Transcript of E540 Sen. JD Vance

We have some upcoming tour dates there in Colorado Springs, in Colorado, Casper, Wyoming, Billings, Montana, and Missoula, Montana, Bloomington, Indiana, Columbus, Ohio, Champagne, Illinois, over there in the Fighting Aligny area, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Lafayette, Louisiana, and Beaumont, Texas. You can get all your tickets at theovan. Com/tour. And thank you so much for the support. I want to start by saying that we have reached out to Governor Walls and Vice President Harris, and we would love to have them in studio as well. Today's guest is a senator from the state of Ohio. He's currently on the Republican ticket for vice president. He's a Yale graduate. He's a Marine. He's an author. He wrote the book Hillbilly Elegy. I've read about half of it. I'm really grateful to spend time with him today to discuss some issues and get to know him. Today's guest is Mr. Jd Vance.

I love this stuff. I love this stuff. I love this stuff. I love this stuff.

I love this But then it starts to become more interesting. Like the last woman we had on trains cats around the country. Really? With a traveling cat circus. That's pretty amazing. So that's who you're following up. That's right.

That's way more interesting than a politician, man.

Just so you know where you are, Mr. Vance.

Call me JD, please.

Just so you know where you are, JD, in the existence of things. Jd Vance, thanks for coming in today, man. Yeah, man. It's good to be here. I really I appreciate it. I just went to Lambo Field the other day. You've been there?

I don't think I ever had been to Lambo Field, but I think I'm going to Lambo Field tomorrow. Yeah. I'm pretty sure. Running for vice president, you never know where you are day to day, but I'm pretty sure we're going to the packers game tomorrow.Wow.Yeah..

It was so good. Did you have fun? It's amazing. I had a show there the night on a Saturday night, last Saturday, so we just got to go do a tour. But it's just so wild. You drive into this, it's a small city, and you're like, Wait, there's an NFL team here? It doesn't make sense, really.

Like the NFL team in some ways, right? The packers are so popular, but I'm looking forward to going. It's like a political rite of passage because I have a guy serve at the Senate, Ron Johnson, really good dude.

He's a senator? He's a senator. From Wisconsin?

From Wisconsin. And he's just talking about you do the tailgate thing at Lambo Field if you're running for office in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is a big battleground state, so I'm going to go and check it out. We're bringing our kids with us, actually, which I don't know what we're going to do with our kids because they're seven, four, and two. I don't think they're going to be that into a tailgate. Fill them with cheese, dude.

You know what I'm saying?

Maybe my wife will take them somewhere and I'll go have fun at the tailgate, but I'm looking forward to it because I'm a pretty big football fan. Lambo Field is like...

Oh, yeah. When we saw it... That's a big deal. I didn't know what to do when we saw it. I didn't know. Yeah, And there were some kids were crying and stuff, and the parents were wiping their cheeks with cheese or whatever. But it was really interesting.

Wait, they were crying because they were so excited to be at Lambo Field? Yeah, they were crying. Are you a big football guy? Yeah. Okay.

I'm a big college football guy.

Yeah, I'm more of a college football guy, but I like both. So I'm an Ohio State guy. Went to Ohio State, born and raised in Ohio. But there's The Ohio State, Michigan Rivalries, one of the big rivalries, and this happens, of course, after the election. So I'm hoping to go to the game. But you talk about a kid crying in a football field. This reminds me of a story. He was like, One of my dear friends, and he's otherwise a nice guy. But Ohio State, Michigan just turns into a total animal. So this is 2006.

Who is he? The senator you're talking about?

No, it's a totally different guy. This is a buddy I've known since I was five years old. Okay. Just a guy back home. We go to the Ohio State, Michigan We're number one, they're number two. I think we win that game 42, 39. It was a very, very tight game. I don't remember the exact score. And we're leaving, and there's this family, and this kid is like... It's a family of Michigan fans, and this kid is crying. And my buddy goes up to him and I'm like, Oh, Bill's going to be sweet to this family. Welcome to Ohio. Glad you guys come to the game. Sorry, it didn't work out. And my buddy goes, Are you sad that Michigan lost? And the little boy goes, yeah. And he says, well, maybe next time you won't root for a team that sucks. And I was like, oh, shit, Bill. We just try to be nicer to the new cars. But then you realize that's actually- Bill is not a concierge.

No, no.

But that's why Ohio State and Michigan hate each other, right? Because that kid was probably nine years old. So this is 2006. I mean, he's, I don't know, close to 25 now. He probably still remembers that asshole from Ohio State, He was crying after a game, and that's what makes the rivalry.

And now that kid is Tom braided. That's right, exactly. That's how it gets started. Oh, dude, I remember the craziest thing I ever saw was there was a Mexican father and son bawling, crying when the Rock came back one night at WEE. Standing there together, same height, bawling, crying. They both had belts on, and it was like, yeah.

I mean, Not at all. It's like the little rituals that actually make life worth it, man. Oh, yeah. But definitely... My son, he's seven now, but I took him to the Ohio State, Michigan game. I think the last... I took him to the game last year, but then we watch it, even when he's four years old. And Michigan has beat Ohio State the last three years. And so it's just like the first time I ever saw my kid cry over a sports event was last year at the Ohio State, Michigan game.

When they beat him?

When When Michigan beat Ohio State.

When you cry when your team wins, that means something is probably you have parenting issues in your home, I feel like. That's right.

That's definitely right. But it's like... I mean, Ohio State just I was to work in a couple, like a week ago, I guess. And you realize, I get so much joy out of watching sports and taking my son to the Ohio State Mission Games, one of the coolest moments of my life as a father. But then it almost always ends in a heartbreak. Because only one team actually wins the championship. I sometimes wonder, why do we put ourselves through this?

It's so true. At a certain point, the odds are you're going to face not feeling great. Yeah, absolutely. That it's going to end. Right.

I guess the one team in my lifetime, the Bulls in the '90s, Chicago Bulls in the '90s, and the Patriots when they had the braided Belichick run, most of the time, you're actually happy if you're a fan of that team. But I I'm a Bingoes fan in pro sports. They made the Super Bowl a few years ago, and it was so cool.

Yeah, I remember that against the 49ers.

Was it against the 49ers? It's funny. I don't even remember who they were playing against, but I remember they lost at the very end. It was a very close game. We almost put it off. But then it's like all the joy turned into complete sadness. I'm a grown man on the verge of tears because a fucking sports team that I root for lost a game. Wait, Wake up, man.

I wonder what it is. Maybe it's just like...

Sorry, I have to just not say the F word.

No, it's okay, dude.

Make sure people still vote for me. If it's too many F bombs, I'm going to lose too many votes, so I'll try to tone it down. Okay.

Yeah. If you say more than seven or eight, I'll tap you on the shoulder.Thank you.Yeah. I appreciate. Dude, oh, actually, my ribs, dude, I've been on almost just on bed rest the past eight days because I was at the Vanderbilt game when they beat Alabama two weeks ago. That was a big one. And some guy, I don't even know him. I got a little bit of a look at him, and he squeezed me so hard. He kept squeezing me, and I was like, Don't squeeze me anymore. And then he squeezed me even more.Was it a happy squeeze? You could hear my ribs like, Dude, they really...

Like the oxygen leaving your lungs? Yeah.

Please don't go. That's on bait. I love you. Ribs had never been away from me. They were He was leaving home for the first time.

Wait, but was he squeezing you because he was happy? He was happy. Okay, so this wasn't like a-So I was smiling, dude.

My smile hit. The more he squeezed the edges of my smile, you could hear him ding against my earlobes. He squeezed me as much as somebody could be squeezed. His wife is not doing well if that guy has a wife. That's right. I'll tell you that. Anyway, my ribs, I've been having to ice them, dude. It's been visible. Oh, really?

He actually cracked a rib.

It sucks, but it was awesome. But it's like, yeah, the pain you to be associated with it.

I've only been to the game in Ann Arbor once, and Ohio State fans, again-Oh, is it weird going up in that territory? People throwing beer bottles at us, sometimes full beer cans at us. I had some kid run up. He was like a 19-year-old kid, run up from behind me, and it had been raining a lot that day, and he had taken a chunk of mud out of the ground and shoved it in my mouth. Again, this is what these sports rivalries are built around is moments like this. That's insane. But we had, I guess, won four years in a row.

That's reforestation, isn't it?

That's right. But man, we'd won four years in a row. And this girl, she's 22 years old. She gets in my buddy's face and she said, This is my senior year. You've ruined my college career because you guys beat us four years in a row. And then she takes a swing at him and a cop tackles this 22-year-old girl down the bleachers. I'm just like, Man, again, yeah. People get injured. People get injured in sporting events.

It's crazy. Oh, yeah. I thought for a second, you were describing a wedding in Appalachian. That's what I thought for a second.

We've had some of those, too.

I'm just joking. We had Billy Strings, and he's a guy who does a lot of picking. He does a lot of guitar picking and stuff.

That's cool. Okay.

He talked a lot about his environment where he grew up. He grew up in... His area had a lot of addiction in it and stuff like that. What part of West Virginia is he from?Oh.Who's this guy? He's from Lansing, Michigan. But he grew up... He grew up in Kentucky. I'm ruining it.

But a lot of people This is the story of my life. A lot of people from Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, their families are all from West Virginia, East Kentucky to East Tennessee. And then they moved up for the factory jobs.

Oh, yeah?

There's a really cool song by Dwight Yokel called a Read and Write in 23. And in some ways, it's the story of my family because he came from two counties over. He moved to central Ohio instead of Southern Ohio. But it's like millions of people. It's a massive, massive thing. So I wouldn't be surprised. Even that guy's from Michigan, if he's got West Virginia family. I don't know that guy, though.

Yeah, Billy Strings, he's great. And he's a new guy, too. And he'll take you fishing if you want to go. But he just has a fascinating story of just growing up and what his life was like and playing music through it all and learning music and how that kept him going and gave him something to do, really. Yeah. Why was that migration? Why did people migrate from there?

Yeah, it was... I mean, at least The biggest thing is you think about it, so World War II ends, right? America is the biggest industrial power in the world. And a lot of these factories are coming online close to where they had access to waterways because you got to ship iron ore and coal and all that stuff. So a lot of stuff around the Great Lakes, that's Michigan, Ohio, a lot of coal in Pennsylvania. And so you had all these steel mills and textile factories and automobile plants, of course, in Michigan, and all this stuff is getting built. And then it's actually what's interesting about it is you had a lot of Black people come from the deep south, and then a lot of primarily white people come from Appalachia, and they migrated together to all these factories. And there are books written in Detroit about basically the hillbillies from Appalachia, the Black people from the deep south, and they're just tossed in to Detroit. And a lot of what we think of as modern Detroit culture is the fusion of those two groups of people who just dropped in in massive, massive numbers. And it's one of the stories of why Chicago is such a big blues town, because all the black folks from the deep south were moving in, and they were bringing their music with them.

That's why Chicago became such a capital for blues. It's not really like... It's because all those folks who came from the Delta. So it's basically jobs, man. My mom all talked about this. That's what I called my grandmother. She talked a lot about how if you were growing up in Eastern Kentucky in the '30s and '40s, it was basically you go work in the mines or get out. That was all there was at that time. And so my grandfather went and worked at the Steel Mill, built a pretty good life, was a union welder for 40 years.

Oh, yeah, we just had a union president on.

Oh, yeah, I listened to that one. I like that guy. Sean O'Reilly. Yeah, he's wild, dude. He is wild. I mean, it's funny, man. You can tell he's from Boston. He's got that thick Boston accent. Oh, yeah. But he's a cool dude. I actually, I've talked to Sean a couple of times. And it's like, normally Democrats are considered the pro-union. And then 30 years ago, Republicans were the anti-union. And one of the things I've been talking a lot about people like Sean is a lot of Union members are coming over to the Republican side. And I think the Republican Party, we got to do, frankly, a better job of welcoming people. But I think Trump is doing a really good job of making union voters feel at home in our coalition, which is an interesting part of what we're all about. I think Sean is the head of Teamsters, I think. Yeah. And there was some poll they did just of Teamsters members, where it's like 65 % of Teamsters in Pennsylvania are going to vote for Trump. That's a crazy turnaround from even 15 years ago.

Yeah, they couldn't endorse. Usually, there's only been two times where they haven't endorsed a candidate in the past 30 years, I think, or maybe past 50 years. But this It's going to be one of those times they said, I think, because it's too split. So do you have to ask Trump places you can go to promote or to campaign? What is that? How does that work?

Yeah. No, It's actually mostly driven at the staff level, right?

So a strategy?

Yeah, it's like strategy. So okay, there are seven big battleground states. It's the three in the Midwest are Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and then Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina. And so it's like you look at a little bit, it's driven by polling, a little bit, it's driven on just like, where do you think this guy is going to do the best? And I've spent a ton of my time. I think I did five or six events just in Pennsylvania the past week and a half. Wow. So I spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania, a lot of time in Michigan, a lot of time in Wisconsin. I'm actually trying to get Kid Rock to get with me to Michigan in a couple of days because he's a Michigan guy. Oh, he'll go. Yeah, he probably will.

Yeah, he'll go, dude. Yeah.

Yeah, he texted me last night. You can't see, but for those of you who're watching, my cousin's here. She's more like my big sister. But we're hanging out. I went to a wedding last night.Oh, nice.My little cousin got married, and Kid Rock sends me a text message. He's like, Hey, if you're in Nashville, because I guess he knew I was doing this podcast.

Some people were going over there. A buddy of mine, I was texting. He's like, Hey, we're going over to Bob's. And I was like, I got to prepare for this podcast tomorrow. Vance is coming on.

Yeah, maybe that's how he knew because he texted me and I was like, Oh, man, I want to fly to Nashville right now just so I can party with Kid Rock. That's an experience of a lifetime. So now I'm trying to get him to go to Michigan with me.

Oh, I'm sure he probably would, man. Oh, yeah, dude. If he's one of a kind, man. Yeah.

But anyway, to answer your question, it's basically you go where the campaign needs you to go. Yeah, I could say no, but I'm running for vice president, so I try to do as much as I can just to be helpful.

Do you go with Donald Trump? Do you guys go separately a lot of times? Do you guys have strategy talks in the mornings and stuff? What is it like?

Yeah, it's more informal.

Is it doubles tennis? It's more divide and conquer.

It's like you got people, and you can be in two places, so you might as well do it. But if we got a really big event, the President got shot in Bucks County. Sorry.

Which time are you talking about?

The first time. Okay. The first time. Because they really... He got shot in Pennsylvania. And so we went out to Pennsylvania together to do a big rally, and then Elon Musk was there. Oh, at Butler? At Butler PA, yes. In Butler, Pennsylvania. And then I was in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a week earlier, but that was just me. You go, some places you go together, but most of the time we're dividing and conquering.

With the attempts that they've had on Trump's life and safety, how much of a concern has that been for you? Because if I'm standing next to a guy and they're shooting at him, I'm next to him.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I try not to think about it, man.

Really?

Yeah, it's one of these things you can't control. And if you're going to do this job, you're going to go out and talk to a lot of people, and you're going to try to win, right? I mean, I fundamentally believe that we're trying to win to help the country. So you either do it or you don't do it. And if you do it, you just accept it. I don't think there's... I don't know. Maybe this is just me rationalizing it. I don't feel like there's that big of a target on my back, but who the hell knows?

Are you a little taller than him or not?

I think we're about the same height. Okay. Which is funny, man, the weird shit people say about you on on the Internet. The thing, there was a long time, maybe even still today, if you Google, how tall is JD Vance? It would say 5'7.It says 6'2 now. Somebody updated it then. Somebody updated it. Yeah. Okay, the first headline is JD Vance is tall, but Americans are getting shorter. What the hell is... The Internet's a weird-ass place.

It also says Joe Biden is 6' sleep. I don't know if that's a height.

Well, see, this is the thing, though. How tall is JD Vance? There was a conspiracy on the Internet that I was a really short guy, but no, I'm about 6'2.

I think, yeah, once you get better people help and you get you height, you get-You're pretty tall. You get a little bit of height. I'm 6 feet tall. I'm 6' tall, yeah. I'm 6' tall. If this rib gets back in place, I'm 6 foot and a half, I'll tell you that. Oh, So did you have to ask your wife about that? Say, Hey, did she have to weigh in? Because that's a little... Because I'm trying to think of other jobs where you get shot at, really. Military, domestic violence, I guess, and then politician.

I mean, normally, politicians don't get shot at that much, but apparently-It's coming back. Apparently, it's coming back, man. That's not a good thing to come back to. You know what I mean? But I also mean, I definitely grew up in Ohio, but I spent a lot of time in the Kentucky. If you go to, there's a courthouse in Brethet County, Kentucky, beautiful part of the country, in the mountains. And there's a plaque, a historical plaque that's basically like, on this site, multiple people were killed in the Brethet County blood feuds of the early the early 20th century. So I don't know, you just accept it as bad as it is. I want us to get away from it as a country, but as an individual candidate, I think you just have to accept it.

I'll tell you-But I guess if you're going in When you're in a battle, you're going in a battle.

That's right. You just got to do what you got to do. But again, I'm a person of faith. I don't talk about it that much. I don't wear it on my sleeve. I always mistrust people who wear it too much on their sleeve. But I feel like if God wants me to be vice president, I'll be vice president. If not, then I won't. You just got to work your ass off and let the chips fall where they may.

Yeah, I saw where your mom was out and you congratulated her on... She almost has 10 years of sobriety, you said? That's right. Yeah, she's-In January?

January of 2025, she will be 10 years clean and sober. And that's really funny because you know who's she standing next to you there? That's Mike Johnson, the speaker of the house. Oh, yeah. And my family is not very political. So they bring her up to this booth and two chairs over is Donald Trump. Of course, she knows who that is. But she shakes Mike Johnson's hand, and he's like, I'm lovely to meet you. And she says, lovely to meet you, too. Who are you? Do you work in politics? Mom, that's the speaker of the house. Okay.

She's like, I'll take a McDonald. That's right. You're not going to get a Diet Coke with extra ice.

What was...

Yeah, I know your mom struggled with alcoholism, right?

Addiction? Mostly, yeah. Mostly non-alcohol drugs. I never saw her drink that much. But I mean, pills, opioids, heroin.

What's it been like to watch her get sober? What's that been like?

It's amazing, man. It's amazing. I know you're... What are you? You're in recovery, right?

I'm in recovery, yeah. A lot of my family's in it, too. So I think that, yeah, I can relate a lot to your It's a great story, to be honest with you.

Look, there was a time... I always wanted to grow up and have a family. I remember when I was a teenager thinking to myself, there's no way mom's going to be around to meet. If I have kids, there's no way my mom's ever going to meet them. She's now a great grandmother to the three grandkids. But I don't know, man. If you've known anybody in this circumstance, it sounds like you know very well what it's like is there's two feelings that you have, or at least always two feelings I had when mom was going through it is on the one hand, she's so smart, she's so funny, and you're just rooting for her because you just want her to get better. Then on the other hand, you're just pissed off because you don't quite understand it. I think if you're not in recovery yourself, it's hard to fully understand. You'd be frustrated with her one moment and then just desperate for her to get better the next moment. You're constantly bouncing back and forth. But, man, it's amazing. It really is. She was at the wedding we were at last night and just having a good time and being her funny, quirky self.

She has a good sense of humor.

She's a very good sense of humor. The bride and grooved this really cool tradition where they had each table wine bottle with a number on it. And then at the table one, they'd open that bottle of wine, their first anniversary, and table two, the second anniversary, and so forth. And they had people write stuff in Sharpies on the wine bottle. I'd never seen that. I thought it was a pretty cool little thing. And my mom, I I forget what table she was in, but 10 years down the road, and she writes something on her bottle like, Hey, I love you. Hopefully, I'm still alive when you're drinking this. She's just got it again. It's a morbid, quirky sense of humor. But yeah, man, it's really amazing because, again, I just never thought she'd be alive when I was 40 years old. And she is. She's got a good relationship with her family and her grandparents or her grandkids. That's just a That's a cool thing.

Yeah, it's a blessing, man. That's awesome to see. It is a blessing. It was really cool to see that. Did you ever go to meetings with her? Did she go to... You had been before?

Yeah, I've been to a lot of NA meetings.

When you were growing up, did you ever go or no?

Yeah, I went when I was a kid. I went when I was a teenager. I've been to a lot, actually, just in the past few years, because now that she feels like she's really on the other side of it, she does a lot with her local NA. I think she's the Treasurer, the secretary of her local NA chapter. Do Did you ever go to meetings or anything? Oh, yeah.

I went to one. I was at one last time at 8:00.

Okay. There's actually a really special community around it, which I really like. It almost reminds me of church. A hundred %. Where you say these prayers and you talk about what's going on. And there's this sense of fellowship and community that I think is really awesome. And it's one of these things where you see just human nature and all of its It's good sides and its bad sides, right? Because sometimes you have people who come in and they're getting their 24-hour medallion, which is like, this is the first real period of sobriety I've had in a very long time. Then sometimes you have people celebrating 15, 20, 25 years It's just amazing to see. But I don't know if you noticed this, but something I noticed, and it's not to get too political here, but five, six, seven years ago, You start noticing this, and then it really started picking up a few years ago, where you have somebody who's been, say, six months or nine months, sober, and then they don't come to a couple of meetings, and then they're just dead. And you realize when people relapsed, when mom was in the worst of it, yeah, there was some dangerous shit out there, but it wasn't nearly as deadly as the stuff that's out there today.

Oh, yeah. And I really worry about that, right? Because think about the second chance I got my mom, and I really worry that the poison that we've got in the streets now is so dangerous. A lot of people would have that second chance, but you fall off the wagon once. Fifteen years ago, it's like, Oh, that sucks. I'm going to climb back on. Today, you fall off that wagon, it might kill you. And I really worry about that because I think a lot of good people, like mom, it didn't happen once. It's not like she got clean and sober and that was it. It's a process.

You fall off a few times. You got to get back on.

It's a process, man.

Yeah, I've had relapses over the years and had to get back on. And it's tough. And one of the tougher things to do is to get back on. But it's funny because I think if... I don't know if I'd be sober if this stuff weren't killing people, to be honest with you. I know that's sad to say, but that keeps me out of the risk of it. It just makes it too...Makes it a little scarier.Yeah, that's the thing. It makes it scarier. But it's also sad that somebody... I mean, this is ridiculous to say, probably that somebody can't You can't even do cocaine in this country anymore. And that seems like a crazy thing to say. Don't say that. But I said it. But don't say that anymore.

I'm going to steal that line. After the election, though, man. No, no.

We got to win first. It's unfortunate.

To be clear, those watching, I've never done cocaine before.

I've made many mistakes, but not that one.

Nobody's saying, yeah.

But it's unfortunate that It's unfortunate.

I don't even know where to go. I know what you mean, but it's unfortunate that... Look, everybody makes mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. I know, as a buddy of mine told me about this. Hell, this has got to have been three years ago. It's been a while. But basically what happened is his daughter was like a bridesmaid in a wedding, and they were going to this wedding, and And the wedding got canceled because a couple of the grooms had terrible overdoses the night before at the bachelor party because they took something. You can judge and say, Oh, they shouldn't have been taking something. But everybody takes something at some point in their lives. We don't want it to kill people. We don't want stupid mistakes to kill people. That's what it like, live and learn. Live and learn from stupid mistakes.

You used to be able to live and learn. Yes.

Now it becomes a death sentence. That's what's really, I think, changed about from now to when my My mom was struggling with addiction.

Why is it so bad? Do you know a lot about the fentanyl crisis?

I know a fair amount about it. I've worried about it for a long time. I've worked on bills related to it. There are two basic issues, right? It's like any business, there's a manufacturer, there's a wholesaler, and then there's the retail, right? And with Fentanyl, you can't make Fentanyl in a trailer in somebody's basement. It's not like meth. It takes a really complicated, pretty sophisticated pharmaceutical process. So we know that a lot of it, maybe even most of it, the Chinese are making, meaning Chinese companies, not necessarily the Chinese government, but they sure as hell know about it. And then they bring it in primarily through the Southern border. And the Mexican drug cartels are like the wholesalers, right? If the Chinese farm is the manufacturer, the drug cartels are bringing it wholesale style, and then it makes it in the street level. Wow. I mean, it's really crazy, man. I was talking to a DA agent about this a couple of years ago, and I think this was in 2022. He was like, Look, a few years ago, the cartels were making less than a billion dollars a year. And he's like, In 2022, 2023, we think they'll make $14 billion a year.

An explosion of drug trafficking in this country. And you hear about stories, and I don't think it happens that much, thank God. But somebody smokes a joint, it's with fentanyl, they go into a coma.

I have seven friends. I have seven friends, and not even just estranged people, but not all best friends. Sure. But I have seven friends that overdose and died from fentanyl.Yeah.That's.

Me.right. With harder stuff, it happens a lot. I think you hear about it being laced in marijuana, but not that much. But you're point about cocaine, pills, You have to be careful.

Seriously, it's a huge thing. It's an unbelievable crisis. It's like, yeah, you'd think that we... I don't know how you fight something like that. Maybe we need to have a head of the DEA or something on. Maybe he would be able to help, or she would be able to help us figure that out a little bit.

I think that'd be a very interesting conversation. But I think you got to go to it at the heart. Something Trump did towards the end of his administration, doesn't get a whole lot of headlines. Obviously, I'm biased. I think it should get headlines, is he was using economic leverage to try to convince the Chinese to crack down on fentanyl manufacturing. Because if you get it at the source, that's, I think, really the way to address it.

Oh, there's fentanyl on half the book shelves they make over there, You put a couple. You put a fucking half a set of dictionaries, and that bitch will give way.

I mean, I absolutely believe that.

It makes them bad furniture.

Oh, man. What's in the furniture here? Are we okay? Yeah, I think we're good.

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But you do that, you go after the drug cartels. The other thing people don't realize about the cartels, man, is one, we're talking about some very dark and dangerous people. This is not some guy who's selling joints on a college campus. They're doing sex trafficking. They're getting 11 10-year-old girls involved in the sex trade.They're very evil people.Diptator.

Type of-Oh, just absolutely vile.

It's like, why are we making it easier for this massive criminal organizations to richer and richer and richer. We should be trying to make them poor and help people who actually need it.

Well, it's also... It's obviously one of the biggest enemies. It's like if there were an enemy that were killing If there were somebody shooting in your country every day and killing people, at a certain point, you go over there, you send your military there or do something to say, Hey, we're not going to let you do this anymore. That's basically what's That's right.

Can you imagine if Mexico sent gunmen across the border and killed 70,000 Americans a year? Because that's about what dies from fentanyl. We would be in a major war, right? It just absolutely would be the case. So the other thing that's crazy about this is, so these cartels, and you see this graphic up, it's pretty interesting there. But the cartels are going to start to destabilize the country of Mexico. Do you know the name Pablo Escobar? Yeah, dude. The Columbian cartels in the '70s were as powerful as the Columbian government. It was a narco state. You don't want that to happen right at the American Southern border, where the drug cartels have more power than the Mexican government. That's just going to be chaotic. It's going to be basically a warlike atmosphere on our Southern border. That's bad news.

Well, it's bad news, but it'd be great to figure out a way to shut it down. It just feels like, yeah, if that many people are dying each year, if it were actual people shooting at these people, we would send people there in a heartbeat.

I think that's what we have to... I think not that we have to send people to Mexico, but I think that we actually have to have a military response at the Southern border. A hundred %. Because these are such vicious people And I think local law enforcement, they're telling us they're overwhelmed by some of these guys. And we've got to be willing to send our best people, our best fighters, to get control of the Southern border. I think that's the most important issue confronting the country, because look, how do you even measure the human cost of 70,000 people, many of them in the prime of their life.

And the ripple effect of it, too, in their families.

The orphans, the parents that are heartbroken. I mean, how many kids are... This is my story, right? That's why my grandmother raised me is because my mom struggled with addiction. Luckily, my mom got clean. You've got hundreds of thousands of children who are being raised by their grandparents or their aunts and uncles. That is an unspeakable human tragedy, man. Especially when we can do better. We could do so much better, and we're failing right now. That's one of the reasons why I'm here, one of the reasons why I'm running.

What was it like growing up with an alcoholic mother? No judgment against your mother. This is just to look at it, right? Yeah, sure. I appreciate that. What is that like? Is it hard to make a connection with your mom? What are some of the side effects of that on a child?

I definitely think there's a... You get very careful about who you allow yourself to get close to. That's one big part of it. You're never quite sure whether you can trust the particular situation that you're in. So am I still going to be living in this house three months from now? If I give somebody my address, because this is back in the '90s, people still wrote letters, postcards, things like that, at least a lot more than they do today. If I give somebody my address, are they going to send me a letter? And I'm not even going to live in this place anymore because we moved around a fair amount. But I think that the thing that I took away from it is, even as a young kid, I very neatly divided the world into three categories of people. There were the helpless people, the victims, the people who needed to be helped. There were the bad guys who were praying on the victims. And then there were the strong people who stood up for everybody else and stood up to the bad guys. That's overly simplistic. But definitely, I saw my mom growing up very much as this person who was a victim and was being prayed on by bad people.

And then the person who was looking up for us and standing up for me, especially, was my grandmother. And I think that attitude of some people are just not as strong as we wish them to be, and bad people are going to pray on them. But it's up to try to make yourself the person who can look out for people who can protect people. And that's always what I wanted to be. That's one thing I think I took from it.

Were you able to be that for your mom, did you feel like?

Not always, certainly.

When I was-It's a lot of responsibility for a kid.

When I was a teenager, man, I was definitely very selfish. I think I got pretty resentful just with the situation. It's like, Oh, other people have more money than I do. Other people have more stability than I do. Other people, they've got nice cars. We don't have that. So there's definitely a resentment that comes from it, I think. But I left high school, enlisted in the Marine Corps, spent four years in the Marine Corps. And I think that what that really did for me was just gave me a cool perspective. And I probably went in the Marine Corps. I was pretty whiny, pretty resentful I was a pro-kid, was pissed off at my mom, was pissed off at all these other people because I didn't have the things that I thought I should have. And then eventually, there's me when I was much skinnier, much better looking. Oh, yeah.

The Marines, that was the original Ozempic. That's right. That's bro, Zempic, dude.

That is good. That is good. Marine's the original Ozempic. I'm going to steal that one. But, man... I say this all the time, dude. If I went back to a boot camp for two months, boot camp is three months. If I went back to a boot camp for two months, I'd come out with a six-pack. Yeah. But anyway.

Semper fat, dude. Sorry, that was stupid. And I don't even know if you can even joke about Semper fight. No offense to any Marines. Not at all.

No, I'm sure no Marines took offense to that.

We've done a lot of shows on military bases and stuff. It's usually the army just waiting for the Marines to get there to tell them what to do.

Yeah, that's right.

I know the chain of command.

But anyway, so we had a... I think that the way that I noticed it, not to get too personal, but when I met my wife in law school, and it was like, I dated girls in the past, but for her, it was like, Oh, my God, I'm in love with this girl. I'd known her for a week, and I was like, I want to marry this girl. Yeah. And there was definitely just an element of it took a long time for me to get to a place where I was like, Oh, I can actually trust this person. I actually rely on this person, because that's not really the experience that I had growing up, is the people you trusted, the people you relied on, they would just disappear. Sometimes through no fault of their own, but sometimes they would just disappear. And so I don't know, you'd say I have attachment issues, and that's something that definitely, I think, comes from growing up in a pretty tough, pretty chaotic environment. But the other thing, the flip side of it is, and again, this is what I talk about the Marine Corps is, after four years in the Marine Corps, one of the best Marines, maybe the best Marine that I serve with, is this kid who grew up, he was a Puerto Rican guy from the Bronx, was a drug dealer.

Were you a jewelry or not? Do you wear jewelry?

I mean, not with uniform, right? Okay. Maybe he did, but by the time I met him as a Marine, he had been. But he had a much harder life than I had, and there was no bullshit. There was no complaining, no whining. He was just doing his job, and he was a good dude. And you meet a lot of people like that, and you start to realize, in some ways, not having everything handed to you is actually a blessing. And growing up in a tough circumstance and being able to understand that not everybody has always had it easy. I used to be annoyed by that, complaining about it. Now I see it as a good thing, right? Because I think I have a different perspective than a lot of people I spend my life around, where they were born to a rich family, they went to a private school. Everything was laid out for them. It's good to not have everything laid out for you because you have to work for it a little bit more.

Yeah, that was going to be my next follow-up question. That was just like, what are the positives? And also, so we don't get stuck in just in a Debbie Downer spiral. Because it's okay to talk about stuff, but sometimes it's like things can get where you're just looking at the negative things, but there's usually something positive in everything. Exactly right. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. What were some of the positives of having a childhood like that and of being... I guess it would be some self-reliance.

I think it's definitely some self-reliance.

Awareness, probably, which is probably a curse when you're young because it feels like you have to be scared of stuff. But when you get older, having awareness can be pretty helpful sometimes.

Yeah, I've got my head on a swivel, right? I'm always looking around corners. I'm always worried that things that aren't exactly what they seem, but I think that's made me a little less comfortable which is a good thing, especially in the political life that I'm not with these days. It's good to have your head on a swivel.

Hey, now everybody is an alcohol. Everybody in politics has a vice that's much worse than alcoholism, is the way that I put But we-Release the list.

Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list. That is an important thing. We can go down that rabbit hole. But anyway, I guess the other thing that I gained from it is I think that I'm just much... I see people as people. And one thing I've picked up on, I went to law school at Yale, and a lot A lot of my classmates are good people.

You're a lawyer also?

Yeah, but as soon as I went from law school, I went to the business world, so I never really practiced law. I was mostly a business guy. But a lot of my friends, they look at people as like, Where did you go to school? What do your parents do? What job do you have? What credential do you have? I've never had that. And so when people talk about politics or policy, they'll be like, Oh, well, this person has a PhD. I don't give a shit. They may be smart, but I don't care about-PhD is only three.

It doesn't even spell anything.

Yeah, exactly. But I don't care about the letters. But I meet somebody and, oh, they don't have a fancy degree or they don't have a fancy job. I still just naturally care about what they think because the way that I grew up, I just see people as people. And I think that's just a very... It's a perspective that I'm glad that I have. I think it's very much a product of how I grew up.

Yeah, I like people that have their own thing. I I don't dislike somebody if they inherited everything, but I gravitate more towards people that haven't had that experience, I think, because Yeah, I don't know. There's just something a little bit more abnormal about it. I didn't like it when things were handed to people. I guess maybe the truth is I got upset when other people had stuff that was handed to them, which probably was just normal stuff to be handed to a kid. But that made me like, I'll screw that. I'll figure this shit out. You know what I'm saying? Fuck them or whatever. You know what I'm saying?

I had that exact attitude when I was 13, 14. Yeah.

And some of that is, it's just that rebellion at that age. What would you say? Because we have a lot of audience members that have struggled with addiction. And these days, everybody's, you can't even... Who doesn't have somebody that's in their family or something that struggle with addiction. But what suggestion or just advice or thoughts would you give to a young person who has a parent who has alcoholism as to how to navigate that? Because I even get messages a lot from people that are like, Hey, my dad is struggling, or this, what do I do? I don't know what to do here. Do you have any thoughts on that? And it's not like you're a specialist.

Yeah, I'm not a Specialist. Here's what I tried to do. I mean, take this for what it's worth. But number one is, if you're a kid in your environment where there's a lot of addiction, you got to make sure that you're taken care of. Don't get yourself in such a situation where it's not just your parent that is struggling, but it becomes you that's struggling, too. Because you can't help them out. You can't help them out unless you're able to take care yourself first. That's number one. I think number two is, as hard as it is, man, and shit, I know this very well, because there were times when I had some very angry moments with my mom, don't get resentful and try to keep your heart as open as possible. You got to compartmentalize a little bit. There's the addict version, but then there's the version that read you a book when you were a kid, or there's the version that took you to your favorite movie. Try to hold on to the memories that are completely divorced from the addiction, because I think if you allow yourself to become totally resentful, then it doesn't just affect them, it starts to affect you, too.

Don't allow your parents' addiction to become something that destroys your life, too, in other words. You got to keep your soul intact here. Just practically, go to those NA meetings. I learned more about mom and her addiction going to those NA meetings, and I didn't always... It's not like it was some eureka moment. Oh, I'm not pissed off at you anymore, but you at least understand it a little bit more, and you gain some appreciation for what's going on in their life because that's a big part of it. And you also... The thing about NA meetings It's just, again, it is human nature and all of its splendor, its virtue, and its vice, man. Oh, yes.

Somebody was selling a boat. The last one I went to, some dude selling a fucking boat at one of them. Exactly. We're like, You can't do it. We're trying to get off of drugs, dude. Some guys started beating on the boat. They had made them take it outside. Yeah, because it's outside issues or whatever. But it was like, What is even happening here? Dude, I was in a meeting. Some guy had a fish hook stuck in his freaking cheek, dude. Really? Yeah. Wow. Wow, man. But he had two weeks clean.

Yeah, he'd either had a really bad night or really good night.

He'd be both. Jesus. Yeah, he was like, What's going to happen? God, it's just like, All right, dude. Catch and release, brother. Catch and release. He probably tried to come across the border. We'll do that as well. I only say that because we had a couple of Border Patrol agents on here, and so we've learned a good bit about it over the years.

No, I I had a border patrol agent who's clearly- Before you go.

That's a funny story. That statement about trying not to be resentful against your parent because once that resentment is the seed that can lead you down some of this or activate some of the same behaviors in you. I'm not preaching that, but it can activate a lot of... Resentment is just an evil seed.

No, that's right.

So many bad things can happen there because that's an important message. I never thought of that or heard it before.

Well, and what you said earlier about not getting to a negative spiral, I think is really important just psychologically. Look, man, I know you had a tough life in a lot of ways. There are certainly some moments in my life that were pretty tough, but I've never I'm not an expert. I've read some books on this stuff. This is not JD Vance's expert opinion. This is just a guy talking is, I really worry that a lot of the mental health stuff in 2024 is about focusing so much on what's bad in your life that you end up wallowing in it, and it becomes a self-reinforcing spiral. If bad shit has happened to you, there's only There's so much you can do to think about it and process it. Sometimes bad shit happens because it just happens. There's no rationalizing, there's no thinking through it. What I've always found is most helpful is getting outside and going for a walk. That made me feel way better than trying to understand, why did mom do this thing when she was 13 or when I was 13 years old and she was, I guess, 39, or 36, she would have been when I But why?

Right, still harping on it. Yeah, you just got to go for some walks then. I mean, I go for them, but still, sometimes you got some ghosts, man. But I feel you.

Yeah, and I've got ghosts, too, man.

But the longer you sit there and look for ghosts, It's still a ghost.

It's almost like you find more ghosts, and you keep on finding them. And then it's like, All right, man, I just feel like hanging out with my buddies, go for a walk and have a drink. Well, not if you're dealing with addiction, but have a drink of coffee. Just go hang out because I really worry that the constant wallowing is bad for us.

Yeah, we've gotten into this definitely into a constant, into a heavy self-help type of vibe. Every book is a self-help book. Because self-help is great, but also you're saying the other side of that is you're saying that something's wrong with me. If you're always looking for ways to improve yourself, which it can be positive to do that, I've noticed in my own life, it's also a way where you're also saying there's always something wrong with you. That's interesting. In the same way that I'm always trying to get better, it's like I've obviously created then there's something unachievable because if I'm always trying to get better, I've set this impossible course. So really, part of me is telling me, Oh, there's something wrong with you. So it becomes a little bit more about finding ways to accept myself.

You got to balance it, right? You got to balance. Obviously, there's all things we can work on, but it can become a It's a self-defeating cycle of people in it. And I try to just balance. About two years ago, at the end of my Senate campaign, I had gotten very overweight And it's like, I mean, campaign is hard on the body. You eat Chick-fil-A for breakfast, you eat Wendy's for lunch, you eat Waffle House for dinner. After a while, that starts to catch up with you. And I think this-What'd you get at Waffle House, just so we know Oh, man, I'm an All-American special sub-gritz for Home fries or hash browns. Wow.

God, I didn't even know they had home fries.

Well, they have hash browns. Sorry, they have hash browns, not home fries.

They have homeless fries over there, dude. I Oh, boy.

Dude, bro. Okay, that second photo from the top, that is the All-American special. But again, I'm not a gritz guy. So if you swap out the gritz for hash browns, they don't charge you anything. Look, dude. Dude, that is it. But they charge it. That is a meal of champions right there.

Well, your arteries are paying a high tariff, brother. I'll tell you that.

Yes, they are. But anyway, the point-Do you get raisin toast or stick with that regular toast?

I get regular toast.

Yeah, I just put a lot of jam on it. I'm not a big raisin guy. You like raisins?

I like, because I like grapes that have been through something. It's just who I am. So yeah, I guess I do like it.

I guess I like my grapes nice and clean and all-affected.

Oh, I like grapes of rad, which are basically raisins. Those are basically raisins.

But anyway, I bring that up because it's like, you can get into a spiral where it's like, Oh, I'm unhealthy, and you beat up on yourself about it. But there's a good balance where you recognize you got to go for a run every now and then and take care of yourself. And that's what I've tried to do is just balance the good and the bad. Yeah. Yeah. Life's balanced, man.

It's a good point. Things aren't going to be exactly... Yeah, things aren't going to be I always was like... I always, yeah, I created when I was a kid, I have to be perfect and to be accepted or whatever. That was a way that I created in my life, I think.

What did that look? Give me What would you try to be perfect at? School or work or just getting in shape? If you're trying to get perfect, what are you trying to get perfect at?

That's the crazy part is it was almost this blind thing. I never I even asked the question, Hey, what am I trying to be perfect at? That's interesting. It was just this like, the only way you're going to be seen, you have to do everything perfect. And then you'll get the... I don't know. It's just this missing thing inside of myself. I know what you mean. I wanted to be seen. So it was like, you have to do it perfect. Because if you do it perfect, then there would be no way. It wouldn't mathematically make sense that you wouldn't be seen then. Sure. Because that would have to be seen. Nobody would not see something that was done perfectly. But perfection is impossible. And so it was always... I'd always set myself up for this. You'd always come up short, no matter what it was. And it could be in anything, something I was presenting at school, the way I was, the way I looked while you were talking to me. It just everything had to be like this. So it was this constant, I just never let my breath go. And And then I was always falling short.

And so thenThat can be a tough way to live, man. Yeah.

Oh, it was horrible. And it fulfilled this prophecy in my head. Oh, we fell short. You're not enough, which is what you thought in the beginning anyway, right? And I'm not saying that now. Now, I have different thoughts and feelings, but those were things that now I'm able to look back and see, oh, that that's how I was operating. And just how, even when I talk about it, it sounds fucking impossibly stressful. Yeah, it does. Did you ever go to ACA meetings or anything like that?ACA meetings.Adult Children of alcohol. Did you ever go to?

No, I guess it's interesting. No, I never did.

Yeah, some people don't need it. Yeah.

I think, frankly, it probably would have helped me, would have been useful to go to. We did sometimes Sometimes there was one very long term treatment facility that mom went to, and I guess it was like that because part of that was that we would go to meetings every couple of weeks with all the kids of the people who were in. That's pretty cool. That may have been an ACA meeting. I just didn't know the name of it, but that was definitely interesting. And again, it's like you go to the meetings with some of these kids and you think your life is tough and you realize, man, there's always somebody who's got it much worse than you do. Yeah. And I think that's a good attitude to have because then you feel grateful for what you have. That's another thing, man. The feeling of gratitude is so empowering. If you're just grateful for what you have, you're like, Yeah, you and your wife have an argument, but if you're just grateful for her, for her existence, that's just such a better attitude. Your kid does something that's annoying to you, but I'm just so grateful that I have this beautiful little baby that I get to take care of.

I don't know. The feeling of gratitude, I think, is a very powerful thing.

Yeah, people say that a lot. Was being Were that parent scary for you? Were you scared?

Absolutely. Yeah? Terrifying to me. Yeah, man. I was taught by my childhood that most people really screw up parenting. It's not just like you make a mistake, you get a bad grade, or your boss is pissed off at you. You make a mistake, and you're screwing up.

You get a bad grade that stays alive.

That stays alive, right? You're like, damn, this C plus is having a tough week. This C plus is having a really tough week. Do you have kids? I don't have any children yet. You just love your kids so much, right? You really think the sun shines out their ass. That's how you see children.

Oh, you're like, care bears or whatever?

That's right. I'm like a care bear, but a living, breathing care bear that you have to take care of. I was just really terrified because this has certainly gotten a lot better. But when I was 27, 28, I had a pretty bad temper. If I were to drive me off, I'd be really pissed off. Now, I don't drive anymore because I have a secret service detail, which is probably a good thing. But I just think to myself, Oh, my God, is my kid going to do something bad? I'm going to fly off the handle. Oh, yeah, I worry about that. Right? Yeah, certainly kids can be frustrating from time to time, but for whatever reason, I think it's partially because my wife's so patient, it's in part just because I'm older and a little wiser, it's really worked out. I've screwed up, and I made mistakes as a parent. And certainly, there are days where you're like, Oh, man, I can't believe that I did this or that. But one, kids are much more resilient than people give them credit for. And two, it's a learning process, man, and it's amazing. Kids are so, so crazy.

The difference between our two-year-old and our seven-year-old, just in personality and what they say. Kids have no filter. So one of the things that we call our side of the aisle is that we'll call the news journalist, the corporate media. I call them fake news. You got to be careful about that shit because my kids getting on the plane with me, my four-year-old, to come to an event.

And somebody gets on the loudspeaker, they're saying where to sit or whatever, and he's like, fake news.

No, he sees all these people taking photos of us and videos because I get photographed and I'm constantly being photographed wherever I go. And he sees these people with cameras. He goes, Daddy, is that the fake news? And you realize you got to be a little bit more careful about what you say.

You're like, No, that's grandma now smile. Okay, that's just grandma's getting a picture of us. That's right.

But yeah, it's It's the most rewarding thing that I've ever done. It's definitely changed my perspective.

So it surprised you against your fears?

It did. I mean, one, it's not as hard, I guess, as I thought it would be.

Yeah, because that's what I just... Yeah, I guess I don't know if I think about it being hard. I don't know. It just feels like it would be so scary. That's the word that comes into my head.

It is scary, but it's like one of those things where you just deal with it, right? And it's good to confront that fear, and then you realize it's not as bad. Most Most people will tell you, the first kid gets completely babied, right? Yeah. And you've got to put hand sanitizer on before you touch the baby when they come home from the hospital. And by the third kid, you're like, I don't... You just played in the mud. Fine. Come over here. And you realize that kids are, again, they're much more resilient than people give them credit for. But you just learn a lot about yourself. And the coolest thing, think about my mom. I didn't think my mom would be alive when I was 40 years old. And now I see her play Pokémon with my little seven-year-old and build a relationship with these little kids. And it's just a really, really rewarding thing.

Does it feel like a gift that you were able to give your mom? Not you were able to give it to her, but that God gave you this serious It's one of events in your life where you get to see your mom play with this kid, and you're like, Man, that almost could have been me, but it does get to be me in a weird way.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I feel like it's a gift that God gave to us where we get to have this second chance with mom. Yeah. We wouldn't necessarily rely on mom when I was 12 or 13 because she was still caught up in addiction. But now we'll leave our kids with mom.

Being able to rely on her is just a very cool thing.

My wife, I remember when our kids were first born, or for all this, was born in 2017, and at that point, mom had been clean and sober for about a year and a half, I guess. I remember talking with my wife, and she said, I love your mom. I hope that she He is clean and sober, but we're never letting her babysit. Yeah, it's a little early. Right, a little early. But now, we trust her with all three of them.Wow.It's an amazing thing, man.

Oh, yeah. And now with three kids, you'll give them to anybody to watch. You know what I'm saying? If you got three kids, bro. That's true. Yeah, that's right. No, I think that's really cool. I could just imagine. I could imagine you getting to see your kids be with your mom and just completing the eight or whatever. You know what I'm saying? Like that symbol or whatever, infinity symbol or whatever.Yeah.

That's exactly right.I could really see that. That's exactly right.

It's pretty powerful. It's important. That's the power of things you see through recovery and stuff, too. It's like that people get to just have a different life. It's like you witness it all the time in the meetings and stuff. I do anyway.

Yeah, there's something very redemptive about it, man.

If you want to hear a miracle or something, you want to see a miracle, go to a meeting. You know what I'm saying? You get to see. It very much is like church. It's like Sometimes people are like, you don't go to church. Sometimes I'm like, Dude, I go to church four times a week, at least. Yeah. Good for you. It's like those meetings, it really is. It's like you get everything you could get out of... I mean, you witnessed God's work just through other people, much less outside of possibly in your own life.

The testimonials you hear at meetings, the courage it takes somebody who's been clean for two days to walk in often with a bunch of strangers and bid on a boat? With a bunch of strangers and bid on a boat. Or to sell a boat. Like, Hey, I've got...

No, I'm joking. I didn't mean to interrupt you there.

I got rid of my cocaine, and now I've got a boat. You want to buy it? Oh, man.

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Price is now. Power to the patients. Oh, dude, did you ever listen to Jelly Roll?

It's funny. I met Jelly Roll at the United States Senate. Because I'm on the banking committee.

He came and gave-And what was he trying to get pardoned for something?

No, I don't think so, at least. But he He was a witness at a hearing in the Senate Banking Committee.

Oh, I think I saw that on C-Span or something. That was a joke, Jelly. He knows it was.

He was really good. I talked to him briefly. I'm sure he doesn't remember. He does remember. But I thought he gave some very interesting testimony. He talked about the Fentanyl issue a little bit. I want to say he maybe talked about homelessness a little bit, but I remember him talking about Fentanyl, and Yeah, he's got an amazing life. Talk about a guy who had a much tougher life than I did. That's Jolly Roll.

Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, he's a magic man. When you talk to him, it's just like watching pure... It's just genuine.

Yeah.

That's what it is. It's like clean water. It's like what we used to have in a lot of our rivers. It's like that's what he is. Yeah. He's just genuine. I mean, it like-He's just a genuine human being. He'll tear up at anything. It's just because what's in him is just real. Yeah. He's a genuine guy. That actually leads me pretty good into this next part I want to talk about some stuff I wrote down because I wanted to be clear, and this is important. Yeah, go ahead, man. You're from a region that was firsthand devastated by the Money Lizard Sackler family, right? Which like, which Purdue Pharma and everything that happened with OxyCon, over 500,000 people died at in the hands of them. Big, big problem. Yeah, unbelievable, right? And it compromised. They used loopholes, all types of stuff to be able to keep that company going, right? And really to keep killing people. I mean, it seemed undeniable at a certain point that they were murderers.

It was legalized drug dealing as well as on an industrial scale. Made billions of billions of dollars.

They just got a slap on the... They got a financial slap on the wrist, right? Very tiny. But why Shouldn't they be kicked out of our country? It feels like if we can let in 20 million people in our country that shouldn't be here or that are not vetted properly to be here.

Don't have the legal right to be here. I agree. I would say they shouldn't be here.

Why can't we put those motherfuckers on a boat and send them back to wherever the fuck they came from?

That's a good question, man.

Look, I think that, frankly-I don't mean that angrily at you, but it's like-Oh, man, I'm pissed off about it, too. At what point do people lose the opportunity to be here? It seemed like if you killed 500,000 people, you wouldn't be able to hang out anymore.

Or maybe at least you should have a criminal investigation. Because that's the thing that's always I've always… The Sackler family clearly got rich off of an extraordinary amount of human misery and death.

Where are they from? Bring it up real quick.

I want to say they're from New York, maybe, or they're from the Northeast. I'm pretty sure.

The Sackler family originated from Galacia in Poland, and their ancestors were Jewish immigrants.Isaac Sackler.Brooklyn, New York. Then they lived in Brooklyn, New York.

That's why I thought they were from New York, Connecticut. I mean, look, the thing that I've never understood about them is that they did get fined, but the fine was such a tiny amount compared to what they... There's a couple of billion bucks or something.Compared to what they... But they made tens and tens of millions of dollars. These guys were absolutely rolling in the dough.

But why isn't there a criminal investigation into this, right?

If I sold drugs on the street and some person has an overdose and died, you can get felony prosecuted for that, or at least investigated for it. And there was never a criminal, at least as I understand it, never a criminal investigation into what was known.

Yeah, I think they had breached a plea deal of some sort. Okay. As the nation continues to grapple with that, the Sackler family had agreed to pay $6 billion to families in states as part of an agreement to wind down Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContinet. In exchange, the Sackler family would be immunized from future civil liability claims. Unreal.

Because here's my understanding about it. And by the way, I think that you always got to be worried about this stuff when you're the child of addiction is like, are there, whether it's drugs, alcohol, whatever, you're worried about making sure you do yourself don't get hooked on anything. I had a minor surgery once, a very minor surgery, and I was prescribed OxyContin, and I took it for 12 hours. Got any left?

Sorry.

No, because of my wife, because of what I'm about to tell you. Okay. And my wife, who was giving me my meds, she was like, Hey, are you ready for your next dose? And I was like, Yeah, the pain is not really that bad anymore. I don't really want to take one. But yeah, just give me one because I feel really good when I take it. And then she and I both have this moment of realization like, Oh, shit. That is where this whole thing starts. She took it to wherever for some disposal site, and we got rid of it, and that was it. But the problem with OxyContin, as I understand it, at least, is that it's supposed to be delayed release OxyCodone. But the problem is people figured out if you just crush it up, then you could just get it all at once.

All released right now.

All released right now. And then the Sackler family, as I understand it, knew about it, right? Purdue Pharma knew this was going on, and they should have been like, Oh, no, we're going to stop this because people are getting killed by overdosing all this stuff because they're taking too high of a dose, and they didn't do anything. That is my understanding, fundamentally, of what happened is they didn't want to stop it because they were getting rich from it. Oh, yeah. Man, it's really gross.

I just couldn't imagine that. Imagine people dying and you're making money, but people are dying. The ripple effect of that in this country, it's It's still haunting people.

Absolutely. That's where the heroin epidemic, which is now a fentanyl epidemic, came from. It started as a pill epidemic. It actually was... I always used to think it was okay, like me, you have a surgery and you get too many drugs, and then eventually you get hooked. What it actually was is they were overprescribing it so much that it was just everywhere. So your nephew comes over and he's 17, and he takes them to his buddies, and now they're all hooked on Oxy. That's what actually happened. There was just so much of this drug everywhere that it started the epidemic we have now.

Yeah. And the outside, it was like candy coat. It was like you just had to slurp off the outside a little bit, and then you could party.

Sorry, I didn't realize that.

Yeah, I think you just had to slurp off.

I heard about people crushing. I didn't know if you just had to slurp off the outside.

Yeah, I think you did. And one of the worst things about it was that medicine used to be a term that was like it was for help, right? It was in our brains, I think, as humans and citizens in our society and culture, medicine was help, right? That whole thing with them tripped that word where it made It made people question the value of medicine. Absolutely. It made people just question then who's prescribing the medicine. It made your doctors seem untrustworthy. It ruined so much trust.

That's absolutely right. Ruined a lot of social trust. I agree. I think they deserve a ton of blame for that. And it's interesting, though, that was maybe the first point, the Oxy epidemic, was the first point where I started to question the mainstream big pharma narrative a little bit. And I always ask myself, and I think this is something... I'm Republican, I'm conservative, but one of the things that I think the old left was pretty smart about is recognizing that when money gets involved, when the profit motive gets involved in health, that can lead to good things. It can lead to people trying to cure cancer because If they know they're going to make a lot of money if they cure cancer, I'm fine with that. Put people making money if they cure cancer, that's a great thing. But then also, sometimes it can lead to manipulation of the health system that doesn't actually benefit people's health, but does get people hooked on a lot of drugs, that that they wouldn't otherwise need. And this was something, again, the old left understood this, that, well, you got to be careful. Are we prescribing this medication because it's good for people because that's good, or are we prescribing it because some big pharmaceutical company is getting rich, if we and they're putting pressure on the government or somebody else to encourage us to prescribe this medication.

And I think there are a whole host of ways in which, frankly, the old left was right about that. And I've tried to persuade modern Conservatives that we should be more concerned about that issue. It's like Bobby Kennedy makes this point all the time, right? Good. Some pharmaceuticals are good for us, but some, actually, it's not totally clear whether we're taking them just because it makes people money. Let me give you a concrete example. There's obviously this big debate about transgender issues, and you don't have to wade into that. But what really worries me is when you've got pharmaceutical companies that are making billions of dollars on hormonal therapies for kids, and are we really being smart about whether this is good for the kids, about whether it causes long term consequences? And why is nobody saying, well, wait a second. The people who are lobbying us to give these drugs to kids are also getting rich off of it. I worry about that.

You have to follow the money motive. Yeah, man. It definitely, of course, they would want that because it's just another way. It's like, well, how do we split the atom here again to make even more money off of somebody? Well, Why not your gender? You know what I'm saying? You're not using it. You're like, What do you mean? I'm not using my gender. I'm trying to. I'm still developing it. You know what I'm saying? But I agree. It's like a couple of my buddies secretly low You date trans people, right? And I don't care if somebody's trans or Neapolitan or whatever. I don't care. You know what I'm saying? Hell, if I had a vagina, I would probably wouldn't go looking for women. So there's probably some up to it. But what I'm talking about is... Shit, I don't know what I'm talking about.

Look, man, if you're an adult-But look where the money...

But follow the money.

When we're talking about kids, follow the money.

Think about what's going on. Are the people pushing this? What is their Or do they have some other motive? You have to think about that.

Well, that's why... I mean, you mentioned Ozempic earlier, which a couple of friends have taken it. I've never taken Ozempic or any weight loss drug.

It got ick in I ended up having a black market. There was somebody selling it outside of a Vineyard Vines illegally or something over there outside of Charlottesville.

Outside of Vineyard Vines. It breaks my heart. That's the perfect encapsulation. It breaks my heart, yeah. Vineyard Vines selling a Zembit.

She was a Kappa Delta. Somebody said she was a Kappa Delta. I don't know if she was at all. Oh, my God. But it's just that stuff. It shakes me to my core, JD.

That's really dark shit, man. That's dark. That's darker than a lot of what goes on in politics. A Kappa Delta selling Ozempic black market off outside of Vineyard finds. I'm going to have nightmares.

They call it faux-zempic.

But I like worry, okay, so America has a terrible obesity problem. Look, I'm not a doctor. I'm not telling if your doctor tells you to take Ozempic, follow your doctor's It's advice, not what you're hearing from me on a podcast.

It's shoddy thick. I don't mind it a little.

What I worry about is, okay, you create a problem, and then you medicate to solve the problem instead of maybe solving the underlying problem, right? Why don't we try to understand why it is that we have a terrible obesity epidemic rather than just giving people another pill to pop?

Well, it's also we get used to that then after a while, and then it's hard to put the toothpaste back in the tooth. That's exactly right. That's one of the tough... That's more of a bigger look at that. Yeah, it's like, how much personal responsibility? It's like, that's something I struggle with sometimes. My brother and I talk about this sometimes. People have problems, and Specifically, even thinking about the OxyContin thing. They created a medicine that was so strong that even your ability, your God-given ability to be able to battle against it. You'd be in AA rooms and you'd see people that came in from opioid, and it was something different than alcoholism. That's exactly right. It wasn't alcohol. It was addiction, but it was something different. It was like, it's zombieed, these people. It's like they created this skip card in uno or something. It was like... So at that point, shit, what are we talking about? I had a good idea.

Talking about opioids, the effect it has on people's brains, pharmaceutical companies making money from We're talking about Ozempic, putting the toothpaste back in the tube.Right, right.

Personal responsibility.Yeah. Yes. Okay. You were almost there. Sorry. You helped me. You laid all the breadcrumbs, dude. That's good, man.

But yeah-I'm here to help, man. It's your next I'm the Vice President. I'll live to serve however I can.

You just helped me right there. But then they created something that was so powerful. It exceeded our ability, our natural ability to be able to fight against it, right? So at that point, Personal responsibility isn't... It's still there, but it's not exactly fair because you're allowing a company to create something that you can't naturally compete against.

It turns you into a zombie, man.

Sorry, that took so long. My brain is bad. No, man.

No, I know exactly what you mean. It's like one thing to take a pill so your pain goes away, or you take a pill because you got a lung infection, the lung infection goes or whatever. When something can so fundamentally transform your personality and your sense of ambition and reward, what are you going after? It's not a medicine, man.

Yeah. It's not a medicine.

It's very, very weird.

That's the thing. It's not a medicine. That is a drug. Yeah.

My mom, to her great credit, man, I don't know how she does this because look, there are some things where you really do need a strong pain medication, right? And I forget something happened a couple of years ago where they were like, Maybe she had some infection, but they really wanted to give her Oxy, and she was just like, no, I refuse to take it. For a couple of days, she was in agonizing pain, but she just took Advil, took Tylenol, and she was fine. She and she persevered through it. But man, you're right. The stuff, it's just... Yeah. It's like it changes not just your personality, but it changes whether you can take care of yourself and other people. For most normal people, there's this thing where it's like, oh, oh, crap. I'm not taking care of my kids. My kids need me. I got to change something. But if you're on opioids, it's like it flips a switch off where, yeah, I'm not taking care of my kids, but maybe I don't give a shit because the drugs have so affected my brain.

Yeah, I think that's it, man. And with that, staying in medical and health care thoughts, one of the major, and I wrote this down so I could say it clearly, and to just saved everybody time who's listening. One of the major bipartisan issues that's plagued in Americans is the health care system, which has become outrageously expensive. It's unaffordable. It's inaccessible by millions of Americans. We're overpaying hospitals and insurance companies that hide their prices, and they charge us whatever they want. Patients overpay, workers overpay, companies overpay, the taxpayers overpay. On this podcast, Bernie Sanders came on, and he stressed the need for a health care price transparency. Donald Trump did the same thing. He had an executive order. I think it's still in place that demands price transparency. Mark Cuban stressed the need for health care price transparency. How do we We don't have real prices and transparency in health care, knowing that it's exactly what America needs so that our health care system will be honest and affordable and accessible?

Well, you're right that we should have it. And the reason that we don't is, unfortunately, because there are a lot of powerful people who get rich off of keeping these things secret. And so they don't want transparency. They don't want sunshine.

You can say Chuck Schumer if you want. I won't say it.

Well, look, you're right, though. Obviously, Bernie and I are on the same team politically, But there are some health care things like price transparency, where actually, I think he and President Trump are both right, that there's nothing that... You go to Starbucks, you buy coffee, you know how much you're getting, you know how much it's costing you. I remember when my wife, I think it was her second baby, where you get pain medications because when you're delivering a baby, at least most people do, because it's a very painful experience. And there was some weird thing where the doctor that she chose was out of network, and she didn't realize... I mean, you're not checking whether the doctor is in network at the time, right? You just choosing a doctor. And then we come home and we have a $15,000 unexpected bill because she chose the wrong doctor an hour before she delivers a baby. And it's like, this is totally crazy. And we're in a situation where that was not a big deal for us. We were able to afford it. But think about a normal middle class family goes and has a baby and comes home to a medical bill that's like a fifth of their entire take home pay that year.

That's crazy. The number one cause of bankruptcy in America is medical debt.

Yeah, it's a huge, huge problem. And I think the price transparency is a big part of it. But you ask, why hasn't it happened? Because every time that we try to force price transparency. The service providers, the insurance companies, or the pharmaceutical companies don't actually want that transparency. Here's one of the reasons why the pharmaceutical companies don't want transparency. It's because if we realized how much more we were paying for pharmaceuticals over the Europeans, there would be a revolution in this country.

We pay a lot more than them.

We pay way more than them. And again, my attitude is, I am fine with people. If you invent a life-saving cancer drug, I'm fine with people earning a great profit for doing something amazing like that. You want to motivate people to do it in the first place, right? And a lot of people are obviously motivated by that profit motive. But if you take certain drugs that cost $100 in the United States of America, and they're way, way cheaper in Europe, or some of these really expensive multi-thousand dollar cancer-Bring that up.

Bring something up for me. Yeah.

These really expensive Next Generation cancer therapeutics, they cost way less than Europe.

Okay. It just says, In 2022, US prices across all drugs, brands, and generics were nearly 2.78 times as high as prices in the comparison countries. Us prices for brand drugs were at least 3.22 times as high as prices in the comparison countries, even after adjustments for estimated US rebates. Wow. Did it show those countries? Is there a chart with that or no?

I love the chart. It's OECD OECD countries, which is mainly Europe. Those are the advanced economies, basically. Okay, that's what that means. The rich countries, basically. Oecd.

Yeah. So first-world countries, probably?

Basically, yeah. So Canada, probably Israel's in there. A lot of the European countries, I think, are all in OCD.

Okay, United States, Germany, Canada, Japan, Switzerland.

I can't see that. Switzerland. I haven't heard of that.

Comparable county Average?

You're screwing with me. Austria.

Well, I think they misspelled it, dude. There's not that many zits in it. Australia, United Kingdom, and Sweden. Wow. So we pay per capita spending on prescription drugs in 2019, 900. And what does per capita mean? Just per person. Okay, per person, 963 dollars per person, whereas in Sweden, 270 dollars. United Kingdom, 273 dollars, dude.

Yeah, that's crazy, right?

Yeah, that's not fair, dude. That's not fair. They colonize everybody, and they're paying cheaper for dope.

That's exactly right. But again, the reason we don't really know what we're paying here is because-Because they hide it.

They hide it.

They hide it. And they don't want to let people know, because if you let people know, then they would demand to pay less. Something President Trump proposed, for example, I think is a very good idea, is he proposed reimporting drugs from Europe. Basically, if they're selling it in Sweden or wherever for $270 per person, and we're paying $963 per person, then we'll just buy it in Sweden and bring it in the United States.I love that.Right? That was a big, big thing. Of course, the pharmaceutical companies don't like that.

That's why they tried to assassinate him twice, probably.

Well, that's probably one of the things that could happen. I, of course, have no idea, no inside knowledge into what drugs above the motives of the assassins.

Oh, yeah, I'm just joking. But I wouldn't be shocked.

It's a lot of money. Man, I wouldn't be shocked if there's some really dark stuff out there. Because look, two separate people have tried to take a swing at this guy in about three months. Well, you know they didn't like Donald Trump, right? Because they wouldn't have tried to shoot him if they liked him. But I wouldn't be... The first guy who went after Trump, may I to put on the tinfoil out here, but we've not been unable to get into his phone. We know that he had all these foreign encrypted apps on his cell phone. It is crazy to me that we don't know the guy's motive. It's nuts. He almost killed the President. We don't know why he did it. We don't know anything about the guy.

Yeah, they're like, he had a lunch box or something. It's like the vaguest information they keep putting out about the guy. He's been using a library car.

We're like, who gives a shit? Exactly. His mom's name was Sharon. It's like, great.

Thank you. Yeah, they're like, oh, yeah. They're like, Oh, he was a cults fan.

You're like, Who gives a fuck? Who gives a shit? Yeah, that's exactly right.

Give us the information of the guy. How do we stop that? Do you get approached by lobbyists and stuff like that?

All the time.

Do you really? What does that look like? Who are they? What are they wearing?

So lobbyists, here's how you spot them. They're always wearing poorly-fitted suits with extremely ugly ties. So if you go out and you see a guy with a poorly fitting suit and extremely ugly tie, he's definitely a lobbyist. It's like in Happy Gilmore.

He's a lobbyist for big fabric, it sounds like.

It's like in Happy Gilmore where the guy's The coach is trying to get Happy Gilmore to play golf, and Happy is like, You know what you need to play golf is a goofy pants and a fat ass. That's what you need to be a lobbyist, is a goofy pants and that.

But why If everybody knows who they- By the way, I like golf.

To be clear, I like golf. Do you like golf?

I'm not that good at it. I'll play when I get a little bit older. I don't want to slow people down right now. Fair point.

But anyway, the way- I like Brooks Kepka. Yeah, I do, too. He's cool. Yeah, he seems like a cool dude.

I like that girl that smokes that place, dude. Puffer McGaven or whatever her name is.

I have eyes only for one woman, Theo. I've got only my wife.

Yeah, no, I like her. You don't have to know who I'm talking about.

No comment. She's like the hot- No comment from Senator Vance. She's like the hot John Daley. I know who you're talking about. Yeah, she's like the hot. The hot John Daley. So John Daley doesn't really do it for you? No. He's a good dude, though.

Oh, no. I like John, man. I definitely... Oh, if you need a ride in an ambulance, hang out with John. You'll get one in a heartbeat. I'm just joking.

I think it was Tiger also.

But also it's true. I've been at two places where John has been taken. One time, they came in looking for him. He went out there and was sitting in the shotgun.

It's awesome. And like, Where is he? In the ambulance. Oh, my God.

He tried to help you guys out. That is so funny. He's a legend. He's got to come on here soon. But how do we stop that? If all the centers in Congress people know it. Like Bernie Sanders said, there's three times as many lobbyists in DC as there are congressmen and senators. Then why don't we get that shit out?

Why doesn't it Why doesn't it stop?

If all you guys know it and everybody's supposed to be working for the people, then why doesn't it stop?

I actually think that we're getting a little bit better compared to maybe 10 years ago. People have no idea how much Washington was just completely run by lobbyists. You think about A guy on the left like Bernie Sanders, but most importantly, a guy on the right like Donald Trump, completely blows the existing system up. And this is, by the way, what I realized, because I wasn't a Trump guy back in 2016, and obviously, I'm his running mate now, so I really like him. What people don't realize is back in 2016, how much lobbyist money and influence there was that wanted to destroy Donald Trump. They hated the guy because he didn't owe anything to them. He didn't come from the existing political process. And if you look at some of the younger guys who have come in, we're much more just open about the fact that lobbyist influence is out there. You can't be in DC without running into these people, but you got to be honest with people like, I'm not going to let this person write a piece of legislation for me. I'm not going to How does this person dictate how I vote.

Yeah, I've gotten definitely some criticisms from the lobbyist groups in DC. Some of them will say, Well, we don't know if we can trust this guy. That's fine with me. I'm okay. If a lobbyist can't trust you, that's good.

Exactly. You're doing your job.

That's exactly right. That's my exact attitude towards it.

They don't know if he can trust you. Who gives a fuck?

Exactly. That's exactly right. But that is how the town works, is that if you come in and you don't always take their meetings, you don't always do what they want you to, then they'll start whispering about you, and then they can get articles written about you. They can have people say bad shit about you. This is why people call it the corporate media, is if you pick up a story in the Washington Post and you read it, and here's this anonymous source said this, this anonymous source said that, there is a 90 8% chance that the person who's attacking Donald Trump is on the take somehow. For sure. Whether it's a lobbyist or whether it's a political consultant, it's all dishonest money laundering bullshit. That's all DC ultimately is, is people who get paid to offer an opinion instead of having a real opinion. Here's the thing that I think we need to fix structurally about this. Let me give you an example. My Senate staff has probably 40 or so people, and all extremely good people. My staff tends to be a little bit younger because I'm one of the youngest. I'm the second youngest US Senator right now.

If I wanted to pay my chief of staff $30,000 more a year than what I pay them right now, I'm not allowed by law. So even though I'm a Senator and I was elected to represent the people of Ohio, I'm not allowed to control who I pay and how I pay them. It's all set by law. And here's the bigger issue is that if you think about it, a lot of these big, important laws are very complicated. They've got 800 pages, 900 pages. And I think the law should be simpler. But if you've got a 900-page law and you've got a bunch of junior staffers who don't know the town very well and they don't make a whole lot of money, then When the people who are writing the laws are not going to be your junior staffers, it's going to be the lobbyists. And we've seen this multiple times with legislation that I've drafted, where the lobbyists will actually ask to get into the draft of the law and make changes for you and say, Well, yeah, we'll justify. No, I want my staff that works for me to write the laws that I'm drafting.

That's crazy. But I actually think that we need to empower senators and congressmen to hire who they want, to make a bigger staff staff if they want. Because if you think about it, the amount of staff a congressman has, a congresswoman has, is a fraction of the federal budget. We're talking about a % of a % of a penny on the federal budget. And so we could actually give people the staff that they need to be able to actually write the laws and to make sure the lobbyists don't have much influence. And you ask, who are the lobbyists? The lobbyists are the people who are really good staffers. And then the staff is They want to buy a nicer house, and they want to start a family, and they can't... Dc is a very expensive town. A one bedroom apartment in DC will easily run you $4,000 a month right now. It's just a very expensive town. So then those people go and become lobbyists. They trade in their public service for a fat check. And I think that we got to fix something about that pipeline.

It's the same thing that happened with OxyContin, and they got the people that were working with the FDA to come and work for them. That's exactly right.

That is exactly right. So It happens at our Congress. It happens with our big bureaucratic agencies. And I think we have to fix something about that. We want the people in our government to be public-spirited and focus on doing the public good. I don't think that this system that we have works very well, where you do public service for a little bit, and then you jump and go make a million dollars a year as a lobbyist. No, I think you got to separate those functions much better than you have right now.

Yeah, because then being a public servant is just a junior college for being Becoming a lobbyist, it seems like.

That is a big worry that I have, especially with my staff. I mean, these are really smart, really good guys. And a big part of what I think about as a sender-You can't afford to keep them. A big part of what I think about is, how am I going to keep these guys as they get more senior, as they become better at their job, as they become better at figuring out what a lobbyist is trying to sell them a bill of goods. That's a skill, right? And you acquire that skill over time.

When they can just spend whatever they want when they're the Yankees.

That's exactly right. Yeah. Damn.

Shit, dude, we're all going to be addicted.

No, we're not, man. I'm telling you, we're going-That's a joke. I'm telling you, we're actually going in the right direction. This is what people don't... I recognize you probably have, of your millions of listeners, some people love Trump, and some people hate him. But the thing that Trump really changed about DC is that he was not beholden to the moneyed interests.

Oh, that's one thing that I also like about Bobby Kennedy. I've known Bobby for years. Bobby has been a friend of mine for years. I knew him before. I thought he was going to do politics. He's a good dude, man. I like Bobby. He used to hold meetings at his house on Tuesdays, and we would go to him in his backyard, dude. And one of his dogs always was slobbering stuff on me. It was a huge dog. It might not even have been a dog because he has a lot of animals.

What would it have been then?

I don't know, dude. But he's had a lot of animals over the years. Ask Bobby, what was this?

He can afford probably a big animal. What was this maybe dog that was slobbering all over Theo?

But he doesn't need anything else. He's got a great name. He's got a cool wife. He He doesn't... He's always cared about just making people healthy. Is he wrong sometimes on things? Sure, he probably is, just like anybody else. Everybody's going to be wrong. But I'd rather have somebody just raise their hand and ask questions. Absolutely. That's one thing that I just love about him, that he's not beholding to any of these people.

The thing that I hate about politics and just media culture in this country right now, man, is people are so afraid of saying anything that's unconventional. They're afraid of thinking thoughts that you're not allowed to think. The biggest ideas come from people who just follow the truth, right? And yeah, sometimes they're going to be wrong, sometimes they're not going to get everything right. But we've got to stop punishing people like Bobby Kennedy for saying, well, maybe Hey, what about that? Yeah, Hey, what about that? Exactly. That, Hey, what about that? Is something we have to preserve. And I do feel like we're destroying it. I'm going to sound like an old man, but this is what I think is really jacked up about social media is, okay, we're all social animals, right? We're all influenced by people around us.

Oh, yeah.

But look, 30 years ago, an opinion, it would take it many, many days before an opinion became the accepted conventional wisdom. You'd have to be repeated in one newspaper, then repeated in another newspaper, and people would talk about it. Now you can have something happen on social media. It's viral. And 10 minutes later, you've got the social media feeding frenzy that says, well, here's this thing that I came up with 10 minutes ago. And if you don't agree with that thing I came up with 10 minutes ago, then there's going to be a feeding frenzy, attacking you, attacking your family, finding out where you worked and trying to attack your employer for keeping you in a job. That is a really jacked up thing to take the normal human social impulse to want to be liked and to want to make friends and to put it all on the internet where it operates at the speed of light. I think there's something very deranged about that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's also it's like, are you a repeater or are you a thinker? That's the thing. It's like we get so preoccupied now and so occupied so quickly that we don't even put it through our own filter. That's exactly right. And then our filter starts to not even be a filter anymore because it's like, well, nobody's using me. I'm just a pathway now. And that's what starts to happen. That's how we all start to become desensitized to everything.

And we just become repeaters. That's exactly what social media does, is it just turns us all into repeaters. I like that Bobby Kennedy is willing to say, No, I'm actually going to think for myself on this topic. I mean, it is crazy. Why do we have such a terrible obesity problem? Why do we have all these Certain types of diabetes are on the rise among children today. It's like, Okay, we're the richest country in the history of the world, and children are getting diseases that they didn't get 30, 40 years ago. Somebody should be saying, What the hell is going on?

Or like, Yeah, somebody should, and it should be our leaders, but it feels like there's so much compromises in there.

I mean, dude, do you know... Okay, this is a paper by a Nobel. Yeah, we'll take a few more minutes. Now We're just having fun. But there's a paper by a Nobel Prize-winning economist that talks about the return to education in years of life. And do you know how much... Take a person who's got a four-year a four-year degree versus a person who never went to college. Do you know how much longer the person with a four-year degree lives in the United States of America right now? Seven years.

Seven years longer? Yeah.

So going to college, you get rewarded with seven years of additional life. If that doesn't tell you something is seriously fucked up in our country, then nothing will. That is not okay. And it's part of it, it's health. Part of it is that people are working more dangerous jobs. If they don't have a a college degree. But part of it's just that we have, I think, made it so hard to get by in our country if you don't have a four-year degree that people are not making enough money to support their families, then they get stressed out, then they turn to addiction, of course. Addiction happens to everybody, but it's much more common among those without a college degree. So this to me is like, what is this campaign about? What is Trump being President about is fixing the big problems, not like the bullshit fake problems that the media gets us to focus on, not the slogans, but why are people dying seven years earlier if they don't have a college degree? Why do we have this historic obesity epidemic in the richest country in the world? Why do we have wars breaking out like crazy all over the world?

Why do pharmaceutical companies get rich by forcing therapeutics that aren't even always good for us? These are big, big, big issues that, frankly, I think absent And Trump, we wouldn't even be talking about this stuff.

Well, I definitely think that one of the things that certainly excited me about Trump when he first was running was, wow, this guy is fucking rogue. And you know what? And this whole thing is so messed up now that that's what you... I hated politics so much. I hated it that I was like, I would hire a Muppet to go in there with a hammer. That's right, man. I would hire a Muppet with a hammer. If I could vote for a Muppet with a hammer. And that's how most people feel. It's like it doesn't even feel like it's working for us anymore. So what does it even matter? Yeah. But so that's why I think, Bobby, that's one thing that I did. That's That's one thing that I thought was pretty amazing about bringing Bobby Kennedy into you guys' campaign is that he's a sheriff for that shit. He really is. I think for just for genuinely caring about people. I agree. Because I know he cares about people. It's I have friends that don't care about me. They're still my friends, some of them, but he's a friend that is a caring guy. Yeah, that's absolutely right.

That is, I think, why I've vouched for him a lot. I had one more thing. Let me see. Oh, the polls and stuff. Okay, yeah. I've been looking at the polls recently, and especially at Calshe is a place where I look at them. Okay.

Is this is the betting market stuff?

Yeah, they're a website and an app where people can bet money on regular happenings in society, not just political stuff, anything from politics to entertainment. And I think it's a good tracker in a capitalistic society because it's people putting their money down. It's people saying, this is what I think with my money, as opposed to just other polls. What's the latest on there? What does it say?

It's like Trump is 57, Kamal is 43.

Trump, 57 %.

That's pretty good.

Yeah, that's pretty good. Does it say the total amount of money that people have bet or not yet? Oh, it says $32,917,000. That's a lot of money. Has been put out there on this. That's why I like to follow their stuff, just because it's actually people putting their money down. Sure. What do you think of polls that are out there these days? Do you guys follow these polls? Is that real stuff to you? I know that they had the Clinton-Trump poll years ago, and they had Clinton who was neck and neck or something, and then it wasn't when it came out. Do you guys follow any of that, or is that really part of the daily routine?

Not Not really, man. I can get you in the weeds a little bit, but I'll try to... I live and breathe this stuff, so I try not to make it too intense here.

I just don't trust a lot of media, so it's like- Here's basically the way.

You shouldn't trust polls, whether they're good for us or bad for us. Here's the reason you shouldn't trust polls is about 10 years ago, every 10th person you called to do a poll would answer. Now it's about one in 30 people. Okay. And another important thing is that if you're Democrat, especially if you're a higher education level Democrat, you're much more willing to answer pollster questions, where if you're like my family, if somebody called them a stranger and said, who are you going to vote for? They would say, F you, and hang up the phone. Oh, yeah. The reason the polls have gotten so bad is because Trump voters are less likely to answer pollster questions, and Kamala Harris voters are much more likely to answer pollster questions. So it's very hard to get an accurate risk sample to give you any sense of what's going on.

But do you just believe that, or are you just saying that?

I actually believe that. Yeah, no, I believe that. And I've seen it in my own race, for example. I ran for Senate. There were all these public polls that say the race was tied, or maybe We'd even lose by a few points. And the pollster that I had who just polced for my campaign, he's actually Trump's pollster, too, and a very smart guy. And he said, Look, the reason these polls are wrong is because they're not reaching voters who don't like to answer polls, and those voters are going heavily for you. So I said, Okay, well, how much are we going to win by? And he said, You're going to win by six points, and we win by seven points. So he was much more accurate than the public pollsters. Now, you ask, why is he more accurate? Because most of the public polls, they cost 10, $20,000. If you see a poll published in a newspaper article, $10,000 to $20,000, to get an accurate sample, these guys need to really... It's $60, $70,000 because they've got to call thousands and thousands of people to get a representative sample of the American people. So sitting here, honestly, I think that chart's about right.

I think that we've probably got about a 60% chance of winning. I think the polls would have to be wrong, but they'd have to be wrong in a pro-Kamala direction, where normally they're wrong in a pro-Trump direction. And we've got 18 days, 17 days, man, and we're just going to do everything that we can to win this race. But you shouldn't believe the polls, basically. And I say this right now because the polls are all saying we'd win. That's why it's 57, 43, don't buy the polls. Because here's the thing, okay?

It could keep people from voting also.

It could keep people from voting. But let's say, for example, that something happened. I don't know what happened, but let's say something happened. There's a fire. Where the people who don't want to answer Polestar questions are now Kamala voters. You can't trust this stuff. You got to assume that you just got work your ass off. That's what we're trying to do. President Trump and I are doing multiple events a day at this point. In my view, if you want to secure the border, have common sense economic policy, then Donald Trump is your man. I got to say, man, something about Kamal Harris. I know a little bit about you, and I read about some of your political views.

We've invited her and Mr. Walsh to come on.

We would love it if they would. I'm sure you would. I hope they will. But like Sean O'Brien, who's who's the head of the Teamsters. One of the things that President Trump has been known for is bringing more working class people into the Republican coalition. I think one of the reasons why he's been very successful politically. If you look at where Kamal is on the big pharma stuff, or you look at where she is on the foreign conflict stuff. She's very pro-war. Or if you look at where she is on things like, how do we put tariffs on goods that are imported from China so that you don't have the Chinese undercutting the wages of American workers. The illegal immigration thing, yeah, it's about fentanyl and drug trafficking. But when you bring in millions upon millions of illegal immigrants who are willing to work under the table, that undercuts the wages of American workers. So our own people get poorer. And I don't have anything against the illegal immigrants themselves. I have something against Kamala Harris who lets these people come in. But I want our people to be able, black, white, brown, whatever. I just want our people to be able to work for a solid wage.

That It doesn't work when you have people coming in like this.

Well, some of it is we have to have personal responsibility, too, as people running companies to not hire-I agree.those people as well. And so you have to enforce that side of it as well.

I agree. You got to do both sides of it. I think we got to make it harder to hire illegal labor. We also had to make it harder for illegal labor to come into the country in the first place. I agree both sides of it got to matter. But I think that's actually why we're doing so much better among working people is because they recognize, Open borders are not good for me. Fint all my community is not good for me. This stuff with pharma is not good for me. And so they have become more open to Donald Trump. And I think that's a very good thing because I think, look, man, between Bobby Kennedy Me, obviously the President at the top of the ticket, I think we're going to have such a cool administration that's going to try to tackle the big things and not just govern along these bullshit slogans anymore. Look, I hope that ends up I'm not saying true, because I think we'll do a lot of good if we win.

No matter what happens in this election, do you think you would run again in the future?

I don't know, man. It's so hard to even imagine running for anything after this because I'm so obsessed with winning right now. And I certainly probably would do another term in the Senate, but that hasn't come up for four more years because Senate terms are six years. It's like, would I ever run nationally again? I don't know, man. That's a big It's a big thing. It's a big thing to put your family through. Yeah, I can imagine. I've seen it for two months, three months now that I've been the VP nominee. To run for that for two years, my attitude is, let's get Donald Trump elected and let's fix as much as we can because then I think the country will be in a much better spot. I don't mean to sound like a doomer. I actually really haven't thought about what I- I don't know if you sound like a doomer. I haven't really thought about what I would do in 2028, no matter what. But Man, if Kamala Harris is the President for the next four years, we have four more years of open borders, four more years of not putting tariffs on Chinese imports, four more years of the crazy foreign policy that's pro-war all over the world, I really do worry that the country is in a very, very bad spot.

I don't think too much about future politics. I just want to win this race.

How many times do politicians say stuff that's just on the trail, and then when it comes time to actually get in office and do stuff, it It seems like that person disappears.

Me, hopefully not at all. Some politicians definitely say one thing and then don't govern that way in the privacy of their actual office. I mean, some of it's negotiation, right? Some of it is, okay, so let's say you have a tax plan where you want 10 things to happen, but then to get the Democrats to vote for it, you have to take out two of those 10 things. That's just the give and take of governance. But I don't think that's what you're talking about. What you do see sometimes is people who say something on the campaign trail, even though they affirmatively do not believe that thing at all. That's just- That's not you? It's dishonesty. It's certainly not me. It's certainly not Donald Trump. They say what you will about Donald Trump, but he just says what he thinks. I think that's actually one of the reasons why people like him.

A lot of people are going to vote for him, I think also because it's just the funny. He's the funniest dude they've ever had in there.

He is incredibly funny.

The shit he says is absolutely wild.

He's got a great sense Can I tell you one story? Yeah. And then you have to go. I know I have to go soon. I've got my person over here.

I understand. I want you to get home to your family.

No, I'm going to have dinner with my kids tonight, so it's a big deal. Skyline Chili, not in Cincinnati. We're doing Skyline Chilly in Middletown.

Even if you have other Chilling, you just say that, they don't want to tell me. That's one thing I don't care if you lie about.

No, man. Skyline is good. Have you ever had Skyline?

Skyline goes straight to the basement. I know that, brother. I'll tell you that, dude. I have had it. I respect Okay? I've had it at a wedding. I've had it at a wedding in Covington, Kentucky. I've had skyline chilling.

That's a good wedding, man. This must have been good friends. Anyway, so the first time Not that he had ever met my wife, but the first time President Trump spent any real time with my wife.

Did he flirt with her or not?

He didn't flirt with her. He was very sweet to her. Gave her a big hug, told her she was beautiful. He's a very engaging guy. Some of the media doesn't tell a lot of people about him, but he's a very engaging guy, very easy to talk to. But it's so funny. My wife is super diplomatic, and so he asks her, he's like, Usha, what do you think about your husband being involved in politics? She's, Oh, it's nice. I like supporting him. He really cares about public service, loves the people of Ohio, just gives a very diplomatic answer. And then he chuckles and says, yeah, my wife hates it, too. And it just broke the ice perfectly. And then she could actually have a conversation with him because she trying to talk to the President, then she was just talking to a guy at that point. Yeah. He's got a very good way about him, and he breaks down those barriers.

He says some funny stuff, dude. At that Al Smith dinner the other night, that shit was good. What if Tony Hinch have helped him write that or not? I don't know.

That's a good question. But I'm telling you, a lot of the stuff he just comes up with himself. I mean, the line where he was talking about white dudes for Kamala.

Oh, yeah.

That was tough. And he was like, I forget exactly what he said, but something the effect of, well, it's okay. Their wives and their wives' boyfriends are all voting for Trump.

That shit was pretty crazy, dude.

And like all good jokes, there's like an element of truth to it.

My best friend, he rubbed unlucky Chuck Schumer right there. I know. Squeeze a couple of bucks out of the fucking insurance companies right there. Do you think that our voting is fair?

Do you think that-I do. Our voting system is fair? I think we had some problems in 2020. I think the biggest problem in 2020 is that big tech interfered in the election. I really think it's-I can't believe that Facebook and Twitter, when it was owned then, they admitted to leaving certain things off and stuff and not facing any charges. They admitted to censoring American citizens weeks before an election.

That's a big deal. We'll have to talk about that another time. We got to get into that.

If you'll have me back, I'll come back after we win and have a good conversation. But you're always welcome in Cincinnati, even despite your views on skyline.

Hey, man, I respect that. We'll be cheering your mom on to get our 10-year chip. It's in January? It's in January. Awesome, man. Mr. Vance, thank you so much for spending time with us today.

Thanks, man. Good to see you. Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones. But it's going to take.