Sept. 30, 2023 - Blood Money
37:39
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| We're here with the Blood Money Podcast. | |
| Today my guest is Clark Bozzert, who is running for the 3rd Congressional District of Nevada. | |
| How are you doing, Clark? I'm doing good, Vem. | |
| It's great to be here. Thank you for having me. | |
| Thank you for coming. So, Clark, let me ask you, the name of the show is called Blood Money because every episode we ask the guest, what does blood money mean to you? | |
| Well, that's a great question. | |
| Kind of a unique question that I haven't gotten before. | |
| I would say that one thing that immediately sticks out is blood money is really the cycle of poverty and government dependence that has been created by the Democrats in every single major metropolitan area in the United States. | |
| Because they've been in charge of these cities For decades, and still we're seeing a 9-11 every single six months in Chicago because we're seeing 3,000 young people die from crime. | |
| And so that's something that I feel like is manufactured and it's created for political convenience to the detriment of some of our... | |
| Most vulnerable communities. | |
| So that's really a justice issue that I felt like no one was going after. | |
| I mean it's terrible what Lori Lightfoot has done and just her legacy and the folks that have come before her. | |
| That to me is blood money. | |
| We're seeing people whose lives have just as much dignity as my own be thrown away through policy mismanagement and just really policy that perpetuates cycles of poverty and brokenness. | |
| And it's so true to say that I'd say the vast majority of social issues and even economic issues that we're seeing in our country, nearly all of them can be traced to fatherlessness in our country. | |
| Fathers are so huge, and of course mothers are as well, but we really have just such a crisis of fatherless folks. | |
| And I'm actually involved with an organization called Dad Inc. | |
| here in Nevada because the federal government stepped in and I've partnered with a church that they said, hey, we've got, I think it was about 65,000 gentlemen here in Nevada that have no legal right to see their children because they're behind on their child support. | |
| So this is a huge problem and it's also a drain on our social safety net programs. | |
| Can a church step in and try to alleviate some of this and make a difference? | |
| So I've been involved with that program for, I guess, coming up on a year now. | |
| But it's really tragic, and I really want to see a lot of that change. | |
| So there's two ways, we don't need to dive into all of this, but there's two ways that you can fix problems in a country. | |
| One is through legislation, and the other one is through certain conversations being elevated to the national level. | |
| And I cannot put a father back in your home 20 years ago. | |
| Of course, I could pass a piece of legislation that funds a new program, that spends a ton of money, that tries to make a difference, but there's just some things that you can't fix through legislation, but you can fix through being a figure on the national level that's just trying to have a conversation and, for instance, say, hey, dad's out there. | |
| Listen, even if you feel like you've been a bad father, nobody can replace you. | |
| Make that call to your kids. | |
| Stop by their house. | |
| Get caught up. | |
| Be in their lives. | |
| It all shows, even if you have a bad mother and father kind of relationship, even children that are raised in that context are much more successful and have better outcomes than children that did not have any father figure at all. | |
| So that's a crisis that I really want to address and it's a passion on my heart and maybe not as core to the campaign in terms of what I typically communicate, but it is something that I really want to see changed in America. | |
| So we're talking about 3,000 young men, mostly, that are getting killed in Chicago. | |
| Why isn't the government over there, especially the people ingrained within that community, doing anything about, you know, this carnage? | |
| The 9-11 every three months, or six months? | |
| Yeah, well, I'll tell you, this is the super savage, honest answer. | |
| The reason that they're not doing anything about this problem is because they like it the way it is. | |
| And that's a pretty radical statement to say, but Democrats prefer the status quo. | |
| They want things to continue just the way that they are for the sake of political convenience, because they come around every four years and say, don't you dare step out of line and vote Republican, otherwise you're going to lose a benefit. | |
| So it's just what they've done. | |
| And they're trying to cement... | |
| We're seeing this in Texas. We're seeing this all across the country. | |
| Democrats are trying to cement their advantage because they believe, and I don't believe this, but they believe that demographics is destiny. | |
| So depending on the color of a person's skin, they have a right to win an election in a certain area. | |
| I fundamentally disagree with that. | |
| I think that I have no right to know anything about you, whoever's watching, whether you're... | |
| Ethnic group you belong to. | |
| I don't know anything about you, and I have no right to assume anything until I've met you and spoken with you and discovered what's important to you as an individual. | |
| I can't make any kind of judgment based on skin color, but that concept is anathema to who the Democrats are and what they believe. | |
| Case in point with Obama. | |
| What is a rich, elite, Ivy League I would say for Lori Lightfoot, | |
| the things are the way that they are because that's what's convenient for her politically and expedient towards what she wants. | |
| I'll also say just on the issue of masculinity and fatherlessness, our society doesn't know what to do with males at all. | |
| And to be a man, you've got quite a bit of initiative, you've got a lot of aggression, a lot of passion, and that's really essential because how else are you going to storm the beaches of Normandy? | |
| People always talk about toxic masculinity, but it's like we need... | |
| There was guys who were 16 and 17 that lied about their age to go fight in World War II to run into almost certain death to see an entire continent liberated from oppression and, you know, the reign of the Nazis. | |
| That's what, you know, masculine intention looks like. | |
| So I want to say, first of all, this is a totally separate conversation, but it means something to be a man and it means something to be a woman. | |
| And our society doesn't have the foggiest idea What either of those concepts mean, but we really need some leadership that can speak to it. | |
| Yeah, I mean they've really tried to mess things up with this idea of toxic masculinity and attack on men and fathers. | |
| I mean that just seems absurd when all the statistics, all the numbers and the history behind this has shown that that leads to nothing but disaster. | |
| Yeah. And then we've got a glut of women complaining that they can't find a man that's intentional. | |
| They're all passive. Everybody's just a passive man. | |
| Won't ask them on a date. | |
| They want to stay home and play video games and throw away a good chunk of their lives. | |
| So it's kind of like our society is just in poor shape. | |
| And I'd like to see it changed. | |
| I'm not the be-all, end-all solution, but... | |
| Why do you think? | |
| I mean, do you think these are, like, interests that are planting these things into our society because they hate us and they want to destroy us? | |
| Like, all the bad things that happened in those neighborhoods, they're like, let's bring it into everywhere else now. | |
| Yeah. Well, that's true. I will say that there are folks that want to see the cultural and societal fabric of America deteriorated. | |
| And just to prove this point, look at what TikTok is like in China. | |
| Fly to China, download TikTok, have an app. | |
| It's totally different. I mean, you see the kids on TikTok on China. | |
| They're all working on an engineering project or they're studying for something or they're doing something with their family. | |
| Really wholesome stuff that makes their society better. | |
| Mm-hmm. TikTok is a Chinese app. | |
| I think it's illegal or restricted for federal government employees to have it because it's like malware. | |
| But you look on the American version of TikTok and it's like nothing but drugs, porn, and just destructive, coercive. | |
| It's like the hour of defilement. | |
| But I think that's what there are other people in our world that want to see America destroyed. | |
| There's even a lot of folks here in our country that are in charge that want to see America fundamentally torn down because they think it's fundamentally broken. | |
| So yeah, worldview matters a ton. | |
| And we have folks that don't have any vision, no principle, no conviction, and a broken worldview that doesn't correspond to human nature. | |
| This brings up an interesting topic when you mention TikTok and how it's very different over there. | |
| China has also banned a lot of this toxic masculinity and things that are erosive to the idea of the male image in their society. | |
| And it's interesting that over here, that seems to be a large part of pop culture. | |
| Yeah, it is a large part of pop culture just because we say there's no difference between men and women. | |
| Ideas have consequences to them. | |
| Socialism obviously has consequences if you implement it in an economy. | |
| You know, we've seen with feminism, I think it was like the first wave of feminism in the 60s said, you know, women are equal or have equal rights as men. | |
| And then I think it was like second wave was women can do... | |
| Just as well as men. | |
| So like, you know, they can carry a 150 pound pack in the military. | |
| There's some things, I mean, there are biological differences. | |
| I think it was Elizabeth Warren or somebody that said that sex is only loosely biological. | |
| I was like, it's completely biological. | |
| Gender, maybe that might be a bit of more of a like social construct. | |
| But then now we're in third wave feminism, which is saying that women are men, but they're just bad versions of men. | |
| They're just low quality men. | |
| And that's not true. Women are beautiful. | |
| I'm married. I love my wife. | |
| But we're just losing a ton of that and it's like... | |
| We're just in a mess. So maybe that point is neither here nor there. | |
| I know that we're supposed to talk about blood money. | |
| But all of this affects human lives. | |
| This is blood money though. This is blood money because blood is being spilled in a certain way by our society and culture basically decaying while other countries are using the principles we had way back when. | |
| And at a time when society was healthier. | |
| So I see blood money all over this topic, you know? | |
| Yeah. And I'll say this. | |
| Whether an individual is thriving or suffering, there's always money to be made on the condition of that human, which is super tragic. | |
| And maybe it's true that there's even a little bit more money to be made on their suffering than thriving. | |
| So, yeah, there's a heck of a lot of injustice. | |
| We really need to fight against it. | |
| The media, you know, let's talk about the media effect on this topic because I've had two business partners that are black and the biggest complaint I hear is how media and pop culture idolizes this idea and you know it's changed a little bit now but when I was growing up the idea of the gangster, the tough guy, the guy with the tattoos Yet you have all these brilliant minds like Thomas Sowell. | |
| There's so many brilliant black minds that in the China TikTok version, they would be the gods of TikTok. | |
| My perception of what's pitched to the black community from the media is, hey, you can be an athlete, you can be a gangster, or you can be a rapper. | |
| And so the rest of society is like, hey, what are you good at? | |
| at? What are you not good at? Let's find a place where you fit, where you can have a satisfying career and see that economic mobility take place rather than saying, hey, you could be a CPA, you could be a business owner, you could be a scientist or something like that. | |
| We don't pitch those ideas. And it's ridiculous that the media, they've taken away the celebrities that the black community is allowed to have. They say you can have Martin Luther King and maybe Frederick Douglass and that's it, nobody else. | |
| When in reality, it's like there are so many ridiculously incredible epic black people that have been just unbelievably awesome in their contribution to America and just to the world as a whole. | |
| They don't let you know any of that because they don't want you to be inspired by your own past because the African-American community has been awesome for America. | |
| And after the Civil War leading all the way up to the 60s, they had You know more economic progression I guess on a percentage basis than the white community they were growing and they were thriving and then they also had higher marriage rates than the white community so they were doing awesome and then in the 60s what did we come in with you know we started to incentivize the welfare system and say listen We wanted to get people on welfare and structure it so that you can make maybe $40,000 in benefits, | |
| which is just enough to where you're never going to launch a career at $38,000, which disincentivizes work. | |
| I'm never going to disincentivize somebody to reach their God-given potential because work is dignifying. | |
| But then also, if you get married, you're going to lose your benefits. | |
| So it's like the government stepped in in a very intentional, specific way to undermine... | |
| We don't talk about the scientists, the economists, all the professors, great writers. | |
| We talk about it, but the media doesn't talk about it. | |
| They don't idolize those kind of people like the way they do your musician and athlete class. | |
| What we're seeing, or what we have seen in the last 40, 50 years in the black neighborhoods, it seems to be now, there seems to be an attack on fathers through the family courts, through Really, you know, social services to all communities. | |
| And one of the statistics I wanted to throw out there is that, you know, let's say there's a breakup in the marriage. | |
| 85% of the time the father is removed from the equation and it becomes a single mom situation. | |
| Bringing those principles that have been so destructive to the black community now into pretty much the rest of America. | |
| Yeah, and I don't know this to be a fact, but it's what I've heard as a personal testimony from some individuals that are involved in it. | |
| And they say that what's reported, at least here in Clark County, is that the courts say, all right, who's the richer parent? | |
| We're going to give the rights to the least financially stable parent, and then we're going to make the richer parent pay out the no's. | |
| You know, to have custody of their kids. | |
| So, I don't know that that's a fact, but that's what I've heard, and I think there's a good chance that that might be true, which is totally unjust. | |
| I mean, it should say, hey, who is the more qualified parent? | |
| Like, we have to have the mindset of what's best for the kids. | |
| Same is true for our Clark County school system. | |
| Right now, we've got a broken incentive structure where we've got, you know, teachers' unions and then You know, school boards and superintendents and principals and teachers, and then you've got the kids there at the bottom, and the money just funnels right up and it doesn't funnel back into how can we make education better for children so that they're prepared to launch when they're 18. | |
| You know, in this incentive structure, it's just broken and the children are getting screwed and nobody at the top is paying for it. | |
| That's why nothing's changed here in Clark County in a long time. | |
| So I want to make some changes there, but... | |
| Yeah, to your point with the family loss situation, it needs to be better. | |
| We need to say, guys, we as a moral society, we have to do everything that we can to look after those that are most vulnerable among us and least able to protect and defend themselves. | |
| That's children. So that needs to be the heart posture of anybody involved in that entire situation. | |
| What's going to be best for the kids? | |
| What separates your typical politician and this new refreshing group of politicians is the fact that the new refreshing group actually has the courage to talk about this. | |
| Yeah, well, I have the courage to talk about it. | |
| I think in part, well, I'll preface my statement by saying, you know, I am a constitutional, originalist, Christian, conservative, grass-fed, corn-finished American candidate. | |
| I'm a lifelong Republican. | |
| I was raised Republican. And, you know, I love conservatism. | |
| I would say that my willingness to venture off the beaten path is because I think that I've not been on the beaten path. | |
| I've kind of like ventured in out of the forest onto the trail and now I'm running for office. | |
| And so I get that I may not be somebody's preselected choice for the Republican Nevada District 3 nomination. | |
| I'm still running in this race because it's a privilege to be involved in our democratic process and civic life. | |
| So it's really exciting. But yeah, I'm comfortable to talk about any issues because I think, first of all, that there's more that we can do as Republicans and as conservatives to engage with voters more than just saying, hey, I'm pro-God, I'm 2A, and I'm anti-abortion. | |
| I'm like, guys, there's... | |
| You know, Donald Trump hasn't cornered the market on everything that it means that it is to be a conservative, or I'll say more properly just to be a Republican. | |
| I think that we can articulate the value proposition of conservatism to folks that have not traditionally been Republicans. | |
| If we'll just put in the work and engage, you know, for instance, with minority communities that the Republican Party, oftentimes they look at and they say, hey, it just doesn't make sense for us, you know, financially or in other ways just to engage in that part. | |
| It's too much work for not enough benefit. | |
| I'd like to just go. That's why I talk to everyone. | |
| That leads me to the other topic, which is small business. | |
| Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on small business, your policies. | |
| How would you rebuild the middle class? | |
| I'll start with just even a little more of my backstory in regard to small business, which is that when I was in Southern California, I was... | |
| I think it was 2008. | |
| I was in high school. I think I was maybe a sophomore. | |
| And that's when the bottom fell out of the economy. | |
| And I lived in a small town of 25,000 people in the middle of the desert. | |
| And there were no jobs. | |
| There were just no jobs anywhere. | |
| So I was digging ditches for $6 an hour. | |
| And I think minimum wage was like $8.25. | |
| And later I got a job managing a restaurant. | |
| And I did that for two years. | |
| And then from there I got a job at a credit union. | |
| And while I was there I was riding my skateboard up the hill to go to the community college because it was only $25 a credit to take classes. | |
| So I got my welding degree. | |
| And I was a welder. And then from there I got a scholarship to go to Liberty University where I got my business degree. | |
| And then the rest is history and now I'm here. | |
| So I've been very blue collar. | |
| I've been very white collar at different periods in my life. | |
| And so economic mobility is huge for me and a lot of the opportunities that I had coming up are not going to exist for The folks that are trying to come up now. | |
| So that's something really passionate on my heart. | |
| And also private domestic business investment is the backbone of real economic growth. | |
| And last year under the Biden administration, every single quarter we had negative real economic growth. | |
| All of the numbers were down and the only number that was higher were the spending numbers. | |
| And those were only higher because inflation had gone up and people are spending more for the same amount of goods and services. | |
| So... We're seeing our economy, it's not growing. | |
| It's shrinking. We're getting way more leveraged. | |
| Anyone can live off a credit card for what seems like an indefinite amount of time until you can't even make the minimum payment. | |
| And we're kind of getting that way in terms of our entire economy because we're entering into what's going to be a currency crisis and then that's going to roll into a sovereign debt crisis and the world I think is going to be chucking our dollars back at us. | |
| So we're in a really, really serious financial situation. | |
| And just as it relates to small business, I don't want to just monologue here, but we need less regulation. | |
| So we need, first of all, drastically reduce government spending because rather than reducing their spending, they've stolen your purchasing power. | |
| Second, nobody wants to start a business anymore because, especially in financial services or some of these more complex industries, because there's just so much regulation. | |
| If I wanted to start a fund or something, I might need a million dollars in capital just to pay for legal fees, just to get my company properly set up. | |
| We're not helping. | |
| Nobody's looking after the little guy that's trying to start a business. | |
| And that's why in the trailer that I made for my campaign, it said, you know, I'm running for Congress, you know, for Nevada families, for the risk takers, for the most vulnerable among us. | |
| And when I said the risk takers, I meant those people that are taking risks to start businesses, to see our economy grow, to provide jobs. | |
| Nobody's looking after them, so I want to try to fight for them. | |
| Do you know any of the numbers about how many businesses... | |
| We did an episode called the COVID Slaughter of Small Business because literally there was a slaughter of small business. | |
| Do you know how many businesses have gone out of business because of COVID? Here in Clark County or nationwide? | |
| Nationwide. Oh, I don't know. | |
| Millions probably. It's funny because right now I think it's in that four or five hundred thousand range, but it's very well moving towards the millions. | |
| Yeah. Okay, so how do we compete with China and all these other places where the minimum wage is a lot lower, the expectations of employees are a lot lower compared to what we have here? | |
| I'll say that you never need to mistreat workers for the sake of making a profit. | |
| You can do things the right way even if you have real slim margins. | |
| As someone who's personally worked in manufacturing, I've spent plenty of years personally cutting chips, programming machines, working on CNC machines and other things. | |
| We don't manufacture anymore. | |
| And our kind of deal with China, I think, you know, 50 or 60 years ago was, hey, they're a developing nation. | |
| We're going to help them out to try to come up in the world and become a modern trading partner. | |
| So what we're going to get out of the deal is this giant trading partner and they're going to be democratic and they're going to be peaceful. | |
| And instead, we've gotten a giant, communist, authoritarian, aggressive regime that has stolen our technology through forced technology transfers. | |
| So Americans have gotten the total short end of the deal for the last 60 years in this whole China situation, which is why under Trump, how do you rein in an aggressive, unfair You know, he resorted to tariffs. | |
| Whether you think that's right or wrong, we're in a tough situation regardless. | |
| So, sorry, Vem, I think that I veered off. | |
| No, no, no, this is good. | |
| I mean, are they, I guess there's a little bit of thanklessness there because of If it wasn't for us and now it seems like their politics have invaded our country and in fact that seems to be the policy of their president per the book that he wrote. | |
| Yeah, so there's a ton that we can do to improve our economy and bring a lot of these jobs back over, just make things in America. | |
| And not all of those jobs are menial. | |
| Of course, there's a couple that might be. | |
| But guess what doesn't get stuck on ships? | |
| Things made in America. | |
| So let's make more things in America. | |
| There's no reason why we can't. | |
| We ship plenty of skilled labor overseas. | |
| We can bring that back here. | |
| Do you think Trump was helping to that effect? | |
| I think he was certainly trying to help. | |
| And I think that he did help. | |
| Though, when you're on the wrong path... | |
| Sometimes to bring a train that's going in the wrong direction to a stop, you know, it takes a long time to grind to a halt, then turn around, then pick up some momentum and inertia in the right direction. | |
| So, you know, the stock market didn't like it. | |
| A lot of other folks didn't like it. | |
| But, I mean, look how the years ended. | |
| I think we made, you know, 35% on average in the stock market or I think in the NASDAQ and maybe the Dow Jones as well. | |
| A little less than that. | |
| But... Yeah, I think that that was probably the right thing to do, though as a matter of principle I don't really have a really strong opinion on pro or against tariffs, but I am pro U.S. economy and I don't even think that we need to be for the U.S. economy to the detriment of the global economy. | |
| I think that we can work together, but it's the job of government firstly to look after the citizens that they govern. | |
| So that's I think kind of the crux behind America First. | |
| What would be the top five issues that are the most threatening and erosive to the United States? | |
| It depends on exactly how you put it. | |
| Morality is huge, and I'll mention something in a moment on that. | |
| I'd say the top one is the erosion of our civil liberties and our God-given rights. | |
| That's what I'm like really, really in the weeds, neck deep in that fight here in Nevada because, you know, Canada has COVID camps. | |
| Look at Australia. They have COVID camps. | |
| We've had a dishonest narrative out of our federal health agencies And they're stripping away our rights. | |
| I mean, look at what's happening with the trucker convoy in Canada. | |
| People that, they just want to work their jobs and they don't want, you know, we will always retain our autonomy as Americans and just as people in the world to determine what we do or do not accept as far as what's put into our bodies. | |
| And Canadians are losing their jobs and their trucks and they're getting arrested over it. | |
| So, defense of our civil liberties and God-given rights. | |
| Next, our national debt and our economic situation is the greatest threat to national security that we have right now. | |
| So we have to get a wrangle on it. | |
| And it feels to me like neither party as a whole is really serious about solving the problem. | |
| Both of them are racking up ridiculous tabs that we have no intention of repaying the debts that we're taking on, which is dishonest even from the start. | |
| So that's really sick. | |
| And then, of course, education here in Nevada, there's no reason why we can't give kids a great education. | |
| That also attracts business investment because no one wants to come here if we don't have an educated workforce. | |
| And then after that, I mean morality is huge and we just have folks that may have gone to Harvard and maybe they're competent with a spreadsheet but they just don't have any morals and so they pass bills that spend money that we're not going to repay. | |
| And so the moral fabric of our society is really crumbling and that's why in Democracy in America and in just our founding documents, you know, our founders knew this doesn't work if we don't have a moral society. | |
| So I mean, John Adams, I think he was talking about Haiti or, I don't know, some other countries, and he just said, listen, because of the moral fabric of these other nations, I don't know if it was Haiti, there's a good chance that's wrong, but he said maybe the best that they can ever do is to have some kind of authoritarian structure or a dictatorship, just because they couldn't steward freedom if he gave it to them, because freedom is always the hardest test to pass. | |
| That's when I was an RA in college. | |
| I saw young kids come in all the time. | |
| No parents and loads of freedom. | |
| You can spend your time and your money however you want. | |
| And I saw a lot of them not finish the semester as well and have to get sent home. | |
| So freedom is really hard to steward and it necessarily requires a giant amount of individual self-government and personal responsibility. | |
| So I can't tell you the right thing to do when you wake up in the morning, but you need to do what's right in your heart and be accountable, in my opinion, to God, but to whatever higher power is pertinent to you. | |
| So those are my thoughts. That's actually four answers. | |
| Maybe I'll just save the fifth one for another time. | |
| What do you think about The media's role in all of this, and if your answer is that they have a negative role, which I have a feeling that's where this is going, how do we fix that issue? | |
| Yeah. Well, I kind of want to come into the fix first. | |
| I mean, citizen journalism in this latest season has been awesome because we can hear who knows what about COVID, all kinds of things. | |
| But I want to know, like, who's actually died? | |
| Whose relative or friend has died? | |
| Who do you know personally that died from COVID? Like, what are your personal stories? | |
| And so it's really hard to find good information and you can't make a good decision without good information. | |
| And so I've really appreciated, you know, Project Veritas and some other folks that are just, they're on the ground with a camera taking a selfie or taking a video saying, listen, I'm in Kenosha or I'm in Portland or I'm in D.C. This is what I'm seeing or I'm in a private meeting. | |
| This is what's, you know, this is how the sausage is getting made right now. | |
| Citizen journalism is really great. | |
| But yeah, as far as the media, they're just reprehensible in terms of the job that they've done to serve the American public with an honest narrative. | |
| I mean, it's just been totally dishonest. | |
| and they don't even cover so many huge stories that are happening. | |
| Like in Kazakhstan, there were police officers getting executed and beheaded and the media said, oh it's because, well they didn't even tell you that part. | |
| They just said, oh there's riots in Kazakhstan, I wonder why. Well it's because of economic mobility and high gas prices and I'm like, no no no. | |
| It's because their bank accounts were seized and they were frozen if you didn't have the vaccine or there was a mandate. | |
| So it's like, but nobody's going to tell you that. | |
| So all across the world, what I'll say is, first of all, if you're getting all your info from CNN or other mainstream media news sources, I'd say it's hard. | |
| You know, those people bait folks that are wanting to be an intellectual. | |
| And they say, oh, if you watch us, you're part of the in-group, you're an intellectual. | |
| But I'd say, listen, you're missing. | |
| That's exactly where you'd want to go. | |
| Even Wall Street Journal, which I love. | |
| That's exactly where you'd want to go if you wanted to miss everything that was happening in our country. | |
| Because they're all just simping for Biden 24-7. | |
| Yeah, and ignoring a lot of the real issues. | |
| They don't talk about what you talked about at the beginning of this interview, where there's a 9-11 that happens every six months in Chicago. | |
| They don't really dive into the reasons for that, it seems. | |
| And that's because narrative beats facts every day of the week. | |
| They're not interested in telling you the facts. | |
| They want to control the narrative. | |
| And that's the reason why they repeat the same thing over and over again as opposed to dive into the thousands of stories that are happening on Main Street. | |
| I think people are wanting to know what's really happening. | |
| There's another faction of people that they're not wanting to know what's really happening because it might be too painful and they want to live in the metaverse. | |
| It's our heritage that we fight for freedom. | |
| We fight for the next generation. | |
| We fight for selfless causes. | |
| Right now, not a lot of that is happening in Washington and I want to change some of that. | |
| How do you resist The financial temptations. | |
| How do you resist this culture of, you know, hey, you know, sign this bill that you're not going to read, right? | |
| And we'll pay you a quarter of a million dollars to come make a 15-minute speech at Harvard. | |
| How do you resist that? | |
| How do you resist these Nancy Pelosi or Maxime Waters type politicians that are obviously making a whole bunch of money Yeah, well I'm glad that you understand kind of the inner workings of how money in politics works because I mean look at the Clinton Foundation. | |
| I think it was Hillary that she was one day she was against the Iran nuclear deal and then the next day Bill and he goes gives a speech. | |
| I don't know if it was India or in some place. | |
| He gives a speech and then a couple hundred million dollars I don't know the exact sum, but millions of dollars came flowing into the Clinton Foundation. | |
| And the next day she's like, actually, I'm for the Iran nuclear deal. | |
| It's not such a bad idea. | |
| And that's how people sell their office. | |
| And it's illegal, but there's legal kind of ways that they slip through. | |
| So that's how money does weasel its way into politics. | |
| The ways that you resist... | |
| Well, the ways that you stay effective, I'll start with that, is that when you get to Washington... | |
| If you have skeletons in your closet, if you care too much about re-election, or if you care too much about money, that's how they leverage you into being ineffective. | |
| And so as a Christian, my thought on the money part is what is a couple hundred million dollars in my pocket in the scheme of eternity when I have the opportunity to serve and affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have just as much dignity as my own. | |
| What I'm doing might seem more exciting than the mom raising the kids or the guy running the business or the child trying to get the grade in high school, but it's not more significant. | |
| So there's only one style of leadership, which is servant leadership. | |
| And if you don't understand that concept, then you're not fit to lead on the national stage in this season. | |
| And then second, I don't have any skeletons in my closet. | |
| So I was in Phoenix, and there was a gentleman that said, oh my gosh, who are you? | |
| I've seen your face before. | |
| And I said, well, I'm Clark. I'm not from Phoenix, but I'm running in Nevada. | |
| I'm here for a political event. | |
| And he said, whoa, I work for a firm, and we've spent a ton of money on counter-opposition research on you, and we can't find anything. | |
| And I was like, hey, I'm sorry. I married my wife. | |
| I married one woman. | |
| I live in a 1400 square foot house and I don't know what to tell you. | |
| So that's with the skeletons. | |
| And then if you care too much about re-election. | |
| So I'm putting in the grassroots effort right now because I just want to be honest. | |
| I don't know if there's Democrats or Republicans, Independents, whoever's on the other side of the screen. | |
| I'm happy to engage with them. | |
| And when you do this kind of work, then if you get to Congress, you can say, listen, I'm here and guess what? | |
| I'm beholden to nobody other than the folks that put me here, which is you, the voters, because I didn't get here through big money contributions or running a coercive ad or an attack ad or just basically buying an election, which is totally a counter strategy to what my opponents are doing in this race. | |
| But... Yeah, I'll just say that, so for that reason, when I get there and, you know, if you get there and you've spent money and you're a weak candidate, then Kevin or Nancy, they come up to you and they say, hey, listen, you don't have a fighting chance to re-win. | |
| If you want to win, you need a buddy up to me and you need to sign these bills that I'm putting forward. | |
| But I can say, listen, I'll sign whatever the heck I want because, not that I want to be a team player, but only for purposes that are, you know, that are good and And I'll say, listen, the people of Nevada District 3, they have my back because I put in the work. | |
| They know me and they're going to turn out to vote next election cycle. | |
| I'm confident. I don't need your money. | |
| You can keep it. And I'll vote how I please. | |
| Thank you very much. And so you're doing like a grassroots campaign in terms of raising money? | |
| Yeah, well we're raising money in a lot of conventional senses as well, but unlike my competition, I'm making phone calls, I'm talking to people, I'm doing events, I'm being accessible, I'm showing up to every meeting that I can physically go to. | |
| Has there been people that have approached you with caveats? | |
| Yeah, well, I'll say that, you know, uncommunicated expectations are the root of disappointment. | |
| So when I talk to a donor, I'll say, listen, I love our country, I'm honest about who I am, and I'm doing everything that I can do to see transformation in our country and in your representation in Nevada District 3. | |
| But I really need your help. | |
| So if you can write a max check, I need that $5,800 check. | |
| I need you to write it. But here's what it's going to get you. | |
| It's going to get you the exact same amount of access to me and representation as any other Nevadan would have. | |
| And if you're satisfied with that, then by all means, I need money. | |
| I'd love to take your money. But if there's any kind of stipulation of saying, hey... | |
| Let's talk later. I'm like, no, no, no. | |
| Let's just talk now. When there's the really rare occasion when someone says, hey, are we going to move forward with this thing? | |
| I'd say, well, we didn't discuss that at the time of the donation. | |
| And thankfully through WinRed, I can just issue a refund right now. | |
| So if there's a caveat, you'll have your, I don't want your money. | |
| I do not want it. And it's taken a lot for me to get this far in the campaign without having a single hook or string attached to the campaign. | |
| So right now, I'm home free. | |
| I am beholden to nobody. | |
| Nobody owns this campaign. | |
| Maybe Cracker Barrel, because I love Cracker Barrel. | |
| But other than that, there's no lobbies, there's no big industry partners, there's no individual donors that have a string in this campaign. | |
| And how's that been? I mean, are you satisfied with the fundraising, or how do you feel as far as how it's going? | |
| Yeah, well, it's been challenging. | |
| And of course, I'm the latest entrant into this race, so I just launched my campaign and had my campaign launch on January 29th, even though I'd gotten some of the infrastructure together before that. | |
| But fundraising is challenging. | |
| I think economically, folks are a little bit tighter with their pocketbooks right now, and a lot of folks are waiting until the end of the primary to just put money into the general. | |
| But... I'll say, we really need your money now because it's like, who's going to fight against AOC? What are you going to send, you know, a 60-year-old person that's, you know, how is she going to lead or how is, you know, somebody who's less relevant going to try to fight against the radical socialist agenda that's taking place in Washington? | |
| You know, you need to send somebody that can counter what AOC is bringing to the table. | |
| And I want to bring, I want to be that person. | |
| Just as far as fundraising, my wife and I, we're the largest contributors to our own campaign because we wanted to put our money where our mouth was. | |
| Nobody has given more than we have in terms of time, effort, talent, resources. | |
| We also don't need millions and billions of dollars. | |
| We just need enough money. | |
| I think our win number might be 15,000 votes because there's a lot of political apathy in Nevada and previous people won for comparable amounts of votes. | |
| So that might be our win number. | |
| We just need to reach 10,000 or 15,000 people. | |
| Thankfully, because of the strategy that I'm taking, just being honest, we're winning with voters on the first interaction rather than needing three mailers, two phone calls, two in-person events, an email, and a door hanger. | |
| Because all of that costs a ton of money, but that's what you do when you don't have any substance. | |
| So I just talk to people, and typically by the end of it, I say, hey, listen... | |
| I want to earn your trust, but I'm not going to lie to you. | |
| So if something that I've said makes sense to you, then I would certainly appreciate your support. | |
| But if we disagree, I'm not going to pander to you. | |
| Awesome, Clark. Awesome. | |
| Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. | |
| Thank you. Thank you for coming down, Clark. |
Export Selection