Will He Be the First Democratic U.S. Senator in Kansas in 88 Years?

So, very serious question here. How can I trust you when you have glasses? I can't trust people with gla- no I'm kidding. I have glasses. Okay. Can this dude be the first Democrat in 94 years to be elected a U.S. Senator in Kansas? Well, I don't know, but he sure was nice to talk to, and he even knew about uncapping the House. Let's go! I love the idea of expanding the representation, so I think that I'm 100% on board with. I sat down with Adam Hamilton. Who's the other? Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast? I don't know him. Oh my gosh, get this on camera. I got Mr. Beat, but I don't know Mr. Beast. Oh, this is so great. You gotta know him. Okay. You gotta know this. All right, so his real name is Jimmy Donaldson. Okay. Check this out. He is originally from Wichita. Okay. He is now the biggest YouTuber in the world. He has over 500 million subscribers. Does like mostly game show kind of stunt videos, you know? Okay. So a lot of younger folks dig him. I've got to look him up. I've got to come up with like a Mr. Something. I feel like maybe that would help me. Most of my audience does not live in Kansas, but you'd be surprised. So many of them wanted me to interview you. I'm getting a lot of interest outside of Kansas. So I think probably for obvious reasons, it's a competitive race. The Cook Report just moved us to a toss-up just this morning. The highly respected and widely read Cook Political Report now rates the Kansas U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Roger Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton as a toss-up, Moving the race from lean Republican, Kansans haven't sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932 and in a state where the president has won three times, including a 16-point win in 2024. My name is Adam Hamilton, and I grew up in the Kansas area, fifth generation Kansan. I am a United Methodist pastor and pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the country. We have about 24,000 members, Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. Is that the big church over 135th? Yep, 135th and all. Oh, yeah, when I used to teach, we had our teachers. Yeah, the annual teachers gathering. Yeah, so I've been there multiple times. I used to teach in the Blue Valley District. I used to teach at Blue Valley High School, which is where? Graduated from high school. I met my wife there. She graduated there. My daughters both graduated from there. Go Tigers. Go Tigers. Also, the same high school where Michael Stevens from Vsauce went to. Do you know who Vsauce is? I do not. Doesn't know Mr. Beast. Doesn't know Vsauce. We'll get you up to speed. Okay, you need to get me up to speed. Thank you. My wife, we married the week after high school graduation. When I was 17, she was 18. We've been married 44 years. I have two daughters. One is the chief public defender in the 3rd District in Kansas, and one owns a plant shop in Kansas City, Missouri. And I have a granddaughter who's 12, who's the reason why I'm also running for the United States Senate. I've written about 36 books. I am, or not about, I have written 36 books. Yeah, we were just kind of mentioning as we started talking that this is a competitive race. Oh my gosh, it's been 94 years. 1932, that's the last time a Democratic candidate actually won the election for U.S. Senate. Yes. And so, yeah, 94 years. And that was a re-election. So I don't even know if that counts. So really, it's like 100 years. So you'll get this reference. What's the matter with Kansas? Yeah, exactly. Well, that is a question that was raised in a book by Tom Frank some years ago. And, you know, I actually, I'm not sure what's wrong with Kansas. I love this state. And I think there's a lot that's right in Kansas. And I'm very proud to be Kansan. But I think, you know, we're a largely ag state. I think the ag industry has tended to lean more Republican for a very long time. And where Kansas is beginning to shift is in the urban centers. We see more and more Democrats there. Johnson County has become, you know, nearly blue in many places. We're sitting here in Lawrence, Kansas right now, and it's Douglas County's blue. Topeka, more blue. Wyandotte County, blue. Sedgwick is, you know, kind of half and half, I think, right now. So what I really think is what's changing in Kansas, And what's changing is I think there's a lot of people in Kansas tend to be people who have decent values. They care about their neighbors. And I think they're feeling like things that are happening in Washington, D.C., do not reflect who they are. They don't reflect their values. And I tell people, you know, so I'm going to mention the Trump administration in particular. To me, people say, you know, why are you running it? Like, it's not one thing. It's death by a thousand cuts. There are so many little things that happen. And some of them, we just get used to them. And they're really, they would be stark things in past administrations. But you see all these things happening and you just think, it's not Republican or Democrat. This does not look like the Democrats or the Republicans hold. And it certainly doesn't look like Democrats. And so we have things, it's not Republican or Democrat. It's decent or indecent. It's moral or immoral. It's kind or cruel. It's often good or evil. And I'm not saying that everything that the Trump administration stands for is horrible. But there's enough things that happen that you just go, that's not normal. That's just not who we, we don't threaten to take over Greenland. I mean, when was the last time we thought to take over a country that belongs to an ally of ours in NATO? When did we set quotas to, last set quotas to arrest people who are here who are foreigners? Well, that happened, you know, after Pearl Harbor in a chapter of our history that we're not very proud of. Just so many things that are happening. You just go, you know, the number 56 tariff changes in the last year to insulting the Canadians. They're like, these are Canadians. How do you insult the Canadians? You know, $4 billion worth of goods in Kansas are exported to Canada every year, at least used to be. But you don't go about insulting your number two trading partner. I mean, there's just a lot of stuff that you just go, this does not feel like America. And that's what got me into this race is just feeling like this is not normal. This is not the kind of country I want to leave to my granddaughter. And we have to do better. Yeah. And the Republican Party has dramatically changed over the last 20 years. I think, you know, as someone who I'm not very happy with Republicans these days generally. However, I as a kid was a fan of Bob Dole and Nancy Kassebaum. And I just think it's important to make that clear to folks like that the parties are constantly changing throughout history. And so maybe speak on your own personal background, voting. Like, I know a lot of people say, well, he's really a Republican in disguise. Well, I think that's pretty funny. Maybe you probably have voted for Republicans. I think a lot of us have who are not happy with what's going on right now. Well, there's two things that happen in Kansas. One is there's a significant number of people who, you know, they value certain things in the Republican Party, but they also stay registered Republican because they want to vote in a primary. And often, now my primary was different this time around. We had 11 candidates running for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. But typically, the action is with the Republicans, and you're trying to figure out, are we going to have somebody who's ultra-conservative, or are we going to have a moderate that's going to run in the general? And so for that reason, a lot of people have remained Republican who say, look, my background, there's a lot of things I value in the Republican Party, but I don't identify with the far right. And that's, I think, where most Kansans are. Sixty-eight percent of all Republicans identify in the center, or they identify themselves as moderates. Sixty-eight percent of all Democrats identify as moderates. There's that broad center. Now, for eight years, I was a Democrat during the Obama administration. I changed my registration to Democrat because I wanted a caucus for Obama in the caucus in 2008. And he asked me to preach his second inauguration. So after the inauguration, the next morning, since George Washington, there's been a worship service, a prayer service. It's not the National Day of Prayer. That's a different thing. But the National Prayer Service happens the day after the inauguration. And so President Obama asked if I would preach his, which I was really honored to do that. And then I served two years in his administration. It was an appointment that looked at how religious communities, faith communities could work with the government to address serious issues in our cities, in our communities. And so I was honored to do that. After his administration, the second administration, then I went back to register as a Republican so I could vote for Republicans, moderate Republicans, because they were more likely to win in Kansas than the Democrats. So if your state's most likely to vote for Republicans, then you want to be able to vote in that primary for a good Republican candidate. it. But in every election, except for this one, I have voted, I've intentionally found one or two Republicans at least that I thought this person has character, they're competent, they share my values, and I want to be bipartisan. I want to find a way to try to bring good people on both sides together. Now I'm leading the ticket on the Democratic Party. I'm going to be voting all Democrats here, but I have never thought the letter behind your name was the most important thing. I thought what was most important is your character, your competency, and your values. Yeah, I think morals, this keeps coming up, it's related to the work you do. You know, what would Jesus do? And it seems to me that the president often is doing what Jesus would not do. And then we have your opponent, your main opponent, Roger Marshall, who I think I calculated it's at least like 97% of the time that he votes with the president. Not only that, though, the thing that's more disturbing to me is he's basically a sycophant, just praises him and repeats his talking points uncritically. So I think the blockade is a great jujitsu move by the president to say, look, we're going to stop Iran's financial funding. There's not much left of them. I think this is a great move and is going to get us to the end game here sooner than later. You know, you got someone like Don Bacon up in Nebraska. He's critical of the president sometimes. Not Roger Marshall. So could you speak on like just this blind loyalty? Why does he do that? Yeah. Well, so I don't know Roger Marshall other than to have met him at the state debate the other day. But it is true. He votes for the president almost all the time. It feels like to me, and I've heard this from many people, that he acts as though he was hired by the White House to be their spokesperson to Kansas, as opposed to being hired by the people of Kansas to be their champion in Washington, D.C. One of the most important roles of the Congress is to act as a check on executive power, as you well know. Absolutely. That's not happening with many of the Republicans, most of them. And I think it's either one of two things. They desperately want to get reelected. And so they're afraid because they know if they oppose the president, he will pick on them, he'll bully them, he'll give them a nickname, and then he'll primary them. So I think some do what the president asks out of fear. I think some do it out of a sense of need for affirmation, closeness to power. And I don't know which of those it is for Roger Marshall, But it is true that so often he has made the case for what the president's doing that's actually hurting people in Kansas. So a war in Iran that we need to get out of, instead he votes to continue it. But not only that, he comes back and he makes the case for it, you know, makes the president's case for it. Well, the people in Kansas know better. First of all, they are not certain. Did we really need to go to war in Iran? And they're not necessarily asking the question, but does it meet the criteria of just war theory or international law? And the answer is no. Now, Ronald Reagan, every other Republican president, did not choose to do this in addressing Iran. Donald Trump chose to. And in the process, Kansans have spent $700 million more on fuel costs this year than they did last year. The cost of fertilizer for farmers, it's doubled in price this year, at least certain types, phosphate in particular. You know, inputs, I mean, all of this. And so Kansans are saying, look, this is not okay with us. But Marshall keeps coming back and saying, oh, no, no, it's good. You know, it's better that we do this. And I think the tariffs, at the debate, you know, I heard him say, well, the tariffs are working, the tariffs are working. And the people began to shout and say, what are you talking about? Alternate reality. Exactly. This is costing $150 a month for the average American family, more than that for a lot of people. And you just go, when I was in Wichita, I talked to a woman, I was knocking on doors, and I said, you know, tell me how you're doing. And she said, horrible. She said, you know, I'm a single mom with a nonverbal autistic 16-year-old son, and I'm working more hours than I've ever worked, and I can't keep up. And this is because of decisions made in Washington, D.C., around the war, around tariffs, that the president initiated and Roger Marshall has supported 100% of the time. And it's like, man, you've got to visit with your people more. You've got to hear. Well, he did that town hall where he walked out. Well, exactly. That was funny. We're still talking about a Saturday town hall out in Oakley, Kansas, hosted by Senator Roger Marshall and how it ended early. Less than an hour before the town hall was to end, Marshall walked out. Right before this happened, people were asking about those recent federal job cuts and the effect on veterans. So Oakley, Kansas, you know, he's out there as far out away from where people lived as he could be. Right. Exactly. I mean, these are these are real people, you know, who live in the western part of the state. I think he thought that they busted people from Johnson County. well there may have been a few people there from Johnson County but I'm telling you I was out in Scott City and there were a number of those people from Oakley who were there and they were like hey we were there at that event and I'm looking around and by the way he said a month ago that the reason why he doesn't do town halls anymore it's been 560 days since he did a town hall that it was open to anybody come to he said we don't do it anymore because they're dangerous so I'm out there in Scott City and there's all these people they're like grandparents and you know farmers and they're like yeah we were all there and I'm like uh, you all don't look dangerous to me. They just laughed. It's like words are dangerous. Yeah. Uh, I may or may have not trolled Roger Marshall a few times on social media. Anyway, uh, I try to be nice, but I just something about him. Um, but you seem very nice. So let's go, let's talk more about like what you plan to do if you get elected. So I'm going to run through a bunch of issues as quickly as possible. I know that on your website, a lot of your campaign is about affordability. So if you had a magic wand, how would you lower prices for every Kansan? Yeah. Well, the first thing is reversing things that cause this. So these are self-inflicted wounds. I'd get out of the war as fast as we could. The war should not have started. I want to see us get out of it as quickly as we can. When it comes to the tariffs, there's a place for tariffs in international trade. It's just that it's a very small place, very limited, and they should be used strategically. In the past, the Constitution gives this kind of authority to the Congress. They have ceded that to the president over a long period of time. And what needs to happen is we need to claw that back. The president gets irritated at 2 in the morning, and he sends out a tweet or an X or whatever you call it. He sends it out and decides that he's going to insult our trading partners, and he's going to impose a 50% tariff on X number of goods from Canada. That's not how it works. It's not the president gets irritated, so he decides to impose a tariff. It's, look, these are places where we have trade imbalance, and maybe we need to do something for a period of time. This is hurting people. We need to claw that back to Congress where Congress, and so there's a bill out there that says that if the president wants to impose a tariff, he needs to make the case for why to Congress. Here's why. Here's the cost to the American consumer. Here's what we're after. Here's the goal of this tariff. And that makes a lot of sense to me. Propose a tariff like if he wants to. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, that was originally Congress was supposed to handle almost every tariff. Exactly. So I'd say on affordability, those would be the first two things we do. Okay. And I think a third one has to do with health care. And so for Kansans who are, you know, making a living, but they can't afford health care under the ACA because Congress took the subsidies away. Yes, they did. In the one big, beautiful bill, when they took the subsidies away, there were people who, so as an example, a woman at Hutchinson told me, she said, when they took the subsidies away, my health insurance went up to $2,700 a month, a month. And she said, she said, that was more than my house payment. And we had to decide. you know this one had to decide is it the house payment or health care and she of course decided to keep the house i mean it's that that kind of thing and so we need to look i just think we need to go back and figure out let's roll the subsidies back in until we come up with a long-term solution to health care because you know in her case 60 i don't know she looked like she was my age i'm 62 and i'm thinking you give up health care health insurance when you're in your 60s before you get to medicare at 65 and you're taking a huge risk you could bankrupt your family you could lose everything you have for retirement if you did this. So we just have to do better. Those are some things we can fix that we broke in Washington, D.C. Are you open to universal health care or something like it? Yeah, I believe there needs to be a basic level of health care for everybody in our country. I think my concern about like Medicare for all is we have an entire industry built around the health insurance field. And I think we need to figure out that's a loss of millions of jobs and an entire industry, I think it's not likely to get passed as Medicare for all. But I think there are things we can do to ensure that everybody has a basic level of health care. And I think that's humane. It's like looking at everybody having a basic level of retirement. I'm not supporting Medicare for all because I don't think that's a viable path. But I think we've got to find, and this is where Republicans and Democrats have to work together. I think this is really important. My campaign is in part about trying to bring people together to solve problems. The Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act without the Republicans' support. The Republicans spent the next 12 years trying to undo it. That's not a good, viable, long-term pathway. We've got to figure out how do we bring reasonable Republicans and Democrats together to create something that at least some on both parties are stacking their hands on, which requires some compromise. And I think we do better government when we're trying to work that way. Can you at least say on the record that health insurance companies have done more harm than good? You know, I will only say that there's a lot of pain when it comes to health insurance companies. And I know people in that industry. There's a lot of anger towards them. There's a lot of anger towards them. And especially when you're refusing to cover things that should be covered, when you are making life harder and harder and harder for people to be able to file their insurance claims and have insurance pay, and then the cost. And some of that cost is not driven by the insurance companies, but they play a part in on all of this as well i don't want to make them out to be the bad guys what we need is we need them to be a part of creating the solutions and so i don't want to demonize anybody i just want to say look we need you and we need the republicans we need the democrats we need the the health care industry we have to work together in the next and i'm saying i got a six-year term i want to i want to see if we can fix this in the next six years where we can do something so there's access for everybody and it works long term pretty level headed. I like it. I'm a little bit more emotional. But you're alluding to like we should blame the systems, not the people. And I totally agree with that. Right. OK, so I say a lot of these problems that we have are often symptoms like we're not attacking the root cause and we really need structural reforms. Yes. So examples like I'll just like throw some ideas out there. You can say yay or nay or maybe term limits. How do you feel about that? Absolutely. Yes. So what I have on my website is 18 years maximum. That includes both House and Senate. And as soon after your 18th year expires, you're out. So the next time you're up for election after that 18th year. But 18 years, I believe that also for the Supreme Court. And if we did this right, I think there is a pathway to be able to ultimately get to where every term, a president will have a chance to nominate two people for the Supreme Court. Republicans or Democrats, and so we're having balance, not what we're seeing right now. So I think that's important. And obviously the eight-year limit for the president, I think, is important. I also see age limits as important. So there are some people, and I put that at 80, there are some people who are 84 and they're sharp as a tack. But we've also seen people wheeled in wheelchairs into Congress to vote with their staff people who are having to tell them how to push the button. Also, Dianne Feinstein, bipartisan here. Exactly. It's both parties. And I'm like, come on, we've got to do better than that. And we need fresh blood. We need new people coming in with new ideas. We need younger generations who are being engaged and involved in the political process. And so I love the fact that to be elected to the House, you've got to be 25 years old. I don't know how many 25-year-olds should be elected, but I do think, and people lived a lot shorter lives when the Constitution was put together, but I should be on the outer limits of what's being elected. And I'm 62 so I think we need to change there and that leaves me, okay I got to put on the cool glasses for this next question. Okay, it's related. I was gonna come up later, but Wait, I have a feeling wait. I mean, I'm gonna think this may have to do with Uncapping the house. Yes. Yes. You did your homework. Okay Let's see this. I just got to connect first. Sorry Okay, while this is pulling up so you mentioned there's only one member of the House right now who's a Gen Z. Okay, it's recording, just so you know. Okay. First person perspective. So yes, obviously that's my pet issue. I think it's another structural reform that will benefit long-term, get a lot of new ideas, fresh faces in there. How much do you know about uncapping the House? What are your thoughts about it so far? You know, I've read a little bit about it. I wish I could say I've spent a whole lot of time focused on it, but I've really focused on the Senate and the things we can do to, to really help people in Kansas right now. Um, I do like the idea of rethinking how we do what we do. I think there's a, I mean, I love the fact that this is a thing that you're spending a lot of time thinking about. And, um, I have questions, you know, my questions are, yeah, well, I think, uh, I think, so we have this in the United Methodist Church. I'm, I'm a United Methodist pastor. We have what's called general conference it's like it's basically our form of polity and the denomination is based on the united states from polity we have a judicial judicial council like the supreme court we have a general conference which is like our executive i mean like the legislative body and we have bishops which are like the executors the executive branch and general conferences our denomination grew it you know grew bigger and bigger then we kind of capped it at around a thousand people then we we had to decide as we became worldwide people all around the world do we expand that even more and and I think we we kind of stopped and we said a couple things so I'm not saying this is this is the answer to what I mean this is clearly not your position and I'm not saying I agree with this for the house but we began to look at how much money do we spend on the legislative body of our denomination how much can we're already struggling to get things done with we have we have 900 roughly 900 people in our legislative body but they only meet once every four years as opposed to meeting full-time. And so those would be the questions I have is I just want to make sure it works. I love the idea of expanding the representation. So I think that I'm 100% on board with. I'm concerned about just costs and can we get things done? Those are things. And to be honest, I just haven't spent time looking at it. So if it's an awesome idea, I'm pretty sure you'll convince me of it and we will. But I'm a center and not a house member. Well, just out of curiosity, how many members of your church, your denomination, is there nationwide or worldwide? Worldwide. Worldwide we have, I think it's about, I'm trying to remember, 18 million or something. That's a pretty darn good representative ratio. So I'm just saying, like, you know, anything. I know right now we have 1 to 800,000, right? That's correct. You did do your homework. Thank you for doing that. Yes. 1929. That's the last time it was. Yeah. They voted on any bill for that. And it only takes a simple bill. And that's why I think in the Senate it's going to be easier to talk. I've talked to a couple of senators before, and they're like, oh, yeah, I think it's going to be a harder sell to the members in the House because they're diluting their own power. Right. But I'll shut up about that. No, I think it's cool that you're thinking about it. I mean, I really, the fact that you are thinking outside the box as to what can we do to make our government more representational of the people in our country, I think that's awesome. I appreciate that. But back to the Senate, though. So what about the filibuster? Would you be willing to at least look at the silent filibuster? Yeah, so here's, again, like I'm open to anything. So I've been a pastor for 38 years. I haven't been in the Senate, so I'm open to new things. But I also want to say my hesitancy when I first think about it is it sounds great to end the filibuster when you're the party in control and you desperately want to get things done and don't want to have to get stuck at 60 votes. And there's a part of me that goes, yep, I'm ready to get things done. let's get it done. My fear is, and I understand the arguments against my fear, but my fear is now when you're not in control anymore and you've given over control to the other party. So I'm a Democrat. So you give over control to Republicans and maybe you get some really far right leaning people in there and they're able to pull off stuff with 51 votes that are bad for America. When you're in charge, it sounds great. And then when you're not in charge anymore, suddenly it sounds like a terrible, what were we thinking when we gave the authority to end major branches of government or we give the authority to do things that we would most of us would agree are not right now you know the answer that is well the voters can vote them out after four years but you can do a lot of damage in four years or six years or two years every two years a third of the senators are up every two years so yes you can vote every two years and try to change it but even changing the filibuster to you know 55 maybe uh to end debate cloture yeah i mean there's it doesn't have to be like a simple majority so there's other ways to compromise as I suppose. I agree. I agree. But that's cool. You're open to like, you know, at least having these conversations because many are not. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. What are other issues that you think are not brought up enough that should be brought up? Well, one thing that's, I think is important is, is education and especially special education funding. So everywhere I travel across the state here in Kansas, I've met with 32, I think, superintendents of schools, a lot of school teachers, everyone says SPED or special education funding. The federal government in essence mandated certain things that needed to be done, and they're good things across the United States. They promised that they would provide 40 percent of the funding for that, and they provide around 13 percent right now, which means that local school districts are required to do these things, but they're unfunded mandates, and that takes money away from other things that are important for the schools. I think we need to support our schools, and I think that's really important. I'll mention several other things really quick. We need to take seriously the role of approving qualified candidates for leadership in the administration. So right now I'm thinking the head of the Department of Education. Her qualifications for office were that she ran the entertainment industry related to the World Wrestling Federation. Now, it seems like to me somebody who's running the Department of Education should have an Ed.D., they should have spent, or a Ph.D., they should have spent their life in education, school, teacher, principal, superintendent of schools and worked you know in this field their whole lives or i'm thinking the department of what used to be called the department of defense and now is the department of war which by itself is i think not a uh you know this was not this indicated something i don't think reflects who we are as americans but the head of the department of defense pete hegseth it seems like to me his best qualifications his leading qualification was he has awesome hair i'm really jealous of his hair. He served in the military for a little while, for a while, and I don't discredit his military service. I'm glad he had that. And then a TV caster, a newscaster. I would argue that half of Trump's cabinet are actors, just like the president. He's an actor. Exactly. And I'm thinking if you're overseeing our entire military and you're putting people's lives on the line, you're going to see people killed by the decisions you make, or you're going to keep the morale or lower the morale in the military. You ought to have at least been a one or two star general. You ought to have somehow managed to work your way up in the military and you understand the challenges and you've withstood multiple different administrations and you deeply care about all of your soldiers. I don't know. I look at this and I go, this is not normal. Again, this isn't Republican or Democrat. It's just not normal. So these are some of the kind of things. I think we do have to work on four big problems though. And this requires Republicans and Democrats to work together. And this is one of the things I've done for 38 years is try to bring people together. The church I serve, 24,000 members, about 9,000 are Republicans, 9,000 are Democrats, 6,000 are independents. And we care for each other. We love each other despite our differences and sometimes because of them. In Congress, we need to get back to George McGovern and Bob Dole. We need to get back to Reagan and Tip O'Neill or Tom Eagleton and Jack Danforth, Republicans and Democrats who actually care about each other and try to work together. They can fight hard but they work together and compromise to come up with solutions because the four big things that seem like are on the horizon the four horsemen of the apocalypse for america are the national debt and we're at 40 trillion dollars now the 2032 cliff for social security yeah health care and immigration we cannot solve those four without republicans and democrats working together i would add a fifth one artificial intelligence or a1 as our secretary of education calls it. That's funny. Yes, that's right. I mean, I think that is a new one that we really have to take seriously. We're just finding out how serious it is. Throw that on. You have five fingers. It'll work out. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I think we have to work together. And that means I think it starts with building relationships. I mean, this sounds really stupid or naive, but there used to be something to the fact that senators and congresspeople would go out to dinner after work hours or have a drink or whatever. Now they're Republican bars and Democrat bars in Washington, DC, somewhere being able to bring people together. And so part of my pastoral work is trying to bring people together. And I'm thinking, how can we do that? You start with eight, you know, let's be, let's find four moderate Republicans and four moderate Democrats who want to start working together and building relationships. And then we move from there to 10 or 12 or whatever. And, and starting to move towards, move away from this hyper-partisanship and this, you know, we're going to win at any cost. As though we're the Chiefs and the Raiders, and one team's going to come out winning. We're the offense and the defense on Team USA. We have got to work together to solve problems. And so I think that is where everything else starts. I love that. Also, if you do get elected, I actually kind of like Josh Hawley, strangely, on some issues. It seems like he cares about certain, yeah, so there you go. That was shocking. His article came out a couple years ago. I think it was in the New York Times, where he was arguing for things like, man, he sounds like a Democrat here. And this is why people are complex. Yes. He cares about working poor people in his state. And I don't agree with everything he does or, you know, a lot of things I wouldn't agree with. But I did admire the fact that he was speaking up for things that were things I cared about as a Democrat because he cared about his people in his state. And so let's start with that. Let's start with not assuming the worst about everybody around us and people on the other party. Let's find places where we can agree and then build relationships and then see if we can't get back to, at least with some, moving away from the win-lose and moving more towards the win-win proposition in Congress. You seem like a really nice guy. I think you'd be able to win over any Republican. So I wish you the best of luck with the rest of your campaign. Thank you so much. I'm really pleased to have a chance to be with you. Have a beat with you, Mr. Beat. And now your homework is to check out Mr. Beast and Vsauce. I know, exactly. Both from Kansas. Yeah, that's awesome. thank you so much alright thank you