The Exchanges

Q Here we are. Why did you make the career shift into politics after being a doctor for some time?

A I practiced private practice for about 20 years, was a physician for 20, 25 years, and you're like, it's a lot of work. You go through an internship, medical school, residency. I was about 30 when I finished, and so When my dad ran in 2008, really the campaigns are a year in advance. So when he ran in 2007 into 2008 for the Republican nomination, I thought I'd go out and help. I sort of volunteered and said, Dad, I'll give some speeches and went out and gave a lot of speeches on my own, not really introductory speeches, but actually my own thing and kind of felt, wow, this is great to be able to sort of express yourself and have an opinion. I always had an opinion, but now I could find somebody to listen. And so I did that in 2008. Got the bug. And then some of us being in the right place at the right time. Jim Bunning had been in the Senate two terms. Uh, he was a Hall of Fame pitcher, but he wasn't raising any money. It looked like he might not run. And so one day I'm at the office and this guy I knew from a property rights group, you know, too many, you know, lower property taxes kind of stuff. Keep the government off our land kind of stuff. He called me up and he says, Hey, I know this reporter. This AP reporter, and we think he leans kind of conservative, and he's from the Republican area of the state. Why don't you just call him up and tell him you're interested? So I had…

AI assessment note: “Got the bug. And then some of us being in the right place at the right time.”

Q That's really interesting, because I wanted to get to your core philosophy and identity. On Wikipedia, it says libertarian, constitutional conservative, Tea Party movement, Republican. How do you describe yourself, your identity, Senator?

A All of those things are, are true to a certain extent. Um, I, I like to say that, um, I'm part of the leave me alone coalition. And then sometimes I'll say, you know, I'm really, I'm part of the leave me the hell alone coalition. And that means in all sort of aspects, personal, private, my contracts, my business, what I do, my family, just leave, just leave me alone. And that encompasses a bigger group than just conservatives, a bigger group than just libertarians. Um, and I would say, There, there was a long time ago, there was a guy named, uh, Frank Myers, and Frank Myers, they called a fusionist. He was a guy who was going to be somewhere in between, uh, Buckley and, um, Murray Rothbard. Murray Rothbard is not as well known, but he was a student of von Mises, and he was a libertarian writer, and Buckley, everybody knows who Buckley is, and that became the more traditional conservative movement, and the libertarians sort of said, well, we like all that capitalism and everything, But we're worried if so much money goes into the military that maybe the military will become the state also, and that we're really against the state in all facets. We want a small state. We're defending the country. Don't get us wrong. But, and so, but somewhere in between those two, some of the libertarians would have no military. Some of them would have open borders. And then there was the conserva…

AI assessment note: “I like to say that, um, I'm part of the leave me alone coalition.”

Q I just want to ask your point on Doge. There was a lot of proclamations at the start of this administration about the importance of Doge. Elon Musk's role in the administration, the president and others in the administration declared Doge such an important part of the efforts, and all the cabinet members were incorporating Doge team members into their work. Today, is Doge dead?

A No, I, I still meet with people in government who I think are part of Doge, were probably colleagues and friends of Elon Musk and brought into the situation. I think they've been a great addition because one, there are people who know about profit and loss, and there are people who have been successful in business, and the fact that they've been selected by the marketplace as being successful people means they're good people to have in government. Is it everything I'd wished? No, but that's not the Doge people's fault. That's the people resisting Doge and resisting the cuts. I like the fact that the president pushed on with another round of the foreign aid cuts, and he's doing this pocket rescission. And, you know, I am a stickler for the rules and for the Constitution. The Constitution is very explicit on how you spend it, but it's pretty silent on not spending it. And I think the best way for people to have their doubts about whether they should do it is, imagine we need an aircraft carrier, and we hire somebody who looks at every nut and bolt, like Elon Musk and his rockets, all right? We hire Elon Musk, and we give him a billion dollars, and he says, this is crazy. I can do this for eight hundred million like this.

AI assessment note: “No, I, I still meet with people in government who I think are part of Doge”

Q I was struck by how many Senate confirmation hearings I watched where senators blatantly spoke on camera about the need to keep dollars flowing to their state. And that was the motivation. It just drove me nuts. Anyway, we'll move on. I want to talk about your new book, Deception, The Great COVID Cover-Up. What was at the heart of the cover-up from your point of view?

A Some people get nervous when you talk about cover up or conspiracy. They're like, oh, you're one of those crazy people. And I think the best way to think of a conspiracy is the way George Carlin put it. George Carlin said that it's not necessary to have a cabal of people, you know, that are all evil that get together in a room to have conspiracy. All that's necessary is to have a convergence of interest. The convergence of interest in COVID was, holy crap, we funded this. And so if you are Anthony Fauci and you know that you've made a deal to do very dangerous research in China, one, because there's less oversight in China and there's complaints beginning to circulate in America, let's outsource this to China. What's your first thought? We've got to cover this up. And that's exactly what he was doing. The phone calls went on in our, in my book. My wife helped me write it. We go on and vivid detail of the minute by minute of him going till three in the morning that first night. Email is going back and forth and back and forth. Jeremy Farrar is his counterpart at Wellcome Trust in England. He is saying, I didn't know what a burner phone was. I had to buy a burner phone. My wife said I should talk to my brother, bring him in, in case something happens to me. And then he goes on to say, it was no big deal. It turns out it just came from animals. It's like, well, you think the anima…

AI assessment note: “The convergence of interest in COVID was, holy crap, we funded this.”

Q So what is the origin of the fallacy? Is it a political tactic to drive votes?

A It's pride, and that's why I have such difficulty counteracting this. Now, what amazes me is, though, for a hundred years, economists, right, left, and center, all decided that trade was making everybody wealthy. It's more visible if you look at the trade of the people who are poor. So the poor people got astronomically, they got, uh, their, their, their multiple is much bigger, because they were much poorer to start with. But if you look at China and us from 1975 on, we both got richer. But China was so poor that their richness is more available. They didn't rip us off. You know, this isn't love of China. I wrote a book called The Case Against Socialism. I hate socialism. I hate communism. I, I wish the people there didn't have to live under that, that authoritarianism. But they didn't rip us off, and it's, it's, it's, it's easy to sell, because nationalism is easy to sell, patriotism is easy to sell, we hate the other country, we're good, they're bad, and also anybody down there luck, and I'm not saying, well, well, the historical trend is great for, for the society, middle, lower, and upper, it's not great for everybody, so there's always being people aren't doing well. Those people are attracted by nationalism, and they're protected by Blame somebody. Don't blame, don't blame myself, or don't blame anybody else. It's somebody else's fault.

AI assessment note: “It's pride, and that's why I have such difficulty counteracting this.”

Q a political leader about the role that government should play in researching ahead of the curve so that understanding what may come next, which I think is part of the argument for some of this research, that we need to understand how viruses can evolve so that we can prepare for the next pandemic, because if we don't, there will be a congressional hearing saying, Why didn't you prepare enough?

A So there's different aspects to this. Should we know how viruses evolve? Absolutely. Should we test viruses and infections from different natural sources? Yes. Gain of function is different than that. Gain of function is forcing evolution in a direction. So gain of function is I take a rat and I put human lungs in it. Not literally human lungs, but I have a, they will express receptors that make cells think that they're invading a human. So I give it a virus. And I run it through and nine, nine rats survive and one's sick as shit. What I do is I take the really sick one. I culture the virus out and I do it again. And every time I just keep culturing it till I get a virus that really attaches to human cells. We believe COVID is that because most animal viruses, the avian flu right now, if the avian flu is not manipulated in a lab, it can infect a human, but doesn't go human to human. It has trouble. That's the way animal viruses are. When COVID started, It hit humans and went everywhere. It just, there was nothing stopping it, which made us think it was pre-adapted. There are many other reasons why we think this happens, but as far as gain of function, what should be regulated and what shouldn't? One, it's very dangerous. Viruses are more dangerous than bacteria if they're aerosolized. Something that can spread through the air can be incredibly dangerous. Um, lethality. Should y…

AI assessment note: “Should we know how viruses evolve? Absolutely.”

Q Is it that in order to get reelected, you have to offer your voters something that they don't have today? And therefore, every election cycle, you have to show up with something else. No one ever gets elected by saying, I'm going to cut back half or cut back a quarter or 10% of what you're getting today. You might. But is, what, is that the dynamic? Or is this?

A I'm proof positive that you don't have to say, I'm going to bring them the bacon. I'm going to bring you your freedom. I'm going to keep the government out of your lives. And I'm going to allow you to become richer because freedom and capitalism makes us all richer, and I'm going to allow you, and it's going to be most mostly on merit, which is better than the government deciding that. So I think you can say that, and I've said it explicitly, I will never go home with a check saying we brought you this to your community because we don't have it, and it has to be borrowed, and that makes us all poorer through inflation. It is that fear though, and the president has bought into this, the president says, Social Security, we can't talk about. Medicare, we can't talk about. And really on Medicaid, he severely limited what could be talked about. Food stamps, they, they nibbled at it. They talked about some good things, but most of it's in the distant future. And, and here's the bottom line. I, I voted against the big, beautiful bill because of the debt ceiling, but also here's the projections. The CBO had a projection that was going to add three trillion. All the Republicans said, oh, CBO has too low a gray throat. We can't, we can't believe the CBO. Well, the authors of the bill did something I agreed with. They said, we're doing it based on policy, and this is what we project, that…

AI assessment note: “I'm proof positive that you don't have to say, I'm going to bring them the bacon.”

Q Is there a point of no return that you view as a year or a debt amount to GDP, a debt ratio, that becomes irreversible?

A Well, there's never, well, there is a point of return, ah, of no return Uh, for a catastrophe, and I don't know that. If I would, I'd be predicting the day, and then I'd be fine, and everybody else would get, you know, killed by the calamity. I don't know. You gotta be really smart or lucky to predict those calamities. Like, the people who saw the housing crisis were really smart, you know, and they, they figured that happening. Um, so I, I don't know that. It is going to happen, but I think what's important, and I tell people this all the time, you will always get your Social Security check. You will always get your Medicare. It will never end. But it just may not be worth anything. So there will be a point in time when we cut you your check, and there are COLAs, but, um, what happens when, if you're, if you're in 19, 23 in Germany and you get annual COLAs? It didn't work so well because the money was losing 30% an hour. You know, there were times when the German workers, and it was in 22 or 23, they wanted to be paid at noon because they didn't wait till the end of the day because it was depreciating so fast. Colas work for a while, but the cost of living increases, but they are somewhat of a game. You have a problem. You're creating this inflation. You, you hate to punish people, so you give them a cola, but the cola comes once a year. Part of the breaking point for all this…

AI assessment note: “I don't know that. If I would, I'd be predicting the day”

Q We don't seem to be cutting the budget much. Everyone wants more. Everyone wants more budget for their particular interests and their states and whatnot. What's your view on where we're headed over the next 10 years? Barring a lot of Rand Pauls getting elected to the Congress.

A The left, you know, has this modern monetary theory, and it sounds ridiculous, and it is, except that it kind of worked for 10 or 15 years. So Bush doubled the debt from five trillion to 10 trillion, but the interest rates went in half. So there's interest payments the same. You know, we went, we went from five to 10 trillion with the same interest rate. We played a lot of games to do something similar. So for the last 10 years or so, or maybe eight years, we averaged our payment was like one and a half, uh, percent for the debt. That's what we were paying. Now it's three and a half. That's a pretty significant jump, but I think if they stay where they are, it's going to be even more. So we're at a trillion in interest now. Could we go to two and what happens? All of these things are fixable. America is a great place because of capitalism. We just need to start fixing them, and it's not even draconian, just a little bit at a time. You know, for 12 years I've been saying, just raise the age three months a year for the next 20 years, and, and you'll be at 70. You may eventually have to go higher depending on longevity. The other thing you have to do is the age doesn't fix Social Security anymore. You gotta means test it. And the only difference we have with the Democrats on the means testing, well, on all of it, if they would agree to any reform, They just want to tax rich people…

AI assessment note: “We're at a trillion in interest now. Could we go to two and what happens?”

Q of central bank holdings. And as a result, we're seeing gold prices, I think 3600 bucks an ounce as of yesterday. What do you think is the path here for the dollar? Like maybe we can just kind of talk to the average person listening. Where's this taking us? Because the market wakes up to this and they're saying, These dollars aren't really, you know, what they used to be.

A I think there are two scenarios. One is the one we're used to, and that's the gradual scenario, and then the Fed tries to intervene to try to control inflation. I think they can, but I've always asked this question to very smart bankers and things. Is there a point in time at which the Fed doesn't control interest rates? And many times they'll say, well, the Fed doesn't really control the long-term interest rates after the daily stuff, that it's really controlled by the marketplace. But when is there a time in which Um, it just becomes out of control. So you have the, the government shows up and says they want to sell twenty billion dollars of the debt, nobody shows up, and the Fed has to buy all of it. I think right now of our 36 trillion dollar debt, the Fed has about a third of it. Uh, what, foreign governments have about a third, and then the marketplace has about a third. Uh, what happens when, when, when, when the private marketplace doesn't show up? Is there a time in which you have a Friday? They do this on Fridays. I think you do a Friday sale and nobody shows up and the fed buys the whole thing. What do you think happens to that Monday? Do you think you'd be trying to prepare to sell, sell some stock, you know, overnight before Monday opens? Um, and then I think you could have a calamity and some of it can be fixed. And some of it, we, we live on a house of cards beca…

AI assessment note: “I think there are two scenarios. One is the one we're used to”

Q Does that make it hard to operate in D.C. to, to be fusion? Because the, the, the kind of mechanism, the operating model in D.C. seems to be policy by party. You have to be a member of a party, and then leadership sets the agenda, and everyone falls in line.

A Yeah, and I think that's really disappointing about it, and I think a lot of the public doesn't necessarily like that, and that's why a lot of the public says they don't like either party. Um, I'm of the, the belief that, like, right now there's a great danger in our country to losing a movement that represents the free market, trade, and capitalism, and all of those things, because I think we're moving towards a movement that backs a person, and I, I feel the wrath all the time. I don't back Donald Trump enough, and so I'm to be You know, uh, I get along with Donald Trump actually on a personal level better than some of his supporters who've gone crazy, and they don't seem to remember I've supported a lot of, supported his nominees, I voted against his impeachments, I was one of the loudest voices against them, and yet they can't stand if I oppose him on one thing. That's not good. And also, there is something, trade is not an incidental issue. Trade is sort of a fundamental aspect of capitalism, and Adam Smith wrote about it. In fact, one of Adam Smith's, um, One of the sort of great nuggets that he gave to the world was the idea that the division of labor makes us richer. So if you don't have to sit around making your shoes, your clothes, your tie, and you can do something out, you have time to think, and your innovation is going to create more, more great things. But he als…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, and I think that's really disappointing about it... I feel the wrath all the time.”

Q by anyone. This is just me doing some addition in an Excel spreadsheet. Somewhere around 40 to 50% of the American workforce age population earn their income from directly from a government or a government contractor. If 40 to 50% of Americans are employed directly or indirectly by a federal state or local government or government contractor or earn their income from a government check, Can we actually reduce spending?

A And this is a real problem. When you look at our spending as a percentage of GDP, the spending part, the seven trillion, the average over the last five years is about 26%. Right now we're at 23 or 24% of GDP. And I love it because the people say, well, we'll just have tariffs and we'll run the government off tariffs. And I say, well, when they did that in the 19th century, government was three percent of GDP. I'm for that. You bring me spending bills and I'll vote for all of them to make us a 19th century government of three percent of GDP and I'll vote for all your tariffs. But that's a, that's a big change, and it is a problem, and it's sort of a two-fold problem. The people are actually working for government. You got to make government smaller so we don't have as many government jobs, but the other segment is, is worrisome, if not more, and that is the people not participating in the workforce. They're getting money, but they're not participating, and it's like, 38, 40%, 42%, depending on the state. So, 40% of the people Eligible to work, able to work, and not working. And this is, um, you know, libertarians had this debate, like, what do you do? They don't, some of them don't want any border controls. And they say, and my dad used to say this, and I kind of agree with this part, you need to build a wall around the welfare state and don't give any people coming into the cou…

AI assessment note: “You got to make government smaller so we don't have as many government jobs”