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Again, go to athletic Greens Dotcom Rogan and claim this special offer today. All right, friends, my guest today is running for Congress in the great city of Houston, Texas. He is a great friend of Dan Crenshaw, which makes him a friend of mine.

Please welcome the great and powerful Wesley Hunt government podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience train my day job and podcast My Life All Day. Mr Hunt, welcome aboard. Happy to be here. Thanks.

Thanks for being here. We appreciate it. Friend of Dan Crenshaw's is a friend of mine. All of them. So Congress running for Congress.

Yeah, this is what I want my congressman to look like.

Jacked veterans. That's when the world be a better place. I agree. I think so.

I mean, it really would be. Yeah. So tell me what this has been like running for Congress.

This is the first office I've run. This is the first time. Thank God. What what started this? I know you're friends with Dan, who's also a congressman. What started this this journey.

Yes. Great question. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure. This is awesome. I really appreciate you. And what started this was really just my family. And how can we continue service it just in a different capacity? I come from a military family, so my dad did twenty three years in the army, retired lieutenant colonel. My sister went to West Point in my family first. So she's ten years older than me to twenty three years active duty.

She was a military intelligence officer deployed to Iraq twice. I did a few tours abroad as well. I went to West Point. My family's second year were ten years apart. My sister and I then graduate at West Point class of 2004, flew Apaches in Iraq for eighty four. It was actually active duty. Eight years deployed to Iraq. They fifty five combat tours and missions in Baghdad and then did two tours of duty in Saudi Arabia as a diplomatic liaison officer.

My brother, who's ten months and eight days my junior, were Irish twins. He also went to West Point and he did five years in the Navy. I went to Harvard Business School for his graduate degree and now lives in Houston with his family. There's about sixty years worth of military service just in my immediate family. Wow, respect. Thank you, sir. That's a lot. Thank you.

That's a serious, serious military family.

It is. My mom's the best of us. So she stood at home for two months. In 2006, while I was flying combat air missions in Baghdad. My sister was doing Intel in the Green Zone and my brother was in the Arabian Gulf on a destroyer for two months at the same time.

So even though she didn't serve in the military, police say she served those who served by lending her family. So when people ask me why am I running for Congress, I always lead with that, because that's the kind of service and sacrifice it takes for us to live in this free country.

So this is just a mindset that you you were raised with. Absolutely. And what made you what made you make the leap?

So there's a lot of things going on in the country that we're seeing right now. Really? I thought everything was fine.

Three things we got going on in the country right now, and my dad always taught us leadership is not about when it's convenient for you.

It's about when your country needs you and our country needs us. I think in this in this what seems to be a dark time, we've had some dark times in the past. I'm sure we'll get into that. But it's always my opinion that patriots always step up when our country needs us the most. And that's kind of we were taught to do to give back to the country that gave us all that we have. Now, to all the things that are going on in the country right now, what what stands out to you as something that you feel like you can contribute and possibly help?

Correct. Or at least get on the right track. Yeah.

So there's a lot of talk of a lot of, you know, racial injustices of the past. And this is something that I think I'm uniquely positioned to talk about.

My great great grandfather was a slave named Silas Crawford, born and rows down plantation just north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Three of his great great grandchildren, Alton at West Point, I earn three master's degrees from Cornell University. Brother went to Harvard. Sister has her advanced degree in applied mathematics. We've had the honor of serving our country. We've had the honor to live in a free country. We are standing on the backs and on the shoulders of absolute giants.

And while we have a ways to go by God, there's some serious progress. And I like the idea of focusing on the future and not the past, and I think as a black man in this country, I get some of the hardships, trust me on that. But how can we begin to heal by focusing on the good that we have done in building on that instead of standing by idling and watch the country burn?

Well, it seems like both things have to be addressed. It seems like you have to concentrate on the good things and have to concentrate on the people like yourself that have made incredible progress in your life. Yeah, but I think we also have to concentrate on injustice. Absolutely. And racial bias and racial injustice and all the problems that we're seeing.

You know, I was I was having a conversation with a friend of mine. We were talking about police and how important the police are, but also how important it is to if you see something like like the George Ford situation, you see that video and then that one guy's horrible actions changes everyone's perception of the police.

Yeah. But meanwhile, there's millions of interactions the police have with citizens that never go that way, that are positive. There's millions of great cops. I don't how many millions of cops? I don't even know how many cops or how many cops are there in the country. That's a good question. That is a good question. How many police officers are there in the country? Let's find out. But either way, most of them, I feel first of all, it's an insanely difficult job.

Yes, it is.

And when you don't do the good altercations, they don't go viral. Of course, you know, so we have this distorted perception of what happens when cops meet people. Here it goes.

In 2019, there's 697, 195 thousand full time law enforcement officers.

Six hundred ninety seven thousand. Wow. OK, so it's not millions, but I would say that that you're right, there are actually millions of interactions with our citizens every year.

Yes, millions. And most of them don't go viral because they're fairly normal. License, registration. Here you go. You were speeding. I'm sorry. Here's a citation or here's a warning or whatever the fuck the situation is.

Right.

Those problems, like the George Floyd thing, the they have to be addressed. We can't have those anymore, especially when they can go viral, because it's not just this one moment. The problem is this one moment can change everyone's perceptions of cops. Right. And then you have all this crazy talk like we need to defund the police, right?

Yeah. You lifted your hands.

Like, please stop that, because that's that's that's ridiculous. And the people who end up suffering the most when you defund the police are actually minority communities with people that look like me and them. And if they actually talk to a lot of minority communities, they don't want to defund the police. They just want the police to do better.

Right, exactly. Yeah. And that's where the problem lies, because, you know, I was talking to JoCo Chuckle Willink on the podcast about that. And Jocke was like this. Defund the police talk is the wrong answer.

The right answer is more funding and more training. Yeah. He said, I think they should be doing 20 percent of their time training.

Will he do the training he would use? JoCo would do it would be awesome. Yeah. I mean, he he's a that's a leader, you know. I mean, he's a guy he's a bona fide leader.

100 percent. Yeah. Undeniable.

So his his perception is that what we're dealing with is people that are untrained, under motivated, underappreciated, and some of them just bad people. That's right. Like the guy in the George Floyd case, whatever the fuck is. Derek is a bad actor.

Yeah, exactly. Bad human being. That probably had been bad for a long time. Had several instances on his record that were similar.

A guy been probably, you know, whether he's fucked up because of the job or before the job or a combination of both things, we got to figure out where do we get rid of how he has got to go?

That should be like this is this is the poster boy for what's wrong with the system, right? It's not the system. You don't throw the whole fucking system. That's right.

I mean, anybody who's ever been in a situation where you need the cops and they show up is a great sign of relief and you feel protected. That's right. By law enforcement. And if that's ever happened to you and I hope it never does, but if it is ever happened, anybody listening, then you'll appreciate the police.

And this is personal for me, too, Joe, because when I got out of West Point 2004, it was during the Abu Ghraib scandal. I don't know if you recall. I recall well, you know, we had a few idiots that treated some prisoners very poorly and posted the pictures up in the world, saw that. And I entered the military at a time where that was the perception of military officers and soldiers. And that's not true, right?

Exactly. I would never most of us would never behave that way. And we condemn those actions. We condemn that behavior. Yeah.

After the George Floyd event actually went down to the Houston Police Union to go talk to some of the police officers, 100 percent of them, all of them were disgusted. Yeah. With how George Floyd was treated. So I don't think that's it. That's not even an issue we just had. How do we then work with law enforcement to empower them to get rid of the people that we know are idiots?

Yes. Yes. Yeah, that should be the conversation.

But the problem is that conversation doesn't work on social media. You know, it's too nuanced. There's too many layers to it. There's too much talking has to be done. When you write defund the police is nice and clean. Yes.

You know those three words, easy and everybody goes, yes, headline. And if you go along with it, you're on the right side, like, yeah, you're a good person, you know? And you're like, no, we need cops. Oh, you fucking piece of shit.

That's ridiculous. Yeah. You see what Charles Barkley said after a few weeks back? Yeah, he followed that. And his logic is actually quite sound, especially even in Houston, Texas, where a lot of the affluent areas see they have their own police that are paid for by their own taxes that they pay in their own community. So if you talk about defying the police again, you're not taking away the safety of those communities. You're taking away the safety of black and brown people.

Yes. And he said that and he got crucified for it. Yeah. And that's that's the problem we have right now, Joe. Like, we could have both conversations.

Well, I think the problem is like he said something and then there's a lot of people that want to respond to that. Yeah, right. And they don't get a chance to so they just attack them on social media. And it's like the louder their voices are. Moakes and especially if you're someone of prominence, if you have a platform, you can attack him and you get a lot of credit for it.

And then people like you and this is this is one of the problems with social media that people say things not just because it's their opinion, they say things because they want to get a reaction. They say things were likes.

They say things for free tweets and they hide behind it.

Yeah, yeah. And it's easy to do it. So it's it's an easy time to snipe at people. It is. And, you know. I don't know. First of all, that Brianna Taylor situation, tragic, horrific, a complicated, complicated here's the here's the big problem, the war on drugs.

That's the big problem. The big problem is you're having these no knock raids for I mean, what was he supposed to be selling marijuana, right? I think he was selling marijuana. That was the idea that he was I don't even know if he was, but this was. So you're breaking down a door somewhat. Is that what it was about? I believe so. Which is fucking insane. Yeah. Right. Insane. Yeah, that's insane.

Period. That down doors for that insane. This is how it all I mean when you have no knock raids. Yeah. And you know, if you're a person who's a homeowner and you believe in the Second Amendment and you have a firearm and you hear someone kicking down your door, you have a right to defend yourself. Right.

So this guy shooting at the cops is a rational response to something. He has no idea what's going on. You know, assumedly and if someone says, open up, it's the cops and kick down the door in terms of not be a cop, turns out to be a rival drug dealer or just a thief.

Right.

Is that what the investigation revealed? Was it really they really didn't knock at all? Because I believe I've seen both. I've heard that they that there was a knock that certain neighbors did hear. And then I've heard that it wasn't, though not I don't know what they did or didn't.

But here's the problem. If you're a person that is alone in your home at night and someone says they're police, how the fuck do you know it's really the police that's true to how do you know that's true, too?

If I was going to kill somebody and I want to open the door and say I'm the police. Yeah, open up. It's the police mean it's 100 percent been done before logically.

And if you're at home and you don't know and if you also if you're a black guy and you're paying attention to the news and you hear is the police, that doesn't put you at ease.

Right. Right, right. It's it's a horrible story. It is. It is. And I think these are these are the kind of anecdotal stories that we need to build and grow on. Yes. Let's not let's not burn the country down because of them.

Let's figure out how to write this and then change our doctrine and then train our forces better. Yeah. So that they can better serve our communities and we can better serve them. Yeah. What's really important to me is I heard a story when I went to go visit the police union and there was a spouse that was there and she told me, you know, Wesley, the best thing that I could hear every day is the sound of Velcro. I said, What do you mean?

He said, at the end of the day, when I when I hear Velcro at night, it means that my spouse made it home alive. So he's taken off.

She's taken off his vest and then they have two thousand six hundred.

And how many thousand people families have to deal with this every single solitary day? Yeah. And most of them do a really good job. Yeah.

So so so the George Floyd instance, the Brianna Taylor instances, I want to use those to build and grow, but I want to really hug our law enforcement officers and tell them, hey, you're doing a good job, let's build and grow together. Yeah. When I made mistakes, I was a kid, you know. You know, my dad didn't just kick me out the house. He taught me right from wrong so that I wouldn't make the same mistakes next time so we could all get better together.

Well, if you talk to anyone who has this defund the police narrative, I mean, and there have been conversations with these people. There's no real answer. There's no real answer. What do you do about violent crime? And if you look at what happened in New York City, murders have gone up some insane number. I don't know what I watched a breakdown of. The numbers of robberies have gone up. Murders have gone up. It's fucking insane.

And communities are calling for the police to be reinstated in these areas. Right. And this is. This is what happens when you have this online activist perspective and you apply it to the real world. You have this defund the police and everybody's like, yea, yes, do it. And then you go and do it. Yes. And then what happens? Violence. Right.

You have to have the fucking police. Right. You have Trump, Trump tweets, law and order in all caps. It's one of the rare times I go yeah yeah, yeah.

He went on a great tweet raid the other night after they juiced him up with steroids. Let him out of the house was fuck, I get all of them maybe laugh.

It's what I love. The video is like, maybe I'm immune.

I don't know, maybe, maybe shit. But I laugh. I laugh.

Like this is the best I've felt in twenty years.

He's a savage, 74 fat and eats nothing but McDonald's fries and he beat it kicks covid in a couple of days. And people like Jabat, he's getting the right treatment. But bubble, bubble, bubble. But the treatments available. Can everybody get this treatment?

Is this treatment in a fucking gold mine in India somewhere? And you have to, you know, send the guy on Allama down into a cave to get it? No, it seems like it's pretty common.

It's not. And that's somebody and I you know, we were talking about earlier, you had it like family, but you had it like that. It's right in and out. It's right there. Asymptomatic, never had any issues. But my my my wife and daughter, my wife had some symptoms as we talked about my daughter, who's twenty twenty months old. No symptoms. Yeah.

Little kids generally seem to have zero problem with it. There's obviously exceptions, but young folks like yourself seem to be able to just get through Briese and healthy people. Healthy people. Yeah. This is the big thing obviously. Your fitness. Fitness. Yeah.

Well, you have a strong body, strong immune system, healthy. I'm sure you eat well, so I do. Yeah. I mean, that is what's what's wrong with this country. We have a lot of people that are metabolically unhealthy and then when something happens and body can't respond to it. Exactly.

Exactly. Especially something new and weird like this. covid-19.

That's right. Meanwhile, Trump has all those things wrong with them and the medication still fix it.

That's what's crazy. Doesn't work out. He thinks his body's a battery and working out would like drain some of the battery. I heard him explain that. It was like I thought that what in the fuck are you talking? Not how that works. That's literally not how it works opposite of how it works. But meanwhile, he's OK. And obviously you've got to give credit to Walter Reed.

You got to give credit to the hospital and all the doctors and all the amazing researchers that have put in the work to create those those treatments. But here's a thought. He has been one of the people that has been pushing for those experimental treatments. And there's been a lot of resistance to that. Yes. And I I think he's probably now one of the best arguments for those experimental treatments at this point.

Seventy four. Yes. I got an email from a guy today, like still five percent a good person. And I respect still five percent likely to die. Michael, what are you talking about? Yeah, fucking guy's doing speeches. He looks great. By the way, when you're seventy four, you've got a thirty percent likelihood of dying anyway, period. Like what is the average age people die. I think it's like seventy six. The median the me.

I saw this the other night, the median age of 78.

Yeah. OK, so he's already fifty percent likely to die. So that means. So what's the, what's, what's the median age of, of our life expectancy in the US. It's not high. Seventy eight.

That's which would be his second term. Right. When it ends.

When it ends it would be Joe Biden's first words don't start.

Well, what are you doing. What are you about the blood. I was looking at something talking. I've seen this being passed around online. Some people are comparing his timeline of covid diagnosis or covid yet to Herman Cain's because he passed away after going to a rally. I have it on screen. OK, there was a time period when he said he was feeling good and the doctors all said he was great. And then he died like a week later.

A week later. Hmm. So I just seen this getting passed around a lot.

Just like for conversation's interesting, test positive seven to says he's improving seven, eight. So that's eight days later.

And then in twenty eight days. Yeah. So. Thirteen days later, Doctor says he seems happy. And then. Twelve three days before he died, he says he's really getting better, I think. Yeah, 12 days after that. How old was Herman Cain? Uh, good question.

The thing about anyone, it's what else do you have going on?

Do you have diabetes or you have COPD?

There's a lot of different factors in even obesity. Yeah, 75, 75.

So he's in the neighborhood right there with Trump because he easily I mean, who knows what kind of treatment he got, though?

Maybe Herman Cain didn't get the same treatment that Trump got. I wonder what what remedies they gave him. Either way, not good for 70 year old people to get it. It is not also not good for seven year old people to get the flu. It's not not good for them to get anything.

It's not I think the way that we responded to this is is a bit overkill, because I think there is a way for us to make sure that we keep the people who are at risk to get this virus and could potentially die from it. Like my parents who are alive and well in 71, 72 years old, they should be able to stay home.

Yes, stay home, wear a mask, keep away from people you know. And the beautiful thing about today is we do have well, at least here we have this rapid response test at the studio. I hope they have this rapid response or not rapid response, but rapid result test everywhere.

I mean, if we can get to a point where we can I believe they're working on I read some saliva test where you lick a swab and you could find out within minutes. The minutes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if we can get to that point where you have a 100 percent accurate test, we can keep people away from sick people.

And that is that's the remedy to this whole thing, is the more testing we can do, the better. Yes. The more knowledge we have, the better. The more we can track it, the better. There's nothing wrong with that.

I think we thought it was going to be way worse than it is. I think that's what I thought. I mean, my look, obviously, I'm a moron and I'm not a doctor. But when March was rolling around and everything was shutting down, I was very nervous. I was very nervous. I was nervous for my family. I was nervous my mother and my father. And I was nervous for older friends that I have. And I was nervous for my obese friends.

I was like, fuck, this is not good. Yeah. You know, and I was worried we're going to lose people looking this up.

I forgot he also he was a cancer survivor.

Twenty six here. This is Herman Cain, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Percent chance of surviving stage four colon cancer. Oh, Jesus.

So, oh, Jesus. Did maybe have a preexisting. Oh, for sure.

The CDC came out and they said, you know, six percent of those who did pass from covid were were covid only deaths. Right. Which is some kind of something to point out to. We're talking about, you know, our health and being healthy people in the obesity issue that we even have in America. And there's a piece of also staying physically fit, staying mentally fit as well. They coincide with each other. Yes. Being this virus, I think a lot of it, as well as your overall mentality, how do you feel about yourself, mind over matter in certain ways is something that I'm I'm a fan of.

Because when you go into a situation, I've read some studies, you've even heard about cancer. People that have an optimistic outlook actually have a higher chance of beating cancer. That's interesting.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Tentatively, right, because I think some diseases just fuck you up, you got it sometimes, sometimes there's nothing you can do about it.

But there's a reason why the placebo effect works and is because states of mind do have a profound effect on the human body and in a way that we don't totally understand.

You know, that's why I think meditation and breath work is very important and people should do that all the time because it just helps alleviate anxiety and I think alleviate anxiety and alleviate a certain amount of stress is probably good for you.

And then also having as little burden in your life in terms of like negative relationships, bad friends. You can't trust people that are weighing you down, all that kind of shit, all that stuff compounds and has an effect on your immune system, has an effect on your psyche, has affected your self-esteem, how you feel about yourself, how you feel about the world. You have to work on all those things. But we don't have any of that.

All you hear about is wear a mask, stay home. That's right. We've got to shut down restaurants. That's right. Shut down gyms are the craziest one because that's the place where everybody should go.

Yes. To improve your body, to be able to fight and ward off these kinds of viruses and diseases. That's the best part about it. Yeah.

What they should do is put these big we got that air filter down there and the supposed to filter out all the bad.

Whatever we got, it's too loud. The problem is too loud. Why is it on. It's on very low. It's on very low.

But when we crank it up it's like full blast. It sounds like there's a fucking airplane in the room.

So but you can have those at the gym, you can have those all over the place at the gym. They're not that expensive. Yeah.

And to keep people outside of the gym, you are now compounding all those other things. That's right.

You're you're giving people you're taking away this avenue that they have to alleviate stress, which for me is gigantic.

I'm a different human. I'm I'm two different people. Yes. I'm the guy who doesn't work out and the guy works out and you want to hang out with the guy, work all the time. I'm I'm super friendly. I hug everybody. The guy who doesn't work out is cranky. He's quick to judge things, quick to say, fuck that guy. That's right.

Like all that, all those, you know, I mean, like all those negative aspects. It's I don't like that.

I don't want to be that way, you know, I don't think anybody does. And I think the best way to alleviate that is to clear the body of stress.

And when you tell people they can't go to the gym, like, come on, man, I get New Jersey. They were shutting down people working out in the parking lot. Right.

Which is just bananas, you know, in the best thing for me. And even running running for office has been very busy with an 11 day old daughter, 20 month old daughter, and just running for Congress in general. And that is you have to carve out time to work out. And I think it's important to me that I do something extremely difficult that might suck a little bit every single day. It just keeps the mental edge. It keeps the mental acuity at a an instructor in flight school, he he would always say, and he was my Apache instructor, he would always say, you got to kill something every day, even if it's an art, no matter how small, just to keep the edge.

Right. It's a fucking psycho Jesus. But the guy you want but the guy you want to break glass in case of war, dude. That's right.

You got to kill some every day, even if no matter how small. Holy shit. Just just to keep the edge. Jesus. And I'm like and I feel the same way about working out. You got you got to keep the edge. You got to challenge your mind. You got your body every day when you force yourself to do it. Yeah. One hundred percent at a time. Don't you feel better after you've worked out a hundred percent.

One hundred percent. Now I'm going into it. You're like this is not the day that I really want to do this.

Yeah, well, the beautiful thing about like this is sobre October for me. And one of the things that I pledge is that during sober October I'm going to work out. I'm doing something every single day.

So when I know I have to, but when I know I have to and then I do it, I get it done, but I always work out. But I take days off.

But now I'm wondering like, do I take too many days off? Like maybe I'm being a bit like maybe maybe when I take two days off a week, I really only need one and another one is just a bitch day. Right? Not sure. I'm not sure because it's kind of amazing when you have a set schedule, when you have to do something that you get it done and you realize you can get it done when you require more of your body.

That's right. And then and then your body responds to stress and stimulus much better other aspects that you don't even think about, even if it's just you got to do 100 pushups and 100 bodyweight squats, that'll take ten minutes.

That's not that much time to accomplish something. But you can do it. You can do that in ten minutes. Yes. I mean, it can be done. You do push ups and sets of twenty, and in between you do sets of twenty body weight squats and just bang them out left and right, left, right. You'll be tired as fuck. Yep. That's my goal. Yeah. Yeah. And so like I only have ten minutes.

Good. Go to work. Do. And you can do that, and then you also feel like then you've also accomplished something. Yes. And also like the idea of what I just did something. Or if you do this, I did something that actually how many people would have actually just chosen to do this for ten minutes. Right. That makes me different. Yeah. That gives you an edge. It gives you the edge. It gives you an edge and it makes you feel better about yourself.

Like you did what you needed to do. That's right. Yeah. I think that that's a great message that we can get out there to the world.

And I've been promoting that message for a long time, is that when you challenge your mind and you force your body to do things, you you increase your ability to do difficult things and increases your overall ability to do difficult things.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. The days the days are the roughest for me on the campaign trail or the days I didn't work out. And my campaign manager knows it, too. He could tell. Now, what is the campaign trail been like?

What is in general? What do you have to earn? Yeah, so with covid, things have obviously changed the way that we do things dramatically.

By the way, if everyone is noticing that both me and Wesley are sweating, fuckin AC in this room is shit out on us and it's now doesn't even say. Yeah, thermostat's broken. It was seven seventy eight degrees when we walked in here, but all this equipment and then all this intense talking seems a thing, but we've worked well.

We work out so we can handle it. Yes, it's a slow sweat. We can do it. Yes.

But I mean, if people like what's going on, these guys are just sitting there. Why are they spending? It's all about working out. They're not doing anything. They're probably going to open the door and get some air flow. Don't worry about it.

We're good. So tell me about the campaign trail. Like, what does it entail and how long have you been doing it? When I met you in Houston was what? July's right? That's right. With that in Cranshaw at the Houston Improv. Great spot with Willie. Directed to a great job, by the way. Thank you. Thank you very much.

When did it start and what what is it entail? Like what do you have to do?

So I announced I announced about a year and a half ago. And what you have to do is basically work every day tirelessly to try to reach as many voters in the district as possible and as efficiently as you can and as avenues in which you can do that. So there's broadcast television, there's mail, there's digital, there's knocking on doors, there's person-to-person stuff. What's really lacking because of covid is the latter, the person to person stuff. So you're not really allowed to have big gatherings like you used to be able to do for, you know, fundraisers and meet and greets and things like that.

So you have to get creative. This is now evolved into a lot of more Zoome calls. It's evolved to what we're doing in Houston. Some frontyard meet and greets that are socially distanced. And we make sure that we keep everybody safe and everyone's wearing a mask. But we are still out in the community actually talking to people because there's absolutely nothing like meeting someone in person. Yeah, or even meeting even meeting you in person at the airport is just way different.

I've been following you for years, but like, it's just a different touch when you actually see the person. And so that's what the challenge has been. So what we are doing is just lining up as many front yard backyard meet and greets throughout the district as possible. And I think we've done a pretty good job at getting out in the community.

So when you say backyard or front yard meet and greets like how do those come about? Like what do you do?

Well, we have people that reach out to us and they'll say, hey, look, you know, we have we have we have a community here. People want to meet you. We can get 10, 15, 20 people out here that usually set up some chairs or just stand around.

I'll come over, meet everybody the best of my ability, give them kind of my talk, answer questions that they would have with me on how they want to see government run for the future. How can I continue to be their humble servant? What can we do to save our country? What can we do to kind of quell a lot of the division that we're seeing right now? And then I go off to the next one. It's very efficient.

It's very good. And I think a lot of people have been very receptive to it to now.

What other issues do you think are the concerns that people have that maybe you you have a unique perspective on that? You can help. But what what are the big issues do you see in the country that you think that need to be addressed in a way that you are not seeing being addressed currently?

Some Houston boy born, born and raised first football game I went to was for the Houston Oilers back in the back. And I love you blue days and I don't know what to love.

You blew the whistle.

Get out of the Houston oil light, Luke. Oh, my goodness. Sports commentator, professional. I do not know. I know nothing about sports. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. It's like I don't know shit. Jamie knows. Tell me, what is it? I saw one play on his birthday. Did you. Did you really hear that surrounds.

I don't remember who won the game. I was only like eight. Oh yeah. It's also I've been in all his game two. That's awesome.

There you go. Yeah. So they play in the Astrodome. Never seen a football game live.

You're making that up? No, you're dead serious. No, I've only watched the Super Bowl like twice ever. That's it. So you watched it. You didn't go to the Super Bowl?

No, no. Never been to a football game live ever. Do you plan on doing it? No, no. Is there a reason for this? I mean, it's a great sport and everything, but I got shit to do.

I'm the wrong guy.

I know. I get it. People like, what the fuck is wrong? I've already yelled at me. What do you mean? He yelled at me. I don't know anything about sports. He's like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Hey, man, I mean, you want to ask me some shit about fighting? I know a lot of you know a lot about that Muay Thai, a lot of shit about jujitsu and a lot of shit about the UFC.

Yeah, but that's it. That's it. Sorry, I'm a one trick pony too. Funny. Well oilor I basically call the Houston Oilers, OK.

And you know this is an oil and gas town and I am not a climate denier like a lot of millennials.

Quite frankly, I do believe that human beings can influence the climate.

But Houston is known as the energy capital of the world and encompassed in the energy capital of the world is the energy district of the world, which is Congressional District seven, where I am running in in Houston. And the narrative that I am seeing about fossil fuels doesn't necessarily jive well with me at all.

Well, let's talk about that. Yeah, I have to talk to you about that. Yeah. California recently, the state that I escaped.

I want to I want to ask you about that after this actually escaped. I feel so happy. Welcome. Welcome to Texas, too, by the way. I appreciate it. Yeah.

When I when I saw you was right around the time that I'd made the decision. Yeah.

Tom Papà, my buddy who was just here yesterday, sent me a picture of Los Angeles. And obviously this is because of the fires. But also, what the fuck is that?

Come on, look at that. Look at that is massive traffic and believe the sky is weird. Shade of gray and brown. And he said, you've poisoned my L.A. mind with that picture. And I said, you're in the wrong place, my brother. Now, you know, he's in the wrong place.

He knows he knows where to go is in Texas. I've always loved Texas. I filmed a film, one of my specials here. I did one of my CDs here back in 1989, the first CD I ever did. I filmed at the Houston last stop in 1999. The one on River Oaks. I know the one. Yeah, it's not there anymore. It was one of the best spots in the country. I'm a I love Texas. I've always loved Texas.

And it was one of the places where when I thought about getting out of L.A., I was like, there's only a couple of plays I'm interested in. I'm interested in Montana because the beauty and this the wildness. And I want to live in a place with Grizzly Bears and Colorado. I love that weed. Legal legal mushrooms now, too. And then Texas.

I just I just love I love people from Texas. I love the attitude. People are super friendly, like they have a distorted perception of what Texas is. I think Texas and a lot of ways is what other people think of when they think of America.

Yeah, think wild motherfuckers with guns, tigers in their backyard. Right.

Big trucks and big trucks, big trucks and barbecue right now. I mean, that is Texas and a lot of ways.

But so does get back to what we were saying, though. Yeah. You were talking about oil when I was saying that I escaped Los Angeles.

One of the things that's going on is Gavin Newsom has passed this new law saying that they will sell no cars that run on gasoline that are new after 2035.

And a lot of people are freaking out. And one of the things they're freaking out about is do you know how much lithium you're going to have to pull out of the fucking ground to make the batteries for all these electric cars? And that this is not good for the environment, right? Yeah, the lithium mines like mining. There's a great Meat Eater podcast.

I want to encourage everybody to listen to my friend Steve Vanilla's podcast. And it's going on right now. It's episode two. Forty one half Life of Never.

And it's all about the thing. It's called the Pebble Mine. The Pebble Beach mine is the mine that's going on. There's a project in Alaska that they're going to do.

I think it's called the Pebble Mine. It's either the Pebble Mine, but Pebble Beach is like a golf course, right?

Yes, it is. I think it's called the Pebble Mine.

Is that what it is?

But it's a it's a crazy copper and gold mine that they're proposing, like one of the biggest mines in the world in Alaska. And it's near Bristol Bay, which is like which one is it?

Pebble Mine, Pebble Months.

It's near Bristol Bay, which is the number one salmon fishing resource in salmon resource on planet Earth. And they're saying it will destroy everything.

And these people want to do that to to pull minerals and and to pull gold and copper out of the ground. It's going to devastate the environment. Sulphur as well, going to have to get through a shitload of sulfur and then move and destroy.

But that the podcast is eye opening. It's really fascinating.

But you got to mine to get lithium. This is not good for the environment. This is I mean, and I'm a person with an electric car. I have a Tesla, I love it, got it, got it. But it's not this is not like one is awesome and perfect and the other one is terrible for everybody.

It's a combination of everything. And that needs to be the solution for the future. I'm also not a big fan of the government saying when an industry is supposed to end. Yes, I'm a big fan of the government in power in the private sector to innovate, to get to the next, you know, affordable, renewable source that's going to happen is my opinion.

Jeff Bezos doesn't get there first. The first trillionaire, in my opinion, who's already born, is going to be the person that comes up with an abundant renewable source for the future that everyone can't afford. Hmm.

Now, I. I get the green new deal and the tenets of it, what they're trying to do. But what's not addressed in that is global warming and the operative word being global. If we don't get India and China and Russia and Africa and South America to reduce their carbon footprint with us, you can literally destroy the oil and gas industry here in the U.S. at no gain to the globe. That doesn't make sense to me that it's such an important point that's so important.

Nobody's talking about the other countries, such as China and India are building four coal plants per month.

And it's not a case of if we build it, they will they will come. That's not how this works. In fact, our energy independence is also an issue of national security as well. We're energy independent. Why? Because of fracking that, quite frankly, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris actually want to do away with by 2035, as well as actually a national agenda. And so we are reducing our carbon footprint because of fracking, because natural gas burns cleaner.

But most importantly, Joe, 20 years ago, we would kill a bad guy in the Middle East.

And then we have to turn around and ask these same countries for resources in oil. That's a conflict of interest, if you could imagine, of course. So we don't have to do that anymore. So when we kill Qassem Soleimani outside of Baghdad Airport, who was a bad guy responsible for actually killing some West Point graduates actually in Iraq. We don't have to ask them for oil. So this is an issue where we have to marry economics, innovation, and, of course, make sure that we are good stewards of this earth, right.

But right now, there's roughly one billion with a B, roughly one billion light trucks and vehicles in the world today that are gas powered. And over the course of the next 20 years, the world is going to add another billion vehicles. And of that billion, 750 million of them are going to be gas powered. Again, it's not a California problem, it's a global issue that we have to take a look at from a defense standpoint. I flew Apache helicopters and we have a joke in the Army.

How do you know if if somebody flew Apaches? We will tell you, we always do, and what's funny about the Apache and about destroyers and about F 22 is and that's you can't fuel them.

On solar and wind. We literally aren't going anywhere for the next few generations. What I want to hear the conversations shift to is more of the idea of us working with these oil and gas companies to innovate for the future. And they want it to. It's a matter of time until we get there, but let's bring them along with the conversation and not demonize them and ask somebody this Houston born and bred, this is the conversation is near and dear to my heart because, again, it's the energy capital of the world.

And I am all for solar. I am all for wind. I am all for renewables. I get it. But it's a combination of all of the above. Not not in your conversation.

Now, let's what is the Green New Deal? Can you lay that out for us? Yes. What do they what are they looking to do to deserve the Green New Deal?

You know, one big thing that Joe Biden talks about and what Bernie Sanders was talking about, as well as being carbon neutral by 2035, which effectively is an end to the oil and gas industry, the United States, that that's one that's one tenth of it. Another one is fracking bans.

And again, as I just articulated, this is the very technology that's actually reducing our carbon footprint. Also just more restrictions on oil and gas companies to be able to drill and find resources as well.

And it is a job killer in Houston, Texas, particularly as we recover from covid-19.

And we've been hit pretty hard because you notice the oil and gas industry has been hit pretty hard to start it off with just a obviously a shortage of of of demand because people just stopped driving and that really drove costs down tremendously.

And so we have to recover from this thing in the way to do it is not to employ more restrictions on an already hurting industry that, quite frankly, has got to be around, rather, you like it or not. Also, the byproducts of petrochemicals as well. This microphone, this mug, your phone, hydrocarbons. The shoes on your feet is all byproducts of the oil and gas industry, and so what people don't realize is that the chairs that they sit in, the silverware that they eat off of, where they eat, sleep, breathe and live, the mattress that they're sleeping on fossil fuels.

We are not going anywhere. I understand the benevolence of the Green New Deal is always good in theory. I got it. I think I think if we can magically snap our fingers in the world could be just carbon neutral. That that sounds great. That sounds great. But that's not how that's not how this works. We are always about progression. This country is always about innovation and progression. We've been doing this for generations, let's continue that progression by enabling, again, the private sector to innovate to the next level.

If you're paying attention to what the Green New Deal says, it basically just demonizes an entire industry.

And I think for a lack of understanding what the industry does for the world is there in the Green New Deal, is there a solution for what they deem the problems of the oil and gas industry? Do they have a replacement for those resources?

So their last point. Hydrocarbons are a storable energy that have a lot of power in them, and that's actually the reason why the world uses them. Bottom line is, is this you can't turn your lights on. The world can't turn their lights on.

The U.S. can't turn the lights on for the time being without oil and gas.

Whether you want the gas industry, if we were able to miraculously even attempt to turn this entire country into a renewable source, it's just not possible. I don't know exactly what the numbers are, but we would actually only be able to fuel less than last, I read eight percent of our world of the United States's energy demands if we were able to completely transform to renewable resources.

So that's just wind and solar, yet wind, solar and battery, lithium ion, you know, these kinds of these kinds of well, they also require something all charged. Yes.

What about nuclear? Because, yeah, one of the things that is really uncomfortable for people is that nuclear power is one of the cleanest sources of power that we know of. It's just we know about disasters. We know about Fukushima. We know about Three Mile Island. We know about all the Chernobyl Chernobyl.

We know about these disasters, which in many cases are indicative of old technology. Yes. Like Fukushima, they really know how to shut it down. Yes. Which is fucking bananas. I decided to build it anyway.

Mind boggling. Like, figure it out later.

But they there's there's ways of doing nuclear right where you have very little environmental damage. That's right. But that's a you just bring up nuclear power.

Never is like going to die. That's right. For freaks out. Yeah. Yeah.

And you think Chernobyl. What do you think about nuclear? So this is this is again, the importance of innovation.

You brought up an excellent point. You see, in the past technologies, we didn't have the ability to be able to really create something without understanding what the worst outcomes could possibly be. Do you think over the course of the last 50 years, we've actually advanced to know more and to be able to do better, to be more effective with how we do how we do this? Of course we have. Right. But it kind of goes back to the oil and gas industry as well.

You had the overt demonization of an energy source. People, just as we were talking about, they just shut it off. Right. It becomes a headline that said, I don't want anything else to do with it. Oh, no, we saw bad and that's it. It becomes headline news instead of us saying, wait a minute, if you're going to try to tell me that 2020 was the same as the 70s and the 60s and the 50s, from a technological standpoint, it's ridiculous.

I mean, look at your Tesla that you drive. No, I mean, that is a technological marvel, an advancement in itself. And now we're producing it on a mass scale. Thank you. Elon Musk. And again, even the production of the Tesla, that doesn't mean we do away with the oil and gas industry, we could have both. Let's continue to do both. So from a nuclear standpoint, I also think that that's got demonized as well because of some incidences.

And we need to realize that from a technological standpoint, we are certainly further along than we were before. Let's pursue this. Let's empower these companies to come up with a safe way of building these these plants and also making sure that everybody to stay safe in the future.

What I've actually heard discussed that's kind of fascinating is the technologies that could be on the horizon that can actually pull carbon and pull particles from the atmosphere. Yes. That they can develop essentially enormous air filters that can be used in high pollution areas and, you know, cities and urban centers. And they actually can pull pollution out of here and potentially use that carbon and they can actually be a resource.

That's exactly right. Right. So tell me people think about that pretty crazy. They kind of makes sense, right? Like, if you can put it out there, then it's there. Well, if you can push it out, can you extract it seems like you should be able to meet.

We extract nitrogen from the atmosphere. Right. I mean, that's how they make a lot of fertilizer. That's right. There's got to be a way to take that carbon out.

Of course there is. And again, people want to look at where we are right now. Maybe we aren't there now.

Right. But we can easily be there in the not so distant future. Sure. But 150 years ago, we were riding horses. Thank you. Yeah.

And think about what you just said that wasn't that long ago, by the way.

That's pretty recent and crazy for you.

I mean I mean, in World War One and World War One, they were still using livestock.

Yeah. Yeah. Bananas. Think about that. I know. Yeah. And I was flying Apaches.

It's it's hard for people to once they have it in their mind that they are doing a good thing like the proponents of the Green New Deal. They are doing a good thing. This is the way. And anyone who opposes that or anyone who even has debate about it is on the wrong side. You are on the side of the fossil fuel industry. You've been paid off. You're a shill, right? You don't care about the environment. You don't care about our children.

And then they'll propose it this way that, you know, this person does not care about the future of this country. We're going to burn. Look what's happening in California. This is Trump's fault. This is like we were discussing this in the podcast yesterday. It didn't matter who became president in 2016. The exact same conditions would be in place here as Battleship is an enormous thing. It's hard to turn around it. You think that somehow or another, if Hillary Clinton was president, that California wouldn't be on fire right now?

The exact same thing would be happening. It would be 100 percent. There's no other way around it.

And what I always say to people that have had this conversation with and again, I've I've two kids at the house, and it is my opinion at this point with two baby girls, that it is incumbent upon us to make sure that we hand them a better world than we inherited. Yes, we were like, again, you know, the birth of a child is a is a spiritual thing.

We're saying this before alterable talking about your youngest and how crazy it is.

It's just it's crazy. It's like life changing.

My youngest is ten. But still, I think back and, you know, there's times when I'm alone, when I just go, I can't even believe I have children. I can't I can't believe that it's a thing that a person who comes out of your own DNA is now walking and talking and hanging out with you.

Yes. Yes.

And destroying our living room. We live and breathe. Yeah. For sure. So, of course, I care about and of course I care about that. Yeah. And of course I care about the environment. I just have I just want to take a pragmatic approach to making sure that. Yeah, well we're so polarized today.

If you don't agree with me you must be evil. And this is, this is our or you must be naive or you must be foolish. This is these are the perspectives that are the narrative that you see on social media today, which is where so many people are forming their opinions and arguing them.

And it's insanity. Yeah. It's such a crazy time where people want people.

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine today. They were talking about this new social media platform where this person was arguing, don't hear people's opinions. What we need to do is the platform them. Right? Like what? This just that's insane. So everybody has to agree with you and you don't. And I don't even know if you're right. You don't even know if you're right where you find you even know you're right. Right. You've got to talk to other people.

Right.

There's a lot of times I've talked to people and I went, huh, OK, yeah, I'm wrong. OK, yeah. Like, that's important. The whole point. Yeah. You have to have these conversations. Yeah.

What the proponents of the Green New Deal, what are they proposing in terms of replacing fossil fuels and the these things that we're relying on currently to power everything and have the country running exactly how it's running now.

And therein lies the problem. They're not. They're not. So what are they saying, though, when they're when they're questioning? It's like, what are we going to do in twenty, thirty five? In terms of like, how are we going to keep the lights on? I have no idea, really. And this is and this is literally this is literally part of my problem. And that is if you aren't going to tell me a substantives viable solution by itself.

So if you want to say that's it, snap my fingers like Thanos, that's it. We're going to be CarbonNeutral here and OK. OK, so what's the path to do? So what resources are we going to use to get there? How are we going to replace these resources? And again, I'm not a climate denier. I keep saying this over and over again. But but nothing's being proposed that's rational and reasonable. That's actually addressing global warming.

Hmm. It completely leaves out the other countries, it completely leaves out the globe, and that's problematic to me. Yes, yeah. What? So they're not even discussing it at all? No, they're just conveniently just out.

It sounds. Is it sounds good. Yeah, it it does sound good. Sounds amazing. Don't get me wrong, it sounds great, but it's not the name of it.

Green Light Green thinks it's a beautiful name, but he doesn't believe in the green new deal, though, right?

He was. He said first. He said so first he said he did. And then he backed or walked that back ever so slightly and said, well, no, no, no, not the green new deal is entirely. Tenets of the Great New Deal. Did he describe which tenets translation to me? Is this the Green New Deal?

Are you troubled by the fact that the Democrats have this gentleman running for president? That seems. At the very least, like his better days behind him, it got to the point where where at first when I watched the corn pop video, we've seen that one.

Yes, the corn popcorn. What the fuck was that video? It was the most bizarre thing. I've my most bizarre things I've ever seen.

How about all the kids behind? I'm talking like they don't even pay attention.

This guy was it was the weirdest thing. It was like really literally put it together and I sent it to my brother Brendan because my best friend, we talk like four times a day and a that he just like, is this even real life got hairy legs like this, the blonde.

And it's it was really weird.

That was that was back in December and I thought it was funny. And then now I don't think it's very funny anymore, actually. And this is this is this is very dangerous, I think, for the country. And we need to be very careful with who we put forward. There is a clear decline in Mr. Biden. I think we can all agree with that. I think we can all say that the reason why Kamala Harris was chosen was probably to make sure that someone of a sound or mind actually run the country.

Yeah. And was young and healthy.

And she's probably going to be the president. We know that if he wins, that she will be really pulling the strings.

Now, you just came from California. Yeah. And again, I don't politics. Democrat, Republican. This is this is Texas Democrats. Republicans in Texas. That's fine.

You understand this. Do you know how left and how liberal you have to be to be a senator from California? How left extremely as left as you could probably be, if you think about it, that's not where the values of Texas are, though. And so what we have to be very careful is in the idea of making sure that if she's going to be running the country, you do understand that those values are going to be the issues that are going to be running Texas as well.

And that's just not where I believe Texas or really the nation is. I think we are far more center than that.

Yeah, I agree. And I think the center is probably where the rational discussions are taking place, but everyone's scared to be in the center. Oh, yeah, because if you're in the center, you're not supported by the left, you're not supported by the right. And that's the problem with this country right now is that we're so divided and people seek comfort and being connected to a certain ideology, whether you're full on liberal or full on conservative.

This is so another reason why I'm running is because I always like to add perspective and add color to the history of this country. That's why I bring up my great great grandfather and I always talk about the Civil War.

So one of my favorite stories about West Point is there is a monument as called Trophy Point is actually one of the most prominent pieces at West Point.

At one point it was the largest single piece of granite in the history of the world and then the world at the time that was in a monument this beautiful overlooks the Hudson River surrounding trophy point, a civil war era, cannons that are that are buried into the ground muzzle first. Why?

Why, during the Civil War, you had West Point classmates that were friends that were trained together, that were in class together that would graduate and depending on where you were from geographically, geographically, some would go and fight for the north and others would go and fight for the south. And you had West Point classmates killing each other. The reason why trophy point or battle monument was created and the reason why those cannons are surrounding it buried into the ground muzzle first is to commemorate the notion of never aiming our cannons at our fellow countrymen again.

That's division, hmm, when I think about the Vietnam era, when you had soldiers that were drafted, by the way, not volunteer, they were drafted, they'll go off to war to do our country's bidding and they would lose limbs and most importantly, pieces of their mind because of PTSD, that they that they would never get back for the rest of their natural lives and come back home.

They get off a plane and they would be spat on by fellow Americans. Joe, I came home to a hero's welcome in the first thing people tell me all day, every day is thank you for your service. That's division. My parents were alive and well today, they're in their 70s, as I was telling you earlier, my dad was born in 1949. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. So he spent a lot of his teenage years in a segregated South.

He's seen the back of buses and he has seen colored only water fountains, he's alive and well today. That's division, so I want to add perspective to how far this country has really come, and we've got to understand how do we build on these things and also understand that this pendulum shifts back and forth. I think people like Dan Crenshaw are people that want to make sure that we bring this pendulum back this way. But just being a reasonable human beings.

Yes, that's that's it.

We could disagree politically, but that would be reasonable people.

That's one of his best qualities. It is. He's so measured and so rational and reasonable. And and when he talks, he says things that make sense. Yes, he's logical and I mean as well trying to tell and run for president.

How old is he now? Thirty six. Thirty six.

So that's how old you have to be, right? Thirty six. Yeah. Yeah. He'd be he'd be a great one. I tell people all the time people are like, how about you two together. Oh thank goodness. Dan, you know. You know seals are.

No, tell me. I got to ask this. I got to ask this the other day. You know, what's what's the issue? You know, if I have an issue with the country and Wesley, I'm concerned about where we're going to be in ten years. And I retorted, Why, Dankers, I could be the president.

And I think that would be an excellent thing, to be honest with you. Yeah, to have a leader like that as president, I would vote for him. I would vote for myself. And so I always look at Americans like him that get into the breach when it seems like it's dark. It seems like it's bad. We are the ones that step in and pull that pendulum back by just being reasonable people. That's why he's here.

Hmm. What's wrong with SEALs? SEALs? SEALs are intense. Oh, yeah. SEALs aren't seals are uber competitive and they are very intense. And they are my most favorite people on the entire planet because what they do and their dedication to. Service, sacrifice, and if you ask a Navy SEAL to give their life for this country tomorrow, they don't even think about it. They don't think twice about it, they'll do it. I kind of say that tongue in cheek, because, quite frankly, I love them, but that level of intensity is why America is always so different.

Hmm. It's that passion. It's that love is that it's that. It's that just that camaraderie that SEALs have. You've been around quite a few of them. I mean, I have to and it is it is hilarious to watch them compete against each other. It's awesome. Yeah. But I love it too, because I think that's just kind of the American warrior ethos. That's somewhere in all of us. They are just at the tip of the spear when it comes to exemplifying it.

And that's why when Dan Crenshaw calls me up and says, Hey, man, I got an idea for a video Ewin and I was like, OK, tell me more. And he goes, well, first time to jump out of an airplane. And I'm like.

Sign me up to be.

That video's crazy awesome. That's a great. But we should. Could we play. Sure. You know the video, Jamie? Yeah, sure.

The Texas Reloaded, Jamie, find it. I don't think we get in trouble so much trouble like that. They have to be notified, I guess. Oh, well, we'll let them know what I mean. Yeah, it's not going to hurt till you get help. Oh yeah.

So I made it.

So can I. Yeah, I think it probably owns it. I think some on the only download like this. Daniel let it go for sure.

So anyway. So keep going. So he tells you he's going to jump out of an airplane, goes up every airplane and then he's like, do you want to be in it?

And my next question was, so can I wear my flight suit?

It's four minutes long, too. We can't play the whole thing. We can't I do want to watch the whole thing for four minutes because I bet I'm asking the probably the problem is there's not a lot of talking yet.

Yeah.

Crenshaw Command Center, this is fine. It's also kind of ridiculous, but you can see things with a. By the way, they're probably about three years away from giving him one of those. Oh, yes, after this. Yeah, to save Texas, save Texas Tanta.

Well, people are genuinely worried about Texas going blue.

Right? This is why we're running. And there's a lot of people that are using this hashtag turn Texas blue as if that's going to fix things.

Here you go, Wesley Hunt. And he's on the plane right now.

That's him locked. Oh, yeah. Of course it is. There he goes. Crazy. Fuck. He's probably so excited to risk his life like. Yeah, something exciting is great.

Oh, he's the land superhero landing, a superhero landing. And then all of a sudden he's got a suit on.

Right. It's great. It's so silly and awesome at the same time. Look at you.

These things. Ben Crenshaw, put the team together. Leslie, you guys are terrible shows, all your credentials. I think all of this is going to want to come to me.

August Pflueger, he's wearing he's running out here to on August. Pflueger is running for a seat up in the District 11.

He's an Air Force Academy guy of twenty two. Pilot, amazing guy. What were you doing working under a helicopter.

I have no idea. A typical Air Force fix in the army. This guy this guy did prove you could have just texted me, man, to jump out of airplanes and still have a ways cooler to jump. Never mind. We get the point, you get the point, you get the point. People can watch it. It's available on is it on Danz YouTube page or. Yes, the Texas Reloaded Dotcom, OK. Texas related dot com.

It's on YouTube. It's on his Instagram.

It's all over the place. There you go. Save Texas, yeah, people are worried about all folks like me moving from California, worried, worried about, you know, what's funny is that we want we come one.

Come on, give me your tired, your poor. Come on to Texas. But you got to understand something. Yeah. You're coming here because of low taxes and low regulation and you want to live your life and liberty and make sure that you can protect yourself and protect your family. And that means you have to you have to vote a certain way. And that's why we kind of are Texas.

Don't turn this place into what you fled.

That's exactly right. Yeah. That's what Matthew McConaughey was. That's exactly right. When you have to kind of put that out there to people.

Right. And I understand people have different views and whatnot, but you're here for a reason.

Yeah, well, the thing is, you can be socially liberal. Yes, you can. But also understand that there's there's certain things that are just not wise.

Yes. And a lot of those things are ruining California. Right. There's there's overregulation in California.

That's taxes off the fucking truck, that the taxes are so crazy there and they're trying to raise them up to sixteen point eight percent. And then what are you going to do with that money? Fuck it up. Worse, I'm going to have more money to fuck things up.

I just don't understand their logic of of opening and not opening things. And especially now when you look at the deaths like they want to talk about covid cases, the cases are low, they're not that high and the deaths are very low. It's like it's we've kind of got a handle on what this is. You can let people open up their businesses. You can let people wear masks and be careful and take care of themselves and take vitamin D and zinc and vitamin C and we can we can at least get back to some semblance of normality.

Right. But they don't want to do that for some weird reason. And this is the one that drives me crazy.

They keep saying after the election they're not even trying to hide the fact that they're politicizing this like they won't let kids go back to school in California until after the election. Like, what the fuck does the election have to do with anything?

How is that scientific? Like how is November 3rd? How is that your science point?

It's not again, and this is what makes Texas, Texas. We just believe in liberty. Yes, we believe in allowing and empowering its citizens to make your own personal informed decisions for your own life. Yes. If you want to take the risk, then then we allow you to do so. Go buy a tiger.

How do you know? I'm going to say that, you know, the statistic about Tiger is here.

What is more tigers in captivity in Texas than all the wild of the world? I did not know.

There's more tigers in private collections, interactivity intact in Texas than all of the wild of the planet Earth.

Sometimes a little bit too much freedom. That's the logit I had a whole bit about it in my 2006 Netflix special.

Yeah, that's a little statistic. I guess I'm not getting a dog by the Tiger and Mike Tyson on. And he was explaining to me. Here it is estimated 25000 tigers living in the southern state of the United States. That's unbelievable.

So what's even more incredible is 2000 to 5000. That's a pretty big tiger effect. It could be more tigers.

And meanwhile, they don't know that means they could be like 3000 unaccounted for tigers. We don't know. We don't even know about. Yeah. So there's roughly 3800 tigers living in the world globally. There's as many as 5000 tigers living just in Texas.

Just in Texas. Yeah, I'm sure. And I'm sure that picked up after after the Tiger King got. Oh, I'm sure.

I'm sure people like, hey, I didn't know I get a tiger.

I was appalled at how easy it was to get a tiger.

And not only that, how cheap it was to get a tiger, how much is the tiger cost? I think it was like, was it like 600 bucks?

Oh, yeah, it was a puppy is there are puppies that are more expensive, I remember, right? Oh, for sure. I believe I paid more than that for my dog. Yeah. I thought, I thought for sure this would be I mean thousands of minimum, thousands of dollars.

So it's not like a hundred thousand dollars for anything. A walk. He's walking around with these little tiger cubs and it's just like like five bucks apiece. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Jamie's got something here.

Oh, my goodness. I bet 100 bucks you could buy an orange Bengal tiger and tie it up in your yard. No questions asked. A white tiger will cause you 5000 and up. It's all perfectly legal in Texas. The exotic animal trade is a billion dollar industry.

That's nuts.

They're endangered, but you can buy them for 500 bucks. That's right. That's bonkers.

This is crazy. I mean, what kind of regulation do they have on the size of your yard? Oh, my gosh. I don't know.

Wasn't there a situation where kids, bunch of kids were getting high and they went into an abandoned house and they found a tiger inside of it? I thought, yeah, that's the most Texas I've ever heard. What would you like? I'm moving to Texas after you saw that it that's now. But that is one of the most Texas things I've ever heard. It is you're in an abandoned house. It just happens to have a tiger in it like I do.

That's that's that's absolutely absurd.

What does this what's the title? Cannabis Smoker finds Tiger an abandoned house.

And you would you do if you saw Tiger? Well, you would hope it's been eating right. I hope that motherfucker's full. You know, your lunches, which is what they do.

I mean, you ever seen those ligers? It was absolutely that is the most weird shit ever because they're massive, too.

Yeah. Apparently the I don't remember if it's from the male or the female, which has to be, which I think it has to be like a male and a female tiger.

And then for whatever reason, there's genes for growth. Regulation don't exist. Right. So the you have this thing that can be like fifteen feet long, legs fucking massive.

It's so big, they're pretty chill. That's the other thing. Like they don't necessarily attack people anymore than a regular tiger.

So let me get this let me get this right, Joe. You're going to buy a tiger. No, no, no. You go buy, bro. I got a golden retriever.

That's it. I have the calmest dog of all time. Look at the size of the the upper left.

Gosh, look at that. Look at that. What in the fuck. Got to have these big click on that, Jamie.

Yeah, but but it's unbelievable.

Yeah. That's to do for the movie. Look at the size of that thing. Oh my lord.

That is so big. It doesn't even look real. That's that lady just finished a bottle, right? That's like giving it a shot. You give it a shot of milk, a shot glass of milk.

Yeah, Texas has got some wacky laws. Yeah.

You know, but again, we've freedom. Liberty. It's just these are just tenets that we have here that we just adhere to and also friendliness.

Yeah. Like people go out of the way to be nice here. Like drivers are more polite. I notice they cut you off less. They're generally let you in the lane easier.

It's like there's a it's a more polite society. And the thing about Austin that I really enjoy is it's just not that many people to there's there's something about enormous populations where you kind of like lose your appreciation of people because there's too many of them that become a problem, like all these people on the highway, all these people at the mall, these people, you don't appreciate them as much, you know.

And so and another place that I find somewhere in Texas is actually Iowa. So my wife is from Iowa and I have the most amazing mother in law ever. She's great. And you go to Iowa, people are just flat out kind to you. Yeah, they're just nice. Well, it gets so fucking cold in the winter that we have to be nice.

That teddy bear. Yeah. I've got a good buddy of mine lives in Iowa. Yeah. Shout out to John Dudly. Okay, there you go. Yeah, he he lives in Iowa.

He's got his reasons are the most nutty ever. He's a deer hunter, OK. And he has an enormous lease like well you owns land and he leases it all together. He's got like more than 700 acres, I believe in in Iowa just for deer hunting.

I don't think I want to say I don't want to give out his spot, but he's he's got it.

Yeah, but he's he's he's a rare dude is he's a very famous bow hunter, OK.

And so he teaches archery, teaches bow hunting and teaches it online. Get this knock on archery set up like they set up bows for people and all that stuff makes videos of bow hunting, but literally move to Iowa because the best white tailed deer hunting in the world arguably is you know, it's arguable whether it's Kansas or Illinois or Iowa, but Iowa's in the mix and his place is pretty special.

I went hunting there a couple of years ago and hopefully I'll be I'll get to go back here late November. It's pretty awesome. It's it's amazing. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. It's amazing.

When you drive down the road, you better go slow because those motherfuckers, they're everywhere, just darting everywhere, all over the place, everywhere. And they will destroy your vehicle. They won't destroy your vehicle.

He he gets some big deer there and his place because he cultivates it only for bow hunting. Oh, my gosh. And he knows what he's doing. He puts up food plots and stuff. And it's a it's a part of the culture there that if you don't live in an area that has a culture that revolves around deer hunting, whether it's, you know, Wisconsin has it, other parts of the world have it.

But it's it's different. It's different there. That's right. Yeah. So it's absolutely it's absolutely incredible. And I believe the states actually buckshot only. Oh, really.

Is it you can't use a rifle. That's how much it makes things.

That makes things challenging, like shooting a cannonball. But yeah those yeah.

Those are kind of crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's just it is though in that way, like you get a lot of farmers, a lot of hard working people. You do. And generally very nice. There's a wave to you on the roads and, and again not that many people. It's a smaller population of people.

So my wife, she, she moved down here and she fits in seamlessly, shall I say, the kind of values of Iowa, like kind of the kind of values of of of Texas. Yeah.

But without the black ice. Right. That's the worst. It's insane when you don't know. And then all sudden your car is like you're spinning around your spinning around in circles.

Yeah. On the highway. Yeah. I grew up in Boston so you know, I experienced a lot of snow on a lot of black ice.

That's the weirdest one because it just rains a little bit and then it freezes over. And then I was on the it was a funny thing when I was in high school, me and my friend John were on the roof of I lived on a hill. Yeah. And we were on the roof of the garage drinking, watching people slide down the street. It's slamming the curbs bounce off of each other because one day the whole street became just like a skating rink, just all black ice.

And we sat up on that roof for hours watching people slide. Just so we called the cops. I really having people keep slamming into my stomach.

So the cops did it. They came sliding down and they slammed into the curb and they bounced off the fucking side like my bad.

I got to do the thing. We try to tell you guys, you fucking look. Yeah, we got it. No, you know, clearly clearly you don't. But that's a you know, if you live in anywhere where it gets that cold, that's a common.

I guess I was I was in grad school at Cornell up in Ithaca. So, I mean, it was just it was just the same. Yeah. They got to apply to stay off the road.

The one thing I do like about snow, though, is it makes everybody go mellow. Everybody chills.

Your allergies just drive slowly if you got good tires and. Four wheel drive will be all right. You'll be all right. Yeah, it just it also makes you feel more comfortable that you huddle up in the home.

You appreciate the fire. Appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's the weird thing is the eerie quiet outside when you go outside in snow because the snow acts is like a sound deadening for everything. So if you got 12 inches of snow on the ground and it's snowing outside, you don't hear a fucking thing except for your steps as you crunch into the snow.

So all you hear, you have the quiet. It's really awesome.

That's pretty amazing. Yeah, but that's the problem with Iowa is the cold, is it? And it's flat as fuck.

A lot of corn, too. Yeah, it's a lot of corn but yeah. Yeah.

There's good things. Yeah. This in a lot of people are exiting California and they're trying to find places to go and they're going to Bozeman, Montana and they're going to Arizona.

They're going, they're going all over the place and they're realizing that this this situation, this covert situation that we're in, this terrible it's being handled differently.

Yes. In different places. Areas.

Yeah. I have friends that come from California and they come out here and they're like, holy shit. It's like everyone's normal, right? Yeah. You could be normal, man. Right. Wear a mask. Don't be an asshole. And yeah, you could go to a restaurant.

So the good thing good thing about Houston is obviously we took it very seriously, as we should and I will never tell anybody not to. But what you're starting to see glimpses of life again. You start to see people kind of starting to go out. This restaurant rules. So if you're walking around, you're wearing a mask. But if you're sitting down, it's OK.

California, they want you to put your mask on in between bites. Now, it's just that's a new thing.

Let me think about what the fuck think about what you just think. Oh, please, shut up.

So if you're outside, you have to eat outside anyway. Do you have to do it outside? That with the new rule is outside. You have to put your mask on between bites.

Come on. It's just so stupid. Come on.

They just want to control people in some weird way like this. So they were trying to tell kids they can't go to Halloween, they can't go trick or treating. And then everybody freaked out and like, OK, we change our mind. Like, what kind of policies do you have?

Like what what is what's what's the what is the motivation behind these policies? And how can you just change your mind? Because people get upset if it's so important. You really think children should stay inside on Halloween and then everybody freaks out. So you go, OK, we change our mind. Like, what are you basing it on and who are you? That's right. And why do you get to choose? This is not what the Constitution was supposed to be enabling.

No, it is not.

In my other concerning thing, especially when it comes to young people and kids. And we don't we don't have these kids in school.

And the problem is, is that when you are, you know, young, your eighteen year, eighteen years old, one year means a lot.

Yes. And I'm not talking about academics. I am talking about social growth and social development. Yes, we are stunting the social growth and social development of these kids, unquestionably, because when you are around groups of people, that's how you grow, that's how your personality is formed. And we're robbing them of that for roughly a year. And I just feel like there's a there's a way to do it to make sure that the kids are safe, which is our number one priority.

If there are infrastructure instructors that are at risk, how do we keep them away and then allow the teachers, a lot of them that I speak with, who actually really want to get back to work and teach these kids because that's their passion and they're willing to take that risk because that's what they signed up for. And that's what they told me. And I and I feel like there is a way we could accomplish all of the above, but we don't want to have a conversation about it after the election.

Wesley. Oh, gosh. Let's just wait until after the election. I don't know why you're rushing now.

You're going to put people at risk. People's lives. Someone died.

These kids. Yeah, we're hurting. We're hurting the kids.

Unquestionably. And, you know, the other thing that people don't want to take into consideration or even don't want to discuss is how many people are dying during this covid crisis because of depression, because of suicide, because they lost their business, they lost their income, they lost their livelihood.

They lost their home.

Devastating. It's happening and it's a factor. And it's not a factor that's being talked about. You know, you're not seeing charts that track how the suicides have gone up so high. I have a friend who talked to a sheriff in Los Angeles who said we used to see one suicide every week or so. Now we see five a day.

That's exactly right. And it's like this is crazy and it's crazy because we have the technology to fix this and actually handle it. I mean, for example, case in point came your studio, also studio, by the way, it's good to see you in person walking. What do you do? You text me, hey, there's a nurse you're going to get covertness takes fifteen minutes.

Great.

We all find out we're negative and we can get on with our day. Yes. Yeah. Oh easy. That is.

Yeah it well it's not readily available. Readily available everywhere yet.

Yet but it can be. It can be. Yeah. That's the argument that it can be. Well what I want to do with a comedy club is set up like ten of those ten and just.

Have everybody say, look, the shows at 8:00, get there at 7:00, you get tested once you're clean, 15 minutes in, you can go have a drink. And the show started 8:00. And this way we could just sit down like humans, like we used to do the seven, eight months ago and have a good old time.

We can still do that, I think. Yes, it can be done. And I think more importantly, you have to let people take risks.

If you let people take risks, like Dan Cranshaw jumping out of airplanes for a fucking video, people.

And I understand that you're putting other people at risk.

I do understand that, by the way. I don't that's not that's not lost on me either.

But I do think that we need to take precautions about that. That needs to be cut. But if you're a person like, say, if you're a 24 year old and you live with another 24 year old and you want to go out but you can't go out, that's bullshit. You should be able to do whatever you want to do. And just it's up to you. And we should really highlight your responsibility to get tested and not expose yourself to other people that are at risk, that are high risk or that are vulnerable.

We could definitely do this, by the way. Yes, it can be done, but it can't be done with overregulation and it can't be done with the kind of attitude that they have in California where they think they could just shut everything down. That's right. And this is this is why I left. I just I don't see this getting better any time soon. I just I saw it as being a thing where they weren't addressing the negative aspects of locking things down.

For right now, we're at six, seven months. What is it going to be? Is it a year? Is it a year and a half later? What is it how are you going to deal with the negative aspects, the negative social, the economic, the just the way people feel about the city? How are you going to deal with all that? Is there a strategy in place? Seems to be none. Right now. They're looking at everything with rose colored glasses and they keep getting paid.

And that's part of the problem is all these politicians keep getting paid. And I know Gavin Newsom was at one point in time saying he was going to take a pay cut, but he never did. As far as I'm concerned, as far as I'm as far as I know, I don't think he did things like, well, I love that.

Well said. As you brought the Constitution. Yeah. And again, I use the word liberty multiple times now because it's absolutely real to me. Yeah. I mean I mean, they set they set this framework up to empower the citizens to have their own religion to live where they want to live. If you don't like your state, you can move as you did and vote with your feet. You if you don't like the tax rate in one state, you can move somewhere else that we've allowed.

We've built this country to allow people to make their own decisions. Yes. In the second we start to erode that and take that away from people is when we're getting in trouble. And that completely flies in the face of what the construct of this country was supposed to be originally. And that's where people like me, for example, you asked why I run for Congress. This is why. Because we have to get back to empowering citizens to make their own decisions.

Yes, I spent eight years in the Army, four years at West Point. That's twelve years total in the military. I love the military. Thank God I did it. Best decision I've ever made.

But but we don't need more federal government and more regulation. We need as little regulation as possible. I understand the human condition every now and again can have some nefarious intent. I understand that. But really, it's about empowering the individual to make their own choices and make their own decisions. Federal government is not supposed to tell people what to do and how to live. People are fleeing their countries from all over the world to come right here to this country.

And I just sat with a woman from Taiwan today. They are fleeing their countries to come here to live free. And then here we are talking about regulation to take that very thing that makes us different away from our citizens.

My concern is that we're not going to get it back.

My concern is I understand that they have motivation to reduce these freedoms, to contain covid. But freedoms lost are rarely regained.

Yes. And my concern is that they're going to find other excuses to keep people locked down, other excuses to try to exercise these powers that they've learned how to use. This is what's weird about this is like you've let a genie out of the bottle. You've let people like that Mayor Garcetti guy in L.A. tell people what they can and can't do. They're shutting off electricity. And when water if you have a party at your house. Yeah. Like this kind of shit is like that's supposed to be those are essentials.

Like when did when are you allowed to do that? Since when can you do that? And everybody's like, oh, because of covid.

Well how do you get that back. Does it have to be one of covid is a returning thing. Would have covid is like the common cold and people are just going to get it from now on.

Like the flu. Like the flu. Right. So what are we giving up? Enormous amounts of power to the government now. So are we losing all of our liberties because because of this disease that we're all dealing with and we're going to put our faith in the hands of people who are elected.

Yeah. That we never intended them to have these powers in the first place. And now we're seeing these powers are used very differently in. Different parts of the country. Yeah, so this is the good thing about information, and we walk around every day with a supercomputer in our hands. We're actually one of the first generations to ever, ever be able to do that for the bulk of our lives. And I think that people wake up and they realize that.

So, no, I don't want to be overregulated. So I'm going to go somewhere where I am not overregulated.

So I'm going to move. Exhibit A, right, I think that people are awakened by stuff like this, particularly when we over when government overplayed their hand and a particular population where they're like, no, we're not going to take it. And then what happens?

People either a move or they put somebody else and they elect somebody else and they fire the person who's in charge. We're seeing a lot of what's happening in Portland and in Seattle. And it's kind of interesting. I'm very curious to see how those elections go in the future because those local leaders failed their people. They failed their citizens.

I think that area is so liberal that they're not going to learn the lesson. We'll say we will see. There's a lot of Trump supporters in Portland, too, that they're doing these big parades with American flags and Trump flags driving their trucks and honking their horns. I wonder if that's going to have an impact.

I think it will, because the number one, the number one role, the government, the federal government, is to keep her citizens safe. That's the number one goal. Yeah. And when in Portland, you have a police chief that says two small business owners who are losing their businesses because they're getting a rioted and looted and the police chief says this, sorry, you're on your own or you have now failed.

Now, why are they saying you're on your own?

Because the mayor won't allow them to do anything. Well, that was because they are now defending their defending the police and then they're setting up areas where they won't allow law enforcement to even enter.

Like Seattle, like in Seattle. I can tell. Yes. And then now the citizens are actually not as safe.

Well, that one was bonkers where the mayor was on television saying maybe it's the summer of love that you found out.

Fuck are you talking about you found out. The whole idea behind it is. So my take on it was you you're doing something that has never been done before.

You're taking over blocks, you're putting up boundaries and you're deciding it's yours. But you set a precedent now because you didn't earn any of that space. You didn't earn that land. You didn't earn those buildings. You took it by force. You set a precedent. And what's to stop someone from taking that from you?

That's right. With the same strategy saying, no, I think I'm right. So I'm going to come in with bigger guns and more people and we're going to shut out all these businesses and we're going to put up bigger barriers and we're going to have more stringent policing.

They were beating people up for filming. Unbelievable. It's just it's so dumb.

Like you embody the worst aspect of a dictatorship in a six block thing, and you did it quick. You became the worst country in America. Right. If that's an independent country and that it's in the continental United States, you became the worst version of what America is.

That's right. That's right. Get agreement with you and people see this, by the way, people see, I think they do. People see it. I think they do.

I think there's a lot of people that are seeing a lot of people that are seeing that these idealistic portrayals of what government can be. You like this idealistic.

We need to defund the police and put all the money into social programs like.

Yes, with no long term solution, you see.

Oh, Jesus, look what happens. Oh, this is terrible.

That's right. We don't we don't want that. No, it's a wake up call for a lot of people. It is a wake up call.

Yeah. And then the mayor of Portland, I mean, he's he's hilarious. Like, he goes outside, they're like, fuck you resign. He's like about that is the case. The progressive guy, he got canceled.

Yeah. The most people think about that right now. You got a good enough bench there, but the price is wrong. It's like his apartment building on fire.

It's it's just amazing that the literally the most progressive mayor in America and they're like not and not enough. Resigned, sir.

Not good enough. So where does it stop and where does it end? I don't know. They want 100 percent defund the police. They want to give these people a year to their was their demands, give them a year to find alternative and meaningful employment, and then no more police.

Yeah, OK, come on down. We need to come on down here to Texas. Yeah. Congratulations, folks. You just fucked up your entire city.

You're welcome. What are you going to do with that? What do you mean? How do you plan on working that out with no police?

What happens if your car got stolen? You're going to call social worker, will you do? If someone breaks into your house, what are you going to call? Yeah, what are you going to do about murder? What are you gonna do about rape?

These things happen, but they just don't miraculously go away, right?

Yeah, well, it's just these idealistic views of what the future should be and the way you think you're going to implement them today currently. And we just need to get well, there's bad cops. We've got to get rid of all the cops. Well, there's bad protesters, too. Should we get rid of all protesters? Of course not. Yeah.

When you see people smash buildings and smash windows, no one saying you can't protest anymore. No one's saying there's no more. Well, obviously, that's a part of protest because you got bad people.

And when you have a group that anyone can join in on, anyone can join most of these groups.

You're going to get a bunch of assholes.

That's right. Unquenched. What happens? Yeah, that's that's life. Yeah. And you need law and order to fix that. Yeah. You need consequences for unlawful acts.

And the best way to do that is with the police and they choose to do it too.

By the way, these people choose to get up in the morning and they choose to protect people. They do. And I always say this. They don't always get it right. We know this. We I recognize that.

Yeah, but this is not the answer either. Well, they're human. Yeah.

And when you get a bunch of humans together, look, you get 100 people in a room, one of them's going to be a fucking idiot. That's right. There's no way around it.

If you get a bunch of cops, one of them is going to be incompetent if you're lucky, one of them if you lucky.

And here's the other deal. Like how many of those poor folks are running around with PTSD untreated? A large percentage of them. They're seeing what they've seen, murders and violence and car accidents.

And you name child abuse and I'll name it, you name it, all the horrors of humanity. They see it on a daily basis. It's part of their life, human trafficking.

That's another thing that we don't talk about. Yes, that is another thing that just goes in and out of the news we were talking about on the podcast, the thirty nine or thirty five kids that were rescued in Georgia. Yeah. And it was a blip in the news like. But meanwhile, I saw a thousand articles on how mean Ellen is.

Yes. I mean, she's so mean all these people are out there risking their lives to stop human trafficking.

The rescuing children. Yes. From human trafficking.

Yes. What is this?

U.S. Marshal, while 72 million missing children excuse me, 72 million, 72 missing children across Indiana, Iowa, Ohio and Georgia in the past several weeks, over the past several weeks.

So what is what is this is where these so when you Rennard like that, U.S. Marshals rescued 72 missing children, you this is where all the Kuhnen people get crazy because they think that Donald Trump is secretly working behind the scenes to stop child trafficking and that there's like some secret cabal in the government that wants to enable this shit.

And then Facebook bans Kuhnen and they everyone's going crazy now like this.

This child trafficking thing is real, is real. It has always existed.

You know that Houston is actually one of the hubs for child trafficking in the U.S.. Really? Yes, it is. Now, how is today, how do they find out about child trafficking, like what what do they how do they infiltrate? It usually is local law enforcement that recognizes some abnormalities in the behavior of some of the children. Usually it's certain areas, certain shops, certain businesses that are kind of harboring these people. A lot of them just get stopped because, I mean, it's kind of really odd if you're on a van or an 18 wheeler and then there's like 20 kids in it.

It's weird and. We as a culture have got to work with local law enforcement to start to curb this thing because that's where the rubber meets the road. I don't know if you saw the story. I know if you could pull it up, sir, but if you saw the story about the flight attendant know that helped out the girl that recognized the abnormality of a girl on a flight by herself and saved her life. Yes.

And they had the authorities on the ground when the plane waited. Yeah. Waiting. Yeah. We got we have got to see more of that. And so this is this is how we're taught by the army.

You got to police your own troops. We've got to police our own.

If we are just acutely of acutely aware of the abnormalities and the behavior of young children who clearly are under duress, we cannot turn a blind eye to it.

Why is this not a bigger story in mainstream news? This is one of the things that concerns me. I don't understand why you're not seeing this on CNN. This is every day.

Why are we seeing this every day and seeing that story right there should be leading everything, primetime news, everything that should be leading.

72 missing children rescued. Yes.

So how how are they? They can't it can't be just that they're randomly discovering these kids in a truck or they see a kid on a plane acting weird. And that's how they catch everybody. Like, how are they infiltrating? Like, how?

Because there's there's also a bunch of guys that are former spec ops guys that are that are working to fight child trafficking. How are they doing this? So.

The solution to this, in my opinion, I would like to insert a second solution is in my opinion, is actually and I would be in huge favor this of literally starting a separate task force to address this and known hotspots. The other way we're finding out as to answer your question, the other way that we're finding out as to how they're infiltrating is really if you go to Hub's of the world like Houston, you go to coastal cities where people are actually bringing people into the country.

That's exactly what you're going to find, a lot of it. So if you just kind of hang out around these areas, then you'll see a lot more of it.

You'll discover a lot more of it. And so Houston has become kind of one of those hubs because of his geographic location. It's actually near a port city. And obviously people are coming through port cities at a higher rate, cargos coming through at a higher rate. And so we're actually able to track that a better rate for just kind of hang around the hoop. You'll find it.

Hmm. So how are these people communicating?

Oh, my goodness, this is it seems like if the government can use programs like Edward Snowden revealed, like how are they how are they organizing these things and where are they getting these kids from?

Again, these kids actually all over the world. A lot of them are coming from impoverished communities, a lot of them are coming from impoverished countries and there's shipping shipping them and a lot of them come from Asian countries, actually. And. A lot more right here in the US. And this is something that that dawned on me, particularly with having two girls now, and that is it's also my job to continue to protect them and all of these young people as actually young boys, as well as not just it's not just young ladies.

It's actually incumbent upon them to keep them safe if we can't keep them safe. And what are we doing here? Literally, like, that's our role now, you know, as fathers and as responsible human beings is keeping our young people safe. And. The biggest thing is this there clearly is an appetite and there clearly is a culture for it. What I want to do is how do we. Place extreme punishment on those who behave in this.

Yeah, and partake in this behavior. I tell you what, it could be happening right next door to you, to somebody that seems to be a normal human being. But we have got to stop them. We have to stop the predator from feasting on our children. Yeah. It has got to be demonized, let's demonize that. Yeah, 100 percent, yeah, how how are these people communicating, though? Yeah, doing it through the Dark Web are they're doing it through forums.

Are they doing it through the using code. Like how are they doing this.

Heard all the above. Yeah. I've also heard communicating through just open email inboxes. They don't hit send but they have the password for multiple emails and they'll just go in, get the message and then never open or closed. So it's impossible basically to track this just like a draft.

Oh, I see. And so other people have the log in, the log in the password and they they check it out through the draft.

That makes sense. And it's funny because this subject, because of things like pizza gate, the subject became so taboo that no one wants to talk about it because it sounds preposterous because pizza gate was so preposterous. Guy shows up with a gun looking for kids that are tied up in the basement. I was like, oh, my God, there's nobody here. Everyone's wacky. These child sex trafficking fanatics that are interested in this and they're trying to stop this.

They're all crazy people. Right. But that's not really the case. Right. The problem with something like pizza gate is that it it confuses everybody. Yeah. And you start thinking that all this stuff is nonsense. But then these stories, they they make it to these websites and you see that this is a real thing. These are real news stories.

But then they don't get talked about in mainstream and then we lose track of who the real enemy is.

Yeah, that's a real enemy, not one that's dangerous. You're right, Elena.

I mean, to our system, just fuck if we relate to this. What we care about is so bizarre. It's it's such a symptom of how how sick we are as a as a culture and that our priorities are so skewed and that this is sort of accentuated by our addiction to social media. Yeah. And that people are concentrating so much on things that are trivial and nonsensical that somebody I I found an article on rooters that said that, like the mainstream media has been reporting on this.

So like that I'm looking through pages to find out details on different reporting of this.

I'm all I'm finding this on is like local news sites. So like what does that mean, though, that it's not being reported?

Well, you don't see on CNN, you're not seeing it as like mainstream television news or it's a big subject that gets discussed that we have a giant problem like this in this country. That's what I'm saying and what they're going through here.

And then like the human trafficking angle, according to what like the US Marshals down here, it's one in four of these kids. So if it was twenty five kids picked up at six or seven of them were human trafficking, the other twenty 20 or so are like kids that ran away or kids that were being abused if they found them because they were missing, some of them missing for two weeks. I'm up to two years. Well it's not every kid is in a human trap.

That's those 72 hour ones. The 35 though in Georgia. I think they're all the same. Same thing. Yeah, same kind of thing.

So they're collecting and then they're like reporting the numbers, like they're getting the collecting these 35 kids over a period of time. And then they're reporting we found 35 cases like it's a month later.

They found 35 kids, one from September, which should have been reported five weeks ago, says that they recovered. Twenty five missing and endangered children over the last month. One in four was part of what they believe an alleged human trafficking situation. Obviously, one is too many, obviously.

Obviously, obviously. But so it seems like there's they're finding missing kids and a percentage of them happened to be a part of human trafficking.

And now here's the question. How many of the kids that are being human trafficked actually get discovered?

We're finding this five year, six year, these types.

How many of them actually are there? Do we know? We don't. We don't. We don't. Just the fact that it's a real thing is spookies.

Fuck, it is. And it's dangerous. Yeah, it's terrifying. It's terrifying for fathers and mothers. It is. You know, it's like the fact that we're brothers and sisters. The fact that it could be someone close to you.

Yes. What other subjects and what other concerns do you have about the current state of this country?

Maybe things that we haven't discussed before. So, again, we always were sitting here talking about the division in the country, which is something that I think it's it's a very real issue that we've been talking about.

But I also just kind of want to say, what's the solution to the division in the country? We always talk about problems, but then what are we going to do about it? And the one thing I got to ask a few weeks ago, like Wesley, what are you going to do when you get in the Congress? What can you do differently that nobody else has done to try to start to bridge this gap and bridge this divide? Twenty eighteen, we had the fewest number of veterans in Congress and in the Senate since since roughly World War Two.

And I think that's actually a part of the issue and a part of the problem. So when I get to Washington is actually what I believe will be my personal mandate is to go find Democrats that are veterans. And let's have a conversation, and actually it won't be about policy or politics will actually be more about where you serve, what did you do? Who do you know, what circles did you run? And maybe we have a common bond there because people that are willing to give their lives for this country just view the world a little bit differently.

So I want to be a part of that contingent that actually tries to bring military people to the table and to be a part of that. You look at me, you look at Ben Crenshaw, you look at August Pflueger, we're all military guy. We all we all get each other on that on that point. Now we're all Republicans.

But but Democrats do as well because we've we've taken an oath to defend this country against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. I think that's the beginning to start to bridge the divide. And it lies with soldiers. And again, you look at this time period, this is the time for soldiers that are, you know, Operation Iraqi Freedom, we have Enduring Freedom, you know, folks that actually have gone into private sector gone and gotten, you know, a further education, but still have that bug to continue to serve, still have that itch.

And I think they need our country needs more of us than anything else right now. I think that's where it starts.

I Wesley Hunt, I'm going to be one of four hundred and thirty five congressmen and women that are currently serving this country today. One person, one person can't change the entire system. But two, three, four, five, six, 10, 20 can name. But you can't get to two unless you have one, can't get to three unless you have two, can't get four. Yeah, and so even if I'm two or three or four, I am I represent the continuance of the coalition building.

It's going to take some time.

Well, when it comes to foreign policy, when it comes to decisions of military actions, when it comes to war itself, there's. I think it's very important to have people of actually service, right, that are making those decisions and it's disturbing as hell when people making those decisions that have never served don't understand it, never been in the military. And they're making decisions that are going to put our veterans at risk. They're going to send them overseas to do these actions and in a way that they do not personally understand because they don't have any actual experience that people like you, the people like Dan Crenshaw, Tulsi Gabbard, people that have served.

These are the people that, in my opinion, should be the ones that we listen to.

So it's personal because I lost 14 of my West Point classmates in a global war on terror.

And when I think about these brave men, we're better men than me to pay. The ultimate sacrifice gave the eulogy. This bracelet, says David Frazier on it, wear it every day as a reminder as to why we are all here and why we have to continue to serve. And we have to make sure that when we ask somebody to go die for their country, we got to make sure that that that we know exactly what we're doing and how we're doing it, regardless of what the cause is.

Dying for your country is the most noble death anyone can ever have, in my opinion. I don't I don't care what the war was. I don't care what the reason was. Those brave men. Died a noble death. In moving forward, we're going to ask somebody to pay that sacrifice. We as lawmakers and we as leaders better make sure. It's for a reason that is the most high and most noble, the one thing that I do see about President Trump and his doctrine is the idea of getting us out of this decade long wars.

I tend to agree with that. Actually, that region of the world is actually diametrically opposed to the way that we view the world here in this country. It is.

And there are ways through technology to continue to be an effective fighting force, the most effective fighting force in the world without having brigades worth of soldiers in the Middle East in perpetuity. So I like that. I like using special ops, I like using small teams, I like using our brains and our technology. I like all that. I think President Trump is spot on on that. And I do think that he's actually valuing the life of every individual soldier by making this decision.

And then when you do that, you blow credibility, because when you do send people in harm's way, we get it, we get it. This guy is sending us here for this cause. It's a worthy cause. Giddy up. Let's go. And that's the kind of that's the kind of confidence that you want to have in your leaders, not just the president, but across the board. When you've been there, you know what it feels like when you've lost classmates, you know what it feels like.

And as a congressman, when we choose to send someone to war and I look at that brave young man or that brave young woman and I say, look, this might be it for you, they look at me and they say. Yes, sir, but if you're sending me, I trust you. We've got to get that back. The only way you're going to get that back is people like you. Thank you, sir. I really believe that.

I don't think anybody who's never served is going to be able to make those decisions and have the respect of the people that are that are going to be sent over there.

Yeah. One of the things we need to cover here. I was going to talk a little bit even about social media a little bit, OK, and that's a good subject. What makes us what makes us a very interesting topic for me is that while we are divided, I don't think it's as bad as everyone thinks it is.

It's not as bad as you get people in a room together. It's not at all actually not a talk. It's not bad at all. Twenty years ago, any event would have something would happen, something bad would happen. And you turn on the evening news and you might see it twice. That's it. You might see it on the news. You might see a newspaper. That's it. Something bad happens today, your phone blows up, so on Twitter, it's on IG is on Facebook and then it's not like CNN app, your your Fox News app, then it's on Fox News cable, then it's on local TV.

So we have now seen the same incident like eight times on eight different platforms, which gives the perception. That is worse than it really is. I got to thinking about this a lot, because my father, my father is my hero and he is a he is a very, very wise man.

But to thinking about this because he goes, son, do you really think it's harder to be a black man today than it was when I was growing up? That was rhetorical. The answer is absolutely not. But it got me thinking about it because it gives the perception that it is given all that we're seeing. But quite frankly. We've always gotten better. My brother and I always joke about America. He was like, what's what's the best time to be an American?

Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Am I am I better off being in America right now than I was when I graduated high school in 2000?

Absolutely. So what is it distorting our view so much that that gives us the perception that we're way worse off?

Well. Over the course of the past 15 years, we have developed this social media system that, quite frankly, sends out just negative information and people then hide behind their words, they hide behind their posts because they don't actually confront people one on one. But is it really worth, Joe, really worse in what way I look so like so. So. Let's just let's just let's just go back to the racial issues in this country. OK, this is go back to that.

When I was in high school, I thought about some of the language that was used, some of the language that was said, some of the ways that I was treated, when I compare that to the way I am treated right now, it's very different, actually.

It's way better. Again, I'm actually running for Congress in a predominantly white district, overwhelmingly white district. Would that have been the case 30 years ago?

Would they have nominated me? Would they have elected me? I'm not quite sure.

But now they have overwhelmingly and they don't even care that I'm black. I think what people would push back on is for sure things are getting better. Yes, what they would say is there's massive amounts of room for improvement and many, many, many things that need to be done to correct the way things are wrong in this country right now. Of course, that's why people have a hard time when people look at the bright side of things, OK?

They look at the bright side of things. They go, yeah, OK. But you can't just ignore all these problems that exist right now.

And that's what I refuse to do, which is why I tend to bring up the past and progress. Yes. So when people ignore it is when they don't talk about their great great grandfather who was once a slave. You see, I acknowledge that because I want to actually build on it. What I don't like are people who just refuse to even mention that what I don't like are people who don't even want to acknowledge our past slavery. I actually want to talk about it because when you talk about it, we can fix it.

What do you think could be done about injustices that are happening currently? Like, one of the things that I've discussed in this podcast many times is there are parts of this country, whether it's Baltimore or Detroit or south side of Chicago, that are almost perpetually engulfed in crime.

Yes. And they have been forever. And that doesn't seem to be any effort whatsoever to reverse that.

How can you how can you fix those? I understand you're becoming Congress congressman in a specific district, but when you look at the country as an overall and you look at these particular bad spots, what strategies can be used that aren't being used to fix this?

The strategy of empathy and understanding, not yelling at each other, not demonizing each other, not saying that your culture is so messed up and it's and it's your fault. Acknowledging that particularly in the black community, the welfare state was created, and that's actually what has caused a lot of the consternation in our culture today. That's not black people's fault, actually, it's actually the system's fault, right? Black people also have to take some responsibility for some of the cultural issues that we have as well.

It's not all white people's fault, actually. We have to accept some of this, too, if both sides can accept and take on the culpability, some of it on the problems that we see today and we can admit it and we can talk about it, then we can begin to heal.

But obviously, some physical actions need to be to need to take place.

I can't I can't actually agree more with you on that. And physical actions need to actually take place for everybody.

The issue is that somebody says one side says, well, they should do this, but they should do this, what you should do where point fingers and nothing and nothing gets done. So the police are brutalizing us and a black person has a two and a half more higher chance of dying at the hands of police than a white person. That's actually a fact. It's actually a fact. So look at the police officers, but then the police officers and other groups can't say, well, that's because there's a higher incidences of crime amongst almost brown and black people.

What's that what did that accomplish? Nothing, but because nobody wants to assume responsibility that both are issues, both are issues, both are problems. This is where someone like me is actually uniquely positioned to look.

I have I have been discriminated against. I have been profiled. I get it. I have been treated poorly by white people. I've been treated poorly by black people and vice versa. I, I understand all this.

So what? What are we going to do to actually solve the problem? And this is where it takes real tough leadership, because what happens is you start getting in a circular firing squad, everybody's firing from all sides and it gets it gets tough for someone like me every now and again who's kind of stuck and caught in the middle. But I always joke around and I said, well, I've also I've also been in combat and I've been shot at before, I can deal with it, but somebody has got to take this on.

Instead of pointing the fingers at each other, who who's going to bring both sides to the table? And again, can Wesley do it by myself? No. But what I hope in my candidacy and in conversations like this. Thank you so much. Is that what I hope?

What I hope is that people can hear the message and then say, oh, OK, I get that tone. I accept this responsibility.

So now what can we do about it? That's where we start. And right now, we are way over here, I recognize that, but we have to work incrementally to get us back together. I am confident that this country can do it because just like I've said before. We've been way worse. We've been at war with each other and we were able to overcome that, we can overcome this to. It's just going to take some work. Joe, what would you do, like if you.

I know, I understand you're running for Congress, you're not running to be king of the country. Right.

But if you if you had a magic wand and you you could take someone and say, Wesleyan, what would you do about, let's just say, south side of Chicago, which is just one of the most murderous places in this country right now?

Yes. Terrible.

Yes. What would you do? I give you the power like Wesley, you fix this, how would you fix that? So one of the issues, in my opinion, in Chicago is the relationship. With law enforcement in the citizens of that community. We need to be in the business of building relationships with those that protect them and keep them safe. As long as as long as we can, again, admit that there is a problem on both sides.

What can I Wesley, what specifically do I have? You've heard all you've heard so many different ideas on how to know how to combat this. What I say is this. We start off with conversations. You have to start off with the community leaders. Who are, again, who are willing to accept culpability for some of the problems and culturally speaking, and then you start with the law enforcement officers that are willing to admit that we actually want to be a part of the solution and not be a part of the problem.

And it takes one person to do that on either side to systematically fix the community, one person at a time.

You can't take just one big bite, the apple in this thing, it's it's going to take some time and it's going to have to be incremental, quite frankly. It's going to have to be generational as well, because there's so much distrust. There's so much distrust on both sides that we can't even have a conversation about it. So so we have to start small and then go big from there and it starts right at the community level, do you think also an announced.

Some announcing intention to specifically work on this. Yes. And having this be a big conversation that takes place publicly that law enforcement does want to communicate with community leaders and there's a direct effort to try to improve these places to let people know we care. We know it's a problem. Even though it's been ignored for so long, it will be ignored no longer. That's it.

That's it. That's where you start. That's where you start and it's I agree with you, that is it's a long process. Yes, sir. The frustrating thing is that it just hasn't really hasn't been addressed that much, sadly. And I was said, if you want to make America great, you really want less losers.

So you want more people with an opportunity to get past the situation they're currently in. And so many people are trapped. They're trapped in these crime ridden, gang ridden, drug ridden neighborhoods where it's normal for people to be in and out of jail. And this is what they grow accustomed to because they grow up with it. Right. And that's that that's no way to grow up.

Yeah. Social media. Let's get back to that. One of the things that drives me crazy about social media is this flippant nature of this this way that people think it's fine to just censor people and censor people that disagree with you. One of the things is unity. 2020 was something that was created by Brett Weinstein and many other people. Brett, who is very liberal, very progressive. He was the guy that was the professor at Evergreen State, was run out by these crazy kids that wanted to take over and turn it into a utopia for leftists.

That's a very, very paraphrased version of the story.

But he created this thing called Unity 2020, and he wanted to have conversations between the left and the right and have these people talk and try to come up with someone who's a better solution to run this country than what we're currently being offered. Twitter ban the account. Yeah, I mean, it was the most reasonable I don't know if they got it back, see if they got Unity 2020 back. But most reasonable and their take on it was say no to Biden, say no to Trump, and let's come up with a better solution that this can be done.

And Twitter is like, no, that's ridiculous. It's completely ridiculous, but.

The question is the First Amendment. What is this here, suspended articles of unity, is that what it is? Articles of unity is that the same thing is unity, 20, 20. Same thing. Yeah, the official account, articles of Unity, yeah, band, so they banned it. And why?

Why? Because they don't agree with the sentiment. They think that maybe, perhaps we should all fall in line and vote for Joe Biden because this is what they want. Yes. And if you are a progressive and you're a liberal, you just have to accept the differences that you have with Biden and Kamala Harris and their their perspectives. And you need to just fall in line. And there's no other third party. And the idea that you're fucking carrying water for the two party system in 2020 is bonkers and that you freedom of speech is supposed to be the freedom to discuss ideas.

This is not it's not an enormous percentage of the population that's going along with this guy. He's offering an educated perspective, their constitution. It's our Constitution. It is our Constitution.

It's also it's so important to listen to things that you disagree with, to understand why you disagree with that.

Right. And to understand if maybe there's some knowledge in there that you can acquire, maybe maybe there's a part of their perspective that you do agree with. Maybe there's maybe you see the error in their ways and you can discuss it with them. You can say, well, this is where you guys got it wrong. Right. Like, that happens on this fucking show. Also in private, you can improve. Yes. I mean, discussing things, it's it's fucking critical.

But whether it's Facebook, whether it's Twitter, Facebook, banning Kuhnen.

Look, I'm not a Kuhnen fan. How could you ban that? But here's the problem. If you ban them, why are you letting the flat earth are still have a fucking page? Why are you letting the JFK people who are the people that think the assassination was caused by aliens?

Where do you draw the line on what's true and what's not? And the problem is you just started down a slippery slope.

And look, I don't even know what Kuhnen mean. I know a lot of people believe in it, but I don't even know what they stand for. I just know there's a lot of wacky folks involved. I know them personally and they're wacky like. But the fact that Facebook wants to just ban it is ridiculous.

I just don't I don't think they should have that kind of editorial power, the power to decide what gets discussed and what not what doesn't get discussed.

Do you think that maybe perhaps and this is my friend Kyle Golinski, had the suggestion that the second or the First Amendment, rather, should be.

Amended to include social media and that social media should be treated as a utility, a utility that everybody should be able to enjoy.

Interesting that, look, you can't do things like dock's people or call for people's death or, you know, obviously.

Obviously, yes. But threaten people, but express opinions. Come on. You can't express opinions. I mean, you can get banned on Twitter for some of the most preposterous things, you know, for a while was like, learn to code. You say learn to code. You would get banned. Yeah. Because they were saying this was in response to people like coal miners. What are they going to do when they get out of there? Someone said learn to code.

And so then whenever anybody get fired that someone would say, learn to code like you're banned for life, like, come on, it's nuts.

Come on. But it is this thing where you're allowing people to censor people's voices.

And I don't I think you should let all the nuts talk, let them all talk.

It's called freedom of speech as long as you're not threatening somebody. Yes. And the question is like people say, well, they're harmful and their opinions sway people in a certain way.

What sway who sway you? And it's when you are they making you think the earth is flat or they're making, you know, no, it's not swaying morons. So what do we do? We're going to regulate to stop morons from believing stupid shit. Is that what we're this impossible? It's impossible. And it's also un-American to stop expression.

Even expression that you don't agree with is un-American. It's it's the wrong way to approach it.

Yes, it is. But there's so many people that believe in de platforming and that that's the way to handle these things.

I think they're wrong. I think the more conversation and the more discussion, no matter what, the better, because it teaches you about the world.

The problem is you have that switch and you can just pop them, just pop that switch. And now they're off Twitter forever.

Would you say unity, what you click that's done next.

And it's not again, it's not even people harassing people. It's not people threatening people. It's just people expressing opinions that you don't enjoy.

What do you think should be done about this? And what why haven't they've done something? Well, I mean, I know the president's discussed this.

Yes. But what can be done about this? So.

This topic is near and dear to my heart, because you could imagine somebody like me going to Ithaca, New York, at Cornell. OK, I am a Texan. I come from the energy capital of the world. I am a veteran. And in Ithaca, you would kind of solve the world's problems in coffee shops and I'd walk in wearing something like this and boots and a hat. I'm a conservative guy and I'm black.

I don't know anything about Jones is from Ithaca, is a really liberal city.

Very liberal college town. Yes, it is. It's Cornell in Ithaca College.

It's a college town and great place, by the way. I love it. A lovely place. I love my time there, actually. And I would talk to people, obviously, that were that were very liberal. And we would meet up on weekends all the time and we would just talk. And you could probably imagine that we didn't see the world the same way. But we always got to talk and meet up the next week and the next week.

And they were my classmates and they were my friends. And they we got to learn how to respect each other. One of my classmates, actually, who is a banker up and up in New York, who is a it was a Bernie Abreau, very liberal guy. He sent me some money for the campaign and sent me a note.

And he said, you know, Wesley, if I was down there, I don't think I'd even vote for you. I said, thanks, man.

And then he goes, But but I hope you win because I know you're a good guy and I know that you believe in this country.

Why wouldn't you vote for you? Well, because how can I probably how he's helping you.

But he doesn't want you to win, but he wants you to win. Maybe get some money. But here's somebody to win. So I'm so confused. I don't know how to feel about that.

But it's complicated. It's complicated. He may not vote, but does want me to win. And so that's where we're actually missing that element of we might disagree politically. But I respect you as a person enough to hear you out, this is why we have to stop cancelling people. This is why we have to stop dwelling just opinions, because it's actually a form of disrespect to the very fiber of someone's human being. We've got to get to the point where we start respecting each other again and this and this has to stop and, you know, President Trump tweets a lot as we as we see.

And it's dawned on me that he does a lot because that's that's his way to get his point across to circumvent everything else. Now, do I agree with all of it? No. Do I disagree sometimes? Sure. I agree with some of it. I absolutely do.

But the whole point is, is this that's an attempt to go direct to the people with his voicing his opinion. Whether you like it or disagree with it or not, that's actually beside the point.

This is where we start to break that down, because everybody should have the leeway to do just that. So we have to lead by example, and when I see stuff like this, it's actually infuriating to me. Because if it's if it's a very liberal opinion, knock yourself out. In fact, I want to hear it. I want to hear more about it. Yeah. But if it's a conservative opinion or if it's different from my opinion, then then we better and it gets cancelled.

Do you only fact check the more conservative points and opinions and not fact check the others because they disagree with you, right, or agree with you? This is a very dangerous place to be in. This is a valuable conversation to have because this is where legislators need to have a conversation about this, what is freedom of speech, right? What is freedom of assembly? What is it like, like really what is it and I think our founding fathers intended it, intended it for it to be exactly what you're talking about right now.

They never anticipated something like social media. No. And I think that social media represents the current town center where people can get together and talk about ideas they just never anticipated.

One person be able to reach thousands and thousands of people with one individual opinion, with one phrase or with one tweet or with millions of people.

But to stop that from happening because you disagree with is just is unconstitutional. Actually, if it's just political is unconstitutional, it's also it's abusive.

Yes. You didn't no one anticipated that social media was ever going to be what it is.

Yes. True that it would be this town's center of discussion. It was, you know, the beginning. It was just people putting up pictures of their dog or something, you know, normal stuff. But what it is now is it's the battleground for global communication. It is. And the fact it's being run almost entirely by left wing people is very problematic, especially with their pension for censorship.

Right. All right, well, I think Dan Crenshaw actually does a really good job with his social media.

And again, it's about going direct to consumer is what he does. And even with again, with the video and his Instagram account that has millions of followers on it, that's actually that's actually the way to combat this. He has built a heck of a brand that actually allows him to speak to people.

Without worrying about whether or not he's going to be censored or not, because it's his opinion that he is putting on his brain on his page. Yeah, this is how they can start to take that back through social media. Mean, that's actually what I intend on doing to here over the course of the next few years. The problem is you can be shadow band, you can be silenced, you tweet. And that's and that's the problem. Yeah.

And the fact that this has become a viable solution to a lot of people on the left, they think it's a wise thing to do.

Yes. Is cancel people. Yes. It's not it's not acceptable.

It's also a lot of these people are mentally ill that are doing this.

That's like legitimately meant when I say mentally ill, I mean overridden with anxiety and depression and spending hours and hours and hours a day getting in fights online.

That's an ill person, right? I mean, look, we want to talk about mental health, and this is something where people would push back against this. But I want you to consider this, OK, piece of mind like clarity. If you are arguing with people on Twitter, I would say right now you're mentally ill. If you're spending hours and hours every day, which a lot of these people are just arguing and shitting on people all day long, you're probably ill.

That's not optimal. That's not healthy.

It's not a it's not a great way of communicating. But these social media networks, they facilitate mental illness and a lot of waste. And a lot of these people.

Yeah, people that don't understand the negative consequences of engaging constantly, constantly in conflict.

Yeah, it's negativity. Yes. And negative. It's not wise. It's just not wise. And a lot of them are depressed. I've talked to people who, you know, I've talked to them after they've gotten off of these like Twitter binges. Now, like, do I got to stay off Twitter when I get depressed? I can't sleep at this. I mean, why don't we delete it?

Like, why don't you sleep? Think about that. I can't sleep. They get up in the middle of the night to check their Twitter.

They check to see if people are agreeing or disagreeing with them. They check to see who's who's angry at them and who's who's tweeting them because they're neurotic.

Oh, they go crazy and it's just so unhealthy. And then these people are the ones that think it's OK to silence other people, to disagree with them.

Progressor. It's wrong answer. It's wrong answer. But I think it needs to be. We need to figure out a way to regulate this like we regulate utilities. I really do.

I don't think trysting. I don't think you could call. So I don't think you could say, oh, it's a private company. They can do whatever they want.

That's a private company that reaches billions of people's right. Like it's a pipeline for communication. I understand that they created it, but it's being used by so many people and it's responsible for so much discourse.

The argument should be made, I think that this is one of the main forms of communication. And to deny people because of their political ideology, the access to this, I think is devastating.

And I think it's terrible for our country. It's terrible because it promotes division. That's right. It promotes more of the people on the right that are getting censored. They're going to hate the people even more.

And it creates that friction. It creates more friction. What can be done about this? It's a tough one, it's a tough one. What can be done about it is, again, when I always retreat and go back to that's conversations like this. So who's actually having conversations like this, by the way, about this topic? Not that many broadscale, not very many people. So what can be done about it is we have to increase the conversations like this with what's with what I believe can be reasonable people from all walks of life on both sides of the aisle.

We have to talk about this.

I think if there were reasonable people that were sitting here, no matter where you're from, no matter where you're from, no matter what race, color, religion, creed, a political affiliation, if we're sitting here listening to this conversation and I've read the Constitution and you've been in you've been in this country for the bulk of not even for the book of like you've lived in America for long enough to understand freedom and liberty. You hear this conversation, you would say maybe we should push back on that.

Yeah. Maybe we should. So this is what you're doing, honestly, as a leader, but just even having these conversations and we just need more of it. And we need to have conversations with leaders in politics and in entertaining in the entertainment industry. We have to have conversations with foreign countries and other leaders. This is how we started with leaders and industry and CEOs. We have to have these conversations.

I feel like we're at a time right now where we've just flat out stopped. We just were just yelling at each other. And we spent the better part of an hour myopic and literally talking about the crux of the problem, which is unconstitutional and against the First Amendment and our rights. Let's talk about that, what that means. And even in my in my opinion, maybe I don't know, you know, maybe I look I see the glass half full.

Even the most liberal person, if they were sitting here as a human being, looking at each other, would say they have a point.

I think liberal people that are objective would see the danger in censorship. Yes. And if they didn't, I don't know how they'd call themselves liberal. How are you going to call yourself progressive when you're anti communication? It's the antithesis of being liberal, yes, by not wanting to hear other people's opinion because it doesn't agree with yours is actually opposite of the word liberalism.

Yeah, it really is.

But in this day and age, it's really it's become so tribal that these people, they form these groups and then they live in these thought bubbles and they only want to communicate with people that agree with their ideology.

Yes. And they want it to be confirmed. They want confirmation bias. And that's what they want. They want to be surrounded by people that think the same way they do and that we're more polarized now than ever. It's just it's so disheartening.

I always push back on people that ask me that. I start a question off like this. Leslie, how could you.

Wrong. Let me let me just stop you right there. What do they say that about the question? Lots of things. Give me one. How could you how could you how could you be a black Republican? Oh, that's an interesting one.

How could you just just the wrong question to ask anybody. Right. The question is, is why are you or why do you. Yeah, if you're seeking to condemn or you're seeking to understand. If you're seeking to understand, you're asking the question why, because you want to learn something. Yes. If you're asking how do you or how could you?

You've already made your mind up, right. You're casting judgment with your question. You've already done it. You know, how much grief do you get for being black and being Republican at the same time?

I wouldn't say I wouldn't say I wouldn't say grief, I do get a lot of pushback. I get a lot of pushback on social media, as you could probably imagine, until somebody sits down and they actually have a conversation with me. Right.

And then all and then all of the sudden you're reasonable all of a sudden?

Well, I can't imagine anybody listening in this conversation. Nothing is reasonable. Right.

But if you look at you look at a tweet or soundbites, you look at a briefing thing, try to categorize someone. You the absence of nuance is very dangerous.

Yes, it is. And eliminating nuance from clearly nuanced discussions. All right. Human beings are nuanced. Yes, we are. Yeah. I mean, there's there's no ifs, ands or buts about our complicated super.

So except that. Right. And to try to boil someone down to a quote or to a demographic or to anything, a simplistic interpretation of possible to do that.

It's not wise, sir.

And when people do it, they're being disingenuous and they're being sneaky. Yeah, but that's more often now than not. It is. That's the problem. And we accept it.

And if it's if it goes along with our belief system or ideas or ideology will again go with it. Fuck em. Yeah.

Yeah. Part of my I don't know, I believe in serendipity and I'm just I don't know how I got here at this time at this place. And but I do think I'm here for a reason because. This is a courageous thing to be able to have these conversations than take it out to the public specifically in politics in this climate today. But it's kind of my mandate, I have to do it. Because if Dan doesn't do it and if I don't do it, then then literally nobody is going to do it.

Well, I'm very excited about the entrance of all these veterans getting into thank painkillers. Thank you. I think it's very important. It is.

And I think it's something that's been missing and lacking people with real world experience on these subjects that we discuss.

Yes. Yes, I agree. I'm happy there's guys like you and Dan and and many others that are entering into politics. And I think the people that have experienced the kind of things that you guys have experienced, there's an education that cannot be acquired any other way.

Right. Literally trial by fire. Yeah, literally, I'm just glad no one censored podcast yet. I don't think you let that happen, brother. I try not to fuck them.

And people get crazy depending on in the comedy, depending upon who gets into politics or who gets into power. Yeah.

I mean, look, there are dictatorships that are currently going on in this world. The idea that that could never happen here is preposterous.

Well, human beings can fall into all sorts of traps and they have throughout history. We are aware of those traps and we think, well, that won't happen to us.

We're always one generation away. Yes. Or one tragedy away and one tragedy or one decision that we make to give up rights in order to have safety and then, boom, next thing you know, guess what we've lost.

Someone's checking all your emails. Yep. Guess what? You can't express an opinion or guess what? You can't talk shit like men like to get together and talk shit. Oh, we do. We like. Yeah. And we say a bunch of shit that we probably don't even really mean. But it's funny to say.

Right, especially soldier dude I've been around so yeah.

SEALs have the most fucked up sense of humor. Oh my gosh. Some of these guys work security for me. Holy shit. They're hilarious.

Dark but funny. Yes. But if you took some of that shit and put it in a quote like, oh my God, like that. First of all, out of context. Yes, that person's terrible. Yeah. This is what they're planning like that.

I know he's talking shit. Don't you know we're talking shit. Is God especially with alcohol involved.

Oh my God. You know, and everyone talking shit knows it's talking shit.

That's why everybody's laughing. That's right. Yeah that's right. We all we are all in on the joke. Yes. Talking shit is a very important part of human beings. It is. It's very important part of men, men and discourse.

Yeah, that's right. If a man can't talk shit with me, I can't talk to them because you can't talk shit.

Come on man. Yeah. You can't talk a little shit. It's fun. Like the the half smile while you're saying things like yo yo, you know, you got to look at our you know you but we both know we're doing we're talking shit.

Yeah. Yeah. I think talking shit is very important. That's OK.

It gets demonized so much and it becomes a part of this whole narrative of toxic toxic masculinity.

And listen, if it wasn't for toxic masculinity, we'd all be speaking German.

So shut the fuck exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly right. Because because it is toxic. It was toxic masculinity that stormed the beaches of North. Yeah, it's not a barrage of machine gun fire. It's just masculinity.

And by the way, here's the dirty secret women love masculine man. Sorry, guys.

Sorry, dorks. You're not going to fix that. You're not going to fix you're not going to change that. That's just how it is. We're animals. Human beings are animals. And we we we are animals.

Yeah, we're complicated. We are complicated. And you can't you can't boil down to like some fucking ridiculous Disneyfied narrative that you'd like us to fall into. But there's this there's an inclination to do that. Today, Roy Jones Junior talked about on the podcast. He's like, they're trying to neuter men. That's right. And that is how it feels like they're trying to socially neuter men to get them to fall into a pattern that they would like because it's easier to control people in that way.

And it also it eliminates the kind of competition that you can't win if you're a nerdy, feminine man and you view toxic masculinity, you men who are very masculine as something you can never be, you want to try to eliminate that or you want to try to control that. And you see a lot of that. You see a lot of it from people that have had bad interactions with men.

There's a way to be tactful and there's a way to be respectful and still maintain your masculinity.

Yes, but you also I was going to get to you see a lot of shitty men that want to neuter women.

They want to assert, yeah, they want they don't like strong women.

They don't like power because they've had bad relationships with women or they've had women that didn't like them or that they feel bad about the relationships with them because the women dismissed them or weren't interested in them or you know, or just it's just you see what that was say when you do that.

So you don't have a westling in Orinda. Not because my sister went to West Point first. She is a strong woman that actually set quite the example for my brother and I, that's why we all three women. Yes.

So so why would I want to take away her strength and her power and her individuality to actually lead men and women and also be a good example for her brothers.

Yes. Who are too masculine guys. But here's the thing. Strong people. Yes. Appreciate strong people, period. Weak people don't like strong people.

That's where it comes down to. It has the masculine, feminine thing. That's a trap. Yes. There's a lot of strong women.

Yes. Who love masculine men. There's a lot of strong men who love powerful women. They don't fear it because they're not weak. Right.

A few days ago, I got to meet Nikki Haley in person. She is remarkable.

She's a strong leader. I don't know who Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley, she's the former governor of South Carolina, U.N. ambassador under President Trump. Unbelievable, you could tell she's strong, she is. Level headed, she is extremely shrewd, she's extremely smart, she's amazing, and I'm sitting at the table with her and it's me and her and my wife and Dan and and Tara Crenshaw. And we're sitting there and I'm looking at Dan Dan's looking at me.

I'm like I mean, she is incredible. That has nothing to do with her being a woman or me playing Apache's or Dan being a SEAL. She is a strong person. She's a strong woman. She is a leader. Exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. That's that's what we need. And that's what we need to get to. Yes. That's what we need to get to. We need to we need to celebrate powerful people. That's right.

People who are strong people who are leaders and want to stand for something. Yes. People exemplify what we what we enjoy seeing in others.

Great character, great intelligence, integrity. Right. Someone is interesting.

Mental strength. Yes. Yes. All those things. Yes. We should really reinforce that and celebrate those things. Don't celebrate those to celebrate. Exactly.

Yeah. Exactly. What else what other subjects you think we need to cover.

I think you made an awesome point today. I really do have it covered at all. I hope these motherfuckers vote for it.

Yeah. Yeah, they get out. I hope we get the word out and they see the podcast. Oh me too.

And we're working hard at it. And again, I just want to say always, always, always. I am an American first and I'm proud of it. You can't tell me this is not the greatest experiment in history of this world, and I'm just blessed to be a part of it.

You can't tell me that either. Can't tell you cannot tell me otherwise. No, I love it.

I love it. I love it.

And I love the guys like you are out there. Thank you, brother. Trying to represent America correctly. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you. Thank you. My pleasure.

Tell people one more time what district. How to get after it.

Sir, it's Houston, Texas. Congressional District seven. On my Web site is Wesley for Texas, dot com Wesley for Texas.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, brother, very much. Awesome. Thank you, sweetheart. Ladies and gentlemen, you know what to do.

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