The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 129 | ‘The Media Is an Assembly Line to Hell' | Andrew Yang | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: December 18, 2021

It didn’t take long for Andrew Yang to learn how vicious and broken the media and our two-party political system are. During his 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, he felt the system’s corruption firsthand. So now, he’s on a mission to fix it — and he started by leaving the Democratic Party behind to form a new one: The Forward Party, which he outlines in his newest book, "Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy." Yang joins Glenn for a conversation that the two-party system says should never happen, but that results in something rare: allies in the fight to prepare for the greatest upheaval mankind might ever have seen — the automation-fueled “revolution of all things.” While Glenn and Andrew debate climate change and Yang’s trademark $1,000 universal basic income proposal, they find common ground on tech, cryptocurrency, and disturbing political trends that would have the Founding Fathers rolling in their graves. Sponsor:  Preborn - Will you help rescue 10,000 babies’ lives? To donate, dial POUND 250 and say keyword “BABY.” That’s POUND 250, keyword “BABY,” or go to PreBorn.com/Glenn.  AR500 - The best day to prepare was yesterday. The second-best day is today. Protect yourself and your family now ... with AR500 Armor. Go to AR500ARMOR.com/BECK today to see this special offer, and use Code “BECK” at checkout for 20% OFF. This special offer and my promo code are just for my audience.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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to the world entire. Trouve of little enterprises like on our own.com.com. What do you offer the world? What do you want to leave behind? These things are something the questions that should be the questions

that motivate political action. But instead, political, the root word is politics. And politics is decided by shady deals between elites. And nobody really ever thinks, how do we want to leave this world and then honestly pursue that? Today's guest is not that politician. And that's what makes him an incredible politician, in my opinion. He has years of experience inside the tech bubble, which we talk about. in this podcast, a little frightening, quite honestly.

It earned him a position of the presidential ambassadors for global entrepreneurship in the Obama White House. Then he decided, hey, I know what I want to do. I want to run as a Democrat in 2020. His presidential bid is what made him a household name, but also dragged him through the mud. Watching the Democratic nominee debates, it was obvious that. that he was probably at least a decade ahead of any other presidential candidate, and nobody wanted to deal with what he was talking about.

I have for a very long time. He is talking about and writing about issues that truly matter because they are issues that we're all going to face, and people don't even know what they are, let alone, oh, that's never going to happen. He's offering solutions for now in the age, of automation. He's also taking on capitalism and a way forward

for the election. He wants to usher in capitalism, but a new kind of capitalism. He calls it human capitalism. He also thinks everybody should get $1,000 every month. These things I disagree with, but we have a fascinating conversation on. I had to boil down his message. It would be current system isn't working and things are about to get much, much worse so we need to innovate quickly. The system is broken.

The path to improvement is left or right. He says, no, it's not. It's forward. That's the name of his new book. A political party as well, founded by our guest. He outlines all of it in his book and in this podcast. notes on the future of our democracy.

Please welcome Andrew Yang. I'm going to talk to you about something uncomfortable, and it is abortion. It is the leading cause of death in the U.S. Is that crazy? Since Roe v. Wade, over 62 million babies have been aborted in the U.S. Nearly one in four pregnancies end in abortion. I met some people here recently. They're part of the ministry of preborn,

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Just a small donation makes a huge difference. To donate, dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby. That's pound 250, keyword baby, or go to preborn.com slash Glenn. Now through a match, your gift is doubled, saving twice as many babies. Do it now. Andrew, how are you, sir? Hey, Glenn. How are you?

Very good. It's good to have you. I've been fascinated by you for a very long time. And you'd never come on. We've asked for two years. You'd never come on. And I think that was probably very smart. If you were running as a Democrat, you wouldn't want me fawning on you.

But you're in now, and I think there's more in common than we have differences on. We might disagree on some policies, but I really would like to pick your brain and go deep on some topics that are very concerning to me. And they are to you as well. And they're not the topics that politicians are talking about. I would enjoy that and I suspect you're right. Okay. So first, let me just lay groundwork on one thing. I can have a conversation and this is something we didn't have to use to say.

We never had to have some sort of a litmus test to talk to each other. But if you're trying to throw out the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, I don't know where we connect. You know what I mean? so let me just ask you, do you agree with the Bill of Rights as written? Yes. Okay. So there's no tinkering with the Bill of Rights. You believe in freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and, you know, trial juries and search warrants and guns, all of that.

I believe in the Constitution on the Bill of Rights. Okay. Well, I did. Okay, good. Because I don't think anybody is. I think a lot of our problems stem from. We don't care about the Bill of Rights anymore. And our rights are being horribly, horribly violated or we're setting ourselves up for some sort of China system, it seems to me.

Let's start with just go ahead. Do you have a comment on that? I don't know. I mean, there are some very, very tough times ahead, which is what drove me to run for president in 2018. and it drives me still. I mean, anyone listening to this or watching you is probably on the same page where we don't think things are exactly heading towards a scenario we'd like to pass to our kids, truly. And it's so irritating for me.

I mean, we sent somebody out to report on your campaign at the Blaze, and the guy we sent out, he said, I watched a lot of the politicians. He said, Andrew Yang, is the most honest of all of the politicians. He said, you would go out. You would actually listen to what the other politicians would say. You'd actually listen and not have a rote answer for people that were talking to you on the sidelines. You're not a politician.

Do you consider yourself one? If I am a politician, Glenn, I'm a very accidental one and possibly a poor one. My wife comments on the fact that I'm a terrible liar. But for me, I consider myself an entrepreneur and a problem solver, and the problems just have gotten so serious that I at some point said, look, I want to contribute. I want to help. I'm not that interested in holding elected office.

I will confess that, too, that it's not like that if I could just finagle my way to some, you know, like a appointed role or elected office. You know, like I don't care about most of those things. You know, but I think that's what Americans are looking for. Partly, that was part of the charm of Donald Trump. He didn't care about all of that. He didn't grow up wanting to be president. He didn't care what anybody thought of him.

And that's really refreshing in many ways. so I think it's a point in your favor that you're a bad politician and a bad liar. I'm at a point where, and I think most people are, the problems are getting so huge, and I want to stop hearing from all of these. I'm not an agist by any stretch of the imagination. I'm older than you are, and I'm tired of these 80-year-olds who have absolutely no idea what tech even is. who are running this country like it's 1950, the world is completely changing.

And I would honestly rather talk to you or Elon Musk about solving our problems than any politician in Washington because they don't, they have no vision over the horizon, none. Well, they're not rewarded for having that vision, Glenn. One of the big themes of my book is that people are following their incentives. And unfortunately, we're at a time in American life where if everyone does the reasonable thing according to their incentives, we are sunk. Now, you'd imagine that our government leaders would have some rewards for trying to plan for the future and AI and compete against China and a bunch of other things. But it turns out their job security and their rewards have nothing to do with whether they actually are planning for the future in that way. They don't understand most of the issues because, as you say, many of them are in their 70s or even 80s. and they might not have even answered their own email,

much less reckoned with what's happening in the world, in the world of technology right now. It's not that, I mean, you know, my parents are old, my wife's parents are older. They use email. They are somewhat up to date, you know, it's not like a 20-year-old kid, but these people have been isolated and have been there forever.

They have no interest even. in any of it. Yeah, a lot of them have been in office for 20 to 30 plus years. And I do think that one of the frustrations a lot of Americans feel is that our system's not rejuvenating itself or renewing itself. You know, like you have folks who have been around for a long time running the country into the ground. And everyone's like, oh, this doesn't seem to be going well. But the system can't challenge itself. That the system is going to just keep grinding on. It's one reason why I think many people did support Donald Trump is because he represented something different. Change, really.

I think Donald Trump and Barack Obama were elected in many ways for the same reason. They both campaigned basically on change. I think that was part of Bernie's appeal, too. Bernie also represented a sort of change. Yeah. So let's talk about what's over the horizon. I want to talk to you about tech. I want to talk to you about cryptocurrency.

But what would you say the biggest problem is that we face today? Where would you start? Well, my book starts with polarization, which is that right now, the extreme points of view on both sides are whipsawing our politics and our media. And there's a whole set of people who don't feel like they have a voice in our politics, by the way, because they don't. You know, like they feel that way because it's kind of accurate. And we're realistically careening towards some version of Civil War 2.0 more quickly and

powerfully than we are leading to some kind of national renewal or coming together. I'd say that dysfunction is making it so that the other problems on the offing, like for example, China's lapping us in AI or climate change, changing our way of life. Like our government isn't able to have any kind of coherent strategy around technology or other issues because the polarization and dysfunction are so baked in. So what is the, I mean, that's why I started with the Bill of Rights. I mean, that's where government, they're handcuffed. And if they just actually did just follow those rules, a lot of our problems would go away.

A lot of our problems would go away because they're not, they are not defending them, following them. They're not promoting them. And a lot of our discontent is because the government is actually fostering this, us against them. And the media is following into that as well. If you just looked at the freedom of speech and somebody was saying, look, everyone has a right. You're not going to like it. You're not going to like it.

But they have a right to say it. They have a right to question these things. Just that alone. There's no leadership on that. So how do we get there when, as you say, everybody's incentivized to divide? Yes. Well, I want to go back to first principles when you talk about the Constitution and the founding of the country, you know it was not in the Constitution, the Republican Party

or the Democratic Party. Right. Like, you know, neither party existed. George Washington warned against it. Yes. John Adams in 1780 wrote that two parties would be an evil upon the Republic. So what we think of as carved in stone with the duopoly is, something that came into existence years and even decades later. The Republican Party didn't even

exist until the Civil War era. Yeah. Yeah, 1865. Oh, I'm sorry, 1855. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, and then, yeah, it really came into its own in the 1860s, so you're not entirely wrong. And it started out as a northern anti-slavery party, like around the Civil War era. The two parties were ideologically closer together until, the 1960s when the civil rights movement started to change things. But this duopoly we take for granted is very much a fabrication. Like they came up with it at some point later. And then when you talk about the politicization of our media,

at this point, unfortunately, media organizations have made a choice and said, look, we're going to either cater to one side or the other, because that's what the audience has now been trained to expect. So our founders would be shocked and horrified if they were to just sort of wake up and look around and be like, wait, what's going on? Like you have two parties? I think around 1820, they would have come back and said,

so when did America end? I mean, but we are way off the track. They would not believe that this is run by the Constitution that they wrote. There's no way they would believe that. Yeah, we layered in all sorts of stuff. A lot of the stuff is not serving us well at all. And I know that a lot of people that maybe watching or listening to this have a libertarian impulses. If you're a libertarian in this country, you must feel completely left out and marginalized because, you know, even though that libertarians are clearly.

The closest thing we have to a third party in the U.S., it's very difficult to so much as get on the ballot in a lot of races. You get completely locked out in the media. Like, people are just brainwashed to think that you can only have an R or a D in office in the vast majority of the country. And this is something I would love to see change. I would too, but I, you know, the problem, speaking just of libertarians, because I consider myself a libertarian, but I'm not pure enough. for other libertarians. And I never have understood that. Wait a minute.

Libertarianism should be about the freedom to be you, you know? And we're going to disagree on things, but that doesn't not make me a libertarian. That makes me somebody who thinks differently than you. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you is because I really disagree with UBI, but I see exactly the same problems on the horizon that you do. and I don't have a better answer. So I want to hear, I want to be able to talk to you about UBI

as somebody who thinks it's a horrible idea, but I also know what's on the other side. What else could we do? Can you explain the problem of why we would need a UBI? I have a lot of friends who work in Silicon Valley, tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and 95% of them are convinced that artificial intelligence is going to wipe out millions of jobs in industries around the country. And an obvious one that most people will understand and have direct experience with.

There are two million Americans who work in call centers right now, picking up the phone, customer service. And Google's AI now can do that job better, maybe right now as we're having this conversation. And so if Google's AI ends up sweeping away hundreds of thousands of jobs, what do those families do? The scenario I was warning about on the campaign trail was imagine autonomous cars and trucks where when you call Uber, just an Uber shows up behind the wheel. And that is going to happen. That will happen. Yeah, that will happen. to the extent that there are impediments in that direction, a lot of them are regulatory. You know, and one of the things that you're going to see, Glenn, is that certain industries,

let's call them doctors, are going to lobby very actively saying, no, no, no. Like, you can't have a lot of surgery. Doctors, doctors were the ones who came out against anesthesia in the 1800s because they were not good. you were based, if you did surgery, the best doctors were the fastest doctors. And so when anesthesia came, now you could finesse, well, those guys who were really fast were not necessarily the best. And they campaigned against anesthesia. That's the problem is, and that's where government always gets involved and says, well, now,

wait a minute, we'll make the, no, let it change. Let the process work its way through. Stop protecting industries that are dying. I bet you believe by 2030, maybe 2035, people will say, yeah, yeah, doc, but what did the machine say? What did the computer say? What did the AI say? Because it will be better at diagnosis than the average really good doctor. Right or wrong?

It is correct because the AI is going to be able to reference. tens of thousands of cases, you know, like the latest scholarship. I mean, there's no doctor that's going to be pouring through every last medical journal every night. You know, I mean, you're always coming up with new things. So what the doctors do is they do something very important. They pattern match. You know, they base it on the hundreds or even thousands of cases that they've seen and say, okay, this reminds me of this. This reminds me of that. But an AI can reference different sets that are more geographically disparate.

They can home in on the latest advances in a way that a human doctor can't. They have no emotion. There's no bias. They're just like, and I'd be like, well, you know, that this, these are just the facts. So even now a doctor should be consulting with an AI and getting confidence levels or probability levels being like, okay, there's an 85% chance that, you know, you should be thinking it's this. And the institutions right now are protecting doctors because the doctors are very, very powerful. I mean, this is something that I would like to see change. The other really

unconscionable thing, Glenn, we have to know, we've had a massive doctor shortage in this country for decades. You know, you go to rural areas and you have to drive two hours to get to a doctor a specialist. You know why that is? Because the AMA has been restricting supply of doctors. You know, you think there's a shortage of humans that want to be doctors? No. Do you think there's a shortage of a need for doctors? No. So what it is is the medical lobby said, you know what, let's like cap the number of doctors. Let's make sure you can't open new medical schools. Like there's a lot of stuff going on that serves an industry well, but doesn't necessarily serve the public. So that's why we came here in the first place.

I mean, originally the Pilgrims because of church. We don't want that church. We want our own church. We want to be left alone. And when we had a new country, it was easy to get rid of all of that stuff, but we didn't keep it.

So there's no place for us to go unless you're on Elon Musk's spaceship. How do you reset this system to get rid of all of the cronyism without destroying it, without completely burning it down. That is the question.

That is the project, Glenn, and I have a plan. I'm the man with a plan. So, oh, yeah. So right now, there's a higher appetite for a third party or moving on from the duopoly than there has been ever, essentially. Almost two-thirds of Americans say they want a choice. aside from one of the two major parties. Independence are the most numerous group in terms of self-identification relative to Republicans or Democrats.

This is particularly true, by the way, among young people. Young people are allergic to the two major parties. I think the only difference between many young people and maybe people of my age, and there's fewer on my age, but there's still a lot. the only real difference was we've seen the libertarian party and the green party and everybody else try it over and over and over and over again and they never get traction and so i mean with youth comes a little more optimism what is going to set this movement apart from any of those other movements that would that marveled at six percent of the vote yeah so the the problem

is very very fundamental check it out is that if you run as a Republican or Democrat, then you have a lot of voters who are conditioned to vote for you. You have media organizations that will support you and elevate you, and then you have a donor network that will enable you to run and compete. If you try and run as a libertarian or a Ford party or anything else, then none of those things exist. like the votes, the media, the money are not in place to support you. Also, by the way, the mechanics work against you because the two parties have made it very, very difficult even to get on the ballot as another party in a lot of districts. So in that environment, then it's extraordinarily difficult to try and compete.

So how do we do it? What is the plan? The plan is to actually go and change the mechanics at the state level. so that different points of view can emerge and you have a chance to compete in a more genuine way. It turns out because our founding fathers were not into political parties, nothing in the Constitution about it,

all of the inventions and fabrications around the two parties are at the state level. The states have set it up so that you have certain rules. And so you can change it without an act of Congress. Hang on. You agree with it. that, right? Elections held at the state level. Federal government should not be doing it. Yeah, I'm going to suggest in this case, this is our saving grace. Because the fact is, if you had to try and get

something through the U.S. Congress, you know. The other reason why I ask that is because there's a push to federalize all that, which would be a nightmare. You're right. The system is broken and it's broken in the state level. So that's every state needs to start. Everybody who wants a free election should be standing up right now in their state and saying get rid of all of that stuff. Let these things run free and fair. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's exactly right. This is our hope, Glenn, that enough Americans stand up and go to their state legislators or in half of the states around the country, you don't even need the state lawmakers to get on board. You can have a ballot initiative. You just get enough. people in Alaska or Missouri or Massachusetts or wherever and just say, look, we'd like to change it so that

anyone can run from any party in the election and may the best person win. And we can vote for whomever we want. There's no spoiler effect. There's no like, oh, you made the bad people win. You just set it off. set it up so it's an open, nonpartisan primary, and then you have instant runoff so that people can vote for whomever they like. And believe it or not, one state already made this change. Alaska made this change last year. Just a bunch of Alaskans got together and said, we're sick of the parties. We're sick of a tiny minority controlling everything. Let's make it so that it's a true democracy. Like, you know, people from any point of view can run. And so we can do what they did in Alaska and states around the country. And that is our hope, Glenn. If we get enough people, Americans standing up and saying we're sick and tired of this mess, this dysfunction, we can flip this switch. And then if you flip the switch in, let's call it, I don't know, six, eight states around the country, then a state like New York, where I live is going to be shamed, wherever it's going to be like, wait a minute.

Like, why is it that other states have it so that you could vote for anyone of any party? And here in New York, it's just like, you know, Democrat, Democrat, Democrat. at. So this is our path out. And I would love for us to get some real-life examples of more states following Alaska's lead in 2022 so that then this wave can take place around the country and free us from the madness. So that's the project of the Forward Party, is to enable true lowercase D democracy in states around the country as quickly as we can. Well, that would be good. And I would support you and I campaign with you for that. I mean, I

think that's really, that is the answer to most of our problems. People have been cut out. The decision is made, you know, long before people actually vote. I mean, they still have the right to vote for the individual, but I have a

I'm building a museum of American history and it includes all the good things and the bad things. And one of them is a ballot ballot from Alabama. And the Democrats were trying to say, no, no, no, we're not racist. Blacks can vote, except they can't vote in the primary. And so we have a ballot of the Alabama white primary.

So an African American could not vote in the primary, but hey, vote for any white person you want after that. I mean, that stuff has to stop. Yeah, there's a famous quote from William boss Tweed, who ran the New York political machine, where he said, you can do the electing as long as I get to do the nominating, which, by the way, is exactly what's happening and races around the country. It's like, oh, you can show up their boat after we've made it so that, frankly, you know,

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AR-500 Armor.com slash Beck. When you visit AR-500armor.com slash back, you're going to find special ready-to-go bundles that they've built just for you up to 50% off. If you, If you're new to body armor, AR500 armor has you covered. They have a dedicated page with a ready to go layout based on whatever scenario you might need. Better yet, they're running their nine-year anniversary sale right now, sales up to 50% off so you and your family are protected. Use the promo code Beck and get 20% off everything else in their store to ensure you're well protected. AR500 armor.com slash Beck. I don't think you're a Democrat, but you were a Democrat.

When the Democrats saw what happened with Ronald Reagan, he was a complete outsider. He comes in, he wins in 1980. The Democrats, the first thing they do is put in the, what do they call it, the super majority or the super delegate. Wait, so the people can say one thing, but then this handful of picked by the party politicians can override that? I mean, we've been going in that direction for a long time. There is a very legitimate gripe in the Democratic Party where they,

you know the DNC sandbag Bernie both times. It's like that like they really are not content to let the people actually choose someone. It's like, well, you got to choose like the person we think is right. How were you ever a Democrat? How was I ever a Democrat? I will say, Glenn, I've been an independent now for a couple of months and I really enjoyed the heck out of my interest. I just want to believe in big government. I don't believe in big government.

The Republicans are big government, but the Democrats are like Stalin-sized government, crazy-sized government. So I'm a big fan of trying to solve problems in the best way possible. Well, it's one reason why I'm for something like universal basic income because I think that people are better situated to be able to make their own decisions. And, you know, like if you have economic resources in their hands, I do think there's an appropriate place for government on things that, frankly, you know, like no individual or even set of individuals can solve or something like climate change, which I, by the way, I think is a very big real problem. But what I'd love to see is the government get out of our way for the things that it should be getting out of our way for. and then do a better job on the things that it purports to be about. Because right now, the frustration that I think a lot of Americans feel is that you have the government not doing the things it's supposed to do well. And then sticking its nose into things that it also is it.

Like, the government's not good at a lot of things. And we have to try and focus on its core competencies. I guess I sound like a business guy when I talk like that. That's pretty much what I am. Let's go to climate change for a second. I agree climate change is real. I just don't buy any of these answers that we're getting. You know, if you actually care about climate change, if you believe the carbon stuff, carbon capture is getting better and better, nuclear energy is your silver bullet.

You don't want any of that. now the government through the World Economic Forum and is starting to control the banks and public-private partnerships. And it's, we have made so much progress in the United States. And yes, we're not moving at lightning speed. But I think that's because partly it's been so politicized that you've got the same groups going at it with each other. The free market is the solution. I agree on nuclear energy. I agree on carbon capture.

I actually champion nuclear energy in the Democratic primary and got beaten up for it. Because I think that that is where the numbers lead you. Yes. And it's a very, it's a safest form of energy ever created by man. Yeah. It's a very safe, sustainable source of energy. Right. And so that that is the problem is that some of the stuff gets politicized where you can be like, oh, I'm for sustainability.

It's like, okay, good. It's like, I'm for nuclear. It's like, well, no, it's the wrong form. And you're like, well, like, why is that? Right. Right. Exactly. Right.

And then the objections tend to be a bit more image based and ideological than around anything that I saw data for, you know, like when when you ask people those questions, sometimes you would get arguments that weren't very convincing. What specific? Like when I would say, hey, I'm for nuclear and then people like, oh, nuclear bad. And I'd like, why do you think nuclear is bad? And then they would provide arguments that I was like, well, that's not really a reason why nuclear is. Right. It's not even true at all.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So let me go back. We were at UBI and we were talking about people losing their jobs. And you were talking about Uber drivers. I just heard the first song, I think, that the singer, the lyrics, the music, and the singer, all AI. And I'm telling you, I couldn't.

How was it? It was good. It was good. I mean, I could not believe. And I've been watching, especially the vocal synthesization for a while. You can't. It's not ready for prime time yet. But I'm telling you, it was amazing what I heard.

So what jobs are? I get $1,000 a month. But what am I doing? What job will I do? What job will not be taken over by AI? In my ideal version of the WorldClan, people are able to do things that give them purpose and structure and fulfillment, even if it may not be necessarily like driving, you know, GDP or,

innovation. And so an example I use in my book, The War on Normal People, is let's say that you had a town of 10,000 people, everyone was getting a thousand bucks a month so that you all of a sudden had another $10 million in buying power going through that town. And then someone decided that they wanted to start a bakery. Well, the bakery now makes a lot more sense because all the people in the town have a little bit extra money to spend. And you also know if your bakery fails, then you're not going to die because you can be like, oh, I can just go home and at least survive and figure it out. And so that town would have a bakery, I'm sure, but it would also have, you know, like a nonprofit, a religious organization that gets more support, like maybe a mixed martial arts dojo. Like people would, like people would be doing things.

And then if you say, well, you know, that bakery or that mixed martial arts dojo doesn't matter in the scheme of trying to drive our GDP to the moon, it'd be like, well, who cares? You know, it's like you have it, you have people doing things that they'd find worthwhile and exciting. And one example I'll use in real life too is that I spend some of my time in a college town. And college towns look a certain way in part because there's just some, you know, kids with money walking around who like want to get a beer on Friday night or, you know, I think that if you had UBI, you would actually have more towns resemble college towns. because people would just have some more money in their pockets. So don't disagree with that, but let me take you to the opposite side. You then have the top of the very top controlling AI, controlling all of this stuff. You know, you want to talk about the ability to influence people, get them to behave in any way you want.

you put it up into the Silicon Valley tech leadership and what's right on the horizon, what they're already doing in China, you've got a very dangerous situation. How do you not have those who are getting the $1,000 and doing their little thing in their little town and that gap, gulf between that and those who can really control the strings? Oh, we need to tackle that problem, too, in a very, very serious way. And one of the arguments I make in my book that's related to what you're describing with Facebook's ability to control our democracy and subvert free will on some level is that they sell our data for $200 billion a year every year. And we're becoming like rats in a maze. that's wrong. It should stop. If we decide to have someone access our data for our own convenience, it should still be ours. I can loan it to you. If you're going to or sell it to you, if you're going to make money off it too, I should get a cut. I should actually get more than a cut. I should get most of it. So this is a movement around data rights and data privacy and data autonomy.

that needs to get made yesterday, where these social media companies right now are almost like governments unto themselves. And they've been taking advantage of this massive, massive, frankly, just failure on the part of our leaders to understand what the heck was going on. They looked up and said, hey, you know, and there was a period too.

I mean, people probably sense, like, I like technology, I like progress, But man, we completely let them eat democracy's lunch, shall we say. We just like eating up everything. And it's high time that the pendulum swings the other way. And you look up and say, look, wait, what's going on? You have like a trillion dollar franchise because of some rules that were written before your company even existed. Like, does this make any sense?

So let me two parts of this question. One, horse is already out of the barn on that one. that back, the rights to my own intellectual data is, it seems obvious to me, but the horse is already out of the barn. How are you going to do that? Second part of that is, when you're looking at, hang on now, I forgot the second part. Answer the first part, and I'll remember the second part of the question. Sure thing. I'd love to tackle the first part. All right, check it out. So once again, the hope comes at the state level where if you want Congress to pass data rights legislation,

well, first I will suggest that there are good examples going on in the EU, where the EU has been passing various rules saying, look, tech companies access your data, they have to do X, Y, and Z. There is now this thought that people are going to get paid for the use of their own data, which I would suggest would be very, very positive. So it is possible. The EU is showing that. Here in the U.S., Congress is, as you'd imagine, out to lunch.

And so one state has passed data rights legislation and created a consumer data protection agency and enabled individuals to have organizations bargain for their data rights collectively. So you could have data unions. You could have, you know, like a representative come and say, okay, like if you're going to do this and you have to pay our members, this and this and this and that. That state is California. They passed data rights law last year. And now they're putting the agency together. And so the argument that I would make to people listening to this is like, why do Californians have more data protection rights than you do? You know, like at the state level, they should just take, if they want to just be lazy, which I have nothing against laziness, I'm an entrepreneur.

And like entrepreneurs often just frankly take ideas from someplace else. Like, if you just take the California rule, Montana, and just be like, hey, why don't we just adopt this too? Then, you know, you too can have more protection for your consumers. Everyone in your state will be happy. Like, is anyone in your state going to be unhappy that all of a sudden that they have more rights and protections to how their data gets used? So hopefully we can make it so that that California rule is the, like the start of a wave. I was part of passing that California referendum. It was a ballot initiative, essentially.

And then if enough states do it, then maybe Congress will get its act together. How do you turn that congressional wave when you have Congress and the administration and everybody else not even giving you a right to what you inject into your own bloodstream? I mean, we're losing the right not only of our mind, And what we do, you know, in cyberspace, we're losing the right to actually say, no, you're not putting that into my body. Well, again, I don't think Congress is going to be the answer for a lot of these things. I feel like the progress can be made at the state level where the incentives are different. If enough Americans get together and say, look, like, I want data protection. I want this sort of ability to make certain kinds of choices.

I want to be able to choose a candidate from any party to support or just have an eye next to their name as an independent. That's really the saving grace. And one of the frustrations I think a lot of people share is that our politics have really become nationalized in a particular way. And I, as you can probably tell, like I'm just trying to get stuff done. I'm very practical. And so if you sense that it's not going to happen in D.C., then you have to try and make it happen at the state level.

What California does is California's business. You don't like it. Move. I know that's horrible, but I shouldn't Texas should not be able to influence California. A couple of problems with that on the state level, on the federal level is the change that the progressives made with the Senate. But on the other level is at some point, I've always wanted to live in California, but it's run by crazy people. And I know that that state is going to fail at some point if they stay on this same course.

It's unsustainable. I chose not to live there, but when it fails, I'm going to be taxed to pay for it. And as far as I'm concerned, Californians, you voted for it, you wanted it. we should not have everybody else bail you out because of those bad decisions. Nobody learns anything. Do you agree with that? Because you can't have the 10th Amendment right for the states if there's no penalty if it doesn't work. I think that it's fair to say, look, another state can make a decision and it shouldn't necessarily, you know, like have any repercussions.

like across the country, think that's very reasonable. I do think that California right now is a net payer, like that they have a massive economy. I would recommend living there at some point, Glenn. It's like a very pleasant place to live. I mean, you know, you can have a lot. I mean, I understand the concerns you might have, and I've actually spoken on my podcast about them.

Yeah, my concern is paramount as a business owner, taxes. it's impossible. I lived in New York City for a while. It took me a year or a year and a half to build two studios up there. I took the Paramount lot in Texas and changed it to a digital space in a week in Texas. I didn't have to jump through all these kinds of hoops that they had me and jumping through in New York. I mean, it's impossible to do business in some of these states. Yeah, no, the red tape is out of control in certain parts of the country.

The concern that I articulated in my podcast not that long ago was around some of like the rising theft and crime rates in parts of the Bay Area where, you know, like I walked into a Walgreens and it got robbed in front of me. and then a week later, Walgreens announced they were closing a number of Walgreens in the Bay Area. Some of these things are having very, very negative impacts. And then, you know, when people are moving with their feet to your suggestion. That's not a crime problem. That's a policy problem. That's a problem with the politics, the policies that these people have put in. It's not, it's, you don't have more criminals there than any other place.

You're just not enforcing the law. You're saying you can steal up to this amount. We won't call the police. Well, yeah, as you can tell, I disagree with that approach. And I, I agree with you that there is like, uh, uh, leadership issue. Yeah. Yeah. Um, talk to me about the, the thing that really concerns me is,

um the fed if you read any of their their papers the treasury and the fed they're very much into a fed coin which completely defeats the idea and the the the real love for um something like bitcoin they would control it they would print it it would be full faith and credit of the united states which means nothing um and

I have a hard time. I own Bitcoin. I believe in Bitcoin. I want Bitcoin or others to be able to work. But that's an awful lot of power for the government to let go. Do you see cryptocurrency actually surviving China, the United States and Europe coming up with their own coin to be able to control cash and control people? I certainly hope so. I'm a big proponent of cryptocurrencies generally, Bitcoin in particular, and you're right that the incentive among certain government actors is going to be to try and kill it. You know, there's been a clear tendency among certain treasury officials to try and go in that direction. And I tweeted not that long ago that, look, if you have a trillion dollar, industry that could define the future and create thousands of jobs, try not to screw it up.

You know, like that to me is fairly common sense. I want the forward party to be an interface for the cryptocurrency community in D.C. Because to your earlier point, a lot of folks in D.C. have no understanding or grasp at all on blockchain or the potential of this technology to help democracy function, help make it so that you don't have so much red tape. You can actually trust. Imagine a world where you could vote for anyone you wanted from your smartphone and know that it was hacker proof and the rest of it.

I mean, like these things are things that are conceivably possible if we invest in these technologies instead of seeing them as some kind of threat. So the forward party hopefully will end up trying to bring some kind of sensible integration of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into the financial system. I'm not someone who thinks that, you know, it's realistic to expect there to be no regulation or no taxation. But you have to try and make it so that they're sensible and don't kill innovation and jobs and an immense amount of value creation that could be at the table. innovation. We talked about global warming a little bit. I am, I mean, I have a house completely off the grid and it's all clean energy. I can afford it. Clean energy at this point is unstable and very expensive to make it stable. The idea that we are going to get rid of cars and be a green, economy and shut down our coal plants and our nuclear plants by 2030 is insane. Shouldn't we be looking for the things that actually work and then help foster those things

without getting into the free market, just get those prices to get the work, get the prices to go down, which is all through innovation, and get the government. out of it. I don't see how we're going to have electric cars if we don't have coal plants in 2030. I agree with you. We should be trying to build on what works. I did have the pleasure of sitting down with Elon Musk to talk about what the heck we should be doing in this space. And he's a huge believer in solar, which makes sense. And he explained the potential of solar energy to me. And he kind of kind of painted a picture more effectively. But I'm with you that you should be making decisions

based upon an effective transition and not for political purposes. You can tell that there are some people who look at it and just say certain form of energy bad, certain form of energy good, let's get rid of the bad, especially when in many cases, there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who are doing jobs in a particular area.

And anyone who thinks that we're going to magically be able to transition tens of thousands of people some other role, like, hasn't actually spent any time in a freaking, you know, like, you know, coal town, manufacturing town, et cetera. It's like, it's like thinking, spend time thinking. It's almost that bad. You don't have to be in a cold town to get it. You just have to think. 20 years ago, I said, we're going to approach a time that is going to be as dramatic, if not more so, and I believe now more so, than the entire industrial revolution. But it's all going to happen in about a 10-year period.

And I think we're at the beginning of that period. And people have no idea what's coming. You can't make these kinds of changes to everything all at once and expect that everything's going to be fine. I completely agree with you, Glenn. And when you said before where you agreed with me, the diagnosis of the problem and then you weren't you know you're negative on ubi as a solution and you're still trying to work out what the solution is i've had versions of that conversation

with hundreds even thousands of people over the last number of years where they're like okay i get it i get that AI is going to start replacing not just call center workers or uber drivers but eventually bookkeepers uh insurance agents yeah actuaries like you know is it like doctors it'll keep on just eating through things and what the heck are we going to do? And I'm saying we should begin the wholesale transition for society and also by the way, be realistic about how lousy our government is

trying to address these problems at scale and let people solve their own problems and say, look, we're going to take some of the incredible gains from AI and the rest of it, just distribute it to everyone in the form of like a $1,000 dividend a month. Now there are people like you who look at it and say, okay, I don't like that particular solution. Go ahead. I do like that solution because it's my data that they've been mining. That's what Google was for.

Yes, that is exactly right. So they've been mining. They built AI on all of us searching on Google and other and doing other things. Absolutely. That's my data. You didn't pay me for it. We should all own that. I have no problem with that. Yeah. Oh, the data dividend. That was my argument where I said, look, what is the oil of the 21st century? It's our data.

And just like they have an oil dividend in Alaska, we should have a data dividend for everyone. I even started something called the Data Dividend Project that's trying to make that happen in the near term. But we should be doing that. And that to me would be one way we can manage what's going to be a halacious transition period. I mean, this is one of the things I was arguing about in my last book is like, look, if you did everything right, this is going to be a very, very difficult time.

But we are doing very little right, which is going to take a very difficult time and make it potentially catastrophic. So when you see what is, you know, you know who Ray Kurzweil is. Do you know him? Yeah. Okay. I don't know, Ray. Oh, you don't? I think he is.

I mean, I don't know him personally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I know his, yeah. So I said to him at one point, you are the most fascinating and exhilarating mind I have been with. At the same time, the spookiest damn mind I've been with. Because his logic is, we just won't do that. When you bring up anything that could be a bad thing, well, we just won't do that. That's like Google say, don't be evil.

Yeah, well, you kind of are. And you look at what is on the horizon. Do you believe in the singularity that we will actually hit the singularity or not? I believe that there will be some artificial generalized intelligence coming down the pike that can do things better than we can. in a certain time frame AGI but not A-S-I? That would be a fair characterization of where I am, yes. Where at least in the time frame I'm imagining.

And I know as soon as you get an AI that can improve itself, then that improvement can take place in an eye-blank. Correct, yeah. And then you wind up at Ray's singularity pretty quickly. But I'm, less concerned about that that version of like the super intelligence than I am of the steps on the path there where I think that you can have something fall short of real general intelligence that is still powerful enough to upend the labor market and the way of life for millions of people. So that that's where a lot of my attention is. So then let's stay there because my point on, you know,

with Ray is, oh, we just won't do that. Well, China is doing it. China doesn't even have, you know, has AI, not AGI. And look at what China is doing. And we are building the same kind of framework here. And it's really disturbing. Just leaving it at AI, not AGI. And it is a powerful force that can enslave people.

Yep. So I agree with you and I also agree with your critique of Ray's general optimism that there's a strain of techno-utopianism that assumes the absence of ill intent that I find unrealistic. I do too. I mean, I've read a history book. Expecting men to be saints is a really bad idea. So you and I are aligned, Glenn, it turns out, on this set of. issues where I look at them be like, guys, this is going to be a fiasco. You know, like if we do get to that level of AI, it's going to probably be used for something we're not excited about, like very, very quickly. And the steps on the way there are each also going to be. I'll tell you one thing too, Glenn, like I ran for president.

And my concern level has gone up in the level. two and a half years, in part because of my interactions with the news media, where it turns out, so I would talk regularly about the fact like, look, we've lost four manufacturing, four million manufacturing jobs over the last number of years in, by the way, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, the swing states that the Democrats need to win and used to win, Missouri, like, you know, used to be a swing state. And a lot of those four million manufacturers, manufacturing jobs were lost due to automation. And I would have conversations with various media outlets about this.

And it was like I was speaking in the language. Like it didn't matter at all. And there was part of me that would think to myself as like, hey, would it matter if I said $8 million, $10 million? Like it's like throw a number out there. Like it seems immaterial to you. It is the scariest thing. It's the scariest thing.

I used to give the media the benefit of the doubt. And then I actually got into the inside. both of CNN and Fox, it's scary as hell. Scary as hell. The lack of intellectual curiosity on some of the biggest people in media is staggering. You could talk to them and it just, it's like you're not even there anymore, are you? You're not even listening to me, are you? You're just waiting to ask the next question that maybe, maybe you wrote down, but probably your producer wrote down.

It's become an assembly line. And it's become an assembly line to hell. I mean, I shouldn't, you know, it's really that dark. And I had the experience over and over again where I'd be like, hey, guess what? Like, we did a number on these communities and we're almost certainly going to do the same thing to a lot of other communities. Like, what do you think? And people would, you know, people would have the expression you described where it's like, this is interesting. let me get to the next question.

And I connected with enough Americans where they started to hear what I was saying and say, wait a minute. Like I think the Asian guy is on to something. And oh, by the way, he doesn't seem like a politician. And like he seems to be saying these things because he believes them. And I don't get the sense from him that he's, you know, like a maligned narcissist. And so, you know, that's pretty much my campaign in a nutshell. is like I was trying to be what Joe Rogan called me, like the Paul Revere of automation.

Mm-hmm. You are. You are. So I'm trying to imagine how those debates were so frail. I know I've been talking about, I've been beating a dead horse for a while on a few things that are really quite frightening that nobody will pay attention to. and I know I stand in a room full of people and they're talking about garbage. I have a really hard time. Ben Franklin said, I think in 1774, I can't go to parties anymore.

I can't talk to people anymore. The times are too important. And I go to places and they're just talking about, you know, frivolous stuff and it drives me out of my mind. what was it like to be in the belly of that beast being the Paul Revere and having all these people act like you were the crazy one? The day to day, Glenn, was exciting because I found my message was connecting with the American people and I would do events when I wasn't in front of a TV camera. I would do a rally in Iowa or I do a rally.

in New Hampshire and hundreds of people would show up and I'd think like oh like this is connecting you know we can do this we can do this so to take the Paul Revere metaphor further like I was on my horse and then you'd go in and sure I'd have media interviews where I was like well you know like I hope that reached somebody but then I would talk to real life flesh and blood Americans in their hometowns and I felt like it was working and so when I I would ride around, I mean, it wasn't a horse, it was like a rental vehicle, but you know, I'd like to be dry or in Iowa, it was a bus. It had horse power. But I felt like I was almost channeling something else for those weeks and months, invigorated.

And I tell people that it was only after we failed to make a certain threshold in Iowa, New Hampshire, did I feel like. You know, I went from being on horseback to walking on the ground myself again. And I was joking that I felt like I was like William Wallace and Braveheart or something where I was like riding around on horseback and in slow motion for a while there. And then it was only after we didn't hit our goals that I was like on the ground looking for my helmet. Let me talk to you a little bit about on your campaign, riding the horse, feeling like you are making an impact. You had the help of Dave Chappelle.

And you had some, the people who cut through, you know, Joe Rogan, Chappelle. Chappelle actually campaigned with you. And those people, they are attracting your kind of person. What happened? Why no impact or very little impact? A lot of it, Glenn, is that I was going through a Democratic primary, where if you look at the Joe Rogan audience, it's enormous. You look at the Dave Chappelle audience.

It's enormous. how many of those people were Democratic caucus goers in Iowa or to a lesser extent? It's more inclusive, the second group, but Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire. There was one poll I saw that was interesting. It had me at something like 14% of support in the general population. I also was the candidate that people want to. to have a beer with the most. I won the Iowa youth vote. I had various strains of support that unfortunately did not overlap that heavily with the Democratic primary electorate,

which is one reason why I'm now so passionate, and this is not self-serving, it's just because you know, I've been through this process now, that we need to open it up. We need to make it so that everyone can vote in these primaries because if you just subject it to folks who are traditional democratic voters, you're going to have a different outcome. But would you agree? And I'm the math guy. Would you agree? I just want to point out that in Iowa, like the percentage of people that actually

voted in the caucus was something like 6%. And so, you know, like when I would walk around Iowa State, there would be a lot of kids who'd be excited about me, maybe because they saw the Joe Rogan podcast. I have a hunch that a lot of them didn't show up on caucus night because they might not have been, you know, traditional Democrats. Right. So, but do you think with forward being a third party, would you have restrictions on anyone? So anyone could cross party lines and vote in your primary? Or would you have to be somebody that says, I want to vote in this primary, not, you know, not, not.

in the Democrat and the Republican and forward. Thanks to the question, Glenn. The process that we're fighting for is a completely open primary, where you can show up and you can vote for whomever you want under the sun. And so it's not that there is a same day. Same day. Just like everyone just shows up and yeah. And then in our ideal world,

then like the top five candidates from any party go through to an instant runoff. And this is the system they've implemented in Alaska, though I think they had top four instead of five. But we just don't believe in closed party primaries. Like the last thing I want is for the forward party to have another closed party primary. I want people to come in and just be able to vote for whoever they think is best. And try and vote for the candidate and not the letter next to their name. So really, you know, it's messing. Go ahead.

But really hard to do, Andrew. And you know this. I'm assuming it's one of the reasons why during the primary you didn't come on here is you wouldn't want to be associated with my point of view or have my praise because you knew the left, the Uber Uber left or the media would take it and just drag you through the mud. The interesting thing about I started this podcast to have people that can agree on a set of principles, the Bill of Rights.

But now we might not agree on anything else, but we can leave with respect for one another and understand what the other person is actually thinking. That's not happening in America. If you are a Republican, you are for big business, you know, no taxes for the rich. You don't care about the poor and let's just have another war. Well, I don't agree with any of those things, any of them. And people put me in the category of Republican. And that's not how I would describe a Republican either. So how do you do an open primary when it's, you know, nuclear energy, bad, solar, good.

Well, that is the key to this. And in these states, and I'm actually going to have fun right now, I just have the list of states. I'm not going to do it entirely, but it's like Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Idaho. that these are all states where if enough people got together and said, hey, let's change it to an open primary, then you can make it happen. Now, is that easy? No, it's hard. But I just want people listening to this to imagine a process where then you can run from any party

and you can vote for whomever you want. Do you think more people would care about politics? The fact is right now, 83% of these races are safely Democratic and safely Republican, so you know your vote does not matter. If you're a Republican in lots of New York state, for example, like, you know it doesn't matter. And so then when people try and convince you, it's like, oh, like vote, it matters. You're like, well, for some reason I get the sense that my vote's kind of irrelevant. And it is irrelevant in 83% of the country.

What you have to do is make it so that people are actually competing and contesting for our support. And it's not just, okay, I got appointed by the insiders of my party. I'm going to have the money. And so now everyone knows it's going to be me and there's like no suspense in the general. And like it's it's not a real democracy, Glenn. Like right now we have like a simulated democracy when you start getting into the nuts and bolts of it. Now that you've said it this way, I have to. Because I've wanted to say something about three times.

We're not a democracy. We're a republic. And that is a huge important difference that I always made fun of people who used to say that. until recently because now I'm like, no, there is a really, there is a big difference. But you're right. We are not, the people are not selecting their representative. It's not. They're pre-selected in many, in many ways.

Yeah. Yeah, and that's one of the interesting ingredients about my run is that people knew I was not selected. Right. Right. But you've left one part out of this equation, even though we've talked about it, The other part of the equation is not just opening it up so everyone can run and you could vote for anyone. This republic can't be kept by an ignorant, especially a self-imposed ignorant group of people.

Our media is corrupt. Our schools are corrupt. and our intellectual curiosity on the average person also seems to be going down. They don't know even how to critically think. So doesn't that have to be part of the solution? How do people get their message out in this transition? I agree with your characterization of the problems. I think we need to elevate independent,

voices that aren't of the corporate media. And it's something that I would love to help with. When you talk about folks like Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle who helped me get my message out, one of my beliefs now, Glenn, is that people don't trust institutions anymore, but they do trust certain people. Like a lot of people trust you. A lot of people trust Dave. A lot of people trust Joe. You know, a lot of people trust Barry Weiss.

I mean, whoever it is. So if we were to elevate that type of voice, I think that we would have a chance to rebuild some degree of trust and cohesion. Coherence, really. Coherence would be the right work. They're already, I mean, you know, my platform, we beat CNN almost every night. you know, if there were actual ratings, I can see what's behind the paywall. I can see their ratings. We beat them almost every night. It's the trust is already being built with those people.

It's the legitimizing because the mainstream media has spent so much time de-legitimizing somebody like Barry Weiss. So that's what I'd love to help reverse. And I agree with you that by the numbers, you're right. Like a lot of the people I just named have. I mean, Joe Rogan is smashing, you know, audiences on network TV all the time. And this is part of the distortion, too, Lynn, where you have a mainstream media narrative, and then it plays into the duopoly. And then you have this undercurrent of all these people that are questioning it and trying to figure out,

okay, like, how do we change things? And the forward party is the way that we can make our politics actually mirror what the people are seeing and what they want. And right now there is this disconnect that threatens to destroy us, truly, where it's like, hey, there are a lot of you and you recognize that this is not true. And you recognize that the fix is in, but you don't have a choice. Like, we're going to try and make it so that you feel like, you know, you're going to have to vote for either A or B. And I'm suggesting it's like, you know what? I think the American people at this point. One of the arguments I make, too, Glenn, Ross Perot got 19.3% of the vote in 1992 in a more trusting time, I'm going to suggest. An independent, I know who is considering running for president in 2020, he obviously didn't go through with it.

But he pulled himself at 25% this past cycle. I think that if you had a credible independent running in 24, they, start out at 20 to 25% if the, you know, if the Democratic and Republican field looks like, looks like it did in 2020. So there's this, this continuing upswing in people that are questioning the mainstream media narratives. You can see it in your audiences. You can see it in, you know, Joe's and Berries and everyone else's. And the question is, how does that start reflecting itself in our politics? Well, I will tell you that it is, a terrifying time to be alive and an exhilarating time to be alive. And the only reason why it's

terrifying is because I have no idea how it ends. Are we in that 10-year period that I talked about with the Industrial Revolution, this revolution of all things? Do you think we're in that period yet? Yeah, yeah. We definitely are. And the pandemic sped it up. One of the things that you saw very clearly is that a number of companies invested a lot more in automation over the last 24 months. When do the average, when does the average American really begin to feel it and go, oh, I know that. I know what's going. I see it now. The next several years, in my opinion, we actually are already feeling it in different ways. If you look at the labor force participation rate, It has been low and sputtering and declining for a number of years now.

It's in the low 60s, maybe even high 50s. I'd have to double check. But when I looked into it a couple of years ago, our peer countries were El Salvador in the Ukraine in terms of the labor force participation rate. And that's getting worse, not better. We were down something like four million jobs. the last I checked. And someone told me it was like the equivalent of the labor force of Pennsylvania disappearing from the workforce.

So it's here with us now, Glenn. It's spreading in different ways. The thing I have to try and remind people is that it's not like you're going to go to work one day and then there's going to be a robot sitting in your chair. It's what happened. Or even then you go to the mall and there's like a. robot kiosk, though there is probably a robot kiosk in your mall at this point. It's more likely that the mall just closed and the robot was in the Amazon fulfillment center, you know, like across the state. Correct. Correct. Correct. You are fascinating. I wish you the best. I hope you

come on again. You have a, I think you have an important voice and important role in our future. And I which more people would listen to you. I'm grateful. And I want to take you up on this offer to campaign at the state level. I mean, like, let's freaking free our electorate. So I would love to team up with you. I'm looking at these states right now, looking at places where maybe you and I could team up. But thank you.

I really enjoyed the conversation. And I apologize that it's taking me so long to get here. For what it's worth, you know, I actually had no. Oh, I know that. That those decisions were just running around on a bus. There is no hard feelings. And every time I would ask, I'd say to our Booker, can you just ask Andrew if you'd come on again? And she'd look at me and she'd say, they're going to say no again.

And I said, they should say no. But just in case, one of them has a mental lapse. Because I just don't think it would have been to your advantage to be on during the primary. So even your people I give a pass to. Well, thank you. And yet another wonderful thing about not being a Democrat anymore, Glenn. I can talk to whoever the heck I want. And I got to say, this is not the last time you guys sit down for sure.

Appreciate it. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.