In a recent episode of the Winston Marshall show, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-TN) spoke to the former musician about the endemic of congressional corruption. The conservative stalwart explained to Marshall how lobbyists use campaign contributions to bribe politicians into betraying the American people.

For context, Thomas Massie is one of the most conservative members of Congress, known for his principled stances on the budget and foreign wars. Massie graduated from MIT and, before politics, started a successful tech company with his late wife.

In any case, Massie made his stunning remarks while speaking to the former Mumford and Sons frontman on April 15, 2025. Beginning his comments, the Tennessee Republican explained how lobbyists corrupt politicians. He said, “Like a lobbyist can’t buy me food, but I can go to launch, pick up the tab, and the lobbyist can write me a $5,000 check to my campaign, and then my campaign can pay for the food.”

Explaining the details of the corruption, he said, “Now, so they’ve created this rule to say that lobbyists can’t buy you food, but what good does it do when the lobbyists can give you the money and you buy the food, and that’s common practice, yeah? Like it’s a campaign expense at that point, don’t shoot the messenger and,
and that’s just, I mean, that’s the way it works. I’m giving you an example of a rule that doesn’t really work.”

Responding to possible objections, Massie laid out how this corruption is technically legal. He declared, ” Like you can put rules in place…When they give you money, ostensibly, they’re not giving you their money. They’re not even giving you their corporations money. They are giving you money from employees of that corporation who have pulled their money into like a club or a group, and they’ve been persuaded, maybe by their management, that they should give a little back to this because their job would be more secure if they supported their lobbying efforts in DC.”

Continuing his remarks, the congressman said, “It’s money from employees of that company that’s being channeled to the lobbyist that’s then given to, and the lobbyists are supposedly representing the employee’s interests. That’s the workaround they have to keep corporations from giving members of Congress money directly.”

Moderating his statement, Thomas Massie explained that there are some legitimate uses for lobbying. He clarified, “So fair enough people argue for their case, whether it’s a charity, whether it’s even, frankly, a country. But where, instead of there’s there’s a place where I think I would intervene and say, intervene, yeah.
The question is, does a foreign country have the right to be represented in my office? And I don’t think they necessarily do.”

Watch Massie expose here: