#592 - Thomas Massie

Thomas Massie is a Republican congressman for Kentucky's 4th district. He is also a farmer and engineer with a Masters degree from MIT. Rep. Thomas Massie joins Theo to talk about living off the grid as a member of congress, why both parties are to blame for the rising national debt, and how he developed a somewhat rocky relationship with President Trump… Rep. Thomas Massie: https://x.com/RepThomasMassie ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ DraftKings: Pick 6 from DraftKings is the most fun way to play fantasy sports. Download the DraftKings Pick Six app NOW and use code THEO. That’s code THEO for new customers to play $5, get $50 in bonus picks. Better payouts. Bigger wins. Only with Pick6 from DraftKings. The Crown is yours. https://draftkings.com Acorns: Go to http://acorns.com/THEO to get your $20 bonus investment today. Vanta: Go to http://vanta.com/theo to get $1,000 off! Armra: Go to http://tryarmra.com/THEO or enter THEO to get 15% off your first order. Netsuite: Go to http://netsuite.com/theo to download the free e-book “Navigating Global Trade: 3 Insights for Leaders. ------------------------------------------------- Gambling problem? Call 1-800-Gambler. In New York, call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369). In Connecticut, Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg dot org. Please play responsibly. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino & Resort (Kansas). 21+ plus age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario. New customers only. Bonus bets expire 168 after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG.co/AUDIO ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Theo Von?

  We're coming into the last few dates for Return of the Rat Tour. We'll be in Philadelphia, Rochester, New York, Detroit, Michigan, Los Angeles, Anaheim, and Oceanside. You can get your tickets only at theovon.com/TOUR. And thank you to everyone that has shown support. Love y'all. Wanted to mention that Governor Tim Walz was going to be a guest on the podcast this week, but there was a shooting amongst some of his coworkers, colleagues, Minnesota lawmakers. And so they're obviously very bereaved up there and we wish them peace and prayers and hope to catch up with him another time.

• 1:14Theo Von?

  Just advising that this episode was recorded late last week. I was on tour and so we couldn't get it all put together, but we're happy to get it out today. Today's guest is a congressman from Kentucky's 4th District. He is from Appalachia and he got a master's degree at MIT before he got into politics. He's a member of the Republican Party, but he's a bit of a rogue guy. He does things his own way and I am fortunate today to spend time with Congressman Thomas Massie.

• 2:04Theo Von?

  All right, Thomas Massie, thanks for coming in, man.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:08Theo Von?

  Good to see you, dude.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Good to be here. Just had to cross the state border to get here.

• 2:12Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's what I see from Kentucky. And you, uh, you drove, like, you just took me into your home, in your camper home vehicle.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  It's a F-250 with a truck camper, and I lived for two solid years in it in DC, still occasionally do.

• 2:28Theo Von?

  And where would you park that thing at?

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Well, I don't want to disclose where I park, but I did get in trouble. I parked the, uh, truck camper. It's a Super Duty. It's got a, even though it fits in the back of a pickup, it's got a shower, bathroom, stove, and a fridge.

• 2:42Theo Von?

  It felt super when I was in there. That living arrangement in there, I could have definitely cozied up. It felt very cool. The milk felt cold in there. We had a little cup of milk, which is definitely...

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Raw milk.

• 2:52Theo Von?

  Yeah, I'm sure, hopefully.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Don't tell anybody across state lines with that. But, uh, so here's a funny story. I was parking this truck camper in DC in a congressional lot, and it got hotter than the hinges of hell in the summertime in this parking lot. So I ran a little extension cord over to the electric car charging station so I could run the air conditioner on my camper at night. Well, the cops like to park, they didn't know I was living in this camper, and I would park close to a Sprinter van, and the cops would park between me and the Sprinter van to take a nap at night.

• 3:26Theo Von?

  Oh, so everybody's working together.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. I would look out the camper and do a wellness check on him at night. They didn't know I was looking out for him. But anyways, one night...

• 3:34Theo Von?

  That's diplomacy. It's how it all works. It's like everybody's kind of hiding a little bit behind the other group.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  One night, it was like that movie Bridge Over the River Kwai. They found my 50-foot extension cord and followed it over to the electric car charging station. They said, "Damn, there's somebody living in this truck." So my chief of staff got a call from the speaker's chief of staff, and, uh, he said, "We think your boss is living in Lot 28." And he said, "What do you mean, in a pickup truck?" And I said, I told my chief, "Don't call him back. Let me settle this." So we have a don't ask, don't tell arrangement. As long as I don't start a K.O.A. or something in the congressional lot, I can live there.

• 4:12Theo Von?

  If the cops are getting a little bit of shut eye, you know what I'm saying? You're able to operate a grill, you know, or a little two-stroke motor in there, something to keep the blender working.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I gotta mix my medical margaritas in there and keep the raw milk cold. So what I eventually did was cover it in solar panels and took off the old air conditioner and put a mini split on the back. So it looks like the millennial falcon now.

• 4:34Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, it definitely looks like the guy that's in there. It definitely seems like you want to get his fingerprints. That has a CODIS vibe outside of it, you know? But that's, that isn't, a lot of your vibe is that you're off the grid. I've heard that.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, off the grid, in the camper and off the grid at home. So I haven't bought public utilities in 20 years.

• 4:55Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  And that, you know, that kind of ties into when I go to DC, that gives me some independence. Because if all, if everything goes to hell and I'm no longer a congressman and I don't have a job, I still got a house where all my own utilities are taken care of. It runs off solar, got a backup generator, got a well that I dug. And it just gives you the sense that, okay, things, the worst day in Kentucky is better than my best day in DC.

• 5:24Theo Von?

  And this is you right here? This is some, oh, this is you right here?

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's one of my gardens and there's some of my chickens clucking around.

• 5:32Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  I built a mobile pin that moves with the chickens to keep the coyotes from eating them. Now, it's like a Roomba. Think of a Roomba with 50 chickens in it.

• 5:42Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Moving around in my yard. It runs on solar, collects drained water and it takes care of my chickens when I'm not there.

• 5:49Theo Von?

  And what makes it move? How does that even work? Bring that up, Trevin. Can you get me so we can see what I'm looking at?

• 5:53Speaker 02

  I don't have any footage of it on here, but I call it, so I, it first ran off batteries and a solar panel and the batteries went dead and I'm like, this sucks. I don't like taking batteries to a landfill because I was trying to come up with a green way to raise chickens. So I figured out a way to do it with super capacitors. There's no battery in it and the super capacitors never wear out and I call it the Clucks Capacitor.

• 6:16Theo Von?

  Is this kind of an example?

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what it's like, except, yeah, except mine moves itself. Mine's like a Roomba version that's robotic.

• 6:22Theo Von?

  And so what is the point of it moving?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Well, you know, chickens poop and you don't want them walking around in their own poop.

• 6:29Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  They also like to eat a certain amount of grass and bugs. And so this gives them fresh forage and it keeps them out of their poop. They don't get disease. It fertilizes my yard. It mows my grass. Everything's all happy in the Clucks capacitor.

• 6:43Theo Von?

  I got a good damn chicken, dude. Or a little batch of chickens. I gotta get something. I almost bought my mom two goats, but she like, for years, she's like, give me some goats. And then, then she didn't want it. She just has a problem with everything. But, um, anyway, uh, so what is a flux capacitor?

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Clucks capacitor.

• 7:00Theo Von?

  Okay, what is an actual, what is a?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  It's the circuit that I designed. So, uh, I'm a double E by train, electrical engineer by training. And, um, I just had to come up with some way to keep my chickens alive and keep them healthy while I went to DC. So I came up with this circuit board that's got capacitors that trickle charge from a little solar panel the size of a sheet of paper. And, um, it's got an automotive winch in the front, so it can pull itself even if it weighs 2,500 pounds. Along a cable.

• 7:29Theo Von?

  So you don't have, you don't pay an electric bill?

• 7:31Speaker 02

  No electric bill, no water bill, no sewer bill. I do have an internet bill because I use Starlink.

• 7:37Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. And is that legal? Are you allowed to legally be a person like that?

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Well, you know, they tried to bring more regulation to our county, uh, 20 years ago before I was a congressman. And I wrote letters to the editor and mobilized people and we stopped them from bringing more regulation to our county. So it's still legal where I live.

• 7:55Theo Von?

  Wow, because this is, it seems like a very like libertarian or almost like demo, like a lot of the ideas seem almost very like something you would see like on the Democratic Party, which sounds kind of wild, you know?

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Oh, I, I'd say I'm the greenest member of Congress and no Democrat has come after me. No fact checker has ever tried to check that fact because they know it's true.

• 8:13Theo Von?

  Wow, it's kind of crazy that the greenest member, uh, you know, with the term greens is now a Republican because you wouldn't necessarily think that.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  No, you wouldn't think that. I mean, I have a Tesla that charges off the solar panels on my house. Collect rainwater. I dug a well. I've got a bunch of trees that I'm not cutting down. They are bringing in all kinds of CO2, although I like CO2. I wish I had more because it makes my peaches get bigger on my farm.

• 8:39Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  My, I raise grass-fed cattle.

• 8:42Theo Von?

  And what kind of, what kind of group do you have helping you over there? Cause I don't think you can't get out there first thing every day and do it all.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  I do it myself 90% of it. I mean, if I'm in DC and the cattle get loose, I got a neighbor, you know, you gotta have some neighbors that'll help you.

• 8:56Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  And the deal is I'll help them when they need help. Oh, there's a picture of my cattle. They are Angus crossed with Wagyu. I call them Wangas.

• 9:05Theo Von?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Wangas beef.

• 9:06Theo Von?

  It's a little, oh yeah, it's a little urban over there. Definitely, that's definitely, uh.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  There's, there's the, you know, not the black sheep, but the white cow. Uh, he kinda stands out. I say, I feel like that white cow in DC some days. The like, do I really belong in this herd?

• 9:22Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah, you seem like a little bit of like an outsider, I think, like, or, you know, like a black sheep or like a maverick. I feel like people say, if they talk about a maverick and they say Thomas Massie, you know, um. How much money do you save by, uh, living the way that you do, like off grid?

• 9:36Speaker 02

  You know, I don't think I've saved a dime. It costs a lot to do it. You can save money by heating your house with wood, which I do. But you, if you start counting the, uh, how much you're paying yourself when you chop that wood is probably about $3 an hour.

• 9:51Theo Von?

  Right.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  And I could go work at Dollar General and make more money than I do when I save money, heat my house with wood. So if I were completely, you know, poor, I could keep living, but to set all that up took, took a large investment. It'll probably pay off by the time I die.

• 10:08Theo Von?

  So you just wanna end the book with even book?

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Zero, yeah.

• 10:10Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Just clear the tab when I leave the bar.

• 10:13Theo Von?

  No doubt.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  No doubt, yeah.

• 10:15Theo Von?

  Yeah, cause you always wonder like, okay, I wanna live off the grid. I wanna, but there's a, there's a real cost to it, but a lot of that cost is sweat equity, do you feel like?

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's sweat equity and it'll, it'll pay back, unlike what we're doing in DC. I mean, if we were borrowing money in DC to fund the future, I could be for borrowing money. The problem is up there, it's not like on my farm where you invest in fences and you invest in livestock. In DC, we're just pissing away the money and living on basically our seed corn. We are taking what should be saved for the next generation and spending it now.

• 10:52Theo Von?

  How you feel?

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's we're robbing the next generation, but it's got so bad. We're robbing ourselves five years from now.

• 10:58Theo Von?

  Right. It's getting that close.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:00Theo Von?

  I've heard you talk about, or you talk about the national debt overall. Okay, I've heard you talk a lot about it and I see you got your, um.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  This is my, my debt bench. Um, it shows I've got three levels of brightness. So if you wear it to the movies, you can tone it down and not blind your date. But, okay, so I got on the brightest level there. Hopefully your camera can see it.

• 11:18Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Um, I wear this every second I'm in that House of Representatives. I wear it in hearings. I wear it in elevators with Democrats. They think it's how many steps I've taken, but I built this using my electrical engineering degree. I came up with this idea and I built it. It's got wifi. Once a day, it connects to the treasury.gov and calibrates to the penny. So it's the most accurate debt, uh, representation that you can have. In fact,

• 11:45Theo Von?

  Holy shit.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  It's, um, I mean, make sure.

• 11:48Theo Von?

  You're like Mark Zucker Twain.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  This, this is, I brought you one as a gift. Yeah, brother. So, uh.

• 11:55Theo Von?

  Oh, hell yeah, dude.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  You can just stare at the numbers, just spinning all day long. It's, um, it's an, yeah, it just clips onto your pocket there.

• 12:02Theo Von?

  What kind of woman am I gonna meet wearing this though?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Oh, man. I don't know what kind you've been meeting, but you've really upped your game with that thing.

• 12:08Theo Von?

  You think?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:10Theo Von?

  They're gonna think I am way broke.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  I had, I had a female congressman staring at my chest, uh, the other day and I had to tell her my eyes were up here. And then she asked if I would make a belt buckle out of it.

• 12:23Theo Von?

  Oh, damn, brother. Yeah, people want it all nowadays. People just wanna see your damn weener if they can for free sometimes. I'm like, get away from me. Um, but let's talk about the national debt. Actually, uh, uh, cause can you explain it to me? A lot of people don't even understand the national debt. We hear about it. What is the amount right now too?

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Well, we don't even really know. I mean, this is the regime number, the one that treasury publishes is 36.2 trillion roughly.

• 12:49Theo Von?

  Trillion dollars.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now you see this one online?

• 12:52Theo Von?

  Uh huh.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  It's not that accurate. Like it's off by a few hundred billion. We, we were shipping these debt clocks. I don't make them, but my son-in-law makes them. sells them and he had somebody go online and find this debt counter and say, oh, you sold me a faulty debt badge. And he's like, no, ours calibrates with treasury every day.

• 13:10Theo Von?

  It's so sad that we can't even get a, even our debt clock doesn't even like, at least invest in the fucking clock that shows the debt, right?

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Well, what they might be trying to do there online is anticipate when we lift the debt limit. Like, right now, we've hit the debt limit, so it's stuck at thirty six point two trillion dollars. Every day, they sort of reset the number until Congress raises the debt limit. Now, you say, how do they do that? Well, they start selling off the postal workers pension fund. They take the money that's been saved up to pay your postman his retirement. And they use that to fund other parts of the government. They can only do that for a few months, and that's what we've been doing for, you know, the first six months of this presidency. And pretty soon, we're going to run out of all those extra things we can spend.

• 13:59Theo Von?

  That we're leveraging, basically?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're leveraging all that, and they're gonna have to pay it all back. So we're really, probably are closer to thirty six point, uh, six or thirty six point eight trillion.

• 14:10Theo Von?

  And, but is that a common practice, like leveraging like pensions or, um, I don't want to say like Medicaid and Medicare, they're not leveraging that, right?

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Oh, anything they can get their hands on, they liquidate it. And they spend it, for instance, to buy bombs and send them overseas. That, all that deficit spending right now is not funded by treasury bonds. That all the new deficit spending is funded by, you know, the, the, the trust funds that have been established that might have money in them.

• 14:38Theo Von?

  Okay, I'm a little confused on that, um.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Well, it's like, it's, it's like this, the, uh, let's say you saved up for your kids' college.

• 14:48Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  They've been going to college and you got enough to pay the next semester of college. Uh, but your credit card comes in and your credit card gets canceled. So instead of renewing your credit card, you just spend your kids', you know, next tranche of tuition or something. But you gotta find that money before the next semester comes back, or else they get kicked out of school.

• 15:09Theo Von?

  Okay, and so how do we find that money? Like, cause obviously we repeatedly

• 15:13Speaker 02

  well congress is going to pass a law here in the next few weeks and and they're just going to say oh well there is no debt limit it's now five trillion dollars higher than what we said

• 15:23Theo Von?

  they move the limit up

• 15:24Speaker 02

  they move the limit up they get a new credit card they go out they start borrowing new money to pay off the money they've borrowed and it's a vicious cycle

• 15:32Theo Von?

  got it and it's obviously it's a cycle that we've been in for a long time I think to the point where like the national debt doesn't even make sense to people right it's like here's my question is who do we owe the money to

• 15:43Speaker 02

  some of it is owed to institutional investors like the big banks in the United States some of it is owed to sovereign wealth funds like China Japan other countries that buy our debt for us it's and here's here's the problem right now they're telling us we don't want to buy your debt at 2% or 3% or 4% we want at least 5% return and so everybody thinks the Federal Reserve is setting interest rates you know there's all this discussion will the Fed raise the rate will the Fed lower the rate the reality right now is the Fed can't do much because if they lower the rate to let's say 4%

• 16:24Speaker 02

  the that and try to tell people to buy our debt at 4% the people who normally buy our debt those foreign countries and those institutional investors are saying you're not a good investment at 4% we want 5% and that's that's a big problem because just to put it in perspective on you know let's let's round this number if it were 30 trillion dollars and we were paying 5% that's that's

• 16:49Speaker 02

  that is sixteen thousand dollars per family I've already done the math I'm not doing all that in my head right now but it's sixteen thousand dollars per family of interest that we are paying

• 17:01Theo Von?

  got it

• 17:02Speaker 02

  so when you pay your taxes for your family the first sixteen thousand dollars goes to nothing except for the interest that's paid to those foreign countries and to the big bankers

• 17:12Theo Von?

  but we're never going to defeat this number

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Um, you know, we might get in a situation like Puerto Rico got into a few years ago where the people said, we're just not loaning you anymore. And you know what happens that day? It's actually kind of a, it'll be scary for a lot of people. For me, it would be a good day because that's the day we have to balance the budget. When people say, we're not going to loan you any more money, you're not a good investment. We don't trust that you'll pay it back. That is the day that you can only spend as much money as you take in on any given week.

• 17:42Theo Von?

  And are a lot of people in Congress aware of this and like battling it? Or it just seems like it almost seems like we don't even hear about like, it seems like it's one of those things you hear about during the election cycle and that's about it, you know?

• 17:54Theo Von?

  Like, we're gonna balance the budget and it never happened. No one ever balances the budget. Like, do you think anyone, either one of these parties even want to balance the budget?

• 18:03Speaker 02

  No, they're not serious about it. It's why I built the debt badge to like shove it in their face every day and it's still, they're still not concerned about it. I mean, they're a little bit concerned, but as long as they can get reelected, they're not that concerned.

• 18:17Theo Von?

  Right.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  And I don't blame them for all of it. I blame the American people who keep reelecting people who, because they tell them you can have these things and it won't cost anything. So I, I hear people talk about like mass deportations and there's a hundred billion to DHS and, and 50 billion to DOJ to do mass deportations. Well, we know, we, it's not, it doesn't cost that. Whatever Trump has intended to do, it's not going to cost $150 billion, but people say, I don't care what it costs. And the reason they say, I don't care what it costs, is they don't think they're paying it.

• 18:55Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  They don't care what anything costs. They don't care what war in the Middle East costs because they don't see that they're paying it.

• 19:02Theo Von?

  Well, it's all gotten so confusing. And when you, when you start with communication with people, even on a financial front of this Hogwartsian number, right?

• 19:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:11Theo Von?

  When you start, because we all learn basic math in school. Some of us learn algebra, some of us going to learn some higher maths, right? Um, but the, when you, when you're starting with this, we, the regular person doesn't know where to begin. You feel literally like- Numerically defeated out of the gate, right? The average person, because it's like, how, what do you do?

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Here's the way I.

• 19:32Theo Von?

  So this sets everything up with impossibility, right? So I think that's why we've gotten so far, we've gotten, you know, two generations now into complete impossibility of numerical reality when it comes to even having some of the discussions, I think. Does that make any sense?

• 19:49Speaker 02

  No, that makes sense. It's virtual reality.

• 19:51Theo Von?

  Right.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  You did the last five digits on this deck counter. They change about eighty thousand dollars a second. That's like a cyber truck being launched into the ocean every second. Like boom, boom, boom, boom. That's how much debt we're taking on.

• 20:07Theo Von?

  Well, I hope the new model looks a little bit different. I have a cyber truck, but and the.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Do you?

• 20:12Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  And the. Let's put my camper in it.

• 20:14Theo Von?

  Oh, I don't know if we can fit it in there.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  I don't think so. That's why I have it F two fifty.

• 20:18Theo Von?

  Dude, yeah, I think I need to get something that fucking, I want something that it feels like it'll, you'll burn to death when you hit something. You know what I'm saying? That's what I like about something that's got some real fuel in it. But this thing, yeah, this thing definitely.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Oh, there's one with a camper.

• 20:31Theo Von?

  But I think the New Orleans will have camp, like better camper abilities. There's no way to get out of the inside, like through the back window right now. And it kind of feels like you just work for Lowe's, but you never drop off what you're delivering. You always like, where does this go? You know, like how much meat's in here? It just has that very like a whirlpool or frigid air kind of energy. But it does go very fast. You almost feel like you could beat an email somewhere. Like that bitch is fast, dude. The big, let's, let's talk, since we're talking about debt, let's talk a little bit about the, the big, beautiful bill, right?

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:04Theo Von?

  And you, you oppose it.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:08Theo Von?

  Right. And there's reasons that I've learned recently that I oppose it. I don't know a ton of them, but there's, I know some of my reasons, but I don't know everything that's in the bill. Why are you against it? Because it, well, it's, it's not going to help our debt.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  No, that that's the first big lie that's told about the big beautiful bill. You can finagle the numbers.

• 21:29Theo Von?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  The big beautiful bill looks at a 10 year spending window. Okay. And what it does is in the next five years, it's going to add to the deficit. Like, nobody disputes that. Even the number crunchers that work for the president know that's going to happen. What they're claiming is five years from now, it will start to break even and reduce the deficit. Uh, the problem is, the people I serve with, a lot of them aren't going to be there five years from now.

• 21:56Theo Von?

  Right.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  The President Trump's not going to be there five years from now. This big beautiful bill doesn't force people five years from now to do that. It suggests that they should do that, and it will do that unless somebody does something different. But they're going to do something different five years from now. We'll get to that point and they'll say, oh, my gosh, that Congress five years ago set up a fiscal cliff. We're going to be hit with tax increases on seniors. We're going to be hit with tax on tips. We're going to be hit with tax on overtime. We're, oh, my gosh, the military's not going to get as much money as it got last year. We got to do something about this. And so what they'll do is they'll cut taxes again, and they'll increase spending again.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  And this deficit will never go down. And I'm not even talking about the debt. The deficit is how much you add to the debt every year. It's about $2 trillion. It's going to be above $2 trillion next year and for as far as the eye can see.

• 22:53Theo Von?

  But I got to talk with, uh, uh, J D Vance a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking about, but that a lot of what's happening now is still because of the last party that was in.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a lot of it's still because of what Trump did when he was in last time. So I-

• 23:10Theo Von?

  I'm just wondering how far it's it's it's tough to cor- like, as a regular person, it's tough to correlate how far up or downstream you are from whatever, who was actually responsible for whatever's occurring. Does that make sense?

• 23:20Speaker 02

  It does make sense, but, you know, in 2020, we had COVID hit. And they put a $2 trillion spending bill on the floor. And they, I was the only one who would oppose it. I said, this is going to- This was, Trump was president and Pelosi was speaker, but they were working together. I said, this is going to cause massive inflation. You're going to have shortages in the stores. And this is going to last for years. And the inflation, once it happens, the prices will never go back down. And that's exactly what happened. They, they said Congress and the president's chief of staff at the time told me. He said, it was Mark Meadows, who's a friend of mine. We both worked together in Congress. He said, the reason this is $2 trillion is so we don't have to pass another one of these. It's just going to be painful once. Well, guess what?

• 24:04Speaker 02

  By the time December rolled around, under Trump, we passed another one of these stimulus packages that was over a trillion dollars. And don't forget, people got a $1,200 check the first time, and they got a $600 check the second time. I told folks, that's the cheese in the trap. That most of, you know, that $1,200 check, you multiply that times the number of families in the United States. It wasn't 5% of the spending in that bill. Most of that money went to corporations and banks. Eventually.

• 24:31Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  And so, everybody's responsible for it. Everybody wants to point to, to the other party for it. But, you know, it's, I don't want to upset too many people who like wrestling, but it's like the WWF, okay? Or

• 24:47Theo Von?

  Oh, it's felt like this for years. I think everything is turning into the WWE. Everything. It's all, it's all like optics and the way things are shot. And this is out there and this is what you believe. It's like interviews that are just to get the hype. And then they offstage, they're all in the, you know, in the locker room, like, you know, rubbing GHB on each other's backs and stuff like that and gramming out.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Let me, let me tell you something that probably will shock your listeners, whether they're Republican or Democrat. Mike Johnson, since he's been the speaker, and he's only been the speaker for less than two years, has put 183 Democrat bills on the floor and passed them. What did he trade for that? Like, I thought we're breaking chairs over top of the Democrats' heads in the back room. No, that's not what's happening.

• 25:34Theo Von?

  Is that true?

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:36Theo Von?

  How do I look that up?

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Go to congress.gov.

• 25:40Theo Von?

  My Johnson's out of Shreveport.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Yep, he's the Speaker of the House. But you can see, like, if you, I'm not sure how you look it up here at congress.gov, but if you spend enough time here and look at every bill that's passed since he's been Speaker, and I'm not talking about the special bills that reassign committee members. I'm talking about bills that do something. 183 Democrat-sponsored bills. And you might say, Theo, well, the Democrats have good ideas, okay? We should put their bills on the floor. Well, if I had a good idea, what Speaker Johnson would do would take that bill from me, put somebody else's name on it, and put it on the floor. Like, if there's something that needs to get done, why would you let a Democrat get credit

• 26:24Speaker 02

  for it if you're in this mortal combat with the other party?

• 26:28Theo Von?

  But has he made a lot of Republican bills pass, too?

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, there've been, yeah, there's been way more Republican bills than Democrat bills, but why's he even passed one Democrat bill?

• 26:37Theo Von?

  Well, I think, don't you want to work with the other team? And it's like, isn't there diplomacy and everything? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, you have to, like, there's a give and take to everything, I feel like.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  We've got the majority. Like, why are we putting their bills on the floor? Why would we go in that direction? I understand in the Senate you need 60 votes, so you gotta have a Democrat.

• 26:55Theo Von?

  But some of their bills are good, right?

• 26:57Speaker 02

  If Thomas Massie has a good bill, they'll put another Republican's name on it and pass it.

• 27:02Theo Von?

  But I can't understand what you're saying here. I guess I'm a little bit confused. Are you saying that Mr. Johnson, who is the Speaker of the House? That he, because bills get brought to him, he puts them on the floor, right? He's the one who's like, okay, let's put this on the floor and take it to a vote, right? And you're saying that he's done that with more Democratic-led bills than Republican-led?

• 27:23Speaker 02

  No, he's done it with 183 Democratic bills. He's probably, there's probably been several hundred Republican bills. My question, though, is why would you put one on if you're engaged in this kind of mortal combat for the soul of the country? And he acts like that? It's because people aren't paying attention to what's going on there.

• 27:42Theo Von?

  Oh, I agree that I think people aren't paying attention. I think it's, there's so, it's all so confusing, I think, to the regular person.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  It is.

• 27:49Theo Von?

  That it feels like... It feels like it, the ship sailed long ago from us being at the dock, looking each other in the eyes with some sense of a hope.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Congress is this big giant black box and people can't see what's going on inside of that black box. They know they're electing their congressman and two of their senators and the president and they're sending them to Washington DC and then they don't understand what comes out of that box. I've been in that box for 12 years.

• 28:18Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  And that's, I think that's sort of what my role has evolved to, which is to just try to tell people what's going on inside of the box so that they can do a better job of picking congressmen and senators.

• 28:30Theo Von?

  That's what I always think. I'm like, if somebody would just get elected, just to get in there and tell us what's, we don't even fucking, we'll, we'll buy you a Volvo or whatever. Fucking, you know what I'm saying? We'll give you some Taiwan Semiconductor shares. But just tell us what's happening in there. Somebody fucking look in there and just throw a note out and be like, hey, this is what's really going on. Now the problem we start to get into is there's so much like pandering and everything and all like so much social media used to like try and disguise who the messenger is. It really turns into a game. And I think that is one thing that's, that's the only joy of it is watching the like the masters of this just game of thrones type of energy go on. But how do?

• 29:15Speaker 02

  So the biggest, I'll tell you right now, it's, this is, this would be 50% of solving the problem. It's not a silver bullet, but it's a lot of it. Get rid of the giant bills. Okay. The omnibus bills, the continuing resolutions, and even the big beautiful bill. Why not put that shit on the floor one at a time?

• 29:34Theo Von?

  I agree.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  And, and then that way, you're, you can go to your representative or your senators and say, why did you vote for that? Right now they can say, well, Theo, I had to vote for it. I had a pay raise for soldiers. Right? They literally will put a pay raise for soldiers in every freaking bill. Giant bill so that if you vote against it, you have to go back home and watch TV ads that say, "He voted against a pay raise for the soldiers."

• 30:02Theo Von?

  Right, even though he may have voted for 90 other amazing things on the bill, right?

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:08Theo Von?

  And that was the one, that was one thing that was tied in there that if you went this way, you know?

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:12Theo Von?

  It may have been like oxygen for grandmothers, right?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Literally, there probably is that in there.

• 30:18Theo Von?

  But if you vote for oxygen for grandmothers and you cannot, they're not going to give, so I see what you're saying.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  I've voted against oxygen for grandmothers so many times, they can't even run that ad anymore. It doesn't even seem real.

• 30:31Theo Von?

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• 34:25Theo Von?

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• 34:35Theo Von?

  Has there ever been a bill that was like, okay, we want to stop these omnibus bills? And bring up omnibus bill. We looked it up the other day when Mr. Vance was here.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 34:44Theo Von?

  But I just want to go over it again. An omnibus bill is proposed law that covers a number of diverse or unrelated topics. Omnibus is derived from Latin. It means to, for, by, with, or from everything. An omnibus bill is a single document that is accepted in a single vote by a legislator, but packages together several measures into one or combines diverse subjects. So it's not even really fair because you only get one vote on the bill?

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 35:08Theo Von?

  What?

• 35:09Speaker 02

  And, and, and so typically, an omnibus bill, it includes at least 12 other bills. Because there, the 1974 Budget Control Act, there's a law that says we're supposed to do these bills separately. So we've already tried the law. We already tried that, Theo. They just suspend that rule, those budget rules, every year.

• 35:28Theo Von?

  Okay. So but show, take me through this moment so I don't, so I don't stray from it so people can be, so I can, so I can understand it. So, like, give me two examples of things that would be on an omnibus bill that would be, that there's no way for a voter to win, that there's no way for

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 35:43Theo Von?

  a representative to vote and win on.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, the, the, um, the easiest, let me just take something topical, the big, beautiful bill.

• 35:52Theo Von?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  Inside of that big, beautiful bill is a provision for artificial intelligence corporations that says no

• 35:59Theo Von?

  10 years.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, for 10 years, no state or local locality can regulate them. And then it talks about zoning and routing, which if you, you know, some of your listeners may have seen this, like locally, somebody's, some big corporation wants to put a data center in your backyard. Well, that's what Congress is trying to do. They're trying to say that these corporations can override local zoning laws, that the local zoning board should take a backseat and let this big information center show up in your backyard that uses all kinds of water and all kinds of power and puts out all kinds of RF and has, you know.

• 36:35Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, your fucking cousin's gonna be walking down the street just fucking, you know, just fucking screaming out Amazon orders, you know? It's gonna be, the shit that's gonna start happening is gonna be crazy. You're literally gonna be driving on the road with your windows open and an old gust of 5G remnants from blockbuster emails that never got out of, got out of, got out of, got uploaded are just gonna pass through your fucking vehicle. Shit's gonna get insane. You're gonna have babies that are born with advertisements, like birthmarks that show up. This fucking, this is a set of twins with Nike logos on them? What is happening, man?

• 37:09Speaker 02

  So that's in the big, beautiful bill, okay? And you can know that's evil, you can know that's bad. And, and Trump never campaigned on that. But also in that bill is to enforce our borders, okay, to finish the wall.

• 37:22Theo Von?

  Right.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  So if you're a Republican and you vote for that bill, okay, you support it enforcing the border, but you also let AI basically take over your local and state governments, okay? And then if you vote against it, well, then you're against the AI provision, but oh my gosh, you're for open borders, you know? You're for, you don't want to support the military. There was a hundred billion dollars in there for the military. There was, oh, you want to tax seniors. There was a tax cut for seniors. There was an extension of the tax cuts from 2017. I voted for the 2017 tax cuts, but I voted against this 2025 bill because it's got a lot of crap in there that doesn't belong and it's gonna balloon our deficit.

• 38:05Theo Von?

  Right.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  So you can't win for losing. And so I don't blame a lot of my colleagues, like, they, they come to Congress, they have the best intentions and you get there and you're like, oh my gosh, this whole game is rigged. How, how am I gonna play it? Am I gonna call it out? Will that get, will that be the best for my constituents who elected me? Or should I play along? And most of them choose to play along.

• 38:34Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  And you can't, can't really blame them. They feel like, oh, my fiduciary duty to the people who elected me is to get as much as I can up here. And if I piss off the Trump and I piss off Mike Johnson, I can't get any table scraps. But the reality is, they're not even getting table scraps. They are trading, I say every week, Congressman trade their votes for magic beans that never sprout. Like Jack and the Beanstalk. He trades the cow for magic beans. The difference is Jack got beans that sprouted. My congressman, they're not getting gas vouchers. They're not getting a Cracker Barrel gift certificate.

• 39:08Theo Von?

  So, so, um, explain to me how that part works. So that's a part that I don't understand because you mentioned a little while ago. You're like, I could have a bill and I put it forward because Mike Johnson seems like a good guy. He doesn't seem like somebody that would take something that was yours and make it somebody else's. Like, I don't understand what you're, so I don't understand what you're saying. Like, how does that work? And take me through, like, like, how can you put a bill out and people would know it's your bill? I mean, obviously, is there information online that says this is a bill that Thomas Massie made? Or that any person made, like any representative made?

• 39:39Speaker 02

  You, the other thing they'll do with your bills is they'll stick them in another bill.

• 39:43Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Let's, I'll give you an example.

• 39:45Theo Von?

  Yeah. Show me how you're saying that people aren't even getting the scraps or whatever. You know what I'm saying?

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:49Theo Von?

  Take me through some of that.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  Uh, well, they're not, Theo, I tell people, I joke with my colleagues up there. They're like, Massie, why? You're not a sellout. I'm just like, I look at them in the eyes. I'm biggest sellout up here. Like, I would sell out for Snickers bar, but you guys aren't even getting a Snickers bar. You're not getting a bridge in your district. You're not getting a new exit off the interstate.

• 40:09Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  You're not getting anything for your vote. Like, the, nobody's ever offered me anything up there of value. I'm not, I don't even know myself. I could be the biggest sellout there is. There's just no trade up there that's, that's worth taking. And so mostly people are trying to stay relevant and get reelected.

• 40:28Theo Von?

  Right. That makes perfect sense, right? Everybody's looking out for themselves in a sense. But you would think at some point that even that would lose its appeal. When you look around your town or your community and you see that like, oh, man. By not really benefiting the people, it's every, like, it's all falling apart, you know? By not really benefiting the country, it's falling apart. And ah, fuck, I'm starting to sound like a downer again. I don't want to do that.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  It should. It should.

• 40:52Theo Von?

  But take me through, take me through what you're talking about.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 40:55Theo Von?

  How you put a bill up and it doesn't get labeled yours? That, so it's plagiarism or some, I don't understand what you're saying.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  And then if you do get something done by working inside of the system, they'll just, you won't get any credit for it. So for instance, uh, when Ron Paul left Congress, I came into Congress and I introduced-

• 41:12Theo Von?

  That's Randy's daddy?

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Yep, Rand's dad. I introduced a lot of Ron Paul's bills and one was the Industrial Hemp Farming Act. Cause it was illegal, they treated hemp just like marijuana, it was illegal to grow it, according to federal government. So I introduced that bill and I got a lot of cosponsors and I, I figured out a way to work with Democrats and get it into the farm bill. Now it was a Republican farm bill that I got it into, but I needed Democrat and Republican votes to do it. And I got it into farm bill, but now like people online say, oh, Congressman Massie. And it became law, by the way, and people can grow industrial hemp in all 50 states.

• 41:51Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Into the, you know, that's the rest of the story.

• 41:53Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, a lot of chicks that don't wear deodorant are working on those, working on those places and no offense ladies, I don't mind it.

• 42:01Theo Von?

  But yeah, no, I'm glad that we have another product in our country, you know?

• 42:04Speaker 02

  Right. Um, and so that became law. That was one of my bills, but nobody ever gives me credit for it because it wasn't a separate bill that said. And by the way, I voted for that crap sandwich, the, the farm bill, which is a big giant bill. And then I took crap for voting for that because it had my thing in it, but now I don't get credit for it. But I've, I haven't particularly had bills where somebody took my name off them and put somebody else's name, but my colleagues have.

• 42:33Theo Von?

  Okay. So it's, so you haven't had that exact thing happen to you from Mike Johnson?

• 42:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 42:37Theo Von?

  But you've seen it happen?

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:38Theo Von?

  You're saying?

• 42:39Speaker 02

  And if it did, I wouldn't care that much. I mean, if it's a good bill.

• 42:41Theo Von?

  Right.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Make it happen. But a lot of people, you know, they, they need to go back to their district and say, I got this done.

• 42:48Theo Von?

  Oh, I see. So a lot of times people don't know from the, um, from their congresspeople or their representatives that they actually got this thing done.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:58Theo Von?

  Right. So there's a communication issue there.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  And then there's another thing that happens, like some congressman gets to DC and they have this bill they wanted to pass even before he was a congressman and they say, we'll put your name on it and then you'll get credit for it. And then the congressman has no idea about the subject or anything. So I had, there was a bill that came to the floor. It was about opioids. Okay. And I voted against it and the sponsor of the bill comes up to me and says, why did you vote against my bill? And I said, well, I'm not against research or things like that at the federal level, but this is basically a form of Obamacare and I thought we were against that, like, cause this had treatment and stuff which should be handled at the state level. And he looked at me and said, you're right. He said, I'd

• 43:44Speaker 02

  vote against this too, if it weren't my bill. He said, the leadership gave it to me and told me to bring it to the floor and it would help me get reelected.

• 43:53Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  I swear to the Lord above, that is an exact conversation I had on the floor.

• 44:01Theo Von?

  Yeah. Oh, I believe you do.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  Congressman from Wisconsin. He's still there.

• 44:05Theo Von?

  He is?

• 44:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:06Theo Von?

  White guy, I bet, huh?

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:08Theo Von?

  That was a guess, dude. That was a guess.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  By the way, but not to pick on him because that year, we passed like 38 opioid bills.

• 44:16Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  They're all redundant. They just gave everybody they were trying to get reelected, they give them an opioid bill.

• 44:21Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, they were renewing more prescriptions for opioid bills than they were opioids. That's the craziest fucking part of it. And the Sackler family never even went to fucking jail. And some people believe that the Sackler family should be electrocuted, allegedly. I don't know them and I don't even know if electricity would work on their fucking sick evil bodies. Um, is that slander for saying that? Can I go to jail for saying that? That might be a death threat, huh?

• 44:44Speaker 02

  You can, but I can't. So maybe I should say it. There's something in the constitution called the speech or debate clause. And so I can go to the floor of the House of Representatives and lie. I can tell every lie I want and nobody can do anything about it. And it's called the speech or debate clause. Our staff, yeah, look this up.

• 45:03Theo Von?

  The speech or debate clause found in Article One, Section Six of the U.S. Constitution protects members of Congress from being questioned in any other place for their speech or debate in either house. So let me read it again. Protects members of Congress from being questioned in any other place.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  Which means you can't be questioned in a courtroom. You can't be sued.

• 45:23Theo Von?

  No way.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  You can't be. Now, read the next sentence, though, because there's a good reason for it.

• 45:27Theo Von?

  This clause rooted in historical struggles for parliamentary independence aims to safeguard the independence and integrity of the legislative branch by preventing interference from the executive or judicial branches.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  So, uh, so when people, you know, even our founders, this is a, this is a hard pill to swallow.

• 45:48Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  But even-

• 45:49Theo Von?

  I'm still a bit confused at this moment.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Well, even our founders thought that there were some laws that shouldn't apply to congressmen because if they did, they would get abused. And like a Democrat president would arrest members of Congress for saying things on the floor of the House. Because it hap- that's what the king did back in England. The king would arrest members of Parliament if he didn't like what they said.

• 46:12Theo Von?

  Ah, I see what you're saying.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Or you could get a private individual to sue a member of Congress for something they said. And then that would, uh, basically freeze the debate. And members of Congress would be afraid to speak. They would send their speeches to lawyers before they said them, you know, if this didn't exist.

• 46:32Theo Von?

  I see what you're saying.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  So this is kind of a fascinating little part of our Constitution. And even though it seems wrong to give members of Congress extra First Amendment protection, the founders thought this was the best way to do it.

• 46:47Theo Von?

  So you could go to court right now and lie on the stand?

• 46:50Speaker 02

  No. I can lie about anything, but I gotta be on the floor of the House. Uh, or it has to be attached to my official business. So I'm probably covered on social media.

• 47:03Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  Uh, and I could just say defamatory things about you. I could release natural, national secrets. Um, and, and this also covers my staff as well.

• 47:15Theo Von?

  Hmm. God, interesting. But can you, but am I gonna go to Jeffrey Colman Sackler, say, say, they got electrocuted?

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably.

• 47:23Theo Von?

  Shit. So what I have to do, bleep it out?

• 47:26Speaker 02

  No, you need to run for Congress.

• 47:27Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 47:29Theo Von?

  That's hilarious, dude. And I only say, I don't really even say those words myself. I just say that on the, uh, this, it's the spirit of hundreds of thousands of opioid addicts who died channeling through me for just a brief second. Forgive me, I'm back.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  All right.

• 47:44Theo Von?

  Um, it starts to feel like neither party. Wait, wait, so could I, I'm thinking about this. Could we ask, could Mike Johnson, uh, put a bill on the floor about the omnibus thing?

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:02Theo Von?

  And then we could see who would vote for it and vote against it?

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:06Theo Von?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  He could, but he's not going to.

• 48:09Theo Von?

  Right, because it would be too dangerous.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  It's, it's way too dangerous. I mean, the lobbyists love it that way.

• 48:15Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  They, they love the opaqueness of that black box that Americans can't look into it and see what's going on.

• 48:21Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Because they're inside the black box.

• 48:23Theo Von?

  Oh, for sure.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  They get to craft language, language and special provisions in those big giant bills. And they're so big and we don't, we're not given time to read them. But you gotta remember the, like, a lot of my colleagues wouldn't read these bills even if they were given three months to read them. What they're, what they're doing by rushing these bills through is they're not who doing the congressman, they're who doing the public.

• 48:44Theo Von?

  Of course. No, I think it makes perfect sense. It's like, because we just send one set of eyes and, uh, and brain up there to handle something, you know, or a couple sets.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:52Theo Von?

  If you have a few reps. And then it's, but it's so much information at once. It's all, it's, it's all the same thing. It's literally like a bus passing by. It's like, with a car passing by, you can get an idea of what's on it. You can look at the wheels, you can check the exhaust, you know, be able to see who's in there. But when a bus goes by, you're like, fuck, I don't know, you know, was the driver awake? You know? It's kind of like, you know, that's how it, that's how it certainly starts to appear, appear.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  And the, and the windows are painted black on the bus.

• 49:16Theo Von?

  Yeah, dude. And somebody wrote just married to a trans man on the windows with chalk or whatever with window paint. Um.

• 49:26Theo Von?

  Here's my question, is anybody representing the people anymore? Because it kind of feels like, it used to feel like you, the parties were against each other, and now it feels like it's the government versus the people. That's what it feels like.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  I think it is. I mean, I call it the uniparty. Last year, Marjorie Taylor Greene and I introduced a resolution to oust Mike Johnson. After Mike Johnson put a bill on the floor and was a tie-breaking vote to send more money to Ukraine, after he passed another omnibus, after he passed another bill to spy on Americans, using mostly Democrat votes, because a lot of Republicans are waking up to that and didn't vote for it. After he did like three or four really bad things, Marjorie and I put a resolution on the floor.

• 50:14Theo Von?

  Which you think are bad things, right?

• 50:15Speaker 02

  I think they're bad things. Spying, spying on Americans, sending all the money to Ukraine. Yeah, I think they are. I think they're not Republican priorities. And so, and he's a Republican speaker. So, we put a resolution on the floor to vacate the Speaker's office, and...

• 50:31Theo Von?

  What does that mean, to get a new Speaker?

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Get a new Speaker.

• 50:33Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  And typically, no Democrat will vote for that. And if he, if he doesn't have enough Republicans to sustain that vote, he will lose and you get a new Speaker.

• 50:44Theo Von?

  Why would no Democrat vote for that?

• 50:45Speaker 02

  Well, for the first time in history, they did. Like, they did vote to keep Mike Johnson, because it was as good as they've ever had it. They were getting everything they wanted.

• 50:56Theo Von?

  You believe he was, he was helping their party?

• 50:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was helping their party, so they kept him in power. So, it is really hard to change things. You can occasionally get people to try, but the consequences of trying and losing can be great. Like, they call up all the lobbyists and say, quit giving money...

• 51:14Theo Von?

  Right.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  ...to that member of Congress. They'll call up donors in your district. They'll call up constituents and have constituents call you up. Or, the new thing recently is to fund social media campaigns. The NRCC, National Republican Congressional Committee, they spend money on Twitter influencers who then do things against... Who knows what? I mean, they're directing them. That part isn't transparent, but it's directed toward me. For instance, our own party is is coordinating efforts against me.

• 51:49Theo Von?

  Well, then at that point, that's what I'm saying. It's there's a party that's it's them against.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Which is okay. I've got a thick skin.

• 51:55Theo Von?

  Right. But I'm just saying, it feels like it's it feels like it's you guys are playing this game, but it's all against the voter. None of it is for the voter anymore. It doesn't. You know what I'm saying? It's like, it feels like. I don't know. It just feels like it's it's it's the voter against the politicians. And it's it just starts to feel really, really scary for sure. Have you thought about becoming an independent? Or is that not a is that too? Is that is that is that death?

• 52:20Speaker 02

  I I've thought about it a lot. And one of the things that surprised me when I got to Congress is there's two of everything. So there's two cloakrooms. There's a Democrat cloakroom.

• 52:32Theo Von?

  Say that part again. There's a Democrat cloakroom?

• 52:34Speaker 02

  Room and a Republican cloakroom. This is like when you show up to vote. There's a little clubhouse, two little clubhouses attached to Congress. You can go back there and get a hot dog and a hot ham and cheese and ice cream sandwich.

• 52:48Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. Get a hot blonde, too, huh?

• 52:49Speaker 02

  That is our cloakroom right there on the right.

• 52:51Theo Von?

  Is that really?

• 52:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, you go back there, although there's some computers as well. That's looking in one direction. If you look in the other direction. There's a sandwich. They're not showing the sandwich bar.

• 53:03Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, I'd love a little.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  There's a sandwich bar. Yeah, that's it.

• 53:06Theo Von?

  That's it?

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now, that's the.

• 53:09Theo Von?

  Old, huh?

• 53:09Speaker 02

  That's the Democrat cloakroom. The Republican one looks just the same.

• 53:13Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  But here's the thing.

• 53:15Theo Von?

  A little more to Della, huh?

• 53:16Speaker 02

  There's only two cloakrooms. So if you were truly independent and you came to Congress, there'd be nowhere to get a hot dog. Or to call, people go in there and call their lobbyist friends, like during votes. You'll get a call and and they'll say, hey, don't dare vote for this, or or maybe they'll call up. A member of Congress will go to the cloakroom, call and ask for advice. Any case. There's also things called backrooms on every committee. You've heard of backroom deals?

• 53:45Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  I couldn't believe it. When I got to Congress, people are using the word backroom because there are backrooms behind the committee rooms where you go back and do your huddle. But there's only two huddles. There's the Democrat huddle and the Republican huddle, and there's only two backrooms. So I say if you were an independent, you're going against the architecture. It's not just tradition. It's built into marble and oak. There can only be two parties. That's how strong they have put it in. You know, and if you're bipartisan, that means you like both parties. I say that if you're... I'm not bipartisan. I'm trans partisan.

• 54:24Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Trans means can't identify with either some days. I don't know which cloakroom to go into. Some days, they don't want me in either cloakroom, so I feel like I'm a trans partisan.

• 54:34Theo Von?

  Well, at least you can just be out in the van outside, you know?

• 54:37Speaker 02

  That's right. Some days, I have gone out to the camper and just like drank some raw milk and just be like, we're so screwed. Let's go back in and try it. But I think it is hard. It would be really hard to have an independent party. Or to get elected as an independent. I think...

• 54:56Theo Von?

  Yes, that's true.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  But never forget this. There's really like six parties up there in DC, and they've been shoehorned into two different cloakrooms.

• 55:04Theo Von?

  Right.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  And so you gotta pick, which, and...

• 55:08Theo Von?

  So either way, if you had a separate party, you're kind of still in one cloakroom or the other. You're kind of still in one huddle or the other.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. So there's a guy from Maine. His name's Angus King. He's a senator, and he runs as an independent. And he gets elected as an independent, and then he goes in the Democrat cloakroom. So, yeah, that's him.

• 55:27Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. He definitely looks like a Maine guy.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  So he gets elected...

• 55:31Theo Von?

  Undeniably. Wears a raincoat at night.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  You may have heard the term Rhino, Republican in name only. I have a friend who calls him an Ino, an independent in name only, because he gets elected as an independent. And Bernie Sanders did this too, and then caucuses with the Democrats.

• 55:49Theo Von?

  You know, I've been involved with different financial groups that sponsor the program over the years, but none has really piqued my interest as much as Acorns. Sometimes it feels like the whole world is trying to spend your money. Your social media is full of ads, your mailbox is full of credit cards. Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes it easy to start saving and investing for your future. You don't need to feel like financial wellness is impossible. Acorns gives you small, simple steps to get you and your money on track. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals. You just need to stick with it, and Acorns makes that easy too.

• 56:33Theo Von?

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• 57:17Theo Von?

  View important disclosures at acorns.com/theo. You're a startup founder. Finding product-market fit is probably your number one priority. But to land bigger customers, you also need security compliance. And obtaining your SOC 2 or your ISO 27001 certification can open those big doors. But they take time and energy, pulling you away from building and shipping. That's where Vanta comes in. Vanta is the all-in-one compliance solution, helping startups like yours get audit-ready and build a strong security foundation quickly and painlessly. How? Vanta automates the manual security tasks that slow you down.

• 57:59Theo Von?

  Helping you streamline your audit and the platform connects you with trusted experts to build your program, auditors to get you through audits quickly, and a marketplace for essentials like PIN testing. So whether you're closing your first deal or gearing up for growth, Vanta makes compliance easy. Join over 9,000 companies, including Y Combinator and tech stars startups who trust Vanta. Simplify compliance and get $1,000 off at vanta.com/THEO. That's V A N T A dot com slash Theo for $1,000 off. So one of the ways, and I wrote some of my questions down today, one of the big things

• 58:42Theo Von?

  that people talk about all the time these days are lobbyists, right? And lobbies and how much of an effect that they have on our elected officials. How much is it? I mean, how much of these PACs really controlling things?

• 58:54Speaker 02

  Quite a bit. There's some aspects of lobbying that people don't think about. Like, for instance, I think there are just as many lobbyists over at the White House as they are in Congress.

• 59:06Theo Von?

  So what do you mean that? Some people are almost as elected lobbyists?

• 59:09Speaker 02

  Well, no. They spend their time talking to White House officials because even though we're the legislators, the White House sends recommendations for bills. And if the same party is in power in the White House and in Congress, like the big beautiful bill, for instance, the legislation can initiate over in the White House. And so lobbyists, I'm just saying, if you think of lobbyists talking to your Senator and your Congressman, they're all over DC. They're talking to bureaucrats, they're talking to people, cabinet secretaries, because they know it's sometimes easier to get written into the budget if they're over there lobbying. Another thing to know about lobbyists, I mean, there's lobbyists for

• 59:54Speaker 02

  the Alzheimer's victims or people who have Alzheimer's. There are lobbyists.

• 1:00:00Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, there are lobbyists for people with rare blood disorders. Okay. There's lobbyists for the concrete association. If, if there is a group of people, they have lobbyists. And so they're in some people's enemies.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  Lobbyist enemies are other people's lobbying friends. Like, there are pro-Second Amendment lobbyists who are up there fighting for the Second Amendment. And, you know, the Democrats hate those lobbyists, but those are lobbyists the Republicans kind of like. So, the question is, you know, and sometimes my constituents, they don't know how to get to DC and how to talk to all the congressmen from Kentucky and both senators, and so they hire lobbyists to come and do that.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  I don't know that I would outlaw lobbyists. Sometimes, they're actually helpful. Like, let's say, the concrete lobbyist. You got the, you got the concrete lobbyist fighting with the asphalt lobbyist on what's gonna be the road surface, okay? Well, if all you hear is from the asphalt lobbyists, you would just buy asphalt. And then, you hear from the concrete lobbyists, and so, it's really, to get to the truth, you need adversarial opinions.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  The, the problem is, I wouldn't blame the lobbyists for advocating for their group of people. I would blame the congressman who basically put that crap in the bills. And again, I would go back to separating the votes. How do you know that your congressman is sold out to Big Pharma, for instance? If Big Pharma is only one, one tenth of the bill?

• 1:01:43Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  And there's pay raises for veterans in there?

• 1:01:46Theo Von?

  Ah, so they can hide the fact that they're selling out over here by buying in over here?

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:51Theo Von?

  Hmm. God, it almost sounds fun!

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Now, there's, there's one group of lobbyists I don't think really should exist or should have access to, to US offices, and those are foreign lobbyists.

• 1:02:06Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah, I've, I've heard you talk about this before, and I've heard a lot of people are talking about it now. It's definitely become a hot topic. And, um, AIPAC is one of the big ones. And is it, that stands for?

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  American Israeli, uh, political, it's not a, it's not a, a fund. It didn't start out as a super PAC, so, um...

• 1:02:26Theo Von?

  Political Action Committee?

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  Public Affairs Committee.

• 1:02:28Theo Von?

  Public Affairs Committee, American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  Now, a lot of times PAC stands for Political Action Committee, like you said, but these guys were started before there were Political Action Committees, so it stands for Public Affairs Committee.

• 1:02:40Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  And they brag that they've spent more on elections than any other lobbying group.

• 1:02:49Theo Von?

  In the world?

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  In the United States.

• 1:02:51Theo Von?

  In the United States.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  You know, in Congress.

• 1:02:53Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  They now do have a Political Action Committee, and I forget what the name of it is. So, AIPAC has a subsidiary that spends money to basically crack heads of congressmen. So, there's two kinds of, by the way, there are two kinds of lobbying groups. There's access lobbying, that's where, they're all your friends. They're never mean to you. They would, even if they don't like you, they'll buy you a steak dinner, and they'll try to get you to hear out their point of view. And they figure, as long as I can get in that person's office, I'm doing well for the people I'm lobbying for.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  But then there are confrontational lobbyists like AIPAC, and AIPAC has transitioned into a confrontational lobbying group, where if you don't do what they want, they come after you.

• 1:03:46Theo Von?

  Wow. And what does it look like?

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  They spent $400,000 against me in my last election. And they are basically, advertise themselves as just all things Israel. They are lobbying for more money to go to Israel, which, all the money we give to Israel is military money. So, they are basically lobbyists for the military industrial complex.

• 1:04:09Theo Von?

  Got it, understood. So, and I'll ask you some questions about that, the military industrial complex, in a few minutes. But, do you feel like Israel is a fair ally, or they're a good ally for us?

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:04:21Theo Von?

  Or is that too general of a question?

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Well, I think it doesn't matter like there's no big giant Great Britain lobby. There's no Australian lobby. There's no German lobby.

• 1:04:29Theo Von?

  Oh, the other countries don't have them?

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  No, no, not like this. This is singular. This is unique. I mean, if you're an ally, why wouldn't we work with you? Why do you have to convince us that you're our ally? Why do you have to basically go into every congressional office and convince them? And it's because they want to keep the money flowing. And that they've got a good return on their investment. I mean, we send more foreign aid to Israel than to any other country.

• 1:04:58Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  There, you know, like 10 million people or something.

• 1:05:03Theo Von?

  Yeah, I think this year.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  Tennessee, I don't know this population to Tennessee, but it's probably about, you know, on that order.

• 1:05:09Theo Von?

  Yeah, I think this year they said we spent like 12 billion dollars, but that's not actual dollars. It's in military aid, right?

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, well, it's, it's dollars that comes out of the treasury. Yeah, but it's not like we give them, it's a, it's a gift certificate that's redeemable at Lockheed Martin and your local Raytheon, you know?

• 1:05:27Theo Von?

  Okay, got it. So that's kind of how that works?

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:30Theo Von?

  Okay, got it. Um, why, yeah, why do they have this carve out that's just for them? Like what, like what do we get from Israel, do you feel like?

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  Uh, we got a lot of countries that hate us is one of the things we get.

• 1:05:47Theo Von?

  Well, especially right now with this stuff in Gaza, it's, I think it's Israel's, it's one of the worst PR campaigns I've ever seen in my life, if they're even, I haven't, it doesn't make any sense to me. It's like, I, I just don't, it gives their government this extremely evil look to me, you know? And I think to a lot of people, you know?

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Well, rough numbers, there are 2 million people in Gaza. And 50,000 have been killed. That's two and a half percent. Like, they've killed 1 in 40 people in Gaza. If you, if you did that in the United States, if you did 2 and a half percent of, of 350 million, it'd be almost 10 million people dead in the United States. You, everybody in Gaza is a, at this point, related to somebody who's been killed. Like, at least a first cousin you had killed. And then if you say, how many have been maimed? It's probably three or four times that. So, everybody in Gaza knows people who've been killed and maimed.

• 1:06:44Theo Von?

  And we're supporting it, right? That's the, also the part that makes it really tough sometimes, to just be a person. It's like, we, our tax money is going towards this. But I just hope that people in some of these other countries know that, you know, it's not regular, everyday people who'd want to do these things, you know? That it's like, governments making these choices, and it's corporate interests that make these choices. Um, how do we, how would we stop it? Well, do we need this connection with Israel? What is it? No one ever explains what it's for, I feel like, right? That would help everybody have a much better understanding, you know? Because it starts to feel like, America is just a shell company, uh, an LLC for Israel. That's what it starts to feel like a lot of times, you know? Um, do you feel like that that's realistic?

• 1:07:29Theo Von?

  Or do you feel like that that's off-base?

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  I would, I wouldn't send them a dime. Like, that's my position. I don't think, whatever we're getting, isn't worth it. And, uh, don't ask me to articulate the benefit, because I think the cost is greater than the benefit. You're good, everybody in Gaza is, at this point, has to hate Israel, right? And by extension, those bombs, when they see American politicians go over there and like, sign the frickin' bombs that are gonna kill women and children.

• 1:07:57Theo Von?

  Uh, what do we, actually, there was just a clip with Ted Cruz that came up. Can you see, if you, if you can find that, Trevin? Where, yeah, where Tucker Carlson was interviewing Ted Cruz. Let me see, this is a scary interview. During the Tucker Carlson interview with Ted Cruz, it's confirmed Israel's version of the CIA called Mossad spies. Oh, it's about spying? It's like, what we get? Let's, let's just watch it for a second.

• 1:08:18Speaker 04

  Does Mossad share all of its intelligence with us?

• 1:08:20Speaker 05

  Oh, probably not, but they share a lot. Um, we don't share all of our intelligence with them, but we share a lot. It's a close alliance.

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  Do they spy domestically in the United States?

• 1:08:28Speaker 05

  Oh, they probably do, and we do as well. And, and friends and allies spy on each other. And, and I assume, I assume all of our allies spy on us.

• 1:08:35Speaker 04

  And that's okay with you?

• 1:08:36Speaker 05

  You know what? One of the things about being a conservative is that you're not naive and utopian. You, you, you don't think humans are all... Part of the reason socialism doesn't work is, is the, the mantra from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs doesn't work. As a conservative, I assume people act in their rational self-interest.

• 1:08:55Speaker 04

  So it's conservative to pay people to spy on you?

• 1:08:58Speaker 05

  It's conservative to recognize that human beings act in their own self-interest. And every one of our friends spies on us. And I'm not...

• 1:09:05Speaker 04

  Do you like it? That's my question. I'm not asking whether they have motive to do it, of course they do. I understand that. And I, I'm not mad at them. But you're an American lawmaker, so I just want to know, hold on. I want to know your attitude. You said that your guiding principle, in fact, the only principle, the only criterion...

• 1:09:22Speaker 05

  I said guiding, the overwhelming, I wouldn't say only.

• 1:09:24Speaker 04

  Is, is it in America's interest? Is it in America's interest for Israel to spy on us, including on the president?

• 1:09:29Speaker 05

  Um, it is in America's interest to be closely allied with Israel. Because we get...

• 1:09:37Theo Von?

  What do we get? That's the thing.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  It's painful to watch that. So when I'm in a room with somebody and they say, can I talk to you, you know, just frankly, as anybody listening? I say, well, there's three nation-states plus our own in my phone.

• 1:09:52Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  There's, there's gonna be Russia, China, and Israel.

• 1:09:55Theo Von?

  They're in our phone?

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  No, not yours. Like, it's a lot of effort to... Anybody can be hacked, okay?

• 1:10:02Theo Von?

  Oh, I thought, one of the reasons, I got to go to Qatar recently, and I'm wondering if they hacked my phone. I thought they were good. I, I don't know if that's crazy.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  I think it's probably continuously hacked, okay?

• 1:10:10Theo Von?

  That's what I'm thinking. I, I just think like, everything's hacked now. I get scared, you know?

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  But, but, um, if, if you're not...

• 1:10:15Theo Von?

  I play the Israeli national anthem every 45 minutes.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  Look, Amazon and Facebook know what you're saying in your phone, right? But probably Israel and, and Russia and China aren't devoting that effort and internet traffic, which can become detectable...

• 1:10:32Theo Von?

  To us.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  To, yeah.

• 1:10:33Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  But, um, you're probably, you know, why wouldn't you be trying to hear what the 535 people in Washington DC who vote on bills, what they are thinking?

• 1:10:45Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  And then you also there, there are allegedly some congressmen who indulge in insider trading, but I would guess that there are probably some hackers who are also inside of congressmen's phones, trying to figure out what the sentiment is in Washington DC, and then trading on that.

• 1:11:06Theo Von?

  Wow. So there's always this extra layer kind of going along, going on, it feels like.

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:12Theo Von?

  But what do you think we get from Israel? I think it's just a big question. I think it's okay as a regular person, and I might get killed or something by Mossad or something, but what do we get from them as a country? Like, is there, I think there's just, that's a big question America has right now. Is there something we just don't see? And if there is, just tell us what it is, so we can operate accordingly, you know?

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  No, I think they're the best lobbying group in Washington DC. And the reason they can do it is you have dual citizens, people who are American and Israeli, who are allowed to give money into American politics, and because they're American, and by virtue of that, you're allowed to participate. But if you're a foreign national, you're not allowed to.

• 1:11:57Theo Von?

  So they're one of the few countries that can donate money to what?

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  To super PACs, to members of Congress.

• 1:12:04Theo Von?

  Other countries are not allowed to do that?

• 1:12:05Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, they could if you were dual citizens, but there's not so many dual citizens, as it were.

• 1:12:12Theo Von?

  But could somebody be a Russian and American dual citizen and serving, and serving in a Congress or?

• 1:12:18Speaker 02

  Sure, and donate to congressmen. By the way, I have introduced a bill that would require members of Congress to disclose if they are dual citizens. And I think that's only fair.

• 1:12:31Theo Von?

  Right, because right now, you could have allegiance to another country, not just the USA.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Correct. We swear an allegiance when you're a member of Congress to the Constitution. I always like to point this out. We're not swearing it to the country, we're not swearing it to the president, we're not swearing it to our party, we swear it to the Constitution. And other countries have constitutions too. What if you've taken allegiance to two different constitutions? Like, the American, I'm not, and I'm not even, my bill wouldn't even Keep you from being a member of Congress. It would just say you have to disclose it if you are. And it, and by the way, it wouldn't necessarily just be Israel members of Congress who are also citizens of Israel. It could be other countries as well. I just think it creates a conflict of interest.

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  And, you know, I have to disclose yearly which stocks I own. I have to disclose all my personal financial information so that the voters can decide if I am unduly influenced by that conflict of interest. And so that's the structure of my bill. My bill just, it's a, an election disclosure. Okay, you're running for Congress?

• 1:13:40Theo Von?

  Bring it up.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  Tell us, tell us which countries you are a.

• 1:13:45Theo Von?

  Representative Thomas Massie announces the introduction of HR 2356, the Dual Loyalty Disclosure Act. Representative Massie's legislation amends the Federal Election Campaign Act to require candidates for federal office to disclose both their possession of dual citizenship and also the foreign country in which their dual citizenship is held. So right now, we don't have to, people don't have to disclose?

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Nope, they don't.

• 1:14:11Theo Von?

  What?

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  You would have no idea.

• 1:14:14Theo Von?

  Have you seen Spies Like Us, dude?

• 1:14:17Speaker 02

  It's also, by the way, it's a safety net, by the way. If you, if something went really bad, you could just go live in your other country. I think you should be all in for this country.

• 1:14:27Theo Von?

  I agree. This ain't the fucking hokey pokey, dude. I think you gotta have both feet in or both feet out. You know what I'm saying, dude? I just, and, but, but, but any country this could happen, it could be, it's, that's not just Israel.

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  Correct. It could be any country. It could be.

• 1:14:45Theo Von?

  But Israel's the only one that has a big lobby.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:14:48Theo Von?

  Is there the Russian, like Russia PAC or whatever?

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  No, there is not. Like I say, there's not even Australia PAC or, or Great Britain PAC. I mean, because they're natural allies. Why would they have to lobby Congress? They're also not on our teat like asking for money.

• 1:15:07Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  But I think it's also, there's this, it's a weird amalgamation of, of combined interests. There's a military industrial complex that is all in for everything AIPAC is for.

• 1:15:19Theo Von?

  Ah.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  And before I banned AIPAC from my office, we used to have conversations that would go something like this. Oh, you should be for the foreign aid that goes to Israel because it all comes back to the United States in the form of military spending. We're buying it all from American contractors. And be like, no, that's not a convincing argument to me.

• 1:15:42Theo Von?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't even know what it's about, but it seems like bullshit to me. Um, how, how does America make money off of war? Right? Like, I get that, you know, we sell things, this and that, but how is that such a business? Right? You know, it's like, how do we let this happen?

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  Well, the, the answer is America doesn't make money off of war. A few people in America do make money off of war and they make a lot of money off of war. So they want the, the music to keep going. They don't want the music to stop.

• 1:16:12Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  And as soon as, um, you know, Biden was serious about getting out of Afghanistan um, and did get us out of Afghanistan. And we were spending, by the way, we were still spending $50 billion a year in Afghanistan after 20 years. As soon as he got us out of there, guess what? We start spending an average of $50 billion a year in Ukraine. And now that that's winding down, guess what? This thing in Iran is heating up. And regardless of whether our troops engage directly, those are all American munitions. And those stocks are, you know, the people who run those companies are excited that now, you know,

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  as soon as we deplete our stockpiles, we're going to have to fill them back up. Like, it's not like they're holding a bunch of inventory, but the US government does. Those ostensibly, those are weapons that are supposed To defend us that are now being used and so they know we'll buy them back. And I I have this theory that there's about fifty billion dollars of year of things that need to get blown up and replaced in order for that segment of the economy to stay healthy. And then there was a real push to get out of Ukraine to quit spending money there. And we almost succeeded. Like I said before, the tie breaking vote was Mike Johnson.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  It would the bill passed by just one vote and a lot of times the speaker doesn't even vote, but he voted in that case to make sure that Ukraine got that money.

• 1:17:48Theo Von?

  But isn't it? I mean, it's also, I think it's admirable that a guy is willing to go against their own party's interests, right? Like that part to me seems like a part of like, you know what I'm saying? Like not just to be in line all the time with everything.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  Well, that could be me sometimes, right?

• 1:18:02Theo Von?

  Right. That's what I'm saying. Oh, totally. Yeah. So that's what I that I think that's a little bit of the thing I don't get about some of this stuff. Whenever we talk about Mike Johnson is like if he like there's admiration in going against like just what your party is going to do, right?

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  If you're if you're staying true to your party's principles, I think it's admirable. But when you're betraying your party's principles, I don't think it is because you've campaigned on one thing and now you're doing something different.

• 1:18:29Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  And and the reality is the speaker has so much power up there. He's in training dozens of more people who rely on him to get reelected. And the by the way, the lobbyists, in addition to focusing on the executive branch, they spend a lot of their effort on the on just the speaker and the speaker's office.

• 1:18:50Theo Von?

  What do you? What do you think's kept us in Ukraine so long? I mean, obviously, you know, we want to be supportive of people that are struggling, right? We want to help out people, you know, it feels like as an American, especially that's part of like our creed. And what you feel in your heart is like if you can be helpful to another group, right? So I certainly see that as something that we want to keep involved in foreign conflicts, even though a lot of times I'm like, why are we involved in these conflicts over there? What is it I think that I don't understand maybe about the, or about Russia and Ukraine? Or do you think that that's part of just the military industrial tab that we have to fill?

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  I think we have agitated Russia to the point by expanding NATO. We just keep adding countries closer and closer to their backyard that are in a military alliance with us. And the situation in Ukraine, we also toppled their government in 2014. The United States did.

• 1:19:48Theo Von?

  We did?

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:50Theo Von?

  Bring that up.

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, bring that up. You can see that the government changed there and we had our hands all over that.

• 1:19:59Theo Von?

  Let me see, in 2014, Ukraine experienced a period of intense political upheaval culminating in the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych. The event, often referred to as the Revolution of Dignity or Euro Mayidon, involved widespread protests against Yanukovych's policies, particularly his decision to reject the trade agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. So we didn't want them to have closer ties with Russia, so we ever threw them?

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we went in and fomented those protests. Our CIA did, our State Department, you know, Victoria Nuland was part of that.

• 1:20:35Theo Von?

  So this was just another thing you think we started laying the seeds in advance to get to this point?

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think it would have ever happened if we weren't involved in fomenting this and then talking about bringing them into NATO after we poked Putin in the eye here.

• 1:20:51Theo Von?

  And the whole point was just to get to a war to help fill out the tab, you're saying?

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's a part of it. Like, that's sort of Massie's Law. There has to be $50 billion of stuff that gets blown up that is made by American military industrial complex in order to keep them going. And if it's not, they'll just spend more effort in making that happen.

• 1:21:17Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  Rather than go out of business.

• 1:21:20Theo Von?

  Oh, I think once you get used to something, you get used to it.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  Oh, here's the thing I was gonna say before, when, when we got close to not funding Ukraine under Mike Johnson, uh, the Biden administration sent a letter to Congress, to each of us. Everybody in Congress got one of these letters, listing all the states who had, they, they call it the defense industrial base now because military industrial complex has a bad connotation.

• 1:21:47Theo Von?

  You need rebranding.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's DIB, D I B, the defense industrial base. They showed how every, almost every state in the union benefits from military spending and why you should, that was their argument, not that there was some noble cause or to help out a struggling group of people, like you said, the argument that the Biden administration was making was it was in congressmen's financial, the financial best interests of their districts in order to vote for this bill.

• 1:22:18Theo Von?

  So at lea-, now they're just saying it's, it's a business.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I give them an A for honesty.

• 1:22:22Theo Von?

  Yeah. They're at least saying, yeah.

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  Feed the machine.

• 1:22:25Theo Von?

  Yeah, feed the machine, but doesn't that also cost human lives, like if our military has to get involved?

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  It does, that's the, um, you know, these, now there's supposedly sanitary wars where our kids don't have to die, but I think it's disgusting, uh, when, you know, we've had members of the Senate at least say that, uh, this is great, we're grinding down Russia's military capability and we don't have to spill any of our blood, but I mean, how perverted is that, that you're, you're grinding up Ukrainians.

• 1:22:59Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  Bodies in order to grind up Russian bodies and that somehow that's in the best interests of the United States. I'll, I'll give, I don't wanna say his name, but I'll give that senator, uh, credit for being honest at least, but I think it's disgusting.

• 1:23:16Theo Von?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's we just have so much capability to manipulate so many situations, you know, and I don't understand like, actually, I it's silly to say I don't understand anymore. If I believe that part of the military industrial complex or the defense.

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  Industrial base.

• 1:23:31Theo Von?

  Industrial base needs to keep uh keep collecting, you know, it makes sense. It's a business, everything kind of, I mean, that's one of the downsides of capitalism, I guess, you know, in a weird ways that everything kind of can become a business, you know, even like the beauties of um trying to be uh supportive of other countries or trying to help out people, you know.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  And that that's in addition to the trillion dollars a year we're now spending on the military in in the United States. That's about what Congress allocates. And this this is all catching up to us because now the interest that we're paying is about a trillion dollars a year. So because we've engaged for two or three decades and all of these overseas wars, we've racked up such a tab that we're paying more in interest than, there you go, than we are in the military industrial complex. And the, you know, on the screen there it says eight hundred and forty nine billion. Don't forget, there's another hundred billion in the big beautiful bill that they snuck

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  in there and they sneak in another fifty billion somewhere else when um so it's about a trillion, but look look up the interest on the debt now, too. We're.

• 1:24:43Theo Von?

  Oh, the interest on the debt, it matches our GDP right now. I think it's about thirty five mil thirty five trillion a year is our.

• 1:24:49Speaker 02

  That's the debt, but the interest on the debt matches the how much we spend on all of our defense. It's it's a trillion dollars. If you look up interest, what's the interest on the debt last year?

• 1:25:00Theo Von?

  It's insane. Um, do you think that we should have a war with Iran? I know you got you and Ro Khanna, which is so crazy that he was here the other day and then here you are, because it was just like, what are the odds, you know, like?

• 1:25:12Speaker 02

  Right, and no, we didn't plan that because we didn't know Israel was gonna bomb Iran and that.

• 1:25:17Theo Von?

  Oh, no, a month ago, I knew that you were probably gonna come. We've been talking about it, but then Ro, he and I just decided like five days ago. So it was just crazy before I even knew that the bill. That you guys had put that together. He said that that made it so that the there had to be a 15 day moratorium before you went to war. Is that correct? Can you explain it to me?

• 1:25:35Speaker 02

  Um, no, that we can get a vote within 15 days of uh of this bill being introduced. Unless Speaker Johnson does something sneaky. So there's a law that says if Ro Khanna and I, um, in which we did introduce this war powers resolution. The law says that Speaker Johnson needs to bring this to the floor uh for a vote. If the committee doesn't act on it, the committee's not going to act on it. By the way, I introduced this on Tuesday.

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  And it's just been a few days. We have 37 cosponsors already. Now, it whether you think we should be engaged in a war with Iran or not. I would hope that your listeners understand that or agree that it's important that their members of Congress vote on whether that happens or not. And before, just to give you some historical perspective, uh, before George Bush senior went attacked Iraq. There was a vote of Congress to do that. It wasn't a declaration of war. It was to authorize use of military force. Before George Bush junior went into Afghanistan, there was a vote of Congress.

• 1:26:51Speaker 02

  And before we went into Iraq again, there was a vote of Congress. What's being discussed right now in the news is this notion that the president could just join in on the bombing of Iran without a vote of Congress.

• 1:27:05Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:27:06Speaker 02

  It's the constitution requires Congress to vote like that's our authority is to declare war.

• 1:27:13Theo Von?

  So why do you need this bill then if it's already a law?

• 1:27:16Speaker 02

  Well, this is. Uh, this is prescribed by that law. Basically, somebody has to bring it to a vote.

• 1:27:23Theo Von?

  I see.

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  And so I stepped up and I asked Ro Khanna if he wanted to join me on this and he did. And we've been collecting like a dozen cosponsors a day since then.

• 1:27:32Theo Von?

  So you guys are saying, hey, guys, we have to vote on this.

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  We have to vote.

• 1:27:35Theo Von?

  They can't just say it and we have to do it.

• 1:27:36Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:27:36Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

  And what's funny is whenever it's the other guy in the White House, if like if a Democrat's in the White House, Republicans and the Democrat wants to wage war, the Republicans agree with this principle that I'm saying. And if it's a Republican in the White House.

• 1:27:54Theo Von?

  It's the other way.

• 1:27:54Speaker 02

  It's the other way. The Democrats agree with the principle that Congress needs to vote on it. But we've got this interesting situation where there's a Republican in the White House and Republicans control Congress. And so it's, I don't have a single Republican cosponsor for my bill yet. For, for two reasons. Number one, they're afraid of AIPAC, the, you know, American Israel.

• 1:28:21Theo Von?

  Because Netanyahu has been wanting to fight over there forever.

• 1:28:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, for two decades.

• 1:28:26Theo Von?

  I know there's videos of him saying like how he's been, yeah, how he's been wanting to, yeah. I've seen it anyway. It could be AI, I have no idea.

• 1:28:32Speaker 02

  No, it's real. For two decades, he's been saying they're weeks away from a nuclear weapon.

• 1:28:38Theo Von?

  So do you believe that?

• 1:28:39Speaker 02

  And even, by the way, even if they are, Pakistan's got a nuclear weapon, India's got a nuclear weapon, nobody's talking about bombing them.

• 1:28:46Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:47Speaker 02

  And the other reality is, look, South Africa, people forget this, used to have nuclear weapons. A country of 30 million people developed nuclear capability on their own in the seventies. Like, we need to be preparing to defend our own country.

• 1:29:03Theo Von?

  I agree. I don't know what the fuck we're doing over there. I don't understand it. And we've almost dug so many holes over there. And it's like, it just feels so far away from people. Like, why is it over there starting all this shit? You know, when we have problems in our own country and they're basic problems and they never get solved. It's the same thing. Instead, like Hollywood creates like, what about the Diddy trial? That'll keep you entertained for fucking three months, you know? Or like some, here's some shit, here's a pedophile, la da da da. You know, it just, it's always the same fucking thing.

• 1:29:33Speaker 02

  I call those weapons of mass distraction.

• 1:29:36Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:36Speaker 02

  There's always a weapon of mass distraction that comes up.

• 1:29:40Theo Von?

  What do you, uh, do you think that Trump wants a war in Iran?

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  No, I don't. I actually don't. And I've talked to him on the phone about this. When, you remember there was Iran, uh, a general from Iran called Soleimani, who was, uh, basically taken out while he was in Iraq during the first Trump presidency.

• 1:29:59Theo Von?

  Bring up Soleimani.

• 1:30:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:30:01Theo Von?

  Interesting looking guy. He almost looks like two different people put into one head.

• 1:30:05Speaker 02

  So they took him out when Trump was president.

• 1:30:08Theo Von?

  Was he a good guy or a bad guy?

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  Bad guy.

• 1:30:10Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:30:10Speaker 02

  Okay. And then, uh, and I, I'm not here to litigate that, but Trump was talking about attacking Iran after that. I think they shot down one of our drones. And so tensions were escalating and the Democrats put a bill on the floor to say that, uh, you can't go, basically like my bill this time, says you can't go to war without a vote of Congress. And I vote, I was one of three Republicans who voted for that resolution. But Trump found out I was gonna vote for it and he called me up and tried to talk me out of voting for it. And in that conversation, we talked about war with Iran and he genuinely, I do believe he genuinely didn't want war with Iran.

• 1:30:52Speaker 02

  His argument to me was that if we, if Congress gave him the authority to threaten them, that he could keep us out of a war with the threat.

• 1:31:02Theo Von?

  I see. So that's a strategy.

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  It is a strategy. The problem with the strategy, I told him, was, okay, if I vote to give you that authority to declare war or on your own, you know, preemptively.

• 1:31:16Theo Von?

  How do I know it will happen?

• 1:31:18Speaker 02

  Well, what if they call your bluff? And then now we're in a war and I don't get a chance to vote on it. Because I just said, we don't need to vote on it. And, and, um, he was not happy with that reasoning, but.

• 1:31:32Theo Von?

  Well, cause I guess, I guess his thought would be, well, if I tell you I'm not gonna do it no matter what, then why wouldn't you support me probably?

• 1:31:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, but you can't know that he won't. And by the way, he told me, he said, I'm more libertarian than you are.

• 1:31:50Theo Von?

  Oh, man, Donald Trump is an interesting guy, man. What an anomaly of a human being, I think.

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  He is. There'll never be another person like him, particularly not one that becomes president. And I've been on his good side, and I've been on his bad side. And it seems like every couple of years it flips.

• 1:32:08Theo Von?

  Yeah, I saw, didn't you get uninvited to the picnic or something? Was that a thing that, was that a real thing that happened?

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  That was a real thing that happened.

• 1:32:13Theo Von?

  A meme about it or something, that you got uninvited to the, um...

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  At the last minute, I got re-invited. But this goes back to 2020 during COVID. I was the only one who said, you know, this CARES Act is going to bankrupt the country. Basically, it's going to cause massive inflation and shortages. So I opposed that.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  And the president called me. He was upset with me that I would force Congress to return during COVID and vote. And basically, all I said was, look, this was during COVID. They wanted to spend $2 trillion by unanimous consent. I said, if truckers have to work, and farmers have to work, and nurses have to work, why doesn't Congress show up and vote on this?

• 1:32:54Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:55Speaker 02

  So he, at the time, he called me a third-rate grandstander and said I should be thrown out of Congress. The media immediately, like, descended on me and said, what did I have to say for myself? Because he was tweeting all of this. And I said, well, I'm at least second rate. Come on.

• 1:33:11Theo Von?

  Yeah, help me out here.

• 1:33:13Speaker 02

  Two years later, he endorsed me for reelection. And then, most recently, Bobby Kennedy, you know, joined a coalition with the president for Maha, Make America Healthy Again. And, you know, you can do that through the National Institute of Health, and FDA, and CDC, and all that. But also, our food supply is a big, important part of that. So Bobby Kennedy was advocating for me to be the Secretary of Agriculture. And he and I have been talking about it for weeks. This was before Trump won the election last fall.

• 1:33:50Theo Von?

  And there's a lot of agriculture out of Kentucky. It would have been great.

• 1:33:53Speaker 02

  It would have been great.

• 1:33:54Theo Von?

  Would it have been something you were interested in?

• 1:33:55Speaker 02

  I would, yes, definitely. Because I think there are a lot of things we could do to basically reinvigorate and empower small farmers to make healthy food and grow local economies, things like that. And so I was all in and Bobby Kennedy's team spent a lot of time on it. And I told him, this was like in October before the election. I said, I think there's one problem with your plan. And he said, what's that? And I said, I've not endorsed Trump. And he said, well, it sounds like you need to endorse Trump.

• 1:34:24Theo Von?

  Hmm, do you think that was a strategy? Or do you think that it was?

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  No, he was genuine.

• 1:34:28Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:28Speaker 02

  And, and I agreed with him. So I said, well, how do we announce it? And he said, well, come out to Wisconsin Tuesday and Tulsi and I are doing this rally and just come up on stage and announce it there. And I'm thinking, man, I don't want to go to Wisconsin in October to, to do this. Cause I had a lot of other things on my plate at that time. And so, um, I put it off for a day. I did look at plane tickets to go to Wisconsin. I typed out an endorsement of Trump on my iPhone, read it back to myself. And I woke up the next morning and I thought, God, this is the day. I gotta do this. So, uh, Trump, when my wife passed away last summer, he had left a very nice, uh, message.

• 1:35:10Speaker 02

  I would have obviously taken his call, but you know, I was inundated with calls, but he left a really nice message of condolences.

• 1:35:17Theo Von?

  That was thoughtful of him.

• 1:35:18Speaker 02

  And so it was, and that's a side people don't see, right? I, I actually campaigned for Ron DeSantis and Trump felt compelled to leave that message, even though I hadn't endorsed him. It was very thoughtful message. So I sit down, I'm in a hotel in Orlando and I woke up and, uh, I went and I listened to that message and I thought, all right, I'm going to talk to his staff about going to Wisconsin and doing this endorsement. So I dialed the number and on the second ring, I hear, hello, this is Donald. And I was like, oh shit, that's his cell number. And he's like two weeks from prison or president. Nobody knows. And he, and he's taken my call.

• 1:36:00Theo Von?

  To America.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  And I was taken off guard because I thought, I was, I was like, oh crap.

• 1:36:04Theo Von?

  Now what do you do? What do you fricking do, Thomas?

• 1:36:06Speaker 02

  Sitting here in my boxers in Marriott.

• 1:36:08Theo Von?

  Oh God, at least go outside and stand up. You weren't sitting down, were you?

• 1:36:12Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:36:13Theo Von?

  Cause your audio, your vol, your volume's better if you walk around where you're talking.

• 1:36:17Speaker 02

  So, uh, the first thing I did was to thank him for leaving the message.

• 1:36:21Theo Von?

  Oh, that's good.

• 1:36:22Speaker 02

  About my wife.

• 1:36:23Theo Von?

  Buy a little time.

• 1:36:24Speaker 02

  I hadn't done that yet. And he said, That's a hard one. That's a very hard one. You know, Arnold Palmer, he played around a lot, but he did love his wife. And when she passed away, it almost killed Arnie. I mean, it was tough on Arnie. But he's a tough cookie. You're a tough cookie too. And, you know, you're like Arnie. You'll get through this. And then he goes, I take it back. You're much tougher than Arnie ever was.

• 1:36:54Speaker 02

  So then he goes, you're a sharp cookie too. You know, you went to MIT. My uncle, Professor John G. Trump, taught at MIT for 41 years. It's a record. He said, Oh, what a, what a god. What a, I've got the best genetics. Yeah. Like, I'm thinking, wait, this guy is two weeks away, and he's gotta be busy, right? This is the election of his life. And so I thought, you know, at some point, they're gonna grab him and say, look, who are you talking to? You gotta get back to work. Yeah. So I said, well, the reason I'm calling you is I wanna, I've seen it's close in these purple states and a lot of independents and libertarians who could be influenced perhaps,

• 1:37:39Speaker 02

  and I'd like to endorse you. Oh, this is wonderful. This is great. This is tremendous. And I said, well, how do I, how do we get it out there? And he goes, oh, just tweet it. I'll retweet you. So I saved myself a trip to Wisconsin. Oh, that's nice, dude. I love going to Wisconsin. Was it in La Crosse? I don't know where it was. Oh, you missed out, I think. So he goes, you know, I spoke at the Libertarian National Convention. Yeah, there it is. There's, oh, yeah. There's a sentence in here I gotta explain. Okay.

• 1:38:13Speaker 02

  So he goes, I spoke at the Libertarian Convention and they loved me. He said, when I mentioned I was gonna free that kid that's been locked up 100 years, they all applauded. And

• 1:38:24Theo Von?

  Who's that? Not Travis Scott or something?

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  Ross Ulbricht. So I said, oh yeah, he's in for two life sentences plus 40 years for running a website.

• 1:38:32Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:38:32Speaker 02

  And um, he said, yeah, put that in your endorsement. The libertarians will love it.

• 1:38:38Theo Von?

  Oh, really?

• 1:38:39Speaker 02

  So if you look like, I'm saying, he will make America healthy. He'll save America, security liberties. I said, and he'll free Ross Ulbricht.

• 1:38:47Theo Von?

  Wow. So a lot of people are like, we'll take it.

• 1:38:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Ross's mom called me and thanked me for that. And then

• 1:38:55Theo Von?

  Is he out?

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. I took him to the State of the Union.

• 1:38:58Theo Von?

  Is he a cool guy?

• 1:38:59Speaker 02

  He's a super cool guy and he never should have been in prison uh, for as long as he was.

• 1:39:05Theo Von?

  Yeah. What'd he get locked up for?

• 1:39:06Speaker 02

  Uh, running a dark web website called Silk Road that allowed people to buy and sell things on the internet.

• 1:39:13Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. And they started selling dope and shit on there and people were dying?

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. So uh,

• 1:39:17Theo Von?

  I say, but

• 1:39:18Speaker 02

  So that's what

• 1:39:18Theo Von?

  At least hold him for a year.

• 1:39:20Speaker 02

  But I mean, that's the thing.

• 1:39:21Theo Von?

  But it's like, you can't lock him up. If you can't lock him up and not lock up uh,

• 1:39:25Speaker 02

  All the perpetrators on the website are free, right?

• 1:39:28Theo Von?

  No, I'm talking about you can't lock him up and not lock up the um, Sackler family though.

• 1:39:34Speaker 02

  You keep going back to that. I don't know what you're talking about.

• 1:39:37Theo Von?

  Oh, they're the uh, family that did the opioid epidemic or whatever.

• 1:39:41Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 1:39:41Theo Von?

  They're the Purdue Pharma family.

• 1:39:43Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 1:39:43Theo Von?

  Sorry. So anyway, yeah, I'm sorry. They're just, they're just like uh, mass murderers or whatever. I mean, they're allegedly mass murderers that are still wandering around.

• 1:39:51Speaker 02

  So anyways, um, the thing is, so I said, all right, I'll put that sentence in.

• 1:39:59Speaker 02

  Let me, I want to run this by you. And he said, here, I give you to Dan Scavino. He's on the plane with me. And I'm like, oh my gosh, he's on a plane? He's talking to me? He said, we're gonna go tape the Joe Rogan show. Then, then he like, I can hear him hand the phone to

• 1:40:13Theo Von?

  Oh, that was right before the election, dude.

• 1:40:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. He hands the phone to Scavino and he's like, I don't think he knew I could hear him, but he goes, Dan, this is a tough cookie. It's Thomas Messi. Uh, don't screw this up.

• 1:40:25Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:40:26Speaker 02

  Then we worked out the endorsement and

• 1:40:28Theo Von?

  That's pretty cool, huh?

• 1:40:29Speaker 02

  It was cool because then instead of like a bunch of staff trying to figure out what to do, I just called him. And we got it done in like five minutes, right? But, and I did endorse him and then I'm, obviously I'm not the ag secretary, but I'm, that's okay. I'm happy where I'm at. I would have done it if he needed somebody to do it.

• 1:40:47Theo Von?

  But are you guys at odds, do you feel like, or do you feel like there's so much going on in his world?

• 1:40:52Speaker 02

  Uh, well, he came over to Congress a few weeks ago.

• 1:40:57Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:40:58Speaker 02

  To whip us on the big, beautiful bill.

• 1:41:00Theo Von?

  And so when that happens, you guys all get together in a room and he gets to speak?

• 1:41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, 200 people in the room.

• 1:41:05Theo Von?

  Okay. And so he's petitioning for the big, beautiful bill?

• 1:41:08Speaker 02

  He's telling us how great it is. And then he's, she says something about me. And then he realizes I might be in the room. He said, is Tom Massie in the room? And I raised my hand and he looked at me and he said, you know, the thing about Tom Massie is, um, he's very much like Rand Paul. They're both from Kentucky. You can never get him to vote for anything and they got the same hair.

• 1:41:33Theo Von?

  That's pretty true, huh?

• 1:41:34Speaker 02

  And he goes, actually I like Massie's hair better. So all my colleagues, they, they were approving of me that day.

• 1:41:43Theo Von?

  That's hilarious. Yeah, there's, I mean, people, people, some people hate Donald Trump. Some people love Donald Trump. I just think you cannot deny that he is a, they is, there is nobody like him.

• 1:41:56Speaker 02

  There's two, there's two forms of Trump derangement syndrome though. There's, uh, there's the kind where you hate him so much, it's irrational. And even if he's for something you support, you still be against him. And, and a lot of liberals have Trump derangement syndrome and some Republicans.

• 1:42:13Theo Von?

  Well, that's a general thing that I think that's just a political derangement syndrome too. I mean, I have friends that it's like, you could show them the same exact thing, but if it's a Republican saying it or a Democrat, and they'll choose the other side, you know?

• 1:42:24Speaker 02

  Well, that's why there's the other version of Trump derangement syndrome, which is you love him so much that when he goes against something he said he would do, or he does something that's against your principles, you change your own principles to support him. And I think that's just as dangerous. And I try not to have either of the Trump derangement syndrome, so.

• 1:42:48Speaker 02

  Be for the people of Kentucky.

• 1:42:50Theo Von?

  Yeah, it is. And look, Kentucky derangement alone is that's a pretty good, you know what I'm saying? That's not a bad, you know, that's, that's a, I mean, that's its own special 150 proof derangement right there, you know? It's one of a kind.

• 1:43:04Speaker 02

  I'm a man of my people.

• 1:43:07Theo Von?

  It's one of a kind. You know what's one of the most beautiful places I've ever done a show was Pike?

• 1:43:12Speaker 02

  Pikeville?

• 1:43:12Theo Von?

  Pikeville, Kentucky.

• 1:43:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, Eastern Kentucky.

• 1:43:15Theo Von?

  It was a tough show. It was just, I don't know if it was the acoustics place we played, but it was a beautiful little city, great crowd. I mean, beautiful, big town. I mean, one of the most beautiful places I think I've ever been. It just blew my mind of what it even was.

• 1:43:27Speaker 02

  See, see if you can find a picture of Lewis County, Kentucky. That's where I'm from. It's a, that's the town I grew up in right there.

• 1:43:34Theo Von?

  What is that?

• 1:43:34Speaker 02

  I believe it's Vanceburg.

• 1:43:37Theo Von?

  That's Vanceburg?

• 1:43:38Speaker 02

  Yep. And the courthouse with the red roof on the left, uh, with the columns.

• 1:43:42Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  The, there's two courthouses, but one on the left, my grandfather hauled the stones for that courthouse that were quarried locally.

• 1:43:49Theo Von?

  Dude, that is cool. How big is that place?

• 1:43:52Speaker 02

  It's about, uh, 2,000 people.

• 1:43:54Theo Von?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:43:55Speaker 02

  And it's the county seat. It's the biggest town in the county. So you go there to buy beer and to go to church and put your money in the bank. Or get a loan.

• 1:44:06Theo Von?

  Amen. Lewis County.

• 1:44:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:08Theo Von?

  So that's the town is called Lewis County or the whole county is 12,000?

• 1:44:11Speaker 02

  Uh, the, the whole county is, uh, about 13,000 or 14,000 people and Vanceburg used to be 2,000. It's probably 1,500 people now. But that's where I grew up and I, this is a true story. When I went to MIT, which is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, across the river from Boston. You, you can see in Vanceburg, there's no crosswalks. We had one stoplight and I lived there until I was 18. Then I would go to Massachusetts, never visited in my life. And I'm, I landed on a plane. I'm going through a crosswalk, you know, with the signs that say walk and don't walk. And a car honked at me and I thought, oh my gosh, I'd been here six hours and already run into somebody from Kentucky and I waved at them.

• 1:44:56Speaker 02

  Cause I thought the car honking knew me.

• 1:44:57Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:44:58Speaker 02

  No, they were, they were waving back with one finger. Cause I was walking against the don't walk or something.

• 1:45:04Theo Von?

  Get out the street, honky. That's hilarious, dude. Yeah, man. Going from a small town to a big place is definitely fascinating, man. It's definitely.

• 1:45:14Speaker 02

  That was, and it was intimidating, like to go from that little town where everybody says, oh, you're uneducated, you're backward, you don't know anything. I went to public school, K through 12 there. And then, and then to go to MIT with all these kids from private school and Bronx Science.

• 1:45:33Theo Von?

  Were you just like a, were you just, I mean, people must have think you was a real nerd or whatever.

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  Oh, I was a nerd. Oh, yeah. I built little science projects in my room and, you know, that was, that was basically my ticket out of Appalachia.

• 1:45:46Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:46Speaker 02

  And went to MIT and, and started a company there. It, it was actually a virtual reality interface that I invented that let you touch three dimensional objects and raised 32 million dollars of venture capital.

• 1:46:00Theo Von?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  From people like J D Vance.

• 1:46:03Theo Von?

  Yeah. Have you seen, well, and some of your story remind, or is similar to Mr. Vance's, I think, in some ways, you know, it's like, and you don't hear a lot of stories about like, I mean, I think that they happen, but you don't hear that many of them, you know, and maybe it's just because we don't talk to as many politicians or like, usually politicians were always like on C span or somewhere where you didn't really get to envelop much of their story. I think by JD having that movie that came out about him probably helped.

• 1:46:30Speaker 02

  Well, the book, I mean, he wrote the book and it rings true for me. Like he, he went to New England to school. I went to New England from school. I didn't know where the place, what to do with the place setting of, of, of silverware. I was waving at cars that honked. But I tell JD, when he was a Senator, we, we met a few times to talk about the Ukraine issue and things like that. But I told him, I said, JD, you've appropriated my culture. Like I'm from Vanceburg, Kentucky, literally Vanceburg, and you're from Ohio and you're saying you're a hillbilly. Like he's part of the, the hillbilly people that, like my people that left and went to Ohio.

• 1:47:10Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:47:11Speaker 02

  I, I have a brother and a sister. They both went to Ohio. We, and.

• 1:47:15Theo Von?

  It was a big migration. Why was it? Was it to work in the mills?

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  It was, uh, there were shoe factories. Some of them went to Detroit to work at car factories.

• 1:47:24Theo Von?

  But it was for employment.

• 1:47:25Speaker 02

  Employment.

• 1:47:25Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:26Speaker 02

  Uh, and, and this continued for generations as coal went down. But then we said, they teach you three Rs in Eastern Kentucky, reading, writing and route 23.

• 1:47:36Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:37Speaker 02

  Route 23 runs north, crosses the river and goes up from Portsmouth to Columbus and on up that way. So, um, the difference between JD and I is my mammal didn't drop F bombs. Like he had, uh, I will say he probably had a rougher upbringing with, you know, his single mom and, and whatnot. So he had overcome a lot.

• 1:47:59Theo Von?

  Yeah. I mean, he's an, I mean, I think JD's a great speaker. He's an interesting guy, you know? I've enjoyed the opportunity to even get to talk to him. The simple fact that even somebody like me is even going to talk to him. I think it's all kind of fascinating.

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  I think it's great. I think he's over there biting his tongue so much though. Like, cause when you're the vice president.

• 1:48:15Theo Von?

  Oh, it did feel different when I spoke with him the first time than the second time.

• 1:48:18Speaker 02

  You, you, and he's a good guy. Like he's texted me.

• 1:48:21Theo Von?

  Oh, I agree.

• 1:48:22Speaker 02

  Since he's been vice president and, um, he's a good guy, but I'm sure he's biting his tongue on some of this stuff.

• 1:48:30Theo Von?

  Yeah, I bet it's interesting, you know? I bet the plot thickens, you know? I bet the plot really, really thickens. Um, you talked about working in virtual reality. How cra- I feel like now, did you see Iran did that, uh? There was a military video that they had pushing their military. It was like, um, and we'll be done in a few minutes. Um, see if you can bring that up. It was, uh, yeah. Did you see now it's like, there's like PR videos for war and shit now? Like what is even, look at this shit.

• 1:49:03Theo Von?

  Zoom in.

• 1:49:07Theo Von?

  I mean, this is.

• 1:49:12Theo Von?

  This is like a video game.

• 1:49:17Theo Von?

  I mean, look at this.

• 1:49:23Theo Von?

  I feel like it's just getting really bizarre.

• 1:49:31Theo Von?

  Look at that. I mean, that's good, but I think it's like, well, it's like we're, it's like now, I feel like we're getting so close to you're going to be able to subscribe online and stream, watch a stream of a war. Like you're going to be able to have drones that are in the air, watching war, right? Like probably Palantir drones or some company in the air and you can stream it from home, you know?

• 1:49:54Speaker 02

  But wouldn't it be better if just like the drones killed the other drones and people didn't get killed? And maybe that's it's virtual reality and who can, who can build the best army in VR? That'd be a lot better way than killing people.

• 1:50:07Theo Von?

  I agree. I think it's gotten, I mean, it's like, you're going to be able to, you know, it's going to be like, yeah, shit is just like you said earlier, everything is feels merging. It doesn't even feel real anymore. That's how unreal shit is. It doesn't even, you can barely tell as a regular semi ignorant person, the difference between what's real and what's not anymore. And that's when things get bizarre. It's like, I feel like next week, like I show speed is going to like compete against Netanyahu's son or whatever that lives, I think in LA or somewhere like, but, and they're going to compete. And like the winner gets to, um, live in like a, one of those like Congo cobalt mines where they're making iPhone like parts. It just, you're just like, what the fuck is happening anymore?

• 1:50:50Speaker 02

  It happens on both sides though, and truth is the first casualty of war. And you saw like, there was the ghost of Kiev. Remember when that came out and there was supposedly this aviator in Ukraine that was shooting down all these Russian jets?

• 1:51:05Theo Von?

  Yeah. It was a, it was lore?

• 1:51:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was, it was all, yeah, it was all made up.

• 1:51:09Theo Von?

  A popular, but ultimately mythical Ukrainian fighter pilot, an urban legend that emerged during the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Said that a single MiG 29 pilot was shooting down multiple Russian aircraft, becoming a similar resistance. Yes.

• 1:51:23Speaker 02

  So, and, and that was being reported as a real thing and congressmen were falling for that. And so I have tried to be very judicious in all the videos I watch of everything that's, that's coming from all the countries, whether it's Iran or Israel or our own. And I actually caught the IDF, this Israeli defense forces putting, using a, a clip that was from last year.

• 1:51:49Speaker 02

  Trying to make it look like that was Israel being bombed this, you know, this week. And I, this is one of the fun things about being a congressman with 1.3 million followers. Like I pointed it out and people started looking at it and comparing it to the video from nine months ago. And they got community noted, the IDF, for putting out a fake video. They didn't have to. I mean, there's plenty of live footage, but they fell for it. Like, we're just, we're in a loop. We're, we're consuming stuff on the internet and you know the loop has been completed when the Israeli government consumes YouTubes that aren't real and then puts them in their videos.

• 1:52:33Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I could see them doing it just because, but yeah, I think it's definitely the loop is like, we're spinning the loop so long, we're dizzy. That's where, that's where it feels like we are.

• 1:52:44Speaker 02

  If you can step out of it, like I haven't had a TV in 20 years because, um,

• 1:52:49Theo Von?

  You're not missing anything.

• 1:52:50Speaker 02

  It just reinforces the, the false, there we go.

• 1:52:54Theo Von?

  Breaking Bad was good.

• 1:52:55Speaker 02

  Did they, and?

• 1:52:57Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, who knows?

• 1:52:58Speaker 02

  See?

• 1:52:59Theo Von?

  Yeah, you can't tell what's really more. Raw footage Iran.

• 1:53:02Speaker 02

  There, yeah, there's the two videos. Look, that's, that's the one they put out that said was happening in the past hours, right?

• 1:53:09Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:53:09Speaker 02

  Now look at the other one. The clouds are the same shape, the missiles are in the same formation, and that was a YouTube from eight months ago.

• 1:53:16Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:53:17Speaker 02

  But the, the reason I caught it and nobody else did was I was trying to verify everything before I took it as real.

• 1:53:25Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:26Speaker 02

  And I saw that video from eight months ago and figured out it was fake, but the IDF didn't. Or maybe they did and it just was more dramatic than the footage they had.

• 1:53:35Theo Von?

  That could be more, but that sounds slightly more possible, but what do I know? I don't know anything. I know this dude, um, what can we do, like what can voters do anymore? Do we, does it matter anymore what we do or are we done?

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  It does matter. Uh, you're gonna,

• 1:53:52Theo Von?

  Does local level matter more than ever, local level voting or what matters? Like what do we, what do we, what can we do?

• 1:53:59Speaker 02

  So the congressman before me in my district got a call at home one night and this older lady was upset that her trash hadn't been picked up. And he's a US Congressman.

• 1:54:10Theo Von?

  Who, you picked it up?

• 1:54:11Speaker 02

  He said, no, he said, I'm your US Congressman. I don't, I'm not involved with the trash pickup. Did you think about calling your county commissioner? And she said, I was gonna do that, but I didn't want to start that high up.

• 1:54:22Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:23Speaker 02

  So, um, it, I think local is, I started out in local politics.

• 1:54:30Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:54:30Speaker 02

  And the local officials have way more impact on your life than the, than the federal government does. And so I would take time and pay attention and vote locally. And those are also people you can go find. When I was a local government official and we would stop at the grocery store to buy milk, my kids would beg my wife to go in to pick up the milk because I'd be in there two hours. And somebody had talked to me about a pothole and somebody had talked to me about some weeds that need mowed at the intersection and I wouldn't get out of there. Now that I'm a Congressman, I can buy milk anywhere. Nobody cares. They know Congress can't get anything done.

• 1:55:07Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:55:08Speaker 02

  And so I think the people have figured it out. Definitely pay attention local. When you do pay attention federal, don't get distracted by the weapons of mass distraction. Um, don't call Nancy Pelosi. She's not, you're not going to change her mind. Only call people you can vote for because the, the people taking those calls know that and they'll discount everything you say unless you're a constituent. So everybody has two state senators and one US representative. So you only need to make three phone calls. I wouldn't write them a letter. I wouldn't waste time on email. I would make a phone call and a real, more likely than not, a real person in that office will pick up the phone and talk to you. And it'll be somebody who does talk to the Congressman.

• 1:55:52Speaker 02

  Like we, we have a staff of about 12 to 24 people. And I say hi to those people that you are talking to every day. Now, I don't know that all Congressmen are this diligent, but. I have them write down who called about what and how many calls we got. Some days I get one phone call and it's from the same guy that calls every day.

• 1:56:12Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:56:13Speaker 02

  Michael. If Michael doesn't call, we ask the local sheriff to go do a, you know, wellness check.

• 1:56:17Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:56:18Speaker 02

  Don't, don't be a frequent flyer. Don't call up your congressman and say, I'll never vote for him again if he votes this way. Because then they never have to take you seriously. But I would call up, I would only call people you can vote for and be polite, be quick, get off the phone. The, the next one, your people, I see people come up to lobby, let's say for their, for their grandma who has Alzheimer's. And they spend $300 on a plane ticket, a couple hundred dollars on a hotel room. Uh, they, you know, the food is expensive in DC and they finally get to their congressman's office and they talk to a staffer.

• 1:56:59Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:00Speaker 02

  That to me is a waste of money. I would, uh, find that congressman locally and take half of what you would have spent on the trip to DC. And if you could stomach that person's politics, make a donation.

• 1:57:15Theo Von?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:57:15Speaker 02

  That's why the lobbyist has the ear. I'm not saying America has to compete with lobbyists for giving money, but I will tell you this. If you give a politician $500, you won't have to ask for his phone number. He'll be calling you, uh, every week.

• 1:57:29Theo Von?

  Thinking about what do I need next?

• 1:57:31Speaker 02

  Asking for more of it.

• 1:57:32Theo Von?

  Damn.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:57:34Theo Von?

  So, but that's where we're at.

• 1:57:35Speaker 02

  That's where we're at.

• 1:57:36Theo Von?

  Cause we just have to compete. Money has to compete with money, you think? Dark money?

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  It doesn't have to compete, but you gotta figure out a way to get their attention. You know, if it's whatever the minimum is to get in the door, that.

• 1:57:48Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:57:48Speaker 02

  Fund rate. If it's $50, don't give them 500. Give them 50 and go in and, um, just. Talk to them like a human being, if you can.

• 1:57:58Theo Von?

  But at a bigger level, like, will we ever get, will the people, you know, will we ever get these lobbyists out? Is it just a rap? What do we, just tell us if we all just.

• 1:58:07Speaker 02

  Here's the way, here's the way you break free. No. Well, you should definitely go to the beach and only spend about no more than 10% of your life thinking about politics, because it ain't healthy.

• 1:58:17Theo Von?

  Amen.

• 1:58:18Speaker 02

  And, but the 10% that you do, you should, you should ask your congressman to, to advocate for separate bills on separate topics.

• 1:58:28Theo Von?

  Yeah, I agree. That seems way more pertinent, because then you get, there's some, a level of accountability.

• 1:58:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they can't hide behind, well, it had a pay raise for soldiers.

• 1:58:35Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:58:37Speaker 02

  So advocate for that, make phone calls. If you can be friendly and connect with them, maybe you don't agree with them on everything, but a broken clock is right twice a day.

• 1:58:49Theo Von?

  Yeah, some diplomacy.

• 1:58:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:51Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a big thing I've been learning recently is that there's a give and take to everything, every single, everything, you know, and that's the way that the world's built. There's like, you know, there's forces, there's a give and take, there's a yin and yang, and even when you have, you want this party or this thing, it's like, there has to be like, you, you really need both forces a lot of times to get things done. I think that's about it, man. I'm trying to think of anything else. Oh, I did want to, we were gonna, supposed to talk to Mr. Walls this week, Tim Walls, on Thursday, because I have a show up there, but he can't, he is unable to go because of, they're doing services and stuff for that. His constituents or his colleagues, maybe, that were murdered up there.

• 1:59:35Speaker 02

  I, you know.

• 1:59:36Theo Von?

  It's pretty heartbreaking.

• 1:59:37Speaker 02

  It is heartbreaking.

• 1:59:38Theo Von?

  And he seems like a guy with a big heart, too.

• 1:59:40Speaker 02

  I get death threats. I mean, and the hard part is knowing which ones to take seriously and which ones not. I mean, it's definitely not the right way to do politics.

• 1:59:52Speaker 02

  It's just, there's no, there's no level of frustration that justifies violence.

• 1:59:58Theo Von?

  Yeah, I mean, that just seems really bizarre. There was, I remember there was rumors that whenever your wife passed away, that there was like something bad had happened like from a, like a, like a, not a deranged person or something like that?

• 2:00:11Speaker 02

  No, she, she died unexpectedly, but of natural causes and I wasn't home. I was in DC, which kills me to this day. But my son was home visiting. So we know exactly what happened. There's no conspiracy there. Although.

• 2:00:28Theo Von?

  Sorry to even ask you about it.

• 2:00:29Speaker 02

  Well, no, I think it's good because people ask that. People want to know that. I tell people she would get a kick out of it. She would.

• 2:00:39Theo Von?

  Everybody wants to be a part of, yeah, like anyway, that's.

• 2:00:42Speaker 02

  There was a conspiracy, but I'm sure she's, she's up there laughing at that one.

• 2:00:47Theo Von?

  Well, I know it's coming up on a year since she's been gone and yeah, just sorry to kind of, maybe that was a little out of the box to say that, but.

• 2:00:57Theo Von?

  Yeah, I'm sorry you and your family had to go through that. So I appreciate you being brave and still being able to honor your constituents and your group even in, in the face of those types of things and, and still be able to show up and, and do your best and, and be a maverick, I think for probably for her spirit and for the people of, of our country, you know? I think that's one thing that's inspiring. Some people were like, well, this guy's nuts or this guy's great, but I'm like, at least this guy's his own fucking guy. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'd rather talk to that guy any day of the week.

• 2:01:27Speaker 02

  Well, the other conspiracy that's interesting to me is people say, oh, he snapped, like he's lost his marbles since he lost his wife and he's off the chain, et cetera, et cetera. No, I'm actually honoring what she wanted. Like she worked at home on our farm and raised four kids. She also had an MIT degree.

• 2:01:47Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 2:01:48Speaker 02

  She was watching me from afar every day. She would watch hearings and give me advice for questions to ask and. She wanted me to go up there and kick ass every week and, and that's what I do. And, and I'm still gonna do it. I remember one time, uh, I introduced a bill to legalize raw milk, like the kind I got out there in my camper truck.

• 2:02:11Theo Von?

  I'll take another swig off that thing. As long as you leave the door open while we do it.

• 2:02:14Speaker 02

  Right. We had alarms going off in there. The Gadar in my camper was going off when you went in there.

• 2:02:19Theo Von?

  Two men got in that thing and suddenly an alarm went off. I was like, this is a little too Republican for me. This is a little too old school Republican for me. If two men can't even casually drink raw milk together in the back of a truck camper.

• 2:02:32Speaker 02

  I know. I, so I introduced a raw milk bill to legalize raw milk. And, oh yeah, there we go.

• 2:02:38Theo Von?

  Oh, this is in honor of her, kind of?

• 2:02:40Speaker 02

  Well, this was, she was still alive and I introduced this bill and the, guess who came after me? The, uh, the milk lobbyists came after me. They said there wouldn't be enough hospitals to take care of all the people.

• 2:02:54Theo Von?

  Who got sick from raw milk?

• 2:02:55Speaker 02

  Who were gonna get sick from raw milk.

• 2:02:57Theo Von?

  Is that true, do you think?

• 2:02:58Speaker 02

  Oh, hell no. I, I drink it every day. I, I know thousands of people that drink it every day.

• 2:03:04Theo Von?

  I'm gonna catch a fucking batch of it. It always looks like it's a little warm.

• 2:03:08Speaker 02

  No, I pour mine in a ice cold glass. But anyways, uh, and it tastes like just liquid ice cream. It's so good.

• 2:03:17Theo Von?

  I'll come have a little bit more.

• 2:03:19Speaker 02

  All right. Well, so I, I, I did this bill and the milk lobby comes after me and my wife had Google alerts on or whatever alerts there were. And it's like all this negative press over milk and she texted me, OMG, I didn't realize the lactose lobby was this intolerant.

• 2:03:38Theo Von?

  Well, I think even just the, the name of, um, the lactose lobby was this intolerant. That's cute. What was her name, your wife?

• 2:03:47Speaker 02

  Rhonda.

• 2:03:48Theo Von?

  Rhonda.

• 2:03:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:50Theo Von?

  Well, we miss you Rhonda. Just a nice thought of you there and a nice story. I love the fact that that's called the Interstate Milk Freedom Act, which sounds insane, dude.

• 2:03:59Speaker 02

  Right?

• 2:03:59Theo Von?

  It sounds like something that happens at a rest area, you know? That's the problem with it, I think.

• 2:04:03Speaker 02

  It's, it's easier to get meth than it is to get raw milk. I'm not lying.

• 2:04:10Theo Von?

  And at least put birth control in the meth. When do we make that law?

• 2:04:15Theo Von?

  Like, is that too much to ask? Like, give us something! That's my motto these days. Uh, Thomas Massie, I, I, I just admire, I, I appreciate your time. That's what I really appreciate. And, um, get out there and give them hell, man. Keep serving to the best of your ability and just thank you for your service. And, uh, I really, I just appreciate it.

• 2:04:33Speaker 02

  Thanks, Theo.

• 2:04:34Theo Von?

  Yep, you bet, man. Best of luck, dude. God.

• 2:04:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, keep an eye on the debt.

• 2:04:38Theo Von?

  Yeah, well, I'm gonna say this to my mom, she will be, she'll call me every hour and she'll be like, oh my God.

• 2:04:44Speaker 02

  It's about to go up.

• 2:04:45Theo Von?

  It is?

• 2:04:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:46Theo Von?

  I'm looking for the jump. I'll be there.