Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - Kevin McCarthy On His Youth and The Value of Work
Aired: 2023-01-27
Duration: 03:05


=== Winning Big, Starting Small (02:21) ===

[00:00:00]  My family didn't have wealth.
[00:00:01]  I didn't have the academics.
[00:00:03]  I didn't have the athletics to get a scholarship.
[00:00:04]  I went to junior college, which was a great school.
[00:00:07]  But while I'm going there, I meet this guy.
[00:00:10]  That owns a liquor store but has a car dealer's license.
[00:00:12]  I'll let you figure out how I met him.
[00:00:14]  But one day I say, I'll give you a hundred bucks if you take me to L.A. Because L.A. has these car auctions.
[00:00:18]  You've got to be a dealer to get in there. And Bakersfield is two hours away.
[00:00:21]  So I start going down there and I start flipping cars to pay my way through college.
[00:00:25]  I find out later it's illegal, but I don't know why I'm doing it.
[00:00:28]  I've been an entrepreneur, right? By the way, just so you understand, we may have to cut this out.
[00:00:33]  Nancy Pelosi is going to try to figure out how to impeach you for doing something.
[00:00:36]  Exactly. Exactly. So when you go to community college, what you do on the weekends, you go visit your buddies away.
[00:00:42]  My best friend was a running back for Stanford.
[00:00:44]  I grew up to Stanford. I had some buddies at USC. I had some buddies at San Diego State.
[00:00:47]  So this weekend, I was going to go to San Diego State.
[00:00:49]  So I go pick up my friend.
[00:00:50]  We go to the grocery store to cash a check so I have some money.
[00:00:53]  The day before, the lottery starts in California.
[00:00:56]  So as I'm cashing the check, my first time, I buy a lottery ticket.
[00:00:59]  And I won the lottery. Now, it's before there were millions.
[00:01:02]  The most you could win was $5,000.
[00:01:04]  But put yourself... I think it's like...
[00:01:06]  Is it 1985? I'm 20 years old.
[00:01:08]  It's Friday night. I just won $5,000.
[00:01:11]  And I end up 10 minutes from Tijuana for the weekend, right?
[00:01:15]  So I come back. I take my folks to dinner.
[00:01:19]  I get my brother and sister to each other in the box.
[00:01:20]  I take the majority of the rest of the money. I put it in one stock.
[00:01:22]  Because one thing you'll learn... I'm a risk taker.
[00:01:24]  I make 30% of my money in six weeks.
[00:01:26]  So the end of the semester comes...
[00:01:29]  I take my money on the market, I refinance some of my cars, and I go and I try to buy a franchise, but no one will sell me one because I'm 20 years old.
[00:01:35]  So just like in the speaker's race, I never give up.
[00:01:37]  So I go and I open a deli.
[00:01:39]  My cousin had a yogurt shop.
[00:01:41]  He'd ridden this place before, so I sublet this place.
[00:01:43]  And there's three lessons I learned in my business.
[00:01:45]  I was the first to work, last to leave, last to be paid.
[00:01:47]  But you know what? I had it for almost two years, and I've come pretty successful.
[00:01:51]  I now have enough money that I can pay my whole way through college as long as I go to Cal State.
[00:01:56]  And nobody in my family had finished a four-year degree yet, so I sell my business.
[00:01:59]  I'm going to college. I open up the local newspaper, and the local congressman says, become an intern in Washington, D.C. I thought, well, he'd be lucky to have me.

=== Don't Quit Because It's an Obstacle (00:59) ===

[00:02:07]  So I apply, and you know what he does?
[00:02:09]  He turns me down. So you know what the end of the story is?
[00:02:11]  I'm now elected to the seat I couldn't get an internship for, and now I'm the 55th Speaker of the House.
[00:02:18]  Only in America can that happen.
[00:02:20]  That's amazing. You don't give up.
[00:02:21]  And you know what? What taught me each time, if there was an obstacle, Don't quit because it's an obstacle.
[00:02:29]  Find a way around it.
[00:02:30]  That's what this country embeds in you and rewards you for doing.
[00:02:34]  Yeah, and I feel like that's also something that's missing in so much of Congress where people are just, they've just been, they've never actually had that hustle.
[00:02:42]  Now, again, I understand where I come from in my background.
[00:02:44]  I get it. But, like, my father made sure I worked minimum wage jobs.
[00:02:47]  Oh, yeah. And I could drive a D10 Caterpillar.
[00:02:50]  And, like, you know, I also worked for TIPS, which is something I think that's really important that everyone should understand.
[00:02:54]  It is. That aspect of things.
[00:02:56]  But in D.C., I feel like so much of that is lacking.
[00:02:59]  No one's ever had to make payroll.
[00:03:01]  No one's signed the front of a check as opposed to the back.
[00:03:04]  So it's sort of unique.