Latest / Breaking The Meta / Ex-CIA Officer Running for Congress: 'I Had to Flip the Table' | Adam Dunigan VA-8"
Transcript
- Breaking The Meta: I think right now it's a pretty black and white situation that we face. Like we all feel it and not everybody's in a position to run for office. I happen to, you know, have the life context with which this was possible, but we all still kind of feel like something's happening right now that's pretty unique and questions might be asked down the line. Like what'd you do when, that moment came? And if you don't have one, I, you're living wrong brother. ⁓ you Hello everyone and welcome to Breaking the Meta. My name is Mike Winson. Today we are sitting down with Adam Dunnigan. Hope I said that right. He's running for the 8th district of Virginia and we're excited to sit down and talk with you today. Hello Adam, how are you doing? I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Mike. I'm doing great. Got a little bit of snow here in Virginia, but it didn't destroy their world like it did last time. we're happy about that. You know, not destroying the world is always a good thing. So to start off, Could you give us a little background on who you are and why you decided to run in the first place? Yes, sir. ⁓ So I came up in the Marine Corps as I did five years. I was in the Marine Air Wing and then I got into a little bit of special projects, which is how I swung into my next career, which was a case officer at CIA. So I spent quite a quite a while. I can't say exactly how long, but I spent quite a while at CIA and I did some some cool stuff overseas, which which I'm really proud of. And I do like my former organization, but it is a little hard to be abroad far from the flagpole and watch the backslide of American institutions and democracy. So at a certain point after seeing some some really dark stuff, I had to flip the table and go do something about it. So that's that's what put me here. You are not the first veteran that I have been interviewing. In fact, of all of the people that I've interviewed so far, which is going on close to 100 now in the last month and a half, I will say 100. Almost 75 % of them have been veterans, which is amazing. And I cannot imagine what it's like to be a veteran and see what's going on right now. mean, you can imagine it from a different perspective. It's surprising to me that veterans jump out of these services to try to run for office right now, because veterans are a self-selecting group of people who are willing to go sign on the dotted line for some crazy shit, right? That's true. So, so when, when they see, you know, a moral obligation to be fulfilled, they're not hesitating to go do it. That's fair. And I think, I think right now it's a pretty black and white situation that we face. Like we all feel it. Um, and not everybody's in a position to run for office. I happen to, you know, have the, life context with which this was possible, but you know, we all still kind of feel like something's happening right now. That's pretty unique and questions might be asked down the line. Like what'd do when, when that moment came? And if you don't have one, I, I, you're living wrong brother. Yeah, I hear you. ⁓ So when you've gone around your area, we'll say your area, that works better at this point, and talked to people, what are the pain points? What are the things that people in your district could use help from, most from the government? Yeah. So I think the biggest one, I have all these really smart ideas about cost of living. The affordability crisis is real and people are suffering, but this district around here is rather well-heeled. There's a lot of high income earners and the tax base is pretty solid. there's, know, like economic things. have really smart ideas about what we should do about energy and affordability. However, here we're like the CIA, the Pentagon, half the federal architecture all live. What they really want to see is a restoration of dignity to federal service and consequences for everybody at Doge and DHS, anybody that is violating our constitution or our civil statutes, they got to go and they got to face consequences. It's not one of those shuffle off into the background. Like if we're going to reaffirm the legitimacy of American institutions, we have no choice but then to pursue consequences for people that broke them. That's what I'm hearing. People want consequences. Has your area, has the area of Arlington especially been affected a lot by the cuts in government jobs too? Yep. Yeah. So a lot of the federal hiring freeze, you have families that serve, if people aren't familiar with the federal hiring process, you know, if you're getting a job at one of the intelligence agencies or something that requires a clearance, you might get your conditional offer a year, 18 months before and be in the clearance process. And you might be in the process of moving your family out here. for a job that just disappeared overnight on the recommendation of some 22 year old off Twitter. It's wildly offensive. And so it's not just everybody who was fired, in my opinion, illegally USAID. The abolishment of USAID was, was horrifying, but it's also everybody that was in the pipeline and put their trust and confidence in a federal position that they were sensibly promised. And it was, you know, rug pulled on them at the last minute. Like that's, yes, people are angry. ⁓ and I don't think. no matter how good faith efforts are made on the part of elected officials right now to offer alternatives and try to give them other options. I do think that my job in Congress will start at trying to restore some dignity and trust into those institutions and the federal service as a career. Yeah. You had talked about it a little bit ⁓ before. One of the other things that I'm hearing a lot from a lot of people, regardless of the side of the aisle that you're that you're ⁓ sitting on is this idea of accountability or the lack thereof when it comes to our elected officials. What does accountability in this position you're going for look like to you? does being held accountable by your district look like to you? So I think We need a metrics driven approach to legislation in general. Like if you send somebody to do a job, there should be sort of jobs report and how well we did. And I think a lot of otherwise good congressional representatives, they're not good about being responsive or transparent with the work that they're doing at any given time. And that is doubly compounded by some of the bad actors within the legislature that are very clearly insider trading and self-enriching. So on the front, front portion of that. Accountability for me in that office is just being present in my community and making sure I am clearly and succinctly communicating everything I'm doing and why all the decisions I'm making and why and making sure I tap all the potential. Like I'm not one of these guys that has to fly halfway across the country to go to session. I can see, you know, the Washington monument from my apartment right here. It's not hard for me to walk over to the building. So that means I have more time than other, I would have more time than other congressional reps to be more active in my community and take a more editorial role in the conversation. So that's, that's that part. And then what I think might be more interesting for some people is if we hate the concept of politicians self enriching while in office, if it feels wrong, because I think it is, ⁓ then I'm also making a personal financial ethics pledge as part of my campaign where essentially any money I make past my salary, and I need to pay my mortgage, so I my salary, but any money I make past my salary, 50 % of that gets donated back into the community to programs that support veterans and working families and childcare and these kinds of things because I mean, I don't begrudge success or wealth and I don't think we should demonize success, but I do think it's very hard to engage trust in institutions when you see people go into office with zero money and out of office with millions and millions of dollars. It's it's hollowing us out as a country and I want it to stop. As someone who lives close to Washington, as close as you do, like you said, you can see the Washington monument from where you are. I just have to ask this question. What do the people around you feel about this announcement of the, the arc that Trump wants to build? ⁓ some, forget where specifically I was over there. It's, it's, it's right on the, entrance to, ⁓ to Arlington national cemetery, which I was, I was just next to, this is my, my running path. And I go running in the morning. This is like where I live. ⁓ everyone is pretty, ⁓ horrified. but like not upset because they're so ground down by the flooding of the zone. we got his fascist posters hanging off the DOJ right now. They just renamed the Kennedy Center. He's trying to go after Dulles. Like fuck him. If he wants to build an arch, who cares at this point? You know, like I don't want that to happen for the record. I'm fired up about it. But I think the average person is so ground down by the constant march of offensive degradation of like our history in the region that like Whenever it's a traffic circle, you can build yourself a little castle if you want little boy. ⁓ Speaking of being ground down, ⁓ you know, since World War II, we, this country has by virtue of its isolation from the rest of the world, been at the head of pretty much every table around the world for the last 80 years. And In one year, this administration has destroyed to some extent all of that, whether you're talking tariffs or Greenland or Venezuela or these new tariffs that they're trying to put in place. ⁓ There's just a, or talking about leaving NATO and now we left the who and regardless of what this administration thinks, we are not going to be the head of the table. at everything anymore as soon as humanly possible, probably for a lot of these countries. How do you see America's foreign policy going forward, knowing that there is a supreme lack of trust in our ability to have a government that is trustworthy in any way, shape or form? That's a, that's a deep question. ⁓ I actually, I was just in, ⁓ I was in Lisbon, Portugal. got invited by the American club in Lisbon to go speak to them. And this was forefront, not just amongst the Americans living abroad, which is kind of the audience, but also the Europeans in the crowd were saying, like, how can we trust the US again? And I do think the hard answer to that is there's going to be a period of contrition between us and the rest of the world. Not an apology, but a somber respect for the violations that were made. However, I think there was just an article, a great article by the Southern Poverty Law Center the other day. I can link it for you guys if you want. reimagining like what American representative democracy could be both home and abroad. And if the failures of the Trump administration in the first term and now in Ukraine, it's a good example, right? Like we failed to react to and arm Ukraine in a way that we should have prior to expansion of the invasion. And then the Biden administration trickled aid in a way that froze the war. And then the Trump administration now has violated so many norms in that conflict that Europe is now arming itself again, very effectively. So there's a moment of opportunity where if you get a good faith foreign policy actor back into the US government in the form of probably another democratic administration, we now face a world with a strong Europe and a strong US allied against the incursions of the Russians or anybody else. I don't think that's a bad thing. So we can take a silver lining out of a bad situation. And having that kind of flexibility or contextual thinking in foreign policy leaders is going to be key to make sure we don't see it any more ground back. But yeah, if you're asking like what the foreign policy of the this country should look like in the future, some contritions of acknowledgement of what went down and then building forward from the new reality that we face rather than trying to recreate the status quo that led us here. Yeah. The way I've always the way I'm the way I'm looking at is even a little bit more on the economic side, especially with the fact that We've had trade deals with many multiple countries and what we're getting is a, we're getting a administration that has shown, or we have a government that has shown that it does not matter what we agreed to at any point when someone can just walk in and go like that and everything that has been agreed to is just gone. And. I think that's where the biggest struggle will be. mean, obviously when we've got money, money does talk, but we're also dealing, as you've said before, with affordability and there are seven businesses can only carry the country so long. And when half of our economy is Nvidia, we should all be a little scared about. Yeah, this is another thing that I think about on the economic side too is ⁓ A lot of American soft power abroad is USAID was a huge part of that. We're not going to die that. But the other part of it is the stability of the US dollar and the reliability of American financial promises. And when we start acting no better than a backroom bookie at a sports bar, then we really start sacrificing long term future potential gain, which we are just giving away to China. Yeah. I want to do a little bit of future casting. So ⁓ let's say You get through the primary, you get through the general election, are, you win, congratulations. January 2nd comes around, you get sworn in as a representative of the seventh or eighth district. And what is the first thing that you do? ⁓ First thing that I do is probably going to be, launch, launch a special investigation into the violations of law by Doge. If we're going to try to rebuild back dignity into the federal service and get our feds either rehired or ⁓ reintegrated into the workforce. It has to start with understanding exactly what went wrong and who did it and making sure they're not allowed back into government again. That's it. That's the first one. But the first legislation that I'm going to sponsor is I intend ⁓ to advocate for campaign finance reform ⁓ and overturning of Citizens United and term limits. There's one thing like when I... I'm new at this, right? I'm a rookie. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm just out there talking to people. And sometimes I wander into more Republican held spaces who are like, hey kid, what are you doing here? You Democrats, you all you blue haired lefties, which that ain't me bro, but fine if you need to this that way. But one thing that I think everybody can connect to is the idea of term limits or age limits, whatever it is. And I don't know exactly at this point in my primary days, like what that policy is going to look like. I just know that 20, 30, 40, 50 years spent as an elected official in the legislature ⁓ is not okay for our government. It prevents churn, it prevents the training of the next generation of leaders. It's a long jam on American democracy. And I think right now, after all this bullshit we're seeing lately, we have a moment where people are more willing to engage with and think creatively about these kinds of legislative pieces where they were not before. I intend to capitalize on that. Yeah. You know, I was just... I hadn't actually thought about it until you said something. ⁓ One of the other things that I think this current administration winning showed us is there is a desire for transparency from our government, especially about how our tax dollars are spent. Now, Doge failed completely at that. This administration has failed completely at that. But there is a reality that I think our administration needs to do better. at being transparent about how, I mean, we've got a Pentagon that has never passed an audit in the last, Why would they? They only have a trillion dollars in the budget. Why do they need an audit? It's fine. Yeah. So I think that's another thing that would probably be really good to consider. think it's shown that there is a lot of people that are frustrated about that. ⁓ So you talked about going, know, when you go into to red spaces and how you get response. In general, obviously there is at least an idea of division, even though, as you said, there are some areas that I think there's overlap. We probably actually agree more than we disagree. What has it been like when you've gone into Republican spaces in general, coming out saying, you know, when they find out you're a Democrat, do people listen or is it kind of just a, you know, talk to the hand kind of thing? It's a mix. It's mostly, most of the former people do listen. I would say they're very confused by me, right? Cause like Marine Corps and I'm a good white clean cut boy. ⁓ They assume that I'm on the Republican team if we're talking politics. And it's funny because a lot of the economic populist ideas that are being advocated rightfully by the Democratic party right now, like Ezra Klein's abundance theory, for example, you know, 30 years ago, that would have been right wing fantasy. But right now within a new context, like the same ideas are being... There's not a lot of like intellectual pedigree in some of these spaces. So when they find out that I'm coming at it from the democratic side, it's this look of confusion, but that's what I'm counting on. Like that's why I got in this race. Cause I think like I am a very progressive Democrat. ⁓ But I am, I can explain it and I can speak the language of these, these groups that are typically ⁓ disinclined to interact with Democrats in general. I've seen it work a couple of times. ⁓ I've had a couple of conversations where like, people told me like, ⁓ you really gave me a Delta on this one. Like, I'm not going to vote for Democrats, but I might vote for you. You know what? If that's, if that's what we need to like break that wall, to like give them a permission structure to come back to sanity and the way they vote again, even once I'll take it. I think that's a, that's a contribution to society. Now that there are also some of the guys that tell me to go fuck myself very, very, very directly, ⁓ which are, which is always frustrating. Like I. I can be silly about it and like, as a, as just as a human being, like I like to argue, I like to be kind of, know, ⁓ snipey about these things, but I quickly learned that like there's, ⁓ if you trigger that cognitive dissonance and somebody who's unwilling to engage with it, it can go really, really dark real quick. ⁓ and it's not constructive for me or for them. And if what I'm trying to do is like, you know, be the responsible statesman type person, I really have to rein that part of myself in. But it's hard when they're just, you know, quoting Russian propaganda that was recycled through OAN. Like it's really, really tough to hold my tongue. Yeah. I think the one positive that we may see from this, and I hope comes from this as a whole, getting out of this idea of identity politics and following someone just because of a letter past their name and not actually spending any time listening to what they stand for or just have conversation in general. Conversation as a whole is... is practically gone in society right now. yeah. And the dialectic is there's not, I would say people are so tired of politics in general, this is left, right, whatever. Everybody's just tired of politics. It was really fun for a while in 2015, 2016 to like be a Trump troll, MAGA kind of guy. I think even the MAGA people right now are pretty horrified by the excesses of this administration and they know there's no moral defense for it. So they are not as inclined to be that sneering, ha ha, know, MAGA for life, ⁓ caricature that they used to be. ⁓ and that's again, that's the opportunity that I'm hoping a candidacy like mine can, can, can, you know, take advantage of. Yeah. if for anyone that has listened this far and heard everything that we've talked about, ⁓ what are one or two things that no matter what you would want to make sure that they come away knowing about you and your campaign. Um, knowing about me personally, like I, the way that I talk right now, like this is who I am. It's not intuitive to some people who don't know the intelligence services or the military, but I blew my entire life up to do this. I cashed out my retirement. I outed myself as an intelligence officer, which is a no-no. So, you know, I, I broke friendships and I walked away from, you know, about 17 years of federal service. I could have coasted to 20 and got my, got my pension, but there's something to be done right now. And if I. As far as the campaign goes, if somebody like me is outing themselves after 17 years of quiet anonymous service undercover, you got to, you should be feeling like this is real. And that's very important that you be paying attention and participating right now for the future of our country. Yeah. If anyone wants to learn more about you or volunteer or, or give to your campaign, where can they find you? So the website is Adam for the number four congress.com or on Instagram or at Adam Dunigan VA8 for now. might have to change that if they redistrict us. ⁓ And then if y'all want to, if anybody of your listeners wants to volunteer and get involved, we actually have a pretty cool team popping up around this. got about 20 volunteers at this point. We all hang out. We get beers in the area. Like it's, it is a fun social vibe and it's probably good for our mental health to know that there's other people like us out there that care and are doing something about it. So even if you don't have a lot of time, even if you don't have a lot of money, anything you can do helps out. And this campaign might even give something as far as reassurance back to you. Yeah. Well, Adam, thank you for sitting down with us and letting us get to know about you and what you hope to do for your district. I appreciate it. I appreciate you, brother. Thank you for having me on. Yeah. And for everyone listening that has gotten this far, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Please like, subscribe, hit all the buttons down below. It makes it possible for me to keep doing what I'm doing, which in this case is trying to talk to as many progressives that are running for office. ⁓ What progressives need is visibility and name recognition more than anything else because they're not taking PAC money. They want accountability. They want to do it right. They want to do it a way that we have been screaming about needing to do things while they're trying to do it. the way so we've got to step up and we've got to do the work to make it possible for them to whether it's dealing with an incumbent that's been there for 20 or 30 years and has a huge war chest or it's or it's the other, someone on the other party and they're trying to flip a seat. They just, need name recognition so they can get in, in the, in the faces of the people in their district. So please watch, share, whether it's my video or their videos, please help them out. ⁓ and when it comes to this podcast, if you don't know about it, this podcast is about having hard conversations when necessary, fighting to break the status quo and the idea that all people, no matter your race, religion, gender, identity, deserve rights, respect, dignity, and safety. Adam, again, thank you very much. And for everyone else, we'll see you. next time on Breaking the Meta. Bye guys. Cheers, brother.