509: Joe Manchin—A Declaration of Independents

For decades, Joe Manchin was a Democrat in a state that increasingly voted Republican. He served two terms as governor of West Virginia before spending 14 years in the U. S. Senate, where his willingness to buck his own party made him one of the most consequential—and controversial—voices in Washington. But eventually, even Manchin had enough. In 2024, he left the Democratic Party and registered as an independent. So what changed? Why was he a Democrat in the first place, and what finally convinced him to leave? On this episode of The Way I Heard It, Mike Rowe sits down with the former governor and senator to explore the state of American politics, the price of putting principle ahead of party, and the growing divide between Washington and the people it serves. Manchin explains why he considered running for president but ultimately decided against it—and what kind of president he might have been. He also lays out his vision for changing the political conversation, empowering moderates, and tackling the problems that actually matter, from energy and economic opportunity to the national debt and a government seemingly incapable of getting much done. Now, through his work with the Independent Leadership Council https://independentleadershipcouncil.com/declaration/, which he launched with his daughter Heather in 2026, Manchin is working to recruit and elect independent candidates to Congress who will answer to voters rather than party bosses. Can a movement built around common sense and compromise break the grip of the two-party system? Or is independence just another political pipe dream? Mike and Joe consider whether the road to a better America runs not through the extremes, but through the middle. It's a conversation about political identity, the courage to change your mind, and whether a Declaration of Independents might be just what the country needs. Tip o' the hat to our excellent sponsors GoodRanchers.com/ROWE https://bit.ly/TWIHIxGoodRanchers—100% of their meat comes from American farms and ranches and delivered straight to your door. Start your plan and get a FREE Ground Beef Bundle with your firs order. PureTalk.com/ROWE https://bit.ly/PureTalkRowe—Switch your phone service today and get UNLIMITED talk, text, data, and 30G hot spot for just $29.95 a month for LIFE! Not your phone's life—your life! America's Workforce Academy https://bit.ly/TWIHIxMetaAWA is a nationwide, unprecedented fast-track to a long-term career in a skilled trade, powered by an initial $115 million first year investment by Meta. Go to Meta.com/AmericasWorkforceAcademy https://bit.ly/TWIHIxMetaAWA to learn more. Chapter.com/MikeRowe https://bit.ly/TWIHIxChapter—Chapter compares every Medicare plan nationwide to recommend the right coverage for you. Call them at 804-CHAPTER or visit chapter.com/mikerowe https://bit.ly/TWIHIxChapter to get free, unbiased Medicare help. Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and standalone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan's contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don't directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Mike Rowe?

  Hello friends and greetings from Saratoga, Wyoming, specifically the Brush Creek Ranch, where I've been ensconced for the last couple of days. This has got to be one of the prettiest ranches on the planet. It is so beautiful out here. We're at the Frontier Summit, which is a convening of, I don't even know how to describe it. There's some politicians here. There are lots of business leaders, lots of people running think tanks all over the country. There's some big shots from various universities and some people who are familiar with MicroWorks and support my work. Anyway, I was invited to address this august group and did so a couple nights ago.

• 0:48Mike Rowe?

  And now I'm just kind of hanging around, soaking it all in. I've got a crew with me. So I've been interviewing some people who spoke here that I thought you guys might like to meet. One of them is the former governor of West Virginia and Senator to West Virginia, Joe Manchin. Now retired. He was a famous Democrat, of course, for a long, long time. And then he became an independent. And now, in retirement, I don't even know if I can say he's retired. I don't think he thinks he is. But he's certainly busy with the ILC, the Independent Leadership Council. I saw Joe and his daughter a couple of weeks ago on one of the shows, Meet the Nation,

• 1:32Mike Rowe?

  Face the Press, whatever it is. Meet, Face the Nation. And they got a pretty good pitch. You know, the basic problem is 47% of people who vote identify as independents, including me. I was a registered independent from the start. But there are no independent candidates in office right now. Nobody in Congress. It just doesn't seem to make a ton of sense. And the problem is, as an independent, you really can't get on the ballot in individual states unless you get tens of thousands of signatures and raise all kinds of money. The parties are in control. They have a duopoly. And I don't think that's a political thing to say. It's just a fact. They have a duopoly.

• 2:16Mike Rowe?

  And what Joe Manchin wants, what he's pushing for are open primaries and term limits and a level playing field. Not a third party. This isn't that. And I'm glad it's not that because honestly, I don't know how a third party would really and truly work. I think people want another choice. But with three parties, you know, you're liable to get a winner who has 60% of the country, 65% of the country, you know, against him or her. That's not good. So this isn't a new party. This is a movement to get independent candidates who don't caucus with either side into Congress.

• 3:01Mike Rowe?

  So we, the people, have a more direct pipeline to policies as opposed to we, the parties, which I was going to call this episode, We the Party, because it feels like that's the world we're living in. But instead, I'm going to call it a declaration of independence with the alternative spelling on independence, because I think that's terribly clever. I really appreciate Joe Manchin's time. He's much in demand here. He's one of the organizers of this event. And I want to give a shout out to the organizers here at Brush Creek. This is just an incredible event. I got to know these guys through White Lodging. Bruce White was just a force in the hotel industry, the hospitality industry. He completely changed that whole business.

• 3:46Mike Rowe?

  And I didn't know much about him until I narrated a documentary about his life last year. So long story short, I knew this place was here. I always wanted to see it. They're convening this event. I got invited to speak. And now here I am with a crew, interviewing a bunch of big shots. And I'm having a ball. I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. I loved it. It was totally unexpected and quite eye opening. Joe Manchin and the Declaration of Independence, right after this.

• 4:20Mike Rowe?

  Couple of weeks ago, on this very podcast, I talked with Brooke Rollins, our Secretary of Agriculture, about the incredibly complicated business of delivering affordable beef to our citizens without disadvantaging American ranchers. We also discussed the very controversial decision to import 300,000 metric tons of ground beef from various foreign countries and the maddening policy that allows meat packers to label imported meat as a product of the USA. Well, shortly after that conversation, one of my sponsors, Good Ranchers, reported an unusually high level of interest in their product. And this is not surprising. Given a choice, most people would prefer

• 5:04Mike Rowe?

  to buy their meat from American ranchers. And Good Ranchers is the number one company in America that delivers 100% American meat straight to your door. They partner with over 100 local farmers and ranchers to deliver pasture-raised meat with no antibiotics and no added hormones. They've got 25,000 five-star reviews on TrustPilot. 25,000, including my own. This month, when you visit GoodRanchers.com/row, you'll get a free Angus ground beef bundle with your first order. Again, that's GoodRanchers.com/row for four bonus pounds of ground beef raised right here in these United States. And that's guaranteed. Support your local ranchers

• 5:49Mike Rowe?

  by insisting on American meat delivered at GoodRanchers.com/row.

• 6:10Mike Rowe?

  Joe Manchin, first of all, what are you doing here? And why is this place so doggone beautiful?

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Oh, it is beautiful, isn't it? It's just unbelievable. The West is something special. Wyoming, I've been coming to Wyoming for quite some time because my dear friend, Dave Frudenthal, used to be the governor. And the governors were all very, very close, whether you were Democrat or Republican. We didn't know the difference because we all had the same problems. Pothole didn't have a name on it. They couldn't blame one or the other. Kids needed education and people needed help. So we had a kind of a bond. So I come out there then. But I've never been here to Brush Creek. And this is something beautiful. My good friend Mitch Daniels, who was a former colleague of mine, a governor from Indiana. We traveled some together to visit our troops overseas when Afghanistan war was going on and just became very good friends. And he called me a couple of years ago and said, Joe, I got something going on.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  It's really tied into the University of Purdue. And it's all about bringing people together to discuss the challenges. And I said, that's who I am. Let's do it. And he said, would you help me with that and work with me? I said, Mitch, whatever you want, I'm going to do. And so then I met Beth White and the White family. It's been, it's just been phenomenal and quality of people we were meeting.

• 7:21Mike Rowe?

  I was so flattered to be invited. I didn't know much about Bruce White until somebody called and asked if I would narrate the story of his life. And I said, sure.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Oh, you did that?

• 7:32Mike Rowe?

  I did.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 7:33Mike Rowe?

  They sent me a documentary. And I went into the booth. And you know, sometimes you get a script in advance. Sometimes you just sort of read the picture. I was reading the picture. So I'm getting to know this guy as I'm telling his story. And I just thought, this is, this is one of the great Americans. A truly great, an entrepreneur, a leader, a businessman, a hospitalitarian, if there is such a thing. And so apparently the doc did well. And they reached out and invited me here. And then you and I got a chance to chat. Now I've been shooting guns and riding horses. And I just wanted to give a shout out to Brush Creek and the Frontier Summit. Thanks for, thanks for helping make it happen.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  This is wonderful. So what we do, when we start putting it together, we'll start working on next year's and start looking at different things and kind of predicting what the hot topics may be. They're pretty much the same. They just get worse and worse.

• 8:28Mike Rowe?

  Think you'll have me back?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  I hope.

• 8:30Mike Rowe?

  Really?

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Oh, I can do that.

• 8:33Mike Rowe?

  All right, um, if you got an hour or so.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 8:36Mike Rowe?

  I want to jump into, I guess, I guess, the obvious thing. I saw you a couple of weeks ago on one of the shows.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:44Mike Rowe?

  Nation, maybe.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:45Mike Rowe?

  I've been a registered independent for as long as I've been voting.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  God bless you. You're the smartest one.

• 8:51Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know what? At the time, I just, I felt like it was, let's make a deal. Except there were only like just the curtain and the box. I, I, I wanted.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Not many choices, right?

• 9:03Mike Rowe?

  I wanted something else.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:05Mike Rowe?

  And I felt, and I still feel like we ought to be able to cherry pick some stuff. We ought to be able to put some kind of menu together. Says, yeah, yeah, that, but that's crazy. And you know what? You guys make some good points here, but that's nuts. When I heard what you and your daughter, Heather.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Heather, Heather.

• 9:22Mike Rowe?

  You've put together.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  She's the force.

• 9:24Mike Rowe?

  Yeah? I mean.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Truly, truly the force.

• 9:27Mike Rowe?

  Well, she's certainly well spoken and I found myself just nodding violently as you guys were talking. So maybe just explain what success looks like.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Let me tell you first of all, how my approach to public service had been. I was 35 before I got involved. I've been around it. I remember being a little kid and John Kennedy coming to West Virginia and my family was involved and really excited. And kind of always at a far watch that my uncle was very much involved. And in 1982, I was 35 and I was working with my father and someone said something about like, you know, do, I've done you favors, do me a favor. I'm thinking, I've been with my dad my whole life. He never asked anybody for a favor. He might say, Mike, do your job. Can you help this person or that person? But that was a public servant's job.

• 10:11Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  So he walked out and I said, Dad, that guy's not in public service. That's self-service. It's about him.

• 10:17Mike Rowe?

  What was your dad doing exactly?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  He had a grocery, we had a furniture store and my grandfather had a little grocery store.

• 10:21Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  So we all worked together as a family. And when he went out, I said, I'm going to run against him. My dad said, oh, don't get involved in politics, Joe, it's too dirty. And I said, I think you might be a hypocrite. And he looked at me and I'm thinking, my dad's a big guy. And I'm thinking, oh, I could have said the wrong thing. He said, why would you say that? And I said, because you said you need good people of good character. And basically people who had other people's best interests in mind to be a public servant. It's the noblest of all professions. And I said, I think you did a pretty good job raising me. Let's give it a shot. He said, okay, let's go get him. And that's how I got involved. Now, my approach, they said, well, you were always a Democrat, Joe. My grandfather was.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  And I assumed my grandfather was a Democrat because FDR helped him feed my dad and his four siblings and gave him a little bit of a life. In the coalfields in West Virginia. So I don't know, but we never looked at the other side was anything but our friends. It was a little bit different ideas. So we never saw a Republican that wasn't our friends. And so we never grew up as weaponizing it. I always looked at this, Mike, I'd said, the liberals, I'm not liberal and I'm not ultra conservative at all. So I always thought, I'm, I, I describe myself, I'm fiscally responsible and socially compassionate, which I think most Americans are.

• 11:41Mike Rowe?

  I met you on a mountaintop years ago, years ago, at the Bechtel property.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yes, you did.

• 11:47Mike Rowe?

  Which they donated to the Boy Scouts. Why were you there for that?

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Well, I was the governor at the time, okay? And we had a chance to the Boy Scouts, they were looking for a new home, if you will. Their home base, I mean, their, their corporate base is out in Dallas. And they were looking for a new home base, as far as they could call their home base site and looking for a, uh, a high adventure. We have everything.

• 12:13Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  My staff came into my office one day and said, hey, Joe, um, the Boy Scouts looking for a new place. Do we want to compete for that? I said, no, we're not going to compete for it. We're going to win it. I said, they can't compete when they see everything we got. We put a good staff together and we went after it hard. I'll never forget, Mike, I'm sitting in Dallas trying to sell them. And I know they were a little bit kind of, West Virginia?

• 12:37Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  I could see, that's always. And I'm thinking, oh boy, here we go again. So I'm talking to this one guy who was the head guy, he was real stoic about the whole thing. Like, yeah, we will, he's the governor, we'll be kind and nice and do our little dog and pony show. And he was there and everything. And I start talking and everything of why we should, you should be there. We had 10,000 acre site. It's not only a great adventurous site. We have whitewater rafting, we have everything, mountain climbing, zip lining. And plus we have the beautiful lakes that we can put them on and water sports. They get all their merit badges and everything. It's a place to have both. And, and I was given my whole spiel and I could tell when getting through to him. And I don't know why Forrest Gump came to my mind. And I said, let me just tell you this.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  West Virginia and Boy Scouts go together like peas and carrots. The guys started laughing so hard, my god, I was going to fall. He probably thought, this dumb son, yeah, that's so big. He, if he hadn't got any more than that, and he just, I think he just liked the hominess down. That's who I was. And I said, listen, it's a perfect, you'll never have to worry about West Virginia supporting Boy Scouts. Well, you know what happened in iteration now? It's just called scouting of America and we've transformed.

• 13:48Mike Rowe?

  This is why I bring it up.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:50Mike Rowe?

  Um, I know you're a fan of the organization. I'll tell you, uh, it changed my life, changed the direction of my life, acquainted me to this, with discomfort in a way that was super healthy.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:02Mike Rowe?

  It wasn't a safe space. When I grew up, my scout master was a retired army colonel and the next one was a Baltimore city police detective. Point is, whatever's happened to our politics that's driven us apart seems to be a kind of contagion that's affected a lot of other things, a lot of our social systems, a lot of the grout and the tile that, that, that makes us a people, right? It, to me, it all kind of rhymes. When I think of the Declaration of Independence, I think of the Declaration of Independence as well, right? C E T S, you're making your own declaration.

• 14:45Mike Rowe?

  So I, I just, I admired the position you took with scouting. I admired the way you ran West Virginia. I got a thousand questions about all that. I guess what I should ask you now is, would you have run for president if you could have gotten on the ballot as an independent?

• 15:03Speaker 01

  If I could have got on the ballot in 50, out of, on 50 states.

• 15:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Guaranteed that I could at least compete.

• 15:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  In a heartbeat. All I wanted to be is part of the dialogue. Cause I wanted to tell, I knew Joe Biden for, you know, for a long time, longer than anybody else. I knew Donald Trump, worked with him. I knew Kamala Harris, I was with her in the Senate. I knew everybody. And I would have just said, come on, you all know better than that. This doesn't make sense. We don't live our lives this way. You can't explain it back home. We got a debt that's crippling. We're going to basically throw so much debt on our children and grandchildren. They'll not have an upward bound opportunity like we have.

• 15:40Mike Rowe?

  Have the extremes of both parties truly captured their requisite parties?

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, they're, they're getting now, uh, I mean, it's, it's a product of what they designed. They wanted to have total control. It's a duopoly. And my, my daughter Heather made me aware of the business that I'm in. Cause I told her, I said, I'm not in a business. I'm in public service. She's dead. You might believe you are, but it's a business.

• 16:03Mike Rowe?

  Smart girl.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's very smart. So she said, let me just show it to you. And she broke the numbers down, billions and billions of dollars. She broke the total control. She says, in any other form of a business operation such as this is totally illegal in the United States of America. You have no competition. You write your own rules and you prevent anybody from competing with you. It's true. So I'm thinking, that, that is right. That's correct. And I said, they wanted to control the primaries, so they, they spoon feed us. Well, the primaries really didn't come into play an awful lot in American politics until the 1960. That, that election there basically changed from the conventional choose who you put up or the Republican or Democrat put up. The primaries had some sway.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  That was under Kennedy. Then things changed. Well, then the parties would say, well, rather than all the backroom deals, now we have to have control of the parties. They want to control the primary process. If I can control a primary and make sure that the type of people that I want to be in the Democrat Party, Republican Party is only people who can participate. I got control.

• 17:11Mike Rowe?

  How'd we get here? And, but tell me if this is right. It, when I, whenever I think about three parties, I think, great, I like the options, I like the choices. But doesn't that put us in a world where the winner could win with a minority? Like a real minority of the popular vote?

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Well, most, most of them are winning by pluralities now, which is minority, minority. They don't have a majority vote. Very few states elect anybody with 51%. Most of them are just, they come through a process and, and if you have three-way race and some people in other states, depends on how your state's set up. You might have an independent, you might have a libertarian. On the ballot, you follow them and you might only have 42%. Someone else has 41 and someone else has seven or eight or nine or something of that sort.

• 17:58Mike Rowe?

  Then what's the fundamental argument in favor of a two-party system?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  There is none.

• 18:04Mike Rowe?

  Then what the hell are we doing?

• 18:05Speaker 01

  That's what I'm trying to figure out. So I, here's where I'm coming at. I'm not trying to start a third party. I just wanted to be on the ballot if I could as an independent. We thought, well, maybe we have to start a third party. It's almost impossible, the way the system's set up. But if you had open primaries, Mike, to where you go in and on that primary, you would see a Democrat, maybe? A Republican, maybe? An independent, no party affiliation? A libertarian or whatever has gotten petitions to do that. Only the two-party system, most control over 50 states are able to go and get on the ballot by just paying a filing fee. But as an independent in most states, they put the criteria so high, you might have to get 35,000 signatures.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  And then they'll contest your signature and say, oh, we threw them out and you didn't have, you only had 32.

• 18:53Mike Rowe?

  In every state.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Well, they all, they're all different.

• 18:55Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Every state's different.

• 19:00Mike Rowe?

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• 19:42Mike Rowe?

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• 20:26Mike Rowe?

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• 20:43Speaker 01

  The thing that we're trying to bring to light is that the founding fathers never intended for the political parties to be ruling of the people, by the people, and for the people. It was always we, the people. Well, the party says, okay, yeah, guess what? You handed us this now. It's going to be of the party, by the party, and for the party. We'll control.

• 21:00Mike Rowe?

  We, the party.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  We, the party. That's exactly.

• 21:03Mike Rowe?

  Remind me, that's got to be the title of this episode.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  We, the party. We, the party.

• 21:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Well, look, do you think maybe people, for the first time, might have gotten a taste of what that means with this whole Graham Plathner thing?

• 21:16Speaker 01

  I think what, I think that things are such disarray now. There's very little hope that we're going to correct ourselves with the political process. Do you think they're going to sit down and get a financial plan that really works, that turns it over to their children or grandchildren better than what they received it? I don't think so. The last time we had a balanced budget was through 1997 to 2001. Do you know why that came about?

• 21:40Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Because, basically, Ross Perot ran for president in 92. That was his platform only, one platform, the finances of our country. Now, you could say it was misaligned, whatever. But he had the wherewithal to be able to elevate that to where I can't believe that no one's talking about this. And let me tell you what's going to happen to you.

• 22:01Mike Rowe?

  That was the giant sucking sound.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Yep, he did all that. Now, what happened? He didn't get elected. Bill Clinton gets elected. 96 coming, okay? Well, wait a minute. We know through 92, there was 19, 20% of the American public liked what he was saying. And we better get our act together here and make sure we make that a part of our new agenda. And it got them together. We haven't had that since then. From there, it just went, we were on a downward trajectory to be debt-free by 2006. We had 9/11 happen to us. We had two wars. We declared Afghanistan and the Iraq war. Never paid for them, first time. And that baby shot, we were at $6 trillion going downward to nothing. And it shot up and never looked back.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  And it's everybody's fault. Everybody's fault.

• 22:51Mike Rowe?

  So we just cracked 40 trillion.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  40 trillion, which is unsustainable.

• 22:56Mike Rowe?

  30 was unsustainable.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Well, not as much as 40. We've just.

• 23:01Mike Rowe?

  So you are an economist.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yep. The reason I'm saying that is, there's a Ferguson law, they call. And it's basically, it's an old economist, years and years ago, would say that whenever the interest of a country's, their interest rate, their interest payments are higher than what they're spending to defend their people and their country, you've got a problem. It's a downward spiral that you don't usually pull out of. We're there.

• 23:24Mike Rowe?

  When does it go splat?

• 23:26Speaker 01

  I don't know. We, we're here studying this wonderful conference. We're seeing some of the brightest people speaking. Mike McGinnis just spoke, gave a good analogy for lunch there, an oversight of what's going on. And we don't see the will to change the direction we're going. So it's going to just compound. And as we keep compounding and the debt is growing faster than the GDP or the growth of our economy, when you have that happening and you just compound more and more on that, then what happens? People lose confidence. They don't want to invest in our country. So we don't have people buying our debt because we were always a safe haven. Now, we have to offer them more, you know, a little bit more higher rates and that. So our cost goes up. Everybody costs. Sooner or later, when everyone's cost is going up

• 24:11Speaker 01

  and the facts of life, my grandfather always said this, Joe, just be careful. Unmanaged debt will lead you to make cowardly decisions. We're making cowardly decisions now, Mike. And we will continue to because we don't want to lose votes. So we don't want to take anything away from you. We don't want to make some changes, and we don't want to raise any taxes. What do we want to do? We're going to go broke. I can tell you one thing. Survival in any family is when they hit the rock, hit the wall hard. Okay, what do we cut back? What can we do without? How do we start working a little bit harder, saving a little bit harder, be more disciplined? All the things people go through, not to government. I guess because they have a printing press. That's all I can figure out.

• 24:53Mike Rowe?

  Well, or maybe an unlimited term. I mean, how do you think about, how does independence, if it's not a third-party solution, to what extent do term limits inform the underlying logic of what you and your daughter do?

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Term limits is wonderful. Open primaries is wonderful. There's so many other things that we can do to bring attention to this. The quickest thing for us to do right now for this 2026 election midterm is to elect a true independent in the United States Senate. One or two. To elect two or three people, independents in US Congress. The numbers are so tight that one or two people that says, listen, I'm an independent. I belong, let's say Seth Bodnar, I belong to the state of Montana. I don't belong to a Democrat Party, Republican Party. When I go to Washington, I remain an independent. I will not caucus. But whoever has the best idea to start correcting these problems,

• 25:51Speaker 01

  and here are problems that we have, that's who I'm going to work with. And now, you know what? I could be working with Democrats one week, Republicans the next. But they're going to bring them back together. So they need your vote, and I've been in that seat. They'll come to you. They'll talk to you. When I was a 50/50, the one-vote threshold, I said, guys, listen, just don't get me crazy.

• 26:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  That's not where our country is. I'm not extremes. So when you want to, when you want to put people and have them confirmed, don't ask for my vote for confirmation if you're bringing me in activist. Give me somebody who is rational enough to look at both sides with objections.

• 26:27Mike Rowe?

  So we're not constantly confronted with choosing between?

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:31Mike Rowe?

  Like syphilis or gonorrhea? Like, like, like the lesser, like, it's always the lesser of.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 26:36Mike Rowe?

  Why do we always have to hold our nose before we vote?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 26:40Mike Rowe?

  There's always something on the plate. Like, yeah, I got what I wanted, but there's this dead rat on there, too.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:46Mike Rowe?

  And I can't, I have to.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Can't eat around it. I can't eat around it.

• 26:48Mike Rowe?

  Got to eat it all. Got to eat the rat.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  But the independent movement, the independent movement, it's different today than it's ever been. It's the only, it's the only criteria, basically, or it's the only section of America in the political arena that continues to grow and grow and grow. We're down to 25, 26% of each party registration. Independents are 45-plus.

• 27:12Mike Rowe?

  And they can't get on the ballot?

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Can't, not even get on the ballot. They have nobody speaking for them.

• 27:15Mike Rowe?

  Who's fundamentally stopping this from happening?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Well.

• 27:18Mike Rowe?

  I mean, is there, does it trickle back to one person?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Not one person, no, not one person. The system protects itself. You're rewarding bad behavior. When the Democrat Party and Republican Party continues to get more money than ever before, it's a pretty good business model.

• 27:34Mike Rowe?

  Can the president sign an executive order? They all seem to be good at that. Without an EO saying, okay.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  They could do that. It's not going to happen. You know that.

• 27:41Mike Rowe?

  Why not?

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Because there's no reason to. If the president belongs to a certain party, if our president was independent, absolutely. You can stop this in a heartbeat. We're just talking about getting somebody in the Senate. I was the most independent person, and there was other independent-minded people. But I had to basically say, I'm not voting for that. I can't go home and explain it. I accept, I looked at the political process this way. I told people when I was, when I was raised in Little Farmington, West Virginia, coal-mining town, that I was a privileged child. I was raised as a privileged child. And they said, really? It must be a big home. Well, a three-room garage apartment. Well, it must have been a fancy neighborhood. Oh, it was wonderfully fancy. I had tracks on one side, and I have a crick on the other. Why'd you think you were privileged? I had unconditional love.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  I knew my parents, my grandparents, the love they showed me. But they had a lot of expectations of that love that came. Do the right thing. You make a mistake, own up to it. Build your character, okay? And be able to look at people in the eye and say, I made a mistake. I didn't intend to. I'll fix that. That's the way I was raised. So I thought, well, I go, and after a while, when I was in the Senate, they thought this is a game. You know, I said, no, guys, I can't go home and explain that. I owe it to the people that gave me my foundation. I got to go back and face them. They, they can smell BS a mile away.

• 28:59Mike Rowe?

  Why, when you, I mean, you had to choose one or the other. Why did you choose the Democratic Party originally?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  I didn't. I never chose a party. I just didn't know any difference of why a party would change me. So if my grandparents, my parents are Democrats, identification.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  And so if they're, if they, if I'm identified with my heritage, my family, but we never looked at, I said, I had the Republicans come to me all the time when I was in Senate. Joe, just switch. I said, you don't like me any more than they like me. Democrats don't like me now. You're not gonna like me because I'm not gonna do what you tell me. So, and I don't think it's gonna change who I am. Then I finally changed, I couldn't do it more, no more. Independence. I've always been independent.

• 29:40Mike Rowe?

  Look, man, I don't have a crystal ball, but you could have won. Play back the last 90 seconds and so many Americans watching this would be like, yes, a thousand times yes. But they're being, it's like going into the grocery store and seeing exactly what you want, but it's, it's locked up.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Let me make a pitch, let me make a pitch what we're doing. If you're watching and listening to this, to this wonderful opportunity that I have to speak with my friend Mike here, we have what we call americans together.org. It's very simple. And if you go on that, that website, it'll hit your, where you live, your zip code, whatever, and it'll tell you what kind of government you have. And if you don't think you're getting represented right, if you're being gerrymandering where your congressperson is, and basically they're playing games and it's all about parties and everyone's mad at each other.

• 30:31Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  This will give you a little bit of an idea. And then go to I L C. It's part of that, Americans Together. It's the Independent Leadership Council. And we're gonna tell you how to get involved. If we can make a difference and get enough people to support, and if we can help these five or six people that we're trying to, get two or three of them, Mike, can you imagine having someone in Washington right now and having both parties chastising them because they won't join either one? And they try to stop them from going to committee meeting? And these people have expertise in whether it be military, or in finance, or in agriculture, whatever it may be, education, but they can't go because they have to buy, belong to one of the parties to go represent their citizens that elected

• 31:17Speaker 01

  them. To me, that would raise up, I think, the ire of all Americans. This is not fair. How can you, how can you basically object to someone and stop someone because you've created the rules to play by? It's your playbook and your rulebook? And if you don't like them, you'll change the rules? They want to know why the DSA is, where they got some strength now? Where, how did MAGA get started to where it is? The far right and the far left? The parties are now, they produced a product, and they're now getting penalized by their own product. The product was, they wanted to narrow it down, control it completely, and have the right kind of Democrat and the right kind of Republican that they could elect out of the primary process. Because in the general election, that was over.

• 32:02Mike Rowe?

  There's something kind of delicious in the cognitive dissonance. When, if, if you start looking for this kind of thing, you, you'll find it. You'll see it everywhere. But what, what does a company do when the consumer makes it clear that they love a product that they don't want them to love? What happens when that occurs? I, I still remember 17 candidates on stage 10 years ago in the GOP. And I guess it was Ryan Spree was talking glowingly about, look, look at these choices. We have him, we have her, we have people of color, we have this, we have that, so many to choose from. All good choices, anybody but the guy in the middle. Like, not that. Well.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  That's what happened.

• 32:50Mike Rowe?

  And so I feel like a lot of people who voted in that direction did so, because they just didn't want the party telling them what to like. They just didn't want it. What if, say, five years ago, some big oil company offered a promotion that gave you a chance to lock in the price of gasoline at $2.50 a gallon for the rest of your life? Would you have taken that deal? Or what if a nationwide grocery store had given you an opportunity to lock in the price of ground beef at, say, $2 a pound for as long as you live? Would you have taken that deal? Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, those deals were never

• 33:34Mike Rowe?

  on the table, but this one is. Today, as in right now, for a very, very limited time, Pure Talk is offering every American the opportunity to purchase unlimited talk, text, and data, along with a 30 gig hotspot, for just $29.95 a month for life. Not your phone's life, your life. No contracts, no commitments, just a very rare opportunity to lock into a ridiculously low rate for unlimited talk, text, and data for the rest of your life. It's the unlimited data plan from Pure Talk, and it will not be around for long. $29.95

• 34:18Mike Rowe?

  a month for as long as you live. Taxes and fees not included. Some restrictions do apply. See puretalk.com for details. Offer ends 11/15/26. So chop, chop.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  But here, you said, Democrat, Republicans. I never remember Democrat, Republicans growing up that would tell you who you should love, who you shouldn't love, who you should marry, who you shouldn't marry, what type of religion, who was more pro-American than the other. I never, you know, I grew up, you have a safe place to work, can you return home? Do you have a benefit package you can take care of your family, enjoy a little bit of life?

• 35:11Speaker 01

  And I always said, the Bill of Rights Constitution gives you the pursuit of happiness. I'm gonna do everything I can, once I take that oath, to make sure you enjoy the happiness you want, as long as you don't infringe on other people's rights. And just don't be upset if I don't agree with you. That's all. And the Democrats got so sanctimonious that, if you don't agree on this, this, this, and this, I said, let me just make it very clear. Where I come from, there's never gonna be a boy competing against a girl. Forget it, would you? Forget it. Now, with that being said, if they want to play intramural ball, whatever, that's fine. There's no gonna be organized sports in any way, shape, or form. So get over that. And if you can't say that you want a, you know, a secured border, and

• 35:56Speaker 01

  you want people just coming really neatly across the border, why do you have a fence around your house?

• 36:00Mike Rowe?

  You want to get rid of the cops? You want to get rid of the Senate?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  That's not, that's not America. And you want nobody in uniform to be supported? And other ones going in, in harm's way to protect you?

• 36:09Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  I said, that's who, we never argued about that. We all accepted that. And if our country made a mistake, I'll never forget the Bay of Pigs. Here, I'm a little kid watching, oh my God, nuclear war's coming. They're teaching me how to dive under a desk in my, in school.

• 36:26Mike Rowe?

  When the alarm goes.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  And that'll save me.

• 36:27Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  That desk wasn't gonna save anybody.

• 36:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Okay, but that's what we were taught.

• 36:31Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, that mask will save you too, by the way.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  We didn't blame anybody, but we were all in it together.

• 36:36Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  It wasn't blaming Democrat, Republican. We were hoping that John Kennedy and this administration could get us out of that. Now, who got us into it? We were there. It ain't gonna change it. We gotta get out. So that, right now, can we get out of this mess? Do we have the political will? Not unless we get the pressure, the politics. You're not gonna scare a politician by saying, well, if you don't do this, I'm not gonna have a fundraiser for you. Well, guess what? There'll be someone else who'll have a fundraiser for me. But now if you said, if you don't do this, I'm not voting for you, my family's not voting for you, and everybody I can talk to shouldn't vote for you. Then you got my attention. Now you got my attention. I'm not afraid of holding the money back, because there's always somebody. And I've said this, you're entitled to your own opinion. You're

• 37:21Speaker 01

  just not entitled to create your own facts, to support your batshit crazy opinion. Okay?

• 37:27Mike Rowe?

  What's going on in Pennsylvania? Through the lens, I just talked to our friend Toby Rice.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Good man.

• 37:34Mike Rowe?

  I think he's a great guy. I really like what he's doing. And I was in a room with him.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  He wants to give back to, and he wants to make sure that people that don't have energy can get energy and afford it.

• 37:43Mike Rowe?

  Energy Corps, he's calling it.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  I'm on that board.

• 37:46Mike Rowe?

  Good for you.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 37:48Mike Rowe?

  Okay, then. Maybe you can enlighten me on this. I'm sitting in a room, year and a half ago, with Senator McCormick. He convened this summit. There are probably 35 CEOs in there, presidents there. $93 billion is pledged toward data center construction and energy initiatives in Pennsylvania. Governor's behind it. Everybody in the room's behind it.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  At that time.

• 38:13Mike Rowe?

  At that time. This is literally.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:16Mike Rowe?

  A year, July, right?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Got you.

• 38:18Mike Rowe?

  So I, I'm there, simply to say, hey, carve off a little slice of that. I mean, just a tiny, the tiniest little sliver, to make a more persuasive case to Pennsylvanians for the jobs that you're hoping to create. Because right now, there's not a lot of enthusiasm, and we're losing the war of public opinion around this issue. I said my piece and whatever, but just last week, it looks like the governor now is.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Governor Shapiro.

• 38:45Mike Rowe?

  Welcome us back. In a year.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  One year.

• 38:47Mike Rowe?

  In a year.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  But why?

• 38:50Mike Rowe?

  That's my question.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Public. The public's been speaking out. They've done a horrible job with PR, public relations.

• 38:58Mike Rowe?

  Worst I've ever seen.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And first of all, I was chairman of the Energy Committee on the Senate, so we were in this for quite a while. When I first got to the Senate in 2010, I heard about machine learning. I heard about AI. We had the internet and at that time, you know, there was some things on the internet that we thought shouldn't be on there, but there was no way to scale it back. A lot was going on. We were just trying to get 5G. Well, hell, we skipped over 5G. We went from 1G, 2G to no Gs. We went clear through that. I'm thinking, what the hell's going on? How's it so rapidly changing? And it did. It was in the works for quite some time. But what they never ever did, they said, the grid couldn't support it. The demand for energy, we never predicted this.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  I did a little presentation this morning showing where we were in 2005, what we thought would be needed in 2025. Then I had another chart to show where we are in 2025, what was predicted in 2005, and how far they missed everything. Coal was supposed to be 54% of our mix. Right now, we're down to 17%. They never predicted that. They never predicted the renewables. They never predicted gas replacing coal. Never predicted that. None of it. So they've missed it all. I said, okay.

• 40:13Mike Rowe?

  So what are we missing now?

• 40:14Speaker 01

  If they miss it that bad, what's gonna happen in 2045?

• 40:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  That's what we look at that, too. The thing of it is, I've said this to some, and I've been doing some consulting with some of these. And I've told them, I said, you all have done a horrible job. Just think if you came in to a community. First of all, go look at a site that might be a brown filled site that's been condemned but reinstituted. That we can put another commercial site there. Don't go look at someone's beautiful farm and says, that could be a wonderful development or something, but we're gonna put a data center there.

• 40:43Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  First of all, your site selections are horrible. Okay? You can take a, you can take a, really a retired power plant and use that footprint. There's plenty of them around the country.

• 40:56Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  But no, they're going for the beauty, boy. So that's the first problem. The second problem, you come in and I'm gonna compete against you. You have such an appetite, you can buy in such large quantities at a lower rate, and they're gonna have to pick up the differences, you know, the public utilities by charging me more. Okay? So why don't you go in and say, listen, we're gonna build our own power plant to support this new data center. And not only are we gonna be a good neighbor, we're gonna be a more responsible neighbor, and we're gonna be more protective of you having guaranteed reliability in your grid. We're gonna build our system a little larger than what we need to net meter back into the system that gives you a lower cost and a reliability that you haven't had.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Cause a grid system is teetering from time to time. That all can be done very realistically. And then you have to hold the hyperscalers, the hyperscalers, the people that are ordering this, rather than just sending their minions out and their contractors, hold them responsible. This is yours. This baby's on your balance sheet. This responsibility, if you screw up, we're coming after you. So it holds everybody in this together. And then sell it as a community project. There's not gonna be that many jobs from that data center. But what that data center can produce could be tremendously, it's gonna happen.

• 42:11Mike Rowe?

  Well, to your point, nobody's got a crystal ball in 20 years from now. This is the part of the map that says, here be dragons, right? Like, we don't know. Now, I think it's exciting. I think the possibility is-

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Look what the internet did, Mike.

• 42:26Mike Rowe?

  Right. Now, but that's the other, I feel like, and I've said it before on this show, but I've seen this play before. I remember being scared in middle school that the Ice Age was coming. And I remember being worried in 99 that Y2K was the thing. And you just mentioned 5G. The hell is that? I'm told it's gonna rot my brain. There are waves I can't see. I'm gonna put it in my pocket. I'll be sterile. Whatever's gonna, like 5G, 5G, 5G.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  That's exactly right.

• 42:53Mike Rowe?

  And it's just gone.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  We skipped that baby.

• 42:55Mike Rowe?

  I don't wanna be glib. I don't wanna pretend the issues aren't real, but man, just so tired of it.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Well, when they have these machine, the machine learning, you know, when you have that quantum computing on top of AI, and you set these up and they start learning to talk to themselves, the machines, and basically outthinking what you would have thought, cause you didn't put any guardrails on them. That's why we're talking. You have to have guardrails. We never put guardrails on the internet. We saw all the good, the economic prosperity, all that came from it. And we saw all the deterioration as far as the youth being able to think, communicate, work together. It deteriorate everything. Now you've got people saying, well, we can't have internet. Kids can't have anything until they're 16. They're putting age limits now as their brains are developing,

• 43:43Speaker 01

  rather than being totally committed to that. They're bringing suits now, medicine, billions of dollars of suit. And if we had put that on from the beginning and said, here's the guardrails, guys. You get out of them, we're gonna smack you and smack you hard. You stay there and you protect it. They can stop all this. If you heard the guys this morning talking-

• 44:01Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, what is it? What's the law? Is it 230?

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Section 230.

• 44:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Section 2, been in place since 91.

• 44:07Mike Rowe?

  Are you in favor of leaning into that?

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Oh, no, we have been. We can't get, the lobbyists are so damn powerful. They come to Washington. We think we got everyone moving in the right direction, but the guardrails, boom, goes away. President Trump comes in and I'm thinking, oh, this is great. Now he's gonna put, you know, we're gonna put some guardrails on. Before you know it, he has a meeting at the White House, all the big shots from Silicon Valley come and all the hyperscalers, boom, everything's okay. But I think, I still think they know it has to be done.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  It's concerning. It's worrying. And then on top of that, $40 trillion, what's gonna be left? You know, a person that's making big, big money, gasoline at $6 a gallon's not really bothering them that much. Okay? But I can tell you one thing, 90% of the other people aren't doing very well. That's $6. You were pushing them at 350. You hit four, you really hurt them. You hit five, you've crippled them. You hit five, you've crippled them. In my state, they gotta drive to get a job, good job, and they do.

• 45:05Mike Rowe?

  Well, look them around here.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:06Mike Rowe?

  I mean, you don't do anything in Wyoming without gas.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  And then they start talking about, you know, minimum wage. The thing, I think what's happened with our system, we've got so many people that are not paying what people believe is the fair share they should pay because of the offsets and loopholes. We've got some people in America aren't paying anything. Nothing.

• 45:28Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  And I don't believe that a citizen of this great country with all the opportunities we have should go through just because of your income barriers or this or that and pay nothing. Something. And then I don't believe that the people on the top end of the totem pole should be able to escape a fair rate. With that, there's enough, and my dad always said, my granddad and dad always says, Joe, leave a little bone, meat on the bone for the next dog.

• 45:52Mike Rowe?

  What about the wealth tax?

• 45:54Speaker 01

  I've never thought about penalizing someone just because they've done well, Mike. I haven't. I'm a pure capitalist, but I'm a capitalist with a heart. I still think there's a responsibility. I think the good Lord's given us people in America, in this great country, and say, God bless America. Well, that's fine. To be a superpower, you have to have a super economy, which we do, super military, which we do, super compassion, which we're losing. That's the problem.

• 46:22Mike Rowe?

  I would say we gotta have that thing you talked about earlier.

• 46:27Mike Rowe?

  You didn't use the word, but it's gratitude. You thought you were privileged, A, because you were.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  I had love.

• 46:35Mike Rowe?

  But I got this thing, it's called a sweat pledge.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 46:38Mike Rowe?

  Everybody who applies for money from my scholarship has to sign it. I wrote it because I knew it would be controversial 10 years ago. We were arguing about, we're still arguing about whether or not work ethic is, what, toxic or something? So the first tenet in the sweat pledge says, I believe I've won the greatest lottery of all time. I'm alive. I walk the earth. I live in America. Above all things, I'm grateful. I wanted to talk to you because I think you probably are singing out of that same hymnal.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Oh, I tell people, if you were born in America, you hit the jackpot.

• 47:16Mike Rowe?

  That's it.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  If you came to this country and now you're a citizen, you hit the lottery. How are you gonna spend it? What are you gonna do? You gonna splurge? Throw it away? Spend it on yourself? Do you wanna invest it?

• 47:28Mike Rowe?

  If you truly believe that, it's very difficult to feel sorry for yourself.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 47:33Mike Rowe?

  It's very difficult. And for me, I kinda feel like that's where we start. My challenge is, and I'm, I assume you agree, but nobody wants a lecture. Nobody wants a sermon, not even on a Sunday morning. They don't wanna be told what to do, but they wanna be persuaded. It's back to the independence. It's back to a rational choice. And, and look, I'm gonna make this point, too, cause you kinda, you kinda glanced over it, but this thing, and if you're listening to this, I'm holding my iPhone and looking at it. Guy named Jonathan Haidt, who I really liked, behavioral shrink the other day, said, here's an idea. Let's make a casino and the most elaborate porn site in the history of the world.

• 48:19Mike Rowe?

  And let's give it to our kids and let's let them take it to school and let's see what happens. Those are the guardrails that you're talking about. Somehow or another, we didn't see it coming. And now it's here and we're looking at that. And I think the point you were making is, if, if we got so far over our skis with that, what mistakes are we about to make with AI?

• 48:44Speaker 01

  We start talking, first of all, no matter what it creates, whatever new jobs, are we able to basically fulfill them? Can we build it? Do we have the skill sets to do it? Everything you've talked about, work ethics. And when we look at it from a standpoint as reality, are we prepared? I think the greatest detriment that I've ever seen in my lifetime has been COVID. It's stripped away the personal dignity that we all had. Everyone was expecting a paycheck. Everyone thought it was the government's responsibility. I always said, and when I became governor, they'd come to see me and I said, I am not your provider, but I will be your best partner you've ever had. And that means the partnership, we're both in this. And we both have to, you know, give a little bit. That person come one time and says, I want you to do this, this, and this.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Why would you want me to do all that? I said, what are you gonna do for yourself? And they said, well, no, we need your help. That's why we're here. And that's when I gave them the sermon. They got over that real quick in West Virginia. I said, no, I'm not doing that stuff. But I said, you better have the compassion to take care of those who can't mentally or physically do it for themselves.

• 49:53Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week, highly immersive pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 50:35Mike Rowe?

  I'm talking about AI-proof, six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you, or your spouse, or your kid, or your grandkid are looking for a straight path

• 51:18Mike Rowe?

  into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. Remember all the crap George Bush got when he talked about a thousand points of light?

• 51:37Speaker 01

  George H.

• 51:38Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. He wasn't wrong. I mean, that's...

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Good man.

• 51:42Mike Rowe?

  When I talked about the grout, it's, the grout's not the government, like the tiles are the government, but the grout is the people. It's the connective tissue. That's why I brought up the Boy Scouts. That's why, maybe it's a church, maybe it's a...

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Let me tell you, what I want to tell you is this, you talk about work ethic. Everything, I've watched you, and I've been so enamored with what you were doing, because I was so, it just resonated with me. I'm 10 years old, working for my grandfather, 11 years, 12. You had to work in the grocery store from 10 to 13. You got to go on a delivery truck and go on the furniture store, 13 to 16. You got to put a tile on at 16. Okay? So that was a process. I knew it. Kids are coming by the store, they're going to play ball, they're going to go swimming. We didn't have a pool, so we had a hole, swimming hole, and we'd jump in that. And I told them I learned to breaststroke very quickly. You know I'm talking about.

• 52:37Mike Rowe?

  I don't start.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Okay. So anyway, I said, hey Papa, I'm trying to think, every day I try to think how I get out of work. And then one day I say, hey Pop, I knew he loved football. I says, can I get off today? I want to go lift weights and get strong to play football. And I thought, he says, sure honey. He called everybody honey. Sure, honey, I thought he would say that. He said, Joe, he says, he's cutting on the butcher, little butcher block. Show me a man that lifts dumbbells and I'll show you a dumbbell. That's wasted motion. If by God you want to get strong, get back in that warehouse and rearrange that warehouse. I never asked for another day off. That's work, the beauty of work. 13 to 16, I'm carrying refrigerators up steps, washing machines and everything. At 16 comes, got to put a tile on. My dad was giving me speeches every morning. That's what he gives everybody. We had seven o'clock.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  My dad's starting time was seven. His real starting time was 15 to seven. You were late if you were 14 to seven. So I learned that. And then he says, let me tell you, Joe, there's no such thing as shoppers. They're all buyers, they just don't know it. He says, I'm not looking for order takers, I need salespeople. And he says, trust me, they don't come in to get out of the rain, they come in to buy something. I swear to God, I put a tile on the first time, I was so proud. It is one of the worst storms we've ever had in Farmington, raining like hell. This guy runs in off of the street, and I said, buddy, it's not your lucky day. He says, what, Joe? I says, you got to buy something. He says, why? Because my dad told me no one comes in to get out of the rain. He says, look outside. Forget about that, I said. Do you understand, I got to go back on the truck if I don't sell something?

• 54:07Speaker 01

  I'm not going back on that damn truck. I've been on a truck for three years, I'm not going back.

• 54:11Mike Rowe?

  What'd you sell him?

• 54:12Speaker 01

  A lamp. He felt sorry for me and bought a little cheap lamp.

• 54:19Mike Rowe?

  Hey, listen, never underestimate the power of pity.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Oh God, I used everything I had.

• 54:24Mike Rowe?

  As long as it's come from someplace other than you.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  And then what happened in 20, from 2020, 2020 to 2022? We were looking, I remember all the political jargon was going back and forth, and they were thinking, well, you know, we just come off a kind of a financial meltdown, the mortgage markets, 2008, 2009. And they thought that President Obama didn't put enough stimulus in to get us back. It lasted, the recession lasted a little bit too long. So they were determined, both sides, Democrat, Republican, Senator, I mean, at that, President Trump's and his staff and Democrats, and they were all trying to stimulate. Well, they come up with this $600 a week unemployment. Now, once the COVID hit, and there was a COVID declaration, if you will, then unemployment

• 55:09Speaker 01

  benefits, everything went out the window, because unemployment up until that time, if you were unemployed, you had to go to unemployment office and show you were seeking work. And if someone asked you to come back, and you declined that, then you lost your unemployment benefits. Okay? So that was how the system worked forever. You had another job, you didn't take it.

• 55:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Well, I want to continue to pay you to stay off of work. You got good jobs, go to it. Well, when this happened, that all went out the window. You couldn't fire anybody. You couldn't even call a person back, and if they wouldn't come back, you had no say into it. Then they got it down to 300, because I said, you know, some of these jobs didn't pay quite that much, there was more incentive to move forward. You're going to have a complacency built in, that they're going to say, that's good, I'm better now than I ever was. Let's just stay in on pandemic forever. Then we got a vaccine that worked, we had people with money, we sent checks to everybody. Okay? And then the supply chain was broken, and no one had to go back to work. I says, you're setting yourself up, I told President Biden, you're setting yourself up for one heck of an inflation.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  And he says, oh, no, Joe, he says, I have 17 Nobel laureates that told me that it's transitional, it won't, it'll go away. I said, sir, and all due respect, you had 17 educated idiots told you what you wanted to hear because you paid them. There ain't no way. I mean, I'm not an economist, I can see, I got money, I feel safe now, I can go out and I can spend my money because I got a vaccine, I'm not worried about dying now, and there's not a whole lot on the shelves, and they've jacked the prices up two or three times, but I still want it, and I got extra money I never had before, I'm going to do it. It's just human nature.

• 56:48Mike Rowe?

  I heard here, somewhere in the last 36 hours, that the brand that experienced the highest growth...

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 56:57Mike Rowe?

  ...during this exact period, was it you who told me, or was someone else?

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Toby. Toby told you about that. He was on the stage, he told you...

• 57:05Mike Rowe?

  Was it Louis Vuitton?

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Louis Vuitton. The one guy that owns all that became the richest man in the world there for a period of time.

• 57:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, because there was so much money in the system.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  People have more money to buy, right. The money can't digest. We were in 2020, 2021, about five and a half trillion dollars is cash flow is what it took to run the country. We threw additional 3.2 trillion in from March of 20 up until February of the next year. That's almost double. And then President Biden comes on, and he wants to do American Rescue Plan. That's another 1.9. Now, we have doubled the amount of money we put into the system, the system can't, just as it can't control it.

• 57:44Mike Rowe?

  In terms of damage, the consequences of doing that, rank them in some way. What did we do during those years that we have yet to truly realize?

• 57:55Speaker 01

  We took performance and work out of everything, out of everything, Mike. Your whole life's around that, your whole career's around work. And think about this, I said, I was sitting in a group of senators, and I said, guys, I don't know, I said, I remember, I loved history and I remembered it. And I said, you know, I knew generations that went to the CC camp, they went there because they didn't have anything at home and their families couldn't feed them, they were joining at a very young age, they're doing everything to get in the CC camp, and it...

• 58:25Mike Rowe?

  What's that stand for?

• 58:26Speaker 01

  It's Civilian Conservation Corps.

• 58:28Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  They were building camps, they were building schools, they did things in WPA...

• 58:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  ...work progress. There's still schools and there's camps and there's basically national parks that are benefited from that back in the 30s. And I said, I don't remember the greatest depression the world has ever seen, 1930s. And this is, we say, well, we have the greatest pandemic, okay, let's rank them, they're equal. I don't remember FDR sending checks to anybody. He sent opportunity. My family, my grandparents, your grandparents, they had an opportunity to survive.

• 59:03Mike Rowe?

  Why don't our elected officials expect the people to work?

• 59:07Speaker 01

  People want to work, but they don't want to work if they don't have to work.

• 59:11Mike Rowe?

  It's the fault in our stars.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  That's exactly correct.

• 59:14Mike Rowe?

  We're a river trying to get to the ocean, and we get to a mountain, we don't go over it.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  And just think about West Virginia, we're the eastern continental divide. Half the water from my state goes to the Mississippi into the Gulf. Half of it goes to Chesapeake Bay into the Atlantic. So we are the middle of the road.

• 59:34Mike Rowe?

  What do you love most about that place?

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Oh God, I don't know, something about the people, I think, I just, I don't know. I've never met a West Virginian that wouldn't help you. I can always tell when I'm back home, if somebody's broke down, there'll be a West Virginian laying under the car trying to fix it for him. There'll be a person, if you're lost, they says, oh, heck, before I can explain to you, just follow me, I'll take you there.

• 59:55Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  I just, I don't know, there's something about that. And then the, just the vistas and the God-given beauty that we have, but it's the people. You could be broke down, they'll bring you in, they'll feed you. My grandmother fed everybody. As I said, we lived between the tracks, and back in the 50s, early 50s, a lot of people riding the train.

• 1:00:13Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? But Mama Kate, and I grew up with rules. I watched her preach to people every time they would come down, say, Mom, they said, Mama Kate, can we stay with you? She says, sure, honey, you know I got three rules. You can't cuss, okay? Can't drink, and you got to work.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Now, this is a little Italian immigrant grandmother. She fed him. She made twenty little grandchildren. We had to whitewash her little basement in her car, in her house. And she had a shower and a little, and a little bathroom. And she had a bed. They had a place to stay and she fed him. They ate with us, everybody. We had names for everybody. We had Peg Leg Peggy. We had Wheelbar Willie. We had them all. Peg Leg Peggy got caught in the tracks one day. Train was acoming. We're up there trying to pull him out of the tracks. I'll never forget. I mean, this is a cadre. And then we'd lose him. And I never, when I was young, I said, Mom, okay. What happened to Deloitte? Oh, honey. And she'd go like this, don't worry, he's on the toot. But he'll be back.

• 1:01:16Mike Rowe?

  He's on the toot.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  He's on the toot again. That's my grandmother. I'm thinking, what's the toot? Well, he drinks a little bit, honey, but I can't have him around all you little babies. So they had to leave.

• 1:01:25Mike Rowe?

  You know, it's funny. I talked to Vance the other day. All he really wanted to talk about was his grandmother.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  I had so many, but my grandmother, grandfather's. My grandmother, I slept with her every night till I was ten years old.

• 1:01:37Mike Rowe?

  Really?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  My one brother had a ribbon. He sucked a ribbon at night. My sister had a blanket and one had a pillow. I had Momma Kay, pretty big sized Italian woman. And we lived in a little, we had a little single bed. I'll never forget this. And I, I just, she was my, she was my blanket. She was my, that was everything. Every night I'd sleep with her.

• 1:01:58Mike Rowe?

  Well, you're privileged.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Well, by ten years old, I couldn't breathe. And I said, Momma Kay, do you mind if I sleep with myself tonight? She says, honey, I knew this day was coming. I still, I still remember that I couldn't breathe.

• 1:02:13Mike Rowe?

  You know, you mentioned.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Isn't that beautiful?

• 1:02:14Mike Rowe?

  That's, that's terrific. You mentioned football earlier.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:02:18Mike Rowe?

  Tell me if this metaphor works for you. I went to the Army Navy game this year.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  I went, I went last year.

• 1:02:23Mike Rowe?

  It was a good one. Navy one by one, I think. Sitting there in the box next to a bunch of swells.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:30Mike Rowe?

  Watching these guys, I mean, it's fierce rivalry. And obviously, the stadium split. Everybody's got their favorite. But nobody in the stadium hated the other team. They were just rooting for their team. And I think there was a time, I, you're certainly been around enough to remember it. But it feels like, that was like a Tip O'Neill Ronald Reagan thing, right? Where, where, where you could be adversaries. But fundamentally, we, the people, understood the other guy wasn't the enemy.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Let's put it in terms they can understand.

• 1:03:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  I'm a competitive person, you're competitive. I want to beat you when we compete. I don't want to defeat you. I want you to come back and make me better. We've lost that.

• 1:03:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  We want to doubt, we want to defeat you now to where you can never raise your head again. You can never come back in society. You're done forever of ever contributing back. There's something wrong with that mentality. And then when there's no competition in the political process, which there is no competition today. This is what you're getting. You're getting a really, a really inferior product.

• 1:03:34Mike Rowe?

  Well, you've got people of conscience in both parties, I would think, who simply don't have the conviction or the will to shout down the madness on both sides.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I've said this to my children. We were, when I first got into politics, Mike, the kids would ask me, they said, hey, Dad. This and that. I said, honey, tell my kids, I had three, I had two, two girls, one boy. I said, once I get involved in public office, you're gonna hear a lot of things. Good, bad, ugly, it's gonna make you mad. You're gonna be upset and everything. And I said, I want you to think of one thing. As mad as you're getting upset, and maybe you think you'd want me to be involved, or why are we doing this? That's a very, very small price to pay for the life you have, the opportunities you have. Someone's got to do it. And that's a very, I keep thinking back to our founding fathers. They laid it all on the line. Here they were, taking on the most powerful, most powerful dynasty in the world. The, the British Empire.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Greatest navy the world's ever seen. And you got a ragtag group of people that, we can take them on, let's go.

• 1:04:36Mike Rowe?

  Ragtag for sure, but also, the guys who signed that declaration, they were the one percenters of their day. They were the very cohort we've been trained to vilify. They were prosperous, they owned land.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:54Mike Rowe?

  They, they had a lot to lose. That was a death warrant, essentially.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Oh, most certainly.

• 1:05:00Mike Rowe?

  It was, it was a treasonous.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  And it was basically send you back to poverty or death, one of the two.

• 1:05:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  And the bottom line is, is right, we did not villainize those people at that time. But we're villainizing anybody that's raised, that's raised their level. I'm just saying there's, that, that, when, when Bernie Sanders talks about income inequality, he's right. Never have this much disparity between the two. A working, average working person that might, even today, making hopefully a hundred and fifty, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, good jobs? They're no comparison of a forty to one ratio or whatever was acceptable. It's so far out of the realm. So that has to change. I understand that. But at what point? We used to have basically held seventy-five percent tax.

• 1:05:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  At one time. Ronald Reagan came in, put a more reasonable price. We started growing. But then they start putting, it wasn't enough. I gotta have some more offsets. I gotta have some more different loopholes.

• 1:05:49Mike Rowe?

  I'd kick myself later if I didn't ask you about part of the disenchantment that I feel, and I assume a lot of other people feel with the two-party system, also has to do with the fraud. And this feeling, and you touched on it earlier, that there's really no consequences anymore. People, whatever was done to us during COVID, that's going to have a catastrophic long-term effect. There's not going to be any consequences for individuals who pulled the levers on that. And now we're looking at just massive amounts of money. You know, the Doge thing, people, you look at that and you just, I don't cheat. I pay my taxes and I'm privileged to pay a bunch. But man, oh, man.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  It's something.

• 1:06:34Mike Rowe?

  It does break your spirit to see it squandered.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  When you start seeing the amount of taxes that, that you're paying and have privileges enough to be able to pay them.

• 1:06:43Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  What you ought to be looking is how much I had left. You never thought you'd have that much left to spend. Why are you, why are you want it all? I mean, can't we all agree that maybe in this stratosphere, everyone should pay twenty-five to thirty percent, maybe?

• 1:06:58Mike Rowe?

  We can quibble over.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, what it is.

• 1:06:59Mike Rowe?

  Percentages. I'm just saying that whatever the percentage is, you have to have faith that your government is not buying this eight hundred dollar toilet. Right? That is not being just so flagrantly, whatever it is, USAID, what, all that stuff, you know, it's, it, the rot and the incuriosity and the, and the bitterness that all of that sows in the electorate. It's bad for the.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  I didn't know, Mike, you know, the corporate rate went from thirty-five to twenty-one, right? Thirty-five percent, twenty-one. We thought, we thought it should have been at twenty-five to be competitive. Went to twenty-one, you think that would have been a menazza? And I'm thinking, okay, that's. And then someone said, well, everyone should pay at least fifteen. I said, well, they're paying twenty-one. They said, no, they're not. There's hundreds of millions and billions of dollars of corporations that aren't paying that. Two, four, six percent. So I said, well, my God, I don't think, and maybe be mad if we just, everybody paid fifteen percent. Phew. I found out different about that one, but we, we put that in. But I'm, I'm almost a flat rate guy anymore. Give me a flat rate. That way you, you know what? God bless you, but you can't cheat. You can't find a loophole. You know, it is, it is what it is.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  And it's all, all treat as earned income. Don't give me that passive income. Don't give me all that. How much you end up with at the end of the day?

• 1:08:19Mike Rowe?

  So you'd, you'd favor a flat tax?

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  I have looked at a flat rate, a progressive flat rate I would take.

• 1:08:24Mike Rowe?

  What else? You're king of the world. Sorry, bad analogy, but let's say you got on all fifty. Let's say you won, like with a mandate.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  Well, I'd get my financial house in order. That's the first thing. As my grandfather said, you'll make carefully decisions if you don't. And I don't want to make carefully, I'll make good decisions for the next generation. I owe it to them. I would do that. That'd be the first thing I put, I put a, some, some bowls commission together.

• 1:08:48Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  That commission had us down to where everyone had a little bit of skin in the game.

• 1:08:52Mike Rowe?

  That was Alan Simpson?

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  That was Alan Simpson, God rest his soul.

• 1:08:55Mike Rowe?

  Erskine?

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  And Erskine Bowles is still one of the brightest people you ever meet.

• 1:08:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Still at it. He understands it and gets it. And he was the one that, he's the one that basically was the mastermind behind the balanced budget that we had in nineteen ninety-seven. So you have people that have that expertise. Look at them. And then get corporate America together. So listen, this is not the country that gave you the opportunity you have. That's not going to be the next country you're gonna leave. Now, if you think your kids are going to inherit that, that old saying again, I told you, leave a little meat on the bone for the next dog. There's going to be enough dogs that are going to be so hungry coming after your children, your family, that are up here with all the meat. And they only have a morsel of meat on the bone down here. That's not a good life you want to live.

• 1:09:39Mike Rowe?

  Shit, that's a good title, too. Leave a little meat on the bone with Joe Manchin or We the Party. Which one you like?

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  I like them both.

• 1:09:47Mike Rowe?

  All right, I'll flip a coin. There's a woman here that I'd like to grab before I leave. Have you met her? It's Carolyn Bordeaux, maybe?

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  I met Carolyn. She was, she was in Congress before.

• 1:09:58Mike Rowe?

  Short term.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  Short term, but she, she, she's, she gets it. She's that moderate. All she wants is those of us who've been there to work together.

• 1:10:06Mike Rowe?

  I feel like we cracked forty trillion and now she's saying, look, enough. She's throwing the flag and she's going to try and make, I guess, what would you call it? Fiscal responsibility sexy again.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Well, we're, we're, I'll, I'll help her anyway. I can't, I can only tell you this. If you want to change it, help me and those of us who understand the process well enough, elect an independent. And let's see if they can, we can keep them enough support when they get to Washington to stay independent and watch the sides and watch us educate the public in America. You know, George Washington said, beware of the political parties for they can become the engines that allow the system, the political system, the parties, to usurp the power from the people. And they have done it and done it exquisitively.

• 1:10:52Mike Rowe?

  I think you're absolutely right. And I want to help. And that's why I wanted to talk to you here.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  I'm going to need you to help me. I need to help.

• 1:10:57Mike Rowe?

  Land the plane again. Where do people go? What, what can the average, what can anybody?

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  ILC, ILC dot com. Independent Leadership Council dot com.

• 1:11:09Mike Rowe?

  It's not a third party.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Not, we're not, it's not a third party. It's a movement. It's a movement to take back our country to where our founding fathers, it's about service. Service to others before yourself. If you're, if that's not in your blood, don't get in public service, but get involved. Help people that will do that. It might not be your DNA, but you need to go out and make sure that you're. You know, when's the last time you really went and said, hey, Mike, you need to run. You should be on the ballot. I want you to speak for me. We're not doing that anymore.

• 1:11:38Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  These people are coming up and they think, oh, I want to be there. It's fortune and fame. I got this and that. No, you got service.

• 1:11:45Mike Rowe?

  We could not be a country if the real literal army actually hated the real literal Navy. We couldn't fight a war. Those branches need to love each other.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  Well, the Army and Navy, they're competitive. The competition's built in. You see them on that field.

• 1:12:03Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  And both sides are hollering and screaming and after they all got together. Okay, whoever beat did not defeat. You can beat me today. I got next year. I'm coming back.

• 1:12:13Mike Rowe?

  Every single one of those players is an American.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:12:16Mike Rowe?

  Who signed up because they give a damn.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  And that's the only football we're watching today that is not infiltrated by NIL.

• 1:12:24Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Isn't that beautiful?

• 1:12:25Mike Rowe?

  Name, image, likeness.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  That's destroying it, destroying the system. Can you believe the gambling that's going on? People are gambling on who's going to make a decision on what the tax cut's going to be.

• 1:12:37Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  Or is.

• 1:12:37Mike Rowe?

  There's an over under on everything.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  Everything. And then the thing that I can't even believe that the president is administrator, whoever, they're allowing them to pay money to get inside information or early enough to make a decision on a bet. That's not who we are.

• 1:12:54Mike Rowe?

  I shouldn't tell you this, but my producer bet a hundred dollars that I couldn't get this thing done in less than an hour.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  They won. I know he did. I get 50 of it.

• 1:13:03Mike Rowe?

  Like, politics scare me to death.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:13:06Mike Rowe?

  I've been flattered historically with offers and I can't, I can't bring myself to, to do it. But I'll tell you something, man.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  But you've got a voice. You've got a voice. You've got a following and people believe in you, Mike. You got to use it.

• 1:13:23Mike Rowe?

  Well.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  I've told Nick Saban, my dear friend, we grew up together.

• 1:13:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  I said, Nick, use your voice. You know NIL is wrong.

• 1:13:29Mike Rowe?

  I want people to understand, point your, name, image, likeness. Why is it a problem in sports and what's the metaphor you're making?

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  You have, you have young, young, talented, talented athletes. We call it student athletes. Take the student away because none of them are graduating.

• 1:13:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  It's become semi-pro, if not even pro. They won't make as much money in pro, if they get pro, as they will if they just stay in college. They've been there for seven years now. It's, it's basically just been horrible for the system. They use their talent now. Now NIL, name, image and likeness. If you have all the skills and people want to see you, you can go ahead and get yourself a lawyer and say, okay, let's market our skills to the market. But if you're going to play ball in order for you to keep your name and name and image high enough, you can't use that as a bargaining tool against West Virginia University or Indiana University or anybody else. You'll get recruited and then you cannot just say, I'm going to join a portal because you don't let me play where I want to play.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  So Nick Saban, I say, he said, Joe, he said, I can't, I can't develop a student athlete. I can't take a person.

• 1:14:36Mike Rowe?

  What's Nick do exactly?

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Nick Saban was the greatest coach of all times of Alabama.

• 1:14:40Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:41Mike Rowe?

  Believe it or not, some people might not know that.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's won more national champions than anybody else.

• 1:14:47Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  Comes from Little Worthington, West Virginia, three miles over, one hill from me, Farmington. We've been friends all our life. And he is, his dad was one of the finest human beings, coaches. And his dad was, all he wanted to do is develop young kids that didn't have a chance. Start a Pop Warner team called The Black Diamonds. And he gets his little kids, he buy them a school bus, painted it. And it was called, it was black and orange. And he goes around, picks the kids up and he would take them to practice. He'd feed them. Cause there was a lot of things that kids didn't have that structure. And Nick Senior. And I don't know Nick Saban by Nick. I know him as Brother Saban. The reason why his sister, his mother, Mary, used to say, tell your little brother do this, tell little brother go get that.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  And just stuck with him. So we all know him as Brother. Anyway, he says, Joe, I'm going to get the best athletes I can when I recruit. He says, now I go to a person's home. And I said, listen, I know people are saying you how great your son is and how great your grandson is, and they're going to go into pro and make all this money. I cannot guarantee you that. I can't. You give me that young boy of yours and I'm going to guarantee you one thing. I'll give you back a man that's going to have an education, that's going to be held accountable and responsible and hold himself to be a contributor to society. I can guarantee you that. Now, anything else above that, that's by the grace of God. I can tell you what I can do. If you give me a chance to have your young son, I'm going to give you somebody you'll be proud of.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  He got about everybody he wanted and he performed. High graduation rates. He did everything. But what do you do? He says, Joe, he says, most of the kids in small schools are either going to be skilled players like the quarterback or that. Well, that's fine. That might not be where I need them. So I'd bring a kid in and says, well, I want to be quarterback. Well, let me tell you, I understand that. Right now I need you over here in defensive back. You're going to be one heck of a good hands, good size, you can move good. I'm okay on quarterback right now. They're going to say, I just want to play, coach. Put me anywhere. Not today. Today in assistant. He says, I tell a person, hey, coach, I want in the portal. Let me out of here. I'll, I'll know where I want to play. And so you put a cap on that.

• 1:16:53Mike Rowe?

  But this is a reaction.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  That's a reaction.

• 1:16:56Mike Rowe?

  Getting paid a bunch of money off your name, your image or your likeness.

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  Just that people think, well, you have this value, so we're going to pay you 800,000.

• 1:17:03Mike Rowe?

  While you're playing ball in college.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  College. And you might go to four different schools, four different schools. There's no penalty. So they're putting that back to where you might have three years. You have to stay at least three years at one school.

• 1:17:16Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Unless there's a hardship clause. And then your senior year, going from junior to senior, if you haven't gotten the playing time or you haven't been able to achieve what you wanted, then you can transfer. You haven't hurt anybody.

• 1:17:25Mike Rowe?

  Now, I imagine there's probably a, a sports agent out there.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Going crazy right now.

• 1:17:29Mike Rowe?

  They were sitting here.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:31Mike Rowe?

  Would say, hold on a second now. You're talking about individual rights. You're talking about the ability to, you yourself said you were a capitalist.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  I got a scholarship. Okay. And I got hurt my, going into my sophomore year. I still kept my scholarship. So right now, if you get a kid, Division One school, they're guaranteed four years of education where they play one minute or not. If they get hurt, once you sign that, you're guaranteed, you get X amount of spending dollars a month. They called it, we had laundry money back then.

• 1:17:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  Okay. The biggest thing was they never, the, the system itself, NCAA, never adjusted to where a lot of these kids come from not the most prosperous background. And a lot of their, their family, mothers, single mothers or grandmothers, couldn't even afford to go watch them play. They could have had then contribution from alumni to help the families enjoy their kids playing. Now, if they went on to bigger things because they were good, that's good. We all benefit. If not, you had a quality of life, you got a young person back that had a scholarship, had a degree, had education and could be something. That's what we were building. So if they're going to play the game now, take the word student away.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  None of them are graduating. They're transferring too much. Those credits aren't transferring. They're never going to graduate. It's awful.

• 1:18:45Mike Rowe?

  So they're professional players.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  Professional players on the lower, on, on the level that's not at the National Football League or National Basketball League or any of that. But it's just unbelievable.

• 1:18:56Mike Rowe?

  So why did you bring it up? What's the, why, what's the corollary to what Nick ought to be doing and to what?

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  We're not building character anymore. No character, Mike.

• 1:19:06Mike Rowe?

  I just wanted to hear you say.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's got to be character. This kid's got to say, listen, I want you to be all you can be and I'm going to help you. You don't know what it is yet. You don't know what you're capable of. Maybe I do. Maybe I can help you get there.

• 1:19:18Mike Rowe?

  You know what you just did?

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:19:19Mike Rowe?

  You just used the Army's recruiting slogan to make your point.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  Be all you can be.

• 1:19:24Mike Rowe?

  Which is interesting because the armed forces, they all have a, like a different take.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:30Mike Rowe?

  Right? They're all presenting.

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  And they're all doing good recruiting right now.

• 1:19:34Mike Rowe?

  They're doing great recruiting. Look, the Navy, you see the world, the Coast Guard do this, your army, be all you can be. And the Marines, I think they're still saying, uh, it's probably not for you.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  Marines are saying.

• 1:19:46Mike Rowe?

  Few, proud.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Few, proud.

• 1:19:48Mike Rowe?

  Not you.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Few are proud and we're capable of kicking your ass.

• 1:19:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. That's the truth. Okay. I sure appreciate your time.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  I appreciate.

• 1:19:56Mike Rowe?

  I know you've got a lot going on.

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  Help me with the independence because that's the only way we're going to save the country.

• 1:20:01Mike Rowe?

  Okay. Let me know what I can do.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  I'm going to send you everything.

• 1:20:04Mike Rowe?

  I'm going to cut this up into clips.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Mike Rowe?

  I'll put money behind it. I'll make sure people see it.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Just put your social media helping us tremendously.

• 1:20:11Mike Rowe?

  Look, I'll do it.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  I know you will.

• 1:20:12Mike Rowe?

  I'm, I'm.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  And I want to give you the candace. You look at it, make one and everything and.

• 1:20:16Mike Rowe?

  Do it.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:17Mike Rowe?

  My listeners know that I'm, I touch things like it's hot and politics scares the hell out of me.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  Well, right now.

• 1:20:23Mike Rowe?

  I've always tried to argue from the middle and didn't you write a book?

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  Dead Center.

• 1:20:27Mike Rowe?

  Dead Center.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  You want to make a plug on the book?

• 1:20:29Mike Rowe?

  Plug it. No, don't do it.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  No, you need Dead Center. If you haven't seen it, if you haven't read it, it's by audio. You can get it. And it basically tells you how a kid from Appalachia, a kid from a home hunting town of 500 people, how I end up sitting at the seat of power with the president and my vote for two years was as important as anything that he was doing too. We had to work for what was betterment for the country. He had a political machine behind him. I had basically people back home expected more from me. That was the difference.

• 1:20:59Mike Rowe?

  I like you, Joe. All I know is that I, I met the governor of West Virginia once upon a time on a mountaintop.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:21:06Mike Rowe?

  At night with one of the Bechdel's after an extraordinary gift to an organization that changed my life. And it, it worries me to see how that organization has changed. I'm talking about the Boy Scouts. And it worries me to see what's going on in our country. And I, I think you're right. It can't be a third party. It's gotta, it's gotta be this.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  We have competition more now in the scouting. I was concerned as you are. Girls are now into scouting. Not Boy Scouts, but competing on equal. And I got to be honest with you, Mike. They're outperforming. More, there's more Girl Scouts that become Eagle Scouts than Boys.

• 1:21:45Mike Rowe?

  No, yeah.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  Is that, does that?

• 1:21:48Mike Rowe?

  We had a boxing ring in my troop room. I learned to shoot in the Boy Scouts. We went down.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  How about snipe hunting?

• 1:21:57Mike Rowe?

  I went on a snipe hunt.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  Did you get one? Did you catch one?

• 1:22:00Mike Rowe?

  How about a skyhook?

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:22:02Mike Rowe?

  Anybody ever send you out for a skyhook?

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  Oh my. We did that. We chopped one kid out of a tree. One of our, one of our counselors, because they, one night we had, we should scout camp and then they had, they had numbers and if you, whoever got the most numbers, they'd go hide.

• 1:22:18Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  And you had to capture them. Once you capture them, they get, gave over their number. Well, we had one scout mash up top of the tree. You're gonna love this one because the gentleman in my scout, one of my scout troop members was, was George Rowe.

• 1:22:32Mike Rowe?

  W E?

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  George Rowe.

• 1:22:34Mike Rowe?

  Oh.

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  And, and George, George was, he was kind of quiet, but always, and Pinchy, we called him Pinchy. He's up in the tree. Well, we couldn't climb the tree because he cut all the limbs down and he had this belt he could get down. We couldn't get up. So we're, we're all trying to figure, come on, Pinchy, we got you. Just come down and give us your number.

• 1:22:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  No, no. Come get me, boy. We couldn't get up. George pulls out an axe.

• 1:22:57Mike Rowe?

  Cut the tree now.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  Cut the tree down, but killed him.

• 1:23:01Mike Rowe?

  We took a kid out of the tent one night because he was snoring and we carried him on his cot while he was asleep, about a half mile. And we put him on a rowboat. This is Broad Creek, Maryland. Put him out in the lake and just pushed him out. Woke up about two hours later. About half a mile offshore.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  About drowned?

• 1:23:23Mike Rowe?

  Wasn't a great swimmer. We also tied a kid up in his sleeping bag once and hoisted him up the flagpole. Don't know why we did that, but like I said.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  It's the right thing to do at the time.

• 1:23:33Mike Rowe?

  It, it felt like the right thing. I don't think you can do that to a girl.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:23:37Mike Rowe?

  I don't think you should. I don't, I don't think you should put a woman in a sleeping bag.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  How about, how about the swimming merit badge?

• 1:23:43Mike Rowe?

  Sure. Got it.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  In the lake.

• 1:23:45Mike Rowe?

  Mile swim?

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  You run off? No, no, at the time, float. You had to make a float out of your clothes.

• 1:23:49Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  Remember that? Tie your, tie your legs?

• 1:23:51Mike Rowe?

  Take your jeans off, throw it over your head.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  But you had tie knot, tie knot in your leg.

• 1:23:55Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, you know, jeans are hard to get off. Sometimes they're wet and you're,

• 1:23:58Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  You're, you're a little kid by that, 12, 13 years old.

• 1:24:01Mike Rowe?

  Hard to tread water when you're taking your pants off.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  I had assistant scout mash that weighed 300 pounds. I said, I said, Charlie, give me your pants. He said, what? I said, I gotta go for the merit badge today and I want to make sure I can't, I don't get stuck in the one. I can't get my pants off because it's too tight. He said, Joe, I don't know. I said, no, Charlie, I, they won't, I'll just, I'll wrap them up a little bit. I took off running off the dock, Mike. I hit the dock, pants went one way and I went the other.

• 1:24:26Mike Rowe?

  I got one for you. I spoke at the 100 year jamboree. It was down at KP Hill and I told this story because for me, this is the ultimate change in everything. The game was called Swing the Thing. Swing the Thing. And what you did was you took a, you took a, a canvas bag that would normally hold a tent rolled up and you filled it with wet rags. And then you took a length of rope, maybe 15 feet long, and you tied it tight. And then one guy would get on the other end of the rope and he would swing that thing in a circle, about a foot off the ground. So this is about a 25, 30 pound bag of wet rags flying around in a circle. And the troop comes in, right?

• 1:25:10Mike Rowe?

  And they, they get within that circle. And when the thing comes, you gotta jump over it. And that's the game. Except if you time your jump wrong, the thing hits your ankles and you go down like a cheap card table. Usually with a busted finger and a broken nose. Between that game, British Bulldog, which was just.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  You played capture the flag too, right?

• 1:25:28Mike Rowe?

  Of course, of course. Nobody got hurt in capture the flag.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:25:32Mike Rowe?

  But when I, when I just think of the lessons we learned.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  How we lived, how, how do we make it through?

• 1:25:38Mike Rowe?

  We got, our first aid merit badge was mostly applied as a result of the damage done through activities.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  You know, the one badge I couldn't get?

• 1:25:47Mike Rowe?

  What's that?

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  Holding a snake, the animal.

• 1:25:49Mike Rowe?

  Oh, you couldn't do snake handling?

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  I could not handle. I was going to. I had myself all psyched up and Ricky Pruitt was in front of me. Richard, Rick Pruitt, a good friend of mine. He's a year older than me. And Rick was a little apprehension. I said, Rick, we gotta do it. And I said, you go first, Rick. And there's a big black snake. And the, the counselor at that time was leading the charges from our troop, troop 27.

• 1:26:11Mike Rowe?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  Tom Bugles. And so Tom had this big, big, I mean, it was a big black snake. I said, Rick, you go first. I'll be right behind him. I'll be behind you, but I'm gonna do it too. We gotta get this done today. And Rick goes up there and he grabs that snake and he froze and he starts squeezing and he starts squeezing and squeezing tighter. And Tom Bugles says, I'll give you the merit badge if you don't kill the snake. He's, I'll give it to you. Just let go of my snake. And I was done. I couldn't do it. Finished me off. I couldn't get it.

• 1:26:44Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know what, man? Wayley's on the way and we would not be sitting here for the Boy Scouts. Joe Manchin, thank you, thank you, thank you. When you leave a review, only five stars will do. Not just one or just two or just three. We were hoping four more. As in one more than the four. Oh, please run more than four.

• 1:27:20Mike Rowe?

  Just a quick review with five stars too. From you, five stars will do.

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

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