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We live on a house of cards because, and most people don't know this, and I don't want to scare your audience, the scare
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your audience if I tell too much. Go ahead. I voted to raise the age of social security, but it's not going to be around unless you raise the age to 70.
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That's the only way that sticks around. Do we really need American primacy? He said, when you go back to Washington, make sure they know that wars with China
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is not inevitable. But I think it's overstated how great AI is going to be. the left, you know, has this uh modern
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monetary theory and it and it sounds ridiculous and it is except that it kind of worked for 10 or 15 years.
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If 40 to 50% of Americans are employed directly or indirectly by a federal, state, or local government or government contractor or earn their income from a
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government check, can we actually reduce spending? Here's the bottom line. I I voted against the big beautiful bill because
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of the debt ceiling, but also here's the projections. What was at the heart of the cover up? There's never been a more extraordinary
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cover up in the sense that these people were saying in public the opposite of what they were saying in private.
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[Music] All right, besties. I think that was another epic discussion. People love the
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interviews. I could hear him talk for hours. Absolutely. We crushed your questions in a minute. We are giving
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people ground truth data to underwrite your own opinion. What do you guys think? That was fun. That was great.
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going. Senator, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me in your office for the conversation today. I'm I'm really
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excited for this. You grew up in Texas with a well-known father, 12-term congressman, three-time
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presidential candidate Ron Paul. However, you became a doctor after residency at Duke Medical. And I'd love to hear a little bit about how you chose that path instead of politics at the
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beginning of your career. Well, that was sort of following father also. You know, my dad's a physician, too. So, I went to medical school. in
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fact went to the same medical school as my dad. Um my dad is an OBGYn. He's retired now. Uh we have a family of several doctors. My little sister's an OBGYn. My brother's a family doctor. I
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got two nieces, three nieces that are doctors. So, a lot of doctors. But as a kid, uh you know, I have distinct
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memories of laying on the shag carpet because we have had shag carpet in the 70s and listening to him in uh I don't
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know, Missoula, Montana on the radio. I'd hear the one end of him answering questions. Uh I went to lots and lots of
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his speeches. I was interested in the books he recommended other people to read and I read many of those. Uh he
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gave me a full set of Einran's novels when I was 15 and said there's a lot of good stuff in here but you know there's some of the stuff we don't agree with either. So, and uh but to be
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open-minded, to take the good, the good with the bad and uh to be able to filter through, but that there was something
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there about individualism and I still believe that to this day, that there is something uh you know, all the critics
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hate Iron Rand. It's oh, she's, you know, she's so simplistic, this and that, but there is something that connected with the American spirit, the
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spirit of ingenuity, the spirit of uh being heroes. You know, it's the idea that, you know, uh, you know, it's I
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think why people were fascinated with Elon Musk and capturing those rockets from space that it's like, wow, we can
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have somebody who really does cool things once again in our country. Yeah. Einran's writing seemed to be
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coming more preient than I think we realized early on. I think that's why the people thought it was simplistic because the characters
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were character types. Nobody believed they could ever exist that there'd be be there would be middle management. There
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would be the Ellsworth Tui or the Peter Keading in the middle of these corporations and nobody believed that
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their whole purpose would be mediocrity, right? And they purposely would try to choose people based on the color of
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their skin or their ethnicity over their merit. Nobody believed that could ever happen. That was such a a dystopian sort
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of Harrison Burggeron. That was all farce. That was dystopian farce until now. You're right. It looks a lot like
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reality. Here we are. Why did you make the career shift into politics after being a doctor
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for some time? I practiced private practice for about 20 years. Was a physician for 20 25
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years. In your life, it's a lot of work. You go through an internship, medical school, residency. I was about 30 when I
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finished. And so when my dad ran in 2008, really the campaigns are a year in advance. So when he ran in 2007 into 2008 for the Republican nomination, I thought I'd go
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and help. I sort of volunteered and said, "Dad, I'll give some speeches." And went out and gave a lot of speeches on my own. Not really introductory
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speeches, but actually my own thing and kind of felt, wow, this is great to be able to sort of express yourself and
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have an opinion. I always had an opinion, but now I could find somebody to listen. And so I did that in 2008,
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got the bug, and then some of being in the right place at the right time. Jim Bunning had been in the Senate two
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terms. Uh he was a Hall of Fame pitcher, but he wasn't raising any money. it looked like he might not run. And so one
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day I'm at the office and this guy I knew from a property rights group, you know, too many, you know, lower property
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taxes kind of stuff, keep the government off our land kind of stuff. He called me up and he says, "Hey, I know this
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reporter, this AP reporter, and we think he leans kind of conservative and he's from the Republican area of the state.
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Why don't you just call him up and tell him you're interested?" So I hadn't even talked to my wife about it or anything. I said, "What the hell?" So I called him
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up and said, "Yeah, I'm thinking about running." And uh I got a statewide story. Then I got a national story. I
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was like, "Wow, this is not that hard." And so then I had a sort of a come to Jesus moment. I had to talk to my wife about this. And uh she wasn't very happy that, you know, we'd been married 20some
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years that I hadn't bothered to mention it to her. I said, "Look, there's no way I can get elected. I'm just going to be
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honest. I'm going to tell them we're out of money. I'm not going to offer him something for nothing." I said, "I'm never bringing home any bacon. We don't
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have any bacon. nobody will ever vote for that and uh she gradually got over it. Now she's my biggest champion. We've
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written a couple books together and we you know we work together well but um someone was being the right place at the
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right time maybe having something to say. The Tea Party movement which I think my dad is responsible at least
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partly for getting started that mo movement was burgeoning in 2010. The big radio talk hosts were Limbbo and Hannity and Hannity still big on the radio. These hosts were out there hosting
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rallies. They were talking about the Constitution and the debt and it was an exciting time. I uh uh I don't know if I
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had announced yet. I was thinking about it. My town's fairly small, 50,000 at the time and we have an old square built
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in the 19th century. I went down to the square. Somebody was having a tea party rally. I didn't know what it was. And it was open mic. I wasn't even invited to
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speak really. And I spoke and there were 800 people there. I'd never been to a political rally in my town, Republican
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or otherwise, with 800 people. There was a real movement. That's why it kind of makes me sad now that it's a it's a
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movement that came and you know did it go came conquered and nothing happened because uh some of the people left and some of the people decided that debts were okay if you had a Republican in
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charge and were bad if a Democrat was. That's really interesting because I wanted to get to your core philosophy and identity. On Wikipedia it says
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libertarian constitutional conservative tea party movement Republican. How do you describe yourself, your identity? Senator, all of those things are are true to a
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certain extent. Um, I like to say that I'm I'm part of the Leave Me Alone coalition. And then sometimes I'll say, you know, really I'm part of the Leave Me the Hell alone coalition. And that
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means in all sort of aspects, personal, private, my contracts, my business, what I do, my family, just leave just leave
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me alone. And that encompasses a bigger group than just conservatives, a bigger group than just libertarians. Um, and I
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would say there there was a long time ago there was a guy named uh Frank Meyers. And Frank Myers they called a
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fusionist. He was a guy who was going to be somewhere in between uh Buckley and um Murray Rothmar. Murray Rothbart is not as well known but he was a student of Von Mises and he was a libertarian
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writer and Buckley everybody knows who Buckley is. And that became the more traditional conservative movement. And the libertarians sort of said, "Well, we
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like all that capitalism, everything, but we're worried if so much money goes into the military that maybe the
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military will become the state also." And they were really against the state in all facets. We want a small state.
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We're for defending the country, don't get us wrong, but and so, but somewhere in between those two, some of the
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libertarians would have no military, some of them would have open borders, and then there was the conservatives that somewhere in the middle was a
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fusion. and Frank Meyers uh was a part of that. Was one of the cool things when I first come up here, they invited me to
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the Frank Meyers Society, like eight guys that were like 80 and 90 years old. It was such a great dinner club. Uh but
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anyway, does that make it hard to operate in DC to to be fusion? Because the the the the
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kind of mechanism the operating model in DC seems to be policy by party. Uh you have to be a member of a party and then leadership sets the agenda and everyone falls in line.
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Yeah. And I think that's really disappointing about it. And I think a lot of the public doesn't necessarily like that and that's why a lot of the
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public says they don't like either party. Um I'm of the the belief that like right now there's a great danger in
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our country to losing a movement that represents the free market, trade and capitalism and all of those things because I think we're moving towards a movement that backs a person. And I I
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feel the wrath all the time. I don't back Donald Trump enough and so I'm to be, you know, uh, I get along with
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Donald Trump actually on a personal level better than some of his supporters who've gone crazy and they don't seem to
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remember. I've supported a lot of supported his nominees. I voted against his impeachments. I was one of the loudest voices against them and yet they
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can't stand if I oppose him on one thing. That's not good. And also there is something trade is not an incidental
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issue. The trade is sort of a fundamental aspect of capitalism and Adam Smith wrote about it. In fact, one
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of Adam Smith's u sort of great nuggets that he gave to the world was the idea that the division of labor makes us
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richer. So if you don't have to sit around making your shoes, your clothes or your tie, you can do something out, you have time to think and your
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innovation is going to create more more great things. But he also said that the division of labor and the prosperity
00:10:16
that it creates is only limited by its ex how far it extends. And I think what he meant by that is by trade. So we, you
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know, I I'm richer in my town because I don't make my shoes. Maybe somebody else in the town makes them. Then I'm even richer when somebody in another state
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makes them. But guess what? I got even richer when they were made in Vietnam. We all did. And that is being now uh the
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fallacy is being promoted that trade is bad, which really essentially means capitalism is bad. Then we got people
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promoting that we should own the companies and the government should be involved with ownership of the companies. All that stuff. It worries me
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that people are going to forget what we once were for and what really is important to be for, what made America great, and that is capitalism. Some
00:10:55
would argue that this idea of what they call the globalist agenda, which is to outsource our jobs versus reducing our cost and increasing availability of goods and services that we can benefit
00:11:07
from, has hollowed out America and has caused a great economic depression for many Americans and they can't seem to find their way out of it unless we create a more protectionist trade environment.
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There's a lot to dislike about globalism and what that represents. And to many people and to many even libertarians, if
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it means a big huge treaty organizations that have labor rules and environmental
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rules and all these anti- capitalist rules in them, that's not really free trade or free market. But I will say
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that there is a fallacy and it's repeated adnauseium and it just is absolutely tr untrue and the facts will
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bear this out. Uh most people for the protectionism say the middle class is being hollowed out and we're being
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ripped off. They're both absolutely and unequivocally untrue. So if you look at household income, and there's a good
00:11:55
website that does this, humanprogress.org will look at this. Steve Lindsey at KO is great on this. Look at household
00:12:01
income for the last 70 or 80 years. And you look at what percentage is middle class, what are lower class, and what is
00:12:08
upper class. The middle class 50 years ago, about 54% of the people in the middle class, and now it's 51. Everybody's like, "Aha, the middle class is shrinking." Well, the lower class was
00:12:19
like 37%. It's now 33%. It's like, where did they go? They're being hollowed out.
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Yes, they're becoming rich. They're in the they're in the upper class. The upper class has grown. It's the one segment and you have to constant dollars
00:12:32
and call the upper class above $100,000 and the middle class 50 to 100. But really, there's been a grace increase in wealth. If you look further at things like clothing, you can buy, you know,
00:12:44
people, oh, hey, we lost the textile industry. Well, I think that's sad in a way, but you can get 10 times as many
00:12:50
clothes as a person in 1900 could. We live twice as long. We uh by historical standards, one of the best charts is u prosperity per unit of GDP or something.
00:13:02
And you look at it and people have called it, I think Jonathan height called it the greatest, you know, graph in the history of the world.
00:13:08
Steven Pikner highlights this well. Same thing. Pikner does he's he's Pinker does it as well and he's great. His book
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Enlightenment Now is an amazing book. But anyway, this chart is for all of human history. If this is prosperity and
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this is time for all of human history, we lived on the x- axis. It's just an amazing chart. In about 1820, when the
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division of labor allowed the industrial revolution and people to think about doing other stuff, you just had this it
00:13:33
it really is this curve that that just is extraordinary. That's the history, but nobody wants to hear this like, oh, we're being hollowed out and trade's bad. But then the second fallacy is we're being ripped off on trade. And
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this one, I think, is pretty easy to debunk. A million people go to Walmart last week, next week, and they all buy
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TVs. At the end of the year, you say, "They all bought Chinese TVs." Let's put a circle around all of these trades and the country they came for. The Chinese didn't buy crap from us. We
00:14:02
bought all these TVs. But a million people went in and made a voluntary trade where when they left their 600
00:14:09
bucks, they wanted less than the TV. And Walmart wanted their $600. Every volunteer voluntary trade ever made it
00:14:15
in humanity, every second of the day is all mutually beneficial or it doesn't occur. It's not even an equal trade.
00:14:21
It's mutually beneficial. We both think we got it. So, how can a million people all think they got a great deal and make
00:14:28
a trade and then I draw a circle around them and have this false accounting that says, "Oh, we all got ripped off by China." It's just not true.
00:14:34
So, what is the origin of the fallacy? Is it a political tactic to drive votes? It's it's pride. And that's why I have
00:14:40
such difficulty counteracting this. Now what amazes me is though for 100 years economist right left and center all
00:14:47
decided that trade was making everybody wealthy. It's more visible if you look at the trade of the people who are poor.
00:14:52
So the poor people got astronomically they got uh their their their multiple is much bigger because they were much
00:14:58
poor to start with. But if you look at China and us from 1975 on we both got richer. But China was so poor that their richness is more available. They didn't
00:15:09
rip us off. You know, this isn't Love of China. I wrote a book called The Case Against Socialism. I hate socialism. I
00:15:14
hate communism. I I wish the people there didn't have to live under that that authoritarianism. But they didn't
00:15:20
rip us off. And it's it's it's it's easy to sell because nationalism is easy to sell. Patriotism is easy to sell. We hate the other country. We're good. They're bad. And also anybody down their
00:15:32
luck. And I'm not saying well while the historical trend is great for for the society middle lower and and upper it's
00:15:40
not great for everybody. So there's always pe being people aren't doing well. Those people are attracted by nationalism and they're protected by
00:15:48
blame somebody don't blame don't blame myself or don't blame anybody else. It's somebody else's fault. So walk me through the consequences of
00:15:55
tariffs. Where do they take us? Where do they take the economy? Where do they take us from an inflation perspective? from a job creation perspective
00:16:01
onshoring which has been argued as another piece like what's your view on where this is going you know um one of my favorite sort of
00:16:09
people complain I get a lot of complainers right now about the tariffs because they love the president and they don't love my position so much and
00:16:15
really 75 80% of Republicans he's sold on this issue that tariffs are good but there's a I guess I'd start at the I'd start at the macro level so you have uh seven billion in spending for our
00:16:26
federal government five billion in revenue so we're $2 billion short two trillion two trillion. It used to it
00:16:32
used to differentiate conservatives and Republicans and Democrats. We as Republicans would say, "Yeah, deficits
00:16:38
are bad and let's close it by lowering spending." Democrats will say, "We'll just tax the rich people." You know,
00:16:43
rich people don't pay enough in taxes, which is also untrue. But then we'll do it that way. And that was how what differentiated us. But now everybody's
00:16:49
like, "Oh gosh, tariffs are so good. We're going to balance the budget. We're bringing in revenue." One, it's a it's really a pittance. It's a it's a I think
00:16:55
it's about a h 100red billion 150 billion more than last year is what's going to come in this year and that over
00:17:00
10 years might be $1.52 trillion but we're going to borrow like $15 trillion over the next 10 years but the when you when you look at it and you say uh from a global point of view is it good to
00:17:13
raise taxes most Republicans always said we didn't like more taxes we we were taxed that was part of the Tea Party
00:17:18
acronym is taxed enough already we didn't want more taxes now everybody wants more taxes it's inconsistent with
00:17:24
who we are. But it also, the other one I love is that we're going to do it and we're going to eliminate the income tax.
00:17:30
And I say, "Come to me with that. I don't like tariffs very much, but I'll vote for a 20% tariff." You know, I take
00:17:36
a sale, it's a sales tax. I'll take a sales tax over an income tax. This is being presented in addition. So,
00:17:41
everybody needs to forget what they think they're saying and understand the tariffs are in addition. But there's
00:17:46
also an argument on the separation of powers. One of the things our our founders really struggled with was they
00:17:53
worried about tyranny of one person and tyranny of the majority. And so the way our government is structured is to try to, as Madison said, pit ambition against ambition. And but I think they
00:18:04
never imagined that we'd have a Congress without any ambition. We just basically said, "Oh, did President Trump go ahead
00:18:10
just do what you want." And there's a problem with that. He's declared an emergency to raise taxes. I don't pay
00:18:18
the taxes. We pay the taxes, but you know, there are people analyzed as a little bit done by the foreigners,
00:18:23
a little bit done by the importer, a little bit. Yes, but it is a tax. It's a fee and we collect it here in our
00:18:28
country. It is a tax. The constitution says taxes originate in the house. And uh you know, this one just originated with the president with not even a confirmation by the House or the Senate. when we get an AOC as a president, which
00:18:40
I hope never happens, she's going to declare an emergency and we'll she'll say no more gasoline powered cars or
00:18:46
lawnmowers or whatever else and they'll send police to your house. So say I'm just doing an emergency just like your president did. So there is the danger
00:18:53
and people need to think about it and this is where the president the president well this is the problem with only being
00:19:00
tribal and only being for your tribe when your tribe is in power. You have to think beyond this. So, for example, when
00:19:06
Biden was in power, there were two dozen Republicans, and I was one of them, who had a reform of the emergency power that
00:19:11
said when a president declares an emergency, it expires in 30 days unless affirmed. Right now, it's the opposite.
00:19:18
The president's declared an emergency on tariffs. If we wanted to stop him, we could vote by simple majority. He would
00:19:25
then veto it, and then it would take twothirds. So, right now, the way the law is set up is presidential
00:19:30
emergencies can only be stopped by twothirds of Congress. Well, I mean, that's so dramatic it almost never
00:19:36
happens. We'd like to reverse it. But all those Republicans who supported reform of the emergency under Biden have
00:19:42
all bailed on me. And so when we recently had a vote directly on whether or not there was emergency with Canada,
00:19:48
I was one of four Republicans. And most of the people who had signed on to emergency reform all of a sudden didn't care that there was an emergency under a
00:19:55
Republican president. And none of this is to say I dislike Donald Trump. I actually like him very much as a person.
00:20:01
Play golf with him. support probably 80% of what he's doing. Do I think he's better than Harris? Oh gosh, just a
00:20:06
million times. I mean, I'm going do anything to stop socialism and the redistributionist, but doesn't mean I
00:20:12
should just roll over and no longer have a thought, you know. Have you tried to align with the Democrats to try and get this emergency?
00:20:18
It's not trying to align with them, but when they're right, I vote with them. Uh they had an emergency to overturn the emergency and I voted with them. It's a
00:20:24
privileged vote and very rarely can people who object to the majority will of either party get votes. The only way
00:20:31
you get votes is by using special procedures. So the emergency vote to overturn an emergency has a privilege,
00:20:38
meaning that it has to come to the floor. So I voted with them and there were four of us, four Republicans that voted with them.
00:20:43
You were also pretty well known recently for being one of three Republicans to vote against the big beautiful bill,
00:20:49
right? Maybe you can just share the parts of the bill that you were opposed to. Increase the debt ceiling by 5 trillion.
00:20:56
This is not only extraordinary but unheard of. No conservative in their right mind would ever vote for this
00:21:02
under Biden. In fact, when Biden did propose stuff like this, all the conservatives voted no. So, we sort of
00:21:08
lose who we are if we don't keep the same standard under the same presidents $5 trillion. But a lot of people don't
00:21:14
know this, but up until the last moment, my vote was still in play because I told him I don't like a lot about it. It's
00:21:20
also going to add to the debt. And I think that is true. And I we can go through that in a minute. But up until that morning, I met with Vance that
00:21:26
morning. Lisa Marowski was demanding more stuff for Alaska. I didn't want anything for me or for my state in a
00:21:32
proial way. I wanted something for the country was not not add so much debt. So I said I'll vote to increase it 500
00:21:37
billion. And even that's like sticking a dagger in my heart. 500 billion used to be a year or two years. Now that's three
00:21:44
months. And they said they didn't want it. I had long conversations with the president. I spoke with him for 59
00:21:49
minutes the week before. I noted I looked at my phone. my wife standing in the kitchen and he spoke for 58 minutes
00:21:55
and 45 seconds and he just didn't the debt ceiling. The Democrats will never vote for it. I don't want to do it
00:22:00
again. It's inconvenient. You know, I don't want to talk about the debt ceiling. But I won't talk about it. I'd
00:22:06
vote on it every three months. Um not that I want us to default, but because every three months we need to talk about
00:22:12
how we're out of whack. We need to talk about why, you know, why are these credit agencies downgrading the dollar?
00:22:18
what happens if there is a dramatic flight from the dollar. Um the thing about economics and I don't claim to
00:22:23
know even a tenth of what smart people know but things don't always happen gradually. You know, if you think in your lifetime or my lifetime of the different corrections in the market, they came in one or two days. You know,
00:22:36
2007208 came in like a day or two, right? Um there was one in the '9s, there was 1929. I think somebody told me
00:22:43
almost all the losses in the stock market, if you take like seven days of the last century, it's like 95% of all
00:22:48
the losses are in like seven days. But it could be worse. If there's ever a flight from the dollar and people are
00:22:54
talking about that they have bond sales, you know, they talk about how many people show up. There's some kind of ratio and it usually it's like I don't
00:23:00
know 2.5 to one or something. It was in the low twos, 2:1 of not many people showing up. Interest rates are still,
00:23:07
you know, pretty pretty high. But what I've always fascinated by is people say, "Well, the interest rates are so high."
00:23:12
But I was always taught historically that the interest rates are inflation or expectations of inflation plus the
00:23:19
historic rate, which is about two or three points. If I take money from you for 30 years, you're not giving it to me for less than two or three points. But
00:23:25
you also want inflation, too. So you want three points for inflation and two. Well, that's about what interest rates are. So I don't think anybody knows
00:23:31
whether interest rates are too high or too low. I think that's a silly question, but if you looked at it in
00:23:36
historic terms, they're about probably, you know, the market's judging them to be expected inflation plus about three
00:23:42
points, right? But just going back to the big beautiful bill and your vote against it, right?
00:23:47
I just want to understand how we got here or your view on how we got here. So, you've read a lot of history, a lot
00:23:54
of philosophy. I've interviewed Ray Dalio twice. I've met him. He's a fascinating guy. talking about his cycle of empires and
00:24:01
you know we're it his kind of thesis is we're one of six cycles right over the last 500 years and we're kind
00:24:08
of at the the tipping point here and there's a a set of trends that are very common he says you know different characters same act you know like it happens over and over
00:24:18
again and we take on too much debt when we the country gets wealthy it grows it the economy expands we start to get offered free money we
00:24:25
take it we spend it all of a sudden and one of the things you we we had a dinner bipartisan in dinner with him recently and one of the things he's
00:24:31
saying is the way to get out of this what we have to do is we have to get and his isn't even dra I think draconian we
00:24:36
have to get 3% our debt our annual deficit needs to be 3% of GDP well it's 6% now so it'd have to be cut in half and uh I think it's very reasonable and a lot of people nodding their heads but
00:24:48
it takes a tough vote like I voted to raise the age of social security and people say god do you hate old people I
00:24:53
say no I aspire to be an old person I want my social security and I want the system to be around for ordinary people,
00:24:59
but it's not going to be around unless you raise the age to 70. That's the only way it sticks around. Is it that in order to get reelected,
00:25:05
you have to offer your voters something that they don't have today. And therefore, every election cycle, you
00:25:10
have to show up with something else. No one ever gets elected by saying, "I'm going to cut back half or cut back a quarter or 10% of what you're getting
00:25:17
today." You might, but is what is that the dynamic or is this I'm pretty positive that you don't have
00:25:23
to say, "I'm going to bring on the bacon. I'm going to bring you your freedom. I'm going to keep the government out of your lives and I'm going to uh allow you to become richer
00:25:30
because freedom and capitalism makes us all richer and I'm going to allow you and it's going to be most mostly on
00:25:35
merit which is better than the government deciding that. So I think you can say that and I've said it
00:25:41
explicitly. I will never go home with a check saying we brought you this to your community because we don't have it and
00:25:46
it has to be borrowed that makes us all poorer through inflation. It is that fear though and the president has bought
00:25:52
into this. The president says social security we can't talk about. Medicare we can't talk about. And really on
00:25:59
Medicaid he severely limited what could be talked about. Food stamps. They they nibbled at it. They talked about some
00:26:04
good things but most of it's in the distant future. And and here's the bottom line. I I voted against the big
00:26:11
beautiful bill because of the debt ceiling. But also here's the projections. The CBO had a projection
00:26:17
that was going to add three trillion. All the Republicans said, "Oh, CBO has too low a grade throat. we can't re we
00:26:23
can't believe the CBO. Well, the authors of the bill did something I agreed with. They said, "We're doing it based on
00:26:29
policy and this is what we project that the taxes will go on and that they aren't really we're not giving a tax
00:26:35
cut. Most of that is just keeping the same policy." I said, "I accept that. So, what are your numbers?" The authors
00:26:40
of the bill, the Republican supporters of it said, "Well, the first 10 years, no, the first five years it's going to
00:26:46
lose 500 billion. So, we'll be more 500 billion more in the hole. the second five years we'll make that up and we'll go a trillion positive so we'll be plus
00:26:53
500 I believe the first five years I don't believe the second five years and this is from the authors admitting and
00:26:58
the reason you know it's going to lose 500 billion is this many tax cuts will pay for themselves over time but almost
00:27:04
all of them have a little bit of dip in revenue in the beginning it's not a reason to be opposed to tax cuts it's a
00:27:09
reason to at least be wary even if you don't count the tax cuts that we already had that we continued and you count the
00:27:15
new ones there's going to be a little dip in revenue and maybe some of these weren't that growth growth related tips and things like that may not be that
00:27:21
growth laid to reduce tax on tips. So that's going to be a dip down. But the other reason why you know the deficit's
00:27:27
getting better, they they put $500 billion of new spending. So from the very beginning, this was this was Lindsey Graham and the
00:27:32
military-industrial complex. They wanted more money for the military. They already got an increase in the military
00:27:38
last time. This is 150 billion for the military and 150 billion for the border, which I'm for controlling the border. I
00:27:44
applaud the president for controlling the border. He didn't need the 150 billion. who may, you know, 20 billion would have probably been enough to
00:27:50
secure the border, but nobody's conservative when it comes to this. I saw your hearing where I think you challenged the the bill the amount.
00:27:56
Yeah. The wall because you kind of went through the numbers and it was uh pretty pretty striking that it was on their website. The next week
00:28:03
they changed their website because they didn't like me reciting their website back to them. Right. So, where are we headed? 37
00:28:10
trillion of debt. If the debt gets financed at five, six% which is kind of where interest rates are trending, we're
00:28:16
talking about an incremental trillion dollars a year of incest expense. Interest expense will probably become two trillion a year,
00:28:22
right? We don't seem to be cutting the budget much. Everyone wants more. Everyone wants more budget for their particular
00:28:27
interests and their states and whatnot. What's your view on where we're headed over the next 10 years? Barring a lot of
00:28:34
Rand Paul's getting elected to Yeah, the the the left, you know, has this u modern monetary theory and it and
00:28:41
it sounds ridiculous and it is except that it kind of worked for 10 or 15 years. So Bush doubled the debt from 5
00:28:48
trillion to 10 trillion, but the interest rates went in half. So his interest payments the same. You know, we
00:28:54
went we went from five to 10 trillion with the same interest rate. We played a lot of games to do something similar. So
00:29:00
for the last 10 years or so or maybe eight years, we averaged our payment was like one and a half uh% for the debt.
00:29:06
That's what we were paying. Now it's three and a half. That's a pretty significant jump. But I think if they stay where they are, it's going to be
00:29:12
even more. So we're at a trillion in interest now. Could we go to two? And what happens? All of these things are
00:29:18
fixable. America is a great place because of capitalism. We just need to start fixing them. And it's not even
00:29:24
draconian. just a little bit at a time. You know, for 12 years, I've been saying just raise the age three months a year
00:29:30
for the next 20 years and and you'll be at 70. You may eventually have to go higher depending on longevity. The other
00:29:36
thing you have to do is the age doesn't fix social security anymore. You got to means test it. And the only difference
00:29:42
we have with the Democrats on the means testing, well, on all of it, if they would agree to any reform, they just
00:29:47
want to tax rich people in the beginning. So, there's a limit. your social security taxes go up to about 160,000 and they're indexed to kind of
00:29:53
keep creeping up a little bit. Um, which I can live with that. But if there's a choice whether rich people get less
00:30:00
social security in the end or we tax them up to $10 million, I'd rather do it in the end because somebody making $10
00:30:06
million is investing in creating a lot of jobs and I'd rather not stop that. But I don't care if rich people have
00:30:11
including me and I'm not that rich but I'm upper middle class and I would get less social security also. You can fix
00:30:18
the system that way. And I think we are so dependent on it that uh it's hard to go back to a pure system where we devel
00:30:24
it would be worked on charity and private pensions. Um but we got to get started on it. The longer you wait the
00:30:30
more difficult it is to fix. Is there a point of no return that you view? Is there a year or a debt amount
00:30:36
to GDP a debt ratio that becomes a reversal? There's never Well, there is a point of
00:30:41
return of no return for a catastrophe and I don't know that. If I would, I'd be predicting the day and then I'd be
00:30:48
fine and everybody else would get, you know, killed by the calamity. I don't know. You got to be really smart or lucky to predict those calamities. Like
00:30:55
the people who saw the housing crisis were really smart, you know, and they they figured that happening. Um, so I
00:31:01
don't know that it is going to happen. But I think what's important, and I tell people this all the time, you will
00:31:06
always get your social security check. You will always get your Medicare. It will never end. But it just may not be
00:31:12
worth anything. So there will be a point in time when we cut you your check and there are colas but um what happens when
00:31:20
if you're if you're in 1923 in Germany and you get annual colas didn't work so well because the money was losing 30% an hour you know there were times when the German workers and was in 22 or 23 they
00:31:32
wanted to be paid at noon because they didn't wait till the end of the day because it was depreciating so fast colas work for a while but that cost of
00:31:39
living increases but they are somewhat of a game. You have a problem. You're creating this inflation. You You hate to punish people, so you give them a cola. But the cola comes once a year. Part of
00:31:49
the breaking point for all this stuff that has colas on is when you need to do it every month. So that's much higher
00:31:56
inflation. And we've been extraordinarily lucky. And I've never really seen anybody write this as accur
00:32:01
as as um I think um detailed as that could be. I think we've exported our inflation. I think we've created so much more inflation than we have. But because we import more than we export, we pay
00:32:12
them in the dollars. Some of them find their way back into our stock market, put our stock market up. But you can go to two dozen countries around the world
00:32:19
and they're trading in your dollars. So the actual physical dollar never comes back on some of these trades. And so I
00:32:25
think if you took what the M1's going up and what the money's going up, and I think you looked at it, some of it
00:32:30
disappeared. Then they play the games with paying interest to keep it in the Fed, which I've got a bill to eliminate
00:32:36
that right now. Um, and that bill is co-sponsored by Bernie Sanders. Um, we paid 188 billion, the Fed did, in interest to banks, not to loan money. Most of it went to five banks in New
00:32:48
York, the big five, but 40% of it went to foreign banks. So, the Fed's buying our interest with fake money. The taxpayer still has to pay the interest back to the Fed. The Fed used to use it
00:32:58
as profit and give it back to the Treasury, and it's a a weird game. But now, instead of at least playing the weird game, they're giving it to rich
00:33:04
people. So this is something reminiscent of the u occupy wall street movement where you got right and left coming together. The free market is not dumb to this it seems right. So the the global free
00:33:16
market dollar reserves according to the IMF report on central bank holdings have
00:33:22
declined in the last decade. So it's been shown the dollar reserves have declined from 60% to 40% in the last 10
00:33:29
years. Meanwhile, gold has doubled from 10 to 20% of central bank holdings. And as a result, we're seeing gold prices, I think, 3,600 bucks an ounce as of yesterday. What do you think is the path
00:33:40
here for the dollar? Like maybe we can just kind of talk to the average person listening. Where's this taking us? Because the market wakes up to this and they're saying these dollars aren't
00:33:51
really, you know, what they used to be. I think there are two scenarios. One is the one we're used to and that's the
00:33:57
gradual scenario. then the Fed tries to intervene to try to control uh inflation. I think they can, but I've
00:34:04
always asked this question to very smart bankers and things. Is there a point in time at which the Fed doesn't control
00:34:09
interest rates? And many times they'll say, well, the Fed doesn't really control the long-term interest rates after the daily stuff that it's really
00:34:16
controlled by the marketplace, but when is there a time in which um it just becomes out of control? So you have the
00:34:24
the government shows up and says they want to sell $20 billion of the debt. Nobody shows up and the Fed has to buy
00:34:31
all of it. I think right now of our $36 trillion debt, the Fed has about a third of it. Uh what foreign governments have
00:34:37
about a third and then the marketplace has about a third. Uh what happens when when when the private marketplace
00:34:43
doesn't show up? Is there a time in which you have a Friday, they do this on Fridays, I think you do a Friday sale
00:34:50
and nobody shows up. the Fed buys the whole thing. What do you think happens to that Monday? Do you think you'd be
00:34:55
trying to prepare to sell sell some stock, you know, overnight before Monday opens? Um, and then I think you could
00:35:02
have a calamity and some of it can be fixed and some of it we we live on a house of cards because and most people don't know this and I don't want to scare your audience. Will this scare your audience if I tell too much?
00:35:14
It's great. It's going to get clicks and views. Yeah. Okay. This is this is this is very scary. So, you have $1,000 in your
00:35:20
checking account and you go to the bank and you want all of it. That only works if a few of you go because the bank, I
00:35:26
think, only holds 10% of your checking account. Now, I want the bank to loan money. So, I give them $1,000 in a CD.
00:35:34
They pay me 2% and they loan it out for 3%. That's how banks traditionally make it money. But they they have a game. I
00:35:41
have a a racket. This it's called fractional reserve system. And it works until it doesn't work. And once a bunch
00:35:46
of people go crazy, a bank run. We've had bank runs even back in the 19th century. We nearly had one with Silicon Valley Bank two years ago.
00:35:53
Exactly. Exactly. But it's really based on that and I haven't been as involved exactly with what the rate should be.
00:35:59
But I I think lo loaning out 90% of your checking account is a recipe for a bank run. We don't have it because we just
00:36:06
print more and we flood the system with liquidity when when people get get skittish. But there's a time at which
00:36:12
they can't control that and it's coming. But I try to get back to simple things because I don't know when that's going
00:36:17
to happen. Maybe it's not going to happen. The simple thing is you spend what comes in. Most people do. You
00:36:22
borrow if you have an asset that the bank can hold like your house or something. This is what normal people do and they spend what comes in. Your
00:36:29
government should behave that way. In the same way there are ramifications to you personally. If you overspend, you'll
00:36:34
ultimately be punished. It's going to happen to us. And so the first thing we do, we don't even need to think about the 36 trillion. We need to think about
00:36:40
the two trillion we're borrowing next. And that number needs to be smaller. But I can tell you people aren't getting it.
00:36:45
I I went, you know, I asked the secretary treas the treasury secretary basent about this. I said, um, you guys
00:36:53
are spouting all these numbers, the big beautiful bill, and it's going to be great, and there'll be no more debt, and
00:36:58
all the Saudis are going to invest 20 trillion dollars in our country, and we'll all be rich. And I said, but the
00:37:03
number I'm concerned about is will the deficit be bigger or smaller next year? And he said, well, um, in terms of the
00:37:11
GDP, it will. But even that's not going to be true. The deficit next year's uh this year the one we're in that's going
00:37:16
to end in about three weeks is going to be about 1.9 something trillion and that's going to be about 150 160 billion
00:37:23
worse than last year and as a percentage of GDP I think it's going from six to about 6.2. So we are getting worse and
00:37:30
it isn't I don't say this because I you know want to be mean and get the wrath of Donald Trump. I say this because as
00:37:37
Republicans we need to be for balanced budgets, less spending no matter who's in the White House. And it's going to
00:37:42
take some some back and forth with the president to get there. Well, I want to introduce another kind
00:37:48
of frightening metric and statistic. So, by my estimate, and this is not reported
00:37:53
by anyone, this is just me doing some addition in an Excel spreadsheet, somewhere around 40 to 50% of the
00:38:00
American workforce age population earn their income from directly from a government or a government contractor. If 40 to 50% of Americans are
00:38:12
employed directly or indirectly by a federal, state or local government or government contractor
00:38:19
or earn their income from a government check, can we actually reduce spending? And this is a real problem when you look at our spending as a percentage of GDP, the spending part, the 7 trillion, the
00:38:32
average over the last 5 years is about 26%. Right now we're at 23 or 24% of GDP. And I love it because the people
00:38:38
say, "Well, we'll just have tariffs and we'll run the government off tariffs." And I said, "Well, when they did that in the 19th century, government was 3% of
00:38:45
GDP." I'm for that. You bring me spending bills and I'll vote for all of them to make us a 19th century
00:38:51
government of 3% of GDP and I'll vote for all your tariffs. But that's a that's a big change and it is a problem
00:38:57
and it's sort of a two-fold problem. The people actually working for government. You got to make government smaller so we don't have as many government jobs. But
00:39:03
the other segment is is worrisome if not more and that is the people not participating in the workforce. They're
00:39:08
getting money but they're not participating and it's like 38 40% 42% depending on the state. So 40% of the
00:39:16
people eligible to work able to work and not working. And this is um you know libertarians had this debate like what do you do? They don't some of them don't want any border controls. And they say
00:39:28
and my dad used to say this and I kind of agree with this part. You need to build a wall around the welfare state and don't give any people coming into
00:39:34
the country illegal any access to your welfare state. And I still agree with that part. I think you still have to have border security too and you have to
00:39:40
push back on millions of people coming all at once. But there is a problem if you had like for example and people will tell you this in that have tomatoes or
00:39:51
anything else the things that uh require handpicking you won't have enough people. But you would have enough people
00:39:57
if Americans work. But a whole chunk 40% of them aren't working who should. But if you want to if you if you want to expel 20 million people from the country and do that, you have to simultaneously
00:40:10
quit paying the people not to work or you won't have enough workers. There is also this argument. There was an
00:40:16
economist by the name of Julian Simon who was a big promoter of this. Population is actually proportional to wealth.
00:40:22
So is trade. You look at big large charts over decades and decades. The more trade you have, the wealthier you
00:40:27
have. The more people you have, the wealthier you have. And um there was a famous bet between Paul Erlick and
00:40:33
Julian Simon about five different commodities and whether they'd be uh more more rare after like a 10-year
00:40:39
period. Julian Simon, the libertarian economist, uh wins his bet because basically the real he said the real resource, the real ultimate resource is
00:40:50
the mind. It's ingenuity. Nobody would have imagined even in my lifetime the whole concept of AI. We didn't imagine
00:40:57
smartphones or cell phones. We didn't imagine all of these things. Um and we're going to have these big debates
00:41:03
maybe bigger than everything we've discussed is whether or not we're going to succumb to the lite philosophy or whether we're going to believe that we
00:41:09
will over not only overcome but technology we will succeed in technology. It doesn't mean you can just
00:41:15
sit there and do nothing. You have to adapt with the times and move forward. But we've, you know, the people breaking
00:41:20
the looms were wrong. Do you think this transition with AI in our economy and our society will actually
00:41:27
create such significant productivity gains that jobs will proliferate that we can get people off of the welfare, off
00:41:34
of government jobs and into the private workforce because they're I don't know if it fixes that problem, but I am of the opinion that I don't
00:41:41
fear technology in general. And I was having this conversation really with one of the world's richest men and he told
00:41:46
me, "Yeah, that's fine." and I' I've been with you and I'm not for the lites except for and I said well humans you
00:41:53
got to have humans to make the robots he says the first generation the second generation of robots will be made by the
00:41:59
robots and I guess it doesn't it doesn't resonate with me because I have such a profound uh belief in in the ingenuity
00:42:07
of of mankind that I think it is limitless and um I don't think that we need to uh smash the computers I don't think we have to break you know somehow
00:42:17
shut down the chip companies and say we're all going to be out of work. I do think though there'll be a time that we will have such great leisure that we
00:42:25
will we will actually choose to work. And I always tell people this anyway. I want everybody in America to work not as
00:42:31
punishment but as reward. There is a reward to working. And I think even if all jobs were eliminated, you'd have
00:42:37
sort of like secret societies where you can go someplace and it'll be underground and you have to do it under
00:42:42
threat of death, but you can go and work. Yeah. You know, even if we have no work, there will be want people have
00:42:47
used to have yoga classes and Pilates classes and massage therapists and many of the luxuries that we take for granted
00:42:54
today that simply didn't exist a 100 years ago when the industrial revolution, the second industrial revolution was underway.
00:43:00
And as we fast forward the next few decades, I think our life, and this is one of Pinker's points, is just labor
00:43:06
per capita, like labor hours has gone down steadily. We've given ourselves more free time with the leverage we've
00:43:12
created on on human time. He he does this and so does uh Marian Tupi at uh human progress. They talk
00:43:20
about time hours and so did William Nordhouse the was the famous example maybe one of the first from Yale. He was
00:43:25
the economist who wrote about how many hours of work it takes to get light for a year to read by. And it was like in
00:43:33
the 19th century because you had to have candles. It was like 10,000 hours of work or no maybe it's a thousand hours
00:43:39
of work to have nighttime light to read by. It's 10 seconds of work gives you an entire year's worth of light. That
00:43:46
productivity increase nobody could fathom and all the loites, you know, hate that kind of stuff and it's like
00:43:52
it's not going to happen and we need to take the pitchfork and the axe to the computers. Uh, no, we'll we'll figure it
00:43:58
out. Um, I do think though that the the the AI people and once again I'm not a genius on AI. I don't write code. I
00:44:05
don't know any of that. But I think it's overstated that uh how great AI is going to be. I think it's going to be a lot of
00:44:11
cool things. And I think some people are going to get caught. We're going to have too many data centers at one point. And I don't care how much electricity
00:44:17
they're sucking. But at the same time, I think we're going to have too many of them because people will say what the one thing I see they do really well now
00:44:23
is they they uh are great adjacent to things. uh you know I've looked up political questions even today on what happens if we hand the reverse repos you
00:44:34
know at the Federal Reserve and it gives a a pretty good explanation it's a faster it isn't smarter than humans it's
00:44:40
much faster at doing the search that I could have done manually by using the Google search engine but these things
00:44:46
just kill and I wonder whether that's you know everybody oh we got to break up Google because they have a monopoly on
00:44:52
search engines I wonder how long it will take until maybe it's already happening that AI I will make Google less of a
00:44:59
dominant search engine. This was actually in the court ruling yesterday, the judge that decided to not
00:45:04
break up Google. There was a write up on the rise of AI showing a a point and that I'm in favor of on multiple levels, but I think it's also cool. Nobody would have predicted, oh, oh, Google's going to have everything and
00:45:15
they'll the whole world market all of a sudden something comes in new, you know, right? AI, like any other technology
00:45:21
prior, provides leverage on human time and therefore leverage on human capital. And when you get a higher ROI on
00:45:27
capital, you generally have more capital flow in, not less. So people will invest more in people. They will pay more to
00:45:34
people. They will hire more people as AI tools are utilized. They're just going to increase productivity for every person.
00:45:39
That's a great way of putting it. And I hadn't thought of that because that fits with my sort of Adam Smith model that
00:45:45
the extent of our prosperity is the extent of the division of labor. And so if AI gives me four more free time, you
00:45:51
know, then I'm I'm going to be smarter and I'm going to think of other ideas and maybe we will get to Mars. You know,
00:45:57
I just want to ask your point on Doge. There was a lot of proclamations at the start of this administration about the
00:46:02
importance of Doge, Elon Musk's role in the administration. The president and others in the administration declared
00:46:08
Doge such an important part of the efforts and all the cabinet members were incorporating Doge team members into
00:46:13
their work. Today, is Doge dead? No, I still met meet with people in government who I think are part of Doge were uh probably colleagues and friends of Elon Musk and brought into the situation. I
00:46:26
think they've been a great addition because one, they're people who know about profit and loss and they're people
00:46:31
who have been successful in business and the fact that they've been selected by the marketplace as being successful people means they're good people to have
00:46:37
in government. Is it everything I'd wished? No. But that's not the Doge people's fault. That's people resisting
00:46:43
Doge and resisting the cuts. I like the fact that the president pushed on with another round of the foreign aid cuts and he's doing this pocket resision and you know I am a stickler for the rules and for the constitution. The
00:46:54
constitution is very explicit on how you spend it but it's pretty silent on not spending it. And I think the best way
00:47:00
for people have their doubts about whether they should do it is imagine we need an aircraft carrier and we hire
00:47:05
somebody who looks at every nut and bolt like Elon Musk and his rockets. All right, we hire Elon Musk and we give him
00:47:10
a billion dollars and he says, "This is crazy. I can do this for $800 million like this." And he probably can. And
00:47:16
that's probably true of every aircraft carrier we have. So he does it for 800 million. Should we be forced to spend the 200
00:47:22
million that this this person found in savings? Should we go to Las Vegas and have a big convention for all the GSA
00:47:28
people with champagne and everything? No. It's ridiculous. The money should go back to the Treasury. Now, the appropriators on both sides of the aisle
00:47:34
say, "No, it's been appropriate. It should be spent." but sort of ignores the fact that we're $2 trillion over
00:47:40
budget. If you had a balanced budget, you could argue, well, we want it to be spent. If you have $2 trillion in the
00:47:46
hole, if you don't spend it, we should be applauding the savings and the money should go back to the Treasury. So, I'm
00:47:52
with them on the recision stuff. I want more of the Doge cuts. I'm all for it, but the push back, and it's bipartisan,
00:47:58
the push back, it's the spenders, it's the big spenders in both parties that have pushed back on Doge, but I still
00:48:04
wish them success and still am for them. I was struck by how many Senate confirmation hearings I watched where
00:48:09
senators blatantly spoke on camera about the need to keep dollars flowing to their state and that was the motivation. It just drove me nuts. Anyway, we'll move on. I want to talk about your new
00:48:19
book, Deception, The Great COVID Coverup. What was at the heart of the coverup from your point of view? Some people get nervous when you talk about cover up or conspiracy. They're
00:48:31
like, "Oh, you're one of those crazy people." And I think the best way to think of a conspiracy is the way George
00:48:37
Carlin put it. George Carlin said that it's not necessary to have a cabal of people, you know, that are all evil that
00:48:44
get together in a room to have a conspiracy. All that's necessary is to have a convergence of interest. The
00:48:49
convergence of interest in COVID was holy crap, we funded this. And so if you are Anthony Fouchy and you know that you've made a deal to do very dangerous research in China, one because there's
00:49:02
less oversight in China and there's complaints beginning to circulate in America. Let's outsource this to China.
00:49:07
What's your first thought? We got to cover this up. And that's exactly what he was doing. The phone calls went on in
00:49:14
our in my book. My wife helped me write it. We go on in vivid detail of the minuteby minute of him going till 3 in the morning that first night. Emails going back and forth and back and forth.
00:49:26
Jeremy Ferrar is his counterpart at Welcome Trust in England. He is saying, "I didn't know what a
00:49:33
burner phone was. I had to buy a burner phone. My wife said I should talk to my uh brother, bring him in in case something happens to me." And then he goes on to say, "It was no big deal. It
00:49:43
turns out it just came from animals." It's like, well, you think the animals are going to kill you? Why are you getting a burner phone? Why are you
00:49:49
giving your last rights to your brother? These people were very concerned. Maybe not that they were going to be killed by foreign agents, but that the public was going to find out that they had been funding this very dangerous
00:50:01
research and that millions of people die because of lack of oversight. But I go through the emails. There's never been a more extraordinary cover up in the sense that these people were saying in public
00:50:13
the opposite of what they were saying in private. So freedom of information became the the the tool that uncovered a
00:50:21
lot of this and thousands of people, you know, helped to get this done. But in private, Anthony Fouchi is saying I'm
00:50:28
50/50 whether this came from the lab or animals. in publicly saying you're a conspiracy theorist and should be
00:50:34
treated as crazy and that we should uh expune you or we should expose you. We should bring you down. Him and Francis Collins are talking back and forth about bringing down Jay Badacharia and uh all
00:50:46
of the others that were exposing this stuff. This is just extraordinary. We have the we have the proof. You're saying they
00:50:53
knew that their funded research which was done in China because there was less oversight is what ultimately led to the development of SARS KV2 and it escaped from the lab. They knew there was a high everything's
00:51:04
a a proportion. Everything is a percentage. They knew there was a high chance it was and they they chose to
00:51:10
cover it up because in the book I say this is about the business of science. This isn't about science. It's about the
00:51:16
business of science. And people have to realize there are some good people in this world. There are good scientists who want to cure cancer. But there are
00:51:22
many people getting millions of dollars and there's nothing against money. I'm all for money and good people should be paid for important discoveries. But they
00:51:29
shouldn't shouldn't be paid not to tell us the truth and it should be exposed. I think all the scientists should have to reveal their royalties. Not one
00:51:36
scientist in government reveals their royalties. Some of them are now getting millions of of dollars in this stuff. Fizer paid 800
00:51:43
million and Madna paid 400 million and they've taken that money and now they put it in a foundation that I have no
00:51:50
oversight in government over. Government has no oversight of there's an NIH foundation that has $1.2 trillion in it
00:51:56
given from big pharma for their share of the COVID vaccine. So no, it's an extraordinary thing where in private they were very open to the fact leaning towards and in favor of the fact that
00:52:07
the virus came from a lab. In public they were disdainful. They got Facebook to take all our crap down. They got
00:52:14
Facebook to take down the discussion of it as a conspiracy. That's an evil thing to do. And it's it's dishonest. It's not
00:52:20
just you're a bad person. If you were in the government and you were leading people astray as to the cause of
00:52:26
something because you find it you deserve to be punished really in a criminal way. I saw your heated exchange with Fouchy.
00:52:32
There was a a video. It's about nine minutes long. It went viral. you and uh questioning uh Fouchy
00:52:38
um about gain of function research and I just want to talk about the origin of gain of function research because it's a term of art that's got different definitions right depending on who you
00:52:48
ask Fouchy obviously disagreed with the definition what's your view as a doctor as someone who's worked in science and as a political leader about the role
00:52:59
that government should play in researching ahead of the curve so that understanding what may come next which I
00:53:05
think is part of the argument for some of this research that we need to understand how viruses can evolve so
00:53:12
that we can prepare for the next pandemic because if we don't there will be a congressional hearing saying why
00:53:18
didn't you prepare enough so there's different aspects to this should we know how viruses evolve absolutely should we test viruses and
00:53:25
infections from different natural sources yes gain of function is different than that gain of function is
00:53:31
forcing evolution in a direction so gain of function is I take a rat and I put human lungs in it. Not literally human lungs, but I have a they will express receptors that make cells think that
00:53:42
they're invading a human. So, I give it a virus and I run it through and nine nine rats survive and one's sick as What I do is I take the really sick one, I culture the virus out and I
00:53:53
do it again. And every time I just keep culturing it till I get a virus that really attaches to human cells. We
00:53:59
believe COVID is that because most animal viruses, the aven flu right now, if the aven flu is not manipulated in a
00:54:05
lab, it can infect a human but doesn't go human to human. It has trouble. That's the way animal viruses are. When
00:54:10
CO started, it hit humans and went everywhere. It just there was nothing stopping it, which made us think it was
00:54:16
pre-addapted. There are many other reasons why we think this happens. But as far as gain of function, what should be regulated and what shouldn't? One,
00:54:22
it's very dangerous. Viruses are more dangerous than bacteria if they're aerosolized. something that can spread through the air can be incredibly
00:54:29
dangerous. Um, lethality. Should you increase the lethality of it? Um, some of these viruses start with 50% lethality. And if you want to know what that's like, read Barbara Tukman's about
00:54:40
the 14th century calamity and the black plague. When a third of Europe died, I mean, we're talking about setting back
00:54:45
civilization hundreds of year. We're talking about entering the stone age. We we some people think we could lose 10%
00:54:51
of our population and we wouldn't get chlorine in the water. we'd no longer have portable water and we would have
00:54:56
riots like you've never seen in just a disaster. So aerosolization, increasing the lethality, increasing the
00:55:02
transmissibility are all dangerous things. They did all of that and yet he argued, oh well, you can't have gain of
00:55:08
function unless it was intentional. And it's like, well, if you're running it through human humanized mice or rats,
00:55:16
you're pushing it you're pushing its evolution to be infectious in humans. And uh you know he he basically lied.
00:55:23
One day he came and they had actually changed the the definition on his website the day before. So they knew I'd
00:55:29
been arguing that it was gain of function. They actually literally changed the definition on the website to say it doesn't match the definition.
00:55:35
You would still support research into where viruses are headed and protecting the population and doing this this
00:55:41
research but not in this directed engineered way. Right. So there's a there's a big difference and even many some of the people support Fouchy actually support
00:55:48
me on this. Identifying viruses mostly a good idea but still you have to think about it. A lot of these viruses are 300 feet underground in these enormous bat caves in South China. So
00:56:00
should you go down 300 feet underground and just randomly get as many as you can and take them back to a lab in Wuhan.
00:56:05
Well, there's the danger that one you got is the one that's going to kill all of mankind. Maybe it was never getting up and other viruses would dominate it
00:56:12
and never was getting up to service. You should check the humans who live around the cave. You should check viruses that
00:56:18
get up into our world. I'm not sure you should bring viruses from very remote areas to big cities. But then it's worse
00:56:24
than that. The big virus identification, which sounds benign. They were taking the corona viruses. They were taking a
00:56:30
backbone of it and they have a new one they found in a cave. They were taking the S- protein off a new one and
00:56:36
sticking it on a backbone. the backbone is infectious and they're wanting to know does it make it more or less infectious. Well, that's really a recipe
00:56:43
for discovering something that maybe is a disaster. It isn't helping and and most most of the people who follow this
00:56:48
that oppose gain of function say no gain of function research has developed any vaccines. But here's further I think a
00:56:56
compromise and a moderation of this. I don't want to ban it. I want to set up a presidential commission of scientists
00:57:02
who are not currently employed by NIH, don't have grants that I can give them bigger grants if they agree with me. And
00:57:08
I want them to evaluate this. But not only do they need to evaluate the civilian side of this, they need to
00:57:14
evaluate the classified side because here's what happens in our government. And I only know this much because they won't tell me either. They say, "Well,
00:57:20
the Chinese are doing this." Well, then we need to do it. You have to, oh, the Chinese are doing this. They're working
00:57:26
with Norberg virus. I'm just making this part up of which virus they're dealing with this very dangerous virus. Well, we
00:57:31
should too. That is the basically the logic and what it takes to get a research grant in the classified area
00:57:37
that the Chinese are doing it. Well, you know, we might have an accident doing something the Chinese are doing that the
00:57:43
Chinese shouldn't be doing and we should be trying to stop them from doing, but we could kill the world also through an
00:57:48
accident. Uh even the safest labs in our country have dozens of accidents every year. Fair enough. Do you feel like there's
00:57:55
been an erosion of public trust in science and scientific institutions in this country? And importantly, when people lose faith in science, which is meant to be the source for objective
00:58:07
truth, a process by which we discover the truth through testing and experimentation, hypothesizing, testing
00:58:14
and experimentation, and looking at the results objectively, does it not create space for people to
00:58:19
come in with untruths and convince the public of untruths being true? Right. Absolutely. And so, the biggest
00:58:26
one they're talking about now is vaccine hesitancy. So, and people say, "Oh, it's all the right wing. It's people crazy on
00:58:32
the right wing that are creating this vaccine hesitency." And I say, "Well, if you tell people things that aren't true,
00:58:38
they become distrustful of all science." So, I'll I'll tell you one right now. I've had this back and forth with C Bill
00:58:44
Cassidy, the senator from Louisiana, and with other members of the establishment medical community. Does your two-day old
00:58:50
need a hepatitis B vaccine? I just went through this personally. Yeah. And we we opted not to and we have to
00:58:56
deal with it in the schools and we've been having this debate about how we did the same thing. We did it later on in school. But here's the thing. Does
00:59:02
your two-day old need There's one indication for your two-day old get it. Mom has hepatitis B and you have to
00:59:08
within 12 hours give them the vaccine and you have to give them imunoglobulin which is like a a monoconal antibbody
00:59:14
against hepatitis. But they test it already. So if the mom does not have hepatitis B, is there any indication
00:59:20
with hepatitis B? No. In fact, you know what the honest people will tell you? They'll say, "Oh, no, but we have you
00:59:25
there and we can get much better compliance by forcing it and pushing it in the hospital." The other problem is
00:59:30
this. There's so many problems on so many levels. The hepatitis B vaccine wears off. When does it wear off? About
00:59:36
10 to 12 years. When might you want to inoculate your kid for hepatitis B? If you are worried about your teenager
00:59:42
getting involved in sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and IV drugs. That's when it's going to happen. You might consider the
00:59:47
hepatitis B vaccine. Plus, he's 12 years old at that point and much bigger, stronger, and able to take whatever you
00:59:53
give them. But they are creating vaccine hesitancy on this because they're lying to us. They're absolutely lying to us.
00:59:59
COVID vaccine the same. People think I'm antivaccine. Uh my age, I'm 62. I probably would have taken it. I'm still a little iffy on some of the details, but I the reason I didn't take it is I got infected in March of 2020. I had it
01:00:11
and I didn't take the vaccine. But would I give it to my 5-year-old right now? Hell no, I wouldn't have. Would I have
01:00:16
given it to him in March of 2020? No, because all of the initial evidence out of uh China was children. They weren't
01:00:23
even sure if they were getting sick. But when they started doing the testing, they found out they were all getting it and they weren't getting sick. It's like a lot of social discourse and
01:00:29
politics. It's become so binary. There's no nuance and there's no gray area for conversation about some of these make sense, some of them do not. Why can't we
01:00:36
agree that we can each have a different point of view on that? And most of Europe doesn't do the COVID vaccine or push it on goods. So, I think
01:00:42
I blame them and actually do want people to believe in science. I come from a scientific background. And I've had uh
01:00:48
papers published in scientific journals. You know, I come from that background. But uh you have to be honest with
01:00:54
people. And I also believe people are smarter. You don't have to have a PhD to know people are lying to you about the
01:00:59
FB vaccine. Just today, Putin Xi and Kim Jong-un stood together in Beijing. Very dramatic
01:01:05
show of strength and unity as a group. What does it mean for America to be in competition with China? Is this going to evolve into a conflict from your point
01:01:16
of view? Or is there a way to carry the world forward where we all have prosperity where we all progress, where
01:01:22
all societies succeed, where they cooperate, and we have a multipolar world that doesn't dictate a winner and
01:01:27
a loser. Do we really need American primacy? The shorter answer is yes. The longer answer is more complicated. Um Graham
01:01:34
Allison wrote a book, The Thusidities Trap, and we interviewed him at our show last night. He's amazing guy. Really, really bright
01:01:39
guy and a guy I'm fond of. He you know talks about up and cominging powers and is is war inevitable and interesting and
01:01:46
I don't know if this commander but I met with one of the Pacific fleet managers I don't want to name him because I don't want him conversation but he said when
01:01:53
you go back to Washington make sure they know that war with China is not inevitable and I thought it's a profound
01:01:58
statement from a guy who's going to be in charge of the war and out there fighting on the front lines and uh I think it is very possible and I think it
01:02:05
but it gets back to fallacies um can you trade with China where you both get rich and it's not they're ripping us off. Uh
01:02:11
I think yes and I think that is the truth of the matter. Since 1975 on, we've had a trade deficit every year and we got richer and so do they are there
01:02:18
problems and dislocations in industry? Yeah. But I would actually argue what killed the steel industry or hurt the steel industry the most in this in this
01:02:25
country was actually protectionism. Um they've been protected for long one antitrust killed them first when they
01:02:31
broke up US steel and that became them less competitive with foreigners because they were smaller. But then the second thing that went after them is we did try
01:02:38
to protect them. This isn't the first time we tried to protect steel. We've been trying to protect steel. As we protected steel, what did it do? Did it
01:02:44
breed uh better and more uh profound market decisions or worse decisions? So, if you're selling me chairs and I tell you, you sell them for $50, I can say, well, we'll put a tariff on you, sell
01:02:56
them for $100. Are you going to be more efficient or less? You know, you won't make as wise a decision because you're being protected from the competition.
01:03:03
And so, all of that happened with with steel industry. But I think we can we have to get through the fallacy part,
01:03:08
but we also have have to understand that I think we're pushing in the wrong direction. There's a possibility. People think we're going to defeat them and
01:03:14
we're going to come out on top because we're so, you know, great and protectionism is going to show how great we are. But them all meeting together to
01:03:20
me shows one other possibility. And I don't know what will happen. Nobody does. But there's one possibility that
01:03:26
finally unites them enough that they do everything in their power not to use the dollar and maybe they can displace the
01:03:32
dollar. They already try in their transactions. And so I think we we we use the the stick in foreign policy and
01:03:39
you have to have it, but we should have a carrot offered as well. Um I just met with some Syrian Americans today,
01:03:45
physicians mostly and uh uh intellectuals and u engineers and things and they want to get rid of the
01:03:52
sanctions on Syria. And I say finally, now they did like that. I think this group liked the sanctions before, but they want to get rid of them. Finally,
01:03:58
somebody wants to get rid of sanctions because there has to be a reward. And so even with countries we find distasteful
01:04:04
and often are distasteful. Iran, there has to be an offer somehow to get rid of the sanctions. I would send my diplomats
01:04:11
to China. I'll give you a great example. Blinken and Yellen went to China and they were screaming, pitching a fit and and telling the Chinese how bad they were. One that's not very good diplomacy, but they wanted them to stop
01:04:23
selling dual use parts to Ukraine. I mean to Russia in the Ukraine war. And so I said, "Well, it's a reasonable
01:04:29
goal." But had I been in charge, I would send my diplomats to China and I would say, "Look, the Chinese don't like to
01:04:35
lose face. They don't like you insulting them in their own country. Quietly say, you know, this sanction I think is
01:04:41
costing you about $50 billion worth of of wealth. We'll remove it, but you got to quit selling them the dual use." They
01:04:47
would never admit that we pushed them into doing it. It's a trade and it's transactional and diplomacy sometimes needs to be that. We have a lot of people both in Congress and and involved
01:04:59
administrations who are much more black and white that there are good and bad people in the world and the bad people
01:05:04
need to die and we need to defeat them utterly. And I wish they would die and go away, but you know, I can't that kind
01:05:10
of attitude. We're going to be waiting a long time if we think sanctions is going to get rid of the Communist Party in China. Capitalism might someday. And
01:05:17
everybody complained, well, Deng Xiaoping opened it up and it they still have repression and capitalism. It's
01:05:22
true. But I think you might argue and this isn't a great argument for current China, but that China may be a better
01:05:28
place than it was under Mao. I mean, people who've been there tell me that it definitely is 10x improvement in GDP per
01:05:34
capita. You visit a modern Chinese city, it's like living in the future, right? People are very happy, it seems, despite
01:05:40
the but not an argument for socialism, but an argument that most of that's actually due to the amount of capitalism they've
01:05:46
allowed to come in. There was a interview with the guys from the I think it was the Hoover Institution that it was actually the entrepreneurism in the
01:05:52
country. Political future for you, Senator, or are you thinking maybe you could run for president again in the
01:05:57
future? You know, I think um it depends on what happens in the next year or two. I think
01:06:02
there needs to be a voice within our party that is more libertarian free market. I think we have populism and
01:06:08
protectionism covered and I think there will be many errors and many people competing to be heirs of Donald Trump in
01:06:14
the protectionist front. I don't think it's good for our country and I think it will make us less wealthy and ultimately could really lead to a calamity. um if
01:06:22
things are rosy in three or four years and the economyy's percolating along and it is a possibility. It is a possibility
01:06:28
that the tariffs as as bad as I think they are are not a big enough percentage of the overall GDP to slow things down
01:06:34
and that capitalism is still vibrant enough to overcome the tariffs. There's a distinct possibility if that's true we'll get more tariffs and we'll get
01:06:40
another protectionist populist president. Um I want to be that voice whether it's in the Senate or running
01:06:46
for the presidency. I don't know. I think right now, all things given, uh, free markets and free trade isn't isn't very popular right now. People are all making excuses for why we should own
01:06:57
Intel. Howard Lutnik thinks that's part of that's capitalism and, you know, that tariffs are lowering taxes and all
01:07:04
gobbledegook that makes no sense. If that if the economy still percolated on, people may still accept that uh nonsense
01:07:11
as truth. I've been to DC a number of times in the last year or two. I always tell people I'm disappointed when I meet with
01:07:17
members of Congress when I come back from DC because I hear the same thing over and over and I don't see a progressive voice that actually speaks
01:07:24
to where this nation needs to go. I often consider myself a libertarian. So I want to thank you for your service,
01:07:29
for your leadership, for your voice. Thank you for being here today. Thank you. [Music]
01:07:48
I'm going all in.