Name: Thomas Massie | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #592
Uploaded: 2025-06-24T05:03:36.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Thomas Massie | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #592' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-24. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Thomas Massie | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #592' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-24. Transcript available.

Thomas Massie | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #592

We're coming into the last few dates for Return of the Rat Tour. We'll be in
Philadelphia,
Rochester, New York, Detroit, Michigan, Los Angeles, Anaheim, and Oceanside.
You can get your tickets only at theovahn.com slash T-O-U-R. And thank you to
everyone that
has shown support. Love y'all. Wanted to mention that Governor Tim Walls was
going to be a guest
on the podcast this week, but there was a shooting amongst some of his co-workers,
colleagues,
Minnesota lawmakers. And so they're obviously very bereaved up there and we
wish them peace and
prayers and hope to catch up with him another time. Just advising that this
episode was recorded late
last week. I was on tour and so we couldn't get it all put together, but we're
happy to get it out
today. Today's guest is a congressman from Kentucky's 4th District. He is from
Appalachia and he got a
master's degree at MIT before he got into politics. He's a member of the
Republican Party, but he's a
bit of a rogue guy. He does things his own way and I'm fortunate today to spend
time with Congressman
Thomas Massey.
All right. Thomas Massey, thanks for coming in, man. Absolutely. Good to see
you, dude. Good to be
here. Just had to cross the state border to get here. Yeah, that's what I see
from Kentucky. And you
drove, like you just took me into your home, in your camper home vehicle. It's
a F-250 with a truck camper
and I lived for two solid years in it in DC. Still occasionally do. And where
would you park that
thing at? Well, I don't want to disclose where I park, but I did get in trouble.
I parked the truck
camper. It's a super duty. It's got a, even though it fits in the back of a
pickup, it's got a shower,
bathroom, stove, and a fridge. Oh, it felt super when I was in there. That
living arrangement in
there, I could have definitely cozied up. It felt very cool. The milk felt cold
in there. We had a
little cup of milk, which is definitely. It's raw milk. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure.
Hopefully. Don't tell
anybody across state lines with that. But, so here's a funny story. I was
parking this truck camper in DC
in a congressional lot. Mm-hmm. And it got hotter than the hinges of hell in
the summertime in this
parking lot. Yeah. So I ran a little extension cord over to the electric car
charging station so I could run
the air conditioner on my camper at night. Mm-hmm. Well, the cops liked to park.
They didn't know I was
living in this camper. And I would park close to a sprinter van and the cops
would park between me and the
sprinter van to take a nap at night. Oh, so everybody's working together. Yeah.
I would look out the camper and do a
wellness check on him at night. They didn't know I was looking out for him. But
anyways, one night.
That's diplomacy. It's how it all works. It's like everybody's kind of hiding a
little bit behind the
other group. One night, it was like that movie Bridge Over the River Kwai. They
found my 50-foot
extension cord and followed it over to the electric car charging station. They
said, damn, there's somebody
living in this truck. Yeah. So my chief of staff got a call from the speaker's
chief of staff. And he said,
we think your boss is living in lot 28. And he said, what do you mean? In a
pickup truck. Yeah.
And I told my chief, don't call him back. Let me settle this. So we have a don't
ask, don't tell
arrangement. Mm-hmm. As long as I don't start a KOA or something in the
congressional lot, I can live
there. If the cops are getting a little bit of shut eye, you know what I'm
saying? Yeah. You're able to
operate a grill, you know, or a little two-stroke motor in there, something to
keep the blender working.
Well, you know, I got to mix my medical margaritas in there and keep the raw
milk cold. So what I
eventually did was cover it in solar panels and took off the old air
conditioner and put a mini
split on the back. So it looks like the millennial falcon now. Oh yeah. It
definitely looks like the guy
that's in there. It definitely seemed like you want to get his fingerprints.
That has a CODIS vibe
outside of it, you know? But that's, that isn't a lot of your vibe is that you're
off the grid. I've heard
that. Yeah. Off the grid in the camper and off the grid at home. So I haven't
bought public utilities
in 20 years. Wow. And that, you know, that kind of ties into when I go to DC,
that gives me some
independence. Mm-hmm. Because if all, if everything goes to hell and I'm no
longer a congressman and I
don't have a job, I still got a house where all my own utilities are taken care
of. It runs off solar,
got a backup generator, got a well that I dug. And it just gives you the sense
that, okay,
things, the worst day in Kentucky is better than my best day in DC.
Mm. And this is you right here. This is some, oh, this is you right here.
Yeah. Yeah. That's one of my gardens. And there's some of my chickens clucking
around.
Oh yeah.
I built a mobile pen that moves with the chickens to keep the coyotes from
eating them. Now it's like
a Roomba. Think of a Roomba with 50 chickens in it. Okay. Moving around in my
yard. It runs on solar,
collects grain water, and it takes care of my chickens when I'm not there.
And what makes it move? How does that even work? Bring that up, Trevin. Can you
get me so we can
see what I'm looking at? I don't have any footage of it on here, but I call it,
so I, it first ran off
batteries and a solar panel and the batteries went dead. And I'm like, this
sucks. I don't like taking
batteries to a landfill because I was trying to come up with a green way to
raise chickens. So I figured out a way
to do it with supercapacitors. There's no battery in it and the supercapacitors
never wear out. And I
call it the clucks capacitor.
Is this kind of an example?
Yeah. That's what it's like, except, yeah, except mine moves itself. Mine's
like a Roomba version
that's robotic.
And so what is the point of it moving?
Well, you know, chickens poop and you don't want them walking around in their
own poop.
They also like to eat a certain amount of grass and bugs. And so this gives
them fresh forage
and it keeps them out of their poop. They don't get disease. It fertilizes my
yard. It mows
my grass. Everything's all happy in the clucks capacitor.
I got a good damn chicken, dude, or a little batch of chickens. I got to get
something. I almost bought
my mom two goats, but she like for years, she's like, give me some goats. And
then, then she didn't
want it. She just has a problem with everything. But, um, anyway, uh, so what
is a flux capacitor?
Clucks capacitor.
Okay. What is an actual, what is a,
it's the circuit that I designed. So, uh, I'm a double E by train electrical
engineer by training.
And, um, I just had to come up with some way to keep my chickens alive and keep
them healthy while
I went to DC. So I came up with this circuit board that's got capacitors that
trickle charge from a
little solar panel size of a sheet of paper. And, um, it's got an automotive
winch.
So it can pull itself, even if it weighs 2,500 pounds along a cable.
So you don't have, you don't pay an electric bill.
No electric bill, no water bill, no sewer bill. I do have an internet bill
because I use Starlink.
Oh yeah. And is that legal? Are you allowed to legally be a person like that?
Well, you know, they tried to bring more regulation to our County, uh, 20 years
ago before I was a
congressman and I wrote letters to the editor and mobilize people and we
stopped them from bringing
more regulation to our County. So it's still legal where I live.
Wow. Cause this is, it seems like a very like libertarian or almost like demo,
like a lot of
the ideas seem almost very like something you would see like on the democratic
party, which sounds kind
of wild, you know? Oh, I say I'm the greenest member of Congress and no
Democrat has come after
me. No fact checker has ever tried to check that fact. Cause they know it's
true.
Wow. It's kind of crazy that the greenest member, uh, you know, with the term
greens is now a Republican.
Cause you wouldn't necessarily think that. No, you wouldn't think that. I mean,
I have a Tesla that
charges off the solar panels on my house, uh, collect rainwater. I dug a well,
I've got a bunch
of trees that I'm not cutting down. They are bringing in all kinds of CO2.
Although I like CO2.
I wish I had more because it makes my peaches get bigger on my farm. Oh yeah,
my, I raise grass fed
cattle. And what kind of, what kind of group do you have helping you over there?
Cause I don't think
you can't get out there first thing every day and do it all. I do it myself. 90%
of it. I mean,
if I'm in DC and the cattle get loose, I got a neighbor, you know, you got to
have some neighbors
that'll help you. And the deal is I'll help them when they need help. Oh, there's
a picture of my
cattle. They are Angus crossed with Wagyu. I call them Wangus. Oh, wow. Wangus
beef. It's a little,
oh yeah. It's a little urban over there. Definitely. That's definitely, uh,
there's, there's the, you
know, not the black sheep, but the white cow, uh, he kind of stands out. I say,
I feel like that white
cow in DC some days, like, do I really belong in this herd? Yeah. Yeah. You
seem like a little bit
of like an outsider, I think like, or, you know, like a black sheep or like a
maverick. I feel like
people say, if they talk about a maverick and they say Thomas Massey, you know,
um,
how much money do you save by, uh, living the way that you do like off grid?
You know, I don't think I've saved a dime. It costs a lot to do it. Um, you can
save money by heating
your house with wood, which I do, but you, if you start counting the, uh, how
much you're paying
yourself when you chop that wood, it's probably about $3 an hour. Right. And I
could go work a dollar
general and make more money than I do when I save money, heat my house with
wood. So if I were
completely, you know, poor, I could keep living, but to set all that up, took,
took a large investment.
It will probably pay off by the time I die. So you just want to end the book
with even books.
Zero. Yeah. Yeah. Just clear the tab when I leave the bar. No debt. No debt.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because you always wonder like, okay, I want to live off the grid. I want to,
but there's a,
there's a real cost to it, but a lot of that cost is sweat equity. Do you feel
like?
Yeah, it's sweat equity and it'll, it'll pay back unlike what we're doing in DC.
I mean,
if we were borrowing money in DC to fund the future, I could be for borrowing
money. The problem is up
there. It's not like on my farm where you invest in fences and you invest in
livestock in DC. We're
just pissing away the money and living on basically our seed corn. We are
taking what should be saved
for the next generation and spending it now. Is that how you feel? Yeah. It's
we're robbing
the next generation, but it's got so bad. We're robbing ourselves five years
from now. Right. It's
getting that close. Yeah. I've heard you talk about, are you talking about the
national debt overall?
Yeah. Okay. I've heard you talk a lot about it and I see you got your, um,
this is my, my debt badge. Um, it shows I've got three levels of brightness. So
if you wear it to
the movies, you can tone it down and not blind your date, but okay. So I've got
on the brightest
level there. Hopefully your camera can see it. Yeah. Um, I wear this every
second. I'm in that
house of representatives. I wear it in hearings. I wear it in elevators with
Democrats. They think
it's how many steps I've taken, but I built this using my electrical
engineering degree. I came up
with this idea and I built it. It's got wifi once a day. It connects to the
treasury.gov
and calibrates to the penny. So it's the most accurate debt, uh, representation
that you can
have. In fact, you know, it's, um, let me make sure like Mark Zucker twain.
This, this is,
I brought you one as a gift. Yeah, brother. So, uh, hell yeah, dude. You can
just stare at the
numbers, just spinning all day long. It's, um, it's an, yeah, just clips