The Pomp Podcast - #528: Catalina Lauf on Freedom

Episode Date: April 6, 2021

Catalina Lauf is running for election to the U.S. House to represent Illinois' 16th Congressional District. She previously served as an advisor at the US Department of Commerce. In this conversation, we discuss misinformation, term limits, social media censorship, gun rights, immigration, free enterprise, law and order, and education.  ======================= Public Rec is the first to bring tailored sizing to leisurewear so that you don’t have to choose between comfort and style. They make leisurewear in waist and inseam sizes because they believe comfort starts with a better fit. And when things fit better, they look better. No tailors. No settling. No stress. Comfort and style, all in one. Check out publicrec.com/pomp and use POMP10 at checkout for 10% off your order. Step into a better fit today with Public Rec. ======================= As one of the largest and oldest Bitcoin exchanges in the world, Kraken is consistently named one of the best places to buy and sell crypto online, thanks to our excellent service, low fees, versatile funding options and rigorous security standards -- but this is only part of the story. We’ve been on the forefront of the blockchain revolution since 2011: http://www.kraken.com ======================= Coinbase Wallets are adding support for .crypto and .zil domains through their partnership with Unstoppable Domains. Unstoppable Domains provides an all-in-one solution for blockchain domains. You can send money using these new domains instead of long Bitcoin wallet addresses, while also storing your domain in Coinbase's collectibles section. Go to unstoppabledomains.com in the dapp browser to register and manage your domains.  =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Catalina Loft is running for election to the U.S. House to represent Illinois' 16th Congressional District. She previously served as an advisor to the U.S. Department of Commerce. In this conversation, we discuss misinformation, term limits, social media censorship, gun rights, immigration, free enterprise, law and order, and education. I really enjoyed this conversation with Catalina and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Public Rec. Public Rec is the first to bring tailored sizing to

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as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. In fact, Catalina here with me. Thank you so much for doing this. Yes, thanks for having me. For sure. Let's just jump right into your background. You were running for Congress, but you spent some time in the private sector and in the public sector. So kind of walk us through your career before you decided to run for Congress. Yeah, and also I'll walk you through just kind of my background. So I was born and raised outside of Chicago in a really small town. My family came here from Guatemala, my mother's side, and my father built his own business.

He came from a depression era household in Chicago, and, you know, they really instilled the values of hard work and liberty and free enterprise, especially coming from a different country where you come to the United States and it's the land of opportunity. And so a big part of my platform is preserving those values of, you know, the ones I was raised upon, but also the values that really make the United States the greatest country in the world. And so I'm really excited. I'm now running again in Illinois' 16th district.

I was in Illinois' 14th previously in 2020. But to really make change, and I think people of all backgrounds now are starting to step up. A lot of people in the private sector are starting to step up because they see what's going on in this country. So I worked in the private sector. I was appointed by President Trump to the U.S. Department of Commerce and really saw kind of firsthand how the pro-growth policies from the Trump administration were really impacting

people in the district. Meanwhile, you see kind of the far left rising, the AOCs, this very socialist, communist, Marxist ideology coming out from women, especially the squad, these younger voices infiltrating the millennial community. And I took a hard look and said, well, who's fighting for our values? Who is telling these stories of what it's like to have family in a different country and what opportunities are here? Who's telling the story from the business owner perspective or from the person benefiting from the free enterprise perspective? We need new faces and new perspectives. So, and now I'm running again and it's been an amazing experience thus far, but it's a hard job running for Congress. For sure. And so let's just talk about, I think,

what has become a pretty interesting dynamic, right? If you look at Trump, Trump really understood social media. He understood how to leverage a lot of the platforms to get a message out, speak directly to the people, cut out the middleman. And regardless of what people think about his specific policies, the way that he communicated was very, very effective and ended up obviously launching him into the presidency and then kind of everything that he did while he was acting as president. We've now seen other people realize the power of doing that. And so AOC and a number of other people. So it shows that it's not so much one side of the aisle. It's more just the communication tactic is quite effective. And on the other side of that aisle and sort of

democratic viewpoint, it seems like the message is very much geared toward telling people what they want to hear, right? Hey, you're going to get free money. You're going to get support. You're going to get all these things. It sounds like you and the Republican side is much more around free enterprise and no one's coming to save you and you're going to have to kind of do this stuff yourself. And so do you think that either side's kind of principles or perspective really matters as much as the communication tactic or does it know everyone's going to use these communication tactics and therefore the principles, the perspectives, that's ultimately what will prevail because there won't be a difference in the communication tactics moving forward?

That's an awesome question. And I, my theory on this is number one, for a long time, if Republicans had the right messengers, uh, we would be winning right now, uh, for a long time. And this also goes for both sides of the aisle, frankly, is that you kind of have these buttoned up people that they go to Washington. They don't really communicate with their constituents. You don't really know what's going on. And I think that all really broke with the digital era and the age, and I call it the age of authenticity, where you have more people interested in like reality TV. You have access to people as human beings in a broader way that we just never did before based on the digital communication, right? How come a CEO of a major Fortune 500 company or

a tech company can get on a Zoom meeting and talk to thousands of people all across the entire world in real time, talking about the values of the company or what's going on in updating the company. But how come our elected officials aren't doing that? There is a gap in transparency, especially as you kind of rotate out of a lot of our members of Congress are significantly older. I don't know the average age of people currently in Congress, but it's not millennials. And so when you look at kind of the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Socialists currently is our message still wins on the Republican side, but we need to have better messengers.

And President Trump was frankly one of the first people to really break that mold. He broke that kind of invisible wall between the majority of the population and then this ivory tower in government, basically not only in the way he communicated, but just being able to understand his his base. And what was incredible about it is that he was able to communicate to so many people in the Bible Belt, in the flyover cities and flyover country, and also people of all different walks of life. I mean, we've made massive gains in different areas and demographics and different socioeconomic levels, not only because of his policies like you were mentioning before, but like you said, the communication barrier. And so you look at the socialists and the Democrats now, AOC, using kind of these mediums of video and Twitter. I mean, she's got a massive following. Why is that? Because she's communicating to an audience and especially millennials to a base. Her ideas are awful, but she's able to really capture that. So on our side, we need better communicators that are really hammering down our message of free enterprise, personal responsibility, and just going back and defending the values of our country and the U.S. Constitution. Yeah, and so I think that most people who watch this podcast, I've never talked about this before, but most people I think have figured out that I'm an independent in terms of, I frankly think that like the extremes of all sides of the political spectrum are probably missing the point, right? And so it gets back to this kind of like the nonpartisan topics, though, that is fascinating that I think actually everyone agrees, whether it's you're more of a centrist or you're on the extreme ends.

It's like something like term limits, right, where people literally say, like, wait a second, should somebody be able to, regardless of their political leanings, enter politics at 25 or 30 and literally do it until they die? Like that seems pretty crazy, especially when you start to think about innovation, the ability to understand technology and the evolution there, fresh ideas, like just talk a little bit about those term limits and kind of, you know, what is the right solution? Should there be term limits? How should we think about those being imposed? Should people be grandfathered in? Should there be things that you could do to maybe get around term limits if you're a really good kind of governor of the people that you're elected to govern? How do you think about that? Yeah, that's also a great question. You know, here in Illinois, especially, I think coming from a deep blue, kind of blue state, both sides are, you have this idea that both sides are kind of just career politician type of mentality, right? And so this term limits, especially in a state like Illinois, is a huge thing because you have so many people that are there for so long. And then from a national perspective, that is happening all across the board. I mean, you're right. People should not be in Congress for 30, 40 years. I mean, this is ridiculous. What kind of real world issues are you solving for the future?

You know, when you're looking at things like how do we talk about student debt or new innovative tech, innovative technologies? How are you even having those conversations if if the mentality is kind of so I don't want to say archaic, but it's true. I mean, if they can't even solve real world problems 30 years ago, how are they going to solve it presently and currently in the future? So I'm a huge proponent for term limits. It's an issue that both people, people from all walks of life, independents, libertarians, Republicans and Democrats can come to terms with. But the problem why I think it has never been solved is because neither side has wanted to solve it. Because a lot of these people you look at, you know, career politicians, that is a career for them. When you look at the founders, for example, our founders, they never intended to go to Washington for 30 years. Why? Because they were lawyers, they were farmers, they had their

own things going on. They had families back home. And not to say that, you know, politicians don't have their own careers, but by and large, they have made a career out of politics. And so it's more beneficial for them to kind of sit there and stay in and do enough to get reelected and then ultimately get there. What needs to happen because for so long, I think we've seen, you know, the founders argued that why don't you vote somebody out of office then if you don't want them to be stuck in there forever, right? Unfortunately, you know, politics has become such a money game. It has become such a, it rewards the career politicians. It rewards the kind of establishment on both sides. And I'm really excited to kind of be in this new generation of disruption

where a lot of these people now on both sides of the aisle, frankly, don't care. They're like, I'm going to step in. I'm going to disrupt it. We saw the disruption in corporate America. And, you know, that's the rise of Silicon Valley. And I think we're seeing it in politics now. And so I'm really looking forward to people, champions from both sides of the aisle saying, look, I'm going to go in there and I'm going to actually pass term limits because we're young, we're millennials. We don't want to be here forever. And let's actually get things done. So I think you're seeing that shift now. So I think most people will agree that a 40, 50-year politicians are probably not the answer. And I think that you, I, and other people kind of

in our age brackets will say like, oh, just put a bunch of young people in there. The argument against that would obviously be, wait a second, all these young kids have no clue what they're talking about. They literally are wide-eyed, bush-and-tailed, very naive about the world, and therefore they're going to make just poor decisions, not because they've been around forever, but because their inclination or default is just go disrupt government, change everything. Maybe the truth is actually somewhere in between. It shouldn't be that we protect the status quo 100%, but also we shouldn't disrupt everything. And so how do you think about that balance between maybe fresh ideas and innovation, but also experience and some of the things that people who have been around for a while have learned over time? Yeah, that's a, that's a great point. I think a way to counter argue, I think the young bright eyed bushy tail concept is, you know, we have a lot of people now, millennials

creating billion dollar companies, right? I mean, they are successful. We have new ideas. We are, we are innovators. And, and a lot of that is, is a generational thing and not to say that other generations haven't been able to do that, but we're, we have a lot of, a lot to offer. And on top of that, you know, you, you surround, you're only as good as who you surround yourself with. When you look at, you know, the Capitol or the Capitol Hill or the swamp or whatever you want to call it, there are people who have been there who know the game for so long. You have experts in different areas of, you know, policy wonks to, you know, your chiefs of staff who've been there for a long time and have served under a lot of people. And so I think that's a really

good happy ground is your team, is having people that are able to understand the concept, but then ultimately the candidates or the members be new. And it's not necessarily just an age thing. I mean, if you have somebody who's significantly older, who's left the private sector or just wants to step up and get involved and run for office now, there's a lot to say that too. But you look at, you know, what is actually being solved, right? If we actually ran our government like a business, if we actually ran things efficiently, I think a lot of our problems would be solved. And I think we'd be able to come together a lot more as a country as well and actually say, look, let's talk about these things in a thoughtful way. But you're seeing

now, you know, I always say, how is somebody in office for 30 years, but you're still talking about the same problem. I mean, this is it. So I think I more lean on the new faces, new perspective, not necessarily age, but just an experience in the political space is not necessarily, I think, where our country needs to be now. So as we think through, there's the age or experience level of those who are elected to be leaders in our country. Whether they're old or young, the platforms are changing as well. And so where it used to be kind of very much dependent on the filters and the middlemen of the traditional media, you had to go and talk to the New York Times, you had to go talk to the network television. You don't have to do that anymore.

And you can talk directly to people on social media and other platforms. But at the same time that we're seeing a rise in the adoption of that, we're also seeing a rise in the challenges that those platforms face, whether it's misinformation, whether it's all sort of different political ideologies. And so just talk a little bit maybe about the social media platforms, how you see their role in all of this. And are there things that are kind of out of bounds and they should police or should we approach it with a truly free market approach of just, hey, anyone can say anything. And the platform is just a platform. It is not supposed to be an editorial type decision. How do you view all that? Absolutely. I don't think that, you know,

these platforms should have this bias. And look, I experienced it as a candidate prior to even when we saw President Trump being deplatformed after the election. Censorship was happening all across the board. And, you know, our argument as I'm running as a Republican, but this is a topic that a lot of people should be concerned about, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, is this is limiting our free speech. You know, if our founders didn't want these monopolies or a, or a government to be so gargantuan, why would they want this to happen in the private sector? Um, they are completely overreaching, um, their bounds and you see it. I mean, I remember when we were saying, excuse for, for conservatives or whatever

libertarians, uh, but it was, it's really, it's truly happening. And, and I think the argument too, is that we just want a seat at the table. We just want an opportunity to have these discussions and to have a voice at the seat of the table. We're not asking for or filtering anything out. We're just asking for a voice. And a big topic, you know, a lot of millennials weren't even thinking about the election, at least, you know, some that I knew about until President Trump was deplatformed. And I know a big thing was, you know, how is the Ayatollah of Iran or some of these other world leaders allowed to have a voice and have a platform when the president of the free world is not? I mean, these are really concerning

questions that need answered. And I hope that they get answered because this is a gross infringement on civil or on earned individual liberties. And again, if they can do that to president Trump, they can do that to anybody. Um, because people should have freedom of thought. They should have the ability to choose who they want to speak with, who they want to hear from. Uh, and that's just being very much, um, stifled right now, but at the same time, you can make the argument. Why don't we have other companies come in? We live in a free market society. We have competition. Government does not own Twitter and these other companies. Why doesn't somebody fill that void? But then you saw what happened with Parler, where everybody

came together and took Parler off of even as an app. So there are a lot of things that need to be solved. And I think this is an area that both sides can come together on as well. Do you feel like as there's other platforms that start to pop up, whether it's Parler or others, uh do you feel like there is uh colluding among the large platforms to kind of attack those uh those competitors and keep a monopoly uh do you feel like no those platforms are just like violating some of the terms of service and that's why they're being treated the way they are like how do you do that yeah and that's that's a tough question because ultimately who's deciding the rules you know what was what was ultimately decided uh what was the deciding factor rather

of parlor getting kicked off of google and um the android app store or sorry or the iphone um platform whatever it was whatever app it was not being able to be purchased on or or downloaded from what was the deciding factor was there collusion i'm not sure but it just kind of looks bad when all these companies all of a sudden decide to take away another option that was was clearly gaining some momentum, and in particular for conservative voices. And so when you look at it, like, is there a line, and I'll give you really extreme examples, right? So if somebody is actually calling for violence, right, there's a very kind of undeniable call for violence, not something that could be interpreted as violence, but a call to violence,

or something that is racist or sexist, or kind of name your thing that would be controversial and potentially out of bounds if it's like very obvious should there be some limitation of a free speech on these platforms or do you think that it's more just like uh the truly free market and the platform should have no say and who can use their platform and what they can say and and i'll carry out the whole question with like i don't know if there's a right answer right i actually think that it's almost more of like everyone has a different opinion but i don't know if there's like a an answer that we're all going to get to that's like every once in a while that that is needs? There's a big issue with choosing sides, right? I mean, I've seen a lot of situations on

Facebook, Twitter, you name it, Instagram, where one side is clearly being told that they are racist or misinformation and that, you know, you have to put up all this, hey, with a caveat, hey, this is misinformation. Why don't you kind of look more into it? There is a clear bias that happened. I think if a platform is ultimately going to decide on what their bounds are in terms of violence or racial comments or anything of that nature, then there needs to be a criteria that is universal across the board with all different types of people. And that's not happening right now. I mean, there's countless examples of one side kind of being favored. And then again, back to kind of the parlor example where, you know, if one person was

particularly calling for violence or whatever it might've been, you shut down the entire platform for the thousands of other users, because one person in particular was saying this. Um, at least be fair, I think if they are going to implement these things, And then ultimately, I will say, I mean, bullying and things like that, it's really tough on social media. I'm sure a lot of people on both sides of the aisle also think that that's huge. Yeah. Is there an argument? Don't read the comments and don't get caught up in it? Sure. But at some point, like when somebody's death threatening you or deliberately, you know, coming at you in a very aggressive way, is there a line that needs to be drawn as well? So that's a it's a complex problem. But I think ultimately, we just need to strive for for equal playing field for both sides of so all voices are heard.

So another topic that has recently come up is diversity, racism, and kind of everything that is related to those two. There's a very strong push, and I think most people would agree, an important push on diversity, whether it's in corporate boardrooms, on executive teams, in the funding of companies and founders, who the venture capitalists are, all the way to on the political spectrum, you know, kind of who the elected officials are, who is nominated, and who serve in a variety of different roles. With that said, recently, there was a politician who basically said, I'm only going to vote for minorities. I'm only going to vote for a white person if they are LGBT. And so at what point and where is, I guess, the line between the push for diversity, which I think most people, again, regardless of their political leanings, feels like that is an important topic, all the way to kind of what I would think is a pretty extreme position of race and sexuality. How do you just view this balance and how do you just think through it? Again, there's no right answer, right? It really is, I think, kind of each person's individual perspective. How do you think through that?

So as a Hispanic woman, I talk about this all the time of, you know, why are you putting people on boards just based on their ethnicity or based on their gender or, you know, whatever it may be, it should be based on merit. And as the person, say you are being put on a board or you are being elevated in a different position, wouldn't you want to be there because you worked for it and because you felt this personal responsibility of, yes, I deserve a seat at the table because of X, Y, and Z. When you bring in race and really dividing people from by color and by gender, you're basically you're forced to choose. You're basically saying, well, one is better than the other. And that's why we want to elevate this particular voice or this particular gender. And I just don't think that that's fair for this society. I mean, we are we are a country based on personal responsibility. You have a lot of different people from all ethnic backgrounds in very different industries and and people should should demand accountability by merit, not based on this kind of made up structure of, well, you know, that you're a minority.

Therefore you shouldn't have, or therefore you deserve a seat at the table because you have been for so long, um, oppressed. I don't believe that. I think we live again in the greatest country in the world where, um, all races are elevated and, and should be elevated based on personal responsibility, not by picking and choosing. Um, we're in a very dangerous spot when you do choose and pick and choose, because ultimately somebody is going to feel resentful for that. And, you know, we should be encouraging diversity of thought and voices instead of just, again, diversity based on identity politics. For sure. And so I guess as part of this, this bleeds into, I think, a whole bunch of other topics when it comes to individual personnel or

individual responsibility, personal liberties. And one of the things that also has come up recently is gun rights. And so there's a really complex situation, right, when it comes to, let's say, the Second Amendment, people's right to bear arms, combined with the safety of the public. And so there was recently a mass shooting that occurred inside of a supermarket. When people, I think, see the headline, they say, hey, there's a mass shooting that occurred. Immediately, it's let's go and kind of install much more kind of stringent gun laws or gun control laws. What surprised me, and again, I'll be the first one to say that in many of these cases, you just don't know the nuances until you start to look into it and you really got to

kind of understand some of it. It seems like a rational argument. Hey, we should have gun control. And there's a spectrum there, right? Obviously, having ID before you buy a gun is some form of gun control, but then there's like very, very strange outlawing of guns, etc. But in Colorado specifically, it appears that there was an assault rifle ban. There was, you know, all sorts of mental illness type rules in place. And just a lot of the things that people normally call for around gun control were already in place.

And then there was still a shooting. And so is it something where using gun control as one example of many, many of these topics where rules can actually change the situation or address the situation, or is it just a thing where it's like criminals and bad people are going to do bad things and part of being a criminal is like breaking the rules, right? And again, I don't think it's the right answer, but I think this specific situation, as I dug more into it, it was actually shocking to me, frankly, of like a lot of these measures around gun control seem to actually have been implemented in Colorado, yet there was still the shooting. And so how do you think through that? Is there a right answer? Just kind of, you know, if you were an elected official, how you would kind of act in this situation? Yeah. And what happened was tragic. But we look at, you're right. I mean, the amount of laws that were already put in place, when you look at federally, the amount of gun laws that are already passed from a federal perspective, and then individually, I mean, I live, you know, close to Chicago, where we have the strictest gun laws possible. And unfortunately, you know, 25 people were shot just a couple of weeks ago. Nobody in the media really talked about that. A little boy was shot.

When you have a situation like what happened in Boulder, it's very sad that, you know, people are quick to politicize things without actually breaking down the facts. Um, a big thing that I saw too was, you know, the race of the shooter and all this stuff. When we start talking about just everything from a surface level perspective, um, in the soundbite kind of era that we live in, you're not, you're, the facts are not able to come through unless you dig really deep. and and you were right i mean the laws in boulder how could have how could you you they've done they've put every single gun law possible um that could have quote unquote in their eyes prevented it yet it still happened right there are bad people that do bad things it is the person not the weapon and but when you look at again why our individual liberties were were instilled in the first place. We must respect that too for the overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens.

And every time we have these conversations when a tragedy happens or we try to push more gun control measures when there already are some in place, then we are chipping away at that individual liberty every time. And so the focus needs to be, yes, is there areas to improve on in mental health? Sure. Let's look at that. But let's also look at why, you know, I heard a statistic that, not a statistic, I heard a, I was reading about this and the FBI had, he'd already been on, you know, the watch list or he had been associated with somebody in the FBI watch list. He was on somebody's radar. And again, that's all the government involvement. That's all the control possible. And yet it unfortunately still happened. We need to take a hard look at the reality that people will do evil things. But no matter what the situation is, it should not be at the expense of the law-abiding, free American citizen.

And that's ultimately what gun control, when they impose those things, it ultimately hurts the law-abiding citizen. So we don't know each other super well, but I'm guessing that you don't believe the solution is just, hey, allow it to happen. And so, you know, meaning like a mass shooting or a significant negative event, what is the solution, right? If you're running for Congress and you're in that seat and somebody says to you, hey, how do we prevent these situations from occurring? What do you think the solution is? How can you prevent a, again, when you have all the control in the world possible in a situation, again, like in Boulder, how can you prevent that? You've seen situations that people who are armed have been able to actually thwart these situations or prevent more killings from happening. A lot of these situations, when you look at the mass shootings that happen in, I don't think this particular instance was one of these, But, you know, schools are where where weapons aren't allowed. So ultimately, the very vulnerable areas that a mass shooter will go in and understand that they are not going to be met with a aggression back. Right. Um, that's a tough one to answer, but ultimately I am for individual liberty, preserving our

second amendment, right. As much as possible. And people need to understand that again, criminals will get, whether it was a gun or whether or not it was a truck or, you know, a criminal will commit the crime that they want to commit. Um, and again, we maybe we need to look at the more of the mental health issue that was happening with that particular individual, but in terms of gun control, that's not the avenue that I would be, um, looking to solve the problem with. Got it. Let's move on and, uh, talk about

immigration. Uh, your parents came here from another country, uh, and, uh, and they built a life for themselves. Uh, they've, um, I think it's you and your sister, uh, have two, uh, highly productive children. They grew up in the United States, but it was all thanks to them coming here from Guatemala. Talk a little bit just about kind of the immigration situation, both legal and illegal, and kind of if you were an elected official in Congress, how you would address some of those issues. Sure. I'll first start out by saying that some of these countries that a lot of people immigrate from my mother being from Guatemala, you know, you visit there and it's very poverty ridden. I mean, it is it's sad. The corruption is rampant. You have the drug cartels

and the government and law enforcement kind of all together in one system. And the the people who lose are the everyday working class people there. And that's why you see so much poverty is because they don't have, you know, in a lot of these cases, stable governments that, or some sort of stability. It's very corrupt. And, but this is a, this is a very complex issue that unfortunately a lot of past administrations, both from a congressional, from a presidential administration perspective, but also Congress has not been able to solve in, in a way that, you know, you're seeing right now what's happening with the border crisis where you're having some serious issues that are going on down there. And why has it come to that point? When my family

came here, you know, I grew up with stories of my grandmother working on a coffee bean farm when she was eight years old because education back in the 20s in a country like Guatemala was just, it, you know, wasn't really even heard of. Um, the literacy rate from the nineties, you know, didn't even start to improve until, um, the early two thousands in a country like Guatemala, meaning, you know, people couldn't even read, how are you supposed to have a career or do better for yourself if education or there weren't, there wasn't a free market type of infrastructure in place. And so my family story, again, my grandmother grew up, picked coffee beans as an eight-year-old, was able to start her own little food truck, and then ultimately started

a business there. But then it wasn't until my family came to the United States that they actually were able to thrive. I mean, when you come from a country with poverty, you're not thriving at all. You're just living. And then you come here to the land of opportunity where there's no ceiling. You can start a company, you can come from nothing with $5 in your pocket and be a billionaire. I, you know, I read somewhere 55%, almost 60% of our billionaires are all self-made. And I would, I would beg to, to also look at, you know, the other portion of how many actually did start with a lot, probably not a lot. And, and, you know, there are a ton of immigrant success stories. But the, but the reason why those are success stories is because you had

law abiding people who, who came here because of opportunity and wanted to have a better life for their families. You cannot fault anybody that wants to come here, obviously, because we are the greatest country in the world, but why have we imposed measures that has incentivized an influx of illegal immigration? And with that comes their own, um, portion of business. You're looking at sex trafficking, labor trafficking. It's become a business because of past policies that incentivize people to come here. Hey, you cross the border, you'll get health insurance, you'll be able to get housing, you will be able to get a paycheck. These are very things that socialists and Democrats ultimately really do push for. It is come here and we will take care

of you instead of come here because you are fulfilling a gap in from a merit-based perspective. You want to come here. You want to be a productive citizen. You want to pay taxes. You want to start a business. You want to create a family. You want to contribute to our GDP in our country. Let's create a reform system that awards that behavior rather than awarding, come here on an illegal basis and we will give you whatever you want. And this is a very complex issue that both sides of the aisle clearly haven't really figured out. But first and foremost, you need to stop the influx of people coming here. And when you have resources getting taken away from the Border Patrol or ICE and things like that

who are actually targeting criminals, when you see this influx, you need to stop the bleeding. where it is first, and then focus on how we can actually bring people here on a merit-based perspective. Sorry, a long-winded way of saying it. No, is it fair to kind of say your perspective is like, one, we should have less illegal immigration. Two, we should have more and easier legal immigration pathways. You're an advocate of a merit-based system. And part of this is to address the illegal component today, but also to counterbalance that with a drastic increase in the legal immigration pathways that people can pursue? Is that kind of a fair way to categorize your thought process? Absolutely. Merit-based first, but then also looking at let's curb what's

happening at the border in a very thoughtful way. And again, we should want the best and the brightest. You look at a lot of the tech Silicon Valley, big founders of amazing companies doing incredible things are immigrants. You have software engineers, you have people that are really contributing to making our economy thrive. Um, and also obviously Americans that are contributing of course, but let's do it on a merit-based system first. Sure. Um, before we wrap up, I want to ask a question that I think just, again, spans across the aisle, regardless of what people's political beliefs are. It's just how do we make more young people care about politics and about governance and about leadership in our country, both at the local level, the state

level and the federal level? Any ideas there in terms of what people can do, whether it's within their own communities or what we should be doing at kind of a state or national level to just get where people engage in politics in general? Yeah, it's a twofold approach. I'll use the example of what happened with GameStop or even the Twitter example of President Trump being deplatformed. When an issue actually becomes personal that millennials can really relate to, and you have people, leaders, for example, I remember Dave Portnoy talked a lot about GameStop during that time, when you have kind of these mediums that millennials are using and their influencers talking about these real world issues, I think it really forces people to kind

of, especially younger people who are not focused on these political issues to look at, wow, this is impacting my life. I should kind of dig a little deeper in this space and then ultimately see the political policy behind it. A big thing too, is educating people on history, you know, and it goes back to having effective messengers as well in the political space of, well, these ideas are not good. Why? Because you shouldn't be taxed. You shouldn't be overtaxed. You should have a little bit more money in your pocket. Your 401k should be up. You should be able to own a home. You should be able to buy a car. All of that is made possible by free enterprise, a mixed economy. And, you know, once you kind of describe it in those ways from a philosophical

and principle perspective, but also having the right tools and the right messengers for it, I think we can actually really make gains. And a big thing is, you know, how can these influencers that are in the business space or really care about these topics that millennials are listening to educate people on the policies changes that are happening. Right now, you're seeing, again, the rise of kind of the socialist ideology because you have messengers that are kind of saying, free everything. Let's overtax everybody. Let's control the means of production by, you know, the state should be able to, to have control over everything where if you ask the average millennial, I'm sure they're in a good paying job.

They're, they, they're trying to maybe buy a house at this point. They're trying to have families and that's only made possible because of free enterprise. Um, so I know it's a, again, long-winded, uh, way of saying, you know, having the right message, but having the right messengers for it and the right mediums, and also putting out the facts and making people think for themselves. Nobody should tell you how to think, but you should at least have the historical references. You should at least have the values and the principles and digging deeper on the fact that policy changes really impact your life. When I was with the administration, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, for example, that was really impacting businesses everywhere.

That was putting more money in people's pockets. Companies were able to reinvest in their employees. People's salary went up. You had low unemployment rates. Real wages were up. Those impact people. That's the message that we should be honing in on. And then you look at kind of these very over-regulatory, burdensome policies that come out now from this administration where they're looking to tax people that have $200,000 or more. When you're in San Francisco, how much is $200,000 even getting you by with or New York City? We need to look at these things in a thoughtful way. And I think millennials are actually coming around to the idea of free enterprise. And ultimately, that's a good shift. We're kind of getting away from the social issue kind of construct and looking at, well, wow, we have a very overregulated administration that wants to kind of destroy free enterprise or at least stifle it.

How do we push back and how do we bring back free enterprise into the equation? Lower debt, things like that. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. And I think that nothing is actually free, as we know. But at the same time, I think that there's a lot of people who obviously are in pain and suffering. So trying to find what is the middle ground is why the politicians are there and they're going to do their thing and they'll hopefully eventually figure it out. uh before i let you go i was asking everyone the same three questions you've got to ask me one to finish up uh the first is what is the most important book that you've ever read oh my gosh that's a great one um man's search for meaning is a incredible one else i'll also throw out here the fountainhead by ayn rand um is a one of my favorites what's yours those are great ones uh I always say the same three that were probably the most formative for me. It was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, and Richest Man in Babylon.

I read it when I was 20 years old and had a positive impact. So those probably take the cake. Second question. Sorry. Was I supposed to say three? No, no, no. Whatever you got. Okay, next question.

All right. Next question is coming from our friends over at Eight Sleep. they've got this thermoregulated mattress. So you can make it really hot, really cold. I used to sleep like five, six hours. I started sleeping on this thing and pretty much changed my life. I'm a full-on convert of the sleep religion, if you will, and now sleep like eight or nine hours. What's your sleep schedule and how has that changed over the years? That's an interesting question. I would say I'm definitely in bed early and I'm an early riser. that certainly was not the case in college and probably after but I've recognized that I need

kind of a structure to be able to function correctly so I go to bed pretty early start reading and then ultimately kind of wind down I try to turn off the phone I know the the lights are really bad you know for sleep try to get a really good night's sleep and then wake up super early in the morning. How many hours do you think on average? I would say probably seven to eight hours, full seven, eight hours. All right. Gotta get you an eight sleep. Then it would be eight or nine. It'd be even better. Uh, last question is a more fun one. Uh, and you get to ask me one is aliens. Are you a believer or a non-believer? Oh, I would say, didn't something recently come out this week of, um, some rumblings that were going around in the alien community.

I would definitely say that there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. And there are a lot of things happening that to say that there's not some sort of extraterrestrial being or community would be not looking at the facts. That's a very politically correct way to say that you believe in aliens. No problem. You get to ask me one question to finish up. What do you got for me? okay um favorite company oh favorite company why i don't know this is like choosing between children um i'll say the one uh it's a company that we announced uh an investment in today so not necessarily favorite but just uh kind of recently buys a company called synthesis uh elon musk started a school on space at this campus for his children uh that really focused

on just critical thinking problem solving independent thought you know more of the skills that are necessary to be successful in life uh rather than the rote memorization kind of preparation for standardized tests and so the co-founder of that school uh this guy josh and his new co-founder uh chrisman uh basically created a piece of software and they take kids between like 7 and 14 and they put them in these uh virtual environments and basically give them them a problem. They give them no direction, no rules, no anything, and just say, figure it out in a team setting. And so it's pretty incredible to watch these young kids come in. They've got to learn leadership, teamwork, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, et cetera.

So that one seems to be pretty important moving forward. If we can teach more people critical thinking, problem solving skills, I feel like we might be a little bit better off than we are today. Absolutely. And that shows you that free market and innovation are really filling these gaps where traditionally people kind of want the government to fill. You look at why is the literacy rate so low in some of these inner cities where how can big, how can companies through innovation and again, free enterprise be able to kind of fulfill that gap and problem solved. So I think that's huge. It's incredible to know that something like that is out there. It's like school choice 2.0, right? The digital version. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Listen, thank you

so much for doing this. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or reach out if they have any questions or want to follow up? Yes, catalinaforcongress.com and catalinalauf on all social media platforms. Awesome. That is the benefit of having a unique name is that you are You're not competing with very many other cattle in the Laos, so. That's true. That's true. It's a double-edged sword. Awesome.

Well, Catalina, listen, thank you so much for doing this, and we'll have to do it again in the future. Yes. Thanks so much for having me on again, Anthony. You take care.