E464 Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

30:40Yeah, I have it. Yeah, it's pretty good. I'll say that. Dude, one of my, I used to work at this, at this restaurant and one of my coworkers, he's like, man, I hate seeing bananas foster on the menu because I was raising a foster home. and it makes me sad. Isn't that ridiculous?

30:59Well, yeah. Like, just to equate, like, bananas foster and being raised in a foster home. But I was like, but I bet he still had some every now and then, and I think it made him feel pretty good. But, yeah, I think... Would you ask me about it? I asked you. I was asking about conspiracy theories. Yeah, I don't think... Well, I think since, to me, since the news started to get compromised, it feels like, a few years ago. And one thing I do like using is that word compromise. That's kind of like a conspiracy theorist word, you know. But I feel like when I was a child, it felt like the news was real.

31:32And it was like, this is the news. And it was honest. I don't know if it was. That could have been me romancing it too. But it felt like that. And then at a certain point, which feels like about maybe 10 years ago, the news started to become more different. Did you notice that in your life? Yeah, I did. And I watched it happen because originally the news – going back to when they invented radio in 1928, they passed a law that was called the Fairness Doctrine. It was called the Communications Act and they said that all – they did a bunch of things. They said nobody could monopolize the news. So now there's five companies that own all the TV, all the radio, all the newspapers and most internet content providers.

32:23And they didn't want that to happen because they thought then these large corporations will control what we're thinking because they're going to control the information flow and that's bad for democracy. They said you can own no more than eight radio stations and you couldn't own a newspaper and a radio station or a television station the same. That sounds like a good choice. That seems fair to me. Yeah, they wanted a diversity of ownership. It was called the Fairness Doctrine. But they also said if you're using the public airwaves, which means radio or television, that if you make a statement, you need to give the other side a chance to respond.

33:03And you also need to put the news on every day at times when Americans are likely to be at home to see it. So they – in order to – like NBC did not own that airwave. It had a license to use it and it could only use it if it benefited the public interest. The way that it did that is it said, OK, you're going to create a news division. The news divisions always lost money. But they were willing to pour money in because it was the only way they could hold on to their license. And they made a guy who – Wait, explain that part to me. Sorry. That's rough. See, what they could say is you can use the airwave to make money by entertaining people, right?

33:51But you have to tell the real news, the authentic news, the important news that affects policy decisions that Americans have to make about their government. OK. And you have to do it every day at a time when all Americans are going to be home, are likely to be home. So that's why we had a 6 o 'clock news hour. It's also radio stations. If you probably – I don't know if you remember this or not, but it used to be even the top 40 music stations had a news break like every 15 minutes. There was a short news break where they would tell you the news. Paul Harvey. Remember him? Exactly. Good day. Yeah.

34:27Yeah. Exactly. Well, they had to do that. That was a legal obligation. Oh, wow. And the news divisions were separate from the rest of the operations and they were untouchable. So they bring some, you know, really credible figure like Newton Minow or Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley and John Chastro. these guys who were total integrity people and everybody, the most credible man, the most believed credible man in America was Walter Cronkite. And all of those newscasters were people of extraordinary integrity. Then what happened is Ronald Reagan, when he ran for president in 1980, he had the support of the big studio heads in California because he had been the California governor.

35:19They wanted to abolish the fairness doctrine so they could get their hands, so they could consolidate the entire media and under monopoly control. And he had the Christian right. And the Christian broadcasting stations did not want to do the fairness. They didn't want to show the other side because they didn't want to show Satan's side of the argument. So they all wanted to get rid of the Fairness Doctrine. And so Reagan came in and appointed a guy. I think his name was Tom Wheeler to run the FCC, the Federal Communication, and they threw out the Fairness Doctrine. At that point, you saw this huge consolidation where they started buying up everything.

36:02You also saw the news divisions were told, OK, you know, we don't really need you to have integrity anymore. We need you to make money. So the news divisions became profit centers. And so you saw more and more news that was not really news. It was, you know, about Brad and J-Lo and it was entertainment. It was stuff to get eyeballs to make people and violence and horror and, you know. So you saw this deterioration from highly credible people on the news to people that you have today who are just propagandists for the government and for the pharmaceutical companies. Muppets, man. Yeah, the people turned into Muppets.

36:46But so whenever they – so it was Christian activism that made them – making them repeal that? It was a combination of things. The Christian broadcasters, for good reason, they had good reason. They didn't want to tell because like for example – Yeah, give me an example. I'll give you an example.

37:10NBC – I think it was NBC. It was either NBC or ABC was having advertisements. We're selling advertisements for Mustang, which is the automobile. Oh, yeah. That's Stang, baby. At that point, it was the biggest gas-guzzling automobile. Yeah. And so the, the, uh, an asthma society of America. They hated Mustangs? Yeah. They didn't like Mustangs. Oh, come on, dude. If you have asthma, if you get a Mustang, you got a chance with the ladies. I feel like, but if you just show up with asthma, dude, it's a wrap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a good selling point. Yeah. Asthma has one speed, dude. You know?

37:47Sorry. Go on. So they, they wanted to do an ad saying Mustangs are bad. because they're making us have asthma attacks. And the network didn't want to do it. They said, no, you know. Right, we want to sell Mustangs. We want to sell Mustangs. So they told the Asthma Society, you can't, you know, we're not going to let you, we're not going to sell you ad space. So they sued. They went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said, you got to allow them to sell both sides. And they upheld the Fairness Doctrine. So if you applied that to Christian broadcasting and said you're using a public airway, you know, if there's atheists out there who want to give their side of the story, maybe you'll have to do that.

38:36So they didn't want to. Wow. They didn't want to do that. So they were, you know, and you can see the rationale. Yeah. And then also that leans into more like towards, yeah, things being able to create monopolies then it seems like, you know. Yeah. Well, the monopoly. Exactly. And now we are where we are today. Well, it's sad. Every city you go to, like I go to a city, if you go as a comedian, you go to do radio sometimes before. And, you know, it used to be you had kind of a local radio station. And now all of them or most of them are kind of clear channel, you know, and I'm not denouncing clear channel.

39:06I don't but they're all like usually like part of a bigger group, you know, and you can't find like a local newspaper anymore. Like that used to be like part of the community, like getting yourself in the newspaper. you would get like a little trophy for you know you didn't do nothing really maybe you found a missing person or something and they would put you in the newspaper or something you know but it was like you kind of got to see like everything that was going on in your community like baseball scores for little league games i think things that made you feel attached to your environment you know and uh they don't have that anymore it's like everything's just too big now to get it to fit into like um smaller communities you know or maybe you'll get a paper like once a week now or something You know, it's just different.

39:46No, I, you know, I agree 100 % with that. I think that's, you know, and I think there's a real appetite for local news. People want to know what the, you know, what happened in the baseball. I mean, like, you know, I grew up reading about, you know, kids who I was playing, you know, sports with. Yeah. Right. And, um, and you'd read about them in the local papers. They were heroes to you. That's how you had local heroes. You know, it's like, yeah, now it just feels like they want all your heroes to be like. from the Marvel Universe, or you're not even allowed to have a hero anymore, you know? And I don't know, maybe I'm romancing that a little bit, but I definitely notice it when I go home.

40:25I can't find, like, the local news and see kind of what's going on, and then, so then you're not attached to it. You don't really... And where do you consider home Nashville? I'm from Louisiana, from Covington, Louisiana. So, but... Is Covington, is that in the Delta or it's up north? No, Covington is south of the Delta. It's kind of like, let me see, southwest of the Delta. Yeah. Covington is over there. We had, I'll tell you something neat about Covington. Well, we have the tallest statue of Ronald Reagan, and you're welcome to come see it whenever you want. Really? Yeah. And Michael Landon was supposed to come there one time, but he couldn't make it.

41:02Michael Landon? He was supposed to stop in. He didn't make it, though. And that's a big selling point for that. Yeah, Michael Landon was almost here, I guess. Look at that statue, though, buddy. Oh, I can't tell how big it is. It's bigger than the trees, though. Yeah, it's 10 feet tall. Or it could be. Somebody said it's even 12 feet tall, but I think that somebody had a bad ruler on them. But also, Lee Harvey Oswald went to our middle school there for a little bit. Oh, yeah. And what else? The Tulane Primate Facility is there, and they tested the polio vaccine. They actually made the polio vaccine.

41:38That ended up giving cancer to a lot of women, like cervical cancer. Yeah, it had a virus, a monkey virus in it called SV40. Yeah, that's where they tested it at. And some of the monkeys got out when I was a kid, and we got to get out of YMCA summer camp to help them look for them, which is pretty crazy when you think about it. Is that true? Yeah. They had a Kenny Rogers Roasters, and we're out there wrangling chimps with a couple of local police. Wow. Pretty cool, huh? But anyway. There's actually, you know, there's a book. You go to the escape right there. Oh, wow. There's a book called Mary's Monkey.

42:12Yeah. And it's about the – Dr. Mary's Monkey, is that it? Maybe it's just Mary's Monkey. Dr. Mary's Monkey, yeah. Dr. Mary's Monkey. And it's about the secret lab. It's about the Kennedy assassination, but it's about the Tulane Lab. And there were people involved in that lab who were involved with Lee Harvey Oswald. Did you go down a lot of rabbit holes ever like kind of searching like just about information? Well, you know, I feel like I'm really evidence-based. I don't make any presumptions, but I read everything. Yeah. And that book is actually very, very well researched and very interesting.

42:57Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I've read all of it, but I've definitely read a decent amount of it. Man, yeah, congratulations. Since I saw you last, you were running for election. Yeah. That's cool, man. You didn't see that coming. Yeah. I don't know because I think I almost think I asked you about it. We'll have to go back and see if there was a clip where I asked you if you would at some point. Because it's like you were so well spoken. I didn't have any intention. Was it hard to – did you have to convince your family that it was okay for you to run? Well, the one person I had to convince was my wife.

43:32Yeah, that's a good start. The kids were like – I actually went up to Boston and I had three boys who were in Boston at that point. And I went out and took them out to lunch and they were like – they weren't like, OK, go get them, dad. They were like, OK, this is what you – buy the ticket, take the ride. And they were not – I think now they're much happier about it. Yeah. because the way it's kind of turned out. But they didn't know what was going to happen at that point. And then Cheryl, who you know,

44:13she took a lot of convincing. But what happened is I was, you know, I thought at one point because they were censoring me. In fact, you got, you know. Yeah, we got censored. You got a hammer. Our episode got taken down. That's right. And then miraculously got put up again. How did that happen? Like a month ago. Oh, it came back up on YouTube? One of the episodes that had been taken down came back up on YouTube. I mean, it had been gone. Bobby, it had been gone. And then it just showed back up? That's weird. Well, we sued them. But I doubt if that's the reason. Sued YouTube? Yeah, they're still taking our stuff down.

44:51Wow. Good for you. That's cool when you're a lawyer because then you can sue somebody if you need to. That's a great idea. You guys actually made a wager whether or not that episode would be taken down, RFK. He said it would be, and Theo bet him that it wouldn't. Oh, dang. How much was it for? Yeah, how much was it for? We have the clip. One sec. All right. It's going to get interesting. We'll see if anybody's getting paid this week right here, brother. God, this could be bad. Whatever it is, Bobby, we'll donate to your campaign, okay? How have campaign donations been? Oh, you have the clip. Hey, good.

45:28We were at the Eric Clapton concert last night. Let's play this. I had a question that came in actually right here from a guy for you, Bobby. Is this live? This is not live. None of this is live, and this question isn't live. Because I want to make sure you have an option of not playing this podcast. Video. No, I think we're okay. Yeah. I mean, we – I'm generally curious, and I think I – I'm worried about your career, Teal. That's why. Oh, thanks. Well, the good – I feel like I own my own career until – like I don't need a Hollywood career, you know. But it's definitely – I worry about like my career of like I guess maybe like YouTube canceling us or people saying that we can't do this anymore.

46:07You know, that's the scary part. Is this on YouTube? Yeah, this will be on YouTube. So – but our last one stayed up. Okay, well, let's make a bet. I'll bet you. Five bucks. Inflation's happening a lot. Let's make it ten. We were ahead of the curve. Big question right here from somebody that came in. But anyway, last night you asked about donations. We got – yeah, we were at Eric Clapton. And there's Steve Stills and Eric Clapton. And we did that at a private home in Brentwood. And we got$2.2 million. We're doing well on donations. How was it – because you were kind of like looked at as like a guy that was like – a nutcase by some people, right?

46:56Yeah. Not by me. I thought you were definitely curious and active, you know, and I knew you as a person. So I knew that like, you seem like a, like as normal as a guy could be to me, you know, were you surprised when people started to get on board though with you? Like, cause I remember I listened to you. I mean, I listened to you on Rogan and I thought it was one of his best episodes. I thought it was just, I remember you thanking him for letting him, letting you speak. Right. And it was like, you know, I remember just listening and I just got a clear layout of exactly kind of where you'd been and how you ended up where you were, you know.

47:32And I thought it was just awesome and I thought that was such a great interview. Did things start to turn after that or when did things kind of start to turn do you feel like? The big turn for me was a podcast I did before that called All In. You know that podcast? It's David Sachs and it's a bunch of tech people who are leaders in the kind of tech, Bitcoin community. They're San Francisco-based financial wizards. David Friedberg. Okay. And it's very, very popular. I mean I cannot – I can't tell you how popular. the reason I know how popular it is almost every day somebody comes up to me and says I saw you on that no matter where I am in the country and it's a very weird demographic because it's not it's all kinds of people like an old lady and young college kids that's amazing I'm about to check this out all in with Shamath, Jason, Sacks and Friedberg or Freiburg and so they you know I went on there and there's four guys and they all kind of grilled me and then you know then Rogan brought me on, Megyn Kelly was really good with me, she had me on about three times when you know nobody would let me on and then Fox started letting me on a lot and so I could go on my you know the thing is that I get a lot of eyeballs when I go on.

49:12So they, I think they, this is what they told me because I went and met with their editorial board that, um, that, you know, it was, uh, that I was getting more eyeballs than any other guests. Wow. On Fox. Yeah. On Fox. And, um, and I think the same as CNN, but CNN won't let me on. The only guy who's let me on CNN was Michael Schmerconish and he, It was a very short interview, but he got in a lot of trouble for it. Wow. So you're running for – you're running right now. You're running for president. Yeah. With the Democratic – under the Democratic Party, right? At the moment. OK. And so the – is it usual – is it normal that someone is able to run against the incumbent?

50:04I want to make this clear from the audience because some audience, I hear words a lot of times, and I don't know what they mean, right? So like the incumbent is the guy who's already in office, right? Yeah. So if a president has already done one term, then he's the incumbent as he goes up to do the second term, right? Yeah. And he has to run against someone who's submitted by the other party. Well, he ultimately has to run about – the other party is going to nominate somebody to run against him. So the Republicans will nominate somebody to run against – But if you're a Democrat, if you're popular within your own party, a lot of times you won't have a challenger from within your own party.

50:41So you'll only have to go to the prize fight. You don't have to fight all the belucas who are coming after you. And who determines if they have to fight all the belucas? Well, it would be me. Like I would run against him. But my father ran against Lyndon Johnson in 68. Lyndon Johnson was an incumbent Democratic president and my father challenged him and ultimately Johnson withdrew and he pulled out of the way at Rays and then my father won the primaries and he was killed, my father was killed on the night, the last night of the primaries. So June 6th, he won, you know, the last primaries, California, South Dakota, and a couple of others.

51:28And he was killed that night. My uncle Ted Kennedy ran in 1980 against Jimmy Carter, who was a president of his own party. So yeah, it's not uncommon for people to run against a president of their own party. And, you know, I've had a long friendship with Biden. And I've known President Biden for at least 40 years. Oh, wow. And, you know, he has a statue, a bust of my father behind him in the Oval Office. Any picture that you have of Biden, there's a bust of my father. You can call him up. And there's five members of my family who are working in the administration. In the Biden administration. Yeah.

52:14Wow. Different, you know, different ways. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so do you think he'll get the nomination from his party for the 2024? Well, I think I could beat him in the. And yeah, you can see in that middle one, the second one from the right up there, that one. There's a there's a bus to my father behind him. Wow, that's awesome. That's so cool, man. That'd be cool if I were my dad. Yeah, it's wonderful. Do you think that he will get the – yeah, so I guess I have two questions because some of the – I think I can beat him if they give me a fair fight. Right. OK. But before that, do you think that he'll get the nomination?

52:55Well, I think I could get the nomination if they gave me a fair fight. I see. Do you think that you're currently getting a fair fight? No. Why? Well, because they're doing – the Democratic Party is supposed to be neutral. They're not supposed to choose favorites, but they actually endorsed him a week after he declared. And his campaign is being run out of the Democratic Party office. Which seems like convoluted, huh? Yeah. Well, it's not. It's a conflict. Because the party should be separate from the president even if they're of the same – Yeah, they're supposed to be. Even if they're both Democratic.

53:31Yeah. The party should be neutral and say, look, we're going to be the referees in this fight. It's like if you went to a football game and the referee in the game was wearing the same uniform as the guys you were playing against. You say, hey, hey. Yeah. So that's what they're doing. And what they've done is they've taken the states that voted most strongly against Biden last time around and they've said if anybody visits those – if I visit those states and no vote in that state will count in the election. So if I go to New Hampshire, which I did, any vote that I get in New Hampshire will not count.

54:11Any vote you get to what? For me. So if I beat Biden in New Hampshire and I win all the delegates, those delegates will not be allowed into the convention. But how can they just say that? Isn't there like a democratic process that overrides that? You would think. But actually, the party makes its own rules. And there was Bernie Sanders. They did the same thing to Bernie Sanders. Yeah, they cooked you, man. And he sued them and said, you know, you guys were fit rigged the game against me. You fixed it. And the court said, yes, they did fix it. But actually, it's a private club and they're allowed to fix it.

54:45They can make up any rules they want. They can do anything they want. So see, this just leans so much more into like this stuff that like people feel like their vote doesn't matter. There you go. Court concedes DNC had the right to rig primaries against Sanders. And that. And that's Debbie Wasserman Schultz who, you know,

55:12And she's the one who tried to silence me when I testified before Congress a couple of weeks ago. Wow. And so anyway. It just feels like it. So it feels so dirty at every turn. Cold turkey. It may be great on sandwiches, but there's a better way to break your habits. We're not talking about some voodoo or seancery or anything like that. We're not talking about getting tickled by your crazy neighbor until you just belch up a secret. We're talking about our sponsor, Fume. That's right. They look at the problem in a different way. Not everything in a bad habit is wrong. So instead of drastic, uncomfortable change, why not just remove the bad from your habit?

55:59Fume is an innovative, award-nominated device that does just that. Instead of electronics, fume is completely natural. Instead of vapor, fume uses flavored air. And instead of harmful chemicals, fume uses all natural delicious flavors. You get it. Instead of bad, fume is good. It's a habit you're free to enjoy and makes replacing your bad habit easy. Indeed, stopping is something we all put off because it's hard, but switching to fume is easy. enjoyable and even fun fume has served over 100 000 customers indeed join fume in accelerating humanity's breakup from destructive habits by picking up the journey pack today head to try fume t-r-y-f-u-m dot com and use code theo to save 10 off when you get the journey pack today that's t-r-y-f-u-m dot com try fume and use code theo to save an additional 10 % off your order today are you missing the syrup for your pancakes oh dang or have you just run out of your favorite coffee creamer well with door dash grocery delivery you can get what you want when you need it that's right you've trusted door dash to deliver your restaurant favorites and now you can get your groceries delivered right there on the same app.

57:30With thousands of grocery stores to choose from, you'll find the best in your neighborhood and boost your local economy with each and every order. Want even more value? You can save on all your grocery and restaurant favorites with a zero dollar delivery fee on all eligible orders with a DashPass membership. You can get it with easy substitutions right in the app and best-in-class customer support. DoorDash delivers groceries exactly how you want them. Get 50 % off your first DoorDash order up to a$20 value when you use code THEO at checkout. That's 50 % off up to$20, no minimum subtotal, and zero delivery fees on your first order when you download the DoorDash app in the App Store and enter code THEO.

58:20Don't forget that's code Theo for 50 % off your first order with DoorDash. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. From improving emergency response times to protecting against cyber attacks, local, state, and federal governments are innovating with Google AI. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American Innovation. So it feels so dirty at every turn. Yeah. I mean, it's bad to me. It's bad for the country right now because so many people think the whole system is rigged. Yeah.

59:01That's what it feels like, man. And my vote doesn't matter. And we should be, I think we should, both parties should be conducting elections that are incredibly fair. And everybody looks at them and says, okay, this is a model. America's the exemplary democracy for the world. It should be. And one thing you can say about America is it has fair elections and every vote gets counted. Yeah, it's starting to remind me of the articles I would read in the papers of like Venezuela, a lot of the Central American countries where there would be coups and stuff and they would be overriding the process because they thought the elections weren't fair.

59:36Or in the Soviet Union, the Communist Party, they said we're a democracy. But the party would pick the candidate and that would be the only guy you could vote for. and that is exactly what they're doing here. They're saying the good and the bad is we have a democracy but there's only one guy and everybody has got to vote for him. But do they have the right to do that because he's the incumbent? I understand. They have the right to do it within the Democratic Party process. Okay. And then so they're going to – it's weird what's happening now, Theo, because the press is now turning against President Biden.

1:00:20So, you know. It has been interesting to see some of that, huh? Yeah. It's the first time ever I've seen some of the headlines that are, you know, either bringing like his son's issues into it or discussing impeachment. I'd never seen that before, you know. Yeah. In the Washington Post, there's a very famous journalist called David Ignatius who is linked to the intelligence community and he kind of speaks for the, if you want to talk about the deep state, David Ignatius is the voice of the deep state and he came out and said, Biden's got to step down and then immediately CNN published a, did a story about all Biden's lies and then I think today, either Washington Post or New York Times, And Maureen Dowd had a story today about all of his lies.

1:01:15So you see these attacks on Biden that were not happening before. And you wonder what is going on. Well, if he does step down, I hope it's not a far step, to be honest with you, because I don't know if he can handle it. I think the saddest thing to me is I feel like Mr. Biden just isn't healthy. He doesn't seem like mentally healthy, right, to me. And I don't know. It could be that they edit clips to look a certain way. He just seems like he's – he doesn't seem as healthy as he once was, right? And so I feel like to me it's like a bad example that we – this is what we do with our old people. We put them out.

1:01:54It's like this is like a – you know, somebody we're just using. It just – I don't know. It just seems like a bad example of how to treat other people, you know? Like if this were my father and he were, to me, what would seem like ailing, like mentally just kind of either losing his composure that he probably once had. And it could be dementia. I don't know. Like his cognitive capacity. His cognitive. That's what I'm saying. If he were losing it, it would just hurt my feelings if they kept wheeling him out there. But I don't know. Maybe that's what he wants. And we just don't hear that part of it.

1:02:24So what is your path in to really get to the presidential nomination for 2024? Is there a path for you? do you feel like? Well, if President Biden steps out, the decision kind of has to be made by October 15th. Oh, that's soon. Yeah, because... You'll know before Halloween. Yeah. October 15th, you have to start qualifying in certain states so that you have to declare whether you're a Democrat or an Independent or a Republican. Yeah. And you can't – a lot of people think, well, you can run as a Democrat and then if you lose everything, then you can just switch to independent and run on independent.

1:03:09But you can't do that because a lot of states have sore loser laws that make it so that you have to choose early and you can't come in. Once you've chosen Democrat, you can't switch to independent. That's fair because every year they let Odell Beckham Jr. join another team right before the Super Bowl. I know. That doesn't seem fair to anybody. I get that he's good, but it doesn't seem that fair. So when do you have to – but you've already chosen that you're a Democrat, right? I mean you've been a lifelong Democrat. Is there a chance that you would run as an independent? Do you look at that ever?

1:03:42And how do you even evaluate that? Yeah. I mean I – if they really shut down the process, we're right now – we're grappling with the DNC, trying to get them to do the right thing. But if they rig the process so that I can't possibly win, which is how it's rigged right now, then I would have to look at other options. I would have to look at running as maybe outside of the party or something. I don't know exactly what I do. I'm hoping that they'll open up the process and let me run. And, you know, we polled this week and I – if President Biden steps down, I have a pretty clear path to the nomination.

1:04:26My numbers are better than any other Democrats including the vice president, Kamala Harris. So – and then if he stays in and they give me a fair fight, I think I can beat him. So – Wow. So it's kind of it's tough to figure out kind of you're kind of just navigating the space, huh? Who's ahead in the national polls? Well, he beats me among Democrats in the national polls. But if you could get a third of people to switch that were Republicans and a third of Democrats. Yeah, that's the thing is that those polls aren't looking at the Republicans who want to vote for me or the independents. OK. If you can't get it run this year, would you run in the next next one?

1:05:11Are you thinking that far ahead? Okay, you're not. No, I'm not thinking all about that. Okay. Some people say that you are, that the Republican Party set you up to take. Do you ever hear, did you hear about this? Yeah, I hear that, that I'm like a stalking horse for Trump. And all I can say is, you know. I don't believe that, Bobby. I'm just asking you. I don't believe that. Well, you should ask me. I mean, you shouldn't do it publicly like you just did. Really? No, no, I'm just kidding. Okay. No, you should ask me. Yeah, yeah. But here's the thing. Here's the problem with that. First of all, if the Democrats make rules that say I cannot win, you know, and then they complain about me running somewhere else, it's like the – you know, it's like a guy who murders his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he's an orphan.

1:06:04Yeah. You know, they're trying to get public sympathy for a problem that they created. I hate when I see bananas foster on the menu. But no, I see what you're saying. It's almost like they're playing two cards that are trying to do two different things. But one of them kind of concedes that there's some truth in the other one. Yeah. And then the other thing is that I take more votes from President Trump than I do from President Biden. Right. So why would that help them? It's not helping them. Yeah. Yeah. I thought about that. But when you look at – do you feel like there's – do you feel like that the Democratic National Party has treated you fairly like they do every other candidate?

1:06:47Do they always try to – like how does that usually work? I think what they do – the DNC has a lot of donors. OK. The DNC. Yeah, the Democratic National Committee. Committee. And the donors are Black Rock State Street Vanguard. Oh, really? Yeah, the big pharmaceutical company. All the people that I assume, Monsanto, et cetera, they've got$2 billion in their bank accounts, and it comes from those donors. And those donors do not want to see me running as the Democratic nominee and spending their money. Not an environmentalist for sure. Right, and spending their money then to dismantle their very exploited business models.

1:07:27And so progressive candidates like me who challenged the corporate control of our country, people like Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, and me are told, we don't want you in the party. So that's – And who do you get? An email? Do you get a letter? Is it a text? It's not a text, Tom. We just watch what they do with the rules. How can they change the rules so that votes for me in New Hampshire don't count? Seats taken. Right. So it's like Dennis Kucinich who's running my campaign, who's ran for president twice himself. Dennis Kucinich? Yeah. He was the youngest mayor in the country. He was the boy mayor of Cleveland.

1:08:09You know, they tried to – the mafia tried to kill him when he was – shot at him and stuff when he was mayor of Cleveland. He's a very, very progressive and, you know, man of utter, complete integrity. but he's been around he served I think 6 or 8, maybe 10 or 12 terms in Congress and he ran for president twice and he got bullets I think through his living room wow it's a party Dennis Kucinich anyway he said to me you know when I was saying you know when we were talking about the Democratic Party he said to me what part of F you do you not understand you know they're not they don't have to write you a letter and say you know go jump in the lake there they're just saying they're changing the rules so that you know they're rigging the game against the Democratic process does that inspire you a little bit that that's what's going on like you know I have the same program you do.

1:09:22Yeah. Just live one day at a time. Yeah. Keep doing the next right thing. Yeah. And, you know, trying to maintain kind of my inner calm and not, you know, if God wants me to win, I'm going to win. I just got to keep doing the right thing. And nothing could stop me in that case. That's such a great point, man. So I feel like, I mean, I go to a meeting every day. I'm in a different city every day. And that's the one thing I always do. Wow. And I... Been in some good ones recently, anywhere in particular that kind of stood out? I went to one in Maine that was pretty cool a few months back. I got a gnar and the guys was like this in gnar.

1:10:04No, I... Yeah, I went to one the other day where it was a guy... And first of all, I went to one in Barbados one time where they were... Yes, man. They were talking about... No beer for me, man. They were talking about... It was like a night set meeting and they were talking about how to take curses off of people. That's crazy. And I went to one in Belfast during the war there, which was really interesting. Oh, wow. Yeah, but I went to one the other day and they were – and I went to this. It was in New Hampshire and they were – and the people – I had been to a couple times. And the people in that meeting recognized me.

1:10:45They know who I am, most of them. And it's a very supportive atmosphere for me. I don't know whether Republicans or Democrats, but anyway, it's a very warm, safe kind of place. And I heard a guy – there was a break. They take – at those meetings up in New England, they take a five-minute cigarette break halfway through the meeting. It's from like the old days. Yeah. And this guy was sitting like four or five seats behind me. And he's one of these old people who talks really loud because he's going deaf. Yeah. And he's – they compensate by talking super loud. Yeah. Yeah. And he was saying – he was saying, RFK Jr.

1:11:36And he had three or four of his cronies around him talking. And they were whispering to him, you know, that's RFK Jr. And he said, he's the anti-vaxxer. And I, you know, I was just listening. I was like, you know, I can hear what you're saying. Yeah, well, some senior citizens are whispering. It's a little high, a little high on the whisper. And then he did speak at that meeting and he spoke about, you know, how important it was to get your jab and stuff. And I could tell it was directed sort of, you know, clearly it was directed toward me. But I feel like peaceful and afterward I went up and talked to him, said hi and smiled.

1:12:22But, you know, it makes me – my job is to stay sort of peaceful and serene. And anything that I've ever done in my life that is enduring, that is important, has come out of that spiritual place. And anything that I do that comes from frenetic activity is, you know, is just wormwood and bile. I know. I remember reading about Abraham Lincoln where he was the rail splitter and everything. He had a bunch of cats too. He had cats? Yeah. He was a big cat owner. Really? Mm-hmm. I know that he loved animals. I did not know about the cats. Some man gave him two cats. William Seward right there. Oh, he was the Secretary of Defense.

1:13:16He was given an unexpected gift of two kittens from Secretary of State. He's a real cat boy. I've been to his home. You know, his home. In Springfield? Yeah. And one cool thing that's really neat about Springfield, bring it up if you can, Nick. They have, like, the whole neighborhood, they turned into a museum. So you can go to his neighbor's house. You can go down the street. Oh, really? It's really cool. Yeah. Like, you literally feel like you're in the past. Yeah. So he also, on the same subject of him and animals, he killed a turkey when he was, like, 12 years old. he shot it from his cabin in Kentucky.

1:13:51Gobblers, yeah. And he went out and he saw it in its final suffering and he vowed that he would never kill an animal again. He was probably the only person in his generation that if his wagon was going down the road and it was going to run over a snake, he'd stop and get out and pick the snake up and move it. Which is ironic because Because he ran a war that killed 659 ,000 people. But Grant, Ulysses Grant, who did a lot of the killing hand-to-hand, he had the same thing. He never lost his temper. The only time that he was ever seen to lose his temper was when he saw a man beating a horse. Some real animal lovers.

1:14:40You know Hooker? There was a sergeant, Colonel Hooker? Yeah, General. General Hooker? That's how they got the term hookers because he brought ladies in to spend time with his troops. You know a lot of history, of interesting history. I don't know about that, but I know about hookers, buddy. I mean, unfortunately.

1:15:00But I do know that. Civil War, yeah. They brought in hookers first. American Civil War, he was popularly with his men because he didn't crack the whip in terms of discipline. it said uh after a hard day on the battlefield he would bring in prostitutes but they eventually a lot of his men got diseases from unprotected sex and killed a lot of them anyway moving on anyway i was saying about lincoln lincoln said he was asked how do you um what would you do if you had to cut down a like a really big oak tree and you had five hours to do it he said i'd spend four hours sharpening the axe, which is good.

1:15:42Yeah. It's like, it's a metaphor for, you know, keeping yourself in kind of a good spiritual space, you know, that you're more efficient and more effective. You expend less energy. Yeah. Yeah, man. I definitely, that's been probably a struggle for me this year is trying to do too much, getting frenetic, and then acting. I'm getting a little better. I'm getting better at it, but acting from a place of like frenetic, you know, it's just, man, sometimes it just gets tough. It's tough, you know, but every time I slow it down, every time I kind of do my morning routine well and do my practices, everything's way different.

1:16:24What was, what was one thing that sobriety, we're both sober. So what was one thing that sobriety kind of adjusted or changed in your, for you in your life that you didn't expect? Maybe what was something that came out of it or being a part of it or around it? Well, you changed everything in my life because I think before I came in, I was just like a bundle of appetites. And that's when you're kind of living according to self-will. And it's like whether it's drugs or alcohol or sex or extreme behavior or just – You know, I was always just filling that empty hole inside of me with things, trying to fix that by reaching for things outside of myself.

1:17:12And my mind is like a formulation pharmacy. I can turn anything into a drug.

1:17:20and then trying to adjust your compass so that you're not living for self-will but you're trying to do the next right thing and be of service to others. And that is what... You know, when I was – I feel like I was born an addict. I feel like I had just an empty hole inside of me from when I was a little kid. So you don't think it was something really that caused it when you look at your life? I don't think so. But, you know, and you hear in the program all the time, like half the people think they were born with it and others think that, you know, trauma, you know, had something to do with it.

1:18:06But, you know, I also, I, I, there's certain races like the Irish that are, yeah. What? We know. Yeah. There's other ones too. They're the most thirsty. Yeah. The Irish, yeah. I mean, they're good. They make it look good. I mean, for, I mean, we call it the Irish flu. Yeah. You know, cause it, it, it's, you go into a meeting and, you know, in any meeting, any place in the country and half the people in it are, you know, Sullivan and O 'Brien. Oh, yeah. A lot of Irish, yeah. Was there, was alcoholism in your family? Was it popular? In my mother's family, it was back to the Neanderthals. Wow. They were all, you know, and of all of my mother's siblings, she was the only one that did not get it.

1:18:58Wow, that's a lot then. That's pretty strong. Yeah, it's just, it's good to have a program, man. i think it adds a lot i think it's definitely been a saving grace for me uh for sure just the people i get to meet like last night a guy texted me a new a new guy i've been texting in the in the rooms and we're texting and he he hit me up yesterday like hey you want to go to a meeting i wasn't going to go you know so next thing you know i go and we're like over in venice and it's 8 p.m we're sitting on a porch at some guy's house you know listening to a guy talk about how he was in a gang and his brother uh got killed right next to him you know and uh and now for years he was using and then finally he started to get help and gotten in the program and just but to sit there and hear a story like that was that real you know that's part of the fun of going to the right i mean it just puts something real in your life it's like i left out of there like sure you know it was very sad but it was like a real thing it was like i left out of there with like i don't know it just people sharing makes you feel more connected you know but you know when you uh when you got sober did you realize did you because a lot of I know a lot of comics feel like you know that the alcohol and the drugs are part of what makes them funny did you and that they have anxiety about getting sober because they think it might hurt yeah I think I had some of that for sure you know I was in and out for a long time I had three years sober and then I was in and out and then finally i just was so spiritually just empty you know i'd gotten a decent amount of popularity and i thought that that would achieve my happiness or it would do something for me and it just didn't do anything it was like literally getting to a top of a mountain and or you know a decent ledge on a mountain and you're like dang i'm still on a mountain you know that's what it felt like and so i think that just made me realize that there was something bigger going on inside of me that I had to get some help for.

1:20:52And then just the gifts of it, like seeing other people get well, like seeing people's lives turn around, like just it's, it's cool. I can go to a place every day. I can go somewhere and witness a miracle almost. And that's unbelievable. You know, people are looking for miracles and reasons to make them feel, you know? And so I think that's one of the reasons I go to is because there, it makes me feel in there, you know, like regular life it was always trying to find something to make me feel and i could never i couldn't do it there wasn't anything that was doing it enough but man i go in there and i see somebody their life has changed and man it makes me feel you know and that's really what i've always been looking for i've just been wanting to feel and that's probably one of the most blessings of it and then just getting to meet cool i mean like you know you and our friends i have so many most of my friends are sober.

1:21:43Yeah. You know, it's kind of crazy. It's just how it kind of works out. And also some of them used to be the biggest derelict. So you get to hang out with the craziest people in the world, you know? I mean, alcoholics are generally kind of desperados. Yeah. Oh, they're interesting. You feel like a desperado in this campaign. I mean, one thing that I've, that I thought about was interesting about you is that nobody was in your pocket because nobody was getting on board with you. It, you know, you like, yeah it seemed like there's no choice like there's nothing that's like this is who we this is this guy is what he is whether you he's not working for anybody that's what it always was like that's the most admirable thing to me about anything these days is like i just want somebody who's not part of the status quo because the status quo feels very dangerous or the system feels dangerous you know yeah does that make sense or not yeah and i you know it's i don't know i think You know, my campaign, the way it came together, it feels, I don't know, it just feels like there's some, you know, all the people who are involved in it are people who are, you know, on some kind of spiritual quest, you know.

1:22:58And it's really interesting because they came from all different – but there was an early on in my campaign. We didn't have any money because most people who start a campaign are their senators, governors. They've been in politics before. So they have an email list and they have a huge war chest. They come in with 20 or 30 million dollars and you're not allowed to raise any money until you register with the FEC, with Federal Election Commission. So, you know, so I announced my campaign and I have no money in the bank. So, you know, let's say I get 5 ,000 calls the next day. I want to help you.

1:23:39I got nobody to answer the phone. I don't have a phone because I'm not allowed to spend money until I register. and so we were really desperate for money at the outset and a guy said – contacted me and said – through a friend and said, you know, I want to – I can get$10 million for you fast. Oh, dang. I spent – I met him in my hotel and I just – Was it like one of those consolidation credit card things? No. It was just a guy who – you know, he was an attorney who had a lot of clients. Oh, okay. Private deal. In industries. And he said, who would give me money? But they were industries that I really didn't want to take money from.

1:24:28Yeah. And I – and so – and he left. And I just didn't – it just didn't feel – it felt like it just didn't feel right. And so I called the guy who had brought him in and I just said, I can't do it. and I immediately felt like yeah that was the right decision and you know if we're supposed to win we'll win but you know whatever happens um at the end of this process I'm gonna have my integrity intact and that's the only thing that really matters yeah wow that's cool man your wife seems so proud of you I saw you on tiger belly I felt like she seems she seems so proud of you that's it seemed pretty that was wild that show yeah I thought at first when I was all there I I was like, Bob, this is a different world.

1:25:12But I think, yeah. Have you been on the show before? I've been on the show before, yeah. And what did you think of it? It's bonkers in there. But it's just this love. It's very high energy. But he's such a sweet. Yeah, Bobby's a lovable guy. Lovable. Yeah, he is. And he's, what is he like? He's had a kind of a wild life. He's had an interesting life. But he's beloved by people. and I think part of his podcast is just being in his world and what it's like you know so I thought it was brave of you to go but I also thought that it was cool you know when you got to see you and your wife and I just felt like man I could tell your wife just seemed real proud of you maybe she's also just a good actress but she seems to love me but you know I have to keep saying she's an actress how do I know yeah that's a good point yeah one day she could just say and scene um there was recently there was like you guys had a uh you guys had an issue with the security right that that happened this is a few days ago maybe where they had a guy who was a like it looked like he was here we go armed man arrested at rfk junior campaign event in los angeles was this guy armed and supportive of you or was he armed and it seemed like he was against you or was there did you have any take on this?

1:26:29He was, he showed up and he asked, um, he, uh, he was wearing a U S Marshall badge. You can see it in some of the, he was wearing a lanyard. You can see the lanyard around his neck there. And at the end of that is a badge that identified him as a U S Marshall. And then he had a federal ID on his belt. Okay. You can see there. Yeah. Right. He has some other kind of badge on his belt and you see the badge around his neck.

1:27:03And that was determined to be fake. And somebody from my Gavin DeBecker associates, which is doing my security, they won't – the White House will not give me a Secret Service protection. And so I've retained this group that's the premier security group in the country. And one of their guys looked at that badge and said, that's too shiny. Wow. It's not a real badge. And so then he called somebody else who was armed. And the two of them cornered him. And then they called the police and they kept him in the corner. They didn't want to grab him because they didn't want to start a shootout. And they could see that he had shoulder holsters on.

1:27:49Jeepers. And so then the police came and arrested me. He was asking for me. Oh, he was looking for me. And he had two shoulder holsters that were fully loaded pistols. And then he had, you can see that badge on his hip. Yeah, he's badged up, huh? Yeah, and then he had – he also had a backpack that had another weapon in it, another gun. Like a sword? He also had knives on him and he had a lot of extra magazines filled with ammunition. So he said afterwards – apparently his brother said, oh, he heard there was a job opening for security. But you don't go to a job opening for security with all those magazines and guns and knives and two to three pistols.

1:28:41His brother who brought him there also was like an armory. So they had a whole car filled with weapons. Wow. I have no idea. I don't know what he was looking for. But I'll tell you what. The thing that you should do is go on his YouTube. His TikTok. Yeah? He has a TikTok site that he just opened, so he only has one TikTok video on it. And it's of him just before he comes to see me. Yeah. Let's see that if you can find it. Nick will find it. It is. Yeah. Because some people want to show up. At the end of that thing, he says something to the effect of, I'm going out to do a job right now. And if I don't come back, you know, if I don't come back, report to your commander, Donald J.

1:29:35Trump, your commander in chief. So it's a very kind of – okay, you want to watch this? It's about a minute. Yeah. It's worth watching. Let's watch it. You got to turn the sound up. Here we go. Oh, shit. Big homie Zorro over here. I think this is his brother talking to him. I think he's a fool that I needed to see. More like God's gangster. Shit I hear you're the man with the plan what's the word?

1:30:23Okay this guy's not doing well huh? no yeah and this could be also be an advertiser for rumble first name I would see him go to something like this I think I've seen enough but yeah I get it so this guy's like yeah and he does this little you know kind of let's see the end suicide by police show the last I don't know 10 seconds here we go

1:30:53if I don't make it back call the fucking president your commander in chief donald j trump and where's he going i didn't see a door over there when it was a wide shot so that's the weird part of you just walking just over like by some tool chests wow i mean look dude just i don't know i don't know yeah you don't have y 'all don't have the best track record with like no you know you mean the family yeah i don't want to say that but yeah I shouldn't have said it like that, but it's like, is it more scary? But you can't live in fear. What are you going to do? No, I'm not going to live in fear. Yeah.

1:31:31I know. Yeah. It is what it is. But the White House should definitely be giving me Secret Service. Well, can you save your receipts and if you get in there, can you get reimbursed or not? What? No. Oh. Yeah. And I think that's what they're up to, that they want to bleed me white, essentially. from money perspective. But I'm the first candidate in history that has requested Secret Service protection. They haven't given it to you. But do they give it to you this early? Because I read somewhere that they don't – Here's what – because the press has been dishonest about this. You're entitled to it.

1:32:13They have to give it to you 120 days out from the – before the general election. If what? What circumstances? To all candidates, 120 days out. Okay. Well, you have to have a certain polling number, but I've surpassed all the thresholds by far. Okay. So, but like my Uncle Teddy was given Secret Service protection 551 days out. But he was also a – he was like a lifelong politician. Well, he was a politician, but he wasn't even running for president. And he was talking about running for president against a president of his own party like me, Carter. But Carter said you better protect him right away.

1:32:56Right. And even though he hadn't officially declared they gave him Secret Service protection, Obama got it 450 days out. John McCain got it 400 or 500 days out. I think I'm like 300 days out now. Jesse Jackson got it. Shirley Chisholm, you go down, there's probably 30 of them who've all gotten it long before the 120 days. And I get, you know, I mean, we gave them a 68-page. Yeah, I remember reading about that. Yeah. And why you should have it? Yeah, because I get death threats all the time. And, you know, I had a mentally ill person break into my house a month ago and make it to the second floor.

1:33:43Are you at your house? Yeah. Oh, my God. You know, I mean, so they should. You would think that the president would. Yeah. If you know Biden, can't you just, like, ask him? Well, we're not talking terms at the moment. Okay. Damn, that's a bummer. Yeah, because you think you'd be able to hit him up and be like, Joey, you know? Yeah. I'll trade you an ice cream for a couple of front door goons, you know? You know what I'm saying? A couple of sharpshooters, dude. I bet you send him a box of mint chocolate chip, buddy, you'll get whatever you want. You think? Yeah, it could be. I mean, you know, I think every man loves to have a dessert.

1:34:22Do you think that Donald Trump will legally be allowed to run in the election? Yeah, I don't think that can stop him from running, even if he was in jail. Yeah. He's still entitled to run because there's only, you know, the Constitution, The Constitution says there's only three things that you got to do to be – you have to be a citizen. You have to be born here and you have to be over 35 years of age. OK. And that's it. You can be a president. There's no way to block somebody because they got convicted. It's in the Constitution what the criteria is for being president. Yeah. It's funny because I feel like some people like Trump because he just wasn't a politician.

1:35:04You know, he could have been anybody. He could have been a fraggle. He could have been a mime. I think some people just want anything that's not they just something has to change. They feel like at the very least I'll vote for something that's not a politician. I just feel like people start to feel like this. The overall system is so corrupt, you know, and I think that's something that's been kind of harrowing just to voters overall. Well, you know, people are suffering in this country now. Yeah. You know, we're not, you know, like I said before, when, you know, with housing, our kids are not going to get, you know, the American promise, the American dream was that this promise that if you worked hard, you played by the rules, you could afford a house.

1:35:53You could have a summer vacation. You could take care of your family. And you could put money aside for retirement with one job. And my kids, I have seven kids. You know six of them are in that 20, 30 range. And none of them and none of their friends are looking for a house because it's so out of reach. and you have a whole generation of kids who now are struggling with college debts what they paid for college is seven times what I paid they're never going to pay off that college debt and they're never going to own a home for most of these kids and it's like the American dream is gone if you don't have an American dream then what do you have?

1:36:40that's the thing that starts to get sad that's one of the reasons that people are so angry at both Republicans and Democrats because there's a level of disintegration in this country and deterioration. I mean, I end up talking to a lot of people because of my job. I represent 1 ,000 families in Columbiana County, Ohio for the Norfolk Southern Spill. Oh, yeah. And all of these environmental cases, I end up talking to people at every level of society and I see the desperation that people are living in. It's like elderly people now are splitting their drug prescriptions, cutting pills in two to make them stretch out the week so they can buy food.

1:37:26There's young couples who have a crying baby who have to wonder whether the baby is$50 sick or$100 sick or$1 ,500 sick before they bring them to a hospital. So there's people your age and my kids' age who are choosing between gasoline and food. And, you know, 57 % of the people in this country cannot put their hands on$1 ,000 if they have an emergency. Or somebody like that, if the engine light goes on in the car, it's the apocalypse. Yeah. Because they know they can't afford that mechanic. they know okay now i can't get to work i'm gonna lose my job then i'm gonna lose my house and then i'm gonna be like all those people in san francisco who were just regular you know joes yeah and they didn't know they weren't drug addicts they weren't mentally ill they just had a string of bad luck the engine light went on their car and they couldn't find the mechanic that's what i feel like i feel like the engine light's on in this country yeah that's what i I feel like.

1:38:33Well, you know when you're driving around with your engine on empty? Oh, yeah, dude. Yeah, right. And you can't think of anything else because you're thinking, how am I going to be able to get that gas tank? And it literally makes you stupid. It makes you lose IQ because that's all you can think about. Now, put two kids in the back of your car, a toddler and a baby seat and another kid, and you're now magnifying that anxiety. And now you're driving through a bad neighborhood. and you're starting to think of all of the bad things. Well, that's what it's like living paycheck to paycheck and that's what Americans are doing.

1:39:09And it's like most Americans wake up every day and with that sense of impending doom and it's like they're driving around empty. They don't know what's going to happen and they're desperate and nobody is listening to them. The politicians aren't listening to them for the Republican or the Democrats. and Donald Trump comes along and says, I'm going to break things. And they love him. And I get it. And the Democrats can't understand why are all these people liking Donald Trump? That's the reason. Because you're not listening to him. Yeah, I think if people want anything, I'd vote for literally a puppet.

1:39:50I'd vote for Grover. I'd vote for anything that wasn't a career politician because I'm just so over it. And you see these shows like Painkiller and like that one on Hulu too, the one that I can't remember. Yeah. What was it called? The one about the Sacklers. Yeah. Yeah. On Purdue Pharma. If that show didn't ruin your faith in taking care of people in this country, it's un-fucking-real, man. I hate to use that language, but it made me so mad, bro. Yeah. It just made me so mad how compromised we are, how it feels, you know? because if we're not even out here caring about each other, then what are we even doing?

1:40:31You know, that's what it starts to feel like. It's like, if we're not out here trying to do something like, then what are we? We're just, then what, you know, I'm just out here to have a nice car. It's just, I don't know, man. Yeah. It's about, is it about, we're just here to make a big pile for ourselves and whoever dies with the most stuff wins. Yeah. But we are proving that there's no value in it. It's like, it's been proven over and over again that there's no value in it. Yeah. You know, Um, when you, uh, when you come across people like that, right. On your campaign trail and you like, what do you offer them?

1:41:07What type of hope do you offer them? Well, you know, I think that's why I have, because I mean, I have specific things that I'm going to do to make, well, I mean like with housing, what I, one of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to make a 3 % mortgage available to every American for a single family home. So if you – right now, you're going to pay 7 or 8 or 9 percent. I'm going to cut that down so your mortgage for the average home,$215 ,000 or$400 ,000,$1 ,000 a month, which people can afford. And it's going to allow you to compete and your kids to compete with BlackRock. I'm going to change the tax code to make it more difficult for them to buy up all the single family homes, which is not good for democracy, not good for our country.

1:41:58You know, if you have a rich uncle, you can get a – who will co-sign your mortgage. You can get a much cheaper mortgage rate because the bank is looking at his credit rating, his perfect credit rating rather than your – So it's like nepotism kind of. Oh, you know, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to give everybody a rich uncle, which is Uncle Sam. I'm going to get the U.S. government to co-sign your mortgage. Now, if you default and the government owns your house, no foul, no loss. But it's going to allow you to stay in that house. And, you know, I'm going to give the first half, you know, 500 ,000 to teachers because we need to start supporting the teachers in this country.

1:42:41but to make them available to all Americans who want a single-family home because we need widespread homeownership. Thomas Jefferson said American democracy can only survive if it's based on tens of thousands of independent freeholds owned by individual Americans and not big corporations. The aristocratic, the feudal model where the billionaires own the landscapes and we all are – we're no longer citizens. We're now, you know, we're now subjects or not, you know, we're serfs on our own country. Yeah, that's what it feels like. It feels like we're subjects and the Lord won't even tell us who they are.

1:43:20Yeah, exactly. That's the sickest part. At least show your fucking face, you know. At least let me know who's, you know. It's like, that's what it feels like a lot of times. I know you went and visited the border. We had a border patrol security. We had a gentleman on here who was the head of the border patrol. Oh, Chris Clem. No, this guy, he had retired. Roy Villarreal. Okay. He came on here. This was two years ago. And he was talking about one of the biggest issues that he was noticing at the border. This was in Arizona. That was his jurisdiction. Yeah. Was that people were getting – the legislative branches weren't working well.

1:43:55So, like, they would arrest people, but they weren't prosecuting them. So they would get just the same people back over and over again. So it seemed like such a goose chase. Well, it's gotten 100 times worse now. Wow. Because now that people are just – I mean I was there between 2 and 4 a.m. in the morning. I watched 300 people just walk across and then the Border Patrol brings them to the airport and they fingerprint them. If they're criminal, then they go into a different line. But the rest of them are brought to the Yuma Airport, given a ticket to any place they want to go in the United States.

1:44:32And then we pay for it if they don't have the money for it. And, you know, they've 110 ,000 have landed in New York and this is a humanitarian crisis. I talked to the people who were coming over. They've been exploited, extorted, beaten. What's happened is the whole thing's run by the Mexican drug cartel. We saw the buses. They have white buses the cartel owns. Fifty-five people a bus. They pick them up in Mexicali and they bring them to the border and they let them out. The people who come out are from every country. They're not – They're from all over. and they have to pay the cartels. They're from Asia.

1:45:06Right. They have to pay the cartels to get through their land. Well, right. But they pay them usually up front $10 ,000 to$15 ,000 to get them across the United States. And the cartels are advertising all over the world. Wow. And they're advertising on YouTube. TikTok. They're telling you exactly what's going to happen to you. They come across and then what happens is they're given by the Border Patrol. The border, there's nine Border Patrol committed suicide because what they're being asked to do is not their job. They're just escorting people. Seven million people have come across illegally in three years and legal immigration during that period was 3.1 million.

1:45:46So the cartels are literally controlling our immigration policy. And, uh, we have a video that I made, you know, an 18 minute video that shows what happened, but you were only down there for what? How long were you down there for? I was there for three days. Okay. And then, um, you know, and then we've been dealing, you know, we made the film. We, you know, I've been writing a lot about it, researching it and it can totally be, be, uh, shut down overnight. They're not. And what happens is people think, well, there, there's a big, all those people I watched coming across. But I just wonder, is that a long enough like time to go see it?

1:46:23Like three days? Is that a real list? I had three intense days of, First of all, the first night watching all these people come and then spending the next days with local law enforcement, local sheriff's department, the ICE, the border patrol, all the local medical systems, the doctors and doing interviews. No, it's good to talk with those people. That's why we wanted the guy because we kept hearing the border, but it gets like becomes like this political like red rover that different parties use and you never know what's going on. That's why we wanted a border patrol agent until we could really see what happens.

1:46:55There's a guy called Chris Clem who was the head of the Border Patrol at Yuma and he's fantastic and he's giving us advice. What happens is a lot of the Democrats think, oh, we're being kind to these people by letting them in but we're not. In fact, what happens is they're given a court date for seven years in the future to go to the asylum court. So they have seven years in this country where they have no legal status. So they're not allowed to work. So they work for five or six. You have unscrupulous employers. Yeah. Five or six bucks an hour. And then they're employed on construction sites in New York.

1:47:37The employee of the construction company that's employing them is competing for bids against a union labor company. Ah. And he doesn't get a chance. Because he's paying six bucks an hour. Right. So, but just as guilty as the people who are undermining the system, right, as they are of undermining the system, people can have their own like social beliefs about it, but there is guilt of undermining what the system is that's in place. But those – the people that pay them to work are also guilty, right? If they're – Yeah. I mean what I – here's what I would do. and first of all, you need to hire a thousand asylum judges and you need to adjudicate before people come in.

1:48:21Once they come in, they're entitled to stay here. They get a court date. Put them right on the border like Judge U. Exactly, and they adjudicate right there. And then it will shut down the border. But most of the people, 99 % of the people we interviewed didn't even have an asylum claim. They just said, I'm here to work. I want a job. And so they are not entitled. They have to come through the regular line like everybody else legally. Yeah, that's what's fair is just doing it legally because you can't keep – if you don't have accounting and inventory of your business, then you're bound to go. Yeah.

1:48:53You know? I'll tell you how you shut it down overnight. And this is what I'm going to do the day I get into office. I'm going to waive passport fees for all – any American who can't afford it. Now, what that means is if you can get a passport card. I don't know if you've seen it. I got one. It looks like a license. It's a federal ID with your picture on it. And the problem is it costs$65 and there's some paperwork attached that makes it difficult for very poor people to get them. And so there's a lot of people in our country who are poor, particularly in cities, who don't drive cars. They don't have a driver's license.

1:49:32They have no government issued ID. Now if you don't have a government issued ID, you're a second class citizen. You cannot open a bank account, which means you're using the paycheck companies that take 10 % of your Social Security check, the cashier check. You can't get on an airplane. You can't stay at a hotel. You can't visit your kids at school. And so what I'm going to do, there's 33 ,000 post offices in this country. I'm going to make it very easy for any American citizen who can't afford it to go down to the local post office and get a passport ID. Once they do that, you now tell employers you cannot hire somebody unless they have that passport ID.

1:50:18I will shut down the border overnight because nobody is going to come through if they know they cannot get a job because now you can prosecute employers. Right now what they do, the employer, construction firm in New York, they're just – they don't care if you're legal or illegal. They just want somebody who's cheap as possible and that they can check the box. So they ask for social security card. The social security card has no picture on it. They're easily fabricated and they're handed – passed down from person to person. Oh, yeah. Those things are nuts. Right. And so you can't put the employer in jail because he says, hey, I got a social security card.

1:50:57But now you're telling the employer, it's illegal for the employer to do it. And now you're saying you got to have a passport card or you're going to jail. At that point, all illegal employment dries up overnight. Nobody is going to employ somebody with the risk of going to prison. and one other thing it'll do is that it will solve a lot of the anxieties that people have republicans particularly about voting because they say oh you know these people are coming in and they're voting people are voting without id and they're double voting they're committing voting fraud well now everybody has an id and you can't have any of that kind of voting fraud and the Democrats support it.

1:51:41I mean, the Democrats will support it, although Biden won't sign this bill. But, you know, the big civil rights leaders like Andy Young, Al Sharpton are all behind this idea. So we can solve all these problems and the anxieties and the debate about the voting system and whether you need ID or not to vote. Right now, Democrats oppose ID laws and the reason they oppose it is they say if you force people to show an ID, you're disenfranchising a lot of students who don't have driver's license. You're disenfranchising poor people who live in the city who don't have driver's license. And there's other people in the country, elderly people, a lot of their license have lapsed so they don't have ID.

1:52:26And you disenfranchise all of those, those are all Democrats. So the Democrats say we shouldn't have ID laws. Now we've got civil rights leaders who are saying, yeah, let's have IDs to vote, but let's give everybody an ID so everybody can get one. Right. Then nobody has an excuse. And nobody has an excuse. Yeah. What do you say to, so some people would say that that, that takes away some of the old, like adage and the old, like a romantic idea of like, um, you can come to America and you can make it here. Does that, does that do that by making the border? Cause what are you doing? Making the border more organized?

1:53:01You're not saying. There's no country in the world that has an insecure border. Yeah. I think it's – We have to be able to control who comes in. Now, what I would do, I think we should have high fences but wide gates. We should let a lot of people in legally, make it much easier to get citizenship and make sure that there's plenty of people to – for employers, et cetera, so that we can keep our country humming. Yeah. Right. And, but we should be able to select who comes through, not have the Mexican drug cartel select. I agree. It's a good point. No, it's, I mean, it's disheartening. It's very scary to think that anybody can just come in, you know?

1:53:44I mean, I know that we're all here and we're blessed to be here. I just think it needs to be organized. Remember when Reagan had that plan that couldn't you sponsor people that were coming in? Well, you still can. You know, that people. That'd be awesome, bro. Well, but you still can do that. I mean, legally 3.1. Million people are coming across and a lot of them are coming across on visas that require them to have a sponsor because they're employment visas. Yeah. An employer says we need this guy. We need to bring him from Uzbekistan. Let's bring him. I want Hector. I'll sponsor Hector. To sponsor your family member, submit a United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Form 130.

1:54:23Each person you sponsor needs a separate Form 130. Let me ask you this. How long? We should sponsor one as a podcast. how long has your family been in this country let me see my father came over in 1922 i think from where from nicaragua and my mother i don't know when she came probably probably she's probably been here for like 100 200 150 years so and what it would like ethnic group is she let me see polish italian and nicaraguan that's what i am so she's nicaraguan is that hispanic or is it Indian? Actually, it's a good question. It's a little bit of both. I think it's part Aztec maybe. I've got to check and see.

1:55:06The Mesquite Indians are down there. Are they? Oh, yeah, dude. That's probably me then. I've got to see. But I remember my father's birth certificate. Have you ever done like 23andMe or anything like that? Yeah, I've done it. I don't know what they said. They email me so much. They're like, guess who's allergic to milk in your area? They're always sending me like weird emails now, you know? Yeah, I know. And I don't trust them really. Yeah. So now they get all my stuff. Yeah. Guess who hates cinnamon rolls on your street? You know, they're like, what? What does this matter? Is it a cousin or not?

1:55:38I went hiking this morning with Tulsi Gabbard. You went hiking with her? Yeah. And I was asking her about her, you know, her ethnic background. And she said she did 23. She actually did a, there's a TV show where they investigate your background. Oh, yeah. They do it with celebrities. I think Lou Barrymore was on it. Yeah, and she did that. Oh, that's cool. And they said that she had the most ethnically diverse background that they'd ever run into. Wow. She is part Samoan, so she's Polynesian. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that's fantastic. But then she's got everything else. She's got the whole, like every country in Europe.

1:56:23I wish I could be Samoan. I wish I could be Mexican sometimes. times um maybe next life you know um what will keep you say you get into office bobby right like what keeps you right a guy that is trying to do it his way how do you get um sabotaged how do guys get sabotaged once they get into office like how do people get calm like their values and their goals and stuff get commandeered and stuff well a lot of people you know that happens to them but But I've been fighting corporations for 40 years, and I've been suing these agencies. So probably 20%. I've sued almost every one of these agencies, DOT, USDA, Department of Agriculture, EPA, NIH, FDA, CDC.

1:57:08DTF, sue her. Yeah. I feel like I know better than anybody else about how to unravel the corporate capture. And I'm not interested in anything. They got nothing they can offer me. Yeah. You know, the only thing I'm concerned with is good government and making sure that our kids, you know, love America the way that I love and have hope for their future. And that's, you know, I mean, literally, I can't think of anything that anybody could give me to buy me off. There's nothing I want. You know, I have everything that I want. And I just, you know, I want to do the right thing. And I, you know, I think there's other people.

1:57:49I think Tulsi is the same way. I don't think she has any personal ambition. I think she just, you know, she loves our country. And I think there's other politicians out there too who can't be bought, but most of them can. Do you stay with the – And in fact, the entire political process – Has been bought. Of running to office is a training school for teaching you how to get bought. Yeah. So – That's what it seems like. Like, it's like, where are the fucking warriors who want to die, like, for something that means something? Yeah. You know? I'm with you. I don't know. I mean, I guess I don't know.

1:58:28We all get, it's all, it's hard to, it's, we live in a place where that's what we've built. It's part of, that things can be compromised. The last question I have is, where do, if you, how do you know if you are going to stay running with the Democratic Party or if you have to make another choice? Well, I have to make that choice by October 15th. Okay. So I'm just going to see what they do. If they open up the process, I'll stay in. And then I have to see if they don't close it, then I don't know exactly what I'll do. I'm proud of you, man. I'm just excited to know you've always been a nice guy, man.

1:59:06You've always been someone I could rely on. And so I just appreciate you just being willing to come back on and spend time with us and help us learn about the election process and stuff. I think even if listening to you helps us, you know, a lot of people like me just learn who aren't as up to, you know, skew on politics. And yeah, man, certainly happy to get to spend time with you. And congratulations, man. I'm proud of you. Oh, thanks for having me back. Yeah. It's always a pleasure. It's always a pleasure being with you. Yeah. Thanks, Bobby. I'll talk to you soon.

1:59:43I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna take

2:00:32ABC Wednesday, Shifting Gears is back. move.