Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin texted that he was nearby and wanted to tell me something. It turned out that he was still buzzing from just visiting the gold depository at Fort Knox and wanted to tell my radio audience about it.

Bevin, invited by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnunchin, is the only governor to ever visit the gold depository. President Franklin D. Roosevelt is the only commander in chief to visit the vault and Mnuchin only the third treasury boss to personally inspect America’s safety deposit box.

Bevin gave the WHAS Radio audience a fairly comprehensive accounting of the vault’s contents, last opened for inspection in 1974.

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Bevin had already had a pretty solid day, flying a helicopter with his old Army buddy over Hopkinsville, a totality zone for the day’s solar eclipse. Once Mnuchin’s people contacted him about the vault opportunity, Bevin redirected the flight to Fort Knox.

The Kentucky governor was impressed with the gold bars, coins, and other precious contents of the vault but was quick to point out that its “few hundred billion dollars” in value is “approximately 1% of our total federal debt.”

He wouldn’t talk about the complicated entry system but joked that, combined with a total solar eclipse, it seemed like a setup for a new version of the James Bond heist film Goldfinger.