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Trump's Petro-Fascist Sugar Daddies · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 1: this episode. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 2:22
  Speaker 5: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: On today's show, we'll talk about Trump's love affair with
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Middle Eastern autocrats. We'll cover the latest with his big,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: beautiful bill, which is getting worse by the day and
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: turning into a bit of a clusterfuck for Republicans. The
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court also heard oral arguments Thursday over Trump's attempt
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: to end the constitutional right to citizenship for people born
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: in America. We'll dive into how the justices reacted. And
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: then later, you'll hear my conversation with our pal Beto O'Rourke.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: who stopped by the studio here in Los Angeles to
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: talk about Texas politics, the democratic party, Donald Trump, Joe Biden,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: and lots more. It's great to see Beto.
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: That's awesome.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: He's, uh, he's given a commencement at, uh, USC law
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: school tomorrow. So, uh, he's, uh, he stopped by here
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: to say hi, which is great. But first the president is, uh,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: still fluffing Arab dictator for cash and bribes. Just, uh,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Just wrapping up a tour of the Gulf states that
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: blended jaw-dropping corruption with the side of foreign policy. Trump
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: not only declined to address the fact that his petro-fascist
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: sugar daddies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar have funded terrorist groups,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: murdered journalists, and brutally repressed women and gays. He showered
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: them with the kind of praise he rarely gives anyone
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  Speaker 1: but himself. Let's listen.
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  Speaker 2: Like the crown prince a lot. I've known him a
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: long time.
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  Speaker 6: In Saudi Arabia, and the emir is fantastic.
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: And we're going to another country in a little while,
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  Speaker 5: the UAE, a fantastic man, fantastic leader.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: We are going to protect this country.
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  Speaker 7: It's a very special place with a special royal family,
• 4:04
  Speaker 7: and they're going to be protected by the United States
• 4:06
  Speaker 7: of America.
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  Speaker 2: I do. I like them a lot.
• 4:10
  Speaker 5: I like him too much.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: That's why we give so much, you know? Too much.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: I like you too much.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: As a construction person, I'm seeing perfect marble. This is
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: what they call perfecto.
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: What they call perfecto.
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  Speaker 1: He likes MBS, the guy who ordered a journalist murdered
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  Speaker 1: with a bone saw, Jamal Khashoggi. He likes him too much, Dan.
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  Speaker 2: Too much.
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: It's kind of getting steamy in there.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: A little awkward.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: A little awkward. How inspired are you by Trump's loyalty
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  Speaker 1: to American values, liberal values around the world?
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  Speaker 4: It's like everyone has a type, right? And Trump's type
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  Speaker 4: is very clearly hereditary monarchs with large reserves of cash
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  Speaker 4: willing to give him planes, golf courses, and crypto deals.
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  Speaker 4: So he is in his element right now. I mean,
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: it's obviously disgusting and funny in a weird, gross, sad,
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: gallows humor sort of way. But it If you kind
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: of like step back, and we talked about this a
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: little bit after the incident with Zelensky in the Oval Office,
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  Speaker 4: the hugging of dictators, J.D. Vance's speech at the beginning
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: of the administration of the Munich Security Conference, wherever he
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: was when he did that. But it is just worth
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  Speaker 4: recognizing that we are now the bad guys, that the
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  Speaker 4: United States always had a set of values that we
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: stood for, that we pushed for. And we were not
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: perfect in those. Like, Barack Obama went to Saudi Arabia.
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: He wasn't, you know, Bill Clinton did, everyone else has did.
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  Speaker 4: But Trump just like does not even have the pretense
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  Speaker 4: of pretending like we care about the things we've always
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  Speaker 4: cared about. What he celebrates, he celebrates authoritariancy, he sees
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  Speaker 4: weakness in democracy. And that is a very disturbing place
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  Speaker 4: for the American president to be.
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  Speaker 1: Especially wealthy autocrats who can shower him with not just praise,
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  Speaker 1: but planes, money, business deals for his family. I mean,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe Brussels should have given Donald Trump a
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: new jet. And, you know, we'd have better relations with
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: the European Union. Maybe the Canadians should have thrown in
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: some Trump towers and Trump golf courses. And he wouldn't
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: be threatening to annex them as the 51st state. You know,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: this is how he operates. You give him praise, you
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  Speaker 1: give him money, you give him gifts. And he's going
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: to treat you and your country well. He's going to
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: make sure that the policy of the United States is
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: favorable to your government so long as you take care
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: of Trump.
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  Speaker 4: He is obviously a transactional kleptocrat.
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: That is very true.
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  Speaker 4: But there is just this certain level of respect and
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  Speaker 4: admiration he has for true dictators that he does not...
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  Speaker 4: Even if Mark Carney gave him a whole bunch of
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: free stuff, he would never view someone subject to the
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: will of the people, as impressive as someone who has
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: crushed the will.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Of the people.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Yes. That's why Kim Jong-un he praises, Duterte in the Philippines, Bolsonaro, Putin,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: like just name your autocrat. So hanging over all this,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: of course, is the issue of the jet, which is
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: such an obvious grift that more MAGA types are breaking
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: with Trump on it. We talked about Laura Loomer on
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Tuesday's pod. She is now the conscience of MAGA.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Um, but there has also been criticism from your Ben Shapiro's,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: your Mark Levin's, your Eric Erickson's. Uh, there's also a
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: growing number of Republicans in Congress who are saying they
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: want to look into the details before letting this deal happen.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Unclear what that entails.
• 7:52
  Speaker 5: That's what details they want to know about.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: You know, you're like, oh, this is a, this person's
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: on the armed services committee. I'm like, okay, so what
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: is it? Is it legislation that's going to come up
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: before them? Are they going to block a funding bill
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: because of the jet? We'll see. But none of that
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: criticism is stopping the most committed cult members from doing
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  Speaker 1: their thing. Let's listen.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: Mr. Speaker, you are very critical of President Biden and
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  Speaker 3: his family's foreign business dealings. You supported an impeachment inquiry
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: as a result of it. Are you equally concerned about
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: President Trump's family's business dealings?
• 8:24
  Speaker 8: The reason that many people refer to the Bidens as
• 8:26
  Speaker 8: the Biden crime family is because they were doing all
• 8:28
  Speaker 8: this stuff behind bars. curtains but in the back rooms
• 8:31
  Speaker 8: they were trying to conceal it and they repeatedly lied
• 8:33
  Speaker 8: about it whatever the president trump is doing is that
• 8:36
  Speaker 8: is out in the open they're not trying to conceal.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: Anything but mr speaker the investment in the meme coin.
• 8:41
  Speaker 8: I don't know anything about the meme coin thing i
• 8:42
  Speaker 8: don't know i can just tell you that i mean
• 8:44
  Speaker 8: president trump has had nothing to hide he's very upfront
• 8:47
  Speaker 8: about it and zero issue with it zero issue with
• 8:50
  Speaker 8: it do you think it raises ethics concerns or national
• 8:53
  Speaker 8: security concerns.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: You ever been to New York and saw the Statue
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: of Liberty?
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: That was a gift, too.
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: He's going to take the plane.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: And then you guys are going to do nothing about it.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: And the press is going to ride on it.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: And then if you win in the midterms, you're going
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: to impeach him.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: So what?
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, maybe the most honest answer there from our
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: pal Jesse Waters.
• 9:13
  Speaker 5: Your pal Jesse Waters.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: My pal Jesse Waters. My good friend Jesse Waters. Before that,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: that was Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen making the apt
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: comparison to the gift of we received from France of
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: the Statue of Liberty, which of course, after receiving the
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: gift and after leaving office, Grover Cleveland just flew it
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: all around the world.
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, a personal gift. People now visit it in
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: Grover Cleveland's ancestral home.
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: That's how you see the Statue of Liberty.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: People don't know this about the Statue of Liberty, but
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: it actually belongs to the Grover Cleveland Presidential Foundation.
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: When you pay to take the tour, that money goes
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: directly into Grover Cleveland's pocket.
• 9:52
  Speaker 9: Yes.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: His dead pocket, yes. Which way do you think the
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: party ends up on this one, Dan?
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: I kind of feel like Jesse Waters nailed it. This
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: is exactly where it's going to be. A few people
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: will express some mild concerns, but in the end, these
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: people are not going to break with Donald Trump over
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: a free plane. If they did, what would happen? He
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: still gets to take the plane. There's nothing they can do.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: There are Donald Trump scandals and crises that Republicans are
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: just willing to defend from the jump. There's a small
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: sliver of Donald Trump scandals like this one that they're
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: not willing to defend from the jump, but all of
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: them are willing to just wait it out knowing that
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: our memories are almost, that every day is memento for
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: the American people. We just wake up forgetting anything that happened.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Never mind the last year, two years, basically in the
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: last news cycle. And if you just wait long enough,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: it's going to sound ridiculous to bring up the jet
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: three months from now when there's so much other business
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: to go on. We're just looking forward. We're just doing
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: other stuff now.
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: I have a lot of things to say here.
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: But my first question is, what percentage of our listeners
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: do you think recall the 20-year-old Phil Memento?
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: How about, I guess, 50 First Dates is also in
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: that category.
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: I guess so.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Groundhog Day.
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: I mean, Chris Nolan has really, he's come a long
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: way since that small film in the early 2000s. But
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: remember Sammy Jankus? That's usually a way to think about politics.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: Isn't that what he had tattooed on his mirror or
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: whatever it was?
• 11:30
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: See, I don't even remember that. I love the movie. Anyway, yeah,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: you had other comments.
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: My other thing is Mike Johnson's response is insane. His logic,
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: like he's not, does not seem to be a super
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: sharp guy or like a D he's not a deep thinker.
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: I think is what I would take away from Mike
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: Johnson's brief time.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: On the public stage.
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: But his logic is that Joe Biden's crimes, which there's
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: no evidence of to be very clear that Joe Biden's
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: because Joe Biden, Joe Biden tried to conceal his, his
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: fake crimes.
• 11:59
  Speaker 5: That's bad. But because Donald Trump commits his crimes in public,
• 12:02
  Speaker 5: that's okay.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, they are, you know, look, between Jesse Waters
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: and Mike Johnson there, they're coalescing around an argument that
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: corruption is a virtue for this president and for America.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: This is a new America now, right? You know, you
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: can storm the Capitol. You can try to steal an election.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: You can lock people up without due process. And you
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: can slap a bunch of tariffs on people because you
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: want to run world trade. Because you want everyone to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: come to you and make some deals. You can accept plans.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: And as long as it's out in the open, what
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: are you going to do about it, Democrats? Oh, you're
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: going to impeach them? Then what's going to happen? Yeah, that's...
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is like they are making the argument
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: for a system that is very much not democracy. They're
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: not just saying, oh, no, no, no, this is a democracy.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: They're just like, no, no, no. This whole system where
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: there's laws and due process and ethics for people in
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: power and... No, forget that. This is much better.
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: What they're actually doing is they're pointing out the massive
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: loopholes in our democracy that Trump is exploiting, which is correct.
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: Trump can commit these crimes and Democrats could impeach him,
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: but because of who the Republican Party is and the
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: high threshold for conviction, there's nothing he can do for
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: which he would be convicted. At the end of the day,
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: the only thing that keeps the system truly working as
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: it was intended is if you have a president with
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: some modicum of shame. some sense of patriotism or duty.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: It's because Trump has none of those things. He can
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: just run right through the giant loopholes.
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: In the middle of our democracy.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Supreme Court and the Republican Congress has given
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: him immunity. And that just leaves the voters to vote
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: out Republicans and MAGA Republicans particularly from now until, I
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: don't know when, 26, 28 and beyond till we get
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: them all out of office.
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: Till the 50th anniversary of Memento. Sorry, I'm very punchy today.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: And pod save America.
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: I'm sure we'll still be doing this.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right. Did you see that Kristi Noem wants a
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: new jet too, by the way? She wants a... Washington
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Post says the DHS is going to use $ 50 million
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: from the Coast Guard budget to get her a brand
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: spanking new Gulfstream 5 to help her fly between those
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: photo ops in Seacott and wherever else we're sending people
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: in style.
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: Look, if you have to be doing cosplay at an
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: ice raid in LA, and then you have to be
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: in El Salvador for torture porn the next morning. You're
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: not going to get their commercial. So you need a
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: private jet for that.
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: So it makes complete sense.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: You think you're going to fly fucking coach? Yeah.
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: Come on now. Not Kristi Noem.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Not in your fatigues.
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: You know how hard it is to get that prop
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: assault rifle in the overhead compartment? No, of course not.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: She's got fatigues. She's got to do hair and makeup
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: on the way.
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: You need the glam squad. A lot happening.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: She's got to get a machine gun. There's a lot
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: going on. You can't take that through TSA.
• 15:07
  Speaker 5: Everyone's going to want a free plane now.
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• 16:39
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• 16:42
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• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Axios did feel the need to rain on our parade
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: this week by reporting that the corruption message isn't yet
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: breaking through with key voters, according to some focus groups
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: conducted by Polar Coaster guest Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: at Impact Research. The gist is that while generic politicians
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: are vulnerable to corruption critiques, Trump still has some, quote,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: inoculation on the issue because of, quote, Doge and his
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: longstanding anti-DC rhetoric. The voters in the group also view
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Democrats as weak. What was your takeaway from that piece
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: and those findings?
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: It seems pretty consistent with other research. I've not read
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: the whole memo, but it seems consistent with other research
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: I've seen and research we saw in 2020 in the
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: run-up to the general election when One of the findings
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: from a lot of– from the Democratic National Committee actually
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: was that the corruption message was not our most effective
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: attack on Trump. And in some ways, that's about Trump
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: in the sense that he's this rich guy. People think
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: maybe he can't be bought or he's so corrupt. They're
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: willing to like accept a level of corruption with him
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: that they may not with other politicians. And some people
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: will read this– focus this memo and other similar research
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: and say, well, that means we should not talk about corruption.
• 18:06
  Speaker 5: And I think that's a huge mistake.
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: I think that is sort of one-dimensional thinking. It is checkers,
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: not chess. Because ultimately, the reason why we have to
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: make this case is because the politics no longer operates
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: on the left-right axis.
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: We talked about this before.
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: It operates on the insider-outsider axis, the change status quo axis.
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: And the problem for Democrats is we are still seen
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: as the defenders of the broken status quo, even with
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: Trump in office, which is why as Trump's numbers go down,
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: ours don't go up. And so we have to do
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: something to make ourselves be credible agents of change. And
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: one way to do that is to run against corruption. Now,
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: if we want to be credible messengers for corruption, because
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: I actually think what this memo and others show is not,
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: it says more about the messenger than the message itself,
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: and that we are not seen as strong enough to
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: stand up, and we're not seen as outsider or reformer
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: enough to be credible messengers on corruption. And that is
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: a very fair critique of our party. When Biden was
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: in office, we did very little on corruption. We defended
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: instead of banning members of Congress trading stocks. We're unable
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: to do a lot on dark money in politics because
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: the voting rights bill collapsed or all of those things.
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: And we should be, I think one of the things
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: the Democratic Party should do is have a reform agenda,
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: starting with banning members of Congress from trading stocks, but
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: a whole host of other things that gets right at
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: the corruption and influence happening in Trump's administration. And this
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: is the path we used back in 2006. But I
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: think we absolutely have to do this, because if we don't,
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: if all we do is just vomit up anti-inflation tariff
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: talking points for the next two years, we may do
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: fine in this next election. But that's not going to
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: be because our message was great, just because we just
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: happen to be the other guy when people are pissed
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: at the people at the incumbents. But if we want
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: to strengthen the brand of the party to the point
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: where we can actually build the governing majority, we have
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: to regain some of the reformer personality and credentials we
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: had when Obama was president. One simple thing the party
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: could do Stop taking PAC and lobbyist money.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: Corporate PAC and lobbyist money. Just stop doing that right now.
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: That was the policy of the party from the day
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: Barack Obama became the nominee until he left office. And
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: we have backslid on that in very bad ways.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I totally agree with the need for a reform agenda.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: I also, I think we got to stop testing messages
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: in complete isolation here and not as part of a
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: larger story. I think if you showed people clips of
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Trump talking about why he deserves the plane, along with
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: clips where he's like, you don't need that many dolls,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: you don't need that many pencils, and inflation's great, everything's down,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: gas prices down, everything's wonderful. I think telling a story
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: about Donald Trump as corrupt, which I agree, most people
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: know he's corrupt or assume he's corrupt because most people
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: think most politicians are corrupt, but talking about his corruption
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: in the context of how out of touch he is
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: with the concerns of the people he said he was
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: going to fight for, I think is much more damning.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: And I think you want to tell a story about
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people who are running the government to
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: enrich themselves while everyone else gets fucked over. And like
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: people have to, it's sad as it is, I think
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: some people are willing to let it fly that some
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: government officials are going to get rich based on their positions,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: so long as they're also doing work to help people,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: you know, afford their groceries. And if they don't see that,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: so I do agree with you, like, if it's just
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: tariffs or it's just reform, like, I don't think just
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: spitting out a list of messages that test well is
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: going to work. I think you have to tell a
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: story about Donald Trump. And then, like you said, Democrats
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: have to tell a story about, like, what they would
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: do differently, not just on economic policy, but also on
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: making sure that government's not corrupt.
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: The story– I always wrestle with the story thing because, yes,
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: you need a story, obviously. That is the core of
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: what we've always believed in politics. Communicating that story is
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: just so fucking hard right now, right?
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: Just to have the space.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: Now, if you are– it's hard to do in the opposition.
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: If you are the nominee in a race and you
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: have the combination of the press attention you get, the
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: social following you have, and the paid advertising, like together you.
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: Can do it.
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: But it's like Democrats telling that story right now, it's
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: like a hard thing to break through, to.
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: Tell something holistically, right? Like it is hard.
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: I'm not arguing against it. I'm just saying like that
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: is a real challenge.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: I think it's a challenge for some of these Democrats.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: But like I don't know how hard it is to
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: like go out and give a– you don't even have
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: to give a long speech. You can do like a
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: two-minute video on that. I just think that we are–
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: people are so caught up in– well, what is the
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: corruption message and what's the right line that tests well? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Talk about what's happening. Just talk about what's happening and
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: how fucked up it is.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: I guess I'm getting at the point that telling the
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: story is possible. Getting people to hear the story is harder.
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: Than it's ever been.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: That is true. That is true.
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: This is just a side note, as I said on
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: Punchy today, related to your You Should Give a Speech,
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: is that sitting in my message box drafts folder for
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: like three months now is my take that politicians should
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: stop giving speeches.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Just.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Damn you.
• 23:29
  Speaker 7: I mean, you're, you're out of the, you, you stop
• 23:31
  Speaker 7: writing and watch these people keep giving them. I, I
• 23:34
  Speaker 7: think that I still think there's a place for speeches
• 23:37
  Speaker 7: because I think there's a place for storytelling.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Cause I think storytelling works better than anything.
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: If I ever finished this thing, then you and I will,
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: you know what we'll do?
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: We'll debate it on the pot.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Perfect. All right. Well, I look forward to it. So yeah,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I do think Trump's orgy of corruption might look even
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: worse to, uh, all the voters he's about to fuck
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: over with his, uh, big, beautiful tax cut for the rich.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: which will cause millions of people to lose their health
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: care while somehow still adding trillions of dollars to the deficit.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Here's where things stand on the bill in the House
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: right now. We are, of course, recording this Thursday afternoon.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: We got Medicaid cuts that will lead to at least
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: 8 million people losing their coverage, millions of others who
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: will pay a lot more for their health care, higher co-pays,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: work requirements for people who are either already working or
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: people who have disabilities or caring for children or students
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: so they can't work. They've also included a massive cut
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: to food assistance that gives low-income Americans, mostly children, about
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: six bucks a day so they don't go hungry. That's
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: where they decided to get $ 300 million of savings from that.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: They want to defund Planned Parenthood and repeal most of
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the clean energy tax credits that Biden passed. And all
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: of this is so that people making over $ 1 million
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: can get an average tax cut of $ 90, 000. So that
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: business owners who make over $ 10 million a year can
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: take a million dollar tax deduction on average. And so
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: that wealthy couples worth over $ 30 million can pass on
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: a tax-free inheritance. Because if you can't give your kids
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: $ 40 million inheritance without some taxes on it, what are
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: you even doing? Why are you giving them anything? Isn't
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: this America? You should be able to. $ 35 million, $ 40 million,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: $ 45 million. You should pass on that to your kids tax-free.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: No taxes on it. Because those kids deserve as much
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: money as they could possibly have. $ 40 million.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Tax-free.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Un-fucking-real.
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: The Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump Jr. Memorial Tax Act.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: And the size of these tax cuts and just how
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: they're showering the just ultra-mega-rich with more money. is partly why,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: even with all those cuts to people's health care, to
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: food assistance, to everything else, the bill is still going
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: to add a few trillion dollars to the deficit. And perversely,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: that's why some Republicans in Congress are threatening to tank
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: the bill because it is adding too much to the
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: deficit because it's not cutting enough. So that's what's happening
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: right now. It's disgusting. It's infuriating. It's also somehow not
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: extreme enough for these Republicans. The last I checked, Mike
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Johnson had a big meeting today with the warring factions
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: of the Republican Congress. You had the hardliners, who it's
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: not going far enough. The moderates, who have already taken
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: some votes that people in their districts might not be
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: so happy about. You have the SALT caucus. I don't
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: even know if we want to get into SALT.
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: The SALTies?
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: The SALTies, that's what they're called. These are the people
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: very concerned about the state and local deduction for their taxes,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: which Trump put a cap on. And now they want
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: to remove the cap because it hits people in blue
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: states the hardest. But of course, the people in the
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: salty caucus for Republicans are the Republican House members who
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: do represent blue states. There may be another warring faction
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: that I can't think of right now. But apparently people
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: left the meeting and they were members were texting Jake Sherman.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: We're fucked. I think they said we're cooked. We're cooked.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: And they might delay the vote now. But by the
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: time you're hearing this Friday morning or Friday afternoon, it
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: could all change. So I'm just telling you where we
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: are right now. Dan, what do you think about the
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: politics driving this negotiation right now?
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: I mean, the whole thing speaks to the utter incoherence
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: of the Republican policy agenda in the era of Donald Trump.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: There is not a consistent view. I'm going to oversimplify here,
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: but under Reagan, there was a simple principle to support
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: Reagan was to agree to lower taxes, smaller government, right?
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: And then a bunch of other stuff. But like that
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: was the economic principles. That extended for a long time.
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: Then you get to the, you know, the Mitt Romney,
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: Paul Ryan Republicans, and we are going to cut Social
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: Security and Medicare and cut Medicaid.
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: Like that was our principle.
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: They don't really stand for anything right now. It's a
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: sort of a very dissonant, incoherent group of coalition really
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: coming together. And so you have these super far right
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: essentially Tea Partiers, the Freedom Caucus, who want no government.
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: If a Democrat was president, they would want to burst
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: through the debt ceiling, default. They're nihilists. And then you
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: have a group of sort of Republican leadership, corporate types
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: who want as big a tax cuts as possible for
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: the rich. That is where they are. It's sort of
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: the corporatist wing. And then you have people with very
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: specific political concerns worried about losing their own seats. And
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: so all of these things They're not all rowing in
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: the same way. And sometimes you'd be in a situation,
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: like we were trying to pass the Affordable Care Act.
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: The general view was everyone in the Democratic Party believed
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: in some form of universal health care. We had disagreements
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: about how we got there, but the priority was shared. Here,
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: there is no agreement about what we're trying to accomplish here.
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: Are we trying to cut taxes?
• 28:59
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: Are we trying to cut taxes primarily for rich people
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: or working class people? Rich people probably, but some people
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: feel differently. Is our goal to cut Medicaid or not
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: cut Medicaid? Are we trying to reduce the deficit or
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: only increase it by $ 2 trillion so we can give
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: the tax cuts to the rich? When the entire organizing
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: principle of the party is one man's personality, it makes
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: legislating on big policy agenda very hard, especially when that
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: man has no coherent policy views because there's no shared
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: set of principles that you're going for.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. How would you compare that to the way that
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Build Back Better? wins on the Democratic side.
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: Well, Build Back Better, all these legislative processes are messy.
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: The Obamacare process was incredibly messy. The challenge for the
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: Build Back Better process was two people, right? It was
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: 10% of the Senate caucus.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: And I do think it was, I think what's happening
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: just with polarization in general and the fact that no
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: one can pass anything with the filibuster anymore. And so
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: everyone needs to pass these you get basically democratic administrations
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: get one reconciliation bill to jam all their priorities in.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: And with the Democrats, you know, it'd been built up
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: over four years that like we had a lot of
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: different priorities. And I, I guess I would argue that
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: having so many priorities is one of the reasons it was,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: it was such a long drawn out process and build
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: back better. Cause it's like when Joe Manchin said, Oh,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: you have to cut some spending. Do you want to
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: cut it from the childcare tax credit? Do you want
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: to do climate? Do you want to do this? Do
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: you want to, you know, and they ended up with
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: a prioritizing climate and, you know, drug prices and infrastructure,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: But I think if you hadn't had Joe Manchin, you
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: could have gotten the bill done six months earlier, eight
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: months earlier.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: But you hit the bigger point here is Congress can't
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: really function unless they use the budget reconciliation process, which
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: adds a whole bunch of complications to how you do things.
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: It was harder for Democrats because we were trying to
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: fit a lot of things that were not specific. You're
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: assuming taxes and entitlement cuts or Medicaid cuts or whatever
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: else like that is very much in the original framework
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: of what a budget for reconciliation is. Once you're starting
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: to do climate and other things, I mean, it's permissible
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: and it's fine. It's just a little more complicated because
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: of a set of pretty esoteric Senate rules.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: So you mentioned the members, the Republican members who are
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: concerned about their political careers and the races that they
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: have to run in 2026. A lot of those Republicans
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: have already taken votes to deeply cut Medicaid. And I
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: think it would be good if people kept up the
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: pressure on these members. These are people like Marionette Miller-Meeks
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: from Iowa City, who won by less than 1,000 votes
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: last year. Gabe Evans from the Denver suburbs, who won
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: by just more than 2,000 votes. There's plenty of other
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: members like that who are sitting in seats where they
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: only won by a couple thousand votes, either they're in
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: districts where Kamala Harris won or districts that Trump won
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: by not that much. And so, you know, if you
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: want to call, if you're in these districts or you
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: want to put pressure on these folks, you can head
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: to votesaveamerica.com and they'll make it really easy for you.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Anything else you think people can do, Dan?
• 31:57
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, ultimately the goal here is to convince not
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: just these individual members, but the Republican leadership in Trump
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: that the bill is currently constructed is akin to handing
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: your majority to Hakeem Jeffries. And so they have to
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: feel the political pressure. And to do that, you have
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: to make your voice heard. And There are a few
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: ways to do that. And I know some of these
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: sound kind of trite in this sort of era of
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: cynicism we're in, but calling a member of Congress, especially
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: if you're in that district, matters. Because you and I
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: have worked on the Hill. At the end of every week,
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: the member, the senior staff, the chief of staff, they
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: get a list of– they get a report on call
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: and email traffic. How many calls they got, how much
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: more it is than usual, what it was about and
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: what the sentiment was. So if you blow up their phones,
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: it is the best way to have them know that
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: people are upset about this. Even if they think it's
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: not their core base or it's a bunch of Democrats,
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: it tells them, these members are not doing polling right now.
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: The only way they get to see what public opinion
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: is is through that call report.
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: So call.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: Second thing is go to protests, right? Go to protests.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: If there's a town hall, your Republican member is crazy
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: enough to have a town hall, go to that one.
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: If they are not having town halls and they're like
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: Tim Walls or- you know, Ro Khanna or Bernie AOC, Beto.
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: If there are Democrats coming to your, it's Chris Murphy,
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: Maxwell Frost, all these people. If they're coming to your,
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: to your, to a district to do it, go to
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: their tunnel. Let people see that. And then the other thing,
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: and I wrote a message box a few days ago
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: about this, where to listing all these different things you
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: can do. But one of the most important ones is
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: like talk, we say this all the time. I say
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: this all the time is talk to the people in
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: your life about it. They have, most people have no idea,
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: not a clue that the Republicans in Congress want to
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: kick people off of healthcare to pay for a tax
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: cut for rich people.
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: And they're only going to know that if you tell them.
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: And I included in this message box newsletter from Tuesday,
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: a very handy communications guide that I got from our
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: friends at Navigator Research about how to talk about it
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: in a way that's most persuasive based on all their research.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: So if you want to check that out, you can
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: go check out one of my latest message box newsletters
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: about this.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is brought to you by Bombas. People
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• 35:46
  Speaker 1: you saw the Washington Post piece. This is on the
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: tariff issue.
• 35:50
  Speaker 7: I did.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: That one of the reasons that apparently Trump backed off
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: a little bit on the tariffs is that Susie Wiles,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: his chief of staff, and Scott Besant, the treasury secretary,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: told him that it was going to, really hit the
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Trump base hard. The working class blue collar Trump base
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: is getting hurt by these tariffs. And then we saw
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: the news today that even though Trump has backed off
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: a little, maybe not enough because Walmart, the Walmart CEO
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: got on an earnings call Thursday and said that they're
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: probably going to raise prices because of what the tariffs
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: have done already. What did you make of that post story?
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: Wait till Donald Trump finds out who's on Medicaid.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I suppose that was my first thought.
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: I know in the public imagination dating back years and years, decades,
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: the idea is it's a bunch of people of color in.
• 36:40
  Speaker 5: Urban areas, right?
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: This is basically, this is the equivalent of Ronald Reagan's
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: welfare queen racist bullshit. But the reality is it's a
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: quarter of Americans are on it and it is working
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: class Americans brought across the country and a lot in
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: rural areas. Like these are a lot of Trump voters
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: are going to lose their healthcare or have to pay
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: more or not be able to, their kids will get
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: kicked off healthcare. People will not be able to pay
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: for long-term care in nursing homes if this happens. Secondly,
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: it's also, it's just, this is kind of like what
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: we talked about at the beginning about Trump's, you know,
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: how like the dangerous sort of cruelty of Trump's rhetoric,
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: we sort of, it sort of gets dumbed down because
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: we're kind of so used to it now. Once again,
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: here's the president of all of the United States who
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: only cares about people who vote for him. This is
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: the same logic he's used in granting disaster assistance.
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: That is unprecedented.
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: I guess maybe with the politics of Richard Nixon throughout
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: our history, presidents, Republican and Democrat, the idea is you're
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: presidents of all people. When Americans need you, whether they
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: voted for you or your opponent, you help them. And
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: to only make polished decisions based on people that you
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: perceive to be your political supporters while everyone else can
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: just rot in hell is, it's just, It's disgusting and
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: it's unprecedented. It's very easy for this stuff to get normalized,
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: but it's worth, I think as his story did a
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: good job of doing, is pointing out the danger of
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: that approach to governing.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: I also think there's a good chance that all the
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: people around Donald Trump are telling him, oh no, people
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: aren't going to lose their health insurance because of what
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: we're doing to Medicare. We're just doing some work requirements
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and making sure that there's no fraud and abuse.
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: MAGA voters work. All of them work.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This is crazy.
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: The 47% are on the other side.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: This is just Democrats and the commie CBO, the radical
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Marxist CBO just lying about all this.
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: Don't forget woke Walmart there.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: Woke Walmart.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Right. Which is why I do think like, you know,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: then you've got some parts of some wing of the
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: party now, the so-called populist wing of the party. you know,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: the Josh Hawleys and even the Steve Bannons and those
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: kind of people who are like, no, no, no, we
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: just shouldn't cut Medicaid and this is cutting Medicaid. I
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: think those, lifting those voices up is important, just at
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: least on this issue. And then just making a lot
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: of noise that this is going to lead to a
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: lot of people losing their healthcare so that it is
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: loud enough that it gets through to Republicans and maybe
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: to Trump and, you know, they pair it back because
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: it's going to be, I mean, the CBO, I think,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: when they tried to, when Trump in 2017 tried to
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: repeal the Affordable Care Act, I think they said like
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: 17 million people would lose their health insurance. This is like,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: you know, you have the 9 million for Medicaid, 8.6
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: million for Medicaid, and then you have another 4 or
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: 5 million because they don't want to renew the subsidies
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: that people get to help buy insurance on the exchange
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: for the Affordable Care Act. You also have a bunch
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: of other people who are on Medicare and Medicaid and
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: might lose Medicaid, even though Medicaid fills in gaps in
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Medicare insurance for low-income seniors. And those people won't be
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: counted as losing their health care, but they may lose
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: their health care because it's really important that they have
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Medicaid fill in those gaps. So it's just a ton
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: of pain. that could follow from this. And the bill
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: probably will get worse if they end up passing it
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: because they're already saying like the work requirements wouldn't kick
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: in until 2029 or something. And I think Steve Scalise
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, no, no, we're going to rewrite the
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: bill so that they're earlier to try to get some
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: of the hardliners on board. So as they try to
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: get these hardliners to vote yes, the bill's only going
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: to get worse and hurt more people.
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: That is the history of Republican legislation in the last decade, really.
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: More than the last decade, two decades.
• 40:18
  Speaker 5: It always moves right.
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: It never moves left to get passage at all. The
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: moderates are forced to fold to appease the hardliners. And
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: that's what will happen here.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Last thing on the agenda here, big case before the
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court on Thursday. The justices heard oral arguments on
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: two really big intertwined questions. The first is whether Donald
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Trump's day one executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: is constitutional. And the second, stemming from the circumstances around that,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: is whether federal judges below the Supreme Court can issue
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: nationwide injunctions. That is whether a single federal judge can
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: freeze a given policy from the administration across the country,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: which is what happened after the birthright citizenship EO was signed.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: It would be pretty surprising if the court didn't uphold
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: birthright citizenship in the end since it's spelled out clearly
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: in the 14th Amendment. And it didn't seem like any
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: justices at least were openly entertaining EO. ending birthright citizenship
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: based on that EO. But of course, we don't know.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Some could just be quiet. They didn't really talk about
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: the case on the merits, the birthright citizenship on the
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: merits all that much. During the oral arguments, they spent
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: most of the time on the argument over nationwide injunctions.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: That said, it did seem clear that Solicitor General John
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Sauer didn't have great answers on some of the big
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: questions about birthright citizenship and injunctions. Let's listen.
• 41:42
  Speaker 9: On the day after it goes into effect, it's just
• 41:46
  Speaker 9: a very practical question how it's going to work.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: What do hospitals do with a newborn? What do states
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: do with a newborn? I don't think they do anything different.
• 41:57
  Speaker 6: What the executive order says in section two is that
• 41:59
  Speaker 6: federal officials do not accept documents that have the wrong
• 42:03
  Speaker 6: designation of citizenship from people who are subject to the
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: executive order.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: How are they going to know that?
• 42:07
  Speaker 6: The states can continue to, the federal officials will have
• 42:10
  Speaker 6: to figure that out.
• 42:11
  Speaker 9: How?
• 42:12
  Speaker 6: So you can imagine a number of ways that the
• 42:16
  Speaker 6: federal officials could.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Such as?
• 42:17
  Speaker 6: Such as they could require a showing of, you know,
• 42:20
  Speaker 6: documentation showing legal presence in the country. For a temporary visitor,
• 42:24
  Speaker 6: for example, they could see whether they're on a B-1 visa,
• 42:27
  Speaker 6: which would exclude kind of the birthright citizenship in that context.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: For all the newborns? Is that how that's going to work?
• 42:33
  Speaker 6: Again, we don't know. This week, the Second Circuit holds
• 42:36
  Speaker 6: that the executive order is unconstitutional.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: And then what do you do the next day or
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: the next week? Generally, we follow. So you're still saying generally?
• 42:44
  Speaker 9: Yes.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: So that was Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, two
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: justices nominated by Donald J.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Trump.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: What did you make of the arguments and how the
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: justices responded?
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: The arguments around birthright citizenship, were ridiculous. It does feel
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: like even Trump's attorneys were just sort of Trojan horsing
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: using this case. They know they're going to lose this case.
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: Trump doesn't know that because he was truthing up a
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: storm in the middle of the night from the Middle
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: East about why birthright citizenship is bad. But it seems
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: like his attorneys are using this as a way to
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: take on the issue of temporary restraining orders in nationwide injunctions,
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: which has been a huge problem for Trump because he
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: keeps violating laws and constitutions and processes and the above
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: and all of this stuff. And those arguments were interesting
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: because there's obviously a governing challenge if any judge anywhere
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: can just stop you from doing anything. And people go
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: forum shopping. They go looking for the right Trump judge
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: or the right not Trump judge. We saw this a
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: lot when Biden was president. People, they went People go
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: forum shopping and it just– we even saw this. There
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: was less of this when we were in the White House,
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: but there was a fair amount. And it's very hard
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: to govern if one judge anywhere can just stop the
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: implementation of a policy for some period of time and
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: then an appeals court undoes it. Then another– and then
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: maybe it goes to the Supreme Court and you're back
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: into a hold. And so how they figure that out
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: I think is interesting. There seems to be a general
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: consensus among the justices, at least in the parts that
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: I read, that this is a challenge to What is
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: the solution is an open question. Is it creating some
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: sort of guidance for the courts on how to do it?
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: Limiting the kinds of things that can be– the sorts
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: of issues, the sort of– limiting it to major constitutional
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: issues that affect lots of people. There was some talk
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: in there about could you make it specific to the
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: people in that district, but that seems impossible to implement.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: On– For birthright citizenship.
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, for birth– like– obviously for everything, but if you're,
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: you know, like think about the Mifepristone case, right? Is
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: it going to, we're going to stop. We're going to
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: say it only can't be in this, in this federal
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: court district, but everywhere else, it's fine. Like that seems
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: like very hard to implement. So like, I know like
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: far from an expert here, I know very little about it,
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: but it does seem like there's going to be, this is,
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: if anything comes to this case, it will be related
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: to the use of nationwide injunctions in some way, shape
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: or form.
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: I think, The most simplistic way to think about it
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: is you're trying to balance out the threat of a
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: rogue president with the threat of a rogue judge. And
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: you always want to like put the shoe on the
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: other foot, right? And imagine if it's a Democratic president
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: and like you said, you know, conservative activists go forum shopping,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: find some crazy right-wing Trumpy judge, blocks a Democratic president's policy,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: and now it's blocked across the country. And now we
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: have to wait for the Supreme Court. And then, but
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: then there's a problem that, you know, If you have
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: an out-of-control president like Donald Trump who wants to just
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: smash the Constitution and break laws and a judge is
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: trying to stop them, then you're going to have to
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: wait and say, no, no, you can't have a nationwide injunction.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: This crazy policy is going to go through while we
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: wait for this issue to go through all the courts, right?
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: So it is a tough challenge, I think.
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: Think about it in the context of the flights to
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: Libya we talked about.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, exactly.
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: So it's like a judge in Texas stops them. You
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: just move the detainees to somewhere else and fly them
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: from there, right? There are issues of imminent concern that
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: have to be addressed right away and can only be
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: addressed with some sort of nationwide injunction. And so hopefully
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: that that– like it's obviously being– abuse is not the
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: right word. It prevents complications to governing, but to just
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: throw the baby out with the bathwater I think would
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: be quite problematic and would really give even more power
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: to the executive, which we– one thing we've seen in
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: the last 120, 30, 40 days, whatever it is.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Not a great idea.
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: They don't need any more power.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. All right.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: When we come back, you'll hear my interview with Beto
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: O'Rourke about the long game in Texas and whether he's
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: jumping back into politics there. Before we do that, I
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: just interviewed Hassan Piker this week about getting detained and
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: questioned by Trump's CPB agents in Chicago and Trump's general
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: crackdown on free speech. It's a great interview. Horrifying, but
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: also great. You can watch the interview on Pod Save
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: America's YouTube channel right now. And you'll find tons of
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: other YouTube exclusives there as well. Make sure to subscribe
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: to Pod Save America's YouTube channel now at youtube.com slash
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: at sign Pod Save America.
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: Can I jump in here for our listeners on the housekeeping?
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: It costs you no money to subscribe to the Pod
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: Save America YouTube channel. But I cannot emphasize how critical
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: this is. I just saw a study the other day
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: of how the right wing dominates political YouTube, dominates it.
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: The reason why they do is that the listeners of
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: all of their show, the first thing they do is
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: they go and subscribe to that media company's YouTube page.
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: The more subscribers, the more the YouTube algorithm shows it
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: to people, the more you grow subscribers. So we are
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: asking you, asking you to help support progressive media. Just
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: go smash the subscribe button so that people do it.
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: It will help ensure that more people get more progressive media,
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: not just from us, but from the people we work with,
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: like Brian Tyler Cohen, The Bulwark, others.
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: Thank you. End of pitch.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Excellent pitch, Dan. Excellent pitch. We'll see you next time.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: She says the data speed and cell service are just
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: as reliable as her old wireless plan, but at a
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: fraction of the cost.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Love to hear it.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: That was an exact quote from Nina when we saw her.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: We did just see her in D.C. She says, you know,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: the data speed's amazing. Say bye to your overpriced wireless plans,
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  Speaker 1: Upfront payment of $ 45 for a three-month, five-gigabyte plan required,
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  Speaker 1: fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Beto O'Rourke, good
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: to see you, my friend.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me over.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: What have you been up to? What's keeping you busy
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: these days?
• 49:39
  Speaker 9: We're still running this group called Powered by People in
• 49:42
  Speaker 9: Texas that you and your viewers and many others have
• 49:44
  Speaker 9: been so helpful in supporting. Basically, we're registering likely Democrats
• 49:50
  Speaker 9: where we can find them, typically on college campuses. And
• 49:53
  Speaker 9: something that we've innovated around that I'm really excited about
• 49:56
  Speaker 9: is after we register people, we stay in touch with them.
• 49:59
  Speaker 9: So we'll say, you know, can I get your cell
• 50:01
  Speaker 9: phone number? I'm going to help you through the voter
• 50:03
  Speaker 9: ID process, which is incredibly important. complicated in the state
• 50:07
  Speaker 9: of Texas. I'm going to give you a heads up
• 50:09
  Speaker 9: when early voting starts. I know you care about women
• 50:11
  Speaker 9: making their own choices about their own bodies or raising
• 50:14
  Speaker 9: the minimum wage or these other issues that we just
• 50:16
  Speaker 9: talked about. I'm going to tell you who the candidates
• 50:18
  Speaker 9: are that reflect your values when they're on the ballot.
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: So it's really labor intensive.
• 50:24
  Speaker 9: We become these voting Sherpas for people in Texas that
• 50:29
  Speaker 9: it's a state that's harder to vote in and harder
• 50:31
  Speaker 9: to register in than any other. So that's a long-term...
• 50:35
  Speaker 9: power building project. We're doing that. And then in meeting
• 50:40
  Speaker 9: the moment and the urgency of this crisis that we're
• 50:43
  Speaker 9: in as a country, I'm holding these town halls all
• 50:46
  Speaker 9: over Texas. And we just had one in Amarillo. We're
• 50:49
  Speaker 9: about to have one in East Dallas County, Wichita Falls, Mansfield.
• 50:54
  Speaker 9: Did one with Tim Walls in Fort Bend, just outside
• 50:56
  Speaker 9: of Houston. And I've got to tell you on a
• 50:59
  Speaker 9: personal level, it just feels so good to be with people.
• 51:04
  Speaker 9: And to know you're not alone and to realize other
• 51:07
  Speaker 9: people are seeing and feeling exactly what you're seeing and feeling.
• 51:11
  Speaker 9: And it may be even better to listen and learn
• 51:14
  Speaker 9: from people who are going through things that I'll never experience,
• 51:17
  Speaker 9: but the ways in which this administration is hitting them
• 51:21
  Speaker 9: or hurting them, something you can make up. I'm in
• 51:24
  Speaker 9: Amarillo and this woman comes up to me at the
• 51:27
  Speaker 9: end of the town hall and she said, I'm.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: A 30 year owner of a toy store. here in Amarillo.
• 51:33
  Speaker 9: I think it's called Unique Toys. We were struck by lightning.
• 51:37
  Speaker 9: Place burned down. And I'm trying to rebuild this place.
• 51:40
  Speaker 9: And I'm now also negotiating, is it 145% tariffs? Is
• 51:44
  Speaker 9: it 30% tariffs? I would love to buy American-made toys.
• 51:48
  Speaker 9: They don't exist. 90% of the production in the world comes.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: Out of China.
• 51:53
  Speaker 9: And I'm going to have to close this shop. I'm
• 51:57
  Speaker 9: going to have to look for another line of business.
• 51:59
  Speaker 9: I'm going to have to fire my employees. And I
• 52:02
  Speaker 9: don't know if she's a Republican or a Democrat. This
• 52:05
  Speaker 9: is a county that voted for Trump 80% in the
• 52:07
  Speaker 9: last election, but it takes these stories out of the
• 52:11
  Speaker 9: headlines or the aggregate data. And now I've met this
• 52:14
  Speaker 9: woman who's going through this hell because of this president.
• 52:17
  Speaker 9: And then I can go share her story to other
• 52:20
  Speaker 9: people so that they don't feel as alone. And they
• 52:22
  Speaker 9: realize there are other people out there like me, not
• 52:24
  Speaker 9: just in Austin or Dallas or New York or LA,
• 52:27
  Speaker 9: but in Amarillo, Texas too.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: What was the, I know that, personally, you just love
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: being around people. It gives you energy. It inspires you.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: What was the genesis of the idea to get back
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: out there again? And like, what are you hoping that, um,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: these town halls can, can do for people and just
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: do for this moment?
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: I need to do something. Yeah.
• 52:51
  Speaker 9: I'm going to go fucking crazy. If I stay at home,
• 52:54
  Speaker 9: if I'm just reading the news or scrolling through Twitter
• 52:57
  Speaker 9: or trying to do this at distance, um, So I
• 53:00
  Speaker 9: know just personally, I'm going to feel better. And I've
• 53:04
  Speaker 9: learned that when we went to the Wichita Falls Town
• 53:07
  Speaker 9: Hall in Wichita County, again, 72% for Trump in the
• 53:10
  Speaker 9: last election. What's wild is the look of surprise on
• 53:15
  Speaker 9: people's faces, not to see me, but to see 449
• 53:18
  Speaker 9: of their neighbors, many of them complete strangers. Again, we
• 53:24
  Speaker 9: never screen for partisanship. We don't know who voted for
• 53:26
  Speaker 9: whom in the last election. And their ability to hear
• 53:32
  Speaker 9: and listen to one another and out of that to
• 53:34
  Speaker 9: go take action.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: I'll give you an example.
• 53:36
  Speaker 9: We're in Wichita Falls and somebody stands up and says,
• 53:39
  Speaker 9: I'm going to hold a protest tomorrow, Sunday in Sanger, Texas.
• 53:42
  Speaker 9: Anybody live near Sanger? You join me tomorrow. There are
• 53:45
  Speaker 9: going to be more people at that protest. In Amarillo,
• 53:47
  Speaker 9: a woman said, you know, I live in a neighboring town, Canyon, Texas,
• 53:51
  Speaker 9: my 12 year old daughter with disabilities. when they cut
• 53:54
  Speaker 9: the Individuals with Disabilities Act, which Trump is going to do,
• 53:57
  Speaker 9: when they slash Title I funding, when you add to
• 54:00
  Speaker 9: that the vouchers that Governor Abbott has imposed that take millions,
• 54:05
  Speaker 9: almost a billion dollars out of our public schools, what's
• 54:07
  Speaker 9: going to happen to my kid? She's going to get
• 54:08
  Speaker 9: warehoused somewhere, like we used to do with people with
• 54:11
  Speaker 9: disabilities before.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: Who's going to fight with me?
• 54:14
  Speaker 9: And so I said, can you tell me when the
• 54:16
  Speaker 9: Canyon Independent School District Board of Trustees meets? next Monday
• 54:20
  Speaker 9: at 7 p.m. Okay, everyone, if you live anywhere near Canyon, Texas,
• 54:23
  Speaker 9: you have this lady's back Monday. And so I need
• 54:26
  Speaker 9: to follow up with her to see how that school
• 54:29
  Speaker 9: board meeting went. But there's real power in people coming together.
• 54:33
  Speaker 9: It's not as some fear, you know, an empty gesture
• 54:36
  Speaker 9: or virtue signaling or, God, I feel great after doing that,
• 54:39
  Speaker 9: but did it really change anything?
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: It absolutely does. It gives us encouragement. It gives us faith.
• 54:46
  Speaker 9: It stokes the optimism and hope that we need to
• 54:49
  Speaker 9: then take action, to go register people to vote or
• 54:51
  Speaker 9: run for office or support that candidate. Or for my
• 54:54
  Speaker 9: fellow Texans who've had their hearts broken one election cycle
• 54:58
  Speaker 9: after another to hold off despair and actually take a
• 55:02
  Speaker 9: chance and vote in this next one in 2026. So
• 55:05
  Speaker 9: there's real good that comes out of this. I'm It's
• 55:11
  Speaker 9: better than nothing. And it's better than waiting for somebody
• 55:14
  Speaker 9: else to step up.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: What are the issues that come up in these town
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: halls from people? What are the most common issues? And
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: what issues come up that are missing from the national
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: debate that we're not talking about enough?
• 55:30
  Speaker 9: Something that's so interesting to me about going to these
• 55:33
  Speaker 9: places that Democrats are have almost always, well, at least
• 55:37
  Speaker 9: for the last 30, 40 years written off like Wichita County,
• 55:40
  Speaker 9: is you hear some of what you would expect. A
• 55:43
  Speaker 9: veteran stands up and says, well, Beto, can you tell
• 55:46
  Speaker 9: me how cutting 83,000 positions at the VA, most of
• 55:50
  Speaker 9: those positions held by veterans, by the way, how that's
• 55:52
  Speaker 9: going to help me with my service-connected disability claim or
• 55:56
  Speaker 9: my six-month wait time to see a behavioral health specialist?
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: That's an important question.
• 56:01
  Speaker 9: A woman who stands up and asks about cuts to
• 56:03
  Speaker 9: Medicaid in a state that is the the least insured
• 56:06
  Speaker 9: already in the union. But then what perhaps you don't
• 56:08
  Speaker 9: expect is the young mother to stand up and say,
• 56:11
  Speaker 9: what are you doing about due process? And the fact
• 56:14
  Speaker 9: that they just sent this guy to this hellhole torture
• 56:18
  Speaker 9: chamber prison in El Salvador, and he had an order
• 56:22
  Speaker 9: to protect him from deportation. They did it anyhow. And
• 56:26
  Speaker 9: then she goes on to make the point, look, they
• 56:28
  Speaker 9: come for these people that we don't want to stand
• 56:30
  Speaker 9: next to right now. Do you want to stand next
• 56:32
  Speaker 9: to the alleged terrorist gang member thug with the tattoos
• 56:36
  Speaker 9: on his neck. But if you don't stand next to
• 56:39
  Speaker 9: him and stand up for the constitution rule of law
• 56:42
  Speaker 9: and due process, well, they're going to come for the
• 56:44
  Speaker 9: next vulnerable population after that. And then pretty soon it's
• 56:47
  Speaker 9: going to be us. And she was saying this prior
• 56:50
  Speaker 9: to all of us learning that we're now actually deporting U.S.
• 56:53
  Speaker 9: citizen children, some of whom have stage four cancer and
• 56:57
  Speaker 9: are leaving this country without their medications. So, you know,
• 57:04
  Speaker 9: our temptation sometimes to write whole sections of the country
• 57:08
  Speaker 9: off or to write people off based on who they
• 57:10
  Speaker 9: voted for last time is so dead wrong. And the
• 57:14
  Speaker 9: only way you really learn that is by showing up
• 57:17
  Speaker 9: and meeting people where they are. And I think what's
• 57:20
  Speaker 9: missing right now from leadership and opposition to Trump and
• 57:24
  Speaker 9: leadership that wants to replace him with something better is
• 57:28
  Speaker 9: more of this, more showing up for people and showing
• 57:30
  Speaker 9: up everywhere, fighting on every front, every one of the
• 57:34
  Speaker 9: 254 counties, every one of the 50 states. We were
• 57:37
  Speaker 9: just in Tuscaloosa with Doug Jones. The students at University
• 57:41
  Speaker 9: of Alabama, many were pissed that Trump was imposing himself
• 57:45
  Speaker 9: on their graduation. He announced he was going to give
• 57:47
  Speaker 9: the commencement address, though he had not been invited.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: Typical Trump.
• 57:51
  Speaker 9: He's going to overshadow and try to outshine their achievement
• 57:54
  Speaker 9: and their day of celebration. So they invited a few
• 57:57
  Speaker 9: of us to come down and speak. And what I
• 58:00
  Speaker 9: thought was so cool about it is No one from
• 58:02
  Speaker 9: the DNC gave them marching orders. No one said, you
• 58:05
  Speaker 9: should do this. Their state is not supposed to matter
• 58:08
  Speaker 9: to our party. There's zero investment that I can discern
• 58:11
  Speaker 9: in places like Alabama, but they know that they matter
• 58:15
  Speaker 9: and they want to be heard. And so they're going
• 58:17
  Speaker 9: to get it done. 1500 people showed up at this
• 58:19
  Speaker 9: public park on that day. And it was just, it
• 58:22
  Speaker 9: was fantastic. It was absolutely beautiful. And out of that,
• 58:25
  Speaker 9: you know, I stayed afterwards and folks were like, you
• 58:27
  Speaker 9: know what? I think I'm going to run for office.
• 58:29
  Speaker 9: I'm probably going to lose. But if I run and
• 58:32
  Speaker 9: somebody follows me or I run again next time, ultimately
• 58:34
  Speaker 9: we're going to get there. And maybe the DNC will
• 58:37
  Speaker 9: come to help us out, but I'm not going to
• 58:38
  Speaker 9: hold my breath. I'm going to do what I can
• 58:41
  Speaker 9: with what I have where I am. I think that's
• 58:43
  Speaker 9: the spirit of the moment. And those who want to
• 58:46
  Speaker 9: lead better get with it.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: How are you feeling about this constitutional crisis that we
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: seem to find ourselves in right now?
• 58:54
  Speaker 9: The solace I can take. in this moment is that
• 58:57
  Speaker 9: we've been through this before. 249 years into this deal,
• 59:02
  Speaker 9: there's this great speech that I know you're super familiar with.
• 59:06
  Speaker 9: Johnson gives it eight days after Bloody Sunday. I think
• 59:10
  Speaker 9: it's March 15th, 1965. And he's putting John Lewis and
• 59:14
  Speaker 9: those 600 marchers in the pantheon of great Americans who've
• 59:18
  Speaker 9: answered the call.
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: At these moments of truth.
• 59:19
  Speaker 9: So he says, as it was at Lexington and Concord,
• 59:22
  Speaker 9: a hundred years ago at that courthouse in Appomattox. And
• 59:25
  Speaker 9: I've always wondered why he didn't add, you know, on
• 59:28
  Speaker 9: the beaches of Normandy in 44, where Americans were bravely
• 59:31
  Speaker 9: fighting off fascism to defend democracy at home. He says,
• 59:34
  Speaker 9: here is John Lewis in 1965 willing to give his
• 59:38
  Speaker 9: life so that this country can fulfill its promise to
• 59:42
  Speaker 9: itself and to the world.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: It's just one of the most beautiful moments in American
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: history that the power flowed.
• 59:48
  Speaker 9: Not from the president on down, but from 24-year-old John
• 59:53
  Speaker 9: Lewis on up to the White House.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: And so- And Lyndon Johnson adopts- we shall overcome and
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: says it for the first time, which is came up
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: from the civil rights movement.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 9: The, the, you probably know this story too, of, of
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 9: prior to that, Andrew Young and Dr. King are meeting
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 9: with Johnson. This is the end of 64. And they're like,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 9: great job on civil rights, Mr.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: President. Now we'd like to vote.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 9: And Johnson at the end of the meeting says, I'd
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 9: love to help you, but I just don't have the power.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 9: And King turns to Young as they're leaving. And he says,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 9: we've got to go out there and get this guy
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 9: some power. And I just love that conception of America,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 9: government of, by, and for the people. The power always,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 9: when it really works, flows up. And so, yes, Trump
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 9: has a concentration of political power in his hands. Elon
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 9: Musk and the other oligarchs, a concentration of economic power.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 9: The billionaire masters of algorithm and influence, they've got some
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 9: cultural power in their hands. But this great Lincoln line,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 9: public sentiment is everything. That's what That's what Lewis was
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 9: shaping and catalyzing in, in 1965 and countless others before
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 9: and after him. My faith is in the American people
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 9: and that we are going to come through. And though
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 9: it's just anecdote that, that meeting in Tuscaloosa with those
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 9: students was so damn inspiring. Like I needed to see
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 9: that the country needs to see that. And then one,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 9: one last example, John, um, you remember in 18 when Trump, uh,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 9: was imposing this family separation policy. And people were just
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 9: spontaneously rising up against it. It's unjust, it's immoral. How
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 9: in the hell can this be happening in our name?
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 9: And those protests culminated in one that we were a
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 9: part of in Tornillo, Texas. It's this small town in
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 9: the lower valley of El Paso County. And this government
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 9: contractor had constructed this tent city that was housing all
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 9: of these separated kids. And we put out the call,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 9: many of us days before, And a thousand people show up.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 9: Folks drove down from Alaska. People flew in from Massachusetts
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 9: and folks came in from other parts of Texas. And
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 9: we wanted to make sure those kids knew that we
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 9: knew they were there. And we also wanted to bear
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 9: witness and testify to the rest of the country. Hey,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 9: this is happening and we got to do something about it.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 9: That's on June 18th. June 20th, Trump rescinds family separation.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 9: He could be moved and he will be moved by
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 9: public sentiment. So yeah, the constitutional crisis, the undermining of
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 9: the rule of law, it has never been more dire,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 9: certainly in our lives. But my faith is in the
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 9: American people rising up and stopping this, certainly I hope
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 9: in 2026, but we should not wait until that year.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 9: We have to do everything we can right now in
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 9: this moment. We can move him and we can move
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 9: the politics of this country, but it's going to take
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 9: everybody doing everything they can.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think what makes it so much more
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: difficult in 2025 is, well, there's a lot of factors,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: but I do think that the media environment and the
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: information environment, just beyond the media environment, is so much different.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: I think a lot about the civil rights movement and
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: even that moment. And, you know, when John Lewis was
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: on that bridge and was beaten within an inch of
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: his life, that led the news on the three major
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: channels that millions and millions and millions of Americans watched.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: We all watched the same thing. We had to pick
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: between three channels and it went to most of the country.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: And I don't know of anything now that breaks through,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: good news or bad news, politics or not, to the
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: entire country of moments like the Super Bowl. Like we
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: just don't have these moments anymore. And so, you know,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: public opinion, while it's turned against Trump, you know, I
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: keep thinking about 2024 and everyone who paid attention to
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: the news voted for Kamala Harris and people who got
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: their news from social media, Donald Trump won them by
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: a bit. And then people who didn't get any news
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: at all, who don't pay attention much to the news,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: he won them by a lot. And I wonder how
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: we break through to people in the same way who
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: might feel the same way we do if they learn
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: about what's happening, but either because they're exhausted or or
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: because everything seems too bleak, or just because they're living
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: busy lives, are not closely paying attention to what's happening.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 9: So this is the great opportunity for the Democratic Party
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 9: to step up. And this is where we're completely failing
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 9: the country right now. So three of the last seven
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 9: or eight town halls I've had have all been in
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 9: Ronnie Jackson's district. He's a far-right congressman in Texas. So
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 9: I mentioned Amarillo.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: Doctor I've dealt with before.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: Doctor.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 9: Amarillo, Denton and Wichita Falls. You know, in Amarillo, they're
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 9: talking about the fact that they had to turn around
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 9: 13 trucks, 18 wheelers full of food for their food
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 9: bank because Trump cut the USDA supplemental that was passed
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 9: under Biden. People are going to go hungry in Amarillo.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 9: They're shutting down three of the public schools in the
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 9: Amarillo ISD because of cuts to Title I and what's
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 9: happening at the state level. Up in Dalhart, Texas, further north,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 9: they care about their local schools. They care about unions
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 9: because it's a big rail hub. And they care about
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 9: immigration and they want more immigrants because they're an agricultural community.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 9: And no matter what they pay there to anybody born
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 9: in Dalhart, Texas, they're not taking the jobs. If we
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 9: cannot figure out immigration better than what Trump is doing
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 9: right now, that town will wither and die forever.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: On the vine.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 9: There is no Democrat, no Democrat on the ballot making
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 9: the other side of the argument on issues that we
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 9: should absolutely fucking own every single day. And so if
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 9: we continue to concentrate the presidential election in seven battleground
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 9: states and leave Alabama and Texas to their own devices,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 9: if in Texas we only focus on the top of
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 9: the ticket against John Cornyn or Ken Paxton, which is important,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 9: but neglect the state house races or the U.S. congressional
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 9: races like the one against Ronny Jackson, We're going to
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 9: keep getting this and we can never blame the people
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 9: in Amarillo for either voting for Ronnie Jackson because he
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 9: has no opponent or just not voting at all because
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 9: they don't really have a choice. And so I recognize, John,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 9: that just saying this, that the proposition is extraordinarily expensive
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 9: and it will force us to use muscles that we
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 9: have not employed since Lyndon Johnson was crisscrossing the state.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 9: But if we don't become a truly national party and
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 9: a party that can talk and listen to people, I
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 9: think more importantly, in rural Texas, as well as urban Texas,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 9: then we will be consigned to irrelevancy and we will
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 9: fuck up this moment. And this is, you know, in
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 9: that litany that Johnson described, you know, as it was
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 9: in Lexington and Concord, all the way up to Selma.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 9: So it is today in 2025. And we have got
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 9: to come through because if we don't, I think you
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 9: really do lose the last best hope of earth. I
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 9: think this thing is gone. And the outright corruption and
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 9: criminality and total disregard for the law that we're seeing
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 9: from Donald Trump himself and from those around him leads
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 9: me to believe that they think this thing is already gone,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 9: that they're not going to face accountability or voters or
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 9: free and fair elections. And I don't think that's the
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 9: wrong logic for them to employ given where we are
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 9: and given how feckless so far and weak the opposition
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 9: has been. So I sure hope that those who have
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 9: the positions of power within our party, the money, the titles,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 9: the influence, will follow the lead of those students in Tuscaloosa,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 9: of the people that we're listening to in Amarillo and
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 9: get after it and fight and dispense with this false
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 9: choice of do we need to be more progressive or
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 9: more centrist and moderate? It's just, are we going to
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 9: fight or are we going to surrender? And if we
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 9: fail to fight, this thing's over.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: Oftentimes, it is a false choice on the ideological spectrum,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: just partly because voters have, as you know, very complicated views,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: and they can hold a view on one issue that's
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: quite liberal and quite progressive and a view on another
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: issue that's conservative. Obviously, we can't take power, especially in
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: the Senate, without winning states like Texas. I mean, I
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: think to win the Senate in 26... Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: like we'd need to win a lot of really tough states. And,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: you know, part of it is showing up. Part of
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: it is, and people in the party will make this argument,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: especially people who look at the data, who've run in
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: these races, who've talked to these voters, that Democrats have
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: positions as a national party that don't always line up
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: with voters in some of these redder states. And the
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: question is, do you moderate your views do you say
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: no these are my views and you don't have to
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: agree with me on everything but maybe we agree on
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: this like how do you navigate the fact that there
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: just really are right of center voters on a whole
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: host of issues in some of these states that we
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: absolutely have to win to take back power?
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 9: You know, I just don't know, just to be honest
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 9: in my ignorance, just how much those policy positions and
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 9: your place on the political spectrum really matter for some
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 9: of the reasons you, you, you set up earlier. the
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 9: lack of information that many voters have, not because they're
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 9: dumb or uninterested, but because we don't have common facts
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 9: that we share. They're delivered on three broadcast news channels
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 9: or one daily newspaper or the evening paper, if you
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 9: lived in a town like El Paso 40 years ago
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 9: that had both. And so folks are getting information, you know,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 9: culturally or anecdotally or incidentally, if they're getting it at all.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 9: And I further agree with your point that people are complex.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 9: They voted for Obama and they voted for Trump and
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 9: they're not inconsistent. It's not hypocritical for them. Each man
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 9: was speaking to them in that moment where they really
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 9: needed to see that change that Obama was promising, that
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 9: change that Trump was heralding. And to further make my point,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 9: look at the shit that Trump is doing. Like what
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 9: poll test would return the results? Like you need to
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 9: advocate invading Greenland or taking on, you know, Canada is
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 9: a 51st state or your HHS secretary after two kids
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 9: have died of measles in a country that hadn't lost
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 9: a child to that virus in 20 years is saying
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 9: you shouldn't take medical advice from him or just take
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 9: more vitamin A or just tough it out. Deeply unpopular stuff.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 9: That woman who owns the toy store in Amarillo, she's
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 9: absolutely getting screwed by this guy and his total ineptitude.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 9: What he does have, what he does have is what
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 9: seems and appears and is sold to people as the
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 9: courage of his convictions. No one's cooking this stuff up
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 9: for him. The shit that's coming out of his mouth
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 9: is the shit that was generated in his brain. And
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 9: there's something in today's overly controlled, sanitized corporate politics that's
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 9: just really exciting about someone who speaks their mind. It
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 9: just almost never, ever happens. Like we can name the
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 9: people on one hand. I think Bernie Sanders is that way.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 9: I think AOC has that going for her. I mean,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 9: there's some people who really stand out Um, and so
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 9: I guess from everything I just said, have the courage
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 9: of your convictions. Uh, I think strength appeals people to
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 9: people far more than policy precision or your, or your
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 9: 10 point plan, or just how far you've moderated your
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 9: views to anticipate where they're going to be in November of.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: Of 2026.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 9: Um, you know, when I was running for Senate in,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 9: in 2018, and we got so close to Ted Cruz
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 9: and perhaps more importantly, helped 12 insurgent Democrats defeat 12
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 9: incumbent Republicans in the state house. Colin Allred defeats Pete Sessions.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 9: Lizzie Panel Fletcher wins in Southeast Texas. It was transformative
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 9: for the state. That was not one on policy. They
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 9: were like, this guy fucking shows up everywhere. He's working
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 9: his ass off. He listens to me, whether I'm wearing
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 9: a Trump hat or a Hillary hat. He just does
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 9: not care. He's going to fight for me. He knows
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 9: where I live. He understands what's happening here in Sweetwater
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 9: or Roscoe or Dallas for that matter. Nobody's written off.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 9: Nobody's taken for granted. So, you know, of course I'm
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 9: biased based on experience, but I think that is the
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 9: path forward. So whatever you believe, whatever you feel, let
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 9: it show, let it come through in real honest to God,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 9: human terms. And I guarantee you, you're going to have
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 9: a better chance of connecting with that voter and than
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 9: using the message-tested, approved line that came out of D.C.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 9: or Austin, for that matter. People want to connect with people,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 9: so be a person.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: What could elected Democrats be doing better right now, either
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: in Congress or in the states?
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 9: Plenty of exceptions to this, and Bernie's a great exception.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 9: He's just getting out there, and he's being with people.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 9: Tim Walz, getting out there, being with people, AOC, Chris Murphy,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 9: I just saw, Ro Khanna, a lot of really, really
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 9: great leaders right now. To show the other side of
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 9: the party, Chuck Schumer saying, well, we just got to
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 9: wait till this guy's approval numbers go below 40. We
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 9: did it before and we're going to do it again.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 9: So we'll kind of rope a dope him. We'll vote
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 9: for this CR, which essentially gave Trump and Musk a
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 9: free hand with our tax dollars to do whatever they
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 9: wished with them at this moment of constitutional crisis. That
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 9: certainly cannot be the answer. And unfortunately, I think it appears,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 9: and who knows what's in their heads, there are too
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 9: many Democrats who are waiting and watching to find out
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 9: which way the wind is going to blow. What is
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 9: the message of this moment? And I can sympathize with
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 9: those Democrats who don't want to hold a town hall
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 9: because they're asking themselves, well, what do I say? What's
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 9: the answer? What's the silver bullet? People want the message,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 9: and I don't know what it is. You can be
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 9: forgiven for not knowing what it is. I mean, this
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 9: is a historical unprecedented. We've never seen this before, but
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 9: all the more reason for you to be with the
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 9: people that you purportedly serve and represent and listen to them.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 9: They're going to have the answer. They're going to have
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 9: the message. I guarantee you, listen to them, not the consultants,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 9: not the pollsters, not the data scientists. Those folks are
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 9: important too, but really more at the margins than, than,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 9: than anywhere else. So, and that's what I'm hearing from folks.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 9: You know, one of the questions I get, no matter
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 9: where I travel in the state or outside of the
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 9: state is, where's the democratic party? Where are people? What
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 9: the hell are you guys going to do? Who's fighting
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 9: for me right now? You know, it's, you know, this,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 9: because you're, you're an expert in messaging. The message is
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 9: we fight for you, but the trick is you can't
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 9: say that you have to show that.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: You can't read in the stage directions.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know if you've come across any of
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: the excerpts from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's new book,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: Original Sin, which is about Biden, his decision to run again,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: sort of decline and age-related issues. I'm thinking about it
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: because you were just mentioning, you know, Democrats have to
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: listen to people. Clearly, the Biden folks were not listening
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: to a whole bunch of voters, not just Democratic voters,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: but voters all across the country for a long time
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: who didn't want him to run. And then you know,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: post-debate trying to tell people that what they were seeing
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: with their eyes wasn't real. To what extent do you
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: think Democratic politicians and party officials have a credibility issue
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: to fix with voters due in part to everything that
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: went on in 24?
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 9: Just to be clear, Biden should not have run again.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 9: And to be even more clear, he failed this country
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 9: in the most important job In fact, the entire rationale
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 9: for his presidency the first time and the rationale he
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 9: tried to sell us on for his attempt to run
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 9: for reelection, only I can stop Donald Trump. And he
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 9: failed to do that. And it's not just you and me,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 9: but our kids and grandkids and the generations that follow
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 9: that might have to pay the price for this. We
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 9: might very well lose, you know, the greatest country that
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 9: this world has ever known. And it might be in
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 9: part because of the decision that Biden and those around
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 9: him made to run for reelection instead of having an
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 9: open primary where the greatest talent that the Democratic Party
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 9: can muster could be on that stage to have a
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 9: competition of ideas and track record and vision and really
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 9: excite not just Democrats, but the people of this country
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 9: who did want change. I mean, if anything was clear
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 9: coming out of 2024, they wanted change. And to literally
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 9: run the oldest guy who many people accurately, to your point, said,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 9: I just don't think he is capable of doing this.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 9: And I know that I saw the congresswoman and the
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 9: congressman on CNN saying he's running circles around us in
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 9: the briefing rooms behind closed doors. It just, it doesn't
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 9: add up with what I'm seeing with my own lying eyes.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 9: I think that credibility problem is going to persist up until,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 9: when Democrats say we fucked up and we made a
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 9: terrible mistake and it didn't just hurt our ability to
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 9: win election in a political campaign, it deeply and gravely,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 9: and perhaps we'll see irrevocably harmed this country. And so,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 9: you know, you and many others got out there and
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 9: told the truth. And I don't think you did it
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 9: in a crass or brazen or mean way. I think
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 9: you said, hey, maybe we should have this conversation and,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 9: and we're absolutely trashed for doing it. Um, you know, others,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 9: I think saw that we're concerned, but worried that, you know,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 9: Biden's already out there. He's going, am I going to
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 9: hurt him and his chances and our ability to defeat Trump?
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 9: If I further weaken him, I was definitely hearing stuff
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 9: like that. I, I supported, uh, you know, folks who
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 9: were behind the uncommitted movement in Michigan, not because I
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 9: wanted to hurt Biden or Kamala Harris, but because I,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 9: I was, um, I just couldn't stand what was happening
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 9: in Gaza. I didn't like America's complicity in that. I
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 9: knew President Biden had the power to do something. And
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 9: here were people, speaking of the civil rights and voting
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 9: rights movement, who were peacefully, democratically, nonviolently protesting to get
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 9: the president's attention, to give him the power to do
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 9: the right thing. And when I spoke on behalf of
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 9: those who were doing that in Michigan, and in the
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 9: same breath saying, you know, I want to defeat Donald Trump.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 9: And if Biden is our nominee, we should vote for him.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: You know, the attacks... where.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 9: You're undermining the president, you're weakening him in front of
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 9: this election, why don't you just shut up and stand
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 9: with him? And if we're the world's greatest democracy, you
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 9: never shut up and stand with anybody.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: When they're wrong.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 9: And you always have to speak the truth. So grateful
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 9: to you and others who did do that. I wish
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 9: more of us had done more at that time. But
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 9: the last thing that we can do is fail to
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 9: learn from that and not be honest about Chuck Schumer
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 9: right now, not be honest about other Democratic leaders who
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 9: are failing us in this moment. The time to be
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 9: polite and kind and respectful is over. You know, Democrats,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 9: it seems, care far too much about being right and
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 9: being polite than being in power. Republicans under Trump care
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 9: about power and nothing else, not the constitution, not the
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 9: rule of law, not being nice to one another. We
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 9: don't have to be so immoral or illegal or corrupt,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 9: but I think we have to be far more ruthless
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 9: and real about power or we'll never have it again.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, whenever we talk about it now,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: people are like, oh, wait, we're still picking on Joe
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: Biden and let's just move forward. And you see a
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: lot of Democratic politicians are like, let's move forward. And
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: it's not only about Biden. I do think our party,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: you know, we just talked about how reading polls too
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: closely is bad. You get poll tested messages and all
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: that shit. But knowing where the public is and trying
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: to at least meet them where they are on issues,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: I do think is important. I think is an issue
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: that our party has had over the last several years.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: And it's not just with Biden's age. It was like, hey,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: the economy's great and look at all the statistics and
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: people are feeling the price increases.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 9: It's much worse in England and Europe. It's not so
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 9: bad here in America. Here's the comparative example that you
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 9: need to pay attention to.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: And you've lived this being on the border, which is like, oh,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: immigration is just an issue that Trump uses to win
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: elections and that people couldn't possibly be upset by more
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: migrants coming over the border than any time before. And look,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: you can imagine that people still want to be generous
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: and want to have more immigration in this country, but
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: are worried that when you have so many migrants coming
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: across the border in a community and it's stretching the
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: public services in that community, that people are going to
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: be upset by that. And I just think that we
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: have to do a better job really finding out where
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: people are. And even if we disagree with their policy
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: solutions or we disagree with their positions, figuring out a
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: way to make sure that they feel seen and heard?
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 9: I spent a lot of time on the border in, well, forever.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 9: I lived there, but going to other border communities like
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 9: Eagle Pass in Maverick County, this is where Abbott has
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 9: put these border buoys that are in the river that
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 9: have razor wire. It's just like medieval torture death device
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 9: that has led to far too many migrants losing their lives,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 9: mothers and young children. That's obviously the wrong way to
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 9: do it, But when I listen to people in Maverick County,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 9: they're like, where's the president? Where is the party? Beto,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 9: would you be okay if at 2 a.m. 20 people
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 9: are walking through your backyard? You don't know who they
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 9: are or where they came from or what they might
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 9: do to you and your family. Is that cool with you? No,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 9: I wouldn't like that either. It sounds like you have
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 9: a real problem here. Well, then where the hell are
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 9: you guys? Quit telling us that everything is okay or
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 9: that we're managing this through the asylum process or we
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 9: just need to get comprehensive immigration reform done. So vote
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 9: for me in the next election until we have a majority.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 9: And they know that we had a majority in both
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 9: houses and a Democrat in the White House in 2009
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 9: and the same in 2021. And I don't begrudge Obama
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 9: or Biden for the priorities they chose instead of immigration.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 9: They were both very, very, very important. but that's not
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 9: lost on the voter. You guys talk a good game.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 9: You never fix this shit. So I may not like
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 9: walls and family separation and kids in cages and all
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 9: the other crazy shit that Trump does, but if he's
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 9: the only guy offering change and taking us seriously and
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 9: showing up and visiting the border, okay, I guess I'm
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 9: going to vote for him. So should not be a
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 9: surprise to us that we lost so many voters in
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 9: Maverick County and the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso, Texas,
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 9: my hometown, you know, El Paso, Texas, which saw a
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 9: Trump inspired shooter come and murder 23 people and said
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 9: he was coming to repel the invasion of Hispanics who
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 9: were taking over our country. Trump still won more voters
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 9: in 2024 than he did in 2020 or 2016.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: So you're absolutely right.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 9: We got to listen to people and we can't tell
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 9: them not to trust their lying eyes on price increases
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 9: on a border that is out of control. Or one
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 9: of the things I learned as somebody who often talks
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 9: about democracy is I know what I'm talking about when
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 9: I talk about democracy. It's the right to vote and
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 9: to freely and fairly choose a person who represents you.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 9: And my love of this country and 249 years of history,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 9: and are we really going to fucking blow it? But
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 9: for someone for whom this country has not been working,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 9: they're making $ 7. 25 an hour, or they're a young person
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 9: who has heard us talk about school shootings and more
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 9: than two years after Uvalde, nothing has changed, or you
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 9: name it, it's not working out for them in their lives.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 9: are you, the Democrats, defending everything as it exists, these institutions,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 9: including quote unquote democracy? So people still want change. I
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 9: know that from visiting all these communities. Democrats better offer it.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 9: And to your point, it better reflect what they are
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 9: hearing in these town hall meetings. Let the people define
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 9: the message. It doesn't mean you change your core convictions
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 9: or what you believe. It just means that you reflect
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 9: those people that you want to serve. And The only
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 9: way you're going to do that is by showing up.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 9: And man, it is hard. Texas is a big state.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 9: It took me two years to cover 254 counties. But
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 9: if you're serious about winning places like that, I think
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 9: it's the only way to do it.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: In Texas, you mentioned your 2018 race. You came so
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: close from 2018 to 2024. The state seemed like it
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: moved to the right. It seemed like it was moving
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: to the left and then it moved back to the right.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: Where do you think the situation stands right now? And
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: How big of a reach do you think the Senate
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: race is in 2026 for Democrats?
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 9: You know, I mentioned some of those transformative changes that
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 9: took place in 2018, including at the local level. You know, Houston, Texas,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 9: most diverse city in the country, 17 black women in
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 9: that year won election to judicial positions. That was not
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 9: lost on Republicans in power in the state legislature and
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 9: in the governor's mansion. They almost immediately began changing the
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 9: voting laws to make it harder and harder for for
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 9: people to cast a ballot, closing hundreds of polling places,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 9: almost all of them in the fastest growing black and
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 9: brown districts, changing the rules on mail-in voting. So when
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 9: I ran for governor in 2022 during the primary, 13%
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 9: of the ballots cast by mail in the wake of
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 9: the deadliest pandemic this country has ever seen, 13% were rejected,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 9: 13 out of every 100. That's a banana republic. That's
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 9: not a modern democracy. Guess what happens when 13 out
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 9: of every 100 ballots are rejected? people stopped voting come November.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 9: 9 million registered voters in Texas with Uvalde and the
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 9: most obscene abortion ban in America and a power failure
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 9: in the energy capital of the world that killed 700
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 9: Texans didn't vote. It's not that they didn't care. It's
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 9: not that they don't love this democracy. It's just that
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 9: they didn't think that this thing worked anymore. So I'm
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 9: kind of laying the groundwork for the answer. It is
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 9: a very challenging environment exacerbated by The ratio of what
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 9: Republicans can spend, I raised $ 80 million in the governor's race,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 9: a record for a gubernatorial candidate on the Democratic side.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 9: Greg Abbott spent $ 130 million, plus what Dan Patrick, plus
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 9: what Ken Paxton, plus what every other statewide elected Republican,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 9: plus the independent expenditures that come in. So, you know,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 9: this party cannot be won by the people of Texas alone.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 9: We are doing a mighty job with what we have,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 9: but we need the party and the country as a
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 9: whole to see its future in our state and to
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 9: invest appropriately. In 2032, which will be on us before
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 9: we know it, Texas will likely have 44 electoral college
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 9: votes as population continues to move from other parts of
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 9: the country to our state. You, the Democratic nominee, could
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 9: win every one of the blue wall states in that year,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 9: and you will still lose the White House if you
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 9: cannot pick up Texas. So investing now is important for
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 9: whoever the nominee is against Ken Paxton or John Cornyn.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 9: But it's also important to continue to build the infrastructure,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 9: the bench, and the wherewithal to win elections down the road,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 9: especially when the only path to the White House is
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 9: going to run through Texas.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: What are the chances that the nominee against Ken Paxton
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: or John Cornyn is you?
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I really like what I'm doing right now.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 9: It's nice not to be a candidate, to be at
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 9: these town hall meetings and not say, you know, at
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 9: the end of it, now I need you to vote
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 9: for me or sign up for my campaign, but really
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 9: to hold this conversation and for everyone to listen to
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 9: one another. And then with Powered by People, our group
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 9: to recruit volunteers to do the voter registration and voter
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 9: organizing and voter turnout work. But I'm also not afraid of,
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 9: you know, serving as a candidate. But I only want
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 9: to do it if it's the right thing to do,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 9: if it's right for the people of Texas, if it's
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 9: the best way for us to win political power and
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 9: then to be able to deliver on that. And that's
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 9: a question I can't answer right now. Perhaps as I
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 9: continue to travel the state, I'll know more. But we
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 9: don't suffer from a lack of talent in the state.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 9: And we've got extraordinary leaders in and out of office
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 9: right now. So I'm not too concerned about that.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: And the So we've got a lot of time. Yeah.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: What's the most important lesson you've learned from running all
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: those races in Texas that maybe surprised you that you
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: didn't think about before?
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, you got to show up. Yeah.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 9: And we did it in 2017 when we first ran.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 9: You know, we had a snowball's chance and no one
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 9: had ever heard of me. And Ted Cruz was the
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 9: runner up against Donald Trump for the Republican presidential primary,
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 9: had more money than God. Name recognition was at a
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 9: hundred percent. I couldn't get a professional political person in
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 9: Texas to return my phone call.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: Seriously.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 9: I mean, I can't tell you how many messages I left.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 9: It was just a lost cause. And everyone was also
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 9: dispirited because Trump had just won in 16. The few
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 9: folks who did call me back said, hey, I'm out
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 9: of gas. I gave it all for Hillary. I just,
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 9: I can't do another heartbreaker. So I'm sorry. We turned
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 9: a necessity, you know, no money, no name ID, no
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 9: path into a virtue. And that begat the 254 county campaign.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 9: I learned so much as a candidate. I grew so
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 9: much as a human being. We got so close. And John,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 9: some part of me still thinks we won. On the
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 9: eve of that thing, I just felt it. I'm not
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 9: the kind of person who counts my chickens before they're hatched.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: I just knew it.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 9: And it was one of the hardest calls I've ever
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 9: made to call Senator Cruz on election night and to
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 9: concede to him. But it was the the right thing
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 9: to do. He and Trump and others might learn something
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 9: from that. But showing up is what got us there.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 9: And being honest with people, again, virtue out of a necessity,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 9: no money to poll test or to focus group or
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 9: to get pointers from a consultant. You just, you had
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 9: to listen from people, learn from them, reflect that back
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 9: on the campaign trail. And there was a real magic
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 9: in that. And it is how I won my election
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 9: for Congress In the first place, it's how I won
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 9: my election for city council. So all those lessons hold true.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 9: But I think when we're talking about power and being
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 9: honest with ourselves and actually winning and not just feeling
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 9: good about the way that we run, it cannot just
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 9: be a Colin Allred or a Beto O'Rourke or a
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 9: Wendy Davis just to pick three of the last statewide nominees.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 9: You need a full ticket for every position statewide. You
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 9: need every state house seat contested because those votes will
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 9: flow up just the same way that they flow down.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 9: You need county commissioners and justices of the peace. You
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 9: really need to be doing this everywhere all at once.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 9: And I really believe if we do that in Texas,
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 9: we're going to win those positions up and down the ballot.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 9: And who knows what will happen in 2026? But given
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 9: the crises that you and I just discussed that are
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 9: hitting people in Texas probably harder than almost any other
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 9: part of the country, there is an opening. And if
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 9: it's Ken Paxton, twice indicted, recently under FBI investigation, impeached
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 9: by a Republican majority state house in the state of Texas,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 9: he's wildly popular with the most extreme element of the
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 9: Republican Party and not a whole bunch else. Golden opportunity.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 9: But we have to hit on all cylinders in every county,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 9: on every position.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: Of the ballot.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 9: So- I learned that from the races that I have
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 9: run and lost. You can't just have one person out there.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 9: You can't have a few people out there. It's got
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 9: to be everyone, everywhere, in every county.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: Beto, as always, your energy and optimism is infectious. I
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: am so grateful that you're out there doing the hard
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: work of registering voters and going to all those town halls.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: Wish there were more Betos and more states. Thanks for
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: stopping by. It's great talking to you.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: That's our show for today. Thanks to Beto for coming in.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: Tommy will be back on Sunday with a special episode
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: looking at why we get so many spam fundraising texts
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: and what we can do about it without sabotaging ActBlue
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: and the other platforms our party relies on. Talk about
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: news that actually matters. Check that out. Have a good weekend.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: And we'll have another regular episode in your feeds on Tuesday. Bye, everyone.
• 1:32:33
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