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Kibbe on Liberty
Ep 324 | Are Republicans Serious About Budget Cuts? | Guest: Nick Freitas
00:57:20
Matt Kibbe is joined by Virginia state Delegate Nick Freitas (R) to talk about the Trump administration’s diverse coalition and whether it can hold together long enough to enact Trump’s agenda.
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- [00:00]
Matt Kibbe
Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. This week, I'm talking with Nick Freitas. We talk about the conflict between the aspirations of Elon Musk's Doge Project and the Republicans in Congress who fear their own shadow and maybe a budget process that's not going to reach those aspirations. Ultimately, we come out optimistic, thinking that people with information about what's going on in Washington, D.C. can apply the same kind of pressure that they did to push through some of the most interesting Trump nominees for his Cabinet. Check it out. Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. Nick, I don't know if you noticed, but I wore this T shirt for you today. We've had many heated arguments about the ideological inferiority of dogs versus cats who are perfect libertarians.
- [01:28]
Nick Freitas
Perfectly. I think they're authoritarians, actually. Don't get me wrong. I used to think maybe Matt is onto something, and then I got a few cats. I'm like, oh, no, these are complete authoritarian creatures. They would totally kill me and take my property the moment I'm not looking.
- [01:43]
Matt Kibbe
Well, you do work for them, but that's. They're sort of like Randian characters in that their objective is more than libertarians.
- [01:52]
Nick Freitas
That's true.
- [01:53]
Matt Kibbe
So you're here on Capitol Hill, perhaps recovering from the Virginia legislative session.
- [02:00]
Nick Freitas
Yeah, I don't know that this would.
- [02:01]
Matt Kibbe
Be the place I'd want to remove. Well, we're at least talking a good game here on Doge, and I want to get into that. But the context for this conversation is that yesterday Thomas Massie announced that he would oppose the latest continuing resolution. And I just did a ranty episode on this subject because, you know, the context is Massie is saying this is the same thing you've been telling me every six months for the last 12 years. And we just kick the can down the road. And every year spending goes up, and every year the deficit goes up, and every year the debt goes up. And supposedly Republicans first won the House, and then they won the Senate and the presidency. And supposedly they're the ones that claim that they're actually going to cut spending, cut the deficit. And I don't know if President Trump has ever talked about eliminating the debt, because that's probably not really his thing to do, but some of us think that that actually should happen. So you have the battle scars of the state legislature, and we were talking about this a little bit, but so many Republicans talk a good game, but I don't think they're fiscally conservative at all.
- [03:21]
Nick Freitas
I. I think that's accurate. Not. Not in any meaningful Sense. I mean, they might be. If we're, if it's relative to everybody else in, in Congress, well, then, yeah, I'm sure that the media, the members of the House Freedom Caucus, are significantly more fiscally responsible than the squad. Yeah. You know, and, and I do think that you have people like.
- [03:41]
Matt Kibbe
By the way, that's a. That's a low bar.
- [03:42]
Nick Freitas
Yeah, right. You have people like, like Massey and Paul and, and Lee and I think others where. I think they've definitely demonstrated over a long period of time that if you gave them the opportunity, they would. They would take fiscal responsibility to a whole new level. But, yeah, I think, I think overall, no, I think. I think most Republicans have demonstrated over time that they're absolutely fine with the level of government spending that those of us in Liberty Movement consider to be obscene.
- [04:12]
Matt Kibbe
There's. There's two wings, and I'm making this up, but I think it's probably true. There's two wings of the fiscally irresponsible Republicans, and that's the cowards and the neocons who really love big government, as long as it's applied to their agenda on nation building and endless war and that kind of thing.
- [04:32]
Nick Freitas
Yeah, no, I think that's accurate. I mean, the thing. Here's the one area where I've allowed myself to have some hope, and that really comes from Doge and from the fact that I do believe that more than any other administration in my lifetime, we do have a president that is gunning for the bureaucracy. And I'm a big believer that if you actually want to stop some of this stuff, it's not just about cutting wasteful spending. It's about eliminating federal agencies and departments. And I don't think there's been anyone in my lifetime that has been as. At least appears as determined to do it as he is, and quite frankly, got raked over the coals. I'm a big believer that the Trump we're getting right now is far better than the Trump we would have got with two consecutive terms.
- [05:21]
Matt Kibbe
Oh, for sure. Yeah.
- [05:22]
Nick Freitas
I mean, no question. Trump.
- [05:23]
Matt Kibbe
Trump 2.0 is a very different animal.
- [05:25]
Nick Freitas
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Well, he went in the first year. He went in the first year. And I thought. Here's what I think he thought. I'm going to go into D.C. and we're going to drain the swamp. But I've got to pick people that know how the swamp works, so I'm going to put them into Cabinet positions. I'm going to trust them for leadership in House and the Senate. And then they're going to help me understand how DC works, and I'm going to show them how to fix it. And what he found out is that's not the way it works. The swamp protects the swamp. The bureaucracy protects the bureaucracy. And so this time he came in and it was like, f that I want people that are every bit as mistrustful of the federal government as I am. And you see that with people like Tolstein, you see that people like Pete Hegseth, and you see that with people like rfk. And so that is what gives me some encouragement. But trust, but verify. Right? Like, I need to. We need to see things up front and we need to see structural things. Because to your point, there's no shortage. There's no shortage of Republicans that will justify, you know, pro business big spending, which is cronyism. And then there's the others that will support. Those are the Chamber of Commerce Republicans. Right. And then you have the, you know, military industrial complex Republicans. And, and look, I recognize the military is actually a legitimate function of the federal government. I want a military that's strong, well trained, powerful, all that good stuff. But I don't want either a foreign policy or a corresponding military who sees its personal responsibility to go around and make the world safe for democracy. Right. Because we've seen what that's translated into. And especially now, it's essentially the exporting, like woke. WOKE ideology is the primary export of the United States right now. So, yeah, I agree, it's a big problem.
- [07:06]
Matt Kibbe
So the context for this, and maybe I already said this, I don't know, because I just did this other podcast, but Trump is threatening once again to primary Thomas Massie, which he's done before. And I won't defend Trump on this, but if I were to put myself in his shoes, what he's doing is he's sending a signal to other Republicans. Don't disobey. But what I wonder about this is if you're actually talking about the type of structural reforms that you just outlined and that both of us hope are the actual outcomes of this process. You want to align with Rand Paul, not Lindsey Graham.
- [07:51]
Nick Freitas
Yeah.
- [07:52]
Matt Kibbe
You want to align with Thomas Massie, not Mike Johnson, because Mike Johnson is. Is not of that philosophical ilk, if he has any philosophy at all. And I'm like, if you're going to use your political capital as president to demand that Republicans do something, why not demand they do the radical thing?
- [08:15]
Nick Freitas
I think so here's what I think. Obviously, I don't know this, and I've spoken to Speaker Johnson before. We spoke to him right after the address to the joint session of Congress. And here's what I think it is. I think Trump is looking for what he would consider to be team players. I think. I think one of the things about the Trump administration that has been different from a lot of other administrations is it's been this idea of going out, showing all your cards and operating, and so everyone can see what your cards are and then decide where they line up. I think Trump goes into a negotiation holding some back and showing some. And what he wants is people are going to fall in live and back his play so that he can have, like, the big reveal or he can turn it when he needs to or whatnot. But he. I think he judges loyalty and trust and his ability to make the negotiation above everything else. And I think he sees, like, a Lindsey Graham as someone that, oh, that's easy. I get him in a back room and I say, this is the play and you're going to back it. And he backs it. Whereas with a Massie or a Rand Paul, they've been fighting a particular battle for a very, very long time. They've heard it all said before, and they're going to stick to what they believe. They're going to stick by their word. And so if they. If they buy into what you're saying, okay, they will be good, loyal. In fact, you'll be able to trust them when you can't trust anybody else. But this is what I always tell people. I want a fighter. I want a fighter. Do you? Because what happens when they don't agree with you? You're going to get a fighter, right? And in reality, what most people want is people to just go along with whatever their play is. And look, I think that. I think Massey has. Massey, Paul and others, they've been fighting this for a long time. They've heard it all before, and they want to know it's actually going to get done. And I will say this. I understand Trump wanting people to back his play and feeling like they should trust him. But I think going after Thomas Massie is. Is a big mistake. And I say this as someone that enthusiastically voted for Donald Trump that is very, very happy with what's been going on in. In the short term here, wants him to be successful. But Massey is not the guy we need to be picking fights with. Um, Massey or Massey and Paul and some of these other guys are the people that have been holding the line to ensure the Overton Window doesn't Shift too far. And to some degree they're entitled to respect and loyalty. And that's the part that bugs me about this exchange right now is that stop giving me this either or proposition between what Trump wants or what Massey wants and let's figure out how to do both. Because I think ultimately what Massey wants is a lot closer to what Trump wants in the end than what Lindsey Graham wants.
- [11:05]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, it's. I mean, there's all these, there's all these lines, tenuous lines that hold Trump 22.0 together. And so you have the Liberty wing, including some actual big L libertarians that came out for Trump. You have the. Well, there's multiple wings. I'll call it the Doge wing. Because Elon's not just a tech bro. Elon is his own universe of. And I take his commitment not just to Doge, but reining in the debt. I take that very seriously. He's paying a price for doing what he's doing. And then you have the tech bros and the crypto bros, and that's an interesting libertarian ish wing too. And then the whole Maha wing, the RFK wing, to hold that coalition together. To reiterate your point, you need to move more towards Rand Paul and Thomas Massie because of those concentric circles. The thing that holds that coalition together is small l Libertarian. Those are the parts where that very disparate coalition can actually agree on things. And it's the neocons, the Lindsey Graham's of the world who are the outliers. So yes, you have to manage them and yes, you need to wrangle them in. And to me, it was remarkable. And I would give most of the credit to Maha. The calls and the social media and the melting of the phones to force squishy Senate Republicans to confirm Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hex, like the whole list. I'm like, I never said this publicly, but privately I'm like, I don't see how Tulsi and RFK Jr get through. Yeah, because there's no, like, there's a good third of the Senate Republican caucus that absolutely wanted to vote against them.
- [13:08]
Nick Freitas
Yeah, yeah.
- [13:09]
Matt Kibbe
But there was, there was enough grassroots pressure and Trump's political capital was fresh and strong. Oh, yeah, yeah, that, that needs, that entire thing needs to be applied to the budget process. Thank you for joining me today on.
- [13:23]
Christian Hines
Kibbe on Liberty and for being part of our fiercely independent audience. Every week, my organization, Free the People partners with BlazeTV to bring you this show. My guests bring smart perspectives on everything from current events to timeless philosophical debates. If you like what you hear, go to freethepeople.org kol and support Kibbe on Liberty so we can continue to produce these honest conversations with interesting people. Now, let's get back to it.
- [13:52]
Nick Freitas
Yeah. Trump has a political capital unlike anything I've ever seen in American history. Right. Like, I mean, it's, it's pretty. The thing I think needs to be understood though is that like, again, as someone who is incredibly supportive of Trump and especially Trump 2.0. Right. I was on Twitter today going, defending Massie and, and let me, let me clarify something. Like, I have heard some decent arguments for why they want to run the play. They want to run right now with approving the CR and then going around in September starting.
- [14:27]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. Without, without naming names, sort of steel man, that argument.
- [14:32]
Nick Freitas
So, okay, the, the steel man argument that I've heard is right now they're dealing with continuing resolution for fiscal year 25. And the idea was is that Biden, obviously that was not one that we controlled that entire process. There was a bunch of money put in there that a lot of us don't like. A lot of it was the spending for a lot of it was front loaded. And so you run into legal issues with respect to when Congress has allocated funds, contracts have been warded, the money has been spent and you run into these, you know, potential legal battles. We are kind of already saw this with that 5, 4 Supreme Court decision where $2 billion was forced to go out the door. Now there's a lot of other money still waiting in the wings and we don't know how much more of it is going to run into legal challenges, but there it is. So the idea is, is like, look, we're six months into this because, you know, the fiscal year started back in September. The idea is, is get rid of this, just get through it, seal it off, get through it. And then in September, when we go into fiscal year 26, that is the first clean, you know, Trump budget. And we are promising you that we're going to take all of the various cuts and whatnot that Doge has identified. We're going to work that into that budget. And then in the meantime, as we're still looking at that, we're going to try to do rescission, which is, it's this congressional mechanism where the administration can identify funds that they think are wasteful or not being spent appropriately. And then Congress can essentially, I don't know if a bill is the right term, but they can essentially pull that money back, and now it doesn't get spit out the way we want. So there's this idea that we can still pull some of it back through rescission, that which is eligible for rescission, but just let us get past 25 clean and then move on to 26. The big question I asked was, okay, what guarantees do I have as a, as a very commonly disappointed Republican? What, what guarantees that I have that you're going to do this? And specifically, what do I need to be looking for to make sure that it's going to happen? And look, I'll give this senator credit. He went through. He's like, okay, if you don't see all the 12 various, you know, what do they call it? The appropriations bills.
- [16:40]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [16:41]
Nick Freitas
If you don't see all 12 of those appropriation bills for 26 out of the Senate by July 31st, you know, we're probably not on track to get this done by September. And I'm like, okay, for better or for worse, you've given me a reason. I might not like all of it, but you've given me a reason. You've given me a strategy and you've given me a deadline. You've given me something to look toward. And those are some of the things I look for when somebody is asking me to trust them. So, again, I'm not saying happy about this. I sure as hell don't think that Massie should be taking all this hell for not being willing to trust it. But that's at least more than I've ever gotten before on explaining what the strategy is. And so now it's, now it's going to be a question for individual members of Congress to say, do you trust the Trump administration to hold up their end of the bargain? And that one, I think, is one I'm a little bit more willing to trust. But then do you trust the House and do you trust the Senate? Because the closer you, the longer you wait, the closer you get to midterms, and the more dicey this all gets, the more cautious everyone gets. And the Republican tendency has been the way you win midterms is by not making anyone mad. Now, this senator came right and said, he goes, no, the way we're going to the midterms is by delivering on the promises. Okay, again, I like what you're saying, but that's the steel man argument for why they got to do this the way that they're currently doing it. Again, it's not my argument, but that's the argument.
- [18:10]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. I mean, if that's true. They're claiming that they are returning to regular order. And we will actually see Appropriations Committee subcommittees meeting and we will see authorizing committees meeting and we'll be having hearings about eliminating USAID that will be incorporated in the appropriations process. So it's not like we need to wait until, would you say, July.
- [18:36]
Nick Freitas
So July is when the bills have to be out, which means now the Senate obviously has two calendars. The House has one right now because the Senate has both the Senate calendar and the executive calendar because they got to do all these other appointments. So really, what I think we need to be watching is how quickly is the House working on their budget? Because the House can get their budget out quicker and they have to. Budget bills ultimately have to originate, so they get that out. Now the Senate gets to look at what the House has done, and they need to be working in conjunction because the other thing you have to look for is how different are the two budgets. Now, if there was ever a president that I thought could get House leadership and Senate leadership together and say, work this crap out, and I mean lickety split, it's this one. I do believe that he has enough kind of public goodwill, at least within the Republican Party, to be able to push that. And when he does say, I'm gonna primary your ass if you don't do it, that carries some weight. It's also why I don't think it should be directed at Massie. So that's where we're at. Because at the end of the day, I still think the CR is gonna pass. And then the real question will be, okay, what sort of work are they actually doing? I want to see rescission. I want to see budget bills. I want to see stuff passing out of committee. I want to see debates. I want to see the incorporation not only of getting rid of wasteful spending, but what sort of structural changes are you making within the process to ensure more wasteful spending doesn't happen in the future? Because the goal should not be for every year DOGE has a new, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. It should be. So glad we caught this. How do we not do it anymore?
- [20:08]
Matt Kibbe
Right?
- [20:09]
Nick Freitas
And a big part of that, too. And this is the part where it's going to get. This is the part where it's going to get tricky. Right? What agencies or departments are you. No kidding. Getting rid of? Because the more agencies, departments you have, the more, you know, opportunity you will have for fraud, waste and abuse. So now when I look at Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Using just that as my guide, I could carve quite a bit of fat off of the federal government. I realize we're not going to get there overnight. That's fine. I'm not asking for everything at once, but I want to see substantive cuts not just from the budget, but from the actual executive branch. And again, if those bills aren't being carried well, then I think we're going to. We're going to have our answer far before September ever gets here. And whether or not they're serious.
- [20:57]
Matt Kibbe
And by the way, politically, I think it. I think this is do or die for Republicans. And.
- [21:04]
Nick Freitas
Yeah.
- [21:04]
Matt Kibbe
And like they'll. In a very opposite way than they'll tell you because they'll Republican. You were telling me a story earlier and you can recount this, but your colleagues in the state legislature are constantly telling you that they have to run for reelection. So they can't do the thing they said they were going to do when they won reelection. But the opposite is true here. Like this coalition. I don't think Elon does things that fail. That's not why he's in this and that the conflict. And Massie said this publicly, the conflict between Elon's aspirations and go along get along budgets. These two things don't fit together. You're gonna have to choose one.
- [21:47]
Nick Freitas
Yep.
- [21:48]
Matt Kibbe
So they have kind of a do or die situation where if they don't deliver on this stuff, that political coalition unravels. Cause does Elon hang around if they're just fully funding USAID next year, too?
- [22:04]
Nick Freitas
Well, in the other. Here's the other argument. This is what we've always heard. And again, to some degree, there's an element of truth to this. Right. You get told, well, we can't get what you want done because we don't have the Senate. We can't get what you want done because you don't have the House. We can't get what you want done because we don't have the presidency. Why are you going to carry controversial bills that could impact the election if they have no chance of passing anyways? Let's for a moment concede all those points. What's your excuse now? You got the House, you got the Senate, you got the presidency. You've got arguably the most friendly Supreme Court you've had in generations. So now if you don't do it now, if you tell me I have to wait for the midterms, I think the American people are at a point right now where it's like, screw you, man. Yeah, I'm just done. Screw you. If you're not willing to do it, we'll get somebody that will. And here's the other thing. Two things I'd like to say on this. Whenever I have somebody come to me and say, nick, you know, you've been in office for 10 years. I'm interested in running. Before we get to anything about policy or fundraising or what do you got to do to run a campaign? My question is, what are you willing to lose your seat over? And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, what vote? What vote do you know is the right course of action? What vote could you cast that will get the thing that you want, the policy that you want, but it costs you your seat? You're done. I said. And before you answer, I want you to think about. I want you to think about it after you've knocked 5,000 doors yourself and you've had to spend days upon days raising money when you didn't want to, and you've gone through all these hard fights, and you're finally there, and you finally got the position, and everyone around you is telling you, well, you can't get anything good done if you can't get reelected. But now you have the opportunity. You're going to vote. What do you do? And half the time will sit there stunned, and I'll be like, you're not ready. Because if you don't know what you're willing to lose your seat over, the answer is nothing. You will lose your seat over nothing. You will always find a reason why you had to compromise, why you couldn't do it this time, but you'll do it next time. We're at a point right now where I think people are fed up with that. This is your moment. You can prove it. But here's the other good part about this. I honestly believe we're at a point where even when it seems controversial, even when the media is trashing it, I cannot believe the number of people that I have seen that were not big Trump fans that have said, you know what? At least this guy does what he said he was gonna do. I think we're in that era right now. I think all the conventional political wisdom about just keep your base and don't piss off, don't, don't galvanize your opponents. I think they're already galvanized. So this is a question about how many people see you as the sort of person that did what you said you were gonna do. And if you're that person, you you get the benefit of the doubt with the great undecided in every election. But if you don't, you're gone. You're just another. You're just another empty suit. So I think the political dynamic has changed somewhat. And I think you just don't get the same excuses when you're holding all the cards. And they're holding the cards right now.
- [25:07]
Matt Kibbe
Watching Thomas Massie get the stuffing kicked out of him by, by all of the Trump loyalists who, like, when Trump says attack that guy, they just attack that guy. I realize that one of the reasons I have so few friends in Washington, D.C. is I started off my career as a budget economist and a fiscal hawk.
- [25:30]
Nick Freitas
And you took that job seriously.
- [25:32]
Matt Kibbe
I thought we meant it. They said they wanted to balance the budget and like, ok, here's how you do it. And going all the way back to the 1990 budget deal. So I was the budget director at the U.S. chamber of Commerce. I wrote an op ed saying, abandoning your no new taxes pledge and increasing spending will mean that you're going to lose your reelection. George H.W.
- [25:56]
Nick Freitas
Bush.
- [25:58]
Matt Kibbe
John Sununu, then chief of Staff to the President, called the President's chamber and said, I'm going to cut your balls off with a chainsaw. And that was my first month on the job and I didn't get fired that time. But it just sucks being a fiscal hawk because everybody's got their Achilles heel when it comes to spending. Everybody's got something that they want to spend money on, and you're just the turd in the punch bowl.
- [26:25]
Nick Freitas
So there's this very, very cynical remark in politics, and it's, nobody ever lost their seat by spending too much money. And my co host, Christian Hines.
- [26:38]
Matt Kibbe
He.
- [26:38]
Nick Freitas
Said he was, that's true, they never lose their seat, but they do eventually lose their head. And we were talking about all the various times where a country has either fallen under, like, really, really bad monetary policy and hyperinflation, and you're right, they didn't lose their seat, but they did get shot. There's a certain point where you run into sovereign debt crisis or you have a collapse. And the bottom line is it seems so ridiculous to Americans because we've been able to coast so long, and the fact that we were the world's reserve currency gives us an advantage. But there is a point of no return. And one of the things that I've actually found encouraging is the media and the left have thrown out all of their best arguments like it was, oh, these poor people that are losing their jobs and it's like, none of you gave a damn when I lost my job due to COVID lockdowns. Piss off. Yeah, right. And then, then it was, you know, you know, oh my gosh, it's all this money that's going to helping people. It's like, oh, really? Because we're looking at a little bit closer. And just because you say it's for healthcare and just because you say it's for education doesn't mean it actually is. And so you just see this, you know, going back and forth on throwing the absolute best they possibly can on trying to make these cuts sympathetic. And then the final one was, oh, look at, look at the price of things. Oh, the price of eggs is high. And I finally saw one person, they put out a meme and they said, I would pay $10 for each effing egg if it mean I could continue to get the cuts that I'm seeing through. Doge, I didn't vote for cheaper eggs. I voted for them to go in and summarily gut all of the wasteful spending I've been watching my entire life. And I'm like, yes, that is exactly the sort of energy I want to see. Not because I want eggs to be expensive. I think we can do, I think we can do two things at once. In fact, I think the more you do one, the more you'll get the other, provided that you have good fiscal policy and everything else. But that's the sort of energy I am seeing more and more out of people. It's like, no, we are finally getting to the heart of what has always pissed us off. And you've always diverted us with bread and circuses, right? It's always been bread or circuses or Granny's gonna die and we don't believe you anymore. Yeah, and the rise of new media has really allowed us to elevate the other side of this debate. And the cutting of a lot of this money from USAID has demonstrated how much astroturf the leftist narrative was. It couldn't survive without billions of our dollars subsidizing their message. And now that they're actually forced to compete on something vaguely approaching a level intellectual playing field, they're getting their asses kicked.
- [29:19]
Christian Hines
If you made it this far into the show, it means I must be doing something right. Key Beyond Liberty is just one of the amazing products we create at Free the people. We tell emotionally compelling stories and produce educational videos for the Liberty Curious. Our award winning documentaries personalize all things liberty, independence, creativity, hard work, integrity and perseverance after the show, check out our work@freethepeople.org and if you like what you see, donate to support what we do. That's freethepeople.org now back to the show.
- [29:55]
Matt Kibbe
The USAID protests outside the building were so comical and to your point, I just can't imagine that a single American, particularly American, that was deemed non essential during lockdowns would care that bureaucrats doing these ridiculous projects might lose their jobs. I don't even understand the political play on that.
- [30:21]
Nick Freitas
I had somebody get very mad with me like, Nick, I love everything you say, but there are good veterans losing their job. And I said, look, let's. I'm gonna concede a point to you. I'm gonna concede a point that there are probably good, intelligent, hard working people that are really trying to do their best within their department or whatever it is who are now losing their jobs. And that sucks. I've lost a job. It's two things. One, the government is not a jobs program. Every job that the government creates came at the expense of jobs that could have been created somewhere else by people spending their money that they earned on something they wanted that was taken from them in order to create this job. So I'm sorry, I can feel bad for the person. I don't feel bad for the make work job that was created by robbing taxpayers. Secondly, thank God that a good, hard working, intelligent person that served their country can now find a job where those talents will be truly effective, truly rewarded in a job that is actually created by the marketplace, not by government fiat. I said so this is not about me not having sensitivity toward a person that loses their job. But ultimately these are the things that have to happen not only for us as taxpayers, but also for them, so they can actually use their talents in places that are truly rewarding for both them and the people they serve.
- [31:49]
Matt Kibbe
You know what, I want to talk about eggs for a minute because it's sort of funny that the, the Democrats are now worried about the price of eggs because they didn't suddenly become and they're outrageously expensive right now. And obviously part of that is the Federal Reserve printer going brrr all the time and just printing more and more funny money to finance all of these trillions in deficit spending with money we don't have. But the other thing that's going on, and this gets back to one of my primary obsessions, is the pandemic industrial complex is committing henicide right now. And it is.
- [32:33]
Nick Freitas
So I guess that's better than cockerside yeah.
- [32:37]
Matt Kibbe
It is so irrationally stupid. But they're culling the flocks. And my friend Joel Salatin has had the most poignant response, which is, if you want to worry about the health of a flock of chickens, and I'm now going to exceed my knowledge of farm culture, you actually don't want to kill the healthy ones?
- [33:01]
Nick Freitas
No, it's this bizarre idea that the ones that actually build the natural immunity because animals build immunities just like we build immunities.
- [33:10]
Matt Kibbe
Are we allowed to say that you're.
- [33:12]
Nick Freitas
Actually weakening the flock by just randomly killing all of them? By the way, I love Joel Salatin. Absolutely great guy.
- [33:20]
Matt Kibbe
But it's planned chaos. So there is a irrational government policy that is driving up the price of eggs. It's not just inflation.
- [33:28]
Nick Freitas
Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And we see this all the time. I had an incident in my district where a guy calls me up and he goes, nick. He goes, I'm trying to. I had a cow die. I'm trying to incinerate the cow so I can use my neighbor's poultry incinerator. And it's been working fine. It's been doing the job. It's been. But it's a poultry incinerator, and this is what I've been doing. And they just came, you know, Department of Environmental Quality, and said, you're not allowed to do that. Okay, well, what can I do? Oh, well, you can. You can compost it, essentially. You can throw it out here and you can bury it with stuff. He goes, okay, but the whole point of incinerating it is. Is you don't want diseases and things like that and then, like a coyote to come and take it and then run it off and the disease spreads. And that's what happens if I try to do this method. Like. Well, I'm just following EPA guidance, right? This is what you have to do. And we're sitting here going, let me see if I understand this correctly. The very reason the EPA put in the regulations with respect to incinerators was because they realized it was a better option in order to prevent disease spread, but because they don't have the right incinerator, even though this one is working, you want them to go back to a process that doesn't do a better job of preventing disease spread? Well, those are the rules. Oh, my. Only in government. Only in government do you get this sort of idiocy, you know, expanded out with people going, I'm just doing my job, right? And it's. This is the sort of thing that I think People are just finally totally fed up with. And really, it's in part because the bureaucracy has grown to such a degree to. To where they can involve them. They have time to involve themselves in all these little minute decisions that they were never intended to. And yeah, it's. You wonder why price of things go up. Well, it's. Well, I got three bureaucrats breathing down my neck over something stupid. That's a lot of money.
- [35:18]
Matt Kibbe
Hopefully the Maha wing of the Trump appointees get that granular with this stuff. Because if you want healthier food, if you want a diversified production, that's not just centralized corporate farming, it's stupid regulations like that that prevent the little guy from producing food.
- [35:37]
Nick Freitas
And this is another reason why I love Joel is we were talking about this, and Joel Salatin is obviously like the godfather of regenerative farming. And if you've never been to Polyface Farms or gone on his lunatic farm tour, it's a blast. It is such a good.
- [35:52]
Matt Kibbe
Is that your district?
- [35:53]
Nick Freitas
No, it's just outside of my district. It's over in Augusta County.
- [35:56]
Matt Kibbe
You should read.
- [35:57]
Nick Freitas
Oh, my gosh, I love going up there. Joel does the best tours. Joel, Daniel, his whole team are just like the greatest salt of the earth people you can imagine. But even Joel was saying, look, he goes, don't confuse me. I don't want. I don't want the federal government to now come in and punish everybody else with a bunch of rules and regulations like, aha, now it's your turn. He goes, I want people to be free to be able to make more decisions, but I also want people to understand the consequences of those decisions. I want there to be greater transparency, because there is a hidden cost to raising growing packaging, preserving your food a certain way. It's just absorbed by your health care costs as opposed to your food costs.
- [36:35]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [36:36]
Nick Freitas
And so it'll be interesting to see how all of this kind of pans out as a result of it. Because, again, I'm not a big regulation guy. I actually think you should be. You should be free to eat all the Twinkies you want. I think you should have to pay for your own healthcare costs if you choose to make those decisions. But it'll be interesting to see kind of what happens on the Maha side of this.
- [36:57]
Matt Kibbe
I've seen a promising trend on the Maha side. And Nicole Shanahan, who was RFK Jr. S running mate, she's more openly talking about libertarian solutions to these problems. Because you could raise more regulations, you could start banning certain foods, you could ban Twinkies. Which is precisely the wrong way to do it. Or you could look at the way we subsidize the production of sugar and how that raises the price of sugar to the point where the corn subsidies allow for high fructose corn syrup to be a markedly viable thing. If you just eliminate those things, the Twinkie problem kind of solves itself.
- [37:43]
Nick Freitas
Yeah, yeah, your Twinkie, strangely enough, your Twinkie actually gets healthier. Yeah, yeah. Although I will say there. Okay, there's. There's something bizarrely appealing to me about them outline Twinkies, just because I have a feeling that a black market Twinkie would taste even better.
- [37:57]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [37:59]
Nick Freitas
But no, I think that's true when.
- [38:01]
Matt Kibbe
You look at street twink Twinkies.
- [38:02]
Nick Freitas
Yeah, yeah. Like, hey, man, can I get a dime bag of Twinkie?
- [38:07]
Matt Kibbe
I've never had a Twinkie in my life, but I would eat one of those.
- [38:10]
Nick Freitas
Well, yeah, I remember, you know, talking once about the whole idea of, you know, the concentrated benefit and dispersed costs and how that influences so much of our regulation that people think the regulations are being made because, oh, it's going to keep us safe, when in reality. Well, no, this is regulatory capture. Right. The bigger industry with more political connections, they can afford to spend $10 million on lobbying in order to keep the price of sugar, you know, slightly higher. And, you know, for you, maybe in your grocery budget over the course of the year, it's only an extra 100 bucks that you don't even see or associate with the regulation or the subsidy or whatever else it is. But for them, it represents 70% of their revenue or whatever.
- [38:54]
Matt Kibbe
It's their business model.
- [38:55]
Nick Freitas
Yeah, it's their business model. And so, yeah, what happens when you just simply say, hey, we've decided it's not the role of the federal government to subsidize your industry. We've decided it's not the role of the federal government to engage in protectionism. You should sink or swim based off of your ability to serve your customers. What a novel idea.
- [39:15]
Matt Kibbe
Can't try that. That's crazy.
- [39:17]
Nick Freitas
Crazy talk. Crazy talk.
- [39:19]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. So tell me, you're in Washington, D.C. you're spending a rare day in the belly of the beast because you're optimistic or at least hopeful about the potential of dogecoin. Tell me about that project that you're working on.
- [39:33]
Nick Freitas
So we've got to. We have like our normal program, we do, like, making the argument and the why minutes and things like that. And then when DOGE started being discussed as a serious concept, we figured, you know what? This is Something we really want to watch. And it's something that we also want to encourage. Again, we call it the stick and the carrot. Right. I want to, I want to encourage people to be brave and if they can, I'd love to whip their ass for being cowards. Right. But I want both of those to be there. And so we figured, look, we've got a pretty good social media audience. Let's do weekly updates on what Doge is doing and in 15 minutes and we'll give you kind of like the highlights of what Doge is doing. And then obviously, because, you know, we have connections up in D.C. and with the administration and because I know a little bit about what it's like to be a legislator, maybe not at the federal level, but the processes, we could give some insight on why some of this stuff is important in ways that the mainstream media is not going to cover. Like, we're going to tie certain things with USAID to Gramsci. Right. In a way that CNN is not going to do that. So we started doing these 15 minute updates and they started getting pretty popular. And we said, you know, what's missing from this is actually talking to people that are either legislators or in the administration or in some of the think tanks that have been doing work on this forever to actually talk about, okay, what is now explain the process. Because when you talk about things like continuing resolutions and, and the fiscal years and 12 appropriation, what the hell does any of that mean? Right? Nobody runs their business this, you know, this way for the most part. So what does that mean? And so now we're coming up here and we're talking to legislators that are either on the DOGE Committee or DOGE Caucus, or they're on money committees or on the committees that deal, like the HELP committee, which is Health, Education, labor and Pensions in the Senate. Who are the people up here that know how this process is going to work, that can explain in layman's terms what they should expect to see and what I think is good about this is the more opportunity that we give them to explain the process and what the plan they do, what their plan is, the more transparency the American people have and the more they get to actually come back and say, well, you said it was done this way. How come it's not being done this way? So that's the, that's the encouragement. That's the, you know, the carrot and the stick. Hey, thank you so much for this transparency. I would love to retweet what you're doing. I would love to be able to call the Congress people that you think need a little additional encouragement and be a force multiplier. And nobody gets to tell me that doesn't work anymore, because we saw how it worked in December with the last continuing resolution. I mean, Twitter exploded overnight. New media showed its power in a way that it really had never has before with the budget process.
- [42:09]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [42:09]
Nick Freitas
So I want to give as much people, as much access to the people making these decisions, as much knowledge on how the process take place, so that they can be helpful and encouraging in the right direction and remind people as we get closer to midterms. No, no, no, no. I don't care what your consultant is telling you. We hired you to do this, so I want to see it done. And so that's the mechanism that we're doing. We're providing them weekly updates, and now we're jumping into providing these bonus episodes, which will probably start dropping on Saturdays, where we're talking with the players, the people that are making this happen, whether it be on the executive side, kind of the think tank side, or the, like, the Doge side as well as the congressional side.
- [42:48]
Matt Kibbe
Are you going to interview Big Balls?
- [42:53]
Nick Freitas
If we can get an interview, that.
- [42:54]
Matt Kibbe
Would be a huge interview.
- [42:55]
Nick Freitas
We can get an interview with Big Balls. Yeah. I think as soon as we can get Doge Watch up to, like, right now, we're probably hovering around, you know, last few episodes are jumping up to about a quarter million views within the first 48 hours. It's not bad. I think once we get closer to a million, maybe. I'll tell you the other thing, too, that we're doubling down.
- [43:11]
Matt Kibbe
That's his threshold.
- [43:12]
Nick Freitas
Yeah, yeah. The other thing that we're doubling down to on a social media side, us in particular, we've always put a lot of effort into Instagram and YouTube, and there's a variety of reasons for that. One of them is we like easily shareable content. We like to talk about things outside of the political realm as well. We like to talk about cultural things. We like to talk about fans, family. We also like to be able to convert from short form to long form. And YouTube makes that very easy. We're putting a lot more effort into X than we ever have before. We always saw X, and really we saw. Twitter is kind of like this liberal cesspool where they could shut you down anytime they wanted. And when Elon took it over, all of a sudden it was like, okay, we're interested. And now I look at the stuff that he's doing with video content and with X Spaces. And so we'll probably also start to do more Doge stuff on X Spaces as well, because that's become the virtual town hall. Very easy to use. So, yeah, that's. That's where. That's where we'll be.
- [44:11]
Christian Hines
At Kibbe on Liberty. Freedom is a lifestyle24.7, something you live and breathe and wear every day. If that describes you, you need the very best Liberty swag in the market today, just like this shirt I happen to be wearing. Go to freethepeople.org kol and check out our exciting merch. You too can love Liberty and look cool.
- [44:35]
Matt Kibbe
That's kind of where we're at. And we're investing more and more time on X. I've always been a big fan, particularly since Elon took over, because we face peril on any of these platforms and, and I'm old enough to remember when Facebook was open and free and you could actually talk about the deaths caused by socialism. And despite Mark Zuckerberg's promises, I haven't seen any changes yet.
- [45:05]
Nick Freitas
No, I think their algorithm, I mean, look, on just a practical level for Facebook, their algorithm sucks. Their Facebook reels are decent and they allow for good sharing in between Meta or, excuse me, for Instagram. Instagram. But they kept doing stuff in the 2024 cycle where they would change your preference, they would change the preferences for, like, political content, and then they would adjust your preferences for you. And you're sitting there and your audience is wondering why they're not seeing you. Well, it's because Meta made the decision that you didn't want to see this. Oh, but here's a bunch of crap you never asked for. Maybe you trolled somebody once and now you're just inundated with left wing, you know, garbage. So I don't know, I hope, I hope that Zuckerberg is being honest and what he plans to do. YouTube. We've actually had a fairly decent, you know, relationship with YouTube. They haven't been, you know, too much of a pain.
- [45:58]
Matt Kibbe
No strikes.
- [45:59]
Nick Freitas
No, no. I mean, we've had some demonetized and whatnot, but. But no strikes that I'm aware of. The. The day is young.
- [46:06]
Matt Kibbe
They're watching.
- [46:06]
Nick Freitas
Yeah. And. But. And then obviously, you know, we try to participate on Rumble and some other platforms, but. But X is the one where if X ever figures out or chooses to go in the route of not only doing what they're doing now, which I think is highly competitive with Instagram and Facebook and even TikTok to some degree, but if they ever figure out how to be competitive on the YouTube side as well, you now have a one stop shop with easy sharing, easy conversion from short to long. I mean, that's a game changer.
- [46:41]
Matt Kibbe
I mean, I think he's pretty much said that's his plan. And the competition alone is. I mean, I viewed Zuckerberg's comments as extremely political. But I also think there's probably a market survival mandate here because if Facebook continues to be that shitty, their community is going to just go away.
- [47:06]
Nick Freitas
It was one thing where they were the only game in town, right? They're not. It's a very competitive field. And again, it's the thing I love about market efficiency is whether YouTube or Facebook wants to do this or not. At some point they're gonna have to because the market's gonna require it. And that's, that's the way it's supposed to be.
- [47:24]
Matt Kibbe
But yeah, I was, I was being grumpy and pessimistic about the budget process early on. But a point you made, which is something that Elon, I think fundamentally gets, is that you now have a radically democratized world, in large part because X is now relatively free and open public square, and people can engage on complex things like what are those programs at usaid? They can learn about these things and they can then have their voices heard. And the same dynamic where MAHA plus was melting the Senate phone lines and social media. DOGE should be next.
- [48:09]
Nick Freitas
Oh, yeah.
- [48:10]
Matt Kibbe
Doge is the frontier. And that has implications for everything else. Because I think the success of the Trump coalition in the midterms is going to be about credibly holding together the Maha Doge libertarian aspects of Trump 2.0.
- [48:28]
Nick Freitas
No, I think that's right. And again, the exciting point is that we're getting more access to Congress and the administration than we've ever gotten before in the past. Because it used to be. Were you in the Washington press corps? Okay, great. Then you get a meeting or you get a call or you get a statement. And this administration has. I mean, I was there when Caroline Levitt was explaining the new process and saying, like, look, you don't just get a press pass anymore because the Washington Correspondence association says so. Like, if. If you're someone that has an audience and is talking about these things and, you know, want to be in on this, well, then we want to give you information. It's like, great. Now, by the same token, one of the things that needs to be understood that I don't think is quite yet appreciated, Conservative libertarian influencers that is not the same world as left wing influencers. Collectivists look at information and influence very, very different than the way we look at it. They look at it for orders. Our site does not.
- [49:27]
Matt Kibbe
I mean, if you think we resent orders, yes.
- [49:31]
Nick Freitas
If you think for one second, like, look, I'm very, very grateful that we have an audience across social media platforms of about 3.4 million. But if I went out there today and said, I, as your social media influencer have now told you to think.
- [49:47]
Matt Kibbe
This way, dude, go after Thomas Massie, I'm done.
- [49:51]
Nick Freitas
Right? That's not happening. Because what they expect is to say, hey, look, here's what you've grown to believe about me and trust about me that I'm going to tell you where my bias is. I'm not pretending I don't have one. I'm going to tell you where my bias is and I'm explaining things I'm going to call balls and strikes. The way I see it, based off of kind of an objective standard of truth, of reason, of logic, of morality, like that's where I'm going to call it. And insofar as you think I do a good job, you're willing to listen to me. But the moment I'm co opted by anybody, even if it's like our side, you're done, you're done. And I think that's a good thing. That is a very, very.
- [50:30]
Matt Kibbe
I won't name names, but you can, you can tell immediately when an influence influencer has joined a team. Probably for a fee. Yeah, because they change. Yeah, they change. And it's obvious.
- [50:43]
Nick Freitas
Yeah, I remember we, it's, it's interesting. There's been some things where we've gotten offers like, hey, would you, you know, would you advertise for this? Or would you do that?
- [50:52]
Matt Kibbe
Or Twinkies and.
- [50:55]
Nick Freitas
Yeah, and so we'll look at something. And our, our rule has been, I don't know if you ever saw that skit, but by, oh dang, what's his name? I forget the comedian's name. But he was doing a funny little shtick on liberal sponsors and conservative sponsors. And the liberal sponsors were like, you know, save the Environment brought to you by Exxon. Right. And the conservative sponsors was like, this is brought to you by Freedom Water. You know, And I know one of the things that we always looked at was like, look, we, it's not, we have sponsors, you know, good ranchers, true classic, like we love them, but it was only people that we like that share common values and that we Actually like their product. One of the things that we were adamant about is like, dude, don't. Don't come in waving the flag and saying, oh, look at us. We're so patriotic. Okay, but does your product suck? Yeah, well, then we're not interested. We're free market capitalists. But yeah, you're right. And it's the same. The influence can happen on the same way. Like sometimes you get.
- [51:54]
Matt Kibbe
I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about that sort of thing because that, that, that's pretty, that's pretty transparent. But yeah, obviously a lot of influencers have private contracts to promote certain agendas and maybe products, too, but usually the products are more transparent.
- [52:10]
Nick Freitas
We're giving you this access because we expect a narrative.
- [52:13]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [52:13]
Nick Freitas
And as long as you are sending that narrative, you get the access. It's like, okay, well, at some. The same quit. The same question I asked people when they run for office pretty much applies to everything else. What are you willing to lose it for?
- [52:25]
Matt Kibbe
Right.
- [52:26]
Nick Freitas
If you're, if you're not wanting to lose the access. Like, I remember, again, it was, I think it was super cool that we've now been invited to the White House to, To be able to talk to members of the administration. Great. Okay. But Donald Trump just said we need.
- [52:39]
Matt Kibbe
But did you get an Epstein binder?
- [52:41]
Nick Freitas
Oh, my gosh. But then Donald Trump says, you know, we should primary Thomas Massie. I'm on Twitter going, you know what? I remember when Thomas Massie was the only guy, only guy in the House of Representatives demanding that everyone come in and vote on these massive spending bills. We have very, very few members of Congress that are willing to lose their seat for what they believe. It'd really be a shame to lose one. Right. Why? Because that, that is the right thing to do. Because Thomas Massie has earned the loyalty. Not because of access he has granted, he's earned the loyalty.
- [53:13]
Matt Kibbe
And if you did the opposite, it would destroy your brand.
- [53:15]
Nick Freitas
Yeah, it should. Yeah, it should, right? It might. It might help it with some. But at some point, too, you have to ask the question, right? This is why, like, look, I've been watching your stuff for years, and I never know quite how you're going to explain it, but I always know that you're going to stay true to what you believe, and that's why it's worth watching. So again, it's another one of those areas where it is the morally correct thing to do, and it also happens to be the thing that the marketplace over time, tends to reward, which is how you know you're actually living in a good moral marketplace is that it ends up rewarding the things that are genuinely virtuous.
- [53:56]
Matt Kibbe
Even though I live in Washington D.C. i believe, and maybe it's somewhat naive that doing the right thing is ultimately a good move for your career.
- [54:08]
Nick Freitas
Yeah.
- [54:09]
Matt Kibbe
And I've had short run experiences where it didn't feel that way. But it does work itself out and it gets you develop, you know, for whatever it's worth, your character is your brand. And I think we're at a point in this very transparent democratic world where that matters more than it used to putting out a good performance. You could get away with it.
- [54:34]
Nick Freitas
Yeah.
- [54:35]
Matt Kibbe
When it was a production, when, when it was scripted.
- [54:38]
Nick Freitas
Yeah.
- [54:39]
Matt Kibbe
It's not anymore. So I hope that's true. But, but I'm, I'm pretty stubborn about my beliefs, so it's not like I'm going to change it.
- [54:47]
Nick Freitas
Well, I think it's, it's another. That's. There's definitely times where short term gain is obvious. And I think the other difference too is there are some people that won't take the short term gain because they're really good at calculating what they think the future prospects will be. There are other people that pass on the short term gain because they genuinely recognize it as the wrong thing to do. And I think those are two different types of analysis. And I don't care how smart you are. I believe in a soul. I believe in objective morality. And even if you get away, even if you're so smart that you can get away with it, it's purely just a matter of calculations. There's something about that that is internally corrosive that will eventually come back to bite you. I just, I totally believe that's, that's inevitable. And look, I don't. Sometimes people don't get caught for a very, very long time, but they end up getting caught in their own lives at some point. Yeah, because you'll end up burning people that you really should have stuck up for. And sooner or later you'll be the one on the. You'll be the one on the chopping block. And you can't be surprised when nobody's willing to be there for you. Yeah.
- [56:02]
Matt Kibbe
Well said. Shameless promotion. You've talked about some of this. But where do people find your content and you and all this crazy stuff you're putting out on X?
- [56:11]
Nick Freitas
Well, we've made a pretty easy. As long as you just go to Nick J. Freitas, one of, one of the. I love my last name right. Proud of my Portuguese heritage, but it is shameful how close it is to Fuentes. So Nick J Freitas F R E.
- [56:26]
Matt Kibbe
I T A S Totally different. Totally different.
- [56:29]
Nick Freitas
But you can find that on on x. You know, YouTube, Facebook, everywhere. We use the same thing. That way it's just easy to find.
- [56:37]
Matt Kibbe
Very cool. Good catching up.
- [56:39]
Nick Freitas
You too.
- [56:41]
Matt Kibbe
Thanks for watching. If you liked the conversation, make sure to like the video, subscribe and also ring the bell for notifications.
- [56:49]
Christian Hines
And if you want to know more about Free the people, go to freethepeople.org.