Giving Tyranny The Tombstone Piledriver | The Glenn Jacobs Interview
On The Babylon Bee Interview Show, Kyle and Ethan talk to Glenn Jacobs. Glenn Jacobs is the current Knoxville County Mayor and is also known as the WWE wrestler Kane. They talk about being a wrestling star, libertarian philosophy, and the best hot chicken in Tennessee. Glenn had gained most of his fame from being one of the most feared villains with his intimidating physique and red mask he has worn throughout his career. Glenn felt an obligation to keep freedom going for the next generation by becoming the mayor of Knoxville County. Kyle and Ethan start the interview by finding out who is behind the Kane mask. Glenn obliges by describing his journey as a wrestler and what led him into becoming a libertarian. Kyle and Ethan find out the best food in Tennessee while Ethan reveals a secret about Kyle that shocks Glenn. Glenn goes into how he has been leading his county and all the obstacles he has had to work through. Glenn reveals which President he would figuratively lay a smackdown on and which President he would have the ultimate tag team with. They all talk about the growing opposition to talking to the other political side and what can be done to help keep an open conversation between our political parties. Ethan is able to get the ultimate cool story out of Glenn Jacobs before entering the Subscriber portion. In the Subscriber Portion, subscribers get some questions asked by Kyle and Ethan such as finding out which politician Glenn would lay a figurative chokeslam on. Glenn goes in depth on how libertarianism and Christianity can work together. Glenn talks about what drove him to English Literature as a major in college. Kyle and Ethan ask Glenn the 10 questions with Glenn giving one of the best fight stories.
Does Ethan have any weird growths on any part of his body?
Does Kyle like D ⁇ D or not?
Does Ethan write any books about things other than possums?
Where does Kyle get all his ideas?
How many bastard children does Ethan have?
Why is Kyle, how does he get his hair like that?
All these questions and more answered this Wednesday at 6 p.m. Pacific.
Yeah, 6 p.m. Pacific.
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Well, not technically our first, but we did a long time ago.
Long time ago.
In my garage.
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Live stream.
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Wednesday.
August 11th.
At 6 p.m. Pacific.
Pacific time.
Bone saw.
That's all I can think about when I talk about professional wrestlers.
Bonesaw.
MCU Dork.
That's not MCU.
That's Sony.
I mean, it's Marvel.
It's Marvel, but they sold the film rights to Sony.
It's not an MCU.
I don't know what I have stepped into here.
Hey, today we're talking to Kane slash Mayor Glenn.
Glenn Jacobs.
I almost said Glenn Campbell.
No.
Glenn Jacobs.
Mayor Glenn Jacobs.
I just want to call him Mayor Kane.
But yeah.
So I knew we were interviewing Glenn Jacobs, and then someone said, oh, you guys are talking to Kane.
And I was like, what?
And then I realized they were the same person.
You knew about Glenn Jacobs before you knew about Kane?
Well, I saw it coming up on the schedule.
I think on our schedule is Glenn Jacobs.
They look him up.
Oh, Mayor.
Yeah, I think that's true.
I just saw some guy named Glenn Jacobs.
I was like, oh, you're talking to Kane.
And I was like, when's that interview?
It's the same day.
I'm like, oh, it's the same person.
So this is actually really cool.
He's a WWE wrestler.
Yeah, he's like Libertarian Mayor.
Undertaker's like sidekick or son or something, right?
Crazy like that.
And then they fought and then he nailed the Undertaker into a coffin and set it on fire at one point because I guess they had a falling out or something.
And so he's the mayor now in Tennessee.
Yeah, we didn't ask him about this, but it would be so cool to be in a WWE writer's room.
Yeah, I would love to know about that.
Like to just figure out, we should find a WWE writer and interview.
Dan, find us a writer.
Find us a writer.
But that's not who we're interviewing today.
Today we're interviewing Kane, who is also a libertarian mayor in Tennessee, mayor of a county.
And the dude's smart.
He is.
He's incredibly smart.
He always threw me off.
We'd ask him really dumb question.
You'd do a really smart answer.
So you see those wrestlers and you're like, oh, they're just big, dumb oafs.
No, he sits there and reads like giant tomes with a pipe in his mouth.
Yeah, English literature major.
So take that.
Let's check it.
Let's just go talk.
Let's jump into the ring.
Yes.
Are you ready to rumble?
Let's leave a smack down.
Well, welcome, Mayor Jacobs.
How you doing?
Doing well.
How are we, y'all?
Oh, and by the way, you made fun of me for saying y'all, but it is an official word at dictionary.com now.
It's one of the 300 words added this year.
So very happy to see that.
There's a lot of words on dictionary.com, though, that probably shouldn't be.
Hey, y'all is an inclusive word.
It's one of the most inclusive words there are.
So it's true.
And in English, we don't have an appropriate second person pronoun.
Like in Spanish, they have ustetas.
And we just say you, but you can mean you as you, or you can mean you as you as a group.
So y'all is actually a great word.
It's one of my favorite words.
Yeah, we have no second person plural.
Yeah.
Here in California, we say you guys.
Do people get it's also less offensive if you are worried about your pronouns because saying calling somebody y'all, it covers everything.
Like very genderless.
Yes.
Inclusive.
Very true.
I never thought of how progressive Tennessee is.
Yeah.
That's the influence of Mayor Jacobs here.
Bringing everybody in the middle of the world.
I don't necessarily know progressive is the right term, but thank you.
So here we are interviewing progressive Mayor Glenn Jacobs.
Please don't say that.
Get him in trouble.
So, well, I mean, you know, pretty excited about the fact that I'm also interviewing WWE superstar Kane.
In case you guys didn't know that, they're listening and watching this.
Yeah, thank you.
I appreciate that.
I'm kind of an addict of, I didn't watch a lot of wrestling, but I watched a ton of wrestling documentaries.
I have a fascination with the behind the scenes world of wrestling.
So that might be a good lead-in question.
There's so many wrestlers that have like pretty messed up lives and pasts and stories.
What is the difference with you?
I mean, you're walking around in a suit.
You got like a, I was reading that you have like a degree in literature, English literature.
What's the difference?
Or is that just the bad guys get kind of the stories and you don't hear about them?
Yeah.
I think that's a situation where those stories are interesting to people much more so than those of us who are much more mundane, regular people.
But I can tell you that most of the folks in WWE and most of the people that I've worked with over the years, you know, we're just average folks.
And there was a lot more, I think, prevalence of the wild personalities back before I got the business, probably right when I was into the wrestling business, that was sort of tapering off.
So, you know, I don't think you see as many of those stories now.
But yeah, so much of it I think is the fact that, you know, it's just people's fascination with something different and in some cases, unfortunately, something really bad, as you pointed out.
Do you think there's almost like an advantage to being a guy who is in a mask?
It kind of like you can compartmentalize your celebrity a bit.
I don't think the mask did that.
My personality is that way.
I never, you know, I've never been like, oh, gosh, I'm this WWE superstar.
You know, that's just what I do.
It's my job.
It's what I did for a living.
So I was able to, as you say, compartmentalize.
I think it's just more of staying grounded, realizing that we're all just human beings.
And certainly in my life, I've had a wonderful life, but there have been points where if things had gone a different way, my life would have gone a completely different way.
And I'm very thankful for that.
I've been very blessed.
And I really think that's probably, for me anyway, excuse me, the most important thing.
So you want to tell us a little bit about your story.
I mean, you know, you're wrestling and then all of a sudden you're like this mayor dude.
So I want to explain like what was going through your head.
You want to defend that decision a little bit?
Do I want to defend that decision?
Certainly get into politics.
Yeah, yeah.
Did you hit your head a lot?
Yeah, maybe that.
Maybe that was.
For me, I'm, you know, I'm very much of a libertarian mindset.
You know, I always say I'm a libertarian conservative in that my belief system as far as political and what I think the government should be doing is libertarian.
I think the government should do as little as possible because anything that it does do restricts our freedom to act.
Now, of course, we don't want people running around killing each other or stealing and that sort of stuff.
So certainly you have to have a framework so that doesn't happen.
But when you're delving off into all these mandates and personal choices that really don't impact anyone else, you don't hurt anyone else.
I don't think the government should be involved with that.
My own life, I'm actually, you know, I'm a pretty conservative person as far as like, you know, you were talking about I've never gotten to the wild stuff.
You know, I just, I'm the most boring person in my personal life just because those are my beliefs.
But I don't believe the government should mandate those.
I don't believe the government should force my beliefs on someone else alongside not hurting other people.
And unfortunately, really since almost the founding of our country, you know, we have this idea that the country is founded on these ideas of liberty, which we never really lived up to, but that was the rhetoric, which is awesome.
You know, but then we've gotten to the point now where they're under attack.
I mean, all the time from all angles.
In my own life, I grew up on a farm in Missouri.
And if you'd asked me, what are you going to do with your life?
I had no idea.
And it certainly wouldn't have ended up where it ended up.
But I had these tremendous opportunities throughout my life that just popped up and I'd work hard and take advantage of them.
And something would happen and I'd hit a dead end.
But then another opportunity would come up.
And I just was able because of that to live a life that I never would have thought was possible when I was a kid growing up on a farm in Missouri.
That's the American dream.
It's the ability to create the life that we want.
And that's what we have here in this country.
That's actually what makes this country so special is our ability to do that because of freedom, because of the free market system, because of the free enterprise system.
I want to make sure that my kids, my grandkids, have that opportunity.
Ronald Reagan said that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
And for me, it's just doing what I can to make sure that it's not my generation that extincts it.
And I think that's very important.
That's why I got into politics.
Nice.
You talked about not hurting anybody, but you did lock the Undertaker in a coffin and set it on fire.
Yeah, he deserved it, though.
Did that violate the non-aggression principle?
Well, Kane's not a libertarian, trust me.
It's part of a time.
He's an authoritarian.
He's, yeah, he's kind of, he's got, he could be anti-fire or something if he wanted to be.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
They need a guy like that.
Yeah.
He's got more upper body strength than any people.
It's true.
Yeah, that's probably true, actually.
So I keep struggling between talking about, I don't want to over talk about wrestling, but it's fun.
So describe the chokehold the taxation has on the American people.
you know especially when we look at well when we look at okay when we look at the federal government versus your state local governments right who does the stuff that people think a government do it's your state and local governments right yeah you know we do the roads we provide the police force in some places we it's the fire department actually here in knox county that's private but still you know all the stuff that people when we think of government It's the local and state governments that do that.
You know, the federal government has a clear mandate under the Constitution that it's basically supposed to act as an arbitrator between the states, supposed to ensure against invasion and provide a military for national defense.
That's it.
I mean, if you read the Constitution, there ain't a whole lot more than that.
There's other stuff like coining money, which actually when they talked about money, they weren't talking about this premium money.
They were talking about gold and silver and asthma money.
But in any case, it was a very small mandate.
Where do we pay most of our taxes to now?
The federal government.
They have a $4 trillion budget.
So when we think about what our tax dollars go for, they go for social welfare programs from the federal government.
All these restrictions from the federal government, not from the states.
If you look at the Constitution, again, the states were supposed to have most of the power and the feds had minimal power.
So income tax is a huge issue because it's really taxing productivity.
With the progressive income tax, you get punished for doing better and actually rewarded for not doing this well.
You know, when we look at other, is there a good tax?
No, there really isn't.
I mean, everything has its impact.
Overall, I'd like to see taxes as low as they could possibly be.
I think that the income tax is particularly offensive because of the nature of that tax.
I think sales taxes are much, you know, if you're going to fund the federal government, you know, I'd like to see some sort of consumption tax as opposed to an income tax in that way.
But the more you tax people, the more money you're taking out of the private sector and giving it to the government.
And you're actually destroying the private sector's ability to create wealth, which is where wealth comes from.
I mean, my friends on the left will swear government creates wealth.
Government does not create wealth.
It siphons off the wealth from the private sector.
It can't create itself.
So obviously, the lower your overall taxes are, the better.
Here in Tennessee, we have the third lowest state and local tax burden in the country.
People are flocking here because they're tired of the high taxes in other places around the country.
So they're voting with their feet and it shows.
And our economy is thriving.
We're doing really well.
So not only do you have the kind of theoretical, but you also have in reality, you see what happens with the low-tax jurisdictions in contrast to the high-tax jurisdictions.
I have a couple of questions.
Number one, what is the best barbecue in Knox County?
And also, what's the best Nashville hot chicken that you've ever had?
All right, man, so you're going to put me on the spot because we have a lot of great voters, man.
But yeah, we're actually foodies down here.
So we have a lot of great restaurants.
Calhoun's was voted the best ribs in America a few years back.
Their ribs are awesome.
A dead end barbecue has great barbecue.
Archer's barbecue is pretty awesome.
Let me see who else and I'm going to leave someone out.
But those are three that you can't go wrong with.
And there's some others as well.
Can I just real quick?
I need to out Kyle.
He says he doesn't like barbecue.
Well, he just went to Nashville and he revealed this to me.
It's a complex.
What's wrong with y'all?
It's a complicated issue.
It's a complicated issue.
We introduced him to Nashville Hot Chicken and he's crazy about it.
The office is sick of him ordering it now.
I just order Nashville Hot Chicken all the time.
Yeah, so, and then that, and that's fine.
I mean, you know, if you don't, if you don't like barbecue, that's first thing you'd say.
I'm not going to criticize that.
I mean, it is strange.
It's odd, but very odd.
It's how I want to live my life.
And you're a libertarian.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Hey, be as strange as you want, dude.
Knock yourself out.
Don't let that.
That's my lifestyle choice, bro.
Best hot chicken.
Actually, there's, again, there's two.
One is Jackie's Dream here in Knoxville, which is awesome.
And also, Gus is world famous fried chicken has some killer hot chick.
All right.
Noted.
I'm making a note right here.
He's noting it.
You can also get barbecue, I think, at Jackie's if you'd like, but since you don't do barbecue.
Should I go?
Should I leave?
Like, identify as a unicorn or something less controversial.
So let's see here.
What else we got in the questions?
You refused to enforce COVID restrictions.
I saw you tweet this.
What do you think the impact has been from COVID restrictions?
And do you think, oh, what's the impact of COVID been on your area with those policies?
And do you think maybe they just steer clear for fear of their own safety from you?
The virus.
You know, COVID is real and it's dangerous.
You know, people, you know, what bothers me is folks will say, like, well, you didn't take it seriously.
No, I took it seriously.
You know, and it's just like now with the vaccine debate.
You know, I'm for people making their own choices, you know, make an informed choice.
I think the vaccines are a good thing.
Okay.
But people also should be allowed to make their own choice.
Well, somehow that makes me, in some people's mind, an anti-vaxxer.
No, that's absolutely not the case.
And it's the same with this.
You know, because I resisted government overreach when it came to COVID restrictions, you know, people say, well, you didn't take it seriously.
No, I took it very seriously.
The problem is that when I look at the documents that I swore to God that I would do my best to defend and protect, governments can't do what they did in the United States with these restrictions.
All right.
The Fifth Amendment and the 14th Amendment both provide for due process.
So government just can't say your business is closed because in wide swaths, they have to say your business is closed for this reason.
You have a right to appeal that.
You have a right to come and say, you know, what we're accusing you of is correct.
And then you have an opportunity to correct that.
And that's not what happened.
They just closed businesses.
The masks, never before in history have people that were not infected been subject to government mandates and regulations.
Okay.
Now, if you're sick, certainly, you know, the government can say, you know, you have to be isolated, you have to be quarantined, you have to wear a mask.
The government can do those things, but you have due process.
Okay.
The government can't just say, we think everybody's a risk.
So we're going to do that.
That's not how this whole thing works.
And I think now what we're seeing, you know, the CDC today, this is Tuesday the 27th.
The CDC has just reversed itself on mask guidance.
You know, it's just back and forth and back and forth, basically, because frankly, some bureaucrats are making decisions in Washington, D.C. that have monumental impacts around the country.
When we look at the lockdown data from around the world, the lockdowns, they didn't work.
We see the spread is pretty much the same everywhere, and that's because it's a virus, and virus will do what viruses do.
And it's also obvious that you can lock people down, but when they come back out, if the virus is still there, what's it going to do?
It's going to spread.
So, all you're really doing, you know, I understood the rationale initially, you know, to try to alleviate stress in the hospital systems, but it went from 15 days to flatten the curve to 30 days to stop the spread, and then it just became almost infinite.
And there's a price.
I mean, when we look at mental health, when we look at suicides, when we look at lost learning in schools, when we look at, in my opinion, the overall anxiety and stress level of society, it's just gone through the roof.
So, two reasons.
I didn't think the government had the authority to do what was done in many places.
And I also, you know, I also don't think that people actually looked at the risk benefit.
I think they thought there were certain benefits and they didn't realize that there were certain risks.
And because everybody was so alarmed, and granted, it's very scary.
I'm not saying it wasn't.
But if everybody was so alarmed, they just jumped on board and said, This is, we need to do everything possible instead of taking a clear-headed look and actually saying, you know, is this going to work?
And in America, the government is there to protect your freedoms.
And that's what Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence.
So we have to allow people to make choices, even if we don't agree with those all the time.
And when we take that away from folks and government starts this overreach, it's very hard to stop and it's very hard to get back.
I mean, if anybody knows about wearing masks, it's cane.
Yeah.
I think you'd be pearl mask.
And I look at the image search saying you used to wear a full face mask.
And that must have sucked to wear that in the ring.
No, it actually wasn't too bad.
You sat up my face and it could and it could breathe.
Like a little air conditioner in there or something.
Not really an air conditioner, but there was some airflow.
And that's the other thing.
I think, you know, there was airflow so I could breathe.
That's true.
But eventually you changed to a mask that opened up your nose and mouth as a new style.
Would you recommend that in code for COVID?
Just to scare it away?
Because then it's pretty scary looking.
Threaten it.
I mean, you know, again, whatever works for you.
And you can eat barbecue with that mask.
It just makes it double better.
It's way more and hot chicken if you like.
Yes.
Yeah, it seems like there's both.
It seems like there's a couple of different philosophies of government that you see.
You sound like you have faith in, you know, you trust your people.
Yeah, that voted for you or whatever.
Yeah, you're like, they can make their own decisions.
They're smart people.
Whereas a lot of our leaders seem to just despise the people that they're supposed to be serving, not trust them at all or something.
And there's an inherent contradiction there.
If you're going to allow people to vote for folks that have a lot of power, like President of the United States, but then you're saying we can't trust them to make decisions in our own personal life.
Well, how can we trust them to choose the person that literally has their finger on the button that can destroy the world?
So there's an inherent contradiction within that thought of, you know, we can't trust people to make the right decisions.
Well, if that's the case, you can't trust them to vote.
They voted for you.
And yeah, they all voted for you.
And we always hear so much about the importance of democracy.
And I think democracy is important.
So it's the choices not only that they make at the polls, but it's also the choices they make in their personal life.
We have to respect those.
Hey, you, are you enjoying this interview?
Oh, I know I am.
Oh, I sure am.
I'm actually probably sweating trying to think up new questions right now at this very moment.
But if you're enjoying it, you should become a Babylon B subscriber because the interviews are much longer.
Yes.
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So our guests kind of kick back a little bit and get a little looser.
They tell us what they really think.
And we always do our 10 questions, which for everybody tends to be the funnest part of the show.
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Now, in the WWE, you probably witnessed the effects of head injuries and things like that.
And some people saw, what's your assessment of President Joe Biden?
That's a great question and put me on the spot.
You know, WWE actually banned chairs, but not only chair shots, but anything to the head with foreign objects years ago because they realized once the data started coming out on the CTE and how big an issue it really was, they stopped all that stuff.
I don't know how to say this.
I'm trying to say this.
I think President Biden, when you walk in, when you watch him speak, and he's always been somewhat gaff-prone, it's gotten a lot worse.
So I'll leave it up to folks to make their own determination.
But, you know, he's, yeah, I'll leave it up to folks to make their own determinations.
All right.
Very measured.
Yeah.
If you could pick any president from history and throw them off the top of a steel cage, which one would it be?
You have to throw them on to thumbtacks.
Oh, onto thumbtacks.
Oh, gosh.
There's actually quite a few.
Actually, probably the number one would be LBJ, you know, because he got us, you know, he ramped up the Vietnam War and the great society.
So he was the worst.
And then there were some, you know, there's others that were not great, although really bad.
But when we look at the double whammy of the warfare state and the welfare state, I think he's the epitome of that.
And we're still dealing with that today.
He was a big guy, too.
That actually might be a pretty good match.
I think he was like 6'2 or 6'3.
So I might have to tussle with him a little bit before he gets thrown off.
That sounds like a wrestling move, too, the LBJ.
The LB, it sure does, doesn't it?
The lock bite jab.
I don't know.
Well, who would be the ultimate wrestling tag team, political politician, president?
Presidential tag team.
Me and the president.
Gosh, man.
Actually, it would be me and George Washington.
Well, if you're saying I'm part of the tag team, sure, yeah, you and I, sure.
Yeah, it would be me and George Washington because, you know, we can look at criticisms of Washington and, you know, certainly many of those are valid.
But frankly, the country just wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for George Washington.
He was the most important and the greatest person in American history.
All right.
So, man, okay, that was a short answer.
I need to come up with another question fast.
Well, George Washington also fought in a war.
He did fight in a war.
That's true.
Not many presidents can say that.
How about this?
Do wrestlers still get really mad?
Because there was this, who was the guy that got punched by the reporter that got punched for suggesting fake economy guy.
David, so it was John Stossel, who's actually a good libertarian.
He's had a lot of influence on my thinking.
No, I mean, years ago, we told the public that it was entertainment.
And, you know, I still don't like when people drop the F-bomb.
We're going to say it's fake.
Yeah, despite the fact that I didn't say I was saying they say those guys.
Thank you.
But no, seriously, if we say, oh, gosh, it's all fake.
Well, so is movies.
So is TV, so are novels, you know, so is so much of entertainment.
And that's the idea behind it is, you know, we're there to entertain people so that they have a good time.
The stories are about good and evil.
They're go back for as long as mankind's been around.
So, you know, if you look at it through that light, it mixes the best to me, drama and sports together.
And it's really the only one that does that, the only form of entertainment does that to that level.
So, you know, it doesn't bother me when people say that.
The connotation bothers me because it's just like, oh, you don't care and it's stupid and blah, blah, you know, whatever.
That's your personal opinion again.
But as far as the entertainment value, I think that's very real.
And that's what I try to concentrate on.
So WWE is basically Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's with suplexes.
Shakespeare and suplexes.
And chairs and stories.
The name of your book or something.
That one's free.
Well, yeah, I think when I was watching that episode about that and one of these wrestling documentaries, I kind of started to understand that.
I mean, wrestlers go through a lot of actual pain.
There's, I mean, these guys get slammed all over the place and also all kinds of injuries.
And to say that's not fake.
Have you got any injuries left from your wrestling career?
I was pretty fortunate.
I didn't have too many traumatic injuries.
I'd hurt my knee playing football before I ever got into wrestling.
So that bothered me all through my career.
I broke my hand.
I tore a bicep tendon and had some pretty bad cuts on my head and stuff.
But that was really about it.
And for the length of my career, I was very fortunate that I didn't have anything worse than that.
So have you always been a libertarian-minded kind of guy or did something kind of get you into that?
What drew you to that?
Is there authors or influencers or, you know, like I said, it was actually, this could be the headline of the Babylon Beatom Babylon Beat Tomorrow.
It was actually a professional wrestler whose gimmick was a porn star that did it for me.
When I was a kid, my parents were, my parents were kind of gold water conservatives.
You know, they were small government at the time people, but it wasn't like politics or something we talked about all the time.
Got to college and sort of got indoctrinated into the socialist mindset a little bit.
Then got out of college and realized, hey, that stuff doesn't work, you know, when you get out in the real world.
Then, but I never, I mean, I was doing, I was trying to figure myself out and I didn't, I couldn't determine where I landed, right?
Whether I was conservative, whether I was a liberal, because I strongly agreed with fiscal conservative policies.
But this is back when the Republican Party was all about social conservatism, and I'm like, I don't care as long as you're not hurting anyone else.
I have my, as I said, I have my own way of living my life, but I don't care what people do at home.
So long as it's consensual and no one's getting hurt, it's none of my business.
So I couldn't figure out where I was.
And then my friend John Morley, who was Val Venus in WWE, said I sounded like a libertarian.
And I told him if he insulted me again, I was going to punch him in the nose because I didn't know what a libertarian was.
I never heard the word before.
And that just, it kind of got me going down a rabbit hole.
I started reading a lot more about libertarian philosophy and eventually into economics as well.
And realized, yeah, that's, you know, that's what I believed.
And I was kind of shocked that a lot of other people and a lot of really smart people actually believe the same thing.
So, yeah, that's it.
That is all.
I liked that we heard the Tennessee train there going behind you.
Yeah, sorry.
That was cool.
It felt very Tennessee.
I don't know, like a train going through something.
The one thing I'm kind of wondering about, you know, you talk about libertarianism versus conservatism, conservativism.
And one thing that's interesting to me is like with how insane the left has been lately, it feels like there's this realignment.
So I like to pick people's brains.
You know, like I like, I'm more libertarian, but I feel like I'm kind of cool with like Republicanism and conservatives now a lot more than I would have been, you know, five or 10 years ago, because it feels like the threat from the left has been so much greater.
I'm curious if you're seeing that too.
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that.
Especially when we look at very prominent people like Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Thomas Massey, you know, and you can see that alignment of, you know, and Ted Cruz too, you know, that they're all kind of, you know, they have, they might have their differences on certain things, but overall, you know, it's, hey, you know, individual choice is really important.
Individual liberty is really important.
And the left now has taken on such an authoritarian tone with everything, you know, that I think that the natural allies are more so on the right.
And, you know, even some of the stuff, man, that, you know, the social stuff that I'm normally I'd be like, you know, whatever, those have become really important because you can see the left is forcing that on people.
You know, it's no longer, hey, you know, you get to choose.
Now it's, if you don't believe this, you're a bad person and you're wrong.
And no, that's, that's not the case.
And, you know, again, you know, there are certain, to me, there are certain fundamental values of America.
We are why we are who we are for a reason.
And you don't want those to erode away.
And the left is literally attacking those.
You know, so even though we might disagree on stuff, I think we all see the importance of opposing the authoritarianism.
And, you know, for some, for some folks on the left, literally destroying the basis of the country.
I think, you know, that's something we can all agree on, but we can't have that.
Yeah, I saw a video when you won your mayoral election.
You had the Democratic candidate, I think, next to you and you had your arm around her.
Is that her?
No, that's my wife.
That's not your Democratic candidate.
Oh, man, those are fighting words, too.
That's hilarious.
Okay.
You kissed her.
The way you're talking about her kind of snuggling up to you, like, I really wanted to say that.
I was like, man, that's, you got your arm around the can.
That's really nice of you.
Okay, that's your wife.
Ever come to town?
I'll introduce you to my wife and tell you that you said that.
Your wife's because my next comment was going to be like compared to you, she's like, it looks like a plush toy.
She's so small compared to that.
She is quite a size.
She's about five, too.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, your attitude towards your opponent was beautiful.
And you were talking about, you know, how we don't have democracy.
We don't have freedom to voice our ideas and opinions and talk about those and debate those things.
Where do you see failures from the conservative side of things in that area?
It does feel like a lot of people are getting on this.
It's like they're wary and exhausted of trying to talk across the aisle.
And what's your encouragement in that?
First of all, my opponent during the general election never talked about the things that are being talked about right now.
She talked about you need to raise taxes, which I disagreed with.
That was probably our biggest point of contention.
This other stuff, she never talked about critical race theory in schools or defunding the police.
And probably hard to win in Tennessee with that.
Yeah, there's this huge departure now.
The Democratic Party of just a few years ago is not the same thing now.
They've gone, to me, they've gone off the rails.
By the same point in time, at the same point, I think that conservatives need like when we talk about illegal immigration, you have to, you're not talking about brown people.
You're just talking about a process that you'd like everybody to go through so you don't come here and live off the system, for me.
But when we look at, when we look at that, we think about Latino people, they're Catholic, they're pro-life.
They should be conservatives.
They're hardworking people.
And that's actually something that I think the right has allowed the left to control the narrative of, if you oppose legal immigration, you oppose these people.
Well, you don't oppose these people.
It's just you want to see this, right?
And it's things like that.
It's the same with Black folks.
We want Black folks to be conservatives, to understand, that it's all about uplifting yourself.
You should be rewarded for hard work.
Instead, we get into these whatever and it feels like you alienate wide swaths of the population.
And I think that's been a mistake.
And I think that there needs to be much more outreach and much more better articulation of the ideas.
What we're talking about is opportunity.
It really is.
To me, that's the most important thing is economic opportunity.
And the free enterprise system provides that.
Socialism does not.
And what we've allowed to happen is that the left has been able to capture those people.
I think by often they're a false promise.
So to me, that's the thing is being able to articulate and say, man, I don't care what you look like.
I don't care what you, you know, where you come from.
I don't care.
You know, I think that everybody should deserve the opportunity to better their lives.
You ever have any problems with too many liberal Californians moving there?
You guys ever consider building a wall or anything to stop that?
We do have a lot of people flocking here, and they are coming, I believe.
They're escaping high-tax jurisdictions.
And we welcome them at the same time.
You know, it's like we are who we are for a reason.
And, you know, there's concern here that folks are going to bring their political stuff with them instead of leaving it behind.
They're going to bring what they're trying to escape with them, which is going to change what we have here.
So that is a concern, but it is interesting because the folks that I talk to, you know, that they get it.
They want to move here because they're trying to get away from what they see as the insanity, you know, and they're attracted to this place.
So, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, I guess we want people to come here and we want them to come, you know, for the right reasons, but don't change us into what you're trying to escape from.
And again, I think for the most part, that's actually how the folks that are moving here.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was going to ask if you noticed people assimilating well and eating a lot of hot chicken and barbecue, or if they, you know, open up their vegan restaurants, sushi restaurants, and taco stands.
I don't know.
Sushi is good.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm a sushi entire.
Hey, man, I'm I eat everything.
It's all good.
So, what do you think is like one of the biggest problems right now in the country?
I mean, what's the thing that gets under your skin a lot?
It's going on in the news.
Lay the smack down.
Well, let me start here.
There's a well, um, the spending by the federal government is going to end very badly.
You can't have 30 trillion dollars in debt and have these massive spending packages and not think that there's going to be problems.
You know, the price inflation that we see, the consumer price inflation is directly correlated to the fact that there's pretty money and the debt, the debt is exploding.
And that's bad.
And it's not, you know, we always talk about our kids paying it back, can't pay it back.
I mean, it's just, it's too much at this point.
So I think that's going to have some serious economic consequences.
I think the division around the country is horrible.
You know, the fact that we can't talk anymore, that's bad.
I do see, you know, with our young people, the fact that there's only one way of thinking, critical thinking is discouraged.
You know, and I think that's not good for our future generations.
With, you know, with everything that's happened with COVID and the government's reaction to that, I think that's very bad as well, because it's like Ram Emmanuel said, never let a good crisis go to waste.
So it seems now like it's never let a good crisis end.
You know, and there's, you know, when government clamps down, what happens is as the crisis releases, it'll loosen, but it never goes back to where it was.
And I think that we're seeing that already.
And again, with the CDC and everybody calling for all these restrictions and mandates again, you know, I'm worried that they're going to clamp down hard for a second time and not release as much as they should, which would be to go back here.
So there are a lot of things that really bother me.
But at the same time, we have a legacy in this country of individual liberty, of the free enterprise system.
And I think there are enough people that still strongly believe in that, especially in our area here in the South, that there's still, and there's no matter what, there's always more good than bad in America.
Know we do have our challenges, but I think that we'll work through them.
Did you find through the COVID lockdowns in your guys's area that, I mean, was it driven by, was it driven by the state?
Was it driven by the county?
I mean, what was the most restrictive?
I know here in California, it was like the state was more restrictive in a lot of ways than the federal government, you know, and tried to override the local, you know, the local areas.
And it was really the sheriff's departments that had to fight back again, you know, from in various counties that were the ones that were standing up and saying, we're not going to enforce these.
Right.
Here it was really strange because the governor gave we have a weird system here.
The health departments are all under the state except for the big counties.
Okay.
So there's like six that have their own independent health departments and statutorily they can kind of do whatever they want.
Which now, you know, we all looked at that and said, wait a second, you know, literally, when you look at the state code, if you have a board of health, which the county actually creates or not creates, and we had one in Knox County because no one ever knew this, but if you looked at the Board of Health, there was nothing they couldn't do.
They were there to protect public health and safety.
And it didn't, you know, we came to realize it didn't matter whether we were under state emergency, whether we're in a pandemic, it didn't matter.
So our county commission, and they were the ones issuing the boards, actually.
And I sit on the Board of Health.
There were a lot of like eight to one votes where they would vote to, you know, limit capacity at restaurants.
And the one dissenting vote was me.
They voted for a mask mandate.
The one dissenting vote was me.
And eventually, though, the county commission, you know, looked at that and realized, oh my goodness, you know, it wasn't even so much the fact was happening then at the height of the pandemic, but looking forward to like, oh my gosh, you realize that, you know, these folks, and I'm not saying they're bad folks, it's just the potential.
You know, they could, they could, of their own accord, because their health orders trumped county ordinances.
So they could ban sugary drinks on their own.
They could declare firearms at public health crisis like President Biden's recently done.
They'd get sued for that, but still they could do it.
So the county commission made them an advisory board and took away their power to make policy.
But there was, yeah, there was a lot of stuff going on here just politically.
You know, the laws concerning emergencies and public health and all that, they're not really well written.
And the legislature is reviewing those because no one ever thought you'd have anything like this.
Of course, we were much more lenient overall as a state, though, than, say, the federal government.
You know, even when Florida was getting all the headlines, you know, for Governor DeSantis doing a lot of things that he did, we'd already done that in Tennessee.
We just didn't get the headlines for it.
Here at the Babylon Bee, we wear many hats.
Indeed.
In fact, we wear many sick lids and tight caps.
Seamus didn't like my pun.
I wish I wasn't here right now.
You were so excited.
I was so excited to do that.
Well, I said, I got a great joke about this, and I figured you all would already know what it was.
Very sad.
Oh, look, we have hats in our store.
Lots of them.
Can I be real?
I was just jealous of the pun.
It was pretty sad.
I know we've got trucker hats.
We've got flex fit hats.
We've got dad hats.
We've got black hats.
Mom hats.
Mom hats with camo.
We have trucker, more trucker hats, more truckers.
Look at all these hats.
All these trucker hats.
We have a lot of hats.
I bet the truckers are mad that the world has taken over their hats.
Yeah, and they're like, those were our hats.
Back in my day, I was the real original trucker.
Yeah, there are hipster truckers.
Anyway, be an imitation trucker with a trucker hat.
Yeah.
Or if you're a real trucker, you can get one too.
And you can get these all in our store at shop.babylonb.com.
Do it.
I really like to ask our guests, and I'm hoping I get some good here.
Do you have any cool stories?
Yeah, from your wrestling career, there has to be some great behind the scenes.
What's a favorite story you tell around the campfire?
You get together, you're like, oh, my pants fell down.
What's a funny story?
Yeah, I don't have any of those.
There's one.
There's actually one pretty good one.
I was...
We were doing a show at the pond in Anaheim, California.
And next morning, I had an early flight out of LAX.
It's about 45 minutes from Anaheim back to the airport in Los Angeles.
So after my match, I'm trying to get out of the building as quickly as I could to avoid the crowd leaving.
So I took off my stuff and just threw it in the bag, didn't shower, just put on my workout clothes, drive back to the hotel.
And now this is back when I was still wearing like the full face mask and I'd always wear black paint around my eyes to blacken my eyes.
So it looked like I had runny mascara going down my, it looked kind of like Alice Cooper, right?
I also had like my really long hair, right?
So I had that pulled back in a ponytail.
And I weighed about 315 pounds at the time.
It's the biggest I think I ever got.
So you can imagine the looks I got as I'm walking through the airport hotel.
I'm in a tank top and shorts, still sweating with mascara running down my face and my hair pulled back in a ponytail.
So I get getting the key to my room and I go up to my room.
I open the door and you know how the hotel room doors slam back in your face.
So I kind of throw my bags in and I hear screaming coming out of the room and I look up and there's like an elderly couple that are in the room as I throw my bags in and the guy, they're like both on the bed like this.
And of course they were also, I think they were from Japan because they were screaming at me in a foreign language.
So anyway, I get back to the, got back down to the front desk and the poor manager, you know, is on the phone.
You know, yeah, sure, we'll comp your room.
Everything's going to be fine.
Please don't call the police.
So you gave someone somebody's room key.
Is that what happened?
But they gave me, yeah, they gave me a key to the room that's already occupied.
Oh, gosh.
Can you imagine?
You're just hanging out in your hotel room and this guy, he's six foot eight, 315 pounds.
Yeah.
Yeah.
With mascara comes walking in your room.
You know, dramatic with that.
And you just threw your bag in there?
I just threw my bags in.
Yeah.
What's he doing here?
They're visiting America for the first time.
Exactly.
Kane kicks the door down.
Oh, gosh.
It's Bane.
That's Bane.
All right.
Well, let's move into our subscriber portion.
We've got some questions from our subscribers.
Yeah, and we're going to ask you our 10 questions.
Yeah.
So let's do it.
Let's go.
All right.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
Who in politics would you most like to choke slam?
Figuratively.
Metaphorically.
Yeah, facts and logic.
If you were president, would you use an executive order to ban income tax?
What I would actually do is I would.
How would you reconcile the tension between libertarianism and the Bible's command for Christians to obey earthly authorities?
Man, what are you talking about?
It's Romans 13.
Ooh, dropping it.
Enjoying this hard-hitting interview.
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