Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning. Breakfast Club morning.
Speaker 2: Everybody is DJ Envy, Jess hilarious, Charlamagne the guy we
Speaker 2: are to Breakfast Club lay the ross of filling in
Speaker 2: for Jess. And we got a special guest in the building. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 2: Vivic Ramswami welcome.
Speaker 1: How you doing man, How you feeling?
Speaker 3: You know, I would say pretty good, except for my
Speaker 3: two year old, who usually sleeps really well when he
Speaker 3: comes to New York City. The kid does not sleep,
Speaker 3: and so when he doesn't sleep, my wife and I
Speaker 3: don't sleep. But other than that, the noise, excitement, excitement,
Speaker 3: you know, yeah.
Speaker 1: He loves it here.
Speaker 4: He was.
Speaker 1: He was happy this morning.
Speaker 3: But twelve am to about four am, yeah, we were
Speaker 3: up playing trucks man.
Speaker 1: But all good doing well.
Speaker 4: This is your first interview on what you said like
Speaker 4: a month.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been't I haven't been. You know, a lot
Speaker 3: a lot going on, but I haven't been out on media.
Speaker 3: But you know, people are gonna be hearing more from.
Speaker 1: Me starting now.
Speaker 3: Why not you called me, uh over the weekend, I
Speaker 3: told you happened to be in the city. So this
Speaker 3: worked out well?
Speaker 4: Well, we'll tell us a vic what happened with dog.
Speaker 3: Yes, the congratulations on it job, Thank you man, I
Speaker 3: appreciate It's not my job right now.
Speaker 1: I'm moving on to my next No, it was.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 1: It was a slightly.
Speaker 3: Different vision from where we started to where we landed.
Speaker 1: And it's not that it's you know, one's right.
Speaker 3: Or wrong, but if you take a look at where
Speaker 3: we began, right DOJ is going to be an outside
Speaker 3: body to the government. One of my core areas of
Speaker 3: focus throughout has been the constitutional and legal basis for
Speaker 3: shutting down the bureaucracy and the federal government and downsizing it.
Speaker 3: That's what I focus written my books on, et cetera.
Speaker 3: It evolved in more of a direction of a technology
Speaker 3: project using a technology first approach, and so Elon and
Speaker 3: I were on good terms, we have good personal relationship,
Speaker 3: slightly different approaches to the project. And what he and
Speaker 3: I both concluded, and I think this is right is
Speaker 3: given my focus on law on legislation, the right way
Speaker 3: to realize my vision is through elected office, and so
Speaker 3: that's what I'm going to be pursuing. We have an
Speaker 3: announcement I'll be coming up in the next month, but
Speaker 3: that's my next path. The Government of Ohio about that
Speaker 3: that's coming up soon, but that was where we all landed.
Speaker 3: Was the right way to do this for me was
Speaker 3: if I'm focused on constitutional law, deregulation, legislation to downsize government.
Speaker 3: That's been my vision for a long time. Let me
Speaker 3: realize that I'm my own two feet through elected office.
Speaker 3: At the same time, I'm happy to have helped over
Speaker 3: the last couple of months to be able to get
Speaker 3: this off the ground and a technology first approach from
Speaker 3: within the government. Now it's not outside the government. It
Speaker 3: made all the sense in the world to make this
Speaker 3: the time that we went separate ways.
Speaker 5: So it was true there was an exclusive report in
Speaker 5: the Washington port that said you were pushed out because
Speaker 5: your vision didn't align with Elon.
Speaker 3: So I would say that we arrived at it pretty mutually,
Speaker 3: and mean, I think when it came the doge was
Speaker 3: in the government.
Speaker 1: So there's actually a law, it's called the Hatch Act.
Speaker 3: Boring stuff, but you literally can't run for office while
Speaker 3: you are in employee of the government.
Speaker 1: Unless you're the president or vice president.
Speaker 3: I've been committed to this path of likely running for
Speaker 3: governor of Ohio for a long time. My plan initially
Speaker 3: might have been to do those at the same time,
Speaker 3: once it became clear that was impossible to do at
Speaker 3: the same time, once it became clear to me that
Speaker 3: that was the right next leadership destination for me, felt
Speaker 3: like the start of the project on day one was
Speaker 3: the right way to start that next chapter.
Speaker 1: That's why we did it.
Speaker 2: Now, you did say it. The last couple of months,
Speaker 2: you've been focused on getting Trump in office. So now
Speaker 2: that he's in office and we've seen the last couple
Speaker 2: of days, what are your thoughts and do you still
Speaker 2: stand by everything that he's done.
Speaker 1: You know, I really think he's off to a pretty
Speaker 1: good start.
Speaker 3: I mean, you think about most presidents, they take a
Speaker 3: little bit of time to get warmed up.
Speaker 1: He didn't go through the warm up phase. He got
Speaker 1: started right away.
Speaker 3: And I think there's a reason for that, which is
Speaker 3: very few presidents have actually been the president before and
Speaker 3: then they come all the way back then. Grover Cleveland
Speaker 3: was the only one other one who did it, so
Speaker 3: he in some ways is coming in for a second term.
Speaker 3: But I actually do think those four years of being
Speaker 3: able to reflect on what actually mattered to him were
Speaker 3: actually pretty good. So I like a lot of what
Speaker 3: we've seen in that first week unleash energy production. That's
Speaker 3: going to bring down energy prices. It's going to stimulate
Speaker 3: the economy, a lot of the regulatory and red tape rollback.
Speaker 1: I think it's just a.
Speaker 3: Good thing for the country. If you travel the country
Speaker 3: and you ask most Americans, do you think there's too
Speaker 3: much red tape or do you think there's too little
Speaker 3: red tape? I don't think there's anybody who would tell
Speaker 3: you that I think there's too little red tape.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of.
Speaker 3: People, especially business owners, small business owners, that tell you
Speaker 3: there's too much red tape. Trump has gone pretty aggressive
Speaker 3: even in the first week and saying we're rolling back
Speaker 3: a lot of those regulations. We're rolling back the regulations
Speaker 3: that hold back energy production in the United States, getting
Speaker 3: very serious about the border, and you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think that you can have your debates about what
Speaker 3: the legal immigration policy in the US should look like,
Speaker 3: but I think most people are united that we don't
Speaker 3: want an open southern border, and yet functionally that's what
Speaker 3: it's been for much of the last four years. So
Speaker 3: I think it's been a lot of pretty good moves
Speaker 3: out the Gate. I'm pretty excited about it.
Speaker 2: What don't you like if there's one thing that you
Speaker 2: didn't like that you've seen so far that he's done.
Speaker 3: So, I will say in the first in the first
Speaker 3: week out the Gate, I like pretty much everything I've seen.
Speaker 3: I think that there are some areas where I could
Speaker 3: imagine over the next year I might have some shades
Speaker 3: of difference in opinion. There's really nothing in that first week.
Speaker 3: All of this stuff struck me as very common sense.
Speaker 3: And when you think about what's going to actually make
Speaker 3: people's lives better, that's where I'm focused. Okay, economically in
Speaker 3: terms of reducing crime, in terms of fixing our border.
Speaker 3: What do people across the country actually care about affecting
Speaker 3: their lives.
Speaker 1: I think it'd be pretty hard to pick.
Speaker 3: Something that in that first week that I would say
Speaker 3: wasn't strictly good for the country.
Speaker 5: How is eliminating government diversity programs like DEI beneficial to
Speaker 5: anybody other than it's great white males.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think I think there are some ways in
Speaker 3: which is not even beneficial to straight white males, which
Speaker 3: I'll tell you about in a second. But I think
Speaker 3: this culture of reviving merit in the country is a
Speaker 3: very American idea. You and I have talked about this
Speaker 3: in some of our some of our discussions here in
Speaker 3: the past. I think is America is a country where
Speaker 3: you are not judged on the color of your skin.
Speaker 3: You ought to be judged on the content of your
Speaker 3: character and your contribution. The best person ought to get
Speaker 3: the job, regardless of their genetics. That's America at its best.
Speaker 3: We haven't always been that. You could argue that we've
Speaker 3: never actually been that perfectly. We're an imperfect nation because
Speaker 3: we're comprised of human beings and not gods. But I
Speaker 3: do think it is a step forward to say that
Speaker 3: after we've turned the page on one hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: years ago and then sixty years ago with the Civil
Speaker 3: Rights Revolution, after we've made all the progress we have,
Speaker 3: now is the time not to engage in blaming for
Speaker 3: the past or whatever we have been perfect, but to
Speaker 3: move forward to say, work country where we want the
Speaker 3: best person to get the job without regard to their
Speaker 3: skin color, or their sexuality, or their race.
Speaker 1: So I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 3: And the only thing I would tell you that you
Speaker 3: might be interested in for the angle you mentioned is
Speaker 3: I also think there has been a culture emerging in
Speaker 3: the last few years, a culture of excuses amongst people
Speaker 3: who say, oh, I didn't get that job because of DEI.
Speaker 3: And in certain cases that may be true that certain people,
Speaker 3: maybe a white male was denied a job because somebody
Speaker 3: else got the job because of racial or gender preferences,
Speaker 3: but there's also a lot of instances in which that
Speaker 3: provides somebody else a new excuse. And I just want
Speaker 3: to no excuses culture across the board, where one of
Speaker 3: the side effects of ending DEI is that nobody's going
Speaker 3: to have excuses anymore for why they didn't get that
Speaker 3: job either. So I just think merit across the board
Speaker 3: is the way to go.
Speaker 5: But do you trust people, don't like, do you trust
Speaker 5: people enough to say, hey, you know what, I'm not
Speaker 5: going to be prejudiced against this person because of their identity.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all have it. Let me say something.
Speaker 1: We all have our innate biases, right, we're human beings.
Speaker 1: As I said, we're human beings.
Speaker 3: We're not God's were flawed and people have their innate biases.
Speaker 1: But the question is is there a perfect system? Though
Speaker 1: there's not, But what's the.
Speaker 3: Least imperfect system, and I think the least imperfect system
Speaker 3: is one where we aspire to at least think of
Speaker 3: our country through the lens of merit. And what is merit?
Speaker 3: I mean we I banded this word around a lot.
Speaker 3: I actually got a tough question when I ran for
Speaker 3: president as a college kid. I was talking about waxing
Speaker 3: eloquent about merit from the stage. Is what is merit?
Speaker 3: What is meritocracy? Made me think for a second, you
Speaker 3: have to define what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I think a meritocracy is a system.
Speaker 3: That recognizes that not everybody has the same God given talents.
Speaker 3: In fact, it recognizes that everyone has different God given talents.
Speaker 3: That's true diversity, that's a beautiful thing. But a meritocracy
Speaker 3: is one that says, whatever your unique God given talents are,
Speaker 3: you get to achieve the maximum of your potential without
Speaker 3: any system standing in your way.
Speaker 1: To me, that's America at its best.
Speaker 3: And so are we going to be perfect as human beings?
Speaker 3: In realizing that? I do, of course not, because we're
Speaker 3: human beings. But does that mean that we shouldn't at
Speaker 3: least do our best to design systems that aspire to it?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I think that a step forward is and I'm done.
Speaker 3: I'm mostly I'd like to be mostly done. I think
Speaker 3: I am done with the DEI debates. I think we've
Speaker 3: turned the debate, turned the page on that. I'm interested
Speaker 3: in a forward looking conversation about what is equal opportunity.
Speaker 1: Actually, I think.
Speaker 3: That in the debates we've had about equal opportunity versus
Speaker 3: equal results, the DEI side of this often has fallen
Speaker 3: into equal results camp and people would say, oh, well,
Speaker 3: we want equal opportunity, and that was a conservative response.
Speaker 3: But now we have to confront the hard work of
Speaker 3: what does that actually look like like? What actually does
Speaker 3: equality of opportunity whichever acknowledges doesn't exist today?
Speaker 1: How do we actually do that hard work?
Speaker 3: And I think that that's a good result of going
Speaker 3: past the group quota DEI regime to have an honest
Speaker 3: conversation about the fact that we don't have equal opportunity
Speaker 3: across the country early education. Do we have equal opportunity
Speaker 3: when it's public schools organized ac quoting to zip codes
Speaker 3: rather than actually giving every kid access to the best
Speaker 3: education they can have.
Speaker 1: That's not equal opportunity.
Speaker 3: But we haven't been able to have that conversation because
Speaker 3: we're having the cosmetic discussion about dei or quotas or whatever.
Speaker 3: Now that we're done with that, that hard work can
Speaker 3: begin across the board. And I think that that's a
Speaker 3: conversation where a lot of thoughtful voices on the left
Speaker 3: and right can now roll up our sleeves and say,
Speaker 3: we've preached the message of equal opportunity, how do we
Speaker 3: actually get there?
Speaker 1: And I, for one, am game for that discussion a.
Speaker 4: Way to get there? You don't think that.
Speaker 3: I think it has proven not to be the way
Speaker 3: to get there. I've obviously been an opponent of it
Speaker 3: for for four or five years. I'm obviously going to
Speaker 3: have biased views on this from what I said, But what.
Speaker 4: Is it exactly the policy?
Speaker 5: Because you need diversity to get there, you need equity
Speaker 5: to get there, you need inclusion to get there.
Speaker 3: Yes, So I think part of what happened is when
Speaker 3: you when you started using the.
Speaker 1: Capital D capital E capital I.
Speaker 3: Here's what happened is I think in the name of
Speaker 3: diversity of thought, right, because that's where you want diversity
Speaker 3: of thought in an organization, the capital D diversity actually
Speaker 3: ended up saying that certain viewpoints aren't welcome, that we
Speaker 3: actually sacrifice true diversity of thought in the name of equity,
Speaker 3: which is measured in terms of outcomes.
Speaker 1: I think we.
Speaker 3: Actually sacrificed true equality of opportunity. And then at a
Speaker 3: certain place, and this is really where it took a
Speaker 3: dark turn to me, is in the name of inclusion,
Speaker 3: we created a culture of exclusion where and viewpoints we're
Speaker 3: not welcome in an organization. And what that does is
Speaker 3: it causes the bottled up emotion to fester. Okay, that
Speaker 3: doesn't lead to good places. When you tell somebody shut up,
Speaker 3: sit down, and do as your toll keep reviews to yourself,
Speaker 3: that actually fosters resentment. And the weirdest thing I think
Speaker 3: has happened in the last few years, and I do
Speaker 3: actually blame a lot of the DEI and related policies
Speaker 3: for this, is that we have seen a reactionary wave
Speaker 3: of racism in the country, anti minority racism that would
Speaker 3: not have existed but for that DEI culture of not
Speaker 3: only taking something away from somebody based on their skin color,
Speaker 3: but even worse, in the name of inclusion, saying that
Speaker 3: you can't express your view And then there's an ugly
Speaker 3: side that comes up in response. So I don't want
Speaker 3: this game of tug and war where the war continues
Speaker 3: just everybody laid down arms.
Speaker 1: Are we perfect? No we're not.
Speaker 3: But whatever residual racism or prejudice might exist, let it
Speaker 3: slowly melt away. As we've been on the course for
Speaker 3: the last sixty years of heading in the right direct
Speaker 3: and then let's have a substance.
Speaker 1: I think we've been in the right direction obviously in
Speaker 1: compared to nineteen sixty. I don't think that it's really debatable.
Speaker 3: We were so so now we're having a healthy discussion
Speaker 3: where I think, you know, I think that the rise
Speaker 3: of even well intentioned DEI programs, even from those who
Speaker 3: had the best of intentions, I think did in retrospect,
Speaker 3: I think we can say set us back.
Speaker 4: Not the rise of MAGA and Trump's executive orders from
Speaker 4: last week.
Speaker 1: I think the executive orders were last week.
Speaker 3: We're about with this's what we're talking about. So it's
Speaker 3: the circle here, which is does ending the DI programs.
Speaker 3: Do we think that's a step forward for the country
Speaker 3: or not. I think it's a step forward for the country.
Speaker 3: Is that the destination? No, it's just the beginning of
Speaker 3: a real discussion about equal opportunity that lifts all Americans up.
Speaker 6: And why would you have a conversation about equal opportunity
Speaker 6: if they don't even want to have a conversation about diversity,
Speaker 6: equity and inclusion. You get what I'm saying, Like, I
Speaker 6: understand where you're trying to go with them, but you
Speaker 6: can't have one without the other, I think is the point.
Speaker 6: And how do you do that? It seems like that'sh
Speaker 6: your disconnect even with Doge Right.
Speaker 1: No, I think it a couple of different couple different
Speaker 1: topics there. Look, are we a country where we want
Speaker 1: equal opportunity every person to achieve the maximum of their
Speaker 1: God given potential? Yes, we do. Are we perfect in
Speaker 1: realizing that?
Speaker 4: No? Or not?
Speaker 3: Do we think that group quota systems are the right
Speaker 3: way to achieve that?
Speaker 1: I'm of the view the answer is no.
Speaker 3: And I think the last few years show us that
Speaker 3: it hasn't even been effective in actually empowering the people
Speaker 3: it was supposed to empower, while it's created a resentment of.
Speaker 1: A lot of the people who felt deprived. So I
Speaker 1: think we got we just got to go to post
Speaker 1: We've got to go to post DII world. That ship,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, for the better, maybe in other people's opinion,
Speaker 1: for the worst. That ship is sailed.
Speaker 3: Now let's look to the future and say, what does
Speaker 3: equal opportunity actually look like.
Speaker 1: I'll give you.
Speaker 3: I'll give you one of the areas I'm most passionate about.
Speaker 3: I think equal opportunity to a high quality early education
Speaker 3: makes a difference. There's a lot of focus on college
Speaker 3: and what the college composition needs to be.
Speaker 1: You missed the boat.
Speaker 3: If you're doing this after somebody's already eighteen years old
Speaker 3: and in twelfth grade, the.
Speaker 1: Cake is baked.
Speaker 3: This starts young, I mean early childhood. Achievement trajectories are
Speaker 3: set in preschool, set in first grades, set in second grade.
Speaker 3: There's a massive disparity set at that point in time
Speaker 3: based on the quality of schools that somebody in the
Speaker 3: inner city is relegated to because they don't have the
Speaker 3: choice for better opportunities versus somebody who's in a suburb
Speaker 3: with a better public school or access to a private school.
Speaker 1: That is an injustice.
Speaker 3: I think anybody who's really concerned with true quality of
Speaker 3: opportunity in this country that's not dealing with that problem
Speaker 3: doesn't actually care. It's just they want to pontificate, and
Speaker 3: I don't have a lot of patience for that, so
Speaker 3: I think that you know, it becomes a buzzword that
Speaker 3: goes in one ear out the other when you say
Speaker 3: it this way. But universal school choice, it's like people
Speaker 3: hear those buzzwords. But when you think about what that means,
Speaker 3: it means every kid, no matter their skin color or
Speaker 3: what neighborhood they're born in, has at least the opportunity
Speaker 3: to get the.
Speaker 1: Best possible education.
Speaker 3: Some of the stuff gets boring, and part of part
Speaker 3: of the people is people don't have patience for the
Speaker 3: boring stuff. But the boring stuff is what matters. Even
Speaker 3: summer break not even a very political topic, right, Summer break,
Speaker 3: especially early on, is something that actually causes the educational
Speaker 3: achievement gap to widen because people who are well to
Speaker 3: do families tend to have programs that enrich their kids,
Speaker 3: and so there's a well known phenomenon where when you
Speaker 3: come back in the.
Speaker 1: Fall, you have some regress for the kid.
Speaker 3: That regress is small or non existent for people who
Speaker 3: can actually afford the right kind of summer programs or
Speaker 3: educational programs for those three months. For kids who come
Speaker 3: from poorer communities. It's massive. Multiply that twelve times over.
Speaker 3: By the time you get to twelfth grade, you have
Speaker 3: just different levels of preparedness. I don't care what kind
Speaker 3: of quota system in Ivy League university establishes. That's not
Speaker 3: really establishing true equality because some of the same people
Speaker 3: who are admitted to those programs are doing no better
Speaker 3: when they then enter the workforce. Because a lot of
Speaker 3: this traced back to equality or inequality of opportunity at
Speaker 3: a really young age. And by the way, all against
Speaker 3: the backdrop of a lot of people don't pay attention
Speaker 3: to this. Actually, I'll just ask you a question just
Speaker 3: you have no reason to know the answers that I've
Speaker 3: studied this. But what percentage of eighth graders in the
Speaker 3: United States today are proficient in math according.
Speaker 1: To international centers? Was that at a eighth grade level?
Speaker 1: Eighth grade level? In eighth grade?
Speaker 3: What are what percentage of eighth graders are performing at
Speaker 3: what should be an eighth grade level according to international
Speaker 3: Developed World standards sixty twenty five percent, twenty five percent
Speaker 3: in the United States. So that's just unacceptable. So we're
Speaker 3: talking about equality issues. Now, let's just zoom out and
Speaker 3: talk about overall achievement issues. Our educational system is not working.
Speaker 3: There is a deep failure, and we can debate the
Speaker 3: causes and yeah, well, and people, you know, I think,
Speaker 3: can can often get a little bit upset. I've had
Speaker 3: the experience of people getting upset when you when you
Speaker 3: confront these questions. But I care about this country too
Speaker 3: much to just look passively at that and look the
Speaker 3: other way, because it doesn't make people feel good. And
Speaker 3: you know, a classic response is to blame a lot
Speaker 3: of that on woken doctrination or whatever. And I'm against
Speaker 3: all of the woken doctrination at a young age. But
Speaker 3: that's not the real issue here. The real issue is
Speaker 3: just an achievement problem.
Speaker 1: In the United States.
Speaker 3: And that doesn't start in high school, it doesn't start
Speaker 3: in college. It starts young. And so I just see
Speaker 3: an opportunity right now where we can make the choice
Speaker 3: to enter a new golden age in America. You can
Speaker 3: make a choice to say this is our Sputnik moment.
Speaker 3: Right you look at just the news of today.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much you've.
Speaker 3: Taken a look at it, but deep seek coming out
Speaker 3: of China right completely mop the floor with respect to
Speaker 3: a cost by which they were able to get to
Speaker 3: apparently similar maybe even if not in some ways better
Speaker 3: AI production than a lot of capital that's gone into
Speaker 3: achieve the same thing for computing power investment in the US.
Speaker 3: These are good opportunities for us not to be ashamed
Speaker 3: or to be angry, but to wake up and say
Speaker 3: we should have the humility to admit that we still
Speaker 3: have room for improvement. I say this as somebody who
Speaker 3: believes this is the greatest country known to the history
Speaker 3: of mankind. It is the only country I will ever
Speaker 3: pledge allegiance to. It is the country I will die
Speaker 3: fighting for if I have to. But we should still,
Speaker 3: out of our love.
Speaker 1: For this country, have the ability to have humility to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: here are the ways we still need to improve. And frankly,
Speaker 1: I don't think that that's up. It's not a preacher
Speaker 1: to the left or to the right.
Speaker 3: I think it's just a wake up call for all
Speaker 3: of us, and that's kind of what I'm interested in delivering.
Speaker 6: I think people just get nervous when there's no systems
Speaker 6: in place like what d I should have been if
Speaker 6: it was done the right way, because then there's you
Speaker 6: think that there's going to be no trickle down because
Speaker 6: what you're talking about to affect people before they get
Speaker 6: to eighth grade, you have to have people that were
Speaker 6: able to go to these schools, were able to have
Speaker 6: your certain experiences, come back to the communities, teach, build
Speaker 6: different administrations. There's a whole system that people think won't
Speaker 6: fall back down.
Speaker 4: You can't trust white supremacy. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So it's like even when you like with the Dulge thing,
Speaker 6: right and you back and a way. Now I'm be
Speaker 6: listening to you, I'm like, oh, it sounds like y'all
Speaker 6: didn't agree because morally you want to do right. I
Speaker 6: don't know if I believe that Elon Musk in a
Speaker 6: Trump cabinet wants.
Speaker 4: To do that.
Speaker 3: Well on that front, let me just say I think
Speaker 3: we all share an opposition to bureaucracy. And by the way,
Speaker 3: you think about how bureaucracy hurts even the least well
Speaker 3: off among us, it actually hurts the least well off
Speaker 3: among us the most. I don't want to get too
Speaker 3: much in details unless you're interested in this, but take
Speaker 3: housing costs in the country, right, Why are housing costs spiking?
Speaker 3: It's because of bureaucracy. And red tape that's stopping new
Speaker 3: housing construction. There's all these zoning limitations, there's all kinds
Speaker 3: of limitations for single family homes. For smaller homes, it's
Speaker 3: really hard to build one, and a lot of that
Speaker 3: comes from regulatory red tape. So on the stuff relating
Speaker 3: to cutting back red tape and bureaucracy and regulations, I
Speaker 3: don't view that as a left versus right issue. In fact,
Speaker 3: one of the things I loved in the time period
Speaker 3: that I was helpful involving setting up Doughs was how
Speaker 3: many Democrats also said, hey, you know what, there's actually
Speaker 3: a lot of issues that we care about where bureaucracy
Speaker 3: is getting in the way as well that raise their hand.
Speaker 1: So that I think is just a strictly good efficiency
Speaker 1: and elimination of bureaucracy. I think is good across the board.
Speaker 3: As it relates to getting serious though about addressing root
Speaker 3: inequality causes in the United States, I think a lot
Speaker 3: of people enjoy being on one political side or the
Speaker 3: other without actually rolling up their sleeves and doing the
Speaker 3: hard work of getting to the root cause. I think
Speaker 3: the root cause starts with education at a really young
Speaker 3: age in a stable family foundation from which those kids
Speaker 3: are able to grow up and have access to the
Speaker 3: same opportunities as anybody else. And if you got to
Speaker 3: a place where every kid at the age of four,
Speaker 3: I'm not even talking about the age of ten. In
Speaker 3: some sense, it's already it's already partially baked by then.
Speaker 3: But at the age of four, when they enter preschool,
Speaker 3: has a chance to enter the best possible school that
Speaker 3: somebody else would have to enter, but they have to
Speaker 3: pay the actual tuition to get there. I think we've
Speaker 3: made massive progress towards restoring to.
Speaker 1: Equality of opportunity in the US.
Speaker 3: What does that mean. That means that literally you have
Speaker 3: to provide money to the families who are stuck in
Speaker 3: a bad public school to be able to opt out
Speaker 3: of that school. Transportation included, the ability to pay tuition included.
Speaker 3: That is an investment that we make both in the
Speaker 3: overall future of our country and an equality of opportunity.
Speaker 3: I think we should be more vocal about standing for that.
Speaker 3: I certainly for one plan to be by.
Speaker 1: The way, A lot of this is done not at
Speaker 1: the federal level.
Speaker 3: A lot of this is done at the state level,
Speaker 3: which gives you a sense of where or part of
Speaker 3: the reason I've been drawn in my own journey to say,
Speaker 3: if I actually care about addressing these issues and not
Speaker 3: talking about them, there's actually a lot more than a
Speaker 3: governor is able to accomplish on a practical level than
Speaker 3: even somebody sitting at the federal level.
Speaker 1: And so that's part of what I feel.
Speaker 5: Are you able to have these conversations though, because I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, you do get to the root of these issues.
Speaker 5: But when you try to do it and you criticize
Speaker 5: the US for its cultural emphasis on mediocrity over excellent,
Speaker 5: Maggie and conservatives lost their mind, and a lot of
Speaker 5: people say, that's the reason you got pushed out adults.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I will tell you this is I would rather.
Speaker 3: Speak the truth and lose than to pander to an audience,
Speaker 3: to tell them what they want to hear.
Speaker 1: It's like an old expression. I think it might have
Speaker 1: been Thomas Soule who said this. Actually, you know him.
Speaker 3: Very smart man. I think he's doing it to this.
Speaker 3: If you care about somebody, you tell him the truth.
Speaker 3: If you care about yourself, you tell them what they
Speaker 3: want to hear. I would rather speak hard truth and
Speaker 3: take the chance of losing an election than to somehow
Speaker 3: win by just saying what you're supposed to say. Now,
Speaker 3: my view on this is America is an excellent country.
Speaker 3: I mean, America is defined by the pursuit of excellence.
Speaker 3: And it's an interesting question about American identity. Right, if
Speaker 3: you go to Italy, what's the Italian identity? It's the
Speaker 3: heritage of people who grew up in Italy. Japan, it's
Speaker 3: the heritage of people grew up in Japan. There's a
Speaker 3: language that binds them, a unique language of Italian or Japanese.
Speaker 3: And that's a beautiful thing. But what's America in that context?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: What is the American identity? I don't think it comes
Speaker 3: down to the national identities of other countries, of a
Speaker 3: cuisine or an ethnic lineage. Even our land is relatively different, right,
Speaker 3: Our land today is very different than it was just
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty years ago, than it was even
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty years ago. Then we added Alaska,
Speaker 3: then we added Hawaii. Maybe we're going to add some
Speaker 3: more soon. So I think that America is not defined
Speaker 3: in the same way that other countries are. I think
Speaker 3: America is defined for most based on the set of
Speaker 3: ideals that bind all of us together despite our different genetics.
Speaker 3: That's what makes America special. And one of those ideals
Speaker 3: is the pursuit of excellence, the idea that you are
Speaker 3: able to achieve whatever you want without any government or
Speaker 3: bureaucracy standing in your way, that the best person gets
Speaker 3: the job, that you get to speak your mind in
Speaker 3: the open without somebody telling you you can't speak your mind.
Speaker 3: Those are the ideals that make America itself.
Speaker 4: We don't live up to that. We don't live up
Speaker 4: to them often.
Speaker 1: We often don't live of course not.
Speaker 3: But I would rather live in a country that has
Speaker 3: ideals and falls short of them than a country that
Speaker 3: has no ideals at all.
Speaker 1: So you could say we're hypocrite. You can only be
Speaker 1: a hypocrite if you have ideals.
Speaker 3: So I would rather as as a nation, be hypocritical
Speaker 3: and have ideals rather than not have ideals and therefore
Speaker 3: not be a hypocrite.
Speaker 1: Right. And so that's a tough message, and it lands
Speaker 1: in different directions.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: I would go so far as to call it my
Speaker 3: battle against the woke left four years ago was a
Speaker 3: tough message. In people on the other side had resistance
Speaker 3: to that message. Of what I still consider to be
Speaker 3: tough love, but love at the core of it. I'd
Speaker 3: say the same thing with respect to my more recent commentary.
Speaker 3: Here comes from a place of love for this country,
Speaker 3: and I love this country too much, so much as
Speaker 3: h one to b tweets, Well, I didn't talking about
Speaker 3: I mean that was talking about American excellence, right, about
Speaker 3: the idea that I do think we need to light
Speaker 3: a fire under the feet of our culture, right, I
Speaker 3: do think we need to light a fire and celebrate
Speaker 3: excellence in every domain, by the way, not just not
Speaker 3: just academics, sports, music, the arts, but to celebrate winning,
Speaker 3: to celebrate the person who is a striver. I don't
Speaker 3: think it should be a bad thing in America to
Speaker 3: be a striver, right. That word has a negative connotation
Speaker 3: to it a little bit today. Our founding fathers were strivers.
Speaker 3: Our culture was built by strivers, right, Neil Armstrong and
Speaker 3: John Glenn, the people from my home state went to
Speaker 3: outer space at the frontier. We are a culture of strivers,
Speaker 3: the best athletes. I mean, look at the legacy of
Speaker 3: Michael Jordan. He was a guy who worked hard and
Speaker 3: was unapologetic about the fact that he wanted to win
Speaker 3: and would do whatever is required to work hard to
Speaker 3: do it, same thing with respect or engineering talent. That's
Speaker 3: the culture that I think we can revive in this country.
Speaker 3: I think it's necessary to revive in this country if
Speaker 3: we're going to compete against China. It's like a parent
Speaker 3: when you're talking to your kids. Sometimes the message you
Speaker 3: deliver is not well received. When they hear it, you
Speaker 3: know it comes from a place of love.
Speaker 4: But Magan conservatives didn't want to hear that at all.
Speaker 5: And it seems like when you chastise others for cultural concern,
Speaker 5: it's wildly accepted. But when you attack saved by the
Speaker 5: Bell and white culture, you got sidelines.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this is I'm consistent three to sixty degrees.
Speaker 1: This is what I will what I'll give you all that.
Speaker 4: You shocked by the response, you know, I like taking
Speaker 4: it back like.
Speaker 3: Damn, you know, if I think about it, I've been
Speaker 3: around American politics for a little bit. Did I know
Speaker 3: the message that I was delivering was going to make
Speaker 3: some people upset?
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 3: My goal was not to make people upset for the
Speaker 3: sake of making people upset. My goal is looking at
Speaker 3: our country and saying, how do we light a fire
Speaker 3: under the feet of our nation to be able to
Speaker 3: aspire to be the very best again and do it
Speaker 3: consistently as you said. You know, I've talked to the
Speaker 3: woke left for years, and if I put the word
Speaker 3: woke in that you know message several times, many of
Speaker 3: the people say people were cheering for a long time
Speaker 3: when I delivered the same message in a different way.
Speaker 3: I'm just against victimhood culture across the board. We're not
Speaker 3: a nation of victims.
Speaker 4: Even when the victims are magnet and Conservatives like victims.
Speaker 4: When you put the.
Speaker 1: Look that I'm against it, I'm against any kind of
Speaker 1: victimhood most most of the time.
Speaker 3: For the last four years, if I'm being honest, I
Speaker 3: think the dominant strain of victimhood has been a left
Speaker 3: wing victimhood. But there is I wrote a book called
Speaker 3: Nation of Victims a few years ago that had chapter
Speaker 3: called conservative victimhood.
Speaker 1: We're not a nation of victims. We are victors, not victims.
Speaker 1: That's who we are at our very best. That's the
Speaker 1: American way. And I do think that when you think
Speaker 1: about what are those.
Speaker 3: American qualities, hard work, self determination, self reliance, not victimhood
Speaker 3: culture that gives you a greater claim on the government.
Speaker 3: And you could see this across the political spectrum. I
Speaker 3: don't think that we win this country back by greater
Speaker 3: dependence on our government. We win this country back by
Speaker 3: greater in dependence from it, through reviving our self confidence
Speaker 3: to stand on our own two feet. To teach our
Speaker 3: kids the way you get ahead isn't to see yourself
Speaker 3: as a victim and to play that as a as
Speaker 3: a card that gets you ahead, but instead to see
Speaker 3: yourself as a winner and somebody who isn't going to
Speaker 3: be bullied by your circumstances. The number one person where
Speaker 3: would I tell my kids?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: The number one person or the number one factor that
Speaker 3: determines whether you achieve your goals in life, not saying
Speaker 3: it's the only one, But the number one factor that
Speaker 3: determines whether you achieve what you want in.
Speaker 1: Life is you. Let me no doubt about it.
Speaker 3: And so it's not it's not your race, or your gender,
Speaker 3: or your sexuality, or the climate or the weather, or
Speaker 3: somebody from some other country.
Speaker 1: It is you.
Speaker 4: All the things won't play apart. But I agree it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, i'd say didn't play a part, But I said,
Speaker 3: the number one is you, and so that's the culture
Speaker 3: where whether it's in some ways it was the same
Speaker 3: message delivered slightly differently and got a very different reaction.
Speaker 3: But I believe I have been deeply consistent in delivering
Speaker 3: this message.
Speaker 1: For a long time. And the reason why is and
Speaker 1: by the way, on the justtion you brought up one B,
Speaker 1: H one B is a broken system. Right.
Speaker 3: So the funny thing about this people say, O, why
Speaker 3: didn't you criticize H one B and his tweet. I've
Speaker 3: been saying this about a hundred times, maybe for the
Speaker 3: last couple of years, probably hundreds of times. It's broken
Speaker 3: in a bunch of boring ways. They use a lottery
Speaker 3: instead of picking the very best ones. It's got an
Speaker 3: indentured servitude problem where if a company sponsors you and
Speaker 3: you come from another country, you can't leave that company,
Speaker 3: so you don't actually have a competitive labor market. All
Speaker 3: those things need to be fixed, and I have been,
Speaker 3: I would argue, among the biggest proponents, if not the
Speaker 3: biggest voice, in favor of fixing those things. But that's
Speaker 3: a technical issue about fixing some H one B system.
Speaker 3: But the deeper question is are we a country that
Speaker 3: believes America ought to be number one, that we want
Speaker 3: the best people in this country, cultivated in a homegrown way,
Speaker 3: and then to fill the gaps with the best and
Speaker 3: brightest from the rest of the world as well to
Speaker 3: come here and be Americans and pledge leads ins to
Speaker 3: this country.
Speaker 4: That's us.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's the best.
Speaker 2: But let me ask you, what were your thoughts on
Speaker 2: and you claim to be an honest person like that
Speaker 2: when Donald Trump signed off on the people that tried
Speaker 2: to overdo the.
Speaker 1: Government signed off. Here's here's my view.
Speaker 2: And then I want to ask you what did you
Speaker 2: think when Joe Biden pardoned, you know, his son and
Speaker 2: his family members as well. So let's start wait with Trump.
Speaker 1: So here's my view.
Speaker 2: They try to overdo the government, which is totally against law.
Speaker 3: So let's time. I've turning the page. I'll give I'll
Speaker 3: give you, I'll give it to you, give it to
Speaker 3: you straight.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: I think that there were many people there's a rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: We could have an hour on this, and I don't
Speaker 3: really I don't really think it's even all that relevant anymore.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of people who didn't do a
Speaker 3: thing that was wrong that ended up being ensnared in
Speaker 3: getting locked up, getting prosecuted for peacefully without any weapons,
Speaker 3: exercising their First Amendment rights. And as a country were
Speaker 3: country that celebrates political dissent and opposition, people who never
Speaker 3: entered the capitol, people who never hurt anybody, people who
Speaker 3: were unarmed walking on the Capitol grounds. And it was
Speaker 3: just sloppy the way the whole thing was. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: I think that those kind of peaceful protesters, the fact
Speaker 3: that they were ensnared and had their due process rights
Speaker 3: denied is an affront. And I say that as somebody
Speaker 3: who I'm a civil libertarian. I believe the same is
Speaker 3: true for left wing protesters. I think the same thing
Speaker 3: has been true for civil rights protesters sixty years ago.
Speaker 3: I think the same thing was true for peaceful protesters
Speaker 3: on January sixth. So then when you when you look
Speaker 3: at it holistically, right, it was so messy in the
Speaker 3: way that it was handled. There were so many also
Speaker 3: unanswered questions and some stuff that didn't smell great.
Speaker 1: Like if you look at the first.
Speaker 3: Thing that came out from the Inspector General's report only
Speaker 3: came out a few weeks a couple weeks before Trump
Speaker 3: took office. How many FBI informants and affiliated people were
Speaker 3: in that audience.
Speaker 1: It didn't smell good, and that came out.
Speaker 3: You said that two years ago that was considered a
Speaker 3: bad conspiracy theory. But now they came out with the
Speaker 3: Inspector General report saying that they weren't transparent with the public.
Speaker 3: There was enough that the government did that smelled rotten
Speaker 3: there that in the interest of just turning the page,
Speaker 3: you know what I think would have been the best
Speaker 3: outcome for the country. Here's here's something that would have
Speaker 3: been the best outcome. But I think we got to
Speaker 3: your second best outcome. I said this before Biden left office.
Speaker 3: I think if Joe Biden had not pardoned his family member,
Speaker 3: but had pardoned the January sixth protesters in one of
Speaker 3: his final acts to say that I've been critical of this,
Speaker 3: but in the interest of moving the country forward, as
Speaker 3: I'm leaving the office, I'm turning the page and looking
Speaker 3: into the future. And then Donald Trump takes office and
Speaker 3: pardons the Biden family for any alleged defenses.
Speaker 1: That would have been I think the best case scenario
Speaker 1: for the country. People we had, we had the.
Speaker 4: They were some of them were insurrectionists.
Speaker 5: And I mean there's actual people who are denying pardons
Speaker 5: because they said, no, we committed a cross.
Speaker 6: Yes, there was a woman who did a hosted that interview,
Speaker 6: so we did really horrible things. People died.
Speaker 3: I heard her interview, and so to that, you will
Speaker 3: say there.
Speaker 1: Were people who were.
Speaker 2: Decision and peaceful, but then we've seen people that have
Speaker 2: the gates ran up in there, running in people's.
Speaker 1: Office as well.
Speaker 4: I think had the best reason.
Speaker 5: And what jade Van said this before Trump did the part,
Speaker 5: and he said that we're going to look at every
Speaker 5: We're not going to pardon all the January sixth insurrections.
Speaker 5: We're going to look at it on a case by case.
Speaker 5: He's a case by case and see who needs to
Speaker 5: be part and who doesn't.
Speaker 3: And that's what I That's what I had said for
Speaker 3: the last couple of years as well. I do think
Speaker 3: that when we're also moving quickly with respect to Trump
Speaker 3: talking about a new golden age for the country, that's
Speaker 3: what we all want, right, We want a country where
Speaker 3: the issues were focused on is what affects people in
Speaker 3: their everyday lives. The conversation about lifting people up economically
Speaker 3: and educationally.
Speaker 1: I think it is in.
Speaker 3: That spirit to say that we're just turning the page
Speaker 3: and moving the nation forward. I understand the decision to
Speaker 3: do it not on a case by case basis, but
Speaker 3: on a blanket basis.
Speaker 1: I understand when.
Speaker 4: It's coming up actual criminals. Like one of the guys
Speaker 4: got out and went right.
Speaker 3: Back to just by definition, just so we're talking about
Speaker 3: the same thing. By definition, anybody who gets a pardon
Speaker 3: is getting a pardon, many of them. Anybody who gets
Speaker 3: a pardon after a conviction means they were convicted, right,
Speaker 3: So there are hundreds of president of pardons. Biden I
Speaker 3: should most more pardon than any president has in his
Speaker 3: final month leaving office. Every president issues pardons. But part
Speaker 3: of the reason the president has a pardon power is
Speaker 3: the job of the president is actually.
Speaker 1: To look after the country.
Speaker 3: The job of a jury and a judge in a
Speaker 3: case is to look after that individual case. But a
Speaker 3: president is a steward of a country and to say
Speaker 3: what's in the best overall interest in the country. That's
Speaker 3: why the president is a pardon power. So everybody who
Speaker 3: a president has ever pardoned is by definition of criminal.
Speaker 3: The question is even in the face of somebody being
Speaker 3: a criminal by definition of having committed some crime, take
Speaker 3: a big step back and say, notwithstanding that, is it
Speaker 3: in the interest of a nation to be able to
Speaker 3: pardon that person and move forward. That's the judgment that
Speaker 3: belongs on a president's shoulders. And when you look at
Speaker 3: the agenda that President Trump wants to pursue, and he
Speaker 3: wants to be ambitious about that and say I just
Speaker 3: want to turn the page on the past and move forward,
Speaker 3: I understand that decision, and I think that looking at
Speaker 3: a case by case would have been a reasonable approach.
Speaker 3: I think that going blanket pardon and turning the page
Speaker 3: is also a reasonable approach. But what I do is
Speaker 3: that we're not going to see. I want to make
Speaker 3: this claim right now, and I think I will be
Speaker 3: proven right I certainly hope.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be proven right now. I expect I will.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of fear mongering over the last
Speaker 3: couple of years, and some people still have the fear that, Okay,
Speaker 3: Donald Trump is going to go after his political opponents
Speaker 3: and whatever. I can tell you solidly that just ain't
Speaker 3: gonna happen, and you can roast me a year from
Speaker 3: now if we're wrong about that is not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's that's the spirit of that decision.
Speaker 1: All that fits together.
Speaker 3: Is to say, we've had a kind of a toxic
Speaker 3: chapter over the last four years as a country. You
Speaker 3: have a guy who is all kinds of unprecedent things
Speaker 3: have happened, right who himself was the subject of four
Speaker 3: prosecutions by the government, has been censored before that while
Speaker 3: he was leaving office, and the President of the United
Speaker 3: States couldn't even speak all that. Let's not really negate it.
Speaker 3: Let's turn the page. Let's move forward. And I think
Speaker 3: that is something that if we stay true to that promise,
Speaker 3: everybody can get behind. And I will tell you that
Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of people earnestly have the fear.
Speaker 1: I could say it's created by the me or whatever.
Speaker 3: But to say that, oh, now Donald Trump's going to
Speaker 3: prosecute as political opponents, Now, it's not going to work
Speaker 3: that way. The way it's going to work is we're
Speaker 3: moving forward to say what actually lifts up all Americans.
Speaker 3: It's part of why you had a coalition, which I
Speaker 3: thought was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: This time around.
Speaker 3: You got a lot of former independence black voters, Hispanic voters,
Speaker 3: first generation Americans. It was there was a different kind
Speaker 3: of coalition. It wasn't yesterday's Republican Party. That I hope
Speaker 3: gives us a shot at unifying the country. It gives
Speaker 3: us the best shot I think we've had in a
Speaker 3: long time.
Speaker 1: I'd love to see it.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about how do you how do you advocate
Speaker 5: for ending birthright citizenship when both your parents were illegal
Speaker 5: and non citizens were legal.
Speaker 1: They were legal. Yeah, that's right, that's right when they
Speaker 1: gave the country. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So my view, and I've been pretty consistent on this,
Speaker 3: is that birthright citizenship should not be granted to the
Speaker 3: kids of.
Speaker 1: Illegals in this country.
Speaker 3: Therese, birthright citizenship means, just to get everyone on the
Speaker 3: same page, it means if you're physically born in the country,
Speaker 3: you're automatically a citizen. And that's been part of the
Speaker 3: long standing tradition of the country within certain guardrails. So
Speaker 3: I'll give you one that nobody contests. Let's say you're
Speaker 3: the kid of a Mexican diplomat. All right, it's a
Speaker 3: guy who's legally physically in the country, but he is
Speaker 3: the ambassador from Mexico. Or Panama or whatever country to
Speaker 3: the US. They happen to have a baby while they're here,
Speaker 3: is that baby a citizen of the United States?
Speaker 1: Nobody thinks. The answer to that is yes.
Speaker 3: If you're a diplomat from Mexico or a government official
Speaker 3: from another country, but physically the baby happens to be
Speaker 3: born here, you're still a citizen out of other country.
Speaker 3: And goes to the fourteenth Amendment, it says, are you
Speaker 3: subject to the laws and jurisdiction thereof, then you're a citizen.
Speaker 1: That's what it says.
Speaker 3: So by similar analogy, if somebody who's an ambassador from
Speaker 3: Mexico or is in this country legally but doesn't enjoy
Speaker 3: birthright citizenship because they're still subject to the laws and
Speaker 3: jurisdiction of the other country, then the question is if
Speaker 3: somebody entered this country illegal, or let's just say it,
Speaker 3: take another one, if somebody is a foreign invader to
Speaker 3: the country.
Speaker 1: Right, Let's say you have a foreign invasion of the
Speaker 1: country but includes a pregnant woman and she.
Speaker 3: Happens to have a baby here. Nobody thinks that baby
Speaker 3: enjoys birthright citizenship. So then the question is if somebody
Speaker 3: broke the law when entering the country. Right that they're
Speaker 3: active entering the country was a violation of our laws.
Speaker 3: Are they really subject to the jurisdiction and law in
Speaker 3: the same way if they have their kid in the country,
Speaker 3: that kid does not automatically enjoy birthright. That's in my position,
Speaker 3: I think it's a reasonable position.
Speaker 6: Why is it that moving forward, you would want an
Speaker 6: administration to pick and choose, like when they give opportunities.
Speaker 6: So for instance, like what if I'm here.
Speaker 1: Illegally, I have my kid here legally.
Speaker 6: No, I'm here illegally, Okay, hypothetically if I'm here illegally, right,
Speaker 6: I did whatever I had to do to get here
Speaker 6: just because of whatever my circumstances are. I'm not committing
Speaker 6: crimes while I'm here. I'm working the best I can,
Speaker 6: just trying to raise my kid. My kid is doing amazing.
Speaker 6: I'm providing a better life. Right, And then all of
Speaker 6: a sudden, now because Trump is in office, it's like, no,
Speaker 6: my kid has to go back to whatever circumstances we
Speaker 6: came from, not too much set up because they're no
Speaker 6: longer a citizen.
Speaker 1: So on things.
Speaker 3: If you look at President Trump's recent commentary in some
Speaker 3: of his interviews even leading up to take an office,
Speaker 3: he himself has drawn a distinction between people have been
Speaker 3: here for a really long time and established roots versus
Speaker 3: people who have come super recently to the country. Right
Speaker 3: in the Dreamer's Program, you talked about how people have
Speaker 3: been here for a long time. We could have our
Speaker 3: own debates about what my own views even are on that,
Speaker 3: but let's just take start with the easy.
Speaker 1: Low hanging fruit.
Speaker 3: If somebody is a criminal, should they be if somebody
Speaker 3: commits a crime while they're here and they entered illegally,
Speaker 3: should they.
Speaker 1: Be automatically deporting? I just want to and then we
Speaker 1: just go straight down the way.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're not going to argue that point because that's
Speaker 6: that's kind of like a that's an easy point, though.
Speaker 6: I know, I think where I'm getting confused with you
Speaker 6: as like you, even if.
Speaker 1: It's a few years, I would say the same thing.
Speaker 3: So if somebody has come here and it hasn't been
Speaker 3: that long, So we're talking about, you know, double digit
Speaker 3: millions of people who have come here illegally under Biden's tenure,
Speaker 3: those people have not established roots in the United States, right,
Speaker 3: those people should have followed a different route and by
Speaker 3: the way, there are millions more who didn't come here,
Speaker 3: who did not come here illegally because they were trying
Speaker 3: to do it the right way. They're the ones we
Speaker 3: kept out, and the ones who lied or broke the
Speaker 3: rules are the ones who we let in. That's not right, right,
Speaker 3: So I think that's sending all of the people who
Speaker 3: at least entered ill legally under Biden's tenure just recently.
Speaker 3: Even if it's just taking in the last two years,
Speaker 3: that is millions of people. So even if we just
Speaker 3: said over the last eighteen months, the people who entered
Speaker 3: this country illegally have to go back to their country
Speaker 3: of origin they haven't established roots in eighteen months, that
Speaker 3: alone would be the largest mass deportation in American history.
Speaker 3: Now you want to go beyond that, we could argue
Speaker 3: the details, but that alone is literally the largest mass
Speaker 3: deportation in American history.
Speaker 1: And I think most people are in favor of it
Speaker 1: to say that that's fair.
Speaker 5: So why our House Republican is divided on this because
Speaker 5: it seems weird that you would want to fight the
Speaker 5: in birthright citizenship now, especially when you've made so many
Speaker 5: scries or dispanding vodists.
Speaker 1: So I'm not following we necessarily what the House Republicans
Speaker 1: are divided on per se. But what I will tell
Speaker 1: you is I think most people if explained right, because
Speaker 1: I think the problem with this is it can become
Speaker 1: a pretty emotional conversation. If you just objectively look at
Speaker 1: the low hanging fruit that we all agree with, that's
Speaker 1: actually pretty far from where we are today.
Speaker 3: If you look at somebody who entered this country illegally,
Speaker 3: does their kid automatically get birthright citizenship?
Speaker 1: Going forward?
Speaker 3: We can't even change the past, right, because those are
Speaker 3: the rules of the past, But at least going forward
Speaker 3: we will say that anybody knew who entered this country
Speaker 3: illegally and their kid's born here doesn't enjoy birthright citizenship
Speaker 3: without even a change to the past.
Speaker 1: I think most people agree with that. Somebody who entered
Speaker 1: in the last eighteen months, pretty recent.
Speaker 4: This is what you're sitting the back.
Speaker 1: It's millions of people illegally should think about.
Speaker 5: Illegals abusing birth right citizenship. That's what that's what you're
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 3: I think I think somebody who comes here illegally and
Speaker 3: has a kid here, that kid should not enjoy birthright citizenship,
Speaker 3: especially if the government has said so.
Speaker 1: So in the past you could say it was vague.
Speaker 1: That's a separate debate. But going forward, to lay the
Speaker 1: marker down and say, going forward from this date forward,
Speaker 1: somebody who enters the country illegally and has a kid here,
Speaker 1: that kid does not automatically enjoy birthright citizenship, I think
Speaker 1: is a very reasonable position.
Speaker 4: So that wouldn't that be you know, since your parents
Speaker 4: were not.
Speaker 3: Citizens, they were legal So it's one thing if you
Speaker 3: you apply to the government, you followed the legal process.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of paperwork involved, there's a vetting, and
Speaker 3: I'm saying I'm saying in that that's a separate point
Speaker 3: in the deportations. So in the deportations, let's just start,
Speaker 3: aren't there. Okay, If you look at how many people
Speaker 3: came into this country illegally, illegally in the last eighteen months, okay,
Speaker 3: the last year and a half of Biden's ten year alone,
Speaker 3: that is millions, not a million, millions of people. There's
Speaker 3: no argument to be made that those people somehow establish
Speaker 3: roots in the country in eighteen months or in two years.
Speaker 3: If every one of those people were returned to their country,
Speaker 3: of origin respectfully. You're not trying to mistreat anybody or
Speaker 3: anything else, but in a respectful, humane manner, is returned
Speaker 3: to their country of origin. That alone would be the
Speaker 3: largest mass deportation in American history by far. Going forward,
Speaker 3: you send the signal that we're not open for illegal
Speaker 3: immigration anymore.
Speaker 1: And this is not dehumanizing anybody.
Speaker 3: Frankly, if any of us were in the position of
Speaker 3: somebody sitting in Guatemala or Venezuela or Colombia and the
Speaker 3: US government's given you a wink and a nod, who knows,
Speaker 3: maybe many of us would do the same thing to
Speaker 3: have a better life for our family. So I'm not
Speaker 3: blaming anybody other than the US government. But now the
Speaker 3: US government can be clear to say that no, we're
Speaker 3: not open for illegal entry. We have a sealed border,
Speaker 3: there's no funding for sanctuary cities, there's no welfare or
Speaker 3: benefits for people who enter this country illegally. And if
Speaker 3: you enter illegally, you will be returned to your country
Speaker 3: of origin. What's going to happen is you're going to
Speaker 3: see a lot fewer people even trying to come.
Speaker 2: What if your country's not accepting you back, like we'
Speaker 2: seen you what Mexico we s.
Speaker 3: I think those countries need to start accepting them back.
Speaker 3: And that's where the US has leverage to say that
Speaker 3: we all got to play by the same set of
Speaker 3: rules here because a lot of those countries, for example,
Speaker 3: in Central America right there's this area called the Dairyan Past.
Speaker 3: It's like a jungle area which used to be closed.
Speaker 3: Now there's a massive north and flow migrants.
Speaker 1: Many of those countries are recipients of US foreign aid.
Speaker 1: What does that mean.
Speaker 3: It means we're literally given our taxpayer money as aid
Speaker 3: just as a check to those countries. It's a free check,
Speaker 3: free money to those countries. I don't think we should
Speaker 3: be given free money to those countries unless they're also
Speaker 3: at minimum doing their part to also seal their borders.
Speaker 3: So we have levers to be able to have a
Speaker 3: reasonable discussion with other countries. And I think that that's
Speaker 3: something I mean to be overly partisan about this, but
Speaker 3: I think that was something we're missing under the Biden years,
Speaker 3: which is that we kind of were just jelly spined
Speaker 3: with other countries.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We let other countries walk all over us agree, and
Speaker 3: I don't think that standing for American interests. And by
Speaker 3: the way, American interest doesn't mean some segment of America
Speaker 3: people agree with me. I'm talking about all Americans interests,
Speaker 3: regardless of skin color, regardless of political affiliation. If you're American,
Speaker 3: we're going to stand for your interests because that's what
Speaker 3: an elected leader of the United States has responsibility to do.
Speaker 3: Not give away your tax payer money when we're thirty
Speaker 3: six trillion dollars of debt in the whole to some
Speaker 3: other country that isn't even doing what they're supposed to
Speaker 3: do with respect to blocking their own borders on the
Speaker 3: way to the United States.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3: So I think that a lot of this is common sense.
Speaker 3: A restoration of common sense is the path back to
Speaker 3: American greatness.
Speaker 5: I agree with what you said about people being jelly
Speaker 5: spine under the Biden administration, But do you think it's
Speaker 5: smart for Trump to start a trade war on day six?
Speaker 3: So the thing about the thing to understand about Donald
Speaker 3: Trump if you look at his first term, the thing
Speaker 3: I love about the second term is you don't have
Speaker 3: to do a lot of guessing about Donald Trump like
Speaker 3: you would with a new president you had a first term.
Speaker 3: He is a tough negotiator on the international stage, right,
Speaker 3: And so I believe there's there's probably three camps on
Speaker 3: this issue of tariffs. If this gets to uh, we
Speaker 3: don't switch the subject any time, let me know, but
Speaker 3: this is worth probably going into. One is that I
Speaker 3: think a silly view to say it's like the turn
Speaker 3: of the other cheek mentality, which is, even if another
Speaker 3: country is screwing us over by charging tariffs on our
Speaker 3: goods that go to those countries, we're going to pretend
Speaker 3: like they don't and not charge tariffs for them coming
Speaker 3: to their goods coming to our country. That's the turn
Speaker 3: of the other cheek model. And some people favor this
Speaker 3: because they say it still makes the global pie a
Speaker 3: little bit bigger. I don't favor that. The other model
Speaker 3: is to say that, okay, we're gonna at least have reciprocity,
Speaker 3: which means same standards both ways. If you're another country
Speaker 3: and you're applying tariffs to us, and not just tariffs,
Speaker 3: but maybe you're doing state sponsored subsidies to your businesses,
Speaker 3: but we don't do them here, so it's an uneven
Speaker 3: playing field for those businesses. Then we're going to level
Speaker 3: the playing field. I think that is totally legitimate. In fact,
Speaker 3: I think in most cases that makes sense. Then there's
Speaker 3: a third camp, which says that even if the other
Speaker 3: country isn't really being unfair to us, we're just going
Speaker 3: to put up barriers in a way that I think
Speaker 3: is actually harmful, usually to the United States. So I
Speaker 3: think camp number two is super pragmatic to say that
Speaker 3: everybody's got to plan a level playing field. You don't
Speaker 3: get two sets of rules, one for the rest of the.
Speaker 1: World to one for America.
Speaker 3: If we're going to be a trading partner and you're
Speaker 3: going to be a long run economic partner in the
Speaker 3: United States, great, let's play by the same set of rules.
Speaker 1: That's fair game.
Speaker 3: That's different from and I will admit there are a
Speaker 3: lot of people on the left and on the right
Speaker 3: who prefer the other camp to say that, okay, we
Speaker 3: should make sure that only things are ever made in
Speaker 3: the United States, even if it could better advance the
Speaker 3: interests of American citizens to be able to have access
Speaker 3: to broader goods and bring costs down if the other
Speaker 3: country's played by the same set of rules, I don't.
Speaker 1: Think that we should be we should be.
Speaker 3: Penalizing ourselves and shooting ourselves and notes what the expression
Speaker 3: has cut your nose.
Speaker 1: Despite your face. I don't think we should do that.
Speaker 3: But if you look at Donald Trump's record, I'm not
Speaker 3: talking about rhetoric on social media or with some supporter
Speaker 3: somewhere of Donald Trump might have an opinion. If it's
Speaker 3: a big coalition here, a lot of people have a
Speaker 3: lot of different opinions. But Donald Trump has been super
Speaker 3: pragmatic as a businessman on these trade issues.
Speaker 1: And sometimes when you're.
Speaker 3: In negotiation, you got to be able to play a
Speaker 3: hard card to be able to get to the place
Speaker 3: where you want to get. So I have no problem
Speaker 3: with that as long as the place where we land
Speaker 3: advances the interests of all America.
Speaker 5: Because how are you going to make things more affordable,
Speaker 5: like housing when you've got tariffs on everything?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think. Look, I think the question is
Speaker 1: if another country I think you probably agree with me
Speaker 1: on this, If another country applies a tariff to the
Speaker 1: United States, do you think that we should apply the
Speaker 1: same tariff in return or not?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think yes. So's it's that simple.
Speaker 3: The only thing that's a slightly a little more complicated
Speaker 3: was just a slight wrinkle to that is sometimes the
Speaker 3: other country may not be applying a strictly speaking tariff,
Speaker 3: but it functionally is a tariff because their government supports
Speaker 3: their industries, so they may make them state sponsored industries
Speaker 3: with their own taxpair dollars. But we don't do that
Speaker 3: here because we believe in true competitive markets and capitalism.
Speaker 1: That is like a tariff because effectively it props up
Speaker 1: the other country's company to make it look like it's
Speaker 1: better than the US company, when in fact the company
Speaker 1: isn't actually that much better. It's just using their taxpair
Speaker 1: dollars to do it.
Speaker 3: Oh and by the way, we're often giving foreign hate
Speaker 3: to that very country, which allows them to have extra
Speaker 3: taxpayer dollars to spend. So that's the only wrinkle. Is
Speaker 3: either a tariff or a tariff like unfairness. That's what
Speaker 3: we've been on the receiving end of for a long
Speaker 3: time to make.
Speaker 4: Things more affordable for people with are on average.
Speaker 3: So I think what's going to happen, What typically historically
Speaker 3: plays itself out is that that other country then says,
Speaker 3: oh crap, we're actually going to be screwed in a
Speaker 3: lot worse off. Let's now play by the same set
Speaker 3: of rules, because we're not going to be getting away
Speaker 3: with arbitrage in the United States of America anymore. If
Speaker 3: we got away with it for a little while, we're
Speaker 3: not going to get away with it anymore. And then
Speaker 3: both countries are actually able to have a cleaner trading
Speaker 3: relationship than not. There's one wrinkle to this, I think.
Speaker 1: I think most of that pretty hapen. Most of that
Speaker 1: happens pretty quickly. If you study the history of these
Speaker 1: trade deals with.
Speaker 3: The companies quickly with Columbia, ye sure, in history historically,
Speaker 3: and if you look for one hundred years, the way
Speaker 3: these things play out, it happens very I mean it happens.
Speaker 1: It's relatively instant for correcting itself.
Speaker 3: The one exception to all of this, which you know,
Speaker 3: I favor, I think is important to us, is with
Speaker 3: respect to China.
Speaker 1: That's different from other countries.
Speaker 3: Not Japan or South Korea, or India, or the Philippines
Speaker 3: or South America. China is in a different category where
Speaker 3: I don't think we should put ourselves in a position
Speaker 3: to rely on China for anything that is critical to
Speaker 3: our national security.
Speaker 1: Take our own military. It's crazy.
Speaker 3: The following is crazy fact, the number one supplier to
Speaker 3: our Department of Defense of semiconductors is actually China. Our
Speaker 3: own military industrial base cannot exist without a Chinese dependent
Speaker 3: supply chain. That doesn't make any sense because the whole
Speaker 3: reason you a military industrial base is to potentially protect
Speaker 3: yourself against an adversary. It makes literally no sense if
Speaker 3: you depend on that very adversary for your own military
Speaker 3: industrial base. And I would say the same for the
Speaker 3: pharmaceutical supply chain, which is a pretty critical supply chain,
Speaker 3: especially in a week where even the CIA has now
Speaker 3: confirmed that COVID came from a lab in China. Really,
Speaker 3: that's the same country that you want to have ninety
Speaker 3: five percent your ibuprofen coming from, which is what it
Speaker 3: is today. That doesn't make sense, so I put China
Speaker 3: in a different category. But then the irony on this
Speaker 3: is that if you really want to declare economic independence
Speaker 3: from China in those critical sectors, that actually means you
Speaker 3: need more, not less trade with other countries like Japan
Speaker 3: and South Korea and Vietnam and India and other countries
Speaker 3: in Brazil. You actually want to bring as much as
Speaker 3: you can to the US, but you've got to supplement
Speaker 3: that with other countries that can also fill those gaps,
Speaker 3: and so it gets more nuanced more quickly and depends
Speaker 3: on what your priorities are. If your priorities are national
Speaker 3: security of the United States and also the economic best
Speaker 3: interests in the United States, I think what that means
Speaker 3: is you don't let other countries exploit us. You play
Speaker 3: by the same set of rules. In the case of China,
Speaker 3: you can't depend on an adversary for critical sectors. That
Speaker 3: means more onshoreing to the United States. But it also
Speaker 3: means more, not less, trade with a lot of our
Speaker 3: allies to fill those gaps. So I think that's a
Speaker 3: rational course forward. And this is a good conversation because
Speaker 3: actually usually people don't get to this level of the conversation.
Speaker 3: It's just you know, is trade war good or bad?
Speaker 3: When in fact it's for what purpose?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly if oh yeah, question for you on trade war,
Speaker 6: like why do we even because for instance, with Columbia, right,
Speaker 6: I saw a Boocari Sellers tweeted in response to Tim Scott.
Speaker 6: Tim Scott came out and supported with Trump did with Columbia.
Speaker 6: The car Sellers was like with Biden, we didn't have
Speaker 6: to do that, like they accepted four hundred and seventy
Speaker 6: five deportation flights under Biden, more than one hundred and
Speaker 6: twenty and twenty twenty four alone. Basically, like, why did
Speaker 6: they even have to go to this extreme? It shows
Speaker 6: how people feel about our new president and what we
Speaker 6: might have the extent that we might have to go
Speaker 6: to and is dangerous, right.
Speaker 3: Well, I think different countries are to have different relationships, right,
Speaker 3: and so at certain points you want we want a
Speaker 3: president who will play hardball for the United States when necessary. Okay,
Speaker 3: we just that's what we want. We don't want some
Speaker 3: sort of limp spined US president that gets rolled over,
Speaker 3: because the person that's getting rolled over is the president.
Speaker 1: It's us.
Speaker 3: So if somebody else is trying to stiff us, right,
Speaker 3: trying to roll over us, you gotta double dish say,
Speaker 3: if you're gonna hit me, I'm gonn hit you back
Speaker 3: ten times harder. Metaphorically speaking, I think that's okay for
Speaker 3: the president to take that mentality. And by the way,
Speaker 3: under Biden, part of the reason why is you have
Speaker 3: to way more illegals that were of the kind that
Speaker 3: they actually wanted to get out of their country. That
Speaker 3: we're actually finding their way into ours, and so each
Speaker 3: situation is going to be different. But if you ask me,
Speaker 3: do we want a president if I had to make
Speaker 3: the choice, and I do think that.
Speaker 1: Often it is a trade off.
Speaker 3: Often it is a trade off between somebody who is
Speaker 3: going to be well liked or well feared.
Speaker 1: On the global stage.
Speaker 3: I would rather have a president who is well feared
Speaker 3: on the global stage than one who is well liked.
Speaker 3: Where it's possible to do both, that's the best. But
Speaker 3: when you have to make a choice, I want my president.
Speaker 3: I dont care what party he is. I want my
Speaker 3: president to be one who is feared rather than loved
Speaker 3: by adversaries or even allies who are looking after their
Speaker 3: own interests.
Speaker 1: And that's why elected. I think respect follows somebody who
Speaker 1: stands for his own interests. Actually, in the short.
Speaker 3: Run, somebody who loves what you do may not actually
Speaker 3: respect you, right, And I think Donald Trump's this way
Speaker 3: with respect to other leaders. He respects other leaders who
Speaker 3: looks after their country's interests, even though he's going to
Speaker 3: play hardball with them along the way. I'm the same
Speaker 3: way is think about the people in a business negotiation
Speaker 3: who roll over versus people who actually will hold the
Speaker 3: line when necessary for their interest. I respect that, even
Speaker 3: if that makes for a tougher negotiation. So I think
Speaker 3: we will automatically be more respected by the world if
Speaker 3: we stand for our own interests.
Speaker 1: And then here's also one area where the US is
Speaker 1: different than other countries. It's a little bit.
Speaker 3: You know, people in other countries may take issue with it,
Speaker 3: but probably not because it's true. What hope to do
Speaker 3: the rest of the free world have if the United
Speaker 3: States the shining city on hill still doesn't shine. And
Speaker 3: I've talked to leaders from other countries over the last year.
Speaker 3: The way they've framed it to me is the US
Speaker 3: has a choice to make. I mean, you guys, decide
Speaker 3: which one you're going to be. Are you actually going
Speaker 3: to remain the leader of the world and proud of
Speaker 3: who you are? And if you're not, just let us know,
Speaker 3: because I think that we will organize our own views differently.
Speaker 3: And I do think that the United States of America
Speaker 3: in particular has an obligation not just to itself but
Speaker 3: to history to remain the strongest version of itself. Because
Speaker 3: if the United States just goes back to being just
Speaker 3: like any other ordinary country around the world. In some sense,
Speaker 3: it's a loss of hope, not just for every American
Speaker 3: but for the free world as we know it. And
Speaker 3: I think that too is secretly these other countries were
Speaker 3: in the short term, they might want to exploit the US.
Speaker 3: But if they come back and say, earn know the
Speaker 3: US is back, They're strong, They're a leader, and I
Speaker 3: might not get my little trade agreement exactly what I
Speaker 3: wanted out of it, but I know that that's somebody
Speaker 3: who I can really depend on to be consistent and
Speaker 3: looking after their own interests and for standing for what
Speaker 3: freedom means. I actually think that will win us more
Speaker 3: respect in the long run.
Speaker 5: I got a few more questions, Chucky, you always so
Speaker 5: generous with your time. What did Trump say when you
Speaker 5: told him you wanted to leave.
Speaker 1: Those It was it was a pretty good mutual discussion.
Speaker 3: He was very supportive, and uh, you know, I think
Speaker 3: Donald Trump and I we built a good relationship since
Speaker 3: I left the race.
Speaker 1: I think it's for me.
Speaker 3: I've always been somebody who I need to stand for
Speaker 3: my own vision for the country. I met my best
Speaker 3: when I'm standing for my vision for the future. And
Speaker 3: I'm excited for that, and Donald Trump was super supportive
Speaker 3: of that. We had a good time at the inauguration together,
Speaker 3: and I think we're gonna be working together informally for
Speaker 3: a long time to come.
Speaker 5: One of the executive orders that happened, uh you know,
Speaker 5: was was DoLS was rebranded as the US Digital Yeah Service,
Speaker 5: which was an Obama air group, which is basically created
Speaker 5: to keep the manage the Affordable Care Acts website.
Speaker 1: Right, That's where it started, okay, but.
Speaker 5: Now it determines best practices for the government's use of technology.
Speaker 4: That wasn't your initial vision.
Speaker 1: So look, there were there were a couple of different
Speaker 1: visions in approach, and I will say that Elon and
Speaker 1: taking a technology first approach, he's the best person to
Speaker 1: take that technology first approach, no doubt about it. You know.
Speaker 3: My what I've always been drawn to in my books
Speaker 3: and a lot of the articles I've written. In my
Speaker 3: own campaign for president, a lot of my focus has
Speaker 3: been on using the constitutional landscape and using the legislative
Speaker 3: landscape to bring down spending to curb regulations. I think
Speaker 3: the best way to do that is from the perch
Speaker 3: of elected office. And I think that when you think
Speaker 3: about who's going to drive change through technology in the government.
Speaker 3: Nobody better than Elon to do that.
Speaker 5: But it seems like the Trump administration, at least some
Speaker 5: of them, like Steve Mann and the Susie Wilds of the.
Speaker 4: World, they don't. They're not fond of him. It seems.
Speaker 1: Look Steve, Steve Mann is I'm not.
Speaker 3: I'm not a big palace intrigue, you know, person stuff.
Speaker 3: I'm an ideas guy. I believe in a vision for
Speaker 3: the country.
Speaker 1: I want to think about how we're going to best
Speaker 1: be able to improve the country. I don't really I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not super I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't really think the personality driven stuff is something
Speaker 3: that's super.
Speaker 1: Of interested me. But I can tell what I see.
Speaker 3: What I see, certainly for what I was part of,
Speaker 3: is you gotta coalition here that is unified in wanting
Speaker 3: to restore American greatness, even with a diversity of views
Speaker 3: underneath that coalition, right, because you can't have both a
Speaker 3: big tent coalition while also having everybody having united views
Speaker 3: on every small question. And so I think that was
Speaker 3: part of what was cool this last year. I mean,
Speaker 3: I ran for you as president with slightly different views
Speaker 3: on certain things.
Speaker 1: And Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: I endorsed him when I left the race. You got
Speaker 3: the likes of Independence, you got you know, Bobby Kennedy,
Speaker 3: you got Tolsi. You got a bunch of other people,
Speaker 3: Elon Musk, a bunch of people who each have our
Speaker 3: own distinctive spins on what the right emphasis should be
Speaker 3: for the future of the country, but came together in
Speaker 3: what is a you know, I think, a big tent coalition,
Speaker 3: which means there's always going to be some levels of
Speaker 3: diversity of thought and opinion in that coalition.
Speaker 1: I think it's actually a good thing. I think that
Speaker 1: makes a movement stronger.
Speaker 5: And so they only catered to a billionaire class, which issue,
Speaker 5: which is why it's so interesting.
Speaker 4: I think got so many working class.
Speaker 1: People to you know, God, Yeah, I don't think. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's true. I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: sin to be a billionaire the country. No, I think so.
Speaker 3: I think that's part of the coalition. I think it
Speaker 3: was very different if you look at the stage at inauguration.
Speaker 3: By the way, I'm a big fan of indoor inaugurations.
Speaker 1: It was a great it was war. It was good
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you watched it, you know, But
Speaker 3: if you look at the people who are I was,
Speaker 3: I was on stage with the diversity of people who
Speaker 3: are on that.
Speaker 4: Stage, guys, all the billionaire.
Speaker 1: And imagine that four years ago, many of those same
Speaker 1: platforms had censored and silenced the account of that same president.
Speaker 1: I think that's progress. I don't think that's a bad thing.
Speaker 3: I think there may be some people across the country
Speaker 3: who say, well, that's a bad thing and we need
Speaker 3: to we need to go religate country.
Speaker 1: That's what some people say. But I think Donald trumps
Speaker 1: around the country. I think that's the hard truth of
Speaker 1: the matter.
Speaker 3: And I think that there are things, there are views
Speaker 3: that everybody in this coalition who supported him may have
Speaker 3: that may be slightly different what Donald Trump actually does.
Speaker 3: Because he's done a good job of building and melding
Speaker 3: together a pretty diverse coalition of independence, libertarian minded folks.
Speaker 3: You have some folks who were certainly got the American
Speaker 3: working class, union folks, you got minorities, You have people
Speaker 3: who have lived the American dream themselves. You have people
Speaker 3: who have not yet lived the American dream but aspire
Speaker 3: for their children to. It's a pretty big tent and
Speaker 3: so obviously, if you're going to bring together that type
Speaker 3: of coalition, not everyone is going to agree on one
Speaker 3: hundred percent of policies. I'd prefer that to one where
Speaker 3: everybody did uniformly agree on everything. But it was a
Speaker 3: much more insular, you know, segment of the American population.
Speaker 1: So I think this is a good thing.
Speaker 5: The more questions, how you how is the Trump administration
Speaker 5: where reduced food prices when they're.
Speaker 4: Deporting the people who are picking the food.
Speaker 6: Because he's that first day out and we ain't seen
Speaker 6: no prices drop yet.
Speaker 3: Well, come on, it's been a couple of weeks, right,
Speaker 3: it's been not even a couple weeks, it's been a week.
Speaker 3: People who are actually picking the food, well, I mean
Speaker 3: deporting the people. Well, we maybe we should have a system,
Speaker 3: and I think you would agree with me on this.
Speaker 3: Maybe we should have a system where the people who's
Speaker 3: picking our food or people who are in our food
Speaker 3: supply chain were not people who entered the country illegally,
Speaker 3: but actually fostered both American born and a proper legal
Speaker 3: immigration system to staff that in a way that isn't illegal.
Speaker 1: That's a separate question.
Speaker 5: You want to deport people and there's only fourteen million
Speaker 5: people live in the country illegally rid of.
Speaker 1: Let's let's just talk about bringing down food prices for
Speaker 1: a second, because I think it's an important point.
Speaker 3: I would also add to the list, by the way,
Speaker 3: housing prices. I would add to the list energy prices,
Speaker 3: especially electricity costs. I would add insurance costs. How things
Speaker 3: going to be tough, Well, here's the number one way
Speaker 3: to do it. Increase the supply of everything. It's the
Speaker 3: laws of supply and demand. If you have constricted supply,
Speaker 3: you have higher prices. If you have more supply, prices
Speaker 3: come down. And one of the easiest things that we're
Speaker 3: able to do in all of those areas housing, food, energy,
Speaker 3: you bring down the regulatory barrier to producing.
Speaker 1: More of it.
Speaker 3: That is automatically going to bring prices down. That's at
Speaker 3: least the first and easiest step we can take. Some
Speaker 3: of this is at the federal level, but keep in mind,
Speaker 3: not all of this is stuff that Donald Trump can do.
Speaker 3: Some of this is a lot of this is actually
Speaker 3: at the state level too. I mean, you think about
Speaker 3: most of the regulations that stop people from producing food,
Speaker 3: most of the regulations that stop people from building new houses,
Speaker 3: including manufactured homes, which I think is actually an innovative
Speaker 3: area for the future. You think about even a lot
Speaker 3: of the restrictions on energy production, it's nuclear energy included.
Speaker 1: A lot of that is at the state level, which
Speaker 1: is part.
Speaker 3: Of why, in my own reflection right, thinking about having
Speaker 3: an impact on the country, you want if you're doing
Speaker 3: this public service thing, you'll tell you there's a lot
Speaker 3: about it that isn't super pleasant at all times. So
Speaker 3: if you're going to do it, you might as well
Speaker 3: have the biggest possible impact.
Speaker 1: You can have.
Speaker 3: And the way I look at it is Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: He's got it covered at the federal level. I'm rooting
Speaker 3: for success, and I expect success, but it's not gonna
Speaker 3: be a one man show.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day.
Speaker 3: He got fifty states that have also have to tackle
Speaker 3: these very same problems, and especially when it's questions of affordability,
Speaker 3: questions really into education.
Speaker 1: Education is all driven by the states. I think the
Speaker 1: States is where it's.
Speaker 3: At in terms of actually the need to drive real change.
Speaker 3: And so at my sites accordingly, and yeah, I've tried
Speaker 3: to and I'm going to hopefully stay true to not
Speaker 3: just talking about this stuff but to actually translate it
Speaker 3: to action. And I do think that this is a
Speaker 3: lot of the issues. We're talking about bringing down housing costs,
Speaker 3: that is not a part.
Speaker 1: Of an issue.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of Republicans who are pissed off
Speaker 3: about high housing costs, a lot of Democrats who are
Speaker 3: pissed off about high housing costs.
Speaker 1: And it is not a nature made problem. It's not
Speaker 1: a law physics. It is a man made problem. And
Speaker 1: a man made problem has a man made solution. And
Speaker 1: Donald Trump can set the tone. But those regulations, most
Speaker 1: of them are actually at the state level.
Speaker 3: Same thing with respect education, determining whether or not that
Speaker 3: poor young kid in the inner city, black, Hispanic, or
Speaker 3: white can go to an actual good school isn't determined
Speaker 3: by the federal government. It's determined by actually those state laws.
Speaker 3: Same thing with respect to food restrictions, the constraints on
Speaker 3: nuclear energy production, a lot of those are at the
Speaker 3: state level.
Speaker 1: And so I'm.
Speaker 3: Actually excited about making sure that we're not just looking
Speaker 3: at this as a one size fits all solution.
Speaker 1: I supported Donald Trump pretty heavily.
Speaker 3: I dedicated a significant part of my last year to
Speaker 3: getting him elected because I thought he would restore that
Speaker 3: sense of spine, that sense of greatness to America. But
Speaker 3: it's never one man show. It's never one man coming
Speaker 3: down from the White House to save us. It's never
Speaker 3: been that way. In fact, our founders envisioned this system
Speaker 3: of federalism to be led by the state's bottom up
Speaker 3: as well, and so I'm excited for both of those
Speaker 3: to work in the next couple of years.
Speaker 5: Do you think you will push out of those because
Speaker 5: Trump rolled back the DEI initiatives?
Speaker 3: No, the contrary, And you know, I would say, just
Speaker 3: to be super clear about I have no problem with
Speaker 3: you framing or whatever. It was really just an actual
Speaker 3: mutual decision where you look at here was one vision
Speaker 3: on approach, here's a different vision on an approach that's great.
Speaker 3: There's no right or wrong answer with a technology driven
Speaker 3: approach and a technology first approach, there's no better person
Speaker 3: than Elon to run with that. With a constitutional law focus,
Speaker 3: with a legislation focus. Some of the areas I was
Speaker 3: focused on, probably the right place to do it is
Speaker 3: elected office. And so we all agreed on that, and
Speaker 3: I think that that's actually a good thing where we're
Speaker 3: able to where we're actually able to collaborate, divide and
Speaker 3: conqueror behave.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't believe you.
Speaker 5: I think you either got pushed out you know that
Speaker 5: it's going to implode. I think that you know Elon
Speaker 5: is going crash and burn it. And you're a smart guy,
Speaker 5: and you said, you know what, let me get out of.
Speaker 4: Dodge and go do my governor Ohio thing.
Speaker 1: So look, I know.
Speaker 3: I knew that the right step for me in the
Speaker 3: long run is elected office and to pursue the vision
Speaker 3: that we're talking about here, to actually translate that to
Speaker 3: action of my own terms, that's what I've been called
Speaker 3: to do. It was clear that I could not do
Speaker 3: that and serve on Doge at the same time, even
Speaker 3: for logistical reasons.
Speaker 1: It came to be in the government rather than an
Speaker 1: outside body.
Speaker 3: I was proud to be able to spend the first
Speaker 3: couple of months offering my contributions and setting it in
Speaker 3: the right direction with its focus now with its digital
Speaker 3: technology focus. No better person to do that than Elon
Speaker 3: in the way that he's going to lead it. And
Speaker 3: I am hopeful that there's going to be a lot
Speaker 3: of stream lining of government bureaucracy that comes out of that,
Speaker 3: and I'm pursuing my next steps.
Speaker 1: At the state.
Speaker 3: We're on, we're all on very good terms, and so
Speaker 3: I wouldn't want to speak for anybody else, but I
Speaker 3: will say that they are very supportive of of the
Speaker 3: decision that I made to pursue is my next step.
Speaker 1: All Right, you've been here a long time and.
Speaker 5: You hit me up every weekend and said, I cannot
Speaker 5: wait until you unhit your horse from this Maga wagon.
Speaker 1: And you can tell me I got my horse hitch
Speaker 1: to one wagon. And I'm not being corny about it.
Speaker 1: I really mean it. It is the America Wagon.
Speaker 3: I love this country and I will you know what,
Speaker 3: I would rather fight to this country for the principles
Speaker 3: I believe in and stand for and lose than to
Speaker 3: win by checking some box along the way. And this
Speaker 3: next step for me, I think is going to be
Speaker 3: it's going to be really good.
Speaker 4: You don't want your horse hits to the Maga wagon.
Speaker 3: My horse is hitched to the America wagon. And I think,
Speaker 3: and I think making America great again, by the way,
Speaker 3: I'm all in for that. I'm all in for making
Speaker 3: America great again. If we're doing our jobs four years
Speaker 3: from now, we won't be saying make America great again,
Speaker 3: We'll just say make America greater. That's who we've always been.
Speaker 3: So I want to turn Maga into mag Okay, so
Speaker 3: we don't have to make America great again.
Speaker 1: We just have to make America greater.
Speaker 3: And I think it's good to have the humility to
Speaker 3: say make America great again. Acknowledges we're not perfect right now,
Speaker 3: and some people just.
Speaker 4: Great because they've never experienced the greatnesstead.
Speaker 3: Of let's make America greater than it's ever been. That's
Speaker 3: what I'm all in for.
Speaker 6: You're going to be able to really do that as governor,
Speaker 6: you're gonna have that is that just for you to
Speaker 6: be there and be quiet until you figure.
Speaker 1: Out, well, I'm not gonna be quiet. I'm not very
Speaker 1: good at that, and uh, you better believe that.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have a lot to say at every step
Speaker 3: of this way. I don't believe in being shackled, and
Speaker 3: I think that the ability to lead a state but
Speaker 3: also to be able to revive this culture of victory
Speaker 3: over victimhood in America, that's what I care about. We're victors,
Speaker 3: not victims.
Speaker 1: That's who we are. And I don't care where that
Speaker 1: comes from I've been from my first book Woking all
Speaker 1: the way through everything I've done ever since.
Speaker 3: I'm against victimhood culture where victors were exceptional. We believe
Speaker 3: in excellence, we believe in we believe in being unconstrained
Speaker 3: as a people and as a country. Well, if I'm
Speaker 3: going to be a leader in that country, I'm going
Speaker 3: to be pretty unconstrained at every step of the way too.
Speaker 1: So that's why I look at it.
Speaker 4: Big Grumaswami.
Speaker 2: Good luck in Ohio, and uh, how are you going
Speaker 2: to take care of our Haitian family over there that
Speaker 2: you know?
Speaker 3: Trump said, Well, I visited a number of them, Uh,
Speaker 3: in Springfield, and I think that I spent a lot
Speaker 3: of time in Springfield growing up.
Speaker 1: Actually any of them, we didn't. Oh yeah, no we
Speaker 1: did not. We hung out.
Speaker 4: We hung out.
Speaker 3: It was it was the daytime where we hung out.
Speaker 3: But I would say that I will say that it's
Speaker 3: understandable where you have a tiny community, that it's really
Speaker 3: small population in Springfield that has had its population dramatically transformed.
Speaker 3: I don't blame anybody. That's what I said when I
Speaker 3: went visited Springfield. I don't blame anybody in that community.
Speaker 3: I don't blame the people who live in Springfield for
Speaker 3: being upset. I don't blame Haitians who made decisions for
Speaker 3: their own family to end up in Springfield the way
Speaker 3: they are. I do blame a lot of Field government policies.
Speaker 3: And at the end of the day, you could sit
Speaker 3: back and blame the government all you want, and some
Speaker 3: of At a certain point in time, I said, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm sitting here offering commentary from an armchair.
Speaker 1: I'm done with that.
Speaker 3: I want to go in and actually be through action,
Speaker 3: make a difference that you want to see. The best
Speaker 3: way to do it is from elected office, and I
Speaker 3: prefer an executive office that involves actually being an executive
Speaker 3: rather than just being one among a chorus of one hundred.
Speaker 4: I'm just ready to see you.
Speaker 5: But I think you're a smart dude, and I listened
Speaker 5: to a lot of your interviews and I watch you
Speaker 5: a lot, and I'm like, yo, you know, the VIC
Speaker 5: says some things that I can get with, but I'm just.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might, I'm not.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to be constrained by anybody. And you
Speaker 3: know what I eve my you can watch me over
Speaker 3: the next year. You know, wining some election. Most politicians
Speaker 3: their goal is to get re elected. I don't need
Speaker 3: to get elected anything. We live a great life, We
Speaker 3: live the American dream. This is my way of giving back.
Speaker 3: What's the point of going through the motions if you're
Speaker 3: just going to be hamstrung by what you say and
Speaker 3: do in the first place? And so I think that,
Speaker 3: let me put it this way, running to be the
Speaker 3: chief executive of a state, a governor, short of being
Speaker 3: a president, is the single greatest way to have unshackled
Speaker 3: impact on your country. And I'll look forward to making
Speaker 3: a big announcement about that in a few weeks.
Speaker 2: All right, it's Vivick Ramaswami. We appreciate you for joining us.
Speaker 1: Continue man, It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning, Wake that
Speaker 1: ass up in the morning.
Speaker 4: The Breakfast Club.