Rep. Thomas Massie: Battling the Treachery of Trump’s Republican Party, AIPAC, and the Epstein Class

0:00 So, how's your Iran war been so far?

0:03 You enjoying the Iran war?

0:05 Well, that really depends on who you are.

0:08 We like to think as Americans that we're all in this together.

0:13 And big events like wars or economic booms

0:16 or crises or natural disasters affect all of us equally.

0:20 But that's not true.

0:21 And it never has been true.

0:24 How you experience something big really depends on where you sit.

0:29 And again, that's been true since the beginning of time.

0:32 When Rome fell in 476, September 476,

0:34 it of course was a history-changing disaster that we're still talking about.

0:37 Books have been written about it ever since, more than 1500 years.

0:40 And for most people, it was really the end.

0:43 It was the end of a civilization, the world's largest empire.

0:47 But there were some people, you can imagine,

0:51 on New Year's Eve 476 sitting around the table with their families assessing

0:55 the year that just went by and they looked around the table and said,

0:58 you know, that was the best year we ever had.

1:00 Of course, Germanic hordes are plundering the city of Rome,

1:04 but for us, honestly, it was pretty great.

1:06 And that's just the nature of it.

1:08 Not anything inherently wrong with that.

1:10 It's just a fact.

1:11 You saw it during CO.

1:13 COVID was a massive disaster for most Americans, for most people in the West.

1:17 Addiction rates went up, suicide rates, divorce,

1:20 kids didn't get educated for over a year.

1:23 It destroyed a whole generation of young people, affected them badly.

1:27 Anyway, on the other hand, if you were fortunate enough to have a second home,

1:31 like a weekend house in a rural area that didn't

1:34 have CO restrictions or enforcement officers capable of enforcing them,

1:38 it was pretty great.

1:40 If you lived in a traditional world,

1:43 like say where your wife didn't work because

1:45 she didn't have to because you made enough money,

1:48 you could live a kind of 1950s family existence and you had a coherent family

1:52 and children who still liked you sort of and they were all home for months.

1:57 It was like the best time you had in the last 20 years.

1:59 People don't like to say that out loud, but that's real.

2:02 And the Iran war is a little bit like that.

2:06 It's an event that is affecting our lives right now

2:10 are certain to define our lives in important ways going forward.

2:13 An event that's changing the world for all time.

2:16 An event that people will write books about.

2:18 And for most, it is a disaster.

2:20 A true disaster.

2:21 Not just for the thousands who've already been killed

2:24 or the dozen countries that have been bombed or for the hundreds

2:27 of thousands of Britain in the UK who've dropped below

2:30 the poverty line already two months in, etc., etc., etc.

2:34 It's a disaster.

2:36 But for some small select group of people, it's been awesome.

2:40 Let's check in with our old friend, hedge fund manager, Bill Aman.

2:45 This was him two days ago in CNBC.

2:47 Here's how his war is going.

2:49 Iran has been, I think,

2:51 a major uh funer of sort of anti-American protests and kind of otherwise.

2:56 Um I think, you know, that that that war is a is a very good one.

2:59 And uh the war is a very good one.

3:01 Yeah, it's I think we've It's very unpopular though.

3:04 I don't know.

3:05 I don't know who surveys to trust.

3:07 Look, I think most Republicans uh many Republicans support

3:11 the president and it's it shouldn't be a bipartisan issue.

3:15 The Iran war is a very good one.

3:17 Really?

3:18 Says the interviewer on CNBC.

3:19 No, really.

3:20 Yeah, it's a very good one.

3:22 Is it an unpopular?

3:23 I don't know about that.

3:25 And the truth is Blackman probably doesn't know.

3:27 He may not know anyone personally who thinks this is

3:30 a disaster because for Bill Aman and his friends

3:33 the Epstein class it's been a massive win

3:36 and that's been pretty obvious increasingly if you're following markets.

3:40 So there's this phenomenon that people are starting to catch

3:44 on to where a certain certain news organization predicts serially many

3:48 times in a row over the past 20 or so

3:52 days an imminent peace agreement between Iran and the United States.

3:56 Now, that agreement has not materialized.

3:58 Apparently, we're not actually close to getting one.

4:00 But at the moment when that's announced,

4:02 every single time you've seen a massive move

4:05 in global energy markets and in equity market,

4:08 stock market, because people are betting that that will have direct

4:13 effects on the value of stocks andor oil or other commodities.

4:18 And a little bit before that announcement,

4:21 every single time you have seen massive bets made on oil futures,

4:26 you've seen billions of dollars change hands and you

4:30 can surmise that somebody is getting rich doing this.

4:34 In fact, you can be absolutely certain.

4:36 Now, you you don't know who.

4:38 Well, the only thing you know is a it's happening

4:40 and b no one will ever be held to account for it.

4:42 Now, how do you know that?

4:44 Cuz we've seen this a lot.

4:45 In fact, we saw it and no one ever wants to remember this on 9/11.

4:50 Shortly before 9/11,

4:52 somebody somebody put big bets in shorts against airline and bank stocks.

4:58 Those are two businesses that were directly affected by the events of 9/11.

5:03 Now, we know this happened because these are public markets,

5:05 so there's a record of it.

5:06 But we also know because they admitted it, the FBI figured out who did it,

5:10 but the FBI never got around to telling us their identity.

5:13 So the largest federal law enforcement agency has known for 25

5:17 years who had foreign knowledge of 9/11 and that's demonstrable

5:20 cuz they bet against the events of that day before

5:23 the rest of us experienced them and has never divulged their identities.

5:28 Now we can guess as to why that is.

5:30 Why would the FBI be protecting people with foreign knowledge of 9/11?

5:33 We don't know for certain what the answer is,

5:35 but we do know that they are doing it.

5:38 They did it and they're still doing it.

5:40 So, if the identities of people who bet against 9/11,

5:44 who shorted airline stocks before 9/11,

5:46 are somehow classified on national security

5:48 grounds and you're allowed to know them,

5:50 then we can bet safely that whoever is profiting from the Iran war

5:55 in public markets probably isn't going

5:57 to get any kind of insider trading violation.

6:01 Probably not.

6:03 But one thing we also have learned

6:05 is that these markets are much more vulnerable,

6:08 susceptible, maybe based on manipulation than we ever thought.

6:11 And if you think about it, that's kind of a surprise.

6:15 Even people who complained about how central

6:17 the stock market is to the American economy,

6:19 and you can argue whether we have a real economy, if it's based on anything.

6:24 That's a academic argument.

6:25 But even people who thought, "Wow,

6:28 we seem a little bit overinvested in public equities markets

6:32 kind of assumed they were

6:35 real." And market's pretty straightforward proposition.

6:37 I've got something to sell.

6:39 You want to buy it?

6:41 I'll sell it for what you'll buy it for.

6:44 And vice versa.

6:45 It's transparent by its nature.

6:46 It's self-correcting.

6:47 That's the basis of our economic system.

6:49 Capitalism, free market capitalism.

6:50 It always finds the right level, the rational level,

6:54 because it's based on the free exchange of money for assets.

7:01 But that's not what we're seeing now.

7:03 Not at all.

7:04 Markets are doing things you would not expect markets

7:07 to do if they were behaving rationally in a free way.

7:11 If they weren't rigged, you would see, well,

7:14 certain commodities prices, including oil, go up a lot more.

7:17 They have, gold, go up a lot more than it has.

7:20 And yet gold and oil and other commodities

7:23 have stayed far lower than you would rationally expect

7:27 them to stay after 60 days of terrible news

7:32 out of the world's center of global energy production.

7:37 So the street of formuz has been closed for months now in effect.

7:42 And yet oil as of airtime tonight was under a hundred bucks a barrel,

7:47 much lower than it was in say 2008.

7:50 That is bizarre.

7:51 But it's more than bizarre.

7:54 It's fake.

7:55 It is obvious.

7:57 It's become too obvious to deny over the past couple of months

8:02 that public markets are not what they told us they were,

8:06 which is to say open and free and equal for everyone to participate in.

8:11 It's going to take a long time for that understanding

8:14 to percolate down to level of retail investors.

8:17 But the knowledge is there and you can't kind of deny it

8:20 that some people are getting rich from this and most people aren't.

8:23 And it's not exactly clear the mechanisms mechanisms by which they are,

8:28 but it's very obvious that it's happening.

8:29 We're not accusing Bill Aman of participating in this.

8:31 It's not like Bill Aman would talk down

8:34 share prices in publicly traded companies to make money.

8:36 Oh, wait.

8:37 He's done that his whole life.

8:39 But in this specific case, we have no evidence of a crime,

8:42 assuming it still is a crime.

8:44 But we can say with great confidence that in this, as in every other war,

8:49 some people will do just fine.

8:51 In fact, they will greatly benefit from it, which is one of the reasons we

8:56 keep having wars because they are enormously profitable.

8:58 It's hard for normal people to appreciate that that could possibly be true.

9:03 People die, innocents die in foreign countries, your own country becomes poor,

9:07 your own service members die so you can get rich.

9:10 Could anyone be that dark?

9:12 Yeah.

9:12 And we're watching it now.

9:14 So there is a part of the population that thinks this has been

9:19 a very good war and isn't even aware that it might be unpopular

9:23 with anybody else because I haven't met anyone in in the famous words

9:27 of polling Kale who didn't vote for George McGovern who lost very badly in 1972.

9:32 We all live in our own worlds.

9:35 So Bill Aman doesn't know anyone who doesn't

9:37 think this is a great a great thing.

9:40 It's a great war.

9:41 So how's the rest of the country doing?

9:44 Well, the chairman of the White

9:46 House Council on Economic Advisors, Kevin Hasset,

9:48 was called to the lawn today to give an account of the American economy.

9:53 And that's a tough thing to do.

9:54 And we say this with great sympathy and no personal animist toward Mr.

9:58 Hasset at all.

9:59 But here's the tape.

10:00 Here's what he said.

10:02 So, the consumer is really really firing on all cylinders

10:06 just like the corporate sector you're seeing in the earnings reports.

10:08 And they're doing that because they have so much more money in their pockets.

10:11 In fact, I had the head of one of the big five banks

10:14 in my office yesterday going through the credit

10:16 card data and just as Secretary Vessence said,

10:18 uh, credit card spending is through the roof.

10:21 They're spending more on gasoline,

10:22 but they're spending more on everything else, too.

10:26 Credit card spending is through the roof.

10:29 That is now again, you feel bad for the man who has

10:33 to present those data those data to the public as if they're a win.

10:38 But think about this for a second.

10:40 The average interest rate on a credit card,

10:42 not even a new credit card, but an existing credit card,

10:44 which is to say a credit card held by someone with a track

10:47 record of paying money every month to the credit card companies.

10:50 These are not high-risisk credit cards.

10:52 These are normal credit cards.

10:53 The average interest rate in the United States right now is 23%.

10:58 23%.

10:59 And by the way, that goes up to 36%, probably higher.

11:05 probably higher than 36%, but officially 36% is the highest rate

11:10 any mainstream credit card will charge you.

11:13 You could go get a personal bank loan for 11%.

11:17 So, you could borrow money at less than half

11:21 the rate than you're getting from your credit card company.

11:26 So, why would anybody use a credit card and roll over the interest?

11:33 40% of American adults cannot repay their credit card balance.

11:39 That's 111 million people and they are paying on average 23% interest.

11:47 So that's not a win.

11:51 That's a sign of desperation and impending poverty.

11:54 And keep in mind we are living right now

11:58 in the final moments before whatever AI is going to bring us.

12:03 those data centers being erected in your town,

12:07 the ones that you are paying for through higher energy costs,

12:12 through the legacy environmental cleanup,

12:14 you're definitely on the hook for those data centers are being

12:18 constructed in order to eliminate half of all American white collar jobs.

12:22 So, you hate to use the hackneed cliche digging your own grave,

12:27 but it's not entirely an overstatement at this point.

12:31 those data centers going in, destroying the landscape in your town,

12:36 eating up fertile farmland in some cases,

12:40 certainly making everything uglier and providing almost no jobs.

12:42 Those are going up in order to facilitate AI.

12:45 And the one thing, really the only thing we know about AI is

12:50 that it's going to eliminate half of all productive work in the United States.

12:55 That hasn't happened yet.

12:57 It's beginning to happen.

12:58 But all forecasts from the people who are developing it,

13:02 who have every incentive to downplay

13:04 the negative effects of the technology they're creating,

13:06 all the forecasts suggest in the next 2 or 3 years,

13:09 we're going to see economic disruption on a scale we've never even conceived of.

13:15 Keep in mind that economic change always precipitates,

13:21 always causes, forces econom forces political change.

13:25 And if the economic change is profound and abrupt enough, it causes revolution.

13:32 The first and second world wars were a reaction to the industrial revolution.

13:37 Of course, Marxism was a reaction to the industrial revolution,

13:41 but no technological change in all of history matches the abrupt

13:47 and radical change now being promised by the developers of AI.

13:54 So all of this, the conversation we're having about the American

13:56 economy and how much money people have and how much they owe,

13:59 all of that is taking place in the final moments

14:02 before the economic cataclysm we've been promised by artificial intelligence.

14:06 So it's not like we can wait 10 years for this whole thing to self-correct,

14:13 for markets to become honest again,

14:15 and for people to make a wage sufficient to buy a home and raise children.

14:20 This is all happening,

14:21 which is to say people are getting poorer and far more indebted on the eve

14:26 of what we should all be staying up late worrying about and trying to fix.

14:30 But instead, no one is worried about it in any position of authority.

14:34 People seem to be wholly focused on cashing in on it.

14:38 Build the 40,000 acre data center as soon as you possibly can.

14:42 get taxpayers to pay for it in effect

14:44 by shouldering the cost of running it through

14:47 higher utilities and take as much money off the table as you can while you can.

14:53 That's what it looks like.

14:54 Now, maybe that's an ungenerous interpretation.

14:56 Maybe there are a lot of people who really

14:59 trying to build a better tomorrow through AI and Deltas.

15:01 There are some of those, but big picture that does seem to be what's going on.

15:06 And you know that because no one has explained

15:08 to you how this is going to be good for you.

15:10 Instead, they're telling you that borrowing money

15:13 on your credit card is a sign of economic health.

15:16 It's a sign that we're on the right track.

15:19 We have more money to spend.

15:20 That's why we're buying more on our credit cards.

15:22 No, people have more money to spend buy things.

15:24 People who have no money to spend buy essentials on credit.

15:28 And that's exactly what is happening.

15:31 Now, some of that is a reaction to the economic

15:36 changes already wrought 2 months in by the war with Iran.

15:39 Some of it is the downstream effect of years of bad economic planning,

15:44 years of living in an economy where Bill Aman makes $8 billion or something

15:49 with an IQ of 105 with no track

15:52 record of improving the country or creating anything.

15:55 Basically just leeching off the existing system, plundering it effectively.

16:01 He hates it when you say that, but he's he's never explained how what he

16:04 does for a living is good for the United States or productive in any sense.

16:09 It's merely extractive, probably worse than lead mining.

16:12 But all the gains, the substantial gains over the last

16:19 20 years have not been broadly shared by Americans.

16:24 They've gone upward.

16:26 Now, that's a moral problem, maybe,

16:30 probably, but it's certainly a management problem.

16:34 It is a problem of governance at a certain

16:37 point because it means a huge number of Americans,

16:40 let's just go with the 111 million,

16:42 the number that can't repay their credit card debt,

16:44 who have no vested interest in the system.

16:48 They have a negative net worth.

16:50 They don't own anything.

16:52 They are living here,

16:53 but they don't see a future for themselves or their families,

16:58 or they may not have families,

16:59 and they certainly don't own anything worth protecting.

17:02 And so, what does that add up to?

17:04 social and political volatility.

17:06 So you would think the people in charge

17:08 of the country who are benefiting the most,

17:10 the people like Bill Aman who think it's been a really good war

17:12 would be very concerned about this and they would not want to put any

17:16 more economic pressure on this belleaguered population

17:19 and particularly on young people who seem

17:21 to bear the brunt of it probably because they have the least political power.

17:26 So nobody cares what they think.

17:28 healthy society would be totally focused on what young people think because they

17:31 are building the society that will

17:33 outlive the current leadership of that society.

17:36 But they're ignored.

17:38 So if you were thinking longitudinally,

17:40 if you were thinking about what's best over time for your country,

17:44 your civilization, you'd be focused on them

17:47 and you would not casually add to their burden.

17:52 But what we're watching is a kind of frenzy of carelessness, of thoughtlessness,

17:59 of callousness toward people whose lives have

18:02 not gotten better over the past 30 years,

18:06 but gotten measurably worse in every category of measurement.

18:11 Now, you hate to pile on and you hate

18:15 to take the president literally because as I've said many times,

18:18 Trump is not meant to be taken literally.

18:21 Sort of like reading poetry.

18:24 The theme is what matters.

18:26 The feeling it evokes is what matters.

18:29 I've made that argument and it's often true.

18:32 But at some point, particularly when you're talking about hard numbers,

18:36 the prices of commodities,

18:37 for example, in the middle of a war that is affecting those prices,

18:40 it is worth paying attention to the president's own estimates of the costs

18:45 of this voluntary war that he started at the demand of Israel.

18:49 So, here is the president, I think yesterday, explaining his view on oil prices.

18:53 I also thought oil would go up to 200, 250,

18:57 maybe 300, and I knew it would be short term,

19:00 but I thought it would go I I look today it's like at 102 and that's a very

19:07 small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear

19:12 weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.

19:15 It's a 100.

19:17 It could I thought it was going to go to 200 or 300?

19:22 Really?

19:22 What would $200 a barrel oil mean?

19:25 Well, we've never had it.

19:27 We've never had in the and this is these are adjusted numbers.

19:33 We've never had $200 a barrel Brent crude period in world history.

19:38 But what would happen if we did?

19:41 Well, I don't know, $10 a gallon for unled at the pump,

19:46 more for diesel, much more for jet fuel.

19:48 What would that mean?

19:50 Well, it would mean inflation, possibly hyperinflation.

19:52 What would $300 a barrel oil,

19:55 which the president said he imagined we could have, what would that mean?

20:01 Well, it's not even worth guessing because no one's even modeled it out.

20:06 No one's even taken the time to write out the formula or guess

20:10 as to what effect $300 a barrel oil would have on human civilization.

20:16 But you can be absolutely certain it would be the end

20:21 of a lot of things that we take for granted.

20:24 Certainly air travel, jobs.

20:26 It would be a true disaster on the level of, I don't know,

20:34 a national tsunami or hurricane.

20:37 It would affect every person in the United

20:40 States making less than a million dollars a year.

20:43 It would crush people already at a hundred bucks in the US.

20:47 $100 oil.

20:48 You just heard the president say it's 97 something like that.

20:53 People around the world are worrying about

20:56 famine because of course oil is not just used to produce gasoline and jet fuel

21:01 and asphalt and kerosene and all the familiar products.

21:04 It's also used to produce fertilizer.

21:06 All kinds of petrochemicals used in manufacturing

21:08 but fertilizer and without it crop yields go down

21:13 and people starve in the most populated continent

21:17 in the world which would be subseran Africa.

21:21 So already you are seeing a massive human cost not well reported

21:26 in American media to a relatively small spike in global oil prices.

21:31 And here you have the president saying I thought it could be 300 bucks.

21:36 That's that's like saying, "Well,

21:38 I I thought they might drop a neutron bomb on Chicago, but you know,

21:43 I was willing to risk it." No president should ever be

21:47 willing to talk that casually about the economic destruction of his nation.

21:53 The justification for it.

21:55 It's worth it, said the president, because Iran had nuclear weapons and you

22:02 can't let crazy people have nuclear weapons.

22:04 So, it's almost not worth rebutting that with the facts, which are as follows.

22:09 Iran did not have a nuclear weapon.

22:12 It did not have ICBMs to deliver that weapon here or anywhere near here.

22:16 It did not have an active nuclear

22:18 weapons program and the American intelligence community.

22:21 All 18 separate agencies determined that conclusively after studying it

22:25 for years and with the motivation to find said nuclear program.

22:29 They couldn't.

22:30 So no, Iran did not have a nuclear weapon.

22:33 It was nowhere near getting a nuclear weapon.

22:35 Despite the lying you have often heard that was not even an imminent threat.

22:40 It was not close to an imminent threat despite the fact the Israelis had told

22:43 us and the US Congress for over 20 years that it was an imminent threat.

22:46 That was a lie.

22:47 But you have to ask yourself, even if if it was true,

22:52 would that justify destroying the American economy?

22:55 Would it justify, I don't know,

22:57 driving 200,000 Britons into poverty in 2 months?

23:00 And that's just the opening salvo.

23:03 Would it justify a famine in Africa?

23:05 No one wants to say it.

23:06 There are a lot of countries nuclear weapons.

23:08 You don't want any of them to have

23:10 nuclear weapons because any normal person thinks

23:12 nuclear weapons are bad because they are

23:14 by definition weapons of mass destruction that kill innocents.

23:16 So they are bad as a category.

23:18 But there are a lot of countries

23:20 that have them including countries with well leaderships

23:23 that are filled with religious extremists like Israel

23:27 and Pakistan and in a way North Korea.

23:30 And the world has been able to continue

23:34 for now almost 30 years with a nuclear armed Pakistan.

23:38 It's not ideal.

23:38 Maybe we should have done something

23:40 during the Clinton administration to stop it.

23:43 But we haven't had to destroy the American economy

23:46 in order to do something about it since then.

23:50 Of course not.

23:51 And in fact, the deeper truth is that there is a kind

23:56 of stability as bad as nuclear weapons are when rival nations possess them.

24:05 India and Pakistan, which are countries with a long almost 80-year

24:09 history of hating each other and many wars in the interim,

24:13 have managed to fight fairly bitter conflicts since

24:18 1947 without using nuclear weapons against each other.

24:23 How is that possible?

24:24 Well, the mutually assured destruction principle,

24:27 which as ugly as it sounds, is real.

24:30 It's absolutely real.

24:31 What you don't want is a nation that feels no constraints whatsoever.

24:36 That feels it can do whatever it wants.

24:38 It feels it can roll into its neighbors

24:41 sovereign territory and expel the population and kill people.

24:44 This is exactly we thought the lesson of World War II.

24:48 That's bad.

24:48 But that's kind of what you get when you

24:51 have a country that feels it has unconstrained power.

24:54 It can do whatever it wants.

24:55 What does it tend to do?

24:57 Well, whatever it wants.

24:58 And so you could at least make the case academically even if you disagreed

25:02 with the whole idea of nuclear weapons

25:05 and thought they were probably inherently evil.

25:08 Even if you wondered where they came from in the first place,

25:11 even if you had dark suspicions about the genesis of nuclear weapons,

25:13 and some of us do, you could still make

25:15 the case on a pragmatic basis that look at the effects.

25:20 Look at the effects.

25:22 They are less bad than this.

25:26 So that's the explanation from the president.

25:29 You can see why in an administration that had higher levels of support

25:34 from young people a year and a half ago than any Republican in memory,

25:37 young people came out for Donald Trump to vote for Donald Trump.

25:41 Why did they do that?

25:43 Because they are dissatisfied with the system as it is.

25:46 They understand it is rigged against them, because it is.

25:50 And they felt here was one man strong enough to stand up against that system.

25:55 They tried to put him in jail.

25:57 They tried to impeach him twice.

25:58 Here was a guy who understood he was up against

26:01 and would take it on and was brave enough to do that.

26:04 And a year and a half in, what they've seen is a guy who got in office

26:09 and immediately took the side of the people

26:12 who persecuted him for the preceding eight years.

26:15 He took their side and became their most valiant champion and began

26:20 to persecute their enemies as he himself had once been persecuted.

26:24 he switched teams.

26:25 And they look at this and they may not understand all of the details,

26:31 but they look at this in horror and they feel betrayed.

26:34 And that is obvious from the polling numbers.

26:37 And these are polling numbers that are so

26:40 stark that you can't actually lie about them.

26:43 You can't spin them.

26:45 Donald Trump's drop in support among voters under 30 is precipitous.

26:49 It's off a cliff.

26:50 And there are a lot of reasons for this.

26:53 the Iran war, the refusal to release the Epstein files,

26:58 the mounting debt that most of them carry.

27:02 How's your average 27year-old 5 years out of college,

27:05 hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt

27:08 from this four-year college was supposed to make

27:11 the difference between getting ahead and staying

27:13 in your hometown and stagnating in some dead-end job?

27:16 That kid likely has a negative net worth 5 years out of college.

27:21 And in many cases, they're told, "Point blank,

27:24 we can't hire you because of how you look." How

27:28 do you think kids like that feel about Donald Trump?

27:33 Well, you should talk to some.

27:36 So, at this point, you have to ask, what's the solution?

27:40 What are people like that, voters like that, young people,

27:43 not exclusively, but heavily young people, what are they looking for?

27:47 Well, probably what all people are looking for.

27:52 honesty, fairness, decency, a sense of humor, courage,

27:58 a willingness to actually stand up and fight entrenched power.

28:02 That's what they're looking for.

28:03 And who do they look to?

28:05 Well, there aren't many.

28:07 One of them is a guy called Thomas Massie.

28:09 He's a member of Congress from the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

28:12 Not the most important state in the union.

28:14 Not one you hear about too much.

28:16 He's a member of Congress, one of 435.

28:18 You may have heard his name.

28:20 Why?

28:21 Thomas Massie is in his district and probably nationally,

28:24 but certainly we know for a fact in his district,

28:27 the most popular person among young voters.

28:29 80% approval rating among young voters.

28:31 Why is that?

28:33 Well, once again, because Thomas Massie has made good

28:36 on the promises that Donald Trump made to the nation,

28:40 to these very same people who supported him in 2024, and he stuck with it.

28:46 Thomas Massie is a better standardbearer for Trumpism,

28:50 for the America first ideology that Donald Trump

28:53 ran on three times than Donald Trump is.

28:56 A far better spokesman for that because he has not changed.

29:01 And moreover, he's a thoroughly decent man.

29:05 Cheerful, kind, loves his family, his children love him.

29:11 He's self-reliant.

29:12 He is in short the American they told us we should aspire

29:18 to be a man who doesn't brag about himself who says what he means

29:24 who stays true to his word and who in the end if it

29:28 all falls apart could take care of himself and his family that's the American

29:31 ideal and that is Thomas Massie that's not fake that's real and that's

29:36 obvious in the way that he behaves in public as a member of Congress

29:40 and it's obvious in the way that he lives at home in the farm

29:43 he lives in in the house that he built with his hands.

29:48 He is the man you want your son to be.

29:51 And so you would think at this point Thomas Massie

29:55 would have the full support of the Republican establishment in Washington.

30:00 Oh no, just the opposite.

30:02 Thomas Massie has like three allies in the House of Representatives.

30:05 a lot of people who like him personally,

30:07 but only a very few who are willing to support him publicly

30:10 because he has become the number one enemy of the Trump administration.

30:13 Well, how did that happen?

30:14 How did a guy who ran for office on a clearer,

30:19 more precise version of Trump's own platform,

30:22 who had 75% approval in the last election from his own voters?

30:27 How did that guy become the number one person the Trump administration

30:30 wants to destroy 13 days from today in the Republican primary in Kentucky?

30:35 How did that happen?

30:37 Well, there are a lot of reasons, but it seems pretty obvious this all began

30:43 in this room on this show almost exactly 2

30:46 years ago in a two-hour long interview we did

30:48 with Thomas Massie about a bunch of different topics,

30:50 including his off-grid homestead that he built with himself, his own hands.

30:57 He at one point described the experience of serving in Congress

31:01 and being asked to carry water for a foreign power, Israel.

31:06 Thomas Massie has never been hot on the topic of Israel.

31:09 Thomas Massie probably hasn't spent 20 minutes in his entire

31:12 life talking about Israel or thinking about Israel.

31:14 He doesn't hate Israel now.

31:16 Its leadership, Israelis,

31:17 he he's kind of agnostic on the whole question even now.

31:22 But at the time, two years ago, Thomas Massie committed probably the most

31:27 dangerous sin you can commit in Washington.

31:29 He explained how the process works.

31:30 How is it that members of Congress arrive there

31:32 with a plan to help their constituents and their nation and wind

31:36 up spending such a huge percentage of their time doing

31:39 the bidding of a tiny Middle Eastern country of 9 million people?

31:42 How does that happen?

31:44 Well, part of the process revolves around a group called Apac,

31:47 the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

31:50 Here is Thomas Massiey's fateful description of the process in Congress.

31:55 Watch.

31:55 There's a foreign interest group called Apac that's, you know,

32:00 got the ear of this current speaker and demanded 16

32:03 votes in April on on Israel or the Middle East.

32:07 We haven't had 16 votes in April on the United States in Congress.

32:11 It's a group of Americans who lobby on behalf of Israel.

32:16 They're for anything Israel.

32:18 Um, and they're a very effective lobbying group.

32:20 They get in there, they u they try to get

32:23 me to write a white paper as a candidate, for instance, for Congress.

32:27 They almost get on on what on Israel.

32:30 Like, and I wouldn't do it.

32:32 And they said, "Why?" And I'm like, "I don't do homework for lobbyists,

32:36 right?" I'm like, "I didn't I didn't like writing term papers at college.

32:40 I'm not writing one for you." What did they say?

32:43 They said, "Oh, well,

32:44 here just copy Rand Paul's term paper and put your name on it.

32:49 We'll accept that." And I'm like, "No,

32:51 I'm still not cribbing somebody else's homework to do

32:54 homework." I'm not turning in my homework for you.

32:58 And And what I You're laughing, but you know what?

33:02 I bet um I may be the only

33:05 Republican in Congress who hasn't done homework for Apac.

33:08 And it's just what it is.

33:09 It's conditioning.

33:10 They want you to do something very simple and benign and you know for them.

33:14 They don't really they don't really grade your term paper.

33:17 They just want to know that you'll do something for them.

33:19 And if you'll do something for them as a candidate,

33:21 you're more likely to do something for them

33:24 as as a congressman when you get in there.

33:27 You will never hear the Israel lobby

33:30 describe more precisely the humiliation rituals included which

33:34 are a key part of the process to base yourself and then you serve us always.

33:39 But you'll never hear it described more precisely, but also more good-naturedly.

33:43 Massie isn't mad.

33:43 He finds the whole thing hilarious.

33:45 I'm a member of Congress.

33:47 I'm not doing homework for you.

33:48 And he laughs and he means it.

33:50 And his cheerfulness is real.

33:52 It's not a pose.

33:53 He's not angry at Apac.

33:54 He's just not playing along.

33:56 He's an American.

33:57 He doesn't have to play along.

33:59 Get out of my way.

34:01 Stop.

34:01 He smiles.

34:02 Moves on to the things he cares about,

34:04 like keeping the United States from going bankrupt.

34:08 That is the way.

34:10 That is the way right there.

34:13 That reveals a total unwillingness to play along with someone else's charade

34:19 to become someone else's servant or slave without any hatred at all.

34:23 Thomas Massie isn't mad because he knows he can't be controlled.

34:27 He's not a rich man, but you can't bribe him.

34:30 He has everything he wants.

34:31 He's not mad at you.

34:32 You've got your agenda, but he's not going to serve it under any circumstances.

34:38 go away.

34:39 Because Thomas Massie is not a hater,

34:42 because his position is rooted in principle

34:46 and good-natured cheerfulness and American self-reliance and decency,

34:49 and that's so obvious to everyone who watches him,

34:52 he became the number one threat.

34:55 And next thing you know,

34:58 the president's favorite political consultant, Chris Losa,

35:02 Chris Lassita, is tweeting that Thomas Massie is quote, "garbage." Garbage.

35:09 You just call that man garbage.

35:12 A political consultant has the brass to call that man garbage.

35:16 A guy who literally sells his allegiance to whoever

35:20 will pay him is calling that man garbage.

35:24 Yes.

35:24 Now, why would Chrisvita say that?

35:27 Well, because he's been hired by an Israeli called Miriam Adlesen,

35:32 a woman who was married to the late Sheldon Adlesen,

35:35 who made billions in the gambling industry, now mostly in China,

35:38 who was one of, if not the single

35:42 biggest contributor to Donald Trump's campaign last time.

35:44 Now, she may be an American citizen,

35:46 but she was asked point blank by the president on camera,

35:49 "What country are you more loyal to, the United

35:53 States or Israel?" And she indicated very clearly Israel,

35:56 which is her right, of course, but she kind of in stating that gives

36:01 up her right to influence American politics.

36:04 People with loyalties, self-p profofessed loyalties to other nations

36:07 should not be involved in our politics.

36:09 They certain certainly shouldn't be central players in our politics.

36:13 And yet now she is, as she was in the last election.

36:17 Miriam Adlesen, who's not clear has ever been to Kentucky,

36:22 is spending through Chris Law Sevita,

36:25 the president's political consultant, who has decided Thomas Massie is garbage,

36:32 human garbage, whatever it takes to take the seat away from him because

36:38 he committed the crime of describing how

36:40 things actually work in the US Congress.

36:42 And that cannot be allowed.

36:44 And as a lesson to others, future Thomas Massies,

36:46 anyone who gets the idea that maybe I'll get

36:48 to Congress and tell the truth about how things actually work.

36:51 Maybe I'll put my own country, my own community,

36:54 my own people ahead of other concerns that have

36:57 nothing to do with this country or its people.

37:00 Maybe I'll let those people know, don't bother because you'll be crushed.

37:04 You won't win.

37:06 And if you do, there'll be Chris Lovita out there calling you garbage,

37:11 attacking your wife as they have spending tens of millions of dollars against

37:16 you just to make sure that no one else tries to be you ever.

37:21 All of which leads to where we are right now,

37:26 which is a moment where a Republican congressional primary in Kentucky

37:31 is the single most important political race of the year.

37:36 Because if they are successful in doing this, crushing a man, defaming a man,

37:43 slandering a man, attacking his family purely

37:45 for the crime of telling the truth about them,

37:48 about how they operate, about the nature of the Epstein class,

37:51 then you have to wonder why are we voting in the first place?

37:56 What is the point of all of this?

37:58 Is there a reason to participate in the process if in the end some

38:03 Israeli casino lady can come in and just

38:07 determine the outcome with Chris Sevita?

38:09 That's not democracy.

38:11 It's it's it's not even it's not even a poor faximile of democracy.

38:18 It's just straight up teethbeared oligarchy.

38:21 It's shut up and obey.

38:24 It's a foretaste of life under AI.

38:27 It's the control grid actually.

38:30 And so, while we can, it's probably worth doing whatever it takes within

38:33 the bounds of the law to prevent that from happening.

38:36 Not because Thomas Massie is going to change the system single-handedly.

38:40 He's not, and he's happy to admit that, but because crushing Thomas

38:44 Massie for the crime of telling the truth is itself a moral crime.

38:48 You can never punish people for telling the truth.

38:50 And yet in Washington,

38:51 the only people who are punished are those who told the truth.

38:54 And at some point that has to stop or the system itself lacks all legitimacy.

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40:26 And so, for the second time in two years,

40:30 here is Thomas Massie in his own words.

40:33 Thomas Massie, thank you for doing this.

40:36 You've got a primary in less than two weeks, 13 days.

40:39 And so to take the time to come here, we're we're grateful for it.

40:43 Um it seems like this is this primary is more than a primary.

40:49 It's a window into what MAGA has become and it's

40:52 a referendum I would argue on democracy uh itself.

40:55 And so just to to frame the conversation um around that idea,

41:00 what was your margin of victory in the last race in Kentucky?

41:05 In the last race primary, I got 75% of the vote.

41:09 There was somebody that got 13% and somebody that got 12.

41:13 75% of the vote.

41:14 And in the race before that, I got 76% and then the race before that I got 81%.

41:20 81%.

41:20 Now, the race the race you get 81% you

41:23 were already having conflict with Trump at the time, right?

41:26 Yeah.

41:26 At the time, he was saying to throw me out of the party,

41:28 called me a third rate grandstander, to which I claim I'm at least second rate.

41:35 Fair.

41:35 Uh, so I'm going through this because I think it it

41:38 it leads to today and it makes a really interesting point.

41:42 So what is the current polling in your race?

41:45 It's a single point lead for me.

41:48 Um, it's not very fluid.

41:50 They've spent $10 million against me.

41:52 And when I say they, I hope we get into they.

41:56 Yes.

41:56 Um, and uh, it's going to be close.

41:59 It's just going to b it the result is going to be based on who turns out.

42:04 So it was 81% margin 76 75 like fullon blowouts in the Republican primary

42:10 in your district in Kentucky and now it's

42:12 within a couple of points and you could lose.

42:15 Correct.

42:15 And the difference is they have spent $10 million against you.

42:19 Um so I don't think anyone would dispute that.

42:23 That's the difference.

42:24 the money poured into this race from outside of Kentucky is basically

42:28 pushing you to the point of almost losing and you may lose.

42:33 Uh where'd that money come from?

42:35 Well, um it didn't come from regular people.

42:38 It's come from billionaires and it 95% of it

42:42 at least 95% has come from the Israeli lobby.

42:45 So, um I'll give you their proxies.

42:49 the RJC, which is the Republican Jewish Coalition, Apac,

42:53 the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Miriam Adles,

42:56 Paul Singer, and John Pollson went together.

42:59 They funded a pack called MAGA Kentucky, which is neither MAGA nor Kentucky,

43:03 but the any of them live know who are those three people?

43:08 I they have been u Miriam Adlesen is the gambling magnet who's

43:12 ironically makes money from the Chinese now gambling and not in Las Vegas.

43:17 She's literally an Israeli.

43:19 Yeah.

43:19 She was born there.

43:20 Um she's given over $200 million to the president.

43:23 He puts her on the stage.

43:25 He says that she's influenced his own policy and attitudes toward Israel.

43:29 And so she's trying to buy a congressional seat in Kentucky

43:33 along with the rest of these groups that are probably,

43:36 by the way, getting her money as well.

43:38 There's there's also another interesting

43:40 faction called Christians United for Israel.

43:44 They're really just another wing of Apac and RJC

43:48 that's been used to co-opt Christians into supporting their position.

43:52 And their position is more war, it's more strife,

43:57 um it's more bombs, it's send more foreign aid.

44:00 And those are the things that I've been voting against.

44:04 So the real reason that this race is a serious

44:08 race and I may lose is because a foreign lobby

44:12 is has fully funded to the extent that they've never

44:16 done in any Republican race ever before um my opponent.

44:20 It's interesting because you're not I don't think of you

44:23 as an opponent of Israel or a hater of Jews,

44:26 an anti-semite, a man with hate in his heart or anything.

44:29 I don't I don't think those topics have

44:32 defined your terms in Congress so far, have they?

44:34 No, you can't go find even a xenophobic tweet

44:37 or Facebook post from me in my entire life.

44:40 I I'm the least xenophobic.

44:42 Um, you know, I went to MIT, which is a real melting pot

44:48 of of different nationalities and races and ethnicities,

44:52 and it was a meritocracy.

44:53 And that's what I'm used to is just, you know, come to me with your ideas.

44:58 I don't care what color your skin is or who

45:01 your parents were and um let's talk about things.

45:04 But it turns out that I've never voted for foreign aid.

45:08 And in fact, I've for Israel, for Israel,

45:11 for Egypt, for Ukraine, for anybody for anybody.

45:14 In fact, I've offered amendments as soon as I got to Congress in 2013.

45:18 I had an amendment to defund the foreign aid to Egypt,

45:21 which seemed like a good idea at the time

45:24 because they were in the middle of a coup.

45:26 This is how ridiculous our foreign aid is.

45:27 We didn't even know who was going to control the capital.

45:30 There were tanks in the streets and we didn't know who the leader

45:34 was and my colleagues insisted on sending

45:36 the billions of dollars to Egypt anyway.

45:38 The question is who's going to cash the check when it gets there?

45:43 So, I've got a complete track record of voting against all foreign aid.

45:49 But it turns out there's one lobby that's

45:52 very upset about that and that's the Israeli lobby.

45:55 And so you're right, this is a referendum.

45:57 It's a referendum.

45:58 The question we're putting to the people is,

46:00 are you going to let a foreign country

46:03 or lobbyists for that foreign country um buy a seat

46:07 in Kentucky from and and displace the one

46:10 congressman who will tell you what's in the bills,

46:14 who will explain his votes, I explain all of my votes,

46:18 uh especially on controversial bills on social media to where anybody can see.

46:23 So your position is that it's not your position as much as it's

46:28 the fact you're willing to disclose what's actually happening behind the scenes.

46:33 Correct.

46:33 So to add evidence to that claim,

46:36 the last time you were on this show was almost exactly 2 years ago.

46:40 It was a little later in May, I think.

46:42 You had just won your primary 75%.

46:44 Yes.

46:44 And so you decide to come up here

46:46 and we have this amazing conversation mostly about you

46:49 and your life and the self-sufficiency with which you live

46:52 and how you built your house and it's amazing story.

46:54 We're going to repost that video soon cuz

46:56 I want people to see it before the primary.

46:59 But in the middle of that conversation, you said, "Yeah,

47:02 there's this group called Apac and here's how

47:05 they go about corelling support in the Congress

47:08 and they have minders that follow you around and I just don't hate Israel.

47:11 I don't support foreign aid to anybody and I don't have an APAC minder.

47:17 And I remember thinking, boy,

47:18 I've never heard anybody explain how this works in the way that you did.

47:23 I felt like that conversation was a pivot point in your political life.

47:27 It was.

47:28 And you know what's interesting?

47:30 In the two years that have transpired since then,

47:33 not one of my colleagues has said I'm wrong.

47:37 Right?

47:37 Did anybody come out and say, "Oh, he's full of it.

47:40 I don't have an Apac person that I go to dinner

47:43 with every time they come to DC and back in the district.

47:47 Nobody said that.

47:48 They I mean they all have an Apac person.

47:51 Now, some of them may not, you know,

47:53 know it's their Apac person, but they've all got an Apac person.

47:57 And by by the way, I I have a lot of Jewish friends and since that interview,

48:02 they joke that they're they're secretly my Apac person, right?

48:05 When in fact, they're not.

48:07 But that see it wasn't just that you voted against

48:11 Apex priorities or some of them anyway which you did

48:15 because there are people who have done that before

48:18 but you described and you opened to public view the process.

48:22 You pulled the curtain back.

48:24 Correct.

48:24 And that was the crime.

48:26 Right.

48:27 The crime is transparency.

48:28 It's not obstructionism because the votes they're most upset about me

48:33 for were 420 to1 or 421 to1 or 410 to five, right?

48:39 Like show me in any of those cases where my single vote out of, you know,

48:47 435 if everybody had been present was obstructionist.

48:50 It wasn't.

48:51 What happened though is people said,

48:52 "Who's the one person that voted against that?" And then they go to my social

48:57 media and then they read the bill and then they're like, "What the hell?

49:00 Why did my congressman vote for that?

49:02 What's what are the other 420 smoking?" Right?

49:05 And so, or what are they getting for that vote?

49:08 Why did they take that vote?

49:10 Why why were they intimidated into taking that vote?

49:12 And that's the problem that I'm causing this foreign lobby

49:16 is I'm causing people to ask questions for the first time.

49:20 Who is my congressman's Apac person?

49:22 for instance, how much money do they get from Apac?

49:26 Why did they vote for that bill that bans passages in the New Testament?

49:31 You know, that infringement on the First Amendment.

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50:29 So, because you revealed that, you got this swarm of big

50:37 donors laying down big money to get you out of your seat.

50:42 And you said basically it revolves around three Paulson Singer and Aden.

50:47 Have they described why they're doing this?

50:49 Why would a casino magnet or a hedge

50:53 fund manager hedge fund manager, private equity guy,

50:56 distressed debt buyer like Paul Singer, like why would they care what happens

51:01 in a Republican primary in Kentucky of all places?

51:05 It's it's um to silence me.

51:07 It's so that I shut up.

51:09 Look, if I lose on May 19th,

51:11 I'll be out of Congress on January 3rd of next year,

51:15 and nobody's going to follow my Twitter.

51:17 Nobody's going to go to my Facebook page to see what's going on.

51:21 I won't be invited down into the secret

51:23 skiffs to read the secret interpretations

51:25 of the laws that the uh that the executive branch is using to spy on you.

51:31 I'll be gone.

51:32 The the one whistleblower, if you will, in Congress will be gone.

51:36 And let me tell you who's on the other side of this, who's funding me.

51:40 I've got, and this is miraculous, I think, you know, you called it a referendum.

51:45 I think it may be a movement within the MAGA movement is what we're seeing

51:50 because I've got over 33,000 donors

51:52 and the average donation is less than 94 bucks.

51:55 These people, they don't have a lot of money to give,

51:59 but they can't be intimidated, right, by the White House.

52:02 They can't have their environmental permits pulled on a big data center.

52:07 The the the government of Washington DC doesn't

52:10 have that kind of leverage on individual normal people.

52:13 So those are the people who are funding me in this race.

52:16 And if you and if you want to be one of them, you can go to massmoneybomb.com.

52:21 massimmoneybomb.com.

52:21 Yeah.

52:22 because we we've raised almost $200,000 in the last

52:26 2 days just by going out there and saying, you know, help me fight back.

52:31 Um, we've got to have some ads to run against these billionaires.

52:35 So, what do you think the the full money breakdown is?

52:39 And without getting boring about it,

52:40 I don't think people understand exactly how these campaigns are funded.

52:43 So, there's you can send money to someone running for office,

52:46 but there are limits to how much you can send.

52:48 You can send to something called a super PAC, and there are no limits at all.

52:51 So, it's hard to kind of figure out, isn't it, exactly how much being spent?

52:55 Yeah.

52:55 I think it'll be after the race when people finally

52:58 are able to compile the spreadsheets and look at the money.

53:01 A lot of the donors won't be disclosed until July,

53:04 the super PAC donors, because they're on a six-month reporting cycle,

53:07 whereas I have to disclose big donors every two days

53:10 now once we get inside of a window with the campaign.

53:14 But um you got super PACs on each side and there's a super PAC helping me.

53:18 Not as large as the Israeli super PACs, which of which there are three.

53:23 Um but there's a super PAC helping me.

53:25 Now, as far as hard dollar campaign money from real people,

53:30 I've raised over $5 million this election cycle,

53:33 which is probably more than I've raised

53:35 in the entire time that I've been in Congress.

53:38 Really?

53:38 Oh, yeah.

53:39 I usually raise a couple hundred thousand, maybe $400,000 election cycle.

53:43 This time I've raised over five million.

53:46 It's because this situation is dire.

53:48 Now the other side, you might say, okay, well,

53:51 how much money has he raised for his campaign?

53:53 He's raised about one or 1.2 million per quarter for two quarters.

53:57 So he's maybe raised 2.5 million at most.

54:00 But if you go look at where did that money come from, u

54:04 I think because of the show I did with you two years ago,

54:08 Apac sort of gone in hiding and they're

54:11 trying to secretly funnel money to campaigns.

54:14 And what we've uh realized and deduced is that they're funneling money,

54:18 hard dollars, not the super PAC dollars,

54:21 but they're funn funneling money from their donors

54:25 to his campaign through a vendor, a payment vendor called Democracy Engine.

54:29 It was started by one of the people who started Act Blue.

54:32 It's not a conservative, if you will.

54:35 Act Blue, the Democratic Yep.

54:36 bundler.

54:37 Yeah.

54:37 So, it's primarily a left-leaning payment vendor.

54:40 I use a payment vendor called Anod, and some people use Win Red.

54:44 Probably you're familiar with that.

54:46 I am.

54:46 So, when you see something come through

54:49 a a payment vendor called uh Democracy Engine,

54:53 you you particularly $50,000 per quarter.

54:57 So, if somebody's reported $50,000 of expenses to Democracy Engine,

55:02 and if the payment vendor, Democracy Engine, has been charging 5%.

55:06 That means a million dollars of money came through that payment vendor.

55:11 And we've seen that in both of his quarters.

55:14 So, basically, as as far as we can tell,

55:17 um about a million dollars of his 1.2 2 million

55:20 every quarter that you would think may have come from grandmas

55:23 who are digging deep in their pockets when they get

55:26 an email from Trump that says give to this guy.

55:29 That's not where his money's coming from.

55:31 It's coming from Apac donors.

55:32 And then Apac donors were using a Democratic

55:35 fundraising operation to get the money to your opponent.

55:38 Correct.

55:39 And by the way, one of these super PACs that's aligned against me,

55:42 United Democracy Project, UDP, they are a pro-abortion, pro-gay rights,

55:50 um, left, like not just left-leaning, like majorly leftist super PAC,

55:55 and they are fullon in my race funding my opponent against me.

56:00 This is insane.

56:02 It is insane.

56:03 I do think it might be a couple years

56:07 from now when AI gets smart enough and honest enough

56:10 in the in the competition of AIS that it will tell you

56:14 exactly what happened in this race whether whether I win or lose

56:18 it can go back look at the data and and tell

56:21 you well here's what happened a congressman from Kentucky was

56:26 challenged and 95 or 99% of the money came from an Israeli

56:30 lobby to take him out for merely telling the truth.

56:35 and not even attacking Israel.

56:36 I mean, that's that's the thing.

56:38 You didn't even attack Israel.

56:40 You're not even hostile toward Israel.

56:41 I I You're not muttering about the Jews.

56:44 It has nothing to do with that at all.

56:46 It's just you just don't think the US

56:47 government should be sending money to foreign countries.

56:49 Right.

56:50 I mean, right.

56:50 And by the way, that's the position of my constituents.

56:53 So, what kind of TV ads are they running against me back in Kentucky?

56:57 Are they saying Congressman Massie doesn't

56:59 vote to give money to foreign countries?

57:02 you know, let's fire him.

57:04 No, they don't run that ad.

57:06 They run ads that distort my record.

57:08 They'll take a bill that had 3,000 pages in it,

57:11 pull a page out of that bill, and say he voted against this.

57:15 You know, it could be a pay raise for the soldiers

57:17 or something like that to try and turn you into a liberal.

57:20 Correct.

57:20 That's what they want to make it look like, which is hilarious.

57:24 Um, if I, by the way, if I could make one reform to Congress,

57:28 so I I voted for balanced budget amendment.

57:30 I voted for term limits, but the biggest constraint,

57:32 the most helpful thing for our republic would be

57:35 if every bill had to address only a single issue.

57:39 Amen.

57:39 Amen.

57:40 Because right now we take we take thousands of votes,

57:44 but they're post offices and non-binding resolutions and things like

57:48 that to make it look like we're busy all year round.

57:51 But it usually boils down to two

57:54 or three votes every year that are consequential,

57:57 must pass pieces of legislation that have everything in them.

58:02 And that's the problem.

58:03 Let me give you an example on the big beautiful bill there.

58:06 By the way, there are maybe three or four sins, and I'll put that in air quotes,

58:13 that I committed against the swamp um that got me into this situation.

58:18 And um one of those is I was the only

58:20 Republican who didn't vote for Mike Johnson to be the speaker.

58:24 Um the second was you were the only Republican.

58:27 Mike Johnson turned out to be the worst speaker

58:29 of the house in the history of this country ever.

58:31 And we've had some bad ones.

58:33 Yes.

58:33 No one compares.

58:35 Yeah.

58:35 Um, so I didn't vote for the speaker there.

58:40 Twice, at least twice,

58:41 they brought up a continuing resolution of Joe Biden's budget.

58:45 And I'm like, wait, I thought we control the House,

58:47 the Senate, and the White House.

58:49 Why are we just going to keep going

58:51 on autopilot with all the things Joe Biden did?

58:54 Yet, they did.

58:55 And I voted against those things.

58:56 And in fact, in one of those bills,

58:59 they attached an amendment that had nothing to do

59:01 with the budget to kill the hemp industry in Kentucky.

59:04 Like the hemp industry is almost dead.

59:07 It's like, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars,

59:10 thousands of jobs wiped out in one continuing resolution

59:13 because everybody was afraid not to vote for it.

59:17 And I voted against it because number one, it was Joe Biden's budget.

59:21 Number two, it killed the entire hemp industry in Kentucky.

59:24 Um, that was another of my crimes against the swamp.

59:27 and and when I voted against the big bill,

59:30 they're using they're they're picking things out

59:32 of it to run ads against me right now.

59:35 Let me give you an example.

59:37 So the the draft version, the first version that passed

59:40 the House of Representatives defunded transgender surgery,

59:43 sex changes basically for minors.

59:46 I that there was lots of good stuff and lots of bad stuff in that bill,

59:50 but I voted against it because I said it'll bankrupt the country.

59:53 Okay?

59:54 But it had that good provision in it.

59:56 the the Senate took the good provision out that defunded sex changes for minors

1:00:01 and then everybody voted for the big beautiful bill again except for me,

1:00:05 but it had the money for sex change for minors.

1:00:09 So, because I voted no against both versions,

1:00:11 they prefer to use the first version and run ads

1:00:15 and say that I voted not to defund sex changes for minors

1:00:19 when in fact everybody who voted for that damn bill

1:00:22 in the end put the money back in for sex changes for minors.

1:00:25 What liars?

1:00:26 It's a total liar.

1:00:27 Who put out that ad saying that?

1:00:29 Um, these super PACs again, they're not talking.

1:00:32 They're taking they're distorting my record instead of telling

1:00:36 you why they're trying to flush me out of Congress.

1:00:39 They want to flush me out of Congress cuz I don't vote for foreign aid.

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1:02:15 which just it's just I guess what I find um head spinning,

1:02:19 bewildering, and honestly infuriating is that a bunch

1:02:23 of serious committed liberals are trying to kick

1:02:26 you out of Congress on the basis of the lie that you are a liberal.

1:02:30 Liberals are calling you a liberal.

1:02:31 Correct.

1:02:32 these um you know if you look at Chris Lassvita who's

1:02:35 a liberal who's the pre you know the president's consultant is calling

1:02:39 you a liberal and he's too liberal for the district says

1:02:43 the guy whose values have no connection at all to your district

1:02:47 well look at Miriam Aden Paul Singer and John Pollson the three

1:02:51 people that fund MAGA Kentucky u they funded transgender activism partnered

1:02:56 with George Soros they've funded abortion

1:02:59 candidates they've done fundraisers for Chuck

1:03:02 Schumer like they it's true they are Republican super mega donors, right?

1:03:08 But um they've given money to Liz Cheney after

1:03:11 she voted to impeach Trump and now they've cozied

1:03:14 up to Trump and they're in influencing foreign policy

1:03:17 of the United States and trying to take me out.

1:03:20 They're controlling foreign policy to the United States

1:03:22 and and I never got resolution of the big question.

1:03:25 I'm sorry.

1:03:26 What do you think the total oh your opponent has received

1:03:30 both directly and on his behalf to the super PAC is?

1:03:33 I I think all in um they've spent

1:03:36 about 10 million their super PACs and their campaign.

1:03:40 All in we've probably spent about 8 million so far and I would guess all

1:03:46 in by the time this is over there's going

1:03:49 to be $30 million spent in a Republican primary.

1:03:53 It's It's right now the most expensive Republican

1:03:56 primary for Congress in the history of Kentucky.

1:03:59 Um, by the time it's done, right now I hear it's the second most

1:04:03 expensive primary in the United States for Congress,

1:04:05 but I believe by the time it's done it'll

1:04:07 be the most expensive primary in the United States.

1:04:09 That's just absolutely incredible to me.

1:04:12 The commercials have commercial breaks in Kentucky now.

1:04:15 There's so many damn commercials.

1:04:17 So, I just I just saw a spot they put up.

1:04:20 Um, and you tell me who did this, but it was AI generated video of you

1:04:26 with Elon Omar and Alexandria Kaziocortez suggesting

1:04:29 that you were having sex with both of them.

1:04:33 Um, and basically saying you've got the same politics they do.

1:04:37 Yeah.

1:04:37 It's a 30 secondond spot created with AI.

1:04:40 There's a disclaimer at the beginning in font that nobody over the age of 65

1:04:45 could possibly see on the TV that says it's AI and it's not cartoony at all.

1:04:50 It looks like a real camera, you know,

1:04:53 recordings that shows me walking handinand with the two of them,

1:04:56 dining with the two of them,

1:04:58 and checking into a hotel with the two of them and uses the word throppple.

1:05:04 I'm hoping it will backfire on the the just horrible individuals who've come

1:05:11 up with this idea and think that it will get their rubber stamp,

1:05:19 their puppet for Israel into Congress.

1:05:22 It's disgusting.

1:05:23 Who is So, we haven't even named the man running against you.

1:05:28 Not that I guess it matters, right?

1:05:31 It doesn't really matter.

1:05:32 Who is this?

1:05:33 Who is running against you?

1:05:34 What we've found out, he looks good on paper.

1:05:37 He's a he served in the Navy Seals.

1:05:41 Um he's a, you know, a boomer originally from Kentucky.

1:05:45 Um and he looks great on paper,

1:05:48 but the president call says he's from central casting and that he's a warm body.

1:05:52 And I don't think the president understands

1:05:56 those are not like terms of endearment.

1:05:59 And the the most That's true though.

1:06:02 Here's the most interesting thing.

1:06:03 Yeah, he is a warm body and he u he may be able to fog a mirror,

1:06:08 but he can't put three sentences together.

1:06:10 His own commercials don't even have him talking to camera.

1:06:13 He's turned down eight debates with me

1:06:15 and in two of these debates or televised debates,

1:06:18 they went ahead and had the debate and I went and debated the moderator

1:06:22 um because I'm comfortable with what he's accepted no debates with you at all.

1:06:26 Zero debates.

1:06:27 And conventional wisdom is if you're me,

1:06:30 if you're the incumbent and you're ahead, even by a small amount that you should

1:06:35 never debate the challenger because you're just giving him

1:06:37 a platform and giving him some notoriety and status

1:06:40 to speak and a chance to take you out.

1:06:42 I'm willing to debate this guy anywhere.

1:06:44 I've said I'll I'll let President Trump moderate the debate and I'll

1:06:47 still win it because this guy doesn't know what he believes in.

1:06:50 He won't fill out any of the questionnaires from the pro-life groups,

1:06:54 from the pro-sec amendment groups.

1:06:55 those are sitting in his basement.

1:06:58 He um won't tell anybody where he stands.

1:07:01 Is he for exceptions on abortion?

1:07:04 Is he for red flag laws?

1:07:05 Because those are the president's positions.

1:07:07 So, he's caught in a in a tough position right now.

1:07:11 And he's not really he doesn't have an ideology, I don't think.

1:07:15 In fact, he was in the Republican party until

1:07:19 2016 when Donald Trump got the nomination for president.

1:07:23 He, my opponent, left the party for five years while Donald Trump was president.

1:07:28 He wouldn't even call himself a Republican while Donald Trump was president.

1:07:32 When Joe Biden won the election, that's when my opponent came back after Donald

1:07:37 Trump lost and called himself a Republican again.

1:07:41 So, he's got a lot of questions to answer.

1:07:44 So they found a liberal guy who's taking money from liberal

1:07:49 guys to beat I know you call yourself a libertarian or whatever,

1:07:53 but I mean conventionally you're one of the most conservative

1:07:57 America first candidates the Congress has had in my lifetime.

1:08:00 So basically you're running against a liberal.

1:08:03 Yes.

1:08:04 And let me let me talk about the association

1:08:07 of my donors and his donors with Democrats.

1:08:10 So they started saying, "Oh,

1:08:12 Massiey's taking money from people that also give to Democrats."

1:08:14 So we went and we did a core sample.

1:08:17 We looked at the people who give me money.

1:08:20 Um, and we looked at all the max donors.

1:08:22 Turns out 37% of the people who've donated to me have also given to Democrats.

1:08:27 I went and we went and looked at his numbers.

1:08:30 It's 85% of his donors have given to Democrats.

1:08:33 And it's because it's a core sample of Apac donors.

1:08:37 And that's why you've got 85% overlap in his donors

1:08:40 with Democrat donors is because it's just a core sample of Apac.

1:08:44 In fact, he's given to Lindsey Graham eventually.

1:08:48 Yes.

1:08:48 Like 500 or a,000 bucks.

1:08:50 Like he was so inspired by Lindsey Graham

1:08:54 that he gave him his own personal money,

1:08:56 not from his campaign uh before he was campaigning.

1:09:00 And think about this.

1:09:01 He's promising to He's promising to be a rubber stamp for the Republican party.

1:09:06 This is the main charge that's been leveled against

1:09:09 me that I don't vote with the party enough.

1:09:11 I vote with the party 90% of the time.

1:09:14 But listen, there's 10% of the time where I don't care who the president is,

1:09:19 I'm not going to change the position that I promise to take to my constituents.

1:09:23 So, for instance, when the party votes for warrantless spying on Americans,

1:09:27 I don't vote for that.

1:09:29 when the party votes to warrantless spying on Americans.

1:09:32 Yes, it's And by the way,

1:09:34 each of the in all of these circumstances that I'm going to describe to you,

1:09:39 uh, where I don't vote with the party,

1:09:41 I'm actually taking a position that Donald Trump had less than two years ago,

1:09:46 he was against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act being used to spy

1:09:50 on Americans without a warrant because it was used against him, he found out.

1:09:54 So, I'm sticking with that position that you need a warrant that the Fourth

1:09:59 Amendment hasn't expired to the Constitution

1:10:01 um when they're covering up for pedophiles.

1:10:03 Look, the the president's own children, the vice president, the FBI director,

1:10:07 and the president himself said that they would release the Epstein files and now

1:10:12 I worked harder than anybody else to get it done and got it done.

1:10:16 And that's part of the 10% where they say,

1:10:18 "I have betrayed the Republican party because

1:10:21 you voted to disclose Epstein's crimes." Correct.

1:10:24 So, it's now a core tenant of the Republican party that you

1:10:26 have to hide the crimes of a left-wing Democrat who was touching kids.

1:10:30 It seems to be and the president himself and has said it's a hostile act.

1:10:35 This was before he signed my bill.

1:10:38 He ultimately did agree with me and now

1:10:40 it seems like the first lady agrees with me

1:10:43 that Jeffrey Epstein did not act alone

1:10:44 and the files show that he did not act alone.

1:10:47 And you've got a prince who's lost his title and been indicted.

1:10:52 You've got the British prime minister to the United States.

1:10:55 Uh you've got the former prime minister of Norway,

1:10:58 the minister of culture in France.

1:10:59 There's accountability.

1:11:00 All those people have been arrested or indicted or being investigated.

1:11:04 But nobody in the United States where Jeffrey Epstein lived and worked.

1:11:10 Yes.

1:11:10 Where he spent 99% of his time.

1:11:13 Even the US Virgin Islands is part of the United States where Epstein Island is.

1:11:19 I just want to linger on this for I mean there's so much to talk about.

1:11:23 Um I just want to linger on the Ebstein question.

1:11:26 So um why was that important to you to push for disclosure?

1:11:30 It so there's a claim that I didn't

1:11:33 care about it before President Trump was president.

1:11:36 I want to clear that up.

1:11:37 You can go find on my social media at least three times where I posted about it.

1:11:42 And um I always assumed that Pam Bondi would release the files, right?

1:11:48 People are like, "Well, why weren't you interested sooner?

1:11:51 Why didn't you try harder sooner?" Because I've heard

1:11:53 the FBI director say he was going to do it.

1:11:55 I heard the attorney general say she was going to do it.

1:11:58 Um, and then I found out the binders were a farce.

1:12:02 I serve on the judiciary committee,

1:12:04 which this is the committee that Jim Jordan chairs,

1:12:08 which by the way has authority over DOJ,

1:12:11 the attorney general for instance, and FBI.

1:12:14 And so we went on a dinner to the DOJ to Pam Bondi's office,

1:12:19 every Republican member of the judiciary committee.

1:12:22 This was in April of last year, about a year ago.

1:12:27 And um I told Jim Jordan on the way over, he said, "Everybody gets one question.

1:12:32 You can ask the attorney general a question." I said,

1:12:34 "I want to ask her about phase two of the Epstein files.

1:12:37 Would that be uh too too confrontational?" And Jim said,

1:12:41 "I'm not going to tell you what you can and can't ask.

1:12:44 Go ahead." So, I was one of the first

1:12:47 people as we finished dinner to ask a question.

1:12:49 And I asked Pam Bondi where the rest

1:12:50 of the files were and when would they be released.

1:12:53 And she said there was nothing left

1:12:56 but child pornography and nobody wants to see that.

1:13:00 It made it sound sort of like I was a voyer

1:13:03 or a pedophile myself if I were creepy for asking.

1:13:05 Yeah.

1:13:06 That I was creepy for asking.

1:13:07 And so I didn't ask any more about it.

1:13:10 Then I saw in the news as things played out, the story kept shifting and I said,

1:13:16 "Well, there's some there there." And um I introduced my resolution,

1:13:20 which is a discharge petition.

1:13:22 I would need to get 218 votes on it to force

1:13:26 a vote on whether to release the files or not.

1:13:30 I did that in July.

1:13:32 And um we did a press conference.

1:13:34 The reason I'm telling you all this is

1:13:36 my motivation changed part of the way through this.

1:13:38 Can I just ask you something?

1:13:40 If it was child pornography, did you get a sense that there was

1:13:43 any effort to find out who these children were,

1:13:45 who shot the videos, like who's responsible for this?

1:13:49 They said most of it was um stuff he had downloaded from the internet,

1:13:55 not original, you know, crimes of his.

1:13:59 But even so, right, wouldn't wouldn't

1:14:01 that stuff be things that you would investigate?

1:14:05 Even if he hadn't created it, if he had got it from a friend or some black,

1:14:10 you know, black site on the internet,

1:14:12 wouldn't you want to, you know, the dark web,

1:14:15 wouldn't you want to go find out where this stuff comes from?

1:14:17 Did you get a sense that they were doing anything about any of this?

1:14:20 No.

1:14:20 In fact, this is what this was the final straw for me.

1:14:25 A day or two before I introduced the discharge petition,

1:14:28 the uh it was either the attorney general

1:14:32 or the FBI director said they were closing all the cases.

1:14:35 They were done with Epstein and there would be no more.

1:14:39 And then so what happened is after August recess,

1:14:41 we came back and Roana and I held

1:14:43 a press conference with the survivors and it was

1:14:47 to motivate this issue in Washington DC and to give

1:14:50 these women a platform to tell their stories.

1:14:53 And in fact, women who had never spoken up before came to this and spoke up.

1:14:57 And women who had fought all their lives to be heard and believed and to say

1:15:02 their story and they gave witness to the FBI and it all got suppressed.

1:15:06 Um, they came and told their stories and a a strange thing happened.

1:15:11 I had intended to motivate my colleagues and I

1:15:13 was brought to tears by their stories and became doubly

1:15:17 motivated to get this done because at that point

1:15:21 it became more about justice for them than even before.

1:15:24 You know it does.

1:15:26 And somebody may say, "Well, that sounds pretty cold.

1:15:29 You mean you weren't doing it for them to start with?" Well,

1:15:31 I was doing it to uncover the creeps, right?

1:15:34 And the pedophiles and the rapists and the sex traffickers.

1:15:38 But once I met the survivors,

1:15:40 it became even more personal to get justice for them.

1:15:43 Well, of course, it's less academic and more real.

1:15:47 So then you initiate a discharge petition and to force to force a vote on this.

1:15:55 And what was the response you got from the White House?

1:15:58 Um, so I actually had at least a dozen co-sponsors

1:16:02 on my Epstein Files Transparency Act and um I thought,

1:16:08 well, I've got I'll get a dozen rep dozen,

1:16:10 by the way, dozen Republican co-sponsors.

1:16:12 I thought, well, this will be easy.

1:16:14 I've already got a dozen who will sign the discharge petition.

1:16:16 Well, it turns out most of those people chickened out,

1:16:20 would not sign the discharge petition under pressure from the president.

1:16:24 In fact, I ran into the legislative affairs director

1:16:27 for the White House on the street on Independence Avenue, Jeff Freeland,

1:16:32 just randomly while I was trying to get more signatures

1:16:36 and while he was trying to keep people from signing it,

1:16:40 we just randomly met at a crosswalk and I said,

1:16:43 "Listen, I know what your job I know you're just doing

1:16:46 your job and I'll be with you 90% of the time,

1:16:49 but in this instance, I'm I'm I'm compelled to do this and um I said,

1:16:55 "And by the way, I made a mistake.

1:16:57 I got co-sponsors on this bill.

1:16:59 So now you got your whip list.

1:17:00 I know you're going to the 12 people who originally co-sponsored it.

1:17:03 If I ever do this again,

1:17:05 I'm not getting co-sponsors and showing you my road map." And um there was,

1:17:10 you know, there was mutual respect there

1:17:13 as two people working on two different things.

1:17:15 He was he said to me, he said,

1:17:17 "You're moving too fast for me." Like he couldn't keep up.

1:17:21 There was only one of him and I was moving around and and getting people

1:17:25 to put their names on it and getting people not to take their names off.

1:17:28 By the way, I have to give credit to the three absolute three bravest there.

1:17:33 There's nobody If I go back to Congress next

1:17:36 week and somebody comes up to me and says,

1:17:38 "I saw you on Tucker Carlson and you didn't say I was brave." I'll say,

1:17:43 "Too bad cuz you weren't." There's there's three women,

1:17:48 Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Lauren Boowart, who signed their names

1:17:52 on that discharge petition and all suffered.

1:17:55 Marjorie practically gave up her political career over this.

1:17:59 Yes, she did.

1:18:00 Um she got she and her children got death threats over this.

1:18:05 Not from the left, from the right.

1:18:07 Um and then and she went to President Trump and said,

1:18:10 "My one of my children is getting death threats." And he said,

1:18:13 "That's your fault." Yeah.

1:18:14 Despicable.

1:18:15 He also told her that if she insisted on following

1:18:18 through this with this, she was going to hurt his friends.

1:18:21 She told me the day he told her that.

1:18:25 Hurt whose friends?

1:18:26 Um, the President Trump's friends?

1:18:28 His friends.

1:18:29 Um, and I suppose some of them have been hurt.

1:18:33 Howard Lutnik was shown to be a bald-faced liar, right?

1:18:37 Um, and it turns out that uh John Pollson,

1:18:41 one of the three billionaires who put money into MAGA,

1:18:46 Kentucky, is was in Epstein's phone book,

1:18:49 but also was implicated in these files,

1:18:51 is doing a a fundraiser and reaching out to Jeffrey

1:18:55 Epstein to get money from him to honor Howard Lutnik.

1:18:59 Um, so it's, by the way,

1:19:02 it's just a really small world when you get into the billionaires.

1:19:05 Um, and they're not partisans.

1:19:07 They're above party.

1:19:09 Right?

1:19:09 The Epstein class, they don't associate themselves

1:19:13 as Republicans or Democrats so much as they

1:19:15 do among a class of billionaires who are above all of that, above the judges.

1:19:21 They they've they've got visa waiverss.

1:19:24 They fly private planes.

1:19:26 They don't mingle with the public, whether it's on a plane or in a courtroom.

1:19:32 And um so anyways, that's my hats off

1:19:35 to to Marjorie for taking on those threats.

1:19:38 Lauren Boowbert.

1:19:38 Um they took her over to the situation room, right?

1:19:42 Like this is where if they're trying to kill or capture Osama bin Laden,

1:19:47 this is where they are at the White House.

1:19:50 They took her into the situation room and tried to whip

1:19:53 her into taking her name off of the discharge petition over Epstein.

1:19:57 Over Epstein.

1:19:58 Yep.

1:19:58 And then the president vetoed a bill that would have

1:20:02 brought water to a large portion of Colorado like over Epstein.

1:20:06 Over Epstein.

1:20:06 And this isn't even at this point.

1:20:08 It's not just about Lauren Boower.

1:20:10 Why are people in Colorado deprived of water?

1:20:14 Because their representative wants to expose a sex trafficking ring.

1:20:18 I mean, none of this makes any sense at all because it's a losing issue

1:20:23 for Trump and has been that was the beginning of the end really for I mean,

1:20:27 I think we're at the end of the 2024 campaign.

1:20:30 It's just total betrayal of everything.

1:20:32 But that that began with Ebstein last summer

1:20:35 and Trump's now famous attack on his own voters.

1:20:39 If you think this is important to know more about Ebstein,

1:20:43 I don't want your support.

1:20:45 Why do you think Ebstein of all issues is the one

1:20:49 that Donald Trump was willing to destroy his presidency over?

1:20:52 I don't know.

1:20:53 It's I mean I did it because it was the right thing to do.

1:20:57 Of course, I understand your motive, but the president push back now he's

1:21:00 endorsed this campaign against you and your family

1:21:03 and but really just sort of hurt himself

1:21:06 on behalf of the memory of Jeffrey Epstein.

1:21:09 Like what?

1:21:10 There's something here.

1:21:11 No, like what is this?

1:21:13 Uh I think he's he's changed some and he's part he

1:21:18 the promise of Donald Trump he's

1:21:20 willing to negotiate on anything including immigration.

1:21:22 It's like no problem we'll give them citizenship.

1:21:25 But when it comes to Epstein it's like no.

1:21:27 And it does raise questions about like how did Ebste die and who

1:21:31 signed off on that and why was Epstein rearrested actually for crimes

1:21:34 he'd already been convicted of and brought back from France to the United

1:21:37 States and then gets murdered in prison less than two months later.

1:21:41 Like what is that?

1:21:42 And maybe there's a connection.

1:21:43 I don't know.

1:21:44 I'm just guessing like what is this?

1:21:46 It's the people who are funding the ballroom,

1:21:49 the people who are funding the arch,

1:21:51 the people who are funding the rebranding of the Kennedy Center.

1:21:55 These are the people who are also funding my opponent.

1:21:58 These are the people who have the ear of the president.

1:22:01 These are the people who are changing dominating our foreign policy decisions.

1:22:06 They're the billionaires.

1:22:07 And these are also the same people who are in the Epstein files.

1:22:12 by large part or their friends are they're social.

1:22:14 I just want to say stop and I I I want

1:22:16 everyone to just stop and rewind the tape when you said that.

1:22:20 Okay, maybe you just answered the question.

1:22:22 I think I did.

1:22:24 I tried to answer the question.

1:22:27 The hair of my arms just went up.

1:22:30 Um Okay.

1:22:31 So, by the way, by the way,

1:22:33 you touched on something I that I want to comment on there.

1:22:36 There are still a lot of files that haven't been released.

1:22:38 I don't care whether it's three million files or whether

1:22:41 it's 300 files that they still need to get out there.

1:22:44 But the kind of files they haven't released,

1:22:47 they are breaking the law by not releasing them.

1:22:50 They they you mean Department of Justice?

1:22:52 Department of Justice, Todd Blanch.

1:22:54 Now, and he's he he by the way

1:22:56 could be criminally prosecuted by the next attorney general.

1:22:58 This is the great thing about passing a law instead of issuing a subpoena.

1:23:03 This they didn't do this in Watergate.

1:23:05 They didn't do this in Iran Contra.

1:23:08 They had commissions, they had committees, they had subpoenas,

1:23:11 whether it was u you know Bill Clinton's issue.

1:23:15 This is the first time the Epstein

1:23:17 Files Transparency Act where a member of Congress

1:23:20 or members of Congress got a law passed passed in the House and the Senate,

1:23:24 signed by the president to compel the release of documents.

1:23:26 What does that mean?

1:23:28 Why is it different?

1:23:29 Because every subpoena from Congress expires at the end of Congress.

1:23:32 This law never expires.

1:23:34 This law, unless they can get a house and a senate and a president to repeal it,

1:23:40 is in effect for infinity.

1:23:42 50 years from now, if there's an attorney general who

1:23:45 is like cleaning out a drawer and find some Epstein files,

1:23:48 they have 30 days to release them.

1:23:51 It's it's incumbent on we didn't name Pam Bondi.

1:23:53 We said the attorney general of the United States.

1:23:56 As long as there is an attorney general of the United States,

1:23:59 that cabinet position may go away before

1:24:01 the Epstein files transparency act goes away.

1:24:04 um cuz it's forever.

1:24:05 But let me tell you the category of documents that will

1:24:08 eventually be released that haven't been released that you touched on.

1:24:12 Um we said in the Epstein Files Transparency Act that you have to the DOJ,

1:24:18 FBI and US attorneys have to release internal memos

1:24:22 and emails about decisions on whether to prosecute or not prosecute,

1:24:26 about decisions on whether to investigate or not investigate.

1:24:29 And right now the attorney general is claiming

1:24:32 something called deliberative process privilege that they use

1:24:35 when they want to keep Freedom of Information

1:24:38 Act files from getting out or to redact them.

1:24:42 They say that and it's a long-standing rule for Freedom of Information

1:24:46 Act that the government only has to give you the final work product.

1:24:50 They don't have to show you their math, the internal deliberations of a policy.

1:24:54 They just have to give you the end point.

1:24:57 But anticipating this and having served on the judiciary committee for a long

1:25:02 time and having had Merrick Garland and Christopher Ray tell me, "Well,

1:25:06 that's the subject of an ongoing investigation and we don't have to give you

1:25:10 that or that's deliberative process and we

1:25:12 don't have to give you that." Anticipating that.

1:25:14 I put into law that they have to give me that and the president signed that law

1:25:18 and yet they are asserting that my law doesn't

1:25:21 apply to their deliberative process privilege and they're wrong.

1:25:25 it won't withstand 30 minutes in a courtroom, their legal thesis.

1:25:30 Every first year law student knows that new

1:25:33 laws overwrite the ones that existed before.

1:25:37 And so I think eventually there will be a forum.

1:25:41 Some survivor will sue the attorney general or the government for not

1:25:45 releasing those particular files and it'll

1:25:47 get adjudicated and we'll get more files.

1:25:50 Did do you ever ask anyone in the administration or the Congress like why is

1:25:55 this a hard thing for a Republican administration

1:25:58 that was elected to quote drain the swamp to do?

1:26:01 Why would it be hard?

1:26:02 You would think since most people identified in the Epstein

1:26:05 files were partisan Democrats and donors to the Democratic party.

1:26:08 You'd think be pretty easy for Republicans to be like, "Yeah,

1:26:10 this the other guys did this." And there were some Republicans, but not really.

1:26:13 It's mostly Democrats in those files.

1:26:15 So why would it why is it so hard?

1:26:17 Like what the hell are we w what is this?

1:26:20 Well, Pam Bondi, when I cross-examined her in a hearing

1:26:23 while she was still attorney general about the Epstein files,

1:26:28 she protested to me that, you know,

1:26:31 this also went on under the Biden administration.

1:26:33 And I said, "Of course it did." Oh, right.

1:26:35 And it went on under the Obama administration and the Bush administration.

1:26:39 Like, it spanned four administrations,

1:26:41 five administrations, counting Trump twice.

1:26:43 And I told her, "You're just responsible

1:26:46 for this portion of the cover up." Right?

1:26:49 So the reason they I think they don't want to admit

1:26:52 that they have covered this up is then they admit that there

1:26:56 are two tiers of justice in this country and that every

1:27:00 administration at least every attorney general has been in on it.

1:27:05 That is exactly right.

1:27:06 There are two tiers of justice and some people seem to be immune

1:27:10 from law and some people are just henpecked to death by the law.

1:27:16 Um, and and that's why I want to know

1:27:20 their decision process because then we'll find out in 2008.

1:27:23 Why did they give Jeffrey Epstein a light sentence when

1:27:26 they had him dead to rights to lock him up?

1:27:29 We'll find out.

1:27:30 I think eventually cuz the law goes forever.

1:27:33 And I think just by random selection,

1:27:35 we'll eventually end up with an attorney general if they don't

1:27:39 delete the files before that attorney general sits in the seat,

1:27:42 whoever that may be.

1:27:43 Do you have any sense of how much hasn't been released from that case?

1:27:46 Um, well, I know that set of particular files haven't been released.

1:27:50 I know that they put some files up and took

1:27:53 them back down and they've not put them back up again.

1:27:56 And you may say, well,

1:27:58 don't you didn't people get archives of those files while they were up?

1:28:01 Why do you care that the files haven't been put up again?

1:28:04 Yes, it's because I have the ability to go look at unredacted

1:28:08 files over at the DOJ and some of the files that I wanted

1:28:13 to look at unredacted because I

1:28:15 believe they implicate co-conspirators with Jeffrey Epstein

1:28:18 haven't been put back up onto the public site nor the private site.

1:28:22 So, I can't go look at documents unredacted that may contain

1:28:26 the names of co-conspirators until they put those files back in.

1:28:30 What's justification for protecting co-conspirators?

1:28:32 Well, they said they're protecting uh victims.

1:28:36 Okay.

1:28:37 But if you're protecting victims and so you had to take the document down,

1:28:40 then what you do is you redact all the information

1:28:42 that would hurt the victim and then you put it back up.

1:28:45 But they haven't put it back up.

1:28:47 So I haven't been able to look at that.

1:28:49 Then there are files over there.

1:28:50 The DOJ claims were redacted before they came into their possession.

1:28:53 And so when I try to unredact them, I can't see beyond the redactions.

1:28:58 And the DOJ says, "Sorry, that's just the way we received them." Well,

1:29:02 the fact of the matter is they need to go back to the US

1:29:06 attorneys and the FBI that gave them those redacted documents and say,

1:29:09 "Give us the unredacted documents." But they haven't done that yet.

1:29:12 And then there's another category of files that are missing.

1:29:15 In talking to the survivors lawyers,

1:29:17 um the survivors have indicated that there's

1:29:21 no evidence of their testimony in these files.

1:29:25 Like they know it exists.

1:29:26 They sat down with the FBI.

1:29:27 They did an interview and the FBI

1:29:29 agents are obligated to summarize that interview,

1:29:31 at least provide a summary in a 302 form.

1:29:35 Well, they can't even find their own 302

1:29:37 forms in the in the uh release of information.

1:29:40 So, we know not everything has been released.

1:29:43 And I also know they're releasing more stuff,

1:29:45 just quietly doing it because when I go over there

1:29:48 and look for things and find that they've redacted a man's

1:29:51 name who may be a co-conspirator and threaten on the internet

1:29:55 that they've done this, then they have released files.

1:29:58 For instance, with Leslie Wexner, he's the billionaire who resides in Ohio.

1:30:03 Pam Bondi, when I pointed out to her that she

1:30:06 had redacted his name from the files, she said, "Well, we've his name appears

1:30:10 thousands of times in the files." I said,

1:30:12 "Yes, but in the one instance where it appears on an FBI

1:30:15 document listing him as a co-conspirator in a child sex trafficking ring,

1:30:19 his name has been redacted.

1:30:20 In the only one place where it implicates him,

1:30:23 you redacted it." And so I know what your question is.

1:30:26 It was my question to her.

1:30:28 Who redacted it?

1:30:29 They're not giving interns a bucket of Sharpies

1:30:32 and a bunch of documents spread out and saying,

1:30:34 "Go draw a line through anything you don't think should be released." It's all

1:30:38 on a computer and you have to log in and every redaction belongs to somebody.

1:30:42 So what I want to know and I asked Pam Bondi and she

1:30:46 refused to tell me is who particularly

1:30:48 redacted that one instance of Leslie Wexner.

1:30:51 If you were going to if you were the least bit curious, you'd want to know.

1:30:54 Do you know if the Department of Justice

1:30:57 in this administration has spoken to Leslie Wexner?

1:31:00 Um the oversight committee called him over there and asked him some questions.

1:31:06 The Department of Justice did not.

1:31:08 They mysteriously lost interest in Leslie

1:31:11 Waxner after listing him as a co-conspirator.

1:31:14 So they they never even talked to him.

1:31:17 Never.

1:31:18 They they had some correspondence with an attorney and decided they didn't

1:31:22 need to talk to him even though he paid for the whole thing.

1:31:26 Yeah.

1:31:27 And um so the you know they should be wondering

1:31:30 like this is why I want to know about that decision

1:31:34 of not why did they not talk to Leslie Waxner

1:31:37 that's in an email or a memo somewhere and the clear

1:31:40 language of the law that I wrote requires them

1:31:43 to release it and they won't and they haven't and that's

1:31:45 that's what we need to know is why did they

1:31:48 and why do they continue to cover this stuff up?

1:31:52 Do you ever have conversations with your colleagues in the Congress about this?

1:31:59 Are others bothered by it?

1:32:02 Um, they're not bothered enough by it.

1:32:05 Yeah, I mean uh ultimately they voted 427 to1 to pass the bill after

1:32:11 fighting it for so many months and then to the Senate realized it had

1:32:16 been political malpractice on the part of uh Mike Johnson to lead the whole

1:32:21 GOP conference against the Epstein files release

1:32:23 merely because the president wanted him to.

1:32:25 And so when it got to the Senate,

1:32:28 they passed it by unanimous consent before it even got there.

1:32:31 like the bill was still in the House and the Senate heard it was

1:32:35 coming over and they made a motion to pass the bill before it got there.

1:32:38 So they just said when it gets here we're going to deem

1:32:40 it passed so we don't even have to repeat the name of it.

1:32:43 So Mike Johnson really was leading the charge

1:32:45 to to hide the facts of the Epstein case.

1:32:47 He was lying about my bill.

1:32:49 He told everybody it was dog crap.

1:32:51 It was poorly drafted.

1:32:52 it would hurt the victims and then it would hurt the victims

1:32:57 when in fact the victims love my bill and but he

1:33:01 would stand up he would say these lies to a whole gaggle

1:33:05 of cameras and then one day Mike Johnson told the entire conference

1:33:09 vote for Massiey's bill what changed we won the argument

1:33:14 in the public like if there is hope and and I know I'm

1:33:19 giving people hope and this is one of the reason I'm fighting

1:33:22 so hard to win is there will be not tens of thousands,

1:33:27 hundreds of thousands if not several million people who lose hope if I lose.

1:33:33 But I what gives me hope and frankly what gives me even u

1:33:39 more religious conviction is that we in spite of all the odds we got

1:33:45 this bill passed and it became law and 3 million documents came out after

1:33:50 we had been lied to and told that everything but kitty porn had been released.

1:33:55 Right.

1:33:56 That gives me hope.

1:33:57 That was after Pam Bondi told you everything had been released.

1:34:01 Correct.

1:34:02 Did she ever explain?

1:34:03 I think she was largely in the dark most of the time.

1:34:08 I always have a a question.

1:34:10 Is it ignorance or is it malfeasance?

1:34:13 Right.

1:34:14 Right.

1:34:14 Um when something's doing the wrong thing in her part,

1:34:17 on her part, I think it was ignorance and blind allegiance.

1:34:20 I think when she released those binders,

1:34:22 she really thought she was releasing the Epstein files.

1:34:25 I believe she thought that.

1:34:27 And then uh she found out very quickly.

1:34:31 Somebody came and told her, "Oh, no, no, we we're not releasing those.

1:34:34 You're not going to do that." And then she had to adopt

1:34:37 blind allegiance without even in fact really she at one point she said,

1:34:41 "They're on my desk for review." Do you remember that?

1:34:44 Very well.

1:34:45 How do 3 million files sit on your desk?

1:34:47 They were not on her desk for review at any point.

1:34:51 Also, um I don't think Cash Patel can

1:34:54 be the FBI director and anything ever happened

1:34:58 with these Epstein files because he testified in the Senate

1:35:02 to Senator Kennedy that Jeffrey Epstein acted alone.

1:35:05 Even Melania Trump does not believe that, right?

1:35:09 But he testified that Epste acted alone.

1:35:11 And then the next day, he did.

1:35:13 Yeah.

1:35:14 And then the next day he came to the House

1:35:17 Judiciary Committee where I asked him to double down

1:35:19 and he said there's no evidence in these files that anybody

1:35:22 was a co-conspirator with Jeffrey Epstein other than Gelain Maxwell.

1:35:26 So again, here we go.

1:35:28 Ignorance or malfeasants.

1:35:30 He he's perjured himself in the Senate and the House.

1:35:35 And so his his defense could either be ignorance.

1:35:39 That's his only defense is to say, "Well,

1:35:41 when I told you that, I didn't really know what was

1:35:43 in the files or the people working for me misled me." Um,

1:35:47 those are his only defense.

1:35:49 And then that's why I think you will never get

1:35:53 to the bottom of this as long as he's FBI director.

1:35:56 And by the way, the the Trump administration could redeem

1:35:59 themselves on this, but not by releasing 3 million more files.

1:36:03 They've got to indict somebody.

1:36:05 They've got to go in there.

1:36:07 Look, tell go in there and investigate um Leon Black or Jess Staley.

1:36:13 There's enough information even in the redacted files that anybody with common

1:36:19 sense knows that there needs to be an investigation of those two men.

1:36:23 What?

1:36:23 On what grounds?

1:36:24 On the witnesses said they were sexually abused by those men.

1:36:29 And they've never been investigated as so far as you know.

1:36:33 As far as I know.

1:36:34 And at le by the way, on what grounds, that's a good question.

1:36:37 On what grounds did uh Prince Andrew lose his title?

1:36:41 Did the British ambassador have to resign?

1:36:44 Did the former prime minister of Norway get indicted?

1:36:47 On what grounds?

1:36:48 Not for pedophilia or sex trafficking,

1:36:51 but for misabuse of state power and state secrets and state authority.

1:36:56 And this gets to what I believe Epstein was.

1:37:00 Um my background is technology.

1:37:03 Um, I'm not a hacker, but I went to school with a lot of people who are hackers,

1:37:09 and I still know people who are hackers.

1:37:11 It's actually very difficult through wires to break into most of these systems.

1:37:16 The the guys who get the biggest breaches of data are able to get a human

1:37:21 on the phone and convince them to give up

1:37:24 their password or get a human on an email, right?

1:37:26 like fishing is.

1:37:27 But if you can get physical proximity to somebody's phone or their computer,

1:37:32 that's the go that's the holy grail of hacking.

1:37:35 If once you get physical proximity or if you can get somebody so comfortable,

1:37:39 maybe they're in another room having sex or doing a line

1:37:42 of cocaine and they leave their laptop in that room without logging out,

1:37:45 then that's the holy grail of hacking.

1:37:48 You don't have to be good.

1:37:49 You got to be lucky or have really good humid.

1:37:53 And I believe that's what Jeffrey Epstein

1:37:57 was purveyor of was direct access to individuals.

1:38:00 He was interested in meeting with market makers,

1:38:03 people who were going to move markets, hedge fund managers, that sort of thing.

1:38:09 Um, and foreign, you know, officials and dignitaries who were going to make

1:38:14 laws and make decisions that would move markets.

1:38:17 I mean, it seems pretty obvious that this wasn't,

1:38:20 you know, that Jeffrey Epstein was not acting on his own.

1:38:23 I mean, first of all, there's no evidence he ever made any money, right?

1:38:27 I It's not clear even now, 7 years after his murder, what he did for a living.

1:38:33 Like, where where' the income come from?

1:38:35 You know when the probability in my mind that Jeffrey

1:38:38 Epstein killed himself went from 5% to 0% is when I

1:38:44 heard the recording that he serendipitously uh recorded of Ahood Barack

1:38:50 when he was about to leave as defense minister of Israel.

1:38:55 Jeffrey Epstein was advising him on his next career steps.

1:38:58 And in this recording, just cool as a cucumber, he says,

1:39:02 "Make a list of everybody that owes you something for all the things

1:39:05 you did for them while you were in government." And then go get

1:39:09 on these boards and draw a check and like he was explaining like how

1:39:15 Ahood Barack could make money once he

1:39:18 left the employ of the government of Israel.

1:39:21 And this is a recording.

1:39:22 It's it's a insight into Jeffrey Epstein's mind that you don't really get.

1:39:28 um otherwise even through emails and um it

1:39:31 was it was revealing to me Jeffrey Epstein strikes me as the kind of guy who

1:39:38 wouldn't be that worried that he was in prison.

1:39:40 It was a I think in his mind it was a temporary condition Yes.

1:39:45 that he either needed to blackmail somebody or maybe

1:39:50 he had enough blackmail or more likely than blackmail,

1:39:53 he just had enough connections that somebody would spring him

1:39:57 pretty soon and I don't think he would have lost.

1:40:00 So if he was murdered and I think it's

1:40:03 I mean I I'm totally convinced he was murdered.

1:40:05 It seemed very obvious that he was murdered,

1:40:07 but if he was murdered in federal detention in Manhattan,

1:40:10 like how could that have happened without

1:40:13 the knowledge of highest level federal officials?

1:40:18 There was never an investigation into it.

1:40:24 Who who are the highest level federal officials, by the way?

1:40:27 They're not always the elected people.

1:40:29 Like when we talk about the deep state there,

1:40:32 the these are the Victoria Nuland of the world, right?

1:40:35 Those are the people who are causing coups and and is that the highest level?

1:40:41 Are we talking about the highest level of the permanent

1:40:44 government or are we talking about ostensively the highest level,

1:40:47 the people who get elected and pretend to wield power like Pam Bondi?

1:40:51 Yes.

1:40:51 Because she's never been the highest level at the Department of Justice.

1:40:56 Who do you think is um I don't know,

1:40:59 but Todd Blanch in a way is working for them.

1:41:03 I think it's the people directly below Todd Blanch.

1:41:07 The people that we were told Trump would fire and get new people, the you know,

1:41:13 the people that did all the bad stuff on January 6,

1:41:17 the people at the DOJ who prosecuted those folks.

1:41:20 Why are any of those people still around?

1:41:22 And they are.

1:41:23 And they are.

1:41:24 and they shouldn't be.

1:41:25 Is that true in other key federal agencies?

1:41:28 I think all federal agencies.

1:41:31 What do you think happened?

1:41:33 How do you go from campaigning against all

1:41:37 of this to becoming its greatest champion as the president has?

1:41:43 I I don't know.

1:41:44 Um I do think and he by the way he doesn't need to run again.

1:41:49 Right.

1:41:50 Right.

1:41:50 Well, exactly.

1:41:51 People argue that term limits will work because once

1:41:54 somebody knows they don't have to run for election again,

1:41:57 they'll do the right thing.

1:41:59 It'll be in their nature.

1:42:00 Yes.

1:42:00 And they won't be uh subject to taking money to get their, you know,

1:42:04 to win their next election or doing favors.

1:42:07 They could just act in their good conscience.

1:42:09 I think what's happened is they've convinced him that he needs a ballroom,

1:42:13 that he needs an arch,

1:42:15 that he needs a Kennedy Center renamed after him and and multiple other things,

1:42:20 and that these take private money,

1:42:22 and the order of magnitude of private money that you

1:42:25 need for these things obligates you to those individuals.

1:42:28 We think that's part of what has happened.

1:42:31 I also think um he's aligned himself with Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.

1:42:37 These are the neocons.

1:42:39 He got he got close to this with John Bolton

1:42:42 and eventually got he tired of John Bolton, I think.

1:42:46 Yes.

1:42:46 Most people do.

1:42:47 Some of us never liked him.

1:42:50 I'm with you.

1:42:51 Um but I think he's basically gone from pushing those people away,

1:42:57 the the Dick Cheney of the Republican party to inviting them in the tent.

1:43:03 And it's given him more power, interestingly,

1:43:06 to align with these folks on certain issues.

1:43:10 Whether it's spying on Americans without a warrant,

1:43:13 whether it's spending more than we can afford,

1:43:16 whether it's starting another war in the Middle

1:43:19 East that's going to be hard to end.

1:43:22 Um, he's listening to too many of those people right now.

1:43:25 Why would the president, who was spied on illegally by the intelligence

1:43:29 and law enforcement agencies of this country, back in 2015, 2016, 2017.

1:43:35 Why would he put so much

1:43:39 of his authority behind more warrantless spying on Americans?

1:43:45 That's hard for me to understand.

1:43:47 Uh some people think it's because he wants that ability to, you know, well,

1:43:53 as long as he's president, to use his own FBI and DOJ to have these same tools.

1:43:58 Um, but then that begs the question, why would the Democrats, the Uni Party,

1:44:04 right, if you will, why would they want to give President Trump this authority?

1:44:10 You would think they might agree

1:44:12 to a three-year hiatus on spying without warrants, right?

1:44:16 But no, they don't want any lapse in the program,

1:44:19 and the president doesn't want any lapse in the program.

1:44:22 But but if Democrats are so afraid of Trump, if he's really Hitler,

1:44:27 he's this authoritarian crazy person who's going to eliminate civil liberties,

1:44:31 why would Democrats be giving that guy the power

1:44:34 to spy without a warrant on American citizens?

1:44:38 That exactly.

1:44:38 You've re rephrased it better than I said it.

1:44:42 Um, in fact, I found myself in a really weird position

1:44:46 last week on the floor of the house on flyyou day.

1:44:50 Most people uh had already booked their planes

1:44:53 to leave before this debate was going to happen.

1:44:56 The House of Representatives uh sent the Senate a deal

1:44:59 to reauthorize FISA if the Senate would ban central bank digital currency.

1:45:04 No, I would I would ban central

1:45:07 bank digital currency and not reauthorize FISA, right?

1:45:10 But the some of the freedom caucus decided that was an okay trade

1:45:14 to trade part of the Fourth Amendment for another part of the Fourth Amendment.

1:45:18 And I am terrified of central bank digital currency.

1:45:20 It's an onoff switch for your participation in society.

1:45:23 Right.

1:45:24 Of course.

1:45:24 Um they starve you to death if you disobey.

1:45:27 Yeah.

1:45:27 Just they won't let you put gas in the tank.

1:45:30 You won't be able to travel.

1:45:31 Um they'll just, you know, they can control everything.

1:45:34 If they can control the currency, it's bad enough.

1:45:36 But we sent that deal to the Senate.

1:45:38 Um I didn't vote for that deal, but some people did.

1:45:41 It went to the Senate and the Senate laughed at that deal.

1:45:44 threw it in the trash and sent a clean reauthorization

1:45:47 of FISA back to the House with the 45day ex expiration.

1:45:51 And everybody suggest everybody but me suggested we should just let that pass

1:45:56 by unanimous consent and folks could get on their airplanes and go home.

1:46:00 And I said, I don't think so.

1:46:02 Like an infringement of the Constitution for 45

1:46:06 days is still an infringement of the Constitution.

1:46:08 And by the way, we've known about this problem

1:46:10 for as long as I've been in Congress.

1:46:13 I've been offering and passing amendments

1:46:15 to defund this part of the FISA program.

1:46:18 It's not something new.

1:46:20 It's like a a florist being surprised by Valentine's Day.

1:46:24 We knew this date was coming.

1:46:26 And so, um, I stood up and I objected and they said, "Okay, well,

1:46:32 now we got to have a debate over this bill." and Jim Jordan got 20 minutes

1:46:37 and Jamie Raskin got 20 minutes as the chair

1:46:39 and the ranking member of the committee of jurisdiction,

1:46:42 the judiciary committee.

1:46:43 And at that point, I I stood up and and told

1:46:47 the speaker that I want 20 minutes in actual opposition to the bill.

1:46:51 Wait, I'm confused.

1:46:52 You have one of the most liberal Democrats in the House,

1:46:55 Jamie Rask, of Maryland.

1:46:56 You have one of the most conservative

1:46:57 Republicans in the House, Jim Jordan of Ohio,

1:47:00 but they're on the same side on spying on Americans for at least 45 days.

1:47:06 They're on the same side.

1:47:08 Well, how could Jim Jordan, this ferociously conservative freedom guy,

1:47:12 be in favor of spying on Americans without a warrant?

1:47:17 Well, the president told him to.

1:47:20 Yeah, but that's like a core that's a core.

1:47:23 It's always been a core issue of his.

1:47:25 And in the debate of his specifically, correct?

1:47:27 It was it was a condition of being on the judiciary committee when I joined.

1:47:32 Like you had to believe that we needed warrants on FISA

1:47:35 or you couldn't be on the judiciary committee that he chaired.

1:47:39 That was like the first interview question when you

1:47:42 applied for judiciary that the constitution is still real, right?

1:47:46 and particularly with FISA 702 this particular program and he battled last

1:47:50 Congress ferociously to get warrants and it came down to a tie

1:47:54 vote where Mike Johnson was the deciding vote and we I

1:47:58 don't know why again because Biden was president but enough Republicans voted

1:48:03 to let Biden have the power to spy on Americans without a warrant

1:48:06 because a lot of that information that intelligence that's spying on Americans

1:48:10 goes directly to Israel like fact absolutely right so that's what

1:48:13 this is really about is do we allow a foreign country to spy?

1:48:17 Does our government make it easier for a foreign country to spy on Americans?

1:48:21 It's like the ultimate betrayal.

1:48:23 Another fact, when uh X decided to show you where accounts were based,

1:48:28 where they were set up, and where they were operated from, the DHS

1:48:32 account showed Israel that it was set up

1:48:35 the the US Department of Homeland Security's X account

1:48:39 was set up using an IP address from Israel,

1:48:43 using uh an Android app for purchased in Israel.

1:48:48 And that doesn't trouble people.

1:48:50 Like there should be an investigation over why

1:48:53 when the DHS set up its Twitter account, it was set up in Israel.

1:48:58 Now they claim if you ask Grock about this, he'll walk around the bush with you.

1:49:02 Oh, of course.

1:49:02 And and say that, well,

1:49:03 there were some glitches back in the old day and there was some

1:49:06 contractors involved and you can you can never get to the bottom of it.

1:49:10 So, but back to the last week, um I was able to claim.

1:49:14 So, but just to be clear, Jordan was on the same side as Jamie Raskin, correct?

1:49:18 For the clean 45day.

1:49:20 Did you feel like your head was spinning as you watched this?

1:49:23 It Yes.

1:49:24 But I've been here before where it's me versus the uni party.

1:49:29 And by the way, um this when they call me an obstructionist,

1:49:33 you can put this in the column of things

1:49:36 that I try to obstruct like violations of your fourth amendment.

1:49:40 So, the speaker said, "Okay,

1:49:42 each side gets 20 minutes." And I rose up and I said,

1:49:45 "Well, in fact, each side is for this." So, this is no kind of debate.

1:49:49 Like, I want my 20 minutes.

1:49:51 It's like the perfect metaphor.

1:49:53 It's like a fake debate where both sides agree, right?

1:49:56 Yeah.

1:49:56 So, and it is in the House rules.

1:49:59 They had to give me 20 minutes.

1:50:01 And so, then it was going to be me

1:50:03 with 20 minutes and Jim Jordan with 20 minutes.

1:50:05 Ironically, a guy that I like who has

1:50:08 been leading the charge to get warrants in FISA,

1:50:12 but in this situation was for reauthorizing a program for 40 days,

1:50:16 45 days without warrants.

1:50:18 And at that moment, one of the staffers came over to me,

1:50:21 this is where it's getting surreal, and said,

1:50:24 "Jim Jordan would like to give half

1:50:26 of his time to Jamie Rascin." This is the last

1:50:30 scene in Animal Farm where the the farmers and the pigs are like in it together.

1:50:34 And they said, "Would you object?" And I said, "No, what the hell?

1:50:38 Let them both have time." So I had 20

1:50:40 minutes and Jim had 10 and Jamie Raskin had 10.

1:50:44 And then u to their credit, Keith Self from Texas,

1:50:48 Chip Roy from Texas and Warren Davidson from Ohio joined me in this debate.

1:50:52 Some other people in spirit came and sat down to to offer their moral support.

1:50:57 They didn't need time to debate.

1:50:59 And we had a a good debate on this issue.

1:51:03 Look, the FBI has used this program

1:51:07 to uh basically run their dating app prospects through

1:51:11 the database to see what they can find

1:51:13 about them before they swipe right or swipe left.

1:51:16 What?

1:51:17 Yeah.

1:51:17 That's the kind of abuse that's gone on.

1:51:20 They've used it on on uh Congress.

1:51:23 They've used it on the president.

1:51:26 They've used it on political parties.

1:51:28 And people say, "Well, if there's if you're not doing anything wrong,

1:51:31 why do you care if the government spies on you?" Well,

1:51:33 it's the government's opinion of whether they like what you're doing or not.

1:51:36 Well, they used it on me and they got caught and no one's punished.

1:51:40 Yeah.

1:51:40 They've used it on Cheryl Atkinson spying on her, you know,

1:51:44 spyware on her computer.

1:51:45 Uh they use it on the press.

1:51:48 Like, this should concern everybody.

1:51:49 And we and right now we're in a 45day

1:51:53 extension because uh I did call for the vote

1:51:56 and um we had too many Republicans and too

1:51:59 many Democrats that voted for a clean extension.

1:52:02 So let can we just go through

1:52:04 the issues on which you've disagreed with the president?

1:52:07 So my read as a non- Kentucky citizen is that this race

1:52:10 comes down to the question of who is more on board with Trump?

1:52:15 Who's more the MAGA guy, you or the liberal you're running against,

1:52:20 funded by the casino owners, uh, funded by Israel?

1:52:23 What are the issues that have separated you and Trump?

1:52:27 Can you just go through the list where the big issues where you've disagreed?

1:52:31 Um, let me let me start with the ones I agree with just real quick.

1:52:35 I voted to fund the wall.

1:52:37 I voted to keep men out of girls sports in the Olympics.

1:52:40 I have voted.

1:52:41 Well, I've read that you were totally for mass migration,

1:52:45 illegal migration, that you love transgenderism.

1:52:47 You were encouraging people to castrate their sons.

1:52:51 That's not true.

1:52:52 Absolutely false.

1:52:53 I signed a an amiki brief to the Supreme Court

1:52:57 to support the repeal of birthright citizenship for illeg children of illegals.

1:53:01 Um, I I've done all of these.

1:53:04 I voted for the SAVE Act, which is to require photo ID in federal elections.

1:53:09 Uh, if you want to run for school board and or HOA, do whatever you want,

1:53:13 but if you're going to vote in a federal election,

1:53:16 you got to have an ID and prove you're an American citizen.

1:53:19 I've voted for these things.

1:53:20 Um, I voted for Doge.

1:53:22 I've voted for all of that stuff.

1:53:24 Um, but let's talk about the things where I have been an obstructionist.

1:53:29 Um, most recently they tried to put immunity

1:53:33 for pesticides and herbicides in the farm bill.

1:53:36 Immunity.

1:53:37 immunity from liability and a ban on any state.

1:53:40 Let's say a state finds out that one

1:53:43 of these chemicals causes cancer and if it's,

1:53:45 you know, applied in a certain way.

1:53:48 Right now, they're trying to ban any state's ability

1:53:51 to warn its citizens that that product causes cancer.

1:53:54 What?

1:53:55 Yes.

1:53:55 So, it would be a violation of the first amendment,

1:53:58 um, a violation of the 10th amendment.

1:54:00 They had this in the base.

1:54:02 Wait a second.

1:54:03 So if you say something crazy on this show, you can be sued.

1:54:06 But if you make some poison that gives people cancer and kills their kids,

1:54:10 you can't be sued because you have quote

1:54:13 immunity along with the vaccine makers given by Congress.

1:54:15 Correct.

1:54:15 And well, they were, by the way, that's in front of the Supreme Court right now.

1:54:20 I went and listened to the oral arguments in the Supreme Court on this issue

1:54:24 and they said in the oral arguments

1:54:26 that Congress could decide this issue, right?

1:54:28 And so it was stuck in the farm bill and um I

1:54:33 did work with Democrats to offer an amendment to strip this out.

1:54:36 Anna Paulina Luna offered an identical amendment.

1:54:39 Her amendment was allowed a vote and we got enough Republicans

1:54:43 and Democrats to vote to take this out of the bill.

1:54:47 So if you're saying that I'm an obstructionist and I work with Democrats,

1:54:50 it is true if you're trying to poison Americans

1:54:53 that I will cross and then get immunity from tort law.

1:54:57 like why don't I get immunity which is state law by the way

1:55:00 this would be they're not they're the vaccine immunity is wrong it's

1:55:04 bad enough but at least they pretend there's some federal court will

1:55:09 take care of the problem here they were pro proposing that nobody you

1:55:13 could get a venue nowhere by the way that's a violation

1:55:17 of the seventh amendment to the constitution it's in the bill of rights

1:55:21 that says you have a right to a jury trial and they're taking

1:55:24 away first amendment 7th amendment and 10th amendment Why would Trump want that?

1:55:30 Uh it's I think he's a busy guy

1:55:33 and I think um he's not paying attention to this.

1:55:38 Although I will caution listeners that when I went to the Supreme Court,

1:55:44 it was very much like the debate that I had in Congress on FISA.

1:55:50 There were actually three attorneys, not two.

1:55:52 Usually in the Supreme Court there are attorneys

1:55:55 arguing the plaintiff side and the defendant side.

1:55:58 In this case the US DOJ joined the German

1:56:02 company Bear Bear Monsanto who makes glyphosate in arguments.

1:56:08 So the DOJ helped a German company make the point

1:56:13 that they should be immune from any state liability.

1:56:16 A German company should be immune from lawsuits

1:56:18 by Americans if it turns out their product kills them.

1:56:21 Correct.

1:56:22 This is so bonkers.

1:56:23 I It's hard to believe that's I mean, you can, you know,

1:56:26 there's an argument about is it worth it to put dangerous chemicals

1:56:30 on farmland because maybe the benefits outweigh the risks or I don't know.

1:56:35 There's like an argument.

1:56:36 What could possibly be the argument for stripping

1:56:38 people's rights to redress if the product is faulty?

1:56:43 It's dangerous.

1:56:44 We we've got cor corporate capture of the EPA.

1:56:48 And so the EPA was set up ostensively to protect people and the environment,

1:56:54 but now they've morphed into an organization that would give immunity.

1:56:57 They would give get out of court free cards

1:57:00 to any company that could convince them to put

1:57:04 a light label on it that says um you

1:57:07 know a warning label instead of a danger label.

1:57:09 Right.

1:57:10 Wait.

1:57:10 So, the EPA was in favor of giving

1:57:13 full liability protection to Bear Monsanto out of Germany.

1:57:17 Correct.

1:57:18 Who's running the EPA?

1:57:20 Uh, Lee Zeldon right now.

1:57:22 And he was for that.

1:57:24 This case predates him, but it's going on right now under him.

1:57:29 And you might think the EPA,

1:57:31 the federal EPA is going to argue for as much authority as they can get.

1:57:35 And so they would like and the corporations

1:57:38 would love to have one-stop shopping.

1:57:40 They don't want to be subject to courtrooms in 50 different states.

1:57:45 They want to be able to say, "Well,

1:57:47 we're we got to get out of court free card because the EPA

1:57:50 said we don't need to put a skull and crossbones on this product.

1:57:54 All we need is a little warning label on it." Um,

1:57:58 I know we've gone deep into that issue, but let me tell you why it's important.

1:58:02 because the president is the president and we're

1:58:04 in the majority because there was a coalition formed.

1:58:06 I do believe that he and his adviserss

1:58:08 were genius in setting up this coalition and I was part of it um when I endorsed

1:58:15 the president to try to bring on libertarians and independents.

1:58:18 But we also brought on Maha which is I

1:58:21 was one of the people who helped put that together.

1:58:22 Yeah.

1:58:23 Cuz I believed Well, then you're the genius.

1:58:24 I'm not a genius.

1:58:25 It's just like that seemed like an obvious issue.

1:58:28 It's obviously they told us banning smoking was going

1:58:30 to make us healthy and life expectancy went down.

1:58:32 I just noticed that and I'm like this country is super unhealthy and why

1:58:37 wouldn't you make it easier for people to be healthier if they want to?

1:58:41 So, and by the way, I have a standalone bill too to uh this it's

1:58:46 the no immunity for glyphosate act and I

1:58:49 have Republican and Democrat co-sponsors on that.

1:58:52 But it's that's what MA is.

1:58:54 And here's the problem.

1:58:56 If you keep if your DOJ and your USDA and your EPA

1:59:01 are all going to be captured by a German company and and argue

1:59:07 that Americans don't deserve their day in court if they're harmed

1:59:12 by a chemical that's being sold and mislabeled according to their state.

1:59:15 Um then you're going to alienate that part

1:59:18 of the ma the maja part of the coalition.

1:59:20 Yeah.

1:59:21 And that's another thing that could lead

1:59:23 to a a bloodbath in the November election.

1:59:25 And it's going to it's going to Yeah.

1:59:27 There are a lot of sort of liberal moms or moms who thought they

1:59:31 were liberal but they just watched too

1:59:33 much media but they basically had good values.

1:59:37 They're for their kids.

1:59:38 They're for nature.

1:59:39 You know, those are good values.

1:59:41 Those people are very disappointed and betrayed.

1:59:43 I think.

1:59:44 Yeah.

1:59:44 Don't you?

1:59:45 I I think so.

1:59:46 I mean, by the way, you're a farmer.

1:59:49 I should say this by the way.

1:59:50 And there is one good thing in the farm bill.

1:59:52 By the way, I've worked for 11 years on it.

1:59:55 I've worked four years on this part of it.

1:59:57 I got my prime act, a pilot program for it in the farm bill,

2:00:01 which means that here in Maine or in Kentucky or any of the state in the union,

2:00:06 you could have a small farmer use a small processor and s sell their beef,

2:00:11 pork, and lamb locally to consumers without the USDA being hovering over Yeah.

2:00:18 the the that transaction as long as you

2:00:22 comply uh with the local health inspections, you know,

2:00:26 the there are steak houses in Washington DC that cut up

2:00:30 more beef than most small processors in Kentucky in a day, right?

2:00:34 Yet they don't have to have a USDA inspector.

2:00:38 And the reason the big corporations, I call it the industrial meat complex,

2:00:42 wants a big wants all these regulations on the little

2:00:45 guys is to keep them out of the business.

2:00:47 And so my prime act just says you can

2:00:50 sell a steak or a hamburger to your neighbor using

2:00:52 a local processor as long as you comply with the local

2:00:56 health requirements and you don't need the USDA involved.

2:00:58 And we got a pilot program for that in the farm bill.

2:01:00 That's MA completely and the confluence of MA with conservatism, right?

2:01:06 Because I have it's a bipartisan bill and it's one area where

2:01:11 Democrats realize that the little guys are being regulated out of the business.

2:01:15 Yes.

2:01:16 And if they want healthy food, more sustainably raised food,

2:01:19 that you've got to break up the the meat monopoly, I'll call it.

2:01:24 Now, the White House has recently announced they're going to use the DOJ

2:01:27 and the full force of the federal government to break up these big meat packers.

2:01:30 The problem with that is if you don't let the little meat packers exist,

2:01:34 you're just going to raise the price.

2:01:37 Of course.

2:01:37 Right.

2:01:37 There'll be more of it will be from Brazil.

2:01:40 Yes.

2:01:41 Or Argentina.

2:01:41 Yeah.

2:01:42 So, uh, really quick, since you do run a farm, a working farm,

2:01:48 the chemical in question made by Bear Monsanto, would you use it?

2:01:53 This, so I don't want to ban it.

2:01:57 Um, what we're talking about is the mislication of it or the mislabeling of it.

2:02:02 Let me tell you a use I would never use.

2:02:05 So, I don't do it, but um, I would spray fence lines with it.

2:02:11 Y if you had a respirator and something like

2:02:14 that to to kill weeds in the fence line,

2:02:16 y I would not spray my fields with it because I'm afraid

2:02:20 that the cattle might the residue from that might be taken up in the meat.

2:02:25 Um I would not tell my neighbor you can't kill the weeds

2:02:30 so that you can do no till farming of uh your corn.

2:02:34 Okay.

2:02:34 But here's one place where I would never ever

2:02:37 use it and I don't think it should be legal.

2:02:40 They spray it on ripe wheat to dry it out before they harvest it.

2:02:44 Like this is the food you're going to eat.

2:02:47 It's like the next step is to grind it and bake it into bread.

2:02:51 And they are just one step away from you eating it.

2:02:53 And they're spraying it with glyphosate, the whole plant,

2:02:56 so that it will die quickly and dry out quickly and save them some money.

2:03:01 Maybe they can get the next crop in there four days earlier into that land.

2:03:06 And I've been assur and by the way that's been

2:03:09 banned in Europe um but not here in the United States.

2:03:12 And they say, "Oh, Congressman Messi,

2:03:13 this is only used on 3% of the wheat crops in the United States." First of all,

2:03:17 I don't believe that.

2:03:18 But if it is true, then why don't we just grow something

2:03:21 else there in that 3% where it's too wet to grow wheat?

2:03:25 Why don't we grow soybeans or something instead of wheat at that place

2:03:28 or something you don't need glyphosate to dry it out with?

2:03:32 or maybe you'll get 80 or 90% of the yield you would have

2:03:35 gotten if you hadn't sprayed poison on it to dry it out quickly.

2:03:38 That's disgusting.

2:03:38 So, I do think there are areas where I wouldn't ban it,

2:03:42 but I and I wouldn't tell my neighbors you can't use it,

2:03:45 but the company needs to have the right label on it.

2:03:48 And if they do, if they know there are

2:03:51 if we know scientifically that it can cause harm,

2:03:54 that needs to be disclosed so that the farmers who are using it.

2:03:57 I think it's a threat to the farmers more so than the consumers.

2:04:01 Well, there the ones I know are afraid of it,

2:04:03 but it's also effective and so they do use it on fence lines, for example.

2:04:07 So, okay.

2:04:08 So glyphosate, warrantless spying, Ebstein.

2:04:10 What are the other issues on which you've disagreed with the president?

2:04:15 Spending.

2:04:15 Spending.

2:04:16 So this is probably my biggest issue

2:04:18 and people want to know why food so expensive, why is housing so expensive?

2:04:24 Why is fuel so expensive?

2:04:26 Why did things get so expensive so quickly?

2:04:29 And it started back during CO.

2:04:32 We just we put spending into overdrive.

2:04:34 We used to say that we're a a free

2:04:38 market economy and we're not socialist because we spend 20%

2:04:43 or 24% of GDP the uh federal government things

2:04:47 and that Europe is socialist because they spend 30% or more.

2:04:52 Well, during CO we jumped up to like 35%.

2:04:55 We were clearly if there's a spectrum and you draw a line on it

2:04:59 and say above this much federal spending is socialism and below this is not.

2:05:03 We crossed that line for several years after CO and it

2:05:06 it has gone down some without the big stimulus spending,

2:05:09 but the stuff that's baked in has stayed high.

2:05:12 So, we're like probably at 29%.

2:05:15 We've gone we've gone bonkers on federal spending.

2:05:19 And I will tell you this, this is a fact.

2:05:23 The debt and has gone up $2.7 trillion since

2:05:26 in the 16 months that we've controlled the White House,

2:05:30 the House, and the Senate.

2:05:31 Gone up.

2:05:32 it's gone up.

2:05:33 So, by the way, in some years they go back I think

2:05:36 I find it interesting they try to blame the president for spending.

2:05:39 Um, even when let's say the party, you know,

2:05:43 there's a different party in Congress and a different party in the White House,

2:05:48 they always blame the president for the spending.

2:05:50 I think they should blame the Congress.

2:05:52 But in this case, there's no ambiguity.

2:05:54 We control the Senate, the House, and the White House.

2:05:57 And when you say, "Oh, it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass anything." Yeah,

2:06:01 it takes 60 votes to spend money.

2:06:03 Like the money would stop if you can't get 60 votes in the Senate.

2:06:08 It's like the other way around because the money expires

2:06:10 every year unless you do a CR or an omnibus.

2:06:12 So these this is a place where I

2:06:16 have diverged with Republicans because they took Joe Biden's

2:06:19 budget and using the big beautiful bill added

2:06:21 hundreds of billions of dollars of spending to it.

2:06:24 And this is where I get the ads run against me.

2:06:26 you know, even though I voted for a wall

2:06:28 and I voted re most recently to fund DHS, there was extra money for DHS and DOJ,

2:06:35 which includes FBI um in the big beautiful bill and I said we can't afford

2:06:41 this and that's why they can run the ads that say I voted against Well,

2:06:45 not just run the ads like they've attacked

2:06:47 and I I almost don't want to even go here, but I'm I was so shocked by it.

2:06:52 the president attacked your family like

2:06:54 repeatedly and attacked your personal life.

2:06:56 It's a little odd, you know,

2:06:58 who decides to attack other people's personal lives,

2:07:02 but um what did you think of that?

2:07:06 Well, it's ironic cuz I defended him when he gave Stormmy Daniels money.

2:07:11 This came up in front of us when I was

2:07:14 on the oversight committee and they were trying to turn

2:07:17 it into a crime and because they said he

2:07:20 should have run it through campaign a campaign account instead

2:07:23 of paying her personally and that he but I can

2:07:26 tell you this if I told my treasurer I wanted

2:07:29 to pay some woman to be quiet with my campaign

2:07:32 money he would say no you'll go to jail for that.

2:07:35 So they were actually trying to prosecute the president because he didn't do

2:07:39 it a certain way which certainly have would have gotten him in jail, right?

2:07:44 Um and I pointed that out and also at the time I pointed out in that hearing,

2:07:48 this was three years ago, I think there was a congressional slush fund

2:07:52 that did the same thing but with taxpayer dollars to pay off people who had been

2:07:57 harassed or sexually abused by congressmen and their staff.

2:08:01 And nobody wanted to hear that in that hearing,

2:08:03 but I blew the whistle on that too.

2:08:05 What happened to the slush fund?

2:08:07 Um, we were able to recently force a vote on disclosing,

2:08:12 not getting away, not getting rid of the slush fund, just saying who,

2:08:17 which offices have paid out of this slush fund,

2:08:19 and it failed because Republicans and Democrats voted against

2:08:22 the measure to disclose the names on the slush fund.

2:08:25 So, it still exists.

2:08:27 It still exists and it if I'm a member

2:08:30 of Congress and I get sued for sexual harassment or blackmailed,

2:08:34 I can use tax dollars to pay off the accuser.

2:08:37 They pay off the accuser to to avoid the lawsuit because if it

2:08:42 be if it becomes a lawsuit then it's public and by the way

2:08:46 this is I'm calling it a slush fund and it's appropriate

2:08:49 to do that because every office congressional office gets a budget every year.

2:08:53 We have to divide it among office expense and salaries

2:08:57 and travel and postage and you know donor cartridges.

2:09:00 We don't even have to take it out of that money to if

2:09:05 you trying to pay off a claim before it goes to court.

2:09:09 It comes out of an extra fund that's just got money somewhere.

2:09:13 Anyways, we we failed on that.

2:09:15 But I'm the one that exposed that in the context

2:09:19 of defending Donald Trump from the Stormmy Daniels allegations um that they

2:09:24 had tried they really it was a tortured legal logic they

2:09:27 were trying to come up with to to convict him of something.

2:09:30 Um, and yet he has turned around and and in one

2:09:37 social media post um dishonored my late wife,

2:09:41 dishonored me, and dishonored my current wife

2:09:44 by um alleging that I shouldn't have gotten remarried.

2:09:48 I got remarried 16 months after my wife passed away.

2:09:53 I think this is common among men who are widowers who have wonderful marriages.

2:09:59 Um, if you I mean you seek that out, you find out that you know what,

2:10:06 God had a good idea here when he created man and woman and that um you're better

2:10:10 off in a monogous relationship where two people

2:10:13 care about each other and when one gets sick,

2:10:16 the other takes care of that person.

2:10:18 You're and so I sought that out again.

2:10:21 But the president who himself has had affairs.

2:10:24 I've never had an affair.

2:10:26 I was faithful to my wife for we were together 35 years,

2:10:30 married 31 years, high school sweethearts.

2:10:33 Um, here's somebody who I defended when he was trying to cover up his affair.

2:10:39 Um, criticizing the fact that I got remarried in, you know,

2:10:44 in a church in the eyes of God according to Christian religion.

2:10:49 Um, but I didn't I didn't retaliate.

2:10:52 I didn't tweet back.

2:10:54 My uh wife tells me it's my fault anyway.

2:10:56 I should have invited him to the wedding and that's why he's mad that he didn't.

2:11:00 Well, you're a good man to laugh about it.

2:11:03 But that's that's a pretty heavy thing to say about somebody.

2:11:05 He called me a[ __] at the prayer breakfast.

2:11:07 Well, that's funny cuz you're obviously not a[ __] Well, and so I said,

2:11:11 "I'm glad I'm in his prayers cuz it obviously

2:11:15 wasn't a prayer he was saying at the prayer

2:11:18 breakfast." It just I think what's so revealing about

2:11:21 all of this is he you've never attacked him personally.

2:11:24 You don't seem mad at him personally.

2:11:27 Nope.

2:11:27 Um, you're aligned on the issues that I think most

2:11:31 people who voted for Trump in 2024 really believed in.

2:11:35 You're way more America first than

2:11:38 anything this current administration is doing.

2:11:41 And he's mad at you because of like Epstein and spending, right?

2:11:48 Those are my main infractions.

2:11:50 And those are things that he and I both campaigned on and promised to eliminate

2:11:55 um you know to disclose the Epstein

2:11:58 files and to eliminate the wasteful spending.

2:12:01 And I'm just trying to keep my promises to the people

2:12:05 that I represent and he's keeping his promises to Apac.

2:12:09 So I I um What do you think's going to happen um in my race?

2:12:16 Yeah.

2:12:16 Um it's going to be really close.

2:12:19 It's going to depend on turnout.

2:12:21 And I think um the most stark difference that we can discern in the crosstabs,

2:12:27 you know, when you do polling, yeah, if you've ever been pled,

2:12:31 maybe people haven't got to look at the results of a full poll,

2:12:34 but there's 200 pages of cross tabs that come from a poll

2:12:37 when you just poll 500 people because at the end of the poll,

2:12:41 you ask what's your race, what's your religion, how old are you?

2:12:45 you know, if sometimes in the poll you ask the income, your household income,

2:12:50 um, and you look at the cross tabs and try to find out,

2:12:53 is there a group of people we're doing better

2:12:55 with or worse with, what do we have to work on?

2:12:58 And the the most stark contrast in my cross tabs is age.

2:13:04 And if um, under 40, I win like 8020.

2:13:08 8020.

2:13:09 It's it's like it doesn't even look real.

2:13:12 Okay.

2:13:13 And those folks are getting their news from social media,

2:13:17 from podcasts, from you.

2:13:19 I think uh between 40 and 65, I do really well.

2:13:24 That's that's the age group you and I are in.

2:13:27 Those people I think watch the news, but they're suspicious of what they say.

2:13:32 And then the folks um not all of them,

2:13:35 but I'm not doing that well with 65 and up.

2:13:39 And I think that's because they're watching Fox News 24/7.

2:13:43 And Fox News has blocked me out.

2:13:45 I've I used to be on there every week.

2:13:48 I've went on your show when you were on Fox.

2:13:50 Yeah.

2:13:51 Gone on Laura Ingram's show, Shannon Bream's show.

2:13:54 I've gone on, you know, Hannity's show.

2:13:56 I've been on all those shows, but not in the last 18 months.

2:14:01 Why?

2:14:01 Because Fox wants access to the White House.

2:14:03 They want the scoop.

2:14:04 They want to make sure they're in the press gaggle.

2:14:06 They want to be there when Marine One lands to ask a question.

2:14:11 they want to get called on and they know

2:14:14 that if they in any way let me have a platform

2:14:18 that they will be deprived of those things that they

2:14:22 want from the White House and that's just how it works.

2:14:26 Um, so to get on Fox I have to buy ads to be on Fox.

2:14:30 I can't be on the TV shows.

2:14:32 It's a wonder they'll still let me buy ads,

2:14:34 but I think that's just because it's federal law.

2:14:38 If you'd asked most Fox News voters,

2:14:40 viewers who were Trump voters, if you'd asked them two years ago,

2:14:44 like state what you believe on the issues,

2:14:47 I think there'd be pretty close to 100% overlap between you and those people.

2:14:52 Absolutely.

2:14:53 Yeah.

2:14:53 So, I don't feel like your views have changed.

2:14:56 Might have never changed regardless of who

2:14:59 the president is or who the speaker is, but Trump's have changed dramatically.

2:15:04 At least the disconnect between what he said he

2:15:07 was gonna do and what he's doing is is shocking.

2:15:10 I I you know when I endorsed him I thought we wouldn't have a new war.

2:15:14 I thought we would get warrants for FISA that they had used to spy on him.

2:15:19 I thought that Maha would be front and center

2:15:22 at the um at the HHS with Bobby Kennedy there.

2:15:26 Um I thought that we would have sane foreign policy.

2:15:30 I thought that where we put America first.

2:15:33 That's my definition of sane.

2:15:34 I thought we would end our involvement in the war in Ukraine.

2:15:38 I thought we would release all the Epstein files and indict some

2:15:44 of those so um and those are all the things I'm still fighting for.

2:15:49 Do you feel like there's more corruption now than there was?

2:15:53 Oh, what is corruption?

2:15:55 Well, I don't know.

2:15:57 It's using the power of the government,

2:16:01 in this case the federal government to advantage

2:16:03 your business over others or using say foreign policy like

2:16:07 the idea that our foreign policy might be used

2:16:11 by donors to make money for themselves is a shocking idea.

2:16:17 I think the conflicts of interest are are increasing and not um

2:16:26 adequately disclosed and that the line

2:16:29 between business and government is becoming blurred.

2:16:31 Let me give you an example.

2:16:33 The government's taken a 10% stake in Intel

2:16:36 and they're bragging that they're making money on this.

2:16:39 I remember when they they took a stake

2:16:42 in General Motors and then bragged the same thing.

2:16:46 Um the problem once you co-mingle government

2:16:49 ownership and private ownership is that the government

2:16:52 is now predisposed to see that company succeed

2:16:55 over the companies that haven't given them ownership.

2:16:58 In fact, the reputation of the person whose name is on the ballot

2:17:03 is at stake if the company does well um or doesn't do well.

2:17:08 And so if there's any preferences that can

2:17:11 be given in um in contracts with the government,

2:17:15 in permits to make buildings, in trade deals,

2:17:19 then they go to that company that the government has a stake in.

2:17:25 I it's fundamentally unamerican.

2:17:27 And I think we're seeing I know we're seeing more of that.

2:17:30 And I don't think we should embrace it.

2:17:32 I think we should reject it.

2:17:34 I had concerns um at the beginning of January when the US government

2:17:40 overthrew Maduro and arrested him and his wife and brought them to New York.

2:17:43 I predict he will not testify in open court because that would

2:17:46 not be good for the US government if he did that.

2:17:49 But um but whatever that happened and then there was

2:17:53 this scramble to get rich off the oil assets of Venezuela.

2:17:58 And I noticed that one of the people who's funding the campaign against you now,

2:18:03 Paul Singer, one of the richest people in the world already,

2:18:06 always eager to get richer for some reason, uh,

2:18:08 was involved in a Venezuela related business

2:18:12 deal shortly before that in that exercise.

2:18:17 Am I misremembering this?

2:18:18 No, this is the one exception.

2:18:19 This is why I have to say 95%

2:18:21 of the money motivated against me is because of Israel there.

2:18:25 I've got to reserve 5% for Paul Singer in Venezuela.

2:18:28 He's known for buying troubled assets, distressed assets.

2:18:33 Um, and then a lot of times destroying the company

2:18:39 or leveraging the company to get things or the country.

2:18:44 Yes, big player in this.

2:18:46 And um it should not be lost

2:18:49 on the voters in Kentucky that this billionaire bought SIGO,

2:18:54 which was the formerly nationalized oil company

2:18:57 of Venezuela for pennies on the dollar

2:19:01 and completed that transaction just a few weeks before we invaded Venezuela.

2:19:06 And the, you know, it was such a good

2:19:10 deal to get this company because it looks like, well,