Dead Men Walking #128 Representative TC Clements on faith, government, and his campaign for Senator

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Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between. Broadcasting from an undisclosed location.

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Dead Men Walking starts now. Well hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking.

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I'm Greg, thanks for coming along for the ride, we appreciate it. We appreciate you going to dmwpodcast .com, checking us out there, learning a little more about us.

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You can purchase some merch too and support the show, we appreciate that. But first and foremost, let's get into a little business here.

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This show is brought to you by Jacobs Supply, right here locally in Temperance, Michigan.

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I love this brother, what a great guy. Quality building products at wholesale pricing. What he does is he takes the big buyouts, he passes that savings on to you.

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Has anything from metal roofs and decking and appliances. Even if you're listening in Ohio or Indiana, you're a few hours away, it's worth a drive.

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Come up and see him or visit him at jacobssupply .com. Also we're brought to you by Reformed Sage. Nick, we met him at a

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Fight Laugh Feast conference a few years ago. What a great guy. Has all kinds of cool snarky t -shirts, coasters, bookmarks, anything you could possibly want.

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And he also owns reformedroasters .com. So if you have a coffee itch, make sure you go check him out as well. Cool, now that we got the business out of the way, we have a special guest here in studio.

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He is a state representative here in the great state of Michigan. He's a friend of mine, Mr. T .C.

01:27

Clemmons. How are you, sir? I'm doing well, thanks for having me on. Let's try that again. Ready? How are you, sir?

01:34

I'm doing well. Oh, look at that. The studio audience goes wild. Our fake listeners love you.

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It's amazing. They look a lot louder for how many are sitting there. For how many are sitting there, right? So yeah, you're currently a state representative.

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We wanted to bring you in. We've got primaries coming up in Michigan. Actually primaries coming up across the United States.

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We're in a crazy primary season right now, even nationwide, but especially in Michigan. Why don't you give the listeners a little bio, maybe a couple minutes on who you are, where you come from, and what you're all about.

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Cool. I'm not a native Michigander. Born and raised Floridian. My wife was born and raised about three miles from where we live.

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And when it came time for us to have kids, we wanted them to grow up with the aunt, uncle, 30, 40 people together at Thanksgiving, Christmas, summer parties.

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And so we had been coming here about once a month, almost every year that we were married.

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To the point that when I would say home, it would confuse Jamie, because she would say, do you mean Florida home, or are we talking about Bedford?

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And I said, listen, I love this place. And I think I have a unique perspective in that because I wasn't raised here,

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I know how incredibly amazing southeast Michigan is. And my kids are here, and I want them to continue to be here.

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So I'm driven that way. Most of the time, I don't talk so much about my political agenda, it's more who

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I am. Because I think people are over hearing roads, taxes, right? Like every politician says that.

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I think what I adopted is I commit, I try to live my life as best

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I can, you know, with my faith in front of me. And I'm a sinner, and I mess up a bunch. But I really have the philosophy that anything

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I do well is Christ in me. Everything I screw up, well, that's TC. And if you really own that, you don't need the victory laps, because they're not yours to take.

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If anything, it gives you an opportunity to talk about your faith and to talk about why and how you feel about things.

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You do have to own the mess ups, and that's no fun. But I think that's part of the grace of our salvation, is being able to look at somebody and say, hey, either

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I'm sorry, I messed up, it'll never happen again. And having the character and the integrity to ensure it never happens again.

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That's kind of who I am. I always tell people I have three titles that matter to me. I'm a Christian, I'm a husband going on 19 years, and I'm a father of three.

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I've been very blessed to be around great teams my whole life, and I kind of outran my kit coverage a long time ago.

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But I just, because I don't hold on to titles, I feel like I'm more freed up to do work.

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When I've been in Lansing the last two years, I'm not focused on my re -election. I'm not focused on the fact that when

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I move through the halls, people call me Representative Clements. I don't care about any of that. What I care about is working on behalf of my neighbors.

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And because of that, I think it keeps you a little bit more focused. Old school, founding fathers, go do the work of the people, come home.

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Don't get comfortable living there. That's a facade. That's the fake world. Home is, you know, on Sunday when

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I'm still ironing all my shirts for the week, and I'm making dinner, and I'm helping vacuum the floors. That's real world.

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Yeah. And I think it's important that anybody that's in leadership stays grounded for real world. Yeah, that's good. That's good.

04:40

So you have, you know, you have kind of a storied past. You were a Deputy Police Chief, correct?

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Yes. So Police Officer. Police Officer. And then Deputy Chief of Police is number two. So that's the position I rose to, and then exited law enforcement before making

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Chief. And then you also owned your own business and currently still do own your own business. A few businesses, right? Yep.

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We started five, sold four successfully, have a fifth one that we've owned since 13. So, and now politician.

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So how do you make that transition from police officer, entrepreneur, politician? Why politics?

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So back when I became a police officer, first year I made $19 ,200. You have to have a side hustle.

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So I learned how to talk. Right. And then you learned X, and then you learned Y, and once you got a little bit of money together, we bought a house to flip.

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And so I learned a lot of these skills and then realized that it was a way to make a secondary income and provide for savings in my family.

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I've owned a graphic design firm, and I've owned a solar technology firm.

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And again, just great opportunities, meeting wonderful people, building things. I really enjoy that. And then

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I also have enjoyed stepping aside and letting other people carry on with it. To me, the central point for public service is just that.

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When I was a police officer, I am passionate about the concept that you are an ambassador first and an enforcer second.

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And if you see it any other way, I think you are dramatically confused as to what real law enforcement is supposed to be about.

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You are a public servant. The public does pay your salary. And I used to teach when I trained officers that, look, any monkey can be taught how to put on a pair of handcuffs.

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Right. But talking to someone and changing their vantage point and their perspective, that is the skill.

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And so I think because I've seen and believe in this ambassadorship, loved law enforcement, and so when

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I ran for trustee here locally, it was, again, a part of that. For me, I saw people running that I felt like were anti -personal property rights, and that's a real hot -button issue for me.

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And so I ran. I wanted to be sure that there was a voice to kind of back some of that off and to be sure that people still were maintaining their rights.

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Really enjoyed it. Was asked to consider the state rep. Run. Did it. Have thoroughly enjoyed it.

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Yeah. But I realized there was an opportunity in the Senate to do a couple of things that you can't do from the

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House. And as much as I appreciate some of our current electeds, I think there's a lot more that we can be doing.

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I think fundamentally one of the biggest things missing in Lansing is people really aren't willing to put skin in the game.

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Yeah. Because, again, they're clutching on to that title. They need that re -election. Sure. It's the paycheck. It's the perks, right?

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Well, if the paychecks and the perks aren't first in your world and your neighbors are, you're freed up to do a lot.

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Yeah. And so far this past year, we've gotten a lot of things done. Most of them are blowing up legislation that should have never gotten anywhere.

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Yeah. And so I'm not the guy that goes to Lansing and passes a ton of legislation. In 21, we had 30 pieces.

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So I think 15 were mine that I actually sponsored. The rest were co -sponsorships. President Biden, we think you need to enforce the border.

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Sure. We want to get rid of mask mandates or fourth vaccines, those kind of things. Those are co -sponsorships. Yeah. So 30 total.

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My opponent has 219. I think there's a vast difference there between the role of government, small government, small business, get out of the way, let people live their lives, or a little bit more broad -centric government control.

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And so I wanted to make sure that for my children, for other people, that this concept of government being we the people.

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Yeah. And not the leaders get to do whatever they want. They get to make rules.

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They get to step on our civil liberties at will. That's unacceptable to me. And it's just gone so far that I was raised that in life, you either do something about it or you shut up.

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Right. And so people thought I was crazy. They're like, look, you got elected to the House. You won by a huge margin.

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You probably won't even have to put up signs. You just automatically get reelected. And I looked at them and I said, that's the fundamental problem is that's the way you think.

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You know, we declared for Senate on November 6th before the district lines were known, before anything was known.

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But I think that's what leadership looks like. Leadership is saying I'm willing to personally sacrifice, and I'm going to give it my all because I think that the voice for my neighbors is ultra important.

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Yeah. And so we were willing to take the risk. We did it. We spent a lot of time in prayer, thought, you know, consulting with people.

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And we've done it. And so far, I think we're sitting in good shape. And here you are. You know, you mentioned something there that I've always thought was a little funny.

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When you have conservative, mostly, I'd say conservative, because mostly those guys are limited government guys.

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And they come back and they tell you about all the bills they passed. And you went, you know, as a conservative, I'd be totally happy with you just stopping unnecessarily.

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Bills are not doing any, not really doing anything. Maybe one or two, or like you said, 15 out of, you know, 300 or whatever.

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It's always funny how you brag about, I created new government. Look at me. And most of your base is going, well, we don't really want, we got a lot of laws on the books.

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Let's enforce those. Well, like everything else, our guidelines as to what we consider a successful legislator is just broken.

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Yeah. You know, a good legislator goes out and says, hey, we want to reduce the scope of government.

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We want to be sure that our taxes are minimal. You know, I think you and I would agree that the further dollars are spent away from people, the worse they're spent.

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Oh, absolutely. So my job, D .C. should push money to the state. State should push it to the county and county to the township and villages.

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Yeah. But so many people want to go and either have bills which require a lot of maintenance and expense or force mandates on counties and townships.

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And to me, that's completely backwards. Yeah. You know, I've always have said jokingly, if you really want to watch how

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Lansing should work, tell every legislator they get $1 ,000 for every bill they take off the books and there will be a race to get rid of thousands of bills.

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Right. Yeah, you get a campaign donation for every bill you remove. That's funny. So what is your overarching view of government for the listeners?

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What's your philosophy when it comes to government? I know we probably got some hints there in your answers. So pure constitutionalist.

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Yeah. Very small government. Government is dabbling in 1 ,000 things that it has no place in being in.

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One I like to use is schools. So let's talk about schools for a minute. We are asking teachers to do everything that a human could possibly do, least of which is teach.

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Right. Most teachers went to college to teach because they love arithmetic or science or math, not because they want to be, you know, guidance counselors.

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Right. Babysitters. Or a babysitter. Exactly. But because government has stepped in, government has tried to create this arbitrary parody.

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It's just gotten so messed up to the point that all, at best, all we do is put Band -Aids on it. Yeah. Right? And then

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I think if we talked long enough, we could come up with hundreds of those examples. Government is fundamentally broken.

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Yeah. And sooner or later, people are going to have to be willing to step up and say, this is not okay. Yeah. And I'm willing to say it's not okay, and I'll take the arrows and I'll take the darts and whatever you want to throw at me.

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But at least I can lay my head down at the end of the night and say, I did what I felt like was supposed to be done.

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And government, to do everything I can so that government's retracted. Yeah. Bureaucracy is bloated.

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We were just at the Monroe County Republican Party meeting last night, and there were legislators bragging about, we passed this budget, it's the biggest it's ever been.

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And I'm just cringing. Right. Are you kidding me? Yeah. You know, the only reason why we should be happy about this budget is that there was a $2 .6

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billion debt reduction. Biggest in the state. We think it's the biggest in the nation. And it's largely the only reason why

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I voted for the budget. Yeah. Because there is still so much arbitrary and unnecessary spending going on, and people are just blindly going along with it.

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And we have to get people who are willing to say no. It's tough, too, because the system is set up that way, though, too.

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Boy, wouldn't it be nice if you could break up the budget into parts, but it's like you have to vote all or nothing.

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Same thing at the federal level, where they bundle bills together, and it's a great idea, and then it's a horrible idea, and they put them together, and you're damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of thing.

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Exactly. So what kind of stuff have you done in the House that you're proud of? Well, I'm probably most proud of bills that you haven't seen.

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We have fought back successfully, bail reform. There is a large number of both Republicans and Democrats pushing for significant bail reform in our state.

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Okay. There was a Republican legislator who wanted to basically adopt what's called productivity credits, which would do away with truth in sentencing in Michigan.

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Wait, how does that work? So truth in sentencing basically says if you get sentenced to 10 years, you do 10 years. Right. Okay, we don't have a behavior, or you don't get time off because you brush your teeth successfully three days in a row.

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Okay. States that I'm familiar with that do have it, a year translates to about four months.

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So now imagine somebody gets a five -year sentence, well, they're doing just over a year. Sure. And this whole thing was sold.

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This is a great idea because we're going to convince inmates to go get their GED. Ninety -seven percent of inmates in the

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Department of Corrections already get their GED. Right. So this was just a way to try to soften our criminal justice system.

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I was opposed to that. We fought back critical race theory aggressively. We fought back that. One of the bills that I was personally proud of is all the federal dollars, which

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I was adamantly opposed to. I think it is ridiculous that we ever did it, but it would have been malfeasance for me to have let that money go to another state.

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I mean, once it comes to Michigan, we have to spend it on behalf of our residents. We came up with a $368 million bill package to try to help emergency services.

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We are at critical mass when it comes to law enforcement, fire, rescue in this state. You know, if you think about it, your home prices don't go up, schools typically don't improve, and economic development does not happen in a community that's not safe and secure.

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Right. It literally is the backbone of most communities. And right now, police are terrified to take action.

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Pensions are down. Benefits are down. Wages are down. The entire employment pool is terrible.

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We're 1 ,200 paramedics short in this state right now. Oh, I didn't know that. It's huge. Yeah. And so this bill did a number of things, everything from recruitment, retention.

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We wanted to go after students and people who want to enter these fields who might not otherwise have the opportunity because of economic constraints.

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Yeah. So we wanted to broaden the pool of applicants. We wanted to help with some equipment. We wanted to encourage training and different things like that.

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So I was very proud of that. Unfortunately, it went to the Senate and it got sat on because our Senate would rather want to talk de -escalation.

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And another reason why I wanted to move from the House to the Senate because I feel like we're losing one of the only conservative voices that we have in our

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Senate in Tom Barrett. Yeah. He's running for Congress. Congress, yeah. And so by losing him, we don't have that anchor of conservatism there, and we've got to have one.

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And so I'm willing to stand up and take that shot. It is kind of—maybe explain this to me.

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Give us a little inside baseball because I do feel that sometimes in the House at the state level, you can usually find a handful of let's just say conservatives.

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Let's go with that. I would say most of the listeners here are on the right side, right, are conservative. And you can usually find a handful, maybe six or seven or eight.

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You get to the Senate, and I feel like there's even less—even percentage -wise, obviously, there's less members.

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What's the two differences in the House there? Because there's a lot of House members that then become senators, and they kind of lose their way a little bit, and they just kind of play ball and shift towards the middle and maybe lose some of that philosophy you're talking about.

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What do you think that's about? Or am I mistaken? I don't know. No, you're spot on, and I think your acumen is really good there.

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I think if you see it this way, as Republicans, we have always convinced ourselves that to win, we have to play to the middle.

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And by playing to the middle, you end up with a lot of the middle, which are classified as Republicans in Lansing.

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And I'm not going to go off on a middle train versus conservative. When I say the word conservative, I really do talk in terms of people more than the values.

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Are we in fact representing our neighbors, or are we doing things that are arbitrary and contrary to the

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Constitution and to our state? So I think what happens is when this funnel happens and you have people playing to the middle, playing to the middle, rising to different levels of leadership, playing to the middle, the obvious outcome, because most people go from House to Senate, is you end up with a lot of middle.

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And I think that's what's happening. I think that we're at a point in our nation's history, and I'm super excited about this, because I think there are a number of people who are willing to step up and say, no more middle.

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You know, one of my biggest frustrations as a Republican has been every time we get control of the

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House, Senate, and the White, then the first words you hear is, well, we really shouldn't run that bill because, you know, we do have to get reelected in two years.

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When in fact, the people elected you to go do a job. They put their confidence in you, just go do the job.

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And so many people are paralyzed by that. And so I'm hoping that we're at a point in time where people are starting to wake up and realize, you know, we talk about this woke culture on the left.

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I think there is an awakening happening on the right, and it's exciting to me because I'm starting to see a lot of people wanting to talk in terms of smaller government, letting churches maintain that link.

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I think we got to wake up call with COVID with that. We did. When a government can snap their fingers, shut down your business, shut down your synagogue, shut down your church, and they go, oh, wait a minute, do

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I own my business if I can't open it? Now, look, we all, you know, we learned a lot through that in the very beginning months.

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My wife and I were the same way. Okay, let's pump the brakes here. Maybe we don't go anywhere. Let's look at, you know, look at what's coming out with the reports and the science.

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But then to drag it on, especially in Michigan, I get calls from other people in other states and other countries. We get comments, and we go, we were watching

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Michigan during that, Michigan and California. That's really bad when we're grouped in with California with, you know.

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And I don't think anybody can even argue at this point in time based on the knowledge that we have that it was good decisions.

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And I'm not making excuses because I was not in the legislature. You know, I came in after that. But what it also taught us is that there are a number of positions within government and a lot of legislation that people thought was, you know, it's not really important legislation.

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It wasn't critical legislation. That's a good point. People let go through, and all of a sudden in a time of crisis, it pops up.

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They have power. They have the right to, yeah. Right. And so one of the things that we've been very aggressive in the last year is identifying all of that, that web.

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Yep. And undoing it as much as we can, given that we have a governor who largely doesn't want to sign anything that we come up with.

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It's tough, though. It's 60 years of layering. It is. You know what I mean? It's like, how do you do that? Right. And I told somebody the other day, they got very dejected, and I said, look, even if the governor won't sign this, we have left a roadmap for the first Republican governor and Senate and House that's here.

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They could pass it within a week. Right. And we could literally call this stuff done and, I think, get rid of just a ton of legislation that's hurting people.

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Now, to go back to when you're saying kind of standing on principle and you wanting to be the conservative voice in the

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Senate, I've seen, when I've talked to people, elected officials and even people running,

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I seem to find that if you stand on principle, whether you're more right or more left, okay, because there's some principle.

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We might not agree with their principles, but there's some principled people on the left. They seem to – now, it's a harder road.

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You're going to get less funding. You're going to have some people yelling in your face and trying to cancel you online and all that. But they have the most loyal following because people identify with someone who has integrity and just goes, nope, this is what it's going to be.

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This is what I told you, I believe, and that's how I vote instead of, like you said, kind of pandering to the middle. Now, the middle might be a little bit easier.

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Maybe you raise a couple more bucks. You don't have to knock as many doors. Maybe someone does you some favors. But at the end of the day, look how many –

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I don't want to say superstars, but just those guys and gals that have that loyal following because people identify with someone who just stands up for what they believe in.

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Like a Tom, right? Absolutely. And he works his tail off. I'm not saying he doesn't. No, no, he does. Do what you say you're going to do.

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Don't make promises you can't keep. And just like any good business, politics is a lot of referral base.

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We've built our team by having meet and greets. Five couples get together. We talk for five or ten minutes.

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Then we socialize for 30 minutes or an hour. They get to know you. A lot of these are families, so they see you with your kids. I've often said if you want to know about somebody, look at their kids.

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They're going to tell you a lot. And the next thing you know, three of those couples say, hey, we'll have one. And then we'll have one.

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Well, you do that for nine months. All of a sudden, you have people who are not only supporters, but they're pretty committed to want to help.

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And I think that you can't talk about we the people if your campaign isn't legitimately people first because you haven't gotten out of the gate and you're already hypocritical.

21:19

Right? So our campaign, we've not spent near the money on mailers or on TV time or a number of other areas, but we have hit it so hard face -to -face talking and building those relationships that I think we're sitting in a great place with a really activated and excited group.

21:37

Yeah, I think it's a more genuine vote, too. I think the penetration rate is so much better if you can get in front of someone for 30 seconds or a minute and say, this is what

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I believe. And I would probably say, and you might agree, when I knock doors or when

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I talk to local people, I tell them, here's the common sense things. Eighty, 90 percent of people, especially in your district around here, will go, yeah, that makes sense.

21:57

I'll vote for you. I'm good on that. And we have these weird polarizing minorities, the minority of people driving this weird narrative, like wokeism and all that, like you're talking about.

22:07

When, in fact, most people are like, just make sure my job's secure. I'm providing for my family. And, hey, government, stay off my back.

22:13

Don't do anything stupid. I might need you once in a while for some stuff. And that's where most people are at,

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I feel. National polling shows that. And it's where we should be. But the reality of it is, is leadership has completely lost the truth and faith of the people.

22:26

And so, sadly, we live in a time where you can't assume your government's going to do the right thing. One of the negative, or I think a positive, depending on how you look at it, is when you build a people network, well, those people hold your feet to the fire.

22:40

That's true. And they're like, remember when you said? And I think that's also good because when you get in the weeds, it's good to have people around you.

22:47

You know, it kind of takes a village. And I think that, politically speaking, that's a smart move as well because you have those guardrails in place.

22:53

As you begin to shift, or if someone were to be driven to kind of change lanes, if you will, you've got a lot of people saying, uh -uh.

23:03

Remember? This is where we wanted to go. This is what you said. I start off, every time

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I have a chance to talk with people, I tell them, I want to start off with a fresh breath of air. I'm going to be honest with you.

23:14

If you elect me within the first year, I'm going to do something that's going to thoroughly irritate the crap out of you.

23:20

And people laugh, right? And they're like, no politician's ever said that before. And then I turn around and say, my second promise to you is when

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I do, and you call me on it, I will talk to you logically, and I'll defend why

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I took the action. I will not give you a political two -step. You may not like my answer, but when you walk away, you're going to go, okay, at least his logic was there.

23:40

I disagree with him, but he was respectful to me. I was respectful to him. And I think that's largely what's missing.

23:46

And I know where he stands. Exactly. Exactly. And so I'm either a proponent of this person in the future, or I'm going to look and see if there's an alternative that I feel more strongly about.

23:55

The intelligent voters just want you to be honest with them. Be honest with them. And I would say most adults can go, okay, yeah,

24:02

I didn't agree on that one. There may be a few hot -button issues where they would hold a grudge or something, but most of them go, okay, well, he told me that.

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When he knocked on my door six months ago, and now he's in the Senate, he said that, and I voted for him, and okay, we don't agree on that one, but the next one coming down the line,

24:17

I like that. Well, and I always tell people, you know, listen, I can barely make my family five happy every night with what

24:23

I make for dinner. Or what movie you're going to watch. Yeah, what makes me think I can make 300 -some -odd -thousand people happy with every vote?

24:29

It's not realistic. But I also think that having had that experience in law enforcement, you're used to the concept of showing up and half the crowd loves you and half hates you.

24:38

Sure. So that's not a new phenomenon. And having to kind of go logically right off the bat and always de -escalating.

24:45

That's kind of what you probably did as an officer as well. And hopefully you're wanting to educate people, too. It's not just telling them the law, but it's trying to educate them so that next time they understand how the law could either work for them or against them.

24:56

Yeah. All right, let's wrap this up here with the last question, then we'll move into fresh tense. So the election comes, you're in the

25:03

Senate. What are some of the first things you're looking at? I have loved being assigned to regulatory reform because it's a committee where we talk specifically a lot about the vices.

25:13

So alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, construction industry. It's interesting that construction gets thrown in there.

25:19

All our construction workers, hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute. But it's an area where you can undo a lot.

25:25

Okay. And I've enjoyed that committee quite a bit. So I'm hoping that we've done a good job there and that, you know, Senate leadership would look at us and that would be a healthy spot.

25:33

Other than that, I believe this way. A good chair can make an average committee great, and a horrible chair can ruin a great committee.

25:41

Can ruin a great, yeah. Right? So all I want to do is just make sure that I don't let anybody down. Good legislation moves through.

25:48

Bad legislation is halted. And I'm a team player. Where you need me, put me in. Again, I'm not holding on to I have to have this chairmanship if my world's crushed if I don't get it.

25:57

Yeah. Awesome. Cool. You want to stick around for a few more minutes, play fresh ten, and the audience gets to know a little bit more about you?

26:03

Are there prizes or? I don't know. We might be able to rustle something up for you. We might have a dead man walking hat for you. I'm in either way.

26:08

All right. Let's go. Can we kick that one more time? Let's go. I'm fresh. I'm fresh.

26:21

All right. Fresh ten with Representative T .C. Clemons. We're going to run through these ten questions. He does not know what they are.

26:27

And we're going to get to know him a little bit better. Number one, since you're in politics, who was your favorite president? I'm going to lose a lot of people here, but I am most impressed with what

26:38

Trump was able to accomplish, given the landscape that he had to deal with. Yeah. Prior to Trump, it would have been

26:44

Reagan. Yeah. But I am very enamored with the way he was able to deal with the landscape in the face of so much opposition.

26:53

Now, here's the thing. I was not a Trump guy in the primary. I was a Rand Paul or one of those type of guys.

26:59

But in the very short time that he had, boy, did he get a lot of policy stuff done, didn't he? A lot of policy stuff.

27:04

How do you do that? It's such a divided—you know, ten years ago, they said, it'll never be the same as a country. The president will never do anything.

27:10

He got a lot of stuff through. True businessman. Yeah, right. And if you go back in love, Love deal. he was largely self -made, grew a lot of his own, if you want to argue how he got started.

27:19

But look back at the last 20, 30 presidents and go, how many have that business experience and how many don't?

27:25

And I think you begin to see something. I mean, he also took 20 % of the Democratic Union blue -collar worker with him.

27:31

They went, oh, no, we see pictures of him out on the construction site and asking questions, and that's us. I don't care what letters in front of his name.

27:37

He's one of us. Right. It's crazy. And he spoke to people in a way they felt like was genuine. All right, number two, what do you wish you had known 10 years ago?

27:45

What's something you wish you'd go, I wish I would have known about that 10 years ago. I wish that I had embraced my own spiritual walk a little bit more 10 years ago.

27:54

It's been a really healthy walk for me the last 20 years. But I think that 10, 9, 8 year ago mark, really about the time we started having children.

28:05

And you see the blessing of life through a whole different lens and a whole different level of responsibility.

28:12

I think for me that was it. Yeah, no, that's good. Children are a common grace of God. They'll reflect the relationship you have with the

28:18

Lord back at you. Absolutely. All right, number three, what three albums are you taking with you on the deserted island?

28:24

Wow. Anything Linkin Park. Rascal Flatts' greatest hits.

28:32

Okay, very eclectic. And probably Purple Rain with Prince. Oh, that's good.

28:38

Those are three totally different albums. I like that you're all over the place. I'd be in the same boat. Question number four, what properties do you try to buy when you're playing

28:45

Monopoly? Are you a boardwalk and park place guy or do you go for those cheap purple ones? Somewhere in between. My family gangs up on me.

28:52

No, I'm in between. I think Illinois, Indiana, the Reds, I like. I think there's a lot of value there.

28:59

And if I'm ahead early, I'll go for the greens. But they're a little pricey, so sometimes I'll play the orange. I'm a common man.

29:05

There you go. I love it. Question number five, what's a movie that you can watch over and over again and not get tired of it?

29:12

I have probably watched Hunt for Red October more than any movie ever. That's a good movie. That's a really good movie and a good answer.

29:19

All right, we're jumping in the DeLorean. We're firing up the flux capacitor. We're going in the time machine. Would you rather go back in time to visit your ancestors or go to the future and visit your great -great -grandchildren?

29:28

I would go back because there are a ton of thank yous I'd like to say to people for work they did to kind of give me opportunities.

29:35

That I didn't realize until they were gone, and I didn't have that opportunity. It's crazy how when you're a younger man, you don't really care about the history or the ancestry.

29:45

And as you grow and mature and you have children, you go, oh, my gosh, standing on shoulders of giants when you start looking at your grandfather and great -great -grandfather and what they went through.

29:54

And just lessons. All of a sudden, at 53, at 52, something happens, and I think, wow.

30:00

My FTO at my first police department taught me that. And I'd love to just pick up the phone and say, hey,

30:06

Pat, I really appreciate you doing that. Right. Very good. All right, question number seven, moving right along. What's the best piece of advice someone has ever given you?

30:13

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Just because you can. That's a good saying for government, huh?

30:19

And life. Yeah, really. All right, question number eight. Morning person or night person? Where are you most?

30:25

I am a midnight monkey. Oh, me too. I am. And what's interesting is so I get up about 4 in the morning to get to Lansing.

30:31

I leave the house about 4 .30. Yeah. I'm still up till 1 or 2. Yeah. My three days a week that I'm in Lansing, I sleep for maybe two, three hours a night.

30:38

Yeah. But I just I love the energy of 9 o 'clock till 1 in the morning. Me too. It's like the creative mojo goes, let's go.

30:46

Yeah. Yeah, when I should be sleeping. All right, number nine. What is one thing people would assume about you that just simply isn't true?

30:53

Now, this requires a little introspection, a little self -reflection. What's something they would assume about you, you think?

30:59

But you go, hey, that's not true. I think a lot of people would tell you that I'm more confident than I probably really am.

31:05

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Man, that's a good, good answer. He's just getting raw here on the Deadman Rocking Podcast.

31:12

All right. Gotta be honest, right? Yeah, absolutely. Question number 10. This is the last one. What is one book outside of the Bible that every person should pick up, take a look at, read through?

31:19

The Art of War. The Art of War. There it is. Fresh Ken with T .C. Plummer. All right,

31:34

T .C., as we wrap up here, why don't you throw out where people can get a hold of you, maybe your social media accounts, and maybe they can get a hold of you and talk to you and see what you're all about.

31:42

Easiest way to reach out and learn a little bit more would be www .tc4mi, that's

31:49

T -C -F -O -R -M -I .com. Facebook is T .C. Clements. Sadly, you're going to run into either a guy wearing a shirt and tie or a guy in a light blue long -sleeve shirt.

31:58

The light blue is the political one. The shirt and tie is the personal one. You're welcome to either or both. Right. We're kind of an open book.

32:05

If someone wants to go to any of those, either send us a message, send us an email, phone number for the campaign, 734 -224 -3508.

32:14

Oh, I like that. This whole thing is to try to be as available and responsive as we can be. I will caveat it and say we're three weeks out from a primary.

32:22

I'm stretched as thin as I've ever been, so I would ask for a little bit of grace. It may take a little bit longer to get back with people than normal, but we'll absolutely do it.

32:30

Cool. Anything else? Final word before we take off? No. Congratulations on your show. Thanks for having us. Oh, thank you.

32:35

Yeah, we appreciate you being here. Guys, thanks so much for listening. We appreciate you giving us constructive criticism and commenting.

32:42

Make sure you put those reviews on Apple and Spotify and all those places that you hear or listen to our podcast.

32:47

We do appreciate it. As always, guys, God bless. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Dead Men Walking Podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips, or email us at deadmenwalkingpodcast at gmail .com.