MOJO Academy Book Brief

Book Title: How to Test Negative for Stupid: And Why Washington Never Will
Author: Senator John Kennedy
Publishing Year: 2025
Number of Pages: 288
Audible Time: Approximately 8 hours

Brief Summary

I have always been a huge fan of Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana. Especially because of his candor. Especially because of his genuine way of getting to the truth.

This book proves why.

It is not a policy memoir. It is not a wonky legislative history. It is Kennedy’s trademark one-liners, personal anecdotes, and stories from Louisiana politics and the U.S. Senate, all stitched together around one central thesis: Washington rewards people who are disconnected from ordinary Americans and common sense.

Kennedy narrates the audiobook himself, and that matters…ALOT!

You hear the Louisiana drawl. You hear the timing. You hear the man who has become one of the most quotable senators in the country say it exactly the way he means it.

Now, this is not a book stuffed with data and footnotes. It does not need to be. It is a funny series of stories that anybody, Republican or Democrat, can appreciate. And underneath the laughs sits something serious.

This book is about saying the quiet part out loud.

Two Important Quotes

1. “This book is for people who might enjoy learning about a few things—some funny, some tragic—that have happened to me in the United States Senate, or that I have observed happening to others. Senators aren’t like most teenagers; they are all over forty. You’ll see what I mean soon enough if you keep reading. (Please keep reading.) This book is also for people—there may not be many of you—who want to know how this particular senator came to be like he is, and why he does what he does and does it how he does it. This book is about saying the quiet part out loud. This book is about the mighty weapon of candor, which most people in Washington, D.C., have only a casual relationship with. And this book is also about my hope that you too will be encouraged to risk saying what you think and making the right people mad.”

The mighty weapon of candor. That is the whole book in four words.

Most of Washington treats plain speech like a liability. Kennedy treats it like a mission. He is telling you, right up front, that this book exists to give you permission to say what you actually think, even when it makes the right people mad.

Amen. We need more people calling out crazy for common sense!

Sure. That takes nerve. It also takes humor, because nobody wants a lecture. Kennedy gives you both.

2. “Not long after I had that exchange with Kash Patel, he was confirmed as our country’s FBI director. I voted for him. I’ve largely been pleased, as of this writing, with the actions he has taken. He has done what he said he’d do in his confirmation hearing, and I think (and hope) he will continue to get rid of the bad employees at the FBI who use their job to advance their political preferences and lift up the good people at the bureau who are impartial. I am, you see, an optimist. But I’m a paranoid optimist. I’m an optimist who worries. That’s why, during the first months of the second Trump administration, when the president was filling out his DOJ as well as other parts of our country’s legal infrastructure, I used all my power as a senator to sound the alarm about the degradation of our judicial system in a partisan political environment.”

A paranoid optimist. I love that phrase, and I think it describes half the conservatives I know.

Kennedy is telling you he wants to believe the system will fix itself. He voted for Kash Patel. He is largely pleased with what Patel has done at the FBI. But he does not just trust and walk away. He watches. He worries. He uses his power as a senator to keep sounding the alarm, even when his own side is winning.

That is accountability without cynicism. Or as Reagan always taught us, “trust but verify.”

I will say that Kennedy’s back and forth with Kash revealed one of the very best lines that Senator Kennedy ever uttered!

here it is:

I then turned to Patel and said, “You’ve made a lot of people mad, haven’t you, Mr. Patel?” “Seems so, Senator,” he said.

Senator Kennedy: You think maybe you’ve made the right people mad?

Kash Patel: As my FBI agents, the brick agents, told me when I was running cases with them across this country and around the world—if you’re not ticking off some people, you’re not doing your job right.

Senator Kennedy: My colleague and friend Senator Durbin called you a conspiracy theorist. You remember that?

Kash Patel: I do, Senator.

Senator Kennedy: You were instrumental in revealing that the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax was a hoax, weren’t you?

Kash Patel: Yes, sir. I was a lead investigator.

Senator Kennedy: Sounds to me like we need to get some new conspiracy theories because all the old ones turned out to be true.

Kash Patel: Facts matter, Senator.

Senator Kennedy: Yeah. I mean, conspiracy theorists are up something like thirty-seven to nothing. You’re not saying that everybody at the FBI is bad, are you?

Kash Patel: Never said that. I’ve overwhelmingly said multiple times that ninety-eight percent of the FBI are courageous, apolitical warriors of justice. They just need better leadership, especially those who participated in these conspiracies that actually turned out to—

My Nuggets of Wisdom!

I laughed wholeheartedly all the way through this book.

Between the folksisms and the one-liners, having worked in Washington, D.C. myself, I could appreciate every single story. Kennedy has lived it, and it shows on every page.

Here is our most important nugget: John Kennedy might be the funniest senator ever to serve in that body. Not the funniest in a cute, harmless way. Funny in a way that lands a punch. He uses humor the way a good boxer uses a jab, to set you up for the real point.

Think: Lieutenant Columbo, the homicide detective from the TV series Columbo.

And that real point of Kennedy’s—Louisiana down home humor—is always the same. Washington has a stupid problem, and it is bipartisan.

Kennedy is not just mocking the other side. He is mocking a culture, a swamp that truly rewards word salad over plain talk, credentials over common sense, and self-importance over service.

You could even say it’s crazy versus common sense in our nation’s capital and in some of our biggest cities!

I would think Abraham Lincoln would have appreciated this book.

Lincoln had his own one-liners, and they were almost beautiful in how simply they cut through nonsense and stupidity. Kennedy is working in that same tradition, just with a Louisiana accent and a modern target.

Now, connect this to the Reagan Revolution and the era of JFK. That was a time when Democrats and Republicans both, at bottom, cared about the country. They fought hard sure about their own policies. (we have a MOJO Book Brief on this: JFK and Reagan Revolution)

They disagreed plenty.

But nobody doubted the other side loved America. I am not so sure we can say that today (which is sad), and Kennedy’s book, funny as it is, sits right on top of that worry.

Connect this also to the fight against the bloated administrative state that runs through the book American Leviathan. Got a MOJO Book Brief on this one too!

Kennedy really does not like a big, sprawling, fraudulent government, and this book takes constant aim at the bureaucracy that has made Washington so disconnected from the people it serves.

Final Recommendation

This book is for anyone who has ever sat through a congressional hearing and wanted to scream at the television.

It is for anyone tired of politicians who talk for ten minutes and say nothing. It is for people who need to laugh at Washington in order to survive following it.

The title of Kennedy’s book is How to Test Negative for Stupid: And Why Washington Never Will.

Read it, and you will see the title lives up to the truth.

Always try to Keep fighting the good fight.

If You Liked This Book, You Might Like These

• JFK and the Reagan Revolution by Larry Kudlow – A reminder of an era when Democrats and Republicans both, at bottom, cared about the country, the same era Kennedy’s book measures Washington against today.

• Liberty and Tyranny by the great one Mark Levin – Levin names the Statist bureaucracy in serious terms; Kennedy roasts that same bureaucracy with a punchline in every chapter.

• American Leviathan by Ned Ryun – A deeper look at the bloated, sprawling government Kennedy spends this whole book roasting one story at a time.