Welcome. I'm Dr. Randy Bach. I'm with the Newton Taxpayer Association in Newton, Massachusetts. And our fine state is going to be having a couple
elections this year, a gubernatorial and US Senate. And to it, I have last rounds 2024's Republican nominee for the US
Senate role, John Deon with us, and he's running again now. Um, and I've um been impressed by him, and I think you will
be too. John, thank you so much for coming on our show.
Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure to be with you. So, um, why don't we just find out who John Deon is?
And, you know, Admiral Stockdale got raked over the polls when he was running with Ross Perau. He began the vice presidential presidential debate. I remember that.
Who am I and why am I here?
Yeah. Who am I and why am I on this stage?
But, you know, I think it was just cuz they wanted to do that and rake him over the coals. He was the older guy.
Whatever. But, it's not those are not bad questions. So, who are you and why are you here?
They're not. Listen, uh, it'll be very hard to find someone with my kind of unique life experience. Um, first and foremost, I'm a father uh of three
daughters. Um, I live in Bolton, Massachusetts. But my background, I come from extreme poverty. And you know, a
lot of people talk about poverty, but I mean extreme poverty, single mother on welfare and food stamps, a deadbeat dad who abandoned us. We were living in a
place called Highland Park, Detroit. And if people look it up, they'll see it's ranked in the top five worst neighborhoods in America for the last 50 years.
Unfortunately, you know, I saw my mom get stabbed when I was six. And um after that, unfortunately, three years later,
at the age of nine, a child predator began brutally raping me for a period of two years. Uh my best friend died in my
arms in a driveby at 17. My first day of high school, had a gun shoved in my mouth. And so I became a high school dropout just like everyone else in my
family uh before me, all my siblings, first cousins, and um I uh found a tiny
Catholic high school in the suburbs of Detroit and a principal. It shows you what one person's kindness can change the trajectory of a person's life. He made me earn it, but he gave me a shot.
He reduced the tuition in half. um told me I had to play two sports, maintain at 3.5, and at age 14, I began working
18our days um going to school. I paid my way through high school, then college, and I made it here to Massachusetts to
New England School of Law. Uh lived in Roxberry my first year, uh East Boston, my second, Malden, my third. Realized I
am the embodiment of the American dream and everything that's possible in a great country. and uh if you're given an opportunity, you're willing to work
hard. Joined the Marine Corps, seven years of active duty in the Marine Corps. Um got injured, not in combat, but in training, got medically retired.
And for the last 25 years, I've been a messtheloma and lung cancer attorney for people who are exposed to asbestous. So,
I've been fighting insurance companies and multi-billion dollar corporations for for a few decades here in Massachusetts and New England. And uh a
couple years ago I was sitting on the couch in Swansea. That's where I lived at the time. Saw Elizabeth Warren running and decided I felt compelled. I
think the American dream is dying. I wonder if a poor kid like me back in the day living in Brockton or Roxberry could
they do what I did in today's world uh decided to run. um ran as a firsttime
no-name candidate and got beat pretty handily, but had a proved a lot of momentum and uh decided I would run
again against Ed Marky and and I'm looking forward to that comparison. I I got about 41% the first time. Uh and I think that um I
can reach 10 more% and become your next US senator.
Well, we very much like that. You know, I when when you're speaking, it it's relland for me of of Le LeBron James, frankly. Um people probably know that he
grew up hard scrapple. His mom had drug issues and he doesn't even know his dad.
Even as wealthy as is, nobody's come out of the woodworks to announce. So there was, you know, a lot of question there.
Um but he was taken up uh and sort of adopted I guess by a um ex I think ex
military um and football coach. Um I think it might have been you know in the police or whatever but you know somebody who I think it was a school teacher but
you know somebody who understood you know discipline and and applying himself and he you know could have chosen any number of different lives or had those
lives chosen for him and he wound up uh getting the regiment you know and he did not served in the military like you but
you know having that kind of you know applied expectation such as you're talking about from the Catholic school teacher I think that's really crucial
important and makes a man and and you know you you probably have those other things kind of with you and haunting you, but you know, the fact that you
were able to kind of persevere and get through that, it speaks volumes.
No, listen, I I wrote a book called Food Stamp Warrior because uh I realized when my daughters went to college, um I
started waking up and quite frankly in the middle of the night and I would be weeping, crying like and I would be thinking about whether it was the rapes
or my best friend dying in my arms or my mom. And I couldn't understand why that um like I had money in the bank. I was a
successful lawyer. I'd broken the cycle of poverty. I'd broken the cycle of being a deadbeat dad. I was a good father. And it was that unexamined trauma. And so I wrote this book called Food Stamp Warrior. And it was great.
You know, I had never shared that I had been raped for 40 years. No one knew. No one in my family knew. Um it was
something I kept inside. And um what I learned by writing the book is we're all so much similar. You don't have to have those experiences, but we all carry
sort of scars uh of human life and experiences uh and whether it's poverty or cancer or or single mom. There's lots of things u that resonate with everyone.
And so I think I'm one of you and that's why I'm running. I think it's time that we elect someone that's one of us to go
to the Senate. Yeah, I think it's, you know, kind of a mischaracterization of Republicans. You know, when I grew up, you know, it's kind of this essence of the country club republic rep
Republican, you know, removed from reality. Um, I I I don't know who made this theory, but I read this some time
ago, and I have been unable to find the source, but it's called the hamburger theory of of politics. And the top bun and the bottom bun these days are the
Democrats. So, the upper class and the lower class are Democrats. And the meat, kind of the working class and the people who are producing and so forth. and
essentially, you know, figuratively the meat of society are Republicans these days. And Donald Trump, you know, it kind of uh got in in 2016 based on he's
kind of like Richie. I don't even know the comic book richy rich, but you grew up thinking, oh, he's rich, he's got everything is gold and whatnot, but he had a real commonality and and
understanding of the the working-class man. I've written on narcotic addiction and uh Donald Trump was able to carry
Michigan and a lot of the bluecollar um Midwest states understanding that there was you know a lot of unemployment and
people losing focus and all that kind of stuff and nobody's talked about it during his first administration was the first time in decades that the number of
opioid deaths had declined and it was like crickets you know quiet like crazy because they didn't want to give him a
victory on this but the approach was not to treat the drug problem. The approach was to get people industrious, get people back to work. And I think that's
really important. So, you know, the Reagan Democrats in uh Michigan is who he carried.
That's the thing. It's like, so, you know, George HW Bush, the first, you know, kind of got pillaried for the kinder, gentler, you know, nation,
whatnot. But, but it is in a sense Republicans who are showing more care.
they're not having the war on poverty and have poverty win, but they keep, you know, their battalions out and and getting funded. A lot of times the best
kind of compassion is, you know, getting people back to work and so forth. So that that's to set up this question.
What do we do to kind of continue the the progress we had against the drug war for instance?
Well, the first thing is obviously we've done some things well like securing the border was was very important. And I I went to the border Yuma crossing um in
May of 2024 and learned that uh the fentanel that comes in New England 80% of it comes from the Yuma crossing. And
I learned that 12 million people had crossed in that three and a half years of Biden's first administration. So So that's important. And I think going to
the source of the the cartels, but but also personal accountability. I mean, you know, that's why I made a point of that high school principal. He didn't
just feel sorry for me, this poor kid, right, who was a high school dropout because of violence. He said, "I'm going to give you an opportunity, but you're
going to earn it and you're going to have these requirements that you meet." That's what we need to instill in people. And you know, my hatred of
poverty is in part what drove me to be honest with you. And and I understand poverty in a way that these elected
officials could never fathom to understand just to give an example what poverty does and why it drove me so hard the hatred of it. My mother is my hero.
Single mother on welfare did the best she could. Only had an eighth grade education when she called me crying so much because I couldn't go to high
school. Um she said, "Why are you so upset?" And I said, "I I want to go to college. I have to graduate high school, mom." And she said, 'Well, just do what your brother did. Work until you're 17.
I'll sign the papers and you join the military. That's our ticket out of the hood, right? And I said, ' Mom, I don't want to do that. And my beautiful mother put her arms around me to console me and
said, "Son, I'm sorry, but college just isn't for people like us." And that's what poverty had done to to my mother. It stripped her of that that
self-esteem that we were some we were subclass citizens or humans because of uh being so poor. And that drove me.
Yeah.
Uh because like I said, she's my hero and that's what poverty had done to her.
Yeah. No, I mean, you know, that's a cloud. The silver lining is, you know, you are a man. That's right.
And and um one way or another, I'm not sure what the sequence was, but you know, I I I I was in high school when the Vietnam War was on and I got my
lottery number. It was a good number, I guess, because I didn't get picked, whatnot. But, you know, how how would my life have been different? I don't know.
you know, we had uh you know, kind of I grew up in a small rent control apartment. My parents put all their money and they put us to private school.
So, that's something they had to do maybe, you know, but it was like like tough circumstances. So, for nothing like yours, but I do think that having
experienced that kind of thing, you know, gives you a hunger and gives you a sense of of wanting to do well. And I I think you know first of all I applaud you for putting your time and effort
into something that you know some people might think quicksotic in a way like oh you know how can a Republican win in this state and so forth. So let me just
put that question to you. How can a Republican win in this state?
A Republican can win in this state and I I plan on proving that a Republican can first Republicans have won for governor.
It hasn't been at the federal level for senator or Congress in quite some time.
Um, so it shows you that there is an appetite for a certain type of Republican. I believe a common sense
type Republican, no doubt. Uh, that is addressing people's problems, not ideology. But I don't have a primary
opponent this time. And it's going to allow me to take the case to the 64% that are unenrolled here in
Massachusetts, independents are called unenrolled in Massachusetts, and even disenfranchised Democrats who believe they've just went too far left. I know
so many lifelong Democrats, you know, we call him the JFK Democrats. Personally, I believe if JFK were alive today, he
would be ousted from the Democratic party, he would be a Massachusetts Republican, right? And you know, and so there's a lot of people
out there uh that I think are ready for that and they want somebody who will address their solution. We we live in a
one party state that every statewide office is a Democrat. All nine members of the House are Democrats. Both US
senators Democrats. And we have we're number one unfortunately with migration, people leaving because they can't afford
it here. We are dead last in housing affordability. We are dead last in private sector job growth. Uh Massachusetts is hurting. And I think
that when they have someone who's not just running because Ed Marky's old and he is he's 80 and he's been there since 1976,
but I'm coming with real ideas, fresh ideas. I have an energy plan, common sense energy plan where we put four
nuclear SMR small modular reactors and we feed 40% of our power to the 2.9 million homes that need it at carbonfree
emissions, 97% efficiency. I have a a housing plan that's going to build houses that, you know, cuts through the
red tape. I have student loan payment that makes the colleges on the hook for the loans so they're incentivized to
help find jobs and actually teach things that lead to jobs. Just a lot of fresh ideas that are addressing our problems and and I'm looking forward to making the case uh to those 64% independents.
Right. So it must be a little bit of um you know when you're running for US senate from a state people are always like what are you going to do for us and
whereas it's a federal position and you're working on um uh you know things that affect all 50 states. So so tell us
kind of the focus for Massachusetts and the focus for our country.
Well the here we have if you look at the two people that are on the Democratic side Ed Marky and and Seth Molton are in
a primary. Uh Seth Molton came out and said the reason to vote for him over Ed Marky is he's younger and he'll fight Trump harder. Ed Marky's whole platform is how much he'll fight President Trump.
It's a six-year term. President Trump will not be the president three years from now. So their whole message is fighting against this one person, this
one thing. And I think people ready to fight for in Massachusetts. There should be one test. Is it good for Massachusetts in America in the Senate?
If it is, you support it. And if it isn't, you don't. But we know that no matter what President Trump does, if his
name's associated to it, if he's the president, our current senators will say no matter what. I think you should always be a maybe. And you should be a
maybe depending on, and it shouldn't be depending on what party the president is. Show me that it's good for my state.
Show me that it's good for my country and I'll support it. But the whole idea is we have multiple crises in this country. Affordability crisis, energy crisis, housing crisis, foreign wars.
But the number one crisis we face is a crisis of leadership. You have career politicians who are just loyal to a party or an agenda, not to the country.
And I think we just need someone who's going to go in and say, you know what, I'm just going to be loyal to America and and my state.
Fair enough. So, are there mo role models for you currently or historically for US senators? I I would say my favorite Republican is
Teddy Roosevelt. Uh, you know, Teddy Roosevelt in my eyes came in. He saved capitalism. One could argue back in the
guilded age. Uh, he bust the the he took on the oil barons of the railroad tycoons that had a strangle hold on our
economy and and small businesses thrived and competition came, prices lowered. We need something like that. We need an
approach. You know, affordable uh care act was never affordable because it allowed three vertically integrated
insurance companies to control 90% of our health care. That's not true capitalism to me. Yeah.
Right. That that is cronyism. That is even corporate socialism if you will.
So, we need somebody that's going to come in and take an approach, you know, not what the Ed Markies of the world is.
He's going to give say Medicare for all, which is never going to happen. and he's going to say green new deal, which is never going to happen. You need someone to come in and say, "Hey, let's let's
let's roll up our sleeves and tackle these problems in a pragmatic way." Yeah. There's an old expression, uh, you know, if you think healthcare is
expensive now, wait until it's free, right?
Um, you know, we we see Well, you're a doctor.
Well, yeah. You know, I got lamb bases, this is a long time ago, probably 35, 40 years ago, um, by artist friends. Uh,
somebody owned a gallery. She was wealthy and all that. like you don't want like free healthcare. It's like how about we do free art? How about we do free gasoline? You know, there's no such
thing as as free. You know, you're whatever you make free basically you're subsidizing one way or another or you're restricting. So, you know, it tends not
to be the thing that you do that you want restricted. Otherwise, you know, otherwise you're basically in some sense stealing people's cattle. They're they're their actual professional
services and so forth. So I do think there are realms in which you can you know give say discount or quoteunquote free situations based on on emergencies
and whatnot. But leaving that aside I I I agree with you. You can't have an economic system. So that that that is predicated upon, you know, a sector that
doesn't have any market forces, right?
And I, you know, the um I kind of we could I guess talk about economics a little bit and I know you've had some investments in Bitcoin.
Um and I I did at one point I sold too early. Um such is life. Anyway, it's not too late.
No, I made money on it. I I I made 10x, but you know, that's pretty good.
Turns out I could have made, you know, a few more zeros. Anyway, um so that's that's why I'm still here and not uh you know on my desert on my my tropical
island. Anyway, um I think the Bitcoin model is interesting because it's something that comes from nothing. It's a it's kind of a disintermediation of the banking system. You have you have
banking that's done by all kinds of people together locally. We see this with you know the chat the LLMs the the chat GBT and uh Grock and all this kind
of stuff where people can do more more things on their own and medicine whatnot. A lot of our industries you can uh when I say disintermediate you could
take away the person who has to be doing that stuff. So instead of a tax lawyer instead of having an attorney closing a deal we can have faster processes and
and I again think the major driver of our economy versus many others is the speed which which we can communicate and
the the the converse is the toll boost the regulations that people put up like such as Liz Warren who's pretty much that's her whole thing is to regulate
everything right. Um I'm wondering how what what kind of parts of the economy um would be if if you're in agreeing with with me which may not be which parts of the
economy you might see that we can make more efficient in such a manner.
Well I think that blockchain technology which is Bitcoin and others are uh absolutely
revolutionary. Uh, I would encourage everyone to read the book The Creature of Jacko Island, which is by Ed Griffin,
and it it shows you how the Federal Reserve was created. And if you really get into our banking system, it really is people would be shocked. You know, a
lot of people don't understand fractional, you know, banking, you know, where they just hold a little bit of your 10% of your deposits and and loan
the rest of your money and make all kinds of risky bets. But um stable coin legislation that passed under President
Trump, the Genius Act, uh that has made um crossber payments and things of that nature, remittances much more efficient.
Um and we can use it. I got into Bitcoin because you could cut out the intermediary, the bank, and and have
peer-to-peer payments. Uh limit that friction. Uh think about it. You can do a uh we've had the internet and email.
You can send an email and a picture to someone in seconds. But just a few years ago, it was still cheap um it was still
uh faster to get in a plane and take $10,000 in cash from here to London than to wire it because it would take five
business days. And so there's lots of things we can do. What we want to do is use blockchain technology and other innovations AI to uh to foster individual capitalism around the world.
I think AI and blockchain is the perfect vehicle. One of the biggest things I supported President Trump's decision on was appointing a cryptozar a blockchain
zar um which is David Sachs an AISAR uh to make sure that we win that race on innovation because whoever wins this AI in race is going to lead the world.
Fair enough. You know uh I um I understand all that but a lot of these things come about because of because they're independent of government.
So, you know, every time there's a ZAR, I I worry whether that's going to, you know, kill the goose that lays the golden egg. And a lot, you know, our our
innovation economy, you know, didn't I mean, the internet didn't happen, it happened through some original government laying the groundworks, I
guess, you know, through DARPA and whatnot, but you know, the actual functionality, the commerce part happened spontaneously. Yeah.
And let me just interrupt you because I agree with you. Thesar is more of though is to try to make sure that the government gets out of the way, right?
That's the key. You and I are completely tracking on that. You know, for example, you have people at the state level that
that want to overregulate everything and technology such as AI that can get in the way. I mean, you know, in 1980 here
in Massachusetts, our uh SEC regulator, Securities Exchange kind of commission at the state level, uh said, "You know
what? This risky new um computer company, it's too risky." And they even prevented regular people from buying the
IPO because they wanted to protect us, right? That was overregulation. That company was Apple. And a$1,000 investment would be worth about 2
million today. uh and that was our government protecting us from making a bad decision by ourselves.
So, so to uh I had this discussion over the dining room table probably 20 years ago with my now late mother-in-law and
late father-in-law amongst others. And uh he and I were talking about how they should like dissolve this concept of
social security, Medicare and whatnot and let people just buy because he was a business guy. He had started a bank and he was a big guy in a small town
and you know he was functional guy. He could he you know started a bank with some friends and whatnot. There it's a bank now.
It's still there and whatnot. And uh mother-in-law was more like oh no you know we don't have the security and so forth. We're not going to trust it. But
the returns when you put your money in as opposed to like having it in an account of some type. If you took all your social security money and put it in
an account, you'd have like I think by you know if you do it your whole life about six, eight times more than the government's ever going to be sprinkling out.
No, you're right. And I don't mean to interrupt you, but I I just wanted you to know that like I'm 57 years old. Should my I have a seven-year-old.
Should my seven-year-old be on the same social security system that her father and her grandfather and her greatgrandfather was on? I don't believe
so. I don't believe so at all. And so these are the issues that we need to to tackle. Sorry to interrupt.
That's fine. No, it's perfect. No, and we have five more minutes left. So, you know, my feeling about social security is it's not that social and it's not that secure. I mean, they don't really
have, you know, Al Gore's lockbox, you know, ever. It's all part of general funds, right?
And so the general funds that they rob and yeah, it's kind of a Ponzi scheme because it all got created without any reserve money. So they basically all
just taking the money from the young people and pouring it into the glass of the old people. as old people started living longer, there's, you know, they have to take more. Anyway, so it's it's
a it's a funny system. Um, so I understand you're an attorney. Do you what's kind of the business or or I
guess sensibilities you you bring to the Senate that would be unique and or whatever closing statements you want to have in the next few minutes?
Well, I appreciate it. you know, well, one is something I'm proud of is as an attorney, I uh sued the SEC, Securities Exchange Commission on behalf of small
investors and one won an award called Defender of Freedom Award. Also won consumer advocate of the year and lawyer of the year by lawyers weekly for that.
And the reason I'm bringing that up is that I've taken on multi-billion dollar corporations and insurance companies on behalf of consumers and career
politicians like Elizabeth Warren, like Ed Marky. They they claim they're for the consumer, but they're really not.
They're really for centralized control of wanting to control like five banks if it's the banking committee or u
technologies. They want five technology companies that the government can control. And so, um, I have cut a
paycheck many times, uh, running a small business for the last 25 years, something that Ed Marky has never done.
What I want people to know is to reject the toxic division that's being pushed in this country. and you know to vote
for who the best candidate is in a particular race and reject all of the these theories where they convince you
there's only two sides and one side doesn't love the country and is a threat to democracy. The real enemy are career
politicians, okay, who have devalued our dollar to the point that in the last five years
alone, the US dollar has depreciated 20%. is depreciate 98% uh over the last 50 years. And it's
because of career politicians like Ed Marky and Republicans on the other side who have been in Congress or the Senate for 50 years who spend reckless money.
They shut down the government, but they get paid. You know, we have TSA agents at Logan Airport right now, not getting paid, but the politicians who shut it
down do. And so I just want them to understand that they I think it's time for a fresh perspective. Someone who has
went through cancer, went through poverty, run a small business, and all of those things who brings that kind of uh perspective to the Senate.
Fair enough. So hypothetical question, if it turned out to be Seth Molton, not your opponent, how would how how would things differ uh for you or what would the message be? has that?
Well, I think um Seth Molton, like I said before, it their only argument is that they'll fight Trump. They're always
are fighting against things. And I'm coming to the table saying, "Isn't it time that you elected someone who's
going to fight for things? Fight for what's right, not fight and support an
agenda." Uh support you everyday per people. I know your struggles because I've lived through them. Uh, I'm not an
ideologue. I just want to go solve problems. The the real reason I'm running is because I've made a difference in my life and my children's
life. And before I leave this planet, I want to be able to say I made a difference in other people's lives.
Well, that's hard to argue with. You know, I I think sometimes uh you know, if Donald Trump said, you know, I I think breathing oxygen is incredibly awesome. You know, half half the country
would, you know, would hold their breaths and turn blue. And I think they've done a little bit of that, especially I've noticed the hair turning blue, but that's a whole side thing.
Absolutely.
So, um, as as far as Newton taxpayers, anything that would help our pocketbooks 30 seconds.
Well, I want them to go to johndeonforcenate.com to learn more about me. But, um, I also
am fighting for the audit that, uh, the government here refuses to comply with.
I've actually me and 28 other taxpayers has sued the legislature to force the audit and we have more teeth actually in
our uh in our lawsuit than Diana who I support Diana Daglia and so I am fighting for the taxpayer even in my personal life.
Well, thank you so much. I met her uh at an event in December. She actually does great karaoke by the way. She's awesome singer.
So uh we'll have to test you out at some other point. Thank you so much for joining us. John Deon for US Senate. Thank you.