Could Glenn Jacobs (Kane) Help Trump, Elon, and Ron Paul in DOGE’s Fight Against the Fed?
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Hey, I'm excited to have this show together because, you know, I always love hearing from our guests. He's the mayor of Knox County in Tennessee and WWE Hall of Famer, Glenn Jacobs. How you doing? Hey, doing great. Thanks for having me on. I always got to bring in the wrestling element. You know, I have a special place in my heart for that as well, of course.

But it's so great to have you on because there's so many things that you've been talking about. Look, I remember, you know, this is going way back, but I remember booking you on another person's show, Straight Talk with Jerry Hughes. He has a beautiful baritone voice. Many years ago, I was a producer and I remember, you know, the things that you were talking about, the Federal Reserve and foreign aid and wastefulness, just like a lot of other pioneers in the news like Ron Paul.

You were one of those guys out there talking about these things before they were cool, and now they're very much the biggest thing everybody's talking about. So how does it feel, first of all, this moment after this big win with Trump and then what's happening with Doge? It's almost surreal to see what's happening in Washington, D.C. For the longest time, I thought that, unfortunately, Washington was just a lost cause. It was perpetually broken. And now it's like, oh, my goodness, all these things are happening that can really have –

huge beneficial impact on quality of lives for Americans for generations to come. I mean, this is all transformational. So on the one hand, you want to say you're vindicated, but at the same time, these are still ongoing issues and problems, and there's just way too much spending in Washington. And unfortunately, as we've seen, the swamp is even deeper, I think, than any of us thought.

And the corruption goes further than any of us would have thought beforehand. And this is coming from someone who's pretty skeptical and jaded about the federal government. So the fact that I'm surprised by some of this stuff really tells you something. So there's a lot of work to be done. But for me, it's really, I mean, it's really rewarding and encouraging that the work is finally being done. And at least we're starting to talk about some of these really foundational issues. You know, the Federal Reserve,

you talk about spending that's the federal reserve is what makes this spending possible it's what makes all this debt possible you know and the fact that we're finally talking about that uh and floating the idea of ron paul to audit the fed or to be the fed chair dude it's like i went to heaven now right i mean that would be the ultimate

The Overton window, the vaunted Overton window has been blown out of the city. It has shifted. Yeah, but it's wonderful because, you know, again, these are just, to me, these are issues that really. Right.

When we look at all the other problems, those are symptoms. But some of these things, the Fed and what happened with USAID and some of these other things, those are the actual problem. And the more that we can talk about those, the better. You know, it's interesting. It's true that there's this sense that when you really look at it, it's the financialization of the economy really...

And then politics is a lagging indicator, you know, and you can see there's a lot of things I've had. I don't know if you know Tom Luongo, but he's a fascinating economic analyst, and he has been talking about some of the things that have happened in recent years under Powell, where there's this, it seems like there's a bit of a war.

between the Federal Reserve and the European Central Banks and the Bank of England. And perhaps this fiscal reckoning that's taking place is almost kind of coming alongside as a lagging indicator for what's been going on behind the scenes in these kind of shadowy worlds of high finance and central banks. Have you looked at that? Sure.

And you can see that with adversarial countries as well. And Trump is very attuned to this, you know, the movement away from the dollar. China and Russia attempting to basically create a regional reserve currencies. And that's all to chip away at the dollar status as the world's reserve currency.

You know, so yeah, it's funny because as you say, you know, it's kind of the, you know, the dark halls of finance that we don't think about. But so many times that is what drives everything else. Ultimately, you know, ultimately we live in a world of scarcity and we

We have this idea that since the Fed can print money, that kind of overcomes it. However, scarcity is always there. I mean, that's the basis for economics. And at some point, that reality makes itself known again. And that even goes for power as well. You know, power is zero sum gain generally. You know, if one person has it or one country has it, it's at the expense of other countries and they're always trying to get it themselves. Yeah.

And again, you're exactly right. We often don't see these things play out in public, but we can see the results of them coming out in public or some of the byproducts. People who love liberty and are skeptical of the state in general, there's always been an ongoing debate amongst the purists versus the pragmatists.

And that's been in a perennial debate for any kind of philosophy that wants to change things. But you really see that debate really spilling out in real time and people really kind of rethinking things.

just how purist they want to be. Because, you know, you can always speculate in theory about the foundations of this or that. But like I say, look, EMS is government funding. And if you've got an emergency and you're bleeding out, you're not going to say, excuse me, I object to this ambulance. I'm bleeding, but I have merely a head wound. I will take the car and drive. No, you just take the ambulance, you know. So always having this kind of purity, it works as a mental abstraction.

But we don't want to denigrate that. There are real principles that should always be pursued, but it has to be in tension with where we are. And that's kind of what's playing out with this MAGA coalition that's doing the biggest libertarian moment we've ever seen in history. It is. It is. And, you know, who'd have ever thought that it was Donald Trump that has caused all this to happen? Yeah.

But you're exactly right. And that's something that, you know, that I struggle with to some extent, obviously, because, you know, I would consider myself an ideologue. I'm a purist on many areas. That's not the world we live in. It's just not. I mean, today I actually had a luncheon where the ambassador, the U.S., the Australian ambassador to the U.S. was at the University of Tennessee. He's also a former prime minister, Kevin Rudd. And

He's an expert on China. And everything that China is doing is literally trying to corner the world market on whether it's lithium or uranium or rare earth minerals. And it's not a market anymore because they have basically, you know, they're not playing by the same rules. So you're left with this quandary of, you know, F.A. Hayek and the Road to Serfdom wrote, you don't want to become what you're fighting because

At the same time, you know, you do have to take measures that are really extraordinary. And Trump's done this. Normally, I would be completely opposed to executive orders.

But you see the way that he's using them. And in many cases, what he's doing is rolling back other executive orders by former presidents and implementing his own. But at some point, it does become just fighting fire with fire. That's what you have to do. It would be completely different if we were in this great utopia that we want to live in.

but we're not. And that's, that's, that's actually as elected official. That's the hardest thing for me is, you know, there's been a lot of books written about this, the utopia,

This is what we want. But there hasn't been much about how do we actually get there in a private way. Even the great Robert Murphy, who's a brilliant economist, and I'm sure you know him. And, you know, I saw him say something recently where he said something to the effect of people making all this hubbub about his executive orders to repeal some of this corrupt USAID and all this.

And he said, at what point do we lose the plot? You know, if the president discovers there's real evil criminality going on,

And he's using an executive order to stop it. How is that a violation of the NAP or non-aggression principle for folks who are not into that? Jeffrey Tucker has been writing the same thing. You know, Jeffrey's head of the Brownstone Institute, as libertarian as you can possibly be. But he's been defending much of what Trump has done for that very reason. This is just the practical world that we live in. And how do we operate in that move in the direction that we need to move in, want to move in?

I mean, and being an absolutist, I mean, like you say, it can get you in a quandary because much of the, you know, the executive branch is, you know, unconstitutional creations of Congress as a way to delegate their authority to unelected bureaucrats. So in some sense...

It's not necessarily unconstitutional to start using the actual constitutional authority of the president to reclaim some sanity, right? I mean, how else would this actually go about? You know what I mean? And one of the things that's really distressing to me is now you have these judges coming out and, you know,

offering injunctions or, you know, ordering injunctions about some of the things that Trump's doing. It's like, wait a second. These are purely functions of the executive branch.

Okay. How do you have a judge come in and say that, for instance, the treasury secretary cannot have access to data within the treasury system. Okay. That again, you didn't talk about judicial activism and overriding the constitution. That judge has to me has no standing whatsoever to make that order because this is an executive branch decision. It's carried out by the executive branch. The additional branch has nothing to do with it. Yeah.

So out of all the whirlwind of changes happening, what are you most excited about or what have you been most thrilled with or just riveted by with all the different things flooding the zone every day from... Obviously Doge. I mean, that's just it because they're following the money and...

when you follow the money, that's when you find out the truth. The fireworks, right? Exactly. And, you know, so many of the things that they've uncovered, whether it's USAID, whether it's the, you know, the National Institute of Health wants to build a monument to Anthony Fauci, $168,000, which is obviously rounding there in the federal budget. I don't care. Get rid of that thing, right? So it's just, it's amazing to,

just to see the work that they've done in bringing so many of these things to the forefront and saving money in an actual significant way, not just talking about it. And that's what's been the most amazing thing to me, actually, about the second Trump administration. It almost feels like when he went in office in 2016, he was probably a little surprised that he won. And I don't know if they had a great plan moving forward.

Brother, he learned from that. This time they had a plan coming in and they have executed it like no president in history. And I'm telling you,

If Ron Paul gets to audit the Federal Reserve, that's it. Donald Trump is the greatest president ever. Okay? For sure. He's done some... This first three weeks have been amazing. He has done more good things in three weeks than almost every other president has done over their entire time. Made them look so sleepy and useless. Yeah. You know, it's just...

It's just amazing. And as you said, you know, they're literally libertarian reforms that he has been able to implement that just most of us probably thought would never happen. And then here it is happening. It's just been amazing. I mean, I just applaud him.

it's been remarkable what they've been able to do. Yeah. I mean, and my show played a historically significant role in making this Elon Musk, Ron Paul Alliance happen. It was a God thing providentially right before the Tuesday election. I brought them on to Halloween and I had never heard anybody ask them or even come up with the idea about, could you work with Doge?

With Elon and he and I said, let me ask him. And he said, well, you know, in his humble self, oh, you know, I'm not interested in doing anything official. But if they ask, maybe, you know, and I said, you know, I think that I think we just broke a little news there. And the world went nuts with that when we blast that out there. And then Elon sending memes and he's been sharing almost every show every week.

Ron Paul's latest column about foreign policy, neocons, everything. And to see it now culminate to the point where he could be, you know, cause Ron, cause Elon, for those who didn't see is, is,

has said two or three times, not only should Ron run the audit for the Doge for the Federal Reserve, but maybe even be the chairman. Now, I don't think Ron would be interested in being the chairman, but this is a symbolic victory. You know what I mean? This is a symbolic victory. And Charlie Kirk's on board and Senator Mike Lee and, you know, I, I,

I I'm selfish. I want to see when Senator Glenn Jacobs in there too, one day, I don't know. That's just me. I'm speaking out of turn, but you know, we need to get all these guys in here and really expose the whole rot and do a great reset on all this nonsense. Huh? Let's take their word. Great reset. Good. Great reset. Exactly. A good one. And I,

One of the most important things that's actually happened in the 21st century is Elon Musk buying Twitter. Yeah. Just unbelievable. And then what he has done, and you think about it, you see former Democrats like Tulsi Gabbard, who, by the way, stood up for Bernie Sanders when he...

basically got the shaft because of the Hillary Clinton when he's running for president. It's Hillary Clinton. And then he doesn't vote for her to confirm her. Right. And obviously, and I put on Twitter today, I was like, you know,

You learn who the establishment is when the establishment is threatened. And Bernie's establishment is anybody. But, you know, think about Elon Musk. Yeah. A guy that comes probably center left. I wouldn't say he was ever a hardcore lib or anything like that.

It's amazing. And he is, you know, he's putting stuff out from Thomas Sowell, like you said, from Rand Paul, from the Austrian economist, Milton Friedman. It is unbelievable. And the impact that he has had, you know, and he's also, I have to say, he's also a master troll. I mean, the fact that he's just driving the media nuts and shows them for what they are as well, which is basically the mainstream media is a bunch of clowns. And he has them on a string and is playing them like puppets. It is, it,

I mean, it is glorious, actually. It's amazing. It's fantastic. You know, you mentioned Bernie. I have to remind for those who didn't know this. Remember when Ron Paul, he got the audit the Fed bill passed in the House. It goes to the Senate, and Bernie was supposed to be his guy in the Senate. And at the last minute, the bankers put pressure on Bernie, and he gutted Bernie.

He took all the teeth out of that audit, the Fed and the bill that, that, that Obama or whatever signed in was a toothless audit that never did anything. Oh, Bernie, that's Bernie for you in a nutshell. He talks the talk, man, but he doesn't walk the walk. Hey, maybe there's something, maybe that's a proof of the collectivist spirit versus the individual spirit. You know, when you actually stand up for yourself and think for yourself versus I've got to be a company, man, Chuck Schumer says he's got something for me. You know, when you have that company man attitude, sometimes, sometimes,

you don't do the right thing. You got to do the right thing, even when it means you're going to take suffering. Right. I mean, that's what you have to be. Mike Lee has to be Rand Paul. Yeah. So let's talk about you for a second. Cause you know, you, I kind of see you and what I think I've seen you posting on about does on X and stuff, but I've always kind of seen you as a one man does at the, at the County level where you're at as the mayor with what, what you can do within the purview of your office. So I'm, I want to know, you know, what,

There's a lot of people listening right now who are like, well, that's really awesome what's going on at the federal level, but that's a little bit too big for me to be a part of.

what could I do at the city or the county or my local state level to put a doge type effort in place? So I would want to know what you would say to that. You know, you've done it. So tell me. I think it's a great idea. I inherited a good situation. My predecessor is Congressman Tim Burchett. And obviously he's a very fiscally conservative individual. So I,

It was kind of a, actually, it was almost a two-edged sword for me because normally I would have come in and just started cutting stuff. Tim had done such a great job. There wasn't really a whole lot to cut. You know, so we've made our, we've made some adjustments here or there, you know, but again, I inherited a good situation. There are other places around the country. It comes to mind Chicago. You know, Chicago's got a $25.5 billion pension problem. They're $25.5

billion dollars underwater in their pension. You look at Los Angeles and everything that they just went through. Los Angeles has a 15 member city council. Every person on that city council receives compensation of about $225,000 a year. They're the highest paid local commission in the country. And I think they also have a full staff. Well,

I think a third of Los Angeles City Council has either been indicted or convicted of corruption. OK, so apparently $225,000 isn't enough to live on, which probably is about the case in Los Angeles. But, you know, you just look around the country and it's amazing here in Knox County. You know, we the things that I see go on other places. I mean, I.

I can't even imagine that happening here because, you know, people hold us, I think, to a much higher level maybe than they do other places. And that's true. Obviously, that's not just Knox County. That's true around the country. But I think that, you know, there are a lot of places that certainly could use some auditing and, you know,

a closer look at what they actually do. $400 toothbrushes and stuff. Right, right, right. Or, you know, Brandon Johnson in Chicago has got a room that's off limits to his inspector general where they keep all the gifts, apparently, that he's received, including cufflinks and Gucci bags. You know, some of these things, it's not even...

I don't even call it low hanging fruit. It's just ridiculous. And what would you say to a local, what would you say to a local activist? Who's like, I don't know much about my city government or my County government, but I want to doze in my local, I want to start this. Do I got, you know, and I know everybody's got different charters and ordinances and so forth, but what would you just generally recommend to the, just educate yourself about, you know, like a lot of folks think that I'm the dictator of Knox County and I can just do this or do that. And I can't, you know,

My power as mayor is actually severely limited, probably compared to even a city mayor in many cases. You know, but people still think that, oh, I can make this happen. I can't make this happen. And that just comes down to not understanding. And I get it. You know, most people are not going to get that in the weeds with local government.

However, I would say that your local government has as much, if not greater impact on your quality of life than the federal government does. Even today, most of the services that we think about government, roads, police, EMS, and so forth, schools, those are provided by the state and local government, not the federal government. And also when you have good state government, good local government,

That really sets you apart from other places. Here in Tennessee, we're seeing an influx of people from blue areas and that's,

The reason is not because they're liberals, you know, just coming here to change our way of life. It's because they're folks that are tired of the foolishness that goes on in so many other places. So, yeah, you know, learn as much as you can about your local government. And also, you know, be supportive of the good people in elected office. All too often what happens is we yell at folks for stuff, but then we don't praise the people that do the right thing. And what happens is you kind of end up feeling alone because you're like, I'm doing the right thing, you know, and

And no one's saying anything about that. So that can be just as important as holding people's feet to the fire and build relationships with your local elected officials as well. Yeah, you mentioned Representative Tim Burchett. I can't wait to see him audit Area 51 with those. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, and that's another, you know, the way that Tim has gone about what he's done with the UAP and UFO stuff, you know, people think, oh, it's Burchett talking about the little green men and flying saucers. No, if you actually listen to what he's saying, he's talking about transparency. And if the government's hiding this from us, what else are they hiding from us? Congressman Burchett, he helps fund the Department of Defense, right? I mean, that's Congress's job to pass those funding bills.

And he was told that he can't see these files because it wasn't even a clearance issue. He just couldn't see the files.

the dude, you know, the dude authorizes the check, but he can't provide any oversight. That's a problem with our system. And that's just endemic through not only the Department of Defense, but also so many other federal agencies. Well, Glenn, if that leads to a trade war with Mars, we're going to have some trouble though, you know. Yeah, we got Elon on our side, man. We'll be okay. Yeah. But I mean, you know, Ana Paulina Luna, who I've had on my show many times, she's been very steadfast on this issue too. And

I have to say, I mean, if whatever's going on with that technology, we should know what it is. The public should have access to it and should be able to reap the benefits of it. If the government has something that could revolutionize clean, you want to talk about clean, you know, by the way, you don't hear about climate change as much lately. That kind of, that trend kind of fell off the cliff a little bit, but, but regardless, if you want the planet to be clean and, and, and healthy, uh,

I mean, if these things that they're describing sounds like they don't have much pollution, whatever's going on. And if it's some genius Nikola Tesla in a basement put these together for the government, we need to know about it. If it's whatever, you know, it needs to be known. Ultimately, how can you say that we're a government of, by, and for the people when the people never know what's going on? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I mean, from the origins of COVID-19...

To this, to so many other issues, we're just kept in the dark. And, you know, we're supposed to be an informed citizenry so that we can make decisions about who we send to office. And in many cases, though, that information, we're not allowed to see it. And that, frankly, is wrong.

Well, Mayor Jacobs, you know, it's always a pleasure to have you on. And I got to ask, what's next for you? I know that you've got a lot of great activities going on with your mayorship in Knox County. And if there's anything you'd like to highlight for folks that are probably listening, maybe some of them from in Knox County watching this show, you can highlight, you know, whatever you guys have got going on over there or, uh,

anything else you'd like to share with this last closing time? Yeah. So, uh, we just launched our, this year's read city USA challenge. Uh, you can go to read city USA.com and learn more about that program, but basically it's community effort to, uh, to get especially young people reading more. Um, we're also having a lot of success with our skilled trades Academy. Uh, uh,

We have dual enrollment opportunities now through a couple of our high schools. So we're really happy about that. Tennessee is going to be the leader in nuclear energy. We're only about half an hour away from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is

the world's foremost research and development lab. A French company called Orano just made a massive, massive investment in that area, largest in the state's history, to build the first uranium enrichment facility in the United States in 19 years. So again, thinking about clean energy, ultimately that clean energy is nuclear.

And I think that we can be a leader in that area. So the governor's on board with that. So there's some really exciting things happening here in East Tennessee. Wow, what that could do, I mean, to revolutionize the economy even further. Yeah. It really feels like we're really having what we would call an apocalyptic moment. And I use that word, that word in its original Greek means to unveil things that were hidden.

And it feels like we're in an unveiling moment for the last hundred years of governance, starting with Woodrow Wilson.

You know, it's almost like we're repealing the progressive era. It almost feels like. And now we have these green shoots of change and growth, like what you're talking about with the future nuclear energy industry that's safe and going to be amazing when we get our hands and our heads around it and not have all this politicization ruining and stealing from the people.

And I think like you've said, we've only touched the tip of the iceberg here.

And when we get that Pentagon audit and the... Well, I really do think it's just amazing how things can change in a very short period of time. If Kamala Harris had won the election, we would not certainly be in the situation that we are here now. But it just feels like

a transformational moment for us. And it also feels like,

If things keep going like they are, obviously at some point you lose some momentum and all that sort of stuff. You know, again, you have forces such as activist judges, unfortunately a lot of folks on the left that don't want to see this transformation happen. But if we can keep it going, I think that America's best days truly are ahead of her. Yes, that's true. And hey, thank you for what you're doing because, you know, you,

you were early in terms of cultural figures before you got into politics and really pushing these ideas for liberty. And I know that you've influenced a lot of folks who are thrilled to see the audit of the Fed near being a reality. You've been pushing these ideas for many years. Like I said, when it wasn't popular, when people were looking at you cross-eyed when you mentioned these things earlier,

And so I appreciate you doing that because you don't have to. You didn't have to. I mean, you had a very successful career. And just like Trump, you could have just kept on serving your own interests, but you decided to do the right thing. So I appreciate you doing that. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's actually my pleasure. Yeah. Well, we'll see you soon and look forward to more exciting breaking news and audits to talk about in the near future. Sounds good, David. Keep up the great work. Thank you. Take care. Thank you.

Bye.