#588 - Vice President JD Vance

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Today's guest is the vice president of the United States of America. He was previously a senator from the state of Ohio before winning the presidency with Donald Trump in 2024. We are coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee. the Detroit Cowboy, a new restaurant here. I'm grateful for his return to our podcast. Today's guest is Vice President J.D. Vance.

clear no i'm not i don't care at all look we believe in the first amendment if the secret service has to hit me hit me hard brother you know what i'm saying and hit two other people i want a class action suit oh holy shit

Look, there's a literal lion right there. Like a lion skin. I hadn't seen. Have you noticed that before? Nuh-uh. I think it's, is that a line or it's a? Sorry, I know we're supposed to start this. No, it's okay. No, you're good. I'm just, there's hand signals and stuff going on on my group. I'm just trying to get everybody to chill out so I can. Okay. Yeah, I just said, no, my bad.

Fuck, now I ruined everything, dude. We had a really good vibe going. Thea just totally ruined it. It's like my childhood, dude. Something I said right out of the gate ruined it. That's what my mom said to me when I was like, something you said to me right when I met you really ruined our relationship. And I'm like, when I was what? 11 months old? Your mom said that to you? Yeah, she's just kind of a, she's a mid, you know, she's just a good grudge holder.

And she's Midwestern, so she's got a good grip on it. Yeah. My mom's a good grudge holder, too. Is she? Yeah. I don't think that she's ever held anything that I said at 11 months against her, though. That's pretty, I mean, that's tough, man. Your mom is the champion of grudge. oh she wins man she definitely wins um yeah this is Kid Rock's place dude yeah

It's cool. There's a lion over there that I don't think people can see. There's two foxes over there. You know what I love this place is my kids. Oh, dude. Kid Rock is one of the freaking... He is definitely a damn piss lizard. He is a beautiful guy.

He's a good dude. He's definitely the kind of guy. I feel like he would sing at like a... I'm trying to think, what would you have Kid Rock sing at? I know like a concert, but I'm trying to think of a different type of event or something. I mean, he could sing in the orchestra. Or not orchestra, no opera.

Okay. My wife now, because I'm the vice president, she's on the board of the Kennedy Center. We could bring Kid Rock to sing in the opera. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. That's going to be interesting. Oh, you got a fuma gate. Let's do it. You got to fumigate that place after. That's all I'm saying, Dave. Just because, Dave. So my cousin, her one request from the campaign is that she wanted to party with Kid Rock.

And I feel kind of bad. I didn't bring her. I brought her. You remember the first time we did your podcast, my cousin was with me. Oh yeah, I met her. She's blonde, right? Yeah, yeah. She's good people. And she said, I really want to party with Kid Rock. She said she wanted to party with Kid Rock and Hunter Biden.

And unfortunately, I haven't made either one of those happen yet, but we'll see. There's a lot of time left. Wow. I don't know if there's that much time left for either one of those guys, though. That's really...

What I would, what were we talking about before we started, dude? Oh yeah. You saw that hand thing. Remember by Huberman? I did see this. Yeah. Who was that? What's his name? Huberman? Andrew Huberman. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. He's. And the problem was, though, another doctor told me we might have had our hand backwards. There's like millions of people in America.

Oh, doing like a potentially like homoerotic test on themselves based on. Okay. So it's your index finger is supposed to be longer than your ring finger, right? I think I'm not sure. Yes. That's how mine is. Okay. Is my.

I mean, like, my pointer finger is longer than my ring finger. Oh, look, I'm just saying there's a lot of guys afraid to get out of their truck at work today, probably, you know? That's all I'm just saying. I mean, there are, because, I mean, millions of people watch your podcast.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of dudes, maybe more, who stared at their hand and were like, oh, no. Oh, I saw one guy pulled his finger out of socket just to lie to his wife again. I mean, these are the steps people are going to, especially with this health care. Yeah, that's right. I mean, you got to do what you can. I'm like, dude, you're going to have to put that back in yourself, you know?

I don't think it works like that though, right? The causality. I think if you like jerk your finger out of the socket, it doesn't really change anything other than you have a broken finger. Look, man. Not that I'm judging, of course, all. Every, you know, live and let live. Look, dude, if you're a gay guy, I think if you can put, you've put more than your finger back in soccer. You know what I'm saying? You can handle that.

That's all I'm saying. So that right there, I think, is a good test. I think my great-great-grandfather, not sure if he was gay, but people thought he was gay or whatever, just from the pictures of him. Your great-great-great-grandfather. Yeah. Man. I don't think I knew anything about my great-great-great-grandfather. He probably fought in the Civil War. He did?

Probably. For both sides, I bet, huh? You know what I'm talking about? Okay, so there's a database. There's actually, there's a website. I think it's like an American history or Smithsonian. Somebody keeps up a database where you can go in and type your name.

And you can see how many people with your last name fought in the Civil War. Hell yeah. And I did that on both sides of my family, mom and dad's side. It was kind of crazy how many people with the same name at least fought in the Civil War. Oh, I'm sure. But on, I mean, like on both sides. On both sides.

Confederates, there was some union. Yeah. Who would you have fought for, you think? Sorry, I'm joking, Eddie. We're not going to start there. I'm a big fan of Abraham Lincoln. I would have fought for the union. It's interesting, man.

The, you go back in time to like even, so when I grew up, right, the story that we told, so I grew up in Southern Ohio and the story that sort of we learned in Ohio history and American history was basically. The union side was right, but we're all part of the same team. After the Civil War, we all came together, shook hands, and kumbaya.

And you could even like respect the other side, even if you didn't necessarily agree with what they were fighting for. And I feel like something happened like 10 years ago where every, it's like you have to think that every single person who fought for the Confederate side was an evil person.

I just think that's so stupid. Yeah, well, I think, you know, I know there was a time when they tore down all the statues and stuff and erased like a lot of the history. I think a lot of people would debate about the value of erasing history, you know? That's a good point.

Because it feels like it's there for a purpose, and it feels like it deserves to be there, even though later on in life you might be, or later on in time, people might be ashamed of it or think of it differently. Yeah, that's right. It feels like it at least earned its place in existence. Yeah. So did you ever see... There's this documentary.

on the civil war by ken burns it was on pbs oh yeah the really sad violin music and uh i actually met the couple that composed that song from the ken burns documentary it's like it's a beautiful song honestly yeah but it seems sad as hell to sitting around with your wife all day listening to that shit? Good God. Let's just, let's sit here and listen to all five minutes of it in total silence. Me and you and all these producers. Look, I, so my wife.

who, you know, her family came from South India and then immigrated and then she was born in San Diego. Like I watched that documentary with my wife. Actually, I think when we were still dating, we weren't even married yet. And it's like such a good. summary of everything that happened in the civil war and you get this sense it's sad and it's heartbreaking you know they read letters from some guy home to his family and it's just it's it captures the tragedy of the civil war

And my wife made this point actually a few years ago. She was like, if you show that documentary, maybe not now, but like at the height of the woke thing, so call it 2021. You show that documentary in 2021, there are a lot of things they would try to cancel Ken Burns over. Because, you know, like a Confederate soldier wrote a letter home and it's sad and it's tragic and you try to empathize with that person.

And that wasn't okay in 2021. And I think that's actually one of the best things that's happened in the country the last few years is people are just done filtering themselves. Right. And they're done like... being canceled or being afraid to say what's on their mind yeah that's a good thing yeah that's a great point man dude i'll tell you this i heard that frederick douglas um i heard frederick douglas was gay

And I'll tell you, I swear. Who told you that? I've heard it from probably almost 15, not 15 people. I've heard it from four people. Where do you go to find the people who tell you that Frederick Douglass is gay? Look, I'll tell you this. You must hang out in more interesting places than I do. It wasn't white people that told me. Really?

So out of the gate, I'm giving a little bit more credibility. And that's why he wanted to free all those men because he was having trouble meeting anybody. Is that right? Because everybody was at work. You know, I'm going to talk. I'm going to talk. JD Vance, congratulations, dude. Congratulations. We're going to talk to the Smithsonian about putting up an exhibit on that. And Theo Vaughn, you can be the narrator for this new...

this new understanding of the history of Frederick Douglass. Dude, no, congratulations. Dude, you have such a dry sense of humor that sometimes you say something to me and I'm like, was he, was he screwing with me or was he actually being serious? But when you think about it though. he seemed awfully particular about getting them fellas off work early. Yeah, I think so. Probably not for the reasons you're suggesting. I don't know. And if he was, then more power to him, dude. I think we need...

I don't know. I'm not getting, this is, it's just getting worse for me. You're still good. Congratulations, man, on being vice president. Thanks, man. That's awesome. That's so crazy, man. It's just like, I just can't even, like, I can believe it, but it's just like.

I can't. You can't? No, man. It's crazy. What about that first night? The first night you won, what did y'all do? Y'all didn't get high on that. If I did, I wouldn't say it for public consumption. No, I did not get high. I did not get high. I mean, I did have a fair amount to drink that night. Hell yeah, dude. Dude, first time I stayed at a Hampton Inn that had two beds, double beds in one room. Yeah. You got to find an excuse to celebrate whatever.

whenever one arises, but I, uh, yeah, take us down that night. Okay. All right. Here's, here's, here's what happens. So we're in Mar-a-Lago because first of all, we had a puppy about 18 months ago. Okay. And I wouldn't even think about it, but the puppy's birthday is November 5th.

which happens to be the day of the election. So our puppy's first birthday is November the 5th. So we're at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump and Donald Trump has his chef send our dog a birthday cake. And I'm, you know, it's, I'm so nervous.

You know, I'm thinking about the election results and I'm trying to get, you know, I'm calling my guys up and saying, oh, do we have any early returns? Like what's going on? And this like rice dog birthday cake shows up at Mar-a-Lago and I'm like, what the hell is going on?

The president, it's interesting, he compartmentalizes things very well. So he just doesn't get really stressed out. He's very stoic about everything. Whereas I was a little bit more nervous. So anyway, so polls close. I'm sitting there with my wife and all my best friends. from back home.

come down to Mar-a-Lago to watch. Except for my one buddy, Nate. I still give him crap because Nate couldn't make the trip. He couldn't make the trip, man. He had to take care of his kid or something like that. He's a good dude. He's a good dude. Put his kid in a van, dude. You have to go to that.

And do what with her? Huh? Pay the valet to help out. I don't know. Anyway. Sorry, Nate. Never mind. I don't know him. Go on, sir. No, trust me. Nate's a good dude. Go on. He's a good dude. He's a fan of yours, actually. Oh, give him a hug for me. Anyway, so we're watching. We're watching the election returns, and I'm getting updates because...

It's crazy, dude. There's a whole data apparatus that is feeding information into the central campaign. So like whatever the media is reporting on, we're like 15 minutes ahead of time. And we're asking questions like, oh, there's this, I'll never forget this. There's this. one little county in Indiana that produced election results early. And we were like, oh my God, we did so much better in that county.

than we did in 2020 or even 2016. And so that's a pretty good sign. And what happened is as these counties trickle in, you realize we're doing way better than we did even in 2016. Like, oh my God. Donald Trump's going to be the president and I'm going to be the vice president of the United States. And that was nuts. And I was there as actually with, uh, with my wife. So we, so once you do, did you put your hands in your pockets or would you even do?

I don't know what I did with my hands, man. I was, it was like, it was like, you know, Talladega nights, right? I'm just not sure what to do with my hands all night. So we go over to the hotel where they're doing like the victory celebration and I'm there with like Don Jr. and Tucker Carlson, and a few other people who are sort of in the world of politics, and they called Pennsylvania. And I didn't realize that, like the TV called Pennsylvania.

And I didn't realize that I was just talking to my wife and the crowd goes wild. So you hear people cheering and I'm like, what the hell happened? And I look over the TV and I'm like, oh my God, it's official. And that was one of the craziest moments. God. Yeah.

Yeah. The feeling at that moment, one, it was incredible. But then you have this overwhelming sense of like, oh, my God, we're the dog that caught the car. Right. And now you have to do a good job. Yeah. And it's not, you know, it's not like. some random job. It's like a really important job. And so I just have this kind of sense of, oh my God.

This is real now. Well, you're moving to another class. I mean, shit, your dog used to getting cakes for his birthday now. You know what I'm saying? Things are changing, man. Do you stay...

Where do you stay at? Because if Trump stays, if the president stays in the White House, where do you stay at? Yeah, so you should come visit. You have an open invitation. The president actually gives me crap about this because he says, sometimes I think you have a nicer house than I do.

We stay at a place, we call it the VPR, the Vice President's Residence, but it's in the Naval Observatory. So we've got like probably 40 or so acres of completely private space. In an observatory? Yeah, and across the street. That's right. Bro, bring me in, dude. Peeping Tom on stars. Dude, I got a small ladder. I'll set that whole neighborhood ablaze. Dude, nobody will buy a new bra in that neighborhood without me knowing it, dude. I swear to God, brother.

The telescopes are pointed towards the stars. But anyway, so we live there. So we got three little kids and like I said, a dog. And it's very cool. So we did actually, so a couple of weeks ago. The president invited me and my wife. We had a, I think, I think it was my stepmom was in town and the president invited me and my wife to stay in the Lincoln bedroom. And I was like, oh, that's like really cool. Of course I want to go stay at the Lincoln bedroom. So.

Apparently, though, a vice president had never stayed at the White House with the president before. And so the Secret Service wasn't totally sure what to do because they didn't have like the processes. But yeah, we went to the White House. We stayed at the Lincoln bedroom. He don't stay up late.

We did actually, but because it was kind of scary, right? I mean, you're like laying in the room. There's a desk where, you know, the president's like, that's the desk where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. Like I thought it would be cooler. and more fun, but you're kind of just laying in there and it's like, you know, there are ghosts, feels like there's ghosts everywhere. It's just a kind of a creepy feeling to be in the literal bedroom of Abraham Lincoln.

When you think about it, that dude went to the Ford's Theater to go see a play, left that room, but never came back, right? That's creepy stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Dang, dude. Speaking of Frederick Douglass. Yeah. We've come full circle. Look, I'll just say this. There's photos. When he was signing that, you saw Frederick in the distance just...

Biggest smile. Biggest smile on the joint. So, damn, you slept, so you might be the first vice president that ever slept in the White House? That's what they told us. I don't know, you know, that's, maybe it had happened like 30 years ago, but. Did y'all stay up late with the Trumps and watch a movie? movie or anything like what did you got play a game or anything so the white house is a movie theater the president was busy but my wife and i wouldn't watch gladiator 2 in the white house

That's right. Hell yeah, dude. It wasn't as good as Gladiator 1, I thought. That's just one man's opinion. Yeah, but it's way better when you're the vice president watching it. Yeah, that's right. In the White House movie theater. Oh, dude, it's shitty, but if you're the vice president watching it.

When you get to the end of the movie, you're still the vice president. You're still the vice president. That's right. Yeah, that's right. So yeah, we stayed up late, watched the movie. The food's really good. So there's like a fancy chef at the White House. I mean, it's the White House. And he stays up all night. Well, I don't know how late he stays, but if you order anything at any time of night, they will just bring it to you. Oh, my God. I've got to get there.

Thankfully, at least right kid rocks bars. That's right. I'm headed in a good direction. We are a Kid Rocks restaurant. I do want to say that. It's a new restaurant. Well, it's a reaffinement of Joe Muir's Seafood, which is a famous restaurant in Nashville. And he graced us by letting us have this room here to do this. Okay. So I want to thank you. Thank you.

Bob Ritchie, also known as Kid Rock, for letting us have this beautiful space. He told me it had only been open for two days. Really? I didn't realize that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I was here at a freaking welcome party or something. I was here last night. Nice.

What the? Dude, I was freaking in here last night. The welcoming party, which was last night because it's only been open for two days. It's good. So how was the food? The food, I will say this, actually. There's steaks that they have these little bitty mushrooms, and I feel like they were.

I don't want to say this out loud, but they were too young to be picked or whatever. But it was really good. Really, really good. I got to ask you, we have you here. Elon just hit the airwaves today. Bring it up, dude.

Oh, man. The fucking shit missile is in the cannon. Okay. Wow. Elon Musk, time to drop the really big bomb, right? And I thought this was going to be on Iran. I haven't even seen it. Right? I haven't even seen this one. But he goes, at real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. This is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day. Nice signature from a South African DJT. Man. Well, so...

Just so your audience is aware. When is this going to air? Like tomorrow or two days from now? It's going to be 45 minutes airing now, dude. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm just saying like, presumably when this comes out, people are going to know more about this than even I do because this kind of happened on the plane when I was coming on down here. I agree. This is new.

Here's my basic reaction to like all this stuff is look. First of all, like absolutely not. Donald Trump didn't do anything wrong with Jeffrey Epstein. Like there's the guy is. Whatever the Democrats and the media says about them, that's totally BS. Here's my basic read on it. First of all, I'm the vice president to President Trump. My loyalties are always going to be with the president.

And I think that Elon, he's an incredible entrepreneur. He's actually done, I think Doge was really good. The sort of effort to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in our country was really good. And look, man. I'm always going to be loyal to the president, and I hope that eventually Elon kind of comes back into the fold. Maybe that's not possible now because he's gone so nuclear. But I hope it is, man. I think it's feeling to hurt. Why, though? Do you know why? Yeah, I mean, so.

Look, I think number one, so Elon's new to politics, right? So... His businesses are being attacked nonstop. They're literally like firebombing some of his cars. And by the way, we're looking into a lot of this stuff. I mean, some of that stuff we're looking into is an act of terrorism. at the Department of Justice because I think it is an act of terrorism. So I think part of it is this guy got into politics and has suffered a lot for it. But I mean, and I get...

the frustration there. And I get the frustration. I mean, look, Congress got the spending bill. But the main purpose of the bill is not actually spending or cutting spending, though it does cut a lot of spending. The main purpose of the bill is to prevent the biggest tax increase. But I understand it's a good bill. It's not a perfect bill. The process in D.C., if you're a business leader, you probably get frustrated.

with that process because it's more bureaucratic, it's more slow moving. So I think there's just some frustrations there. But I really, man, I think it's a huge mistake for him to go after the president like that. And I think that if he and the president... are in some blood feud. Most importantly, it's going to be bad for the country, but I think it's going to be, I don't think it's going to be good for Elon either. But Elon, like-

Doge, first of all, my first thought was that it's a ruse, right? Because there's a lot of times where the media will put out a ruse or they'll use somebody like, I think the Diddy thing is a ruse. Like, it's like, hey, like, diverse community, stay busy with this shit while we, like, move all these chests.

pieces right sometimes that's what i feel like it is and maybe i'm like a pervert or whatever sorry or weird guy sorry but this has nothing to do with that huh but i'm not a pervert maybe you're a weird guy you're not a pervert i think you're a good dude well i appreciate that dude um

But anyway, what I was saying was... The Diddy thing, man. Is it true they found like... Sorry, I got to play into this, but I read somewhere that they found like bottles and bottles and bottles. Maybe you told me this.

i don't know somebody told bottles and bottles of like baby oil but that had like drugs drugs in it bring that up was they was they doping up is that real or is that just something i heard on the internet because sometimes you hear stuff on the internet it's not true well here's most of it is most of the stuff you hear on the internet

What defense would you have? Like babies that are addicted to dirty oil? Yeah, I mean, you don't normally have GHB in baby oil. I'm not a doctor, but I don't think that's a normal ingredient in GHB. Anyway, sorry. I don't know, dude. There's some babies these days that fucking want to get to the club, homie. No. But no, but...

So do you think it was, so obviously it was the bill. This is where it's happened. Something about the bill made him upset. Yeah. So, yeah, that's right. That's right. I mean, again, I think he looked at the bill. He didn't like it. And I think it's a good bill. But again, there are things you can criticize about it. Like the president.

would be very open and say, this is not a perfect bill. But Donald Trump doesn't get to write the bills, right? Congress has to write the bills. And you've got to work with them to try to get something that is as good as possible. So here's what I'll say about the bill. Number one. prevents the biggest tax increase in American history. It prevents it? Prevents it. Because taxes are going to go up on everybody in a really big way at the end of 2025.

because the old tax law expires at the end of 2025. So you're going to hit a big tax increase. We're trying to prevent that from happening. We're also trying to do stuff, okay, so you've got a lot of people working long overtime hours in this economy. You know, we inherited bad inflation from Joe Biden, so no tax on overtime.

No tax on tips, right? We're in Bob Ritchie. We're in Kid Rock's great restaurant. His servers would not have to pay taxes on the hard-earned tips that they get when they're busting their ass doing a good job. So when working for Kid Rock, man, that's hard work, right?

I think that it's a good bill and it does a lot of good for the American people. But like, look, Elon's entitled to his opinion. I'm not saying he has to agree with the bill or agree with everything that I'm saying. I just think it's a huge mistake for... the world's wealthiest man, I think one of the most transformational entrepreneurs ever, that's Elon, to be at this...

war with the world's most powerful man, who I think is doing more to save the country than anybody, I'm 40 years old, anybody in my lifetime. Think about it. It's a guy who not even a year ago nearly took a bullet. in the process of campaigning, went back on the horse the next day. And if you look, obviously I'm biased, but you look at what we've done on the border, you look at what we've done with trade, fighting back against a generation of theft of the American dream.

which is what the president's trade policies are starting to do. I just think you got to have some respect for him and say, look, yeah, we don't have to agree on every issue. I'm talking about if you're Elon Musk, you don't have to agree with us on every issue. But is this war actually in the interest of the country? I don't think so. So hopefully Elon figures it out, comes back into the fold.

I know the president, you know, for a couple days, I'll tell you, just, you know, I don't want to reveal too many confidences, but he was getting a little frustrated, feeling like some of the criticisms were unfair coming from Elon. But I think it's been very restrained because the president doesn't.

think that he needs to be in a blood feud with Elon Musk. And I actually think if Elon chilled out a little bit, everything would be fine. It would help. Well, Elon also tweeted that he thought that in the second half of this year that there would be a... The Trump tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of this year. Now, who knows what what could cause a recession in the second half this year? It could be a buildup of our entire just history of being alive. But.

He's saying this. So it seems like, and this is just me guessing, and I don't know Mr. Musk. I never met Mr. Musk. One time he fed my buddy spaghetti at a party, though, dude, that my buddy, they were, people were raging and shit.

Your buddy couldn't feed himself the spaghetti? Well, my buddy said, he offered my buddy some spaghetti, and my buddy said, yeah, I'd like to have some. But only if you feed it to me? But instead of getting him a plate of spaghetti, he made him some and put it in his mouth, dude. Does your buddy know? Douglas. My buddy, I'll say this. My buddy actually is a friend of FDR. No, no, no. Sorry. Of, uh, shit. I don't know. God, dude. Fucking ruin this shit, dude.

Fuck, dude. Civics, man. Chill out. No, but he said that he thinks— But do you think that he just thinks that there's too many— That it's not a fair bill for the people? Do you think Elon Musk is for the people? I mean— I think that he's making a mistake and going after the president. I think his heart is in the right place, man. I do. I think he got into this for the right reasons. I think he's frustrated. I think he's an emotional guy. Honestly, I'm a very emotional guy. It's the president.

It's interesting because if you read the media reports, you wouldn't necessarily see this. He's not- like, quick to temper. Like, he's not one of these guys who flies off the handle. That's a little bit more what I'm like, honestly. Oh, he's smooth. He's smooth, man. He's stoic. His blood pressure's fucking 007, dude. That motherfucker is... I don't know if that's good, but...

Yeah, I get what you're saying. But it is where it is. But I think, so yeah, I think Elon means the best, but I think he's making a mistake. Yeah, got it. That's my view. Did any, was Dolish helpful? It was. Yeah, it was. And I mean, look, Doge continues within the White House and within the executive of the country. I mean, look, there's a lot of ways in which we are wasting the American people's money. Yeah. Sometimes spending it on crazy stuff.

Sometimes spending it on like actually counterproductive stuff. I think Doge has saved already at least 170, maybe $200 billion. Hopefully it's going to save more. But yeah, I think it was very worthwhile. That's so much money. That's a ton of money. How would you not even notice that? If that much money. There's so much I could tell you about this. Okay. So one of the crazy things we all figured out like first week or so we're in the White House. Okay. Is there was a payment.

that should be stopped because the president signed an executive order to stop a payment and this is like day one of the white house we're like okay how do we stop this payment because somebody's trying to make this payment and nobody knew where like the computer was that actually wired the money

from the U.S. taxpayer to this entity. The amount of waste and the amount of just grift in the federal government was off the charts. It's still, it's getting better, but there's still a lot more I think we can find. Who was getting it all? I don't know one person that was getting something extra, I don't think. Unless everybody was slurping. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people were slurping, man. You look at what...

so for example, there are all these humanitarian programs that we have where we send money for people for medicine, for food. Oh yeah. Okay. But like you think, I think. Like what I thought before I got in the government, what most Americans think is, okay, so we send $100,000 to this group to buy food for like poor kids in Africa, okay?

And what actually happens is it's not $100,000 that go to the food for the poor kids in Africa. That the NGO, the non-government organization that gets that money. contracts it out to somebody else. And then they subcontract it out to somebody else. There's like three or four middlemen. And what, you know, Marco Rubio, who's the secretary of state, he's a very good friend. What he told me is that his best estimate after he had his team look at it is that 88 cents of every dollar.

was actually being collected by middlemen. So every dollar we were spending humanitarian assistance, 12 cents was actually making it to people who needed it. That's crazy. So there's a lot of waste, man. A lot of crazy stuff. So Elon was putting in a lot. Was Elon doing it for free? all that time. He was doing it for free. Yeah. He was doing it for free. I mean, he doesn't need money, right? That's the one thing Elon does not need.

So I wonder if he was expecting anything from Trump and they just couldn't figure it out. I don't know. I'm just curious about it. You know, I'm kind of like you start to see how all this stuff kind of works, you know, and just like it's like. Yeah, like I hear. I really do think he's disappointed about the bill. He's, you know, he disagrees.

with some of the things that were in there. He's an emotional guy. Look, it happens to everybody. I've flown off the handle way worse than Elon Musk did in the last 24 hours. Oh, yeah. But my hope is... comes back says look made some mistakes didn't mean to say everything let's smooth it out and let's all be friends because again like i care about the country and i think the country's better off if the under the president's leadership

elon's helping us out as opposed to fighting the administration i don't want him to fight the administration i know the president doesn't want that but here we are yeah he just tweeted a little bit ago that he felt like 80 of the um what was that About a third party or something? He's tweeted like 300 times. Oh, sorry. Never mind. Okay. Just a regular day for Elon. So yeah, he's obviously, I mean, he's definitely, he gets a bit rogue.

Why don't we have... Oh, wait. This is interesting. Pull it up. Let's see it. This post is from an account you muted. I'm curious. Who did you mute? Who is that guy? Is that yours? It's one of your producers. Oh, it's a Trump should be impeached and J.D. Vince should replace him. Dude, that's one vote. Oh, my God.

See, this is what I'm talking about. This stuff is just... What are you talking about, campaigning? This stuff is just not helpful. Again... Yeah, Twitter is definitely... Look, my first loyalty is to my family, obviously, to the Constitution, but... politics is a place where people stab each other in the back and you can't get anything done unless you're all on the same team and you're actually committed to getting stuff done together. I just think like the idea that.

The president's, the president should be impeached. I'm sorry. It's insane. It's totally insane. The president is doing a good job and you can look. you're free to disagree with them, right? Everybody has a First Amendment right. Are you free to disagree with Trump ever? Do you feel like you can? Of course, of course. I mean, the way that I put it is, if I have a disagreement with the president, then...

It is my job, obviously, to provide the president honest counsel. He doesn't need me to be a doormat. He needs me to actually say what I think about an issue. But when the president makes a decision, man, he's the general. And when the general makes a decision.

everybody's got to go and execute that order. And that's kind of how I think about my job, really, is to be a good ally and a good friend, provide honest counsel to the president, but also when a decision's made, you go out and get it done. Does he listen to many people or does he listen to just one or two?

he listens to a ton of people. It's one of the more interesting things about his, his leadership style is if he's got a big decision to make, he talks to everybody. And I think it's why he's like, in touch with normal people is because he doesn't just talk to like congressmen or people a lot of money he tries to talk to everybody like i've seen him ask the gardener at mar-a-lago

what he thinks about a particular issue. I've seen him ask the people who work in the kitchen at the White House what they think about an issue. He's constantly trying to understand what other people are thinking. Oh, I saw him ask a Scottish terrier what kind of cakes they like, you know? Yeah, I agree with you. He's definitely always absorbing kind of information. He is. Yeah. Nobody needs help spending money. Sometimes it feels like the whole world is trying to spend your money.

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Man, it's pretty obvious that the mainstream media is a big machine. They kind of contour, they team up, they have a strategy. So we're never really seeing the whole picture when it comes to news. That's why I love ground news. It lets you see how different news outlets cover the same story, left, right, and center. Yeah, I was on ground news this morning, and it shows on the, if you look at the left.

Regarding the Musk-Trump feud, it says Musk hits back with Epstein theories. Trump hits back with threats. Elon has gone crazy. And then we go to a more centrist news feed and it says Trump-Musk feud explodes with threats of cutting contracts backing impeachment.

And here we are with a right-leaning from the Daily Wire. White House responds to Elon Musk Epstein claims an unfortunate episode from Elon. And I think you should go check this out yourself because I don't think we've ever seen anything like it. I think it's actually the only of its kind. And I think it's what we've all been wanting. Just go to groundnews.com slash Theo. That's G-R-O-U-N-D.

N-E-W-S dot com slash T-H-E-O to get 40% off the Vantage plan and get access to the mobile app, website, and exclusive newsletters. Wow. One more time. groundnews.com slash T-H-E-O. You talked about the bill, the big beautiful bill, you know, which is like kind of the most, it's the most Trumpian name you could ever have. It is.

The big, beautiful bill. And why are these bills this whole mess of shit? Why is it a gumbo? Why isn't it just one fine soup each time and you vote on each certain thing? I know that's definitely gonna be a novice question. But no, I mean, it's a fair question. I think there are a couple. Excuse me. It depends on the kind of the Celsius is a lot of caffeine. What are you talking about? Yeah.

That's what FDR was on. That's why he left his wife. That thing will definitely remodel. FDR loves Celsius. As everybody knows, his favorite beverage was... what is this here? Sparkling orange Celsius. And that is the most FDR flavor too, to be honest. Oh man. Okay. Sorry. What did you ask me? Okay. The big. I thought we were supposed to be reading the Bible. What is this even about? All right. The Bills. Okay.

But the bill, why is it? Because you always hear every congressman or senator, not everyone, but some of you are like, I just got it. I don't know what happened. I couldn't read a thousand pages last night, you know? So there are different kinds of bills. Okay. And I think, so there are things called omnibuses and omnibuses are like a million different things shoved into one bill.

And oftentimes you don't have time to read them. The House of Representatives actually adopted a rule to where they have to get, I think, at least four days to actually read it. to change this because people weren't getting time to read the stuff before it got voted on. This particular bill, the way to think about it is basically...

If you look at a campaign speech I gave back in September of 2024, and I said, we're going to cut taxes on tips. We're going to have no taxes on overtime. We're going to cut taxes on Social Security. you know, we're going to secure the border, we're going to build more border wall, we're going to hire more border patrol agents, like all that stuff, all of those promises are in this bill. So like the way this particular piece of legislation was conceptualized is...

Rather than take up floor time on a bunch of random different stuff, why don't we just do everything or at least most of the things that we campaigned on that can be done through legislation and put it into this bill? Now, that's not saying that there aren't sometimes massive bills. that are ridiculous and don't make a ton of sense. There are, but I think this bill, like, you know, there's a political answer to your question too, okay? So...

let's just say, I'm not going to name names. I don't embarrass anybody. Let's say you've got some Republican congressmen who really love no taxes on tips. but they're a little squishy on the border stuff. They don't agree with what we're doing on the border, okay? Let's say you got somebody who really loves what we're doing on the border.

but they don't necessarily like, you know, they don't want to cut taxes for one reason or another. If you take enough of this stuff, of our promises again, and put it together, you say, look. Even if you disagree with parts of it, this is what we campaigned on writ large. And so we got to vote on this thing and make it happen. Sorry, there's a final answer to this question, which is stupid and parliamentary, but it matters. It's actually the most important answer is...

okay, any bill that you do takes, you got to put it on the floor and you got to give people enough time to read it and you got to amend it. And then you got to do a committee process. And there's like a constant stream of things. There's a big process for it. And so if you went through that process, for each individual item.

on a separate bill, it would take over a year to do all these bills. But we got to prevent taxes from going up. We don't have that much time to do it. We got to secure the border. We don't have that much time to do it. We've got to do the no tax on Social Security. Like if we did that 18 months from now in a smaller bill, then we would not be keeping our promises to the American people. I see.

Is there a way that they can just prioritize those? It just feels like it would be so much easier to digest as a regular person if you weren't thinking like, well, heck, my guy's got to stay up all night for 600 nights to get all this information in, you know, and to get it in accurately and then make fair choices on it. Yeah, I think the answer to your question is you could do that, but Congress would have to change its procedure. And could Congress do that if they voted to do it?

They could. They could. But they would need to change their procedures. And, you know, the president's attitude is... We're like, we're not going to tell you how to run Congress. We're working within the constraints that we have. And we're just trying to get as much done. And look, I mean, people are frustrated with Congress. I get it. People are frustrated with certain things that Congress does. I agree with a lot of those criticisms.

I mean, we do spend way too much money in this country. Like it is a reality that we spend too much money, but I don't think those criticisms apply to this particular legislation. One thing I'd ask everybody to say is, okay, so big, ugly spending bill, some people are calling it. What is the spending that is done here? The biggest single budgetary item, Theo, in this bill is the money to secure the border.

Like, that's not ugly spending. That's, like, the best kind of spending. Well, that's a great kind of spending. I think, well, no, I agree with that. Look, we've had two border officials on over the past four years, and we've learned about...

about all the, just the infrastructure issues that they face. We've learned about the fact that the executive branch doesn't process any of the, like they'll apprehend the guys, but then they're not processed. I think it's the executive branch. Yes, because we don't have the money to do it.

Like that, that's okay. But they were saying for years, guys would come in and they'd have to catch them every other week because they would, and nobody would prosecute them. So it was just, then it made them feel like they didn't have any value. I know that we're signing like 5,000 new people to work at the border. So I know that we're giving a lot of new jobs over there.

to do right is create enough resources so you can actually do all the border enforcement that we promised and like the the the part that the president got immediate action on if you think about this we came in The president empowered Border Patrol to stop letting people come across the border illegally. That stopped pretty much immediately. You got like a 96% drop in border.

crossings immediately yeah the thing is though is you've got 21 million people in here illegally you got to send them home you got to process them you got to actually sometimes some of these people you know are entitled to some kind of trial for one reason or another. So you've got to like do that. That stuff all costs money. And that's where we don't have money to do it right now. So that's why this bill is necessary. Did, who was that? They just said that.

Did Congress have enough time to read this bill? Rep. Thomas Massey said the House has a 72-hour rule which requires the bill to be posted 72 hours before passage. What does that even mean? Yeah, that's... I'd never heard that before. And look, I mean, Thomas Massey and I get along. But my understanding is that the bill text was...

People have had literally weeks to pass it or to read it. And the reason, okay, here's the criticism I'd give of what Thomas Massey's saying right here is what's going to happen is the Senate has to vote on this bill and then it has to go back to the House.

And it may change like 1%, like the Senate may change a sentence or a paragraph here or there, but it's going to fundamentally be the same bill. So the idea that people haven't had an opportunity to actually read it is ridiculous. They're in fact going to have to vote on it again before it even... becomes law so they'll have more time they'll have more time got it like by necessity by law they have to

Understood. Part of the bill I know that people are, that's getting a lot of attention, right? And I do want to say, like, I recognize that, like, when you get into a place, you can't just get what you want, right? There's a lot of people in that place and everybody wants certain things.

There's a give and take. That's why I'd say it's good, not perfect. There are criticisms to make of it. Yeah. There's a give and take, dude. You know, you can, yeah, it's like getting in-laws or whatever. That's right. Any good marriage has give or take. Any good relationship has give or take. Yeah.

Right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. You got to compromise a little bit. You got to accept some things you might not love. That's just, that's the nature of the beast. Part of the bill that people are talking about is there's like the AI stuff, right?

Like the government, like, um, there's a band, uh, is that we're going to spend a lot of money with AI, like. in order to advance, like, bring our government and technologies up to code, really? Yeah, I know what you're talking about. And then also, it says in there that there's a ban that at state levels, they couldn't prosecute some of these AI companies, right?

That sounds really sketchy. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. And this is in USAT. I'll just read it. The ban is tucked into a section of the bill that would allocate $500 million over the next 10 years to modernize government systems with the help of AI and automation technologies.

ban would not only prevent new state-led regulations of AI, but would also block dozens of states from enforcing pre-existing AI regulations and oversight structures. It feels scary. Yeah, so let me say a couple things about this. I actually was talking to a couple of senators on the way down here about this because they really hate this provision. And actually both, we brought them on because it's Bill Haggerty.

And Marsha Blackburn, great people. They represent the state of Tennessee. So they don't like this provision. And they brought up a really interesting point. So Tennessee obviously has a lot of musicians, right? And Tennessee wants to protect those musicians from having...

basically ai steal the the production of their artists right because one of the big problems with ai right is you're going to be able to take somebody's voice and then like you know taylor swift's voice or you know anybody else's voice um And basically say, oh, okay, well, based on this one song that, you know.

Robert Plant did 35 years ago. We're going to like make a whole new Led Zeppelin song using artificial intelligence. Right. And they want to protect people from that kind of thing happening. So that's a totally reasonable point to me. The reason that provision is in there.

is because you think about like, think about how like woke- the google searches got remember when you like search what does george washington look like and it show you like a picture of a black dude oh yeah and and like a little japanese george washington or something so so the idea is you use you basically have a federal regulation that prevents, a federal regulation that prevents like California.

from having a super progressive set of regulations on artificial intelligence, right? That's the argument for it. The argument against it is that if the feds aren't protecting artists, then you're not going to be able to protect artists either. Okay. And so, honestly, I don't think the provision, to be honest with you, I don't think that's going to make it in the final bill, but...

I usually have a pretty strong view on most things. I can kind of go both ways on this because I don't want California's progressive regulations to control artificial intelligence. I also agree with Marsha and Bill that you want to protect, you know, country artists.

in nashville from having their crap stolen by ai like i get that yeah yeah it's interesting i mean that kind of stuff it's like because they made a bunch of little babies of all the like a lot of podcasters and now they're doing it with everybody like They got dang Aaron Rodgers' baby. They got Left Eye from that Milli Vanilli woman or whatever. They have everybody in there. Milli Vanilli man, too soon. Oh, yeah.

I'm a Milli Vanilli truther, by the way. Really? Yeah, man. Oh. I think it was really them. I just think they were taken advantage of. Thank you. Thank you, dude. You know there's like seven of us left, don't you? Oh man, that was a catchy song. So I was born in 1984. That's one of the first songs I remember like. Playing in a radio. Dude, remember that song? I'm the one who wants to be with you. That was like mid-90s, right? I don't know. It was good, though.

I'm trying to think of the band. I think it was kind of a one-hit wonder. Mr. Big. That was Mr. Big, okay. That's kind of a one-hit wonder, right? Yeah, they were. Yeah, that's too bad. God, they were good, dude. That was a good song. Remember the first song you ever heard? I'm pretty sure the first song I ever heard was...

layla by eric clapton the the original one not the acoustic one dude my buddy i used to live with my buddy's dad right because he was getting i had like erectile dysfunction so i was pretty young and then uh I was living with him because he was getting like an early script on E.D. peels or whatever, you know, wiener peels. And so I stayed over there. I cop a little bit off of his.

Anyway, he used to hook up with this lady and I was learning the guitar. He made me go play. Layla? No, Tears in Heaven. Oh, man. That's a sad, you know, that's about his son dying. And it was the only song I knew and they like play it again. Oh my God. I see. This is one of those things where I hope to God you're joking. Because if you're living in Steve's house, how old were you at the time?

Oh, probably 27. Okay. So you're 27 stealing ED pills, playing tears in heaven. That's a bad situation. You got to get out of that situation, man. I'm going to assume that you're joking because I don't want to have nightmares about this. Brother. About this later on. What do you mean?

Okay. That's the healthcare system we have. The healthcare system. All right. So on the way over. No, I'm just joking. That is a true story though. I hear you. On the way down here. On the way down here. there's like an advertisement for some like med pack it was it was on it was a tv commercial and i don't really watch like normal tv so i don't see commercials that often anymore but it's like med pack and it's like order this thing and it costs 45 and it has these different drugs in it

And I only saw it briefly, but I could have sworn that two of the medications in this med pack were, and it's advertised as like an emergency medicine, are ivermectin and ozempic. And I'm like thinking to myself. what is the situation where you need emergency Ozempic? And so like the second half of the flight down here, I'm thinking to myself, what is the emergency Ozempic situation? And then I thought like, you know, if you have a Dahmer party situation and it's like, all right.

you know, we got to suppress our appetites here. But I don't know. But maybe it was just ivermectin. Maybe it was an OSM pick. But... See, stuff like that is kind of crazy to me. Well, now they're combining. It's just everything is combined now. You know, they even put, I think it's Pizza Hut and Baskin-Robbins are together now. It's like everything I think is mixed now. That kind of makes sense, though. It kind of does.

some pizza and then some ice cream yeah yeah that's true you're right so what i never understood was like what was ivermectin taco bell and kfc yeah like what is that it's one of the other that's called indigestion that is the only way that combination It should be one or the other. You do not need. If you're going to Taco Bell and KFC in the same stop, you got serious problems. Did you?

Let me think about something that's important, J.D., or people are not even going to believe that we spent time together. Oh, my God. This is fun, though, man. It's good. It is good, man. Dude, I just can't even believe that that's your life. Is it what you thought it would be? Is it different once you got in there? Are things that different?

It's about what I thought it would be. I mean, at this point, right, I know the president pretty well. And, you know, I knew that he would, I knew he had a lot of trust in me. And again, the role of the vice president is very derivative of what the president is doing. So if the president has trust in you, if he gives you a task and just lets you go and do it, that's kind of what your job is. And it's been a lot of fun. Like I've traveled all over the world.

I think we've done a lot of good work for the American people, which of course is the most important part. And there are little things that I, you know, will take some time getting used to. So like we got three little kids. Our son just turned eight yesterday, actually. And then we have a five-year-old son, the three-year-old baby girl. And our eight-year-old son is, he's a little bit of an introvert, I think. And so he doesn't love the attention. But then our like five-year-old son.

is is a little bit more like me so he'll like roll off the airplane wave in saying hello to everybody and um having secret service around is is kind of a crazy experience like they're all good dudes and i love them but it's also kind of unusual to like just walk outside your house and there's always somebody you know walking with you that's kind of weird oh definitely i think i mean we went back to go chat for

You know, like five minutes just before this thing started. And, you know, I was like, don't worry, guys. Theo doesn't have a gun. He's like, I hope you don't. No, they checked me. We're in deep shit, man. They checked me. Somebody kissed me on the way. And I was like, that's part of it? One of the Secret Service agents? No, I'm joking.

I was like, what's your secret, buddy, huh? You know? Oh, that's Milli Vanilli right there. It's babies right there using it. Oh, my God. Wait, those are Grammys, right? I didn't know. Oh, they took their Grammys away. Well, didn't one of them- They took their Grammys away? Didn't one of them commit suicide? It's kind of a sad story, actually. Yeah, and one of them died a couple years ago. I met one of them one night, I think. Maybe I didn't. I was out late one night, I'll say that.

I'm sorry. That's crazy. What are we talking about? Let's talk about... Could have been Milli Vanilli. Could have been my uncle. Who knows? Who am I to say? I don't know. I'll just say I met one of Freddie's buddies, one of Frederick's buddies out there. I'll say this, man, right now, sir, I will say it. So people have to, like, we all need, like, help whenever we're, like, when you're podcasting.

right like you need help you need support you have sponsors and stuff right correct there's a lot of speculation and talk like one of your primary sponsors was is a guy peter teal right and he's in the tech world yeah and i never met him you know sure um But, you know, there's like a lot of these tech kind of lords like they, you know, technology has grown so much in the past 20 years that it controls a lot of our environment and our life, right? It does.

what do you owe somebody if you do, like if you get into office, if somebody like donates a lot of money to your campaign, like how does that relationship work after that? I think the attitude is you don't owe them anything. And I think if you take the attitude of you owe somebody something, then you're fundamentally not going to do the job that you were meant to do. I mean, this is always, this is tough, right? Because, so take my Senate race, first time I ever ran for office was 22.

2022. I ran for the Ohio Senate race. I won. You did? Yeah. Fuck yeah. Thank you. That's good. Yeah. If I hadn't won, I wouldn't be sitting here. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. No idea. Because then I became the vice president. Right. I get that. So I basically have won. I've run two campaigns in my life. The first one, the Senate campaign cost $45 million. The second one.

presidential campaign, I think that we spent like $1.2 billion. Okay. So it costs a lot of money. Well, the president obviously is the leader of the campaign, but the total campaign. Got it. So. It costs a lot of money to run for office and you got to go and raise money. Yeah. But I think that if your attitude is I owe something, these people gave me money, then you're going to end up being corrupted. And you've got to kind of take the attitude of.

They're supporting me because they agree with me. And obviously like you have conversations with them. Like you mentioned Peter Thiel. I see a lot of crazy stuff on the internet about, about Peter Thiel. Like. You know, he's always been a friend of mine. He's always been one of the smartest people I've ever met. Oh, really? Just a very thoughtful dude. But he's literally never asked me once for anything. So he just believed in you?

He believed in me. He agreed with me on a lot of issues. I mean, he definitely has like said, hey, I don't agree with you on this. But he's never said, I don't agree with you on this. Therefore, you should vote differently or act differently. But it's like, to be honest with you, it's one of the risks of our system.

if you think about it, right, because if you are a super ambitious dude or girl and you really want to run for office, like you got to be able to separate yourself from that donor pressure. And think about it like if you're going to do a fundraiser.

OK, everybody's going to go to fundraisers and politics. Well, that's like an hour and a half you're not spending talking to the people you represent. Right. So there is one of the problems in our system is the people spend so much time raising money.

I think sometimes, not all cases, but sometimes it can have a corrupting influence on the process. Now, I was talking to a buddy of mine actually about this because his argument is, yeah, he's like a political consultant. He's a political hack, but a good dude. He said, He said, our system is better, though, because in some places they have publicly financed campaigns. And he's like, the problem with places where they have publicly financed campaigns is it all...

all of the control in the political system is with the media. Because... Like if you raise money, most of what you're spending your money on is TV, radio advertisements. It's reaching voters. So if you can't reach voters with TV advertisements and you got to go on the corporate media to get your message out there, that's even worse. So I kind of see both.

sides of it. I just think as a practical matter, what I try to do is remember that, you know, it's an honor to serve, but it's also a sacrifice to serve. And if people are going to write me a check, great, but I don't owe them anything. That's the attitude I try to have. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's just, it's interesting because I mean, we all have people that help us do certain things or supportive. And then you get in spots where you're like, you know, I like, I used to live with a family when I was growing up and there's always been this thing. I was like, what do I owe them? You know, not that they've ever said I owed them anything, but it's like, you know, there's.

always this feeling inside of you you know of like uh and so i'm sure a lot of people can relate to things like that um this episode is brought to you by masa chips it's time to get those processed seed oils out of our lives and masa chips is at the forefront. Did you know all chips and fries used to be cooked in tallow up until the 1990s when big corporations switched to cheap?

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Well, recently they have like, there's a lot of like Trump picked out that there's the Palantir company, right? Yeah. And that's about a surveillance thing. So this thing is fucked. This sounds crazy, dude. Like this sounds like we're only going to be human for like two more years. Right. So. And this is the Palantir company where they're going to build security databases that have all of our information in them, right? That's what they're saying.

That's what they're saying. And it's going to have like everything. It'll like look at you and know like if you're good at tennis or if you've ever, you know, if you have like if you have $60 in your pocket or if you're, you know, it can tell if your kids are, you know, if your kids can have a limp or whatever, he'll be.

in the Christmas play. You know what I'm saying? It can tell all of that. And then, and that feels real scary, man. I get it. To a regular guy on the street, that feels like we're going to give our society, like... like we're going to become these, like they're going to know everything about us, it makes you feel like you won't be a person anymore. I hear you. Does that make sense to you? It definitely makes sense to me. I mean, let me try to explain.

So to be clear, I'm not an expert on this particular deal. I actually just read about it earlier today or maybe yesterday. But the president did an executive order, I don't know, a couple months ago. And the basic idea is you've got all this different information. but it's not accessible in one place. So like, let me give you an example where this might be useful. Let's say you catch an illegal immigrant, okay? And that person's using a social security number.

but the Department of Homeland Security that arrests the person can't actually figure out what social security number that illegal immigrant is, what name it's attached to, okay? Or, you know, let's say you're like investigating some terrorist.

And the FBI arrests the person. But, you know, there are information about like where the person lived a couple of years ago that you'd like to have. So you'd maybe like to go, you know, talk to their friends or associates or whatever. Yeah. My understanding is that.

It does sound odd, but that what they're trying to do is take all the information that the Department of Homeland Security has, that the FBI has, and just make it so that it's actually not in some hyper-inefficient system. It's all sort of accessible. And here's the thing. Modern technology is just crazy and weird, and it affects our privacy. And I think...

We don't have to think that's a good thing. It is like a reality of the world that we live in. Right. Sometimes I get a little romantic about things. Well, I mean, look. And I think it's going to go back in time. I mean, look. Everybody, I kind of agree with you. I think people are sort of going to rebel against technology a little bit. In some ways, they already are. But look, dude, if I, this has happened to me so many times.

Or I'm talking to my wife like, oh, what are we going to make for dinner for the kids tonight? Oh, let's just like do DoorDash or Grubhub. And then you go on like X or you go on Facebook or Instagram and there's like an advertisement for a DoorDash coupon. And it's like, well, I was just talking about this 10 minutes ago. So we know that big technology spies on us and harvests our data. I honestly worry more about that.

than about like connecting the DHS system to the FBI system. So that's all that this Palantir deal is part, like a lot of that, it's just. It's just connecting information. So I'm hardly an expert, but my understanding is that it's just taking, okay, DHS has information, FBI has information, Secretary of the Treasury has information, and making it possible for...

that information to be searched by whoever is looking for it. That's my understanding. But again, I hear that story and my reaction is the same, which is, oh, I don't like the government having my information. The reality is the government already has my information. And more importantly, some of these private technology companies have way more information on me than the government does. Oh, yeah. I mean, anywhere you shop.

has unbelievable information on you. I mean, let me tell you like- Yeah, dude, Blockbuster, two days ago, Blockbuster was like, happy birthday. They were wrong. So I gotta, I gotta- It's like, you're out of business. There's a, there's a, yeah. When was the last time you were at a blockbuster? But some guy somewhere, probably in another country, Nepal, is sitting somewhere. You and FDR took your Celsius and went down to Blockbuster to get some VHS rentals.

A little bit of boogie nights for the fellas. That was FDR's favorite movie, so that makes sense. So, all right. What were we talking about? Technology. Okay. So I was, okay. I was getting a brief. So when I first became, no, no, they are. And I get it. And look, like all I'll tell you is we try to be as. Oh yeah. I did go to the last blockbuster. I forgot about that.

How old was that? Is that 14 years ago? That? No, that's freaking two years ago, dude. My ex lived out there. I got stuck in the snow out there. Yeah, so... So...

I got a brief from my national security guy. I want to make sure I can, it's not classified information. Okay, no, it's not classified information. Okay, basically, long story short, one of the guys who works in the national security team of the Trump administration gave me this brief about how Okay, when you're using an iPad and let's say, you know, you're reading a story from some random newspaper and you hover on a particular paragraph.

Like your iPad is collecting that information on you. Like it's actually trying to track what you're doing. Like that is the stuff that really freaks me out. Well, how do we stop that? I think it freaks everybody out. I think it just makes people sick. It's like, you don't even feel like you exist.

any purpose anymore other than to be advertised to or to be um i don't even know anything yeah well you think about it like our think about a hundred years ago 50 years ago the most brilliant scientists in the world they're trying to figure out nuclear energy they're trying to figure out how to cure cancer now way too many of them are figuring out like how do i get a person to linger

on a digital advertisement for a little bit longer so that we can increase the price of the ad that we sell them by three pennies. There's something I think that warps our entire economy about the digital advertisement world. Because too many smart people are focused on getting us addicted to these applications. And I mean, what do we do about it? I mean, one thing is from a policy perspective.

we've already looked into a lot of things we can do on data privacy and protection. So we're trying to make it harder for these firms to collect information on you. Well, it feels like with this, with Palantir, it's like they're going to collect all the information though. So that feels like...

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, my understanding again, so this is full disclosure. I think it's important. I think it's important. I think it's important to be open. So Palantir, you asked about Peter Thiel. Palantir is actually one of the companies that he invested in. Right. So.

Oh, he doesn't run it. My understanding is he doesn't run it. But I don't believe that Palantir is collecting any information. I believe it's purely building a database that's... sort of combining information is that i might have some my team that you guys get is that right is that accurate okay cool no i'm glad yeah because yeah we're just trying to figure it out and i think i mean right now i think palantir has like you know

there's a lot of conflict right now in gaza you know everybody knows about that of course and palantir is like um been accused of being like complicit in a lot of the violence over there And so I think that's where it gets really scary for like regular person on the street. I'm like, well, this is the company, you know, because you see videos of like horrific stuff online. Very sad stuff. And you're like, well.

If this is the company we're hiring, how do I know that I might not be walking down the street and just a sniper bullet could hit me from them, you know? So that is... To be really honest with you. Yeah, no, I hear what you're saying. And I think the answer to that question is... The only real protection that we have against that is that we've got to, you know, elect the right people and we've got to make sure that our government doesn't do crazy stuff.

Because, I mean, look, any of this information can be misused. Like our government has your social security number, okay? Using that information, the government could spy on you. The government could give your information over to an illegal alien to start a fake account in your name. And that, by the way, happens. I had a friend of mine who had an illegal alien steal a social security number. And when he went to the IRS to complain about it, they wouldn't give him information on.

on the person who was stealing his stuff. And by the way, that's what we're trying to do is make it so the IRS can talk to the Department of Homeland Security. But the only real protection against this stuff, I think, is to have a government that...

actually protects the rights of its citizens. And, you know, if, I mean, we should all be worried about our privacy being invaded by the government. I think we should be just as worried about private corporations as we should be the government, I think. Everybody can invade our privacy. But I don't put this away. I don't think that the solution to that problem is.

to like pretend that the government doesn't already have this information it just does right you got to make sure it doesn't misuse it and that's that's my view at least is we got to live in reality and the government's already got this information we just need to make sure they don't misuse it

And on like the Gaza thing, just sort of, you know, chat about that for a little bit. I mean, I'm like a human being. So I look at this stuff, I see these videos, I see the pictures, and it's very heartbreaking. And just since you brought it up, what we're trying to do here is try to solve two problems here. So on the one hand, you've got innocent people.

innocent Palestinians and innocent Israeli hostages, by the way, who are like caught up in this terrible violence that's happening as we speak. OK, and we're trying to get as much aid and as much support into people as humanly possible. That's like one thing that's going on. The other side is Israel is attacked by this terrible terrorist organization. I think people sometimes forget that, right? They forget like the thing that kicked this off.

is that we had this terrible terrorist attack and you had a lot of innocent Israeli civilians die in that terrorist attack. And so I think what we're trying to do in the Trump administration with that situation is to get to a peaceful resolution. And I think the peaceful resolution looks something like this. You've got to give Israel confidence that Hamas is never going to attack them and kill a bunch of civilians.

And then you've got to get as much aid and support into these innocent Palestinians as possible, because in some ways they're caught in the middle of this thing too. One thing that I don't love about the whole Israel-Palestinian debate... is I think it kind of degrades our humanity a little bit because I've seen people on the left, mostly on the left, who will say, well, they'll completely ignore that Israel, like all these innocent Israelis were killed in this terrorist attack.

And you have some people usually on the right who will completely ignore that they're like kids who are caught up in this violence. And I think it's why the president has been, you know, I call him the president of peace.

It's why he cares about solving this problem because the longer this goes on, the more suffering, the more death. So we're trying to solve it as much as we can. It's not easy. Do you have a say in it? Yeah, I mean, well, the president's obviously the person who makes the final decision all the time. But yeah, I mean, certainly I think I'm one of the few people that he's talking to constantly. We're constantly, we're talking to the Israeli government. We're talking to...

people in the Arab world. We're talking to people in Palestinian territories. Like we're constantly engaging in diplomacy. I mean, one of the crazy things, dude, is this guy is a very dear friend of the president's. He's our special envoy of the Middle East, Steve Wyckoff. He's a Jewish guy, very pro-Israel. He's done more to try to bring this conflict to a close than anybody.

And you sometimes have people who say that they're pro-Israel who attack Steve for not being pro-Israel enough. And I think it's totally bogus. I see this guy operate every single day. He actually is. He's a Jewish guy who believes... in in in the purpose of the state of israel he also is a guy with a heart who's trying to prevent the killing yeah and i i think there's just

Like when I talk about this whole debate has caused us to lose our humanity, I think of the people who are constantly going after Steve because this is a guy, he's a father. He lost one of his own children because of an overdose. And he just, he loves people. He believes in the value of human life and he's doing a really good job. And he's one of the important people in the presidency or two. Yeah, it seems like I've heard of Mr. Whitcoff, but I never met him.

Good dude. You should have him. I think the tough thing just as a regular person, right? It's like we're seeing all these videos of people like picking up pieces of their children. Of course. It's the sickest thing I think it's ever been televised, basically, if you consider watching something on your phone being televised. It feels like a massacre, and it feels like...

You know, I've called it a genocide. Other people have different thoughts about it and that's fine, right? And I don't need anybody to share the same thoughts or you too. But I think where it gets scary is that we give, you know, we're complicit in it because we help fund like military stuff.

You know, and that's where it's like a regular guy. You're like, well, I'm paying these taxes and they're going towards this. Like, but you can't do anything, you know, like you can, you can, you can talk, you know, but it's like, you can't, I don't understand how it becomes like.

tough for people like sometimes it feels like we look out for the interests of israel before we look out for the interests of america so let me say a couple things so so number one like i think you're a great dude so we don't always have to agree on everything

Do I think it's a genocide? No. And here's the reason why I don't think it's a genocide. Because I don't think that the Israelis are purposely trying to go in and murder every Palestinian. I don't think that's what they're doing. I think they got hit hard. And I think they're trying to like...

you know, sort of destroy this terrorist organization and war is hell. And that is true. I also think it's true, man. I mean, I've seen people on my side of the political aisle. I'm a Republican. You know that, but your audience may not. who like will see these videos of these innocent Palestinian kids and say, oh, well, they had it coming to them. No, no, no, no, no. Like if you have a soul, your heart should break when you see a little kid who's suffering.

which is why we have the policy that we have, which is we're trying to stop, eliminate the conflict, eliminate the source of the conflict so that we can actually bring some peace and some humanitarian assistance into people. And that's my basic view. And the president's interesting. He's a pro-Israel guy. Yeah. And he also recognizes...

that to bring any conflict to a close, you've got to talk to everybody. And so, I mean, we've been attacked. I've been attacked. The president's been attacked for being too interested in diplomacy. And you ask, like, what can I do? I think that what people should demand. is that if our tax dollars are going to something, we should be actively trying to fix it. Okay, that's kind of the way that I think about it. And what happened with the Biden administration, man, it's crazy.

They were spending so much money all over the world, they weren't engaged in diplomacy at all. So they'd sent, I mean, we sent $300 billion to Ukraine, for example, and you never had the president of the United States actually trying to force a diplomatic settlement. I mean, you talk about...

bodies all over the ground dude the russia ukraine thing is the most vicious we see satellite images we see classified images man it is it is vicious and again it's i i i will i will hear people who will say well you know You know, again, mostly on our side, we'll say, oh, the Russians got killed. That's a good thing. Look, I'm not defending the invasion. I'm not defending starting a war.

But when human beings are getting blown to bits, your heart should feel sad about that. And you should try to do something to fix it. And that's what we're trying to do. And we get crap for it. But again, that's like the part that makes me feel the best about my job is... whether it's in Israel or Russia, Ukraine, like we're actually trying to bring this stuff to some settlement and to some close. And if we do, we're going to save a lot of lives. And if we don't, it was worth the try. Yeah.

Yeah, I just have one more question. And yeah, and I want to say, yeah, I recognize that it's like you can't expect people to do stuff immediately. You can't expect things to happen overnight. Sure. And that you get into a place and there's a lot of people that are already there and you have to figure out how do I make my way in this? How do I figure out? to get some of the things I want

And I have to give up some of the things that I also want. Right. And so I just want to let you know that I recognize that, you know, and I think I learned to recognize that more. I think the older that I get and learn a little bit more about politics, it's not just like this guy got the job. Everything's going to be done immediately.

I do want to ask really quick. This is important because there's a lot like President Trump talked about this. He signed this executive order to make price transparency for health care. Right.

And for hospital bills and medical billing. And we talked about it last time you were on, you said your wife was getting birth and you didn't even know like how much it was costing. Like, what does this cost? And what if we get to amnesia where your wife's like, I don't want any amnesia or whatever. And you're like, you should take it. And you're like, how much is it?

it you know but it's like nobody knows you know and then they're putting thirty thousand dollars of amnesia in your wife you're like well shit and so it's like but what i'm saying is everybody at this point is it's uh it's you know but it's a

hundred trillion dollar multi hundred trillion dollar industry yes that's going to change will we actually see it take place like biden administration tried to get price transparency they couldn't they were too caught up they couldn't get it done trump signed the executive order

Do you think we will actually see this happen? So I do. I think it's going to take a little time, but we took the first big step when the president signed that executive order. And you asked this question about donors, right? So the pharmaceutical industry gives a ton of money.

to republicans and democrats i'll tell you they were not happy when the president did that and the president's attitude is look it's the right thing for the american people so i think again it's an example of when you've got to tune out the financial pressures of politics to just do what's right. Well, people are afraid to get sick, not because they... Sorry, am I being loud to you? I'm sorry. No, you're fine. Here's something...

No, I mean, your normal volume, I would say. Okay, sorry. I felt a little handed. It's not towards you. I'm thankful that you're spending time with me. No, no, you're good, man. So I'll tell you a crazy story. A buddy of mine.

was visiting recently a friend from back home and his wife told me the story that his kid they thought he was special needs maybe had sort of a neurological disorder just because he was sort of emotional or not emotionally educationally behind his peers turns out he was just deaf he needed a cochlear implant and it took

This, this, you know, my, my buddy's wife just fighting with the insurance companies for forever to get this kid, the medicine that he needed, the treatment that he needed. And now the kid, he's happy, he's healthy. It's a beautiful child, smart child. Like that's amazing, right? That's what we want medical science. is to take a serious problem and make it better. Well, why do we have a medical system in this country?

where too many people can't get the treatment that they need? And it's a complicated answer to that question. But one of the big problems is, and I don't think most Americans realize this, we subsidize. When you go to the hospital or you go to the doctor and you pay out the rear end.

for a treatment, you are subsidizing all of the therapies all over the world. And tell us what subsidizing means because some people won't know. So basically, we pay more so that Europeans in other parts of the world pay less. So we fund all the innovation. We fund all the development of new drugs. And then Americans pay way more. That's why, you know, Americans, we spend 22% of our economy on healthcare. The Europeans average out about 10 or 11%.

We spend way more on health care and they spend way less. So the president uses example all the time. You know, the Ozipic, as he calls it, the fat shot drug. He had a buddy who was on Ozipic. and had to go to Canada to get it, even though it was invented in Europe.

Yeah. And it was mass produced all over the world. It was like a tenth of the price in Canada that it was in the United States. And the way that it is, is the drug companies make money off Americans so they can offer discount drugs to everybody else. So what that executive order, the reason why I think that...

is going to work way better than anything the Biden administration is doing. It's going to say the Americans get to pay less and the Europeans are going to have to pay up a little bit. You'll know more about what you're spending on. but it also is more fair to Americans. And I think that's a win-win scenario because you can't expect Americans to pay 10 times for prescription drugs what other people pay. It's also, by the way, not that this is the main issue.

but it's bankrupting people and it's bankrupting our country. Because we spend so much more on healthcare and that's a major driver of our budgetary problem. It's the number one cause of bankruptcy is medical debt. And it's like people aren't afraid to get sick because they'll be sick. They're afraid to get sick because...

they can't afford to be sick that's right and the stress of it is going to kill them that's right but do you think like he made the executive order do you think we'll and i know it's like so hard to be like you do you know you know but it's like do you really think we'll see this

I mean, it's like, God, give us, give the people something. I do. I do. And we got a great secretary of health and human services, Bobby Kennedy. Have you done, has Bobby been on the show before? Yeah. Okay. He's a good dude. He's a good friend of mine. We had Bobby when everybody thought he was insane, dude. Hell yeah, dude. He had to give him a ride home. His vehicle had been repossessed, dude. Yeah.

Oh, man. I'm joking. Congratulations, Bobby. Yeah, we should have known that for the Senate confirmation hearings. But yeah, I mean, Bobby's a good dude, and he really cares about this stuff. And this is what you need. You need the will, you need the good idea, but you also need the implementation. I think the president's got the good idea. He's got the executive order.

Bobby's got the implementation. So like, look, am I going to tell you sitting here that all of our healthcare problems are going to be fixed in 12 months? No. But do I think that this is going to make prescription drugs way more affordable over the longterm? Absolutely.

Okay. Yeah, and I know a lot of people might be critical of this interview and stuff. It's like, I'm doing my best, right? I'm trying my best, and maybe I'm just too hard on myself sometimes. Critical interview because I'm a politician, and I'm like...

It's partisan. Yeah, I think people expect, I don't know. But you would have a Democrat on. Huh? You would have a Democrat on. We got Tim Walsh coming on. Oh, nice. Okay. That'll be interesting. But no, I never met him. You know what I'm saying? We got him coming on. So it's like.

Yeah, I'm definitely trying to learn more about it. Honestly, he's a nice guy. But I think that's- Yeah, I'm not a, you know, I don't know the history of- of everything right so it's like i feel like we're just trying to do our best and i'm trying to do my best with somebody who i consider a friend and um yeah and to learn in as we go anyway anything else particular that you wanted to say that you needed to get out to people

I don't think so, man. I think we've covered a lot. Hopefully I didn't get myself in too much trouble here. What are you talking about, dude? I think you're good. I'm trying to think of anything else, dude. You think Trey Hendrickson will get signed?

million dollar question, or I guess the $50 million question. Are y'all going to subsidize that? Is that part of the big... That's actually unknown. That's a big part of the big, beautiful bill. It's $30 million to the Bengals to help with salary cap space. I mean, look, so Hendrickson is worth it, dude. He's a generational talent. It's very hard to get a guy.

like that it's kind of crazy how like i'm a big football fan but edge rushers have become it's almost like where left tackles were 10 or 15 years ago where everybody just realized there's this really underpaid position yeah that you got to have. And so, yeah, I think we're gonna have to pay Hendrickson. I hope so. If he's, here's what I'll say to Trey, if you're watching this show, if you're a Republican.

I will show up to a Bengals game and take a photo with you if you sign on with the Bengals. And if you're a Democrat, I'll stay the hell away. Just sign with the Bengals because we got a chance, man. I keep, I say this every year, but with Burrow, with Jamar Chase. If we get our defense and our offensive line, we could have a true championship run.

It's exciting. Well, I just appreciate you coming and spending time with me, man. Thank you very much to Bob, Richie, Kid Rock for having us here today. And dude, congratulations, man. I know you've had a very interesting life and just really cool. It's inspiring. It's good to see you. Thanks for having me, dude. You too, brother. I'll share this peace of mind.