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Merkley Smash · The Schmidt Show PDX

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: I have a big announcement.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: We're welcoming a new show sponsor.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_03: This show is about helping build a healthier,
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: better informed community through knowledge and understanding.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I couldn't ask for a more fitting sponsor than Dr.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: Adam Moret and Corbett Hill Wellness Center.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I can speak to the kind of care they provide from personal experience.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: I've been a patient at Corbett Hill myself,
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: and they've helped me through several things over the years.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm especially pleased to welcome them to the show.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: Corbett Hill Wellness Center, whole person care to help you move well, feel well, and live well.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: Find more at corbethill.com.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome back.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Mike Schmidt,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: former Multnomah County District Attorney,
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: excited parent eagerly awaiting the first day of school.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: Huge shout out to all those parents out there.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: We made it.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, part time podcaster.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: This week on the pod, I have the privilege of sitting down with U.S.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Senator Jeff Merkley.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: With everything going on in this country,
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: we are lucky to have him fighting for us in Washington, D.C. We get into it all.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: What it's actually like inside a Senate that's gone from a lofty 30% approval rating
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: in 2009 all the way to its current historic 10% low today.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: Finally, something the vast majority of Americans can agree on.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: We talk about leaving the old when they go low,
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: we go high in the rear view and how we should be fighting fire with fire.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: The real mechanics of restoring trust,
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: insider trading on Capitol Hill,
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: the Supreme Court ethics or lack thereof,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: and what Citizens United It has actually done to show how senators spend their time
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: and where things stand with ice from a guy who happens to sit on the appropriations
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: and budget committees.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: And we close it out with a lightning round built entirely from your questions.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, including whether Mitch McConnell is still alive and his favorite Dolly Parton song.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: But before we get into that conversation,
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: we're trying something a little bit new this week,
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: a new exciting segment we're calling In the news.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: Because this week we lost three giants.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: Dolly Parton,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: the queen of country,
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: and about as close to a universally beloved American
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: as this country has ever produced,
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: Tim Curry, Dr.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: Frankenfurter himself,
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_03: the man who made the rock Rocky Horror Picture Show,
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: a cult phenomenon that's still selling out midnight screenings 50 years later.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: And because these things always seem to come in threes,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: Peter Cullen,
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: the voice behind Optimus Prime,
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: who spent four decades convincing a generation of young kids like me that
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: a talking semi-truck could teach you something about honor.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: Three very different careers, three genuine cultural giants.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: But to help us make sense of it,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: I brought in the first ever Schmidt Show correspondent, Eleanor Jones.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: Eleanor, it's been a sad week in the news.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: Please catch us up.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for having me.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I agree.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: It has been a sad week in the news.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to start off with a couple of small little pieces of information for your listeners.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: For one, I do listen to the podcast and you have a very nice podcasting voice.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: It is very slow and measured.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Many of your guests also have a lot of slow and measured speaking voices.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: I actually listened to the last episode at 1.5 because I had
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: I listen on 1.2, so I feel you.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, for any of your listeners, I know I have a voice like Stephanie Tanner.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you're used to listening at 1.5, please don't right now or this will sound truly insane.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then also in regards to what you said, three giants, perhaps two, I will agree with.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: The third one is probably a giant identified by a man in his 40s who grew up in the 80s.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've never heard of Peter Collins before.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, or Peter Collin, RIP Peter Collin.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: My condolences to people who watch Transformers.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, Autobots.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was not me.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: I only have preparation for two people on my paper.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, anyway,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: so yeah,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Dolly Parton and Tim Curry died, which is a huge blow to the queer community.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, they were both 80 years old.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty cruel that two 80 year olds died.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it was those two 80 year olds who died.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are some other people on the list who, how old is Mitch McConnell?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Is he 80?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, he's got to be in the 80s, right?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: But he's already dead.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: So it doesn't really matter.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Anyway,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: so Dollywood,
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of people have already said pretty much all of the smart things to say
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: about Dolly Parton,
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: and I don't have anything smart to say because that's not really my kind of content.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I was curious how Dolly Parton got into the amusement park game because
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: that is actually where most of her millions were from.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: So Dollywood was actually purchased in the 80s as an existing park.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: The park was founded on the centennial of the American Civil War.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: The original park was called Rebel Railroad,
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: and it was based on the Confederate experience during the Civil War,
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: where visitors could arrive and sit in a locomotive,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: and the main draw was pretending to be attacked by Union soldiers
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: and Native Americans.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: So just so you know,
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: anyone who has had the fortune of going to Dollywood knows that is the foundation of
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: the park.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that she burns some sage.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly very different vibes right now in the Dolly Parton universe or Dollywood universe.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: She's even more epic.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the idea that she was able to shut down that abomination and turn it
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: into something beautiful.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: Just perfect synopsis of her career.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: She still has her trains there, though, although they have been painted.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: But if you are going there and sitting on the trains,
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: they are the same trains that once bought off
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Union soldiers that people would pay money to go see.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was also curious, why would any celebrities get in the theme park game?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like a very niche thing for celebrities to do.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Not a lot of people would do it.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I researched what other celebrities have had theme parks.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Chuck Berry once had one earlier in the 1960s.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: He actually started it years before Dollywood.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was called Berryland.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the main draw there was a swimming pool that was shaped like a guitar.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that was pretty much it.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: So theme parks have really come a long ways.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then Travis Kelsey owns part of Six Flags, which is very on brand for him.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: So when we think about buying Taylor Swift's merch, we're really part of the Six Flags universe.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: I bet you she's performed at some Six Flags.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not for a while, though.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's been a long time.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: But interestingly, comedian Nate Bergazzi, do you know how to say his last name?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's Bergazzi.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think so, too.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: He is also planning on opening a theme park.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is in development.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be bigger than Dollywood,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: and it's going to be also in Tennessee,
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: which I feel that one state should not have more
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: than one celebrity themed theme park.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think that both of them have Tennessee very strongly as part of their brands.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think that that means that that's the right thing to do.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: And also Nate Bergazzi,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: if anyone listening doesn't know this,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: has made his fame on being like politically neutral.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: But he had gone to the he went to the cage fight.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: The UFC on the White House lawn.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're going to go to a celebrity based theme park in Tennessee,
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: please stick to Dollywood.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Tim Curry,
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: who got famous for playing Dr.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Frankenfurter,
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Rocky Horror Picture Show came out in 1975
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: and Clinton Street Theater started their run in 1978.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's been one of the longest running midnight showings.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: Did they pick it up right away?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is what's interesting.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was only three years after the movie came out that they started doing
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: the midnight screening and it was like an immediate cult classic.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm thinking in 2026...
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: What movies would be prime to turn into a midnight screening looking three years into the past?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: So in 2023.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_03: Great question.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Barbie and Oppenheimer came out.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then could you imagine a midnight screening of Barbenheimer where you start
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: at midnight and then you're at the movies until like seven in the morning?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, my God.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, I can't imagine that.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: But then I also started thinking.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Why am I at night screening?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've gone to the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Clinton Street Theater one time.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was when I was a teenager.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't stay up until two in the morning ever again.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And all of the buzz and excitement, you know, after Tim Curry's death and it's picking up all.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to go again.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine going somewhere at midnight?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: No, I can't imagine going anywhere at 9 p.m. to be honest anymore.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that if we're going to look back three years for
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: a new celebrated cult classic,
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think that it would have to kick off a new era of like noon screenings.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, noon screenings.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Or 2 p.m. screening.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you could go and get brunch and get a little bit silly and then go to the movies
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: and then come home.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like this is built around our generation.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: This is what we're like.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: This is for us.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: This is our thing.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: We've been doing it for, you know, 50 years at this point.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: Noon.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: I like it.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: Brunch.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, that's that's my final thought on that is, you know, RIP Tim Curry.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: But most importantly, let's go to movies earlier.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: Movies earlier.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I do everything earlier.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_03: Eat food earlier.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: I want that reservation at 530.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: Let's go.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, Barbenheimer, boy, that would be an epically long.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: Barbie, I see.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's a costume.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think the magic of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, people dressed up, right?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: No one's dressing up as Oppenheimer,
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: although Barbenheimer you could certainly make costumes out of.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you could do something with that.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: But then I was also thinking other cool movies that came out in 2023.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if you were going to do a midnight screening or even like a late screening
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: with Cocaine Bear.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that one would be really right for a midnight screening.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because if people stayed on theme, staying up late would be really easy.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_03: Eleanor Jones, thank you so much for catching us up in the news this week.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to read me, you can find me writing the trash report at Portland Mercury.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Eleanor.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: A quick word from our show sponsor,
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: Dr. Adam Moret at Corbett Hill Wellness Center, people I know and trust.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Dr. Moret from Corbett Hill Wellness Center.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: My vision for Corbett Hill has always been simple,
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: to give our community a place for whole person care with people they can trust.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Today we offer chiropractic,
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: massage,
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: acupuncture, naturopathic medicine, laser treatment, shockwave therapy, and more.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Different kinds of care with one goal, helping you feel your best.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Corbett Hill Wellness Center, move well,
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And now, U.S.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Senator Jeff Merkley.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: Senator Jeff Merkley, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I'm very happy to be with you.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm so excited to talk to you.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: We've got a lot to pack into this episode, but I don't want to just jump right into business.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: I did a little bit of research before you came in,
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: and on good authority,
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_03: I have it that you had a nickname as Smash at one point in your life.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness, that goes back to outdoor school.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Is that outdoor school?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that was outdoor school.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: You don't strike me as a smash.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: That was kind of the point of it.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of a counterpoint, if you will, to my general...
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: So this has always been your,
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: I thought I maybe envisioned as a younger person you were out there smashing things,
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: but this has always been your demeanor.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: This was,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: this was camp counselor at outdoor school and I wasn't able to go
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: to outdoor school myself because we didn't have enough funding for every class
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: to go.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought, well, I'll get to go by being a counselor while I'm in high school.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: And for anyone who,
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: if you're familiar with that,
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: it's a great chance to get every child out and get a week's education living in
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: the woods.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: And they spend a day on soil and a day on air and weather and a day on animals.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a great component that we should make sure every sixth grader has a chance
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: to participate in.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: I grew up in New York State,
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: in upstate New York,
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: but my wife's a lifetime Oregonian,
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: so she's familiar with outdoor school, attended, you know.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so when I talk to Oregonians, it is something that everybody just looks back on fondly.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, no, absolutely.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's our connection to the natural world here, for sure.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: So you have a stressful position, it seems to us on the outside, especially these days.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: When you're home,
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: when you're back in your district, what do you do to wind down or touch some grass?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's changed over time.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: I go kind of through chapters, if you will.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: And for a while,
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: that was triathlons,
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: and I did a number of triathlons,
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: and then ultimately a couple of Ironmen, which are the all-day.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's incredible.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: You start at 7 a.m.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: in the morning with an over-two-mile swim,
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: and then you bike 112 miles,
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: and then the sun's setting, and you're starting the marathon.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I must say that's an adventure.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then kind of I said, OK, I'm not really a swimmer, but I still enjoy jogging.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I did marathons for a while.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: But now I'm more likely to be found out on a hill launching a paraglider
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: and running off mountains.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: I don't do free fall very well.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know what I can do with that.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: No one does free fall well.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: Fair point, fair point.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: The whole point is to avoid free fall.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: You have tied yourself to a wing made of fabric that depends
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: upon your forward movement to inflate it,
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: and sometimes they become uninflated,
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: and then suddenly you don't have a wing over your head, and then it's free fall.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully that changes before you hit the ground.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm going to leave that to you.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to invite you out to join me.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, boy.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, boy.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: We'll see you about that.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate it.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: I imagine your colleagues across the country,
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: you get to talk to people all over the world and everything.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: And you must talk to them about your home in Oregon and the things that you love.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: Is there a place in Oregon?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: I know you can't pick a favorite.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: You can't have favorite sons or daughters.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: But is there a place in Oregon you find yourself recommending, hey, you got to see this?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like, where's your go to when you tell somebody about your home state?
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's so many wonderful things here.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I put together the coolest places to go in all 36 counties.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's called Oregon Treasure Quest.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: And if you go to 10 counties and you send me a selfie of something that's in
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: the book, then you're invited to the annual Treasure Quest party.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: This is something actually you should do.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: I should do this.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know about this.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: I want to now.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Do we have a copy of that
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: for you right here?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe not.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: We do have it online as well.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I can put it in the show notes for other people to find.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I hold the annual party after the election in November and before Thanksgiving,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: and it's the happiest room I have been in basically at any time.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, people who have gone out on the road,
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: restored their soul, turned off their phone, turned off the news.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: They visit these places.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: They meet people from all over.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: But so it is like you discover some.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason this came about is because I go to 36 counties every year.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I've done this for 18 years.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: And you keep finding all these cool things.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: And you go, well, I lived here.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: How did I not know about this?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: And they're all public things.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: I can't promote any private business.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, sure.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: But if someone's close to Portland, people know and hear about the things in Portland.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: But something I always mention to people is Oneonta Gorge.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because when I was a little kid...
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: When you go out to those waterfalls along the Columbia Gorge,
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: there is a place where there's no waterfall, but there is a canyon.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: And the canyon's not very wide.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: And during low water season,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: you can walk up and then swim through a few pools along this canyon,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: turn the corner at the end, and there's a waterfall there.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: And this was kind of unknown when I was a kid.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like people didn't do this.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought that is the coolest thing.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's been discovered.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, of course.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: So the last time I had people out there, there were throngs.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of takes away from experience a little bit,
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: but it is like,
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: it's really cool,
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: like this hidden waterfall after you go through this narrow canyon just really close
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: to Portland.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's amazing.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know, for spring break this year, I have two boys.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: They're growing up.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_03: They're six and nine.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so we decided this would be our first real time that they're old enough to take
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: a little road trip around Oregon.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: We went down to Florence.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: We hit the dunes.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: There's a.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: We had a carnivorous bog right outside of Florence,
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: which is kind of a little bit of a roadside attraction.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: But we got to walk these boardwalks, all these carnivorous plants to see that.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: And then we drove out to Bend and then from there out to Burns
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: and discovered some hot springs, the Crystal Crane hot springs out there.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: Never been there before.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: It was incredible.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: I've been in this state now for over 20 years, and there's still always something to discover.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's phenomenal.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to give you a whole new set of things for your sons to page through
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: and say, where's our next adventure, Dad?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: I can't wait.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, this kind of reminds me a little bit.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Your program maybe predates this,
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: but the McMinimins have kind of these passports that you can go around and take
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: a picture of everything.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: It kind of sounds like similar logic.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the McMinimins is a little bit more challenging.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: What do they have?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's like 70 bars to go to now.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: You got to hit them all.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: My wife, Mary, has done that.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: My son's in the middle of doing it.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: But if you want to see Oregon, Oregon Treasure Quest.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: Oregon Treasure Quest.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: All right, folks,
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: we'll put that in the show notes so that people can make sure they click on
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: the link.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm excited to do that with my boys.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: I know they'll love it.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: All right, I want to take us to your job.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: And you started in the Senate in 2009.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: And here we are in 2026.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: I pulled some approval ratings of the Senate in 2009.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: People really thought highly of the Senate.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: 30% of people appreciated the job that the Senate was doing in 2009.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: Fast forward to today, there's at least one poll that has the approval rating at 10%.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_03: Just, I want to start off,
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: we're going to get into some of the challenges and things that are happening,
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: but just give us a little, what's it like?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you've been there now,
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: you know, since 2009 to today, things are, seem like they're changing a lot.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: What's it been like for you?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know,
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: my perspective comes a little bit from having been around the Senate from when I was
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: an intern for Senator Hatfield.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: It was my sophomore year of college.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: I hadn't decided on a major and somebody mentioned, hey,
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: something is really cool to explore public policy and services to And I applied
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: to six senators and one of them, Hatfield, adopted me as a summer intern.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a great experience.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the summer of 1976 was our bicentennial summer.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right, of course.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was exciting.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then there was a bill on the Senate floor.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: It was the 1976 Tax Reform Act.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: And the person,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: the legislative aide who was staffing it,
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: had a family vacation scheduled because they were supposed to be out,
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: but they were still in.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was assigned to staff this bill.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: There were 125 votes on that bill.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Every single one.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: In other words, no supermajority on anything.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: Not to bring it to the floor,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: not to put on amendments, not on final passage, nothing of that nature.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I stress that because it represents a dramatic change from then till now.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Because now you cannot sneeze in the US Senate without a supermajority.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: So essentially take that and combine it with a strategy that Gingrich engineered.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: Gingrich engineered on the House side, the strategy of obstruction.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: Rather than just weighing in and trying to get things changed and then voting,
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: well, instead we'll just stop the majority from being able to function and then...
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: We'll say, hey, they didn't do a very good job, elect us.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it worked well on the House side.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: But on the Senate side, there are two tools the House does not have.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: And one tool is nomination.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: So you can eat up a tremendous amount of time on nomination.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: And the second is a supermajority.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: So McConnell comes along and he says about what Gingrich is doing in the House.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: He says, Gingrich is giving obstruction a good name.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so...
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: Basically, we have seen an enormous expansion of just pure obstruction.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so we have a fast changing world and a paralyzed Senate.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that drives a lot of cynicism.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it also means You have a lot of opportunity for power to be exercised by the powerful.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: And here's what I'm talking about.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: We grow up in kind of Oregon civics classes or national civics classes.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: We hear, we hear, hey, what preserves And how do they do that?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they have lawyers, work 365 days a year.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: They have lobbyists.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: The pharmaceutical industry had two lobbyists for every member of Congress
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: when I went to Congress 18 years ago.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: Now they have three.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: You have regular campaign donations at far higher levels than ordinary citizen can donate.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: You have Citizens United campaign donations,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: and that's unlimited and it's potentially anonymous.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: Some groups brag about those massive donations because they want to kind of send shockwaves.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: You saw that with the crypto industry doing 40 million into Sherrod Brown's campaign.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: Others want to do it secretly.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: But the net effect is these multiple There are several ways to do government by and
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: for the powerful.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: So here we are with paralysis in the Senate and yet huge influence exercised through
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: the disparity of wealth or the concentration of wealth in high wealth individuals
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: In addition to everything else I just mentioned,
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: the powerful have a couple other pieces.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: They can do media campaigns to shape how people think about things.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: And because big bills are done in the Senate,
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: they can insert provisions in big bills out of the view of the public.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: And if you have a thousand page bill,
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: it may take a while to figure out what special favor
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: for what powerful actor was done.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then,
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: like you said,
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: with teams of lawyers around the clock,
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, every comma and ellipses and every and or but matters significantly.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: It does.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: And if you read the bill, you have no idea what eliminating that and or but.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Or does until someone does an analysis of it and says,
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: oh, well, that means
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: their tax rate's cut in half or something.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly right.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think you've kind of hit on and where I want to go is a little bit
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: of how people are feeling.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the growing inequality is a major factor.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I think people are looking to Congress and thinking to themselves,
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: they don't have my best interests at heart,
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: the institution and the federal government.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so I kind of wanted to get us a little bit into what I'm seeing,
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: my characterization from a lot of Democrats who are,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_03: like you said,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_03: were locked out of power at the top of every one of the branches,
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: the judicial, the presidency and the legislature.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: And they're feeling like.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: We need to fight fire with fire.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: We've seen the tactics that they're willing to employ,
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: the executive orders that are attacking things like vote by mail,
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: just over and over again,
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: even where it looks like they're They're willing to do that.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I think people on the Democrat side are saying, are we?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: Are we going to do that?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm wondering,
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: there's all kinds of maybe tools and things that have been talked about,
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: filibuster reform or court expansion or all kinds of different things.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: What are some of the tactics or things you're thinking about with hopefully a change
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: in control in Washington?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, executive orders have been around forever,
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: but they've never been utilized like this president.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: And when I was sitting at his inauguration,
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: less than 20 feet away,
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: I was hearing a speech that didn't talk about,
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: I have won an election,
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: I have a mandate, I'm going to work with Congress to implement it.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: There was no mention of Congress.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: It was just saying, I'm going to do an executive order on this, an executive order on that.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's like you might as well have been listening to a king saying, Somewhere in the world.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: And sitting behind him were not representatives of working people.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: People sitting behind him were the billionaires.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: And this is what it was.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: It was government by and for billionaires.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't matter how he campaigned on being a champion for families.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: He was saying from the very day one, I am a champion for billionaires.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that was so disturbing.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: I couldn't believe he was willing to do that.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, as an observer, I was like, this is what's happening.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: But to have that visual of the billionaires behind the president,
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: I couldn't believe that they would do that.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: No, the optics make no sense except that this president – He's like,
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: I've been reelected and I'm going to, I'm a king.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: I can do what the hell I want.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm not going to worry about the optics.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'll just do it.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: And not worrying about the optics has been part of what gives him kind of the flexibility.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: To do whatever the hell he wants.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: You want to start a war?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: Start a war.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: You want to put a 50% tariff on Canada?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, I want to do it tomorrow.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: You want to tear down the People's House, the East Wing of the White House?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, by the time they stop me, it'll already be torn down.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so forth.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: But let's mention, you mentioned the filibuster.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: And the filibuster is, in essence, a term that means piracy.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: It came from the word freebooter, piracy.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason it was considered piracy is because the initial social contract of
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: the Senate was that everyone has their say, their opinion, then you vote.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: And Jefferson, before he was president, he was vice president.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: He laid out a manual for conduct.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: He said, nothing superfluous, get to the point.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, people had to kind of share their ideas,
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: argue a bit, and then say, okay, let's take a vote.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Proceeding to use structural strategies to prevent you from ever getting to a vote,
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: that was the pirates taking over the Senate.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it was used on a limited basis,
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: primarily initially about the division between the North and South over issues of
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: a national bank.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: Here we go again.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: There we go.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: The Southerners called the tariffs that were being pros in the 1830s the tariff of
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: the abominations.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: And why is that?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, because the North wanted protectionist tariffs on manufacturers.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: But the South was worried about retaliatory tariffs on tobacco and cotton.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: So it was a division between those two economies.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: But then that morphed into the issue of civil rights.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: And really,
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: the supermajority was used primarily by Southern Democrats
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: to block civil rights legislation right up through the 1960s until we had
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: the Civil Rights Act, until we had the Voting Rights Act.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: That one might have thought, well, that's going to be the end of the use of the filibuster.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: No, it was the starting bell for using the supermajority,
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: not just on final passage,
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: but on motions to proceed to bills,
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: on amendments and on nominations,
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: and not just on civil rights issues, but on every issue.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was one of the unexpected outcomes.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: That put us where we are now.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I have argued, in fact, I've written a whole book on this called Filibustered.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: And basically,
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: I went back through Senate history to understand what's gone wrong with the Senate.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: And what I propose is a reform called the Talking Filibuster.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it is a different But what it basically says is, look, if you want to delay the vote,
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: You can only do it on the issue of final passage of bill,
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: not on amendments, not on nominations, not on motions received.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to maintain continuous debate on the floor.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this makes it very hard to delay a bill
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: because keeping continuous debate going is extremely difficult.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: Something you have experience.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's very hard to get the Senate to go for a single night,
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: but talk about trying to sustain that through multiple nights,
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: through a weekend, through several weeks.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so the Senate came within two votes of adopting my talking filibuster.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it was on a bill to strengthen our election system.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: It created disclosure on all campaign donations.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: So didn't the Citizens United...
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: Donations that are made to a friend of the candidate rather than the candidate.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then that they're currently undisclosed, they're disclosed.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: It included protecting vote by mail.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: In fact,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: it would have required both a little bit of early voting and vote
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: by mail opportunity for every citizen.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: The reason why is because it's very easy to manipulate and rig election day.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that's exactly this is exactly why.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: The president hates vote by mail because he wants to be able to rig the vote on Election Day.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: How do you do that?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you go to places you don't want to vote,
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: and that may be related to Native American reservations,
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: certainly poor inner City, communities of color, college campuses.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you say, hey, on election day, we're going to make it very hard for you to vote.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to have few voting places.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to slow walk the machines.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to have the machines break down.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to put it where there's no parking so people can't get there.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: You can't hand a person a bottle of water, as Larry David has pointed out.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: They have to wait in line for eight hours and you can't hand them a bottle of water.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's the type of rigging that has been done often and that vote by mail stops.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why the president opposes it.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: So the talking filibuster reform says,
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: well, the minority has to do the hard work of maintaining continuous debate.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: The majority has to keep also a presence.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so essentially what you have is an incentive for compromise
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: because it's hard work for the minority and the majority can't tie up the floor
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: for weeks.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: So there's an incentive for both sides to say, is there a solution here to this challenge?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: So instead of a Instead of the filibuster being a road to pure obstruction
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: and inaction paralysis,
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: it becomes a road to working out a deal and being able to act on issues
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: that Americans face.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: And the public gets to weigh in because they can see it happening.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right now, there's no moment to weigh in.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's just nothing happening until you can get a supermajority.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's no required debate.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: So the public can weigh in.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: Are you a hero?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: Are you a bum?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: So that's my proposal to try to take us forward on that front.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I love that.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: And your filibuster that you executed,
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: a talking filibuster through the night, I mean, it grabbed headlines.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: It brought attention.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: For me, I wasn't necessarily paying attention to the day-to-day,
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: but you doing that brought attention to the issues.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, this was a 22 hour.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's the third longest speech in American history.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to give the longest speech because the two longest speeches were on
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: the issue of civil rights, anti-civil rights and pro-civil rights.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't want to overshower what Senator Booker had done on pro-civil rights
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: a few months before.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: But I did want to ring the alarm bells about Trump's authoritarian destruction of our democracy.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: People have generally thought that democracies die because men with guns storm
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: the executive mansion or the executive offices or they storm the Congress
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: and they take over and they put in a dictatorship.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: But democracies are now dying through a set of tactics that have been utilized.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: And those tactics have meant that, well,
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: you have the trappings of democracy, but what you really have is imperial power.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's happened in Russia.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's happened in Nicaragua.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: It happened in Venezuela.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's happened in Hungary.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: And those 10 tactics or whatever was highlighting in that speech say,
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: you may think this is just a chaotic craziness of something here and all
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: that crazy thing and then this crazy thing.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: And by the end of the week, you can't remember the seven crazy things that happened.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's called flooding the zone.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's an effective tactic.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: But behind that is a carefully orchestrated plan, first laid out in Project 2025.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then Russell Vogt,
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: who was a key architect,
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: was put in his head of the Office of Management Management
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: to basically run This anti-democratic strategy,
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: this authoritarian strategy for the Trump administration.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately, he's very capable.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so I've written a pamphlet that lays out each of Ring the Alarm Bells,
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: that lays out the 10 strategies and that unfortunately,
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: every single one of them is being effectively utilized by this president
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_02: and his team.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: And we're going to get that also in the show notes.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'll get a link to this so that folks can find it.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_03: But first of all, I really appreciate you bringing this.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: One of the points,
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: one of the things I try to accomplish in this show is to unpack civics,
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: help educate people,
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: but also give them, okay, I've just learned some interesting information.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: What do I do with that?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I think in this ring the alarm bells, you give some folks things they can do.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and so in the same literature about how democracies die,
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: there's information that lays out how they survive.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: How do they survive?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Steve McLaughlin.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: That peacefully protests, by the way.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's really important so that you are sending a message.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's unacceptable.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: The second factor is the next election.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: The next election, because the authoritarian will try to rig the election.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: Number 10 on the list of strategies is rig the election.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: And you can see that in everything Trump's doing.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: For example,
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: his mid-decade redistricting in order to create an inappropriate number
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: of Republican congressional districts in order to bias Congress.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_03: The gerrymandering.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: You see it in his executive orders regarding vote by mail.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: He wants to control actually who gets to vote in each state.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: So his executive order says you have to submit your voter roll to us,
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: Team Trump, and we are going to Tell you who can vote.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: So all of these factors are all about rigging the election.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: Well,
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: so if you don't kind of topple the authoritarian impulses in the first election
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: and there's two more years in order for those things to be kind of implemented,
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: you're in deep trouble.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: Second of all, citizens have jobs and they're raising kids.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: And if the protests don't make an impact in the short term, people burn out.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: They give up.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: Or they're imprisoned.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: Or they're silenced.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, silencing is one of the strategies of the authoritarian.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: You see it with the strategy of trying to say to the networks,
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: You better behave yourselves and not criticize the president too much
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: or we will take away your ability to do mergers
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: or we will take away your broadcast license.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: With those threats against the networks, that is crazy stuff.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: That is crazy authoritarian.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right wing fascist stuff to destroy freedom of speech.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that's just one of the other of the 10 tools is suppress speech.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes it's direct suppression and sometimes it's intimidation.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: And what you see with many,
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: many corporations right now is they have stopped a lot of their initiatives
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: for initiatives to be responsible in conserving energy or sustainable products or
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: to make sure that everyone has a fair shot to get a job at their corporation
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: for fear of making this this this company,
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: this this this company, this administration angry and targeting them.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: So so that has a big impact as well.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I got to give a shout out to the No Kings protests, as you already have lifted that up.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_03: I think they've done fantastic work across the country.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: But what I've seen here in Portland,
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_03: so I was the district attorney during the George Floyd protests,
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_03: and that was a different scene and different things happening there.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: What I've seen is...
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_03: People showing up with joy and humor.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that just,
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: in terms of fighting fascism,
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: pointing out their absurdity seems like such an effective tool
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_03: to undermining fascism.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so I got a call from the mayor of Portland and he said a plane's landed
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: and they're bringing in a whole bunch of national federalized National Guard.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: And let's do a press conference tonight, which he said, let's do it in an hour.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it took a couple hours, but we did do a press conference that evening.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: And after the mayor spoke, I said, Welcome to the Don't Take the Bait press conference.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I spoke to each person beforehand saying,
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: stress the Don't Take the Bait,
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: because what Trump wants to do is to have riots in the street to justify sending in
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: the National Guard.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: And we went through this during his first administration.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: I recall.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that situation was once the rhythm is underway of abusing protesters and
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: then people protesting even more and in direct confrontation.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: It feeds right into his strategy.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: And we have to take that away.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the laws regarding the federalization of the National Guard say there has to be even...
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: I've had them on the podcast, the Frog Brigade.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: There we go.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you have the Unipiper, but I've heard him talked about nationally.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: The Unipiper won his unicycle with his bagpipes.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: And people know that there were weddings or a wedding, the dancing classes.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: There were crochet classes.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, people were doing all sorts of creative things.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it completely flummoxed King Trump.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: He wanted riots.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: And what he got was protest protests.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: A quick word from our show sponsor,
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: Dr. Adam Moret at Corbett Hill Wellness Center, people I know and trust.
• 41:10
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• 41:55
  SPEAKER_03: So, Senator,
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_03: one of the things I think we can all say,
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we saw I talked about the polling numbers.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_03: There's been an erosion of trust in all of our institutions.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_03: They've been tested.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I've seen some admirable people.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_03: I just had a Supreme Court justice in Oregon, Bronx.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I know this is an issue you care about.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: What are your thoughts on that?
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's about 13 years ago that I started championing a ban
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: on congressional stock trading,
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: by the way, a ban on stock trading by executive branch officials as well.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: And here is the reason.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: Those who are elected.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you have a concentration of stocks and fossil fuels,
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: you might be inclined to support tax breaks for fossil fuels that really aren't
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: the best investments.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, insider trading is illegal but very difficult to prove.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: Here you are with all kinds of conversations every day.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: Often I have somewhere above two dozen meetings a day
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: and people are mentioning things and sometimes they'll say,
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: hey, did you know we're going to be announcing today?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_02: A cure for cancer.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, well, no, I didn't know that.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: And if I was wanting to use that for personal profit,
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: well, I might go and make a little bet on that stock price going up.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's just not acceptable.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean,
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: the truth is that unless you're using insider information,
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: essentially you don't beat the, on average, you do not beat the S&P 500 anyway.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: We did all kinds of exercises on this when I was studying economics.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: And it just, it's the only thing.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: I did have a bill passed out of committee that I was the
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: We architected this bill.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: Other folks had bills.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: We combined ideas together.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_02: But this shows how hard it is to get something actually implemented.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so here is the president who is proceeding.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, talk about insider trading on full display, on complete display.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's happening right before your eyes.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: The president is buying up hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: of stock right before the government issues a deal he knows is coming, and we don't.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: And then he puts out a true social about it after he's purchased to even try
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_03: to pump up the prices even more.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: There we go.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: Drive it up even, even, even more.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: Is there hope for accountability for, I mean,
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_03: some of these things just seem so, I mean,
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_03: we know the Department of Justice is captured at this moment,
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_03: but is there hope for accountability for insider trading investigations
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: at some point in our future?
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: There is certainly hope for legislation that will ban stock trading.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: One is waste no crisis.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: So what we're seeing is a whole series of horrific abuses of our democracy.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: What has to come out of that is a whole series of reforms.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: And think how Watergate triggered a whole bunch of reforms.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Okay, this is worse than Watergate by far.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: Watergate seems so quaint.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: And essentially, we had such confidence in our constitutional separation of powers.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it assigns the power of the purse to Congress, the Constitution does.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the power of the purse means Congress,
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: representing all parts of the country,
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: proceeds to design programs and decide how much they'll be funded by.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's the president's job to execute that.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: This president says, hell no.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to establish slush funds.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to start up programs that haven't been authorized, programs that haven't been funded.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to refuse to actually do programs that have been authorized and funded.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is another mark of a dictatorship rather than...
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_02: A second power assigned to Congress is the power of taxation, including tariffs.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: The first bill the Senate ever considered was a tariff bill.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_02: They thought the most important thing in this newly created nation
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: And they sit around for three weeks saying,
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: what should we do on a keg of nails or a barrel of molasses?
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it was three weeks.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_02: They argued and pushed and pulled and set.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a bill.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's the power of taxation.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: This president is I'm just going to,
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sitting here today and I'm angry with Brazil,
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_02: so I'm going to put a tariff on that and I'm negotiating with China.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_02: They get 100% and Canada,
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: I don't like Canada,
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_02: so I'm going to disrupt our key trading partnership to the north.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_02: That stuff is unconstitutional.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then you have the question of war.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_02: This is the third big power assigned to Congress.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: And what does the president do?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: Or our troops are being attacked abroad.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: You can operate for 60 days while you propose the power to execute war.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: And this president said, no, I don't need to do that.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to do that.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: Think about Madison, who explained why they put the question of war with Congress.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: And Madison wrote this out in a letter to Jefferson.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: You really don't find it in the Federalist Papers.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_02: And what he said,
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_02: he said is,
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: in the entire history of governments,
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: it is the executive branch that is most interested and most prone to war.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why with care and deliberation, we have vested the question of war.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: Not in the executive, but in the congressional branch.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, something that, and that isn't that Congress always gets it right.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: Congress got it wrong on Afghanistan.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: They got it wrong on Iraq.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: But there was a national debate in which people had to weigh in.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll tell you,
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: one of the reasons I think that members of Congress from
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: the Republican side now do not want to bear the responsibility
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: that they've been assigned by the Constitution is they know it's such
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: a consequential decision.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_02: And if you get it wrong, it may be the end of your political career.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, OK,
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: but shirking your constitutional responsibility and letting
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: the president make these decisions is horrific for a democratic republic.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: Now, we now have an authoritarian state.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: I want to take us to something that's already come up, Citizens United.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_03: Your former colleague,
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_03: John McCain,
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_03: once when that decision came down from the Supreme Court,
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_03: said that this will be the death of democracy,
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: that senators' days will stop being about constituents and only be consumed
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_03: with fundraising.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_03: What is your experience on Citizens United,
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_03: and has it changed your day-to-day or other senators or the institution?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: Citizens United Supreme Court decision that basically set up two systems for fundraising.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_02: One is that someone says, I want to support this person's campaign, so I'm writing them a check.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's publicly disclosed,
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: your address,
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: your age,
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: your employment, the amount of money you donated, all is publicly disclosed.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then the Citizens United system in which the Supreme Court said,
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: if you give the money not to the candidate,
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_02: but to a friend of the candidate,
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: Who will run a parallel campaign or a supporting campaign.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: You can give unlimited sums and you can do it anonymously, that is secretly.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: So let me give you some examples of what happened.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_02: Fossil fuels.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_02: It used to be that Republicans were leading Wow, I forgot.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: And Mike McCain,
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: by the way,
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: was a major champion on climate change, as was Lindsey Graham, who just passed away.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so you had that whole like, hey, we got to be responsible stewards of our planet.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: It was a bipartisan concern.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what happened?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the fossil fuel world said,
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: we're going to give all our donations on the Republican side of the ledger.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: And what you saw...
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_02: Just between 2010 and 2012, in a two-year period, a silencing of Republicans on climate.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: And they started to support all kinds of fabrications and disinformation.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_02: Climate change is caused by sunshine.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_02: It naturally goes up and down.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: Humans have no role in it.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_02: Even if we have a role in it, there's no way to stop it.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_02: We'll never be able to tackle climate change because China won't ever invest in renewables.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: Well, China's doing more renewables than the rest of the world put together.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, but it was all a strategy promoted by the fossil fuel industry.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_02: They are massively subsidized.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: So we are subsidizing the expensive, dirty energy world.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_02: And instead of promoting the clean, less expensive renewable energy because of Citizens United.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_02: Or let's take cryptocurrency.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_02: In the last campaign,
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: the cryptocurrency world over a weekend put $40 million into a Senate race in Ohio
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: because they wanted to defeat Sherrod Brown and they wanted to send a message
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_02: to everyone else.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: So even though they could do this anonymously, they did it very publicly.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: Then you had, that was 2024, so 2025, you have a bill called the Genius Act.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: And the Genius Act, there's no genius to it.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: It was about pretending to regulate crypto to make it essentially acceptable.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_02: And yet,
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: what was really going to happen is it made it as a better paved pathway to avoid
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_02: the American banking system,
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_02: which was great for money launderers,
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: drug traffickers,
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: people selling illicit weapons around the world,
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_02: people wanting to transfer money out of the country to avoid taxes,
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: all of these things.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: But they passed that bill easily in 2025 because
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: of this $40 million Citizens United funding in 2020.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: And now they have a second bill called the Clarity Act.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that is more of the same.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: The first one, I think, dealt only with meme coins.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_02: And the second one's going to deal, I think, with stable coins.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe I have that reversed.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: But the point is...
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: You have massive corruption of the vision of government by and for the people
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_02: because of Citizens United.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_02: So if we don't find a way to address that,
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_02: and by the way, I've got something positive for you on this.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_02: Good.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: Here's something positive.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: Back in 2014, the fossil fuel world came after me.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I was my first reelect.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so I said to my team,
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_02: you know what,
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_02: if I'm going to be defeated because of all these fake front groups being supported
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: by the Koch brothers, I'm going to go down swinging.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so I said,
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: we're going to attack the Koch brothers for what they're doing in Oregon,
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: running this smear operation.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_02: And My team said, oh, Jeff, please don't do this.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_03: Don't provoke them.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: No, if they put 5 million in, they can put 50 million in.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: They can crush you and they can use all these fake front groups,
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: the next best generation or build a better world or give it any fancy name you want.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, no, no, they're spending 5 million bucks in this phony way.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to give them a little bit of a response.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so I wrote the ad because my team didn't want to do this.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the ad said,
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_02: out of stage,
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_02: Coal billionaires,
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: the Koch brothers,
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: have come to Oregon to elect my opponent because they share an agenda,
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_02: item one, two, three.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_02: Great investment for them, terrible choice for us.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: That was the ad.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a television ad.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you know what?
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_02: The Koch brothers bailed out of my race with a month to go.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because they did not like being attacked.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_02: The attention.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then they run a huge amount of reputational repair ads after the election.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: And every time I saw one of those ads, I felt a little glow.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_03: They have to spend money on that.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh,
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: smear campaigns to do what I did and take on the source of the money and they didn't
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: and they all lost.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: And now what we're seeing is we are seeing it has become a legitimate response to
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: the dark money.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_02: To attack the source.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_02: If you know the source,
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_02: if they're bragging about the source, you can run campaign to attack them.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_02: And they don't like that.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_02: So we saw that, for example, in some of the races around the country regarding AIPAC.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: Which was spending big sums while AIPAC became a political issue.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: Out-of-staters coming in, not arguing on their issue, but all kinds of other smear tactics.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the only tool we have right now because Citizens United...
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: Is a constitutional decision.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's wrongheaded constitutional decision because the argument that donations to
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: the friend of the candidate will never be noticed by
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_02: the candidate will have no corrupting impact.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_02: That is totally bogus.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: But we're stuck with it for now.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's good to know that sunshine is still the best disinfectant.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_03: Sunshine helps.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to try real hard to get us through a couple more questions.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_03: Secret police, ICE, immigration.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for calling this out.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_03: I just saw a headline yesterday.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_03: They hit their highest month ever in the country in July of over 50,000 arrests.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_03: What can we do?
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you used the word secret police, and that's the word I've been using.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_02: Back when I was studying political science,
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: I saw around the world, you'd hear about secret police.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_02: What did they mean by secret police?
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: Folks who show up with unmarked vans,
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_02: unmarked uniforms,
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_02: they had no court order,
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_02: they broke down doors, they drug people out, and they disappeared.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_02: All of those things are happening here.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_02: We have, we, well,
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_02: Trump administration has turned ICE into all of the attributes of a secret police.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_02: I was attacked.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_02: In a committee hearing for calling them secret police,
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_02: the individual said, how dare you call them the secret police?
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_02: I said, as soon as they stop acting like a secret police,
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'll quit calling them a secret police.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_02: And realize that they are absolutely Absolutely traumatizing communities.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_02: If you go out to Hillsboro here,
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_02: you go down to Woodburn,
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_02: you're going to find folks who are terrified that their children will be disappeared
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_02: or their parents will be disappeared.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_02: And we're not We're not talking about folks who were,
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_02: as the president said, rapists and murderers.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about folks who have been here for 30 years,
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_02: contributing to their community, essential to their community in a workforce.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_02: And we have got to have information.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_02: Immigration reform.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_02: We came so close twice.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_02: In 2013, we passed a bill in the Senate, supermajority, bipartisan support.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_02: The House wouldn't hold a single hearing on it.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_02: They wanted to sustain, the Republican majority in the House wanted to sustain Right.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_02: Hell no, I want to keep immigration as a campaign issue.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_02: So for anyone out there who thinks that the Republican Party is dedicated
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_02: to actually solving the immigration challenge,
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_02: no, they are dedicated to keeping it being dysfunctional and appropriate.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so we need that immigration reform.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the rule of everyone is thirsty.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_02: For the rule of law.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_02: So you orderly use visas.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_02: Once you have the rule of law,
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: and yes,
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: rule of law at the border has been supported in both of these bills,
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_02: but let's have a pathway to citizenship for people who have benefits.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_02: Let's have a court system for adjudicating refugee status, asylum status.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: That doesn't take six years to get before.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_02: For a judge, that makes no sense at all.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_02: And yet this administration has slowed down the process of getting to a hearing
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_02: by reducing the number of immigration judges.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, there should be real judges, not political appointees like they are under Trump.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_03: Quick word from our show sponsor,
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_03: Dr. Adam Moret at Corbett Hill Wellness Center, people I know and trust.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Dr. Moret from Corbett Hill Wellness Center.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: My vision for Corbett Hill has always been simple,
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: to give our community a place for whole person care with people they can trust.
• 1:00:19
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• 1:00:27
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• 1:00:31
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• 1:00:34
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• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: Visit CorbettHill.com.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to do a quick lightning round.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_03: In anticipation, I put out on social media.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_03: I said, hey, I get to interview our senator, Jeff Merkley.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_03: Give me some questions.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so I picked some out.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_03: You'll be delighted to know, actually, that I didn't get any terrible or snarky questions.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_03: No one were like, why is he so ugly?
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody gave me any of those types of questions.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_03: They're all very earnest.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_03: Some of them funny, some of them not.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_03: But we're going to do our best to get through these.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_03: First question, what's your favorite Dolly Parton song?
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I hear it in my head.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's the one.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_03: I like 9 to 5.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's kind of.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, 9 to 5 is great.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_03: It seems like an anthem of our time almost a little bit.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_03: Of the working class, right?
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_02: No, but this, what she, Jolene.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_02: Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_02: It just rings in your head forever.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_03: I found out yesterday that.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: Leave my man alone.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_03: She wrote a song about Eugene, Oregon.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, she did.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_03: Which is incredible.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_03: Did you see that?
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_03: I did.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_03: Because I put it up in a text yesterday.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_03: I did, yes.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_03: Indeed.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_03: So that's great.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_03: So will there be a blue wave this November?
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, absolutely.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: Will we have open- We will take the Senate.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way,
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_02: there are six Republican seats right now in what
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_02: the Cook Report says are either toss-ups or lean blue.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_03: People are worried about open elections and worried about intimidation at the voting booth.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_03: I know this is something that you care about.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_03: Are we going to see that in November?
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely worry about it.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_02: Trump has forecast he's going to send intimidators in some form.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_02: The law says you cannot send armed federal agents.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_02: What about unarmed?
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_02: Or what does armed even mean?
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_02: And besides, there's a president who says, I'll do what I want and take me to court later.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_02: Take me to court later.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_02: Mitch McConnell, still alive?
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_02: He's alive.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_02: But we bless him at this point.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_02: We hope he recovers, but difficult health.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody thinks that you're a gardener.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_03: Is that true?
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_02: And what do you grow if you are not a gardener?
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: As a kid, I planted grapes and I planted marigolds.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_02: But no, the grapevines are still living, by the way.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, there you go.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_03: Grape vines before people thought grape vines were cool.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe your thumb's not completely black or brown.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's a little green.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody said exasperatedly, can't we just go back to the Reagan era tax rates?
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they were very, very high by comparison.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_02: And let's understand that there were lots of ways to bypass those tax rates.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_02: And now we have lower rates and there's lots of ways to bypass them.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_02: So the effective marginal rate for wealthiest Americans is about three to eight percent.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_02: Three to eight percent.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_02: Does anyone on this listening to this call pay three to eight percent of the marginal rates?
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, just your unemployment insurance,
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_02: your Social Security,
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_02: your Medicare, those things, even before you pay your income tax, you're over that.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't own a home, you don't have capital gains coming in.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_02: Most Americans are not in a position having significant stock returns
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_02: or significant property that appreciates in value.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_02: And those things are essentially untaxed.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_03: Last one.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_03: What advice do you have for the next generation of leaders who want to follow in
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_03: the footsteps of political giants like Edith Green, Mark Hatfield and Jeff Merkley?
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you for ever asked that question.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_02: Get involved.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_02: Go out and join a campaign right now.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_02: You're working for a vision you believe in and a person you believe in.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_02: And you learn so much about the issues.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it sets the stage for being involved the rest of your life because the beauty of
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_02: a democratic republic when it's working well is you have a chance as a citizen
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_02: to change the course of your community's affairs,
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_02: your state's affairs, your nation's affairs.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_02: But you only do that by getting involved.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_02: And let me point this out right now.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people feel under this heavy cloud.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: They want to lay on a couch and put a pillow over your head.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: And all you achieve with that is you're alone and depressed.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_02: But take that same anger with the direction of our country,
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_02: same angst over its future,
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_02: and join a group that you identify with on a public issue or
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_02: a grassroots organizing issue like Indivisible.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you are engaged with others, you are now energized and you are effective.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_02: And in order to save our republic, we need folks to be energized and effective.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_02: U.S.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_02: Senator Jeff Merkley, thank you so much.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_02: Save our republic.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_03: Check us out on Substack and subscribe so you can stay on top of all
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_03: of our exciting show announcements.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_03: If you see someone without a smile, give them yours.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_03: We'll see you right here next week on The Schmidt Show.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_03: And thanks again to our sponsor, Dr.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_03: Adam Moret at Corbett Hill Wellness Center for supporting the Schmidt Show
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_03: and our mission to build a healthier, better informed community.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_03: Find out more at corbethill.com.