Ep.64 Youth Activism w/ Matthew

Why does our youth show more interest in politics these days? Listen and be inspired with this week’s guest, Matthew, a high school student taking the conservative movement by storm. Hear his thoughts on political influence, elections, the upcoming Trump presidency and more. 

TIMELINE

00:00 Intro

03:58 Why conservative?

07:06 When to start?

10:00 Debate 

12:53 Social media influence

17:44 Conspiracies

20:45 Election results

23:25 Trump vs Harris

29:08 Cabinet picks

36:58 Rapid Fire

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Programming Alliance Podcast. Today, we have Matthew on the show and he's an incredible and sharp young man. He's a junior in high school, 16 years of age, runs the Young Republicans Club at his local high school. And so we're going to talk about politics with the youth, the youth movement, all kinds of cool topics. So let's get into it. so much. Bye. Bye.

MP - Dad: 0:27

Hey Matthew, thanks for joining the programming Alliance podcast. We're excited to have you on You are somebody that we know through family and ultimately I found out you run the Young Republicans Club. We've had a lot of interesting discussions about that at your school. But you are interested, intrigued, and curious about politics and the economy and how the world works. And you're, you know, a youthful guy. And so we wanted to sort of scratch the surface on what the youth is thinking today. So I think you're a great Kind of opportunity for us to, you know, get into that. So, the boys have come up with a number of questions that we wanted to go over with you. And, you're a little bit older than them. You are 16, is that right?

MP - Matthew: 1:08

Yep.

MP - Dad: 1:09

Okay, 16. Max and Will are 11 and 13, respectively. And so, without further ado, let's get into some of the things we wanted to talk to Matthew about. I'm pretty sure you're the president or like the leader of your young Republicans club thing Why did you want to run for president?

MP - Matthew: 1:28

Okay. So, it was a club at one point. Not at my years at my school. And so when I got to my school, I was thinking, this, this needs to be a club. And I was thinking at freshman year, sophomore year, then we got to my junior year and that's election year. And I said, All right, it's go time. Like this has to happen. Like, especially at my school where we lean left a little bit more than right. It, it needs to be there and I need to inform kids who don't know about politics. Plus a lot of them can't even vote, but they need to know it's election year. They need to understand what's happening and we need to send people down the right path. So I decided to start the club little backstory. It went from first meeting was 25 kids. And then the second meeting was a hundred kids. And then the third meeting was 150 kids. And then after Trump won the election, the meeting after it was 200 kids. And I can show you guys pictures, but it's a tiny classroom. And these kids are just like, it's like a mosh pit in there. It's crazy.

MP - Dad: 2:31

that is awesome. Well congrats to you that must be very rewarding to grow from 24 like basically 10x your Your group. Wow, great. You guys watched the election live and

MP - Matthew: 2:44

it's called a community period. It's like a set club period. And it was not during the election. It was the day after the election.

MP - Dad: 2:51

What got you into politics and all of this madness kind of

MP - Matthew: 2:56

I agree. There's a lot of madness. I think what got me into politics the most was the election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. I wasn't really that into it. Obviously I was only like, what, 12 years old or something like that. But I just found it really interesting there. And also the one with Trump and Hillary, there was a lot of drama around it. I mean, obviously I haven't been alive for that long of a time. Neither of you guys. But politics have evolved into this insane thing. It's the, it's changed so much from what it used to be. And I wanted to get involved. I wanted to learn about it. I mean, it's our country and we need to like, we need to learn about this stuff. And also growing up. While I was in middle school, I did and elementary school also like us history. I just found super fascinating and economics and everything. I just find that a lot of fun to learn about. So over the past couple of years, I've just gotten really passionate about it just over time, just growing my understanding of everything. And. That's kind of how I got involved with it and stuff. Yeah,

MP - Dad: 3:55

Okay, so similar ages really to where Max and Will are is where you got intrigued about it or curious about it Yeah, okay. So, why did you like, drift towards the conservative, like, side?

MP - Matthew: 4:11

My immediate family is conservative. They've been voting Republican and I, and I can remember clearly in my head, I was like, when the Trump and Hillary election happened, I was like, mom and dad, who are you voting for? Cause we did a mock election at our school. And I, at the point at that point, I just like. It wasn't really a big deal to me. Like I didn't really understand it. It was just like, I mean, obviously you guys understand it's like lala land when you're like eight or nine years old. So I just wasn't really paying attention. So, I asked them and they're like Trump. And at the time I didn't really understand it. Obviously I heard bad things about Hillary Clinton, like everybody did. But now I really understand it. I've leaned conservative my whole life. I grew up like that. That's just like me being A Catholic, like my family is very Catholic that's how I've gotten here, I guess. Yeah.

MP - Dad: 4:56

faith kind of underpinned it a bit, and then it sounds like faith and family,

MP - Matthew: 5:00

Faith and family. I just grew up the right way. I guess.

MP - Dad: 5:03

Yeah. Mm hmm.

MP - Matthew: 5:05

Yeah.

MP - Dad: 5:06

Well, it's interesting too, because people ask me this sometimes, well, frequently on social media, particularly with certain posts. You know, why are you introducing your kids to these things? And a lot of times I will reply with, look, it's not that I really wanted to, but things like faith, family, freedom. Kids have been under attack and so we kind of have to we have to get ahead of it And and so that's one of the reasons that we got into it and similarly I think to your point like times are different The news is different. It's more present. We have social media and it's It's either kids are gonna learn it by watching it watching somewhere else or they can learn by watching it together with their parents. And so we've decided to take a more active role in trying to unpack and understand the things that are happening in the world, politics, different candidates, their policies, and make informed decisions. And our decisions largely lean the same, same way as, as probably yourself in terms of conservative views.

MP - Matthew: 6:04

Social media, obviously, you growing up, like, social media wasn't around. Now it's changed the game completely, especially for us. Gen Z and Gen Alpha just completely changed it for us. And not only that, like, Not to get off track with it, but drugs, like that's another thing. That's in our everyday society for my parents, like they've told me like that, it wasn't like that for them, especially just going off of social media, like a lot of people nowadays like for example, Charlie Kirk's tour, like it's called a brainwash tour. Like people are getting brainwashed day, night in, day out. All the time, literally all the time. And it's, it frustrates me so much because you'll just hear stuff that you've seen on the internet, like five minutes ago that they're saying. And it's just like, they're completely seeing stuff off the internet. And that's where all these conspiracy theories come from too. And yeah, no, it's literally changed our generation completely. But yeah.

MP - Dad: 7:00

Agreed. Yeah. So, the thing is, to learn, like, about this stuff, do you think we learned it at, like, a good age? I think we started at, like, 10 and 12, or, were you 11? 12. Yeah, 12 and 10. So then, do you think that's a good age, or should it be less to start learning about politics, or

MP - Matthew: 7:21

I mean, in my opinion, the earlier, the better. I feel like I found out a little too late, to be honest. You guys are striving in life. Like you guys have all the right opinions, all the right mindset. And honestly yeah, I mean, the earlier, the better you got to learn about this stuff. This is how we change the future of our nation. To be honest, I don't really have a set age that I think people should be learning about this stuff. I feel like your guys age I feel like that's where you start to develop an actual understanding of the real world. And I think that that helps you guys process it a little bit more. Like, for example like when I was eight, like I was saying earlier, like you're not focused on politics. You're not focused on like economy. You think money grows off trees. You're not going to focus on taxes and stuff at the age of eight years old. but you guys are developing, you guys should be learning about this stuff. So I think you guys have found out and developed the understanding of politics and the real world at a very good age.

MP - Dad: 8:15

I agree. Yeah, and people kind of lump politics into a broad spectrum of things, but understanding economy, business, taxes how systems work, right, like, like that's not a crazy thing to learn about. A lot of it you do learn in history, in civics, and those are classes that are taught around the same age. If we put this policy in place, what will it do? What will it mean? What will it do to the economy? Let's think about it. We did that with a number of policies that we heard about, whether it was no tax on tips or 25, 000 first buyer, home buyer credit or, or, or whatever. And we'd try to think about like, okay, well, who does this benefit? And we'd, go through. All those cycles and it usually led us to believe that the Democrat policies were not very good. In fact, they would probably spike inflation even further, but, but nonetheless, yeah, I think it's important for kids to know because then as they get into a stage where they either get their first job or whatever, they're just more prepared, like they're, they're more prepared. And so, we certainly get a lot of criticism for introducing these topics to the kids early, but ultimately I think it just prepares them better to your point. And

MP - Matthew: 9:21

Oh yeah, I totally

MP - Dad: 9:22

And it doesn't mean we can't have fun. We're like people are like, oh, just let them let them be kids Well, gosh, we do a lot of kids. We still do a lot of kid stuff. I can tell you

MP - Matthew: 9:30

Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, it just makes everything better in my opinion. So, yeah. A

MP - Dad: 9:36

Yeah, I totally agree i've heard that in school you do things kind of like um Like debates almost right?

MP - Matthew: 9:46

little bit. A little bit,

MP - Dad: 9:47

yeah, yeah or something like that, right? And we're also looking toward doing starting to do a little bit more of that stuff for this channel So how did how do most of those debate things go? And how do you like to prepare normally? Okay

MP - Matthew: 10:05

And it was based around Arizona's policies. So it was against, it was Young Republicans versus Young Democrats Club. And everybody got a proposition. And so, for example, me. Nobody did Proposition 314 on the Democrat side. Now, I did Proposition 314. And then, for example, like somebody on my team did 311 and 138. It's just focused on how we did it. We didn't really like a debate. It was a bipartisan panel. We kind of just shared opinions. But basically, we kind of just spoke to a group of people at our school, explaining to them how it affects us. How voting yes or no can help or worsen our state. And how it can affect our lives for the next four years. I feel like the reason that we chose, and I was a part of this decision to do. A bipartisan panel of propositions instead of the whole United States topics is because there was a lot of propositions on the ballot this year. Usually not that many, and I was reading through them cause I didn't. At first I didn't really like care to read for them. Obviously I knew like the main ones, I feel like everybody had a new, there, there was a lot of teachers that actually came in too and listened to us and it was super cool. The way I prepared just in my research ran it by teachers. Made sure that it was okay. Wasn't rocket science, but kind of just did what we could.

MP - Dad: 11:29

As Will said, we may engage in more of this. We did a live event a little bit earlier today and taking questions and things like that. And those are really good skills to build, but it's, it's also a little bit nerve wracking, right? It's like you get a little bit anxious because you, you, you've got to, you've got to really defend your ideas. But ultimately, like, I think that's great. Like, if you can defend your ideas in public and be articulate about them, then that means you probably got. Good ideas. Or

MP - Matthew: 11:55

Yeah. And the other thing is like, I've been, like, kids have asked me at school like different questions and have opposed my opinions and I'm like, sure dude, you can have your own opinions. But, I have my own opinions too, like it's a free country. It's our first amendment. For example, there was a kid one time that asked me, why are you so into politics? Like you can't even vote. And I'm like, it's the future of our country. Like we have to know about it. Like going back on what we started with,

MP - Dad: 12:23

Yeah.

MP - Matthew: 12:23

It's a passion of mine. And not only that, it's a passion that everybody should have in general, no matter what way you sway. Yeah,

MP - Dad: 12:30

I don't see what's the downside of that. But we get that a lot too. It's like, worry about it when you can vote. And I think it's too late because it'd be like, Learning how to drive a car the first time you turn 16 and step behind a wheel, right? You do driver's education and you get prepared for it and you do Preparation and practice and understand how a car works and all that, right? Before you, get on the road So, it's it's wild, so. Data suggests that Gen Z and Gen Alpha might be more conservative. Is that true? Why and why not? Yeah, anecdotally, in your view, what do you think?

MP - Matthew: 13:13

I think it can go both ways. Only reason I say that is because of social media and with social media has come the LGBTQ community. I think that social media in general, most places censor a lot of stuff out. Matter of fact, I just wrote a whole essay on this about censorship in our country. I think that there's different places that censor out stuff bias. Their bias towards different stuff and it goes liberal and conservative. That's why I say it goes both ways. Now, in my opinion, I think that our generation is more conservative, but looking at it from different people's eyes, I can say that it's more liberal. Just because of these different groups that have come up saying that they have to be liberal because the conservatives target their groups, which is not what we're meant to do. But people take it that way because of social media. Yeah, I think it I think it could go both ways though. But yeah, I definitely, at my school in particular, I definitely see, I can see like a difference in the two groups

MP - Dad: 14:12

hmm.

MP - Matthew: 14:13

opinions wise.

MP - Dad: 14:14

Okay. Yeah, that's fair. It social media is a big influencing factor in all this and we don't have to get into LGBTQ too much. But just in our experience, it's a They have a very powerful voice on social media, and they really influence the, let's say, the social media airways, in my opinion, my direct experience with our channel and all of that. And so I definitely feel like the liberal voice is very assertive, very powerful, very organized on social media, and that is something that the conservatives have not been historically good at, but I do think that they are rallying in a lot of ways And creating outlets, channels, podcasts, et cetera. the. Headwinds for us are heavy. It is, it's like a haboob. Those that don't know what a haboob is. We live in Arizona and so haboob is like a big dust storm. It's like the, the mummy, the, the wall of dust come. It's like that. And cer with certain groups in particular, but nonetheless, we can move on. That's a, that, but that's a great perspective. And I think it's really important that we do have. People like yourself and the group that you run and represent really standing up for what you think is right, what you think is true, what, what your opinions are and, and it is a free country. And so it's just important that people stand up for what they think is right. And it's been difficult on some topics, but I feel like there's the more people that do that, the more people that will do that. You know what I mean?

MP - Matthew: 15:49

I think I think another thing is I see a difference in the different platforms because I have most of them. I think that there needs to be some type of like way we can meet in the middle. Like for example, Rumble, free of speech in a way. I think the only problem with it is that there's a lot of conspiracy theories and misinformation that can be spread on it. As much as I love some of the people that talk on it, I still think that there's some stuff that

MP - Dad: 16:16

There's some wild stuff there.

MP - Matthew: 16:17

There is some wild stuff, I totally agree with that. And then, on the other side of things, it's like, YouTube. I don't know what you want to call it, like competitors, but in a sense, but I don't know. I don't totally agree with everything YouTube does either. And I don't agree with take talk and I don't agree with Instagram. But yeah, I feel like there's needs to be a middle to it where we can spread our opinions willingly.

MP - Dad: 16:40

Mm hmm.

MP - Matthew: 16:42

this like crazy stuff come up that like, for example, Rumble has there's some wild stuff on there. I totally agree. That's why I'm saying that there needs to be a middle to it.

MP - Dad: 16:50

Yeah, it's interesting. The whole like free speech versus censorship versus information, misinformation, it's a, it's difficult topic to solve. It's probably its own podcast.

MP - Matthew: 16:58

Yeah, yeah,

MP - Dad: 16:59

point we could get into but I noticed that too, where, some might argue that the public square will sort out. Ideas if it's a crazy idea and it's a conspiracy then it just won't get attention or it won't get you know And and so there's there's maybe that opinion, but then there's also There's a lot of people that will fall for a lot of crazy stuff. So you got to be I guess you do have to be careful. It's a balance

MP - Matthew: 17:23

yeah, I feel like with the conspiracy theory some of the crazy ones I see this is getting off track a little bit But some of the crazy ones I hear about and I don't know where your guys's stance is on it but um like the hawaii wildfires Like a blazer. Yeah, like

MP - Dad: 17:39

I

MP - Matthew: 17:40

this or no?

MP - Dad: 17:41

haven't heard of that one.

MP - Matthew: 17:43

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh Don't even get me started with it. It's unbelievable There's this video and it looks so way AI generated and it's like the laser being shot down in the middle of a city You

MP - Dad: 17:54

Yeah. What?

MP - Matthew: 17:57

And then like the other one is like Hurricane Milton, like they're saying it was like to sway the election, like the government made it.

MP - Dad: 18:03

Yeah. Yeah, in fact, with that one we have talked about. Will did a little bit of research on That one I do actually find interesting. I think it is probably possible. It's probably like really hard though. There's not really any proof, but that would be so cool if we could control the weather.

MP - Matthew: 18:19

That's what I'm saying is like, like my friend, we were talking about it at the, at our lunch table one time, I just I don't get how we can like control the weather like that. Have you ever seen in the air, like the planes that would like the smoke that come out of the back and they're like shooting up like a rocket.

MP - Dad: 18:36

Yeah.

MP - Matthew: 18:37

Like, they're kind of like straight, like you don't even know what they are. Like they were saying like, yeah, that can control it. But I was like. What? Like, that makes no sense. I don't know, I feel like it would be hard to make a hurricane.

MP - Dad: 18:47

Yeah, yeah, I think I'm pretty sure it's wearing the thing It's like these are poor chemicals in it. It's like make it go bigger So I don't know it's like or it's more like they go around it and multiple times like they create some sort of airwave Yeah, there are I mean they have been doing experiments on manipulating the weather since the World War Two, but I believe it's on a more of a micro scale. Like we were talking about this. In fact, we had a guest on that we were tickling conspiracy theories with a bit, but yes, they can put silver nitrate and dry ice into the air in certain volumes. They can do that through Projectiles that put it out into spots and so it can create very localized smaller weather patterns This is what we suspect is it can do some of that and maybe it can even steer things a little bit But like when you're talking about a hurricane, I think it was well One of our guests was like describing the magnitude of a hurricane And it's so massive right it like lifts water, you know for a couple hundred square miles Mm hmm

MP - Matthew: 19:54

the hurricane? I feel like I just saw this on the Hurricane Milton. But like, they have like a plane that goes through it or whatever. They're like, air storm chasers. When they're inside the eye of a hurricane, it's like, How are you supposed to make that? It's massive. It's a massive hurricane. It makes no sense to me.

MP - Dad: 20:09

Yeah, and that would, yeah, that would really surprise me. But I, I wouldn't doubt that they have a lot of military experiments in this area and they can do certain things. But to do something of that magnitude seems, seems, yeah, kind of unthinkable. But, yeah, there's the, that's, that's another one that's out there for sure. Conspiracy theories.

MP - Matthew: 20:30

Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah.

MP - Dad: 20:32

Yeah, anyway. Going back to what we were talking about before we rea before we reared off on this pretty cool stuff about, you know, conspiracy theories. How do you think that the people in your school and just your whole school in general reacted to the results of the election?

MP - Matthew: 20:53

So we actually did a mock election. And It was actually split pretty fair for the most part. I think Trump did end up winning at my school. Which, yeah, I mean, there's a lot more families, I think, that like we're close with that are all Republican. But yeah we, they won, I think it was like 54 percent to 46 percent or something like that. But pretty, obviously that's pretty split.

MP - Dad: 21:16

There any mental health issues after the election results? Any kids losing it?

MP - Matthew: 21:21

no, but I heard about some crazy stuff on the internet. I like. The suicide rate went up or something.

MP - Dad: 21:27

Huh? What?

MP - Matthew: 21:28

yeah.

MP - Dad: 21:29

Well, I've seen this video of like top 25 like reactions to Trump winning

MP - Matthew: 21:35

Oh my gosh, it's so funny.

MP - Dad: 21:37

car and they're like

MP - Matthew: 21:39

Yes No, no, no like that one you're talking about on

MP - Dad: 21:42

Yeah

MP - Matthew: 21:42

so funny. It was a little eerie at school. I feel like that's almost everywhere, just cause I feel like the school administrations in general lean left. I don't know, how was it for you guys after the election? You guys see anything

MP - Dad: 21:54

it wasn't too crazy, actually. Yeah, we can't really talk about politics at our school. So, teachers Some people I mean, I've seen, I did see some teachers that looked a little weirder than they were. After, but like I didn't see like Foley like, like uh Trump won and like all that. Mm-hmm I mean, I don't And your teachers didn't come in and do the No. Do this? No. Okay. Actually, my friends, my friends in class

MP - Matthew: 22:20

I guess that's that's different from my school because obviously we're a high school private high school So I guess I see the difference in the middle school stuff, but

MP - Dad: 22:28

Yeah, I think when we get into high school there, it's a little bit different, William. Yeah, for us, I don't really see any teachers that overreacted at all.

MP - Matthew: 22:38

But there was one kid at our school that came the day of the election day of democracy He came in and he was wearing like a Harris Walls like flag over him and had a hat on and I was like, what in the Oh my gosh,

MP - Dad: 22:55

just lost last night. The next day you come there with like a giant Trump shirt and then you're wearing a MAGA hat.

MP - Matthew: 23:02

my gosh, there's one kid that wore a flag as a cape around campus.

MP - Dad: 23:05

It's kind of cool, you guys get like a Republican group.

MP - Matthew: 23:08

Yeah.

MP - Dad: 23:09

I think we're actually trying to start one right now. Yeah, I kind of want one when I get into like middle school or something. That sounds fun to be in. Yeah, I think generally they're high school, those are high school types of clubs, What's the main difference between Trump and Harris this election?

MP - Matthew: 23:27

Well, I think they're obviously, I mean, they're in different parties, so that's the main

MP - Dad: 23:31

Yeah, that's the main, but like other like

MP - Matthew: 23:33

The first one is. The border, the Southern border. a big deal, big talk throughout the whole election. And I feel like that was one of the main differences. Obviously conservatives were for having a secure border and Kamala Harris had different opinions. I don't know if you guys see it, but I see it. And I talked about this in my speech in the bipartisan panel. I serve at the Andre House, once a month, for example. And I see The homeless rate goes up and up and it's and it gets out of control and then crime rates is another thing And then drugs, that's another one always and that's always gonna be here the other one abortion

MP - Dad: 24:17

my gosh. Wait, did anyone talk about the northern border? Canada people come in?

MP - Matthew: 24:24

No

MP - Dad: 24:24

I don't think that's just as big of a problem, Max. The hockey stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're the worst. Aren't they the worst? These Canadians and their hockey sticks? Chugging maple syrup. Yeah, there's a, there's a maple syrup crisis on the northern border, Max. Holy smokes.

MP - Matthew: 24:41

No, but the other one was yeah, the other one was abortion. Obviously

MP - Dad: 24:45

So you're Catholic?

MP - Matthew: 24:46

Yeah, I'm Catholic. But we're men. I don't really talk about it that much. Cause I honestly feel like there's some Republicans that have swaying opinions on it. It's honestly, I feel like abortion is its own topic, but broad standpoint, Republicans are pro life and Democrats have different views on that. Proposition 139 got passed in Arizona, the abortion one. It, honestly, talking about it, it makes me sick to my stomach because that's like a human life being taken away,

MP - Dad: 25:16

Yeah.

MP - Matthew: 25:16

as you hear

MP - Dad: 25:18

so weird. And like the other side says it's like a clump of cells. And even though it's actually a, it's a real human child. I'm a clump of cells. That will grow in your stomach until it comes out. And they just say, yeah, like it's. It's so weird how they're just like yeah, it's just a clump of cells, even though it's actually a living organism Yeah,

MP - Matthew: 25:42

to me, honestly.

MP - Dad: 25:43

Yeah, okay, okay

MP - Matthew: 25:48

What do you, but what do you guys think? What were the two main points?

MP - Dad: 25:51

Oh, I like the pro-life. Yeah. I feel like I do not like murder of children. We live in a border state too. Arizona. Oh yeah. So we see, we, we see directly a lot of the challenges with it in terms of. poverty rates, homelessness drugs, as you said, and those things we've seen like directly in our community. So what else though, boys, were things that stuck out to you? Well, well, I kind of think the debt, Foreign wars. Yeah, foreign wars too. I mean, Cause we are on the edge of like, World War 3. With all the wars

MP - Matthew: 26:23

gosh. Yeah. That's

MP - Dad: 26:24

Yeah. It's escalating. And now that we let Ukraine like, have all of the like, use their missiles. That's literally wanting us to go to war with Russia. Which is something you do not want to do.

MP - Matthew: 26:37

I also think the money that we've spent in Ukraine and not saying like, I don't care about their lives, but like, it's just unbelievable. Like we need to focus on our own country's problems. We have to focus on homelessness. We have to focus on our own country's debt in our economy another one I have pulling out of Afghanistan. That's another one. I mean, all the money we've lost in those two things, like it's unbelievable. Really? Yeah. It's crazy to think about. Like, I have a job now and I'm making in my opinion, a good amount of money, but then like, you hear the words, like billions of dollars come out of their mouths and I'm just like, I'm never going to make that in my life. So like,

MP - Dad: 27:18

That's a lot of

MP - Matthew: 27:19

it's unbelievable. It's actually

MP - Dad: 27:20

Heck yeah. Yeah, a billion dollars is so much money. It's hard to even, yeah, wrap your head around a thousand millions. I have like the debt counter, or like the thing that counts how much debt. And it goes up so fast It's wild and it shows all the debt lags going in well, and we've talked a lot about the debt quite a bit because Just its influence on gen alpha in terms of inflation as the debt goes up there's monetary policy of having to print more money so that extra, you know, money in the system creates inflation and everything costs more and that's impacting these guys. It's impacting you a lot. I really, I sympathize with your generation and it's going to be worse for Gen Alpha. But when I think about like when, when I got out of school, I was able to, within, let's see, six months, I was able to afford, I had just a moderate job. I was an engineer. I had a good pay good pay. I think it was like 32, 000 a year, which I thought was okay. This is great. I left college made made 32 grand And I bought a condo. I bought I bought a condo six months out of college Today that is going to be so hard for young people to do

MP - Matthew: 28:31

I think we talked about this when we had lunch. It's just like, if there was a multiplier for the generations, it would be unbelievable. Like, my dad, out of, he went to USC, and out of college he was in a condo. Right on the beach in Manhattan beach with his buddies. Like nowadays that would be like unheard of,

MP - Dad: 28:52

Yeah, it's impossible. Yeah, so inflation's the invisible tax and it's a big one. But okay, what else guys? So Maha is with rfk jr, right? And yeah, I'm pretty sure he's basically then gonna be in Trump's cabinet. Do you like all of Trump's cabinet picks, which are a lot of them controversial, and how does your generation feel about Maha?

MP - Matthew: 29:18

All right. So I'm going to start with the cabinet picks one. I think the two main ones that at least I've focused on, I haven't done a lot of research and knew it cause there's a lot of cabinet picks and I'm. On the golf course, like all the time. But the first one is Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary. I like the pick and I don't, I kind of sit in the middle with it. He wants to get rid of all the generals that were involved in the DEI.

MP - Dad: 29:43

Yep. Mhm.

MP - Matthew: 29:44

and he, yeah, he wants them to go. And I think I think it's a, he's a little iffy, obviously he has experience. I mean, I don't know if you guys know he fought in the Afghanistan and Iraq. So obviously he has some level of expertise in that area. But he's never, he has no experience leading a group of I don't even know how much troops it is. 1. 2 or 1. 3 million troops.

MP - Dad: 30:08

Yeah. And a massive budget. And, yeah.

MP - Matthew: 30:10

I think it's, In my opinion. And other people say it, I've heard the news say multiple times. It's one of the most challenging jobs in his cabinet for sure. He's second in command when it comes to the military and then the other one, obviously you guys know is Elon and Vivek the department of government efficiency.

MP - Dad: 30:26

Mm hmm. I love this, too.

MP - Matthew: 30:29

Yeah, I mean, two very intelligent guys. Obviously Musk, in my opinion, is like one of the biggest influencers when it comes to our economy, our modern economy right now. And they're putting him and Vivek in charge of government spending right now. He runs Tesla and SpaceX. Elon does. So, he doesn't really have any experience in the government part of things until he joined Trump's campaign. And so, it, it leaves me speechless, almost. Like, obviously, I love the guy. He's a very intelligent guy. It's going to be weird because we, I, in my opinion, I would have never thought that he was going to be in politics ever involved in any of it. On the other hand, the Vec, very smart guy very intelligent. I don't know. I was saying this when he was running for a Republican president the Republican presidential candidate, I don't think he has What it takes to be at the top of the line. Only reason I say that is because he's younger, he's on the younger side of things. Obviously very smart guy, but he's just never been involved in in something like leading this much of a I don't know, like just leading a country like

MP - Dad: 31:37

It's a big scope. Yeah.

MP - Matthew: 31:38

yeah, being in a high part of our government.

MP - Dad: 31:41

We liked Vivek a lot as well in the, Presidential runoff he was probably our favorite pick, but you're right. He's young and so and Trump just had so much

MP - Matthew: 31:51

Yeah, obviously later on, he'll, he'll be

MP - Dad: 31:54

Think he'll be you will see him for a long time and same with JD. I think we'll see them in politics for a while, but I look at it I think you bring up good points. Like some of these people don't have a ton of experience in these government roles. And I look at that as like, that's, it's a double edged sword. Like part of that's good because they're like, okay, I'm not going to put up with this inefficiency, stupid stuff that you guys do here. So we're going to cut that out and be smarter. Like we run a business. So I like that. But at the same time, they might have trouble. Cutting through some of it because they don't understand the bureaucracy as much so it'll be interesting to see how they do it I agree with you in terms of we have the sharpest minds around working on it So that's cool. Like I like

MP - Matthew: 32:34

I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty optimistic about it, but like I said, it could go both ways just with their experience in these realms. Yeah, I feel like those are like the two main people in my cabinet picks, in my opinion. Also, Not a cabinet pick, but I love JD Vance. Great guy. Super, super smart. And he's been involved and he has relations with a lot of the problems that we're dealing with now. For example, he served in the military. So that's a big deal. Having him as vice president, being able to deal with that type of stuff. I'm excited to see what he does for

MP - Dad: 33:07

Yeah, I I I expect and I hope that he's more active as a vice president than what we've seen maybe in past vice presidents. Certainly more so active than Kamala Harris. But he's very well spoken. He's articulate. He's smart. He handles himself incredibly well. We've seen him on, difficult, you know, stages and debates and and things. And he's obviously a very intelligent guy. I'm optimistic that he'll Just bring more horsepower I'm optimistic as well that we just have so much talent in the Republican Party. Now. I didn't feel that way Four years ago certainly four to eight years ago but now I feel like it's just a ton of talent and it's It's overwhelmingly obvious that there's more talent there and I expect that, you know The Democrats will come out with their own talent pool, but right now it just doesn't exist It's a bunch of

MP - Matthew: 33:55

Yeah, no, I, yeah, no, I totally agree. And then what was the second question you guys had?

MP - Dad: 34:00

How does like Gen Z feel about Maha?

MP - Matthew: 34:04

Make America healthy again. Right.

MP - Dad: 34:06

Yes.

MP - Matthew: 34:07

Time out. Okay.

MP - Dad: 34:07

Hmm.

MP - Matthew: 34:08

important that our country is healthy no matter what. End of discussion. I think. It's very important. I don't really think that we talk about it a ton

MP - Dad: 34:19

hmm.

MP - Matthew: 34:20

so focused on the Make America Great Again that Make America Healthy Again isn't really in our viewpoints necessarily. But also I feel like MAGA, Like covers the make America healthy again, at least what I see in my standpoint on that. Now from my own opinion, I think that it's very important that we keep America healthy again.

MP - Dad: 34:40

It's wild to me that it's actually a partisan topic. It really shouldn't be. We're talking about, things like rooting out chronic illness out of our society from the foods and things that we put in our drinking water or medicines and so forth. The low hanging fruit seems to be all of the chemicals that they put in our food that are addictive in nature and we know that are bad for us. The food pyramid and the collusion and corruption that has come between, you know, government entities like the FDA and big food industries and the fact that executives are bouncing back and forth between the government and these food companies and their boards and just all the weird collusion that's going on there in terms of how things get done and decided and what gets promoted and put out as healthy standards. And so I am really pumped about the just like just tearing all that down. I think RFK will do a good job of that. He knows it really well. And there's other people in that movement, like Callie and Casey means that have been very active in, in this. I think we're pretty optimistic about that. The other part is some of the chronic disease and correlations to things like vaccines, our water supply, how we consume other products like milk in terms of how we pasteurize it and all of that, which I don't know, I'm not a scientist, but I expect that they'll they'll stoke a flame under some of those and root out. But I, yeah, I, like I said, I'm not necessarily like super studied on it to know what's the best thing or not, but certainly it's hard to argue when you look at the data or if you've listened to RFK on a longer form podcast like Rogan he's lays out a pretty compelling case that There are some very obvious correlations to some of the things that we've put in our bodies over the years and chronic diseases like autism and Diabetes and so forth. So we'll see. We'll see. We're optimistic about Maha we had a chance to go and see them when they were here. They came to Scottsdale Charlie Kirk hosted them matthew. I appreciate you Going through a bunch of questions. We could probably sit and Talk about this for a while. Yeah, we could, we could, we could, we'll probably see you at AmericaFest. We're going to be hosting a booth there. You may come down, hang out with us. We're going to be doing a lot of interviews and Some live events and some podcasts there. If you're open to it, we'll, we'll definitely want to have you involved in that.

MP - Matthew: 36:54

For sure.

MP - Dad: 36:55

As for today, we have one more section that we cannot. And I'll forget this part. This one, this one is a surprise, but it's fun. Rapid fire. Let's go. All right. The rules are, you have to answer each question as fast. As possible.

MP - Matthew: 37:14

Okay, this could be hard. I have dyslexia, so we'll have to see where this goes, but

MP - Dad: 37:18

Alright.

MP - Matthew: 37:19

try our best. We'll try our best.

MP - Dad: 37:20

Would you rather be stuck in traffic with Rachel Maddow or Kamala Harris? That's tough.

MP - Matthew: 37:28

Rachel,

MP - Dad: 37:29

All right. If you had a superpower, what would it be?

MP - Matthew: 37:34

stopping time.

MP - Dad: 37:35

Interesting, okay. Excluding us, who is your idol?

MP - Matthew: 37:40

My dad.

MP - Dad: 37:42

Okay. Would you rather die to a great white shark or flaming hot volcano?

MP - Matthew: 37:47

Volcano. I do not want to get eaten.

MP - Dad: 37:50

What is the coolest invention in your lifetime? Don't know Would you rather fight a 1, 000 pound duck or 1, 001 pound ducks

MP - Matthew: 38:06

1, 001 pound ducks

MP - Dad: 38:08

have you ever been stuck in a bathroom stall without toilet paper? Yeah.

MP - Matthew: 38:15

sure. Yeah.

MP - Dad: 38:16

Oh, yeah. Nice, well that concludes Rapid Fire. Wow, amazing.

MP - Matthew: 38:20

are some, those are some great questions, guys. Those are, those are great questions.

MP - Dad: 38:24

Yeah, a little out of left field, but that's a fun section. So with that let's call it a wrap for the podcast today, but Matthew Hey, you brought a lot of really great insights We love hearing from Gen Z and what you're dealing with it gives us a lot of perspective we got some gen alpha kids that are gonna be you know, right on your heels in terms of the things that you're going through and We appreciate what you're doing at school and beyond fighting for Conservative values and thanks for standing up and doing that. We'll call it a wrap, but thanks for coming on and we'll see you in a couple of weeks at American fest.

MP - Matthew: 38:57

Yep. Sounds great. Thank you.

38:59

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