The First Thing Tulsi Gabbard Would Do as President | Joe Rogan

If you become president, excuse me, when you become president, sorry, and you do get to change the way we spend money and stop spending money on these regime change wars, what would be the first thing you invested in in this country? And how would you go about doing that? That's a good question. I think there's, I'd want to give that some thought because there are a whole host of challenges that we're facing. You know, I mean, healthcare is among the top of the list. And, you know, we've talked a little bit about that the last time I was here. Our crumbling infrastructure continues to be something that's not only just uncomfortable every time we're driving over potholes, it's actually threatening people's lives and well beings. I was in Iowa a few weeks ago and we visited this, a few communities that were completely inundated and devastated by the flooding that took place there. Gosh, about three, three, four weeks ago now, many of them have not been able to return to their homes. We went and helped out one family. We were tearing down drywall and ripping up the floors and underneath the wood and the floors, there was still like tons of water in place. And they were talking about how even with, you know, the aid from FEMA and SBA loans that they are unwilling to put a single dollar back into rebuilding their homes because they're hearing from the government and the Army Corps of Engineers that it may take two to four years to fix the levies that broke down and caused that flooding. So why would they go and try to pour their life savings back into rebuilding their homes when they could get flooded again in a year or in two years? Because we're not making the kinds of investments in our infrastructure that we need to make. So there's education. I mean, there's a whole host of issues that I think we need to look at how we can best provide the resources that are necessary to improve those services to the American people and also look at how we're doing business and fixing the problems that exist within those different agencies. There's always been a call to help countries in need in the world. There's always been a call for the United States to step in and, you know, and do something. But yet there's problems in this country that never change. There's bad communities in this country that are impoverished and crime-ridden that have been the same way for decades. There was a former Baltimore police officer named Michael Wood who came on my podcast and he was talking to me about the time when he was in the Baltimore Police Department. They found a piece of paper that was documenting various crimes from the 1970s, one of the years from 1970 something. And it was the same exact crime in the same exact area that they were having problems with now, whether it's homicide, narcotics, whatever it was. They were having the exact same issue in the exact same places. And then he realized, like, well, there's no effort put to change this. There's no – if you're talking about decades and decades and decades, why wasn't there money funneled into this community? Why isn't there some community centers that help children? Why isn't there an emphasis on better education? Why isn't there more police officers or at least some sort of civilian presence that helps out people and stops some of this crime and gives people a better place to live and then fix a lot of this – what you're seeing decade after decade. If we want to make America better, the best way to do that is to fix the weakest parts, the weakest parts of the people that are born in a shit situation. They don't get a good break. They got a bad break. They're born in a crime-ridden environment. And then they have to figure out how to be a better person while dealing with all this. And then you've got people that are aloof to this that are like, hey, figure it out for yourself. I did. Like, as if we all start from the same spot in this crazy game called life because we don't. Those people are in the worst spot. Why can't we fix the worst spot? It seems like we could. If we can help Iraq, if we can invade Syria, if we can do some of the things that people either want us to do or we have done, why can't we do that? Exactly. And that's what I often remind people is that right now, today, we spend $4 billion every month in Afghanistan. Four billion dollars. Every month. Every single month. Imagine what could be done with those dollars and those resources in communities like Baltimore, in communities like Flint, Michigan, where people are still being poisoned by their water, where they're being lied to and cheated by their leadership, where the governor sent in these inspectors and cleared the water saying, hey, everything's fine. But what he didn't tell people was that when those inspectors went in, they turned the faucet and let the water run for five minutes before they tested it to clean all the crap out of the pipes and create this false conclusion that somehow the water is clean. When the people who live there know that it is still not safe to drink, and for some folks, they can't even take a shower in their own homes. And so that's why you're not going to hear any other presidential candidates talking about the cost of war and where our money is going and how it is counter to our national security. It's making us less safe. It's counter to the interests of our people and the people in those countries. But this is why I talk about this everywhere I go, because it's central. It's central to our ability to address these domestic challenges that we are facing, we in this country are facing, in communities across the country dealing with health care, affordable housing. There's a homeless crisis in both urban cities and rural communities, people who are not able to afford to put a roof over their heads. People who are working full time, maybe one, maybe two jobs even, still can't afford to put a roof over their heads. There's serious issues that we need to address here, but to think that somehow we'll have the resources to do so without addressing where trillions of our dollars have been going now for the last several years is a lie. It's just not true. When you talk about people that are working full time jobs and they still don't have enough money to get by, what could you do to change that? Well, I think there's not one single action that can fix that. I'm pushing for a living wage. I think it's important that... What do you think that should be? It's going to be different in different places. I'm a co-sponsor of the congressional legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 at the federal level. There has not been an increase in the federal minimum wage for a very long time. I think that's a step that can be taken. Los Angeles is like Hawaii, where a $15 an hour job is not going to be enough to pay the rent because you've got high cost of living. Living wage is going to be higher in communities like ours than it is in smaller communities or communities in the Midwest. What would you suggest for Los Angeles? $20 an hour? I don't know what the answer is here. But it would have to be more. I think so. The argument against that would be that small businesses would go under or hire less people or that somehow or another it would be bad for business. What do you think about it? I think there's a... I mean, the cost of living here is higher. What we are paying the employees who work in these industries and these service jobs has to match that. It has to correlate with that higher cost of living. It costs more to go out to eat here than it does to go out to eat in a restaurant in, I don't know, Alabama, for example. I think we've got to recognize people who are doing the work that correlates with the higher cost of living that we're seeing already. I'm really looking at the universal basic income and seeing how that could be a tool to help deal with a lot of these poverty-stricken communities and people who have been struggling and still unable to dig themselves out of a hole there. Seeing how that potentially could replace a lot of the bureaucracy, a lot of the money that we're spending on bureaucracy and a lot of social welfare programs, perhaps, to both save money and to provide support directly to people who need it. I think that's an option that we've got to consider. It's not simple, and so I'm doing the research and figuring out how exactly that would work and how exactly we'd pay for it. We also have to look at affordable housing. I think not accepting the fact that the high cost of housing is what it is is not the solution. There's a lot of money that goes into our Housing and Urban Development Department, but is it really having the effect that we needed to have to make it so that, whether it's cops or teachers or firefighters, people who are working in these public service jobs are able to afford to live in the communities where they're working. We were in Malibu yesterday. We had a town hall there yesterday and took a tour with the mayor, city council members, community leaders around a lot of the areas that were completely devastated by the fires. That was one of the things that they mentioned, is that they pointed out a trailer park, traditionally where a lot of those first responders live. That's where the workforce in Malibu have lived in that trailer park. They said that it's not unheard of that one of those trailer homes go for a million bucks. A million bucks, and you don't even get to own the land that your trailer sits on. This is a real problem that they're facing is people who are teaching in that area, the firefighters who are working in that area, they're not able to afford to live in the community that they serve. How could that be fixed? That's a supply and demand thing. It's not that much beachfront area. Well, some communities, I mean, there's land in the valleys and other areas, but some communities are dealing with this, both in the private sector. There's hotels in Hawaii, for example, who are recognizing that they can't attract workers to work in the hotels because they can't afford to live near where they work. They're starting to buy up properties to actually provide that workforce housing at an affordable cost to be able to attract those workers. Some communities are doing the same thing for first responders, for firefighters and others. So this is a problem that a lot of city councils and local communities are trying to deal with and solve, but I think it also points to a bigger problem that we have nationally that there is just not enough affordable, truly affordable housing for working people in the country. But a place like Malibu has always been this exclusive community because there's just not that much Malibu, right? It's right next to the water, so it's more valuable. Is there a way to do anything that would change that? Well, that's what I was asking the mayor about, and that was one of the things they said that has been, people look at Malibu and they're like, well, that's where a bunch of multimillionaire rich people go and buy their beach homes. But there has always been, the basis of that community was really founded on those who worked to build the community, middle class people who are increasingly being pushed out. If you're not living in the home that your grandfather, your great grandfather built, then you're not going to be able to afford to stay there. So we didn't get into the details on what they're looking at, but this is something that the city council and the mayor are grappling with now to be able to attract workers who want to work in the area, but who don't want to have to drive two hours or three hours just to get to their place of work. Yeah, I just don't know how you would ever do that, especially with all those fat cats that are living in Malibu. I mean, it's a crazy place to live. Those houses on the beach are ridiculously expensive. And that's where a lot of the folks we were talking to yesterday, they live up on the mountain or in the valley. That's a better spot anyway. The thing about being by the beach is people can just kind of hang out in your backyard, like right there, like right where your bedroom is. There can be people that are cooking out four feet away from your head. Yeah, not so much privacy. You got none. It's the beach. It's everybody's. Yeah. People have tried to kick people off of it too, which gets really strange. There's been a lot of those cases where they hire private security, but it's like trying to kick someone out of a park because you decided to have a picnic. That's true. Man, this beach is everybody's. Exactly. It's gotta stay that way. Yeah, it has to stay that way. It's gotta stay that way. I have a problem with, this is a personal problem with municipalities that charge you to go to the beach. Crazy. So if I have no money in my pocket, you're going to bar me from going and putting my feet on the sand and going for a surf in the ocean. That's just wrong. It's insane. It's wrong. It is wrong, right? I mean, I could see if you had a donation box to help people clean up the beach. That's all I could say. Donations. I'll throw some money in there. I mean, I'll pay for my parking. Sure. Sure. But don't stop me from coming on the beach. I'll catch a bus if I don't have any money. I'll catch a bus to the beach. Poor people. That's the whole reason we have these national parks. Exactly. National wilderness areas. It's anybody. Yeah. Anybody can get in there. Yeah. That's the beautiful thing about, one of the best things about the system that we have in place in America is that there's so much public land. Yes. And you understand that. They've never been to other countries where that's just not the case. Everything is private in many, many countries. You can't just go camping. You can't just take a raft and go down the river. You can't just do that. And what happens when those public spaces are lost? It's horrible. When they're lost. They're lost forever. When you pave over them, when you develop them, when your beaches become trash with pollution and others, like, that's a treasure. It's a treasure that's lost. Well, we have our forefathers to thank for their foresight. Yeah. Like Theodore Roosevelt saw this in advance and met with great resistance from a lot of big businesses that just wanted to put apartments up everywhere and start building factories. Yeah. And we created this incredible system of public land in this country that's unprecedented. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, only Canada has something that rivals us. I mean, I guess Australia's got a lot of public land too, but it's just, there's other countries that have it, but it's amazing what we have here. And in terms of our diversity of scenery and where you could go too, I mean, you could go to the desert or you could go to Idaho and go to Coeur d'Alene. Or go see a volcano in Hawaii.