963: What’s Wrong With Texas Republicans?

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
Instead

Brian Nichols  0:08  
of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, hey there, folks. Brian Nichols here on another fun filled episode. Yes of The Brian Nichols Show, I am, as always, your humble host joining you from our lovely cardio miracle Studios here in sunny Eastern Indiana. The Brian Nichols Show is powered yes by cardio miracle, the best heart health supplement in the world. So if you want to learn more about how to lower your resting heart rate, lower your blood pressure while improving your pump at the gym. Stick around. We're going to talk about that more in today's episode. But first we're heading to this, I guess, down towards the south there, towards the border, to the Lone Star State. We're talking all things Texas. And with that, we're going to dig into, is there a current revolt? That's a pun you'll see as I bring on today's guest, Tony Ortiz from current revolt. Tony, welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. How you doing today? Doing well, thanks for having me. Great to have you on. Man, I know we talked before we hit the record button. Lots of things are happening down in the the Lone Star State, in the great state of Texas. But before we do that, do us a favor. Tony. Introduce yourself here to the audience. And what is current revolt?

Speaker 1  1:21  
Yeah, current revolt is something started back in 2020. We're a media organization that initially started off as just producing commentary on political happenings that were happening in Texas, and we've kind of evolved into a sort of quasi TMZ of Texas politics. We talk a lot about the affairs that are going on, the different drama, scandals that are involving politics, and we talk about a lot of things that are kind of in the in the dirt and the weeds that the mainstream media isn't really comfortable talking about. So there's a vacuum for it. There's people that read it, and we provide that.

Brian Nichols  1:53  
Why do you think the mainstream media is not focusing on all those dirty, juicy details?

Speaker 1  1:57  
You know, it's funny you bring that up. I just right before this, we're doing this, I got off the call with, I've got the phone with a mainstream journalist. There is a something I just tweeted on. There is a big scandal going on involving a former Republican conservative operative that got arrested for multiple charges of rape, sexual assault and family violence. And now this journalist I spoke to is a lefty journalist or a progressive journalist, and she was telling me that their their their mainstream media outlet, plus another competing, leftist, progressive mainstream media outlet is not covering this story, which is very interesting. You think they'd be jumping on the on the gun to to publish a story about a GOP or Republican conservative operative committing or being alleged to have commit, you know, multiple instances, instances of sexual assault, but they're not and it she didn't have a good answer as to why. A lot of it was just like, oh, there's not enough interest in this. Or like, we don't want to like, we don't want to platform this sort of stuff. And it just sounds like nonsense to me. So of course, we're covering it. We were the first to publish the police complaints, right? So you can read that on my website or on my Twitter account right now. We'll publish it on the website later. But I think that mainstream to answer your question, I think that mainstream outlets are more concerned with covering very digestible news and also stuff that they don't view as, like, super controversial. And we're, we're more willing to get into the weeds and cover breaking stuff.

Brian Nichols  3:30  
And let's talk about that. Why the focus on the controversial, the dramatic, all that, all that, I guess, what the big, the big media entities probably say is, like, you know, that's beneath us that kind of stuff? Yeah,

Speaker 1  3:41  
yeah. Well, there's two things that make us unique and help us and where we fill a vacuum of news, here in Texas, we don't talk about anything that isn't related to Texas, so it has to have some sort of connection or relation or happening in Texas. So for example, if President Trump were to resign tomorrow, we wouldn't write it up. It wouldn't affect us. So it's not, it's not Texas related. I guess you can make an argument that it is, but in a way, it's not. So we wouldn't write it up, right? And so people who read us, they can pull up our website, and they can know that whatever they're reading, it's 100% going to be relevant to a Texan and two people read drama. TMZ is one of the most popular websites, whether people want to admit it or not, in the United States, men and women alike, read it right. They love hearing about gossip and who's sleeping with who, and who's been seeing where and what they're doing. There's a desire for that news, and nobody in Texas wants to produce it, so we do

Brian Nichols  4:34  
so 2020. Was when current revolt started. What was really the genesis for having current revolt become the TMZ of Texas. Yeah.

Speaker 1  4:43  
So you know, I've been in politics. I've been involved in politics since 2016 I worked on the Trump 2020 2016 election race, and in 2020 as you all know, there was a big I don't even know if you're gonna get censored if I say the word so I'm not gonna say it. But everybody knows what happened in 2020 Me, you know, the algorithm affects if you say certain words,

Brian Nichols  5:02  
I'm aware. Don't worry. We've had to deal with that with YouTube during COVID ourselves, right? Yeah,

Speaker 1  5:07  
we all know what happened in 2020 and so that was a trigger for us to start writing opinion pieces. Kind of just out of frustration. The state was relatively locked down. We didn't do too bad here in Texas, but it was relatively locked down. And me and a bunch of guys were frustrated with the lockdowns and what was going on politically. And you know, you had a bunch of Republicans and conservatives that were arresting other conservatives. Shelly Luther was a conservative that's now elected that got thrown in jail over policies that our governor, Greg Abbott had in place. And so we were frustrated with all that. So we started writing, and then eventually we broke the news on a story where a state representative, a Republican state representative, was having a extra marital affair with another Republican state representative. We broke that story, and people started criticizing us and saying, Oh, you guys are a trash rag. You guys publish gossip and and garbage, and you guys are, like, a TMV, and I'm like, Yeah, you know what? We are, like, Sure, okay, I'll be that guy. Like, I don't care. And so we leaned into it very, very hard, and we've been incredibly successful ever since. So

Brian Nichols  6:11  
I grew up in New York State. I lived in Pennsylvania for just shy of a decade, and then I moved out here to Indiana. So obviously one of these things is not like the others, and Indiana is a very, very bright red state. It was for a long time, surrounded by a lot of blue states, but it really became kind of like the beacon of Republican hope out there in the Midwest, well, in the eastern Midwest. And when I moved out to Indiana, I got to see a complete discrepancy compared to what I grew up experiencing, which in New York and in Philadelphia, for just the microcosm. I live there, it was just deep, deep, deep blue, right? It was as Democrat as it could possibly get. And then going to Indiana, I saw it was deep red. But with that being said, I had a lot of folks, more in the small l, even some big L, libertarian ethics and, heck, even some Republicans. Here in the state where I live, I'm in a more of a rural area, rural community. And I heard a lot of Republicans who were saying, hey, you know the Republican administration, and when I moved here, it was governor Holcomb. Now it's Governor Braun, you know, lots, lots of folks with some very deep seated issues. And it was a little alien to me, right? Because I grew up where it was. It was Republicans against the entire state, basically, right? So I say that because I look at Texas. And when your average person hears Texas, they think of, you know, big red Texas down in the southern United States. God, you guys, the rumor was back in 20, like, the 2020s you were going to become your own country with a whole Texas movement, which I want to get into some of your perspectives there. But based on the feedback, you know, just in the limited time you and I have talked off air, and then the time we've been connecting here in the show, it sounds like, keep me honest here, but like, is Texas not exactly the GOP conservative, Libertarian, Liberty oriented bastion of hope that the rest of America seems to think it

Speaker 1  7:57  
is. Yeah, we're not okay to be the short the short of it, we are very conservative. We're just not the shining star example that many people think we are. For example, we just got, you know, the right to carry, concealed carry, just like two years ago, three years ago, which you would think, like the stereotype, cowboys, horses, guns, all that good stuff. Like you think that we had constitutional carry for like ever. We didn't. You had to have a license to carry everywhere now, now you don't, but this was only three years ago, right? We have a lot of problems, right? And people, you know, people stereotype us as being super conservative, and we're just not that not every Republican is as conservative as they they profess themselves to be, or that they could be. And, you know, my rag spends a lot of time attacking those Republicans for not being as conservative as they can be. And you know, we get a lot of criticisms like, why do you guys swing right so much? Why do you guys punch right so much? And I've always explained it like this, if, for example, if you lived in California and you're and you're complaining about Republicans ruining your state. You're not you don't make sense, right? Because California is run by Democrats, right? And so the opposite is true in here in Texas. If you're in Texas and you're complaining about the way things are done, you're not happy with policies or legislation, there's a 90% chance that it's a Republicans fault. As long as you don't live in a major metropolitan area, it's a Republicans fault. So yeah, we swing right a lot, and it's just because Republicans aren't doing the best

Brian Nichols  9:22  
job they could. Why aren't they? I mean, you have a super majority in Texas, you think it'd be easy to get forth like some real bedrock conservative solutions and principles and policy in place? No, yeah,

Speaker 1  9:32  
there's like, an infinite reasons why they don't do a great job. One the easiest one, is that they're just not, they don't believe in really what they're saying. Or they're just not as conservative as they portray themselves to be, they're more moderates, right? Which is understandable. The other one is like, you know, these guys always need something to run on, right? We're like, on our fifth session in a row where we're banning abortion. We're banning abortion again. By the way, you've already banned it, but we're doing it again. By the way, we also are banning sanctuary cities again for like, the 20th time we've already banned the before. But we're doing it again, right? So if you're running for office, you need something to run off of, right? So there is this motivation, and this is me just theorizing, there's this motivation to not get everything 100% done. Maybe, maybe it's even better to get 10% done, because then you can say, hey, I'm Tony, you know, I got, I got constant carry done. But, like, we didn't get this, this, this and this done because we ran out of time, or because this Democrat got in the way. So you need to vote for me again. You need to put me back in office again so I can get a, b and c done now. And then you get me again in there. And I maybe halfway get one thing done, and then I'm like, Oh, you need to vote for me again, right? So there is this slight motivation to, just for lack of better word, half ass everything, because you need to. You need something to run on again,

Brian Nichols  10:44  
which is unfortunate, right? Because when you look at where we are right now as a country, I would say that the momentum is more on the right side of the aisle. And I was actually having a good conversation with one of my really close buddies here, who was saying, like, Nichols, did you take a big jump off a short Pier? And I was like, in what regards, he goes, Well, it just seems like, you know, you've been much more in favor with the right wing lately. And I'm like, Dude, I'm a libertarian who understands that our ideal voter persona is going to be folks more politically on the left, be that their politics, their their personality, their moral preferences, whatever that may be, they're going to be more on the political right. And I just, I don't think that's silly to, you know, say that's the reality. I know a lot of folks in the libertarian movement, especially they want it to be, you know, the leftist, hoity toity, high brow person that is actually our voter. That's not the case. So with that being said, I would say when we look at where we are right now as a country, I think the only demographic that leaned more in the Democrats this past election cycle were folks over the age of 70, everybody else, everybody else went more towards the right. So I would say right now you guys, of all the states, should be leading by example, saying, hey, look what we can get done when we not only have the populace on our side, but now we have the folks in office who can actually make this reality happen. It just seems almost backwards of what you're experiencing versus what you should be seeing happen. Yeah, the

Speaker 1  12:04  
biggest problem is informing the voters. Right? The average voter doesn't read independent journalism or what or read my rack, or read a lot of these other or is on Twitter, right? The average voter, you know, is seeing what they see on Fox News. Governor, Texas, Governor Greg Abbott is the best thing for Texas and sliced bread. Dan Patrick's amazing, and we just need to keep voting for these guys, because Texas is just doing a phenomenal job. So the average voter believes that, because that's what the mainstream is pushing out. And so when they go to the ballot box, they skip the primary, so they don't vote for the in the primary, right? Which is this hurting us in this part of getting better conservatives and and if they do vote in the in the primary, they vote for the the incumbent. Um, I think in Texas, at least incumbents win over 90% of the time, which,

Brian Nichols  12:50  
by the way, that is a nationwide issue. Yeah, not a nationwide issue.

Speaker 1  12:54  
Doesn't surprise me. Doesn't surprise me. So, you know, the incumbents get back in, and then now we're at the general election time, and I'm, I'm Fox News voter number 28 and I go to the ballot box and I'm like, yeah, things are great. Sure. Check it off, right? And then I go back to my nine to five, right? I People don't have time to talk about and digest politics like you and I do because we, we do this for like, a living, or for a hobby or for fun, or because we enjoy it, like, like some of the other people in our our industry, right? Um, but the average person doesn't get a crap. They're dealing with their nine to five job. They're dealing with their three kids. They're trying to pay their mortgage and and make a living and put food on the table. They don't have time to consume all this. So, yeah, they just get by with voting for status quo. And you know what I mean, in Texas, status quo isn't as bad as being left at least. So what have

Brian Nichols  13:40  
you found beyond, I mean, and let's just maybe take a step away from current revolt. I'm just curious, for you personally, what's been the best way to actually meet voters where they are and get them to do things differently, like to actually go and pay attention to the politics of their area or their locality, to to say, Hey, don't sit out on the primary, get involved. Have you found that one type of approach works better than the others.

Speaker 1  14:01  
Yeah. So some things, I mean, if you're if you're trying to reach voters, like, for example, families stuff that affects their children is very big, right? And so those are, like, city council and school board races. You may not get your local dad to care or mom dad or mom to care about, like their state rep race, but if their child is going to school and their tax dollars are paying for, basically, light pornography for their kids to learn about being trans in schools. That's getting mom and dad fired up to like, go to their city council meetings, their school board meetings, and to go vote. And so I have found that when you're trying to get voters involved, especially like right wing voters or voters and families, the best thing to do is to show them news that's related to stuff that's hitting them immediately, and that is their tax dollars funding whatever program or whatever thing that their children are consuming. And so that's really important to them. If you talk to them about stuff like, oh, you know, they want to, they want to change the way we process lawsuits and. Suits and he pays the the results of those suits. Like, that's a big deal. Of course, that's a huge deal. But does does mom and dad care about that? No, but if you tell them, like, Oh, hey, Timmy is going to school, and you know his teacher with blue and pink hair is talking about his sexuality and how he wants to be a woman, and having them read a comic book where they talk about being trans, like, Yeah, mom and dad are fired up now all of a sudden. So we have to talk about things that voters care about, instead of just dropping slop on them that that's really not important. Wow.

Brian Nichols  15:28  
It's almost like that's the slogan of my show. Meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. How about that? Well, and then at the end of the day, you're spot on. Because and I just had this debate with, actually, with two folks, Abdullah Hayek and Kyle Moran here on the show, one conversation was about us funding in the Middle East. The other was about funding in Eastern Europe with Ukrainian and Russian war. And in both of those debates, I just had to keep on hammering home the point. Guys like, listen, I hear your argument. I know you're making the most sound argument you possibly can. Your average person will not care when they are with their comparing and contrasting what you are presenting and then saying, Hey, I'm seeing the potholes on the road. I'm seeing that the blue haired lady trying to teach borderline pornography to my children at school, like I'm in, by the way, when COVID happened, I'm seeing you do that while I'm forced to have my kids stay at home because the teachers union is too afraid to go back to school. What like? And this is the stuff you're spot on. It's the stuff that people can see, touch, taste, smell, hear, like, stop with the hoity, toity like, you know, pie in the sky stuff. Let's talk about the stuff that actually, again, meets the person that we're talking to, where they are on the issues that are resonating to them in their everyday life. And, man, I'm so glad you hit on that, because that is exactly the the focus of the show. And by the way, what we see work when, when folks are actually going out and trying to change hearts and minds. So thank you for that, Tony. I appreciate,

Speaker 1  16:49  
yeah, this, this international stuff, is such BS, like, nobody, anybody. The only people who care about what's happening in Ukraine or Russia are the people that are ultra obsessed with politics or they have loyalty to a foreign country. And I mean, your person that like, like, I'm Hispanic, for example, I've never lived or I visited Mexico. I think once or twice in my life, I don't even speak Spanish, okay, but I have no loyalty to Mexico. But you've got people that are my skin color, that are Hispanic, that they don't have loyalty to the United States. Their loyalty relies back south in this in the country of Mexico, okay? And there's plenty of people in our state or in our country, that have voting rights, that still have loyalty to foreign nations. These are, these are nations that are the friendly or not friendly to us. And so they're Ultra obsessed with what's going on in Ukraine and Syria, in Israel, in Mexico, right? And it just, I don't care. I don't have loyalty to these countries. So if you're talking you tell me like, Hey, we're going to save 1.6 billion by reducing funding to Ukraine. I'm like, Great, let's, how do we invest that in Americans, right? How do we invest that in our people? And, you know, there's, of course, there's the big brain argument. Like, yeah, what happens in Russia and Ukraine eventually affects the US citizens? Of course, nobody is dumb enough not to believe that, but the average voter that like that. We've been talking to the average person. They don't care about this stuff. They they want to know that they're they can put food on the table, and they can work a nine to five and provide for their family. So

Brian Nichols  18:10  
let's go back to COVID, because during COVID, there was a conversation I had in the show with a gentleman named Dennis Miller. He's from the Texas movement, and actually, I think, has been on the show twice, yeah, twice. He was on twice. Okay, I guess there you go. And I found out, I was like, Oh, I heard this conversation. You were on Tim cast with Dennis Miller. And, you know, this, this whole Texas movement, right? It was the idea that during COVID, things were getting so bad that a lot of states were starting to say, Hey, do we want to be part of this whole, you know, this whole movement going forward of one united 50 states of America, and maybe we should start to consider alternatives, right? And this is where the whole Texas movement came from. So I had Dennis in the show, and it sounded like, when he was in the show, that, you know, we're like, a couple months away from Texas being not just a Lone Star state, the Lone Star country. And, you know, Fast forward 2025 It's been, like, two or three years since Dennis on the show, and I don't see that so, so talk to me. What's going on in Texas? Are you guys gonna become, you know, the first state to secede from the Union and become your own little country? Or is that just not the case?

Speaker 1  19:15  
Yeah, short answer is no. It's never gonna happen. Not in a million years. I would put my entire life savings and my wife's life savings and my future kids life savings. On this it's never, ever, ever gonna happen. No matter how much people want it, it's not going to happen. Okay, text it is not gonna happen. The idea that the text it is. So the idea of Texas sounds really cool. And I say this as a Texan, I've been in Texas since 2004 so I didn't grow up in Texas, but I did spend a lot of time here early on, but I've been here since at least, oh, four. And as a Texan Texas, Texas and Texas nationalism and Texas independence sounds so freaking cool, like we're our own country, right? Guns, like nobody can tell us what to do, like, don't mess with the Lone Star State. All of that is like the stereotype that Texans carry, right? You walk into a. Local Walmart here in Texas, and you'll be you'll see the flag everywhere, and so, like, there's a lot of Texas pride. So with that comes this idea of Texas independence, unfortunately, economically, socially, politically, it makes zero sense, and it will never happen for a multitude of reasons. The biggest factor being that the majority of voting, rep voting, voting, Texans do not support Texas. Okay, they just don't really. And despite no, they don't, and that includes Democrat unfortunately, Democrats are real, so you have to include them in this voting block. Democrats overwhelmingly do not want exit. And I would say less than half of Republicans actually do want Texas, a lot less than half. And that is based off of real voting efforts and real voting poll, polls, not stuff that, not polls that Texas has done, or friends of Texas done, right? And so I think that there's, there's there's, there's two categories, or really three categories, of people that believe that Texas now, Texas independence, is a real thing. They're the people that just think it's cool thing and it should happen because it's cool and it's awesome and it's fun, and because we deserve it, because we're good, we're good, we're Texans. So there's those people, and I think they're not at all for it because it is, it is cool, it sounds fun. There's the people that truly believe it will happen and want to push for it, and they're not being paid. They just actually totally are all aboard on it. They think that they've got this down right. And then there's the people that are leading these movements. And I'm not saying, I'm not saying this about Dennis, but I'm saying that there's groups. Of people that lead these types of types of things, that control these narratives and push these ideas, and they're using it to fundraise. They're using it to make money. They're using it to grift. And you can see that if you go to any of these Texas nationalist social media and look at their YouTube pages, they'll do they'll put out these mailers and all this stuff to show up to their YouTube channels for these live shows, and they'll get like, 900 views for the state of Texas for like, one of the most popular things, like 900 views on a weekend or on a weekday even. And it's like, it's not a real thing, okay? And again, it sounds cool, and I don't, I don't fault people for wanting it, but it's just such a waste of time. There's a lot bigger things that we should focus on, and I just think Texas is not it. So what

Brian Nichols  22:04  
are some of those other bigger things right now? I mean, right now we're recording here just for posterity sake, in April of 25 what are some of those big I mean, like headline leading issues in Texas that you guys are talking about? I mean, are these things that I don't say they go beyond Texas, but you see things that are like a theme that Texas is going through, that maybe the rest of the United States is also going through. Yeah,

Speaker 1  22:25  
I mean, with us, there's a few big things, like, right, we have a lot of energy issues, so we're a lot of this about energy, right energy, and we have our own grid, and it almost failed a while back. So like, energy and right, how we manage it. It's a very, very big deal. Right water is a huge, huge deal for our state. It's something that's going to be an issue in the future, and not people aren't thinking about it. Securing the border is always an issue. It's gotten a lot better under President Trump, of course, but these politicians are never fully on board with really securing the border, right? E verify is something that I think is really important for the future of Americans being able to secure well paying jobs. A lot of a lot of companies don't use it. And you have a lot of, I mean, you go, I always crack up again in these debates with my friends. They're always like, Oh, you need to go to this XYZ Asian restaurant because it's super authentic. And so we go, and I look in the kitchen and there's a guy that looks like meat in there cooking, like, there's a Jose in the back cooking, right? So it's like, yeah, this shirt is authentic, but you got dudes like me running it doesn't matter. Running. It doesn't matter which ethnic restaurant it is, there's people like me in the back cooking. So it's like, whatever. Like, okay, is it really that authentic? Okay, sure, whatever. But anyway, you have a lot of illegals that work in the industries here, and they're not using E verify. And you know, these Republicans, and this is something that we're writing on, and I think we'll have an article on it tomorrow, they have this scam out where they're trying to pass a bill to force e verify. And as a politician, I can tell you, Hey, man, you know we're going to pass you verify, and we're going to force businesses to use it. And you're like, Man, that sounds freaking awesome. Let's do it. And then you don't read, you vote for me. The bill passes. And I say, You know what? I got it done. We put out e verify, it's in the books, and the law passed. Well, then you don't read the fine print. And the fine print in these bills that they're pushing out is that they're requiring e verify for only government jobs. Okay, I assure you, Jose is not applying to be, you know, the the secretary at the local city council, okay. Maria is not applying to be the admin assistant for the Treasury Department for the local city. Okay, Marie and Jose are working jobs like manual labor, jobs and other types jobs that are not related to the city. So they passed this. They're trying to push the E verify thing on them and not telling the full story. They're going to pass it. They're going to view it as a win, but it's not going to do anything. It's going to affect maybe 2% of the illegal population, it does nothing. So that's the kind of scams that these Republicans out here pull. Is where they say one thing and then you read the fine print and something completely else. So these are major problems, right? These are things that we should be talking about rather than like Texas independence, because that's just not

Brian Nichols  24:55  
going to happen. You use your example of the E verify. Just maybe remember. One of my favorite lines from Everybody Loves Raymond. What did the Mexican firefighter name his two sons, Jose and Jose B so bad. Sorry. That was Peter Boyle, by the way, one of my favorite, favorite actors from the golden era film. But anyways, I digress, yeah. So as we're going towards the tail end of the show, Tony, I want to just segue a little bit more towards, like, where, where we're heading, not just as you know, in your case, Texans, but as a country, right? Because, right now, I would dare say we are one of the more, one of those, like those forks in the road, right? Like everybody was saying, oh, you know, 2016 the fork in the road. Was it? 2020 fork in the road? I don't know. I think 2024 is really the ultimate fork on the road. And I guess, where do you see the country going? Is Texas going to be one of those states that's leading by example? Are we going to see other states do you think kind of lead in and Texas follows suit? I just, I'm curious what your thoughts are being a native, well, not native Texan, but being there for over 21 years, right? Like, just kind of give us what your vibes are, and where do you think this leads us as a as a state in your world, but also as a country, as a state, you

Speaker 1  26:01  
know, we're doing better. It's not great, it's not bad, but it's not it's not bad, it's not horrible. So as a state, we continue to do better. This session so far has been decent. You'll have, you know, there's, there is a group of people in Texas that are constantly complaining about how the state's doing, like by aggressively, right? And there's, of course, some of their what they're saying is valid, but you know, you need, you need people to push the Overton windows. So you need those people. You need those groups that are just never happy. They're always pushing highly aggressively. This sucks. Everything's bad. The Texas is on fire. We need to do better. We need to prime everybody. You need those people, right? And then you've got the left that's pushing their own way. But things aren't going that bad in Texas. They're not great, not going that bad as far as, like, the rest of the country, I think Trump has, like, inspired a lot of Republicans and a lot of conservatives and a lot of people to start running more aggressively conservative. And I think that is a good thing. We'll see some definite positive things come from that as conservatives, right? You know? And in a fiscal thing, you know, you mentioned you're libertarian. I, I find that libertarians are phenomenal in city government, because in city government, there's not a lot of culture to manage. It's all money, taxes, fiscal stuff, spending that stuff that's like, insanely important. You have to be very smart to manage. You have to be very responsible, very conservative. You have to be you have to feel bad about spending people's money. You have to be able to justify and I think libertarians handle that phenomenally. I would disagree on other positions in government, but in city government, libertarians are phenomenal. And so I think, I think the Trump administration and getting elected has inspired a lot of people to run. The unfortunate part is the economy. It's it's bad. There's a housing housing crisis, right? Inflation is out of control. We're looking at potential stagflation. Everybody's got some kind of Doom or advice to them about spending, and I think consumer trust and spending is down, if I recall correctly. I'm not an economist, but I feel that personally, like people are afraid to go out. I think even people visiting our country, like the tour tourist here is down year over year. So I think from an economic standpoint, there's a lot of concern, and people are

Brian Nichols  28:08  
afraid. You mentioned there's some issues you have with libertarians. Trust me, me too, I identify as a small l, very, very small l libertarian, because at the end of the day, like, it's funny, you say this because I was literally just having this, this this conversation, I'll call it a debate a little bit, with one of my very close friends. And I'm like, dude, listen, at the end of the day, I don't care what party it is, a party is nothing more than a vessel to get ideas or policies into action right, or to use it as a platform to to message to a larger audience. That's it. And I look at the Libertarian Party, I mean, it's been a dumpster fire for 40 plus years, and I don't see that getting better anytime soon. However, I do think it has a role in helping maybe push to certain parties to be better on very important key issues. You mentioned economics, right? Like, hey, if I can have a libertarian running against a Republican and saying, Hey, I'm going to run as a libertarian to keep you honest, right? I don't want you to run to the middle or to the left on economics, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold you accountable. And actually, we had this here in my home state. I say home state where I live now, in Indiana, we had Don rain water running for governor, and his entire role was to try and hold Mike Brown, who was US senator, who was running for governor, to hold him to be more accountable. So I say all that I definitely hear. You know, there are a lot of libertarians who make both the folks on the left and the right and raise their eyebrows and say, Really, guys, I'm right there with you in a lot of different areas, but looking at how do we move forward as a country, I do see what you're outlining as the issues you're seeing in Texas be issues that we're seeing across the board in other states. And I guess at the end of the day, the one thing that we have talked about today that does give me hope for the future across the board, is that people are having conversations like this right now, but in mass now, they might not be sitting down and watching the evening news, to your point, for you know, in hyper detail, or reading that economics paper, or reading that foreign policy brief, but they're paying attention, right? They're aware, and they're having side conversations. As they're listening to Joe Rogan and hearing different perspectives that weren't allowed before, right? And I think that's a win. Culturally speaking, we're having conversations right now that we would never have 510, 15 years ago. I mean, heck, man, like we go back to when you guys were started in 2020, try to talk about the COVID pandemic, and any, you know, any common sense type of perspective, and you were instantly throttled or outright ban on social media or on these larger platforms like YouTube and the likes. So to see where we are today, the Overton window has absolutely shifted. I think that's a step in the right direction. Now that doesn't mean that we can take a step back and just, you know, rest on our laurels. No, we had to continue fighting. And I think what you're doing at current revolt, you know, raising up some of the more. We'll call it the TMZ stuff of politics that folks will pay attention to, right? That could help hopefully lead them to pay attention to other things. So I say all that to say, Hey, I think we're taking a step in the right direction. And Tony, I dare say, what you're doing down in Texas with current revolt is helping paint the picture of ways that we can start to get more folks to pay attention politics as well. So with that being said, I'll turn things over to you, bring us home. Final thoughts for today. No,

Speaker 1  31:04  
I appreciate you having me on. If you're a Texan and you're watching this, we're a must subscribe so you can follow us@currentrevolt.com same on Twitter. At current revolt got a YouTube page and Instagram as well. We just talk about Texas news. So if you're a Texan and you just want to pay attention to the place to be.

Brian Nichols  31:21  
There you go, man. All right, folks, we'll include all those links in our show notes. So if you wanna go ahead check out current revolt, go ahead and check out Tony. You can go ahead and do that. Just click the links and they'll all be available down below. And then, other than that, you can find yours truly on your favorite pop I can say podcasting. Let's try to say platforms and podcasting. It came out podcasting. So that's a new one. Podcasting platforms. You can find yours truly at B Nichols liberty. You can find the show at YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, Twitter, or you can go ahead and find the show on your favorite podcast catchers, like Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music. All I ask is, if you are joining us for the first time, hit that subscribe button. If you haven't listened to the show for a while, check and make sure you're subscribed, because sometimes you get unsubscribed. And then, other than that, if you want to reach want to reach out to yours truly, email me at Brian, at Brian Nichols show.com. Tony, this has been a great conversation. Thank you for joining us, and thank you Mr. And Mrs. Members of the audience for joining us today as well. Again, if you got some value, please go ahead and share today's episode with that being said, Brian Nichols, signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Tony Ortiz, we'll see you next time. See.

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