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- [00:01]
A
Hello and welcome to the Mountain State Liberty cast. I am your host, Ty Ward. Today I am joined by Matt Kibbe, who is the, I guess, director of Free the People and host of Kibbe on Liberty with BlazeTV. Matt, thanks for joining us.
- [00:18]
B
Hey, good to be with you.
- [00:19]
A
Yeah. So, Matt, if you don't mind, can you give us a rundown of your background a little bit what you, where you came from in the liberty movement, what you do now and all the different ventures you have. I know you've got documentaries going and you are. The reason we're having you on today is because you'll be at the Libertarian Party convention of West Virginia, March 15th. I think you're, you're speaking, you were at our convention in 2020, I believe.
- [00:49]
B
I think that sounds about okay.
- [00:51]
A
Yeah. So go ahead and tell us about yourself and let the people know what they're getting into.
- [00:56]
B
2020, the year we were forbidden to gather. Yeah, it's burned into my psyche to never let that happen again. So I'm an old man, so I could tell the long version, but I'll try to keep it short. I like to say that I've been a libertarian since I was 13, at least consciously. When I read the liner notes on a Rush album dedicated to the genius of Ayn Rand and, and those lyrics and later her books and the people she recommended that I read really resonated with me. So I was one of those dorky libertarian kids that was reading all of these books and really animated by these ideas. I'm an economist by training, so I went to Grove City College where I learned Austrian economics. I did graduate school at George Mason University because that at the time was where you would learn Austrian economics. But because George Mason is so close to the Beltway, I got sucked in. It was like Mordor or the Death Star or something like that, where as an economist you could find work in the city. So I went from wanting to be an academic and being totally turned off by the internal politics of academia. Not sort of left, right woke, non woke, but just the pettiness with which the, the fight over tenure would, would consume people. And I, I find that, I find that a total turnoff. So ironically, perhaps I immediately got involved in politics and I'll empty my whole closet here. I was the chief economist for the Republican National Committee during Lee Atwater's time. I worked at the US Chamber of Commerce. Eventually became a chief of staff for, for a member of the Hill. And that was back when the so called Republican revolution was happening. So I Got to see what a permanent Republican minority was and what in hindsight was a fairly productive Republican majority trying to balance the budget and all sort of stuff like that. I eventually made my way to founding an organization called FreedomWorks. And that was the idea was to actually build a grassroots constituency, a community of people that would, that would do the things that the left had always done, like show up at town hall meetings, like march peacefully on Washington and, and, and participate in the process in a way that at that time you didn't really see anybody that shared our values that was speaking up. No. When I worked on the Hill, nobody came to my office and demanded that we cut spending. Everybody had their hat out. Everybody was asking for something. So the idea of FreedomWorks was to create a grassroots community that would advocate for limited government, individual liberty. Really radical stuff like balancing the budget, stuff that's just really crazy. And we had created that. I think we launched that in 2003 and were struggling and laboring away, trying to organize people. And suddenly about the time of the Wall street bailout, we discovered that the Internet changed everything. And almost simultaneous with the rise of the Ron Paul movement and the emergence of the Tea Party after the Wall street bailout of 2008, that became a very important thing for us. And it was really based on a left wing theory of cadre building. If you could organize people that shared your values and get them to show up at the right place at the right time, you could really drive public opinion. You could change a congressman's mind if you took over a town hall meeting, you could change what the media was reporting on, and ultimately you could change politics itself. And that was the idea. And I think I learned a lot from that. But the Tea Party, of course, fell apart. Some people say it got hijacked by being too involved in politics. It can be quite corrupting. If we went from let's elect Rand Paul and Thomas Massie to, and I'm using the royal we here. But we went from that to we need the Republicans to win the Senate. Well, of course, as they've demonstrated time and again, a Republican Senate doesn't necessarily or even ever lead to more liberty. So, so that was, that was a turn off to me, which gets me to what I do now. My wife Terry and I created an organization called Free the People, sort of at the, at the end of the, the Tea Party wave, because we realized that that same technology that allowed us to build really large cadres of people shared a certain set of values. We could now reach anybody, theoretically anybody. That was consuming social media. So what we do at Free the People is we create a lot of content. And the idea is to reach outside of the libertarian bubble, the conservatorian bubble, constitutional conservatives, however you want to characterize our community, and turn on people that don't know what the word libertarian means. Don't know. Haven't read any of the books that I've read and really are sort of newbies to this set of values that we cherish so much. So if you go to freethepeople.org, you will see a lot of documentaries. You will see. I have a show on BlazeTV which is honestly more wonky than anything else we do at Free the People. My team is a bunch of creatives, videographers, artists, storytellers, who also happen to share these values of liberty. But they're not, they're not thinking about it the way I would, which is, you know, the books and the Gospel of Liberty. Right. It's, it's, it's more about, like, what's an emotionally compelling story that would convince people that are otherwise pro lockdown to realize that there's a lot of collateral damage when you lock down an economy. So we've done a lot of stuff like that. I can get more into it, but I've. I've babbled for too long.
- [07:21]
A
No, so it's funny, economics. I know most people, I mean, being an economist yourself, I know I always tell the story that I took some college classes when I was in high school, senior in high school, just to get some college credit because my girlfriend was taking them. So, you know, you want to be in class with your girlfriend. And we took a psychology class and I don't remember a thing about it. I got an A in it. I don't remember anything about it. But when I went to, to Colle, I was moving some, transferring some of those credits over, and for some reason they transferred that credit over and it showed up as economics because I had to have an economics credit. And I kind of asked the registrar, I said, well, I said, does this, this isn't an economics class. She goes, well, that's what it's coded as. She said, you got to have it. You don't have to have psychology. I went, okay, it's economics then. So that's how seriously the college system takes economics is. I took a psychology class and learned nothing. And now I have an economics class under my belt. Whatever. Credits. That was two credits. So, yeah, so I learned nothing about economics in school. I mean, you learn what capitalism is, you learn what socialism is, and you kind of forget all the details. But you're talking about the Tea Party movement and what happened to it. And, you know, for me, I was a. I was a Democrat for most of my life until I'm only 40. So I've been a Libertarian for probably 15 years or so. And then I was kind of independent, you know, homeless before that, brought to the liberty movement by Ron Paul like everybody else. But, you know, the idea of. Of economics for me was just kind of like, rich people are evil, and if you're rich, you did something bad to get there, and the only reason you wouldn't want socialism is if you're greedy. And I don't. I had a friend that still tells me that. That we were. I was just out of college, and he said, you used to say that all the time. And I was like, yeah, I don't know what. I don't know if God touched me or what, but, like, I guess I just started working and understanding how things work. But the Tea Party movement, again, it was that whole, you know, Liberty Republicans, I never knew anything about Thomas Massie, never knew anything about Justin Marsh or any of those guys. I remember Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and those guys were not on. Not. Not my cup of tea. So, yeah, I'm sure that's frustrating for a guy like you who has these Austrian principles and then the people that are getting all the player people, and I don't know, I guess Tom or Tom Cruise, Ted Cruz might have been better then. I don't know. I mean, he's the antithesis to me of Liberty now, but I don't know. Did that change? Did Ted Cruz change, or was he always like that?
- [09:53]
B
He. He changes all the time, right?
- [09:55]
A
Yeah.
- [09:57]
B
He is sort of an encapsulation of everything that's wrong with politics, because what you learn, like if you go back. And now, for instance, he. When he gets in that infamous argument with Tucker Carlson, he says, you know, I ran for the Senate promising to be Israel's senator. Or Pete says something almost verbatim like that.
- [10:18]
A
Yes.
- [10:19]
B
And I was at those rallies. I never, ever heard Ted Cruz utter a word about foreign policy. And he certainly didn't do it at the Tea Party rallies. And the same with Marco Rubio. Like, foreign policy was not something that any of us talked about and perhaps a mistake on our part because we were. We were keenly aware that. That defense and intelligence and forever wars were a big driver of deficits and national debt. But we didn't have what I'll call a Ron Paul litmus test on non interventionism. And it shows because even this will tell you how weird it was. Mike Pompeo was a Tea Party candidate at one point. And so many of them, as you learn, just they'll pretend to be what you want them to be. And in some ways that's okay because I think our job is to create an incentive as activists, whether we're doing it through the lp, we're doing it through other grassroots organization, we're doing it just through community action. Our job is to force elected officials to be better than they would otherwise be.
- [11:29]
A
Right.
- [11:30]
B
And that's not a one time event. That's not about voting. It's more important what happens the day after voting. And it was the, I think if the Tea Party was still as robust as it was circa 2009, 2010, Ted Cruz would still be one of us. But he's gone through other iterations. You know, he was the never Trumper who then became sort of a Trump sycophant. And now Israel, I guess is his play to win the Republican primary for president after Trump. I think that's an odd choice. But, but we'll see, we'll see what happens.
- [12:09]
A
Yeah, so it's funny because, you know, West Virginia, we've had a Republican majority for about 10 years and a super majority for probably five or six. And, and I don't know if you're familiar with West Virginia politics, but you know, the whole union thing is here and, and we always had what they call Blue Dog Democrats. I mean, they weren't even, you know, in the 60s or 70s, I'd say West Virginia Democrat was a lot more conservative than your average, you know, California San Francisco Democrat. Even though the San Francisco Democrats are probably, would be considered Republicans now. But our, our, the Republican Party here has kind of been inundated by these Blue Dog Democrats and some of them have been as bold to, you know, switch parties in the middle of their term. And it's one of those things that we, you know, us being, you know, proponents of Austrian economics and just basic, and I don't, we don't even use that word much just because it's kind of over some people's heads. It's over my head, to be honest. But you know, just basically capitalism, free markets, market forces, and even our good Republicans, we have a few that are, you know, staunch libertarians and they run as Republicans just because they know that's, you know, how they have to win. But they do things, they'll say things like medical freedom and West Virginia was, you know, on the forefront of school choice. And, and, and then they do things like, we had a bill this year come through the house to pay small business like a hundred employees or less to train their employees. If you have a fabrication shop, they'd pay a, you know, a helper to go get training to become a welder if you promise to pay them more. And then the state would reimburse them for the training. And you know, they say they're pro business and you know, we're shouting from the roof like, look, that doesn't help anybody if you're, if you're having to, that's not a free market economic system. And they'll say, well, we're pro business. And in the short term, and my question is, in the short term it looks really good when they do things like make freak technical school and, and pay people to trade in their employees. But what are the long term economic effects you've seen from policies like that? Because it's nothing new.
- [14:17]
B
Yeah, and, and by the way, I, I don't, I don't drop the C word that often, capitalism, because I think, I think it's, it's misunderstood and we spend a lot of time, and I certainly spent a lot of time in my career trying to figure out common sense ways to explain really complex ideas. And, and so I, I avoid the word capitalism. And I'm, I'm not sure I talk about free markets that much either. So the challenge is to get people to think about the consequences of policies like that. And I'm remembering Thomas Massie when he forced everyone to come back to Washington, D.C. to vote on that $2 trillion train wreck that to this day is driving insane inflation that people see in their grocery baskets. And sometimes the best you can do is make sure that you're there when, when the, the chickens come home to roost and explain to people, if you spend money you don't have, the government has to print a lot of money to make up for the fact that it can't borrow it all anymore. There's limits on how much you can borrow. So they print it because it's easy. But it's a tax and it's, it's, it's fundamentally a tax on your groceries. It's a tax on the, the money you earn. Anybody that is not able to play millions and billions in stock markets and hedge your bets against inflationary pressures. That's why they do it, because you don't know that it's happening. Until after it's happened. So I think the opportunity with every public policy is to maybe go back and say we've done this before and let's look at how that turned out. There's pretty compelling evidence that almost every sector, every cause that the government subsidizes ends up being the most expensive thing. It's true with healthcare, it's true with education, it's true with transportation. It's certainly true with the university system, which is absurdly expensive for the value you get in return of that. So it, it, I think sometimes we have to go back and say, you know, this is not the first time the legislature has proposed this. Let's see how it worked out last time. Because you know, when you're subsidized, for instance, when you're subsidizing first time homeowners, who's paying for that? People that are paying rent. Right. That can't afford a mortgage. So there is kind of a have and have nots of insiders that are sort of feeding off of government programs. And, and you, you can, you can sometimes make quite populist arguments as to why these, these really nice sounding things are horrible.
- [17:04]
A
Yeah. And that's one thing we've kind of been, lately, we've been kind of effective with, is getting, using social media to our advantages. Our Taylor, who is usually my co host, he's the, the chair of the party and he's been getting a lot of calls from radio stations to do interviews because he's, he's pretty good at vocalizing, you know, the, the concepts of liberty. And we're getting a few more, you know, personalities on the radio that are moving away from the Blue Dog Democrat side to them hiring more, for lack of a better word, real, real Republicans. And that's one thing he, he harps on all the time, is that there's nothing new here. I mean, West Virginia basically gave our economy to the, to the coal industry for 80 to 90 years. And you know, southern West Virginia, their water is all poisoned. And you know, we still get a little bit of tax benefit from the coal mines that are still open. But the things we try to say is, you know, you can't. With the, the data centers, oil and gas, they constantly are jumping on the new thing and giving them the, you know, giving them the keys to the store. And that's one thing we harp on a lot here, is that it's, it we don't, we're not against data centers, we're not against oil and gas, we're not getting Coal, we're for all of those things in a market environment. And, and, and one thing they're trying to do is make coal fired power plants burn at 60% efficiency all the time. Whether they're using, whether they need the coal or not, just to burn coal just so that they're digging coal. And it's not hard for anybody with a little bit of logic to go, well that's insane. That doesn't make any sense. That's, that's socialism. That's, that's, you know, what a communist country does to hide what they're doing, you know, pad their economy. And those are the kind of things we try to do in social media, you know, with AI making memes about the governor being the punks of Tony Phil and, and waking up and seeing the same promises from last year. And, and it's, it's really, we had high hopes for our governor, Governor Patrick Morrissey, and he, like everybody else, they, they campaign like Ron Paul and then govern, govern like a Democrat. And it's been, it's frustrating because we do praise them when they're doing good things and, and school choice is fantastic. But like this year they put all of the, Our HOPE Scholarship, that's our school choice bill, it's the law. They put it all into, oh, what's it called? The word's not coming to my head. The extra money they get surplus, surplus spending. And so they're basically holding our governor hostage because he wants a 10 income tax cut. And they're saying, well we can't afford it. So they're putting all of that, which, it's a, it's a long, it's, it's code. So it's something they're supposed to be funding, but it's all in the surplus. And then they had a bill to cap the amount because it's supposed to be based on whatever the school spends, which like now it's like $5,300. Every year goes up. So every year the Hope Scholarship goes up where they're wanting to cap it. And as you alluded to earlier, they just had a House Finance Committee meeting and I think about 100 people showed up and stood outside the, the meeting room and they tabled the motion and those people came in and basically, you know, holding signs and saying, you know, this is unacceptable. And, and they back down. And so I think to your point, it really does, it really is just that easy. I mean, 100 people showed up to say they were unhappy about this and, and it worked. And that's Our thing is trying to get people aware that this does work. If you hold people to the fire and getting on the radio and showing people there is another option to the milquetoast Blue dog Democrat Republicans. So, yeah, what you're talking about, it seems to really, really work. But I had a question about. Well, Taylor wanted me to ask you. In a state like West Virginia, most states, you know, unless you're a Republican or a Democrat, you're not going to win. I mean, this is it. It's, it's a trend across the, the nation. But in West Virginia, I always kind of test people, tell them I'm a Libertarian and they're like, oh, you're a liberal? And I'm like, I mean, what do you want a classical. And you know, that's again, a whole conversation. And I basically tell them, you know, we're just to get on their level. I said we're the, what the Republicans pretend to be, but we actually believe what we, we say. And that gets across to him a lot of the time and mentioned Ron Paul and they, a lot of people know who he is. But in a state like West Virginia, what have you seen work across the, the country as far as getting, I don't even know getting people in office, but having effective candidates when they, when they run for office, from, you know, county commissioner all the way up to the legislature.
- [21:38]
B
Yeah, a couple things. And to your last point, just to close that out like the. I've never been to a state capitol or here I'm in Washington, D.C. and it's certainly emblematic of how this town works. It's an inside game if you let it be an inside game. And it's the crony capitalists and the unions and all these powerful interest groups, many of whom claim to be Republican interests. They will rig the system against you if you, if you let them. If you let them do that in the dark of night. So the only way to, the only way to counterbalance that is for enough people to be paying enough attention. And I think part of our job is to, if we're, if we're trying to impact legislation, we have to make sure that we make it easy and even fun for people to participate and have their voice heard. The other dynamic that's happening everywhere, and you can tell me if this is true in West Virginia, I suspect it is, is that more and more people, to the extent that they're registering to vote, are not registering as Republicans or Democrats, are registering as independents. And that number nationally goes up every year. And that is a pretty vivid vote against uniparty politics. So even even though it's impossible for big old libertarians to break through because of all these barriers that they've created, you know, the two parties shockingly don't want a third party competing for their votes. Right. The people want it. People want more choices, people want different ways of expressing themselves. And there's, there's all sorts of fascinating new coalitions that are emerging. The things that might have given you hope about a second Donald Trump administration. Maha red pilled free speech advocates that are coming over from the left. Guys like Elon Musk and the whole Doge effort, that list goes on and on. Those people and those values and that coalition is still out there. And to a person, I suspect they're quite disappointed in what's become of the Trump administration. I think that's an opportunity for big L libertarians and small L libertarians and organizing grassroots around some of those principles I think is a very fruitful place for us to work. And I'm going to talk about this a little bit when we all get together at the LP convention, but I just did, we're going to release it on Monday. Actually. I just did a long conversation with Ron Paul in his office, in his office in Lake Jackson because whether or not he intended to do that. Well, he did intend to do it. He used politics as a soapbox. He, he, his wife warned him that if he ran for Congress he would win. And he's like, oh no, I'm never going to win because, because people love Santa Claus in politics and I'll be sort of the anti Santa, not giving away free stuff.
- [24:53]
A
Yeah.
- [24:53]
B
And of course he did win. And of course he went on to run for president and he wasn't running to win office even though he would have happily won if that was something that could have happened. He was using politics as a cultural soapbox.
- [25:12]
A
Yeah.
- [25:12]
B
He was using those debates and all those rallies and all those things that, that turned on guys like you. Yeah, he was using that to spread ideas and values in his own words. So I think, I think to the extent that we want to run candidates for office, we, we, we can look at you guys think about this more than I do. But there's, there's obviously a multi pronged strategy. Instead of looking at the top of the ticket, maybe look at nonpartisan offices. Do you guys have nonpartisan?
- [25:45]
A
Yeah, we actually have, our last chair is Clarksburg, West Virginia, which is near where. Well, it's not, I don't know, in West Virginia. It's near where Joel lives. He's a city councilman. And it's nonpartisan. So we have. And we have another one that says a very small town, it's barely incorporated, but we have another libertarian that's on city council. And those are nonpartisan races and all of our school boards races are nonpartisan, so.
- [26:11]
B
Yeah, so those. The advantage of those is that the system isn't so out of balance against third parties. I think Joel actually won his mayor's race back in the day in a nonpartisan race. So that's one option. And this is how Thomas Massie got his start. He ran for county clerk. Executive, I think the title was. Yeah. And it started out of a grassroots movement that he created. Just opposing zoning laws. Yeah, if I'm getting the story right,
- [26:46]
A
that's what I remember.
- [26:47]
B
Yeah. And that, and that eventually became an opportunity to run for Congress. But by that point, he had, he had built an army of people that were going to help him get past the Rhinos and the country club Republicans and neocons that never would have otherwise elected a Liberty guy. But the other, the other thing to think about, and I. This, this is more where I'm at right now. I'm having. I'm, I'm. I'm a recovering political activist. I'm. I'm trying to get out of it. Sort of. Sort of like. Sort of like al Pacino and Godfather 3. They, you know, I keep getting out and then they pull me back in. But I would think about politics as a way to influence people and to turn them on to ideas. So recruiting candidates that can actually tell the story and are personable and are good on podcasts and are good on social media, you'll probably get ignored by mainstream media. But the good news is mainstream media doesn't matter nearly as much as it used to.
- [27:47]
A
Right.
- [27:48]
B
So consider it a communications job to the extent that that's possible. And then learn how to, to connect with audiences who are not going to be excited if you're preaching the non aggression principle. They're not going to be excited if you're quoting Ludwig von Mises.
- [28:04]
A
Right.
- [28:06]
B
But you could translate that into something that really matters to people where they live.
- [28:11]
A
Yeah. And we are. That's. That's right in line with what we're trying to do. We've got, we're trying to go through all the unopposed races in the state. My, my House delegate is actually unopposed. And, and all of our. We. It's like we've got. It's always in our LP convention Where we nominate candidates, it's always, you got two people that are tentatively a definitely no, but maybe in the future. So it's, it's hard to get people to do it just because they understand what the reality of it is. But we're trying to get people that, even if we have some members that are willing to donate some filing fees and, and just get people on the ballot because like right here, my, my House delegate, my representative is unopposed. Democrats didn't run anybody. And just paying 125 bucks to get your name on the ballot, in our view is a good start. Because nobody's ever seen Libertarian on their ballot. And it says now the funny thing is it used to be West Virginia on the ballot. It would say lib, which is like. And we got them to change. I was like, please stop. So now it says Libertarian. But so, yeah, just getting the name recognition that way. And for so long it's been a lot of people doing a little bit and I think right now we have fewer people in the party, but doing a lot more. And again, social media and AI and being able to write things on the fly with everybody's busy schedule and using that technology to get that stuff done is so much easier than it used to be. And another question, you know, kind of off this topic, but you know, technology and stuff like that, you know, I, I think about the Epstein files and, and your conversations with Thomas Massie and the amount, you know, what is it, 3 million, 3 million files per dump. Like, I'm sure when you were, you know, 20, that would have required somebody literally, you know, printing them out and reading them and no computer access and, you know, it would have taken forever. And then when they did find it out, I mean, there's no social media or, or Internet to get the information. And, and now, you know, Thomas Massey can come out and he can go into, you know, skiff or whatever with Rokhanna and leaf through this stuff and know what he's looking for and use search terms and then come out of there and get in Pam Bondi's face and do what he did to her. And, and I wonder, do you think that's playing a more positive role than negative, the, the, the technology and just the advancements that's going on right now.
- [30:42]
B
Yeah, I always think that the upside is bigger than the downside when it comes to technology because for all the censorship and all the weaponization of technology and AI that we're going to see from the government and that's happening, we know it's happening. But you could look at the censorship industrial complex that emerged or at least was weaponized during COVID I think it existed before that. It was essentially a military operation in hopes of controlling this unruly populace that has new access to information and new abilities to organize. I think we really caught them unawares when we held that first massive Tea Party rally where we put a million plus people on the Mall. They had no idea what was happening. And all that was happening was freedom of association. People were self organizing and using at the time, very rudimentary technologies to gather, to share information, to learn what their senators and congressmen were actually doing instead of what they tell you they were doing. Because you used to get away with that, right? Like you would say one thing back home and then go to Washington and behave the opposite way. And it was very difficult to know that there was a contradiction, that your legislator was lying to you. So we got to stay on top of that. We shouldn't hide from AI. We shouldn't hide from social media. We shouldn't throw up our hands and say, oh, Google and Facebook and Instagram are censoring us. Well, of course they are, but there's competition for that stuff now. And I think whatever you think of Elon Musk, he really created a. An existential threat to YouTube and Facebook and all these social media platforms that were censoring us because he's far less censorous. And that. That would allow him. Should YouTube continue to stifle half the country's voices, that would allow Elon to come in and say, okay, I'll be a video platform.
- [32:54]
A
Right?
- [32:54]
B
That's obviously what his plan is. So I think it's good and it's fine. And there's a libertarian think tank in Hawaii, the Grassroots Institute, that has created a new set of AI tools that specifically go through this massive tranche of government documents that are either available or can be accessed through FOIA requests, or can be found on the gray web by people who are really technologically savvy. And it uses AI tools to sort through that and figure out what actually is happening at school board meetings and county council meetings and budgetary meetings, all that. That's what's happened with the Epstein files. There's a lot of citizen journalists and technologists that have made searching those files far more accessible. Then certainly the Justice Department wants them. And when Thomas and Ro Khanna go into that skiff, they've already been armed by. Not by staff. They don't have enough staff to go through it, but staff that's actually watching what's happening on social media. So you get. I had a Austrian professor at George Mason who always talked about the decentralization of. Of market processes and how if you didn't get in the way of that, you could create a greater social intelligence. Yeah, that's what we saw happen with COVID There was this group called Drastic. I forget, I can never remember what Drastic stands for, but it was a bunch of really smart people that knew how to get all of those documents about the origins of COVID And the only reason we know that Covid came from a lab, the only reason we know that it was essentially a Dick Cheney contrived military bioweapons research project, is because of decentralized knowledge. The government was never going to tell us that. The committees of jurisdiction were never going to tell us. They were probably in on it. So I think that that decentralization, for all of the threats of technology, that's our power, and we shouldn't hide from that. And if we do know that the bad guys are still going to use it against us.
- [35:17]
A
Yeah, no, and that's the. That's been. The crazy thing is, you know, with COVID you know, I was, you know, right in there, first two weeks or so, you know, not knowing what was going on. You know, we were with the kids, we were making masks for the local hospital because, you know, Fauci said they didn't have any. And, you know, pretty quickly, you know, I listened to a podcast and somebody, I don't even remember which one it was, but they basically pointed out the concept of, you know, they're saying all these people are dying, but they're not giving us any ages or details or anything like that. And they're not really giving us much information about who they are and what their, you know, comorbidities, that word that nobody knew before 2020. And. And I went, you know what? That's true. And then, you know, just listening to podcasts and being able to discern between, you know, the. The crazy stuff and what. What was legitimate and using a little bit of discernment there, because there is. I mean, there's the crazy with the. With the logical as well, with all this stuff, and you're seeing that with the Epstein files, but just the fact that, you know, listening to your interviews with Thomas Massie, you can listen to an interview from a week and a half ago, and it's already, like, completely, like, useless. Like, all the information is completely changed. And it's just because there's so Many people that are able to access this stuff and commun. Like you said, a decentralization of the technology and knowledge of people being able to read this stuff and, and cooperate all their, the things they're finding and with AI and all these things and it's really just amazing to me. And again, I'm only 40, so I mean it's been within my lifetime. I've had the Internet since the early 90s with AOL and just seeing the change of it is, it's almost, you know, that everybody says well I didn't, why didn't Biden release it? I'm like, it's almost good that they didn't because AI wasn't where it is now and the technology wasn't where it is now. And it's almost good that it's coming out now because we have this, you know, just the advancement within, you know, couple years of what technology is becoming. So yeah, I mean I think it's, it's better, it's more positive than negative as well. But it is kind of terrifying. But yeah, so it's, it's also, it's
- [37:19]
B
an, it's an existential threat to, I don't even know what to call it. But this, this massive ecosystem of very powerful interests. Government finance, big pharma. You can keep, drop big media.
- [37:34]
A
Yeah.
- [37:34]
B
Keep dropping these, these interest groups in there. The big reveal and this was the last conversation I had with Thomas Massey on my show. The big reveal is that this, this is not a market system. This is, this is crony capitalist. You could use stronger words than that. Where, where all of these very powerful interests are feeding off of each other, extracting wealth from the public for their own interests and they are scared to death. And this is why I brought up Covid. This will be the thought I was trying to finish on. That the ham fisted way that the censorship industrial complex went after your Uncle Bob's poorly thought out tweet about Joe Biden's cognitive abilities. The fact that some gray suited Soviet inside of Homeland Security or maybe even the CIA was monitoring Uncle Bob, that is, that is pathetically ham fisted.
- [38:29]
A
Right.
- [38:29]
B
And I think they don't, they don't know what to do with this, this, this decentralized power that is just us trying to figure out what's going on and sharing that, that information and wealth with other people. I, I think it's, I think we're at the beginning of something really powerful and that's why the government is acting so weird right now. Yeah.
- [38:50]
A
So to Thomas Massie I, you know, we said, we talk about him a lot on here and the stuff that he's doing, you know, and again, I, that to the Ron Paul thing. I mean, like you said, Ron Paul using his, his political career as a, as a pulpit, basically. I was actually in Iraq when I first saw his Giuliani moment on what they called Internet over there and watching that. And I had voted for Obama and he said he was going to close Gitmo and he said he was going
- [39:19]
B
to end the war.
- [39:20]
A
And, you know, eventually did, but. And then after I voted for him in 2008, he sent me to Iraq and seeing a Republican in the Republican primary debates say what Ron Paul said, it just changed my whole world. And it was a couple years before I really converted fully. But it, you know, it really got me like, oh, a Republican can say that stuff because, you know, I grew up, you know, Republicans were the war party. And, you know, this is a Republican basically owning Rudy Giuliani, the, you know, September 11th guy. And Thomas Massey for me is very similar. And, and, you know, I, I feel, saw him shortly after his, maybe he'd been in for a couple years. I started paying attention to him and, you know, he's. I was like, okay, him and Justin Dimash, they're the guys. Him and just Namash and Rand Paul, they're the, you know, the three musketeers there in the, in D.C. and then I watched. I don't know if you all did this or not, but the documentary on him and his farm, did you all have anything to do with that?
- [40:13]
B
That was, that was Free, the people's first documentary.
- [40:16]
A
Okay. I thought so, but I couldn't remember.
- [40:18]
B
Proudly produced on a. An extravagant budget of three tanks of gas and two cases of beer. Well, you did a great job.
- [40:25]
A
So that's, I mean, it seems like you're. If you're using any more budget than that, you're wasting your time. So. Yeah, but he, that, that whole thing, I mean, that's right up my alley. I mean, he just, everything he was doing, it's basically not, not even I was like, that's what I want to be when I grow up. Like, I want to be Thomas Massie and what he's doing and then plus he's the, you know, most based congressman in the entire country. And to me, I keep on waiting for him to do something that, you know, knocks him off that pedestal and he just doesn't. Do you think that he. I mean, everybody kind of says he's the next Ron Paul. I almost, and I shudder to say this, but I almost think he's taken what Ron Paul did and taken it to the next level. Do you agree?
- [41:08]
B
I do, I do. And the irony of Trump spending so much time attacking Thomas Massie is the elevation of Thomas Massie as a, as a national leader. Yeah, there's actually, I love to brag about this. There's a New York Times feature article about Thomas Massie, I think about three or four years ago should be easy to find because it was a massive article that took over the entire opinion page. It was basically lifted from the documentary off the Grid, because when they reached out to Thomas, he quite wisely said, you're the New York Times. Why would I talk to you? You're going to write a hit piece on me. And instead they wrote what I would consider almost, almost a puff piece, very substantial, but a puff piece about Thomas Massie arguing. And I think this is, this is probably 2019, 2020, something like that. And, and arguing that, that his voice was just so different than other wannabe leaders within the Republican Party. And they went into the comments that that documentary to this day is still one of our highest performing documentaries on YouTube. I forget what the number is, but it's substantial. And the reporter had to watch the documentary. He watched some of the other shows I did with Thomas, and most interesting, he went through the comments on the YouTube page and found all of these people from all political walks of life across the political spectrum being turned on by his very folksy, homespun way of explaining the values of liberty. Yeah, Thomas was Maha. Before any of us knew what Maha was, Thomas was off the grid. Thomas was about decentralized power. He was about respecting your neighbor and not hurting people and taking their stuff. And that message is not just attractive to people on the right. It's not just attractive to people in the middle. It's very attractive to people that actually, that started, like perhaps you did, coming from the left and really believing in the First Amendments, probably believing in the Second Amendment like they do. I have met a lot of Bernie Bros that love the Second Amendment in Vermont, but certainly the fourth and fifth and tenth Amendment, like, these are, these are just common sense values. And it, you know, to, to our earlier point, we could all learn a little bit something from Thomas about how to express complex ideas in a way that, that are common sense, simplified and really emotionally resonant.
- [43:52]
A
Yeah.
- [43:53]
B
And don't tell me it can't be done. Maybe our liability is that we read all those books because Thomas likes to brag that he's never read any of the Austrians. He only got it secondhand through his Ron Paul days.
- [44:06]
A
Right Now I'm the same way. That's the funny thing. I pseudo brag on here all the time that I haven't read a book in like 10 years and my wife reads all the time, but I just don't. I listen to. I have a lawn business and I spend a lot of time with headphones on and I listen to thousands of hours of podcasts a year. And it's one of those things that a lot of the people like. You like your podcast. When you came to our, our convention in 2020 or whatever it was, 2021, maybe, I think Joel told me, yeah, he's got a podcast. I went, okay, so I looked it up and there's probably been times where I, you know, just go through cycles of listening to things and not. But I've listened probably, probably thousand hours of your voice talking to Thomas Massie and all these other people. And, you know, there's some things, you know, the thing with podcasting is you can pick and choose what you, what you want to absorb and what you want to listen to. And, and I, I always say, I used to be a big listener to npr, and then when I started understanding Austrian economics, what Kai Rysdal and what's their. It's not Planet Money, but the Market Watch or whatever it is, and they'd start talking about the Fed and all these things. I'm like, that's just not right. And I like you, like you said with Thomas, I've never read Mises. I've never read Hayek or Rothbard or anybody, but everything he was saying, I'm like, that's not true. Because of this, my wife is like, why do you know this? I'm like, I don't know. She goes, you don't. How much our electric bill is or what our kids birthdays are. But, you know, all this, I'm like, yeah, there's only so much room in everybody's head for, for certain things. But. But yeah, I think that that's another fantastic thing that you and others are doing is, you know, even if I don't necessarily agree with Tim Pool all the time, something like Iran happens and he's got Scott Horton on to come on the next day to set everybody straight about what's going on with, you know, Iran and then Ukraine and all these things. And, and whether they absorb it or not, there's people listening that. That will. And he's got the goods. And he knows what he's talking about. And at a time, even when I was younger, before podcasting, you've got to wait for these talking heads to go on, Rush Limbaugh or whatever, and they're only going to have on and you, like you said, gatekeeping, just like the parties do. And now, I mean, there's a million places Scott Horton and you and anybody else can go or talk to to spread this information. So, and I'll say this just not to shine your shoes, but one thing I like about your podcast is, like you said, Thomas Massie does is taking these complex ideas and having people on. I don't think you've ever had anybody on that. When I was listening, I was kind of listing off and falling asleep. So somehow you're able to find people to talk about this stuff that they're halfway entertaining. So congratulations on that, because that can be hard to do.
- [46:47]
B
I spent a lot of time trying to find interesting people that have a substantial understanding of the topic, but are also just conversational. Right. Like, yeah. And that's that, that to me, like, this is going to seep into our politics. Rand Paul was just on Joe Rogan, and, you know, we're, we're working all the levers in hopes that Joe Rogan gives Thomas Massie the call.
- [47:12]
A
He said his name a couple times on the show, so usually when he
- [47:15]
B
does that, he's aware and he's a fan. And obviously, you know, Dave Smith talks him up every time Dave's on the show as well. But the ability and, you know, the reason Joe Rogan says I'm doing three hours now is because he thinks that if, if you have someone on for an hour and they're very good at what they do, they, they will have everything already in the can.
- [47:38]
A
Right.
- [47:38]
B
And it'll, it'll be talking points. And maybe you're very good at spewing talking points. Most politicians are not good at all. So it just sounds like bs.
- [47:46]
A
Yeah.
- [47:47]
B
But after an hour, after two hours, you're going to learn who that person really is. And whether or not you're going to get a better sense for whether or not they actually believe what they're saying.
- [47:57]
A
Yeah.
- [47:58]
B
And to me, that, that, that measure of authenticity is very attractive to young people that, you know, the mythology of social media says that, oh, they only have 15 seconds to watch a TikTok video or they're only going to watch one minute video on YouTube. The opposite is actually true. They will, they will binge watch, slash, listen to three Hour podcasts. Lex Friedman does these ten hour podcasts. I can't imagine getting through one of those. But, but I think, I think the reason people will, will consume that kind of content, one is they get to curate it for themselves. So they're going down whatever rabbit hole they're going down and they're finding things that interest them. And two, if they find the person to be interesting and informed, not even persuasive, because I think persuasion is a far more subtle art than that. But not being told what to think. And I think we as libertarians sometimes are so passionate about the things we believe in. We've, we slide into lecture mode and, you know, we become the meme of that guy talking to that girl on Internet. Don't, don't do that. Like, like, listen and, and particularly when you're building a coalition, if, if someone's really excited about sort of the Maha agenda or, or what, what the government did to their children during lockdowns in the education system, start there and work with them on that stuff and then sort of expand the principle that got them motivated in the first place and start applying it to other things that matter in their lives. I think that's the best of the opportunity that we have.
- [49:51]
A
Cool. Yeah. With what's coming up politically, you know, everybody wants to make their predictions on the national level. So the midterms, and I always quote you and when you say, I have a sneaking suspicion that a Democrat's gonna be in the White House again one day. And that, that really does terrify me. And, you know, I kind of go on my instincts a lot. And, you know, a lot of libertarians are super anti Trump and, you know, so we just don't really, we stick to the facts. And a lot of people, I don't really talk about, you know, my critique with a lot of my, when I'm trying to, you know, proselytize, the libertarian stuff is in West Virginia, you kind of skirt around critiquing Trump in a general way. Just poke at things that, you know, he's doing good and things you don't really like. But the, the midterms coming up in West Virginia, I mean, it's, it's almost surely going to be a Republican for whatever's coming up our Senate. Shelley Moore, Capito, is our senator and she's, there's a couple of good Republicans that are, well, I don't know, they're better than her, but they're, they're coming up. And I mean, in West Virginia, it's typically A popularity contest. Do you see the. The bloodbath coming that everybody's predicting for the midterms?
- [51:08]
B
Yeah, I do. And. And I feel like I've been predicting that going all the way back to the more optimistic days when. When Doge looked like it had legs and they were actually going to fully defund the Department of Education and the National Endowment for Democracy and. And various things that Trump was doing. It was always the case. Am I still here?
- [51:36]
A
Yeah, you're here.
- [51:37]
B
Okay. Just. I think it said it signed me out, but.
- [51:42]
A
Well, I see you in here yet, so.
- [51:44]
B
Okay, I'm gonna. I'll keep talking. It was always going to be the case that the party that's in power in the White House historically has a tough midterm. And combine that with inflation and the real economic pain that people. Trump keeps bragging about. The stock market, the Dow's 50,000.
- [52:06]
A
Yeah.
- [52:07]
B
What an embarrassing moment for her because that means nothing to people that are shopping for groceries.
- [52:14]
A
It's funny, I think of that. Have you seen the Truman show with Jim Carrey? Yeah, that. That scene where his wife is talking to him and, and she's saying, try. If you don't feel well, try some of this super smooth mocha cocoa. And he looks at her and goes, what do you talk. Who the hell are you talking to? That's. Kind of feel like putting Pam. Bonnie's face on her. Her head is just. What are you talking about, lady?
- [52:36]
B
So. So they were like, historically, particularly in a House, they were. They were in for a very tough midterm. I think the Senate map is such that it favors Republicans not because they're better than the Democrats, but just because the. That the numbers are more in their favor because of who's up and who's not up. Because, of course, the Senate runs every six years, so it's not every cycle that every senator is up. But in the House, they're. They're. They're most susceptible to anxiety about the economy, first and foremost. The stuff that Trump has done with wars and with the Epstein files and recently, just a poke in the eye to Maha and glycephate, for instance. Man, he seems to be wanting a bloodbath. Or he's wildly naive about how this works because midterm elections are about passion. It's about turnout. They're lower turnout elections. Maybe it won't be this time because everybody's fired up. But you know who's fired up right now? The other side. Yeah. And the Republican machine seems blithely unaware of the fact that this was always going to be the case and you know, if they really get rolled, they might lose the Senate as well. And then we're gonna spend the next two years impeaching Trump every six weeks.
- [54:01]
A
Yeah. And that's the thing we keep talking about on here is, you know, Democrats get stuff done. I mean, in, like I said before, West Virginia, the Republicans have had the state for 10 years and it's a slow trickle. They've, they've reduced taxes and there's a few good things they've done. The Hope Scholarship. Right. To work, stuff like that. But that Virginia governor, I mean, she's been in there, she's been literally in office for a month and they're just slamming bills through and getting it done. And that's the problem is, is like, I don't know who says it most of the time, but you know, Republicans are Democrats in the slow lane and where they're both driving to the cliff. And in West Virginia, it's, that seems like, you know, there's a good, like I said, there's wins here and there, but they're just not moving the way they should. And I know the, the federal government is what people pay a lot of attention to, but in my opinion, the, these states where Republicans have been taking, you know, these, these strongholds in West Virginia, you're seeing a lot of, you know, like you said, fired up female Democrat candidates running and they're doing, they're getting on tick tock. They're about the, the, the water crisis in southern West Virginia. They're talking the f, about the fact that they had all this money for flooding last year and they, they didn't spend it. And there's still bridges that are washed out and they're, they're making, hey, well, the sun shines with this going on and the Republicans are, you know, doing their, wearing their ties and not saying a word. My representative, she before, before and after election day, you don't hear a word from her. I mean, it just, and, and when social media exists, make a Facebook post once a week. Heck, it's not hard. And we do have some good Republicans that communicate. But the Democrats are on there. They've got Tiktoks and they're doing, you know, doing their makeup while they're explaining a bill. And like you said, they're fired up. And, and I, Taylor and I, if he was on here, we've got it a little, little bet. I think that we're going to start seeing Republicans lose office here. He doesn't think that's going to happen, but I don't know about this year, but I think pretty soon Republicans are going to start losing seats here. And to me, and I don't know if you agree, but the stuff is what really scares me because, like, California, I mean, you see what happens there, and it kind of reverberates across the country. And then you see what's going on in Minnesota and all these other states. And if a lot of these purple states start turning blue, like Virginia, it's going to be a lot harder for the federal government to do anything to combat it.
- [56:21]
B
Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of stupefying how. Because I never thought Republicans would do the right thing because it was the right thing, but it does seem that it would be common sense that they would occasionally do the right thing just to hold on to power.
- [56:38]
A
Right.
- [56:39]
B
And it seems like they have this suicide pact right now, and it really looks like the neoconservative wing in the military industrial complex is just bought and paid for the Republican Party, just at the national level. And I think that's precisely the opposite of what helped Trump win reelection.
- [57:02]
A
Yeah. And that's the thing. I mean, Cash Patel and Dan Bongino, they tricked me. I mean, I wasn't like, gung ho, but I was like, okay, cool, this could be something. And then like we talked about earlier with technology, as you see him go on Joe Rogan and say what he said there, Epstein killed himself. And he's talking about, you know, I was a prosecuting attorney and I was in these jails. And then it takes five seconds for somebody to pull up an interview of him saying that direct opposite thing two years ago, like, verbatim, the opposite thing. And then it just, you know, it's just pie in their face. And like, what, you know, Baker, your, your buddy at Blaze, the stuff he's uncovered. Oh, yeah, yeah. With the pipe bomber.
- [57:43]
B
Yeah. Steve Baker.
- [57:44]
A
Yeah, Steve Baker and the, the pipe bomber stuff is just like, it's completely wrong guy. Like, they're not even trying. And it's like, just a complete disappointment. And the people who, the libertarians who were pro, Cash Patel and Dan Bongin, them forever, they're never going to believe you again. So. Yeah, I think it's a lot bigger deal than they, than they think it is. But. Yeah, so, but good.
- [58:06]
B
But let's, let's talk about the upside. And I, you know, obviously, Thomas Massie has to survive his primary. I think he's hard to beat. But, but we shouldn't take lightly the fact that they're going to spend God knows how many millions of dollars trying to blast him out of that seat. Yeah, I, I think, I think it'll, at some point all that spending will be counterproductive for them. So you, you have this, your Republicans are going to get trounced in the midterms. Thomas is going to survive. And a lot of those disaffected members of the broader Trump coalition. I think the common element, if you do the, the Venn diagram of these different groups, Maha and free speech and anti war and Doge. The, the center of that is libertarian. Yeah, 100%. And I think we should, we should be actively reaching out to those folks to figure out how we organize something together. And it doesn't have to be a political party. Maybe some of them want to be part of a political party. That's. If you think about times when you were optimistic about, about fixing government at the state or federal level, it's usually after some sort of catastrophe. Yeah. Such as the Wall street bailout in 2008. And, you know, that, that seemed like the end of the world at the time. Like, oh, it's over this. There's no limits on government power. But, but of course there was backlash to that and we created something better. Right.
- [59:43]
A
Yeah. And that's the, that's the thing you're talking about with independents that are not registering as Republican. We're seeing that a lot here. Our Repub Party just recently closed their primary and you're seeing a lot of independents losing their mind over it. They're saying, look, I mean, we pay for your primary and you're not gonna let us vote in it. And then we're actively, you know, letting people know. No, hey, yeah, we have a primary too, and we don't take a dime from the government. And a lot of those people are seeing that, you know, they're, they're not wanted. But I think it's going to backfire on the Republicans because they don't. They, I don't think they understand who the, the independents are that are voting in their primaries. I think they think they're a bunch of Democrats trying to infiltrate, which I think that's, that's way overblown. And I think they're going to lose a lot of actual, you know, conservative or Republicans because the independents are going to vote for them. So you're going to have these establishment boomer Republicans voting for your milquetoast, you know, boomer Republicans running for Office. So, yeah, it's all very interesting, and that is a positive side of it, is there's plenty of room for people to move around, whether Independent or Libertarian or whoever. And if we've got candidates that are Libertarian, those independents can see us vocalizing what they agree with and seeing what the other options are. So, yeah, that's. That is a. You know, it's glass half full, but I don't know, there's so many moving pieces.
- [61:06]
B
Yeah, we'll see what happens. So. So how'd you convince Scott Horton to come out? I'm looking forward to seeing him while we're out.
- [61:12]
A
I don't know the. I just do this podcast Mat. No, I was on the executive committee, and I told them, I said, I'll do the podcast as long as I don't have to go to another committee meeting for the rest of my life. But they. I think maybe we have a new communications director, Dustin Blankenship, and I think he. He's been on a few boards with the national LP and he has some contacts. So I think he got ahold of him and he was on the podcast a couple weeks ago. But, yeah, no, it's great. And that's the cool thing, is using social media, a lot of people, more people than I thought, know who he is. So we're hoping for a pretty good turnout. But. But we'll see. But, yeah, no, I can't wait to. To meet him and hear him and talk. And the podcast was. You can just say one thing to him, and he just. It just talks. So it wasn't a hard.
- [61:59]
B
He's. Yeah, he's my favorite guest. I'm like, hey, Scott, how's it going? Yeah, he just takes off. So that's. That's. It's a. It's an easier job.
- [62:09]
A
Yeah, for sure. So. But no, we're really excited to have you and. And Scott there. So. Yeah, people come out to the LPWB convention in Charlestown, West Virginia. You were in Martins last time, right? Is that where you came?
- [62:22]
B
Yeah.
- [62:22]
A
Yeah. So, yes, a little bit further in, closer to D.C. than Martinsburg, but not much. But, yeah, maybe when we'll. In a couple years when we go to real West Virginia, you can come and see what the. The real part of the state. I always tell people in the Eastern panhandle, we may have the same license plate, but we're not from the same state. So, yeah, I live three miles up a holler, and the only access to Internet I have is starlink. Again, decentralized markets. So thank God for Elon Musk. But yeah, we appreciate you coming on, Matt. And until March, where can people find you? And and again, what you got coming up?
- [62:58]
B
Sure. Go to freethepeople.org and I'm both free to people and myself are on all the socials. I spend way too much time on X. It's probably where I'm most political in my opinions. And look out on Monday, we're dropping this new video that I'm very proud of called Ron Paul's Austrian Revolution, talking about how he spread the ideas there. What else do we have that's new? We're always producing a lot of documentaries. So if you go to Free the People, you can sort of sort through there and find something that might pique your interest.
- [63:37]
A
Awesome. Well, everybody, thanks for listening. And until next time, don't hurt people and don't take their stuff.