Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hello everyone, and welcome to the 154th episode of the Atlas Society asks, my name is Jennifer Anju Grossman. My friends call me Jag. I'm the c e o of the Atlas Society. We are the leading nonprofit organization introducing young people to the ideas of Ayn Rand in fund creative ways, graphic novels, animated videos. Today we are joined by my dear friend Larry Elder. Before I even begin to introduce our guest, I wanna remind all of you who are watching us on Zoom, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube. Uh, go ahead, use the comment section to start typing in your questions. We're going to get to as many of them as we can. Larry Elder, of course, is a man who needs no introduction, <laugh>. He is a talk radio host of the Larry Elder Show, a frequent cable news commentator, syndicated columnist, also a bestselling author of over a dozen books, including 10 Things You Can't Say in America, double Standards, the Selective Outrage of the Left.
Speaker 0 00:01:08 And one of my personal favorites, dear Father, dear Son, two lives, eight hours. This is September. He is also releasing his latest book as Goes California. Uh, my Mission to Rescue the Golden State and Save the Nation. I have it pre-ordered. We're gonna put that link in the chats, and I am sure you're going to wanna order that by the end of this interview. Um, his film projects include the 2020 release of Uncle Tom in oral history of an American Black conservative. I just rewatched it again last night, uh, and it's a must watch. As is Uncle Tom, too, an American Odyssey, a previous candidate for Governor of California in 2021. Elder recently announced his candidacy for President of the United States in next year's election. So if you have disparate of your choices, I think we've got one for you. Larry, thank you so much for taking, uh, time out of what I know is a completely breakneck schedule to join us.
Speaker 1 00:02:15 Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for that wonderful introduction, and thank you for not calling me the blackface of white supremacists, <laugh>. What the only times called me when I ran for Governor
Speaker 0 00:02:25 <laugh>. Uh, yeah, I, we wanna get to talking about that tactic. But as I mentioned, um, this book of yours, the one that I just most recently actually listened to, in addition to having read previously, uh, is one of my favorites. Dear Father, dear Son, which covers the Rocky Road, you and your father traveled to reconciliation. Now, corporal punishment was a near constant feature of your childhood, uh, with one particularly eloquent quote from the book, uh, phrase you used to describe your father. Quote, he treated infractions like misdemeanors, misdemeanors like infer, like felonies and felonies like capital offenses, right? You later learned more about what your father had to overcome, uh, to become a marine, a business owner, family man, restaurateur. So looking back, what were some ways that difficult experience, um, and that abuse really, that you endured, uh, either sabotaged you or paradoxically spurred you on to succeed?
Speaker 1 00:03:36 Well, uh, I think that what it taught me, uh, the, the long the book is about a long conversation I had with my father, having not spoken to him for 10 years. Uh, my father, uh, started a little cafe when I was 10 years old, and I had to work for him. I was always afraid of my father. I thought his temper was, um, unwarranted, as you mentioned. Uh, unfortunately now I've gotta work for him and his, and he, uh, had the same temper when I worked for him. He had a little cafe near downtown LA and he would scream at me when he thought I did something wrong. Uh, and when I say cafe, it's really a diner where everybody can see and everybody can hear. So now I've been working for him for 15 years. I'm 15 years old, and yelling at me now is really starting to get on my nerves. And I told myself the next time he yells at me, I'm gonna leave. And I, every time I said that, I didn't do it because I was afraid of my father. But finally one day he yelled at me and 15 years old, and I walked out of the restaurant, where are
Speaker 0 00:04:33 The hotdog buns
Speaker 1 00:04:35 And act of defiance? No one had ever done to my dad. So it was, by the way, it was during rush hour. So the little cafe was full of people, and the waitress had called in sick. So my dad was there all by himself. When he got home that evening, he was steamed. I'm laying on my bed, Jennifer, and my dad said, why did you leave? And was it my first time ever talking back to my father? And I said, dad, I got sick and tired of the way you spoke to me, and I'm not gonna put up with it anymore. My father balled up the $10 a day that he paid me for wages, threw it at me as I lay on my bed. He walked out of my bedroom, and we did not have another conversation for 10 years. And when I say not another conversation, I mean, not even, you think it might rain?
Speaker 1 00:05:19 How about those dodgers? What about the Lakers? We didn't talk at all. And I was easy to avoid, uh, being around him. We have a tiny little house, but I knew my dad's hours, so I just made sure I was never around when he was there. Now, I graduate from high school. I go to college 3000 miles away. And when I'd come back to visit my mom, I would just make sure my dad and I were not in the same room. I'd go off to law school, same thing. I'd come back and I would visit my mom, make sure my dad and I were not in the same room. Now, I'm 25 years old, Jennifer, I've, uh, graduated from law school. I've passed a California bar, the Ohio Bar. I'm working in Cleveland, and I can't sleep.
Speaker 1 00:05:57 And I knew it had something to do with my father. I never thought we'd be friends. But I told my secretary to cancel all my appointments. I'm flying to California. I was going to, uh, surprise my dad. Have a five or 10 minute, uh, discussion with him. Tell him with an s o b I thought he was, I figured he'd tell me I'm an ungrateful son, and then maybe I'd be able to go back to Cleveland and sleep. So I go to la don't tell him I'm coming, take a cab from LAX right to the restaurant. I walk in at one 30, he closed at two 30. I knew that. And I had a, a, a couple bags of luggage with me. My dad said he was shocked to see me. He said, Larry, I put your bags in the back. I said, no, dad, I'm gonna be here for five or 10 minutes.
Speaker 1 00:06:35 I wanna tell you something that I'm taking off. My dad said, okay, wait till we close. So I sat there for an hour and I said to myself, now, don't tee off on the man. Don't tell him everything he's ever done. Everything he's ever said, all the things you've thought he did that were offensive, don't do that. Just say him. Give him the highlights and get outta Dodge. So my dad sat down and I teed off on him. I told him everything I could think of, every slight, every inf, everything I could think of. And I talked for 20 minutes nonstop. And Jennifer, you know how I can go <laugh>. And pretty soon I was out of ammo. I was out of episodes. And when I stopped, my dad looked up and he said, is that it? You didn't speak to me for 10 years because of that.
Speaker 1 00:07:18 And for the first time I saw my father cry, he said, let me tell you about my father. He said, you know your last name, elder? I said, yes. He said, that's not the name of my biological father. I said, what? Who's your biological father? Don't know. Never met him. Whose elder? Elder was a man who was in my mother's life the longest. She was illiterate. She had a series of boyfriends she lived off of. She never really worked. And my dad said he was 13 years old. He came home and he started crawling with his mom's. Then boyfriend Elder was long gone. She sides with the boyfriend and throws my father outta the house. 13 years old, Jim Crow, south Athens, Georgia, at the beginning of the Great Depression. And when people say so-and-so didn't have a nickel, uh, in his pocket, he was dirt poor.
Speaker 1 00:08:03 My dad was on a dirt road, had nothing in his pocket, did anything he could. Ultimately, he became a Pullman porter on the trains. They were the largest private employer of black in those days. And this little black boy from Athens, Georgia then went to California to a city called Los Angeles. And he was stunned. You could walk through the front door of a restaurant and get served. He made a middle note that maybe someday he'll relocate to LA because he always had packages of crackers and 10 cans of tuna, because you never knew in the south if you'd be able to get a meal at Pearl Harbor. My dad joins the Marines. He becomes a cook for the colored soldiers. And when he gets out, goes back at Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he met, married my mom and tried to get him a job as a short order cook.
Speaker 1 00:08:48 And he was told, we don't hire inwards. So this whole story I'm telling you, unfolded over a period of eight hours, he told me about his whole life, uh, that he went to an unemployment office, uh, in Chattanooga. Uh, and he was told, he went through the wrong door. He goes out to the hall, sees colored, only goes through that door to the very same lady who sent him out, told my mother, this is nonsense. I'm going to LA get me a job as a cook. I'll sin for you. He comes out to la he walks around for a day and a half, and he's told, I'm sorry, you don't have any references. My dad said, I need references to cook ham and eggs. So they treated him the same way as he was treated in Chattanooga. They just didn't say to his face, we don't hire inwards the way they did there.
Speaker 1 00:09:31 My dad went to an unemployment office this time, just one door. The lady says, I don't have anything. What? My dad said, what time do you open? She says, uh, nine. What time do you close? She said, five. My dad said, I'll be in that chair till you find something. Sat in the chair for a whole day, came back the next day. She calls him up. She says, I have something. I don't know whether you're going to one. And my dad said, of course I'm going to want it. What is it? She says, it's a job cleaning toilets. My dad did that for over 10 years at a company called the Bisco Grand Bread. Had a second full-time job cleaning toilets at another bread company called Barbara and Bread. He cooked for a family on the weekends to make additional money because he wanted my mom to be a stay-at-home mom.
Speaker 1 00:10:09 And he went to night school to get his g e d and then later on trade school to learn how to operate a cafe. So the man never slept, Jennifer, that's why he was so grouchy all the time. Five minutes of, of sleeping here, 15 minutes here, 45 minutes here, maybe an hour here. You do that, not just week after week, not just month after month, but year after year. And you walk into a house with three rambunctious boys. How are you gonna feel? So as my dad is speaking, the man got bigger and bigger and bigger, and I got smaller and smaller and smaller. And now by the end of eight hours, I'm crying. And I asked my father to forgive me for judging him so harshly. And my dad said, you didn't know. You didn't know you were a child. Just follow the advice I've always given you and your brothers.
Speaker 1 00:10:55 Hard work wins. You get out of life what you put into it. You cannot control the outcome, Larry. But you are 100% in control of the effort. And before you moan and groan about what somebody did or said to you, go to the nearest mirror, look at it and ask yourself, what could I have done to change the outcome? And finally, he said, no matter how good you are, how hard you work, sooner or later, bad things are gonna happen to you. How you deal with those bad things will tell your mother and me. If we raised a man from that on for the next 35 years, my dad and I were the best of friends. My mother and I were very, very close. Arguably my dad and I became even closer. So I had wonderful 35 years with him. And the book is about that conversation. And Jennifer, I gotta tell you, I still get letters from all over the country, sometimes the world people telling me that my book inspired them to reach out to their father, to understand their father better, to make me be a better father. Uh, it's the best thing I've ever written, and I'm really, really proud of it.
Speaker 0 00:11:52 Well, I'm glad to hear that because it is my favorite. And, um, you know, a li little bit of p politics in there, but mostly as in the context of the narrative that, um, you're describing. And, uh, now that I know that your, um, dad had, you know, sleep deprivation an hour here, a few minutes there, I hope you're not gonna turn into a grouchy old man with your campaign. Um,
Speaker 1 00:12:19 You, you mentioned there was a little, little politics in it. And as you know in the book, uh, my dad is a lifelong Republican. My mom a lifelong Democrat. And you should have, I wish I had taped some of the conversations they had. You know, they, they passionately believed what they believed, but nobody called anybody a fascist. Nobody called anybody a Nazi. Nobody said, you don't care about the, uh, the poor. You only care about the rich. Nobody ever said that. My dad said this about the Democratic party. Democrats wanna give you something for nothing. When you're trying and get something for nothing, you almost always end up getting nothing for something. <laugh> one of his favorite, favorite expressions.
Speaker 0 00:12:56 So, um, in reading about some of those early pitched battles, uh, did that help inspire your interest in politics or was it another influence? No,
Speaker 1 00:13:06 It was my mom. My, I I cannot remember not watching a convention with her, uh, until she was no longer with us. Uh, the first one I watched, I was eight years old. It was 1960. Uh, we watched both Republican convention, the Democratic Convention, and in those days there was some drama. They're all scripted now, but there was some drama then. My mother always, always, always loved politics. And I recall vividly us sitting down on the front porch at our first house and going through a book of Presidents Illustrated book of Presidents from George Washington to the then incumbent, uh, Dwight Eisenhower went over all the presidents, their highlights, their, uh, their lowlights, uh, and at the end of it, she closed the book and she said, Larry, someday if you want it, you can be in this book. Now. I was, I was zero interested in politics, never thought I'd run for anything.
Speaker 1 00:13:59 And I thought my mother was crazy when she suggested that someday I could be in that book. Fast forward, I ran for governor, as you know, and now I'm running for president. Who would've thunk it? And my mother would've been so, so proud. I no longer have my mother or my father. I have two brothers, older and a younger, uh, and they're neither, neither one is with us. My older brother died of a, of a, uh, heart attack, uh, uh, in 2019 September 13th, Friday the 13th. He was my closest friend. My little brother Dennis, uh, was diabetic. And he died about 35 years ago. So now I am truly an orphan
Speaker 0 00:14:33 <laugh>. It's up to you. Now, um, in knowing a bit about your mother who, uh, became quite famous as, uh, America's mom, um, it sounds like, did her politics change? Did you influence her or did the party change out from underneath her?
Speaker 1 00:14:51 Well, that's what she says. She says the Democratic Party left me. I didn't leave the Democratic Party, although she remained a registered Democrat until she died, but she began voting Republican. Uh, and I think that's in part because of my influence, but I tried to get her to reregister, uh, as a Republican and she wouldn't do it.
Speaker 0 00:15:09 All right. Well, I'm gonna move along here cuz I do wanna get to, um, your most recent race and, uh, the, the one that you're engaged in right now. But I couldn't just gloss over. Uh, the fact that you have said in the past that Atlas Shrugged is one of your favorite books. So when did you discover it and why did it resonate?
Speaker 1 00:15:30 I don't remember when I read it. I think I read it, uh, in high school. Uh, and the Fountain Head actually, I like even more than I do at the Shred. Uh, I have a girlfriend I've known for almost 20 years, and, uh, when we got to know each other, the first thing I did was take a look at her bookshelf and she had a copy of the fountain head, and it was dogeared, meaning she read it thoroughly. Uh, and I knew I had found my <laugh>. I knew I had found my soulmate, but, um, you know, I, iron Rand, uh, is, is a tower. I mean, uh, she's all about limited government, personal responsibility, hard work, not making excuses. Uh, and, um, uh, I wish more people appreciated her works, which is why I'm so, um, uh, happy to had this honor to speak with your, uh, with the Atlas Society.
Speaker 0 00:16:19 I can see why the fountain head would've, uh, resonated with you. And I can see a little bit of your father as well in it, because it's one of the themes is, um, being able to be an independent thinker and having integrity and not being a second hander and looking, uh, and placing too much stock or value in, in what other people think. But, but following your own judgment. Um, okay. So I have seen you described as both a libertarian and a conservative at various points. Uh, you seem like an objectivist to me, but <laugh> how would you classify your, your philosophy these days?
Speaker 1 00:16:58 Uh, well, I would call myself a re libertarian. I am a registered, uh, Republican, but I also co consider myself to be a small l libertarian, not unlike Milton Friedman, who was a, a hero of mine. I had the opportunity to meet him. Uh, he even endorsed one of my books. That's how I see myself as a small l libertarian. But as a registered Republican, my fear of being a capital L libertarian and running as such, um, is that libertarians in my opinion, often take votes away from, uh, the Republican party. I know that libertarians like to think that they, they take votes, uh, from the parties equally, but that's not my experience. My experience is that a libertarian is more likely to vote Republican, uh, than vote Democrat. And so I feel that there are some races, uh, some senate races and maybe even some gubernatorial races that have been lost, uh, because of the 3%, 4%, 5% or whatever it is that the Libertarian candidate gets.
Speaker 1 00:17:51 And as between the two parties, uh, both of them are are big spenders. We know that both of them, uh, grow government. We know that Ronald Reagan, who is a personal hero of mine, uh, ran promising to slash the size of government. Uh, he did cut taxes from 70% to 50% and then down to 28%. But by the time he left, government was 30% larger than when he entered office, which is why one of my platform planks, uh, is an amendment to the Constitution, the fixed spending to a certain percentage of the G D P with exceptions for war and for natural disaster. Otherwise, both parties are gonna spend, we just did this debt deal right now, and all it does is, uh, kick the, the can down the road because it does nothing at all to do something about the so-called entitlements. Uh, you add the entitlements, that's almost half the budget, and then 25% or so is interest on the debt.
Speaker 1 00:18:42 The rest of it is, uh, national security. A little sliver is so-called discre, discre discretionary. And you could end all discretionary spending and you're still gonna have, uh, the so-called entitlements on automatic pilot. So the only way to do this is to restrain both parties. So they have to go into a room, lock the door, and then come out and say, the devil made me do it. Other than that, they're gonna continue keep spending because they want to get reelected. And you don't get elected in America by threatening to reform entitlements programs. Uh, that's a death now for anybody who wants to get elected. So the only way to do this is to force the politicians by a law that fixes spending so that they cannot spend beyond a certain level.
Speaker 0 00:19:24 All right. Well, we have got quite a few audience questions piling up, and I wanna get to those, but I don't wanna gloss over your experience in the California recall election, uh, in which you received the most votes and had, um, uh, ha you, you had the recall passed, so you were originally encouraged to run by Dennis Prager. Tell us a little bit about, uh, the lessons that you learned along the way and how that is informing your current, um, campaign.
Speaker 1 00:19:54 Well, you've known me a long time, Jennifer, and you've never known me to say I wanted to run for anything. So I never thought I'd run for anything. I ran for a third grade class president. Uh, yes, I won that race, and I wasn't particularly happy about that. So I was zero interested, uh, in, in politics other than as an observer, a critic, a pundit, uh, but so many people I respect, including Dennis Prager, without whom I would not be on the air. Uh, a my pastor, pastor Jack Hibbs, a woman named Jenny Sand, who's a local, uh, activist, uh, and a longtime friend named Lionel Chetan, who's a filmmaker, conservative filmmaker who's done among other things, uh, the great film called Hanoi Hilton. All these people approached me and asked me to run. And at first I thought they were crazy, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought, uh, if not you, who, if not now, when.
Speaker 1 00:20:42 And I found out that lo and behold, uh, even though California is a tax spend regulate state, when there have been governors who vetoed legislation, uh, like Schwarzenegger did, uh, there hasn't been a veto that's been overridden in California in almost 40 years. So I thought maybe just maybe I might be able to do a little something. And as you know, it was a two-step deal. The first part is, uh, 50% plus one had to vote to recall Gavin Newsom and whoever got the most votes out of the 46 replacement candidates would become the next governor of California. So, conceivably, if the ball pair 'em the right way, I could have been elected governor with as little as 25% of the vote. And the reason that's significant is in California, registered Republicans are outnumbered by re by non-registered Republicans, three to one. There hasn't been a Republican is one statewide in California in 20 years.
Speaker 1 00:21:34 Uh, and so it's almost impossible to win. But I thought maybe I might be able to sneak through on a recall election. And between the time I got elected to the time I had to run for a full term, uh, California would say, I don't have a tail. I don't have a horn. Things might've gotten better regarding the homelessness. Hopefully things would've gotten better regarding school because I support school choice. Uh, and then I would've gotten reelected. That's what I hope for. I got 3.5 million votes more than almost all the other 45 rivals combined. I raised 27 million in just eight weeks. That's when I got into the race with eight weeks left. That's more than all of the Republican rivals combined. And that included the guy that Newsom ran against the first time, a two term, uh, mayor of San Diego. That's the one by the way, the party wanted, they didn't want me. I was an insurgent candidate. I carried San Diego County, by the way, by 30 points. California has 58 counties on the replacement side. I carried 57 to 58. The only one I lost was San Francisco, and I lost that by 149 votes. Um, 150,000 individual donors. Half of them came from outside of California. So by any stretch of the imagination, it was an extraordinary performance. And that's one of the reasons I was confident that I could make some noise, uh, by running for president this time.
Speaker 0 00:22:51 What, what most surprised you about your, um, Dubin race?
Speaker 1 00:22:56 Well, I knew the, the, uh, media would be vicious. They were probably even more vicious than I thought I was called. I, I joke and joke with you when we first started, I was called the blackface of white supremacy by a columnist in the LA Times. Another one referred to my views as white supremacist. Uh, when I went to an a, um, homeless encampment in Venice, uh, some woman in a gorilla mass threw an egg at me. Uh, and rather than treat this with the seriousness, it deserved many of the pundits joked about it and simply said that I got what I deserved. So some of those things surprised me. Um, I was shocked at how I became the front runner right away. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I mean, Caitlin Jenner was in the race, and she has, uh, combined around 18 million followers on Instagram and on Twitter, way more than I have. Uh, I, I ran against, as I mentioned, a two term mayor of San Diego. I ran against, uh, a current house member, uh, plus the guy that, uh, Gavin Newsom defeated in 2018. Uh, and yet I was the front runner right away. And as the eight weeks went on, my lead only increased. That really surprised me. I figured I would do okay, but I, they treated me like a rockstar. Uh, people said that,
Speaker 0 00:24:09 Well, you are
Speaker 1 00:24:11 Security. Uh, people said that I drew Trump-like crowds, and I had Trump-like enthusiasm at many of my rallies. All that surprised me. Pleasantly surprised me. But what surprised me,
Speaker 0 00:24:21 I'm so glad to hear that. Now, speaking of Trump, you are running against a front running former president, correct? Uh, among a broad field, including governors and senators. Um, help map out the, uh, for us in broad terms, your path to the nomination.
Speaker 1 00:24:38 Well, here's how I see it. Republicans are of two minds about Donald Trump. There are those who love him, and they're those who love what he did as president, but feel for reasons that I think are almost entirely unfair, that a sufficient number of swing voters, particularly female voters in the suburbs, would not vote for him if he walked on water. Now, I don't know what to do about Trump derangement syndrome. Maybe someday they'll develop a vaccine. But until then, if you like what he did on borders, if you like what he did on judges, if you like what he did on taxes, if you like the fact that he had a, a, uh, passionate Secretary of Education who supported school choice, then you need a vehicle to push those policies, but for whom a sufficient number of swing voters can vote. And I think I'm that person.
Speaker 1 00:25:22 That's why I'm asking people to go to Elder for America, throw a little something in a tip jar and get me up there in that debate stage in Milwaukee. Between now and August, I have to get 40,000 individual donors in order to qualify. And once I get up there and people hear what I have to say and hear my attack on the lie that America, uh, is systemically racist and raised the 10,000 pound elephant in the room, and that is the epidemic of fatherlessness, I think a lot of Americans are gonna like what I have to say, uh, and will support me.
Speaker 0 00:25:52 Well, uh, there's nothing I would like more to see you up on that stage. So folks, whatever platform you are, um, watching and joining us on, we're gonna put that link in. And, uh, really any amount, it's, if it's just the number of individual donations, it, it could be any amount, um, to, to help get 'em on the stage, and then we'll take it from there. Um, yeah, it can be, it
Speaker 1 00:26:16 Can be as little as $10. All I need is, is $10 from 40,000, uh, individuals. And I'm there.
Speaker 0 00:26:23 I think we can do that, folks. Great. All right. Uh, in the past, you've been largely supportive of President Trump. Now you're up there on the stage having that debate mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, why would you be a better president?
Speaker 1 00:26:38 Uh, again, it's because I think I'm sufficiently palatable to enough swing voters that I can get elected. Uh, I think I've demonstrated that I'm likable. I've got a good sense of humor. I've been talking about these issues for some 40 years. I have ideas about what we can do to restrain spending. Uh, and I think that sooner or later, Republican voters in the primary are gonna have to decide, do you believe that Donald Trump can win, uh, and run the risk that he'll get defeated again by Joe Biden, Kamala Harris? Or do you want somebody else that you think has his policies for the most part, but who also can, can win? And I think that they're gonna collapse on somebody like that, just as the Democrats did after Bernie Sanders won the Nevada caucuses. And for one shining moment, a self-described Democrat socialist was the front runner. They were scared bleep list, and all of a sudden they all collapsed around Joe Biden. I think at some point, uh, the Republican primary voters are gonna have to make the same decision. Do you want somebody who you think can win? Or do you want somebody who you think can get nominated but cannot win in the general? And that's the decision that they ultimately are gonna make. And I think they will make that, and I'm hope I'm that person that they collapse around,
Speaker 0 00:27:48 Rally around, rally around. Okay. Alright. Um, getting to some of the questions. James Dunn, who's joining us on the Zoom, uh, is saying, Larry, thank you for your service to this country. We, uh, helped with your campaign when you ran against Newsom. My wife is a black conservative, um, and appreciates it. Do you support a national, national abortion ban? And what, uh, week would you support?
Speaker 1 00:28:21 Uh, I am pro-life. Uh, I believe abortion, uh, is, is murder. Uh, but this issue is a state by state issue. Uh, until Roe v. Wade took it up, every state had its own individual policy regarding abortion. And all the reversal of Roe v. Wade did was put it back, uh, to the states. Every state is gonna determine that differently. I'm in California a deep, deep, deep blue state, uh, and there's zero chance that the legislature will pass anything to restrict so-called access to abortion. There was an amendment some years ago, uh, for, uh, waiting periods. There was amendment some years ago, uh, for parental notification, and I voted for both those, uh, both of them overwhelmingly failed. That's how California is. Um, and if you're in a conservative state, the legislature will will, of course, uh, pass different legislation. That's what federalism is all about. So that's how I see that issue. And I think that people that are pro-abortion should calm down, make your argument to your state legislatures, uh, and stop acting as if the reversal of Roe v. Wade all of a sudden made abortion illegal in all 50 states. It did not.
Speaker 0 00:29:31 Okay. From Instagram, my modern gal asks, what do you think about people today who refuse to put in the hard work, but are envious of people who do? So, a little bit of thoughts on envy, which is a big theme of ours here at the Atlas Society. Well,
Speaker 1 00:29:46 Well, it is, and I think part of, of this whole ridiculous movement towards reparations is based upon envy that other people have more than what you have. Rather than work hard for it, invest in yourself. You're gonna, uh, use government to extract money out of somebody else's pocket and put it into yours. It's, it's a real problem. It's one of the deadly cents. Um, I don't care that somebody has more than I have. What I care about is opportunity. And there's no country, uh, that's afforded more opportunities for more people, uh, than the United States of America. You can't make it here. You can't make it anywhere. Uh, there are think tanks on the left, like the Brookings Institution think tanks on the right, like the American Enterprise Institute and the formula that they offer to escape. Poverty is the same first graduate from high school. One presumably, where you can read, write a compute a grade level. All too often that isn't happening in the inner city, which is why I support school. Choice number two, don't have a child before you're 20 years old. Number three, get married first. Uh, number four, get a job. Don't quit that job until you get another job. And number five, avoid the criminal justice system. If you do that, you will not be poor. But trying to extract money from other people because they have more, is a recipe for failure.
Speaker 0 00:30:59 Jay Jackson Sinclair on Facebook asks, do you think California can be saved, or should I say, can the Bay Cities be saved?
Speaker 1 00:31:08 Well, not in
Speaker 0 00:31:09 The, we've got a book coming out on that <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:31:11 Yeah, I, I talk about the things that are going on in California, the homelessness crisis, uh, the fact that people are leaving for the first time in 170 years. We've lost 500,000 people in California last, uh, two, two and a half years. Our school system is near the bottom of all 50 states. We have a real crime problem because we have soft gun crime. Das, uh, they're not doing the job. The number one job of government, which is, which is to protect people and property. I think of California, as I think of a drug addict. Sooner or later, the drug addict has to hit bottom. And maybe then the voters will start, uh, rethinking, uh, how they've been voting. People have asked me if I support term limits. I don't, but I do support term limits for voters. I think after you vote democrat two or three times, baby, you wanna lose the right to vote. I'm, I'm being facetious, but, uh, at some point, California voters are gonna have to wake up, uh, and smell the coffee tax spend regulate is not working. It's causing the cost living to go up. Uh, it is causing people who are taxpayers, hard workers, people who hire people to leave for places like Texas and Florida where they don't have a state income tax,
Speaker 0 00:32:18 Or as I Rand would say, brother, you asked for it, right? That's right. So, um, they, they get the consequences that of the policies that they, that's
Speaker 1 00:32:29 Right. Ultimately, you get the government that you vote for, and, uh, if you don't, uh, change your, your votes, uh, you're gonna keep getting the same thing. Look at Chicago. Chicago had a huge, huge crime problem. Uh, and they bring in a mayor who's even soft on crime. Then the former soft on crime Mayor, go figure. Uh, mor, this Memorial Day weekend, 53 people were shot, uh, in Chicago. And if you go by past stats, about 75% of those shot, uh, or black. And about 71% of the shooters are also black. The city has a black mayor, uh, a black, uh, da. And, uh, who are you gonna blame? Look at Baltimore. Uh, Jennifer. That's where Freddie Gray died. Uh, in, uh, police custody. He was in a van, I think it was 2015 or 2016. Uh, the mayor of Baltimore Black, the number one, number two people running the police department, black. Uh, three of the six officers who were prosecuted black. A judge before whom, uh, two of them tried their case without a jury, was black. The state attorney who brought the charges was black, all the city council, Democrat majority Black at the time. The, uh, uh, attorney General, uh, US Attorney General was black Loretta Lynch, oh, as was the president of the United States. So all these people running the system, and you're complaining about systemic racism, honestly, uh, at some point you need to take responsibility.
Speaker 0 00:33:54 All right, uh, on Zoom, I'm gonna probably butcher this name. Guda. Hi, Larry. Congratulations on your candidacy for the U US President. If you win, how would you tackle the issue of healthcare? What policies would your administration pass to bring a free market, uh, system into healthcare and make, uh, provide consumers with more choices and lower costs?
Speaker 1 00:34:20 Well, uh, one of the reasons I'm running is to propose an amendment, uh, to fix spending to a certain percentage of the G D P with exceptions for war and for natural disaster. Because one of the big engines driving our ever exploding government are the so-called entitlements program, including Medicare, uh, Medicaid, Obamacare, and programs, uh, for children. Uh, medicine is a commodity like anything else. The more competition, the better it is. Right now, government, uh, at all levels pays for almost 50% of our healthcare, which is why our system is so inefficient. Uh, I have long believed that we ought to be able to buy a policy with a high deductible, uh, buy them across state lines, uh, and we need more competition, not less. Uh, what we're doing, uh, is very, very slowly marching towards single payer, which is what the Democrats have always wanted.
Speaker 1 00:35:14 And Obamacare gave us another big leap, uh, towards that objective. If you ask a Democrat behind closed doors, what they really want, they will tell you they want single payer, that's what they want. Uh, and all that, all that means is we're gonna be looking at rationing less, less, uh, innovation. Uh, and the only way to, to contain costs is to have the government go in there and set the cost, which inevitably means you're gonna have less quality, better quality, more competition that that applies to, to eggs. It applies to flat screen TVs, schools, it all applies to healthcare.
Speaker 0 00:35:48 Yep. Yep. All right. Uh, from Facebook, Candace Marinna says, uh, Larry, you mentioned that your father went to trade school, but nowadays it seems like fewer and fewer people are encouraged to go into the trades. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1 00:36:03 Uh, I agree with that. Uh, I don't think everybody needs to go to college. I certainly don't believe that other people should pay for other people to go to college. And this whole student, uh, loan forgiveness saying, uh, is an abomination. Most Americans have not gone to college. Uh, the idea that you're gonna forgive the debt and assume the debt of people that did go to college, and the reason they go, it's presumably they're gonna make more money over their lifetime, uh, is an absurdity. But I do believe that for-profit schools, that, that teach people practical things, uh, is exactly what happens if you get government out of the business of education.
Speaker 0 00:36:37 All right. Um, another question from Zoom, Stanley Lampert asking, uh, if you've ever thought about running for Senate in California?
Speaker 1 00:36:48 Well, the reason I've not thought about it, although I've been approached to do that as I've been approached to run for governor again the last time, is because, as I mentioned, we are so outnumbered meeting Republicans in California. Uh, as I, as I said earlier, there hasn't been a Republican who's been been elected in California in 20 years. I thought that string might be broken. A guy named Lanny Chen was running for controller. And the reason I thought it might be broken is he's got a brilliant educational background. Uh, he's a fellow with the Hoover Institute. He's a conservative, and he is somebody who got endorsed by the LA Times and endorsed by the Sacramento B. And the reason I believe they endorsed him is because, unlike me, who questioned the, uh, shenanigans that were going on in the 2020 election, he did not. He also waffled when they asked him whether he would support, uh, Donald Trump again. So that's a kind of Republican, uh, that, uh, that the left likes. And so he got endorsed, and he still lost by almost nine points. Uh, so it's almost impossible. And, um, I, I just don't feel that I wanna run <laugh>, just put my hand in the garbage disposal like that. Uh, the, the voters have not yet hit rock bottom in California, such as somebody like myself, I think could get elected.
Speaker 0 00:38:02 So, someone I know that you know quite well, uh, as well, art Laffer, he, I went to a talk of his recently, and he has criticized the tenor and topics that seem to be the focus of some g o p hopefuls at this point in the debate. And he's asking, where is the talk of tax cuts, uh, economic growth of jobs? Are you similarly, similarly concerned that the culture, war and populism are taking precedent over what's needed to get the economy back on track?
Speaker 1 00:38:38 Uh, I think the number one concern is the economy. Uh, and I'm really concerned about the runaway spending. You know, we just ta had this debt, uh, deal. Uh, and both sides are claiming victory. Uh, it doesn't even get us back to pre covid spending levels. Uh, and, uh, it does nothing at all to address, uh, the, the, uh, entitlements, and I'll use the word unsustainable, because both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in unguarded moments refer to them as unsustainable. And Art Laffer is absolutely right. One of the reasons why we applaud just 3%, uh, g d P growth is because government takes so much from people in 1900, at all three levels, government took around 9%, uh, from the American people. Right now, it takes about 32%. And if you put a, uh, cost on so-called unfunded mandates, government takes almost half of what the American people produce. Uh, I'm somebody that believes we ought to get back to Article One, section eight, a handful of duties and responsibilities of the federal government leaving everything else to the states, uh, and to the democratic processes. We're not even close to that. So that's why I want this amendment, uh, to fix spending to a certain percentage of the G D P. Otherwise, government's just gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 0 00:39:50 What do you think are the issues that are top of mind for voters in the upcoming presidential race?
Speaker 1 00:39:58 Uh, I think the spending, the debt, uh, the, the borders. Uh, and I would also throw in there, um, things like gasoline prices. One of the first things Joe Biden did was he reversed all of the policies that Donald Trump, uh, put into place that gave us the most secure border we ever had. Uh, and then, uh, went to war, uh, against oil and gas. Uh, and he stopped, uh, drilling on federal lands. Uh, he opposed fracking. He killed Keystone Pipeline. He killed any possibility of drilling in Anwar. We're sitting on more reserves than any other country in the world, including Saudi Arabia. Uh, and we're not using it. Uh, and this business about pressuring Americans to get, uh, an ev, uh, when all it will do is make us even more dependent upon China. Uh, China's our number one adversary. China, uh, produces all these rare earth minerals that go into the battery, the lithium, the cobalt, the nickel.
Speaker 1 00:40:52 Either they produce it or they process it, or they control parts of the world where it's being processed. And all it will do is make us more dependent upon China. So, uh, on the dubious assumption that an e electric vehicle is better for the planet than a gasoline powered vehicle, and I don't believe that case has been made at all, particularly when you look at the human rights violations, you're having, uh, kids as young as four years old, uh, in places like the Congo, using their hands to mine, this toxic stuff that goes into the batteries. Uh, and, uh, so I don't believe, believe that the case is even, uh, valid, that they're better for the planet than EVs. Yet Donald, yet, uh, uh, Biden and the Democrats are all gung ho on EVs and literally forcing Americans, uh, to wean themselves from fossil fueled cars, uh, for EVs. And I think it's an abomination.
Speaker 0 00:41:40 So, um, let's talk a little bit about your new book coming out in September as goes, California, my Mission to Rescue the Golden State and Save the Nation. Uh, we're gonna put the link to pre-order it in the various comment sections, but, um, tell us a bit about what we can anticipate.
Speaker 1 00:42:00 Well, part of the book is about my background, my relationship with my father, with my family, and then part of it is kind of a behind the scenes look about as to why I decided to run for governor, what it was like running for governor, what it was like trying to raise the money, what it was like trying to, uh, have all these interviews and all these questions being asked, some of which I thought were completely irrelevant to the campaign. And then I outlined what my prescription is, uh, uh, for America, uh, if I get elected. And again, it's to reduce taxes, reduce regulations, secure the borders, and promote school choice, uh, to, to, uh, refute the lie that America is systemically racist. And to talk about the importance of dealing with the fatherless eep epidemic. Barack Obama once said, A kid raved without a father is five times more likely to be poor and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop outta school, and 20 times more likely to end up in jail. Now, the question is, how has the black community gone from having 25% of kids in 1965 entering the world without a father in the home, married to the mother to 70%? Now, and I argue it's the welfare state. The welfare state has incentivized women to marry the government and incentivized men to abandon their financial and moral responsibility. And we don't talk enough about that.
Speaker 0 00:43:14 Alright. Um, you, another book that you wrote in 2010, things You Can't Say in America, uh, included things like, there's only a dime's worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats. Uh, that media bias is real widespread and destructive. Looking back at that book written now, almost a near quarter century ago, how has it held up? Uh, what trends did you feel like you helped to predict, like, cancel culture?
Speaker 1 00:43:44 Well, uh, I think it's held up pretty, pretty well. Uh, I would, I would say it, there's more than a dimes worth of difference now between the two parties. Uh, I, I felt that way back then, but I see that there are some real severe differences. You know, uh, government is way, way too big as we talked about earlier. Uh, Republicans wanna take a pocket knife to a problem that requires a machete. Democrats don't even see a problem. They want to grow and grow and grow and grow. Uh, they believe that rich people, uh, are not taxed enough when in fact, rich people are overtaxed. If you look at the percentage, uh, of the total federal income taxes paid by the top 1%, it's almost 40%. Those who make around 350 K or more pay almost 40% of all the federal income taxes while making around 20% of the federal of the nation's income.
Speaker 1 00:44:31 So, if anything, wealthy people are overtaxed. Uh, and as, uh, I rand pointed out at some point, uh, Atlas is gonna shrug, uh, and wealthy people, people that create jobs, uh, they're not stupid. Uh, their money is portable. They can go other places. Uh, and we're seeing that, uh, in California with, when you see people like Elon Musk leave all the taxes that he would've been paid over the course of his lifetime, California is now lo no longer getting. And in California there are 40 million people, but in the largest source of revenue with the state income tax, 1% of all the taxpayers in California pay almost 50% of the state income tax revenues. And when they leave, uh, and they take their tax base with them, it really hurts the state. So, um, that's one of the things that, uh, that I'm gonna be talking about that I think we, we need to talk more about, uh, this, this attack on, on providers, the attack on creators, the attack on job producers, uh, has gotta stop.
Speaker 0 00:45:32 Fantastic. Um, all right, from Facebook, Alex, Alex Olos asks, what is the most surprising change you've seen in politics in the last four years?
Speaker 1 00:45:43 Last four years?
Speaker 0 00:45:46 Um, I think, yeah, I think
Speaker 1 00:45:47 Emergence, yeah. The emergence of, of Donald Trump. Uh, the fact that Donald Trump got defeated in 2020, but still remains the front runner for the, um, for the nomination. Jimmy Carter was a one-term president. Uh, he didn't emerge four years later and then tried to, to run again. George Herbert Walker Bush was also one term president. He didn't emerge four years later as a front runner, but Donald Trump never left the stage. I think that surprised me going back a f a few more years. I must tell you, I was shocked, uh, with Obamacare. No one could have told me, uh, that the American people would've put up with a legislation that requires every man, woman, and child, uh, to purchase healthcare insurance, whether they wanted it, whether they needed it, or whether they could afford it. Uh, and that was jammed down the American people's throat. And no one could have told me that the Supreme Court led by Justice Roberts, uh, would've affirmed that. I would've thought it would've been an affront to the Commerce Clause. Uh, but now, uh, it's apparently legal and, uh, that surprised me.
Speaker 0 00:46:50 Okay. Um, Tim Talmid on Zoom is asking, would Mr. Elder accept an offer of Vice President with, uh, the front, front runner? If it comes down to that, um, Tim is saying, I think he could do a lot of good consulting with the president on tough issues, should it not be him at the hel
Speaker 1 00:47:11 Well, I'm running for president, I'm not running for vice president. I'm not running for a cabinet position. But in the unlikely event, Jennifer, that I'm not the party nominee, I'm going to support whoever he or she is. And if my phone rings and an offer like that, uh, uh, comes to me, I will strongly consider it.
Speaker 0 00:47:29 All right. Um, Kim stem on Twitter asks, did the Green New Deal get quashed or is it being implemented by other means?
Speaker 1 00:47:41 No, the Green New Deal is still in there. Uh, all that spending that Joe Biden wants, uh, to, uh, force us, uh, into unreliable, so-called renewables, is still there. Uh, and nothing has changed. It's one of the reasons why this deal does nothing but kick this thing down the down the road, uh, and leaving all this ridiculous spending that he's done that's cost, uh, uh, this inflation that we're experi experiencing right now.
Speaker 0 00:48:06 All right. This is an interesting question from Stanley Lampert who had asked about, uh, the Senate previously. He says, voting for someone is voting for their Rolodex. Um, you know, you were just given that question about vice presidency. Any examples of the kinds of people that you might appoint? Certainly, uh, in rewatching Uncle Tom, um, you've got quite a network of people that, um, you've cultivated over the years. People you admire, so care to speculate.
Speaker 1 00:48:41 Well, yeah, I said that. Talk about putting the, the cor cart before the horse
Speaker 0 00:48:45 <laugh>. Right? One way or the other.
Speaker 1 00:48:47 Yeah. There, there are some people that I'm impressed by. I'm impressed by Byron, uh, Donalds of Florida. Uh, he has emerged as a really strong spokesperson for a limited government. He's very angry about this, uh, this debt deal that eventually is gonna pass. We know it's gonna pass, because no one has the courage, uh, to allow America to default, uh, just as they don't have the courage to allow Ameri, uh, government to shut down. They all wanna be reelected. They're all afraid of what the voters will, will do to them. But, uh, I'm very impressed by him. He's a strong, smart guy. Uh, and, uh, when I'm elected president, I've gotta find somewhere for him to be in my cabinet.
Speaker 0 00:49:25 I'll, I'll run your speech writing team
Speaker 1 00:49:27 <laugh>. Okay, sounds good.
Speaker 0 00:49:29 In all of my free time. No. Um, speaking of Uncle Tom, the movie and, uh, also, um, the, the work that you contributed to, uh, Candace Owens book Blackout, uh, she has credited you as a mentor. Who are some of the rising black voices that give you hope for the future? Um, and that maybe we should have on this show?
Speaker 1 00:49:56 Well, there are a lot of them. Uh, th there's a guy named CJ Pearson, uh, who is pretty active on, on Twitter. He's now, I believe, works for Prager University. Uh, there's a guy named Droy Murdoch. Uh, he's not particularly young, no offense. Droy, I think he's in his fifties, <laugh>. Uh, but he's a writer who also works with, um, uh, Fox News, uh, Candace Owens, of course. Uh, there's a guy named Rob Smith, uh, who was in the film, uh, uncle Tom. Uh, there are a lot of, uh, young black people now who have discovered, uh, people like Thomas Soul, uh, and Walter Williams. Uh, and I'm very happy that, uh, uncle Tom has been able to enlighten a lot of people. By the way, uncle Tom came out, I believe, in 2020. And, uh, you know, you know, the Hollywood business, uh, if a film does three times, its cost. It's considered to be a smash hit. Uncle Tom did 10 times its cost.
Speaker 0 00:50:49 Wow.
Speaker 1 00:50:50 And it made more money than four of the five that were nominated for the best documentary combined. And the only reason I don't say it made money that more money than all five of them, is that one of them was a Netflix film, and they don't break out how that film does independently. So, I don't know. I do know that, uh, it did better, made more money than four of the five that were nominated, including the one that won. I know it was seen by more people, because if you look at the amount of comments on I M D B, uh, my film exceeded, uh, the comments on, I think all but one of the, um, of the, of the five that were, that were nominated, we hired a consultant, Jennifer, to get the academy, uh, to consider Uncle Tom for a best documentary. And of course, they wanted nothing to do with it because it's conservative.
Speaker 1 00:51:37 Uh, and it refutes in the, the notion that America is systemically racist and talks about how black people, uh, even in the wake of Jim Crow, k k k, kept moving forward because of strong families. A, a belief in entrepreneurship, a belief in Judeo-Christian values, and a belief in patriotism, even if America was not, uh, applying these values fairly to black people, fast forward, now you have an organization, uh, like Black Lives Matter, which is what we talk about in Uncle Tom two, which refutes all those things on their website. They attacked the nuclear family as a phony European construct. Marx was a atheist who wanted to deone God, and of course, didn't believe in private property or entrepreneurship. So all the things that allow black people to keep moving forward after slavery are now under attack by organizations like Black Lives Matter in an organization, which by the way, Barack Obama embraced.
Speaker 0 00:52:30 Alright. Um, we've got about eight minutes and I do wanna leave enough time for you to be able to, um, talk about anything that, uh, we haven't covered or what's on your mind or what the next few months are going to look like for you. I guess I will just put in my closing question, Larry. Is, uh, whether you are optimistic about the prospects for resolving racial conflict in America, or does the framing of current controversies make, uh, the prospects for reconciliation more elusive?
Speaker 1 00:53:04 Well, I, I'm, I'm optimistic. Um, I look at, uh, the 4% that Republicans got when Barack Obama ran in 2008. Uh, it was 6%, uh, when he ran for reelection in, in 2012. Uh, Donald Trump got 8% in 2016, and when he ran for reelection, he got, he got 12%, which is a 50% increase from what he did. Four years earlier. 20% of black men voted for Donald Trump, I think, well, I had no idea. Yeah, 20%. I think it's the growing recognition, uh, that we need to have choice in education. Uh, you look at all these cities that are run by Democrats, the schools are lousy. 85% of black eighth graders nationwide, according to the National Assessment of Educational Policy, the so-called National report card, 85% of black eighth graders, these are 13 year old kids, Jennifer can either read nor do math at grade level.
Speaker 1 00:53:57 Half of them can't even do basic reading, which mean, which means a substantial percentage of black 13 year olds are functionally illiterate. I think a lot of black people are waking up and seeing that. And these soft gun crime das, there was a study done by a research scientist at Thompson Reuters, and he looked at what happens when there's a high profile, uh, shooting or killing, uh, by the police of a black person, whether it's in Baltimore regarding Freddie Gray or in Ferguson outside St. Louis because of Michael Brown, or a guy named Laquan Mc McDonald in, uh, in Chicago. Uh, and every time the police pulled back, they stopped engaging in proactive policing, and he documented literally thousands of what he called were excess deaths over the last several years. People who otherwise would be alive, but for the lie that the police are engaging in systemic racism.
Speaker 1 00:54:48 And the consequence of that, which is, uh, to pull back from p from proactive policing. And most of these excess deaths are the very black and brown people that people on the left claim that they care about. Uh, this lie about systemic racism has another consequence. You're a young black man, particularly a young black man who grew up without a father in the house to talk to him about, uh, respecting authority. And you're driving down the street and you see the flashing red lights. Why in the world would you cooperate? Why in the world would you comply? If you believe, uh, based on what you've been told by everybody from Barack Obama to Al Sharpton, that these are bad people, these are cops. These are systemically racist cops, white supremacists who want to do me harm. And so virtually every single one of these high profile shootings and deaths would've been avoided.
Speaker 1 00:55:34 If the individual has simply complied, you're making complying far less likely to take place. So that is one of the big reasons why this business about America being systemically racist has gotta be refuted. America is the only majority white country that's voted for a black person for president, uh, reelected him. Uh, and there is a Harvard sociologist named Orlando Patterson, like all sociologists, he's a Democrat, voted twice for Barack Obama. But in the nineties, he said America is a least racist majority white society in the world, provides more opportunities for blacks than any country in the world, including all of those of Africa. There's a reason why as we speak, Jennifer, there are people in Haiti lining up for a shot at a lottery to get into America because America is systemically racist nonsense. The three largest cities in in America, la, New York, Chicago, all have black mayors.
Speaker 1 00:56:28 We just witnessed a senatorial contest between a black Republican and a black Democrat in Georgia for crying out loud one of the states of the Confederacy deep south where my dad was born. This is what's going on right now in America. All you have to do is work hard and invest in yourself. I saw a chart that looked at how many, how much homework an average black high schooler does versus Hispanic versus white versus Asian American. And you look at the amount of time that the average Asian American high school puts in every night in homework versus the average amount of time a black kid puts in, and it is night and day. If there's some sort of relationship between how hard you work and results, the proof is right there. Um, we had this silly movement for reparations in California. The problem is, of course, California was admitted as a free state what to do, what to do. So what that panel said is, well, it's about grievances. It's about redlining, it's about, um, uh, over-policing. It's about, um, uh, the warehousing of black behind bars. Well, if you wanna talk about mistreatment, uh, Chinese people in California were treated horribly. There were laws that prevented Chinese from operating laundromats in, in, in the Bay Area, ever crying out loud. There was
Speaker 0 00:57:42 Japanese Americans,
Speaker 1 00:57:43 There was a law on the books that stopped Japanese American from owning farmland. And of course, they were placed in, uh, in a relocation camp. Good. The average household income of a Chinese American, the average household income of a Japanese American is higher than the average household income of a white American. How can that be in a country that's systemically racist?
Speaker 0 00:58:04 Well, uh, listen, everyone, if um, you agree with me that, uh, this has been a spectacular interview, uh, and that we need to make sure that Larry's voice is heard more widely than first thing, uh, make sure you share this interview, whichever platform you are watching it on, uh, retweet, share it and get it out there. Second, uh, even if you've made up your mind at this point and you've got another front runner, but you think that the debate would benefit by having Larry up there on the stage, uh, then go to his site and put in at least $10 and, uh, we'll help to make that happen. Uh, Larry, what else can we do to help?
Speaker 1 00:58:46 Well, I need, as I mentioned, to have donations from 40,000 individuals. It can be as small as just $10. And once I get up there in that debate stage, and I talk about the issues you and I have been talking about, I talk about the live that America systemically racist. I talk about the 10,000 pound elephant in the room, which is the epidemic of fatherlessness, then it's gonna be game on hold, my dear
Speaker 0 00:59:08 <laugh>. Fantastic. All right. Well, we are looking forward and, uh, we are wishing you, uh, God's speed and, and, uh, the best success. So thank you.
Speaker 1 00:59:18 Thank you, thank you for the time. I appreciate it. God bless.
Speaker 0 00:59:21 Thank you. And thanks everyone for joining us. Uh, you can first go and put that, uh, 10 bucks in Larry's tip jar, but as always, remember the Atlas Society is a nonprofit. We are dependent on your donations for our work to be able to put on programming like that. So also consider making a tax deductible
[email protected]. And be sure to tune in next week, uh, when British economist and co-founder of the Adam Smith Institute, Dr. Eman Butler, is gonna be on to talk about Adam Smith. So we'll see you there. Thank you.
