The Exchanges

Q the exact same way. But you tweeted recently about your desire to see some of those folks forgiven and pardoned. Do you want to just take a few minutes just to talk about some of those folks that you think has allowed us to actually see the truth if we want to see it and why you think that and what you think should be done with folks like that?

A I mean, Julian Assange is an example. Julian Assange is a newspaper publisher. He published leaked documents. You know, why are we, I mean, I, if I was any newspaper publisher in this country, I would be worried about that, that now he can go to jail for life because he published leaked documents of great import to the American people, of things that should not have been secret, that we should have known about, um, revelations that affect our civil rights, affect our foreign policy, affect things that we have a right to know about. And, you know, it's, it's really, It's strange that there's any support for his imprisonment among the press, and I think the press is beginning to figure this out finally. The most controversial of those figures is Edwin Snowden, but Edwin Snowden, um, released documents that showed us that we were all being spied upon, and that's important for Americans to know, and in fact, it was so important That Congress passed laws based upon his revelations to protect the American people. So why are we punishing the whistleblower rather than punishing the people who were, you know, who were illegally spying on us? That's what we should be doing. We shouldn't be jailing dissenters in our country. We shouldn't be Jailing whistleblowers. We should be jailing the people who break the law.

AI assessment note: “Julian Assange is an example. Julian Assange is a newspaper publisher.”

Q But do you believe that? That that's the.

A I don't have any question about that. I believe this was a, you know, it was, uh, as I said, it was a military response. I mean, look at who was running the, look at who was running the coronavirus response. Wouldn't you think it would be HHS? Well, when they had one warp speed, Had to present its, declassify its organizational charts to show to the FDA committee called VRBAC when they demanded it. And Warp Speed went in and showed them the organizational charts. The, the, the, the, the agency running Warp Speed and Pandemic Response was not HHS. It was NSA, the National Security Agency. Avril Haines is the Director of National Intelligence, so she was running Operation Warp Speed, and who was manufacturing? It wasn't Pfizer and Moderna. It was a 140 military contractors who, you know, had lines ready, and you say, you know, and then, you know, all of this clamped down on, on civil rights that we saw, the, the censorship, Um, the closing the churches, the, you know, the, the closing of the right to assemble, the banning of jury trials against pharmaceutical companies, they, they crushed the seventh amendment, the first amendment. They closed down 3.3 million businesses with no due process, no just compensation. Uh, they, they obliterated the fourth amendment right to, you know, uh, to, uh, against warrantless searches and seizures. With all these intrusive, ah, you know, you, y…

AI assessment note: “I don't have any question about that. I believe this was”

Q serious material shortage for renewable sources. By the middle of next decade. So what do you think is the right answer to long range energy security? And what sort of technology should we be embracing? And do you think that they scale fast enough to kind of allow us to have our economy grow in the way that it needs to to support the population demands over the next century?

A I mean, I'm agnostic about the energy sources, and I think you need to, you know, you have to be eclectic about it, and a lot of them are, are, you know, make sense locally, but we, I mean, we have enough energy, we have enough wind energy, In North Dakota, North Dakota is the windiest place on earth outside of the Arctic. In North Dakota, Montana, and Texas, we have enough wind energy to produce five times the amount of our entire grid. Um, the, the problem is, the North Dakota wind farmer cannot get his product to market because it dissipates in a, you know, we have an, Accordated grid system that simply will not efficiently move electrons across country, and we need a DC grid system that, you know, with off ramps in the big cities, et cetera, that can do that. In North Dakota, if you have an acre of farmland, it's worth about 300 bucks. If you put a wind turbine on it, it's worth about 3200 bucks. So every farmer in North Dakota wants to put wind turbines in their cornfields. And the problem is they cannot get that energy to market. That is the only choke point. And if we, and the same is true, you know, in, in, uh, in, you know, we have great solar power in this country. Um, we, we have, you know, we have an abundance of, of renewable energy in this country, and the power, the problem is the incumbents were, were, were, were operating on rules, under rules that were written…

AI assessment note: “we need a DC grid system that, you know, with off ramps in the big cities”

Q Bobby, let me ask you a question. I just want to go back a little bit, because I, I just want to make sure I heard it properly. When Callie called you, Was it to be the VP on the Trump ticket? And did you, was that asked, and did you consider it, and why did you say no to that, but then said yes to this?

A Well, I had no interest in being a vice president. If you're a vice president, it's a, you know, I grew up in politics, and vice president's the worst job in Washington. You have no budget. You have no staff except what, your budget actually all comes through the White House. So if the president, if you do something that, uh, offends the president, he can literally, you know, he can take away your plane, he can take away your staff, and he can, the only thing you really have is the Naval Observatory, which is the official residence of the vice president, and he can essentially put you under house arrest. And, you know, I have very strong views on issues, and I, you know, I felt like if I took that job, I'd be on house arrest probably on day three. So I, you know, I, um, I was not, I was never interested in that.

AI assessment note: “I had no interest in being a vice president.”

Q Bobby, can you comment on when people talk about revamping the food supply? One of the things that sometimes is not allowed to be said is that focusing on organic food and produce can Excludes certain communities. And so there's like this DEI filter that preferring that is almost racist in some way. Like, can you just comment on that whole vein of thinking and your thought on that?

A Yeah, I mean, I think feeding people poisonous food is racist, and by the way, the NAACP gets huge amounts of money every year from the food industry. It may be one of the biggest, I think, I think Coca-Cola is the biggest supporter of NAACP, so a lot of the NGOs that are supposed to be Concerned about the, the disproportionate, uh, impact on minority communities of federal policies have actually been bought off and bought into the process. And, you know, a lot of times those are the voices you hear saying this is racist. What's really racist is poisoning black Americans because these are communities that are food deserts. Um, the school lunch program is the, you know, oftentimes those communities, the biggest access that they have to food, and we're giving them poison food. We're, you know, they, many of these communities have no grocery stores. Um, they, you know, they're no big, like, they definitely don't have, uh, whole foods. They don't have access to, to those kinds of foods. Shouldn't we have national policies that Then make sure our people are healthy and, you know, they use, of course, market, uh, dynamics, but also supports. We're, we're giving Billions of dollars in agricultural subsidies for farmers to addict farmers to, to, to growing commodity agriculture, which is bad food. It's low in nutrients. It's high in chemicals. It's high in pesticides. And, you know, we…

AI assessment note: “I think feeding people poisonous food is racist, and by the way, the NAACP gets”

Q stuff. And giving people stuff costs money, and that money has to be paid back at some point. I guess, how do you think about the importance of this? And how do you think about the boundary conditions that you would You know, look to articulate and impose, uh, as you, you know, think about this role with respect to the deficit spending and the debt levels for this country.

A In terms of a boundary, I, I, you know, I would love to hear arguments about that, but I, um, you know, I, as you say, I think the debt is now 32 trillion, uh, the GDP, our GDP is around 25, uh, trillion, so that is, that's just a really alarming ratio. I, if you look at why, you know, the, the primary cause are our military expenditures. We're spending eight, uh, this year, I think, uh, eight, uh, 8.4 trillion dollars on the military budget this year. Um, but if you throw in the Homeland Security and all the surveillance and security expenditures at home, it's 1.1 trillion a year. That's 1.1 trillion a year that is attributable to, to essentially to our, our, you know, warmongering. And I don't think we can afford to be policemen of the world anymore. We have 800 bases around the world. We need to start rebuilding our middle class at home. We need to be responsible with our debt. And we need, my grandfather always said, We should make America too expensive to conquer. We should make fortress America. We should arm America to the teeth at home so that no, so we're too expensive to conquer, and then we should concentrate on building up our economic power and a robust middle class. That's what's going to make America strong, and instead of projecting military strength abroad, we ought to be projecting Our economic strength and a marketplace of ideas and economic power. I, I, you …

AI assessment note: “I can't tell you exactly what my boundaries would be.”

Q a challenging thing to, to go from your family being the bedrock of the Democratic Party and Trump being, you know, uh, obviously seen as an existential risk by the Democratic Party. So, what, what should Americans know about the state of politics and fairness in America based on what you've learned? What, what, what do you want the American people to know about the process of selecting a president?

A Well, and, you know, I do want to say that I feel Like, I didn't really leave the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party left me, and left the, um, and left the ruins of, uh, the, uh, the infrastructure that I think my uncle and father had, that had made them Democrats. If you went down a list of all of the priorities that Robert Kennedy, that John Kennedy had, I would check every box. You know, they were anti-war. They were anti-censorship. They were, they were against the corporate control of, of our country. Um, the, you know, this, this corrupt merger of state and corporate power, that now has emerged as the dominant governing model in our country. Um, the Democratic Party has changed demographically. Um, when I, I grew up with a Democratic Party that was the party of the working class in our country, that was party of, um, small businesses, That was the party of the poor. Um, in the last election, President Biden got roughly half of the country voting for him, but that half controlled 70% of, of GDP. And President Trump got about half the country voting for him, and that half represents about 30% of GDP. So, we've had this inversion where the Democratic Party has become the party of wealth, of elites, um, and I would say very insular elites, and the, um, and the Republican Party is now the party of the poor, the working class, and, uh, it's been, you know, for me to wa…

AI assessment note: “I didn't really leave the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party left me”

Q What do you think about Things like critical race theory, and maybe we can just use that as a way to just talk about the state of U.S. education in general. Are we preparing our children for the task at hand, and what is the task at hand, maybe, in your eyes, and how does it need to change, if at all?

A You know, I think critical race theory, as much as I understand it, um, is, you know, though, listen, we should not be hiding from people, we should be About the history in this country of genocide, of racism, and those things. You know, we need to be honest about that with each other. Not to shame people, not to make people, people feel badly, not to make people feel guilty, but to understand the milestones that we never want to go near again, and to move forward with those things. I, you know, in turn, I don't really understand. The battle over critical race theory in, in schools, but, you know, to the extent, if somebody would say that this has to, that that theme has to dominate all historical, um, teaching, I would be against that. I think it's very, very important. You know, America, Our country has, has done wonderful things in the world. We have a history of idealism. We have a history of moral authority and leadership, and we have a history of doing bad things too. But I think for children, for the sake of our national unity, for the sake of, you know, we need to instill children with a sense of optimism and hope and love, and also a love of history. I mean, I grew up learning history and learning, you know, kind of the heroic aspects of history, which I now understand. We're not the only parts of history, um, but it's really important for children to have, have role m…

AI assessment note: “if somebody would say that that theme has to dominate all historical, um, teaching, I would be against that.”

Q this? And when you get caught up in these debates and the presidential debates about trans athletes, as but one example, do you think a trans Woman who was a biological male should be able to be put in a female prison? Do you think they should be able to play on a female basketball team and change with a bunch of fifteen-year-old girls in a high school locker room?

A I've already said, first of all, I want to say this. I think that people, I believe in bodily autonomy, and that people's choices about what they want to do with their body should be respected, and people should not be shamed. I do not believe that, ah, that somebody who was born a biological man should be able to compete later on in life, whatever choice they made on a woman's team. I mean, I have a, ah, a niece who is, ah, playing softball at, at BC, She has worked, ah, she has devoted her entire life to getting that scholarship, and it's, it's consumed her, and I've watched, you know, during my lifetime, women's sports go from essentially non-existent to, to equitable mainly with men's sports, and I think that's important, and I don't think that, you know, um, women should lose ground Um, in, in any way. So I would, you know, I've said, I don't believe that that's the right thing, but I think everybody should be respected.

AI assessment note: “I do not believe that, ah, that somebody who was born a biological man should be able to compete”

Q To keep this bipartisan, do you believe the deep state is acting to subvert the Trump presidency and that they are framing him on these three or four indictments that they are working on, some that have dropped, some that haven't? Do you believe there's a deep state conspiracy against Trump? Because you might be facing him.

A I don't use the word deep state. I mean, I, you know, I, You know, I've described how these bureaucracies function, and it's not, it's not so much a group of people that kind of deep split state implies there's a group of people and it's kind of, you know, black coats in a smoky room pulling strings, but the corruption is systemic. The, these, ah, you know, all of these agencies are captive agencies. The CIA is ultimately working for a, for industry like the oil industry, the coal industry, and the military contract. And that they've always had that tie since the very beginning, know, Alan Dulles, who had worked for Sullivan Cromwell and ended up doing coup d'etats on behalf of his former clients like Texaco and United Fruit, Texaco and BP and and, uh, in in my, in, in, in, in in in in in in in in, in, in in in, in, Tried to nationalize United Fruit. You know, the CIA under Dulles went over through the government to protect the interests of his former clients, so there's always been these ties to industry, and the ties now, and particularly the oil industry, And the ties to, um, to the military industrial contractors really drive CIA action and CIA intelligence, and we have to, you know, you have to stop. And this is systemic in all these agencies. I mean, USDA is run by Cargill. Smithfield, um, Monsanto, um, Bo Pilgrim, John Tyson, EPA is right. When we sued EPA, uh, we got di…

AI assessment note: “I don't use the word deep state.”

Q Do you think that we somehow allowed Zelensky to believe that we would allow him into NATO? Meaning, do you think that US foreign policy somehow almost induced this thing to happen? I just want to try to understand the boundaries.

A We have been doing integrative military exercises with the Ukrainian military, so we were actively integrating them into NATO forces. There was no question. That, you know, the one thing that Putin said from the outset, this is a red line. You know, when my uncle was president, one of the things that he said, he said a couple of things. He said, number one, the principal job of a president of the United States is to keep the nation out of war, and he succeeded doing that during his term in office. He sent 16,000 military advisors to Vietnam who were not, were not authorized to participate in combat. That didn't mean that some of them didn't. They were not authorized, and in fact, that was fewer federal troops than he sent to get James Meredith into the University of Mississippi. So he sent fewer to Vietnam, and two weeks before he died, He signed a national security order ordering all of those troops home by 1965, with the first thousand to come home that month, by November, and he died two weeks later. So, and then, of course, Johnson came in and remanded the war and sent 250,000 troops over there, which is what all of my uncle's military advisors wanted him to do, and he stood up to them. Um, one of the other things my uncle said, and You know, the anniversary of his speech at American University, which is an extraordinary speech, probably one of the best in American history.…

AI assessment note: “we were actively integrating them into NATO forces. There was no question.”

Q How are you going to cut the federal budget when you're sending over a hundred billion to Ukraine? There's, you can't, you have no more authority to do it.

A I want to finish that by saying, you know, you're like tinkering in the engine room when the ship is sinking, you know, because the, you know, the, or, or switching tech teachers on the Titanic. Let's deal with the real problem. Let's figure out how to make this This nation, a nation that is really focused on taking care of our people inside rather than saying, okay, well, in order to pay for the Ukraine war, we gotta screw every American on Social Security and Medicare. We've had, by the way, the inflation that we've created from, you know, from, from just printing money Is making my friend Keith's food twice expensive, so the cost of stables in this country was raised by 76% in two years, and now they're cutting his food stamps and bailing out the same month, three hundred million dollars, the Silicon Valley bank. We gotta, I mean, it doesn't make any sense, and having this kind of conversation How do we screw the poor to make sure that we can, you know, we can milk them while we're doing all of this crazy? It's like this country is acting like the alcoholic who is behind on his mortgage and who takes the milk money and goes into the bar and buys rounds for strangers. You know, that's what you're dealing with.

AI assessment note: “Let's deal with the real problem. Let's figure out how to make this”

Q going to cause a massive crisis, whether it's not this year, maybe it's in five years or 10 years. Right now it's projected social security will go bankrupt in 2035, 20 34, around that range. So this is coming up fast. What are we going to be cutting besides defense and, or are we going to be raising taxes to 70%, do you think? To kind of bridge this hole.

A I can't answer that question any better than I already have. You know, I think there are targets for opportunity in the, uh, in the Homeland Security. I think once we stop Fighting these words all over the world. There's a lot less need for us to have a surveillance state at home, so the real cost in the military is 1.1 trillion a year, not just the 800 trillion that shows up on the book, and I think those are targets for opportunity, and I, I can't, you know, I have to, I need to study more the issue about how to, how to get back into a balanced budget. I, you know, one of the things I'd say disturbs me Is that I don't think we should be playing chicken in Congress about raising the debt ceiling, um, because I, I don't think we should mess around with the full faith and credit of the United States, particularly at this point in time.

AI assessment note: “I need to study more the issue about how to get back into a balanced budget”

Q And how much the party matters in this process for you?

A I don't know that they're gonna. I mean, it was kind of traumatic what happened this week to them, not to me, because I'm used to it, that ABC, you know, one of their, the, the, a person who describes herself As the journalist journalist, and gave me a long talk when I got to ABC, um, that, uh, when I got to the green room, that she was not somebody who would ever censor or cut, and they're not working to cherry pick, because I said to her, I don't, I'm very uncomfortable doing a taped interview with you, because I know what you guys do when I tape an interview. You cut it up, you cherry pick it, you dice it, and you do, and you then you play things out of context. And she said, you won't do this. See that from me. I'm a journalist journalist. I don't take orders from anybody. I do. And then she asked me, she says, you know, in the interview, I didn't want to talk about vaccines. I'm not going around the country talking about vaccines. If you see my speeches, I'm, I don't mention vaccines. I, but if somebody asks me about vaccines, I'm going to tell the truth. I'm not looking to talk about them. I know a lot about them, but I'm not leading with that because I, I'm interested in a lot of other issues. Oh, she says, um, everything you've said about vaccines, about vaccines and autism has been debunked. And, um, you know, vaccines, it's clear, do not cause autism. What do you have…

AI assessment note: “I don't know that they're gonna. I mean, it was kind of traumatic what happened”