This interview has been edited and condensed. 

Dr. Fred Simon recently filed to challenge incumbent Republican Mark Amodei in the deep-red second congressional district in Northern Nevada which covers a third of the state and includes most of Lyon County, all of Churchill, Douglas, Elko, Eureka, Humboldt, Lander, Pershing, Storey, Washoe, and White Pine counties, as well as the state capital, Carson City. This is Dr. Simon’s second attempt as a candidate in Nevada after his unsuccessful run in the GOP primary for Governor. 

During his candidacy for Governor of Nevada, Simon told The Globe, “I am a trauma surgeon who ran a major trauma center. I am an Intensivist. I left my practice to run a Covid clinic in 2020. I did this to help people. I did this to help my profession. I am a medical legal expert and have testified in 100’s of cases. I own a restaurant in Douglas county, a car dealership, and I am an investor in both private and commercial real estate. A majority of my tenants could not qualify for a loan. But, I helped them. I am an advocate to help people, but I am not an advocate of entitlement…I will work with anyone who wants to work–who is a capable and good human being. Whether you are black, white, hispanic, asian, republican, democrat, gay or straight, we are all Americans and human beings who want a good life. I am well prepared on the issues–the history, the trends, and opinions on both sides. I act quickly as a trauma surgeon. Doctors don’t sit around and pontificate or people die.”

Now, Simon refuses to sit around while the country and the Silver State is facing taxing “inflation, an open border, and endless spending bills benefiting foreign countries.” He is now focused on ousting a three-term Republican incumbent Mark Amodei, who Simon refers to as “Mark Amodei, the invisible liberal Republican who does nothing” and who “goes along to get along.”

Why are you running again for office and why in CD-2?

So, politics is all about the people that you serve, and they are my boss, just like my patients were. I’m giving my patient, or in this case the constituents in CD-2, what they’re needing and asking for. In politics, we really need to get back to the fact that the public domain is the boss, but it doesn’t seem like that anymore, or hasn’t been for a long time. And, I know this district pretty well. I’ve been all around it. It’s who I am, a conservative. And it’s who I can relate to–the farmer, the rancher, the small business person, the everyday person. One question we need to ask is “What policies are going to make it better for all of us and how can we keep our values intact with the craziness of the world going on?’

I have heard and seen that Mark Amodei is not really a reflection of this district and continues to vote for all this crazy spending. He never stands up. He doesn’t have to vote like he did last Friday. He didn’t have to vote for that massive spending bill. He could have sat back and said,  “Look, I stand for the values and principles of conservatism. I stand for the people who elected me.” That massive spending bill would have gotten through, anyhow. He would have won one for his district. Now, he goes along to get along. There is no leadership coming out of Nevada, nationally. None. That is a problem that needs to be fixed with leadership comprised of constructive, intellectual, and thoughtful leaders.

Amodei is not an independent thinking individual. He goes with whatever the party is pushing, and I’m not gonna be that way. I’ve never been that way. I am not voting for that type of spending. It isn’t who we are as a district. It’s not who the people are in CD-2. It’s not who I am. If I am elected, I’m going to be one pain in the ass for the progressive Democrats and liberal Republicans. I won’t be a silent member of Congress and I don’t want to be treated as a freshman.

I’m a senior guy with a a long portfolio of accomplishments in different areas, all across of America. I have a lot of experience and I understand this country very well. I’ve been probably out in this country, at the grassroots levels, more than almost anybody who’s sitting there in Washington, and I am going to be a guy who represents everybody in America.

America needs to be America again, and it isn’t. This is not who America is, with all this stuff going on. It’s getting very crazy. It’s getting very dysfunctional, and it’s all intentional.

The last two generations coming up are highly-influenced…emotionally. With anxiety, gender dysphoria, and this pervasive ideology. Students are not being taught English, History or Civics. Curriculum is all about their identity and emotions. It’s way too early, but the influence and control of the Left is very smart. Young kids are highly influenced. That’s why Democrats are now going down the education ladder to four and five year olds. The only way to counteract this is through parental control and electing a representative who will stand up for them, and not remain silent.

Are there some issues or votes that, outside of last Friday’s vote, that you would have voted differently or are concerned with?

Well, I I don’t agree with much of the spending at all. Amodei is the invisible liberal Republican, in my opinion. When you look at the progressive wing in theDemocratic party, they aren’t the majority, but they have taken the power and changed the Democratic party. There is a spectrum in both parties. I think we need to start knocking off liberal Republicans and get a reasonable, minority of conservatives. Republicans can then do the same thing the progressives have done with the Democratic party and bring stronger leadership to the Republican party and on behalf of Northern Nevadans.

We have to grow the conservative wing in the Republican party, and that’s what I’m going to try and do–to unseat a liberal Republican who votes with the Democrats.

Amodei hasn’t been very vocal about the border. I believe in legal immigration. We need more workers. We’re short of workers, but not a replacement theory that Obama and Biden are following. This is just as illogical. This makes no sense, except it’s political.

You can’t possibly sit here as a congressman in CD-2 and not be outraged by who’s coming into this country. When you go to any meetings, he’s always telling jokes. It’s all about jokes. He says a few little things and he puts out his little newsletter and talks about how he brought money into Nevada. Can you imagine how much more money could come into Nevada if we stop subsidies to Big Tobacco? Big AG (agriculture), Big Pharma, Planned Parenthood, PBS? The list goes on an on.

Why are we subsidizing other countries?

Why are we giving $125,000,000 to Egypt for Egyptian students to go to Egyptian University. Why are we giving a $150,000,000 to Jordan to secure their border. Why are we giving all this money to Ukraine, with no accountability to where it’s going. That war has lost 400,000 young men in Ukraine. Ukraine is a humanitarian disaster.

 Do you plan on self funding again, or are you out raising money? Amodei, at the end of 2023, raised nearly $500,000.

I’m trying to raise some money, but I’ll have whatever money I need. I’m in it to win it. I’ve got plenty of money to put into it, if it that’s what’s necessary. It’s not about money to me. I worked real hard my entire life to do good things. To get elected as a conservative in CD-2 would be a good thing because I will stand for our values, aggressively and nationally. I will not be silent. I will go and partner with other conservatives. I will be vocal. I will be assertive. I’ve already been to the border twice in Texas and California. I met with Rodney Scott in his living room, the former head of border security. These problems are not insurmountable. It’s all political. All of it is.

We we are being driven into debt by the billionaires and the elite in this country. Inflation is the driving force behind the rising prices for companies that are making record profits on the backs of the American public. We’re inflationary based on two things: greedy corporations and the federal government printing fake money, which depreciates everybody’s dollar. That’s not real money. It never existed. There’s no mystery to this. They want to keep saying it’s a supply chain issue. It is all BS. The packages are smaller, the prices are higher and it will happen, as it always does, until the tolerance of the American public reaches a point that we won’t pay anymore. But, this is pure greed. All they’re trying to do is suck money out of what is left of the middle class, and the impoverished are struggling more than they ever have.

As far as I’m concerned, as a conservative, I’m a representative of the citizen, the worker. The Democrats are not about the worker anymore. Not with their inflationary, spending and border policies. There is plenty of money that has gone upwards to the corporations that don’t pay their fair share. Billionaires are controlling the media, controlling the corporations, controlling the banks, and basically controlling America’s lives. We have to stop that flow of money that way. There needs to be some reasonable fair distribution of the wealth of America

How does that redistribution come about? Does that come through taxes? Does it come through raising the minimum wage? How does a conservative fairly distribute wealth?

Well, first of all, stop subsidizing the corporations. Everything is subsidized. We’re still subsidizing tobacco. We subsidize Big Pharma. Why is the federal government paying for the Covid vaccine? Number one, the vaccine is unnecessary in a large number of the population, but that that’s another story in itself. But, that’s not the role of government. Why are we subsidizing Pfizer? Why are we sending all this money overseas? Why are we in endless wars where we are zero and six?

There are significant humanitarian problems. These wars have caused millions of lives to be lost. My support for veterans is….let’s not send anybody into war anymore. I’m tired of seeing young men and young women with loss of limbs. We left $70,000,000,000 of equipment in Afghanistan. We funded the Taliban who kicked our butt in the last few days.

Does any of this make logical sense? We’re not protecting America. That’s  just pure demagoguery.

We’re not protecting America by being in Afghanistan. We were not protecting America by ravaging through Iraq. We didn’t have to take down Libya. None of these people are in democracies. Why are we trying to change cultures that we don’t even understand? What have we accomplished in the Middle East, other than instability?

So, how do I say I support veterans? Keep them from getting killed for no rational reason. Keep them from getting maimed and changing their lives dramatically. We must have a strong military, but do it by deterrent. We don’t need to be where we are.

So, you asked me where we start? We keep our money at home. We stopped subsidizing corporations. We start a better policy of what we do economically. We stop the Chinese and people like Bill Gates buying up all our farmland.

We have 36 rural hospitals that have closed since 2020. 200 more are at risk because Obamacare underfunds them.

In many of these small towns, the mortality rate goes up because they now have to be transported to hospitals 45 minutes to an hour away, and they don’t get that golden hour of care. It’s shameful what the politicians in Washington are doing to the American citizens and their hard-earned tax dollars.

Mark Amodei is as bad as any of them. Shame on him.

And then he bullshits us and tell us that he’s a conservative. He is not a conservative. It’s time for him to go.

It’s time for a lot of these people to go, and it’s time for us to change the dynamics and this budgeting scam. This cannot be our legacy…leaving our children with, at minimum, 50 trillion in debt. It’s grows by one trillion every 100 days. This cannot be our legacy to our children and grandchildren.

Really? For what? So all those people in Washington could get rich, have this high profile life, sit at the tables when they’re in session, and go out to dinner and parties together on our dime. This is ridiculous.

Think of all the money we just saved by what we don’t and shouldn’t do.

Stop taxing the individual, working-class American citizen to death. 60 percent of the population in America can barely meet an emergency of $600. You have to lower their tax burden to offset the lower wages. You have to decrease the regulations and lower the costs for small business.

Every small business that I know of that are family owned, the families are working more because they’re they’re laying off people. They can’t afford to pay the increasing minimum wage along with the increasing inflation.

Just take my restaurant as an example. I have to pay the sheriff’s department for two bars. I have to pay the health department. I have to pay for all of these regulations and costs, and we’ve cut back on personnel, and we’ve cut back on on the hours we are open just to stay afloat. We can’t keep raising the minimum wage.

We have to decrease the their tax burden and their costs for for those type of employees and we have to help the small business people. Small business people can’t offer health insurance. It’s impossible. We’re all getting squeezed by the greed of the corporations and the billionaires. It has been like this for decades.

What’s the first three things you will do if elected as Nevada’s next Congressman in CD-2?

The first thing I’m going to do is call all of conservative Republican congressmen that exist and go meet with them to get an idea of how I’m going to partner with them and let them know who I am. Then, I’m going to look and see who I can partner with to change things that I think need to be changed. I will professionally and aggressively represent our district.

Second, we are losing our health care to the government. That is a huge issue for me. We’re losing our rural community hospitals. We have to get funding for them. Those people don’t deserve to lose their hospitals, and they don’t deserve to have a higher death rate because they lose their hospitals.

We have to get better health care. We’re dying at a younger age. There’s an increase in diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and cancers. They’re all increasing. There’s this exponential rise ain cancers, the turbo cancers, all of these complications rising in 2020 to 2023. Isn’t that interesting? All related to timing of the COVID vaccine. This has to be addressed aggressively, because in clinical practice I saw lots of patients that have issues. Finally, the FDA has removed their propaganda about Ivermectin. I’m going to make sure that every physician in this country who advocated for different treatments will be no longer punished or censored.

This is America.

They complain about Russia and Putin. They’re doing the same thing here to all these medical professionals who legitimately and scientifically question their propaganda. Some of these drugs that are coming out from Big Pharma, these obesity drugs, the COVID vaccine, the pushing of pills and pills and more pills. If you don’t have your life, if you don’t have your health, life is very difficult, and the COVID vaccine shot has made life difficult for thousands and thousands of people. This is something like that would have never passed the FDA. Never has. Ever. This is unprecedented.

Number three, we must secure our border for the safety of every American. Fentanyl is destroying lives and communities. We also must push for substantial integration from Mexico to reunite families that are in the United States. We have an obligation and a commitment to our Hispanic community. 60 to 70 percent of my patients over my career were Hispanics. I admire their morals and their ethics. They are wonderful people, they work hard, they love family and God. There are so many Hispanics in this country whose families are divided. If we are fighting over immigration policy, let’s start there. They are conservatives who vote for Democrats, but that is changing.

Lastly, the people that I talk to in CD-2 don’t know what Amodei stands for, other than spending. But you know what? The is why I am challenging him. If I don’t get his this time, I will get him next time.