Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from rough and rugged Wyoming, out here in Jackson. I'm just about to leave after attending the Salt Conference, which is kind of like the counter conference to the Federal Reserve's annual get-together. There were a lot of wonderful people here. I had a chance to hang out with Senator Lummis and met with Tim Scott. By the way, Senator Scott is an amazing guy—really nice, incredibly affable, smart, and has a strong moral core. He is a man of very high integrity. I also saw the governor and all the luminaries in the crypto industry, including Caitlin Long and Steve Lupian, as well as some BlackRock people running around doing BlackRock stuff. Circle people were there too; you name it, we saw it. It was the who's who of the crypto space, like a mini Milken or a mini Whiff. Kudos to the Salt organizers for being able to bring so many people together.
Anyway, the point of this video is that, according to news reports, it’s very likely that the candidate I chose to back, RFK, is going to drop out of the race on Friday and endorse Donald Trump. There’s a natural question that people ask when that happens: do people fall in line and create a unity government? Even though you may hold your nose, do you endorse the guy at the top? I get asked a lot about this. I was recently in an interview with Sin City Crypto, and they asked me about it. Other people, for example, when I’m on Gin’s show—he’s a Trump supporter—ask me about it as well. They say, “Come on, you’ve got to endorse the orange man.”
My broader point is that the system is badly damaged. It’s a bipartisan duopoly that operates on the concept of the lesser of two evils. It is absolutely extraordinary how much we’re willing to excuse in people because we don’t want to let the other side win. The Democrats claim to be a party of democracy, believing that everybody’s voice and vote should count. Numerous third-party candidates, RFK included, have been directly targeted by the DNC to prevent them from appearing on the ballot. They took the time to collect tens of thousands of signatures, hire lawyers, and file the paperwork. Any technicality, any issue—even if it doesn’t actually exist—they’re going to sue you over it to prevent you from getting on the ballot because of the risk of taking votes away from them. That’s not democracy.
When one weaponizes the legal system to attack their political opponents, it’s not democracy. We’ve endured four years of lawfare against the cryptocurrency industry, and people on Team Blue seem to excuse it, saying, “Well, Trump did some stuff.” No, Choke Point 2.0 was a unique phenomenon of Biden, as is the SEC going after nearly every American exchange and most layer one protocols in some way or another. We do not live in an age of clarity. When we’ve asked for it, including legislation that was common sense, bipartisan, and sensible, it was either vetoed or killed in committee because of this current administration. Yet we’re told that somehow they’re going to be pro-crypto.
The party that believes in democracy, which threatened to remove the sitting president using the 25th Amendment, picked their candidate with no votes or democratic process. They tell us that this candidate’s policies—we’re just going to have to wait until after she’s been elected to know what they are. There’s no accountability there, and there’s no apology. It’s a crooked and broken system. Saying, “Well, we really hate the orange guy,” is not an excuse to vote for that. Holding your nose or thinking this will preserve and protect the institutions and the integrity of the United States of America—what exactly are we protecting?
The debates were really important to me because, for the first time ever, we could talk about new things—not which bathroom you use or which particular ethnic group seems to think they’re going to get screwed this election cycle, or poor versus rich, and all of this nonsense and noise. By the way, there were people at the DNC bragging about being billionaires, including the governor of Illinois. We had Oprah tell us how evil and unfair America is and how systemically racist it is, along with all the challenges she felt when she’s worth $2 billion.
1:07:35
26:05
26:19