This Past Weekend - #592 - Thomas Massie

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Starting point is 00:00:46 you to everyone that has shown support. Love y'all. Wanted to mention that our governor Tim Walls was going to be a guest on the podcast this week but there was a shooting amongst some of his co-workers colleagues Minnesota lawmakers and so they're obviously very bereaved up there and and we wish them peace and prayers and hope to catch up with him another time. Just advising that this episode was recorded late last week. I was on tour and so we couldn't get it all put together, but we're happy to get it out today. Today's guest is a congressman from Kentucky's 4th District. He is from Appalachia and he got a master's degree at MIT

Starting point is 00:01:34 before he got into politics. He's a member of the Republican Party, but he's a bit of a rogue guy. He does things his own way and I am fortunate today to spend time with Congressman Thomas Massey. All right, Thomas Massey,, thanks for coming in, man. Absolutely. Good to see you, dude. Good to be here. Just had to cross the state border to get here. Yeah, that's what I see from Kentucky.

Starting point is 00:02:12 And you drove, like you just took me into your home, in your camper home vehicle. It's a F-250 with a truck camper. And I lived for two solid years in it in DC, still occasionally do. And where would you park that thing at? Well, I don't want to disclose where I park, but I did get in trouble. I parked the truck camper. It's a super duty. It's got a, even though it fits in the back of a pickup, it's got a shower, bathroom, stove, and a fridge. Oh, it felt super when I was in there. That living arrangement in there, I could have definitely cozied up. It felt very cool.

Starting point is 00:02:48 The milk felt cold in there. We had a little cup of milk, which is definitely. It's raw milk. Yeah, I'm sure it is, hopefully. Don't tell anybody I crossed state lines with that. So here's a funny story. I was parking this truck camper in DC in a congressional lot, and it got hotter than the hinges of hell in the

Starting point is 00:03:06 summertime in this parking lot. So I ran a little extension cord over to the electric car charging station so I could run the air conditioner on my camper at night. Well, the cops like to park, they didn't know I was living in this camper and I would park close to a Sprinter van and the cops would park between me and the Sprinter van to take a nap at night.

Starting point is 00:03:26 Oh, so everybody's working together. Yeah, I would look out the camper and do a wellness check on him at night. They didn't know I was looking out for them. But anyways, one night- That's diplomacy, it's how it all works. It's like everybody's kind of hiding a little bit behind the other group.

Starting point is 00:03:38 One night it was like that movie, Bridge Over the River, quiet. They found my 50 foot extension cord and followed it over to the electric car charging station. They said, damn, there's somebody living in this truck. So my chief of staff got a call from the speaker's chief of staff and he said, we think your boss is living in lot 28. And he said, what do you mean?

Starting point is 00:03:59 In a pickup truck. And I said, I told my chief, don't call him back. Let me settle this. So we have a don't ask, don't tell arrangement. As long as I don't start a KOA or something in the congressional lot, I can live there. If the cops are getting a little bit of shut eye, you know what I'm saying? You're able to operate a grill, you know, or a little two stroke motor in there, something to keep the blender working. Well, you know, I got to mix my medical margaritas in there and keep the raw milk cold.

Starting point is 00:04:25 So what I eventually did was cover it in solar panels and took off the old air conditioner and put a mini split on the back. So it looks like the Millennial Falcon now. Oh yeah, it definitely looks like the guy that's in there. It definitely seems like you wanna get his fingerprints on the guy. That has a CODIS vibe outside of it, you know?

Starting point is 00:04:44 But isn't a lot of your vibe is that you're off the grid. I've heard that. Yeah. Off the grid in the camper and off the grid at home. So I haven't bought public utilities in 20 years. Wow. And that, you know, that kind of ties into when I go to DC, that gives me some independence. Because if all, if everything goes to hell and I'm no longer a

Starting point is 00:05:05 Congressman and I don't have a job, I still got a house where all my own utilities are taken care of. It runs off solar, got a backup generator, got a well that I dug and it just gives you the sense that okay, the worst day in Kentucky is better than my best day in DC. And this is you right here? This is you right here? Yeah, that's one of my gardens and there's some of my chickens clucking around. Oh yeah. I built a mobile pen that moves with the chickens to keep the coyotes from eating them. Now, it's like a Roomba. Think of a Roomba with 50 chickens in it moving around in my yard.

Starting point is 00:05:44 It runs on solar, collects rainwater, and it takes care of my chickens when I'm not there. And what makes it move? How does that even work? Bring that up, Trevin. Can you get me so we can see what I'm looking at? I don't have any footage of it on here, but I call it... So I first ran off batteries in a solar panel and the batteries went dead. And I'm like, this sucks. I don't like taking batteries to a landfill because I was trying to come up with a green way to raise chickens. So I figured out a way to do it with super capacitors.

Starting point is 00:06:09 There's no battery in it and the super capacitors never wear out and I call it the Clux Capacitor. Is this kind of what it looks like? Yeah, that's what it's like. Except, yeah, except mine moves itself. Mine's like a Roomba version that's robotic. And so what is the point of it moving? Well, you know, chickens poop,

Starting point is 00:06:27 and you don't want them walking around in their own poop. Oh, yeah. They also like to eat a certain amount of grass and bugs, and so this gives them fresh forage, and it keeps them out of their poop. They don't get disease. It fertilizes my yard. It mows my grass.

Starting point is 00:06:40 Everything's all happy in the Cluck's capacitor. I got a good damn chicken, dude. Or a little batch of chickens. I gotta get something. I almost bought my mom two goats, but she like, for years she's like, give me some goats. And then she didn't want it. She just has a problem with everything.

Starting point is 00:06:55 But anyway, so what is a flux capacitor? Clux capacitor. Okay, what is an actual, what is a? It's the circuit that I designed. So I'm a double E by train, electrical engineer by training. And I just had to come up with some way to keep my chickens alive and keep them healthy while I went to DC. So I came up with this circuit board that's got capacitors that trickle charge from a

Starting point is 00:07:18 little solar panel size of a sheet of paper. And it's got an automotive winch in the front so it can pull itself even if it weighs 2,500 pounds along a cable. So you don't have, you don't pay an electric bill? No electric bill, no water bill, no sewer bill. I do have an internet bill because I use Starlink. Oh yeah, and is that legal? Are you allowed to legally be a person like that?

Starting point is 00:07:42 Well you know they tried to bring more regulation to our county 20 years ago before I was a congressman and I wrote letters to the editor and mobilized people and we stopped them from bringing more regulation to our county. So it's still legal where I live. Wow, because this is, it seems like a very like libertarian or almost like demo, like a lot of the ideas seem almost very like something you would see like on the Democratic Party, which sounds kind of wild, you know? Oh, I say I'm the greenest member of Congress and no Democrat has come after me. No fact checker has ever tried to check that fact because they know it's true. Wow.

Starting point is 00:08:13 It's kind of crazy that the greenest member, you know, with the term greens is now a Republican because you wouldn't necessarily think that. No, you wouldn't think that. I mean, I have a Tesla that charges off the solar panels on my house, collect rainwater, dug a well. I've got a bunch of trees that I'm not cutting down. They are bringing in all kinds of CO2, although I like CO2. I wish I had more because it makes my peaches get bigger on my farm. Oh, yeah. I raise grass fed cattle.

Starting point is 00:08:42 And what kind of what kind of groups you have helping you over there? Because I don't think you can't get out there a first thing every day and do it all. I do it myself, 90% of it. I mean, if I'm in DC and the cattle get loose, I got a neighbor, you know, you gotta have some neighbors that'll help you. Oh yeah. And the deal is I'll help them when they need help.

Starting point is 00:08:59 Oh, there's a picture of my cattle. They are Angus crossed with Wagyu. I call them Wangus. Oh wow. Wangus beef. Oh yeah, it's a little urban over there. Definitely, that's definitely. There's the, you know, not the black sheep, but the white cow.

Starting point is 00:09:14 He kind of stands out. I say, I feel like that white cow in DC some days. Like, do I really belong in this herd? Yeah. Yeah, you seem like a little bit of like an outsider, I think, like a black sheep or like a maverick. I feel like people say if they talk about a maverick and they say Thomas Massey, you

Starting point is 00:09:31 know. How much money do you save by living the way that you do, like off-grid? You know, I don't think I've saved a dime. It costs a lot to do it. You can save money by heating your house with wood, which I do, but if you start counting the how much you're paying yourself when you chop that wood, it's probably about $3 an hour. And I could go work at Dollar General and make more money

Starting point is 00:09:54 than I do when I save money heating my house with wood. So if I were completely poor, I could keep living, but to set all that up, took a large investment. It'll probably pay off by the time I die. So you just wanna end the book with even books. Zero, yeah. Just clear the tab when I leave the bar. No debt.

Starting point is 00:10:14 No debt, yeah. Yeah, so you always wonder like, okay, I wanna live off the grid, but there's a real cost to it, but a lot of that cost is sweat equity, do you feel like? Yeah, it's sweat equity, and it'll pay back, unlike what we're doing in DC. I mean, if we were borrowing money in DC to fund the future, I could be for borrowing money.

Starting point is 00:10:34 The problem is up there, it's not like on my farm, where you invest in fences and you invest in livestock. In DC, we're just pissing away the money and living on basically our seed corn. We are taking what should be saved for the next generation and spending it now Is that how you feel? Yeah, it's we're robbing the next generation, but it's got so bad We're robbing ourselves five years from now, right? It's getting that close. Yeah, I've heard you talk about are you talking about the national debt overall? Okay, I've heard you talk a lot about it and I see you got your This is my my debt bench I've heard you talk about, or you talk about the national debt overall. Okay. I've heard you talk a lot about it and I see you got your, um,

Starting point is 00:11:05 this is my, my debt bench. Um, it shows, I've got three levels of brightness. So if you wear it to the movies, you can tone it down and not blind your date. But, okay. So I got on the brightest level there. Hopefully your camera could see it. Yeah. Um, I wear this every second I'm in that house of representatives. I wear it in hearings. I wear it in elevators with Democrats. They think it's how many steps I've taken, but I built this using my electrical engineering degree.

Starting point is 00:11:32 I came up with this idea and I built it. It's got wifi. Once a day, it connects to the treasury.gov and calibrates to the penny. So it's the most accurate debt representation that you can have. In fact, you know, it's, I accurate debt representation that you can have. In fact, you know, it's, um, I mean, make sure you're like Mark Zucker Twain. This is, I brought you one as a gift. Yeah, brother.

Starting point is 00:11:54 So, uh, hell yeah, dude. You can just stare at the numbers, just spinning all day long. It's, uh, it's an yeah, just clips onto your pocket. What kind of woman am I going to meet wearing this though, I don't know what kind you've been meeting, but you've really upped your game with that thing. You think? Yeah. They're gonna think I am way broke. I had a female congressman staring at my chest the other day, and I had to tell her my eyes were up here.

Starting point is 00:12:19 And then she asked if I would make a belt buckle out of it. Oh damn, brother. Yeah, people want it all nowadays. People just want to see your damn wiener if they can for free sometimes. I'm like, get away from me. But let's talk about the national debt actually. Cause can you explain it to me?

Starting point is 00:12:36 A lot of people don't even understand the national debt. We hear about it. What is the amount right now too? Well, we don't even really know. I mean, this is the regime number, the one that treasury publishes, it's thirty six point two trillion roughly. Trillion dollars. Okay yeah now you see this one online? Uh-huh. It's not that accurate. Like it's off by a few hundred billion. We were shipping these debt

Starting point is 00:12:58 clocks, I don't make them, but my son-in-law makes them and sells them and he had somebody go online and find this debt counter and say oh you Sold me a faulty debt badge, and he's like no is ours calibrates with Treasury every day It's so sad that we can't even get a D even our debt clock does even at least invest in the fucking Clock that shows the debt right well what they might be trying to do there online is Anticipate when we lift the debt limit. Like right now we've hit the debt limit, so it's stuck at $36.2 trillion.

Starting point is 00:13:30 Every day they sort of reset the number until Congress raises the debt limit. Now you say, how do they do that? Well, they start selling off the postal workers pension fund. They take the money that's been saved up to pay your postman his retirement, and they use that to fund other They take the money that's been saved up to pay your postman his retirement and they use that to fund other parts of the government. They can only do that for a few

Starting point is 00:13:50 months and that's what we've been doing for the first six months of this presidency. And pretty soon we're going to run out of all those extra things we can spend. That we're leveraging basically? Yeah, we're leveraging all that and they're going gonna have to pay it all back. So we're really probably are closer to 36.6 or 36.8 trillion. And but is that a common practice like leveraging like pensions or I don't want to say like Medicaid and Medicare, they're not leveraging that, right? Oh, anything they can get their hands on. They liquidate it and they spend it, for instance, to buy bombs and send them overseas. That all that deficit spending right now is not funded by Treasury bonds. That all the new deficit

Starting point is 00:14:30 spending is funded by, you know, the trust funds that have been established that might have money in them. Okay. I'm a little confused on that. Well, it's like this, Theo. Let's say you saved up for your kid's college. They've been going to college, and you got enough to pay the next semester of college. But your credit card comes in, and your credit card gets canceled. So instead of renewing your credit card, you just spend your kid's next tranche of tuition or something. But you've got to find that money before the next semesterche of tuition or something, but you gotta find that money before the next semester comes back,

Starting point is 00:15:07 or else they get kicked out of school. Okay, and so how do we find that money? Because obviously we repeatedly. Well, Congress is gonna pass a law here in the next few weeks, and they're just gonna say, oh, well there's no debt limit, it's now five trillion dollars higher than what we said. They move the limit up.

Starting point is 00:15:24 They move the limit up, they get a new credit card. They go out. They start borrowing new money to pay off the money they borrowed. And it's a vicious cycle. Got it. And it's obviously it's a cycle that we've been in for a long time. I think to the point where like the national debt doesn't even make sense to people, right? It's like, here's my question is who do we owe the money to? Some of it is owed to institutional investors, like the big banks in the United States. Some of it is owed to sovereign wealth funds like China, Japan, other countries that buy our debt for us.

Starting point is 00:15:59 And here's the problem. Right now, they're telling us, we don't want to buy your debt at 2% or 3% or 4%. We want at least 5% return. And so everybody thinks the Federal Reserve is setting interest rates. There's all this discussion, will the Fed raise the rate? Will the Fed lower the rate? The reality right now is the Fed can't do much

Starting point is 00:16:20 because if they lower the rate to let's say 4%, that and try to tell people to buy our debt at 4%, the people who normally buy our debt, those foreign countries and those institutional investors are saying, you're not a good investment at 4%, we want 5%. And that's a big problem because just to put it in perspective, let's round this number. If it were 30 trillion dollars and we were paying 5%, that's, that's, uh, that is $16,000 per family. I've already done the math. I'm not doing all that in my head right now, but it's $16,000 per family of interest that we are paying. Got it. So when you pay your taxes for your family, the first $16,000 goes to nothing except for the interest

Starting point is 00:17:09 that's paid to those foreign countries and to the big bankers. But we're never gonna defeat this number. You know, we might get in a situation like Puerto Rico got into a few years ago where the people said, we're just not loaning you anymore. And you know what happens that day? It's actually kind of a, it'll be scary for a lot of people. For me, it would be a good day because that's the day we have

Starting point is 00:17:29 to balance the budget. When people say we're not going to loan you any more money, you're not a good investment, we don't trust that you'll pay it back. That is the day that you can only spend as much money as you take in on any given week. And are a lot of people in Congress aware of this and like battling it or it just seems like it's almost seems like we don't even hear about like, it seems like it's one of the things you hear about during the election cycle and that's about it, you know? Like we're going to balance the budget and it never happened. No one ever balances the budget. Like, do you think anyone, either one of these parties even want to balance the budget?

Starting point is 00:18:03 No, they're not serious about it It's why I built the debt badge to like shove it in their face every day and it's still they're still not concerned about it I mean, they're a little bit concerned but as long as they can get reelected They're not that concerned right and I don't blame them for all of it I blame the American people who keep I blame the American people who keep re-electing people because they tell them you can have these things and it won't cost anything. So I hear people talk about like mass deportations

Starting point is 00:18:33 and there's a hundred billion to DHS and 50 billion to DOJ to do mass deportations. Well, we know it doesn't cost that. Whatever Trump has intended to do, it's not going to cost 150 billion dollars, but people say, I don't care what it costs. And the reason they say I don't care what it costs is they don't think they're paying it. Yeah. They don't care what anything costs. They don't care what war in the Middle East costs because they don't see that they're paying

Starting point is 00:19:01 it. Well, it's all gotten so confusing. And when you start with communication with people, even on a financial front, of this Hogwartsian number, right? Yes. When you start, because we all learn basic math in school. Some of us learn algebra. Some of us go on to learn some higher maths, right? But when you're starting with this,

Starting point is 00:19:20 the regular person doesn't know where to begin. You feel literally like numerically defeated out of the gate, right? The average person doesn't know where to begin. You feel literally like numerically defeated out of the gate, right? The average person. Because it's like, how, what do you do? It's impossible. So this sets everything up with impossibility, right? So I think that's why we've gotten so far.

Starting point is 00:19:39 We've gotten two generations now into complete impossibility of numerical reality when it comes to even having some of the discussions, I think. Does that make any sense? No, that makes sense. It's virtual reality. Right. The last five digits on this deck counter,

Starting point is 00:19:55 they change about $80,000 a second. That's like a cyber truck being launched into the ocean every second. Like boom, boom, boom, boom. That's how much debt we're taking on. Well, I hope the new model looks a little bit different. I have a Cybertruck, and the model. Do you?

Starting point is 00:20:12 Let's put my camper in it. Oh, I don't know if we can fit it in there. I don't think so. That's why I have an F250. Dude, yeah, I think I need to get something that fucking, I want something that it feels like you'll burn to death when you hit something. You know what I'm saying? That's what I like about something that's got I want something that it feels like you'll burn to death when you hit something. You know what I'm saying?

Starting point is 00:20:26 That's what I like about something that's got some real fuel in it. But this thing, yeah, this thing definitely. Oh, there's one with a camper. But I think the New Orleans will have camp, like better camper abilities. There's no way to get out of the inside, like through the back window right now.

Starting point is 00:20:39 And it kind of feels like you just work for lows, but you never drop off what you're delivering. You're always like, where does this go? You know, like how much meat's in here? It just has that very like whirlpool or frigid air kind of energy, but it does go very fast. You almost feel like you could beat an email somewhere. Like that bitch is fast, dude.

Starting point is 00:20:58 The big, let's talk, since we're talking about debt, let's talk a little bit about the big, beautiful bill, right? Yeah. And you, right? Yeah. And you oppose it. Yeah. Right. And there's reasons that I've learned recently that I oppose. I don't know a ton of them.

Starting point is 00:21:12 But I know some of my reasons. But I don't know everything that's in the bill. Why are you against it? Because it's not going to help our debt. No. That's the first big lie that's told about the big, beautiful bill. You can finagle the numbers. The big, beautiful bill looks at a 10-year spending window, okay?

Starting point is 00:21:33 And what it does is in the next five years, it's going to add to the deficit. Like, nobody disputes that. Even the number crunchers that work for the president know that's going to happen. What they're claiming is five years from now, it will start to break even and reduce the deficit. The problem is the people I serve with, a lot of them aren't gonna be there five years from now. The president Trump's not gonna be there

Starting point is 00:21:58 five years from now. This big, beautiful bill doesn't force people five years from now to do that. It suggests that they should do that, and it will do that unless somebody does something different But they're going to do something different five years from now. We'll get to that point and they'll say oh my gosh that Congress five years ago set up a fiscal cliff We're gonna be hit with tax increases on seniors. We're gonna be hit with tax on tips, we're gonna be hit with tax on overtime, oh my gosh the military's not gonna get as

Starting point is 00:22:30 much money as it got last year, we got to do something about this and so what they'll do is they'll cut taxes again and they'll increase spending again and this deficit will never go down and I'm not even talking about the debt, the deficit is how much you add to the debt every year. It's about $2 trillion. It's gonna be above $2 trillion next year and for as far as the eye can see. But I got to talk with JD Vance a couple of weeks ago

Starting point is 00:22:56 and he was talking about, but that a lot of what's happening now is still because of the last party that was in. Yeah, and a lot of it's still because of what Trump did when he was in last time. So I just wondered how far it's tough to like as a regular person, it's tough to correlate how far up or downstream you are from whatever who was actually responsible for whatever's occurring. Does that make sense?

Starting point is 00:23:21 It does make sense. But you know, in 2020, we had COVID hit and they put a $2 trillion spending bill on the floor. And I was the only one who would oppose it. I said, this is gonna cause, Trump was president and Pelosi was speaker, but they were working together. I said, this is gonna cause massive inflation. You're gonna have shortages in the stores

Starting point is 00:23:41 and this is gonna last for years. And the inflation, once it happens, the prices will never go back down. And that's exactly what happened. They said, Congress, the president's chief of staff at the time told me, he said, it was Mark Meadows, who's a friend of mine, we both worked together in Congress. He said, the reason this is $2 trillion

Starting point is 00:23:59 is so we don't have to pass another one of these. It's just gonna be painful once. Well, guess what? By the time December rolled around under Trump, we passed another one of these stimulus packages that was over a trillion dollars. And don't forget, people got a $1,200 check the first time and they got a $600 check the second time. I told folks that's the cheese in the trap.

Starting point is 00:24:19 That $1,200 check, you multiply that times the number of families in the United States, it wasn't 5% of the spending in that bill, most of that money went to corporations and banks, eventually. And so, everybody's responsible for it, everybody wants to point to the other party for it, but, you know, it's, I don't want to upset too many people who like wrestling, but it's like the WWF, okay, or.

Starting point is 00:24:47 Oh, it's felt like this for years. I think everything is turning into the WWE, everything. It's all, it's all like optics and the way things are shot and this is out there and this is what you believe. It's like interviews that are just to get the hype and then they offstage, they're all in the you know in the locker room Let's like, you know rubbing GHB on each other's backs and stuff like that and gramming out Let me let me tell you something that probably will shock your listeners

Starting point is 00:25:14 Whether they're Republican or Democrat Mike Johnson since he's been the speaker and he's only been the speaker for less than two years Has put a hundred and eighty three Democrat bills on the floor and passed them. What did he trade for that? Like I thought we were breaking chairs over top of the Democrats' heads in the back room. No, that's not what's happening. Is that true? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:36 How do I look that up? Go to congress.gov. Mike Johnson's out of Shreveport. Yep. He's the Speaker of the House. Oh yeah. But you can see, you're like, if you, I'm not sure how you look it up here at congress.gov, but if you spend enough time here and look at every bill that's passed since he's been Speaker,

Starting point is 00:25:57 and I'm not talking about the special bills that reassign committee members, I'm talking about bills that do something. 183 Democrat-sponsored bills. And you might say, Theo, well, the Democrats have good ideas, okay? We should put their bills on the floor. Well, if I had a good idea, what Speaker Johnson would do would take that bill from me, put somebody else's name on it, and put it on the floor. Like, if there's something that needs to get done, why would you let a Democrat get credit for it if you're in this mortal combat with the other party?

Starting point is 00:26:28 But has he made a lot of Republican bills pass too? Yeah, there's been way more Republican bills than Democrat bills, but why has he even passed one Democrat bill? Well, I think don't you want to work with the other team? And isn't there diplomacy in everything? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, you have to, like, there's a give and take

Starting point is 00:26:43 to everything, I feel like. We've got the majority. Like, why are we putting their bills on the floor? Why would we go in that direction? I understand in the Senate, you need 60 votes. So you gotta have a Democrat. But some of the bills are good, right? If Thomas Massie has a good bill,

Starting point is 00:26:59 they'll put another Republican's name on it and pass it. But I can't understand what you're saying here. I guess I'm a little bit confused. Are you saying that Mr. Johnson, who is the Speaker of the House, that he, because bills get brought to him, he puts them on the floor, right? He's the one who's like, okay, let's put this on the floor and take it to a vote, right? And you're saying that he's done that with more Democratic-led bills than Republican-led bills.

Starting point is 00:27:24 No, he's done it with 183 Democratic bills. There's probably been several hundred Republican bills. My question though is why would you put one on if you're engaged in this kind of mortal combat for the soul of the country and he acts like that? It's because people aren't paying attention to what's going on there. Oh, I agree that I think people aren't paying attention. I think it's all so confusing, I think, to the regular person is that it feels like it feels like it the ship sailed long ago from us being at the dock looking

Starting point is 00:27:55 each other in the eyes with some sense of hope. Congress is this big giant black box, and people can't see what's going on inside of that black box and people can't see what's going on inside of that black box. They know they're electing their congressman and two of their senators and the president and they're sending them to Washington DC and then they don't understand what comes out of that box. I've been in that box for 12 years and that's I think that's sort of what my role has evolved to which is to just try to tell people what's going on inside of the box

Starting point is 00:28:26 so that they can do a better job of picking congressmen and senators. That's what I always think. I'm like, if somebody would just get elected is to get in there and tell us what's, we don't even fucking, we'll buy you a Volvo or whatever. Fucking, you know what I'm saying?

Starting point is 00:28:41 We'll give you some Taiwan semiconductor shares. But just tell us what's happening in there somebody fucking look in there and just throw a note out and be like hey This is what's really going on now that probably we start to get into is there's so much like Pandering and everything and online I like so much social media used to like try and disguise who the messenger is it really turns Into a game and I think that is one thing that's, that's the only joy of it is watching the like, the masters of this just game of thrones type of energy go on, but how do we-

Starting point is 00:29:15 So the biggest, I'll tell you right now, it's, this is, this would be 50% of solving the problem. If it's not a silver bullet, but it's a lot of it. Get rid of the giant bills, okay? The omnibus bills, the continuing resolutions, and even the big beautiful bill. Why not put that shit on the floor one at a time? I agree. And then that way, you can go to your representative or your senators and say, why did you vote for that? Right now now they can say, well, Theo, I had to vote for it. I had a pay raise for soldiers, right?

Starting point is 00:29:49 They literally will put a pay raise for soldiers in every freaking bill, giant bill, so that if you vote against it, you have to go back home and watch TV ads that say, he voted against a pay raise for the soldiers. Right, even though he may have voted for 90 other amazing things on the bill, right? Right.

Starting point is 00:30:08 And that was one thing that was tied in there that if you went this way, you know? Yeah. It may have been like oxygen for grandmothers, right? Right. Literally, there probably is that in there. But if you vote for oxygen for grandmothers, then you cannot, they're not going to give. So I see what you're saying. I've voted against oxygen for grandmothers so many many times they can't even run that ad anymore.

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Starting point is 00:34:36 okay, we want to stop these omnibus bills? And bring up omnibus bill. We looked it up the other day when Mr. Vance was here, but I just wanna go over it again. An omnibus bill we looked it up the other day when Mr. Vance was here But I just want to go over it again an omnibus bill is proposed law that covers a number of diverse or unrelated topics Omnibus is derived from Latin it means to for by with or from everything An omnibus bill is a single document that is accepted in a single vote by a legislator But packages together several measures into one or combines diverse subjects So it's not even really fair because you only get one vote on the bill correct and and

Starting point is 00:35:10 Not and so typically an omnibus bill it includes at least 12 other bills because they're the 1974 Budget Control Act there's a law that says we're supposed to do these bills separately so we've already tried the law We heard tried that Theo they just suspend that rule, those budget rules, every year. Okay. So, but take me through this moment so I don't stray from it so people can be, so I can understand it. So, like, give me two examples of things that would be on an omnibus bill that would be that there's no way for a voter to win, that there's no way for a representative to vote and win on. Okay, well, the easiest,

Starting point is 00:35:50 let me just take something topical, the big, beautiful bill. Inside of that big, beautiful bill is a provision for artificial intelligence corporations that says no- 10 years. Yeah, for 10 years, no state or locality can regulate them. And then it talks about zoning and routing, which if you, you know, some of your listeners

Starting point is 00:36:11 may have seen this, like locally, somebody's, some big corporation wants to put a data center in your backyard. Well, that's what Congress is trying to do. They're trying to say that these corporations can override local zoning laws, that the local zoning board should take a backseat and let this big information center show up in your backyard that uses all kinds of water and all kinds of power and puts out all kinds of RF

Starting point is 00:36:33 and has, you know. Oh yeah, your fucking cousin's gonna be walking down the street just fucking, you know, just fucking screaming out Amazon orders, you know? It's gonna be, the shit that's gonna start happening is gonna be crazy. You're literally gonna be driving on the road with your windows open and an old gust of 5g remnants from blockbuster emails that never got out of a got out

Starting point is 00:36:53 of a got out of got uploaded or just gonna pass through your fucking vehicle shit's gonna get insane you're gonna have babies that are born with advertisements like birthmarks that show up up. This is a set of twins with Nike logos on them. What is happening, man? So that's in the big, beautiful bill, okay? And you can know that's evil, you can know that's bad. And Trump never campaigned on that. But also in that bill is to enforce our borders, okay?

Starting point is 00:37:21 To finish the wall. So if you're a Republican and you vote for that bill, okay, you support it enforcing the border, but you also let AI basically take over your local and state governments, okay? And then if you vote against it, well then you're against the AI provision, but oh my gosh, you're for open borders, you know?

Starting point is 00:37:44 You don't wanna support the military. There was $100, you're for open borders. You don't want to support the military. There was $100 billion in there for the military. There was, oh, you want to tax seniors. There was a tax cut for seniors. There was an extension of the tax cuts from 2017. I voted for the 2017 tax cuts, but I voted against this 2025 bill because it's got a lot of crap in there that doesn't belong and it's going to balloon our deficit. So you can't win for losing. And so I don't blame a lot of my colleagues. Like they come to Congress,

Starting point is 00:38:16 they have the best intentions, and you get there and you're like, oh my gosh, this whole game is rigged. How am I going to play it? Am I going to call it out? Will that get, will that be the best for my constituents who elected me? Or should I play along? And most of them choose to play along. And you can't, can't really blame them. They feel like, Oh, my

Starting point is 00:38:37 fiduciary duty to the people who elected me is to get as much as I can up here. And if I piss off the Trump and I piss off Mike Johnson, I can't get any table scraps. But the reality is they're not even getting table scraps. They are trading. I say every week, congressmen trade their votes for magic beans that never sprout. Like Jack and the beanstalk. He trades the cow for magic beans. The difference is Jack got beans that sprouted.

Starting point is 00:39:03 My congressmen, they're not getting gas vouchers. They're not getting a cracker barrel gift certificate. So explain to me how that part works. So that's a part that I don't understand because you mentioned a little while ago, you're like, I could have a bill and I put it forward because Mike Johnson seems like a good guy. He doesn't seem like somebody that would take something that was yours and make it somebody else's. Like, I don't understand what you're saying. So I don't understand what you're saying. Like I don't understand what you're saying. Like how does that work? And take me through like, how can you put a bill out and people would know what your bill is. I mean, obviously

Starting point is 00:39:32 is there information online that says this is a bill that Thomas Massey made or that any person made like any representative made? The other thing they'll do with your bills is they'll stick them in another bill. Okay. I'll give you an example Yeah, show me how you're saying that people aren't even getting the scraps or whatever, you know, say right take me through some of that Well, they're not Theo I tell people I joke with my colleagues up there. They're like man see why

Starting point is 00:39:57 You're not a sellout. I'm just like I look at him in the eye I'm biggest sellout up here like I would sell out for Snickers bar, but you guys aren't even getting a Snickers bar. You're not getting a bridge in your district. You're not getting a new exit off the interstate. You're not getting anything for your vote. Like nobody's ever offered me anything up there of value. I don't even know myself, I could be the biggest sell out there is.

Starting point is 00:40:19 There's just no trade up there that's worth taking. And so mostly people are trying to stay relevant and get reelected. Right, that makes perfect sense, right? Everybody's looking out for themselves in a sense. But you would think at some point that even that would lose its appeal. When you look around your town or your community

Starting point is 00:40:38 and you see that like, oh man, by not really benefiting the people, it's every like, it's all falling apart, you know? By not really benefiting the people, it's all falling apart. By not really benefiting the country, it's falling apart. And fuck, I'm starting to sound like a downer again. I don't wanna do that. It should, it should. But take me through, take me through

Starting point is 00:40:54 what you're talking about. How you put a bill up and it doesn't get labeled yours. So it's plagiarism? Or I don't understand what you're saying. And then if you do get something done by working inside of the system, they'll just, you won't get any credit for it. So for instance, when Ron Paul left Congress, I came into Congress.

Starting point is 00:41:11 And I introduced- And that's Randy's daddy? Yep, Rand's dad. I introduced a lot of Ron Paul's bills. And one was the Industrial Hemp Farming Act. Because it was illegal. They treated hemp just like marijuana. It was illegal to grow it, according to federal government. So I introduced that bill and I got a lot of co-sponsors, and I figured out a way to work with Democrats and get it into the farm bill. Now it was a Republican farm bill that I got it into, but I needed Democrat and Republican votes to do it.

Starting point is 00:41:41 And I got it in the farm bill. Republican votes to do it. And I got it in the farm bill, but now like people online say, oh, Congressman Massey, and it became law by the way, and people can grow industrial hemp in all 50 states. That's the end of the, you know, that's the rest of the story.

Starting point is 00:41:53 Oh yeah, a lot of chicks that don't wear deodorant are working on those, working on those places. No offense ladies, I don't mind it. But yeah, no, I'm glad that we have another product in our country, you know. Right. And so that became law. That was one of my bills, But yeah, no, I'm glad that we have another product in our country, you know? Right.

Starting point is 00:42:06 And so that became law. That was one of my bills, but nobody ever gives me credit for it because it wasn't a separate bill that said, and by the way, I voted for that crap sandwich, the farm bill, which is a big giant bill. And then I took crap for voting for that because it had my thing in it, but now I don't get credit for it. But I haven't particularly had bills where somebody took my name off them

Starting point is 00:42:30 and put somebody else's name, but my colleagues had. Okay, so you haven't had that exact thing happen to you from Mike Johnson? No. But you've seen it happen, you're saying? And if it did, I wouldn't care that much. I mean, if it's a good bill, make it happen. But a lot of people, you know,

Starting point is 00:42:45 they need to go back to their district and say, I got this done. Oh, I see. So a lot of times people don't know from the, from their Congress people or their representatives that they actually got this thing done. Right. Right. So there's a communication issue there. And then there's another thing that happens, like some congressman gets to DC and they have this bill they wanted to pass even before he was a congressman. And they say, we'll put your name on it and then you'll get credit for it. And then the congressman has no idea about the subject or anything.

Starting point is 00:43:18 So I had, there was a bill that came to the floor. It was about opioids. Okay. And I voted against it and the sponsor of the bill comes up to me and says, why did you vote against my bill? And I said, well, I'm not against research or things like that at the federal level, but this is basically a form of Obamacare

Starting point is 00:43:36 and I thought we were against that, like, cause this had treatment and stuff which should be handled at the state level. And he looked at me and said, you're right, he said, I'd vote against this too, if it weren't my bill. He said, the leadership gave it to me and told me to bring it to the floor and it would help me get reelected.

Starting point is 00:43:53 Wow. I swear to the Lord above, that was an exact conversation I had on the floor. Yeah, oh, I believe you did. Congressman from Wisconsin, he's still there. He is? Yeah. White guy I bet, the floor. Yeah. Oh, I believe you. Congressman from Wisconsin. He's still there. He is? Yeah. White guy I bet, huh?

Starting point is 00:44:07 Oh yeah. That was a guess, dude. That was a guess. By the way, but not to pick on him because that year we passed like 38 opioid bills. They're all redundant. They just gave everybody they were trying to get reelected they give them an opioid bill. Oh yeah. I mean, they were renewing more prescriptions

Starting point is 00:44:24 for opioid bills than they were opioids. That's the craziest part of it. And the Sackler family never even went to fucking jail. And some people believe that the Sackler family should be electrocuted. Allegedly. I don't know them and I don't even know if electricity would work on their fucking sick evil bodies. Is that slander for saying that? Can I go to jail for saying that? I might be a death threat, huh? You can, but I can't.

Starting point is 00:44:45 So maybe I should say it. There's something in the Constitution called the Speech or Debate Clause. And so I can go to the floor of the House of Representatives and lie. I can tell every lie I want and nobody can do anything about it. And it's called the Speech or Debate Clause.

Starting point is 00:45:02 Our staff, yeah, look this up. The Speech or Debate Clause found in Article I, yeah, look this up. The speech or debate clause found in article one, section six of the US constitution, protects members of Congress from being questioned in any other place for their speech or debate in either house. So let me read it again. Protects members of Congress

Starting point is 00:45:16 from being questioned in any other place. Which means you can't be questioned in a courtroom, you can't be sued. No way. You can't be... Now read the next sentence though because there's a good reason for it. This clause rooted in historical struggles for parliamentary independence aims to safeguard the independence and integrity of the legislative branch by preventing

Starting point is 00:45:36 interference from the executive or judicial branches. So, so when people, you know, even our founders, this is a, this is a hard pill to swallow. Okay. But even- I'm still a bit confused at this moment. Well, even our founders thought that there were some laws that shouldn't apply to congressmen because if they did, they would get abused. And like a Democrat president would arrest members of Congress for saying things on the floor of the house.

Starting point is 00:46:06 Because that's what the king did back in England. The king would arrest members of parliament if he didn't like what they said. Ah, I see what you're saying. Or you could get a private individual to sue a member of Congress for something they said. And then that would basically freeze the debate and members of Congress would be afraid to speak.

Starting point is 00:46:27 They would send their speeches to lawyers before they said them, you know, if this didn't exist. I see what you're saying. So this is kind of a fascinating little part of our constitution. And even though it seems wrong to give members of Congress extra First Amendment protection, the founders thought this was the best way to do it.

Starting point is 00:46:47 So you could go to court right now and lie on the stand? No, I can lie about anything, but I gotta be on the floor of the house or it has to be attached to my official business. So I'm probably covered on social media and I could just say defamatory things about you. I could release national secrets. And this also covers my staff as well.

Starting point is 00:47:17 God, interesting. But can you, but am I gonna go to Jeffer Callum, the Sacklers, say they got electrocuted? Yeah, probably. Shit. So what I do, do you bleep it out. No, you need to run for Congress. Oh That's hilarious, dude, and I only say I don't really even say those words myself I just say that on the this is the spirit of hundreds of thousands of opioid addicts who died Channeling through me for just a brief second. Forgive me. I'm back. All right

Starting point is 00:47:45 It starts to feel like neither party, wait, wait, so could I, I'm thinking about this, could we ask, could Mike Johnson put a bill on the floor about the omnibus thing? Yeah. And then we could see who would vote for it and vote against it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He could, but he's not going to. Right. Because it would be too dangerous.

Starting point is 00:48:11 It's way too dangerous. I mean, the lobbyists love it that way. Yeah. They love the opaqueness of that black box that Americans can't look into it and see what's going on. Yeah. Because they're inside the black box. Oh, for box. They get to craft language and special provisions in those big giant bills, and they're so big and we're not given time to read them. But you gotta remember, Theo, a lot of my colleagues wouldn't read these bills even if they were given three months to read them.

Starting point is 00:48:38 What they're doing by rushing these bills through is they're not who doing the congressmen, they're who doing the public. Of course. No, I think it makes perfect sense. It's like, cause we just send one set of eyes and brain up there to handle something, you know, or a couple sets if you have a few reps and then it's, but it's so much information at once.

Starting point is 00:48:56 It's all, it's, it's all the same thing. It's literally like a bus passing by. It's like with a car passing by, you can get an idea of what's on it. You can look at the wheels, you can check the exhaust, you know, I'd be able to see who's in there But when a bus goes by you're like fuck, I don't know, you know was a driver awake, you know That's kind of like, you know, that's how it that's how it certainly starts to appear up here My question and the windows are painted black on the bus And somebody wrote just married to a trans man on the windows with chalk or whatever with window paint

Starting point is 00:49:24 a trans man on the windows with chalk or whatever, with window paint. Here's my question. Is anybody representing the people anymore? Because it kind of feels like it used to feel like you at the parties were against each other. And now it feels like it's the government versus the people. That's what it feels like. I think it is. I mean, I call it the Uniparty. Last year, Marjorie Taylor Green and I introduced a resolution to oust Mike Johnson. After Mike Johnson put a bill on the floor and was the tie breaking vote to send more money to Ukraine, after he passed another omnibus, after he passed another bill to spy on Americans using mostly Democrat votes. Because a lot of Republicans are waking up to that and didn't vote for it. After he did

Starting point is 00:50:09 like three or four really bad things, Marjorie and I put a resolution on the floor. Which you think are bad things, right? I think they're bad things. Spying on Americans, sending all the money to Ukraine. Yeah, I think they are. I think they're not Republican priorities. And so, and he's a Republican speaker. So we put a resolution on the floor to vacate the speaker's office. And what does that mean to get a new speaker? Get a new speaker. Okay.

Starting point is 00:50:34 And typically no Democrat will vote for that. And if he doesn't have enough Republicans to sustain that vote, he will lose and get a new speaker. Why would no Democrat vote for that? Well for the first time in history They did like they did vote to keep Mike Johnson because it was as good as they've ever had it They were getting everything they wanted believe he was helping their party. Yeah, he was helping their party So they kept him in power. So it is really hard to change things

Starting point is 00:51:02 You can occasionally get people to try, but the consequences of trying and losing can be great. Like they call up all the lobbyists and say quit giving money to that member of Congress. They'll call up donors in your district. They'll call up constituents and have constituents call you up. Or the new thing recently is to fund social media campaigns.

Starting point is 00:51:28 The NRCC, National Republican Congressional Committee, they spend money on Twitter influencers who then do things against who knows what. I mean, they're directing them. That part isn't transparent, but it's directed toward me, for instance, our own party is coordinating efforts against me. Well then at that point, that's what I'm saying, there's a party that's, it's them against you. Which is okay, I've got a thick skin.

Starting point is 00:51:55 Right, but I'm just saying, it feels like it's you guys are playing this game, but it's all against the voter. None of it is for the voter anymore. It doesn't, you know what I'm saying? It's like, it feels like, I don't know, it just feels like it's, it's, it's the voter against the politicians. And it's, it just starts to feel really, really scary for sure. Have you thought about becoming an independent or is that not a, is that too, is that, is that, is that death? I, I've thought about it a lot. And one of the things that surprised me

Starting point is 00:52:25 when I got to Congress is there's two of everything. So there's two cloakrooms. There's a Democrat cloakroom. Wait, say that part again, there's a Democrat cloakroom? Cloakroom and a Republican cloakroom. This is like when you show up to vote, there's a little clubhouse, two little clubhouses attached to Congress.

Starting point is 00:52:42 You can go back there and get a hot dog and a hot ham and cheese and ice cream sandwich. Oh yeah, get a hot blonde too huh? That is our cloakroom right there on the right. Is that really? Yeah, you go back there although there's some computers as well that's looking in one direction. If you look in the other direction there's a sandwich they're not showing the sandwich bar. Oh yeah, I'd love a little. Oh, there's the sandwich bar. Yeah, that's it. Oh, god, that's it? Yeah, now that's the-

Starting point is 00:53:08 The cabinets are old, huh? That's the Democrat cloakroom. The Republican one looks just the same. Okay. But here's the thing- Give you a little mortadela, huh? There's only two cloakrooms. So if you were truly independent and you came to Congress,

Starting point is 00:53:23 there'd be nowhere to get a hot dog or to call, people go in there and call their lobbyist friends. Like during votes, you'll get a call and they'll say, hey, don't dare vote for this. Or maybe they'll call up a member of Congress will go to the cloakroom and call and ask for advice. Any case, there's also things called back rooms on every committee.

Starting point is 00:53:44 You've heard of backroom deals. I couldn't believe it. When I got to Congress, people are also things called back rooms on every committee. You've heard of back room deals? Mm-hmm. I couldn't believe it. When I got to Congress, people are using the word back room because there are back rooms behind the committee rooms where you go back and do your huddle. But there's only two huddles. There's the Democrat huddle and the Republican huddle, and there's only two back rooms. So I say if you were an independent, you're going against the architecture.

Starting point is 00:54:06 It's not just tradition, it's built into marble and oak. There can only be two parties. That's how strong they have put it in. And if you're bipartisan, that means you like both parties. I say that if you're, I'm not bipartisan, I'm transpartisan. Trans means you can't identify with either some days. I don't know which cloakroom to go into. Some days they don't want me in either cloakroom.

Starting point is 00:54:32 So I feel like I'm a transpartisan. Well, at least you can be out in the van outside. That's right. Some days I have gone out to the camper and just like drink some raw milk and just be like, we're so screwed. Let's go back in and try it. But I think it is hard, it would be really hard to have an independent party

Starting point is 00:54:53 or to get elected as an independent. I think- Yes, that's true. But never forget this. There's really like six parties up there in DC and they've been shoehorned into two different cloakrooms. Right. And so you got to pick which and. So either way, if you had a separate party, you're kind of still in one cloakroom or the

Starting point is 00:55:11 other. He's kind of still in one huddle of the other. Yeah. So there's a guy from Maine, his name's Angus King. He's a senator and he runs as an independent and he gets elected as an independent and then he goes into the Democrat cloakroom. So yeah, that's him. Oh yeah, he definitely looks like a main guy.

Starting point is 00:55:30 So he gets elected. Undeniably wears a raincoat at night. You may have heard the term rhino, Republican in name only. I have a friend who calls him an I know, an independent in name only because he gets elected as an independent and Bernie Sanders did this too, and then caucuses with the Democrats. You know, I've been involved with different financial groups that sponsor the program over the years,

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Starting point is 00:58:47 have on our elected officials. How much is it? I mean, how much of these packs really controlling things? Quite a bit. There's some aspects of lobbying that people don't think about. Like for instance, I think there are just as many lobbyists over at the White House as they are in Congress. Because a lot of you mean that some people are almost as elected lobbyists. Well, no. They spend their time talking to White House officials, because even though we're the legislators, the White House sends recommendations for bills.

Starting point is 00:59:22 And if the same party is empowering power in the White House and in Congress, like the big beautiful bill, for instance, the legislation can initiate over in the White House. And so lobbyists, I'm just saying, if you think of lobbyists talking to your senator and your congressman, they're all over DC. They're talking to bureaucrats. They're talking to people, cabinet secretaries, because they know it's sometimes easier to get written into the budget if they're over there lobbying. Another thing to know about lobbyists, I mean, there's lobbyists for the Alzheimer's victims or people who have Alzheimer's.

Starting point is 00:59:59 There are lobbyists. Really? Yeah, there are lobbyists for people with rare blood disorders, okay? There's lobbyists for the concrete association. If there is a group of people, they have lobbyists. And so there are, in some people's enemies, lobbyist enemies are other people's lobbying friends. Like there are pro-Second Amendment lobbyists who are up there fighting for the Second Amendment. And, you know, the Democrats hate those lobbyists, but those are lobbyists the Republicans kind of like. So the question is, you know, and sometimes my constituents,

Starting point is 01:00:37 they don't know how to get to DC and how to talk to all the congressmen from Kentucky and both senators. And so they hire lobbyists to come and do that. I don't know that I would outlaw lobbyists. Sometimes they're actually helpful. Let's say the concrete lobbyists. You got the concrete lobbyists fighting with the asphalt lobbyists on what's gonna be the road surface, okay?

Starting point is 01:01:03 Well, if all you hear is from the asphalt lobbyists, you would just buy asphalt. And then you hear from the concrete lobbyists. And so it's really to get to the truth, you need adversarial opinions. The problem is I wouldn't blame the lobbyists for advocating for their group of people. I would blame the congressmen who

Starting point is 01:01:26 basically put that crap in the bills. And again, I would go back to separating the votes. How do you know that your congressman is sold out to Big Pharma, for instance, if Big Pharma is only one tenth of the bill? And there's pay raises for veterans in there. Ah, so they can hide the fact that they're selling out over here by buying in over here. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:01:51 Hmm. God! It almost sounds fun. Now, there's one group of lobbyists I don't think really should exist or should have access to US offices. And those are foreign lobbyists. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:02:07 Yeah, I've heard you talk about this before and I've heard a lot of people are talking about it now. It's definitely become a hot topic. And AIPAC is one of the big ones. And is it, that stands for American? Israeli, political, it's not a fund. It didn't start out as a super PAC. So.

Starting point is 01:02:25 Political action Committee? Public Affairs Committee. There we go. Public Affairs Committee. American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Now, a lot of times PAC stands for Political Action Committee, like you said, but these guys were started before there were Political Action Committee, so it stands for Public Affairs Committee.

Starting point is 01:02:40 Got it. And they brag that they've spent more on elections than any other lobbying group. In the world? In the United States. In the United States. In Congress. Okay.

Starting point is 01:02:54 They now do have a political action committee. And I forget what the name of it is. So, APAC has a subsidiary that spends money to basically crack heads of congressmen. So there's two kinds of, by the way, there are two kinds of lobbying groups. There's access lobbying. That's where they're all your friends. They're never mean to you. They would, even if they don't like you, they'll buy you a steak dinner, and they'll try to get you to hear out their point of view. And they figure, as long as I can get in that person's office, I'm doing well for the people I'm lobbying for. But then there are confrontational lobbyists like APAC,

Starting point is 01:03:39 and APAC has transitioned into a confrontational lobbying group, where if you don't do what they want, they come after you. Wow. What does it look like? They spent $400,000 against me in my last election. And they are basically, advertise themselves as just all things Israel.

Starting point is 01:03:57 They are lobbying for more money to go to Israel, which all the money we give to Israel is military money. So they are basically lobbyists for the military industrial complex. Got it. Understood. So, and I'll ask you some questions about that, the military industrial complex in a few minutes, but do you feel like Israel is a fair ally or they are a good ally for us? Well. Or is that too general of a question?

Starting point is 01:04:22 Well, I think it doesn't matter. Like there's no big, giant Great Britain lobby. There's no Australian lobby. There's no German lobby. Oh, the other countries don't have them. No, no, not like this. This is singular. This is unique. I mean, if you're an ally, why wouldn't we work with you?

Starting point is 01:04:39 Why do you have to convince us that you're our ally? Why do you have to basically go into every congressional office and convince them? And it's because they want to keep the money flowing. And they've got a good return on their investment. I mean, we send more foreign aid to Israel than to any other country. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:04:59 They're like 10 million people or something. Yeah, I think this year. I don't know this population in Tennessee, but it's probably about, you know, on that order. Yeah, I think this year they said we spent like $12 billion, but that's not actual dollars. It's in military aid, right? Yeah, it's, well, it's dollars that comes out

Starting point is 01:05:17 of the treasury, yeah. But it's not like we give them, it's a gift certificate that's redeemable at Lockheed Martin and your local Raytheon You know, okay got it. So that's kind of how that works. Yeah. Okay got it. Um Why yeah, why do they have this? Carve out that's just for them. Like what like what do we get from Israel? Do you feel like? We got a lot of countries that hate us. It's one of the things we get.

Starting point is 01:05:46 Well, especially right now with this stuff in Gaza, I think it's one of the worst PR campaigns I've ever seen in my life. It doesn't make any sense to me. It gives their government this extremely evil look to me, you know? And I think to a lot of people, you know. Well, rough numbers, there are two million people in Gaza, and 50,000 have been killed. That's two and a half percent. Like, they've killed one in 40 people in Gaza. If you did that in the United States,

Starting point is 01:06:20 if you did two and a half percent of 350 million, it'd be almost 10 million people dead in the United States. Everybody in Gaza is at this point related to somebody who's been killed. Like at least the first cousin had killed. And then if you say how many have been maimed, it's probably three or four times that.

Starting point is 01:06:40 So everybody in Gaza knows people who've been killed and maimed. And we're supporting it, right? That's also the part that makes it really tough sometimes to just be a person. It's like, we are tax money is going towards this. But I just hope that people in some of these other countries know that, you know, it's not regular everyday people who would want to do these things, you know, that it's like governments making these choices and it's corporate interests that make these

Starting point is 01:07:06 choices. How do we, how would we stop it? Do we need this connection with Israel? What is it? No one ever explains what it's for, I feel like, right? That would help everybody have a much better understanding, you know, because it starts to feel like America is just a shell company, an LLC for Israel. That's what it starts to feel like a lot of times, you know? Do you feel like that that's realistic or do you feel like that that's off base? I wouldn't send them a dime.

Starting point is 01:07:33 Like, that's my position. I don't think whatever we're getting isn't worth it. And don't ask me to articulate the benefit because I think the cost is greater than the benefit. Everybody in Gaza is, at this this point has to hate Israel, right? And by extension those bombs when they see American politicians go over there and like sign the freaking bombs that are going to kill women and children. Actually there was just a clip with Ted Cruz that came up. Can you see if you

Starting point is 01:08:02 can find that Trevin? Where yeah where Tucker Carlson was interviewing Ted Cruz that came up, can you see if you can find that, Trevin, where Tucker Carlson was interviewing Ted Cruz. Let me see, this is a scary interview. During the Tucker Carlson interview with Ted Cruz, it's confirmed Israel's version of the CIA called Mossad spies. Oh, it's about spying, it's like what we get. Let's just watch it for a second. Does Mossad share all of its intelligence with us?

Starting point is 01:08:20 Oh, probably not, but they share a lot. We don't share all of our intelligence with them, but we share a lot, it's a close alliance. Do they spy domestically in the United States? Oh, they probably do. And we do as well. And friends and allies spy on each other. And I assume why assume all of our allies spy on us. That's okay with you. You know what, one of the things about being a conservative is that you're not naive and utopian. You don't think humans are all part of the reason socialism doesn't work is the mantra from each according to his abilities

Starting point is 01:08:49 to each according to his needs doesn't work. As a conservative, I assume people act in their rational self-interest. It's why the free market works. So it's conservative to pay people to spy on you? It's conservative to recognize that human beings act to their own self-interest and every one of our friends spies on us.

Starting point is 01:09:04 And I'm not- Do you like it? That's my question. I'm not asking whether they have motive to do it. I understand that. And by the way, I'm not mad at that. You're an American lawmaker. So I just want to know. Hold on. I want to know your attitude. You said that your guiding principle, in fact, the only principle, the only criterion, guiding the overwhelming. I wouldn't say only is, is it in't say only. Is it in America's interest? Is it in America's interest for Israel to spy on us, including on the president? It is in America's interest to be closely allied

Starting point is 01:09:34 with Israel because we get... What do we get? That's the thing. It's painful to watch that. So when I'm in a room with somebody and they say, can I talk to you, you know, just frankly, is anybody listening? I say, well, there's three nation states

Starting point is 01:09:50 plus our own in my phone. Yeah. There's gonna be Russia, China, and Israel. They're in our phone? No, not yours. Like it's a lot of effort to, anybody can be hacked, okay? Oh, I thought one of the reasons I got to go to Qatar recently, and I'm wondering if they hacked my phone.

Starting point is 01:10:05 I thought they were good. I don't know if that's crazy. I think it's probably continuously hacked. Okay. That's what I'm thinking. It just seems like everything's hacked now. I get scared, you know? But if you're not-

Starting point is 01:10:16 I play the Israeli national anthem every 45 minutes. Look, Amazon and Facebook know what you're saying in your phone, right? But probably Israel and Russia and China aren't devoting that effort and Internet traffic, which can become detectable to us. To, yeah. Right. But you're probably, you know, why wouldn't you be trying to hear what the 535 people in Washington, D.C. who vote on bills, what they are thinking.

Starting point is 01:10:48 And then, you know, also there are allegedly some congressmen who indulge in insider trading, but I would guess that there are probably some hackers who are also inside of congressmen's phones, trying to figure out what the sentiment is in Washington, D.C., and then trading on that. Wow. So there's always this extra layer kind of going along, going on, it feels like.

Starting point is 01:11:12 Yeah. But what do you think we get from Israel? I think it's just a big question. I think it's okay as a regular person. And I might get killed or something by Mossad or something, but what do we get from them as a country? Like, is there, I think there's just, that's a big question America has right now.

Starting point is 01:11:25 Is there something we just don't see? And if there is, just tell us what it is so we can operate accordingly, you know? No, I think they're the best lobbying group in Washington, D.C. And the reason they can do it is you have dual citizens, people who are American and Israeli, who are allowed to give money into American politics because they're American. And by virtue of

Starting point is 01:11:53 that, you're allowed to participate. But if you're a foreign national, you're not allowed to. So they're one of the few countries that can donate money to what? To super PACs, to members of Congress. Other countries are not allowed to do that. Well, I mean, they could if you were dual citizens, but there's not so many dual citizens as it were. But could somebody be a Russian and American dual citizen and serve in a Congress or? Sure. And donate to congressmen. By the way, I have introduced a bill that would require members of Congress

Starting point is 01:12:26 to disclose if they are dual citizens. And I think that's only fair. Right. Because right now you could have allegiance to another country, not just the USA. Correct. We swear an allegiance when you're a member of Congress to the Constitution. I always like to point this out. We're not swearing it to the country. We're not swearing it to the president. We're not swearing it to our party. We swear it to the Constitution. And other countries have constitutions too. What if you've taken allegiance to two different constitutions? Like the American I'm not and I'm not even my bill wouldn't even keep you from being a member of Congress. It would just say you have to disclose it if you are. And by the way, it wouldn't necessarily just be

Starting point is 01:13:06 Israel members of Congress who are also citizens of Israel. It could be other countries as well. I just think it creates a conflict of interest. And I have to disclose yearly which stocks I own. I have to disclose all my personal financial information so that the voters can decide if I am unduly influenced by that conflict of interest. And so that's the structure of my bill. My bill just, it's an election disclosure.

Starting point is 01:13:39 Okay. You're running for Congress. Bring it up. Tell us, tell us which countries you are a... Representative Thomas Massey announces the introduction of HR 2356, the Dual Loyalty Disclosure Act. Representative Massey's legislation amends a federal election campaign act to require candidates for federal office to disclose both their possession of dual citizenship and also the foreign country in which their dual citizenship is held.

Starting point is 01:14:05 So right now, we don't have to, people don't have to disclose. Nope, they don't. What? You would have no idea. Have you seen spies like us, dude? It's also, by the way, it's a safety net, by the way. If something went really bad,

Starting point is 01:14:22 you could just go live in your other country. I think you should be all in for this country. I agree, this ain't the fucking hokey pokey, dude. I think you gotta have both feet in or both feet out. You know what I'm saying, dude? I just, but any country this could happen, it could be, that's not just Israel.

Starting point is 01:14:43 Correct, it could be any country. But Israel is the only one that has a big lobby. So, for... Is there the Russian, like Russia PAC or whatever? No, there is not. Like I say, there's not even Australia PAC or Great Britain PAC. I mean, because they're natural allies. Why would they have to lobby Congress? They're also not on our teat, like asking for money. But I think it's also, there's this, it's a weird amalgamation of combined interests.

Starting point is 01:15:13 There's a military industrial complex that is all in for everything AIPAC is for. And before I banned AIPAC from my office, we used to have conversations that would go something like this. Oh, you should be for the foreign aid that goes to Israel because it all comes back to the United States in the form of military spending.

Starting point is 01:15:35 We're buying it all from American contractors. And be like, no, that's not a convincing argument to me. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, I don't even know what it's about, but it seems like bullshit to me. How does America make money off of war, right? Like I get that, you know, we sell things, this and that,

Starting point is 01:15:55 but how is that such a business, right? You know, it's like, how do we let this happen? Well, the answer is America doesn't make money off of war. A few people in America do make money off of war and they make a lot make money off of war. A few people in America do make money off of war and they make a lot of money off of war. So they want the music to keep going. They don't want the music to stop. And as soon as, you know, Biden was serious

Starting point is 01:16:16 about getting out of Afghanistan and did get us out of Afghanistan, and we were spending, by the way, we were still spending $50 billion a year in Afghanistan after 20 years. As soon as he got us out of there, guess what? We start spending an average of $50 billion a year in Ukraine.

Starting point is 01:16:36 And now that that's winding down, guess what? This thing in Iran is heating up. And regardless of whether our troops engage directly, those are all American munitions. And those stocks are, you know, the people who run those companies are excited that now, you know, as soon as we deplete our stockpiles, we're going to have to fill them back up. Like, it's not like they're holding a bunch of inventory, but the US government does. Those are ostensibly those are weapons that are supposed to defend us that are now being used and so they know we'll buy them back.

Starting point is 01:17:13 And I have this theory that there's about $50 billion a year of things that need to get blown up and replaced in order for that segment of the economy to stay healthy. And then there was a real push to get out of Ukraine to quit spending money there. And we almost succeeded. Like I said before, the tie-breaking vote was Mike Johnson. The bill passed by just one vote and a lot of times the speaker doesn't even vote, but he voted in that case to make sure that Ukraine got that money. But isn't it, I mean, it's also, I think it's admirable

Starting point is 01:17:50 that a guy is willing to go against their own party's interests, right? Like that part to me seems like a part of it, like, you know what I'm saying? Like not just to be in line all the time with everything. Well, that could be me sometimes, right? Right, that's what I'm saying. Oh, totally. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:18:04 So that's what I, I think that's a little bit of the thing I don't get about some of the stuff. Whenever we talk about Mike Johnson is like, if he like, there's a generation in going against like, just what your party's going to do, right? If you're, if you're staying true to your party's principles, I think it's admirable. But when you're betraying your party's principles, I don't think it is because you've campaigned on one thing and now you're doing something different. Got it. And the reality is the speaker has so much power up there,

Starting point is 01:18:33 he's in training dozens of more people who rely on him to get reelected. And by the way, the lobbyists, in addition to focusing on the executive branch, they spend a lot of their effort on just the way, the lobbyists, in addition to focusing on the executive branch, they spend a lot of their effort on just the speaker, in the speaker's office. What do you think has kept us in Ukraine so long? I mean, obviously, we want to be supportive of people that are struggling, right? We want to help out people. It feels like as an American, especially that's part of our creed and what you feel in your heart is like if you can be helpful to another group, right? So I certainly see that as something that we want to keep involved in

Starting point is 01:19:12 Foreign conflicts, even though a lot of times I'm like, why are we involved in these conflicts over there? What is it? I think that I don't understand maybe about the About Russia and Ukraine or do you think that that's part of just the military industrial tab that we have to fill? I think we have agitated Russia to the point by expanding NATO. We just keep adding countries closer and closer to their backyard that are in a military alliance with us. And the situation in Ukraine,

Starting point is 01:19:43 we also toppled their government in 2014. The United States did. We did? Yeah. Bring that up. Yeah, bring that up. You can see that the government changed there and we had our hands all over that. Let me see.

Starting point is 01:20:00 In 2014, Ukraine experienced a period of intense political upheaval culminating in the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych. The event, often referred to as the Revolution of Dignity or Euromaidan, involved widespread protests against Yanukovych's policies, particularly his decision to reject a trade agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. So we didn't want them to have closer ties with Russia, so we overthrew them? Yeah. I mean, we went in and fomented those protests. Our CIA did, our State Department, you know, Victoria Nuland was part of that.

Starting point is 01:20:36 So this was just another thing. You think we started laying the seeds in advance to get to this point? Yeah, I don't think it would have ever happened if we weren't involved in fomenting this and then talking about bringing them into NATO after we poked Putin in the eye here. And the whole point was just to get to a war to help fill out the tab, you're saying? Yeah, that's and that's a part of it. Like that's that's sort of Massey's law. There has to be another there has to be $50 billion of stuff that gets blown up that is made by American military industrial complex in order to keep them going.

Starting point is 01:21:11 And if it's not, they'll just spend more effort in making that happen. Got it. Rather than go out of business. Yeah. Oh, I think once you get used to something, you get used to it. Oh, here's the thing I was going to say before.

Starting point is 01:21:26 When we got close to not funding Ukraine under Mike Johnson, the Biden administration sent a letter to Congress, to each of us, everybody in Congress got one of these letters, listing all the states who had, they call it the defense industrial base now because military industrial complex has a bad connotation. Rebranding. Yeah, so it's DIB, D-I-B. The defense industrial base, they showed how almost every state in the union benefits from military spending and why you should,

Starting point is 01:22:01 and that was their argument. Not that there was some noble cause or to help out a struggling group of people like you said, the argument that the Biden administration was making was it was in congressman's financial, the financial best interests of their districts in order to vote for this bill. So now they're just saying it's a business.

Starting point is 01:22:20 Yeah, give them an A for honesty. They're at least saying, yeah. Feed the machine. Yeah, feed the machine. But doesn't that also cost human lives, like if our military has to get involved? It does. That's the these are now they're supposedly sanitary wars where our kids don't have to die, but I think it's disgusting when you know, we've had members of the Senate at least say that This is great. We're grinding down Russia's military capability and we don't have to spill any of our blood But I mean how perverted is that that you're grinding up? Ukrainians right bodies in order to grind up Russian bodies and that somehow that's in the best interests of the United States. I'll give

Starting point is 01:23:07 I don't want to say his name, but I'll give that senator credit for being honest at least but I think it's disgusting. Yeah, I mean I think it's we just have so much capability to manipulate so many situations, you know, and I don't understand like actually, it's silly to say I don't understand anymore if I believe that part of the military industrial complex or the defense industrial base industrial base needs to keep keep collecting, you know, it makes sense. It's a business, everything kind of. I mean, that's one of the downsides of capitalism, I guess, you know, in a weird way is that everything kind of can become a business, you know, even like the beauties of trying to be supportive of other countries or trying to help out people, you know.

Starting point is 01:23:52 And that's in addition to the trillion dollars a year we're now spending on the military in the United States. That's about what Congress allocates. And this is all catching up to us because now the interest that we're paying is about a trillion dollars a year. So because we've engaged for two or three decades in all of these overseas wars, we've racked up such a tab that we're paying more in interest than there you go. And we are in the military industrial complex. And on the screen there, it says 849 billion.

Starting point is 01:24:28 Don't forget, there's another 100 billion in the big, beautiful bill that they snuck in there and they sneak in another 50 billion somewhere else. So it's about a trillion, but look up the interest on the debt now too. Oh, the interest on the debt, it matches our GDP right now. The interest- I think it's about 35 million, 35 trillion a year is our-

Starting point is 01:24:49 That's the debt, but the interest on the debt matches how much we spend on all of our defense. It's a trillion dollars if you look up interest. What's the interest on the debt last year? That's insane. Do you think that we should have a war with Iran? I know you got you and Ro Khanna, which is so crazy that he was here the other day and then here you are because it was just like, what are the odds, you know?

Starting point is 01:25:12 Right. And we didn't plan that because we didn't know Israel was going to bomb Iran and that- Oh no, a month ago I knew that you were probably going to come. We've been talking about it. But then Ro, he and I just decided like five days ago. So it was just crazy before I even knew that the bill that you guys had put that together. He said that that made it so that the there had to be a 15 day moratorium before you went to war. Is that correct?

Starting point is 01:25:34 Can you explain it to me? No, that we can get a vote within 15 days of of this bill being introduced, unless Speaker Johnson does something sneaky. So there's a law that says if Ro Khanna and I, which we did, introduce this War Powers Resolution, the law says that Speaker Johnson needs to bring this to the floor for a vote if the committee doesn't act on it. And the committee's not gonna act on it.

Starting point is 01:26:03 By the way, I introduced this on Tuesday, and it's just been a few days. We have 37 co-sponsors already. Now whether you think we should be engaged in a war with Iran or not, I would hope that your listeners understand that or agree that it's important that their members of Congress vote on whether that happens or not. And before, just to give you some historical perspective, before George Bush senior attacked Iraq, there was a vote of Congress to do that. It was in the declaration of war. It was to authorize use of military force.

Starting point is 01:26:46 Before George Bush Jr. went into Afghanistan, there was a vote of Congress. And before we went into Iraq again, there was a vote of Congress. What's being discussed right now in the news is this notion that the president could just join in on the bombing of Iran without a vote of Congress. The Constitution requires Congress to vote. Like that's our authority is to declare war.

Starting point is 01:27:15 So why do you need this bill then if it's already a law? Well, this is This is prescribed by that law. Basically somebody has to bring it to a vote. I see. And so I stepped up and I asked Ro Khanna if he wanted to join me on this and he did and we've been collecting like a dozen co-sponsors a day since then. So it's you guys just saying, hey guys, we have to vote on this. We have to vote. They can't just say it and we have to do it. Correct. Right. And what's funny is whenever it's the other guy in the White House, like if a Democrats in the White House, Republicans and a Democrats in the White House, Republicans

Starting point is 01:27:46 and the Democrat wants to wage war, the Republicans agree with this principle that I'm saying. And if it's a Republican in the White House, it's the other way. The Democrats agree with the principle that Congress needs to vote on it. But we've got this interesting situation where there's a Republican in the White House and Republicans control Congress And so it's I don't have a single Republican co-sponsor for my bill yet For for two reasons number one. They're afraid of a pack the you know American Israel Because we go once that met and y'all has been wanting to fight over there forever. Yeah, for two decades. I know those videos of him saying like how he's been, yeah, how he's been wanting to fight. Yeah, I've seen it anyway. It could be AI. I have no idea.

Starting point is 01:28:32 No, it's real for two decades. He's been saying they're weeks away from a nuclear weapon. Um, by the way, even if they are, Pakistan's got a nuclear weapon, India's got a nuclear weapon, nobody's talking about bombing them. And the other reality is, look, South Africa, people forget this, used to have nuclear weapons. A country of 30 million people developed nuclear capability on their own in the 70s. We need to be preparing to defend our own country. I agree. I don't know what the fuck we're doing over there.

Starting point is 01:29:05 I don't understand it. And we've almost dug so many holes over there. And it's like, it just feels so far away from people. Like, why is it over there starting all this shit, you know, when we have problems in our own country and they're basic problems and they never get solved. It's the same thing. Instead, like Hollywood creates like, what about the Diddy trial? That'll keep you entertained for fucking three months, you know, or like some,

Starting point is 01:29:28 here's some shit. Here's a pedophile. La da da da. You know, it just, it's always the same fucking thing. I call those weapons of mass distraction. Yeah. There's always a weapon of mass distraction that comes up. Would you, uh, do you think that Trump wants to war in Iran?

Starting point is 01:29:42 No, I don't. I actually don't. And I've talked to him on the phone about this. When you remember there was a general from Iran called Soleimani who was basically taken out while he was in Iraq during the first Trump presidency. Bring up Soleimani. Yeah. There you go.

Starting point is 01:30:02 Interesting looking guy. He almost looks like two different people put into one head So they took him out when Trump was president. Was he a good guy or bad guy? Bad guy. Okay. Okay, and then And I I'm not here to litigate that but Trump was talking about attacking Iran after that I think they shot down one of our drones and so tensions were escalating and the Democrats put a bill on the floor to say that you can't go, basically like my bill this time, says you can't go to war without a vote of Congress. And I vote, I was one of three Republicans who voted for that resolution, but Trump found

Starting point is 01:30:40 out I was going to vote for it and he called me up and tried to talk me out of voting for it. And in that conversation, we talked about war with Iran and he genuinely, I do believe he genuinely didn't want war with Iran. His argument to me was that if we, Congress gave him the authority to threaten them, that he could keep us out of a war with the threat. I see. So that's a strategy. It is a strategy. The problem with the strategy, I told him, was, okay, if I vote to give you that authority to declare war, or on your own, you know, preemptively-

Starting point is 01:31:16 How do I know it will happen? Well, what if they call your bluff? And then now we're in a war, and I don't get a chance to vote on it, because I just said we don't need to vote on it and and He was not happy with that Reasoning but well cuz I guess I guess his thought will be well if I tell you I'm not gonna Do it no matter what then why wouldn't you support me probably? Yeah?

Starting point is 01:31:41 But you can't know that he won't and by the way way, he told me, he said, I'm more libertarian than you are. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh man, Donald Trump is an interesting guy, man. What an anomaly of a human being, I think. He is, there'll never be another person like him, particularly not one that becomes president. And I've been on his good side,

Starting point is 01:32:04 and I've been on his bad side and it seems like every couple of years it flips. Yeah, I saw, didn't you get uninvited to the picnic or something? Was that a thing that, was that a real thing that happened? That was a real thing that happened. A meme about it or something, that you got uninvited to the-

Starting point is 01:32:16 At the last minute I got reinvited. But this goes back to 2020 during COVID. I was the only one who said, you know, this CARES Act is going to bankrupt the country. Basically it's going to cause massive inflation and shortages. So I opposed that. And the president called me, he was upset with me that I would force Congress to return during COVID and vote. And basically all I said was, look, this was during COVID.

Starting point is 01:32:44 They want to spend $2 trillion by unanimous consent. I said, if truckers have to work and farmers have to work and nurses have to work, why doesn't Congress show up and vote on this? Yeah. So he, at the time, he called me a third rate grandstander and said I should be thrown out of Congress. The media immediately like descended on me and said,

Starting point is 01:33:04 what did I have to say for myself? Cause he was tweeting all of this and I said, well, I'm at least second rate, come on. Yeah, help me out here. Two years later, he endorsed me for a reelection. And then most recently, Bobby Kennedy, you know, joined a coalition with the president for Maha, Make America Healthy Again. And you know, you can do that through the National Institute of Health and FDA and CDC and all that.

Starting point is 01:33:35 But also our food supply is a big important part of that. So Bobby Kennedy was advocating for me to be the Secretary of Agriculture. And he and I have been talking about it for weeks. candidate was advocating for me to be the secretary of agriculture. And he and I have been talking about it for weeks. This was before Trump won the election last fall. And there's a lot of agriculture out of Kentucky. That would have been great. It would have been great.

Starting point is 01:33:54 Would have been something you were interested in? Yes, definitely. Because I think there are a lot of things we could do to basically reinvigorate and empower small farmers to make healthy food and grow local economies, things like that. And so I was all in and Bobby Kennedy's team spent a lot of time on it. And I told him, this was like in October before the election, I said, I think there's one problem with your plan.

Starting point is 01:34:18 And he said, what's that? And I said, I've not endorsed Trump. And he said, well, it sounds like you need to endorse Trump. Do you think that was a strategy or do you think that it was? No, he've not endorsed Trump. And he said, well, it sounds like you need to endorse Trump. Do you think that was a strategy or do you think that it was? No, he was genuine. Yeah, I would think so.

Starting point is 01:34:29 And I agreed with him. So I said, well, how do we announce it? And he said, well, come out to Wisconsin Tuesday and Tulsi and I are doing this rally and just come up on stage and announce it there. And I'm thinking, man, I don't wanna go to Wisconsin in October to do this because I had a lot of other things on my plate

Starting point is 01:34:46 at that time. And so I put it off for a day. I did look at plane tickets to go to Wisconsin. I typed out an endorsement of Trump on my iPhone, read it back to myself. And I woke up the next morning, and I thought, this is the day. I got to do this.

Starting point is 01:35:03 So Trump, when my wife passed away last summer, he had left a very nice message. I would have obviously taken his call, but I was inundated with calls, but he left a really nice message of condolences. And that was thoughtful of him. And so it was, and that's a side people don't see, right? I actually campaigned for Ron DeSantis,

Starting point is 01:35:24 and Trump felt compelled to leave that message, even though I hadn't endorsed him. It was very thoughtful message. So I sit down, I'm in a hotel in Orlando, and I woke up and I went and I listened to that message and I thought, all right, I'm gonna talk to his staff about going to Wisconsin and doing this endorsement. So I dialed the number and on the second ring,

Starting point is 01:35:47 I hear, hello, this is Donald. And I was like, oh shit, that's his cell number. And he's like two weeks from prison or president, nobody knows. And he's taken my call. And I was taken off guard because I thought, I was like, how the hell? Now what do you do? What do you fricking do, Thomas?

Starting point is 01:36:06 I'm sitting here in my boxers in a Marriott. Oh, God. At least go outside and stand up. You weren't sitting down, were you? No. Because your audio, your volume's better if you walk around where you're talking to somebody. So the first thing I did was to thank him

Starting point is 01:36:20 for leaving the message. Oh, that's good. About my wife. By all the time. I hadn't done that yet. And he Oh, that's good. About my wife. By all the time. I hadn't done that yet. And he said, that's a hard one. That's a very hard one. You know, Arnold Palmer, he played around a lot,

Starting point is 01:36:33 but he did love his wife. And when she passed away, it almost killed Arnie. I mean, it was tough on Arnie, but he's a tough cookie. You're a tough cookie too. And you're like Arnie, you'll get through this. And then he goes, I take it back. You're much tougher than Arnie ever was. So then he goes, you're sharp cookie too.

Starting point is 01:36:57 You know, you went to MIT. My uncle, Professor John G. Trump taught at MIT for 41 years, It's a record. He said, oh, what a god. What a fuck. I've got the best genetics. Yeah. I'm like, I'm thinking, wait, this guy is two weeks away.

Starting point is 01:37:19 And he's got to be busy, right? This is the election of his life. And so I thought, at some point, they're going to grab him and say, look, who are you talking to? You is the election of his life. And so I thought, you know, at some point they're going to grab him and say, look, who are you talking to? You got to get back to work. So I said, well, the reason I'm calling you is I want to, I've seen it's close to these purple States and a lot of independents and libertarians who could be influenced perhaps. And I'd like to endorse you. Oh, this is wonderful. This is great. This is tremendous. And I said, well, how do I, how do we get it out there? And he goes, Oh, just tweet it. I'll retweet you.

Starting point is 01:37:51 So I saved myself a trip to Wisconsin. Oh, that's nice, dude. I love going to Wisconsin. Was it in lacrosse? I don't know where it was. So he goes, uh, you know, I spoke at the libertarian national convention. Yeah, there spoke at the Libertarian National Convention. Yeah, there it is. There's, oh, yeah. Um, there's a sentence in here. I got to explain. Okay.

Starting point is 01:38:12 Uh, so he goes, I spoke at the, the Libertarian Convention and they loved me. He said, when I mentioned I was going to free that kid that's been locked up a hundred years, they all applauded. And I said, not Travis Scott or something. Ross Ulbrich. So I said, Oh yeah, he's in for two life sentences plus 40 years for running a website. And, um, he said, yeah, put that in your endorsement. The libertarians will love it. So if you look like, I'm like he will make America healthy. He'll save America, security,

Starting point is 01:38:47 I said, and he'll free Ross Albers Yeah Ross's mom called me and thanked me for that and Then I see out. Yeah, I took him to the State of the Union. I said cool guy He's super cool guy and he never should have been in prison For as long as he was. Yeah. What'd he get locked up for? Uh, running a dark web website called Silk Road that allowed people to buy and sell things on the internet.

Starting point is 01:39:13 Oh yeah. And they're starting to dope and shit on there and people dying. Yeah. So, uh, so that's what he's holding for a year, but I mean, that's the thing. But it's like, you can't lock him up. If you can't lock him up and not lock up- All the perpetrators on the website are free, right? No, I'm talking about you can't lock him up

Starting point is 01:39:30 and not lock up the Sackler family though. You keep going back to that. I don't know what you're talking about. Oh, they're the family that did the opioid epidemic or whatever. Oh, okay. They're the Purdue Pharma family. Oh, okay, okay.

Starting point is 01:39:44 So anyway, yeah, I'm sorry. They're just like mass murders or whatever. Oh, okay. They're the Purdue Pharma family. Oh, okay. Okay. Sorry. So anyway, yeah, I'm sorry. They're just, they're just like, uh, mass murders or whatever. I mean, they're allegedly mass murders that are still wandering around. So anyways, um, the thing is, so I said, all right, I'll put that sentence in. Let me, I want to run this by you. And he said, here, I give you the Dan Scavino. He's on the plane with me. And I'm you to Dan Scavino he's on the plane with me and I'm like oh my gosh he's on a plane he's talking to me we're gonna go tape the Joe Rogan show then then he like I can hear him hand the phone that was right before the election dude yeah he hands the phone to Scavino and he's like it I don't think he knew I could hear him because Dan this is a tough cookie it's Thomas Massey don't't screw this up. Oh.

Starting point is 01:40:26 Then we worked out the endorsement. That's pretty cool, huh? It was cool, because instead of like a bunch of staff trying to figure out what to do, I just called him. And we got it done in like five minutes, right? But, and I did endorse him. And then I'm obviously, I'm not the Ag Secretary, but that's okay.

Starting point is 01:40:43 I'm happy where I'm at. I would have done it if he needed somebody to do it. But are you guys at odds, do you feel like? And obviously I'm not the Ag Secretary, but that's okay. I'm happy where I'm at. I would have done it if he needed somebody to do it. But are you guys at odds, do you feel like? Or do you feel like there's so much going on in his world? Well, he came over to Congress a few weeks ago to whip us on the Big Beautiful bill. And so when that happens, you guys all get together in a room and he gets to speak? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:41:04 200 people in the room. Okay. And so he's petitioning for the Big Beautiful bill. And so when that happens, you guys all get together in a room and he gets to speak? Yeah, 200 people in the room. Okay. And so he's petitioning for the big, beautiful bill. He's telling us how great it is. And then he says something about me. And then he realizes I might be in the room. He said, is Tom Massey in the room? And I raised my hand and he said, you know, the thing about Tom Massey is he's very much like Rand Paul. They're both from Kentucky. You can never get him to vote for anything. And they got the same hair. And he goes, actually, I like Massey's hair better.

Starting point is 01:41:38 So all my colleagues, they were approving of me that day. That's hilarious. So there's some, I mean, people, some people hate Donald Trump, some people love Donald Trump. I just think you cannot deny that he is a, there is nobody like him. There's two forms of Trump derangement syndrome, though. There's the kind where you hate him so much,

Starting point is 01:42:04 it's irrational, and even if he's for something, you support him so much, it's irrational. And even if he's for something you support, you still be against him. And a lot of liberals have Trump derangement syndrome, and some Republicans. Well, that's a general thing that I think that's just a political derangement syndrome too. I mean, I have friends that it's like,

Starting point is 01:42:18 you could show them the same exact thing, but if it's a Republican saying it or a Democrat, and they'll choose the other side, you know? Well, that's why there's the other version of Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is you love him so much that when he goes against something he said he would do or he does something that's against your principles,

Starting point is 01:42:36 you change your own principles to support him. And I think that's just as dangerous. And I try not to have either of the Trump derangements in here, just be for the people of Kentucky. Yeah, look, Kentucky derangement alone is, that's a pretty good, you know what I'm saying? That's not a bad, you know, that's a, I mean, that's its own special 150 proof derangement

Starting point is 01:43:02 right there, you know, it's one of a kind. I'm a man of my people? It's one of a kind. I'm a man of my people. It's one of a kind. You know what's one of the most beautiful places I've ever done a show was Pike? Pikeville. Pikeville, Kentucky. Yep, Eastern Kentucky.

Starting point is 01:43:15 It was a tough show. It was just, I don't know if it was the acoustics of the place we played, but it was a beautiful little city. Great crowd. I mean, beautiful big town. I mean, one of the most beautiful places I think I've ever been. It just blew my mind of what it even was.

Starting point is 01:43:26 See if you can find a picture of Lewis County, Kentucky. That's where I'm from. It's a, that's the town I grew up in right there. What is that? I believe that's Vanceburg. That's Vanceburg? Yep. And the courthouse with the red roof on the left, with the columns.

Starting point is 01:43:42 Oh yeah. There's two courthouses, but one on the left, my grandfather hauled the stones for that courthouse that were quarried locally. Dude, that is cool. How big is that place? It's about 2,000 people. Hell yeah, perfect size.

Starting point is 01:43:56 It's the county seat. It's the biggest town in the county. So you go there to buy beer and to go to church and put your money in the bank or get a loan. Amen. Lewis County. So that's the town is called Lewis County or the whole county is 12,000? The whole county is about 13 or 14,000 people and Vansburg used to be 2,000, it's probably 1,500 people now. But that's where I grew up. And this is a true story. When I went to MIT, which is in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

Starting point is 01:44:28 across the river from Boston, you can see in Vansburg, there's no crosswalks. We had one stoplight. And I lived there until I was 18. Then I would go to Massachusetts, never visited in my life. And I landed on a plane. I'm going through a crosswalk, you know,

Starting point is 01:44:46 with the signs that say walk and don't walk. And a car honked at me. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'd been here six hours and already run into somebody from Kentucky. And I waved at them. Cause I thought the car honking knew me. No, they were, they were waving back with one finger cause I was walking against a don't walk or something.

Starting point is 01:45:04 Get out the street, hulking! That's hilarious, dude. Yeah, man, going from a small town to a big place is definitely fascinating, man. It's definitely... That was... and it was intimidating, like to go from that little town where everybody says, oh, you're uneducated, you're backwards, you don't know anything. I went to public school, K through 12 there. And then to go to MIT with all these kids from private school and Bronx science. Were you just like a, were you just, I mean, people must have think you as a real nerd

Starting point is 01:45:36 or whatever. Oh, I was a nerd. Oh yeah. I built little science projects in my room and you know, that was, that was basically my ticket out of Appalachia yeah and went to MIT and started a company there it was actually a virtual reality interface that I really needed that lets you touch three-dimensional objects and raise 32 million dollars of venture capital oh my

Starting point is 01:46:00 god from people like JD Vance yeah Yeah. Have you seen, well, in some of your story, it reminds, or is similar to Mr. Vance's, I think in some ways, you know, it's like, and you don't hear a lot of stories about like, I mean, I think that they happen, but you don't hear that many of them, you know, and maybe it's just because we don't talk to as many politicians that are like, usually politicians were always like on C-SPAN or somewhere where you didn't really get to envelop much of their story I think by JD having that movie that came out about him probably helped With a book. I mean he wrote the book and it rings true for me. Like he he went to New England to school I went to New England from school. I didn't know where the place what to do with the place setting of

Starting point is 01:46:42 Silverware. I was waving at cars that honked. But I tell JD, when he was a senator, we met a few times to talk about the Ukraine issue and things like that. But I told him, I said, JD, you've appropriated my culture. Like I'm from Vanceburg, Kentucky, literally Vanceburg. And you're from Ohio and you're saying you're a hillbilly.

Starting point is 01:47:04 Like he's part of the hillbilly people that Like my people that left and went to Ohio. So I I have a brother and a sister. They both went to Ohio We and it was a big migration. Why was it was it to work in the mills? It was there were shoe factories some of them went to Detroit to work at car factories. But it was for employment. Employment. Yeah. And this continued for generations as coal went down, but we said they teach you three R's in Eastern Kentucky, reading, writing, and Route 23.

Starting point is 01:47:36 Oh, yeah. Route 23 runs north, crosses the river, and goes up from Portsmouth to Columbus and on up that way. So the difference between JD and I is My mamal didn't drop f-bombs like he had I will say he probably had a rougher upbringing with you know, his single mom and whatnot. So he had overcome a lot. Yeah, I mean he's an I mean I think JD's a great speaker. He's an interesting guy, you know I've enjoyed the opportunity even even get to talk to him.

Starting point is 01:48:05 The simple fact that even somebody like me is even gonna talk to him, I think it's all kind of fascinating. I think it's great. I think he's over there biting his tongue so much though. Like, cause when you're the vice president. Oh, it did feel different when I spoke with him the first time than the second time.

Starting point is 01:48:19 And he's a good guy. Like he's texted me since he's been vice president and he's a good guy but I'm sure he's biting his tongue on some of this stuff. Yeah, I bet it's interesting, you know? I bet the plot thickens, you know? I bet the plot really, really thickens. You talked about working in virtual reality. I feel like now, did you see, Iran did that, there was a military video that they had pushing

Starting point is 01:48:43 their military. It was like, and we'll be done in a few minutes. See if you can bring that up. It was, yeah. Did you see now it's like, there's like PR videos for war and shit now. Like what is even, look at this shit. Zoom in. This looks like a video game.

Starting point is 01:49:18 Look at this. It's just getting really bizarre. Look at that. I mean, that's good. But I think it's like, well, it's like we're it's like now. I feel like we're getting so close to you're going to be able to subscribe online and stream, watch a stream of a war like you're going to be able to have drones that are in the air watching war right like probably Palantir drones or some company in the air and you can stream it from home you know but wouldn't it be better if just like the drones killed the other drones and people didn't get killed and maybe that's it's virtual reality and who can ever who can

Starting point is 01:50:02 build the best army in VR that would be a lot better way than killing people. I agree I think it's gotten I mean it's like you're gonna be able to you know it's gonna be like yeah shit is just like you said earlier everything is feels merging it doesn't even feel real anymore that's how unreal shit is it doesn't even you can barely tell as a regular, semi ignorant person, the difference between what's real and what's not anymore. And that's when things get bizarre. It's like, I feel like next week,

Starting point is 01:50:32 like I show speed is going to like compete against Netanyahu son or whatever that lives, I think in LA or somewhere like, but, and they're going to compete and like the winner gets to, um, live in like a, one of those like Congo cobalt mines where they're making iPhone Like parts it just you're just like what the fuck is happening anymore It happens on both sides though and truth is the first casualty of war and you saw like there was the ghost of Kiev remember when that came out and there was supposedly this Aviator in Ukraine that was shooting down all these Russian jets.

Starting point is 01:51:05 Oh, it was lore? Yeah, it was all made up. A popular but ultimately mythical Ukrainian fighter pilot, an urban legend that emerged during the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, said that a single MiG-29 pilot was shooting down multiple Russian aircraft, becoming a similar resistance. Yes. And that was being reported as a real thing thing and congressmen were falling for that. And so I have tried to be very judicious in all the videos I watch of everything that's coming

Starting point is 01:51:36 from all the countries, whether it's Iran or Israel or our own. And I actually caught the IDF, Israeli Defense Forces, using a clip that was from last year, trying to make it look like that was Israel being bombed this week. And this is one of the fun things about being a congressman with 1.3 million followers. Like I pointed it out and people started looking at it and comparing it

Starting point is 01:52:05 to the video from nine months ago, and they got community noted, the IDF, for putting out a fake video. They didn't have to, I mean, there's plenty of live footage, but they fell for it. Like, we're just, we're in a loop. We're consuming stuff on the internet, and you know the loop has been completed

Starting point is 01:52:26 when the Israeli government consumes YouTubes that aren't real and then puts them in their videos. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I could see them doing it just because, but yeah, I think it's definitely the loop is like, we're spinning the loop so long we're dizzy. That's where it feels like we are.

Starting point is 01:52:44 If you can step out of it, like I haven't had a TV in 20 years because. You're not missing anything. It just reinforces the false, there we go. Breaking Bad was good. Did they and. Oh yeah, who knows. See?

Starting point is 01:52:59 Yeah, you can't tell what's really more. Raw footage, Iran. Yeah, there's the two videos. Look, that's the one they put out that said was happening in the past hours, right? Now look at the other one. The clouds are the same shape, the missiles are in the same formation,

Starting point is 01:53:14 and that was a YouTube from eight months ago. But the reason I caught it and nobody else did was I was trying to verify everything before I took it as real. And I saw that video from eight months ago and figured out it was fake, but the IDF didn't. Or maybe they did and it just was more dramatic than the footage they had.

Starting point is 01:53:35 That could be more, but that sounds slightly more possible. But what do I know? I don't know anything. I know this, dude. What can we do? What can voters do anymore? Does it matter anymore what we do what can we do? Like what can voters do anymore? Does it matter anymore what we do or are we done? It does matter.

Starting point is 01:53:51 You're gonna- Does local level matter more than ever? Local level voting or what matters? Like what can we do? So the congressman before me in my district got a call at home one night and this older lady was upset that her trash hadn't been picked up. And he's a US Congressman. He said, he said, no, he

Starting point is 01:54:12 said, I'm your US Congressman. I don't, I'm not involved with the trash pickup. Did you think about calling your County commissioner? And she said, I was going to do that, but I didn't want to start that high up. I think local is, I started out in local politics and the local officials have way more impact on your life than the federal government does. And so I would take time and pay attention and vote locally. And those are also people you can go find. When I was a local government official

Starting point is 01:54:46 and we would stop at the grocery store to buy milk, my kids would beg my wife to go in to pick up the milk because I'd be in there two hours and somebody talked to me about a pothole and somebody talked to me about some weeds that need mode at the intersection. And I wouldn't get out of there. Now that I'm a congressman, I can buy milk anywhere.

Starting point is 01:55:04 Nobody cares. They know Congress can't get out of there. Now that I'm a congressman, I can buy milk anywhere. Nobody cares. They know Congress can't get anything done. Right. And so I think the people have figured it out. Definitely pay attention local. When you do pay attention federal, don't get distracted by the weapons of mass distraction. Don't call Nancy Pelosi.

Starting point is 01:55:23 She's not, you're not gonna change her mind. Only call people you can vote for because the people taking those calls know that and they'll discount everything you say unless you're a constituent. So everybody has two state senators and one US representative. So you only need to make three phone calls.

Starting point is 01:55:40 I wouldn't write them a letter. I wouldn't waste time on email. I would make a phone call and a real, more likely than not, a real person in that office will pick up the phone and talk to you. And it'll be somebody who does talk to the congressman. Like we have a staff of about 12 to 24 people. And I say hi to those people

Starting point is 01:55:58 that you are talking to every day. Now I don't know that all congressmen are this diligent, but I have them write down who called about what and how many calls we got. Some days I get one phone call, and it's from the same guy that calls every day, right? Michael. If Michael doesn't call,

Starting point is 01:56:14 we ask the local sheriff to go do a wellness check. Don't be a frequent flyer. Don't call up your congressman and say, I'll never vote for him again if he votes this way, because then they never have to take you seriously. But I would call up your congressman and say I'll never vote for him again if he votes this way because then they never have to take you seriously but I would call up I would only call people you can vote for and be polite be quick get off the phone the next one you're people huh I see people come up to lobby let's say for their for their grandma who has Alzheimer's, and they spend $300 on a plane ticket, couple hundred dollars on a hotel room,

Starting point is 01:56:53 the food is expensive in DC, and they finally get to their congressman's office and they talk to a staffer. Yeah. That to me is a waste of money. I would find that congressman locally and take half of what you would have spent on the trip to DC and if you could stomach that person's politics, make a donation. That's why the lobbyist has the ear.

Starting point is 01:57:17 I'm not saying America has to compete with lobbyists for giving money, but I will tell you this. If you give a politician $500, you won't have to ask for his phone number. He'll be calling you every week. Asking for more of it. And so. So, but that's where we're at.

Starting point is 01:57:35 That's where we're at. Cause we just have to compete. Money has to compete with money, you think? Dark money? It doesn't have to compete, but you gotta figure out a way to get their attention. You know, if it's whatever the minimum is to get in the door that oh, yeah fund rate if it's $50 don't give them 500 give them 50 and go in and

Starting point is 01:57:54 just Talk to them like a human being if you can But at a bigger level like it will we ever get will the people you know will we ever get these lobbyists out? Is it is a wrap? What do we... Tell us if we all just... Here's the way you break free. No. Well, you should definitely go to the beach and only spend about no more than 10% of your life thinking about politics because it ain't healthy.

Starting point is 01:58:17 Amen. But the 10% that you do, you should ask your congressman to advocate for separate bills on separate topics. So that you can- Yeah, I agree. That seems way more pertinent because then you get a level of accountability. Yeah, and they can't hide behind,

Starting point is 01:58:33 well, it had a pay raise for soldiers. Right. So advocate for that, make phone calls. If you can be friendly and connect with them, maybe you don't agree with them on everything, but a broken clock is right twice a day. Yeah some diplomacy Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that's a big thing I've been learning recently is that there's a give-and-take to everything every single everything that you know And that's the way that the world's built. There's like, you know, there's forces as a give-and-take

Starting point is 01:59:00 There's a yin and yang and even when you have you want this party or this thing, it's like, there has to be like, you really need both forces a lot of times to get things done. I think that's about it, man. I'm trying to think of anything else. Oh, I did want to say, we were supposed to talk to Mr. Walls this week, Tim Walls on Thursday,

Starting point is 01:59:22 because I have a show up there, but he can't, he is unable to go because of they're doing services and stuff for that. His constituents or his colleagues maybe that were murdered up there. It's pretty heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking. And he seems like a guy with a big heart too. I get death threats. I mean, and the hard part is knowing which ones to take seriously and which ones not I mean, it's definitely not the right way to do politics It's just there's no there's no level of frustration that justifies violence. Yeah, I mean that just seems really bizarre

Starting point is 02:00:01 There was I remember there was rumors that whenever your wife passed away that there was like something bad had happened like from a, like a, like a not a deranged person or something like that. Was that real? No, she died unexpectedly but of natural causes and I wasn't home. I was in DC, which kills me to this day. But my son was home visiting. So we know exactly what happened. There's no conspiracy there. Although... Sorry to even ask you about it.

Starting point is 02:00:30 Well, no, I think it's good, because people ask that. People want to know that. I tell people she would get a kick out of it. She would. Everybody wants to be a part of, yeah. Like, anyway, that's a dark side. There was a conspiracy,

Starting point is 02:00:43 but I'm sure she's up there laughing at that one. Well, I know it's coming up on a year since she's been gone. And yeah, just sorry to kind of, maybe that was a little out of the box to say that, but yeah, I'm sorry you and your family had to go through that. So I appreciate you being brave and still being able to honor your constituents and your group even in the face of those types of things and still be able to show up and

Starting point is 02:01:11 do your best and be a maverick I think for probably for her spirit and for the people of our country. I think that's one thing that's inspiring. Some people were like, well, this guy's nuts or this guy's great. But I'm like, at least this guy's his own fucking guy. You know what I'm saying? Like I'd rather talk to that guy any day of the week. The other conspiracy that's interesting to me

Starting point is 02:01:30 is people say, oh, he snapped. He's lost his marbles since he lost his wife. And he's off the chain, et cetera, et cetera. No, I'm actually honoring what she wanted. She worked at home on our farm and raised four kids. She also had an MIT degree. And she was watching me from afar every day. She would watch hearings and give me advice

Starting point is 02:01:53 for questions to ask. And she wanted me to go up there and kick ass every week. And that's what I do. And I'm still gonna do it. I remember one time I introduced a bill to legalize raw milk, like the kind I got out there in my camper truck. Oh yeah, I'll take another swig off that thing

Starting point is 02:02:12 as long as you leave the door open while we do it. Yeah, right, we had alarms going off in there. The GADAR in my camper was going off when you went in there. Two men got in that thing and suddenly an alarm went off. I was like, this is a little too Republican for me. It's a little too old school Republican for me if two men can't even casually drink raw milk together in the back of a truck camper.

Starting point is 02:02:32 I know. So I introduced a raw milk bill to legalize raw milk. And oh yeah, there we go. Oh, this is in honor of her kind of? Well, this was, she was still alive and I introduced this bill and guess who came after me? The milk lobbyists came after me. They said there wouldn't be enough hospitals to take care of all the people Who got sick from raw milk?

Starting point is 02:02:56 Who were going to get sick from raw milk. Is that true, do you think? Oh, hell no. I drink it every day. I know thousands of people that drink it every day. I'm going to catch a fucking batch of it. It always looks like it's a little warm. No, I pour mine in an ice cold glass. But anyways, and it tastes like just liquid ice cream. It's so good. I'll come have a little bit more. So I did this bill and the milk lobby comes after me

Starting point is 02:03:24 and my wife had Google alerts on or whatever alerts there were and it's like all this negative press over milk and she texted me, OMG, I didn't realize the lactose lobby was this intolerant. Well, I think even just the name of the lactose lobby was this intolerant, that's cute. What was her name, your wife?

Starting point is 02:03:47 Rhonda. Rhonda. Yeah. Well, we miss you Rhonda. Just a nice thought of you there and a nice story. I love the fact that that's called the Interstate Milk Freedom Act, which sounds insane, dude.

Starting point is 02:03:59 Right? It sounds like something that happens at a rest area, you know, that's the problem with it, I think. It's easier to get meth than it is to get raw milk. I'm not lying. And at least put birth control in the meth. When do we make that law? Like, is that too much to ask? Like, give us something. That's my motto these days. Thomas Massey, I just admire. I appreciate your time. That's what I really appreciate.

Starting point is 02:04:25 And get out there and give a mailman, keep serving to the best of your ability and just thank you for your service. And I really just appreciate it. Thanks, Theo. Yep. You bet, man. Best of luck, dude. God. Yeah. Keep an eye on the debt. Yeah, I will. It's about to go up. She'll call me every hour and she'll be like, Oh my God. It's about to go up. It is? Yeah. I'm looking for the jump. I'll share this peace of mind I found.

Starting point is 02:05:05 I can feel it in my bones, but it's gonna take a little...

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This Past Weekend - #592 - Thomas Massie

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