940123-1b  
9/8/2024 Vivian
MEETING TAPE: Ross Perot Interview on C-SPAN 

[Video Audio] I have a million dollars for each of the 234 votes. That's the way it was done. And the way in Washington, a lot of the West, just the way we do business up here. If that is, that's not a proper way to do business. Folks should be deciding on their own. The republicans, who were strongly for it, did a poll right after the vote found that 60% of the voters were against it. I was frustrated since they were doing a very tough poll so I didn't know were there. But it's done. The sad thing is, and we're seeing it now, so the Mexican people who vote that you see down there, the Mexican people are saying what we were saying for months, that the Mexican worker is not treated fairly. The Mexican worker is a good worker, he is 90% as productive as the American worker. 
00:47
If he makes one cent as much as a United States worker building cars, you can't compete with that. Everything we do behind is linked together. We treat it in Washington, it's like each thing is on a separate island and there's no interconnection. It's all linked together. Let's assume your competitor goes to Mexico to take advantage of the cheap labor and not have any pollution, environmental regulations, drop it in the air, digging holes in the ground, and dropping chemical waste down into the underground water supply, and have a disproportionate number of workers around this chemical plant, babies born without brains. You've got a chemical plant in the United States, you can't compete with that. You're going to Mexico, you're going out of business. Then, let's assume you're a red, white, and blue guy, you're hanging out there barely making money, health care passes. Your competitors are going to Mexico to get away from you, you will have to go to Mexico. But there's a gap there since it all interrelates. The reason everybody wants to sell into the United States is because of the biggest market for goods and services in the world. You say, well, we're the Japanese, everybody wants to keep doing automobile plants here. No, they don't do automobile plants in Mexico. Just watch the activity of Mexico. There's huge economic advantage and shipping across the border very free. We're the biggest buyers of goods and services in the world today. The reason we are is that our people have good jobs and can afford to buy things. People who don't make any money can't buy anything. If we lower the standard of living of our people, not only do we reduce our ability to balance the budget and pay the debt, but we reduce our ability to purchase. And we no longer have the ace of being the business master in the world. See everybody should want to build factories here since this is the place they sell their arms. It is so tough to do business here nobody wants to build a factory here. In a perfect world with everything interrelated there would be a rush of capital from around the world and a rush of building facilities from around the world in the US because we really like it. But no, it's too expensive to do anything there. So you try to sit offshore, dump goods in here, use the cheapest labor you can find, but the blind spot is if the people don't have jobs, they won't do the least amount of work. All this takes time. The bad news is, the election cycle is a very short period of time. So as the Japanese say, we think 10 minutes ahead, they think 10 years ago. If the President were to invest in cargo, trade with cargo against Vietnam, what would your reaction be? 

03:23
We left men behind at the end of the war. We never left men behind and anybody that questions that, and CSPAN hasn't done it, less understood and sometimes to give the briefing using the recently released intelligence documents, these are government documents that have been classified for years and the evidence is just overwhelming. I've known this for years, I've saved for years, many others have. And now you can take their documents and prove your case. It is morally wrong to send men into combat and leave them behind at the end of the war. It's never been wrong. You can get the declassified documents and you've got the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the secretary of the Navy, the secretary of defense, talking about the fact that we've got to start bombing again in order to get the rest of our POWs out. That's at the end of March 1973. April 13th, 1973, two weeks later, they declared no more living Americans in the Southeast Asia. The fact is, there was no will to start bombing Indiana. There was no, here was the real problem. And here is the real problem today with the NWF money. Ruth Thomas, the Vietnamese reparations money, they released a group of prisoners and held them arrest until they got the money. Which was just shooting on their parts, frankly. Wars have been wars, there's nothing pretty about war. But war does have rules and politics doesn't it, so I'm not that kind of guy. I was a political commentator. They kept it private from people. Then Congress was angry with them. They had a reparations money. Watergate was in full flight. American people were in disarray. And they just shut it down. And there was Dr. Fisher. He had no leverage. And he’s right. He had no leverage at that time to continue negotiating. How would you like to deal with 20 years, it's now 1994, 21 years, left behind by the greatest country in history, Vietnam. And in the race to make a little money in a country, Vietnam, let's go ahead and recognize them and just write these men off. We left them behind in Korea. Let's look at our history. We left them behind in Russia in World War II. We left them behind in Korea. We left them behind in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Russian and the CNN messages are right there for the world to see. Took people out of Vietnam to Russia. Now they, that's war. They wanted to find out all the intelligence information they could on our air products, our airplanes, our lead. Those people never came back. What happened to them? All should be accounted for. This should be a moral problem for our country. Instead, things start coming to a rug and the literal courage is given to all of us. Intelligence data was now public record. And there is the rush to recognize it. The rush should be that we go look for remains in Vietnam, but there is no real effort at all to search for black Americans. No if’s, and’s, and but’s. They had a second tier prison system. You can see that in all the intelligence documents. You can see it in the Russian documents and so on and so forth. 

06:41
And all of the data at the end of the war and since the war, talking about the number of men we left behind, is several hundred. The question is how many are still alive and the law obligation is to bring them home. Do you think there are still Americans alive? Yes. Do you think they are living in Vietnam? They probably, well, some of them, again, when I say that they are living, so I am not discussing it, but you have a good idea of where they are. And again, one would like to hit the president with some embargo. The primary concern is that using the old statement, dead men tell no tales. You never have to be embarrassed to explain about living POWs if you kill them. And what a tragedy they've been all these years. These men deserve to come home and spend what every year they have remaining in their lives in this country that they literally have given years of their lives to gain. I'm sure the average guy would say he would rather have his name on the Vietnam wall, killed in combat during the war, than locked in for twenty some odd years of hell. For example, being used as human beings pulling plows. At one time there was a videotape that the U.S. intelligence community thought was valid, that one former Special Forces guy had seen. It showed POWs and Golden Triangle being used as [unintelligible] just using them for the toughest, hardest kind of work. Stories of people who escaped came in places like the Swedish paper mill. The workers wanted to protect them. The manager contacted the embassy and they turned back to the Vietnamese and on and on and on and on. Let's get some more about United States. Sure. Do you ever intend to publish the number of people that are in the library? I don't know. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Everybody gets so excited about it. It's kind of precious. It just makes me very happy. Some of our sons are over a million. [unintelligible] We are very fortunate to have so many wonderful people in the organization. We have not published [unintelligible] next person says they will be two after they say they are going to be number three. So we don't say. 

09:26
Since you have gotten into this politics business for the last two years, do you have any idea how much total money you have spent? Well most of it was done in campaign. And that is a matter of record and I think it is 60% of it. I have promised American people that if they put me on the ballot on the 50 states, we would win a world class campaign, we would not spend a penny of their money, and we didn't. I spent somewhere in the 60 million dollars, I don't have it exactly in my head, it was a lot of money. Would you ever do it again? Nobody I say would want to do it. The really nice parts of it, those are with the American people. That is pure joy and pleasure. There is a lot of it that is just, well, most of life is just sort of, you know, coming out the kitchen, taking out the trash, doing what you have to do. But the best part is the American people, because the American people are really wonderful, good, decent people who love this country, who do want to continue to build and strengthen this country, who do understand that every time you pass another wall in Washington telling us when to brush our teeth or what have you, you're taking away a part of our people. The average person on the street understands that the core of a free society is the willingness of each individual to take full responsibility for his or her own actions. The American people understand that a free society can't endure without a strong moral, ethical lease. The whole lease part that’s the fun part. In terms of public life versus business life, no comparison. Business life is pure pleasure as far as I'm concerned because you're working and building, creating jobs, and you're doing productive, constructive things. and I think this is just a matter of tradition. It's a thousand straight bullets a day, I don't know what the core issues are. But that's the way the game is played. If I could waive a wand, I'd say let's not make it a game anymore, let's make it a serious undertaking. And let's agree that you and I can disagree without my feeling the need to try to destroy everything about you including your dad, if I can. So let's just disagree. In other words, if you say we should go through one thing, we should debate that issue. I should respect your views. You may disagree with me, but if you say in true society I have a right to my views, that's not the way the system works now. You get a consensus that he helped and then you get the establishment and then you get the government crowd and then once they decide to roll then anything that's in the way is just considered something that needs to be moved out of the way. Let me ask you a minute, do you think he would have run? I would, for example, I never wanted to run for public office. People have been trying to get me to run for office since 1968 when somebody ran a poll that said I could be governor of Texas. 

12:30
I had so many people writing and calling me wanting me to run for president, I finally said, well, I'm going to put my own ballot off if this doesn't happen. I did. I will say the only reason I would ever run again is that if the members that have worked so hard and so effectively just really, really, really felt that [unintelligible] the average citizen feels he actually won the title of the mayor in 1996. I am not driven to be an elected official. I am more than happy to be serving in my country. And what role, maybe the role we're in now where we just stay focused on the issues. [unintelligible] Some people say that you've been so soured by the process of the media and all of exposure and everything that you've had enough of it. Would you say that you haven't had enough of it? The reason of this that they've created in politics, that is not kind of for me. So you're not tired of all this? But, so the point is, I can understand why you would raise the question, because you read it often, not in other people's opinions. But I don't think you've ever heard me say that. I've just been completely candid with you in terms of, and I think this is an interesting thing for the American people to talk about, and I don't mean that I follow this category, but let's assume that we do want the best and most talented people in our country in public life, we want them as a career, we want them to come so they go back home. And we need to have an environment that will attract the best and talented people to give up whatever they're doing. Now maybe it's a doctor, maybe it's a lawyer, maybe it's an engineer, chief, whatever, nurse, whatever. They leave, they go serve, they come back home. I think we have a much better, stronger country rather than having everybody so thirsty for power. That's the wrong reason to go. So thirsty for power that they will endure anything in order to have power. That is probably the least healthy thing that could happen to a free society. Something to imagine people think about or something that the united people do think about. I don't understand what I [unintelligible] when your next get together is what to do with all the elected state officials. What does it mean? All the elected state officials will get together, the agenda set for 1994 and deliver. And what does that mean? Even in New York they were. In New York and Dallas. Yes, just here. Yes, that's true. In Dallas, yes. And how long are you going to be here? Very nice set of dates. We have like four dates. You've had two books published in the last couple of years. One on your budget proposal and one on... How did they do? True. We have 3 now. The first was Anne. So they've all been on the bestseller list. The first one was number one on the bestseller list. At my amazement continuing after the election for a while. And I'm on the bestseller list. That's right, which I'm very pleased to be. I mean, [unintelligible], but large numbers. 

15:38
The other two got the second on the best seller list, so they all did a good distribution. And there was a great thirst on the party and on the people for clear and detailed explanations of the issues. You won't believe how many people who read the big massive volumes, actually, and how few congressmen, the two published volumes by the US government on that, and then at the last minute this giant, it became a law that nobody in Congress had time to read because it was written to them at the last minute. Now only in a matter of what you said, there are tax breaks for Honda motor company, which has nothing to do with that. That's what's wrong with the system. I was watching television the other night and they were showing all of the lobbyists taking the congressmen and their staffers out for rotations. That's wrong. You wouldn't allow supplies to do that to the economy. That was the prime time live, I forget about, that in the city no, yeah, that's right. why is it wrong? why shouldn't members of congress in the senate be allowed to go places for charity work? Give me a break. This is almost nothing to do with charity. If you look around all the doors of the charity, it's insignificant. But it's tiny compared to how many cops you get in an entertainment. Right. I'm going to go to the next slide. This goes back to public service should not take anything from special interests. For example, there's a strong theory in our organization that the members of Congress should only take contributions from people in their districts. The members of the U.S. Senate should only take contributions from people in their states. And it is dead wrong for the Congressman to try to get on one of these power committees like banking so that every bank in the country dumps huge contributions into his poor ass, and nobody in his district can raise approximately that much money. And television time is the key to winning so if nobody has a chance and he becomes the longest serving congressman in history because he got on the power committee that's not right. Back to the books that were done do you plan another book? We've talked about it we're probably doing something on health care this year and [unintelligible] How soon would you have to have a health care book out to learn any difference in this debate? I don't know. It may drag on. It may move quickly. It all depends on how things come together. If there's any indication that it will be a lengthy debate, there's no indication that they're going to have to say one hand on welfare or put it in front of it. So there'll be the issue of bringing this kind of thing that goes on in free society, having priority. And we'll never know. Were you allowed and effort in the house, it's a way to get an answer. They're familiar with all of them, they'll discuss that while they're in the house. It wouldn't make sense. I feel very strongly about it. The aspect of it. It's a way to get the welfare of everyone, I mean, sort of a house to everyone. Yes, yes. But, in the language of the street, keep in mind, I spent an awful amount of time on the street, with real people and here is what these folks have had to go and learn how to say. 

18:54
So it's awesome the government is going to take over health care and the Clinton plans they are going to tell the doctor how much he can make. What they can and can't do they will figure all this out and so then they are going to tell doctors how much they can make. Why don't they tell lawyers how much they can make. Why don't they tell [unintelligible] how much they can make and why don't they tell [unintelligible] how much they can make? I've ever seen a lot of doctors. Once you cross that threshold in the free society, then you go on and put everybody on a maximum salary. And so that's the first thing. You can understand why people think that way. The second thing, that these fellows are so good at healthcare, that they've been there. So can the government run the healthcare system? And the man on the street says, what are the best hospitals in the United States? The ones that have the problems are the veterans hospitals. If they think they can run health care, why don't they prove it to the American people by making the veterans hospitals role models of excellence? This is step one. I think that's an interesting point from ordinary Americans. Then they saw the organization chart for the health care system plan, which made Ross beat out. And as one fellow said, and this is the apothecary, I am a physician, he said, Ross, they look like Rube Goldberg through [unintelligible] If you understand organizations and you look at that chart, you realize that makes the Pentagon look like a bad-ass. That plan is designed to fight the whole research job. So, there are these. If you're going to try to solve a problem, why turn it over to an institution that has a history of doing a ton of jobs in health care? Medicare and Medicaid are totally out of control. If you look at the original forecast of what Medicare and Medicaid would cost, this pack, so Medicaid was not supposed to exceed a billion dollars a year, I think it's now, the last figures I saw, 76 billion, so that's a little bit of a miss in the forecast, right? Let me do a huge miss in the forecast. Let's take a logical and more cautious step. Let the government prove that it can do a good job in healthcare. Number one, clean up the VA hospitals. Number two, make all of these savings that they're promising on Medicare Medicaid. I'll let it get in Medicaid, but it's their own hand. Put the money in the bank. I can't wait to see that happen. Make those savings. Because this whole health care system is predicated on those savings. So then, having proved their ability to do this job well, let's start experimenting on a pilot basis with some of their ideas. The average person here in Texas, out of Texas, understands that what works in a small town in health care probably won't be the system that works in New York City and those metropolitan areas. You totally lose grassroots America on this health care plan when they realize that the mother cannot pick the doctor that will deliver the baby. 

22:00
They look at you like you're from Mars when they see all that stuff going. They leave you totally on the thought that if they're going to see a stimulus, a wife, women, youngs, remember their family, they could go find the finest doctor to try to save that member of their family. So, we have a system that needs dramatic improvement, but just turning over the federal government with its history of mediocrity and failure in managing social programs and its total lack of discipline on spending when it comes to social programs and finally here's my favorite, we're going to do this off-duty. So I thought if it was out of control we could pretend it wasn't, but not have it stocked up in the National Department even though it is a part of the National Department. So this is an airplane with no wings and a free community something for nothing. Absolutely must be so. We want to take care of it and step one of free society when it's not time to get out you better be alert because the fundamental of a free society is everyone who can must take care of himself or herself the good chance we will seriously damage the whole medical profession. We, if we're not careful here, we have wonderful medical care in this country. It's things that are out of control, and there's a basic reason for it. When I grew up here in Texas County, the patient was the customer. Now we've changed that, it's the customer. For example, I got a big medical bill through my office yesterday for one of my employees. And everybody in my business has always had the same medical care I had. And I asked, here's your question, I said, now has this person signed off on this bill? And the person said, no, but the insurance company did. I said, that's not the point. I want the employees who knows what they did and didn't need to go line out for the bill like you would if you were paying for it out of your pocket, right? This goes back to individual responsibility. So have the employee check it, but make sure that the person who is treated always goes through it. You're taking the patient, it's no longer the customer. That's the insurance company. If a new plan goes through, then the folks, the government, will become the customer, and health care will be rationed, and you and I will stay in line which is not pretty if you need a heart operation because we have some life-threatening problems. People poured out of Canada to the United States because of the same problem. It was a tragic story of a little boy who had to have a heart operation and he couldn't get it in Canada, it was all in waiting lists. Then the story was run, a US doctor in a hospital heard about it and said send me out here to receive it. That's the way it was run in Canada. Canadian government was so embarrassed to put it at the head of the list, but they delayed it until after you got it operated on. You don't want to take what we have now and go to that. Here in Texas, I can take you to Dallas Texas Parthenon Hospital. You can see the poorest person in Dallas come in with a life-threatening problem and see the genius doctors and the Nobel Prize winners in medical school and [unintelligible] that person. 

25:16
Now they'll have the people in there, it's a, you know, it's a digital teaching function, but the quality of the person with the staff on his hand, on their hand, is unbelievable. Now before we change all this with a radical plan put together by people whose lives are not going to stand in healthcare, we better really be careful. We talked earlier about the issues on the language game list. You have campaign reform, you have time, veto, balance budget amendment, health care, turnarounds. We like turnarounds tied to, we feel strongly that the economic plan should have had an overall plan to balance budget over time. And we had proposed that we put time limits as part of that. If things didn't stay on that schedule, time limits, which had been already enacted in the law, would kick in. So there is a reason to stay on schedule. Right now, there's no reason to stay on schedule. There is every reason to ever hand out candy. To agree to build two airplanes that the Pentagon doesn't want to cost almost two billion dollars and one congressional district to get one vote permitted. And what does that have to do with this one example? That's a simple, but your tone to do that is your question. My advice would be, just find out what your salary cost to the people in that district would be, which is a fraction of the cost of the airplane. Agree to pay it. Don't create the airplane, don't buy the amendment, don't buy the hull, buy the [unintelligible], just pay it. And you spend a fraction of what you would had spent, plus you don't have airplanes to maintain. It doesn't cost to maintain the airplanes, it's very expensive. But, that's not the way the system works. Go ahead. In 1984, how much of your time did you spend on politics versus [unintelligible]. Are you going to make the rounds in the television shows again? Are they as interesting and intimidating as they used to be? At this part, I think the general rule is no access to television. I cannot find television in town at this point. Why not? I don't know, that's just, it was, that, I think, just the sensation. This is not inside the system. This is not part of the, you know, this is not part of the lobbying network. This is, we've got this thing working the way it has been working now, and we want to change the way we are. We don't want change and lose the components of change so the real Boulevard of Voice is the ability to talk to the people. We accept that there's just a temporary issue. The facts are, if it's their right, if they want to sell time to sell, they just their right if they don't want to sell time to sell. Now you could say that the error is wrong, but we believe it. I can make arguments. But we will get the message out. Just remember how many people got messages out before television came on. We will get the message out and we are getting the message out. We are and you know we are going to change over time. When was the last time you sold your time? I was right as a friend can you give me a reason why you should try to buy time for next year? oh we've got that time. We are not able to buy time at this point. 

28:53
Well, then, would you ever be getting a legal recourse? Again, I don't think that's productive. We haven't even talked about it. Well, I've asked them to different programs. [unintelligible] They haven't been to the show. Are they interested in the heroin drug industry? Well, we'll let’s see. I can't speak for them, but I have heard from some of my friends, they're probably busy on other issues, and they may not be in the student union, and again, that's their right as far as I'm concerned. If they are not interested in learning [unintelligible] Oh, I'd say you'd have to ask them. On the issue of crime, is there a good plan you think? Yes, we talked about that in our four-day meeting. We talked about. There are some things you can't pass a law to correct, and the American people really need to spend a lot of time thinking about this. We cannot pass a law that says, the United States of America must have a strong law of ethical base, each person must be very caring and sensitive about every other person, and under no circumstances would a good decent American go out and shoot somebody in a drive-by shooting. So this goes back to who we are, what we believe, what we stand for. This goes back to the curation of family image. There's direct correlation in terms of violence and the strength of the family image in different segments of our cities. So, these are problems we have to work on outside the law, and that we really need to discuss and talk about them. And a lot of people are starting to do it, and a number of leaders in various groups are starting to talk about it. I hope they're celebrating. We need to very clearly, though, pass laws where one person can put violence on another person. So you're going to be born with much longer problems. It's interesting that I haven't come to any other, but it doesn't fix the problem. 

30:56
It's produced a rash of gun purchases. I don't know if you've read that book, but there's a huge number of people. I've read it, and I've always read it. I always think it's very funny. But it's what you do with that gun that really matters. We live in such a violent society that if we protect them in poor sections of our cities where people have bars on their windows and bars on their doors, they're a lot of bad people because their neighborhoods have gone down in time and that includes Washington DC. That magnifies to Washington every good idea that you have on crime, and that's Washington DC in your testimony because that is a civilian problem. And you live there. Let's make Washington a role model for the country and the world. That just appropriating huge sums of money to go out, that won't do it. We'll have to make it unthinkable to inflict violence on another human being. Not just with a gun. Say, I'm federally killed. If you kill me with a gun, the knife, or the pipe, he stays there. The price for that would be you go away, you don't ever come out of his family. And you don't go to someplace that costs more to keep you than art would educate you. But you, my dear, put up with society, no matter how drunk you are, or how high you are, or how crazy you are, that will clear your head. You're not that full of trouble. And certainly not in order to turn membership in a teenage gang into wanting to janitize and kill an innocent human being. It's a joke. For example, when I was growing up in Texas County, I never heard of anybody driving along the roads at night, shooting cattle or horses or animals in the pasture to feed the trunk. And it was considered terrible to kill an animal when you were hunting unless you wanted to eat that animal. You just didn't kill for sports, even animals. Now we kill human beings for sport. And the only way to get it squeegee hot to that point is to take the time to build a strong moral ethical base then that will take time and I have children so you can in television and in the movies there is nothing to build a strong moral ethical base there is everything to deter it but as violence becomes technical if you watch all of this creative violence night after night after night after night then it becomes technical. Should [unintelligible] Yes, I would like for the people who run the entertainment industry to say, you know, we really can have an enormous impact on this country. We can be a terrific force for good. The finest cast in the world have just probably offsetting this hour after hour barrage of comments. So you don't get involved. As a last resort. In what way? 

34:05
I think we just have the people on the airwaves, and the government has a responsibility not to saturate the country with a type of programming that degrades the moral and ethical standards of the American people, because a free society must have a strong law at the base. Now, when you get into this, and everybody wants to say that white man is really talking about Catholic, Protestant, Jewish men. I say take the common values of all religions. I don’t know a religion that doesn't teach some variation of the Old Way. I know a religion that doesn't teach people to force one another to take a shot through the right gun. So, it has nothing to do with self-parareligion. It has everything to do with this being square one on making a great society work. We've got to stop trying to all be pretty and cute. Everybody wants to run down the sidelines of the field of bellyaching. When I grew up in this little town, everybody lived in a sunny little retreat over there. And it wasn't just because it was legally legal. The question is whether it's legal or illegal, it's supposed to be, right or wrong, and that's the way they live their lives. We'd only be a great country if we continued to do that. But how can we do that? We're the first country in the world to turn this possibly on television, or what is it? See, I don't look at it in terms of how do we go technical, legal form, so I look at what we have to do. I would like to go to the census. We have to do this for our children. We have to do this for the future generations. We can't program our children to be animals. We can't make the heroes people who do violent crimes. We have the wrong heroes in our country. The real heroes in our country nobody ever heard of. All of our heroes, people who present the rock stars as heroes, athletes are heroes and some of these athletes are not good role models for our children. Some of these rock stars are people who have these high-disability roles. When you get into the faculty modesty, just the basic standards for example, just having kids out of wedlock, not being married, not being a sponsor for a child, etc. is a terrible message to send to young people. I think right now everybody would choke on the idea of ever saying to young people that the first rule of sex when you're single is abstinence.  And yet to avoid these massive problems from AIDS to ill-adjuvanted children. You've got to go back to square one and all of our religion teaches us that. Unless you should have a strong family unit is step one. 
36:58
To have a child and then both parents have an equal obligation to be there and give that child and make sure that child is a good citizen. You don't have to do that for him. In the two years you've been involved in the public, have you changed the way you deal with the media and the public at all? What have you learned? Well, the main thing I've learned is the goodness of the American people and how it works. The potential for the greatest years in our country's history can be in the future because the American people still are devoted to this country, We're still patriots. We still want to do the right thing. But feel like you're straws caught in the wind and you're getting swept around by a lot of these factors that we discussed today. Excuse the inside and outside question, but I was getting an inch of how people inside and outside analyze this together. Have you changed the way you interact at all with the media? You know, a person, did you learn anything from that experience? Did you interact with it? Would you do something differently in the future, specific things? You mentioned earlier... Well, very simply, we would make sure we had a debate on the issues. We would make sure that each person in the debate had not taken a speech, but he had to say on the issues. And that neither person would interrupt the other person and live stream. And the only thing we could talk about would be the issues. That would be just that so basic and so simple, but that would have to be some kind of what you learned from that one experience. That's what I learned from that experience. He said, well, gee, if I might know him, well, I just addressed it as my concern that that's what it would be. Would you rate your own struggling in on the issue? Sure. I'd be glad to make anybody an attorney. How about your astute attorney? Do you do much one on one interviews on the book? We can share it with him, if there's some issues that somebody wants to talk about. How about the overall experience of using television? I mean, the book's been written about your use of television as a kid. Can anybody else do what you've done? I would guess anybody could. Nothing special about it it's not as though we're getting professional coaching any time so I would think anybody could do it. I mean.  Are there any shows that you appear on in the past that you might run in the future. How would you go about doing the classes? Would they both have me one it? Would you go back to make the classes if you were invited? Well, again, I want to, you know, that's just to say, for what? What is the issue that we're going to talk about so on and so forth. As it's a general discussion? You went back to the point last time. Well, I went, and everybody on the program knew that I came for one reason. 

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That was to raise money for drug victims on the Mississippi River, and I knew that they were going to ask me questions on other subjects, but they understood that that's why I went, because my motivation for going, that is what we were, our organization was hard at work trying to raise money for drug payments. I called up and said, is there anything that you all would like to discuss that is very detailed that I should bring up? A lot of detailed information. And they said no. And then when I got there, those were the issues that we required at least some healing. Now if they had said, well we want to discuss this, this and this, but please don't worry about it just have it in your head. Well I said I can always get that in my head. But I was trying to make sure that whatever they wanted to talk about, I would be willing to talk about it. And they said no, no, no, we want to discuss in detail, [unintelligible] that's fine, that's fine, that's a lot more. But the reason I asked that question is that on prime time they raised a very detailed question based on a stack of paper they had just gotten from my Office of Management and Budget. And I had no idea what the premises were, what the assumptions were, and the person asking the questions would know what the premises and assumptions were. I later found out that the premises and assumptions were wrong. And we finally got to look at them and pay for the paper. But we couldn't have the public conversation, so I don't have a good way back, but in the real world, this is the way the process works. So instead of wondering, I know how it works. Thanks for joining us, all of us here in your hometown. Great, nice to see you. Great, nice to see you. Thank you.

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MEETING CONTINUES ON TAPE 940123-2a