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April 6, 2023 - Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy
01:11:35
Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr | The TRUTH Podcast #7
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So much of what I've pledged to do as U.S. president is, to say the least, amongst people who have actually worked in the federal government, quite controversial.
to protect our own border and to potentially go the further step of using it to even annihilate the Mexican drug cartels and thereby solve a fentanyl crisis that's responsible for 100,000 deaths of Americans here on American soil.
Now, to most Americans across the country, including in places where I've traveled, Iowa, New Hampshire, my home state in Ohio and elsewhere, this is an intuitive idea.
The idea that you would use the US military to protect Americans on American soil, even from a foreign threat, even to a neighbor or especially to a neighbor with whom we share a border.
But it turns out that in the national security establishment, that is actually the very reason why it is unthinkable to use the US military in that context.
Another pledge I've made is that the way to reform the national security establishment and the police state at home starts with, for example, shutting down an institution like the FBI, just closing the keys, saying that that agency ceases to exist, but to create a new one to take its place.
Obviously, we do need a federal law enforcement function.
But when the police arm of that function becomes so rotten, so politicized, so corrupt, as it has not only in recent years, but actually for this institution, in a way that dates back decades, the right way to solve that problem isn't through incremental reform, but through a quantum leap of reform, the right way to solve that problem isn't through incremental reform, but through a quantum leap of Again, as you might imagine, this is a controversial idea, not just within the national security establishment.
But in the minds of anyone who works in the federal government, and the things I'll hear is that you legally can't take these steps, that you're constitutionally or statutorily prohibited from shutting down the FBI because of, you know, let's go down the list, civil service protections, impoundment prevention, boring stuff, but real stuff that relates to statutory provisions that Congress has passed, despite the fact the Constitution says, Article 2 says that the U.S. President runs the executive branch of the government.
On the military side, they'll say, no, no, no, protecting the border is a...
A law enforcement function, not a military function.
Solving the drug crisis is a law enforcement function, not a military function.
Here's the real deal.
Most Americans across the country understand, I believe, these constitutional principles more deeply than even the people who are hired to safeguard them.
And the reason I'm...
Having the guest I have on the podcast today is he's somebody who understands both sides here, because he has worked in the US federal government under multiple Republican administrations and senior roles, somebody who understands the relationship between the Constitution, the statutes that govern how Congress does or doesn't limit executive authority.
And we're going to roll up our sleeves and get into the meat of that today because I think it's a pretty special opportunity that I've been looking forward to, to sit down with somebody who I've spoken to many times over Zoom and on the phone over the last year, but somebody who I'm sitting down with for the first time in person.
I'm excited to do it.
Welcome to the podcast.
Thanks Vivek.
I appreciate being here.
It's good to be here.
We found each other through some, you know, I would say we found each other, I think was how we got set up initially.
You found me initially on the ESG issue, I think.
Yeah, I like what you were saying on ESG and I mentioned it to a mutual friend we have and he put us in touch with each other.
That was the first time we connected.
And then even if we hadn't connected through that, I know you found me.
I would have found you after having read that Wall Street Journal op-ed that you more recently published.
I'm using the US military to solve the Mexican drug cartel problem, which stood out to me.
But before we get into the specifics and the meat of those issues, maybe we could start with the Mexican drug cartel issue as an example.
Who makes the call on whether or not it is a legally permissible use of, say, the U.S. military to actually solve a problem that the U.S. military previously hasn't solved, like protecting the border, the U.S. military to actually solve a problem that the U.S. military previously hasn't solved, like protecting We'll get to the merits of that in a second.
But the thing I'm interested in is, look, I'm looking to occupy the White House as the U.S. President in January 2025. Let's say that's a mandate I set into motion.
This is something we need to do.
Someone from the Joint Chiefs or from the military, you know, more broadly says, no, no, no, Mr. President, that's not something that we can do.
We don't have that authority.
What happens from there?
That's what I'm interested in.
It's the President's call as to what tools to use in dealing with an external threat.
A lot of the confusion today, and it's a confusion that exists in Western countries and unfortunately in the United States, is the confusion between law enforcement and national security.
Law enforcement, the constitution essentially gives two powers to the federal government.
One is to deal with internal errant members of society who flout the rules and have to be punished, violating the rules of the body politic here.
And there, the power is law enforcement and it's hedged in with all kinds of safeguards so the government doesn't oppress the people, meaning the American people.
For good reason.
Yeah, for good reason.
And so, you know, there's due process, you elevate the rights of the individual, so they're really on the same plane as the government.
And the other power deals with people who are not members of our body politic.
They are external foes, external enemies that threaten the United States.
And there, the Constitution gives the national security power essentially to the President and And it's at its maximum.
The president has the ability to take steps to protect the country.
Where people have got confused is in the terrorism area and the narcotics area.
We've passed laws that also make it a crime to engage in activities overseas directing it against the United States.
So a terrorist is violating US law.
But that doesn't mean it becomes only a law enforcement matter.
We can pick the tools That we want to use.
Sometimes it may be law enforcement, but other times it's national security.
And people intuitively understand that.
For example, if it was law enforcement, we wouldn't be using drones to kill them.
And people understand we do.
And that's because terrorism is a national security problem, and so are the foreign narcotics operations, which are narco-terrorists.
And so we can use national security power against them.
Now, as you know, people have sort of attacked my article by saying, you know, invade Mexico and so forth.
We have the ability- Saying that you're claiming to invade Mexico.
Yeah, or just bomb them or something.
No.
There are a lot of reasons why we have to intervene in Mexico eventually, hopefully with the Mexican support.
But we have the capacity through targeted and precision operations to cripple the cartels.
I'm not saying it would be a carbon copy of what we did in Syria.
But in Syria, with a few thousand special operators and the use of air power, we destroyed ISIS. Tens of thousands of terrorists.
And Iraq, by the way, too.
Yeah, right.
So we have been increasing our capability to focus our military assets in a way that can cripple these kinds of organizations.
And I think it's going to come to that.
The fact that it's now of military proportions is illustrated by the Mexican government themselves.
When they go in to arrest El Chapo's son, they send 4,000 troops to make an arrest.
They didn't send in the local police department with handcuffs.
I didn't know they said 4,000.
I mean, I know it was a big – it was almost a warlike struggle.
Right, right.
And then they left.
Then they withdrew.
And then – because actually they were overcome by the military-like force of the cartel.
Yeah.
So I think people know this, but you were most recently Attorney General under President Trump.
Right.
You've served under prior administrations as well.
Which other administration have you served under?
I worked in the Reagan White House.
I worked under George H.W. Bush.
H.W. Got it, but not W. Not W. So here's one of the things that I've understood from national security establishment folks who, I think helpfully, even if they disagree with me, have been helping me advance my plan to do this.
I... I do intend to act on this.
And I think it's got to be a first six months kind of thing.
What I've said is, we'll call whoever the president of Mexico is, let them know for a fraction of what we spent in Ukraine, here's the plan for how we can help you solve your Mexican drug cartel problem.
Right now they say silver or lead is the two choices for how the cartels deal with their own government.
Well, we'll help you with silver and lead to overcome that.
Not because we love Mexico, but because we love America.
100,000 people dying from fentanyl crossing the southern border.
We're going to help you solve that problem.
But if you don't do it, we're going to do it anyway.
We're going to solve it one way or another.
Now, what I hear tactically is that the NSA was pivotal to the success in Syria and Iraq of ridding ourselves of the ISIS problem there.
That in principle, it could be Much easier to gain the intelligence needed to do that in Mexico, but we just haven't done it.
And that there's some basic time horizon it'll take for intelligence operations to make sure that those strikes are as targeted and as effective as they possibly can be while minimizing civilian casualty and actually getting to the heart of the problem.
How familiar are you with this dynamic and what do you think that time horizon looks like just from the standpoint of executing this?
Right.
Well, putting aside the issue of the extent to which the Mexicans will help us, probably about a year of complete analysis.
Intelligence gathering included, yeah.
Yes.
Okay.
And this wouldn't only require what they call kinetic strikes.
This would involve things like sending in Special operators to dismantle the drug labs.
For example, I don't think we should just be bombing drug labs to minimize civilian casualties.
We should be sending in groups to dismantle them, so we have eyeballs on what we're doing.
So it would be a host of actions that could be taken, including cyber activity directed against the cartels.
What would that look like?
Cyber activity.
We're getting into their financial dealings and so.
Yeah, I mean that's – we're taking some steps in that direction.
That's what the designation – if we did succeed in designating them as terrorist organizations, that would ease the freezing of their financial assets.
Right.
Yeah.
But back to the original question of just – The dynamic is interesting to me, right?
I guess here's a question I ask is, it's a little bit surprising to me that President Trump didn't already, towards at least the latter half of his term, take steps in this direction.
He was focused on the fentanyl crisis.
He was focused on the border.
I assume, maybe I'm wrong about this, but I assume what the dynamic is, is that he would say from a policy perspective, this is something that he wanted to do.
And then he would get resistance from the people who were in the Pentagon or elsewhere that would be charged with effectuating it.
And then he would be persuaded out of it because, you know, an expert class told him that was something he couldn't do.
But I wasn't there.
You know, you were.
So tell me what the actual dynamic was.
Well, AMLO, the current president, López Obrador, got into power in December 2018. And the first thing the president did with him was threaten to use tariffs against Mexico that would bring their economy down, essentially, unless they helped us with immigration, the immigration issues.
And he did.
He brought out 17,000 troops.
And he helped us close the border.
Those troops were along the border facing south.
Mexican troops.
Yes.
So he responded to pressure because it would have crippled his economy if he didn't.
And then after we had his cooperation on that, Trump and I talked about the drug war.
That was toward the end of 2019. And the idea was that we would go down and talk to him about – he had stopped cooperating on drugs.
AMLO had.
Yeah.
What changed between 2018 when he was cooperative at the border and then 2019?
No, he stopped with the drugs right at the beginning.
Okay.
Helping us on the drug war.
Even while he was helping us on the border security.
Yes, yes.
What do you think drove that?
His policy is what's called hugs, not bullets.
Mexico has a high murder rate, and his idea was, let's deal with the root causes of poverty and bring down the crime levels.
And one of the things that increases crime levels in his mind Oh, okay.
So it's sort of like if you – the collateral damage of going after the tumor isn't worth it.
Just leave the tumor lying.
Right.
Was sort of his philosophy.
And I believe what he basically enunciated and what he wants to do is really a modus vivendi with – Sharing sovereignty with the cartels.
Don't challenge them.
Let them operate.
As long as you operate against the gringos in the north, we won't come and pressure you.
So let's coexist.
But I want to reduce violence in Mexico, so stop killing Mexicans.
It hasn't worked.
The murder rate is still extremely high.
And in fact, fewer people were killed under the Mexican president who was actually going after the cartels, Felipe Calderon.
So, you know, so he backed off completely helping us with the drug war.
The problem is the Mexican government, during my experience, and I started dealing with this when I was Attorney General the first time, is fundamentally corrupted.
Whether or not it goes up to the very top, people have their different opinions on that.
What is your opinion on that?
I think the top levels of his administration have been compromised based on my experience and from what I saw.
But the problem is that there's so much money and the cartels are so violent going after judges and police officers who are trying to do their job that any government, they've gotten, the cartels are so strong that any government down there is going to be corrupted over time.
And it's impossible to work through them because all the information goes to the cartels.
So if you try to do joint operations and clue the Mexicans in on everything, the cartel finds out about it.
And so it's a terrible situation because the country is, as I said, it's like being wrapped by a python.
They're in the grasp of these groups that have grown stronger and stronger and stronger.
A lot of law-abiding Mexicans want to get rid of the cartels.
What's dangerous, I mean, AMLO is basically, you know, waving the leftist populist flag like, you know, these are the gringos to the north that want to come and intervene and so forth and whipping up sentiment there.
You think he really is?
Oh yeah, definitely.
Even amongst the general Mexican populace.
That's what he's doing.
They're bringing violence and division to Mexico.
It's all the Americans' fault.
It's the Americans' demand.
They're the ones at fault and now they want to come down and And, you know, attack our country and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And regular Mexicans, I mean, other Mexicans who don't respond to that kind of, you know, populist pandering, basically saying, how are we going to liberate ourselves from the grasp of these criminal organizations?
And there is no answer in Mexico without a leading American role working with the Mexicans.
And I believe, at the end of the day, as Trump showed, both the economic cost to them of not cooperating with us, if we employ tariffs and so forth, and the practical fact that we do have the capacity to go down and act unilaterally, You know, they will come along eventually and we'll have to structure it in a way that keeps our information secure.
But together, we can dismantle the cartels.
That was done in Colombia.
Very brave Colombian leaders, many of whom were assassinated by the cartels, one after the other, joined with the United States and we eventually destroyed the Medellin and the Cali cartels.
So it can be done.
How did we do it?
Through a combination of law enforcement and national security assets, intelligence aspects.
We had – the military was not uninvolved in Colombia.
Let me put it that way.
Okay.
It was not overt then.
Right.
Got it.
I understand there's sort of the channels that the president can act pretty much via the CIA without congressional authority.
Versus, you know, actually getting congressional authority.
There's multiple channels of action there.
Right.
In talking generally, yes.
He has the capacity to do that.
Right, understood.
And when was this in Colombia?
I mean, it's a useful learning.
This was in the late 80s and early 90s.
Yep.
And so what happened was the cartel, I mean the organization, the Mexicans were essentially transporters of marijuana.
And they weren't that strong.
But they took over the business with the demise of Medellin and Cali.
And they were allowed to take root and really be unhampered since then, with one minor exception.
But the basic problem is this, when local countries, when the United States is ready to go in and do something against the cartels, the local companies generally aren't.
And when the local countries are, America has, our attention is elsewhere.
Do you think that there's something – I think that was definitely true in Mexico too with Calderon.
Yeah.
He probably would have been our best shot.
Right.
Yeah.
And Obama, I guess, was asleep somewhere between the sleep of the switch and didn't prioritize it.
Yeah.
Well, he came in toward the end of W's administration.
Of course, we were at that point engaged in the war on terror.
Focused elsewhere.
Right.
And so – and it was also sort of the tail end of – This is a form of terror too.
Yeah.
Yes, it is.
Right.
The Middle Eastern form of terror.
Right.
Right.
Nonetheless, but then Obama had his chance and we just sort of squandered it.
Right.
So the Obama administration, their principle was to pull – I call it extraterritorial engagement.
That is going to the source of the drugs and dealing with the head of the snake.
That's always been my view.
And they explicitly pulled back from that policy and were going to fight the drug war at home.
You know, lock up generation after generation of street pusher rather than deal with the main problem.
Right.
Right.
You know, I'm wondering if there's just like a first principles reason why both in Colombia and in Mexico and other places, it can't be a coincidence, right?
I think it seems to me that the US posture would be – Well, if they're taking care of it already, then we need to less because presumably the country is itself making some incremental progress, which means there's less of a justification or need for us to go in and do it.
I think it's not an accident that we see this pattern in history, whereas whenever you have a friendly administration is precisely when we don't partner and engage because we begin to see early positive signs and signals that they're going to deal with it themselves.
When in fact, that probably is actually the window we should or should have seized on to actually say that it's when you have a friendly that we actually need to seize that opportunity because otherwise you get stonewalled by the likes of an AMLO. Fair to say just from a first principles reason, it's not a coincidence of history.
That it happens this way, there's a reason why.
Right.
But I also think there's another pathology at work and that is for the modern frame of mind, you manage problems, you don't solve problems.
And so there's this tendency, I don't know whether it's the over-education of the, you know, going to get their master's degrees and PhD and diplomacy or whatever.
But it always becomes a question of managing the situation instead of saying, how do we actually solve this problem?
You know, a decisive resolution of this problem.
What will it take?
It's actually a profound point.
It's kind of something about the… Yeah, and I see it across the board.
And so I have this image of all these pots boiling on the stove that we've allowed to simmer for years.
And the problems are mounting, our foreign policy problems are mounting, our domestic policies.
And that's in part because no one has The orientation of let's deal with it and let's take the slings and arrows and the cost of dealing with it.
And so they'd rather just sort of manage things along.
Powerful.
You know, I'm a big believer that language sometimes reveals a reality of the underlying thing that you otherwise would have missed.
And so anyway, one of the things that I often rail against is the managerial class, the rise of the managerial class.
You've seen what that looks like firsthand.
The managerial class is certainly more empowered in American institutions, including government, but corporations to universities is also true.
We live in a moment of the managerial class.
And I can't help but notice that at least the linguistic parallel of the rise of the managerial class occurs at a point in our history when we've also grown more accustomed to managing problems rather than actually solving them.
And I think there's probably something to that.
Oh, yeah.
So, I mean, even as early as H.W. Bush's administration, before the War on Terror emerged, you know, the military was spending a billion dollars a year on intelligence collection against the cartels in Colombia and Peru and so forth.
And we're following their plan.
We knew a lot about what they were doing.
And I said, what's our endgame?
We're collecting all this intelligence.
Are we going to pursue this on law enforcement or national security channel?
And there was no discussion or analysis of the problem.
Like, how are we going to deal with this?
And I said, you have two endgames.
There are only two endgames.
You lock them up or you kill them.
Okay?
Which are we going to do?
What do you want to do with all this intelligence?
Just tell me what the order is.
You know, we'll get it done.
This is under- HW. HW, yeah.
What was the answer?
Well, it was the usual crap.
I mean, you had like 35 agencies involved and you had coordination meetings and all that stuff, but they never get to the essence of the problem and what the strategy is.
It is this idea of managing problems, not addressing problems.
Where do you think Trump fell on that spectrum?
Trump was much more of the type, let's solve the problem.
That's my sense.
Yeah.
In discussing the drug issue with him, he said something that I give him a lot of credit for and it's one of his good qualities.
I said, look, It's gotten to the point and the size that this cannot be solved with going down and arresting people and putting them on trial one by one, bringing them into the United States and trying them.
This is more of a national security threat.
These are terrorist groups.
And he said, well, let's deal with it.
That's why we're here.
If we don't do it, who's going to do it?
Let's stop kicking the can down the road.
And that was his attitude.
And I give him credit for that.
And I think we would have – but for COVID, I think we would have collected a lot of intelligence and in a second term we would have taken more definitive action.
So you think that actually Trump and broadly you guys in the administration really were on track – To potentially follow through and use military force, maybe after a year of intelligence groundwork.
Right.
Yes.
I think that would have happened.
And why not – it just wasn't a priority between 2016 and 2018. Right.
I mean, there are other things to do, but then – Yeah, of course.
Because I'm not criticizing it.
I'm just – Yeah, when COVID came along, it disrupted everything.
But also the problem has worsened, right?
The fentanyl crisis has gotten to much more of a national challenge today than it was even in – Even in 2015 or 16. Right.
But that clearly was coming.
We understood that that was coming.
We understood it was coming, but it didn't make the priority list.
Once it made the priority list, you're saying the administration did actually take certain steps and but for COVID and but for the change in administration, you think it's actually quite likely it would have happened.
Oh, yes.
Okay.
Now, you know, I mean, that was one of Trump's strengths.
He had other issues relating to his ability to actually carry out things in a coherent way.
He would sometimes go for the grand gesture that would win him political approval from his base.
You know, he wants – it's almost like a – Well, these can coincide here though.
Yeah.
Because I think it would have broad approval from the base and actually solve the problem.
But sometimes he would be willing not to follow through and actually solve the problem.
It would be, look, I already did that.
I got credit for doing something here and say, yeah, but it's not enough.
That's not the metric of success.
Maybe running a campaign it is.
Yeah.
Now, I see this from professional politicians all the time.
I was to some controversy even yesterday, you know, pointing out some issues in Ron DeSantis' fight against woke capitalism in Florida.
Again, I think that one of the problems with our system, it's not specific even to Ron DeSantis or any other individual, is that when you're in elected office, And you're up for a re-election, you're rewarded by the surge of media wave and voter response more than you are in actually seeing the thing through, actually.
That's exactly right.
And the problem in this pattern is I can imagine seeing the same thing in the Mexican counterpart version of this, but even in dealing with the self-proclaimed problem that Ron wants to address of woke capitalism is – The companies at issue or the actor at issue or the nation at issue presumably understands that dynamic, understands that about us and so knows that all they need to do is, okay, we're going to weather the storm.
Once you've gotten what you needed out of it, then we'll work it out behind closed doors.
And, you know, that's when the Black Rocks of the world excel at that game and I think are excelling in plain sight.
That's a discussion for another day, but presumably Mexico – Yeah, that's the world I know really well, but presumably Mexico can view it the same way too, is okay, we're going to let your cycle of rhetoric play out, gesture what you need to to your base, and then presumably you'll move on and we'll work out the details in a way that's actually favorable to the status quo.
Right, right.
And one thing I just want to stress is that in my mind, it's – the Mexicans will eventually agree to a much more aggressive US posture against the cartels.
Because they really don't have an alternative.
Yeah.
Now, AMLO's out in 2024. I think he's term limited now.
Is that right?
Yes.
I should know more about this.
What does the dynamic look like of who the candidates would be to take his place?
I mean, I'm not sure polling data matters.
It might be who the cartels want that actually get the job anyway, but like what are the possibilities there and is that something we should be paying attention to?
Well, we should be paying attention to it, but I think it's so murky right now, I couldn't tell you.
Yeah, I mean, if you had a Calderon-like figure or even someone from that orbit, That would be presumably very good for us.
Right.
In this objective.
Yeah.
And the other dynamic is this, and I said this to Trump, which is, you know, at the beginning of 2020, I made two trips down to Mexico.
I said, even if the Mexican- When did you go?
I went in December and January.
To Mexico City?
Yeah, yeah.
And just like, I guess, very practically, this is like a random aside, but suppose you were- More open about the policy posture you're going to take against the cartels.
Like is that even just from a personal perspective from a travel – like is that even a safe trip to make, you think, from a Mexican government perspective or not?
I just wonder even about the practicalities of this.
Well, I guess, you know, I would have been – maybe brought more security with me if I was going to take that openly.
But what I was going to say is, this is an important thing, which is I said to the president that no Mexican government, even if they're willing to help us and want to get this finished once and for all, they're not going to go in until the beginning of a new administration.
They're not going to poke the bear and start a death match with the cartels if there's an administration there with only one more- You mean like Obradors, for example?
Yeah.
No, no.
Or the US administration.
Yeah, you're not going to poke the bear unless you're- Because that could itself change because somebody could pull the rug out from under you.
Right, somebody comes in and pulls the rug out from under you.
That's a great point.
It's why it has to be done at the beginning of the term.
Yes, it has to be done at the beginning of the term.
I've identified this as a first six-month item for a big part of that reason is you can't get into the miring of it.
And probably even the military side of this, the tactical side of this is once you're past the intelligence gathering phase, you probably get one cycle.
You don't want cycles of adaptation here.
Well, I heard you had said, I mean, I listened to what your statement was, and I thought that was a great point, one I totally agree with, that any move has to be done swiftly and with decisive force because otherwise they just adapt to it.
And so, you know, these people are not 10 feet tall.
They can be dealt with, but they haven't really met their match.
Not yet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We'll see what we can do on that front.
I want to ask you about the legalities, right?
Did you get any legal challenges to this plan?
I mean, you guys, the authority stops with you in the administration or the attorney general, but what was the current thinking with respect to legal authorization to be able to follow through and see that through?
Because that's an objection I've heard a lot when I've presented this one.
Well, using the military outside the United States, it's a national security judgment by the- U.S. President.
By the U.S. President.
And do you think that the Pentagon was aligned with this way of thinking?
There's always divisions in the Pentagon.
There are some in the Pentagon who, you know, you ask them to do a military mission and they immediately recoil from it.
But I think they would- This issue wasn't one of them.
I think as long as there was a defined military objective, you know, this is what we're going to do.
Here's how we're going to do it.
Here's what the job is.
And it was well-defined and not getting us embroiled in sort of an endless situation down there and nation building.
That's the other point about this, which is, you know, I think that would have been fine.
They don't get to veto that anyway.
You know, it's the president's decision.
Under international law, the principle of international law is commonsensical, as you would expect, which is, if people are using your territory as a launchpad to conduct predations against a neighbor, You have the – if you're going to claim sovereignty, right, you have to take care of that yourself.
You have to stop it.
And if you don't stop it, then the country who's being preyed on can come in and do it themselves.
I mean, that's – That was the heart of your article.
I love the article.
Yeah.
And that's an international norms-based argument.
But under US law, your point is if it's on the national security side of the house, the president has authorization, period, to basically do whatever.
Right.
As long as you're – I mean, as long as you're not Going after people in the United States and transgressing constitutional safeguards.
So, the other question you asked about is using the military to secure the border.
You know, under the posse comitatus statute, which was passed after reconstruction in the Civil War, where we used federal troops to police the South, a law was passed that says you can't use American military for law enforcement purposes in the United States.
And the reason for that was to prevent the clash of American military with its own citizens.
And there are exceptions to that.
One of them is the Insurrection Act.
If there's an insurrection, you can use American military force.
This is not that.
This is not that.
And so, yeah, I don't want to use the American military.
I'd be very cautious about using that domestically.
What about just protecting the border though, literally on the border?
Or you could do it on the other side of the – I mean, that's a technicality I suppose on which side of the Rio Grande it is.
But that's a different point.
Yes, you can use the military.
You can also use National Guard.
And what do you think about the – you know, the way the federal government is set up is you do have law enforcement over here and military over here.
What do you think about the rising presence of cartels even on our side of the border?
I mean, you see increasing evidence of that at least in places like California and even Oregon and Arizona and elsewhere.
What do you make of that?
Well, that's the reason I consider this a national security threat to allow them to give them the sanctuary south of our border from which they're free to operate.
And part of the consequence of that is not only the drugs, it's not only the human trafficking.
It's not only the national security problem now posed by them becoming an entry point for over 100 people from over 100 countries around the world.
It's also the metastasis of their tactics and their structure up into the United States.
So in city after city, they're getting a stronger foothold and they operate through sort of subsidiary criminal organizations.
And, you know, there was that case in California, which I'm concerned that where they wiped out a family including an infant.
And I'm concerned that they're going to start taking their tactics, their extortion and terrorist tactics up north of the border.
And we have to stop these people.
I agree with you that it strengthens the case for solving the problem.
Yeah.
Narrowly, I was asking about the dilemma that that proposes in terms of even who you put in charge if it's a Pentagon-driven operation.
But you're talking about, you know, posse comitatus, you know?
Right.
Yeah.
So the cartel problem, I think you want to solve it comprehensively.
I'd like to take care of it, not just on the Mexican side, unless you really believe if the head of the snake dies, the tail in the U.S. automatically withers away.
That's one theory of the case.
But if not… How do you divide up that operation for the part of this that's on the U.S. side of the border itself?
So I'm not for entirely, quote, militarizing the war on drugs.
I think we can use the military- Tactically south of the border.
Yeah, in certain ways.
But I do think law enforcement should continue.
It's going to require some level of coordination.
And I don't have a good sense, you probably do, of just even bureaucratically, like the way the government is set up.
Is that set up for success or not?
No, I mean, it's not set up for success.
It's set up for just managing.
That's my sense.
Yeah.
And what you need is clear direction from the president as to how this is going to be done and put people in charge that can manage it on a day-to-day basis.
There are certain things that would...
You know, like interdiction at sea.
That's a military – that's largely a military operation, you know, using the Coast Guard and the Navy.
There are other parts like the DEA would be involved and DEA is very skillful at certain kinds of things down in foreign countries.
So – The DEA is – most people I've talked to at the DEA or either at the DEA or formerly – I'm actually pretty excited about this plan because they see firsthand the consequences of failing to actually address the root cause.
Right.
My sense is most people in the military, I think, would be ground level Pretty mission aligned with carrying this out.
Well, I think the special operations command would be.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
But, you know, there's a lot of other things that go into it.
The use of the treasury department to get involved in- Financial assets, yeah.
Go after financial assets, sanctioning banks, Mexican banks that are involved in this.
So in the law enforcement, let's say on the domestic side, it's not purely a military function, as you said, dealing with this fentanyl issue, including the cartel-driven side of it.
Right.
The FBI would be involved, presumably, would be the agency from a law enforcement side that would lead this or no?
In South America, it would probably – the FBI has involvement and there are certain things they do very well down there.
But there are other agencies involved, including the DEA. And there's, you know, the agency, the CIA is involved.
And that's one of the issues.
There are a lot of different players here, but there's no overall definitive strategy like, this is how we're going to win.
It's always an intermediate objective.
Let's arrest these three people.
Let's build a case against this.
And there's no overall sort of anaconda strategy of squeezing them quickly.
Speaking of the FBI, maybe we want to shift gears to that in terms of Talking about managing a problem.
Actually, I don't want to assert my premise without asking you about it.
I think the politicization of the FBI is a problem in our country.
I think that the agency has demonstrated that it acts with Often politicized motives that have both undermined public trust in the agency and have demonstrated that the agency is self not fully worthy of full public trust without the skepticism that many now have towards the FBI. But before I go to solutions, I don't want to just bake it on a premise that maybe you might have a different point of view on.
Like what's your candid view on that?
Is that a well-grounded perspective or not?
I think it's a mistake to look at the FBI and even DOJ in isolation in terms of their becoming a corrupted institution.
Not corrupted in the sense of personal graft, but people who are sacrificing the values and processes and so forth of the institution.
I think what's happening at At the department, what's happening at the FBI is across the board.
Not only across- In the federal government.
Not only the federal government, but all our institutions.
Science, medicine, everything.
Business.
Education, business.
And it's all the corruption of our institutions that's going on.
And in some ways, what stands out about the- Actually, if I were to sort of rank them as how thoroughly- I'm not sure the FBI or the Department of Justice would be that high on the list.
But as Shakespeare said, lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
It's because of the sensitivity of the function they're performing and how much we really rely on these institutions that catches our attention about these failings, these institutional failings.
But I think they all go back to the same thing.
The Comey episode in Russiagate gave people the impression that the FBI was rotting from the head, that it was the leadership that was It's not my impression.
Yeah.
My impression is it's found its way maybe less deeply than into universities, fair enough.
But permeated, I think, the culture of the bureaucracy itself.
Right.
And part of that, I think, was Mueller coming in and sort of announcing he was going to change the culture of the FBI. And that was carried out by Comey as well.
What did they mean when they said that?
I'm not sure exactly what they meant.
You know these people, you've worked with them.
What do you think they meant?
Did they mean in the direction of depoliticizing it?
Did they mean in the direction of making more results-oriented, like we said, I'm going to come change the culture of the FBI? Presumably, what did they mean?
I think what they had in mind was that the FBI was a law enforcement entity with a law enforcement culture.
And it recruited mainly from the military and from law enforcement, police officers who had had good careers.
And so the people understood chain of command, and they approached things from a law enforcement standpoint, which is, you know, following the process is very important.
And...
Being even-handed is very important.
You're not results-oriented, okay?
And what they had in mind after 9-11 was that, well, we're no longer cops and robbers type agency.
We're no longer going to react to crime.
We have to prevent it from happening in the first place.
And so we had, I think it was sort of a foggy concept that they sort of wanted, you know, we just want something, you know, we want more, you know, different kinds of people involved and so forth.
This is super interesting, though.
I think you're right over the flame here.
Yeah.
Because I think it does start with, you know, call it a good intention, call it what you want.
This idea of – that's actually very important, right?
So you think it's in the post-911 era.
Right.
That's when Mueller came over the first time.
Yeah.
Well, he was there.
He was there.
Yeah.
He was the head of the FBI. He had just become head of the FBI. Post-911.
And then Comey took over after.
Right.
And so the idea was we have to prevent this stuff from happening.
And so – I think they've changed the intake process of the kinds of people coming in, you know, or kindergarten teachers and social workers and so forth.
Really?
Yeah.
To join the FBI? Yeah.
So there's a lot more different backgrounds that are attracted into the Into the Bureau, and they dumbed down some of the requirements early on.
Nowadays, the physical requirements have been decreased by two-thirds, what they used to be.
That has changed the culture in the FBI. You know, I've heard reports of, you know, the FBI has firearms instructors in various places around the country to make sure that the agents in that area, the city and so forth, keep care of their guns, have the right armaments, you know, stay qualified and so forth.
And there's some reports there from there of agents coming in to turn in their weapons because they feel it's socially irresponsible to carry a gun.
That would have never happened 15 years ago.
Just the opposite.
Wait, wait, someone's- I'm sorry, I had to process that for a second.
Someone's working at the FBI who's an agent saying that they kind of came in to turn in their gun because the member of a law enforcement community like the FBI- An agent comes in and says, I don't want to carry a gun anymore.
Because it's socially irresponsible.
Socially irresponsible.
Were they fired on the spot?
No.
That's another problem with the FBI which is – and this is a problem throughout government and probably throughout the corporate world which is the failure of middle management because they become careerists and they don't want to get into trouble and so it's don't rock the boat for the next two years.
I'm doing this job, my next job is going to be this if I don't rock the boat.
That leads to a whole career service within the agency that is geared more toward people, you know, careerists rather than the agents who are really doing the job out in the street.
And so, you know, that's one of my concerns.
And discipline has broken down in part because a lot of managers know that if they discipline certain employees, you know, a woman agent or a minority agent, they're going to get in trouble for that.
Their career will be upset.
Oh, you had this altercation, you know, where you were accused of discrimination and therefore you're not going to move forward.
And so they'll just ignore problems.
Who decides that that person is not going to move forward though?
Why is that the culture of the agency?
It just has become.
That's just the way it's become.
And there's also, you know, in my mind, there's too much orientation toward Washington headquarters.
And so, you know, there are people who become what they call headquarter rats.
They sort of hang around and when they're required to do a field, they move to someplace, you know, they do it in Washington field office or someplace very close to Washington, then they rotate back into Washington.
So there are a host of issues that are involved, but they're issues that are in every institution.
And underlying it is a change in what I consider to be sort of a progressive mindset of younger people.
Even if they don't wholly embrace the progressive agenda, they actually start thinking this way.
A bureaucracy ossifies that.
That's the way that it works.
Right.
But also, the basic premise of it is that because we are seeking this pure objective of a perfect I think?
Departing from the value and standards of the institution because they are pursuing something higher and more important.
So it's the willingness to say, I'm going to leak this information.
Or I'm going to go after this guy because this guy is a bad guy.
And how I justify it is, it's the right thing to do for equity.
That means that all institutions essentially lose their actual function.
Totally.
And they're all become little mini, you know, what's your goal?
Social justice.
School.
Is your goal teaching kids how to think and reading, writing, arithmetic?
No.
We're not doing a good job of that, but we are promoting social justice.
And you go through institution after institution.
It's interesting.
You know, I mean, this is more familiar to me than I might have guessed in terms of the managerial rot of the FBI. It's not something foreign.
It's actually something – Very familiar.
Yeah.
It's not something – and that's why I say, you know, actually, I think as institutions go, it's not as bad as most of the institutions.
No, but it's the most – it's arguably among, if not the most important – Yes.
Where we have to be sterile.
Right.
With respect to this.
Right.
That's my view.
Because that's the backdrop.
Mm-hmm.
Stable law enforcement.
Yeah.
I would say maybe the court system.
Fair-minded.
Court system is probably highest on the list.
This is second up, right?
The prosecutorial system.
Yes.
And the investigatory power of the federal state.
Right.
Federal police power.
You've kind of cast a light on a different dimension of this, which in some ways actually makes the case for my proposed course of action even more strongly and perhaps even more persuasive.
than just the top-down politicized version that I have appealed to in certain of my speeches.
But the proposed solution I've put on offer is, as U.S. President, I'll shut down the FBI and create a new agency, built from scratch, with a different fit-for-purpose culture that is not yet captured by a cancer that once it's taken a foot, It's very difficult to eradicate because it's more or less like a cancer and more like a virus that's embedded itself into the DNA of the organization itself.
Shutting it down and creating something new is the easiest path or at least the most plausible path to solve that problem even if it comes at some transition cost.
That's my view on it.
I'd be curious for your perspective and both on the merits but also on the implementation of that and what that looks like.
You'd be a pretty good person to advise on it.
So, you know, there are two ways of dealing with an organization that is...
Corrupt or cancerous or infected.
Yeah, in fact.
One is to just start a new one, which I come to the problem usually leaning in that direction because of sort of the history of the Catholic Church, which is when an order went bad, you just create a new order.
It's much easier to do that and better in the long run than trying to reform something that's broken.
In this case, I think right now I would come down a little bit more in the middle, which is this.
After 9-11, there was this push to separate the foreign intelligence and intelligence aspects of the bureau from the law enforcement, pure law enforcement aspects.
To say that that one coordinates more with the CIA and things like that, right?
Yeah, and just separate them into two different agencies.
And I oppose that at the time because there are a lot of good practical reasons to have them together.
One is so that you don't have that wool of separation that led to 9-11, right?
Sharing information.
But we're also seeing some abuses.
And what I think maybe the best approach would be is I do think you need some catalyst to actually make the kind of reforms within the FBI and law enforcement generally.
And I think maybe splitting those apart now would provide you with the catalyst to accomplish other reforms.
Yeah.
In other words, just sort of sitting back and saying, okay, we're going to start an agency from scratch or, you know, we're going to reform the FBI. You need some kind of systemic shock.
You need like half the people moving out of the building.
You need to break it into two and then use that to actually drain the yolk inside, break the egg and then drain the yolk or something like that.
And I think they have a problem that all big institutions and especially governments, they've become highly bureaucratic and they try to do too much.
And they have all their little processes.
And the processes, you know, were well-intentioned.
We have all these people running around with guns, right?
You know, you want to keep things harnessed, and that's a good thing.
But they've become extremely bureaucratic and risk-averse in many ways.
So I think to change the FBI, I'd be more open now to splitting the FBI in two.
As sort of a catalyst for reform.
But at the end of the day, leadership has a lot to do with this.
But then also go the distance for use that to just gut a lot of what's in there.
I wouldn't use the word gut, but you know, some of it has to be- Turn over mass amounts of people.
Right, right.
And I think go back to some of the standards that we used to have as the FBI agents and things like that.
And you know, this is not a social experiment.
And the other thing is, you know, this goes across all our institutions.
Play your damn position.
Everyone wants to be, you know, as I say, the end goal of my institution is to pursue social justice.
That's not how our system works.
Our system works by breaking, it's like the division of labor.
You educate our children.
You put bad people in prison in our search for justice and so forth.
The press, get at the objective truth.
Those are supposed to be the functions of these institutions.
Look at the media.
They don't care about finding the objective truth.
They are a cog in the progressive agenda.
And what's important is the narrative, not the objective truth.
And so all these institutions are sacrificing their mission, the mission we expect from these institutions.
And they have this sort of hazy idea of some brave new world that they're promoting.
Right.
Okay?
Don't worry about that.
Do your job.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
And that actually restores institutional integrity.
Integrity, yes.
That's actually the thing we've lost.
Right.
This is the vision of this term.
You'll hear the Great Reset.
You're familiar with this terminology.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, people use this term and bandied around, but the essence of the worldview inherent in the Great Reset Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum type stuff.
And now, if a conservative says the same word, they'll say it's a conspiracy theory, but put that to one side.
What is it?
What is the thing?
It's a worldview that calls for the dissolution of boundaries.
Right.
Actually, dissolving the boundary between the private sector and the public sector, dissolving the boundary between nations, dissolving the boundary between different institutions so that each or leaders of each can work together towards address shared global problems towards the common good.
Agree or not, right?
That is in neutral terms what proponents of the Great Reset would say that it stands for.
Right.
And I think that you see it – I mean, you and I, I think it's probably what drew us together even, you know, some of my commentary on ESG maybe appeal to you for some of those subtextual reasons.
I think the question is – it's a philosophical question about how you just think the world, humanity and its institutions should be ordered.
Is it that these boundaries are inherently bad and that we need to break down and dissolve those boundaries so that – Institutional leaders can coordinate towards addressing a common good.
Right.
Or is it that you believe in institutional integrity, part of true institutional pluralism, just because you say capital D diversity, it's actually an off-the-shelf agenda that dissolves the boundaries between different institutions and makes them less diverse.
Do you believe in actually institutional pluralism, the diversity of different institutions to each carry out their respective functions?
I know where you stand, play your damn position, pretty good quote.
I'm gonna take that one with me.
Yeah.
I think it's just two different worldviews.
It has nothing to do with partisan politics.
It's a worldview of how The world itself should be ordered.
Actually, I think it has a lot to do with politics, though.
I mean, it's- Oh, it has to be politics, but not in the partisan politics sense of the present moment.
Right, that's right, that's right.
This is something deeper that transnational, transpartisan- But also goes to religion.
Goes to religion, absolutely.
Because- There's a deeply, you know, you could say there's a Hindu worldview, but you could say there's a Christian worldview embedded in that distinction.
Right.
So, I think basically, the fundamental question is, you know, teleology.
What has a purpose?
Does the individual life have a target and purpose?
Or is it the collective that has a target and purpose?
The Western worldview that gave rise to the most successful system we've had, the Anglo-American system, It was rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which views individuals as individuals.
You have a destiny, now it's a transcendent destiny, but also it's an individual destiny.
And the collective is, you know, we're worried about the collective in providing a stable environment in which people can live their individual lives.
What we have now is essentially, you know, it's part of, you know, it's undergirded Marxism and other totalitarian ideas going back to the French Revolution.
Which is, your destiny is collective.
The thing that has a target and a goal is the collective.
The political arrangement of society, you're a cog in that.
History has a direction, the directionality of history.
That's why we always hear, you're on the wrong side of history.
Yeah, the wrong side.
It's exactly right.
It's a deep observation, right?
You know, this is the progressive idea, which is they've, you know, Buckley used to say they immunitized the eschaton, which is they've taken the final things, And they've immunitized it.
They've brought it down to the world.
And so heaven is a future place.
We're all going to go.
And the way we're going to get there is through political action and political organization and building a collective that's perfect.
A collective perfectly just collective.
And those are the two world views, but they ultimately give rise to very different politics.
And that's why I feel what's happening today in the United States is not just right versus left.
It's of a different order altogether.
To me, the Democratic Party, the progressive wing has moved outside The tent.
They are, you know, their agenda is to tear down the system, not fight within the system, within the tent, you know, a right wing and a left wing.
But they're now outside the system, and the great impediment to human progress and to building this just society are all our institutions and conventions.
Specifically in rejecting this notion of individual purpose itself as just the teleology, just the whole rule of the game is written.
Right.
It's a very fundamental – when you start thinking, I mean, to me, that's the essence of it.
And it's also the difference fundamentally between conservatism and progressivism.
A lot of conservatives, I think, make the mistake to think that conservatism is the mirror image of progressivism.
Which is ideology.
We have an ideology which means we are going to use politics to shape society collectively according to some abstract vision of perfection.
To me that's what ideology is.
That's not what conservatism is about.
We're about essentially muddling through to have a durable, stable society which gives the broadest vent possible, consistent with order, to individuals finding their destiny, both as individuals and in voluntary association.
The civil society.
And that is what has led to the success of the United States and the West generally.
And not the idea of, you know, that we have some kind of game plan to organize ourselves politically according to some abstract scheme of perfection.
Because we're not dealing with perfection.
We're dealing with human beings.
Hmm.
How much do you think the loss of faith, I think, creates the...
Window.
The window.
Yeah, I mean, I think there is a secular account, and you go, John Locke on this, or whatever else, that'll get you still to that fundamentally American worldview.
So it's not that religion is a precondition, but it strikes me that the recession of faith It plays a role that allows the collective purpose worldview to reign supreme.
Right.
So I agree with you.
It's not a precondition for individuals to come to the conclusion- I don't think so, yeah.
Yeah, that this is the best- But it might make it easier.
Yeah.
But I think the framers would have said, and this is what my speech at Notre Dame was about, which is our constitution was actually written- Of moral people.
Of a religiously disciplined people.
John Adams, right?
Yeah.
And it's true.
I mean, as Burke said, if you don't control yourself, then an external force is going to control you.
Was that Burke?
Something like, by their passions, they forge their own fetters or something.
They become enslaved to...
So, I mean, Burke, I used it in my speech at Notre Dame, so it's...
Yeah, certainly I think the loss of faith in the West is what is generating a lot of the decomposition of society and providing the opportunity for these irsats, faiths, secular faiths to emerge.
I mean, one of my views is you could either take faith, family, Patriotism, belief in nation, faith in a nation, you could say.
America was built on a sort of civic religion for a long time.
Hard work as a value of what you create, you know, pick a couple of them.
Yes.
But you can't have all of them disappear at the same time.
Right.
Or else you keep – get this vacuum that something else is going to fill instead.
I guess that's a version of the Burkean concept.
You can say, you know, Blaise Pascal said something similar.
Yeah.
Hold the size of God.
If God doesn't fill it, something else will.
But whoever, whichever, you know, philosopher triangulated on the same concept, that's, I think, that's the description of where we are in our modern moment in American history.
This is part of the modern American experience is that loss of purpose and meaning and identity that allows that Siren song of collective purpose to then fill the void.
Right.
Now, it raises an interesting question of whether the path to reviving that individual sense of purpose comes from restoring some sense of, you could say, collective purpose as Americans.
I don't know what your reaction to that is, or if that's getting a little too philosophical for you.
No, I mean, I think that that's, you know, one of the key questions.
I do think this is something that can only be developed within coherent That is, genuine communities in some way, which you don't have just by being a manager of a welfare state.
Okay, someone new showed up, okay, let's write a check for them.
There has to be something deeper than that.
I think we're losing our sense of that completely.
As you say, this world without borders or without allegiance, There's a lot, it's a very daunting situation, but I think one way to, that's why I've always been a big advocate of school choice.
I think there's no road back unless we have school choice in this country.
I'm an advocate of school choice too, but I don't believe in silver bullets because I think one of the things that we're now seeing – I don't think a lot of conservatives have woken up to this, but it's the direct extension of what we had in this conversation of the so-called long march through the institutions is now the accreditation bodies that accredit a private school that's eligible to receive funds from a school voucher program or a school choice or ESA program, educational saving account program.
Is itself infected by some of the same dogmas that start with the Department of Education that create the cultural infection of primary education in this country.
So it just kicks the – it's like a hydraulic – The battle shifts.
Exactly.
You squeeze in one place – as long as the water is flown through the pipes is still the problem.
It's like a hydraulic pump.
If you squeeze in one place, it just shows up in a different place unless you really purify the water itself.
But it clarifies issues and it makes it more transparent.
Oh, it's a step forward, no doubt.
Because then the fight is more transparent.
But the other thing is people have completely missed what's going on here, which is Americans, when we founded our country, we would have said that the state has no business telling people what the good life is and You know, telling them how to live a good life and using coercive power to force them to do it.
That was the classical world.
That was Sparta, where you turned your kid over to the state.
And with Christianity led to this bifurcation.
The state has a limited role, and education is the role of the parents and the church.
Moral education.
Now we were able to allow the state to play a role in that in this country because the country was 95% Christian and agreed on the values and public schools were run as essentially that way.
But now there is no consensus and the government is affirmatively subversive of traditional values.
So people have to step back and say, wait a minute.
What power does a school board or the government have to determine what moral education is and shove it down the throat of people?
They don't under our system.
It's not the function of government.
A collective determination that my kids should be taught an ism.
It's one thing to teach kids facts.
It's one thing to read, write and so forth.
And that's why I think actually you put your finger on I think the pulse of what I see a lot of conservatives across this country recognize when I've been traveling, you know, Iowa, New Hampshire, different places, South Carolina.
It's not that actually the question is even where the sort of intellectual battlefront might have been in decades past of what role the state ought to have in inculcating traditional religion or not.
Right.
The state is already inculcating modern religions more than it ever has in the history of this country, foist in Christianity or any other religion.
It's our failure to recognize it as such is I think the – is actually what allowed it to happen.
I mean the climate cult I think – You could – I wouldn't say in a strict sense make an establishment clause violation in a constitutional argument in court.
But the spirit of it is we are – effectively have a government-established religion deciding that carbon emissions, that the anti-impact framework is itself – it's a form of a cultish belief as opposed to some other metric mattering for humanity like human prosperity itself – But we've decided that even every metric – and it's perpetuated through the government in every sense about what you even measure in terms of a carbon emission is itself the product of a cultish conviction that the anti-impact framework – meaning that
the human being's impact on the environment is the thing we're supposed to measure as opposed to the environmental impact on humans.
That's established as a sort of religion in this country and the idea that we were ever debating the establishment of Christianity or Judaism or whatever else is a farce compared to the modern reality.
Right.
Of what's really established as the state religion today.
And the transsexuals.
Oh, the transgender stuff.
It's a perfect example.
Yeah.
It's a perfect example of it.
Yeah.
You know, it's completely incompatible with traditional religious belief and yet the government thinks it can force it down people's throats.
Well, the thing that I just took away in this conversation that I'm so grateful for is – I've been entrenched in these issues for the last several years.
And I don't know, have you read my books?
Yes.
Okay, you're familiar with where I come from here.
Maybe that's why you set it up this way for me, which I appreciate, which is when I'm looking from the outside in, a daunting challenge like the bureaucratic cancer at the FBI or other government agencies, part of me feels like I'm ready to take it on, but that's got to be a daunting challenge because that's a new challenge.
Institution-specific bureaucratic failure.
And I think one of the things you've done in this conversation, very helpful to me, maybe you intended to do this and you succeeded, it's very helpful, is open my eyes to the fact that that governmental bureaucratic challenge is not so unfamiliar with To me, even relative to the problems I've been tackling in other parts of our culture or the private sector, which is encouraging.
But I still think some of the things you've been talking about, I mean, we do have to change the civil service laws and allow presidents much more latitude in managing their own branch of government.
Yeah.
And also, I think we have to move agencies out of Washington, D.C. I love that.
In a radical way.
And the reorganization powers allow for that, I think, for the US president to do it.
I think we should move, I mean, I would move agencies not to primary cities, not to cities that are already big and have their urban problems, but to other places in the country.
I would have liked to move a lot of the FBI down to Huntsville, Alabama, where we already have a campus down there.
But not just the FBI, but all the agencies.
We don't need everything concentrated.
I like that quite a bit.
I mean, I think there's a lot of things that are appealing about it.
One of them is it's an easy way of getting a lot of people who don't want to move out of the system.
So yeah, that's something I'm definitely working on.
Maybe I'll be picking up the phone and calling you from time to time if you're okay with it as we set in place the plans of How exactly I think we're going to do that.
Absolutely.
I think, as I told you, I think you're a great voice out there, you know, so clear and saying a lot of things that have to be said.
What we're going to try to do, thank you for saying that, is to translate that into action through national leadership, which hopefully comes with a mentality of not just managing the problems we have, but actually picking at least a few of them.
You're not going to get one person who solves all of them, but pick a few of them and don't just manage them, you solve them.
Right.
Yeah.
I appreciate that.
Well, this is an incredibly useful conversation.
I've enjoyed it a lot.
We're going to have a few more of them.
You have to come to Columbus.
When we do this again, we have a lot to pick up.
We didn't even touch the DOJ, which I want to get into.
Let's say that, you know, we're talking right now in D.C. on a on-the-road edition of the podcast, but let's keep our plan to do one in Columbus intact.
Sure.
Love to do it.
Yeah, love to do it.
We'll pick up where we left off.
Yeah.
Good.
Thanks, Bill.
I'm Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for president, and I approve this message.
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