https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=5N0vQ4Tq3ew
See, I think Putin will settle for the devastation of Ukraine. I think he could claim that as a victory. The utter devastation of the Ukraine, because it stays out of Western hands. But if Putin ever believed that his people even believed that they were now under attack, let’s say by German tanks, let’s say the probability that he’s used a tactical battlefield nuclear weapon seems to me to be extraordinarily high. For me, it’s like, well, why wouldn’t he? And the issue is, well, you don’t want to escalate. It’s like, yeah, that’s already factored into the decision. The fact that they’re even theorizing about any of this without recognizing the very direct and real cost to human civilization on this planet, we can look throughout history to see how US foreign policy, especially in regime change wars, have failed so spectacularly in different regions around the world because they go and pick which dictator they like or don’t like. Well, we’ll take this guy out, replace him with this guy. And then all of these disastrous unintended negative consequences come both for the United States and the people in these countries. Yet here we are now where we are facing that exact same prospect with the country that has the most nuclear weapons in the entire world. Hello, everyone. I’m here today with Tulsi Gabbard, an American politician, commentator, and a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserves. She served as the US representative for Hawaii’s second congressional district across four terms from 2013 until 2021. She was the first female combat veteran to run for president, as well as the first Hindu member of Congress and the first Samoan American voting member. Both during and after her terms in office, Gabbard has been a formidable voice in the political space, leaning right of center despite her Democrat origins with continued appearances on Fox News while retaining more progressive views on topics such as drug legalization. She is the host of her own program, Tulsi Gabbard’s show, where she continues to speak on relevant issues with the following axiom firmly in mind, country before party. Thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today. I’m looking forward to this conversation. I thought maybe we’d start by talking about your experience, your history with the Democrats. If you could just walk us through that. I mean, you’ve had a stellar rise within the confines of the party and then a certain amount of friction. Maybe you could just walk us through that. You were elected very, very young. Yes. So maybe we could start with that. Could you just tell the story of being involved with the Democrats? So I, growing up here in Hawaii, it’s a beautiful place and from a young age, had a pretty deep appreciation for the importance of protecting this place, protecting our oceans and the preservation of clean water. We get our water here from water aquifers and as the most remote island chain in the world, protecting those resources are essential for life. And so my motivation and drive to run for the state House of Representatives here in Hawaii when I was 21 years old in 2002 really came from that motivation to want to be in a position where I could actually do that. I previously, I had, they wanted to build a big landfill over one of our big water aquifers which even for me as a teenager seemed like such an absurd idea and risk because once that water is contaminated, then it’s done. And so I was part of, I went out and got petitions and signatures and joined others to be able to try to stop that because it was being, the wheels were being greased by a corrupt politician essentially. He was trying to help his buddy who ran the landfill business. And it was a great experience for me as a young person to be a part of stopping that from happening. And that’s what drove me to run for office when I was 21 years old. It was not out of any kind of design like, oh, I’m going to have this big political career and this will be the first stepping stone to get to somewhere else. It was really driven by a desire to be of service and make that positive impact. I chose to be a Democrat. My family wasn’t one of those like legacy party affiliation things that you just did. I really was thoughtful at that time about which box I wanted to check in filing those papers to run for office. And for us here in Hawaii, the origins of the Democratic Party really came from a party that fought for people, kind of a more populist perspective. We had plantation workers who were being absolutely abused and taken advantage of by the huge landowners here in the state that was essentially being run by elite wealthy Republicans at the time. And it was a Democratic Party that fought for those who didn’t have a voice. It was a Democratic Party that celebrated civil liberties, that celebrated freedom and individual thought, this big tent party that really was rooted in kind of those traditional liberal JFK-esque ideals. And it was a party that had many voices that spoke out for peace. And so all of these different things really drew me to the Democratic Party as a party that would fight for the voices of the people. You know, in Canada, we have a socialist tradition, the New Democratic Party, and I worked for them when I was a kid. The man I worked for was the father of Alberta’s last premier, second-to-last premier. And a lot of the people that were involved in the NDP were labour leaders, you know. It was well known in Canada that the Conservatives were the party of the establishment and the Liberals were, well, they played both sides against the middle very effectively. And the socialists, the NDP, British socialists, rather than the communist type, were really, they’re really the voice of the working class. They’re the voice of the unions and the working class needs a voice, obviously. And I think, well, the NDP did provide that to some degree in Canada and the Democrats historically did provide that. That seemed to go pretty damn sideways with Clinton. And I think it looked to me from an outsider’s point of view, and I was rather appalled by this, that the Democrats had decided to sacrifice their traditional base, the working class, the committed working class, for something approximating the politics of division and this, whatever this new narrative is of oppression and victimization. I don’t think that worked out very well either, as far as I could tell, because my sense of the Clinton-Trump debacle was that it wasn’t so much that Trump won, although he certainly did. It was definitely the case that Clinton lost. And I think she did that by sacrificing the interests of the working class. Trump just vacuumed that up in no time flat, masterfully, I thought. He seemed to have that ability to communicate with working class people, interestingly enough. And they trusted him. At least they trusted him in comparison to Clinton. So, okay, so you were interested in the Democrats because of that working class voice tradition. And you worked with the Democrats for a long time. How long was your, how long you ran when you were 21? That was in when? 2002. 2002. Right. So, and when did you formally sever ties with the Democrats? In October of last year, 2022. Right. So it was basically 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. I did not spend all of that time in politics. I left the state house when I volunteered to deploy with our Hawaii Army National Guard unit because the events of 9-11, like so many Americans, changed my life, changed my perspective. And I had enlisted in the military motivated by what happened there to go after the Islamist terrorists who attacked us on that day. And so I was campaigning for reelection here in Hawaii in 2004, which looked to be a pretty easy reelection here and to continue the work I was doing. Our unit or the National Guard unit was activated for a deployment to Iraq. I was told by my commander, you know, congratulations, you don’t have to go. Your name is, you know, we’ve already got someone filling this job in the medical unit where I was serving. So you can stay home and you can continue doing what you’re doing. But I knew that there was no way, there was just no way that I could stay back and work in some plush office in the state capitol and watch my brothers and sisters in uniform go and deploy to war on the other side of the world. And so I left my reelection campaign and volunteered to deploy, got trained in a different job that they needed filling in that medical unit and went off on an 18-month long deployment. So what did you learn from that? Exactly. So you got hauled out of your life? What did you learn? So much, so much about the cost of war, both in the loss of people who I was close to, people who I served with, as well as people who I had never met. One, the very first thing that I did in my job while I served in Iraq, we were in a camp about 40 miles north of Baghdad. And the very first thing that I did every single day that I was there was to go through a list of names of American service soldiers who were serving all across that country who had been injured or hurt in combat the day before, in the previous 24 hours. And I had to go through that list name by name to look to see if there were any of the soldiers from our brigade, which was about close to 3,000 people who were serving in four different parts of Iraq at the time, to make sure that, okay, well, this person has been injured or they’ve been hurt. Where are they? Are they getting the care that they need? Are they able to get what they need in country and return to duty? Do they need to be evacuated quickly? And basically make sure that they had what they need, whether they were staying in country, we eventually got them back home to their families if they had to leave. But every single day being confronted with the high human cost of war that is just so often not discussed or talked about in the headlines or even thought about by politicians, even if they might give lip service to it. And also, therefore, coming from, you know, serving in the state house and even some of our local politicians in Hawaii, they would come out and visit the troops, get the photo up, be on the ground for maybe 24, 48 hours, and then go back and say all of these things as if they knew what was happening. And just the hypocrisy, the hypocrisy of the politicians in Washington that voted for that war in Iraq, but really without any care for the consequences of that decision or even thinking through what are we actually doing here? Is it serving the interests of the American people? Is it? Yeah, well, and what were you doing there as far as you’re concerned? You know, you’ve had lots of time to think about it now and you were actually there. And so well, for our unit, so our specific unit there was there to go after different terrorist elements. This was kind of where Al Qaeda was growing stronger. And obviously, the rise of ISIS would occur a little later after we left. But you know, we had a number of different infantry units that were going around in different areas and trying to seek out those insurgents that were attacking Americans. And that was the specific mission that we had. I was served in a medical unit. And so we were providing care primarily for our American troops, but also going out and trying to help provide care for local Iraqis in the area where we were. I visited Abu Ghraib Prison. This was after the scandal occurred, but I visited the hospital Abu Ghraib Prison and was struck there about the medical care that was being provided there to the prisoners, which was exactly the same kind of care that we were providing to injured service members who were also in the country. But it was seeing past kind of the day-to-day tasks there in being exposed on the, literally on the front lines to the war profiteering and the military industrial complex, the monopoly of KBR Halliburton making an immeasurable amount of money off of this war. Again, I was there for all of 2005 in Iraq. And that was in the early days. And you look at what has happened since over the ensuing decades in Iraq and Afghanistan. And again, my exposure in Hawaii as a state legislator was very limited when it comes to foreign policy. There wasn’t a lot that I knew, but being there, experiencing it, and at a basic level understanding government spending and taxpayer dollars and how are we using it, the accountability and going and talking to these, they labeled them third country nationals. They would import in from places like Nepal and the Philippines and Sri Lanka, pay them essentially compared to how much they were charging the federal government to do things like, okay, well, we’re going to cook food for the troops every day. And I started asking, well, how, if I walk into the chow hall tent or building or whatever and get a bowl of cereal and a banana for breakfast, how much is KBR Halliburton charging the US federal government for that? And it was some outrageous price in 2005, it was like 500 a month. Right. 31.4 trillion debt ceiling last month, the White House still refuses to reduce spending. Our national leadership has buried their heads in the sand. But you don’t have to. Call the experts at Birch Gold today and start diversifying into gold. For over 5,000 years, gold has withstood inflation, geopolitical turmoil, and stock market crashes. With help from the experts at Birch Gold, you can own gold in a tax-sheltered retirement account. Birch Gold makes it easy to convert an IRA or 401K into an IRA in precious metals. Ask Tex Jordan to 989898 to claim your free info kit on gold and then talk to one of their precious metals specialists. With an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, thousands of happy customers, and countless five-star reviews, you can trust Birch Gold to help protect your savings. Text Jordan to 989898 today. Well, there’s a measurement science that’s been devoted to this for a long time, and there are actually guidelines for psychologists who do assessment, let’s say, in relationship to a particular job. Some of those are enshrined in appropriate law. And the notion is, first of all, that you have to do a job analysis, which is, okay, what is it that the people who are doing this job, who are good at it, spend the bulk of their time doing? And you can measure that, although that’s not easy. For example, it’s not that easy to measure the performance of a middle manager, for example, in a corporation, because the outcomes are difficult to specify. But you can do a better or worse job of that. And if you do a good job, then you can find out what predicts prowess, and you can do that statistically. And then you can, then you define merit, right? Merit is what makes you, makes it likely that you will do very well doing whatever this job is for. That’s merit. And that can be handled properly. The problem is, as you alluded to, if you accept merit defined in that manner as the gold standard, then you’re going to have to accept the outcome, which is that there isn’t going to be radical equity at all levels of analysis in the candidate pool. And so you have to forego that. And it certainly seems, I would say, that on the left side of things now, people are almost entirely unwilling to forego that equity outcome. I mean, even Kamala Harris, who should have known better, tweeted out a few weeks ago her support for this concept of equity. And people who aren’t paying attention think that means equality of opportunity, which is not what it means at all, which is why it’s a different word. It means that if the outcomes of the selection process aren’t equal across all conceivable combinations of ethnicity and gender, sex, etc., that intersectional morass, then the system is by definition exclusionary and prejudiced. And that, well, that just kills merit, assuming that merit is not completely equally distributed. Now one other question on the female front. So one of the things that’s disturbed my conscience with regards to women on the front lines is that there’s always the possibility that you’ll fall into the hands of the enemy. And it wasn’t very much fun for, let’s say, British and American prisoners of war in Nazi camps in World War II, although there were some Geneva Convention arrangements that were still in place. But I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a front line woman who fell into enemy hands. I mean, that’s a level of absolute bloody catastrophic hell that I think that we should be very, very cautious about exposing anyone to. And so I have a proclivity to think that women are differentially susceptible to exploitation on the captured enemy front. And I don’t know exactly, you know, given credence to what you say about making sure we have the most qualified people, you know, maybe you can ask people to face their death. I don’t know if it’s okay to ask them to face endless gang rape and then death. You know, that’s pushing the envelope. And so I don’t know what you think about that. I imagine that thoughts of that sort must have gone through your mind from time to time. Sure. It is the most… War is tragic and ugly, to say the least. And you’re facing some of the most horrific conditions, which is one of the reasons why I don’t support the draft is because as a soldier, I don’t want to be serving alongside anybody who hasn’t made that choice to be there, who hasn’t made that choice to be willing to make those sacrifices. Not only to give up one’s life in service to our country, but to face the plethora of what could be the absolute worst case scenarios. That’s my perspective. And so whether it’s those scenarios are facing a male or a female soldier, these are some of the things that, you know, both the training of the practical implications, but obviously the mental preparation for how anything could possibly go bad is essential before sending troops into that situation. Okay. So your sense, it sounds like your sense is that, you know, if people have been fully apprised of the risks, and I think we outlined the most substantive risk on the female side, if people are fully apprised of that risk and there’s evidence that they actually understand what that means, which is no simple matter, that it’s okay to allow them to make that choice. But that’s partly why you introduced the idea that there’s no compulsion in military conscription, also partly because you don’t get the best out of people if they’re compelled, obviously. So okay, so anything else on the combat front or can we turn back to the Democrats? I’d like you to do a… Well, I’ll walk us back into that because it is what motivated me to run for Congress. We talked about, you know, okay, well, I’ve been with the Democratic Party for 20 years. I chose to join the Democratic Party. My experience on two Middle East deployments is what really drove me to run for Congress. It wasn’t something I had great any ambition for, frankly, when I ran for the state house in 2002, but being exposed to the cost of war, being exposed to both the military industrial complex, but what you described very well earlier is this collusion in the narrative and the push coming from elected officials in Washington, the establishment of people in both political parties who are part of this warmongering uniparty, so much of, I guess, the mainstream media or legacy media that we have seen, you know, amp up and beat the drums for war over and over, not interested in actually exposing the truth or asking any tough questions as it comes to foreign policy and the decisions to go to war. And of course, now even more so, we’re seeing Big Tech being a major contributor in this establishment narrative. It’s what drove me to run for Congress, to be able to be in a position where I could actually serve in a place to help make decisions that would prevent us from continuing to go and wage these costly counterproductive wars that actually end up undermining our own country’s national security. One of the main reasons why I chose to leave the Democratic Party is because the Democratic Party has become the war party. Those voices that we talked about a little bit on the left who challenged the military industrial complex, challenged this pro-war narrative that we’re seeing across the board, I don’t see them anymore. And worse yet, we have leaders in the Democratic Party who are the ones who are actually amping up these counterproductive wars, who are amping up these new cold wars against Russia and China, who are amping up and escalating and pushing us to the brink of nuclear war, which is where we sit right now as a nation, which threatens us and threatens the world, frankly, and doing so without any thought or consideration for the reality of something that was very eye-opening for us here in Hawaii back in January of 2018 when we had a missile alert where we thought that North Korea was sending a nuclear missile to us and then we had 15 minutes to live, the government telling us, oh, seek shelter immediately. This is not a drill, missile inbound to Hawaii. But we were confronted with the reality that there is no shelter. There is literally no place to go. So not only have our leaders failed us in the sense of getting us to this point where that is now a reality that every single one of us lives with right now, but also they tell us, oh, seek shelter, get inside, stay inside. There is no shelter. They may have some fancy shelters where they may be able to survive and continue to wage war in the event that we get there. But the vast majority of people in this country and people around the world will be the ones the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear holocaust. There is no shelter. They have not provided that shelter. And so this question of how my experience is there on these deployments, the experiences that I’ve had throughout this time was one of the main reasons why I left the Democratic Party and frankly was one of the main reasons that back in 2016 that I saw the necessity to leave as vice chair of the DNC to go and speak out against Hillary Clinton’s warmongering record as she was trying to become our country’s commander in chief and the dangers of what would happen if that became a reality. Okay. So it was primarily a consequence of concerns about, well, concerns about the military industrial complex. Okay, let’s segue for a minute then. I made a couple of videos about the Russia-Ukraine war, you know, making a foray into a domain that’s obviously contentious enough to produce a war, let’s say. And here’s my problem. I don’t understand. Now I’ve listened to a lot of hawks on the American side talk about, well, two things, about the fact that it appears likely, and this is independent of the merits of this It appears likely that the Ukraine, supported by the West in the manner it has been supported, can do serious damage to Russia’s conventional arms force. And I think there is evidence that the Ukrainians and the West are pushing the Russians back and God only knows how far that will go. And the hawks that I’ve talked to said, that’s a good thing, it’s in our interest to ensure that Russia is no longer a conventional military threat. And no, I have a certain degree of sympathy for that viewpoint. But then here’s the counter problem as I see it. So I try to look forward into the future and I think, okay, what does a victory for the West look like? Forget about Ukraine. Ukraine victories, they get their territory back and there’s a wall between them and the Russians and the pesky Russians leave them alone and they go back to whatever level of appalling corruption they had managed before the war. So that’s the Ukraine victory. The West, well, let’s say we could do this two ways. So Putin is deposed, however that happens, and then what? And then we have a better leader in Russia, we have a more trustworthy leader? Yeah, I don’t think so. The Russians haven’t got a great history of that and no matter what you think of Putin, it’s definitely the case that he isn’t the worst leader that emerged in Russia in the last hundred years by any measure. So that’s a big problem. And then I think, well, instead of Putin being replaced by someone who could be better, but probably won’t be, we’ll have a Russia that’s really fragmented and that, you know, the country in some ways collapses. That’s a really bad idea because there’s a lot of nuclear bombs there and if you get the fragmentation of that power structure into multiple chieftains, let’s say, and a few of them emerge armed with nuclear bombs, then we have a major problem on our hands. And that seems to me to be a highly likely outcome. And so, and then if we weaken Russia severely and permanently, then we have the problem of a severely and permanently weakened Russia. That’s a big problem because they produce a lot of fertilizer and the Europeans happen to be dependent on them for a lot of their energy needs. So that doesn’t look very wise. And then we have the absolute bloody catastrophic probability that if Putin starts to lose in any serious way and so starts to believe that Russian territorial integrity is threatened, however he defines that, that he has an immense array of unbelievably powerful next generation weapons at his disposal and why the hell wouldn’t he use them? So let’s walk through that. I mean, imagine the West wins. Okay, what does that mean? I don’t see what that means. And I haven’t heard anyone describe to me what the goal of this war is. We’re supporting the heroic Ukrainians. It’s like, yeah, you’re a moralizing scoundrel. That’s not a plan. That’s idiot hand waving as bad as the environmental doomsayers. It’s the same thing. Cheap moral victory. Can you make a pro and then a cautionary war case in relationship to the Russia and Ukraine? What’s in America’s true interests as far as you’re concerned? Well, this is exactly, you have very clearly laid out not only the problem with how this President Biden and frankly, Democrat and Republican leaders in Congress who are applauding and pushing for and escalating this war is how short sighted they are. But also this has been the problem in US foreign policy from our leaders for so long is they are not actually thinking clearly if they’re thinking at all about what is our goal? What is our objective? You said, what does a win look like? How is it defined? Even theoretically. Even theoretically. Whether it’s realistic or not, just saying, well, we’re fighting for democracy. That’s not a goal. Also, it’s in direct conflict with the reality of their actions even here in the United States about how many undemocratic decisions and increasingly authoritarian decisions they’re making. But on this question of the war in what is essentially a proxy war against Russia, the United States is waging a proxy war against Russia, the Ukrainian people are paying the price. They have not outlined what a win looks like. Anytime anyone asks President Biden or anyone in the Biden administration is, when does this end? How does this end? They throw out this cheap one liner of saying, well, that’s up to Putin. Whenever Putin stops doing this. Oh, good. That’s good. That’s up to the guy with the hydrogen bombs. Exactly. That’s brilliant. Look, I know what I would do if I was Putin. I know it. I know it. As soon as I felt that I was in danger of a true loss. See, I think Putin will settle for the devastation of Ukraine. I think he could claim that as a victory. The utter devastation of the Ukraine, because it stays out of Western hands. But if Putin ever believed that his people even believed that they were now under attack, let’s say by German tanks, let’s say the probability that he’s used a tactical battlefield nuclear weapon seems to me to be extraordinarily high. It’s like, well, it is for me. It’s like, well, why wouldn’t he? And the issue is, well, you don’t want to escalate. It’s like, yeah, that’s already factored into the decision. There is this theory, I don’t know if you’ve heard it before of escalate to deescalate. So the response from the US government is always, well, we don’t think he’ll resort to that or we don’t think that, you know, we’re not sure. I even hear people say, we’re not even sure that his nuclear weapons are that great or will really work in the way that we think could cause major damage. But the fact that they’re even theorizing about any of this without recognizing the very direct and real cost to human civilization on this planet is exactly the problem. They’re living in some fantasy land that it’s hard to connect with because it’s not based in the reality of the situation you’re facing. And you have laid it out very clearly of the different possible outcomes. We’ve heard President Biden say and others in the Department of Defense, well, we got to get rid of that guy, Putin, but not actually- For what? For who? For who? And to what end? To what is the alternative? They have no idea who will step up or what kind of Russia will exist in the aftermath of that. We can look throughout history to see how US foreign policy, especially in regime change wars have failed so spectacularly in different regions around the world because they go and pick which dictator they like or don’t like. Well, we’ll take this guy out, replace him with this guy. And then all of these disastrous unintended negative consequences come both for the United States and the people in these countries. And yet here we are now where we are facing that exact same prospect with the country that has the most nuclear weapons in the entire world. Right. So look at what happened after the Germans went into France in World War I and wreaked havoc in that idiot war, World War I. Their entire industrial machine was devastated. They had a period of hyperinflation. They were subject to that extraordinarily punitive Versailles Treaty. And that could be imposed upon them because they were devastated. And hypothetically, we could do the same thing with Russians if they’re beat very badly on the conventional front and they emerge weak. We put punitive measures in place to keep them weak. And then we might remember just exactly what happened to Germany as a consequence of the Versailles Treaty because they didn’t stay weak for long. And you know, maybe the Russian nuclear weapons are no better than anything else the Soviets built, but that doesn’t mean a few of them won’t go off. And it’s really not going to take that many because after all, they are nuclear weapons. And so even one that doesn’t work that well is going to be a lot more spectacular than anything that happened in 1945. And Hiroshima, we can be absolutely certain of that. So again, you know, the mystery is fair enough, man. We want victory. Okay, no problem. What’s the victory? Have you ever read the fine print that appears when you start browsing in incognito mode? 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One of the common responses that you hear from both people in the White House, from Washington, both when talking specifically about Russia, but you hear this very often whenever they see there’s a bad actor on the world stage. Well, the United States needs to take action to punish them, to send them a message. And whether this is through economic warfare or kinetic or tactical warfare direct, whether indirect or direct, this is a line that they have. Well, we have to punish them. We have to punish them. And so they’re making decisions about, well, we got to make life hard for them, punish them in whatever means that we can, but not actually thinking about within the context that they should be, which is for us in this country, what action should we take that is in the best interest for the well-being of the American people in our country and our national security and our freedom? And who’s the them? That’s the other things. Well, we need to punish the Russians. Like, well, who exactly are you talking about here? Are you talking about the elites that are in control? Are you talking about the whole damn population? For how long? And as you already pointed out, to what end? To what end? So to what end? To what end is all this? And well, we touched on that a little bit. You can’t help but, and this is where I suppose I turn into a leftist in some real sense, at least in relationship to what you might describe as a stance against gigantism. It’s like, to what end? Well, how about military industrial profits that are staggering? How about that end? And if there’s no other end in sight, and I’m not particularly skeptical about capitalism except in its gigantism forms, it’s like if there’s no other end being outlined, well, I’m going to go with profit as the motive because if you have a better theory, man, lay it out, but I don’t see anything. And you know, given that it was Eisenhower, who knew what he was talking about, having been supreme commander of the allied forces, when he warned about the military industrial complex being the biggest threat we faced back in what, about 1959, that was something to take seriously and it’s something to take seriously again. So do you have any sense, and have you talked to anybody who, as far as you’re concerned, has some reasonable vision about what actually might be done in a sensible manner on the Russia-Ukraine front? Well, the reasonable people who are rooted in reality and not fantasy understand that the only way to bring about an end to this war is through diplomatic means of bringing together the different stakeholders and actually coming to an understanding, whether it’s through the form of a treaty or whatever that agreement may look like, where no one is going to walk away happy, but there is a reasonable approach to being able to find that agreement. You’ll hear from the Biden administration anytime this is brought up, well, Zelensky and Ukraine have to be the ones to drive this. They’re the ones who have to set the terms and everything else. The only way that they’re able to continue doing what they’re doing is through the means that the United States, largely the United States, but also some other countries in Europe, are providing them with the weapons and the money and the ability to do so. The United States has President Biden as a responsibility. We could definitely stop lying about the fact that this is Ukraine. Yeah, exactly. Nobody with any sense at all believes that. I mean, we’re in a proxy war for sure and we have been from the beginning. And so we might as well be crystal clear about that. Exactly. So Trump popped up the other day as he has a proclivity to do and he said, if I was president, I’d stop this war in 24 hours. And that’s typical Trump overstatement, I would say. But it is the case that the war emerged on Biden’s watch and not Trump’s watch and that’s not nothing. And so what do you make of that? What do you make of Trump? We diagnosed the Democrats a bit. Let’s turn to the Republicans. Only Trump knows what Trump would be doing in this situation. But as we’re talking about a diplomatic end to this war, something that should have happened a very long time ago, something the Biden administration has been blocking, categorically blocking even efforts between Russian, Ukrainian officials on their own who are trying to come together. It’s been the United States that has been blocking them, telling Ukraine, no, leave the table, don’t negotiate. How have they been blocking? What are the details? There are multiple reports publicly of Biden administration officials telling Ukraine not to negotiate, as well as other countries who have been also sharing that they’ve been getting that same message going all the way back to, I think, March, shortly after this war kicked off when there were… Yeah, I heard the same thing. I heard that from people I was talking to who knew what they were talking about in Israel, too, that the Russians, there were avenues open quite early in the conflict where diplomatic maneuvering could have hypothetically proved useful and that that was blocked. Now, I’m not saying it would have been useful, but I couldn’t understand when this all broke out why the number one priority of Western leaders who instead gathered to make fun of Putin’s hyper-masculinity, and it was a pretty sad bunch of wimps gathered around the G7 table who were managing that, I might say, instead of noting that if they had any sense at all, they’d be trying to broker something like an intelligence arrangement so that we didn’t face the likely possibility of being dragged by our shirt sleeve into the maw of the military industrial complex and end up all torn to shreds as a consequence, which I think is the most likely outcome of what’s happening now. Because what I know something about World War I and World War II and the other wars we’ve been in since is that what tends to happen is you get pulled in one stupid step at a time, especially if you’re also turning a blind eye to the chicanery of your wealthy friends who are profiting like mad on the war front. So, people always, I think they said when World War I started, it was like, the troops will be home for Christmas. It’s like, yeah, guess that didn’t happen. And then it’s many, many years later, and it’s not like that didn’t happen in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan. This will be over soon. It’s like, yeah, I don’t think so. That isn’t how these things worse work. No. And who walked away with the most profits in the war in Afghanistan alone? Major defense contractors. What does the Department of Defense have to say about the money that was spent there? They can’t even account for the vast majority of money that was spent there. What can we say? Yeah, we’re talking billions of dollars, billions or hundreds of billions of dollars. Yes, hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s trillions, if I remember correctly. Overall, what was spent. Yes, trillions of dollars were spent on that war. Spent and unaccounted for. Exactly. Spent and unaccounted for. Right, so that’s pretty damn convenient for who over those trillions of dollars went to. For the military industrial complex. And then you have these defense contractors again saying, publicly, war is good for business. Period. Full stop. Well, there’s no doubt about that. If you’re not on the front line, because your bank account isn’t that useful to you when you’re dead. But if someone else is dead and the consequence of that is that your bank account is accruing profits quite nicely, well, you know, that’s all well and good, especially if you’re a psychopathic narcissist and it’s all about you. And there’s no shortage of that going around at the highest echelons of what would you call it? Fascist collusion. And we’re seeing that pretty much everywhere. Yeah. Okay, so let’s turn to the Republicans. We’ve had our shot at the warmongering Democrats, let’s say. Although I think we’ll return to their problems. But let’s look at the Republican side. Now, you’re sitting as an independent at the moment. That’s correct. I’ve got that right. Yes, good. And so you’re not aligned with the Republicans or the Democrats, which either makes you extremely hard to get along with and someone no one likes or… Right? That’s a possibility. Or you’re in a neutral position in some sense at the moment with a lot of experience on the Democrat front, right? A lot of detailed experience. And so what do you think is good about the Republicans and what do you think they’re lacking? I think there are a number of Republicans who are obviously who are a part of this permanent Washington establishment that whether we’re talking about the issue of war and peace or we’re talking about the crony capitalism. I’m not against capitalism either, but you look at the crony capitalism of industries like Big Pharma or the so-called health care industry that really doesn’t care about people’s actual health and well-being. You could go kind of across the board of what is wrong with the corruption in permanent Washington where politicians are essentially paid off and therefore working for the interests of these industries rather than the interests of the people that they’ve been elected to serve. And there are both Republicans and Democrats who are not only entrenched in this, but who are in those positions because of this system. And it is what is broken. That’s outright fascism by definition, right? Because the fascists, the definition of fascism is essentially corporate government collusion at the highest levels. And so yeah, the deep state that everyone is paranoid about and for good reason is essentially a collusionist fascist regime and increasingly an international collusionist fascist regime. And when people say crony capitalism, it’s a weak phrase for what’s essentially a fascist enterprise. And as you said, there are people in the Democrat Party and in the Republicans who are pulled into that web of collusion. And it’s easy for that to happen too because- It is. You get sucked into the system quickly and you think, well, this is just the way it works. And so if I want to do anything in Washington, if I want to get anywhere, even people who I know who came in, I got elected with, best of intentions, it is very quickly inculcated like within the first few days of being there that this is the way the world works, buddy. And if you want to get anywhere to be able to do what you came here to do, well, this is the game and the rules you’ve got to play by. And then very quickly before you know it, those good intentions that you came up with are lost and you are no longer serving the interests of the people. You have become a puppet of those who are the puppet masters in this world. Well, you are a neophyte when you first enter the ring. Even once you’re elected, in terms of the constituents you represent, you’re sort of at a pinnacle. But as a newbie in Washington, you’re lost. You’re a freshman. They’re literally called freshmen. You get elected and you are the freshman class. And you’ve got no knowledge and you’ve got no allies. And then there’s also going to be the part of you that wants to hang out with the cool kids. Exactly. Right, absolutely. And some of that’s actually just humility, you know, because you don’t have any allies or friends and you do need to know how the system operates. And so that’s a big problem. So what did you face? But you have to be grounded in principles. You have to go there and be grounded in your principles and your mission and your purpose, which was not just to go and get along and be around this interesting group of people and get the fancy title, though that is some people’s purpose. But in order to be truly effective there, you have to go there and be very grounded in your principles and purpose so that you don’t then become the puppet for these other powerful interests. And that frankly is exactly what I went through is when I got to Washington, you know, I was lauded as like, oh my gosh, she’s a rising star, the headlines, she’s a rising star of the Democratic Party and, you know, checking all the different boxes of all the things that they look for, the labels that they look for. She’s a woman of color. She’s a veteran. She’s this and she’s that. And then they realized like, oh, hold on a second. She’s not just going to allow us to control her. She’s not just going to read the talking points that we send out in the morning email. She’s not just going to vote based on the way that we tell her to do. They realized that I wasn’t there. And was we the DNC? Essentially, I mean, my experience with talking to congressmen in Washington has basically, it’s actually been somewhat, it’s been disenchanting and I’ve also developed more sympathy for the congresspeople because while they have hard jobs, it isn’t obvious that anyone sensible would ever take that job even though it’s necessary that they do. Well, the new congressmen, they spend 20 to 30 hours a week fundraising. They can’t do that in their offices. They have to rent another office and they spend all their time on their phone. So they’re basically glorified televangelists or telemarketers. 40% of them don’t live in Washington and sleep in their offices. So there’s no community there. They have to run for reelection every two years, which means that not only are they in a job that’s very difficult as newbies, but it’s a very unstable job. They’ve destabilized their families by doing so. It’s hard for them to move their spouse to Washington. And then, and this I think is especially true on the Democrat side, but it’s also true on the Republican side. They’re facing constant pressure from the powers that be who are very entrenched to do nothing but raise money for the damn party, even though they waste almost all of that, and to toe the bloody party line. And of course, you have to have a certain amount of party discipline or you don’t have a party. So anyways, that’s now, so why don’t you, what, what real temptations did you face? And, you know, how did that warp you? Because there’s no way you get through this without a certain degree of warping. And how did you, to what degree were you successful in resisting that and why did you manage it? So let’s start with that. What were the major temptations facing you when you first went to Washington? Well, like I said, within the first few days of arriving there, before even being sworn in as a member of Congress, there was a bifurcation. We had 84 people who were elected to Congress in 2012, new members of Congress. I believe 50, if the numbers are right, I think there were 50 Democrats and 34 Republicans. And so for the first week that we were there and what they call freshman orientation, we were going through different policy briefings with people presenting on, you know, a whole host of the issues that we face and people presenting from different sides, different perspectives. And we all went through that together. And then after that, it was okay, Democrats, you’re going to go here, Republicans, you’re going to go there. And that’s where two things happened. Number one is, is the partisan direction coming to members of Congress, basically preaching in a nutshell, it is party first. You will do what is best for the party first, rather than thinking about, well, what’s in the best interest of my constituents? Or what about if I disagree with the party and this is a decision that I want to make, you will make your decisions based on what’s best for the party. If you have an idea to introduce a bill, best not to go work with someone from the other party because that’ll make them look good, it’ll make it harder for us to beat them in the next election. So not about how do we solve problems, not about how do we be effective in serving our constituents, all about the party power, keeping power, getting it back. Those are the two things. And both of us got those same messages from our respective political party leaders. Part and parcel of that was exactly what you talked about. There was a PowerPoint slide that was put up, I remember it very distinctly because it was so shocking about here’s what your day will look like and how many hours of the day, morning, noon and night will be spent either at fundraisers with lobbyists representing different industries, or as you said, on the phone, off site, making calls to those lobbyists to try to get more of them to come and give you money at the next day’s fundraisers, breakfast, lunch and dinner. And as I was looking at this slide, it was split up hour by hour. Here’s what your days will look like if you’re doing your job. Your 16 hour days. Exactly. And how the vast majority of a single day was not spent studying issues that you would have to tackle in committee or, you know, working on legislation that you’re going to introduce. The vast majority of hours of that day would be spent fundraising from lobbyists representing special interests. And that’s the expectation to get on certain committees that you want to get on. You’ve got to give them, you’ve got to give the party a certain amount of money and all of these different things. And that’s the frustration that the American people have with our politics right now. And obviously it’s been going on for a long time is they know, we know this. We can see through their results that they don’t actually care about making decisions that are in the best interest of the people who are actually solving these problems. It’s being reactive. And ultimately when it comes down to it, when you hear what they are saying, for example, like, oh, well, prescription drug prices are flying through the roof and people can’t afford insulin, diabetics can’t afford insulin and, you know, seniors can’t afford the medicine that they need. But when you actually look at the results, even though politicians complain about it, there’s not a regulation of big pharma that would actually seek to start solving some of these problems in the ways that people need help. And that’s just one example of many. We’ll be back in one moment. First, we wanted to give you a sneak peek at Jordan’s new documentary, Logos in Literacy. I was very much struck by how the translation of the biblical writings jump started the development of literacy across the entire world. Illiteracy was the norm. The pastor’s home was the first school. And every morning it would begin with singing. The Christian faith is a singing religion. Probably 80% of scripture memorization today exists only because of what is sung. This is amazing. Here we have a Gutenberg Bible printed on the press of Johann Gutenberg. Science and religion are opposing forces in the world, but historically that has not been the case. Now the book is available to everyone. From Shakespeare to modern education and medicine and science to civilization itself. It is the most influential book in all of history. And hopefully people can walk away with at least a sense of that. You know, here’s maybe part of the underlying problem. So I went to the Republican Governors Association meeting in November and I remember one of the people who presented, they were trying to rally the troops to some degree, sharing policy information amongst themselves as governors. And a lot of the Republican Governors are pretty good at implementing micro-polices and there’s something to be said for that, that boots on the ground pragmatic competence. They weren’t very good at putting forward a vision and they weren’t really very good at even rallying the fundraisers with a rousing call to action. And I think that’s a problem on the Republican side. But one of the presentations was extremely interesting to me as someone interested in because the person got up and talked about how effective the Republicans had been in certain jurisdictions, in certain key elections, in outspending the Democrats on the advertising front. And I thought three things at the same time. The first thing I thought is there is almost no evidence that election spending has any effect whatsoever on the outcome of the election. It’s a marginal effect at most. And it’s so marginal that political scientists have been debating for 20 years about whether or not election spending helps at all, whether you’re an incumbent or a challenger. And so that’s a big problem. It’s like it is not obvious that what you’re paying for works. That’s a big problem. Second, why in the world did we ever assume that the right metric for electoral competence in running a campaign is how much money you spend. No one in their right mind thinks that the right measure for doing a bathroom renovation properly is the fact that it cost a million dollars when it could have cost 10,000. That’s just preposterous. So it’s a measurement problem in the fundamental analysis. And then even worse on the Republican side, and I think I asked this question, which didn’t make me very popular at the meeting itself, which is, I don’t know if you noticed, but 95% of the legacy media to whom you’re devoting all this money actually really can’t stand you or anything you stand for and is completely 100% tilted against you. So on what grounds do you base your claim that spending more money than the Democrats feeding this god-awful legacy media machine is, well, it’s not effective and it’s counterproductive and they hate you. So what are you doing? And so then what happens in Washington, it’s very similar, is the parties devolve to the simplistic notion that those junior congressmen who can beat the drum most effectively to raise money are ipso facto the most loyal and competent. And that’s all based on a whole misapprehension of, it’s a measurement problem. It’s like the money you raise is not an indication of your competence. It’s the same problem we were talking about with relationship to women in the military to begin with. What the hell are you measuring? Now, okay, you, now for whatever reason, you got on a lot of Democrat committees and you ended up as vice chairman. You had a pretty stellar career, very rapidly accelerating. Now you claim that you weren’t one of the junior congresspeople that could be subsumed all that easily into the military industrial complex, for lack of a better word. So if that was the case, why in the world were you also able to move into leadership positions in the Democrat party? Because hypothetically you would have had to go along, and I’m sure you went along to some degree, but you would have to go along. That’s what they’re telling you. You have to go along to get something done. But you’re saying you didn’t particularly go along, or at least not always, and yet you had a stellar career. So how is that possible? These opportunities, these, you know, vice chair of the DNC, we’ll start with that one, because I was. I was a top official of the National Democratic Party from 2000, I guess I was sworn in January 2013 up until my choice to leave that position in 2016. I was sitting in the backseat of a car shortly, it was around the time of President Obama’s reelection inauguration. I got a phone call saying, hey, what would your answer be if you were asked to serve as vice chair of the DNC? I had been in office for less than a month, and my response to this person who called me was, I don’t know, what is a vice chair of the DNC? What do they do? What would the expectations be? What kinds of things would I be able to do? Is this just a by name thing, or would I actually be able to do something? I didn’t have any idea what that was. But I was offered that position, and I thought, well, hey, I agreed to do it, because I thought maybe this is an opportunity for me to bring some, and effect some change in the Democratic National Party. So a lot of these different things came to me without me seeking them out at all. Why? Why? Because of what I talked about. They saw the superficial, and they thought, well, this is somebody who we can, you know, if I did go along, I can be a safe assumption to say that they would have continued to push me up to the highest levels if I had been someone that they thought I was, that I would just go along and I could tell the story that they wanted to tell and say the things that they wanted me to say. And so when they asked me to be vice chair of the DNC, I had been in office less than a month. And who’s they? Who’s the they that are asking? It is, you know, the Democratic leadership in Congress, Democratic leadership within the DNC. And also, I got a lot of media coverage that I didn’t have a press secretary, I didn’t have a publicist, I didn’t seek any of this stuff out, but I kept getting calls. Hey, we want you on our show. We want to feature you in this magazine. We want to do this. We want to do that. And I questioned it a little bit, but ultimately I was like, hey, look, this is an opportunity for me to be able to reach out to people and say what I want to say and get across what I want to get across. So I took advantage of those opportunities. Well, you checked the identity boxes. Exactly. I presume that they thought that they were hoping that you might be well, I want to get back to this issue of they too. You know, my experience with organizations and activists, for that matter, is that the they turns out to be a very small number of people who are very well connected, who are continually maneuvering. And sometimes that’s a consequence of their unbelievable competence. And sometimes it’s a consequence of their unbelievable capacity to manipulate and capitalize on narcissism. And that’s a probably a problem in politics and entertainment and media more than anywhere else for obvious reasons. And I don’t want to paint everyone with the same brush because that’s foolish. But the they that are looking at you and thinking, well, you know, we can certainly use someone with an image like hers for us. And that’s not all cynical, by the way. Who are the people who are making those decisions as far as you’re concerned? If we go back, say, well, when you were asked to serve as vice chairman, who are making those who is making those decisions? Well, I mean, obviously, Nancy Pelosi is one of them. You know, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was the head of the DMC at the time. There were people in the Obama administration. There are people who were not elected officials. And within the DNC, I’m sure there were probably political donors as well who had a part of that. But you know, we’ll start with Nancy Pelosi. I had won my primary election here in Hawaii in August of 2012. And that in Hawaii, Hawaii is a very strong Democratic state, that was essentially the election. I did have a Republican opponent and still had to go and win the general election. But it was a safe assumption that I was going to I had de facto already won the election. And within a few weeks of winning that election, I had gotten a call from Nancy Pelosi saying, would you like to come and speak during prime time at the Democratic National Convention? That was going to happen shortly shortly after that. This was in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2012. Someone who had not even yet been elected to Congress for the first time being invited to speak on prime time. It was I was surprised. I was very surprised. The topic she was asking me to talk about is one that is obviously near and dear to my heart to talk about veterans. And so I said, yes, of course, I will do that. I went there and I spoke and I did interviews with just about every media channel that was out there. And but but all of these different things, you know, there were not opportunities that were given to the vast majority of people, I guess. I’ll put it that way. Yeah. But my decision my decision to leave as vice chair of the DNC was one of those pivotal moments where in the lead up to making that decision, it was it was driven by a couple of things. One was the recognition of the rules of the DNC is that you’re as an officer of the DNC, you are not involved in tilting the scales or getting involved in Democratic primaries, especially Democratic presidential primaries that you have different candidates, they go out, they make their case, and then the party coalesces around whoever the winner of that primary is. Well, in the lead up to that 2016 primary election, I started to see very quickly that the decisions that were being made, not in consultation with us as vice chairs of the DNC, but unilaterally by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was the chair, who was very close with Hillary Clinton, were made to give an advantage to Hillary Clinton. For example, limiting the number of debates where she would have to face Bernie Sanders, putting them at times where, you know, I think there was one that was scheduled during like the Super Bowl or something like that when nobody was going to be watching or paying attention to a presidential debate. There were there were new newly implemented rules that said any Democratic presidential candidate that participates in a debate that is not sanctioned by the DNC will be banned from participating in any future DNC debate. And for me, I’m just thinking like, if our purpose and our cause is to increase involvement and engagement in our democracy, to get more people to pay attention, to learn more about these different candidates, to actually have a real dialogue about these important issues, why would you be punishing someone for going out and trying to engage in doing exactly that? Why would you be trying to limit the debate that the American people can be exposed to and involved with? And it was very clear why those decisions were made to give an advantage to Hillary Clinton, who was designated as the one that the Democratic Party powers that be wanted to win that election. And so their lack of integrity coupled with the fact that Hillary Clinton wanted to be our commander in chief. I still serve in the Army reserves now for almost 20 years. So for me, as someone serving in the reserves at the time, as well as a member of Congress, as well as an American, to have her in a position where both Democrats and the mainstream media refused to challenge her on her record, both as a senator and in every position she had held, previous secretary of state and so forth, previously on her. She is the queen of war hawks. She is the queen of warmongers. No one challenged her. They just said, well, she’s got all these positions. She’s the most qualified. I and so many of my brothers and sisters in uniform were like, hold on a second. You need to ask her and hold her to account for the disastrous consequences for the decisions that she has made, the wars that she has advocated for, the things that she has done that has not only undermined our national security but come at great cost to the men and women who volunteer to serve this country. Why do you think, okay, two questions on the Hillary front. I mean, one of the reasons she terrified me, I suppose, is that it was pretty damn obvious that she’s been aiming at the presidency for 50 years. And that’s a long time, right? And you’ve got to ask yourself, what is driving someone who’s that committed to that goal? And the goal is clearly the presidency. It’s not what could be done with the presidency. And it’s not like she was dragged in kicking and screaming by people who were overwhelmingly impressed by her prowess and who enjoined upon her for moral reasons to consider a career in government. It’s like, no, no, no, she’s being laser focused on being the first female president of the United States for God only knows how long. And so that’s concerning to me. But then that doesn’t answer the next or address the next mystery, which is, well, given that she’s a Democrat and given that the Democrats should, in principle, be somewhat skeptical, let’s say, of the fascist collusion between corporation and government and a little bit skeptical on the military industrial side, why do you think that her record indicates that she’s such a hawk on the military front? Like, is that a compensation? Is she attempting to, this is a cheap, you know, psychological interpretation could easily be wrong. Is she trying to look tough on the foreign policy front to, you know, to mitigate against any criticism of the fact that she might not be capable of that? Or what’s going on? Why is she doing that? I don’t think that’s such a cheap analysis or assumption to make because that is a reality. And that is one of my fears, not only about her, but also about some others who have been in those types of position. You look at someone like Kamala Harris, for example. She’s a breath away from the presidency. And I have lost track of how many conversations- She has a feeble breath, unfortunately. Yes, exactly. Which is incredibly concerning. I have lost track of how many service members, American service members, I have spoken with who are absolutely terrified about the prospect of a President Harris for that reason. She’s proven- You mean facing off against someone like Vladimir Putin, for example? Wouldn’t that be lovely? Kamala Harris versus Vladimir Putin. Oh yeah. Or anyone. But somebody like her, who is weak, who lacks understanding in foreign policy, who feels the need to prove herself, to prove her strength, to stand up with the big boys and look tough and somehow believe that, well, hey, the best way to do that is to go drop some bomb somewhere and start a war. This is a terrifying prospect for someone. And you see this, yes, with some women who feel like they have to go and look tough, but that only happens if they’re not actually strong, internally strong individuals themselves. But we also see this with some of the male leaders in this country. We saw how people react. Again, like in the media and in media, media and politics, how they react when we go to war. We saw how Nancy Pelosi and Brian Williams and others declared Donald Trump, this is the first time he seems presidential, when he decided to go and launch some rockets and missiles against Syria. People who hated him, people who could not stand him and were obsessed with trying to destroy President Trump, all of a sudden he goes and launches some bombs and they’re all over the television saying, well, finally he’s acting like a president. Give me a break. This is the problem with the lack of leadership that we have and how you started this question asking about how is it the Democratic Party that should be the party that is at a minimum skeptical and cynical about the military industrial complex and going out and starting new wars and regime change and all of this stuff. Well, they have become party to it, part and parcel of it and have become that machine that benefits from all of this. And so they can’t, it would be self-defeating for them to now exercise skepticism or challenge. And this, you know, I want to jump back to a question you asked earlier we didn’t get to finish, which was what are some of the positive things that I’m seeing in the Republican Party right now? We see at a minimum there are dissenting voices within the Republican Party, for example, on the issue of this proxy war against Russia. There are not enough to be able to make a legislative change at this point. I hope that changes. But there are a growing number of Republicans who are saying no, expressing a lot of the concerns that we are. And from a Republican Party perspective, there’s no, I’m not aware of any punitive measures being taken against those members. So even though they are not part of the establishment in the Republican Party, there is that room for dissent. And I’ve experienced this myself. There’s that room for open conversation and dialogue, whether you agree or disagree. There’s a growing movement of concern about, you know, these wars and a movement for peace and a responsible foreign policy. Whereas the Democratic Party has moved in the opposite direction, where you are not allowed to ask questions. You are not allowed to challenge their narrative or their position. You are not allowed to hold a dissenting view, because if you do, then they will seek to destroy you and cancel you and smear you and take away your voice. And it’s really sad and unfortunate because there’s nothing more undemocratic than that. Right, right. Well, look, I would love to continue talking to you on the YouTube platform. But I know you have a hard out in about half an hour. And I would have really liked to have talked to you some more about Trump. We should do this again. We should do this again. And we’ll find a time that’s appropriate and do it again. Wonderful. I would just ask you one final question on this in this episode. Then for everyone watching and listening, I’m going to continue talking to Tulsi Gabbard on the Daily Wire Plus platform. I’m going to do a little bit more biographical interrogation, let’s say. And that’ll be available for those of you who want to go over to the Daily Wire Plus side of the world, let’s say. But maybe we could close with this. So what are your future plans at the moment? Where do you see yourself going? Because you’re in an odd political position at the moment, to say the least. You have this immense wealth of experience and reputation, hard earned. And you’re in an idiosyncratic position. And you’re quite young as well, all things considered by political standards. And so where do you foresee yourself going? And where would you like to go in the next few years and maybe even longer than that? The short answer is I don’t exactly know specifically. But what I do know is that I will continue to do what I’ve done throughout my life, which is seek out those opportunities and places where I feel I can make the most positive impact and be of service. Be of service to God, be of service to our country and the American people. I always like talking to you Americans. You’re so good at that sort of thing. That whole Mr. Smith goes to Washington thing, which is, well, it’s real. It is real. It is real. And I’ve seen that among Democrats and Republicans alike. There is, despite everything that divides people in the United States, and despite all the possibility of corruption and all of that, there is still this underlying belief in the goodness, the essential goodness of the system and this real desire on behalf of people to be of genuine service and to put themselves on the line for it. It’s no joke to give up your life to become a congressman or congresswoman. It’s a very tough decision. We need leadership. I think the thing, just to close out that point here is there is promise in this system, but the system is extremely dysfunctional and corrupt right now. And so whether it’s what I’m doing now and being able to speak the truth and try to bring some common sense and reality and sanity to the insanity that we are going through in this country that is threatening our constitutional rights, that is threatening our own democracy, I will continue to seek ways to help lead that change to get us back to the kind of country that our founders envisioned for us. Well, that’s a very good closing. And so we will turn now to the Daily Wire Plus part of this conversation. Thank you very much for talking to me today. Thank you. I look forward to part two. Yeah, yeah, that’d be good. And so for all of you watching and listening, thank you very much for your time and attention. It’s much appreciated. And to the Daily Wire Plus people who are producing this, the film crew that’s here in Detroit, because that’s where I am today, thank you for your help. And onward and upward to the next part of the conversation. Very good to meet you. Hello, everyone. I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guests on dailywireplus.com. Thank you.