Tulsi Gabbard exposes Congress’s insider trading scandals, like the Pelosis’ alleged $1M+ profits from legislative-influenced stock trades, ignored by media due to Washington’s cozy elite. She contrasts Fox News’ fair treatment of Democrats with left-wing networks’ hostile dismissals, citing figures like Harris and AOC as symbols of a fear-driven, anti-dissent culture. Gabbard warns the Ukraine proxy war risks WWIII, blaming NATO expansion and $1.7T defense budgets for escalating nuclear threats while ignoring UN alerts on global starvation. Both agree bipartisan posturing over policy—like endless military spending—undermines real progress, leaving voters trapped in a manipulated two-party system. The conversation ends with a stark reminder: unchecked power and profit prioritization could destroy us all. [Automatically generated summary]
And people who come and ask me, they're like, oh, I'm thinking of running for office.
And that's literally what I tell them.
I'm like, are you ready to quit everything else in your life and have the support of your family and dedicate all your energy towards this mission of service?
And if you want to be truly sincere, when you're knocking on people's doors, you're standing in a town hall meeting and you're saying, hey, essentially, give me your trust.
And look, I think this is one of the good things about social media is, of course, the mainstream corporate media is hardly covering it at all.
But because of social media, things like that are spreading like wildfire, like, hey, Paul Pelosi is doing these trades within this period of time of Nancy Pelosi voting on this bill or bringing a bill to the floor because we've got to remember...
Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, nothing happens without her knowing about it or giving her stamp of approval.
So regardless of whether it's happening in the Judiciary Committee or the Commerce Committee or the Armed Services Committee, if there's a bill coming to the floor and there's major legislation that's being passed or is being squashed, That is happening with her say-so.
And so just in these last few days, once people started making noise saying, hey, you as a member of Congress or your spouse or your adult child should not be allowed to conduct insider trading on issues that Congress is dealing with, which really covers every issue under the spectrum, they can't pretend anymore that they haven't been doing it.
And yet, even as a Nazi policy like, okay, okay, fine, we'll draft legislation.
But Congress is about to take a break as they head into the general elections.
And once again, she's refusing to bring the bill to the floor for a vote saying, oh, well, you know, we're not going to bring it to the floor if it doesn't have support.
Put people on the freaking spot, make them cast that vote.
And this is where the quote-unquote uniparty in Washington has been blocking this kind of legislation from being passed because they're both benefiting from it.
We had, I think, there were Republican and Democrat senators in the lead up towards COVID who knew about it, right, and started making different investments as we were approaching it, even before the rest of the country knew about it, so that they could profit financially from it.
It's like this chummy insiders club in Washington.
A common term that's being used now is called permanent Washington, which really fits when you think about it.
It kind of encapsulates that whole swampy ecosystem of both those who've been elected into positions, those who are longtime appointed or powerful bureaucrats, and the corporate media.
They all go out to the same parties, the same social functions.
You know, passing information to each other.
And so, you know, if the anchor of a big-time news show says, hey, guys, guess what?
Nancy Pelosi and her husband are insider trading, then they have to think about, oh, well, am I burning a bridge?
Am I cutting off access to...
You know, information that she or her staff might be feeding me that I can break news on and all this stuff.
So, you know, it's like you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
And if you start pissing off certain people, then you get kicked out of the cool kids club.
That's really what's at the heart of it.
And so they play along because this issue has come up before.
It came up years ago.
Congress said, okay, we're going to take action to stop insider trading and make sure that elected leaders aren't benefiting off of insider information.
And so they passed the Stock Act, which did nothing.
Essentially, it just said, okay, if you are going to trade in stocks or buy or sell stocks, you have to report it.
You have to be transparent about it.
Most of Congress has failed to do even that.
So it did nothing to stop it.
Says, you just got to tell us.
And most people are like, yeah, I'm not going to tell you anyway.
Well, they might get like a $100 fine, $200 fine, as they make millions in their trade.
So, you know, again, it's good.
This is kind of like one of those things that should give us all a glimmer of hope, where if enough people, we the people, make noise about it, they're forced to pay attention.
It ranges from people kind of like giving you a cynical look like whose side are you really on to people just outright ending that friendship or that professional relationship because they don't want to have anything to do with you.
There's been this negative stigma for almost as long as I've served in Congress against anyone who actually goes on Fox News, period.
And so you could say – and I do.
I was like, hey, more people watch Fox News than any other cable news channel.
So my audience is speaking to the American people.
If I have the opportunity to do that, and by the way, Fox News, more than CNN and MSNBC over the last decade, has been more fair to me in providing me that opportunity to speak to the American people, I'm going to take advantage of it.
Because when a right-wing person seems to be, if they're on MSNBC or if they're on CNN, it's like they have these weapons ready to go, the blades are sharp, and they attack.
And they're trying to discredit that person, trying to mock them.
They will talk over them.
They will be rude to them.
They will mock whatever position they have.
Instead of, like, trying to offer some sort of a reasonable debate against it, they will just talk over it and mock it.
And they'll bring on another expert, and that person talks over it.
It's not even limited to those who bring like a so-called right-wing perspective or conservative perspective.
It's really anyone who brings a voice, a view, a perspective that is different from whatever the mainstream narrative is at that point, whatever the cause of the day may be.
And so as a Democrat serving in Congress, I experienced that over and over and over again.
Exactly that reaction that you're talking about In, you know, not allowing me at least just to come and present my view.
They can ask me a tough question.
They can present an opposing view.
That's great.
But so many times I've gone on these different shows and they don't even allow that.
And, you know, it really just speaks to what is really a dangerous mentality amongst the Democratic Party leadership and kind of this establishment narrative in Washington, which is they don't believe in freedom.
They don't believe in freedom of speech or freedom of thought.
And for anyone who brings an opposing view, they choose to shut you up, silence you, smear you, try to ruin you or undermine your character and credibility because, you know, they don't want the weakness or the insecurity of their own argument to be exposed.
And also they immediately judge you as someone who may bring an opposing view, regardless of your political party, as the enemy, as a threat, as somebody who is less than and doesn't deserve a voice.
which is really, really dangerous for our democracy when you really think about it.
Yeah, it's very spooky and it's spooky how prevalent that That mindset is, and how many Democrats, not even just politicians, just people that are Democrats, how many people share that position that you should silence people that you don't agree with?
It's such a foolish perspective, and it plays out historically over and over and over again in a terrible way.
I just don't understand why people don't learn that lesson.
I think that the Democratic Party leaders, people like Hillary Clinton, people who've been in charge for a very long time, foment this kind of culture of fear and like, hey, if you go against us, you're dead.
You're on the shit list.
You have kind of the very loud activists who don't represent, I think, even the majority of the Democratic Party, but the AOCs of the world who are almost like these radical religious zealots.
And they are ideologues, and whatever they choose is the battle of the day.
It's so bonkers because the first thing she goes to is – We gave student debt forgiveness and those people have bank accounts and we're going to urge them to take their money out of your bank account.
So it's like we bribed these people by giving them 10 grand.
If you really want to help them, make it so that you can get out of student debt.
You really want to help them?
Make it so that a bankruptcy actually absolves you of student debt.
Because it doesn't.
Because it's a corrupt system.
So like, fuck all this, your 10 grand.
Because 10 grand is nonsense.
These people are $150,000, $200,000 in the hole.
And some of them actually wind up getting their social security docked when they're in their 60s.
Because they still owe money from student loans that didn't help them at all.
Meanwhile, she does not understand the incredibly complex variables that are involved in the elimination of fossil fuels or how many fossil fuels are involved in every single thing you do, including electric cars, the construction of solar panels, Like everything, the transportation of goods and services.
This idea that you're just going to stop all future projects because you think that that's what your ideological group wants.
We're committed, as you all know, to transition the emissions from lending and investment activities to line with pathways to net zero in 2050. Do you know what the International Energy Agency has said is required to meet our global 2050 net zero targets of limiting global temperature rise to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit or 1.5 degrees Celsius?
That is the example of exactly what we're talking about.
This whole mentality of wokeism, of being ideologues, that not only doesn't make sense, but if you don't agree with it, you're wrong, you're the enemy.
And the irony is here we are sitting now with a lot of these same people who like, oh, well, I don't know how to define a woman.
And there is no such thing as a woman.
And But all of these examples point to the hypocrisy, the fact that they don't believe in truth, and that whatever their cause of the moment is, is whatever they decide, is the truth and the thing that must be measured against for you.
Like, you're either with us or you're against us.
And if you're with us, you've got to prove your zealousness for the cause.
And that's what was so powerful about that documentary was both Matt Walsh's demeanor and, frankly, his respect with whoever he was questioning and the spectrum of people that he spoke to on this.
From, you know, psychiatrists, psychologists, doctors, professors, and even the woman who transitioned hormonally to become a man.
Here's what's not represented at all in the mainstream media.
People that have had a horrible experience having gender transition surgery and regret it deeply.
There's a lot of them.
It's not a small amount.
It's a lot of people.
It's not a cut-and-dry thing.
Look, if there was a way where we had some sort of genetic engineering, some super-advanced form of CRISPR, where I could just decide, I want to be a woman now, and then, bam, now I have a double X chromosome, I have a vagina, I'm an actual woman, like 100%.
Not surgery.
And here's the other thing.
If you're saying that you identify as a woman and you're a woman, okay, why do you have to get an operation then?
It's so dangerous that the Biden administration's Health and Human Services Secretary is openly advocating for this.
Parents and schools and the community need to support this quote-unquote gender-affirming care and treatment for kids.
Knowing what we know, even the limited knowledge of what we know about the impacts of these hormone treatments, the impacts of these irreversible surgeries, both physically as well as mentally, as more and more even of these kids who come forward who've gone through this with incredible regret and talking about the long-standing symptoms and problems and illnesses they're now having to deal with.
We have the person who's supposed to be in charge of federal health policy for the country.
This is exactly what we should be doing and encouraging parents and kids to go and get this treatment.
It is an advocating for abuse of children.
And it's something that more and more people need to stand up against.
But the fact that we don't have more people speaking out about this speaks to this culture of fear that we're talking about.
It's like he's talking to an alien that has a tape recorder that's going to press play every time the question's over.
Thank you, Senator.
You know, transgender care is nuanced and goes into this speech, and Rand Paul says, just let it be said on record that the person is not answering these questions.
I don't know how well known this is, but I saw a brochure that the Department of Health and Human Services put out on what is gender-affirming care.
It basically says that if parents refuse or fail to provide this gender-affirming care, then Child Protective Services will have the authority to step in and try to intervene for the sake of the child.
She works at a school that had to install a litter box in the girls room because there is a girl who's a furry who identifies as an animal and her mother badgered the school Until they agreed to put a litter box in one of the stalls.
So this girl goes into the litter room or to the girl's room and urinates or whatever.
I don't know if she poops in it.
That's pretty gross.
Like, if you could teach your cat, by the way, here's the thing.
You're a fucking human being and you prefer a litter box.
You want to piss into a pile of sand rather than use a bathroom that you could flush the toilet, wipe yourself like a normal person.
Like you're so crazy with what you think an animal is that not only have you said this, but you've conned the school into putting this fucking litter box in a girl's room.
If you knock your teeth out, if I go lift weights and hit myself in the face with a kettlebell and knock my teeth out, they'll replace my teeth with fake teeth.
But if I have these teeth that are my real teeth and I put fake teeth over them, those are fake, fake teeth.
So this person, these are not fake boobs like they went and got an operation and had breast augmentation.
No.
They put giant rubber boobs over their real boobs.
I wish I could find a watermelon that big.
I love watermelon.
If I could find a watermelon that big, they're so big, it's crazy.
The Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose, and James Lindsay seeded peer-reviewed journals with absurd critical studies papers, which was amazing, that they'd simply made up.
Caused a huge stir, but neither academia's...
Perverse incentives nor the often ridiculous stances on critical studies have noticeably changed as a result.
Academia is still publishing, apparently sincerely, autoethnographic studies about pedophilic masturbation.
What is that?
Click on that link.
What are they saying?
What is this study?
We'll come back to this in a moment.
unidentified
I want to know what the fuck they're talking about.
University investigates PhD students' paper on masturbating to comics of young boys.
Holy shit.
Manchester University launches inquiry into ethical standards after paper details masturbation sessions.
A leading university has launched an inquiry after it emerged that one of its PhD students has written a research paper about sexual attraction to young boys.
Carl Anderson spent three months recording his thoughts and feelings while masturbating over images of young boys in Japanese comic books.
In the abstract for the paper, Anderson, who's interviewing fans of Shota, I guess, S-H-O-T-A, comics for his PhD, said he wanted to understand how they experience sexual pleasure while reading Shota.
His 4,000-word study, which detailed his sexual habits and sexual encounters between boys in the comics, was published in the journal Qualitative Research in April.
It provoked outrage from academics and MP and others after it was circulated on Twitter this week.
Yeah.
There's a normalization of all kinds of sexual attraction, you know, including illegal sexual attraction.
They're trying to say that people aren't pedophiles.
This is exactly, you know, when you don't believe in truth and, you know, you're talking about the furries, like, you know, the accommodations for this child who identifies as a cat in the school, then you have the minor attracted persons.
Go back to that big boob gentleman slash female hoaxer.
I want to finish where we're at.
So try to figure out what is happening here.
Okay, we're right around there.
And in much of the same way, if Lemieux is attempting to force an absurd anti-discrimination law to breaking point, the attempt has failed.
Rather than forcing the school to confront the grotesque absurdity, Of letting a male wear prosthetic boobs to a teaching job, it simply promoted a debate on what size and shape the prosthetic should be.
The school, exacerbated at the international attention they've garnered, has simply approved a new dress code that would force Lemieux to wear slightly smaller fake boobs.
But what if you actually have real augmented boobs that are that big?
Because people do.
Go to that.
Go back to that, please.
Click on the new dress code.
unidentified
I need to find out what you guys are out of your mind.
Like if a small child, like if a six-year-old was in the fetal position and they hung from your neck, that would literally be the size of one of these breasts.
Kayla Lemieux is conclusive proof that trans women are women and that there's absolutely no connection between trans activism and mental health issues or misogyny.
I would have never imagined if we went four or five years ago.
I remember when I had Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay on the podcast years ago, people were saying to me, like, why are you concentrating on this?
Like, this is some stuff that's happening at universities.
Why is this even a...
Like, why are you obsessed with this?
And I said, because this is going to spill over into society.
Like, you don't see this?
It's like, if we have barbarians that land in Hawaii, and they start attacking, marauding, and they get in their boats, and they start moving towards America, and you go like, well, hey, I think this is coming here.
Why are you concentrating on that?
This is only happening in Hawaii.
No, that's...
They're fucking in the boats now, kids.
They're in the boats and now they've hit land.
And now they're burning through tech industry.
They're burning through so many corporations.
Because all this craziness is an accepted ideology in universities.
So you let these children get away from their parents.
Fuck my mom and dad.
unidentified
My mom and dad are bullshit and they're racist and fascist and this and that.
What you just outlined is exactly how we got here.
So much of this has been happening already for decades in some of these incredibly, I don't even know what you call them, in a lot of the universities.
And then you start seeing it, okay, well, here's the boundary today.
And that's where the thing that people warned against in the past, but it's hard to imagine that it would be possible, certainly within our lifetimes, the normalization of pedophilia.
And how a lot of these same people who are saying, hey, if you refuse to use pronouns, you're fired.
A friend of mine in a huge New York law firm Corporate policy is you have to put your pronouns in your email signature block or you will have to talk to the HR department.
And he's like one of the partners at this law firm.
The number of people that identify as trans is higher than it's ever been before, which is really weird that that's not consistent.
And you could say, well, it's because they feel comfortable doing that because it's an accepted part of society.
Like, maybe.
But according to Abigail Schreier, who wrote that book, Irreversible Damage, with young girls, it's up An extraordinary amount, like a preposterous amount, where they have these clusters of girls who identify as trans in school, where you get like eight, nine kids that just all, in a friend group, identify as trans.
And she's like, there's a very distinct possibility that this is a social contagion.
And that there are, and without denying that some people are trans, because there are, but it's like, how do you know now?
Because this is one of those...
Incredibly bizarre human issues where it's open to interpretation like this guy or woman whatever with the giant rubber boobs can just say that they are a woman and everyone has to back off right because of that Because of a lack of an ability to prove something, now you're in this area where it's open to how someone feels.
That's how you get male athletes who want to compete in women's sports, and when the women complain, they get kicked off the team and forced out of the locker room, which we're seeing.
I talked with Carla Esparza recently about this issue specifically, and I gave her great credit because she has been and continues to be very outspoken about how dangerous it is Especially in mixed martial arts, to have biological males competing against biological females.
And she grew up competing on the boys' wrestling team in high school because there was no girls' team.
And at that age even, she was just like, yeah, I experienced the unfairness of it because obviously these boys are built very differently.
And she's like, I'm stronger than the average girl my size, but still.
I couldn't compete at a level playing field.
And then you take that forward to mixed martial arts.
I know you've talked about this a lot, about how actually dangerous it is.
But the fact that it takes a whole lot of courage for a female UFC champion to speak out and say, hey, no, biological males should not be competing against biological females.
That's an act of courage in this society rather than just like, yeah, of course, she's stating fact.
It's truth.
But this is the problem is when you have this, you know, it's the Democratic Party leadership, it's the progressive left that is so ideologically zealous about this cause because it's the cause today, tomorrow it'll be something else.
They create this culture of fear that there will be consequences towards those who differ and also that they just don't believe in truth.
And so whatever they say is true today is true today.
Whatever they say is true tomorrow is true tomorrow.
But the danger of that is you take away all the boundaries of, you know, what is true and what is false.
You know, you take away the boundaries of the things that science actually does prove.
And what are we left with then?
We have no foundation.
And then we end up where we're at.
Like, okay, well, today we're going to promote pedophiles.
That's what we're going to promote today.
We're going to push books in public schools, kindergarten, first grade, third grade, fifth grade, that are causing your child to say, well, I don't know if I'm a boy or I don't know if I'm a girl.
I saw some of these books that some of the parents in Virginia and other states are protesting at their boards of education, trying to get these books removed from their kids' schools and, These books, like I thought, okay, how bad can it be?
I saw them, and they are some of the most graphic images I have ever seen in my life.
It seems like it's happened so quickly, but that's where if we actually stop and think about it, it has been very intentional and the groundwork has been laid over time.
Do you think it's intentional, like planned out, or do you think that there is an ideology that gets accepted and then that ideology, it's like a forest fire.
It feeds off new fuel, so it has to expand its boundaries.
People who, I mean, it's the very same people who are doing it now, I think, over time, trying to see how far they can push, you know, I mean, the sexualization of our kids and our society.
You know, I don't know exactly who the person is or the group is or whatever, but we can't have gotten to this place by accident.
But if it's a mind virus, which is what I think it is, and I think that these ideological perspectives that are not grounded in reality get accepted by people and then they promote it.
These people are promoting it without any conversation with some cabal of evil leaders.
It's clear there's a mechanism in play.
And that mechanism is very easy to follow.
You could see where it starts in universities.
You can also see that in these universities, these people that are promoting these things and teaching children also grew up in the university system themselves, and most of them don't have any real-world experience.
experience.
They have experience going from being in a university to teaching in a university and then promoting these ideologies that are preposterous to the rest of the world as if they're smarter, than the rest of the world, and then that keeps spreading.
It needs more fuel.
So it keeps moving further and further to the left and further and further into crazy land.
But I don't think, I think just by observing that, just by observing the fact that these people that are promoting these things, they're not being paid to do it, they're not, They're stuck in this mind virus.
And this woke mind virus, this ideological mind virus, is trackable.
You could see it.
And you could see how it infects people.
I've seen it infect people.
You know, I had this guy on the podcast.
His name's Adam Conover.
And he has a show, Adam Questions Everything, or Adam Ruins Everything.
I don't know if you've ever seen it.
We got into the subject of trans people in sports.
And his position was the most far left, far woke, I just think it would be great to be inclusive and this and that.
I go, well, why do women have a specific category?
And these are people who, as you said, they're not connected to reality, don't have any kind of personal experience.
I was shocked when I saw Megan Rapinoe basically say, I don't know what her statement was, but basically it was like, yeah, you know, there's no real difference.
Like, okay, well, you already won your Olympic gold.
Exactly.
Got it.
So are you saying that you could have gone and won that gold competing against men on the soccer field?
Well, they have to publicly support that because of that whole group, this whole lumping in of everyone together.
That's why a lot of gay and lesbians support that.
But a lot of them, if you talk to them, specifically in my conversations with lesbian women, that lesbians have a real hard time with trans women entering into what is, in their mind, feminist spaces.
And running things like a man and running things with threats and with aggression and insults and treating people the way biological men tend to treat people when they're behaving at their worst.
And, you know, that's a real giant issue because if you're a woman and you're a feminist, you're supposed to be ideologically left, you know, maybe even like far left in some of their eyes.
And now all of a sudden you get lumped in with something you completely disagree with.
I introduced it with a Republican friend of mine named Mark Wayne Mullen from Oklahoma.
And he's got six kids.
Three of them are little girls.
All of his kids wrestle.
And the bill was very, very simple in upholding the original intent of Title IX. Can you explain Title IX to people?
Title IX was passed, gosh, I think in the 70s, if I'm not mistaken.
And it was a huge landmark piece of legislation because it delineated, it provided a level playing field on the basis of sex.
Meaning males have opportunities, females deserve those same opportunities, whether it be in sports or in college, and in a public funding realm, essentially.
Where the federal government can impact it, it said there has to be a level playing field and equal opportunities.
So people like my mom who grew up, she's very athletic, the only thing that was available to her in high school was cheerleading, and she did it.
She was great.
But she would have liked the opportunity to be able to compete in other sports.
Carla Esparza, I think, is a more modern-day example.
There were no girls' wrestling teams in her high school.
She got a scholarship to wrestle in college on a girls' team, and obviously she has gone on to do amazing things.
So Title IX was created recognizing that difference on the basis of sex.
Democrats have championed Title IX and talked about this great accomplishment in passing this legislation for decades.
And that's where it makes no sense.
So our legislation basically just said, hey, we want to uphold the original intent of Title IX in recognizing the biological differences between males and females.
Period.
They should not be competing against each other.
The legislation didn't move forward for obvious reasons.
We were excoriated for having the audacity to uphold the original intent of Title IX.
And now what we're seeing with the Biden administration is administratively, not even through passing legislation, they're trying to backdoor this move to change the rules around Title IX to include gender identity rather than having it be on the basis of biological sex to include gender they're trying to backdoor this move to change the rules around And threatening schools that they will withhold federal funding unless they adopt this rule change within the Biden administration.
Again, not running through Congress, not allowing the people's voices to be heard, but trying to backdoor this through and making threats to publicly funded educational institutions as a means of trying to implement this.
There are polls that have been done that show not only a majority of Americans disagree with this, but also a majority of Democrats disagree with this.
And so why they're doing it, They're catering to those ideological zealots within the Democratic Party and trying to placate them in their radical policies and their extremes rather than actually standing up and saying, you know what?
No, this is science.
This is biology.
And this is what's right.
And oh, by the way, it would also be politically beneficial given where the vast majority of Democrats and Americans are on this.
Like, if you're a daughter and you're competing in that Connecticut track and field team where those two biological males are breaking world records, like, that's crazy!
And that's the danger of it, is the people in charge of the Democratic Party, whether they actually hold positions or they just are influential in the Democratic Party, Have created this cult-like atmosphere and fomented this fear so much so that people who are really in a position to impact this, to stand up against and say, hold on, guys, this is literally insane and needs to stop.
They're too afraid to do so because of what the ramifications will be.
The Democratic Party of the past, the Democratic Party that I joined doesn't exist anymore.
The party that was, you know, the party of JFK, of Dr. Martin Luther King, the party of inclusivity, the big tent party that Welcomed and encouraged this marketplace of ideas and conversations and people who held different views, the party of, you know, the championed women and equality and the rights of people in our society, that party just, it doesn't exist anymore.
And instead, we have a party that's being led by by people who have gone insane with this ideological fanaticism.
And there are a lot of different issues, a lot of different examples.
You know, the whole issue of of biology and the trans issue is just one of them.
There are so many different others.
You know, parents don't have you don't have a right to raise your kids now.
You don't have a right to say what they're being taught in schools now.
The state, the government, the teachers unions, only they have that right and responsibility.
They're undermining families.
They don't believe in the rule of law.
Defund the police.
The Supreme Court, we don't agree with them, so they're illegitimate.
There's so many different examples of this...
It's all about these ideologues who have taken control of the Democratic Party, who don't actually care about the people.
It's all about themselves, their power, and their maintaining control.
And that's the real threat to our democracy that they pose, is they don't believe in freedom of speech.
They don't believe in freedom of thought.
They don't believe in freedom of religion.
All they believe in is you've got to buy into whatever they're selling at any given day.
And like I said, not only it's not enough to agree.
You've got to go out there.
You've got to march in the parade.
You've got to carry the sign.
You've got to scream and yell.
And don't you dare even think about talking to Republicans.
Don't even think about working with Republicans because that directly undermines their authority.
And frankly, Joe, this is something that I've been trying to fight against within the Democratic Party back when I was vice chair of the DNC for years.
And it's gotten to a point where those who have been in charge for a long time remain in charge.
are not willing to change, and so I'm leaving the Democratic Party.
I mean, it was a big deal at the time, but it seems like so minor now compared to, you know, our vice president standing at the DMZ saying we are great allies with North Korea.
And that is, for you, that is where everything sort of soured with you and the Democratic Party was when during the debates where you accurately pointed out her record.
And you basically sank any hope that she had of being president because you opened up this discussion that many people are not aware of about her prosecution record and the things that she's done that are absolutely illegal, like forcing people to work as labor, as cheap labor for the state to fight wildfires after they're supposed to be released.
They did their time and she kept them in prison to use them essentially as slave labor for the state, putting their own lives at risk forcibly.
The thing about my exchange with her on that debate stage, when you take a step back, you got a question like all of those things I brought up on her record, You easily Google-able on the first page when you look at Kamala Harris's record, all of those things.
I'd have to dig very deep to see what those issues and problems were with her record.
So then the question is, hey, why didn't anybody in the media ask her these questions about the record that she said, I'm so proud of my record as this and as that, as that?
All right, cool.
Talk about this.
This is your record.
Talk about these things.
No one in the media did that.
There's no other candidate on the debate stage who had the balls to bring that up.
How are voters supposed to be able to make their best informed decision when the media and fellow Democratic candidates who are running, who are opponents in that race, don't have the courage to ask a very factual question on a record that she says she's proud of?
I don't know why no one had the courage to ask her those questions, why I was the first person to do it.
If I had to guess, I would imagine it's because she's got friends in high places.
I would guess it's because she's a woman of color and no one wants to be seen as the person attacking a woman of color who's running for president.
They got no issues attacking me on a whole host of fronts.
But because, again, she was connected.
She's playing the game.
She's somebody that the Democratic Party knows that they can control.
And that was the thing for me.
And it started years before I ran for president.
I got elected to Congress and they were like, Oh, she's the first this.
She's the first that.
She's cool.
She's going to be one of us.
We'll put her forward.
And, you know, she'll be a great new face of the Democratic Party, all these things.
But then very quickly they realize, like, I mean, I've always been an independent Democrat.
Every race that I've ever run, whether it was for city council in Honolulu or for the state legislature or for Congress, I was never like the party pick ever.
I never won any of those races with the Democratic Party saying, all right, hey, we're going to back you up.
We're going to send you money.
We're going to send the troops out to support you.
None of that.
It has always been a truly grassroots campaign of the people, which is amazing.
They found out very quickly like, okay, she's not somebody that the puppet masters can control.
She's not just going to read the talking points when she goes on TV or stands on the house floor.
And that's where things started to take a turn, where those who are in those positions of power said, okay, she's somebody who could expose our weaknesses, expose our So our insecurities exposed the hypocrisies in our arguments and started to create that distance and then resorted to the smear and the discrediting and the attacks and then ultimately like total media blackouts.
That's how they do it is like, hey, let's just plant a seed of doubt or suspicion so that most people, I mean, as a journalist, he's got no excuse, but most people don't have just, I mean, honestly, they don't have the time.
And you want me to do research from multiple different platforms so that I get an unbiased perspective or at least an objective perspective based on multiple sources of information.
It's like it's Such a bizarre system that we have and it's so easy to rig because there's only two parties and both parties are controlled by these gigantic special interest groups.
Gigantic special interest groups, corporate, for-profit, media, big tech, and then the powers in both parties.
And that's where I'm glad you used the word rigged because it's an important word and usually when you use it, people aren't thinking of it in the way that we're talking about.
It's what I experienced during that campaign is that collusion between those very, very powerful entities to decide before voters even get a chance to be exposed to different candidates to choose from.
They decide, all right, here are the candidates.
Here's the people that we're going to, you know, we think will be all right.
We think they're going to play the game and we'll promote them.
We'll say nice things about them.
Maybe throw in a tough question here or there just to not blow our cover.
But these are the people that we want voters to choose from.
And these other people are the ones that we're going to try to either just slide into the darkness and hope nobody notices them.
Or if people are noticing them, we're going to do everything that we can to smear them and undermine their credibility so that when they do speak, you get that kind of reaction from Berenson.
The interesting thing to me was that I heard from some friends who were sitting kind of in the green rooms and backstage for some of the major cable networks at that moment, live, when it happened on the debate stage.
There was a whole bunch of people cheering and like, holy crap, that just happened.
Yeah.
But probably within an hour, maybe 30 minutes of the debate being finished and going into the media room where you've got the post-debate, all the interviews and all those things happening, immediately it was like, okay, no, we've got to change the narrative because we can't allow that to stick.
I mean, look, the Republican Party, I mean, what is the Republican Party today?
You know, I've got Republican friends who don't like to be associated with each other because they're in different factions of the Republican Party.
I think that, you know, when you look at the two, I think there's potential there for that party.
The Republican Party has kind of turned more towards populism and actually fighting for working people.
You look at a recent vote that was taken on the issue of foreign policy and war and peace.
The Republican Party had like, I think it was 50 members of Congress voted against that massive multibillion dollar funding package for Ukraine and have been saying, hey, we shouldn't be waging this proxy war against Russia, or at least we need to have a debate or accountability. we shouldn't be waging this proxy war against Russia, or Zero Democrats voted against that.
So you look at, you know, the Democratic Party that used to have people who, you know, protested the Vietnam War and others.
Now, I mean, the Democratic Party leadership is very strongly within the grips of the military industrial complex and advocating for more war and you have more Republicans.
And I think even Trump, this was Trump's instinct when he ran for president and he was president, was like, hey, we shouldn't be going and being the policemen of the world.
We shouldn't be going around the world and starting all these wars.
I think the problem with him was he surrounded himself with people who held a diametrically opposed view.
You know, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, John Bolton, people who never saw a war they didn't like and advocated for.
So there's movement.
There's movement happening within the Democratic Party.
Leadership is going crazy.
I think the Republican Party is, I don't know, I think they're trying to figure out what they're doing.
I mean, I think if they had someone like Ron DeSantis, who seems to be like the most reasonable amongst the potential candidates, he seems to be, you know, a pretty no-nonsense guy, not without his flaws, but he's more reasonable than anything that I'm seeing on the left.
It's one of those things where as it's all playing out, there's this sense of hopelessness because there's not a clearly defined path where this country's ship gets righted.
It's like I just see a lot of chaos and a lot of confusion and a lot of infighting and I don't know how this plays out.
It doesn't seem like there's a real clear, oh, this is our path to sanity.
And so I think that that creates opportunity for us as a country to get out of just this two-party system mindset and this mindset of fear that drives so many of the elections where instead of saying like, hey, I'm running for president because this is how I'm offering to lead the country.
This is how I'm offering to serve the country.
Here are the things that I'll do.
Instead of that, we are kind of relegated to, hey, vote for me or vote for my party because the other guy is the devil.
And really treating voters like we're idiots and we don't care or have the intelligence to actually look at, okay, here's where you stand on this issue.
Here's where this other person stands on this issue.
I'm going to make my decision not based on party.
But actually based on, hey, who best reflects my values?
Who is actually going to put the country first, the interests of the American people and the country first?
And not just the people who say the words, but the people who actually have the record and the policies to back that up.
And so I hope that this is the direction that we're moving in as more and more people get disillusioned with Leaders in both parties who care more about their own political ambitions and their own party's power than they actually do care about the American people.
It seems like part of the problem is that that attack style of politics works.
Like, just think about someone saying, oh, she's crazy.
Like, okay, how is she crazy?
But that's a narrative.
And it gets out there because they attacked you.
So that stuff works.
That's what's unfortunate.
Is that instead of – to make it – like if there was an incentive to say these are our plans and this is how we can implement this and just ignore negativity on the other side.
You know, when I was running for president at town halls that we held across the country, it didn't really matter where we were, whether it was a small town or a big city, middle America, East Coast, West Coast.
One of the things that one of the media embedded reporters that would kind of follow us around everywhere we went said, made an observation that I thought was pretty awesome.
This reporter said, gosh, you know, I go to all these different campaign and candidate events.
Yours is the only one where people walk out feeling hopeful and feeling inspired.
And we had Democrats, Republicans and independents and libertarians at every single one of those.
And it was because we talked about different issues.
We talked about, you know, the threat of nuclear war.
We talked about this new Cold War, the dangers of continuing down this path.
We talked about things that they – education.
We talked about how – we actually talked about these things most days.
I never brought up Trump.
Because why?
I'm running and I'm asking you, hey, let me have the opportunity to serve you and here's what we will do.
Whereas with these other candidates, these other Democrat candidates who are running, people left angry.
People left angry.
And that was their only goal was like, hey, how many lines against Trump can we use that we know are going to piss people off?
And motivate them through anger and fear rather than through hope and inspiration for what we can do together as a country.
That's the direction that we need to go.
And there are a lot of things that are issues that are of concern.
And treating people with respect and like they have intelligence and actually tackling those issues Breaking through and being able to deliver that message to the American people I think is the challenge.
I think people want it, but the media does a really great job of kind of reducing things to their lowest kind of standard.
Do you think that the biggest challenge or one of the...
I should just rephrase that.
One of the biggest challenges, I believe, is the influence of money and...
Dave Smith was on the podcast recently, and we went over the defense budget, and I had no idea it was that much.
It's such an insane amount of money.
How?
Can decisions be made that are not influenced by that money?
When you're talking about, what was it, $1.7 trillion?
That is a preposterously huge amount of money per year.
That was the 2022 budget, apparently.
What can be done I think we're good to go.
To all the political decisions that get made in this country, particularly when it has to do with foreign policy.
When you're talking about, and you have been a very outspoken critic of interventionalist foreign policy and wars that are unnecessary and that put lives in danger and cost incredible amounts of money but enrich the coffers of all these corporations.
It is these massive defense corporations who make all these different weapons systems from the smallest to the most powerful nuclear weapons and missiles.
When we are at war, they make a lot of money.
When politicians, even if we're not at war, but are threatening that we may go to war, they make a lot of money.
And these decisions are not made within the context of, hey, what does our military actually need?
What do we need to ensure that our military is ready to defend our country and our national security interests?
It is very often what members of Congress are advocating for, even more than the military is asking for sometimes, because of those cozy relationships with the military industrial complex, with these massive defense contractors and their lobbyists.
So there's a direct correlation as the money is changing hands there.
The problem is not with the Democratic Party, the Republican Party.
On this issue, when you see so much divisiveness on tons of other issues facing our country, everything from infrastructure to education, all these other things, you see like, oh my gosh, Democrats and Republicans can't agree on anything.
This issue of putting our country in a continual state of war is supported by leaders in both parties and the majority of people in both parties.
And it's directly tied to the military-industrial complex's influence and tied to people who, you know, want to act and look tough, but aren't asking the most important questions like, okay, if we do this, will this help the American people or hurt the American people?
If we vote to, you know, send these billions of dollars to Ukraine, is that strengthening our national security or undermining it?
You'll hear a lot of rhetoric, especially recently, saying, hey, if we've got to send all this money to Ukraine, otherwise Russia's going to come and attack us.
Otherwise, our national security will be undermined.
So they say all these things to foment fear in people's minds, but they're not rooted in reality.
So what we're seeing play out now is essentially a proxy war.
U.S. is engaging in a proxy war with Russia using Ukraine as their military.
So the U.S. and some European countries, predominantly the U.S., though, are providing We're good to go.
Years before, obviously, Russia's invasion in Ukraine, this anti-Russia sentiment has been building up by the permanent Washington establishment and laying the groundwork and this was the opportunity that they saw.
It's put us in the most dangerous position we, the American people, and the world has ever been in, in that a nuclear war could break out in a week, in 30 days.
We are staring over the precipice of that nuclear brink now more than ever before.
We're hearing language coming from Putin, from Medvedev, from different Russian nationalist leaders saying, no, Putin, you should go and use those nuclear weapons.
Whether they're the tactical nukes or the strategic nukes, doesn't matter.
There is no way to win this.
That would spark...
A nuclear war.
It would spark World War III. And the result of that is destruction of the world.
It is destruction of the world as we know it.
And, you know, I hate to paint such a bleak picture, but people need to know that this is the reality that we're facing, that our leaders have pushed us and led us to this brink of nuclear war.
They have their own bunkers and ways to protect themselves.
There is no shelter for the American people.
I think it was last time I was here, I talked to you about the nuclear scare that we had in Hawaii and how this message went out to everybody saying, hey, missile incoming, seek shelter immediately.
This is not a drill.
What everybody found out immediately is there is no shelter.
There is no shelter.
There's no place to go.
There's no place where you can take your loved ones and your kids to be protected not only from the blast but the fallout and the lack of food and water and everything else that comes after.
New York City recently put out a PSA. I don't know if you saw it, but it is literally a video ad that they put out saying, hey, here's what you do in the event of a nuclear explosion.
Why are they putting this out now?
Because of where we are as a country.
The problem is, as it shows in this video, their advice to the people of New York City is get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.
Who's gonna tell you it's okay to go outside during a nuclear blast in the United States, something that's never happened ever and that we're completely woefully unprepared for?
I was in, I think it was after my second deployment.
When I came back from the Middle East, I went on a trip and did some travel through Eastern Europe and went and actually visited Chernobyl.
And it was astonishing to me even decades after that happened.
Because I was curious.
I'd heard about it and I was like, okay.
Went on this little bus and went out there.
They gave us these radiation monitors, these handheld radiation monitors, so that wherever we were, you know, you could kind of test and see where the radiation still existed.
They're like, oh, you're going to see apple trees and things like that?
Don't eat any of the fruit because it's contaminated.
It is still contaminated decades later.
Walking through the middle of the town, I know everyone's seen the pictures and obviously now with that Chernobyl series, I think that Netflix did.
More and more people know the story, but walking through the school and the classrooms where the desks and the books and the kids' shoes and the deflated basketballs, everything is still there in the way that it was when people fled and had to evacuate.
When that nuclear plant melted down.
It was so eerie walking through there.
You could almost kind of feel the heaviness of what happened there.
And then as we were leaving after we left and were crossing back into Ukraine, Before we got on the bus, we had to go through these radiation, kind of like the thing you walk through in TSA, except it tests for radiation to make sure you're not actually bringing any contaminants with you back into TSA. All of that is to say, this is what we're talking about.
So you see that kind of video, and you see how completely out of touch it is with the reality of what could happen in the event of a nuclear attack.
And the fact that Russia's got, what, over 6,000 nuclear warheads.
The United States has over 5,000 nuclear warheads.
Both countries making up 90% of the total number of nuclear warheads that exist in the world.
And literally it would just take the flick of a match to spark this war off.
And that's where say, okay, well, you hear President Biden say, well, this is Putin's war.
This is Putin's fault.
It's Putin who's the one who's solely responsible.
Well, the United States and some of these European NATO countries are fueling this war.
And need to provide the leadership to bring about a negotiated outcome.
That is exactly what needs to happen here to prevent the destruction of the planet and life as we know it.
They're not doing that.
And in doing so they are failing the American people and putting us in this position of Not knowing where we're going to be in the event that this kicks off.
Do you think that whoever the powers that be and whatever the influence is from the military industrial complex, that they are trying to prolong this in order to profit?
So they're trying to continue to fund Ukraine.
This gives them an excellent reason to Ramp up budgets and keep shipping over weapons and arms.
They keep making more and more profit and just get us right to the point where it gets squirrely.
Well, Putin won't do it.
He won't do it.
He won't do it.
But if he does it, there's no pulling back from that.
And the only reason why we would ever get to that point is because people are trying to make more money.
I am concerned that we may have passed that point already.
You're talking about people pushing us right up, right up to the line and then just saying, well, you know, the whole theory of nuclear weapons is one of mutually assured destruction, right?
There's no way Putin will ever launch this.
Because of that fear of like, okay, well, we will all be destroyed if that happens.
And they're saying, you know, Putin is many things, but he's not crazy.
There's no way he's going to do this.
Well, they're talking about doing it.
They changed their nuclear weapons policy so that according to their laws, they would be authorized to use a nuclear weapon if they are facing any kind of existential threat, whether it's coming from a nuclear source or not.
And you look at the situation that Putin is in right now.
He's boxed into a corner.
He's lost face.
He is in a place where he may feel like he has nothing else to lose.
And you find that same kind of mentality in people who are suicidal or people who are bullied or people who feel like they're Their best option is a way out.
And so to be so dismissive and say, well, you know, Putin's not crazy.
He's not going to do this.
It denies the reality of the position that he's in.
The opposing argument is, hey, if we don't stop Russia now, then they will take over all of Europe and come at us, and then we'll have to deal with them later.
The problem with this is, you look at all the intelligence reports and things that were coming out in Russia first, Was preparing to invade Ukraine and then invaded Ukraine.
This is what they were saying, right?
Is they're going to do shocking on Ukraine, take all of Ukraine and then move on to, you know, other NATO allies and then to the West as a whole.
That has all been completely disproven and the intelligence community failed us as a country with those reports because we've seen how Russia's military has been depleted and destroyed in many cases.
And as far as, you know, taking over, they're having a hard time holding on to a little sliver of a non-NATO country that is directly their neighbor right now.
what to speak of being able to go and take over Ukraine and move into other countries.
So, you know, these arguments that they keep making to justify sending billions and billions more of our taxpayer dollars to fund this proxy war, there is no justification because it is undermining our economic security and it's undermining our national security there is no justification because it is undermining our economic security and it's undermining our national security and putting us and the world in a place where nuclear war Imminent.
Not like, oh, a far future possibility.
Total destruction of the planet.
Is imminent if this occurs.
Our leaders are completely failing us because they've got the power and the ability to be able to deescalate and pull us back from the brink, but they're failing to do so.
This is something, and I'm bringing this up because no one else is talking about it.
I ran for president in 2020, warning of this outcome, seeing, hey, this is what's around the corner if you continue to wage these new cold wars.
I talked about it virtually every single day, brought it up in virtually every single interview, and the media refused to talk about it.
It was never brought up in any of the debates.
And I was even told by a reporter, like, come on, why do you keep talking about nuclear war?
Here we are.
We are unfortunately in this place.
And my concern is, you know, look, the next presidential election is over, what, two years away?
Over two years away.
We don't know what's going to happen next week or next month with this war.
The only way to stop this now is for the American people, people in Europe, people around the world, Taking that direct action to make sure that our voice is heard and holding our leaders' feet to the fire to literally bring about an end to this insanity and save our future.
Did you ever see the video of, I forget who it was from the State Department, who was on the Colbert Report?
We played it the other day during the Dave Smith podcast.
And there was a guy who wrote a book, and this was in 2014, and he was on the Colbert Report back when it was on Comedy Central.
And he was essentially bragging about how they are trying to lure the Ukraine.
We'll play it for you just so you can watch it.
Gideon Rose.
It's crazy.
First of all, before we play it, one of the things that's crazy about it is that they're essentially bragging openly about foreign policy shenanigans that are just designed to try to undermine Russia.
And they're doing it on Comedy Central in a joking way while this guy's selling a book.
Countries have to develop over time, and Ukraine basically, after the end of the Soviet Union, faced two tracks.
It could stay a sort of stagnant, corrupt, authoritarian country tied to Russia, or it could essentially join the West.
It could modernize, liberalize, become a democracy.
At the last minute, when it looked like it was going to trade up from its sort of abusive relationship with its boyfriend from the hood to a nice, yuppie...
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And the president, who himself was tied to the old elites and the eastern part of the country who ties to Russia, decided to back off the change and go join Russia.
The problem was the western parts of the country and the younger parts of the country and the more modern liberal parts of the country basically knew that they had no future being Russia's vassal, and so they took to the streets.
Why isn't Obama spiking the ball in the end zone and calling Putin and saying, hey, you might have won the medal count, but we won the country count, biatchi?
It's actually a very good question, and the answer is that we don't want Russia to intervene and kick over the table like a game of risk and take Ukraine back.
When we talk about the military-industrial complex, it's not just the United States, because the longer this goes on, the more NATO is strengthened.
I think two other countries, was it Finland and Sweden, have just joined NATO as a result of this.
These big arms deals are also happening with NATO. The major producers of these weapons systems are coming from the military industrial complex here.
So there are a lot of interests that are pushing to build and strengthen this whole NATO complex.
And this war is giving them a great opportunity to do it.
There should have been a very direct and full-hearted attempt to de-escalate and try to negotiate an outcome to this conflict before it started or very quickly after.
But instead, what we saw was an influx of money and weapons systems There doesn't seem to be any clear path to removing money from influence, especially this kind of money.
It comes down to who we are choosing to elect, really.
Like, yeah, okay, we could, you know, yeah, Congress should pass legislation to prohibit lobbyists and PACs from giving money to members of Congress and candidates.
That's what should happen.
But it's not what's going to happen so long as these same crooks are in charge.
So where does that leave us as voters?
It leaves us with making a choice.
There are candidates from both parties right now who are running saying, hey, I'm running to serve you in Congress and I refuse to accept a single penny from a lobbyist or a corporate PAC. There are choices out there.
We need more of those choices of people who are not just saying, yeah, America first, I'll put country first, but then are going in the back door and making these shady deals.
People are actually backing up Saying, yes, I'm here to serve you and only you, the American people, and backing it up with their actions.
So moving forward, like, you know, even Trump, one of the things, like, I don't know, I believe it was with Steve Hilton.
He was having this interview, and he started talking about the military-industrial complex, about how these people want to go to war.
And you've never heard a sitting president say something like that.
And it was one of the things that I think is kind of interesting about Trump, is that he is such a loose cannon that he'll say things like that, which is no one's going to say that.
But how do you stop that influence once a person gets into office?
Because it seems like, obviously you never got into that spot, but it seems like once you get into that spot, there's so many moving pieces, and there's so much influence, and there's so much money, and there's a lot of you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, we're working together on this, so that we can work together on that, and we can open up the pathway for this, if you open up that.
By electing a real leader who has a backbone and whose motive is to serve the country and not these interests.
You see it with the military-industrial complex.
You see it with big pharma.
You see it with big insurance.
You see it with a lot of these different—Wall Street— By electing a leader who has the backbone and courage to stand up for the American people, that's how we start to make this change.
Because then that person who's elected as president, commander-in-chief, then makes the decision of who's going to be the director of the National Security Council, who's going to be the secretary of defense, who's going to be the secretary of state.
Who's going to lead all of these federal institutions, including the national security state, law enforcement, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, making those decisions and then going down.
So it's not only those who you're pointing to those positions, but recognizing that those bureaucrats who've been there for a really long time and who are very cozy with all of these special interests actually bring about that institutional change that we need I'm not saying that this is an easy task at all.
It is a tough task, which requires a tough, strong leader to be able to do it.
That's why I ran for president, because I've lived through experiencing the cost and consequences of presidents and members of Congress who don't give a shit about the cost of war.
Not only on our military and our veterans, but on the American people and on the people in the countries where we've gone and waged these regime change wars in the name of spreading democracy and humanitarianism.
Meanwhile, we're destroying those countries and harming those people.
A leader who can actually fulfill that responsibility of Commander-in-Chief is what we need.
I want to say like 93 or 94. He had this bit about what it's like the day you take office, that he thinks you're in a smoky room and they show you an angle of the Kennedy assassination that you've never seen before.
And then they stop the projector and you just go, any questions?
Yeah, what's my agenda?
Like, what do I need to do?
Like, tell me what to do.
Because this is what people think, is that once you get into office, then Because so many people had promises and campaign slogans and you go, okay, was Obama just lying?
Did he never have intentions to do those things?
Or once you get into office, do they appraise you of all the threats to the world?
Do they tell you what kind of influence the military-industrial complex really has and how impossible it is to get the barbs out of the skin of the American people?
But what I will say is if we elect a president who cares more about the title and the reelection and the power than they do about actually doing the job To serve the American people in our country,
then yeah, we will end up with a president who is easily bullied and kowtowing to these special interests, whatever they may be, told, oh, hey, look, if you make this decision that we don't like, whether it be the military-industrial complex or big pharma, we're going to pull our support from you.
Or we're going to do this or we're going to do that.
The system as it sits today, that's not a viable option.
It's not a viable option because I think it was back when Ross Perot ran for president.
I think he was an independent, if I'm not mistaken.
And he was beating Bill Clinton in the polls.
You know, both parties saw that as a direct threat to themselves and got together and rigged the system to, practically speaking, shut out a third option.
And then also they changed the electoral college to make it so that if you have a viable third option, basically none of the parties will get the minimum number of electoral votes through this winner-take-all system needed to actually win.
And then it goes to Congress, and then Congress will make that selection.
So the electoral college system itself also needs to be reformed to one that is proportional.
So if I were to run for president and win 60% of Texas, I would get 60% of Texas's electoral votes rather than if you win a state, you get- All of them.
It would be great to live in a world where that were not the case, but when you look at the practical application of our electoral system right now, it's not a viable path.
I am deeply, deeply concerned about this very real and imminent threat of nuclear war that no one is talking about that no one is preparing the American people for that people are kind of sitting ducks because of the decisions that our leaders have made.
If I felt that there was a way that I could Stop that and make a difference and impact that and pull us back from the brink Then yeah, I'd seriously consider running again my concern though is like We don't know what's gonna happen and you know,
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we don't know if it's gonna be too late I There's no way to argue with that.
Again, the media hardly covers it, and if they do, they're talking about it as though it's like, you know, one missile system against the other.
They're talking about the waging of a nuclear war as though it can be won, or as though there's some kind of limitation to the destruction and devastation that it will cause.
You know, going back to Reagan, he talked about how a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
You go back to, you know, JFK recognized the serious danger and risk of a nuclear war.
We go back to these leaders in the past from both parties who saw how dangerous a nuclear war would be and therefore took action to try to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons in the world and try to put these nonproliferation treaties in place.
Almost all of those treaties have been stripped away at this point.
There is one left between the United States and Russia, the two largest nuclear powers in the world, and that is being eroded as we speak the longer this war continues.
So, no, I think the American people don't largely know, and that's why it's so important to talk about it, because as we sit here today, that's the only thing that will make a difference at this point.
Is people here in the United States, people in Europe, people around the world stepping up, speaking out, making sure that our voices are heard.
taking action to say no.
Absolutely not.
Our leaders need to look out for our lives, our futures, our country, this planet, and negotiate an end to this war and prevent destruction of this planet, a nuclear holocaust.
Don't question the corruption that everybody knows exists in Ukraine.
Don't question where those weapons are going.
Don't question what the actual real life ramifications are to our national security as a country.
To our future, given nuclear war is on the line, what to speak of the direct economic implications we are already feeling with, you know, gas prices hiking in many places in the country, increased inflation, you know,
supply shortages, food shortages, the U.N., The UN's food guy, I can't remember his official title, but he's already sounded a warning saying that this war is causing an unprecedented threat of global starvation.
Global starvation.
So the ramifications of this, people are just like, okay, go to war and here's more guns and here's more weapons.
And instead of actually being leaders and advocating for peace and a negotiated resolution where, yes, Ukraine's going to have to give up something.
Russia's going to have to give up something.
That's literally what happens when you negotiate an end to a war.
You can look throughout history.
Nobody walks away completely happy.
But that's what needs to happen for the sake of humanity at this point, and our leaders are failing to do so.
And so we're at a point where the future is in our hands, and what are we willing to do?
If we continue down this path where we have seen this war continue to escalate since the invasion happened, we will end up in World War III and a nuclear holocaust.
If nothing else changes and we continue down this path, This is where that path leads.
It's very difficult for people to live in a world without nuclear war, to live in a world where you get up, your alarm clock goes off, you go to work, you drive the same way every day, to imagine the eradication of all civility,
of all the things, all of our structure in terms of All of our just everything from all of our civil liberties to all of our roads and utilities being gone.
And so we're in a position where, you know, I'm sure the billionaires of the world have their, you know, deep bunkers with food sources and water sources.
I know there are contingencies in place for our politicians at the highest levels, should this situation occur, so that they can continue to manage and wage the war from another location.
And so that this occurred should not have been a surprise.
I don't know who did it.
I haven't seen any evidence to point in one direction or another.
You know, Russia's got the financial investment in that pipeline.
So, I don't know, somebody's done the numbers, I don't remember what they are, but how much money they lost in that, with that explosion, and that pipeline being sabotaged.
So I don't know who is responsible, but we should not be surprised that as this war escalates, that this sort of thing happens.
And it should cause everyone to wonder, okay, so this week it was a pipeline, a major energy pipeline being sabotaged, cutting off the ability for, you know, major countries in Europe as they head into winter from having that option.
Internet cables, deep undersea internet cables, GPS satellites, other necessary pieces of infrastructure, not only to the United States, but to the world.
What's next in this escalation of war?
And again, this is not just about something happening in Europe, because again, we've already seen in this past week At least on the West Coast and other parts of the country, how gas prices have gone up 50 cents, 70 cents.
They're continuing to rise.
All of these things are directly connected.
And you mentioned the loss of civil liberties.
Let's say we get to a point where World War III is sparked because of this, but a nuclear weapon has not been used.
It's absolutely a realistic outcome to imagine some kind of martial law being implemented here in the United States because now we are a country at war and there are certain regulations and civil liberties that are being violated, just like we've seen with the Patriot Act in the past.
We've seen recent examples of the country being shut down by the government in the public interest.
And so these outcomes are not just theoretical.
This is where we are headed if we don't change course.
Yeah, I'm concerned about all that and I'm concerned about the lack of understanding that people have about the implementation of things like a digital currency that is centralized, that's controlled by the government.
And you look at that and what is the recent thing of...
I think Elizabeth Warren was pushing for credit card companies to start tracking people who buy ammunition and firearms and report that to the government.
That's why I'm warning people about the impending doom of where our leaders are taking us.
And really, it's that care for each other and for our planet and our future That should encourage us to be involved and to be engaged.
And as disheartening as our election systems and politics can be, we've got to know that we have to be the change.
No one else is going to come and save us.
Our founders envisioned this country as a country of, by and for the people.
Many in our government have forgotten that, unfortunately.
They're not going to wake up one day and magically remember.
It's up to us to bring about that change and the system that our founders set up for us.
It has its flaws.
We've got a lot of work to do on it.
You know, lobbyists and PAC money infecting or corrupting our politics, you know, election integrity, making sure that, you know, people are actually trusting the system and that their votes will be counted as they were cast.
So there's work to do, but these changes can only come about when we are all informed and engaged in the process.
So one piece of news.
Last time I came on your show, I talked about launching a podcast.
I'm finally doing it.
Specifically to be able to really, you know, I'll go and do different interviews.
They're like four to five minutes long.
I have like, okay, cool.
I can say four sentences in that period of time.
But to actually take a deep dive into examining like, hey, here are the challenges that we're facing.
Here's how we identify what the problem is and the cause and here are some of the things that we need to be able to do to solve these problems.
And really when you think about it, all of these different things, you might see a headline here, a sound bite there, there's always so much more to it.
And looking at different people's views and actually encouraging those conversations and helping people just to understand each other as people.
And that's one of the reasons why podcasts are so huge.
The numbers that we get off of this conversation will be so much bigger than any other conversation that you can have anywhere else, which is weird.
Right?
But that's why.
It's because people recognize like, hey, this is not, it's not satisfying to watch these five minute chunks on CNN where people talking over each other with three different screens, you know, three different boxes on the screen and everybody's yelling over each other, alright, well thank you for your input, bye!
And it's not an accident that you never hear people on those channels saying, hey, you should be careful about what Pfizer is telling you because of the drugs or the vaccines or whatever it is they're trying to sell you and then cut to the Pfizer commercial.
I know you've talked about it a lot before, too, is like people talk about healthcare reform in America, but most people who talk about it aren't identifying The root cause of the problem, which is our entire system incentivizes sickness and obesity and people being unhealthy.
Our system is built around that.
It does not incentivize health and wellness and nutrition and prevention and fitness.
And, you know, the problem is these corporations are always trying to make more money every year.
And if they go around telling you, hey, you know, we'd make less money, but you'd be happier if you stop eating sugar and garbage and start exercising every day.
And I think this was censored around, I think the CDC was saying that people who are obese are more likely to have severe health consequences if they catch COVID-19.
And so the reporter asked, and I don't know, I don't remember which outlet it came from, but the reporter said, so are you the White House therefore then advocating for nutrition and health in order to try to prevent that?
And she just said, we take all of our guidance from the CDC and the CDC says get vaccinated.
She couldn't even just say, well, yeah, of course, try to be healthy.
And this goes back to that information where these norms have been created.
And I've had conversations with different people recently.
Somebody who was telling me about his experience, like they were overseas and deployed and it was somebody's birthday and like one of the guys knew how to cook and he made this amazing orange cake.
He actually went to the market and got oranges and made this cake from scratch, like not even from a box.
And it was better than a cake from Walmart.
And in my mind, I'm like, holy crap.
Like, why is it abnormal to make a cake from scratch where you put the flour and you put the sugar and you put the oil or whatever.
I think they're terrified that if they do talk about it, that it makes all these decisions and opinions very unpopular, and that people are going to be scared about it.
Which is because it's just a political game of football versus people that are actually trying to change things for the better to make the country a healthier, happier place to be.