The Sunny Side of Life with Troy Thompson
The Sunny Side of Life with Troy Thompson
Tom and Spencer for Hire
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This week at Sunnyside, Troy shares his opinion on two primary candidates on the national scene he thinks should win their respective races but that doesn't mean everyone agrees (as usual). When it comes to the Sunnyside of Life, it's hard to find a couple of candidates more self-deprecating and likable than Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky's 4th District and LA Mayoral Candidate Spencer Pratt. Both men are up for hire and there are a lot people (and money) working against their common sense and transparent approach to the respective levels of government in which they seek to serve.
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Hello friends and neighbors. Welcome into life. Let's craze a place where love ignite is park.
SPEAKER_04Hello friends and neighbors and welcome to Sunnyside. Well, it's another Monday and I'm glad you're with me. Uh we're gonna get started right away. We like to tell stories about people that uh are trying to be the sunny side of other people's lives. And uh I don't, you know, I try look, I do get political, and and uh that is part of you know just who I am. And so uh I'm just gonna share some things, a couple of people that I'm very interested, and I want to um uh and and if you haven't caught up with them yet or you're not quite sure what to think, uh I'll just give you my two cents and we can move on from there. Uh but there are some things happening in the um in in in primaries right now that are coming up very quickly, particularly one in Kentucky, and then a mayoral uh race in Los Angeles. And I have two favorite candidates. And so the my favorite candidates for uh Kentucky, uh my favorite candidate for Kentucky is none other than the sitting current congressman um from their fourth district, which is Thomas Massey. And um now listen, there are some people that um uh there well the president, including the president, I guess President Trump uh is leading the the pack to unseat him because uh he made he made he made uh President Trump mad. And you know, when you make President Trump mad, he's gonna do everything he can to get back at you. Because if there's one thing that the president truly loves is loyalty to himself. And um that is something that Thomas Massey has uh proven that he can vote with the Trump agenda 91% of the time. Uh, but those nine that 9%, if it's not 100% for the Lord and Savior Donald Trump, then you are going to be ousted uh by uh by DJT. And that's what's happening. They're spending $10 million uh against Thomas Massey in Kentucky for a congressional primary.
SPEAKER_05These super PACs, again, they're not talking, they're taking, they're distorting my record instead of telling you why they're trying to flush me out of Congress. They want to flush me out of Congress because I don't vote for Foreign Aid. They've spent about 10 million their super PACs and their campaign.
SPEAKER_04Uh, with a guy who has uh uh what is his name? Giner, guy, something like that. Uh anyway, he's um he he had tried he'd run for state senate and lost uh a a year or two ago. So he is unsuccessful in his own pirate party. That was a primary, he lost the primary for a state senator uh job, and uh and and now he's being uh recruited, has been recruited in the last year by President Trump himself. And so um this is who Thomas Massey is running against. And Massey has got 90% approval uh for for uh his for his previous uh elections have just been landslides uh because the people of Kentucky seem to really like him. And in say my demographic of Gen Xers and younger, uh he still holds that ridiculously high uh approval rating. So you would think this would be pretty easy to do. But unfortunately, it's not because um there is a much larger demographic of Fox News viewers only of a certain older generation than my own, uh, who just go along with whatever Donald Trump says and whatever Fox News says. And uh, in this case, whatever you know, the whoever I guess it's I Massey says there's like three billionaires. Uh one of them is Adelson and whoever else is involved, and there's a variety of in interests that are desperately seeking to unseat him uh because he claims that Israel wants to buy a seat in uh the House via Kentucky. And he might have something to that because it's very rare, in fact, it's unprecedented, that in a congressional primary uh in the Republican Party in Kentucky, or maybe anywhere, that you would spend $10 million trying to unseat a sitting U.S. Congress person who 91% of the time votes along with the uh Trump agenda, the Make America Great Agenda. And the thing is, the differences between Donald Trump say and Thomas Massey is that Thomas Massey has actually done what the Trump agenda uh claimed that it would do when Donald Trump was elected back in 2024. And so um now uh if you go against Donald Trump, uh he's going to throw a little conniption fit and he's gonna do everything he can and use all of his um friends with lots of money to try to unseat you. And the and the guy that he's running against, I guess he's a Navy SEAL, good job uh for you. That was a long time ago. He's not like Navy SEAL, um, you know, like we see in the movies now. He's like he's like Navy SEAL like 40 years ago. Um, so a little younger, say, than Jesse Ventura, Navy SEAL. Um, but you know, if you're a Navy SEAL for the rest of your life, uh you get to uh you get to wear that as a badge of honor, as you well should. And apparently he's got a farm, and so he's a farmer, uh, and there's horses involved with with with farming uh in Kentucky, and so there's that, and apparently it's a fairly well-known farming name in Kentucky. Uh I wouldn't know because I don't uh you know know a lot of farmers in Kentucky. Uh I know Kentucky's a beautiful state, and I know that Thomas Massey is also a farmer, but he's also an engineer, an MIT graduate, uh, as was his wife, uh his his former wife. She passed away uh a while ago, and um and and then and then Thomas Massey had the audacity to get married again about 14 months later, uh, because he thought that as a father and as a man that it would be uh good to have uh a woman in his life to whom he was married uh in a biblical relationship. And so they went ahead and got married, and Donald Trump gave him a lot of flack for that. I mean, come on. Donald Trump, this is the guy who cheats on every wife he's had, and uh, and so he's he's giving moral uh suppositions, I suppose, about a guy who decides that it's better to be married before um, you know, he so you can have this relationship and and and two people can can can grow together uh and not be lonely and also uh do it under the guise of uh faith and and good for the family. Um so Thomas Massey just kind of chuckles that off as he well should. Uh like a lot of things that the president says, it's off the cuff, it doesn't hit well. Uh he thinks he's a comedian. And sometimes I like what sometimes DJT is very funny, uh, and and I laugh at some of the things that he says. But lately his jokes just haven't been landing. Uh and this is no joke. What is happening uh right now in Kentucky is uh is very uh it's a problem. Now we're here in Iowa, so it's not representing our district, but it does say a lot about what we think and what we believe as conservatives, and particularly if you're an independently minded conservative. In other words, you actually think uh for yourself, you're not too worried about what any party has to say, you use critical thinking and common sense. And uh Thomas Massey has been doing that his entire career. The guy invented and co-found and founded an uh a robotics company with his wife, his first wife, before of a long time ago before they passed away, before she passed away. They uh both were from Kentucky, high school sweethearts, and they decided that uh Boston was not for them, uh, the Northeast was not for them, so they moved back to Kentucky. And then on a farm, uh they built their own house. They live off grid.
SPEAKER_01He lives unlike any other member of Congress, off the grid in a timber frame home. He and his late wife Rhonda built using stones and fallen trees from their property.
SPEAKER_04Uh with so with their own, with their own hands and designed. Uh, I love this. This is the kind of stuff that's right up the sunny side of life alley because you know, if you've been listening to this show, this is what I like to do. I like to build stuff with my own hands. I like to use the materials that we have around. I like to have it have character, it has to have uh purpose, it has to be practical, uh, and but it also has to be beautiful. And so he did this with his own house. He has got uh all kinds of like Jeffersonian engineering ideas, helping bring water from the top, you know, one part of the hill and running it down and creating pressure so he can water his peach trees. He has 15 varieties of peach trees on his farm.
SPEAKER_05I have 15 varieties of peaches, and they each get ripe on a different week. So peach season on this farm in Garrison starts at the end of June and goes all the way through September.
SPEAKER_04They apparently um uh they they they mature uh one week apart from each other. So his his entire season from June till September, he's got peaches. Um and uh he raises cattle, which obviously I do too. Uh he's a much uh he's got more cattle than I do.
SPEAKER_01He raises grass-fed cattle.
SPEAKER_04Uh some of these are going to freezer camp this fall. He la he has chickens and his chicken tractor that he designed.
SPEAKER_01One of his inventions protects and moves the grazing poultry one inch at a time.
SPEAKER_05I can be gone for a week and it runs by itself because it's got a microprocessor in it that I wrote the code for, and I can tell it how much I want it to move every day.
SPEAKER_04So now his chicken tractor, a lot more I mean, this is the difference of having uh, say, like a liberal arts degree like I have, or having a degree from MIT and founding a robotics company. Like his chicken tractor just moves his chickens uh one inch at a time. And and he can he didn't even have to be there for that, which is handy because he's in Congress. When he's in Washington, D.C., he's got his own, he's got like a little camper on the back of his pickup truck, and that's frequently where he will stay and live. He runs off of solar energy on his farm back in Kentucky, uh, that he rewired and repurposed.
SPEAKER_05I took direct model S Tesla, took the battery out of that, disassembled it, and rewired it. So my house has been running off of a Model S Tesla battery for about eight years.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, imagine being able to do that. Right? So he uh he claims then that um you know, because of his electricity, because of his food production, uh, because you know he doesn't own or he he owns his property, doesn't own any uh owe anybody any money, doesn't, you know, leave in high interest in borrowing and all that other stuff. Um this guy uh can just go on with life uh and and regardless of what happens to him, and he's always lived that way.
SPEAKER_05The independence that I've created or earned here on the farm, whether it's from the food or the power that it generates, or that I can build a structure with the lumber on the land, uh that's what enables me to go to Washington, DC and say, You don't have anything over on me. Like you could literally uh take everything I've got and I can create it again, and I'll be okay.
SPEAKER_04You can be a person, a politician, who uh gets elected and he started out like in the county level and worked his way up. People asked him to run, and then now he became uh a very popular congressman in Kentucky. Now Kentucky is a red state, and people do like Donald Trump. They voted for him, but so did Thomas Massey three times 2016, 2020, and 2024. And 90, 91% of the time, he votes with the Trump agenda. But there are a few things that uh Thomas Massey just will not do. Uh he expects that if the Trump administration said that they were going to prosecute, reveal, uh, and bring and shed all this light upon the Epstein files to bring that to course, he expected that they would do that. They did not. And so he uh authored a law that uh the president eventually had to sign.
SPEAKER_05This is the main charge that's been leveled against me that I don't vote with the party enough. When the party votes for warrantless spying on Americans, I don't vote for that. I'm actually taking a position that Donald Trump had less than two years ago. He was against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act being used to spy on Americans without a warrant, because it was used against him, he found out. And then covering up for pedophiles. I didn't vote for that. The president's own children, the vice president, the FBI director, and the president himself said that they would release the Epstein files. I worked harder than anybody else to get it done and got it done. And that's part of the 10% where they say I have betrayed the Republican Party.
SPEAKER_04And so now, hopefully, we will see uh what is actually going on and the people that are behind the actual Epstein situation. But that was what Trump promised that he was going to do. And so um the fact that Thomas Massey uh held them to account, to me, that just speaks as a person who is conservative and has a libertarian bent and says, Well, if you say you're going to do this in your campaign, let's do it. And when they decided to change course for whatever reason, uh Thomas Massey was like, No, we're not we're not doing that. And um that made them mad. Uh that made uh whoever mad, and uh they decided they weren't gonna do it. He also refuses to vote for foreign aid for anybody. There's no foreign aid in Tommy Mass's Thomas Massey's imagination, which I wholeheartedly uh agree with.
SPEAKER_00This is kind of a proxy war between the America firsters and the Israel Firsters. Thomas Massey, the uh incumbent in this race, uh, has voted consistently against providing foreign aid to many countries, including Israel. Israel doesn't like that. And so their minions here in the United States are working overtime to oust Massey, and they are pouring a lot of money into his primary challenger.
SPEAKER_04Other nations, our tax dollars, do not need to be paying for other countries uh in support of any other country, any other country. It is unnecessary. Now, people will argue that uh the listen, the amount of money that we actually spend in our ever-growing gigantic uh abortion of a financial uh of a federal budget uh is tiny. It's insignificant what we give to other countries. And this is just a good gesture, it's how business is done. I scratch your back, you scratch mine, we give you some money, whatever. And and you might think that it is insignificant too, um, but it's billions of dollars um that we give away, and and that is money that we could be using uh if if nothing else here in the country if we didn't change anything, or uh just reduce our budget. And that would be a great way to do that. Um now the problem is is that uh Israel is uh very dependent on the United States, it expects our money. Uh we pay for their wars and we pay for uh whatever agenda that they've got going on over there, just like we do for other countries as well. Anytime you give support for them, uh for any other country via uh money, uh there's gonna you're you're essentially agreeing, in my opinion, with whatever it is that they what they're up to. And I don't like that. As a conservative, I don't like that. Uh and as a person who thinks that you know our job should be taking uh care of America first, in other words, make America great again. America first, that whole agenda. Thomas Massey thinks, well, we don't we can we don't need to do that. So he's never voted for uh foreign aid packages.
SPEAKER_01In Congress, Massey is often a caucus of one. He's been the only dissenting vote on so much legislation he's earned the nickname Mr. No.
SPEAKER_04So he that makes people upset. So upset that you can get uh APAC and other in and uh other other organizations, particularly for Israel, but other groups uh who does who don't like the way he votes on foreign aid, um, to try to uh put a uh just you know uh a sycophant in uh who supports Donald Trump uh in everything he does without thinking. Uh and so um that is two of the three that uh that uh Thomas Massey will say. And I happen to think that uh those two things are uh very conservative. When Republicans say that they want to cut the budget, when they want to uh you know prevent foreign wars, uh, when they want to put America first, um, you know, when they said that they were gonna have a transparent government and that they were gonna open up all of these things about Epstein, uh, we've got more information now to some degree on the UFOs that are apparently all around us. What's going on there? Like than we do about Epstein and and the the whole twisted situation, a very untalented human being uh who has has passed away in one way or another a few years ago. There's only one person in jail, nobody else has been prosecuted, and this is a problem for Thomas Massey. And so uh what we get instead is we get a war with Iran, which is illegal and it is it it is wrong, and it is unclear of what the purpose has ever been, and I've been saying that for a long time, and so has Thomas Massey on the floor of the House.
SPEAKER_05The Constitution is clear. Article one, section eight, clause eleven of our constitution provides Congress initiatory powers of war. Article two, section two, clause one of our constitution gives the president operational powers of war to wage that war. Even if this body were to pretend that the 1973 War Powers Resolution supersedes the clear language of the Constitution, the President still has not met the conditions required by that law itself. The 1973 War Powers Resolution states plainly that the President may only introduce U.S. armed forces into hostilities pursuant to three conditions. Either one, declaration of war, two, specific statutory authorization, or three, a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States. None of those conditions exist today. Iran has not attacked the United States, Congress has not declared war, and Congress has not granted specific statutory authorization. Beyond the constitutional question, here lies an even more important one. Why are we going to war with Iran?
SPEAKER_04And man, you just can't do that if if if people uh in the White House think that they have the authority to just go uh make war whenever they want um uh with whomever they want, and uh they're allowed to do that. They clearly are not constitutional Republicans. Right, they're not. And Republicans like to say that they're constitutional conservatives, which I think is great. But read the damn constitution. And uh they I mean, look, there's no reading in the Constitution in the White House, they're not reading the Bible. Uh they're misquoting all kinds of crazy evangelical nonsense of of uh what they think I guess is is is faithful Christianity, and uh God knows what kind of uh misguided moralism they're spewing from from the White House and from the uh cabinet room, particularly. But Massey's not doing any of that. He's like, no, you said you were gonna release the Epstein files. I'm gonna make you do that. You said you weren't gonna go to war in or in the Middle East and that you were gonna reduce the number of wars, and in the last year, what you've done is blown up a lot of um alleged drug boats. You've uh toppled uh Venezuela because I guess you can, uh, and then uh now you've uh created this war with Iran, which I've talked about before. And we're constantly shocked and surprised uh as a nation. And and it's funny watching the shock uh and surprise and irritation really from uh from the White House and the administration in general, uh having the fact that this darn independent country of Iran keeps hanging on. So dang irritating. The audacity that they have uh to do such a thing is is frustrating. And to defend themselves against America, look, when America comes in and we decide to knock your teeth in, then you need to stay down, you need to lay down. And um if there's one thing that we know in America as we approach our 250th uh anniversary of our independence uh coming up this 4th of July, uh when when somebody when a bigger country, um a powerful country, uh maybe a superpower country, uh, you know, tells you to sit down and take it, then what we do as Americans is we sit down and we take it, right? No, we do not do that. We haven't we we that's why we're celebrating 250 years coming uh this this this July 4th. It's so amazing. And yet we're shocked when other countries don't just take it from us, uh the audacity uh that these that these that these people uh keep fighting back and then to shut off the Strait of Hormuz, uh the audacity, why would what the why would they do that? Don't they realize uh what they've caused for an economic situation for the world, what Iran is causing for the now the Strait of Hormuz, by the way, prior to us bombing the hell out of them, was still open. It was open, like and then and then so essentially we closed the Strait of Hormuz. Now I know Iran is doing that, but it's because in response to what we did. It's like it's like we went and set a fire, and we're the firemen, and then we put out parts of the fire, and we're upset that other people aren't helping us put out the fire that we started. It's so dumb. It is so it's childish. And Massey sees that and goes, You said that you weren't going to do these things, and you called, for example, the Iraq war a terrible idea. Concur. And um, that's why people liked you, that's why people loved you. You had this coalition, they knew that you had been wrong, they knew Donald Trump that you had been wrong, they knew that you had been that you had been pursued by all these uh, you know, the this this law fair uh the entire time that you were out of office. Uh everybody knew that. And we were excited that you would come back and you would set things right again. Instead, What you've done is the opposite of what you've said, with the exception of immigration, right? Immigration has actually been the one thing that the Trump administration has done pretty pretty well on. But everything else has been a disaster because his ideas are dumb. It's terrible to have um tariffs. I've said that for a long time. There's no advantage to tariffs whatsoever. Uh Donald Trump thinks it's a negotiation. Uh he thinks he's a brilliant negotiator, and the tariff situation has not made it cheaper for those in the United States prior to the war in Iran. Now, gas is $5 a gallon.
SPEAKER_05It's going into a midterm. This administration can't even give us a straight answer as to why we launched this preemptive war. The President says we had to strike first because an Iranian strike was imminent. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense conceded there was no evidence of an imminent Iranian strike. Some told us this war was about nuclear weapons. But six months ago, we were assured our last strike on Iran decimated their nuclear program. So which is it? I think the most candid answer came from the Secretary of State who told the press that Israel forced our hand and dragged us into this war again. And that truth is the very reason why it is Congress that must decide war. If American lives are to be risked and American blood is to be shed, that decision must be debated and voted on by the representatives of the American people. And that debate is meant to be arduous. And that vote is meant to be hard. I have a theory. I think my colleagues don't want to go on record because we have a terrible track record of meddling in the Middle East. They don't want their name associated with this when it doesn't turn out well. But Congress cannot be bothered with its constitutional duty because for many in this chamber, it's easier to simply allow someone else's sons and daughters to be sent to combat without their vote.
SPEAKER_04I mean, the dumbassery of this situation, pardon my French, but some of these things do have to be. I mean, it's just who is in charge up there at the White House? And Capitol Hill is doing nothing about it. They're all afraid of running. Uh, they're all afraid of of uh dealing with the big uh the big boss up in the White House as the leader of the party. And Thomas Massey is like, listen, I'm just doing what you said you were going to do and holding us accountable for that. No ridiculous foreign wars. We're not spending a bunch of money. The big beautiful bill was not, it was big, but it was not beautiful. It was stupid. And he can go line by line and he's not, I'm not going to, I'm not going to vote for things that are just going to uh flush the government with money, devalue your dollar and my dollar, make things more inflationary, and then not supporting tariffs, not supporting uh these these these billions and billions and billions of dollars that we're just throwing away either to other nations in support of foreign aid, or we're doing all this crazy stuff uh when we're when we're when we're financing a war now that we're not even sure how we're gonna get out of because we didn't think that through all the way. We thought it was gonna be like Venezuela, and uh it is not. And so all of these things are just disastrous um uh for, in my opinion, uh the Trump administration, it doesn't really matter because he's a lame duck president, and he very well could be very lame duck here in uh less than a year. Uh and I think that that unfortunately is the situation, and nobody wanted that. I well, I mean, Democrats wanted that. Um, I don't want that. I want a Republican Party that actually does what it says it would do. Um, but they don't do that either. And so that is very frustrating for me as a as a you know uh Republican and then libertarian and then now back to Republican. It's just like I'm come back. It's like it's like when I went to college after I'd been to the Army. So I was in college for two years. Uh it was a two, you know, Waldorf University back then was just a two-year private Lutheran college, which is a weird business model, I admit. Uh, but two years I went there, then I went to the Army. I came back from the Army, and then by that time it was a four-year school. So I went back and got my bachelor's degree uh from Waldorf University. And then um during that, so what during that time, actually when I got my four-year degree, it was still called Waldorf College. Um, and so now it's Waldorf University because they've added graduate degree programs and and all of that stuff, good for them. Um, but when I came back, you know, having left college at 20 and then coming back and finishing my bachelor's degree in my upper 20s, um, it was a different experience for me. And I had the um, you know, when you're 18 years old and you're going to college and you're having that college experience with all the other people that are 18 years old, uh, and the smartest room, the smartest person in the room is the college professor from whom you are learning, uh, whatever your curriculum is demanding, um, that you're just kind of like, yeah, that makes sense, you know. When I came back from the army, uh, having lived around the world and seen things, and I, I, I uh decided that uh I wanted to get my finish my degree, uh, and that was part of my GI Bill benefits, I did so, but the difference for me was is like, man, I'm in my late 20s at this point. I'm a non-traditional student. I got a business on my own. I've worked, I've been around the world, I've seen things, I've experienced things. I'm not some 18, 19, 20-year-old minion who has never been outside of the classroom who is just, you know, uh absorbing everything that the professor has to say because, you know, when they express an opinion, they assume that these, you know, mindless 19, 18, 18, 19, 20-year-olds are just gonna ass just gonna take it for granted. And I'm like, no, that's not how this is working. Um now, for me, it worked out well. Some people say that you can't uh um argue with uh your professors when you're a student. And I'm like, you don't have to argue with them, but you also can stand on your laurels and say, no, I don't. The truth is an 18, 19, 20-year-old doesn't know anything either. And so they don't get the same respect perhaps as a 27-year-old who comes in and goes, Yeah, I was stationed around the world. I think what you're saying is kind of a load of crap. That's not actually how this works. And also, you've never had a job outside of education, so what do you actually know about the real world? And um, I'm not saying that in a derogatory manner, but it was certainly something that bolstered my ability to um argue uh certain positions when I was in college, finishing my um bachelor's degree in history, and uh I succeeded. I'm fine, my grades were great. I got a group, I had great relations with my with my uh with my professors, and most of them with we did not agree with politically whatsoever. Uh and so it it helped to have that additional experience of being in and coming back. Well, I thought that that's what was going to happen when Trump lost in 2020 and came back in 2024. I thought that his administration will have had seen what um had had happened, understood what was going on, and learned a lot about the culture. And in some ways, at the first hundred days, I think, of the administration, it really seemed like that's what was going on. They just tackled immigration immediately. They did uh away with all of this woke nonsense and the uh the the the you know transient of kids and and all kinds of just ridiculous, insignificant uh word salad um wokeness that they that they got rid of. That was good from the Pentagon all the way down. And across and across the board, that was all good stuff. And it looked like that uh they were going to doge uh uh all of these organizations and they were gonna save us billions and billions of dollars because they were gonna go through and audit every single uh entity in the federal government. And that lasted for what, a few months, three months tops? And then Elon Musk left. Uh it wasn't going the way that they weren't actually doing anything with the information that they had. They did some show boating about the uh amount of corruption that is in our federal budget in these different agencies, and some things I suppose did get stopped, but where is that today? It's like completely uh been completely forgotten about. And I would have thought that coming back to an administration after having learned all of the learned all the, it looked like they were really making like they had learned something, like they had come back to college essentially at 27, taken a hiatus there, experienced the world, learned from what they had experienced before, and they came in at the Trump administration, it looked like they were really uh gonna get rolling. And then somewhere in the last several months, um it is like they have not cleared out any of the swamp. The swamp, they are now 100% swamp monsters. They're using their lawfare against their enemies, they're threatening First Amendment, telling people that they shouldn't be talking or allowed to speak or allowed to express opinions or do this type of thing. Republicans are just blindly, in some cases, going along with the president's nonsense and his administration spokespeople's nonsense about what can be said and what can't be said and who can say it, what you can think and what you can't think. And um, and this is just continuing to happen. And then he's getting advice, the president is getting advice from, I would say, incredibly neocon nefarious characters, um, which is not what I voted for. I didn't vote for more war in the Middle East, all stupid. We're not good at it. Uh, I didn't vote for more spending. Uh, and I I realized that Trump was going to uh he's he he doesn't care about spending. I mean, the guy doesn't care about bankruptcy, he sure as hell doesn't care uh about your tax dollars being used usefully. And so we kind of accepted that going in, but thinking like, well, maybe he'll shut down immigration. That seems to be going pretty well. Maybe he'll get some of this woke nonsense away that we've, you know, but we're just ridiculous uh inputs from the Democrat Party. And uh he did some of that, and then he just went and completely worked for uh, you know, taking the advice of of uh of foreign individuals or people with foreign interests. Uh he uh did not he he pretends like Epstein uh files didn't we're still talking about Epstein, we don't need any of that stuff. Uh we want to know everybody that's behind that. We want to know everybody that did business with them. Well, that might hurt some people's feelings. Not my problem. I'm not on the list, could care less, irrelevant to me. But powerful people with a lot of money are making that uh very difficult to do. And so what we get instead is a war with Iran, a distraction with with uh drug boats in uh the Pacific or the Caribbean, a distraction with um uh UFO files being released. It's just I mean, so if you're a guy like Thomas Massey who's like, well, now wait a second, all of the things that I've said as a con as a conservative uh since I was in the local before I was even elected to the local offices, I have not strayed from that. And if you talk to uh conservatives and Republicans like I do all the time, most of my most of my friends are you know conservative, um, and and we have these conversations. We all say the same things. We want government to get out of our lives, to not be so uh overreaching and obtrusive. We don't need the government to help us with anything in business, we don't need subsidies, we don't need welfare, we don't need um all of these um uh rules and regulations and things that just slow down the economy. We don't want uh a bunch of spending, uh we want less spending in it across the board for everybody, and we would prefer it if we would quit getting involved in these ridiculous um uh skirmishes and wars around the world. Just do business with people or don't do business with people, that's how you make America great again. Control your immigration situation, enforce the laws, and get out of the way. That's what we wanted. And yet, um the only person, in my opinion, in Congress that is sticking to those talking points and has been stuck to those talking points from the get-go is Thomas Massey. And so now there's a big problem if you're trying to get rid of Thomas Massey and you uh support that as a Republican because you just want a yes man uh in that spot. That's all Trump wants. He just wants a yes man. In fact, that's what that's what his opponent said that he was there for. He doesn't need an obstacle. The president doesn't need an obstacle, he needs back up because I'm a Navy SEAL from back in the day. He needs back up. And it's like there are th there are three distinct, you know, uh parts of our government in the federal level. The president, the Congress, and the courts, right? The judiciary. Like they're those those they they act independently and they are co-equal branches. So no, I don't need a yes man or a yes woman in Congress in any capacity to sycophantially go along with whatever Donald Trump farts out in a tweet or a truth social uh that particular day at 3 a.m. in the morning. I don't need it. I don't care for it. Uh I just he can do whatever he wants. I support a lot of the things that the president does and a lot of the agenda that apparently is supposed to be happening, but we'll see what happens, uh, because a lot of it is also f just changing course midstream. And I'm and I expect Congress to do their job. And and the only one that it seems like is doing that in the House is Thomas Massey. I don't care. In fact, I don't it's almost not a bad in my now, maybe I think differently. Maybe common sense is too much a part of my life. Maybe critical thinking and the when you're critical, when you truly are a critical thinker, it always starts with someone makes a statement and they say, How do you know what you know? And so a lot of what I'm hearing is I'm like, well, when somebody is running for office, then the way to get elected is then you have to be 100% in line with Donald Trump. And and people who are running for office are desperately trying to affiliate themselves with Donald Trump. Donald Trump's a one-trick pony. And I supported him in 2016, I introduced him to the Winnebago County Republicans, I voted for him three times, and uh he is not who I thought he was gonna be uh this second go-around, um, but still better than what Kamala Harris would have been, no question in my mind. However, if you're running for office and you think that that Trump name or that Trump picture uh is going to sway me to vote for you because you love Trump lots and lots and lots, or n that's almost it almost has the opposite effect for me now. Like if you're running for office as a Republican and you are it's like I'm 100% Trump. Look at me, Trumpity Trump, Trump, Trump. Like Trump is gonna be gone uh in in two and a half years. He could b very well be uh a lame duck president in less than a year. So then what is what did that get you? Did it get you the votes that you needed from the folks that still wear the MAGA hats? Um which I've never had a MAGA hat. That's not true. I had a MAGA hat in 2016, my brother-in-law gave it to me uh as a gift, and I never wore it because I thought they were ugly. They're ugly hats. But despite that, uh, like said I voted for them you know three times. I was hoping for the best. And uh, but what I really wanted was them to do what they said they were going to do, and I found it in um uh a lot of inspiration in Thomas Massey. And now, because he doesn't agree with spending tons of money in the Big Beautiful bill, uh blowing out our budget, which we never really even have, and he's consistently done that. He won't allow, he does not vote for foreign aid of any type, and he wants to have uh uh this situation and prosecutions with the Epstein files, uh, stop making wars uh that you're not allowed by the Constitution to do, uh, he's become uh an enemy of President Trump.
SPEAKER_02Well, Thomas Massey is no stranger to harsh words from the president. And in fact, Mr. Trump called Massey a moron during the national prayer breakfast last month. And as a sign of how the Congressman handles comments like that, Massey told me today that he's glad he's in the president's prayers. Speaking to his supporters in Hebron on Wednesday, President Trump sounded off on Thomas Massey, who represents northern Kentucky in Congress.
SPEAKER_06His name is What the hell? How did he ever end up in Kentucky? His name is Thomas Massey. Thomas Massey is a disaster for a party.
SPEAKER_02A little later, Ed Yalrun, the candidate Mr. Trump has endorsed to replace Massy, piled on. I'm hope the fake news gets dis Thomasy stands with the ladies of the view.
SPEAKER_05I've got a thick skin. You know, I vote with the party and with President Trump 91% of the time. One of those nine percent cases where I deviated, and I think it struck a nerve with him, was when I forced to release the Epstein files. I authored that bill.
SPEAKER_04And so nothing would make me happier than for Thomas Massey to pull off his primary, defeat this douchebag Navy CEO guy who can't even win a state senate primary in his own party, uh, was hand-selected by the president because President Trump was mad at him. And and I would love nothing more than for Thomas Massey, and I hope and pray that that's the case. Now, if it's the will of God, um, then things are all gonna work out. Well, it's it's all in God's hands anyway. So if the other guy, Gaynor or whatever, gets in, I guess it's in God's hands. That doesn't mean that he's God's man. Certainly Trump's not God's man, but that doesn't mean that uh people can't be used in God's plan one way or the other. But I will tell you this it will be a sad day for the Republican Party because as it uh it becomes more and more apparent to the uh thinking uh conservatives that uh that the their party is uh bought and paid for. We know the Democrats are bought and paid for. Independent thinking is not allowed. People who are bought and paid for are just expected to get in. It's the people at whatever level of the top, or different levels of tops, I guess, and whether it's state or county or federal, that are picking the winners. Um you are losing people in both sides. Trump had done such a great job building this amazing coalition of young people and working class folks and uh people from all backgrounds, all walks of life, all faiths, all religions, all um uh uh ethnicities. And he succeeded. He did not win in a landslide, but he won very convincingly. Um, so uh that is that is not there anymore. Like you're losing the working class, you're losing the the the white working class, you're losing the uh the people, the the the people that you'd built a coalition with unions with, you're losing uh the folks that are in other demographics that you that you said that you would have. And and what you're seeing is that the independents, um, which um the in independent are becoming uh a more attractive option than either party. Republican Party, the Democrat Party, Libertarian Party, like just people just want to be independent. They want to listen, they want to see, they do not trust the media, they do not get their news from just one source or two sources, they certainly aren't getting it from corporate sources that make all their money with advertising from pharmaceuticals or whomever, you know, and so that the entire demographic of the voting population of the United States is changing course, and it's happening uh just like right in front of uh the left and the right, the you know, the red and the blue, the the uh the the Republicans and the Democrats, uh right in front of their parties, and they could care less. And they're shocked when they're saying young people are leaving us or or this demographic is leaving us, and it's like, yeah, because you blew it. You don't care. And uh unfortunately, I think that's what is happening as we roll into the midterms. Now, if Thomas Massey wins this primary, which I certainly hope that he does, then this goes away. Donald Trump still won't shut up, but he'll have to at least that's egg on his face, which he can handle. He's a big butt, he's a big boy, he can handle it, you know. And then Massey will go back and he's gonna win. He's gonna win. There's not even a Democrat challenger they can could come close to Massey. He has won by 75% in all his elections before, but now because you've got billionaires supporting him and throwing $10 million into supporting this other uh guy who can't win a state senate primary, um that is that is that is what's happening there. So I am for Thomas Massey. If you want to uh support Thomas Massey, just got a little bit of time uh to to to send him some money or send him some uh kudos or whatever, wherever you're from, uh that'll be helpful to him. He's got an uphill battle. He is leading in the uh in the polls, but it is single digits. And I hope that those polls are incredibly inaccurate, is my hope. Is that I hope that uh he just you know whoops uh his uh primary um uh opponent and uh that this this ends uh to some degree. He's taken a lot of flack, he's taken a lot of um a lot of flat, but uh he can you know he can handle it. And I like it when you have independent-minded, conservative, libertarian leaning Republicans who live off the grid, who build stuff with their own hands, who have who you know, you can't Donald Trump called Donald Trump called Thomas Massey a moron. This is hilarious to me because Thomas Massey engineered a robotics company that he sold for that his wife. And move back to Kent Kentucky. And he built his own house with his own hands. Donald Trump always uses other people's hands to do everything. And um, and then he designs his, you know, redesigns a Tesla, uses that to power his car, and and designs a chicken tractor where he designs like the microprocessors or whatever so that it can move one inch at a time and he can control it with his phone when he's in Washington, D.C. Yeah, he's the moron. Give me a break. Like if if you are an admirer of our American history, if you find it interesting, uh that Washington was it was interested in farming and Jefferson was interested in multiple like these were true Renaissance people, then this is a Renaissance man who has a clear understanding of the constitutional principles of the United States of America, who is a conservative, who is a faithful Christian, and he is smart enough to know the difference between uh what Trump is saying and what he's doing, uh, and then uh being able to uh actually act on what truly is a Make America Great Again agenda. So Thomas Massey is a no-brainer, and um and I hope that uh my listeners in Kentucky appreciate that. They probably, if they're my listeners, already know that and feel the same way. And uh if you're not in Kentucky, which is where most of my listeners are, they're not in Kentucky, uh go ahead and click on the link and support Thomas Massey if you want to. Primaries are right around the corner, like within a week or two, and so that's very important. And I hope that uh that he I've never met him, I've never talked to him, I've just watched uh many of his um different uh videos on on YouTube, the different shorts, the interviews, Tucker Carlson, news sources, uh debates on uh the congressional floor, and all these other things. So he's just a very, very interesting man and uh and a true uh true blue uh independent mined conservative who is not a cuckold. And so that is good. And now uh my second person that I want to go, I'm not gonna spend quite as much time with this because I just find it so humorous. Um I think I was in Los Angeles when I was like four years old or something like that. It was a long, long time ago uh visiting uh my great aunt. So I believe I was in Los Angeles back then. I haven't been in Los Angeles since then, besides stopping over, you know, at LAX on some other trip and then just not leaving the airport. We were actually flying back from Hawaii and landed in L in Los Angeles to uh transfer planes, uh, and things were just starting to smoke out there during the wildfires when that happened. Well, that's the wildfires that has inspired a mayoral candidate named Spencer Pratt to run against uh Karen Bass, who's the current mayor, and a city councilwoman who I can't remember her name. It's not really not that important. The way California does it is uh they don't now so mayor uh is a um um it's it's it's it's it's it's not a it's not a partisan office. I mean, the other two are Democrats or Democrat Socialist. Yeah, that's what America is. And then you've got uh Spencer Pratt, who is a Republican, uh, but he's pretty moderate Republican. He's a California Republican. Um he's a uh you know his is he and his wife are pretty faithful people, uh they raise their kids, and he has like his and his wife claim the fame as like reality TV stars, which I never watched any of those shows, so I don't particularly like reality TV. Um, but there's a whole generation of people that know who he is, and apparently he was like the bad guy in these reality shows. I don't even know what the reality TV show was. But since I've uh come around uh in the last few months and paid attention, you're probably seeing it now more and there because he's he did he did a debate recently where he just he crushed it. He crushed it in the debate. They asked him a question. Do you think and as the guy who asked the question was like from Telemundo, like why are you here um asking these questions? But I guess they do that in California, and they just asked, Do you think that uh you know illegals should be able to vote or people that are not citizens should be able to vote? And he just gives a single one-word answer.
SPEAKER_06Non-citizens should they be allowed to vote in local elections? Is this a yes or no? Mr. Pratt, no.
SPEAKER_04No, and the other two can't give a straightforward answer, and they think that there's so much more nuance, and that's the problem uh with people uh getting wrapped around the axles of their own minds uh and their own rhetoric. They think so much uh that they can't uh come up with a clear solution. And that is clearly evident what has been happening in California politics for a very long time. California politics only affects me in the sense that it does a lot. I notice it a lot on like labels. This is known to the state of California to cause cancer. It's like, oh, how did California figure that out and everybody else? It's just basically whatever. So California's got to put their label on everything. That it affects me in that way. Okay, occasionally I'll see it. I don't like intend to travel to California. I heard the weather's beautiful, um, but it's just so gross to me. Like they, you know, the the the conservatives that are out there, and there are a lot, they're just not the majority. They can't get anything done. And so, um, you know, you're left with whatever the socialist state of uh California is, which is unfortunate. They could do a lot better. It's really sad. That's where President Ronald Reagan came from. Anyway, Spencer Pratt is uh, I wouldn't say he's conservative, I'd say he's just common sense, and he's running because these wildfires burned his home down.
SPEAKER_08Update. I'm watching our house burn down on the security cameras.
SPEAKER_04And uh so that is uh now he is he's got a trailer. It's an airstream trailer, by the way, which are pretty nice trailers. Uh he's got that parked on the remains of where his home was. Uh, and uh he lives there um so that he can run for LA mayor, and he's just doing it out of spite.
SPEAKER_08First off, uh Mayor Bass and I are definitely not working together. I blame this person for burning my house and my parents' house and my town and all my neighbors down.
SPEAKER_04Uh but the things that he says are pretty accurate. He knows the numbers, he knows how to uh empower the uh the fire department, how to empower the police department, how to um uh deal and and with homelessness that the Democrats cannot figure out. Uh they just talk themselves around in circles with no solutions. Uh as a father, he is sick and tired of seeing uh the disastrous uh effects of uh poor leadership in his community for decades. And so um he's just had enough. And so he's running and he's getting a lot of traction.
SPEAKER_08These people are evil that let every innocent person that pays their taxes feel unsafe on their streets that they pay taxes for. A lot of people don't have money to do things because they pay all their taxes, like me, and then the city and the government fails them, and whether your house burns down or you got a screaming drug addict in front of you, a naked drug addict in front of your kids causing trauma. There's people having literal drug addicts having sex on met in front of kids. Parents are telling me they have to have their kids glued to an iPad in the backseat of their cars, driving to them in the school. In other communities, they have to walk under these underpasses and walk past this. So I'll be able to tell my sons, thank God America had laws. And your dad said, Hey, breaking news, let's enforce them.
SPEAKER_04And I hope so much that uh Spencer Pratt becomes the mayor of Los Angeles. And you listen to him on what you know, whether it's a podcast, he's done many podcasts, he's done the circuits, he's obviously in the debate. He watched that debate in in its entirety. He does a great job. He's just a common guy, you know. He doesn't claim to be some incredible movie star. He knows he's a reality star. He has a uh self-deprecating sense of humor, which was a key aspect of why Ronald Reagan was so loved, his ability to be self-deprecating and humorous, and also uh focused on like a handful of things. That's what made Ronald Reagan such a great uh governor and a great president, in my opinion. And I'm not saying that Spencer Pratt is Ronald Reagan by any means, um, although their acting, you know, might be about the same. Um, but he he's just a common sense, likable, normal human being with a wife and a and kids, and he would just like uh his home state of California to be normal again. And obviously you can start with Hollywood, Los Angeles, that whole area. Now, will the people of Los Angeles feel the same way? I have no idea. I cannot understand how they vote in California. I certainly can't understand the mindset of the Hollywood-framed folks that are out there, but Hollywood is not doing well. They're moving to Atlantic, uh Atlanta and Georgia, and various other places. So maybe they see some value in having a person who understands the business.
SPEAKER_08And we got businesses booming, more jobs. Hollywood, we're making even better movies than we've made in 10 years because the independent creative artists are inspired again, they're feeling supported. The vision is so real, and that's my fight.
SPEAKER_04I don't know. Um, I just enjoy his uh his his rhetoric, his answers, his his humility, his self-deprecating uh nature. Uh he doesn't claim to know everything. They ask him, you know, like, you don't have any experience. How are you gonna come in there? And his experiences, like, well, listen, I was, I mean, from my community, I've got like two awards, and then Barack Obama was a community organizer, he didn't have any awards.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, well, people keep saying, You don't have the experience. I said, I have two awards for my community. President Obama actually didn't even have awards when he was a community organizer, and he was able to become a senator and then a president right here. So I feel like him and I have the same experience.
SPEAKER_04So he's like more qualified than Barack Obama. And uh he went on to the Senate and then two-term president of the United States of America. I don't think that's what Spencer Pratt is planning to do. Uh, but if you haven't seen anything, if you haven't heard anything about, I don't I'm not saying you need to support Spencer Pratt financially, you certainly can uh to help him with his mayoral candidacy in in uh in this primary uh coming up very quickly in in Los Angeles. Uh but uh get to know him and see what's going on out there. And there's hope, right? There's hope.
SPEAKER_08When you lose everything and you truly have nothing, your parents lost everything, you have to focus on what's important, which is your family, like your my kids, being healthy, you know, like my kids are alive, my wife's, at least I'm really on my personal. That's my focus that keeps me going. And then what's this journey, this year's been on, are my neighbors because they don't have the platform I had. So I really had to step up from all the senior citizens that come to me crying in the town that are, you know, 80 years old, that lost everything. And I have these social media platforms that reach millions, and I want I need to be the person to tell their story. And a great quote right after the house burned down the Entertainment Tonight host, he looked at me off camera and he said, You have two weeks right now why people care about this tragedy, and then nobody will ever care again. So it is your responsibility for your community and the neighbor, the 12 people have burned alive, to not let people forget. And I also now, why, you know, I've this my journey's change is to really make sure there's change and that we can be honest with what happened and failures and the negligence and do everything I can.
SPEAKER_04I like it when candidates are normal. I like it when they are focused on family and faith and freedom. Uh, we don't need big government, we don't need big government answers, we don't need intellectual government allegedly intellectual government answers. Um, as F.A. Hayek would would would say and had said in his some many of his essays, the problems with the elite or the intellectual class is that they're not actually that smart. They're just retail salespeople of other people's bad ideas. And um you see that a lot in government. And so I don't want a yes man or a yes woman in Congress or at the school board or in the you know county supervisors or the state house or the halls of Congress or wherever. I want people to who get elected to represent their districts, to do their job, uh, and to uh be able to explain themselves clearly. And so my my deepest, deepest hope is that uh for folks that are running like uh Thomas Massey that they win their primary, and I hope that Spencer Pratt wins his primary, and I hope that the folks that I've endorsed, like Stacey Besch and other folks, uh win their primary as well, because I like the idea that uh they're not bought and paid for, and that they should be out there uh doing their job. And you know what? If it all uh falls apart, it's not the end of the world. They don't have to sell their soul to stay in power because if they uh if they lose, they go back to being the successful, normal uh people that uh they always were. They've got other things that they could do. Uh I like that type of thing. I like that. I hope that it stays that way. And you don't need to put a picture of Donald Trump on your on your website, you don't need to tell everybody how how Trumpian you are. It's actually not as effective as you think it is, um, because even the folks that um really, really, really, really love Trump um are a little grossed out by some of the things that have been happening uh lately. And so um, yeah, it's not necessary. Just run on who you are. You don't have to associate yourself with uh somebody else. Maybe I'm not a very good political advisor, but let your ideas that has been a Republican thing, right? Let your ideas uh do the talking for you. If you have good quality ideas, uh if you are able to explain uh conservative policy to people, and that may mean that you get to say, uh, well, uh I'm sorry that that's uh that that that you're hurting in that way, but it's not the government's responsibility to wipe your butt. Sorry. Um, you know, uh you should maybe go to church or something. It's probably well I'll never get elected to anything uh beyond the school board. Uh of course that would mean that I have to be contested, which which is fine too, by all means. If folks want to contest me for the school board, um I'm not running for another couple of years. So by all means, go ahead. Uh it's nice to have that. But there's no debates in school boards, those are also nonpartisan. So I'm probably maybe I shouldn't be giving people advice uh because there's so many people who get paid uh to do that, and uh and and they seem to know what they're talking about. Uh, but I don't necessarily like any of them. Uh the the experts that tell people how to run uh a successful campaign. Just get your ideas out there, meet with people, uh, shake hands and do your thing, which I'll be doing later uh this week for Stacy Bash as well. So if I see you out there, hope that brings uh a little sunshine into your life. And um I hope that this uh this I don't know if my endorsement even matters. Probably doesn't. Uh, I don't think Thomas Massey uh cares whether I endorse him or not. I think he would appreciate it. Uh but again, out here in Iowa, what's the difference? Um, you know, but if you if you want to lend your support to uh to Thomas Massey, I encourage you to do so. He needs it uh more than uh Spencer Pratt. I think Spencer Pratt's gonna come out of this pretty well, and uh I support them and uh I support uh the folks that are out there doing the right thing uh for the right reasons. And what they're trying to do is go out and honestly just be the sunny side of everybody else's life that they're that hoping will vote for them. And um that's what I'm hoping that we'll be able to do uh for you as well. So more to come here from the sunny side of life as we head out to the farm and do more exciting things. Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter so you can get um all of the details behind the scenes and additional videos on what it is that I've got going on. Uh so go ahead and click on the link and um it's real easy. Just join the newsletter by clicking on the link, filling out your name, your email, and uh we'll add you to our emailing list and get you uh that newsletter and and links to the things that we do that we don't share with everybody else. So uh make that a part of your day. Appreciate everybody being with me, and I hope that you have a fantastic week and uh that you have the opportunity to go out and be the sunny side of somebody else's life.
SPEAKER_07When the shadows fall and doubts begin to creep, remember together we're strong every week. Lift your neighbor up with kindness every day. Let your actions speak the words you want to say.
SPEAKER_03The sunny side of life is a weekly production about our life on the family farmstead here in Iowa, the liberties we prize and the pursuits which make us happy. None of this is possible, of course, without Christ in our lives. For the Lord God is our son and our shield. He gives us grace and glory.
