Brock Pierce – Independent Presidential Candidate Transcript

Brock Pierce – Independent Presidential Candidate Transcript

Brock Pierce - Independent Presidential Candidate

Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 0:01
Hey folks, Rob McNealy here. Hey folks Rob McNealy here and I am super excited. Today we are talking to Brock Pierce. He is probably the quintessential godfather of crypto and it is a true honor to be speaking with you. Hey, Brock, how are you?

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 0:19
Grateful. Glad to be here.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 0:22
I’m glad you’re here too. So a funny thing happened to me about a week ago, I was scrolling through the internet scrolling through the Twitter’s and I see this announcement from you. On Twitter, it says you’re running for president. Tell me what’s going on here, man.

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 0:44
Well, I’m I’m running for president of the United States of America as an independent candidate.I guess the the Why is perhaps what you want to know?

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 0:56
I would love to know the why.

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 1:01
I’m very concerned about our collective future, you know, as a nation, but you know, as a species even, I look around, and I feel that we’re facing a number of existential threats. I see a nation that’s divided, I see polarization between the left and the right. And I don’t think that we’re on the right path. I’m very concerned about our collective future if we continue going down this path. And so I’m looking around for the last, you know, five years going, Okay, you know, where are these? You know, where are these people going? When are these people going to show up that are going to actually know how to fix this stuff, you know, kind of looking around waiting for something to happen, and no one’s really showing up. I see a lot of people talking about the changes that are needed, but I don’t see people throwing themselves, you know, into this type of running. And I think that this is a place from which we can make real change. And if no one else is going to do it, I guess I will. And I think there’s an important message that the American people need to hear right now, which is that we are all in this together, you know, this whole us versus them, we are us, and we are them. What happens to you is going to happen to me. And we need to find a way, I think, to transcend partisan politics to find a collective path forward, and so I’m excited to deliver a message that’s a little different than probably anything anyone’s heard, you know, at least in presidential candidates, which is a message from the heart, and it’s how do we reunite our nation? You know, how do we find that path forward together, so that there is a future for our kids and their kids and the generations that follow?

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 2:46
I think that is something that we need right now. But I’m not gonna softball you. I mean, I got I got a real question. I mean, we had Kanye West announced that he was gonna run for office and then right around the time, you know, that you announced as well. Is this a serious run army? And is this just like a vanity thing? And I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way. I was a member of the Libertarian Party I ran as a third party candidate, knowing that I would never win the third party candidate. Are you serious about this?

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 3:16
I’m always serious about everything I do. I mean, certainly a commitment like this. I don’t think you would do it. I mean, I wouldn’t do it for any reason other than is a very, very, very serious endeavor. And things are going, things are going really well. And I do believe there’s a path to winning. But the question is, what is winning? From my perspective, there’s three different versions of winning, at a minimum, delivering a message that can get us to focus on the things that matter if that message is amplified enough and heard by enough people that could bring about real change. And so I think that that’s called level one. Winning is delivering that message. And we’ll see how effective I can be in doing that. The next level of winning is if that message actually starts to become a movement, you know, a movement, this isn’t about me, this is about all of us that actually believe in transcending partisan politics to bring about real change in this nation at a time that we need it. You know, I believe this is the 11th hour, I believe this is our defining moment, you know, the future is going to happen to us, or it’s going to happen with us. And I encourage all of us to get involved, if you see what I see, you know, if you feel when I feel it’s time to do something, this is our time to act. And so that movement through this election in 2020, to 2022, to 2024. You know, this is intended to be a movement that will bring about real change. And it’s not about me, it’s about all of us, all of us that are willing to sign up to go do something about it, and that signing up might be as little as voting, but let’s actually start to create the world in which we all want to live. And so that movement, I’d say is the second level of winning, and obviously the third, would be to be in the White House and in January of next year.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 5:06
You said you have a path to winning. And, and I see multiple wins there. You have a path to get ballot access, what is your strategy to get on a ballot?

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 5:16
Yeah, so, um, we’re on the ballot of Oklahoma as of yesterday.And we have a giant team working across the country, we will be on many many ballots.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 5:31
Very cool. I know, it’s like, especially in some states and, you know, running independents almost harder than running, you know, third party and a lot of these places because the the signature requirements and, and let’s just be honest, the the duopoly political system that we have, they don’t want competition from people and candidates that aren’t controlled. And so they make that third party Rhonda, that independent run very, very challenging, just from the requirements gathering point of view. And so, I always want to just say okay, here, people want to run for But it’s like, okay, there’s an actual pragmatic issue of getting, you know, on the ballot. And so if you have a strategy for that, I mean, that is amazing. So are you how are you funding this campaign? Are you gonna be self funding? Are you looking for donors? What’s that looking like for you guys?

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 6:17
So I self funded the entire call it beginning process of the campaign and I’m still the largest contributor to the campaign. But I believe that you want as many people participating and feeling ownership in the process. And so clearly, we are looking for anyone that wants to donate to this to this cause to this campaign. And in an ideal world, that would be millions of people, you know, dating and donating $1 $5 $10 $20 that’s in an ideal world, what would happen here and, and we hope that many people choose to get involved.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 6:53
And I think that makes a lot of sense. You do need a community it’s like building a crypto project, you need a herd supporting it.

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 6:59
I’d say this is one of the mistakes that I think Bloomberg made. Bloomberg chose to self fund everything. The problem is when you fund everything, you’re not out there building community, right? You’re not out there, giving people a feeling of ownership, you know, just funding yourself causes you to do things that you wouldn’t do otherwise, which is putting yourself before the people as much as possible and all the people and realizing that, you know, that person that gave you $1 is is just a much they’ve opted in. They are a contributor as the person that gave you 20 $800. And, you know, going out there and give building that coalition building that community of supporters. And I think it’s an essential part of the process. And I think that Bloomberg would have done better had he chosen to involve as many people as possible versus self funding.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 7:50
Well, I think part of the problem is, is that he bought that portion essentially, and instead of like trying to build a community, he just thought he could buy his way around that. And he missed the most important function is getting that buy in from people. And I think that you’re right that that’s absolutely a catastrophic mistake he made on his part. So platform, what are your issues? What are your hot button topics that you’re going to be, you know, focused on during the campaign?

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 8:18
Well, I’m, obviously the areas where I’m differentiated is in technology. For one. I think that technology has clearly affected all of our lives and all of our businesses and it’s going to continue to do so. And how do we work with technology to enhance our lives? And so technology is clearly a core component of everything we’re doing as a as an entrepreneur as a small business builder and owner. Clearly, I’m a big supporter of small business. I would be a small business sort of President. It’s probably worth noting other major things right now clearly we we need reform around our police our run our justice system around our prison system. These are hot button topics right now. And I firmly believe that we need real reform in these areas, well being health, health care, all of these sorts of things we can talk about mental health probably being the most important of which, you know, it’s, we know when our body is unhealthy, but it’s, you know, because you can see and feel it. But when you’re, you’re having mental health issues or spiritual health issues, those are not recognized as much and I think our country has a real mental health issue right now, this has been a very traumatizing year, whether it be you know, fear of COVID itself or just fear of how am I going to pay my mortgage, my rent put food on the table might be fear around our our future, the uncertainty of just everything that’s happening. So it’s been a very traumatic year. And that’s something that is not being discussed, I think nearly enough, might be worth also just commenting on my process. And so what We’re going to be releasing this week is the details of this process. And so how do most politicians come up with their platform? And how do they define, you know, where do their policy ideas come from? It often comes from, you know, talking to experts, or lobbyists behind closed doors. But I’m going to do this a little differently, which is, instead of me meeting with people behind closed doors, I’m going to meet with these people. You know, with open doors, I’m going to do this in an open forum live in a town hall, so that if you want to see who I’m talking to, you know, where I’m getting my information from, and actually observe that conference, that that that process, that conversation, I invite you to tune in and actually watch and at the end, even to participate in the QA, and so that we can learn together. I don’t need to do this privately. I’ll show you who I get my information from. I’ll even you’ll watch me get educated in real time and you can learn right there alongside me and at the end of that process around each college policy issue, we’re going to be taking that portion of the platform and publishing that into a collaborative platform so that you can comment at it. And we can work on these issues together. You know, too often I think Polly politicians feel the need to have an answer to every question. versus just saying, I don’t know, I don’t have all the answers. But let’s get to that answer. And here’s my process for getting there. And I don’t know where that where the best information is going to come from. I know in the world of open source software by putting projects into GitHub, you know, everyone can become a contributor, because I truly believe that every one of our voices matter, you know, everyone’s voice should be heard, at least have the potential for it to be heard in every voice counts. And so I truly want to give us that feeling of participation. And so this is an invitation to, to get involved, be part of the process.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 11:50
You’re going to be doing that for your campaign as well, where you’re actually taking in real time through like a repository kind of website.

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 11:57
That’s the goal. That should all be live. Starting next week.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 12:01
I’m excited to see it actually. Okay, so we’re screwed right now. I mean, I think on so many metrics in the United States, we have a lot of problems that we’re facing right now. And in my not so humble opinion, I think 2021 is actually going to be worse than 2020. Because I think that’s when a lot of the the damage that I believe has been done to the economy is probably gonna start manifesting. So January 1 2021, there’s a Brock Pierce presidency, you’re inheriting a giant mass, what’s the first thing you’re going to do

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 12:37
in terms of the economy, while we need to basically get jump started again, you know, people have to are gonna have to get back to work at some point. Some of the data that I received yesterday and I haven’t fact checked this yet, can we fact check this? The World Food Programme or WFP, as well as I think it was A released information saying that the economic damage related to this is going to cause 130 million deaths in the developing world due to starvation. And so I think what you’re raising is we understand the impact of the virus itself. And we understand, you know, the number of people that are getting sick and how many people are dying and how this is being affected, but we don’t really have a lot of visibility into the long term impact that this is going to have on the economy. Clearly, you know, unemployment rates, you know, skyrocketing small businesses failing, skyrocketing. And even when things open back up again, you can’t just put the band back together again. You know, it doesn’t it doesn’t it’s there’s not like an on off switch. It doesn’t work this way. And so yeah, it’s it’s going to be a very long road. And hopefully, we don’t end up in a situation similar to the Great Depression. And so where do I think the path forward? The United States has been the capital of innovation for a long time? And I think that we want to make sure that we continue to To be that through this fourth industrial revolution, I love the fact that we’re bringing the big fabricators like tsmc and Samsung into the United States to bring semiconductor development here. Clearly cities like Detroit that have all of this infrastructure for mass manufacturing, these things can be repurposed to be building, you know, 21st century products. And so how do we how do we bring as much innovation back into the economy? How do we invest in call it our collective future? You know, one of the things that we can do is invest heavily in upgrading, call it our infrastructure as a country. You know, there’s a and these are the sorts of things that can bring and create high paying high skilled jobs. I think that continuing to support innovation is probably the best path forward.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 14:47
Yeah, I agree. And it’s funny because I’m not funny, funny laugh laugh, but, you know, you’ve been reading my Twitter because I’ve been talking about the potential starvation issue next year. For three months now. That’s because I view that is because that, you know, four of the world’s major food exporting countries now are having looks like agricultural yields that are going to be much lower this fall. And if that if the harvest numbers in the fall do fall below a certain level, those four countries are not going to be exporting food to the third world. And that is what’s going to cause that starvation and and that is a concern. I’ve been telling people playing the garden since March. And because I think food is going to skyrocket in price and I think it’s going to create a lot of turmoil if that happens, but we won’t know what that really looks like until the fall harvest numbers but but I’m tracking with you there. Brock, I think I am concerned about that. foreign policy. What..

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 15:42
Just one last point on that. When we look at like what happened in Syria and other places. When we see these revolutions occur. It normally comes from rising prices in food food, when people become hungry. You know, that’s when you know things get really gnarly. Yeah. And this is going to be a very real issue. And one and one that I’d like to echo that, that statement and continue to echo and echo and echo and echo it, which is planted garden planting garden. You know, this is something that it’s good for your health. It’s good for your spirit. And it might be really good for your belly. If things get too and your pocketbook

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 16:29
I’ll send you some Zucchinis because my wife is we’re overwhelmed and zucchini right now but yeah, I mean, we planted our biggest garden ever this year for the same reason and and as much as we dollar cost average or SATs for doing that now with groceries as well buy food. I’m telling people buy food. I hope I’m wrong on this because you know, it’s like when you get countries like India, which is the number two rice exporter, India feeds the Middle East, their rice and Africa their rice. Right now Brazil is the number one protein exporter in the world. They’re having massive problem with COVID and I think It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the US. And again, I’m looking at those fall numbers. I mean, the commodities traders out there probably are the most clued in on what’s happening in that field. But I think people are gonna be really paying attention to commodities brokers and about, you know, for months. And it’ll be interesting with those futures look like, I guess. Well, I know, we don’t have a lot of time left, but foreign policy right now. We’re in multiple wars still. That seemed like they’re never ending. We’re having bad trade relations with places like China. There’s obviously a lot of contention with Russia. How will Brock Pierce deal with foreign the one just foreign policy in general, but these specific kind of problems we’re seeing right now.

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 17:45
So I’ve spent most of my life working all over the world. You know, I lived in Europe for a meaningful amount of my life. I’ve lived in Asia for a substantial amount of my life. And I’ve traveled the world. You know continually for my my entire adult life. And so yeah, we live in we share one planet? And how do we deal with our neighboring countries and countries around the world? And how do we put in place good trade policies that make dollars and cents with an objective or an intention of Win Win scenarios, you know, doing, you know, putting in place creating arrangements for both parties benefit? You know, it’s not you don’t have to, you know, I don’t have to win, you know, you don’t have to lose for me to win. And, and how, you know, knowing that, you know, peace and prosperity is the, you know, call it, I think long term objective for all of us. How do we create a more peaceful world? Now, how do we deal with, you know, some of the more challenging government situations of China probably being the most complicated of them. And I guess we’re where would you like to double click on any of this? Absolutely.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 18:59
Brock, where can people find out more if they want to get involved with supporting your campaign or donating to your campaign?

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 19:05
I go to the website which is Brock.vote, you know, Brock.vote. And you can sign up to just to stay tuned, stay aware of what it is that we’re doing. Clearly you can volunteer and get involved to the extent that you’d like to support this, this process and donate as well to the extent that you’d like to to contribute. All of it matters. We seek all of your support.

Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com 19:33
Brock, thank you so much for coming on today. I look forward to watching your campaign unfold over the next few months.

Brock Pierce-Presidential Candidate 19:40
Yeah, Rob. Happy to come back again. It’s good to see you. Thank you for having me. Have a great day. You too.

Episode Links

Audio Interview
Video Interview
Interview Transcript