Gary Johnson, former New Mexico governor and Libertarian Party nominee, argues the two-party system ignores 70% of voters by excluding third-party candidates like Perot from debates despite high polling. He advocates replacing income taxes with a 28% federal consumption tax, eliminating embedded costs (e.g., corporate fees) to simplify collection while keeping revenue neutral, though critics question fairness for high earners. Johnson blames $160B Iran treaty funds for terrorism and prohibition for 90% of drug-related issues, citing Colorado’s drop in alcohol deaths post-marijuana legalization. His policies—free-market healthcare, ending federal education mandates, and abolishing agencies like Homeland Security—aim to cut waste and empower states, but Rogan doubts transparency alone can curb lobbying influence. Johnson insists debate inclusion would force mainstream candidates to address libertarian solutions, reshaping polarized politics with pragmatic alternatives. [Automatically generated summary]
You know, when you just do the mathematics of the fact that Hillary and Donald Trump are arguably the two most polarizing figures in American politics today, That Trump has to go out and get 30% of the far right to get the nomination.
Hillary has to go out and get 30% of the far left.
When 50% of Americans right now who are registering to vote are independent, at the end of the day, don't the two major parties represent about 30% of the electorate?
And so where is – where are the interests?
Where is the representation for the majority of interest in America?
I think it's the Libertarian Party.
I think it's Libertarian.
People just don't know it.
And speaking with a broad breaststroke, Libertarian, fiscally conservative, socially liberal.
Yeah, that seems to be where most people hang their hat, but it's not something that most people identify with when they talk about their actual political persuasion.
They usually say, you know, they're on the left or they're on the right.
When someone says they're a libertarian, that's that dude at the office that has guns.
And it's almost like – Everyone knows that the two-party system is kind of stupid, but everyone seems to think that any other party other than the two-party system is unrealistic, or any other party, like a Libertarian, Green Party, anything independent is unrealistic.
50% of all people that are registering to vote are registering as independent.
Statistically, right now, 43% of America is independent, but new registrations, 50%.
So I don't know.
As people do identify with the two parties, the rigged game of the system is that we're only presented with two choices, and that really starts with just being in the polls.
Look, right now, if Mickey Mouse were the third name in any poll, Mickey would be polling at 30%, but Mickey's not on the ballot in all 50 states, and if I'm the Libertarian nominee, and I hope to be the Libertarian nominee, that happens next weekend, I'm going to be the only other candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.
So, polling, I just want to be in the polls.
There is no way a third party wins without being in the presidential debates.
That's just not going to happen.
A Super Bowl of politics.
To get in the presidential debates, you have to be at 15% in the polls.
Joe, the rigged game is that If you're not in the polls, there's no way that you can poll at 15%, but it has to be a consistent polling starting now.
I was in the first national poll that I've been in a month ago.
I haven't been in a national poll since, but a month ago I was at 11% against Hillary and Trump.
And was this all established back when Ross Perot sort of shook up the political establishment because there was a lower percentage required to get involved in debates before that?
Well, actually, there was no percentage points prior to Ross Perot.
That was something that got established after Ross Perot.
And what is amazing to me is Ross Perot, after having gotten 19% of the general election vote the first time, The second time he ran, they did not allow him in the presidential debates, which is just, I mean, that's the rigged nature of the game.
The rigged nature of the game is, come this fall, if my name does not appear in another single poll, the Presidential Debate Commission will say, Gary Johnson, he just didn't poll high enough.
What they won't say is that he wasn't in the polls.
Democrats and Republicans were suing the Presidential Debate Commission also.
We think that it's antitrust.
We think that, not think, it's Democrats and Republicans and they collude with one another to exclude everyone else.
Bruce Fein is suing the Presidential Debate Commission.
Bruce Fein's claim to fame is that he brought Nixon down in Watergate.
But in the next sentence, he will tell you that the biggest thing he's ever done in his life is suing the Presidential Debate Commission because this has the opportunity of changing politics in America.
I mean, this is really at the heart of this rigged game.
You can't win the presidency if you're not in the Super Bowl of politics.
We figure the dollar value alone of being in the presidential debates is several hundred million dollars.
Just think of the Super Bowl and the ads that sell during the Super Bowl.
And imagine having the second biggest audience, you know, like 75 million people for 90 minutes, two hours.
That's a couple hundred million dollars worth of advertising.
And if you're not in the show, people don't consider your vote.
Even if you have 50% of these people that are registering and saying they're independent, what they're really saying is they're not committing to a left or a right.
They're not committing to a Democratic or Republican.
But are they going to vote independent?
A lot of people, they have this idea that if you vote independent, you're throwing away your vote.
Which should be the case if the system isn't totally right.
Because the problem is, people like Hillary, the people that are longtime establishment people that have been a part of politics forever, the last thing they want to do is turn over the reins to the internet.
Because she's had, how much did they say they were spending?
Spending over a million dollars just to combat online trolls?
Just to go on Reddit and forums and correct people?
I think they're probably being pretty conservative about that.
But the idea is that the internet doesn't like the establishment.
They know that there's a real problem with the system in place as is.
And the internet, when I say the internet, the broad...
The stroke that you're painting is obviously young people who are a little bit more aware of how screwy this whole system that they're sort of born into is and that the people that are in charge don't want to change it.
They want to keep it a two-party system.
They want to keep this silly white hat, black hat, goofy game going on forever and keep control of the power.
And everybody listening, take this political quiz, isidewith.com.
It's about 60 questions.
It's really easy.
You don't have to sign up on the website.
But you take this quiz, and at the end of the quiz, you get paired up with the presidential candidate most in line with your views.
It just makes real sense.
I think everybody should take the quiz, and whoever you line up with, I think you should knock yourself out supporting that person.
Well, for me, taking the I side with quiz, amazingly, the next politician that I align with outside of the libertarians that are running for president is Bernie Sanders.
I align with Bernie Sanders 73% of what he says.
Now, when it comes to economics, we come to a T in the road.
When it comes to socialism versus being an entrepreneur, when it comes to big government versus small government, we come to that T in the road.
But on the issues of legalizing marijuana, same-sex marriage, a woman's right to choose, hey, let's stop with these military interventions.
This is just crazy.
We're in line.
So I push this website because it should work the other way around.
Okay, I side with Bernie most of the time, but oh my gosh, the libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, I side with next in line.
And I do believe that Bernie is not going to get the nomination.
I don't think that's going to happen.
And where do all those voters go?
Where does 50% of Republicans go that really are, at the end of the day, socially tolerant and fiscally conservative?
And I think that is the majority of Republican voters, but they've been co-opted by the social conservatives that have an agenda that I think is really a turn-off to most of America.
And it's okay to be a social conservative.
There's nothing wrong with being a social conservative, but if you equate...
If you make that public policy, if you pass laws regarding social conservatism, you end up putting people in jail for personal choices.
And we do have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, and I think that starts with the drug war.
Well, and it's so polarizing because those issues at the end of the day, why can't Democrats and Republicans come together on some very common sense issues that would move the country forward?
It's such a strange show where one person says something and the other person's standing there shaking their head and not agreeing, and then they interject or they go over their time and the other person jumps in.
It's one of the worst ways ever to get your point across.
No, actually, what everything is riding on for me is being in the polls.
If I am in the national polls, I'm back to the Mickey analogy, but Mickey's not on the ballot in all 50 states.
So the justification of having me in the polls is that I am on the ballot in all 50 states, and I really do think that I represent the majority of Americans.
I'm offering up proof of that with this iSide website.
People say to me, why should I vote for you?
Well, how about...
How about getting online and seeing where you are at philosophically with those people running for president?
I mean, don't you owe it to yourself to find out who lines up with what it is that you believe in?
That's the real proof that this is a locked up system.
Because if you were in those debates with all those people during the same time, most likely a lot of people would be looking at you and go, you know, this Gary Johnson guy makes a lot of sense.
But that's a really good point, the fact that the larger the government gets, the more money it costs to keep that going.
So the idea that it's going to do better, it's going to do more, because there's more government, there's more people, there's more programs, but they cost more money.
And then it just becomes a point of diminishing returns.
And at the end of the day, statistically, it doesn't help.
And that isn't to say, you know, I'm in the camp that believes that there are those people that are truly in need, but I think we've gone way over the line when it comes to people in need.
And at the end of the day, if we continue the growth of government and taxation, And printing money, at the end of the day, we're going to suffer from horrible inflation at some point.
This is my belief.
Do we have a fighting chance against what is the worst, most insidious tax of all, which is inflation, which erodes your buying capacity for the money that you earn?
There's nothing worse than inflation.
But that's what we're looking at if we don't actually just get some common sense at the helm.
All the help wanted signs in the state went down because everybody had to go out and get a job.
Now the legislature sued me immediately on the basis that what I was doing was unconstitutional, that what I was doing needed to be passed by the legislature, that it couldn't be an executive order.
And after six weeks of implementing this program, the Supreme Court in New Mexico ruled that what I had done was unconstitutional.
I'm not here to debate that, but we kind of proved that what I was saying was correct.
They never did back it up with legislation.
They could have overridden the courts by just codifying what we did in legislation, but they never did that.
So I was a Republican governor in New Mexico, state's two-to-one Democrat.
One of the big surprises I've had, having served as governor, is I really naively thought at the end of the day Democrats and Republicans would come together over issues that were right, meaning do the right thing as opposed to lining up politically.
So in this case, they lined up politically and never passed the legislation that...
And six weeks was not, I mean, I say anecdotally, all the help wanted signs went down.
They did go down, but really not enough time to garner the statistics that could have made that, in fact, a national program, emulated by other states because we would have shown success doing it.
Here's one for you, Joe.
So, welfare in New Mexico.
I had a health insurance policy as governor of New Mexico.
Okay?
I mean, this is given to me.
This is a perk, being governor.
I have a health insurance policy.
It covers me and my family as governor of New Mexico.
We took all the welfare recipients in the state, which were a quarter of a million, 200,000 people and did the math.
Gee, what if we gave all of them my health insurance policy as opposed to just paying the bills when it came to welfare?
That was moving from a fee-for-service, meaning if you were on welfare and you went to the hospital or you went to the emergency room, a bill was sent to the state, Medicaid, and the state paid that bill.
Three-quarters of that bill got picked up by the federal government.
One-quarter of it gets picked up by the state, but that's Medicaid.
And by switching to an insurance model or a managed care model, we saved 20% on the whole bill.
Now, when you look at things like Obamacare and the criticism of Obamacare, and you look at what you were trying to implement in your own state, what do you think could have been done differently?
Well, I think that welfare and Medicare, so health care for those over 65, I think the federal government needs to devolve both of these services to the states.
Now, currently, of course, health care for those over 65 is completely federal.
But in my heart of hearts, if the federal government would have blocked, granted New Mexico a fixed amount of money, just capped.
By the way, this is just runaway expenditure.
This is the worst runaway expenditures in federal government today is Medicaid and Medicare.
But if they would have just capped it or the historical increase being 7 percent, if they'd have just given a couple percent increase to the state of New Mexico as opposed to, let's say, 7 percent and said New Mexico.
Governor Johnson, you are in charge of health care delivery to those that are poor, welfare, and health care to those that are over 65.
In my heart of hearts, I believe that I could have delivered that or seen over the administration of the delivery of...
Of that health care.
So if the federal government did that, and that's the only way to reform Medicaid and Medicare, is devolve it to the states, 50 laboratories of innovation, best practice, there would be some fabulous success that would get emulated.
There'd be horrible failure that would get avoided.
But as opposed to one size fits all, the federal government, we'd actually come up with solutions on how to cap And how to contain the costs within the system.
Talking about Obamacare, what we really need when it comes to health care is just free market solutions to health care.
Healthcare is as far removed from free market right now as it possibly can be.
In a free market system for healthcare, we would not have health insurance to cover ourselves for ongoing medical need.
We would have health insurance to cover ourselves for catastrophic injury and illness.
And we would pay as you go in a system that would probably cost about one-fifth of what it currently costs.
We would have gallbladders are us.
We'd have gallbladder surgery for thousands of dollars as opposed to tens of thousands of dollars.
We'd have stitches are us.
We'd have x-rays are us.
We'd have the radiologist next to x-rays are us to read those x-rays.
And at the end of the day, we would pay out-of-pocket for those services, and they would be a fifth of what they currently are.
Well, right now, Chief Justice Roberts, when he said that Obamacare was a tax on people, my personal insurance premiums have quadrupled, and I have not been to see a doctor in three years.
So it's a tax for me.
I'm subsidizing those that aren't healthy.
I wish I didn't have to have insurance to cover myself for ongoing medical need.
Look, we go into the hospital right now There's no advertised pricing.
You have no idea what you're going to pay.
There is no statistics on the wall that say, hey, if you're here for gallbladder surgery, you can expect a 99% outcome.
There's none of that.
If you had a free market approach to healthcare, you would have all of that.
You'd have advertised pricing and you would have...
Outcomes based on prior patients that had gone in.
But there is an issue with people that do have injuries, whether it's a catastrophic injury, whether it's some sort of a disease that comes up, where the amount of money that they're going to have to spend for healthcare can be catastrophic.
And I started out by saying we would not have insurance to cover ourselves for ongoing need, but we would have insurance to cover ourselves for catastrophic injury and illness.
Okay, but what about the health consequences of avoiding or not avoiding treatment?
Because there's going to be a lot of people that don't have the money and are going to just deal with certain issues, like a surgery perhaps that you need, and you're just going to avoid it, knee surgery, things along those lines?
Well, today it's a few thousand dollars because it's one of those no-advertised pricing for meniscus tear.
And having had several meniscus tears myself...
If you had a free market approach to healthcare, you would have meniscus tears are us.
We specialize in meniscus tears.
Here are our outcomes and you can come in and get a meniscus tear surgery for what would end up to be hundreds of dollars as opposed to thousands of dollars.
I mean, you're starting to see advertised pricing.
And as opposed to the $100 aspirin that when you go into the hospital, when you read the fine print, but of course you're not paying for it, so you don't care.
So in that sense, you would essentially go to a hospital, they would diagnose you, they would tell you, here's the issue, you have to get a gallbladder, and then you'd go to gallbladders or us.
Fiscally conservative, when you say fiscally conservative, when you talk about issues like welfare and things along those lines, people get a sense, a lot of people do, that you are perhaps callous or uncaring about poor people.
Well, what I was going to get at was what you're saying as far as, like, the 50 states.
That...
It's probably one of the most interesting things about having 50 states is that you can have 50 different experiments.
And we're seeing that, of course, with legalized marijuana in Colorado bringing in more tax revenue than alcohol for the first time ever.
I mean, this is a huge thing that's happening right now in Colorado, an experiment in government.
The federal government tried to block it at one point, and they were very concerned with it, but now they're letting it go, and it's proving to be incredibly financially beneficial to that state.
Now you're seeing Seattle or Washington State, Washington, D.C., other states are starting to join in, and it's going to probably go nationwide within the next decade or so.
This is a perfect example, right, of states coming up with an experiment, the experiment proving to be fiscally effective, and then moving forward with it.
Yeah, and Washington State, well, Washington State, they'll have an...
Whatever the rate is, though, it applies four times.
It applies to growing, it applies to processing, it applies to every single...
So that at one point, two summers ago, right after Washington State implemented it and that pot went on sale, at one point, Marijuana in Washington State was selling for $26,000 a pound.
And a lot of that has been recently revealed, was started off during the Nixon administration as just trying to control the civil rights movement and trying to control the anti-war movement.
The way they did it, they recognized that these people were using marijuana.
Like if someone became a president, what could be done to stop this influx of private prisons, this prison industrial complex that we're finding ourselves in this horrible quagmire with?
When I took office, there were 800 prisoners housed out of state.
There had been massive prison riots in New Mexico so that the federal courts were in charge of the prisons in New Mexico.
It was called the Duran Consent Decree.
The legislature refused to appropriate money to build new prisons.
It was a huge problem that we had.
So the private prison, Wackenhut in particular, came in and said, And the federal courts were running the prisons in New Mexico.
So, what I'm about to tell you, if you think that we were going to get away with any less goods or services being delivered to the prison industry, guess again.
Federal courts are running the prisons in New Mexico.
On an apples-to-apples, oranges-to-oranges basis, instead of $100 a day, they offered it up for $66 a day.
Two-thirds the cost.
If that isn't good government, I don't know what is.
And in New Mexico, I constantly said, if we would adopt rational drug laws, if we could let people out of prison, it'll be a lot easier to empty the private prisons than it will be the public prisons.
But I would imagine that something like a private prison, which is a company, and it's a company that...
Companies tend to aspire towards growth.
And when you have a private prison that profits off of people being in jail, you would tend to think that they would try to maximize their potential for growth versus the government, right?
But maybe the component in here that you're missing is, as opposed to growth, just think of it as stepping in and taking over the services that are currently being provided for a lot less money.
And assuming, and this is my experience now, and don't get me wrong, I mean, there's just a logic behind, gee, if you're a private prison, then you're in it for the money.
And this mandatory sentencing, which really starts with the drug laws that we have, I mean, this is the reason why we have this high incarceration rate that we have.
Just extend that to other things that we see also.
For example, you see ads on television that say increase the expenditures for education that's being paid for from tax dollars from teachers.
That we'll advertise for that.
We see advertisements all the time from public institutions that, in essence, we're paying for for increased funding all the time, every time we turn around.
How is that fair?
How is that legal?
Isn't that a manipulation of our brains, you know, in a way that many times just belies the underlying logic that, no, they shouldn't get more money.
Well, the issue though is this is very different because you're talking about people lobbying to try to lock up other human beings for their own profit.
If there's a group of people, the massive amount of the general public doesn't believe that people should be in jail for a lot of the drug crimes they're in jail for, especially marijuana.
If you look at the statistics, you look at the amount of money that's being spent on it, most people would say, this is fucking crazy.
Now, this perfect example is they say that you have to do A, B, C, and D, use the transgender bathroom as the latest and greatest front page.
Here's what the federal government is requiring.
But it costs you as a state 15 cents to deliver on getting the 11 cents.
It actually is a negative to take federal money.
So abolishing the Federal Department of Education, which I think people think was established under George Washington when it was established under Jimmy Carter, tell me what really has been value added when it comes to the Federal Department of Education since the 80s, since when it was implemented?
Because is there any benefit at all to being open-minded and trying to get people to discriminate against transgender people less?
Or is this some sort of a political hot topic that the government has latched onto to try to get people to think that they're progressive and they're moving towards the right direction?
Because, I mean, how many people are we even talking about?
But when I think of that bullshit, if you will, over an issue that has never been an issue before, as governor of New Mexico, Joe, I may have vetoed more legislation than the other 49 governors in the country combined.
As governor of North Carolina, if I'd have been governor of North Carolina, I'd have vetoed that legislation.
This is much to do about nothing.
This is not an issue.
And certainly, the federal government shouldn't be stepping in and doing this because North Carolina right now is suffering the wrath, if you will, of the whole country that says we're going to boycott North Carolina, we're going to have nothing to do with North Carolina as a result of them having passed this legislation.
They're just saying that you have to change your gender and your birth certificate, right?
I mean, it may be discriminatory at heart, but when you look at the actual paperwork, like what's required in order to use the women's room...
Like, it's not saying that you have to have an XY chromosome to use the men's room.
They're saying you have to identify as a male on your birth certificate.
So if a woman decides to become a man or transition to a man, she decides she's a man at heart, and she changes that on her birth certificate, they don't do a chromosomal test on her.
So it's just a matter of a paperwork change.
I'm not really sure how much less you could require of someone to use a different bathroom that corresponds to the gender of their birth.
Well, I'm sure there's been something, and I'm sure some people feel maligned, but I just don't know if necessarily there's enough demand to require a law change and what all this hullabaloo is about, about this law change.
When I discuss it with people, and I'm I try to be as open-minded as humanly possible when it comes to people's choices and what they want to do, whether it's regarding gender or sex or whatever you want to do.
To play devil's advocate, is there any benefit in having it in the news?
Is there any benefit in it being debated so that people become more and more aware of it?
I mean, I think whether or not you look at Caitlyn Jenner as a real issue in this country, I think what the issue is is that people are becoming more aware that there are folks out there that don't necessarily fit with our standard Idea of what gender is.
They're all over the place.
There's people on the far right and the far left, just like politically.
It's so confusing in some ways because they're outliers on both sides.
Like, I have met transgender women who, without a doubt, I would consider them a woman.
I mean, it looks like a woman, she talks like a woman, has sensibilities like a woman, dresses like a woman, whatever the fuck that means, right?
But then on the other side, I've seen, I mean, there's this guy that identifies, we were talking about this guy recently, identifies as a woman, has a beard, has a penis, doesn't want to have a sex change, doesn't take hormones, identifies as a woman, wants to use the women's room.
This is knee-jerk, of course, and it's based on, let's have, instead of having a one-size-fits-all, how about let's work this out at the absolute lowest level we can work it out, and maybe we'll come to some real, you know...
Monumental, you know, epiphanies on how to do this.
I love when something has no answer, when you just sit around going, man, I don't know.
Because people will take sides, and they'll run with their side and make sure that you think that their side is the only solution whatsoever, when there really isn't an only solution.
And wouldn't it be better for everyone if we just became more open-minded and more friendly and loving and let people do whatever the fuck they want to do.
Let the man who identifies as a woman, let him use the woman's room if he actually looks like a woman.
But if you have a beard, maybe we should pull you aside and go, dude, you can use the men's room.
Now, as a person who's governed a state, and you look at what happens when someone gets in office, when Obama gets in office, promises all these things, gets in office, changes almost everything.
What are the hurdles?
I mean, what are the differences between the hurdles of someone who governs a state versus someone who governs the United States?
And how much more difficult is it to change things?
It seems like the United States is like a gigantic ship That takes so much effort to shift even slightly that these presidents get out of office eight years later, exhausted, looking like they've aged 50 years, and very little gets done.
Well, I think there is a silver bullet to the system, and I hope I'm tying into what you're saying, but I do think there's a silver bullet to the system, and that would be term limits.
I think that for the most part, politicians, once they get in office, the main concern is to stay in office.
So in my estimation, I pressed the limits, term one, but not to the point where I wasn't going to get reelected.
And then when I get reelected, I started off by saying, you know, let's examine the drug war in this country.
I started off by saying that marijuana should be legalized, taking on what I thought at the time was, and it still remains so, as one of those really fixable things in our lives.
That would make the world a better place.
But because of term limits, I was emboldened because, man, I was getting out of office and there was no return.
What are your thoughts on all the other recreational drugs, not just marijuana, but the more controversial ones, like maybe cocaine or psilocybin, LSD, things along those lines?
Well, so when I was governor of New Mexico, I had a...
I went to Portland, Oregon, and judges in Portland, Oregon—there were judges that wanted to meet with me in Portland.
And so I went to meet with these judges, and I didn't know what it was going to be about, but it was six judges, Portland, Oregon, state district judges—I'm sure I'm getting the wrong label— What they said was, hey, Governor Johnson, we're here to tell you we completely agree with everything it is that you're saying, but we would like to share with you some stories here that maybe you can pass on to others that will allow others to better understand the drug issue.
They said that the really horrible drug out there is methamphetamine, that people that use methamphetamine really have their behavior altered and not in a good way.
So it's really the boogeyman drug out there.
They said methamphetamine is the best example that we can think of of a prohibition drug.
It exists because it's cheap and it's easy to make.
And what they said was that, hey, we're not suggesting the following, but if cocaine were legal...
These people would be using cocaine instead of methamphetamine without the negative behavioral consequence.
And that's true.
But if the government were to tell the truth when it comes to cocaine, cocaine puts holes in your heart.
People that use cocaine their entire lives are stereotypically Whitney Houston that die before they're 50 because they die of a heart attack from using cocaine.
Now, will there still be people that will use cocaine knowing that they might die of a heart attack?
I think there'd be less cocaine use if people actually knew the truth and could trust government when it comes to the truth.
I just maintain that 90% of the drug problem is prohibition-related, not use-related, and that is not to discount the problems with use and abuse, but that should be the focus.
When you have 8,000 deaths a year in this country, 8,000, which is staggeringly low due to cocaine and heroin overdose, and people will immediately say, well, yeah, the number is so low because it's illegal.
No.
You can argue that if it were legal, if quality quantity was known, it's arguable that those deaths would significantly decrease, although there will always be people that will commit suicide, always be people that will push the limits.
What I was going to get to was that when you look at what's happening in Colorado, one of the more interesting things is the lessing of violent crime and drunk driving.
Those are two effects that have dropped pretty drastically, noticeably, statistically, because of the legalization of marijuana.
You would reduce, because of the legalization of a less harmful, more peaceful drug, you'd reduce the effects of what's right now a readily available and incredibly prevalent drug.
I have always maintained that legalizing marijuana will make for a better planet.
On the medicinal side of marijuana Marijuana products directly compete with legal prescription drugs, painkillers, antidepressants that statistically kill 100,000 people a year.
No documented death due to marijuana.
On the recreational side, I've always maintained that legalizing marijuana will lead to less overall substance abuse because people are going to find it as such a safer alternative than everything else that's out there, starting with alcohol.
The campaign to legalize marijuana in Colorado was a campaign based on marijuana is safer than alcohol.
And Joe, as you were pointing out, all the statistics that all the naysayers were going to go south have gone better.
There are less traffic incidents.
There's less overall crime in the state of Colorado.
Colorado is vibrant.
And does it have to do with marijuana?
I think that that's an ingredient comprised in why Colorado is so vibrant right now.
And I think a prime example of how screwy the system gets when people lobby against the legalization of things that don't harm anyone is the fact that hemp is illegal federally.
And that we're trying to make it legal and trying to make it legal statewide in various states and start production of hemp.
Yeah, well, that's, I mean, that's all been proven.
So we're in a strange time that it's 2016, it's still illegal.
And it's slowly starting to become legal and people starting to...
I believe in Kentucky and a few other states, they're allowing farmers to profit off of this incredibly vibrant plant that's easy to grow, doesn't require pesticides, has a variety of uses as a textile, as a commodity for food, full amino acid profile.
If the marijuana plant were discovered today in the Amazon, it would be hailed as the greatest discovery of humankind.
In 1999, good news, bad news here.
In 1999, I was the highest elected official in the United States to call for the legalization of marijuana.
In 2016, bad news.
I'm still the highest elected official in the United States to call for the legalization of marijuana, although Bernie Sanders apparently rolled out of bed, hit his head, and now he's come to that same epiphany.
But in 1999, 30% of Americans supported legalizing marijuana.
In 2016, Sixty percent of Americans now are supporting the legalization of marijuana, and not one politician outside of Bernie Sanders in office is, and when I say elected official, at the congressional, senatorial, or gubernatorial level, not one politician in that group outside of Bernie Sanders, myself, have espoused legalizing marijuana.
What a disconnect.
What an incredible disconnect between what people think and our elected officials.
I'm trying to be funny here, but trying to bring out a point that Actually, if you could have that benevolent dictator step in and right the wrongs that...
We don't live in a democracy in this country.
It's not a democracy.
We live in a constitutional republic.
We are a republic.
We're governed by laws.
The laws are the constitution.
We democratically elect our representatives.
But in a democracy, the demise of every democracy is that at some point in a democracy people vote themselves a raise.
And it becomes unaffordable.
Nazi Germany was a democracy before Hitler took power.
Well, I do think that government is too big, that it tries to accomplish too much.
If, at a minimum, Gary Johnson were able to just put a cap on spending, the impact of that, when you consider When you consider the ultimate impact of inflation and how that's going to kick in and how that's going to so adversely affect our lives, that would right a lot of wrongs because you do have economic growth.
You tie that with the fact that you just put a...
I'm trying to put the most minimal bars out there possible that would really have a positive impact going forward from a financial standpoint.
And...
It isn't just financial.
It is about liberty and freedom.
It's about your liberty.
It's about your freedom.
It's about you making decisions in your own lives.
It's about the fact that the government, that crony capitalism is alive and well, that there are favors granted to those that have money, as opposed to a level playing field that everybody would actually have an equal shot at the opportunity that That there currently is unavailable because of government and the actual protections that exist for those that do have money as opposed to those that don't.
Well, without any legislation whatsoever, and I am speaking now, having been governor of New Mexico for eight years, I ran all of state government.
I appointed the heads of all the agencies, and from that standpoint, the idea was just to make things better.
And what's the definition of better?
Well, that the average person on the street would have to spend less time and less money dealing with government.
And by spending less time and less money on government, that means that you would actually be able to pursue the things that were important in your life.
And that is not to minimize government's role, which fundamentally is to protect us against individuals, groups, corporations, foreign governments that would do us harm.
So going back to what we had discussed earlier, that when government gets too big, you reach a point of diminishing returns.
When it becomes so swollen that it requires so much money to stay up that it doesn't support itself.
It gets too large.
So what do you cut?
So say you get into office, and you look at the current system we have right now, you look at all the bureaucracy and the red tape, what do you start to chop away at?
Well, what I did in New Mexico, and I said I would do this in New Mexico, is that, you know, I wasn't going to fire anybody, but let's just manage attrition.
Let's just have some common sense here.
Let's not grow it anymore.
At a minimum, it's not going to grow anymore, and it will shrink because there will be attrition.
So how about the notion of as people leave, as people retire, quit, retire, that you just not backfill those positions?
So when I left office, there were 1,200 fewer state employees than when I got there.
I think it was a testament to better government because people were doing more with less resource.
And I think everybody saw that.
New Mexico is a state that's two to one Democrat.
I made a name for myself pinching pennies, being frugal, just like we're frugal in our lives.
At least I certainly am.
Difference between cheap and frugal, but I'm a pretty frugal cat.
So what do you do with something that's very controversial and often criticized, like Homeland Security?
Like, there was an article that came out yesterday about Homeland Security going after, they're using Homeland Security to go after massage parlors for giving sex to people, for, you know, hand jobs or whatever.
I would have never, in the first place, I would have never established the Department of Homeland Security.
Now, as president, I either get to sign or veto legislation.
I would sign legislation that would abolish the Department of Homeland Security, or I would merge it with the FBI. I just think we do have too many agencies.
And when you hear about a story like Homeland Security going into a massage parlor...
How does Homeland Security, something that's set up to prevent terrorist attacks, how does it eventually get bastardized and distorted to the point where they're utilizing the legislation that was put in place to protect people from terrorist attacks to stop guys getting hand jobs?
Well, as governor of New Mexico, here's something I did as governor of New Mexico, and it's something I would do as president of the United States.
As governor of New Mexico, I set up this open door after four policy, where the third Thursday of every month, I saw anyone in the state of New Mexico starting at four o'clock in the afternoon until 10 o'clock in the evening on five-minute increments.
And it was amazing, Joe, the stories of people that came in and what they had to say.
Now, they could come in for anything.
They could come in for a picture with me.
They could come in to visit me for five minutes.
They could come in and talk about, here's a government atrocity that's happening to me, and I'd like you to fix it.
And I always viewed it from the standpoint of, well, this is one person that's come in, but you know what?
Everybody that's dealing with this same situation is having the same outcomes as this person.
It was an incredibly valuable tool.
As President of the United States, I would set up an open door after four policy for atrocities in government, for waste fraud and abuse atrocities.
I'm just saying, I think I can make this mechanism work.
That as a result of having this mechanism, I'm going to find out in a very short amount of time that the Department of Homeland Security is busting massage parlors.
I'll tell you what, that just sounds about as atrocious as it gets when it comes to government turning its back on an obvious situation.
I think about...
So I'm reading about it, and as governor of New Mexico, I guarantee you that residents from Flint would have been at my open door after four saying, look, I got dirty water.
I'd like to think, Joe, that I would have gotten into the middle of it immediately.
But you know what?
If I didn't get into it immediately, I'm guessing my second door, open door after four, instead of having four people show up from Flint, would have 80 people showing up from Flint.
Point is...
It would not have gone unnoticed by me as governor, and I'd have gotten right into the middle of it.
And I had a mechanism for doing it.
And there needs to be a mechanism for the President of the United States to stay in touch.
The imperial presidency, the notion that the president, you know, whenever the president travels, it's tens of millions of dollars every time he travels.
Well, that's...
If I'm elected President of the United States, that's going to change dramatically.
Does Air Force One really need to fly everywhere?
Gosh, you wouldn't think so.
Why can't the President of the United States come into Los Angeles in a very stealth way and travel without having to block all of traffic in Los Angeles?
Well, also, when you isolate the president and you make them this person, they have to shut down all the city streets and bring in a gigantic parade of stormtroopers that have to stand by his side.
Does it not seem logical that anyone who can mathematically be elected president in 2012, that would have included the Libertarian Party and the Green Party, Does it not seem logical that anyone capable of being mathematically elected president of the United States, 270 electoral votes, should at a minimum be included in the polls?
That there be a requirement?
And you know that in 2016, there are like 1,600 people that registered to run for president?
Well, the two-party system is the biggest hurdle right now for...
I think most people, when you think about the potential of running for president, the biggest hurdle is that you have to be accepted and you have to be the nominee of one of these two parties.
And right now, because of just how polarizing Hillary and Trump are, that just being in the polls, that that will register enough dissatisfaction with any third party name, in this case, me, that I'd like to think that all the things that we've talked about right now, you wouldn't hear out of the mouths of either Hillary or Trump.
The real problem is a lot of the stuff that he said running versus what he's done in office.
The hope and change website that talks about whistleblowers and then you look at his actual actions towards whistleblowers and actual actions towards the press.
He gave all the information to media, saying, I do not in any way have the resources to release this data, because if I release this data, maybe I'm going to put people in harm's way.
I don't want to put people in harm's way, so I'm giving this up to...
And I can't remember the institutions that he gave it up to, but he said, they have the resources that they will be able to disseminate this information and not put people...
It was just an excellent, excellent documentary on what I will say is a real American patriot.
To play devil's advocate, if you do pardon Snowden, that means that if there was a crime being committed at all, that crime was being committed by the NSA. If you demonize Snowden...
As soon as they arrest Snowden or they try to arrest Snowden, they say Snowden's a bad guy.
What he's done is terrible.
If he comes to the United States, we're absolutely going to arrest him.
What you're saying is, and they're putting the focus on him as a potential criminal.
Well, if somehow or another he is exonerated and he's really, well, what happened then?
Well, is there a crime?
Well, if he's exonerated, if he's done something that violates the whatever agreement that he had to sign in order to work for the NSA, That means that the crime that he exposed was so significant that it was valid for him to violate whatever agreement he signed with the federal government that right now they're pursuing him as a criminal for.
Which means someone needs to go to jail for the crime.
This just came to my attention like 10 days ago, that the NSA is an executive order under Truman that the President of the United States could repeal immediately.
I do not want to downplay on the complexity of what this might entail.
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But at the end of the day, is it possible to turn the satellites away from you and I? Well, that wouldn't be that we would want to get rid of the NSA. What would it want to be is maybe redirect their efforts.
It's bizarre that they've just randomly decided to get the entire country under surveillance when there's no evidence to point that, you know, you're stopping anything or eliminating anything.
But you are putting people in a compromised position because if people know that the government has been paying attention to all their emails and voicemails and all that jazz, then People will adjust their behavior.
They'll be a little bit more cautious.
They're a little bit more cautious with their criticism.
And if you are ever in a situation where you are against the government in any way, they will have so much data on you.
Like, if you're one of those people that decides to Edward Snowden it from here on out, boy, good luck with that.
I mean, they will instantly be pulling up emails and voicemails and you've got a real problem on your hands.
Yeah, well, there's a gentleman that was one of the original whistleblowers who was actually one of the coders who was working with the NSA when they first started designing this sort of program, and he resigned and went public with all this.
And he was vilified.
And when Edward Snowden came out with all of this information, this guy started doing interviews again.
And he started saying, like, listen, I was talking about this in the early 2000s.
This is something they've been putting into play for a long time.
During the Bush administration, they started us all off.
Yeah, here's the guy, Bill Binney, the original NSA whistleblower on Snowden 9-11 and illegal surveillance.
It's a very, very interesting story.
There's several interviews with this guy.
This one is from Computer Weekly.
But there's several interviews with this gentleman.
He was the original whistleblower.
What was the year of this, Jamie?
Because I want to say 2007, but I might be wrong.
It doesn't say.
Well, it doesn't matter.
Bill Binney is the guy, and I've seen him interviewed several times, and he realized while this was all going on, he's like, you're not looking for criminals.
You're trying to spy on everyone.
You can't do this.
And I think we all agree that you shouldn't be able to do that, but right now that's happening.
Well, he was in the Hope and Change website when he was running for president.
One of the things he was talking about was supporting whistleblowers that are revealing criminal activity.
Well, he's directly contradicted that.
Everything he's done in regards to people blowing whistles and revealing government problems, they've prosecuted them.
They've been worse on freedom of the press than any other president.
We look at Bush as being this really terrible, draconian guy.
But the Bush administration was easier on whistleblowers and easier on press and trying to get press to reveal their sources than the Obama administration.
And when I had Mike Baker on, who was a former CIA operative, when he and I were discussing this, he was saying that, look, what you're seeing is lawyers make those decisions.
These decisions of whether to bomb or not to bomb, they're being done by lawyers.
They sit down, they go over the possibilities, they go over the risks versus reward, and they make the call.
Broad and locally, what do you do in terms of minimizing the amount of money that we spend on the military, minimizing the amount of invasion of privacy, the branches of the military, things like the NSA, which I guess you consider the military, some sort of security apparatus for us, right?
What would you consider the NSA? Is that military?
Well, the Congress has allowed the President to carry on this...
To do what the president sees fit.
Well, that is, in my opinion, that's an abdication of constitutional responsibility by Congress.
So let's reestablish that.
I think the biggest threat in the world right now is North Korea and the fact that at some point, Kim is...
At some point, these intercontinental ballistic missiles are going to work.
And this guy is a nut.
So how about the notion of really getting together with China, because this is in China's best interest, to get rid of Kim, unify the Koreas, get American troops out of South Korea.
If Cuba, look, we didn't put up for a second that Russia was going to occupy or have missiles in Korea.
In Cuba, do you think China likes the fact that we got 40,000 troops in Korea?
No, they don't like it a bit.
Well, do we not make the world a lot more secure if we can't come to terms with China on how we can deal with what I will argue the biggest threat in the world right now?
But to turn that ship around, boy, you want to talk about turning a tough ship around, the North Korea ship, you're talking about an entire brainwashed country.
I agree with you, but to play devil's advocate and take their point of view, they would say that what they're doing overseas is saving things from happening here and keeping people safe by intervening in other countries, by blocking things from taking place.
I mean, this would be the argument for a large, prevalent military that exists all over the world.
Like, if they weren't doing this, that you would have these superpowers develop in these other countries, and it would become a gigantic issue, whether it's Iran, whether it's Russia, whether it's whatever it is.
They're the biggest funder of terrorism in the world.
They fund terrorism.
It's undeniable.
So at first I was in support of this treaty and naively, meaning the treaty that we signed with Iran that ended up releasing, however much money it was, $160 billion.
And by Secretary Kerry's own admission, The question was, will there not be funds that will get directed at terrorism?
And he said, yes, there will be funds that will be directed at terrorism.
So how on earth could we have signed that agreement with Iran, given the fact that they are the biggest funder of terrorism in the world?
Well, at some point, these terrorist groups, and who's to say where the connection, using Brussels as an example, who's to say where those guys were getting their funds from, their support from?
Well, it's not a stretch to say that it may have come from Iran.
And in this case, if you are allowing a contributor to terrorism to have funds to contribute as the United States – Are we not making the situation worse?
When we go in and militarily intervene and leave equipment, Afghanistan, we leave equipment, we end up arming the Taliban.
When the Russians leave, the Taliban is equipped.
They're equipped with U.S. arms because we use the Taliban to fight the Russians.
I think that free trade at the end of the day is a really powerful tool.
I don't have the answer to this, and I don't want to misstate anything, but this is a conversation that we're having.
Could we have not opened up free trade with Iran and still kept their assets frozen?
And by that, assets that now they enter into the world community, that they can sell their oil, and on an ongoing basis, we'll have free trade with Iran.
They can spend the money as they see fit.
But with regard to the money that's been frozen, if we believe that any of that's going to be redirected, Or directed at terrorism.
Well, that was the – this was, gosh, maybe, I don't know, six months ago when Kerry was asked this.
And, you know, it was very matter-of-factly, yes, some of it's going to get redirected to – you know, you have to – I think it's secondhand or firsthand.
I mean I'm repeating what I thought I heard him say, which was, yeah, unquestionably some of this is going to go to terrorism.
I wonder what, if anything, can be done to calm some of the areas down in the world, and how much of what's going on in the world is about controlling resources, and how much of that would change if we had less reliance on fossil fuels?
Well, first and foremost, and this is where the Obama administration has concentrated on, and I couldn't tell you the status of how effective it is, but it is to cut off funding to terrorism.
The Muslims get extremely offended when you use the term Islamic terrorism, which, looking at it from the outside, it does appear as though there is that constant.
But Muslims would say that, look, that's not inherent in the Muslim religion, which I more than agree with.
So this is the political correctness about saying terrorism as opposed to Islamic terrorism.
When I've talked to military operatives, though, they believe that a proactive attack or proactive action is much more likely to stop ISIS or any of these ISIL. Well, and that's been our tact to date.
Without exception, that every one of those military interventions have had an unintended consequence of, at best, you know, we always deal with atrocity.
There are atrocities going on.
We go in to deal with that atrocity, and at the end of the day, The new dictator, the new despot that we put into place to replace the bad despot at the end of the day is just as bad or in many cases worse.
We cut off the head of the Hydra and lo and behold, there are more heads.
I mean, have you ever tried to come up with some sort of a solution or look at some sort of a long-term plan that would somehow or another calm the world or at least allow the United States to make peace?
One of the reasons that I'm seeking to become President of the United States is I think I do a really good job of presiding over all the intelligence that we do have regarding all of this, and I don't want to present myself as having the answers as much as,
you know what, give me the intel, let me be part of this discussion, and But I'm going to enter into this discussion as a real skeptic on what we've done to this point and a real skeptic on what appears to be what we're going to do in the future regarding all this.
And isn't there a more effective way of dealing with this?
I wouldn't be seeking this job if I didn't think that I could make a difference in it.
And I do not want to misstate.
I don't want to play cards.
Obama draws lines in the sand.
I'm not going to draw lines in the sand.
If you draw any lines in the sand, you better be prepared to back up what you've said with action.
How much different do you think perspective changes once you get into office?
Once you get into office and you sit down with military leaders and you sit down with someone who explains to you the actual landscape you're dealing with?
But wouldn't they possibly alert the enemy that we have knowledge of some things they may or may not know we have knowledge of and that would put people in danger?
Well, you certainly wouldn't want to cross over that line in any way whatsoever.
But if you got elected to office saying that we should not militarily intervene, that military interventions have an unintended consequence, and then the next day you militarily intervene somewhere, you better darn well get up in front of the American public and take the...
But it was one of the first examples of the United States, like, sort of collectively, the will of the people, like, being openly expressed that the idea of entering Syria was outrageous.
Nobody wanted to do it.
It didn't make any sense to people.
This gas attack, like, how is this any more horrible than a lot of shit that's going on all over the world all the time?
What is it about Syria that all of a sudden we have to go and invade Syria, one more intervention in one more country, and the administration backed off?
You let off this kind of line of thought by saying, or this is where I thought you were headed, was can you get in and not be co-opted by the system?
Based on my only experience, having been governor of New Mexico, yeah, meaning that good government was easy, it wasn't hard, that you weren't co-opted.
There was plenty of co-option that tried to wield itself, but you know what?
You're the President of the United States.
You're the governor of a state.
You're at the top of the pyramid.
Yes, you do have limited powers, but even with those limited powers, you're still the most powerful human being on Earth.
Don't you think there's a pretty radical difference between being a governor of a state without a military and being the President of the United States dealing not just with the same sort of problems that you dealt with as a governor, but on a much larger scale, plus the problems of the world, plus the military, Plus the weird stuff like the NSA and the CIA and the FBI.
But at the end of the day, can you still tell the truth?
Can you still admit mistakes?
And if you're willing to tell the truth and you're willing to admit mistakes, mistakes seem to have a way of compounding themselves when you don't admit the mistakes as in lieu of admitting the mistakes.
And then taking corrective action.
But really, at the end of the day, doesn't it boil down to telling the truth and fessing up to mistakes and fixing things?
But it seems to me that the wiring of the office is so complex and there's so much craziness going on that no one gets in office and does what they said they were going to do before they got in office.
And with all the other variables that you discussed, terms, term limitations that aren't in place, ideological blockades on the left and the right, supporting your constituents on the left and the right, special interest groups, lobbyists, the fact that there's...
I mean, there's this one area outside of Washington, D.C. that is just all lobbyists, these neighborhoods, and it's one of the wealthiest parts of the area.
And it's just because people are making insane amounts of money manipulating the system.
It's called the fair tax, and it's how you dot the I's and cross the T's when it comes to establishing one federal consumption tax.
If we had zero corporate tax in this country, I believe tens of millions of jobs would get created If we did not have corporate tax, if we did not have income tax, I believe that pink slips would get issued to 80% of Washington lobbyists because that's why they're there, to garner special tax favor.
At the end of the day, it's all about So how does this consumption tax work, and how would you possibly implement it, and how would you possibly get anyone to agree to do this, to get rid of the IRS, to get rid of the...
And if you think about the pressure that the police unions or the guard unions, rather, prison guard unions put to make sure that marijuana remains illegal and drug laws remain in place, imagine the kind of pressure that lobbyists and the IRS and anyone else that might be affected by these decisions are going to put to try to stop this from happening.
If you had, in this case, Gary Johnson on stage in the presidential debates talking about something like this, wouldn't that maybe open people's eyes to the fact that, whoa, life could change dramatically?
Some would argue for the better.
I think at the end of the day, you can argue that this would make life a lot better for everybody.
So you think that, like, Apple would move their iPhone factors, they're paying people five cents an hour, they'd move them to the United States and have to pay a working wage because they don't have to pay corporate taxes?
Wouldn't they cancel each other out?
Wouldn't it be more profitable to still invoke foreign labor and use third world countries?
But now I'm back to, hey, I get elected president of the United States and I get legislation submitted to reduce corporate tax.
Yeah, I'm going to sign on to that because I think it really is a hindrance to job creation when we have the highest corporate tax rate.
But imagine, instead of having a debate over...
Should we reduce the corporate tax rate to 28% or 29% and Republicans and Democrats both get their peacock feathers all up in arms about 29% or 28% or 27%?
Well, how about zero?
How about doing away with the IRS? Oh my gosh.
I mean, if lowering it is good, how about eliminating it?
And this is what was actually argued against the Reebok deal for the UFC. I get real concerned with super PACs for sure.
I get real concerned with money and politics.
And that is, I think...
One of the reasons why Bernie Sanders has stood out is because he's the only guy that is not really accepting money from these giant corporations and he's fairly self-funded.
Well, maybe, but my point is that if I would have had 1,000 contributors giving me $1,500, I guarantee you, Joe, that 10 of them at some point would have been on the phone wanting something.
I mean, you're talking about one contributor versus...
If you're looking at someone who's trying to contribute, though, to the United States, to someone running for the United States, and if they give you a billion dollars, one person who gives you a billion dollars, that guy's gonna want something.
The notion of life and what do you do with your life.
For me, my entire life, politics, I viewed it as a high calling.
The notion of being in a position to make things better.
Look, I'm the first person to also admit that if you had people lined up or if you asked, how many are going to line up here to say Gary Johnson was the scourge of the earth?
Hey, you know, there'd be lines, blocks long out here.
Well, so I didn't have to go out and raise any money.
I gave the money to myself.
Well, why can't you extend that argument and say that if somebody would have given me, if one person would have given me that same $510,000, that that person wouldn't have changed the, okay, my contributor that gave me $150,000 for good government.
Well, he had the ability to write, you know, he had the ability to give $510,000 and essentially get me elected.
But do you think that transparency protects you from influence?
If it is transparent and you have one of the Koch brothers giving all the money up, even if it's transparent, you know what the hell their motivation is.
They want to continue to extract massive amounts of money, right?
Well, if it's one person that's giving all the money, then there's that much more scrutiny that goes along with that person giving that much more money.
And you'd have to think...
That the influence wouldn't be as blatant as it was if it was completely non-transparent.
Well, I want to make a pitch for myself, and that is that I think I really am a unique package.
I am fiscally conservative.
I I'm as frugal a human being as you've ever met, but that doesn't mean that I'm cheap.
It just means that I spend my money wisely.
I got to serve as governor of New Mexico for two terms.
I served as governor of New Mexico for two terms as a Republican in a state that's two-to-one Democrat.
I got re-elected by a bigger margin the second time than the first time, made a name for myself as a real government skeptic, vetoing legislation.
I may have vetoed more legislation than the other 49 governors in the country combined.
Coupled with that, I'm socially tolerant, socially liberal.
Look, you and I should be able to make decisions in our own lives that only affect our own lives as long as those decisions don't adversely affect others.
And then there is a very real terrorist threat out there.
It exists.
But I do believe that our military interventions have resulted in making situations worse, not better.
So I'm a real skeptic when it comes to government and the fact that government is too big.
I've been an entrepreneur my entire life.
I know what it is to hire and fire.
I know what it is to share in the profits and what a magic formula that is, that when you share in the profits, amazingly, the profit pie grows significantly.
I've been an athlete my entire life, a bit of an axi-moron as a 63-year-old.
But what athletics has taught me is, you know, life is putting one foot in front of the other.
Athletics has taught me that anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
It's how you deal with failure that ultimately determines your success.
Look, things go wrong all the time.
You can crawl up on the couch.
You can declare yourself a victim.
You can give up or you can recognize that that's just part of life and wake up the next day with a smile on your face and continue to move forward and just do your best.
I've told the truth.
I think it's really hard to do any damage to somebody who's willing to tell the truth regardless of the consequences.
And then I admit mistakes.
I think mistakes have a way of so compounding themselves just because people don't acknowledge those mistakes.
So given this pitch, all I want to do is just get in the polls that determines who is in the presidential debates.
I think that if I'm in the presidential debates, I have an opportunity of actually winning because of this package that you've allowed me to present here today, Joe.