#130 JD Vance - Why Have a Government if it's Not Functioning?

Today, we have the privilege of sitting down with JD Vance, a man who has become a critical voice in American politics. JD Vance, known for his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, is Donald Trump's VP pick and has built a reputation for his deep understanding of Middle America and its struggles. On this solemn day, 9/11, JD shares not only where he was on that fateful day but also the tragic stories from this sober anniversary, reflecting on how the events shaped the course of his life and his decision to enlist in the Marine Corps. He highlights the wave of enlistments that followed 9/11 and contrasts it with today's troubling decline in recruitment. In this episode, we dive deep into Vance’s views on pressing issues like the Biden-Harris administration’s funding of terrorism and the ongoing war in Ukraine. We explore the troubling amount of taxpayer dollars being spent overseas while American families face financial struggles at home. JD also shares his insight on Israel, the crisis at the border, government reform, and the evolving role of AI technology. This conversation not only covers current policy challenges but also explores JD Vance's vision for addressing these critical issues facing our nation. JD Vance Links: IG - https://www.instagram.com/JDVance/ x - https://x.com/JDVance FB - https://www.facebook.com/p/JD-Vance-100070055152736/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@jd?lang=en Truth Social - https://truthsocial.com/@JDVance1 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOu1i1eeT8unVAc678Q6LQA Website - https://www.vance.senate.gov/ Book - https://www.harperacademic.com/book/9780062300553/hillbilly-elegy/ Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:28Speaker 01

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• 1:05Shawn Ryan?

  Mr. J.D. Vance, it's an honor to be with you here in New York City today on September 11th. And what a somber and difficult day for a lot of people.

• 1:18Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:19Shawn Ryan?

  And we've got a lot to remember.

• 1:20Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:21Shawn Ryan?

  And we've got a lot to be thankful for today as well.

• 1:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, thanks for having me, man. It's good to see you.

• 1:26Shawn Ryan?

  It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. So I wanted to talk to you about, a little bit about 9/11, and just get some of your personal stories.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:34Shawn Ryan?

  So where were you on September 11th, 2001?

• 1:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I was at the school library, Middletown High School, and I remember that because we were sort of in our library session, and, you know, everybody flipped on the TVs in the library because the World Trade Center was under attack. And I think we were still in that phase where it was not totally clear whether it actually was an attack, or whether it was just an accident. But I was a junior in high school and just sort of watched the day unfold, and obviously we didn't do a lot of schoolwork that day, all of us were just glued to the TV. And I remember going home and, you know, for one reason, the memory that really sticks out, because I lived with my grandmother at the time, you know, my grandmother raised me. Is we were really worried about gas, right? Because we sort of realized this is an attack from the Middle East. We didn't know who, we didn't know any of the background.

• 2:21Speaker 03

  But I just remember like taking my grandmother's car and then a family member's car and waiting in line for gas because we wanted to like make sure the tanks were filled up in case something crazy happened in the Middle East. And there's just a sense of instability and uncertainty, right? Like, we didn't know what was going on, we didn't know if that was going to be the last attack. And of course, you know, for people in New York, like I'd never been in New York in my entire life, but sort of got to know the perspective of a lot of people since then. And, you know, even just some of the stories I've heard today, like, we went to a fire station with President Trump after the memorial ceremony this morning at Ground Zero. And, you know, there's this, there's this plaque in the fire station of this guy who died on 9/11, this firefighter who died on 9/11.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  And there's like, you know, all these little trinkets and, and sort of pieces of the guy's life there to memorialize him by. And it sort of hit me that, you know, talking to people and seeing some of this stuff, that he had a son that was born on September the 13th, 2001. So his wife was pregnant with her fourth child. He goes in, he loses his life, and two days later, she delivers her, her, her fourth child. And I met that kid today. And so his 23rd birthday is in two days. And I talked with his older brother and his older sister, and, you know, it's, it's what you realize, I mean, I have three little kids, I have a seven-year-old, a four-year-old, and a two-year-old, is, like, each of these kids remembers their dad differently, right?

• 3:49Speaker 03

  So the, the guy who was four when his dad died, you know, was just kind of phantoms of a memory, right? Remembers a face or a smile, he has a couple of memories. And then the eight-year-old, she's 31 now, but she was eight when he died, she actually sort of really remembers her dad, remembers his personality and so forth. And, you know, it was, it was just interesting to hear them talk about their dad because, on the one hand, the young kid is kind of, you know, happy that he doesn't remember that day because it was such a terrible day. Wow. But then you've got the eight-year-old daughter who's like, "Yeah, it was a terrible day, but at least I got to remember dad." And just, man, it's wild. It's wild what happened to this country, it's wild how many brave people, how many, how many amazing stories of heroism there are on that day.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Something I always do on 9/11, I just to go on for a little bit, but I haven't done it yet today. Is I would always read the story. I think it's an Esquire. And it's about the falling man photo. I don't know if you remember this photo.

• 4:44Shawn Ryan?

  I do.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  But it's like this amazing photo of this guy. He's headfirst. It almost looks like he's intentionally flying. It's just the craziest photograph. And it goes through who that guy might be. And it just takes you into the perspective of, you know, your loved one goes to work down there. And cell phones aren't working. And, you know, some people, they get a call four hours later from their dad, like, oh, I'm okay. And then some people never got that call. And you just realize, man, what a crazy and terrible and tragic day, but what an amazing number of heroic stories that came out of it, right? It's this amazing duality of terrible tragedy, incredible heroism. And that's like the story of 9/11 in this country.

• 5:30Shawn Ryan?

  Did not is, was the military on the radar at the time before 9/11 happened for you?

• 5:36Speaker 03

  No, not really, right? So, you know, I came in some ways from a military family. So the grandmother who raised me, she had six grandkids. Two of my older cousins had enlisted in the Marine Corps. And I think they were both still in the Marine Corps when I was a junior in high school. And maybe my oldest cousin had gotten out. But I thought a little bit about it, but not really, right? I sort of assumed that, you know, they were tougher than I was. They'd go to the Marines and I'd do something else. And 9/11 really did change that, right? You start thinking to yourself like, oh, if this is our generation's, you know, greatest generation moment, where we have to go and do what the country requires of us. Then I don't want to look back in 30 years and say, I had an opportunity to serve. I was a 17, 18 year old kid and I didn't answer that call. So, you know, I graduated about a year and a half after 9/11.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  Graduated from high school, enlisted in the Marine Corps my senior year of high school. We actually invaded Iraq in March of 2003. I enlisted in April of 2003. And so when I enlisted, just the assumption was that all of us were going to go to Iraq, which of course I eventually did go to Iraq. But it was just what you did, right? I mean, there were two kids on my block, McKinley, the 300 block of McKinley Street in Middletown, Ohio, who graduated Middletown High School, class of '03. Both of us were in the same boot camp platoon in Parris Island, South Carolina. So there was this spirit of patriotism that was very real. And not, you know, to get too political about it, but I do, when I look back at that moment and think about what, you know, you had Republicans, Democrats, independents, everybody kind of united together. And I do think in a lot of ways, our leadership screwed that moment up

• 7:06Speaker 03

  because you could have done something amazing with that sense of patriotism. We were all on the same team. And unfortunately, you know, five, 10 years later, it was like we were all back to fighting each other again. But we had something, I think, very special for a couple of years after 9/11. I try not to forget that.

• 7:23Shawn Ryan?

  I'm with you. You know, it was as tragic as the incident was, I've never seen the country more united.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 7:31Shawn Ryan?

  Than those than those months afterwards.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:33Shawn Ryan?

  And it would be great to get back to that.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  I mean, dude, it was, it was, I remember talking to my recruiter, like, he was turning people away. Like, there were so many people who were volunteering in a time of war, right? We were in Afghanistan, we had just invaded Iraq. You had so many people volunteering in Middletown, Ohio, that the recruiter was like picking and choosing between kids who wanted to join the Marine Corps. Like, now we have a massive recruitment shortfall, you know, just 23 years later. You think about what that really means about where the country was psychologically, man. We were, you're right, for all the tragedy, we were in a very good place as a united country. And it's heartbreaking in some ways. I think about the people who died on 9/11. I think about the people who died in the years, sort of the immediate years afterwards.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  And I think in some ways, they'd be disappointed with what the country's become because the very patriotism that motivated them to serve, I think it's going away.

• 8:27Shawn Ryan?

  I think a lot of people are disappointed with how the country's going.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 8:31Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  It should be.

• 8:32Shawn Ryan?

  You know, speaking of 9/11 and the 20-plus year war that it triggered.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:39Shawn Ryan?

  And you being here today, speaking with the families, speaking with the sons and daughters of firefighters who have died, police officers that have died.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:46Shawn Ryan?

  We both served. We have friends that served. I mean, what? What is it like for you to talk to these people in such an intimate setting, knowing that the Biden-Harris administration is actively funding terrorism?

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:05Shawn Ryan?

  And not just them, every taxpaying American. You're funding them, I'm funding them.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 9:11Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody that's paying US taxes is now funding terrorism.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:16Shawn Ryan?

  We're sending 87, 40 to 87 million dollars a week to the Taliban. The IG report came out and said that they had accidentally sent 239 million dollars to the Taliban.

• 9:28Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:28Shawn Ryan?

  9/11 was a 500,000 dollar budget. What are they gonna do with 239 million?

• 9:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:35Shawn Ryan?

  I've been working really hard to bring this to life.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  It's crazy, yeah.

• 9:38Shawn Ryan?

  With a colleague of mine, Scott Mann and Sarah Adams. And we've made a lot of headway. We brought a petition up to, to bring Masood in to talk about how some of our policies are affecting Afghanistan and the fact that we're funding them.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 9:55Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, that bill's been kinda squashed. Bill Hagerty now is spinning something up in the Senate that's a little more aggressive.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 10:03Shawn Ryan?

  What, and I know we're, we are pending a potential government shutdown on October 1st. Would it be a good idea to shut the US government down if we continue to fund terrorism?

• 10:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it's kinda crazy if you think about it, right? Because the Taliban, so Al Qaeda, of course, was the organization that planned 9/11, but they had the explicit support of the Taliban, right? It's like, you know, North Korea and China during the Korean War, right? These guys are working hand in hand, they're working in the same territory. And the idea that we're now sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban after they've taken complete control of the country, and of course, they've got a lot of our military equipment there, it's completely insane. And, you know, just on, on the mechanics of a government shutdown fight, so I've actually been in the Senate all of two years, I've never voted for continuing resolution, in part because of this very issue. And what I mean by continuing resolution...

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Like, you can do two things in the budgetary process, right? You can basically take what you've done and rubber stamp it for another three, six months or a year. That's a continuing resolution. Then there's the traditional appropriations process where you actually go in and say, "Why the hell are we spending money on that? Should we be spending less money on this thing, more money on this thing?" You actually have the real budgetary process that leaders should do, right? I don't like the continuing resolutions because you do this exact thing, right? You're rubber stamping more money for organizations like the Taliban. By the way, while we're on that topic, rubber stamping more money for the open border. Because you talk to people, right? And one of the biggest fears with the open border, and there's a lot, but one of the biggest fears with the open border is, okay, how are all those people getting into our country? We know in 9/11, we just had garbage security.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  A lot of them flew in, were trained in American flight schools. We now know that there are thousands of military-age men who've come through that southern border from places like Afghanistan, Iran, and so forth. And so, yeah, man, why shouldn't we be trying to force this government shutdown fight to get something out of it that's good for the American people? Like, why have a government if it's not a functioning government? And if you have a government that's spending hundreds of millions of dollars funding terrorism and then facilitating those people to come across the American southern border, it's totally insane.

• 12:21Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's just, it's asinine. I mean, people cannot afford school supplies for their kids.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  It's crazy.

• 12:29Shawn Ryan?

  But we're sending a billion dollars a year to a terrorist organization.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. After, by the way, they killed 13 of our Marines, or I guess, you know, 11 Marines and a couple other service members just a year ago, actually, almost, or sorry, just three years ago, almost exactly three years ago today. Like, if that can't motivate our leadership to get off their asses and actually say, "We're done funding the Taliban," then what would actually motivate it?

• 12:55Speaker 03

  And it's, I mean, again, the way Washington works, man, is it's like a rubber stamp mentality. It's that we did this thing 20 years ago, and maybe it made sense when we were trying to, like, you know, convince the Afghans to become more self-sufficient, to train their own military, so the Taliban wouldn't take over. Like, whatever, I'm not going to judge what we did 20 years ago. But even if it made sense 20 years ago, it sure as hell doesn't make sense today when the people who are in control of Afghanistan are the literal Taliban, the people who killed our Marines, and, by the way, are actively training terrorists right now. But that's what you get when you rubber stamp everything from the past, instead of running a functional government where you ask yourself what makes sense and what doesn't make sense in this year, not 20 years ago, then that's how this stuff ends up happening.

• 13:40Shawn Ryan?

  Speaking of wars, I think a lot of Americans are tired of funding all these wars.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:45Shawn Ryan?

  And last night, on the debate stage, we saw Trump and Kamala kind of bat that back and forth.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, one of his best moments, I thought, last night.

• 13:54Shawn Ryan?

  Trump had mentioned that he would have this war done before you and him actually take office.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:01Shawn Ryan?

  How exactly would that be negotiated?

• 14:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, one thing I'll say about the president, Republicans, obviously I'm a Republican, I'm running as the Republican VP nominee, we like to give Trump credit, justifiably so, for being strong. I don't think that we give the president enough credit for smart diplomacy. It's not just strength, it's also intelligence, right? Both of those things, and that's why we had a peaceful world. So, what Trump was really good at is saying, "Yeah, okay, this guy's a screwball, this guy's a bad person," but sometimes you have to deal with screwballs and bad people, right? I mean, in World War II, we allied with Joseph Stalin to beat Adolf Hitler. We can engage in diplomacy even with very bad guys, and because of that, I think he was able to keep the world at peace for a very long time. I mean, look, you didn't have the, you know, Iran and Iranian militias

• 14:49Speaker 03

  attacking Israel, you didn't have, you know, of course, the war in Eastern Europe, you didn't have what's going on in Africa, you didn't have what's going on potentially in East Asia, where the Chinese, I think, are on the cusp of invading Taiwan. I hope not, but I think it's very possible it's going to happen the next couple of years. So you need somebody that, first of all, people are terrified of, right? You need to be worried that if Donald Trump says something, or Kamala Harris, God forbid, says something, that they actually mean it, right? But you believe that with Donald Trump, you don't believe that with Kamala Harris, right? That's deterrence. That's, "Oh crap, if we screw with these guys, they're going to come after us hard." But then it's also like sitting down and understanding like Russia wants this war to end, Ukraine wants this war to end, Europe, which by the way, has underfunded this war

• 15:33Speaker 03

  while American taxpayers have been very generous to Ukrainians, the Europeans want this war to end because it's jacking up their energy prices. So I think what this looks like is Trump sits down, he says to the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Europeans, you guys need to figure out what does a peaceful settlement look like? And what it probably looks like is something like the current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine, that becomes like a demilitarized zone, it's heavily fortified so the Russians don't invade again, Ukraine remains its independent sovereignty, Russia gets the guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine, it doesn't join NATO, it doesn't join, you know, some of these sort of allied institutions, and I think that's ultimately what this looks like. And by the way, the Germans and other countries have to fund some Ukrainian reconstruction.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  That is what the deal I think is ultimately gonna look something like, but I think what's gonna happen is President Trump's gonna go in there as the president-elect, they're scared of him in Russia, they're worried about him in Europe because they know that he actually means what he says, and I think he's gonna be able to come to a deal very quickly because this is what's insane about this dude is, the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Europeans are all saying, "We can't fight this war forever." Well, why the hell are you fighting it for another day if all of them are trying to find a way to solve it? The answer is, or at least to get over it, right, to stop it, you're not gonna solve the war, but you can at least bring the thing to a stop. The answer is, Joe Biden is asleep at the wheel, Kamala Harris doesn't know what the

• 17:00Speaker 03

  hell she's doing, and so their policy is, throw money at this problem, hope the Ukrainians are able to achieve a military victory that even the Ukrainians are saying, "We can't achieve." Donald Trump's policy is, yes, to be strong, but also to be smart, negotiate.

• 17:16Shawn Ryan?

  When it comes to these wars, especially Ukraine,

• 17:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:21Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it gets painted as some type of a humanitarian thing.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 17:24Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not buying the humanitarian thing, I mean,

• 17:26Speaker 03

  We should.

• 17:27Shawn Ryan?

  If it was humanitarian, we'd be in Venezuela right now.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Neither do I, yeah.

• 17:30Shawn Ryan?

  We'd be in Brazil, we'd be, we'd be all over.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:34Shawn Ryan?

  What, what is?

• 17:35Speaker 03

  We'd be in armed communities, kicking out 25 million illegal aliens, yeah.

• 17:37Shawn Ryan?

  Good point. What, what is, what is, what are we there for?

• 17:43Speaker 03

  Man, it's a tough question. And I think some people have convinced themselves that this is like the great humanitarian mission of our time. And I think that's what drives some of it, even though I think it's fake and it's wrong. I think some people have convinced themselves this is like a war of good versus evil, right? Or Russia evil, Ukraine good. And once you get yourself in that fairy tale mindset, you can justify a lot of stupid activity and a lot of stupid decisions because, of course, we always want to support the good guys. But maybe the truth is the Russians shouldn't have invaded, but the Ukrainians have got a lot of corruption problems too, right? It's a little bit more complicated than that. And unfortunately, you have no American leader who's willing to actually understand what's really going on over there.

• 18:28Speaker 03

  I mean, I think that some people, look, are going to get rich from that war. You talk about, you know, BlackRock and some of these major financial institutions talking about spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Ukrainian reconstruction. We know the stock prices of defense contractors have skyrocketed since the Ukraine war started. So it's like a complicated mixture, right? Some people are getting rich. Some people are convinced they're the good guys. Some people are convinced this is a great humanitarian mission. And it ends up leading to a very stupid place. And it's one of the reasons why I just want Kamala Harris and Joe Biden to say, what the hell are we doing? What is the goal? What are we trying to accomplish? And the fact that you don't have a president or a vice president who can articulate that means we probably shouldn't be there to begin with.

• 19:10Shawn Ryan?

  Is there any validity to the point that Crimea sits on a very large natural gas deposit?

• 19:16Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm sure there's a huge part of that, right? I mean, look, Ukraine is not just Crimea, but is a very resource-rich country, right? And it always has been. And it's got great agricultural resources. It's got great natural gas resources. And again, a lot of, I mean, you know this, a lot of wars get fought over natural resources. And I guarantee you, both the reasons the Russians are interested in part, the reasons that Europeans are interested in part, and certainly a lot of American investors, it's got a lot to do with money. Let's just be honest.

• 19:46Shawn Ryan?

  Would it be in our best, if it is, and we're there to... To build the infrastructure to get that natural gas into Europe. Would it be in our best interest to stay there and see Ukraine hold on to Crimea? It seems like that would be good for US interests.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  I think that the problem is there are a lot of risks to us of staying there and trying to encourage the Ukrainians to hold on to Crimea, right? The question is, you know, how many American lives would it cost to do that? And if the answer is more than zero, then I'm out, right? I'm sick of wasting American lives being the policeman of the world. The other thing, dude, is we got plenty of natural gas resources ourselves, right? This is one of the things that's so stupid about our Russia policy. With the one hand, we're saying that we want to save, or we want to prevent the Russians from funding the war machine. We want them to get out of Ukraine. With the other hand, we're shutting down our own energy resources and shutting down the European energy resources. Well, who's that make rich? Russia, right? So the one hand, we're going to sanction Russia.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  With the other hand, we're going to get them rich with natural gas and oil resources. It just doesn't make any sense.

• 20:52Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move to Israel.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:54Shawn Ryan?

  The other war that's going on. What is our position there?

• 20:58Speaker 03

  Man, well, what our position should be is that we want Israel to end the war as quickly as possible. We want them to destroy Hamas and we want them to actually build some alliances with the Arab Gulf nations so that the Saudi Arabians, who don't like Iran, the UAE, which doesn't like Iran, and the Israelis, which don't like Iran, can provide a kind of regional counterbalance, right? Like, that's how alliances work, right? They don't like each other on everything, but they don't like Iran. But they can't do that peace process. The Israelis and the Saudi Arabians can't come together while Israel has Hamas in its backyard, right? Doesn't make sense for Israel, doesn't make sense for Saudi Arabia either. So what we should be trying to do here is get the war over with, destroy Hamas, and

• 21:42Speaker 03

  restart that peace process. What our actual policy is, man, as far as I can tell, is on the one hand, we say we want to prevent civilian casualties. Well, on the other hand, we don't give the Israelis the weapons that allow them to minimize civilian casualties. We only give them the weapons that allow them to maximize civilian casualties. And we're also telling them, we want you to finish the war, but you can't prosecute the war in a way that allows you to actually destroy Hamas. So we're living in this weird in-between world where I think what we're actually doing is we're getting a lot of Palestinians killed, we're getting a lot of Israelis killed, and we're prolonging Hamas for as long as possible, and we're not getting the hostages back. It's like the dumbest possible policy imaginable.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  But that is effectively the policy of the United States government right now. We blundered into it because, again, we've got an incompetent like Kamala Harris who's calling the shots.

• 22:34Shawn Ryan?

  Could you be a little more specific on maybe what a successful conclusion to that war looks like?

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I look, I think you have, obviously, my understanding is right now, pre-war, I should say, you know, 25 Hamas viable fighting battalions. Now they've got it down to about four. There's a very narrow slice of Gaza where those four battalions are left over. Now, obviously, that's some of the hardest fighting, right? Those are the holdouts, those are the people who are really going to fight for the death. But you've got to destroy all four of those battalions, right? Now, there could be a deal, like if, for example, the leader of Hamas just gave up and said, "All right, we'll demilitarize, you know, maybe he goes and lives in another country, maybe he gets arrested," but I don't think he's going to do that. So I think these Israelis really are going to have to clear out every single last vestige of Hamas. That's tough fighting, got a lot of people going to get killed. Obviously, a lot of Israelis have already died.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  But I don't know, I mean, if you look at it from their perspective, and my attitude on this is, you know, I'm pro-Israel, but it's their country. They can call the shots. I want to focus on the United States of America. But if you try to look at this from Israel's perspective, like, I don't know how they can possibly allow this entity to continue as a viable military, right? It's like, imagine if Al Qaeda existed in Mexico City, and then 10,000 Americans get killed in southwest Texas. There is no way that we're going to tolerate that kind of threat on our back door. You've just got to get rid of it. And then you can, I think, focus on peace.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  And by the way, once you destroy Hamas, then again, I think it restarts the Middle Eastern peace process. You know, Trump called it the Abraham Accords, which is where you get the Arab nations on board with the Israelis. And again, why are they on board? Because they both don't like the Iranians.

• 24:21Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting, interesting. Let's talk about how close we are to potential World War III in nuclear warfare.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  Way too close.

• 24:30Shawn Ryan?

  How could this go if it doesn't go? How could this, how could this end up in World War III?

• 24:35Speaker 03

  I think a couple of different ways, right? So I'm sure that Russia has red lines, some of which we're not even aware of, in Ukraine. You know, you get to a situation where is a Russian red line crossed? There are nuclear power? Do they start using tactical nuclear weapons in eastern Ukraine? If that happens, then probably at least some of the eastern European countries like Poland have to get involved. That balloons into a World War III scenario. I think the most likely and the most dangerous scenario is Iran and Israel right now. So obviously, the Israelis are on high alert. They just had this terrorist attack. They're dealing with Hamas. You know, what if in north Israel, a bunch of Iranian-backed militias start killing thousands

• 25:19Speaker 03

  of Israeli civilians? Okay, so the Israelis invade, do the Iranians counterattack? And now you have Israel, Iran in a regional conflict. The Turks probably have to get involved. The Saudi Arabians probably have to get involved. And then that is the sort of thing that could balloon into World War III. And then the final thing, man, is, is, you know, China wants Taiwan, right? Everything that we have tells us the Chinese want Taiwan. America, I think, has left Taiwan in a really crappy position because we've sent all our weapons to Ukraine. The Taiwanese, I don't know that they could repel a Chinese invasion right now. And so do the Chinese invade Taiwan? That leads to some sort of accelerating conflict there.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  So there are basically at least three hotspots in the world right now that each have the potential to become a major worldwide conflict. It's really scary. And this is one of the reasons why I say, like, you don't want an incompetent as President of the United States right now. Like, you go back, I mean, look, there are some people I disagreed with. I mean, hell, I disagreed with a lot of George W. Bush's foreign policies. Obviously disagreed with a lot of Barack Obama's foreign policies. But these were, like, fundamentally capable human beings, right? Donald Trump is a capable human being. I think more than capable, but I'm biased. Kamala Harris is not a capable human being. Like, do you really want, in the midst of a high-pressure conflict, her negotiating with Xi Jinping about Taiwan?

• 26:43Speaker 03

  Or do you want her over there in Moscow or Kiev, negotiating with the Russians, with Vladimir Putin, about the peace settlement in Ukraine? This is scary, scary stuff. And you're talking about a person like Kamala Harris, who can't even answer a simple question without retreating into slogans and talking points. What about when the cameras are off and she's in a private room with world leaders? That's scary, scary stuff. And that's maybe what worries me about, more than any of her domestic policies, is what happens if the shit hits the fan? I don't think Kamala Harris can handle it.

• 27:16Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think China hasn't made a move on Taiwan yet? It seems like every chess player on the globe has made the move since the Biden and Kamala took office. And so, why hasn't China made their move yet? What are they waiting for?

• 27:31Speaker 03

  I think there are a few different explanations, and maybe, you know, all of them are true, at least a little bit. I think one thing is, even in a relatively weakened position, it's not an easy military maneuver. So maybe the Chinese don't want to kill a lot of people, especially their own people. Maybe that destabilizes them politically. That's one solution, or one possible answer. I think another possible answer is, look, you know, Xi Jinping, my understanding, and this is all, you know, guesswork, we're sort of judging with imperfect information, but my understanding is that he is not in the strongest position politically right now. That five years ago, or maybe five years in the future, he'll be in a slightly stronger political position. And so, maybe it's more likely to happen, say, in 2027,

• 28:16Speaker 03

  as opposed to, you know, so three years from now, as opposed to right now. The other thing that you hear is, maybe the Chinese don't think they ultimately need it, right? So maybe we're actually misunderstanding how, what their calculus is. Maybe their attitude is, they can control Taiwan from the outside without ever having to invade it and control it from the inside. And there's probably some element of truth to all those explanations. But I think eventually, my guess is, they're eventually going to make a real military move on it. It's probably going to be sooner rather than later. I hope not, but we'll see. Because right now, if they do it, we're not in a good position with the leadership we have.

• 28:54Shawn Ryan?

  Those are some perspectives I haven't heard before. Thank you. Let's move on to the border.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 29:00Shawn Ryan?

  So, the border, we have, I hear 11 million, 15 million, 21 million.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:06Shawn Ryan?

  Whatever. It's millions and millions and millions of illegal immigrants that are calling the US home now.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 29:14Shawn Ryan?

  We're paying for it. You guys have a plan? I'd like to dive into, how exactly are you gonna go after and, and remove all of these immigrants?

• 29:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So, first, let me preface that, because I think you gotta stop the bleeding, right? Whenever you got a problem, like, you know, somebody cuts your leg off, stop the bleeding and then figure out how you're gonna reattach the leg. The, the "stop the bleeding" thing that we have to do is reclose the border, right? Re-implement deportations, re-implement the Remain in Mexico policy. I think people don't fully realize that the reason the border is such a nightmare is that somebody will come into the country, say that they're seeking asylum, and if you're Border Patrol, you have to let them into the country. They can, they get a work permit, they can, you know, live in the country for 10, 12, 15 years, and then maybe 10, 12, 15 years later, they get a court date to adjudicate whether their asylum claim is legitimate. But of course, most of them don't show up for that court date, right?

• 30:10Speaker 03

  So that's, that's one of the main reasons why you have an open border. The way that Trump solved that is he made all these people wait in Mexico while their asylum claim was being adjudicated. Which means a lot of people never came to begin with, because they didn't wanna go to Mexico. They wanted to go to the United States, right? So you re-implement those policies, you get illegal immigration back down much lower, you know, it's, it's well north of 10,000 a day under the last couple of years of Kamala Harris's leadership. Get it much lower, and then you figure out what to do with the, I think it's probably 25 million illegal aliens who are here right now. So, the way I think about this, and I'm asked by the media all this, about this all the time, and I always say, you know, it's like eating a sandwich, right? You know, it's like asking somebody, okay, how are you gonna eat this sandwich? It's 10 times as big as your mouth.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  Well, you take the first bite, then you take the second bite, then you take the third bite, right? You do this sequentially, and I think that's how you have to think about it. So you start with a million illegal aliens who are violent criminals, who have committed violent crimes in the United States of America, and you do everything that you can. You round them up, you get them out of this country. You just have to, right?

• 31:15Shawn Ryan?

  How do you know who the criminals are?

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Because most of them have actually committed crimes in the country.

• 31:20Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Right, so either they're in American jails, or they were released. I mean Kamala Harris has released a lot of people who were arrested for committing violent crimes. And then some of them go on and commit further violent crimes. Some of them are just bouncing around. They probably are committing crimes but not being caught. But you, I mean, that's a real law enforcement focus. Get the violent criminals out of here and you focus on them. And I think there are a few other things that you gotta do to make it frankly harder for illegal immigrants to take advantage of the country, right? You gotta end the social security fraud and the Medicare fraud. So that people aren't able to get free benefits, free healthcare. What I think we ought to do, I actually have a piece of legislation on this in the Senate, is you tax remittances, right? Because you think about, somebody comes in here, they're an illegal alien, they're working,

• 32:03Speaker 03

  and they're sending all their money back home. They're not gonna send their money back home if you tax the money that they're sending back home. So they'll come, they'll go back to their country of origin. If they want to come, maybe they'll apply for a legal pathway, but they're not gonna come in illegally. And I think you also gotta make it harder for employers to hire illegal labor, right? I mean, this is one thing that, I think, you know, Republicans, we've gotta sort of accept is, part of the problem is illegal aliens breaking our laws. Part of the problem is employers are encouraging them to come in and break our laws. Because they'd much rather pay an illegal alien under the table than they'd pay an American worker. And so I think you do those things, focus on the criminal migrants, deport the people you've gotta deport, make it harder for illegal aliens to work in this country.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  I think you solve a whole chunk of the problem.

• 32:52Shawn Ryan?

  How would you, I mean, we tried to lock the border up first go around.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 32:57Shawn Ryan?

  What's gonna change this go around?

• 32:59Speaker 03

  So a couple of things. I mean, first of all, like, yeah, it wasn't perfect when Trump was president, but man, it was very good. Like, you look at the number of illegal border crossings per day, it wasn't zero. You're never getting it to zero, but man, it was much closer to zero than it's been pretty much at any time in our country's history. At least recent history, right? So you really can, just with some common sense law enforcement approaches, get things to maybe a thousand illegal crossings a day, 500 illegal crossings a day. That's one twentieth. Right of what Joe Biden has had and Kamala Harris have had. So that's a big, a big improvement. Now you got to do some other things too. You've got to finish the border wall. Right? I think you probably got to empower Border Patrol to do their job a little bit more.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  One of the problems that Trump had his first term is that, you know, because we hadn't had a real border crisis in a while, and because you didn't have until Donald Trump, somebody who took border enforcement seriously, there was a lot of like litigation and legal cases about, well, what is the president actually allowed to do? Because every time he tried to do something new, you'd have somebody file a lawsuit and say, no, no, no, the president's not allowed to do this. Right? Well, one of the things that happened is Donald Trump won all those cases, but it happened towards the end of his administration. So he's going to have law enforcement tools during his second term that he didn't have during his first term. And yeah, you got to finish construction of the border wall. There's a lot of cool technology that you can use, you know, AI, infrared.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  I've seen some crazy stuff where, you know, you put a camera in the desert and it's got, you know, 20 mile line of sight in either direction. And then somebody comes from eight miles away and, and, and the AI can identify like, is that a person? Is it a rabbit? Is it a fox? Is it something else? Oh, is it a person with a gun or a person, you know, who's just a little kid? Like you actually can use technology to identify illegal migrants who are trying to cross the border. You just have to empower law enforcement to do that stuff. And I think that's what Donald Trump wants to do. In fact, I know it's what Donald Trump wants to do. And again, it was quite successful the first term. It can be more successful the second go around.

• 35:03Shawn Ryan?

  Very good. Very good. Let's talk about government reform.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:08Shawn Ryan?

  So it looks like Elon is going to be on the cabinet and be in the charge on the government efficiency department.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 35:17Shawn Ryan?

  If that's what you call it.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 35:19Shawn Ryan?

  How do you see? Have you spoken with him about the plan? How he's gonna do it?

• 35:24Speaker 03

  Well, I've spoken, you mean with the President or with Elon?

• 35:27Shawn Ryan?

  With Elon.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, with Elon. So, I've spoken with Elon a little bit about it. And, you know, I think that the way that this is envisioned is you set up a, you know, you set up an organization with very smart people from the private sector and a few smart people from government and you go in and you say, "How are we gonna fix all the broken inefficiencies?" And the thing that's complicated about this, man, is it's gonna look much different and say the Department of Defense versus Social Security, right? Like, one of the biggest problems in Social Security is fraud. You've got a lot of illegal aliens. I've actually had friends of mine who have had their Social Security account drawn down and then when they go to the IRS, the IRS is, "Oh, yeah, an illegal alien used your Social Security number, but we're not allowed to reveal that person's information."

• 36:11Speaker 03

  A person who's using your Social Security number to defraud you, your own government is saying, "We can't tell you who that is," right?

• 36:19Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 36:19Speaker 03

  I'm dead serious. Me, crazy stuff is happening out there in this country. So, you gotta fix that problem. Now, that's a Social Security fraud problem. Now, at the Department of Defense, right, we've got a big, it's not, you know, so much a fraud problem as it is a procurement problem. So, you ask yourself, like, "How do we end up paying six times what the Chinese are paying for ships?" Or, "How, why are we paying five times what the Russians are paying for artillery shells?" You need somebody to go in there and actually fix that procurement process. And the honest answer, man, and I hate to say, because a lot of these companies do do important work, like, "We want our troops to have the best weapons." There are a lot of companies that are getting really rich because Uncle Sam is run by idiots, right?

• 37:02Speaker 03

  And so, you go in and you fix that procurement process, you do less, you know, less procurement based purely on what something costs and more procurement that tries to, you know, force companies to be a little bit more efficient. So, there's a lot that you can do there and you just gotta go department by department. And what makes it complicated is, again, each department is a little bit different from the next one and I think you just gotta, for four years, go one right after the other and make this country's government more efficient. I mean, let me give you a statistic, just absolutely insane. So, 2019...

• 37:35Speaker 03

  This government spent about $4.4 trillion, right? That's a lot of money. In 2024, our government will probably spend close to $7 trillion. Okay, so 4.4 to 7, $2.6 trillion of additional spending. A little bit of that is social security because you have an aging population. Some of that's fraud, right? Illegal aliens committing fraud. A little bit of that is Medicare because again, you've got an aging population. But of that $2.6 trillion that we're spending, that's just in four years, dude. Four years, $2.6 trillion. Probably $2.4 trillion of it has nothing to do with social security, nothing to do with Medicare. There's a lot of waste, there's a lot of fraud, and there's a lot that we can fix in that

• 38:19Speaker 03

  $2.4 trillion. Save people a lot of money, allow the private sector to grow instead of destroying the private sector, and also hopefully give people some of their hard-earned money back because if their government's wasting trillions of dollars, who's paying for that? You are and I am.

• 38:35Shawn Ryan?

  What agencies or departments of government would you start with?

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a good question. I haven't thought about that, actually. I mean, I think you start with, you've got to start with fraud in what you might call the welfare system. Okay, so Section 8 housing. Okay, and I believe, by the way, that, you know, if somebody's down on their luck, they lose their job, you don't want kids being homeless, okay? But that program should exist, number one, for people who are actually down on their luck, and number two, for people who are legally in this country to begin with. So a lot of Section 8 money goes to illegal immigrants, either through fraud or because even though Section 8 housing is not supposed to go to an illegal alien, if you're the son of an illegal alien or the daughter, then you can benefit from that system.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  So I think you've got to go into sort of the welfare system, make sure that it's actually going to the people who are entitled to it and not to, frankly, illegal aliens. That's probably where I'd start because that would help solve the immigration problem too. So you kind of kill two birds with one stone there. Man, I think the defense procurement process is really broken, and what it means is that we have a lot of weapon systems that are outdated and we're not doing as much technology innovation. And what we're giving our troops. I mean, you know this better than anybody, but like whether we win the war of the future is in large part a technology battle, right? You like, you don't want our troops out there waving around knives when the other guys have guns. You know, there's a lot of cool stuff happening in drone technology. There's a lot of cool stuff happening in underground, or I should say underwater, submersibles,

• 40:08Speaker 03

  unmanned submarines. Like, we should be giving our troops the best stuff. But to do that, you've got to fix how the defense, but the Defense Department actually buys weapons to begin with.

• 40:19Shawn Ryan?

  What about IRS, CIA, FBI?

• 40:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I don't think, I don't think the CIA wastes a ton of money. So that's not an efficiency problem, but I think it's corrupt. Right? That's, that's just a basic, like, there's lawlessness within our intelligence services. We know this after the 2016 Russia hoax. I mean, we have to remember, there are actually members of the intelligence community who are leaking stories to CNN that like Donald Trump was paid off by the Russians. Totally fabricated. None of those people have been fired. And they, they ran the same playbook in 2020. Remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? That they used our own intelligence services to justify big tech censoring that story. Right? Why did, why

• 41:05Speaker 03

  did Google, Facebook, Twitter, why did they all censor that story? Because some of the members of our own intelligence services, the FBI, the CIA, were telling them, you're not allowed to run this story because it is Russian disinformation. Right? So you have to fix that problem. I don't think you save a lot of money doing it, but you make the people's government work better, which is maybe the most important thing.

• 41:25Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. With your discussions with, with President Trump and Elon Musk, is there any estimation on what percentage of the government we can see go away? I think when he took Twitter, it was what? He, he cut 80% of the workforce?

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. That's right.

• 41:41Shawn Ryan?

  What can we expect within our own government?

• 41:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I go back to that number of, okay, we're spending $2.4 trillion more from 2019 to 2024. And what are we actually getting out of it? I think a lot of that money, you can make a lot of that money go away. Or I shouldn't say go away, you can give it back to people. People who actually earned it rather than have it being misspent by government bureaucrats. I think you can fire a lot of, or at least, you know, get rid of a lot of the federal workforce. Right? I don't know if it's 80%, but it's a lot because look, there are a lot of people. I mean, look, if you go to Washington DC right now and you go to the Social Security Administration, there are a lot of people who aren't showing up to work. And you know why they're not showing up to work is COVID. But they're still doing remote work in some of these agencies.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Like if your job is not important enough for you to show up and actually do it, then maybe you shouldn't be collecting a taxpayer check to begin with. And so I think there's a lot that you can cut. There's a lot of efficiencies you can get out of there. And I really do think you can save hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe even trillions of dollars, just by making the people's government work more efficiently.

• 42:44Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you, I mean, so just on this point, one more thing there is like, okay, think about this. So I'm sure you've used the VA system before. I know I have. When I got out of the Marine Corps in 07, the VA was the main way that I got healthcare from 2007 to 2012. So here's my read of the VA, being a senator, dealing with the VA, but also experiencing it personally. Probably 90, 95% of the people who work at the VA are fantastic human beings. But then you've got like a small slice of the VA that's bad apples that make it really hard for everybody else to do their job. This is why veterans spend three hours on the phone trying to get an appointment. This is why you have people committing suicide because they're waiting 28 days to get an appointment with a doctor, like just crazy, crazy stuff.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  But it's a small sliver of the VA. You ought to fire those people, right? Give the people who are doing their job a raise, a promotion. Fire the people who aren't doing their job. You save money. You also make these agencies work better for the American people.

• 43:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm a, I'm a veteran as well. I tried the VA system. I never walked back. And, um, and so I am curious to know, would you ever consider privatized healthcare for, for veterans?

• 43:57Speaker 03

  I think I'd consider, and Donald Trump was really good at this, doesn't get enough credit for this particular innovation, but giving veterans more choice, right? So, yeah, let's say you're in a rural hospital, your closest VA is 120 miles away. Why force a veteran to drive two and a half hours to that VA facility when he can get cheaper and good care right in his backyard, right? So I do think that we ought to open up choice and optionality for veterans. You know, I think that there is areas where the VA actually works very well, so I wouldn't say get rid of the whole thing. I would say give people more choice. I think you'll save money in the process, you also give veterans a lot more optionality.

• 44:34Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Speaking of technology, you being a tech venture capitalist. You understand the importance of AI technology. Xi Jinping has said the winner to the AI race will achieve global domination. How are we gonna get in that mix? You know, especially with our power grid. I mean, we need more power, the power, artificial intelligence. The left wants us on this green initiative, they don't want to go nuclear. I mean, how are we gonna, how are we gonna compete?

• 45:06Speaker 03

  Well, if the left gets their way, we won't. There's just no way around it. I mean, you know, what I didn't realize until I actually, you know, looked into this is the amount of power you need to run modern AI is absolutely off the charts, right? I mean, it's, you'll need twice as much power, three times as much electricity as we have in this country right now. If you get AI going in all the ways that it could. I mean, things like, okay, let's say you take a picture of your arm and you send it off to an AI company and that AI, the company can tell you with 100% certainty whether you have any skin cancer on your arm, right? Think about how much money that's gonna save.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  Think about how many lives that's gonna save. But the power you need to run all that computing technology is crazy. It's like... Take what you need to run New York City, add AI, and then double or triple what you need to run New York City, just in this one small geographic area. So number one is you've got to unleash American power. Now, the good news is we actually have it, right? Between nuclear, natural gas, and everything else, we have the power that we need. We could run an AI economy for 500 years just with the natural gas that we have in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The problem is Kamala Harris won't let us get that stuff out of the ground. She has decided to prioritize oil and gas in Iran and Venezuela, then oil and gas created by American workers that's mined from American territory.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  It's totally insane. That's number one, is you really got to unleash American energy. And unfortunately, we've got Kamala Harris who wants to do the exact opposite. The other big thing, man, is, look, I believe in merit. Whether you're black, white, I don't care where you come from. I don't care who you sleep with. Like, I want the best people for the job. And the way that we lose the AI race is by all of this ridiculous diversity crap that forces companies and forces innovators to not hire the best people. Like, this is my theory, by the way, about what's really changed about Elon Musk. Like, dude, Elon Musk was like a center-left Democrat 10 years ago. Like, what really changed with Elon Musk? Elon Musk wants to get to Mars. And to get to Mars, he needs the smartest engineers in the world. He wants to hire who he wants to hire,

• 47:21Speaker 03

  not who a government diversity bureaucrat tells him who to hire. I think that's the big reason why Elon Musk has become more conservative, is he just wants to hire the best people for the job. He doesn't want bureaucrats telling him who he has to hire. That's the second thing, is we've got to end this ridiculous diversity, equity, inclusion garbage. Best person for the job, good old-fashioned American merit, that's how you win the race to AI, that's how you get to Mars. Final point I make is, you know, think about like, you know, AI, you need software and you need hardware, okay?

• 47:54Speaker 03

  What is the hardware? It's computer chips. And this is where China has really, really invested. And America's got to do a better job. It's too hard to create computer chips in this country. You need power, you need water, you need minerals, you need rare earth materials. You need a whole host of things. But if China dominates the computer chips, they're going to dominate AI. Because you can't do AI without the next gen computer chips. So we've got to invest in creating that infrastructure to do the next generation of computer chips. And let me give you just one example of how insane this stuff is. So there was a big bill that came out of Congress a couple of years ago. And the whole point of it was to promote the American computer chip industry, to manufacture more computer chips in America. Something that I think is a good idea.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  Agree or disagree, we got to make more computer chips. How could it be a bad idea? I mean, look, I don't think, I think most people agree with this. Probably 90% of Americans agree with us on this, okay? So here's the problem, though. The way that that program has been implemented is Gina Raimondo, who's Kamala Harris's Commerce Secretary, she's trying to make Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor and all these companies that are manufacturing in the United States of America check all of these ridiculous progressive politics boxes before they can manufacture. Like, for example, do you have the right diversity policies? Do you have the right human resources policies? Are you targeting your recruitment to have the right racial mix,

• 49:23Speaker 03

  depending on the communities that you're operating in? And these companies are like, we just want to hire the best people for the job. Like, does anybody really think that Intel is going to discriminate against people based on their skin color? It's ridiculous. Let them hire the best people for the job. But it goes to show how progressive politics destroys the actual infrastructure that we need to build this stuff out.

• 49:45Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for clarifying that.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:46Shawn Ryan?

  On the subject of censorship, since we're on with Elon, you know, we know what's happening in Brazil.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 49:53Shawn Ryan?

  They blocked X. Now they've taken Starlink, to my understanding. Are we gonna see any blowback if you and President Trump take office?

• 50:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 50:02Shawn Ryan?

  About all of the censorship that happened before?

• 50:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:04Shawn Ryan?

  Mark Zuckerberg just released that, like, letter saying, oh, I fell to, you know, victim to the FBI.

• 50:13Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 50:13Shawn Ryan?

  Pressuring me to censor. Are we gonna see any repercussions?

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 50:17Shawn Ryan?

  For people that censored?

• 50:18Speaker 03

  Yes. We're gonna fire the people who censored. We're gonna fire the people who were telling Mark Zuckerberg and all the other technology companies that they needed to censor. Fire the, you know, the 50 intelligence operatives who said the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. A lot of those people still have security clearances. Strip every single one of those people with their security clearances. Fire every single person. You cannot lie. Take your position of public trust and lie to the American people for political purposes. It's disgraceful, and people have to suffer consequences for it. Now, the other thing is, we've gotta be willing to use American soft power to promote a free speech society. So you talk about Brazil. The leader, I forget exactly which official it was within the European Union,

• 51:01Speaker 03

  but sent Elon this threatening letter that basically said, "We're gonna arrest you if you platform Donald Trump", who, by the way, is the likely next president of the United States. So what America should be saying is, oh, if NATO wants us to continue supporting them, and NATO wants us to continue to be a good participant in this military alliance, why don't you respect American values and respect free speech? Excuse me. It's insane that we would support a military alliance if that military alliance isn't gonna be pro-free speech. I think we can do both, but we've gotta say, American power comes with certain strings attached. One of those is respect free speech, especially in our European allies. Like, look, I'm not gonna go to some backwards country and tell them how to live their lives,

• 51:47Speaker 03

  but European countries should theoretically share American values, especially about some very basic things like free speech.

• 51:54Shawn Ryan?

  This is my last question.

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 51:56Shawn Ryan?

  We're running out of time here, and I just, I did a lot of, I talked to a lot of just everyday Americans.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:02Shawn Ryan?

  And the, the, the one thing that everybody wants me to ask you is...

• 52:09Shawn Ryan?

  Childcare costs, healthcare costs.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, man.

• 52:12Shawn Ryan?

  I just talked to my brother-in-law. He's paying $60,000 a year on childcare and healthcare costs.

• 52:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:19Shawn Ryan?

  And so Kamala voted against the childcare tax credit.

• 52:24Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 52:24Shawn Ryan?

  Several years ago.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 52:27Shawn Ryan?

  How are we gonna make, how are you and President Trump going to make healthcare, childcare, these kind of everyday necessities more affordable for everyday American people?

• 52:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it's funny, man. Kamala Harris says that she now supports the child tax credit. The biggest expansion of child tax credit was when Donald Trump was president. And like you just said, she voted against it. And this is one of the reasons why Trump joked last night at the debate. He joked like she's gonna put on a red MAGA hat. Because every position that she once held, she's running away from. And she's running to Donald Trump's positions because they're smart and because they're popular. But I think it's important, like, don't believe what Kamala Harris says that she wants to do. Believe what she's actually done and what she's actually failed to do. But on childcare costs, I think there are a couple of things that we gotta do here to give Americans more choice. But also, I think if you give them more choice, you can lower costs in the process.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  So you ask yourself, there's a lot of federal support that goes to childcare. But it's kinda crazy, it only goes to one particular model. And that model is a daycare center that you pay for, which, look, a lot of families wanna rely on that model, a lot of families need to rely on that model. I'm not saying we penalize them, but we should allow other families who wanna use different things to do that too. Like, for example, let's say that your church wants to have a daycare system set up. A lot of people would prefer to have their daycare also be their church because they know those people, right? They trust those people already. If they've already got a relationship through their church. The federal government does not help church-focused daycare centers. They do help a lot of non-church-focused daycare centers.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  So if you're a nonprofit organization and you are in the community and you wanna set up a daycare center, we should not be penalizing you for wanting to do that. You oughta have the same support that everybody else has. Another example of this is, let's say, for example... You know, you have an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent. They'd like to help you with the kids, but for financial reasons, it's just not possible. There are a lot of ways in which we make it harder for grandparents to play a role in the childcare of their grandchildren. And again, like, some people don't have access to grandparents, and that's fine. But if your grandparents are there and want to help, we should be giving them the same supports that we give to external daycare centers.

• 54:50Speaker 03

  But there's so much federal money, so much taxpayer money that goes to just the daycare center, it should be going to the nonprofits, too. It should be going to the churches, too. And I think it should be going to the grandparents and the aunts and uncles, too. And if you spread out and gave people options, right? Gave people more choices, then that means those daycare centers are under less pressure. You have fewer people who are trying to use those resources, so it drives down the cost of all childcare. And that's, I mean, it is the craziest federal policy that we basically, we have these things called child development block grants, and there are other federal programs, and it subsidizes one model of childcare. Give Americans choice. Let them do what they want to do, and I think that will lower the cost of childcare for

• 55:35Speaker 03

  a lot of American families.

• 55:36Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for that.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:37Shawn Ryan?

  If I could, I have one more question popped in.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  Absolutely, man.

• 55:40Shawn Ryan?

  I asked President Trump this when I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago, and I said that I thought that the most challenging part of your campaign was the women vote.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure.

• 55:50Shawn Ryan?

  How are you guys going to win over the women vote? I mean, Taylor Swift just came out last night to endorse Kamala.

• 55:58Speaker 03

  Well, you know, look, I, all respect to Taylor Swift. I don't think that billionaires endorsing candidates, celebrities endorsing candidates really matters that much. I think that we have to make our pitch to the American people. And in particular, you know, there are issues that affect all Americans, but I think affect women voters in particular. So, public safety, right? Women voters want their kids to be able to grow up in safe communities. They want their kids to not be affected by the terrible fentanyl that's coming across the southern border. I mean, I was in Georgia the other day, and these cops showed me fentanyl disguised as child's candy, nerds, like nerds candies, because the cartels are using this to get around our security protocols.

• 56:41Speaker 03

  But what happens when you're a mom and your kid picks up a packet of candy on the playground, and it kills them? Because they ate a piece of candy and it happened to be fentanyl that a cartel had brought into our communities. Or, you know, let's say you're a single woman and you want to ride the New York subway or you want to walk through Central Park in public safety, but Kamala Harris has allowed millions of criminal migrants to take control of our communities. I think our message to single women, to married women is, we want you to grow up in safety and security and we're going to pursue policies that make it easier for you to walk around the street in your own country and feel safe and secure. Whether you've got kids, whether it's just you, you and your family deserve to be safe and secure and that's something Kamala Harris has taken from you.

• 57:24Speaker 03

  And I think if we make it about policy and how our policies make communities safer, then I think we win on that argument and I think we're going to get a lot of women voters to come on to our side. Another issue, right? We know this in reality about, I've been told that about 70% of the grocery shopping in this country is done by women. Okay? So, like, I like to go to the grocery store, you know, so in my family, I do more of the grocery shopping than my wife, but I think most families, the wife tends to do more of the grocery shopping. Okay, so they're affected by the rise in food and they're affected by the fact that a lot of young people can't afford to buy a home, right? A lot of young women would like to buy a home and they can't do it because of Kamala Harris's policies.

• 58:06Speaker 03

  So I think if we hammer home the message that you can't buy a home, you can't buy groceries, you can't afford to turn on the heat at night because Kamala Harris has made food, energy and housing more expensive, then I think that will have a special appeal to women voters too. Again, it affects everybody, but it maybe affects women a little bit more.

• 58:21Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for clarifying.

• 58:23Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 58:24Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Mr. Vance, I just wanted to say that I'm a former SEAL and CIA contractor. I have a lot of colleagues that I keep in touch with who are still in and out. Everybody is behind you guys, including me. I wish you the best of luck and I have one more thing to say. Not everybody's going to vote, so if you are going to vote, go drag a buddy out.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  That's exactly right.

• 58:48Shawn Ryan?

  Get out of the vote and that's how we win this thing.

• 58:50Speaker 03

  That's how we win this thing. Thanks, man.

• 58:52Shawn Ryan?

  God bless.

• 58:53Speaker 03

  Good to see you.

• 58:54Shawn Ryan?

  God bless you.