Joe Walsh | Will There Be A Viable Third Party In The United States? | OAP #40
Chase Geiser is joined by Joe Walsh.
Walsh was born in 1961 in North Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He earned his bachelor's in English from the University of Iowa in 1985. After graduation, Walsh studied acting, and then earned a master's in public policy from the University of Chicago in 1991.[5]
Walsh worked as a community college teacher, fundraiser, and researcher for private foundations and advocacy groups, including Americans for Limited Government, the United Republican Fund, and the John and Kathleen Buck Family Foundation.[6]
He first ran for elected office in 1996, when he challenged Rep. Sidney Yates (D) for U.S. House.[6]
Walsh defeated Melissa Bean (D) to represent Illinois' 8th Congressional District in 2010 as part of the wave election that saw 63 seats change hands from Democrats to Republicans. Walsh lost his re-election bid in 2012 to Tammy Duckworth (D).[6]
Following his exit from Congress, Walsh launched The Joe Walsh Show, a conservative talk radio show. It debuted on WIND Chicago in March 2013, and began receiving syndication in other major U.S. cities by early 2014. In February 2017, it was picked up for national syndication by the Salem Radio Network, and became part of Newsmax TV in May 2018.
Walsh ran for President of the United States in 2020.
So back in 2009 is when you served representing Chicago.
Is that right?
You ran in 2009?
Yeah, I got into the race in nine.
I was elected in 2010, sworn in in early 2011, and served until January of 2013.
I was part of that Tea Party class.
Yeah, yeah.
And there was some redistricting and stuff that went on at that time, too, because the census was in 2010.
Is that right?
Yes.
So I represented a district in Illinois.
The Democrats controlled Illinois then.
They control it now.
So I was drawn out of a district.
In fact, they drew a district for now U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth.
Wow.
So that must have been frustrating for you.
Chase, it was.
But to be honest, the Republicans probably wanted me out of Washington every bit as much as the Democrats did, probably more.
So I know that fairly recently, you've been sort of a cantankerous, I don't even think right-wing is the right word for you necessarily, but I could see how you wouldn't necessarily be the person that would just follow all the party rules, right?
You're an independent thinker.
You have your own ideas, and you're not going to make any sort of compromises about your principles or your convictions for the sake of telling a party line.
So I could see how that would have been something that would have been frustrating for Republicans back in 2010.
Oh, absolutely, Chase.
Look, when I was there, I came in and there were a group of us young conservatives, and we were probably as pissed off at the Republican establishment as we were the Democrats.
Look, I ran because I was all about the debt and the size of government.
And you know, like I know, Republicans are every bit as guilty when it comes to the debt as Democrats are.
Yes.
Well, I mean, we saw a lot of spending last year.
And I do want to specifically talk to you about Trump because I am a Trump supporter, although reluctantly, mostly because everybody I hate hates him.
That's interesting.
So I consider myself a much more fiscally conservative person than obviously Trump behaved.
But I just, I really embraced, and you might have some insight on this that I don't, but I really embraced the populism of Trump.
And even if not in action and rhetoric, it just resonated with me to hear someone who was unashamedly at least saying America first.
This sort of populist kind of nationalist message really resonated with like my upbringing of patriotism and freedom and everything that America, you know, the flag, all this stuff, right?
And so I know that, you know, you can quibble about, you know, Trump, whether or not he actually led or had policy that lined up with that sort of rhetoric, but it was certainly something that got him elected and explains sort of my support for him, my enthusiasm for him.
So, and I hear that.
And what makes me kind of an unusual guy is I'm a never Trumper.
I can't stand him, but I voted for him in 2016.
I wasn't a never Trumper.
I understand why Trump got elected.
The same people who voted for Trump, you know, voted for me, listened to me on the radio.
And you're right.
He sang a populist tune.
Look, our politics is fucked up.
It's messed up.
Both parties suck.
And most of the American people are fed up with both parties.
We needed a disruptor.
Trump was that.
And so it made sense.
I understand why he got elected, probably like you do.
So why do you hate him so much?
We don't have time in this podcast, Chase.
I'll go with where I just stopped.
We needed a disruptor.
I've got populism in my blood.
I understand it.
There are good disruptors and bad disruptors.
He's a bad disruptor because he's a thoroughly horrible human being.
And I can't get over that.
I can't get over the fact that he doesn't believe a thing he says, that he lies every time he opens his mouth.
I can't get over the fact, Chase, that he, and you and I can get into a good, respectful conversation.
Oh, of course, of course.
But our government was attacked on January 6th.
That's a big deal.
I'd never seen that in my life.
You haven't seen that in your life.
Trump incited that because he spouted a dangerous lie.
So I just, look, Chase, I consider Donald Trump to be an authoritarian.
I'm a limited government guy.
Big government scares me.
There's nothing more big government than a wannabe authoritarian.
I think that's what Trump is.
Yeah, that's interesting.
You know, I struggle with the incitement aspect of it because, you know, I think a lot of our neighbors on the left try to ascribe the inciting of what happened on January 6th directly to the speech before.
And I think it was really more like three hours after election night.
And, you know, I struggle because I am very open to the idea that there was cheating.
I think there's been cheating in our elections for 150 years to some extent.
Not necessarily cheating that resulted in a different outcome.
I'm not prepared to say that.
I'm not confident enough to say that.
But I'm totally open to believing that there was some sort of fraud that happened in the election, just as I think there is in every election.
But what alarmed me about Trump was how certain he was of the fraud night of the election, right?
It's like, all right, well, you know, if there was fraud, it's going to take audits and weeks and months to get to the bottom of it.
So, you know, regardless of whether or not there was fraud, I think I do think that it was inappropriate for him to be so vocally certain that there was before anybody could have known for sure, right?
Chase, you are spot on.
That speech he gave that morning, that was irrelevant.
When I say Trump incited that attack, I agree more with you that it was what he said from the election on.
The election was stolen.
Biden didn't win fair and square.
And I got to remind everybody, Chase, Trump started talking about this last summer, months before the election, is when Trump first said, either I win or it will be stolen from me.
He was planting the seeds for the big lie even before the election.
Again, I'm in a weird spot because I'm not some crazy liberal or progressive.
I come from the Republican base.
And I engage with hundreds, sometimes thousands of Trump supporters every day.
They all believe the election was stolen.
They believe Trump's lie.
So he did incite, and it is a lie.
And Chase, final thing I'll say is Joe Biden won.
For the first time in American history, we had a sitting president who did not concede, who did not congratulate the winner, who did not participate in that glorious American thing of the transfer of power.
What a son of a bitch.
What a selfish, un-American, dangerous thing to do.
And his people then went to Washington to try to overturn the election.
It's hideous.
It's dangerous.
So let me ask you your thoughts on January 6th specifically.
So I absolutely agree with you that what happened was totally inappropriate.
I think it was criminal.
It was over the line.
No qualms there.
It was not just none of that behavior was justified.
But I really struggle with the rhetoric of an insurrection.
To me, it just seems like a mob that got out of control.
I don't think that it was an actual coup.
I just think it was a protest that was totally unruly.
Unruly is an understatement.
I mean, someone died.
So I understand that this was an astronomical problem, but I don't like hearing Pelosi and the Biden administration throwing around this insurrection language and this white supremacy is the number one threat.
It's a national security.
It seems to me like Justice Trump kind of set up everything for, you know, like in case I lose, I'll have this plan B. It seems to me like the left is sort of setting up like some sort of a narrative that's going to allow for increased domestic security or surveillance.
I don't know.
I'm not conspiratorial, but I'm wary of big government too.
And, you know, I'm really alarmed with some of the language I hear.
Some of the some of the what the left is using, you know, January 6th as an excuse to try to accomplish, it seems like.
Fair point, Chase, fair point.
And again, I'm not of the left, and I don't know why Pelosi or the Democrats say what they say.
I'm a hardcore Tea Party conservative, and I'm comfortable using the term insurrection.
It was an attack against our government.
It was a violent attack with the direct aim, and you could call them bumbling idiots, but with the direct aim of trying to overturn an American election.
Do you think that's what they were trying to do?
Yeah, but Chase, and context here is important.
And you're right in that maybe 20 to 30,000 Trump supporters went to Washington that day.
Maybe of the 20 to 30,000, maybe a thousand or two marched on the Capitol.
And maybe of that thousand or two, maybe 500 to 1,000 went there violently to storm the Capitol to overturn the election.
So fair point.
The vast majority of Trump supporters in Washington that day were peacefully protesting the election.
But the 500 to 1,000 who stormed the Capitol, it's clear what they were trying to do.
And maybe you'd agree with me.
Maybe this select committee is bullshit.
Maybe it's partisan.
But to me, it was a big enough deal that I wish Republicans had gone along with having a bipartisan commission.
I think we ought to look to find out why it happened to maybe help make sure it never happens again.
But I got to tell you, my former Republican colleagues, Chase, they got no interest at all in looking into the why it happened and what happened.
That's a well, they don't want to look into it because they don't want Trump supporters not to vote for him, but they also didn't want to be supportive of what happened on the 6th because they could be associated with insurrection.
Because you notice on the 6th that a lot of the Republicans that were going to have a protest vote and not certify or whatever, they all backed down, right?
They kind of chickened out.
And it's like, it just, it just, you know, not that I agreed with them having a protest vote and not certifying, but it just seemed like, okay, you guys don't actually have principles.
You're just doing whatever is politically convenient.
Yeah.
And Chase, again, this won't surprise you.
I, so for three and a half years, I've been publicly out against Trump.
I ran an impossible primary challenge to him.
Most of my former Republican colleagues in Congress privately, most of them agree with what I say publicly about Trump.
Yeah, the party never liked him.
And they're afraid to say, well, but they're afraid to come out against him now because I'll be the first to admit it's Trump's party.
He's the leader of the party.
The Republican base is with him.
If Donald Trump wants to run again for president, no Republican will challenge him.
I'm somebody who's anti-Trump.
I couldn't get elected to anything in the Republican Party.
I get that.
That's fine.
That's where the party is.
These guys know it too.
So they keep their mouths shut because they want to get elected.
What did you did?
The Revolver News article about January 6th and the FBI's alleged involvement.
Did you follow that story at all?
I did not read that article.
I don't know specifically.
And again, this is something that should be investigated, right?
I agree.
I think there's no doubt because, Chase, I have concerns.
Again, I don't think Trump's speech that day did anything, but there were signs and there was intelligence that troublemakers were coming that day.
Why were we so damn unprepared?
That needs to be investigated.
All of it.
What did the FBI know?
And how come our intelligence agencies didn't prepare law enforcement?
These are all questions that need to be answered, I think.
Yeah, I'm really, I'm generally concerned about the intelligence community in the United States because, you know, one thing I often think about the fall of Rome and try to compare it to what's going on in the United States and there's things like currency debasement, hyper-expansion.
But, you know, one thing that's unique about the United States that we haven't seen in societies really up until the 19th, 20th century is that there weren't these secret police intelligence communities.
And, you know, I think that we have a unique vulnerability in terms of historically in that when the FBI gets caught doing something wrong, they conduct an internal investigation.
You know, so it's like there's no checks and balances on the intelligence community, right?
And they don't have to tell politicians anything unless they have need to know, right?
And so it seems to me like we like, I don't want to use the term deep state just because of its connotations, but it seems to me that we have major elements of our government and our military operating with sort of no oversight.
So people like you and I who fear big government, eternal vigilance is our code.
And we always have to hold the FBI accountable for what they do, the NSA, all of our intelligence agencies.
I agree with you, Chase.
And I generally had a voting record where I was very weary about giving further control and power to our intelligence agencies.
But again, and so there's some truth in what you say, but this is why Trump is so bad.
Our FBI generally, Chase, the men and women who work for, say, our FBI, the 37,000 of them, the vast majority of them are good public servants, just like the vast majority of police officers in this country are good public servants.
But in 2016, we elected a president who like declared war on our intelligence agencies.
Where I come from, Chase, Putin's a bad guy.
Russia's the bad guy.
Our FBI isn't the bad guy.
There are bad apples in the FBI, but they're not the bad guy.
Trump flipped this stuff on its head.
And that's really, really dangerous again.
Do you think he was miffed because he was spied on?
Here's what.
No, here's what.
Here's what.
Again, Chase, you probably won't go there with me.
That's fine.
That's what makes conversation.
I'll go wherever you want, but I just like hanging out with you, man.
This is not like, I'm not like pissed off or anything.
No, no, no.
In where I'm about to go with Trump, I think Trump's one of the worst human beings who's ever lived.
Here's what happened, Chase.
Trump won in 2016.
We had the intelligence that Russia fucked with our election.
It's clear.
All of Trump's people know in 2016, Russia screwed with our election to try to help Trump.
So Trump wins.
He finds that out.
And what does Trump do?
He gets pissed off because he thinks that's going to take away from his victory.
Chase, let me, I'll finish.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, go ahead.
Go ahead.
No, I want to hear what you have to say.
If Donald Trump, after he won in 2016, discovering this story that Russia interfered with our election, if Donald Trump then, as the new president then, had said, time out, that can't happen.
I'm going to appoint a blue ribbon commission or whatever to investigate what Russia did.
Trump would have been a hero and he would have been elected in a landslide.
But he couldn't do that because all Trump cares about is Trump.
So he got defensive about his victory and that started this four-year war with our intelligence folks.
So how do you feel about all the impeachments?
I mean, as much as you hate Trump, do you think that was an appropriate way to address the antagonism toward him?
Well, if I were in the House, I've said publicly I would have voted to impeach him both times.
I think it was warranted both times.
I believe that Donald Trump encouraged Russia to screw at the election.
I know because I read every inch of the Mueller report four times that Donald Trump obstructed justice.
So yes, I would have impeached him.
And then the second time, Chase, Donald Trump using his, again, he's a dictator.
He used his position in government to pressure another foreign government to screw with our election.
This is the stuff of dictators.
You can't do that.
Hell yes, he deserved to be impeached a second time.
And again, Chase, I'm not a Democrat and I give the Democrats no quarter, but we had a guy in the White House who believed he was above the law.
That scares the hell out of me.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I mean, obviously the details on like the Mueller report and other whether or not it was quote quote quo and those details are, you know, are disputed among avid supporters of Trump.
But, you know, I don't want to like get into details with that because I'm not well versed enough to make the argument.
So I don't know.
I just, I'm just very interested to hear your perspective.
I think open to that.
Chase, you are right in that there's a populist streak in America.
Most Americans think the Republicans suck.
They do.
Most Americans think the Democrats suck.
They do.
Our political system is broken.
Donald Trump tapped into that.
That's a good thing.
He's just a horrible guy.
Now, hopefully, a better person can continue to tap into what I believe is a good, healthy, populist streak in America.
So let me ask you this.
Do you think that Joe Biden is a good human being?
I think he's a good human being.
Do I think he's a good president?
Probably not.
Look, everybody, every politician, Chase, is complicated.
There's good and bad.
But I think, yeah, Barack Obama, who I probably disagreed with on everything, I think is a good human being.
AOC, who I disagree with on probably everything.
I think she's basically a good human being.
I just can't say that about Trump.
Man, see, AOC strikes me as somebody who's just dishonest all the time.
Maybe I'm bullshit.
I don't know.
That's so interesting.
Well, what's interesting, Chase, like you'd acknowledge that Trump lies a lot, right?
Yeah, I would acknowledge that Trump lies a lot.
Yes.
But you'd probably say, you'd probably say a bunch of other politicians lie as much.
I've had that thought.
Yeah.
No, I hear you.
Yeah, but I don't think every politician lies.
I don't think of Rand Paul as a liar.
But I do think of AOC.
Maybe you know him better than I do.
So maybe he is a liar and you know.
But no, he doesn't strike me as one.
But, you know, but I think of, when I think of AOC, I think of someone who knows exactly what she's doing and doesn't necessarily believe any of the shit that she says, but knows what she's got to do in order to make it roll.
That's interesting, Chase.
I look at AOC and I see an ardent, young, committed socialist.
And I think she's young, but I think that's certainly her brand.
Yeah, she genuinely has these beliefs.
Now, those she's taking pictures outside of a parking lot and pretending that she's looking at immigrants and crying like fake crying.
Like, come on.
No, no doubt.
No doubt.
You're right.
A bunch of politicians do all this.
Look, I used to be close to Rand Paul.
I voted for Rand Paul in 2016.
I didn't think he'd fall for Trump like he did.
It makes me sad.
That's really interesting.
Can we talk a little bit about TPUSA or do you want you want to avoid that subject?
I don't avoid anything, my friend.
That's what I thought.
That's why I'm glad you're on the show.
So can you tell me?
So I recently became interested in TPUSA because of the Brandy Love story, what happened last week in, I think it was at Tampa.
Yeah.
And you're familiar with the story, right?
They kicked her out because she's a game star.
And I actually had her on the show last week.
She's really super nice.
And I wanted to hear your story about what it was like getting involved in TPUSA in the beginning, what it's actually like was supposed to be about, and then why you left.
So I was there at the beginning.
I knew Charlie Kirk when he was in high school.
I helped him start TPUSA.
I loved the original mission.
It was a great mission because there was a huge need.
The mission of TPUSA was to go onto college campuses and spread the gospel of freedom, free markets, and limited government.
Amen.
It still says that on the website.
Does it?
Amen.
The problem is, and why I left TPUSA is because Charlie Kirk, the minute Trump came on the scene, he basically went to work for Trump and they became a pro-Trump organization.
Instead of advancing the issues, he was all about advancing Trump and Trumpism.
And I'll just give you one example.
And I have inside knowledge, Chase, because I know Charlie well.
But TPUSA before Trump rightly railed about the debt under Obama every day, rightly.
The minute Trump became president, TPUSA stopped talking about the debt or the size of government.
And Chase, I warned Charlie about this.
I said, if you tie yourself, yourself to a president, you're going to have a hard time criticizing that president.
I would have said the same thing, Chase, when Reagan was president 40 years ago.
TPUSA's unique brand was they're not tied to any politician.
They're about the issues.
And they'll go after Republicans or Democrats if they're bad on freedom, free markets, and limited government.
TPUSA became a Trump organization almost overnight.
That's when I left.
Well, they certainly blew up as a result.
They just saw the apple hanging from the tree and they had to take a bite.
And Chase, in their defense, who didn't do that?
I mean, all of my former, I mean, nobody did what I did.
It's not good to do what I did.
If you do what I did, you lose all of that.
If you don't take a bite of that apple, in fact, if you go after that apple, you lose your radio show.
You'll never get elected again.
So Charlie Kirk didn't do anything differently than everybody else in the conservative part.
Do you think he sold out or do you think he bought it?
You know, because you could be wrong and, you know, still have good character.
Chase, that's a really good question.
I know Charlie well enough to know that there's a big part of him that sold out.
And I can't go into that now, but I think there's a big part of him that sold out.
To me now, he's become like the biggest and most disgusting grifter out there.
And there are a bunch of grifters.
But I don't know.
I'm sure he believes some of it.
That's interesting.
What were your thoughts about their decision to uninvite Brandi Love?
I think it's bull crap.
I think it's bullcrap.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Chase.
She's a pretty good conservative, right?
Yeah, it has been for her whole life.
I mean, so.
So, excuse me, she's a porn star.
So, Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk, who sold his soul to a guy who had sex with a porn star six months after his son was born, that would be Trump, disinvites a conservative porn star from a conference.
I thought it was kind of bullshit.
Well, and they had an atheist speaking at the conference who wrote a book.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah, and I don't want to say his name because I don't want to throw him on the bus.
I don't think he'd care, but I'm a big fan of him.
I'm not an atheist, but I'm a fan of him.
I think he's a really smart guy.
And, you know, so I don't blame him for having him speak, but it's just, you know, it's sort of hypocritical to say, listen, you're immoral.
You're against our conservative values.
We need to ask you to leave.
And at the same time, you have an atheist on stage.
Kind of like, you know, absolutely.
Absolutely.
So my point isn't that they shouldn't have had the atheist speak.
My point is that they should have let Brandy stay.
And I just be absolutely clear.
I agree.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I wish they wouldn't have done that.
She's a sweetheart.
She's a very, very nice person and genuine.
And she wasn't there to do any marketing or exploit the situation.
She's got a net worth in millions.
She's ranked number nine on pornhub.com.
She's already made it.
Like she wasn't there.
It wasn't some sort of like, you know, gimmick where she was just trying to get a lot of press.
She's not like an up-and-comer.
She's been in the business for 16 years with her husband.
And, you know, say what you will, I understand it's a controversial industry.
And, you know, I respect people who have reservations about it for sure.
But she was not there just to exploit situations.
She just wanted to watch people speak and hear conservative ideas.
It was a hypocritical, cheap thing to do.
It was a cowardly thing to do.
So one thing I've noticed, you know, I'd love to get your feedback on this because one of the things that I think has really hurt the Republican Party among like the millennial and younger generation is just it's got this brand of having been like a very dogmatic party with like a lot of evangelism sort of at the core, you know, going back to like gay rights and the holdouts on gay marriage and things of that nature.
And I think that did a lot of long-term damage to the brand of the party when you those sorts of decisions and positions that the party had.
And I thought that we'd kind of moved away from that, but I've noticed that it seems to be coming back with a vengeance.
And I think that it might have to do with the way that social media works in that when you are trying to be an influencer, whether you're Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, or whomever, you tend to post content that gets the most engagement.
And you learn from the engagements what kind of content to continue to post.
And it seems to me that if you have a social media situation where evangelicals are 10x more likely to engage with content than just sort of average, moderate people, then it can drive the influencers to become more radical in terms of whether it's socialism, whether it's Marxism, whether it's feminism, whether it's evangelism, right?
And I think that we might be witnessing social media actually radicalizing our influencers more than necessarily the people.
And so I think that's why you're seeing weird stuff like TPS, TPUSA, you know, telling people to leave.
It just, it doesn't make any sense.
Like, I don't think it would have happened four years ago or five years ago.
The other thing, Chase, is TPUSA's donor base is mainly older white Christian men and women.
So I think, but I think you're right.
I think that's the problem.
Social media exacerbates this.
But the problem, Chase, is you got people like Charlie Kirk and a bunch of others like him.
Every day they're feeding the base to get clicks and to get on Tucker Carlson's show and to get all of this stuff.
But it's a shrinking base.
The Republican Party right now is the party of old white men and old white women.
It's a dying political party.
It's becoming, in my mind, a regional party, much less than a national party.
And you're right.
Young people want nothing to do with it.
Women want nothing to do with it.
People of color want nothing to do with the Republican Party because it's perceived to be a party of culture warriors.
It's all about the culture war.
And it's all about, again, preserving kind of white Christian America.
That's a shrinking base.
So what do you think is going to happen in the next 10 years?
Do you think there's going to be a third party that comes along and just smacks everybody around?
You're younger than me, man.
You got some cool stuff coming your way.
Chase, I think the Republican Party is dying before our eyes.
I agree.
For 168 years, we've had this Democratic-Republican duopoly.
I think it's breaking up.
I think you will see a viable third party in this country within four to eight years.
I mean, is that what you're working on in D.C. right now?
Kind of, sort of.
I'd love to talk to you offline about that.
I've got some ideas.
Good.
I think it's coming.
Chase, a radically centrist, let's get stuff done kind of a party.
I think it's coming.
The Democrats have their issues.
They're being pulled to the left, to the left, to the left.
That's not where most Americans are.
So I believe, and I was saying this before Trump first got elected, we are living through, in my mind, the third American Revolution.
And I think not to be confused with the Third Reich.
Not at all.
I believe, Chase, it's an open question as to whether this great experiment can stay together.
Yeah, I'm worried about it too.
You know, a lot of people throw around, oh, you know, we're going to secede.
And it's like, you guys just don't get how much that sucks.
Like, that's like the absolutely worst outcome possible.
But it could happen.
It could happen.
But I think people, you know, when they think of secession or when they think of revolution, they think of Mel Gibson as a patriot and they don't realize it's like watching your house burn down, you know, or your neighbors like disappearing in the middle of the night.
Like, that's what that looks like.
It's not pretty.
There's no glory.
There's no heroism.
I mean, there is heroism all the time, but it's mostly a tragedy.
And I just, I hope it never comes to that.
But, you know, it's, you know, I don't think our federal government was ever supposed to be as much of a player as it is.
And, you know, I think would have done a couple of things differently in the Constitution had they known how this was going to manifest to restrict that even more explicitly.
But we've gotten to a point where, you know, in 1776, the population in the United States was 2 million, and now the population is 360 million, and the federal government is like basically centralized authority, and it was decentralized back then.
So it's like, I don't know what's going to happen, but hopefully we can get some serious things fixed.
What do you think the solution is?
What's the solution?
I think, Chase, I think one solution is we need more than two political parties.
I really, really do.
And the second solution is, and I don't know how we ever do this, the federal government, you're right, is way, way, way, way, way too big.
I don't know how we ever reverse that.
And state governments have abdicated so much of their power.
And truthfully, Congress, the legislative branch, has advocated too much of its power.
I think we need to look also at election reform, the way we elect people, maybe look at like ranked choice voting.
I'm a conservative, but I don't really support the Electoral College.
I think we're in for some major reform coming up.
Very interesting.
So where can people follow you?
On Twitter, they can follow me at Walsh Freedom.
I've got a couple new ventures coming up.
If they want to know what I'm doing, follow me on Twitter at Walsh Freedom.
I also right now put out a podcast called F Silence.
Go to F, F as in Frank, F SilencePodcast.com.
Go there, subscribe to the podcast, and you'll know what I'm doing as well.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
It's been a real pleasure to have you.
I really appreciate it.
And let's definitely make an effort to stay in touch.
