September 11, 2025 • 33 mins
This week on Classic SOUNDS OF FILM, Tom Needham welcomes Governor Jesse Ventura, one of America’s most unconventional political figures and cultural voices.
Ventura served as the 38th Governor of Minnesota from 1999 to 2003, making history as the only member of the Reform Party ever elected to a major government office in the United States. Beyond politics, he has built a reputation as a provocative truth-seeker and bestselling author, with books.
Join Tom Needham for a candid, wide-ranging conversation with Governor Jesse Ventura on politics, media, history, and the stories behind his groundbreaking career. THE SOUNDS OF FILM with Tom Needham Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and YouTube Podcasts.
THE SOUNDS OF FILM is also the nation’s longest running film, music and ideas themed radio show. For over 30 years, the program has delivered a popular mix of interviews and music to listeners all over Long Island, parts of Connecticut and streaming live on the internet. Past guests include Billy Joel, Alexander Payne, Nile Rodgers, Chuck D, Laurie Anderson, Howard Shore, Hal Hartley, DMC, Elliott Murphy and Jordan Peterson. THE SOUNDS OF FILM airs on WUSB on Thursday at 6 PM.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hi, this is Tom Needham, and you're listening to the sounds
of film and I'm very excited to have on the air with us today
former governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura.
He's the author of American Conspiracies, 63 documents the
government doesn't want you to read, and most recently, They
Killed Our President. He's done a lot of work on
television as well. I'm a big fan of his former TV
(00:22):
show, Tru T VS Conspiracy Theorywith Jesse Ventura.
I understand you have a new showyou're working on that I'd like
to ask you about, but I want to start off by talking to you
about They Killed Our President,a really exciting new book
that's out. And we're celebrating the 50th
anniversary of or not really celebrating, but, you know,
respectfully paying attention tothe death of JFK.
(00:43):
And you'll have this powerful book out just right off the bat.
I'm sure you heard about John Kerry recently making remarks
that he he didn't think that Oswald was the only shooter
involved. That's pretty amazing, isn't it?
Yeah, I I didn't know that. When did John Kerry come out and
make that statement? That that was in the past week.
You know, he just made one of those off the cuff remarks and
(01:05):
then everyone has tried to follow up and get him to
clarify, but he hasn't done that.
And I. Thought that was as well.
Probably his handlers are now telling him to button it up and
don't be going down that street because I'm learning very
quickly that it's a street that powerful people don't watch
travelling down. In doing this book tour, I
(01:27):
haven't been gotten any near theinterviews that I normally get.
In fact, ABCNBCCBS and Fox News will have nothing to do with me.
Well, that's really interesting.And and I mean, you've touched
on so many different conspiracies and you do really
get quite a bit of media attention.
I want to go through that and I want to actually talk to you
quite a bit about the media and its part in the JFK
(01:51):
assassination cover up. But let's start off, you know,
through the years, your many books and media work, you've
you've covered a number of controversial topics throughout
U.S. history. But with they Killed Our
President, you return to the topic of the JFK assassination.
And it seems to me that this is a topic that you've gone back to
before and and other forms on your TV show and in other books.
(02:12):
And it seems like this one's a really important one to you.
What is it about? Well, it is an important one
because again, without being able to say who they are, if
they can kill the president and get away with it, what can't
they do? Right.
I mean, if you can succeed in murdering the president of the
United States and cover it up for 50 years, that's remarkable.
(02:36):
And that's what's happened. Because, you know, when I wrote
this book, people always right away they say, well, who did it,
who did it, who did it? And if you can't tell them who
did it, then they all of a sudden discard you as not being,
you know, not worth anything. The point of my book is not to
tell you who did it. The point of it is to show you
(02:57):
that Lee Harvey Oswald did not do it, and thus if Oswald did
not do it, then obviously someone did do it and it wasn't
him. So then who did do it?
Well, we're never going to know until they actually investigate
it. Take a look at the the
government's own last investigation, which was the
(03:18):
House Select Committee on Assassinations in the mid 70s.
They came to the opposite conclusion as the Warren
Commission. They said it was a probable
conspiracy and turned it over tothe Justice Department, which of
course, the Justice Department did nothing.
There's no statute of limitations on murder.
It can be investigated at any time.
(03:40):
Why won't our government do it? Well, I mean, it's something
that's so out there. I mean, there was the Oliver
Stone film, JFK. You've written books.
Other people have written books.When you poll the average
American, most people think thatthere was something more to it.
And yet, if it's so out there, why do you think it still is
something that's so protected from?
(04:01):
The government, because again, they, they help, they don't want
to admit that a coup d'etat tookplace that day, that they don't
want to admit to America. And even the American people
seem to be in denial that a coupd'etat happened that day.
And it wasn't done at a ballot box or anything like that.
It was done by an Assassin's bullet to the brain of our
(04:23):
president, and our government changed that day.
The world would be far differenttoday had John Kennedy lived.
We we would see a world completely different than the
one we're seeing today. What do you think the biggest
differences would be? Well, there would have been no
Vietnam War. Right.
Imagine that he also was negotiating and working with
(04:46):
Nikita Khrushchev behind the scenes, unbeknownst to the
governments, Khrushchev and him,and agreed to end the Cold War
by 65. Imagine if there'd have been no
Cold War, the billions and trillions of dollars spent on
that. Because the only reason we
defeated the Soviets in the ColdWar, we outspent them.
(05:08):
We collapsed their economy because they tried to spend with
us on weapons and they couldn't do it.
Imagine how the world would be different.
John Kennedy was changed, attempting to change the path of
America towards peace, not war. Instead, when he was killed, we
went on a path to war, starting with Vietnam and ending today.
(05:31):
We're still in Afghanistan. So you feel that the killing of
JFK was really the start of a whole bunch of things that have
been going on since then? Absolutely.
I'm 62 years old now. I've lived through it.
I'm watching it, I'm observing it, I'm part of it, and I pay
attention. I'm a vigilant citizen that, you
(05:53):
know, people can criticize me for many things, but our
forefathers who created this country, they had in mind that
the people had to be vigilant for it to work.
We had to be a part of it to make it work.
And the problem is we don't haveenough vigilant citizens today.
We have citizens who somehow have lost sight of the fact that
(06:14):
we're in charge. The government's supposed to
work for us, not the reverse. One of the things that I've
always respected in your writingis that you seem to pull from
figures that you respect on the left and the right.
You know, I've seen you talk about Bernie Sanders, I've seen
you talk about Ron Paul. And it seems that you're just
(06:34):
looking for, for people who are willing to stand up and, and,
and have a voice for the people.Well, because of the fact I
believe today that that the downfall of our country are the
two political parties. Right.
And I have good backing in that thought.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams agree
completely with me. They wrote about it.
(06:57):
We're not listening to what theywarned us about.
We're not listening to what Ben Franklin told us.
For those that will give up their liberty for security shall
have and deserve neither. Because liberty is security.
Don't people get that? Freedom is security and the only
way government could make you safe is to take away your
(07:18):
freedom? And that's what they're doing.
And we're letting them. Oh man.
We're speaking with Governor Jesse Ventura.
His new book is They Killed our President, 63 Reasons to believe
that there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK.
There is a great listing of all these different facts that
(07:39):
you've discovered through your research about why you believe
that JFK was assassinated. And we can't go through all of
them. But is there one or two really
key pieces that for you are the most convincing things that
you've ever heard that that makeyou believe?
1 is what we open the book with the Katzenbach memo.
Yeah, I want to talk. About it, I didn't even count
that as one of the 63. I told the publishers I want to
(08:02):
open the book with it because tome, it's not a smoking gun, it's
a smoking cannon. And people need to realize there
were two conspiracies that took place that day.
There was the conspiracy to actually murder the president,
and then there was the conspiracy to cover up that
murder. And the Katzenbach memo outlines
the entire conspiracy that was used to cover up the murder.
(08:25):
And it was written Monday morning from them at the acting
attorney general, Nicholas Katzenback, to the new
president, Lyndon Johnson. And it outlined, we have to
convince the public that Oswald after the law, that he had no
compatriots with him and that hewould have been convicted had
there been a trial. And then it finishes.
We have to head off any unwantedcongressional investigations.
(08:47):
What is an unwanted congressional investigation?
I would like a definition for that.
This was the murder of our president.
Why would we not want a complete, thorough investigation
of that murder? That's pretty powerful stuff
and. That's not mine, that's them.
Yeah. The other thing that's amazing,
(09:08):
I'm reading the works right now of, of oh gosh, I can't think of
his name off the top of my head now.
And I should and that one of them blank out.
So I'm getting old. But Harold Weisberg who wrote
Whitewash 1965, this is 2 years and a half years after the
murder. And did you and he only used
(09:29):
Warren Commission documents. Did you know that they
completely ignored the testimonyof Governor Conley and his wife
Nelly, who were both in the car with the President when they
both underoath to the Commissionstated that they were hit by it?
That Governor Conley was struck by a different bullet than the
president and and that right there kills the whole Warren
(09:53):
Commission magic bullet which causes it all to fall apart.
And they chose not to accept that testimony from the two
people who were in the car with the president.
It wasn't the main point of it, but that document that you
referred to that you used to open up the book, I, I was kind
of shocked. I had no idea that I think a lot
(10:13):
of people would be surprised that that the memo that you're
referring to is addressed to Bill Moyers of all people.
That was shocking to me. And he, he.
Was he worked with LBJ? Yeah, I, I mean, I, I had known
that, but I, I never really thought of him having anything
to do with the whole Kennedy assassination.
That that was pretty amazing. I think people are going to be
shocked about that. It's amazing the people that are
(10:33):
that have have, you know, some type of tie to it.
Yeah, you know that, that. Be an innocent guy, you know?
You don't know I'm. I'm not accusing Gilmore.
No, of course. Yeah, reminding the you know,
but he just happened to be working for LBJ at the time.
Right now, there's so much stuffthat we could get into, but why
(10:58):
do you think, you know, you kindof addressed it already, but but
if this is this is true that there was a conspiracy to.
Assess it is true. OK, it's.
Tell us about it. So what?
What do we do with that information?
Well. The thing is, is there's there's
no statute of limitations on themurder.
(11:18):
The government itself, when theyhad their last investigation,
which was the House Select Committee on Assassinations in
the mid 70s, they came to the conclusion that Kennedy was
killed by a probable conspiracy.They sent it on to the Justice
Department to act on it, and it's probably still there
collecting dust. Nobody bothers with it because
(11:40):
nobody tells them act on this. There's no, there's no statute.
A murder can go on forever. You can investigate it at any
time because there is no statuteof limitations on murder.
And I think we can all agree President Kennedy was murdered
and we can all agree there was never a trial.
(12:04):
So who has the the power or the the authority to open?
Them, justice, the president, all they have to do is order it.
Interesting. None of them will, will they?
No, you know none. Of them will investigate 9/11,
none of them will do anything. We got to move forward.
We got to look ahead. That's the standard answer,
(12:27):
Yeah, we got to move forward andlook ahead.
And that way nobody behind us gets prosecuted for anything.
But you're saying that we can't move ahead until we acknowledge
what's actually happened? Exactly.
Right. We're speaking with Jesse
Ventura. He's the author of They Killed
Our Presidents, available on Amazon.com and lots of other
(12:47):
places. You know, one of the things that
I found particularly interestingin this book related to the
assassination is really just a really smart chapter on the role
of the media. And you, you touched on it a
little bit before, but I don't know if everyone knows some of
the stuff that you referred to in the book, which is that you
(13:07):
allege that the the CIA actuallyhas, I don't know if you call it
a program, but that they actually have people who are
journalists, hundreds of them, who have ties to the CIA and
that their job is to be in the newsrooms all over the place.
Correct me if I'm misinterpreting what you were
writing. And and that their job is to, in
(13:28):
this particular case, you know, cover up the assassination or.
Or spin whatever it may be into the best possible light that
they want it to be put under. No, that's a known factor.
No, this the majority of your CIA operatives.
First of all, they're not supposed to be operational
(13:48):
within the United States according to their charter.
I, I, I showed in my book, Don'tStart the Revolution that
they're, they're embedded in state government.
I won't say who it is because I could get in trouble for that,
but they wear 2 hats. They do a job and then they're
CIA contract agents on the side.So they do 2 jobs and they're,
(14:11):
they, it's a known fact that they're, they're infiltrated in
our media massively because it, it, it was learned at a very
early age that if you control the media, you control the
people and you control any knowledge or, or things that the
people can, no one learned. If you withhold knowledge and
(14:33):
evidence from the public, then the public is ignorant about it
and can't act upon it, can they?No.
And that's what's happens. That's what's being done.
What, you know, when you look atthe latest, the whole, the whole
thing with Snowden, I mean, they're they're claiming that
this guy should go to jail. Yeah.
(14:53):
For, for, for for what? For exposing the government,
breaking the law and lying. There were some journalists that
said that he should be killed, that they should send the drone
over and kill him. Well, I'd like to know who those
journalists work for. Yeah.
Because to me, anyone that exposes the government lying and
(15:14):
the government doing wrong, not even obeying their own laws, is
a hero. And I've stated already, if I
became president, both him and Bradley Manning would
immediately be pardoned. Well, you mentioned if if you
would become president. There's been a lot of
speculation right now put out byyourself and and others about
(15:34):
the possibility of running for president.
If you could get Howard Stern torun with you.
Is there something that you're serious about?
Well, you know, I've just made the statement that 2016 would be
the opportune time to do it because number one, you, I know
this from my experience, you don't want to run against an
incumbent, right? So 2016, there would be no
(15:56):
incumbent that, that you need a wide open race #2IN light of the
things that they're doing in public sentiment.
It's like they're paving the wayfor me to do it.
Yeah. I mean Congress's approval
ratings now at 10% yet I can't figure out how 90% of them get
reelected. I bet that baffles me to no end.
(16:21):
If their disapproval rating is 10%, why are they constantly
being re elected? And the point I made is I, I'm
not saying I'm going to do it. I just said the opportunities
there. And I also stated what I would
run on and I, and I make no bones about it, I would run you.
You need to keep campaigns simple, and I would keep mine as
(16:43):
simple as this. I would challenge and give the
American people the opportunity,if I did run, to elect the first
president since George Washington that does not belong
to a political party. Imagine that.
Yeah, we've only had one president, the father of our
country, who is not part of a political gang.
(17:06):
Yeah, you do address that in your last book.
So is there any chance? I mean, I, I know you said you
kind of depended on if you couldget on Howard Stern's well.
It's because I won't, I won't, Iwon't sacrifice my integrity.
And you've got to have a lot of money to be competitive and you
got to be allowed in the debates.
Those are the two things that have to happen.
(17:27):
And to keep my integrity, see, Itake no PAC money.
I take no special interest or corporate money.
And, and my four years as governor, I never met with a
lobbyist. They didn't have to, they didn't
have nothing to do with me in inmy election.
So in order to keep my integrity, I need someone like
Stern who could raise money and say 20 and $50 donations from
(17:52):
individual citizens because thatway it keeps my integrity.
And I have to have that. I can't run the conventional
way. I have to run unconventionally.
And that's what it would take todo it.
And I use Howard as that exampleof of I would need him in which
to raise the money to be competitive.
(18:13):
That makes a lot of sense. I I suppose, though, that there
would be some people that that feel that maybe Howard won't do
it and would hope that maybe there's a similar way that you
could go about it. I don't know.
You could do it with Howard and just go along with the program.
If I had to pick a second choicepolitically, I picked up.
I picked Senator Angus King fromMaine, who was the independent
(18:35):
governor of Maine when I was independent governor of
Minnesota. We were the two independents.
He then went back to the privatesector for a number of years,
and he now just won by a landslide the independent Senate
seat from Maine. He's a complete independent and
Angus King and I could cause them tremendous trouble.
Yeah. You know, I don't know whether
(18:55):
you would. Want someone like Howard Stern
on board to raise the money? Give us, give us if we could use
his show. It doesn't cost anything, right?
And it wouldn't. I mean, nothing to me is more
obscene than the system of bribery that we see today where
they spend a billion dollars to become the president.
(19:16):
I mean, with that money alone, we could have healthcare for
everybody. In in in your books.
You've made the point several times before that if we didn't
spend the money on the military that we do, we'd be able to have
healthcare for everyone and and a whole bunch of other things as
well. Absolutely.
And why do we need we? We spend more on defense and we
(19:39):
don't ask. The question that needs to be
asked is why does anybody want to get us?
I don't think that no one wants her to take away our freedom.
Who out there in the world can take away the United States's
freedom? Is Al Qaeda going to do a
Normandy invasion on Virginia? Yeah.
(20:02):
It seems crazy and like we need to ask the question, why do they
hate us? What are we doing?
Well, I got news. I know why.
Let's get out of the Middle East.
Yeah, that's what you know, Ron Paul.
Was talking about this way. Do you remember a guy named
Christopher Columbus? Yeah, yes.
He discovered, allegedly, America for the Anglo-Saxon
(20:24):
European world, right? Right.
What was he doing on that mission?
He was trying to find another way to India by avoiding the
Middle East. In other words, science believed
the world was flat. Columbus ran the risk of falling
off the earth, but he was willing to take that chance to
(20:46):
stay out of the Middle East and find another way to India.
And this was, well, how many, 7-8 hundred years ago?
Yeah. So why are we still dealing with
the Middle East? Get out of there.
Leave them under themselves. You mentioned just just a second
ago the idea that we we hear theexcuse that that they hid our
(21:09):
freedom. And that was something you heard
a lot after 911. You've been one of the few
prominent people in this countryto question some of the, the
details surrounding 9/11. And I've been really amazed
because even some other people that typically will get involved
in, you know, debating certain controversies and so forth, like
(21:29):
Oliver Stone and Bill Maher and so forth, even they, they won't
even touch 9/11. But you've gone out there and
you had it on your TV show. You've written about it in your
books. What is it?
Even more so, it seems, than JFK, about 911.
Because I have questions that I haven't been answered and no one
will attempt to give me an answer.
(21:51):
I can give you one right now. Sure.
I I there were over 1100 cars, automobiles that were posted on
the street that day. I've seen photographs of them
and they were as far away as theFDR, which was 5 to 6 blocks
away. What on earth could cause a car
to burn 6 blocks away from a building that was allegedly that
(22:13):
was hit by two planes and allegedly collapsed?
I. Don't know.
Anybody give me an answer on that?
See, it's it's questions like that that I desire answers to.
And you know what's interesting?The only thing burnt on the car
was metal, not the upholstery. I've seen photographs of them
(22:34):
all. Some of them only burn halfway
in a clear line, half the car. And now here's what I want you
to think about. Everything that's hot glows, but
not everything that glows is hot.
And then I want you to think about the microwave oven.
You can take a piece of chicken and put it on a paper plate and
(22:55):
stick it in the microwave, and you can burn the chicken black.
And yet the paper plate's unharmed, isn't it?
Yeah, because it's molecular. All that paper flying all over
Manhattan that day. If the fires were so intense to
drop buildings, why didn't that paper burn now?
These are these are different details and you hear people
(23:16):
talking about the collapse of the building and so forth, but
this this is different stuff that you're talking about.
Yeah, because I've studied it. What?
Why do you think others are so reluctant to talk about it?
I you because I don't know, because you're made to feel
you're unpatriotic if you ask a question about it.
You're supposed to blindly do what George Bush told us to do,
(23:38):
and that's go to war with the country that had nothing to do
with it. I mean, what?
You know, what first raised my thing on 9/11 was when Bush said
we were going to go to war against Iraq.
Because I went, wait a minute, there wasn't one of the 19
hijackers who was from Iraq. Why would we go to war and
invade Iraq when most of them were Saudis?
(24:03):
That's interesting, Yeah. And.
I thought, what, what's going? Well, that told me there's
something going on here that's far beyond what they've told us.
As someone who has studied the JFK assassination as as closely
as you have, and someone who hasobviously asking important
questions about 911, these are probably 2 of the biggest events
in recent American history. Do you see any kind of
(24:27):
overlapping detail? I mean, is there anything in
these two events that that you've noticed that you can
compare and contrast and come toany?
Conclusions about absolutely. They both led the war.
They both unequivocally lead us to war.
The killing of Jack Kennedy put us in Vietnam because Kennedy
had already ordered the 1st 1000advisors to be home by Christmas
(24:50):
and he said off the record that he would have us completely out
of Vietnam by 65 with no advisors or nothing.
We had no ground troops there, yet we had quote UN quote
advisors. Well, both of these events led
the United States into war. We're speaking with Jesse
(25:12):
Ventura. His new book is They Killed Our
President, 63 Reasons to BelieveThere Was a Conspiracy to
Assassinate JFK. We don't have a whole lot of
time, but I wanted to ask you a couple questions really quickly
about your TV work. I loved your show Tru TV's
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.
Whatever happened with the show,I never heard the official
(25:34):
story. Oh, there wasn't one.
They just didn't renew it for a fourth year.
But it was doing very well, wasn't it?
It was doing well. They didn't.
So we didn't do anymore. We did 24 of them.
They aired 23 of the 24. The only one they wouldn't put
on was the one we did on the TSAand Homeland Security at the
airports. I don't know why they never gave
(25:55):
a reason, but they wouldn't air that one.
And we did 8 for 8/8 shows for three seasons and they just
didn't renew it for a fourth year.
So I've moved on and I'll be doing a show on the Internet now
from off the grid in Mexico. And what's your show going to be
about? It's going to be broadcasting
into the Iron Curtain United States.
(26:17):
I kind of view us today as I didEast Germany, East Berlin, and I
have to be outside the country to tell you the truth so I can
have my safety. Well, that's fascinating.
Are you already working on this?Oh yeah.
And are. You trying to feel delivered.
The eyes have been dotted, the TS crossed and I, I, I, I
(26:37):
couldn't get a job here in the United States, so my boss is
Mexican. I mean, I mean, you talk a lot
about how how tough it is for you to to get on TV and that a
lot of media doesn't want to cover, you know, this book.
They killed that president, marginalized you, and that's the
way they do it. Yeah.
But yeah, you still do get a lotof attention.
(26:59):
I've heard you say that, you know, it's because like, you get
big ratings, so sometimes they'll still let you.
Well. That's what Pierce said to me.
Yeah, off the air, he said. I wouldn't have you on, but you
get big ratings. Nice.
That was his quote to me off theair.
See, Pierce makes a huge mistake.
You know what mistake Pierce makes?
What? He puts me in front of a live
(27:21):
audience. Right.
The last two times I've been in front of a live audience.
Now come on, use your head. I'm a former pro wrestler.
I know how to manipulate an audience.
Yeah, that's a good point. I win them over and I do.
By the end of the show, they're booing peers and cheering me.
You notice that? Yeah, I have, you know, another
(27:42):
person that that seems to do that.
It only happened once. But your regular guest on is
Alex Jones. Can you talk a little bit about
your relationship with Alex and?Well, Alex is a guy I met
through different things I've done and I've grown to like him
as a person and as a friend. And Alex, I think performs a
good service. He's out there speaking about
(28:02):
things that mainstream won't talk about.
And I don't necessarily agree with Alex 100%, but I, I don't
agree with anyone 100%. You know, I don't think anybody
really does with anyone. And but I found I find Alex kind
of refreshing. I think we need him.
He's a voice that needs to be out there and, and, and he he's
(28:26):
a friend. And when, when when I got in
trouble, Alex was right there tohelp me any way that he could.
That's truly the sign of a friend is someone that will do
that. Well, that's a really good point
because as you said, you know, one may not agree with
everything that he says and theneveryone may not agree with
everything that you write about in your books.
But seems like both of you are are out there searching, trying
(28:47):
and doing it with integrity. And I think we're both, we both
love our country. And I believe simply I'm being a
vigilant citizen, which is what our forefathers said was
required for this great democracy of ours to work.
It required vigilant citizens. And if you're not going to be a
vigilant citizen, then it's going to fail.
(29:08):
And I won't allow that to happen, not on my watch if I can
help it. One last thing, you said that
you spend a lot of time out of the country in Mexico and you've
been pretty critical of our our leaders and the state of affairs
right now. What is the number one thing?
I mean, I, I know there's a lot that concerns you, but when you
look at our country right now, what is the thing that really
(29:32):
upsets you that you fear the most?
We've, we've bet if you count the war on drugs, which is a
war, talk to my friends in Mexico where they lose 20,000
people a year because of it. If you count the war on drugs,
we've been at war my entire lifeand I post World War 2, Korea,
(29:58):
Vietnam War on drugs and all therest of these wars we're at.
And, and so I think that war is the is the overriding top thing
that concerns me the most is that we are now the country that
is synonymous with war. And I stand with President
Kennedy in saying that we shouldnot start a war and we should
(30:19):
not fight a war. We should simply defend
ourselves. After all this work that you've
done with, with being governor, having a film career, doing
wrestling, writing books, teaching at Harvard and.
Serving in the military. And serving in the military as a
Navy SEAL, what is the thing that you're most proud of that
(30:40):
you've done in your life? Well, that's it.
I'll give you a political answer, which is the only one I
can. I'm proud of all of them because
they all happened at different parts of my life and they were
the most important thing in my life at that point of part of my
life. So it's difficult to sit here
and say to you, one was more important than the other when
they all ultimately led me to where I am today and they all
(31:02):
played important roles in be getting there.
It's all part of living. More of what I would say to you
is this I, I don't want to get to 75 or 80 years old.
If I'm that fortunate, which isn't that far away anymore.
I don't want to get there and say woulda coulda shoulda.
Well, I don't think you can say that because you've already
accomplished quite a bit in yourlife.
(31:23):
Well, but there's more I want todo.
You know what? Here's something off the track.
You know what I did last spring that was life changing when you
look at my resume, and I'd rate this in the top five of
everything I've ever done. What's that?
What I did what? My wife and I went into this
private lagoon, this lagoon in the deep Mexico and the Baja,
(31:44):
and we physically touched grey whales in the wild.
And I don't mean we just touchedthem as they pass by.
We had a mother and calf spend an hour and 15 minutes with us
and we were in a boat. Wow.
And they approach you, You don'tapproach them.
We were in a 20 foot boat and the mother was 40 feet long and
(32:05):
I stuck my hands in her mouth. Huh.
Oh my. Goodness, Jesse, he was.
Life changing. They do.
That and, and anyone can. They're remarkable.
They're mammals. Remember that.
They're not fish. They clearly can think and
communicate because that's what this proved to me.
(32:27):
How else wise, how would they know it was safe?
How would a mother bring her baby up?
She actually got underneath the baby and raised it up so we
could touch it better. I wasn't planning on asking
about it, but do you have any thoughts about, I don't know if
you've been following the story,that documentary that came out
about SeaWorld and the and the killer whales?
Yeah, yeah, I thought so. This.
(32:48):
I went out and touched them in the wild, in their domain where
they belong. Yeah.
I think that answers your question absolutely they belong.
OK man, I I could talk to you. Forever.
They belong in a tub at SeaWorld.
They belong out in the ocean, living free.
They need to follow like what Ben Franklin said should apply
(33:11):
to them too. I was going to say that's a good
way to wrap it up because that'swhat you always go back to
freedom. Yep.
And and Ben Franklin when he said those that will give up
their liberty for security shallhave and deserve neither.
There's your example, the killerwhales, they have no freedom and
they and and they've given it upfor security.
Do you think they're happy? I don't think so.
(33:34):
So maybe they're a good metaphorfor the American middle class
right now there. You.
Go. All right, Jesse Ventura, thank
you so much for joining us on the Sounds.
Of film and. I want to recommend.
Thanks, Jesse. Bye, bye, bye.
Take it easy.
Hi, this is Tom Needham, and you're listening to the sounds
of film and I'm very excited to have on the air with us today
former governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura.
He's the author of American Conspiracies, 63 documents the
government doesn't want you to read, and most recently, They
Killed Our President. He's done a lot of work on
television as well. I'm a big fan of his former TV
(00:22):
show, Tru T VS Conspiracy Theorywith Jesse Ventura.
I understand you have a new showyou're working on that I'd like
to ask you about, but I want to start off by talking to you
about They Killed Our President,a really exciting new book
that's out. And we're celebrating the 50th
anniversary of or not really celebrating, but, you know,
respectfully paying attention tothe death of JFK.
(00:43):
And you'll have this powerful book out just right off the bat.
I'm sure you heard about John Kerry recently making remarks
that he he didn't think that Oswald was the only shooter
involved. That's pretty amazing, isn't it?
Yeah, I I didn't know that. When did John Kerry come out and
make that statement? That that was in the past week.
You know, he just made one of those off the cuff remarks and
(01:05):
then everyone has tried to follow up and get him to
clarify, but he hasn't done that.
And I. Thought that was as well.
Probably his handlers are now telling him to button it up and
don't be going down that street because I'm learning very
quickly that it's a street that powerful people don't watch
travelling down. In doing this book tour, I
(01:27):
haven't been gotten any near theinterviews that I normally get.
In fact, ABCNBCCBS and Fox News will have nothing to do with me.
Well, that's really interesting.And and I mean, you've touched
on so many different conspiracies and you do really
get quite a bit of media attention.
I want to go through that and I want to actually talk to you
quite a bit about the media and its part in the JFK
(01:51):
assassination cover up. But let's start off, you know,
through the years, your many books and media work, you've
you've covered a number of controversial topics throughout
U.S. history. But with they Killed Our
President, you return to the topic of the JFK assassination.
And it seems to me that this is a topic that you've gone back to
before and and other forms on your TV show and in other books.
(02:12):
And it seems like this one's a really important one to you.
What is it about? Well, it is an important one
because again, without being able to say who they are, if
they can kill the president and get away with it, what can't
they do? Right.
I mean, if you can succeed in murdering the president of the
United States and cover it up for 50 years, that's remarkable.
(02:36):
And that's what's happened. Because, you know, when I wrote
this book, people always right away they say, well, who did it,
who did it, who did it? And if you can't tell them who
did it, then they all of a sudden discard you as not being,
you know, not worth anything. The point of my book is not to
tell you who did it. The point of it is to show you
(02:57):
that Lee Harvey Oswald did not do it, and thus if Oswald did
not do it, then obviously someone did do it and it wasn't
him. So then who did do it?
Well, we're never going to know until they actually investigate
it. Take a look at the the
government's own last investigation, which was the
(03:18):
House Select Committee on Assassinations in the mid 70s.
They came to the opposite conclusion as the Warren
Commission. They said it was a probable
conspiracy and turned it over tothe Justice Department, which of
course, the Justice Department did nothing.
There's no statute of limitations on murder.
It can be investigated at any time.
(03:40):
Why won't our government do it? Well, I mean, it's something
that's so out there. I mean, there was the Oliver
Stone film, JFK. You've written books.
Other people have written books.When you poll the average
American, most people think thatthere was something more to it.
And yet, if it's so out there, why do you think it still is
something that's so protected from?
(04:01):
The government, because again, they, they help, they don't want
to admit that a coup d'etat tookplace that day, that they don't
want to admit to America. And even the American people
seem to be in denial that a coupd'etat happened that day.
And it wasn't done at a ballot box or anything like that.
It was done by an Assassin's bullet to the brain of our
(04:23):
president, and our government changed that day.
The world would be far differenttoday had John Kennedy lived.
We we would see a world completely different than the
one we're seeing today. What do you think the biggest
differences would be? Well, there would have been no
Vietnam War. Right.
Imagine that he also was negotiating and working with
(04:46):
Nikita Khrushchev behind the scenes, unbeknownst to the
governments, Khrushchev and him,and agreed to end the Cold War
by 65. Imagine if there'd have been no
Cold War, the billions and trillions of dollars spent on
that. Because the only reason we
defeated the Soviets in the ColdWar, we outspent them.
(05:08):
We collapsed their economy because they tried to spend with
us on weapons and they couldn't do it.
Imagine how the world would be different.
John Kennedy was changed, attempting to change the path of
America towards peace, not war. Instead, when he was killed, we
went on a path to war, starting with Vietnam and ending today.
(05:31):
We're still in Afghanistan. So you feel that the killing of
JFK was really the start of a whole bunch of things that have
been going on since then? Absolutely.
I'm 62 years old now. I've lived through it.
I'm watching it, I'm observing it, I'm part of it, and I pay
attention. I'm a vigilant citizen that, you
(05:53):
know, people can criticize me for many things, but our
forefathers who created this country, they had in mind that
the people had to be vigilant for it to work.
We had to be a part of it to make it work.
And the problem is we don't haveenough vigilant citizens today.
We have citizens who somehow have lost sight of the fact that
(06:14):
we're in charge. The government's supposed to
work for us, not the reverse. One of the things that I've
always respected in your writingis that you seem to pull from
figures that you respect on the left and the right.
You know, I've seen you talk about Bernie Sanders, I've seen
you talk about Ron Paul. And it seems that you're just
(06:34):
looking for, for people who are willing to stand up and, and,
and have a voice for the people.Well, because of the fact I
believe today that that the downfall of our country are the
two political parties. Right.
And I have good backing in that thought.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams agree
completely with me. They wrote about it.
(06:57):
We're not listening to what theywarned us about.
We're not listening to what Ben Franklin told us.
For those that will give up their liberty for security shall
have and deserve neither. Because liberty is security.
Don't people get that? Freedom is security and the only
way government could make you safe is to take away your
(07:18):
freedom? And that's what they're doing.
And we're letting them. Oh man.
We're speaking with Governor Jesse Ventura.
His new book is They Killed our President, 63 Reasons to believe
that there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK.
There is a great listing of all these different facts that
(07:39):
you've discovered through your research about why you believe
that JFK was assassinated. And we can't go through all of
them. But is there one or two really
key pieces that for you are the most convincing things that
you've ever heard that that makeyou believe?
1 is what we open the book with the Katzenbach memo.
Yeah, I want to talk. About it, I didn't even count
that as one of the 63. I told the publishers I want to
(08:02):
open the book with it because tome, it's not a smoking gun, it's
a smoking cannon. And people need to realize there
were two conspiracies that took place that day.
There was the conspiracy to actually murder the president,
and then there was the conspiracy to cover up that
murder. And the Katzenbach memo outlines
the entire conspiracy that was used to cover up the murder.
(08:25):
And it was written Monday morning from them at the acting
attorney general, Nicholas Katzenback, to the new
president, Lyndon Johnson. And it outlined, we have to
convince the public that Oswald after the law, that he had no
compatriots with him and that hewould have been convicted had
there been a trial. And then it finishes.
We have to head off any unwantedcongressional investigations.
(08:47):
What is an unwanted congressional investigation?
I would like a definition for that.
This was the murder of our president.
Why would we not want a complete, thorough investigation
of that murder? That's pretty powerful stuff
and. That's not mine, that's them.
Yeah. The other thing that's amazing,
(09:08):
I'm reading the works right now of, of oh gosh, I can't think of
his name off the top of my head now.
And I should and that one of them blank out.
So I'm getting old. But Harold Weisberg who wrote
Whitewash 1965, this is 2 years and a half years after the
murder. And did you and he only used
(09:29):
Warren Commission documents. Did you know that they
completely ignored the testimonyof Governor Conley and his wife
Nelly, who were both in the car with the President when they
both underoath to the Commissionstated that they were hit by it?
That Governor Conley was struck by a different bullet than the
president and and that right there kills the whole Warren
(09:53):
Commission magic bullet which causes it all to fall apart.
And they chose not to accept that testimony from the two
people who were in the car with the president.
It wasn't the main point of it, but that document that you
referred to that you used to open up the book, I, I was kind
of shocked. I had no idea that I think a lot
(10:13):
of people would be surprised that that the memo that you're
referring to is addressed to Bill Moyers of all people.
That was shocking to me. And he, he.
Was he worked with LBJ? Yeah, I, I mean, I, I had known
that, but I, I never really thought of him having anything
to do with the whole Kennedy assassination.
That that was pretty amazing. I think people are going to be
shocked about that. It's amazing the people that are
(10:33):
that have have, you know, some type of tie to it.
Yeah, you know that, that. Be an innocent guy, you know?
You don't know I'm. I'm not accusing Gilmore.
No, of course. Yeah, reminding the you know,
but he just happened to be working for LBJ at the time.
Right now, there's so much stuffthat we could get into, but why
(10:58):
do you think, you know, you kindof addressed it already, but but
if this is this is true that there was a conspiracy to.
Assess it is true. OK, it's.
Tell us about it. So what?
What do we do with that information?
Well. The thing is, is there's there's
no statute of limitations on themurder.
(11:18):
The government itself, when theyhad their last investigation,
which was the House Select Committee on Assassinations in
the mid 70s, they came to the conclusion that Kennedy was
killed by a probable conspiracy.They sent it on to the Justice
Department to act on it, and it's probably still there
collecting dust. Nobody bothers with it because
(11:40):
nobody tells them act on this. There's no, there's no statute.
A murder can go on forever. You can investigate it at any
time because there is no statuteof limitations on murder.
And I think we can all agree President Kennedy was murdered
and we can all agree there was never a trial.
(12:04):
So who has the the power or the the authority to open?
Them, justice, the president, all they have to do is order it.
Interesting. None of them will, will they?
No, you know none. Of them will investigate 9/11,
none of them will do anything. We got to move forward.
We got to look ahead. That's the standard answer,
(12:27):
Yeah, we got to move forward andlook ahead.
And that way nobody behind us gets prosecuted for anything.
But you're saying that we can't move ahead until we acknowledge
what's actually happened? Exactly.
Right. We're speaking with Jesse
Ventura. He's the author of They Killed
Our Presidents, available on Amazon.com and lots of other
(12:47):
places. You know, one of the things that
I found particularly interestingin this book related to the
assassination is really just a really smart chapter on the role
of the media. And you, you touched on it a
little bit before, but I don't know if everyone knows some of
the stuff that you referred to in the book, which is that you
(13:07):
allege that the the CIA actuallyhas, I don't know if you call it
a program, but that they actually have people who are
journalists, hundreds of them, who have ties to the CIA and
that their job is to be in the newsrooms all over the place.
Correct me if I'm misinterpreting what you were
writing. And and that their job is to, in
(13:28):
this particular case, you know, cover up the assassination or.
Or spin whatever it may be into the best possible light that
they want it to be put under. No, that's a known factor.
No, this the majority of your CIA operatives.
First of all, they're not supposed to be operational
(13:48):
within the United States according to their charter.
I, I, I showed in my book, Don'tStart the Revolution that
they're, they're embedded in state government.
I won't say who it is because I could get in trouble for that,
but they wear 2 hats. They do a job and then they're
CIA contract agents on the side.So they do 2 jobs and they're,
(14:11):
they, it's a known fact that they're, they're infiltrated in
our media massively because it, it, it was learned at a very
early age that if you control the media, you control the
people and you control any knowledge or, or things that the
people can, no one learned. If you withhold knowledge and
(14:33):
evidence from the public, then the public is ignorant about it
and can't act upon it, can they?No.
And that's what's happens. That's what's being done.
What, you know, when you look atthe latest, the whole, the whole
thing with Snowden, I mean, they're they're claiming that
this guy should go to jail. Yeah.
(14:53):
For, for, for for what? For exposing the government,
breaking the law and lying. There were some journalists that
said that he should be killed, that they should send the drone
over and kill him. Well, I'd like to know who those
journalists work for. Yeah.
Because to me, anyone that exposes the government lying and
(15:14):
the government doing wrong, not even obeying their own laws, is
a hero. And I've stated already, if I
became president, both him and Bradley Manning would
immediately be pardoned. Well, you mentioned if if you
would become president. There's been a lot of
speculation right now put out byyourself and and others about
(15:34):
the possibility of running for president.
If you could get Howard Stern torun with you.
Is there something that you're serious about?
Well, you know, I've just made the statement that 2016 would be
the opportune time to do it because number one, you, I know
this from my experience, you don't want to run against an
incumbent, right? So 2016, there would be no
(15:56):
incumbent that, that you need a wide open race #2IN light of the
things that they're doing in public sentiment.
It's like they're paving the wayfor me to do it.
Yeah. I mean Congress's approval
ratings now at 10% yet I can't figure out how 90% of them get
reelected. I bet that baffles me to no end.
(16:21):
If their disapproval rating is 10%, why are they constantly
being re elected? And the point I made is I, I'm
not saying I'm going to do it. I just said the opportunities
there. And I also stated what I would
run on and I, and I make no bones about it, I would run you.
You need to keep campaigns simple, and I would keep mine as
(16:43):
simple as this. I would challenge and give the
American people the opportunity,if I did run, to elect the first
president since George Washington that does not belong
to a political party. Imagine that.
Yeah, we've only had one president, the father of our
country, who is not part of a political gang.
(17:06):
Yeah, you do address that in your last book.
So is there any chance? I mean, I, I know you said you
kind of depended on if you couldget on Howard Stern's well.
It's because I won't, I won't, Iwon't sacrifice my integrity.
And you've got to have a lot of money to be competitive and you
got to be allowed in the debates.
Those are the two things that have to happen.
(17:27):
And to keep my integrity, see, Itake no PAC money.
I take no special interest or corporate money.
And, and my four years as governor, I never met with a
lobbyist. They didn't have to, they didn't
have nothing to do with me in inmy election.
So in order to keep my integrity, I need someone like
Stern who could raise money and say 20 and $50 donations from
(17:52):
individual citizens because thatway it keeps my integrity.
And I have to have that. I can't run the conventional
way. I have to run unconventionally.
And that's what it would take todo it.
And I use Howard as that exampleof of I would need him in which
to raise the money to be competitive.
(18:13):
That makes a lot of sense. I I suppose, though, that there
would be some people that that feel that maybe Howard won't do
it and would hope that maybe there's a similar way that you
could go about it. I don't know.
You could do it with Howard and just go along with the program.
If I had to pick a second choicepolitically, I picked up.
I picked Senator Angus King fromMaine, who was the independent
(18:35):
governor of Maine when I was independent governor of
Minnesota. We were the two independents.
He then went back to the privatesector for a number of years,
and he now just won by a landslide the independent Senate
seat from Maine. He's a complete independent and
Angus King and I could cause them tremendous trouble.
Yeah. You know, I don't know whether
(18:55):
you would. Want someone like Howard Stern
on board to raise the money? Give us, give us if we could use
his show. It doesn't cost anything, right?
And it wouldn't. I mean, nothing to me is more
obscene than the system of bribery that we see today where
they spend a billion dollars to become the president.
(19:16):
I mean, with that money alone, we could have healthcare for
everybody. In in in your books.
You've made the point several times before that if we didn't
spend the money on the military that we do, we'd be able to have
healthcare for everyone and and a whole bunch of other things as
well. Absolutely.
And why do we need we? We spend more on defense and we
(19:39):
don't ask. The question that needs to be
asked is why does anybody want to get us?
I don't think that no one wants her to take away our freedom.
Who out there in the world can take away the United States's
freedom? Is Al Qaeda going to do a
Normandy invasion on Virginia? Yeah.
(20:02):
It seems crazy and like we need to ask the question, why do they
hate us? What are we doing?
Well, I got news. I know why.
Let's get out of the Middle East.
Yeah, that's what you know, Ron Paul.
Was talking about this way. Do you remember a guy named
Christopher Columbus? Yeah, yes.
He discovered, allegedly, America for the Anglo-Saxon
(20:24):
European world, right? Right.
What was he doing on that mission?
He was trying to find another way to India by avoiding the
Middle East. In other words, science believed
the world was flat. Columbus ran the risk of falling
off the earth, but he was willing to take that chance to
(20:46):
stay out of the Middle East and find another way to India.
And this was, well, how many, 7-8 hundred years ago?
Yeah. So why are we still dealing with
the Middle East? Get out of there.
Leave them under themselves. You mentioned just just a second
ago the idea that we we hear theexcuse that that they hid our
(21:09):
freedom. And that was something you heard
a lot after 911. You've been one of the few
prominent people in this countryto question some of the, the
details surrounding 9/11. And I've been really amazed
because even some other people that typically will get involved
in, you know, debating certain controversies and so forth, like
(21:29):
Oliver Stone and Bill Maher and so forth, even they, they won't
even touch 9/11. But you've gone out there and
you had it on your TV show. You've written about it in your
books. What is it?
Even more so, it seems, than JFK, about 911.
Because I have questions that I haven't been answered and no one
will attempt to give me an answer.
(21:51):
I can give you one right now. Sure.
I I there were over 1100 cars, automobiles that were posted on
the street that day. I've seen photographs of them
and they were as far away as theFDR, which was 5 to 6 blocks
away. What on earth could cause a car
to burn 6 blocks away from a building that was allegedly that
(22:13):
was hit by two planes and allegedly collapsed?
I. Don't know.
Anybody give me an answer on that?
See, it's it's questions like that that I desire answers to.
And you know what's interesting?The only thing burnt on the car
was metal, not the upholstery. I've seen photographs of them
(22:34):
all. Some of them only burn halfway
in a clear line, half the car. And now here's what I want you
to think about. Everything that's hot glows, but
not everything that glows is hot.
And then I want you to think about the microwave oven.
You can take a piece of chicken and put it on a paper plate and
(22:55):
stick it in the microwave, and you can burn the chicken black.
And yet the paper plate's unharmed, isn't it?
Yeah, because it's molecular. All that paper flying all over
Manhattan that day. If the fires were so intense to
drop buildings, why didn't that paper burn now?
These are these are different details and you hear people
(23:16):
talking about the collapse of the building and so forth, but
this this is different stuff that you're talking about.
Yeah, because I've studied it. What?
Why do you think others are so reluctant to talk about it?
I you because I don't know, because you're made to feel
you're unpatriotic if you ask a question about it.
You're supposed to blindly do what George Bush told us to do,
(23:38):
and that's go to war with the country that had nothing to do
with it. I mean, what?
You know, what first raised my thing on 9/11 was when Bush said
we were going to go to war against Iraq.
Because I went, wait a minute, there wasn't one of the 19
hijackers who was from Iraq. Why would we go to war and
invade Iraq when most of them were Saudis?
(24:03):
That's interesting, Yeah. And.
I thought, what, what's going? Well, that told me there's
something going on here that's far beyond what they've told us.
As someone who has studied the JFK assassination as as closely
as you have, and someone who hasobviously asking important
questions about 911, these are probably 2 of the biggest events
in recent American history. Do you see any kind of
(24:27):
overlapping detail? I mean, is there anything in
these two events that that you've noticed that you can
compare and contrast and come toany?
Conclusions about absolutely. They both led the war.
They both unequivocally lead us to war.
The killing of Jack Kennedy put us in Vietnam because Kennedy
had already ordered the 1st 1000advisors to be home by Christmas
(24:50):
and he said off the record that he would have us completely out
of Vietnam by 65 with no advisors or nothing.
We had no ground troops there, yet we had quote UN quote
advisors. Well, both of these events led
the United States into war. We're speaking with Jesse
(25:12):
Ventura. His new book is They Killed Our
President, 63 Reasons to BelieveThere Was a Conspiracy to
Assassinate JFK. We don't have a whole lot of
time, but I wanted to ask you a couple questions really quickly
about your TV work. I loved your show Tru TV's
Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.
Whatever happened with the show,I never heard the official
(25:34):
story. Oh, there wasn't one.
They just didn't renew it for a fourth year.
But it was doing very well, wasn't it?
It was doing well. They didn't.
So we didn't do anymore. We did 24 of them.
They aired 23 of the 24. The only one they wouldn't put
on was the one we did on the TSAand Homeland Security at the
airports. I don't know why they never gave
(25:55):
a reason, but they wouldn't air that one.
And we did 8 for 8/8 shows for three seasons and they just
didn't renew it for a fourth year.
So I've moved on and I'll be doing a show on the Internet now
from off the grid in Mexico. And what's your show going to be
about? It's going to be broadcasting
into the Iron Curtain United States.
(26:17):
I kind of view us today as I didEast Germany, East Berlin, and I
have to be outside the country to tell you the truth so I can
have my safety. Well, that's fascinating.
Are you already working on this?Oh yeah.
And are. You trying to feel delivered.
The eyes have been dotted, the TS crossed and I, I, I, I
(26:37):
couldn't get a job here in the United States, so my boss is
Mexican. I mean, I mean, you talk a lot
about how how tough it is for you to to get on TV and that a
lot of media doesn't want to cover, you know, this book.
They killed that president, marginalized you, and that's the
way they do it. Yeah.
But yeah, you still do get a lotof attention.
(26:59):
I've heard you say that, you know, it's because like, you get
big ratings, so sometimes they'll still let you.
Well. That's what Pierce said to me.
Yeah, off the air, he said. I wouldn't have you on, but you
get big ratings. Nice.
That was his quote to me off theair.
See, Pierce makes a huge mistake.
You know what mistake Pierce makes?
What? He puts me in front of a live
(27:21):
audience. Right.
The last two times I've been in front of a live audience.
Now come on, use your head. I'm a former pro wrestler.
I know how to manipulate an audience.
Yeah, that's a good point. I win them over and I do.
By the end of the show, they're booing peers and cheering me.
You notice that? Yeah, I have, you know, another
(27:42):
person that that seems to do that.
It only happened once. But your regular guest on is
Alex Jones. Can you talk a little bit about
your relationship with Alex and?Well, Alex is a guy I met
through different things I've done and I've grown to like him
as a person and as a friend. And Alex, I think performs a
good service. He's out there speaking about
(28:02):
things that mainstream won't talk about.
And I don't necessarily agree with Alex 100%, but I, I don't
agree with anyone 100%. You know, I don't think anybody
really does with anyone. And but I found I find Alex kind
of refreshing. I think we need him.
He's a voice that needs to be out there and, and, and he he's
(28:26):
a friend. And when, when when I got in
trouble, Alex was right there tohelp me any way that he could.
That's truly the sign of a friend is someone that will do
that. Well, that's a really good point
because as you said, you know, one may not agree with
everything that he says and theneveryone may not agree with
everything that you write about in your books.
But seems like both of you are are out there searching, trying
(28:47):
and doing it with integrity. And I think we're both, we both
love our country. And I believe simply I'm being a
vigilant citizen, which is what our forefathers said was
required for this great democracy of ours to work.
It required vigilant citizens. And if you're not going to be a
vigilant citizen, then it's going to fail.
(29:08):
And I won't allow that to happen, not on my watch if I can
help it. One last thing, you said that
you spend a lot of time out of the country in Mexico and you've
been pretty critical of our our leaders and the state of affairs
right now. What is the number one thing?
I mean, I, I know there's a lot that concerns you, but when you
look at our country right now, what is the thing that really
(29:32):
upsets you that you fear the most?
We've, we've bet if you count the war on drugs, which is a
war, talk to my friends in Mexico where they lose 20,000
people a year because of it. If you count the war on drugs,
we've been at war my entire lifeand I post World War 2, Korea,
(29:58):
Vietnam War on drugs and all therest of these wars we're at.
And, and so I think that war is the is the overriding top thing
that concerns me the most is that we are now the country that
is synonymous with war. And I stand with President
Kennedy in saying that we shouldnot start a war and we should
(30:19):
not fight a war. We should simply defend
ourselves. After all this work that you've
done with, with being governor, having a film career, doing
wrestling, writing books, teaching at Harvard and.
Serving in the military. And serving in the military as a
Navy SEAL, what is the thing that you're most proud of that
(30:40):
you've done in your life? Well, that's it.
I'll give you a political answer, which is the only one I
can. I'm proud of all of them because
they all happened at different parts of my life and they were
the most important thing in my life at that point of part of my
life. So it's difficult to sit here
and say to you, one was more important than the other when
they all ultimately led me to where I am today and they all
(31:02):
played important roles in be getting there.
It's all part of living. More of what I would say to you
is this I, I don't want to get to 75 or 80 years old.
If I'm that fortunate, which isn't that far away anymore.
I don't want to get there and say woulda coulda shoulda.
Well, I don't think you can say that because you've already
accomplished quite a bit in yourlife.
(31:23):
Well, but there's more I want todo.
You know what? Here's something off the track.
You know what I did last spring that was life changing when you
look at my resume, and I'd rate this in the top five of
everything I've ever done. What's that?
What I did what? My wife and I went into this
private lagoon, this lagoon in the deep Mexico and the Baja,
(31:44):
and we physically touched grey whales in the wild.
And I don't mean we just touchedthem as they pass by.
We had a mother and calf spend an hour and 15 minutes with us
and we were in a boat. Wow.
And they approach you, You don'tapproach them.
We were in a 20 foot boat and the mother was 40 feet long and
(32:05):
I stuck my hands in her mouth. Huh.
Oh my. Goodness, Jesse, he was.
Life changing. They do.
That and, and anyone can. They're remarkable.
They're mammals. Remember that.
They're not fish. They clearly can think and
communicate because that's what this proved to me.
(32:27):
How else wise, how would they know it was safe?
How would a mother bring her baby up?
She actually got underneath the baby and raised it up so we
could touch it better. I wasn't planning on asking
about it, but do you have any thoughts about, I don't know if
you've been following the story,that documentary that came out
about SeaWorld and the and the killer whales?
Yeah, yeah, I thought so. This.
(32:48):
I went out and touched them in the wild, in their domain where
they belong. Yeah.
I think that answers your question absolutely they belong.
OK man, I I could talk to you. Forever.
They belong in a tub at SeaWorld.
They belong out in the ocean, living free.
They need to follow like what Ben Franklin said should apply
(33:11):
to them too. I was going to say that's a good
way to wrap it up because that'swhat you always go back to
freedom. Yep.
And and Ben Franklin when he said those that will give up
their liberty for security shallhave and deserve neither.
There's your example, the killerwhales, they have no freedom and
they and and they've given it upfor security.
Do you think they're happy? I don't think so.
(33:34):
So maybe they're a good metaphorfor the American middle class
right now there. You.
Go. All right, Jesse Ventura, thank
you so much for joining us on the Sounds.
Of film and. I want to recommend.
Thanks, Jesse. Bye, bye, bye.
Take it easy.
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