Jesse Ventura was a professional wrestler. Then he was the governor of Minnesota. And now he's in Mexico, hoping to stay "off the grid" and thus ensure "that the drones can't find me."
Appearing on CNBC's "Closing Bell" (from an "undisclosed location" in Mexico), Ventura spoke about his own television show, not coincidentally titled "Off the Grid," and his antipathy for a U.S. national security apparatus he believes has become out of control.
"I’m off the grid. I move about with my TV show so that the drones can’t find me and you won’t know exactly where I am," Ventura said.
He went on to say he viewed the U.S. today "much like East Berlin" before emphasizing, again, that he was "off the grid."
"I’ve tried for 20 years to warn the country about the Democrats and Republicans," Ventura lamented, "and nobody’s listening."
“I now view the United States from the outside, and I don’t like what I see,” Ventura continued.
“You know what the favorite T-shirt was off the grid down here a couple years ago?" Ventura asked. "A picture of George Bush, and it said, 'Weapon of mass destruction.' Is that the way we want the United States portrayed throughout the world? I don’t think so."
Ventura doesn't consider himself totally removed from the U.S., however. In fact, he thinks he's continuing to help his native country.
"I’m a job creator," he told the CNBC host and panel. "And I’m not only creating jobs, putting Mexicans to work, I’m stopping them from running across the border now and taking our jobs, because my whole staff said that if I wasn’t down here, and I didn’t have them, they’d be coming up to America, looking for jobs."
Watch Ventura's appearance on "Closing Bell" below, via Politico:
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