#528: Catalina Lauf on Freedom

Catalina Lauf is running for election to the U. S. House to represent Illinois' 16th Congressional District. She previously served as an advisor at the US Department of Commerce. In this conversation, we discuss misinformation, term limits, social media censorship, gun rights, immigration, free enterprise, law and order, and education. ======================= Public Rec is the first to bring tailored sizing to leisurewear so that you don’t have to choose between comfort and style. They make leisurewear in waist and inseam sizes because they believe comfort starts with a better fit. And when things fit better, they look better. No tailors. No settling. No stress. Comfort and style, all in one. Check out publicrec.com/pomp and use POMP10 at checkout for 10% off your order. Step into a better fit today with Public Rec. ======================= As one of the largest and oldest Bitcoin exchanges in the world, Kraken is consistently named one of the best places to buy and sell crypto online, thanks to our excellent service, low fees, versatile funding options and rigorous security standards -- but this is only part of the story. We’ve been on the forefront of the blockchain revolution since 2011: http://www.kraken.com ======================= Coinbase Wallets are adding support for .crypto and .zil domains through their partnership with Unstoppable Domains. Unstoppable Domains provides an all-in-one solution for blockchain domains. You can send money using these new domains instead of long Bitcoin wallet addresses, while also storing your domain in Coinbase's collectibles section. Go to unstoppabledomains.com in the dapp browser to register and manage your domains. =======================

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

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Catalina Loffe is running for election to the US House to represent Illinois's 16th congressional district. She previously served as an advisor to the US Department of Commerce. In this conversation, we discuss misinformation, term limits, social media censorship, gun rights, immigration, free enterprise, law and order, and education. I really enjoyed this conversation with Catalina, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Public Rec. Public Rec is the

• 0:42Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:25Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:53Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:29Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Catalina here with me. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Yes, thanks for having me.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  For sure. Let's just jump right into your background. You were running for Congress, but you spent some time in the private sector and in the public sector. So kind of walk us through your career before you decided to run for Congress.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and also I'll walk you through just kind of my background. So I was born and raised outside of Chicago in a really small town. My family came here from Guatemala, my mother's side, and my father built his own business. He came from a depression era household in Chicago. And, you know, they really instilled the values of hard work and liberty and free enterprise, especially coming from a different country where you come to the United States and it's the land of opportunity. And so a big part of my platform is preserving those values of, you know, the ones I was raised upon, but also the values that really make the United States the greatest country in the world. And, and

• 4:56Speaker 02

  so I'm really excited. I'm now running again in Illinois 16th District. I was in Illinois 14th previously in 2020. But to really make change, and I think, you know, people of all backgrounds now are starting to step up. A lot of people in the private sector are starting to step up because they see what's going on in this country. So I worked in the private sector. I was appointed by President Trump to the US Department of Commerce and really saw kind of firsthand how the pro-growth policies from the Trump administration were really impacting people in the district. Meanwhile, you see kind of the far left rising, the AOCs, this very socialist communist Marxist ideology coming out from, from women,

• 5:38Speaker 02

  especially the Squad, these younger voices infiltrating the millennial community. And I took a hard look and said, well, who's fighting for our values? Who is telling these stories of what it's like to, to have family in a different country and what opportunities are here? Who's telling the story from the business owner perspective or from the, the person benefiting from the free enterprise perspective? We need new faces and new perspectives. So, and now I'm running again, and it's been an amazing experience thus far, but it's a hard job running for Congress.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  For sure. And so let's just talk about, I think, you know, what has become a pretty interesting dynamic, right? If you look at Trump, Trump really understood social media. He understood how to leverage a lot of the platforms to get a message out, speak directly to the people, cut out the middleman. And regardless of what people think about his specific policies, the way that he communicated was very, very effective and ended up obviously launching him into the presidency. And and then kind of everything that he did while he was acting as president. We've now seen other people realize the power of doing that. And so AOC and a number of other people. So it shows that it's not so much one side of the aisle. It's more just the communication tactic is is

• 6:56Speaker 03

  quite effective. And on the other side of that aisle, and sort of Democratic viewpoint, it seems like the message is very much geared toward telling people what they want to hear, right? Hey, you're going to get free money. You're going to get support. You're going to get all these things. It sounds like you and the Republican side is much more around free enterprise. You know, no one's coming to save you and you're going to have to kind of do this stuff yourself. And so do you think that either side's kind of principles or perspective really matters as much as the communication tactic? Or does it know everyone's going to use these communication tactics and therefore the principles, the perspectives, that's ultimately what will prevail? Because there won't be a difference in the communication tactics moving forward?

• 7:41Speaker 02

  That's an awesome question. And I my theory on this is, number one, for a long time, if Republicans had the right messengers, we would be winning right now for a long time. And this also goes for both sides of the aisle, frankly, is that you kind of have these buttoned up people that they go to Washington, they don't really communicate with their constituents, you don't really know what's going on. And I think that all really broke with the digital era and the age, and I call it the age of authenticity, where you have more people interested in like reality TV, you have access to people as human beings in a broader way that we just never did before, based on the digital communication.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Right? How come a CEO of a major Fortune 500 company or a tech company can get on a Zoom meeting and talk to thousands of people all across the entire world in real time, talking about the values of the company or what's going on and updating the company. But how come our elected officials aren't doing that? There is a gap in transparency, especially as you kind of rotate out of a lot of our members of Congress are significantly older. I don't know the average age of people currently in Congress, but it's not millennials. And so when you look at kind of the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Socialist currently is our message still wins on the Republican side, but we need to have better messengers. And President Trump was frankly, one of the first people to really break that mold. He broke that kind of invisible wall between the majority of the population and then this ivory tower in government. Basically, not only in the way he communicated, but just being able to understand his base. And what was incredible about it is that he was able to communicate to so many people in the Bible Belt, in the flyover cities and flyover country, and also people of all different walks of life. I

• 9:49Speaker 02

  mean, we made massive gains in different areas and demographics and different socioeconomic levels, not only because of his policies like you were mentioning before, but like you said, the communication barrier. And so you look at the Socialists and the Democrats now, AOC, using kind of these mediums of video and Twitter. I mean, she's got a massive following. Why is that? Because she's communicating to an audience, and especially millennials to a base, her ideas are awful, but she's able to really capture that. So on our side, we need better communicators that are really hammering down our message of free enterprise,

• 10:29Speaker 02

  personal responsibility, and just going back and defending the values of our country and the US Constitution.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, and so I think that most people who watch this podcast have figured, I've never talked about this before, but most people I think have figured out that I'm an independent in terms of, I frankly think that like the extremes of all sides of the political spectrum are probably missing the point, right? And so it goes back to this, this kind of like, the nonpartisan topics though, that is fascinating, that I think actually everyone agrees, whether it's you're more of a centrist or you're on the extreme ends, it's like something like term limits, right? Where people literally say like, wait a second, can, should somebody be able to, regardless of their political leanings, enter politics at 25 or 30 and literally do it until they die?

• 11:15Speaker 03

  Like, that seems pretty crazy, especially when you start to think about innovation, the ability to understand technology and the evolution there, fresh ideas, like, just talk a little bit about those term limits and kind of, you know, what is the right solution? Should there be term limits? How should we think about, you know, those being imposed? Is, should people be grandfathered in? Should there be things that you could do to maybe get around term limits? If you're a really good, you know, kind of governor of, of the people that you're elected to govern, how do you think about that?

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's also a great question. You know, here in Illinois, especially, I think, coming from a deep blue, kind of blue state, both sides are, you have this idea that both sides are kind of just career politician type of mentality, right? And so this term limits, especially in a state like Illinois, is a huge thing because you have so many people that are there for so long. And then from a national perspective, that is happening all across the board. I mean, you're right, people should not be in Congress for 30, 40 years. I mean, this is ridiculous. What kind of real world issues are you solving for the future? You know, when you're looking at things like, how do we talk about student debt?

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Or new innovative tech, innovative technologies? How are you even having those conversations if, if the mentality is kind of so, I don't want to say archaic, but it's true. I mean, they're, if they can't even solve real world problems 30 years ago, how are they going to solve it presently? And currently in the future. So I'm a huge proponent for term limits. It's an issue that both people, people from all walks of life, independents, libertarians, Republicans and Democrats can come to terms with. But we, but the problem why I think it has never been solved is because neither side has wanted to solve it. Because a lot of these people, you look at, you know, career politicians, that is a career for them.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  When you look at the founders, for example, our founders, they never intended to go to Washington for 30 years. Why? Because they, they had, they were lawyers, they were farmers, they had their own things going on. They had families back home. And not to say that, you know, politicians don't have their own careers, but by and large, they have made a career out of politics. And so it's more beneficial for them to kind of sit there and stay in and do enough to get reelected and then ultimately get there. What needs to happen, because for so long, I think we've seen, you know, the founders argued that, why don't you vote somebody out of office then if you don't want them to be stuck in there forever? Right? Unfortunately, you know,

• 13:57Speaker 02

  politics has become such a money game, it has become such a, it rewards the career politicians, it rewards the kind of establishment on both sides. And I'm really excited to kind of be in this new generation of disruption, where a lot of these people now on both sides of the aisle frankly, don't care. They're like, I'm gonna step in, I'm gonna disrupt it. We saw the disruption in corporate America and, you know, that's the rise of Silicon Valley. And I think we're seeing it in politics now. And so I'm really looking forward to people, champions from both sides of the aisle saying, look, I'm gonna go in there and I'm gonna actually pass term limits because we're young, we're millennials, we don't want to be here forever.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  And, and let's actually get things done. So I think you're seeing that shift now.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  So I think most people will agree that 40, 50 year politicians will probably not be the answer. And I think that you, I, and other people, you know, kind of in our age brackets will say like, oh, like just put a bunch of young people in there. The argument against that would obviously be, wait a second, all these young kids have no clue what they're talking about. They literally are, you know, wide eyed, bushy tailed, very naive about the world and therefore they're going to make just poor decisions, not because they've been around forever, but because their inclination or default is just go disrupt everything, change everything. Maybe the truth is actually somewhere in between. It shouldn't be that we protect the status quo 100%, but also we shouldn't disrupt everything. And so how do you think about that balance between maybe fresh ideas and innovation,

• 15:28Speaker 03

  but also experience and, you know, some of the things that people who have been around for a while have learned over time?

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a, that's a great point. I think a way to counter argue, I think, the young, bright eyed, bushy tailed concept is, you know, we have a lot of people now, millennials, creating billion dollar companies, right? I mean, they are successful, we have new ideas, we are, we are innovators. And, and a lot of that is, is a generational thing, not to say that other generations haven't been able to do that, but we're, we're, we have a lot of, a lot to offer. And on top of that, you know, you, you surround, you're only as good as who you surround yourself with.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  When you look at, you know, the, the Capitol, or the Capitol Hill, or the swamp, or whatever you want to call it, there are people who have been there who know the game for so long. You have experts in different areas of, you know, policy wonks to, you know, your chiefs of staff who've been there for a long time and have served under a lot of people. And so I think that's a really good, happy ground is, is your team, is having people that are able to understand the concept, but then ultimately the, the candidates or the members be new. And it's not necessarily just.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  An age thing. I mean, if you have somebody who's significantly older, who's who's left the private sector, or just wants to step up and get involved and run for office now, there's a lot to say that too. But you look at, you know, what is actually being solved, right? If we actually ran our our government like a business, if we actually ran things efficiently, I think a lot of our problems would be solved. And I think we'd be able to come together a lot more as a country as well and actually say, look, let's let's talk about these things in a thoughtful way. But you're seeing now, you know, I always say, how is how does somebody in office for 30 years, but you still you're still talking about the same problem?

• 17:29Speaker 02

  I mean, you this is it. So I think the I'm more lean on the new faces, new perspective, not necessarily age, but just in experience in the political space does is not necessarily, I think, where our country needs to be now.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  So as we think through, there's the age or experience level of those who are elected to be leaders in our country, whether they're old or young, the platforms are changing as well. And so where it used to be kind of very much dependent on the filters and the middlemen of the social media, you had to go and talk to the New York Times, you had to go talk to the network television. You don't have to do that. And you can talk directly to people on social media and other platforms. But at the same time that we're seeing a rise in the adoption of that, we're also seeing a rise in the challenges that those platforms face, whether it's misinformation, whether it's all sort of different political ideologies. So just talk a little bit maybe about the social media platforms, how you see their

• 18:30Speaker 03

  role in all of this. And are there things that are kind of out of bounds and they should release? Or should we approach it with a truly free market approach of just, hey, anyone can say anything. And the platform is just a platform that is not supposed to be an editorial type decision? How do you view all that?

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I don't think that, you know, these platforms should have this bias. And look, I experienced it as a candidate prior to even when we saw President Trump being deplatformed after the election.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Censorship was happening all across the board. And, you know, our argument, as I'm running as a Republican, but this is a topic that a lot of people should be concerned about, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, is this is limiting our free speech. You know, if our founders didn't want these monopolies or a government to be so gargantuan, why would they want this to happen in the private sector? They are completely overreaching their bounds. And you see it. I mean, I remember when we were saying

• 19:38Speaker 02

  this excuse for conservatives or whatever, libertarians. But it was, it's really, it's truly happening. And, and I think the argument too, is that we just want a seat at the table. We just want an opportunity to, to have these discussions and to have a voice at the seat of the table. We're not asking for or, or filtering anything out. We're just asking for a voice. And a big topic, you know, my, a lot of millennials weren't even thinking about the election, at least, you know, some that I knew about, until President Trump was deplatformed. And I know a big thing was, you know, how is the Ayatollah of Iran or some of these other world leaders allowed to have a voice

• 20:23Speaker 02

  and have a platform when the president of the free world is not? I mean, these are really concerning

• 20:31Speaker 02

  questions that need answered. And, and I hope that they get answered because this is a gross infringement on civil or on individual liberties. And again, if they can do that to President Trump, they can do that to anybody. People should have freedom of thought. They should have the ability to choose who they want to speak with, who they want to hear from. And that's just being very much.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  stifled right now, but at the same time, you can make the argument, why don't we have other companies come in? We live in a free market society. We have competition. Government does not own Twitter and these other companies. Why doesn't somebody fill that void? But then you saw what happened with Parler, where everybody kind of came together and took Parler off of even it be an app or as an app. So there are a lot of things that need to be solved. And I think this is an area that both sides can come together on as well.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  Do you feel like as there's other platforms that start to pop up, whether it's Parler or others, do you feel like there is colluding among the large platforms to kind of attack those competitors and keep them monopoly? Do you feel like, no, those platforms are just violating some of the terms of service and that's why they're being treated the way they are? Like, how do you do that?

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's, that's a tough question, because ultimately, who's deciding the rules? You know, what was, what was ultimately decided? What was the deciding factor, rather, of Parler getting kicked off of Google and the Android App Store, or sorry, or the iPhone platform, whatever it was, whatever app it was not being able to be purchased on or downloaded from? What was the deciding factor? Was there collusion? I'm not sure. But it just kind of looks bad when all these companies all of a sudden decide to take away another option that was clearly gaining some momentum. And particularly for conservative voices.

• 22:37Speaker 03

  And so when you look at it, like, is there a line? And I'll give you really extreme examples, right? So if somebody is actually calling for violence, right? There's a very kind of undeniable call for violence. Not something that could be interpreted as violence, but a call to violence, or something that is racist or sexist, or kind of name your thing that would be controversial and potentially out of bounds. If it's like very obvious, should there be some limitation of free speech on these platforms? Or do you think that it's more of just like, the truly free market and the platform should have no say in who can use their platform and what they can say? And I'll caveat the whole question with, like, I don't know if there's a rating. It's right. I actually think that it's almost

• 23:20Speaker 03

  more of like, everyone has an opinion. But I don't know if there's like, an answer that we're all going to get to that's like everyone's ago, that that is the answer.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  There's a big issue with choosing sides, right? I mean, I have seen a lot of situations on Facebook, Twitter, you name it, Instagram, where one side is clearly being told that they are racist or misinformation and that, you know, you have to put up all this, hey, with a caveat, hey, do you, you know, this is misinformation, why don't you kind of look more into it? There is a clear bias that happens. I think if, if a platform is ultimately going to decide on what their bounds are in terms of violence or race, racial comments, or anything of that nature,

• 24:13Speaker 02

  then there needs to be a criteria that is, is universal across the board with all different types of people. And that's not happening right now. I mean, there's countless examples of one side kind of being favored. And, and then again, back to kind of the parlor example where, you know, if one person was particularly calling for violence, or whatever it might have been, you shut down the entire platform for the thousands of other users because one person in particular was saying this. At least be fair, I think, if they are going to implement these things. And then ultimately, I will say, I mean, bullying and things like that, it's really tough on social media.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  I'm sure a lot of people on both sides of the aisle also think that that, that's huge. Yeah, is there an argument, don't read the comments and don't get caught up in it? Sure. But at some point, like when somebody's death threatening you, or deliberately, you know, coming at you in a very aggressive way, is there a line that needs to be drawn as well? So that, that's a, it's a complex problem. But I think ultimately, we just need to strive for, for equal playing field for both sides of, so all voices are heard.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  So another topic that has recently come up is diversity, racism, and kind of everything that is related to those two. There's a very strong push, and I think most people would agree, an important push on diversity, whether it's in corporate boardrooms, on executive teams, in the funding of companies and founders, who the venture capitalists are, all the way to on the political spectrum, you know, kind of who the elected officials are, who is nominated, and who serve in a variety of different roles. With that said, recently there was a politician who basically said, "I'm only going to vote for minorities. I'm

• 26:19Speaker 03

  only going to vote for a white person if they are LGBT." And so at what point and where is, I guess, the line between the push for diversity, which I think most people, again, regardless of their political leaning skills, like that is an important topic, all the way to kind of what I would think is a pretty extreme position of, you know, race and sexuality. How do you just view this balance? And how do you just think through it? Again, there's no right answer, right? It really is, I think, kind of each person's individual perspective. How do you think through that?

• 26:56Speaker 02

  So I, as a Hispanic woman, I talk about this all the time of, you know, why are you putting people on boards just based on their ethnicity, or based on their gender, or, you know, whatever it may be? It should be based on merit. And as the person, say you are being put on a board, or you are being elevated in a different position, wouldn't you want to be there because you worked for it and because you felt this, this personal responsibility of, yes, I deserve a seat at the table because of X, Y, and Z? When you bring in race and really dividing people from, by color and by gender...

• 27:39Speaker 02

  You're basically, you're forced to choose. You're basically saying, well, one is better than the other. And that's why we want to elevate this particular voice or this particular gender. And I just don't think that that's fair for this society. I mean, we are, we are a country based on personal responsibility. You have a lot of different people from all ethnic backgrounds in very different industries. And, and people should, should demand accountability by merit, not based on this kind of made up structure of, well,

• 28:20Speaker 02

  you know, that you're a minority, therefore you shouldn't have, or therefore you deserve a seat at the table because you have been for so long oppressed. I don't believe that. I think we live, again, in the greatest country in the world, where all races are elevated and, and should be elevated based on personal responsibility, not by picking and choosing. We're in a very dangerous spot when you do choose and pick and choose, because ultimately, somebody is going to feel resentful for that. And, you know, we should be encouraging diversity of thought and voices instead of just, again, diversity based on identity politics.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  For sure. And so I guess as part of this, this bleeds into, I think, a whole bunch of other topics when it comes to individual personnel or individual responsibility, personal liberties. And one of the things that also has cooperated with me is gun rights. And so there's a really, I don't know, complex situation, right? When it comes to, let's say, the Second Amendment, people's right to bear arms, combined with the safety of the public. And so there was recently a mass shooting that occurred inside of a supermarket. When people, I think, see the headline, they say, hey, there's a mass shooting that occurred. Immediately, it's let's go and, and kind of install much more.

• 29:49Speaker 03

  Um, kind of stringent uh gun laws, right, or gun control laws. Uh, what surprised me, and again, you know, I'll be the first one to say that in many of these cases, uh, you just don't know the nuances until you start to look into it and you really gotta kind of understand some of it. Uh, it seems like a rational argument, hey, we should have gun control. Uh, and you know, there's a spectrum there, right? Obviously, having uh, you know, ID before you buy a gun is some form of gun control, but then there's like very, very stringent outlawing of guns, etc. Uh, but in uh Colorado specifically, it appears that there was an assault rifle ban. There was uh, you know, um, all sorts of mental illness type uh rules in place. And just a lot of the things that people normally call for around gun control were already in place,

• 30:34Speaker 03

  and then there was still a shooting. And so is it something where um, you know, using gun control as one example of many, many of these topics, where rules can actually change the situation or address the situation? Or is it just a thing where it's like criminals and bad people are gonna do bad things? And part of being a criminal is like breaking the rules, right? Like, and again, I don't think it's the right answer, but I think this specific situation, as I've dug more into it, it was actually shocking to me, uh frankly, of like, a lot of these measures around gun control seemed to actually be have uh have been implemented in uh Colorado, yet there was still the shooting. And so how do you think through that? Is there a right answer?

• 31:15Speaker 03

  Um, just kind of, you know, i- if you were an elected official, how you would um kind of act in this situation?

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and what happened was was tragic. But we look at, you're right. I mean, the amount of laws that were already put in place. When you look at federally, the amount of um gun laws that are already passed from a federal perspective, and then individually, I mean, I live, you know, close to Chicago where we have the strictest gun laws possible. And unfortunately, you know, 25 people were shot just a couple of weeks ago. Nobody in the media really talked about that. A little boy was shot. When you have a situation like what happened in Boulder, it's very sad that, you know, people are quick to politicize things without actually breaking down the facts.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  A big thing that I saw too was, you know, the race of the shooter and all this stuff. When we start talking about just everything from a surface level perspective in the soundbite kind of era that we live in, you're not, the facts are not able to come through unless you dig really deep. And you were right. I mean, the laws in Boulder, how could have, how could you, they've done, they've put every single gun law possible that could have, quote unquote, in their eyes prevented it, yet it still happened, right? There are bad people that do bad things. It is the person, not the weapon. And, but when you look at it again,

• 32:51Speaker 02

  why are individual liberties were instilled in the first place? We must respect that too for the overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens. And every time we have these conversations when a tragedy happens, or we try to push more gun control measures when there already are some in place, then we are chipping away at that individual liberty every time. And so the focus needs to be, yes, is there areas to improve on in mental health? Sure, let's look at that. But let's also look at why, you know, I heard a statistic that, not a statistic, I heard a, I was reading about this and the FBI had,

• 33:35Speaker 02

  he'd already been on, you know, the watch list or he had been associated with somebody in the FBI watch list. He was on somebody's radar. And Again, that's all the government involvement, that's all the control possible, and yet it unfortunately still happened. We need to take a hard look at the reality that that people will do evil things, but at no matter what the situation is, it should not be at the expense of the law-abiding, free American citizen. And that's ultimately what gun what gun control, when they impose those things, it ultimately hurts the law-abiding citizen.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  So we don't know each other super well, but I'm guessing that you don't believe the solution is just, hey, you know, allow it to happen. And so, you know, being meaning like a mass shooting or a significant negative event, what is the solution, right? If you're running for Congress and you're in that seat, and somebody says to you, hey, how do we prevent these situations from occurring? What do you think the solution is?

• 34:42Speaker 02

  How can you prevent a, again, when you have all the the control in the in the world possible in a situation, again, like in Boulder, how can you prevent that? You've seen situations that people who are armed have been able to actually thwart these situations or prevent more killings from happening. A lot of these situations, when you look at the the mass shootings, they happen in, I don't think this particular instance was one of these, but, you know, schools or where where weapons aren't allowed. So ultimately, the very vulnerable areas that a mass shooter will go in and and understand that they are not going to be met with a aggression back, right?

• 35:26Speaker 02

  That's a tough one to answer, but ultimately, I am for individual liberty, preserving our Second Amendment right as much as possible. And people need to understand that, again, criminals will get

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Whether it was a gun, or whether or not it was a truck, or you know, a criminal will commit the crime that they want to commit. And again, we maybe we need to look at the more of the mental health issue that was happening with that particular individual. But in terms of gun control, that's not the avenue that I would be looking to solve the problem with.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  Got it. Let's move on and talk about immigration. Your parents came here from another country and made both life for themselves. They've, I think it's you and your sister have two highly productive children that grew up in the United States, but it was all thanks to them coming here from Guatemala. Talk a little bit just about kind of the immigration situation, both legal and illegal, and kind of if you were an elected official in Congress, how you would address some of those issues?

• 36:37Speaker 02

  Sure. What, I'll first start out by saying that, you know, some of these countries that a lot of people immigrate from, my mother being from Guatemala, you know, you visit there and it's very poverty ridden. I mean, it is, it's sad. The corruption is rampant. You have the drug cartels and the government and law enforcement kind of all together in one system and the, the people who lose are the everyday working class people there. And that's why you see so much poverty is because they don't have, you know, in a lot of these cases, stable government that, or some sort of stability. It's very

• 37:17Speaker 02

  corrupt. And, but this is, this is a very complex issue that unfortunately, a lot of past administrations, both from a congressional administration perspective, but also in Congress, has not been able to solve in, in a way that, you know, you're seeing right now what's happening with the border crisis, where you're, you're having some serious issues that are going on down there. And why has it come to that point? When my family came here,

• 37:52Speaker 02

  You know, I grew up with stories of my grandmother working on a coffee bean farm when she was eight years old because education back in the 20s in a country like Guatemala was just, you know, wasn't really even heard of. The literacy rate from the 90s, you know, didn't even start to improve until the early 2000s in a country like Guatemala, meaning, you know, people couldn't even read. How are you supposed to have a career or do better for yourself if education or there wasn't a free market type of infrastructure in place? And so my family story, again, my grandmother grew up, picked coffee beans as an eight-year-old,

• 38:34Speaker 02

  was able to start her own little food truck and then ultimately started a business there. But then it wasn't until my family came to the United States that they actually were able to thrive. I mean, when you come from a country with poverty, you're not thriving it at all. You're just living. And then you come here to the land of opportunity where there's no ceiling. You can start a company. You can come from nothing with $5 in your pocket and be a billionaire. You know, I read somewhere 55%, almost 60% of our billionaires are all self-made. And I would beg to also look at, you know, the other portion of how many actually did start with a lot. Probably not a lot. And, you know, there are a ton of immigrant success

• 39:17Speaker 02

  stories. But the reason why those are success stories is because you had law-abiding people who came here because of opportunity and wanted to have a better life for their families. You cannot fault anybody that wants to come here, obviously, because we are the greatest country in the world. But why have we imposed measures that has incentivized

• 39:42Speaker 02

  an influx of illegal immigration? And with that comes their own portion of business. You're looking at sex trafficking, labor trafficking. It's become a business because of past policies that incentivize people to come here. Hey, you cross the border, you'll get, you know, health insurance, you'll be able to get housing, you will be able to, you know, get a paycheck. These are very things that socialists and Democrats ultimately really do push for. It is, come here and we will take care of you. Instead of... Come here because you are fulfilling a gap in from a merit-based perspective. You want to come here, you want to be a productive citizen, you want to pay taxes,

• 40:27Speaker 02

  you want to start a business, you want to create a family, you want to contribute to our GDP in our country. Let's create a reform system that awards that behavior rather than awarding come here on an illegal basis and we will give you whatever you want. And this is a very complex issue that both sides of the aisle clearly haven't really figured out. But first and foremost, you need to stop what's happened, the influx of people coming here is just, and when you have resources getting taken away from, you know, border, the Border Patrol or ICE and things like that, who are actually targeting criminals.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  When you see this influx, you need to stop the bleeding where it is first and then focus on how we can actually bring people here on a merit-based perspective. Sorry, a long-winded way of saying.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  No, is it fair to kind of say your perspective is like, one, we should have less illegal immigration, two, we should have more and easier legal immigration pathways? You're an advocate of a merit-based system and part of this is to address the illegal component today, but also to counterbalance that with a drastic increase in the legal immigration pathways that people can pursue? Is that kind of a fair way to categorize your thought process?

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely, merit-based first, but then also looking at let's curb what's happening at the border in a very thoughtful way. And again, we should want the best and the brightest. You look at a lot of the tech Silicon Valley, big founders of amazing companies doing incredible things are immigrants. You have software engineers, you have people that are really contributing to making our economy thrive and also obviously Americans that are contributing, of course, but let's do it on a merit-based system first.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Sure. Before we wrap up, I want to ask a question that I think just again spans across the aisle regardless of what people's political beliefs are. It's just how do we make more young people care about politics and about governance and about leadership in our country, both at the local level, the state level, and the federal level? Any ideas there in terms of what people can do, whether it's within their own communities, or what we should be doing at kind of a state or national level to just get more people engaged in politics in general?

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a two-fold approach. I'll use the example of what happened with GameStop, or even the Twitter example of President Trump being to platform. Those types, when, when an issue actually becomes personal that millennials can really relate to, and you have people, leaders, for example, I remember Dave Portnoy talked a lot about GameStop during that time. When you have kind of these mediums that millennials are using and their influencers talking about these real-world issues, I think it really forces people to kind of, especially younger people who are not focused on these political issues, to look at, wow, this is impacting

• 43:44Speaker 02

  my life. I should kind of dig a little deeper in this space and then ultimately see the political policy behind it. A big thing, too, is educating people on history, you know, and it goes back to having effective messengers as well in the political space of, well, these ideas are not good. Why? Because you shouldn't be taxed, you should be able to, you shouldn't be overtaxed, you should have a little bit more money in your pocket, your 401K should be up, you should be able to own a home, you should be able to buy a car. All of that is made possible by free enterprise, a mixed economy. And, you know, once you kind of describe it in those ways,

• 44:29Speaker 02

  from a philosophical and principle perspective, but also having the right tools and the right messengers for it, I think we can actually really make gains. And a big thing is, you know, how can these influencers that...

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Are in the business space or really care about these topics that millennials are listening to, educate people on, on the policies changes that are happening. Right now, we're seeing again, the rise of kind of this socialist ideology because you have messengers that are kind of saying free everything, let's, you know, let's overtax everybody, let, you know, let's control the means of production by, you know, the state should be able to, to have control over everything where if you ask the average millennial, I'm sure they're in a good paying job, they're, they, they're trying to maybe buy a house at this point, they're trying to have families and that's only made possible because of free enterprise.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  So I know it's again, long-winded way of saying, you know, having the right message, but having the right messengers for it and the right mediums and also putting out the facts and making people think for themselves, you know, nobody should tell you how to think, but you should at least have the historical references, you should at least have the values and the principles and digging deeper on the fact that policy changes really impact your life. When I was with the administration, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, for example, that was really impacting businesses everywhere. That was, that was putting more money in people's pockets, companies were able to reinvest in their employees, people's salary went up, you had low unemployment rates, real wages were up, those impact people.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  That's the message that we should be honing in on. And then you look at kind of these very over regulatory burden, burdensome, right policies that come out now from this administration where they're looking to tax, you know, people that have $200,000 or more. When you're in San Francisco, how much is 200,000 even getting you by with or New York City? We need to look at these things in a, in a thoughtful way and I think millennials are actually coming around to the idea of free enterprise and ultimately that's a good shift. We're kind of getting away from the social issue kind of construct and looking at, well, wow, we have a very over regulated.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Administration that wants to kind of destroy free enterprise, or at least stifle it, how do we push back and how do we bring back free enterprise into the equation? Lower debt, things like that.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. And I think that, you know, nothing is actually free, as we know, but at the same time, I think that there's a lot of people who obviously are in pain and suffering, so trying to find, you know, what is the kind of the middle ground is, is why the politicians are there and they're going to do their thing and they'll hopefully eventually figure it out. Before I let you go, I was asked everyone the same three questions you get to ask me one to finish up. The first is, what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh, that's a great one. Man's Search for Meaning is an incredible one. I'll also throw out here The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand is one of my favorites. What's yours?

• 47:54Speaker 03

  Those are great ones. I always say the same three that were probably most formative for me was Richard Ford, Girl Rich, and Richest Man in Babylon. I read it when I was 20 years old and had a positive impact. So it was probably Take the Cake. Second question.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Sorry, was I supposed to say three?

• 48:16Speaker 03

  No, no, whatever, whatever you got. All right. Next question is coming from our friends over at Eight Sleep. They've got this thermo-regulated mattress. So you can make it really hot, really cold. I used to sleep like five, six hours. I started sleeping on this thing and pretty much changed my life. I made full on convert of the sleep religion, if you will. And now sleep like eight or nine hours. What's your sleep schedule and how's that changed over the years?

• 48:45Speaker 02

  That's an interesting question. I would say I'm definitely in bed early and I'm an early riser. That certainly was not the case in college and probably after, but I've recognized that I need kind of a structure to be able to function correctly. So I go to bed pretty early, start reading, and then ultimately kind of wind down. I try to turn off the phone. I know the lights are really bad, you know, for sleep. Try to get a really good night's sleep and then wake up super early in the morning.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  How many hours do you think on average?

• 49:18Speaker 02

  I would say probably seven to eight hours, full seven to eight hours.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  All right, gotta get you an eight sleep, then it would be eight or nine, it'd be even better. Last question is a more fun one, and you get to ask me one, is aliens, are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Oh, I would say, didn't something recently come out this week of some rumblings that were going around in the alien community? I would definitely say that there are a lot of questions that need to be answered, and there are a lot of things happening that, to say that there's not some sort of extraterrestrial being or community would be not looking at the facts.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  That's a very politically correct way to say that you believe in aliens, no problem. You get to ask me one question to finish up, what do you got for me?

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Okay, favorite company?

• 50:19Speaker 03

  Oh, favorite company?

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Why?

• 50:21Speaker 03

  I don't know, it's like choosing between children. I'll say the one, it's a company that we announced an investment in today, so not necessarily favorite, but just a recent bias, a company called Synthesis. Elon Musk started a school on space at this campus for his children that really focused on just critical thinking, problem solving, independent thought, you know, more of the skills that are necessary to be successful in life, rather than the rote memorization, kind of preparation for standardized tests. And so the co-founder of that school, it's got Josh and his new co-founder, Chrisman, basically created this software,

• 51:00Speaker 03

  and they take kids, between like seven and 14, and they put them in these virtual environments and basically give them a problem, they give them no direction, no rules, no anything, and just say figure it out in a team setting. And so it's pretty incredible to watch these like young kids come in, they've got to learn leadership, teamwork, creativity, you know, problem solving, critical thinking, etc. So that one seems to be pretty important moving forward, if we can teach more people critical thinking, problem solving skills, I feel like we might be a little bit better off than we are today.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Absolutely, and that shows you that free market and innovation are really filling these gaps where traditionally people kind of want the government to fill. You look at why is the literacy rate so low in some of these inner cities where how can big, how can companies through innovation and again free enterprise be able to kind of fulfill that gap and problem solve? So I think that's huge. It's incredible to know that something like that is out there. It's like school choice 2.0, right? The digital version.

• 52:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Listen, thank you so much for doing this. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or reach out if they have any questions or want to follow up?

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Yes, catalinaforcongress.com and Catalina Lauf on all social media platforms.

• 52:23Speaker 03

  Awesome. That is the benefit of having a unique name is that you are not competing with very many other Catalina Lauf's. So.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  That's true. That's true. It's a, it's a double edged sword.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  Awesome. Well, Catalina, listen, thank you so much for doing this and we'll have to do to get in the future.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Yes. Thanks so much for having me on again, Anthony. You take care.