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EXIT Podcast Episode 28: Joe Kent
305 Plays3 years ago
Joe Kent is a SOF veteran running for Congress in Washington's 3rd district. He's running on a promise to demand accountability for the 2020 election, reverse invasive COVID policies, and rein in the unholy alliance between the DNC and the security state. We discuss why political action is still relevant, and how he thinks we can end the corruption and take the country back.
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Transcript
Motivation to Run for Congress
00:00:18
Speaker
I'm Eric Bennett.
00:00:19
Speaker
I'm joined here by Joe Kent.
00:00:21
Speaker
Joe is a special operations veteran running for Congress in Washington's 3rd District.
00:00:25
Speaker
At Exit, we're interested in identifying places where we can still exercise voice as well as places where we need to withdraw.
00:00:31
Speaker
And I recently heard a Twitter spaces with Joe and Josiah Lippincott where he was discussing his opinions on foreign policy and elements of where we need to move forward as far as the security state and the political situation.
00:00:44
Speaker
I found him really, really candid, and so I wanted to get him on the podcast to discuss some of those issues.
00:00:48
Speaker
Welcome to the show, Joe.
00:00:49
Speaker
Nice for having me, man.
00:00:50
Speaker
I appreciate it.
00:00:51
Speaker
So you've mentioned a couple times that you had to Google how to become a representative before you could get started.
00:00:57
Speaker
What was that process like and what have you learned about politics from your experience since then?
00:01:03
Speaker
Yeah, so for me, it was kind of trial by fire, build the airplane in flight, however you want to describe it.
00:01:09
Speaker
I found myself in a situation out here in the Pacific Northwest where because of
00:01:13
Speaker
Pretty much everything that happened in my life ended up moving back to where I'm from unexpectedly after my late wife was killed serving overseas.
00:01:20
Speaker
And then 2020 happened, the lockdowns, the riots.
00:01:22
Speaker
I saw things really deteriorating.
00:01:25
Speaker
I had started speaking out on behalf of really President Trump's America First foreign policy.
00:01:29
Speaker
That was kind of a gateway into working on the Trump campaign in 2020 a little bit.
00:01:33
Speaker
And then I got offered a job in the second Trump administration.
00:01:35
Speaker
All of that fell apart when what happened with the election, which we can go off on for as long as you want to talk about it.
00:01:41
Speaker
I think it was stolen.
00:01:42
Speaker
I think there was a lot of interest there that moved.
00:01:44
Speaker
I just say it right up front.
00:01:45
Speaker
I think there's a lot of interest that moved kind of in lockstep in a very frightening way between big tech, mainstream media, corporate corporations, unelected bureaucrats.
00:01:54
Speaker
And so I really felt we were on the cusp of losing our country.
00:01:56
Speaker
And then I just moved to a red district in the Pacific Northwest, which is very, very rare and very sacred.
00:02:03
Speaker
And then my congresswoman votes for the impeachment of President Trump.
00:02:05
Speaker
And so I was like, well, all these other avenues that I thought I had to go serve, work on the second Trump administration,
00:02:11
Speaker
all those who just disappeared kind of overnight.
00:02:13
Speaker
And then the one woman who's supposed to sort of protect us from, you know, what the left is doing, who's a Republican votes for the impeachment and goes along with it.
00:02:21
Speaker
So for me, I was like, well, I don't know how I'm going to go do this, but I'm going to try and do
Preserving Institutions vs. Systemic Change
00:02:25
Speaker
something.
00:02:25
Speaker
So that's, that's, that's where the whole, like I Googled, how do you run for Congress comes in?
00:02:30
Speaker
Um, so really I, I just hit it kind of as hard as I could.
00:02:33
Speaker
And it's, it's been, um,
00:02:35
Speaker
both motivating like kind of white pill um and then just you know opens up your eyes really at the end of the day getting out and talking to everyday americans it's it's good and refreshing especially as a guy who served overseas you know for this country fighting under the flag for so long it's good to see that like the america that you hope that you're fighting for is still alive and well well is relative i mean i think the spirits are high and we're attempting there's a um
00:02:59
Speaker
I'd say concerted effort right now, a campaign to put down that spirit, multiple facets to that.
00:03:06
Speaker
So it's overall good to see that the downside is, look, this whole thing runs off of money.
00:03:11
Speaker
It really does.
00:03:12
Speaker
I mean, I've had to, we've done really well on individual contributions to get me to this point where,
00:03:16
Speaker
you know, we've actually made some traction in the campaign, but the way that money's made, it's stuff that you're sort of aware of if you're politically active, but then seeing it at this level is, you know, it's enlightening and it's just kind of heightened to my resolve that the whole system pretty much needs to be burned to the ground.
00:03:36
Speaker
Well, okay.
00:03:37
Speaker
So, I mean, I'm with you there, but then the choice is to, like, I mean, you know, you see the election stolen.
00:03:48
Speaker
And then the recourse to that is to run for office, which some would say, you know, like, what's the point?
00:03:57
Speaker
I get it.
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:58
Speaker
No, I totally understand that.
00:04:00
Speaker
I think our system is still worth saving.
00:04:03
Speaker
I think the tenets of America, I think even our big institutions, some of the ones that I want to completely gut, FBI, CIA, for instance, DOD, I think that they are still very worth having and we need to fight to preserve them because we actually need these things.
00:04:18
Speaker
smart people with a decent amount of foresight and patriotism created these and they've been driven off the cliff just by corruption and human nature and so elections are the same way i think if we surrender elections if we surrender political discourse if we surrender uh peaceful protest to the left we are handing them just such a huge strategic victory you know and it's really because we we have bought into them being demoralized the whole election steal
00:04:45
Speaker
was a complicated thing.
00:04:46
Speaker
And I don't mean complicated in the sense that it was a massive conspiracy.
00:04:48
Speaker
There's some of those elements as well.
00:04:51
Speaker
But one of the biggest, I think, psyops, for lack of a better term, the left is trying to pull off on all of us right now is that elections are pointless that don't even go and bother and vote.
00:04:59
Speaker
And if they can convince just 25% of regular Americans that, then they win big.
00:05:04
Speaker
The last thing they want is people like us involved in the process.
00:05:09
Speaker
And that was a big thing that was behind Trump's success and why Trump was such a threat
00:05:14
Speaker
He brought a lot of Americans kind of out of this political sleep and really energized them and kind of put them in the room in the deal.
00:05:21
Speaker
And I think that that's what the corporate hierarchy just couldn't stand.
00:05:24
Speaker
So I totally understand people's frustration, but really we cannot surrender the political realm over to the left like this because we're the majority of the country.
00:05:34
Speaker
And so simply we can beat them on a battlefield that they even have rigged against us if we just mobilize people to vote.
Campaign Strategy and Key Issues
00:05:42
Speaker
So the theory is just to bring enough people to bear that it can't be plausibly stolen.
00:05:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:50
Speaker
And I mean, that's, I think, harder for them to steal in a down-ballot race like mine because I don't think at the end of the day I'm that important.
00:05:59
Speaker
And it's a midterm.
00:06:00
Speaker
And so there would be a lot of shenanigans that would have to take place as opposed to you build up two or like four years worth of like Trump is the most evil guy in the world and we need to do anything to get rid of him.
00:06:12
Speaker
that steel becomes much less complicated and you put different layers in it, but to actually go after and get rid of, you know, guys like me at a lower level, I just, if we have enough people turn out, I don't think that's at, is it possible?
00:06:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:25
Speaker
I mean, it's possible.
00:06:26
Speaker
There's a lot we don't know that goes on behind the algorithms behind these machines that do the tabulation, all that totally understand it.
00:06:33
Speaker
But I think we still have a chance to fight back within the system by winning, especially in the midterm.
00:06:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:41
Speaker
So, so there's winning the election, right?
00:06:44
Speaker
Which I, you know, from what I'm seeing, it seems like all the energy is behind you.
00:06:49
Speaker
There's, there's, there's national energy behind you and I haven't seen really anything for your opponents.
00:06:53
Speaker
So like it's, it's, I think the odds are good there.
00:06:58
Speaker
But then there's when you show up and you're, you're in the room with the, with the Democrats and you're in the room with the GOP establishment and,
00:07:10
Speaker
There's always going to be an element of playing ball because you're, you're part of this, this huge structure and you're just one voice, but, but how are you going to deal with that?
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:26
Speaker
I think being as transparent as possible with like my constituents, like I I've been fairly, whatever, however you want to put it based or just, I try and let people know exactly how I feel about things.
00:07:36
Speaker
And I really want to be able to carry that into Washington, D.C.
00:07:39
Speaker
Now, if I want to get something done, there is going to have to be a back and forth.
00:07:43
Speaker
I'm going to have to deal with people that maybe I'm not 100 percent ideologically aligned with.
00:07:47
Speaker
And I think most voters, they understand that.
00:07:50
Speaker
And so I think being transparent and saying, hey, if there's this this thing I want to get done, I need to bring on these people.
00:07:57
Speaker
So it may have to be a little bit diluted.
00:07:59
Speaker
So I think transparency is a big part of that.
00:08:02
Speaker
But also the good thing about being a non-career politician, this isn't my entire life.
00:08:09
Speaker
I don't really have aspirations beyond Congress.
00:08:11
Speaker
I want to be able to make a difference in our country.
00:08:13
Speaker
I care deeply about the future for my kids, as I think most voters do.
00:08:18
Speaker
But threatening me with, hey, this is the end of your political career or whatever, that's not... I mean, the more invested you get in things, obviously, it's not going to be like, I don't care.
00:08:26
Speaker
However,
00:08:28
Speaker
This isn't the only thing I have going in my life.
00:08:30
Speaker
So I think a lot of folks, we elect these positions because of the amount of money and preparation and time it takes.
00:08:37
Speaker
You do get career politicians.
00:08:38
Speaker
And that's not always a bad thing.
00:08:39
Speaker
But I think overall, it's a very bad thing because there's leverage over them.
00:08:44
Speaker
But I think the times are really changing.
00:08:46
Speaker
I think our base, like your average American is going to come out and vote for a guy like me.
00:08:51
Speaker
I think that their eyes are becoming more and more open every day.
00:08:54
Speaker
And if I have to take a principled stand, which politically ostracizes me and ostracizes me from some typical means of funding, I think that they're going to be supportive and kind of repay me with small contributions for actually reflecting their voice as opposed to, well, I had to make this vote to get this PAC support for X, Y, and Z. The typical horse trading that I think was tolerated by people for the last, as long as I've been alive, but even 10 years ago, I think would have been more palpable
00:09:26
Speaker
So when you, you mentioned horse trading, uh, which horses are you willing to trade?
00:09:32
Speaker
In other words, what, what, what are the red lines that you won't compromise on even rhetorically?
00:09:38
Speaker
And what are the places where it's like, well, you know, these are the things that we have to do to get to, to move the ball.
00:09:45
Speaker
The thing is accountability, man.
00:09:50
Speaker
I think the 2020 election, like we talked about it is something that we can't back down on.
00:09:53
Speaker
So
00:09:54
Speaker
I want to have some form of a congressional hearing where we actually finish the process that was supposed to, the constitutionally appointed process that was supposed to take place on January 6th.
00:10:02
Speaker
That's something that like, I will not compromise on.
00:10:04
Speaker
I won't listen to Mike Pence or anybody come and say like, well, hey, let's just look forward to future elections.
00:10:09
Speaker
Like I want the full adjudication for that.
00:10:11
Speaker
The American people do too.
00:10:12
Speaker
I mean, you even have like, it's like 41% of, I think Democrats and independents with recent polling thinks that there was fraud, heavy, a heavy amount of fraud in our last elections.
00:10:21
Speaker
Like our country can't go on
00:10:23
Speaker
with that level of distrust in our election system.
00:10:25
Speaker
So those are things I wouldn't compromise on.
00:10:27
Speaker
I'm also a huge protectionist.
00:10:28
Speaker
I'm sick and tired of our corporations shipping our jobs overseas.
00:10:33
Speaker
I think that that has just led to this massive downturn with our country.
00:10:36
Speaker
Same thing with endless wars.
00:10:38
Speaker
Like if I'm, I'm not an isolationist.
00:10:39
Speaker
I know you want to talk about this later on, but if we have to use military force somewhere, I want to hear clearly defined what the national security interest is.
00:10:47
Speaker
I want Congress to vote on it.
00:10:48
Speaker
I want senators.
00:10:49
Speaker
I want senators and congressmen to put their name on the dotted line.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yes or no.
00:10:52
Speaker
Do you support this military action or not?
00:10:54
Speaker
It can't just be a war we slowly slide into and stay at.
00:10:58
Speaker
Those are hard red lines for me.
00:11:01
Speaker
I'm sure there's some other ones as well.
00:11:02
Speaker
Obviously, protection of our Second Amendment, defending life, those types of things.
00:11:06
Speaker
Very, very hard red lines for me.
00:11:07
Speaker
Something that I think there can be some horse trading on.
00:11:10
Speaker
Like I want to break up big tech.
00:11:12
Speaker
I want to absorb it as a public utility.
00:11:15
Speaker
make them a common carrier.
00:11:16
Speaker
However, there's a lot of tech reform bills that are being put out there right now by like members that some, even some being proposed by Democrats, like section 234 reform and all that.
00:11:25
Speaker
I think those things don't go far enough, but I would support them because they're actually starting to take a bite out of the, the elephant that is big tech.
00:11:33
Speaker
So I'm good with those types of things.
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:37
Speaker
So I think it's, it's, there'll be a little bit back and forth in there, but again, if I pull this off and I get elected, if
00:11:43
Speaker
I don't think I'm being hired by the people of Washington three to be like the ultimate deal maker.
00:11:48
Speaker
I think people are just really, my opponent, the impeachment voter, like she's part of the problem solvers committee.
00:11:53
Speaker
And she's like, well, I'm a problem solver.
00:11:55
Speaker
I'm like, well, that means you compromise every single time and you get paid off by the special interest group.
00:11:59
Speaker
So I kind of think people are just done with that.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:04
Speaker
So I'm not from the Pacific Northwest.
00:12:08
Speaker
And I, to be honest with you, my, my,
00:12:13
Speaker
my visibility on like what a red district looks like out there is not very clear.
00:12:19
Speaker
So tell me a little bit about your constituents, your hopeful constituents, and what are the hot button items for them in particular?
00:12:33
Speaker
So pretty unique here.
00:12:35
Speaker
I know most people think when they think Pacific Northwest, they think Portland, Seattle.
00:12:40
Speaker
Fair enough.
00:12:40
Speaker
Those are our big urban hubs.
00:12:42
Speaker
The cool thing about the third congressional district, we're in Southwest Washington.
00:12:45
Speaker
If you get into Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon, very red, very conservative.
00:12:49
Speaker
We're actually on the west side of the Cascades.
00:12:51
Speaker
We're one of two districts that are red Republican that touched the Pacific Ocean.
00:12:56
Speaker
Our largest city, Vancouver, is right across the Columbia River from Portland and could be defined as either an extension of Portland or a suburb of Portland.
00:13:04
Speaker
However,
00:13:05
Speaker
The rest of the district is deep red timber country.
00:13:08
Speaker
So all of the same issues that have affected the deindustrialization of America, they affected our district as well, too.
00:13:16
Speaker
A slightly different guise was given for gutting those industries, the altar of environmentalism.
00:13:21
Speaker
but even shipping our timber mills and our production capability there, that's had the exact same effect as the automotive industry leaving the Midwest, steel and all that.
00:13:31
Speaker
So the same types of concepts there.
00:13:34
Speaker
We've also had a good deal of investment from the tech sector.
00:13:36
Speaker
So the H-1B visa issue of importing mid to high level tech workers, that's affected us heavily as well.
00:13:44
Speaker
So we get a bad rap for being
00:13:47
Speaker
So close to these very, very liberal cities, but we're a very conservative district right now.
00:13:50
Speaker
We're R plus 10.
00:13:53
Speaker
And really, it's people people want to have accountability from their government.
00:13:56
Speaker
I'd say some of the most hot button issues that we have right now is our vaccine and mask mandates.
Economic and Family Values
00:14:01
Speaker
Our governor, Jay Inslee, he's elected by really the people of Seattle and the counties that surround Seattle.
00:14:07
Speaker
And he is, for those who aren't familiar, he's basically the Andrew Cuomo of the West in terms of how horrible he's been with COVID policy.
00:14:14
Speaker
He actually got ahead of, Inslee got ahead of Biden and everybody else with mandating the vaccine for state employees.
00:14:21
Speaker
So we've had people that have had to either, you know, take the jab or lose their jobs.
00:14:26
Speaker
So the vaccine mandates are right up in everybody's face every day.
00:14:30
Speaker
Election integrity is another massive issue.
00:14:32
Speaker
Deregulation of our timber industry is big.
00:14:35
Speaker
We have a couple of major ports here as well that could become hubs for international shipping if we just allocated some federal money in the right way.
00:14:44
Speaker
We have some failing bridges that are part of the I-5 quarter that affects interstate commerce that the federal government is just completely and totally ignored.
00:14:51
Speaker
So we have, I mean, I think we have some unique issues, but overall we are really the forgotten men and women of the country that President Trump and the populist right has spoken so strongly to, just like you find throughout the country.
00:15:05
Speaker
Okay, great.
00:15:09
Speaker
One of the biggest challenges that I see in pursuing family values in politics, I know that your district, it sounds like it's very kind of economic populist.
00:15:20
Speaker
It's very concerned about brass tax issues.
00:15:24
Speaker
But this stuff matters too.
00:15:27
Speaker
And I think it matters maybe even more in those deindustrialized parts of the country because
00:15:35
Speaker
it's people who cannot afford always the social costs of the breakdown, right?
00:15:45
Speaker
If you're rich, then you can afford to live in a way that creates these problems over time.
00:15:55
Speaker
But the burden falls on working class people.
00:15:59
Speaker
And one of the challenges with that kind of politics is that the people with like the single mindedness and the ambition to make a difference politically, they tend not to be family values types.
00:16:10
Speaker
So like conservative power circles are dominated by like childless single, like confirmed bachelor types.
00:16:19
Speaker
Can you talk about like your approach to life and marriage and, you know, from a political perspective?
00:16:29
Speaker
I mean, obviously, 100% pro-life.
00:16:31
Speaker
I want to do everything I can to end up.
00:16:32
Speaker
I think abortion, I remember growing up learning about the civil rights movement and learning about slavery and all that.
00:16:40
Speaker
And it blew me away that my parents, the people that were raising me, they lived in an era where there was actually segregation.
00:16:48
Speaker
And then my grandparents were like, well, yeah, actually, we lived in an era where there were still people who fought in the Civil War.
00:16:53
Speaker
And I was like, holy crap.
00:16:54
Speaker
When you think about that, because slavery and segregation is such a horrible thing.
00:16:59
Speaker
it was hard for me to even fathom.
00:17:00
Speaker
And I think abortion is going to be that way.
00:17:01
Speaker
I think there's going to be a time when we tell our kids and our grandkids that, yeah, there was this really weird period we had in American history where you could go kill a baby and it was common and it was even celebrated.
00:17:12
Speaker
I mean, I, it's just like, we're going to have to explain that somebody to our kids and our grandkids.
00:17:16
Speaker
And I don't know how we're going to do it.
00:17:18
Speaker
You know?
00:17:18
Speaker
So I think this is something that a huge moral issue that I think we just can't back down on.
00:17:23
Speaker
The family values thing is huge.
00:17:25
Speaker
I mean, when I was talking about Washington state, we've had a,
00:17:27
Speaker
a massive exit even before COVID from our public schools because of Planned Parenthood sex ed agenda, they call it comprehensive sex ed, and saying it's the whole transgender ideology being pumped into our children, really getting control of our kids, manipulating their concepts of what a man is, what a woman is.
00:17:45
Speaker
We could talk about what I think that the overall goal is there.
00:17:49
Speaker
I think it's really just to dilute our society.
00:17:51
Speaker
The last thing that the left and these major
00:17:54
Speaker
globalist corporations want is like strong, independent families.
00:17:57
Speaker
So you hack away at the economic base behind that, and then you hack away at faith, and then you also hack away literally at the sex roles.
00:18:04
Speaker
And that's what they're trying to do.
00:18:05
Speaker
So we've had people pull out, there's been a huge homeschool movement that's only grown because of COVID.
00:18:11
Speaker
So I think being able to
00:18:13
Speaker
And I talk about the economy, and especially with populist economics, I like to talk about it too from a moral perspective, because the free market right-wingers always come in and say, but man, this is the free market.
00:18:23
Speaker
You're talking about intervening in the economy that makes you some kind of a socialist.
00:18:26
Speaker
And I say, look, at the end of the day, our country has to be a sovereign nation that cares deeply about our people and not just an economy.
00:18:31
Speaker
I don't care about GDP.
00:18:33
Speaker
I care about what affects our people.
00:18:35
Speaker
And the fact is, our economic policies over the last at least 30 years or so
00:18:39
Speaker
have been a bullet aimed at the heart of the American family.
00:18:43
Speaker
And that starts with like, hey, can you get out of high school?
00:18:46
Speaker
Can you marry somebody and support a family on a single income?
00:18:49
Speaker
And by and large, the answer is absolutely 100%.
00:18:52
Speaker
No, you can't.
00:18:53
Speaker
Even if the culture wasn't aimed at destroying that, the economic situation is just not there.
00:18:58
Speaker
So we have to start bringing jobs back.
00:19:00
Speaker
I'm real big on school choice, a school voucher system.
00:19:03
Speaker
The state is the best vehicle for that.
00:19:05
Speaker
But I live in a
00:19:06
Speaker
I live in a blue state and that's just not going to happen.
00:19:08
Speaker
So I do want to provide some sort of a federal assistance where people can get the ability to pay for private school or even homeschooling resources.
00:19:16
Speaker
Obviously you can opt out if you want.
00:19:18
Speaker
Child tax credit vouchers where if you have skin in the game and like your family is not on federal assistance, I think getting $10,000 in a tax deduction, not money from the government, but a tax deduction, taking less money away from you per child to incentivize one parent to be able to stay home with their kids is
00:19:34
Speaker
is huge.
00:19:35
Speaker
The whole Democrat, if you look at their Build Back Better plan, especially of them wanting to give pre-K assistance to people, that sounds great on paper, but that's really just the government getting more control of your children even faster.
00:19:47
Speaker
What we have to be doing is strengthening the American family so that families are in the driver's seat.
00:19:53
Speaker
For the America First movement, I think our core unit that we're protecting has to be the sovereign American family.
00:20:01
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:20:03
Speaker
I've seen Republicans frame the pre-K thing as like it's this pro-family, pro-family values thing.
00:20:11
Speaker
And that's insane to me.
00:20:13
Speaker
The idea that sending your four-year-old to a state institution is pro-family.
00:20:19
Speaker
So that's good to hear.
00:20:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, as far as like, well, the circles that you have to run in
00:20:31
Speaker
as a politician.
00:20:34
Speaker
Um, how do you think that I'm thinking about people who might be interested in doing what you're doing.
00:20:39
Speaker
I'm thinking about people who not only want to, to vote and contribute, but who want to run.
00:20:48
Speaker
There's so much distaste for that whole world.
00:20:53
Speaker
And, you know, talking about those conservative power circles and like the people that you'd have to be around and the people, you know what I'm saying?
00:20:58
Speaker
Like, like,
00:21:00
Speaker
there's, there's a lot of contempt for that.
00:21:04
Speaker
And I wonder how you, you know, as a father, as somebody trying to raise kids, how you interact with that world and, and, and how you make that work.
00:21:18
Speaker
It's definitely tough, man.
00:21:19
Speaker
That was really the only thing that was holding me back that I had a second thought about doing this was like, okay, well, I have two young kids,
00:21:24
Speaker
Um, how, how do I make this happen?
00:21:26
Speaker
And so for me, it was like, okay, what's, what's going to be harder balancing that or in 10 years, looking them in the eyes and saying like, well, you used to have a great country that your, your mom lost her life for.
00:21:34
Speaker
Um, but it went to hell in a hand basket and I didn't do anything about it.
00:21:38
Speaker
So that was ultimately the, the issue for me.
00:21:40
Speaker
Um, I mean, a big thing is really just, I'd say, keep, keep the fringe you had before you started running for,
00:21:46
Speaker
for whatever office you're running from and be wary of new ones.
00:21:50
Speaker
Not to say there isn't good people out there because people are hungry for real people.
00:21:53
Speaker
And so we, you know, I'm very happy with like the network of volunteers and supporters, you know, that I've built.
00:22:00
Speaker
I think a big thing is really just trying to stay as true to yourself as possible.
00:22:04
Speaker
And then I think our community just needs to get way more engaged because the more that we can keep our politicians free of corporate interest by either supporting them with small contributions or just making sure people are mobilized to vote,
00:22:16
Speaker
the closer in you're going to be able to hold those politicians.
00:22:18
Speaker
When people just think, hey, I've done my civic duty by voting once every two years, once every four years, and then I'm done with it.
00:22:26
Speaker
Well, problem is then the people that are in your congressman or your senator or even your local representatives, those people are going to have more influence over them than you are.
00:22:35
Speaker
So I think having constant engagement is very, very key because that's going to keep your elected officials grounded.
00:22:43
Speaker
So it's a balancing act, staying
00:22:45
Speaker
Rounded between the people you need to court relationships with, I think, to make a lot of money versus like the people you need to court relationships with to make sure that you're plugged in to the community and to the voters.
00:22:55
Speaker
I think you always want to be, I always want to be trending towards the community
Cancel Culture and Political Honesty
00:22:59
Speaker
and the voters.
00:22:59
Speaker
Like I'm not taking any corporate special interests like PAC money or any type of stuff.
00:23:03
Speaker
To be frank, I'm not getting offered a lot of it because I'm going after an incumbent, which is like very taboo.
00:23:09
Speaker
Like people don't want to be associated with you because then you're, you know, all that.
00:23:13
Speaker
But even someday if those interests did cater to me, I want to be able to stay plugged in enough with the people in the district that I say like, hey guys, like it's going to take me $3 million to win this next election.
00:23:24
Speaker
So if you like what I've been doing so far and you can spare 50, 20, 30, 100, whatever, $100, like
00:23:30
Speaker
I can make it happen with you guys.
00:23:32
Speaker
So I don't need to even talk.
00:23:34
Speaker
I don't need to open the door to, you know, some special interest group or whatever super PAC, you know?
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:41
Speaker
That's, that's a huge piece of it is the freedom to say no.
00:23:46
Speaker
And that's, that's a big part of what I'm trying to do with, with my, with my group is, is build people the freedom to say no and, and to,
00:23:54
Speaker
to have an alternative to the power structures, whether it's their job, whether it's, you know,
00:24:03
Speaker
the need to be liked universally, which is increasingly impossible to do.
00:24:11
Speaker
I've thought occasionally about how I could get involved in politics, and I essentially came to the conclusion that based on, I could tell you a little bit about my story later, but I was doxed and fired.
00:24:25
Speaker
from a government contractor.
00:24:27
Speaker
And I've kind of concluded that I was burnt as far as that goes.
00:24:34
Speaker
But then I listened to your spaces with Josiah Lippincott and the things that you were saying, well, I mean, it's not like you were saying anything genuinely offensive, but you were saying things that were things a lot of people wouldn't want to hear.
00:24:56
Speaker
And so do you think that the wind is changing for for like the whole I mean, it's I hate even using the term, but cancel culture.
00:25:05
Speaker
Like, do you feel like there's there's space for people to be more honest now?
00:25:10
Speaker
I think we're going to I think right now we're getting a really good test of that, like with what's happening with Joe Rogan.
00:25:16
Speaker
Um, I, I do think we're gaining ground because like, if you're on the right in any way, shape or form, unless you were just like controlled opposition, Mike Pence or Lindsey Graham, like, you know, you're going to get like canceled at some point.
00:25:31
Speaker
Like I've been called, I mean, every day I pretty much get called like, like racist, whatever, you know, white nationalists, like
00:25:37
Speaker
So much to the point that it's like, it's so boring.
00:25:39
Speaker
And I think most people, it's just like, it's not even dumb anymore.
00:25:43
Speaker
It's just like, come on, man, like you can do better than that.
00:25:45
Speaker
You can listen to one of my, one of my speeches or something and pick on me some other way.
00:25:50
Speaker
But I feel like, I think at least people that are, they have their eyes opened up a little bit more.
00:25:55
Speaker
And then especially if you're on the right man and that can be used against you, like you probably should just pick something else to go do with your life.
00:26:02
Speaker
Cause like, it's going to happen.
00:26:04
Speaker
You're not going to make these people happy.
00:26:07
Speaker
The whole idea that we're ever going to be able to sit down and the New York Times, the Washington Post is like actually going to respect you.
00:26:13
Speaker
Like, it's just not going to happen.
00:26:14
Speaker
And then all the bots and whoever else they're going to, they're going to call you racist.
00:26:18
Speaker
They're going to call you horrible things.
00:26:19
Speaker
Like I, and so I do, I do believe that it's losing some of its power.
00:26:25
Speaker
I really think it only has the power that we give it.
00:26:28
Speaker
Now there is the whole other thing.
00:26:29
Speaker
censorship thing.
00:26:30
Speaker
Like Trump was very much that way.
00:26:32
Speaker
Right.
00:26:32
Speaker
And Trump then was successful.
00:26:34
Speaker
He won the surprise victory, took over the white house.
00:26:37
Speaker
And then we saw what happened between the election.
00:26:38
Speaker
And then he literally got kicked off all of the internet.
00:26:42
Speaker
You know, if he wasn't independently wealthy, he may not have, I mean, like,
00:26:47
Speaker
And so it's a very real thing because if you or I, if that happened to us, could we survive?
00:26:52
Speaker
And probably not.
00:26:53
Speaker
And so you sort of do need a guy like Trump who's independently wealthy, who can actually endure being kicked off the internet.
00:27:00
Speaker
And now he has to have like his press secretary tweet out the PDF of what he said.
00:27:06
Speaker
So there is a, I think we're in a spot right now where it's like we've maybe created enough space that the cancel culture stuff isn't as powerful.
00:27:15
Speaker
And so now that the, now the regime is having to use other means like we will kick people off the internet.
Oversight and Reform in Government
00:27:20
Speaker
We'll say that they're spreading disinformation.
00:27:21
Speaker
It's a public health risk.
00:27:24
Speaker
they're trying to make it so like Madison Cawthorn and a couple of their representatives like can't run.
00:27:28
Speaker
They're trying to make it so literally they can't get access and get on the ballot, which is the next level of insanity, which again, for me is why like this next election and all other elections are very, very important because if we don't engage now and fight within the system, like they're going to switch over the system from us and then we won't have a, then we won't have a prayer beyond horrible things.
00:27:49
Speaker
So yeah, I think for right now it's losing a lot of its effect.
00:27:57
Speaker
That's an interesting, to say we won't have a prayer beyond horrible things.
00:28:01
Speaker
I mean, I feel like the mood in a lot of the country is that we're already there.
00:28:11
Speaker
That it would not be possible.
00:28:13
Speaker
And I wanted to talk to you a little bit.
00:28:16
Speaker
You know, you mentioned the value of CIA, FBI, NSA, and the
00:28:25
Speaker
But at the same time, we know that they get around domestic spying rules by collaborating with our quote-unquote allies.
00:28:36
Speaker
We know that they are heavily involved in not solving but generating attacks.
00:28:46
Speaker
And I want to know if you think there's anything that can be done to rein that in.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, accountability is heavy.
00:28:54
Speaker
We need to have...
00:28:55
Speaker
massive amounts of congressional oversight.
00:28:57
Speaker
I think using January 6th, because the regime's hand has been exposed so heavily on January 6th, the way that they lied from day one, that, you know, Officer Sicknick was beaten to death by crazy Trump supporters.
00:29:08
Speaker
And we find out months later, it's like, well, he didn't even, he didn't, we kind of caught you right-handed, you know, tragically for that man, he lost his life, but he didn't die on the steps of the Capitol.
00:29:16
Speaker
Like we were told that for months.
00:29:18
Speaker
And now we're finding out like all the other
00:29:20
Speaker
unindicted co-conspirators, the Ray F, Stuart Rodangle, all that that we can, you know, happy to go into.
00:29:26
Speaker
I understand what an intelligence operations looks like when I see one.
00:29:29
Speaker
And this is very much starting to look more and more like an intelligence operation.
00:29:32
Speaker
So I would use that as a reason to expose a lot of this corruption, work our way backwards.
00:29:39
Speaker
Russiagate too, the way that FISA and the power of the NSA was used by like in coordination with the DNC.
00:29:47
Speaker
And like you said, with some of our allies,
00:29:50
Speaker
to ruin the lives of American citizens who we just, we, the regime simply did not like the national security state simply did not like their, their political views.
00:30:00
Speaker
Probably a little more targeted against a guy like Mike Flynn, who actually knew how some of these things work.
00:30:04
Speaker
So they took him out first.
00:30:07
Speaker
So I think we need to go really heavily, like something like a church committee.
00:30:10
Speaker
There's been times where these, these organizations and these institutions got way out of control and they were reined back in by something like the church committee.
00:30:19
Speaker
I think we need that.
00:30:20
Speaker
And personally, I would have said the same thing five or six years ago.
00:30:24
Speaker
However, I would have erred more on the side of like, hey, these institutions, they still need to have a lot of secrecy and a lot of power because there's dangerous threats out there.
00:30:32
Speaker
I frankly think that these institutions now at this point, their corruption has been exposed to the point where I would lean way more heavily on like, nope, we are going to go with transparency over security.
00:30:44
Speaker
We are going to take away a lot of your power and your controls until you guys can prove to us that you're actually doing what you're supposed to be doing.
00:30:51
Speaker
And there has to be kind of, I mean, I think for what happened January 6th, Russiagate, we do need to see some charges and people do need to actually be punished and go to jail.
00:31:00
Speaker
It can't just be like, okay, well, you lost your government job and now you're going to go work at a think tank or now you're going to be the national security correspondent at freaking CNN.
00:31:08
Speaker
You know, like it can't be, it can't be that.
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely.
00:31:14
Speaker
And so, I mean, I think about, I think about what classification has really bought us historically.
00:31:22
Speaker
Like it, it, it didn't protect the bomb.
00:31:25
Speaker
It didn't protect, like, there's just so many, there's so many leaks and so many holes in that system.
00:31:30
Speaker
And it, it almost seems to me like the only people that those secrets are being kept from is the American people.
00:31:38
Speaker
And so tell me what you think the value of maintaining that secrecy is at all.
00:31:47
Speaker
Liz, it's just been abused so much.
00:31:49
Speaker
I mean...
00:31:50
Speaker
it's the, the overclassification has been used to hide sometimes like how incompetent we are.
00:31:56
Speaker
Um, which, you know, that can be something we don't want the, I used to joke when I was in the intelligence community that like the deepest secrets we have is how incompetent and petty we are that like, if the enemy actually knew that they would stop being scared of us.
00:32:10
Speaker
So like, forget about our sources and methods and technology.
00:32:13
Speaker
Like they probably, they're going to, they're going to get that eventually.
00:32:15
Speaker
They can't know how fucked up we are.
00:32:16
Speaker
Sorry if I'm not supposed to swear here.
00:32:19
Speaker
Um,
00:32:19
Speaker
But that was like, I was kidding around when I was, you know, muddling my way through the war on terror about that.
00:32:26
Speaker
But no, I think that a lot of times the overclassification has been used to hide, like we just talked about the FISA thing, they classified the heck out of that, right?
00:32:36
Speaker
So that they, but what were they, what were they classifying?
00:32:38
Speaker
They were classifying the fact that they were abusing their power and they were doing so in a very criminal manner.
00:32:42
Speaker
So
00:32:43
Speaker
I think it needs to be subjected to way more oversight.
00:32:46
Speaker
And so I think we have to really look at how we are overclassifying things.
00:32:51
Speaker
Of course, we're a country.
00:32:52
Speaker
People want to attack us.
00:32:53
Speaker
We have to have secrets.
00:32:54
Speaker
We need to have operational security.
00:32:55
Speaker
That has to happen.
00:32:58
Speaker
But especially when things touch American citizens, I think we have to be much, much more transparent about that.
00:33:06
Speaker
And there needs to be the FOIA system, I think, needs to be much more robust and much less complicated.
00:33:13
Speaker
You know, like the real journalists doing real investigative journalism, it's absolutely essential, you know.
00:33:18
Speaker
And I think having more podcasts and more independent journalists and just eroding away at the corporate media as much as we possibly can, I think it's huge, man.
00:33:28
Speaker
But yeah, I think this is another thing where that we can cover sort of in a church committee like hearing.
00:33:33
Speaker
And Congress needs to exercise congressional oversight way more than they actually do.
00:33:39
Speaker
It's one of the core principles.
00:33:40
Speaker
you know, tasks that Congress has is oversight.
00:33:43
Speaker
And I just think for the last decades and decades, there's been a blank check that's been given to the national security state and the Department of Defense.
00:33:50
Speaker
Because if you say, if you get some spooky CIA guy or NSA guy that comes in there or a general with a bunch of medals and they say, well, we have to do these things.
00:33:58
Speaker
Otherwise, the terrorists are going to attack us.
00:33:59
Speaker
Like most congressmen and senators are just like, oh, crap, man, I don't want to be the guy to like let this happen.
00:34:04
Speaker
So a general or CIA, NSA guy, do whatever you want.
00:34:08
Speaker
And the problem is that
00:34:10
Speaker
the NSA director and the CIA director are probably political appointees.
00:34:13
Speaker
They're probably not even actual operatives.
00:34:15
Speaker
Like they're, they're political hacks by and large, you know, and then our generals at some point, they become political hacks as well.
00:34:21
Speaker
So it's a very corrupt system.
00:34:24
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, I, I, I had occasion to look through talking about Millie and, and I had occasion to look through the, the joint chiefs of staff and like, it's, it's all like,
00:34:39
Speaker
Carter era guys who, who signed up for a peacetime kind of bureaucratic military and they've been in there ever since.
00:34:48
Speaker
And, um, it's, it's, uh, it's so self, it's so, so transparently political.
00:34:56
Speaker
Um, and, and, and so, yeah, and I think, I think popular sovereignty, um,
00:35:05
Speaker
It has to be predicated on the idea that we are in possession of the facts, the American people.
00:35:14
Speaker
Because if official sources, if the people that work for us can lie to us, then they don't work for us.
00:35:20
Speaker
That's right.
00:35:21
Speaker
I agree.
00:35:23
Speaker
The only way that I can think of to square that circle is to say,
00:35:30
Speaker
Congress, it is your responsibility to go into the SCIF, look at the documents, look at the images, look at what they're telling you, and then you're accountable for that decision.
00:35:44
Speaker
And nobody wants to be held accountable.
00:35:46
Speaker
And I just don't know if that principal agent problem can really be overcome.
00:35:52
Speaker
But I mean, I think you're right that if it is going to be overcome, that's how it has to happen.
00:35:59
Speaker
And that's the thing is like when you get guys like Adam Schiff, who like we at this point, we know Schiff lied to us for like four years about Russiagate for him not to be held accountable for that.
00:36:07
Speaker
That's why no one.
00:36:08
Speaker
I mean, that's why like if I'm if I'm elected a congressman tomorrow.
00:36:11
Speaker
And like literally we get really good intel that something bad is going to happen and we need to use military force and put people in harm's way.
00:36:18
Speaker
And even if you guys trust me and I come to my constituents, I'm like, guys, I heard in the skip the CIA said something bad is going to happen.
00:36:24
Speaker
Rightfully right now, most American people will be like F all the way off.
00:36:28
Speaker
Like I don't even want to hear about it.
00:36:31
Speaker
We can't have that.
00:36:33
Speaker
So what we need to do is we actually have to –
00:36:35
Speaker
We have to lay it out for the American people that look, Adam Schiff and the DNC, they did this.
00:36:39
Speaker
They did this with FISA.
00:36:40
Speaker
We caught them and he will now be held accountable.
00:36:42
Speaker
And the next congressman that does some crap like that, they're going to share a sale with Adam Schiff, you know?
00:36:47
Speaker
So that's, that's how we restore accountability and trust.
00:36:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:53
Speaker
I mean, I mean, what it will amount to, in my opinion, if it works is it will amount to an electoral revolution.
00:37:02
Speaker
It will have to be the entire,
00:37:07
Speaker
The wave of replacements in the Congress, in the Senate, in the presidency, would have to be so extreme to act in unison on a task like that.
00:37:24
Speaker
I think the trends that you're seeing as far as the red wave in 2022, or this year,
00:37:31
Speaker
it's encouraging.
00:37:34
Speaker
I'm not sure that it's enough.
00:37:35
Speaker
And then you get into the Supreme Court.
00:37:40
Speaker
And this is why I maybe I'd like to believe.
00:37:47
Speaker
I want you to sell me on this being solvable politically.
00:37:51
Speaker
But I look at some of the decisions that the Supreme Court has made and there's really no
00:37:59
Speaker
internal to the constitution recourse against those kinds of decisions.
Foreign Policy and Military Strategy
00:38:03
Speaker
And, and they seem nakedly political to me.
00:38:07
Speaker
Um, and I, I, I wonder if you could comment on that.
00:38:10
Speaker
Like, is there anything that we can do about this whole like living constitution thing where the Supreme court just decides what, what, what they want to happen.
00:38:18
Speaker
And they say, well, I found a penumbra and an emanation and that's what the constitution says.
00:38:26
Speaker
I'm not going to have to vet our Supreme Court case.
00:38:28
Speaker
It's much, much better.
00:38:31
Speaker
But yeah, the whole lifetime appointment thing, I think that's an issue.
00:38:35
Speaker
I understand the logic behind it.
00:38:38
Speaker
But I really think having good – the legislative body because the people are the closest to the legislative body, especially Congress.
00:38:46
Speaker
Having them actually exercise a lot of oversight I think can prevent a lot of things from going to the court.
00:38:52
Speaker
I don't think everything is supposed to be litigated in the courts.
00:38:56
Speaker
I think we've just had so much gridlock and just so much incompetency in the legislative branch.
00:39:00
Speaker
And then into some extent, like with the executive branch as well, that a lot of things have ended up in the court's purview and the court is showing that like, they're not, these people aren't set up for that.
00:39:10
Speaker
Like they're, these guys are judges, they're academics.
00:39:12
Speaker
Like I don't think they're, I don't think they have the steel spines for the fight.
00:39:17
Speaker
I mean, Clarence Thomas is probably the exception.
00:39:19
Speaker
I think he's, I think that guy's, you know, he consistently is ready to tackle hard issues.
00:39:24
Speaker
The rest of them, they seem like they want to have these philosophical arguments and maybe write an interesting paper for a bunch of law students to debate.
00:39:31
Speaker
When it's like, hey, our country is about to literally implode because of what happened with the last election.
00:39:36
Speaker
Could you guys maybe look at this because there's states suing other states?
00:39:39
Speaker
I'm pretty sure that's somewhere in the Constitution.
00:39:41
Speaker
And they couldn't even be bothered.
00:39:43
Speaker
So to me, I lost a lot of faith in them.
00:39:45
Speaker
you know, that's why I say, Hey, Congress has to be the ones that actually go and adjudicate the election of 2020.
00:39:50
Speaker
Should it be the courts?
00:39:51
Speaker
I don't know.
00:39:52
Speaker
I'll let some kids at law school debate that, but like the problem is they're not doing it.
00:39:56
Speaker
So I, I totally understand the, the, the issues of that.
00:40:01
Speaker
And I, maybe we look at how we appoint Supreme court justices.
00:40:04
Speaker
Maybe we look at like, can we impeach these people?
00:40:06
Speaker
Maybe we look at like, can we do term limits?
00:40:09
Speaker
I don't want to add judges.
00:40:10
Speaker
I don't want to take away judges.
00:40:11
Speaker
Nine is a good number.
00:40:13
Speaker
Um,
00:40:13
Speaker
It's there for a reason.
00:40:14
Speaker
But man, I totally understand.
00:40:17
Speaker
And the problem is we can't vote them.
00:40:19
Speaker
We can't vote our way out of the Supreme Court.
00:40:21
Speaker
That's the problem.
00:40:23
Speaker
So I put a lot more faith on the people.
00:40:25
Speaker
Yeah, I put way more faith in the people that we can fire every two years because we can fire them.
00:40:30
Speaker
In theory, if we get enough political engagement, we can fire congressmen every six percent of us.
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah, which again, I mean, the will to pass a constitutional amendment hasn't existed for decades.
00:40:43
Speaker
And we probably, I think there has to be a realization that like, you know, if we don't adjust this system, it's going to just be run by the Supreme Court.
00:40:56
Speaker
They're just going to litigate every decision.
00:40:57
Speaker
Congress is going to be gridlocked forever.
00:40:59
Speaker
Like, there's just not an obvious reason for that to change.
00:41:05
Speaker
So I want to move to foreign policy quickly.
00:41:09
Speaker
There's a pretty common take in dissident circles that since we don't like the people running the government, we don't like the security state, basically any regime that's antagonistic to that security state is based, and they're the good guys.
00:41:24
Speaker
And I know you have expertise in the Middle East in particular, but in general, I want to get your take on
00:41:32
Speaker
And, you know, we can go in whatever order you want, but I'd like to talk about Syria and Iran.
00:41:36
Speaker
I'd like to talk about Ukraine.
00:41:37
Speaker
I'd like to talk about China.
00:41:39
Speaker
Yeah, my overall take in foreign policy is that, like, the first country we need to worry about is America.
00:41:46
Speaker
And I mean that in the most national sense.
00:41:48
Speaker
Like, we need to have a very strong independent economy.
00:41:52
Speaker
If you look at the map, I mean, we're one of the unique countries in the world that we have.
00:41:56
Speaker
Two neighbors that are oceans we have.
00:41:58
Speaker
We are blessed by divine province of all kinds of natural resources.
00:42:00
Speaker
Like we're we're one of the countries that just really doesn't need that much from the rest of the world.
00:42:06
Speaker
And so for us to not capitalize on that is is just insanity.
00:42:10
Speaker
So that's where that needs to be our starting place.
00:42:13
Speaker
But yeah, there's going to be countries out there that want to do bad things to us.
00:42:17
Speaker
They want to do harm to us.
00:42:18
Speaker
We have interests in other parts of the country.
00:42:20
Speaker
But in general, our starting principle should be a strong and sovereign America.
00:42:25
Speaker
So seeking out foreign interventions and foreign adventures, like that has never worked out for us.
00:42:30
Speaker
I mean, there's going to be times where to save the world, like we did in World War II and World War I to a certain extent, like we actually do have to get involved.
00:42:38
Speaker
And that's legitimate.
00:42:39
Speaker
We're going to have to do that because eventually that will come to our doorstep.
00:42:43
Speaker
There's validity in that argument.
00:42:44
Speaker
But again, this does go back to trust.
00:42:46
Speaker
Trust.
00:42:47
Speaker
We have to trust that our government is not involved in just silly, foolish, nefarious activities overseas that don't directly benefit the American people.
00:42:58
Speaker
So I think right now, like for me, if we have to go and use military force, we have to be able to state what the vested national security interest is.
00:43:06
Speaker
Is it a clear and present danger?
00:43:07
Speaker
What's the actual plan?
00:43:09
Speaker
And like, when is that plan done?
00:43:10
Speaker
How do we actually get out of those types of things?
00:43:12
Speaker
And is there consensus from the American people via an actual vote in Congress?
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:43:20
Speaker
So like to start with Ukraine, I mean, the national security interest that I can see, I'm trying to, you know, give the devil his due, is that we've made these commitments.
00:43:36
Speaker
And these commitments were, they were made under different circumstances with a different geopolitical arithmetic.
00:43:42
Speaker
Fair enough.
00:43:44
Speaker
But there is a case to be made that if we have a line drawn in the sand and we let the bad guys cross it or the other guys cross it, whatever, then all of the other hotspots, whether it's Kashmir, whether it's the 38th parallel, whether it's the South China Sea,
00:44:05
Speaker
all of those spots become more dangerous to everybody, including our soldiers.
00:44:11
Speaker
And so I wonder what you make of, like, I mean, Biden is incompetent and probably not in charge, but I don't envy his position.
00:44:22
Speaker
Like, you know, we're extended in all these commitments and, you know, it's on paper.
00:44:31
Speaker
So what would be your take on how would you handle that situation in Ukraine?
00:44:37
Speaker
our national security state is done.
00:44:38
Speaker
And they do this with a lot of different problem sets is they, they say, Hey, this thing's a problem.
00:44:43
Speaker
And then the next thing, you know, like it gets kicked to the Pentagon and the Pentagon's like, well, we're the department of defense.
00:44:48
Speaker
So, you know, I, we could go to war if you want, but there's supposed to be an entire suite of things that policymakers have available.
00:44:55
Speaker
And this is something that Trump never got any credit for.
00:44:57
Speaker
Trump actually tried to use every single avenue of power that we have.
00:45:02
Speaker
And so
00:45:02
Speaker
For Ukraine, let's take the hypothesis that at its face value that if Putin goes and takes Ukraine, this is going to be a horrible thing for us, our allies in Europe, and we need to do something about it.
00:45:13
Speaker
Okay, well then what you, the first thing you do is you don't kill off the Keystone XL pipeline and make the one commodity that Russia has, oil and natural gas, go up in value by taking our production off the market.
00:45:23
Speaker
Like you don't do that.
00:45:24
Speaker
And then you don't go to the Europeans in green light, the NORAD stream two, you know, pipeline,
00:45:29
Speaker
So we did all these things.
00:45:31
Speaker
And then now we're supposed to believe that Putin is some form of this is a crisis.
00:45:36
Speaker
Like, it's just not believable.
00:45:38
Speaker
We're either so incredibly incompetent, which is possible with Biden, that we don't understand there's more tools to use other than war.
00:45:46
Speaker
But I think there's much more of a wag the dog trying to divert from the domestic issues.
00:45:50
Speaker
But really, it does go back to let's have a strong, sovereign America.
00:45:54
Speaker
And if we were producing, if we are a net producer of oil and natural gas, we can easily go to the Europeans and say like, hey, stop buying that crap from Putin.
00:46:03
Speaker
You can buy it from a bunch of other people.
00:46:04
Speaker
We'll sell you some discounted stuff.
00:46:05
Speaker
We'll make a good deal.
00:46:07
Speaker
We're not going to green light that pipeline.
00:46:09
Speaker
And if we do, we're going to sanction it and we're going to threaten kicking NATO countries, maybe out of NATO.
00:46:14
Speaker
We'll look at the NATO treaty and say, hey, like if you guys are going to tell us in one out of one side of your mouth that Russia is a threat and you need our help and then buy oil from them, we're going to stop taking you seriously.
00:46:24
Speaker
You know, like that's that's actually using diplomacy and economic power in a way that we should, as opposed to being like, well, I guess it's war.
00:46:33
Speaker
I guess we're just going to have to rally up the Pentagon once more.
00:46:37
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:46:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:38
Speaker
Take their oil and also never meet their defense commitments ever.
00:46:42
Speaker
Like the idea that they do.
00:46:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:46
Speaker
Well, I mean, NATO in general, do you feel like NATO has kind of outlived its usefulness?
00:46:51
Speaker
I mean, once the Soviet Union,
00:46:53
Speaker
Empire fell.
00:46:53
Speaker
I mean, like it seemed like that was the whole purpose for having NATO.
00:46:57
Speaker
Like right now, I would understand if NATO said to us like, hey, we stepped up after 9-11 and we followed you guys to Afghanistan and then you kept us there for 20 years and we don't want to play anymore.
00:47:08
Speaker
That's actually if I were NATO, that's what I would be saying to us.
00:47:11
Speaker
So, yeah, I think in many ways it kind of has outlived its its usefulness.
00:47:16
Speaker
The blanket international organizations, I don't think ever really work out in our favor.
00:47:22
Speaker
or ever really in any kind of strong sovereign nation's favor.
00:47:25
Speaker
Like us having individual treaties and relationships with countries, that's fine.
00:47:31
Speaker
But I think these blanket international organizations, that is just on a slippery slope for getting people involved in things that don't directly benefit their nations.
00:47:41
Speaker
It's just this globalist mentality that a bunch of different elites sitting somewhere in Brussels or Davos, they know better.
00:47:50
Speaker
than their sovereign nations do.
00:47:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:54
Speaker
And you could maybe make a case that NATO, you know, and even our position on the UN for a while was sort of an extension of our empire.
00:48:05
Speaker
And it was sort of in our national interest to maintain that because we were effectively in complete control of it.
00:48:13
Speaker
But then you have to get into the question of who's we.
00:48:16
Speaker
Like, you know,
00:48:19
Speaker
the American state was in control of those institutions, but the American people were not necessarily.
00:48:25
Speaker
And that creates that separation.
00:48:27
Speaker
And even then the crazy thing about like the American empire, I mean, like we were an empire because we, you know, won the second world war and then we won the cold war, but we are never really an empire.
00:48:36
Speaker
Like we're not imperialistic people.
00:48:38
Speaker
We, we, and if we are, we do a really bad job at it.
00:48:41
Speaker
We're good at extending our resources and not getting anything out of it.
00:48:44
Speaker
Like,
00:48:45
Speaker
We went and we fought and we bled in the Middle East for 20 years.
00:48:47
Speaker
Like I spent like most of my 20s and 30s in Iraq.
00:48:50
Speaker
And did we get one barrel of discounted oil from it?
00:48:52
Speaker
Like we're really bad at empire.
00:48:54
Speaker
I'm not saying we should be doing that.
00:48:56
Speaker
But like even when the Brits had an empire, like the Brits actually got a good deal out of their empire.
00:49:01
Speaker
Our empire really just benefits people in the Beltway, on Wall Street, and it doesn't even benefit the country.
00:49:07
Speaker
So it's like we are bad.
00:49:10
Speaker
And it's a good thing that we're bad at empire.
00:49:12
Speaker
So we just need to like not even try it.
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:49:19
Speaker
Moving on to Syria and Iran, I know that you have a very personal stake in that conflict.
00:49:28
Speaker
And do you think that we have or had a compelling security interest there?
00:49:34
Speaker
I think when Trump came into office, the ISIS situation was so out of control.
00:49:38
Speaker
You can reverse trace that to like Obama's capitulation and then all the way to Bush removing
00:49:45
Speaker
The guy who, right or wrong, stabilized the region, Saddam, kept the Iranians at bay.
00:49:51
Speaker
And then the steps we took in Iraq really led to al-Qaeda in Iraq and then ISIS eventually.
00:49:57
Speaker
But when Trump came in, it was really clear, like, hey, we had to go do something about this.
00:50:03
Speaker
There was ISIS.
00:50:04
Speaker
They had sanctuary.
00:50:05
Speaker
They had safe haven.
00:50:05
Speaker
They were able to plan attacks.
00:50:07
Speaker
Those attacks were aimed right at America.
00:50:08
Speaker
They were forcing a migration crisis into Europe.
00:50:11
Speaker
Yeah, this is a place where we actually had to do some international leadership and we had to go crush ISIS.
00:50:16
Speaker
My late wife was over there for the final push into that.
00:50:19
Speaker
And when we actually, so Trump actually did something very remarkable.
00:50:23
Speaker
He stated what the military objective was.
00:50:24
Speaker
He said, I'm going to crush ISIS.
00:50:26
Speaker
And that means I'm going to, I'm going to destroy every section of every inch of ground they control.
00:50:32
Speaker
They can't be allowed to control ground because he realized that like the ideology of a terrorist group or Al Qaeda or ISIS, like
00:50:39
Speaker
it's like the war on drugs.
00:50:40
Speaker
Like you're not going to win that.
00:50:41
Speaker
However, you can say, I'm not going to let these guys fly their flag and control ground.
00:50:45
Speaker
He did that.
00:50:45
Speaker
And so they, we went, we took, we took back every section of ground that control.
00:50:50
Speaker
And then Trump said like, and now we're out of here.
00:50:51
Speaker
I don't want anything to do with this foresighted civil war going on in Syria.
00:50:56
Speaker
I don't care.
00:50:56
Speaker
Let's get our troops out.
00:50:57
Speaker
And that's when Madison and a bunch of the guys publicly resigned a month late.
00:51:01
Speaker
They were supposed to be out Christmas Eve of, uh,
00:51:04
Speaker
And then a month later, because of all the bureaucratic slow roll that went on, my wife and three other Americans were killed by a suicide bomber in a place that we really have no vested national security interest.
00:51:14
Speaker
So no, I don't think we have any more use for Syria.
00:51:17
Speaker
Like right now, we did that raid that went and took out the number two guy from ISIS.
00:51:22
Speaker
Like that happened closer to the Turks territory.
00:51:26
Speaker
I mean, that was probably done.
00:51:27
Speaker
I don't know anything, but with Turkish liaison intelligence.
00:51:29
Speaker
So could we be sitting in a place like Turkey and every now and again strike?
00:51:33
Speaker
I'm even skeptical about, do we need to put boots on the ground for these things?
00:51:36
Speaker
Or could we just like bomb places?
00:51:38
Speaker
Like I'm totally okay with that as well.
00:51:40
Speaker
Um,
00:51:41
Speaker
if it's, if it meets the threshold of something, that's going to be a threat guys, like guys that are part of ISIS, like they're a threat.
00:51:46
Speaker
They do, they do actually want to come here and kill us.
00:51:49
Speaker
And so doing things like occasional bombings or targeted raids, that's fine.
00:51:54
Speaker
We take away all of our strategic advantage.
00:51:56
Speaker
When we go and we hang out in these places, like America has an ability to reach out and touch people like no country ever right now or ever in the history of the world.
00:52:04
Speaker
When we go and we occupy places, we take away all of our advantages.
00:52:07
Speaker
And so like right now, Syria, I mean,
00:52:09
Speaker
where our troops are, they are basically speed bumps between the Turks and the Kurds, Assad, Russia, Iran, and ISIS.
00:52:17
Speaker
Like these are not wars that we want to be a part
Economic Independence and Global Alliances
00:52:20
Speaker
of at all.
00:52:20
Speaker
So I think get out, like I wouldn't be against any kind of effort to remove Assad.
00:52:25
Speaker
Like if we haven't learned, if we haven't learned by now that like getting rid of strong men, especially in the Middle East is a very bad idea, then anybody who's advocating to get rid of Assad, like they need to be taken away from foreign policy and they have to go read
00:52:39
Speaker
everything about the Arab Spring and what we did with Saddam before they're allowed to come back into the conversation.
00:52:45
Speaker
It's just an utterly unserious point that we should be actively working towards getting rid of Assad in any way.
00:52:53
Speaker
Roger that.
00:52:56
Speaker
The toughest one
00:52:59
Speaker
that I'm aware of right now is, is Taiwan and the South China sea.
00:53:03
Speaker
And the fact that so much of our transistors are built over there, not our transistors are, are, yeah.
00:53:09
Speaker
Microchips, some kind of semiconductors.
00:53:11
Speaker
Microchips, yeah.
00:53:12
Speaker
Semiconductor.
00:53:14
Speaker
And, and,
00:53:17
Speaker
Tell me what you think the approach should be to the Chinese and Taiwan.
00:53:22
Speaker
I mean, I obviously, you know, step one I'm imagining would be bring that industry here because it's a great high paying industry.
00:53:33
Speaker
But in the meantime, how would you handle that conflict?
00:53:39
Speaker
Yeah, so obviously the semiconductors and the advanced microchip design, all that needs to
00:53:45
Speaker
like we even using the government to do it, get that capability back here in America.
00:53:50
Speaker
Actually, my district, because of the amount of water we have from the Columbia River, we used to build them here and we actually have companies that build parts of it and they ship the rest over there so that we can ship them back here.
00:53:59
Speaker
It's completely terrible.
00:54:01
Speaker
I think arming our allies in the region, obviously arming Taiwan,
00:54:07
Speaker
arming the rest of Asia Pacific that is not aligned ideologically with the Chinese, is the way to make it so costly that if the Chinese were to move on Taiwan, they would face a bloodbath from allies and neighbors who actually have real skin in the game because they live in the neighborhood, backed up by our fleet.
00:54:27
Speaker
That's absolutely key.
00:54:28
Speaker
The biggest thing though right now of China is they smell blood in the water and they smell weakness.
00:54:32
Speaker
I mean, they control
00:54:34
Speaker
Our supply lines, because of our means of production are over there.
00:54:37
Speaker
We rely on the Chinese to buy off our debt bonds.
00:54:40
Speaker
And like when we killed off the Keystone XL pipeline, that was just really a massive effort for us to keep dollars in circulation because we needed now to, we need to go back to OPEC and say like, hey, we're going to give you guys petrodollars.
00:54:51
Speaker
Can you ship us oil?
00:54:53
Speaker
Well, if we were independent, we wouldn't need to have that.
00:54:55
Speaker
And like, so right now, because we're back on this entire debt economy, we need the Chinese to buy off our debt bonds.
00:55:02
Speaker
So in terms of production, we have to get independent.
00:55:05
Speaker
And we also have to not rely on the Chinese to buy off our debt because they could, I mean, economically right now, they could, they're in the process of eating our lunch.
00:55:12
Speaker
So I think a combination of economic nationalism and isolation to a certain extent, decoupling from China,
00:55:19
Speaker
And then making sure all of our allies in the region have what they need in terms of mines, in terms of surface to sea type of missile defenses to really make it, to make them impose a cost.
00:55:34
Speaker
And this is a place where I would have some informal alliances with the folks in the region to say like, hey, if they do move on to Taiwan, it's going to be a bad and bloody day for them.
00:55:43
Speaker
But
00:55:43
Speaker
What just happened in Afghanistan, the stupid military adventure that the national security state is trying to take in Ukraine, the Chinese are laughing at that.
00:55:52
Speaker
And the fact that the Chinese and the Russians just signed a strategic agreement as allies, that should be what's throwing up red flags.
00:56:00
Speaker
But you don't hear about it.
00:56:00
Speaker
You just hear that we're sending a division over to Europe to flex on the Russians.
00:56:07
Speaker
Again, it's totally unserious.
00:56:09
Speaker
We should be taking every measure we can
00:56:12
Speaker
to drive a wedge between Russia and China.
00:56:15
Speaker
And we don't do that through, you know, aggression on the Russian flag.
00:56:20
Speaker
Do you think that means making friendlier overtures to Russia?
00:56:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:26
Speaker
I mean, Putin's Putin's he's Putin.
00:56:28
Speaker
Like we, we know the guy's never fully going to be our friend, but again, if we, if we're not, um,
00:56:35
Speaker
bowing down to NATO, or maybe we're even just listening, like NATO right now doesn't care about Russia.
00:56:41
Speaker
So, you know, we can, we can even take the advice of NATO and even take the advice of the Ukrainians who are telling us to calm the heck down about Putin.
00:56:50
Speaker
I mean, I think Trump did a great job with showing Russia that we met in business, like making us energy independent, going after Europeans for buying Russian oil.
00:56:59
Speaker
And then the Russians were flexing on our forces in Syria and Trump authorized us to do self-defense strikes against them.
00:57:05
Speaker
So Putin, I mean, game understands game.
00:57:07
Speaker
You're not going to sit down with a thug like Putin and show any kind of weakness.
00:57:11
Speaker
He has to see that every now and again, you're going to take decisive action and do it in a very smart, calculated way.
00:57:17
Speaker
So he respected Trump.
00:57:18
Speaker
And so, you know, we didn't get a lot of Russian aggression during the Trump era.
00:57:23
Speaker
I mean, that's not coincidental.
00:57:24
Speaker
And the second Biden comes back in, he does stupid things of our economy, you know, like they know weakness is on display.
00:57:30
Speaker
So you just can't display weakness with the Russians.
00:57:33
Speaker
I think the Russians advocating for themselves to be a strong sovereign nation, that's not a bad thing because then their strong sovereign nation is right on the border with China.
00:57:42
Speaker
Like those guys, the Chinese and the Russians are going to have way more just natural friction than we should have with either one of them.
00:57:51
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:57:52
Speaker
Absolutely.
Military Service Advice
00:57:54
Speaker
Um, thoughts on serving in the military right now.
00:57:58
Speaker
I mean, I know that, uh, there's a lot to be said still for the quality of the training and the networking and, and we need, we can't, it's just like, it's just like you said with politics, we can't, we can't cede the military to our enemies.
00:58:11
Speaker
Um,
00:58:12
Speaker
on the other hand, there's the prospect of like dying for a non-binary roller rink in Kabul.
00:58:19
Speaker
Like, so what, what's your take on, on should guys sign up or not?
00:58:27
Speaker
Of all the questions I get, I like actually hate this one the most because I had a very, even, even though I tragically lost my wife in the military, talk about that all day long.
00:58:35
Speaker
I still had a really positive experience in the military.
00:58:37
Speaker
Like
00:58:38
Speaker
If things were in a perfect world, I would still be in the military or paramilitary guy in the CIA.
00:58:43
Speaker
It was the greatest job ever, especially if you're a young man that wants challenge, you want to test your mettle, you want to serve your country.
00:58:50
Speaker
It's like the core of everything that makes America, America.
00:58:53
Speaker
And if we don't have people that are willing to step up and fight for our country, then I think we don't have a country anymore.
00:58:58
Speaker
All that said...
00:59:00
Speaker
What's happening right now between the so-called extremist stand down, that partisan witch hunt that Secretary of Defense Austin and Biden are leading the way on, and the vaccine mandate, and just the way our soldiers are being treated, the way that they were willing to put people in harm's way for that horrible withdrawal, and then we lost 13 and they won't even really acknowledge it.
00:59:20
Speaker
You know, all the way up to like, hey, maybe because Biden's domestically weak at home, we need to send American soldiers to Europe, potentially into Ukraine to, I don't know, see who blinks first.
00:59:31
Speaker
Like just insanity.
00:59:32
Speaker
So right now I have actually, unfortunately, and I hate doing this.
00:59:35
Speaker
I've told people like, look, you got to realize that's where things are right now.
00:59:40
Speaker
And I wouldn't necessarily recommend joining the military.
00:59:43
Speaker
Now, I know what it's like.
00:59:44
Speaker
when I was 18 years old, no one was going to stop me from joining.
00:59:47
Speaker
Like I hated Bill Clinton.
00:59:48
Speaker
I thought he was horrible.
00:59:49
Speaker
I enlisted under Bill Clinton, you know, times were different.
00:59:52
Speaker
The stakes were nowhere near as high.
Conclusion and Further Engagement
00:59:55
Speaker
So, you know, I talked to young people at the time that I was,
00:59:59
Speaker
So unfortunately, Joe's audio cut out and we had to end it there, but it was wonderful to have Joe on the show.
01:00:04
Speaker
If you want to learn more about Joe's campaign, you can check out joekentforcongress.com.
01:00:08
Speaker
If you want to learn more about what we do here at Exit, you can check us out at exitgroup.us, follow us on Twitter at exit underscore org, or follow the podcast at exitgroup.podbean.com.