To be honest, I don’t know how you can be in politics without playing politics and pandering to some degree—but still, the GOP seems to have lost its connection to truth and integrity almost entirely. For instance, I don’t think anyone in GOP leadership ever believed that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile ring in a pizza parlor—but when that story started to circulate on the internet, they either chimed in or they just let it run because it served their political purposes. I see this sort of thing happening a lot in the Republican Party, with senators and congressmen not speaking the truth, or even speaking the opposite of what they know to be true.

I’m not saying that people in the private sector and elsewhere should not run for public office. I’m just saying that if they do, they should be intelligent, capable, and rooted in integrity. Just look at Volodymyr Zelenskyy—he wasn’t a politician when the Ukrainians elected him President. He was a comedian. But it was his courage, integrity, and humanity that made him accessible to the people and elevated him as a true leader on the world stage. He’s really an inspiration to all of us now. Honestly, I think we need more pure-of-heart people like that in politics—people who genuinely care about others and the world in general. Those are the folks who need to start speaking out more. That goes for me, too, although I’m fairly vocal as it is. But the problem I have here in Oklahoma is that I don’t want to push conservative-minded people away, or piss them off so much that they tune me out completely. Obviously, that would not be helpful because you can’t change a person’s mind by preaching at them or pushing your ideas onto them. I’m not sure what the right approach is, but somehow, I feel like I need to get more in the game.