Jesse Ventura has proposed a novel way to repurpose some of the US military’s gargantuan defense spending from foreign entanglements to helping the environment, suggesting that if he were president he would repurpose the Navy to deploy to clean up the swirling garbage patches near America’s coasts.
“You know that big huge defense bill that both parties okayed? Well, if I got in, I’d accept that completely, that whole big defense bill, but you know what I’d do with it? I’d take about $200 billion of it…[and] rather than buying aircraft carriers and rockets and all that other paraphanelia – have you seen those machines that clean up the ocean? I’d spend $200 billion buying those machines, which then would create jobs because they’d have to produce them like heck,” Ventura said, speaking to Jimmy Dore.
“And then I would take enough money to train the United States Navy in operating them. And we would then start a new war: It would be a war to clean the pollution out of our ocean next to our country,” he added.
Ventura, a former Navy SEAL, said that if he were president, he’d “get the Navy fighting that war, instead of [deploying] aircraft carriers half way around the world supporting crap in the Middle East.”
In the interview, Ventura continued to tease the possibility of a presidential run, calling President Trump and former Vice President Biden the weakest potential adversaries he’s seen in a long time, and suggesting he may yet run if his family situation allowed for it.
“These two candidates are the most beatable ones I’ve seen in a long time, to where if you had a powerful third party candidate with name recognition, who had a track record, could come out of the woodwork and I think beat both of these candidates; because they’ve got the highest negatives in history,” the former governor, who defeated the Republican and Democratic candidates in the Minnesota gubernatorial election in 1998 in a historic upset, said.
Ventura said a family health concern has required him to keep his employer’s insurance, saying he’d have to be “crazy” to give up his job and healthcare in the current environment. He added that the Green Party, on whose ticket he has considered running, has not given him a clear path to the nomination. Ventura stressed however that if there was “a clear path, I’ll take it a step further.”
Whether he runs or not, Ventura suggested that only a third party candidate could hope to end the divisions plaguing the US today. “We gotta elect a third party president and he’s why: If Trump or Biden gets elected the polarization continues. Worse than ever,” he said.
In recent weeks, an effort to ‘draft’ the former governor to run for president has been picking up steam online, with users creating the #Ventura2020 hashtag and a change.org petition, and posting endless polls and memes predicting victory if he did run.
If the Presidential Election was being held today, and the candidates were Republican Donald Trump, Democrat Joe Biden, Libertarian Justin Amash and Green Jesse Ventura, who would you vote for?
— US Politics Polls (@USPoliticsPoll) April 29, 2020
Do you see what we see?
— The People For Jesse Ventura (@people4jesse) June 8, 2020
Simpsons predicted Trump.
Did Futurama accurately predict President Ventura?
Help us make it a reality. https://t.co/9kAFOXb6IQ#Ventura2020 #DraftJesse pic.twitter.com/tZ51SXWtrV
If you want to win.. just saying! #Ventura2020 pic.twitter.com/dsZvXgWXen
— Tulsi Revolution 🌺🧢🤠🌻🦖🇺🇸 (@Tulsi_Rev2020) June 11, 2020
Ventura served as governor of Minnesota between 1999 and 2003, and as mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota between 1991 and 1994. During the Vietnam War, he served on the US Navy’s Underwater Demolition Team. Between 1976-1986, he worked as a professional wrestler, and beginning in the mid-1980s, worked in over a dozen Hollywood action films, including Predator, The Running Man and Demolition Man. Ventura has repeatedly referred to the ‘bankruptcy’ of the two party system, and has called on Americans to stop voting for both Democrats and Republicans to end what he calls their “two party dictatorship.”
