0:10

Welcome to Tucker Carlson show. It's become

0:12

pretty clear that the mainstream media are

0:15

dying. They can't die quickly enough. And

0:17

there's a reason they're dying because they

0:19

lie. They lied so much. It killed

0:21

them. We're not doing that. Tucker carlson.com

0:23

we promised to bring you the most

0:25

honest content, the most honest interviews we

0:27

can without fear or favor. Here's the

0:29

latest. Do you know James Carville? Yes.

0:31

So he got stuck at a roast

0:33

one time when we worked together in

0:35

New Orleans and had to take a

0:37

leak and was on C-SPAN and

0:41

on the table, which I have seen, he's sitting there and he's

0:43

kind of shuffling in a seat. All of a sudden he takes

0:45

this water pitcher off the table and sort of six,

0:47

we get in the water. Oh gosh.

0:53

So what, what is that thing moving

0:56

on your lapel on your

0:58

pocket? That's the debt. That's my

1:00

anxiety generator. So it's

1:02

actually making me really anxious. Is that, is

1:04

that real time? Yes. So it's

1:07

synced to treasury. It gets the

1:09

debt to the penny once a day. And then

1:11

it looks at what the debt was a year

1:13

ago and it comes up with a rolling average

1:15

debt per second. And it interpolates on weekends and

1:17

holidays when the, when the treasury is not paying

1:19

attention. I am. So I think you're the only

1:21

one who wants to know. Yes.

1:24

And I want my colleagues to know, and it's

1:26

great to wear this thing in an elevator with

1:28

like Adam Schiff and he's got nowhere to look.

1:31

I once caught a female congresswoman staring at

1:34

it and had to tell her my eyes

1:36

were up here. She

1:38

asked me why I didn't make a belt buckle out

1:40

of it. Can

1:42

you say who it was? Cause

1:44

I like, No, I cannot. Oh,

1:46

she's funny. That's very impressive. So

1:49

what's the message of it? The

1:51

message is, this is urgent. You know,

1:53

it's, it's hard to comprehend 14 digits

1:55

of debt, but when you see the last

1:58

five digits are moving so fast. you

2:00

can't perceive them with your

2:02

eyes, then you kind of understand, whoa, we

2:04

got a problem here. I mean, it's $100,000

2:06

a second roughly. So

2:09

imagine we had this catapult and we

2:12

were launching a cyber trucks once a

2:14

second into the ocean. That's how much

2:16

debt we're taking on continuously.

2:19

Now there is some good news. I

2:21

noticed last month it went

2:23

down and I'm like,

2:25

is my debt clock broken? Why is it going down? And

2:27

then I realized, oh, it's April 15th. Everybody's

2:30

paying their taxes. So

2:33

the good news is we balanced it for a

2:35

month. The bad news is April 15th is

2:37

the only reason that happened and now the

2:39

debt's going back up again. So maybe when

2:42

it gets so big, it becomes something

2:44

that you have to ignore. It's almost

2:46

like if you fall off the wagon

2:48

from drinking, you binge. If you fall

2:50

off your New Year's diet, you just eat the pizza and

2:53

the bread and the cherries. Like, why do you care? You

2:55

know, you sort of go crazy. And it feels

2:57

like we're there. I

2:59

am trying to make people feel very uncomfortable. I

3:02

wear this on the floor of the house. And

3:05

people literally they'll press the button that

3:08

says yay or nay. I've argued we

3:10

should relabel the voting button spend and

3:12

don't spend. They're red and

3:14

green if you got that far and can't read. I

3:17

say it's like stop and go, but I've seen

3:19

people press the spend button, then turn around and

3:21

look at my debt badge and ask did it just

3:23

go up? But I want them to

3:25

realize there are consequences to

3:27

what they're doing because they have been, I think, as you said,

3:29

just ignoring it, putting it off to the side. It

3:32

almost feels like, you know, it's so big that

3:35

why even deal with it? That's

3:38

where we are. We're kind of, I think a

3:40

lot of lawmakers are apathetic. You're

3:42

like, well, we can't fix it. We're not going

3:44

to fix it. We might as well indulge in

3:46

it and I'll see what I can get. Well,

3:48

exactly. Yeah. So where does it end? Right

3:53

now we're able to finance it because

3:55

we're the world's reserve currency. And

3:57

when we print more money, which

4:00

we're doing all the time, the Fed

4:02

is doing that. We're actually taxing the

4:04

world. Everybody in the world who holds

4:06

dollars gets like a 3% transaction

4:08

fee. I say we're kind of like the

4:10

credit card at the gas station that gets

4:12

3% because you're using that credit card. Well,

4:14

we get 3% from inflation we

4:17

cause because the world is using

4:20

our currency and we can do that as long

4:22

as they use our currency. But I think it's

4:24

going to end at some point.

4:26

They're going to quit using our dollars as reserve

4:28

currency. I mean, I watched your

4:30

interview with Putin and one of

4:33

the things, whether you hate him or

4:35

not, one of the things

4:37

he said that is true is when we sanctioned

4:39

him before we sanctioned Russia, 70% of

4:42

their transactions were in US dollars. And

4:44

after the sanctions, it's less than 20%

4:47

of their transactions are in US dollars. So

4:49

what we're doing with all these sanctions, ironically,

4:52

we're shooting ourselves in the foot every time

4:54

we sanction a country and say you can't

4:56

use our currency to have a transaction.

4:58

We're taking away our ability to charge

5:00

them 3% for

5:03

that transaction because when we print 3% more

5:05

dollars, we're just taking that money. And we're also

5:07

sending a really clear signal, which is the dollar

5:09

is not safe for you. Right. That's

5:12

the reserve currency because it's a safe haven because

5:14

it's a stable country. It's the most stable country

5:16

in the world and we're not going to weaponize

5:18

the dollar because that would be shooting ourselves. But

5:21

suddenly we are. And they'll

5:23

tolerate like 3% because

5:25

we're not backed by dollars, we're backed by

5:27

aircraft carriers right now. So they'll sort of

5:30

tolerate that 3%. But one of

5:32

the things we recently did in Congress, we

5:34

passed something called the repo act, where we

5:36

said we're just going to seize all of

5:38

Russia's sovereign assets in the United States. Well,

5:40

it turns out a lot of that is

5:42

treasury debt that they've agreed to buy so

5:44

that they can hold dollars. And

5:47

here's the problem with that. When

5:49

people see that we've seized their

5:51

money that they gave us in exchange

5:53

for these treasury notes, then

5:55

other countries won't want to buy our

5:57

debt. It's already happening. price

6:00

of a long-term bond that the Treasury puts

6:02

out will go, it's already gone above 4%.

6:05

It's like over 4.5%. They don't

6:07

want to buy them anymore because

6:10

we probably wouldn't seize Great Britain's assets,

6:12

but I could see a seizing China's

6:15

assets. Why would, I mean, that seems

6:17

like theft. Just like take a

6:19

country's assets when it belongs to the people of the

6:21

country, right, such as Putin. It

6:23

is theft. It's immoral, but

6:25

even if you're okay with the

6:28

amorality or immorality of it, it's

6:30

short-sighted because eventually it'll catch up

6:32

with us. So do any of the dumbos you

6:34

work with understand that? Did you say, wait a

6:36

second, if we do this, first of all, it's

6:38

wrong. And if we're going to be a beacon

6:40

of light and order and justice in the world,

6:43

we should abide by those

6:45

principles. But even if you don't care about

6:47

the, even if, as you said, you're amoral,

6:49

like it's self-defeating to do this. Do they understand

6:51

that? Some of them understand

6:53

it, but it doesn't matter. They'll still vote

6:55

for something like the repo act anyway, because

6:57

it's popular. With whom?

7:01

With voters. They think, yeah, take Russia's money.

7:03

Like, you know, let's take, yeah, yeah, that'd

7:05

be great. Let's take their money and use

7:07

it in a war against them. It kind

7:10

of feels good, but the problem is it's

7:12

not moral in the long run and it

7:14

won't work in the long run, even if you were okay

7:16

with it. Why are we in a war with Russia? I've

7:19

never figured that out. Why Russia? It

7:21

almost seems like they picked it off a map. Like, why would it

7:23

be a war with Russia? You know, what's interesting

7:25

is we were in Afghanistan and I

7:27

was tracking this. I talked to the

7:29

special inspector general, John Sopco, about

7:32

twice a year about the money that was being

7:34

wasted in Afghanistan. It was about $50 billion

7:37

a year. And I was glad to see

7:39

us get out of Afghanistan, but kind of

7:41

like feathering the clutch and

7:43

shifting gears, we just went from second

7:45

gear to third gear because as soon

7:47

as we quit spending $50 billion a

7:49

year in Afghanistan, we started spending more

7:51

than $50 billion a year in Ukraine.

7:53

There's a military industrial complex. They call

7:55

it the defense industrial base. Now in the

7:57

United States, they say we have to, they're

8:00

hungry and we got to keep them fed.

8:02

And since we don't have any of our

8:04

own wars, and we don't have a reason

8:06

to deplete our stocks and our bombs and

8:08

weapons that we have, we'll engage in these

8:10

other things to keep them healthy and thriving.

8:12

In fact, the Biden administration even made that

8:14

argument in a letter to Congress for

8:17

why we should do this supplemental foreign

8:19

aid to Israel, to Ukraine, to Taiwan.

8:22

They made the argument that the defense

8:24

industrial base needs to be strong. And

8:26

so we need to spend this money.

8:29

And they gave a list of all

8:31

the states in the United States that would benefit

8:33

from this spending. And that's why they said we

8:35

should do it. But if you're, if I mean,

8:37

like, everyone who lives here wants to be proud

8:40

of the country, I always have been. And I'm

8:42

proud of its people still. But if your

8:44

main export is death, you

8:47

know that I mean, why? It

8:49

doesn't work in the long run. I mean, there is a

8:51

blowback. What's wrong? We're engendering a lot

8:53

of ill will. Look, 10 years

8:56

ago, even more

8:58

recently than that, the only way we could

9:00

get to the space station was on a

9:02

Russian rocket. Right. And we, you know, we

9:04

had a collaboration with them. We were able

9:06

to get to space that way. And

9:09

now we don't. I mean,

9:11

it's, and the bad thing that's, you

9:13

know, like in the Middle East, Israel

9:17

is creating tens of

9:19

thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who

9:21

are going to have to hate the United

9:23

States and, you know, they're going to hate

9:25

Israel also. But because we're giving

9:28

Israel the weapons to do what they're doing, we're

9:30

creating a lot of people who hate us in

9:32

this country. But we're told

9:34

that it's essential to our national security to do

9:36

that. Do you believe that? No,

9:38

I don't see that. I mean,

9:40

one of the reasons, like I said, the Biden

9:43

letter said, well, we need to keep our industrial

9:45

base strong. So let's fund all these weapons and

9:47

send them over. But I don't

9:49

see how it's strengthening our country. In fact,

9:51

we're getting weaker by doing it. So

9:54

you've been, I think the lone Republican

9:56

to dissent from a lot of these votes. Can

9:58

you, how many. votes have there been on this

10:01

question and where have you voted on them?

10:04

Oh, I've tried to keep track. There were

10:06

something like 18 votes

10:08

on Ukraine and I

10:10

voted against every one of them since like

10:13

2014 when we started, you

10:15

know, saber rattling. We

10:17

do these non-binding resolutions, whereas,

10:19

you know, Russia's evil. And

10:22

you know, whereas we support democracy.

10:24

Now, even then we knew that

10:27

Ukraine was just corrupt as

10:29

hell. But, you know, I

10:31

the most corrupt country in Europe by

10:33

far. Yeah. So I started, you

10:35

know, there's been 16 or 20 votes on Ukraine. I've

10:38

been against all of those. Just in

10:40

the last seven months, there have been

10:43

probably 30 votes on Israel in

10:45

the Middle East. 30? 30. There

10:48

were somebody. How many votes on the US border during that

10:50

time? Maybe

10:53

maybe four show votes that, you know,

10:55

where we know they're going nowhere in

10:57

the Senate. Look,

11:00

we haven't named their host offices. In

11:03

last month, we voted like 15 or 16

11:06

times on issues related to Israel. And,

11:10

you know, I've been hit because I voted no

11:12

on all of that. Why do you because you

11:14

hate Israel or is there another reason? No, because

11:16

I'm against sending our

11:18

money overseas. I'm against starting another

11:21

proxy war. I'm against sanctions

11:23

because it's going to weaken the dollar. I'm

11:26

for free speech. Like all of these

11:28

resolutions run afoul of those things. And

11:30

that's why I can't vote for them.

11:33

Tell us what the free speech part of

11:35

it. So recently they brought a

11:37

bill to Congress and this was

11:39

actually a binding bill, not a nonbinding resolution.

11:41

Like this was going to have the effect

11:43

of law and people would get, you know,

11:46

prosecuted if they engaged

11:48

in anti-Semitism on campuses. And the

11:50

problem with this bill is they

11:52

use some international definition of anti-Semitism

11:54

on a website somewhere. My first

11:56

question is, why don't you just

11:58

put the definition in. jail,

24:00

which they did on a FARA

24:02

violation and a bunch of other people in

24:04

jail on FARA violations, but the largest and

24:07

most effective and most feared foreign lobby working

24:09

for a foreign government doesn't have to register

24:11

under the law. That's insane. Oh

24:14

man, don't make me take their side, but

24:16

I'll explain as best as I can what

24:18

their argument is. Oh, maybe, I

24:20

mean, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they should take their side. I don't

24:22

know. Well, I'm going to agree with you in a second, but

24:24

let me at least offer what I think is their argument. They

24:27

would say, we are Americans, the

24:30

members of APAC are

24:32

Americans, and they have the

24:35

right to free speech. Paul Manafort's an

24:37

American. Right, right. Yeah, so there's the

24:39

good rebuttal as FARA applies not to

24:42

foreigners, to foreign agents

24:45

of foreign principles, agents of foreign principles.

24:47

It's Americans lobbying on behalf of foreign

24:49

governments. Correct. So this is, APAC is

24:51

exactly what FARA is meant for. Now

24:53

they would say, and we have a

24:55

first amendment, right? Okay. Well, I

24:58

agree with you there, but we also have election laws

25:01

and to the, it's disclosure, right? We're,

25:03

they're not, FARA doesn't say you can't

25:05

say Thomas Massie's, you know, an ignorant

25:07

hillbilly. You're allowed to say that if

25:09

you want to, but we just want

25:11

to check where your money's coming from.

25:13

Tell us where it's coming from, what

25:16

you're spending it on. And

25:18

if you are lobbying on behalf of a foreign

25:20

country, so they

25:22

should be now to your point, they

25:24

should be registered with FARA. This is

25:27

what FARA is, is where there's gray

25:29

area, where it's an American representing a

25:31

foreign country. Let's look

25:33

and see if you're getting any money

25:35

from that foreign country. Are you a

25:37

dual citizen with that foreign country? Are

25:39

you being directed by, for

25:42

instance, is Netanyahu speaking to your group,

25:44

advising you on your next move? Those,

25:47

are you getting money from the

25:49

military industrial complex? Like, because to

25:52

understand APAC, I think it's

25:54

easiest to model them as a military

25:58

industrial lobby. statewide.

34:00

They're worried that I'll run for McConnell's seat.

34:03

And so they're trying to send me a message. That's what

34:05

they would tell you. But

34:09

why? I don't know what the

34:11

message is. Maybe it's a little presumptuous to decide.

34:13

I've never said that

34:15

I'm running for the Senate, right? Yeah,

34:17

I, I pretty much disinterested in it

34:20

personally and publicly. But

34:23

just in case they're running ads statewide.

34:25

Now, mind you, there are six congressional

34:27

districts in Kentucky, and I only represent

34:29

one of them. They're running the ads

34:31

in all six congressional districts just in

34:34

case. Amazing. What do you

34:36

think of Mitch McConnell after all these years of

34:38

being in the delegation with him? He's

34:41

a shrewd guy. Yep. He's quick.

34:43

He's, let

34:46

me, let me give you an example of how quick he is. So

34:49

we had a Congressman Jamie Comer, who's now chair of

34:51

the oversight committee. He got elected in a special election,

34:53

which means you come in in the middle of a

34:55

term. And you have to boot up

34:57

with no staff. And so it's,

34:59

it's kind of, you know, disorienting.

35:02

So Mitch McConnell had a, had

35:05

an event for Jamie Comer on his first day in Congress.

35:07

It was in a townhouse with like 200 lobbyists. By the

35:09

way, I'm never going to get invited to one of these

35:11

now that I tell you the story. And

35:14

so Jamie's there and McConnell

35:16

goes, I believe Jamie

35:18

took his first vote tonight. And

35:21

that is such a perfect imitation.

35:24

And I wasn't supposed to speak, but I

35:27

interrupted Senator McConnell, who was at the time

35:29

the majority leader. And I

35:31

said, yes, Senator McConnell, he did take

35:33

his first vote and I know he

35:35

has no staff. So I advise Jamie,

35:37

when you walk into the chamber, look

35:39

at how I vote and

35:41

then vote the other way and you'll be just

35:43

fine. And every, you know,

35:45

200 lobbyists thought I was a

35:48

pretty good joke and they were laughing. And as the laughter

35:50

died down, I guess, well,

35:52

Thomas, I'm glad you and I

35:54

are giving Jamie the same advice. And

35:59

then the and

40:00

they know things we don't. But you can expose

40:02

them with two or three questions like how

40:04

many Ukrainians have died and they refuse to answer.

40:06

I've asked that very same question to

40:09

Mike Johnson actually directly. But

40:18

I've also asked him and a number

40:20

of committee chairman just in personal conversations,

40:22

do you believe your Intel briefings?

40:24

Because only a child would believe an Intel briefing.

40:26

They get at face value, there may be truth

40:28

in there. Right. It may

40:30

be largely true, but you're being spun,

40:32

you're being manipulated. And if you don't

40:35

know that, then you're a moron. But

40:37

they seem to believe them. Because

40:41

they have no other reference. And then here's what else

40:43

happens, Tucker. When you go into

40:45

a classified setting, like a skiff, you

40:48

lock up your phone, you take off

40:50

your Fitbit, you take every electronic device,

40:52

they even make me take off my

40:55

debt badge. What? I know. Do

40:58

you feel naked? I feel exposed. I

41:01

do feel naked if I'm not wearing this.

41:03

I've been wearing it for a year every

41:05

day of my life. Okay. But

41:07

they make you the strip you

41:10

of every outside reference. Okay. And

41:12

now your staff is not allowed

41:14

in that meeting either. Remember,

41:16

congressmen are primary roles

41:19

are like raising money, being

41:22

friendly to constituents, you know,

41:25

putting on a good face, campaigning. And then

41:27

then, you know, once a day or maybe

41:29

twice a day, we roll in there and

41:32

press the vote buttons based on what staff

41:34

advises you. Well, when you go into a

41:36

skiff, you don't have your smartphone. So you're

41:38

not very smart. They start using acronyms that

41:40

you don't know. Remember what the

41:42

acronym stands for. You can't just like, okay,

41:45

what are what's the IDG FBZ? I don't

41:47

know, man, I must be stupid. Like,

41:50

but you know, if you were in a regular setting,

41:52

you just pull your phone out and like, oh, okay,

41:54

that's what that is. I know what that is. And

41:56

then you also can't ask your staff a

41:59

question while you're in that setting, you know, we have

42:02

legislative staffers who handle

42:04

certain specific areas, of course, you can't bring them

42:06

in. And then when you go back to the

42:08

office, you can't tell them what you heard. So

42:11

it's really quite an experience.

42:14

It's sort of it's, you know, it's a deprivation

42:17

experience of any outside reference. So it's

42:19

designed to produce Stockholm syndrome, it sounds

42:22

like. Yes. And when you get in

42:24

there, they really don't give you classified

42:26

information. I say there's three levels of

42:29

classification in the skiff. There's Facebook level,

42:31

there's Twitter level, and there's New York

42:33

Times. Like, and the New

42:36

York Times level is the highest level of

42:38

classification. I mean, it's you're getting

42:40

to the good stuff when they're telling you what's in

42:42

the New York Times that week. Have

42:45

you ever heard anything you thought was genuinely

42:47

secret? Occasionally, just a few

42:49

times. And obviously, I can't say what

42:51

that is. But they slip up and

42:54

commit candor occasionally in there. And you're

42:56

like, Whoa, I didn't know that.

42:58

You know, nothing like what's at Area 51. Right.

43:01

But occasionally, you're like, What do people

43:03

think is Area 51? By the way,

43:05

I don't know. I'm not a you

43:07

guys passed this law, the UAP disclosure

43:10

Act of 2023. And then they never

43:12

disclosed anything. What is that? Not

43:14

my area of expertise. Yes. Don't know. But

43:17

do members of Congress ever say, Wait a

43:19

second, we're a co equal branch for the

43:21

legislative branch, we have as much power as

43:23

the president collectively. And you

43:25

can't keep this stuff secret from us. You're not

43:27

allowed to do that. But see, like I have

43:30

this in hearings all the time. They'll say LSATF

43:32

director, this is this happened just last week. Dettlebock,

43:35

or I'll ask Merrick Garland

43:37

something, or Christopher Ray,

43:40

like I've asked all them this

43:42

and they give you the same

43:44

answer. It's long standing DOJ policy,

43:47

not to comment on on ongoing

43:49

investigations. And you know what,

43:51

that's fine to tell a reporter, but

43:53

you can't tell the branch of government

43:55

that created you that that funded you,

43:58

you can't tell them that that's So

46:00

this self selects for likable people, but likable

46:02

people want to be liked. And

46:04

they're not surrounded by their wives and children who

46:06

usually give them plenty of like, right? When they're

46:09

in DC, it's like, who am I going to

46:11

go to dinner with tonight? Well, I want to

46:13

eat food with somebody that likes me, right? So

46:16

if you're not going to eat alone, and

46:18

you have to be liked, and you generally

46:20

have to be liked to get elected to

46:22

Congress, you better be liked. And so it's

46:24

literally, it's almost like kindergarten when somebody says,

46:26

I won't be your friend anymore. If you

46:28

don't, you know, give me your lunch. Congressman

46:32

fall for that, you know, they're in their

46:34

30s, 40s, 50s, and they fall for that.

46:36

How do you have it's interesting, you like

46:38

people. I've asked around, you don't seem to

46:40

have any real enemies in the Congress. I

46:42

don't even think a pack hates you. They

46:44

just want you to obey, but it's not,

46:47

it doesn't seem personal, right? You don't seem

46:49

to be at personal war with anybody. That's

46:52

my take on I have a mutation. So

46:55

you like people, okay? And obviously, you're not

46:57

some weird autistic who doesn't care about other

46:59

people. You like other people. I love people.

47:01

I can tell. And your colleagues say

47:03

that. But you also don't

47:06

feel like you need to fit

47:08

in, right? Same time. Like what

47:10

is that? It's a mutation that

47:12

chromosome, the like the liking people

47:14

and likability. chromosome usually has

47:17

another gene on it right next to it,

47:19

which is the need to be liked. And

47:22

I'm missing the need to be like Gene. I

47:25

don't know what happened. I

47:28

can go like on the CARES Act. Okay. This

47:31

was under President Trump, the 11th

47:33

day to slow the spread of 15, right? They

47:37

said we're going to pass a

47:39

$2.2 trillion package, and you all

47:41

just stay home. It's dangerous. Like,

47:44

we'll just do it by unanimous consent. And

47:47

it was 11pm. I'm sitting in my living

47:49

room, and they send us this message. And

47:51

I'm like, WTF? Like this

47:53

is twice the size of the omnibus bill,

47:55

right? This is going to cause massive inflation.

47:57

The public... policies ended are going to cause

47:59

shortages. And if we don't show up to

48:02

vote, we're sending a message to all 50

48:04

states that you don't have to show up

48:06

to vote in this election. So

48:08

it was like, wait, I got to do so I

48:10

got my car and I drove eight hours. I slept

48:12

one hour in a rest stop because I knew I

48:14

had to be there by 9am. This was March 27

48:16

2020. Actually, the

48:20

25th is the day I got to Congress to stop

48:22

it. And I

48:24

got there and I said it's not going

48:26

by unanimous consent. And I was literally sleeping

48:28

in my wife's SUV eating those peanut butter

48:31

filled pretzels like I had a big jug

48:34

of those are good. Yeah, for my three

48:36

days of nourishment. I'm sending SUV eating that

48:38

big tub of pretzels with peanut butter in

48:40

the middle, like waiting, just waiting for them

48:43

to try to call it in session and

48:45

sneak this bill passed. And they're like, shit,

48:47

Massey's gonna do it. So

48:50

they, they loaded up congressman, you know,

48:52

the airports were shut down for the most

48:54

part, there were some planes coming from California,

48:56

they only had two passengers and they were

48:58

both congressmen. So they they roll them all

49:00

back to Congress. It takes

49:02

them two days to assemble a quorum. Because

49:05

I like they went to the parliamentarian and

49:07

they're like, is there any way around this?

49:09

And he's like, Nope, Massey's right. The Constitution

49:11

requires a quorum if one, you

49:13

know, he didn't call me an asshole. But if

49:15

one asshole just shows up, the Jax, it says

49:17

there's no quorum here. So they brought every back,

49:20

I go to the floor, actually

49:23

got everybody was hating

49:25

me. I mean, everybody. Did

49:27

you know what it's like to be in a room of 434 people

49:30

and they're all staring at you like there

49:33

I had maybe 10 friends who

49:36

were like looking at me like that guy

49:38

is dead. Like I was never seen Harry

49:40

Carey like this. They were

49:42

worried for me, but the rest of them hated me. They're

49:45

they would come up to me and say, I live

49:48

with my mother. And when I go back

49:50

home, you're going to cause me to take

49:52

COVID to her and she's going to die.

49:54

And I'm blaming you for this. And I

49:57

said that's your face. Yeah, oh, yeah. Well,

49:59

like, no, it It wasn't just one, it was

50:01

like when he was done, there was a line of

50:03

people. I just stood there and they're all coming to

50:05

hate on me. And

50:08

I was like, but what about the guy that's

50:10

going to the grocery store and bagging your groceries

50:12

and carrying them out to the car? Does he

50:14

live with his mother too? What

50:17

about the trucker who's out there driving and

50:19

interacting with people in order to get the

50:21

goods to where you need to be? What

50:23

about the nurse who's going to work every

50:25

single day taking care of people? Is

50:27

she going to kill her parents? Why

50:30

are you special? Like you're supposed to, you know,

50:32

they, they carved a hole in the side of

50:34

a mountain in West Virginia for us in the

50:36

case of emergency. Yes. Well,

50:38

the sad, but, but realistic thing is now

50:40

they don't have a place for us. We're

50:43

so useless, right? They just like, well, here's

50:45

where we were going to keep them if

50:47

shit hit the fan. But now we've realized

50:50

they're like useless. We can declare

50:52

war without them in the event of a nuclear

50:54

strike. So you know, they're just a rounding

50:56

error in the three branches

50:58

we can operate with too. Yes,

51:00

I've noticed. So anyways, these are the kind of people

51:03

who are supposed to respond in an emergency and they

51:05

all wanted to stay home. They all hated me for,

51:07

for recognizing our constitutional duty.

51:10

And Trump called me three times on

51:12

the floor of the house while I was

51:15

getting ready to make the motion to object. And

51:17

I let it go to voicemail three times in

51:19

a row, which is probably not good, but I

51:22

couldn't leave the microphone because I was asking people,

51:24

would you make this motion if I go to

51:26

the restroom? And they're like, Oh no. I

51:29

mean, so I, I

51:32

sat there. I finally, they yielded time for

51:34

debate. I go off the floor and called

51:36

the white house switchboard back and,

51:39

and you know, I didn't have his number. I just

51:41

like, if you want to tour the white house, you

51:43

call the number I called, right? And

51:45

the intern is like, Oh, is this Congress and Massey?

51:47

I'm putting you through to Trump right now. And

51:51

so he comes off and he goes, I'm coming

51:53

at you like you've never seen, never in your

51:55

life before. Have you seen the way in which

51:57

I will come at you? popular

52:00

than you in Kentucky and you know

52:02

it. I'm back in your primary opponent

52:04

and you're gonna lose. And

52:09

I'm like, oh crap, I probably will

52:11

lose. I mean, he had

52:13

95% popularity in among my

52:16

Republican electorate who I had

52:18

to face in about eight weeks in my primary. And

52:21

I had a well-funded opponent in here. Now,

52:23

Trump was mad at me. So he

52:25

screamed at me for two or three minutes. I kept

52:27

trying to talk and he just screamed louder. Then

52:30

he repeated it all. He goes, no, this

52:32

is the second time you've done something like

52:34

this. And they took me out

52:36

of it before, but not this time. And

52:39

then you're gonna lose. And

52:41

he hangs up. And like, the

52:43

thing is, like, I had, he said, he

52:45

thought it was the second time. I'd done

52:47

that like eight times since he was president.

52:49

He just started realizing it's the same guy.

52:53

The time before that was on

52:55

war with Iran. The Democrats were

52:58

in the majority and,

53:00

you know, he had just vaporized Soleimani.

53:02

And we were worried that he would

53:05

attack mainland Iran without a vote of

53:07

Congress. So the Democrats actually insincerely. There

53:09

aren't too many anti-war Democrats left. I've

53:12

noticed. But they realized this was a

53:14

chance to make a statement. So

53:16

they put a bill on the floor saying Trump,

53:18

you can't go to war with Iran without a

53:20

vote of Congress, which is constitutionally obvious. So I

53:22

had to vote for it, but I was only

53:24

one of three Republicans to do it. So he

53:27

remembered that time, but he didn't remember the fake

53:29

Obamacare repeal and some of the other things that

53:32

I was kind of, you know, the turd in

53:34

the punch bowl on. Did it change

53:36

your views at all? No.

53:40

The president tweeted that I was a

53:42

third-rate grandstander. And this

53:45

is before I got back to my seat. I

53:48

go back from the speaker slobby to go to my seat

53:50

to get ready to make the motion. And one

53:53

of the Congress was like, you better look at your phone,

53:55

Massey. Look at your Twitter. And I turn it on. He's

53:57

like tweeting hard and heavy against me. He said I should

53:59

be thi- thrown out of the party. Then

54:01

the best one is I'm chairman of the

54:04

Second Amendment Caucus. So his

54:06

third tweet was, he's terrible on guns.

54:09

I was like, what? Where did that come from?

54:12

Have you seen my Christmas card picture?

54:14

Great. What's your Christmas card

54:16

picture? Well, it's a little

54:18

infamous. No, I've actually seen it,

54:20

but I choose for the benefit

54:22

of those who have not. So, you know,

54:24

I got my family together for Christmas and

54:26

we got bluegrass instruments out. We play music

54:29

together and we took a Christmas card picture

54:31

with bluegrass instruments. And I said, hey, wouldn't

54:34

it be kind of neat if we just like change

54:36

these all out for machine guns and

54:38

took a picture. And that was supposed to

54:40

stay on my phone for eternity. But

54:43

I had had a couple of medical margaritas one

54:45

night. I don't do medical marijuana, but

54:47

I had a few medical margaritas and I looked

54:49

at that picture and I thought, well, that's pretty

54:51

good picture. It'd be a shame if nobody ever

54:53

saw it. And I tweeted it and

54:56

I caught all kinds of

54:58

hate for that. The arch- It's a great

55:00

picture. The Archbishop of Canterbury condemned it. This

55:03

is the head of the church of England

55:05

condemned my tweet. I'm like, oh my gosh.

55:07

Are you an Episcopalian? I'm

55:09

Methodist. Good. So you can ignore him. Yes.

55:12

Yeah. He's a disgrace. So

55:15

anyways, you know, the press asked me as

55:17

I'm, we're talking about

55:19

the need to be liked gene, right? If I

55:21

had that, I would have

55:23

been devastated that day. If I had

55:25

needed to be liked, I couldn't have

55:27

carried that through and I

55:30

walked out of that chamber. Everybody's hating me

55:33

in the chamber. Nancy Pelosi called me a

55:35

dangerous nuisance. CNN called me the most hated

55:37

person in DC. John

55:39

Kerry called me an asshole or

55:41

something. And President

55:43

Trump called me a third-rate grandstander. This is all

55:45

in the course of a few minutes, right? I

55:48

walk out of the chamber of the house and

55:50

the reporters like swarm me, you know, like they

55:52

do. And I'm just trying to run back to

55:54

the SUV with the pretzels with peanut butter in

55:56

them and get out of there.

55:59

And. The

56:02

press said, what do you have to say

56:04

for yourself? Your own president just called you

56:06

a third-rate grandstander. And I paused for a

56:08

second and I said, I was offended. I'm

56:11

at least second-rate. So

56:14

anyway. So what happened to your relationship with Trump? You

56:18

know, I think he respects people that stand up. Yeah. Even

56:21

if he disagrees with you. And

56:24

two years later, he did endorse me. No

56:27

way. Yep. Did

56:30

you get along with him? Okay. Now? Yeah. I

56:32

mean, I did endorse Ron DeSantis, not out

56:34

of spite or animosity

56:37

because we had already patched things up

56:40

just because I served with Ron DeSantis for six years. And

56:42

he and I were really good friends. We talked about

56:44

bills when he was in Congress. He he entered. He

56:48

and I fought over who was going to

56:50

introduce the bill to eliminate congressional pensions. And

56:52

he won and I co-sponsored it. Now I'm the sponsor now that he's

56:55

a governor. But I knew he was a good person and he thinks

56:57

things through and he was smart. So

56:59

I endorsed him. But, you

57:01

know, because I have I call it natural

57:03

immunity. I have Trump antibodies at this point. They

57:07

may wear off at some point. Do you think if you did run for

57:09

say just pulling us out of a hat, but governor of Kentucky, do you

57:11

think Trump would endorse you? I

57:17

don't know. You'd probably do

57:19

some polling and see who was winning. Fair.

57:22

Fair. Totally fair. I

57:25

wouldn't turn down an endorsement. Yeah. Yeah.

57:28

So it's it's not. So are you at

57:30

war with anybody in the Congress? No, I

57:32

get along with everybody. I

57:35

mean, and people try to use this against me. You

57:38

know, when APAC was running those ads

57:40

that say I always vote with AOC and

57:43

Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, you

57:45

know. So I introduced

57:47

an amendment and forced to vote on

57:50

eliminating the kill switch and automobiles that's mandated. Oh,

57:53

thank you. Yeah. Well,

57:55

I was losing Republicans on that. I lost like

57:57

20 Republicans. So I knew I

57:59

needed to. Just to be clear for the people

58:01

who don't know what you're talking about, in new

58:03

vehicles this has been the case for years, they

58:06

can be turned off remotely by the authorities,

58:09

which is like the most North Korean thing ever

58:12

to happen. That's what

58:14

you're talking about. Yeah, by 2026, every

58:16

new automobile sold has to be able

58:18

to turn itself off if

58:20

it doesn't like you're driving. So

58:24

I'm like, how do you appeal this conviction at

58:26

the roadside, right? Maybe you swerved to miss a

58:28

deer and pulled over for an ambulance and you

58:30

got your kids in the car and it stops.

58:32

How could anyone vote for something that evil? I

58:34

don't understand. Because again,

58:36

they know that I'm right,

58:39

but they're worried about, for instance, mothers against

58:41

drunk driving or they

58:44

don't have the bravery. Wait, we're, we just

58:46

let in millions of illegal aliens who are

58:48

allowed to drunk drive. Right. And

58:50

Biden has told us that drunk driving is not a big

58:52

deal. It's not grounds for deportation. Deportation. Yeah.

58:56

Who mothers against drunk driving as far as I know, he said nothing

58:58

about this. Like who cares what they think? I

59:01

know. And but there may be, let's say

59:03

one constituent in your district who gets ahold of you and

59:05

they lost a child to drunk driving, which is terrible. And

59:08

they say, you know, you

59:10

don't care about me if you vote

59:12

for Massey's amendment. And

59:14

you know, they make that personal phone

59:17

call. That congressman doesn't have the fortitude

59:19

to say or knowledge to say, look,

59:21

this technology can't work. I

59:23

really care about your child. I think you're

59:26

drunk driving is a scourge and I want

59:28

to fix it. But this is a false

59:30

promise and it's only going to increase the

59:32

price of automobiles and give the government more

59:34

control. So I'm going to

59:36

vote with Massey. They don't have the courage to say

59:38

that. So long

59:41

story short, I lost 20 Republicans. I

59:43

needed some Democrats. So I went over

59:45

to AOC who I get along with

59:47

just fine. Don't hate me for saying

59:49

that. I don't. And

59:51

I said, AOC, they're running ads right now that

59:53

say you always vote or that I always vote

59:55

with you just once. Could you vote with me?

59:58

Could you vote for my kill switches? amendment since they're

1:00:00

running ads the other way and she did. She

1:00:03

voted to defund the automobile kill switch

1:00:05

for her. So

1:00:14

she ran is interesting.

1:00:16

I mean, obviously I don't like her.

1:00:19

But I think she's talented. She

1:00:21

is definitely talented. But she ran

1:00:24

as a radical as someone from the outside, which

1:00:26

I'm of course, very sympathetic to, but

1:00:28

she doesn't seem to actually be that

1:00:30

person. So like, for example, on

1:00:33

the foreign aid stuff, how often does she

1:00:35

vote with you on? Quite,

1:00:37

quite frequently, but had a funny moment, you

1:00:40

know, this 15 or 16 votes

1:00:42

we had on Israel in April. Well,

1:00:44

the squad and I know

1:00:47

this is going to be used in the next ad against

1:00:49

me this clip from Tucker. But I

1:00:52

was the only no sometimes sometimes the most

1:00:55

of the squad voted with me, but I noticed

1:00:57

AOC wasn't always there with me. So I went

1:01:00

over to the squad on the Democrat side of

1:01:02

the aisle literally sit together. They hang

1:01:04

out together. Yeah, they kind of. It's

1:01:06

really clickish. Even you know, the Freedom

1:01:08

Caucus sits together. The Texas

1:01:12

delegation sits together. There are

1:01:14

different clicks. The appropriators sit

1:01:16

together. It's the military guys,

1:01:18

the Intel guys sit together. You know,

1:01:20

sometimes it's by state. Sometimes it's by

1:01:22

click. A lot of the congressional black

1:01:24

caucus sits together. I can't

1:01:27

get the Second Amendment caucus to sit together. That's

1:01:29

my car. They're too independent minded. Independent. But so

1:01:31

I go over to their. This is just high

1:01:33

school cafeteria. It's high school cafeteria. That's what it

1:01:36

is. And why would you again, they need to

1:01:38

be liked, right? They don't want to sit next

1:01:40

to people they don't like or who don't like

1:01:42

them. So I go over, I went over

1:01:44

to the squad a few weeks ago and I said, I

1:01:47

told AOC him for the squad, I said, we're going

1:01:49

to kick you out if you don't keep voting with

1:01:51

this more consistently. What did she say? She laughed. She

1:01:53

thought it was funny. I mean, she has a sense

1:01:55

of humor. These people are humans. There are 435. I

1:01:58

call them goldfish

1:02:00

in the aquarium. You have to

1:02:02

get 218 of them to pass

1:02:04

a bill. So it doesn't benefit me to hate

1:02:06

on any of them. Some day, you know, on

1:02:09

some days they may vote with me. Well,

1:02:11

they're also people. And if you can help it, you shouldn't hate

1:02:13

people, period. We've formed coalitions

1:02:15

on the First Amendment, on the

1:02:17

Fourth Amendment, on war

1:02:19

sometimes, to eliminate cluster bombs, delivering

1:02:22

cluster bombs, even though the Democrats

1:02:24

almost to a person, actually

1:02:27

to a person, want to give Ukraine more aid.

1:02:29

Some of them are like, well, the

1:02:31

cluster bombs, maybe we shouldn't do that. Okay.

1:02:34

And so you can form coalitions. So I try

1:02:36

to do that when I can. But

1:02:39

why aren't there anti-war Democrats? Since

1:02:42

it was the anti-war party for like 40 years? I

1:02:45

don't know. And we've lost a lot of them

1:02:47

on privacy and free speech as well. I think

1:02:51

with Russia, you asked this before, there's

1:02:54

this element that I didn't answer.

1:02:56

It's sort of a proxy against

1:02:59

Trump for them now. In their

1:03:01

file folders, in their brain, Trump

1:03:04

and Russia are in the same file folder. Even

1:03:07

though that's a false narrative that's been dispelled

1:03:09

long ago, it's still

1:03:11

in their same file folder. So when

1:03:13

they see Ukraine is fighting Russia, they

1:03:16

use that as a proxy for their

1:03:18

hate for Trump. And so they'll vote

1:03:20

for that. And they did. They

1:03:22

waved, I don't know if you saw this,

1:03:24

they were waving Ukrainian flags after Mike Johnson

1:03:26

put their bill on the floor and every

1:03:28

Democrat voted for it. This was premeditated. Somebody

1:03:30

had to go buy, you know, 200 Ukrainian

1:03:33

flags and hand them out.

1:03:37

And I filmed it, which

1:03:39

you're not supposed to do, but you're also not supposed

1:03:41

to wave flags of other countries on the floor of

1:03:43

the house. So I'm like, all right, I'm

1:03:46

going to expose this. So I filmed

1:03:48

it and I put it on Twitter

1:03:50

to show what like the humiliation that

1:03:53

Mike Johnson brought upon us by bringing their

1:03:55

the Democrat bill to the floor without any

1:03:57

and it was leveraged to even if

1:03:59

you're a. Republican and you're okay with sending

1:04:02

money to Ukraine. That's a leverage point get

1:04:04

do something for our country and Require

1:04:06

that as a condition of doing whatever

1:04:08

that is, but he gave up all

1:04:11

the leverage I put that video on

1:04:13

Twitter three days later the sergeant at

1:04:15

arms tracks down one of my staffers

1:04:17

in Kentucky Because we're

1:04:19

no longer in session and says he

1:04:21

needs to delete that video from Twitter

1:04:23

Are we gonna take a fine out

1:04:25

of his salary out of his congressional

1:04:27

salary? So my Stafford

1:04:29

he knew what I was gonna do. He

1:04:31

told me what they had just said. I

1:04:33

said, all right. I'm retweeting it Did

1:04:37

you oh, yeah and it got like 8 million

1:04:39

views it went from 4 million to 8 million

1:04:42

and then you know sometimes you just got a

1:04:44

double down and The

1:04:47

speaker had to announce on

1:04:49

Twitter that I wouldn't be fined for that But

1:04:52

there but no one was considering finding any

1:04:54

member who waved the flag of a foreign

1:04:56

nation on the floor of the House Representatives

1:04:58

right and they were taking selfies of them

1:05:00

with their foreign flags too and no none

1:05:03

of them got a phone call Only I

1:05:05

got a phone call because I exposed the

1:05:07

humiliation It wasn't just a humiliation of

1:05:09

those of us in Congress. It was a

1:05:11

humiliation of our country. I Mean,

1:05:14

it's one of the most corrupt countries in the

1:05:17

world And they got every

1:05:19

thing they wanted for them and the Democrats are

1:05:21

waving the flag even though the Ukrainian flag Even

1:05:23

though they're in the majority and we just have

1:05:25

to like sit there and take

1:05:28

that it was it was horrible Do

1:05:31

you think any I mean the leader of Ukraine

1:05:34

is not elected anymore He

1:05:36

bet his term has ended. He's

1:05:38

not having a new election. He's the unelected

1:05:41

maximum power in some places we call that a dictator

1:05:43

and Yet they're still

1:05:45

hitting us with a democracy pro democracy talking

1:05:47

points Do you think I mean have they

1:05:49

thought this through at all? The are they

1:05:52

just lying like what is that? They're

1:05:55

lying. Yeah, I mean they know it

1:05:58

and the good news is some Republicans

1:06:00

are waking up to it. Remember when

1:06:02

we started voting on these Ukraine resolutions

1:06:05

Even you know as soon as the war

1:06:07

started I was the only know there was

1:06:09

like this open-ended promise in a

1:06:12

in a non-binding Resolution they said would give them

1:06:14

whatever they need and there were only

1:06:16

like two other Republicans that joined

1:06:18

me on this But now we've got

1:06:20

a majority of Republicans in Congress are

1:06:22

saying wait This is

1:06:24

they aren't using this money Like

1:06:27

we thought they were and we're giving

1:06:29

them money to fund pensions of retired

1:06:34

Politicians in Ukraine who were

1:06:36

most certainly corrupt and we're paying their pensions

1:06:38

with this money But most Republicans don't support

1:06:41

it So that means that your speaker the

1:06:43

Republican Speaker the house Mike Johnson is working

1:06:45

for the Democrats Yeah, it's that

1:06:47

simple I mean and that's one

1:06:50

of the reasons we went through with the motion

1:06:52

to vacate Paul Gosar and I Co-sponsored

1:06:54

Marjorie's motion to vacate there were ultimately 11

1:06:56

of us who voted for it No, she

1:06:58

became to be to fire him to fire

1:07:01

speaker Johnson just like they had

1:07:03

done Kevin McCarthy Although

1:07:05

I thought inappropriately and at the wrong

1:07:07

time and for the wrong reasons They

1:07:10

did that to McCarthy, but here we had

1:07:12

speaker Johnson who is doing all the things

1:07:14

people were afraid McCarthy might do They

1:07:17

they Pre-convicted McCarthy for things they

1:07:20

thought he would do and here Mike

1:07:22

Johnson came and did all these things

1:07:24

He put an omnibus on the floor.

1:07:26

He passed the foreign intelligence surveillance act

1:07:28

re-upped that without warrants Built

1:07:30

the FBI a new building and gave Ukraine

1:07:32

all this money so what

1:07:34

what happened what Marjorie and I

1:07:37

and Paul decided ultimately is

1:07:39

we needed to expose the UNI party and Never

1:07:42

before have you had Democrats vote

1:07:44

for a Republican speaker? And

1:07:47

that's why we forced a question Nancy

1:07:49

Pelosi voted for him Hakeem Jeffries went

1:07:51

on national TV and said Why

1:07:54

would we want to get rid of him? He's given us

1:07:56

everything we want. I mean the the

1:07:59

UNI party is never been so exposed as it

1:08:01

was when we called that motion to vacate. I

1:08:03

know some people got mad at us that we

1:08:05

shouldn't have done it. But it's

1:08:08

a long game, which we certainly

1:08:11

hope that he doesn't become speaker

1:08:13

next January. And hopefully people have

1:08:15

seen with Nancy Pelosi rushing to

1:08:17

Speaker Johnson's aid that he's not

1:08:19

the speaker you want. When

1:08:21

Trump wins the White House and we keep

1:08:24

the majority. Do you think you will be? A

1:08:28

lot of this depends on what the people

1:08:30

want. And if they can see it, hopefully

1:08:32

also Trump sees it that Mike Johnson is

1:08:34

gonna would be even worse than Paul Ryan.

1:08:37

Paul Ryan put while

1:08:39

he was still in the while

1:08:41

we were still in the majority, Paul Ryan

1:08:44

sent like a dozen CRs or omnibus bills

1:08:46

to President Trump's desk that didn't have any

1:08:48

money for a wall in it. Like

1:08:52

he had no intention of ever funding a wall Paul

1:08:54

Ryan did it you know,

1:08:56

and so I think Mike Johnson is gonna be

1:08:58

similarly the same way. He's basically working

1:09:00

for the deep state at this point in the

1:09:03

unit party. How did that happen? Do you have

1:09:05

any idea? The Paul Ryan

1:09:07

bit or no, Paul Ryan is a

1:09:09

change, you know, is a

1:09:11

sinister person I happen to know, but also, you

1:09:14

know, not just kind of not a genius and an

1:09:16

ideologue at the same time, which is like a bad

1:09:19

combination. Dumb ideologues are the scariest. But

1:09:21

Mike Johnson seemed like kind of

1:09:23

a moderately conservative kind of sincere,

1:09:26

decent guy. You

1:09:28

know, maybe he would babysit your

1:09:30

kids and do an okay job. I'm

1:09:32

like Paul Ryan and but he just

1:09:34

and then he immediately just becomes a

1:09:36

tool of CIA and Jake

1:09:38

Sullivan and the Biden administration. How did

1:09:40

that happen so fast? Well, one

1:09:43

of the things he claims, which I

1:09:45

don't believe is true, and I have

1:09:47

reason to say this, is

1:09:49

that he says he witnessed gift like he's had

1:09:51

some 180 degree turns on some things

1:09:54

like for instance, whether you need a warrant

1:09:56

to spy on Americans using the Foreign Intelligence

1:09:58

Surveillance Act. an O2 program. Well,

1:10:01

he used to be on Judiciary Committee

1:10:03

with me and Jim Jordan trying to

1:10:05

reform that, trying to get to the...

1:10:07

So he understood what it was. He

1:10:09

knew completely what we were talking about.

1:10:11

He's an attorney too, right? And he

1:10:13

knows the Constitution. He knows this is

1:10:15

required, but he claims he spent time

1:10:17

in a skiff and he learned things.

1:10:20

Skiff, that's a pure compartmentalized information facility

1:10:22

or something. It's

1:10:24

where we go. We have to leave our phones

1:10:26

locked up, you know, no staff in there. He

1:10:28

claims he spent time in skiff and learned things

1:10:30

that changed his mind. Here's the

1:10:32

problem, Tucker. I was in skiff with him. We

1:10:37

had DNI, not

1:10:39

just the current DNI, but the

1:10:42

former DNI, John Radcliffe, Trump's DNI.

1:10:45

We had CIA. We had FBI. We

1:10:47

even had a FISA judge in there

1:10:49

and we spent three and a half

1:10:51

hours. It was a four hour meeting

1:10:53

and after three and a half hours,

1:10:55

it was basically a PSYOP where they

1:10:57

were just trying to beat you down

1:10:59

and do the things. And

1:11:02

I was like, this is ridiculous. You

1:11:04

haven't given... They didn't give us one

1:11:06

example of any time ever

1:11:08

since FISA was created that getting

1:11:11

a warrant would have kept them from solving or

1:11:13

preventing an act of terrorism. They gave hypotheticals, but

1:11:15

they had no specific... And I think FISA has

1:11:18

been in place since 1978, since the 70s. So

1:11:20

almost 50 years and they couldn't

1:11:24

give you one example? Not one example.

1:11:26

Now, they also expanded it after

1:11:30

9-11 to

1:11:32

do the program to go against

1:11:34

civilians, to spy on civilians. And

1:11:38

actually that product came out of the

1:11:40

Judiciary Committee. Here's another place where the

1:11:42

speaker betrayed us. FISA

1:11:45

702 was created by John

1:11:47

Conyers and Jim Sensenbrenner. Conyers

1:11:49

was the chairman and Sensenbrenner

1:11:52

was the ranking member. And

1:11:55

what Mike Johnson said this year was,

1:11:57

well, even though the Judiciary Committee created

1:11:59

this and is responsible for overseeing it,

1:12:01

I'm going to let the Intel Committee

1:12:04

bring the bill to the floor without

1:12:06

warrants in it. It

1:12:08

wasn't even their jurisdiction. They have

1:12:10

jurisdiction over FISA as long as

1:12:12

it's for the CIA, but not

1:12:15

for the FBI. So

1:12:18

that was frustrating. And but

1:12:20

it's shocking. It's shocking. It is shocking. So

1:12:22

he said, you know, like end of civil

1:12:24

liberties level stuff. So yes. Yes.

1:12:28

But it's not like he learned new information

1:12:30

in the skiff. No, he did not. I

1:12:32

was there. So what? So that's a problem.

1:12:37

The fact that I was there. Right.

1:12:39

So that's why on your show,

1:12:41

that I was there for three and a half hours

1:12:43

and Mike Johnson, go ask Mike Johnson, he'll say, Yep,

1:12:46

he was there three and a half hours. So

1:12:48

what is the truth? What do you think changed? I

1:12:54

think he's kind of a lost ball and tall

1:12:56

weeds. I think he's in a

1:12:58

position of power. He never imagined he would get

1:13:00

to at this point in his life. He's

1:13:03

not done anything in private practice or

1:13:05

political arena that's prepared

1:13:07

him for this. He took the job

1:13:09

with a very small staff. He

1:13:12

didn't have people

1:13:14

to put in all positions on the field.

1:13:16

And he had to accept a lot of

1:13:19

suggestions in areas he

1:13:21

didn't know a whole lot about, although he gets

1:13:24

no pass on FISA. Yes, he

1:13:26

gets no pass on Ukraine. Because

1:13:29

he does as you pointed out, he doesn't

1:13:31

even know how many casualties have been incurred

1:13:33

on the Ukrainian side. I

1:13:35

mean, he needs the second person in

1:13:37

line for president after Kamala Harris. This

1:13:40

is this is scary to me. He's

1:13:43

he's basically getting moved around. It's

1:13:47

crazy. You said nothing he did in

1:13:49

his life before this prepared him for

1:13:52

it. But that

1:13:55

itself may be kind of a

1:13:57

more charitable explanation because I'm trying to be charitable.

1:13:59

I mean, I've got to go back to work

1:14:02

with him. Nothing in your life prepared you for

1:14:04

this. So just for those who don't know, you

1:14:07

went to MIT, your high school girlfriend

1:14:09

joined you at MIT. You married her whilst

1:14:11

she was still there. And then

1:14:14

together you started a company based on

1:14:16

and a very sophisticated invention that you

1:14:19

came up with, maybe

1:14:21

the first of about 30 patents that you now have.

1:14:23

You ran this company for a long time, then you

1:14:25

moved back to Kentucky and a

1:14:28

lot of things happened. And you went up running for Congress.

1:14:31

So that's not the background. Well,

1:14:33

so nothing in the political arena, but in my

1:14:35

private life, I raised $32 million of

1:14:39

venture capital and I swam with the sharks.

1:14:41

Like I had

1:14:43

lots of moral dilemmas in the course of

1:14:46

creating that company. I could have taken money

1:14:48

off the table and gone and done other

1:14:50

things, but instead I felt a commitment to

1:14:52

my staff and to other investors. I

1:14:55

had investors who said, if you'll just shit

1:14:58

can that guy you hired as president

1:15:00

will double our investment. And

1:15:02

I'm like, no, he's my partner. I'm not like,

1:15:04

he helped me get to this point. I'm not

1:15:07

gonna abandon him. Good for you. And

1:15:10

so, I had experiences in life that, and

1:15:12

then also just put my hands in the

1:15:14

dirt on my farm. Like-

1:15:16

So tell me about that. So you tell us

1:15:18

about how you live and where you live. Cause

1:15:20

I think it's one of the most

1:15:23

unusual things about you. So I spent, I

1:15:26

grew up as a hillbilly in Eastern Kentucky.

1:15:28

What county? Lewis County. Lewis County.

1:15:31

How many people in your town? 13,000 people, 13,000 cattle. It's

1:15:34

a huge land mass. And

1:15:38

it's a great county. It's

1:15:40

one of the 21 counties that

1:15:42

I represent. It's actually the

1:15:45

poorest county per capita income that

1:15:47

I represent, but it's the one I grew up

1:15:49

in. So it's very unlikely that the congressman for

1:15:51

the district would come from the poorest county. So

1:15:54

I grew up as a little nerd. I

1:15:56

love taking stuff apart. Cause I was bored.

1:15:58

There were no malls. and ride your bicycle

1:16:01

to any, you know, store to have. And

1:16:03

if you did, you didn't have any money.

1:16:06

So I had to find things to

1:16:08

do at home. I took apart things,

1:16:10

built things, entered science fairs, built robots,

1:16:12

made it to the international science fairs.

1:16:15

It's a little, you know, Hillbilly, won

1:16:18

an award from NASA there. And

1:16:21

at the age 15, like I won the high

1:16:23

school level awards. And

1:16:27

got into MIT, never visited

1:16:29

the campus, didn't really have the money to go visit it.

1:16:34

But I read about it. There was no internet,

1:16:36

seemed like a good place. I got

1:16:38

there. I'd lived in a town of 1900

1:16:40

people all my life. And

1:16:43

I was there for six hours in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1:16:45

I cross Massachusetts

1:16:47

Avenue, they had a crosswalk and a stoplight,

1:16:50

you know, never really seen never really seen

1:16:52

two of those things together. I'd

1:16:54

seen crosswalks and stoplights. But so I

1:16:56

walk through the crosswalk in a car

1:16:58

honked like that short little Boston. And

1:17:02

I thought, oh my gosh, I've been here

1:17:04

six hours and already run into somebody from

1:17:07

Kentucky. And I turned around and waved at

1:17:09

the car as big as I could. Was

1:17:11

it people from Kentucky? I don't think so. I think

1:17:13

they had one finger up. So

1:17:18

and people are like, that's

1:17:20

not a true story. I said, not only is

1:17:22

it true, it took me a moth

1:17:25

to quit waving at cars to beat. Like it

1:17:27

was just 18 years of

1:17:29

conditioning. You thought beeping

1:17:31

was hey, hey there. I mean, that's what we

1:17:33

thought that little thing in the middle of your

1:17:35

steering wheel was for. If you saw somebody and

1:17:37

they couldn't see you through the windshield, just toot

1:17:39

the horn. You throw your hand up wave and

1:17:41

they roll down the window. That's Bob. And

1:17:45

if you didn't wave, I mean, you were

1:17:47

pariah. You were probably an axe murderer who

1:17:49

was in our town, right? Or you were

1:17:51

just an a-hole. So

1:17:54

I didn't want to be either. So I waved at

1:17:56

that car in Massachusetts and

1:17:58

kept waving for about a month. But anyways, long

1:18:00

story short, as you said, I invented

1:18:03

a virtual reality device that lets you touch

1:18:05

three dimensional objects, started a company, raise venture

1:18:07

capital, did that for 10 years, moved to

1:18:10

the live free or die state, New Hampshire,

1:18:12

New Hampshire, my company was in Massachusetts, I

1:18:14

couldn't move the center of gravity too far

1:18:17

out of Cambridge, I got it up to

1:18:19

128 on Woburn, and then I commuted 40

1:18:21

miles every day. So I could live in

1:18:23

a state that let you have machine guns

1:18:26

and old cars and, you know, cool stuff,

1:18:28

redneck sports. I'm the

1:18:30

best, the best sports. So why'd

1:18:32

you move back to Kentucky? After

1:18:35

10 years, you know, of doing

1:18:38

it, it was, you know,

1:18:40

we had three kids, and we

1:18:42

wanted to raise them like we were raised in

1:18:45

Kentucky. And we wanted

1:18:47

to be near their grandparents, like both my parents

1:18:49

were still alive, both my wife's parents were still

1:18:51

alive, and you learn so much from your grandparents,

1:18:53

because your parents are really busy, just,

1:18:55

you know, trying to earn a living or whatever.

1:18:57

And if you're lucky enough to have a relationship

1:18:59

with your grandparents, that's where I

1:19:01

think the generational stuff carries on. Yes.

1:19:04

And I had a great relationship with my grandparents.

1:19:06

So we wanted our kids to live in that

1:19:09

environment. And we came back, we bought

1:19:11

the farm that my wife grew up on, we

1:19:13

built a house off the grid. It

1:19:15

runs on a wrecked Model S Tesla battery, it's been

1:19:18

running continuously for six and a half years. So you

1:19:20

built the house, like, who built the house? I

1:19:22

did. I we had

1:19:24

an ice storm and a lot of trees fell

1:19:27

down. How big is the property? It's

1:19:29

1500 acres. And

1:19:32

it's wooded. It's almost all woods,

1:19:35

like, and it's too steep. I don't want you to

1:19:37

think this is like valuable Iowa. No, no, no, no,

1:19:39

I know the part of the state. Yeah, pack your

1:19:41

lunch if you're on the ridge and you fall off

1:19:43

the ridge, because you're going to be hungry by the

1:19:45

time you get to the bottom, you're gonna be grabbing

1:19:47

like tree roots and stuff to keep from sliding. But

1:19:50

it grows trees and some of it is flat.

1:19:52

And you know, in the bottom. This is not

1:19:54

plantation land. No, these are hollers. Yeah. So

1:19:57

in fact, interestingly enough.

1:19:59

It's been a Republican county since the

1:20:01

Civil War, even though all the counties around

1:20:04

it have been Democrats since the Civil War.

1:20:06

Because the geography. Because the geography. Yes. The

1:20:09

topography did not allow for consolidation of

1:20:11

farms. Right. So there was no

1:20:13

scale at which slavery made sense. You could

1:20:15

basically, in your holler, you only had

1:20:18

enough land that your family, if you

1:20:20

had enough kids, could farm. Yes. And

1:20:23

so that's the way people grew up. And by

1:20:25

the way, it's kind of libertarian, you know, I'll

1:20:27

do my thing in my holler. You

1:20:29

do your thing in your holler. That's right. If

1:20:32

you need some help, let me know. I'll come over and help you.

1:20:34

South West Virginia is like this. West Virginia is like this. Yeah. Because

1:20:37

the topography. Right. It's the

1:20:39

reason West Virginia was Republican and seceded

1:20:41

from Virginia. So

1:20:43

by the way, half my family's from West Virginia

1:20:46

and half my family's from Kentucky.

1:20:48

My mammals, who's 97 right

1:20:50

now, is still alive. Her

1:20:52

grandfather was Union soldier. Amazing.

1:20:56

Isn't that crazy? From

1:20:58

West Virginia. West Virginia, yeah. She still lives

1:21:00

in West Virginia. But like we're

1:21:02

not that far away from the Civil War. No,

1:21:04

I know. I know. You can

1:21:07

talk to people who were alive when people

1:21:09

who fought in the Civil War. I

1:21:11

worked with a guy when I was in the newspaper in Arkansas,

1:21:13

the guy I shared a desk with, Bob

1:21:16

Salih from Texarkana, Arkansas. He

1:21:19

said, I knew Confederate veterans. It's

1:21:21

in my lifetime. I knew a man who

1:21:23

knew Confederate veterans or Civil War veterans. That's

1:21:25

just absolutely crazy. But my whole point of

1:21:27

that was she's a Republican. She's been Republicans,

1:21:29

my mammal since the Civil War. And

1:21:32

like nobody marries into our family if

1:21:34

you're a Democrat. You got to go

1:21:36

see mammal and she'll either approve or

1:21:38

disapprove. And she's had pretty good

1:21:40

luck at sniffing out the Democrats.

1:21:43

The liberals. Yeah, the liberals. So

1:21:45

you had an ice storm. There was an ice storm

1:21:47

on your property. How does that figure into your house?

1:21:49

So I already had a bulldozer. So I got a

1:21:51

winch so I could drag these trees out. I got

1:21:53

a sawmill, cut these into timbers, built a timber frame

1:21:55

house. What kind of wood? It's

1:21:58

17 kinds of wood because we did. It

1:22:00

was whatever fell down in the ice storm.

1:22:02

We've got Oak, Yellow Poplar, Hickory Beach.

1:22:05

So hardwood. Hardwood, yep. And

1:22:09

then we wanted it to be self-sustaining.

1:22:11

How did she know how to timber frame? I

1:22:14

found a class on eBay for $500 in Tennessee, and

1:22:18

I bought it now. And I drove

1:22:20

to Tennessee and took a one-week class. And we

1:22:22

built a little shed slash cabin.

1:22:24

And I called my wife from a pay phone,

1:22:26

and I said, I want to do this. Instead

1:22:29

of going to get a job, we had just left

1:22:33

our company after 10 years of working there, and

1:22:35

we'd move back to Kentucky. And I

1:22:37

said, well, just build a timber frame house. Full

1:22:40

time. Yes. Woke up every

1:22:42

morning, had my coffee, and started chiseling

1:22:44

away or going up in the woods

1:22:47

and dragging more trees out that had

1:22:49

fallen down. So you built your

1:22:51

house full time as a job every day?

1:22:54

And this is what our kids saw, too. The

1:22:56

flooring for our kitchen came out of the creek. We call

1:22:58

it a creek. What

1:23:00

do you mean the flooring came out of the creek? There

1:23:03

are rocks in the creek that

1:23:05

are flat that they

1:23:07

look like the stuff you buy at Lowe's that's fake.

1:23:10

And I'm like, oh, this is what they modeled the

1:23:12

fake stuff after. It's free. Let's

1:23:15

just go pick it up. Now, we

1:23:17

probably have. We're paying ourselves about $3 an hour compared

1:23:20

to if we had just gone to one of the box

1:23:22

stores and bought it in

1:23:24

terms of harvesting it. But our kids,

1:23:27

I think, in addition to being with

1:23:29

their grandparents, learned a big lesson that,

1:23:31

wow, mom and dad are growing our

1:23:33

food. They are collecting

1:23:35

the materials for the house here

1:23:38

from the environment that

1:23:41

you don't have to rely. Neighbors

1:23:43

are good, though, right? We actually sent them

1:23:45

to public school, which

1:23:47

was, and we let them ride the bus.

1:23:49

It was only three miles away. But we figured the

1:23:52

bus ride was important, too, because when you get to

1:23:54

school, they sort of separate you. But

1:23:56

you've got, can be, 15 terrifying

1:23:58

minutes on the bus. where you

1:24:00

interact with everybody, right? I

1:24:04

remember my son, he was like 10 years

1:24:06

old, he had traded some Yu-Gi-Oh cards

1:24:09

on the bus and for

1:24:11

this like awesome, the best Yu-Gi-Oh card ever, and he

1:24:13

showed it to us and was a little plastic thing

1:24:15

and we're like, well, did you want to take it

1:24:17

out of plastic? No, no, he told me to leave

1:24:20

it in here and we take it out and it

1:24:22

was a fake and

1:24:24

he was so mad. But it turns

1:24:26

out his dad had sold me a

1:24:28

leaky bulldozer and said there was no

1:24:30

leaks in it. So like, it ran

1:24:32

in the family. The same kid

1:24:35

who stiffed my son and stiffed me on

1:24:37

this dozer. So where, I mean, but

1:24:39

you learn these, these are life lessons, right? They

1:24:41

didn't lead a sheltered life. And

1:24:43

so we grew up, you know, they grew up

1:24:45

there. What percent of

1:24:47

the timbers in the

1:24:49

timber frame came from your property? All of

1:24:51

it. In fact, they never left the farm.

1:24:54

Really? So you milled it there. Milled

1:24:56

it there, chiseled it there, made

1:24:59

the mortise and tenons and the dovetails. It

1:25:01

was a lot of work. Personally. Yes. How

1:25:10

did you, you know, cutting a mortise and tenon,

1:25:13

cutting a dovetail joint, these are, having done

1:25:16

it, very difficult. How

1:25:18

did you learn to do that? I kept

1:25:20

telling myself, look, farmers without calculators pulled

1:25:23

this off 200 years ago.

1:25:25

And so surely if I've got

1:25:27

a computer and some, you know,

1:25:29

electricity, I should be able

1:25:31

to do this as well. Just

1:25:35

dent of will. But she'd been

1:25:38

like a electrical engineer,

1:25:40

software programmer, right?

1:25:43

But not. Nothing that

1:25:45

scale. Yeah. I mean,

1:25:47

the only thing I built before that

1:25:49

was a treehouse, right? And even

1:25:52

that didn't get finished. So, but

1:25:54

I mean, some of that stuff is very

1:25:56

complex, like actually complex timber framing

1:25:59

some. Some of the

1:26:01

joints are difficult to cut and the

1:26:03

design itself is complicated.

1:26:06

Yeah, you don't like, you

1:26:08

have to plan it all ahead. You don't like hold the timber

1:26:10

up there like you would a 2x4. It's

1:26:13

not balloon framing. Yeah,

1:26:16

totally right. Or that 45 needs to be a

1:26:18

42 degree angle. Let's, you know,

1:26:20

saw off a little bit more. You

1:26:22

can't do that while it's, you know, you're up in the

1:26:24

middle of the air on scaffolding, trying to get two pieces

1:26:26

to fit together. It's actually, it's a fun

1:26:28

math problem. So I enjoyed it, but

1:26:30

is there something honest about it? Because all the

1:26:33

fasteners are wooden too. So it's

1:26:35

one medium that you learn. There's

1:26:37

no like bolt. So it's all pegs. Nails,

1:26:39

all pegs. And once you realize

1:26:41

that, and there's no metal fasteners in the

1:26:43

frame. Correct. None. I

1:26:46

mean, we had to nail the floor. I got it.

1:26:48

And the walls on it. Of course, but the

1:26:50

frame itself, the frame that no metal fast structure

1:26:53

and it's 46 feet tall. It's

1:26:55

46 feet tall. Yes. From

1:26:57

the basement slab, which I timber frame the

1:27:00

basement too. I still don't even know how

1:27:02

to stick frame. Like,

1:27:04

I'm like, well, I'm going to build one house.

1:27:06

I'm going to learn one tech. The framing that your house

1:27:08

is, if you're watching this, it's stick frame. It's stick frame.

1:27:11

So I was like, well, let's build the basement timber frame

1:27:13

too. And the dormers, like if you

1:27:15

paid a company to build timber frame, they would

1:27:18

stick frame the dormers. Well, of course, or, or

1:27:20

buy them and just bolt them on. Right. Yeah.

1:27:23

I timber framed that. I'm just like, let's just

1:27:25

be pure the whole way. And there's

1:27:28

as an engineer, I thought, well,

1:27:30

I want to build a house with timbers. I

1:27:32

like how timbers look, but, but, you know, we'll

1:27:35

just bolt them together. We'll use iron brackets. That's

1:27:37

the best way to do it. But in

1:27:40

the course of this one week class, I

1:27:42

came to realize, wow, if you just let

1:27:44

go and make everything out of wood, it

1:27:46

solves problems that you would create

1:27:48

when you start using metal fasteners, like

1:27:51

wood shrinks, right? It takes

1:27:53

like six or eight years for a big

1:27:55

timber to fully dry out. So

1:27:57

how do you deal with metal fasteners? shrinking

1:28:00

wood, well, the metal fasteners can rip out. But

1:28:02

if you build your fasteners out of wood, like,

1:28:05

it can all work. It moves together. And there's,

1:28:07

you know, if you go to

1:28:09

Germany, you know, there's homes that are four or 500

1:28:12

years old to show that it can work.

1:28:15

So so all the timbers came from the property. What about

1:28:17

the stone? There's a lot of stone in the house. Yep,

1:28:19

we we got some of it out of the creek. We

1:28:21

dug some of it out of the ground. All of the

1:28:23

stone is from the property. How did you dig it out

1:28:25

of the ground? What does that mean? You started a stone

1:28:27

quarry on your on your own property? Well, I was in

1:28:30

my front yard, it's now a pond. But

1:28:33

I there was an

1:28:35

old logging road and the erosion had exposed this layer

1:28:38

of rock. And I thought, well, that layer

1:28:40

of rock must go pretty far.

1:28:42

So I started digging using a backhoe, I

1:28:44

started digging the dirt off

1:28:46

of that layer of rock. And I'm like, wow, there are lots

1:28:49

of rocks here. And I just, I

1:28:52

almost giggled out loud when I shoved

1:28:54

on that layer of rock with my backhoe and all these rolling

1:28:57

out in front of the blade. And they looked like

1:28:59

rocks you could buy at the store. You

1:29:02

know, like, well, why would I go

1:29:04

buy them? Like, I can just like shove three

1:29:07

tons of them out of here and,

1:29:09

you know, a few minutes. And

1:29:12

then I had people coming and visiting, obviously, we

1:29:15

looked like a bunch of weirdos building this timber

1:29:17

frame house up on the hill, and people would

1:29:19

come up and they were you living at this

1:29:21

point, we lived in a mobile home, like we

1:29:23

just pulled in a mobile home and we I

1:29:25

told my wife, we don't want to live in

1:29:27

it for six months, we ended up two years

1:29:30

in a 900 square foot mobile

1:29:32

home with four kids. No

1:29:34

way. It's but I

1:29:36

mean, it's actually not that bad. You

1:29:38

get to know your family really well. You can

1:29:40

hear it's like being on a boat. Yeah, you

1:29:42

try to go to the bathroom. And if you're

1:29:44

gone for more than five minutes, like the wall

1:29:47

between the kitchen and the bathroom is so thin.

1:29:49

You're just enjoying private moment there

1:29:51

on the throne. Trying

1:29:53

to read a magazine about timber framing or

1:29:56

something, right. And you can hear the

1:29:58

kids at the dinner table saying, we're dead. he

1:30:00

go? Where's daddy? Where's daddy? And then

1:30:02

start trying to find that. Anyways, it

1:30:05

was a good comfy experience. And now

1:30:07

we actually kept the mobile home and

1:30:09

we lease it to deer hunters. Really?

1:30:13

Yeah. It's a double wide.

1:30:15

It's so it's full of deer heads and

1:30:17

bunk beds now. And the hunters

1:30:19

call it the lodge, which we find amusing.

1:30:21

My wife calls it the double lodge since

1:30:23

it's a double wide. Do you have a

1:30:25

lot of deer on your land? We have

1:30:27

trophy deer all over. What do

1:30:29

you charge to rent it just in case people are

1:30:31

interested? We were

1:30:34

booked up. You know, any weird

1:30:37

internet people in the land. We

1:30:39

are booked up. Yes. So

1:30:41

how long did it take you to finish

1:30:43

this house? It's not finished. I've

1:30:46

been criticized. In campaigns,

1:30:48

people try to use this against me. Some

1:30:50

guy goes, he doesn't even have doors on

1:30:52

all these rooms. He's some kind of weirdo.

1:30:54

Great. Well,

1:30:56

we haven't made that door yet. You're

1:30:59

making the doors? We have made a few

1:31:01

of them. Yeah. We're kind of

1:31:03

breaking down now and buying a few doors. Now

1:31:06

that the kids are gone. So

1:31:08

this, that was like your kids. So what year did

1:31:10

you start? How long has this process been? So we

1:31:13

started in 2003. So we're 21

1:31:17

years and we've been off the grid that long

1:31:19

too. Again, when you say off the grid, what

1:31:21

do you, what do you mean? We're not connected

1:31:23

to any public utility, not electricity,

1:31:25

not water, not sewer,

1:31:28

not phone. The

1:31:30

house is totally disconnected from everything.

1:31:32

Did you build those systems yourself?

1:31:35

Yeah. Using a lot of it's off

1:31:37

the shelf stuff, but some of it's improvised field

1:31:40

expedient. So like for like the Tesla battery,

1:31:42

the car battery that runs the house. Let's

1:31:44

just buy that out of a catalog. You

1:31:46

go to a junkyard and say, how much

1:31:48

do you want for that rec model S

1:31:51

and like, or I'll sell you the battery for

1:31:53

15,000. Why not? Why can't you just buy the

1:31:56

battery separately? They won't like

1:31:58

Tesla wouldn't sell me a power. I

1:32:00

tried to buy one for years. Why? Because

1:32:03

it has to be connected to the grid

1:32:05

for some reason. Their business model involves that.

1:32:08

So I was like, all right, well, I'll get

1:32:10

a battery. How much different can it be from

1:32:13

the batteries in their car? So

1:32:15

I drove to Lake Lanier, Georgia with a

1:32:17

little trailer, landscaping trailer.

1:32:19

The battery weighs, I think,

1:32:21

1,200 pounds. But

1:32:24

here's the funny thing. It's considered

1:32:26

hazardous material if you pull it

1:32:28

on a trailer. But

1:32:30

if it's in a car, it's just fine. So

1:32:34

I hurried up and got back to Kentucky with

1:32:37

the trailer. I don't have a hazmat license. So

1:32:39

it was a wrecked Tesla Model S and

1:32:41

you pulled the battery out of it. Yeah. And

1:32:44

what'd you do with it? Disassembled it. I

1:32:46

paid $15,000 cash. But

1:32:48

this is like, you know, I'm, I count this probably like

1:32:50

15 or 20 years. Hopefully it'll

1:32:52

last. And so I

1:32:54

brought it home, took it apart. Actually, I made

1:32:56

a YouTube video of this. And what's kind of

1:32:58

funny is I had these big rubber gloves that

1:33:01

a friend who had worked on power

1:33:03

lines, you know, they were leftovers and he gave to me.

1:33:06

And so like in the YouTube video, I try

1:33:08

to make sure like I'm using big rubber gloves

1:33:10

and stuff. And I did like this

1:33:12

fast forward, you know, of the disassembly of the

1:33:14

battery. And I forgot like my two little boys

1:33:16

are in there helping me and they don't have

1:33:18

the gloves on. They

1:33:21

haven't earned a right to have gloves. Don't

1:33:24

put stuff on the internet. Like

1:33:26

I once I have a Tesla Model S,

1:33:29

one of the very first ones made. And

1:33:32

I've got friends of coal license plates on it. Like

1:33:34

in Kentucky, you can get friends of coal. It's a totally black

1:33:36

hole. COAL. COAL. Yeah.

1:33:40

Sorry. So because in Kentucky, that's if you plug into the

1:33:42

grid, that's likely where your electricity is. I would think. Yeah.

1:33:46

So I'm driving this thing back from DC. This was when

1:33:48

gas was, you know, getting close to $5 a gallon. It was over

1:33:50

$4 a gallon. And

1:33:52

I, and I stopped in West Virginia to charge my Tesla

1:33:54

to supercharging station. It just

1:33:57

to kind of troll people on the internet. And I made

1:33:59

sure to get it. get a picture of my friends a

1:34:01

coal license plate and I said I'm just charging up with

1:34:03

coal here in West Virginia. And within

1:34:06

30 seconds I knew I'd

1:34:08

made a mistake because somebody had zoomed

1:34:10

in on the picture and my tags

1:34:12

were expired. And they

1:34:15

started tagging the Kentucky State Police, my

1:34:17

local sheriff, the DMV in Kentucky. No

1:34:20

way. Like they were trying to get

1:34:22

me in trouble. I'm like, there's no

1:34:24

way to stop this now. And

1:34:27

so they were relentless. But

1:34:30

then somebody realized they had been expired for 18

1:34:32

months and I'd actually made

1:34:34

it a year without paying taxes and was

1:34:36

maybe likely to get out of a year

1:34:38

of taxes. Well, it's your win then. Yeah,

1:34:40

but in Kentucky I think they make you

1:34:42

go back and pay the old taxes. Anyways,

1:34:44

what I learned there is like search everything

1:34:46

in the picture before you put it on

1:34:48

the air. Well, yes. And others with zest

1:34:51

to your personal lives then you have learned

1:34:53

this the hard way. Not

1:34:55

even on very zest. No, it doesn't

1:34:57

seem right. You've got enough minor tax

1:34:59

evasion issue here. You

1:35:01

don't have time to be too weird. So you

1:35:03

get the Tesla battery back to your off-grid

1:35:06

house and what do you have to do because

1:35:09

it's not made for this. It's a car battery. So car battery

1:35:11

is made to run 400 volts. All

1:35:14

of my existing system was made to run on

1:35:16

48 volts, but there were

1:35:18

16 modules, each nominally 25 volts. And I

1:35:20

realized if you put two of those in

1:35:22

series, you could make 50 volts. So

1:35:25

I put eight sets of two

1:35:27

in series and so I put eight parallel, a

1:35:29

parallel to eight sets of two in series. So

1:35:31

I got 50 volts at

1:35:33

a lot more amperage than what the

1:35:36

Tesla car would normally draw. It

1:35:38

was capable of doing that and.

1:35:40

How hard is that to do? Well,

1:35:44

I mean, it took a

1:35:46

few days, but it's lasted

1:35:48

for six and a half years. I wouldn't

1:35:50

advise doing this at home. Like why

1:35:54

put it in an outbuilding? I mean, if it

1:35:56

catches on fire, it's probably like Chernobyl, that mini

1:35:58

series. Like don't look at the reality. reactor. God

1:36:01

cannot put out, he created lithium ion, but he

1:36:03

can't put the fire out if

1:36:05

it starts. So I would not attach

1:36:07

it to your house. Mine is like, is

1:36:10

it attached to your house? Kind of.

1:36:12

Yeah. It's like a basement room that's

1:36:15

not under the house. Like I don't want

1:36:17

to get into everything under my house right

1:36:19

now. Okay. So

1:36:21

my wife says our house is my science

1:36:23

project and she's the mouse and

1:36:25

she doesn't mind that, but I keep rearranging

1:36:27

the maze on the weekends when I come

1:36:29

back from DC and then she has to

1:36:32

find the cheese while I'm in DC. But

1:36:34

it's, she's more like the astronaut, I think

1:36:36

in a rocket. I think that's exactly she's

1:36:38

the only same trust level required. Correct. Yes.

1:36:41

She trusts me while I'm in DC and

1:36:43

I trust her to fly the house while

1:36:45

she's in Kentucky. So what, um,

1:36:47

she's also an MIT graduate. So I assume she

1:36:49

has like kind of understand some of the stuff.

1:36:51

Oh yeah. Yeah. Although

1:36:53

she would like to have just one thing in the house

1:36:56

where if something went wrong, she could call somebody, but

1:36:58

she can't. She's got to like call me and

1:37:00

then I walk her through it. By

1:37:03

the way, it's a good like marriage security, but

1:37:06

it's just like, she knew

1:37:08

we ever, whoever broke up or if let's say

1:37:10

she put something in my coffee and I didn't

1:37:12

wake up the next day, she'd

1:37:14

have a hard time running the house. So,

1:37:18

so you put these, you put the nodules,

1:37:20

which is basically just separate batteries, right? Okay.

1:37:23

Within the, within the big battery battery. Then

1:37:25

I put a computer on it, um, a

1:37:27

raspberry PI and I made a little graphic

1:37:29

screen and the raspberry PI using,

1:37:32

uh, an Arduino talks to the CAN

1:37:35

bus that which is a proprietary Tesla

1:37:37

communication system. So I use the battery

1:37:39

management system that's native to the Tesla

1:37:41

battery modules. If there's a nerd listening

1:37:44

to this, this, this makes complete sense

1:37:46

and they'll be like, Oh, well, why

1:37:48

wouldn't you do that? And

1:37:50

everybody else is going to be like, uh, he's just BSing.

1:37:53

So did you have to add new software to

1:37:55

this to run it? I had to write software

1:37:57

from scratch. Yeah. But

1:38:01

it's fun, like this is what I do. Look,

1:38:03

I've been in Congress for 12 years. My brain

1:38:05

has atrophied to the size of a walnut. Actually

1:38:09

to a raisin. And it expands to a walnut

1:38:11

if I can go home and do these projects.

1:38:14

And then I go back to DC and it's

1:38:16

back down to the raisin. I

1:38:18

believe that. I don't understand how these projects work,

1:38:20

but I know what brain atrophy looks like, and

1:38:23

I know that Congress induces it.

1:38:25

It's not a worm, it just shrinks. So

1:38:27

how does it work? It

1:38:30

works great. We can run the air conditioner.

1:38:32

For the first 11 years, we had lead

1:38:34

acid batteries, and they didn't work that great.

1:38:36

You had to add water to them. Oh,

1:38:38

for sure. They put off hydrogen gas, which

1:38:40

is explosive. Oh, I know. They put off

1:38:42

a sulfide gas that can kill you. Lead

1:38:45

acids are bad and they're over 100 years old. But

1:38:48

by the way, I love solar

1:38:51

panels. Republicans are like,

1:38:54

they look at me like, you have solar panels? You have an

1:38:56

electric car? Are you sure you're one

1:38:58

of us? And I'm like, well,

1:39:00

the solar panels are rocks that make electricity.

1:39:03

They are amazing things. They

1:39:06

take sunlight and turn it into something we

1:39:08

can all use. So

1:39:10

you could hate. I tell Republicans, you can hate the

1:39:12

subsidies. You can hate the bailouts.

1:39:15

You can hate the mandates. I hate all

1:39:18

of those things as well. But don't hate

1:39:20

solar panels. Don't hate the technology. Right, because

1:39:22

it's actually given me and

1:39:24

can give other people a license to

1:39:26

be independent. So let's get specific

1:39:28

about it. So you have this Tesla battery

1:39:31

that allows you to do everything a normal

1:39:33

house can do. You can run air conditioning.

1:39:35

You've got a dishwasher. You've got a washer

1:39:37

dryer. I'm assuming all this. Four deep freezers,

1:39:40

refrigerator. Four deep freezers. Full of peaches, beef,

1:39:42

and chickens. Running continuously. Continuously. So

1:39:45

your power draw is significant on all

1:39:47

those appliances, obviously. And the battery handles

1:39:49

it fine. How much

1:39:52

propane or how much diesel or would

1:39:54

I assume you have a generator to

1:39:56

recharge? Backup generator that runs occasionally in

1:39:58

the winter. But I keep every time.

1:40:02

So your solar panels recharge the battery?

1:40:04

Yeah. For nine months out of the

1:40:06

year, the backup generator doesn't run except

1:40:08

for its like test run. Yeah, exactly.

1:40:11

When we bust out the machine guns like who's in the

1:40:13

driveway? OK, back down

1:40:15

to level one, that's just the backup generator.

1:40:18

So your electricity is I mean, as long as

1:40:21

you know how to operate the system, which apparently

1:40:23

only you do. But if

1:40:26

you can do that, then you're just living a completely

1:40:28

normal life. Correct. With electricity. How

1:40:30

do you do heat? How do you heat

1:40:32

your house? So in one of the greenest

1:40:34

ways possible, like I think the whole carbon

1:40:36

thing is a scam. Of course it's a

1:40:38

scam. But if you do care about carbon

1:40:40

neutrality, I wish we had more carbon. We

1:40:42

need more CO2. And

1:40:45

it periods in Earth's history, we had more

1:40:47

CO2 and plant life was doing better. And

1:40:49

we've seen plant life. We've seen

1:40:51

the coverage of green on the globe

1:40:54

increase as CO2 levels go up. Crop

1:40:56

production goes up as CO2 levels go

1:40:58

up. But if you did care about

1:41:00

CO2, I am using

1:41:02

wood on my farm like just trees

1:41:04

that fall down. I'm not

1:41:06

even going out and cutting a

1:41:08

living tree. There's enough trees falling

1:41:10

down. Deadfall. Deadfall. That if

1:41:12

I don't get to them, the termites do.

1:41:15

That's right. They turn them into CO2 and

1:41:17

methane. But I can get to them and

1:41:19

cut them up and bring them to my

1:41:21

house and burn them in a wood gasifying

1:41:23

boiler, which is super efficient. By

1:41:26

the way, once you start cutting wood for heat

1:41:28

efficiency, like if you figure out a boiler is

1:41:30

twice as efficient and you can cut half as

1:41:32

much. So wood. Can you because anyone who's made

1:41:34

it this far in the interview is probably interested

1:41:37

in wood gasification. Can you explain what that is?

1:41:39

How is it different from a normal wood fired

1:41:41

boiler or wood stove? Yeah. And a normal wood

1:41:43

stove, you put the wood in there. It can

1:41:45

be green. You light

1:41:47

it on fire. You get it going and then you control

1:41:49

the air that goes to it to keep it from

1:41:51

getting too hot. And a

1:41:54

lot of smoke comes out, especially when it's

1:41:56

idling because it's an inefficient combustion process and

1:41:59

it's at a relatively low temperature

1:42:01

under let's say a thousand degrees. But in

1:42:03

a wood gasifying boiler you

1:42:05

get the fire started and it basically

1:42:08

turns the wood into charcoal and drives

1:42:10

the gases out of it into a

1:42:12

secondary chamber that's ceramic because it's burning

1:42:15

at over 1500 degrees. So some of

1:42:17

the stuff that would you get wood

1:42:19

to burn that hot? You

1:42:21

just you deprive it of oxygen at first and

1:42:24

and get it hot and then you

1:42:26

drive all the gases off and you

1:42:28

put more oxygen in in that secondary

1:42:30

chamber and it looks like it's burning gas

1:42:32

like it will be a blue flame and

1:42:36

then it'll turn into a yellow flame. It

1:42:40

starts out actually and this is just

1:42:42

oak maple beech this is just conventional

1:42:44

firewood. I burn near wood nearest

1:42:46

wood to the house. I don't remember that.

1:42:50

Near wood. Yeah near wood nearest. You

1:42:52

burn softwood in it? You can

1:42:55

but the BT again if

1:42:57

you're doing this yourself oh of here about

1:42:59

efficiency like if you look at the old-timers

1:43:02

they were the greenest people on the planet

1:43:04

right they didn't waste a thing and

1:43:07

they figured out the most efficient way to

1:43:09

do things because it was minutes out of

1:43:11

their lives. Yes. So you start figuring out

1:43:13

how to be more efficient when you're trying

1:43:16

to be self-sustaining. So I've

1:43:18

got on my Twitter bio I

1:43:20

used to say it may still say this

1:43:22

on their greenest member of Congress that doesn't mean

1:43:24

I just got there and I'm green it

1:43:27

nobody I never got any of the fact

1:43:29

checkers to come after me on that nobody

1:43:31

wants to fact check me because

1:43:33

I probably am the greenest member of Congress

1:43:36

who's who is has

1:43:38

self-sustaining food self-sustaining without

1:43:41

externalities right self-sustaining

1:43:44

power self-sustaining water. So

1:43:47

you heat with wood how

1:43:50

much wood you burn would you say a

1:43:52

season? The size

1:43:55

of this table may be four

1:43:57

stacks of wood the size of this table. So

1:44:00

this is about a cord, so this is about

1:44:02

a cord is four by four by eight. So

1:44:04

it's like roughly that. So yeah, or cords a

1:44:06

year. Yeah, that's not much. That's impressive. How

1:44:09

do you get hot water? We've got

1:44:11

three ways to make hot water when our geothermal

1:44:13

units running in the summertime doing the air conditioning,

1:44:15

it takes the heat out of the living room

1:44:17

and puts it in the hot water tank. So

1:44:20

we have free hot water from like

1:44:22

May until September when the

1:44:24

air conditioner is running. And

1:44:26

then in the winter when the boiler, the wood

1:44:28

boiler is running, that makes hot water. And

1:44:31

then if there's ever not the air conditioner

1:44:33

running or the boiler running, we have an

1:44:35

on demand. This is where we cheat on

1:44:37

demand propane hot water heater that makes up

1:44:39

the difference. Amazing. But

1:44:41

you could pretty easily set up a wood fired

1:44:43

outdoor. You could.

1:44:46

Yeah. But in the summer, again, you get

1:44:48

it for free from the air conditioning. I actually have a

1:44:50

fourth way to make hot water too. So

1:44:54

when we're not connected to

1:44:57

the grid, a lot of people who have solar panels are connected

1:44:59

to the grid. And if they have extra power, they

1:45:02

sell it back. Right.

1:45:04

I'm always depressed when I have extra power. My

1:45:06

solar panels just turn off and I'm like, run

1:45:09

around, turn on some lights, you know, turn on

1:45:11

something. I don't want

1:45:13

to waste this free electricity. So

1:45:15

I got extra hot water heater elements

1:45:17

that run on DC so

1:45:19

that when the sun, when our

1:45:21

house is full, the first thing it

1:45:23

does is it tries to charge the Tesla that's

1:45:26

sitting in the garage. So the

1:45:28

Tesla sitting there at half full and a

1:45:30

solid state breaker in my breaker box comes

1:45:32

on and starts the Tesla charging. Then

1:45:35

when the Tesla gets full and the house battery

1:45:37

is full, I create hot

1:45:39

water with the electricity. So

1:45:42

I've got like a fourth way to make hot

1:45:44

water. Hot water is almost as good as water.

1:45:46

I mean, if you've ever gone without water, you

1:45:49

know, it's bad. Yeah. Without

1:45:51

hot water is almost just as bad. Yeah. I

1:45:54

have experience with that. Where

1:46:02

do you get your water? So I dug

1:46:04

a well and – Dug

1:46:08

not drill. There

1:46:11

are lots of old dug wells on our farm so I

1:46:13

knew it could work. Yeah. The

1:46:15

way they would do it, they would dig a big pit. Yes. They

1:46:18

didn't dig it just straight down. They dug a big pit

1:46:20

and then they laid up stones in a

1:46:22

circle, you know, the stones you see when

1:46:24

you look in an old well, but then

1:46:27

they backfilled the pit with stones. So that

1:46:29

extra area becomes like a reservoir and then

1:46:31

they put dirt on top of that so

1:46:33

that, you know, when a raccoon poops an

1:46:35

extra well, it doesn't necessarily go right into

1:46:37

the reservoir. So I did a

1:46:39

very similar thing, but I hit bedrock

1:46:43

and I borrowed a friend's jackhammer and spent

1:46:46

a day inside of that hole with a

1:46:48

jackhammer trying to get even deeper through the

1:46:50

bedrock. I finally took my friend's jackhammer back

1:46:52

and said, okay, that's deep enough. What was

1:46:54

the jackhammer like? I

1:46:57

mean, that's the best argument for public

1:46:59

health care. Sorry, I hate this.

1:47:04

Because I have a new

1:47:06

appreciation for somebody that's running

1:47:08

a jackhammer. Those

1:47:11

would wear your body out quickly. Like really

1:47:13

quickly. Yeah. Did you lose a crown?

1:47:17

I did not lose a crown. So does

1:47:19

the well, the dug well work? It works. One

1:47:22

month out of the year, we're kind of short on

1:47:24

water. Yeah. So yes,

1:47:27

August, how'd you know that? Have

1:47:29

you ever lived in this situation? Yes, I

1:47:31

have a dug well, so I'm aware of

1:47:33

that. But again, you conserve, right? Of course.

1:47:36

If you're connected to city water and it seems

1:47:39

what's on the other side is opaque to you, you

1:47:41

just use as much as

1:47:43

you want. And

1:47:45

what happens is during those peak periods,

1:47:47

that's when the utility company has to

1:47:50

work extra hard. That's when the

1:47:52

price and the inefficiency goes way up is

1:47:54

in those peak periods. And people aren't cutting

1:47:56

back in response to the supply because the

1:47:59

actual. cost of producing it isn't known.

1:48:01

When you're making it yourself, it's known.

1:48:04

But I've argued that water

1:48:07

and electricity, even when they come from,

1:48:09

especially when they come from utilities should

1:48:11

have variable pricing based on the instant,

1:48:14

the cost at that very instant to produce

1:48:16

it. And then you can

1:48:18

have appliances not mandated, but smart

1:48:21

appliances. If you're rich, you don't

1:48:23

care when the price of power goes up.

1:48:25

You don't know what it costs. If you're

1:48:27

poor and you got a little screen that

1:48:29

says the power just went up, you'll go

1:48:31

turn it off, right? A hundred percent. You'll

1:48:34

say, well, we'll do the dishes tonight, right?

1:48:36

When it's cheaper. And if you're middle income,

1:48:38

you'll probably eventually the market will respond to

1:48:40

this and automate these things so

1:48:42

that, you know, if you

1:48:44

know the price of electricity, your appliance can

1:48:47

know the price. I don't want the utility

1:48:49

company to know what you're doing with it.

1:48:51

Of course not. You can have these smart

1:48:53

systems that make a lot more efficient use

1:48:55

of our resources. So because you're

1:48:58

not connected to the grid, to any

1:49:00

public utility at all, I mean, you're

1:49:02

actually independent in a way that no

1:49:04

one outside of Alaska I've ever met is. And

1:49:07

it sounds like you're not giving up

1:49:09

anything. You're not living in a. Not

1:49:12

too much. There are some sacrifices. Like?

1:49:14

Well, you know, if it's cloudy for a lot

1:49:17

of days and hot, we may

1:49:19

turn the thermostat up. Yeah. Just

1:49:22

so we don't have to hear the backup generator run. That

1:49:25

doesn't seem like a crazy sacrifice. There's

1:49:27

some people would take the instant they had to turn

1:49:29

the thermostat from 72 to 75

1:49:32

as we screw it. I'm out of here.

1:49:34

I'm going, I'm going back to the grid.

1:49:36

It means that the state kind of has

1:49:38

no control over your land. Correct.

1:49:41

Or me. Or you. So

1:49:43

when I go to DC and they threaten me or

1:49:46

try to bribe me, it's like, I

1:49:49

know. Once Friday comes, I'm going to

1:49:51

be back on my farm and I don't need them.

1:49:54

Like it's not that I

1:49:56

don't want to do things for people. I

1:49:58

help my neighbors and my neighbors. help me and

1:50:00

I want to do public

1:50:02

service, but because I have

1:50:04

this comfort level that I'm going to go back home to

1:50:06

this, I don't need the job. We're

1:50:10

self-sustaining. It gives

1:50:12

you an extra dimension of independence, I

1:50:15

think, when you're in

1:50:17

DC. What about food?

1:50:19

Can they starve you out? I

1:50:23

don't think so. Like they can cut

1:50:25

off my fish supply because we don't raise fish and

1:50:27

we don't raise pork, we raise

1:50:29

chicken, meat and eggs, we

1:50:31

raise beef, and we usually

1:50:34

raise a pretty good garden. I

1:50:37

have an orchard, peaches,

1:50:40

lots of peaches. My first peach is going

1:50:42

to be ripe here in a few weeks

1:50:44

and my last peach will be ripe in

1:50:46

September. I've planted 14 kinds of peach trees

1:50:49

so they get ripe different weeks and

1:50:51

they taste nothing like the cardboard peaches you

1:50:53

buy at the supermarket. You don't need to

1:50:55

leave, actually, your farm. No. I'm

1:50:59

trying to talk me out of like, I mean, this is

1:51:01

a crisis I have some weeks. I bet. Oh,

1:51:04

man, on Mondays, it's like, you

1:51:07

know, you know you're going to get hit with a two by

1:51:09

four as soon as you walk in the

1:51:11

door in DC. Is

1:51:14

it weird? I mean, I guess what I'm struck by, I don't

1:51:17

live off grid, though I do have an off grid

1:51:19

camp, but the

1:51:22

amount of skills you need to

1:51:24

build something like that is really, really striking.

1:51:27

I mean, I'm just trying to know how to do things, complex things. I

1:51:30

mean, timber framing is another level, but

1:51:33

electrical, plumbing, masonry,

1:51:36

agriculture, heavy equipment operation,

1:51:38

like you can do all of that, obviously.

1:51:41

So is it weird to be in a

1:51:43

room with 434 people who can't do shit,

1:51:46

who can't operate a micro? I

1:51:50

mean, they're like actually incapable and maybe

1:51:52

that's why they're in politics so they

1:51:54

can externalize their self-loathing. Is

1:51:56

that weird? I

1:52:00

don't I really don't think about it that

1:52:02

much. Good. I

1:52:05

don't think about it. Where'd you pick up plumbing

1:52:07

skills? So my rule

1:52:09

is buy three books for everything because

1:52:13

you can you can go to a hardware store and

1:52:15

buy a book on plumbing but I

1:52:17

don't trust one book so you buy two

1:52:19

books and then if the two books

1:52:21

disagree what are you going to do? Well, you got to

1:52:23

have a third book. So I've got

1:52:25

three books on plumbing, three books on

1:52:27

wiring, three books on septic systems, three

1:52:30

books on- You did your septic too. Roofing, yep.

1:52:33

I get three books on everything. And

1:52:35

you read them. And I read them. And

1:52:37

then there's the code book which is like you

1:52:39

know the it's almost like

1:52:42

international housing code thing that

1:52:44

some municipalities have adopted and

1:52:46

you have to abide by.

1:52:49

I just look at that as like a suggestion

1:52:51

manual. So do you

1:52:53

think now we're way in the weeds I don't know

1:52:55

if anyone's watching but they're like four

1:52:58

handymen carpenter general

1:53:00

contractors are still in this but do

1:53:02

you think that code which

1:53:04

really determines how people live in this country

1:53:06

the code it's not up to code is

1:53:09

it is it real? I mean is

1:53:11

it knowing what you do

1:53:14

about all those different trades does

1:53:16

the code protect people actually? It

1:53:20

protects the contractors. Well I know

1:53:23

that. So they help write it

1:53:25

the unions do. So for

1:53:27

instance the roofers

1:53:29

union and the plumbers union I

1:53:31

think have conspired to put as

1:53:33

many holes in your roof with

1:53:35

plumbing as possible right because-

1:53:38

All the venting. Yeah all the vents right

1:53:40

if you try to build a house to

1:53:42

code you're likely to have four or five

1:53:44

perforations in your roof. I've noticed. And

1:53:47

that keeps the roofers busy like they're guaranteed to

1:53:49

get a call every few years to fix that

1:53:51

leak and it's also very

1:53:54

expensive it's fairly cheap to do roofing

1:53:56

but it's all the exceptions that cost

1:53:58

money and then if you're a plumber That's

1:54:00

one more thing. Like all the flashing and all the,

1:54:02

every time you have an aperture in a roof, that's

1:54:05

a vulnerability. So my

1:54:07

roof has no holes in it. Like I looked at

1:54:10

this and I'm like, well, that's a good suggestion, but

1:54:12

who benefits if I believe what they're telling me. So

1:54:14

you vent your stove at the side of the building?

1:54:16

No, no holes in my roof, no holes out the

1:54:18

side. Have you seen that opera house

1:54:20

in, I think it's Sydney, Australia?

1:54:22

A famous opera. Is it Sydney or Melbourne? Sydney,

1:54:24

Sydney Opera House. Yeah, there's no holes in that.

1:54:26

There's bathrooms in there. How do they do it?

1:54:30

The one-way admittance valves, like you have under

1:54:32

your kitchen counter, they have giant ones of

1:54:34

those that work for the whole system. And

1:54:37

they're not to code, but I think that's stupid

1:54:39

because why would I want to put a bunch

1:54:41

of holes in my roof? Well, I couldn't agree

1:54:43

more. I'm interested in this topic. And

1:54:45

but nobody else is now. Well,

1:54:47

but for the four people who are, I've

1:54:50

always wondered that. Why with

1:54:53

wood stoves, right? I live, everyone has lots of wood

1:54:55

stoves. And some of them, I have

1:54:57

wood stoves that vent out the side of the

1:54:59

building, like next to a window, and then

1:55:01

do an L up. It's

1:55:03

not quite as efficient, because you're gonna turn in

1:55:06

the run, but you don't have

1:55:08

a hole in your roof. And in a climate

1:55:10

with lots of snow, for example, you don't want

1:55:12

any holes in your roof. But how do you

1:55:14

vent your furnace, for example? So

1:55:18

that, I just run in a typical flue and

1:55:20

it goes up in the chimney with my pizza

1:55:23

oven flue, my wood cook stove

1:55:25

flue, and my Rumford fireplace flue. So I have

1:55:28

four flues through the chimney. On the gable end?

1:55:30

No, they're in the middle of the house. I put the

1:55:32

chimney in the middle of the house because it's

1:55:35

a big thermal mass, and I wanted to

1:55:37

smooth out the changes in temperature in the

1:55:39

house. And so there's where

1:55:41

I did accommodate one hole in

1:55:44

the roof, is the chimney. Because

1:55:46

if you put a big stone mass on the side

1:55:49

of your house, there's no way to insulate it from

1:55:51

the outside. So, by

1:55:54

the way, let me say something. I know there

1:55:56

are some women watching this wondering, I

1:55:59

wanna live in a house. like that. That sounds like

1:56:01

a lot of fun. Talk to my wife first.

1:56:05

Occasionally we have like some crisis that

1:56:07

I have to solve and become MacGyver.

1:56:10

So the first time I got elected

1:56:12

to Congress, for instance, the

1:56:14

day before I went to go get sworn in, the

1:56:17

well pump failed. And I'm

1:56:19

like, I can't leave my wife and

1:56:21

four kids at home without water. And

1:56:24

we have a very unique

1:56:26

well pump. What

1:56:28

do you mean by that? I

1:56:30

didn't buy the one at the hardware store, so you

1:56:32

get and go replace it. So I

1:56:34

went down there. And what did you buy? It's

1:56:36

like in a catalog somewhere. Like the engineer in

1:56:38

me found the best one. Okay, it's not the

1:56:40

most common one, but I had to fix it.

1:56:42

So what I did is I

1:56:44

found one of my drills, you know, like

1:56:47

you drill holes with and

1:56:49

I took it down to the well and

1:56:51

I took the motor off the well pump and

1:56:53

I chucked the drill to the

1:56:55

well head. And because it's

1:56:58

not submerged, it's off the side in a pump

1:57:00

house and I wired this, you know,

1:57:02

had an outlet on it, but I just wired

1:57:04

it into the well pump wiring and

1:57:06

the drill pumped water for our house. I

1:57:08

believe that. Long enough for

1:57:10

me to go get sworn in. I've

1:57:13

seen that. I've seen drills run winches.

1:57:15

Yes. Well, I forgot it was there.

1:57:17

Like I did my Congress thing for-

1:57:19

You had it on continuously? Yeah.

1:57:21

And then the accumulator in

1:57:23

the basement that controls the pressure

1:57:25

would turn the drill off and

1:57:27

on whenever it needed more water

1:57:30

pressure. And so it ran

1:57:32

continuously. I forgot about it. I just got busy.

1:57:34

And like a year later, a freaking water quit

1:57:37

working again. Because

1:57:39

the Makita died? Right. It was actually a Milwaukee

1:57:41

hole. It was? The whole hog, you know, one

1:57:43

of those- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I

1:57:45

totally do what they handle on this side. Yeah.

1:57:48

Those are cool drills. So you, last

1:57:50

night, I just want to end with this. Last

1:57:52

night we were having dinner and, which was really

1:57:55

one of the most interesting amusing

1:57:57

dinners I've ever had. But

1:57:59

you- made reference to a story, but we

1:58:01

didn't get it. You didn't get a chance to finish

1:58:03

it because I interrupted you. But about

1:58:06

putting new plumbing in a county jail,

1:58:08

I think we tell that story. Yeah.

1:58:10

So quickly, I

1:58:12

got into politics, because

1:58:15

we were living off the grid. And

1:58:17

I read this little newspaper. And it

1:58:20

said they were going to raise our

1:58:22

taxes to fund this cronyism in the

1:58:24

county, the conservation district, which was building

1:58:26

stuff for themselves, and not

1:58:28

for other farmers, they wanted to tax

1:58:30

other farmers to help their farm, right?

1:58:32

It wasn't really about conserving farmers are the

1:58:34

biggest, best conservationists there are. So let's

1:58:36

don't punish them anymore. Okay, good call. So

1:58:38

I fought that tax. And then I

1:58:40

actually fought zoning in our county, they wanted

1:58:43

to zone our county, I mean, zoning

1:58:45

is to keep the smokestacks out of the

1:58:47

cul-de-sacs, right? Okay, my county didn't have

1:58:49

any smokestacks and didn't have any cul-de-sacs, right?

1:58:51

We did the, like the neighborhood in

1:58:53

ET, you know, that movie

1:58:56

where the kids ride through the neighborhood, we

1:58:58

didn't have neighborhoods like that. So we didn't

1:59:00

need zoning. But somebody thought, if we zone

1:59:02

the county, that we would get prosperity because

1:59:05

they saw all the prosperous counties had zoning.

1:59:07

It's like, it's cargo cult.

1:59:09

No, totally. It's like saying, we should

1:59:11

import some homeless because then we'll have

1:59:13

banks. Right, right. Morgan

1:59:15

will move here because in midtown, they're

1:59:18

homeless. Right. So that was I

1:59:20

was fighting that and writing letters to the editor.

1:59:22

And then finally, I quit

1:59:24

fighting the guy who was doing all this, he's

1:59:26

called the county judge executive in Kentucky, like the

1:59:28

mayor of the county, and it decided to run

1:59:30

against him. So you never been

1:59:33

in politics, never in my life. Also,

1:59:35

there was this guy named Rand Paul, who was

1:59:37

inspiring, who was taking on the establishment, it was

1:59:40

his first run for Senate and it decided to

1:59:42

get involved in his race too. So just

1:59:45

like with my house, I didn't go in

1:59:47

partway, I went in all in, okay, on

1:59:49

politics one fall, actually one spring, because I

1:59:51

had to win the primary and Rand did

1:59:53

too. And so I actually

1:59:55

did a fundraiser for Rand at my house. And when nobody

1:59:57

wanted to win, I was like, okay, I'm going to win.

2:00:00

to do a fundraiser for Ray and Paul because

2:00:02

he was running against the establishment. My house wasn't

2:00:04

finished. We weren't even living in it yet. Sorry,

2:00:07

little sidebar. But he traipsed up from the

2:00:09

double wide. Yes, we went to the double

2:00:11

wide and we said for $100, you can

2:00:13

come to our pizza party. I did have

2:00:15

the pizza oven working and-

2:00:18

So you built the pizza oven before the bedrooms? Yes. There's

2:00:21

priorities. That's right. Had to test it out,

2:00:23

make sure it was inhabitable. So,

2:00:26

funny thing too, we didn't have doors on the

2:00:29

bathrooms at the time. We had no doors. So

2:00:32

we did run to Lowe's the day before

2:00:34

Ray and Paul came and put a door

2:00:36

on the bathroom. Good call. Because I was

2:00:38

like, look, this guy could be a senator

2:00:40

someday and he might need to go to

2:00:42

the bathroom and we need something more than

2:00:44

a curtain here. So we call it the

2:00:46

Rand Paul door on the bathroom. It's the

2:00:48

one room that had a door from the

2:00:50

very beginning. Anyways, we

2:00:53

did, by the way, also this was in January

2:00:55

and Rand is cheap as hell. He had a

2:00:57

two wheel drive SUV. So I

2:00:59

had to plow all my

2:01:02

driveway so that he could get up there. And

2:01:04

the problem is it's gravel. So I had to plow

2:01:06

all my gravel off practically just to get. So for

2:01:09

what it costs to upgrade to the four wheel drive

2:01:11

for Rand Paul, like my

2:01:13

gravel costs way more than that. Yes. Anyways,

2:01:15

I went all in on politics, helped

2:01:18

Rand get elected in his primary. I

2:01:20

was on the ballot the same day

2:01:22

in 2010, the primary May 22nd, 2010.

2:01:25

Rand was on the ballot and I was on the

2:01:27

ballot, but I was running for this little county executive

2:01:29

seat trying to take a Republican out because he's trying

2:01:32

to raise our taxes and bring in more government. And

2:01:34

so I won the election and it

2:01:37

was the most terrifying thing when they handed

2:01:39

me the key to the courthouse. Like it's

2:01:41

a small town. And if

2:01:43

the janitor didn't show up to open

2:01:45

the courthouse and start the boiler, which

2:01:47

looked like the African queen, right? It

2:01:50

was like, you had to kick

2:01:52

it and do all this stuff to get it

2:01:54

started. The sheriff's office wouldn't be heated. The clerk's

2:01:56

office wouldn't be heated. And my office wouldn't be

2:01:58

heated if I couldn't get the African. Queen

2:02:00

to start. So

2:02:02

anyways, I was like the dog that caught

2:02:04

the bus. And I had

2:02:06

promised I wouldn't raise taxes. And I was

2:02:08

immediately confronted with all these problems that

2:02:11

had accumulated over the years in our county

2:02:14

government. And the jailer came

2:02:16

to me who's an elected official in

2:02:18

Kentucky. His name's Chris. And he, he

2:02:20

got elected the same day I got elected.

2:02:22

And he was all in on my, you

2:02:24

know, let's reform this county. But

2:02:26

he had some bad news for me. By

2:02:29

the way, the state government had sold the county government

2:02:31

a bill of goods. They said, if you'll keep our

2:02:33

state inmates, we'll pay you $32

2:02:35

a day and you'll make all kinds of money. And

2:02:39

the county was a million dollars in debt because this

2:02:41

did not work out. And I

2:02:43

wasn't going to spend another penny, you

2:02:45

know, on this throwing good money after

2:02:47

bad. And but we had 30, 30

2:02:50

state inmates who go out and pick up trash

2:02:52

and, you know, around

2:02:54

the courthouse and they, they

2:02:57

get real sweaty and the hot

2:02:59

water heater had quit working at the jail. And

2:03:02

so the jailer, Chris comes to me and

2:03:04

says, judge, they call

2:03:06

me judge, even though I'm not an attorney, it

2:03:09

was the county judge executive said, judge, I got

2:03:11

some bad news. So what's that? He

2:03:13

said, well, hot water heater quit working on the

2:03:15

state inmate side. And I can't mix state inmates

2:03:17

with local inmates. You know, you get murderers along

2:03:20

with non-support, you know, for child.

2:03:22

Yeah. It's like this, we can't

2:03:24

have them taking showers together. It's

2:03:26

not going to work. And

2:03:29

I said, okay, we'll just buy another hot

2:03:31

water heater. And he said, well, I

2:03:33

tried that. I got a quote. We only had one

2:03:35

licensed plumber in the county. And

2:03:37

I said, well, what was the quote? He said, $12,000.

2:03:39

I said, I mean, this is

2:03:41

a small county for a hot water heater for hot

2:03:43

water. Like all of our property taxes together were like

2:03:45

$400,000. $12,000

2:03:48

for hot. I'm not paying $12,000 for

2:03:51

hot water heater. You tell that guy

2:03:53

to get lost. And he

2:03:55

said, well, what are you going to do? I was like,

2:03:57

I'll go buy one at, you know, the hardware store or

2:03:59

something. So I go look at this hot

2:04:01

water heater at the jail. It is not the

2:04:03

kind you buy at the store. It's like a

2:04:06

boiler almost. And it's fairly

2:04:08

involved. It's got like inch and a

2:04:10

quarter copper lines. It's not household plumbing.

2:04:13

But I had three books on plumbing,

2:04:15

right? I felt fairly confident. I

2:04:18

said, well, if I can find one of these, I'll put

2:04:20

it in myself. So I got on

2:04:22

eBay and I looked for this

2:04:24

model hot water. There was one, buy it now for $5,500.

2:04:28

And I'm like, I can save the

2:04:31

county like $6,500. So I called an

2:04:33

emergency meeting of our fiscal court, brought

2:04:35

in the magistrates, noticed it to the

2:04:37

newspaper, did it all legally, and made

2:04:39

a motion to buy it now on

2:04:41

eBay. Then I hit the

2:04:43

button. I bought this hot water heater.

2:04:46

They bring it in a tractor trailer. I didn't pay

2:04:48

extra for the lift gate because I had inmates. The

2:04:53

inmates take this thing out of the tractor trailer.

2:04:55

And we go in and we take the old

2:04:57

hot water heater out. And there

2:05:00

were three inmates in that closet, right?

2:05:02

Working on that hot water heater, just

2:05:04

demolishing everything. So they dragged that thing

2:05:07

out of there. And I had

2:05:09

to go in the closet with the inmates

2:05:11

to put the new one in. I'm like, I

2:05:14

only want one inmate in that closet with me. Fair.

2:05:17

The hot water heater needs plumbed. I don't need

2:05:19

plumbed. So the other two inmates

2:05:23

that were smelling pretty rank at this

2:05:26

point, I said, you guys go strip

2:05:28

the old hot water heater. I want

2:05:30

anything of value on that. Besides, you're