Dustin Dunbar is running as an Independent candidate for the U.S. presidency. He draws from a broad range of experience to shape his policies—from healthcare to real estate to wellness. He is the founder/CEO of FreeHealthInsuranceHelp.com (founded in 2009), and was the division manager for HealthMarkets. He has assisted tens of thousands of Americans navigating the health insurance maze. Dustin also founded the wellness non-profit AlcoholFreeRevolution.org, and is a real estate entrepreneur and a former appraiser for First Alliance Mortgage. He holds a PhD in psychology from Saybrook University, had a stint modeling for the Ford Model Agency, and is a prolific author as well. His books include You’re Doing Great! And Other Lies Alcohol Told Me, Her Holiness, and his new book,  and Make America Whole Again: A Blueprint for Leading the AI Age, Empowering Global Security, and Reuniting the Nation. Learn more at Dustin-Dunbar.com.

You open the book with a scene where you’re on a fishing boat in Oklahoma: you ask your grandfather the difference between a Republican and a Democrat, and he answers with a question about whether you’d rather learn to fish or be handed a fish. Then you take that answer to your father, a former Marine teaching American history, who asks you what happens to the people who can’t fish. You write that you walked away realizing you saw both sides. Most people who grow up with that kind of split in their lives pick a side eventually. Why didn’t you — and what did it cost you not to?

That moment on the fishing boat with my grandfather was more than just about fishing. It was a profound lesson about life and values. In asking me if I’d rather learn to fish or just be handed a fish, he was teaching me self-reliance and dignity. Then my dad challenged me further. His question, “What about those who can’t fish?” stayed with me and opened my eyes to a deeper truth. The answer isn’t about choosing one side or the other. It’s about understanding both and seeing how they integrate and strike a balance.

I am so grateful that I didn’t get into politics until recently or I would have been forced to pick a side. That is how the system has worked until now. It was the only way to belong, to get financial backing, to be heard. But I saw that no single party holds all the answers. My family, like so many Americans, lives with that tension—sometimes stubborn, sometimes compassionate, sometimes right, sometimes wrong. And I love them all for it. That experience taught me the world isn’t black and white; it’s filled with so many shades. Every person’s perspective is shaped by their own story and challenges.

Our democracy is beautiful because it gives every voice a place. But it also demands we respect the outcome, even when it’s hard. It calls on us to listen deeply—to truly hear—and to hold space for each other, even when we disagree. That’s what I stand for: love, boundaries, and the refusal to allow division to tear us apart like a family at war.

Being “both” isn’t always easy. It cost me at times—missed opportunities, lost alliances, the comfort of fitting in. But I know that the courage to embrace complexity, and to seek common ground beyond slogans and party lines, is exactly what this country needs right now. I’m here to build bridges, not walls.

Our founders warned us about the dangers of rigid political parties—they knew division would come if we put party before country. Today, those warnings are ringing true. The two-party era is finally coming to an end. Nearly 45% of Americans identify as independents, nearly double the size of either party. If I get just around 40% of the vote in each state with the Republican and Democrat candidates getting around 30% each, it will be a landslide victory in the electoral college, winner take all. The 2028 election will be the first time there is a true third option. 

People see how completely broken the two-party system is and they’re stepping away. I ask all Americans to do the same: look beyond party labels. Let’s be the independent, free-thinking citizens our founders dreamed of, and put our country first.

You describe your addiction plainly: alcohol cost you your marriage, your family as you knew it, and nearly your life. You write that your awakening began not with your own insight, but with the mother of your children setting a boundary and filing for divorce. That’s an unusual thing for a presidential candidate to put in print—the moment of change belongs to someone else, and you’re the one who had to be stopped. Why did you decide to tell it that way, and what did you learn about power from being on the receiving end of a boundary you didn’t want?

I grew up really poor, but in my adulthood, I was the golden boy. Lucky breaks came easy. Full-ride sport and presidential scholarships, modeling in Milan, a multimillionaire by the age of 45 with thriving businesses in both health insurance and real estate. I lived all over the world, earned a doctorate, and had a happy marriage with wonderful kids. I believed that those who struggled in life were just weak-minded or lazy. Then everything changed.

When my wife set a boundary and filed for divorce, it hit me like a freight train. Suddenly, I was forced to see a truth I had been blind to—that my selfishness and alcohol had cost me my marriage, my family as I knew it, and nearly my life. At first, my ego wanted to blame everyone else and play the victim. But the hardest, deepest healing began the moment I took full responsibility for my failures.

I was fiercely present for my kids: I was still their dad. But I had taken their mother and our family for granted in ways I didn’t even understand. Her courage and unwavering strength to say “enough,” and not only set clear boundaries but stick to them, was a gift I never expected. It was the beginning of my true awakening.

I finally understood what Jesus meant when he said, “I of myself can do nothing.” Ultimate power comes from the Universe/God. My ego was a fortress, but her boundaries were the sledgehammer that shattered it. Without her, I would have stayed lost in selfishness, and blind to my own shortcomings and the struggles of others.

This story isn’t just about my past. It’s about the power of vulnerability, accountability, and love that transforms. And it’s why I’m here today—ready to create a future where we have the courage to face our hardest truths and grow stronger through them.

The organizing idea of the book is “love with boundaries.” You write that love without boundaries becomes chaos or abuse, and boundaries without love become cruelty or control. It’s unusual the way you scale it up: in Part II you use the same formula to argue for enforceable international AI and nuclear law. Can you us through that leap? How does a principle you learned in a men’s circle and a 12-step room become foreign policy without losing its meaning along the way?

When we get the inside right, the outside falls into place. That’s true for one person, and it’s true for a civilization. I learned this the rawest way possible—sitting in a men’s circle, staring at my own wreckage. Love without boundaries becomes chaos, enabling, even abuse. Boundaries without love become cruelty and control. Real healing only happens when both are present together.

I didn’t invent this. Every functional marriage and every person who’s found real health knows it in their bones. So, I asked myself: why would this stop working at the water’s edge of a nation?

Take AI or nuclear weapons. Right now, we have immense power with no enforceable boundaries —195 nations acting on trust and goodwill, which is exactly the “love without boundaries” chaos I lived through in my own life, just scaled up to catastrophic stakes. Meanwhile, too many rules are just about control with no love behind it—power for its own sake, which breeds resentment and eventually rebellion.

The fix is the same at both scales: enforceable structure rooted in genuine care for human survival. Not naive trust, and not domination—real accountability, held together by the intention to protect life. I didn’t learn that in a think tank. I learned it doing the hard internal work from my own chaos, and I’ve watched it work too many times to believe it stops mattering just because the stakes get bigger.

Your AI chapters are the most concrete in the book.  You flatten the federal government from a twenty-story hierarchy into ten-person “AI Pods.” You deploy Forensic AI to catch fraud at the moment of the transaction. Your American Equity Fund asks the largest corporations to contribute to a national fund in exchange for fast-track permitting and their names on the benefit checks. But you also write that you know people are afraid of AI as “Big Brother.” Your answer is that in your government, it would be a “big servant” that watches the government instead of the citizen. That’s a promise every administration makes about a new technology. What’s the actual mechanism that keeps it true after you’re gone?

Here’s the simple hard truth: the mechanism is the law. Not a promise. Not a good president. Laws that are enforced.

I’ve traveled all over the U.S. and Europe, asking every kind of leader—politicians, priests, generals, scientists, and everyday people—what we actually need when it comes to AI. Almost everyone tells me the same thing. We need real international laws, or this technology will create hell on earth.

There’s a quote I keep coming back to, from E.B. White: “Government is the thing. Law is the thing. Not brotherhood, not international cooperation … Where does security lie, against the thief, the bad man, the murderer? Not in brotherly love. It lies in government.”

That’s the whole idea. 

It can’t stop at our borders. That’s why I’m also calling for a Global Rulebook for AI with real teeth: actual enforcement, not just words on paper. It would address  the worst-case uses of AI. Things like a lab virus ten times worse than COVID, cyber-attacks that could shut down our power grids and water systems, or drone swarms capable of wiping out an entire city in a single mission. These aren’t science fiction anymore. They’re within reach right now, for any country or group with the right code, and no single nation—not even the most powerful one on earth—can stop them alone. This has to be a shared set of rules that every major power signs onto and actually follows, the same way we once agreed nuclear weapons needed limits nobody could ignore.

AI isn’t heavy like nuclear weapons. It’s weightless. It is just code. It travels through the air and under the ocean at the speed of light. You can’t put a blockade around a line of code. We aren’t dealing with nine countries that have heavy bombs; we are dealing with 195 nations that can all download a weapon that is invisible and instant.

We are fighting in the dark. If a missile hits New York, we will know exactly where it was launched from. But if a cyber-attack takes down our power grid tomorrow, it won’t come with a return address. You cannot fight an enemy you cannot see, and you cannot deter an enemy who has no flag.

You spent twenty-five years inside the health insurance industry—twelve selling private plans, thirteen working with Medicaid, Medicare and ACA. You write that you came out with scars as well as a mechanic’s understanding of an engine that everyone else is arguing about with the hood up. You also write that in America, the system finishes off people who are already sick. Having sold the product for a quarter century, what did you see from the inside that people on the outside consistently get wrong, and is there a specific claim or a specific family you still think about?

If our goal were to build luxury hotels, we currently have the ideal president for that task. However, since what we truly need is a strong, effective, and affordable healthcare system, I am undoubtedly the right person for the job. Twenty-five years in the brutal trenches of the American healthcare insurance industry forged my understanding of its systemic flaws. It wasn’t a job; it was a daily battle. I fought through a relentless barrage of claims, billing nightmares, and the constant scapegoating of insurance agents when things went wrong—which was daily.

I saw the heavy burden of the system up close—the random rejections, the frustrating red tape that only seemed to confuse people, and the real human suffering caused by this broken system. It wasn’t just numbers; it was the pain of many individuals and families that I witnessed. My colleagues and I often jested that after long days fighting against huge health insurance company claims departments, we felt like we needed a shower to wash off the grime.

In America, getting sick is a financial death sentence. We are the only wealthy country in the world where this happens. Every year, over 500,000 Americans are forced into bankruptcy because of medical bills—more than 1,300 people every single day. 

As of 2025, over 100 million Americans carry some form of medical debt, owing a combined $220 billion to hospitals and doctors. In countries like Australia, Germany, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom, the number of people who go bankrupt from medical bills is zero. And you are not safe just because you have an insurance card: about 60% of people who go bankrupt from medical bills had insurance when they got sick. It is not a lack of coverage that destroys them—it is the fine print: sky-high deductibles, brutal coinsurance, the highest drug prices in the world, and “out-of-network” surprises.

That’s why I built AmeriCare Hybrid Healthcare. It gives every American the solid, public major medical coverage they deserve, with the option to add private plans on top if you want extra bells and whistles. We can do this without raising taxes — and I lay out exactly how in the book.

The afterword takes a turn that will surprise readers who came for discussions on policy. You describe yourself as a Christian mystic, quote Meister Eckhart, and end by telling Americans to stop playing small. Meanwhile your appendix is a single page telling readers—”MAGA Maniac, Woke Warrior, or something in between”—to save 988 in their phones before they need it. Those two pages sit right next to each other. What is the book asking of a reader who finishes it, and why did you want the crisis line to be the last practical thing they see?

When people finish this book, I want them to feel two things: a deep sense of their own worth, and a safety net for when things get too heavy. I brought up that spiritual side because faith is not just something from history books. It lives inside us today. Right now, we are playing small, and we are letting ourselves be divided by a system that feeds on our anger. That is why the very next page is the 988 crisis line. Whether you call yourself a MAGA maniac, a woke warrior, or anything in between, your feelings are valid and your life matters. In a world full of division, we have to protect each other first.

For most of my life, I have watched politicians stand at podiums, pointing fingers and throwing around numbers to make us fear our neighbors. They want us to blame the other side so we do not look at what they are doing. I refuse to play that game. 

This campaign is not about blaming. It is about blending the caring blue water of Democrats with the strong red fire of Republicans. When we realize we need both sides in balance, that is when we will truly heal the deep hurt in our country. We need to stop fighting one another and start using one another’s strengths to fix things together. Water and fire together creates the steam that makes the engine run  

This is a campaign about we, not me. I know how lucky I am. I was born in America, which is the best start anyone can get. I am a straight, white, educated man who owns property. The American system was originally built to work for people who look exactly like me.

But here is the heartbreaking reality. Even with every advantage in the book, I still feel powerless against the corporate control of our government, and I know you do too. Our voices are being drowned out by big money. Washington does not care about your family or mine; it cares about the highest bidder. Because of the system of how to get elected, our politicians have had to become puppets for giant corporations, and laws are bought instead of debated. It leaves people feeling lonely, angry, and completely forgotten.

That is why I am asking you to stop playing small. I want to give the power back to you through direct, real-time voting on the big issues. Imagine a system where everyone can see exactly how a politician votes compared to what the people actually want. If a leader votes against their own neighbors to please a corporate donor, the truth will be right out in the open. We can finally end the mystery, stop the bribery, and hold them accountable. 

Finally, that 988 number is there because human life is sacred. We have the beautiful gift of free will, but we also have a duty to look out for one another. No matter how angry politics makes us, we can never turn on each other with violence. If you are hurting, or if the weight of the world feels like too much, please know you are not alone. Help is just three numbers away. We need to save our country, but first, we need to save each other.

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