Name: Thomas Massie Explains How to Actually Get a Word in With Your Congressman
Uploaded: 2025-08-24T15:00:48.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Thomas Massie Explains How to Actually Get a Word in With Your Congressman' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-08-24. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Thomas Massie Explains How to Actually Get a Word in With Your Congressman' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-08-24. Transcript available.

what can we do? Like, what can voters do anymore? Do we, does it matter anymore
what we do or are we
done? It does matter. You're going to. Does local level matter more than ever?
Local level voting
or what matters? Like, what do we, what do we, what can we do? So the congressman
before me in
my district got a call at home one night and this older lady was upset that her
trash hadn't been
picked up and he's a U S congressman. He said, ma'am, he said, no, he said, I'm
your U S
congressman. I don't, I'm not involved with the trash pickup. Did you think
about calling your
County commissioner? And she said, I was going to do that, but I didn't want to
start that high up.
So, um, it, I think local is, I started out in local politics and the local
officials have way
more impact on your life than the, than the federal government does. And so I
would take time and pay
attention and vote locally. And those are also people you can go find. When I
was a local government
official and we would stop at the grocery store to buy milk, my kids would beg
my wife to go in to pick
up the milk because I'd be in there two hours and somebody talked to me about a
pothole and somebody
talked to me about some weeds that need mode at the intersection. And I wouldn't
get out of there.
Now that I'm a congressman, I can buy milk anywhere. Nobody cares. They know
Congress can't get
anything done. Right. And so I think that people have figured it out.
Definitely pay attention
local. When you do pay attention federal, don't get distracted by the weapons
of mass distraction.
Don't call Nancy Pelosi. She's not, you're not going to change her mind. Only
call people you can vote
for because the people taking those calls know that and they'll discount
everything you say unless
you're a constituent. So everybody has two state senators and one U.S.
representative. So you only
need to make three phone calls. I wouldn't write them a letter. I wouldn't
waste time on email. I would
make a phone call and a real, more likely than not, a real person in that
office will pick up the phone
and talk to you. And it will be somebody who does talk to the congressman. Like
we only, we have a
staff of about 12 to 24 people. And I say hi to those people that you are
talking to every day.
Now, I don't know that all congressmen are this diligent, but I have them write
down who called
about what and how many calls we got. Some days I get one phone call and it's
from the same guy that
calls every day, right? Michael. If Michael doesn't call, we ask the local
sheriff to go do a, you know,
wellness check. Oh yeah. Don't, don't be a frequent flyer. Don't call up your
congressman and say,
I'll never vote for him again if he votes this way, because then they never
have to take you seriously.
But I would call up, I would only call people you can vote for and be polite,
be quick, get off the phone.
The, the next one you're, uh, people, I see people come up to lobby, let's say
for their,
for their grandma who has Alzheimer's and they spend, uh, $300 on a plane
ticket, a couple hundred
dollars on a hotel room. Uh, they, you know, the food is expensive in DC and
they finally get to their
congressman's office and they talk to a staffer. Yeah. That to me is a waste of
money. I would,
uh, find that congressman locally and take half of what you would have spent on
the trip to DC.
And if you could stomach that person's politics, make a donation. That's why
the lobbyist has the
ear. I'm not saying America has to compete with lobbyists for giving money, but
I will tell you this.
If you give a politician $500, you won't have to ask for his phone number. He'll
be calling you
every week asking for more of it. And so, so, but that's where we're at. Cause
we just have to
compete. Money has to compete with money. You think dark money, it doesn't have
to compete,
but you got to figure out a way to get their attention. You know, if it's
whatever the minimum
is to get in the door, that fund rate, if it's $50, don't give them 500, give
them 50 and go in
and, um, just talk to them like a human being, if you can.
But at a bigger level, like, will we ever get, will the people, you know, will
we ever get these
lobbyists out? Is it just a wrap? What do we, just tell us if we all just,
here's the way, here's the way you break free. No, well, you should definitely
go to the beach and
only spend about no more than 10% of your life thinking about politics because
it ain't healthy.
Amen. And, and, um, but the 10% that you do, you should, you should ask your
congressman to,
to advocate for separate bills on separate topics. Yeah. I agree. That seems
way more
pertinent because then you get, there's some, a level of accountability. Yeah.
And they can't
hide behind, well, it had a pay raise for soldiers. Right. Um, uh, so advocate
for that,
uh, make phone calls. If you can be friendly and connect with them, maybe you
don't agree with them
on everything, but a broken clock is right twice a day. Yeah. Some diplomacy.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think
that's a big thing I've been learning recently is that there's a give and take
to everything,
every single, everything that you know, and that's the way that the world's
built. There's like,
you know, there's forces, there's a give and take, there's a yin and yang. And
even when you have,
you want this party or this thing, it's like, there has to be like, uh, um,
you, you really need both forces a lot of times to get things done.
Thank you.