MIT is mentioned in The Bob Zadek Show only once, and only incidentally. In an April 30, 2020 episode featuring Rep. Thomas Massie, the congressman describes a lunch meeting in the basement of the Capitol Hill Club with three lobbyists from the medical device industry, held roughly eight weeks after he arrived in Congress. Massie’s chief of staff attended the meeting with him, along with the woman he had hired to help him raise money in Washington, D.C. Prime time for the PRIME Act (2020)
According to Massie, the lobbyists praised him and his chief of staff, telling him that he was not like other congressmen, that he was smart and going places, and that he could make a difference. They also said they liked his chief of staff. In that context Massie notes that his chief of staff went to MIT, Stanford, and Caltech, and that he had patents of his own. The excerpt records no further detail about the chief of staff’s education, his field of study, the nature of the patents, or when he attended any of the three institutions. Prime time for the PRIME Act (2020)
The reference functions as an aside within a longer anecdote about congressional recruitment and committee fundraising. The lobbyists at the table urged Massie to leave the transportation, oversight, and science committees for the Ways and Means Committee, which they called the most powerful committee. They told him that Paul Ryan was going to be the next chairman of Ways and Means, a prediction Massie says he had not heard anywhere else and wondered how they knew. They also told him that one or two members always fail to get reelected, so a seat on the committee would open, and that they were prepared to raise the money required to get him on it. Massie describes leaving the meeting and telling his chief of staff that he needed a shower, calling it one of the slimiest meetings he had ever been in. Prime time for the PRIME Act (2020)
Massie’s account continues into the mechanics of committee seats. He says he found out that a member has to give about a million dollars to the Republican Party to get on the Ways and Means Committee, and that members on the Democratic side of the aisle have to do the same thing. He frames the arrangement as renting rather than buying a seat: there is no equity in it, and every two years the money has to be paid again. He describes passing the hat with lobbyists rather than asking constituents for fifty- or five-hundred-dollar checks for that purpose. Prime time for the PRIME Act (2020)
Bob Zadek’s contributions in the excerpt are questions and framings rather than statements about MIT. He asks Massie what his goal was in going to Congress, what he was chafing at the bit to accomplish, and later characterizes members as chess pieces moved by others and as twigs in a stream. He also remarks that Massie is the last vestige of an at-will employee, a characterization Massie agrees with. None of these remarks concern MIT. Prime time for the PRIME Act (2020)
The same episode includes other material unrelated to MIT: Massie’s account of putting a debt clock on his office wall, updated every second, to remind himself why he ran; his daughter’s question about whether the clock would go backwards once he fixed things; the December substitution of a Christmas clock counting down the days until Christmas; and his description of being told by a staffer, on his second day of voting, that the leadership was not whipping that vote so he could vote as he wished. He also describes voting against Speaker John Boehner and joining a revolt against him within weeks of arriving. Prime time for the PRIME Act (2020)
The episode’s later segment, according to Bob Zadek’s introduction before the break, turns to Massie’s prediction about an impending food shortage, his proposed solution, the PPP program, and what Zadek calls the underbelly of the food supply chain in America. The excerpt of that segment contains only Zadek’s introduction and no content. Prime time for the PRIME Act (2020)
Across episodes
Only one episode in the excerpts touches on MIT: the April 30, 2020 interview with Thomas Massie. The excerpts show no development of the topic across episodes, and no other episode mentions the institution.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when MIT was founded, where it is located, what it teaches, or anything about its institutional character. They do not name the chief of staff, his field, his degree, or the subject of his patents, and they do not say when he attended MIT, Stanford, or Caltech. They contain no discussion of MIT policy, research, or controversies, and no guest or host offers an assessment of the institution. Everything the sources say about MIT is confined to the single clause in which Massie lists it among his chief of staff’s schools.