The following is a rough transcript which has not been revised by The Jim Rutt Show or Cliff Massey. Please check with us before using any quotations from this transcript. Thank you.
Jim: Today’s guest is Cliff Maloney. Cliff is the founder of The Pennsylvania Chase, an on the ground door knocking campaign to get out the vote for the Republicans. He is also the Chief Executive Officer of Mobilize The Message and has previously been the President of Young Americans for Liberty. He was the National Youth Director for Rand Paul for President, and he was a former Ron Paul staffer. And at the very beginning of his career, he was a school teacher for a year. Welcome, Cliff.
Cliff: Jim, glad to be with the Salty Man himself.
Jim: As my regular listeners know, I relatively seldom talk about the Team Red Team Blue shit show known as American politics. But I’ve decided because it’s my podcast and why not to do four episodes on the November elections in the period leading up to the elections. We’ll get them all out well before the elections. And I’ve selected and booked four people who have made specific decisions about who they’re voting for and are willing to talk about it, but are not classic committed members of either party. And Cliff is the first. So this is kind of an experiment. And then if I don’t do as good a job as usual, it’s because of the new format. So there [inaudible 00:01:12] off and gives me plenty of room to do whatever the hell I want. And of course, as usual, I’ll be chiming in with my own views. So before we get into the deep logic of why you do what you do, tell me what you do? What is this ballot chasing PA Chase thing?
Cliff: Yeah, so Pennsylvania, there’s very interesting election malls, Jim. And when COVID happened, they created 50 days, that’s 5-0, 50 days of mail-in ballots. And so what’s happened is you’ve seen the Democrats adapt and really understand how to utilize those new rules. And Republicans, quite frankly, they’ve just avoided it, they’ve ignored it and they’ve just said, “No, we’re going to stick to our old ways.” And there’s reasons for that and I’m happy to dive in on him.
But to give you a little background, I’ve always been of the mindset when I worked for Ron Paul, when I worked for Rand Paul, the libertarian ideology is what kind of got me in, and I always tell people that usually I’m in battles against some of the Rhino Republicans. I spend all of my time working for or against Republicans because usually those are the battles. And it’s been interesting because this is the first time I’ve really played Team Red, and I’m sure we’ll get into my rationale or my reasoning for that, but our whole program is simple. We’re trying to fix the problem that in 2020, Trump lost Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes, but 141,000 Republicans requested a mail-in ballot and they never sent it back. And you fix that, you win PA and all these pollsters now, and these data scientists. When I agreed to do this a year ago, we didn’t know how important Pennsylvania would be. And now it’s like, yep, this whole election comes down to Pennsylvania.
Jim: So in most scenarios, it’ll be the deciding state?
Cliff: Yeah, it’s pretty wild, but high pressure, high reward. And yeah, I’m not here to say I’m a party guy. I do think that Donald Trump is the absolute choice this cycle, whether it’s weaponization of government, whether it’s the enemy of the Uniparty, I think this is a turning point for the country to give a middle finger back to the establishment. And so I’m all in.
Jim: We’ll get into the details on that in a bit. First [inaudible 00:03:25] comment, my mother was a Republican activist back in the 70s, 80s and early into the 90s, and in fact, she was President of the Republican Women’s Club, first of Fairfax County and then the whole state of Virginia and then helped get the Republican Women’s Clubs rejuvenated in Arizona when she moved there in their retirement. And in those days, the Republicans were the champs of the get out the vote.
The Republican women would have these amazing boiler rooms, and my mother actually would deliver big stacks of fan fold computer paper with all the information on it, and they’d call people and they’d track who needed a ride and they’d make some estimates of who ought to be called a week before the election just to remind them to turn out, the ones that are the kind of marginal voters. Sometimes they vote and sometimes they don’t. But then the Republicans kind of fell away from all that and became much less grassrootsy and thought they could do it with TV ads and social media. So it’s kind of good and resonates with my youth because I got involved in some of that stuff too, to hear that Republicans have returned to the grassroots in terms of turn out the vote so that’s a good thing.
Cliff: And actually, I get in trouble for saying this, but I figure I’m in a safe space here. The problem has been the consultant class, both with Democrats and Republicans. There’s so much millions of dollars that is spent on these TV ads and these big digital buys, and they’re all making money on that. The Democrats though, they don’t put up with it. The Democrats say to their consultants, “Listen, yeah, we’ve got to compete and we need to have a message, but we also need to make sure that we’re using every tactic, every tool that we have at our disposal needs to be used.” And I’ve got to say 2024 I think is the first time Republicans are finally moving in that direction. The problem, Jim, the rules were changed in 2020. So you’ve had four elections since the rule change, if you count the off years, and so it’s taken four elections. This fifth election under the new rules is the first time you’re actually seeing them adapt to what the Democrats are doing.
Jim: Interesting. Now, I heard in one of the videos that you gave that you had 120 employees. Is that about right?
Cliff: Yeah. So our whole structure is we have 120 people in 10 Airbnbs across PA. Some are smaller, some are bigger, we’re in target areas and we’re trying to knock 500,000 doors. Now the objective of this, yes, all the statewide candidates that are on the ballot for the Republicans, they all love us because guess what? Every one of those 500,000 doors we knock on, they’re on the ballot. Killing two birds with one stone is some of the other targets. We’ve got Scott Perry for Congress, three of our Airbnbs are in his district because he’s a top target for them to take out. And if you’re like me, you like hardcore freedom warriors, he was the chairman, former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. He’s not your go-alone to get along politician. And the third thing we look at is the statehouse. Right now republicans are down a seat in the statehouse. We take that back. It’s a check and balance on Josh Shapiro. So when we’re looking at where we knock the 500,000 doors, when we’re looking at where our 10 Airbnbs are, that’s how we’re mapping out our target areas.
Jim: Why paid people rather than volunteers?
Cliff: Yeah, I love that question. So when I first got involved, Rand Paul’s 2016 presidential campaign was the first time I really realized the left understood paid ground games. Volunteer efforts, 100% they’re needed. Yes, they’re impactful. Yes, they’re useful, but you can’t compete when you’re just using volunteers and your opponents are using both volunteers and paid ground games. Our folks are out six days a week. They get up in the morning, they have a 9:30 morning meeting in their Airbnb, 10:00, they knock their first door and they wrap at 7:00. It’s exactly what the Democrats do. Because I tell people, if you have 10 Republican women, let’s say that are out on a Saturday afternoon, they’re doing the Lord’s work. But at the end of the day, if they’re knocking 30 doors each, that’s 300 doors. These paid teams are knocking thousands of doors a week reaching these voters.
And so that’s why I always tell people, “If you really dive in” and look, there’s a great book out there called Get Out the Vote. It’s done by the left. So any of your listeners on the left, this is coming from them. They did all this research and they pulled together what is the most impactful way to communicate or to reach a voter? And they compare door knocking to phone calls, to texting, to mail to TV and radio. And what they looked at is how many times do you have to use that method or have a potential voters see the method? And then they looked at the cost. And door knocking, it was kind of just off the charts. It’s not only the cheapest, but one out of every nine people you talk to at the door, you create a voter that would not have voted otherwise.
And so that’s why I’ve always been all in on the ground game. A lot of my effort has been state-level races because you have more impact in the small universes. But at the end of the day, we can’t compete in Pennsylvania unless we figure this thing out at the statewide level, which is why I’ve returned to my home state and excited to run the PHAs.
Jim: Interesting. Now, I assume, again, remembering my mother and her actions that you must have some fairly serious data science behind deciding what 500,000 doors to knock on. We do talk a lot about AI and advanced technologies on the show. Just tell me a little bit about how you get your call lists.
Cliff: So the way it works is we have data that shows, and it’s pretty wild what you’re able to get now that you have this 50 days of voting. So first we call it phase one. In Pennsylvania, if you want to vote by mail, you have to request a ballot. In some states, they send out a ballot to every single person that’s registered. Not the case in PA. It resets every year. So from January 1 until the ballots go out, which is pretty much here in the next couple of days. That’s phase one. Phase one is you target low propensity voters within your party with a request form. You’re literally going to the door with a request form and you’re saying, “You should fill this out. The ballot will come to your house. It’s much easier to vote.”
Now, what’s a low propensity voter? Well, we identify the data as anyone who has voted in zero of the last four elections, one of the last four or two of the last four. That means they’re low propensity according to our definitions.
And so what we do is we’re talking to them. So right now, my team on the ground, we’ve knocked over 180,000 doors on our way to 500,000. We’re still in phase one. We’re trying to get Republicans to request a ballot because they’re not likely to vote on election day.
Phase two, all your data switches over. Once ballots go out, you’re specifically going to Republicans that have a ballot sitting on their table, and it’s not just one knock at their door. If I go to the door and say, “Jim, I know you’re a great Republican. You’ve got a ballot sitting there and we’re 45 days from the election.” You might say, “Oh yeah, I’m going to vote. I’m going to vote. I’ll send it.” We mark that down in our data, so we track that on the smartphone. Seven days later, we can see if that person has voted yet Jim. You don’t know who they voted for, but you can see if they submitted their ballot.
Jim: That’s interesting. That’s very interesting data.
Cliff: The Democrats, by the way, I’m not a rocket scientist. I’m a math teacher who’s just trying to figure it out and look at the numbers. The Democrat strategy is what we’re using. You go back every seven days with the same person and you say, “Jim, hey, we checked with the clerk. You haven’t voted yet. We really need your vote. Can you send it in?” You do that every single week until the election to drive down the number of ballots that are still out, meaning they’ve come in.
Jim: Good classic brute force, direct response marketing.
Cliff: Right. Exactly.
Jim: Interesting. How do you make sure you are pushing Republican votes and not Democratic votes?
Cliff: Yeah, so all that’s public data as well. So in Pennsylvania, the registration of the voter is marked, we know what party they’re in, and we’ve got different data companies that we work with that do modeling. So we do target some independents if they lean conservative. We typically won’t talk to Democrats because you don’t want to turn out the opponent.
Jim: Exactly.
Cliff: But yeah, you’re targeting Republicans based on the registration and then you’re targeting independent, some libertarians, some constitution party if they lean conservative, but that’s how you build the model of the universe you’re targeting.
Jim: Yeah. I have a friend who actually helped build one of the Democrat data science companies, and we were just talking about what were some of the biggest … This was 15, 20 years ago, what were some of the biggest signals? And he said, “Well, I can tell you what some of the Republican strongest signals are. A hunting license and a pickup truck.” And both of those were public information in many states, and so they purged anybody who owned either a pickup truck or had a hunting license.
Cliff: It’s smart. I mean, there’s a lot of weird niche communities too when it comes to especially registration or targeting people. You have 80,000 truckers in Pennsylvania. I’m not even talking pickup trucks, 80,000 people that are driving a truck for a living. You’ve got 40,000 Amish. That’s another one of those communities. If you can get the Amish to vote, it’s like 99 to 1 Republican to Democrat. And then the hunting license is another one. So there are different pockets and all that data is public. You use that data to refine and make sure you’re targeting the right people.
Jim: All right, well, that’s enough talk about the what and the how. Now, let’s then switch to the why. Why would a nice guy like you be helping the Republicans? Looking at your background, you’re a real libertarian. I mean, Young Americans for Liberty is one of the most serious, hardcore principled libertarian outfits out there. Ron Paul was a true libertarian. His son ran sort of on a good day with the wind, depending on which way the wind is blowing, et cetera. We want you to stop and think a little bit about why a decent libertarian would support a Republican or particularly this set of Republicans.
But before I do that, before I get you to talk, I am going to give you my views on where I stand, and then I want you to tell where you stand and then you can argue with me. So if you want to take some notes, feel free.
Now, my own political history is I was formerly a Goldwater Republican from 1964, and I had 1 issue that in my mind, pre predominated over all else, and that was anti-communism. I was absolutely convinced, I still believe this to today, that Marxist-Leninism was a historical risk to the future trajectory of the human race, was a vile thing from top to bottom and needed to be destroyed. And that the Democrats, while some of them were decent cold warriors like Scoop Jackson and to a lesser degree Hubert Humphrey and a few others, the Republicans were far more steadfast on being willing to call out the evils of communism and do something about it.
At the same time, I also leaned into Barry Goldwater’s libertarianism on both economic and social issues. Good old Barry was one of the first senators of either party to advocate legalization of marijuana, gays in the military, et cetera. And of course, he was relentlessly small government, pay your bills, no deficits kind of guy. And so being a Goldwater Republican, I was part of a party that had multiple components as every party does, and I more or less tolerated the religious right, and I also tolerated the cut my taxes, but keep all the benefits types. I can call those Reagan Republicans essentially, people who wanted tax cuts but weren’t willing to take any cuts in government service, run up the deficit and basically just tolerated them.
But post-1992, with the overthrow of the USSR, I no longer felt like I needed to fellow travel with these other factions that I really had come to hate. And I was especially set off by the 1992 Houston Republican Convention where the anti-gay stuff and the semi-racist stuff was on strong display from the Buchananite faction. And I’ve pretty much been a double hater on Team Red and Team Blue since that time.
I decided to go through the issues here and sort of lay some out why I hate each party. I think if you had to ask me today why I hate the Dems, the number one Dem hating issue, it is the fact that they have been responsible to a substantial degree for the growth of oikophobia. Now, there’s a weird ass word. What the hell does that mean? Basically, oikophobia is hatred of our society. I would say hatred of America, hatred of the West, and more fundamentally hatred of the enlightenment. I’ve got a datum from a poll, which basically is a age stratified survey of all Americans, representative, statistical class that asked the question, “Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?” 18 to 24 year olds, 67% agree with that statement. 65 plus I.E, good guys like me, 9%.
So the educational and cultural engine has turned our people into anti-westerners, anti-enlightenment, and oh, by the way, anti-Semites. People say that these Hamas lovers aren’t anti-Semites, they can kiss my fucking ass. They’re anti-Semites. Closely related to woke nonsense or what I call neo-tribal racism, the 2020 riots, etc. And I point out that 75% of Americans, including every racial and ethnic group, was opposed to the racist thumbs on the scale in college admissions, and took 50 years to run that thing out of dodge. Unhinged approaches to climate challenges. For instance, the Bernie 2020 platform said that by 2030, 100% of all transportation and electrical generation energy use in America would be renewable. Well, I happen to know a lot about alternative energy. At the Santa Fe Institute, we’ve studied it quite a bit, and I know some of the leading people in the technologies. And so for a while I used to say that only Stalin could get that done.
But then a friend of mine who’s also an expert on a alternative energy told me, “Nope, not even Stalin could have done it. Only Pol Pot by killing off 25% of the population and reducing the GDP by 80% could achieve this,” on the platform, on the website. And it’s there to this day. Check the 2020 Bernie website and you can read it. And of course, I hate spend, spend, spend. The Dems always been famous for that. I am a relentless Second Amendment guy. I believe in the right to keep and bear arms. I’m a free speech guy, very strong one. I’m the co-founder of the MIT Free Speech Alliance, and I drive my European friends nuts, even the ones that are pro-free speech by saying, “Well, America has a huge advantage because the second protects the first.” And of course, I’ve been driven nuts by this Hamas love bullshit. It’s not all Democrats, but it’s a significant minority of Democrats love Hamas. Why anybody would want to love medievalist head cutter offers? I have no idea, but there’s a bunch of those in the Democratic Party. Sounds like I pretty much hate the Democrats.
Okay, now, why do I hate the Republicans? Let’s go down that list. Near the top of the list is the religious nuttery, the Christian nationalism, Bible studies in public schools, 10 Commandments on the wall, et cetera. I consider one of the greatest enlightenment documents, the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom that passed in 1786 before the Constitution, before the Bill of Rights. And guess who wrote it? Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Two of the greatest Americans of all time. Fuck you wokies if you don’t like those two guys, I don’t care. They’re great Americans. And it laid out in great detail the argument for separation of church and state in a very rigorous fashion. This was in 1786, and Republicans are showing great slippage on separation of church and state.
And some of that turns up in some of the issues that they have now become very central to the Republican Party, abortion above all else, but also right to die. And maybe not so much from a religious perspective, but in that same category of cultural imperialism, the drug war that we spend $100 billion a year on that does nothing but make drug dealers rich. Also, while the Dems have their issues with free speech, so do the Republicans, trying to throw books out of libraries, directed speech or restrictions on what medical practitioners can say, et cetera. With respect to climate change, while some of the Dems are nuts, the climate emergency, the Green New Deal, blah, blah, blah. Republicans are guilty also. Vivek Ramaswamy said that climate change was a hoax. Bullshit dude. I’ve looked into this very deeply. Climate change is not a hoax. It’s a real thing, and it’s something humanity, it’s a deal with.
On the other hand, we have to be very thoughtful about how we do it because we could ruin our economy, have all kinds of bad side effects if we don’t calculate the correct trajectory to get to a carbon or greenhouse gas neutral economy. My calculations, we can do it by somewhere between 2065 and 2075, but if we try to force march it, we’ll do far more harm than we need to, which will particularly impact poor people the most. But to call it a hoax, that’s just fucking evil. Especially a guy who’s well-educated like Vivek. He’s just a fucking lying piece of shit.
I would also say that currently the Republican Party, this Trump Republican Party is locked into a naive foreign policy, especially regarding Ukraine and Taiwan. Those are the borderlands, those are the battlefield between the West and the anti-West. We can talk about that more. I’m sure you have some views on that.
And of course, unfortunately, unlike the Goldwater Republicans, Jeffersons, George W. Bush, the Republicans have been just as much spend, spend, spend as the Democrats or almost as much. But even worse, they’ve cut taxes without cutting the spending, who were some of the great deficiteers. First, after being handed a balanced budget by Clinton, George W ran up a huge deficit. Obama more. Trump even more. And so the Republicans have lost their way with respect to being fiscally principled. In fact, the only president since Eisenhower who was really fiscally principled was Bill Clinton, who actually achieved a balanced budget and left a balanced budget that should have been a balanced budget going forward to the future, to George W. Bush. But he blew it by both increasing spending and cutting taxes, which is terrible. So both are a hard choice for me.
And indeed, if this year’s Republicans had nominated say, DeSantis or Haley, it’s reasonably likely I would’ve voted for them, probably Haley with some enthusiasm. DeSantis with some reservations. I might well have voted for him. But the deciding factor is that Donald J. Trump is intolerable. He’s an all galaxy narcissist, which is dangerous because he’s easily exploited by Trump whisperers like Putin or Kim Jong. I always say, if you want to know what Trump will do, look at him through the lens of narcissism. It’s the only thing that motivates the dude. I don’t believe he’s the second coming of Hitler. Actually, Hitler was actually a guy who had believed in something, had a plan. It was a bad plan, but at least he had a plan. I don’t believe Trump is. I think he’s just all in it for the ego gratifications around narcissism.
He’s a pathological liar. It’s amazing the shit he says in the debate. I just kept … That’s absolutely not true. That’s absolutely false. That’s absolutely false. He just lies in a bald-faced way. And maybe even worse, maybe he doesn’t even know that the concept of truth exists and that words are either helpful to his narcissistic self-image or not, which would probably be even worse than if he were a flat-out pathological liar. Maybe there’s no difference. He’s also mean-spirited and cruel, makes fun of the disabled, disrespects wounded, captured or killed veterans because they’re losers. He’s a player of the game of business in a reprehensible fashion. At least four bankruptcies. Cheats on his suppliers, stiffs his lawyers. From a business perspective, everybody in New York doesn’t want to do business with him. He’s no damn good.
Way back in 2015 when he first came on the scene, I liked the fact that he was sticking his finger in the eye of the libtards. There’s something good to be said for that. But as I actually looked at who he was as a human being, as a businessman, et cetera, I came to the conclusion if he showed up at one of my companies and I was interviewing him to say, be manager of the mail room, I would absolutely not hire such a person, a person with that kind of track record, that kind of personality, that kind of regard for his fellow humans. And I concluded pretty definitively that if I would not hire him to run my mail room, why the hell would I hire him to run the United States? And finally, having someone like that as an example to our children is just to me, intolerable. So hating both parties, hating Donald Trump even more, I come down to holding my nose with [inaudible 00:25:33] and voting for the Democrats this time.
Cliff: That’s rough. Well, I vehemently disagree on quite a few points, but let me give mine and then we can go back and forth. So I grew up in suburbs of Philadelphia, very much a Republican area when I grew up. I graduated high school in 2009, so I’m showing my old age here. I think that every single person around me, I think most of what I learned growing up, my parents were not political at all. My dad’s side was very union Democrat, working class. My mom’s side was probably more Christian, conservative Republican, but nobody wore it on their sleeve. My grandmother was a huge Kennedy fan. It was never really a heated issue, if you will, in our household.
When I went to school in Johnstown, PA to study to be a math teacher, really opened my eyes, a much more rural area. The cultural difference on guns was wild to me. And Johnstown was funny. When I was out there, I got out there in 2010, it was not a Republican stronghold. It was kind of the, let’s call them Blue Dog Democrats, very pro-God, pro-gun, pro-traditional marriage. But the pro-gun part was what was wild to me. Republicans in the Philly suburbs, back in those days, bad guys had guns and cops had guns. I did not grow up in a culture. There’s no gun in my house. I didn’t really know anybody that owned firearms. That was not a thing.
And so when I was in college, what really got me intrigued, I’m studying to be a math teacher. I was really not in any of the policy stuff, but I started to really dive in on kind of incentives and the welfare system and the value of our dollar. And I got in a debate in an econ class, and I was really just arguing on some of this stuff and how you can’t just print money. And that was just a gut instinct. It wasn’t like I was reading about this. I was an 18-year-old kid, and one of my buddies in class said, “Hey, you should check out this Ron Paul guy. I think you’ll like what he says about money, and you should look at the Federal Reserve.” And I didn’t … “The federal what? What is that?”
And so I went down this rabbit hole, Jim, of following just what Ron Paul was saying about all of the money and the government spending being a major factor in how the supply of money is devalued. And a couple of these videos on YouTube recommended some books. And so I started reading Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. I would read Hayek, Friedman, Ayn Rand, and just really started to become interested. The joke I always tell people is after watching all these videos and starting to read, I kind of started to ask around assuming, oh, everybody else must be having this revelation. That was not the case. A lot of people at that time still had no idea who Ron Paul was, even though he ran for president in ’08.
And so in 2012, he was running for president, I got a job working for him in D.C. And I got to tell you, when I worked on the hill, I made 20 some grand a year in DC, this is in 2012. I mean, I was broke. I mean, you make 20 grand a year living in DC, I mean, you qualify for welfare. I didn’t take it, but I’m just telling you. The experience of being in Ron’s office and the experience of looking at all these different lobbyist groups and meeting these, I call them process people. I got introduced to that expression by a guy named Anthony Sabatini in Florida. He said when he was in the statehouse, all the people there when you meet them, these are the insiders, the [inaudible 00:29:18] both left and right to be clear, when you meet them, they say, “Oh, what do you do here?” It’s part of the process. They almost wear it as a badge of honor.
And the truth is, in DC, there’s four people that decide on policy. The rest of them just have to look busy. That’s their job. If they’re not busy, they’re not working, but they’re not working on anything. They’re just working on being busy. And so it’s kind of frustrating. And I worked for the one office that the lobbyist really didn’t go to because whether you love or hate Ron Paul for his policies, he was consistent. And he was consistent for heck, the three decades he served in Congress. And so I saw his presidential campaign in 2012, I volunteered, I graduated in 2014, taught for a little while, and I had this revelation when I was a cog in the wheel of the public school system that we’re not going to fix our schooling, everything’s becoming an administrative state. People on the right will say that, “Oh, the left wants to control it.” But really it’s this administrative state in DC that I don’t think should have any role in education. And I’ll give you a firm example.
I mean, when I was teaching fifth grade math in Western PA, every worksheet, every test, every lesson plan, it was all pre-written. It was all cookie cutter, pre-written. And whether you want to blame George Bush for No Child Left Behind, or whether you want to blame Obama for Race to the Top, it was all the same thing. It was one size fits all education in an attempt to make sure that we increase our proficiency. But the opposite happens. You drag a lot of the people down that want to be achievers, that are trying to get to the next level. And so I made a decision to hop into the political world and try to find these liberty-loving candidates that I thought would be with me on free markets, would be with me on the education freedom. And at the time, I got to be honest, we’re coming out of the George Bush years and Barack Obama’s running on peace. And then he gets in there and he’s more George Bush’s foreign policy. I mean, bombing six, seven countries, no declaration of war. We’re spending all this money we don’t have.
And the libertarian to me is like, my gosh, where are the Republicans, let alone where are the anti-war left? Which I do think is one of the most disappointing things in our current political climate is this idea that the left has become so bonkers on some of the groups or ideologies they’re aligning with that the idea of peace, love, joy, and the hippie movement. I just don’t think it exists in the normal Democrat voter. And the squad can get it right 10% of the time on some of this, but they’re not quite over the target.
So I’ll end my rant by saying in 2016, after I got involved in politics, I was finding a skillset of mine was recruiting people, understanding how to be impactful, understanding how to really make a difference in elections. And as I told you before, I realized the left was so good at this ground game. Well, Trump comes along in 2016, and I’ve said this publicly and I get flack for it. I didn’t know how he would be as president. I was working for Rand, and I really have to say the no new wars under Trump really, really not only surprised me, but I really appreciated it. My wife’s in the Air Force, I’ve got family, my brother’s in the Air Force, they’re both active.
And it’s like, I really want somebody that has, and I know you’re going to laugh when I say this, but I believe it, that has a gut instinct. You probably wouldn’t say he’s got a good temperament, but his gut instinct on war, of trying to stop people from dying, as he would say, “I want stop the dying.” I do want that in an executive. I want that in somebody that’s the president.
And then what really elevated me to the point of saying, “You know what? I’m going to go all in on Trump, I’m going to take my skill set and utilize it to try to take back the White House” is when they went after him with the judicial system.
Okay, listen, I’m going to tell you this, Jim, when I’ve gotten in some of these heated political battles, I’ve had people come after me civilly, I’ve had people come after me criminally. I’ve had the Federal Election Commission with people filing charges. I’ve beat all that, and I’m happy to say that, but it takes a toll, man. And I don’t like to say that because then the people that do it feel some gratification. But you’ve got to spend money, time, energy, resources. It’s tough. And when they came after Trump with the impeachment and then they came after him with the indictment, then they actually found him guilty of some of these things. Now, some of these radicals are shooting at him or trying to take his life. It really was an eye-opener for me.
Yes, I’m a hardcore libertarian. Yes, I believe in the principles of liberty, but I now see this as Donald Trump being the number one enemy of the Uniparty, the number one enemy of some of these corrupt actors that I can’t stand. And so I usually am not the guy to say, “You’ve got to pick one of the major parties. You’ve got to do this thing.” But my plea to every libertarian, every constitutionalist, everybody that really wants to see the government shrink, did spending go up during COVID? Sure. And that’s probably my biggest fault with those years.
But I’ve kind of come to terms with the idea that I think that if Kamala Harris gets in there, it will be a signal that we are moving in this woke direction, the idea of some of these crazy green new deals, the idea of thinking you can go after political opponents through the judicial system. And I just think you’ll be a wrong signal to send the next generation. I think Trump is coming into office with a chip on his shoulder, and I like that. I like somebody who might cut the federal bureaucracy by 25% on day 1. I like somebody that might say, “You know what? I’m not going to trust some of these high-level people that are processed people, that have been in the system and the infrastructure of DC for decades.” And I think he probably learned a lot in 2016 with some of the people you hire.
And so that’s why I’ve come to this conclusion, that’s why I’m running the Pennsylvania Chase. And I do think, and I hate this phrase, Jim, I hate when people say this is the most important election in our lifetime. I’m 33. I heard that for Bush, I heard it from McCain. I heard it for Mitt Romney. To me, this is a turning point for the Republic, and I think Donald Trump is the answer.
Jim: I’ve heard this and I’m old. I’m 70. I’ve heard this for probably almost every election in my lifetime with possibly the exception of the caucus versus H.W. Bush where we had two kind of technocrats running and nobody … You couldn’t get too worked up about either one of them. Let me come back at you. A guy who works for Ron Paul, the absolutely appalling deficit record of Trump. People say, “Oh, it was all COVID.” Well, just remember, COVID was only the last 10 months of his administration, and in 4 years he ran up $7.8 billion worth of deficit compared to Obama, 8.8 billion in 8 years. So Obama 4.4 billion per 4 year of his term. And part of that, a fair bit of that done in reaction to the economic collapse of 2008. 7.8 billion for Trump in 4 years. He’s a spender big time.
And then into my denouncing of Republicans being both spenders, but he’s also a totally irresponsible tax cutter and incompetent too. Let’s go into that one as well. He had the House, the Senate, and the presidency for two years, got absolutely nothing done except for a grossly irresponsible tax cut, which did nothing but enrich people like himself. And huge, it was huge, the increases in the deficit caused by that tax cut. So what would Ron Paul say about such an appalling fiscally indisciplined character as Trump?
Cliff: Well, number one, I do disagree. I think the regulation cuts, the tax cuts and the no new wars are something I was worried I’d never see in my lifetime. I think you’re exactly right on the spending. I think that’s a problem. And I think the reason, if I had to give rationale for it is I think that the Uniparty continues to just go-along to get along. And I think Trump didn’t take that as a battle that I think he will this term.
I mean, look, when I was in Congress, I always tell people working in Congress, not serving to be clear. I always tell people that it’s a pretty simple equation. Everybody gets on the House floor and the Republicans argue, “We need to cut the spending and we need to prioritize the military period.” And the Democrats get on the floor and they start arguing and they say, “We need to prioritize domestic welfare and play to their constituencies.” And they all scream at each other, and they do it in front of the C-SPAN cameras. And by the way, they’re doing this to an empty chamber. There’s nobody in there. But once they’re done doing their little theater, they step off, they go into the smoke-filled cloakroom, and they say, “You know what? Let’s just spend more on both.” And they just continue to do this. And it just goes on and goes on. Now, one thing I’m going to say, Jim, if Trump only increased the budget by 7 billion, I’d be impressed. I think you mean trillion.
Jim: All those billions are trillions. Sorry, as famously … Everett Dirksen said, “A billion here, a billion there. Soon, you’re talking a lot of money. Now we’re talking about trillions.” Yeah, sorry about that people. Trillions, all these cocksuckers are running deficits at greater than a trillion dollars a year. In Trump’s term, you’ll love this, this number is so scary. The $7.8 trillion deficit on average was equal to the total receipt from the federal individual income tax per year. I mean, this is out of control. This is nuts. Ron Paul would die before he would do any of this sort of stuff.
Cliff: Well, and I agree. I mean, I think the spending, when people say, “What’s our greatest threat?” To me, it’s the deficit. It really is. I think it is a greater threat than people can fathom. I think it’s a wonky issue, so people struggle to understand it. One of the major things, like I told you, getting involved in this audit of the Fed, when I worked for Ron, that was the first time that we passed in audit of the Federal Reserve Act was in the summer of 2012. And I think it just goes to show you that the powers that be, they’re so drunk on power and spending, I don’t know if it ever stops until we’re not the world’s reserve currency. And I think that that’s the battle. I think China right now, that is what they’re angling for, and we keep borrowing money from them.
And I think we’re going to get to a point where people ask me, “When do we get the civil war?” And I’m not advocating for violence. I’m not saying that you should take up arms, but I will tell you, I think when the value of the dollar starts to plummet, and we’re seeing it already with the inflation we’ve had, but when we start to see the runaway inflation and people can’t afford food, they can’t afford to pay their house, they’re not putting gas in their cars. That to me is when things really go for a spin. That is when states need to be bailed out, that is when certain areas of the country that are very, let’s say, politically diverse are having to bail out other states. I think that’s when you start to see a lot of that.
And look, I love Ron. Ron’s my hero. He is my mentor. I think he’s the most principled man that’s ever served in Congress. And I just think there are a lot of things that are existential crises in the country, and I think that the things that I value and that I care about, that’s what leads me to support Trump. And I do think that the DOJ and the FBI, I think they’re run amok. I think Trump coming out and saying he’s going to free Ross Ulbricht. I don’t care if people think, “Oh, well, Ross is a friend of mine. I write this guy in prison.” He started the Silk Road for your viewers that don’t know, a website that was off the grid, lot of exchanges in crypto and the DOJ wanted to make an example of him. And so I think a lot of the civil libertarian things, if there’s any hope of being anti-war, of reining in some of this oversight or this privacy or restoring the Fourth Amendment, I just don’t see any other option than Donald Trump.
Jim: I will say I do resonate with you on the anti-war thing because in 2008, I was still probably better than 50-50 voting a Republican if they weren’t insane. But I did not vote for McCain on the grounds that he just wanted to bomb everybody. If there was ever a guy who just loved war, it was John McCain. Despite having suffered tremendously personally, he was probably the hawkiest guy ever to run for president.
Cliff: You said you were excited about Nikki. What do you think the difference is between Nikki Haley’s foreign policy and John McCain?
Jim: I think she’s very sensible. She figures out what is in our national interest, Ukraine, Taiwan, what is not in our national interest, various other things. Now, she’s a little more hawky than I would like, but I think that she is not too far from a sensible trajectory. Because I also reject America First, the isolationism, Lindberghism that led to World War II basically. And America still has to stand up to its role as the leader of the free world, and that means when it’s necessary, putting blood on the line.
Cliff: When you say necessary, and I hope you’re all right with the back and forth, this is what I love about these conversations.
Jim: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That’s why we do this. Go ahead.
Cliff: When you say necessary, we’ve got over 900 bases around the world, we’re in 120 countries. I get that they’re not all combat zones, but we have a presence. At what point can we not afford it? This is always my conflict with the Nikki Haley types and the John McCain types and the Cheney types. I get what you’re saying. I’m not saying you, I’m talking to them. I get what they’re saying when they’re like, “Well, we need to have a presence.” But at a certain point, you’re losing lives, American lives in all of these places, a lot of these places. You’re creating enemies with the innocent civilians that you’re killing. And this is probably the most important, not most important, but I think the most impactful thing is we can’t afford it. So I always say either one, we spread ourselves too thin on military and we can’t afford it, and then the dollar crashes. Or two, we just spend it elsewhere in the dollar crashes. But at what point do you feel like we got to rein that in?
Jim: And it’s like everything else. This is where wisdom and judgment come into play. There isn’t a black and white answer that all defense spending is bad, or all social welfare spending is bad. You got to say, what is our role in the world in a principled way, not overreaching? For instance, even though I absolutely approved of us going into Afghanistan after 9/11, we absolutely had to, my strong belief was what we should have done after we had overthrown the Taliban is taken a piece of paper and nailed it to the door of the state of the legislature and said, “All right, we’re out of here” one year after we came in. “We don’t give a fuck what you do to your own country, but if you let any terrorists set up headquarters, we’re coming back and kicking your ass again. And oh, by the way, we’re sending you a shipping pallet of $100 bills once a year. Please behave yourself” and then left.
But instead, I think a lot of it driven by the desires of the military industrial complex, we were there for 18 years. Nuts. Only Biden finally got us out, and that was done in an incompetent, grotesque fashion. Iraq, we should have never gone in. That was immoral, a huge mistake. And again, that was a Republican policy of the hawkish wing of the Republicans. You got to watch those suckers. But the Dems have their own history of interventionism, and at the moment, they may be even more interventionist than the Republicans. So neither of them are any good.
Cliff: I feel like right now, Ukraine’s a very good example of understanding the anti-war. And I don’t even mean anti-war, but you kind of see the Uniparty come together on that. And I mean, the Republicans, they’ve bent over backwards to get that money at first. And I think it took so much, and money is still going over there in the tune of billions of dollars. But I think right now with this hurricane, I think it’s a really good comparison. Sure, some people could have advocated, we need to send money at a certain point. I probably wouldn’t have. I think we’re too broke to do that, but to think that we’re not willing to come up with enough money for American citizens at the same time, them saying, I think the numbers, I want to say it’s almost 9 billion that they’ve spent. I could be wrong, could be 90 million or something. But just this huge amount of money on illegal immigration or illegal immigrants through FEMA. I think those comparisons are just tough for people to unsee.
How can we be sending tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine when people here are suffering? I get that there are geopolitical things at stake, but to me, when you start to see those comparisons, and the reason you have those comparisons is because they never cut any of the other shit. We’re never saying, “Oh, maybe we should pull back on some of this other domestic stuff or some of these other programs that are failing in the US, or hey, maybe we should cut this department and then give that money and apply it in a different area.” But right now, the two major things being hurricane relief and Ukraine relief, to me, that’s just nuts.
Jim: On the other hand, I would say the Ukraine thing is absolutely critical. Putin did something that only one other person has really done, which is he violated the post-World War II agreements not to attempt to change political boundaries via force. The only other person that had tried to do that was Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, and the whole world rose up in righteous indignation and kicked their fucking ass. So they threw him out of Kuwait in four days worth of fighting and totally destroyed the most elite units of the Iraqi military. Putin is the second guy to violate the post-World War II agreement, not to try to change boundaries by military means. And it’d be a gigantic mistake for us not to make sure he loses. I think a negotiated settlement where he keeps a piece of Ukraine would be a terrible precedent, which basically will bring the world back to the horrible world we lived in before World War II, where warfare to change boundaries was thought to be a legitimate thing to do, and we had basically 1,000 years worth of war.
So this to my mind, is a paramount issue that we should be willing to pay higher taxes. It’s a hell of a deal. It’s maybe 30 or $40 billion a year, 5% of our defense budget to grind down our biggest military enemy and keep him immersed in a sea of mud, which he is making very little progress in. While at the same time underlining this post-World War II doctrine that no country may change the borders of another country by overt military invasion. Despite the fact of being somewhat of a hater of Democrats, I’ll actually give Biden pretty high grades on Ukraine. He’s managed to do all this without having a single American … Well, that’s acknowledged, any Americans on the ground. There’s fair number of American volunteers there. That’s okay. Americans can volunteer if they want.
If anything, I would criticize Biden for being a little too slow of providing the advanced weapons and a little bit too slow of approving the Ukrainian use of long range missiles against Russia. Hell, those fuckers invaded Ukraine, knock the shit out of them is what I’d say. And so this is something I feel very strongly about, that any country that claims to be the leader of the free world that won’t stand up to a violation of national sovereignty will not long have the position of leader of the free world.
Cliff: But my argument to that would be how are you the leader if you’re broke? I mean, I’m all for diplomacy, and I don’t think there’s any amount of money we’re going to give to Ukraine. Well, I do know there is an amount. The amount is going to be when we say, “All right, this thing has escalated enough” and we go over there with our sons and daughters and we fight it. You think there’s an end to this by giving money to Ukraine, and you think eventually Putin will back down without us having to send in our troops?
Jim: Putin won’t back down, but somebody will take Putin out one day when this thing grinds on forever. It’s such a huge loser for the Russian people. And they’re on a trajectory, they’re doing better and better. Now they’re doing worse and worse. So now I don’t think Putin will ever agree. But the other one, of course is the Ukrainians may take Putin out sometime. If you go out and subcontract to the Israelis, say, “Well, we’ll pay you 10 billion in cash, take out that motherfucker.” And they’ll put two ounces of explosives in his dildo that he shoves up his ass and then explode it. And that of the end of Putin. And even if the Ukrainians lose, if we bleed the Ruskies out for four or five more years, they’ll have nothing left in terms of being able to cause more mischief for many, many years thereafter. So I think it would be absolutely irresponsible to cut off the funding to Ukraine at this point. And if we cut off the funding, Ukraine will fold in a matter of months.
Cliff: But I just think at a certain point, there’s not enough money to go around. I see what you’re saying.
Jim: Cut something else. Cut anything else. I would cut anything else pretty much before I would cut support for Ukraine, 5% of our defense budget. You don’t think we could get rid of a few gold-plated toilet seats and $500 hammers and $150 billion fighter planes that are two precious to really fly into combat? We could find 5% of crap in our defense budget like that. Put me in there, in 15 minutes, I’ll find it. I’ll go down the budget and go, whack, whack, whack, whack. So 5% of our defense budget, it’s not a large number on the scale of things. And the geopolitical significance of that investment is immense. And Trump does not seem to get that. And I’m afraid he has the same attitude about Taiwan.
Cliff: Yeah. I think any cents that we’re going to be able to cut, once again, I don’t necessarily disagree with the idea. I disagree with the practice of we don’t have the money. If you’re saying we did and we cut somewhere else, the politicians are never going to let it. I mean, we would have to get to a point, and I do fear this is not going to be a $200 billion war. I fear that this is going to be a $10 trillion war that will escalate, that we will have to send in our sons and daughters, we’ll have to be over there. Then we’re going to have to occupy it if we were successful.
And so I think it’s just me looking at some of these past wars, I think we need to figure out a diplomatic way. And to be frank, I do think that Donald Trump, compared to Joe Biden, especially compared to Harris, I don’t know what leverage they have or what ability they have. Forget relationships about, “Oh, Trump likes Putin,” or “This person doesn’t like that.” I don’t see this ending any way that’s good unless there’s a sit down between the American president, Zelenskyy and Putin. Maybe not in person. Maybe that’s a little too dangerous. But I just think there has to be some negotiations. And I feel like, I don’t even think we’re talking about that anymore. We’re so far from that.
Jim: No, we shouldn’t do that. Putin’s a fucking war criminal. They’ve killed huge numbers of people. They’ve kidnapped 12,000 Ukrainian children. Fuck Putin. He has to end up at the end of a rope, in my opinion. And if we have to send our people to do that, we have to send our people to do that.
Cliff: Now see, I disagree. I see what you’re saying but I don’t think that it ends. I mean, what’s to say, what’s the vacuum after Putin? I mean, I don’t think they’ve got somebody lined up that’s going to be some rational human being.
Jim: Hard to say. We’ll see. But it seems to me that personally I would cut anything before I’d cut the aid to Ukraine. We’re a very, very, very fat and rich country. The other thing that drives me insane about the Republicans is they keep cutting taxes despite driving up all these things. If you want to be principled about it, if you want to put pressure on all these welfare things, keep the taxes proportionate to the welfare things, then people will be screaming about the taxes. And then we’ll have to cut the welfare things just like Bill Clinton did. Because Bill Clinton not only balanced the budget, he also ended welfare as we knew it. And he’s a Democrat. And the Republicans have lost that Barry Goldwater [inaudible 00:53:52].
Anyway, let’s move on to another topic. Again, as a libertarian, I agree with you that the Federal Reserve system is not good at all. And in fact, my most popular video is called Dividend Money: An Alternative to Central Banker Managed Fractional Reserve Banking Money. You can find it on YouTube, and it lays out a completely principled alternative form of money for the American state that does not involve either fractional reserve banking or the Fed. So I’m with you on that one, though we might have slightly different perspectives on the right solution. So now let’s go back to the libertarian ideas about personal liberty and compare and contrast that with some of the nutso shit from the Republicans around things like abortion and right to die and the drug wars. How do you countenance aligning yourself with those kinds of things?
Cliff: Well, I look at the drug war. I mean, I’m somebody who’s run, I think we did over 800 events, we called them Incarceration Nation across the country on college campuses to teach about the drug war and how horrific it is. I do think fentanyl with the border is a major issue. I don’t say it as a talking point, I’ve got family members of mine that are homeless, drug-ridden on heroin. It’s a horrible, horrible thing. And I think the more that hits communities, the more I think people realize it is not a policy solution. It is a health crisis, and I think it’s probably taken Republicans way too long to realize that. But I think that the fentanyl hitting so many communities is going to force that conversation for people to realize maybe we shouldn’t be locking these people up. We should figure out how to help them. Heck, my own family, my dad was locked up for mandatory minimum for possession.
So I always tell people I’ve always been very, very consistent on this issue. I do think that there are a lot of Republicans that get this wrong and that I’m not out here to advocate for drug use, but I’m out here to advocate that locking people in prison for years and years and years because of a health choice they make. No, I don’t think that’s accurate. I think we need to change that. Trump, despite what people say, the First Step Act was the first piece of legislation comprehensive that actually said, “Hey, let’s look at some of these things that we’re doing when it comes to drug penalties and drug crimes and try to make a change.” I actually think, Jim, that’s one of the most likely changes you’ll see that will happen rapidly. I don’t say that out of DC because nothing changes, but I think that you’re going to see a coalition probably, whether it’s Trump or Harris, that really moves to make some changes on that.
You see all these states have legalized, even states like Mississippi now have medical … I mean, that’s wild. You would’ve told me that 10 years ago, I would’ve thought you were nuts. So when it comes to the drug war, no, I’m steadfast in that, and I do think that there is a section of the Republican Party that’s 10 years behind. But I think Trump being with the First Step Act, I think we need to look at how we fix some of these jail terms and how we look at it as a society.
I think on the abortion issue, I think returning it to the states is the right answer. And to be frank with you, I’d like to return a lot more to the states, obviously not just on the Roe v. Wade, but on a lot of things. I think the abortion issue has always been a 50-50 issue with folks that identify as libertarian. Half of them say that the politician should not be involved in the decision with the doctor, and the other half say, “Well, the Constitution actually gives us one thing to protect.” That’s life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So to have those things backed up, I do think the states, I would argue anything we can decentralize is a good thing.
Now, a lot of Republicans will praise it because they think it’s benefiting them, and Democrats get up in arms because they feel like oh, and that’s their whole campaign issue. I mean, to be frank, Jim, I can’t fucking stand when I’m sitting in a hotel lobby or I’m at a restaurant and I’m in a swing state Pennsylvania, and all of a sudden you turn on the TV or it’s on and it’s just wall-to-wall coverage of Kamala saying, “Trump’s bad on women’s rights.” And then you see all these Republican candidates running and it’s the border issue, which I agree with them on. But man, these 30 second TV ads, I mean, who isn’t muting them these days? And that’s another reason.
This is a little soft plug for myself. That’s why door-to-door matters, having real conversations, even digital ads these days, once you’re so in it … I mean my phone, I probably get 500 text messages a day. And so figuring out ways that you can talk to people about these things, personal liberty is extremely important to me. And I think anytime we can decentralize to get that to the localist level possible, I think that’s a win.
Jim: I agree with you there though everybody is self-serving. The Republicans are for in theory, state rights, and yet in the gun control battle, they are pushing for absolutist nationwide standards, which by the way, I support as a value though I may not support as a mechanism. I come away saying if the cocksuckers in New York City want to have no guns, fine, just don’t come take my guns or I’ll shoot your ass. There’s a great hypocrisy. The Republicans say state rights for abortion, but oh no, we’re going to have to have federal override for gun control as an example of ends rather than principled means.
Cliff: Yeah. And I think that any political movement, unfortunately, the environment we’re in, I think that that happens. I mean, it’s the same thing when somebody puts out an executive order that I might agree with. I might agree with the policy, but the process of doing it, if it’s not a consistent legal way of doing it, it’s tough to cheer it on. And it’s obviously easy to get mad when it’s not your side. One note I like to make though, that I think is probably something I haven’t mentioned. I definitely haven’t mentioned it here on the show, but another thing that really drives me to support Trump and you bring up personal liberty. I really struggle with the transgender surgeries with kids. I really struggle with this.
As a former teacher, if you’re 18, you do whatever the hell you want to do. But some of these parents making these life altering decisions of chopping off private parts, I don’t think long term this is going to be something where people are on the right side of history that are allowing that to happen. And look, as a society, if we say people are adults when they’re born, okay, but we have a structure, you’re 18, you can vote. 21, you can drink. 18, you could serve in the military. 18, you can legally do this, you can legally do that. People can do whatever the hell they want to do when they become a so-called adult recognized by society.
But I am blown away by how many Democrats have kind of fallen for this woke … The elected officials. I think the reality is a lot of Democrats across the country don’t think that kids should be able to have transgender surgeries. They don’t think that. But it’s one of those issues where I feel like there’s an irate minority of radicals on the left, and unfortunately the leaders of the party don’t want to stand up to that. I probably should have mentioned that when I talked about me coming to the terms with this, but when I see those kids, then you see the stories of the people that transition, they grow up and realize, “I didn’t want to transition.” Now that we’re having so many folks doing it, you’re starting to see the de-transitioning. It’s pretty horrible. And I just think that people have shitty times as kids, doesn’t mean they need to change and get their dick chopped off. I really believe that.
Jim: Yeah, by the way, I’m with you on that one. Though I perhaps have a slightly more nuanced view. Here’s one you can use in favor of your argument. In most states, you have to either be 16 or 18 to get a tattoo whether you have your parents’ permission or not, and getting a tattoo is certainly less invasive than chopping your dick or chopping your tits off. So if the state can regulate tattoos, they can certainly regulate chopping off body parts.
Cliff: That’s my new example, Jim. I’m going to steal that from you.
Jim: Yeah, that’s a good one. On the other hand, this is the nuanced part of it. I have looked into this fairly carefully and my assessment, and this is with expert opinion, not just some shit I made up from memes I saw on the internet is perhaps 1 in 1,000 people is truly transgender, maybe a little bit less than that. 1 in 5,000, but somewhere between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 5,000 who really do have a very severe medical condition where the body they have and the brain they have are not incongruent and may well had to do with in utero, hormonal conditions, et cetera. And those people really are suffering. But the 5% of people who claim they’re trans in upper middle class junior high schools, that’s total horseshit. It’s a mimetic plague.
And here’s another example. What it’s most similar to is anorexia. There’s no biological cause of anorexia. You go to Sub-Saharan Africa. Ain’t no anorexics there. Anorexia is a mimetic disease of the affluent typically. And this nonmedical trans, which is, let’s see, if 1 in 1,000 is maybe real trans at the most, and 2 in 100, which would be 20 in 1,000 mimetic trans, 19 out of 20 of the cases, we shouldn’t even be contemplating anything, let alone cutting body parts. No puberty blockers, et cetera. It’s abuse. And these are just … Shit, you were a teenager. I was a teenager. We had goofy ass ideas when we’re teenagers. We’re pissed off at our parents. We want to be different. And then the one that’s really despicable is where the schools celebrate people coming out as trans. If you’re a 12-year-old, maybe slightly unpopular girl, and a way to be celebrated is to declare yourself trans and you’re not too bright, which of course by definition half of the population has an IQ less than 100, then you’re tempted into playing this game of mimetic trans.
And so I do believe the state has a strong interest in making sure people who are the 19 out of 20 mimetic trans have no interventions of any sort until they’re 18. However, the 1 in 20 who actually has this medical condition of transgenderism may actually benefit from interventions when they’re younger and maybe the younger the better. And it’s extraordinarily difficult question, how do you filter the 1 in 20 real from the 19 mimetic? There’s a whole series of diagnostics which rule out most of the mimetics.
And so optimally, I’d like to see a policy and probably at the per-state level, so we can be a laboratory of democracy and experiment with different things that mostly stopped it, except with a high standard of proof that this was true medical trans, and an early intervention may actually be very strongly in the child’s interest. But certainly those willy-nilly horseshit and internet mimetics is totally insane. And on the same topic, this idea that trans women I.E, guys with their dicks chopped off should be competing in women’s sports is fucking insane. Whether it’s memetic trans or medical trans, it’s just wrong and dangerous, by the way.
Cliff: Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, I think you give it five years, and I think it’ll be very, very much rooted out. I don’t think dudes will be able to play in women’s sports regardless … Or you just lose women’s sports. I mean, that’s the end of it. Either you say, listen, there’s a woman’s league, or you say there’s just the league and all the women have to play against men. I’m going to use that anorexic thing.
And the reason I like that is because you said one word, affluent. That is very, very interesting. I always try to figure out how to phrase it, where you have to have so much time, you have to be so not worried about where your next meal is coming from to have some of these ideas and these mental battles of just wanting to on the whim change certain things and feel like you’re a victim and this or that. I mean, when they’re putting cat litter boxes in classrooms for six-year-olds, it’s like, come on guys, what are we doing here? I mean, it’s not just that you’re doing it, you’re endorsing it. When you say they’re celebrating it-
Jim: You’re fucking [inaudible 01:06:53] crazy.
Cliff: Right. It’s fucking insane.
Jim: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 100% agree with you on that. You know who Rob Henderson is? He’s a very interesting thinker, and he has this idea called luxury beliefs that while they may be semi-tolerable for the upper middle class, like having a child out of wedlock, or being an everyday pot smoker or something, or letting your kid pretend to be a cat, or et cetera, but when they’re adopted by the working class, it produces disaster. The broken families, the high out of wedlock birth rates, the really truly dysfunctional drug use, et cetera. And that’s why one of the reasons I threw the word affluent … If you don’t know Rob Henderson’s work, check him out. He’s generally considered to be a conservative, but I think he’s more nuanced than just a conservative plus somebody I strongly recommend. One of these days, I’ll have them on my show. Okay. Two other things. The strong tendency amongst a minority of Republicans to be in this oppressive Christian nationalist stuff, forcing Bible study into the schools in Texas, 10 Commandments on the wall in Alabama, how can a libertarian travel with that sort of stuff?
Cliff: Well, number one, I’m a Christian. I grew up, half my family was Irish Catholic, other half Protestant. And I will tell you, I’m not somebody to wear it on my sleeve or to push it in the political world too much. What I tend to look at though is I feel schooling is actually one of the best examples from my experience in the classroom. I think you get to a certain point where just like the woke ideology, I think at a certain point, if you want to control, and I don’t mean control in a negative way. If you want to have a say and if you want to dictate and you want to be a part of what your kids are learning and the next generation, I just think at a certain point there’s going to be this impasse between woke ideology and I would say the nuclear family. Whether you want to call that Christianity or not, that’s what I see as the two heads butting: the woke ideology versus the nuclear family.
And I think the problem is where it’s developed or where it is sold to a lot of people is in the adolescence years, coming up through grade school, middle school, high school, obviously college. And I think that what you’re going to see, I think the solution to this, and I don’t mean this, it has to happen. I just think inevitably what’s going to happen is you’re going to have those two ideologies. I’m not even saying Republican versus Democrat. It seems that way. It could go that way. But I think the nuclear family versus the woke ideology is going to come to a point where enough parents get involved, enough people get involved and say, we don’t want to just rely on the government to teach our kids. I think probably the left wins that battle and the woke ideology becomes kind of what the public school system is.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think enough parents during COVID started to get a glimpse of what was being taught, what was being taught not just in grade school, high school, but also these college courses and it’s 2024. I mean, everything’s online, everything’s viewable, everything’s researchable, and there’s all this alternate media. Look at us on your podcast. There’s messages getting out there. I’m not saying people have to agree with all the information, but when you have access to all this information, people become more enlightened. And even if they’re not enlightened accurately, they have an opinion. And so when you ask, how do I settle with that within the Republican Party, I think it plays directly, at least in my mind to one of my goals, which is I don’t think that the United States public education system is sustainable. I think it’s like the post office. I think at a certain point, alternatives are going to pop up.
Now, I’m a former teacher. I’m not anti-teacher, I’m not anti-education, but I think at a certain point, the post office will go away and you’ll have your FedEx and you’ll have your UPS, and maybe the FedEx is the woke one, and the UPS is the one where you say, listen, I think you’re going to see a break off because it used to be simple, but both sides are too hot. They’re too hot about the potential for the other side getting control of their kid’s mind. And to be fair, you should be, if you believe in one of those things.
Jim: I wouldn’t send my kid to an upper middle class high school these days, nor would I send my kid to an elite college because of the fact just exactly as you say, they’ll be indoctrinated by woke horseshit. But on the other hand, I don’t use being a somewhat militant atheist, I don’t use religion as the counter. I use just fucking common sense as the counter. And truthfully, I think you may well be right that the solution is irresolvable within the context and probably for good reason for the public schools.
And this is where Ron Paul was so right. He’s a strong advocate of universal vouchers, and if every student carried their expenditure with them, you could establish schools that were much more resonant with the family values of the families where they’re from. And if some people want to send their kids off to woke high school and have them come back with green hair and their dicks chopped off, well, what the fuck? But I don’t think when push comes to shove, most parents would make that choice. And so universal vouchers may well be the answer there. And that’s one that’s I’m on the favor of the Republicans on my list. For a while, Obama was pretty good on pushing for more vouchers and more charter schools and things, but since Obama, it’s been the teacher’s union.
Cliff: The teacher’s union’s way too powerful. I’ll share my fun story real quick. When I was student teaching in Pennsylvania, you had to get liability insurance. And they said, “Well, to get liability insurance, you join the union as an associate member.” And here I am and I’m like, “I don’t really want to join the union. All their political beliefs, they spend all their money against the people I believe in.” And it was fascinating. But I ended up going out, I shopped it around, I got a cheaper alternative that covered me. But I always tell people, “I don’t have any problems with the teachers that are in the union. I have a problem with the union bosses and what they do with the money.” And look at Josh Shapiro in PA. He ran on all this school choice stuff. The second he gets in, what’s he do? He’s a coward. He pussies out and says, “Oh, maybe we have other options.”
It’s like, dude, you would helped so many Black kids in inner city Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to have options and not be zoned in on this zip code that defines their success and their path in life. And all it took was a couple million dollars of pressure from the teachers unions. I mean, these people are making millions of dollars a year. The average teacher is making 40 grand a year, and it’s just this system is just completely … I agree with you. I think eventually we get there. I don’t know how long it takes, but eventually both sides are not going to be okay with what’s coming out of these schools.
Jim: And frankly, I hope that happens. So I think on that one, we’re more in agreement that a universal vouchers program may be the only solution to this hyper-polarized, political, and not just political, but culture. As Breitbart said, “Politics is downstream from culture,” and we have a culture of insanity, and we have a culture of decadence, we have a culture of virtue. That’s really the fault line. So one last thing here before we wrap up, we’re getting to our time, which is you got my list of double hate and leaves me not neutral, but maybe leaning just slightly Republican if I put all the issues on the table. But I get pushed back by the fact that Donald Trump is an impossibly, vile, disgusting piece of shit as a human being, a horrendous role model for children. Someone who’s capturable by narcissism whisperers, a person whose judgment I would not at all trust when push comes to shove. What’s your position on Trump? Trump. Eurgh.
Cliff: Jim, I sense a little Trump Derangement Syndrome, I’m not going to lie. I hear that from different Democrats that I interact with, believe me. Look, I weigh things probably a lot different than the people that have those viewpoints. I look at some of the policy positions. I look at what impacts my life. I look at what impacts my family’s life, and I think it’s easy to square away the idea that I think my favorite meme on the Internet is, “Well, we can’t afford gas because you wanted a woman president.” Right? And some of these that I look at that are like some people value certain things much, much more than others. I value the war issue as my number one issue. I truly do. And in my lifetime, him not starting any new wars, that is going to rank above everything else for me. I think having that as something that we should aim for is extremely important.
But I also think cutting the regulations was another great thing. If we can get the spending in order, obviously I’d be even more excited. But I really don’t look at personalities. Look, Jim, this is probably not good for me to say because I have a lot of people I work with that are in politics. Every time I’m behind a closed door, I’m more and more less surprised by some of the vile shit I see in the political arena. Typically, somebody running for office, especially Congress, I’ve learned that if they’re running for office, they’re not qualified for me to like them as a person. And there’s, of course, a couple exceptions, don’t get me wrong, but the things you have to do to get elected, the people you have to suck up to, the money you have to agree to take with quid pro quo, even if it’s so-called legal, the things you decide to comment on versus the things you don’t ever comment on, it’s a sick industry.
But at the end of the day, politics is not poly and ticks meaning blood sucking creatures as much as I think it is. Politics is the adjudication of power. Politics is who gets to write the laws that dictate how I get to live a healthy or not so healthy life, a happy or not so happy life. And at the end of the day, I think it’s a clear choice for Donald Trump. And I think I’m very on board because the policies that come with a Trump administration, to me, very much outweigh the policies that come with Harris. And I’ll say this, I told you my number one issue. This is the first time in my lifetime that we do not have a neocon on the ticket. If you really think about it, the first time with Trump and Vance, one of their key issues is trying to de-escalate some of these foreign wars.
I mean, look at the Republican tickets, John McCain, George Bush, George H.W Bush, I mean, my gosh, you really can’t find a worst set of people when it comes to war. And so if this is an opportunity to fight for the heart and soul of one of the major parties, I don’t even think there is a fight on the Left. I think they’re just trying to figure out how they can paint Trump to be an, and that’s their whole campaign. And they might win on that campaign. I don’t mean that it’s not a viable thing because honestly, a lot of the Democrats you talk to, they’re so bought in and brainwashed that Trump is going to destroy democracy, that that’s their whole reason for voting. And so if I can fight in a battle for the Republican party represented by the ideas of peace, that’s a fight I want to fight. And that’s why I land on being all in for Trump in ’24.
Jim: Yep. I’ll have to disagree, but I think you’ve done a great job of presenting your position and I really want to thank you for this extremely interesting, but nonetheless jovial and collegial conversation.
Cliff: I wish people could do it more, Jim, I always say politics and religion, people said, all of my growing up, don’t talk about it. Bullshit. We need to talk about it a lot more. We all need to be tired of these safe spaces and all this stuff. Doesn’t mean you have to agree, but I think free speech is probably going to be one of the biggest, biggest needs for the next couple generations. And yeah, let’s keep having conversations. We can disagree, but I appreciate the time and appreciate all your viewers.
Jim: Yeah, thanks for coming on. Now I will mention one Congress critter, I know slightly who I think is a very decent human being, and that’s Tom Massie.
Cliff: Tom Massie, who is that? I’m kidding. Thomas Massie is one of my best friends, personal hero of mine. He is what I call a unicorn in Congress. He doesn’t belong there. He has nothing in his closet. It’s very, very weird to find somebody like him that can make his way to an elected position at the federal level to keep his spine, keep his conscience. I mean he is just extremely rare. You get 50 of him, you probably save the country.
Jim: I agree. I would vote for 50 Tom Masseys. All right, Cliff, this has been wonderful. Maybe we’ll cross paths in the future.
Cliff: All right, take care Jim. Bye-Bye now.
Jim: Thanks. Bye-Bye.