"Trump Stopped Invasions" – Kevin McCarthy Talks Iran, Israel, and the Chessboard of Politics | PBD Podcast | Ep. 482
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So we have the one and only 55th speaker of the house, Kevin McCarthy in the house. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Of course. This is exciting. Yes. And by the way,

The conversations before recording was very entertaining, right? It's private, but it's very entertaining conversations we had. However, you and I have spoken about possibly doing this. And, you know, last time we finally figured it out this time. Last time there was some things going on. But I'm glad to have you here. And for starters, because of what's going on right now, like literally this broke. So if you don't mind, I just kind of want to get into it. Obviously, we heard the story of last week.

which the leader of Hezbollah, Nasser Loh, who was killed, as well as a couple other leaders of the Iranian national, you know, that whole thing took place last week. Chaotic. Iran comes back. We're going to do something about it. We're going to attack. Netanyahu gives a speech, which I don't know if you saw Netanyahu's speech to Iran, saying one day we're going to coexist. It's not going to be nasty. It's not going to be ugly. We're going to figure this thing out. This is the speech we'll maybe play afterwards.

But then all of a sudden right now, Rob, a story comes out about Iran launches major missile strike on Israel. This is five minutes ago on October 1st. If you want to go a little bit lower to read this. So I think it's a couple hundred of them that were fired. There's 180 projectiles that were fired. This is the report that's coming down. There was a serious attack on us and there will be serious consequences, you know,

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps said it targeted Israel in response to the killing of Nasrallah and others, according to Iran's semi-official TANIM News. After the barrage of missiles were launched, the Iranian mission to the United Nations said that Tehran carried out a response to the terrorist act of the Zionist regime. So I'll pause right here.

How much uglier can this get, Kevin, and what can be done to prevent it at this time? We're talking 40 days before election. Okay. A couple things you first want to look at, because this is just happening right now. This is different than the attack that Iran did in April. Whereas in April when they sent, and that was the first time ballistic missiles went from Iran to Israel. Never before they'd come from that land.

They gave more warning in April. They had more drones going first. So you almost were prepared, but it was an embarrassment to Iran that everything pretty much got knocked down. This is with 15 minutes, 12 minutes warning. But also if you look, and I'm just getting this information now, so don't hold me to it, but you had the attack in Tel Aviv on the train station. It seemed, okay, this is coordinated. This is trying to go on all at once.

You're coming up on October 7th, the anniversary of the terrorist attack going into Iran, going into Israel. Iran is taking an action back, which I think is a wrong move on their part, based upon what Israel was able to do, taking out a terrorist. The individual he took out was part of the Beirut killing Americans. He's killed Americans before as well. It showed two things if I was Iran and I was thinking right now.

to take that terrorist out, they had to go underground. They had to go underground.

through concrete to get there, which a lot of people didn't believe is possible. The other thing in April when they attacked, Israel went in and took out the air defense that was before maybe a nuclear facility. So it's telling a very clear message. Iran, if you want to go further, we'll take out your capabilities in other places. But why would Israel go into Lebanon? Well, they have been fired upon and

A large portion of their population in northern Israel have not been home for months.

So all they're trying to do is preventive. You watch what happens with the pagers and with the walkie-talkies. Only went directly to individuals who were there. I mean, they are sophisticated. The Israeli intelligence, October 7th they missed. This one they did not. I think having American naval presence there can calm the temperature. You don't want it go to full scale. I don't think you're going to get a...

Peace agreement between now and a short time period. I think once this is done right now, the early reports, it doesn't seem as though many of these missiles hit facilities. I mean, if you look at the defense system Israel has, the problem being is the number that are coming, you can overwhelm them, right? Right.

If you're knocking them out, there's only so many, but if you're sending hundreds, how can you reload and be able to be prepared? You've got David Sling and the Iron Dome and others.

This is it, Rob. This is the one that just happened, right? Correct. But do you know how many got through, Rob? I do not. The latest report I saw was four killed. I'm not sure if that was related to the shooting or the bombing. So that's what. Well, the shooting says six killed. If you can go to the shooting, I'll read that article. I thought there were six or eight who were either shot or killed in the shooting. The thing you have to remember, too, how these systems work.

They have about 24 missiles sitting in them. They identify the weapon or the missile that's coming, and then they predict where it's going to go. So if they predict that this missile is going to land in an open field, they'll let it go. Leave it alone. They'll leave it alone and don't waste because what you would—

If you're an enemy, what you want to do is you send missiles that don't really have much in it and you overwhelm the system. Then you send the cruise missiles to the others afterwards. But this is where you have to be very sophisticated and use it

smart and be able to have the protection. And as you watch some of those pictures, you'll see rockets going up and you see these explosions. That's taking it out. That's going back to Ronald Reagan in the Star Wars, what people had talked about all before. It actually works. And if you've ever been to Israel, you've ever seen them, the people who are running these systems are about 20 years old, 19, and they're about six or eight of them. They still work this effectively. Oh, wait a minute. The people who do, they're 20 years old. Oh, yeah.

If you're in Israel, you get out of high school, you serve in the military. Women or men. And look, every Congress, I would lead a group of members to Israel. I spoke at the Knesset for the 75th anniversary. It's very important that people understand Middle East, but understand the democracy of Israel and what they stand for in others. And all Israel is doing, remember,

the attack on October 7th was greater than 9-11 in America. The number of people killed proportionally, everything about it. So let me ask this. So Ahmadinejad, right? He and I had a conversation, Rob. I don't know how long ago it was when we had a conversation. Two months ago, three months ago? August, we had a conversation. He reached out. So we had a conversation together. Great. And I'm from Iran. I've interviewed the Crown Prince of Iran. They know my politics, which way I lean, all this stuff.

And yesterday, he's being interviewed, and they talk about how this hit took place. I don't know if you saw this clip on what he said. If you want to play this clip, he's claiming that Hezbollah was compromised by Mossad at the top of Hezbollah. Why don't you just play the clip, and we'll react to it. Go for it.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was rejected as a candidate for Iran's presidential elections to be held on June 18th, continues to make statements. Most recently, he claimed that the head of the counter-Israel unit in the Iranian intelligence ministry was an Israeli agent. That's pretty...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former president of Iran and rejected candidate for the June 18th election, continues his revelations. This time in an interview, Ahmadinejad said that the highest person in charge of the counter-Israel unit in Iran's intelligence ministry was an Israeli agent. Why should he be with people's contacts?

Ahmadinejad said that Israel has influence up to the highest levels of the government, especially in the intelligence and security services. He said that Israel has been able to carry out sophisticated operations inside Iran and has stolen very important nuclear documents from the most sensitive units. And he said that this is because Israel's vast influence and network of agents inside the Iranian leadership is still silent.

You can pause it right there. What do you think? Is it just gibberish or is he being, is he, does he have intel that the rest of us don't? This was a former president of Iran. If he really had this intel and the former president, why would he just come out with it now? And if he thought that was true, why wouldn't he have done something about it? What is true is the sophisticated of Mossad. I mean, for them to think of how difficult to be able to set up a company or be successful

a supplier in a company and have you buy all the pagers and the walkie talkies. What's happening inside and really is exactly what you want to happen there is they're questioning everything now.

they're in fear, right? They don't know who to trust. He's not a like candidate, by the way. No, he was the press. But internally, you know how from the outside we think they're all united? It's just like Iranians looking at us thinking America's united and we're not. He's not a liked guy. No. The damage he did to his country. I mean, you know this just for yourself. The Iranian people are wonderful people. They're trying to rise up to their own government because of the oppression. I mean, think about what...

Iran looked like in 1970 and what it looks like today. Night and day. Yeah, you went backwards. That's right. Right? And nobody wants that. But what happened here and why Israel had always, my belief is, why were they part of the Pagers and why were they the walkie-talkies? So if war ever did break out, they could break down the chain of command, okay? Yeah.

They didn't want to go when they needed to, but they somehow people had found out about it. They began to question it. So the, the Intel and listen, so they had to go when they did. And what's that do is it makes their own leadership, not trust one another who knew this, who bought these, how did you know? And the other thing that pops up, you're now seeing you had an Iranian ambassador. What's he doing with a pager, right? He's part of Hezbollah. You're now seeing the people who say one thing and do another. And, and,

If you really think about this, why is this day transpiring? You move backwards. Had the Biden administration embraced the Abraham Accords, I don't believe October 7th ever would have happened. Tell me why. Because the Abraham Accords, it made such great strides and all you needed to do is build and bring Saudi Arabia in.

When they ignored it for so long and then started to try to get Saudi Arabia, what did they do? They invaded Iran because they wanted, and Israel, I mean, they invaded Israel because they wanted to create a conflict that you couldn't build it together. I watched the Biden administration. They got Trump syndrome, right? Anything Trump did. If Trump had passed a bill that made Mother's Day on a certain day, they would have changed the date.

But had they embraced the Abraham Accords, something you've never seen before, where countries were acknowledging one another. You were now doing business together, UAE and others. You are now flying where you couldn't fly before over. This was a recognition and a growth and an understanding. Saudi Arabia being the largest, they were coming on board. But they didn't because what did Biden do at the very beginning? He shunned Saudi Arabia. We have...

Inside Iran, they were producing 400,000 barrels a day. He let it go to 3 million, the billions of dollars they were able to receive then. So what'd they do with it? They fund their proxies, Hezbollah and the others. And that going through, watching, and then the misstep in Afghanistan that turned the country in a whole different place. And then if you really look at history, we are sitting today similar to 1938, right?

Tell me the last time you had an axis of evil, where you had Russia, you have North Korea, you have China, and you have Iran bounding together. You had Germany, you had another country in Asia, Japan, and you had Italy. If you look at the movements of Putin, they are very similar to Hitler. Let me explain. Hitler serves in the German army in World War I.

He hates that his leadership signs the Treaty of Versailles. Gorbachev. You're talking about Gorbachev? No, Hitler. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm thinking you're going Putin. Got it. Hitler, yes. Let me explain Hitler, then I'll explain the actions of Putin and why they're similar. Hitler serves in the German army. He's a soldier. He hates that they sign the Treaty of Versailles. So much so, in World War II, when he takes France, he brings the rail car they signed it in back to make France sign the surrender in it.

But what does he do? He creates a new political party and he runs for office in a democracy again and again and again until he takes power. Then he takes the rights away. And the first thing he does is rebuild his military. But it goes directly against the Treaty of Versailles. But the world power says nothing because they believe they'll keep the communists in check. Then what does he do? He takes the Rhineland. They don't say anything. Then he takes Austria. They really don't say anything.

Then he creates the axis of evil with a country in Asia, Japan, and Italy. All leaders who want to expand their sphere of influence. Then he tells the world that he's going to take Czechoslovakia. So no longer can the world power ignore him. So in comes Neville Chamberlain. His own generals warned him, don't poke the bear. They can beat us. But what is Hitler? Hitler sees weakness in their eyes. He loves being elevated.

And he signs a piece of paper that Neville Chamberlain waves and says, peace for our time, that he could care less. He invades Poland, World War II begins. Now compare that to Putin. Putin didn't serve in the Soviet army, but he served in the KGB. He hated that his leadership collapsed to the West. So much so when Gorbachev died a couple of years ago, he wouldn't attend the funeral. In this context is Gorbachev. This is what I meant to say. This is Putin, yeah, with Gorbachev. I got you, yes. Okay, so Putin does the exact same thing as Hitler.

He runs for office in a democracy and he wins. He becomes president. He respects the Constitution, serves two terms, leaves, puts its puppet Medved in, becomes prime minister, then comes back and changes and takes the power. He learns from Hitler that a military makes you strong, but dependency makes you weak. He builds his military by selling...

There's natural resources, right? He's got these old pipelines that go through former Soviet countries like Ukraine and others. He uses the KGB tactics to fund environmental groups to get Merkel and others to buy their natural gas. But when the leadership in Ukraine switches, he no longer wants to pay the dividends. So what does he do? He proposes a new pipeline that goes through no country that only goes through the ocean nor stream two.

Merkel and everybody says, great, the only country to stand up to it and sanction it is America. Then what does he do? He invades Georgia. He takes Crimea. He takes part of the Donbass. He invades a country in every single presidency except President Trump. And technically, the world powers, we don't do that much. We sanction him. He's still the wealthiest man in the world. Then he watches.

As you always get, any new president in America gets challenged. He parks 100,000 troops on the border of Ukraine. But in the Olympics with China, he goes to China and creates the new axis of evil. China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia, all bound to pressure democracies, right? He watches what happens in Afghanistan. Here we are. We haven't had one soldier killed in the last 18, 16 months, 2,500 people there. And Biden ignores Afghanistan.

the military advice and shrinks it to 900 and missteps, right? We create 13 gold star families. When he closed Bagram, that's where the suicide bomber came from. That was the prison. Well, what happens? He gets his meeting with Biden, the leader of the world power. So Biden comes to see him. Putin loves it. Biden doesn't tell Putin to remove the troops, but you know what Biden does? He lifts the sanctions off North Stream 2.

So Putin believes that Ukraine would collapse in two weeks. Biden believes the same thing. Offers Zelensky's a helicopter. But these people fight. And let me give you a little back history. In 2015, after Russia had invaded Ukraine once, I took a bipartisan group there.

I come back, I go to the White House, and I go see the person who's in charge of Ukraine, who is then Vice President Biden. I go in the Situation Room, I bring a bipartisan group, and I'm advocating, let's sell them javelins. Javelins is a defensive weapon that takes tanks out. Let them defend themselves, right? Biden says, no, Merkel won't like it. And I will tell you,

As I'm speaker and as this is taking place before they invade, Biden had called me and says, Kevin, I don't think Putin's going to invade. I really put these tough sanctions. I told him all these tough sanctions on. I said, and I don't play games during this time. I said, Mr. President, I disagree. And this is why I disagree. I believe Putin only looks at the world in black and white. He's like a mafia boss. And Mr. President, this year is the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Soviet Union.

What he will do is you need to send weapons, not people. If he views that it will be hard, he won't go. You're giving him a misinterpretation. And then he went through and lifted. Once Putin invaded, Biden called me and said, now, Kevin, you have to understand sanctions take a long time to work.

It was the one thing Gates had always gotten right, Secretary Gates, about Biden. He's always made the wrong foreign policy decision or when he finally makes the right one, it's too late to get the outcome you desired.

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Secretary Gates. You're talking about Robert? Yes. He served under Bush and... Defense. Yeah, defense. Right, I got you. Okay, so let me ask you a question. Why did you go from Israel to Putin? I'm curious. What prompted you to go this way? Two things. You asked me what can we do in this situation and not have a war and what to break out. Right. And that, you can't have something that transpires in the Middle East that doesn't affect the rest of the world. Right.

So I was trying to give you a snapshot of where we actually sit in the world today. Henry Kissinger, before he passed away, he wrote this article with Graham Allison. Graham wrote Destined for War. He served under Ronald Reagan and also with Clinton. He was great in the Cold War. But they started this article with three numbers, 79, 79, and 9.

You know what those numbers mean? It's been 79 years since we had a great war. That's actually a really long time, okay? Between World War I, World War II, think about that. It's been 79 years since any country has used an atomic or nuclear weapon. There are nine countries with that capability. So this all circles back around. If we were sitting here in the 1960s and we were going through the missile crisis of Cuba, we would have projected that there'd be 40 countries

With a nuclear weapon. When did we project that? No, we would have, we would have thought, I'm just telling you what we probably would have thought with him, but we would have thought it would have grown that way. Right. So we've done a pretty good job of holding it together. Right.

if Iran is allowed to get a nuclear weapon, it will move to 40 Saudi Arabia. The next day we'll have one. Everybody will feel they have to protect. And how do you control a world? Is that the biggest fear is the fear that they will be the number one tipping point to everybody else having it, that the nine will become 40. Well, the fear would be if more people have it and you have a change in leadership and you have, uh,

If you have more that have it and you have these unstable people as leaders, they'll use it. And today you could have small nuclear weapons, right? And you know, you don't, you watch where China's building up. And if you're living in a neighborhood that your neighbor has it, you're going to feel you have to protect yourself.

That's a much harder place for diplomacy to work. So let me ask you, so go back to Iran and Israel, right? Yes. I've interviewed directors of different CIA, different Mossad. I've had Mossad, the former director of Mossad from the 80s on. I had the former director of CIA that was under Clinton. And I've had a few guys. I'm curious to know what's going on with, you know, who has the best intelligence. Isn't it known that...

Worldwide, probably the best intelligence is Mossad, or would you put us ahead of Mossad? You know, it's kind of like technology. You live off what was in the back, but somebody else pushes it forward. So let's take two instances. When Ukraine was going to be invaded...

America released their information where everybody thought Russia would not invade them. But we were right. That was a good job on intel. But we miss other things. Mossad is very sophisticated. It has a great reputation. But how did October 7th happen? This is my interpretation why. And look, I was a gang of eight, but I can't tell you anything inside. I'm just going to tell you what I read from the outside. Because what they used in October 7th, we start relying more on technology.

Because we think technology is further advanced. And it is, right? We're going to listen to your phones. We're going to see where you are. They went back to old school. Homer pigeons, right? They just pass in notes. That's hard. That's human intel that you have to need. So you missed an opportunity there where you start relying and believing, oh, I got the best operating system. Yeah, but I'm using floppy disks so you can't find it. So, but...

That was a major miss, but for Mossad to come back and be in the pagers, that takes years in advance to get there. That's sophistication. And they do have one of the best reputations and have some of the best knowledge, but the five eyes share with one another. And sometimes some people pick something up better than somebody else, but it did teach us

technology is not the only answer. You still need human ability. Yeah, I mean, and the reason why I'm asking the question is because when you said they made a mistake on the 7th, but they didn't make the mistake this time, right? So on the 7th, you know, the question becomes, how do you miss that? How do you miss something like that? That's not that complicated to miss. That's an easy one to catch to be able to bring you to where it's at now, right? I mean, this one now, it's almost like,

I mean, if you play the clip, can you play the clip by Netanyahu? Because for me, you got to realize, I go back to the interviews by the Shah. And I'm talking Wallace back in the days when he would interview him.

And he says, we have no issues with Israel. We have no issues with U.S. We have no issues with this. He got along with everybody in the Middle East, for the most part, was peaceful until Khomeini came in, Hezbollah came in, and then Middle East has been in shambles since 79. But he's here pleading with the Iranian people. Rob, if you want to play this clip, go for it. I speak a lot about the leaders of Iran. Yet at this pivotal moment, I want to address you, the people of Iran. I want to do so directly, personally.

without filters, without middlemen. Every day you see a regime that subjugates you, make fiery speeches about defending Lebanon, defending Gaza. Yet every day that regime plunges our region deeper into darkness and deeper into war. Every day their puppets are eliminated. Ask Muhammad Def, ask Nasrallah. There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach.

There's nowhere we will not go to protect our people and protect our country. With every passing moment, the regime is bringing you, the noble Persian people, closer to the abyss. The vast majority of Iranians know their regime doesn't care a whit about them. If it did care, if it cared about you, it would stop wasting billions of dollars on futile wars across the Middle East. It would start improving your lives.

Imagine if all the vast money the regime wasted on nuclear weapons and foreign wars were invested in your children's education, in improving your healthcare, in building your nation's infrastructure, water, sewage, all the other things that you need. Imagine that. But you know one simple thing. Iran's tyrants don't care about your future, but you do.

When Iran is finally free, and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think, everything will be different. Our two ancient peoples, the Jewish people and the Persian people, will finally be at peace. Our two countries, Israel and Iran, will be at peace. You can pause that right there. So you know what it makes me think? You need more of this. No, I agree. But you know what I think about? Here's what I think about. Two things can be right at the same time.

Let me speculate. I'm not in this world. This is your world. I'm a guy that just runs a business and has conversations with people that are involved in business, politics, you know, sports, different things. I enjoy these types of conversations. But for me, he gives me the vibes of a true believer.

He gives me the vibes that he thinks and firmly believes the existence of Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, any one of these guys, the existence of them makes the Middle East unsafe. I believe he firmly believes that. I don't think there's an ounce of doubt there. I think he's a true, true believer. He's not gray. I think in that area, he's a firm believer.

So then to me is it's coming down to a point that his, his time is coming up to an end. He's only got a few more years left. So it's not like he's going to go for many years and he's been going for a long time since journalists. He's been impressive for a long time. No question about it. And, but he's not doing this just because he wants fame. I believe he wants to take out the enemy because of promises he's made to his mentors 30, 20 years ago that I'm going to deliver on my promise. Could be his father, could be other people. That's the vibe he gives me. So, uh,

You have that good of an intelligence and then that event happens? That's kind of like a lame, that's like an open layup. It's not like somebody made a tough shot on you. It's an open layup. They could have got that.

So then that gets me to think about, did they need that crisis to give them all the right for them to go and retaliate, even though Egypt, CIA, everybody gave them the intel? This is going to happen to you, and they kind of looked the other way. And then come now, this is where there's a bit of a division on the conservative side, okay, when we're coming to election cycle. There's a lot of people that...

are sitting there saying, look, Kevin, I get it. You're telling me that Putin is Hitler. You're telling me all these other things. But, man, I'm not for giving more money to any of these guys. I'm not for sending more of our troops. I'm not for more military industrial complex. This is just costing us more money. We're sending more weapons. Shouldn't we be more worried about our country and kind of not get involved in a lot of the mess that's happening over there? What do you say to folks like that? I do twofold, okay?

First, let's finish this with Netanyahu. That's exactly the message you want to go because you know, watching Iran, just the internal...

protests they had. These are free loving people who want to be able to have a democracy and go question that they're, they're oppressed by their leadership. And we know, and so speaking directly to them to try to make something different. And the only way Iran is ever going to be free is from within to, to, to be able to. And I think we missed a big opportunity during the green revolution with, uh, with Obama in there, uh,

I was just thinking if Reagan was around, he would have stood for it, right? The power of America, our greatest strength is not our aircraft carrier. It's the idea of America. That's what changes things. Okay. This is a great debate to have. And if you study history, where was the Republican Party in the early 1900s? We became isolationist. And you watched World War II begin. People say we're sending all this money to Ukraine. I always question because I like accountability.

Technically, not a lot's going to Ukraine. It's going to replenish our weapons. What we do is we send the weapons to Ukraine and think about it. It's like, okay, we're going to send, we're going to get, you need a phone. Okay, we're going to give you our old iPhone and we're going to go buy a new one. The other thing we should learn from Ukraine is the next war is going to be fought different. Okay. I believe the next war will start in space. Okay. After Ukraine,

After Desert Storm, the world watched America, okay? Desert Storm and China watched this too, that no longer do we just drop bombs. We'll send into your window a bomb to get you, right? We'll move an aircraft carrier 250 miles and we'll touch you. So what does China do? They don't build aircraft carriers. They build missiles to sink them. Then they build islands and lie to us and weaponize them to push us further back.

They watch, we use GPS. So what do they do? They start going to space. You may not know it. They got a rover on Mars. China's landed on the backside of the moon, the dark side. We have not. It's difficult. If you watch, if you've, you didn't read Graham Allison's Destined for War. If you study world history 16 times in world history, the number two power has surpassed the number one. Only four of those times they did not go to war.

And so I don't look, I don't think China ever surpasses their form of government's wrong. The idea of freedom of everything else. But this was a concern of mine. And what really got me thinking is, I'll tell you this. I was walking the grave sites at the 75th anniversary of Normandy. And I'm actually with Nancy Pelosi. She's speaker. I'm leader. And I'm reading the great I'm reading the names. They're all young men.

They all come from different faiths. And I'm wondering what would the policymakers have done that that day never would have happened? Okay. It's not a week before, it's like a decade before. So when I became speaker, I created what is called the Select Committee on China.

And I sat with the minority leader at the time, Hakeem, and I said, here's the names of the Republicans I'm going to appoint before I even tell the Republicans. And when we constitute this committee, I want you there with me. I don't want this to be a partisan committee. I'm not going to make the majority a bigger size in there. I'm going to make it very close in number so it sustains rather who.

And the reason why is I don't want us to prepare for war. I want us to build that we never have war. Okay. So if you look at the dependency, especially after COVID, what did we learn? China controls 90% of the critical minerals. So we can go open a new mine, but you know what else? China controls 95% of the processing of critical minerals. They control 50% of our medical supplies.

And what we've done is we sat back and we've allowed this to take place. And I will tell you, with all things that are happening in Congress, this has been a very good committee work together. When the president of Taiwan came to America to see me, I said I would.

And I wanted the meeting to be at the Reagan library because there's no greater symbolism of defeating communism without even a bullet being fired. Simi Valley. Yeah. Okay. So I held it there. She comes to see me. China pays protesters $500 and out there waving China flags. That's fine. It's America. You're allowed to do that, right? So we have a meeting. I bring a bipartisan group. So these Democrats who belong to this select committee come to Ronald Reagan's

library, which is big for them at the same time, right? We have a great meeting with the president. Then we do a press conference out back with a big piece of the Berlin Wall behind it. 173 cameras come. It's the first day they indict Trump in New York over some BS thing, right?

And the Democrats are a little afraid, like, I'm going to go up and do a press conference with him. I said, listen, I won't let him ask any question about that. This is also Andrea Mitchell is sitting there in the front. And she she says in her question, I was with Reagan when he said tear down this wall. And it made me emotional. I want to tell you, I'm just as emotional today seeing all of you together.

So my point here is there's a lot of challenges in this world. This world has been teetering where they have not had a world war in 79 years. That's a long time. You've got nine countries with the nuclear capability, others who are trying. You've got disruption in the Middle East. But why are we here? This is a good case to understand why this election is so important. The only time Putin did not invade another country was under Donald Trump.

China had not partnered with Russia and North Korea. We didn't have five embassies that we had to evacuate. We didn't have a war in Ukraine. We didn't have and just give up a base in Africa that Russia just walked into that we used to have a thousand troops where we used a lot of our drones to study where other stuff is coming there. So I tell my friends who get worried about America, okay?

I worry about this each and every day. The world looks more dangerous. It's not a time that you take yourself off the sitting stage. You don't have to put a lot of money. Tell me one American who has died in Ukraine in our military uniforms. Nobody. Russia, before this transpired, was considered probably the second or third strongest military. It has been decimated, right?

And what we have found too is the next war is not going to be, and we have to learn this. We can't spend $5 million missiles to shoot down a $10 drone. We're going to have to, we have to transform our entire military. And what we need to do is grab Silicon Valley to do it. Do you know Palmer Luckey? No. Palmer's a dear friend. Palmer's a unique guy. Homeschooled.

Went to Long Beach State when I met him, and I asked him, what are you studying? He goes, well, I don't go to school anymore. I only went there three years. Oh, yes. I know he's the Oculus guy. Yeah. Yeah. He created Oculus, but he has Andral today, right? If you think about one other thing I did before I became speaker, I wanted to prepare for this position, right? So MIT teaches a course in AI and quantum to all the generals in our military. Whichever country captures that first will have an advantage, right?

So I want to do this. I want to stop. I want to go back because I want to go back to the question I asked and we'll get to this because I got a list of things I'm going to get through with you here, but let's go back. Okay. I want to know for that, for the people who are, are watching this closely. I'm from Iran. I lived with Hezbollah up until 11 years old. I know what it is to live in Iran, Tehran. I know what it is to have women's hair showing what happens when they're kidnapped and slashed, you know,

whipped 77 times. I know what it was when Iran was at peace in the Middle East pre-the Shah and everybody used to go there for vacation in the 70s. I understand what Khamenei, Khomeini, all of these guys did to Iran post-79, catastrophic, and a number of chaos in the Middle East went to the flipping roof. So to the community that talks about

what that, what that regime did afterwards. Okay. And what happened with the two man? What happened with inflation? What happened with the living? What happened with, you know, women having the rights to do so? What happened with all these, you know, rappers, singers, artists, they couldn't, I know all of that and I'm not with it. What I'm asking is the following. Okay. I'm asking a question about, and if you, if you're not comfortable answering this, I'm totally good. We'll move on. No. Uh,

In order for Israel to be given free reign, to reign on Iran, they needed a crisis, right? What does Rahm Emanuel say? Never let a crisis go to waste, right? So in this situation, if they didn't have a crisis...

They almost needed to create one so he can go finish his crusade of destroying Iran and changing the regime. Which, by the way, some may say, fine, if that's your vision, that's what you want to do, I get it. So it's your question, you think, that they knew this was happening and they let it happen so they could have a reason to go? To have this level of advancement, to pay attention when one of the leaders of Hezbollah says, if you want to know what Mossad is doing, they're watching all your phones. Get rid of your phones.

Use pagers. Then they get ahead of the people that's making it. The lady that makes it, the CEO, sends the 5,000 pagers. They all get a text. It all blows up simultaneously at 3.31, whatever the time was.

I mean, that's extremely strategic to do that, right? With Hamas's attack, I don't believe anybody in their right mind would allow that to happen. And I don't believe one person could make that decision, okay? What I think transpired was a lot of big mistakes, okay? I think it comes in just like the Secret Service making a mistake and having an assassination attempt that could have been stopped. What I believe happened, and these are the things we don't know,

How many prior times had you had intel like something was going to happen and you went and put a defense for it and nothing went to fruition? I think that they went back to old school Hamas did in passage. So they weren't picking it up. And if they pick something up with somebody coming in, it's kind of like Pearl Harbor, right? Hey, we've got all the dots of all these planes coming in. We radio it in. Oh, no, we're supposed to get some B-2s coming in. So I think it's human error.

I think they didn't go probably deep enough, and I think Hamas did something. That was too large. You can never allow that to happen to your people.

That's my personal belief. I don't have any intel that takes me any other direction. I understand your question and I understand people why I would do it. How could you miss something so big? That's a pretty big miss. I mean, it is a big, by the way, historically, it's the biggest embarrassment for that country ever. I agree. And for me, the flip side of it is, is which a lot of people will, you know, I'm not making friends with my position that I have because I'll say that. And then my next position is,

I can't wait for Iran to be free again. I can't wait for Iran to be to the point where I can take my- Yeah, but I think the way Iran can be free is from within. Give them the ability. But they're going to need help from you. They need support, yeah. The moment they remove the sanctions, if I'm not mistaken, February 4th of 2022- Yeah, it was close. Right. We were there. Right, we were so close with what was going on. But then he embraced them and pushed our allies away.

And what happened? China came to the Middle East and brokered a deal with Saudi Arabia and Iran. And under Obama, he brought Russia back into the Middle East that hadn't been there since the Soviet Union, into Syria. I mean, then it makes it more messy with your ability to...

to bring some more democracy there.

Learn more at ibm.com slash WatsonX. IBM. Let's create.

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Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. It's not easy. No, it's not. When you sit there and you... By the way, just out of curiosity for you, you're in that world. You're with everybody. Like, you've had conversations with all the guys that we read about and we speak about. Who has... I don't... Who has the biggest... Like, if they make a phone call, they have the most influence. Let me unpack. Is it the folks...

At Big Pharma, who have the biggest lobbyists, is it the folks with military industrial complex? Is it the folks who control Hollywood, radio, news, media? Is it the folks...

who are with the intelligence organization, CIA that really can make, is it the DOJ? Is it the folks of the social media companies who has the biggest stick when they call and they say, that guy's on line one. We got to make sure we deliver on the promise that that guy's asking for who, who in the establishment has the biggest power. I, you know, it's interesting. You might think in the old days that was the case, but just like, just like that disruption has happened in business. Disruption has happened in politics.

You don't need that anymore. You don't raise your most money from some pack. That's the least amount that you ever get. With the ability to raise money online today, all you need to do is act crazy and go put an email out and you'll raise. Not that you'll achieve anything, not that you'll be able to accomplish anything, but I believe people respect no matter where you come from and what industry, if you're a straight shooter,

that you've had discussions before and people find you not just to be honest, but you're knowledgeable. To me, the greatest power in politics is knowledge. You think so? I know so. I think it's leverage. Okay, explain to me, what leverage does some pharmaceutical company have when they give you a pack that they can give you $5,000? What leverage? Yeah.

Okay, so you're assuming... When you disrupted it, you don't have that great leverage. And the parties have been broken down where they don't have great leverage because McCain-Feingold now. Media companies have leverage. You have influence, okay? Yeah.

Um, cause the other thing that's happened now is we have fewer competitive districts. Okay. So when Republicans won the majority in 2010, we beat 63 Democrats. There's not even 63 competitive seats. There's like 35. So now most seats are safe, right? So if something happens, Democrats are always going to end up with like 198 or 200 seats. Republicans going to end up about 207.

So really then structure dictates behavior. You find this in business, you find this in politics. So most members are going to be safe in their seats. So they don't really care about a general election. They only care about a primary election.

So whether you're a Democrat, it's going to be more in the progressive world. If you're a Republican, more in the conservative world. And who are the influencers? If you ask me from a Republican point, who has the greatest influence is going to be Trump. Trump has never been so powerful in primaries as he was this election cycle. There were only three incumbents to lose.

I mean, you'd probably lose more in Russia today, but only three incumbents lost. One had to run against another incumbent, so one was going to lose. You're saying midterms? Yes, in their primaries. Bob Good lost in Virginia and two Democrats lost, but that was AIPAC that actually got in and spent good money, and that was influencing in the Democratic Party.

Why do you think Thomas Massey has such a big problem with APAC? When he says everybody's got an APAC guy. I think he said that. I don't know who he was being interviewed by. I think it was Tucker or someone like that. I'm a big fan. Is this the one? I'm a big fan of Thomas Massey. I'm a big fan of APAC. I was just talking to Thomas today. Play this clip. Let's see what he says here. Everybody but me has an APAC person. What does that mean, an APAC person?

It's like your babysitter, your AIPAC babysitter, who is always talking to you for AIPAC. They're probably a constituent in your district, but they are firmly embedded in AIPAC and... Every member has something like this? That's how it works on the Republican side. And when they come to D.C., you go have lunch with them and they've got your cell number and you have conversations with them. That's absolutely crazy. I've had four members of Congress say, "I'll talk to my AIPAC person."

And it's literally what we call them, my APAC guy. What's his issue with APAC? Oh, Thomas is a libertarian. He's a solid, true believer. And Thomas will be at times when we do a resolution, something in the Middle East, and he'll be voting no, and he'll be one of two people, right? And so...

I think what you have found is AIPAC probably has a difference of opinion on his belief when it comes to Israel and others. Thomas is solid. I try to tell AIPAC, don't harass him. And he makes it. But Thomas, if you...

The man went to MIT. He's a brilliant person. He has a difference of opinion than some of us, but he votes the way he votes, and lots of times it's a no when everybody, 400 votes are voting yes. To be fair, AIPAC's the one that caused Bowman to lose, and who else lost because of AIPAC? It was Cori Bush that lost because of AIPAC. Those two that took place, yeah. So going back, if you want to go back to the point that we were making until you said AIPAC, I thought about Massey. We were talking about...

What story were we talking about, Rob, right before we went to that? I remember you were going to a point you were going to make. Was it MIT? No, not MIT. It was prior to that. We were talking about, oh, the establishment. And you said, what money does a person have if they're going to give $5,000 to a super PAC or something like that, right? Well, you don't get a super PAC. Okay, let's think about money. Money and politics is not equal. And let me just be 100% honest. I raised the most money.

of anybody's ever in Congress and others. The most powerful money is the least amount. It's the money you give directly to a candidate. Okay. The most you can give to a powerful money is the least amount. And let me explain $50 donations. Well, those are powerful because you raise money online, right? And especially if it comes from your district. Okay. So the least amount you can give it because it's limited is $3,300 to a member and primary general to

To a Super PAC unlimited, to a NRCC or a Democratic Party, I think it's like $35,000 or something. Why is that $3,300 more powerful? Because the member or the candidate could reserve TV time at a lower rate than a Super PAC, okay? So if you're a candidate and say you've got a million dollars and you're going to go get your message out on TV...

I'm just going to give you rude numbers. You get to buy it at the lowest rate they've ever offered it. So maybe you're buying it a dollar. Then you look, oh, no, this super PAC is going to come in with $5 million. But they may be paying $15 while you're paying $1. It goes further. So I've always told people, where do you want to, if your money wants to go somewhere, make the relationship directly to the candidate, max out to them. I think that's more powerful than writing the bigger checks.

So you don't think leverage is the part because... I don't think they have as much leverage as they did in the past because disruption. A lot of members don't get any PAC money and they raise it online. So let's show this here. This is total spending of presidential candidates and major political parties in the U.S. from 84 till 2024, right? If you can zoom in a little bit...

Blue is Dems. Red is Republican. Right. If you go from 1980, go all the way to the top, Rob. So 84, not a lot. Seventy seven hundred fifty million. Then Republicans do more. Obviously, that's Reagan. One ninety one. Eighty three. Then ninety two. One fifty five. Dems. One fifteen. Then Republicans. Ninety six. Three or four. One twenty eight. Republicans. Two thousand. I think that's Bush. Three eighty five. One seventy six. Then Dems. Oh, four.

517, 365. Then Obama, 1.1 billion to 600. Then Obama, 2, 774, 626, right? Then you got Hillary Clinton and Trump there. Trump, 668. Hillary, 883. Biden.

Republicans go to 828. Look at that. Holy moly. Biden needed $3.1 billion to become president. And now we're at 915, 352, right? So a couple of things you should have in here at Asterix. In that timeframe, a couple Supreme Court and some law changes. Please unpack that. Yes. McCain-Feingold-

happened. And I won't know the exact year that changed because before parties had a lot of control. So you could give to a, to a Republican party or not, and you could give corporate money. You can't give any corporate money in federal offices here. Okay. Some of this money too. I don't know if they're actually collecting. You have what is called a C4 and a super PAC, a C4

Can't be you. You could keep the disclosure, but you can't 100 percent use it in campaign. You could use it in issue advocacy. Right. You could say somebody is doing wrong. Call somebody in the straight super PAC, not to an individual. I can't give to an individual. I can give to an issue.

The one you just said. Yeah. If I got to see, say, say somebody has a C4 and somebody has a super PAC, the C4, a hundred percent of the money can't be go used to go to Trump. You could use issue advocacy and they have some formula. Got it. About 40 straight money. You got Bloomberg in here. One year he gave a hundred million dollars. I remember that right before he ran for president and he bragged, I won, I won the Congress. I remember that money. You can dump money on these close races and make a difference. These super PAC comes in. Sure. They can, they can have influence.

You can't work with the candidates about it. And each party has them. But outside groups have them to create their own. And this is another Supreme Court decision that was made that you can't limit that. So both sides do it. Democrats, you've noticed, have done better. They've got the unions do a great deal amount of money. And then when you watch last time, you find out later something like.

Zuckerberg did 400 million. Wasn't really calculated in here, but what was he doing? When I think about this, your question more, Google has a great deal of influence, right? If I Google Trump's name in there, but everything comes up about...

Harris, how much influence do you have there? What do you see? Or if I want to go in and how can I vote or what can I know? And they only put bad things up about you. That's powered. And 90% of all searches go through Google. And most people drop off after the first page. So if you own the first page. That's all that matters. Yeah. And then do this.

Because we do more online, ActBlue is tremendous, right? So if ActBlue, where people can just give a candidate, people come in and say, okay, I want to pick 10 candidates. And I put somebody that doesn't even have a chance. And all of a sudden they have a million dollars. They're making it more competitive. It's like a game of chess. You want to be on offense. You want to be putting more games in play. I've been fortunate. When I became leader, Pelosi became speaker.

When I became speaker, we had a five seat majority. We're both from California. Do you know in those two election cycles, how many more Republican seats I won in California? How many? Five. She lost her majority in California. I won in Oregon. I won in Arizona. I won five more in New York. So when Biden won and he had 82 million votes and everybody who projects, the Cook report and all that projects that we would lose 15 seats. Do you know how many Republican incumbents lost when Biden won the presidency? Zero.

It was the first time since 1994. And think about that. In 1994 was a Republican wave, but we didn't lose one. We beat 15 Democrats.

Okay, so let me ask you this while you're going to see you saying leverage doesn't matter. We're coming up to it. No, I say leverage matters, but I don't believe in leverage. The way you pose that question that leverage is the same way as you think. Okay, again, outside or opinion, you're on the inside. So please take mine as a, I'm not on the inside to know. I'm just watching from the outside as a guy that's a strategist and we've done deals with other companies, but it's different when you're inside politically. So let me talk about this one here because-

So you become the Speaker of the House. Yes. It took me 15 rounds. 15 rounds to get through it. Musk says, he tweeted, I don't know when he tweeted, but he tweeted saying, vote for me. Vote for this guy, right? So Musk's got a voice. Hey, guys, let's have this guy. And you guys are going back and forth. And then your one-year anniversary is coming up in two days, October 3rd, right? So October 7th, coming up in a week. October 3rd, coming up in two days, your one-year anniversary.

A lot of people wanted you in there. There wasn't like people wanted you out. So that's what I mean where did you not have the leverage in that sense is the reason why you got ousted because leverage was missing? This is good to talk about. I want to hear about it. And the reason why I'm asking this question is because I didn't want you to be out. And I've told you this before when you and I spoke about it. So you're not coming from a place of...

We both agree. Yeah. But however, so when that was taking place, I remember rumors were circulating that right before the midterms, I think it was like four weeks before the midterms when they did the Roe v. Wade, you could have waited six more weeks to do it, and that caused...

And correct me again, I'm just reciting what I remember. You're saying the Supreme Court? The Supreme Court Roe v. Wade happened before midterm. So when they were expecting a red wave, there was no red wave. And that's when a lot of people said the abortion issue was the reason why there was no red wave. And then you lost leverage. My interpretation, correct?

because you're in it. And then that's when you have to pick up the call, hey, big guys on the line, Marjorie Greene Taylor and Matt Gaetz and all that stuff. But you know the story, what happened? Okay, here's the story in the 15th. Abortion played in that election. But let me put it in perspective. The two biggest, bluest states we have are New York and California.

We won our majority by California and New York. I won five seats in both states. So how much did abortion play? But abortion mattered in different turnouts. We also had something that nobody really talks about. We had redistricting where they redrew all the lines. So nobody's- When did that happen, by the way? That election for 22. It happens every decade. So these are all new lines you're running in. And what they did when they drew this overall, fewer competitive seats. So you're not gonna have a majority that's sitting at 230.

Did we lose a number of seats that we probably could have picked up? Yeah. And I can walk you through them. Alaska and Maine do a ranked voting. So you can get the most votes, but if you don't get over 50, you're,

The number two kind of surpasses you. So those are Republicans. We had a bad top of the ticket in Pennsylvania running for governor. So we should have picked up a couple there. We had a bad candidate in Ohio. We could have picked up. We had a libertarian candidate in Colorado eight that took 4% of the vote. We lost by less than a thousand. So could it been a little higher? Yes. But the one thing I will say is the Republicans in the Senate lost the governors, everybody else, but we still won and we elected the most women, most minorities.

Quality of the candidate matters. Arizona, they lost both their Republican senators and statewide, but we picked up a seat with Juan Siskamani. So we picked up in Oregon, haven't won that seat in more than 20 years. In saying that, having a small majority, a small group inside Congress wanted to have a greater leverage, the Freedom Caucus, right? So they wanted to have, to go back to a rule that we've always had about a motion to vacate where one person can offer it, right?

It's just like think you have a primary that you nominate somebody. So we go through that and I win the conference to become speaker. I was the leader. We go to the floor and these members vote against me. We go through 15 rounds and then I win. The motion to remove me were eight members of our entire conference and all the Democrats. Okay. So if you're getting 94%, wouldn't you think,

That person wins or whatever. It really drove through one member who is Matt Gates. And unbeknownst to me, I select, I help select the committees, but there's one committee in Congress called the ethics committee. It doesn't matter who's in the majority. It's the exact same number of Republicans and Democrats and whoever has the majority is the chair.

They are the individuals who look at all the ethics. I have nothing to do with them because they could investigate me. You normally put former prosecutes on there. Unbeknownst to me, when I wasn't speaker, when Pelosi was speaker, they started looking into Matt Gaetz. And some of this I've learned later, right? And Matt Gaetz has this complaint about him of paying underage women and going to drug parties and the person he was with is in jail and all this stuff.

Well, what happens, I learned after the fact, is when you start investigating something like that, but the federal entity started it, they come to ethics and they say, pause. Okay, we're investigating. So once the feds stop, the ethics finish up what they were doing. And somewhere along the way, he gets some new letter. Ethics is asking some questions.

He thinks I'm doing this to him. I don't know this. While this is going on. Yeah, this is in the middle. I'm already speaker. I'm already speaker. We're already passing. He's getting along. He's saying I get an A for what I'm doing. And some other member comes, tells me this. I said, I don't even know this. I didn't know that they could have asked me. I don't even know what's going on. I have nothing to do with this. And Matt wants me to stop, influence the ethics. I'm not going to do that. So then Matt starts dreaming up to say, October 3rd, government is going to shut down.

I cannot believe that I'm going to shut government down. It actually costs you more money when you do. Think about if I shut government down October 3rd and our military men are sitting out there in aircraft carriers, they're not going to get paid. Their spouses are back home and October 7th happens. Well, he says, well, if you pass a continuing resolution, I'm going to make this motion against you.

So that's what he did. And the Democrats, even though they said they'd never vote for a motion to vacate, they did. And I believe when they came to tell me was we want to win the majority. You're the one leader who's always won. You raise more money than everybody else. We think you have to go so we can win. And so in essence, Matt worked with all the Democrats to try to pick and you watched, you couldn't find a speaker after that. We now last cycle,

Just my super PAC had more money than the D triple C and their super PAC together. I've won both times through. Now you just had last week, it came out in depositions on another trial that a 17 year old, a junior in high school said, yes, she did go to a party with Matt Gates. Yes, there were drugs and yes, he used Venmo to pay. So in essence, everything I said has come to fruition, but it's unfortunate that one person, uh,

would utilize something to stop what was coming after them and disrupt the entire Congress. Two questions. So in this, while this is happening, does Trump want these chaos? No, I don't. Trump doesn't want to. Okay, exactly. Did Trump try to get in between the two of you guys as a broker and just get a call and say, guys, what are we doing with this? Let's just kind of move on. This is not necessary right now. But you just asked me about money.

Matt Gaetz had his best quarter ever because as he was doing this, he was sending emails out to raise money. That's what you said earlier. You said sometimes you've got to be loud and send the emails. You can raise money, but it doesn't work long term. If you meet a member, if you meet a congresswoman or congressman and you've never heard of them. I'm paying attention. Shake their hand and tell them thank you for the job they're doing. Because, you know, where I say structure dictates behavior.

If you act chaotic, you're going to get on TV and then you're going to raise money online. But what are you achieving? And look, my philosophy in life is the Senate is like the most exclusive country club in the world. And the house is like eating at a truck stop. It's the way our founders devised it. We are a microcosm of society, right? I wouldn't change a thing. I made the right decision.

I mean, if you go back and you look at the negotiation on the debt ceiling, the largest cut we've ever made was the debt ceiling, $2 trillion, welfare reform, NEPA reform. And after I departed, then the conservatives said, and two-thirds of the Republicans voted for it. They normally ever do. Now, if you compare that to what did the Republicans do with the debt ceiling when they had the White House, the Senate, and the House, they added $2 trillion. Right?

So tell me, how could we achieve with a five-seat majority? We passed H.R. 1, energy independent, H.R. 2, border security bill, parents' bill of rights. What has passed since I've been gone? What has passed since you've been gone? A lot of C.R.s. But they said they had to throw me out because I passed a continuing resolution, which is a C.R. They just did that last week. They didn't even pass the appropriation bills.

So maybe what Matt said was not true on the floor, that he was doing this because of a continuing resolution. That's why he wanted it stopped.

Because you've had three or four more since then. And by the way, how was the relationship now? Because I know I saw you guys at the RNC where he walked up to you while you're talking to somebody. You wouldn't be on the stage. You would be booed or something like that. Are you guys better now or still there is no. I don't hang around with pedophiles. I'm sorry. And I don't think it. Look, these young women deserve justice. Can you imagine being you're a member of Congress?

You pay by Venmo to have sex with women. This woman is a junior in high school. You supply them with drugs. There's all these other reportings where he leaves a Trump event, uses his campaign money to rent a hotel and lines out the cocaine for the other women that he paid inside the hotel room. Maybe they were over the age of 18. And I understand he doesn't want that to come public, but I'm not going to influence an ethics committee to try to take over to protect them.

Is that the one you're talking, Rob? Yeah, that's the moment that I think was, that you guys had, I think he came to give you hugging a kiss the Middle Eastern way on the cheeks. The one thing I see there is the one thing I've always learned. A leader keeps their head. Tell me in here who's the leader. Press play, Rob?

What night are you speaking? Are you speaking tonight? Hey, if you took that stage, you would get booed off the stage. Let me ask you, how's your relationship with the President? Very good. Just talking about the day. Tomorrow, well this is coming out tomorrow, tomorrow my super ex will give me a million dollars.

For his campaign. Last week I handed out $4 million. My concern is I do not want to lose this majority. Built too hard to build it. I'm going to give $5 million to the Senate. We've got to make sure we win that. I'm going to give $1 million to Trump. I'm going to give $3 million to the Congressional Leadership Pack, their super PAC. And then I'm going to spend like $4 to $5 million in races trying to help him.

Got it. So when you guys are talking, you guys are talking strategy post him becoming president or you're talking strategy just next 40 days? I talk both. I try to help him. And how does he manage? Because he has to have a good relationship with Matt and you. How does he manage his relationship? He doesn't have a good relationship with Matt. It doesn't help him. It doesn't help him. But with him, I wouldn't say he has a bad relationship with him. I don't think he's vocal about it. No, the only reason I'm saying is like,

In his position, he doesn't want unnecessary enemies right now. He wants to move in the next 40 days to be done and get in the White House. But I don't know, Matt, sleeping with 17-year-old, what constituency helped in that place. Did he speak at RNC or no? Matt did, yeah. Did you see him? I don't know if I did. That's what I'm asking you. I can tell you. You should see his face. It's very creative. Show Matt's face. No one remembers what he said. They only remember what he looked like.

I couldn't tell you so.

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Okay, I rest my case. Okay, so let's go back to something real. President Trump. This is the USA Gear limited edition for the rest of the year. If you love America, support this USA Gear. On the side it says future looks bright. On the back it says value team. And on the side it's got the American flag. We got the shirts.

We got the flip-flops. These are the only flip-flops I wear when I'm at the house and walking the dogs. It feels amazing with the gel in it. So, if you love America, if you believe the future looks bright, if you love Valuetainment, click on the link above or below. Go wear some of the gear and tag us because we share the pictures on the podcast all the time. So go to vtmerch.com and place your order. I view this election, and a very interesting poll, the one that I think you should read,

If you look at the last presidential election, Biden gets 82 million votes. But we don't elect by a popular vote. We elect by electoral college. He only won by 48,918 votes. If you go back four years, Biden was winning Wisconsin right now by 6.2%. But he only ended up winning Wisconsin by 20,000 votes. If you look at Harris's percentage to where Biden or Hillary, she's behind it all.

It only comes down to three States, North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Okay. He doesn't have to have Arizona Trump or Nevada. If he wins Pennsylvania and Georgia and North Carolina, if he just carries what he had before and wins North Carolina, I mean, when Pennsylvania and Georgia, he's won. That's two 70. Um,

And what I see, if you look at the Gallup poll, very interesting facts came out last week. For the first time ever, more individuals identify as a Republican than a Democrat. If you study that poll for years, you'll see the differential when people identify like that. You can pick who won the presidency. When it was a broad spectrum, like five Democrats picked up the presidency at that time.

There was another question in there that said, who is best to handle the problems of the future? Republicans won that. This could be a very good climate. It's going to be a close race. I don't believe there's any undecided voters. It's just you've got to get out the low propensity voters. You don't think there's any undecided voters? No. The decision is are you going to vote or not? You know where you are. Okay.

Kamala Harris has a money advantage, but it won't play as big as part as other years because you don't have as many states in play. Yeah. If she loses, I think it'll come down to a couple of different things. If you look at the New York times poll that was done a couple of weeks ago, they want change. And 28% of the people, 60 some percent want to change. 28% said they didn't know enough about her. They still don't. Right. She won't go talk to the press. She's making a mistake.

Had she picked Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, I think the race would have been much different. Why didn't she, though? He was just signing bombs the other day with Zelensky, right? He was just, he was in a, why didn't she pick him? It shows real weakness on her part. She raised him as a, like as a trial balloon in the attack. Right. I think part was what's happening in Israel. Right. She was getting pushed back. She was afraid there. But she went and picked the governor of Minnesota.

When Ronald Reagan won 49 states, there's one state he did not win, Minnesota. She doesn't have to worry about that. It showed weakness. What you really want to look at when you select a VP, it's what's your idea. I served with Waltz. He's a likable guy in others, but you know what?

It's just like what Al Davis would tell you. Just win. And if she had picked Shapiro, she would have been telling the party, I'm in charge. I don't care what you like. Are they going to leave her? He gave me a vibe that he gave you the VP vibe. He gave you a vibe of a very capable guy. You know, when I would hear him speak, I'm like, you know what? Good for him. By the way, I don't even know what his plans are long term, but to me...

To me, he gave me the vibe of somebody that could be a moderate Democrat that Republicans would say, okay, you know. He's very popular. I would have told you we couldn't win Pennsylvania. Yeah. And look.

Trump has, and it could come down to a tie. This is what people don't really look at. So if you look at, there's two states, Maine and Nebraska, they give their electoral college by congressional districts. Okay. So you pick up the congressional vote, then whoever wins the overall state gets the two senatorial electoral votes.

There's only two states in Maine or two congressional districts in Maine. Trump always picks up one. And I think Austin is the Republican running in the, in that one. I think he can win. He's a former race car driver. He's a good guy. I'm going to play in that race too. But if Trump picked up those two, the overall votes and he picked up those two and she won Omaha where she's ahead right now, you could end up 269, 269. So you know what happens then? Congress picks.

President and the Senate picks the VP, but it's not just a vote one on one in Congress. It's by state. So Idaho is equal to California. Now, Republicans control more of the delegations. I'll tell you a funny story. So in the last presidential race, the president, President Trump calls me one day and he goes, Kevin.

you know, this thing could end in a tie. I go, I know, I know. I've been studying. I said, if you're watching Pelosi, she's, she's dropping money in these different States for some races, just because she's trying to get the delegation to be equal. Cause she's worried about that too. He goes, well, how does it work? I go on Congress. You pick by delegation, you know, and doctor, and he goes at the end. So what does this mean? You know, I told him,

You're gonna have to kiss my ass for the rest of the year. You didn't say that. Look, the one thing I have a very good relation to president Trump. And the thing I do is I will, I never criticize him on TV, but the hardest point of being president, people come up and kiss your butt, right? You need people who will tell you exactly what they think. You make whatever decision you want. You could be upset with it, but I tell them exactly what I think. Okay. So let me ask you a couple other questions here. One,

is two-thirds, according to Rasmussen poll, two-thirds believe there will be another assassination attempt on the president. Okay? Hear me out here. We had one already. We know about the July 13th. We heard the second one. Then there was another one at Arizona or Phoenix or Glendale, Arizona. Something happened. Oh, they had a guy going out looking. That's right. And they didn't tell him. No, they didn't tell him. So if Rasmussen is not CNN poll, not Fox poll, not CBS poll, Rasmussen is Rasmussen. They got credibility, right? Right.

So if they're saying, uh, national telephone, online service, 65% of likely us voters say it is likely that there will be more assassination attempts against Trump. Now in election day, including 32% who believe it is very likely. And 21% just don't think another assassination is likely. And 14% are not sure. Okay. Those are pretty high numbers. Now he, he called you to ask you what to do. If there is, and say something does happen, what happens in the next 40 days?

If there is another attempt, because to him, you think he's going to stop golfing? No. You think he's going to go out there and do his thing? You think he's going to stop living his life? No. What happens legally? Do they pause the election, change the date on November 5th? No, no. So it's a defense? Look, um, you gotta be able to, and this is a sad part in the 1960s. Our leaders were getting assassinated. Think about that. Martin Luther King, the Kennedys and others, um,

This was unheard of. And the thing that strikes me the most, you know, I talked to him the day after the attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, and he was telling me how he could hear it. He could hear the bullet and, and the uniqueness of Trump. And this, this guy is different than almost any person you've ever met. He has sheer strength. You watched it in his entire life. He would never be where he was if he didn't have that strength. But he tells me at the same time, you know, now, now, now, Kevin, I've learned something.

Now you'll learn this too, because you have big, beautiful ears. There's a lot of blood in your ears. You don't realize that. You know, here he is. He almost has his life, but this is what he, but when the second one happened, I was talking to him the other day, that really frightens me. I, and this is where I think we all have a responsibility. We have gotten to the point where we have made politics so personal, where we can't respect somebody else's difference of opinion.

And it has been driven. And I'm telling you, media does this. Social media does this. Individuals do this. The things they are saying. And if somebody tries to say, I think they're mentally ill. Look, we just had to put a person away that was going to go kill my son based upon me being speaker. And he had been in jail before because he tried to kill President Bush. But he was in the car and he was driving and he was texting. He was telling me exactly my son died.

lives in another city and he'd mapped out his house. He was going to get him when he walked across the street and he wanted to be in that city and he wanted me to sit in the courtroom and listen to it because he thought he would get off. There's mentally ill people out there. And this is the part that we have to, I would have hoped after that Butler incident, the world would have changed. America would have woke up. But I think two weeks after, it's like we forgot about it.

I mean, I personally tell the president, I think he needs, I would wear something. I mean, this guy has no fear because he, think about it for one moment. You don't know how you would react if you were shot. Nobody knows until it happens to you. But if you watched what President Trump did, he stood up for everybody else. That's such an iconic picture. I thought that lay in history. But the other thing that was quite interesting, nobody in that audience ran. Think about when you hear a shooting and everybody, nobody in that audience ran.

They turned around and was going to defend. That was very unique to the people there too. I mean, and so. But what happens if something happens? What is the lost state?

You know, I'd have to go back and look. And the reason why I'm asking is because we've never gone through this before. What happens? Not in between. That's what I'm saying. Okay, there have been times. Now, don't take me as a legal scholar because I don't know. But there have been times like in a congressional race where somebody has died before the election but just right before. And sometimes they won the election. Then they go and have another one.

In this case, the party is who nominates you. I'd have to go back and read the book. I don't know exactly what would transpire because I don't want to think about that. Yeah. That makes sense. And the rest of us don't want to think about that. No. But the thing is, the way he's going about it, I mean, it's not like he's being overly protective. Look, this is his own golf course. And you don't quite understand, being the leader of the free world...

you get held captive, right? You've got to have something that you can get out and thank. I totally get it. I totally understand. Being able to go to his own golf course and be able to walk and thank and talk to people. Sure. But now he can't.

Now can he even do that? That's a scary part. - When you, look, there's only 46 other people who have had this job, what, 45 other people who have had this job? Out of how many billions of people that have lived on the face of the earth since 1776? 50 billion, let's just say, 30 billion that have lived here?

Yeah, but they can't be present unless they're born here. Well, what I'm saying is the chances of you being the leader of the free world, that comes with certain benefits that you lose. And one of the benefits is you can't just go out. Like, you know, and so that part is... It's just like a CEO, just like you. Look, I'm very impressed. I was impressed before I ever got here. I appreciate watching you, but I appreciate talking to you. But looking what you're doing here for business and my whole background...

I didn't start out to be elected. I started through business. I started my first business when I was 20. But for you to be successful, you can't be locked down in this place working, working, working all the time because you won't get...

You need some release. You need to be able to thank for a little bit instead of always working. You're better at it in that cases, right? You got to clear your head and everybody needs that. I don't disagree. By the way, you said something a couple of years ago when you're like, you saw the cognitive decline of President Biden and-

Maybe I read it wrong that in a meeting with you, he started taking his shirt off or something like that. Did you say that? What's the shirt story? Okay. Okay. So there is a shirt story. There is a shirt story, but he had a shirt story. Okay. What's so interesting. Now, this is another thing. It was a wild tour. I go down for the president. There was this congresswoman, Jackie Worski, who had passed away in a car wreck.

And we had named a VA clinic after her. And the president put a really nice note out when she died. But the week he's going to sign this bill, he's at this event and he asked Jackie to come up to stage. And so it was an embarrassing moment, right? So he's not going to have press in the White House that day. So it's Pelosi and I and one other member from Indiana. Her family's in there. Her mother's 90 years old. I know him well. I recruited Jackie. She had to run two times before she got there. So we go into the Oval Office and Biden's kind of out of it.

And I've known Biden for a while, right? I know when he's in and out. And he starts telling this old story he always tells about when he was in the Senate and Ronald Reagan was president and Bork got knocked out and Reagan has him down and offering Kennedy to come to the White House. And so he takes us on a little tour outside the Oval. You walk down and you go to the dining room. I've been there many times, but he takes in there and he's giving us a tour. I have never walked out of the glass wall. I didn't know that there was a door there, but we're sitting there.

And he's talking. He's on one side of the table, and I'm on the other side with Jill. And he turns to Jackie's mom. He goes, you want to go outside? He says, kind of like that. Jill hears him and says, no, no, they don't want to go outside. And I'm thinking, boy, this is weird. And he goes, turns back around and goes, you don't want to go outside? He opens the door, and he walks us down to the private swimming pool. And then he walks up to the changing rooms, and he tries the door, and it's locked. He goes, it's locked. It's locked.

And then the secret service comes and unlock it. And it's just two dressing rooms, right? And now I'm kind of like, as an American, oh my, I got to help get this guy back into the White House, right? So we go back into the White House and you've got to understand from between the dining room, there's a hallway and all there is, is a bathroom and there's a little room. Now, I don't want to be rude, but this is where Clinton, it was famous in Clinton's presidency. Trump had made it into a gift shop. He makes it in and I'm not lying to you. It's as long as this table. It's not very big.

He walks in there. He has a little desk, a picture behind it, and he has a valet with a blue dress shirt all wrinkled on it. And I'm thinking, when does the president take his shirt off in here? Now, why doesn't the staff take that out of here? Why is he changing clothes? And you've got to understand, you're less than five yards from the Oval Office, and there's no other, you either go in the dining room of the Oval Office, and he made it feel like it was his happy place. And I was like,

Oh my God. Right. But then when we got back to the Oval Office, he clicked. Right. And then there was a picture of Lincoln. He goes, Kevin, you know why Lincoln's up here? Because we've never been in this type of turmoil since the Civil War. Oh, yeah, whatever. And every time I met with him, it was like a different person. And I didn't tell anybody about that meeting because he was going off to like a G7 or G20. And as an American, I was like, God, I hope he's not around another leader. Right.

And I become speaker a little bit later, short time later. And the press has started anyway. You used to have a relationship with Kevin. You haven't had really had one with him since he'd been minority leader. And they were afraid I was going to tell that story. Right. And so they come out and said, Oh no, no, no. He just kept Kevin on a nice tour. And I was like, Oh no, that wasn't it. But I would be in these meetings. And what I found was he always talked from a card. And if I disrupted him, he just closed his book. He couldn't talk anymore. So I used it as a strategy. Right.

And when we were doing the debt ceiling, I would use that. But what he did is we got closer. He brought the other leaders in because that's a disadvantage to me if you bring the other leaders in because they're telling me no. And if you're the speaker, this is my strategy. I'm only going to negotiate with the president, the Senate. They need 60 votes. But if I make an agreement with you, they have to vote for it. If I'm in negotiating with you and them, they're saying no, and you're not going to get anything.

So, what he would do when you have these meetings in the Oval Office, you want to be the first one out to the sticks because you want to set the tone because the world's wanting to know, right?

So what was interesting is the White House kind of controls the press there. They tell them when to come up. So I'm kind of angry in this meeting because he's asking for more taxes. I said, I'm never doing that. So I go up and I'm sitting in this little office and I see Schumer and Hakeem coming around the corner with the White House press. They're trying to go out to the sticks first. I said, forget that. I said, the speaker goes first. Now it's not a rule, but I'm in line to the presidency. They're not.

So I go out there and I lay out the plane. I could tell it's Schumer's man. So the next time we have a meeting, they thought they'd outsmart me. So they have the president ask me a question at the end, right? But he kind of mumbles. So I don't care what he says. I do whatever. And,

So they want to get out there first. So they're leaving the meeting first, but this is where they make the mistake. You can't take your phone in there. So you got to put them in these little coveys, but that's where the cocaine is. So I never take my phone in because I thought they would blame me, right? So Schumer goes to get his phone. I just go right around him, go back out to the stakes first. You lay out the case. And the thing that was different because he had fallen back, if you're in a negotiation, the president has an advantage because he has a bully pulpit normally.

But he couldn't talk to the press. So I would do two press conferences a day. I went directly to the people. And when I'd walk to the floor, they always have three cameras lined up there to do interviews. If anybody was interviewing live, I'd step into the interview because they can't cut you then, right? They got to take exactly what I said. I don't care if it's CNN, whatever else. I would go for the debate. Because my whole debate is you had to spend less than we spent last year.

If we appropriated COVID money and it hadn't been spent, let's pull it back, right? Let's make America energy independent. Let's pull back. Let's get some reforms and welfare, help people get back to work. NEPA gave you opportunities that we can build again. They're all things that I know 80% of America agrees with. What's the first time you had a meeting with President Biden privately, even when he was a senator? What's the first time you have an interaction with him? He was vice president.

So what year would that have been? 08, 09, 12, 11? Yeah, I came in in 07. Okay. And then he was elected. I didn't have a one-on-one meeting when he was senator, but that was in, what was the presidency elect? When did Obama win? 8-16, 2008 to 2016. Yeah.

So when was it? Yeah. Okay. So when you met him, how impressive was he when you spoke to him? Because you watched some of the clips from earlier on with him. He's pretty impressive. He's not bad from stage. He's a storyteller. He's got some charm. He's likable. He's charming. I would go up when he was vice president. I would have breakfast with them.

in the observation up there at what they call it at the VP house. And, um, in the white house, are you talking like Adams right across the street? No, no, no. In the VP house, in the vice president, he was vice president. I'd have breakfast with him. He look at, he had been since his mid twenties, he had been Senator. He, he, he's likable. He knows charming, right? He'd pick up, try to call my mom, you know, he knew how to do things. Um, but when I saw him again, um,

when he became president, and I saw him when he was outside of office too, I could tell there was a real difference. And each time I saw him, there was a considerable difference. Last question here about this, and then I'll give one last thing and then we'll wrap up. You're born in '65. I'm doing the math.

Reagan passed away in '04. Okay, so we would have made you around 39 years old. You were California, he's California. Did you ever meet Reagan? - Yes. - And what was up? - My first time to vote for president was his second term. It was towards the end of his term. He did an event down in LA and I went to the rally and was able to meet him. - How was it? - Oh, it was amazing.

I grew up in a family of all Democrats in Bakersfield, California, right? My father's Irish. My mother's Italian. We had the best fights in the neighborhood. I was the youngest in the family. Everybody was a Democrat. I was the only Republican. Literally. Literally, yeah. And how I got in politics is different, okay? My father was a fireman and he moved furniture to make extra money on his days off. And so when I got out of high school, they didn't have wealth to send me to college. So I went to junior college.

And this one guy owned a liquor store that'd sell his beer underage, but he had a car dealer's license. So I told him, I give you $100 if you take me to the LA car auctions. It's where all the dealers bring their trade-ins. So I started buying and selling cars and flipping them to pay my way through college. It's illegal, but I didn't know it while I was doing it, right? And so what you do when you go to community college, you go visit your friends away at college. My best friend, Marshall Diller, was a running back at Stanford. My other buddies at San Diego State.

So I pick up my friend and we're going to go to San Diego state for the weekend and visit our friends. So I go to the grocery store to cash a check, to have money. That's 1985 the day before the lottery started in California. So when I cashed a check, I buy a lottery ticket and I win the lottery. The most you can win. I was one of the first winners is $5,000, but put yourself in my place. It's Friday night. You're 20 years old. You just won $5,000 before Biden inflation. And you're going to spend the weekend 10 minutes from Tijuana. Okay.

So I come back, I take my folks to dinner. Never been, I don't know where to want to go ahead. Well, I take my folks to dinner and my brother orders. I could still tell you what they order steak, Diana. It was the nicest restaurant we had ever been to. Yeah. We ordered different things in to want to, but I give my brother and sister each a hundred bucks. And I take the majority of the rest of the money. You'll learn this from me. I take risk.

I put it all into one stock. I make 30% of my money in six weeks. Kind of luck. The semester comes and I decide I'm going to go try to buy a franchise. So I try to buy a subway. They won't sell me one because I'm only 20. Another thing you'll learn about me is I never give up. So I go and I open my own deli. I build the counter in my dad's garage. And in all my businesses, I learned three lessons. First to work, last to leave, last to be paid. And I do pretty well.

I now at the end of two years have enough money that I could pay my whole way through college as long as I go to Cal State and I wouldn't have to work. So I'm going to Cal State. I open up the local papers. Cal State? Cal State Bakersfield. Okay. So I opened up the paper and I wanted to finish my college. No one in my family had gotten a four year degree yet.

So I'm going to school and there's an article in the paper to be a summer intern in Washington, D.C. with my local congressman. I don't know the man, but I thought he'd be lucky to have me. So I apply and you know what he does? He turns me down. You want to know the end of the story? That's the seat I got elected to and became the 55th speaker of the House. Only in America can that happen. Wow. What a great story. Yeah. And I think we talked about this as well on the last call. By the way, is that the picture of your office? Is this your office? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So this is what drove me to be Republican.

I have Ronald Reagan and he's in color, right? And happy. So you know what? If you asked Reagan advice today, he'd tell any American no matter what they believe. If you believe your policies bring people more freedom, there's no reason to be angry. You should be happy, right? The idea today that we think we're more conservative if we're angry or we think we're more liberal if we're angry,

Doesn't get you anywhere. Just means people don't want to have dinner with you. Reagan was a happy conservative because he knew his principles. He knew the world would be better. See if you have a picture of Abraham Lincoln. Another reason why I'm driven. Okay. And my, my portrait of Lincoln is in black and white. That guy's happy though. He doesn't, he, no, he's not happy. I was going to say, but this is why. Oh, okay. Here's, here's Lincoln. So he looks like he's got to use a bathroom. The first Republican president, but,

If you asked Lincoln, I mean, there's a great book. Have you read Angela Duckworth's Grit? Yes. Yeah. This is it. Nobody has more grit than Lincoln. But what Lincoln would tell you, think about this. Don't put off tough decisions for the future, right? The whole debate of slavery did not start in the 1850s. It started at the creation of our nation. But our founders thought it's two devices that put it aside. Hundreds of thousands of grandchildren had to die.

This guy not only saved and think about the words he said four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated the proposition that all men are created equal he's gone to say but if we fail government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from Earth and

There is no other nation that's conceived in liberty and dedicated everybody's equal. There's a reason why America has to lead like that shiny city on the hill, right? Doesn't mean you have to be in every nation. The idea of America is so powerful, right? This guy never gave up. He failed twice at Senate. He failed at VP. He failed in business. His girlfriend died. He had a mental breakdown and then he get elected president. When he gets elected president, November, 1860, not sworn in until March, 1861, he

Seven states leave the Union. He never once blamed Buchanan. He built the intercontinental railway while the country was divided, knowing what the next 50 years would actually be like.

Think for a moment, what would America have been had he not been assassinated? We would not have waited till the 50s and 60s to have a civil rights movement, malice towards none. This is what drives. Now, do you have another one of Washington crossing the Delaware? I'd have these paintings on purpose in my office. And this is a unique one. Okay, this is eight feet by 16 feet. Right there, right there. See the color? Okay, I want you to look at this picture. So this took place Christmas 1776, all right?

But the famous painting is not painted until 1850, 1851. Not even painted by an American, but an immigrant, Emanuel Lentz, who was a German immigrant who lived in America. That's not the one. It's a different one. Yeah, it's a different one, but this is one made up. Totally get it. Okay. So...

Why did he paint it? He goes back to Germany and he wants Germany to have a revolution based upon the freedoms and values of America. His talent was art. So he'll say, I paint this picture based upon the story I was told to inspire him. He gets it historically incorrect. If you talk to historians, they're,

They'd say Washington crossing a Durham boat. He puts 13 people in a rowboat. Why would he pick the number 13? 13 colonies, right? But you only see 12 faces. But look at Washington standing up, his hand on his chest. Look at his uniform. You would think that man has never lost a battle, right?

But history tells us that that moment he's always lost. That was our first victory when we surprised the Hessians. Now, what I want you to see, if you go in the back, there's a Native American and the next to him and expand that a little bit. That's a farmer. But do you see the hand across the farmer's face? If you expand it, you'll be able to see it, right? Does it allow you to rap or no?

Let's see if we can do it this way. There you go. Okay. See that hand across his face? Yes, I do. Okay. That's the hand of the 13th person you don't see. So what this artist, I believe, is saying is, here we are, not a country, but an idea, having lost every battle with unbelievable odds against us, willing to risk everything on what you would call our holiest of night. Here's a hand. Would you get in to join us?

That's as true today as it was then. If Americans get in the boat together, they row in the same direction. There is nothing we cannot overcome. That is so powerful. Uh, you know, the, the characters that we're talking about, Reagan, Washington, Lincoln, uh, Teddy Roosevelt. I add Teddy's another one on that list as well. Uh,

you know, we are byproducts of what they were willing to do so we can have the freedom that we have today. And this is why America is the greatest country in the world. And that's our part, what we're going to be doing with it. That's why our responsibility, because it's not guaranteed. Yeah. Kevin, this has been a blast. I've enjoyed it. How often do you do long form podcasts?

Counting this time too? Probably two to three. Two to three. No, I'd do it whenever. Yeah, this was great. This is fun. No, but you know, sometimes, you know, folks in your world, they don't do these conversations. It's more five minute on Fox, 10 minutes on CNN, eight minutes this and 12 minutes this. And then we don't get to learn about the individual, right? And you know, this is what we need to do in the presidential race. What we should do going up to the next one, we should say when you narrow down the two people, there's going to be four debates. Three of them,

Each one is only going to be on one subject. We're going to take the top three subjects and we're going to have a debate so the entire nation knows what it's about. And the fourth one would just be wide open. Because as a nation, we have to be educated. Look, I believe whoever is up there is pretty bright if you became the nominee from either party. I may disagree with you, but you have a reason why you've been chosen. And not one party has the monopoly on all the great ideas.

The whole country is designed that you're going to have to have compromise, right? Not one person gets all what they want. But just because you're of the other party doesn't mean you don't think like me sometimes and doesn't mean you don't have some of the same solutions I have. But if we can work together at those moments...

That would make us stronger. And if the nation was educated on some of the problems that we have, which is a responsibility of our leadership, and we had a longer debate about it, our debt, it's going to break us if we don't do something about it. Our military, we have to transform it. We can't be fighting the last war. And the way you don't have war is that you're prepared ahead of them. The China relationship,

We've got to compete, but we've got to make sure we win. We can't give them an advantage. Our education system is the great equalizer, but we're failing so many places. Those four things you can't accomplish by one party. It takes both working together to do it. And I'm fearful that we're having elections not based upon ideas, but based upon personalities. So whoever wins will not have the will of the public to be able to govern.

Have you had interaction with Kamala? Do you have an opinion on Kamala? How's Kamala? I believe this. Kamala is a bright individual. She wouldn't be in the position she had before. If I just look at it from a political point of view, she starts really strong. She started really strong for it. But then she collapses as the campaign goes. This is a short campaign. I don't think she's prepared to be president.

You know, she served a short time in the Senate attorney general. Um, and I do believe in the 10,000 hours, but I don't believe you can walk into the presidency and not be challenged by the press. A city council person is challenged more than she is. It's kind of unfair to the nation. Yeah.

And I think it would, I think it would help her. I mean, you've watched people in podcasts, right? You do this long pod. So you, you literally challenge people on their ideas that either makes you stronger. It makes you believe in the idea more. Have you ever read Adam Grant's think again? Of course. It's a fabulous book. Fabulous book.

You may have an opinion. He's written a couple good books. That's one of them. I really like it. And you ever read Simon Sinek's Starts With Why? Of course. Yeah, I love Simon Sinek. Leaders Eat Last. He's got a few of them as well. Infinite Game. Excellent. Infinite Game is a great book. Yeah. If you're thinking long-term with the way you start with end in mind on the way you want to build a company and business, set a short-term thinking. Good.

Good to Great? Yes. Another one. Great book. Getting the right people on the bus in the right seat. Do you know what book he wrote that I like even more than Good to Great? Bill to Last. No, I like the one he wrote, Why Empires Fall. Incredible. Black book by Jim Collins. Yeah, Jim is brilliant. I'd call Jim. Do you ever read Lencioni's stuff? Yeah, I was with Lencioni two weeks ago. Okay, you want a little history? Yeah.

You know who was on the Little League team that was very good? Baseball, growing up? Pat Lincione and Kevin McCarthy. Really? Yeah, he's from Bakersfield. I would bring him into Congress to try to help us with our dysfunction. He is a good man. There is not a book he's written I don't recommend. Five Temptations, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Teamly, Ideal Player. That is a foundational book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. You know how many copies he sold? Six million copies.

He's the most humble. He probably has the highest character from the day I met him in elementary school. Are you guys friends still today? Yes. Okay. We had a two, three hour meeting in Vegas just a couple of weeks ago. It could have been. Yeah. Yeah.

And it was him in his entire, because we run a consulting firm. He runs a consulting firm. He does. He's very good. The StrengthsFinder product, they got some real good stuff that they've done. But he says, look, whatever is worth, I don't know if there's anybody that sells more of my books than you do. He's like, everybody sends me, I've sold. So I got to write a book. I am. Oh, you do that. We're talking next time. That's the thing.

Next time we do that, we'll... You're bigger than Oprah on the recommended list. Not our vision, what we want to build. One of these days, people will see what we're building long-term, but we're excited about where we're going next. Do you ever take anybody on a tour through here, like your listeners? You should do a video through here because...

I did not know all what you have. It's impressive. I came early, took a tour. Let me give you an idea. I don't know what you have after this. I don't know what time your flight is. I got a little time. Okay, so then I'll take you to the other place because that's the one I want to show you.

So on November 5th, we're, this is going one time, Rob. Tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Okay, so I can't give the details. You're so funny, you looked at it. Well, on Thursday, I'll be announcing what we're doing, but you'll see what's going to happen. Yeah, Rob is the best. But we're going to be holding probably the biggest election night party in America outside of what Trump and Kamala will be doing. And it'll be at our facility that I'll show you here in a minute that we just bought last week.

But why do you hold it for election night? Because I just announced it today for our insiders that have access to picking up the tickets. They're going to go fast. And some of the tickets are high tier. We'll announce it on Thursday on PBD Podcast and it'll be public. But we're giving people 48 hours to pick up the tickets before everybody else shows up. Why are we doing election night?

Look, we just had an event at Palm Beach Convention Center. Rob, what was it? Two weeks ago? Three weeks ago? Yes. It's beginning of September. Okay. Beginning. So first week of September. The Rock was there.

We had a 90-minute conversation with them. We had people showing up from 60-plus countries, nearly 6,000 people in a room. This is the event that we just had three weeks ago. Oh, that's fabulous. This is Palm Beach Convention Center. How often do you do something like that? Well, I have three events that we do. This is the Super Bowl we do every year, and we call this the vault. We have two American flags, the big ones that we brought in. That's the biggest LED screen ever used at the Palm Beach Convention Center. And we have one called Business Planning Workshop. We do that second week of December to prepare for the next year.

We have one called the Sales Leadership Summit. The last one we did was at Mar-a-Lago. Next one's going to be in April at Mar-a-Lago. And then we do this one, which next year we can no longer fit here because right after the event was done, at the event, Kevin, when the event ended, last year when the event ended, four days later, we sold 880 tickets to next year's event. No location, no speaker, nothing. No one knows the dates, but we're saying it's going to be in 12 months. This year, the event ends four days later.

2,501 tickets were sold to next year's event in September. There's not a location. There's not a date, nothing. The community of the businesses we're working with right now on the consulting side is expanding rapidly.

So are these mainly small business owners? What are these? They range from a millionaire to a guy that just raised $300 million to a billion-dollar business with 6,000 employees to influencers to content creators to CEOs, private equity VCs, money managers from Goldman, Morgan Stanley, athletes, names that you recognize that are in the room. It's everybody ranging in that sense. And some people...

Bring 50 of their employees, 100 of their employees. Some people bring 12 of their C-suite executives. It's a wide range. And we go through a 240-page manual over three and a half days is what we do. All fill in. It's all trademarked. It's all our stuff. And we're going to build one of the biggest consulting firms in the world, and we don't play the games. We don't do ESG. We don't do DEI. Nothing. You want to grow your business? You want to learn how to raise capital? You want to learn how to...

That's how you take a big business small when you start worrying about that stuff. I mean, for me, I went from being a regular guy to selling my business for a quarter of a billion dollars, and I have no background, no four-year degree, no two-year degree, no MBA, nothing. I'm a guy that just went to the Army two and a half years and then started my own insurance company. Tell me another country you could do that in. That's why I love this place, and that's why we're doing what we're doing now to make sure it stays that way. But that's why if we had more...

You know what Israel does about sending their youth to the military? You ever read the book Startup Nation? You become mature. Think about what you do. You're working on the Iron Dome, the sophistication. When you're in the military, think about the technology you're working with, maybe a tank, anything else. I just went up and I was just speaking for a day at West Point.

There's a fundamental difference about the kids sitting there and they don't come from wealthy families or others and they're making a commitment going to college and not joining a fraternity or sorority. And they're making a commitment to be in the military five years. They're brilliant kids. One of my kids just brought up the conversation about West Point and he is,

like, he's like, can I go to the military now? I'm like, I said, no. What year in school is he? He's 12 years old. He's like, can I go? I'm like, hang tight. Not yet. So you, what you want to do is his junior year of high school, go to the summer school. West Point summer school. West Point Air Force Academy. It's only like $200 because they'll spend a week there and they learn a real experience because it's not for everybody. Um, you know, you, you're walking in order, you're sitting down for food, you're studying. Um,

And it's tough. As a junior, I'm texting my wife. Junior in high school. Talk to your member of Congress or your senator. They're the ones who make the appointments.

And they'll have what I would always do, especially around this time of year, I would bring in representatives from those. I'd show them the videos and I would engage. What do you expect? It's not just your grades. You got to have, you got to be physically fit to be able to do it. You got to have leadership qualities. And I always took any politics out of, I put a group of five people that would not, would interview everybody and they come and nominate. And look, a lot of people say, Oh, I want to go to the air force kind of cause I want to fly. All of them fly.

In the Navy, your runways are moving. You're in your aircraft carrier and stuff. And so your best bet to see if it's really something you want, and it can't be your parents want it for you. You'll get drowned out. I agree. But they offer a great summer school program where you're literally there and you're spending a week what it's going to be like, and you'll walk away and know if you want it. But also they get a look at you to see if they want you.

Wow. That just, I just sent her a text. So we got to have that conversation because we just had this conversation with our younger son on a complete different topic that has to do with what he wants to do longterm. Because to me, that's impressive. The kids are this young talking about what they want. Well, my, my oldest son is, he's obsessed with politics. That's all he does. He loves watching debates. He loves watching politics. My youngest son doesn't care about it. Have him do an internship. He would love. And if he gets turned down, he might be speaker. Yeah.

But that would be the guy that would do it because he would be the one guy that long term, you know, he wants to get in politics. But do you think as a father, this is a debate I have, right? Each generation improves on the generation before it. And you love your children and you end up doing more for them. And you sit back and think, what made you? Your adversities, right? Your challenges. Mm-hmm.

But as a parent, when you sit back and think your child's in something, a human nature, you want to take whatever challenge away from them. But you can't, right? They got to have that stumble. They got to have that perseverance.

To go through, that's what makes them. And each child's different. We had a tournament two weeks ago in Sarasota. And we take my youngest kid. We play this game. We lose 9-0. There's a game on Sunday. Okay, what sport? It's soccer. We play on Sunday. By the way, to see this guy, he's like a Middle Eastern Bo Jackson, if you see him. He looks like that guy, his body, at 10 years old. At 11, he just turned 11 a few days ago.

But we're on a drive back and we have a very serious conversation together with the two of them. And I said, look, in life, my experience is the following. Because my dad would always say, he would say, give him a phone, give him something, let him make a video on YouTube. I said, dad, I don't believe in that. He says, what do you mean? I said,

I said, did you give me dumbbells to lift weights to want to be Mr. Olympia? Did you do that? No, I picked it up. You don't work out. Did anybody have to give you anything to learn how to make makeup? My dad was a chemist. He dropped out of eighth grade. He was a chemist. He made makeup for Max Factor, Nivea in Iran. That's what he did. And then he went to work for GE, I want to say, in Iran. And he said, no. I said, so drive back with the boys. I said, guys, in life, my experience, there's three different types of people.

There's those that are interested in something, but not committed. There are those who are committed, but not obsessed. And then there are those who are interested, committed, and obsessed in something they're doing. Those people that are trifectas, you can't get in their way. They're going to do it.

to the person who's obsessed, I have to take the camera away from you because you want to make a video. I have to take the soccer ball away from me saying, go to sleep. I have to take it away from you because you don't want to give it up because you're so obsessed. Right. And I'm having this conversation waiting. And by the way, yesterday we had this one soccer coach we hired to kind of work with. He's from Brazil and he's Ronaldo's son's coach. He's one of the coaches that goes and trains over there in, in,

wherever he's at, not Qatar, in Saudi, I think. And this guy, very, very good at what he does and he's sizing up Dylan and he's watching him very closely. And while I'm talking about Dylan, my youngest daughter is sitting here listening to the entire conversation for 35 minutes, 40 minutes. She's like,

"Hey, Daddy?" I said, "Yeah, babe." She says, "I'm obsessed with bakery. "I'm obsessed with baking." I said, "Really?" She says, "I am. "How about if I start a shop? "I know you, Dylan Soccer, this and that." I said, "What about it?" And she is, she loves that kind of stuff. You know what's great about it? The fact that she has the pride to say, "What about me?" And by the way, I got four kids, two boys, two girls.

You have no clue who's going to be the rock star 30 years from now. No, you don't. And you have no idea who's going to do anything. You just give them all the opportunities. You just give them all the opportunities. They determine the outcome. And you decide what levels you want to take in and how big you want to go. And the one thing I love, what Kobe said is, you know, about, I don't know if it was Kobe or somebody else. This is what I always tell my, to my kids repeatedly. I say, Hey guys, listen, if you become a billionaire, you become a millionaire, you become an athlete, you become a president, become a governor. If you become whoever you want to become,

You don't need to do nothing for me to love you. Nothing. That is given. It's permanent. You don't need to earn it. You got that? It's hands down signed. You can go cash the check. That love is permanent. Now, if you want to hear those magical words at what levels that it took me nearly 30 years to hear from my dad and my mom, which is what I'm proud of you and you know they mean it.

that you're going to need to get to work. Those are two different things. But one of them is for the rest of your life. You don't need to wonder if I'm loving you or not. And that's the part with parenting sometimes where nowadays, you know, with all the stuff that's going on with schools, you can try to put them in anything that they're doing, but you got to kind of

Allow them to go like the other day, one of my kids, he got into trouble. The principal calls, your son did something today. What happened? You know, he punched a kid and he wasn't supposed to. And he said his father said that he, I'm like, yeah, I've told him to defend himself. You gotta defend yourself. Says, well, we just wanted to make sure you said this. Of course I said this. And you can know I've said it about all my kids. I said, but I'm going to have a conversation with them to see what happened. We'll follow up. Sometimes they're going to screw up and you're like, hey, you screwed up. You got to man up and go take responsibility.

But the other stuff is going to be on them. And like the story you're saying, $5,000 lottery, you want to go open up a subway, you don't, but you're going to create your own shop and all this. And then you end up becoming a 55th speaker. Frickin', that's not an easy thing to do. That's a pretty hard thing to do. I've went 15 rounds. Okay, so I went as speaker. They invited me to Israel to speak at the 75th anniversary of Knesset. So I go to Jordan to see the king before I take a bipartisan group. We go to Israel. Then we go down to Egypt to see Assisi. Then we go into Italy.

I'd see the Pope and the prime minister would come back. I go walking in to see a CC in Egypt. You know, the first thing he says to me, I watched all 15 rounds. What happens in America? People pay attention to, and I'll leave it with this. I know we've got a long time. Um, I tell my children, I have never lost. So what do you mean? I said, I've never lost. I've either won or learned. I've never lost. And if you have the mindset, I didn't get an Ivy league degree, but I'll put myself against anybody because I won't give up.

And in the country, we're not guaranteed the outcome. We're guaranteed the opportunity is what we make of it. And I always find the different books that I read. The most interesting part are where somebody stumbled. America is the most forgiving country. They're the one becoming speaker. I could have had speaker before when we were in the majority, Boehner leaves. And I stumbled in an interview. People thought I was going to leave probably.

We went into the minority. I had to win the majority again. And I won the majority while all the other Republicans were losing. And we won it by electing the most women and most minorities, right? For the Republican Party. And what's interesting to me, I remember going down when I became leader and Trump was president, it was State of the Union, the Democrats had just won the majority. You stand up on both sides, right? And I looked at the Democrats.

They looked like America. Different walks of life, different gender, different ages. And we stood up and we were like 98% white male. I thought we just look like some restricted country club, right? I thought either I'm going to be a leader of declining party or I have a responsibility to open this party up to new people and new opportunities to be a part of it. And you had to win. I had to win in California and New York. Most people say it's too tough. Don't even try. When we won in New York,

Each party selects somebody to run their campaigns for the NRCC and the DCCC. We beat the DCCC chairman. You know who lives in that district? Soros and Clinton. Biden carries by 13 points. Have you had interaction with Soros, by the way, or no? Really odd. He's never given me money or wanted to meet me. Yeah. I don't know why. I met Clinton before too, though. But Clinton's a smart man.

He can talk a lot of subjects. We were in New York. We were going to a Yankees game, and there was a rain out. Now, do you own part of the Yankees? I do, yeah. I'm a Dodger fan, though. Are you? Otani. What about Otani? 50-50. That is unbelievable. Did you see how much a ball is selling for? Oh, yeah. What, does he put it on Golden? Did it sell yet? Yeah, Frank, Ken Golden. I...

Have you watched that reality show where he has something? On Netflix? I've watched part of it. I was on it. Yeah, I was on it. Were you on it? What did you buy? Well, I sold the most expensive hockey card. I had a Guinness Book of World Records. How'd you get the hockey card? So a guy calls me saying there's a guy that needs money in 24 hours. I said, this is a little shady. He says, no, he needs money. I said, but are you willing to buy? That's your best opportunity. He says, can you afford to buy this thing for a number? I said, I'll give him 540.

I said, but I'll buy it 540 if he meets at the PSA headquarters with the president of PSA president. So they put it in a new case and I get it verified. Then I'm going to have one of my guys pick it up and bring it over to me. He says, no problem. Let's do that. So he meets. Great. My guy goes. President checks it. He gives the card. My guy flies back. I wired him money the next day. Nice guy.

18 months later on heritage auctions, I sold the two cars for $2.2 million. Okay. 18 months after we bought that card. So I've bought probably a few million dollars worth of cards from Ken on a golden auctions. The guy, the guy does a very, very good job. Okay. This is what I'm concerned about in two years is the 250 anniversary of America. Okay. Sport cards sell for a lot more than anything from our founding fathers.

So I just recently purchased, you saw that Washington crossing the Delaware, the general that was in charge of the boat, Washington signed a note when he retired. I just picked that up. It was in, it was in private hands. And, and then I picked up the other day, um, what I picked up, um, grant grant signed a

A proclamation. The proclamation sits in the Library of Congress, but the direction to sign it to end the Ku Klux Klan. Because this is the part that the Republican Party doesn't grasp. OK, the first black American ever elected to Congress was in 1870. He was a Republican.

The first Democrat black American was elected 60 years later. The whole reason you have Jim Crow laws is the Democratic Party because black Americans got elected to Congress. There's only one black American ever elected to Congress and Senate. Do you know who that is? Tim Scott. When Tim Scott ran in 2010, there was only one person from Washington that maxed out to him in the primaries running at Strom Thurmond and Carol Campbellson. You know who that was? Me.

And what I found is if you go to the sheer foundation of our party, and it is unique in its nature of how it was created. It was unique that it had to be fought for. This is why when anybody ever challenges me on my conservative beliefs, I think I can beat you each and every day. Why? Because I was born into a democratic party and I left. I never joined it. Even though that's what I heard at home. What's next for you? What are you going to do? You're young. I mean...

I'm in business. I'm doing a lot of different things in private equity and helping some other people. I always believe you don't have to be elected to serve. I want to help the president. I'm helping him right now. I want to help Congress. Look, I helped elect 200 people so far that are sitting in the House and Senate. I want them to be successful. Kevin, you have no interest for the next level. No, I don't.

I love what I do. Every day that I served, I loved every day of it. Less than 13,000 people ever had the privilege. Maybe there's a number of opportunities, but I just believe in God's grace that if you surpass expectation, there's always another door. Let me tell you what happened today, which was interesting. Vivek and I have been speaking for many years, right? He's a stud. I think he's... I met him a long time ago. He's a stud of a guy. Smart. I brought him into the conference. Yeah, so when we had him on today, polls came out accidentally. I don't know if you saw this. Ohio...

Uh, 2026 governor, you know, accidentally, he didn't even plan on doing this. You know, who's the number one leading guy on Ohio for governor Vivek is number one. You know who called him two months ago and told him he should really think about being governor. Me. Got it. Got it. I think that's a better, he's open to it. So the reason why I brought that up is, you know, I think 2028 is going to be open. And what I mean by that is 2028, most likely Trump wins, uh,

You know, it's a... He can only serve one term. I know, that's what I'm saying. But he's going to work from day one until the very last day. He's not going to waste one day. He knows what needs to be done. You've got to get the right people with him. What I'm saying is if Trump wins, 2028 could be the most competitive election because you've got... That's great. Jamie can get in there. You've got Jamie Dimon. You've got Mark Cuban. You've got Vivek. You've got J.D. Vance. You've got...

Rock, if he wants to, if he wants to do a 2020 instead of 2030, 32, there's a lot of guys that could get in it in 2028. 2028 could be. And women. Of course. But what I'm saying is 2020, it could be a. Okay. Two things I think is going to happen from now on the president. We're going to stop electing old people for president. Biden has ended that in the 1960s. What's old, by the way?

Well, it's still younger in a different view, but we're good. We used to elect people in the forties. That's, that's 60 today in that. I don't think you're going to elect people in their seventies or eighties anymore. It's just not going to happen. I think it's subliminal what people. How old is Jamie? Rob, how old is Jamie Diamond? I'm wondering how old he is because he was the assistant to Sandy while in the eighties. He's going to be 72. Yeah. I think we still are, but this is what I say too.

We used to elect governors because governors is our great training ground. And this is why governors can't print more money and they have to balance a budget. They run agencies they didn't create, but they got to make it efficient. Right. And they've got to decide in a legislature, which way to go there. They're managers, right? It's kind of like, but in today's world, I mean, I think there's a lot of similarities, not in personality, but to how,

How Arnold won the governor is different and how Trump won the presidency. They were already known to us from television and they were strong men, right? You know, Arnold or Schwarzenegger, Donald or Trump, they both followed meek men and build Gray Davis, Barack Obama. They both held rallies and,

And these people who turn out who've never been engaged before understood. And they both played the same song, Twisted Sister, We're Not Going to Take It Anymore, right? They both had taglines, I'll be back or you're fired. The normal elite tried to attack them for personal. When LA Times did that, their subscriptions dropped because we already know them, right? They're both great negotiators.

Like Arnold will tell you, he never got a movie in a boardroom. Do you know they had already hired somebody for Terminator? And he meets Cameron. I think it was a Blue Thunder premiere and Cameron wanted to go to breakfast with him. And at breakfast, Arnold's telling him, no, no, no, it should be more robotic and put the gun together. And Cameron didn't believe who he had first hired could go out and kill people. You know who it was? OJ Simpson. Mm-hmm.

And, but if you spend any time with Arnold, he's extremely smart. We, we sat in there. I was a leader in big five. He can mathematically do the equation before the controller could do it on the calculator. You know, they, they, he's a numbers guy, but they're also, they picture something. They picture the future and they don't give up. Yeah. Yeah.

It was a great documentary. Oh, the book. I know, the documentary was, but the book was. Have you ever had him on the podcast? No, I never have. His book was insane. You should spend time with him. And you want to play chess? You'll be sitting with him. He has that little pig or the little animals. Yeah, whatever that is. They're all there and he's sitting outside. But he's playing chess with world champs. But he's always playing. So when you sit down and you have the chair, if you're in his office, you know what your chair says behind you? Loser.

To him. You're sitting, you sit in the chair and it says loser. He's psychologically, it's just like he would tell you when he was bodybuilding, you know, he may not have been the best, but he was psychologically strong.

Try to beat you. Yeah, when he told Lou, he's like, I think you need 90 more days. I don't think you're right. But I think if in 90 days we were to compete, you would do good, but you're going to lose pretty bad. Think about this. He's never been elected before, and he runs for governor of California. 12% of the entire nation lives in California, the fifth largest country. That's like running for president. Trump never ran for any office and went right into the presidency.

There's something unique about these two. Who's the equivalent of that today? Are you saying the rock? Are you saying like people like that? Or who was the, who's cause you, you both men understood business. Um, I don't know the others enough. I'm just saying in today's society, if you're going to run, you've got to be known and tested before you go. And, um,

I just think both parties are going to have a much bigger bench. I mean, think about for the last little bit we've had, you've either been associated with a Clinton or from Biden serving 40 years or the Bushes. This is, this is a country that's going to be wide open.

So are you saying you're interested in governorship or that's not at all what you're saying? I think it's too hard to win in California. I'm just interested in helping the country. So I don't have to serve to help the country. And I wish everybody would feel that way. So zero interest for running anything next for you. I don't know right now. Look, I didn't know when I ran that I was going to run.

I just think each day, whatever I do that day surpass expectation. I've had two philosophies in life. Learn something new every day and I can never have too many friends. Why is that?

I get a high on meeting people. You learn from other people. Oh, I got it. I can meet a new friend every day. I got it. I got it. So you're a Dale Carnegie guy, old school, like how to win friends and influence people. Be a friend. Right. I don't need to be a Facebook friend. Is there a wild card name no one's thinking about for 2028 that you're thinking about that should either get in there or that could be a possibility? Things move so rapidly.

the person could come up in 26. I mean, got it. Did you hear from the bank when he, when he ran for president, I was talking to him beforehand, met him in Ohio and they were having a Senate race. And my advice to him was, I don't think the right time for you to now to get in the Senate, you got to do something else and then come back in. And he ran for president and he surpassed all expectations. Right. He put himself on the map. So I had him on the podcast, Rob, maybe you'll remember this first time we had him on the podcast and he's talking, I'm like,

He had written this book called woke something. I don't know. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. And I said, why is this guy sound like he's going to do something? What's he, what's he about? I think literally the next day he announced he's running for president. I said, wait, what?

If you look at the first time he was on our podcast to when he announced presidency, it's got to be 24 hours to like 72 hours. First, first time. He's 39 years old. He's 39 years old. August 2nd is his birthday. And J.D. Vance is August 9th. I think he's, no, he's born August 9th. And J.D. Vance is August 2nd.

Vance is 84, 1984. He is 1985. Vance is 40. He's 39. And they both went to Yale. And by the way, you know what we- No, no, no, no, no. Vivek went to Harvard. I know he went to Harvard, but they went to Yale together for law school later on in 2012. And do you know what he said when he was at Harvard and when he was at Yale? He says, at Yale, he said, people didn't notice when I was at Yale for three years, I was making part-time hustle, making $15 million. Right.

Yeah. This guy, he was making part-time 15 million bucks. He's very formidable. I would love to see, I think this year, the reason why the numbers would never move. When was it, Rob? The first time we had him on? So first time was January 13th of 2023. I'm going to check to see when he announced. See when he announced. I would see, I would be so curious when he announced because when I did that podcast, I'm like, this guy sounds. But I'll tell you this, the power of podcasts now.

Wow, there you go. But what's the exact date? January 16th? No, it's not January 16th. It's February, maybe go on to Wikipedia. We'll go to Wikipedia, see what it says. When does he announce? It doesn't show the date. Suspended February 21st announced. Got it, okay. So a few weeks later, he announced. Think of his name. He first has to teach people how to even pronounce it.

but he does more than that. And he did it surely by brain power and his ideas. The thing I loved best about him was how he handled protesters. He didn't push them away. He didn't go, come in. I'm gonna give you the ability to, and I thought that was good for America. I'm gonna give you, tell me. Call me out. Yeah. But afterwards, let me, just let me answer.

And he would do it where, and these protests looked like they were only coming there to protest, but he would win them over. People, even if people disagree with you,

If you come from a principle, they'll still end up respecting you and probably voting for you. You think he won't governor of Ohio? If he runs, yes. If he runs, he will. I think he'll clear the field. I think so as well. And it's a Republican state. I think so as well. Yeah. I think so as well. And I think he would bring new ideas. People are, people say change. People are hungry for new ideas. Both parties, we don't have two parties anymore. We have like two or three parties in each party. And the problem is they haven't solved problems.

Whoever rises up as a leader and solves problems will unite the party. Politics is like a professional sport. Okay. From this instance, it's the only thing that's played on a national stage. And at the end of the day, you know, the score in politics, you know exactly how many people dislike you on a given day. Tell me you ever have that in your business. Never. Right. But the difference is the next day you can get in play. You only lose when you stop playing in the process. But politics,

You can bring people over with the sheer power. And in business, you hire and fire who works with you, right? Somebody else hires who works with me and somebody else fires. My job is just to inspire. Now, I had eight people. Apparently, I didn't inspire enough. Some of them would have never got there had I not funded them.

But they decide to partner with all the Democrats, which I think is wrong. The Democrats used it as an advantage to try to win the House. I think you're going to be around. I don't know what you're going to be doing. I can't put the... I'm going to be going to your conference next year. Well, we're going to have a good time. We're going to have a good time. Hey, thank you for the opportunity. This was amazing. Thanks for coming out. This was fantastic. Appreciate you. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

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