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Kibbe on Liberty
Ep 319 | The Department of Education Is on the Chopping Block with Good Reason | Guest: Glenn Jacobs
00:57:46
Matt Kibbe is joined by pro wrestler and Knox County, Tennessee, Mayor Glenn Jacobs to debunk these nonsensical claims about the Department of Education.
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- [00:01]
Matt Kibbe
Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. I'm talking with Glenn Jacobs, the mayor of Knox county and famous WWE wrestler Kane. And we talk about the most obvious things. The band Rush, Austrian economics, Ludwig von Mises, Ron Paul, and why the Democrats are going bananas about Donald Trump and Doge going after USAID and the Department of Education. Check it out. Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. When did you just discover Rush?
- [01:03]
Glenn Jacobs
Oh, before I ever got into political.
- [01:05]
Matt Kibbe
Stuff, like as a kid. Okay.
- [01:08]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah, I had. I had some cousins. I grew up in the country. I had some cousins down in St. Louis, and they were very much the big city. Yeah. Then Kerry Von Erich, who is very famous wrestler from Dallas. And that was a big company at the time, back in the. In the mid-80s, world class championship wrestling. His dad owned it. Fritz Von Erich. If you haven't seen the movie Iron Claw yet, it's very good. It's very depressing. But he came out to Tom Sawyer was his entrance music. So there's. There's some crossover with wrestling as well.
- [01:44]
Matt Kibbe
So I grew up in Western Pennsylvania in a place most people don't know about, called Erie. Yeah, the most important thing about Erie is that it's halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, which means in the late 70s, early 80s, when I was in high school, all of these bands like Led Zeppelin and ACDC and Rush and Peter Frampton and the list goes on and on. And I marinated in all that music. And that's how I found Rush when I was 13 or something.
- [02:17]
Glenn Jacobs
But they would come through on the way to wherever place.
- [02:21]
Matt Kibbe
Right in the glory days when they really played insanely heavy progressive metal.
- [02:26]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah.
- [02:28]
Matt Kibbe
So my favorite album is Farewell to Kings and I have my little shrine to Neil Peart and all of that. And that was my gateway drug because I bought 2112 and it's dedicated to the genius of Ayn Rand. And I just followed that, really. Those breadcrumbs. I accidentally found a copy of Anthony. I'm like, that's that guy. Ayn Rand.
- [02:53]
Glenn Jacobs
That's that guy Ayn Rand.
- [02:55]
Matt Kibbe
I thought it was a dude. And the only reason I remembered her name is because it was different and interesting. And that was. I never turned back. And she eventually says, read Ludwig von Mises in her nonfiction. I'm like, who's that guy?
- [03:10]
Glenn Jacobs
Yep.
- [03:11]
Matt Kibbe
And this is before Ron Paul and the Internet, so I couldn't get it that way. But did you notice their sort of libertarian instincts?
- [03:20]
Glenn Jacobs
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Especially after I educated myself a little bit on political philosophy. And you realize, yeah, this is exactly what they're talking about, you know, one of my favorite lines ever is scheming demons. Scheming demons dressed in kingly guys. I was like, oh, they're talking about.
- [03:44]
Matt Kibbe
They're talking about election.
- [03:46]
Glenn Jacobs
High elected office.
- [03:47]
Matt Kibbe
Right, right.
- [03:49]
Glenn Jacobs
Unfortunately, yeah. It was funny. When I was in college, I went through this phase. Like, I would just play 2112, like, just on repeat on my back. Then it was a tape deck. I never forget, man. One day I'm in my room and I'm. I'm studying, But I'm blaring 2112. And it ends. And I hear my roommate call out from next door. He's like, what are we gonna listen to next? I'm like.
- [04:19]
Matt Kibbe
That'S awesome.
- [04:19]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah.
- [04:21]
Matt Kibbe
I actually. To take it even a step back further, some kids during those music things in high school where you could just spend a segment bringing in albums and people would listen to them. They were playing A Farewell, not A Farewell to Kings. All the world's a stage. And that's the album that I wanted, but I couldn't find it. So I had to settle for 21:12. Because back in the day, the record industrial complex, they wanted you to. The record industrial complex, they wanted you to listen to Captain and Tenille. And I wanted my Rush album. So it's quite liberating today that people and everybody that doesn't know Rush should immediately go out and stream it on Spotify.
- [05:09]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah. One of my favorite songs of theirs is. Is Trees.
- [05:14]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [05:14]
Glenn Jacobs
It's a socialism.
- [05:15]
Matt Kibbe
Right, Right.
- [05:17]
Glenn Jacobs
What does it say? That the. The trees will all be kept equal by Hatchet, Ax and Saw.
- [05:22]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [05:22]
Glenn Jacobs
Like, there you have it. That's socialism, ladies and gentlemen.
- [05:25]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. Yeah. And he had a way. Neil had such a way of translating really complex ideas. That's the magic of it. Right. You don't need to. You don't need to pick up human action.
- [05:36]
Glenn Jacobs
Right, exactly.
- [05:37]
Matt Kibbe
To get what he's talking about.
- [05:38]
Glenn Jacobs
Or you don't. Yeah. You don't need to read Atlas Shrugged.
- [05:40]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. When did you. So you're sort of marinating in this very important philosopher king, Neil Peart, and. But when. What was your. I'm sure I've asked you this before, but when did you first discover the Austrians?
- [05:59]
Glenn Jacobs
So let's back up a little bit. Obviously, in wwe, we're around our colleagues and our fellow performers, in many cases more than we were our families. I was on the road 250, 300 days a year sometimes. So for whatever reason, this was in the late 1990s, very early 2000s and I was. I had taken. And I'd always been interested in politics and government and those sort of things. I'd never been interested in economics because I was intimidated by numbers. My sister's the mathematician of the family. She actually has an undergraduate degree in math. I didn't speak the math language really well. My degree's in English Lit. So I was intimidated by economics. Never took an economics course in any of my formal education. But I had an interest in politics and I was trying to figure out basically what I believed and who I wanted to align with. And I would read stuff from, quote, unquote, both sides of the political, political aisle. So I would read something from conservatives, read some from liberals, and I could pull stuff out that, on both sides that I, that I agreed with. But there are things also that I didn't. Didn't necessarily wasn't comfortable with. Especially this is back, you know, during the, the Bush years and, you know, all the heavy emphasis on social conservatism. I knew that I hated taxes and I was a fiscal conservative. I don't call myself a social liberal because that's not the case personally, I'm a social conservative. But I also felt the government shouldn't be mandating all these things in our personal life. So one day I was talking with one of my co workers, a guy named Sean Morley, and he told me I sounded like a libertarian. And I told him if he called me names again, I was going to punch him in the mouth because I'd never heard that before. But basically that it does sound like an insult. It does, but that I was like, okay. And he explained that the Nolan chart, where it's not just the left and right, but it's also up and down as far as freedom versus authoritarianism. So that piqued my interest and I just kind of went down the rabbit hole. But I started with political theory and really legal theory and was reading people like, more. I actually started Rothbard with the political stuff, not the economic stuff. Same with Ron Paul. But all these people were talking about.
- [08:37]
Matt Kibbe
For a new liberty kind of stuff.
- [08:39]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah, but all these, all these folks were talking about this thing called Austrian economics. And man, I was, I was like, no, I'm not. I'm not going to go in. I'm not going to go down the calculus hole and floor in and read about in the algebra hole and all this math. But then finally I'm like, well, this seems really important because all these people that I respect in these other areas are talking about it. So I ordered a Copy of what Has Government Done to Our Money? There is one formula in the entire book, and it's basically, you know, the money multiplier and how that affects the money supply based on the reserve ratio of banks. Right. That was it. The rest was about theory and human action before I really knew there was a book called Human Action. That's when I fell in love with it, though, and I realized this is what I've been looking for. And economics is not about numbers. That's econometrics, which is really a pseudoscience. But human action is actually the study of economics. And you can't separate. You cannot separate human liberty into two different areas of this. This idea of personal freedom and economic freedom. They're intertwined, and you just can't do that. And the more you kind of go down, especially the Austrian economics hole, you realize the basis of everything is economic freedom, because it's really, how do we use our time, how do we economize our time? And that's. Every decision we make is based on that. So that's it. And then, I mean, I ended up reading everything from human action to man, economy and state and everything in between, and it changed my perspective, not only about economics, but really about politics.
- [10:24]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. Yeah. And I could spend the next six hours talking about this.
- [10:30]
Glenn Jacobs
Sure.
- [10:30]
Matt Kibbe
And I've mentioned this to you before, but I'm working with my friend Peter Bettke, the great Austrian economist at George Mason, and I'm going to be working on a monograph, actually, with Logan on Austrian economics and popular culture, starting with, like, Ben Roge and Leonard Reed and maybe before or after Big ears, I'm a big fan of your music festival in Knoxville. We could sit down and have some conversations about Austrian economics, because I think not starting with Ron Paul, but Ron Paul put all those Easter eggs in his speech just at the time when you could Google and say, who is this guy? Ludwig von Mises? And it's just exploded since then. And right now, I would argue that the most persuasive Austrian economists are professional wrestlers and maybe MMA fighters. MA fighters.
- [11:23]
Glenn Jacobs
It's amazing, isn't it?
- [11:24]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [11:24]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah.
- [11:25]
Matt Kibbe
I want to try to talk to him, too.
- [11:28]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah, well, you know, the fact that, you know, Mr. Money is. Wins the fight and tells the crowd to read me, you know, and I was like, what world am I living in right now?
- [11:39]
Matt Kibbe
They can have Taylor Swift.
- [11:41]
Glenn Jacobs
Exactly.
- [11:41]
Matt Kibbe
I'll take.
- [11:42]
Glenn Jacobs
Well, even. But look at. Look at what's happened with Elon Musk.
- [11:44]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [11:44]
Glenn Jacobs
You know, and he's talking about Hayek and even though Seoul's not necessarily an Austrian and he's pretty solid with his economics. Right. So it's amazing to see how, how these things, which were once really obscure and just scholarly, how now they've penetrated into pop culture and you see these figures literally disseminating them to the masses and as you said, you know, carrying on what Ron Paul did of hey, you really need to read and it's not. The wonderful thing about orchestra and economics is literally common sense.
- [12:16]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [12:17]
Glenn Jacobs
You know, and I, I really think that people are a lot smarter than they give themselves credit for. What happens is you have these experts who basically talk down to people and you have the forbidden knowledge that only they possess. They don't want, you know, Paul Krugman doesn't want you to understand these things because if you do, you're going to read his article and say, whatever, dude. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. So it is kind of neat to see that we've circumnavigated academia to some extent. I mean, there's some good people there. But it's been through pop culture two or three, but it's been through pop culture now that you see more and more people talking about this issue.
- [13:00]
Matt Kibbe
This was the dream of what the Internet could do.
- [13:05]
Glenn Jacobs
I wouldn't just like you, I would not be. I mean, the way I found out about what has government done to our money, was able to order it was because I had the Internet.
- [13:12]
Matt Kibbe
Right.
- [13:13]
Glenn Jacobs
If I hadn't had that, there's no way I would have ever, ever even gone down that rabbit hole.
- [13:19]
Matt Kibbe
It levels the playing field and perhaps that's why the bad guys are freaking out right now, I'd say, because I think like, you know, Elon Musk has been red pilled and it's fascinating. I want to talk particularly about, about Doge and the cool things happening there. But there's this fascinating group of very important, very smart, very influential people who come from the left. They thought they were Democrats, they thought the Democratic Party left them with their radical authoritarianism. But now they're sort of self educating. And it's not just Elon Musk. There's all sorts of really serious people quoting Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises.
- [14:00]
Glenn Jacobs
And I'm like, it's a beautiful thing.
- [14:01]
Matt Kibbe
I'm here for it, I'm here for it. So it's pretty cool. But you must feel a little anxious being here in the belly of the beast.
- [14:08]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. We're in Washington D.C. and I always Get a little nervous when I come here because it is. It is, unfortunately, kind of where all this stuff emanates from.
- [14:18]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. And you sent me a very scary article today. Maxine waters and some 30 other Democratic legislators seem to be trying to start an insurrection outside the Department of Education. What's that about?
- [14:32]
Glenn Jacobs
I mean, certainly that's what they'd be calling if it were Republicans doing it, but, yeah, they had gathered in front of the Department of Education and tried to force their way in, and an employee told them that they weren't authorized to enter. And then, of course, like, we're Congress people, we can go over we want. But, Matt, these folks, they've just gone off the rails now. They've gone off the edge. And, you know, it's all about virtue signaling. They, you know, they had their big rally the other day of no one elected Elon. Well, no one did elect Elon, but the dude that we elected said he was going to unleash Elon on all these things. So we voted for what Elon's doing. Um, and I, you know, you look and you're like, how can you be so invested in fighting against reducing government waste? Yeah, how can you be so invested in. You know, they're the progressives, which means they're the ones that think, you know, ahead. Well, maybe this thing we call the Department of Education isn't the best way to go. Shouldn't we at least talk about it instead of this knee jerk. Oh, my gosh, you're trying to destroy education in our country. Well, no, no. The system just isn't working optimally by any stretch of the imagination. And again, or you look at usad, foreign aid takes people, Takes the money from poor people in rich countries and gives it to rich people in poor countries. But we're all about. To the left, you're all about poor folks. You're taking their money and in many cases, sending it to autocrats and oligarchs overseas. How can you justify those things? And it's almost like that they've been so. So just fossilized in their thinking that they can't break out of that anymore. And I think that's. I actually think that's going to be the end of, of many of them, because I think once enough young people start looking at this and reading Mises and all these other folks that realize those people have not a clue what they're talking about, and this is all about political power in the end.
- [16:33]
Matt Kibbe
Well, that's what I was going to say. I'm going to Offer a more cynical interpretation.
- [16:37]
Glenn Jacobs
And oh, my gosh, Trump's doing this orange man bad.
- [16:40]
Matt Kibbe
Stop. It's funny, I actually read the Doge executive order because there was all this suddenly our friends on the left are rediscovering the separation of powers and that Congress has the power of the purse and they are supposed to legislate, and the executive branch is supposed to legitimate within his things. But the Doge Department is actually something that Barack Obama created under Obamacare. Isn't it amazing to focus on computer systems and data integrity? Well, that's precisely what they're doing. And I can't wait till they get to the big boys like Medicare, Medicaid. I'm now starting to think that there's a lot more waste, fraud and abuse in those systems than even I imagined.
- [17:26]
Glenn Jacobs
I would tend to agree. Obviously, that's just impressions that we have, but I mean, you can just see the kind of nuggets that they've thrown out thus far. Probably for you and me, we're like, yeah, we thought that all along. But for the average person out there who doesn't pay that close attention to these things, it's probably shocking.
- [17:47]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [17:47]
Glenn Jacobs
To see that we fund transgender studies or, you know, creating transgenderism in rats. Right. That we're sending money to China to do experiments and torture dogs. And those are just those. That's not even.
- [18:02]
Matt Kibbe
Those are the best. Those are the best programs.
- [18:04]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah. And, yeah, but those are actually the small. The small dollar programs. Imagine what happens when they get to the big stuff.
- [18:12]
Matt Kibbe
Regular viewers of Kibbe on Liberty already know how obsessed I have been with the pandemic industrial complex and all of the stupid, authoritarian and downright evil things that the government did to us during COVID 19. Well, I'm proud to announce a new investigative series that looks to get to the bottom of all of that. It's called the COVID up and I'm producing it in cooperation with BlazeTV. The only place you're going to see this is Blaze TV. So go to fauci coverup.com kibbe and use the code FAUCI LIDE for $30 off here, your annual subscription. Do it now. The truth is out there. Well, I think so. Particularly, it's interesting that they've started with USAID and the Department of Education, because I think the exposure is that none of those dollars were going to help poor people. No, none of those dollars in the Department of Education were going to help children or to fund teachers. It was a slush fund funding bureaucracy at best. At best. And at worst, particularly with these USAID programs. Rand Paul's been talking about this a long time, but now everybody knows that usaid, and not just Fauci's niaid, it's a slush fund for these intelligence and defense agencies that were not allowed to do gain of function research. There were compliance offices in those agencies, but there were no compliance offices at USAID or NIH because no one imagined that they would ever do bioweapons research.
- [19:56]
Glenn Jacobs
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't USAID actually funding military research in China?
- [20:05]
Matt Kibbe
Yes, yes, yes.
- [20:06]
Glenn Jacobs
So you Chinese, which are an adversarial power, and we have an agency from the United States federal government that is helping to fund some of the things that we're doing right. And if that doesn't throw us red flags, I have no idea what will.
- [20:24]
Matt Kibbe
Teaching the CCP how to do it for themselves.
- [20:27]
Glenn Jacobs
Unbelievable.
- [20:28]
Matt Kibbe
I can't even quite fathom.
- [20:30]
Glenn Jacobs
It's unconscionable that that would happen.
- [20:32]
Matt Kibbe
I can't fathom because the entire logic. And I could spend the rest of the show picking apart the logic, but the logic of this radical expansion of Fauci's power. It's actually Dick Cheney's project.
- [20:45]
Glenn Jacobs
Yes.
- [20:47]
Matt Kibbe
It's a neoconservative, fatally conceded idea that we're going to map out any potential bioweapon that our worst enemies might create. And in the process, we're going to work with our worst enemies to create those bioweapons.
- [21:01]
Glenn Jacobs
It literally is what has been done. I see you have a copy of Deception over there by Rand Paul and he talks about how. Talk about no common sense. You're literally creating vaccines for diseases that don't exist in nature. So you're creating the diseases that you're creating a vaccine to prevent. But then it looks like the preponderance of evidence looks like what happened with COVID is you created this disease. And there's. There's many reasons I say that. For instance, the cleavage, the fur on cleavage site does not exist in any coronaviruses in nature. When the, The COVID the SARS, COV2, when it was first discovered, it took SARS. I forget how many generations of mutation before it was a danger to humans.
- [22:01]
Matt Kibbe
Right.
- [22:02]
Glenn Jacobs
The virus that causes Covid was immediately there. That does not happen in nature. We can't find a predecessor to that. So. And then also just all the circumstantial evidence about destroyed records and all those sort of things. But you are literally created this thing so you could create a vaccine against this Thing. But then the thing, and I don't think it was done deliberately, I think was an accident, but then the thing got out of the lab and millions of people died.
- [22:29]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [22:29]
Glenn Jacobs
And it should have never. It doesn't exist in nature and it should never been introduced into our world.
- [22:34]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. I. I can't believe that they did it on purpose.
- [22:37]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah. Even the Chinese. I don't. I don't think that they did. But the problem is it was just very ill advised, what they were doing.
- [22:47]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. And you mentioned Ren Paul, who is no longer the ranking minority member of the Homeland Security Committee. And that's going to be fascinating. He has already issued his first subpoenas and he is loaded for bear. And I did an episode of the show. I'm doing the COVID up with him. I think it was six or eight months ago now that we actually taped it. And so much of the conversation is frustration that the Justice Department won't cooperate and the Democrats won't cooperate, and the agencies, the health agencies won't cooperate. But if you actually wanted to get answers from the DOD or the FBI or the CIA, he's like, can't do it. They don't care. It's as if we work for them. But now he's the chairman, and I think it's going to get quite interesting. He's the chairman with a Justice Department that I would expect would cooperate and an FBI that will cooperate. And our good friend Jay Bhattacharya will be heading up the nih.
- [23:52]
Glenn Jacobs
How great is that?
- [23:54]
Matt Kibbe
Things are going to get spicy.
- [23:56]
Glenn Jacobs
They sure are. Well, when you think about transparency, let's turn to my friend Congressman Tim Burchett, who's also my predecessor's Knox county mayor. Tim's been talking a lot about UFOs, and people think, oh, Burchett and his little green men are flying saucers. But he'll tell you that's not what it's about. It's about transparency. And he couldn't get answers from the dod.
- [24:18]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [24:19]
Glenn Jacobs
He funds the dod.
- [24:21]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [24:21]
Glenn Jacobs
Right. They have to pass their funding. And the DoD refused to answer questions about this subject. And Tim's point is, if they're hiding this from us, what else are they hiding from us?
- [24:34]
Matt Kibbe
Right.
- [24:34]
Glenn Jacobs
You know, and it doesn't have anything to do with little green men and flying saucers. It has to do with transparency and the fact that they are supposed to work for us. And as you said, apparently they think that everybody's working for them.
- [24:47]
Matt Kibbe
It goes back to Maxine Waters and her clownish colleagues. You didn't say that I did. They don't quite like they're pretending that they have discovered the separation of powers and they're now suddenly worried about executive overreach. But there is, of course, an Education Committee. That's not exactly what it's called, but there's a House Education Committee and they do have legislative oversight, but it's not storming the doors of the Department of Education. It's actually setting up a hearing.
- [25:20]
Glenn Jacobs
Right.
- [25:20]
Matt Kibbe
And asking as Linda McMahon been confirmed?
- [25:26]
Glenn Jacobs
I don't know, actually. I don't believe so, but I'm not sure.
- [25:29]
Matt Kibbe
Do you know, Logan, check. Check it out. But by the way, how many other heads of government agencies have you ever chokeslammed before?
- [25:39]
Glenn Jacobs
None.
- [25:40]
Matt Kibbe
None.
- [25:41]
Glenn Jacobs
Few that I would probably like to, but none.
- [25:44]
Matt Kibbe
Wasn't there a video of you.
- [25:45]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah. Choke slamming a tombstone pile driver.
- [25:48]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
- [25:49]
Glenn Jacobs
We were just discussing school choice and she was. Maybe that's not true. Linda's great. She is incredibly competent.
- [25:56]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [25:57]
Glenn Jacobs
And she's gonna do a wonderful job. And, you know, one of the things that I, when I, she did get confirmed, because I sent her, I came when she was nominated, I sent her a text and talking about how we just got school choice passed in Tennessee, universal school choice. And she said that she would be pushing that around the country. So that, that was good to hear. And she's another person who is definitely, you know, definitely aligned with President Trump's thoughts on things. Like, it's been very refreshing to see his take on education, you know, and Terry, all the, all these folks that. Sorry, I just called you your wife's name. Sorry, Matt. All these folks that.
- [26:41]
Matt Kibbe
Everybody does that, by the way. It's because they like her again.
- [26:44]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah. But, you know, and the left does it this with so many things. Well, you get rid of the Department of Education, what's going to happen? Well, the states are going to take it over like they did before 1980.
- [26:56]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [26:57]
Glenn Jacobs
You know, and that's, that's the issue with so many of these things. You know, obviously, as where I am politically, you know, as kind of a libertarian, a lot of these things I don't like seeing government do anyway at all. But if government's going to do it, I'd rather the states do it because that's what conforms to the Constitution of federalism as opposed to the federal government. Yeah. So this, you know, this going off the rails over things, the reason is because they no longer control it.
- [27:24]
Matt Kibbe
Right.
- [27:24]
Glenn Jacobs
That's why. It's not because your kids aren't going to be able to go to a public school. In fact, probably able to go to a better public school because you won't be wasting all this money on bureaucrats in Washington D.C. but the real reason is because then Maxine Waters doesn't get to control the whole thing like she does now.
- [27:39]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, it's interesting to this accusation that or this myth that if we eliminate the Department of Education, education goes away. Well, it's silly because I think that the evidence is quite obvious that the Department of Education, since Jimmy Carter created it, has degraded the quality of local education by creating a lot of bureaucratic bloats, by creating a lot of diversions, by creating an obsession with testing instead of teaching and at this point and.
- [28:14]
Glenn Jacobs
The social engineering that have, that's come out through there as well.
- [28:18]
Matt Kibbe
So will, will Tennessee be okay without the Department of Education?
- [28:21]
Glenn Jacobs
Oh man, I don't know. I guess we'll have to find out. But I think we'll be just fine. In fact, we would welcome that and not sending all this money to Washington, being able to keep it ourselves.
- [28:32]
Matt Kibbe
How is Tennessee in terms of choice and, and quality of education?
- [28:38]
Glenn Jacobs
So we just passed the school choice, you universal school choice this year. It's a smaller program. There's 2,000 scholarships available, but it's a start. And you know what I always tell people is I don't think this is going to have an impact on a huge amount of people, but it'll have a huge impact on the people that need it. The kids that aren't going to thrive within your conventional school. My brother was kind of like that. He went to a VO Tech school. He didn't go to, he didn't go to a conventional school all the time. So for those kids it's vitally important. We've moved up the educational rankings over the years, frankly, just by spending a lot more money. But we have a pretty robust post secondary system as well. One of the things that I was really happy about was the governor has really been pushing CTE career technical education, which is something that I, that I also think is vitally important. You know, I think the biggest issue with our education system is that it's all about the square, square pegs and round holes. Well, not every kid's going to fit into that and not every kid is going to thrive going to four year university. You know, some kids are more technically inclined, some kids want to go into the military, you know, all of those things. And we should, we should allow our children to experience those different career paths and those different vocations instead of saying, if you don't make, you know, really good grades in school, we should all strive for that. But if you don't make really good grades in school and go to this university and go 50,000, $100,000 in debt and graduate with a degree that you don't know you're going to do with, you're a failure. No, you know, success depends on the individual. And I think that we can all be successful given the right tools.
- [30:33]
Matt Kibbe
You know, the push in Tennessee and these other states, and there's a. There's a wildfire going on across the country where rhino Republicans who were sort of in bed with the teachers unions, were replaced with people that actually want to fix the education system. But that I think that started. It's one of the upsides of lockdowns, one of the upsides of all the damage we did. Yeah, yeah.
- [30:54]
Glenn Jacobs
Parents saw what was happening in their schools.
- [30:56]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. And part of it is it's not just the crazy curriculum stuff, you know, it's not just the crazy transgender stuff. They saw that the process itself was one size fits all. It's all about obedience and regimentation. There's nothing individualized about it. It doesn't treat your child any different than anyone. And it basically punishes the kind of individuality and creative thinking that you would want your children to have access to.
- [31:27]
Glenn Jacobs
Right. You a Pink Floyd fan?
- [31:30]
Matt Kibbe
Oh, yeah.
- [31:31]
Glenn Jacobs
Another brick in the wall. I mean, you know, when people thought that's that album was anti education, it wasn't anti education.
- [31:38]
Matt Kibbe
Right.
- [31:38]
Glenn Jacobs
It was about conformity and. Exactly. We're talking about here, you know, basically saying that, you know, everyone's the same and you have to go. You're a round peg and a round hole, whether you like it or not. And that's just not the case, you know, so to me, school choice actually means more than just, you know, private schools. It means a diversity of educational opportunities and career exposure opportunities within whatever education system that we have.
- [32:06]
Matt Kibbe
Which demands that it become more and more local.
- [32:10]
Glenn Jacobs
Yes, absolutely.
- [32:10]
Matt Kibbe
It demands that the people making decisions actually know the children and understand and listen to parents and children about what. Where they want to go, what they're good at.
- [32:20]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah. I've been really proud of our local school system. They've gone to an academy model, which basically means that we have nine high schools in Knox County. Each of them have. Essentially, you all have to take the same core curriculum, but for your electives, depending on the academy you go to. It's about work based learning.
- [32:45]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [32:46]
Glenn Jacobs
And they've. They've involved industry now. So, you know, you can actually go out and work at a company or the company comes to you or the business comes to you, because our economy. And now, granted, you know, they may move away, but our economy in Knox county is going to be different, and the needs of our businesses are going to be different than other places are. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to marry the needs with our education system. And obviously, also, you know, right now, there's just the way the global economy is going. You know, it's innovation and tech. You know, so a lot of that core is also things like stem, you know, computer science and those sort of things.
- [33:27]
Matt Kibbe
But Vivek Ramaswamy would be proud.
- [33:30]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah.
- [33:31]
Matt Kibbe
Yes.
- [33:31]
Glenn Jacobs
But, you know, it really is trying to work. For a long time. When I first came into office, for a long time, our schools have been very insular and that we educate the kids and then they're yours. Yeah, well, you're not. You're not giving them the tools that they need, you know, to survive, to be able to thrive afterwards. So I've just been very happy with them and that our schools have realized that they're part of a community, they're part of a larger thing, and their job is to prepare kids for the future. But the only way they can do that is by having the people that are actually, actually going to employ them involved in the process.
- [34:04]
Matt Kibbe
That's crazy talk.
- [34:05]
Glenn Jacobs
I know, right?
- [34:06]
Matt Kibbe
Are you saying closed bureaucracies don't care more about our kids than we do?
- [34:11]
Glenn Jacobs
Right.
- [34:12]
Matt Kibbe
Wow. Wow. So the DOGE thing. So we're going to deal with Department of Education. Thomas Massie tweeted out today, something that I've been preaching for 15 years, and he said it differently than I would, but he's like, the uniparty is not ready to do the heavy lifting now that Doge has exposed USAID corruption at the Department of Education. And they're obviously going to go through maybe everything. But conversely, this wave of. I haven't seen a grassroots wave quite like this since the Tea Party days. On the nominations, the nomination of Tulsi, the nomination of Kash Patel, the nomination of RFK Jr. If they had their own devices, the Republicans would kill those nominations. But I think it's going to be very difficult for them to do that. I'm hoping that wave continues, because ultimately, if you ultimately want to end the Department of Education, defund it, you're going to have to kill it and bury it in the ground. And that's a legislative project.
- [35:25]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah. All of them are. They just are. Especially now when Congress has figured out, as you said, well, they knew it all along, but now when they are talking about separation of powers. And I think, you know, I was a big Ron Paul guy back in 2008 and I was like, I always thought if Ron Paul had become president, we'd actually find out how powerful Congress is and how weak the presidency is because they just overridden everything that he did. Different story with Donald Trump because just his personality, but also, you know, I'm generally not a big one on executive orders. What he's doing is, is pretty amazing though, because a lot of what he's doing is actually just turning back other executive orders. Yeah, he's not really legislating in that way, which is the problem with executive orders. So this, I think when, I think when President Trump won in 2016, I think they were a little surprised when they got into office. And I once heard him at a private event say that he was new to politics and he didn't really know what he was doing because he was brand new. This time they know what they're doing. I mean, it has been impressive. I think Susie Wiles is brilliant and, you know, these first two weeks have been amazing, but it's only the first two weeks. Sure. And then as you said, eventually, you know, you start losing that momentum and the problem always is, you know, hey, I'm with you for everything else, man. I can't be with you on that one. And everybody has their one thing. So, yeah, I think that he's made a lot of progress over these first couple weeks. But as we move into the next few years, it's going to be more difficult to keep on making that kind of progress. I mean, I'm 100% behind him. That's just unfortunately the way politics works.
- [37:16]
Matt Kibbe
The Free Life Portrait of an Artist is the new documentary by Free the People, the story of Cuban born artist Carlos Luna, who fled socialism under Castro to find his free life in America. You can watch it exclusively@civil.com C I V L.com throughout the month of December for free at civil.com check it out. Yeah, the Chevron decision is probably going to help people unwind the regulatory morass in a way that's more permanent than what they did in the last term. And guys like Mike Lee and Thomas Massie have basically said, when we get to the debt ceiling, if you'll do the Reins act. Yep, then we can talk. And I think that's a potent negotiating chip and they'll probably have to do it.
- [38:14]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah. One of the most difficult things about politics, even at my level, my position is I often have to think of bigger picture stuff, you know, so normally you would be eviscerating Mike Lee and Thomas Massie for saying they vote for the debt ceiling, but if you can get that in return.
- [38:35]
Matt Kibbe
Right.
- [38:37]
Glenn Jacobs
Sometimes you actually do have to bend to get what you want. I have to do it as well. And that's the thing too. And that's actually what separates a good politician.
- [38:46]
Matt Kibbe
And I'm using Mayor Jacobs compromises.
- [38:49]
Glenn Jacobs
Not necessarily compromise, but you figure out, okay, you know, this is the bigger picture. How do we get there?
- [38:55]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [38:55]
Glenn Jacobs
Okay. And you just have to do that.
- [38:57]
Matt Kibbe
It's never a straight line.
- [38:59]
Glenn Jacobs
I wish it was.
- [39:00]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [39:00]
Glenn Jacobs
You know, but the good politician. I use that in the. The good way a good politician figures out strategically, you know, what is the end goal and strategically how to get there. And, you know, all too often within our movement, it's just been like, man, if, you know, if you do this, I'm going to vote you out. Well, the reason they're doing that is because. Because there's a much bigger thing that they're trying to get to, and that's politics.
- [39:26]
Matt Kibbe
Thomas Massie is every bit as much of a doctor no. As Ron Paul was, but he is all like, there is a difference. And I think part of the difference is that Ron Paul was literally alone when he was a member of Congress. Thomas Massie's not alone. And he has been moving legislation and he. Many of his colleagues hate his guts. It's kind of hard to hate Thomas Massie, too, because he's a nice guy, but he's stubborn about things that matter. And I think there's an opportunity for the good guys, the Rand Pauls and the Thomas Masseys of the world to shift the fairly corrupt legislative culture.
- [40:10]
Glenn Jacobs
Yes, I believe so.
- [40:11]
Matt Kibbe
Even within the Republican Party.
- [40:12]
Glenn Jacobs
I believe so. You know, and then, you know, speaking of. Of that, of. Of people that think strategically, I mean, is. Is there been anybody better for our movement than Rand Paul? You know, I mean, the. The guy's actually been effective.
- [40:25]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [40:25]
Glenn Jacobs
Being a senator, which. But still being a principled. Yeah, a principled liberty lover. So he's actually one of the people that I look to as far as when I'm trying to figure stuff out and look and see how he does things, and I'll pattern my thoughts upon what he does, realizing, gosh, if we were in this libertarian utopia, I wouldn't need to be where I'm at. But we're not, and we're operating in a different world, but how can we push things in the right direction?
- [40:59]
Matt Kibbe
I've yet to see anybody that eviscerated him as a child killing monster for questioning Dr. Fauci. He was 100% right about every single thing. And as far as I can tell, none of the apologies have been forthcoming.
- [41:15]
Glenn Jacobs
Yep. Same way, you know, I was. I pushed back as much as I could at the local level. And the people that were saying that I was killing Grandma.
- [41:24]
Matt Kibbe
Right.
- [41:24]
Glenn Jacobs
You know, no one's ever said, hey, we were wrong, you were right. You know, but you don't do it for that reason. You do it because it's the right thing to do. And one of the coolest things, actually, for me personally, is a while back, I was talking with the district attorney general from another county, and they said that they had seen what I was saying, as well as now Congressman Andy Ogles, but he was county mayor at the time, too, what we were saying about COVID And because of that, they decided not to prosecute anyone in their jurisdiction for violating public health orders. And it was amazing to me because I was just like, you know, just sometimes just talking about things results in a good outcome. And people who shouldn't be in jail stayed out of jail just because we were saying the right stuff. So in the end, I don't care if the other people apologize or not. I have that.
- [42:17]
Matt Kibbe
But it's also like how you do it. Like, you're. You have a style quite similar to Thomas Massey. You have a smile on your face, and you have an ability to translate insanely complex issues like epidemiology. We all had to, oh, let's pick up epidemiology today. But it helps that you can explain it with a good spirit and also have the stones to just take the heat, and it makes it safer for other people. Politicians are not always the most courageous people. I don't know if you know that.
- [42:54]
Glenn Jacobs
That's something else that I'm really proud of is I'd had some other county mayors in our area say that they didn't want to do a lot of the things that either, but I gave them cover because everybody's yelling at me. So, okay, he's the one taking the heat. We can do this. But that's also. I just also kind of consider that my role. You just have to do that sometimes.
- [43:17]
Matt Kibbe
So which Trump nominees are you most excited about?
- [43:20]
Glenn Jacobs
Tulsi is a big one. Linda as well, obviously. Cash Patel at the FBI, you know, just. And the FBI. Sadly, it just been. The DOJ has been completely. And Bondi. You know, the DOJ has just been completely weaponized. And that might be the worst legacy of the Biden administration. You know, for all of our. For all of our faults, of our political system, you know, the criminal justice system. And granted, it has a lot of flaws as well, you know, but it was based on this idea of justice is blind and, you know, just Anglo American jurisprudence. Right. And it. We quickly moving into a banana republic because the DOJ weaponized the law and was using it for political purposes.
- [44:15]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [44:16]
Glenn Jacobs
So if nothing else, if we can turn that back and return to the basis of the criminal justice system is for criminal justice and not for going after people you don't agree with politically, we'd be at a much better place.
- [44:30]
Matt Kibbe
I sort of love the fact that.
- [44:33]
Glenn Jacobs
And sorry. And also Pete Hegseth, I got to meet him a couple months before he was nominated to Secretary of Defense. He was in Knoxville at a fundraiser for a. A Christian Academy. And. Super sharp guy. But when I pick up my Twitter one day and they're Pete Hegseth, I was like, wait, I sat next to that dude like three weeks ago. So that was pretty awesome.
- [44:57]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. My more restrained foreign policy friends assure me that he is good and we'll find out. But I also learned today that he supports Defend the Guard.
- [45:13]
Glenn Jacobs
Yes.
- [45:14]
Matt Kibbe
Which is pretty hardcore.
- [45:16]
Glenn Jacobs
The difference is, and this is, this is not obviously nothing. It's generals, you know, but once you get to, like, you're a flag officer, you become pretty much a politician. Right. Where a guy like Pete Hexith, he understands, I mean, he was deployed, what, three times, he's decorated combat veteran. He understands that. So he's going to stand by those people. And you look at what Trump wants. Trump wants a strong military so we don't have to use it. Wouldn't that be awesome? Right? And I think that's what Hegseth agrees with.
- [45:52]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. It's going to be interesting about Tulsi. And we're talking about this again today, because Tulsi and rfk, I'll single them out because they come from the left. They're career Democrats. They've always. Tulsi actually gave up her vice chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee because the party, the Hillary machine, screwed Bernie Sanders at the convention. No, this is. This table. This is all Miguel's fault. We lost the screwdriver. Yeah, we lost the screwdriver. So is Bernie going to support her or is he going to throw her under the bus like his hysterical behavior at the RFK hearing. It's fascinating to watch them betray their own.
- [46:42]
Glenn Jacobs
Well, remember, I mean, he didn't take any money from pharmaceutical companies, Matt. Remember that?
- [46:48]
Matt Kibbe
I got tired reading the list. I had to stop.
- [46:50]
Glenn Jacobs
I know. And, you know, that's another thing that all of this is revealed is these people that talk the talk, they don't walk the walk.
- [46:59]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [46:59]
Glenn Jacobs
So that, that's been pretty gratifying, actually. I don't know if he does or not. You know, that. That's a big one because obviously when we talk about the deep state, we're really talking about the intent. Intelligence agencies. Yeah, right. And, yeah. The DOJ and, you know, the FBI and some of the things that, that they engage in. But that's really where the rock rubber meets the road. That's the holy grail, especially for the left and these career politicians. And they realize that things would be a lot different, I believe, I would hope, with her in that capacity. So that might be the hardest one, because they're. And this goes through some, you know, some, some Republicans, too, is they're going to want to preserve that probably above all else.
- [47:52]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, yeah. The, the neocons are anxious and.
- [47:55]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah.
- [47:56]
Matt Kibbe
And they're. I can't tell which party they belong to anymore because Dick Cheney keeps bumping back and forth.
- [48:02]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah. And there's no doubt about that. And Liz Cheney as well.
- [48:05]
Matt Kibbe
Right.
- [48:06]
Glenn Jacobs
But don't get. I mean, there's some great Republicans right now, and I think that they're, you know, they're really aligned with Trump, some of them, because it's Trump, and you better be, or you're going to be in trouble. You know, but unfortunately, you do still have the usual suspects who are a little squishy on some things. And this is, again, this is just the most important thing to them.
- [48:27]
Matt Kibbe
I don't know what the status is, but there's a rumor that's more than a rumor that they want to vote for Tulsi in secret, which would. I think the grassroots would literally explode if they tried to do that. And is that constitutional? Is it legal? I don't even know.
- [48:45]
Glenn Jacobs
I don't know.
- [48:46]
Matt Kibbe
But it tells you that they don't want to. And they're feeling tremendous pressure to fall in line that the phone lines are melting. And like I said earlier, it's nothing I've seen since the Tea Party. Even going back to the Wall street bailout was the most huge, spontaneous wave of grassroots opposition that, at least in the short run, stopped Boehner and Pelosi from cutting a deal that's happening here. And I think the ones. The one thing I'll say about most politicians is they're, they're, they're scaredy cats. So.
- [49:21]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah. There's no doubt that public pressure.
- [49:24]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [49:25]
Glenn Jacobs
Does influence.
- [49:26]
Matt Kibbe
I know you're not a scaredy cat.
- [49:28]
Glenn Jacobs
But you also have to listen to what people are thinking.
- [49:30]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [49:31]
Glenn Jacobs
You know, at the same time. So, you know, it just is what it is. Is.
- [49:35]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [49:35]
Glenn Jacobs
But the more pressure that everyone can put on them, obviously, the better.
- [49:40]
Matt Kibbe
So how is Knox County? Are you. Are you past the demonization of being opposed to shutting down schools?
- [49:49]
Glenn Jacobs
Knox county is doing. Doing very well. You know, we're preparing our budget for this year. We won't raise taxes this year again, and we haven't raised property taxes, so since 1999. So we've had some good fiscal stewardship along the way. It actually becomes more difficult every year because our property tax is not indexed to inflation. So with the inflation we've seen over the past several years, it causes us to run even leaner. And if you look at. We've grown a lot as far as population. So if you look at our budget and you think in absolute dollars, like, wow, it's gotten bigger. But if you look at the budget per. And this is something actually, remember even before I got in the office, I was talking to Thomas Massie. He's like, the most important metric is actually your per person spend. And our per person spend adjusted for inflation is flat over 10 years. So since I've been in office, despite all the things that we've had happen, we've. We've been able to keep our budget where it should be. And I'm really happy about that. But, you know, this is the time of year for me, it's a little stressful because everybody, you know, everybody wants something, but our budget is really lean this year. So the nice thing about it is I can just tell everybody we don't have the money. Whereas when they know that you have the money, then everyone comes with open hands. And if you make it known up front that you don't have the money, you know, a lot of that is kind of mitigated.
- [51:12]
Matt Kibbe
When you were young, did you ever imagine that you would take the leap and be a politician?
- [51:17]
Glenn Jacobs
No.
- [51:17]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, absolutely.
- [51:18]
Glenn Jacobs
That was not on my bingo card.
- [51:19]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, but. But somebody has to step up.
- [51:24]
Glenn Jacobs
Yeah. For me, it, you know, again, I think back to. And we started this by talking about kind of my interest in Austrian economics and how that was really an evolution of my interest in government and politics and why things work the way they do. And then the further you go down the rabbit hole, you're like, oh, things work the way they do because they're all messed up. Right. Despite that, our country is still. You know, it's still. It's still the greatest country on the planet. Despite the flaws we have, it could be a lot better. And I got into politics because, you know, I have been an enormous beneficiary of the American dream. I grew up on a farm in Missouri. My family didn't have a whole lot of money and no political connections, no business connections. And I found something I was good at. And in America, if you do that, there's no ceiling on how high it can go. And for someone like me, who's. Who's benefited from that so much, I want to make sure that my kids, especially my grandkids now, that that is still there for them. So that's what motivates me. It's. It's. You know, I didn't have, like, a particular issue or anything like that, actually. It's all the issues, but I didn't have a particular issue as much as very concerned about the direction that our country is going. And I just want to make sure that. That I'm not one of those, like, government should take care of my grandkids. No, I want my grandkids to have opportunities so they can thrive on their own.
- [52:57]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. Yeah. Homework assignment for everybody. Go listen to A Farewell to Kings by Rush.
- [53:03]
Glenn Jacobs
That's right.
- [53:04]
Matt Kibbe
And as the last couple weeks have exposed, plenty of scheming demons dressed in kingly guise. That's exactly right. I love it. I love it. Because once people see who they are, they will realize that they've been lied to and screwed over. Yeah.
- [53:24]
Glenn Jacobs
And I'm just so thankful. You know, I look every day on my Twitter feed and all the stuff that Elon is saying and what he's doing, and it's been amazing, really, to see what Donald Trump has been able to do. He won the election by cobbling together a coalition, as you said, of, in some cases, people that came from the left, you know, libertarians, mainstream conservatives, all these different people. And then he is executed like no president I've ever seen. I mean, and this might be the difference between a typical politician and someone who actually does think like a business person, and he goes in with a plan, and they've been able to accomplish that, but, you know, just the transformation of Elon Musk and the evolution of Elon Musk and how Important he is been him buying Twitter might be the most important thing that happened in the early 21st century.
- [54:25]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, someone unbelievable. Someone else who has read the book. He's. He's the closest, we'll see to John G. That's exactly.
- [54:33]
Glenn Jacobs
You know, but thank goodness in this case that John Galt decided to stick around instead of going off the Galt's gun.
- [54:38]
Matt Kibbe
Right. Yeah, that.
- [54:39]
Glenn Jacobs
That's exactly what I think about him as well.
- [54:42]
Matt Kibbe
We have a T shirt that says don't shrug. Yeah. And final thought, what was I going to say? This coalition, I talk a lot about this, the Tech Bros. Which I think started when Trump went on the all in podcast and just was able to hold court for hours. No notes, no political bullshit, nothing. And he brought on the Tech Bros. He brought on the Bitcoin Bros. The Maha Coalition, libertarians. So this coalition looks very different than Trump 1.0.
- [55:18]
Glenn Jacobs
Yes, absolutely.
- [55:19]
Matt Kibbe
And there is, so far, I'm pretty optimistic about some of the things that will happen. And I'm a grizzled, cynical libertarian who has been trying to do really crazy things like balance the budget for 30 years. So I can expect that we're not going to get as far as we want to. But again, like you said, like, it's not a straight path. We got to. We got to take the path we have.
- [55:43]
Glenn Jacobs
Well, and the other thing is, what gives me a lot of hope is the Ron Paul revolution is actually still alive and well. And I talk to people within the Republican Party who are Ron Paul people. It was funny. I was at the RNC this year or last year, and I must have talked to 20 people who knew me either from the Ron Paul stuff or for young Americans for liberty or from this or for that. And some of them were pretty influential and held pretty influential positions that would have never. You would have never seen that, you know, 20 years ago.
- [56:24]
Matt Kibbe
Right.
- [56:25]
Glenn Jacobs
So we have a voice now and we have a place that table the people, you know, that are more the liberty wing of the Republican Party. And Trump values that. He was serious when he talked about putting a libertarian in the Cabinet. So I agree with you for various reasons. You're probably never going to get as far as you want to go, but at least it feels like the brakes have been put on and we're no longer skidding down the hill to hell. And now it looks like we're actually going to make some headway going the right direction. And in this day and age, I think that's about all you can ask for.
- [57:02]
Matt Kibbe
We'll leave it there.
- [57:03]
Glenn Jacobs
Yep, Sounds good.
- [57:04]
Matt Kibbe
Thank you, Glenn.
- [57:05]
Glenn Jacobs
Thank you.
- [57:06]
Matt Kibbe
Thanks for watching. If you liked the conversation, make sure to like the video, subscribe and also ring the bell for notifications. And if you want to know more about free the people, go to freethepeople.org.