Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Vivek Ramaswamy on Becoming Trump's VP & Who REALLY Controls America

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

YERRRR, Vivek Ramaswamy FINALLY came through to give his opinions on Flagrant after pulling out of the 2024 Election. Vivek sat down with us to help break down what the DEEP STATE is, why everyone doesn't like Nikki Haley, how much of his own money he used on his campaign, AND if he is Trump's next VICE PRESIDENT. INDULGE 00:00 Vivek is gonna be our new VP? 01:03 Trump took shots against Vivek + Deep state exposed 04:09 Vivek was a stand-up comic??? 08:00 Voters struggling with Vivek’s Hinduism 20:08 The Black Church challenge 21:17 Why does everyone hate Nikki Haley? 24:41 Understanding the Deep State 34:58 People wanted Bernie v Trump but the system stole it 36:00 Vivek relied on anti-wokeness too much? 40:57 American Revolution was revolution of thought 46:02 Burning Man analogy + radical self-reliance 52:01 Dismantling bureaucracy + shutdown FBI 1:03:16 Do we need a managerial class? 1:10:05 Dept. of Education outstayed its purpose 1:22:14 Most MAGA wearers aren’t dumb? 1:24:42 Vivek couldn’t win people’s trust + lack of familiarity 1:33:49 Why not run as an independent? 1:38:45 How do you run for President? Innate hunger for purpose 1:43:43 Vivek spent $30m + Vivek’s wife STEPPED up 1:49:40 Assessing Cov1d policies + Trust reciprocity 1:57:11 Lack of US pride & reinstating it 2:03:04 Mega-donors expect allegiances 2:05:11 Democrats’ brand is tarnished right now 2:05:56 How do politicians become millionaires? 2:11:52 Who plots America’s future? Nation of sheep 2:16:39 If change doesn’t happen - march to mediocrity 2:19:31 Life’s many phases + service to others

What's up, everybody, and welcome to Flickr, and today we are joined by Trump's new running mate, man, VP. He's amazing. You're here to tell us you're running with Trump. VP, what do you think? You know, we're thinking things through, man. You know, we— Wait a minute. I'm just being sarcastic.

That looks like confirmation. No, no, we're—I'm going to see him tonight. Really? We're just at a rally to support him. Okay. I love that you said we're thinking things through, like this is a mutual decision. I really like that. I mean, my view is whatever role somebody takes on.

So I've run companies. And one of the things I've learned is when you hire people, you've got to make sure that everybody is swimming in the same direction. It's not one person's fault or another person's fault. Yeah. But if you have, you know, if you've got daylight between you, even a company or an enterprise or whatever you're building, you don't want to figure that out years in. Gotcha. It's good to figure that out. So you guys have synergy because he did.

We have synergy. I think we definitely, we're definitely in for the same mission of saving the country. Overall mission. And the role that each of us plays, the role he's going to play is the next president. And the role I'm going to play, whether it's inside government or outside government, we're going to figure it out. Now, he did deliver a headshot before the primary. I mean, we're competing, man. But you were loving him. I was loving the country, and that's what I've been loving the whole time.

Now, he didn't like some things I said about him. Like what? What'd you say? Well, I think- It was the- Well, show him that size 14, bro. I didn't know. That guy's got a size 14.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a well-built Indian right there. That's right. I never lived up on the height. I was approaching, I was getting right there at about six feet flat, and that was not what a size 14 predicts. Okay, but tell us. Okay, so he delivers this shot. He said that there are some things that you didn't, that he didn't like.

Yeah, I mean, it was a primary. We're running against each other. And so I play to win. And so we all play to win. But I respect, I've said it every step, but I meant it. I respect his legacy and what he did for the country. Okay. He kept us out of war and he grew the economy. Okay. I think those are two of the most important things a president can do. Yeah. He also rolled over the log of the deep state, right? And we saw what crawled out.

I need to learn about the deep state. I want to get into all this. We can get into all of that stuff. It's part of my notes. It's part of my notes. And so I said, one of my things is in the campaign is he rolled over that log and we saw what crawled out. I'm bringing the pesticide. And that was my view. So you want to take out the deep state. You actually, actually want to just spray it down.

Who is the deep state? Give me a name. It's not a name. You're missing the point if you're asking the question. It's a system. It's a system. That was some good political shit you just said right there. It's a machine.

It's the truth. Imagine one of your companies, like you asked the people at the company, like you asking the question. It's a system. It's a system. That was some good political shit you just said right there. It's a machine. It's the truth. Imagine in one of your companies, like you asked the people at the company, like you own the company and you're talking to your CEO and you're like, who is the problem source

in this company? And then somebody said back to you, they're like, it's the machine. If you're asking a question, you don't even know the answer. Like, is it Nancy Pelosi?

I would listen to it. She's a cog. She's a cog. These are all cogs in a deep machine. Give me some cogs. I the it's she's a cog. She's a cog. These are all cogs in a. Give me some cogs. I want to know about the car. Are you a cog in the machine? I'd like to think not.

But. And I'm not right now. But if you get in there for eight years, maybe you become one. And then it's time to get the hell out, actually. So that's my view is get in there. Do your service. Get out. Know when to drop the mic.

And I think it takes fresh blood to do it. I think you get to be an outsider, a solid outsider, like a true outsider once. And so that was my whole premise in this race is I'm going to take the America first agenda to the next level, reach the next generation while doing it. Forget the Republicans, forget the Democrats, build a movement that's founded on two basic ideas. I think these are not particularly partisan ideas. I think they are not particularly partisan ideas. I think they're rather obvious, but apparently they're controversial today. The people who we elect to run the government should be the ones who actually run the government. Yeah. That's

number one, not unelected bureaucrats. So whoever it is, agree, disagree with me, partisan, black, white, doesn't matter. The people we elect to run the government should run the government. And the moral duty that they owe is to the citizens of this nation, not another one. Boom. There we go. That's it. That's the whole premise. And so the fact that that was as controversial as it came out to be in this race, I think

revealed a lot about where we are as a country and gives me a redoubled sense of purpose to if it's not going to be as the next president, which is how I hoped to make a positive difference in this country, I'm going to find what the next best way is. Maybe VP. Do you think you're too qualified to be VP? I don't know that. I mean, I don't see things as like a hierarchy,

like president number one, VP. And I don't know that VP. Imagine it's a caste system. Speaking to, you know, familiar concepts. No, but is it, a casting decision. There we go. I might actually call it more of it. That's what I thought you meant.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm referring to my former acting, my former comedian career. I saw that you took a comedy class. Ten shows. You did ten shows? Oh, do you have a bit? They were not very good. No, but we would love to hear a premise even.

It was about seven, eight years. What's the premise even? were they were not very good no but we would love to hear about seven eight years i what's the premise the premise the thing is the premise was just based on exaggerated versions of my life right and so there were it was like i would say i have a good demographic i have no native i have no native talent for comedy i would say that but i was amazing i went to this american comedy institute yeah you know this one? No. There's some people went through there who were like, you know, aspiring comedians or whatever. And I just did in the evenings.

I had my job and I clearly had interests that went beyond my job. Eventually, it's what led to me starting my company. But anyway, I went to this class and, you know, the guy actually had kind of a formula where without having native God-given gift for comedy to still make it passable, actually. It wasn't great, but it was not horrendous. And the thing he told me was, and this is how it actually led me, and I owe him gratitude because it's what led me to found my first company. He said, take a notebook. There's an exception that I don't have it with me right now. I've kept it a decade later. Still do it.

Take a notebook everywhere you go. Anytime something annoys the hell out of you, write it down. How many notes are about black people? That's great. I self-censored. What is that? Sorry. That's right.

It was, the notebook was black. But there were white pages inside. A little black book. National unity. So the beauty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just think of the beauty of that. It is such a beautiful country.

Yeah, it's deep, right? If you didn't use a brown pen, you was sellout. I'll tell you that right now. That's right, that's right. I probably did. Do you remember any of the bits, though? Not super well, to be honest.

It was 10 years ago. You need Alzheimer's medication, dude. That's what you need. But I wouldn't know how to bring you one of those. I wouldn't be the guy to help you on that. We're going to get to your drug dealing days in a while. This guy used to deal drugs. The legal, the more profitable kind.

Legal drugs. Don't talk about legal. It's cooler to be like, I deal drugs. Almost everybody on this sofa, couch, chair situation has dealt drugs. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. All right.

Well, I mean, I'm not an exception. I'm the majority of us. Did you sell drugs at all? No. I bought oregano one time from a drug dealer. Oh, sick. Oregano? Yeah, on accident.

I thought it was weed. How was the deal? How did you consume it? I thought it was weed, and then it was not weed. He did know. He did know. Okay, okay, okay. Wait, wait.

So you being too competent to be Trump's VP, this is what my concern is. Is that like the last— Oh, just so we can finish this, because I want to leave people with this advice, especially young people for being an aspiring entrepreneur. So I took the notebook down. Anytime something annoys you, there's a joke in it.

Yeah. But actually, it's the best advice that I could give you for starting a business, actually. That's where I wanted to land at because that's what led me

to start actually the biotech company. Because your frustrations are often rooted in something real in the world. That needs to be solved. And then your emotional attitude to that is part of what gives you the passion to, for a good comedian, apparently tell a joke.

In my case, it ended up taking me in a different direction. So anyway, that was, seal that off. VP, I don't know if it's the right role or not. Kamala Harris, genius? She can, you know, she's in charge of AI policy, man. I don't know if she can spell AI, but I think that she's in charge of AI policy. So there must be something good there. That was good.

I like it. She must be. I like it. Get the notebook. Exactly. So I don't know what's going on there. Hence goofball. Right?

I mean, genius. Right? He's an absolute. He's passionate. A man full of passion. Love. And a man full of. I'm so damn proud.

You know what was one of my favorite videos? Exuding that every day. You try to convince people in Iowa that you believe in Jesus and the other gods? Yeah. Have you seen that? I tell the truth, man, about my beliefs. You're like, we believe Jesus is a son of God. That's what I said.

Jesus is a son of God, which is different than saying he's the son of God. And the guy's talking to a presidential nominee. He goes, there's one son of God. I mean, look, I will respect, there were a number of people who I met who struggled. One pastor towards the end of the campaign and he wrote an extensive post, which was, and he's a influential pastor

and he's a good man, but he wrote, I hadn't met him at this time, part of a demonic cult, the way he describes Hinduism and he recommends everybody vote against the member of a demonic cult being our U.S. president. He wrote that about you? Oh, yeah. It was an extensive post.

No, but I think those are the words. Exactly. It's demonic cult. What's the justification? I can't stand it. So I think people were just like, stay away from me, et cetera. What did you say to him? I called him.

I called him on the phone and said I would love to sit down with him. He came out. You got to show up in a brand outfit. In the middle of a blizzard. In the middle of a blizzard, he came out and he listened. And we had a deep conversation on the back of my campaign bus afterwards. Yeah. And he brought a – he's a collector of ancient books.

He brought – he said it was the most valued book and he left it with me. I'm still – I promised him I would read it and I would. It hasn't been that long since the end of the campaign. But in his world, it's about, it's a book about the values that informed American history. And it was a signed book by the author and it's not in print anymore. It's an old book. And it had real sentimental value to him. He then, after our talk, had an extensive post on, you want me to pull it up actually? Yeah, sure. I can pull it up. In the case after our talk, had an extensive post on, you want me to pull it up, actually? Yeah, sure. I can pull it up. In the case of Vivek, if God decides to use him as a president, I will have cause for joy and certainly support him and pray for him as often as I have

for any other president. But what we are discussing is whether or not we as Christians are allowed to reward a candidate with authority and power in a republic. And then it goes on to explain why, even though he agrees with everything that I say, this is ultimately why no Christian should be permitted to vote for me in his opinion. Do you think if you were white and Christian, you'd be president right now? White and Christian? Would I be president right now? I don't think so. I don't think that was the rate limiting issue. So I don't, I mean, just to, I'll call it't think so. I don't think that was the rate limiting issue. So I don't, I mean, just to, I'll call it like I did.

I do think it was an obstacle for me in Iowa. I think that we opened up conversations about faith at like a level of depth that we have not, and I think the people of Iowa and myself have not otherwise and would not have otherwise gone into. I think many people elucidated for themselves what the distinction was between pastor and president and how they could, with conviction, understand that their religion was fundamentally different from mine voting for

president. And for what it's worth, it actually was a forcing function for me to get to like, okay, you say you're Hindu, you say you're Christian or whatever, and you go about your daily business. But this process, I think, really forced me to deeply understand what the core convictions of my faith actually are. And so it was very productive in that sense, actually. But I think that there are a small minority. So your belief in God? Yeah, actually. Like what, even the theology undergirding my faith. I think that that was something that I probably emerged with greater clarity of by the end of this campaign rather than the beginning, because it's a very frequent topic that comes up and sort of forces you to press yourself to understand. Sorry, I would love to hear that and how you change your,

but what does that make you- Rediscover is what I would love to hear that and how you change your, but what does that make you? Rediscover is what I would say. How did that make you feel reading that? Like this is a guy whose vote you want. He's going at you for your faith. And then the end of it is masterful community, all positive qualities. I still will never. That was actually the beginning of it. I will never and no one of my faith should ever vote for this man.

How does that, fuck the right answer. How does that make you feel? That's what I'm interested in. So I would tell you what my, my first fleeting reaction is what my total reaction would have been a year ago, which is one of fury, rage, frustration, and like maybe a tinge of sadness and disappointment. Cause I feel that. Yeah. Okay. That's what I, that's, that's sort of a microcosm of what my first instinct is. And like I said, like that's at the start of this journey, what I would have, what I would have said right now, what I feel on the other side of that is then some, okay,

pause. This is a good man actually, who cares so deeply about this country that he has paused to think about how his own theology connects to the future of our republic. I spent an hour with him. And he spent that time because he deeply does care about the country and believes that he has a duty to fulfill in it. And for somebody who at least gives a damn, I'd say it that way about a pastor, I guess it's a little bit, who cares that much, right? I'm kind of grateful at least, because I think that he and I probably share a deeper care for this country and an understanding of doing what in our faith you Hindu yeah our dharm would be than most ordinary people living their lives and then me over the course of most of my life

and so for that I guess I'm grateful actually and I think we're going to be friends I think he's wrong on his understanding of what the constitutional role of the president is. And I think, if I may say so, he's wrong on even what I think the Bible will ask of him to decide in the way he chooses to elect a president. And I intend to stay in touch with him. And if I do run for president in four years, maybe he'll have a different view by the time that we do. And so I guess that's where I am right now is a profound respect for his level of care for the country. Doesn't change my view that I think he's just on both the Bible and the Constitution wrong on this, but a commitment to say this is a guy who I think I kind of respect.

Towards the late phase of the campaign, there was another pastor I went to a church with. And some things will happen when you go to these churches on Sunday mornings. Sometimes, more often than not, to be clear, what was represented there is a minority view amongst evangelical Christians. That is not the predominant view of most evangelical Christians, but I think it is a distinct and non-tiny minority. So we went to another, we went to a bunch of churches on Sundays. And most of them, actually, what I would sense happening, I can't say for sure, but you get a sense of these things, is they'll almost soften the message a little bit to sort of be inclusive, actually, to make us feel warm and welcome. to sort of be inclusive actually, to make us feel warm and welcome. At the end of a prayer, even,

if they're praying over us, you'll say, usually say the prayer in Jesus name, amen. And then you'll also, often when we're there, we'll say the prayer and saying, all God's people say, amen. And I felt like telling them, and maybe I should have, it's just like, you don't have to say it that way.

If you end your prayer with saying in Jesus name,, say in Jesus' name, because that's what is most heartfelt to you. But occasionally we would actually get somebody who also takes notice of who we are and wants to send a message to everybody else who's in that congregation. And so we went to one where it was probably the most pointed sermon that I have heard, but he went to draw and parse every distinction between, for those of you here who think that you need to understand the philosophy of Christ and that philosophy is what speaks to you. And that's what you want to take away from today. You're missing the point. Christ, Christ is the way he's not a path. He is the path. And he said, and he gave,

he gave, I mean, it was it was it was clearly intended that we were there and the person who brought us was relatively prominent person and i think it was i think he was checking actually i think i don't think it was not a rebuke at us i think it was a rebuke at the person who brought us is what it was it was a relatively prominent person and i think it was intended as a somewhat of a somewhat of a slap on the wrist or a rebuke not to say that we shouldn't show up there, but we shouldn't show up there as somebody who's not actually open to or being there for the purpose of openness to conversion.

Well, I'm sure he's also looking at his flock and going, wow, these people are running for president and they want the vote of my flock. And me endorsing this man is telling all these followers to go to him. But I respect this man. So he started, and once he got warmed up then, then it wasn't even on us. He was just going on, he was just going scorched earth. So he said, you know, a few weeks ago, I gave a sermon and we gave, I forget which passage it was, but it told the story.

And there's a gentleman who came up. He said, it was my first time in church in a long time. He had tears in his eyes. And I said, oh, well, thank you for coming. And he said, no, pastor, I just want to say thank you. You've opened up something in my heart that I previously did not have. I haven't been to church in a long time. You brought tears to my eyes.

And I want to say thank you for that. And he said, well, what did you take away from the teaching? And the man said, I'm still processing it, but I can just tell you the feeling that I have is one of gratitude. And the pastor's speaking in the sermon. processing it, but I can just tell you the feeling that I have is one of gratitude. And the pastor's speaking in the sermon. He says, well, I just looked him in the eye and said, I think you might've just liked the band. And I was just like, it's after he's just delivered. Yeah. Who's this pastor? What's his name? I forgot his name, but I, but he was, I mean, it was a, I think we brought it out at him.

You know, sometimes there's a situation and you awaken your inner beast. I think this, I think, and that was just, I mean, he was just going line by line of people from the congregation come to him with these lines. And he would just be ripping them to shreds because people miss what the actual ultimate point is, is that there is one path. Black dude? To God. No, he's white. Not that many black pastors in Iowa. There was one. I mean, I don't know if you've been to Iowa.

I don't know if you've been. You don't say. No, you tell me. He was a black member of the congregation. I was representing. I had to wear multiple hats. But there was a black pastor. He was probably wearing one hood. I want to wear multiple hats. But there was a black pastor. They were probably wearing one hood.

I want to say thank you, by the way. Everybody came out to the shows in D.C. I had a surreal experience this past weekend there. I posted about this on Instagram. But the first stand-up I ever experienced was Eddie Murphy's Delirious. I listened to a cassette tape of it. My dad has said that many times probably on this podcast. You guys know this. I listened to a cassette tape of it. My dad have said that, you know, many times probably on this podcast, you guys notice.

And we actually did those two shows at the exact venue where Eddie Murphy recorded Delirious. So that was just an incredible moment. I want to thank you guys all for coming out. Thank you so much for that. That was incredible. And the Life Tour in America continues. We are going to Nashville. make sure you get those tickets in, man. We are going to Austin as well.

And we added a second show in Phoenix, so you can get tickets to all those shows at theandrewschultz.com. And I will see you the first weekend in March in Philly. Cannot wait. I love you, I appreciate y'all. I'll see you there. Peace. By the way, guys, I also probably owe the city of Washington, D.C. a thank you because we sold out six shows at the Improv. I've never done that before. Sorry I did not. At the 7th, I didn't have time. But this week, January 26th and 27th, I'm going to be at Wise Guys Comedy

Club in Salt Lake City. I know we sold out one show, maybe two, so hurry up and buy those tickets. February 2nd and 3rd, San Jose, California. I'm at the Improv. I've never been there. Very excited to come. Very excited to perform for the Indians in San Jose. You H1 heaven-ass boys, buy those tickets, hurry up. And then this show, again, was just announced recently, so I'm pretty sure there's a lot of tickets available. February 22nd through 24th, Oklahoma City. Get those tickets and more at akashsingh.com. Now let's get back to the show. There's a black pastor who came to one of our events, actually.

He challenged me, not on Christian teaching, but he challenged me on one of my core principles. We have sort of 10 hard things that are true, we say in the campaign. One is reverse racism is racism. Yes. And so he, first he showed up, big, he's a fit guy, he's a pastor. He said, first thing is a challenge to 10 pushups. So we pounded down, hammered out the 10 pushups. And then the harder question was when there's been a history of systemic racism in the United States, how do you take that into account when you say reverse racism is racism?

Racism is racism. And we actually had, he actually was totally fine in the Christianity piece of this. He understood the distinction, but he was coming at it more from that angle. We had a good discussion and a good exchange that day. We stayed in touch. About three weeks later, he became one of our precinct captains, which is interesting. And I think that there were a lot of just beautiful moments through this whole thing. And even with the other two pastors that I mentioned, I consider that progress, that we were actually able, I would rather us be able to have those open exchanges than to have that bottled up and fester with some sort of deep, you know, I would say unhealthy, toxic frustration that sometimes comes up when people aren't able to speak in the open. I think that's smart.

I think that's smart. Now, here's a question that I think everybody wants to know. Why does everyone hate Nikki Haley so much? Does everyone hate Nikki? It seems like everyone loves Nikki. Oh, my God. The does everyone hate Nikki Haley so much? Does everyone hate Nikki? It seems like everyone loves Nikki Haley. Oh, my God. The corporate press loves Nikki Haley. You mean Nikita Haley?

Yeah. Is that her real name, Nikita? Nikita. It's Namrata. Oh, Namrata. He just wanted to say that other N word. He found a way to sneak it in this morning. And he almost made me say it.

She's Namrata. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. She can go with a normal. Namrata Randhawa Haley. Namrata. Namrata. And she calls me say it. She's Namrata. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. She can go the normal. Namrata Randhawa Haley. Namrata. Namrata.

And she calls me Vivek. So she fucks it up on purpose. I think that. A thousand percent. I think that it's almost, I don't know that she thinks of it as doing it on purpose, but it's almost native and hardwired to who she is that it's exactly how she is. Does she know what fucking caste you are, dude? Does she know you're a fucking Brahmin?

The thing is, it doesn't make it, for her, there's one currency that matters, which is power, personal power, and do whatever it takes. So she's insane lust for power. Insane lust for power, yeah. And she is tied to the corporate interests. Is that what the greatest criticism is?

I would say that it's not specific to her, right? It could apply to Dick Cheney. You could apply it to anyone of a certain breed of Republican or anyone in the neoliberal kind of fashion of Democrat too over the last 25 years. Is whatever it takes to accumulate an added ounce of money and power is what we're going to do. Use an ideology as a vector to do it, to project American power, which actually is a philosophy that creates American weakness in the name of creating an illusion of power. And we're going to fight foreign wars and we're going to create a domestic surveillance state as a consequence. And you can put a D at the end of it, or you could put an R at the end of it. It's the same philosophy hiding on the front. And that's what she represents. And so I think

what's going on in the Republican party right now is there's an ideological fissure about what this party is. I mean, what does it mean to be Republican? It's kind of a meaningless term, really. Biden bad is the closest thing the Republican Party has had to an agenda in the last few years. Biden bad, Trump good. Biden bad, winner good. Our team good.

What do we stand for? And so I think we should stand for the two basic ideas I said at the beginning. People who like to run the government should run the government. They're the old moral duty to the citizens of this nation. Not another one, simple, two simple ideas. But I think there's an alternative view

that says it's the job of the US to be the global hegemon. That's the global police state keeper. And in order to do that, we have to have a federal police state at home that requires under the table violations of your constitutional rights. And if that means tying your social media accounts to your government issued ID as a mandate to use the internet, which is a policy she's advocated for, that's what it takes. And so the post 9-11 Dick Cheney, George Bush, Patriot Act, Iraq War,

fuming Republicans have created a modern avatar. It's called Nikki Haley. Right. And they're trying to reclaim this thing known as the Republican Party. And then there's an alternative vision that says it's what I would call kind of a libertarian nationalist vision. I think I'm the only person to use that term, but that's how I describe my view of the world to say that the way of the future is one of guaranteeing at all costs our constitutionally enshrined freedoms and to take care of the citizens of this country. So Nikki represents traditional conservative. I wouldn't even call it conservative because conservative is, let's find the right word. The machine. I think the fancy word for this

would be neoconservative. But is she deep state? She's a product of the deep state. She's a product of deep state. Biden is also a product of deep state. Yeah, I would say so. So essentially, yeah. Okay, that's a great way to look at it. Because it feels as if, for the average person, that Biden is being run, right? He is being run.

He's being run. That's what the average person, but we don't know what really that means. Who runs him? Do you have names of people who run him? It just comes back to this, man. It's the machine. What's the machine? You could pick your Susan Rice's or the Hillary Clinton's or the Barack Obama's, but it doesn't matter.

But currently, do we know who's doing it? It's like the San Antonio Spurs, right? It doesn't matter who's actually playing. But I know who runs that. Popovich runs that. Who's the Popovich? Yeah, so I think imagine if Popovich steps out in the middle of a game and the whole thing just keeps running as its own machine. Becky Hammond steps in.

I know the coaching staff. I don't even know if she's not there anymore. But it doesn't matter who it is. And the machine still runs. I'm aware it runs. So here's how it works. Here's how it works. Here we go.

And this is not to go, I want to catch you. I don't think that you're using rhetoric. No, I'm taking it that way. I'm genuinely trying to understand a phrase that I feel like I've used without really knowing. At a certain point, the bureaucracy becomes its own creation. That's what it is. So if you want to take, for example, the FBI. Can I say one thing about this and how it helps me understand?

Sure. So in Hollywood, before I did really anything in entertainment, and I was on the outside of it, I thought that there was these organized meetings amongst people in Hollywood. They're like, here's the agenda. We're going to push trans. We're going to push gay. We're going to push Hindu. What I learned is that it's people that are trying to keep their job. Yeah. And by trying to keep their job, they're doing the things that they believe will be rewarded or very least they won't be punished. Yes. So is this what you mean by. So there's a

version of that. I mean, I think that a lot of what most people refer to as conspiracy theories, the ones that certainly are true, are really just an amalgam of collective incentives that are hiding in place. Yes. That we think there's these nefarious individuals that are holding. If you're fixated on where's the smoke-filled room, you're missing the point. And so I think that this idea that you're not supposed to utter the great replacement theory or whatever, this idea that there's an intentional plot to supplant the native white stock of the US for a bunch of people crossing the southern border to permanently secure electoral outcomes to the contrary that's conspiracy theory but if you take great replacement theory out of it you take the idea of somebody concocting this in a smoke-filled room out of it and then you just look at the last 20 years of policy much of one of the two political parties in the u.s as recently as about a decade ago said well immigration legal or not is going to be a key to securing lasting electoral majorities and so that's why now should tend to favor this. Including even in the context of that. You can't even remember the context.

Was convincing a kind of Bernie-esque minority view that was sort of skeptical of competition for domestic workers to sort of, it was a carrot to say, no, no, no, I know that this might like in the short run run against some of the things you stand for, but think about what it could open up in the long run if we have lasting electoral majorities. So it was earnest as a persuasion mechanism that today, if offered uttered by people on the so-called other side, becomes a conspiracy theory, but it's nothing more than just a statement of incentives hiding

in plain sight. So it goes with the bureaucracy. And I want to say a word about the bureaucracy. I don't love the word deep state only because it implies that it's limited to the government. What I call it, people don't like it when I say this and they say it doesn't resonate with people. But the word that I use is it's the managerial class. Is Jamie Dimon part of the managerial class? I think the people two to three layers below Jamie Dimon absolutely are. And I think in some sense, Jamie Dimon is ish, ish on it. So there's three classes of people. I talk about this in my first book, Woke Inc., a little bit. I mean, you got the creators, right?

The actual, you could be a professor at a university as opposed to the associate dean of God knows what. Could be the entrepreneur proprietor who started the company as opposed to the vice president of human resources. Could be the elected president of the United States versus, you know, the class that sits underneath them. You've got the creators, you've got the constituents, customers, shareholders, voters, and then you've got the managerial class who are the higher middle management bureaucracy designed to administer that which the creators have created with the intention of serving the constituents,

but to make it scalable. Like that's the basic premise of it, in a corporate context or not. And I think we live in a moment right now where the balance of power between those three categories has vastly shifted towards the managerial class, the committee class, as we could call it, the permanent bureaucracy or what we would call in government, the permanent state. I think it's true in every sphere of our lives right now. I think it's true in corporate America. I think it's true in universities. But it so happens, and I do think it's the mother of all bureaucracies, it is absolutely true in the government that the people who we elect have almost nothing to do with what actually impacts

most people's everyday lives compared to the permanent machine that sits under it and is fundamentally agnostic to the political party who's on top as long as they're going to keep the party going so it's a joe biden's one version of that nikki haley's another version of that so either which is a safe choice deep state is essentially just bureaucracy yeah and your mission as president would have been to eliminate dismantle would have been 75 a jack a jackhammer that's like a chainsaw and i'm just trying to help people who might be like oh this guy wants to abolish the department of education what the fuck is that you're just trying to eliminate the bureaucracy from the department of education eliminate the

bureaucracy from yeah so many of the fbi all because the bureaucracy is the bureaucracy itself is causing what is causing a separation between what the constituents want yes and what the executor the dissipation of accountability is what disappears so between what the constituents want and what the executors. The dissipation of accountability is what disappears. So they know the managerial folks no longer have accountability to their constituents. That's right. And that is because there is this. They don't even have constituents.

That's the thing. They don't even have constituents. So I'll give it to you in a corporate context so we can depoliticize it. Then we can bring it back to politics. Like in corporate America right now, and this is where I spent my career shortly before running for president, is you have something that happened basically in original OG capitalism. You have the proprietor who's also the owner, who's also the CEO and the operator. Then it all comes down to a question of scale. So the question is, oh, we couldn't scale that without hiring professional

management so that the owner can do other things and create new things or whatever the owner wants to do. And so he hires the CEO and the CFO, et cetera. And so there was like in business school for, I don't know if any of you have back or doesn't matter, but if you go to business school, one of the things they'll teach you about is the separation of ownership and control. So that was like one of the original sins kind of thing, where the owner is no longer the person who exercises control, and that creates what they call a principal-agent problem. So the principal is the owner, the agent is the hired hand, and then like all of modern corporate law and business theory and securities law is designed to basically address that gap. So they have these things called fiduciary duties that the CEO will

owe to the owner, but eventually they start behaving badly in a way that just flies around private jets at the owner's expense and claim that it's a business need. And then that's when the private equity industry was actually born in the 1980s, designed to sort of say, okay, well, we're going to retake ownership and clean house. And that was like where the Henry Cravices and the Steve Schwartzmans kind of came from. So that's in the realm of capitalism. Then something else happened in the last 20 years, which is, OK, so they said the shareholders are the ones who have control. But the managerial class, having not taken it over at the level of the corporation, went to the direction of the shareholders themselves.

They started to pretend to be the shareholders in the guise of firms like BlackRock and State Street or Vanguard or whatever that aggregate. I don't know if these words mean anything to you. Yes. Okay. I mean, aggregate probably most of your money directly or indirectly, 401k accounts, pension funds, et cetera, to say that, okay, we are the shareholders, but we're representing other people's money. And so we're going to have you adopt policies that actually are in our own interest. Not the shareholders. Not the actual shareholders or the capital owners. But since we're the shareholders because we're holding their money.

We're holding the stock. Exactly. So you're using – so let's say you're BlackRock and let's say you're two retirees. You give your money over to BlackRock. BlackRock buys shares in, I don't know, Apple. Sure. Actually, that's a good example to use because there was a specific case with Apple. Now they're using that leverage on Apple to do what they want.

Specifically on Apple and BlackRock. This is a real life story in 2022. Voted for racial equity audits at Apple, which Apple initially said hell no to. But they said, no, no, we're going to vote for it. And then back in the old school version, if the CEO was pushing that kind of philosophy, the shareholders would say, no, you're the agent. I'm the principal, and you have a fiduciary duty to me. But it's always a cat and mouse game. But now it's gone to the shareholders, and they're like, no, no, no, we are the shareholders. And we're telling you that you need to adopt this policy. We need BlackRock. BlackRock, right. Because today,

if you go to the SEC's website and see who are the shareholders of Apple, they're going to be number one or two or three on the list. This is really interesting. And so it's always this cat and mouse game where the managerial class is always about getting one heads up. So there's a whole private sector version of this. And two of my three books are about this stuff and we could go on for days about it. But I use that as an analog because I'm going to talk about politics. People lose their mind. There's something similar going on. And I think of even greater import in the government where there's a cat and mouse game between the elected representatives who,

say what you will, still have to go back to their constituents every couple of years, every two, four, or six years, depending on Congress, President, or Senate, and ask for permission to govern. Whereas what these people say is, no, no, no, how do we drain as much of that power as possible so that we're agnostic? Who are these people? The bureaucrats. The bureaucrats. Yeah. So these people. Absolutely. The people who work for Anthony Fauci. From the electeds as possible to make sure that we're agnostic to who actually gets into

power in those seats in the first place. So they're neutering them intentionally. They're neutering them intentionally. Yes. It depends how much detail you want to go into, but I can't even tell you. I want all the detail. Okay. No, this is very important because I think a lot of your ideas, when explained in this way, are incredibly digestible.

The problem is cable TV's 30-second hits or two-and-a-half hits. Hold on one second. That's the game, though. That is the game. And I've learned this, so I've got to get good at that or get better at that. I mean, we talked about Bernie, for example. I remember when Bernie was going up against Trump, and there was this real where I think like American voters really wanted it to be Bernie versus Trump. And I think that they were so disillusioned with a good race and that would have been a useful race for the country.

I've like, you know, I said it was like, oh, the Democrats stole it from Bernie with the whatever. But here's the reality. That's the system. Yes. He was operating within. Yeah. Hasn't tried to change. So if the system can break you or can sway using the, what are they called? The superdelegates or whatever. That's the system that you, and if you're not breaking that system, if you're using that system, that is- You become a product of it, actually. Exactly. Now- Bring a jackhammer, get the hell out. Drop the mic and get the hell out. Of course, but if it's 30 seconds, a bite on MMBC, this is another problem

with the bureaucracy, you could even argue, that is impossible to describe an issue that is this inundated with bullshit in 30 seconds. So the people don't even know where the disconnect is

between them and their representatives. I'm sorry, but I'm going to interrupt. I'm reading Woke Inc. I actually do read it. You're reading it right now? I'm reading it right now. I'm listening to the audio book, actually.

Let's be honest. I read the audio book for that one. I read that one, actually. Yeah, I know. That's why I was more inclined to do it. The book, and you're- How far into it are you? You are, chapter eight.

Okay. You are one of the most brilliant people I've ever heard speak. Most people are not you. I'm an idiot. I'm listening to your book. I'm listening to your book. And I'm not, a lot of this,

I'm just struggling to keep up as you're even speaking now. But I'm reading Woking and you take this kind of Wokenomics philosophy and you make that the boogeyman of corporate America. And I'm just an idiot who's listening to you. And I'm like, well, corporations and you acknowledge it a little bit. You're like, look, corporations weren't they were corrupt before. But this is the problem. This Wokenomics is what's ruining the country. And it's like, no, the country's been fucked. Again, I'm talking like an idiot. I think the issue, if you had made this about how bureaucracy ruins government even outside of it,

if you make it woke ink and then you make the whole boogeyman. You're framing it as wokeness when the problem isn't just woke. You haven't heard me talk a lot about that in the last year for a reason. So one is just to bring you context. One thing I tell people about Woke Inc. is first of all, probably the three books I wrote, most proud of that one

just because it took more of an effort versus the next two, you already got your flow going. But I agree with about 95% of what's in there. That's the first thing I will say. I've written two books since then and some of those have evolved from certain of my micro views.

But the other thing I will say is that was just a product of my latest experience. I was a biotech CEO. The story I think I tell towards the start of the book, yeah. And there's a demand that I make a statement on behalf of BLM. I refuse to do it. Six months later, I write an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with a former law professor, and then multiple advisors from my company are resigning. What the hell is going on? And actually, the corporate America was in a different and weird place in 2020 than it is

today. So I don't, I don't mean to be defensive, but I don't believe I said that, oh, this is really the, the threat to all American future existence. But it was, but it was what landed on my doorstep. Right. And so that was, that was the thing that moved me to write that book. What I will say is, so when I wrote Woke Game- Hold on, I want people to digest this. This is interesting because I think a lot of people have looked at that book without even reading it as, oh, he wants to run for president. He's seeing this woke wave going.

He's gonna write a book about how woke this is destroying everything. And he's gonna use that popularity to run for president. If you actually read the book, what you're describing is you were put in a situation where you could not do your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders. At least what I felt was the right answer. Because of this, what do you even call this? This like- Social pressure, you could call it that. Yeah, there was a social pressure and a philosophy that was restricting your ability to run your company to the best.

And to be clear, in my case, it was a really mild example of it. So I don't I don't think I've ever overstated that in the case of my company. It was it was a small shade compared to what was going on in the rest of corporate America. America. But it opened my eyes that even in that landing on my own doorstep and multiple advisors to my company stepping aside because of my own views that companies should stay out of politics was an eye-opening moment. And I wrote a book about the reflections that came out of that. At the time I titled Woking and sent it to the publisher, the main criticism that I got, including from people in that world, was that nobody had heard this, not enough people had heard this word woke.

So this book is going to fall flat. This is back in 2020 when we named it. That's funny. By the time it came out a year and a half later, then the actual criticism was, this is too controversial and you're weaponizing the word woke. And then if that book were to have come out today, I'm sure the criticism would be that this is banal. And you know what? That time they might actually be right. See, if I wrote that book today and it comes out, if somebody else gives me a book that says the same thing Woking has come out today, I'm like, come on, guys. It's an eyesore. This is tired.

But it wasn't when it came out. It was intended to be read in the moment when it came out is what I would say. And you could read it now for insight into how I think about things, but it was a product of my own experiences and a product of where I think we were in a particularly weird place in our country. The fight has moved on. And one of the titles, one of the chapter titles in Woking

was the rise of the managerial class. Yes. That's one chapter. We blew that out into a full third book. I wrote a second book called Nation of Victims. And then the third one is called Capitalist Punishment, which is all about actually, it's more specific to sort of ESG and capital markets, but goes into this deeper issue of the managerial class. There's this author called, I think, I don't know if he's on the left or on the right or some kind of issue too, but Michael

Lind wrote a book recently and he was in the school of thought of this guy probably a century ago, Burnham, James Burnham, who talked about this almost like back in the 30s where this has been a phenomenon that's existed for a long time. And what it actually gets to is this is – as esoteric as it might sound what we're talking about, this is what the American Revolution was actually fought about. See, the American Revolution was fought over the idea. The part I left out about the deep state is the people who are believing that they need to drain the lifeblood out of the politicians. The most sinister part of it is they believe they're doing it not even for their own good but for the good of humanity and for the country. They believe that the elected representatives – There's altruism in their actions. Yes, exactly.

It is a noble lie that has to be told that we live in a democracy- So even if you called them deep state, they'd be like, what do you mean? I'm just trying to help. I think it's even one step than that. I know what you mean. And you could think that about me. But I know I'm doing the right thing. But I know I'm doing the right thing, and so I'm going to do it anyway. And see, that's what the American Revolution was fought for. We got to stop using the word deep state. I agree. I agree. I call it the permanent state shadow government, but I call it the managerial class because it's not about the state.

It starts to sound so conspiratorial. I really think it's not even about conspiratorial. It's really about this idea that there are these people with nefarious intent. Right. And when we remove ourselves. Exactly. From this individual and nefarious action. Yeah. It's something it's a systematic phenomenon. Because you force a person who believes they're doing good. Right. Will not listen. Believes the means are justified to accomplish that.

It's not talking about me. It can't be talking about me. I'm doing good for my people. I'm doing what's right. And that's what you have to understand is these people believe that they're doing what's right for humanity. This is good. And for most of human history, now as I said, the American Revolution was fought for. Now you take a historical view. For most of human history, right? Make an American Revolution point because I'm still a little lost. I'm bringing that in here. Pre-American Revolution for most of human history, the view was, okay, the idea that you get to speak your mind openly as long as I get to in return,

You get to speak your mind openly as long as I get to in return. Or the idea that we the people cause a government to come into existence that's accountable to us. Where every one of us has a voice and vote that counts equally in like this weird democratic process. Where we count up votes and decide who's in charge and you get to vote them out. That's nutty, right? What the people would demand would cause humanity itself to cease to exist. That's how stupid people are, is the kinds of decisions they would make. And so the American Revolution was fought, 1776 was based on one idea, which is that for better or worse, we the people still decide who governs. So it wasn't just an american revolution it was a

revolution of thought it was it was fundamentally a revolution of thought absolutely which echoed a little bit and mutate a little bit to get to the french revolution in 1789 but let's just talk about the american revolution which was i think i think the og version of this and the intellectual predecessors of it were like john lock it started in europe but our founding fathers they weren't the most i mean they're brilliant people but they weren't the originators, but they were the implementers of a vision of enlightenment thought that caused the United States to come into existence. They had a juvenile enough system that they could implement these ideas. That's right. That's right. And so that's what the American Revolution was fought for. And so then we have

to accept that we're the weird ones, actually, we as an America. Because for most of human history in most countries, many across the world today, those that haven't followed America's example, that's how it's done. And so what you're seeing right now isn't this devious, new, sinister conspiracy theory. It's a revert to the norm. It's just a revert to the norm. It's exactly what it is. It's just the natural historical tendency. So we live in this anomaly.

But right now, this is just reverting to the norm of all of human history. I saw you talking when you were stumping for Trump in New Hampshire, and you likened it to the American Revolution. And I rolled, because I didn't understand contextually what you were talking about. That's what I'm talking about. I probably didn't explain it. No, it's not about explaining. It's like you said, in these short amounts of time, it's very hard to break down an idea this sophisticated. Like think about it took us 30 minutes to go from the initiation of the deep state, just the idea for us to understand to how it works in corporate America to back to politics and how humans have been operating in this way because it's constantly it's is it in

weirdly like there's like a biological impulse for it probably. Yeah. We're not, there's almost a societal impulse. Part of it's native hardwired, part of it's just the nature of human nature and how we relate to each other. And, and, and this thing about the old worldview that humanity would cease to exist, that's literally what much of the managerial class believes today as it relates to climate change. I mean, for example, you could pick your favorite one, COVID. That if we really left it to self-governance and we were serious about that, pick your favorite, fill in the blank.

The planet would cease to exist. So it has to be a small group of enlightened members of the managerial class that do what's right, not just because they want to enrich themselves in their pocketbook. Now, here's the decision to draw. Because you're too stupid. The Nikki Haley's of the world are in it for their pocketbook. But remember we said they're not the managerial class. They're the pawns for the managerial class. No, no, no, no.

I've seen this a lot of times. So the managerial class cuts them in because those are operators. But what they really, the real people who are the real managerial class hardcore are actually doing it out of a sense of benevolence. There's a, and I don't want to completely discredit this entire conversation because I think it's great by comparing it to Burning Man, but I do have a point

about Burning Man. Have you ever gone? I've always wanted to, but we never made it, actually. One of the tenets is this radical self-reliance. There's nobody really watching. But there's no one

really watching you, right? There's nobody watching you build. There's no, like, constructor, like a DOB people going, oh, is this, how many nails did you put into this? Is this going to fit? Is everything going to work out, right? There's no traffic cop that's just waiting to make sure you stop at a stop sign or anything like that. Everybody's

relying on their self. And when you're relying on yourself, you want to build something you can walk on. You want to build something you can jump on. You want to make sure you stop because there might be a car that's about to run in front of you. There is a kind of neutering of people when you have daddy or mommy around all the time, making sure you don't do anything bad. And it speaks to what you just said, this idea of if you leave us to our own devices, and I understand Bernie May is super privileged and people have a lot of money and time, whatever. But it is people being left to their own devices to take care of themselves.

And they're accountable if anything goes wrong. And when you're accountable, if anything goes wrong, nobody's going to come pick you up necessarily. You're going to make sure, you know what? Maybe I'm not going to build this with too few screws. Maybe I'm not going to find a way to cheat myself out of this situation because I could hurt myself and I could hurt the people around me. So I think it does speak to what you're talking about, which is this like self-reliance has been almost stripped and it's been stripped by an arrogance. Yes.

An arrogance of they're too dumb to build the thing correctly. Right. Now, there is another side of that, which is these people are going to build something for someone else. And if we don't regulate the way they build it, they'll build it in the cheapest way and take advantage of those innocent people. That also exists. Like as much as unions are a pain in the ass, they were created for a reason.

They came into existence for a reason. The created implies that you're going to have a separate discussion about unions. I actually have a very different attitude towards private sector unions than I do to public sector. No, public sector, if you're negotiating against the government, it's very peculiar against the people. Also the people, but think about, if you're negotiating against the government, it's very peculiar. Against the people, yeah. And also the people, but think about it, like you're negotiating against

somebody who's out of office in two or three years, right? So of course, if I'm mayor and I want to get the teachers union on my side and be like, well, listen, I'm out of here to be governor in a few years. Yeah, give them whatever deal they want. If I'm negotiating against my boss, who I have to work for, or he has to hire me and all of the other workers that are part of this company. This is a 10-year relationship, a 20-year relationship, a 30-year relationship. I'm gonna make sure we hammer out a deal that's beneficial for the both of us. But I feel too often what happens with people in politics is, yeah, just give them whatever

they want. Who cares what the fuck happens to the state? I'm out in four years because I'm gonna do something else. And that's why negotiating against- Public sector. Is different than the private sector. Yeah. I agree. All right, guys, we're gonna take a break for a second. Listen, let's face it, okay? We want a healthy way to eat, protein-packed meals, but spending hours in the kitchen to make healthy food is awful. That's why you gotta

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That's 484-373-6753. And follow the prompt for your chance to win $2,000 and two tickets to my show. Just text flagrant to for the people. That is 484-373-6753. Now let's get back to the show. Can you break down what you mean by dismantling the bureaucracy?

Yeah. Because it sounds good. Yeah, yeah. Within politics. So it's like the, you know, if you have like an eight-headed hydra and you cut off one of the heads, it grows right back. That's the model of incremental reform. That's, you know, Ron DeSantis when he says, I want to fire Christopher Wray at the FBI. That's the way I view it.

His cosmetic change doesn't make a difference. What you're saying is like Christopher Wray is one guy. Christopher Wray is like literally one dude. There's 10 other guys that are going to keep on doing the exact same thing. There's 35,000 other guys. They're going to replace him. 35,000 other guys. As usual.

So I mean shut down the FBI. So the institution known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, what I call the failed Bureau of Investigation, because I think it has failed to even carry out its basic law enforcement functions on issues ranging from child trafficking to the fentanyl epidemic. Actually, the right answer is to shut it down. So there's always the risk when you take it. Well, I'll tell you what the mechanics look like, but there's always the risk. You're going to take some risk. One risk is you don't cut enough fat. The other is that you take, you cut so much that you also cut some muscle. You can't say, no, I'm going to cut all of it in just the precise amount, because if you're bringing a chainsaw,

that's not a plan. Where I'm different than most people is I am willing to take the risk of cutting so much that we cut some muscle, but I believe the right approach will then to be regrow in a precise manner that which you overcut rather than to take the risk of not cutting enough, which I think is an illusion.

In some ways, the worst of all worlds, which gives the people the sense that something happened without actually anything of meaning. But isn't that our risk? What's that? That's our risk. That's the one that's what's happening right now. What I'm saying is that's not your risk. It's the people's risk. But that's what I mean. I'm saying us as the people, right?

Us as the people. I think he's saying I'm the politician willing to take the risk. I'm like, yo, you're taking a risk on my behalf. You have security. I guess that's rooted in the theory that he doesn't think they're acting for the people. Yeah, they're not. I'm just reviewing risk. I'm like, yo, you're taking a risk on my behalf. You have security. I guess that's rooted in the theory that he doesn't think they're acting for the people. Yeah, they're not. I'm just reviewing myself. I'm volunteering to represent us.

What's so bad with the FBI? So I think the FBI has been rotten since its inception. Yeah. And it was the embodiment of the managerial class. So J. Edgar Hoover built himself and his institution to be effectively insulated from any form of public accountability. He, I don't know if you guys,

here's a book I would actually really recommend. My wife has read it. I know nothing about anything. There's a book called G-Man. I would read it. It's not some right-wing screed, I promise. It's like a Yale historian, for all I know is a lefty,

for all I know is, talks about the history of the J. Edgar Hoover building. Can I just define one thing for everybody who's watching right now? We're gonna use the term managerial class for the rest of the podcast. This is essentially the middleman between what the people want and the politicians that are serving them or the workers of a company and who is the upper man for the CAO. Yeah, exactly. That sounds good.

That sounds good. The owner. The owner. And the principal or the owners of the company. Between the owner. So there's this system. It's the committee class. The committee class, the managerial class, whatever it is.

But these people aren't necessarily working for the company. They might not. In BlackRock, they are. But they're not working for the government necessarily. It's a separate breed of middle management bureaucrats. necessarily. It's a separate breed of middle management bureaucrats. It's like the equivalent of who sits in between the student and the tenured professor at the university is the dean. In politics, how does this present itself? Is it politicians? Three-letter agencies. The three-letter agencies. Got it.

That's what we're talking about. FBI, SEC, ATF, CDC, Department of Education, TSA. DEA. DEA. What about companies? What about, you know, what about Boeing or? It gets, so the way I view companies is they view these unaccountable nodes as their vehicles for capture. And the node is the politician? The agency, the agency. So that's where power gets concentrated.

It's in an unaccountable place. Then it's just about capturing it. So you are talking about actually cutting people at these agencies. I'm talking about shutting the whole agency. Shutting the whole agency down. Because the idea is- Similar to how people said defund the police. They complained of how the police system has been running all this time.

So now they're like, yeah, we need to pull. So my view is on the FBI's case, there's 35,000 employees at the FBI. And by the way, there's 35,000 employees at the FBI. And by the way, there's the same FBI that 60 years ago was incorrectly collecting tapes of Martin Luther King and threatening him

to commit suicide over his affronts or whatever. He's getting it back. He's getting it back. That today is going after- He saw the tattoo. He's like, oh, fucking God.

He's been collecting information this whole time. I like the tattoo. It made an impression. He gave a lot of credits and he saw the tattoo. It made an impression. That today is actually now going after, I believe, political opponents who have a political persuasion that the benevolent dictators inside the three-letter agency have decided need to be quashed, just like they decided he needed to be quashed. So it's not a partisan point I'm making, but there's 35,000 employees at the FBI. 20,000 of them are the back office bureaucrats

that are the classic typical managerial class. When I say shut down the FBI, those 20,000 are going home and finding honest work, whatever it is. And by the way, we happen to live in a moment where most businesses have more job openings than there are people looking for work in this country. So maybe we can kill two birds with one stone. But either way, they're going home. we can kill two birds with one stone. But either way, they're going home. The 15,000 cops on the front lines, investigative agents, we will move them to, say, the U.S. Marshals, which, I mean, everything I'm naming, they each have their own problems, but they're not, as an institution, has not suffered the same level of rot that the FBI has. It's not systemic. Yeah, and the U.S. Marshals have been far more effective than the FBI in

going after child sex trafficking rings. And you can even talk about the D.A. has a lot of its faults, but sooner I would move them to the D.A. than keep them at the FBI to go after the fentanyl epidemic. There's a financial crimes enforcement network at the U.S. Treasury to go after the future S.B.F.s or the F.T.X.s or the financial fraudsters of the world. The remaining 15,000 move them. So that's what shutting down the FBI looks like. How do you decide who's who? How do you decide 15,000 good, 20,000 bad? Well, the 15,000 are investigative agents that are not sort of- Yeah, if you're- They're based on police officers. They're like the equivalent of the cops, actually. So we'll

use that frontline talent, but deputized by at least a bureaucracy that has not been corrupted in the same way that the current FBI has. And the current FBI makes it pretty nakedly transparent. It's still, for God's sake, the J. Edgar Hoover building, the name of the building. They're celebrating the guy's legacy today. So I would say shut it down. And I'm different than every other Republican in that regard, but I think that that's actually the correct answer. But this is why we need context for these conversations. Saying shut down the FBI is such a volatile headline that when I see that and I'm like, what a ridiculous notion. What is he saying? Is he just trying to trump up some fucking –

My wife is the best one. Because she's not a politicized person. She's a brilliant person. She initially thought this was crazy talk. She's actually the one who found G-Man. She's just like, all right, I know my husband. He's saying some stuff that people say is sounding crazy,

but let me just form my own opinion. And so she's actually the one that clued me into G-Man, which is, I don't think anybody who reads that book will come out believing anything other than,

not that they're going to think what I'm going to say is crazy. They think the, you will agree with me the status quo is what's crazy. It's crazy. And it's crazy that we ever allowed

for the creation of an institution like this that was this insulated from accountability. Your umbrella is not shut down the FBI. Your umbrella is shut down any actor, agency, single person that interrupts what the people want and how that is executed. Exactly. And here's the thing, I can't take credit for that. But real quick, just because our founding fathers said it. So the only saying is there's three branches of government in the United States. But real quick, so we don't move on because I don't want people to miss this because I think it's an important point. You thought the FBI was being used to, I guess, remove certain potential nominees or to tarnish their image, to interfere with election processes.

Among other things. I mean, not just election processes. Just give me one example so people can digest. So the FBI, I believe. Yeah. I believe the FBI played a role. I'm saying the decision,

we don't have all the facts, but based on what we know. Talking about Biden, a divided laptop. Well, I believe the FBI even played a role in instigating January 6th. Okay, so perfect example.

We can talk about both of those things. But just so people don't miss both, and I want to get back to that, but just so people don't miss the point. The point is, if the FBI itself or is being used to interrupt what the people want in this situation, it is a nominee. And if they're tarnishing the image of that nominee, now the people don't get the elected official that they actually desire. Yeah, based on false pretenses. Exactly. And then that is the problem with the managerial class in the same way it's a problem with BlackRock, with your investments. That is one of many problems. And I think that is a very digestible way of going. So it's not even the FBI is the problem. It's not the letters. It's the fact that this organization has been used as a weapon

is the problem. It's not the letters. It's the fact that this organization has been used as a weapon to remove the freedom of the people to elect a person that they feel represents them. Yes, exactly. And now if those elected representatives pass bad laws, well, that's your fault. As Thomas Jefferson says- That's your accountability. Yeah, Thomas Jefferson's great quote, I'm going to botch it. But basically he says, the people deserve the government they vote for. And I think that by definition that's true. So if the government sucks, you voted for it. And he's the guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence, by the way.

And the deep state is essentially just the CIA who can act without the president knowing about it. And the deep state, and it's not in a critical sense, I'm just talking in a descriptive sense. The deep state effectively says, yes, the people are going to get the government they vote for, and it's going to suck because people are idiots. They cannot be trusted. It's a condescension. It's bad for them. We need to make sure that people don't get the government they vote for because that's going to be a pretty shitty government. They better get one that actually allows them to have what's better for them, even though they don't know. Let's use managerial class instead of deep

state. Just so we're on. Yeah, I was just- Because this is like- The managerial class. It's, I think, a really important point that I think would resonate with people because the average person I feel like right now is so disillusioned with government. And I think that's why you see people going, how is Biden president? How is there nobody else that's out there? What the hell is going on?

And I think that's why Bernie, and I think that's why Trump, were these two figures that got so much support because they were both seen as outsiders to the system. So people are disillusioned with the system. And the system is the fucking managerial class that makes me feel like the people that I am voting for do not represent my actual interests. That's right.

And that feeling is grounded in truth. Like, it's not just a feeling. It is an accurate perception of what is true. Like what you said right there with the FBI. If the FBI, if, right, if the FBI is limiting my options of people to vote for, and I'm just voting for the lesser of two evils, which I think both sides end up kind of doing. You're voting for, in your brain, the lesser of two evils. You have limited my option to vote for the person that I truly want to represent me. So if the FBI or if any other three-letter agency or anything else is restricting

my representation, I agree. We should have some way of taking a jackhammer to that system. I don't know what it is. But to me, that is a way more digestible. Yes. Yeah. Does that make sense? Did you guys know initially when he said that? My question is, do we need some version of a managerial class?

Are you here to abolish it or recreate it? Okay, this is good. I think that we go through these cycles in history, right? But I think that we live in one of the moments where the only way you're going to slay the Leviathan, and I use that term, the Leviathan's Thomas Hobbes. I mean, this is what – the stuff I'm describing, by the way, is – like, these are not original observations. This has been a struggle for most of human history. Yeah. But it's what Thomas Hobbes called the Leviathan is what we're calling the machine or the managerial class.

We live in a moment right now where it is impossible, I believe, it is impossible to incrementally pick around the edges of it. I think right now the only available effective option is to take the risk and probably there's going to be some cost involved. Probably there's going gonna be some negatives that come out of it. I'll be the first to acknowledge that. But on net, undoubtedly the right thing to do is nonetheless to come in and break the hell out of the glass

and acknowledge there's gonna be some inconvenience that may come from that at a frictional transitional cost. But absent our willingness to do that, it just isn't otherwise going to happen. Will there be a recreation? It needs to happen. And so that's up to the people who come next.

It's gonna happen again. That's up to the people. And then we gotta break it again. Exactly. And so that becomes the iterative cycle, but hopefully it never gets to the place where the scale of the wreckage needs to be what it is now.

But the question is, every one of us makes our own unique contribution and imprint. This is the imprint that the next leader, successful leader of our country, I think, needs to make. Okay. And then it's up to the guy who comes after and to the people who come after and what we decide and iteratively how we respond to that. Because then inevitably there's going to be some calamity. It's going to be how did we allow that to happen? And then we're going to actually, we're going to accept a trade-off that's in the other direction of that calamity. Aren't we smart enough to have prevented this? Well, it was really self-governance that got us there. So this becomes, I mean, this is the human experience, right? This is iteratively the struggle

that human history is all about. Power consolidates. But this is right now where we are. Am I right? Yeah, it sounds good. It's just hard to run on that because think about the 20,000 people and their families that are like go off just that one agency and then the 30,000 here and the 50,000. I've had people in the room with me be like, oh, like my uncle or my son is working in this agency. And I answer them honestly, which is that I don't think, and it sounds like a crude thing to say, but it's the truth. I don't think that the job of the federal

government is or should be to provide employment opportunity. I just don't. I think the job of federal government is to represent the interest of the people. Now it turns out, by God, one of the main things limiting our economic growth right now is literally if you're a small business or even a large business, the number one thing that's stopping you from expanding right now is literally finding people to staff your open positions. So that's the country we live in right now and one in which we have the massive problem that we do, not to mention the cost of this. I mean, it's not cost-free from a taxpayer perspective when we're $34 trillion in the hole as a nation as well in national debt. free from a taxpayer perspective when we're $34 trillion in the hole as a nation as well in national debt, to say that I have sympathy for many of the individuals involved. Because as I said, it's not one of these is like a culprit and evil person.

But the right thing to do for the nation is for public service to be about public service and not about guarantor of employment opportunity. And that we need to live in a thriving country in which those people find employment opportunity elsewhere in an economy that right now happens to be hungering for more people to fill open roles of employment. And so you're right. You're having a political point that may not win you both friends amongst those voters. And that's true. I've also had many people who have come up and said, I've worked in these bureaucracies and I understand that I would lose my job. But you're right. I've seen it. And I agree come up and said, I've worked in these bureaucracies and I understand that I will lose my job.

But you're right. I've seen it. And I agree with you, which is also heartening as well. I'm not saying that's everybody, but I think that that's for people who've been on the inside. What I'm saying is not that foreign to process. And in any way, the piece about shutting it down is like, I think if you do it in an orderly way. Right. So I want to lay off 75 percent of the federal bureaucracy over the course of the first term.

So we'd stage it over four years. We're not doing all of that on day one. The first four agencies I had said I would shut down would be FBI, ATF, CDC and U.S. Department of Education. We've got, if I may say so myself, I would like to think relatively orderly plans for carrying this out. Please explain Department of Education. That's another one that I heard your take and it was really smart. But I think to people, it's like, what the fuck are you talking about? It's just so jarring. Yes.

And I'm sure for you, because you've probably read so much about this, you've thought so much about this. You've been in the think tank meetings with your people where you're like, how can we execute this incredibly difficult task? It probably seems like an absolute no-brainer, right? And one of the tricky things about being a politician, which I'm sure you've learned, which is different than being a CEO, is when it comes to a CEO and I'm subscribing to you, I'm going, I want to work for this guy, believe in this guy. I don't even need you to convince me. I trust that you know what we're going to do. And maybe I'll go, hey, I think this is a good way to do it. And then I could influence your opinion. But when it comes to being a politician, you're going to make this change.

And you need to convince me that this change is in my best interest. Right. And when I just hear shut down the— It's because you're the boss, actually. That's what it is. Exactly. People lose that sense. And one of the beauties of this Iowa caucus process, I did more events than all the other candidates combined.

Yeah. Which is, I realized actually through the process what this was actually about. If this process of like Iowa going first through this caucus system is about something, it's actually about instilling humility into the candidates. That's really what it's about is you otherwise forget who the boss is. And so like I got some 27-year-old kid comes to one of my events. He's like, give me your accountabilities. What are you going to do by 12 months? Like how will I know you accomplished what I told you to accomplish? And it landed with me because that

sounds like a question I was asking back when I was a CEO hiring people. But if you're a presidential candidate, you got to remember, this is a job. Hell yeah. So I was like, this kid gets it. Like, I'm really, I'm really into that. Also, guys, don't forget about prize picks. Hurry up and sign up. NFL playoffs is the best time of the year. This is what you got to do. I'm giving you my sing locks. First of all, this is a four-player thing. So it's a four-player pick.

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And sign up for prizepix.com. Use that promo code Schultz. They will match your initial deposit up to $100. So you put in $100, you get $100 for free. Now let's get back to this episode of Vivek Ramaswamy. But anyway, I was talking about the Department of Education. And I want to come back to your point about the political. Because there's something important I want to say about that.

But you asked about Department of Education. So the Department of Education, let's go to why it was created in the first place. Here's the thing with some of these agencies is they were created with often understandable intentions, but they should have been a task force rather than an agency. A task force folds up and moves on when it's completed its purpose. This was created in the post-desegregation era, immediately after the segregation civil rights movement, to make sure that Southern states were not siphoning money from predominantly black school districts to white school districts. And that was, in some measure,

at least happening in certain areas. So that's how the Department of Education was created. I would never create a bureaucracy to solve this problem because you know where that road ends, but at least say what you will, that was the intention of having created it. What it then became iteratively was, okay, that's not happening anymore,

but the bureaucracy still has to live on. And any institution that continues to exist after it has achieved success ends up becoming a rot of itself. It's what happened to the UN. It's what's happened to, I think, NATO. But we can talk about each of these. It's what happened to the Department of Education.

We'll get there. And so what happens to the Department of Education is they then start to focus on, okay, but how do we ensure equality in other ways? It's not just the funds. How are we going to ensure equality in other ways? That's where a lot of the affirmative action and the racial quota systems and what became the modern DEI agenda and anti-racism. So there are certain things that you have to adopt as a school.

We have an $80 billion budget. About 10% of public school budgets come from the Department of Education. 10% of most local schools, their budget comes from a grant from the Department of Education. It's 10 percent of most local schools. Their budget comes from a grant from the Department of Education. But the U.S. Department of Education says you don't get that money unless you teach or adopt X, Y, or Z. A lot of those include hiring quotas, race, gender, et cetera, increasingly with respect to gender and sexual identity as well. Actually, there's some schools in the Midwest that wanted to teach archery or hunting. They said, you don't get that money if that is part of your curriculum. So they start to play a centralized God

over what does or doesn't end up in the curriculum. And here you have the managerial class. It's the managerial class at its finest. Because those people that work there are not elected, right? They're not elected. Are you kidding me? So this is perfect example of what you're talking about. The managerial class comes in, they dictate policy.

And that policy is not being dictated by the people who should be represented at all. They're electing officials that might go against what the Department of Education wants for these schools, and the Department of Education is still leveraging their power and resources on these schools. And they'll look at those congressmen and say, yes, sir, yes, sir, and then just continue to do exactly what they were going to do, regardless of what those congresspeople told them to do. And so what I say is that $80 billion, instead, just give that back directly to the states and to the people. This is-

Put it in the pockets of parents, right, who then get to decide where they send their kids to school. And while we're doing school choice, you might as well go on steroids here. We're in New York City right now having this conversation. In New York City, the worst schools are the ones that spend the most money. It's actually true across the country too. So bad public school in the city spends about $40,000 per student per year. Good ones in this city, charter schools and otherwise, will be closer to $15,000 per student per year. So imagine if you have that money coming back from the Department of Education to some family in Queens or Brooklyn or Bronx or Manhattan, for that matter, it doesn't matter. And they're able to now be empowered to choose where they send their kid to school.

90% of the time, if they're switching their kid from the bad school to the good one, they're sending them to a school that actually spends less money per student. So while we're at it, I'm just saying, let's do this. Let the parent take half, let the kid take half the difference with them. So if it's $40,000 at a crappy public school and 15,000 here, let's just say it's 20,000 for even numbers. The kid gets to take $10,000, put it in the investment account. If you start in kindergarten and that's compounding, that kid graduates with a quarter million dollar graduation gift. College and then some. Or not college and start a business or become an electrician or go to one year school and there's

a part of the department of education in recent years is there some good that the department education arguably does there's some that is in vocational training fine move that to the department of labor where it belongs anyway quick question so that's how we would organize the bad school spend more how does that happen yeah so it's actually the teachers unions bureaucracy a separate managerial class. Within the managerial class? It's one horizontal managerial class. This is a verifiable fact?

The teachers' union's... The verifiable fact is the thing... Schools with unionized teachers actually have demonstrably poorer results at a demonstrably higher cost. But that's not a function of the union.

That's a function of like what schools those. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot. So when you're saying demonstrable, I'm just going to give you the facts that are going on. But I believe there's a causal role here where swimming in that level of money breeds excess. So leave the teachers unions or et cetera out of it. Yeah.

But swimming in that amount of money without accountability, that money's not tied to the performance they deliver or anything else. It's just what's coming on from on high via the state, in this case, the state of New York. The schools that are actually running on less money are the ones actually delivering better results on a per-student basis. Most private schools spend less money per student than the public schools. You take these elite, ultra-elite New York schools out of them because they skew the averages based on how expensive they are, but that's a distortion because people have a lot of expendable income here and they're bilking billionaires who don't care about a $60,000 versus $40,000 tuition.

But across the country, broadly speaking. Also, there's scarcity with those schools. Yeah, yeah. So that's a little bit of an anomaly here in New York City. But across the board, 90% of the time, if you're switching your kid from a bad school to a better one, you're switching to a school that spends less money per student on a student basis. Now, I'm sure there's many reasons for that. But the one tricky thing is I think that Americans are abundantly aware of these organizations, but not really clear what they do. So when we hear abolish, we go, well, don't we need that shit? Yeah. So with the Department of Education, let's say the Department of Education is abolished.

How do we have some sort of agreed upon curriculum that will educate the students to a sufficient level where they can succeed at government regulated tests and then get into the universities of their choice? So I think national standardized testing, and it doesn't have to be run by the government, across the board is an acceptable norm. But like the actual curriculum. And that's twofold. How do we make sure that we're teaching our kids? Because you can look at this in two ways. The basic minimums they need to know. And also like this is going to sound fucked up. But like there is a version of American history that you could also say is bastardized.

But I think there's an important version of American history. Like teaching the value of the Constitution, teaching Americans why they're part of this great experiment. Yeah, civic education. That's really important. You know, one of the most controversial parts of my campaign platform was, and I stand by it, is I think every high school senior who graduates from high school should have to pass the same civics test that every immigrant has to pass in order to become a voting citizen. My mom just became an – Did she?

She passed the test. It's not that hard a test. It shouldn't be. I met a 10-year-old girl in Iowa who heard about the controversy. She brought one of the tests. To me, it was 100 questions. She got 100 out of 100. 60% of the pass.

Of course, she's 10 years old. But the question is that you wouldn't be shocked that most Americans would fail because that's what happens today if you ask most Americans. How many branches of government are there? What branch of government does the U.S. president lead? Probably some of the harder questions are, you know, who are three people who wrote the Federalist Papers or whatever? We could sort of go down the list. But- He lost me on that last one. But 60% is a good- You didn't see Hamilton.

Sixty percent. Sixty percent is a passing score. Right. And so and what they do actually for the immigrant population is there's 100 questions. They pick 10. Six out of 10 gets you through. This girl, 10 years old, she took 100. And she got 100 out of 100.

Yeah. But I don't think that that's too much to demand of ourselves as citizens. Some of this falls on the families. I think it does. I think all education begins with the family. And I do think that there's no escaping the reality that some of that accountability still has to rest at the level of the individual family.

And I think part of what happened is, you were given the example earlier of that sort of general loss of individual accountability. I think there's a lot to that story where one of the things I said in the campaign as well, it made some people upset, but the nuclear family is still the greatest form of governance known to mankind. Even go back to the days of Aristotle, you have the man, the individual man who's part of a family, the

household, the household was ultimately the form of government, really. And then you have a broader form of government that takes the existence of the household into account. It's been the part of the building block of every great country known to humanity in our history. And so I do think that the abandonment of the project of the family and giving up on that and believing we have to fill in substitutes for it actually gets it backwards versus saying we have a system that puts that accountability and empowerment this is the same thing empowerment and accountability go together at the level of the basic sorry but it's the same thing we're speaking to it's like hey you guys aren't smart enough to raise your kids hey you guys are too stupid to have a strong nuclear family we'll do it for you we'll do it for you that's what this is about you guys are that's what this

stupid and that's what the modern department is all about. Now, are you going to find, what makes it tough is, because just to see the other side, you're always going to find, right, a kid who grew up in some like truly broken family and like the father is some, I don't know, people do bad things. You can make up whatever story you want. It's probably going to be a real story that's out there somewhere, abusing kid, this or that. And to say that, well, what about that kid? And so I think we've got to really understand what makes the argument for the managerial class compelling is that there will always be that failure of individual accountability. But I would still rather – but this is what the American Revolution was again fought for, is to say that for,

and remember what I told you this even, but 20 minutes ago, we were talking about this. For better or for worse, we the people still create a government that's accountable to us. That is a fucking tough argument to sell, man. Because now you're talking about a kid

that grew up in a broken family. That kid's got- Yeah, and I'm raising the hard case on purpose because you've got to at least understand exactly what that best argument is. And so my view is after that, find the minimally invasive solution that solves for actually the worst cases that need to be dealt with rather than a permanent bureaucracy that's a superset that assumes that to be the goal. Do you have that solution in mind? So for that particular case, a lot of those are going to be legal violations under existing law anyway. Like if I use the case of somebody's abuse, that's a guy breaking the law as it exists. Should we have a foster care system that itself is debureaucratized?

Yes. Actually, most adoption and foster care systems are themselves suffering from the existence of a managerial class that has caused those to be less effective than they are today too. And so we can keep playing this forward. But as a person who's the advocate and the staunchest advocate for my debureaucratization view there is, I also want to be the first to acknowledge that there will always be, because it's not honest otherwise, there will always be some possibility of a trade-off. And you want to minimize that to the fullest extent possible. But life and structuring a society like it is about making choices. And for me, the American way is that we choose self-governance and individual responsibility as our way. And the less self-governance we have, the more lifeblood we suck out of that individual responsibility.

The point I want to make earlier, though, to your point about the political piece of this is hard to sell. In the context of the Republican primary, I would just love for you guys, and I don't know how you would characterize your viewership base, but how would you characterize your viewership base? Like what kind of people? Who knows? Large pieces.

Large pieces. Size 15. Size 14s. Sick dudes. Understanding that. So I think what i would say is maybe there's people from a lot of different buckets let's assume that so i've been i've been educated some pretty elite institutions i didn't grow up in elite america but i've lived it yeah i think most people i appreciated appreciated your humility in this conversation. I don't know a lot about a lot of things,

but I know about the things I care about, but you're asking me very curious questions about my views here. But what I will say is most people who will wear a MAGA hat on a given day, not all, but most at one of my events. MAGA? It was crazy.

I turned it into pommel or something. MAGA. It's was crazy. You might interrupt the flow, but... Tombo or something. Maga. It's Maga. Either way, it works fine. Potato, potato. That's why. Potato, potato. They've been switching it.

No. Yeah, in the news, they say Maga. They say Maga now? Why? What happened? That sounds so Yankee, bro. America first.

Maga, Maga. Oh, Maga. I'm going to stick to my version, but, you know, it's free country. Actually, it's going to be a more free country when we're through. But I'm picking like an image of somebody who like the news media will write off or whatever. And, you know, people who I've gone to school with or whatever they'll view as like the rubes across the country. The concepts I'm describing have a deep scholarly history that many people would have studied

in the Harvard Political Science Department without recognizing it. I think most people, when I'm talking about shut down the deep state, what you may mistake for, I'm being presumptive here, maybe you don't, but what you may mistake for, I'm being presumptive here, maybe you don't, but what you may mistake for being just a, I'm saying something here that sounds nuanced, but then I'm saying something there that sounds like red meat and people are cheering in the audience. It is my firm conviction

having not just spoken to audiences, but like we've been doing this 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. for a year and even heading in the period running into presence for launching my books and stuff for a couple of years, you could say. I think most people who are applauding at that know why they're applauding at that. I think they deeply understand the essence of what's going on in the country. I'd say about two-thirds, okay? But that's what I would say. And so politically, actually, the thing that was challenging for me in this was not the America First base who love the things I'm

saying, I think fundamentally just didn't trust me completely. I think largely because I'm new. There's a lot of things that are different about me, but, you know, I hadn't heard of me or knew unseen versus saying that even though the things I'm saying and my commitments were I to be president would be going further than Trump in this direction of dismantling these bureaucracies and more aligned with what people want to see. I think the trust factor was, I think, the gap that stopped it from happening this time around. And I think that that's fair if most people hadn't heard of me nine months ago. I think the wording was too radical and that created a distrust. I think there was a lot of things that created a distrust.

I think that I talk really fast. Your brown fucking head. I think there's a full package. Can I tell you my distrust as a brown guy? It felt like this guy doesn't like I have. Now I see you don't really love either political party. Why is he running right and seemingly catering to this far-right group with terms like deep state with? Tenants of ten like reverse racism is still racism and I'm not okay. I found this on the web for turn light deep state

They're listening. It's this bitch. That was Nikki Haley. Yeah, it's BlackRock. It's BlackRock. It's my flow. But I was just like, it seems like he's catering to, I don't like anybody catering to either extreme. Catering to either extreme.

I hate it. But I felt like he's catering to a group of people that just aren't going to vote for him. And as a brown dude, even hearing that story, man, that broke my fucking heart. Made me want to cry. Like, you're sitting here talking to this pastor who's like, I'd never vote for somebody who doesn't have my faith. And I'm at you like yeah i don't why is he doing that i i tell you man this is it was this is a good to heart and this is cares about cares about

cares about the country it comes from a place of care about the country even though we'll even though you know disagree about that i'm not gonna cater to anybody and actually speaking of which to bring in our first topic of vice president, that would be when I was talking about alignment with Trump. If he asked me to be vice president, we'd have to have a sit-down conversation about, are you actually, are we serious about shutting down these agencies?

Because if so, I don't think anybody's going to do that and get that done better than me. If part of the goal is it's a little bit, you know, not the direction we want to go, but we want to point some, you know, figureheads on top of different agencies to go try to reform it. That's cool. But that's, there's other ways for me to drive change in this country.

And I wish you well and be as supportive as I can, but that's not how I'm going to drive change. So when I was talking about even alignment early on, Like, you know, if we got serious and this was actually a role to get in and for better or worse, left or right, gut the bureaucracy for the long run. And that's something that we're serious about getting done. I intend to do that as president. And I think that it does take a president to really do it. But would I do that as a vice president? Yes, I would.

Even the word bureaucracy, I think people know but can't define. And I'm not trying to be one of these managerial class idiots who's like, these people are too stupid to know. I just think they hear the word like, yeah, that's an annoying thing. I think it's like when there's a lot of stuff in the middle mucking up and making it harder to get shit done. Or they're like, oh, yeah, there's some bureaucratic bullshit, which is why my renovation is going so long. But they don't exactly know. bureaucratic bullshit, which is why my renovation is going so long, but they don't exactly know. And I think it's really the main ethos of what you've been saying is there is an interruption between what the people want and the people that should be executing.

An interruption in accountability, absolutely. An interruption is there. Yep. And sometimes that's an outside force, that's an FBI, that's a CIA. Sometimes it's who would be interrupting on the, who would be interrupting, like, for example, using Nikki. Like, people are using these politicians and then forcing. It's a military industrial complex. I think it's real.

Okay, so Raytheon, so. And even the people at the Pentagon, frankly. I mean, it's one revolving door class. Are you trying to get killed? I hope not. I hope not. I hope not. I hope not. Everybody.

I hope not. You saw the video of the guy telling him, be careful, right? Yeah. We don't want to go there right now. Don't go there. It's very viral. That's the only reason I'm here. It's very viral.

I mean, it's on the internet. Let's keep talking ideas for a second. While we have you for a second. While we have you. He doesn't mean today. We've taken the steps to protect ourselves. Good. God is the ultimate protection. And you got a lot of them.

And we got to do our own job. That's funny. Just hit it one time. That's funny. You could have won Iowa if you mentioned that uh you think people didn't trust you that you would actually do it do you think not even that i would it was it wasn't even that it was just at a more guttural level of like i don't know this guy like he i i'm just processing a lot of like what i've heard is just like i didn't know who he was and now he's telling me all these things that I like to hear but he talks kind of fast and he went to these elite institutions and he's a little different in a lot of ways young and

Hindu and you gotta like it's a whole it's not one of those things but the whole package it's just like I don't, who the fuck are you? Yeah. And in fact, I think to come full circle, I mean, this is really in maybe the darker corners of the internet kind of thing. But I think there are people who then look and say, wait, is he really the plan? You know, right? And it's sad that you have a Republican Party today that's so disconnected with its own base because the Republican Party has been taken over by a managerial class of its own,

the Ronna McDaniels. If you all don't know who that person is, all the better off for you. But she's the chairwoman of the RNC right now who despises me and would rather me not have run for president because I'm calling out a lot of the corruption in the Republican Party.

She had a 3X pay raise over the same period where the Republican Party lost five elections and much of the funds were being spent on her hair salons or something like this. Really? How's the hair? I mean, I'll plead the fifth on that. But that's not my place to say.

But the point is it's not the right expenditure. Right. And so anyway, the whole game is, okay, this guy is coming in and it sounds so much like what I've been wanting. Yet we live in such a sad state of the Republican Party that if you actually get somebody who's saying what many in the primary base of the Republican electorate and beyond want, it's like, wait a minute. That sounds so right that I'm suspicious of it. But they did get that person and he didn't do it. Trump ran on Jane in the swamp and got in office. And what I said is he rolled over that log and we saw what crawled out and give him credit for exposing it. And my whole point is I'm bringing the pesticide.

But I would argue that there was a familiarity with Trump decades. There was a longstanding familiarity. Exactly. that there was a familiarity with Trump decades. There was a longstanding familiarity. Exactly, where it's like, and even like with Obama, I'm looking at like, because obviously, you know, I'm sure people have likened you to Obama, right?

Yeah. In certain ways. Yeah, charismatic, good speaker, like exciting. We're very different views. Young, big feet. So basically, you have this situation where people go, people go, I trust Obama, and I'll tell you why. I think they saw him within government first, and he was barely in there. He gave that great speech at that. What is it? The DNC 2004 he did.

Yeah, he did this amazing speech. But the safety and security was he existed within politics, which even if people are disillusioned by it, they still trust. They're like, he must have been vetted by something. You go eat something at a grocery store. Community organizer to senator, doesn't matter. Exactly. You're like, okay, well, the water's probably good here because the FDA is gonna make sure it's good. And you came completely outside with no awareness.

And I'm not complaining at all. I'm just saying like diagnosing that thing where we were. Speaking to it. And then immediately, if there's somebody who's compelling that we don't know about, very wealthy, like you have money, but we don't know you got money. I don't like that at all. Yeah.

Like where the fuck you get your money from? You know what I mean? Like there's all these questions. Like this guy's smart. He's sharp. He's got good teeth. He's got hundreds of millions of dollars. And I don't know about him.

And the funny thing is in the early stage of the race, like I did something no politician, certainly nobody who's made serious wealth before. And I released 20 years of tax returns because people are like, this is stupid. Don't do that. They're all out there. They're published. People can just look at it. 20 years worked since I was 18 years old. That was a shot.

And I've said, you know, I believe anybody who, and if I was elected president, I would divest all my holdings and everything else. So in some ways, we've aspired certainly to live by the principles that I want to see in somebody who we put in the office but it's a sad enough state of our current state of affairs yeah that that itself i think was contributed to everything else being different to a trust deficit and i'm fine with that and maybe i'll do this again in a few years i don't know well that's that's how much you know question sorry i do i do know but you'll definitely yeah you think so yeah yeah absolutely we'll see we'll see where the country

is is the honest good answer yeah trust deficit also potentially added to and this is why i'm asking you why run either party why not run independent if you want to win you can't win as independent rfk right now is polling crazy he's not gonna go anywhere near winning he might have an influence on the election and if you it depends on what your goal is right if your goal is to change the conversation in the country, boom, there's, that's actually probably a better way to do it. There's, there's, there's a, I will say, if you want to change the conversation in the country, you are better off doing it as an independent than as a Republican or Democrat. Very quick to say, can't win running as an

independent. Do you think you can beat Trump in a primary? Cause nobody touched net. I didn't, I didn't succeed in it. Yeah. So. So. So there you go. I went from, you know, most people started zero point zero percent, stayed zero point zero percent. I ended at eight percent in the race and we peaked around twelve. But yeah. You know what it was at seven point eight. You're right.

Seven point eight. Yeah. That's fine. But had we gone through New Hampshire, man, had we gone through New Hampshire, I think we would have been lower than him. I'm lower than him. I'm hating. If we knew him,

sure would have been eight. I think if you, at the very least, if you ran independent, you could have made some serious fucking waves. You could have made some serious fucking waves.

I think you could have been. We wouldn't have won the election, though. I believe that I was going to be, I ran with the conviction that I was going to be the next president. All right, guys,

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How do you literally run for president? Who do you call? When we decided, that's what I did. So I called some people. Who is we? Give me the whole. I'll put an I, my wife and I. So you and your wife have a conversation.

Because she's got conversations over a month. It's a mudslinging contest too. You're going to get run through the mud. Literally, your wife, your family, they're going to go after everybody. So you got to ask, I'm sure like for their blessing, bare minimum. That was,

that was the one, my kids are too young to be able to process it. But the one person that has a veto is my, my wife. And she was like, I'm down.

She was initially like, are we sure we can't do this later in life? Because the kids are young. Yeah, the kids are young. And also we've just kind of hit a place And also we just kind

of hit a place. We had just kind of hit a place where, you know, I mean, I was building a company for a long time. We had finally, I mean, that's its own slog. She had been through residency. She was a surgical resident. Actually, she did her training in New York, all that stuff. Everything. Finished her fellowship and she's got a great academic post. We had just had our second son. We were at the place where it's like, okay, like this feels like a destination we've been working to for a long time. And we are going to just chain it up. And now we're just going to mix it up. Yeah, exactly. And are we going to – I think her first reaction was like, you know, she's biased.

She's married to me. But, you know, I believe you'd be a good leader for this country. Okay, so you get the approval. And I understand. Can we do this later? And then we talked through it, and I think we both convinced ourselves into why it had to be now with the sense of urgency. When do you tell her that you're going to spend your own money? She doesn't care about that. She doesn't care about that.

She does not care. She's not the— How much fucking money you got? She really doesn't. really does it yeah are you bill do you get the beat on a given day depends on the day really the market's doing on a given day like a borderline 9.8 or 9.87 or something. I'm going to try to pull a knockoff. I mean, I think it's probably an advantage to be flying right under the radar. We've given away enough. Okay, so you've got the B. You've built the businesses.

There's nothing left to accomplish over there. You've got the lower case. It's not like one of the 50 billion people. Yeah, you broke boy. It's a very lower case B. So you've done everything you need to do in the business sector, okay? Is there, I'm sure you have ambition to make sure the country reaches its full potential or restore to its full potential just as an American.

You have pride, I'm sure you have that. I'm not trying to take anything away from that. Is there also a part of you that just as a man is like, I want a passion. I want something to do. Like what makes somebody who has all that money? Yeah. I mean, it's a, I put yourself through that. It's hard to, my wife could probably give you a better answer about me than I give you about me. But you know, I think that, I think that it's, there's, there's a book by Viktor Frankl. I don't know if you've read, it's called Man's Search for Meaning. I read it in high school. You familiar with it?

I went to St. Xavier in Cincinnati and it was sort of, sort of spiritual book. And anyway, I think, I think all of us have an innate hunger for purpose, right? To be, to feel like what we're doing here in the short time that we're given is meaningful. Yeah. And I think that each of us also has our own unique God-given gifts. Yeah. And I think the true source of satisfaction is matching, at least for me, and I don't, my sense is it's probably true for most people, is matching what your unique God-given gifts are to your sense of purpose. Purpose in the world, yeah. And if you can match those two things. It's an exciting thing. what your unique God-given gifts are to your sense of purpose.

Purpose in the world, yeah. And if you can match those two things. It's an exciting thing. That's much more, that is sort of true self-actualization. That is true liberation more than whether it's a bigger case B or a lower case B. And so for me, that match felt like it was in leading this country. And weird as it sounded, and most people say it's terrible, I was pretty convinced we were going to succeed at this. I mean, I hope.

Like when we're setting out. But even at like 0.0, nobody, I thought we're, it's not like we're going to go and see where this goes. I thought that this is going to end with, I think I have the right vision. I have deep conviction in it. I believe that most people in this country, if they don't see it today, can be made to see that. And ended up getting 8%, rounded up. And so there was some structural reasons for that this time around. But I think that, nonetheless, that was what motivated me. You're asking a question about the politics or the analysis of it, but what motivated me so you're asking you're asking a question about the politics

or the analysis of it but what what compelled me that's what i felt is is the unique was it exciting confluence yes did you love every single day i love most days not every single day right but i loved most days unexpected challenges of the campaign that you didn't see yeah what was the shit i mean i'm gonna sound so it's to sound so stupid when I say it because it's like it should have been obvious. They're the first time for everything. No, it is like, I mean, the influence of mega money on politics.

Break it down when you first felt it. When I understood the dynamic of dealing with mega donors, actually, it's sort of disgusting, actually. So I spent $30 million. It's a lot of our money. You spent $30 million of your dollars. Close to $30, yeah. He could do that. it's sort of disgusting actually so I spent 30 million it's a lot of our money close to 30 he could do that 29.5 or something

but something like that 30 million to lose what the fuck man you're really twisting the knife here I don't want to help with that I'm just joking. You take the delta between your net worth and our net worth.

But, you know, it's, I mean, at a certain point, like, what's the point? Can you write that off? There's got to be something. No, no write off. No write off. So you spend that 30. Yeah. Just out the door, not coming back.

And never coming back at all. Yeah. And your wife, she does not care about. How did you train her to be like this? She just doesn't. She just, she's just not into, she's not that into,

like, stuff, actually. She's also a doctor on her own. She's not into stuff. She's a surgeon. I think she's good. The thing is, the thing is,

she's, I mean, the thing is, actually, many of the procedures she does, I bought Mark dinner once and my wife was like,

why? 30? If I spent $30 million? I ordered double though. was god damn you got a okay go so anyway i think that yeah i mean we don't you know that's our sense of that for me was a sense of purpose is what i would say it's like i believe god's given me unique gifts in this category to use them i believe that there's a purpose that needs to be fulfilled and i i'm here to fulfill and that's what gave me my sense of deep satisfaction about this and she was super

supportive of it largely because she's doing the same thing like i think actually the last time we had a conversation like that was in reverse believe it or not was when so our first son karthik was born in I talked about this in, actually, you may not have gotten to that part yet. Did she go back to school after their kid? She doesn't go back to school. She's in residency. So she's finishing her residency here at Cornell.

That's in the last chapter, I forgot, in Cornell, Columbia here. She's an ear, nose, throat surgeon, but she specializes in throat surgery. Okay. So she's an airway surgeon. And he's born in February of 2020, which is an interesting time to be born in New York City. He's born on February 23rd, 2020.

And that was like literally the week after that is when that first wave. And you know, people went COVID policy crazy in this country in the next couple of years, but that first wave in New York City, I don't know if you guys were here. That was not a joke. Yeah. And the hospitals were super overfilled. So she had just had an emergency C-section at Columbia on February 23rd, 2020. And yet she's an airway surgeon. Okay. And so there's short staff at the hospital. They've got patients piling up. Every operating room is converted into an ICU. And there's literally a lot of older people included, like, going to die unless there's people who are able to help them with the skills that she's been given. And she's very good at what she does. And so in some sense of the union of our God-given skills and our sense of purpose, for her, that was March of 2020.

For her, that was March of 2020. So a little over three weeks in after emergency C-section, she could take six months off if she wants to for maternity leave or at least six weeks. She goes back. So she's in the operating room less than four weeks after giving emergency C-section. And back then, nobody knew what this was back then. Have you told people this story? Not a lot of people. This is good stuff. Come on. Not a lot of people. This is good stuff. Come on.

Not a lot of people. We're too late in to hear this. This is good stuff. Move over, Michelle Obama. This is. So I'm a biotech CEO. I'm CEO of Roivant here. We don't care.

We're doctors. She's saving lives. Don't forget about me. So I brought that up because I had been traveling the whole prior year. And so she had to have. When I talked about the sit down conversation I had with her, she had a sit down conversation with me. It's like, listen, I have to go do this. That's fucking amazing.

We have a son. He's three weeks old. We don't know what's going to happen if I'm doing open airway surgery and we don't know what this virus is. I need you. It wasn't like, it wasn't really a question. It was sort of like, I need you. You gotta do it. I need you to step wasn't like, it wasn't really a question. It was sort of like, I need you to step up and do this. Wow. So, so I took, I took our little man. We'd already, we already

knew we were going to settle back in Ohio. We had moved to Ohio the, like late the year before she was just finishing up her residency here and happened to give birth here because that's where the doctor was. So I took him and I spent, I was single father for what was going to be a few weeks, but then, you know, she ended up predictably, you know, whatever, she got sick. Nobody knew what it was. It wasn't a big deal. Her father also got sick. He was also a surgeon and was taking care of patients.

He ended up in the ICU. She's there with a couple weeks and she continues to do airway surgery, open airway surgery for people who are sick. Ended up being about two months where I'm playing solo single father of our, what was our one month to three month old son during those period of time. And I think it still hurts Apoorva today that she missed those two months. I mean, it's such an amazing example for your son. When he grows up, he'll grow to appreciate it. She's just shipping him breast milk, you know, during that period. Yeah, yeah.

Goodness. Absolutely. But for us, that was our conviction that she has a skillset. God put her here to do it. She did her job and did her duty. And so for me, when we, whatever, two and a half or three years later,

I had a similar, it felt like the same conversation in reverse. Go time, the nation is sick. And she didn't take a beat other than to say, are you sure we can't do this later? We talked through that. And she says, great, let's go. Question, how does that whole thing influence the way you view COVID policies, how we handled everything? How did that experience shape your views? There's some interesting things that happened. I mean, at that time, I remember one of the most

remarkable things was they were sending out mass emails to the people who were in the medical profession, including in her workplace and everything else saying, don't wear masks. They're scaring people and whatever, only for a few months later to then reverse and say there's a policy. So it was just people saying things with a level of certainty that they just didn't have. So what in that early stage of that pandemic do we know? We didn't know much. We knew nothing.

And so we had to make decisions in the face of uncertainty. We took the facts we had. It looked, even in that early phase, like even if Apoorva did get this, it looked like she was going to be fine. Right. And it was the right thing for her to do. We didn't know how it would affect infants.

We separated so that we were able to keep the infant away. But my takeaway was at least if we as a government were able to – I'm not saying – I don't mean to sound self-important in this way, but more as a lesson learned. In the way that maybe we handled it as a family. If you have government leaders that say and are just honest about the fact, here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. Here's the best decision we're making in the face of information that's available. And here's why. I think we would have been a lot better off rather than the fake hubris of saying that we pretend to know more than we do.

Here's how we keep you safe. Yes. Where does that hubris come from? I think it comes from a belief that that's what the people need to see. It's the same energy. It's kind of some of the same mentalities. People need to see fortitude, strength, decisiveness. And is the justification to avoid

the chaos that would ensue if people felt that anxiety of uncertainty? Yeah, I think it's a anxiety of uncertainty yeah i think it's a fear of chaos i think it's a fear of chaos they justify by going we don't want people to feel anxious we don't want them to feel like they could we want them to believe we know what's going on because then they can be calm while we figure it out yeah and then they will they will be more likely to listen to what we need them to do when we tell them there's a better and i think it's actually the opposite i think yeah i think they misread human some of human nature because

once i think actually if you just tell somebody, just tell them the truth. Here's the truth. Here's what we know, here's what we don't know. But here's just the truth and we're not hiding it from you. There's a delicate way that you can deliver that truth that isn't a lie but also doesn't go, we don't know what the fuck's going on. There is a

version of it which is, we still need time to accurately decide what is the best way to handle this. And even if it's not relevant on the piece of how you addressed it, which is we still need time to accurately decide what is the best way to handle it. And even if it's not relevant on the piece of how you address it, this is what actually drove the lies about the origination in China, worries about racism in the United States or whatever, because there was, you know, anti-Asian attacks. I think just the right answer is, we don't know for sure, but it sure looks like it came from a lab in China where we were funding research that we intended to use to prevent a pandemic, but things might have gone a little wrong, and we created one. We as in America, you think America created it?

I think we paid for it. Or we funded the research. Yeah, I think there's very little doubt about that. But they fucked up the stitching. Yeah, I mean, I think there's still unanswered questions. I think there's still unanswered questions. Yeah. I think there's still unanswered questions about what actually went down there. But that's, that's, I think we should have the, I think we deserve the answers to that question and should hold the bad actors accountable or else we can expect even worse in the future.

Again, without accountability, you're doomed to repeat the same mistakes at a larger scale in the future. That's what I believe. But anyway, I think that that would be one of my lessons is honesty. Free speech matters most, not in ordinary times, but in supposedly emergency times. If you had been allowed to debate the lockdowns, I don't think we would have locked down the schools. I don't think we would have locked down the cities for nearly as long as we did. If you've been allowed to debate the merits of the vaccine, I don't think we would have had vaccine mandates in this country. I think that autonomy is paramount in the end. I think you should be able to take something, even if the FDA hasn't approved it. I think you

shouldn't have to take something just because the FDA has approved it. But I think there's a lot of learnings. But I think that the irony, the ultimate tragedy in this managerial conceit, this hubris, is that it'd be one thing if you actually could have pulled it off, that you actually did earn the trust, even if it was based on a lie. But the irony is you're in the worst of all worlds where you actually have bred greater mistrust through the act of lying itself. So it loses not just on philosophical terms, which is what moves me, but even on the terms of its own effectiveness, actually. Right? And so I think that that's something that for me is one of the great lessons. The reason people don't trust the government is actually because the government doesn't trust the people. And like in any relationship, trust is a two-way relationship,

right? In a marriage, in a friendship, in a work relation, a boss, in a CEO-employee relationship, trust is a two-way relationship. And I think the government is in a relationship with its people. We as citizens are in a relationship with one another. And I think the government is in a relationship with its people. We as citizens are in a relationship with one another. And I think that that trust is a two-way relationship that has been today squandered in both directions. And I think that if we think about, you know, ways to heal this country, two steps would, I think, go a long way towards uniting and healing this country. If somebody got in the government, say a U.S. president, it's what I intended to do if we got in there. Apparently that's not meant to be this time. But what I hoped to do is just rip the cord off, whatever, take the bandaid off on a lot of the areas where, at least in the last 20 years, you can start with the last five years,

20 years might be too far back, last five years where there's been understandable public suspicion of what we've been told. And just to say, hey, here's what we know. And pick your favorite topic. I mean, the fringy ones, UAPs, whatever it is. Here's what we know. And here's what we don't. Full disclosure. And here's where we lied to you. Like, be acknowledged. Here's where we lied. And I say we because even if it wasn't me, if you're the president, you own what came before you. You represent that. Here's where we lied to you. Here's why we got, here's why we lied to you. I think the why is important. Here's why we lied to you. And here's how we're going to ensure that never happens again. And if somebody in the government, ideally the president steps up and does that, that's step one. Step two is somebody in the

media. It doesn't have to be everybody. Somebody. Could be CNN, could be MSNBC, could be Fox, could be, pick your favorite one. But somebody steps up and says, okay, here's where we were wrong. You pick your favorite one. Hunter Biden laptop, COVID origin, Nashville transgender shooter manifesto, you know, January 6th. Go straight down the list, whatever it is. Here's where we lied to you. Here's where we lied to you. Here's why we lied to you. Here's where we were wrong.

And here's the changes we're making to ensure that doesn't happen again. And to acknowledge that whatever the next thing is, you're probably not going to trust me because you don't have a reason to. But give us a little bit of time and I think we're going to earn your trust back. And look their audience in the eye and tell them that. a little bit of time and I think we're going to earn your trust back. And look their audience in the eye and tell them that. Those two things happen, one from the White House Rose Garden and one from any mainstream once trusted anchor looking their audience in the eye and saying it. Those two things happen. We are well on our way to healing and reuniting this country, actually. It's not that hard, actually. It's not that hard. Real quick, I feel like there's an extreme dip in American pride.

Oh, yeah. And after talking to you, it makes sense because how can you be proud of a government that does not represent you and a country run by people- Doesn't trust you. That do not trust you, right? So the relationship- And how can you trust people. Doesn't trust you. That do not trust you, right? So the relationship. How can you trust somebody who doesn't trust you? Of course not. So yeah, because one of the questions I had for you, I was like, how do we reinstill the

American pride? And there's a buddy of mine named Ben Yates, a really smart guy. He's like, you know, I'm proud of me and Barack. And I was like, why? And he's like, this is the best version of myself. That's what America has given to me. The opportunity to be the greatest version of myself. I don't think there's another country in the world where I could be the best version of myself. Now, this is a country that put his grandparents or was it great grandparents in the internment camps, right? So,

but he still is like the ideals of this country. Sometimes we get off. Yep. Sometimes we wiggle. And I think this is kind of what you've been speaking to, but the ideals are there. And I think that that's something that we can all have pride in. Yes. When we get those rights, we are the best version of ourselves. Yes, we are. No matter who the fuck we are. I saw my mom get her citizenship and it was like really touching. I got like emotional. I saw all these people. It is an emotional experience. I wish people could go see the excitement that is there when these people are realizing this dream because it is a fucking

dream. And yeah, maybe they're looking at America in the best possible way. Maybe looking at those ideals, maybe looking at that, what that constitution represents. But if this managerial class, who is not necessarily doing it with nefarious intent, and that's a really important thing. It's benevolent. It's benevolent conceit. There it is. So if they are either removed or moved out of the way, or there is a way to execute it

where they have utility but not disruption, I think that could be really- So I'm pretty sparse and libertarian in my tendency to believe that the way to do this is just through publicly accountable elected officials, actually. And we'll get a better class of public elected official once that actually becomes clear to everybody how important that is. Versus if that's unimportant, then you get the C-team that you're getting right now. But that's exactly right. This is a step to uniting this country. It's also part of even when you think about the elections meaning something. And this is the more philosophical underpinning of why I favor.

So I favor this because I think it quells any of the concern about election integrity. But there's a deeper element to this, too, of our elections meaning something. That civic ritual that your mother and you as a family sounds like went through. I favor. That's why I favor single day voting on Election Day. Make it a national holiday and do it with the way the Iowa caucus has done with paper ballots and government issued ID. There's the election integrity concerns. I favor making English the sole language that

appears on a ballot. Many people find that controversial, but we are a nation founded on ideals, but who are we if we can't even communicate those ideals with one another? Right? I think that one of the things that's dividing this country to breaking point is just we're innate as human beings. We distrust one another when people are speaking a language you don't understand. They can speak that language, but if you don't share that language in common, at least on the day that you're expressing the civic ritual. And by the way, all of this goes to the concerns about election integrity anyway. And one of the things I've said in leading the Republican Party is, if we get single day voting on election day as a national holiday with paper ballots, government ID, and English as the sole language on a ballot,

I will pledge, and we have to be, we're just done complaining about election integrity or results or whatever. And we move the country forward, but we do it with a civic ritual that gives us a sense of appreciation of that set of ideals that the country was founded on. Are we perfect?

No, we're not. Have we ever been perfect? No, we're not. And we're gonna keep fucking up. Yes, because we are men, not gods. Yes. Right? We're a nation.

It's supposed to be here in the plural. So we are men, not God. And we are still a nation founded on ideals. And so those two things, by definition, it's like a math equation. It's like an axiomatic, the axioms and the corollary. Those two things are the axioms, that we are fallen human beings, not God. And that we are still founded on a set of ideals that we aspire to, then the necessary logical consequence of that is that we will always fall short of our ideals.

But let me aspire. But aspire to. If you take away my ability to aspire by having this major class that's going to dictate exactly what I can do, now you're taking away my pride. Let me strive and fail sooner than you have me optically succeed. Yeah. That's exactly right. It is optic success.

It's the illusion. Because that's how they get the pat on the back. Yes. Look what these people did. I told you I was right. Look how good I am at managing. I appreciate you having what seems like, to me, reflecting a deep understanding of my worldview in a short amount of time. Yeah.

Because actually this, I think what you just said. I think it's important to be explained in this way. And that's why like deep state, it's just like such a buzzword that people hear and they have all these ideas wrapped around it that might not actually be what you're saying, even if they mean the same thing. I think when people think of deep state,

they're like Nancy Pelosi's in a room and she's saying, hey, FBI, go do this and let's bomb that shit. And that's the deep state. Exactly. Whereas managerial class. As opposed to just the slow motion reality is far more boring in its nature, actually.

The reality of what we perceive as evil intent is always far more boring. Always. If I look at you as just a CEO who would be elected president and remove the bureaucracy, that's a very different thing than a guy who's going to tackle the deep state.

That sounds so abstract. If I look at you as like, oh, this is a CEO who built, he's a billionaire, lowercase b, uppercase B, don't matter, off of this thing, and he's going to help the United States government run more efficiently and in our best interest. That's fucking... What was up with the mega donors you were saying?

Oh, I was just going to say that. It's sort of this dynamic where there's like a, there's like a courtship and an expectation that you supplicate yourself that I was just very bad at because I couldn't put my heart into it at any point in time. And so, you know, if there's a next time, and I didn't really do much of it this time. Can you give an example? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think like the- The name would be great. The handwritten notes, the ability, I mean, the idea that people believe that you got to fly to where they are to see them to some donor retreat. They summoned every candidate. Actually, by the

end of it, they didn't summon me, but they summoned the DeSantis and Haley and Scott campaigns to figure out how there was going to be a discussion about who was actually going to take on Trump. It's sort of... Who are they? Oh, it's just like the Koch brothers. A lot of wealthy people in the Republican, frankly, both parties. Peter Thiel.

No, he didn't play this time. He didn't play this time. But he's always involved, right? I think this time he wasn't. I like that. But he didn't play this time. It is a game. It's a game, man.

So who's one of the people that was quite fascinated with Peter Thiel? You could look at actually one of the most interesting twists right now. One of the most interesting twists is you know some of the biggest donors, because it shows you how bipartisan this is. You know the biggest donors

to Nikki Haley include the very people who have been actually funding to keep Donald Trump off the ballot from a left-wing perspective. So like Reid Hoffman is one such person. And the thing, he's a founder of LinkedIn, which by the way, censored me early in this campaign for making factual statements about climate change. And then they said it violated their policies on hate speech, misinformation, and violence when we challenged them on what was inaccurate about it after we i i you know shared

it with uh we just shared our email exchanges with the new york post which printed it microsoft then comes out and says i don't know your account was locked in error uh which is funny it makes that like a technical glitch that's just a funny side story but but this is the state the type of stuff that happens behind oh absolutely absolutely guys funding nikki haley in an attempt to do what exactly i used to have a big donald trump the primary. I think the idea would be, she's much more beatable in a general election. No, I don't think that's the idea at all, actually. I think the idea is she's actually going to be more effective than Biden at advancing certain of the agendas, actually. But does he support- And the Democratic brand is kind of

tarnished right now. And if they get Biden, he's started to lose his use as the leader of their pawn on the chessboard. But then they got this thing called the Kamala Harris problem. Yes. And so once one better way to do that is, you know, the Democratic Party's brand is a little tarnished. We get to have the illusion of nonpartisanship. Put in the fucking. Put in somebody else we can control. And just all Nikki needs is to be cut in on the rake a little bit. Right. I mean, she left she left the government. She was in debt. And she quickly, you know, 8 million bucks off of paid speeches, military contracting firms. Tell me how these politicians become millionaires.

Yeah, mostly getting paid. It may sound really nefarious under the table, but it's basically under the table. So there are under the table deals made. But many of them are just hiding in plain sight. So it's my belief that if you have done favors for Boeing to the tune of 900 million or nine figure

sums of money, hundreds of millions of dollars in the state of South Carolina showering on Boeing, that it would be inappropriate and undesirable for you to take as one of your first paid seats after you leave government to sit on Boeing's board where they have a nice warm seat waiting for you. take as one of your first paid seats after you leave government to sit on Boeing's board where they have a nice warm seat waiting for you. That's exactly what Nikkei does. Or I think it would be inappropriate if you're representing the U.S.

at the United Nations and you abruptly step off as your family is wallowing in debt for you to be able to start a military contracting firm that exploits your connections at the U.N. to advocate for policies that allow military contracting firm to make more money, which is indeed those that are hawkish or pro-war policies. That's exactly what she does. Or give paid speeches to foreign actors without disclosing what those speeches are. But it's not just Nikki Haley. I mean, I think if you're the vice president of the United States, I don't think your son should be sitting on the board of a Ukrainian company collecting $5 million when he doesn't have the first qualification to do it. Especially if you then become the president and fork over $200 billion of money to Ukraine.

If you're Elizabeth Warren, nobody has any idea. Everybody knows what her salary is. Yeah. Her and her husband's included. And, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars a year, they got expenses. And suddenly her net worth is disclosed to be $68 million. That math doesn't add up. That math does not add up.

And it's just across the board in both parties. This is how it works. And so my own view is if you're in Congress, you shouldn't be allowed to trade individual stocks. Neither should any of the bureaucrats. Or your husband. Yeah, or in your orbit. Yeah, absolutely.

I don't think you should be allowed to lobby the government for at least 10 years. I mean, maybe if you really aspire to a life career as a lobbyist, at least wait until 10 years. Explain how that happens. So basically they leave government and then they get paid by these lobbyists first. By industry to represent them, to go after their own, to get open the doors to their own prior colleagues. Right.

I don't think that if you've done special favors for a company like showering hundreds of millions of dollars on them, you should be able to join the board of that company. Yeah. Which again, would create maybe the illusion that you knew that they were going to do that for you at the time you were showering a hundred million dollars. What about the speeches? Or if you're the regulator, if you're the FDA, I don't think you should be able to join the board of a pharmaceutical company afterwards. This is rampant, happens all the time. That makes sense. But I feel like one version, because I was looking into this a little bit, I kind of want to do a piece on this. But the way that a lot of them make their money after they're in government is through these speeches. So do you think somebody really wanted to pay seven figures to hear Nikki Haley speak?

Forget Nikki Haley. Hillary Clinton. This is one of the most boring individuals. You're talking about half a million dollars. In some cases, we're talking seven figure, at least in one of these cases, seven figure. But we know the entire country doesn't like hearing her talk. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right? So maybe it's not for the talk. Right, that's the whole point.

That's right. That's the whole point. And is that their way of scratching the backs? Of course it is. It's one of the tools. It's not the only tool. It's not explicitly said, but it's basically like, okay, you do this for us. And then when you're done running, when you're out of office, we have seven speeches lined up.

Give your same stupid speech. Nobody's even going to fucking listen. And again, it's like a game theoretic thing where I don't think in most cases that's verbalized. Yeah, just you understand that's how the game is played. And the beat goes on. Okay, what about Kushner getting that $2 billion deal from MBS? What deal is that in terms of investing in a fund? And he is a track record as an investor.

I don't know what went down. But apparently the Saudi fund- I mean, people have criticized Mnuchin. People have, I don't know what he's doing. Yeah. My view is just across the board. Yeah. Across the board.

Yeah. Certainly for people in Congress or the US Senate. Yeah. Let's just start with that because these are the people who should be accountable to the people. I mean, it seems like an absolute no brainer. Now, here's the concern. If and this is an ethical dilemma, of course, because what I'm going to suggest you could argue is unethical. But if you cannot get rich in politics, will the smart people not want to enter politics? So here's what I would say is, I think the term limits are good. I think you should get in there and get out. Which is what it used to be. That's the idea. I want eight years. So if I can't work for the people for more than eight years as their president, I don't want the people reporting

into me to generally work for there for more than eight years either. Get in, get out. Three terms is the limit for Congress. Two terms is limit for the Senate. And I think that I would sooner have a discussion about increasing the salary. I don't think somebody should be forced to be poor or have or even have to live where they send their kids to school. Yeah. But I would rather than just tell us what it is in the open rather than having to do the underhand deal where they didn't pay me enough anyway, I'm just going to do it this way. And so I think that that's a reasonable thing to do. Now, term limits,

most of these people wouldn't vote for term limits. Here's my solution on that is it's shameful, but it would work. It would work in a heartbeat if I was president and we would have gotten this done

is grandfather in the people. Let me make that the final deal. Like we got it all lined up. You don't want to vote for it. We'll grandfather you in. Meaning you can, you. You're not subject to term for it. We'll grandfather you in. Meaning you can, you... You're not subject to term limits. Exactly.

But the guy who comes after you next is. And they would do it in a heartbeat. They would do it in a heartbeat. Because they don't give a fuck about sending people. And it's a wildly popular policy, right? And so, and the same thing with the insider trading bans. Most congressmen hate it when I talk about banning trading of individual stocks. Not for you, Pelosi.

But you have to say that, otherwise they would never pass it. So we got the deal lined up and we'll just say out of interest. So they get the virtue signal. Yeah, but you can't make it nakedly self-interested. You would say out of respect for the continuation of prior norms, this will begin on a date certain in the year 2030 or whatever, right? But that's kind of how it would have to go, actually. Right. And they would do it because it's a wildly popular policy.

Let's assume all these things happen and it works. Who plots the long-term course of America if people are getting elected or reelected every two, six, four years? Yeah. The long-term course. Who is making deals that are going to impact our great-grandchildren's futures? Because that's an important thing. I think that with this setup and the term limits, et cetera- Do we need a managerial class for that?

So this is the question, right? And I think it's the best argument for the thing that I'm against. That's what I'm asking. But I'm still against it. Yeah, yeah, okay. Because I think that you will then select for the kind of leader that is viewing it

as a temporary form of public service. And the job of that leader is to think on the timescales of history rather than the timescales of tomorrow, if they're doing their job right. And it puts accountability back on the people to elect such a person, back to what Thomas Jefferson said, the people elect the government that they deserve. Okay, so break this down to me really quick. You think that because the country is now truly in the hands of the government that are selected and not in this managerial class, that all of a sudden their viewpoints for the country will then transform? It should. The people should elect such people. And if not, we got what we deserved. Just like

in your personal financial life. And then we're okay with that. We have to live with that. And that's just it. For better or worse, that's what 1776 was fought for. Now, as much as I might agree with this, do you think that Americans like the cozy security of a managerial class maintaining the price of oil under four bucks a gallon? Right now, maybe. Do they want that risk in their life? price of oil under four bucks a gallon. And right now, maybe we are. Do they want that risk in their life?

So here's the thing we live in right now is you're offering the best statement of that other side's view. Right now, we live in the worst of all worlds. Yeah. Where actually people are seeing how that has ruined their own lives. The general class sucks. Yeah. And they've left. Exactly.

So the hard case presents itself when those come into conflict, which is the philosophical case. That's not where we are right now. So I think that's what now makes for the right moment to tear the thing down anyway. But I do think that in a psychological sense, we have become a nation of sheep. And I think a nation of sheep is what breeds this managerial class of wolves, actually. And so I think you get what you deserve anyway. Just as trust is a two-way relationship, we don't have trust one direction or the other. Once you do adopt this nation of sheep, you know, waking up two-legged hire mammals,

celebrating our diversity, doing what our iPhones tell us to do on a given day, you know, making our way across an American terrain. Yeah, you kind of get the government that feeds you and creates more of that in return. And it's up to us to declare independence. And so when I say things like the other night, as I said, we live in a 1776 moment. That's what I mean. It's our time to declare independence, not just from the managerial class, but even from within that inner prison within each of us too, that has confined us by the tools of the managerial class, including but not limited to the algorithmification of our modern life. That's a whole separate discussion for another day. But I think that we live in a

moment where it's time for a modern declaration of independence of the forces that have shackled us on the exterior and the interior. And it's not a coincidence that those two things happen at the same time. They actually go together. And so I think each of us, I mean, we talked about this at governmental level, but I think each of us has an inner sheep

and an inner lion. And I think right now the inner sheep is winning the day, mostly, at least across our general population level. And it's partly because we've been lulled into that by having the comfort of the fact that we're not accountable for our decisions, but somebody else is. And so might as well give in to my sheep-like tendencies rather than my lion-like tendencies. Or, yeah, I mean, it's good to phrase it like that because we all obviously want to be a lion, but I think at the end of the day,

people really truly do want security and they're willing to sacrifice some freedom for security. Now, I'm not saying that that's- And right now we're getting neither. But I think that's the most important thing. It's like- Right now, practically speaking, it's all right. You have sacrificed your security for this idea of freedom,

but you've actually had your freedom further restricted because now you're not represented in any way at all. So now you have nothing. So, nothing, we still live in fucking America. But I hear what you're saying. But the trajectory we're on is a trajectory to nothing, is what I do believe we're gonna be. So basically it's like, it was a fool's bet.

Someone told you, hey, give me a little bit of that freedom or give me a little bit of your representation. I'm gonna give you all the security and then you didn't get it. Yep. So you were lied to. Yes. Which is what makes it an easy moment to drive the kind of change that I am right now where the philosophical and the practical go hand in glove.

It's not a tradeoff anymore. If this change doesn't happen, what do you think happens to America? If we continue on the trajectory we're on, what do you say happens in 20, 30, 50 years? I think we go the direction that most nations through human history have, which is to be one other another ordinary nation in human history where the people couldn't be trusted. And we sort of elegant decay into mediocrity, much like what we saw in Western Europe over the course of the last couple of centuries since the U.S. was formed, probably in a tighter time frame. We need to build some more fountains. I think our own culture of excellence has gone to China, and I think in an autocratic form,

we'll have a newly dominant- Aren't they the epitome of the managerial class? Well, they are, but they're the best version of it. Because they're a benevolent managerial class? No, just because it's sort of the nature of the founding of the modern state. Whereas in some ways, we're a nation, we're like betraying our true essence, right?

And so we're not even like good at doing this managerial class thing, right? So I think that's actually what's going on is like we're this bastardized, mutated form of like not even the thing that we are at our core. So you can look at this from Mars and say that, oh, is the American model better? Is the Chinese model? And it's like when it winds up, I have a view. Didn't we inspire their model? Some Martian might say that one is, you know, that these are two different models. Yeah.

But at least one model is being itself. So, right, the communist Chinese government was the one that Mao Zedong set into motion. Right. But we're not the one that George Washington set into motion. Right. And so it's in some ways the worst of all worlds. It's a betrayal of what the thing actually was. Yeah, because that Martian can't actually look at what we're supposed to be.

Yeah. And make that judgment. But couldn't you say that the Chinese government or a lot of these governments, even like Russia, you can look at Turkey, aren't they a reflection of American influence in a way? Some of them are. So we basically tell the world, yo, let your people vote. And then we get in there like, all right, well, we will influence this election. We got you.

So we're not giving away potential true democracy. So they kind of need – That gets into more practical – I'm not being nuanced with my geopolitical take here, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that they, in order to maintain power or that managerial class or whatever it is, so that they can actually compete with America. They need to have one group or they believe they need to have one group in charge. It's the ultimate I do not trust the people in a lot of ways. That being said, I don't know. I like betting on us.

I like betting on us. I'm betting on us with all I have in my life. My money and my effort. That's what we're doing. I'm trying to make the ultimate bet on America. Why did it take you so fucking long to be, so maybe this is the issue. It's like guys like you who are smart, thoughtful, well-read, and actually really learned the topics instead of learning the buzzwords and like spitting them out there, which is great

when you called out Nikki Haley, she couldn't even name the three provinces. That she wants us to fight for. I mean, it was just a perfect example of, she's not even nuanced on this issue at all. But what, you have to go make a billion dollars in finance before you can go be in politics. Now, if you're in Turkey, you're working for Erdogan, you're probably making $10 billion because he's your boy, but he's got you on his hip like this guy's fucking good and we need to work. I'm not saying that we should adopt that system at all. That being said, how do we get more people that are like you to stop speculating and start working for the government? So I'll tell you when I graduated from college, right?

I was in high school when the planes hit the Twin Towers. I was in Cincinnati. A lot of my peers, when they graduated from college or didn't even graduate from college, went and served this country in the military. I grew up in Cincinnati. My dad was facing layoffs at the GE plant in Evendale when Jack Welch was the CEO of GE, slashed about two thirds of the people in the plant where he worked. He had to go to night school to keep job security. For me, when I graduated from college, Bill Gates gave the commencement address at Harvard, actually, when I was graduating in 2007. And I was really looking forward to this. He's the wealthiest man in the world at that time. I'm excited. All right, tell us how it's done. And what we get is this

like pathetic pre-canned speech about the importance of giving back. And I'm like, how the hell does one get the things to give back? Exactly. You skipped that part of the speech. And I listened carefully and you didn't tell me. But I was unapologetically going to say, all right, I'm going to do it honestly, going to do it the right way through hard work and hopefully creating valuable things. But I'm in this to get ahead as a capitalist. And I don't regret that decision, but I think that there's a side to each of us that is also hungry to be part of something bigger than ourselves. So in each of us as an American, I think is the capitalist, but is the citizen too.

Oh, of course. And so as long as I think we create the space for us to have, this gets super practical, but I'd be the advice I'd give young people is don't think of your career as a like one thing. Think of it as like a storybook with a bunch of different chapters. And I think if we are sort of think about the structure of life in that sense, as opposed to right now, there's three chapters in life. One is education. Then there's career. Then there's retirement. Actually, one of the companies I found, it's actually doing pretty well. It's in chapters in life. One is education, then there's career, then there's retirement. Actually, one of the companies I founded, it's actually doing pretty well. It's in New York City. It's not far from here. It's actually doing really well. It's called Chapter. It was about that third

chapter in life, and it ended up becoming, getting into the, you know, Medicare plan selection space. I mean, it started with a grand vision of redefining the third chapter, but ended up getting very practical, and the company's doing well. I've always had an interest in sort of redefining that three chapter model. And I think that that will, in some ways as a cultural norm, help kind of make more normal the fact that you take eight years to go serve your country, even if not on the front lines in Afghanistan, in the front lines of taking on a bureaucracy. And part of my best way to do that, to tell you, man, is through example. I mean, that's why I ran for president with the hope and expectation of being successful. And, you know, if that's what the people of this country want and that's what,

you know, God's plan is, maybe I'll do that in the future. But I think that that's probably one of the best ways to actually do it, is just by showing that it can be done. It doesn't seem like you cut off your capital, you turned off your capitalist part or closed the capitalist chapter or whatever, but at what point were you like,

because the thing you hear, and maybe you have so much money it doesn't even matter, but the thing you hear a lot is you keep, the fuck you number, the number that's enough money just keeps going up and up and up. I think it's an illusion at some point in time. How did you realize that? I think it was actually that 2020 year that did that for me. It was kind of a wake-up call. A lot of things happened.

Karthik was born. I told you the story about, you know, I mean, that experience that Apoorva and I went through for those few months was a wake-up call for me. And then look at my son in the eye every day for those few months while she was on the front lines doing what she needed to do. And then it was a few months after that, two months after that, that the whole George Floyd thing played out and the thing I talked about in Woke Inc. that, you know, in my own company, there's weird stuff going on that I hadn't thought about in cross-corporate America relating to this new ideology. That for me, the combination of those things happening in a very short period of time was kind of my call to action. And I think it probably organically

takes everybody to have their own version of that, to really authentically doing it as opposed to just doing it by rote. But I also think that if we created a cultural norm of that, and I think this is something you don't want instilled from on high. You know, you haven't gotten to the end of the book, but I play with the idea of mandatory service. When I say I agree with 95% of the things that are in there, I don't think that's actually the right answer. Because once you mandate it, it loses the quality of actually being service. But I do think that at least, at the very least, doing it through inspiration,

I think is something that is strictly positive. And that's what I hoped to achieve as the next president. I hope in some small measure, we achieve that even through the campaign itself, but I'm not done. And so the answer to that question is important to me. And I don't have the clear answer other than agreeing with you that it needs to happen in this country. And the best way is you can't,

it's easy. It's always easy to force other people to do something. It's a lot harder to man up and step up and do it yourself. And so instead of pointing at how can we get a country where other people do it, maybe you just take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself to maybe do what you demand of others. And that's what the last year was about for me. And I hope with some reflection, I haven't decided what I'm going to do next. I'm going to take some time on this one. You don't get dealt a blank slate very often. So I want to take full advantage of that.

But whatever I do next, hopefully we'll be guided by that same spirit of wanting to practice what I preach a little bit. And so whatever that is, we'll see where it goes. Vivek, I am, yeah, I'm very happy we got to sit down with you, man. I'm glad, thank you, dude. Great. Yeah, appreciate it.

It's good to, yeah, it's good to use, I think, platforms like this where you get this long time to really explain. It's a tough game. It's a tough game, that politics, this 30 second soundbite, trying to get everything out. But I'm really glad that you got to explain everything because I feel like I understand your ethos way better. Yes, absolutely. And I think I see it through those lenses. So

thank you very much, guys. Give it up for Vivek Ramaswamy, future vice president of the United States of America, maybe president one day.