Blake Masters, the Arizona Senate candidate endorsed by Donald Trump, argues that reckless foreign interventions in Ukraine and climate alarmism like the Green New Deal dangerously expand federal power while ignoring domestic crises such as border security and inflation driven by Federal Reserve money printing. Influenced by libertarians Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises, he opposes gun confiscation and police defunding, positioning himself against establishment rivals Mitch McConnell and Mark Kelly. Ultimately, his platform frames the election as a choice between left-wing totalitarianism and economic liberty, suggesting that true national security requires shrinking government scope rather than expanding it through global engagement or regulatory mandates. [Automatically generated summary]
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Why I Left Libertarianism00:11:33
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What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm very excited for today's show.
As you people who listen and watch the show, you know, I recently threw my support behind Blake Masters, who is running for U.S. Senator out in Arizona.
And he was good enough to join us on the show today.
So Mr. Masters, how are you, sir?
Doing great.
Great to be with you.
Thank you, Dave.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming on.
You must be growing somewhat concerned as you seem to be surging in the polls.
And it looks like you might actually have to go to Washington and be a U.S. Senator.
That sucks.
I'm sorry.
I don't like Washington that much.
It's true.
I'll try to spend every single day and hour I can back in Arizona, but it'll be a good problem to have because I'm really looking forward.
Look, we need to kick Mark Kelly out.
We'll talk about all that and talk about why.
And I actually think Arizona could be vote number 51 here.
It really could be the decisive vote that determines who controls the upper chamber.
Not like we don't have some work to do in the Republican Party, but my gosh, look at what Biden's been doing in the last 21 months and just enabled by people like Mark Kelly, who's a rubber stamp for his agenda.
So if we can kick Mark Kelly out, get me in there.
I will actually represent the people from Arizona.
Well, it's certainly, it's not that far-fetched that this could be, excuse me, that this could be the 51st vote.
It's very within the realm of possibilities.
And now it seems, you know, I was looking, I was reading up on this a little bit.
And one of the interesting dynamics is that in general, from what I've observed, MAGA Republicans tend to under poll.
You know, it's just kind of like a theme.
Like Trump did much better in both of his presidential campaigns than he was polling.
And then also I was reading that in when Mark Kelly won, I guess the election eve polls all had him up like nine or 10 points.
And he ended up winning by only a couple of points.
So when these polls start getting very, very close and you see, I mean, I've just been watching.
I mean, the progressive establishment is really freaking out about the fact that they might lose this seat.
Totally.
And, you know, it's always this weird question with polls, right?
I think half the pollsters are dishonest and they're just trying to do suppression polls that are trying to set the narrative rather than reflect where the race is, right?
But throw them out.
They don't matter.
What about the ones who are being honest?
And I think the honest ones are showing, yeah, my race right now with Mark Kelly's neck and neck.
But the most honest pollsters, when they publish that result, they'll even admit like, hey, we might be missing people, right?
That shy Trump voter effect, they call it.
And I, you know, but then they know that and then they try to control for that.
So who knows, right?
Maybe these polls are on the nose.
But I suspect you're right, especially this cycle, right?
I mean, you've got the president, you've got Biden on TV saying you're a fascist, you're a semi-fascist or whatever.
You're a threat to democracy if you support the police or if you support a border wall or these very, you know, commonsensical things.
And so I think a lot of voters, I know so many, this is anecdote, right?
But so many grassroots Republicans in Arizona tell me like, like we don't answer poll calls, right?
First of all, who has the time?
Second of all, when Biden is accusing us of being like enemies of democracy or whatever, who's going to confess their political opinions to a stranger knowing what the FBI or the weaponized DOJ might come and do to them.
So no, people are going to keep their opinions private.
Thank you very much.
But then go to the polls and vote hard on November 8th.
Yeah, that's what you're a fascist if you support your local police.
However, if you support the national police locking up your political enemies, then I guess you're on the side of democracy.
We call that democracy.
That's right.
That's right.
Don't ask any questions, please.
Man, it is a weird, it is a weird upside-down world that we live in.
So, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about today was, and one of the things that got me really interested in you as a candidate is that I know that you, you know, kind of floated around in the world that I really live in for many years.
Like, you were published on LewRockwell.com.
I know I've read in some of these hit pieces that I've read about you from a lot of the same publications who write hit pieces about me.
I'm not even running for anything.
But I think it was the Mother Jones one that said they were like, as a Stanford sophomore, he was sharing Murray Rothbard articles around to his friends.
And I'm like, no, that sounds awesome.
I'm very interested in this guy.
So I'm curious what, like, what I know kind of me and you are around the same age.
I think a lot of our coming of age was around the same time, reading a lot of the same people.
I know you've read a lot of Rothbard and Hoppe and Mises and Lou Rockwell and stuff.
What today, what, what, like, in what regard do you hold those thinkers?
What influence do they have over how you view the world today?
I mean, they were super formative, right?
And eventually, you know, or occasionally, rather, I go back and dust off the Rothbard or the Mises, right?
But that was, I mean, I was steeped in it.
That was my late high school and just all of college.
And that was like my formative political thinking.
Remember, this is about 2003 to 2009 for me, that period where I was just steeped in libertarian theory all day every day.
I was that kid who would take Mises to my econ professor at Stanford and just be like, everything you're teaching is bullshit.
Here's what Mises has to say, right?
And so, yeah, that's like how I got where I am now, right?
But I think you got to remember at this time, it's like the Iraq war was really surging.
I think you got to surge, what, 06, 07?
It became clear to me that either the intelligence for that war was just wrong or they knew it was wrong and they lied to us, right?
Became clear to me that that wasn't working.
That wasn't a good thing.
We were starting to see the beginning of a forever war.
And so this anti-intervention, more Ron Paul perspective, right?
Can we focus on peace and freedom here at home?
Yeah, let's have a strong lethal military, but can we actually use it for defense?
What about that?
Yet, that was just a huge, that was like my political thinking.
And so much of that, I think, persists today, right?
I used to sort of identify as a libertarian.
Now I'm more of a America first conservative, right?
But there's still so much common ground in recognizing almost at the top theoretical level, right?
That power, government power is like this really bad thing.
It's this live wire.
It is like seeing a live electrical cable, right?
And it doesn't mean you can just surrender it, right?
And I might have said that when you were 21, like, hey, don't don't don't get involved in the system.
All it does is corrupt.
No, I think power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts.
Absolutely.
What I've noticed is that the left-wing totalitarians, they don't care, right?
They're coming after us.
And so I see this America first conservatism and what President Trump was able to do by getting in there and winning in 2016, upsetting the apple cart.
I think that's our best vector towards fulfilling these ideas, right?
Did he make everything perfect?
No, he didn't.
But man, he slashed regulations.
He got the economy humming again.
He was a great foreign policy president in terms of like drawing down these endless failed wars and not starting any new ones.
And then look at how quickly all those gains are gone now that we have a more conventional establishment left-wing politician and Biden in office, right?
So it's just part of the evolution.
You know, for me, it started with Ayn Brand.
And then I graduated to the Mises libertarian set.
But I think that stuff is important.
And yeah, I get the hit pieces saying that, oh, Blake's read this stuff.
This is horrible.
And I think everybody in Congress should read this stuff and we'd be a better society if more leaders did.
Yeah, well, I tell you, I may have some differences with you on Trump.
I mean, I do think he could have, he could have drawn down the wars a bit more and certainly could have reined in government spending.
I mean, even pre-COVID, just the spending was out of control.
But I do, it makes me excited the idea that there would be a U.S. senator who's actually read Rothbard and Hoppe and Mises.
I assume Rand must have, just because his father must have made him read some of it at some point.
You can't grow up with Ron Paul as your dad and not be forced to read some Rothbard at some point.
I suspect that's right.
Yes, but okay, so we'd have two now in there.
So that would be very interesting.
I guess one of the main, the most important issues to me as I see it, and I think most libertarians, and I do have some listeners who are out there in Arizona, is the military-industrial complex opposing wars and opposing the Federal Reserve.
And right now, I think, you know, as you said, look, I mean, that whole era of the George W. Bush, Barack Obama war on terrorism error that has largely been rejected by the American people, although some of the wars are still, you know, persist to this day.
This is also what built the infrastructure for the war on terrorism, the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, all the things being used to target right-wing Americans today and justify this kind of new domestic war on terrorism.
So I guess just more or less, can we could, if you go into the Senate, can we count on you to be a senator who's going to oppose warfare and oppose the Federal Reserve at every turn?
Yes, basically.
And, you know, that's at the level of principle, right?
I have no illusions that we're going to get on the gold standard next week.
You know, it's not going to happen in January when I get sworn in.
But I think honest money is incredibly important.
I was just on Ron Paul's podcast yesterday, which was surreal to me because, you know, I looked up to my parents still have the Ron Paul 08 and Ron Paul 2012 yard signs in the garage.
Right.
So I met Ron Paul at Jekyll Island in 2009 or 2010 at a Mises conference.
And so surreal to be on this podcast, but I was talking to him about this moment where in high school, I was reading a book about the Federal Reserve, right?
And when it dawned on me that this is how they can just print money, right?
I had always had this naive conception that the government is mostly financed through direct taxation, right?
No, actually, they just print a lot of money, right, with these financial machinations.
And the government likes it because they get to spend the first money, right?
They get to send it to the military defense contractors or, you know, redistribute it, however their policy prerogatives dictate.
But like that just screws normal people over.
It just causes inflation.
I've been worried about inflation for a long time.
Obviously, everybody's worried about inflation now.
It's like 13% here in the Greater Phoenix Metro.
That's crazy.
But even when it's 1% a year, right?
When the Fed was created in, was it 1913 or whatever?
Even 1913 to the year 2000, it had lost already, what, 90% of the purchasing power in the dollar just because of the slow, steady theft via inflation.
So I'm a pragmatist.
I'm looking for on the margin, how do I get my hooks into the Fed?
Can we at least get an accounting?
Can we audit the Fed?
Can we do all that?
I don't think we can go guns a blazing as one vote and try to meaningfully restore sound money next week.
Reckless Foreign Policy Risks00:11:57
So I want to temper expectations.
But no, I think that honest money is important.
My dad always told me you can't have an honest society if you don't have honest money.
I think that's very, I think your dad was very wise in saying that.
And I do.
I think that's so much of like what leads to so many of our societal problems is the money itself being phony.
And then everything else almost becomes phony as a result of that.
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I just read, I read in one, uh, one of the hit pieces on you that I just like chuckle reading at these things, but one of them, I think, I can't remember, maybe it was the Daily Beast one.
Um, but they said, uh, they said, Blake Masters has claimed that America is in quote societal decline.
And I remember reading that and being like, who could even argue with that?
I know, like, who could with a straight face look at you and say, like, ah, yeah, no, everything's going great.
We're doing really wonderful right now.
Yeah, there's this taboo against speaking the truth, right?
But everybody knows things are not working remotely as well as they should be, right?
You got a local street corner that might have been a safe place, you know, three years ago, let alone 15 years ago.
And then there's homelessness, there's crime, right?
Crime is going through the roof.
The Democrats have this culture of wanting to defund your local police.
And it's like, well, it turns out it's probably not probably not a good idea.
And so, yeah, what they come at me and sometimes I understand the hit piece logic makes sense and they're just making something up.
But sometimes they just, I'm like, that's not even a hit piece.
Like we are in massive societal decline.
I'm going to call it out.
Can we try to arrest it and reverse course?
But I think the left just wants to pretend everything is fine.
Don't ask any questions.
Let's just boil the frog.
And then we wake up in some totalitarian left-wing dystopia.
Yeah.
You know, I'll tell you, from my libertarian point of view, I almost feel like we'd be if there was, if, if there truly was a move to like defund the police, you know what I mean?
Like in the sense of like, if they were like, hey, we're just not going to enforce like gun gun control laws anymore and we're going to let citizens deal with it themselves.
I almost feel like we'd be in a better place than what the Democrat cities are giving to us now.
Cause I think citizens, a well-armed population would probably handle a lot of these things immediately.
The crazy thing about it is that they then throw the book at anyone who defends themselves, which is what we've seen in all of these blue cities.
So it's one thing like if the, if the state, you know, in or the city and, you know, in Los Angeles or San Francisco or something goes, we're not going to prosecute people who, you know, commit, you know, petty theft or who strong-armed robbery or things like this.
We're not going to prosecute them.
And then they'd be like, okay, well, those companies will just hire private security.
But they're like, no, no, no, we'll prosecute your security guards if they put their hands on the person who just robbed your store.
It's like, it's, it's as if they're intentionally trying to create the destruction of a civilized society.
That's right.
I think the left and the modern Democratic Party is sort of hijacked by this crazy progressive power-loving caucus, right?
The AOCs, the squads, the Chuck Schumers, even, right?
I think they just something about their politics, like they just like this chaos.
They really do.
And it's a one-two punch.
And I think you articulated it well.
They want to defund the police.
They don't want the police to be there to defend you, but then they want to take away your guns.
They don't want you.
They hate the Second Amendment.
They all say that they, oh, we love it.
We just want common sense gun control or whatever.
No, they want to confiscate all semi-autos.
And after they do that, they'll come after your pump action shotgun, right?
They fantasize about Canada or Australia, societies where only the government is allowed to own guns.
And it's kind of like, what are you planning to do, man?
Like, why do you want to take away our guns so badly, right?
They want to defund the police and then they want to take your guns away so that you cannot protect yourself or your family.
And I agree, that's intolerable.
And that is like the precondition for actual tyranny.
And it's why I think, you know, the Second Amendment is the one that protects all the others, right?
In some sense, it's co-equal to the first.
It's the most important.
We can never ever lose it.
And when I get in the Senate, I'll be the most pro-Second Amendment senator.
All right.
Well, very good.
So you got Trump's endorsement, which I think was like a big deal.
Obviously, he's the most, you know, the kind of de facto leader of the Republican, of the Republican Party.
But I did see that I read a couple places that like Mitch McConnell was not so enthusiastic about your campaign.
So I think you've kind of been upsetting the establishment of both parties, which is the highest compliment I think I could probably give you.
Do you think that's going to be like an issue for you going forward or that you're going to kind of much like Donald Trump had to battle his own party?
In fact, that might have been even more of a battle for him than even the Democrats.
Yeah, it's hard to know until I get there, but I don't expect to be put on the, you know, the choice committees or something like this.
I expect to, I'm not sure he wants me in there, you know.
Certainly he cut a lot of funding that had been allocated towards this race.
And I don't think it's because it was unwinnable.
Like here I am without that funding.
Like we've worked hard and we've tied this thing up.
So my job is to win this race with or without Mitch McConnell's money.
I think we're on a great track to win without.
But I'm not looking to just throw bombs and make his life miserable for the sake of it.
But man, I believe in what I'm campaigning on, right?
I don't want to just get in there and say like, oh, cool.
Job's done.
Democrats have been beaten.
Now we have a majority.
It's like, no, what good is it?
Right.
I want to implement this America first agenda.
I want to massively shrink the size of the federal government.
I'm not sure that many Republicans in DC actually do.
And so a lot of conversations to be had, right?
He's going to be stuck with me.
Not sure he wants that.
I'm not sure he doesn't.
I do think he wants the Senate majority.
But one way or another, he's going to have to live with me.
All right.
Well, I like that.
So I wanted to ask you a little bit.
I know I did, I saw your interview on the Liberty Report with Daniel McAdams and the great Ron Paul, of course, and it was very good.
And I know you talked a bit about this there, but I just want to make sure my audience hears it as well, because this is to me, probably, I think, the most important issue right now.
Is this insane brinksmanship with Russia and fighting this proxy war on Russia's border?
I mean, I think this is like the most reckless, dangerous possibility with a policy with the worst possible downside in the history of humanity.
You know, the risk being nuclear war and the benefit being that the Donbass region is ruled by Kiev instead of Moscow.
Like I just don't even see what is possibly in America's interest.
I support freedom for all people.
I think Ukrainians have a right to defend themselves.
I think it was wrong of Vladimir Putin to invade.
But where do you stand on this?
And of course, I'm sure if you get in there, you will be voting on more weapons packages and more things like this, because this is their plan, evidently, to draw this conflict out.
So where do you stand on the war in Ukraine?
Well, I share your concerns.
You know, to me, it feels like Biden is just in zombie-like fashion stumbling towards nuclear war.
In fact, just this morning, I have to go back and read it, but I saw a group of some prominent liberals came out and they said, Biden, rethink your strategy, man.
Can we please get to the negotiating table?
Right.
Like anything the U.S. does here, any intervention should be narrowly tailored to just get Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table.
Like we want to stop the war, right?
Not pour more oxygen onto the fire.
Hey, here's some more gas to pour onto the fire, which is what we're doing when we're sending 10, 12, 15 billion dollars.
It seems like every six weeks, just funneling it over there.
And where's it going?
Of course.
Remember when Rand Paul wanted an accounting of like, can we get a spreadsheet to see like how this money is being spent?
Is it useful?
Is it not?
No, no, no, no.
We can't do that.
You know, it's got to just trust us.
And so I really fear that, no, the interventions that we're making are making nuclear war more likely, not less likely, which is the definition of doing the wrong thing, right?
It's also a simple question of priorities.
It's like we got our own problems here at home.
You know, we have a wide open southern border with Mexico.
Why can't Congress find 20 billion to deal with that?
But it seems like they can just find 60 billion.
Of course, they're printing the 60 billion, which compounds our inflation.
60 billion for Ukraine.
They care more about Ukraine's border with Russia than our own border with Mexico.
So it's a simple matter of prioritization.
I think they've got it backwards.
I don't think that enough people have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, right?
And look at like Libya.
Hillary Clinton destroyed Libya, right?
It's more of a terrorist breeding grounds now than it was even before.
And so I think we need to show restraint, right?
No boots on the ground, obviously, in Ukraine.
I don't think we should be sending weapons to Ukraine.
I basically never have.
I think humanitarian aid in late February of this year, you know, maybe that's maybe that would have been fine.
But I think the whole thing has been massively counterproductive.
I think the Russian ruble is now stronger than it was before invaded.
And the real risk here is just continued incompetence, continued State Department management of the world.
And it actually doesn't work, right?
It just doesn't work.
And if we make nuclear war, I regard it as unlikely still, but man, we weren't even having to worry about this three years ago.
Sure.
Yeah.
No, saying, oh, nuclear armor gun, it might be coming.
Get ready.
And it's like, what are we doing?
Yeah.
It's look, I agree with you.
I regard it as unlikely, but unlikely is still, even if it went from being, you know, like a one in 100,000 chance to a one in 10,000 chance, a one in 10,000 chance of killing all humanity is still pretty concerning.
Right.
There's a lot of saber rattling from Washington.
And it's not as if it's just, you know, this isn't just like anti-war hippies or something like that, or just like, you know, Ron Paul libertarians or something who are like, hey, we should be, you know, working for peace here.
It's like Henry Kissinger even came out and said this policy is insane and we should be working to negotiate a peace.
Like when Henry Kissinger is like, hey, your foreign policy is getting a little bit reckless.
That's a guy you might want to listen to.
Like maybe you really are being pretty reckless if even Henry Kissinger is going, I wouldn't intervene over there.
This is a little bit much.
And it does seem that, you know, there's, it seems that it's almost like if you were trying to push kind of this new axis of Russia and China, and now it seems like Saudi Arabia is pretty flagrantly siding with them over us.
It's like, why are we even, it just makes no sense to me over, you know, a conflict in Ukraine that should be able to be negotiated away.
Stamps.com Shipping Promo Code00:03:02
That's right.
Really, I really worry about pushing Russia into the arms of China.
You know, Russia, to some extent, is already some kind of proxy for China.
Well, Biden is just slamming the pedal to the metal on that.
And China, I think, is our geopolitical rival, right?
We're already in some kind of cold war with China.
They're doing industrial espionage and all this stuff.
And so, like, we have to manage that situation intelligently.
And that is how you make sure that we never get into a hot war with China, which would be the end of the world.
We don't want that, right?
And so I just think, yeah, the hubris coming out of Washington's foreign policy establishment.
And again, I blame the Democrats for most of the dysfunction, but the establishment Republicans very often go along with it and in the past have perpetrated the sort of military adventurism abroad, right?
I think everybody needs a humility check.
And, you know, it doesn't mean you never have to intervene anywhere, right?
But to a first approximation, like we should not be doing that.
We should only be engaged.
I mean, I only believe in ever possibly putting troops in harm's way when there is a clear connection to an obvious U.S. defense interest.
Like the military needs to be strong, it needs to be lethal, but it needs to be used for defense, not for exporting democracy, not for nation building, not for caring more about, you know, this international border 8,000 miles away than our own border with Mexico.
And so it's all upside down, but I'm going to be a voice of reason on this stuff in the Senate.
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So I did, I want to ask you a little bit about China, because this is an area where I think I have a substantial kind of disagreement with most of the populist MAGA types and who are very hawkish on China.
And I certainly think the Chinese Communist Party is a real creepy, authoritarian government.
I wouldn't want to be a Chinese citizen living under that government.
I wouldn't really want to be an American citizen living under like Gavin Newsom or something like that.
But yes, I don't like authoritarian, creepy political leaders.
But I do think that much like with the situation with Russia, even as you kind of alluded to, the truth is that there is no option with all of these countries and their nuclear arsenals for us to have a direct military conflict with them.
That's just not, you know what I mean?
Like nuclear-armed countries can't have direct military conflict.
And it seems to me that really the battle between America and China, if there is one, is kind of economic competitors.
Now, I know they do a lot of things to try to infiltrate governments and stuff like this.
And they've got girlfriends of sitting members of the House intelligence committees and stuff like that.
But to me, I also, to me, as a libertarian, I guess I see that the best solution to that would be to roll back some of the power of the government so there's less to infiltrate.
And really, the primary solution, I think, is to is for us to win this economic race and be as rich and prosperous of a country as possible, which is I know you know, the answer to that is to cut government, allow free enterprise to reign, and we're going to destroy these, you know, quasi-commie, quasi-fascist Chinese ghost city bubble building insanity.
You know what I mean?
But what are your thoughts on it?
I mean, well, I agree with a whole lot of that.
I mean, one of the best things we can do to make sure that China never actually overtakes us or invades us or anything like that is to make sure that we have a strong society domestically, right?
Like one of the best ways, one of the best ways to fight China is to have a strong, healthy United States.
I mean, China looks over at our internal divisions.
They look over at our money printing, our debt.
They look over at our wokeness, infiltrating, you know, not just K through 12, but also the U.S. military.
They look at our left-wing politicians, I think, fanning the flames of racial division in this country.
They love it.
They love, remember, we agreed earlier on.
It shouldn't be controversial to admit, like we are living in a declining society and that is a problem.
And China looks over at us and they love the self-inflicted wounds, right?
So I agree, like, let's get government back to doing what it needs to be doing.
Article 1, Section 8, it's not actually that complicated, right?
It's probably complicated to make that happen again, but the principle is not complicated.
If we build a strong, peaceful, prosperous society, that's the best way to tell China to go shove off.
Right.
So I agree with that.
Now, I think China, like I said, like they are actively engaged in industrial espionage, corporate espionage.
You know, we're letting Chinese nationals pay full price into our universities, and we should probably stop doing that, right?
I think there are measures that we can take to really put China at bay.
Their communist totalitarian dictatorship, this conceit that you could ever have like free trade with them, or that they were going to liberalize if we helped them industrialize.
I think maybe you could say that was naive in the 90s.
Well, by this time, it's like criminally negligent to believe that.
So they're off doing their own thing, right?
We got to make sure that they're not trying to take over the whole world, that they're not going to show up on the California beaches someday.
But I agree with the spirit of what you said, which is like we have a lot of problems ourselves, right?
America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
Our job is not to liberalize or democratize China.
Our job is to make sure that the United States stays a free country.
And I think in the last 20 or 30 years, we've become remarkably more like the oligarchic communist China than the free country that we were hoping that they would become.
Yeah.
So, well, look, I agree with much of that.
And I don't think like the policy of like, you know, Chinese nationals going to universities or something like that.
Okay, I think that's reasonable.
I guess I just don't, what I don't understand, and I get called naive about this a lot from like when I, I know Tim Poole's audience and some people like that, a lot of the kind of Trump supporting audience is that I just don't even the idea of them storming the beaches here of China.
I mean, like when China hasn't even moved on Taiwan yet.
I mean, well, they'd start with Taiwan.
They'd start with Taiwan and then we wouldn't be able to produce any computer chips and they could put the global economy to a halt, right?
Yeah, okay.
I suppose there's a little bit of a threat there.
I mean, maybe the answer there is like, how do we figure out how to produce computer chips so we don't have to?
Like, look, it's like, if the truth is, we're as much as some people feel like we're this invincible empire.
I mean, we're not, if they invade Taiwan, there's really not much we can do about it except ask them to stop.
Even in the naval war games that they run, we lose that war.
We're not invading, we're not going all the way around the world to invade to stop them from invading Taiwan, but they haven't done that yet.
If they invaded Taiwan and then took over Japan and Korea, they started making their way into Europe, then maybe I'll get with you.
I'll be like, hey, they could invade here.
Otherwise, I just really, I just don't see it happening.
But anyway, I mean, we're a far richer country than China, and we're going bankrupt trying to be the world's empire.
I just don't, I don't see it working for them.
However, that aside, before I let you get out of here, the final thing I want to ask you, because I think this is the other really important thing that is going to be at the, you know, at the top of the priorities going forward, is this right up there with the woke insanity, and I guess very related to it, is this climate change insanity, where there does seem now, I mean, I was saying this recently, like I thought it was almost just a few years ago, maybe it was back in 2018 or something when AOC first proposed the Green New Deal.
It was almost like, aha, you dummy.
You don't even understand anything.
This would destroy all of civilization.
You don't even know what you're talking.
What a clown.
And now it's like, oh, no, we're doing that.
We're really going to destroy all of civilization.
And now you're seeing these reports.
I mean, people are talking about how in Germany, you know, the third world country of Germany, this winter, that firewood is going to be the new gold because they have no idea what they're going to do and how they're going to support energy.
We see roaming blackouts in California.
I mean, this is really a real attack on modern society, on advanced civilization.
Yeah, totally.
No, it's crazy.
I remember there was a sort of wave of climate change insanity in 06, 07 when I was in college.
And I felt like I was being surrounded by crazy people who just wanted to, and it was all hypocritical, of course, because they like their warm showers and their conveniences.
They're on the Stanford campus, you know.
But no, the earth is going to end in 10 years if we don't.
It's alarmism, right?
And I remember there's this one quote, I don't remember it exactly, but from H.L. Mencken, who was always talking about how like the government's whole job is to invent a series of hobgoblins to keep the populace just continually terrified, right?
Because it justifies their power.
And if that's the like, look, I don't like pollution, right?
We want clean air and clean water and all this, but that's the level I prefer to discuss this stuff, not abstract.
You know, it used to be global warming.
Well, then some of the patterns, you know, suggested maybe this isn't warming.
So now they just have the umbrella climate change that kind of catches everything.
And what that really is, I think it's AOC's excuse, right?
It's AOC's pretext for, hey, give me the keys to the global economy, right?
Surrender your liberties.
It's a wartime emergency, right?
How many times have we seen this in history?
Surrender your liberties, give it to the government.
Of course, you'll never get them back.
But the people in charge just want that power.
Maybe some of them sincerely believe that this is what we need to do because the world will end.
Some might be sincere and just like delusional, but I think some of it is just cynical.
And this is the left's biggest opportunity to really seize the reins of power and put the pedal to the metal and never look back.
So we want clean air, we want clean water, we need to be responsible, stipulate to all of that.
We got to reject this climate change alarmism that's really just going to sacrifice our economy for no good, right?
Because it's not even like India or China will agree to this stuff.
And they are by far the dirtiest countries in the world.
The U.S. is actually doing pretty good on a relative basis, right?
Plus, we have nuclear power, like which the left hates.
So there's so many things here that don't make sense.
And I think we need leaders who are going to push back on this narrative and say that clean air, clean water, absolutely.
Absolute power for AOC so she can go and like run the global economy.
Like it's her private plaything.
No, we're not going to do that.
Yeah, no, look, you're absolutely right.
It's even by their models, if you don't get India and Russia and China on board, then these policies do nothing to change like the projections of the temperature in 100 years.
And so all you're advocating is impoverishing people for not, there's not even an upside, even by their own models.
So, yeah, I think you're absolutely right about that.
And look, as you mentioned, surrendering your liberties because of an emergency.
Look, this is what we were told to do after 9/11.
It led to nothing but disaster.
This is what we were told to do in March of 2020, and it led to nothing but disaster.
Just two weeks, just two weeks to stop the spread, Dave.
Come on, it's been a long two weeks.
Let me tell you, as the CDC is now telling us to boost our four-year-olds or whatever, I mean, it's just all just absolute madness.
But look, I really appreciate you taking the time.
I am, you have my full support.
I really hope that you go just beat Mark Kelly, who also, by the way, it's worth just in closing mentioning.
I mean, he's just the worst.
Like, he's just, he's like the worst.
He's just a Hillary Clinton Joe Biden Democrat who's like worse on guns, I guess, than them is his big claim.
He really is the worst.
I'm like, at least Bernie Sanders, who's wrong about everything, at least he's a true believer.
Yeah.
Like, he'll tell you what he is.
He's a left-wing socialist.
That's what we're going to.
No, that's not what we're going to do, Bernie.
That's delusional.
But there's a shred of honesty there because he's willing to look you in the eye and tell you what he is.
Mark Kelly votes the same way.
But like, does he even believe it?
I think he's just there for the ride, rubber stamping this incredibly destructive left-wing agenda.
It's, it's even, even harder to respect.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
I completely agree.
All right.
Well, best of luck.
If anybody wants to, obviously, people, if you're listening, if you live in Arizona, you can go vote for Blake Masters, and that's the best way to help.
But for anybody else, is there like a website or wherever they could help you out?