Transcripts For CSPAN2 After 20240703

Cares about our system of governance and representation will learn from your hard work and deep research. Despite the subtitle, the swamp creatures, latte liberals and ruling class elites cashing on america. S. You instead outline rational doable common sense reforms that we should support and we should. Why does it matter that politicians are rich even if theres a perception that they are allowed to feather their nest . Yeah, i think the reason it matters because eroding trust in liberal democracy and elected officials and we have seen a certainliulation i would say in the last four or five decades between the gap widening between our elected officials and normal average americans and at the same time, weve seen the erosion of trust in our elected officials. Now, that parallels a loss of trust in a lot of institutions but politicians are actually at the bottom, members of congress specifically less popular than colonoscopies and thats why the book matters. Have they always been richer than the rest of us . I think clearly politicians in generally have been richer and certainly if you look at president , George Washington was incredibly wealthy. Franklin roosevelt, theodore roosevelt, donald trump, its a long list. Ihi think the real difference is the lower chamber, members of the house of representatives and since about the time i was 10 years old their wealth has doubled and meanwhile the wealth to have average person has kind of been a flat line and in some case gone down. Im talking about adjusted for inflation and things like that. There is right now the average member of congress is about 12 times richer than the average American Household and so i think that gap has grown some of theus distrust and the sense is that the game is rigged and, you know, there are politicians who i think talk about the game being rigged, talk the about the swamp in order to exploit it and to sort of play on populist but the truth is they kind of do have a point as illustrated in the book. Meanwhile they are so yeah. Populism is rising because theres a attention and the fact that americans can no longer count on jobs that provide a living wage meanwhile theyre represented by people who are wealthier than them that continue to get wealthy being public servant. Yet being loaded seems not to be such a problem because in your bookme theyre hit on this by their opponents all the time and win. They vote for their own congressman. In north dakota, john hoven is a wealthy u. S. Senator and opponent tried to use it against him and we see it happening in many, many races, don bayer, the rich car dealer. It was used against him in a democratic primary last cycle, didnt work at all and i think that basically it doesnt resonate as apa Campaign Issue against a specific member but i think that collectively the sense that politicians are getting rich. Richer than us which is a little bit problematic but theyre oftentimes using their perch to the feather their nest, i think that has the effect of eroding trust in the Institution Even if you still vote for your own member of congress. So you list the ten richest president s, topped the list by john f. Kennedy, net worth is 1. 1 billion, who right now is the richest politician. Jb of illinois. Interesting, his family, i believe there are 11 billionaires in his family. I think its the hyatt fortune, the hyatt Hotel Fortune if im not mistaken the and in his last race for governor of illinois, there were actually 3 billionaires running in that raceon alone. Thats the kind of money we are talking about. The richest senator right now we believe and by the way always have to have a little bit of an asterisk here. Politicians make it impossible to know exactly how rich they are. They have toth they have to report their finances but its the very broad ranges, there are certain thishat they dont have to report that so we believe its rick scott from florida, former governor, current senator would be theul richest member of congress. So you write about a system whereer the rich get elected and elected get rich. Why do these rich people even want the job . I think there are a bunchth f reasons why why rich people run. Some of it i think is they really want to do good. Look, i dont buy the argument that they are running to cut their own tax rate or Something Like that. I dont i think thats overplayed. It would be easier to own politicians than to be one. I think some of these politicians are running because rich people are running because they really think they can make a difference and some cases i think its property of expertise. You know, they believe because i was great at Cloud Computing i can fix our healthcare system. I think thats a little bit naive. I know i worked in my past life when i was working literally in politics i worked for politician that is were very successful in one thing, business, military, whatever, and it wasnt necessarily transferable to government or even campaigning but i think thats a natural sense. I think also politician thes want to run for office for the same reason. Im sorry, rich people want to run for office for the same reason that rich people want to buy rocket rides to outer space or own baseball team, they are bored and something for them to do and at the end of the day, i in a way i understand theres something nice about rich people going into politics because i feel like id be on a beach somewhere, like drinking, you know, light or whatever beer you prefer. I dont know that ii would actually want to go into Public Service so in a way i admire it but i do think its troubling when the average person representing us is like 12 times richer than us. I mean, its hard to believe that they really are in touch with with the average persons concerns having said that im much less concerned about rich people running but people getting elected and cashing in. So regular joes cant take leave and they cant quit their jobs in the campaign, so how is the system not stacked against them participating . It totally is stacked against regular joes and not even regular joes even people like me ab, maybe like a year ago my wife and i were going for a walk. I live in West Virginia. My dad was a prison guard for 30 years. I live in West Virginia but i get to this awesome job, talk about politics the and my wife is a republican political fundraiser and with that as backdrop we are on this walk and i was telling her since we live in West Virginia, if the political environment werent where it is theres a scenario where i can possibly run. Theres an open seat in West Virginia and theres a competitive u. S. Senate seat which has opened up the house seat where i i live. Maybe inbe some scenario i could run for the house sit and shes like no, you couldnt. And im like why not. Youre shess like you dont have enough money. But youre a political fundraiser and i know a lot of people and i have been doing this for a long time. Yolet me tell you what i tell people who want the run, just for the house, you have to give your campaign 300,000 or raise that much money from your personal Christmas Card list network before its even worth my time to try to introduce you to Political Action committees or rich donors. And like even i someone who has worked in this industry for a couple of decades now i couldnt i dont have enough money to run for the house and let alone an actual kind of joe six pack like my dad. I was actually going to ask about that eye popping factoid that comes from your its incredible. Great teaser why people need to buy thehe book. Insider trading is most toxic and i agree with you, walkthrough the examples of senatornd richard burr and formr House Speaker nancy pelosi which i find most interesting. Let me start with nancy pelosi and i will give you two examples that i think are pretty egregious. The first example and its really Nancy Pelosis husband paul who is doing actually doing the the investing and in the stock market. And this is how they can work this out. Exactly. In 2020 paul pelosi bought hundreds of stocks of tesla, joe biden signs executive order mandating that federal, local and state fleets begin transitioning by 2027 into zero emissions vehicles, so you can imagine what happened to the stock of tesla after the president signed that executive order, right, it went through the roof. Coincidence or inside knowledge . It seems curious to me and the people i talk to who actually know aboutut the market than i o say its very suspicious, its very sketchy, its very swampy. Second example having to dowa wh the pelosis is the next year 2021 paul pelosi exercises 10 million worth of stock option in microsoft. This time two weeks later the Army Announces that theyre going to go with microsoft for these head sets that they are ordering. Im forgetting the actual word but augmented reality head sets. So in other words, microsoft won a bid, sort of a contract to produce these augmented reality head sets, this could be worth billions of dollars over decades and, again, two weeks earlier paul pelosi invested 10 million. Is that a coincidence . The thing is im just giving you two examples and the pelosis have gotten lucky very often and, in fact, theres even i dont know if it still exists, there were people on social media like tiktok who were investing with the pelosis every time that the pelosis made an investment. Seemed to pan out well for them. And what about senator richard burr, very interesting time in the onset of the pandemic. Right, so think back early on when covid19 is starting to hit. The average american doesntad know how bad it is. In two weeks donald trump said itll be over in the blink of thegh eye. I think it started before the phrase two weeks. This would have. The average american at this point has no idea, we have been hearing that theres this thing in china, this virus, theres a couple of cases or something but we dont know how bad it is, its going to beam in america. So richard burr who at the time was a senator but at the time chair of the intel committee, so he had access toss a lot of top secret confidential meetings and information dumps all of his stock in things like wyndam hotels, places that would be hurt by a global pandemic. Thats bad enough but then he calls his brotherinlaw and within one minute hanging up with richard burr, his brotherinlaw calls his broker and dumps his stock, so coincidence, seems a little bit suspicious to me. Here ise the thing whether this is Insider Trading or not, it doesnt really matter in the sense that the damage done to anybody paying attention is it certainly has the appearance of impropriety. It looks like the game is rigged and, again, that is what i think has i dont blame our problems on this but i think it is contributing to the erosion of trust in liberal democracy. Is there any realistic scenario that you can see for blind trusts in which we can trust members to remain or remain separated from their holdings when they legislate . I dont think so. In 2012 Congress Finally passed the stock act which made it illegal in Insider Trading. I guess until then it wasnt even i legal. You can imagine. And weve obviously the problem has not gone away. In fact, perhaps its gotten worse but it certainly has not gone away. Now some of the politicians that became embroiled in these controversies and things that look Insider Trading will say i have a blind trust or my husband or my wife manages my portfolio or i have and so i believe that in order to to basically end this problem what we should do is ban individual stock trading fromme members of congrs and their families. Now i think you should be still be allowed to own a mutual fund. Youre not going to n game the system with that but i dont think the blind trust goes far enough in terms of quailing concerns and sort of solving like because you still have examples of people who will theyll be, i mean, when russia invaded ukraine, members of congress had invested in you name it, weapons of war, they profited from that and then they can say, well, i have a blind trust. T its still a bad look. I dont think its asking look, if you want to be on the stock market, get another job. Ib. Dont think its asking too much for members of congress who are making money from the taxpayers who are going to washington to serve their country, okay, during this time when im doing this job im not going to bet on the stock market. Okay. So one of the other things that one of the other ways to invest is owning property and very much enjoyed your details in the book about the Affordable Housing crisis champion on the house being rental property owners. Gh share a little bit of that. So land is Insider Information on land so this goes back there was a story in the book about former speaker of the house who, you know, bought up a whole bunch of land before a big highway was going through. He had earmarked in a budget or something. So this goes back forever, rightment. Thats sorr corrupt. Yeah. Compared to being member of congress where you own buildings where condos are rented, right . This story is more recent and it has to do with the squad and thisis is in the latte liberals chapter and so basically what happened is during covid there was pressure from progressives to put a moratorium on eviction, you know, during covid you shouldnt they said you shouldnt be allowed to evict somebody from their home which, you know, i can understand that. But whats interesting, we have to reimburse landlords, we have to pay landlords if the renters cant pay we have to pay the landlords. Dl again, i as a center right, that makes perfect sense to me but seems a little out of step with what you think of the left and it is interesting right because it leaves two members of the squad were landlords themselves and so its impossible to know if its selfserving but it seems odd and a little bit hypocritical and i would say convenient that they were pushing for landlords to get more money, not just the tenants. Yeah, it is it is i think that landlords have taken a lot of heat from the left and we do have an Affordable Housing crisis but at the same time people who invest hardearned money in property and then they have rental income, its completely fair game. Its not inside trading an its just interesting but i urge everyone to read the hazard thing because that is really the opposite of what we send people to congress to do to represent us. What are some other ways that people can have easy access to outside income while to enrich themselves while they are in office . Well, one way that i think seems w underwhelming. When i bring this up to people they dont seem outraged and i think its bookt, deals. Literally as we are talking just a couple of weeks ago ron desantis became a millionaire because of air book deal. Now ron desantis about 5 years ago had a negative net wealth. I think he was like in the red 300,000 or Something Like that as recently as six months ago he had a net worth of about 300,000, Something Like that, now he is a millionaire and its because of a book deal. Of course, he wouldnt have the book deal if he wasnt in politics. Thats the way that hes cashing in off of the fame that hes accrued from politics. What makes it even sketchier, though, is that what happens, a lot of these members of congress will write a book and then instead of normal people wanting to go out and buy the book, there were bulk purchases of that book. So you will have a Political Committee buy 5,000 copies of that book which will never one put it on the best seller list which could actually spark real people buying the book and its the even possible that the politician who wrote the book because of these fake, we will call them fake bot organics, they will make advances and personally profiting not because they wrote a great book that any normal people will ever read but Political Committees and super pacs and other groups will be buying it and maybe throwing them away or giving them away. Right. And it wouldnt sell at the right that a normal author could sell their books and the rnc in 2020 bought 300,000 of don trump jr. s books. You have an idea of how to treat book d deals. Yeah, so right now members of congress and normal member of congress will make 174,000 a year salary which is a lot more than the average american. In addition to that 174,000 they are allowed to make another 29,000 approximately dollars in whats called outside earned income. My proposal is that if you want to write aha book you can wre a book if you want, free speech. You can promote that book but you cant make if youre in congress, you cant make more than that 30,000 total that is set aside for outside earned income. I dont think that members of congress should be profiting so much off of writing these books d,ou know, classic example, bernie sanders, this guy is a socialist and he became a millionaire because he wrote a book and he literally said im paraphrasing, you can look up the quote, essentially asked him aboutsa it, he said i wrote a bestselling book. You too can be a millionaire if you bring a bestselling book and i like, well, okay, bernie, but i dont have like the president ial campaign to like, you know, maybe help promote that bestselling book. And the distribution list and. Allye that. Exactly. There are pervasiveness in the public about congressional healthcare coverage and pensions and you make the case that members of congress and i agree with you are actually not paid enough. I want to take a lotta of things from members of congress. I want to take their ability to bet on the stock market. Right. I want to take their ability toil take the revolving door ino lobbying. I want agh tenyear moratorium d takeaway ability to get rich on book deals. Soha theres a whole bunch of things that i want to take away and in return i want to pay them more money to actually focus on the real job and that sounds counterintuitive to some folks because,ol again, the average congressman is making 174,000 a year and theyy have to travel back and forth, in some cases they washington, d. C. Is very expensive. They have a house in washington, d. C. And back home. I dont begrudge them making a good livering but i would rather them focus on that than the book and the stock market but i forgot your actual question, what was that . No, what about what about the fact that most americans believe that they they are covered for life, pension for life, everything is lined up. You talk about that. That is sort of misunderstood. Yeah. And while we are talking about them being filthy rich and having assets to enrich themselves good thing you note that what people think it is. Totally. Its actually one of the funny things about the book, the book will outrage who dont know how bad it isis and calm down those who are conspiracy minded and theyll be Facebook Memes that will make claim. Theres a claim that as soon as you get elect today congress you have a lifetime pension which is not true. George santos. George santos apparently believed it. He told a friend that if i just get elected ive got to get elected i have a lifetime pension. Actually you have to serve at least 5 years to get a pension and then it kicks in at the age of 62 and, yes, its a good plan but its pretty much commensurate to what you would have ifu you were working a nice government job. Its not as crazy or as glamorous as people make it out to be. Yes, its good but you have to serve a minimum of 5 years and you have to wait till youre 62, so its not as outraged as some. It is. They have a good plan but its not youow know, its not like utopia for them either. I do believe and you might remember this better than me but there was something i found thats in the book that they can go to like a Naval Hospital in dc physically for free treatment. Some loophole like that. If you were in dc. By in large they have a good Healthcare Plan but its not worthet getting upset. That is not the top of my reason to be worried about filthy rich politicians. So you live in West Virginia now. What how did your background and your your journey influence the book . Well, i think that, you know, so its about filthy rich politicians and on one hand i think its important to understand whyrm normal america, average americans, working folks feel like the system is broke and feel like the game is rigged and its hard to do that if youre in a bubble. So i think by virtue of coming from the background i come from and from living in West Virginia now its helped me stay in touch and be a little bit more sensitive to kind of the populist vibe out there and im grateful for that and i think thats helped me write the books at the same time, though, i think my experience working in washington, d. C. Where i work for years in politics has also ledd me to like realize some of these conspiracy are not true, there are a lot of really good people whoop work in politics wo are really trying to do the right thing who are trying to do well and so hopefully thats reflected this book. I do believe we need reform. I do believe we need to be sensitive to the plight of working americans out there in the country who are upset. I dont want people showing up at theirpl doorsteps that would pitch forte as i write in the book, i would rather show up with resumes and thats kind of the goal. It is really important to tell people who are not familiar with the system and congress up close that theyre not all corrupt. They are some that are who are but they are not all corrupt and they are working hard and between two residents and its really, really hard. It can be tough for people who come and the system disincentives but it is a good gig for people who want to be greasy about it. You have so many details about it and my favorite is donald trump head of the Environmental Protection Agency Pruitt and people can look at that. He had weird obsession with ritzcarlton. I love also ron paul refused to give his children allowance, hes a libertarian, he pride himself, Office Budgets and yet according to a 2012 report that you cite in your book he had paid more than 300,000 in salaries or fees to let me read this list his daughter, brother, grandson, daughters motherinlaw, grandfather and grandson inlaw. This is a real problem. It really is. Look, you could argue you own a Country Store and you hire your family. Theres sort of a romantic thing to this. And even like Bobby Kennedy who is probably a Great Campaign manager for j. F. K. , should Bobby Kennedy have been the campaign manager, yes, the attorney general, no . One of the things i call in the book banning the hiring of family whether its for campaigns or official taxpayer funded office. I just think its a bad look at best. Some of this is is spouses, some of it is kids. Was it Maxine Watters who paid daughter 80,000 in one year. Theres a lot of ilhan omar directed more recently ilhan omar directed millions of dollars to her husbands Consulting Firm and maybe hes a great consultant, right. I dont know. My wife is in the business, i would hire her if i were running, nobody i is going to nobody is going to care about me winning probably. So i understand that but it also is a way to either have someone else pay to takee care of your neer kids and bring other peoples money into your household. I raised money from other people for my campaign and i give that i pay my spouse as a consultant who keeps a certain percentage of that, that goes back into if we are married thats in my pocket too. Its notit a good luck and, aga, a lothi of this is look. Maybe this is completely above board, doesnt matter. It smells swampy, that erodes trust in the system and in our officials. So look, how how did do the family f members of joe bidn and donald trump fit into this conversation . I dont know if you can w compae them. One situation is worse than the other. This is what we had with the last two president s. First let me complement you on not getting to joe biden and donald trump until halfway through our conversation because isa intentionally i could t was impossible tote write a book and not talk about them. But they are not the main exactly. A lot of people just want too hear about them. They are definitely part of the story. Let me start with joe biden. Joe biden himself unless hes the, quote, unquote, big guy, right, in the hunter biden laptop which has not been proven, has not been established, im assuming that thats not true. We also dont know if hunter was lying when he was exactly. Im willing to believe that hunter lies occasionally. Sounds like he has. Joe biden actually was one to have poorer members of congress during tenure. He actually cashed in after leaving the vice presidency. He had about two or three years where he made 6 million in things like speeches, book deals, speaking gigs, that kind of thing. Now we may find out that theres a secret accountut somewhere toe continued butut based on what we know joe biden is not one of the richer politicians. Hes rich compared to me but not rich compared to most of these filthy rich politicians but the family thing with the bidens is really interesting, right. Its not just hunter. Joee biden has two brothers, frank and james, both of whom have recently not just historically butt recently trad on their brothers name and position to cash in themselves with speaking gigs and consulting fees and things like that. Its not a good look. The atlantic had a story which i quote in the book that way back in98 when joe biden ran for president in 1988 he raised about 11 million, 20 of that 11 million went to paying the biden family. So biden has certainly been part of spreading the wealth in the family but as you note this is a bipartisan phenomena. Trump has done so many ridiculous sketchy things that we dont have enough time for me to get into. I think the family thing is very interesting. Unlike everybody else trump literally put his daughter and soninlaw in the administration. So i think that makes all of this worse not only that but his daughter ivanka had 16 patents that were fasttracked in china. Kellyanne conway who was an official part of the Trump Administration went on tv and flaked ivankas product and right after the Trump Administration ended jared kushner, the president s soninlaw got a 2 billiondollar investment from the saudi fund. So that looks very, very bad. Say what you will about the bidens but even if they are guilty of everything, we are talking w millions. This is billions from the saudis. So it looks like the 7 years, the 2016 race, the discussion about the Clinton Foundation all the way today we have been bathing in nepotism from trump family to the bidens and now donald trump is enjoying his post president ial earnings like bill clinton did and obama did and Vice President ial post Vice President ial earnings that biden did, but hes running for president while earning money from the saudis. Have we just become numb to this . I think we have and i do think you mentioned the clintons, the Clinton Foundation, hillary was taking in foreign money at a time that it was assumed that hillary would be the next president. So yeah, we have inuerd. Thats chump change. Perfectly on the up and up in terms of ethics and legality but the amount is just pittance to wealthy politicians today. We lost the capacity to be outraged and as a result talk a little bit about that, as a result we expect them we are not we are not policing them. We expect it and then that gives riseen to resentment and populit anger but we are not bringing back those standards of, you know, what is really within the bounds of reason. Yeah. I think that apathy is a really bad thing because it means weve given up. I dont think when we say we have gotten used to it i dont think we are happy to it. I think weve given up hope and, you know, im not im not a historian, expert on rome and that sort of thing but in the book i do go back a little bit and look at the founders of this country and, of course, they were students of greece and rome and why democracies or republics fall and fail and one of the things, one of the main things that they point to is Public Officials who were cashing in and exactly. And so this i dont want to be overbroad but theres a danger that if we t want to preserve this miracle that i believe we have people cant people cant have given up on, oh, of course, politicians are cashing in, of course, they are getting rich, of course, they are paying their families. Sat some point there will be consequences. At some point we should expect something more. We should. But youre right and i agree with you that america is a miracle and that theres so much that you that im about to from your book that i think is really really uplifting. But on a dark note, like you i am very concerned of effects of social media ons our society ad our politics and you wrote, in the last few years have led me to question my faith in the American Publics availability to vet and remove truly bad actors from public office. Can you elaborate on that . Thats why i changed my mind about something, which is term limits. For my whole life, my whole career ive been against term limits partly because i felt like well, we have term limits, they are called elections every twove years the American Public gets to have a vis and the house of representatives every two years and if they like somebody, if somebody is doing a good job like why shouldnt they be allowed to return that person to office. I also worry that getting rid of of politicians, pushing them out after a few terms would have unintended consequence of a permanent bureaucracy where theres staffers and lobbyists who run the show and then we bringe politicians and theres o way they can compete. For the longest time i was against term limits. When i started writing the book it pushed me overhe top and now i do favor term limits an partly because it really mitigates the amount of damage a politician can do when it comes to cashing in and spreading the wealth around, you know, if you only have a few terms, youre not going to be able to really have generational wealth come from that opportunity. Social media is limiting the ability of our citizenry to know the truth and thats why it is becomingt harder and harder for them to vet candidates for office and hold them accountable. You were talking theyll be a facebook meme and no one would really know what is exactly truth about this t guys past. We hope George Santos would be cautionary tale. Talk us through some of the reforms in the book . First let me say, i think its important to understand my world view as a im a christian, im a conservative. As a Christian Conservative i have a world view. I dont believe in the perfectibility off man. I believe that we live in a fallen world and we are not going to be perfect and we are not going to have perfect politicians and just like adam smith believed with economics that he didnt he wasnt gordongr geco, greed exists, we cant get rid of it, therefore lets channel that into people being greedy so theyll invent a cure for cancer, right, lets tap into human nature as best we can so thats the. Approach that i take. With the reforms that i am calling for i do not think that we can fix the problem of filthy rich politicians or that we can end the corruption, right, i mean, like murder is illegal but murderer sadly still happens but policies could affect the number of murderers in terms of criminal Justice Reform similarly when it comes to police in congress were not going to fix corruption forever but i do believe that reforms can help. So weve talked about a few of them here. One of them would be banning individual stock trading for politicians and their immediate family, right, now we dont have to police it. Was that Insider Trading or not, you cant do it so that is off the table. Le same thing with book deals. If youre a member of congress you can write a book but youre not going to get rich, youre not going to get filthy rich off of writing the book and having Political Action committee or National Republican Campaign Committee or whatever buy 5,000, 300,000 however many copies and we will have term limits if nothing else limit the damage if they are hell bent on cashing in. There are a bunch of little things. Here is one. Double dipping on pension. There are a lot of people in congress who are earning a pension from congress which seems fair, right, theyre worked their job for x number of years and theyre earned it but before that they were in the state house where they were also earning a pension so they are getting two checks from the taxpayers. Thats the kind of thing that i would end. I think one more that i believe i mentioned earlier is moratorium on lobbying. Theres a lot ofpl people who ch in as politicians and then they leave congress and they keep on cashing in on k street. Depending youre in house or senate theres twocooling off period. Some people likeuz aoc like ted cruz on the left and the right would like to do a lifetime ban. I think there should be a tenyear moratorium and you shouldnt be able to walk out of congress and start lobbying your buddies and friends from congress the next day. Theres a whole bunch of these outlined in the book and i dont think they will fix the problem. I think that they will begin to restore trust in the system and thats as good as we can hope for. So matt, how can people who are discouraged sort of get involved with reforms, should they researching them and see if they can sign petitions, give them some agency . Step one clearly buy my book. Yeah. Thats yourr guide book. I think this is not something that is really addressed in the book like i talk about what reforms i call for. Right. I dont lay out how would you be a grassroots activist but i think that rather than spreading yourself veryth thin it would be to focus on the stock trading because i think that is by far inthe most corrosive thing thats happening and if you care about this issue be a singleissue voter on that and call your congressperson, email them, show up at their rallies or speeches or whatever and talk about this. Part of the game, this is the messed up partd and i will let you in on a little admission against interest. Its not a flattering admission by me. As i was writing this book there came a point where i started, oh, my what if Congress Bans stock trading before my book comes out and luckily for me there was no chance of that because even though almost every member of Congress Says now, even nancy pelosi now has been pushed by the left into saying she wants to ban stock trading. Everyone says it but it never happens. The bill is never quite right and in some cases there might be a poison pill put in there to make it unattainable and so everybody will say theyre for it how do they actually vote and do they make it a priority. In addition to lobbying, please explain to the rest of us how this particular species a person canti raise vast of sumsf other peoples money and use those to bolster their brands and their careers. Right. I dont think a lot of people dont know that their dollars stay with them. You would know, ad, most americans dont know until 1980 members of congress could raise millions of Campaign Dollars and retire and keep the money personally. There was nothings illegal about it. They could just transfer it into their personal bank account. Since theyve been gotten better thanen they used to be but we ae talking about people leave congress but keep cashing in. Weve talked about lobbying, thats the number one way. Ands its Something Like a third a quarter to a third of members of congress go into lobbying after they leave. On topop of that, we have people who start these foundations, right, weve talked about the Clinton Foundation but members, you dont have to be the president to start a foundation. You can start a foundation if youre a former governor, congressman. Thats another thing. What we are talking about right now are basically members of congress who raise hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars for their campaign and then they retire and they still got all of this money left over. Amazing. And rather than giving it to a charity or just giving it away right now to the party or to other candidates or whatever would be legal, they keep that money and the reason they keep it is that theyre allowed to basically give it out over the course of years. So you can essentially be a big wig, you could say like you know, i like ron desantis, you know, i like vivek and i am using someone elses money but now its mine, i am going to go stay in orlando for a week and go to retreat and while im there im going to give him a million or whatever and now im treated like a big wig. I get to pretend that im a rich big donor and not my money but i get to live the lifestyle. A whole chapter about the lifestyle. Theres Different Reasons theres differenton definitionsf being rich. Some people wantyo to be rich becausent they want to safety ad security for the rest of their lives. Some of them want to just go to ritzcarlton or the hand lotion. They want to eat at ladiplomat, fancy restaurants and go on vacations that are funded by taxpayer dollars, it could go eithern way. I think theres attention economy more thaner ever where people are rich, not just in dollars but they are rich in terms of their social media cloud and certainly that is a big motivator for a new breed of politician. Yeah. I remember governor rob mcdonald of virginia he and his wife just wanted to go to those golf clubs and it is part of it is you describe in the book, theyre hanging out with peoplehat are really wealthynd soon pretty soon they feel like they should have a driver and a car pick them up as well and they should play tennis at the country club as well. It infects you. Have any politicians interesting about the Mitch Mcconnell. Some of them marry into wealth and its not that its the business deals they are doing but its spouses or theyve inherited great sums. Thats a lot. In fact, i rank at the end of the book i rank i didnt rank, Business Insider ranked richest 25 members of congress. And then i went in and sort of explained how they got their money and more than half of them either inherited it or married into money and so like in a lot of cases its rich fathersinlaw. Richard blumenthals fatherinlaw, owned Empire State Building at one point. Youve got mccaul, congressman mccaul out of texas. I think his fatherinlaw owns Clear Channel or Something Like that. Mitch mcconnell after being a u. S. Senator marries elaine chao, thats where his money comes from. How did Mitch Mcconnell get rich and the answer is his wifes mom died and they inherited a lot of moneyy and so like on the one hand its swampy, on the other hand its not nearly as crazy andha conspiratorial and some wl have you to believe. They just inherited a bucket. It is interesting all these conspiracy stories. Ro khana, most of his money is from his wife. Lyndon johnson. So you are youre optimistic which i really appreciate as i said several times. You write in n todays politics on both sides of the aisles the kids settle on a false choice and we can look the other way and we can wise up and start a a revolution. I prefer the third one to fix them, thats the case for tax reform. Lay it out for us. Just like im not an expert on the stock market, im not an expert on tax law. Normal americans who work for a living are getting the short end of the stick. The way it works is if most of your money is derived from investment income, you end up paying a lower tax rate than those of us who actually work for a living and earn a salary and it just so happens that most of the money that most members of congress have are earned from investment, not from a salary, therefore, your filthy rich politician generally speaking is not only richer than you, not only 12 times richer than you but p pays a lower tax rate than you or me or their member theirn average. Not to succumb to bitterns and given the choice by between the cynicism towards the ruling class, trust is better. Why should we still trust . First of all let me say i hope people who are angry and the subtitle by the book. I want them to buy the book. I want them to go like lets give it to nancy pelosi. My hope is that you will be fired up enough to push for these reforms without engaging yourself in the politics of victimhood and bitterness and envy and ifon for no other reasn not only is that toxic for the nation, its really bad for you as an individual. If you believe that the game is rigged against you and theres nothing you can do to get ahead its over before it started that doesnt lead you anywhere good so politics is important and worth the fighting for dont let it driveth you crazy