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This week I'm joined by the one and only Bruce Fenton.
He's an OG Bitcoiner, we'll say.
He's been involved with Bitcoin for 11 years.
He's the host of the very prestigious Satoshi Roundtable annual gathering.
Bruce also ran in the Republican primary for the US Senate last year in New Hampshire,
which we're going to talk a lot about.
He's been in the business of securities for 30 years.
He's CEO of Chainstone Labs.
He's the owner of Watchdog Capital, which is an SEC registered broker.
He does it all.
This guy does it all.
He's Jack of all trades.
Let's jump right into it with Bruce Fenton.
Yeah, Bruce, thanks for jumping on with me.
Thanks for having me.
I've been wanting to talk to you for so long.
I mean, we've caught up before, but you know, I mean, lately you've been talking about Vivek
Ramaswamy a lot, which I want to get to.
For sure.
But first, I wanted to, the stuff I really wanted to ask you about was running for Senate,
man, because it's like, I'm so curious about how that changed your perspective on things,
you know, with politics and just with the country and like, has his life gotten back
to normal or is it like permanently changed for you?
Well, you know, a little of both.
I was lucky in that I had a good job to fall back on and was able to go right back to my
normal life.
A lot of candidates, you know, don't, you know, they quit their jobs so they can run
or something like that or they don't have that option.
So I was lucky to be able to go back into my normal routine.
But yeah, it did change me.
I certainly think differently.
I think about politics a lot.
You know, the fellow who was my campaign manager works for my company now.
So we both got kind of a PhD in politics.
Neither of us had been in politics before.
And we care about New Hampshire because we have a lot of friends and we made even more
friends on the campaign trail.
A lot of the other people who were running for office, other candidates for federal office,
my opponents, this kind of thing.
We got to know all of the officials in the Republican Party and the governor and everything.
So and we learned a lot.
You know, I learned a lot about politics.
I learned a lot about what it takes to run.
One of the reasons that I ran originally was just to kind of level up my skills.
You know, I think biting off more than you can chew, doing something interesting like
this.
It's definitely, you know, when I ran, I knew I was a long shot.
I came in late.
You know, my opinions are not always mainstream.
So there was a lot of factors where I knew it was kind of a long shot.
But I said, well, you know what, if I run and lose, I will learn something.
I'll be well positioned if I want to run again and I'll level up my skills.
You know, I gave a couple hundred speeches.
I got a lot better about kind of dealing with people and crowds and that kind of thing.
Sitting on my feet, interviews, this kind of stuff.
So I thought it was a great experience.
I learned a lot about politics, learned a little bit about myself and got to tour this
great state of New Hampshire.
So I'm glad I did it.
But didn't didn't jade you.
It didn't make you more skeptical of how the country's run or anything like that or what?
A little bit.
Sure.
In some ways, you know, one of the things I probably the biggest disappointment was
the realization that all the experts because I don't like listening to experts.
Well, I shouldn't say that.
It depends on the expert.
You know, I really like to see evidence and I don't tend to trust anything unless I experience
it or unless I really, really trust the speaker.
And a lot of people said, hey, look, Bruce, you know, your ideas don't matter.
All that matters is money.
And I was a little naive on that.
I said, no, come on, come on.
I can reach the voters.
People care like the whole country is a mess right now.
Many people are going to care about ideas.
But unfortunately, you know, this is very much Coke versus Pepsi.
And if I came to you as an investor and I say, Chris, I got a new soda.
It tastes even better than Coke or Pepsi.
It's delicious, caramel colored, carbonated beverage, a sweet beverage.
And we're going to beat Coke and Pepsi because it tastes better.
As a wise investor, you'd think that was crazy.
You'd say doesn't matter if it tastes better.
It doesn't matter if it tastes better.
You're not going to beat Coke and Pepsi.
Everybody's sitting there saying Coca-Cola is where it is because it's absolutely the
best soda in the whole world.
You know, there's probably some grandmother somewhere who makes homemade soda that's better
than or some little roadside stand that makes homemade sodas that are better.
But it's all marketing.
And the marketing companies know that down to the penny what it costs them to market
you to become a Coca-Cola customer.
And the political parties, which are also very much like Coke versus Pepsi, also in
the fact that they're not that different, they know exactly down to the penny what it
costs to get a vote.
And it is marketing and it's a very well tuned.
They try and appear folksy, but it's a well tuned, well oiled, multi-decker, billion dollar
machine.
And they have the marketing down to an absolute science.
They know exactly who the voters are, how to turn them out and many other factors.
So it really does just come down to the money, unfortunately.
And you can have great ideas and be a great speaker and everything else, but rarely will
it break away from just spending.
And almost nothing is enough to overcome the kind of spending that people spend in these
races.
You know, my opponent, so I ran for the Republican primary.
The person who beat me in that primary, General Don Bolduc, he's a friend of mine.
You know, we're kind of all friendly, the Republicans, to the extent that opponents
can be.
But he was a good guy.
One of the things that I respect most about him is he has incredible work ethic.
He's a former general.
I don't think he's slept in, you know, for a single day in the last 50 years.
You know, he's the kind of guy who's up at four or five and he would work these crazy
schedules.
He worked all day every day during the campaign.
And he made 350 appearances in New Hampshire.
He went to every town almost twice.
He did appearance after appearance, three appearances a day.
He met everybody.
The incumbent that he ran against, Maggie Hassan, who has a 98 percent similar record
to Elizabeth Warren, she did something like two appearances.
She wasn't even here in the state.
And it just didn't matter.
She didn't need to play this game.
What do you need to wake up at six in the morning and go up, you know, two hours away
to go speak to a Republican town committee?
Why do that when you can just have George Soros shower the state with, you know, television
ads?
And that's exactly what happens in these races, unfortunately.
So I'd like to see that break broken away from.
But you know, lesson learned, you know, I was naive, but that only happens once.
If I ever run again, unfortunately, I'm going to just shake every single person down that
I know.
I didn't really raise money.
In fact, I joked at the Bitcoin Miami.
I said, don't send me money.
Stack sats, you'll do better for yourself if you do.
But if I ran again, you know, I would run to win and I would be very serious about raising
money because it's no purpose in just running again and not having a plan to win.
Yeah.
But can you raise the kind of money you have to raise if you don't have the backing of
the people with the money?
I mean, it's like catch 22, right?
Yeah, that's the trick because it's a very establishment thing.
I mean, I know more billionaires and more rich people than I don't know, point zero
zero one percent of.
I mean, you know, my whole career I've been involved in money.
I met many, many, many billionaires.
I worked in the Middle East for huge PE firms.
My job was basically rubbing elbows with shakes and Royals.
And then I got into Bitcoin and a whole mess of my friends became extraordinarily wealthy.
And I've advised people and worked with people.
So I've been around people with money more than almost anybody you can think of.
So you would think it would be really easy for me to just make a few phone calls and
raise the kind of money you need.
That's not the case.
For one thing, you need is an extraordinary amount of money.
You know, I can I could call up my my rich friends and raise a couple bucks, but raising
20, 30, 40, 50 million dollars is a whole nother story.
Really the only way to get that kind of money is the big, big donors who put in five million
at a pop.
And I know there's not a lot even the wealthiest people, even billionaires don't just throw
five million around.
It's a very establishment kind of process.
And again, it goes back to these power players.
Mitch McConnell runs a huge pack that if you're aligned with McConnell, they can award you
five, ten million dollars for your race.
But obviously that's not going to happen to me.
I mean, I openly criticize McConnell.
So if you luck out and you know somebody like a feel or somebody who's really wealthy and
who is very generous with the donating, that could work.
But it's a pretty hard game.
You know, even with wealthy friends, it's you know, I might be able to raise a couple
million, but that's not enough to to win these big federal races, unfortunately.
It's like what drew us to Bitcoin.
I'm sure I can speak for you to some regard, you know, when it comes to this, what drew
most of us was the fact that we're going to sort of create this flat structure where we
don't have this power structure, where we don't have kingmakers, where we don't have
people that can change the rules if they have enough money, you know, which is basically
like a proof of state system.
Right.
But then you compare that to what you're talking about with the way that politics works.
And I start to wonder, like, is there first of all, do you think that I mean, you can't
possibly think this is a good way to do it, right?
Politically, like whoever has the most money crowns the kings, right?
Like that's not good.
Right.
It's a terrible system.
And it said, you know, and now a lot of people say they recognize the problem and they say,
oh, well, what we need is more campaign finance reform.
We need more rules and we got to, you know, overturn Citizens United, which actually means,
you know, changing the First Amendment or we need to do this or that, or we need to
ban this group from donating or ban billionaires or something like that.
I'm skeptical of any of those efforts because the rules are written by the people who are
benefiting from this system.
So we passed a bunch of campaign finance.
Does anybody think McCain and Feingold when they passed McCain, Feingold were really just
great Americans looking out for the truth?
I mean, maybe they thought that at best, but they were partisan hacks and they were part
of the problem.
So we had campaign finance and it just created PACs and everything.
And by the way, there's a whole mess of rules, but that's a very insider club.
It's extremely difficult to figure out what you're allowed to do, what you're not allowed
to do.
It's very clear to the people, you know, like Elizabeth Warren or Maggie Hassan, who are
in this system.
They have whole armies of consultants and people.
There's a whole cottage industry, a multi-billion dollar industry, all these PACs and everything.
And they have rules like the campaign can't coordinate with the PAC.
And that's all nonsense.
You know, they have their ways of coordinating.
They've gamed this system so that, you know, the law originally said, oh, you can't can't,
you can't coordinate.
So everybody knows that now.
So they have all these wink, wink, nod, nods like, well, I understand you're coming to
my event, wink, and you're not here on behalf of your PAC, you know, but, you know, and
I know we can't share photos from our event.
However, if you go to brucefenton.com slash open source, you'll see some open source photos
that you're allowed to use that you might want to use on your PAC brochure if you want
to.
You know, this is the kind of thing that the and then, you know, I didn't know how to do
any of these games.
I didn't have a PAC.
I didn't know how to do it.
It all seemed like nonsense.
I didn't I didn't have interest in it.
And I found it opaque and frustrating.
But the political system, people like Elizabeth Warren have absolutely mastered it.
Everybody in her staff knows all the rules about who can talk to who and how you can
do it.
And all these people donating, they know where to donate it.
And they do bundling.
You know, you're you're you're able to get a big mailing list and they collect checks
and then they send the checks.
And there's all the it's just a big system.
And what it does, it makes it harder for somebody like me as an outsider.
I came into this and all I knew is that, you know, you can go to jail for campaign finance
stuff.
You know, that's that's the main thing.
So I look at this and I see, you know, very difficult.
I'm used to reading securities regulations.
Some of these finance regulations are even more difficult, very difficult to figure,
you know, how do we accept Bitcoin?
How can we do this?
You know, do you know, who do I have to make sure I get a from?
Because you can't just take money.
I can't just put up a Bitcoin address and say, donate to Bruce.
I have to know who that's coming from.
Make sure it's not foreign that you have to be able to return things.
People can donate, you know, double for your primary and your race.
But you got to return it if you don't win the primary.
You know, there's all these goofy regulations and it made it quite difficult.
And I was I was really afraid.
I said, all right, I'm just going to be extra conservative.
I'll spend my own money.
I'm not going to worry too much about raising because the more you raise, the more careful
you have to be.
And then you and then you have to say, well, OK, I raised money and then I took my credit
card from the campaign and I bought a bunch of staffers food.
Well, did I bring my own food?
What if I bought my kids food?
Does that you know, am I going to get in trouble for?
So when in doubt, I just paid myself so I would avoid trouble.
But that's not a good system because it's very hard and opaque.
So the solution, I don't think, is more regulation or more efforts at campaign finance reform
because the snakes will snakes on the swamp will just figure out a way around that.
The solution is actually make government so small that it doesn't have anything anybody
wants.
So nobody bothers to hire a lobbyist because there's nothing the lobbyist can get.
You know, that's the way to do it.
Right.
Yeah.
But how do you do that without doing the first thing?
It's like it's insane.
It's so it's almost like it's such a unique position to be in to understand how Bitcoin
works and understand how that level of decentralization can be achieved.
And then live in that world financially and then live in this corrupt political world
that is the exact opposite.
It's basically this totally corrupted crony proof of work system that's totally opaque
in a lot of regards.
And it makes you wonder because most people, I mean, 99% of people still, even if they
have Bitcoin, they don't really appreciate why it's valuable, I think.
You know, but I feel like if we could ever get to the point where we could apply those
principles to politics, I feel like we'd be going somewhere, you know, as opposed to just
sitting in this corrupt morass of nonsense.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, totally.
I mean, one point on that is like you notice in Bitcoin, people talk about ideas and especially
the best conferences, the more technical ones, you know, like I'm not super technical, but
I enjoy things like Baltic Honey Badger and where you go and it's Adam Back and 300 super
nerds rather than nothing against, you know, it's fun to go to the 10,000, 20,000 person
conferences with Lambos too, but there's more meat and substance in these smaller technical
conferences.
Everybody's talking about ideas.
They're talking about Schnorr and privacy and BIP 300 and how you're going to do different
tokens and smart contracts on Bitcoin and very little talk about people.
You go to a political event, you know, the old saying, what is it?
Small minds talk about people, big minds talk about ideas.
You know, you go to a political event, everything's all like, oh, this person's chief of staff
is this and this and this.
And I've been in circles where I've hung out with the Davos World Economic Forum crowd,
the World Bank and the epitome of all of it.
If you watch Chernobyl on HBO, you know, there's these amazing scenes in the first, all through
the season.
I've only watched the first episode, but the, you know, the way that the Soviets worked
where it's like, oh, the director general of the executive committee is going to talk
to the other executive committee who's going to talk to the deputy chief of nuclear regulatory
affairs who and everybody's just terrified like, oh boy.
And I've been in those same kind of rooms, not in Soviet Russia about nuclear, but you
know, about banking and finance.
You know, when I did some charity work and things like that in the Middle East, it's
really hilarious how these people talk.
They're like, oh my goodness, the so-and-so, you know, deputy undersecretary of the executive
committee for the Department of Finance is coming and it's, everybody's obsessed with
people and they're just spinning their wheels on nonsense.
And that's kind of what politics is.
Politics at its worst is epitomized by what we saw with Chernobyl and Soviet Russia and
maybe the complete opposite of that politics at its best is sort of lack of politics where
nobody talks about any of this stuff and it doesn't really matter.
You're talking about the ideas instead.
So I think the world could learn a lot from Bitcoin.
Yeah.
And it's always been that way.
That's the thing.
Like since the beginning of recorded history, like people have been ruled by personalities
basically, you know, it's like the personality plus the power, you know, and then you get
this mutated.
That's why every president in the US is different, right?
It's like you have the power and then it's the personality that's like this variable
and then you get this mutation, right?
And it's always a different mutation and that's why every regime is a little bit different,
you know, and it's inconsistent and you never know what you're going to get until it's too
late and it's so imperfect and it just makes you wonder with this technology and this new
way of thinking that we like are privileged to have from Bitcoin and it's still so early.
It's like we clearly most people don't get it, but is there a future where that can have
some impact?
And I'm not even saying like full, I'm not, I'm definitely not saying like blockchain
government or anything like that.
I'm just talking about the principles of it.
Like the, you know what I mean?
Like, it's like, and I also feel like they try, like, I feel like the constitution was
an attempt at this based on the tech they had available back then, but it's like, I
feel like we're, we're revving up.
I hope it happens in my lifetime, but I doubt it, but I feel like we're revving up towards
this new way of approaching a constitution that could be more programmatic and more predictable
and take the personalities out of it.
What do you think?
Is that, is that a hope that you think is realistic?
Yeah, I hope so.
You know, and we have to rest that hope in Gen Z, you know, they're, they're a generation,
the healthiest thing about Gen Z is that they're very skeptical of centralized power.
And because we're in kind of this fourth turning, a time of epic change, we're seeing old power
structures of, you know, CNN and the New York Times being replaced by Joe Rogan and the
world economic forum and the IMF being replaced by Bitcoin.
And so we see this, but there is still something about this old style and maybe it's in human
nature, our tribal nature as humans, that there's always going to be people who looked
to a leader.
There's something to be said for a leader.
And it's interesting in my case, because, you know, I started my career in the 90s and
I was kind of like your classic 90s business person.
You know, I wore a suit and I listened to books about self help.
And I went to Tony Robbins seminars on how to become a great speaker.
And a lot of those, that kind of style is kind of campy now.
You know, Mike Pence, I met him on the campaign trail.
He's the absolute master of that.
I could tell you stories about Mike Pence when he met us.
Well, real quickly, he met me and then three days later he recognized me out of a crowd
and he said a nice thing to my kid specific to me.
He said, oh, I hope you're enjoying your train set.
Just barely one little tiny line he had heard three days earlier out of 300 people.
And I'm like, wow, no wonder the guy, I don't agree with his politics.
I'm not a Mike Pence fan, but I'm like, wow, this guy has mastered, absolutely mastered
the art of the 90s style politician.
But look at him in the polls now, that kind of style is gone, you know.
And I think especially Gen Z, who is barely voting now, but Gen Z, they're not impressed
by that.
They're not going to look at, you know, they're not going to look like their grandparents
and their and their boomer parents and say, wow, that guy has a blue suit with a red tie
and he's clean shaven.
He must be trustworthy.
You know, that that's an old ideology from a from a different time.
And hopefully they're going to move more towards the cypherpunk way.
You know, if anything, one weakness of my campaign was, you know, because the average
voter in New Hampshire, 79 years old for the primary, I was probably too cypherpunk.
You know, I was I had an unbuttoned shirt and a T-shirt.
I was kind of casual.
And originally, when I first started, if you look at my race in the first few months, I
was like very anti establishment.
I was just like resistant to anything.
I had like a very non campaigning website.
I didn't do any of the I said, look, I'll meet people, I'll meet voters and I'll talk
to press.
That's it.
I'm not doing any other games.
I'm not doing any other nonsense.
And in some ways it was refreshing.
And I was glad with how I ran the campaign.
But in other ways, it was maybe too cypherpunk for a mass market audience, because there
is a lot of people who are from even, you know, still from that kind of 90s mold.
So I think the balance will be interesting as we go forward.
And hopefully we move towards your vision of a more, you know, kind of cypherpunk democracy
to find the right balance of, you know, where do figureheads fit in there?
And can we have because I feel like we do need leaders in some way.
And if not, if we if we all are just cypherpunks, and I think you and I are similar in some
respects of kind of like our mannerisms and our way of interacting and everything, you
or I could either could easily, you know, have launched some coin and become a figurehead
and become some some variation of a Richard Hart and made a bunch of money and gotten
into a lot of trouble and hurt a lot of people.
I mean, it's not a hard thing to do.
So if but if but if everybody is kind of saying like, hey, I'm not playing the game, I'm not
going to be talking about people.
I'm going to be talking about ideas.
Well, then a Sam or Richard Hart can can easily come in and co-op people who haven't internalized
that yet.
There's a lot of people who are like, wow, he had Tony Blair and Bill Clinton at his
event.
He must be for real.
So they gave Sam billions of dollars.
So you know, I and I've thought about this a lot with myself.
You know, I resist it.
It's interesting if this was 15 years ago, I would have been I probably would have quadrupled
the following in crypto Twitter, you know, like if I was a different point in my life,
I would have been given speeches and, you know, walking the walk and talking the talk
and doing all the things for eyeballs.
But as I got much more mature and I moved on in life, those things became less important
to me.
And at my age now and where I am now, I think of a lot of those things as silly.
I'm like, that's just silly.
Like putting on a suit and putting, you know, doing a song and dance.
That's silly.
I want to talk about important stuff like how we can change the world, how we can decentralize.
I don't want to be sitting there, you know, doing some some silly speech about, you know,
you know, America and the children, you know, things that have no substance.
So there's some balance in there.
I think we, you know, maybe we need a new kind of leader that if I could figure out
how to do it, I would, but I think it's probably going to be somebody in Generation X who kind
of comes forward as, you know, and galvanizes people.
And it's somebody you can look to and say, this is somebody I'd follow.
But they're also in favor of those ideals of, you know, tearing everything down and putting
power with the people.
Maybe that's what the founders did.
Yeah.
So much of what you're talking about just resonates with the experiences I'm having
in crypto lately and and politics is the same thing.
I like to say it boils down to whether or not you're willing to monetize the trust that
people are putting into you, you know, and that you're asking them to put into you, whether
it's warranted or not, you know, and usually it's not like usually if another human that
you don't know is asking you to trust them in some regard, whether it's a politician
or a CEO or whoever it might be, you usually shouldn't be trusting them because like you
said earlier, like you don't, you shouldn't trust what you can't examine, what you can't
know yourself, you know, but it's like throughout crypto, throughout politics, throughout every
aspect of the world.
This isn't this capitalism though?
Like I keep going back and forth on this.
Isn't this like a flaw of capitalism in a way because capitalism naturally gravitates
towards this like the the the carnival barker, you know, that's kind of like selling you
stuff, you know, trying to extract maximum value from you and I, I, it makes me question
my own principles once in a while.
Like it is unbridled capitalism in this way, really the best route or are we heading towards
a place where people are just going to be putting their trust in whoever can spend the
most money to convince them of something?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's interesting because you can, you know, you can basically spend
your way into trust and trust can be a good thing.
You know, Naval has a neat piece that he did about, you know, people investing in long-term
people, long-term people in long-term games, it's called, and, you know, basically align
with people that are going to be around for a while and that's sort of a form of trust,
you know, so trust can be important.
There's probably nothing wrong with that and maybe it's all part of the system, but I do
have some moral struggles sometimes to try to figure out, you know, what the proper,
to me, self-promotion and stuff seems so cheesy now and I was so good at it.
I did a lot of it when I was younger.
I used to go around giving financial seminars and that's what my career was for a big chunk,
but I just felt like I moved beyond that.
There was one point in, I don't know, one of the first big bull runs where I had kind
of life-changing money and I'm like, I'm never wearing a suit again.
I haven't followed that.
I have worn a suit a few times and now I'm actually thinking suits might be good.
You know, maybe you don't want the look like the, well, which is funny because it's right
back to trust again.
You know, Sam went and had this like, oh, look at me.
I'm wearing t-shirts and sloppy shorts when I'm meeting the former world leaders and then
you look at it and say, well, yeah, but look at what a clown he was, you know, maybe there's
something to be said for it.
You're just a boomer.
Yeah.
You know, but part of me is like, you know, do you, especially if you want to make change,
you know, do you like, there is some aspect of that kind of 90s style politician.
If I, if I were to run again, I would probably be even less, I don't want to say left cyberpunk
in my ideals and my ideas.
I'm going to stick with my principles.
I'm very, very strong in my principles, but my marketing would probably be more, you know,
along the spectrum with me at one end and Pence on the other side, I'd probably play
a little bit more of those stupid games.
You know, things like parades, for example, all the political concerns, oh, Bruce, you've
got to go to the parade.
I'm like, what the heck does a parade have to do with anything?
I'm trying to save this country from evil and tyranny.
I don't care about the stupid parade.
I think parades are silly.
They're a waste of time, but that's what every politician has to do.
So there's some, some amount of game playing and you know, I think that is some part of
humanity and no matter how successful we are with a cypher punk decentralized revolution,
there still is going to be leaders and there's also nothing wrong with leaders.
If you have good leaders, people that you really, really respect where you look at somebody
and you say, wow, this is a man or a woman that I would like to follow.
That can be a good thing, but those are, those are rare examples.
Now it's, it's hard to do that.
Yeah, it's like with the presidential primaries and stuff, like with DeSantis, you see him
out there throwing baseballs and the VEC out there wrapping M and M, you know, and it's,
I go back and forth on it.
Like I understand why he needs to be at the state fair.
I get it.
I understand you have to, you have to find places to speak to people directly, but then
you look at like Trump who sort of bucked that a lot of that, right?
Like if Trump did one thing right, I would say to a certain extent, he, he bucked the
whole like, I'm a politician.
I'm going to go be in a parade.
I'm going to be kind of not who I actually am.
Cause when you're talking about marching in a parade, that's not you, right?
But you're talking about doing it just because it's expected from a politician, you know?
And it's like, then you got Trump out there who's like, screw all of this.
I'm just going to do whatever and call her by fat and tell them they're idiots and see
what happens.
You know?
So it's like, what is the winning recipe?
It almost seems like people want that real reality thing, except would he have even ever
had that if he didn't have all the money and all the fame and everything that came before
he became president.
So it's like, you need this special witches brew of just serendipity almost to be able
to be thrust into that spot.
Right?
And like nobody has that so rare.
Yeah, it is very rare.
I mean, even these, you mean you look at people like Chris Christie and Mike Pence, who are
lifelong politicians with a lot of money and a lot of power and a lot of recognition.
They have honed their skills over a long, long time and they're getting crushed in this.
I mean, this is the presidential primaries and the election is a very, very big deal.
It's the kind of one of the ultimate games with the ultimate stakes.
And you can never underestimate how smart any of the candidates are and how smart their
teams are and how, you know, how their supporters are going to do and any number of other things.
So you know, people do kind of cry for that authenticity.
You know, I think that's one of the big strengths is coming out and, you know, just being himself
it was one of my strengths in the campaign.
But it's hard to do.
You know, the more you speak, the more you're going to upset somebody if you have opinions.
You know, what they tell you in the old days, they've gotten better politicians overall.
And I think Trump helped move this needle a little bit.
But you go back 30 years or more, a lot of politicians wouldn't even tell you their position.
They'd ask them, they'd say, what's your position on abortion?
They say, well, you're going to have to wait until the vote comes up once I'm in the Senate.
They still do this.
They still do it a little bit, but they get pushed a little bit.
There's not a lot of real journalists so they can get away with it.
But it's become a partisan thing.
They like to get clicks and media.
So people take opinions for a, you know, a strategic reason.
But a lot of them, you know, they will avoid and they'll take the consultants will tell
you take the minimum, you know, make the minimum statement.
Avoid saying anything because anytime you take a firm stand, you're going to lose half
of the people who care about that issue.
And then that's a shame.
You know, we should have more, more people who just speak their mind and hopefully we're
moving more that way with, with politicians like Vivek.
Yeah.
With these primaries, it's like, like, you know, I'm getting old enough now to remember
many of them, you know, and it's, I feel like we've been through this so many times where
we go through this, this, you know, regardless of the party, like we go through this phase
where we're looking at all the people and all, we're like, oh, this guy's a real standout.
This guy's a real standout.
Oh, he's got a real shot.
And every single time it boils down to who is sort of the, who gets the machine behind
them, right?
Like who gets the, it almost makes you feel like we don't really have a say in it, you
know, anymore, you know, and, and, uh, so this one is really interesting because you
got Trump who seemingly has the machine against him, at least one machine, you know, he's
got other machines behind him.
Um, and then you, you're looking at like DeSantis who clearly has some sort of machine behind
him, but it's a much different machine and the machines are actually getting more mysterious,
aren't they?
Right.
It's like, what, what is this machine behind DeSantis?
You know, what is this, uh, with Vivek too, you know, I mean, look, he's got big pharma
ties.
He's sitting here like looking at all this and like, what is exactly, I almost feel like
I'm, I'm constantly getting hoodwinked, you know, like I'm looking at this primary, that's
why I'm starting to be like, what am I really going to achieve here?
You know, by supporting any of these guys, but how did you get, um, like so behind Vivek?
Like when did that, did you know him from before he started running?
You know, it was a, it was an interesting process.
I had assumed that I was going to be a DeSantis supporter.
Uh, you know, once I, so once I ran for office, I'm a libertarian, I've been a libertarian
forever, and I hadn't been officially registered with the Republican party, you know, basically
forever.
I'd registered as an independent, but when I ran for office, you've got to register with
the party.
So I officially became a Republican and I, you know, joined the party and ran for office
and I've kept, I've kept that, uh, I've kept that, um, I've kept that, uh, you know, that
registration.
Hey, what's that ringtone man?
What was that?
That's a, uh, that's a call to prayer.
Are you Muslim?
Yes, I am.
I had no idea.
Yeah, sorry.
Uh, yeah, that was, I have a little clock on my wall.
Um, were you raised Muslim?
No, no, I became, uh, uh, a few years back over a long period of time.
You know, I lived in that region.
I lived in the middle East.
I've been traveling the middle East for over 20 years.
So, you know, it was a long process of learning and, uh, uh, you know, kind of, you know,
just learning over time, a long, long, slow journey for me.
I'm a slow learner, I guess.
So did you, were you Christian?
You know, not to get too personal, but yeah, I'm just curious.
I didn't know you were Muslim.
Yeah, I was raised Christian.
Um, but I was, I was not, you know, there was various times in my life when I've been
kind of agnostic and there's, you know, I was, I was more of a Unitarian Christian.
Uh, which is very similar to Muslims.
Um, you know, the main difference between Muslims and, uh, and, and Christians are non
Unitarian Christians is, is the, how, how, you know, how we look at the Trinity.
And so the, the Unitarian belief is very, very similar to Islam.
And then the only other difference is, you know, believing that Muhammad was a prophet
who delivered the word of God.
You know, that's, that's kind of the, the, um, you know, that's the main, you know, the
main belief in Islam.
Um, and, and so for me, that was the main, you know, that was the main thing.
You know, I spent a lot of time saying, well, you know, what is this book?
You know, what is this book?
And is it, is it the word of God?
And there's a lot of special principles and properties of the Quran.
Like for example, 4 million people know how to memorize it.
You know, what other book is there that over a million people, including children can memorize
the entire thing word for word.
And I've met many of them, you know, any, any mosque, you go and say, you know, who
knows the Quran by heart, every single word, and there's going to be somebody in there,
especially bigger mosque.
There's going to be many people.
Uh, so there's interesting properties of this book.
And I spent a lot of time saying, you know, what, you know, what is this and do I believe
it and is it, is it true?
And um, yeah, that's, that's kind of what I, what I came up with.
Was this a, I mean, now that I know that it had to be a factor in the New Hampshire primary,
right?
I mean, if you're dealing with 79 year old New Hampshire people, you know, and they've
got this Muslim cypher punk running for us.
You know, it's funny, I was all prepared to, I thought it was going to be a big fight.
I thought people were going to hate me or something.
And most people either didn't know or didn't care.
Okay.
So a handful of people asked me during the campaign and I answered truthfully, but it
was never really picked up.
But I know the opposition research, I know the Democrats know, I think they avoided mentioning
it because you know, Republican Muslims, their worst nightmare, you know, it invalidates
all their stuff about diversity and everything else.
So I think they're kind of terrified about it.
They look at it like, oh my gosh, you know, this, it's like, you know, a fire to a caveman
or something that they don't know what to think.
And the Republicans, I mean, what are they going to do?
They're not going to attack me over it, you know, that would make them look horrible.
So it didn't really become an issue.
And I didn't, I didn't make it an issue.
I didn't, you know, I didn't like, you know, make a big deal about it trying to, you know,
I don't like talking about religion too, too much.
Like I feel like it's a personal thing and I don't like making myself a, you know, oh,
look at me.
I'm the Muslim candidate.
I'm the Muslim guy.
I prefer to just kind of have people judge me on my other words and not, you know, skin
color, religion or gender or anything.
Yeah.
No, I hear that.
It makes sense.
It is relevant since it came up.
I mean, it is relevant in the world now.
I think that there's a lot of, it's interesting.
There's a lot of people turning to faith and I like all people of faith, you know, Muslims
call Christians people of the book and Jews, you know, all three religions from the same
Abrahamic faith and, you know, I went to the Kaaba in Mecca and that a lot of people don't
know what the Kaaba is.
You know, that's the house of Abraham.
It's the same Abraham from the Bible and the Torah.
You know, that's, that's the same.
It's the same God, you know, it's definitely the same God that all three of the major religions
believe in and, you know, Vivek is Hindu and he mentioned, you know, he believes in one
God and only one God, which is exactly the same phrase that Muslims used to describe
it.
And I like people of faith.
I think that the church of woke and I call it that because I think it does behave a lot
like a church.
I think it's an ideal.
I think it really is very much like a religion and it is a religion in many ways and a lot
of people who do not have other religion and I don't have any problem with atheists and
agnostics.
I was an agnostic for a long time.
I called myself an atheist for a while.
My brother said agnostic sounds better.
Sounds, sounds more open-minded because you're questioning rather than you're sure.
And so I kind of went from atheist to agnostic to sort of very broad believer to, you know,
where I am now.
But I think that having some kind of faith and you can even call it Mother Nature if
you want or the force, you know, from Star Wars, you know, something bigger than yourself.
There's something that we don't understand in the world.
Some bigger force bigger than ourselves.
If you want to call that God or Allah or Mother Nature or fate or karma or whatever, you know,
I think there is something bigger than us that we don't understand and I think there
is kind of good versus evil.
And you know, more recently in my journey over the last 10 years, I've kind of adopted
this idea that there's some sort of intelligent design behind this.
I mean, there really is some incredible things.
If you look at, you know, we have this moon that moves around our planet and based on
how it moves, it sucks up all the water in one area because of gravity and we have tides
and because of tides, we have billions and billions and billions of animals that live
because of the tides.
Right here on my bay where I live, the low tide, the water goes out and the birds can
feed on all of the muscles and animals that are in there.
And if we didn't have that, those animals wouldn't exist and the birds wouldn't exist.
And there's all these incredible things in our world that kind of leads me to think of
some sort of intelligent design and thinking about these broad issues of good versus evil.
You know, I think there really is evil in the world and I think that's epitomized by
you know, something like what I call the Church of Woke, you know, this ideology that worships
the state and you know, anti-family, anti-a lot of the values, a lot of the traditional
values that most people of faith have.
So yeah, I think it's all relevant to today and I've noticed a lot of people kind of turning
towards faith since the year 2000 or so with the lockdowns and the COVID tyranny or whatever
reasons that they had.
I think people are looking at this kind of chaotic, crazy world and saying, you know,
what did people, hundreds of years ago, people dealt with crazy chaos as well.
You know, there was a lot of people that turned to faith.
There was, I was down at the Jamestown settlement.
Where is that?
Is that Virginia?
Yeah, it must be Virginia.
There was a lot of people there visiting it and they have the chapel and you know, what
they've done and they have this monument to the pastor there and in I think two years,
like 35 people died out of like 90, you know, like a third of everybody died.
So here's this pastor you think like, okay, here's this little guy in this tiny, tiny,
tiny little town, you know, a town of 100 people in the middle of nowhere and basically
every single week, the guy's doing another funeral every week.
And I'm like, wow, what did he deal with?
You know, and they turned to faith.
That's what people did back then.
You know, they were Christians, they turned to faith and you've seen that throughout history,
you know, people in times of chaos have turned to faith and they've been rewarded for it.
And I think there's some universal truths in that, especially when you take the three
major big religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, there are common things.
I mean, and you know, I remember when I first started learning that living in Saudi Arabia
and saying, well, wait a minute.
I mean, are all these people wrong?
There's got to be some truths in this.
There's got to be some kind of truths if all of these three religions, you know, there's
got to be some sort of truths in this.
And that's, you know, that's kind of what I focused on.
Yeah.
The whole woke thing is basically to me, it looks like people who've replaced God with
humans, right?
So they think that humans are the pre, you know, the, the, the highest level of, of enlightenment
that you can achieve in the universe and clear, clearly different from, you know, the religions
you're talking about where, you know, humans acknowledge or believe that there is a more
enlightened something out there, right, that can guide them or can, you know, can sort
of be looked to as, as the Supreme Being.
So it's, it's pretty clear to me that you're right that the woke thing is, I hesitate to
call it a religion, but I guess in that regard, it's like the religion of humans, right?
As God, you know, and like, they think that we are it.
Like that's why I get so repelled when people talk about life extension and making people
immortal.
And I hear Vitalik Buterin talking about like, how can we have humans live till they're 300
years old?
And like, I'm just sitting there thinking, okay, wait a minute, humans aren't, aren't
thou that great?
Like, I don't want them around that long.
You know, it's like, there's so many things that can go wrong if you have that happen.
You know, it's like, how do you, you know, you have even worse situations where people
maintain power and these power structures live for millennia.
I go a whole different way.
I mean, personally, I think that, you know, that, that we're just like a coincidence,
you know, I mean, I think that's where my mind tends to go.
You know, is that like, you know, humans, we think we're really cool and really smart
and really everything, but so do ants, you know, so, so, so do other animals and on other
planets, you know, if there are organisms and they, they can't think the way we can,
you know, it's still everything that we know and see is just like within our context, within
our realm of what we're able to, to understand.
And we don't know to what level we're able to understand the universe.
Right.
So I go with that agnostic route too, but I'm pretty cynical when it comes to a lot
of religious stuff and the woke stuff, forget it.
I mean, I think they're way off the rails.
That's one of the things Vivek has that I really appreciate.
Like the messaging on that stuff is right on, like it nails it for me, you know, as
far as that stuff he talks about.
Yeah.
I think you had, you had asked before my, my clock went off on why I ended up supporting
him.
I was like, I was going to support DeSantis.
You know, I like kind of, I like any other Republicans, Republican party grew on me.
I had been kind of, you know, very much libertarian and like a lot of other libertarians, I was,
you know, slightly Republican leaning, but real loyalty to the libertarians and no loyalty
to the Democrats.
And then, but after kind of becoming a, you know, as a candidate, you have to become an
official card carrying Republican, so to speak, you know, and I wanted to have some loyalty
to that.
I would run and then drop right back out of the party, you know, after the election.
So I still get invited to the Republican breakfasts and I know that, you know, state chair people
and you know, this kind of thing.
And they're very helpful to me as a candidate and that, you know, so I do feel some loyalty
and also I got to know a lot of the really good Liberty Republicans, you know, 20 years
ago it was like Thomas Massey and that was it, Ron Paul maybe, but now you have, you
know, Warren Davidson and Jim Jordan and Thomas Massey and Rand Paul and, you know, Ted Cruz
to some extent, you know, there is a solid Liberty wing of the, you know, very powerful
in New Hampshire politics.
We dominate the state legislature and then in that nationally, it went from a couple
people to a couple dozen and then there's a couple, you know, many dozens more that
maybe not libertarians like Massey, but they will lean for on certain issues like guns
or whatever.
So yeah, you know, the Republican party kind of grew on me, particularly the idea of being
a Liberty Republican, which I think is very distinctly different from, you know, what
I might call a McConnell Republican or a McCain Republican.
And so I knew I was going to support somebody.
I like DeSantis because as you know, I was a big advocate against the masks in schools.
I went and protested eight times at my school board, got removed by police five times.
Right on.
Yeah.
And so, you know, DeSantis was very good on the COVID policy.
I think he was one of the better governors.
And that's why I moved to Florida.
Yeah.
I mean, he's great.
But interestingly, he hasn't had a perfect campaign up here in New Hampshire, just wasn't
as accessible and everything.
And I was skeptical when I first saw Vivek.
When I first saw him, I said, oh, this is just a, you know, rich guy, vanity guy.
He's trying to sell books or whatever.
You know, I was sort of skeptical.
Then I listened to him a few times.
I'm like, this guy's good.
He's got some anti woke stuff.
I like that.
That was the first thing that I liked about it.
I said, but this guy's brave.
He's able to speak.
He's a pretty good speaker.
And then I saw him more and more.
I'm like, wow, he really is quite good.
And then I got to meet him.
And the nice thing about New Hampshire, it's pretty easy to meet these candidates.
So I've met Vivek, you know, 10 times now.
And after like the first time I saw him in person and met him and shook his hand, that
was, that was, it wasn't like instantly that I was like, okay, this is my guy.
But I was definitely on the path.
I said, wow, he's really special.
And then I felt like more of my candidate.
And then I'd see him do more and more things.
And he just very impressive.
And it's very interesting because he's won over a lot of people.
You know, you can't like, I'm not an easy person to get the endorsement from, not that
it matters too, too much.
It's not like I'm going to win somebody in election, but I care a lot.
I have, I have solid principles.
There's certain things I won't, you know, I'd rather go after endorse somebody who has
a 1% chance than somebody who has 70%.
And I'm not the kind of person if somebody says, Hey, we'll make you ambassador to Saudi
if you endorse me, you know, or whatever, which, which isn't, isn't out of the realm
of possibility for some of these major candidates.
It's a high stakes game, you know, an endorsement of somebody in New Hampshire who matters,
matters.
Uh, but I don't care about that stuff.
You know, I care about what's right and wrong.
And I got to know Vivek more and really truly believe that he is an extraordinary person,
uh, partly because of running in for office.
I see how hard it is to do some of this stuff.
He just had this, um, this, uh, activist who identified herself as pansexual who came
up and asked him a kind of a gotcha question about, uh, gay marriage or something.
And he's answered.
I wanted to play the clip.
I want to play it right now because I think it's so good.
Yeah, do it.
I heard it this morning and I was like, this is the best I've heard this guy sound.
Like the last thing I saw of him was him rapping Eminem and I was like cringe.
Right.
But then it's like, I heard this and I was like, Oh, this guy nailed it.
He does that a lot.
And I'm glad they've captured some of this on, on video because you know, I had a couple
strengths in my campaign.
One of them was exactly that meeting people face to face just because I have kind of a
quick tongue.
I was in sales debates, uh, tough questions from reporters that that was it.
I was kind of like a two trick pony.
Those were my really, really good skills.
And there's a lot of other things I didn't have great skills on.
He has those two skills that I have, but way, way, way better.
It's extreme.
Even my best skill on my best day.
I don't think I could have done that.
And I don't think, and I think I'm really good at it actually.
I don't think, let me play it so that people can hear it because it's really good.
I was just wondering, what were your opinions on the LGBT people?
Well, I don't think it's one community.
Yeah.
I mean, how could it be?
I mean, we've all mashed together an alphabet soup.
Trans is fundamentally intention with gay, if you ask me.
But what's your opinion?
I am personally impansexual.
So I was just wondering what your views on same sex couples were.
I don't have a negative view of same sex couples, but I do have a negative view of a tyranny
of the minority.
So, so I think that in the name of protecting against the tyranny of the majority, and there
are times in this country's history where we have had a tyranny of the majority, we
have now in the name of protecting against the tyranny of the majority created a new
tyranny of the minority.
And I think that that's wrong.
I don't think that somebody who's religious should be forced to officiate a wedding that
they disagree with.
I don't think somebody who is a woman who's worked really hard for her achievements should
be forced to compete against a biological man in a swim competition.
I don't think that somebody who's a woman that respects her bodily autonomy and dignity
should be forced to change clothes in a locker room with a man.
That's not freedom, that's oppression.
And so I believe that we live in a country where free adults should be free to dress
how they want, behave how they want, and that's fine.
But you don't become oppressive by foisting that on others, and that especially includes
kids because kids aren't the same as adults.
And so I think adults are free to make whatever choices they want, but do not foist that ideology
onto children before children are in a position as adults to make decisions for themselves.
And so I think a lot of the frustration in the country, and if I'm being really honest,
that I also share, comes from that new culture of oppression where saying those things can
actually get somebody punished.
And in my case, it's part of why it's my responsibility to say them.
And I respect that you may have a different opinion, and that's okay.
Part of what makes our country great is that you and I can be civil and have this conversation,
and that we live in a country that still gives us, each of us, the right to speak until presidential
candidate and back, and still say that we pledge allegiance to the same nation.
So I think that's the beauty of our country, and that's my honest opinion.
Awesome.
Well, thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Thank you for your civility as well.
And he gets the handshake, which is key from this pansexual question.
I mean, you know what?
It's like you hear pansexual and you're like, oh, she's just a troll, but maybe not.
It's like people are actually out there that have sincere, not everybody who's LGBTQIA plus
2S whatever is a troll.
They're actually trying to live a life that's productive in America, and they want these
kinds of answers from people.
Yeah.
And what he did there is a master's class in answering.
He was calm, he was effective, he didn't take a wishy washy stance.
He took real and actually quite controversial opinions, but he delivered them in a way that
was not offensive, even to the opposition, a respectful way.
He talked about the problems, but he also differentiated between adults and children.
And he talked about liberty.
He said something that I say many times, which is, I don't have a problem with adults.
There's a narrative that people say, oh, we want trans people to not exist, or we want
them to die, or something like that.
Or we don't even want them allowed to do what they want to do.
I don't think that's in a libertarian position at all.
As a libertarian, I want everybody, I would actually defend someone's rights to dress
and address if they want to, or identify themselves however they want.
Or if you had an adult business, if you had a bar, let's say, suppose you have a trans
only bar.
I would absolutely support that business's right to exist.
You can't go to a, I don't think you have the right to go to a trans only bar and say,
you must allow non-trans people in.
Let them do whatever they want.
But he made a key distinction between kids and adults, and his answer was just absolutely
on point.
And you can't, and this is what I mean about seeing him in person.
I've seen him do that many, many times.
I'm glad this one was caught on tape.
I've seen him in person.
He has an intelligence level that you can't fake.
You cannot do what he just did there by rehearsing it.
Maybe you could, maybe a really, really slick skilled, you know, one of these 90 styles
politicians that I mentioned could rehearse that answer and almost deliver it as well.
You know, a Gavin Newsom type, but they can't just come up with it like he can.
And he isn't faking.
He really is leagues and leagues above the other people in the race, intelligence wise
and ability wise.
He has actually, he's actually gifted.
And I look at the guy, sometimes when I'm in the audience, I've gone to a lot of his
events and I say, this is somebody I would follow.
This 38 year old guy is somebody that I would follow.
This is somebody I want as my president.
This is somebody who can do amazing things.
He is smart.
He reminds me of the smartest of smart people in our space, both in terms of intelligence,
but also mannerism.
You know, like he reminds me of somebody I sit down with at the Satoshi Roundtable who
is, you know, has half a billion dollars and did real successful things in our industry.
And that's kind of what he is basically.
He's a self-made, very successful, technical, savvy, smart guy.
You know, he was number 25 student in America.
He went to Harvard and Yale.
You know, he's, he's, he is actually intelligent and he's, and he's got a wit and his ability
to speak and communicate is right up there with, you know, Ronald Reagan or Obama or
Clinton or Milton Friedman, in my opinion.
Where does he stand on the whole bodily autonomy, medical tyranny stuff?
Has he been public about that?
Yeah.
I mean, he's answered pretty much every kind of question.
You know, he got, he was in the pharma business, but he was sort of anti-big pharma.
You know, one of his big issues was trying to get faster approvals on drugs and working
around the FDA system.
He sounds like Trump with the vaccine.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Operation Warp Speed.
Right.
Yeah.
You know, he, I would say he's like 70% libertarian.
He's not, or 80 maybe.
He's certainly libertarian leaning.
He's probably one of the most libertarian of mainstream candidates.
You know, we just haven't had, he's probably very similar to Rand Paul, actually.
Rand Paul is not the same as Ron Paul.
I'm a fan of all of them.
And you know, but he's not like the, you know, 100% everything libertarian.
He comes from more of a, you know, constitutional conservative kind of school as well, you know,
which is great.
The Constitution was a very good document.
And he also has a lot of things driven by his legal knowledge.
You know, he went to law school and he is a student of the Constitution who really cares
about this.
And he's done something that nobody's done in decades, which is actually think what powers
the president has and how can you push this limit and how can you do these things under
the rules?
So I think overall, he wants to not have a big heavy, he certainly wants to cut government
by over 75%, cut all the agencies, shutter some of the agencies, including the FDA and
the FBI and severely reform things like the SEC.
And I think that would be a huge start.
And you know, that works to get these people out of our lives and our bedrooms and our
wallets and against this kind of, you know, mandated, you know, tyranny of the, you know,
telling people to wear masks and take experimental injections and this kind of thing.
Yeah.
I saw he made billions in big pharma and it was just right away.
I didn't dive in to learn everything, but to me it was like flashing red light, like,
oh, something's going on here, but it makes me feel bad.
I need to do more research on that.
He's talked a lot about his, he was more like little pharma who became big.
He wasn't like Pfizer guy, you know, he had his own startup basically that ended up doing
extraordinarily well, kind of bucking the system.
So it's, so, you know, sometimes you know me well enough to know how funny this is,
but sometimes people will see that I'm SEC registered.
They're like, oh, look at this guy.
He's SEC registered.
What could he possibly know?
You know, they assume I'm some sort of status just because of the, the, the thing somebody
said on my bio, it said, you know, his operated broker dealers for 30 years and they said,
oh, how could that be a positive?
It's like, well, you've got to judge each person individually.
He was under the system of the FDA, but he was very much at odds with these, you know,
he was no friend of Pfizer.
You know, he was an, he was an opponent of these guys and he disliked the heavy handed
bureaucracy, very similar to our SEC.
I was in a call with him and some industry people not long ago.
And you know, he's talked a lot about the, the similarities between the SEC and the FDA.
You have opaque rules that only the, you know, in for SEC it's BlackRock and Goldman Sachs
and JP Morgan for the FDA, it's, you know, Pfizer and, you know, the other big players.
You know, it's a, it's a crony system with opaque rules, very hard for somebody to compete,
very unfair, not doing its job in protecting Americans and it's rewarding cronies.
So you see that a lot in these agencies and I think he'd be the right person to cut it.
And he has a real plan.
You know, he's actually talked about his plan to actually cut this stuff.
Okay.
But here's the real question.
Does he have a chance?
I mean, you got this guy pretty unknown, 30 something Hindu, which is not a non-factor,
right?
As sad as it is, like people do care.
He has these fringe views, which are still fringe, even though you and I share them.
He's he's just non-conventional.
Does he have a chance?
Like if, if he doesn't have a chance, what is he really doing and why support him?
He does have a chance.
It is an unusual election.
There's a lot of unusual factors.
The Trump factor is very unusual.
There's some chance.
Well, for one thing, you, you, you, if you're suppose you're Republican to have a plan B
for Trump makes sense.
You know, Trump is in his seventies.
He's got significant legal problems.
He may be barred from running.
There could be other things that prevent him from even being able to take office.
The weight of all these different cases and you know, any number of different factors.
And I hope that doesn't happen.
I think if that was to happen, then we need him more than ever because it'll be one of
our only hopes to, to, um, you know, save the Republic from, you know, we would be on
the verge of civil war.
If they, if they put Trump in a prison cell or say that he legally can't run, I think
we'll have to have somebody like Vivek because he's, you know, we would need it be the only
way you could unify, you know, the only way to like placate the Trump fans would be to
have somebody who has a lot of similar similarity to Trump who hasn't criticized Trump, who
has been a supporter of Trump as, as he has.
And it's not just about placating people.
It's just about what's right and wrong.
It's extremely wrong for America to have this kind of political targeting of, of the main,
you know, front runner.
So that is, you know, that is a real factor.
The other thing is it's, although Trump is way, way, way ahead in the polls, that doesn't
mean it's going to translate into, you know, you know, in the, in the ballot for the primary,
you know, you, you, you have to win New Hampshire and Iowa, especially if you're Trump, you
know, if you're Trump and somehow you get an upset, then all of a sudden, you know,
the gigs up historically in a lot of these primaries, the person who was the absolute
presumptive nominee and front runner at this stage before the first primary, you know,
way before the first primary, those people end up losing a lot.
You know, you had, you know, Mario Cuomo and, and John Edwards and Gary Hart and, you know,
the history is littered with Republicans.
Even Ron Paul was a front runner.
Yeah.
Jeb Bush, perfect example.
You know, he had it made.
And what happens is you don't want to underestimate the significance of these people like DeSantis
and attacking Trump.
Trump has not been attacked much by his own people.
It's, you know, his supporters are going to support him if he gets attacked by the
Wolks.
Big deal.
They don't care.
But when you have somebody credible who's sort of one of their own, who's saying, hey,
wait a minute, you didn't do, you know, you didn't drain the swamp.
You kept Fowsy.
You didn't fire Fowsy.
You did Operation Warp Speed.
These kind of things.
Those are harder.
And Trump has made some blunders.
Like, so far, I don't think he's ever properly addressed the Fowsy thing.
He said, oh, you know, they're going to complain if I do and complain if I don't.
And he just sort of changed the subject.
I don't think that's sufficient enough to win the presidency.
You do need to earn everyone's votes.
Votes are fickle.
Even people who like him who are waving a Trump flag, you know, he could be one bad
answer from losing that person as a supporter.
And meanwhile, you have somebody like Vivek where he's gaining momentum.
This is a great place to be at this point in the race, you know, as he gains momentum,
if he can make a strong showing at these debates, which is coming up in a couple of weeks and
then really comes down to New Hampshire and Iowa, if he can, you know, he could do second
place even in New Hampshire would be a huge victory.
And then then people start saying, oh, which one do you like better, this one or this one?
It becomes kind of a two man race.
And that would bode well for him.
And then also, if he if he does that, then people say, OK, I like both these guys.
Who has the better chance of beating Joe Biden or beating whoever the Democrat nominee is?
I think everybody, even Trump's biggest fans and one of the reasons that I'm not, you know,
I'll support Trump if he gets the nomination.
But the one reason I'm not like a diehard cheerleader for Trump is just he's just so
polarizing.
I don't want to go through another four years of orange man bad, everybody complaining about.
And then he said this, you know, just twisting his quotes all.
He said to inject bleach.
He said Nazi neo Nazis are fine people, both of which are fake.
He didn't say either of those things, you know, and they'll just spend four years digging
out every.
I remember the last four years, it was just never ending nonsense.
You know, every day was was, you know, feigned, you know, being horrified at like, you know,
he said he said schools shouldn't have books, you know, or some crazy thing that he didn't
even say.
It gives him too much ammo.
Right.
Yeah.
He's he's so hated that people can't think straight personally as American.
I'd like our country to move on.
And I think the vague is the best one to do that.
And I and also I want to win.
The last thing I want, you know, I'll take any of them over Biden or Gavin Newsom or
Kamala or whatever, whatever clown they put in there.
I mean, anybody's better than them.
So I want the person who's going to win and have the best chance of winning.
If they can show through his extraordinary campaigning skill, and it really is, he really
is formidable.
He's running an incredible campaign.
And you see his personal ability to speak and connect is is like no one else.
If he can show that he he's a real contender, that can change the narrative.
And then the Trump fans, even some of the Trump fans can say, yes, this is a guy who
can win the win the nomination and he can win the presidency because he clean he clean
up.
I mean, imagine imagine Biden answering that clip that you just played.
You know, Biden could never, ever do that.
He's not capable of doing it.
What would he say?
It would start with Come on, man.
Come on, man.
Give me a break.
Look at my record.
I like ice cream.
That's a stupid question.
Yeah.
I mean, even, you know, he used to be quick of wit if you look at him in the 80s, but
he was a real jerk.
Yeah.
I mean, he was, you know, I know one of the things I respect about the vague versus my
campaign style, I have a little bit of an edge.
I'm a little bit more like a Ted Cruz or Marjorie Taylor Green.
I can understand if people don't love me all the time.
I'm not always warm and cuddly.
The vague is much more likable.
Biden, on the other hand, he's worse than any of these.
He's in his day.
You look back to him.
I mean, look at the famous clip where the guy, the guy said something about his education
and Biden really arrogantly rattled off all this stuff that turned out to all be nonsense.
Like, who do you think you're talking to?
I was number one in my law school, the Rhodes Scholar, and I went to Cambridge and I was
fourth in my class at Cambridge.
All nonsense.
He completely just made up the stuff.
He was, he was a politician from an era before cameras where you could get away with just
saying complete and total nonsense and not get called on it.
And then cameras came along and this was early.
Biden wasn't used to it.
This was like, I think in the late 80s or something when he was running for office before.
And he just spewed all this nonsense.
But he was a real jerk.
Even his best days.
The vague is not a jerk at all.
You know, I could see that, you know, the kind of Ted Cruz politician style that I have,
you know, can be polarizing and ruffling.
But the vague has that kind of Milton Friedman-esque quality of being able to say controversial
things in a very calm and disarming way.
It's hard to hate the vague.
And that's, that's not insignificant.
I don't really want a president that, you know, a third or half the country hates.
You look, look, who's been winning lately though?
Jerks.
Like, you know, I mean, you know, Trump, Biden.
I mean, Obama wasn't a jerk, I guess.
He was more in that category of well-spoken and calm, you know.
But at some point things change.
That's what makes me wonder, like, is does a nice guy really have a shot at this point?
You know, I mean, DeSantis is more of, I'd say he's more of a jerk, right?
I mean, he's kind of borderline.
Like he kind of, I mean, but he definitely comes off like he, you know, he's not, like
I wouldn't particularly want to hang around with him a lot.
I think he'd be a good leader, but that's like, you know, I mean, he doesn't seem like
he'd be like the most fun guy.
Like, so then that's why I see Vivek out there doing Eminem.
And I'm like, well, is this really a winning strategy anymore these days?
Do people really want this?
And he's both, he's, he's really likable, but he also has substance.
So he has like a hard edge reminds me a lot of, we were talking about religion, a lot
of religious people that I know, they are very soft spoken and kind and calm.
It's kind of, kind of goes with the territory.
I mean, it's, it, you'd be an unusual religious leader if you're out there dropping the F
bomb and calling everybody a-holes, you know, so a lot of them are very calm, but they,
but they, a lot of them have an inner, inner strength, you know, they, and I feel like
Vivek has that, you know, he's very calm and nice, but he's not a pushover.
He's not a guy who's just, I mean, even, even, even with me as controversial as I am, there's
certain things where I'll just kind of, you know, I get these questions during the campaign
and I would just kind of diffuse it or change the subject.
He doesn't do that.
He doesn't back down.
He'll say a very controversial thing unapologetically right to someone's face.
So I think it's a unique combo.
I think he, you want to separate the, the charisma and the speaking skills, which he
has, which are just like Obama and Clinton, who are both, you know, not good people, but
they had good skills.
So hopefully you get somebody who has good skills, who's also a good person, who also
has a strong Liberty streak and a strong constitutional streak and his ideas are good.
Cause Obama great speaker, bad ideas and bad, and really bad implementation and bad, you
know, he was, he wasn't grounded and you know, his overall philosophy was broken, but he
was a great speaker.
So hopefully we get somebody who's a good speaker, who's also a good person.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think the most important thing for me, cause I would love to see somebody with his
principles when I would love it.
I would just, you know, it would be great to have president Vivek, but I'm so jaded
after all these decades on this planet, observing this nonsense system that we have.
I right now, I believe that if he won the nomination, he wouldn't have a chance to win
the election.
And so what I would love Vivek, if you're listening to this, I would love it if you
could convince people like me that you actually have a shot against, you know, whether it's
a Biden or a Newsome or whoever the hell surfaces.
I don't think it'll be Kamala, but whatever.
Any of them, because the left is so, they don't care.
They defend Joe Biden, even though he lies, he's old, he's senile.
Like they don't care.
They're not defending the person they're defending.
They feel like they're on the defense against the right.
Right?
So it's like they'll vote for anybody that's in that spot.
It could be Donald fricking Duck and they're going to vote for Donald Duck.
So it's like, how can a Vivek, who's a young unknown Hindu guy, possibly overcome that
with like the middle of the road, you know, women of America who basically decide these
elections.
Like that's what I would love to, if I could get there, then I could totally full on support
him right now.
I think DeSantis has a way better shot of winning like a general election than Vivek.
But I think, I think, I think he's got more broad appeal.
He's got the appeal with the youth.
He's harder to attack, which diffuses a lot of the Democrat energy.
He talks about, I think he can win over, it's interesting, you know, the moms and the women
do decide elections to a good degree.
And the old, old men too.
Those are your big voters, women and old men.
But I think he can reach, you know, he can get kind of the Trump people, but I think
he can, independence is where it's ultimately decided.
And I think the way he's the right person at the right time in talking about some of
these culture war, trans issues and things like that, because you, you, the way that
he answered that woman in the clip that you mentioned, you'll notice he talked about a
couple of things from a compassionate standpoint, like, Hey, what about a woman who's worked
hard who doesn't want to compete against a man in her sport?
That is a way that you can win over.
Now, that person was a specific activist far away from Vivek.
I don't know if he won that woman over, but he certainly diffused her.
And I think that she's not representative of the average voter either.
She's probably a far left voter.
But the regular independents who thought that they were jumping into this trans thing because
they're trying to help human rights or help women or whatever.
I think he can address that in a very calm way and be like, no, actually, that's not
the case.
And by the way, you're wrong on Ukraine as well.
And you're wrong on this and this and this.
And I think he can communicate in a way that people respect.
And maybe even if they don't agree, they can say, OK, this is somebody that I can respect
as a person and I sort of trust them.
And, you know, it's a way for our country to move forward.
I mean, if he were to run against Biden, I mean, can you imagine Biden wouldn't even
be able to do a debate?
It would be such a contrast to see this young, energetic guy who can think on his feet, who's
a brilliant genius versus this old daughtering guy whose best days are 40 years ago.
And even in his best days was never one tenth of the guy that Vivek is.
He's never, never been as smart, never been as quick, never been as likable.
And I don't think they're going to let Biden run, which is just that we should prepare
ourselves now for yet another gaslighting.
They're going to throw somebody else in last minute and the Democrats are going to act
like this person was there all the time.
And they're going to totally forgive and forget that the party has gaslighted them for four
years pretending that this daughtering fool is coherent or capable.
And we all know he's not.
We all know he's incompetent and they know it too.
But they're going along with the lie and they're going to pretend like, oh, yeah, sure.
You know, he was he was a wonderful president.
But you know, whatever for health reasons or if he dies or whatever.
Oh, now we've got this other guy, Newsome.
But Newsome is kind of like, you know, he's a he's a times are changing.
There will be millennial, a millennial president and eventually a Gen Z president.
Vivek is the first one of this profile to run as a millennial, you know, first millennial
to run.
But he's not going to be the last 100 percent certain a millennial will win because the
80 year old, the Mcconnell's and the Pelosi's, they just statistically cannot be around
much longer, five or 10 years max.
Maybe now, maybe one year.
You know, maybe now is the time to switch.
But it will switch and the young people will vote more.
And I'm optimistic.
America's had a lot of problems in history, you know, 1968, 1932, you know, various years
where we we almost elected communists.
We had total civil rights collapse and a war and assassination of permanent people in 68.
And we came out of it.
And I'm hoping that the pendulum swings the other way and we can come out of this, you
know, come out of this mess on the other side.
And this would be a perfect person to do that.
So anything can happen in these kind of crazy times of chaos, a fourth turning.
So he certainly could do it.
And I'm I'm.
I'd love to see it, man.
This is why we have to be anti life extension, too, because who wants Nancy Pelosi living
another 100 years?
I mean, come on, let's be honest.
That would be the worst thing for an office, especially.
But yeah, we got to switch it up.
And, you know, it's up to us as a as a country.
Why not?
We have to do it at some point.
And this is exactly what we need.
It really enthuses me.
You know, some of his speeches bring tears to my eyes when he talks about, you know,
there's something as simple as cutting 75 percent of all the office.
Just go in and just slash everybody by 75 percent.
And that sounds radical, but that brings us back to like second term Obama.
You know, that's not it.
It's not like the thing.
You know, it's not like we didn't have big government under Obama.
You know, it's not like he's trying to, you know, cut us back to 1913 or something.
It'd be interesting to see how many people were in the federal government in 1913 as
a percentage.
But, you know, we have we have millions of people working for government now.
And we could we could definitely cut 75 percent.
Most Americans would never would not only not notice anything bad, they'd notice something
good.
You're speaking my language, baby.
I hope I hope we can get there.
I hope we can.
Well, I'll be keeping an eye on Vivek for sure.
Thanks for filling in the gaps for me.
Like I learned a lot just from you just, you know, getting some more context.
If you don't take the time to dig in on these things, it's like you never really, really
get there, especially on candidates like him.
So, yeah, everybody should take the time because the thing is, you know, like I mentioned,
they know all everything about who votes.
And the sad thing is most people don't vote and they don't and they especially don't vote
in primaries.
So you have this in New Hampshire, it's this small number of 79 year olds on average who
vote in the primaries.
They get to decide and we know exactly who they are.
There's 30,000 of them that are like the super likelies.
And those people, they count like eight times more than a normal citizen.
And that's a shame because every citizen who is, you know, 17 and a half years old or above,
you know, is going to be 18 by the election.
They should all be active in this.
You know, there's the old saying, you know, if you don't pay attention to politics, it
doesn't matter.
Politics is still going to pay attention to you.
This stuff affects everybody's life and we all owe it to ourselves, not just to our country
or to our neighbors, but we owe it to ourselves to just do our small part, look into the candidates,
give them a couple of bucks, you know, be a volunteer, spread the word and, you know,
make a bet on somebody.
Right.
And in other words, wake up Americans, stop being such complacent sheep and just doing
what the media tells you to do.
You know, talk to all the people from Russia and Cuba and places like that.
Don't get to a point where you regret it.
Because if you don't get it together soon, smart people like me and Bruce are going to
get the hell out of here.
I'm going to tell you to, you know, solve your own problems.
We're going to go live on an island somewhere.
Exactly.
All right, man.
Hey, thanks for jumping on.
I appreciate it.
It's always great talking to you.
Thank you.
Absolutely, man.
You have a good one.