From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Congressman Massie On Bringing Food Freedom To The United States

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY-4) joins Sean and Rachel as they discuss the impact foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel has on the national debt, and why the Congressman is opposed to new aid packages.  Later, they talk about the Congressman's proposed PRIME Act, how it would help deregulate the food industry, and why it is important to create more food options for Americans.  Follow Sean & Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Rachel Campos-Duffy. Sean, it's great to be back. And we have been wanting our next guest on for a long time because we're obsessed with his ideas on food policy. He's a hard get. He is. It's not easy to get him, but we got him. And we're here with Representative Massey from the great state of Kentucky. Welcome to the kitchen table. Thank you, Rachel and Sean. So we're going to talk to you about food policy. That's the main thing we want to talk about with you, because I think it's the sleeper issue of the next election. It's the it's the topic that everyone should be talking about. I think you're on the right side of so many of these things.

But before we get to that, I just want to talk to you a little bit about Israel. We know the horrible attacks that have happened in Israel two weeks ago now. They're horrific. They're horrible. But it's also having an interesting impact on, I think, the chances that we may enter into a larger regional war. And there are also a lot of questions around aid to Israel. So why don't we start with your thoughts on America's role, the appropriate role for America in this horrible state of affairs in the Middle East right now? Well, first of all, it is horrible and there's nothing that justifies these attacks on civilians ever. And it's just it's heartbreaking to see the images that are coming back. With that said, you know, I may not be in the mainstream Republican thought here, but I don't believe that we can sustain peace at home by funding wars between other nations abroad.

And I am reluctant to fund any offensive effort. You know, we've provided a lot of defensive effort to Israel in the form of the Iron Dome and whatnot. And that's actually, by the way, in an appropriations bill that we passed in the House that I voted for that's sitting over there in the Senate. So when you hear this talk about the supplementals or whatever, remember, the Senate is sitting on $3.8 billion that's already passed the House before we went into the speaker crisis, and they've failed to act on that. But with that said, I am reluctant, very reluctant to send any more money to Ukraine and any money to Israel, because when we do any more money to Israel to make us a co-belligerent in these wars, because once we provide that offensive effort, we become co-belligerents

in these wars, and we could get drawn into it. And I definitely don't think we should be sending troops over there either. So I'm not an isolationist, but I'm a non-interventionist in that realm. And also, I think, you know, I know this is a worn out talking point, but it's still true. We need to protect our southern border and quit spending all of our money overseas. So, Thomas, when I was in Congress, served with you, I voted for the, it was at the start, it was $2 billion of aid a year that would go to Israel to help bolster their defenses. Now it's $3 billion a year. And I think before I left, it had gone to three and I voted for the $3 billion. So I've been supportive of financial aid to Israel. But I look at this and let's take Ukraine,

put that aside. I think that's a different animal. I don't support the funding to Ukraine. But I do think with Israel, they're a close ally. We have been supportive. But we're a country, Thomas, it's $33 trillion in debt. And so for every man, woman, and child in the U.S., we owe every—my little Valentina, who's four years old, her apportionment of the debt would be over $100,000. In Israel, they have debt, but if you break it down per person, it's about $16,000 per Israeli.

Our country's broke. And so to think that Joe Biden says we should send $14 billion to Israel, Israel hasn't spent $14 billion yet. I would have to imagine they spent a billion or $2 billion in missile launches. They're activating their troops. But the first $14 billion spent is on the backs of the U.S. taxpayer at a time when inflation is running rampant. People can't afford their mortgages, their rent, their gas, their food.

They're turning over their cars. They're dunking on their car loans at a historic rate. And so my question is, what percentage of the Israeli war should the U.S. bear? And why should we have the first dollars spent of the war be on the U.S. backs? I think, again, Israel has a role here and we can be helpful and we should be helpful, but at what point and to how much money? Yeah, I mean, to your point, our debt to GDP is greater than Israel's debt to GDP. So the question is, why are we sending the money? And we're borrowing more of that money. And right now, we're kind of going over the cliff a little bit on interest rates. We're watching our debt get refinanced and we're incurring like a hundred billion dollars more

per year in interest on the debt. So that's something that we, you know, needs to be at the front of our mind. Where's this money coming from and who's going to pay for it? So what's your philosophy in general on foreign aid? Because I don't think this is about Israel per se for you. I think you believe that we shouldn't be giving foreign aid anyway. Yeah, I've never voted. There's one small exception that happened during COVID, during the outbreak of COVID, where there was going to be some, you could argue that it was in our interest to try and stop the spread of this virus internationally. Okay. But other than that one exception in the 11 years I've been here, I've never voted for foreign aid for,

also actually never voted for sanctions. Now this is the harder one, I think, for me to defend. But I feel sound in defending my opposition to sanctions because think about this. When we pass sanctions in Congress, we're not talking about putting somebody in North Korea in jail for violating a sanction. We're talking about creating crimes for Americans. We're talking about we're going to arrest Americans for engaging in trade. I also think that sanctions hurt the people overseas that we're trying to help from underneath of their dictator. So I've never voted for foreign aid and I've never voted for sanctions. And that puts me that that makes me vulnerable to a lot of false arguments. Oh, he's a friend of Putin. He doesn't care about the Uyghurs.

He's supporting North Korea. None of those things are true. But just look at our track record. OK, it hasn't worked out well for us. And one thing also, Sean, when you were here, I made an effort and it passed by voice vote, but they stripped it out later. I made an effort to defund the foreign aid that was going to Egypt the year they had a military coup. We were literally doing the appropriations bills. There was a military coup going on in Egypt and we had a billion dollars that was going to go to Egypt. And I said, well, time out here. You know, if we don't know who's running the government, who are we sending the billion dollars to? And they let

that pass on a voice vote. But then they stripped it. You know, they let my amendment to stop the funding pass on a voice vote, which was good. But then they stripped it out later in the omnibus bill and allowed the billion dollars to go to a country that was in the middle of a coup. Yeah, really good point. For me, I come at this where I'm concerned about America. I'm concerned about the American debt. I'm concerned about, to your point, America's debt to GDP. And I would say, Joe Biden, if it's meaningful to send money to Israel and I want to support our ally, what do you want to cut? Maybe we can cut some of the green new deal spending. You know, maybe we take out $100 billion that they put in for new Tesla chargers and send that to you, to Israel.

But to say that we're just going to spend and borrow more money without cutting somewhere else, I think is misguided. That's a very reasonable position. And by the way, what we're looking at here, we're told that they're working on a bill in the Senate that's over $100 billion that's got something for everybody in it. And that's the problem. Yeah, it's disgusting. Before we move to food, one last question on this. Are you worried that we're on, listen, I'm talking to my kids, I'm talking to my adult kids. A lot of kids are worried and talking about World War III. There were articles coming out like, how do you survive if there's a nuclear attack? You know, if there's nukes, you know, how do you survive with radiation? I mean, these are the conversations, believe it or not, that people

are having right now. How worried are you that we are right now on the brink of World War Three? Well, I think there's more than one conflict in the world that could flare up. I mean, There's more than one conflict in the world that could flare up. I mean, Iran may have nuclear capabilities, but we know that Russia has nuclear capabilities. And if you look at the search statistics on the online search engines, you could see that people were searching for iodine and things like in case you had some kind of nuclear fallout. And there could be fallout here, even if there's not a war here. So, you know, if there's even just a 1% chance in the Middle East of starting World War III, then we need to try to make every effort to avoid that. Right.

Even that possibility. Instead, we see Turkey stepping up to try and have some sort of peace negotiation or cooling off. But it doesn't look like America, who really stands to lose a lot if this thing escalates, doing virtually nothing to help put the brakes and cool this situation off. Listen, I do think it's hard to tell Israel after, you know, that your wives were raped, your children were murdered, hostages were taken to stand down. It's a very difficult and complicated situation, which is why I always think the president should have the smartest people around him.

It shouldn't be based on your sexual preference, your gender ideology or race. It should be like, who's the smartest guys on the Middle East that I want to advise him? Joe Biden hasn't done that. He's got, you know, a different group around him. And I think that's why these challenging circumstances become more challenging. There's one more question that needs to be asked here that I don't think is being asked enough. And that is the money that we're sending to Israel, are they buying the right sorts of things? Are they investing in the right type of defense? Because there's a tendency to buy the latest and greatest weapon from the United States that's super high tech. But as far as we

can tell, Israel wasn't infiltrated with high tech. It looks like this was like a low tech attack. And the question is, when I'm lobbied here to send that money to Israel, the case they make is, oh, well, all that money comes back to the United States because they're buying our weapons, our airplanes, our missiles and all of this stuff. And that's the case that's being made to me here is, oh, it's an investment in our military industrial complex. Well, the reality is maybe that the money, if we're trying to provide for their defense instead of stimulate our military industrial complex, maybe they should be spending that money on something other than the latest, greatest airplane. I just get that argument as well. But the point is, we're giving the money to then have them buy American armaments. But it's still U.S Israel so that that's why their response was delayed. And I think that this it speaks to just how complicated this is, that, you know, China is kind of behind some of this Hamas stuff, that they're, you know, funding Iran who's then funding

Hamas, that there's a lot of stuff going on and that the Chinese would like nothing better than to see America engaged in another chaotic, you know, conflict and and tie us up so they can do what they want to do. Yeah, we need to be reluctant to get drawn into this. Yes. In a way other than providing technical assistance and intelligence. technical assistance and intelligence. Do you see any of your colleagues agreeing, at least with that point, like we've got to contain this? Not enough of my colleagues. And oh, by the way, yes, some of the Democrats are off the deep end and radical, maybe a dozen of them, but there really aren't any anti-war Democrats left. So there are a few over there. There's just not enough on either side of the aisle

that instead of wanting to fan the flames or trying to cool it down. Yeah. Well, I'm called at work. They call me the Cindy Sheehan of Fox News. I'm very anti-war. So the point is, it's OK to ask questions and we should know what's going to be used and how much we should spend. Those are all fair questions and a conflict that we support for the most part Israel in. I support Israel in it. We'll have more of this conversation after this. Some things require a lot of work to grow, like plants, hair babies, or your savings. But when you run a business, you already have enough on your plate. Scotiabank's right size savings for business account can help you grow your

savings with ease for a limited time, open a new account and earn up to 4.65% interest for the first six months. Before you know it, your savings will grow without you even noticing. Ooh, which reminds me, I need a haircut. Conditions apply. Ends December 15th. Rate is annual, calculated daily, and will vary based on account balance. Visit scotiabank.com slash rightsizesavings for full details. I want to move to food policy, though, Thomas. I just on Fox Business, I went to a homesteading conference.

And I'm going to put it here, this on Fox Business that hasn't come out yet. But all of these homestead conferences are popping up because more Americans are saying, I want to get out of a city. I want to have five acres, 40 acres, 150 acres to start a little farm because I want to be closer to my food, whether it's my vegetables, my cows, my pigs, my chickens. And because there was real concern over the supply chain that people saw over COVID and the fact that we don't know what's going into our food. And so I know you've been fighting to make sure that if you're a small farmer and I'm in the neighborhood and I want to buy meat or chicken or eggs from my local farmer, sometimes the federal government steps in and gets in the way of two willing partners trying to do business together.

Tell us the state of what you see as, you know, the American food industry right now, and what do we have to do to fix it? Well, first of all, I'm surprised I didn't meet you at one of these conferences. I don't put it on my congressional calendar, and I don't put it on my campaign calendar, but I go to something called the Rogue Food Conference, and I've been a speaker at five of these. And we teach people how to go rogue, not how to comply with all the rules and regulations, because it's impossible. But I guess I just kind of outed myself there. I am a small farmer. You need to start a caucus for that now.

Rogue Food Caucus? Yes. The Rogue Food Caucus? The Rogue Food Caucus. I do kind of have an informal caucus across the aisle with some Democrats. Shelly Pingree, who's from Maine, she actually lives off the grid, as I do. We both have small farms. And enough that we lose money. We're not getting rich on these things. Right. But we do it because it's it's honest and we're interested in it. And also it allows us to provide food for our families and we know where it comes from. And so as a hobby, I raise chickens and ducks and for

meat and eggs, but also sort of as a business. my wife and I have 50 cattle. And we, for the most part, direct market those to consumers. But what I've run up against is this wall that's been built, I call it the meat industrial complex. Four companies control 85% of the meat that's processed in the United States. And two of those companies are foreign owned. One is completely owned by China and another is completely owned by Brazil. Now, I actually chair the antitrust subcommittee in judiciary. And, you know, there's one theory that government needs to go in and break up these companies. But the actual problem is government created these monopolies by putting barriers to entry on the small guys and making so much

regulation on the small guys that they're forced to sell to the big guys, and in the worst case, to foreign countries. If farming were profitable, we wouldn't be selling land to the Chinese, right? Americans could make money off of that land. So what we need to do is remove some of these barriers. And I have a bill here that's picked up a lot of momentum. It's called the Prime Act. And my sponsor in the Senate, you're going to like this, I think. It's not Rand Paul.

It's a guy named Angus King. Angus King, it's not an offering at Wendy's this week. No, it's a senator from Maine who runs as an independent and caucuses with the Democrats. And this is the one place where you can work across the aisle because, you know, my body, my choice, do we, you know, do the Democrats really mean that? If they do, then you should be able to control, you know, not the government control, but you have control over what goes in your body and what you feed your family. So I've been working across the aisle on this prime act. And since covid hit, I've picked up. My support has doubled here in Congress because people back home are calling their congressmen. They're like, why are the store's shelves empty? And I see these cattle walking around in the field next to me, and the farmer's not able to sell them.

It's because our food supply, it's not just grown to be unhealthy. It's brittle, and it's open to attacks. We've seen fires that crimp the food supply, the supply chain. We've seen hacking that interrupted processing at one of the big plants. And so anyways, this prime act of mine, it's catching on. It's got a lot of momentum. And I, again, I probably shouldn't say this, but eventually I'm going to have to tell people, I think I can get part of

this prime act in the farm bill that's coming up this fall. And it's a once in a six year opportunity. So I'm making a really hard push to make it easier. Basically, here's what the prime act says. It says if the farmer and the butcher and the consumer are all in the same state and you're not crossing state lines, if you're not engaged in interstate commerce, then you shouldn't have to have the same regulations on a little butcher as you have on the Oscar Mayer wiener factory. Simple. Yeah. Some might say that's kind of freedom, right? When is this going up for vote? Well, we're working on the farm bill right now.

As soon as we get a speaker, we'll take that back up again. And it'll be, it has to go through the committee, through the ag committee. I'm not on that committee, but I have a lot of friends there. And we're working on trying to get something in there. It won't be everything we want, but it'll be compromised and it could be a good reason to vote for the farm bill when there are a lot of us sitting around saying, why would we vote for the farm bill? It's like food stamps and farm subsidies. Can we just have a little bit of freedom? Yeah. Right. Well, you know, I've talked to people. They like the Prime Act. A lot of them say it's not enough that we need more freedom in our food supply. We need more trust in that what we are eating is actually what we think we're eating. And I want to talk about that. But it made me nervous there. You talked about this meat industrial complex. We have to worry about the military industrial complex. We have to worry about the meat industrial complex. We have to worry about the military industrial complex.

We have to worry about the meat industrial complex. You talked about my body, my choice. I don't think Democrats mean that because we saw what they did during COVID when they wanted to mandate everybody to take an untested vaccine. But here we are. I am absolutely losing my mind, Congressman, over the idea that big pharma and big government wants to vaccinate me through my vegetables and that my tax dollars are going to fund this Frankenstein science. So I want you to, because a lot of people don't know about this, so I want you to walk us through what is happening, why it's happening, and what we can do.

what is happening, why it's happening, and what we can do. Yeah, there's research that is funded by your tax dollars for transgenic edible vaccines. Okay, that sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but you can go to the USDA website and get a list of these programs, and they're growing vaccines. They started out by growing vaccines in plants like alfalfa to feed to animals, but now they've moved on to growing mRNA vaccines in plants like alfalfa to feed to animals, but now they've moved on to growing mRNA vaccines in lettuce and spinach to feed it to humans. The idea being that you would get vaccinated at the salad bar. What a horrible idea. You don't have to imagine how

this could go wrong because it has gone wrong. Several years ago, they were growing a vaccine, a medicine for pigs in corn that would keep the pigs from getting diarrhea. The problem is the next year they raised soybeans in the same field and some of the corn came up and got harvested with the soybeans and contaminated hundreds of thousands of bushels of soybeans. beans and contaminated hundreds of thousands of bushels of soybeans. And then some of it also cross-pollinated to another cornfield. And the problem is, this is the problem when you put this in the wild, when you put it in nature. Hopefully we've learned our lesson from the lab in Wuhan that once something gets in the wild, you can't stop it. My concern with doing these science experiments and playing God and growing vaccines in food is that the pollen carries in the wind. So I offered an amendment this summer

on the Ag Approps Bill to defund at least taxpayer dollars from going to transgenic edible vaccine research. And the good news is I'm on the rules committee. So I was able to get that amendment to the floor and nobody wanted to vote on it because it was so horrible. So it passed. It passed by voice vote. This is one of the few times I haven't objected to a voice vote is, well, it was a good thing. So I let it go by voice. Nobody wants this. Where's the demand for this coming from? Nobody wants to eat lettuce and accidentally or even try to get their vaccines through their lettuce. I don't understand why. There's a lack of consent. So if I'm eating lettuce that I think is an organic, naturally

grown organic lettuce, but they've genetically modified it. And I'm getting the MNRA vaccine through my lettuce that I didn't want anyway. All of a sudden there's a consent issue and the government can do things to me, put things in my body that I don't want. And there's a disconnect then between what, you know, the freedom of the individual of the American and the policies and role of the government forcing things on us, which is a real concern. And they can vaccinate our kids without us knowing with whatever they're coming up with at school lunches or whatever. Yeah. Informed consent goes out the window in that model. And Rachel, you talked about trust earlier.

There are some people who think you could that the government can create trust by putting labels on things and then regulating the labels. government can create trust by putting labels on things and then regulating the labels. So when I started farming 20 years ago, by the way, my wife grew up on the farm that we live on. So she kind of laughed at me when we first got started. It was didn't know what I was doing. But when I first started, I thought, well, let me grow some organic stuff. And then I realized, wait, I can't use that word without the government's permission. Okay, how do I get their permission? And I started studying, okay, what would I go through to get their permission? And I went to the grocery store with my wife and I sell some organic apple juice. And I'm like, yes, I'm going to be an organic farmer. Let me buy some organic apple juice. And I put it in the cart, even though it was like two

or three times what the apple juice we usually buy is. And before we checked out, I looked at the label and it said product of Turkey. And even though it was USDA approved, and I can tell you when you go overseas, there's the chances that somebody slipped somebody some extra money to get that approval go way up in these other countries. But I will say this. In other countries, in Italy, even in Mexico, in Russia, they are becoming very protective of their food. They don't want all this genetically modified stuff. They're getting more protective of their seeds. They're getting more protective of their seeds. Do you see that movement growing in our country that there is, you know, demand that there are, you know, people in Congress care about this besides you and a few others?

A little bit of it. You know, one good thing about being in Kentucky is we we make bourbon. OK, and we export bourbon to Europe and all over the world. It's one of our finest exports, but they require non-GMO corn to be used in the bourbon. Now, bourbon's not really that healthy for you. I probably shouldn't say that as a member from Kentucky, but so it's kind of interesting that they impose even the non GMO in Europe on the ingredients that go into bourbon. But what that means is there's this little industry in Kentucky of non GMO corn. And so I like going to the mills, the corn mills that are near the bourbon facilities, because I can always get non GMO corn there if I need to feed it to my chickens. So it is it is, I think, sort of catching on, but it's more

of a free market thing here in the United States. I think customers are demanding it. They try to get rid of the labels. Again, the trust thing. We had a fight over country of origin labeling here in Congress, and we lost that fight. And the country of origin labels went off of beef and pork here in the United States in 2015. But what I always tell people is the best way to trust what you get is to know your farmer. And so go to your local farmer. I can't disclose my source, but I drink raw milk every week. I bring it here to Washington, D.C. I don't have a milk cow, every week. I bring it here to Washington, D.C. I don't have a milk cow, but I know a farmer who has a few. And so I pick it up every week. But I trust it not because it has some label on it. In fact, it has no label on it. It's because I can see the cows. I can see how he treats them. I can

see how he milks them. And he's interested in keeping me as a customer. So he's got a vested interest in my health. But it's fascinating that you have to buy this milk like you're going to get a drug deal. Oh, it's easier to get crystal meth. Like every county you can get drugs in every county, but you can't get raw milk in every county. I actually drive to a different county to get it. Unbelievable. You can't get it in New Jersey. I can't get it in New Jersey either. I've been trying. So you don't know. I mean, you probably do know what you're missing. But I used to defend raw milk. Like I introduced a bill here in Congress that I copied from Ron Paul.

And I had never consumed raw milk. So for eight years, I was defending the rights of people to drink raw milk and I started hearing it was good for you. And so I decided to try it after eight years of defending it. And now I'm hooked. I can never go back. Well, you know, I have this theory and maybe you will be able to to spread this in Congress. But, you know, Republicans are very nervous in the presidential election because of abortion. You know, the Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade and they think suburban moms are turning on them. And there's some polling that shows that there's some, you know, revolt, if you will, with some suburban moms who might normally have been able to vote Republican that they might not because they're upset about abortion policy. I believe that if Republicans became the anti-Big Pharma and the pro-food policy, food freedom party, that you would be able to peel many of those Republican,

those suburban moms away. I think that food policy, you talked about it earlier, it's bipartisan. You have partners on the Democrat side. We have, you know, Republicans who care about this issue and we have moms who care about this issue. And they are confronted with food every day that they want for their kids to be healthy and natural and not filled with all these other things that they don't know about. They want it from their farmer. I don't understand why Republicans don't jump on this. Yeah, Sean, I bet when you went to that homesteading conference, it wasn't like a tea party meeting where it's a bunch of white-headed old men, bald old men at the tea party meeting. It's young women. A lot of them have kids on their hip or following them around at these conferences because they are seeking out nutrition for their children. You are what you eat eat and they want to do the best job they can at raising their children and giving the best chance. And this resonates with a part

of the demographic. By the way, I'm almost an old bald white man, so I'm not picking on that demographic. Just to be clear, I'm just saying we need to reach the young female demographic. And this food freedom issue gets us there and I don't want to get too much into the presidential politics of this because I know I might get gonged but I had a good conversation with Casey DeSantis and she's a cancer survivor and she really cares about you know what she eats she doesn't know what caused her cancer but we all you know wonder okay she eats. She doesn't know what caused her cancer, but we all, you know, wonder, okay, why are we having these issues, these autoimmune issues and things like that.

And so it was actually her husband co-sponsored my raw milk bill when he was in Congress. So there's, I'm not going to say anything about endorsements. I'm just going to say, you're right politically. And Sean, if we don't take up this issue, we're going to lose those people to people like Robert Kennedy, who they've identified this demographic. And it's a large demographic of people that we're not reaching with our slick flyers in the mailboxes or on TV. You're right. There was a lot of young men and young women, a lot of kids in tow at the conference. But what's unique is this is a nonpartisan issue. You see, you used to have like hippies and their Birkenstocks out there, organic farming and trying to live off the land. the same thing. And so you have liberals and conservatives with the same philosophy, wanting more freedom, knowing what goes into their food, wanting to be closer to their food,

and whether they grow it on their farm or they have a farmer down the street, like you mentioned with your milk, that you can get it from, they want to be connected to it in a different way than we've seen over the last 30 or 40 years. They want to go back to where we were probably in the 40s or 50s. And it's healthier for people. Again, all these pesticides and GMO foods, our bodies, I don't think, handle as well, don't process as well. And therefore, people are making decisions for their health, for their families, and getting closer to nature. So wait a minute. Did it take you 20 years to become a farmer you thought it took you because you know sean wants to be you he wants to become a farmer so i want to know how long i want to be i want to be thomas man i want to actually be like what is it i want to be off the grid like thomas i want to grow my own stuff not everything but kind of hobby-esque but maybe

tennessee your taxes you still have a tax rate in kentucky that's what's prohibiting me from looking at Kentucky. I've been pushing for Kentucky. I just have you know, I've been saying, let's get land in Kentucky. I like Kentucky, but he doesn't like your tax rate. I know our tax rates aren't that great, but at least it's keeping people from California away. We're actually the undiscovered gym. But my suggestion to you, Sean and Rachel, is when you find that piece of land, plant your trees first and don't plant fruit that you haven't eaten.

Go to a local orchard. Find what trees will grow because some apples and peaches will grow in some places and some won't in others. And don't rely on the box stores. They're going to sell you a tree that may not produce the right fruit. But anyways, call me when you find that piece of land and I will advise you. Maybe we will do another podcast. That would be awesome. You are not going to get out of that offer. I'm just telling you, Sean made butter this week. I'm just telling you. I just sauerkraut. I made sauerkraut this week and butter for the first time, Thomas.

You take easy things. The next one is I'm doing applesauce. The political designation for us is crunchy cons. Yes. I've been a crunchy con for a long time. Yes, I've been a crunchy con for a long, long time. And I was scratching my

head, Congressman, when during COVID, all the, you know, rich ladies who go to Whole Foods and buy, you know, organic kale for $20 a bag were rushing to get vaccinated. The whole thing has been so confusing to me that I have been consistent. I was suspicious of the I've been suspicious of our food for a long time. And I certainly was suspicious of that vaccine. Yeah. Thomas, can I confess to you one thing? I voted against your raw milk bill, and I'm sorry about that. And here's why. What? No, I did. I'm going to tell you why.

I'm from the dairy state in Wichita, so I talked to my farmers and they were like, listen, we don't want raw milk out there because it's not pasteurized and homogenized. And someone gets sick, all of a sudden people drink less milk. And though I like where your head's at, but the risk to us as dairy farmers is too great. So we, listen, we're going to push you really hard. Please don't vote for Thomas Massey's amendment. And I didn't. And in hindsight, I was wrong. I wish I would have voted for it because I get the fear of my dairy farmers, but I think you and I and every American family deserves the freedom to drink the milk without government regulation that they feel is appropriate for them with a farmer that they know. Yeah. And they but ask them, do they like the economic scenario they're in right now? Where some of them have gone bankrupt. Some of those dairy farmers who told you not to do it are not even in business now.

And I know this because it's a tragic thing, but they're selling a commodity. What I didn't tell you, Rachel and Sean, is I pay $8 a gallon for this milk. And this farmer used to try to sell it. He might get $1 a gallon when he sold it to the conglomerate or whatever, the cooperative. And now he can get $8 a gallon. He can feed his animals better, you know, better forage and take the extra time. And I'm willing to, you know, to pay that extra money because it's so much healthier for me. So it's an economic opportunity. There are some farmers who want to stay in that mode. Oh, quick story, Sean. So when I offered that

amendment or that bill and we got a vote on the floor, the milk lobby came after me. And they said people would die in the streets and kidneys would fail and the kids and stuff like this. It was horrible. My wife had Google alerts and she saw all these horrible things being said about me and she texted me. She said, OMG, I didn't realize the lactose lobby was so intolerant. So explain to me. She's a comedian too and a farmer. I love that. But explain why dairy farmers in Wisconsin are so threatened by somebody selling raw milk.

I'm trying to make sense of it. Well, listen, there's another thing that's going on that I've tried to expose here in Congress. There's a commodity checkoff program. And a dollar, like every time I sell a cow, not directly to a consumer, but at an auction, a $1 is taken and given to this so-called non-profit. And there are 21 commodities that have these programs. Milk is one of them. So you've seen the ads, Got Milk, okay?

You probably haven't seen one of those ads in a while because they're taking this money and wasting it. And Obama's director, his ag secretary, Vilsack, drew a million-dollar salary off this milk checkoff program after he was no longer the secretary of agriculture. And then when Biden got elected, he became the secretary of agriculture again. But in the interim, in those four years, he's making a million dollars a year off this milk program. And they're supposed to not lobby with that money, but they do lobby with that money. And they call it a checkoff program, but you don't get to check the box anymore.

It used to start as a checkoff program. Like, do you want to help the Got Milk campaign or Beef? It's What's for Dinner. OK, check the box. But now Congress has made it. So you have to do that. Mandatory. And so that money is used by the milk lobby, you have the lactose lobby, as my wife calls it, the industrial meat complex, to try to convince farmers that if you let off of any of these

regulations, it will ruin the reputation of the industry if there's one bad case of something. But the reality is there's never been, I know this group who did a FOIA to the USDA and they said, can you give us an example of some of the food poisoning that's happened at one of these small slaughterhouses? They replied, we have no examples. We have no records of any of that happening. So all of the outbreaks happen in the industrial portion of it where everything is commingled and then distributed to all four corners of the world. And when you commingle things, you can have cross contamination. Again, there I've heard their arguments, Sean. They say it's less safe to to do it locally and not to have the government involved. But the reality and a lot of Democrats are realizing this is it's more safe if you have the accountability there because, you know, the person and you can see the animals. And and milk is so full of hormones that the not, you know, non-organic or non-raw milk. You know, you have girls entering into puberty at younger and younger

ages, and they think it's because of this. We ought to know what's in our food. We ought to be honest and transparent, and we ought to just let people buy what they want to buy. And then in the end, Thomas, when we're $33 trillion in debt, if people are eating better, they probably get less sick, and you have to spend less money on their health care. We save money in all kinds of ways. Six ways till Sunday. We save. Thomas, listen, thank you for all the hard work you do. And being a I don't know, I don't agree with all the stuff you did in Congress, but I agree with a lot of it. And I agree with more of it today than I did when I was in Congress.

So I was with you all along, Thomas, and I'm learning a lot about Sean's voting record. And I used to say he was my favorite member of Congress. I think it's you now. I'm sorry about that vote. If I had known, I would have. I didn't know this podcast. Thomas, I want to stop this thing. Send him back. Send him back. We want Sean back. We want the reform. uh reformed version of sean right you would like me a lot better i've you would like sean a lot better now now that he's a wannabe farmer i've gone crazy since i've left i left congress thomas um but you listen you're doing important work and i think you're going to find more people as this movement spreads uh joining uh what you've been working

on for your whole time in congress and yeah we appreciate you being a voice. And let us know if there's ever anything we can do from our purge to help promote what you're doing on food policy. Sure. I've got one request. And Sean knows this works because he was in Congress. If you could pick up the phone and call your congressman, you only have one congressman and two senators. Don't call Nancy Pelosi or somebody else unless she's your congresswoman. Just call those three numbers, the two senators and your congressman. If they're already on the Prime Act, thank them profusely. If they're not, just politely ask the staffer who takes your call, would they consider co-sponsoring the Prime Act? Excellent. And Thomas, you're right, because what people don't recognize is we know who calls

our office. We know what issues they care about. I told one of the farmers, the most questions I got in a two-year span were on bees and the death of honeybees. And I'm like, I have no... What's going on with these damn honeybees? And I had to learn about honeybees because everyone kept calling about honeybees. You call and you get responses, especially when a lot of people start calling in.

So that's great advice. Call your two senators and your one congressman and tell them to get on the Prime Act with Thomas Massey. Great advice, Thomas. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks, Congressman. We'll have more of this conversation after this. A lot of the things we talk about is get the government the hell out of our way.

Yeah. Leave us alone, which is why we're limited government conservatives. And this is a perfect example of why right here. are making on a lot of levels. I look at my position on, you know, I was fully trusting our government during the Iraq war and thought we were doing something great. And then like at some point I realized they were lying to me and now I don't trust them for anything. And that's why I've become so, you know, as he said, I'm not an isolationist, but I am an anti-interventionist. I don't think we ought to get involved in other people's wars and disputes. We ought to have commerce with everybody and entanglements with no one.

That's sort of my thought about that. But on food policy, we've also transformed. I'm to the point now where you have a hippy-dippy sister who I love, Colleen, who never vaccinated her kids. And I kind of thought I never was critical of her, but I just it's not what I would do. Now I'm fully on Colleen's side of things. I don't think I would vaccinate my kids if I had to do it all over again. I don't trust big pharma. I'm sorry.

I just think we're all making these huge transformations as conservatives. I disagree with that. I think there are some vaccines that are great. I mean, the polio vaccine, I think, did a lot for making sure young kids didn't get polio. But I think we are over vaccinating our kids. There's a mandated vaccine for all kinds of things, and we're, I think, COVID exposed, that maybe these vaccines, one, don't work, or two, if they work for the one thing, they might create 10 other problems in something else. And as that curtain's been pulled back, as Robert Kennedy Jr. has been talking about, there are real problems. And every maybe good thing possibly has a couple of negatives that go with it. And we should know that. And to your point, I don't think our government- And our government shouldn't be involved, Sean, in bed with big pharma. This

should be, if it's a good vaccine, then we should know all the benefits of it. And there should be no profit motive or entanglings with our own government and big pharma to promote it and mandate it so they don't have to advertise it or whatever else that they're doing to make it as profitable as possible. The government is complicit in the disinformation, the misinformation, or the lack of sharing of any information. And that's the problem. You don't fund your government to sell you on things. You fund your government to go, give me the truth, do real studies, and give us the real results of those studies so we can make decisions as an educated population. But again, they believe that they're the smartest ones and they have to run a nanny state because we can't manage our own

lives and make decisions for ourselves. And this is another space. Again, I would love to be able to buy raw milk. And we can't do it in New Jersey. Well, you could. If you really wanted raw milk, there is a black market. And like he said, it will feel like we're doing a drug deal. We'll have to make sure we don't expose our drug dealer who is giving us raw milk. But it's crazy that we live in a country where it's easier to get meth than raw milk. That's crazy. It's easier to come to the country illegally and stay in the country illegally. Something's wrong with that. So, again, I appreciate Thomas. And he's one of the good ones, isn't he? People complain about Congress all the time, and that's a good congressman.

Listen, here's the deal. Thomas is an out-of-the-box thinker, right? And he has certain principles by which he abides. I guess I wouldn't fall into the no foreign aid at no time. Again, I'm leaning that way to myself. And I came to a similar conclusion. I want to know why we're paying the first dollars for the Israeli war. Not that I don't want to help Israel. I voted to give money to Israel every year I was in Congress. I'm a supporter of Israel. I know you are too. And there's an atrocity what happened. But we're broke. And we have to think about what's their role, what's our role. And it's hard to ask those questions today. I think it's beyond being broke. I mean, you know, I just think this could trigger something much larger. And also, you know, there is.

It doesn't matter. It's going to be triggered no matter what. How Israel responds will trigger whatever. What is America doing? What is America doing to make sure America's interests are met? And I don't think it's in America's interest to see this thing grow out of control. And frankly, there are mothers mourning on the Israeli side and there are mothers mourning on the Palestinian side right now. And those mothers love their children as much on each side. And there is real, real pain right now in that area. And I just, you know, what our country can do to help to lower the temperature and lower the violence and the death and the destruction and the injury and death and displacement of innocent civilians, I think is an important thing to think about. And we have to think about what comes next. So being surgical, I think, matters. To say if you're going to flatten everything,

that's a problem. But I don't think with what Hamas has done, you can have Hamas now on your border. You have to address it. And how you do it, you have to do it very smartly to make sure you don't have this thing blow up. But it does come back. All roads in terrorism run through Iran. And that Barack Obama, we did a podcast on this, but that Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been tacitly or explicitly funding Iran. I mean, there's been no stopping of oil sales from Iran to China. Donald Trump enforced our sanctions on Iran, and those sales couldn't happen. Joe Biden decided not to, and so they've enriched this terror-supporting state.

And so not only does he unfree $6 billion, not only does he want to now send money to Israel to fund the Israeli war, but then he'll send money to repeal Gaza. It's like, we spend money everywhere, and you don't have the money to do it. And one last point I want to make. So this is the problem. We're $33 trillion in debt. There was a time when we were $10 trillion. Conservatives were like, oh, my God, there's going to be a debt bomb.

I remember you ran on like $14 trillion and you were pushing out. Then it was $20 billion and $20 billion. Oh, my God, there's a debt crisis on the horizon and nothing ever happened. Yeah. $25 trillion. Debt, you know, calamity on the horizon. And nothing happened. So now we're $33 trillion. Debt, you know, calamity on the horizon. And nothing happened. So now we're at $33 trillion in debt.

And people are like, we can borrow and spend until there's no tomorrow. There's no consequence for it. But there is. And you're starting to see it today. You're starting to see it with interest rates going up. What you should have seen when this conflict happens in the Middle East, people have a flight to safety. And usually safety is the U.S. dollar.

And rates should come down when these conflicts happen. But that's not what happened. Rates went up. They don't see the U.S. dollar as a haven for safety and security because we have so much debt and such a weak president. That should be concerning to all of us. And it means we're getting into this death loop. Thomas mentioned $100 billion more. We spend $800 billion just to service our debt, as much, a little bit more than we spend on our Pentagon spending, our military funding. We spend more just to service the debt. That's the interest, just the interest. You know, Sean, you mentioned how we're now having record high defaults on people's car

loan payments. I mean, think about that. People need their cars to go to work and to go to the grocery store. And so if they're going to pay anything, they're going to pay their house and they're going to pay their car so they can go to work. And so if they're defaulting on their car payments, they're in dire straits. I told you that I was in Florida last week. I was giving a speech there and I ran into a woman, very nice lady. We were kind of talking and she was telling me that her best friend owns a pawn shop and or several pawn shops. And her best friend has been telling her for months now something bad is going to happen to the economy. I have not seen as much business. So they're getting tons of people wanting to pawn stuff off. But it wasn't just the amount of business because, you know, generally pawn shops do well when the economy is doing bad. Right. But it's more than that. It's the type of customer. So it's not just poor people who are who are strapped, you know, trying to sell their

grandma's ring. It's middle class, upper middle class and rich ladies coming in and selling their jewelry. This thing is is much worse than our government is telling us. And we had that the guy from Hedgeye on the other day, if you haven't seen that podcast, you should go back and listen to it. We had a whole podcast on the economy. And he said he predicted a very even keeled, not a not a flamethrower, you know, alarmist kind of guy who said, without a doubt, America is going to face stagflation, which is means a no growth economy plus inflation, which is one of the worst scenarios we could be in. And he said, that is coming. Families need to prepare. And we asked him what we should do. And he said, everybody should be looking to cut back on everything they can right now because hard times are coming.

That was scary. Well, you know, it was. And it's really scary for working class Americans and poor families who don't have savings right now. And all of this is happening under this umbrella, under this fear that now we could be entering into a third world war that would further deplete and endanger our economic standing. So it's getting worse. We're not at stagflation yet, but you have time to prepare. Do all that you can to cut back your spending,

save as much money as you can. There was just, quickly, there was a lot of conversation that we'd be in a recession eight, 10 months ago. Didn't happen. And then there was a conversation about, well, maybe we're not going to have a recession. Maybe it's going to be a soft landing and we're going to start growing again. The more economists I talk to now,

smart people who know how to analyze this stuff better than I do. People you have on your show, the bottom line every day. They're like, we have a recession coming in the first half of next year. And the number of people who say that have gone up dramatically. I'm not saying that myself. I'm just telling you what I hear from the economists that I speak to. And the guy that we had from Hedgeye, I asked him, I said, how can this administration going

into an election allow for there to be a recession? And he said, great question. He said, we're either going to go into a recession or our government is going to do a bunch of financial magic to push it off until after the election. And whatever it is that they do is going to make that imminent, it's going to happen anyway, recession deeper and longer. So all of this bodes very badly. One other thing I want to mention to you, Sean, are sometimes it's interesting having young adults. So let me just say, an analogy here is you're speeding towards a wall and you have your foot on the gas and Joe Biden has kept his foot on the gas. The quicker you take your foot off the gas

and push on the brakes, it's going to limit less than the impact against the wall. Joe Biden hasn't taken his foot off the gas. They keep spending and racing towards the wall, which means that impact is going to be that much harder. The economy, the recession is going to get hit that much harder because Joe Biden hasn't let it come. If you know, we have older children, as you know, adult children, and they alert us about TikTok trends and things that are happening sort of in their generational pop culture. And right now, trending on TikTok videos are these influencers who are bringing back recipes from the Great Depression. So, you know, how do you make, you know, pie with just three cheap

ingredients or whatever it is, like all these different recipes and hacks, life hacks that come from the Great Depression. Why? Because young people aren't making the kind of money. They're not launching in that way. They see and feel that their paychecks aren't making it. And so they're using TikTok videos to share information on how to save money. That's another sign. The signs are all there. And we, you know, we have, you know, the president putting out inflation numbers to say, well, see, we're doing well, it's getting better. Well, it turns out that the inflation number that he put out, I think, I'm trying to remember the title, the name of this particular figure. But what it is, is they take out its inflation without food and energy costs.

It's core inflation, right. What is it called? Core inflation. So it's to see the core inflation level is blah, blah, blah. Well, he just removed food and energy, which is what hurts everybody, which is what's rising and impacting everybody's budget the most, super deceptive. And that's what I'm telling you. Moms and dads who go to the grocery store know that inflation is a real issue. They know that their wages are getting eroded by it. Interesting. They go, the inflation is down. It's like, well, no, it's not because I just went shopping today and I'm still paying more money than I did two months ago. They go, the inflation's down. It's like, well, no, it's not because I just went shopping today and I'm still paying more

money than I did two months ago. So no, inflation is still raging. And I feel it at the grocery store. I see now with oil prices going up, I'm paying more at the gas pump. And so when your dollar goes less far and you need to see what's left over so I can pay my rent or my mortgage or my car loan, something starts to give. And Sean, it's not just the money that we're giving. We would have to give to other countries if we were in a war. It's the possibility of an oil shock if the Strait of Hormuz closes

and we don't have our own energy up to speed as we would like and we're not online as much as we like. You can't snap your fingers and create more American energy and American oil production. It takes time. It takes years, major investments. And those investments haven't been made because Joe Biden is attacking American energy. So they're more fearful of making long-term investments because they don't know if Joe Biden's like, listen, we're going to be oil-free and we're going to be all electric. Well, why am I going to invest all this money in a world that's not going to produce a profit for 20 years, like the oil rig that you went out onto in the Gulf of Mexico? Those are big decisions.

And so what the president says matters. If Joe Biden said today, listen, we are going to open up the American spigot and we're going to produce as much oil as possible in this country. Which should have been the response to this war, right? And he didn't do that. And therefore, you see oil go through the roof, as opposed to, if he said that, it would go down. What would happen, Sean, if this conflict, you know, expands and there is an oil shock? What will happen to Americans? Well, we're going to pay far higher oil prices. Oil is a global commodity. So it's

supply and demand globally that dictate the price. But if you're producing more American oil, you have to care less about what's happening in areas where they are producing oil because you do it, you pump it, and you refine it yourself, which you're right. If you love your country, that is the response that any president should have. But here's the secret. Joe Biden doesn't mind high oil prices. He doesn't want to get blamed for it.

He doesn't want to lose a vote over it. But he and his administration want $7.50 a gallon gas, $8.50 a gallon gas like they're going to have in California. Because when you pay $7.50 at the pump, then he'll come and say, listen, oil is too much for you. It's too unreliable. It costs too much money. Here's the solution. You should buy an electric car that we can then dictate how far you can drive, how much energy you can put into that car, which dictates how far you can travel, when you can travel. So we have more power and control

over you. Go electric. It's going to be cheaper. But it's like solar panels, and you can produce the energy, electricity for free, is the mission that he'll say. So he wants high oil prices, high gas prices, so you'll buy an electric car. And he wants no blame for what's happening in the Middle East, though he deserves it for what he's done in Iran. And it will make us more dependent on China, and it will make his donors rich because they've already invested in all this green energy. That's right. So it's complicated times, but it didn't have to be this way. Failed leadership, bad ideas, get really nasty things to happen around the world, and people die. And people suffer when that happens.

when that happens. And this is the emblem of Joe Biden's presidency, is global chaos, high prices, and a president that bumbles and fumbles and stumbles wherever he goes, doesn't project strength. Well, too bad the Republican conference isn't projecting strength either. They're moving. They're going to get a speaker. All right. Well, let's hope so. Well, thank you They're going to get a speaker. All right. Well, let's hope so. Well, thank you to Thomas Massey for joining us. And thank you for joining us at the Kitchen Table.

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