Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Vivek: Kicked out of DOGE? Elon & Trump Relationship and More

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

YERRRR, Vivek Ramaswamy is BACK on Flagrant to breakdown his departure from DOGE, talk about his possible plans for Ohio, what he thinks about China's new AI technology, AND why he needs someone to monitor his tweets. All that and much much more on this episode of Flagrant. INDULGE 00:00 Intro 00:45 What happened at DOGE? 9:21 Weren't Vivek and Elon unelected? 11:23 What's a technology led approach? Public eye on events 18:01 Different goals and visions + stand on his way 19:15 What would Vivek do? Vision for Ohio 22:18 Vivek's tweets + Outcompeting China 25:59 Deep Seek, Why use H-1Bs? "Auction them off" 39:21 Overcoming people not liking Vivek for being Indian? 41:45 Was Vivek shocked at racial blowback for tweets? 48:00 Dealing with causes of issues + Teacher Unions 57:57 Family values + No-one strives to be on welfare 1:06:57 Why CEO pay is so high? 1:09:47 Akaash = right about Cowboys + Super Bowl picks 1:16:12 Is Vivek a radical? Acknowledge the ridiculousness 1:29:50 UBI investments for kids 1:34:10 How did Vivek make his money? Smear campaign? 1:47:11 Believing narratives to satisfy own pre-conceptions 1:50:44 Who is Vivek fighting against? 1:54:20 Addressing American inequality + Financial Education 2:06:07 That's so Ohio, Corporate money + Conflict of interest 2:17:22 Are there successful States? 2:18:55 What policies would Vivek run on? 2:20:49 Immigration policy 2:26:39 Access to quality healthcare Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody and welcome to the podcast and today we are joined once again listen, this is not the case at all He's definitely not running for governor of Ohio. I know that for sure I mean he'll tell you in a moment that he's definitely not gonna do that. Give it up for Vivek Ramaswamy Definitely not gonna be the governor of Ohio, right people loved you in Ohio, man Ohio, right? People loved you in Ohio, man. We had a lot of black men out there. This guy's coming. He's good.

He's bringing comedians first, the comedians, and then the industry. He's going to save the cats and dogs, man. To Daleks! Already? Everybody. All forms of life. All forms of life.

I'm pro-life. Okay, okay. So there's a lot of things going on here. Yeah, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of things going on. I Yeah, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of things going on. I need to know about Doge. What happened, you're on this podcast. You give us this beautiful soliloquy

about the managerial class. Thank you. And like, it was so important that I was like, I need you to break it down dumb. Obviously you're a very smart guy. You guys say that, break it down dumb, but I know you're into the center of it. I remember that conversation. Sixth grade. I'm a moron. We're sixth graders. You know, I'll tell you're into the center of it. I remember that.

Sixth grade. I'm a moron. We're sixth graders. I'll tell you, if you can't explain it to a sixth grader, it means you don't understand it yourself. That's what Epstein said. That's true. Shit.

That was quick, y'all. That was quick. That was good. Okay, okay. Get it ready. Yeah. Okay, so, this, I see you deliver this amazing thing. It's crazy on Twitter. I wrote a book then after we met where one of the core chapters was about dismantling

the administrative state. So this is my passion. Okay. Yeah. All of a sudden Trump announces that you and Elon are running Doach. Yes. I'm so excited. I'm like, finally, this is going to happen. It's amazing. Yeah. And then you say you hate American workers or something. He said that was too dumb. We need to light a fire. And we can talk a lot about that. Fire under our feet. No, no, we're gonna talk about that in a second. But, but no. So what happened? And now you're leaving Doge right on the precipice of actually cleaning up the government,

getting the major class out of there, fixing everything. We got a good head start, by the way, in the two months leading up to inauguration. Yeah. But I'll, I'll give you the high level. There's a, there's a, there's a short story, long story. I can give you the short story, for sure. And the short story, both are accurate, but the short story I can give you. The short story is it evolved from a focus on where I was focused, legal constitutional issues, legislative issues of if you want to save a lot of money, you got to do it through legislation. If you want to look at the Supreme Court landscape for the last few years, it says a lot of these

regulations are unconstitutional. That's where I had been focused. And you know, the way it's gotten started, you could see this publicly as well as much more of a technology and digital technology focus. Okay. So just slow down for a second. So you were going to use the constitution to remove legislation. Well, to remove regulations. Regulations. So you're going to use legislation to remove regulations. And I've written about this for the last year, right?

Can you give an example of that? Yeah, I can give a good example of that. So you know, not to get too academic too quickly, but basically Congress is supposed to pass the laws and the executive branch is supposed to enforce the laws. But it turns out that most of the laws that decide what you can and can't do in your life were actually never passed by Congress. They were passed by people who were never elected to their position.

The managerial class. The managerial class, the bureaucrats in DC. What's a law? Give me an example. Yeah, so they don't call laws, they call them rules, but they have the effect of laws. Right. Let's say the amount of fees that fishermen

have to pay to the government to have a license to be able to fish in a particular area. Let's say it is the registration requirement before a bank or an asset manager is allowed to do business. Let's say it is the procedural hoop that a biotech company has to jump through before advancing from phase one to phase two of the development process. Let's say it's the permission that a coal miner or a nuclear energy plant has to get as permission from the government before they build a new nuclear energy plant, which by the way, has not happened in 20 years in this

country, because the red tape associated with doing so is so impossible. None of those were passed by Congress. None of those were passed by people that we the people elected. They were written into law, they call them rules, but effectively into law, by unelected bureaucrats. And the thing is that's not a democracy, right? It might be something else, but it's not a democracy. Because in a democracy,

if somebody makes a law that affects you, you get to vote them out. That's what it makes a law. These are more like edicts. Edicts come from a king, because you can't vote them out. This doesn't come from a king, but it's a new kind of edict of a bureaucracy. So just so I can understand.

That was the problem. You're not against regulation as long as it's decided by democratically elected officials. That's my most foundational principle. It so happens in my own politics, I'm generally pretty libertarian. I tend to be against, I think most of these regulations tend not to be productive. But sometimes you need regulation. But the most important principle is if you're going to have it, at least let the people who it affects to say, if it's not working out for me, I want to be able to vote you

out. I need to be able to vote you out. That's the most important principle. Just so we can understand, like a lot of this probably, probably comes from good intentions. Oh, absolutely. Right. So these aren't like evil people necessarily. There's certainly malicious people in all kinds of domains of life.

Yes. Yes. And the government is no exception to that. Right. And you can see some egregious examples of it. But by and large, I think what we're talking about the regulatory state, the overwhelming majority of federal bureaucrats who I've met are good people because most people are good people. Yeah. And they believe what they're doing is not

for the detriment of the American people. It's for the betterment of the American people. But it's for the betterment of the American people. It's a kind of elite benevolence. Yes. And it's sort of skeptical of democracy because the idea that you could just leave it to ordinary people to decide this complicated stuff,

we can't leave it to ordinary people because they're going to harm themselves. They're too dumb. We have to make that. Exactly, exactly. And that was the whole premise of the British monarchy. They're too dumb. We have to make that. Exactly. Exactly. And that was the whole premise of the British monarchy.

It's kind of the whole premise of the modern federal bureaucracy. But I get that. I think it's nice to not paint all these people who are creating this, what do you call it? Creating bureaucracy. Red tape, regulation. Exactly. As nefarious. By and large, most human beings are not nefarious.

And a lot of times it's reactionary. Most human beings are good people. Good intentions. Yeah. There was like a fire in New York, I'm pretty sure. And I think one of the rooms was created in like an apartment building. And I think a fireman died because they built the room but didn't ask the city for permission. So the plot or the plan that they had. So then I think what the knee-jerk reaction was to say,

you cannot do anything to your apartment without permission for the whole city. I'm probably butchering this. Yeah, but it's the kind of example you see all the time. Exactly. And I get that knee-jerk reaction because you want to protect firemen. These guys are brave, they're running into a fire.

And it's such a great example because you see that same type of incentive structure show up all the time where someone at the FDA, they rarely will get hauled in front of some hearing if they fail to approve a drug that saves lives. But if they do approve a drug that has some unintended side effects, then they're going to be in the public eye. So their incentive is to go one direction or the other.

Does that make them an evil person? No. Most human beings just respond to the incentives that they have while still in their heart of hearts believing that they're doing good. That's the way the federal bureaucracy works. So this is your idea for Doge. But it's too big. Yeah. Well, and we laid it out. So there was a Wall Street Journal op-ed that we co-authored soon after it was written focused on, A, this constitutional approach where the Supreme Court in the last couple of years came out and said, actually,

most of those rules are actually unconstitutional because they didn't go through Congress. That's a big freaking deal. Happened a couple of years ago. and said, actually most of those rules are actually unconstitutional because they didn't go through Congress. That's a big freaking deal. It happened a couple of years ago. So we got that toolkit. And then if you want to really tackle government spending, which is a separate prong, the budget's set in Congress. There's no way around that, right?

The budget is set by Congress. If you want to cut trillions of dollars, you got to go to the core of that budgeting process. So that was where my focus and our focus was. I think if you look at, you know, now it's taken off and I think it could be great. It's very much a digital technology first approach. What does that mean? Well, I mean, you can, I'll let you read the executive orders that came out last week.

And like I said, I'll be, I'll be, I'll stay, I'll, I'll leave it at what I'm able to say, which is, you know, sort of what you can see publicly, very technology focused approach and that there's nobody better to take a technology focused centric approach than Elon. And by the way, we ended up having a pretty open discussion amongst all of us that if my focus is on the legal constitutional policy making functions, that's where my passion's been. The right way for me to realize my own vision is through elected office and but not the government behind All of those except that one position now

Announcement will be coming of some kind in the next couple of weeks Got it, but I will say that even some of the regulations you brought up right the fireman example Yeah, most of those regs aren't just federal regulations In fact, most of them that affect people at everyday lives are also at the level of the state, right? The fireman example. Most of those regs aren't just federal regulations. In fact, most of them that affect people at everyday lives are also at the level of the state. And I think short of being a president, when you think about driving executive action to improve people's lives,

I think a governor seat is probably the single best way to actually do it. Correct me if I'm wrong. And so that's where I land. Correct me if I'm wrong. Wouldn't you and Elon coming in as Doge, isn't that the same as unelected bureaucrats coming in to make a bunch of rules?

So I think it's a super fair question of field of that over the couple of months. The question is, it's one thing if you are undoing the actions of people who have actually affirmatively made rules versus making new rules of your own. So you're not gonna make any rules, you're just taking away rules? I think they're going to default. If you're rolling back, if you're rolling back rules and actually cutting bureaucratic overgrowth, it's one thing to come in and say you're going to hire a million federal bureaucrats without any

authorization from Congress to do it. It's another to say there are four million, many of whom were hired without that authorization, we need to scale that headcount back. It's another thing to say all these regulations showed up with Congress never authorizing them. It's another to say they're illicit unless they go through Congress, right? So that was the premise. It's a one-way ratchet. If there's been a federal government overgrowth and a lot of that was never authorized by the democratic process, then it's one thing to say, okay, then all of that in order to

comply with the Constitution has to be rolled back. You can't make it without authorization. But how would you apply all of this new tech? You said Elon's trying to do like tech driven rules. Yes, I'm going to let. Wouldn't that be new rules? Well, I shared with you, my outlook was in what brought me to the project. And I'm super rooting for success and hopeful for success

for what's gonna come from a technology-driven approach. But that's, we had a different philosophy and approach and emphasis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, talk that shit! No, no, it's talk that shit! Well, the, the, yes. Me and my wife had different philosophies about dinner last night. The truth of the matter is, I think he's,

I think there's nobody better in the world to run a technology-focused approach to fixing the federal government than Iran. And if that's where the focus is, I'm rooting for their success. And similarly, when I'm thinking about my legal, constitutional, legislative focus in downsizing government, it's hard to argue the best way to do that isn't through actually being elected in my own right. I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding what the technology driven approach would be.

Can you? What does that mean? I mean, all I'll say is at that point, can you make an example hypothetically or whatever? No, I would say- Because I truly don't know what that means at all. I hear you, I hear you. I think we're probably reaching the outer bounds

of what I'm able to talk about, but stay tuned and I'm rooting for success. Boo. That was not my, I mean, I gave you what my outlook is, because I can speak for my outlook. So before you guys started it. I think there's an opportunity, is there an opportunity to make things more efficient

using digital technology? I believe there is, but that's a different, that's a different. But before you guys started it, did you have this conversation about what your outlooks were for this program? We co-wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed that's out there that laid out a vision

that's pretty consistent with what I'm writing. And then does that make a change? Well, I think it's, first of all. Did you see him saluting in the office? It's a new. No. It's a, I can't believe people lost their minds over that. No, it was nothing like a saluting.

People are so crazy, aren't they? Yeah. People are so dumb for seeing that and thinking it of something else. What fucking returns we got, right? Your words, man. I think that there was a evolution in any new project, right? Something like this has never been done.

I'll give you one example. Initially, this was supposed to reside outside of government. Now, the lead up to, ended up in the government. And by the way, here's another thing that happens. When it's in the government. This is Animal Farm, bro. When it's in the government. Also, I can't run for office at the same time.

There's a rule, it's called the Hatch Act, that stops you from independently engaging in your own political activity or running for office while you're in the government. If you're outside of the government, it's a different constraint. So there were a lot of things that obviously was supposed to be on the outside for a lot of reasons, ended up moving inside, ended up having a technology first approach. And so when something like this has never been done and you set it up, obviously there's going to be some evolution. And it made a lot of sense given the way things evolved for me to say, you know what, this is the right way for me to achieve my vision and goals for the country

and to wish success in taking a technology-driven approach within the federal government. And that's where we landed. I think that that seems like you guys had a, what is it called? Amicable breakup, is that? We're super friendly on a personal level. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just sometimes a different outlook. It was a mutual decision, isn't it? Very much so. Exactly. Yeah, that's what I say when I get dumped. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What is your. What do you say to that? I think both parties say that. No, no, but what do you say to that when you see that, you know, I'm sure you saw like

tweets or articles or something like that where it's like, oh, the administration is pushing Vivek out. Yeah. What is the reaction to that? Do you call up Donnie and you're like, yeah, it's good. I mean, the kind of, I ran for president and you get, I mean, the thing, I ran for president and I mean the number, the amount of online shit that you will read about yourself if you put yourself in the public eye, at some point you just sort of get used to it and deal with it.

It's a price and cost to do in business if you want to change the country. But you know, look, I think it is, do I feel like where I'm headed right now is the right direction for me? 100%. Is there any division in the administration between you, let's say, and Trump? Trump and I are great terms. We have on a personal level, super close. He's got a tick-tock jack here.

I went to spy. He actually worked for me first. Really? Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We partnered with a lot of these people and a lot of the people who worked on my campaign actually ended up joining Trump's campaign. A lot of people joined, you know, and myself too.

I endorsed Trump and worked my tail off over the last year to make sure he got elected because I think it was necessary. And he's incredibly loyal to the people who support him. And I understand that because if you support him in any way, you're going to be raking him out. We supported him all out. And you went all out. Yep. So I cannot fathom, like when I saw you- No, we're good, we're good.

Yeah. We're good. But you and Elon, there might be some- No, I don't, no, not on a personal level. You can send him back home. But there's a different- You could, he's a fucking migrant. You know what I mean? It's probably, I'm probably paying for him

to stay in some hotel in New York right now. You're paying for a lot of people to stay in hotels in New York. I am. Yeah. That's changing very soon. So what's going on? What digital efficiency is going to fix that? So my view is everybody has, look, let's talk about merit in the country, right? Everybody's got their own gifts.

It seems like you got more merit to be in Doge than some fucking guy with four other companies. You should have pointed him through the door. You should have been like... Alright! Finish him. Finish him. Not that cursing. Because you got the mustache. We got one in here.

Just give him your heart. Give him your heart. You can't do it with the mustache. Especially, you got a good length on there. If it comes in here... If it comes in a little bit. And you can't be like, I'm Michael Dior. That's out of the window. It doesn't work.

All right, guys, we also got dates. First of all, Sacramento, thank you guys so much. Nine sold out shows. I literally just didn't have time to add more. So thank you, man. It was such a fun weekend. This weekend I'm going to be in West Des Moines, Iowa on Friday and Saturday the January 31st and February 1st and taking a couple weeks off And then February 21st and 22nd. I'm in Brea, California

One of those shows is already sold out so buy your tickets then February 27th and 28th and March 1st I'm gonna be in Zanies in Nashville March 21st and 22nd Omaha, Nebraska March 28th and 29th, Columbus, Ohio. And these dates have changed, guys. I was gonna be in Toledo, Ohio in April, but we're gonna move that show. I gotta make up for everybody who I had to cancel on last minute in Tampa.

So Tampa, if you missed your shot last time because I didn't make it, well, you didn't miss your shot. I fucked up, I apologize. Flu got me. April 10th through 13th, I will be in Tampa. Guys, get your tickets at akashSingh.com. Now let's get back to the show. What's up, guys? Mark Agnon's Arena Tour continues.

All right. February 27th, Baltimore. I will be in Magubis. That's right. Magubis Joke House. Magubis is great. It's like a house, but it's really like a, it's a small arena. No, a stadium seating. Yeah, it's amazing. I'll see you guys there. Baltimore, February 27th. Perfect place to suck his hundred people. No, I stayed in your city. Yeah, it's amazing. I'll see you guys there.

Baltimore, February 27th. Perfect place to suck his dick. Don't, please don't do that. Because people have tried to do this. After the show, they've come up to me, they said, Akash said I had to suck your dick. I said, please don't do it. Only men, men only.

Yeah, no, that's the only who's coming. Go to, go to fellas, suck his dick. No, please don't. Don't even really ask. It's not even cheating. No, because there would be other people there that don't know about this and they go Oh, yeah, I gosh said to suck your dick and then the other people be like what why are they trying to suck your dick? And then I said, they just it's a whole thing. Anyway, please don't do it

You can just come to the show have fun get a drink and laugh with people that like jokes I'll see you guys there Baltimore looks like this 27th. Okay. Okay, so you and him are beefing but you just had You got a bunch of people with different visions of how to achieve similar goals. You find different ways to achieve those goals. Did you have a combo where you're like, yo, I think we should actually go this direction. Well, look, I think that it was, it was an evolution of where we were headed for sure. I mean, things, you know, the new project has never been done before. So initially the thought would be outside government, use the legal constitutional basis legislation ended up, you know, really having an internal to government and technology centric focus. I think that's

great. And I think it could be super successful. And I think there's nobody with that focus. I really mean this. I think there's nobody with that focus that is going to be better positioned to do good things than Elon. Of course, but initially, but the flip side is also at a certain point, I think this is what's going to be good for me as well is if I'm really looking at a unique constitutional vision for the future of the country grounded in my view of what our lawmaking process ought to be, how do you restore self governance in America? How do you actually rid ourselves of that managerial bureaucracy that exists at the federal, but also at the state level? I think I need to stand on my own feet and be elected to office to do it.

And I think that that's a, that's a good thing. That is interesting. But let me ask you, if you got to run Doge your way or be governor of a state in the Midwest, what would you do? Well, I will tell you, it's been my plan for, even before Doge came into existence and after I left the campaign to pursue the path of likely running for governor of Ohio, right? So this is something that I began to really,

from a family perspective. Wait, you're gonna run for governor? Wait, is that gonna happen for real? Imminently, we'll have an announcement to make. What are we waiting on? Yeah, just announce it right here. What are we waiting on? Yeah, just announce it right here. You know what this sounds like to me?

Inefficient. Everything about government paperwork is inefficient to me. But I will say that that was something that I was committed to even before the election was decided. And so when it became clear that you're not able to do certain things, while being part of the federal government, I made my choice about staying true to the path of it. Who's the sitting governor? Who's the guy you're gonna knock out? He's actually term-limited. So it's a guy by the name of Mike DeWine. Oh really? Yeah, so who you're gonna go up against? Who's the other? Whoever chooses to run. And it's just body bags all day. Zip, zip. Are you excited about that? Look, let me say this. I'll never take...

Talk that shit. Talk that shit. I'm a competitor as well, right? You guys are competitors, we've never talked about this before. I can't believe you let this South African kick you out of Doche, bro. So when you're talking about competing in an election, I don't buy it. Don't cancel my tour, Kaleo. You're actually not that bad, even. I like the way you send the rockets out. You're a good guy. I like him better.

He's going to do great things. He's going to do great things. But I'm a competitor, but what I will say is I don't want to just win an election by some narrow margin and be another caretaker. There's 50 caretakers across the country that come and go. If there's an opportunity to actually transform Ohio, but also to show what is possible to the rest of the country by standing for excellence, you need a mandate to do that. So you can't win by a little bit, you gotta win by a lot. And so I'm in this to be not just in by some sort of

marginal victory and be another nanny for a state government for a while, but to really go in and change the place for the better. And if you think about it, Silicon Valley, right, has been at the bleeding edge of the American economy for the last 20 years, just by market capitalization, by innovation. I think the Ohio River Valley can be the leading

edge of innovation for the next 20 years. You wanna bring Silicon Valley to Ohio. Even one step more than that, to go to the next level where Silicon Valley isn't, in terms of production. Because I do think that's gonna be the next wave of actual true innovation in America is actually producing semiconductors. But how do you do that?

You think you just like get a lot more H1B visas in Ohio? Roll backwards. Starts with rolling back to the regulatory state. How do you do with these retarded Americans, bro? We just got retarded Americans here in this country and there's no way we can figure out engineering. Speak for yourself, man. There's four of us right here.

Four retards right here trying to figure out what the managerial class is. We're too dumb. You know what the sad part is? Yes. We're actually, some people say that. What do you mean? Some people say that. Yeah, I know, you're sitting on a couch know what the sad part is? Yes. Some people say that. What do you mean?

Some people say that. No, actually, to the contrary. Okay. Because I said this in my now infamous tweet. He got hacked. That was all me. In fact, the problem with me with my tweets is nobody else reads them before I put them out. That is all me.

If I learn one thing, when you have a busy year and you're on vacation with your family, maybe put down the Twitter account for a little while. Is it a good one? Take time, Jack. Take my phone. We're in Brazil and I was just like, you know what? You saw them work and you were like, no, these motherfuckers are hard. So the thing is, actually the thing that pissed me off is actually a lot of? You saw them work and you were like, no, these motherfuckers are hard. Yeah. Well, so the thing is, I actually, the thing that pissed me off is actually a lot of people started saying the thing that you were saying,

which is that actually there's some IQ differential in other countries versus the US. I don't think so. We've gotta be the smartest. I think that if anything, we are, because we have a good selection bias of who comes here. Yeah, the best and the brightest typically, yeah. But, but there's a big problem.

So if we have at least no less smart and probably smarter on average than most countries, if not all countries, because of the selection bias of who comes here. Yet in eighth grade. Actually let me ask you this. You're still saying it's the immigrants that come to make up smart.

No, I mean, then you're for generations. I'm still saying that. I mean, for generations. Just say, if you want it to be fine. Oh, you wanted the hard part. Just say white Christians are the smartest and everything will be okay. Okay, just say it.

I think America is the best. Just say Christ is king and we're the smartest. But here's the problem, man. Eighth grade, I'll ask you a question. Yeah. What percentage of eighth graders are, for their age, proficient in math compared to international standards? Anybody have a guess?

Four. Four percent? Four percent. Oh, you're pretty pessimistic. You're not bad, though. It's 25%. Yeah. So 75% of our eighth graders compared

to just other developed countries. So 25% of that class is Asian? They didn't do the demographic breakdown. All right, so 25%. But I think that's a problem. So I think it is offensive for us to just say it's a problem for us that 25% are actually math proficient. They got 100% that could do math and they're still poor? The other countries, like how are you still

in the third world and all of you know math? Apparently math is unimportant. This is in the developed world, but you should be focusing on shooting the schools up or something that can make your country the leader of the first world. This is what I'm getting from the data. I'm getting that math is not important at all

to have the most powerful country in the world. I think that the question is whether we're gonna have the most powerful country in the world, and that's what I'm worried about. So, you know, we can, we can, you can flex all you want, man. Don't make me go kangaroo on you right now. I think that we are the greatest country known to the history of mankind, I do.

Of course. But we have to have the humility to understand what we gotta be better. And I don't think complacency is an option. And I don't think, I mean, look at the news of the day or the news of this week, right? You got new AI technology coming out of China that somehow takes everybody by surprise here

because with a lot less in computing power, they were smart in the way that they were able to use less computing power to still achieve a similar result. That's deep-seek. We can have that discussion later. We're going to get our asses handed to us by China unless we get our act together and light a fire under the feet of our culture. I think that's a hard truth. No, I agree with that. I think we might need to fuck them up right now. I mean, this is

really the only chance we got. We need to fuck them up right now. What do we do? Forget fucking anybody else up. We get it to their neighbors. Let's actually just wake up some stuff. What did you say? We get it to their neighbors. This guy's crazy. We can't. He's saying new China. No, no, that's not what I'm saying.

I'm implying it. How about just how about just being better on our own terms? Right. That's a crazy idea. Crazy idea. I think that's why we just too big. We got it. So at least you're talking about it.

But I think that we can't hide and have our heads in the sand. What do they do better than us? What do they do better than us? He just told you. He literally did. I just fucking said it. What were you doing? This is the whole discussion.

This is the whole discussion. I don't know what I was doing. Was he saying the AI computing? So I think about 6% of it. So maybe we don't want the best engineers, right? Hold on. What did they do? Yeah, so there was this thing called DeepSeek that just came out.

You hear about it? No. Okay. No worries. I've seen one in the last couple of days. Can we do? Yeah, so there was this thing called Deep Seek that just came out, you hear about it? No. Okay. No worries. I've seen one in the last couple of days.

Deep Seek? Yeah, is that the Bonnie Blue video? Yeah. Yeah. He's good. He's good. How do you know? I know him.

He's a comedy engineer. I like it. Somebody just took a photo of it. I like it. Many kinds of engineers, engineers of comedy. I like that. I saw that video of where's your wedding ring? I saw that video of where's your wedding ring?

I saw that video of where's your wedding ring? I saw that video of where's your wedding ring? I saw that video of where's your wedding ring? I saw that video of where's your wedding ring? I saw that video of comedy. I'm an agent of comedy. I like that. Many kinds of engineers, engineers of comedy. I like that. I'm like, where's your wedding ring? Cross examination. Go, go, go, go, sorry. So anyway, there's this thing that really surprised everybody, which with a lot less computing power, because we've had these export bans on chips going to China, the thought was they don't have access to the same type of computing power that other companies do here.

And that's the issue with AI right now is the computing power, right? Also it was thought. And they solved that issue. Well, it's complicated. So under conditions of scarcity, where they had these export controls, they still came out of nowhere and said, you know what, with a lot fewer chips and a lot less powerful chips, they nonetheless created a generation of AI that at least looks as competitive as the bleeding edge of what we're producing in the United States. And you know, there's, there's a lot yet to be known, but they trained this using phrases rather than individual words.

Instead of going out 32 decimal places on a number, they only used a decimal place. So the way they trained the AI, they ended up being a lot scrappier in doing it. And we can have the whole discussion about deep sea can get boring pretty quickly. But my point is, we will see examples daily, weekly of other countries, including China having our asses handed to us unless we wake up and as a Sputnik like moment say, we are the greatest nation and we're going to act like it. And we believe that hard work and education and excellence rather than victimhood is the way to do it. And so the funny thing for me is I've been saying this for years.

It's not a different message for me. I've been preaching it to the woke left. I wrote the book, Woke Inc. I wrote Nation of Victims a couple of years ago. And it was perceived as an attack on victimhood culture because that's what it was in the US. But what I intended it as a wake up call. And I think many of the same people who supported me

in delivering that message to the woke left may have initially had a different interpretation of it when I talked about it just more homistically. I thought you were only talking to black people. I'm talking to everybody. They got pulled by bootstraps, man, Timberlands. And they loved it. I think to puff our chests abroad,

we all gotta pull up our pants. Yeah, I agree. All of us. Yeah, I agree. There was a whole pull up your pants thing. We all gotta pull up our pants. We gotta pull them up. And we gotta be serious about it. We pull up our pants. Yeah, I agree. All of us. Yeah, I agree. There was a whole pull up your pants thing. We all got to pull up our pants. We got to pull them up. Okay.

And we got to be serious about it. We got to balance our budget. We got to actually spend in accordance with what we actually bring in. We got to seal our border. We got to teach our kids how to do math and how to read and how to write. And I want excellence in every domain, by the way. I don't think we should be a country of only engineers. But if we want to be the country where we say companies hire American born workers, that's what we

all want. We got to ask ourselves at least a hard question. This is what people got upset about. And then they get upset about me saying it right now. But it's a question that you have to confront, which is why are these companies choosing on their own to not hire as many American-born workers as we want? It's a tough question, but we can't hide from asking that question if you care about this country. I care about this country too much to just ignore that question because that might be politically convenient.

And by the way, the H-1B system, I hate doing this because it's so lame and sort of just repeating yourself. I've said it like 150 times in the last year. It is a broken system. It is flawed. Yeah. No, it's not flawed. It is badly broken.

Why? Why? Because there's all kinds of things that are messed up. Quickly describe what it is. So it's a worker visa program that allows about 85,000 grand a year where companies can get a foreign worker in a specific role of a specific skill set often used by technology companies. And when you say foreign, you mean Indian?

India is the number one country that uses it. We got an H1B here, don't we? I think you got China, you got other countries as well. Okay. I mean, you might, it was about 85,000, but here's the deal with it. First of all, it's distributed by lottery. So my view is that colleges, they pick the very best, at least they think for their university. What I'm individually

picking, it's a lottery. That's number one. Number two is if you work for a particular company with an H1B, here's the big problem. You are like an indentured servant to the company because another company can't hire you. So the market's not really working. So I have for a long time. And you get underpaid, overworked, you're constantly afraid of getting sent back, so they take advantage of that. And then also you could argue that that compresses American wages

because that person can't be hired away, so the company has them under a barrel to pay them less. There are rules to prevent that, but then companies may be abusing it and sidestepping those rules. And you're afraid to report it if you're- So it is not only a broken system, it is a deeply flawed system in its

application. And I've said this a hundred times, maybe 150 times in the last year, but assume we fix all of that. And, and by the way, I've got some out of the box ideas for how to fix this. I'd say auction them off, actually make the companies pay for it. Get back to that. And by the way, use that money. Get back to it.

If you changed the word, if you. Get back to that. And by the way, use that money. If you change the word, if you auction them off, right? Then you actually raise enough money to close Social Security. The right is on your side. So we've got 44 billion dollars. Social Security. For real, we're going to auction them. We don't have enough money for Social Security.

We don't have a way to fill it. I mean, make some companies pay more. So the companies pay more. I'm going to talk to you as a friend of it. You're being very high cue. The EQ is when you say auction them off The black people are like what are we talking about? Yes, that's the reason why we don't do that anymore.

This guy can joke around like I'm gonna be as loose as I can be too. But the point is they can pay for it. Make them sell the flesh. Sell their flesh to the highest. Sell their visa to the highest bidder. Sell their visa to the highest bidder. And sell their flesh! Take their flesh and sell it! Pay to the United States!

Pay to America, right? So you want to make America great? We got a social security gap. Close the social security gap by saying that if a company wants to hire somebody with the equivalent of a new H-1B system, make them actually pay so there's a higher barrier to hire somebody with the equivalent of a new H1B system, make them actually pay so there's a higher barrier to hire that foreign born worker. But the company will pay whatever it's worth to them to do it. And by the way, when they do it, they shouldn't be indentured servants of that company. They can work at a different company. That's a pretty

efficient approach and it could actually use to close the social security trust fund gap or anything else. But those are wonky policy solutions. But the deeper question though, because everyone likes to go there and get agree. No, this is good. And get to the hard question. Let's say even after you have that system, I believe it is likely that companies will still in some measure hire workers that include workers from other countries. And by the way, a lot of CEOs, what they'll say behind closed doors and what they do behind closed doors is if you tell them they can't do it here,

they start opening up sites in other countries. That's what's happening. Some of the most successful startups in the country right now founded by names of people who I'm not gonna betray confidence as you all would recognize have told me in recent weeks right in response to all of this what people need to know is that I'm actually building teams in places like Brazil in places like Europe. But that's just because it's cheaper. It's not because they're smarter. No, it's not just because it's cheaper. But it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You're gonna hire a Brazilian engineer. It's not good for America. Right? It's not good for America when you create those jobs in other countries. So the question is how do we address the deeper question of... They make great airplanes.

Yeah. Well, it's actually kind of interesting. What is a great Brazilian piece of engineering? What have they done? It's not my choice to make. It's not my choice to make. I'll give you give you decisions that other CEOs are making. That's not good for America. We want this to be the country where the greatest things come out of our own home. I agree. So the question to ask, the hard question is, why, when given the choice,

are companies not making the choice to hire more American born workers than we want? We got to reflect on that. And then there's a separate question. So you got that observation, right? Now you've got a separate observation. Before you go to the second question. No, no, it's related. It's related. That 25% of eighth graders and only 25% are actually proficient in math. That's a separate fact. 25% are actually proficient in math. That's a separate fact. Are those two facts total coincidences? Is that just a random coincidence that we now live in a period where American companies

are choosing, I don't love this, but are choosing not to hire as many American born workers at the exact same time that our educational system is producing lackluster results in math, science, and engineering? Are those just random coincidences? Or might those have something to do with each other? I mean, we could explore if they do. I'm not completely convinced. I'm not saying I'm convinced either,

but I'm saying that this has to be the conversation we're able to have, rather than getting upset that the question was asked. And I care too much about this country to do it. And I think that messengers matter, to do it. And I think that messengers matter. And one of the things I learned from this is, you know, people, people see the message through the messenger a little bit. And for where I sit, to be super clear about it, this is the only country I will ever pledge allegiance to. I have nowhere

else to go. This is the country I will die fighting for if I have to. And so you know what? When you care about somebody, you tell them the truth. And if you care about yourself, you tell them what they wanna hear. And I was consistent with that with the left. It was hard for me to preach a message to the left when we took a lot of arrows before criticizing world culture.

Now that's a cool thing to do. That was not a cool thing to do when I started doing it because I don't think that victimhood culture is good for black people. I don't think it's good for white people. I don't think it's good for any American people. I don't think victimhood culture lifts us up. We're victors, not victims.

That's who we are. But I apply that principle across the board in America that all of us, not pointing the finger at anybody else, including looking in the mirror myself as a guy who's raising kids in this country that I worry about and I see how hard that is. I want all of us to create a country where those kids still grow up in a country where excellence is the priority.

In math and engineering, sure, sports, arts, music, everything, but we are a country where we pursue excellence. We don't penalize somebody for being a striver, right? That has a negative connotation to it today. Our country was built on hard workers and strivers in whatever domain. We also shouldn't be intimidated. Yeah, we shouldn't be intimidated.

We should have confidence. We're Americans. You're coming here and I'm gonna beat you. You've done right. I'm gonna beat you. I want you to come over. I wanna give you all the visas and I'm gonna still outperform.

And I think once we start going- We are the best. Yeah. And American exceptionalism was based on this idea of manifest destiny, it was the manifest destiny of a nation. So, real quick. And the reason we could do that is because other countries have national identities that are different than ours.

Yeah. Right? Italy or Japan or you could go straight, great countries, love both countries, but their national identity is based on the lineage, right? Whether you speak the language, whether your blood stock, your stock of blood goes back, five generations, that's how Italian you are. Culture of thousands of years old, yes.

Yeah, whereas America, I believe, It's ideology. Is a nation founded on a set of principles, right? Yes, there's a beautiful geographic space and a homeland we love and hold dear, but that homeland has changed. That's how it makes you American, yeah. Right, it used to be 13 colonies. Then you got the Louisiana Purchase.

Thousand percent. Then you have out West, then you had Alaska, Hawaii. Maybe there will be more to it to be coming soon. Gangs. But it doesn't matter. The land is not the core element of America. The blood and soil is important, but it's not the essence. The essence is what are the ideals that bind us together across those otherwise geographically diverse and expansive differences. And to me, it's those ideals that we pursue excellence. We

believe in merit, that the best person gets the job, that you can achieve the maximum of your own potential without anybody standing in your way and speak your mind at every step of the way. That's what makes America great. That's why we win. So we have to revive that. But right now, I feel like, especially the last four years, we've gone through a little bit of a lethargic period. And I think most people who may have had issues with the way I framed it a few weeks ago, would agree with me that we wouldn't have to make America great again if America was already perfect. We should have the humility and the love of our country to not only admit that, but to embrace the challenge on the other side of it, to say that we're still going to strive

to be better than we've ever been. That's who we are. And that's the spirit I want to bring back in the country. And if I'm being honest, I think we've lost some of that, but it doesn't have to stay that way. You do know the whole thing is just, it's good white Christian Americans don't like a brown guy holding the mirror up to their face. That's what this is all about. Don't you dare talk about it. That's what it is.

Don't you dare talk about it. So it's funny, it's funny you say that. You know that's what it is. I reject, and in my arguments, friendly, but healthy, heated arguments with the left over the last four years have been steadfast on this and I don't intend to change my position now. My position in talking to the left, including black audiences or places where, you know, there was this idea that if you're not black, you can't say certain things. I never believed that. I think that your ideas stand on your own merits, regardless of your own skin color,

and you got to express them. That's what America's founded on. So if that was my, and I got a lot of applause from many corridors of the conservative movement for maintaining a hard line on that, but that's always been my belief. And I'm not about to change that belief now either. So I believe in being consistent across the board. Here's my fear for you, someone who roots for you. You said it yourself, the messenger matters.

You're going to run in a state, conservative, I guess is a good way of putting it. I'm conservative. And two, having grown up in a conservative state, knowing a lot of conservatives, love them, but there's a good percentage of them, I would say 20% comfortably, that are simply not going to vote for you because of your race and or religion. Yeah, remember Ann Culture said I wouldn't ever vote for you because of your race and or religion. Yeah, remember Ann Culture said I wouldn't ever vote for an Indian. Ann Culture said this exact thing.

Now I'm not saying you can't run or whatever. My question is, she literally said this. She literally said, I would not vote for him because he's Indian. No, yeah. Really? Have you spoken to her recently? Nah, I don't have too much to say.

No, let that just burn. Anyway, point is, how do you overcome that? And I would, listen, this is a beautiful moment to speak to your ideals and what you believe in. And I love those ideals. However, this is a practical problem that you will have to overcome. Can you just do that with ideals?

So I think here's what I believe. It happens to be true, right? If I'm wrong about this, then I won't be a successful American politician. I'm okay with that. My goal in life is not to be a successful American politician. My goal in this phase of my life is to change this country for the better by doing what I believe is truthful and required for saving our nation. That's why I worked hard, worked my tail off to get Donald Trump back in office because I think at the federal level, he is

the guy to lead us back to our sense of self-confidence and greatness. So now when I look at what I'm doing, my goal is not to map some sort of focus group path to what you're supposed to say to win an election. What I care about is actually reviving excellence in America. It so happens though, that I think most people, including in the Republican Party, agree with the core principles of meritocracy, the pursuit of excellence. I do think the majority, I think it's overwhelming majority. And I'm not gonna get 100%? I'm not gonna get 100% of people support me.

That's great. It's the beauty of a democracy. So I think that the majority of people in this country, and certainly I think even the majority of conservatives, especially the majority of conservatives, believe in hard work, self-reliance, self-determination, meritocracy, excellence. That's what I stand for. So I believe I'll be successful. And you know what? I would rather speak my message and achieve whatever, whether that's success or failure.

I don't care about that as much as speaking the truth of what I actually believe. And I think that happens to be the best electoral strategy. But are you shocked? Were you shocked at the, I guess, racial blowback that you received when you tweeted that? Or was that surprising to you? Because I did notice this sense, and I do think I'm a moderate person,

but I noticed this sense amongst my brown Republican friends who were like shocked that this existed. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things... There's a couple of things going on. There's a couple things going on. No, no, no, but what were they saying? I mean, all kinds of shit on to me. Was it because of the racial pushback? There was a couple things going on. The H1B visa thing. No, no, no, but what were they saying? I mean, all kinds of shit on the internet. Funny memes at all or no?

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't think they were super funny. You're probably funnier, you know, in the scale of humor. Yeah, yeah. At times, you know? But sometimes they got some banger, like... It might have been one or two. Did they put you on top of a train or anything like that? I didn't get that.

I don't get that. Yeah. The surprises, I think there's a couple things going on there. or anything like that. I didn't get that. I don't get that. The surprises, I think there's a couple things going on there. Yeah. The online world is not the real world. I think the other thing is you look at actually real people in 3D. I mean, you got a bunch of people with burner accounts that can't identify who they are. The energy changes completely. I could care less, to be honest with you, about what some sort

of, you know, somebody calls you a name and you put yourself in the public domain and you're putting yourself in a position to be a leader in the country. If that stuff's going to bother you, you weren't cut out for it in the first place. And part of my message, you know, it's the whole message in reverse, it applies 360 degrees, is that we're not victims, right? We're victors. That's the example we set. So I'm not going gonna be some victim of,

was there a lot of ugly, racist stuff set on the internet? Big news flash, big surprise. What do you expect in the depths of anonymous internet? So commentary, I don't care less. It's not gonna deter me. And to the contrary, what I do care about though, is my goal is not just to provoke for the sake of provoking. No,

I want to be able to have an earnest and open conversation in our country about how we excel at a level that we have in the past. We're the country. If you think about my home state of Ohio, St. Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, to outer space and the outer frontiers, there's no reason Ohio can't be the heart of that again. There's no reason the United States of America can't view this as our Sputnik moment right now. But there are many rises and many falls of this American experiment. And when you are down a little bit, you got to be able to light a fire under your feet to come back. That's who we've always been. But we can't just expect that to happen automatically. And so I do care about an honest self-reflection as a citizen of the greatest nation known

to the history of mankind. How do we still pursue greatness at a higher level than we ever have? I really care about that. And I think that sometimes that involves tough conversations. I'm game for it. It's going to involve a lot of criticism along the way. I'm fine with that. If you can't handle the game get out of the game. If people accept the root reflection

Yeah, how do we ameliorate the actual root cause? Sure So that's that we should be talking about. So I think a lot of this starts with early education in the country. First of all A lot of this even goes to concerns about inequality I think that every kid who's born in this country starting at the age of four If not younger should have access to the best possible school they can, regardless of what their financial background is. Love that. I mean, it's the truth. We're a universal school choice. That happens, by the way, not at the federal level. It's part of when I'm thinking about my own next step. That happens at the state level. That's really where

these changes happen. I think that restoring at least a norm in the country of a solid family foundation. Does that mean that somebody who the country of a solid family foundation. Does that mean that somebody who grows up in a broken family environment or a single parent household can't achieve great success? No, of course not. But all else equal, it tends to be from a stable family, generally two parent upbringing,

you're gonna be able to jump higher if you're jumping from a ground that isn't shaking, but a ground that's stable. So I think it starts early. And I think a disproportionate focus on high quality education starting young, on measuring that achievement starting young, and then some cultural shift,

and you tend to get more of what you valorize as a culture, right? So I think it's fantastic that we valorize a lot of different things in American culture that are great, because we produce great comedians. We produce great athletes. We have historically produced great scientists and engineers. It's great.

You get more of what you valorize. But what I've seen a little bit that concerns me in probably the last 20 years, you could blame some of this in the woke left, but it's not exclusively at the feet of the woke left, is penalizing excellence, right? Penalizing the person who works hard and wins and instead rewarding the victim. And I think that if you reward victimhood, you get more victimhood. And if you penalize excellence and hard work, you're going to get less excellence and less hard work.

So I think it's going to be a combination of policies that allow people to have access to the best possible education at a young age and start measuring and rewarding for success earlier. Merit-based pay for teachers, not just everybody just getting the same thing for treating kids like they're on an assembly line, but actually measuring and pinpointing the people who are putting kids on even a little bit of a trajectory that's different when they're four years old. By the time they're at 12th grade, you could run a truck through that. So those increments of difference starting even young, that's a big freaking difference. And then to create a culture that we don't need to create it, we just need to revive

it because it is our culture. To celebrate whoever's the best, to reward them, to celebrate that in every domain, right? Not just academics, academics to athletics, physical excellence. I actually did some other controversy two years ago, favor bringing back what's called the presidential fitness test. They used to have middle school kids go through that. They take that away now. Right? How many push-ups can these kids do? We don't valorize that type of physical excellence. We should. I love sports. I was a four-year varsity athlete myself. It sometimes can make you a better thinker too. But we should embrace excellence in all of its forms

rather than this thing that we kind of teach our kids to do nowadays. And I'm not criticizing anybody else. Like my kids grow up in a really different environment than I grew up in. And I'm somewhat concerned about that. It makes me think a lot as a parent about how do you cultivate that same environment where we... participation trophy culture. We should have trophies for the

winners, not participation trophies. That was America, right? That was the America that produced greatness. I worry a little bit about taking the guy who's a striver and using that and make that a negative connotation rather than celebrating the person who's going to put their head down and work hard, be it at basketball, be it at the violin, be it at math or be in the science competitions. And I do think that that's a culture that is American at its core. Maybe we've lost our way on that a little bit.

I think we have. But bring back the culture that produced greatness at every time we've been our way on that a little bit. I think we have. But bring back the culture that produced greatness at every time where we've been at our best. The country that put the man on the moon. The country that was the country of the pioneers, the explorers, the Lewis and Clark expeditions, for God's sake. Merit-based pay for teachers is interesting.

I've never heard that before. How do you implement that? Super required. Teachers unions are an obstacle. I think that there's an obstacle. But I think that the idea that you're going to have, it's participation trophy culture and certainly participation trophy culture for kids. We can't just have participation trophy culture for the people who are educating our kids either.

Question about that. Should unions be able to negotiate against the state? I think that in certain domains it's uncontroversial that they shouldn't. Public school teachers, if you're unionizing as a public school teacher, who are you unionizing against? And also against the very people you're supposed to represent. But also who is rewarding that union, someone who's going to be in office for two, four years, and then they move on. So they don't have to deal with the repercussions of bad policy. Which is totally different from different kinds of unions, right? Private sector unions came up about fighting against monopoly power, against capitalists consolidation.

But public sector unions, even you had FDR, I think actually who was a big pro union guy that expressed a lot of skepticism about public sector unions. And then you could talk about, I would put police and fire, that's in a different category because there are a lot of concerns

that relate to how they're insured or protected in the case of putting their own lives on the line. But let's just start with the easiest example, where I think most people agree. I don't think public teachers unions make sense. And why is that? I think public teachers unions means you're unionizing against the very people you're supposed to serve. For example? Kids, who you're teaching, right? How are you unionizing against kids? Yeah, what are they advocating for advocating for? What you're advocating for, you advocate for summer break. Let's just start with that. So you're advocating for. I talk about summer break. This is super

boring subject to a lot of people. I think it's a super important subject. I've included this in one of my earlier books is you actually see regress when a kid finishes the school year in the spring versus when they show up in the fall. But kids from well-to-do families, that regress is really small because they're able to pay for and seek out high engagement activity over those three months. From poor or less well-to-do school districts,

that's where the gap actually grows, just the regress when they show up in the fall. That's just one example. I think it is a nice perk of being a teacher that you have summer break, but we should take a look at what produces the best results. And conversely, the very best aren't rewarded.

Let's say you're actually doing the best job amongst your pack of peers of teachers in teaching kids how to excel in math and science and reading ability and critical thinking in a way that's measurable. That person still gets paid the same salary, which I think is way too low right now. I was just going to say that. Teachers are severely underpaid. Severely underpaid. measurable, that person still gets paid the same salary, which I think is way too low right now. I was just going to say that. Teachers are severely underpaid. Severely underpaid.

So you think getting rid of unions, they're going to start, the state's going to be like, oh, let's pay them more? I think the best ones would actually get paid more money, especially it's in the context of a true market-based system where the people at the level of the family have the ability, whether they can afford it or not, they're able to with a voucher or with an educational savings account, able to choose to go to a better school. Absolutely. There's good evidence for this. I think you have too much faith in state budgets.

They're trying to cut at all costs. I don't think it happens magically. I'm with you. It doesn't happen magically, but I think that great leaders can make a difference. I think good leaders with the right policies at the level of the state can fix this problem. And this is a man. Here's why. This is not going to the moon. Going to the moon is a problem of physics and not every natural problem has a man made solution. This is a man made problem and every man made problem has a man made solution.

I agree. I believe that. And if we value education as highly as you'd like, then that's the budget you cut last. You see what I'm saying? It's not just the budget. Don't value it already. It's about how you use it. That's an issue. It's about how you use it.

So take the money to administer the bureaucracy, put that money in people's pockets and allow them to actually get to the best possible education they can get to. Either renegotiate the union contracts or maybe get rid of them altogether in a way that allows for merit based pay. Doesn't that agree?

Smart schools and dumb schools? Well, and we're here in New York City, close to downtown, you have the best traders on a Wall Street firm. If they make most profit for the firm, which is their mission, they get paid more rather than the guy who didn't. Why would we want to operate our schools in a way that's the opposite principle? How would you decide what merit is for teachers? Is it standardized tests?

Yes, so there's upsides and downsides to just be slaves of the test, right? Nobody just wants to solve for one metric. But there's going to be no perfect system. I'll be the first to acknowledge that. But is a system that has a combination of objective metrics, even if the metrics aren't perfect, better than one that has none at all? I think it is strictly better, right? So I think we can't let the fact that you're going to have some flaw in whatever

metric you use to say that therefore we're not going to use any of that. Don't be paralyzed trying to be perfect. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Let the perfect not be the enemy of the good. And I do think that we're not at the good right now when it comes to doing justice by our kids in preparing them to be competitive. And I think that's part of where the victimhood culture comes from. But aren't- Even in a state, if you train your kids to be competitive. And I think that's part of where the victimhood culture comes from. But aren't- I mean, even in a state, if you train your kids to be actually prepared to compete,

then they don't think of themselves as victims. But I think we also have to consider that, like sometimes teachers are at the mercy of the families that these kids are born into. Sure, absolutely. And we can't punish teachers because, you know, they have a class of 30 kids who are all from single parent households.

I agree with you. It's like, it's not their fault, they have them eight hours a day, the other 16. all from single parent households. I agree with you. It's like it's not their fault. They have them eight hours a day. The other 16. And that was the other point I made. So those would be the two biggest changes for the country is restoring a solid, rock solid family foundation as the norm. How do you do that through policy?

Yeah, some of it is at least eliminate the disincentives to do it. I think those are accidents. I don't think that somebody nefariously did this to the point we were talking about earlier. But there are weird distortions where actually people can make more money by not having a man in the house than to have a man in the house. I think those are accidents of arithmetic in the way that the great society under Lyndon Johnson

worked out. So that's not gonna solve all the problem, but at least start with eliminating the disincentives. I think some of this doesn't just happen through policy, some of it happens through cultural norm shifts as well, making it cool to be part of a family. I think making family cool again is a great thing for the country.

I do think that when our leaders are able to, even my own journey over the last couple of years, we did it as a family, but we showed the world that we did it as a family too. And to people my age and to the next generation, I think that's a great norm to set and to show the country that fathers and mothers equally are invested in bringing up our kids. What's that?

How do you reinforce that? Yeah. How do you bake that into the identity of an American family? You know, I think we're gonna see it happen. I think it already, I'm pretty optimistic because I see that dial turning a little bit, even in just the way

that Hollywood might make a movie. What kind of movie appeals to what really are the masses of Americans who agree with these concepts? It's almost like a business opportunity that opens up once you give people the permission to think a little bit differently. And so that's one of the things I love about this election is it has mostly turned the page on at least the woke cancel culture in a way that I think is productive. Mostly it's given people a sense of permission to speak openly and rethink, I think, a lot

of the toxicity of the last few years. I think we're going to see, as you see a lot of corporations maybe responding, and that's a different discussion about how they're thinking about DI programs or whatever. But I think you're going to see similar evolution in the arts, right, the kind of songs that people make, the kind of movies that people make. Not boring stuff that hits you over the head and preaches about the importance of having a family,

but what you show as a norm of what's actually beautiful and worthy and desirable in America. I think that culture will reinforce policies that also take away the disincentives for family formation. So it's gonna be a long-term project. What you're saying sounds really good, and maybe I'm just misunderstanding, but I don't think that's a real thing.

I don't think that's a real problem. Like, I don't see anyone who, anyone who's like, oh, I can't wait to be a single parent household. Like, no one's, like, striving to not have a loving family. So, like, where is this problem? Can you give me an example of that? Well, I do think that there are- How do we fix women?

That's the real issue. I do think that it's a fact that there are women. We need some policy for that. We need some policy about that. It is a fact that many women make more money from being married to Uncle Sam than being married to a husband, right? So I think that that's not a good incentive structure

to set up in the first place. And I don't blame the people who are receiving those, you know, we're talking about the great society, the way welfare has been administered. I think there are actually just financial disincentives for family formation. That's not a problem with government. That's more a problem where corporations not paying people enough. Well, that's a separate debate that we could have. But I think that, you know, that's how do you get corporations to pay people more is you actually have a, I believe a competitive market economy that allows people to get jobs in a growing economy.

That's a separate discussion of economic policy. But even if you're going to have programs of government aid, which most of them I'm skeptical of, but if you're going to have it, do it in a way that doesn't create a disincentive to pay somebody more in the exact same situation where single mother without a man in the house, single mother married man in the house, this one gets more money than this one. I don't think that that's a good incentive structure to create, but I'm not going to promise you that the solution is all going to come through policy and the family side. I think through education, policy can deliver the solution.

Education is they'll get us 50% of the way there alone in terms of giving people access to the best possible education they can at a young age. Then you get to the hard stuff. I do think that restoring the nuclear family norm is a hard thing to do. I grew up in a really poor neighborhood. I'm sure there's always people that try to take advantage of the system, but the majority of people weren't happy to be on welfare. It was a necessity.

You say that they'll get paid more not being in a relationship. No one's striving for that. I agree with that. And it's like, to market it that way, I feel it's a little bit disingenuous. Let me ask you a question. Let me ask you, I'm super interested in this. I don't have all of the answers of what the government is supposed to do to recreate family formation.

I think some of this is not going to come from the government. The government should do the best we can What would be your perspective on how we could actually? Enhance more stable family formation in the country given your own, you know background that you share Like I said, I think money is the thing that fixes a lot and if corporations are paying people more now people can Have two family households and make more than if the government was helping them out. I would love for people to be able to earn more as well, which requires a vibrant economy rather than

the shrinking economy over the course of a generation. Yeah, but if we're paying people $15 on 40 hours a week, that's no money, no one can live off that. I mean, it's not even 15 to be, to his point. So when he first said corporations, I was thinking corporate jobs, but in one way, 725. Yeah, yeah. I mean, inflation has gone insane.

And like, are you back to my favorite topic? And I don't mean to pull it back to my favorite topic, but I pull it back because I think it relates to it of the bureaucracy in the regulatory state. The reason people can't afford a house is in part because we have a crisis of not enough housing construction in the country. Why? Because there's too much red tape to be able to build a single family home. So building-

Large because people aren't making enough money to afford housing. Well, I mean, housing costs are also- No, no, no. I mean, housing costs have shot up. You're going to see it happen in California. Right now- You're seeing it happen across the country. No, but specifically when they start to rebuild, there's a lot of people out there who like

they bought their homes already built and they've never went through the red tape and bureaucracy of like building a home out there. And then these people are gonna see what it's like and you're gonna see a monumental change happen in California. Even the builders, right? There's a lot of zoning regulations, for example, at a local level and at a state level that say,

you can't build a new house in this area if it's too small, if it's a single family home. That restricts the supply of new housing. When you have less supply, prices go up, and that's a big part of why people aren't able to afford housing, which I think is a major problem amongst Republicans and Democrats. But let's take it beyond housing.

Yeah. To his point, I hate to not side with the Indian, but a box of cereal in New York legitimately is $10. Yeah. If minimum wage is $15 an hour and food is that expensive, even if I'm renting and I don't wanna buy a house and I don't care about that, I'm still fucking struggling. And if it's $15 an hour in New York,

even if things are more expensive, 725 in Texas, a box of cereal is $5. I got a family of four to feed, I'm working 40 hours a week on minimum wage, what am I gonna do? It's like, and I support a lot of what you're saying, but there is a problem that might require more regulation, which is we inflation continues to go crazy. CEO salaries continue to go crazy.

They outpace inflation. Minimum wage has been stagnant for 20. I mean, largely stagnant since I was a kid. So here's my view. I think that the best way, the reason I want to dismantle the regulatory state is not because that is a more important objective than helping the American worker. It is because I believe it is the way to best aid the American worker. And right now, a shrinking economy or an economy that isn't growing at the pace that we historically have, that brings

everybody down, shrinks the size of the pie. I think companies, we want companies to independently make the choice to hire the best and brightest in the United States and pay them at a rate that allows people to flourish and live a great life. We can all agree that hasn't been the case in the last 20 years. At least in the post 2000 period,

that has not been the case in this country. I think most of that is a function of actually bad government policy by the actual regulatory state and bureaucracy. You think about the Federal Reserve. I mean, the Federal Reserve has tightened monetary, this is a little technical, but it tightens monetary policy every time wages go up.

This is actually one of the best kept secrets of how Federal Reserve policy has hurt workers in this country. They say that was a leading indicator of inflation. It's a leading indicator of wages are going up. So wages going up already was programmed into the mind of this bureaucracy that that's all or equal a bad thing. Well, here's what we've learned is that actually companies-

Second people start making more money. They're like, yeah, we got too much money. Right. Let's restrict the flow of money. It's even worse than that. It's even worse than that because as you will probably appreciate, the last thing to go up in the business cycle when the economy is hot, the very last thing to go up is wages. Yeah. So what we actually discovered in retrospect is they thought that was a leading indicator of inflation.

Oh gosh, we got to raise interest rates and tighten monetary policy. They actually got it wrong. Yeah. It was the tail end of the business cycle when wages were going up, which means they tightened monetary policy right into a natural downturn of the business cycle, which is how you got the 08 crisis, which by the way, people our age, a big source of inequality was still the aftermath of that great recession after the 08 financial crisis. Imagine we had none of that. I don't think that's how you got the 08 crisis. I don't think that is the- No, no, no, no, no, but it worsened it.

It exacerbated it. It exacerbated it and it caused it to last. Fucking poor people wanting more. No, no, no, it was actually the Federal Reserve tightening monetary, anyway, it lasted actually the Federal Reserve tightening monetization. Anyway, it lasted a lot longer even in the aftermath of it. But my point is, imagine you didn't have any of that regulatory state all in. You fast forward 20 years later, would we have been better off if none of the bureaucracy

had even tried to do it? And by the way, just take the money that was spent by that bureaucracy and put it in the pockets of people. Yeah. Yes, we would actually. So how come that bureaucracy is not affecting CEO's pays? Because there's has been going on. So I think there is a-

Well, I think that the reality is the bureaucracy is what determines that pay, right? I think a lot of, now I believe in the market actually working, but this gets into a separate market structure. So normally shareholders, you're asking the question, I'll give you the answer, because this is actually a topic that was near and dear to my heart. I started a company that was on this very issue. Shareholders are the supposed bosses of a corporation and public

companies. It turns out that most public companies have their stock held by a really concentrated small number of firms, Black Rock, State Street, Vanguard among them. They're the ones who are actually voting for CEO pay, not the actual shareholders themselves. So historically, the way the market economy is supposed to work is the shareholders hold the firm accountable. Instead, you have a lot of these concentrated financial actors that are voting their shares on behalf of the everyday American or the pension fund holder in a way that has resulted, I do think, in some level of inefficiency. So wherever you look in our country, the rise of this managerial class, right? Wherever you see

the rise of bureaucracy, the American citizen tends to lose in the end. The everyday citizen tends to lose in the end. And so my general form of solution is as a first step, take a jackhammer to the bureaucracy, take the savings and put them in the pockets of everyday citizens. Real quick. And good things are going to happen. On that, you said BlackRock, what did you say? State Street, Vanguard, all of these companies. So they-

That's where a lot of these ESG stuff, by the way, came from too. ESG is- Like these environmental and social constraints on these firms. Got it. Came from the same firms that in many ways were using that as a smoke screen. Remember when they were giving a score to actually have gay companies? Vote in the way they should be.

So, okay, so just real quick so we can understand. It's not their capital, right? It's not their assets. People are putting their money into these companies, they invest it. But what's happening is they're using the leverage of all that capital to push policy into these companies, they invest it. But what's happening is they're using the leverage of all that capital to push policy onto these companies. And then the shareholders are actually not seeing.

The capital owners, you can call them the capital owners. Because right now they call it BlackRock and Vanguard, the shareholders, that's the shareholders in air quotes. The actual capital owner is totally what they want. Exactly, exactly. And matter of fact, sometimes those policies negatively impact their returns. I believe that's the case.

I strongly believe that's the case. I wrote a couple of books about it. I also started a competitor to BlackRock called Strive, this was a few years ago. So I care about trying to solve these problems at best I can through the market. But one of the reasons I entered politics is there's only so much you can do through the market when the root cause of why these firms are structured this way is actually traces back to the regulatory environment that creates the incentives for that type of consolidation in the first place.

Guys, listen, you know, an exciting weekend. I think that we need to have a little bit of a discussion about Akash and his picks and before we get to the picks, can I just say how right I was about not being a cowboy fan? Okay, tell me. Oh, first of all, and Roddy, you're welcome. Because I last year said, I'm done with the Cowboys, it's never going to change. You guys pretended you were sports fans, you insulted me. People online insulted me, I took a lot of hatred.

They hired this guy to be their head coach. This guy, maybe he'll be a good coach. He has no qualifications. His name is Brian Schottenheimer. He's been a coordinator for about 15, 20 years. He's gotten one head coach interview his whole life. But because the Cowboys are cheap and they don't want to pay money for a head coach,

even though there's no salary cap, they had this guy who's a shitty offensive coordinator for them and they're like, let's just promote him. He's the head coach now. We can boss him around. We'll save a lot of money. Everything is going to be good. And I saw so many Cowboy fans saying, you know what?

I'm done with this team. I've given up hope. It's never going to happen. And suddenly their reception, hey, man, I get it. You're right. You have the right to go support another team. I want you to know I took those arrows for you. I took those arrows for you.

Did those other Cowboy fans say they want to kill Jerry Jones? You're welcome. Not yet. Give it a season. Give it a season. And he doesn't have to die. But just, you know, there's a couple of me too cases out there. Oh my God.

Do you guys care about women? Do you guys care about women? I pretend I do for the sake of football. So there's that. I care about two women Say what you have a mom she made her bed I forgive you though, I forgive you though. You know, I forgive you though. I forgive you though. She ain't got me tooting. Me tooting.

I just felt so vindicated this year. Okay, fair enough. What about your other picks? I don't know any of the words you're saying. I said the Eagles would win. I said I'm gonna go with the Bills over the Chiefs. I didn't feel good about it. I was wrong. would win. I said I'm gonna go with the Bills over the Chiefs. I didn't feel good about it, I was wrong.

Betting against Patrick Holmes, I guess, is just insane. You're almost right, though. It was close. It was a good game, man. It was a good game. I mean, they should've, what's it if they should've grabbed that pass? Dalton Kincaid, he's a good tight end to his,

he got great hands. Balls, I mean, Josh Allen did great to avoid that sack, but that blitz was amazing. What a ballsy call too, at that point in the game. Yeah, see, well, I was thinking, and I'm pretty aggressive, but it was fourth and five, they had like their own 40 or whatever. I was like, why wouldn't you punt this?

And then somebody brought up a good point. He said, because you're giving it to Patrick Mahomes. You give it to Patrick, you don't get the ball back. So you have to go for the win. You can't give it to him. So I said, okay, you gotta go for it. Great play by Josh Allen, just to throw it up in the air and not get sacked.

It was a great throw. Unbelievable. Yeah, and I truly, I mean, Philadelphia's really good, but I thought Buffalo was the best team. But I think Patrick Mahomes is just fucking different. And I know people say the Chiefs get calls and blah, blah, blah, and maybe they do, I don't know. That's also kind of how every great athlete does though,

right? Kobe got calls, LeBron got calls, blah, blah, blah, maybe they do, I don't know. That's also kind of how every great athlete does though, right? Kobe got calls, LeBron got calls, Jordan got calls, Tom Brady got calls in football, like this is just what it is. It's also easier to make calls for the most dominant team. Yeah, I think you just give them the benefit of the doubt and they're at home. They're just more glaring. When you constantly are winning, you see all the calls that benefit the team that you're winning.

Like when the bum-ass underdog team gets a call, you're not going, oh, this is so unfair. You almost feel like better about it. And the more you're winning, the more games you play, the more calls that could go your way. Yeah, so it is an Eagles Chief Super Bowl. I think the Eagles are really fucking good. I hate them.

My wife and I got in a fight because I just refused to be happy for her because she's from Philly. And she was just like, why can't you be happy for me? And I was like, they're just terrible people and you're one of them and that's just what it is. These are good fights. I apologize later. I didn't mean the apology, but I did apologize.

I lied. But they're really fucking good. I would hate to see them win the Super Bowl. I think it's very possible. I think I'm gonna pick the Chiefs, but I'm wrong a lot. So let's hope I'm actually right. Isn't that your team? Isn't the Chiefs your team?

Isn't that your bandwagon? Can I be honest, dude? You're a die-hard Chiefs fan. I found myself rooting for the Bills, because I would like to see Buffalo get a Super Bowl. You just like torture. You're a masochist. The Chiefs, if they win, I'm going to be fucking thrilled, and I will probably buy a Patrick Mahomes jersey because he's beaten...

There's only two teams left that I truly fucking hate. I love that you're like, I'm sick of my team not winning anymore. You know who I'm gonna root for? The Buffalo Bills. Yeah, man. I don't understand. No, all I have left is, what do they call it?

Shot and fraud or what? Other people's misery that I don't like. Two teams that I fucking hate left, the Niners and the Eagles. If Patrick Mahomes beats both of them in the Super Bowl twice, I'm buying a jersey. I'll pay for his fucking Disney World trip. I don't care, whatever you need.

I will worship this man. I will love this man forever. Okay, so you're going Chiefs. Yeah, well, yeah, I think I'm going Chiefs and I'm really rooting for them. And I might have to watch the game in Philly because my wife is gonna be there. And if I gotta be around those fucking,

that whole city just of fucking idiots when they win the Super Bowl, I mean, it's just gonna be unbelievable. You are crazy. It's just gonna be unbelievable. I mean, if they lose though, what a sight that would be. You know what I mean? Just a bunch of fucking nitwits walking around.

You know you have shows in Philly, you perform in Philly, you know you see these people. Oh, I'm sorry, is that crazy for a comic to antagonize Philly? Who would do such a thing? Who would do such a thing? Who would do such a thing? Probably how he got into arenas, because everybody's like, Oh, this guy hates Philly. So do we. Let's fucking buy tickets to a show.

We are going to watch it in Philly. I'm sure she's going to want to watch it in Philly. And if I wanted to watch the Super Bowl in Dallas, I'd make her go. That's never going to happen. But you know, that's gonna be a nightmare. So please, just beat the shit out of them. Don't make it close like you always do. Beat the dog shit out of them. I would love that.

Patrick Mahomes, please. You're gonna riot either way, I already know. Riot? I'm not capable of breaking anything in two weeks. My asthma's gonna start flaring up. It's too much. It's too much. Guys, if you're gonna bet on the Super Bowl, you're gonna do it with Stake. Stake is the leader in globe betting and US social casinos, bet on top sports and political events and use the promo code flagrant for your welcome bonus. Now let's get back to the show.

General summary of my worldview is bureaucracy is bad, all those equal. Do you think you're- And it harms the very people it's supposed to harm. Do you think you're radical? In the sense that America is radical. Sure. I mean, America is a radical idea. You were, of course. Of course.

What I'm saying is like, do you think that your viewpoint on what needs to be changed is significantly greater, more radical, more extreme? I know these words are like loaded and I don't mean them to be loaded. What I'm trying to say is, I think that what you're suggesting is a massive change. Yeah. And do you feel it is? Yeah, I do.

I think a massive change is required to set our country back on the right track to remain, I think we already are, but to remain the greatest country known to the history of man. I do believe that. Good language. And I think that the American Revolution was pretty radical, by the way, too. I like radical. America's birth was radical. The idea that we, the people, get to self-govern,

that was a crazy idea. The idea that your genetics and your lineage don't matter, but the best person ought to get the job. That is a radical idea. Or that any opinion, no matter how heinous to you or me it might. Or that any opinion, no matter how heinous to you or me it might seem, that any opinion gets to be expressed publicly, freely. That is a radical idea. I believe all of those things. So, you know, that might make me radical.

I think I'm fine with that. Because America is a radical nation. I'm not saying it is criticism. I just, oftentimes I see your philosophy and I think it's very digestible in the things that human history. I'm not saying it is criticism. I just, oftentimes I see your philosophy and I think it's very digestible in the things that you're saying. And that you're using language that we're familiar with, right, and tapping into our identities

and what we are as Americans. But the change that you're suggesting, I think significantly shifts the course of the country. And that is, you said this last time in your pod, like we, what is it? We should have the country we deserve or something like that. This was Thomas Jefferson's idea. It's like, for better or worse.

The government we elect is the government we deserve. For better or for worse, right? And I, I think that's a very brave position to be in. I think a lot of times when elected officials win, they're forced to make certain decisions and they reflect and they go, you know what? It really ain't that bad. Maybe we'll try to move it 2% this direction, 5% this direction, 7%. And so this is why, man, this is actually really important to me as I think about my

next step. I don't just, we were talking about this a little bit before. I don't just want to win by a little bit and check the box of being a governor or whatever. I want to win by such a decisive mandate to be able to actually do the hard things. If you want to be an incremental changer in politics, you could do that by temporarily sitting in a seat with a narrow margin and then it's ping pong when somebody else is in charge of the different, it kind of goes incrementally in the other direction. But if you want to revitalize an actual state or a country, you need a decisive mandate to do it. And how do you get that? Well, you have to tap into cultural

necessity. These people have to feel that you can deliver the change that they desperately need. Like what's happened, I think, not throughout entire American history, but when America is doing well, when poor people can feed themselves and pay their rent, there's enough magic and distraction in this country where they don't need to rebel. And that's kind of like the perfect spot for the really wealthy, where they're like, okay, we can get really rich and the poor people aren't going to want- There's no revolution. Exactly.

That's perfect. And then every once in a while, you can see the desperation of the poor people aren't gonna walk. There's no revolution. Exactly, right? There's no, that's like, that's perfect, right? And then every once in a while, you can see the desperation of the poor because the Luigi Mangione walks behind the healthcare CEO, blows his head off, and then the internet is like, A, be like that sometimes. And to me, the reaction was indicative of people being desperate.

A lot of deep seated frustration. Yes. Yeah. So how do you tap into that desperation? And I'm going to use this word sell loosely and then and then sell them a solution to that desperation that I think this is kind of what happened when we can get into like what happened with with Trump. But I think a lot of people couch their support in Trump with these they're how do I do I phrase it? They try to be noble in their support, right?

Especially on the coasts. They go, I wanna stop foreign wars. I really care about the migration issue. They don't, right? Their kid comes home from school and they're like, why am I, I'm a girl but I think I'm a boy. And they're like, who the fuck told you that shit, right? Yeah, she got tired of that, yeah.

And I think that it's the cultural issue, but they feel uncomfortable saying that because of public scrutiny. So they go, we gotta stop these wars. And you're like, well, where are the wars? They're over there, but we gotta stop. How can you tab into what Americans are feeling even if it's not what they're saying?

Like when I saw the reaction of Luigi Mangione, I was like, oh, Americans are feeling resentment and extreme hostility to the healthcare sector. I think to government. I think to, what else would you say? I think the government- Almost every major institution. I would say towards their manner of work,

the way that they're actually taught to the idea that you could get ahead through your own hard work. People feel like that's an illusion. They're not feeling that's possible anymore. Through higher education, through the debt you take on through higher education. I mean, we've all been part of a generation where people are taught that you go to college

for four years, you load up yourself with debt, and somehow you get a head start in the American dream when it hasn't worked out that way. I think the first way to do it is to admit the failure. So this is good. So this is good. But this is really good. And be honest.

Yeah, but this is really good. Admitting the failure is very important. And I think to Trump's credit, I think there's a version of this, and I don't know how much of this is marketing or actual truth, but admitting the failures of your country. If there is something that we, like the Gulf of Tonkin situation, we should acknowledge that. that. And we did, Hey, we did some foul shit, got us into a war. A lot of people died. That's bad. You have every right to have a lack of like a faith and trust in our government. We want to reinstill that. And the way we're still in that is accountability. We don't gaslight you and be like, ah, you know what you're talking about. We go,

Hey, I did some goofy shit. That's Elon. Say you did some goofy shit. Don't go, oh, you guys are making a big deal and nothing, because that's what Democrats said for four years. Don't be the exact version. Totally. Of the people that you fought back against. I think that the ability to honestly have the humility to say, here's where we screwed up and it's easy to point to the other side's screw ups.

It's a lot harder to your own. It's a lot harder, but that's my concern. But then it's not just not just admitting that failure or the failures where we've gone wrong. But I believe the right path is not to just stop there because I think there's a risk there. Okay. The risk that I see there is that we fall into the trap then of saying, have we all

been screwed over? You know, yes, we have been screwed over. Yes. But if you stop there, then it's like you fall back into the trap then of saying, have we all been screwed over? You know, our judgment is screwed over. Yes, we have been screwed over, yes. But if you stop there, then it's like, you fall back into the trap. Exactly. Yes. Of thinking that my fate is somebody else's fault. 100%. Now my plight is somebody else's responsibility.

We took accountability, or that's what I think maybe the left did a little bit. They took all this accountability, which is honorable. Hey, America was imperfect. And we're not perfect. We did some horrible shit and then we stopped at that. Stopped there. it. It's going to be fucked up. How are we going to make it better? And I don't want the American right to stop there either, which is to say that there's well, the American right is the opposite. It's we never did anything wrong. And that's a problem.

It has to be that was kind of the old. There's an older version. There's a newer spin, which is no, there's other stuff that we're being screwed over by. We are government screwed us over, all of which is much of which is true, right? A lot of these systems, for example, we talked about the H1B system is badly broken. It sucks, it needs to be gutted. But. But don't stop there.

We can't, your fate, and I'll say this in ways that speak to everybody 360 degrees. The number one factor that determines whether you achieve your goals is not your race, your religion, your gender, your sexuality, the climate, the weather or somebody else from another country. What is it?

Christ. It is you. Well, I'm trying to win you Ohio bro. I'm trying my hardest. I'm really trying. I believe that God lives in you. Right? And so those two merge.

So do the priest. And in a certain... I'm sorry. I cut him. It's like in basketball. He gives his own alley. Exactly. It's like the dunk contest. He's bouncing off the backboard and taking it out. Go on, go on. You don't need the guy feeding you.

It does live in you. It does live in you. This is probably even a really deeper discussion as I do think a revival of that type of conviction in ourselves. Some of that a revival of that type of conviction in ourselves. Some of that involves revival of faith. And I don't think the government should be in charge of doing this at all,

but I do think a revival of our self-confidence, a revival of conviction in ourselves, as individuals and as a country. And even in states like Ohio, where people have fallen into the trap of believing, we're number 38 where people move in and out, restoring that pride as an American, as an Ohioan, as a citizen, as a member of a family.

Revival of conviction in self. That's what Donald Trump, I think, is doing at the level of the nation. I mean, people could debate about Greenland or anything else, but the idea of manifest destiny, the idea that we're the pioneers and the explorers, that gives us back some of that self-confidence, that juice of conviction.

That's the second step we got to take is once acknowledge that there are a lot of factors that have contributed that were not your own individual level mistakes. But if we just pause there, you're taught to see yourself as a victim, but to say that no, we're committed to actually overcoming those barriers at a young age. So every four-year-old when he chooses preschool, or his parents choose a preschool for him, is choosing the best possible one, and if you can't afford it, you have the money from shutting down the bureaucracy that you saved the money

to put it in the pockets of those parents to choose. But after that, your fate is in your hands, and we believe in you because you believe in you. Real quick. That's what we need to get back to. So real quick, I think this is really good, because a lot of times we get into this black and white dichotomy, like,

these guys are the bad guys, these guys are the good guys, we never listen to each other. But there is a version where if you're more, I don't even want to use the term centrist, but there's a version where you go, hey, I think it's honorable, I think it's noble to recognize our failures. I also think that what we're doing over here, which is shining a light on our successes and what we can do to improve the country. And it doesn't matter which side. It's the combination of both of those.

It's acknowledging the failures of the people because the people feel failed, right? They feel like the government has failed them. They feel like these institutions have failed them. Because they have. Because they have. Let's acknowledge that. And then going, we're not going to stop there and let you just complain and whine about all these institutions.

That's good. We are going to show what's wrong with the institutions and we're going to give suggestions that we think will make it better and we believe in our heart to make it better and we are gonna try to make them better. I like that because- So should we expect more of our politicians and our government?

Of course we should, but we should also expect more of ourselves and each other. And give them- That goes in all directions. But give them something to hope for. Exactly. And the way we expect more of our government is the government, I believe, has actually been in the way of your success. It has been a chief obstacle, whether

it's a small business with the respect of the regulatory state, whether it is overspending on some parts of education without actually allowing you to choose where you go, housing burdens for new construction that raise new costs. The government has been a burden. You deserve as a citizen of this country to have that government out of your way so you can achieve the maximum of your own potential. But after that, the rest falls on us. And that is a beautiful thing, because this is the country that does not constrain you

based on your lineage or your genetics to achieve that. Both of those have to be true. Because if you just do the first without the second, you're back to victimhood culture. If you just do the second without the first, it's not true. Yeah, exactly. And you're making people feel like their failures are completely on them. It's gotta be both.

It's gotta be both. And I think that strategy, as you describe it right now. It's grounded in truth. It's not a strategy. It's true. It's true. I think it's really relatable. And to me, like, obviously I'm in maybe a different situation, right?

But I think to somebody who is suffering, who feels like these institutions are not backing them in the way that they need, will then feel one validated in their feeling, their frustration, but also feel like they have some hope. Because I don't want you to be like, hey, you're poor because it's their fault, but good luck being poor. No, I want, I want people to be like, hey, listen, upward mobility is difficult for you. And there are these institutions that have restricted that, the government being one of them. But we want wanna fix these things so you can have upward mobility. And if I'm somebody who needs that, I'm gonna go, well yeah, let's try something

because this shit ain't working. Let me give you one idea I'm a fan of, right in this spirit, because I was gonna bring this up earlier. Gay marriage. Perfect time, has nothing to do with this. Good, okay. Just making sure.

Damn it, Oczahn, stop, man. We were almost there. One day, one day. We were gonna group the force. We can't, oh, is that it? We're gonna show our wives what a successful get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we get we And he's wearing the ring. That's funny. So, before we like make it. That's actually a fun experiment. Two guys that are married to women,

divorcing their wives, making their wives marry each other, and then we marry each other. And see who lasts longer. We'd be great. Then you'd divorce in two years. We'd be gay in Palm Springs at 90 years old. I think it would do well on Netflix. I love is blind,

it's like, we're the sequel to that. I like that. This is all we needed. I love that. Go on, go on. That's right, we figured that out. So, I mean, I get the, nobody can take that idea, right?

Yeah, yeah, you get it. You can't do that without me. So the- Vin Beck will make you gay. No, no, no. Go, go, go. Now you're really killing me in Ohio. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Not in Ohio! Now you're really killing me in Ohio. Gracious gay! Grac is getting in California. Yeah. Knock out Newsome. So we got, you know, that's too easy. We'll leave that for somebody else. That's cheating.

He's whacked himself out. Okay, so we're gonna start with the center of the country. But an idea earlier, in a serious note to this message of economic empowerment, I haven't talked about this before, but it's an idea that I'm a big fan of. If you think about in a given kid's account when they're born, I'm not going to say universal basic income stuff because it deters work, but take the spirit of that in a different direction. The savings of shutting down a lot of the bureaucracy you could take a tiny fraction of that and every kid who's born have

$10,000 Invested fully in the stock market. They can't touch it till they're 18 You want to know the what the biggest source of income inequalities we can gripe about CEOs or whatever It's actually compound interest. Yeah, compound interest and not compound interest in bonds or in the bank account Yeah, compound interest in bonds or in the bank account. Compound interest in the stock market. You're talking about kids graduating with enough money to not only pay for all of college, but have enough to start their small business afterwards.

But I gotta stop you for one second just so people can understand this. This is very important. This is the kind of thing we should be talking about. When you say invest in the stock market, you're talking about. No it's not. It's not welfare to me.

It is, in fact, and let me just make the case to people who would disagree. I just want people to understand the concept before you move on. So when you say invest in the stock market, I think a lot of people immediately go, and I was talking to the guy who started Acorns, I don't know if you know that account,

and this is not like a plug for him, but essentially this is his idea. It's like we've kind of tricked people into thinking that investing is risky. No, no, no, investing is putting money in and having compound interest work for you over a long period of time. Long period of time.

What we think. In a diversified basket. Yes, so when you invest in the stock market, you're not investing in one company. And I think that's what a lot of people think. They go, I should have put money in Nvidia. No, that's guessing, that's gambling. The full market.

Yes, when you invest in the full market, for example, the Vanguard account that you were just talking about. I'm just using it as a placeholder, right? You're investing across the market, you put that 10 grand in, and then that 10 grand is compound interest over 20 years, you have X amount of million dollars.

Yes. I don't think people really realize what that concept is of compound interest, and it takes a lot of discipline, right? Because when that 10 grand turns into 50, and then something happens to your home, you're like, let me take that 50 out, and then we put it into the home.

So I don't wanna restrict people, but I do want them to understand the power of it. My parents were financially illiterate. They didn't know what the fuck that was. So the difference in inequality at the highest levels is explained by people who are invested broadly in the stock market over long periods of time. It's the long period of time. Yeah, and the way the math works on the compound interest is like if you... What is 10 grand over 10 years or 20 years?

You know, I mean, it depends on, you know, if you're talking about a 20% rate of return, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time. Well, let's go 10%. S&P is what, 7? We can pull the spreadsheet, we'll do the math. S&P is more than that. You're talking about compound stock market returns over long periods of time. You're talking about double digit returns and that multiplies itself.

So a dollar first becomes a dollar and 10 cents, but it's net a dollar and 10 cents times a dollar and 10 cents. And so you're actually multiplying that whole effect. Say it doubles every, your money doubles every five to seven years. Something like that. So 10K when you're five is 20K, when you're 10 is 40K, when you're 15 is 80K, when you're 20 is 160K. All right.

I have a question for you. This one is near and dear to my heart. But so, my Pops has dementia, okay? I know I've seen a bunch of articles about you, obviously when I was looking you up even last time, and it seems like there's some criticism, and I don't know if there's people trying to make you more radioactive, I don't know if there's people trying to make you more radioactive,

I don't know what exactly it is, about how you made maybe your big first chunk of money, I don't even know how much money you made. I know what you're talking about. Okay. And this pisses me the hell off because I know how cynical the intentions are of just deceiving and straight up lying to people about it.

And at some point. But about what? Yeah, so I'll lay out, I'll lay out. So like there's this false allegation that somehow there was an Alzheimer's trial that I made a bunch of money off of that failed. It's bullshit. But here's actually the reality.

So I think it's actually more important than that. It's, there's a lot in my own business background that informs my worldview and what we're trying to do for the country. So I started a biotech company. It was my first company, major company, that I started back in 2014. I'd been an investor.

I worked at a hedge fund in New York. And it turned out pharma companies are among the more inefficient companies when it comes to allocating their money developing drugs. A bunch of pharma companies are among the more inefficient companies when it comes to allocating their money to developing drugs. A bunch of pharma companies tend to get out of a therapeutic area at the exact same time. So when they throw in their towel, they all kind of follow the fad and go in a new direction. And there's a lot of reasons why, but they all kind of throw the towel in the same areas at the same time that go from being in favor to out of favor.

So my premise was to start a biotech company that took a lot of the projects that they had discarded after spending a lot of money on them. Find the ones that they discarded, not necessarily because they were bad drugs. Oh, because it wasn't a trend. Yeah, because it was a trend and they had the capital allocation issues that they had to allocate in a new direction.

And see if you could make one of those drugs work. Exactly, and so some of these areas were women's health and urology. Alzheimer's was one of these areas for sure, where 99.7% of drugs ever tested for Alzheimer's disease had failed. A bunch of these companies are just like throwing the towel. So I set up a company called Roevent,

and the whole model was, A, you give skin in the game to the scientists who actually developed these drugs. They don't get that at big pharma. And B, focus on the areas where pharma had abandoned them a Subset of these are gonna work. Not all of them are gonna work biotech is a game of it's a numbers game Yeah, but enough are gonna work to be able to create a successful company and I was convinced of that based on what I had seen So I started the company we developed a number of drugs in these subsidiaries So each of those units one was focused on Alzheimer's one was focused on women's, one was focused on women's health, one was focused on dermatology and so forth.

And the way I made my money was that five of those drugs that we developed through phase three and successful phase three studies went on to become FDA approved. And the one I'm probably most proud of is a drug actually for the smallest of those markets, but there is a disease where 20 kids a year are born with this genetic condition, where 100% of those kids die by the age of three if they're

untreated. And because of the therapy that we led all the way to get through approval in phase three, is kids, about 70% of those kids live lives of normal duration. Another for endometriosis, for uterine fibroids, women's health conditions that were generally ignored by pharma. So those are the areas that we had success. Five out of how many, you think? There's many more that are still in development, but there were probably 20 drugs that we've put into development, 20 plus, many of which are still in the development process. But five of them ended up going through phase three, successful, sold those rights to other pharma companies, generated billions of dollars in value for shareholders.

And the company I founded, Roivend, is like a eight, nine, $10 billion publicly traded company on the NASDAQ today that's returned billions of dollars to shareholders. And I'm proud of that. And it was a very cool company that bucked the trend of pharma. And a lot of people in big pharma didn't like it because it in some ways made traditional big pharma look bad because it called the bluff on a lot of these areas they were ignoring and that's how the company succeeded. Oh, so you think there's like a smear campaign?

You know, I think, I think, I think, well, I think initially a lot of pharmas did not like Royvon's existence. That's definitely true. But when I entered the realm of politics, which is the realm of, of smear campaigns, there was definitely a concerted effort to exploit one of the drugs that failed. That's the Alzheimer's drug. That's the Alzheimer's drug.

So we had a subsidiary called Aximan. It was developing a drug for Alzheimer's disease. So Royvin is the subsidiary of Aximan. It's got a bunch of subsidiaries. My event is one, took it public, ended up being sold for big premium. Immune event, took it public. Trades at a big premium to where it went public. EuroVent, a bunch of them, was acquired for a big premium. Accident was one of those companies, which is a subsidiary of Roivn, that developed this

drug for Alzheimer's disease. And shares traded on the stock exchange, whole nine yards. That drug eventually failed, and so the stock price was high, and then it went down, and it was low. And the false smear campaign against me is somehow I made money off of selling shares of Accident. It's false. So you didn't make any money.

100% false. You never sold shares of Accident? Neither Roivent, the parent company, nor I sold a single share that we could have. It would have been perfectly legitimate. Many biotech CEOs or many biotech companies do that to diversify. It turns out that I just didn't do that because I felt like we wanted to actually see it through and take the same risk that the investors actually took. In Axiomant, no good deed goes unpunished in the public in the realm of political smearing.

Not a single share did we sell and rode that big loss all the way down in a way that actually was tough. Like it was actually a tough early failure to go through. And the way the company eventually succeeded was through these other successes. And the thing I learned is that once you enter the realm of politics, people do not give a crap about what the actual truth is.

They have their agenda, and they're gonna use it to smear you and I think one of the things I've learned from watching Donald Trump frankly is that when people are that false and that malicious against you, at some point you gotta actually take action. I mean, what he did with ABC, settled the defamation suit. At a certain point, you can't just roll over with this BS.

And my initial approach was like, this is so garbage, I'm just gonna ignore this stuff. But at a certain point, when it's that malicious, yeah. Because I think the perspective, or at least the articles I've written on it is, and I guess that there are people that are speculating on these drugs, right? So you can develop a drug,

and when it's in between phase two or phase three or phase four Whatever it is, you can speculate meaning you can invest in the company That's exactly right And then a lot of times these companies will spike in between phase two and three, right? But it has to go through phase four in order to actually go to phase three to be approved or whatever whatever it is So in order to make money, they're inspired by greed. They don't really want to help Alzheimer's They're like, oh, I think this is a profitable endeavor. Not everybody, but imagine.

They're stock traders. The stock traders, it doesn't matter, they're just looking at letters, and, oh, this looks like it's got a chance. They try to get in early, because if it does pass phase three, if they're getting in phase one or phase two, and it passes phase three,

they're gonna get a 20X, 100X multi. They take that risk, and most fail. Which is also, and one big success pays for it. Exactly, but the idea I think was is that you made money and then sold shares after it looked promising. That's the false allegation. Right, and they even said you put your mom in

to get it approved or something? Oh my God, the level of garbage about this. So my mom was a geriatric psychiatrist who was in retirement, treated patients with Alzheimer's disease her whole entire career, and had experience in the drug development space as well. And she was in retirement, treated patients with Alzheimer's disease her whole entire career and had experience in the drug development space as well. And she was one of, I'm gonna start the business from scratch, I'm gonna find the smartest people I can.

She kindly came out of retirement. She didn't sell a single share or make money off that failure either. But the thing that people make, cause she wasn't a key employee at the company, but she was one of- But the narrative is beautiful. It fails over here.

You bring your mom in, go, hey, make sure it passes. It passes, you guys make billion dollars. And it actually, the trial failed. Well, it failed at three. It failed at three. It passed at two, though, right? We in-licensed it after phase two from GSK. Oh, so it never even did anything.

The whole garbage, yeah. It's just like the level of garbage on this is kind of eye-opening, actually. People have, if they have an objective, they could care less about what the actual truth is, but what's the narrative they could sell. And you know what? Like I said earlier, I'm not gonna be a victim about it.

You stand up and actually explain it to people. People actually understand the truth. The truth is like a lion, you can't hold it back. It's not gonna be held back for so long. Well, I'm glad you explained it to me because I had a perspective, but this is not just politics, this is everything. I think when there's successful people

that potentially could be in powerful positions, maybe they're not even powerful, you're gonna create these narratives and if the narrative feels good and justifies those people's pain or their bitterness, then they're gonna run with it. I mean, you see this all the time. Now, it's one of the things

that I kind of am keen to do more frankly. I was always uncomfortable sort of talking about my own successes in detail, but one of the things I've realized is A, it could actually give a lot of people inspiration. And B, for people to actually get to know you, I think actually one of the things I would have done differently again in my presidential campaign is to actually talk more about my business background and the tough decisions we had to make at every step. That Alzheimer's failure, that was tough. It's probably the toughest career experience I've been through because it was still relatively early in the life of the company. The other projects were still well on their way. It actually strengthened in some ways the resolve of the people who work for the company. Saying, you know what, we did the right thing.

We did it right at every step of the way. Royvind, the parent company, could have sold those shares when it was flying high. Didn't sell a single share because we were there with our conviction. Even though that would have been the normal thing to do, we didn't do it. But to say that that's how we're actually going to carry out each of these projects and then the rest succeeded, those successes were actually far more meaningful in light of actually having gone through a real fair. Because in the narrative,

that's how you made all your money. In reality, that's how you lost all your money. Exactly. I lost a ton on paper, I lost a ton. Instead of just sold shares. And then ended up coming all the way back. Like if you're gonna get blamed for it anyway. You know what, to the best of respect,

that was like what a lot of my friends were close to me, said you might as well have just done it. Because that wouldn't have been perfectly legal and acceptable. Yeah. It might not have been what I felt like was the right thing to do. Dude, this happens all the time. It's insane. Is it having not done it, this will be the case.

And that's what most normal biotech CEOs could do, diversify a little bit or whatever. And so the thing that they pick on is Royvent, which is the parent company, for completeness, Royvent, the parent company. And just for completeness, Roivent, the parent company was developing a bunch of these drugs. We did a financing at Roivent, the parent, where there was so much demand in one of our financings. There was $500 million financing, but more investors wanted to put in money. The only way we were able to accommodate that capital was the investors in Roivent selling a certain number of shares in Roivend. I was to the order of about 30 million bucks at that point in time. Those shares that I sold then are worth way more today than they were back then.

So I actually lost, you know, I actually lost financial value by doing it, but that's the hook of a totally different company that you sold shares in that people will say he made money off of an Alzheimer's failure, which is, I mean, it's just, it's an eye-opening lesson to how dirty American politics works. But it's also a lesson for me to say, you know what, I think you gotta actually, people don't just wanna know about your policies. I think they wanna understand the struggles

you've been through and I've sometimes been not as personally natural in talking about it. We don't vote for the policy, we vote for the person. Yeah, and the policy secondarily. for the person. Yeah, exactly. And the policy secondarily. And a lot of those experiences help shape me to who I am, to believe that, yeah, you're going to go through hardship from time to time. You get through that by actually, you know,

mostly coming out stronger on the other side of it if you can survive. I think addressing like blatant lies, I think is important. I think it is too. We go through all the time because people make these things up that are just like so absurd. You're like, there's nobody stupid enough to actually believe this.

But then you see narratives take on. Totally. And then you're like, ugh. That was my wish. It's just like, okay, this is so garbage. Yeah. And then they start making up other stuff. They say, well, the only drug he got approved

was a trans drug. Oh, no, I haven't seen that. Okay, I don't know what the hell that's about. What's the trans drug? There's no trans drug. I just like, that is a- We should have meant that though. Yeah, that is a drug that makes you trans.

That sounds awesome. But it's like, it's at a level of insanity. I think there's one drug that was approved for prostate cancer, endometriosis, and urine fibroids and works on certain hormones in the body. Somebody should be sued for malpractice if they're giving a drug that's only approved for that for some other thing. And I have no, it would be ridiculous to think that it was. But people say stuff and then I know from the imbalance that I get to say, oh, we're

going to ask you these inquiries. It's like, where are these people getting this stuff? But at a certain point, you know what, you gotta actually just stand for what's true. I was putting out my special, this is the last special, I was gonna do a special with the streamer and then they didn't want me to say certain things and I was like, all right, well, can I buy it back

and then put it out myself and I put it out myself and I sold it myself and then as I'm selling it, I at one point tell people, there's like video of this, I'm like, guys if you can't afford it, just steal it. It'll be on the internet somewhere, you can just do that, that's totally fine. And then if you can't figure out how to illegally stream it,

I'll have it up on YouTube in the future. This is me telling people like, if you can't afford it, just go take it, and if that doesn't work, it's gonna be up on YouTube. And then the special did really well, and I guess people spun this narrative that like, oh, you made us buy it, and then a few weeks later, you put it on the internet, and in my mind,

I'm like, every movie that comes out, eventually is on TV for free. Like, every UFC fight I watch is eventually on YouTube. I'm like, I don't think I'm doing anything different, and I told them, but the narrative is he took our money and then he went with it. And I don't address it because I'm like, well, there's nobody that could believe this

because I literally said verbatim on the podcast, like just go take it and then eventually be there, but it doesn't matter. I felt the same way, man. If people want to see you come down, and I'm sure there are people who didn't hear me say that and then they felt betrayed. And for those people, I feel genuinely bad.

I'm like, that fucking sucks because you supported me and then maybe you feel like I tried to do something. But it's one of those things where there are people that they wanna see fail and they will, maybe they're not creating narratives, but they will believe a narrative that makes you look bad because it validates the way they feel about you. And that is unfortunately something that you have to deal with with success.

That's the cost of success. And it's worth paying the price because I agree. And then the flip side is you can't just sit here and the other thing is to lie about how much you would dress and then how much do you. Yeah, exactly. I mean, at some point you're validating, I mean, to me at a certain point, like to be able to deign to this level and say that, okay, I'm gonna like legitimize

this type of smear by engaging with it, but on the other hand, it sticks. And so you gotta, you know, I think the best solution is, and I think I'm gonna be better about this in the next phase of my political life, is also just sharing more about my own personal journey, just as a human being. Including business.

I mean, that's validating for me here. In my career, yeah. Because that was something where I thought about you, and I was like, and it's deeply personal to me, because of my father, I'm like, ah, did he do some kind of tricky thing? And it was super deeply personal to me too, because I think the whole thing was,

pharma had decided this is an area that's supposed to be not touched anymore. It's too risky. And actually it is deeply personal to me. My grandmother's sister died of Alzheimer's disease. My mom spent years cutting her teeth in the nursing homes in Southwest Ohio, where I would actually go to many of those nursing homes,

play the piano for people who were in nursing homes suffering from Alzheimer's. It's like an important area for me, which is part of why we took it on. And it was a super bruising experience to then take all of that risk, put yourself out there and fail. But the idea then that there's like an allegation

that there was some kind of financial gain from it is just doubly, it's a doubly frustrating salt on a wound. It's a salt on a wound. Yeah, it's chips away and trust it. And then people, it's doubly frustrating. It chips away at the trust. It's a salt on a wound. Yeah, it chips away at the trust. And then people, you don't know, maybe people won't ask you about it, but then they're thinking about it

when in fact, yeah, exactly, is a doubt in the back of somebody's mind. But the flip side is we have a freak, we got the modern economy. You can talk to people. Maybe that's the answer you do it. But you said, so you've been around Trump and you learned from him and you saw how he fought

with ABC. ABC, yeah. Who are you fighting against? Yeah, with a lawsuit. I think it's actually, you know, I would have never contemplated doing it just because I wanted to productive things and like, why are we gonna fight some sort of side battle?

Such blatant lies. But it turns out that if somebody says something that is false, something that is damaging, and they should have known was true or had good reason to know was true and is doing it maliciously anyway, that there's actually hard law that says they can't do that. And so not even for the money of it,

but for the justice of it, I kind of have leaned in the direction that's just the right way to go. Name, name. Yes. Oh, well, I'm gonna- I'm looking for the money, so just sue them of have leaned in the direction that's just the right way to go. Name, name. Yes. Oh, well, I'm looking for the money, so just sue them, you can give me the money. I came to it quite recently.

And the reason is, the reason is people don't bring, why did they bring this stuff up during a Republican primary only? And then again, they were mad about the comments I made on X about American excellence, and suddenly, suddenly that issue comes back up. Absolutely, yeah. It suddenly randomly comes back.

Oh, it had nothing to do with the fact that you didn't like what I had to say and there was a coordinated response to that. And so it comes from a malicious place. And so at a certain point, at a certain point, you just can't roll over and take it. This will plague you. Like you'll be in a debate and it'll get brought up again.

Oh, it's not gonna happen. Oh, that ain't gonna happen. I'm gonna make sure that's not gonna happen. And for you to be like, hey, this was settled in a court of law. It's done. And it's absolutely, here's the hard truth, here's the facts disputed, and if not, bear the consequences. That's what I look at.

Yeah, we need names, bro, we need names. You know what, a lot of these people, I don't even know who these people are, I've never heard of these people, but the stuff that sticks, yeah, I think we're gonna pick, we're gonna pick, we'll pick a good example. We'll pick a good example. I like that.

Yeah, Soros. Is it Soros? I think a lot of this comes, not even necessarily from the left. Really? Yeah, some of it does. But some of it comes from other unexpected corners as well. Really?

Sounds like you got an idea, man. Paul is a self-interested, it comes from your neighbor. Internet trolls, internet trolls. Yeah. But anyway, regardless, I'm not a, I don't believe in whining, I believe in winning. There we go.

So, president, there we go. Winning's the way to go. Absolutely, man. All right, we're gonna take a break for a second. Problem is, the people who are able to participate in that right now are the ones who have excess capital that in the short run can stomach the risk of the market volatility. That is if you wanted to pick, there's many sources of American inequality, but if you

wanted to get to the root of it, you'd pick one thing, it's compound interest. That's the ball game. So actually you have a generation of people who don't participate in that, who end up being skeptical of capitalism. So in a certain sense of what you're doing here is you are cultivating a generation of Americans who win through capitalism. So when they graduated the age of 18, compound interest through the success

of the stock market and capitalism is no longer a source of bruised salt on a wound, envy of somebody else's success, but the success that allowed you to have a quarter million dollar nest egg to be able to get a head start in the American dream. And they believe in America more than they believe in. It does not take a lot of money.

I mean, in terms of that, we're talking about percentage of the federal budget, percentage of savings of waste from the federal budget invested in this, it's tiny. It's like infinitesimally small fraction. But then you'll have a bunch of loan shark businesses like, oh, access your money now with this huge interest rate and when you turn 18 you sign the whole ship to me.

I think you shouldn't be able to do that. So I think, and here I'm a libertarian, generally libertarian-oriented, and it stinks when it comes to adults. Kids are not the same as adults. Yeah. So if you put that in the bank account of a kid at four months old or at one month old

or on the day of his birth, it has to be fully invested in the diversified stock market over a period of 18 years. When he's 18 years old, he gets it out. I would make it tax-free. That is a down payment on preserving American capitalism. I've had a lot of ideas like this, right? It's the kind of idea that's responsive to your question.

But real quick, real quick, it's not just an investment in capitalism. And by the way of ideas like this. It's the kind of idea that's responsive to your question. But real quick, real quick, it's not just an investment in capitalism. And by the way, this is not even my idea. Other people have had these ideas. But what we really need is people in office who are willing to think outside the box to be able to advance a vision for the good of all Americans embracing capitalism rather than, because what happens then when the kid graduates at 18, but the other guy had his parents contributing to his Roth IRA, 15 grand a year, that graduates with that versus not, he's going to have hostility towards capitalism. Of course, why would he not?

He's going to be jaded. He's going to be naturally inviolable. And then, I'm not saying that there isn't CEO overpay, because we talked about the structural reasons why there is, but then you look at that as the root cause of the problem, rather than the fact that, you know it's funny, I actually, if I was given the same economic opportunity, could have started my own business at 22, but I can't,

if you pass this, and now I'm pissed at capitalism, I don't want that. If you pass this law, it would be an actual patriot act. You would be creating people who believe in America. That's to repeal the old one. Trust, yeah, yeah, yeah. The other patriot act was so much. No, trust, they feel patriotic,

make this point, this is really great. They're like, oh, America gave me $150,000 by the time I was 18. Capitalism is great, I trust the stock market, it's not out to get me. America is great, I believe in this system. There's one group called Invest America, I think have been advocating for this, there have been others have been advocating for it.

It's not, one of the things I've learned as well is that intelligence is not our problem in the country. Actually, most people in America have common sense. What we lack is courage, actually. I think we just lack. What we lack is courage. Education. I didn't think that was coming.

I think it's. Pussy? No, no, no, no. God damn. First we were dumb, now we're a bunch of pussies? No, no, no. It's education. Pussy.

We don't understand what these systems are, so how can they work for us if we don't even fundamentally understand them? I don't think that, I don't think. Who's saying for politicians? I don't think politicians these systems are, so how can they work for us if we don't even fundamentally understand them? I don't think that, I don't think that, he's saying for politicians. I'm saying for politicians. I think the problem- Oh, that's good to clarify,

because I interpret- Oh, I thought you were talking about- No, no, no, no, I'm talking about- I'm talking about what we lack in the class that I'm in right now of people with policies. It's not that they don't know the stuff that I'm telling you. But did you see how he interpreted it

and how I interpreted it? I interpreted it immediately as we didn't have the courage to put our money in there and then let it stay. What I'm talking about is we as politicians, people in the political class lack the courage to be able to do what's outside the box as a correct. Because you want to get elected every four years, not you. But they want to get re-elected. I actually think this happens to be a pretty good electoral strategy, probably.

It will over 20 years. Yeah, over 20. The same compounding period of the market. But to what you were saying is it's not only investment in the stock market, it's not only investment in capital, it is an investment in America. You wanna see America flourish because when America's flourishing

and American businesses are flourishing, your money is flourishing. You get to watch your money work for you. And again, I didn't understand this. When I had my daughter, my wife and I were sitting with our business manager and they started telling us about these different things that we could do. We could like put our money in for my daughter, my wife and I were sitting with our business manager and they started telling us about these different things that we could do. We could like put our money in

for my daughter's college fund now. And you get tax deductible. Exactly, so that's why I was referring to people in the Roth IRA account, that kid is actually graduating with some of them six figure payday. And there's so many people that don't know that. And it's tax free growth. Exactly, I'm not just making that available

for the everyday American? And in fact, if you did that for every kid in the country, there's no loss to the country. I don't think that the taxpayer burden, you don't have to increase taxes and IOTA in order to pull this off. You would find more than a multiple of this in just government waste, excess cutting, bureaucracy at the level I want. And then you get to 18 years old and you got people saying that, you know what, this capitalism thing isn't so bad, actually. And you know, somebody else might have more money than me because then they use that money to start some other tech company or whatever. And I'm happy for that because that still served me as a customer, but I'm bought in. I've got skin in the game. I think that that's far better than, I'm not being critical of

other people's, you know, universal basic income. I get the instinct, but that creates disincentives to work. This is where it's at. Because there, you're still in the income category. Here, you're talking about being an owner. This is true. You're a capital owner, an asset. Make a tax-free on the growth, and then by that point, when you show up, you are a capitalist

in the sense that, not just a theoretical sense of it, I'm a capitalist when I'm 18 years old because the country that I grew up into through its economic success was not a source of my envy, but my participation. It's also education by participation and inertia. When you see your money working, you go, I'd like to continue this. And by the way, I better understand that

and I can do the math that tells me that because I started getting into a good preschool that taught me how to do math at a younger age rather than getting an eighth grade. Or even taught you about how finances work. I went to good schools, pretty good. I was never taught this at all. Totally, so I think that this is achievable.

This is not, none of what we're talking about here is rocket science. What this requires from a political class is it's not that they lack the intelligence or the ideas, they lack the courage, which is what brings me back to why am I in this game. It's not that they lack the intelligence or the ideas, they lack the courage, which is what brings me back to why am I in this game. I do think that people who are willing to lose,

if necessary, you'll be willing to lose means that's not your career, that's not your livelihood, but people who are willing to lose on the power of their ideas can then still stand for their ideas. That's what I think is gonna actually use to take the state of the country. But career politicians won't do that. Yeah, career politicians won't.

And this is one of the reasons I like Donald Trump, by the way, he's not a career politician. Say what you will about his first week, which I think was a great first week. He didn't use the usual assembly line model. He came in and did a lot of stuff in that first week in a way that you wouldn't see from a career politician. Or you think about a president or a governor,

whatever it is, executives who lead, you want them at this moment in our country's history in particular to be people who are willing to break things when necessary as long as the mission is the betterment of the whole country. Include all of us in the success of America. I think right now the average person, the middle class person and the people who are impoverished do not feel included in the success of the economy or the country.

They feel left out. And that might be educationally. It might be strictly just their inability to invest and understanding what it is. But that education of those systems, how they work, and I also think there's a little part of it where it's like, if these funds are incentivizing people to gamble, it's not really investing, they might be doing it because they're making fees per transaction. Oh yeah, fees per transaction. You're tricking us into... Put it in the S&P 500 or whatever index it is at the lowest possible fee, don't transact and then just let it sit there. But they're not incentivized. These hedge funds are making money per transaction.

They want us to make these trades. But can you explain how that works? I do think that's very important. Yeah, I can. I do think that, and I've done this in other scenarios, but the other conversation we were having, because that's just kind of the mood I'm in right now, not just today, but like in this period right now is I've written extensive books and articles about how the system is rigged and all that stuff, and I could do more of that. But I feel like right now what we need

is to make sure we don't just, as we were talking about earlier, stop there. Because then we're just victims. I want to just talk about actually what we're going to do to overcome it. No, we have the solution. What I'm saying is why we're in the place we are. Now, here's what happens. A lot of money managers, they'll manage your money, but they take the fee. If you take the fee out, that reduces the compound interest. The fee is almost a negative compounding effect over time, too. And then you get the monkey to the dart boards analogy where they've done this experiment, your monkeys throw in darts at a board of stocks and often outperform half of these wealth managers that are out there because the wealth manager started the fee while the monkey doesn't. So in many ways, I do think that people are set up to be screwed by the facts they were

never given. And I think that sunshine and education is a great toolkit. But I do think that there is a role here at a young age where I'm not a government redistributionist guy, welfare state guy, but here for every kid born in the country, this is, I'm behind this. If every kid born in the country is bought into the stock market and compounds at the diversified rate over the course of 18 years,

we're good. And by the way, it becomes $55,000 at 10%, which is kind of conservative. So like in 18 years. So imagine you've got 55,000 when you're 18. I think you could make a case for that number being even 15 or $30,000 for a kid. It could well be. Starting off. I'm being concerned. And then you're talking about, you're talking about people who are like straight up wealthy when they graduate, well off enough, still hungry enough to be able to use that and start their own business

or invest further on their own account when they're 18. Or pay for college and not be drawing in debt. And then some, and then some. You pay for, I mean, we're talking about this model, you're gonna pay for college and then some. And for some people, and college is not the right solution for everybody, especially by that point, you have a skillset,

you might be able to start your own small business, be in a trade or whatever it is. Every person is able to do the thing that we want in America, which is to realize your own God-given gifts. They're not the same God-given gifts, by the way. We all have different God-given gifts. That's true diversity. But the country that we know and love is the country that recognizes that difference.

Stop trying to pretend that we all have the same skills and everything because we don't. That's a beautiful thing actually. It's not a bad thing, it's a beautiful thing. But to say that we are the country where no matter what those unique God-given gifts are, you get to achieve the maximum of that potential without really any man-made obstacle standing in your way. These are the kinds of solutions, starting with early education, early economic empowerment, the family one I will grant you, I didn't give you a fully satisfactory solution because there's no

government-ordained solution there, but basic issues that I believe we can actually tackle, right? And I don't think that our political class has taken a great interest in addressing over the course of the last one. Because they're not just going to advise to do it either. No, and a lot of it's on the federal level. And I don't mean to be pitching my own book here about what I'm doing next, but I do think the action is a lot of the action there is at the level of the states. I would love to see you do this in Ohio. Yeah. And I would love to see it. This is why I think the Ohio thing is actually a really good example for you,

because taking the reins of the United States of America before this is proven on any sort of like city-wide level, I think it's very terrifying for people, especially it exists in this bureaucratic system, but proving it in a place. And this gets back to where we started, right? This is why I was just like, well, people should care about it, is my view. But prove it there and then all of a sudden everybody else- It's kind of sad to your point. I just want to pick up on that for a second because right now, you guys are, we're all, you know, millennial or whatever, but Gen Z, the phrase, that's so Ohio, is like a butt of a joke. Yeah, it's a meme. It's a meme. And I think that's sad, actually. I want the next time that we send a mission to the moon or to Mars that is successful.

What is an example? Like that's so Ohio. That's what I want us to say. But what is an example they use now? Like I want to get back to the ground. Oh, like something super lame, like something super lame and boring. They're like, oh, that's so Ohio.

Like that's like a online Gen Z meme type expression. Are you going to? I want actually, when we do excellent boundary breaking things as a country, I want to go back to saying that's so Ohio for that. Because by the way, in the 1950s, people don't realize this. Five of the top 15 cities that were the wealthiest cities in the country,

five of the top 15 were in Ohio. Toledo was the glass capital, Akron was the rubber capital, Youngstown and Cleveland were the steel capital. Isn't Rockefeller from Ohio? Yeah, you have some roots in Ohio North, in Cleveland, in Cleveland area. John Glenn, Neil Armstrong. I mean, this was Cincinnati was the consumer products capital.

Dayton was the compute power capital for much of the industrial revolution. That wasn't that long ago. That was in the 1950s. And I think that there's a risk to saying that, okay, we want to go back to that. Well, the reality is we're probably not going to be the rubber capital or the glass capital again. Yeah. But it could be the AI data capital, could be the capital of bi're probably not gonna be the rubber capital or the glass capital again, but it could be the AI data capital, could be the capital of biotech, could be the capital of aerospace and space exploration,

could be the capital of semiconductor production, defense industrial base in the country of producing the bleeding edge of technology that Silicon Valley might have in bits, what we can create in atoms, nuclear energy, fusion where the United States has an opportunity to lead. There's no reason that the heartland of the country that was a pioneer state, that was a frontier state,

that was the heart of the industrial revolution, that that has to somehow be relegated to yesterday. I think there is an opportunity to say from the center of the country, you show what was possible in Silicon Valley for the last 20 years. Just be careful running on that. Be careful running on that

because you're talking about all these institutions that aren't existing in Ohio. So to people who are living there, it's like, oh, he's gonna bring a bunch of stuff that I'm not involved in. So he must be bringing workers and people who don't. We wanna do it from, we wanna leverage. I'm just saying be careful.

And why do I favor Ohio doing it? It's not random. It's the country, it's the state and the country that still has access to some of the best waterways. 60% of the population of North America is literally within a one day drive of Ohio. Access to the same talent base that I think we've always had, which is a great talent base.

I think there's a big concern about AI taking jobs. I think we can actually use AI to make jobs instead of take jobs. Everyone's focused on the algorithms and the computing power, which by the DeepSeek thing was itself a calling a bluff on. But what we haven't focused enough on is training people on how to use AI, actually in different domains.

Training human beings on how to use AI, we're not doing enough, we're training the AI, but we're not training humans on how to use AI, actually in different domains. Training human beings on how to use AI, we're not doing enough, we're training the AI, but we're not training humans on how to use AI. I think Ohio could be the leading state in the country if you have the kind of governor, the kind of leadership who makes that a priority. And then you show the rest of the country what's actually possible.

Are you gonna take donations from major corporations when you run? You know, I did not, well, first of all, corporations, there's a whole complication. I got to familiarize myself with the whole campaign finance landscape. So, you know, how we do this,

but I'm definitely not going to be bought and paid for. I mean, since I've lived the American dream. Don't they all say that? Well, I think a lot of people, I don't blame a lot of people who can't do it differently, right? So I'm not going to blame somebody who's in a different position.

Our family has been blessed to live the American dream. And I'm happy to talk about my business background story a little bit too. What's that? Net worth, just tell him. Just put him in his poor place. Put him in his poor place. Yeah, but I'm like a paltry billionaire, right? There's many people who have billions.

Put him in his poor place. I know what this motherfucker's worth. There's many people who have billions. I just have billions. I'm like a poor billionaire. I'm like a poor billionaire. I'm like a poor billionaire. I'm like a poor billionaire. I'm like a poor billionaire. I'm like a poor billionaire. Put him in his poor place. I know what this motherfucker's worth. There's many people who have billions. I just have billions. I'm like a poor billionaire.

I'm 39 years old. My wife has lived the American dream. Her focus was never financial, but she saves lives every day at the Ohio State Cancer Hospital. This country has allowed us to have independence from a system of being somebody else's pawn. And so it just wouldn't make sense. Even when I ran for US president, we took the money, we took over 30 million bucks out of our bank account and put it in the campaign, which gave me the ability to speak my mind freely and for better or worse, sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad, electorally speaking, but I think it's always good as a leader. And so one of the things I

learned through that process though is you don't want to just be like taking, you want to have impact, whatever allows you to maximally have impact. And so if I were to have won the presidential race, even that 30 million that I put in was a paltry sum to the super PACs that supported the other candidates. I beat up beat out a lot of governors and former senators, but I ended up fourth. If you're talking about with the difference between the people who are number two or number three, a lot more super PAC spending made the difference. And so my view is, but then when people get elected, yeah, I'm not going to be beholden. Those people are going to be like, no, we don't want you doing this. I'm not going to be beholden to anybody.

And actually, you know, in Ohio, there is a there's a bit of a culture of a little bit of a, a lot of states have this pay to play culture. I think you got to end that if you're going to actually serve the actual people. So how can you raise money and end it? Yes. Yeah. Well, you don't make promises to people. Why would I give you a hundred million?

Exactly. If you believe in my vision, come aboard. And if not, don't. So then what if you don't get that money? What do you do? First of all, at least we're backstopped and blessed as I told you what we do with my presidential campaign. And the second is the way I look at it is it's my job to deliver the message.

And if that's going to be a winning message, that's going to be the job of people who want to support us. Grassroots donations, by the way, were a great way, a great experience we had in the presidential campaign. I think we probably had more $1 donors than anybody who had been in a similar position. $1 donors, but it actually sends a message of a bottom up grassroots version of it. So you don't want people who are beholden. You can't afford to have that. I think it's one of the things that Donald Trump did this time around, which is pretty smart is he's not beholden. He's a billionaire, but if people want to support him, he wasn't

saying no either. So I think that you want to change the country, be at once, not just living in your own echo chamber and satisfying yourself and patting yourself on the back for doing what made you feel like you were sending the right virtue signal, but at the same time, stay true to your principles at the same time too. So I think that's the way I think about it. You got to be focused on impact. Trump got a lot of money from Elon. Do you feel like that's maybe a conflict of interest of the amount of influence Elon has? So I think one of the things that makes fucking great. So I think I think the thing what do you mean?

What's a good question? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it is. He doesn't shy away. So my view is I think the best you're going to get in this country is you've got somebody who is independent of that system. Donald Trump is independent of that system. He won in 2016 with effectively an FU to the system that tried to stop him. And that's what the people viewed as the attract quality put him there. He's a multi-billionaire, right? So he doesn't need that money. Now he really is. I mean, there's just, there's no doubt about it in terms of,

in terms of where he is today. And so I think that's all as equal a good thing. Do I prefer a system? I'll tell you what my ideal state is. I would love a system in which the influence of mega money on American politics was virtually non-existent. Mega money, right? Small dollar donations I like, but I would love that system.

That's not the system we live in today. It's not. And you have George Soros, you have a bunch of other people on the left that, by the way, they used to say the same thing in 2010, corporations are not people. Citizens United. We don't want that until we got the Soros checks and then we're not going to worry about that any longer. And you know, I think that would I rather have a check and balance in that system than not? Yeah, if both sides play the same game,

it kind of negates itself out, which is kind of interesting as a way to look at it. And in many ways, one of the things we've seen, and this should be encouraging, is the people, we the people at our best are able to still see through it. So if you look at Michael Bloomberg, right? We tried to run for US president spending like boatloads of money.

It just didn't work, actually. You have candidates even this last time around that have had boatloads of money trying to spend by him. You're never gonna, a turd is always gonna weigh more than the money that could lift it, okay? But money coming from both sides doesn't really cancel itself out.

It's just the corporations still have all the power and the people don't. Would I rather... Let me ask you a question. Would I rather have a check and balance? I would rather have at least competitive forces that are 360 degrees. But the ideal state, would our ideal state one be one in which the influence of money on electoral politics was non-existent? Yeah, I think it'd be an ideal state. But wouldn't that put billionaires in a more advantageous position because then they could fund their own campaigns?

We could talk, I mean, if you want, I do think that it would, but at least they're not bought and paid for by somebody else. Somebody can see that. Right. Bought and paid for by yourself. Yeah. So anyway, I think that where I am though is also pragmatically looking at this free speech is important in the country. You want people to be able to express themselves and then you could say that, oh, if they don't fund the Canada directly, they can fund other causes. I don't think that's the biggest problem in the country right now. If you got checks and balances

in a lot of different directions, yeah, most billionaires in this country are not on the same side of most issues, right? You've got billionaires who are on different sides of a lot of different issues. I think that that's okay. I think that that's okay. It's not the fight, it's not the next fight I'm gonna pick. Okay, it's not the next crusade I'm on a problem to solve. The next crusade I'm on a problem

to solve is restore the American dream, actually ensure that the best person is able to get the job through an actual meritocracy, restoring the idea that through your own hard work and dedication, you're able to get a good education and get ahead in this country, restore the center of the country being a place where we have the bleeding edge of innovation in America. That's where my next fight is. And yeah, you're right. You don't want people who are going to be instruments for special corporate interests. Being independently successful allows you to have that independence.

At some point in the distant future, is that system itself going to be changed? One might hope so. But in the meantime, I think you've got pretty good checks and balances across the board where you've got different moneyed interests with different competing influences. We can agree to disagree on that. I think that's the biggest problem involved. Yeah.

You know, I think that's why everything moves so slow. Because they want to pass something, and then they have to speak to their donors. Like, is it OK for me to pass this? Yeah. So look, I think that you're not wrong. That's when nothing happens. You're not wrong.

But I do think that you've got to pick what you're going to pick as your next battle to change. And as a governor of one state, you're not going to change that. I'll tell you that. Right. So at the level of a political culture overall at the level of a nation, could that be the stuff of an actual political reawakening in our country at some point in time? It could be. But I think right now there's a much more achievable mission that I'm actually pretty optimistic about.

As a thing, I always tell you what I believe I can do. Everything we've talked about so far, I think I can do. I think we can help do it at the state of Ohio as an example for the rest of the country. And what we might aspire to, I'm not gonna make a false promise on, but you bring up a good point. Is there a state that you've seen

implement certain changes? And they don't have to be holistically in the way that you're talking about, but certain changes that have had positive effects and you've gone, wow, it is possible. Is there a state, even on like a small level, because we can point at all the poor decisions and how they've negatively impacted states, but I don't think we ever shine a light on the states that have made these changes. I think Texas is doing a pretty good job with its universal school choice measures that are soon hopefully to become law. It's on its way and that looks like a really

solid program. I think the ability to go to zero income tax, nine states that have done that, it makes that table stakes, I think for the rest of the country to say that the burden on a business owner or the burden on an entrepreneur. So they got nine states in that category. I think the states that have done a good job of attracting industry. I mean, historically, it was thought that even in areas like aerospace exploration, places like Florida or Texas would lead the way. You got states like Montana to Colorado doing a good job. And I'm not just picking Republican examples here, for example.

So I do think that there are areas where states have brought down the barrier for new innovation, brought down the tax barrier so that that compounding interest can work in everybody who lives in that state's favor and have actually enacted true educational freedom. I think there are some good examples to learn from. If I felt like some model had already been perfect, then I wouldn't need to come in with a new vision. But I hope what we're able to do with Ohio

is to provide that beacon of example for the rest of the country. Hypothetically, if you ran for governor of Ohio, would these be policies you would run on as abolishing state income tax or the $10,000 for every kid as soon as they're born? Yeah, so then the latter would have to be more likely federally administered.

But compound interest working in the favor of lifting people up and getting rid of state income taxes, I think is like the easiest, lowest hanging fruit way to do that. Educational choice for everyday citizens to be able to go to the best possible school. And then just bringing down, like not by a little bit, but by a lot, the red tape and regulatory barriers that stop actual businesses from locating in what I think is one of the best places in the country to do it, and seeing an economic boom as a consequence.

Yeah, it's basic table stakes. And I would go even, you know, I'd go further in some other respects we haven't talked about either, which is reviving civic education in our country. Part of that sense of that loss of pride and self-confidence comes from a lot of kids feeling like they're taught to hate our country instead of to be proud of it.

I think that revival of civic education is pretty important. I personally believe that every high school senior who graduates from high school should be able to pass the same civics test that every legal immigrant has to pass in order to become a citizen. If somebody comes from another country, if they want to become a citizen, they got to actually pass a basic civics exam, which I think makes sense. You got to be proficient in English and know the first thing about a country. I think it'd be great if we taught every high school senior before they graduate the basic things we expect of a newcomer

to the country so they can be proud of our country. I think we'd probably see military, voluntary military recruitment go up as a consequence. I think we'd see a cultural civic minded service go up in our country if people knew more about our country that falls on our educational system as well. You know, look, I think that there's a lot else that, you know, I would be would be part of what I want to accomplish. But the kinds of things we're talking about here, absolutely. And I do think that's something a governor can accomplish.

You brought up citizenship, ending birthright is citizenship. For the kids of illegals. That's what I would favor. That's what I do favor and have long favored. That's a whole separate, get into legal rabbit holes. No, I just wanted to clarify. If you came into the country, I'm a pretty hardliner that if you're going to come to the country, come legally. Period. Don't into the country, I'm a pretty hardliner that if you're gonna come to the country, come legally.

Period. Don't enter the country. What if they're here legally awaiting their, what's the- Illegally? Green card? No, no, no. Like all the cases that are going on. Illegally though.

No, no, no. But there are some that came, they're applied for- You're talking about legal asylum seekers. Yes. They went through the borders and they- So now they're waiting for their trial and then they have a kid. So I would say, I would say, let's just start with it. Let's just start with the lowest hang fruit.

Obvious stuff. A, seal the border. B, stop paying for any sanctuary cities. End any kind of government benefit to anybody who enters the country illegally. End government welfare benefits to anybody who's even here on asylum. So end the incentives to be here illegally, ending birthright citizenship for the kids of illegals, that is one of those incentives. And then at least starting with anybody who has committed a crime. And even I would go a little further than that. Anybody who entered the country illegally recently, let's start with that. What does recently mean?

The last 18 months, last 24 months. He came in the last 18 to 24 months illegally crossing that border. You haven't established roots in this country. I think it's a ridiculous claim to think that in one year or two years you have. If that group of people alone is returned to their country of origin, if it's just that,

that alone would represent the largest mass deportation in American history by far. So very practically to say the largest mass deportation in American history, far. So very practically, to say the largest mass deportation in American history, I don't know that many people who actually find it objectionable to say, if you entered illegally in the last couple years of Biden, you haven't established roots in the country or you committed a crime,

we're talking about millions of people. But to say, combine that with sealing the border and ending incentives to enter this country illegally, I think most Americans are actually, if they have the permission to say it, most Americans are in favor of that. Combine that with a rational approach to fixing our legal immigration system in a way that works for the benefit of America, including for the benefit of American workers, but in a way that benefits the people who are already here. Do we have a legal immigration system

that does that optimally now? No, we do not. Can we design a legal immigration system that uses market mechanism, right? Companies should pay for the ability, pay the country for the ability to actually hire somebody born abroad, but in a way that benefits that company.

Yes, I think there are basic fixes that we can make as a total package. I think most people in this country are in favor of, and I think there's a role for the states to play here too, is the pragmatic part of those mass deportations. How are you going to do it? You only have this many ICE agents. Well, I mean, there's provisions in law, it's like 287 G is what it's called, that allows the federal government to partner with the state and local law enforcement to help them

carry that out. That doesn't require the federal military to be showing up in other parts of the country, that should be utilized. And it's not. And I think you need willing governors, willing state leaders to be able to be good partners in carrying out that focused mission. But if you explain it to the people, and I think it's one of the things I've found in the country is most Americans love our country and want what's best for our country. And if you explain it to them, the people are with us. I think that sometimes where we fall short of just sloganeering instead of actually explaining

what makes sense for most people, I think that's half the battle. And so I think if you have both at the presidential level, I think Donald Trump's going to do a good job of it. I think he's already off to a good start in the first week. But if you have partners who are leading the state at the level of the 50 states across the country doing the same thing to reinforce that, I'm confident we can have a pretty rational solution here. I could be mistaken, but what was like the provision or executive order that Trump did

where now they can go into places like churches to get illegals? I mean, look, I think there's a lot of I I want to, I don't want to look at that in front of us before we get into, you know, specifics because I'm not, I'm not off the bat familiar with you. You haven't heard. Yeah. Yeah. With this, I tend to, I tend to have a rule of thumb, which is, you know, in Washington,

DC, it's a good rule of thumb. A lot of people talk about statutes and then you actually read the statutes. It's a lot different. It says something different than what they talked about and same thing with the executive orders. But broadly speaking, as a principle, do I believe in using local law enforcement to be able to enforce the law that if you're in this country illegally, to be able to return you to your country of origin, certainly if you've committed another crime or even if

you came within the last 18 to 24 months, great and easy place to start. Use local law enforcement to do it. I think that actually creates a much more peaceable way to carry this out in a way that is still respectful of the dignity of every human being as a human being. Think we've got to remember that if many of us, right? Any of us were in the same position as many migrants who wanted a better life for their kids,

maybe each of us would have done the same thing they would have done if the United States government is perceived as giving you a wink and a nod to come on in. But that doesn't change the fact that we're a nation founded on the rule of law. So I think doing it in a manner that is respectful of every person's humanity and dignity while at the same time not compromising on the rule of law. I think that's achievable actually. But I think that's the way we ought to carry this out. Did you see anything? I mean, this is from PBS. It seems like Department of Homeland Security says that ICE.

PBS. ICE is able to- PBS, we should not have state-funded media. I'll just sort of start with that. I can pull up another source if you'd like. What were you gonna ask? What I was saying- There's a question. I mean, to conclude on this,

it was just saying that it was able to enforce immigration laws to catch criminal aliens, including murderers and robbers who have illegally entered the country. They're no longer able to hide immigration laws to catch criminal aliens, including murders and who have a legal answer to the country. They're no longer able to hide in churches and schools to avoid arrest. Yeah, I think I think that seems fair to me. But I feel like you were going to say something. I don't think I think we as a country generally like murders and hiding in.

No, no, no. Yeah. I mean, it's a different question than this. But when it comes to free markets, I'm you know, everything you're saying makes sense, right, like deregulating, kind of letting the market operate as it is, typically works out in the best case. I think the thing that I have the most concern with is healthcare in this regard, because the inelasticity of people's access to decline healthcare doesn't really exist. I'm curious, is there anything you can implement in Ohio to ensure quality health care to the citizens of the state? I think, I mean, at state level, so most health care is certainly Medicare, it's a federal

program, Medicaid administration, and also even thinking about basic things like school health, right? Implementation of physical education. The best way to save on health care costs, to be said the blunt truth, is actually make sure people are more healthy. So if you're able to, if people have better health outcomes, this is one of the areas where usually it's a trade-off with how much money do you put in to get an outcome? And then do you trade off a bad outcome for more cost? That's how most things in life work. When it comes to designing a health system, it doesn't work that way. The healthier people are, the more money you actually end up saving. So when you look at the quality of food served in

public schools, that's a state government. That's a state government item. When you look at the quality of early physical education, which I talked about earlier in a different context, but it applies here too. I think that's really freaking important. We used to measure early physical education outcomes. I brought up the example of the presidential fitness test and people that may be a little bit hardcore for middle school or whatever, but I'm not wedded to one particular example, but from an early age, making physical excellence in the pursuit of physical excellence, a worthy goal that we not only implement, but measure. You only excel in what you measure in our public school system,

starting at a young age, I think is strictly a good thing. And so those are areas where, it's not a panacea, but you're thinking over the long run, you're not going to see it show up in the next year. But 10 years later, in terms of both bringing down cost and reducing the need for higher costs to be able to pursue good health, those are great things to start doing at a young age is taking a look at the quality of food going into school cafeterias, and to take a hard look at measuring and implementing physical education

as something that we prize and actually celebrate and prioritize and measure, and think about even merit-based outcomes for teachers and school systems. Every bit as much as academic excellence, as I'm passionate about, I think physical excellence matters too. And those are things that states can make a difference.

And as far as like non-prophylaxis measures, like if someone breaks their leg or if they get diagnosed with cancer, like access to that, is that something you're able to address on a state level? I think that you can, in a limited way, make improvements there. Absolutely. I think that when you think about disincentives for new healthcare or hospital construction in a particular area for access, the amount of time that somebody has to drive to be able to get reasonable care. You think about

even states, it's true in many states across the Midwest, people in the VA, the amount of distance they have to drive to be able to access reasonable health care, bringing down the barriers to be able to create new sources of providing health care actually does two things. One is it's more accessible to people who want to access it. But the other thing. One is it's more accessible to people who wanna access it. But the other thing it does is it actually brings down competition. It brings down costs through competition and holds different people's feet to the fire.

There's also a lot of quirks in the bureaucracy that the amount that you're reimbursed for the exact same thing if it comes through a hospital versus what's deemed to be a private practice clinic. Like that should cost the same thing if the government reimbursement, even through Medicaid or otherwise is different because it shows up through a hospital

rather than because it shows up through private practice, that's insane. Why are they different? Because it just isn't stupid. You can just charge whatever you want if you're a private practice. Medicare and CMS, that's at the federal level now, but some of it's administered through the states

when it comes to Medicaid. There's just different levels of hospital will get more, private practice will get less. And I think it just is, it doesn't make any sense. Now you have then barriers and even thinking about different licensing requirements and other barriers to create then new medical healthcare provision, new private practices, new hospital construction. That confluence of that with the federal nonsensical differences in reimbursement rates

actually give us a lot of the nonsensical health outcomes that we have. So I do think that there is a role, an important role for the states to play here. But in this case, when you think about CMS, that's really the mother of all of these problems at the federal level. And a lot of that's just a product of bad regulation,

lobbying, years of stasis and lack of market competition. Honestly, general principle is if you're able to destroy bureaucracy and take that excess saving and put it in the bank account of people to be able to buy their own private health insurance in a competitive market, that alone is all those equal just going to be a better starting point for a solution and the alternative. So I'm a guy who believes in free markets. I'm a guy who believes in capitalism, not crony capitalism and not tilted fake free

markets, which is what we often end up with. But actually the real thing, that's the ultimate end state. But in the meantime, kids aren't the same as adults. When it starts with physical education early, quality, food that kids are served at a young age, that alone over a longer term period of time is going to yield dividends in health outcomes and cost savings. But you don't think any of the problems with private insurance?

What's that? You don't think any of the problems? Private insurance is major health problems. Major problems. Part of it, among them, is that they have a special exemption from rules that apply to other industries that are anti-competitive rules that apply to other industries don't apply to health insurance companies. What are some of these? Well, for example, antitrust rules. Antitrust rules don't apply to health insurance companies in the same way they do to other industries that are anti-competitive rules that apply to other industries don't apply to health insurance companies. What are some of these?

Well, for example, antitrust rules. Antitrust rules don't apply to health insurance companies in the same way they do to other companies. It's super hard to start a new health insurance company. You think about like innovative startups you see in a lot of different areas. Why haven't you heard of a new innovative startup for like basically anything you could imagine? You don't hear a new innovative startup being funded for a new health insurance company.

Why? Because the barriers to entry by regulatory fiat are so darn high. And I'm sure there are lobbying to maintain that because it maintains their monopoly. Of course, yeah. In the industry, oh wow. Of course, yeah.

So I don't consider the private health insurance market to actually be a market in any sense of the word. We're taking that in our own hands. True capitalism from crony capitalism. That's where I look at it. So, you know- How do you get rid of that? Yeah, well, I think-

We've probably started- You roll back a lot of those restrictions legislatively. Let's start with that. And then, yeah, I think that alone would see a capital boom and then funding. Would you have to do that on a federal level? Yeah, it'd be a federal level. Yeah, it'd be a federal level.

Yeah. So it's not, and that's the thing about our, beauty of our system is, there's certain things that are for a president doing with Congress and the Senate, but there are limits on what a president can do because our founders envisioned a system of federalism where most laws ought to be made and implemented at the level of the states in areas from education to ordinary regulatory policy. That's the beauty of our system.

There's, there's a lot you can do as a governor, but there's some things that had to be done nationally. And there's a lot you're able to do as a president, but a lot of what's, you know, country's fate is really in the hands of the states. And in some ways, that's actually kind of market competition of its own. You look at the number one in two states that people move into right now, it's Texas and Florida. When people leave California and New York, I would love for them to be moving to Ohio. I think there's no reason it actually can't be. Might sound aspirational, but it used to be such a state.

It's just you go through different cycles of leadership. And I do think that generally Florida and Texas have had pretty good governors, all else equal, for their state. But it would be cool to bring that to what people call, I hate the term the rust belt, but what people call the rust belt, I think it could be the revival belt of the country. The state of excellence is what I want to want to help us create. And I think it could be pretty cool not just for, you know, for the state of Ohio, but then in the laboratory of a democracy to show the rest of the country what's actually possible. Vivek Ramaswamy, future governor of Ohio.

Good seeing you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, brother.