Latest / Drawn of History / Ro Khanna _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _591(M4A_128K)

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Ro Khanna _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _591(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

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  Speaker 1: California, we've got some new tour dates for you. I'll
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: be in Los Angeles on August 14th at the Dolby Theater,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Anaheim on August 16th at the Honda Center, and Oceanside
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: on August 17th at Front Wave Arena. Get your tickets
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: early this Thursday, June 19th with code RATKING, 10 a.m.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: local time. General on sale begins Friday, June 20th. Get
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: your tickets only at theovon.com slash T-O-U-R. Please avoid any
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: scalper sites. And thank you so much. This is the
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Return of the Rat Tour. Almost over. I promise it's
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: almost over. And thank you guys so much for all
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the support. Today's guest is a United States congressman from
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  Speaker 1: California's 17th district. That is Silicon Valley. He's from Philadelphia.
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  Speaker 1: His parents immigrated from India. He worked with Bernie Sanders.
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  Speaker 1: He was his co-chair on Sanders' presidential campaign in 2020.
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  Speaker 1: I'm grateful for his time. He's a member of the
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  Speaker 1: Democratic Party. Today's guest is Congressman Ro Khanna. Ro Khanna.
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  Speaker 1: Is that right?
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  Speaker 2: That's right. Perfect.
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  Speaker 1: Nice. Thank you for coming in today, man. Thanks for
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  Speaker 1: meeting up and just being willing to come and chat.
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  Speaker 1: You are Indian? Your family is Indian?
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  Speaker 2: Indian heritage, yeah. My parents immigrated from India. My grandfather, actually,
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  Speaker 2: Amarnath Vidyalankar, spent years in jail fighting for India's independence
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  Speaker 2: as part of Gandhi's independence movement. And then my parents
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  Speaker 2: came and settled in Philadelphia. That's where I was born.
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  Speaker 1: Do a lot of Indian people– is that a– you
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  Speaker 1: know how some places in America are certain like kind
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  Speaker 1: of spots where people start to come? Is that a
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  Speaker 1: popular place that a lot of Indian people have gone
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  Speaker 1: to over the years?
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  Speaker 2: You know, where I grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania,
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  Speaker 2: there were a few Indian families, but it was 99
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  Speaker 2: percent white. the bigger places are New Jersey. Have you
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  Speaker 2: ever been to Edison, New Jersey?
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  Speaker 1: I don't think so.
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  Speaker 2: Edison, it's got a lot of Indian food. Have you
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  Speaker 2: eaten Indian food?
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I've had some good Indian food.
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  Speaker 2: What's your favorite dish?
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  Speaker 1: I think it's like the one, it's like where you
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  Speaker 1: all sit in a circle and everybody kind of like
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  Speaker 1: catches a cold together or whatever. Catches a cold? No,
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  Speaker 1: I just mean like everybody's like kind of sharing off
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  Speaker 1: of the same thing. Yeah, it is a very sure thing.
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  Speaker 2: You got to come to Fremont sometime in California. That's
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  Speaker 2: the best Indian food in the... in the country, but Fremont,
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  Speaker 2: Silicon Valley, a lot of Indian families, New York, New Jersey.
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  Speaker 2: You know, but my upbringing was interesting because I was
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  Speaker 2: one of the few Indian kids growing up in Pennsylvania. And,
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  Speaker 2: you know, I grew up though with a lot of
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  Speaker 2: people who, teachers who believed in me, little league coaches
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  Speaker 2: who believed in me. And at times I would get
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  Speaker 2: teased being Indian, but by and large, it made me
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  Speaker 2: very hopeful about the country.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, man. Well, thanks. I know we wanted to talk about,
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  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think, I actually wrote some questions down
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  Speaker 1: today because I feel.
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  Speaker 2: Like it's important. This is like meet the press. You're
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  Speaker 2: on a different level. I thought, you know, the thing
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  Speaker 2: I love about your show is it's kind of just
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  Speaker 2: you talking like a regular person.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe you're right. Should I put these away, you think?
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  Speaker 1: I mean, no, you can give it a try.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: I think, you know why? I think this is what
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  Speaker 1: I realized. I was like, Man, sometimes I have conversations
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  Speaker 1: with people that I want to be able to get
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  Speaker 1: more information from, and I can't remember everything, right?
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  Speaker 2: But you know what the thing about you is? I'm
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  Speaker 2: not saying this to flatter you. A lot of times
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  Speaker 2: you'll ask questions, and they're like deeper and smarter than
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  Speaker 2: some of the Sunday talk show hosts. And I think
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  Speaker 2: it's because you actually talk to real people. And it's
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  Speaker 2: sort of like, well, how does this affect my buddy?
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  Speaker 2: How does this affect real people? So you could give
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  Speaker 2: it a try. We'll do a mix.
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  Speaker 1: How about this? I know how we got in touch
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  Speaker 1: is you and I have similar thoughts on different topics online. Well,
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  Speaker 1: let's just start with Iran or Iran. People say it differently.
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  Speaker 1: But do you think we're headed into World War III here?
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  Speaker 1: What do you think is going on?
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  Speaker 2: I'm really concerned. I'm fearful. We have a– possibility where
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  Speaker 2: we're going to blunder into another war in the Middle East.
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  Speaker 2: And just today, actually, to make some news, Thomas Massey,
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  Speaker 2: who is a principled Republican and myself, introduced a war
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  Speaker 2: powers resolution saying that the president should not get into
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  Speaker 2: a war with Iran without coming to Congress. You know,
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  Speaker 2: the president, to his credit, ran against the war in Iraq.
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  Speaker 2: He ran saying, I don't want any wars. And the
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  Speaker 2: reality is that if we strike Iran, they start hitting
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  Speaker 2: us back and hitting our troops in the Middle East,
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  Speaker 2: terrorist activity. That's going to cost this country a lot
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  Speaker 2: of money that should be being spent here at home.
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  Speaker 2: It's going to mean people could die who are serving
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  Speaker 2: the country.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Well, let's look at this bill you guys
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  Speaker 1: were thinking about. What is it called?
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  Speaker 2: It's called the War Powers Resolution to Stop a War
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  Speaker 2: in Iran, which basically says before the president does anything
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  Speaker 2: to go into war, With Iran, he's got to get
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  Speaker 2: a vote in Congress.
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  Speaker 1: And how long does that take, though, like usually to
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  Speaker 1: get a vote in Congress? Is there a certain period
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  Speaker 1: of time? Can they do it in 24 hours? It
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  Speaker 1: takes weeks or what? They could.
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  Speaker 2: It's the decision of the Speaker of the House when
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  Speaker 2: he can bring it. He has to bring it within
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  Speaker 2: 15 days. But what we want is today. But by
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  Speaker 2: the way, you know, there are a lot of Trump
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  Speaker 2: supporters who are telling him, don't go into this war.
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  Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, Dave Smith was talking about it. He's a political–
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  Speaker 1: he's a comedian who also talks a lot about politics. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: I think this is a horrible idea. And yeah, people say, well,
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  Speaker 1: you don't know a ton about the Middle East. I'm like,
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  Speaker 1: that's fine. I don't want people I know– My friends
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  Speaker 1: getting called up. I don't want the children of my
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  Speaker 1: friends getting called over to die. I don't even understand
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  Speaker 1: how it's an option. The only reason I even kind
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  Speaker 1: of want it to be possible is... to give is
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  Speaker 1: that if Israel like goes to war with Iran, then it'll,
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  Speaker 1: they'll at least stop killing Palestinian people for a day
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  Speaker 1: or two. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like that's
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  Speaker 1: like my own, it's like at least point the guns
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  Speaker 1: that way, you know, kind of, that's where some of
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  Speaker 1: my thoughts are.
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  Speaker 2: Well, you've been such a courageous voice on, on Gaza.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, you look at what's going on there, right? 55,000
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  Speaker 2: people killed. Now Israel says some terrorists and they're right.
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  Speaker 2: Some terrorists, but most of them, women and children.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: You've got 130,000 people injured. You've got over 600,000 kids
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  Speaker 2: who are not in school there. You've got the entire
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  Speaker 2: population of Gaza being forced into a corner, southern corner
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  Speaker 2: of Gaza. And then you've got over 400,000 people who
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  Speaker 2: are starving, who don't have enough food to to live
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  Speaker 2: a decent life.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the saddest part, I feel like, is you
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  Speaker 1: see this and you're like, somebody should come help them.
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  Speaker 1: That's my first thought a lot of times. And then
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  Speaker 1: the saddest thought for me after that is, we should
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  Speaker 1: come help. Like, it feels like America is the group
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  Speaker 1: that would go to help that situation usually.
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  Speaker 2: That's, we're the good guys, right? I mean, we were
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  Speaker 2: the good guys in World War II. We saved the
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  Speaker 2: world from Nazism. We were the good guys in the
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  Speaker 2: Cold War. We stood up the Soviet Union. People want
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  Speaker 2: to think that we are the good guys. Why are
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  Speaker 2: we helping Netanyahu in the killing of children, women, and
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  Speaker 2: so many Palestinian civilians? Now, look, Israel was hard hit
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  Speaker 2: October 7th. I'm sure, like many people, you thought that
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  Speaker 2: was horrific, the October 7th attack.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And neither of us have any sympathy for Hamas. They're
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  Speaker 2: a terrorist group. But what happened is I supported initially
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  Speaker 2: Israel saying, go get those terrorists who committed those horrific
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  Speaker 2: attacks on October 7th. But within three months, they had
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  Speaker 2: destroyed a lot of Hamas. What now is happening, over
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  Speaker 2: two years later, they're still going and bombing. And they're
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  Speaker 2: bombing because Ben-Gavir— And Smoltlich, two of the people in
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  Speaker 2: Netanyahu's cabinet, are saying, don't stop the war. Even though
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  Speaker 2: they know that you can't bomb and eradicate Hamas. They
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  Speaker 2: haven't been able to do it. And the only thing
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  Speaker 2: that's happening is that civilians are getting killed. And Israel
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  Speaker 2: actually is becoming less popular in that region. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: I was in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. They're losing support.
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  Speaker 1: So why is it? Netanyahu trying to drag us into it.
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  Speaker 1: What do you think that relationship is like between him
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  Speaker 1: and Donald Trump?
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  Speaker 2: So I think Donald Trump actually initially stood up to
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  Speaker 2: Netanyahu because he wanted to bring this war to a close.
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  Speaker 2: And he didn't want to get dragged in initially to
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  Speaker 2: a war in Iran. I mean, you know what Trump's
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  Speaker 2: courage was while he became president in 2016? Do you
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  Speaker 2: remember the Republican stage and they all asked, are you
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  Speaker 2: for the Iraq war? And Jeb Bush, who was George
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  Speaker 2: Bush's brother, wasn't willing to say that his brother made
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  Speaker 2: a mistake.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. He's a little oil bunny.
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  Speaker 2: You know, and Donald Trump, to his credit, stood up
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  Speaker 2: on a Republican stage and said the Iraq war was
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  Speaker 2: a disaster. I think that's how he became president. And
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  Speaker 2: he ran saying, I want to be a president who
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  Speaker 2: ends these wars. I really believe that's what he thought
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  Speaker 2: at the time.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, well, sure. Well, I think recently, you know, we're
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  Speaker 1: doing OK without the notes so far, huh?
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  Speaker 2: You're doing great.
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  Speaker 1: OK.
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  Speaker 2: I wish I wish people had more common sense. like you,
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  Speaker 2: than the people who are making this foreign policy establishment. Actually,
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  Speaker 2: my recommendation is that before Donald Trump makes a decision,
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  Speaker 2: he needs to have a conversation with you. Oh, God. No, well,
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  Speaker 2: to remind him, because I, you know, I watched your
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  Speaker 2: actually clip with him during the presidential campaign. And I said,
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  Speaker 2: you made him the most human that I've actually seen him.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, your conversation with him about his brother and
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Al calls him and then he asks you, what was
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: it like for you to have cocaine and your addiction?
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  Speaker 2: And I thought, well, this is like him having a
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  Speaker 2: normal conversation.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it felt pretty normal.
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  Speaker 2: And so, you know, but I think, do you know anyone, Theo,
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  Speaker 2: in your life who's like, yeah, we should go out
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  Speaker 2: and go to war with Iran? Like any of the
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  Speaker 2: folks you talk to?
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  Speaker 1: Nobody. Even like hardhead, you know, like even guys who
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  Speaker 1: like Navy, former Navy, none of them. Nobody is saying yes.
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  Speaker 1: And I felt like the biggest thing that's, I mean,
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  Speaker 1: there's so many things right now. And it's like, that
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  Speaker 1: I feel like in the world that are kind of
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: stressing people and making people nervous. Um, but one of
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  Speaker 1: the things is I felt like it was supposed to
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  Speaker 1: be America first. Like we're focusing on like, what are
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  Speaker 1: we doing to get things back into America?
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: To like increase like the purpose of being an American
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  Speaker 1: to refill, like our hearts with blood and like, and,
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  Speaker 1: and make us feel something again here and make us
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  Speaker 1: be excited about being an American, right? And I felt
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  Speaker 1: like that was what a lot of the energy was for.
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  Speaker 1: And then now that we're caught up here and it
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  Speaker 1: feels like we are just working for Israel, I think
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  Speaker 1: to a lot of people, it's, I don't know, you
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  Speaker 1: just really start to feel very disillusioned pretty quickly. And
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  Speaker 1: I don't mean disillusioned in people. I don't mean disillusioned
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  Speaker 1: in like the human beings. but this disillusioned in our leaders, right?
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  Speaker 1: You start to feel like, I don't know, at one point,
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  Speaker 1: neither one of these parties is helping us.
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  Speaker 2: Well, they both seem like parties that have gotten us
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  Speaker 2: into war. I mean, $ 6 trillion it cost us into
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  Speaker 2: Iraq and Afghanistan. And we need now an anti-war movement
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  Speaker 2: in this country. And I don't think it has to
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  Speaker 2: be Democrat or Republican. I think Americans are sick of war.
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  Speaker 2: Here are the two things I think we could do. Look,
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  Speaker 2: on how do you end the war in Gaza?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. How do you, yeah, what
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  Speaker 1: would you do to curtail things right now in Gaza?
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  Speaker 1: Do you think they're really going to aim for like
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  Speaker 1: a two-party state over there? To me, it looks like
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  Speaker 1: they're just going to try to sweep these people into
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  Speaker 1: the ocean, you know? Which I hate to say that.
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  Speaker 2: The problem is you've got Netanyahu who is listening to
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  Speaker 2: his right wing, right? Ben-Gavir and Smoltlich. These are two guys.
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  Speaker 2: Smoltlich is the other guy's name? Smoltlich. Smoltlich.
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  Speaker 1: Smoltlich, bring him up. There he is, Smoltlich. Zalo Smoltlich, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And these guys are basically telling Netanyahu that if you
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: stop bombing Gaza until all of Hamas is killed, that
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  Speaker 2: we won't support you for prime minister so so netanyahu
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  Speaker 2: stops he stops being prime minister oh i see.
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  Speaker 1: What you're saying so he's in a bit of a
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  Speaker 1: catch-22 he's in a catch-22 but why don't i don't
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  Speaker 1: understand if they're because you always hear great things about
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  Speaker 1: the israeli military right the idf you always hear like
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  Speaker 1: how um amazing they are and i've met a lot
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  Speaker 1: of former people that have been in it and um
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  Speaker 1: guys who were like in the krav maga some really
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  Speaker 1: talented um warriors really But then why not send like
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  Speaker 1: your Navy SEALs to get the actual Hamas people? I
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  Speaker 1: don't understand this. If you're so precise, then what is
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  Speaker 1: this– you're bug spraying these people.
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  Speaker 2: They got them in the first three months. They destroyed
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  Speaker 2: most of Hamas' military capability. But the reality is Hamas
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  Speaker 2: is both a military movement but it's also partly a
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  Speaker 2: political movement.
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  Speaker 1: I mean there are people– Some people in Palestine elected
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  Speaker 1: Hamas because they thought they needed a desperate political party. Exactly.
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  Speaker 2: Right. So then the question is, well, what do you do?
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  Speaker 2: Because I agree with you that Hamas can't be governing Gaza.
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  Speaker 2: And so there is a solution. And the solution is
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  Speaker 2: the president, Donald Trump, can call Netanyahu. He says, OK,
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  Speaker 2: enough with the bombing. You know, we're giving them right
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  Speaker 2: now 2000 pound bombs. to hit these civilians. We're giving them.
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  Speaker 1: There's a video the other day. Sorry to interrupt you, bro. No, please.
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  Speaker 1: Can you see if you can pull it up, Trevor?
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: There's a video of a child picking up the casing
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: of a missile and reading it, I think. See if
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: you find that. Yeah, we can't find it. That's okay.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Do you think there's any chance of Palestine getting its
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: land back there?
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  Speaker 2: I do. But first of all, I mean, you talked
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: about this. child getting a missile. I mean, how would
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: it make you feel that our tax dollars actually were
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: paying for a lot of the missiles and the weapons
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: that are being used to now kill Palestinians?
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  Speaker 1: I agree. I think we've given them $ 12 billion this year,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Israel allegedly. Can you look up what amount of war
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: materials that we've given them, Trevin? United States has provided
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: significant military aid to Israel throughout 2025. Uh, The Trump administration,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: which took office in January 2025, has approved nearly $ 12
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: billion in major foreign military sales to Israel. This includes
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: nearly a $ 3 billion arms sale. Does that mean we're
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: selling them to them?
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: We're selling part of them to them, and then we've
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: also given aid. Now, I voted against the offensive weapons
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: aid about last year, but we approved it. So some
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: of it is in aid. Some of it is in sales.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Trump is giving them 2,000-pound bombs that they can be using.
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  Speaker 2: So here's, though, what I think that I'm hoping he
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: or others may be listening to this because your voice
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: really matters because you know a lot of people who
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: voted for him. And they voted for him because they
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: wanted American patriotism. They wanted to focus on building our
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: industrial base. They wanted us out of these wars. Donald
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: Trump can call Netanyahu and he says, enough. We're not
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: going to be giving you more offensive weapons anymore. to
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: kill more civilians in Gaza. But here's what I'm going
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  Speaker 2: to do. I'm going to convene Saudi Arabia. I'm going
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: to convene Jordan.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to- What does convene mean, sorry?
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Convene mean bring them together.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: Bring them together. That's it. We're going to get the
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Arab states together. Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, people in Palestine, Fatah, Israel,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: the United States. And we're going to say we need
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: a new government in Gaza. It can't be Hamas. You know,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Hamas is a terrorist organization. We're going to get rid
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: of Hamas. And we're going to make sure that this
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: new government has Palestinian voices, but also has Saudi, Jordan,
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  Speaker 2: Egypt part of it to make it secure so that
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: they don't attack Israel. Because Saudi doesn't want to attack Israel.
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  Speaker 2: You know, he could win the Nobel Prize. You know,
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: he wants to always win the Nobel Prize.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump?
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump could win the Nobel Prize.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: How could he win it, do you think, Rob?
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: I think if he comes in and he says to Netanyahu, stop.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Stop this.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: I'm actually the president who's going to bring peace. And
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: here's how we're going to do it. It's not just
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: going to be Israel, the United States and Palestine, because
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: we agree Hamas can't be anywhere running Gaza. I mean,
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Hamas has called for the destruction of Israel. We have
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: to stand for Israel's right to exist as a Jewish
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: democratic state. I mean, that is a principle we have
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: to respect. But we're going to get Saudi Arabia.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: And they have to respect Palestine's right to exist.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: They have to respect Palestine's right to self-determination. and have
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: a Palestinian state in Gaza and in the West Bank.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: And you can get those two states. And with land swaps,
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: you could actually make it that even a lot of
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: the settlers are still going to be able to stay
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: in some of the places. I mean, you could get
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: to a lot of the deal we know that needs
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: to happen. But Trump has a good relationship with the Saudis.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: We have a good relationship with Jordan. We've got a
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: good relationship with Egypt. Get all of these countries on board.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: And say, okay, what is the new Palestinian leadership going
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: to look like? Saudi, Egypt, Jordan, are you going to
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: guarantee- Qatar too. Qatar.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: My boys over there. I was just over there, man.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: They had us all dressed up like a bunch of
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: You were in Qatar?
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: What were you doing in Qatar?
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: They had me come and perform for the troops. Wow.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: It was really great. It was pretty special. But sorry,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: I interrupted you just to get a joke in, but-
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: also was excited and had a great time there. They
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: really treated me very nice. People thought I was a spy.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I thought maybe they were going to.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Well, you could be part of this whole Middle East plan.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Maybe you'll go perform if they get a state there.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, look, what bothers me is that we know
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: what we need to do.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Right. So why is Trump afraid? Is Donald Trump afraid
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: of Netanyahu? I don't understand that. Because Trump certainly feels
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: like he is a guy who- does not seem afraid
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: to say what he wants to say.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: I don't think he, I don't know what it is.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Cause I, I, I want Trump to do the right thing.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Like I want him to start to end the war
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: in Gaza to actually figure out how we get peace there.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: And I think he could, he could, if he picks
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: up the phone and he says, Netanyahu, you're done. Netanyahu
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: is going to stop the bombing. And then Netanyahu is
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: going to say, OK, but we got Hamas. I can't
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: stay here with Hamas. And Trump can say, OK, I'm
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: going to help you get rid of Hamas. But you
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: can't keep bombing and killing women and children. That's not
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: getting rid of Hamas.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's freaking crazy, dude. I mean, it's just like.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: And so you get Egypt. You get Jordan. You get
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia. I call it the 23-state solution. You get
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: all of those Arab states.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Put Mississippi. Dude, I'll tell you this. We can give
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Mississippi to Palestine. I've been saying that for 15 years.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Have them come over. Have Mississippi.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Have Mississippi?
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Have the Palestinian people come and move there if
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: they want.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but they want Palestine, right?
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: I understand. And I do understand that. I was just
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: trying to give them something that– I think everybody could
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: you know because mississippi could use um an economic boom
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: you know they could use i think some uh you're.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: For palestinian immigrants coming maybe.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah well that's what i'm saying with palestinian with palestinian
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: immigrants coming it would just kind of like add a
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: new texture to that whole state i think it needs
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: like a rebirth of uh of thought you know they
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: have a lot of great arts there but i think they.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Had faulkner Oh, yeah.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: They had some great– they had Eudora Welty. They had Faulkner.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: They had Jackson Dart. I mean they've got some great
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Morgan Freeman. I mean those are easy ones, some of them.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: But no, I'm just saying if they had the Palestinians there,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: it would be interesting. So I've just always thought that
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: that would be interesting.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: But I think your voice on this really matters because
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: no one sees you as sort of like some campus
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: activist shutting down university buildings. You're talking to regular people.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: You're talking to– people who are truck drivers and blue
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: collar workers. And you're saying, you know what? I'm always
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: for the little guy. From the stuff I've seen about you,
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: if there's like one Theo Vaughn political philosophy, it seems
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: like you're for the people who are being bullied. You're
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: for the people who are kind of shut out. And
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: that's how you're seeing this Palestinian issue. It's not because you're,
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's not Jewish or Palestinian or Muslim. It's like,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: how can we not be for both people? And now
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: you're the most powerful country in the world. And a
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: lot of people, you know, supported Donald Trump. And he
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: has an opportunity to bring the suffering to the end
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: and make peace.
• 21:13
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  Speaker 1: it happen. That's right. shopify.com slash Theo. You know what
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: I realized the other day? Cause I've been thinking a
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: lot about like voice, right? Yeah. Like what does it
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: mean to have a voice? And I don't mean like
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: me having a voice in the world, but just to
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: even have a sound that comes out of my throat,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: that means something that's connected to my heart or to
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: my feelings or to my thoughts. Um, you know, and
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: it's just, it's, you know, it's a gift. It's interesting
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: to have. And then I, I, what it feels like
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: when you are afraid to speak, right? Like I feel
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: like my whole life when I was a kid, I
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: was just, I just, I wanted to have a voice
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: for myself. You know, I just never had a voice.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: We were in pretty traumatic place when I was a kid.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: And so I just never had, I couldn't even, I
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: didn't even have any feelings to put together to share
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: what I wanted to share. Right. So I think like, um,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Like I'll just, I'll always go for the underdog. I
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: think that's all it is. Dude, I will have my team.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: That's kind of like your philosophy, right? Look, my team
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: will be in a series, right? A best of five.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: And if my team goes up two to one, I'll
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: start cheering for the other team. I just, for some reason,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I always cheer for the underdog. You know, I grew
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: up in Philadelphia. It was the Rocky story, right? And
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: that's the American thing. Like Rocky is the underdog.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: We're supposed to be the ones there to help. Right. Right.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: We're supposed to be the ones there to help. And
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: if your country isn't even going to do that at
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: a level that's grandiose. Right. Then what what makes you
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: want to go home and do that at your own level?
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: You know, like what you'll you'll still do that, but
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: you won't do it in feeling that you are supported
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: by your country. And yeah, I don't want people to
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: go die over there. I don't think that it doesn't
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: feel right to me. And that's okay. Some people might
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: be like, well, you're not a political pundit. I don't
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: give a shit. But you know what? I don't care
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: if I am or not. I am a human being.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: And you're a citizen.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: And I am a citizen. And some people are like, well,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: you're lucky to be a citizen. Yeah, but I'm a citizen.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm a citizen. I
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: think the Native Americans should get things back. And you
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: know what?
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Your voice hasn't been... I think part of the challenge
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: in politics is you get surrounded with so many of
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: these interest groups. You get surrounded by how you're going
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: to raise money. You get surrounded by all these foreign
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: policy thinkers.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Dude, we're working together. I didn't even realize it. Ro,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: I hate to interrupt you, but right now, my question is, Ro,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: one thing I like about you is I feel like
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: you're a black sheep. You take a lot of unpopular stances.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: That's something I really admire. One of those is not
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: accepting lobby from PACs or PACs, we hear about them
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of times. Some of my listeners, you hear
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: about these PACs. It means political action committee, right? And
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: I'm reading this. Just give me a break, guys, real quick.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: We are at a point, I believe, where a lot
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: of people are starting to see that neither party really
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: represents the people. That's the feeling that I'm hearing people say.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: I've heard Candace Owens say it, and she's very much
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: been a kind of a Republican role model, I feel like,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: or at least have some influence of that. I feel
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: like she's also kind of in a lane of her own.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Parties have been unable to keep businesses and lobbyists away
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: from politics. In 2025, lobbying was at an all-time high
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: of 4.4 billion. I believe that's a couple sites said
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: that online, the sites could be lying. How can we
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: know who is accepting lobby money? First of all, how
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: do we know that?
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: So first of all, take a guess how many lobbyists
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: there are in Washington right now, ballpark.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: 12,000.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: 10,000. That's pretty good. 10,000. They're hiding a couple thousand,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: you know it.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: 10,000. Think, there are 500 members of Congress.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: 535, right?
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Members of Congress. That's 20 to one, right? You play football,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: like imagine you got 20 people, you're wide receiver, you
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: got 20 people covering you. Now, let me give you
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: a concrete example of how this stuff works. Pharma lobbyists, right?
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Just big pharma. There are about 1,200 big pharma lobbyists.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: So it's about Two and a half to one for
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: every member of Congress. I'm sure you know people who
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: want to get some drug, prescription drugs I'm talking about,
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: and it's too much money, right? And they skip it.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Do you know folks?
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, totally I do.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: So Donald Trump, one of the good things he does
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: is he puts out an executive order and he says
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Americans shouldn't pay more for any of these prescription drugs
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: than people in other parts of the world.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: You know, I've had people who, like, go to a
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: foreign country to get the drug because they don't want
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: to pay them. They can't afford to pay the drugs here.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. One night I'm hanging out with a girl, and,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: you know, we've been on a couple dates. I thought
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: we were going to maybe smooch a little. It's 11 p.m.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: She's like, I have to drive to Mexico to get Ozempic.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not even joking. She's like, I have to drive
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: to Mexico to get Ozempic. And she's like, if I
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: leave now, the hours are best for driving there and back.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, God.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: The way to her heart was like getting her this drug.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I'm not riding with her, you know, but I definitely,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I gave her a little bit of gas money, you know,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: because I hope to see her again.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: But anyway. Anyway, it's crazy, right? I mean, we're paying
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: for all these drugs to be developed. You and I
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: pay the NIH to develop all these drugs. Then the
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: big pharma sells them at a profit of, To Americans.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: And basically, the rest of the world gets these drugs
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: at a fraction of the cost.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Right. So we're subsidizing their cost over there.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: We're subsidizing their cost. Now, someone could say, OK, Mexico
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: or some of these developing countries, fine, they should have
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: these drugs cheaper. But we're subsidizing Great Britain. We're subsidizing Japan.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: We're subsidizing Europe. These are rich countries. We're subsidizing Switzerland.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: So Donald Trump, one thing that I agree with, he
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: comes out and he says Americans shouldn't pay a higher
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: price than any other industrialized country. Yeah. I'm the first
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: congressperson actually to introduce his executive order as a law.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: I said, okay, because the executive order, you know, the
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: pharma just will sue it and tie it up in
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: court and nothing's going to happen.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because he had another one with price transparency, right? Exactly.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Where it was like all the prices of if you
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: go get an MRI, whatever it is, it needs to
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: be like a menu. Like you go to McDonald's, you
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: know how much it costs. Right. Because without a menu,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: they can just charge you later whatever they want, right?
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Which is part of the whole bait and switch of
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: the insurance system as part of the whole shell game.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: That was another executive order, but that hasn't been enacted.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: How do we get these things to actually happen? Why
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: do they stop it at executive order? Because there's always
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: this pomp and circumstance. It's an executive order, but it
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: never gets followed through.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Because it gets tied up in courts and they get
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: sued and they say, well, Congress didn't authorize it. So look,
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: I actually give Trump's on credit for putting it out there,
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: but he knows, everyone knows, it can't actually make a
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: difference until it becomes a law.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: And who sues it? The pharma companies?
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: The pharma companies sue it. They've got a whole industry
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: of lawyers, of lobbyists, and they come out and they
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: sue them. And by the way, they're making record profits.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: And they say, oh, we need this money to do
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: research and innovation. Give me a break. They have those profits.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: They're buying back their stock. They're giving out dividends. Their
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: executives are making tons of money.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. They're buying freaking Corvettes, dude. They're doing that.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: But they are. They're all probably live Corvettes, and they
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: don't care. That's the thing. They don't care. So how
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: do we stop that system, right? First of all, do
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: you believe that system can actually be stopped?
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: I do. I do, and I'll give you two examples why,
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: because we did it with big tobacco. You remember that
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: when tobacco basically had Washington, D.C. bought, and then there
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: was a campaign that said, free kids from tobacco.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Bring that up. I want to see a picture of that.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Some kid would smoke if they let them. They used to.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: There it is.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an American nonprofit membership organization
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: established in 1995 with Bill Novelli as its first president. Okay,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: so that happened in 1995, and that had an effect?
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Well, it was them. It was grassroots organizing. There was
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: a hearing in front of Congress. They brought in all
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: these tobacco executives. And basically the tobacco executives are seen
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: lying to the American public saying, yeah, we know that
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: this stuff is addictive. And that had a huge impact.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: There was laws that got passed that said, you can't
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: sell tobacco cigarettes to kids. You have to disclose the
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: addictive quality. So we stood up to big tobacco. We
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: also did it one other time in this country famously.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you know what DDT is.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: DDT, yeah, definitely. It's in the yard, brother. That's what
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: they say. It's in the grass, right?
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: You know, it's the fertilizers. And there was this woman,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: Rachel Carson, she exposed that it was hurting your health.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: It was hurting the birds. It was hurting the ecosystem.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: And that led to Congress saying, no, we're going to
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: ban DDT for a lot of different uses. We got
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: to do the same thing in standing up with pharma.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: How much money does pharma spend? $ 380 million a year.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Year.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: In lobbying? In lobbying.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Or in commercials, you mean?
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Just in lobbying.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Now, does lobbying include commercials? That means paying to congressmen
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: and reps.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: That's paying to congresspeople and reps. That's like money that
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: is going to congressmen, to representatives, to state legislators. So
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: I introduced this bill, right, saying, okay, let's do what
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump wants. Let's do what Bernie Sanders wants. Like,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: how can we disagree on this? Let's take it to
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: pharma so Americans don't pay more. I get two Republicans
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: who co-sponsor it, Representative Luna and And represented Biggs.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Bring him up. Bring up Luna and Biggs. First of all,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: and if that's not an animated series, I don't even know.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: It sounds also like it could be a rap group,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Luna and Biggs. We got to shout him. So that's
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Andy Biggs. He's a legitimate guy?
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: He's a legitimate guy. I mean, look, I mean, disagree
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: on things, but, like, he's willing to stand up for
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: what he believes.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Representative Luna, she's willing to stand up.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, dude, I was just looking at her online yesterday.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: I like her. I mean, I like what she says.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying? I like her energy.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: She has an independence. And I got a few of
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: the Democrats to be on board with this. Obviously, they
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: don't want Americans being overcharged for prescription drugs. I mean,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: this was part of Bernie's whole campaign.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: And now people are, are there also people telling you
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: that they got on board or did it come down
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: to a vote? How did it end up?
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: So right now we don't even have a, we don't
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: have a vote. We should have every single person in
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: Congress co-sponsoring this. The way Congress works is you got
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: to get to about a hundred people to co-sponsor it.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: And then the speaker calls up a vote on the issue.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: But because you got big pharma's lobbying money, well, they,
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: they're so cynical. They don't, They don't try to stop–
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: convince people to vote against it. They try to stop
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: the congresspeople from– the speaker from bringing it for a vote.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: So they would like– they would invest in Mike Johnson?
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: They'll invest not just in Mike Johnson.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: They'll invest– Is that libel or slander for saying that? No,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: I mean it's just– They would lobby with– they would
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: try to lobby Mike Johnson.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: They'll try to lobby Mike Johnson. But there's this quote
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: that I love from Dr. King. He said, attack the
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: evil system, not the individuals who happen to be caught
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: up in the evil system.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: OK, got it.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some egregious cases. The problem is the system
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: is rotten. And they are pouring money into different campaigns,
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: into different lobbyists, and basically are not going to allow
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: a vote on this because they know if there's a
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: vote and someone votes against Donald Trump and against Trump,
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: Lowering prescription drugs, the American people will be furious.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Are going to know who they are.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Are going to know who they are. Right.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: And then we can call them out by name.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: So they just don't want anyone to do it. And
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: this is how– this is the game. This is why
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: we don't get Medicare for all, why we don't have
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: health insurance. Health insurance is not that we– we haven't
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: had a vote on Medicare for all. This is why
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: we still have fossil fuel subsidies. We haven't had a
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: vote to get rid of fossil fuel subsidies. This is
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: why we still have a defense budget that is over
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: a trillion dollars. We don't get votes on cutting out
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: the excessive contracts. I mean, the game is to stop
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: the vote. And so it, let me ask you, the
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: thing I wanted to ask you actually the most in
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: this conversation, do you know people who are just like, yeah,
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: I'm done with politics because I don't think I can
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: make a difference? You know, it's just.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. I'm saying that's what I'm telling. That's what
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I've noticed in the past few months on some of
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: my favorite shows that I listened to and watch people
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: are like, oh, I see now neither. Nobody has our side.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Neither one of these groups, it feels like have our side.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: You feel like it's just all these articles. It's like, well,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: here's an article about this is going to happen. And
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: then people get in an uproar about it, but nobody,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: it's almost like it's all algorithm perfectly to the amount
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: of our attention span where it just fades out of, uh,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: like the, the zeitgeist of discussion and zeitgeist just means, uh,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: like the circle of discussion at the moment, I think. Um,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: But so it's just like, it just fades. And then
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: the next ball hits the air. You're like, oh, look
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: at that one. That's it. Transgender something, you know, that one.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Then it's like, oh, racism again. Here I am, you know,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: forget about me. And then, but it's the same after
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: a while. You just like, I've seen this show so
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: many times. I think even our DNA is sick. So
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: I think you're having newborn children that are like, this
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: is fucking bullshit. Because even I think it's in our
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: DNA now how long the charade has been going on.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: And that's where I see people are like at a
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: point where they're just at a loss. How can that
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: be stopped? How can that sort of thing actually be stopped?
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Can we do anything or does it have to fall
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: on our representatives?
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: The representatives aren't going to change things. And this is
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: this is my biggest concern for the country that people
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: keep getting disillusioned. They're like, I can't change anything. I'm
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: just going to focus on my own life. Every two years,
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: every four years, you get congresspeople, presidents saying they're going
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: to do something. They do some executive order. It gets
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: tied up in courts. Big pharma blocks any reform. And
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: what's the point, right? And then the problem is that
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: the less people get engaged, the more power these lobbyists
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: and moneyed interests have because they don't want the engagement. No.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: They're perfectly fine with the system. And they're like, okay,
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: we will keep supporting our– members of Congress and presidents
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: every four years, they'll run on change. Nothing actually changes
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: and let people get more and more dissolution. That's what's
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: going on.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. I mean, look, I believe that we've entered
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: like a privatized communism. That's what I say a lot.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what it seems like we're in.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: And you're sitting here telling me that our vote doesn't
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: even really matter. So yeah, people are getting dissolution. Like, like,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: but what do we do?
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: So, but that's why I gave that example of tobacco
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: and DDT when the country Actually mobilizes. When they're like,
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: we're done with this.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: What do we need to do? Buy a Jeep or whatever?
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the things you do is
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: look at who's taking money from these interest groups.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Okay. Is there a site that we can look at
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: that's reported?
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: OpenSecrets.org. OpenSecrets.org.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Crack that big open, cat. I know Chuck Schumer's on it.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: And everyone is.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Is that slander or not? Yeah.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: I think you're, I think you're pretty, you're well, not
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: even close to the line.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: We're not? No, we're not.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, good. Oh yeah.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: That little money monkey's taking something, but you can find
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: it on open secret site or you can find out
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: how much each person gets and from where.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: You can find out how much each. So I don't
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: take any PAC money, right? I don't take any lobbyist money,
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: but you can even find out individuals aggregated, how much
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: they're getting. And then If they're getting money, fine, but
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: then look at their voting record. Are they voting on–
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Big Pharma? Are they voting against the big insurance companies?
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: So first is just being aware. But the second thing
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: is we've got to demand that people have a vote
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: on getting lower prescription drug prices.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Who do we ask that for? From Mike Johnson?
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Mike Johnson. He's from Louisiana. He's from Louisiana.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: So I'll say it right now, Mike Johnson, why don't
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: you put the vote up? I mean, everybody wants this.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Everybody is tired of paying, of watching people.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Medical debt's the number one cause of bankruptcy in America.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: We know that. It's bipartisan, right? It means both partisans
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: like it.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, Trump, it's Trump's bill. I mean, Trump's
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: executive bill.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Just help us, dude. Give us something. You know what
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: I'm saying?
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Two things he could do a vote on. One is
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: stopping the war in Iran. I mean, Massey and my bill,
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: he has to give us a vote on it unless
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: he plays games. And then two, let's just focus on
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: big pharma, getting big pharma.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's start with one lobby. Let's start with one
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: big lobby. I think it's just, it's like, give us something, man.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: I was like, cause you know what I'm saying? He's
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: from Louisiana. So like that, Louisiana is a state where
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: it's like, it's mostly about like people, right? Peer to peer.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: It's like, it's like the state, it doesn't have a
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: lot of, I don't think we have one top, we
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: don't have one fortune 500 company. I don't think in
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: the whole state, maybe Entergy, but I think that they left.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: So we're a low-income state, but the one thing that
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: we do have is each other's backs, right? And I
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: just can't imagine that Mr. Johnson wouldn't bring this to
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: the floor. To the floor, is that it?
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: To the floor, yeah.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Bring it to the floor, Mike. You know what I'm saying, bro?
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: People are sick. People are sick, man. People are dying.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: You don't want to bring it to the floor? I
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: think that's fucking bullshit. Now, if you are bringing it
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: to the floor and Rose not telling me the truth,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: then I'm sorry, Mike, right? I'm sorry, dude.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: And I got a good relationship with Mike Johnson.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Mike's awesome.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: But someone has just got to say, okay.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: He's a cool guy. I'm done with it. But he's
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: got keys to the janitor's closet and it's time to
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: fucking get the, it's time to get the broom out
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: and sweep this shit out from under the rug. That's
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: what I feel like.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: And you know what will happen? If there's one time
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: we take on one of these lobbying groups, whether it's
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: big pharma.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: The rest will get scared. Big insurance, big.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: The rest get scared. And it's going to give hope
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: to this country. Yeah, my voice matters. Yeah, I can
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: get involved. Yeah, I can bring change. I mean, we
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: have been voting for change in this country since Barack Obama.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: Every four years, every two years, like kick him out.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: Let's try someone else.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: And no one. Yeah, we put in a mixed guy.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like, damn, we got an Indian guy
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: showing up.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: They're trying everything. They're even trying the Indian guy. I mean,
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: you know, the country is like, who do we need?
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: They don't care about Indian black woman. They're just like,
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: get me someone who's going to actually bring change.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: It's like, give me somebody with some balls. That's one
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: reason why I support a lot of trans stuff. Cause
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: I'm like, and maybe one of these women will have
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: enough balls on them to fucking get us to where
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: we need to be. Like if, if that's where we're at,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: where we have to attach balls to an emotional sense
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: of empathy that a lot of times in a woman,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: and that's who we need to get us over this
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: hill of bullshit that we keep climbing up. then maybe
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: that's what we need, you know? And you know what?
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: It struck me when you said Louisiana doesn't have one
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Fortune 500 company. You know, I represent Silicon Valley. You know,
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: in my district.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Hold on.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: You know, my district. Hold on.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Dude, we're about to go in.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: You and I spoke on the phone about, this is crazy, bro.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: Did you read this somehow?
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Which?
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Are you that Oz mentalist guy?
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: I mean.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: No, you're not.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: I'm not.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Sorry.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: It said, and I'm sorry, I'm going back to my notes.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: And thank you, man, for talking about this stuff with me, man.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: It even helps just like, one thing I noticed, even
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: we spoke on the phone the other night, man. And
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: it just like, after I got on the phone with you,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: I felt a little better. I was like, at least
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: I have somebody to talk about this with. Dude, yesterday
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I'm leaving this restaurant and a guy comes up to me.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: He's missing a tooth or he was missing one. And
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: he was like, hey man, thanks for speaking up about
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Palestine stuff. And I was like, I said, well, I don't, honestly,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know a ton about it. It's just kind
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: of how I feel. And he goes, well, I think
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of people are just afraid to speak up.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: They're afraid if they speak against Israel that they're going
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: to be labeled an anti-Semite. And I was like, oh, no.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I said, I understand that, but I think that's just
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: a verbal trap. I said, you can– like I have
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: tons of Jewish friends that I talk to every day,
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: and I don't think what Yet and Yahoo is doing
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: is good.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: But anyway– 90% of the foreign policy blob that has
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: gotten us into all these wars and that has compromised
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: our humanity. There's a reason the founders wanted Congress to
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: be making decisions about war and peace. They trusted the
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: American people, right? Like the kings of the past, when
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: the founders were there, they would just do wars for
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: their own glory. And the American people were really, the
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: founders were really suspicious of that. And so they said,
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: you know what? We actually trust the farmers and the
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: people in factories and ordinary Americans not to get us
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: into all this stuff. And they trusted people like you, Theo.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: And the problem is that your voice has gotten out
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: of Washington and not central to it. But now we've
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: got all these podcasts and they can't ignore you. So
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: good for you to try to take back citizen voices.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: That's what this country was supposed to be.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, thanks, man. I can't, sometimes I'm like, what
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: the fuck do I have to do with anything, dude?
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: That's a shit that like, I'm like, good God.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: You're a citizen.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Right, now that I agree with. Who hasn't been corrupted?
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: But then you're just shocked when you're like, this me? Like, it's,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: I think it just always blows my mind.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: I think the test in politics is like pretty simple.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: There are two basic tests to politics. Do you believe
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: that the American people are smarter and wiser and have
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: good values? Or do you believe in like a bunch
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: of experts and elites? Like I fundamentally believe like if
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: we just allowed and listened to people, normal people, we'd
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: be much better off in this country. And the second
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: is like do you love and believe in this country?
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: And I do. I think we're a good country. I
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: think we're the good guys. Most Americans want to be
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: the good guys. And like we've gotten away from that
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: because we've got so many intermediate moneyed interests, lobbying interests,
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: PhD foreign policy experts who are corrupting the process.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. They're corrupt, man. They're bought and paid for.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: They're spies. They're spies. And the sick part is to me,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: they're just killing themselves. They're killing the future of their
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: children's imagination. Think of all the little things that you
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: are hampering, but then I guess, you know, money, you know,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: when you see things happen with money and it's hard to, to,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: to prevent. So like you said, don't point at the person,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: try and point at the overall issue. Um, But I
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: love that opensecret.org or com.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: Opensecrets.org. They can do an analysis on everyone. They can
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: do it on me. They can do it– and it's
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: not like people– there's no one who's perfect in American politics.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Let's look at Mike Johnson.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: I'll look at him right now. He's not going to
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: be happy about it. I'm sorry, Mike. He's a good man.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: He's a man of faith. But like the whole point
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: is like maybe he ends up– actually putting this for
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: a vote. I mean, that would be saved, but like.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: All these packs. Imagine being fucking Paul Revere. You know
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying? That's what he has a chance to
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: be because then we could all hold these people like you,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: you fucking vote for this or you will never be
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: back in this thing again.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: Seriously.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: I think that's what people can do. Why doesn't open
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: secrets have an app that makes it really easy? Is
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: it very easy to interface for people to be able
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: to navigate the how to find out who gets what
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: and whatever? It's pretty easy.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: You can do it like that. I would look at
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: two things. One, how much money do they get from PACs?
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: Which are the PACs? How much money do they get
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: from lobbyists? And what are the industry groups? Now, if
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: they're taking money and they're still voting against those groups, fine.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: But what raises red flags is when they're taking money
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: and they're not bringing something for a vote or they're
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: voting with those industry groups.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Right. This says top contributors for 2022-23 for Mr. Johnson,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. And that gets to the vote
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: on Iran, right? That's AIPAC, right?
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: That's AIPAC. And like Massey and I have shown independence
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: on that. So, OK, bring this vote so we don't
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: get into war on Iran or and don't be beholden
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: to groups who are telling you, no, no, no. Let's
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: just go along with Netanyahu and strike Iran.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: It's fucking it's absolutely crazy. And you know what the
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: craziest thing is, is that we've had Thomas Massie's schedule
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: to come in for like a month, right?
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: He's great. He's one of the smartest members of Congress.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: He's a maverick. That's what I like. I think you
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: and him both are mavericks. That's one thing that I
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: admire about you is that you make choices that feel
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: like your own, right? and the odds that you guys
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: have a build together. And then you're here today and
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: he's coming tomorrow.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: So is he coming tomorrow? That's awesome.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: I wanted to put you on the same day. So
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: you at least get to say, Hey, but maybe, maybe
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: in the future.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: We've done stuff. We've done a lot of stuff together.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: We both have like people in our own parties who
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: get upset. Cause we, take stances that are independent. We
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: work across the aisle. But isn't that what Congress is
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: supposed to be like? I mean, when you have a
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: conversation with your buddies, do you always agree with like
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: three of them and then have three of the others
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: always disagree?
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: It's like so irrational.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: Usually like you'll agree with someone on one thing and
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: you'll disagree on something else. And yet in Congress, it's
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: like you got these two teams and they're always supposed
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: to be with their own parties. And that's not how
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: people actually are in real life. They want people who
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: just think for themselves.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I agree. And the craziest part is they're on two teams,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: but they should be playing for the same group, right?
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Team America.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Yes. And the fact that there it's like it always
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: feels the craziest part is it feels like it's you
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: as a citizen against your own against. That's what it
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: feels like now. It doesn't feel like this person. It
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: feels like that in the voting, like they're going to.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: And then it feels like it just changes once they
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: get over that hill. You never know. see them again.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Mike Johnson's a Louisiana boy and I think that he'll
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: do the right thing, man. But I could help keep
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: tabs on who votes for the right thing that they're
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: supposed to vote for because it's unbelievable. We are literally,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: it's still DDT, but it's prescription drugs and we're killing
• 49:57
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• 52:19
  Speaker 1: E O. Okay. So you and I spoke on the
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: phone about the tech lobby, right? And that was something
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: that I had never even heard the term before the
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: tech lobby. Never heard of it. Your district in California, um,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Because you're a Democratic congressman, right?
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: From California? Yeah. Your district is home to five companies
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: worth over $ 1 trillion. Yeah. That includes Apple, Google, Nvidia, Tesla,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: and Broadcom, while half the country is deindustrialized and dependent.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: You guys are– you're in part of a– you represent
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: a very special district.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: How big is that tech lobby? Who are the biggest players?
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: And are there multiple tech lobbies fighting against each other? Yeah.
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: Well, first, let me just say that part of the
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: problem in this country is that we've got $ 14 trillion
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: in my district and five companies over a trillion dollars.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: And Louisiana doesn't have a single company in the Fortune 500. Like,
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: how did we allow this to happen in America? where
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: all the wealth is piling up in Silicon.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: Valley and New York. Oh, and one, sorry. There are
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: two Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Louisiana, Entergy and Lumen Technologies.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: And I'm sorry about that, guys.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: But even that, right? You got two companies and you
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: got $ 5 trillion companies in one district. And a lot
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: of what we've got to figure out is all these
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: places like Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Lorain, Ohio, Downriver, Michigan, places totally
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: hollowed out. You go there and there's 30% hotel occupancy.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: And then they're looking at Silicon Valley making more money
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: than any time in human history in the world. Like
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: how in America did we allow this to happen?
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: It's sad. It's sad and it's unconscionable. But is there
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: a tech lobby? Yeah, there's a tech lobby. Let me
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: tell you one of the things that's been in the
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: news that I know you've discussed. Palantir, right? And the
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: contracts that they're getting, 150. $ 13 million to create this
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: database on Americans. And I, you know, I know you
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: asked someone.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I did. I asked JD Vance about Palantir because
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: I'm scared of it, right?
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: This is just on my thing. That's so crazy, dude.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: We are like, this is bananas. I asked JD Vance
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: about Palantir because I'm scared of it. I felt like
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: he gave kind of a political answer to me, right?
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Which is no judgment. I did. That's what I felt like.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: I want our listeners to know why I'm concerned. Well,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons is that Palantir got a $ 795
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: million contract with the U.S. Army for the MAVEN smart system,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: which is using artificial intelligence tools for data fusion and
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: target identification. And then a $ 30 million contract from the U.S.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Immigration and Customs Enforcement to develop an operating system that
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: identifies undocumented immigrants and tracks self-deportations. So one of the
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: things that's going on is that it feels like to
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: me that they are asking Palantir or they are, they've
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: granted Palantir the opportunity to create this overall database. And
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: that is one thing that JD did talk about. So
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: maybe he didn't give that just a political answer. He said,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: he believes that it's just an overall database where like
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: the local police department will now have them in the IRS,
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: every IRS or everything will be synced up so that
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: if you're involved in something in the world, All the
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: databases will be linked, right? Now, I felt like he
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: would maybe know more about it because he has a
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: relationship with this guy, Peter Thiel, who is one of
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: the founders of it or something. But I don't know
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: if that's true, right? And maybe he didn't give me
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: a political answer. I think it felt, I don't know.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: You know what? Maybe it's just it wasn't the exact
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: answer I wanted, right? And so that's why I'm kind
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: of framing it like that. Um, so yeah, I don't
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: want to say that it just felt, yeah, I think
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: it wasn't kind of what I wanted to hear, but
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: that's also part of diplomacy, right? It's like, I learned
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: that recently. It's like, everything is, you're not going to
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: get everything right. Nobody gets everything. But anyway, that's what
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: it said is this overall database. And to me, I'm thinking, dude,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: if they have an overall database, right. And they know every,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: they're going to know everything. to me, it feels like they,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: that they'll just have this, like all your information, your
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: bank card, your blood type. Um, they'll know if you
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: prayed this morning, they'll know just by like biometrics or whatever.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: If you've hit your knees, they'll know. Um, if you're
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: feeling hopeful, they'll know all of these things, right? Uh,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: what are things that we don't see coming from this
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: Palantir deal? Do you think that those fears are realistic?
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: What do you think? Well, I'm concerned.
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: Let me tell you what, how I see the facts.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: First of all, I don't want to, dunk on the
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: vice president, because I saw some of the interview, and
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: I love the fact that you have people here of
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: different viewpoints. But he's got a particular view. I mean,
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: Peter Thiel founded Palantir. Peter Thiel also, I mean it's
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: public record, put $ 15 million into his campaign.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about that.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: To make him a senator. So I'm not saying– I'm
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: not questioning him. I'm just saying he's got a view
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: of a relationship with Palantir and we've got to figure
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: out what are the objective facts. I mean the Palantir
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: was founded by Peter Thiel. And it was founded by CIA.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: It's In-Q-Tel, right? This is what funds it.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: CIA is what do you mean?
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: The CIA has a venture capital firm called In-Q-Tel.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: In-Q-Tel.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: They gave the money initially for Palantir. There are certain
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: things that Palantir does that are important to our country.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: They're using AI for military applications so that our fighter
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: pilots can identify targets, right? We need certain things to
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: make sure that we're the leading military in the world.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: The problem is on this database that they're creating about Americans, right?
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: And here's what they can do. They're not collecting the data.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: They keep saying, I'm a data aggregator. That means they're
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: creating the program, the software, where the government puts in
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: the data, your financial records, your health records, your employment records.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: They can buy your social media records and they put
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: it in and Palantir spits out information. Now, let me
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: give you a concrete example of of why this could
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: be dangerous. Let's say you're a comedian. You know comedians, right?
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: My guess is before you became Theo Vaughn, there were
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: times where as a comedian you did shows that made
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: you maybe $ 5, 000 a night, and maybe then you'd go
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: a while and not make anything or make $ 500, right?
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: You got good shows, bad shows.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I mean, we made $ 25, yeah, $ 100, yeah,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: for sure.
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure you still have friends who are in
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: stand-up comedy and who have good nights and bad nights. Now, Palantir,
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: this database, suddenly flags and does an algorithm. And if
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: someone's having income here and there, they say, well, is
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: this person a risk for tax evasion? And suddenly they're
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: getting off. because they're making a predictive model that stand-up
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: comedians should be making $ 70, 000 a year and this person
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: isn't disclosing their income.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Are they a risk?
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: We don't know with Palantir what their algorithm is targeting.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: Are they targeting ordinary people who have incomes.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: That are variable?
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: Or are they targeting the billionaires who are evading taxes?
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: It's just a black box. We don't know what data
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: of your friends or my friends is being collected and
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: whether they're actually creating a database. All we need to
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: do is have transparency. I have three simple things that
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: I think we should be able to get consensus around.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: Your data should not be collected without your consent. You
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: need to know what data of yours the federal government has.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: The federal government should not have any of your data
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: that they don't absolutely need to provide you a service.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: And then When Palantir, we should know what their algorithms are.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: Are they doing this to get audit people who are
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: like making 50 grand because they're accusing them of tax evasion?
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: Are they targeting their algorithms on the very rich or
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: on ordinary folks? What if you have a social media
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: post that says things that are critical of the government?
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: Is that information now the government has? It's like a
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: whole black box.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very scary. It's very scary too because what if,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Another country says, hey, Palantir, you're our friends. Why don't
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: you target these people in America so we can start
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: to bring them down, right? Why don't you start to
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: adjust their scores? Hey, why don't you make it so
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: that it makes it look like these people have already
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: paid their taxes if they haven't? You know what I'm saying?
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: There's just all these little things that could be plausible
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: based on whoever owns the information. Like whoever owns Palantir,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: whoever owns that algorithm is going to be able to
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: basically puppeteer so many things that could be possible. And
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: even if they're not doing it, there's the fear that
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: they could be doing it. There's the fear they could.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: And there are no laws right now, right? We need
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: laws saying show us your algorithms. Have an audit of
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: the algorithms. Who are you targeting? How do we make
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: sure that you're not using this in a negative way?
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: And basically like Americans should know what data people have
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: about this.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: I agree. I agree with you 100%, man. And I
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: want to say also, I don't want a company like
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Palantir to think you're bullying me or you're doing this
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: or that. They just happen to be the company that
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: has been picked. And it's a scary time. It's already
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: so scary with technology, everything happening so fast. It's spooky.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: And you have a nuanced view. Look, I have a
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: nuanced view. There's things that Palantir does that are important
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: for a military. Like just saying, oh, Palantir is all
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: bad would be... unfair to what they're doing on the pandemic.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: They helped with distribution or what they've done on the military.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: The point is, though, this American database building is scary
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: and trying to predict whether someone is being a tax
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: delinquent or not, trying to predict if they're going to
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: be a financial risk, trying to figure out a profile
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: on them. And what we need, I really blame the
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: lawmakers because what we need is the laws to protect
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: people's privacy, to protect people's data. like to protect the
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: the use of these algorithms.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah i agree 100 and we're going to get to
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: that i know you have the the internet bill of
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: rights and so we're going to get to that in
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: a second um yeah this is the push i want
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: to say this the push has put a key palantir
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: product called foundry into at least four federal agencies um
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: including dhs hhs uh And others. Widely adopting Foundry, which
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: And that's what J.D. Vance said when he was here, right?
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: He was saying– and I'm reading that off of the
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: New York Times, give or take what you think about them.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: But– Uh, that's what JD Vance had said that he
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: thought it was just this overall compiling, this kind of
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: aggregating of information, right? He didn't think it would get
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: super specific. So I do, you know, I don't think he,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: it felt a little politically, but that also could just
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: be what he exactly believes. And that could be exactly
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: what's happening. I think there's just a lot of fear
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: with it. A lot of it says in here also
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: not just a pipe dream. The Trump administration has already
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: amount of their student debt, medical claims, disability status. et cetera.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: So this will just, I mean, I think this whole
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: thing just goes further down that line. And I don't even,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: of just like knowing everything about everyone. And I don't
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: even think that it's Republican or Democrat. I just think
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: it's where we are in time right now with technology
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: and that it's very scary and that you can start
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: to see how big the tech lobby is. I want
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: to say this. One thing about Palantir though, that a
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: lot of people have had issues with is what they're
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: doing in Gaza, right? With AI targeting. And this is
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: off of, I read this online, and so that makes
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: it probably uncredible, but allegedly Palantir software is reportedly used
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: by the Israeli military to help select targets in Gaza.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: Its data mining and AI systems can process intelligence reports,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: communication intercepts, and surveillance data to generate lists of potential
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: targets in a matter of minutes, a process that previously
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: took hours. Lavender and Habsora, which are two of their
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: kind of, I guess, programs or overall idea names. And
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Habsora means the gospel. Investigations indicate that two AI systems,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: Lavender and Habsora, are at the core of this collaboration.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: Lavender assigns Palestinians a threat score based on metadata, social media,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: and movement patterns. These systems reportedly operate with significant error
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: margins and and their recommendations can be enough to authorize
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: deadly strikes, sometimes with minimal human oversight. Gaza is described
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: as a live laboratory for these AI technologies where new
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: systems are trained, tested, and refined in real-time combat conditions
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: before being marked globally as battle-tested solutions. I think that's
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: where a lot of the fear is.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: If that can happen there, and they're capable of that,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: then how do I know if when I'm walking down
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: the street that some decision I made years ago or something,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: a bullet's not just gonna fly out of anywhere and
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: go through my head from a drone or something, you know?
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: That I think is the big fear about this. And
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: I think some people don't even know it. I think
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: the big fear with technology- Is that crazy for me
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: to say that? No, I mean, I don't think.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: It's crazy to fear that machines should not control human beings, right?
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, we- Look, technology can do a lot of good.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: It can do a lot of bad. But the key
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: principle here is, are human beings going to be in charge?
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: From what you described, it looks like that AI is
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: being used. They're selecting targeting. And the biggest negative in
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: that whole paragraph you read is without human oversight. I mean,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: you still need a human being saying, OK, wait, we're
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: not just going to go do strikes because AI tells
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: us there's a risk. There's some women and children there.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: Let's not have those strikes. There's a hospital there, right?
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: And I think that one of the things we need
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: to adopt for the United States is there has to
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: be a human being making decisions before any military use,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: any military strike.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, at least give me the fat guy with the
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: donut sitting there and be like, nah, forget it. Nah, nah, nah.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: It's like we're now going to be, we're celebrating, we're celebrating.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: He would, I'd rather have a human being, right? Because
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: there's some compassion.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, I agree.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: There's some sense of guilt. AI is not going to
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: feel guilty. AI is not going to feel a compassion.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: AI is not going to, Have any accountability?
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: AI doesn't even go to sleep at night. How can
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: you trust something that doesn't even go to sleep at night?
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: That doesn't even give God a chance to rebuild the
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: inside of it while it's resting.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: That's pretty beautiful.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: I do not understand this, man. And that's very scary.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: And that happens. It's happening. Allegedly, I want to say that.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: It's allegedly, you can go look it up for yourself,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: happening in Gaza that this, and to me, it does
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: start to feel like that. You're like, it has been
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: such a massacre. They are so overabundant. I mean, it's
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: basically people climbing into holes of rubble, looking for pieces
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: of their children and family members. And it's like, we're
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: watching it all. It really does feel like, am I
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: now part of some sick experiment? Like how long do
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: I sit and watch before I raise my hand or
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: say something, or at least some part of me that
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: has a voice inside of me that says, just take
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: me out. I don't want to be in this game anymore.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: I don't like it, man. I don't like it. We're
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: going to keep it moving right there because we have
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: some other stuff that I wanted to say. Oh, I
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: wanted to think about this with you. At some point,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: if we lay this layer of technology over our society,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: and whether we do it now or it's in the
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: future with AI, this all-knowing kind of layer that knows like,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: if you've eaten, knows your blood pressure, knows how far
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: you've walked today, knows how much money you have, uh,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: knows the emojis you sent recently to kind of get
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: a aggregate idea of how you're even feeling as a human,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: then that almost becomes your God, right? In a weird way.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: I know that some people will say nothing will ever
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: be my, be, uh, be a new God for me. I,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: I feel that. And I, I agree with that and
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: I respect that. But if you're say future generations, if
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: they're raised under this cloud of that's all knowing, then
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: that would, they almost at some point pray to this
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: algorithm that it would change, give them a lottery ball
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: of some sort of thing or something. Does that even,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of Ray Brad Bellion or whatever,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: Brad Wellion or whatever. Um, or Brad Burwellian, but does
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: that make any sense to you, man?
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: Well, that's why we have to keep our humanity. You know,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: some of the stuff in Silicon Valley is crazy where
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: these tech leaders really are trying to be God-like. Let
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: me give you two examples. Have you heard of this
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: thing called a, cryonics, you know, where.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: We had a guy on who did the freezing. Yeah.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, you did.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, basically they want to like freeze your body.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: If you die, if I die, freeze your body and
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: your brain so that some future medical technology could bring
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: you back to life.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Some pervert probably too.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: And Peter Thiel has done this reportedly Sam Altman at
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: open AI has done this, have signed up for it,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: have signed up for it. That's the reporting. Now, I'll
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: tell you why that's so bad to try to be immortal.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: One of my favorite speeches of all time was Steve Jobs.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: Steve Jobs founded Apple Computers. He dies of pancreatic cancer.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: He gives this commencement speech and he says that life
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: invented death and death is a change agent because death
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: allows for the removal of the old guard and for
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: new ideas and new creativity to come about. Like you're
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: supposed to make way for a new generation. We're supposed
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: to be mortal. So you have these people who are
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: trying to be immortal. Now, why does that matter? Because
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: this is partly AI, right? If you don't have a
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: sense of your own mortality, your own limitations, you're not
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: going to have a humanistic sense of putting people over machines.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: A second example with these tech leaders, they want to
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: build these tech cities. Have you heard of that?
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: I've seen like pieces in Memphis and stuff where people
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: are getting sick because of like data being uploaded and
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: stuff in their neighborhood and shit like that. Storage, you know?
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: That's a big issue of how these data centers are
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: being built and whether they're going to cause pollution or dislocation.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: But they really want to build these. tech cities, not
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: just a city. It's like a secular Genesis. Like they
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: want to build a new civilization with algorithmic norms, with
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: morality that they're setting, not like the, that was set
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: by God or years of civilization.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: And it's scary.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: It's scary because it shows an arrogance, a lack of humility.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: My sense is, look, AI can be an incredible tool.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: If it, uh, helps you figure out how many steps
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: you walked and when you're sleeping and how to be nutritious.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: But it has to be subservient to human agency. We
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: have to have laws that say, ultimately, human beings are
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: in charge. And we have to make sure that we're
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: teaching people to have the critical thinking skills and the
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: autonomy to be able to use these programs and not
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: be subservient to them. And that's, to me, that's the
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: biggest question for humanity. It's ironic because, you know, you're
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: asking almost deeper questions than any of these Sunday talk
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: shows are in Congress. Like in Congress, we're busy fighting
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: about like who insulted who and like who's up, who's
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: down in the polls. And we just have this technology
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: revolution that's going to change how all of us work, that,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: you know, is going to make people afraid if they're
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: going to lose their jobs, that's going to try to
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: create the super intelligence, wondering whether we're making the decisions
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: or machines are making the decisions. That's what we should
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: be talking about. Right.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: And we should be talking about it in a way
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: that is, and I guess there are ways to talk
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: about it in ways that are exciting, but I just
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: think right now with what you have seen, like, but
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: what the, to me, the, the destruction and the, uh,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: the stuff caused by Israel. Now it makes it very
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: scary to, uh, right now with that company? Cause you've
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: just seen that. And then you're now, that's the company
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: that's going to oversee our country. What's going to keep
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: me from being a Palestinian to the next guy who
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: starts the button in the morning from his cell phone
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: and then goes off on his yacht, you know, and,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: and just the constitution, hopefully, but right, right. Hopefully the constitution. Um,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: thanks for your patience today. Uh, Mr. Kana.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: Bro is fine.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: Bro. Rohit.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: That's your real name?
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: How do you say it? Rohit. You know, when I
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: was a kid, I still remember this. They used to say, Rohit, Rohit,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: Rohit is on fire. And then I figured out it
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: was like I'm making fun of my full name. And
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: then when I used to go up to hit on
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: Little League, I used to go chant, Ro can't hit.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: Ro can't hit. Watch the bunt.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: But, you know, we have this in common, right? I
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: looked up that you got.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: A long name.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. What's your full name?
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: It's Rohit Khanna.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: Rohit Khanna.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: But, you know, we're both– I don't want to geek
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: out because I loved literature. But it's like quintessentially American
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: to in some ways change your name and to make
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: your story, right? Like my favorite character in all of
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: American literature is this guy, Jay Gatsby. And his name
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: was James Gatz. He was from North Dakota. And he said, well,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: James Gatz is not a sophisticated name. So I'm going
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: to call myself Jay Gatsby. And he reinvents himself. And
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: in different ways, you, Theo Vaughn, like no one would
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: have thought you'd be Theo Vaughn growing up. No one
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: would have thought this geeky Indian kid is going to
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: go represent Silicon Valley. And Rohit Khanna is going to
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: become Ro Khanna representing the most economically powerful place in
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: the world. But like that's the story of America, right?
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: That's the story of self-invention. And it's something that we've
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: kind of lost. It's why my parents came here. And
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: the question is how do we get that back? Like
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: how– You know, we've talked about all the negative stuff,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: which I get.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: That's a good point. But how do we get.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: People believing in this country again, believing that we can
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: do big things again?
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: Well, I think there's some ways– and we'll go into
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: this now then because we're on my list here and
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: I am using a list today. That's okay because it's
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: an important conversation. Because of AI, job replacement has already
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: started to happen, right? What kind of worker protections can
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: be implemented, do you think? Because I know you have
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: an internet bill of rights, and then we can talk
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: about that right after that.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: Or it may be part of it. But what do
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: you think? Because we should be protecting the human, right,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: at a certain point.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: We should be protecting the human. And we could go
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: two ways with AI, right? One way of AI is, like,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: this could create a lot of new jobs, right? We
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: could build new factories now that are productive in this country.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: You could have someone in a classroom in Kentucky doing
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: Now who, because AI doesn't get to go to Harvard
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: or Stanford, but suddenly has the knowledge of the whole
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: world at their fingertips. And it can get that kind
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: of education. You can have someone working in a small
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: rural town making 80 grand or a hundred grand because
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: they're a content creator. Or you know how many content
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: creators there are in this country? 1.5 million who make
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: some money doing content creation. Or they can do digital
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: marketing or they can help AI start a small business.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: So like my point is, how do we get AI
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: to lessen the wage gap to create economic opportunities as
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: opposed to just eliminating jobs? The scary part is, what
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: if they're going to start to eliminate jobs? Like if
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: you're a truck driver, what if they say, okay, we're
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: just going to have self-driving trucks. That's why we need
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: to pass law saying, no, I need a truck driver
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: for safety. Like, would you fly on a plane right
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: now without pilots? You know, same thing. I wouldn't. So
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: let's make sure we have basic safety in terms of
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: recognizing that we do want workers and workers get to
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: have a say in how to use this technology. You
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: know what the scariest thing is? The unemployment rate for
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: kids between 21 and 29 who have a college degree.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: Everyone often says, oh, if you have a college degree,
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: you're going to be employed. Actually, it turns out if
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: you have a vocational skill, skilled trades, 21 to 29,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: you have a 2% unemployment rate right now. College degrees, 15%.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: That could go up to 30%. if with AI, with
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: these entry-level jobs. And one of the things we need,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: I think we need the federal government to help incentivize
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: people getting apprenticeships after they're done with a trade school
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: or a college so they can actually get a job,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: make sure they're subsidized. Create a government future workforce administration
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: that hires them so they get a few years of
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: experience and then can go on to the private sector.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: Most importantly, everyone needs to understand technology and AI. The
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: old cliche is you're not going to be replaced by AI,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: but you will be replaced by someone who knows AI.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: And in our schools, K through 12, everyone should have
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: a technology class. China is aiming by 2030 to have
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: universal literacy on AI.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: No, yeah, not to interrupt you, but I think, well,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: one thing you said here that was really great was Anybody,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: I agree. A lot of jobs are going to, it's
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: going to be scary. I'm amazed. I was talking to
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: my brother yesterday. I was like, I said, bro, do
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: you have your kids learning about AI right now? Like,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: are they learning about it? Are they starting to use it?
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: And my brother's like, no, I don't think so. I said, dude,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's coming so fast that it could
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: change things really fast. Now, one thing you mentioned is
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: anybody can learn this right now. It's almost like a
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: great reset in a lot of ways. So you have
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: the kid who couldn't afford to go to Harvard, right,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: who couldn't afford to go to MIT, whose father doesn't
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: have the nepotism because we certainly live in like a
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: nepotism society now in a lot of ways, whose father
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: didn't have that capability. Now that kid can get on
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: a computer for probably six, weeks or something, really focus
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: and crack down and could probably get a job. I
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: was literally looking the other day. It was like, I
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: need somebody who knows everything about AI, right? I need
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: somebody who can program and design things. and help with AI,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: like I wanna start an AI studio, right? And I
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: gotta do it fast because everybody else is gonna be
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: doing it. You could have a new indie. So even
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: someone like you needs AI, right? 100%. I feel every
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: day there's a little part of me that pull, like
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: a little string inside of me that gets a reminder, Like, hey, man,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: you have to get on top of this. I know
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: other things are pressing.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: I hope kids who are listening to this hear that
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: because a lot of people want to be like, how
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: do I be Theo Vaughn? How do I be this
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: guy with a podcast or be a stand-up comedian? And
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: even someone like you, you want to do that. You
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: got to know. AI, look, one of the things I
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: say is, look, I was really good as an Indian
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: kid at math, right? Like every Indian kid is. But
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: you don't need math. Like you don't need algebra and
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: calculus anymore to do AI. You don't have to.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: Dude, you're going to shake up all of Madras by
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: saying that.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: You don't have to be like I was, like some
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: nerdy kid who did like mathletes and got good grades
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: on math tests. Don't need it anymore. If you want
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: to be an advanced coder, programmer, fine. But the amazing
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: thing with AI is now it does all that for you.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: You know what jobs are actually being eliminated? The coder jobs.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: The guys who did all the math. The AI is
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: doing the coding for them.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: Imagine there's a guy sitting there building AI and it's
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: only going to take his job.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: So now, like, okay, you don't have to be the
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: kid who did algebra and calculus. Not to say that
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: you shouldn't learn math. You should learn it for your
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: own sake. But even if you don't like math, Now
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: you can just learn this technology. You just have to
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: be comfortable with it. How do you use it to
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: do a business? How do you use it to learn
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: about the world? And you can be the one asking
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: it questions and prompting it, and it can create a
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: whole new level of jobs. And you know what the
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: exciting thing is? You don't have to leave Louisiana. For
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: so many times we said, okay, you got to go
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: move to Silicon Valley, move to New York. And people
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: in Appalachia.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the gold rush or whatever.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: And people in Appalachia were like, yeah, no, it's really
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: beautiful here. No, I really like living in my small town,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: in my rural community. Like, no, I don't want to
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: go live in New York. No, I don't want to
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: go to Rose District. I often ask all these people
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: in my district who are like, oh, okay, just tell
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: them to move here or move to a tech place.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: I was like, well, are you going to move to Louisiana?
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: And no hands go up. Then I was like, why
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: are you so arrogant to think they want to live here?
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: They like it where they grew up with their families.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: But now you can live there and you learn a
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: little bit of tech and you can work for almost
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: any company in the country, in the world. That is
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: the opportunity if we do this right. And we should
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: start with kindergarten through 12th grade. It's just like reading
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: or writing.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: Are your brother's kids going to do it?
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: I hope so. I'll say this. They're not working for
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: me one day if they don't. This is also interesting
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: because it's like every now and then there's something that
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: makes it where you can jump. You can jump up
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: a cast or a system. You can jump a couple levels.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: And I believe that right now this is that thing.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: I say the same exact thing. You know, the wealth gap,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: there are two huge wealth gaps in this country. One
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: is between places like Silicon Valley and factory towns, rural
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: towns that were decimated. And the other is a racial
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: wealth gap, 10 to 1. White families and Asian-American families
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: 10 to 1 the wealth of people who are African-American, Latino-American. Technology,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: you can do that, scale it in one generation. If
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: we can get rural communities, factory towns, towns in the
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: Black South, the opportunity to do things with tech and
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: build companies, build wealth, be content creators.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, hell yeah. Black AI, dude. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: Build me a trap beat, homie. Let's get this. No,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: but I agree with you. It's an opportunity, right? And
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: that is, it's like, it's an opportunity. People, some people
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: are like, there's no, and I know that's just one thing,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: but also another thing is that trade jobs, like you're saying,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: you're still going to need plumbers for sure. You're still
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: going to need, uh, you're still going to want the
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: hands on the wheel of a human being, I believe,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: but there's a lot of trade jobs. You're not going
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: to be able to replace those. Um, you talked about
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: an internet bill of rights, right? Which you tried to, uh, pass,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing, or tell me about that. Tell me a
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: little bit about that experience and why do we need that?
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: Do you feel like we already answered that or no?
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: I could go do it briefly. I mean, there's a guy,
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: Tim Berners-Lee. You should have him on sometime.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: Tim, what's his name?
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: Tim Berners-Lee. He is the founder basically of the World
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: Wide Web. He's one of the people who made the
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: internet the internet. And I'm sure he was like knighted
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: or something. And so he and I talked and we
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: came out with this internet bill of rights. You remember
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: that Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal where People lost their data
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: on Facebook and profiles were made. And basically it said,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: in this country, no one should take your data without
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: your consent. And you should know where your data is.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, there are other parts to it, but it's
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: like pretty simple. You own your data, you control your data,
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: and you should know what's happening with your data. And
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: I think, and by the way, you should be compensated
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: to some extent for the use of your data if
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: you consent. There should be a data dividend in this country.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: And I think that is not a partisan issue. It
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: is an issue that's going to become increasingly important with
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: things like this database that may be being made. Like,
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: you should know. Do you know, Theo, right now what
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: the government knows about you? Do you know if there's
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: a profile on you? Do you know, like, what if
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: that database is wrong?
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: I'm a Pisces. I know that. I'm trying to think
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: of what else. I don't know. Yeah.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: Like, you should know. You should be able to consent.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: You should be able to get something deleted if they
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: have an incorrect information. And that applies to the government
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: and it applies to big corporations. I don't want Google
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: having some profile on Ro Khanna. I mean, so we
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: introduced this in 2017. Wow. 2017. Congress to this day
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: has not been able to introduce or pass any internet
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: bill of rights. There are no protections. You know, when
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: Josh Hawley.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: When you say there's no protections, oh, you're just saying
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: there's no protections for people.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, no protection for people. Josh Hawley once, and
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: there are places where I actually agree with Hawley, he
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: had Mark Zuckerberg stand up and.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: Apologize- To those parents behind him.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: To those parents.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: I saw that.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: And someone said to me, you know what he should
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: have also done? He should have had the whole Congress
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: stand up and apologize. The problem isn't just these tech companies,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: it's the Congress. We've had this stuff going on for
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: 10 years and Congress has not passed an internet bill
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: of rights. And one of the things I say is, Like,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: I know these people. I know how they think. They're
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: going to run circles around you. You got to hold
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: them accountable. Have the tech guy saying, hold them accountable.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: Why won't they do it? The same reason as before?
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: Why won't the tech companies do it?
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: Who's lobbying? Who's lobbying against the big tech?
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: It's tech lobbying. It's internet service provider lobbying. It's these lobbyists.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: And they don't want, and we haven't, I mean, can
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: you imagine this country that has a constitution that Is
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: the country founded on freedom and we don't have any
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: federal legislation saying you own your data?
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what it's all become. It's all part of
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: this thing where all you become is data and then
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: you don't own it and then you're part of a
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: new country without you even realizing it. You got put
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: into a whole new continent titled or owned by whatever.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: Tech monarchy owns it or all of Jarchi owns it.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: And then that's where you are. People are like, I'm
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: in America. Like, that's fine. You can believe that all
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: you want, right? But if another company owns your information,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: that company can't really even be sued. There was also
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: part of that big, beautiful bill that keeps state-led, like,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: AI- It's.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: The worst part of that bill.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: The AI, you can't even sue the people. Bring it
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: up for me. Get to that really quick.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: 10 years, they want no state to have any regulation
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: on AI. 10 years to give a free pass to
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: these big tech companies, no regulation. I spoke out against
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: that and my phone blew up because I had all
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: these angry tech leaders saying, Roe, how are you speaking
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: out against these moratoriums? That's when I knew I was
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: doing the right thing.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: That's when you know you're doing the right thing, man.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: But- You know what's sad, Theo, in this country? Because
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: you and I both have gone to some of these
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: towns that lost their factories, that lost their industries, and
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: we screwed them twice. First, we took away their jobs.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: We literally shipped their jobs offshore or watched their jobs
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: go to China. These towns started to deindustrialize. There was pain.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: There was opioids. There were drugs.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: And then what do we do?
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 2: We get social media companies to find algorithms on their
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: data to start targeting them with content, which is causing
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: young girls to commit suicide, which is getting some people
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: more addicted to drugs, which is getting people to be
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: angry at each other. It's like we screwed them taking
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: away their jobs and now we're taking their data and
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: screwing them with social media.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: I just feel like the devil is at the gates, man.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: I feel like we are at such an important time.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: And I know people have probably said that before. And
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: what the fuck do I know, dude? I am, I'm
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: not mentally handicapped or whatever, but I am definitely adjacent, right?
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: But I do know some things. I know this, that
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: I'll say this. This is in that big, beautiful bill.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: And I don't know everything that's in it, but this
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: is one thing that really stood out to me. And
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: I asked JD about this. It says, for a full
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: 10 years after enactment, no U.S. state or locality may
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: enforce any law or regulation that limits, restricts, or otherwise
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: regulates artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: systems entered into interstate commerce. Only laws encouraging use or
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: deployment of AI are excluded. That means that you won't
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: have any legal recourse against a machine.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: Basically, like, you know how you said you want hands
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: on a wheel?
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: If now a state wants to pass a law saying
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: you got to have a truck driver on a truck,
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: you can't do that. If your state wants to pass
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: a law saying you can't have an algorithm in social
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: media that gets young girls addicted to content that makes
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: them more likely to have eating disorders? Can't do that.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: So it's just going to be federal have the only.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: Federal will be the only one. And you know what's... Guy,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: do you not see how.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: Do you not see what is at the gates?
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: And by the way, you're not going to get federal
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: legislation because the way you get federal legislation in this
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: country is... When you get a bunch of states that
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: pass legislation, then you get the industry coming to the
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: federal government saying, oh, there are too many state laws.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: Can you just get one federal standard? But if you
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: don't have the state laws, you're never going to have
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: industry coming saying, let's get a federal standard. So it's
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: basically like, let's have AI just develop. And that is
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: the problem, right? There's the beautiful AI vision of how
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: your nephews could learn this and build wealth. And we
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: could have some people in one generation have economic security.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: And then there's the dystopian AI vision, where big government
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: and big companies control our data, are making decisions based
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: on what predictive algorithms are telling about us, where we
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: lose control to machines. And the question is, which way
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: are we going to go as a society? And who's
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: going to benefit? Is the AI revolution going to be
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: like globalization? All the money piles up in my district.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: We'll be sitting here five years from now. Instead of
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: $ 14 trillion, it'll be $ 50 trillion. And places like Louisiana
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: will still be shafted. Or is the AI revolution going
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: to be owned by American citizens? To me, that is
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: the whole biggest question of our society right now.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: I agree. I agree, man. It's one of the reasons
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: why I was so grateful that you were willing to
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: come here so quick and that we're able to talk
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: about this stuff. Because I wanted to have– I don't know.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I just get afraid that I'm not educated enough
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: to have certain conversations. That's what I feel like.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: You're perfectly– you're educated to the point where it's your values.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: And that's– I think that's actually one of the things
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: that the tech folks rely on. And it's like what
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: the foreign policy establishment relies on. It's like the old priests.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: Like we've got some secret language, secret vocabulary. You can't
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: talk about the Middle East because you haven't studied the
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: Middle East as much as us. You can't talk about
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: technology because you don't know the math that went into
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: the coding of AI. Who cares? These aren't questions of
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: technological competence. These aren't questions of foreign policy competence. These
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: are questions of human values.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: It's a moral. It's a moral issue. But just but
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: just to be sure to go back. So on that point,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: we're talking about that part that's in the big, beautiful bill.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: It will not leave you very much legal recourse. Is
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: that correct?
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: It'll leave you no legal recourse if you're a state.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: You can't do any regulations.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: What if you're a citizen?
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: And if you're a citizen, you have almost no legal recourse.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: It's basically saying, look, let's trust the AI developers to
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: just develop AI. And the argument they give is, well,
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: we don't want to lose out to China. Well, you
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: know what? I don't want to live in a society
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: like China. China has a social credit score on every
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: single person. Like if you're in China, you get ranked. Ten,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: you're a great Chinese citizen. One, you're not because you
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: didn't pay your bills, because you were rude to someone,
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: because you made fun of someone.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: Because your karate sucks. That's just an old joke.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: The argument can't be like we're going to stay ahead
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: of China, so let's become like China. How about we're
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: going to stay ahead of China without being China, and
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: we're going to have regulations because we're Americans.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: I agree. And it's here now, though. People don't understand
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: it's here now, right? We can't keep kicking this. The ball,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: I feel like we're on the goal line. We're on
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: the goal.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: This is the thing that the tech leaders, why they're
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: so involved suddenly in politics. They understand that this is
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: the whole ballgame. Like, well, we're fighting over all this
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: other stuff.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, where is the.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: funding for Medicaid and taxes, all very important. They're like, well,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: we just want the whole enchilada. We just want to
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: control data and control jobs and control the economy. And
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: these people in Washington are kind of clueless. Like they're
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: people and members of Congress, I'm not going to say
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: the names who are asking the Google CEO about the iPhone.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: They don't know that Apple makes the iPhone. You know,
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: they're technologically illiterate and they're just being run circles around.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: And now they're saying like, Congress, you're so illiterate, just
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: don't do anything. Don't have any regulation. Let us just
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: do everything. Like, really? We didn't fight a revolution in
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: this country to let the tech billionaires get to decide
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: our future. And I think what we need, you know,
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: FDR was a traitor to his own class. He came
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: from from New York, Wall Street Finance. He said, no,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to let finance dictate America. And in
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: some ways, we need people from technology saying, yeah, we
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: love technology, but no, technologists don't get to call the
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: shots in this country. Theo's buddies get to call the shots.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: And by the way, they got better judgment than you.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: Or just human beings, people with some, I think, because
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not, I don't know the best morals in the
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: world or anything, but I feel like I fucking try
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: to be alive because that's what I'm sentenced to right
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: now is being alive on earth. Um, so why don't,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: why don't, why isn't there a tech leader that comes
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: out with like, this is the app that shows you
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: exactly who's doing what. So you can, this is how
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: you start to change. Like we need something that's step-by-step
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: almost a for dummies. And I hate to say that,
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: but we've all become dumbed down by our phones and games,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: but we need to know if we have, I mean,
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: cause I just feel like this is it. We got
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: to find a developer who's like, you know what? I'm
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: going to fucking try to save humanity.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know who we could have, and maybe you
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: should have him on here, is Steve Wozniak. He's the
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: guy who developed Apple with Steve Jobs. Cool guy? Cool guy,
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: and he's a humanist. He believes human values. We need
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: some people like Wozniak. The Woz, huh? The Woz. And
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: Steve Jobs, in many ways, was a humanist. People who
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: understand technology, but are like, you know, technology in the
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: service of human values. We're not gods. We don't want
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: to rule. I often say we need Silicon Valley in
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: the service of America, not America in the service of
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: Silicon Valley.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: Amen. Amen. I agree. I would love to meet Mr.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: Wozniak and talk to him. Um, okay. You campaigned for, um,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: and I'm, yeah, I'm going back to some of my
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: charts here, but that's all right today, guys. That's where
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: I'm at. It's been a long week and it's been
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: a long, uh, life. Um, You campaigned for Bernie Sanders
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: in 2016 and co-chaired his presidential run in 2020. Yeah.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: We've asked him directly what happened. You know, and I
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: was always, I wish that they made it so that.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: whoever won the presidency, the other, like if a president
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: was Republican, the vice president had to be Democrat, right? Yeah.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: I wish it was like that because then it seems
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: like there would be.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: A common ground or invited them to govern together.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: Right. Then there has to be some sort of teamwork
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: because otherwise you outsource it and it's just, it seems
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: like it's so much more expensive. But what I was
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: going to ask you right here was, and we've asked
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: him directly what happened, but in your opinion, why do
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: you think that he lost out on the nomination both times?
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: Because I think that's had an effect on how the
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party has been perceived over the years.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: The establishment screwed him. I mean, there's no doubt about that.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: He should have been the nominee in 2020. You had
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: the whole party basically like drop out, tell people to
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: drop out and endorse Joe Biden. They resurrected Joe Biden.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: He had lost Iowa. He came in like fourth or fifth.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: He lost New Hampshire fourth or fifth. It's never happened
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: in the history of the party in recent history that
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: someone is losing that badly and then wins. And they
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: suddenly see Bernie is winning Iowa. He's winning New Hampshire.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: He's winning Nevada. Unstoppable. Nate Silver had him at 70
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: percent odds to win the nomination at that point. And
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: the party just reacts and they say no. And they
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 2: convince Buttigieg to drop out and endorse Biden. They convince
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: Beto to endorse Biden. They convince Klobuchar to endorse Biden.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: How did they convince them all? Was it– Funding and stuff,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: you think?
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I think they said, look, you want to have
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: a future. You can be in the cabinet. We're going
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: to be for you. And then they're like, Bernie can't win.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: Bernie can't win. Come on. Donald Trump just won. He's
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: talking about invading Greenland. And you're telling me we can't
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: talk about Medicare for all? I mean, like the one
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: thing that Donald Trump has shown you is like you
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: can say what you believe.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: Anybody can win.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: And that's like– J.D.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: Had that too.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: He was like, you come on. I disagree with him.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: But you know where he stands. Like just– campaign with
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: your heart, campaign with your ideas. That's what, and Bernie
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: was speaking to people who were outsiders, who were underdogs.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: You know, I think that's why you and I resonate.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: I was an underdog growing up. I was not, I
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: was not supposed to be a politician. I didn't have
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: a father who was a Senator or a rich person
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: or a Congress person. Like, No one would have thought
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: this Indian kid of Hindu faith was going to have
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: any shot to get elected the dog catcher in this country.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: But Bernie was speaking for all the folks who weren't
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: supposed to make it, who aren't making it in this country.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: Bernie was an underdog.
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: He was an underdog.
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: That's another thing about Trump, though. Trump was also an underdog.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying? He did have part of
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: that with him. But I do think there's people that
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: love an underdog, man. Okay. Let's build the primary early, right?
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: Who should the Democrats run for? Well, first of all,
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: do you think we need to still have just Republican
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: and Democratic party? Or do you think there's value in
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: getting a big financier to support like a third party?
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: Like say if Elon Musk decided to go and support
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: a third party.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: I think there's a value in third parties. Here's the
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: problem I have in terms of just like third parties
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: running for president.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: A lot of times it has to be a billionaire.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: And then you're like, okay, is that billionaire really going
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: to have the values of the working class? But in
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: terms of parties, and I'm one of the few people
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: in the Democrat party who says this, I think have
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: more parties. you know, if like the Democrats are like, oh,
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: your third party is going to take away votes from us.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: That was like, be better. Like, it's not the voter's
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: job to vote for you. It's your job to convince
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: the voter. I never understood this with like the whole
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: Harris Trump race. They're like, well, you know, they're Jill
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: Stein is taking votes away from us. I was like,
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: her job is to run. Your job is to convince
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: people to vote for you. You know, it's like, if
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: like Apple computers wasn't selling iPhones, they're like, well, this
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: other third party company is taking iPhone sales away from you. OK, well,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: why aren't you making the iPhone better? Right. And so
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: I think having more parties is good. I still think
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Party is the vehicle where we can really
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: have a progressive working class agenda. I think we've got
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: to reform it in the way Bernie Sanders was was trying. And,
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 2: you know, and I think and I think the Republican Party,
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: I hope, will become more anti-war, will become more working
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: class centered so that we have reform in this country.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: I just don't know how we could keep going with
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: nothing because that's what it starts to almost feel like
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: is that we're just, we're not even getting anything. I've
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: heard you talk about the idea of economic patriotism. What
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: does that kind of mean when you say that? I
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: like that terminology.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: My parents came to this country in the 1960s. It
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: was the time John F. Kennedy said, let's go to
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: the moon. Let's dream big. This country was humming. We
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: were building things. We were making things. We were doing
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: things for civilization. I think that's what can bring us together.
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: Let's have a Marshall Plan, not for Europe, a 21st
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: century Marshall Plan for America, where we start to build
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: new factories, new industry, new AI centers, new AI academies,
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: new universities, new trade schools. And we come together in
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: this country, white, black, Latino, Asian, to build things in America.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: And by the way, I think that's something even some
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: of the MAGA folks could get behind. We need a
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: new national purpose. You know, in When John F. Kennedy
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: was president, 60% of Americans had trust in government. Today,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: it's probably like down to less than 20%. And the
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: reality is, you know, we talked about the PAC money
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: and the lobbyist money, but most people go into Congress,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: they are still, they want to do something for America.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: Really, you believe that?
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: I do. I believe that about, you know, J.D. Vance
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: and I have gotten into arguments. I believe that about him.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, I do too about him. I do believe that.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: You know, I believe that about most people. Like, I
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: think they have a story about, they, they, they want
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: to do something good. The system is so broken, but
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: you know, what we need again is a vision that's
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: going to inspire us to come together, uh, to do things.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: And I, and economic patriotism, I think would be one
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: of those visions. Like let's make a, let's redevelop communities.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Me and Mike, I was talking about Mike Rowe and, uh,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: we've kind of started to put the wheels on creating
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: like a, a place that's just American products, right? Where
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: you go to Boston, it's just American, you know, start
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: to see what that would look like. So, That would
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: be really interesting to have like a new American kind
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: of QVC, but all this stuff is just American stuff.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: One of my bills is actually to give a tax
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: credit at the end of the year if you keep
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: your receipts and buy American. So look, you buy an American. glass,
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: American book, you get to deduct it on your taxes.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: I love that. I mean, I love that. And also,
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: if we just didn't give money to some of these
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: other places and stuff, I think we'd have a lot
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: of money for people. Yeah, it's funny that American manufacturing
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: doesn't even seem to be a part of the Democratic
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: talking points anymore.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: Which is so ironic because FDR industrialized the whole country.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: You know, the tragedy I would say of Elon Musk,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: who I've known, is that he could have been Bill Knudsen. Now,
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: I know you like American history. Bill Knudsen was this
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: guy who was running GM.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: K-N-U-D-S-E-N?
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: K-N-U-D-S-O-N. And you can look him up. And he was
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: running GM and FDR says, you know, we need you.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: We need you to build American industry. We were making
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: a thousand planes a year. Within a few years, Bill
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: Knudsen takes it to 300,000 planes. And instead, I mean,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: the tragedy in my view of Musk is he was
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 2: undermining and destroying like the NIH and the All these
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: agencies where what we needed is someone to come in
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: and say, let's industrialize this country. Let's work with labor
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: to build new industry, new jobs. The Democrats did that.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: I don't understand how we let Trump become the made
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: in America guy. We need to be the party that says,
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 2: here's our vision for making things in America. And wouldn't
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: it be great if the argument in this country was
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 2: who was going to build America better? And like Trump's like,
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: here are my ideas. And we were like, here are
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 2: our ideas. And maybe you take the best of those ideas.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: But how about a common goal again? Like I think
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: the country is exhausted. We're embarrassed. They see all of
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 2: us in Congress. And I'm guilty of this too sometimes.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: And we're arguing and name calling. And they're like, yeah,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: but my life. Like I can't afford a house. My
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: kids aren't going to have the same job I did.
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what's
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: happening with this country. Like just get your act together
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: and get some direction that's supposed to be the greatest
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 2: country in the world and start working together on Team America.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's– the dream is fading, I
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: feel like. And I don't want to be a pessimist,
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: but I don't– I feel like– I don't want to
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: say the dream is fading. I don't want to say
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: that it feels like we don't all have the same
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: dream that's fading. That's the part that sometimes feels like
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: it's fading. It used to be that you'd go to
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: bed at night and it felt like you all had
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: this universal dream, you know, I think.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think– and we've lost that. Like what is
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: the common American dream? And one, we're so divided, right?
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: Life is so different for some people in Silicon Valley
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: than it is for folks who are like, how am
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: I going to pay my medical bills? How am I
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: going to pay for rent? How are my kids going
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: to have a decent job? And the other thing is
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: that we lack a common sense of vision. Like what
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: are we doing as a society together as Americans? And
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: I think if we get people talking about that, and
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: that's why I say a Marshall Plan, economic patriotism, rebuilding
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: this country. And that doesn't mean old factories. Like it's
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: going to be the new modern factories, new industries.
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: Well, I think people– it's also going to get weird
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: if people– some of the greed doesn't end, that people
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: are just going to want to see the rich start
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: to suffer. And that's when shit can get really weird.
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: That's when you start getting people into revolutionary thought. But
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: then maybe, who knows? Maybe we just slowly drift off
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: into the ether of our sofa with Cheez-Its on our chest.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Some man with fake breasts laying there
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: eating Cheez-Its and just drifting into the ether of existence.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: That would be sad. But I hope that's not our
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: Paul Revere, right? I hope that there is still a
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: lot of people who believe in something. And I think
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: there is. And I think there's people that want something new.
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that even just saying– asking Mike Johnson for
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: help with that thing. I think that that's neat just
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: because I didn't even know that we could do that.
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: What was it? Anything else we wanted to talk about?
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: We're almost there. Let me see. Oh, one thing that J.D.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: Vance said that was really interesting the first time I
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: spoke with him was he said that a lot of
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: congresspeople and representatives will go– turn over to be– or
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: senators– will turn over to be lobbyists because they don't
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: get paid enough by the government type of situation. Is
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: that true? Take me down a little bit of that
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: discussion where the salary is better being a lobbyist than
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: it is to be on this side.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: Well, he's absolutely right. And it's terrible what happens. I mean,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: you are in Congress, you're working on the Armed Services Committee,
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: overseeing defense contractors. Then you'll retire and suddenly you'll become
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: a lobbyist for the defense industry. You'll go from making $ 170, 000
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: a year to making a million dollars a year. And
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: that's why I have a bill. It's called the Drain
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: the Swamp Act or my political reform act. And it
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: says ban members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists. Now,
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: you know, Harry Truman won World War II. He did
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: more than anyone in Congress put together. And he started NATO.
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: And Harry Truman at the end of his presidency, the
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: guy who wins World War II, sets us up for
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: the post-World War II order, writes to someone when he
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 2: was invited to give a speech. He said, I'm a
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: little embarrassed. Betsy and I can't afford the train ride.
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: Can you pay for the train ride? Happy to give
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: the speech, right? It used to be he went into
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: politics not to get rich. And I don't begrudge people
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 2: who are wealthy. There are a lot of people who
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: are wealthy, but you shouldn't be in public service to
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 2: make money. And afterwards, you can do a lot of things.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: Go do something in AI.
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: Go do something.
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 2: Don't go and lobby. Don't become a member of Congress
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: who's just going to cash out by lobbying. It's something
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 2: I will never do, but it's also a ban we
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: should have. And maybe we can make that a bipartisan effort.
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: I don't see how it couldn't be because every human
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: wants it on both sides. So I don't see why
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: it just keeps happening. And yeah, if you're good at
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: your job of being a congressman or a senator, are
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: they different ones?
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: Then afterwards you could do a tour at all the
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: donut shops. You show up over there.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: People pay in a heartbeat to show up there, take
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: photos and stuff, get a hug or something, get a glazed.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 2: Just the one thing they shouldn't do is start a podcast.
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: Politicians' podcasts are terrible. they're like so boring some tried
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: it yeah and i mean it's just kind of because
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: it's like so stilted and it's not there's no humor
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 2: you gotta have some humor like you know the politician
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: by the straight guy you need someone who's funny you
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 2: need like this conversation it's kind of all over the
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 2: place it's not it's not like oh wow what are
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: the poll numbers on this and so it's just uh
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 2: i've never seen a politician who had a good interesting podcast.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah i think that that would be a bit much
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: maybe but i don't know shit i mean anybody could
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: do it Sorry for saying shit right in front of you, sir.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: Oh no, not at all.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: Well, I should have done better.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, um, I did have this question though. We were
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: talking about that. Um, you voted in the past about finances. Um,
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: you voted in the past to ban members of Congress
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: from trading and holding individual stocks. this hasn't happened yet, right?
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: Why do you think that hasn't happened? You know, like
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: if Martha Stewart went to prison, then Nancy Pelosi should
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: go to prison, it feels like, you know?
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't think that Pelosi, in my view, I mean,
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: this has done things that are unethical. But I think
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 2: that there is this such a trust deficit in the
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 2: Congress that people think that the biggest problem is money
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: in politics, right? They're taking all this money from PACs.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: They're taking all this money from lobbyists. But at the
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: same time, people are concerned if members of Congress are
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: individually trading stock. And so the bill I've supported calling
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: for a ban on stock trading is a no trust act.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: And it says, you know, put your money in a trust.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: Have someone else manage it. Don't be there trading stocks.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 2: or telling your advisor to trade stocks while you're creating
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 2: a conflict. And why haven't we gotten a vote? I
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: don't know. I think Johnson can get us a vote on.
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 2: I think it would pass overwhelmingly, and we've got a
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: bipartisan group that's pushing for a vote on that. But
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 2: if you do the five parts of my political reform plan,
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: ban PAC money, ban super PACs, ban lobbyists from getting money,
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: Ban members of Congress from ever becoming a lobbyist and
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: ban stock trading in Congress. I think you would start
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: to restore trust in Congress. And some of the MAGA
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 2: folks actually have liked the plan the most. I had
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 2: a Drain the Swamp Act, which I said, you want
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: to drain the swamp? How about just telling lobbyists they
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: can't give gifts to White House officials? And someone's like, oh,
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 2: you only wanted to apply for Donald Trump. No, I
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: was like, I wanted to apply whether it's Donald Trump
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: or a Democratic president.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, all of the things you're
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: saying seem very, like, I think these are things that
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: are super important. I feel like it's things that most
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: people feel are super important and that's, but, but it never,
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: what happens? It's like, it just like, we talk about
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: these things. Everybody's like, yeah. And then it gets to
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: some place where it all, nothing ever really evolves, it
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: feels like. And that's where I feel like we're at now. Instead,
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: Hollywood gives us like, here's a ditty case. Go, you know,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: keep the black population at ease, you know, like, or
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: here's a, you know, we'll stretch the NBA finals another week.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: We'll send in a special ref that- Are you for
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: the Pacers? Allegedly, I'm for the Pacers. I like Halliburton.
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: I think he's just a super guy. But, yeah, I
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: know it just, it feels like it never gets there.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: You had- Let me see. My producer would also– you
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: have a– but your family owns stock or you had
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: stock in your family before you got married? Yeah. How
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: does– how would that relate into a congressman or senator owning.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: Well, under the Trust Act, people can– members of Congress
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: and they can be in a trust. They just can't
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: trade stock. They can't trade stock. And that– I think
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: that's why I've sponsored the bill. I think that we–
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: what we want to do is eliminate– conflicts. And if
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: you can have the No Trust Act happen, it says
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: members of Congress cannot trade stock. If there are any assets,
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: they put them in a trust and that would eliminate conflicts.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: But what is upsetting to people is people making trades
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: while they're doing policy. And that's where the conflict is.
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: The federal employees currently aren't allowed to do that. They
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: have to have their money in some trust. Yeah.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it would almost be– ethically it doesn't make sense,
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: but it would be hard not to. You're in a
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: meeting and you're hearing about this or that to get
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: on your phone and get on your app and make
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: a trade. Heck, if I'm watching a SportsCenter highlight or
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: something and I see one of the players has a
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: cough or something, I'm betting against that team the next night.
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: If I see Walker Bueller, if he seems like he's
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: angry about something the next day, I'll probably bet he
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: has a few more strikeouts.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 2: Look, I think the honest truth is there are not
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: many Pete Roses in the Congress. There are not many people,
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: honestly– who are out there trading on information. All my parties,
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: for example, going after Marjorie Taylor Greene, and she says
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: that she's got an independent advisor who's making the trades.
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: I actually believe her. I believe her. But the problem
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 2: is that the perception that has been created is that
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: people are benefiting from this. So just pass the No
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: Trust Act. It's got bipartisan support. People, if they have assets,
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 2: they can put them in a trust, they can have
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: it independently managed, then you know that they're not sitting
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: there making trades or telling people what to do.
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: Can they legally advise the trust advisor?
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 2: They can't in day-to-day trading. They can set it up,
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: but they can't tell the trust advisor, okay, trade here,
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: trade there, and it has to be all disclosed. And
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: that would assure the American people that you don't have
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: people out there trading on stocks in a way that
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 2: they can't.
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, the craziest thing is I just thought
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: sometimes one of the benefits of the surveillance system would
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: be that finally we get to see what all these
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: senators and congresspeople and everybody's up to, you know? Right.
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: I wish you could just tell us, like, do a–
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: I wish you had a breathalyzer for if people were
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: being honest or not. That's what we need. That's what
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: we need.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 2: There you go. You know, they have reinforced the lie
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: detector test. Next time I'm on, maybe I'm going to
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 2: have to like do a lie detector.
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: Take that back to, uh, to a Silicon Valley with you. Um,
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: Ro Khanna. That's your name.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 2: You got that. You got the pronunciation.
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: Perfect. I'm getting better. Uh, yeah, I got to get
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: India once. I went to Madras one time and had
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: a really great time. Uh huh. Really loved it. A
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: lot of, uh, excitement, energy in the faces of the,
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: in the eyes, uh, in the smiles of the people
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: there thoroughly enjoyed it. Um, Best of luck to you, man.
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming on and talking. Keep us out
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: of Iran unless we're already there. I know we've been
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: on the air for a couple hours.
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 2: With Massey, we're going to do it together and with
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: your advocacy. And keep up your voice. It gives me
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: hope that we got people like you out there just
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: speaking from your heart. And don't let anyone say you
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: don't know what you're talking about. You know a lot
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: more of what you're talking about than a lot of
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: the people running this country.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: But thank you so much for your time. Appreciate you.
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 3: Now I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 3: I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone.
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, but when I.
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 3: Reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 2: I can feel it in my bones.