trump at the time was winning states with a plurality, with 28, 30, 32 points. So you had 70 % who were not voting for him. And Marco and I running as a ticket, what it did is it unified the non-Trump vote. You got the other 60. And so what happened, we looked particularly, our campaigns have always been intensely data-driven.

17:33We looked at the numbers. If Marco and I had joined together, we would not have won Florida. We would have won it on election day, but there were already enough early votes that were banked that Trump would have won Florida regardless. But at the same time, we would have won North Carolina, Missouri, and Illinois by double digits. I mean, the effect on the numbers was massive. So I did the natural thing. We saw the poll, and my team delivered it to Marco. And I said, hey, we ought to sit down and talk. And, Pat, it was very cloak and dagger. It was the day before the Florida debate, and we were both in Miami.

18:16We were both staying at hotels. We picked this, like, little motel halfway between our hotels. And the plan was to come and meet and talk. the day of the meeting, Marco cancels the meeting. Just says, I'm not coming. No explanation. No explanation, just I'm not coming. Which was frustrating. Is this public information? Yeah, I've told the story since then. But it was frustrating. And actually, Mike Lee, the senator from Utah, Mike is my closest friend in the Senate. I love Mike like a brother. Mike is also very good friends with Marco. In fact, they used to be roommates. They rented a house together.

18:55Mike had deliberately stayed out of the presidential. He hadn't endorsed anyone because Mike said, look, there's going to come a time when he felt he needed to broker the peace between me and Marco. And so Mike had stayed out. Mike flew down to Miami to be there in that meeting. So Mike was just going to be there when Marco and I talked. And listen, I don't want to overstate it. I did not offer the VP slot to Marco because we never had the conversation. But it wasn't rocket science. You looked at the polling and the results just leapt off the page. I think it changes the entire outcome of the race.

19:29Have you ever confronted Marco on this? After Trump won, when we were back 2017, I asked Marco to go out to dinner. And I just said, hey, man, why did you never come to the meeting? Like, why did we, you know, never have the conversation? And his response, he said, well, I just think Trump was unbeatable, that nothing would beat him and there was nothing we could do to change it. Has he said this publicly? If he has, I have not seen him say it. Okay, so he thought Trump was, so in his eyes, Trump is unbeatable. In your eyes, collectively, we could have beaten him. You know, you could speculate that Marco's team told him, look, if Trump's the nominee, Hillary will crush him because that's what they believe, that Hillary was the inevitable.

20:17Hillary will be president. and then in four years, Marco, you'll come back as the golden child and be the nominee four years from now. That's what I imagine his team told him. But it sure would have been nice to have had that conversation. So he would have been the VP, you would have been the president, and that's kind of how you guys would have gone. Yeah. That would have been very formidable. That would have been very interesting if the announcement was made earlier. Now, let me ask the question maybe in a different way. So when I think about leaders, I put them in four different categories.

20:51I give them a likability score. I give them a respect score, fear score, and a love score. Trump is feared because Trump will attack you hardcore. So Trump's got you and Marco Bid in fear. You guys can't compete against him in the fear side. He will come for your throat and use any words possible. We're not accustomed to this as a president talking like that. This has never happened. No president has spoken like him. No president has spoken like him. So that naturally you and Marco tried to talk like him. You guys feel you can't talk like him. That's his world. Is that a fair assessment? I would tweak it slightly.

21:27I think Marco tried to talk like it. Like, for example, he came and, you know, said Trump had little hands and tried to like insult him. I don't think I went down that road. I decided not to emulate Trump. And we actually talked about like his nicknames were very effective. We talked about as a team, do you come up with a nickname for Trump? And we came up with a whole bunch of different ones. And I said, you know what? This is not real. What was the best one? Oh, you know. Give me one of them. It's not worth going into it. You cannot leave the audience hanging with it. Listen, we went through things like, you know, Crooked Donald.

22:07Oh, like the Crooked Hillary, similar thing as that. Before he'd done Crooked Hillary. Oh, you were going to do Crooked before he did it. That we batted around some insult name because he'd come up with Lion Ted, which, by the way, look, Trump has a marketing genius that is instinctual. And if you look at that race, my number one strength is that voters trusted me. That they believed I would do what I said, that I was telling the truth. It's what made Lion Ted true genius because it was literally going right at the biggest strength of your opponent and undermining it. It did real damage. We went through lots of insults for Trump and brainstorming.

22:54And I said, you know what? It's just not me. I'm not someone that stands up there and insults. And I think voters can tell if you're not. But is it fair to say if you guys go pound for pound in, you know, rage baiting comments, you're not going to be Trump? Is that a fair assessment? Absolutely. And I don't I never intend to go. Great. But what I did do. Is I went head to head to him in debates on issues and substance. And if you look at in that campaign after every debate, my numbers went up. But likability, where would you score yourself or the importance of being likable as a candidate to win as a presidency?

23:32Look, likability certainly matters. I will say there is a differential that is a partisan differential. Because the way the American people perceive candidates comes through the lens of the media filter. And the media filter is massively different if you're a Republican or if you're a Democrat. So in the media world, every Republican is one of two things. You're either stupid or you're evil. And they put them into those two categories. So stupid. In their telling, George W. Bush was stupid. Dan Quayle was stupid. Ronald Reagan was stupid. Got it. evil. Dick Cheney was evil. Richard Nixon was evil.

24:22Trump is evil. By the way, between the two, stupid is better. Historically, stupid has been less damaging, but they put you in one of the two categories. Which one do they put you in? They put me in evil, yeah. Everybody knows you're not stupid. Those are the only two categories. So what I would say on the question of likability, because they've driven the whole narrative, by the way, they say just about every Republican, they say is unlikable. That's part of their evil. I don't know if I agree with that. I'll push back a little bit. I don't know if I, like to me, I would say Marco Rubio comes across very likable.

24:54Marco is very charming. Give me a second. I'm actually curious to know where you're going with this. Give me a second example though. Give you a second example of likability? Yeah. I think there's a part of President Trump that's very likable. Not according to the media. Look, I like. No, not according to the media. So if I went based on media, there's a lot of things I would be believing that's different. No, I think let's even talk to Republican voters. Just take Republicans independents, the 12 % that maybe matters. I think people would say Trump is likable. When you're with them, there is a...

25:26I think Trump is hysterical. I like him a lot. Right. But you know what? I know him. You know him if you know him. I'm saying the media narrative that they devote millions of barrels of ink to... I think it's a very different world today, Senator, respectfully. I think today he went on Theo Vaughn, and you're like, I freaking like this guy. He went on a bunch of these jokes that he does with Rogan, and you'll like him. He went on Schultz, you'll like him. There's a certain level of likability. You're right, and I'm agreeing with you, but the insight you're having is if you want to get through to the people, you have to go around the gatekeepers, around the media that are trying to portray one specific image.

26:06And I think Trump did a very good job. Look, it's one of the reasons why I do a podcast every week. And I've got millions of people who listen to my podcast. It's one of the reasons I do podcasts like yours, because you can actually get around the gatekeepers and talk to people. How do you view yourself when it comes down to likability for 2028? Look, my job is to communicate who I am and what I believe. I can tell you that when I go give a speech, when I go sit down with people one-on-one or in a group or breakfast or lunch or dinner and I talk to them, some of the most frequent comments I get is, holy crap, you're nothing like I thought you would be.

26:45You're supposed to be this crazy bomb thrower with dynamite strapped to your chest. Like I like to laugh. I like to cut up. You know, I'm on social media a lot. I am a complete smartass on Twitter. By the way, there's a general principle. So I do have a social media team. Social media team has the authority. They send tweets for me. If there's a tweet that is, say, right up the fairway, if there's a tweet, we should secure our border, that's probably my team. They know what I believe and they send them. If there's a tweet that's just smartass and getting in trouble, that is almost certainly me on my phone typing it in.

27:23And so like a couple of years ago when the whole Eric Swalwell thing broke, I sat down and I said, look, I can't count how many times I've said, screw the Chinese communists. Little did I know how closely Eric Swalwell was listening to me. See, you're very good with that, though. See, that's the thing, though. You have the – and I don't mind it. You're witty. You're sarcastic. you have that, like I can already picture what you were like at 20 years old, at 16 years old. I see that childlike side of yours, right? But I don't know if I've seen you go in and sitting down with podcasts that may be a little bit to get into in front of a new audience.

28:06Maybe that's going to be the strategy in 27, 28. I don't know. Maybe you're going to go and sit down and talk to those guys. But I think the game plan, okay, so now let's go to 2028. If we go into 2028, what are the it factors? I wrote a few things down. I wasn't even prepared for this. I think number one, I want to ask you how much you think this matters. Number one is Trump's endorsement. Okay. Number two is money. Number three is likability. Number four is how bad the president is doing at that time. Because, you know, if the economy is bad, the endorsement doesn't mean that much. You know how that works out.

28:40It's just kind of how it is. You know, so where do you put Trump's endorsement in whoever's going to be the next president in 2028? Look, there is no question that President Trump's endorsement is enormously consequential. It carries a great deal of weight. I don't think it will be decisive in the presidential race. It carries weight, but I think the voters are going to make their own determination. And I think it is one thing President Trump is very effective when he's on the ballot making the case for voting for Donald Trump. The simple reality is none of us are Donald Trump. And the voters don't think any of us are Donald Trump.

29:21And to be clear, this is not going to be an election where it's a never Trump election. I think there is no never Trump lane in the Republican Party. Look, maybe it's Liz Cheney and six people, but it's not, there's no lane that matters that is a never Trump lane. So the chances of a Massey Tucker, where do you put that? Might they run? Sure. I think they have no prospect for success. And I think, look, Tucker and Massey, they just hate Donald Trump and they want to burn it all down. Why, though? You have to know you're in D.C. It's confusing to me. Why is that? I have my own speculations, but I want to hear from you.

30:03Look, I don't know why. If you look at Tucker, and I have been very, very outspoken on Tucker. I think Tucker is the single most dangerous demagogue in America. I think he is doing enormous damage. And I think he has made a decision to go to a very dark place where Tucker right now, Tucker is almost indistinguishable from Ilhan Omar. If you look at what he is saying, Almost every show he does is attacking Israel and attacking the Jews. His answer for everything wrong in life is the Jews did it, the Judas did it, the Jews did it. Half the shows he's done are attacking Donald Trump. He now says Donald Trump is the Antichrist.

30:45He hates Donald Trump. one of the reasons this is so dangerous is is that i believe anti-semitism is the gateway drug to anti-capitalism and anti-americanism that that it quickly leads to all three and you see that with tucker look you see that with comrade mandami in new york where the marxist and islamist the green red alliance they come together and they come together because they hate the same people You have Tucker who's now done shows praising Comrade Mondami. He's done shows praising Nicolas Maduro. He's done shows praising Putin repeatedly. He's done shows with the president of Iran that were basically a love fest.

31:34He's done shows defending Sharia law. That is a lot of things, but that ain't conservative and that ain't American. And the problem is, Tucker, a lot of young people listen to him. And there's a whole cloud of influencers that are around him that are Candace and Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and now Massey has jumped into it that are telling young people that they hate Israel, they hate Trump, and they're very quickly getting to and they hate America too. I think that's dangerous as hell. And so I made a decision about a year ago that I'm going to stand up and fight this because I don't want that to be my party and I don't want that to be my country.

32:23And I will say in the Senate, most of my colleagues, the Republican colleagues in the Senate, have told me privately, Ted, you're exactly right. I agree with you. And yet almost none of them are willing to say it because he's got one hell of a megaphone. Look, if you pull up my Twitter right now, if I tweet good morning, I will get hundreds of anti-Semitic responses. Like it unleashes a constant barrage. Most politicians are scared of criticism, so they don't do something that results in criticism because they're scared of their own shadow. I'm a big believer in Occam's razor, that the simplest explanation is usually the best.

33:07I'm a very easy guy to understand. I actually believe this shit. Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe it with all my heart. And so standing up against what they're doing, I think matters enormously. Have you ever had dinner with Tucker? Have I had dinner with Tucker? No, I have not had dinner with Tucker. Have you guys broke bread? Have you guys had one-on-one, couple hours sitting down at his place, at your place? Has there ever been a relationship between the two of you? So I have known Tucker for 25 years. we've never been terribly friendly we haven't been overtly antagonistic when he had his Fox show and by the way I've reached out I've invited him and he's not had a whole lot of interest in getting to know me he has never been a fan of mine I've done his Fox show a number of times inevitably when you do his Fox show you would know that he would come at me and he would come at me trying to paint me as insufficiently conservative, trying to attack me as being, and I did a show periodically knowing that he was going to be more hostile than Meet the Press was going to be.

34:13He was going to be more hostile than CNN, but I would do it anyway. And he typically failed in trying to prove that I wasn't really a conservative because I am a conservative. um tucker changed he had had two rather odd shows that at the time i thought were just a weird aberration and they were both defending nazis so he had one crackpot professor on who said there's a good argument that winston churchill is the villain of world war ii and tucker kind of oohed and odd when that happened and then he had a different crackpot professor on, who said there's a very good argument the United States should have intervened in World War II on behalf of the Nazis, and we should have supported Adolf Hitler.

35:02And again, Tucker nodded. And those were kind of weird outliers, but he did not have this obsession with Israel, Israel, Israel that he now has, I think the show exists to attack. What happened though? You have friends that know him. What happened with that? I don't know. I will say, following the interview with me, which, by the way, was both unhinged going after Israel and also utterly fact-free. So listen, Tucker does a show where facts don't matter. So at one point I said, well, the Ayatollah is actively trying to kill Donald Trump. He's like, no, he's not. That's not true. That's simply not true.

35:44And I frankly wasn't prepared for an engaged person in public policy to just lie. It is true. There are two different instances of hit squads that the Ayatollah had hired to murder Trump. The IRGC put out a video that they made an animated video of a drone coming and attacking Trump at Mar-a-Lago. And they put it out from their own language. And by the way, we now have at least one person convicted and in jail for being an Iranian hitman hired by the nation of Iran to kill Trump. Well, Tucker just insists it's not true. It's not true. You're just lying. It just didn't happen. And then bizarrely he said, and if it was true, well, then we should nuke Iran.

36:33I'm like, okay, no, that's stupid. It is true. But no, the right answer is not to nuke Iran. No one's saying that. And like two weeks later, he had the president of Iran on. Complete love fest. You know, we didn't ask him once. Why are you trying to murder President Trump? Like facts did not matter. So what happened? I don't know. But I will say the most common explanation I hear is that almost everyone I know believes he's being paid by Cutter. And he's being paid tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't have any proof of that. Don't you guys have access to it? I know Anna Paulina Luna, you know, something came out two days ago where she is working on influencers that are getting paid by foreign nations.

37:15It's a great idea, yes. This looks really interesting because I don't think he's the only person being paid. Listen, we know Qatar. Qatar is the number one foreign funder of universities in this country. They spend about$7.6 billion. Second is China, but Qatar's ahead. Most people think it's China, but Qatar's number one. Yeah. And look, the anti-Semitic protests on college campuses, Qatar and China are both funding those. How do you know that? Is that factual?

37:52I think there are reasonable inferences. Can I point to documentary evidence to show you that? No. And there's a combination of Qatar and China and Iran and then also Soros and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The latter is documented. I can show the latter. Is there any way you guys can, because that would put the end to everything. Can you find a way to show proof 100 % that Qatar and China were behind the anti-Semitic, you know, the whole movement? Is there any way that you can find that out? You should be able to. I will tell you, I've had this conversation with the attorney general, the head of the FBI, 50 times from the beginning of Trump, too.

38:33And I've said the number one thing you should do is follow the money. Look, it's one thing to arrest some punk who's violent and threatening people. That's fine. But I'm not the only person who noticed that at the anti-Semitic protests, the tents all matched. There was clearly organized funding. Actually, your team pulled up Neville Roy Singham. There's no doubt Neville Roy Singham is an American billionaire, sold a tech company for$800 million. He is a communist. He is a Marxist. He's moved to Hong Kong. He lives in China now. He is clearly funding some of this. We know that he is funding the anti-AI movement, a Chinese communist who wants America not to build data centers so that we are reliant on China and China can win the race for AI.

39:20That's proven. Yes. That he is funding the anti-AI data center movement in the U.S. Yes, and there's a report the House of Representatives put out that detailed it. I did a whole podcast walking through that report, so I can send you that particular. Okay, so if you could, you're a heavyweight in the Senate. If you could go find out who was getting paid by foreign countries, foreign players, how would you go about doing it? The biggest thing you would do is you would have the FBI and DOJ begin examining it, begin following the money. And look, I serve in the Senate. The Senate is a legislative body.

39:54I don't control executive authority. I don't control subpoena power. I don't have subpoena power. I don't control the ability to surveil, to get subpoenas for bank records, for example. And so it's got to be an executive and law enforcement function. And Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, I know them both very well. Kash Patel, I know very well. Well, I've probably urged them to follow the money 50 times. I don't know the extent to which they're doing so. I wish they were doing more on this because I think it is absolutely critical. It's dividing the nation. It's dividing the Republican. It's confusing a lot of the kids is what it's doing.

40:35And on the Tucker side, look, if you look back to Tucker, you and I are both old enough to remember when George W. Bush was president. and the Iraq war was happening. And Tucker at the time had a bow tie on and he was on TV basically as a cheerleader, just about with pom-poms, cheering on the Iraq war. He was a big interventionist and loved the Iraq war. I think the Iraq war was a mistake. And I will say, this is one thing that I think is important to clarify. Sometimes in political decisions, people simplify. And so in foreign policy, they think of Republican foreign policy that they're just two camps.

41:15It's bipolar. You are either an interventionist, and your solution to every problem is send the Marines, or you're an isolationist, and you just want to withdraw from the world and engage in nothing. You know, interventionists include people. I think John McCain would be a very typical interventionist. Lindsey Graham would have said he was an interventionist. Rand Paul and Ron Paul are both isolationists. I have long believed that both camps are wrong. I disagree with both strongly. And I've described myself as a third point on the triangle, that what I consider myself to be is a non-interventionist hawk.

42:00Now, what does that mean? Because that's a little abstract. It means that we should be very reluctant to use U.S. military force. and the sole touchstone for if and when we do should be protecting the vital national security interest of the United States. So where we went off track is doing other things, engaging in nation building. Look, Iraq, you look at that 2016 presidential campaign. There were 17 of us on that stage. Set Rand Paul aside as his views being somewhat fringe. Of the 16 who remained, there were two and only two who opposed the Iraq war, Donald Trump and me. Both of us thought it was a mistake.

42:45The other 14 all said it was a great idea. The reason the Iraq war was a mistake is we were not acting to defend our national security interests. Instead, we were engaged in nation building. There was this idea that we could go turn Iraq into a democratic utopia. We could turn it into Switzerland. I think the military is terrible at that, and that's not their job. Their job is to protect America and to kill our enemies. Now, I also strongly disagree with the isolationists. And where the difference is, is Iran is qualitatively different. When the Ayatollah says, death to America, I believe him.

43:22And I think Iran getting a nuclear weapon, the odds are unacceptably high Iran would use that nuclear weapon against the United States or against our allies. And so I strongly support what President Trump has done, striking Iran to prevent that. I would not support if someone had a proposal, let's send 400 ,000 troops, ground troops on the ground to invade Iran and try to turn it into Switzerland. I'd be like, no, that's a very bad idea. What we need to do, and so a non-interventionist talk, by the way, I also think where I am on foreign policy is exactly where Donald Trump is. and it is also where Ronald Reagan was.

44:03What Ronald Reagan referred to that as is peace through strength. In eight years, the biggest country Reagan ever invaded was Grenada. But at the same time, he rebuilt the military, he won the Cold War without firing a shot, and he defeated the Soviet Union, which collapsed because he was so strong that he didn't have to go to war. So you just said, this is kind of how I heard what you broke down. Republican has two sides, big government, small government. Then foreign, you said, isolationist. And you have your own hybrid model, but somebody that is more intervening. Okay, so if I'm reading this correctly, big government, small government, you're saying you're a small government and you're pinning Marco as a big government guy.

44:48Let me finish and he can correct me. And on the foreign side, I'm assuming you're putting isolationist as a JD and you being the opposite. Is that a fair assessment? Um, look, where Marco is, he'll have to decide. I will say, if you look at, all right, let's take isolationism. J.D. on foreign policy has disagreed with President Trump on almost every decision Trump has made this second term. J.D. negotiated the MOU with Iran. That was a terrible deal. And I was the first and for a long time the only Republican senator to say that and say it publicly, that it was a terrible deal. That MOU envisioned flowing$300 billion to the Ayatollah and the IRGC.

45:44That would have been staggeringly foolish. And what I said publicly is, look, history has shown that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a really, really bad idea. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, in an act of colossal stupidity, flowed$100 billion to the Ayatollah. And that$100 billion they used to fund terrorism across the globe for 47 years, Iran has been the leading state sponsor of terrorism. And in particular to fund October 7th, to fund the death squads that murdered 1 ,200 innocent people and that raped women and girls. That's what$100 billion produced.

46:30And the MOU proposed let's triple that to$300 billion. I think it was a very foolish idea. I spend a lot of time talking to President Trump. I talk to President Trump every week, sometimes every day. And on foreign policy, I will say he has listened to me the vast majority of the time. Not all the time, but a great deal of time. The MOU thankfully collapsed. Had the MOU gone into effect, Americans would have died. That money would have been used by Iranian terrorists to murder Americans. So I'm glad we're not sending them the money. but I do think it was a very serious policy mistake. Who supports you on the Republican side that Trump doesn't have?

47:15So look, I will say this, Pat. Do you know why I'm asking that question? Do you want me to give you the reason why I'm asking the question? Sure. Every journey starts with a choice. People who inspire us don't wait for the path ahead. They create their own. From handcrafted Italian leather by generations of artisans, engineered for life in motion. Every piece is created with purpose For the work, the journey, the moments that matter For those who aren't defined by a title, but by how they live The standards they set, the risks they take, the work they put in Engineered for performance, crafted without compromise Because the future isn't something you wait for, it's something you move toward Introducing the new FLB Icon Collection The future looks bright.

48:07The reason why I'm asking that question is because, you know, you have to look at what, like you covered earlier, you know, suburban women. You know, you were kind of talking about some of the stuff earlier on where they're at and what they're going to be voting for. Trump was able to get an audience that the others didn't have. You kind of talked about a little bit blue collar, all that, you know, to get that audience. But if going in 2028, we know AOC. I've been saying AOC is going to be running for 18 months, and people thought I was crazy. Now finally it's showing up on policy that AOC is going to be running.

48:40AOC is running 100%. She's running, and she could even be the winner. I think AOC and Gavin Newsom are the top two frontrunners on the Democrats. I think Newsom every day is just flip-flopping. Make up your mind what you are, and don't just go be a socialist just to say you have the social. I think his strategy is horrible, horrible, no backbone. He can't stand up for anything. I think that's going to backfire on him. So the conservatives, and let's just say the common sense guys, even some of the people that are center leftists, who are like, look, there's no way I'm supporting men competing in women's sports, but I'm pro-choice, or I'm, you know, some of those guys.

49:13They know if they give their vote to the wrong person, a socialist could be a president in 2028. So then I have to choose between who. Handful of names, you're going to be one of them. JD, some are saying Rubio may not run. I hope DeSantis runs. I actually hope he's working behind closed doors to want to run. I think there's going to be a couple wild cards that no one's even thinking about right now that behind closed doors. Some kind of a Trump's going to get in there that no one is expecting and suddenly, you know, he goes. But a betting man who's protecting his vote has to sit there and say, who do you have that the others don't have?

49:48Who do you have that the others don't have? And a part of it is, is J.D. already have the endorsement from Trump? Because Trump behind closed doors is going and saying, hey, you think J.D. is going to be the guy? J.D. is going to be the guy. And almost saying J.D. and Rubio need to run together on a ticket. So what is different from Ted Cruz than the other two? So listen, I'll say that, as we said at the beginning, I don't have an announcement about 28. I am right now not running for 28. My focus politically is on the mid-term. You went to Iowa. You went to all the states. You're making endorsements.

50:24These are all signs that you're running. And if you don't run, it's a fail. You have to run. It's free agency. My opinion. You don't have to make the announcement, but that's my opinion. Look, as a voter, I get frustrated out of my mind with people who say they're conservative. And they go to office and they turn into jellyfish. And so if I'm deciding whom to endorse, I'm looking for show me your record. Show me when you stood up and fought for conservative principles. Show me when you bled. Show me what you've accomplished. This is serious stuff, so I'm not interested in tilting a windmill. Respectfully, that didn't answer my question.

51:01My question to you was what is the difference between you, J.D., and Marco Rubio? So if that race happens, that will be a decision the voters will make. I'm not laying that out right now. So I get what you want me to say. No, I don't want you to know what I'm asking. All I'm saying is you ask me a question right now. What is the difference between me and Tucker or me and, you know, some of the other podcasts? I'll give you what the difference is for me. I'm asking you, what is the difference? Forget running. On what issues do you, J.D., and Rubio differ? And who do you have that they don't have?

51:36What audience? So what I've said is a couple of things. Number one, I think the election is going to be a divide economically. What do we believe? Small government or big government? And foreign policy, what do we believe? Isolationist or American leadership? I think there are real and meaningful differences on those fronts. I will say another thing, which is I think this next election is going to be a debate about who is best prepared to continue Trump's legacy. to continue winning victories and moving forward. What is the best thing about Donald Trump? The man has cast iron balls. In a way that is epic, in a way that we have never seen in the world of politics.

52:22This is documented. This is proven. He is fearless, and Trump is willing to stand and endure criticism and heat in a way we've never seen anyone do. There is a reason that I've spent 10 years as Donald Trump's strongest ally in the Senate. And when it comes to fighting side by side, we have won massive victories. Now, I think you're also going to have a conversation about what any candidate's record has been. And if you look at my record of fighting for conservative victories and winning conservative victories year after year after year, leading, you look at the one big beautiful bill that passed last year, also called the Working Families Tax Cut.

53:13Huge portions of that bill I wrote. And in fact, there are two provisions in particular that I think are the two most important parts of that bill. Let me take you back to April of last year. So April of last year, we have a retreat of all the Senate Republicans, and we're talking about what do we want to put in the big reconciliation bill. And I stood up at the time. I said, look, there are lots of things in this bill that are really important that we all care about. Securing the border, yes. Rebuilding the military, absolutely. Cutting taxes, passing the biggest tax cut in American history, absolutely.

53:51But I said to my colleagues, I said, look, at the same time, we ought to stop and take a minute and think about legacy. Think about what in this bill will make a difference in 10, 20, 30 years. And I said, if I could, I would like to humbly suggest two things. Number one, school choice, which I think is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. and number two, what are today called the Trump accounts. Now, both of those provisions I wrote, both of those provisions are in the bill. What do they mean? Let me talk a little bit about it because a lot of people don't know the details of these, and I think it's enormously consequential.

54:37On school choice, what we passed, it starts next year. So it hadn't kicked in yet, so people have not yet seen the benefits in their own lives. They will starting next year. Starting next year, every taxpayer in America can give up to$1 ,700 to a scholarship-granting organization in the States. If you do so, you get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for doing so. Not a deduction, a credit. That means if you write a check for$1 ,700 to a scholarship-granting organization here in Florida, you owe$1 ,700 less to Uncle Sam. So from your perspective, it's free money. It costs you nothing. You're sending the money one way or the other.

55:21Do you send it to the IRS or do you send it to a scholarship-granting organization? Secondly, the Trump accounts. On July 4th, the Trump accounts launched. Every child in America, all$70 million, will have an individual Trump account open for them, an investment account. Newborn children will have it seated with$1 ,000. Parents, family, employers can all put up to$5 ,000 a year in a tax-advantaged account. And this is the critical piece. All of that is invested in the S &P 500. It's invested in the stock market and a broad-based equity index. Now, there are two massive advantages to this. Number one, something you understand exquisitely, every child in America is going to experience the miracle of compound growth.

56:14Roughly half of Americans don't own a single stock or bond. That's going to change for our kids. A little girl born this year, she gets a Trump account open,$1 ,000 is seeded automatically. If her parents or family or an employer puts$5 ,000 a year in that account, if you assume the historical rate of growth of the S &P 500, which is 7 % a year after inflation, by the time she's 18, she'll have$170 ,000 in that account. And if she keeps contributing, by the time she's 35, she will have more than$700 ,000 in that account. And that's not just the kids of rich people. That's the kids of a single mom waiting table.

56:56That changes this country. But here's the second advantage of Trump accounts that, Pat, makes me really excited. It's why I was proud to champion and author this provision. We're going to be creating an entirely new generation of capitalists. All of us have seen the young people who say they're losing faith in free enterprise. They think socialism is a good idea. Our kids now, I've talked about, look, 10 years from now, A little boy is going to pull out his phone and look at his app. And instead of being told corporations are big, mean, nasty things, he's going to say, I own$100 of Apple. I own$50 of Boeing or$75 of McDonald's.

57:40You know, when I size you up and I watch you, and I watch you very closely because I used to come and watch you and Mike Lee in D.C. I would sit there and just watch you do your thing. I'm like, this guy's freaking good. I love Mike. Ten years ago, something like that, 2015. 15. But this is, I don't need, I'm not looking for a response. I'm just kind of sharing my thoughts. I think in your eyes, JD's not at your level and Rubio is not at your level. It just so happens the responsibilities that they got, Rubio was highlighted the last 18, 24 months in a massive way, massive way. And Marco's done an excellent job.

58:19Excellent job. Excellent job. And Marco is a gifted communicator. He always has been. And super likable. And you're seeing he's smart. So he's got the trifecta. But I don't know if the audience can make a case that J.D.'s ahead of you in, except for being a VP. I don't know if the market's going to be like, well, what has he done compared to Ted? I can see that being made. But if Trump endorses him, MAGA is going to go this route. So you were about to talk about the Republican Party and maybe. And then I asked you a question about Massey and Tucker. We got a little bit sidetracked. Maybe break down what the Republican Party to you is and what's going to happen when MAGA post-Trump and even what role Trump's going to play.

59:01Oh, look, Trump is not going to ride off into the sunset. Trump is always going to be engaged and say exactly what the hell he thinks. And it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. But he's going to get in the way. I mean, he's going to get in the way because he's not going to give up that power. He's not going to do it. That's not his personality. He and I have a different relationship than most politicians in Washington have with him because he views a lot of politicians in Washington as beta males. He doesn't view them as very strong. I'm the only person who's ever stood in the arena, and he's punched me in the face as hard as he could, and I punched him in the face as hard as he could.

59:40And I ended up winning 12 states, winning over and over and over again. Now, he ultimately won. He beat me. and I made the decision to be at peace with that and became his strongest ally and a good friend of his. But having been through, look, you'll sit down with Trump and he'll go on and on with, you know, tons of people in his administration, but like, you know, they backed Ted. They backed Ted instead of me. They shouldn't have backed Ted, but they did. I mean, I've had a thousand conversations with senior Trump appointees where he just gives them grief on that. And look, that's his prerogative.

1:00:18I deeply respect the strength he has had. Now, what is Trump going to do in 28? Who knows? Nobody knows. I could easily see him essentially letting something like The Apprentice play out of, you know, you guys fight it out. Let's see what happens. He might not. But at the end of the day, I don't lose a lot of sleep speculating on things that neither I nor anyone else on planet Earth knows the answer to. And so my approach to President Trump, I've spent a decade encouraging him to do good things and discouraging him from doing bad things. Now, on the discouraging side, I mostly do that in private because it's not helpful.

1:01:02It's not my job to go on CNN and attack Donald Trump. That is not helpful. It's actually not productive. If you go do it, it pisses them off, and it does the opposite thing. It's the worst thing to do. Yeah. It's privately. Privately, I'll call them. I publicly always support. But, all right, look, I'll give an example. Let's take trade and tariffs. This is a story I've told before. So let's go back to April 2nd of last year. That's when the president announced massive new tariffs. And you'll remember the market collapsed. the next Tuesday, there were a group of, I think, seven senators. We called the president, about 11, 1130 at night, called the president.

1:01:44And we were saying, Mr. President, we've got to change the path we're on. This current path is not working well. And my view on the question of trade and tariffs is that there are two camps in the Trump administration. Camp number one views tariffs or the threats of tariffs as leverage to get our trading partners to open up their markets, to reduce their tariffs, to repeal non-tariff barriers. I think Scott Besant is in that camp. I am very much in that camp. There's a second camp that views tariffs not as leverage to open up foreign markets, but as the end in and of itself, that they just want high tariffs forever.

1:02:27and it's pretty closely linked to an isolationist foreign policy. The idea is we don't want to deal with the world at all. We want high tariffs and just stay at home and say to hell with everyone. Who's there? Who's in that camp? J.D. would be in that camp? I think that's where his instincts fall. What I told the president on this call is I said, Mr. President, my advice, pick a country. Pick any damn country. and tomorrow morning announced that we are slashing the tariffs to that country and announced simultaneously that they are slashing tariffs on American goods. And I said, if you do that, two things will happen.

1:03:12Number one, it will calm the markets because the markets were in free fall at the time. And I said, number two, it will give people some confidence that we're on path number one and not path number two. People are not sure which direction we're going to go. And if you do that, people say, okay, these tariffs are meant to open up markets and expand trade. Trump did not like this conversation. He was in a bad mood. I've had conversations when he's in a great mood. He was really in a surly mood. He did not like what we were saying to him. And I went on to say, Mr. President, look, if we get to November of next year and people's 401ks are down 30 percent and people are going into the department store or grocery store and spending 30, 40, 50 % more to buy groceries and buy the goods they need.

1:04:00We'll face a bloodbath in November, and you'll spend the next two years being impeached every damn week. To which his response was, F you, Ted, although he did not abbreviate it. And that's, look, that is not a typical of a rough and tumble conversation with the president. Now, the conversation went past midnight. We hung up, I think, about 1230 at night. As we hung up the phone, Lindsey Graham was one of the other senators on the call. Lindsey goes, well, that didn't go well. The next day, Wednesday at noon, Trump announced the pause and he halted all of the tariffs that he had announced the week before.

1:04:52And the stock market took off. And I will say, even though Trump was pissed, 12 hours later, he implemented what we were urging him to do. That was the course of action we urged, and he did precisely what we were encouraging him to do. And actually, I was in the Oval the next day on Thursday. He was signing a bill that I'd just passed. And I said, Mr. President, congratulations. you just produced the single largest one-day increase in the stock market in the history of America. So I say that to say, look, a good friend doesn't just say to someone, everything you're doing is perfect, it's great.

1:05:31A good friend helps you solve a problem. And by the way, I wasn't saying this with this level of candor on television. I was saying it directly to the president. And that's part of why he and I have a good relationship, because I think he knows I will tell him the truth if he likes it or not. And in my view, that's a better friend. Have you ever broke bread with J.D.? Oh, yeah. Oh, so there's a relationship there as well. Look, I like J.D. J.D. is a friend. I barnstormed all over Ohio with J.D. to help J.D. get elected. I was very glad he got elected to the Senate. I've had J.D. as a guest on my podcast.

1:06:10I like J.D. personally. We get along and we're friends. He and I have meaningful differences on policy. What's your, do you have a funny President Trump story? Everybody, you know, people have spent a lot of time with him. They all have some great stories. What's your one? First term, Erdogan from Turkey was visiting D.C. and he was in the Oval. and Trump invited five senators to join him in the meeting with Erdogan. And so it was me, Lindsey Graham, it was Jim Risch, Rick Scott, and Joni Ernst. It was the five of us who were there. And we were talking beforehand. The meeting was about two hours, and what Trump did there was unusual.

1:06:57It's something I've never seen him do in another meeting before. Two-hour meeting. Trump spoke maybe five to ten minutes. He was quiet almost the entire meeting. That's not typical. He usually has a lot to say. What he did instead is he let the five senators speak almost the entire time. And I think Erdogan came in believing that the Congress was a rubber stamp, that Trump could do anything he wanted and we'd just stamp it because that's the situation Erdogan has. Whatever he does, he gets a rubber stamp from his parliament. And so what I told Erdogan is I said two things. I said, number one, as long as you have the Russian S-400 missile defense system, you are not going to get the American F-35 fighter jet.

1:07:46Because we are not going to train the Russian missile defense system on our advanced, our most advanced fighter jets. Pick one or the other. You don't get both. If you get rid of the S-400, you can have the F-35, but you can't have both. And I told him, I said, Mr. President, let me be clear. I have probably 95 votes in the Senate for that proposition. This is not close. This is overwhelmingly bipartisan. You ain't getting the F-35 if you keep the S-400. And then I said, secondly, the Kurds. Erdogan hates the Kurds. You're saying this in front of Erdogan? I'm saying this to Erdogan. I'm in the Oval saying it right here.

1:08:30Trump's sitting there. Erdogan's sitting there. I'm sitting right here. Like this is face to face. Erdogan is as close to me as you are. And Trump's right over there. I said, secondly, the Kurds, we're not going to sit by quietly while you exterminate the Kurds. The Kurds have been exceptionally loyal to us. They have stood by us in military conflict after military conflict. And we're not just going to let you exterminate. And Erdogan hated it. but it was an interesting dynamic because what trump was doing is fascinating was brilliant is we were playing bad cop and trump kind of leaned back and he said see what i have to deal with and we were the bad guys trump said at the beginning we before erdogan got there he said i gotta say i like the guy i don't know why i like dictators i just do we're like yeah we don't know why you do either.

1:09:22Like, don't do that. But it was a very savvy diplomatic move on Trump's part because he didn't have to play bad cop. He knew what we believed. So he actually just said, you guys explain it. And it became absolutely clear. And by the way, they didn't get the F-35 because he wouldn't give up the S-400. And he substantially reduced his efforts to go after the Kurds. So it was a very successful foreign policy meeting. But I remember thinking and learning a lesson. This is something a president should do more often, like bring in the bad cop to move a negotiation in a way you want to move it, because I thought in that negotiation, it was very effective.

1:10:06Which world leaders have you met or have you been in the room with? Have you had meetings with Putin or Zelensky? Zelensky multiple times. I've not met Putin. Got it. So Erdogan, is he as intense as he seems to be or is there a softer, lighter side to him behind closed doors? Look, any world leader in the Oval with the president is somewhat restrained. Donald Trump is the most powerful man on the face of the planet. Other than Zelensky, when he came in, it was a jackass and it will go down as one of the most disastrous Oval Office meetings in history. But Erdogan was more restrained because he understood the power differential there.

1:10:48You think in 2028 an outsider stands a chance to win like Trump? Listen, there are a number of self-declared influencers who frankly monetize right now politics and MAGA is profitable for them. I think the voters.

1:11:11Trump changed politics and made the Republican Party a blue collar party. That ain't changing. That shouldn't change. I don't want to go back to country club Republicans. I've spent my entire career in the Senate fighting against the country club Republicans. I think we ought to be fighting for the truck driver, the steel worker. You look at the two bills that I authored in the reconciliation bill, school choice and Trump accounts. They're both focused on building, accumulating wealth and savings and getting education to achieve the American dream. You look at another bill I authored in that bill, no tax on tips.

1:11:51That's my legislation. I wrote that legislation, passed it into law. No tax on tips as you? Yes. Really? Now, I'm going to give credit where credit is due. That was Trump's idea. But you executed it on the writing of it. Yes. Got it. Sometimes genius is in simple ideas. What a simple idea to pitch that Kamala Harris had to copy and Hochul said, no, Trump didn't come up with it. Did you hear the story of how he came up with it? No. All right. So he was having lunch with all the Senate Republicans. And it was a couple of days after he'd had a big rally in Vegas. And he said he was having lunch before the rally at a restaurant.

1:12:29And he said, a waitress came by, and he said, and she was beautiful. She was beautiful. We're all cracking up laughing. And he said, I was just sitting there talking, and she was complaining about how burdensome it was to keep track of her tips, that the Biden administration had made it harder, made it more expensive to pay taxes on tips. And Trump said, he said, I just pulled over a notepad, and I got out a pen, and I wrote, no tax on tips. He said, I handed it to her and said, what do you think? She's like, that's awesome. So then he had the rally and he said, so I went to the rally and he sort of jokes.

1:13:08And he says, I know you guys think I must've had a white paper and studied it. I didn't at all. I just stood up and said, said to the crowd, let's see how this goes. No tax on tips. And the crowd went wild and they just loved it. And so he's telling us this story. This is like two days later. Yeah. And I went back to my office. I grabbed my policy team. I said, this is a great friggin idea. It really was. Let's go draft it right now. So we wrote the legislation that became no tax on tips. It's massive because, you know, folks who make money on tips, by the way, you could flip Democrats with a simple thing like that.

1:13:46Do you know in Nevada, 25 % of the workers in Nevada are tipped workers? That makes sense. Which is why when I introduced my bill, both of the Nevada Democrats immediately co-sponsored it. they don't have a choice. I went to them and said, hey, do you want to sponsor? They're like, absolutely yes. Why is it important when you co-sponsor deals with a Democrat? What does it do? It just gives you more credibility with the Democrats in the Senate? It helps you pass it. Got it. To get it passed into law, you've got to be able to work to build a broader coalition. Look, I've authored and passed over 100 different pieces of legislation.

1:14:23And doing that means I know how to fight. and I know how to battle ferociously. And all right, let's take school choice for a minute because I'll tell you a couple of stories about school choice. All right, you want a Trump story. This is another Trump story you'll appreciate. So with the school choice provision, I went over to the Oval to talk to Trump because I wanted to get him really enthusiastic and engaged in it. And the case I made to him, as I said, Mr. President, we get this passed in this reconciliation bill. You will go down in history as the greatest civil rights president of the 21st century.

1:14:59And I said, your critics will never give you credit for that. But if we get this done, millions of kids, many if not most of whom are low-income African Americans and Hispanics, will escape failing schools and be able to get a real education and have a real shot at a job and a future and at the American dream. And so we're making the case to Trump. And in the middle of it, that is when Elon Musk tweeted that Trump was on the Epstein list. And so Trump now, he's not on his phone anymore nearly as much. So what happens when something gets tweeted is they print it out. Natalie comes in, print it on a piece of paper, and hands it to him.

1:15:42And he literally reads that tweet. And I'm sitting in the Oval, and his knuckles turn white. You also don't know the tweet yet. I don't know what it is yet. I mean, he shows it to us. It happens that second. Like he, that second, they hand it to him that second. I don't know. Sure. I get it. Yeah. It was, and he was so pissed. I joked, I learned some curse words I didn't even know. And I will say our school choice meeting went, went off the rails that like we were done talking about school choice and, and Trump had some technicolor views to say about Elon. Now I'm glad they have patched it up.

1:16:19I'm good friends with Elon as well. Well, it was not good for America to have the two of them battling, but it was a that's a moment I will never forget of just like the. OK, there's a hand grenade thrown in the middle of everything. Here's another question for you, Dave, since you brought that up. You know, I got a call from a chief of staff of a country right now that's, you know, in war and they're having certain challenges. And we had a call and it wasn't about, you know, it was about Elon Musk. and from talking to the entire team over the weekend, this past weekend specifically, it was very obvious how much, the way they put it is they felt Elon's power was going to be longer than Trump's and they feared Elon more than they feared Trump.

1:17:08Is it at a point right now where an endorsement from Trump is valuable but also an endorsement from Elon is just as valuable as Trump in 28 or no? Look, hard to say. Elon has not made a lot of endorsements. Now, he writes checks, which is a different thing. It's a form of an endorsement. It's a form of an endorsement. And I mean, he spent hundreds of millions of dollars in politics. So that is valuable. He has not typically been in the endorsement role. Listen, Elon has become a good friend. You mentioned I had him on my podcast. It was a fascinating interview. It was great. One of the best interviews I watched for the year.

1:17:50Thank you. Look, he is hands down the smartest man I've ever met. And you and I have both been blessed. We've met some really smart people. And Elon is an order of magnitude. He's just, you know, the line I use is it's not that he thinks outside the box. It's that he doesn't know there's a box. So, like, one exchange I had with him, I asked him the question. I said, okay. Most of my conversation was about his business career. And I said, look, in business and life, there are people who are big picture people who can see big ideas and have grand visions. And there are people who are execution people that are really good at getting things done.

1:18:32And I said, generally, they're different people. They're normally not the same person. Somehow, you seem to be really damn good at both of them. How is that? Why is that? And he stops, and, you know, Elon is, you know, he kind of looks off in the sky, and he's silent for like 10 seconds, and he processes. I mean, and he'll answer you, but he's like processing the answer. And he says to me, I think I probably know more about manufacturing than any human being who's ever lived. And my first reaction is, okay, that's an audacious statement, like Henry Ford would beg to differ. And then I start to think about it.

1:19:14I'm like, okay, the guy is the CEO of Tesla. He's the CEO of SpaceX. He's the CEO of the Boring Company. He's the CEO of Neuralink. He's the CEO of XAI. And at the time, he was running Doge. Like, what he said was not crazy. And I will say, have you ever been down to Starbase? It's amazing. I've been down there several times. was down there with both Elon and Trump for a launch December last year. So like six years ago, Boca Chica was just an empty beach on the southern tip of Texas. Now, there was sand dune and a couple of lizards there. There's nothing there. They built a whole city. They have manufacturing facilities where they are building a rocket ship a month with precisions down to less than a tenth of a millimeter.

1:20:10And they're giant. I mean, the size of the Empire State Building that they're building. It is extraordinary. They're launching them there. As I'm walking through with Elon, he's pointing at the stuff, and he says, you know, this is all alien technology. And then he says something really unusual. He says, we don't patent any of it. He said, I assume everyone is going to steal everything I make. He says patents are for the weak. But he said by the time they steal it, I'm going to be five or six generations down the road, and it won't matter. Now, we've both known a ton of businessmen. I've never heard any other business leader say that.

1:20:54That is – What a powerful thing to say. What a powerful thing to say. Can you imagine, like, how little you – it is like an insult to your competition to say, guys, I'm not even thinking about you. Two topics before we wrap up, and I appreciate you being gracious with your time, is your father was an Amway at one point. Was he? Look, my dad's history has a lot of similarities to yours. You fled Iran. My father fled Cuba. And my dad's background in Cuba, he was born in Cuba, grew up in Cuba. And when he was a teenager, when he was 14, he began fighting in the Cuban Revolution. and he was actually fighting with Fidel Castro.

1:21:36So he was fighting against Batista. Batista was corrupt. He was a dictator. He was in bed with a mob. And my dad was throwing Molotov cocktails. He was blowing up bridges. I mean, he was a gorilla. When my dad was 17, he was captured and he was thrown in prison and they tortured him. They beat my father halfway to death. and he got out of jail. And at that point, my grandfather, my abuelo said, look, they know who you are. They're just going to kill you. You got to get out of the country. And so my dad at the time was a freshman at the University of Havana. He applied to three U.S. universities.

1:22:20What year is this? This is 57. Oh, wow. Okay. He applied to University of Miami, LSU, and University of Texas. ut lets him in so while he's in cuba escaping yeah so he gets um batista's still in power so he could get a student visa so he comes on a student visa because he was admitted to ut he takes a ferry boat from havana to key west and then he takes a greyhound bus from key west all the way to austin texas he's 18 he can't speak english he has a hundred dollars that my grandmother sewn into his underwear. And he gets a job washing dishes, making 50 cents an hour. And he goes to school full time, ends up being a math major.

1:23:12Wait, your mother's a math teacher, wasn't she? Both my parents are math majors. Oh, okay. So that's how they met? So my mother is Irish and Italian, born in Wilmington, Delaware, blue-collar family. Her mother was the second youngest of 17 kids. Wow. So Irish Catholic family. You know, I joke they didn't know what else to do on Saturday night. And so I've got hundreds of cousins in Delaware. My mother becomes the first person in her family ever to go to college. And she ended up going to Rice and getting a degree in math in 1956. Wow. And she goes to work at Shell. She gets hired as a computer programmer.

1:23:54And then the two of them meet in the 60s in New Orleans working together at a seismic data processing company. They meet there together, fall in love, get married. They move to Calgary, and they start their own small business in Calgary. They start a seismic data processing company. I'm born in Calgary, 1970. And my dad at the time is a young man. He's partying quite a bit. He's living life. He's not a Christian. And my father was partying a lot and having, you know, being out on the town. And he ends up leaving my mom and me. So when I'm three years old, he decides I don't want to be married anymore.

1:24:36And so he gets on a plane and he flies back to Houston. And I'm back in Calgary with my mom. He's in Houston for several months. and a colleague from the oil and gas industry invites him to come to church, invites him to Clay Road Baptist Church. And he goes there and he becomes a Christian. He becomes born again. It turns his life around. And my father goes and drives to the airport and he buys a plane ticket and he flies back to my mom and me. and it is because of that that I wasn't raised by a single mom, and I was raised, both my parents, they're still living. I'm incredibly close to them both.

1:25:22My dad is 87. My mom's 91, and yet a year later we moved to Houston. How long was the gap when he was gone? It was maybe four to six months. That's still a long time. It was several months. I don't remember it. I was three, so I know the story, but I was too young to remember it, And then I grew up in Houston, and they started a small business in Houston. Where does the network marketing come in? So they start the small business in Houston in 75. It's a seismic data processing company. They have some success. It's doing well. Oil and gas is doing well. You get to the mid-'80s, and the mid-'80s, oil collapses.

1:26:03And my dad, like he had 25 employees, and demand went to zero. Like he had clients who were regular clients who said, I don't care if you can tell us where oil is. We don't want any. Like the price is too low. And my father ended up, he had some savings, and he kept putting his savings into the business trying to save the business, thinking, okay, oil's going to turn around, it'll turn around. I still remember there was a day that I called Black Monday, and it was a Monday morning when of his 25 employees, he laid off 19 of them. And I saw him, I was in high school at the time, I saw him come home.

1:26:40He looked like he'd been beaten with a two-by-four. He broke his heart. And he had employees arguing with him, Rafael, I don't want to leave. I'm not going to leave. And he would say to them, look, you have a wife. You have kids. I can't pay you. There's no salary. You need to get a job that will feed your family because I can't. They ended up going bankrupt. So they went personally bankrupt. The company went bankrupt. And so I'm in the middle of high school with my parents in bankruptcy. And so when I went off to college, my parents were bankrupt. They couldn't pay a penny. And so I ended up being financially on my own at age 17 and had to take student loans.

1:27:22You know, it's interesting. A lot of people think senators are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, that there's a trust fund. I don't got no trust fund. That is not my world. But I took student loans. I came out of college and law school with about$100 ,000 in student debt. I joked that I had a mortgage, but I didn't have a house. And I didn't pay it off until I was 38. So I paid on the loans for a decade and a half. But my dad, when the oil business collapsed and Houston went into a recession, and it was a depression, really. I mean, it was the city. It crushed the city. And my dad had a period of time where he went from job to job to job.

1:28:01He was just trying to find a way to earn a living. And so he did multiple different multilevel marketing companies because he's a good salesman. And so he liked multilevel marketing because you could go and help people build their businesses. And so he spent several years doing that. And then he ended up becoming a pastor. And actually, my father should have become a pastor 40 years earlier. He is much happier as a pastor than he was at any stage. Was he always a good public speaker or, you know, how did that happen? Because so he always was because you can see him. He knows how to rally. He knows how to get up and do his magic.

1:28:34He is a great public speaker. He is passionate. When I was a kid, he used to, I did, competed in speech contests, and he would be a harsh taskmaster. He would literally, if you'd give a speech, and you'd say, um, or ah, he'd be like, what are you, a cow? Moo! But it was, look, a father who demands excellence of you. That's a real gift. Respect. I always heard stories about Rich DeVos, never met him, the late Rich DeVos. But he wrote a book called Compassionate Capitalism. And a man named Bill Vogel, who became a very good friend of mine, he said he heard Rich give a speech in 60, 69. It was called Sell in America.

1:29:19And he knew how to sell America in a very good way. And, of course, the DeVos family now gives money to a bunch of different things. Betsy DeVos, she's done what she's done. Last but not least before we wrap up. And Betsy's a great friend, by the way. Betsy. So Betsy was Trump's education secretary. I remember. Yeah. And she and I worked hand in hand. So in the first term, when Trump rolled out his school choice plan, I authored it and I rolled it out with Betsy DeVos at the Department of Education. And then Trump in the state of the union leaned in and said to pass it. But we were trying to pass it in a way that took 60 votes and we couldn't get any Democrats.

1:29:55We tried what we actually linked scholarship tax credits for kids in K through 12 to tax credit for workforce development because we were trying to get unions. We were trying to get trade unions to back it and to get some Democrats. And the Democrats just didn't budge. But I will tell you, when we were passing the school choice bill, Betsy was a huge ally. I was working with her day after day. School choice has been my passion for 35 years. I think it's the most important civil rights measure in our lifetimes. So I decided to argue it myself, which is weird. You normally have staff arguing it.

1:30:34I went in to argue it to the parliamentarian. three different times the parliamentarian struck the bill down and said no this doesn't meet the bird rule and so three different times my team and i we rewrote it to get it to fit the bird rule we were right at the end it was a we were right at the point when the bill was about to be voted on the floor we were still not in yet and and i went to john thune the majority leader john and I worked together very close. And I pulled John aside. I said, John, look, I've been an easy vote on this bill from day one. I've been a yes from day one. This is important.

1:31:12We're doing a lot of really important things on this bill. And I said, John, I want you to hear me very, very carefully. If the school choice provision is pulled out of this bill, I will burn the effing bill to the ground. Now, there is an advantage to building a reputation for being willing to blow things up. Nobody thinks you're bluffing. And John did not think I was bluffing. I was prepared to do exactly that. We rewrote it one more time and we got it in the bill. And it is the most millions of kids are now going to get. And Betsy was involved in this? Is that going to help with the problem?

1:31:57Betsy was part of the whole thing. Betsy was part of the whole thing. I've heard great things about Betsy DeVos myself as well. Last thing, when I saw the book, I thought I'm like, okay, this makes sense. Why you would write Going Further, the incomparable Clarence Thomas, which if you're watching this, we're going to put the link below to go buy. Number one book right now on Amazon for you to go place the order. Why choose to write this book? Because I think it's an important book. I think it's a book that needed to be written. So this is my fifth book, and I spent some time thinking about what do I want to write?

1:32:27What do I want to say? What do I want people to read? And I think Clarence Thomas is an extraordinary hero. I've known him for 30 years. He has a remarkable personal story. So two years ago, I went to Justice Thomas' chambers, and I told him then that I was thinking of writing a biography of him, and I asked if he would sit for interviews with me to work on the book. And he kind of leaned back in his chair and he thought about it for a second. And he said, Ted, if it were anybody else, if you were a law professor, I'd say no. And Thomas is famously reluctant. He gives very few speeches. He gives very few interviews.

1:33:09But he said, because it's you, I'll do it. And so we spent nine and a half hours in one-on-one interviews where I'd go over to his chambers, 8 a.m., sit there, just him and me in a room. I'd put a tape recorder down, and I'd ask him questions. And what the book does is really three things that are important. Number one, it tells his personal story. And I will tell you, his personal story is astonishing. Fascinating. He was born in abject poverty in rural Georgia, faced withering racism.

1:33:46he was raised initially by a single mom in squalor then he was raised by his grandparents his grandfather Myers Anderson most important man in Clarence Thomas's life if you want to understand Clarence Thomas you need to understand Myers Anderson he called him daddy and he was tough he was a disciplinarian when Clarence and his brother showed up to work to move into the house, Daddy said, boys, the damn vacation is over. And he worked them. He would get the boys up at three and four in the morning. They would deliver heating oil in the frigid cold in the winter. He would not let the boys wear gloves.

1:34:29He thought gloves were for the week. And he would work them from way before dawn until late at night. And the one exception is school and reading. And And both of Thomas's grandparents were illiterate. Neither one could read or write. And they wanted their grandkids to have a better future. So young Clarence Thomas would sit in the library and he'd read book after book after book, and he became an excellent student. And he decided that his vocation, his passion, he wanted to become a priest. And so the world almost didn't have Justice Thomas. The world almost had Father Thomas. So he went to seminary both in high school and college, faced enormous racism in seminary.

1:35:14This is early 60s.

1:35:18And he ultimately got disillusioned with the church. And the reason he left the church is he thought the church was not doing nearly enough to stand up against racial prejudice and racial discrimination and not nearly enough to fight for civil rights. And sort of the straw that broke the camel's back, he was at seminary and Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinating. and several of the white seminarians he was there studying with were cheering and celebrating and that just he said I'm done he left and he went to college he went to Holy Cross College and then Yale Law School and at the time he was angry at the church he was angry at God and he became a left-wing radical he became a radical he was wearing you know camouflage pants and combat boots, he had a poster of Malcolm X on the wall, he would go to Black Panther rallies, he participated in a riot in Harvard Square.

1:36:13I mean he describes himself as an angry young man, he hated, he hated God, he hated America, he hated white people. And so what I try to do in the book is three things. One, chronicle his amazing personal story, which is really inspirational, that he rose from abject poverty and vicious racism to the pinnacle of American law. But secondly, I also chronicled the journey he had personally from a left-wing radical, an angry college radical, to one of the most important conservative thinkers in the history of America. And then third... Who flipped him? Was it Thomas Sowell? Who played the role on him?

1:36:58So it was multiple people. I would say the person who flipped him was his grandfather, and he didn't realize it. So Thomas Sowell, there's an interesting story. He is in law school, and a friend gives him a book. He's in law school or Thomas Sowell? He's in law school. Thomas is in law school, and a friend gives him a book by Thomas Sowell, the great economist, black conservative, brilliant, gives him a book by Thomas Sowell, and Clarence Thomas reads a few pages of it and throws it in the trash, and he says, no black man has a right to think like this. Look, he was a liberal. He voted for George McGovern.

1:37:31I mean, he was a left-wing radical. He didn't want to read what Thomas Sowell had to say. Fast forward, so he comes out of Yale. He's a very good student. He's done quite well. No law firm would hire him. Every firm he went to said they wouldn't hire him, and he saw firsthand the negative consequences of affirmative action because when the schools were publicly letting you in based on your race and not based on merit, it meant that employers didn't believe you could do the job. And in fact, he took a 15-cent sticker from a cigar box and stuck it on his Yale law degree because that's what he said it was worse was 15 cents.

1:38:12The only job he could get is he got hired by the attorney general's office in Missouri, a Republican, Jack Danforth. and several years later a colleague of his guy named Dick Weiler who was actually a quadriplegic was paralyzed called him and said Clarence there's another one who thinks like you and Thomas says well what do you mean and Thomas Sowell had just written a new book and there was a book review of it in the Wall Street Journal and he said another black man who thinks just like you do and Thomas at the time read it he remembered hey that was the guy I threw in the trash and wouldn't read.

1:38:49He read the review. He went and bought the book. And he realized, you know, if you go back to Myers Anderson, he did not consider himself a conservative. But he was a rugged individualist. And he believed in individual responsibility. So for example, even though Thomas's grandparents lived in poverty their whole life, they never once accepted government welfare. And Thomas's grandfather told him, Clarence, if you take welfare from the government, you give the government license to come into your home and to tell you how to live your life. And it's none of their damn business. I don't want them coming into my home.

1:39:30And that, his grandfather believed, he believed in truth. He believed in, it's your responsibility. When Clarence Thomas quit seminary, it ruptured his relationship with his grandfather because his grandfather did not want him to quit anything. And that remains the most painful chapter of Thomas's life when his grandfather broke with him, threw him out of his house. How old was he? How old was he at the time? 21 maybe. Okay, so early 20s. Threw him out of the house and said, you're a grown man now. Go live as a grown man. I am done supporting you. You've decided to quit. And he said, you're going to end up a failure and no good just like all these others.

1:40:12You know, his grandfather also had a phrase, had a lot of phrases, but one that I really like, is he said to Thomas, boy, if it don't make no damn sense, it don't make no damn sense. And that, I think, is a through line in Clarence Thomas's opinion. So he's been on the court over 30 years. He is right now the second longest serving Supreme Court justice in history. In two years, he'll be the longest serving Supreme Court justice. But, Pat, you asked, why did I write this book? Because our world is so divided, so angry, that there's a shortage of role models in the world. And I believe Clarence Thomas is an American hero.

1:40:52And I think a young person, I think anybody, we all need role models. And I don't think you could do better than Clarence Thomas. So I hope people buy the book. I hope they buy it for their kids and grandkids. And by the way, I want to show the clip. You've seen this clip. This is the clip we've shown on the podcast multiple times. You just feel the man's character and conviction. Go for it. Any friend of his to refuse is just not worth it. Judge, you're here, though. Some people have been spreading the rumor that perhaps you're going to withdraw.

1:41:28What's Clarence Thomas going to do? I'd rather die than withdraw. If they're going to kill me, they're going to kill me. Ah, God.

1:41:45So you'd still like to serve on the Supreme Court? I'd rather die than withdraw from the process.

1:41:56Not for the purpose of serving on the Supreme Court, but for the purpose of not being driven out of this process. I would not be scared. I don't like bullies. I've never run from bullies. I never cry uncle, and I'm not going to cry uncle today whether I want to be on the Supreme Court. How do you not love this guy? It's who he is. It is so real. As you mentioned, he did my podcast an hour and 20 minutes, the only podcast he's ever done in his life. And he's open and candid. We're going to put the link to the pod. They've got to watch the interview. you. I'm going to tell you a final story just because I think you'll like it.

1:42:39So a good buddy of mine is a guy named Eddie Margain in Austin. He's a good friend of mine. He's from Monterey, Mexico. He and his wife are dear friends, and Heidi and I vacation with them frequently, and they have kids about the same age as our kids, so we go out and go to the beach and have fun. So several years ago, Eddie and Lorena invite us to go to Oaxaca, Mexico. Have you ever been to Oaxaca. Beautiful town. Yes. In the interior, just a gorgeous town. And Eddie and Lorraine are good friends with Matthew McConaughey and his wife and his family. So they invite the McConaughey's too. So the three couples and all the kids go to Oaxaca.

1:43:20So people would come up and they'd ask for pictures. And what was fascinating is Matthew would always say no. And I'd always say yes. And I felt bad because they wanted a picture with Matthew McConaughey and they got stuck with a picture with me i'm like i'm sorry but if you want a picture sure so the last night we're there we rented the basement of a bar that was a karaoke club and our kids went on stage and did karaoke and they put on skits and did musical theater and it was awesome and we were just you know the parents were sitting back and they did a performance for a couple hours so the next morning heidi and i had to leave to go to the airport at 6 a.m so at midnight uh we forced the girls were like, all right, you're going to bed now.

1:44:02And the girls are so unhappy. They're like, dad, this is terrible. Why are you making us go to bed? Come on, come on. It's midnight. Got to get up to six. Let's go. So we go back. We'd all rented a house. We're all in this house. So we go to bed. A little bit after 2 a.m., Matthew and Eddie come back. And let's just say they had been drinking steadily in the two hours since they left. Mescal is powerful. It is powerful stuff. So I'm asleep, and Matthew McConaughey comes rushing into our bedroom. He jumps on our bed on all fours, and he's jumping up and down going, Ted, come drink with me. And Heidi looks over, and she says, I don't care what you do, but please get this man out of our bed.

1:44:56And I reached over and I grabbed my phone, and I remember it was 2.37 in the morning. And I got to say, Pat, this is the first time I think I've ever felt old. At 25, I would have gotten up and partied the night away. Of course. I'm not 25 anymore. I said, Matthew, I don't care what you do, but I'm going back to bed. Please leave our bed. You said no to partying with Matthew McConaughey. And I went back to sleep. and it did make me think that my wife had just thrown an Academy Award-winning actor and People's Sexiest Man Alive out of our bed, which I guess I felt pretty good about that. It throws you over, right?

1:45:38Look, I was glad she didn't tell me to get out. Yeah, that's right. So that much, but it was just sort of a... What was he like? Actually, I like him a lot. Would you say he's a conservative? Would you say, because sometimes he went on The View and that whole scene. He's not super political. It's interesting. He's emotive. He's sensitive. He's an actor. I thought he'd be like his characters. I kind of thought he'd be like a frat boy. All right, all right, all right. That's just sort of, and he can obviously play those roles really well, but he is very much an actor. What year is this? This would have been like 2018, 19.

1:46:18You would be considered a super conservative guy. Was he worried about hanging out with you? Didn't seem to be, and we're still friends. I mean, I saw Matthew last year at the UTA and M game. Good for him that he didn't. But, you know, there's rumors that he may run. He has some interest. Look, he is charming at a level just oozes charisma. I mean, he's fun. And I'm a massive movie junkie. Like, I love movies. So hanging out with him, I would sit and talk about his movies. He's not super political. Look, he grew up in East Texas, which is a pretty conservative place. But he's not deeply political.

1:46:54I pointed out one of his best movies, Dallas Buyers Club. Sick. Is one of the most conservative movies ever made. And he's like, well, what do you mean? And so Dallas Buyers Club, a true story about a rodeo cowboy who gets badly injured and gets a transfusion and gets AIDS. and this is right when the AIDS epidemic is beginning, they didn't know much about it, and so he's got AIDS and he's dying from it. And the early cocktail of medicines to treat AIDS, the FDA was incredibly slow on approving. But McConaughey's character begins driving down to Mexico and buying the medicines that are needed to treat AIDS and then driving back up to Dallas.

1:47:42And the overwhelming majority of the people that had AIDS were gay or lesbian. So he's like in the gay lesbian community, like providing them life-saving medicines and saving their lives. And I said, look, Matthew, this whole movie is about how you have ridiculous government regulations that are stopping people from saving their lives. I think that's immoral. I think if you're sick, and I've been a big advocate of right to try, I've been a big advocate of reforming the FDA, so that particularly if you're sick and dying, you shouldn't have to drive to Mexico or a foreign country to get life-saving medicines, and you should be able to take a risk on an experimental medicine, particularly if it's your life and you understand the risks.

1:48:26But it was an interesting discussion because I don't think he had ever thought about the policy implications of the movie. Now, he did lose something like 60 pounds. I mean, he was emaciated. By the way, it seemed like some of it stayed off. Like his body changed. He looks different after that movie, a lot of people say. It's a great movie. He's done a bunch of stuff. He's a phenomenal guy to watch. And I hope he gets into it. I think the book he wrote, what is it? The Green, what is the book called that he wrote? Green Doors, I think. What is the book? Can you just type in Matthew McConaughey book?

1:49:07This thing sold millions on top of millions of copies, and people swear by this book. Let's just give him a quick shout-out for the book as well, if you can go to it. Matthew McConaughey, right there, and then just type in book next to it. Green Lights. That's what it is. It's a good book. I was a little grumpy because that book came out at the same time as my last book, and so he beat me. So I was kind of grumpy about that. Thank God he's not writing a book this time. Yeah, I'm glad this week there's not a new Matthew McConaughey book. But, Senator, this was phenomenal of talking to you, and I'm excited to see what happens the next couple years.

1:49:38I'm sure we're going to see you a lot for about an 18-month period. You'll be on TV on a daily basis. I have a feeling that's my speculation. But I learned a lot about you that I didn't know. And for the audience that's watching this, if you enjoyed it as much as I did, please go click on a link below. Show support. Order the book, one for yourself, your kids, your boys, your peers to gift them. But with that being said, thank you so much for coming. This was phenomenal. Appreciate you. Every journey starts with a choice. People who inspire us don't wait for the path ahead. They create their own.

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