Mister JD Vance, this is an honor to be with you here in New York City today on September 11. And what a somber and difficult day for a lot of people. And we've got a lot to remember.

Yep.

We got a lot to be thankful for today as well.

Yeah. Well, thanks for having me, man. It's good to see you.

It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. So I wanted to talk to you about a little bit about 911 and just get some of your personal story, so.

Sure.

Where were you on September 11, 2001?

Yeah, so I was at the school library, Middletown High School. And I remember that because we were sort of in our library session, and, you know, everybody flipped on the tvs in the library because the World Trade center was under attack. And I think we were still in that phase where it's not totally clear whether it actually was an attack or whether it was just an accident. But I was a junior in high school and just sort of watched the day unfold. And obviously we didn't do a lot of schoolwork that day. All of us were just glued to the tv. And I remember going home. And for one reason, the memory that really sticks out. Cause I lived with my grandmother at the time, my grandmother raised me, is we were really worried about gas because we sort of realized this is an attack from the Middle east. We didn't know who, we didn't know any of the background, but I just remember taking my grandmother's car and then a family member's car and waiting in line for gas because we wanted to, like, make sure the tanks were filled up in case something crazy happened in the Middle east.

And there's just a sense of instability and uncertainty, right? Like, we didn't know what was going on. We didn't know if that was going to be the last attack. And of course, you know, for people in New York, like, I'd never been in New York in my entire life, but sort of got to know the perspective of a lot of people since then. And, you know, even just some of the stories I've heard today, like, we went to a fire station with President Trump after the memorial ceremony this morning at Ground Zero, and there's this plaque in the fire station of this guy who died on 911, this firefighter who died on 911. And there's all these little trinkets and sort of pieces of the guy's life there to memorialize him by. And sort of hit me that, you know, talking to people and seeing some of this stuff that he had a son that was born on September 13, 2001. So his wife was pregnant with her fourth child. He goes in, he loses his life, and two days later, she delivers her fourth child. And I met that kid today. And so his 23rd birthday is in two days.

And I talked to his older brother and his older sister, and, you know, it's what you realize, I have three little kids. I have a seven year old, a four year old, and a two year old is like, each of these kids remembers their dad differently, right? So the guy who was four when his dad died, it's just kind of phantoms of a memory, right? He remembers a face or a smile. He has a couple of memories. And then the eight year old, she's 31 now, but she was eight when he died. She actually sort of really remembers her dad and remembers his personality and so forth. And it's just interesting to hear them talk about their dad, because on the one hand, the young kid is kind of, you know, happy that he doesn't remember that day because it was such a terrible day. But then you've got the eight year old daughter who's like, yeah, it was a terrible day, but at least I got to remember dad and just, man, it's wild. It's wild what happened to this country. It's wild how many brave people, how many. How many amazing stories of heroism there are on that day.

Something I always do on 911 just to go on for a little bit, but I haven't done it yet. Today is, I would always, always read the story. I think it's an esquire, and it's about the falling man photo. I don't know if you remember this photo, but it's like this amazing photo of this guy. He's headfirst. It almost looks like he's intentionally flying. It's just the craziest photograph. And it goes through who that guy might be, and it just takes you into the perspective of your loved ones. Goes to work down there, and cell phones aren't working. And some people, they get a call 4 hours later from their dad, like, oh, I'm okay. And then some people never got that call. And you just realize, man, what a crazy and terrible and tragic day. But what an amazing number of heroic stories that came out of it, right? It's this amazing duality of terrible tragedy, incredible heroism. And that's like the story of 911 in this country.

Did not. Is, was the military on the radar at the time before 911 happened for you?

No, not really. Right. So I came in some ways from a military family. So the grandmother who raised me. She had six grandkids. Two of my older cousins had enlisted in the Marine Corps and I think they were both still in the Marine Corps when I was a junior in high school and maybe my oldest cousin had gotten out. But I thought a little bit about it, but not really. I sort of assumed that they were tougher than I was. They'd go to the Marines and I'd do something else. And 911 really did change that, right? You start thinking to yourself like, oh, if this is our generation's greatest generation moment where we have to go and do what the country requires of us, then I don't want to look back in 30 years and say, I had an opportunity to serve. I was a 1718 year old kid and I didn't answer that call. So I graduated about a year and a half after 911, graduated from high school, enlisted in the Marine Corps my senior year of high school. We actually invaded Iraq in March of 2003. I enlisted in April of 2003.

And so what I enlisted just the assumption was all of us were going to go to Iraq, which of course I eventually did go to Iraq, but it was just what you did, right? I mean, there were two kids on my block, McKinley, the 300 block of McKinley street in Middletown, Ohio, who graduated Middletown high school, class of zero three. Both of us were in the same boot camp platoon in Parris Island, South Carolina. So there was this of patriotism that was very real. And not to get too political about it, but I do want to look back at that moment and think about what you had. Republicans, Democrats, independents, everybody kind of united together. And I do think in a lot of ways our leadership screwed that moment up because you could have done something amazing with that sense of patriotism. We were all on the same team. And unfortunately, 510 years later, it was like we were all back to fighting each other again. But we had something, I think, very special. For a couple years after 911, I try not to forget that I'm with.

You, you know, it was as tragic as the incident was. I've never seen the country more united.

Absolutely.

Than those months afterwards.

Yeah.

And it would be great to get back.

I mean, dude, I remember talking to my recruiter like he was turning people away. Like, there were so many people who were volunteering in a time of war, right? We were in Afghanistan. We had just invaded Iraq. You had so many people volunteering in Middletown, Ohio, that the recruiter was like picking and choosing between kids who wanted to join the Marine Corps. Like now we have a massive recruitment shortfall. You know, just 23 years later, you think about what that really means about where the country was psychologically. Man, we were. You're right. For all the tragedy, we were in a very good place as a united country. And it's heartbreaking in some ways. I think about the people who died on 911. I think about the people who died in the years, sort of the immediate years afterwards. And I think in some ways they'd be disappointed with what the country's become because the very patriotism that motivated them to serve. I think it's going away.

I think a lot of people are disappointed with how the country's going.

Yeah, of course.

But it should be, you know, speaking in 911 and the 20 plus year war that it triggered.

Yeah.

And you being here today, speaking with the families, speaking with the sons and daughters of firefighters who have died, police officers that have died. We both served. We have friends that served. I mean, what is it like for you to talk to these people in such an intimate setting, knowing that the Biden Harris administration is actively funding terrorism? And not just them, every taxpaying american. You're funding them? I'm funding them. Everybody that's paying us taxes is now funding terrorism.

Yeah.

We're sending 87, $40 to $87 million a week to the Taliban. The IG report came out and said that they had accidentally sent $239 million to the Taliban. 911 was a $500,000 budget. What are they going to do with $239 million? Yeah, I've been working really hard to bring this to life with a colleague of mine, Scott Mann and Sarah Adams. And we made a lot of headway. We brought a petition up to bring Massoud in to talk about how some of our policies are affecting Afghanistan and the fact that we're funding them. That bill's been kind of squashed. Bill Haggerty now is spinning something up in the Senate that's a little more aggressive. And I know we are pending a potential government shutdown on October 1. Would it be a good idea to shut the us government down if we continue to fund terrorism?

Yeah. So it's kind of crazy if you think about it, right. Because the Taliban, so al Qaeda, of course, was the organization that planned 911, but they had the explicit support of the Taliban. Right. North Korea and China during the korean war. Right. These guys are working hand in hand. They're working in the same territory. And the idea that we're now sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban after they've taken complete control of the country. And of course, they've got a lot of our military equipment there. It's completely insane. And just on the mechanics of a government shutdown fight. I've been in the Senate all of two years. I've never voted for continuing resolution, in part because of this very issue. And what I mean by continuing resolution, like, you can do two things in the budgetary process, right? You can basically take what you've done and rubber stamp it for another three, six months or a year. That's a continuing resolution. Then there's the traditional appropriations process where you actually go in and say, why the hell are we spending money on that? Should we be spending less money on this thing?

More money on this thing? And you actually have the real budgetary process that leaders should do. Right. I don't like the continuing resolutions because you do this exact thing. Right? You're rubber stamping more money for organizations like the Taliban. By the way, while we're on that topic, rubber stamping more money for the open border. Cause you talk to people, right? And one of the biggest fears with the open border, and there's a lot. But one of the biggest fears of the open border is, okay, how are all those people getting into our country? We know in 911 we just had garbage security. A lot of them flew in, were training in american flight schools. We now know that there are thousands of military age men who have come through that southern border from places like Afghanistan, Iran and so forth. And so, yeah, man, why shouldn't we be trying to force this government shutdown fight to get something out of it that's good for the american people? Like, why have a government if it's not a functioning government? And if you have a government that's spending hundreds of millions of dollars funding terrorism and then facilitating those people to come across the american southern border, it's totally insane.

I mean, it's just. It's asinine. I mean, people cannot afford school supplies for their kids.

It's crazy.

But we're sending a billion dollars a year to a terrorist organization.

Yeah. After, by the way, they killed 13 of our marines, or I guess eleven marines and a couple other service members just a year ago, actually. Almost. Sorry, just three years ago. Almost exactly three years ago today. If that can't motivate our leadership to get off their asses and actually say were done funding the Taliban, than what would actually motivate it? And it's. I mean, again, the way Washington works, man, is it's like a rubber stamp mentality. It's that we did this thing 20 years ago, and maybe it made sense when we were trying to, like, you know, convince the afghans to become more self sufficient to train their own military so the Taliban wouldn't take over. Like, whatever. I'm not gonna judge what we did 20 years ago, but even if it made sense 20 years ago, it sure as hell doesn't make sense today when the people who are in control of Afghanistan are the literal Taliban, the people who killed our marines, and, by the way, are actively training terrorists right now. But that's what you get when you rubber stamp everything from the past. Instead of running a functional government, where you ask yourself what makes sense and what doesn't make sense in this year, not 20 years ago, then that's how this stuff ends up happening.

Speaking of wars, I think a lot of Americans are tired of funding all these wars.

Yeah.

Last night on the debate stage, we saw Trump and Kamala kind of bat that back and forth.

One of his best moments.

I thought last night Trump had mentioned that he would have this war done before you and him actually take office. Yeah. How exactly would that be negotiated?

Yeah. So one thing I'll say about the president, Republicans, obviously, I'm a Republican. I'm running as the republican VP nominee. We like to give Trump credit, justifiably so, for being strong. I don't think that we give the president enough credit for smart diplomacy. It's not just strength, it's also intelligence. Right. He did both of those things, and that's why we had a peaceful world. So what Trump was really good at is saying, yeah, okay, this guy's a screwball. This guy's a bad person. But sometimes you have to deal with screwballs and bad people. Right? I mean, in World War Two, we allied with Joseph Stalin to beat Adolf Hitler. We can engage in diplomacy even with very bad guys. And because of that, I think he was able to keep the world at peace for a very long time. I mean, look, you didn't have the Iran and iranian militias attacking Israel. You didn't have, of course, the war in eastern Europe. You didn't have what's going on in Africa. You didn't have what's going on potentially in East Asia, where the Chinese, I think, are on the cusp of invading Taiwan. I hope not.

But I think it's very possible it's going to happen in the next couple of years. So you need somebody that, first of all, people are terrified of. Right. You need to be worried that if Donald Trump says something or Kamala Harris, God forbid, says something, that they actually mean it. Right. But you believe that with Donald Trump. You don't believe that? With Kamala Harris, right? That's deterrence. That's, oh, crap. If we screw with these guys, they're going to come after us hard. But then it's also like sitting down and understanding, like, Russia wants this war to end. Ukraine wants this war to end Europe, which, by the way, has underfunded this war. While american taxpayers have been very generous to Ukrainians, the Europeans want this war to end because it's jacking up their energy prices. So I think what this looks like is Trump sits down, he says to the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Europeans, you guys need to figure out what does a peaceful settlement look like. And what it probably looks like is something like the current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine that becomes like a demilitarized zone. It's heavily fortified, so the Russians don't invade again.

Ukraine remains its independent sovereignty. Russia gets the guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine. It doesn't join NATO. It doesn't join some of these sort of allied institutions. And I think that's ultimately what this looks like. And by the way, the Germans and other countries have to fund some ukrainian reconstruction. That is what the deal, I think, is ultimately going to look something like. But I think what's going to happen is President Trump's going to go in there as the president elect. They're scared of him in Russia, they're worried about him in Europe, because they know that he actually means what he says. And I think he's going to be able to come to a deal very quickly because this is what's insane about this dude, is the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Europeans are all saying, we can't fight this war forever. Well, why the hell are you fighting it for another day if all of them are trying to find a way to solve it? The answer is, or at least to get over it, right? To stop it. You're not going to solve the war, but you can at least bring the thing to a stop.

The answer is, Joe Biden is asleep at the wheel. Kamala Harris doesn't know what the hell she's doing. And so their policy is throw money at this problem, hope the Ukrainians are able to achieve a military victory that even the Ukrainians are saying we can't achieve. Donald Trump's policy is, yes, to be strong, but also to be smart, negotiate.

Interesting, interesting. When it comes to these wars, especially Ukraine, it gets painted as some type of a humanitarian thing.

Sure.

I'm not buying the humanitarian thing. If we were humanitarian, we'd be in Venezuela right now. Neither do I. Yeah, we'd be in Brazil. We'd be all over.

Yeah. We'd be in our own communities kicking out 25 million illegal aliens.

Yeah, good point. What are we there for, man?

It's a tough question. And I think some people have convinced themselves that this is like the great humanitarian mission of our time. And I think that's what drives some of it, even though I think it's fake and it's wrong, I think some people have convinced themselves this is like a war of good versus evil. Right? Or Russia, evil, Ukraine, good. And once you get yourself in that fairy tale mindset, you can justify a lot of stupid activity and a lot of stupid decisions because, of course, we always want to support the good guys. But maybe the truth is the Russians shouldn't have invaded, but the Ukrainians have got a lot of corruption problems, too. Right? It's a little bit more complicated than that of. And unfortunately, you have no american leader who's willing to actually understand what's really going on over there. I mean, I think that some people, look, are going to get rich from that war. You talk about Blackrock and some of these major financial institutions talking about spending hundreds of billions of dollars on ukrainian reconstruction. We know the stock prices of defense contractors have skyrocketed since the Ukraine war started.

So it's like a complicated mixture, right? Some people are getting rich, some people are convinced they're the good guys. Some people are convinced this is a great humanitarian mission and it ends up leading to a very stupid place. And it's one of the reasons why. I just want Kamala Harris and Joe Biden to say, what the hell are we doing? What is the goal? What are we trying to accomplish? And the fact that you don't have a president or a vice president who can articulate that means we probably shouldn't be there to begin with.

Is there any validity to the point that Crimea sits on a very large natural gas deposit?

Oh, I'm sure there's a huge part of that, right? I mean, look, Ukraine is not just Crimea, but is a very resource rich country, right? And it always has been. And it's got great agricultural resources, it's got great natural gas resources. And again, a lot of, I mean, you know this, a lot of wars get fought over natural resources. And I guarantee you both the reasons the Russians are interested in part, the reasons that your Europeans are interested in part, and certainly a lot of american investors. It's got a lot to do with money. Let's just be honest.

Would it be in our best? If it is, and we're there to build the infrastructure to get that natural gas into Europe, would it be in our best interest to stay there and see Ukraine hold on to Crimea? It seems like that would be good for us interests.

I think that the problem is there are a lot of risks to us of staying there and trying to encourage the Ukrainians to hold on to Crimea. The question is, you know, how many american lives would it cost to do that? And if the answer is more than zero, then I'm out, right? I'm sick of wasting american lives being the policeman of the world. The other thing, dude, is we got plenty of natural gas resources ourselves, right? This is one of the things that's so stupid about our Russia policy. With the one hand, we're saying that we want to save or we want to prevent the Russians from funding the war machine. We want them to get out of Ukraine. With the other hand, we're shutting down our own energy resources and shutting down the european energy resources. Well, who does that make rich? Russia. Right? So the one hand, we're going to sanction Russia. With the other hand, we're going to get them rich with natural gas and oil resources. It just doesn't make an ounce of sense.

Let's move to Israel, the other war that's going on, what is our position there, man?

Well, what our position should be is that we want Israel to end the war as quickly as possible. We want them to destroy Hamas, and we want them to actually build some alliances with the Arab Gulf nations so that the Saudi Arabians, who don't like Iran, the UAE, which doesn't like Iran, and the Israelis, which don't like Iran, can provide a kind of regional counterbalance. Right? That's how alliances work. Right. They don't like each other on everything, but they don't like Iran, but they can't do that peace process. The Israelis and the Saudi Arabians can't come together while Israel has Hamas in its backyard. Right? Doesn't make sense for Israel. Doesn't make sense for Saudi Arabia either. So what we should be trying to do here is get the war over with, destroy Hamas and restart that peace process. What our actual policy is, man, as far as I can tell, is on the one hand, we say we want to prevent civilian casualties, while on the other hand, we don't give the Israelis the weapons that allow them to minimize civilian casualties. We only give them the weapons that allow them to maximize civilian casualties.

And we're also telling them we want you to finish the war, but you can't prosecute the war in a way that allows you to actually destroy Hamas. So we're living in this weird in between world where I think what we're actually doing is we're getting a lot of Palestinians killed, we're getting a lot of Israelis killed, and we're prolonging Hamas for as long as possible, and we're not getting the hostages back. It's like the dumbest possible policy imaginable. But that is effectively the policy of the United States government right now. We blundered into it because, again, we've got an incompetent like Kamala Harris who's calling the shots.

Could you be a little more specific on maybe what a successful conclusion to that war looks like?

Yeah, I mean, look, I think you have. Obviously, my understanding is right now, pre war, I should say you had about 25 Hamas viable fighting battalions. Now they've got it down to about four. And it's a very narrow slice of Gaza where those four battalions are left over. Now, obviously, that's some of the hardest fighting. Right? Those are the holdouts. Those are the people who are really going to fight for the death, but you've got to destroy all four of those battalions right now. There could be a deal, like if, for example, the leader of Hamas just gave up and said, all right, we'll demilitarize, maybe he goes and lives in another country, maybe he gets arrested, but I don't think he's going to do that. So I think these are really are going to have to clear out every single last vestige of Hamas. That's tough fighting. Got a lot of people going to get killed. Obviously, a lot of Israelis have already died. But I don't know. I mean, if you look at from their perspective, my attitude on this is, I'm pro Israel, but it's their country. They can call the shots.

I want to focus on the United States of America, but if you try to look at this from Israel's perspective, I don't know how they can possibly allow this entity to continue as a viable military. It's like, imagine if al Qaeda existed in Mexico City and then 10,000 Americans get killed in southwest Texas. There is no way that we're going to tolerate that kind of threat on our back door. You just got to get rid of it and then you can, I think, focus on peace. And by the way, once you destroy Hamas, then again, I think it restarts the middle eastern peace process. Trump called it the Abraham Accords, which is where you get the arab nations on board with the Israelis. And again, why are they on board? Because they both don't like the Iranians.

Interesting. Interesting. Let's talk about how close we are to potential World War III and nuclear warfare.

Way too close.

How could this go? If it doesn't go, how could this end up in World War III?

I think a couple of different ways, right. So I'm sure that Russia has red lines, some of which we're not even aware of in Ukraine. You know, you get to a situation where is a russian red line crossed their nuclear power. Do they start using tactical nuclear weapons in eastern Ukraine? If that happens, then probably at least some of the eastern european countries, like Poland, have to get involved. That balloons into a world war three scenario. I think the most likely and the most dangerous scenario is Iran and Israel right now. So obviously, the Israelis are on high alert. They just have this terrorist attack. They're dealing with Hamas. What if in north Israel, a bunch of iranian backed militias start killing thousands of israeli civilians? Okay, so the Israelis invade, do the Iranians counterattack, and now you have Israel, Iran in a regional conflict. The Turks probably have to get involved. The Saudi Arabians probably have to get involved. And then that is the sort of thing that could balloon into world war three. And then the final thing, man, is China wants Taiwan, right? Everything that we have tells us the Chinese want Taiwan.

America, I think, has left Taiwan in a really crappy position because we've sent all our weapons to Ukraine. The Taiwanese, I don't know that they could repel a chinese invasion right now. And so do the Chinese invade Taiwan. That leads to some sort of accelerating conflict there. So there are basically at least three hotspots in the world right now that each have the potential to become a major worldwide conflict. It's really scary. And this is one of the reasons why I say, like, you don't want an incompetent as president of the United States right now. Like, you go back. I mean, look, there are some people I disagreed with. I mean, hell, I disagree with a lot of George W. Bush's foreign policies, obviously disagreed with a lot of Barack Obama's foreign policies. But these were, like, fundamentally capable human beings, right? Donald Trump is a capable human being. I think more than capable, but I'm biased. Kamala Harris is not a capable human being. Like, do you really want, in the midst of a high pressure conflict, her negotiating with Xi Jinping about Taiwan? Or do you want her over there in Moscow or Kiev negotiating with the Russians, with Vladimir Putin about the peace settlement in Ukraine.

This is scary, scary stuff. And you talk about a person like Kamala Harris who can't even answer a simple question without retreating into slogans and talking points. What about when the cameras are off and she's in a private room with world leaders? That's scary, scary stuff. And that's maybe what worries me about more than any of her domestic policies, is what happens if the shit hits the fan. I don't think Kamala Harris can handle it.

Why do you think China hasn't made a move on Taiwan yet? It seems like every chess player on the globe has made the move since the Biden and Kamala took office. Why hasn't China made their move yet? What are they waiting for?

I think there are a few different explanations, and maybe all of them are true, at least a little bit. I think one thing is even in a relatively weakened position, it's not an easy military maneuver. So maybe the Chinese don't want to kill a lot of people, especially their own people. Maybe that destabilizes them politically. That's one solution or one possible answer. I think another possible answer is, look, Xi Jinping, my understanding, and this is all guesswork, we're sort of judging with imperfect information, but my understanding is that he is not in the strongest position politically right now, that five years ago or maybe five years in the future, he'll be in a slightly stronger political position. And so maybe it's more likely to happen, say, in 2027 as opposed to so three years from now as opposed to right now. The other thing that you hear is maybe the Chinese don't think they ultimately need it. Right. So maybe we're actually misunderstanding how. What their calculus is. Maybe their attitude is they can control Taiwan from the outside without ever having to invade it and control it from the inside. And there's probably some element of truth to all those explanations, but I think eventually.

My guess is they're eventually gonna make a real military move on it. It's probably gonna be sooner rather than later. I hope not, but we'll see, because right now, if they do it, we're not in a good position with the leadership we have.

Those are some perspectives I haven't heard before. Thank you.

Yeah.

Let's move on to the border.

Sure.

So the border we have, I hear, 11 million, 15 million, 21 million. Yeah, whatever. It's millions and millions and millions of illegal immigrants that are calling the US home now.

That's right.

We're paying for it. You guys have a plan? I'd like to dive into. How exactly are you gonna go after and remove all of these immigrants?

Yeah. Yeah. So first, let me preface that. Cause I think you gotta stop the bleeding, right? Whenever you got a problem, like, you know, somebody cuts your leg off, stop the bleeding and then figure out how you're gonna reattach the leg. The stop the bleeding thing that we have to do is reclose the border, right? Reimplement, deportations, reimplement, the remain in Mexico policy. I think people don't fully realize that the reason the border is such a nightmare is that somebody will come into the country, say that they're seeking asylum, and if you're border patrol, you have to let them into the country. They get a work permit, they can live in the country for 10, 12, 15 years, and then maybe 10, 12, 15 years later, they get a court date to adjudicate whether their asylum claim is legitimate. But of course, most of them don't show up for that court date, right? So that's one of the main reasons why you have an open book border. The way that Trump solved that is he made all these people wait in Mexico while their asylum claim was being adjudicated, which means a lot of people never came to begin with because they didn't want to go to Mexico, they wanted to go to the United States, right?

So you re implement those policies, you get illegal immigration back down much lower. You know, it's well north of 10,000 a day under the last couple of years of Kamala Harris's leadership. Get it much lower, and then you figure out what to do with the. I think it's probably 25 million illegal aliens who are here right now. So the way I think about this, and I'm asked by the media about this all the time, and I always say, you know, it's like eating a sandwich, right? You know, it's like asking somebody, okay, how are you gonna eat this sandwich? It's ten times as big as your mouth. Well, you take the first bite, then you take the second bite, then you take the third bite, right? You do this sequentially. And I think that's how you have to think about it. So you start with the million illegal aliens who are violent criminals who have committed violent crimes in the United States of America. And you do everything that you can. You round them up, you get them out of this country. You just have to, right, those are criminals.

How do you know who the criminals are?

Cause most of them have actually committed crimes in the country, right? So either they're in american jails or they were released. I mean, Kamala Harris has released a lot of people who are arrested for committing violent crimes, and then some of them go on and commit further violent crimes. Some of them are just bouncing around. They probably are committing crimes but not being caught. But you, that's a real law enforcement focus. Get the violent criminals out of here and you focus on them. And I think there are a few other things that you gotta do to make it, frankly, harder for illegal immigrants to take advantage of the country. Right? You gotta end the Social Security fraud and the medicare fraud so that people aren't able to get free benefits, free health care. What I think we ought to do, I actually have a piece of legislation on this in the Senate, is you tax remittances, right? Cause you think about somebody comes in here, they're an illegal alien, they're working, and they're sending all their money back home. They're not gonna send their money back home if you tax the money that they're sending back home.

So they'll come, they'll go back to their country of origin, and if they wanna come, maybe they'll apply for a legal pathway, but they're not gonna come in illegally. And then I think you also gotta make it harder for employers to hire illegal labor. Right? I mean, this is one thing that I think Republicans, we've got to sort of accept is part of the problem is illegal aliens breaking our laws. Part of the problem is employers are encouraging them to come in and break our laws because they'd much rather pay an illegal alien under the table than they pay an american worker. And so I think you do those things. Focus on the criminal migrants, deport the people you've got to deport, make it harder for illegal aliens to work in this country. I think you solve a whole, whole chunk of the problem.

How would you? I mean, we tried to lock the border up first. Go around.

Yeah.

What's going to change this go around?

So a couple things. I mean, first of all, like, yeah, it wasn't perfect when Trump was president, but, man, it was very good. Like, you look at the number of illegal border crossings per day, it wasn't zero. You're never going to get it to zero. But, man, it was much closer to zero than it's been pretty much at any time in our country's history, at least recent history. Right? So you really can just, with some common sense law enforcement approaches, get things to maybe 1000 illegal crossings a day. 500 illegal crossings a day. That's one 20th of what Joe Biden has had and Kamala Harris have had. So that's a big, big improvement. Now you got to do some other things, too. You've got to finish the border wall. Right. I think you've probably got to empower border patrol to do their job a little bit more. One of the problems that Trump had his first term is that because we hadn't had a real border crisis in a while, and because you didn't have until Donald Trump, somebody who took border enforcement seriously, there was a lot of, like, litigation and legal cases about, well, what is the president actually allowed to do?

Because every time he tried to do something new, you'd have somebody file a lawsuit and say, no, no, no, the president's not allowed to do this. Right. Well, one of the things that happened is Donald Trump won all those cases, but it happened towards the end of his administration. So he's gonna have law enforcement tools during his second term that he didn't have during his first term. And, yeah, you gotta finish construction at the border wall. There's a lot of cool technology that you can use, you know, AI, infrared. I've seen some crazy stuff where you put a camera in the desert and it's got 20 miles line of sight in either direction, and then somebody comes from 8 miles away and the AI can identify. Is that a person? Is it a rabbit? Is it a fox? Is it something else? Oh, is it a person with a gun or a person who's just a little kid? You actually can use technology to identify illegal migrants who are trying to cross the border. You just have to empower law enforcement to do that stuff. And I think that's what Donald Trump wants to do.

In fact, I know it's what Donald Trump wants to do. And again, it was quite successful the first term. It can be more successful the second go round.

Very good. Very good. Let's talk about government reform.

Yeah.

Looks like Elon is going to be on the cabinet. That's right. And will be in the charge on the government efficiency department, if that's what you call it. How do you see, have you spoken with him about the plan, how he's going to do it?

Well, I've spoken. You mean with the president or with Elon?

With Elon.

Okay. Yeah, with Elon. So I've spoken with Elon a little bit about it. And, you know, I think that the way that this is envisioned is you set up a, you know, you set up an organization with very smart people from the private sector. And if you have a few smart people from government and you go in and you say, how are we going to fix all the broken inefficiencies? And the thing that's complicated about this, man is it's going to look much different in, say, the Department of Defense versus Social Security. Right? Like, one of the biggest problems in Social Security is fraud. You've got a lot of illegal aliens. I've actually had friends of mine who have had their Social Security account drawn down. And then when they go to the IR's, the IR's is, oh, yeah, an illegal alien used your Social Security number, but we're not allowed to reveal that person's information. A person who's using your Social Security number to defraud you. Your own government is saying, we can't tell you who that is. Right. I'm dead serious. I mean, crazy stuff is happening out there in this country. So you got to fix that problem.

Now, that's a Social Security fraud problem. Now, at the Department of Defense, right, we've got a big. It's not so much a fraud problem as it is a procurement problem. So you ask yourself, like, how do we end up paying six times what the Chinese are paying for ships or why are we paying five times what the Russians are paying for artillery shells? You need somebody to go in there and actually fix that procurement process. And the honest answer, man, and I hate to say, because a lot of these companies do do important work, like, we want our troops to have the best weapons. There are a lot of companies that are getting really rich because Uncle Sam is run by idiots. You go in and you fix that procurement process. You do less procurement based purely on what something costs and more procurement that tries to force companies to be a little bit more efficient. So there's a lot that you can do there, and you just got to go department by department. And what makes it complicated is, again, each department is a little bit different from the next one. And I think you just got to, for four years, go one right after the other and make this country's government more efficient.

I mean, let me give you a statistic just absolutely insane. So 2019, this government spent about $4.4 trillion. That's a lot of money. In 2024, our government will probably spend close to $7 trillion. Okay, so 4.4 to seven, $2.6 trillion of additional spending. A little bit of that is Social Security because you have an aging population. Some of that's fraudental, right? Illegal aliens committing fraud. A little bit of that is Medicare because, again, you've got an aging population. But of that $2.6 trillion that we're spending. That's just in four years, dude. Four years. $2.6 trillion. Probably $2.4 trillion of it has nothing to do with Social Security, nothing to do with Medicare. There's a lot of waste. There's a lot of fraud, and there's a lot that we can fix in that $2.4 trillion. Save people a lot of money, allow the private sector to grow instead of destroying the private sector, and also, hopefully, give people some of their hard earned money back. Because if their government's wasting trillions of dollars, who's paying for that? You are. And I am.

What agencies or departments of government would you start with?

Yeah, that's a good question. I haven't thought about that, actually. I mean, I think you start with. You got to start with fraud in what you might call the welfare system. Okay, so section eight housing, and I believe, by the way, that if somebody's down on their luck, they lose their job. You don't want kids being homeless, but that program should exist, number one, for people who are actually down on their luck, and number two, for people who are legally in this country to begin with. So a lot of section eight money goes to illegal immigrants either through fraud or. Because even though section eight housing is not supposed to go to an illegal alien, if you're the son of an illegal alien or the daughter, then you can benefit from that system. So I think you gotta go into sort of the welfare system, make sure that it's actually going to the people who are entitled to it and not to, frankly, illegal aliens. That's probably where I'd start because that would help solve the immigration problem, too. So you kind of kill two birds with 1 st there, man. I think the defense procurement process is really broken.

And what it means is that we have a lot of weapons systems that are outdated, and we're not doing as much technology innovation in what we're giving our troops. I mean, you know this better than anybody, but, like, whether we win the war of the future is in large part a technology battle. Right? Like, you don't want our troops out there waving around knives when the other guys have guns. You know, there's a lot of cool stuff happening in drone technology. There's a lot of cool stuff happening in underground, or I should say underwater submersibles, unmanned submarines. Like, we should be giving our troops the best stuff. But to do that, you gotta fix how the defense. But the Defense Department actually buys weapons to begin with.

What about Ir's, CIA? FBI?

Yeah, so I don't think. I don't think the CIA wastes a ton of money. So that's not an efficiency problem, but I think it's corrupt. Right. That's just a basic, like, there's lawlessness within our intelligence services. We know this after the 2016 Russia hoax. I mean, we have to remember there are actually members of the intelligence community who are leaking stories to CNN that, like, Donald Trump was paid off by the Russians, totally fabricated. None of those people have been fired. And they ran the same playbook in 2020. Remember the Hunter Biden laptop story that they used our own intelligence services to justify big tech censoring that story? Right. Why did Google, Facebook, Twitter, why did they all censor that story? Because some of the members of our own intelligence services, the FBI, the CIA, were telling them, you're not allowed to run this story because it is russian disinformation. Right. So you have to fix that problem. I don't think you save a lot of money doing it, but you make the people's government work better, which is maybe the most important thing.

Interesting, with your discussions with President Trump and Elon Musk, is there any estimation on what percentage of the government we can see go away? I think when he took twitter, it was what? He cut 80% of the workforce.

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

What can we expect within our own government?

I go back to that number of, okay, we're spending $2.4 trillion more from 2019 to 2024, and what are we actually getting out of it? I think a lot of that money. You can make a lot of that money go away, or I shouldn't say go away. You can give it back to people who actually earned it rather than have it being misspent by government bureaucrats. I think you can fire a lot of, or at least get rid of a lot of the federal workforce. I don't know if it's 80%, but it's a lot because, look, there are a lot of people, I mean, look, if you go to Washington, DC right now and you go to the Social Security Administration, there are a lot of people who aren't showing up to work. And you know why they're not showing up to work is Covid. They're still doing remote work. Some of these agencies, like, if your job is not important enough for you to show up and actually do it, then maybe you shouldn't be collecting a taxpayer check to begin with. And so I think there's a lot that you can cut. There's a lot of efficiencies you can get out of there.

And I really do think you can save hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe even trillions of dollars, just by making the people's government work more efficiently.

Perfect.

Yeah. So just on this point, one more thing there is like, okay, think about this. I'm sure you've used the VA system before. I know I have. When I got out of the Marine Corps in zero seven, the VA was the main way that I got health care from 2007 to 2012. So here's my read of the VA. Being a senator, dealing with the VA, but also experiencing it personally. Probably 90, 95% of the people who work at the VA are fantastic human beings. But then you've got, like, a small slice of the. Of the VA that's bad apples. That make it really hard for everybody else to do their job. This is why veterans spend 3 hours on the phone trying to get an appointment. This is why you have people committing suicide, because they're waiting 28 days to get an appointment with a doctor. Like, just crazy, crazy stuff. But it's a small sliver of the VA. You got to fire those people. Give the people who are doing their job a raise, a promotion, fire the people who aren't doing their job. You save money. You also make these agencies work better for the american people.

You know, that's interesting. I mean, I'm a veteran as well. I tried the VA system. I never walked back. And so I am curious to know, would you ever consider privatized healthcare for veterans?

I think I'd consider. And Donald Trump was really good at this. Doesn't get enough credit for this particular innovation, but giving veterans more choice. Right? So let's say you're in a rural hospital. Your closest VA is 120 miles away. Why force a veteran to drive two and a half hours to that VA facility. Facility when he can get cheaper and good care right in his backyard? Right. So I do think that we ought to open up choice and optionality for veterans. I think that there is areas where the VA actually works very well. So I wouldn't say get rid of the whole thing. I would say give people more choice. I think you'll save money in the process. You also give veterans a lot more optionality.

Okay. Speaking of technology, you being a tech venture capitalist, you understand the importance of AI technology. Xi Jinping has said, the winner to the AI race will achieve global domination. How are we going to get in that mix, you know, especially with our power grid? I mean, we need more power to power.

Great point.

Artificial intelligence, the left wants us on this green initiative. They don't want to go nuclear. I mean, how are we going to. How are we going to compete?

Well, if the left gets their way, we won't. There's just no way around it. You know what I didn't realize until I actually looked into this is the amount of power you need to run. Modern AI is absolutely off the charts. You'll need twice as much power, three times as much electricity as we have in this country right now. If you get AI going in all the ways that it could, I mean, things like, okay, let's say you take a picture of your arm and you send it off to an AI company, and the company can tell you with 100% certainty whether you have any skin cancer on your arm, right? Think about how much money that's going to save. Think about how many lives that's going to save. But the power you need to run all that computing technology is crazy. It's like, take what you need to run New York City, add AI, and then double or triple what you need to run New York City, just in this one small geographic area. So, number one is you've got to unleash America power. Now, the good news is we actually have it, right?

Between nuclear, natural gas, and everything else, we have the power that we need. We could run an AI economy for 500 years just with the natural gas that we have in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The problem is Kamala Harris won't let us get that stuff out of the ground. She has decided to prioritize oil and gas in Iran and Venezuela. Then oil and gas created by american workers that's mined from american territory. It's totally insane. That's number one is you really got to unleash american energy. And unfortunately, we've got Kamala Harris, who wants to do the exact opposite. The other big thing, man, is, look, I believe in merit. Whether you're black, white, I don't care where you come from, I don't care who you sleep with. I want the best people for the job. And the way that we lose the AI race is by all of this ridiculous diversity crap that forces companies and forces innovators to not hire the best people. Like, this is my theory, by the way, about what's really changed about Elon Musk. Like, dude, Elon Musk was, like, a center left Democrat ten years ago. Like, what really changed with Elon Musk?

Elon Musk wants to get to Mars. And to get to Mars, he needs the smartest engineers in the world. He wants to hire who he wants to hire, not who a government diversity bureaucrat tells him who to hire. I think that's the big reason why Elon Musk has become more conservative, is he just wants to hire the best people for the job. He doesn't want bureaucrats telling him who he has to hire. That's the second thing, is we've got to end this ridiculous diversity, equity inclusion garbage. Best person for the job. Good old fashioned american merit. That's how you win the race to AI. That's how you get to Mars. Final point I make is think about, like, AI. You need software and you need hardware. Okay, what is the hardware? It's computer chips. And this is where China has really, really invested, and America's got to do a better job. It's too hard to create computer chips in this country. You need power. You need water, you need minerals. You need rare earth materials. You need a whole host of things. But if China dominates the computer chips, they're going to dominate AI, because you can't do AI without the next gen computer chips.

So we've got to invest in creating that infrastructure to do the next generation of computer chips. And let me give you just one example how insane this stuff is. So there was a big bill that came out of Congress a couple of years ago, and the whole point of it was to promote the american computer chip industry to manufacture more computer chips in America, something that I think is a good idea. Agree or disagree? We got to make more computer chips.

How could it be a bad idea?

I mean, look, I think most people agree with this. Probably 90% of Americans agree with us on this. Okay, so here's the problem, though. The way that that program has been implemented is Gina Raimondo, who's Kamala Harris's commerce secretary. She's trying to make intel and Taiwan semiconductor and all these companies that are manufacturing in the United States of America. Check all of these ridiculous progressive politics boxes before they can manufacture. Like, for example, do you have the right diversity policies? Do you have the right human resources policies? Are you targeting your recruitment to have the right racial mix depending on the communities that you're operating in? And these companies are like, we just want to hire the best people for the job. Like, does anybody really think that intel is going to discriminate against people based on their skin color? It's ridiculous. Let them hire the best people for the job. But it goes to show how progressive politics destroys the actual infrastructure that we need to build this stuff out.

Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah, on the subject of censorship. Since we're on with Elon, you know, we know what's happening in Brazil. Sure, they blocked x. Now they've taken Starlink, to my understanding. Are we going to see any blowback if you and President Trump take office about all of the censorship that happened before? Mark Zuckerberg just released that letter saying, oh, I fell to victim to the FBI pressure and made a sense. Are we going to see any repercussions for people that censored?

Yes, we're going to fire the people who censored. We're going to fire the people who are telling Mark Zuckerberg and all the other technology companies that they needed to censor, fire the 50 intelligence operatives who said the hunter Biden laptop was russian disinformation. A lot of those people still have security clearances. Strip every single one of those people with their security clearances. Fire every single person. You cannot lie, take your position of public trust and lie to the american people for political purposes. It's disgraceful and people have to suffer consequences for it. Now, the other thing is, we've got to be willing to use american soft power to promote a free speech society. So you talk about Brazil, the leader, I forget exactly which official it was within the European Union, but sent Elon this threatening letter that basically said, we're going to arrest you if you platform Donald Trump, who, by the way, is the likely next president of the United States. So what America should be saying is, oh, if NATO wants us to continue supporting them, and NATO wants us to continue to be a good participant in this military alliance, why don't you respect american values and respect free speech?

Excuse me? It's insane that we would support a military alliance if that military alliance isn't going to be pro free speech. I think we can do both. But we've got to say american power comes with certain strings attached. One of those is respect free speech, especially in our european allies. Like, look, I'm not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives, but european countries should theoretically share american values, especially about some very basic things like free speech.

This is my last question, running out of time here. And I just, I did a lot of, I talked to a lot of just everyday Americans. And the, the one thing that everybody wants me to ask you is childcare costs. Health care costs.

Yeah.

I mean, I just talked to my brother in law. He spent $60,000 a year on childcare and healthcare costs. And so Kamala voted against the childcare tax credit.

Yep.

Several years ago.

That's right.

How are we gonna make, how are you and President Trump going to make healthcare, childcare, these kind of everyday necessities more affordable for everyday american people?

Yeah, so it's funny, man. Kamala Harris says that she now supports the child tax credit. The biggest expansion of child tax credit was when Donald Trump was president. And like you just said, she voted against it. And this is one of the reasons why Trump joked last night at the debate, he joked, like, she's gonna put on a red maga hat because every position that she once held, she's running away from, and she's running to Donald Trump's positions because they're smart and because they're popular. But I think it's important. Like, don't believe what Kamala Harris says that she wants to do. Believe what she's actually done and what she's actually failed to do. But on childcare costs, I think there are a couple of things that we got to do here to give Americans more choice. But also, I think if you give them more choice, you can lower costs in the process. So you ask yourself, there's a lot of federal support that goes to childcare, but it's kind of crazy. It only goes to one particular model, and that model is daycare center that you pay for, which, look, a lot of families want to rely on that model.

A lot of families need to rely on that model. I'm not saying we penalize them, but we should allow other families who want to use different things to do that, too. Like, for example, let's say that your church wants to have a daycare system set up. A lot of people would prefer to have their daycare also be their church because they know those people right. They trust those people already if they've already got a relationship through their church. The federal government does not help church focused daycare centers. They do help a lot of non church focused daycare centers. So if you're a nonprofit organization and you are in the community and you want to set up a daycare, senator, we should not be penalizing you for wanting to do that. You ought to have the same support that everybody else has. Another example of this is, let's say, for example, you have an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent. They'd like to help you with the kids, but for financial reasons, it's just not possible. There are a lot of ways in which we make it harder for grandparents to play a role in the childcare of their grandchildren.

And again, some people don't have access to grandparents, and that's fine. But if your grandparents are there and want to help, we should be giving them the same supports that we give to external daycare centers. But there's so much federal money, so much taxpayer money that goes to just the daycare center. It should be going to the nonprofits, too. It should be going to the churches, too. And I think it should be going to the grandparents and the aunts and uncles, too. And if you spread out and gave people options, right, gave people more choices, then that means those daycare centers are under less pressure. You have fewer people who are trying to use those resources. So it drives down the cost of all childcare. It is the craziest federal policy that we basically, we have these things called child development block grants, and there are other federal programs. And it subsidizes one model of childcare. Give Americans choice. Let them do what they want to do. And I think that will lower the cost of child care for a lot of american families.

Thank you for that. If I could, I have one more question to pop down.

Absolutely, man.

I asked President Trump this when I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago, and I said that I thought that, that the most challenging part of your campaign was the women vote.

Yeah, sure.

How are you guys going to win over the women vote? I mean, Taylor Swift just came out last night to endorse Kamala.

Well, you know, look, all respect to Taylor Swift, I don't think that billionaires endorsing candidates, celebrities endorsing candidates really matters that much. I think that we have to make our pitch to the american people. And in particular, you know, there are issues that affect all Americans, but I think affect women voters in particular. So public safety, right. Women voters want their kids to be able to grow up in safe communities. They want their kids to not be affected by the terrible fentanyl that's coming across the southern border. I mean, I was in Georgia the other day, and these cops showed me fentanyl disguised as child's candy nerds, like nerds candies, because the cartels are using this to get around our security protocols. But what happens when you're a mom and your kid picks up a packet of candy on the playground and it kills them because they ate a piece of candy and it happened to be fentanyl that a cartel had brought into our communities? Or, you know, let's say you're a single woman and you want to ride the New York subway or you want to walk through Central park in public safety.

But Kamala Harris has allowed millions of criminal migrants to take control of your communities. I think our message to single women, to married women, is we want you to grow up in safety and security, and we're going to pursue policies that make it easier for you to walk around the street in your own country and feel safe and secure. Whether you've got kids, whether it's just you, you and your family deserve to be safe and secure. And that's something Kamala Harris has taken from you. And I think if we make it about policy and how our policies make communities safer, then I think we went on that argument, and I think we're going to get a lot of women voters to come onto our side. Another issue. Right. We know this. In reality, I've been told that about 70% of the grocery shopping in this country is done by women. Okay? So, like, I like to go to the grocery store. So in our family, I do more of the grocery shopping than my wife. But I think most families, the wife tends to do more of the grocery shopping. Okay? So they're affected by the rise in food and they're affected by the fact that a lot of young people can't afford to buy a home.

Right? A lot of young women would like to buy a home, and they can't do it because of Kamala Harris policy. So I think if we hammer home the message that you can't buy a home, you can't buy groceries, you can't afford to turn on the heat at night, because Kamala Harris has made food, energy and housing more expensive, then I think that will have a special appeal to women voters, too. Again, it affects everybody, but it maybe affects women a little bit more.

Thank you for clarifying.

Of course.

Well, Mister Vance, I told you, please, that I'm a former seal and CA contractor. I have a lot of colleagues that I keep in touch with who are still in and out. Everybody is behind you guys, including me. I wish you the best of luck. And I have one more thing to say. Not everybody's gonna vote. So if you are gonna vote, go drag a buddy out.

That's exactly where I have to vote.

And that's how we won this thing.

That's how we won this thing. Thanks, man.

God bless.

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