Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #0238 STORY INSPIRE: NASA’s Return to the Moon: America’s New Era of Space Exploration

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#0238 STORY INSPIRE: NASA’s Return to the Moon: America’s New Era of Space Exploration · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Secretary Sean Duffy, welcome to the show.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: It's good to have you. It's good to have you.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: It's good to be had.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, so we were actually supposed to do this, what,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: about a month ago? A month ago, yeah. And then,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: you know, the Charlie Kirk assassination happened, and so we
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: had to push it, and... You know, I just wanted
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: to say that I thought that spoke a lot about
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: your character. I know you guys were friends, and it
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: sounds like he was closer with your wife than you, but,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people in politics would have
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: loved to have come on the show and made it
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: all about them with that going on. And so to see,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: you know, to get that message that you just wanted
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: to go and be with the family and be supportive,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's what this fucking country's all about. It's
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: nice to see that.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Well, we were... It happened, and then the next day
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: I was supposed to be with you. I was supposed
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: to leave moments after the shooting, and you were generous
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: to say, we'll push it, we're good, which I'm grateful
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: for that, and we made this happen, so I appreciate
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: you having me back, that you took that very well,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: so thank you.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: My pleasure, my pleasure. So, acting Secretary of Department of
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Transportation and active Secretary of NASA, correct? Or NASA administrator.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: So I'm the secretary of transportation and the acting administrator
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: of NASA. So I get this short window of time
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: until the president appoints someone into the full-time role. And yeah, no,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: it's been great. It's been busy.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: And a husband and a father of nine. How the
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: hell do you manage all this?
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Sean, I'm greater than you are. It's been a great...
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: To serve this president has been... really awesome. And then
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: to also be a father and to navigate that back
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: and forth. Again, I think our first role as men
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: is to be good fathers. And again, I had this
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: in Congress. You get to run, you get to serve
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: your country, you do it every two years, you get
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: to pass legislation, you're part of the conversation. In a
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: different way, I get a huge influence on how America
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: works at DOT. I'm able to set a mission at NASA,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: all really important stuff. But I always think about at
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: the end of life, as you sit on your deathbed,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: what do you think about? Do you think about the
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: bill you passed? Do you think about the road you built?
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Do you think about the mission that, you know, you
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: helped send, you know, our second effort to get to
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: the moon? Do you think about those things on your deathbed?
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I doubt it. I doubt it.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: You think about your family and what kind of relationship
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: did I have? How did I raise my kids? Those
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: are the people that you have around you. And so
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: as I do all of this, which I'm so grateful
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: that the president has given me this great honor to serve,
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: and I think this is the most historic administration in
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: American history, if not least since the middle of the
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: 1800s and the Civil War, to be part of this
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: is an amazing honor. And the fact that we get
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: to do so much so quickly with this president, but
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: I don't lose focus on the fact that the most
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: important thing is my family and the most meaningful thing
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: to my life and to what I do on this
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Earth is to raise good kids, to hopefully raise them well,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: not to go to Harvard. I was thinking about what
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: is the mission of kids? Not Harvard, but to Heaven.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: That's what we want to do with our kids.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Man, I love hearing that. I love hearing that. Thank
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: you for saying that. Um, and we'll get into... So
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I want to do a life story on you, start
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: from childhood, kind of talk about where you came from,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: your road to being secretary and administrator, and in that,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: you know, some fatherhood advice. But everybody starts off with
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: an introduction here. Did I approve the introduction? You've got
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: quite the arc here. Secretary Sean Duffy. 20th United States
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Secretary of Transportation, overseeing critical infrastructure, aviation, and automotive policies. Also,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the interim administrator of NASA, stepping into the role in
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: July of 2025 to guide America's space exploration. Competed in
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: the Lumberjack World Championships, a reality TV pioneer having starred
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: in MTV's The Real World Boston in 1997, and Road
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Rules All-Stars in 1998, where you met your future wife.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: A former prosecutor serving as district attorney for Ashland County, Wisconsin.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: A former U.S. congressman representing Wisconsin's 7th district from 2011
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: to 2019. A media personality and commentator, having worked as
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: a CNN contributor and co-host of The Bottom Line on
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Fox Business. Husband to Rachel. and father of nine children,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: and most importantly, you're a Christian.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: We're Catholic, yeah. Catholic, yeah.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: And, yeah, we had talked about, you know, how we
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: rescheduled this interview, you know, after the Charlie Kirk assassination. And, man,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: just lots of stuff going on in the news right now.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: The government shut down. I mean, we're seeing flights delayed.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: We always see flights delayed.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: We do, but it's gonna get better. We've had problems,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: but it can't fix it overnight, but we are gonna
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: fix that as we come into the next, you know, two, three,
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: four years.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: It's gonna be great. Perfect. Perfect. You know, I think
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: something that, you know, is kind of on everybody's mind
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: right now is the three-eye Atlas object. It supposedly might
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: be extraterrestrial. You got any thoughts on this? I mean,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: PolyMarket says there's a 4% chance that the interstellar object
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: is confirmed aliens.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: If it walks like a comet and quacks like a comet,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: it's probably a comet, I would say, right? So PolyMarket
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: might be a little bit off. But we have some
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: great pictures of it. And we're going to release those pictures,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: but the government shutdown has There's a whole bunch of
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: rules that come into play with the shutdown on what
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: we can and can't do. And so when we open
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: back up, we're going to send pictures out of, um, of,
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: of the comment. And I think everybody will love it,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: enjoy it. Um, but yeah, no, we feel, we feel
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: pretty good that it's, it's not extraterrestrial.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Is the government going to open back up?
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: I think so. Well, at some point, well, Maybe before Christmas.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Maybe before Christmas.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: I think we're coming up to some real pain points
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: of SNAP benefits and healthcare benefits, subsidies that come in
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: that Democrats truly care about. And when those benefits don't
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: go out, on top of air traffic slowing down throughout
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: the country because controllers are... Listen, we'll maybe talk about
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: this more, but controllers, it's oftentimes paycheck to paycheck, and
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: especially the young ones, they're looking at taking other jobs.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: And so... there's a number of pain points that I
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: think Democrats are gonna have to give up their push
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: to have illegals get healthcare benefits and open the government
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: up and have a conversation and negotiate.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. With this object, going back to that real quick,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: the three-eye atlas object, what is the fear? What's the
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: spin going on about this?
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: I think social media can take off and you can
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: have people... come out with credibility and make claims. But
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: what the claims are and what we have seen at
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: NASA don't match up, right? And so, I think humans
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: love conspiracy theories, right? By the way, conspiracy theories these
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: days oftentimes come to be true when we're talking about Democrats, right?
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: But this is one that is actually a conspiracy theory. So, yeah,
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I think people, I mean, I think
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: people get fascinated with extraterrestrial life and, you know, what's
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: out there. And this is one of those issues that
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: people have been able to lean into and let their
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: imaginations expand and think it could be something that what
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: we're seeing, it is not.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: It's just a comet.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: It's a comet. It's going to pass by, no big deal.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Just like all the other ones. But it will have
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: been an exciting time thinking about what it could have been.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: But it's not, Sean.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Right on. Right on. Well, so got a couple of
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: gifts here for you. Okay. So... First off, everybody gets,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: everybody gets these.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: The famous gummies.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Vigilance Elite gummy bears made in the, actually made in Michigan.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: We just had a, yeah, we just had a long
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: talk about Michigan. So yeah, made in Michigan, still legal
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: in all 50 states. I love it.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: RFK made an exception for us, I guess. And then
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I got something else for you too. So this is
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: a little more sentimental. So When I was giving you
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: the studio tour earlier, you had asked about, you know,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: who put, who gave me that rosary that's up there.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: And I told you that's from my friend, Dom Rosso.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: He's a former seal team six guy. And, um, so
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: I told you he makes these rosaries and they call
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: them the warriors rosaries for, uh, protection. So I thought
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: you might like that.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: That is beautiful. Thank you.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: You're welcome.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Those, uh, who aren't Catholic, by the way, the power
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: of the rosary remarkable, um, Great protector. Can I give
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: you a gift?
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Let me give you a little history. So I'm from
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: northern Wisconsin. And at the turn of the last century,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: end of the 1800s, America is moving westward, right? Major
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: expansion throughout the country. And they needed wood to build
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: the country. And all the wood came from northern Michigan.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: And as they moved westward, it was northern Wisconsin with
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: these massive white pine stands of timber. And these lumberjacks
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: would come through first with axes, and then they had
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: revolutions to saws that made them be able to cut faster.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: And so what they would do is they would cut
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: all winter long, and they cut in the winter because, one,
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: it's pretty rough to cut in the summer and mosquitoes,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: but they would cut all winter long, and they didn't
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: have tractors and trucks. They would have to use ice
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: roads to haul all these logs to the river's edge.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: They would stockpile all logs on the river's edge all
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: winter long. The spring would come, and they would dam
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: up the river and they would dump all the logs
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: in the river and they would float them, because they
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: didn't have roads, they would float them down to a
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: sawmill town and they would saw them up and then
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: distribute it out across the country so we could build America, right?
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: And so in Northern Wisconsin, we had the, in my
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: small town where I was born and raised, we had
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: a couple of years where we produced the most board
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: feed of lumber in the whole country. So our whole,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: our communities up there were built around logging and these
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: people that would come in and log and cut all
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: winter long. And so from that, we've developed these modern-day
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: lumberjack sports. And so you might see this on ESPN7
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: at 4 o'clock in the morning, lumberjack sports. So it's
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: log rolling, a log in the water where two guys
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: are on it competing against each other to get the
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: other one off. Only rule is you can't cross the
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: center line. And as the match goes on, the log
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: gets smaller in diameter, which means it floats lower in
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: the water and spins that much faster. It's log rolling.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Holy shit.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Then we have... speed climbing it's a race up and
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: down it's for 60 90 sometimes on the west coast
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: it would be 100 feet high but it's a race
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: up and so it'll take you know 16 seconds to
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: get up the tree and you have just these spurs
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: on your feet uh and a steel core hemp rope
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: and so you're you're running vertical up the tree stepping
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: and throwing and then you'll hit a line or a
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: cowbell and then in essence you you you keep your
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: rope on the on the tree and you kick your
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: feet out and you'll feel free fall If you're not great,
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: you can free fall 10 feet, but if you're good,
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: you can free fall, you know, 20, 25 feet at
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: a time. So you'll hit the tree with a spur,
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: you know, three, maybe four times coming down, which is
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: the bull riding of the rodeo. And then we have
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: chopping and sawing. In these modern-day sports, you might think
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: of a lumberjack as a big, fat, burly, suspender-wearing guy.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: The guys that compete now, they're the most amazing athletes.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: No kidding. I've seen these.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Rock solid, awesome. So I could give you a pair
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: of log rolling cleats. I could give you a steel
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: core hemp rope. I could give you a saw. But
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: I thought to give Sean Ryan the great gift of
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: lumberjack sports, which by the way, the lumberjack world championships
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: are in this small town in northern Wisconsin every summer.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: And so world championships, it's US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: So- I'm not going to play you a song because
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: I don't have any music talent. We were coming to Nashville,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: and I had my buddy bring us one of our
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: axes from northern Wisconsin. I thought, no better way to
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: carry it than in a guitar case. This is a six,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: six and a half pound razor sharp Australian speed axe.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: You can shave with them. This is what the guys
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: use to just hammer through these pieces of wood and
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: the accuracy at which they hit the wood and blow
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: through it is remarkable. And these things are so sharp.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: So listen, be careful.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Don't cut yourself.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Wow, look at that.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: And so that's what we use today to compete in
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: lumberjack sports. So you now have your own competitive speed ax.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it's going to.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Find a place of prominence somewhere.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: The little difference is it's Americana. This is part of
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: American history. Very cool. That I think is very cool.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Put it down there.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: You're welcome.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: This is awesome. I love it.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: You can go up back. If you use it, it'll
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: dull up, you'll have to stone it. So there you go.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Thank you. That's awesome.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: So maybe we bring the show. You can come to
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Northern Wisconsin. We'll take you out on the lake. Maybe
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: come see a Lumberjack World Championships.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Hell yes, I would love that.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good guys.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: So is that what you competed in?
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: So I grew up competing in these sports. So I
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: grew up in small-town America. Again, this is late 70s
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: through the 80s. where it was a different era. So
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: all summer long, I would ride my bike from my
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: house to what's called Lumberjack Bowl, where like you might
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: take diving lessons or what lessons people might go play soccer.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: We would go log roll all summer long. And so
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: I'd ride my bike to Lumberjack Bowl and I'd have
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: a couple lessons, you know, on a Thursday and a
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Tuesday and a Thursday or a Monday and a Wednesday,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: but I would spend four days there. We'd get there
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: nine in the morning, we'd stay until two in the afternoon,
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: and we'd just hang out with our friends and we'd
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: log roll all day long. So that was my summer.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: And from there, there was these exhibitions that would travel
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: around the country, and sometimes the world, but I would,
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: when I was young, I would do these exhibitions for
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: lumberjack sports. And it was usually in Wisconsin and Illinois,
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: and I would stay close to home when I was
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: 16 years old, but we would travel around and show
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: these skills of the old-time lumberjack. And yeah, so I
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: did that. Then I competed. I put myself through undergrad
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: and law school by doing these sports. So it's a
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: pretty cool part of America.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll say. Man, I don't know any lumberjacks.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: You do now.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: I do now.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: But I was doing... So is.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: This like what all the kids up there want to do?
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: A lot of them do, yeah. That's awesome. Not all
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: of them. But we have little pockets around the country.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: So you'll see in Idaho, there's a pocket. In Nova Scotia, Canada,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: there's a pocket of log rollers. And speed climbers, we
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: get a lot of them from the West Coast because
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: now the bigger trees are on the West Coast. And
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: the spotted owl affected their ability to log on the
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: West Coast. But we still have a lot of guys
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: who learned how to climb and then they chop. And so, yeah,
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: so I grew up doing this.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Was this ever a career for you? Or is this
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: strictly sports?
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: It was sport, and I also could make money at it.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: So I'd do the competitions, but then I'd also do
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: these exhibitions where I'd travel and get paid to be
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: on the road. We'd drive these big trucks that had these...
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: We'd take probably 45 trees with us on these extended trailers,
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: and we'd get there, and we'd have the pole company
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: come and put the trees in so we'd climb, we'd
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: build a tank and log roll, and then the flatbed
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: trailer would be the stage for the chopping and the sawing.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: And so we'd... And it's like a 45-minute roadshow that
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: we would do, and we'd do three shows a day, which,
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: by the way, you get in really good shape. I mean,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: you're cranking it when you're on the road. Um, so
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: I was young and buff and tough, and I loved it,
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: and I saw a lot of the country by doing
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: the shows. Um... Recently, my wife works for Fox & Friends,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: and so Fox & Friends was gonna do a segment
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: out of the Lumberjack World Championships for the weekend show.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: So I brought in these young, you know, speed climbers.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: You know, they come in there, and I had just
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: turned 50. And I'm like, yeah, bring them in. And, um,
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna be part of the exhibition. And, you know,
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: all three of us are gonna climb for the show.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, yeah, I'm a little older and fatter
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: than I used to be. They're gonna beat me up,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: but I still have my down, like I came down fast.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: And to which we climb up, and yeah, they beat me,
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: and I do a bail and try to come down
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: fast like I did when I was 28 years old.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: And when you come down, so you have your hands,
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: your hands are around the tree. And by the way,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: your hands get so hot. you have to get heat-resistant
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: material on the back of your glove, or you'll burn
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: the back of your hands, because your hands are around
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: the rope, but your hands are on the tree. Coming down,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: so I'm swinging to the side, my arms up in
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: the air, I hit the pad, which I've done a
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: million times. This time I'm like, I hit the ground,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my God, son of a bitch, I
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: can barely talk. I flip and broke my shoulder.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Damn.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: So, lesson of the story is don't... Welcome to 50.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Don't do what you did when you were 28. Son
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: of a gun. Yeah, so anyway, but this is... So
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: I grew up doing this. When I applied for the
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: real world, I did lumberjack videos. I was doing lumberjack sports.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: I'd flown to California, and I was... So back in
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: the day, I would turn the camera on. There was
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: no editing. I'd turn the camera on, and I'm like,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: all right, I'm in Minneapolis, leaving law school, and I'm
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: going to LA. And then I'm like, I'm in LA.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: This is a dirty, shitty city. And then I went
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: up to the competition that we had.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: It still is, by the way.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: It still is. It's probably dirtier and more violent than
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: it was back then. And then I did this, you know,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: I showed them speed climbing and log rolling, and I
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: sent it in, and that was, so this was my
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: pathway into reality TV, was Lumberjack Sports.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: My pathway to law school, my pathway to see the country. Um,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: so it's, like, I love it. It's... Again, it's this
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: part of America, this America history, that I think is
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: so cool. And again, the sports are so... The speed
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: at which people can go through a piece of wood,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: or they can climb up and down a tree, or
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: I think the coolest is truly log rolling. I mean,
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: the log is flush with the water, and two big
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: guys are standing on it, and they're going to town.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: And most people are like, how in the hell can
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: you stand on the log, you know, if no one
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: was on it, let alone with someone else on it?
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: And the skill is immense. A lot of people start
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: when they're young and the hand-eye coordination, the balance. So anyway, that's, yeah.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: So were your parents into this? Were your siblings into this?
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: So my older siblings were started and they would bring
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: us down. But my older brother was very much into it.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: So we'd go down together. We'd ride our bikes down together.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: And so he's three years older than I am. And
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: he focused on log rolling. He was a four time,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: five time. He won the title that many times in
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: log rolling. He was very good. And I couldn't log roll.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: I never got in the top three. But I focused
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: on speed climbing. So I liked the speed climbing. Again,
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: it's a little bit of the bull riding of the rodeo.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: It's the most exciting sport, I think, in lumberjack sports.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: And so I focused on that and I won the
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: 90-foot race a couple times and the 60-foot three times.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: So yeah, it was a great part of my life.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: I still go back and watch the competitions now. It's
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: a really cool part of my life, but also of,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: I think, American history.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Now, do any of your kids, are they involved in
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: any of this?
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: The older ones did.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: You have nine kids?
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: I have nine kids.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Nine kids.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: The older ones long-rolled a little bit, but once I
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: moved out of Hayward, where, again, we have the facility,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: I tried to get them in, But the further I
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: moved away, the harder it was to do. So the
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: little ones do not.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: You mean there's not a lot of lumberjack schools in D.C.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: There's not, no. But can I tell you what happened?
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: So this is... So actually, I stand corrected. So we
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: had this innovative couple that developed, instead of a log,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: like we're using western red cedar for these log growing logs,
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: and they're very buoyant. They'll float high. So you can
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: get two people on them. It just doesn't sink to
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: the bottom of the pond or the river. They developed a...
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: not Kevlar, but a composite material to make a fake
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: log that behaves like a log. And it's light, but
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: you fill it up with water. And so now a
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: lot of YMCAs around the country have log rolling schools
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: because they have these fake logs that they can easily
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: move around when they don't have water, but then you
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: put water in them and they behave like a real log.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: So yeah, so we have YMCAs throughout the country that
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: actually are doing this, which is pretty neat.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Right on, right on. So what
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: else were you into growing up? Other than being... Actually,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: what age did you start lumberjacking?
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: So I started log rolling when I was probably six
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: years old. I started speed climbing when I was 14.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: I started to learn how to do it when I
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: was 14, 15, 16. So that was like the middle
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: teen years. But at least I grew up in small
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: town America. 10 brothers and sisters. I was the 10th
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: of 11. Um, we have a big hockey family. So
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: I grew up playing hockey. All my older brothers played hockey.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: My uncle was, he's in the hockey hall of fame. He, uh,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: he was on the 1952 or 1954 Olympic hockey team.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: So hockey was a big part of, of our lives. Um,
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: so yeah, I played hockey and you know, we, yeah,
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: that was hockey and lumberjack sports was about it. I
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: played a little, I played little league, uh, We didn't
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: have soccer back then in small-town America. Um, it's not
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: what it is today. We had, um, you know... So, yeah,
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: we didn't play football. We didn't start football until, uh,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: your freshman year in high school. I know they start
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: much younger now. But I broke my leg before my
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: freshman year. So that put me out for my freshman year,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: and I just didn't pick it up my sophomore year.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: You were the 10th out of 11 kids... Yeah. How
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: was it being the 10th out of 11 kids? It
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: was great. It was awesome. Was it? Yeah. But do
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: they have any time for you at all?
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: So, no, what's interesting, and I see this in my
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: own life, so your parents, when you're new parents, I
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: think you make mistakes, right? You've never done it before.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: You don't know how to do it. There was a
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: time when we had these extended families and your parents
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: would help you figure out how to raise your kids.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: And we were kind of clannish as people. And now,
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: because we all live in different parts of the country,
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: we're figuring out how to parent on our own, right?
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: We're new to it. And so I think my parents
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: probably made, they were stricter, probably made more mistakes with
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: the older kids. By the time they got to me,
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: they were pretty chill, right? They were pretty great. I
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: did shit that I think if my older siblings hadn't done,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: they would have been, like, in big trouble. But so
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: I had better parents, they had more money, and Now,
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: they were, again, I think they were a little bit
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: tiring of parenthood too, so maybe they're a little more
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: relaxed as well. But I think they were better parents
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: for me when I came through versus when the first
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: ones came through. They were older, more mature, more just, yeah,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: they were more chill parents.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Makes sense.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: I think as you're, and I see this with my
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: own kids, we get better. We make mistakes and we improve.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: We get do-overs. With every child that you have, you
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: get to do it So I was pretty intense with
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: the first ones. And I'm a lot more chill with
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: the ones that are in the house right now. But
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: it's interesting, this happened with my older siblings, and it'll
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: happen with my own kids. My kids will come home like,
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: what the hell? You gotta take charge. They can't do that.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: You can't let them do that. And I'll be like, eh,
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: it's fine. But they notice the difference in the way
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: we parent today versus the way we parented them. And
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: my older siblings would see the same thing with us.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: They'd be like, you guys let them get away with murder.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: But I do think it's nice to come at the
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: end of the lineup with big families.
• 26:43
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  Speaker 1: always consult with your financial and tax professionals. So here's
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: a question for you. I mean, having nine kids, I mean,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: how do you... But you said that the ages are
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: 26 to 6? 26 to 6, yeah. So about a
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: two-year spread in between?
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: How do you divvy up time for nine kids and
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: a wife?
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: That's a great question. I think even from being in
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: my own family, time is precious. And it's hard to
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: give time to everybody. And time can be an issue.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: And many times, instead of individual time, you're having some
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: more group time. And I think all kids yearn for
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: more time from their parents. And so you could argue
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: that's a drawback to a big family. But I think
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: kids learn a lot from being in a big family.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: You have to help. Two parents can't do everything. the
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: older kids become far more mature and responsible because they
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: have to participate in helping with the younger ones. My
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: older siblings now will talk about how they had to
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: change my diaper and wipe my rear end, and they
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: give me a bunch of shit now about that. But, yeah,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: I think it's... For me now, I have to be
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: thoughtful about how do I spend my time and how
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: do I make sure I get back and pick up
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: where I left off with them. And if I'm honest,
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: my wife has to pick up a big portion of
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: what happens in the house. So when I have the
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: benefit of serving, and I do, it's like the greatest
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: honor to serve the country, but also serve with this president.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: My wife has to then pick up the mother and
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: father job when I'm not there. And I think that
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: can be really hard because there is a role for
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: a husband. There is a role for a wife. There's
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: a role for a man. There's a role for a woman.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: And we do different things and we behave differently. We
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: discipline different. And that is one of the, And so
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: when I come home, I try to lean into my
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: job as a dad and try to give individual time
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: with all of them. And right now I have, I
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: think I have five at home right now. So I
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: have two in college, two are out and are married.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: They got married young. I have one grandchild. So when
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: you only have.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: How old's your grandchild?
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Six months, eight months? No, ten months. Six months. She's
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: out in California. Adorable little girl. And that's one of
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: the problems too. We'd love to see her more, our grandchild.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: But again, when we all live in these different places,
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: I think it's harder to do that, which for me,
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: as I was like, you know what? I want to
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: have a farm. I like to have all my kids
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: around me. I do think families living together is really great.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know if they'll go for that or not,
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: but I would like to have, I like my kids.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: I like my wife. I want to spend more time
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: with them. And if they were with us in the
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: same area, it would be fantastic. So like in Wisconsin,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: I'm in a small town, so I don't live there.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: So there's three or four of us that don't live
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: in this small town, okay? But everyone else lives in
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: this small town, like 2,000 people. It's a lake community,
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: so a lot of people come in in the summer.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: A lot of people come in to cross-country ski and bike.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: It's a beautiful area. but most of my siblings live there.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: And I think there's something very special when they all
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: have their own relationships and their spouses will have relationships
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: and they have relationships with my parents. So I lost
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: my mom a little over a year ago. She passed away.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Sorry to hear that.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, by the way, when you lose a parent, unless
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: you do it, it's very hard, and especially, I think,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: your mom. But what was cool was, with, she, she, she,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: she fell, she was in church and she fell and
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: she broke her hip in late December. And, uh, she
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: went up to Duluth and she was in the hospital
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: up there for a number of, a number of months.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: And then she came home for a number of months.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: And then she went to extended care for a number
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: of months. But if she was 89 and when they,
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: when you break, you know, your, your hip or your
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: upper thigh at that age, it's, I mean, it's, it's
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: really hard to recover from that. But with a big
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: family and everyone living in this area, my dad spent,
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: my dad's 91, he's gonna be 92, active, he runs,
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: he bikes, he is the most active 91-year-old, sharp, awesome specimen.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Hopefully I get his genes. But everybody would rotate time
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: with my dad with my mom. So there was someone
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: with her every single day And not just my father,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: but one of the kids was coming up. And if
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: you look at end of life and what she had
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: when she passed away, she had all of these people
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: around her through all of the time she spent in
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: the hospital, which was about six, seven months. My father
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: and kids were coming through and working together to care
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: for their mother, giving back to her what she had
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: given to them. And it was a really... Uh, it
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: was beautiful, it was hard, but it was a beautiful
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: thing that, you know, because a lot of people will,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: they don't have anyone with them. They're by themselves. There's
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: no one there. Um, and she didn't work. She was
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: a stay-at-home mom and my dad was a lawyer and
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: did some small-town real estate development. But she gave us
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: her life, like we were her, we were her works product.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: And again, like any family, we're all dysfunctional and there's
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: fights here and there's fights there. But in the end,
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: if you look at what really matters, that she had
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: all of her kids come and be with her and
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: share time, so my dad wasn't alone with her. And again,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: it wasn't easy because they were an hour and a
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: half away when they're up in Duluth from our small town.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: Or at her house, people would do schedules and who's
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: gonna take what shift versus another shift. And then in
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: extended care, it was.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: I think if you look at the meaning of life
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: and what families mean, That was, I think, for me,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: it all came full circle of, what are we doing?
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: What's the purpose? And for me, I saw a lot
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: of purpose in what she had, because what she had built.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: And there's a conversation now about, have kids, have a family,
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: don't delay it, find love. And she did that and
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: had all these kids. And it's not always easy, but
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: in the end, she had the most beautiful experience as
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: she passed with with not being alone, having people all
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: around her all the time.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Man, that is really cool to hear. Thank you for
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: sharing that. And again, I'm sorry to hear about your mom.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: What a way to go. Yeah. You don't hear that
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: very often.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: You don't. And you know what? I know a number
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: of doctors who deal with people at end of life.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: And I know a lot of people who give hospice
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: care for end of life. It makes you think about
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: what the purpose of life, but if you have faith
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: and you have a family around you, they will talk
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: about the peace that as someone's going through the dying process,
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: the peace of the person with faith and the person
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: with family as opposed to the person who's missing one
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: of those components. Usually faith is very calming, but also
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: then family will add to it. Um, and there's a
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: distinct difference. Um, because you know where you're going, and
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: you know what you've built as you leave this earth,
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: and that gives people peace. And I think listening to
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: what people say who deal with death a lot should
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: inform us on how we should live our lives, what
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: is the true meaning. And I do think, again, it's
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: faith and families. And I think the message today, Sean,
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: is so interesting that we're telling young girls, get a job.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Advance your career. Your career is the most important thing
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: that you have in your life. And I think it's
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: a false promise, man. I think it's a false promise.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: I don't think it doesn't give you happiness. It doesn't
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: give you, it'll give you money, right? It'll give you colleagues.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: It might give you personal gratification. But who do you
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: have a cup of coffee with on a Saturday morning?
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: Who do you get to watch a sunset with? You know,
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: who do you get to share a day on the
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: lake with? Or a rainy day where you sit in
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: your house. Who do you share that with? You don't
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: share it with your colleagues. It might be fun when
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: you're 34 years old and you don't have to deal
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: with four kids crying at home and changing diapers and
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: taking someone to soccer practice. That might seem fun, but
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: in the end, those colleagues, that corporation, they're not going
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: to be with you at the end. They're not going
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: to go on vacation with you. They're not going to
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: have a cup of coffee with you on Sunday morning.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: It is the people that you put around you, which
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: is your family, I think that is the most important.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: And I think starting young is important. Have kids. And again,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: it's not easy, right?
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: It's hard.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: And you know this more than anybody.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: I started way late.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: But hard things bring you joy, right? Joy doesn't come
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: from the easy layup. Doing hard shit makes you... The
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: joy that comes from that, I think, is remarkable. So
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: I'm a firm believer in find love, pursue love, get married,
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: have kids, you'll be more productive, you'll make more money,
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: you'll be happier. And I just, I think a lot
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: of young men now, I mean, the guys that watch
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: your show, there's just been this revolution of what's happened
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: with young men. The manosphere has been really fascinating to
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: see them leaning into what is it, what does it
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: mean to be a strong male? And that these young
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: men are going back to church at a higher rate
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: than girls now.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: It is wild, isn't it?
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: Really cool.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, it should. We almost lost it. Yeah. We legitimately
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: almost lost what the fuck it means to be a man.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: And it comes back this close. And it came back
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: in full force because of guys like you that go,
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna talk about what does it mean to be
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: a man in this group of great men that'll talk
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: about what it means to be a man. And it is,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: you know, the chivalry, it's respecting women, it's... By the way,
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: these are very Catholic ideas. We started these ideas in
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Western civilization. and protecting your family, protecting your kids. And
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: faith is such a big part of it.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Where do you think the resurgence came from?
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: I think it was the attack on masculinity. You know,
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: calling us toxic.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but how long did that go on for?
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: Too long. It was a slow burn, I think. It
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: was a slow burn that came to a crescendo of
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: these attacks on these boys. And when they had an
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: outlet that would actually celebrate them, would talk about how
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: great they are and how great masculinity actually is, they
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: gravitated towards it. And they rejected, right, the, you're toxic,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: and they would gravitate to the celebration. And that's where
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: they've leaned into you know so many people that will
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: talk about it like you do and and others and i.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Never really i don't i don't really i never made
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: it a how do i say this i just lead
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: by example right I'm not telling people how to be
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: a man. I'm not telling people what it means to
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: be a man. I'm not doing any of that.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Which is more effective than preaching.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: I am just leading by example, and that's it. But no,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of people out there that are talking
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: about that stuff, but I don't do it.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: But I think it's all part of an ecosystem of.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: Who are....
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: What does it mean to be a man? And again,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: you can preach it, which that's fine. That's powerful. Or
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: you can show up by example. But either way, I
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: think young men gravitate towards it, and they should, because
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: we should celebrate young men. I think one of the
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: problems today is, again, how does a great young man
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: find a decent girl to marry?
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: I think it's harder to find a good girl. I'm
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: going to get in trouble for saying that, but again,
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: I think there's, these young girls have been sold a
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: different story. They haven't come back to what these young
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: men have. And yeah, I hope they, again, how do
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: you find someone? I think that becomes far more challenging,
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: but I will say, and you probably can attest to this,
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: the greatest decision you'll ever make in your life, the
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: most important decision you'll make, outside of, you might choose to,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: you know, be a person of faith or not, the
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: number one decision you'll ever make that'll have the greatest
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: impact is not where you go to school, not what
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: job I pick, not where I live in the country.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: It's who do I marry? Who you marry is the
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: greatest decision. And by the way, it's oftentimes a crapshoot, right?
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: We all put our best foot forward as we're dating
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: and we're trying to, you know, go through that process.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: But the most important decision is who you marry, what
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: kind of person are they? Are they gonna say, again,
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: because marriages, anyone who's been married knows, It's always not
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: sunshine and roses. Marriage is amazing, but it's hard. Like anything,
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: it's hard. It can be hard, but it's beautiful. And
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: do I have someone who's going to stick with me?
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: Do we share values? On life's road, who am I
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: going to journey it with? That decision is the number
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: one most important decision any young man will make, or
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: young woman.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Man, I'm with you on that one. I think a
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: lot of people get that, I mean, it's very obvious
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of people get that decision wrong. Why do
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: you think they get it wrong?
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: I don't know that they get it wrong. I think
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: when things can get hard, there's a perception that it's
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: always against sunshine and roses. And it's actually not. It
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: can be, I mean, you got to disagree. You're going
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: to fight. You're going to have issues that you have
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: to work through. And do I have, am I someone
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: who can, actually be committed to the marriage and work
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: through those issues? Do I have a partner who's willing
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: to work through those issues as well? And if you do,
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: you can make it work. But if you, you know,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: hit the release valve and get out, you're probably going
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: to find the same situation in the next marriage that
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: you have. Are you willing to stick it out? Because again,
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: it's the most, like, I couldn't My life doesn't exist
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: without my wife. I wouldn't be here without her. I
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: wouldn't have all the greatest things in my life without her. But,
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: you know, do we have disagreement? Yeah, we have disagreement.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: But in the end, there's... And we fight. But in
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: the end, we're not leaving each other. We made a
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: commitment to each other. We are sticking together. And no
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: matter what fight we have, there's never a conversation about
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: the release valve. Like, this is... We've got to work
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: through it. But We are in this together. And I
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: think if people think about it maybe differently, again, we
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: take away the roses and talk about the beauty of
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: marriage and the disagreement and the agreement and the joy
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: and the fights and make it more realistic and that
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: you have to fight for your marriage, I think we
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: might have better results. I think maybe it's the... You
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: can too easily take the easy path. And then by
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: the way, you might have abuse too. There's also situations
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: where you probably got to get out of, but many
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: of them are not that.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. That's a damn good point. I think a
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: lot of people enter into relationships for strictly superficial reasons also, which,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: you know, that never winds up turning out good. But, but,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: but how, so how did you meet your wife? I mean,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: I know how you guys met, but.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: So I did reality TV, as you mentioned.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was like the beginning of reality TV, right?
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was the sixth season of the real world.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: So this is on MTV. Some people might know this,
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: some people might not, because MTV has gone down the drain.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: But they'd pick seven people from all different walks of life,
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: all different viewpoints, all different experiences, and they'd you know,
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: put them in a house and make them live together.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: And they would just film them for, you know, every
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: moment of every day for about six months. And then
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: they would edit that down to about 22 half-hour episodes.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: And it was wildly popular. And I was on the
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: sixth season of that. My wife was on the third season.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: But what's interesting is, if you think about it, we
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: actually gravitate towards and build relationships with people that are
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: very much like us. Similar backgrounds, similar beliefs. And that's
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: who we become friends with. That's who we maybe want
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: to live by. That's who we, you know, we'll go
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: have a drink at the bar with or a cup
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: of coffee with. People like us. We don't naturally go
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: out and go like, I'm going to go be friends
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: with someone who is from a way different walk of
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: life and way different, you know, viewpoints than I have.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: Like we just, human nature is not built that way.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: But this show made you live with people who are
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: very different from you. And what was actually pretty cool,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: one of the coolest experiences and learning lessons for me
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: doing the show was wildly different people than me. Like,
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: I'm a lumberjack from northern Wisconsin who hadn't done a
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: lot of travel. How old were you? I was 24,
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: 25 when I did it. So I was in the
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: middle of law school. I took a year off of
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: law school when I did it. So I was older
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: than most when I did the show. But what I
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: found was that These very different people at first blush today,
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: it was like, we have like nothing in common. When
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: you live with someone for six months, you realize you
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: have way more in common than you would think of
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: at first blush. And it's been pretty instructive for me,
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: even in politics, you can find common ground with people.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: You really can. Even at the first blush, you'll be like,
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: we can't work together because you're crazy, man. You're like,
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: but the truth is you actually can. And you share
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: a lot more in common than you might think. I mean,
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: I worked with Maxine Waters. She's a Democrat on the
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: Financial Services Committee. She's pretty far left. We found a
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: way to work together on a number of different pieces
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: of legislation. I always treated her with respect. We would
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: argue on her ideas, and she would argue on my ideas,
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: but I never attacked her personally. I don't think this
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: has to be personal. But we found, and by the way,
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: I needed Democrats to help me if I was gonna
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: pass a bill in the House to get it passed
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: in the Senate to have a Democrat president sign it. Like,
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: it can't just be, like, we're Republicans who control the House,
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: I got a Democrat president, and I think this bill
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: is going to become law. If I actually believe in
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: the law, I needed Democrats to partake with me, which
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: means they had to have a say in it, and
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: we had to work on it together. And again, that
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: was the way you could get something done. That, for me,
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: comes back to this real-world experience. And so, to your question,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: my wife did the third season. I did the seventh season.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: And she had a famous season. Hers was with, uh,
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: one of the first guys on TV.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: He had AIDS.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: His name was Pedro. He ended up eventually dying of AIDS. Uh,
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: very sad story. Uh, there was a guy named Puck
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: on their show. You know, bike messenger, snot rocket, you know, funny, uh, witty, uh,
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: little crazy guy on their show. So they had a
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: really unique, um, that she did. Again, I came a
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: couple years after that. I took a year off of...
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: I took a semester off of law school to go
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: do this show. And then at the end of the show,
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: they were like, hey, we're gonna do this special where
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: real world, which is the seven people who live in
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: the house, are gonna do a special on what we
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: call road rules, which was five people. They started off
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: by putting them in an RV and they would do
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: different missions around the country and they'd do different missions
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: around the world. They said, we're gonna have one from
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: each of these casts come and do road rules. And
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: they picked me from my cast, they picked Rachel from
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: her cast. And, um, yeah, she was... I met her
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: at a train station. Everyone was coming in. I was
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: the fifth one of the cast. She was on the
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: train with other cast members that came off. Actually, I
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: went on and basically Rachel handed me her bag. I've
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: been carrying it ever since with her. So I have
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: my meeting with my wife on TV, and then I
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: was trying to pursue her on the show. And she
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: had a boyfriend at the time. She was a little
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: bit successful, but not really. And we hung out a
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: little bit after. It was a three-week show. We hung
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: out a little bit after. And then she was like,
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: not gonna have any of it, right?
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: She was not... No kidding.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: She was not in. She was like, listen, she was
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: living in L.A. She was living this L.A. life. She
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: had a really horrific car crash before we met. Everyone
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: died but her. So she had had this unique experience
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: that she was coming into and she was like, this
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: is not, you're not, at this age, you're kind of like,
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: is this someone that's right for me or not right
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: for me? I guess I fell into the not right
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: for me category. And so I spent a little time
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: in LA and I had to go back to Minnesota
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: for law school. And she had a speech in Milwaukee
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: And that's when Northwest was flying, and their hub was Minneapolis.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: So she flew to, did the speech in Milwaukee, and
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: she was flying through Minneapolis where I was going to
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: law school. And she had a layover. She's like, well,
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: let's just, we'll just be friends. Come pick me up,
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: let's go hang out. So I went and picked her up,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: and I brought her to this famous little dirty diner
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: in St. Paul, Minnesota called The Uptowner, not far from
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: where I live. We had breakfast. We drank coffee, went
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: up hanging out for like two and a half hours.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: And at the end of the conversation, I shit you not,
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: I'm in the conversation, this girl I had met on
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: the show for three weeks, we hung out a little
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: bit after, she ditched me. She comes to see me
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: in Minnesota and I'm back in school and I'm like, whatever,
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: but yeah, we'll go up. Two and a half hours in,
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: drinking coffee, after breakfast, she looks at me and says,
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: I love you.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: No way, what?
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna marry you. I shit you not.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, bro!
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: Like, as a guy, you're like, whoa! So she's going
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: to marry me. So we started dating.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Hold on. What did you say to that?
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: I was like, you're flipping crazy town. Like, what the
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: fuck are you talking about?
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: And for her, it's interesting to ask, you know, now
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: that we've been married for like 25 years, she's like,
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: I just thought this is what lovers do. Lovers can
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: sit and have a cup of coffee like for two
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: and a half hours and like have this really easy
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: conversation and I think you have good values. It was
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: important that I was Catholic. She's like, you're Catholic? You're nice?
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: You're handsome? I'm gonna marry you. And so, yeah, dude,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: that was wild. It took me a little while to
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: wrap my head around that. But that's how bold she is.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: She was very bold. And what a, like a year
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: and a half later, we were married.
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: Right on.
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right on. Wow. So... I'd like to take credit
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: for that, but that was, she was... By the way,
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: and obviously I'd been pursuing her, but I got dissed
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: in the process.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: But... Damn.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: So that's... I was telling you before the show, so
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: we're the first reality TV couple. And we are the
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: most fertile of any reality TV couple with nine kids.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: But can I tell you what's interesting too, Sean?
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: You're literally the first reality couple to marry?
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: Wow, no shit.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: Because we're at the start of reality TV, right? Yeah, yeah.
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: We're the first ones to get married and the first
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: ones to, like, again, the only ones to have all
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: these kids.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: Do you guys watch reality TV together now?
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: She does more than I do.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: What do you guys watch?
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: She loves The Housewives. She'll watch The Housewives. So I
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: got stuck watching The Housewives for a while because she
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: has it on all the time.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: You guys aren't watching Love is Blind, are you?
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: I think this sounds familiar.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: She might watch that too. Oh, shit. Here we go.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. What's... Have you not heard of this shit?
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, but don't... My wife is obsessed. She's obsessed with this.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: So they bring out, they pick all these people, right?
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know, 10 guys, 10 girls, something like this.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: And they do like this blind dating where they go
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: in these rooms. So it'd be like if we put
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: a curtain across this room. Females over here, males over here.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: They talk to each other through the curtains. but they don't,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? You can't see them. And
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: then you have to, so you go through and you
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: date all these people and then you have to get
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: engaged without seeing the person. Would you have done this?
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: Hell no.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: Hell no. That's not my jam. I want to see them.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: Well, then they get engaged and then after they get engaged,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: then they meet. They get to see them. And then
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: they- That's dumb. And then, oh, it's fucking awesome.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: No.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: This is like a total- It's a train wreck. This
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: is what I love about reality. I'm ashamed to say it. Yes,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: I've seen almost all of them. I mean, I can't
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: watch mainstream media anymore. So we watch Love is Blind.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: So then they dump all these, then there's the pool
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: party where everybody, they dump everybody into the fucking pool party.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Of course, there's plenty of boos, and then they all
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: meet the people, you know what I mean? Oh, I
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: remember talking to you. Oh, and then they start getting jealous,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: and the affairs start to happen. It's fucking amazing.
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: Do people get married out of this? Oh, yeah.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: They will? Yeah. I don't know how many of them
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: have actually lasted, but they'll get married. Do they marry
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: on the show? Yeah, so you get engaged. Then they
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: dump everybody in, and they all live together. Then they
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: then the person that you get engaged with, you go
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: to their house and meet their family, and you live
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: together in an apartment, and then at the end, they
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: get married.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: So, I watched a few of the... What's the one
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: with the rose ceremonies?
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: The rose ceremonies, the, uh... God, come on. The, um,
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: whatever that loved one was. The Bachelor. The Bachelor and
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: the Bachelorette. So, old school, I'd watch those with her. Um,
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: but it is interesting what's happened you would spend all
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: this money on the scripts and the writing and actors,
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: and the reality TV side of things is very appealing.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: Whether it's the social media influencer versus people that are
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: doing reality TV, the real component of TV and how
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: people behave and the decisions that they make is really,
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: it's great television. It is. And we were the start
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: of that on Real World. So good for you. you
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: sit down and you.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: Watch Love is Blind with your wife. My wife watches it.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: I fall asleep.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: I think that's bullshit. Your wife is like, that's bullshit.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Sean loves the show, but I don't watch it. I
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: got into it for maybe like three seasons or so.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: And I was just like, man, this is like so
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: addicting watching this fucking train get ready to happen over
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: and over and over. Who would do this?
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: But if we're going to celebrate relationships, celebrate love, if
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: we're going to do it through Love is Blind, so
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: be it.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. Well, no shit. So two-time
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: reality TV star.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: So then I did a special as well where they had,
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: now they do these competitions. They picked real world teams
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: and road world teams. They had to compete against each other.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: And we had to vote people off of our shows.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: So it became contentious. And I had a partner from
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: my show, Elka. We ended up winning. And at the time,
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: I had no money. I was like, I won two cars,
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: I won like $ 150, 000. It was pretty, it was great.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: Nice.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: So I did that one as well. But they've come
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: back and asked us to do more shows. So now
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: what they've done is Paramount.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: Recently?
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So Paramount is doing, they're bringing cast back
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: to spend like two or three weeks together to then
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: film them today. Now they're all older and grayer and fatter,
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: and they're gonna film them to kind of relive what
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: happened in the past and catch up with where they
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: are right now. But the deal is everyone on your
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: show has to say yes to it. And they asked
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: our cast to do it, and I was the only
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: one who said no. And the reason, I mean, I wanted,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: and they were gonna pay fairly well. And for a
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: lot of people, they needed the money. And I was,
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: I felt, I couldn't do it because I don't trust
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: liberal producers, liberal editors. I'm a target. They don't agree
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: with my politics. This is in the midst of Trump.
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: They hate Trump. Like, why would I put myself in
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: that environment? And I don't need your money. So I
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: didn't do it. And I think my cast was frustrated
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: at me.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: And we have a comment getting ready to slam into Earth.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I have bigger problems.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: No shit. So they wanted you to do this.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Some have asked for us to do our, you know,
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: kind of have the family do part of it as well.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: And we just, we haven't said yes to it. And again,
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: we're so busy right now. I'm like, I'm overwhelmed busy.
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: My wife does the weekend show on Fox. She does
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: a Spanish show as well. And so, yeah, we don't
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: have time to do it. Maybe at one point, I
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: don't know, maybe we would do it. But right now,
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: we're not interested.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: You know, that's an interesting point with nine kids. I mean,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: have you talked about that with your kids?
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: So.
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: The conversation goes like this. They want us to do
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: a reality TV show. Someone's gonna be like, are you
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: interested in the conversation? And Rachel, my wife, says, no.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: And I say, how much? And... How much? And we
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: don't get beyond her note. So we do. But I
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: think the kids would be interested in it. I think
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: they would think it's... It would be fun. By the way,
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: the problem is you get older kids and they go
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: back and watch the episodes and they'll... Oh, man. If
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: you do this stuff, just know that it'll come back
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: to haunt you. Your kids will watch what you did
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: when you were their age. And... they'll tell me Maya's
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: season was boring, Rachel's was great, and they'll bring back
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: different scenes and things she said and throw them at her,
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: which will really piss her off.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: I'll bet.
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: Um.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, so I don't know that they're... I don't
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: know that they're really into doing it. But they thought
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: it was neat that we kind of went through this process. And,
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: you know, it seemed like the country has moved. By
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: the way, it was very innocent back then, too. Like,
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: it's gotten really debaucherous. The grain of the debauchery today that...
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: The Great of the Radiance, it was pretty innocent back then.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: And you're having conversations that, you know, someone in the
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: 90s was having about their careers and, you know, their
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: love life and, you know, it was far more natural
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: and it's kind of grown into something different that I
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: think is, I think it would be harder to do
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: as a young adult and I think more.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: It's like controlled chaos now.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: It's controlled, yeah. Yes.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: We have an idea of where, which direction it's gonna go. 100%. So, yeah.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: So, I don't know that I'd recommend that they do it. Yeah. So,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: that has come up with the kids. And the older ones, like,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: I have one son who's like, hell no, you should not. No.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: And I got another one who's like, well, that'd be
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: kind of fun and we could do it and be great.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: And we're a big family and we're, you know, we
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: have a lot of fun together. So, but, you know,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: the boss says we're not going to do it. So,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: we're not going to do it. I think it's when
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: we talk about our kids. So we talked about getting
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: it right, making mistakes, and then figuring out how you
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: do things differently. So my first one went to the
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: University of Chicago. I raised a great little Catholic smart girl,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: went to U Chicago, a great school. And it was
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: right at the start of COVID. And she had made
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: a comment about... communism has killed more people than COVID will.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: Or she had made some analogy, because we're dealing with,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: you know, some of the leftist stuff in the country.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: And people lost their minds. Like, she had death threats.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: And the school, instead of reaching out to her, they
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: had gone to the people who feel threatened by her comments.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: And had a conversation with them. But she turned out
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: to be a great little conservative. My son went to
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: University of Madison, turned out to be a good, a
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: great Catholic young man. He went during COVID and he's like,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: did a year.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: And he's like, I'm out of here.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna go try to make movies in California, which
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: he's done and he's been successful. But from that, we've
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: kind of said, you know what? We, and you know this,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: you have two little kids. Like, you put your heart
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: and your soul into your kids and you try to
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: raise them really well. And make them upstanding little people.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: And you try to give them the faith and give
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: them the value. And then you send them to college,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: and you see these kids that come from these great families,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: and they come back from college, and it's like, what
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: the hell happened to that kid? They're like, they're woke
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: and radicalized, and they're saying all this crazy shit. And
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: so as we've seen that, we're like, you know what?
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: We're not going to do that. I'm not going to
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: invest in all the work and effort I put into
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: my child. I'm not going to send them to potentially
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: be radicalized in these institutions that have professionalized radicalizing young kids,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: young minds. And so now what we do is I say, okay,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: here's the deal. You're 18, you're applying for college. You
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: can go wherever you want. Like that's your choice. Like
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: you're gonna be an adult. You can pick. If you
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: want me and your mom to help pay, these are
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: the 10 schools you can pick from. 10 schools that
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: we know that when you come back, you'll have a
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: great education and they support the values that we taught them.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: But why would I risk giving my child.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: Over to these radicals? What are those 10 schools?
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: So we have a list, but it's Hillsdale's on there.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: The one that our kids go to is the University
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: of Dallas.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: Hillsdale's awesome. Awesome.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: Fantastic. Liberty is one of them. But ours go to
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: the University of Dallas. It's a Catholic school, like a
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: great books. It's a 1950s education where they actually expand
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: the minds and horizons of your kids. And it's truly Catholic.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: I know when I send my young adult there, they're
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: going to come back even better than when I sent
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: them out. And so I have two there right now.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: One's a senior, one's a freshman. You know, maybe to
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: a lesser extent, Notre Dame, but Notre Dame has some problems.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: But we put a list together for them and we
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: let them pick. But to go to the University of Wisconsin,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: say Madison, I'm like, I'm not going to do that.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, and again, it's fun. Like we like, these
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: kids want to go to, it's Club Med. It's, you know,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: they got beautiful gyms and swimming pools and, you know, the,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: The football games are amazing. Like, it's a really great experience.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: But what the hell am I sending them to college for? Like,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: that's not the purpose is to have a great time
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: and the great sorority or fraternity is to get an
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: education and to support the values that we've instilled in them.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: And so we've just been like, we're not going to
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: do it anymore. And I think more parents have to
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: make better decisions about who they're willing to turn their young,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: the young mind that they help. I mean, again, you
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: know this. You put a lot of love and effort
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: into it.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: Not going to risk it anymore with the crazy degrees.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Did you guys homeschool at all?
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: No. No. We just thought we... It's pretty wild. Nine
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: kids was hard. But I know a lot of people
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: with big families do it. We did not. But we've
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: sent ours to Catholic schools. And by the way, sometimes
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: Catholic schools are just public school light. We moved to
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: New Jersey three years ago because Rachel does the show
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: in New York City. We found the most amazing Catholic
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: school in New Jersey, in Boonton, New Jersey.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: Um.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: It is awesome. And so, I was gonna, when I
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: got this job, I was going to move the family
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: to D.C. Um, and Rachel could go back and forth
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: on the weekends and we'd all be there together. Uh,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: we didn't do that because I don't think I could
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: match the school that the kids are in, um, in
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: New Jersey. And so, because of the school, they stayed.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: And that's a decision that Rachel and I made. And then,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: I'm the one that goes back and forth, as opposed
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: to just her on the weekend. But it was, uh,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: And I mean, it's an evolving conversation, but again, making
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: sure that we have kids that go even in the
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: K through 12 school where they get the value that
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: we teach them at home. I think a lot of
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: parents at the dinner table, which by the way, dinner's
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: I think important. We have dinner as much as possible.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: They love to sit down for dinner and have a
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: conversation and put phones away. But you don't have to
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: rewire them. They don't come home at dinner and tell
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: you the crazy shit they learned at school, and you
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: have to rewire them, reprogram them. No, it's like they
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: had instruction that fits with what we teach them. If
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: that makes sense.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: It makes perfect sense. A lot of parents, or one
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: of them, are thinking about these things. At least for now,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: we've chosen the homeschool route. I mean, we're preschool, though,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: so we figure. better figure it out before getting there.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: I think homeschool is great. And the curriculums for homeschool
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: are awesome. But if you go to your school and
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: the gay pride flag is bigger than the American flag,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: you got a frickin' problem, right? Or if you tell
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: me that you're going to raise a global citizen, you
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: got a problem. And that's the shit we deal with
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: in the school system. Whatever happened to math and science
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: and English? That's what the public school was made for,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: for those things. not this cultural revolution. And the cultural
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: revolution is alive and well in most of these schools.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, you should have none of it. That's
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: why I hope that we're successful in this administration. We
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: should have the dollars that attach to the kid, not
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: the dollars attached to the school. And if we do that,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: I think competition and parents, I think parents would make
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: way different choices with where they send their kids. Because again,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: the pathway to success is a great education and they
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: have great values as a human being. and the public
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: school in many places doesn't offer that.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: So are we going to homeschool when they get to kindergarten,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: first grade?
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, never know. This is our first year trying it, but,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, that seems to be the direction we're heading.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm hoping for. Yeah. I love it. Yeah,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I've seen a lot of.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: So this area of Tennessee is like homeschool mecca. And
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: I see a difference. I can definitely see a difference
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: between kids that are homeschooled and kids that are in
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: the system.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: And in the homeschool, do you see that the homeschool
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: parents will then get together with the kids so the
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: kids have social interaction? There's a whole structure around it, right?
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: You'll You'll homeschool, but then you'll do things with other
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: homeschool families.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's plenty. I think the whole myth about homeschool
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: kids being socially awkward and weird, I think that has
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: just been decimated. But when I see the homeschool crowd,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: those kids just have, They seem to have a lot
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: more confidence. They ask better questions. They're better in conversation.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: Way beyond their peers, you know, at the same age. And, uh,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, I think that's the kind of
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: stuff that just really builds a great character.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: So my, um, My son-in-law just announced today that he's
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: running for Congress in my old congressional seat. It's an
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: open seat. And he was homeschooled, I think, until eighth grade.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: And then he went to high school in Wausau, Wisconsin,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: met my daughter. They dated a little bit in high
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: school and then dated in college, and they got married young.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: One of the most well-adjusted, nice young men you'll ever meet.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: Confident.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: And... That's how, being a nice human being that is
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: well-adjusted and can talk to people. And I think it
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: probably comes from his homeschooling up till eighth grade.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: That's cool to hear. That's cool to hear.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: Let's get back to you. How did you get into politics?
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: So I was, so I went to college, went to
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: law school, did reality TV. I was, you know, you
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: said you kind of had left the faith a little bit.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: I was probably not the best Catholic that was out
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: there at that phase of my life. We come back
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: to it and it's important that we come back to it.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: But I, so I came back and I always knew
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: I wanted to come back to my small town in Hayward, Wisconsin.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: And I came back and I worked with my dad
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: and his local practice for about a year. And then
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: an opportunity existed 60 miles north of my hometown where
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: there was a woman who was going to take a leave,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: and I was able to get a job as a
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: special prosecutor to fill her spot where she was going
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: to have a baby. And so I learned how to
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: be a prosecutor. And the guy that was the DA,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: a small office, two people, he ended up taking another job.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: We had a Republican governor at the time. He appointed
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: me into this job as the DA of Ashland County.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: And very liberal area, right? But I was a I
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: was kind of a crunchy con. I was on the
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: health food co-op board. But I was like, listen, I'm
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: a conservative. I'm a Republican. No one ever ran against me.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: So I did almost 10 years as the DA, but
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: that was public service. But I never had to go
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: out and campaign. I never had to go shake and bake.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: And just no one ran against me, and I was
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: able to keep the job. So that was my first
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: experience with public life, but it didn't really have to
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: run anything. And when in 2008, so going back a
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: number of years, but Barack Obama wins, Democrats control the House,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: the Senate, and in Wisconsin, they had the governorship and
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: they had the Assembly and the Senate. So Democrats control
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: everything in my life. And it felt really shitty. It
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: was not good. The country's going in the wrong direction.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: My state's going in the wrong direction. And, you know,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: Democrats are riding high. It's, you know, it's not a
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: great time to be a Republican. But I thought a
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: couple things. One, history of politics will tell you that
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: if that is the environment today, the next election is
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: gonna be really good for the minority party. There was that.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: And the guy that I was gonna, that was my
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: congressman that I was gonna run against, he was the
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: chairman of appropriations. So at that time, appropriation's incredibly powerful.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: He had been there for 42 years. So he was
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: elected in 1969. So before man landed on the moon
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: and before Woodstock, he was a member of Congress. And
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: Republicans had run against him, but they had never been successful.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: So I'm like, you know what? And by the way,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: back then, they passed a stimulus bill, because that was
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: after the 08 crisis. And so the stimulus bill was
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: $ 800 billion, which, by the way, is like.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: I wish the size of some of the bills that
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: Democrats passed were that small again. So I decided I'm
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: gonna run, right? I may not win, but I'm gonna
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: flip and hold them accountable. I'm gonna hold them accountable
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: for these shitty votes, and no one ever holds them accountable.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: When Obamacare passed, he was in the speaker's chair with
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: the gavel, and I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna run.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: And I got in the race. And so what's hard
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: is when you run in a seat like this where
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: you have a 42-year incumbent, No one believes you can win.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: Nobody believed. Everyone actually said, you're dumb. This is foolish.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: My friends were telling me, this is foolish. You can't
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: do this. You're a lamb to slaughter. My wife was like,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: hell no, we can do this. And so I had
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: a friend who was involved in politics who told me,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: don't run. But if you do run, I'll help you out.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: And so literally, it was me and Rachel. I think
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: I had five kids at the time. I got noticed
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: that She told me a month into the campaign that
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: she was pregnant with her sixth baby. And I worked
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: my ass off. So I was the DA during the day.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: I'd get in my car. There's no team. We're the team.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: I drive myself. I have a big district. I have
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: about a third of the state of Wisconsin. I'm driving
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: three hours, do an event, drive three hours home, get
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: home late, sleep, go to the office in the morning,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: do DA work, and again, the same thing the next day.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: And I'm trying to raise money. People don't want to
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: give money to a race they don't think you can win.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: But so half my battle was selling people on the
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: fact that we can win this race. We're going to win.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: This is why we can win. These are the numbers.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: And by sheer force, I raised, for me, I think
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: I raised $ 139, 000 in my first quarter, which was at
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: the time really good. Still is actually a decent number.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: Then I raised like $ 159, 000 in the second quarter. So
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: I was raising money and people were buying in. This
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: is all like local money, small towns, people giving, businessmen
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: that are like, this young kid's crazy, but I think
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: he can actually, maybe he can do it. And so
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: that was the story of our campaign. I started to
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: hire people about eight months into the campaign after driving myself.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: And I got Sarah Palin's endorsement I had You know,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: red state right about me. We're trying to get all
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: of these people to try to build some, um, some, um,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: some energy around the campaign. And then, as we got
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: into 2010, which is the race I was actually running in, um,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: that's when it was like, oh, shit, this is gonna
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: be a good year. This is a good year for Republicans.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: We saw the tide turning. And this guy I was
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: running against ended up, he saw the writing on the wall,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: I was gonna beat him. He, he retired. And so
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: then the seat was open. A state senator, Democrat, got
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: in the race. It was the most targeted race in
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: the country that year. They spent a ton of money
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: against me. Like, my kids would watch the ads. They
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: would give me feedback on the ads. They would take
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: some of the lines. Does Dad really hate old people?
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: Does Dad really? Why does Dad want to take jobs
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: away from Wisconsin? Like, that's the, you know, you know
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: the ads. But in the end, through sheer hard work
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: and a great cycle, I flipped a seat that was
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: 42 years Democrat.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: And the next two races were really hard as well.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: So I worked my... So I would shake so many
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: hands that I would get a callus in between my
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: thumb and my pointer finger.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: As a lumberjack?
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: No, so those calluses are on my hand. I had
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: the back of my hand from people grabbing my hand
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: from shaking hands. Wow. I would get a callus. And
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: I went everywhere. In the primary, I ran against a
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: farmer who is a strawberry farmer. And he's kind of
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: a Mennonite guy. And he's a little bit crazy, but
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: he knew how to work. And so I had to
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: match his work ethic. So I was like, I had
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: to match him and how hard he worked. So I
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: just like, that's what you do. Like, that's all you
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: do is campaign. You're everywhere all the time. We do
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: dairy breakfast in Wisconsin. I would sit at the line
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: where people have to pay for breakfast and I'd just
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: shake hands. And then someone might want to stop and
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: talk to me. And I'd walk with them and talk.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: And then I'd shake hands. And someone wants to talk,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: I'd walk and talk. And you know, what's interesting is
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: if you shake someone's hand, It takes a second, but
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: people get an instant read on you. I like him,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: I don't like him. They're nice, they're not nice. They're honest,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: they're not honest. And so just by shaking hands, people
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: are like, I met him. I think he's kind of nice.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: I liked him.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: Um, so I had this big race and I won and, um,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: had the honor of a lifetime to go to Washington.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: Dick Cheney met our... We had this massive class. We
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: had this, like, 87 new members of Congress, which was
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: just mammoth. And Dick Cheney, who I'm not a big
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: fan of right now, but Dick Cheney, who was the
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: former vice president, a former House member came and talked
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: to us and he said, obviously, I've done a lot
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: of things. I've been the secretary of defense. I'm the
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: vice president. But the greatest win you'll ever have, the
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: greatest political moment you'll ever have in your life is
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: the one you have right now. To win a seat
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: in the House was the coolest experience I've had in
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: my political career.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: But it was really... I.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: Walked into the House chamber with my wife. By the way,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: I'd never been in the Capitol in my life. My
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: class in Hayward, Wisconsin didn't take it to or to
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: the Capitol. So the first time I went into the U.S.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: Capitol was as a congressman-elect. We had a dinner in
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: Statuary Hall for all the new members. And then the Speaker...
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: or John Boehner, who was gonna be the speaker, was like,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: do you guys wanna go see the House Chamber? I'm like,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: where in the hell's the House Chamber? It's like right
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: down the hall, like I have no idea. We walk
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: into the House Chamber, and I started to cry. It
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: was so hard to get there. And to be in, again,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: maybe we think less of it today, but I cried
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: when I got in there. It was so much work,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: so much effort. And then to represent people, they put
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: the faith in you it's a um it's a really
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: cool honor.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: That's cool to hear yeah so So, We'll install this building.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: What do you think, Sean?
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: We're high. How did you wind up Secretary of Transportation?
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: So I did.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: I did. So I served for nine and a half years.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: And we were going to have our ninth baby. And
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: when we, again, I slept in my office, right? So
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: you sleep in a cot or blow up mattress in
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: your office. You go to the house gym, you shower,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: you come back, you have your suits there. You know,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: you spend four days, three nights, four days, you know,
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: living on a mattress, showering in the gym. That does,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: it's an honor, but that does get a little bit old.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: Right now they've switched the model they give a stipend
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: to stay in a hotel. But we were gonna have,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: we found out Rachel's pregnant, baby number nine.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: And then.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: She called me after she had done some testing, like, listen,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: there's a pretty good chance your baby's gonna have Down syndrome. Like, okay.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: And by the way, that's the greatest gift in her life.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: But at that time, you don't know what it is.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: What does this mean for us, right? Um, by the way,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: some tried to talk to us about having an abortion.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: We're like, get the fuck out of here.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: Like, no, we're not.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: We're having this baby. And then as we went in further,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: they're like, ah, this baby has.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: A heart problem.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: There's a heart defect as well. And so as I
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: got into the summers, the baby was born, her name
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: is Valentina, at the end of September. But in the summer,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I can't do this. Like, this is too much.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: Because Rachel has all the kids at home. All the
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: kids are at home. We're at baby number nine. And
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: I'm in Congress, I'm going back and forth, flying to Wisconsin.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, I got to get out. She's like, no,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: we can do this. You can stay. We can make
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: it happen. I can... She's like, she's a scrapper and
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: a fighter. And it was one of the few moments
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: where I'm like, no, we're getting out. And she didn't,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: she did not want us to get out. And it
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: created some tension in our marriage for a little while,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: because she was like, no, you should stay. And at
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: some point, I think as men, we're like, I know
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: what we can and can't do. I know what's pulling
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: at our family. And so I announced I'm getting out.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: The baby came early. And at that point, I took
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: a job with CNN. And I signed a two-year deal
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: with CNN, which, by the way, I had done a
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: lot of CNN. I'd supported the president in 2016, one
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: of the few members that would go on and support
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: President Trump, defended him, pushed for him. Not many people
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: would do it. In 2016, they didn't think about him
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: then as they think about him today, but I was
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: one of the only guys that would go do that.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: So CNN offered me a job. They were not very
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: nice to me at CNN. They didn't treat Republicans very well. Look,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: I worked at Fox too. Fox treats Democrats very well.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: That's not the way I was treated at CNN. So
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: I did a year at CNN, and I asked to
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: get out of the contract. They agreed. I didn't do
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: the full two years. I signed with Fox. Um, just
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: as a contributor. I did that for a couple of
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: years and then got a show on Fox Business, um,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: called The Bottom Line. I did that with, uh, for
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: two years with Dagan McDowell, who I love to death.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: She's wonderful. Um, and then, uh, as the president was
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: going through, you know, his selection process, you know, I
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: wanted to, I want, I thought this was gonna be historic.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: And it, and, but it is historic. I wanted to
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: serve with him. And so, um, I made the pitch and,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: you know, he went through the analysis and I was,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: that he picked me to be the Secretary of Transportation.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: And by the way, Sean, if you said, where do
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: you want to serve? Before I was inside and sitting
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: on the outside, there's a number of things I would've
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: thought about of where I want to go. I got
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: the best department.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 3: I got.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: If you ask me to switch with anybody right now,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: switch with any other secretary, whose job would you like
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: but yours? I got the... President Trump gave me the
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: best job in all the cabinet.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: Really? 100%. Why do you say that?
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: Because we build shit. We make people's lives better. I'm
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: able to... So everybody loves infrastructure. Everybody, even Democrats like
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: roads and bridges. Democrats like new airports. Democrats like air
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: traffic controllers. There's a wide agreement on what we do.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: And if we do it well, if I can take
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: 20 minutes off your commute because I've helped deal with congestion,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: I gave you 20 minutes back with your kids, either
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: for dinner or for lunch, or I got you back
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: home in time, you know, to have a cup of
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: coffee with your wife. If your flight isn't delayed or
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: your flight isn't canceled, I'm giving people time back to
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: be with the people that they love. And so that is,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: that for me is exciting. And that's what I get
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: to do. And there's, I don't think The last administration
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: showed up and did much. Maybe that's a really good thing.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: But yeah, we're moving fast, making a true difference in
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: the way the department operates. And I got it. So
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: there's a deep state. I believe that. You have bureaucrats
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: that fight the duly elected president and his cabinet. In
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: my department, I have people that are in roads or
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: in motor carriers. They're there because they love it. I
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: don't have a lot of people fighting me. I do
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: have some, but they actually buy into the mission. If
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: I can figure out a way of how can we
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: build more roads and bridges? How can we build them safer?
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: How can we build them faster? They buy into it.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: They love that because that's what they want to do.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: So I don't have the problems that other departments have.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: And I have, I think, a great way to make
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: their life better.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: What are some of the problems you're facing?
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: Right now at DOT, so we're trying to rebuild the
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: air traffic control system. So I get there, we have
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: the DCA air crash on my first full day on
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: the job.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: That was your first day on the job?
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: First full day. I was sworn in by Clarence Thomas
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: the night before, like at 5.30 at night. I went
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: and toured the department. I hadn't been there yet. Did
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: a tour of the department. You got to stay out
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: until you're in. Got sworn in. Went home. You know,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: we're staying in hotels in D.C. The next day, I
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: did a ceremonial throwing in with J.D. Vance and go
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: to the department. In there, you know, setting up my office,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: getting things organized. I go home, go to bed. And
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: as I'm laying in bed, I get the notice that
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: the crash happened. So it was my first full day. Um, and, yeah, that's...
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: By the way, we had DCA. That was on a
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: that was on a Wednesday. On Friday, the, um, the,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: the business jet crashed in the downtown Philadelphia. Then the
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: NOTAM system, which is the Notice to Airmen, which will give,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: you can't fly without this, um, this system up and running,
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: that crashed. The Motley Crue plane crashed in, um, in, uh,
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: in Arizona. We had the crash in in Alaska, then
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: a crash in Toronto, in Canada. Like all these things happen.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: I'm like, holy shit, like what? And the people are like,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: what have you broke? I'm like, I just got here.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: I didn't change anything. But I think all of the
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: mismanagement from the last four years all of a sudden
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: came to fruition in our first days there. And it
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: made me think I'm going to fix it. And no
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: one sat down and said, there's a huge problem. all
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: this shit's really old. We don't have enough controllers. There
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: wasn't a playbook. No one laid a playbook out for me.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: It was me actually pulling to get information to then go,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: so all of it's old? Everything is crappy? We got
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: to do the whole thing? And no one has a
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: plan to bring in more air traffic controllers? So that's
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: been the most challenging to actually think through, how do
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: we do it? Because it's complicated. How do we do it?
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: And then I had to sell the Congress on it.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: Give me the money to do it. Make a big
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: investment in me and the FAA. And by the way,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: they've given money in the past and they've squandered the money.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: Like they've made promises, but they'd never deliver. And so
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: I'm asking them to take a leap of faith on me.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: I'm like, this is the number one, two, three, and
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: four job of what I'm doing.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: Trust me, please, I'm going to do it. By the way,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: you don't have a choice not to trust me because
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: if you don't do it now, it's only going to
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: get worse. And they did. And so now we're starting
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: that process of, you know, taking the years it's going
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: to take to rebuild the infrastructure of American air traffic control.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: It should be state-of-the-art. We're going to build a state-of-the-art system.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: You know, we had a lot of stuff to talk
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: about in a short amount of time. But, you know,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: one of the things that I found interesting Interesting, that
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: wasn't in the, it's not even in my outline, but
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: I think it's important for everybody to hear is when
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: we were talking about updating the infrastructure in the air
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: traffic controller towers. I mean, can you just go, like,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: this is how fucking bad this shit is.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: So, I was telling you. This is like our power grid.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: This is like the power grid, that's right.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just....
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: The problem with that is Americans think their government is competent.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: And their government's gonna take care of the grid. They're
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: gonna take care of air traffic control. Like, I don't
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: have to think about it, because I know, like, of course,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: that's what they do. They take care of this shit.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: And the truth is, they don't. They don't take care
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: of it. So, um, you think back to 1980s and
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: our copper phone lines. The phone lines that we would...
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: You're too old for this, but the rotary phone and
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: the dial-up phone, like, landline phones. Those copper wires that
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: we used in the 80s to call people is the
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: infrastructure we use for our communication system in air traffic control. Now,
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: the whole world has migrated from copper to new fiber-fast wires.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: Everybody has done that years ago, and we're still on
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: this old shit. And so that's job number one. But connecting,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: taking out the copper and putting in the fiber, I still,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: on both ends of the fiber, have really old equipment.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: And so we can lay the fiber, but in the interim,
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: we have to slow down the fiber, ratchet it down
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: to make the equipment think that it's still running on copper.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: We've got to slow it until we can upgrade the
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: equipment on either end and the software on either end
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: of the fiber. So again, we have companies that know
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: how to do this, right? That's great. We need new radios,
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: new voice switches. We have... We need new everything.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: We need new... Everything.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: Everything.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: And so my question is rather than... I mean, I
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: already asked this at breakfast, but I would think anybody
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: listening would have the same question. If you can't, I mean.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: What is the point of redoing copper wire to fiber,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: and then doing all the computer equipment that's inside the tower?
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, why not just build a new tower and
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: just do this all at once?
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: So in Nashville, they're going to build a new tower, right?
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: They have a new location for a tower. But in
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: many of these airports, there's one place for a tower.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: And to rebuild a tower becomes really challenging.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: Couldn't they just build it right next to where the
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: old one is?
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: Then it affects the line of sight. And they gotta
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: be able to see around the airport. And by the way,
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: really expensive. These towers are not cheap. So, I have
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: asked for $ 31. 5 billion. About $ 12 billion of that, roughly,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: is for the bricks and mortars for... So, you have
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: the tower at the airport, Then you go to Ring
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: and you have a TRACON that controls the airspace outside
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: of the airport. And then from there you have in-route
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: centers that control the airspace across the country. All of
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: these are really old. So if you tell me to
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: go rebuild every center TRACON and tower, shit, we're talking
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: a ton of money. I can barely get them to
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: give me the 31 billion. So I have to go
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: with the oldest towers, the oldest TRACONs and the oldest
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: centers and build those. I don't have the money to
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: redo every tower in the country. I mean, and we're talking,
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: you know, thousands of towers. So then the problem is,
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: I've got a tower, it's operational, it's controlling the airspace,
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: and it's got all, by the way, it's just, it's
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: piecemeal together, right? And I have to then develop a
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: plan to, how do I come in and rip the
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 2: old shit out, put the new equipment in, all the
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: while keeping the airspace operational and keeping it safe, right? Which,
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, it becomes very complicated very quickly, which is
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: why no one's done it. And I'm like, we're not
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: going to let hard problems stop us from doing what's
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: necessary to keep Americans safe. And so we're going to
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: do that. And it's, and again, the safety component is real.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: You got to make sure that, again, these systems can't
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: go down because I have planes in the air that
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: rely on that system. And so... Yeah, the software we
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: use is, you know.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: What else is like, what else is fucked up? I mean,
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: I've been talking about the power grid for years. I mean,
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: the Department of Transportation is just not something that's ever
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: really popped up on my radar. And then you talk
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: about this this morning, and I'm like, fuck, man.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: What else is out there?
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's, I mean, and that's just, that's not even
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: all transportation. That's just air traffic controllers.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: That's just one small thing. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: Space, everything. And then all the other, all the other
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: administrators out there that are new that are coming in
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: that are like, Oh, I mean, I can, I can't
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: even imagine what right is thinking.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: You know, walking into that job. I mean, that's people
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: at least know about how fucked up the, the, the
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: power grid is. Yeah. What else is there? What else
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: is that? I mean, we talk about, I mean, I mean,
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: I just spent a lot of time with, uh, with,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: Secretary of the Army Driscoll. He's trying to unfuck all
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: of that and it's just.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: It's decades of.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: Everywhere you look.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: It's decades of shit. Decades of mismanagement. Decades of a
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: lack of focus on the right things. And what's great
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: about President Trump is.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: I think literally, I'm like, this is broken. This is
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: how I want to fix it. And his gut is amazing.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: he might go like, I'm like, okay, I'm going to
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: run this through the process. But a lot of times
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: he'll say, do it, do it. You're good. I'm like, shit, yeah.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: And he backs us up. He's trying to move at
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: a way different speed. Actually, he's not trying. He is
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: moving at a way different speed. And that gives us
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: carte blanche to move at a way different speed. We
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: have now a little over three years to get all
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: of this shit done. and to move really fast and
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: really safe. And that's what we're doing. But again, passing
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: the buck, because you want to just be a secretary,
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: you want to be a leader, but you don't want
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: to lead. I think that's a lot of what's happened.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: And so I think we've been wildly successful in the
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: policies we've instituted. But it's because we show up every
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: day and we try. We try really hard, but Just
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: try to do what's right by way of the American people.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: And even don't layer in the... A lot of this...
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of political fights that we need to have.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: And politics is there. But a lot of this stuff
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: is just do what's right by the American people. Make
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: it better for the people. Politics don't have to... Keep
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: the politics out. Like air traffic control, no politics. Let's
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: build roads and bridges. Keep the politics out. Let's build
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: them as fast as we can. I need the Congress
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: to help. Roads and bridges are so expensive. They take
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: so long. You look at what China does. Remarkable how
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: fast they build projects. But we have so many regulations
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: around how we build. So much permitting around how we build.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: Even if we're gonna build over a... We have a road,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: we're gonna redo it. We gotta go new permitting.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: So.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: If the Congress would help us restructure that, we can
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: spend money so much more effectively and build so much
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: more with the same amount of money. But again, you
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: look at our airports, you travel anywhere in the world,
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: beautiful airports. Our airports are shit because we haven't reinvested
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: in our airports and it becomes so much more expensive
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: in America and it doesn't have to be. And it
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: takes forever. And I think there might've been a point where.
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: Was there ever a plan? I mean, let's... was there
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: ever a plan to, I mean, I noticed this shit
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: everywhere I go. It's like, I mean, look, driving down
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: the road, I've done a lot of traveling because of
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: the podcast. Now we've gone to a lot of different countries.
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: And I mean, and you know, I mean, I think
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: we're pretty close to the same age you grew up,
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: but it's like, this is the best country in the world.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: This is the best country in the world. Well, I'll
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: tell you what, you drive down the fucking highway in
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: just about any state here, You see all the trash
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: and shit all over the road. Then you go to
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: some of these other countries and you're like, I don't know, man.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: Some of the infrastructure over here looks a little bit nicer.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: The roads are a little better.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: You got a tight cap on this water, Sean.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: But, you know, I mean, so what I'm asking is,
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, isn't there some kind of budget or schedule
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: on how much money should be reinvested in airports, public transportation, trains?
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: So our budget's over $ 100 billion. When you get a
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: gallon of gas, you pay a gas tax that comes
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: to the federal government. We redistribute a lot of that
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: back to the states. We keep some of it to
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: then give out in grant money for big projects that
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: need to be done. But then you have EVs that
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: don't pay taxes, right? EVs don't pay a gas tax.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: The money we bring into the trust fund isn't enough
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: to cover the infrastructure needs that the country has. And
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: I think part of the solution is you need more money,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: but part of the solution is you can do these
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: projects for way less money. You can do them way faster.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: Let's fix truly the permitting process that takes forever, just
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 2: drives up the cost of these projects, number one. And
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: number two, if you put all these requirements on me
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: that I have to have all these environmental, you know,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: climate change studies and shit on the project. And then
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: you add on to that that I have to have DEI.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: I got a contract based on someone's race or their sex.
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: All of these things are driving up the cost of
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: a project. And if we could say, listen, we're not
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: going to consider, again, if you're a disadvantaged business, that's great.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: And we want to have small business be able to
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: compete for big projects. I'm all in favor of that.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: But enough of the racial, sexual stuff. enough of the
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: climate stuff. And if we can fix the permitting, shit,
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: we can, if we build, we can build faster and
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 2: with about the same amount of money and we can
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: fix the country. But we've shackled ourselves because we've become immobile.
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: We can't build shit in this country anymore. And that
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: becomes the problem. And so we're talking about, you know,
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: the consequence of the bad policy. So let's not deal with,
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: you know, about the cost and the projects. Let's go
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: back to the, as Kamala Harris would say, the root cause,
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: which is the structure on which we're forced to build,
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: which is, it just doesn't work. Does that make sense?
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What about safety and public transportation? I mean,
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: it wasn't long ago, I don't know, maybe they're even
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: still there. I mean, National Guard, I think it was
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: National Guard that was, you know, kind of activated in
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: the New York City subway system. I mean, We just
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: saw that poor Ukrainian girl get stabbed in the neck
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: several times. Nobody helped her. She bleeds out. I mean,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: does that fall under you? Does public transportation safety fall under?
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 2: Or the Daniel Penny in New York. So if you
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: take a step back, you're a liberal, right? And you're
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: a liberal who doesn't like cars.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: Cars.
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 2: carbon, carbon is climate change, right? So, like, I want
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: everybody on public transportation. Like, that's what they want. I
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: think it's more about control as well, but they want
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: everyone or more people on public transportation. And so, if
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: you're a liberal and you had any common sense, you'd say, well,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: if I want more people to ride on public transportation,
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: I should make it really safe. I should make it
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: really clean. I should make it beautiful. It should be
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: the greatest experience. So, Sean Ryan and his family, if
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: they have public transportation, They actually want to take it
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: because they're going to get to where they're going much faster.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: It's going to be much quicker. They're not going to
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: get stuck in traffic. So they want to take public transportation.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: Or Sean would say, I feel really comfortable actually sending
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: my wife and my two kids on a train into
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: the city because I know they're going to be safe.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: I know that their lives are not in danger. I
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: feel comfortable sending them. But that's not the story of
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 2: American public transit. New York... I mean, what these cities
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 2: have done is they've allowed the criminal element to converge
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: down into the subways and on public transportation. And so
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: you get repeat offenders, you get violent, mentally ill, people
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: who are on this system, riding with the very good
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: people who paid for it, and it's not safe. And
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: so people don't want to ride it. And I'm fighting
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: with liberal cities trying to tell them, listen, if you
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 2: don't make your system safe, we're not going to fund you.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: If you don't clean it up, we're not going to
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: fund you. And I get resistance over that. That's actually
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 2: really good politics. Good politics is make your trains clean
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 2: and safe, and everyone's going to want to ride them.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 2: Everyone's going to love you as a politician. Why in
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: the hell am I sitting in DC telling you to
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: make your train system safe? One of the biggest complaints
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: I get is, from riders on, whether it's in Chicago
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 2: or in New York or in Boston, complaining about how
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: unsafe the system is. And there's fare jumpers. And, you know,
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: it's riddled with criminals. That should not be the American story.
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: And so we are working, again, the way I spend
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: my money from Joe Biden and the requirements make it
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 2: a little more challenging, but I can pull money. But
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: I don't run them. The local communities run them. But
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 2: with the new money that's going to go out under
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: this administration, there's going to be requirements, stricter requirements on
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: how they need to provide safety to their citizens and
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: their riders. But this is the... We have to have
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: this conversation. It's idiotic. We have trains in Philadelphia. They're
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: starting on fire. Buses, they're starting on fire. We have
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: to look at, do we take them out of service?
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: Do we shut down the whole system? Do I put 15,000
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: more people on the road? Because they can't figure out
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: how to run a safe system. It's a failure of
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: liberal policies in liberal cities that we see in just
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 2: one microcosm of public transportation. And I think these mayors
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 2: would be heroes if they would just pay some attention
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: to making these systems safer and better.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: So how does it work then? I mean, if you're
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: funding them, can you just break down the funding, how
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: it works? I mean, if you're funding them, couldn't you
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: also just fund security for them as well? Or did they...
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: How does it work?
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 2: So on the federal system, I have... On Amtrak, we
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: have federal officers that work for us on Amtrak. But
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: these systems, like New York's subway system, bus system is
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: the MTA. They provide their own security. The city does
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 2: to the system, right? So they... they have to hire
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: the law enforcement to put them on the trains. They're
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: the ones that have to collect the tolls. They're the
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: ones that have to develop, you know, do we want
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 2: to do an expansion? When do we need new cars?
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: And so, they'll come to us and say, well, we
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: want this much money to do this project. Or, you know,
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: we want our share, by the way, towards the gas tax.
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: A portion of the gas tax actually goes to public transportation.
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 2: The trust fund for roads and bridges of the gas tax,
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 2: which the money should go to, we don't have enough money.
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 2: The question becomes, why are we sending this to public transit?
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: Maybe we should put this all on roads, as opposed
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 2: to carving off 20% to go to public transit. That's
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: a different conversation. So I look at the money that
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 2: we do give them, and I'm willing to have conversations
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: to drive public safety. And if not, I threaten them
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 2: with withholding the cash. And they've improved, but they have
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: to get better. It's also local money, city money, it's
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: state money, and it's our money. But our money is
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 2: a big part of it. But they're in charge of
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: running their system. We'll do oversight, right? We do safety inspections,
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 2: and we also help fund. And that's the leverage point
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: that we can use.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: Does that make sense? What is the pushback from... What
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: do they even say? Hey, somebody just got stabbed to death.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: on your public transit system. Could you make it a
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: little safer? I mean, the entire world just saw this young, blonde,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: Ukrainian girl get stabbed in the neck. Could you clean
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: it up a little bit? How the fuck do you...
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: How do they push back against that?
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: That response has been different. They've actually just, because they
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: had no cash bail, they've changed the law to now
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 2: be able to keep some of these violent offenders behind
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: bars when they have pending crimes instead of letting them out.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: So this is directly tied into the criminal justice system
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 2: and the liberal idea that, you know, we don't want
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: to incarcerate people. We want to let everybody out, no bail,
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: They're back on the streets, back in the subways, recommitting crimes.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: You've seen with President Trump in D.C. by bringing in
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: the National Guard, there's just a small cohort of people
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 2: that create all the problems. You take them off the street,
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: you take their guns off the street, and lo and behold,
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: the city becomes a much safer place. So law enforcement
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: actually works, but it's been this liberal idea of no
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: cash bail, soft on crime prosecutors that have driven more
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: of the problems in the subway system. And again, the
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: subway system is not meant for the mentally ill. That's
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: not their home. That's not their shelter. The cities have
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 2: to figure out something else to do with the mentally ill.
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 2: How do I treat them? How do I house them?
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 2: But the subway system is not a place for the
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: homeless or for the mentally ill. And liberals have a
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: hard time wrapping their head around that. So they complain.
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: They'll tell me they're safe. They tell me that, you know,
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: I'm crazy. But again, there's story after story of violent
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 2: crimes on these systems. And the answer is really easy. Again,
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 2: prosecute criminals, put criminals behind bars, stop the fare jumping,
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: kick out the homeless. I mean, it's not, these are not,
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: we don't need, the solution is not complicated. It's very,
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 2: very easy. It's just that their liberal ideology won't let
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 2: them do it. And then that becomes the problem.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: Man, man. Let's talk about, I mean, you know, we're
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: seeing more and more EVs and autonomous vehicles and, and,
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, the, the, was it the robo taxi? Yeah.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: Is that the, is that Tesla's new, you know, taxi? And,
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: and so we're seeing these self-driving cars and just all
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: this autonomous vehicles is, they're massive right now. And so what,
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: what is the, what is the, what is transportation, what
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: is just public road systems? I mean, in, What do
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: they look like in five to ten years as we
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: continue to move down the autonomous vehicle timeline?
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: So, we're on the cusp of the most transformative time
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 2: period in American travel. Things are gonna change faster in
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: the tenure I have at DOT than any time, I think,
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: in recent history. And so, to talk about that. So, again,
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 2: autonomous technology has been remarkable. It's advancing at incredible speed.
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: So we lose about 40, 42,000 lives a year on
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: the road. Way too many. I do think that this
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: technology can help. People pick up their phones. I'm grabbing
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: my phone and I'm driving and a text comes in
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: or I'm texting someone. This is the shit that kills people, right?
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: Or people drink and drive. So I do think the
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: autonomous technology is going to radically improve safety on the roadway.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: I want people to choose what they want. But you
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 2: might find a time when you don't buy a car.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: That's not me.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: I always have a car.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: I like the freedom of having my own car and
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 2: I want to drive my own car. Maybe that's generational,
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: but that's freedom. But there might be a time where
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: you don't need one and you're going to have an
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 2: autonomous vehicle come by and pick you up and drop
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 2: you off. And when you go to a grocery shop
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: and you're going to call one back and you're going
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 2: to get in and you're going to go home. or
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: you might lease your car out into the marketplace that
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: someone can rent it from you and it's autonomous. So
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: I think the Uber model with autonomous model is going
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: to change the way people use vehicles.
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: Do you think that it's going to be a lot
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: more people, a lot of people, what do I say,
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: a lot more people without a car?
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: It could be. Or it could drive, for those who
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 2: are on the cusp, it'll make that... It'll make it
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 2: less expensive and more user-friendly, potentially. We do have the
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: potential with technology, if you look.
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: So you think that a lot more people are going
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: to be gravitating towards public transportation than owning their own vehicles?
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: No. So I'm saying that you'd have an Uber model,
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: but Ubers don't have drivers. Ubers are using autonomous vehicles.
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: And their fleet could be... I'm just using Uber as
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: an example. Mm-hmm. Uber could have their own fleet, but
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: you could lease your vehicle into the Uber fleet, and
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 2: they're all running autonomously.
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's considered public transportation, isn't it?
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if I'd call it Uber public.
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think public transportation is when the public
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: provides transportation with buses and trains. This is a private
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: company providing private transit.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, with the stuff that we're seeing, you know,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: Elon come up with robo-taxis, all these things, I mean,
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: Are we going to start seeing those as public transportation,
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: no bus drivers, school buses?
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 2: 100%. And it would be, some of the modeling that
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 2: I've seen, it would be cheaper. Move people, you're not
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 2: driving this big bus around in hopes that someone might
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 2: want to get on it. And then you're picking up
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: and dropping people off the route that's not actually where
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 2: they want to go. You might more cost-effectively be able
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 2: to use this autonomous technology to to take people from
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 2: where they are to where they actually want to go
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 2: and do it cheaper than using the bus system to
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 2: do it. So yeah, that we could have a public
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: transportation component as well, but also on the congestion side, again,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: there's a whole conversation that we have to have about
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 2: how this information is used and the security of the
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: information and individual liberty, which I am very concerned about.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: But if we set that aside, which I would never
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: set it aside, but just for the conversation sake, you
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: could have, Vehicles, you know, when we look at the
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 2: congestion on our streets and our roads, you can have
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: this technology bring vehicles much closer together and move more
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 2: vehicles on the same roadway because of the technology on
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 2: those vehicles. So we can reduce congestion remarkably with this technology.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: So that'll be interesting as this is all developed. And
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: my job is to, as the technology evolves, I'm kind
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 2: of the Goldilocks, right? I can't let regulation go too
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: far where if bad things happen, people get hurt, then
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: it's going to set us back, you know, five or
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: 10 years. And I can't be too slow because the
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 2: innovators will then go somewhere else. This innovation will happen
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: in a different country. I have to be just right, right?
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 2: And it's an art, not a science of making sure
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: I'm changing our rules and regulations as the technology evolves
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 2: and making sure it's safe for people. But again, I
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 2: want that innovation to happen here. I want autonomous vehicle
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 2: technology to be deployed from the U.S.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: Around the world.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: I don't want Chinese autonomous technology to be deployed in
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: the U.S. That's a national security risk and threat for us.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: We do not want that. But what else is going
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 2: to change? And by the way, so you already have,
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 2: I think it's in Austin, Tesla's already doing this with
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: the Robotaxi. And we're going to see this, you know,
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 2: how does it go there? And you'll see more deployment
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: around the country. But drone deliveries, drones are gonna radically
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: change the way your products move. We're gonna take vehicles
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: off the street, and right now they're about three and
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 2: a half pound deliveries to five pound deliveries. But drones
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 2: are going to deliver a ton of stuff to people,
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 2: whether you wanna get a hot cup of coffee in
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: the morning, whether you need medicine from the drugstore, whether
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 2: you went shopping and you forgot to grab something at
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 2: the store. Drone delivery is gonna radically change the way
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: products move. And I want that technology to be American technology,
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: which means I have to get the regulation right. And
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 2: you've seen these eVTOLs, these Ubers in the air, the
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: electric helicopter. You haven't seen these?
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: I think I've seen... I think I've seen these.
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, you got to check it out. So this is
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 2: the next tranche of air mobility.
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: Is this actually happening right now?
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, shit, yeah, like this, yes, 100%.
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: Where?
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: So we're testing them around the country, but, you know,
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: there's a big test facility down in Texas. So what'll
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: happen is, again, Joby, Beta, we had a number of
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 2: big investments have gone into these.
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 2: Into these eVTOLs. And there's different ranges on these, right?
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 2: They can go 30 miles, some 100 miles. But if
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: you think of DC, you'll be able to go from
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 2: downtown DC, if they let you fly in downtown DC,
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: or I could even say from Reagan Airport out to Dulles.
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: It's the cost of a Uber Black. And they are,
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: you can put five people on them. They're all different models.
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: And come right down. And so you need a pilot
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: in them now. Eventually, those will be autonomous as well.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: You need a pilot in them now? Right now.
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: We have not certified them. They're going through the certification
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 2: process now. We'll start off with pilots. I think they'll
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: be autonomous at one point. You'll be able to call
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: one of these... uber human drones that come down and
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 2: will pick you up and take you 40 miles, 30
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 2: miles and do it quick.
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 2: And so when I talked about the airspace and modernization,
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 2: we have more planes in the airspace right now. This
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: is going to make it just that much more complicated.
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: There's going to be more users of the airspace. And
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 2: then you throw drones in as well. It's very, very complicated.
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 2: And by the way, the U.S. has the the most
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 2: complicated airspace in the world. We have more planes than any... Like,
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: no one has what we have. More complicated, more complex,
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 2: more airplanes, and we're gonna add into that, which is
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 2: why we need to make sure we have this system
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 2: brand new, and we need state-of-the-art technology running it so
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 2: we can get more efficient, not deploy more assets into
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 2: the airspace and then have more delays.
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I was gonna ask that. I mean,
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: the autonomous stuff, I mean, that's... we're now making fighter
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: jets that are outperforming world-class fighter pilots autonomously. And so then,
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: you know, when I hear that, I mean, I just had, um,
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: Brandon saying on from shield AI who just did the,
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: you know, big unveiling of the expat. And I mean,
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: when you see stuff like that come out, it's, it's like,
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: Oh man, like commercial pilots done. Um, We have something
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: that's going to outperform an F-22, but we're not autonomously
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: doing commercial airlines yet. That's, I mean, it's done, right?
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: It's done. And then when you're talking about all these
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: drones and all the, I mean, I'm just thinking, all right,
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: what is the sky going to look like when nobody's
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: going to Walgreens? Nobody's going to Walmart. Nobody's going to
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: the grocery store. And everything is being delivered by drones.
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, you already see all the Amazon delivery vehicles
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: and UPS and FedEx. They're everywhere. And so what's the
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: sky look like when deliveries become fully autonomous? And then
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: you're going to have to have to deconflict all the
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: commercial and private airlines from all those drones. And so
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: if you don't make those autonomous, then we're going to
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: have a lot of human error, a lot more human
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: error than we have right now, because the skies are
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: gonna be more crowded. So I would think it's just
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: a matter of time before all commercial, before anything that
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: leaves the ground is autonomous.
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 2: So I think as you have more acceptance for autonomous vehicles,
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 2: which probably make people feel that that's one threshold, the
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: autonomous Evatols, these Ubers in the air, I don't know
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 2: that people are going to want to get on a
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 2: jetliner and have it autonomous. I decide that maybe one day,
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 2: I think that's the last tranche. I think people want
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 2: to have a pilot on their airplane.
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: You think so?
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 2: I do. I know I do. I want a pilot.
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: The Evitol, yeah, I'd probably do that with autonomous. But
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 2: on the jet, I want a pilot. Now, it's all
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 2: becoming far more... and there's far more technology.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 3: You know, you can.
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know, man. Then we had all that DAI shit.
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: We got all these people that are being pilots that
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: should never have been a fucking pilot. I might lean
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: towards the autonomous version, to be honest with you, but.
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but you mentioned the fighter jet stuff. I mean,
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 2: it was... I read an article about how the autonomous
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 2: fighter jet versus the ace American pilots... they'll take risks
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 2: that the pilot won't, right? They'll do shit that no
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 2: pilot would do, taking risks that no pilot would take,
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 2: which makes them that much better in the airspace, which
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 2: truly is wild. And again, this is airspace, but you
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 2: think about the future of warfighting and how is, I mean,
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 2: the revolution that's going to happen on how battles are
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 2: fought is everything is going to change. And even I
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: mentioned drones. So drones have, amazing commercial benefits to America.
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: But on the flip side, there's a substantial national security
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 2: risk to drones, right? And so how do you marry
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 2: those two things together? How do we let the commercial
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 2: side evolve, but also share the concern for these are
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 2: actually very dangerous tools that can be used to harm
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 2: the country? And we're working through that right now, and
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 2: there's good debates that happen. And we have to have
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 2: the technology here, but we have to be smart about
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 2: how we do it. And you have government all working
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 2: together to figure out what that balance is.
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about shipbuilding a little bit. I mean, I
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: didn't realize that shipbuilding fell under DOT as well. I mean,
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: that's a topic that we talk about quite a bit here.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: So we have... By the way, so I have roads, bridges, semis, pipelines, ports....
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: Pipelines too, huh?
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 2: Airports, airplanes. Yeah, we regulate all the equipment on cars
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 2: on the safety side. Everyone else, we have trains, public transportation.
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 2: So yeah, it's a huge department. But I think if
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 2: you look at what's happened in global shipbuilding, you know,
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 2: you had the You know, we've lost the industry here.
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 2: And I think it comes back to those number of factors.
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 2: One of it was regulation. Other labor factors came into play.
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 2: But it went overseas, right? We're in South Korea, a
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 2: huge producer. But then China one day says, we want
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 2: to build ships. And shit, in less than 10 years,
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: they're a global powerhouse in shipbuilding.
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think US is less than 1% of global
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: shipbuilding capacity. China is over 50%. That's right.
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 2: And so then the question becomes, is that a problem?
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: I'd say that's a big problem.
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 2: A big freaking problem, right? So what's interesting is Trump
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 2: saw that and was like, hell no, we're going to
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 2: build ships in America again. Or even steel. You need
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 2: to produce steel in your country or you're screwed, right?
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 2: So we're navigating the president's priorities around shipbuilding, which are
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 2: ours as well. But we forgot how to do it.
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: We don't know how to do it well. And it's
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 2: more expensive to do it here right now. And so
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: what we have to do is then we need investments
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 2: from government to bring in industries, U.S. companies with foreign
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 2: partners that know how to do this, and set up
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 2: shop to start building here. And I think there's a
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 2: number of ways we can bring in the revenue to
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 2: pay for it, where we can take it off the
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 2: shipping industry itself. even the foreign carriers or the foreign
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 2: ships to pay for it. But we're working with commerce
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 2: on that and with OMB to figure out how we're
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 2: gonna accomplish the president's goals to make sure we build
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 2: in America again, because this is a huge risk. There
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 2: was a time that we owned the seas, man. We
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 2: were the best. We built all the ships. We sailed
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 2: the ships with the best sailors. critically important for our
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 2: national defense. And we just kind of gave it up.
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 2: We just kind of stopped doing it. And again, we
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 2: had dumb people in government that didn't see the risks
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 2: of letting these industries go. And now we deal with
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 2: the consequence of now, how do we build it back?
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 2: How do we reinvigorate these industries? And it's going to
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 2: take us time. It's going to take us money. But
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 2: it's important for long-term viabilities.
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: You know what's interesting? I don't know if you have
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: any insight to this, but when we talk about the
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: allocation of taxes and how bad the energy grid is
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: in the country and a lot of the challenges that
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: you're facing as Secretary of Transportation, where has all the
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: fucking money gone that has been allotted to all these
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: different organizations and institutions? for years and years and years.
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, we haven't seen any, I mean, I'm unaware
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: of any major improvements in our power structure. I'm familiar
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: in any major improvements in our roads or our bridges
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: and our shipbuilding and any of the stuff that we've
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: talked about. I mean, we just talked about the air
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: traffic controlling towers. Where did all the fucking money go?
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: There's been zero improvements, at least that I've seen.
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 2: And I love that you talk about the grid, because,
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 2: I mean... It's a fucking trocious. What happens? The grid
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 2: goes down? Like, a lot of people die. Oh, yeah.
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: A lot of people die.
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 2: And again, there hasn't been someone to say, hey, I'm
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 2: going to grab that, I'm going to fix it. So
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 2: I'll give you.
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: Not only that, not only... that, there's been money allocated,
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: you know, for these institutions. Where did it go?
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 2: So, okay, so I can only tell you our experience.
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 2: So air traffic control. I'm just going to give you
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 2: this one. 20 years ago, they said, we need a
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 2: new brand of air traffic control system. We're going to
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 2: call it NextGen. Next generation of... I think the Congress
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 2: spent $ 20 billion on this. They didn't do shit. They
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 2: spent the money. They had ideas. They did white papers.
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 2: They talked about it. It took so freaking long that
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 2: the technology they were looking at deploying, it took so
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 2: long to study it, so long to even think about
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 2: developing it and get the regulation right for it. By
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: the time they might be ready to deploy the technology,
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 2: it was already fricking old. Like it was already old shit. So,
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, again, you have to be thoughtful on having
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 2: the best technology, but you have to be able to
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 2: build off the technology that you deploy. And 20 billion wasted,
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 2: and now I sit here and go, okay, but we
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 2: have to do it. That's why we have to do
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 2: it fast and do it right. So I bet the
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 2: same thing happened with the grid. People piss away the money.
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 2: they're not smart, they're not thoughtful, they're not strategic. And
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 2: so we sit here with, but again, who knows, if
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 2: you don't watch your show, who knows that the grid
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 2: is shit? Like I think most people think, oh no,
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 2: the government, they won't let that happen. The grid's gotta
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 2: be great. They're amazing. Of course they look out for us.
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 2: They do the right stuff. And lo and behold, you're like, yeah, no,
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 2: it's pretty actually vulnerable.
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: It's a problem.
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 2: So I think that's it. So back to shipbuilding, it's
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 2: the president setting it as a priority. And when he
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 2: says it, I think most people go like, yeah, actually,
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 2: that probably is really important. We probably should build ships
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 2: in America. Let's figure out how to do it. I
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 2: have the Merchant Marine Academy. So this is a national academy.
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 2: They need a commission from a member of Congress or
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 2: a senator to go to the academy. It's the schools
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 2: for free. And we want these excellent U.S. mariners in
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 2: our fleet that if the military needs assistance, we can
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 2: pull these great mariners from the academy, pull them into
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 2: the government, into the Navy. And they also provide the support.
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 2: They're the support mission for the military as well, providing
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 2: a lot of the equipment and assets that you need
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 2: as you're deploying around the world. So really important young people.
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 2: I found out that in the last administration, the kids
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 2: at the academy went four months without hot water. I'm like, well,
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 2: how can they not have hot water? Well, the last
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 2: administration wanted to have electric boilers and electric boilers don't work.
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 2: You need to have the oil or the natural gas
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 2: boilers that actually provide heat. So they couldn't figure out
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 2: the electric boilers for this massive campus. And the kids
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 2: went without hot water. And by the way, they were like,
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 2: we're tough and we're strong.
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: We're the merchant marine.
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 2: We don't have hot water. Their dishwasher broke. And so
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 2: they were eating on paper plates and paper forks. At
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 2: a US service academy, this is the way these young
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 2: men and women have been treated. And they're the most
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: amazing young men and women. I'm like, holy sh.
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 2: I have faith in America when I see those young people.
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 2: at that academy and how hard they work. It's a
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 2: great school. But it's just neglect. We've neglected our country.
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 2: We've neglected the infrastructure of our country. And we spent
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 2: a ton of money. We're $ 37 trillion in debt. And
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 2: you're like, what the hell have we gotten for all
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 2: this money? Where are the roads and bridges? They spent
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 2: a trillion, $ 800 billion in that infrastructure package I told
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 2: you that my former congressman who I ran against, he championed.
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 2: It was all supposed to go to roads and bridges.
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 2: And then we had the Build Back Better Inflation Reduction
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 2: Act that, I mean, we sent a ton of money
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 2: to roads and bridges. So outside of the normal funding,
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 2: we put $ 2 trillion into road and bridge funding. I'm like,
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 2: where in the frick are the roads and bridges? Like,
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 2: what the hell did you do with the money? Because
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 2: I don't see beautiful infrastructure in this country. You're spending
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 2: the money, but I think Americans have to demand we
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 2: get something back for it. I want a new grid.
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 2: I want new airports. I want new roads. I want
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 2: this shit to work. But to do that, you have
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 2: to elect smart people who are not focused on DEI
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 2: and climate. They're actually focused on providing for the American people,
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 2: delivering for the American people. And I just don't think
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 2: that's been the model. And President Trump has absolutely flipped
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 2: it on its head. It's like, no, we give deliverables.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. What, so, excuse me. What can Americans expect
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: improvement-wise from Department of Transportation in the next three years?
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 2: So you're going to see us build faster, right? We're
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 2: going to build infrastructure faster. We are going to push
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 2: safety on our transit systems. We're not going to fund
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 2: transit systems that aren't going to make their systems safer
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 2: for their ridership. We're going to I'd like to see
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 2: high-speed rail in America. I really would. It's possible. There's
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 2: a project now, Bright Line West, that goes from Las
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 2: Vegas to LA. It's somewhat over budget, but there's a
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 2: real opportunity to have high-speed rail here. I think we
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 2: should have it, but we should be able to build
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 2: it at a reasonable cost. You mentioned I cut the
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 2: California high-speed rail. It was going to be a $ 100
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 2: billion project. They spent $ 16 billion and hadn't laid one track.
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, just pissed away the money. Um, I think
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 2: you're gonna see air traffic control way better. It's gonna
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 2: take me time. Like, I can't fix this stuff overnight,
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 2: but you're gonna see massive improvements in, um, uh, in
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 2: air travel. And you're gonna see the way people and
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 2: products move in this country radically change. The autonomous vehicles,
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 2: the evatels, and the drones will substantially change as, um, we, um, we...
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 2: we implement these new rules. We're also gonna.
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: We.
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 2: Talked about road safety. I don't know if you followed this,
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 2: but we have all of these truck drivers that don't
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 2: speak English, number one. And number two, the Democrats do
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 2: a great job of contorting laws. So, we have, um,
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 2: truck drivers that are getting what's called a non-domiciled CDL.
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 2: Foreigners can get a non-domiciled CDL, commercial driver's license, and
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 2: drive truck in America. And... It was really made for
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 2: if you come from Tennessee and go to Wisconsin, you're
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 2: non-domiciled in Wisconsin because you're from Tennessee. You can get
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 2: a non-domiciled CDL in Wisconsin. It was for American citizens
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 2: going from one state to the next. They've contorted it
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 2: to let all these 10, 15 million people that have
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 2: come into the country actually get a commercial driver's license.
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 2: And they can drive a tanker. They can drive a
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 2: school bus. And we're seeing these crashes around the country
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 2: of people who are foreigners, that the licenses were issued
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 2: unlawfully in places like California. A lot of them can't
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 2: speak English, which is a requirement under the law. And
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 2: so we're pushing to make sure that we actually have
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 2: states follow the law and we keep our roads safer
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 2: because we don't have people who can't understand the language
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 2: and they have a CDL that has been issued to
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 2: them that's unlawful and they actually don't have the skill
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 2: sets to be driving a big rig in America. That's
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 2: the stuff that I think will change. And again, it's safety-driven.
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 2: It's speed-driven. And again, I think it's going to be
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 2: a revolutionary time in the next three and a half years.
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 1: So we'll see those. We will definitely see these improvements
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: before this administration's time out. 100%.
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 2: 100%. I think you'll see in your airport, you'll see
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 2: these Evitol pads. You'll see a pad there. And maybe...
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 2: As you have people take trains and cars into the city,
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 2: you might say by the end of this three years,
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 2: you have a service that'll go from the airport to
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 2: a port in downtown.
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's not just D.C.? Oh, no.
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 2: These will be deployed everywhere. You'll take a five-minute ride
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 2: from the airport, and you'll be in the city in Nashville.
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 2: And there you sit. You're good to go. Yeah, they'll
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 2: be everywhere.
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: So what do they call these? EBITDAs?
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 1: So what is there going to be like a station
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: full of a bunch of these things that all go
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: to and from the airport?
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: Is it a huge parking lot?
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 2: They'll be running back and forth to get charged up, yeah.
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 2: But it'll be like.
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: Will people park around them? Yep. You know what I mean?
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: Like an airport, you park your car, get on the plane.
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Or better, I'll park somewhere in the city and
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 2: I'll take one out to the airport, get off and
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 2: go onto the jetway and get on my flight. Or
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 2: I got off my flight and I'll go get in
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 2: one and I'll go into the city. If you're in
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 2: New York, you'll go from Manhattan and you'll fly out
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 2: to Long Island. And the choppers are loud. You barely
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 2: hear them. They're pretty fast. You're up and you're over
• 2:17:51
  Speaker 2: and you're out. Cheaper, faster, moving people.
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: That's cool. Let's move into some NASA stuff.
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: Man, you got a lot going on. Nine kids, husband.
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: Secretary of Transportation and NASA administrator. What are your plans
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: with NASA?
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 2: The president put me in as the interim NASA administrator
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 2: until he picks the actual administrator. The problem had been
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 2: without someone in the role, the organization languishes. He said,
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 2: go in, give a direction, and let's start to move,
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 2: which is exactly what I've done. And again, a couple
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 2: of the big things that we have to do is
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 2: we have to get to the moon and we have
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 2: to have a replacement for the International Space Station, right?
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 2: Those are the two big top priorities that we have
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 2: right now. Number one is that we gotta get the
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 2: moon right, then we're gonna have to figure out what
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 2: we do for our second space station. And so that's
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 2: exactly what I've done. So we had a situation where.
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: Why haven't we been to the fucking moon?
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 2: Well, we have been.
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: Why haven't we been back to the moon? How long?
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 2: It'll be 54 years.
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: 54 years. We just went, we're like, oh, we don't
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: need to explore that anymore.
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 2: I think that there was... It was in there.
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: Box checked.
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was expensive. It was expensive to go to
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 2: the moon. And then it was also, we'd done it,
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 2: and there was more focus on lower Earth orbit, right?
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 2: We wanted to evolve that. And so, again, the Chinese
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 2: want to go to the moon. So at the south
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 2: pole of the moon, there's ice. And ice means oxygen,
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 2: ice means water, ice means life, right? So you have,
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's the key component. And the Chinese are
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 2: trying to get there. We want to beat them back
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 2: to the moon. And again, we're not going to go
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 2: with our 1970s landers. It's going to be a lot bigger,
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 2: bolder missions. But what's important is, What we learn in
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 2: the mission to the Moon, and how we do it
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 2: on the Moon, and how we have sustained human life
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 2: on the Moon, how we have a base on the Moon,
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 2: what we learn there is gonna help us get to
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 2: Mars and beyond. That is the way station, the stepping
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 2: stone to go out and explore other places in the universe.
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 2: And so, I think we would... The organization wasn't focused.
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 2: The last administration, They were trying to pivot NASA from
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 2: human space exploration, which is, by the way, NASA is
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 2: the only one that does human space exploration. No other
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 2: agency does that, right? They were trying to turn it
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 2: into a climate change DEI organization. Actually, I brought you
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 2: a book.
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, boy.
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 2: So this is a couple million dollars on a number
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 2: of different comic books. So this is one that is
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 2: the first woman in space, but no problem with the
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 2: first woman in space, but it's a book that is
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 2: full of DEI and gender crap, as opposed to saying,
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 2: I don't care what your color is. I don't care
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 2: what your gender is. I want the best astronauts on
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 2: these missions. That's what I want. And millions of dollars
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 2: was spent on books.
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: Like this Millions of dollars.
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 2: As opposed to thinking of millions of dollars to invest
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 2: in science and technology that's going to get us to
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 2: the moon before the Chinese. And so what we've had is, again,
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 2: so think about this. So 10 years ago, I don't
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 2: think anyone would have envisioned that we would have a
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 2: space economy like we have right now. And SpaceX and
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 2: Elon Musk revolutionized kind of how we think about commercial space.
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know how much it used to cost to
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 2: get a satellite into space, but it was really expensive.
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 2: What SpaceX has done is brought the cost down. I mean,
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 2: for a small satellite, I think it's gonna cost you $ 300, 000.
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 2: For a little bigger one, it's gonna cost you a
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 2: million dollars. But people can get... Companies can get satellites
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 2: into space way cheaper than ever before. But no one
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 2: would have thought about the space economy but for this evolution.
• 2:22:30
  Speaker 2: in rocket, rocket technology, Elon's ability to reuse rockets, all fantastic, right?
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 2: And so right now, it's a $ 600 billion business. We'll
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 2: be at a trillion dollars in short order. It's the
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 2: fastest-growing part of the U.S. economy, actually, is this part
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 2: of it. And it's really important for our national security
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 2: side of the aisle. We're civil, but there's a national
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 2: security component to it as well. But on the flip side,
• 2:22:59
  Speaker 2: So I told you, we're going back to the moon
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 2: in early February. First time in 54 years. It's called.
• 2:23:08
  Speaker 1: Early February is in a couple of months.
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: Four months. Four months.
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 2: Do you know what the mission's called? No.
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 2: Do you know what Apollo is? What Apollo was? The
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 2: Apollo missions?
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 2: So NASA's Apollo mission. That was our mission to the moon, right?
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 2: Everyone around the world knew what it was. Everyone knew NASA.
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 2: Everyone knew what we were about at NASA and the
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 2: Apollo missions to the moon. Everyone knew the space shuttles, right?
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 2: The shuttle missions. Everyone knew what we did. And we
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 2: are about to send, first time in 54 years, Artemis
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 2: II back to the moon. And I bet you 97%
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 2: of Americans have no idea that we're doing it and
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 2: no idea what it is. It's a huge problem. So
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 2: NASA lives off the fumes of what they did in
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 2: the past. They're not living off what we're doing in
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 2: the future. What's the vision for the future of NASA?
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 2: What are the future missions? Where are we going?
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: Wait, so we're going back to the moon in four months,
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: in February?
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 2: We're not going to land. We're going out and around
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 2: the moon and coming back. Why are we doing that?
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 2: What's that?
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: What are we going to learn from that?
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 2: So we're testing the technology, right? You want to take
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 2: things in steps.
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 2: You just don't want to do everything in one step.
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 2: You want to go through a stepping stone process. And
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 2: this is, we're going to go back, out and around,
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 2: come back.
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: Well, we did take a step 54 years ago.
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 2: We did. But there is a reason to go back.
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 1: No, I'm with you.
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: Shouldn't the next step be a little bit bigger than
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 1: the first? Oh, it will.
• 2:24:46
  Speaker 2: So we're going to stay this time. That is the
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 2: key component. And so we gave a directive for surface
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 2: vision technology, right? So we can have power on the
• 2:25:00
  Speaker 2: surface of the moon. We think we can get that
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 2: done by 2030. And you can have sustained human life, missions,
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 2: bringing products, equipment to the moon's surface. Those don't have
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 2: to be manned. But yeah, it's going to be cool.
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 2: There's helium-3 on the moon, an amazing power source. If
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 2: you bring some of that back to the.
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 1: So that's 100% true. There's helium. We've had conflicting reports
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: on that. We've heard that China is mining helium-3 off
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: the moon, actually, right now.
• 2:25:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know about that, but I think we want
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 2: access to this remarkable power source, right? So again, that's
• 2:25:44
  Speaker 2: just one component of what you might get from the moon.
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 2: You're doing this better than I do. There was a
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 2: time that, I don't know who said this, but he
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 2: who controls the seas controls the world. There was a
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 2: time that that was, I think he who controls space
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 2: controls the world. And I think part of that is
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 2: the moon component and making sure that we're the ones
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 2: that are there. And we do things differently. We have
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 2: all of these international partners that are working with us
• 2:26:14
  Speaker 2: that believe in transparency and openness about what we're doing
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 2: and how we're doing it. Chinese have a very different model.
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 2: There's no separation between the civil and military sides of
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 2: their space. And again, do we want to cede? I
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 2: don't know if in your military experience, should we cede
• 2:26:30
  Speaker 2: the moon to the Chinese? And are there any national
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 2: security risks to that? Do I want to find out?
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 2: I don't really want to find that out. But the
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 2: point is we're late. We're delayed in our mission to
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 2: the moon. And so what I've said is we're going
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 2: to open this up and let different companies compete to
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 2: see who can get us there first.
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 2: I want to get there before the Chinese, number one,
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 2: and I want to get there before President Trump leaves office.
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 2: That's what President Trump wants as well. He's given that directive.
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 2: And so, when you have companies compete, America wins. I
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 2: got two really rich guys that have space companies that
• 2:27:10
  Speaker 2: want to compete against each other. And when they do,
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 2: there's going to be great evolution in technology. in a
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 2: great race, not just against China, but against American companies
• 2:27:21
  Speaker 2: to see who's going to get the honor of doing
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 2: it first, of putting American astronauts back on the moon.
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 2: At this time, it's going to be almost 60 years
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 2: since the last time we were there. Man. It's pretty cool.
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 1: So in February, we're going around the moon. Yeah. Have
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: we ever done that before?
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we did that. Well, we did that back in
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 2: the 70s, right? We were there. But this is... We're
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 2: going to go... I mean, we're going with way bigger equipment,
• 2:27:45
  Speaker 2: way more sophisticated equipment this time, which means it's more complicated.
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 2: The complication of what we're trying to do today is
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 2: different than what we did in the 70s, just because
• 2:27:56
  Speaker 2: of the evolution of the technology. And so it's good to...
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 2: And by the way, what we... The technology that SpaceX
• 2:28:02
  Speaker 2: is working on with their vision on how we get
• 2:28:05
  Speaker 2: to the lunar surface with their landers is what we're
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 2: going to actually need to get to.
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 1: Mars.
• 2:28:13
  Speaker 2: What we're doing with fission technology on the lunar surface
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 2: and the work we're doing on nuclear propulsion is also
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 2: how you're going to get us to Mars and back again.
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 2: So a lot is happening, but you had this agency
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 2: that was adrift. that wasn't really focused. And I've tried
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 2: in the short tenure I'm gonna have there is to
• 2:28:36
  Speaker 2: give it focus, give it a direction, and inspire it.
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 2: And part of my job too is I gotta sell
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 2: the missions. If America, you're like, we're going back.
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 3: To the moon?
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: In February?
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 2: We're like, what? Like, holy shit. It's like Dumb and Dumber.
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 2: We landed on the moon.
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: We're like, holy shit.
• 2:28:55
  Speaker 2: It's amazing. And I think that's the mission. I think
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 2: there's opportunities, too, to partner with... One of the greatest
• 2:29:05
  Speaker 2: brands in the world is NASA. Global, national brand. NASA
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 2: is premium. I think we can partner. We can't take
• 2:29:14
  Speaker 2: partnership money at NASA, but we can partner with companies.
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 2: And in the partnership, we get them to advertise their product,
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 2: but also our mission. Because Americans need to know what
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 2: we're doing, why we're doing it. And when Americans know
• 2:29:30
  Speaker 2: about it and they care about it, then the Congress
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 2: cares about it and the Congress funds it. And again,
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 2: I think that's a really important part of what the
• 2:29:40
  Speaker 2: role is. What I've done and the next administrator will
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 2: have to do as well is you gotta sell the mission,
• 2:29:44
  Speaker 2: you gotta sell the vision, you gotta stop living off
• 2:29:47
  Speaker 2: the past. Let's inspire people for the future. I want
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 2: the eight-year-old kid somewhere in Missouri to not be like,
• 2:29:56
  Speaker 2: we did this in 1970, that was great. No, like,
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 2: I want them to go, this is what we're doing
• 2:29:59
  Speaker 2: right now. Like, in my time, the cool shit that
• 2:30:02
  Speaker 2: NASA's doing, I want to do that too. Like, I
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 2: want to be part of that. I want to give
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 2: my life to this, you know, to this organization, this mission.
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 2: I want to be an astronaut myself. But that takes
• 2:30:13
  Speaker 2: us talking about it and talking about it passionately and
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 2: effectively to let America know what it is and what
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 2: we're doing.
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit, I mean, so you have,
• 2:30:26
  Speaker 1: if I heard this correctly, you have Blue Origin and
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: SpaceX pitted against each other to land somebody on the moon.
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: Did I hear that right? You did. How did you
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: incentivize them for that?
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 2: So, again, I've... SpaceX, remarkable. Like, they've re-envisioned how... I
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 2: hate to use the word re-envision because I feel like
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 2: I'm a Democrat. Re-envision, but space launches and made it
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 2: an incredibly profitable company.
• 2:30:51
  Speaker 3: So.
• 2:30:52
  Speaker 2: SpaceX had the contract to get us to the moon.
• 2:30:55
  Speaker 2: They were supposed to get us there in 24. They
• 2:30:58
  Speaker 2: then pushed the contract back to 27. And about five
• 2:31:01
  Speaker 2: weeks ago, they came back and said, well, no, it's
• 2:31:04
  Speaker 2: not 27. It's going to be the end of 28. Well,
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 2: if this keeps getting pushed back, shit, are we going
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 2: to beat the Chinese? But we're not going to get
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 2: there in President Trump's term. That's a problem. So I asked,
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 2: I said, SpaceX, listen, if you guys need us to
• 2:31:19
  Speaker 2: modify your contract, how to help you accelerate your mission
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 2: to the Moon for us. Let us know what you need.
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 2: And I told them as well, I'm going to talk
• 2:31:28
  Speaker 2: to others about, can they do it faster? So I
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 2: talked to Blue Origin. Hey, because they, by the way,
• 2:31:33
  Speaker 2: they have a later, so I'm talking about Artemis III
• 2:31:36
  Speaker 2: when we land on the Moon. SpaceX has Artemis IV
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 2: landing on the Moon. Blue Origin has Artemis V landing
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 2: on the Moon. So they're working on a lander. So
• 2:31:44
  Speaker 2: I said, hey, is there any way you could pull
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 2: up your lander to get us to the Moon faster?
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 2: And then I asked some others as well. And Blue
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 2: came back and said, we think we can do this
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 2: by the summer of 28. Wow. And you have to
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 2: modify our current contract. I'm like, yeah, we'll do that.
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 2: And I'm gonna modify X's contract. So I announced we're
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 2: gonna open it up and we're gonna let these companies compete.
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 2: Whoever can do it first and fastest and the best,
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 2: we're gonna take. And so we did. And what's great
• 2:32:17
  Speaker 2: now is, You have SpaceX really focused on this mission
• 2:32:21
  Speaker 2: to the moon. You have Blue really focused on their
• 2:32:24
  Speaker 2: mission to the moon. And you have two really rich
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 2: guys that own these companies that are very competitive, that
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 2: are gonna compete. And America's gonna win in this. We
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 2: win because of this competition. And we're gonna put out
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 2: a request for information for others to see if they
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 2: have better, bold, big ideas that could also get there faster.
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 2: and we'll see what they come back with. I haven't
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 2: done that yet because Blue and SpaceX have current contracts
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 2: with us to land on the moon. So I'm able
• 2:32:54
  Speaker 2: to modify those contracts and do it right now, as
• 2:32:58
  Speaker 2: opposed to engaging others that might have great ideas. I
• 2:33:02
  Speaker 2: can only do that after the shutdown ends.
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:33:05
  Speaker 2: So it's an exciting time.
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 1: Good thinking. Was that your idea?
• 2:33:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 1: Nice thinking.
• 2:33:11
  Speaker 2: And with the team, we go, can we do this?
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 2: Should we do this? How can we help SpaceX? How
• 2:33:17
  Speaker 2: can we engage Blue? But again, I'm the one who said,
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 2: I'm going to call the ball and we're going to
• 2:33:24
  Speaker 2: do this. And the president loves competition. The president wants
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 2: America to win. And so the race is on, right?
• 2:33:34
  Speaker 2: And they're both passionate about it. So yeah, it's a
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 2: good thing. It doesn't come without me taking some heat.
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know why it took me to get to
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 2: this point. When the first contracts were set up, it
• 2:33:47
  Speaker 2: should have been a competition to begin with. We should
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 2: have not picked one. We should have had a couple
• 2:33:52
  Speaker 2: companies compete for us. That happened at the start of
• 2:33:56
  Speaker 2: the Biden administration. But yeah, it's going to be great.
• 2:34:05
  Speaker 1: I'm excited. I'm excited. I want to see what February
• 2:34:09
  Speaker 1: is all about. That'll be... Man, I had no idea we.
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 3: Were doing that.
• 2:34:13
  Speaker 2: So the Artemis 2 astronauts, I've got to know them.
• 2:34:17
  Speaker 2: That's the ones that are going.
• 2:34:19
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 2:34:20
  Speaker 2: You should have them on the show. You should go
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 2: to Houston and sit down with them. You're going to
• 2:34:27
  Speaker 2: love them. Some of the smart, it makes your country proud.
• 2:34:29
  Speaker 2: So three Americans, one Canadian that are on this mission. Smart,
• 2:34:37
  Speaker 2: great people. The training they go through. By the way,
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 2: during the shutdown, we made sure it's like, listen, you
• 2:34:41
  Speaker 2: can't we're not going to shut down our mission to
• 2:34:43
  Speaker 2: the moon. You can't stop that and then start it.
• 2:34:46
  Speaker 2: The safety of the mission is critical. So that whole,
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 2: all the science and all the movement around this Artemis
• 2:34:53
  Speaker 2: II mission is fully funded and fully functional right now,
• 2:34:57
  Speaker 2: not being affected by the shutdown. But we have the rocket, right?
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 2: We've just put the capsule on top of the rocket.
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 2: In December, we're going to roll the rocket out to
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 2: the launch pad and go through all this testing. And
• 2:35:11
  Speaker 2: it was supposed to go in April. We think it's
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 2: going to go in February. And yeah, it's a roughly
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 2: 10-day mission out to the moon and back. By the way,
• 2:35:19
  Speaker 2: the capsule is so small. If you go down there,
• 2:35:22
  Speaker 2: we'll put you in the capsule to see where they
• 2:35:25
  Speaker 2: live for all these days.
• 2:35:27
  Speaker 1: Wow. Not big.
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 2: They have to know each other. So where do you
• 2:35:33
  Speaker 2: use the restroom? What the hell? How does this work?
• 2:35:35
  Speaker 2: And you have to see how it's constructed and the
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 2: size of it. They'd love to sit down and talk
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 2: to you. We'll set that up.
• 2:35:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love to do it.
• 2:35:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:35:44
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 2:35:45
  Speaker 2: And then if you can read some more literature on,
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 2: you know, the woke coloring books and comic books from NASA.
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 3: I will.
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 1: I will. Well, any other aspirations or anything you want
• 2:35:59
  Speaker 1: to talk about with NASA?
• 2:36:02
  Speaker 2: After that, we're going to focus on what we do
• 2:36:06
  Speaker 2: on lower Earth orbit, you know, and the replacement to
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 2: the space station. Do we have corporate partners that, you know,
• 2:36:13
  Speaker 2: we have to be an anchor at NASA. But we
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 2: need to see if we can get more private capital in, right?
• 2:36:20
  Speaker 2: We want to have sustained, you know, Americans in lower
• 2:36:24
  Speaker 2: Earth orbit. So that's in the works now. It's been
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 2: paused a little bit during the shutdown, but we have
• 2:36:30
  Speaker 2: to get those contracts and that competition out there. That's important.
• 2:36:36
  Speaker 2: We have a restructure that's going to come Again, I
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 2: think I want the right leaders. I want the right
• 2:36:43
  Speaker 2: leaders with the right teams to accomplish the missions. Sometimes
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 2: you can get bloat. And if you have a conference
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 2: call with 250 people on the conference call, there's a problem.
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 2: No decisions can be made with 250 people on a
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 2: conference call. That's some of the shit that happens. So
• 2:37:00
  Speaker 2: we are going to restructure the leadership. We're going to
• 2:37:03
  Speaker 2: restructure the organization with people who are mission-driven, that are accountable.
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 2: And I think that part of it will be really
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 2: important to make sure that this is more successful than
• 2:37:19
  Speaker 2: it's been in the past. You mentioned like, so I took,
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 2: I don't, I've told everyone, I don't want to be
• 2:37:24
  Speaker 2: the administrator. I can't be the administrator of NASA. I'm
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 2: not asked, I'm never asked to be the administrator of NASA.
• 2:37:28
  Speaker 2: I have said, though, and I've asked people to think
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 2: about it, I think that if NASA was under DOT,
• 2:37:34
  Speaker 2: I've suggested that's a good thing. Some people have been like,
• 2:37:36
  Speaker 2: that's a good idea. Some people are like, I hate
• 2:37:38
  Speaker 2: that idea. But it was my job to put it
• 2:37:40
  Speaker 2: out there. Here's the problem. People are trying to preserve NASA.
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 2: NASA's broken. It has been, like, what has NASA done
• 2:37:47
  Speaker 2: that you're proud of in the last, 15 years. And
• 2:37:50
  Speaker 2: that's 20 years.
• 2:37:52
  Speaker 1: Can't think of anything.
• 2:37:55
  Speaker 2: 25 years ago, it was a space station. That's pretty cool.
• 2:37:57
  Speaker 2: It's an elegant, beautiful machine. Like, that's pretty great. But
• 2:38:00
  Speaker 2: what is... What are we doing? And so they're preserving
• 2:38:04
  Speaker 2: a model. I do think you have to... Don't send
• 2:38:07
  Speaker 2: it to DOT. Send it to Commerce. You want a
• 2:38:09
  Speaker 2: secretary that's going to fight for it, that's going to
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 2: advocate for it, has presidential engagement on it.
• 2:38:15
  Speaker 3: Um.
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 2: It sits out there with an administrator, and it can
• 2:38:22
  Speaker 2: be pushed and shoved and cajoled in ways that I
• 2:38:26
  Speaker 2: think hasn't benefited it. And so to have someone, again, don't,
• 2:38:29
  Speaker 2: by the way, it would never happen under my term anyway,
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 2: but I think under a future DOT secretary or a
• 2:38:36
  Speaker 2: future commerce secretary, it can't go under war. That's a
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 2: problem for us. But you need to have different leadership,
• 2:38:46
  Speaker 2: different engagement. The model that we're using right now hasn't
• 2:38:50
  Speaker 2: given us results. We spend a lot of money, but
• 2:38:52
  Speaker 2: what the hell have you gotten for it? Again, we
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 2: have some cool science missions. Actually, we do. But big
• 2:38:57
  Speaker 2: things that inspire people, we're not doing it. We are
• 2:39:00
  Speaker 2: going to now. So that's been... But the president's in
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 2: the process. He'll pick someone to lead the organization and
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 2: I'll be 100% supportive and we'll we'll move seamlessly forward.
• 2:39:13
  Speaker 2: But the moments that I have at NASA, I'm not
• 2:39:16
  Speaker 2: going to waste a day. I haven't wasted a day.
• 2:39:19
  Speaker 2: I think we've done more in 10 weeks than has
• 2:39:22
  Speaker 2: happened in the last 10 years to get the organization
• 2:39:25
  Speaker 2: aligned behind what's critical, which is this mission to the moon.
• 2:39:28
  Speaker 2: And I think even with this competition, it's going to
• 2:39:33
  Speaker 2: bear fruit in the coming years.
• 2:39:36
  Speaker 1: That's awesome to hear. Do you think Do you think
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 1: Jared Isaacsman has a chance at that slot? Yeah.
• 2:39:44
  Speaker 2: I know the president's talked to him. I've talked to him.
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 2: So yeah, of course. The president, this is not the
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 2: top of mind for the president, is he's over there
• 2:39:55
  Speaker 2: driving seven or eight peace deals. I had a text
• 2:39:59
  Speaker 2: from him. He's like, I'm bringing trillions of money back
• 2:40:01
  Speaker 2: to the US. The amount he fights to get investment here,
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 2: money here, peace deals there. But he'll pick someone, and
• 2:40:11
  Speaker 2: I think he'll pick someone that's great that'll lead it
• 2:40:13
  Speaker 2: forward and will be successful as a country.
• 2:40:16
  Speaker 1: That's good to hear. Well, Secretary, I know you have
• 2:40:22
  Speaker 1: a flight to catch here pretty soon, so we're going
• 2:40:25
  Speaker 1: to have to end this.
• 2:40:25
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you what, just one last, can I give
• 2:40:27
  Speaker 2: you a warning? Yeah. Don't, like, if you go out
• 2:40:30
  Speaker 2: and you start swinging that axe, you'll chop your leg off, okay?
• 2:40:33
  Speaker 2: So just be careful, all right? I don't want to hear, like,
• 2:40:36
  Speaker 2: Sean Ryan lost a leg or, like, chopped a toe
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 2: off or something.
• 2:40:43
  Speaker 1: If that happens, I'll send it back to you. The toe?
• 2:40:45
  Speaker 2: I'm going to send you a toe that you chopped off?
• 2:40:49
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. It's been
• 2:40:51
  Speaker 2: a blast.
• 2:40:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. It was an honor to have you here.
• 2:40:53
  Speaker 1: So thank you for making it.
• 2:40:54
  Speaker 2: Awesome. Cheers.
• 2:41:08
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• 2:41:10
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• 2:41:15
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• 2:41:20
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• 2:41:24
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