Jesse Ventura appeared on The Jimmy Dore Show this week and “The Body” turned Governor spoke on a still slim possibility for a presidential run in 2020 as well as his strong advocacy for the United States to have a strong third party candidate. Jesse doesn’t rule himself as that person, but also discusses the Black Lives Matter movement, his 2016 meeting with Bernie Sanders, the NFL and the country’s police problem.
“I thought about running this year and I inquired in. I thought my best way in was The Green Party but unfortunately, they couldn’t give me a clear path to the nomination even though I don’t know if you heard, there was a poll done by one of the major poll companies and it was played on Fox News listing Biden, Trump and me and without even being a candidate I polled 18%.”
Ventura cited a family health concern as a reason for why he’s currently not running, but didn’t rule out the slight chance that something could happen if matters do turn out positively for he and his family.
“Well if it’s indeed there is a clear path, I’ll take it a step further. Right now I’m in the midst of a medical in my family and if were to announce my candidacy, Jimmy, I would have immediately lost my job and I would immediately have lost my healthcare and I think in today’s day and age if I would have did that many people would have questioned my sanity including myself. In today’s day and age, you’re going to give up your job and give up your healthcare when a quarter or a third of our country has neither? Job or healthcare? And I thought that’s crazy and so I do have this that we’re going through right and this in and of itself could take me out of it. If it comes out negative, if comes out positive, I told them that in the end of June, if in July they want to call me and say, ‘We will give you our nomination.’ Well that slight door could still be open then I guess if they felt the desire to do that, but what I’ve heard is Howie Hawkins [is] their major candidate.”
Dore speaks about how there is conflicting stories involving the Green Party nomination involving Jesse’s viability and Ventura breaks some details down.
“I would have been required to go to the convention, let me explain this, go to the convention and wait until if no one made 51% then it would free up the delegates to win on the second round. Well that all seems nice, but I’m old enough. I was in the Reform Party. When after Perot ran in ’92, we were gonna show the world that we were still growing, that we were not just Ross Perot, but we were a legitimate third party movement. We got three-time governor Dick Lamb of Colorado to be our candidate in ’96. In the 11th hour the Perot people came in, cut his legs out from underneath him and Perot ran again. So I know and everybody I talk to that I trust in the political arena told me the only red flag they had was the Green Party’s nominating convention.”
Ventura adds onto that conflicting aspect coming from the Green Party. “Why is the Green Party fractured? I don’t have time to bring a party together. I know what it’s like to take on the Dems and the Repubs and you sure as hell can’t do it with a fractured party and then I’m required to mend the party first and then take on the Dems and Repubs? When I was in the Mongols my name was Superman, but I don’t know if I qualify anymore.”
LIVE-STREAM! Hey everyone, we're live-streaming! Live Interview With Former Governor of Minnesota, @GovJVentura Jesse Ventura! Plus later phone calls with @MikeMacRaeMike! With panelist, @miserablelib Stef Zamorano! Click on the link below to tune in NOW!https://t.co/BsIkNb1OBn
— Jimmy Dore (@jimmy_dore) June 10, 2020
Ventura gives his insight as to why having a third party candidate is essential to bridge some common ground between the United States.
“We gotta elect a third party president and here’s why: If Trump or Biden gets elected the polarization continues. Worse than ever. I’ve got Minnesota, I can tell you exactly what’ll happen if you elect a third party president it’ll work out like it did in Minnesota. If the two houses are split like I had, a Republican House and a Democratic Senate, whoever I sided with generally prevailed until into the third, into the fourth year. That’s when they jump in bed together and they turn against you and it’s the Dems and the Repubs in my case against the common sense middle governor.”
Jesse gives an example:
“And what happened in Minnesota, I put forward the budget which is my job, fiscally responsible, they rejected, they came back with their own budget, it was fiscally irresponsible, I vetoed it, they overrode my veto and sent it again, I vetoed it the only thing I could do a second time, they overrode me again so they took ownership. Well, they did it to get me, and I fooled them. I didn’t run and they were left with their own budget. A year later they were $5 billion in deficit because of their fiscally irresponsible budget that they were willing to gamble the people of Minnesota to get me. And that’s how it works. People need to know that’s the way it works between these two parties and third party. They always make their decision, here’s their list: It’s party first, then it’s big-time money donors second, it’s your own personal feelings third and ‘We The People’ might be fourth but there could be something that would even make us fifth.”
Dore asked Jesse if he believes keeping Bernie Sanders on the polling ticket is a way for the parties thwart votes for having a third party candidate in the race. This gives Ventura an opportunity to speak on when he attempted to endorse Sanders for presidential candidacy back in 2016.
“Oh I would tend to agree with you on that because I’d tell you my personal thing that happened with Bernie in 2016. 2016 before it ended up Trump and Hillary, Bernie came to Minneapolis and I actually went down there with the intention that I would break from my norm and endorse him and they treated me completely coldly. They didn’t want nothing to do with me when I went down there as former Minnesota governor independent, then when I did get to meet with Bernie in a hallway for about a minute and a half, but I learned what I needed to learn, Jimmy. I asked him, ‘Senator, if you lose the nomination to Secretary Clinton, will you make a third party run or will you support a third party candidate in anyway?’ He looked right at me and said, ‘Absolutely not. I will support Secretary Clinton.’ I looked at him and said, ‘Thank you’ and I turned around and I walked away and I knew right there: Bernie Sanders is not a real independent. Bernie Sanders is merely a front person who calls himself an independent, but is truly a part of the Democratic Party and system because and whatever they do with him I’m not privy to, but I fully believe that all the way because after he met with me, I’m independent all the way. He wouldn’t give me the time of day. Certainly didn’t want an endorsement in any way shape or form from me.”
“He’s getting most of his own delegates now are turning against them. His own delegates,” added Jimmy.
“Well the slang term for them are called ‘Berners’ and I was told ‘Berners’ would jump with me in a second because they said they wanted a candidate with a spine,” said Ventura, who then reiterated his potential interest in still making a run if everything in his family goes well.
“Put it this way and you can tell them, I do have the spine but I just can’t make the commitment at this time until this health thing is settled in my family because I did 14 years of public service, but I’m going to tell people honestly, my family comes first. I’m not going to jeopardize any way, shape or form just to hold public office.”
Dore then brought up the protests sweeping the nation and how it all began in his hometown of Minneapolis.
“Jimmy, it’s worse than that. It’s my neighborhood. I grew up there, right where it all happened,” Jesse said describing the actual landscape of that area of Minneapolis. “It’s a tragic situation we’re in, but it’s the truth and we’re finally being made, hopefully, to look at the truth.
Next, Ventura took a moment to call out the NFL on its hypocrisy for their apology last week. While that aspect was wonderful, Ventura believes they still owe Colin Kaepernick an apology and also need to take a stance against still having the Washington football franchise being called The Redskins.
“Now I’m going to take a little different run at this cause I’m going to bring in my own pet peeve here and I can’t believe that nobody’s raising it. Okay, let’s move on to last week if we may when the National Football League and Roger Goodell made their apology, right? Okay, that was all wonderful and fine, but in my opinion, there should have been a direct apology to Colin Kaepernick in that and having missed on that already, I can understand why and here’s the problem I have. 70% of the National Football League are African Americans and yet, they’re protesting about racism and they have the name of a team in Washington. I’ve been protesting against that name for decades now. I march with the Native Americans in Minnesota whenever that team comes to town. You know the team I’m talking about: The Washington – and I don’t like saying the name because to me it’s as bad as the “N-Word.” And yet, you hear not a peep about getting that name changed and my counter is ‘Don’t Red Lives Matter too?’ Because that nickname is not only racist, it honors genocide.
“When I was marching with the Native Americans a few years ago, young kid came up to me and showed me the Winona, MN newspaper from 1860-something and you know what the headline was? ‘Governor [Alexander]Ramsey Raises The Bounty On Redskins.’ In other words, the government paid you and you could go out and hunt innocent people down, kill them, bring back their quote ‘red skins’ and you got paid, he raised it to $200 a skin which would translate today between $4,000 and $5,000 bucks to go out and hunt people and shoot them and kill them like they were varmits or rats and that’s what that term comes from. And now the African American players, they’ve all said Adrian Peterson (running back who plays for Washington), ‘Oh, we’re all probably going to take a knee next fall.’ Great, I support that 100% I was never against it and I’m a veteran, but the point is how can you take a knee when you are wearing that helmet from that team from Washington and if Goodell and these people want to make an impact immediately, suspend that name right now! And get a new one, I’ve got a good one for them, how about The Washington Crooks? They could name it after all of our elected officials out there.”
Ventura then makes another note on something that would help with police problem, ending “The War On Drugs.”
“Me, the secretary of state, and the chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court were the pardoning force. Any kid that came up to me with a marijuana conviction got (swipe noise) taken out of their record. That’s another thing. end “The War On Drugs” and that will help tremendously to ending this police problem. The war on drugs is one of the creations of the police problem you have today and it’s time to end that.”
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
You can listen to the entire conversation between Ventura and Dore below. Tnterview begins about halfway through the episode:
