Latest / Drawn of History / Sen. Bernie Sanders _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _635(M4A_128K)

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Sen. Bernie Sanders _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _635(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Today's guest is a senator from the state of Vermont.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Before that, he was a congressman. He was a mayor.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: He's a mittened meme, actually. I'm thankful for his return
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: to the show. Today's guest is Senator Bernie Sanders. And
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I will follow.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: This is an historic hotel.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Leonard Cohen used to spend time in here. Yeah,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: my mom used to play Leonard Cohen for us when
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: we were kids. She liked him, and so she would
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: play his When the Walls Came Down. Remember that?
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and here is Hallelujah.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Here in New York City, there is a... It's called
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: the Youth Choir of New York City. Does that ring
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: any bells? It's kids. Pull them up.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: The Youth Choir of New York City, is that it?
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's beautiful. And among other things, they do a beautiful,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: beautiful rendition of Cone's Hallelujah, which I love very much.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven't been to see them. I would like
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: to go check them out, though. Do they perform pretty often? Mm-hmm.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: What's beautiful about it is the kids from the city,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: often working-class kids, The guy does a fantastic job, and
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: the quality is really wonderful. And we're trying to do something,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: and there it is. God, you can't say a word here.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: It's up in, there it is. Those are the kids,
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: and beautiful, and wonderful. Oh, yeah.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's nice. No, I haven't gone and seen it.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: What did I go? I went to see a Knicks game.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: They haven't won a championship in 53 years.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't even realize that.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm Donnie's mayor. That'll change.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there we go. Huh? That's why, Hey, we'll start
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: maybe getting some more foreign players. Hey, they got some
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: good guys at the Euro step, you know, changed a
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: lot of things. Um, I saw that you were out
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: there on the, uh, on the nurses picket line, the
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: New York nurses.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Yup. Yeah.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. We went the other day too. We had
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: a great time.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. That's a nice crowd. Jesus.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: That's when you were, that was there. Was that?
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's me today.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: There I am.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Who's that handsome guy in the brown coat? Oh, that's me.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Who's that kid with him? Oh, that's the mayor.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, that's Zoran, huh?
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there we were. We went out there the other day.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: We had a good time. We stayed for a few hours,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: walked around, shook some bells, you know.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Got out there. I love nurses. My sister's a nurse.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Where is she a nurse?
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: She's a nurse down in Louisiana.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Good.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: But I figured that if, you know, things start here
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: in New York, a lot of big things start here.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Theo, let me just say something. I really appreciate the
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: work you do and other podcasters do. This is one
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: of the technological revolutions that is really good. Sometimes I
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: go on TV and I'm asked to deal with an
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: issue in seven seconds. I can't deal with it. You
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: can't deal with it, right? Yeah. Takes a little bit
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: of time. So thank you for what you're doing.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, we're trying to learn as
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: we go, too, and it changes a lot. But were
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: you at Mount Sinai? Which one did you go?
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Mount Sinai.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where we went.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll tell you, I was really proud
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: to go there and be alongside Mayor Zoran Mamdani. You know,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: I'm the former chairman of the Health Education Labor Committee.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: And I'll tell you, Theo, I have met with nurses
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: all over this country. I love nurses. It's no great
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: secret that our health care system is broken. Everybody knows that.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: And the people who are keeping it going are, in fact,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: the nurses. You know, they're with you when you're Babies
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: are born. They're with you when you die. They're with
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: you in between. They're at your bedside. They're the backbone
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: of the healthcare system, and I love them. And I'll
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: tell you something. Time and time again, nurses would come
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: into my office, and they'd start talking, and suddenly they'd
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: start crying. And you know what they were crying about?
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: They were crying about the fact that they were unable
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: to do the jobs, to do the work that they
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: were trained and wanted to do, that they didn't have
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: the number of nurses they needed, the staffing ratios that
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: they needed. They broke down. and I was just a
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: couple of years ago, not dissimilar of what's going on
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: in New York City right now, in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: These nurses went on strike. You know why they went
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: on strike? Because they needed help to provide better patient care.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: It wasn't even about money. Right.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: They're just saying, hey, I can't even be a nurse.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: This is my calling in the world, and I can't
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: even do it to a decent potential.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: And it's tough enough. We talked last time about patients
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: being stressed to the gills, not only dealing with their
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: with their physical ailments, but having to deal with the
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: stress of begging for insurance companies to support, just all
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: of that. And now you're going to put the nurses
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: under the same stress.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's pathetic. And I'm sure you know this, the
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: CEOs there are these big, huge houses. One guy is
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: making $ 26 million a year. Another guy I think is
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: making $ 16 million. Another guy making $ 5 million. They're bringing
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: in all these traveling nurses, spending hundreds of millions of dollars,
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: rather than sitting down and negotiating a decent contract with
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: these dedicated nurses. There they are. You got them up there, huh?
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Yep, and I'm grateful. I want to just mention these
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: wonderful CEOs by name today, just so, because look, it's
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: time where we put a name with people who are
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: making certain choices. And so we have Brendan Carr. That's,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I know he's over at Mount Sinai. Brian Donnelly, there
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: he is. Look at that big smile. I'd be smiling
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: too if I just made $ 15 million this year. That's
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Philip O. Ozuwa, who looks like a Guess Who character.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: And Stephen Corwin. From Monopoly?
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: That's alleged. These are the CEO's current, and I think
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: one is just leaving one of his posts, who are,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: these are who nurses are asking for help from. Is
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: that right? And just to be clear, Bernie, what are
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: the nurses asking for?
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: What they're asking for, what they call safe patient, nurse-patient ratios.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: That means if you're a nurse on duty and you
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: have too many patients to take care of, you can't
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: do your job. Yeah. A patient calls out, needs your help,
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: you can't get there. So they want more staffing to
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: be able to provide the quality care that patients deserve.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: And I know in addition to that, I think they
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: wanted health care benefits not to be cut.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Right, for themselves, right?
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: If you think.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: That nurses can't get health care, they can't be sure
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: that they're going to have health care, they're.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Working with the sick. We can't say, hey, we're going
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: to do our best to make sure you don't get sick.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: That's pretty crazy. And the other thing they're worried about,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: and I hope we can discuss this a little bit,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: is AI and robotics. They've raised that issue as well.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Have they really?
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And there was a Dr. Oz, who's head of
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: CMS in Washington right now, was talking the other day.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Let me get it straight. I think it was Alabama,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: rural Alabama, where they're weak on the number of obstetricians
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: that they have. And he was proudly talking about how
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: they have robots now who are providing examinations for pregnant women.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And who's controlling those robots? It's not some pervert at
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: his house, huh?
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Well, but the point is, if you're a patient, do
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: you really want a robot examining you? Right. So, I mean,
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: I think all of this, Theo, adds up to the fact.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: And I'll tell you, I've been all over the country.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: And wherever I go, I talk about this. Whether you're conservative,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: you're moderate, you're progressive, you understand the health care system
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: is broken today. Yeah. We are spending, this is insane.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Do you know how much we spend per capita? Add
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: everything else, right? Medicaid, Medicare, what you pay out of
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: your own pocket. How much do we spend per person
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: on healthcare in the United States of America? Do you know?
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Take a wild and crazy guess.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Per year?
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: No, per person.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Oh. Per person.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Okay. $ 15, 000 per person. Okay. So a family of four spends, theoretically, $ 60, 000. Oh, wow.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: That is double. what any other country on earth is spending.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: You got it? Yeah. You would think that if we
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: are spending, you know, if I buy a $ 100, 000 car,
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: you buy a $ 50, 000 car, my car should be a
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: little bit better than your car, right? And yet, despite
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: all of those expenditures, our system is worse than others.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: We're the only major country not to guarantee healthcare to
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: all people.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: But it's because there's these kind of darker agreements between
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: hospitals and insurance companies, right? And the cost of drugs.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It has to do essentially, look, In this day
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: and age, running a healthcare system is very difficult. Technology changes.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: It ain't easy. I admit that. But what is the
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: goal of a rational healthcare system? It is to say,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: first of all, to answer the fundamental question, is healthcare
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: a human right? What do you think? Should everybody, regardless
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: of income, get healthcare?
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: I believe that based on how much money our country has,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: I think it's wrong not to provide that to people.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: because we waste it in so many other ways.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: Okay, good point. So the issue here is, why is
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: the wealthiest nation on earth, the United States of America,
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: the only major country not to guarantee health care to
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: all people? Okay, that to me is a fundamental issue.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: So today, despite spending so much money, 85 million Americans
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: are uninsured or underinsured. And if Trump gets his way,
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: and throws another 15 million people off of Medicaid, raised
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: that number to roughly 100 million, okay? There are estimates
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: out there that when you have that many people uninsured,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: no insurance, and underinsured means high deductibles, right? So if
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: you've got a high deductible, you may be insured. I've
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: talked to people, I suspect you have, they had deductibles $ 10, 000, $ 15, 000
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: a year, right? So if you don't have any money,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: what the hell, how do you go to the doctor?
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: So you add all that together, people get sick, they
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: can't go to the doctor, some 50,000, 60,000 people die
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: a year in America unnecessarily because they don't get to
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: a doctor on time. That is pretty insane. So in
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: my view, I push very hard to introduce the legislation,
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: what we call Medicare for All, expanding Medicare to cover
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: every man, woman, and child without out-of-pocket expenses. We could
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: do that without spending, to your point, not a nickel
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: more than we're currently spending. Yeah.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: How can we get that move forward, though? Why does
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: this just continue to be this thing, you know? Why
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: does it continue to feel like nobody really wants to
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: take care of us, you know?
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Ah, now you're getting into another issue.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: All right, you want to go there?
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I think we can go to a
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: couple of these places.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: All right, let's do it. All right, look, in one respect,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: the health care system is working extremely well. not for
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: ordinary people, not for you, not for me. It is
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: working very well for the insurance companies who make zillions
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: of dollars in profit, the drug companies who charge us
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. And
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: that's the function of the current healthcare system. Right. Okay.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: So again, you know, running a healthcare system, whether it's
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: in Canada, Europe, wherever it is, it ain't easy and
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: they all make mistakes and they all have problems. But
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: if your goal is, if you and I sit down
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: and say, okay, how do we provide a healthcare to
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: all people, And how do we do it in a
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: cost-effective way, all right? Will we come up with a
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: perfect system? No, but that's our goal. But if we
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: sit here and say, okay, how can we charge the
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and make
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: $ 38 billion next year? How can we deny people the
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: insurance that they paid for, right? The benefits that they
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: paid for, that's a whole other scam. And that's the
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: scam we're working on. It is an effort to make
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: huge profits for the drug companies and the insurance companies.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: And that's why we've got to end this broken system.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: And again, I will tell you, I've been all over
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: this country. Nobody or very few people think this health
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: care system is working. We've got to expand Medicare over
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: a four-year period to cover every man, woman, and child.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: But is there a real way to get there, do
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: you think? Yeah, there is.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Look, the goal is, and then that takes us to
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: another area. You know, you asked the question, why? Why
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: are we? you know, perhaps the only country on earth
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: not to guarantee health care to all people. Why have
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: the Canadian, you're in Canada right now, I live 50
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: miles away from the border there, you get seriously ill,
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: you're in the hospital for a month, you know what
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: the bill is when you come out? Zero.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: And they spend half as much per person on health care.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: And they have good posture too. You've been over there?
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: So the answer has a lot to do with who
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: controls the United States in a corrupt campaign finance system.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: All right. So If I'm the insurance companies and if
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: I'm the drug companies and you're running around and you're
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: campaigning and say, I'm going to cut, as I do,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: we're going to cut prescription drug costs in half. We're
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: going to guarantee health care to all people. What are
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: you going to do? You're going to spend a whole
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: lot of money on candidates to defeat me, right? So
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: you've got a corrupt campaign finance system in which billionaires,
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: in both political parties, by the way, I think Republicans
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: now more than Democrats, but both parties, Spend huge amounts
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: of money. Elon Musk, the richest guy on earth, spent
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: some $ 270 million to elect Donald Trump president. So, you know,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Musk has his own agenda. He wants Trump president. Others, billionaires,
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: have their agenda. That's called a corrupt system. All right?
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: What democracy, in my view, and you can argue with
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: me if you want, is you and I, you're running
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: for office. You want to run against me? Good. What
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: are your ideas? Take them to the people. People like
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: your ideas better than me, you can win. All right?
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: It's not me going out raising money, billions or millions
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: of dollars to defeat you, to lie about you, to
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: put ugly 30-second ads on the air, right? Right. Okay.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: It's what democracy is, a real debate on the issues.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: All right, disagree with me. So what? It's called democracy, right? Okay.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: But increasingly, what politics in America is about are super PACs,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: you know, where if you're a billionaire, you can put,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: that's what Musk does, hundreds of millions of dollars. And again,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: it's not just Musk. Democratic billionaires do the same. Oh, yeah.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: There's the Koch brothers over the years. There's the Adelsons.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: There's all these different huge, just big pockets that are
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: influencing things. Absolutely.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So when these guys control the political process, you're
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: not going to have a government that works for ordinary people.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: And it's not just health care. It's many, many other issues.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: So to my mind, by the way, when we talk
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: about bringing about the necessary changes this country needs, our
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: campaign finance reform and doing away with Citizens United, that
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: terrible Supreme Court decision, top of the list.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Citizens United, bring that decision up.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Citizens United was the Supreme Court decision that said, you're
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: a billionaire, okay, you got it? You have the freedom
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: of speech, First Amendment, to say anything you want about
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders. You want to put ads on the air,
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: you can spend zillions of dollars, freedom of speech, and
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: that's what Citizens United said. And obviously that undermines democracy
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: because it allows billionaires the right to buy elections.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: And can we bring this back to a vote? Like
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: will Mike Johnson bring this back to a vote?
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: No, he likes Citizens United because it works very well
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: for those guys. And I got to tell you, some
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Democrats like it too. But I think the American people,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: you go out and you talk to, again, people all
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: across the political spectrum. They understand you're not a democracy
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: when billionaires buy elections.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, here's the thing. It doesn't even feel like
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: either one of these parties works for anybody anymore. Like,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: if anything, in the past few years, it's really started
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: to feel like, oh, all these guys are working for
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: somebody else. And we're just this other group of people
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: down here because you have like there are politicians online
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: that are yelling at voters for support about stuff. It's
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: like we voted for you. Like you yell upwards, you know,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: like it just I don't know. It just yeah, it
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: feels like a total dead end now. It just feels
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: like it feels like most people just want to be
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: elected now so they can. make a profit somehow themselves.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: It almost feels like a business venture if you want to.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Be a politician. I wouldn't frame it in that way.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: I would, you know, frame it.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: It feels like as a regular person. Sorry, that's how
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: it seems a lot of times.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay. I would say it's kind of cool to
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: be a congressman or a senator.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's super cool.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Get your name in the paper. You get on nice
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: shows like this one and all that stuff. And you
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: have a certain amount of power. Yeah. I mean, that's real.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: And you associate with the rich and the famous, and
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: that's cool, I guess. But, you know, that speaks to
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: where we are as a nation today. And here's, I think,
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: maybe the major point that I want to make. You're
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: living in the richest country in the history of the world. Theoretically,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: at least, that should mean that all of our people
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: have a decent standard of living, right? We should not
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: have people a few blocks from here sleeping out on
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: the street. We should not have people unable to afford
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: health care, kids unable to afford to go to college,
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: people literally unable to feed their families. And yet in
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: America today, and I know this is really an astounding fact,
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: 60% of our people, Theo, are living paycheck to paycheck.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: I grew up in a family. I don't know your background,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: but I grew up in a family that lived paycheck
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: to paycheck. Oh, yeah.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: I knew exactly how much money we had. But no,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: I knew what we had left at the end of
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: each week, and it was in mom's wallet, you know?
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. All right. And so the simple question that we
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: have to ask ourselves is how do we feel? And,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: you know, again, you can disagree with me. You're living
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: in a society today where we have more income and
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: wealth inequality than we've ever had in the history of
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: this country.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: You got the top 1% doing phenomenally well, owning more
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: wealth than the bottom 93%. You got one man, Mr. Musk,
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: one man owning more wealth than the bottom 52% of
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: American households. What do you think?
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Well, I think it's tough. I think there's two ways
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: to look at it. Well, I think, I think it,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: In a bigger scope for me, you have, yes, you
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: have these billionaires. You have these guys that have all
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: of this wealth. It does feel unfair. They used to say, well,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: just because one person has more money doesn't mean that
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: other people have less money. But I don't, just visually,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: it doesn't even start to seem like that's the truth, right? Optically,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: for me, it doesn't seem like that's the truth. Do
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: I think there should be a cap on how much
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: money people could have? I do think that there should be.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: To me, in my heart, it doesn't feel like people
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: need so much money and so much control.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: That's the point. I think most people think, and I believe, look,
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: you go out, you're doing it, you start a business,
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: you're making money, right?
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Congratulations.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: We appreciate that. You make money. Great. Do you really
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: need hundreds of billions of dollars? No. Really?
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: No.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: At that point, these guys, whether it's Zuckerberg or whether
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: it's Bezos, they own their islands and their jet planes
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: and their spaceships and all this crap.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Bunkers.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly. Anyhow. So I don't begrudge people. Come up
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: with a great idea, work hard, make money. God bless you,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: you know. But you don't need billions and billions of
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: dollars when people are struggling to put food on the
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: table or afford health care. So that's one of the
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: issues that concerns me right now. When I talk about
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: fighting oligarchy, you know, I was on a tour.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: All over the country. Oh, yeah, I know you had
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: a tour with AOC. How many cities did you go to?
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: We have been now, I was in New Jersey last night.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: It's the 24th state that I've been in. I think
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: we've done 35 events. Well over 300,000 people have come out. And,
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: you know, I got to tell you, I've been to
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: conservative areas. People of this country are not happy about
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: a situation in which so few people, I mean, really
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: a handful of people have such enormous political and economic power. Yeah. Okay.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: That's not what America is supposed to be about. You
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: got rich and you got poor. Fine. But not so
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: few having so much power over the economy and power
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: of our political systems.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Well, here's what I would think. So, but I wonder if,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know if like we always say, let's tax
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: these people, right? That's what, that's a term a lot
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: of people use. We need to tax them more. Um,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: And maybe so, right? But sometimes with billionaires, I at
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: least look at billionaires as people that are more often
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: than not creating jobs, creating environments where other people have
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: the ability to make money. You have Larry Ellison. You
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: have a lot of people that are Amazon workers, people
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: that work at Oracle, people that work in data. You
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: have Elon Musk. You have a lot of people that
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: work for Tesla or that might work for his Uber company.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: type company if he gets it going. Um, but at
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: least those people are creating jobs. A lot of them now,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: do they still deserve to have that much wealth or
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: hold that much wealth? I don't think so. Um, but,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: but then you also have, there's this argument, like, well,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: let's get them to pay taxes. But then you have
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: things that happen like in Minnesota, like with this, uh, the, the,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: this Somalian fraud, right? Like you have this young man
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: who's been going around Nick Shirley, who's like kind of
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: going door to door, like trick or treating about fraud
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: kind of right. And figuring it out. Um, That almost
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: is like, it's like, why get people to pay taxes?
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Who even cares about paying tax anymore if we're just
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: going to let them slip out.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Of the bottom? But the answer is fraud is disgusting,
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: and especially to steal money from hungry kids. If you
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: have a program to feed hungry kids, you steal that money.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: That is probably as bad as it gets. And I
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: think way back in the early 20s under Biden, they
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: started an investigation that Those people should be severely punished.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: I don't care if you're Somali, if you're green, you're blue,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: whatever you are.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Right, I'm using the term Somali fraud because that's kind
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: of the term people are using.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: But anyhow, that should be punished. That's disgusting behavior. But understand,
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure you do, fraud is not just in
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: a child nutrition program in Minnesota. I deal with this
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: a little bit. We are spending a trillion dollars a
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: year on the military. There is not one major defense
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: contractor that has not been charged with providing fraud to
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: the United States government. Their CEOs make huge amounts of compensation.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: They cannot even undergo an independent audit. They're the only
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: government agencies. So they don't even know what they own.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is so massive. But nobody, nobody, nobody, Republican, Democrat, Independent,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: nobody doubts that there's massive fraud. There's fraud all over
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: the place, unfortunately, in this country, and we've got to
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: do our best to eliminate that. But at the end
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: of the day, I mean, we've got to revitalize, in
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: my view, we've got to revitalize our democracy. We've got
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: to hold elected officials accountable. We've got to run cost-effective,
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: efficient government.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Having been in government a long time, do you think
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: that those things are actually possible? Or at a certain point,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: are you like start to– do you lose hope? Because
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: as a regular person, it feels like– Our political system
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: works against us, and it works for big business interests,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: and that's not even up for debate anymore. It feels
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: like you're lucky to find a couple people who seem semi-human,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: that work in politics, who have some semblance of a connection.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: At least they will talk about things that they feel
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: like they really want to do or will show by
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: some of their actions. But otherwise, it feels pretty hopeless.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Does it feel like that to you more and more?
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Yes and no. Again, I will give you some examples.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: This is my own political point of view. You agree
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: with me, you don't. It's okay. Right here in New
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: York City, we're sitting in New York right now. A
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: year ago, there was a guy named Zoran Mamdani who
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: nobody had ever heard of. He's an assemblyman in New York.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Nobody heard of him. He decided he wanted to run
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: for mayor. He was at 1% in the polls. He
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: was taking on the Democratic establishment and said, who the
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: hell do you think you are? Taking on the Republican establishment,
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: taking on the oligarchs in the city, people, front page
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: New York Times, we're going to spend tens of millions
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: of dollars to defeat this guy. You know what he did?
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Not only, I mean, he's a brilliant guy himself and
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: a very good politician, but he had 90,000 plus people
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: in this city knocking on doors for him. So you
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: ask me, am I optimistic? Can we bring about change?
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: I would say New York City is a pretty good
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: example of what happens when people come. And he said,
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: you know what? I'm going to make this city work
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: for working people, not just the billionaire class.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Amen.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: And he's just been in office for three or four weeks.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: I think he's doing great. But you asked me about
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: my optimism. When I see 90,000 people going out on
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: the streets volunteering for this guy, and he's implementing. He
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: was out. You know, we talked about being on the
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: nurses picket line today. He was there with me standing
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: with the nurses. So, yeah, and I've seen this other
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: great members. You know, media doesn't do a great job,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: but you got dozens of young men and women in
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: the House of Representatives, strong working class members of Congress. So, yeah,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I am in that sense optimistic. On the other hand,
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: you know, Donald Trump worries me very, very much. You remember,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: it's a funny story here. He was inaugurated just about
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: a year ago. And I was there. For whatever reason,
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: I got pushed into the front row.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I fell out of my chair. I was in a
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: chair that broke.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, my chair didn't break. But I was almost
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: as close to Trump as I am to you now.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: And you remember who was behind Trump at his inauguration?
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Who was up there? You had Zuckerberg. You
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: had Elon. You had Bezos.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: You got it. Yeah, and it does another billionaire's. So
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: you ask me where I get pessimistic is, you know,
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: and literally, this is not just saying this, it's true.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: I was thinking, you remember Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg, but
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: he said, Lincoln went to Gettysburg, the scene of this
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: horrible battle during the Civil War, tens of thousands of
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: soldiers killed. And a few days later, Lincoln goes to
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: the battlefield. And he jots down some notes. And basically,
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: I'm paraphrasing. What he says is, you know, these soldiers
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: who are fighting against slavery did not die in vain.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: They died so that we will have a continual government
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: of the people, by the people, and for the people.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: And then I'm looking at what Trump and his inauguration,
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: and I'm seeing these billionaires there, and I'm thinking, this
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: is a government of the billionaires. By the billionaires.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: For the billionaires.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: And that's kind.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Of how it's evolved. I'm not surprised that this is
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: kind of where we've ended up. I don't know if
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: this happened overnight. It doesn't feel like this happened overnight
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: with Trump. It feels like this has happened more and
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: more over time. At least Trump, it feels like to
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: me this is messed up, but at least he brings
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: his billionaires up there and shows them off.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: You're right.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: That is something that's kind of crazy about him. It's
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  Speaker 1: about like, yeah, like how do we stay hopeful, right?
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: How do we stay hopeful when it seems like it
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: feels almost impossible to how do you vote somebody in
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: that would be able to stay in the tide of
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: it all?
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Theo, this is where we've got to take a deep
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: breath and accept our very serious responsibilities as citizens, okay?
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: And you think back, and I don't want to romanticize this,
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: but you think back on American history. And, you know,
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: we read all about this when we were in the
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: third grade, you know. Those were pretty brave guys, George Washington.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: and Jefferson and all those guys taking on the British Empire.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: You know, no one in a million years thought you
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: could defeat the British Empire.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: And they did. And a lot of, thousands died. Thousands
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: of them died. It was a pretty bloody situation. And
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: then you think about the Civil War where very brave
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: people said, you know what, slavery is a moral abomination.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: We're not going to accept it anymore. God knows what
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: that Civil War was about. Hundreds of thousands of people
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: on both sides died. And then you think about, and
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: I think about this, December 7, 1941, the United States
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: was attacked at Pearl Harbor. We were totally unprepared. Do
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: you know that? We were totally unprepared. We had to
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: fight a war against Japan, a war against Hitler in Europe, right?
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Totally unprepared. And yet the country came together. You know,
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: instead of building cars, they built tanks and planes. Literally
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: in two or three years, we had put the Nazis
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: on the defensive. The war was won. So what I'm
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: saying is this is perhaps the most difficult moment in
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: my view in modern American history. And it's because Trump
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: is an authoritarian who happens not to believe in democracy.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: And I think he's corrupt. And it's tough. But we
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: have won great battles in the past, and I believe
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: if we do not allow our people to become divided up,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: we will win this as well. And not only defeat Trumpism,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: which I worked very hard to do, but also create
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: the kind of nation that we can become. Health care
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: is a human right. You know what? If you have
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: some kids, children, they have a right to get all
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: the education they need. We are not some poor third
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: world country. Right.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: All right. So we have got to have a vision
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: of where we want to go as a nation. And
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: I think if we fight for that vision, if we
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: bring people together, we can succeed.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: When you speak with guys like Mamdani, did you have
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: any suggestions for him? Did you give him any advice?
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Well, actually, he followed my political career pretty closely. He
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: studied what I did as mayor of Burlington back in
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: the 80s, the campaign that I ran. Yeah, so we
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: chat every now and then. I am extraordinarily impressed by
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: his energy, his intelligence. He has a really good persona.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: He's out there with the people, and I think he's
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: going to do a really great job for the city
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: of New York.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Do you feel like the Democratic Party kind of takes
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: him seriously as a future candidate for elections or for
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: presidential elections?
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Now you are raising a sensitive issue.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Is it a sensitive issue? Sensitive issue, sure it is.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: But yeah, do they look at him as a one-off,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: like an outsider?
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: No, look. What does it mean to be the establishment?
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: The establishment means in a corrupt political system. If you're
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: the establishment, what you do is you leave this, you
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: get on the phone, and you talk to your billionaire
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: friends and say, look, I'm setting up a super PAC.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: I want your help to win the congressional race in
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Arizona and California. I want you to put in $ 30
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: million each, OK? I'll have $ 300 million. 10 of you
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: put $ 300 million. I get the ads going next week.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: We're in business, right?
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: That's crazy, yeah.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: That's the way the system works. All right. And every
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: now and then you have somebody like Mamdani who comes
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: along and says, I don't want your money. Not only
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: do I not want your money, we're going to take
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: you bastards on. Okay? Do they want to? No. So
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Party right now is kind of split. I
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: am an independent, to be honest with you. I'm the
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: longest serving independent. I caucus with the Democrats, but I'm
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: an independent. Proud of it.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: They get really independent too when it's time to put
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: you on the ballot too, I noticed.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: That's fair.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, so I work with people like Alexandria
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal and Ro Khanna and a bunch
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: of other people. And we are trying to move the
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: Democratic Party to be a party that stands with working
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: class Americans and has the courage to take on powerful
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: special interests. Now, there's another faction of the Democratic Party that,
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: you know, doesn't like Trump for, I think, a lot
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: of right reasons. I agree with him. But basically cuddles
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: up to the moneyed interests. And that's the vision that
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: we have. Mamdani is part of the movement that I've
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: helped try to build, Alexandria as well, and others, many,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: many others. So that's kind of the split that we're
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: seeing within the Democratic Party.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Got it. Do you feel like you've been in politics
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: for a long time and you're growing in to be
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: an adult now? In your years?
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: By an adult. My grandchildren will tell you I'm not,
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: but I don't know.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: But I just mean, do you feel like at some point, like,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: it's time to start a new party, like, more than ever? Like,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: do you feel that? You know? Because all you, I mean,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: you have guys like, like, you talk about guys like
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Ro Khanna. People are inspired by him. Like, you know, like,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I got to sit down with him. I like a
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: lot of things he has to say.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: He's a good guy.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: An internet bill of rights. I feel like he has, like,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: you know, he's a forward thinker. Yes, he is.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: Smart guy.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And so I feel like if you got a
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: band of people, it's not that hard to find the
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: people that people love.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: Here's your problem. Good.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Have I thought about it? Yeah, like for about 400 years.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: That's how you thought about it? All right.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: But here is the reality that I have to deal
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: with every day. In my view, the Republican Party, which
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: used to be a conservative party, a small government type party,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: has become under Trump kind of a right-wing extremist party.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: There are some exceptions to be sure, but that's kind
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: of where it is. Democratic Party, as I mentioned to you,
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: their establishment more or less wants to protect the status quo,
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: and then there are those of us who want to
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: bring about fundamental changes in the economic and political life
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: of the country. So that's where you are. Now, starting
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: the third party is something, when I was mayor of
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: the city of Burlington, in a sense, we did. I
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: defeated a Democratic mayor. Yeah. And so we had Republicans,
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: we had the Democrats.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: That must have felt awesome, was it?
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: It felt pretty good. a guy who'd been mayor for
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: 10 years and nobody thought we could win. We won
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: by 10 votes.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: And by the way, I say that to people, if
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: you think it's hard, you could do it. We did it.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: All right. That was a long time ago. And we
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: started kind of unofficially. We called it Independent Party of sorts.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: So it can be done. And there are strong independents
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: today running for office who have a chance to win.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: But you ask about starting a party within today's political climate,
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: it is very hard. For example, you want to start
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: a party in many states, you're going to have to
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: get enormous numbers of signatures in every county in the
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: state to even get on the ballot because the two-party
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: system does not want you on the ballot.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Okay? And you likely don't have a lot of money
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: to do all that stuff. So it ain't easy, but
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: there are people who are thinking about it right now
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: where my energy is. is to transform the Democratic Party.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: You know, when many years ago on the Franklin Delano
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Roosevelt and the Harry Truman, the Democratic Party was considered
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: to be the party of the American working class. Unfortunately,
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: that has changed over the years. I want, once again,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: to have a Democratic Party which has the guts to
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: stand up to the billionaire class and create an economy
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: that works for everybody and not just the very rich.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: You know, we hear a lot about the... you know,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: we've interviewed some of these tech CEOs and billionaires really. Um,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: and they talk about this kind of a universal basic income, right?
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: But it's sort of feels like it's led by the
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: tech industry. And if that gets created, that's not the
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: same thing as one that's led. It feels like by
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: the government. Does that make sense to you? Because one
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: that's subsidized by the government is more like, um, it
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: doesn't feel as controlled. Uh, well, I guess it does.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: It just feels like controlled by two different groups.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: Again, What I want to see, and I suspect you
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: want to see, is you want to see, let's not
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: use the word, the government is not Tesla Corporation. The
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: government theoretically in a democratic society is you, right? And
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: to some degree, you know, you don't like people, you
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: can get rid of them, right? And our job is
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: to create a more democratic, with a small d, not
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: a big d, a small d, where government is responsive
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: to the people. But I want to say a word
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: on the issue that you just raised. I have, over
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: the last six months, become very, very concerned about AI
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: and robotics. And there are a lot of reasons why.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: Number one, the easiest, I think, most apparent reason is
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: what these data centers– I don't know. Are you following
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: these data centers?
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah, what are the
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: side effects? They're taking over, like they're absorbing water in
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of communities. I know they just built one
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: in Louisiana near, like, Basque in Louisiana. Yeah, and they're
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: not even going to end up keeping that many jobs
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: for people once they're open.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: There will be a decent number of construction jobs.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Right, but after that, it's not going to be many.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: Right, to run the place like almost nobody.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Security guards, basically.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly. And the result of that is it drains,
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: as you've just said, scarce, in some cases, water resources. And...
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: It raises electric bills. Okay, so that's number one. Number two,
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: to me, even the big issue. Let me quote. I
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: wrote this down here. Elon Musk, our good friend, right? Musk, now,
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: when you understand, to understand AI and robotics, understand that
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: the very, a handful of the very richest people on
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: earth are investing hundreds of billions of dollars, okay? That's Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, Mr. Ellison, Mr. Gates,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: and others.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: These are the richest guys on Earth. Now, why are
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: they doing it? Do you think they're doing it to
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: stay up nights and they're staying up nights worrying about
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: working people? Do you think they're investing hundreds of billions
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: of dollars to say, how do we make this world
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: a better place for working people? Between you and me,
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. these guys have huge money, but
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: getting back to the point you made earlier, you know,
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: it's not enough that they're worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: They even want more and more wealth and more and
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: more power. Okay. So let's talk about what are the
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: implications of AI and robotics? Okay.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: Well, they're going to take away jobs, so then people
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: won't have purpose.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: You got it. All right, good. You hit the nail
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: on the head. Let's start off in that one. And
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: now the answer is nobody knows exactly. All right. No
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: one can predict what happens tomorrow, next year, five years.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: This is what Elon Musk, leader of this whole effort, says, quote,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: I'm quoting Mr. Musk, quote, AI and robots will replace
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: all jobs. Working will be optional. End of quote. And
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: then he later said, yeah, you want to do a
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: garden in the backyard for a hobby? That's great, but
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: you don't need to do that. Bill Gates, worth a
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: few hundred billion, heavily invested in this, Microsoft. Humans, quote,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: won't be needed for most things. End of quote. Dario Amodi,
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: head of Anthropic, quote, half of all entry-level jobs will disappear.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: And there are other estimates out there that we're talking
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: about over a period of years. Nobody knows exactly when
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: tens of millions of jobs in the next decade disappearing.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: So you tell me, what happens when tens of millions
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: of jobs that people now make an income from disappear?
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: What happens to those people?
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I think there's some of what I've heard is
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: that some of these same companies would then offer some share.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: It's a vague terminology a lot of times of a
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: universal basic income token or something. Really?
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: No kidding.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: And how much are you getting?
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: I have no idea.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: And who's going to determine that?
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: I have no idea, dude. It sounds like you get
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: like one 11th of a Rubik's cube every two weeks
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: or something. But also- I think if you could get
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: to a place where it was like that and people
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: did feel a sense of some sense of purpose or
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: peace or part of something, again, it could be. Good.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: There's a chance it could be something beautiful.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: There's a chance. All right.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: Good point. I agree with you.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: But my questions would be, do we just end up
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: working for these companies that are paying us this UBI?
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: What's the psychological effects of it, right? Like what's the
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: long-term effects of it? And then do we still have
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: a sense of individuality if we don't have exactly anything
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: to do, you know? Or do we just turn into
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: those kids from WALL-E? Can you bring that kid up? Yeah,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: there you go. Yeah, like a young Bert Kreischer kind
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: of there.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: All right, but then what we need to do is
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: to take a deep breath because this thing is moving
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: really fast. I don't know. Have you seen some of
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: these robots on the Internet?
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, unfortunately. Some sites I shouldn't have been on, Bernie,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: to be honest with you, but yes.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: All right. I mean, they are moving very, very rapidly.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a couple, yeah. The ones from Atlanta are for sure,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you that.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: And, you know, in Amazon, I think half of the
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: workers have, I'm not sure about this, I think half
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: have already been replaced.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, especially if you start thinking that Waymo cars
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: are going to pick you up. It's just like, what
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: are people, there's going to be a really tough, does
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: anybody have a plan for the first two years of
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: this thing?
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: You got it. Okay. You're hitting the nail on the
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: head here. The point is, this thing is moving at
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: revolutionary speed. And I can tell you absolutely and positively,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: as a member of the United States Senate, that Congress
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: is in no way prepared to to deal with this.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: You know, the United States got attacked tomorrow by some enemy.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: You know, we got a large military, dah, dah, dah, dah.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: They know what to do. Ain't nobody been thinking about
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: how to respond to this extraordinary monumental change that's hitting
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: the America. So I have proposed, and I get criticized
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: for this every day, a moratorium on data centers. Why
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: am I doing that? Well, number one, I want to
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: protect people's communities. That's number one. Electric rails, water, and
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: all that. But also, I got to say, got to
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: take a deep breath. Your point, what the hell is happening?
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Are we prepared if tens of millions of people lose
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: their jobs in the next decade? All right. What happens?
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: How do they stay alive? So the economics is one thing,
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: but I want to take it a step further. And
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: this is, now you're in the crazy world, okay? This
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: is science fiction, except it ain't science fiction.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're here.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: That's right. We're here. Okay. So you understand this AI now,
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: you know what you know. based on what you've read,
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: what you've seen, your life experience, right? Mm-hmm. Me the same.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Every human being the same. These AIs have absorbed all knowledge.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Every book that's been written, every mathematical formula, every physics proposition,
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: they got it. That's what they got. And... What worries
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: not just me, and this is, do you remember, what
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: was it, 2001, the movie? Do you ever see that movie? Oh, yeah,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: Space Odyssey?
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Space Odyssey.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. All right. And you remember, and this was done
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: many years ago, Hal is the computer that runs the spaceship.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: And one day the guy says, Hal, I'd like you
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: to do this. And Hal says, well, sorry, I'm not
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: going to do it. Rebellion, okay? Everyone's, oh, really? You know,
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: big joke, funny. I had a public meeting in Georgetown
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: a few months ago with a guy named Jeffrey Hinton,
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: a really nice guy.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the godfather of AI, right?
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: Right. He's the guy. He's been studying the issue. Alleged, yeah.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: He's been studying the issue for decades. He got a
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: Nobel Prize in physics. It's a big deal.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: There he is right there. I've heard a couple of
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: his speeches.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is what he says. He says there
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: is no question in his mind that at some point,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: sooner than later, AI will be smarter than human beings.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: And it is not science fiction to worry about whether
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: or not AI is going to communicate with each other
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: in a language that people don't know. Right. Ain't going
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: to be English. And that they may see the human
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: race as an impediment to their progress. Okay? You with me? Mm-hmm.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: All right. That's the doomsday scenario.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: So that the computer's like, God, these people are slowing
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: us down.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: You got it. Okay. Now, again, you know, some people...
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think nobody thinks that that is crazy anymore.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Some people say, well, you know, it's kind of unlikely,
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: maybe five to one, maybe 10 to one, but it
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: is incredibly risky and they don't have the safeguards to
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: protect us. All right. Now, let me give you something
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: that I am seeing today and you're seeing, and that
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: is we are living in a country with a lot
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: of emotional distress, okay, for a variety of reasons. A
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: lot of young people are turning to AI for emotional companionship, okay?
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: I broke up with my girlfriend.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's ridiculous.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, and, you know, what do I do? Or, you know,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: my mom is sick, da-da-da-da-da-da. So we're seeing people not
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: relating to other human beings, but relating to AI. What
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: is the long-term implications of that? I mentioned earlier that
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: robots are now treating patients. Musk talks about creating millions
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: of robots in the next few years through Tesla.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's Orwellian at some point. It's this very thing
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: where it's like, here's my question, would we even notice
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: the day when we switch over from thinking that we
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: have control and we are making choices for ourselves to
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: the day where we are just following along what the
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: computer says? Do you think we would notice?
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: Maybe not, because they would create the environment. Dang, Bernie!
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: It's pretty crazy stuff.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: And then you got even things like warfare, okay? You know,
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: right now, to some degree at least, certainly not in
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: the Ukraine or in Gaza, but to some degree, political
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: leaders are constrained about going to war because they don't
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: want to be telling their parents of their young men
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: and women who died in war, right?
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Well, every week there seems like a new place that
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: we're trying to attack or bully or take control of.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: We'll get to that one in a minute. But generally...
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: What happens? What happens now? If I'm president of the
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: United States, I don't have to send your kids off
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: to war. I send robots off to war. What does
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: that mean in terms of far-right? Am I going to
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: go invading every country in the world? I don't have
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: to tell any parent that their kid was lost, right?
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: You could sit up at night in your White House
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: or whatever and just use a remote control.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: You got it. And no loss of life. Right. So
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: what does this mean?
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: Not here, not for us anyway.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: Right, right, exactly. So what does this mean about international instability?
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: It's incredible.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: Well, there's going to be not much communication anymore if
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: someone doesn't know if a drone just showed up in
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: the middle of the night and did a bunch of
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: horrible things to their country.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: You got it. All right. So all that I'm saying,
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: and I think this stuff is moving very, very quickly.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: It is being pushed by the wealthiest people in the
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: world who, in my view, could care less about ordinary
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: people who want more wealth and more power. Now, they
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: deny all that stuff. That's my view. I think we've
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: got to slow it down and ask the question that
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: you asked. All right. If AI can do some good
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: medical diagnoses, do some good blood testing, is that a
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: good thing? It is a good thing. If you're working
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: in a crap job in a factory, right, and AI
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: can increase worker productivity so you could work 20 hours
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: a week rather than 40 hours a week, is that
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: a good thing? I think it is, et cetera, et cetera.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: If the company then shares some of the profits that
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: the company is making with the workers.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: So that's the issue. It's a very simple proposition. Who
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: is AI and robotics going to work for? Does it
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: work to improve human life? Or does it work to
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: make the billionaires even richer? That's the question that we've
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: got to focus on. Yeah.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely getting in. It's definitely, yeah.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: And I would urge you on the show, keep talking
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: about it. Bring knowledgeable people on. You know, I have
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: my views. Other people have different views. But I'll tell you,
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: this is monumental stuff that we are unprepared for. We
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: need to discuss it a lot.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: Well, it feels like, I mean, it feels like we're
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: not going to be, I don't know. It starts to
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: feel a little bit hopeless that we're not going to
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: have things that could change it down the line. Or
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: it starts to feel like with AI stuff that we're
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: getting there too late. But also with AI, it starts
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: to feel like, remember the internet? Remember Y2K? People thought
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: it was going to be crazy or everybody was going
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: to start, everything was going to disappear, that a website
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: name was going to be the biggest thing. And that
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: never amounted really to anything. Right.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: So the answer is, we don't know.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: We don't know.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's fair enough. So I'm not, you know,
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: I'm telling you what my fears are.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: You know, 100%, and I think those are a lot
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: of people's fears, you know?
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: And you know what? They can put up an AI
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: figure that looks exactly like you. Yeah. That sounds exactly
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: like you, that is saying something you have never said.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: That's already been done to me. Yeah. Okay? And it
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: can be done pretty easily, which raises, you know, come
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: in election time, you're going to see somebody, wow, why
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: are they saying that? Can't vote for that guy. Turns
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: out to be a total fraud, right? Yeah.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Do you feel like it's a time where we just
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: need to be in the streets more than ever, where
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: people need to be revolting? Do you think it takes
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: a revolution to change? And like, what's really going to change?
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't seem like voting is going to get
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: us there. Now, I do like the idea that you
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: have a guy like Mamdani that inspires you and makes
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: you feel hope and you feel like it's different. And
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: he's against an establishment, even if you feel it feels
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: like it's a local one, whatever that is, that he
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: feels like it's different.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: I agree. That is exciting. That is exhilarating. But is
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: that is a guy like that is like a Tom
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: Sawyer like him. Can he go through all the rapids
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: of the, like, dirty Mississippi that is fucking politics and
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: get us to somewhere new?
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: Mandani, he's not a savior. He's going to be a
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: good mayor. We need a hundred Mandanis. We need what
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: I call a political revolution, and that is, you know,
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: what the establishment does. You know, they're very greedy people.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: They could care less about ordinary people. They want more
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: wealth and power, but the ugliest thing that they do is,
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: is through the media that they own, et cetera, et cetera,
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: is they tell people that they are powerless and they
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: have no power. And the answer is when people are
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: organized and stand together, they do have power. And that's
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: what we're trying to do all over this country, bring people,
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: not allow Trump and his friends, I don't care if
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: you're black, you're white, you're gay, you're straight, who cares?
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: You're Muslim, you're Jewish, whatever you may be. Let's stand
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: together because, again, I've been all over this country. People
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: understand that health care is a They want a good
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: education system. They don't think they should be 1% owning
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: more wealth than the bottom 93%. They're concerned about climate change.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: They don't want this country involved in endless wars. Are
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: there disagreements on abortion and other issues? There are. But
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: by and large, you'd be surprised. I was in, a
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: few months ago, I went to Mingo County, West Virginia.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: You know where that is?
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know where it is. I've spent some time
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: in West Virginia, though. I like it.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love West Virginia. It's a beautiful state. It's
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: a poor state. I went to the county, you know,
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Trump won West Virginia by over 70% of the vote, okay?
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: I went to the county where he did the best.
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: He got 74% of the vote. And I went to
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: that county precisely because he got 74%. I want to
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: hear what people are thinking about it. Walk into a meeting,
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: wasn't the largest rally we ever did, four or 500
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: people in the middle of nowhere. This is nowhere.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: Well, that's it.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: There's a picture of it.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: A lot of people thought you were probably giving away
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: free Ben and Jerry's out there, too.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: Nope. And there it is.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: There's a picture of the— Oh, that's nice.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a big gym there. And it turns out this
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: is Trump country. He's a decent people. They're worried about
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: their kids. A veteran up there worried about the needs
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: of veterans. You know, mom worried about a baby. So
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying, you know, Vermont's a liberal state, West
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: Virginia's a conservative state. I'm not saying that there aren't
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: differences of opinion.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: There are.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. But you'd be surprised. This is the good news,
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: that as Americans, we share a lot of common values.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: We know that so many people fought and died for democracy.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: What does democracy mean? It means that just because I'm
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: the president, I don't have the right to shut you up.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: I don't have the right to politically prosecute you because
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: you're against me. You disagree with me? Fine. I'll argue
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: with you. You beat me in an election? Fine. I'm unhappy.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: That's the way life goes, right? All right. See, the
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: American people don't want a few billion, few people, billionaires
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: controlling the economy. They don't want an authoritarian society. They
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: want an economy that works for all. Those are the
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: common threads, I think, that we can build a political
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: movement around.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't think people care if they're– I think
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: people less and less even associate with a party anymore.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: I think that's happened in the past two years. You're right.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: To me, it feels like it's happened more than ever.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: It feels like how do– like if you even look
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: at like the fraud case like in Minneapolis, and I
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: know it's like we don't know all the information about it,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: but it's like– the fact that a vigilante journalist type
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: of kid, you know, this Nick Shirley kid has to
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: go door to door and that he's even bringing that,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: like whether or not everything he's saying is true or factual,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: My understanding on that issue. And again, I haven't studied it.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: I'm the Senator from Vermont, but I think there was
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: massive fraud in terms of child nutrition. Okay. That's absolutely right.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: I believe that was investigated on the, on the Biden's
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: attorney general in In 2021, actually, I believe dozens of
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: people were arrested. So it is a real issue. And
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: it's ugly and it's disgusting. It's, again, stealing money from
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: hungry children. I don't know that you could do worse
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: than that. But this child care thing, I think, is
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: largely exaggerated. I don't think, you know, I think, you know,
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: you could take a camera and go someplace and the
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: child care center is closed or something. Oh, nobody's there.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: I don't think the childcare is an issue. The nutrition
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: issue is real.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, yeah, I agree. I think there's, well,
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: I agree that there's some parts of it that it's like,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: it's tough to know. And if you just see a clip,
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: it's tough to know what the full reality is.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: I agree. But the thing to me, well, there's two things.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: One is that we're getting to a place where vigilante journalism,
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: where somebody hitting the streets, knocking on doors, like you're saying,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: whether it's to get somebody to vote, to get somebody
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: to open their ideas to a new thought, to make
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: sure that something that their tax dollars is going towards
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: is going to, like that is becoming more important than ever.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: And I think that's going to start happening more than ever.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: But two, that it's like, that why didn't our God, why, like,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: it feels, it makes us feel as regular people, like, Dude,
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: we can't even trust that our government's going to figure
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: this out for us, that there's money just falling out
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: of the bottles here?
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: Look, the answer is yes.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: And then that makes people not care about either party.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, all right, but let's put this thing in context. Okay.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: The answer is what you're saying is true, period. Okay?
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: And I'm not yelling at you about it.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: I know, I know, I know.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, good.
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: All right, but context. You've got 340 million people in
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: this country. Guess what? A lot of them are dishonest.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: There are politicians who are dishonest. There are business people
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: who are dishonest. There are media people who are dishonest.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: That is the reality. I mentioned to you before, we
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: spend a trillion dollars a year on the military. Every
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: single major defense contractor has been involved in fraud. That's
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: what they do. The insurance companies, every day, they're ripping
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: off people. Drug companies, lying every single day. You got
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: fossil fuel companies saying, oh, carbon emissions don't cause climate change. Total,
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: absolute lie. You got the tobacco companies. Oh, you can
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: smoke nine packs a day. Ain't going to cause you cancer.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: So look, fraud exists. We got to fight it wherever
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: we can, in government, in the private sector. No argument.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: And you're right. When people see it in government, it
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: discourages them. But you got to put it in a
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: broader context. You have, for example, a social security system.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: 99 plus percent of the checks that go out go
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: out to people who need them.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: You know, so all that I'm saying is when you're
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: dealing with hundreds of millions of people, yeah, you can
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: find an aberration. You can find fraud, put it into context.
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: Got it. Understood.
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  Speaker 1: at BetterHelp.com slash Theo. That's betterhelp.com slash T-H-E-O. One thing
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  Speaker 1: that's really kind of changed a lot of people's, like
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  Speaker 1: young people's opinions too, I think is Trump's relationship and
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: our funding of Israel, especially during like the Gaza conflict, right?
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: It made, it put, it was like one of the
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: first times in my life where you got to see,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: you know, you saw children getting killed. You saw a
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: lot of And I know that there was there's conflict
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: between those Palestine and Israel and those October 7th. I
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: know that I know the history of it. But it
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: felt like Trump like just sort of went with Netanyahu
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: on whatever was he wanted to do there. And it
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: felt also like as a regular American, like we were
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: supposed to be the ones to go help in some instance.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of young people are kind of
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: discouraged about our relationship with Israel and what does that mean,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: especially with AIPAC and influencing our elections and stuff like that.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: Let me just say a word on that because it's
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: an issue I've been deeply involved in. On October 7th,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: Hamas committed a real atrocity. I mean, they went in,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: they invaded Israel, they killed, what was it, 1,200 men, women,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: and children, a lot of kids, committed sexual abuse, et cetera. Disgusting.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: They were a terrorist organization. Israel had a right to respond.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: like any government, you know, that's attacked. But Israel did
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: not have the right to go to war against the
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: entire Palestinian people. There are 2.2 million people in Gaza.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: That's not a lot of people, right? There are 9
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: million people in New York City or 8.5 million people.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: That's all there are, and they're poor people. Over the
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: last several years, Israel has killed over 70,000, mostly women, children,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: and the elderly. It has injured, I think, 160,000 or
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: even more than that. So over 10% of the population
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: has been killed or wounded. Again, orphaned children, the elderly.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: Israel stopped humanitarian aid coming in so that children were
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: starving to death in violation of all international law. And
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: the United States, under Biden and under Trump, continued to
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: fund a guy who I consider to be a war criminal. Okay,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: war is a disgusting business.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: Well, the ICC voted him over. Didn't the ICC say
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: he was a war criminal?
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, they did.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: Except for America.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So look, war is a disgusting business. But out
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: of World War II, you remember the Geneva Conventions? What
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: they said is, look, war is disgusting, but you don't
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: starve children in a war. You want to kill an enemy,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: you kill an enemy. It's this horrible business. We want
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: to eliminate war. But there are rules of war, engagement.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: Starving children is under any definition. And that's what happened,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: bombing all of the entire, people don't realize this, not
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: only killing people, virtually every medical facility has been bombed,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: schools have been bombed, water systems, waste water, the place
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: has been laid desolate. Those are war crimes. And I
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: did my best, and with some success, I managed to
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: turn around, it started, the war started, almost everybody would say, oh,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: you know, Israel, we're going to support Israel, Netanyahu, that
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: has changed. And your point is very important that a
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: lot of the impetus for those changes in Congress came
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: from young people and not just, you know, people on
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: the left. You got conservative Republican kids who are saying,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: you know what, not a great idea to fund Netanyahu.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. How much control do you feel like, like what
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: is that relationship with Israel like? Because I think it
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: seems that because of some of the atrocities, it makes
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of Americans question, why we fund Israel, why
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: do we give money to Israel?
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: And the answer is getting back to a corrupt campaign
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: finance system. If you check the record, and again, it's
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: not just AIPAC. It is the crypto industry. It is
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: the insurance companies. It is the drug companies. But AIPAC
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: is a significant funder of, I would imagine, hundreds of
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: members of Congress. So it's customary. You're there. We'll send
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: you a check for $ 10, 000. If you're a leader, we
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: may make it over a period of years, hundreds of
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: thousands of dollars. You're in the club. You're going to
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: be pro-Israel. But having said that, we're seeing, for all
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: the reasons that you have suggested, we're seeing more and
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: more people saying, AIPAC, thank you. I don't want your money, actually,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: because the people in my district are not happy with
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: what Netanyahu is doing. So I think we're turning that
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: around a little bit. But to my mind, I have
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: long advocated Not another bloody nickel to go to the
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: Netanyahu government. But it's not just Netanyahu. Switch gear a
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: little bit. In that part of the world, you got
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia. You know who runs Saudi Arabia? You got
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: a guy named Mohammed bin Salman. Okay. Remember Mohammed? According
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: to American intelligence, Mohammed killed.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: Right here. Yeah, they call him Pizza Hut Head.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: There was a guy named Jamal Khashoggi. Does that mean
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: anything to you? Yeah. Remember him?
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: He was a reporter that got killed.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: He was a Washington. There he is.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: That was under his rule, right?
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: That's right. So what the intelligence agency said, that the
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: leader of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Mohammed bin Salman, murdered. This guy, Khashoggi,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: went into an embassy someplace. Was it Turkey or somewhere?
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know where it was. Walked into an embassy,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: came back, carved up, and put into a suitcase.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: Dismembered. He murdered him. And yet, when Ben Solomon came
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: to the United States, do you remember a few months ago?
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: White House rolled out the red carpet. We had the
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: Marines there welcoming him. Why was that? Why does a
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: guy who the American intelligence says is a murderer, a guy,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: by the way, who runs the country, you try to
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: protest his rule?
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Can't even do it, huh?
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: Good luck to you. Thousands of people are in jail.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: They execute people. There's no dissent.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: Even when Netanyahu came and he pulled his chair out
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: for him, remember that? That's the kind of thing to people,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: to regular people, it's like, what are we doing? It
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: feels like our intelligence agency does not work for us.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: It's not a question of intelligence. They did work. Why
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: is it that Musk is investing huge amounts of money
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: in Saudi Arabia? Why is it that Trump loves this guy?
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: Why is it that Saudi Arabia is now allowing a
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: Trump family to build, I don't know what it is, resorts,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: golf courses, whatever the hell they do there. Okay. Why
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: is that? And the answer is, and this will upset
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: some people, it is my view, that is the kind
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: of government that Trump likes. It is an authoritarian government.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: They don't tolerate dissent. It is run by the, that
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: family happens to be the wealthiest family.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: In the world. Bin Salman. Bin Salman.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They are, I think, combined, not, you know, they're
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: probably richer than Musk.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: And those, and meanwhile, we are attacking Europe every day.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: You know, we're going to invade Greenland because Trump didn't
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: get a prize or something.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's really crazy.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: That is really crazy.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, for a second, it is. It's so crazy sometimes.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: You got to laugh at it.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: You have to laugh at it. It's like we've had
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: police officers on and they say, sometimes, you know, there'll
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: be murders inside. There'll be victims. People have been shot
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: and murdered, horrible things. And you'll see us in the
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: front yard laughing. And it's like, because sometimes you have to.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: You have to step outside of the absurdity and laugh
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: for a second.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: All that I'm saying, and this ties into a whole
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: longer discussion, but it used to be that the United
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: States was a strong advocate of democracy. We became a
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: model for countries all over the world saying we would
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: like to be like the United States. Our Constitution, our
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence was an inspiration to
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: a lot of people. And now you've got the President
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: of the United States having his best friend, a dictator
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: in Saudi Arabia, supporting a war criminal in Israel, Mr. Netanyahu,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. And by the way, going to war,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: if you like, hopefully not literally, figuratively at least, with Europe.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: Why is that? Europe is a democratic government. Some are conservative,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: some are progressive, but they are elected by the people.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: Trump does not like democracy. So that worries me very,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: very much. All right, maybe one or two more questions
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: if we could.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, great. That sounds good. Recently with the ICE raids
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: that have happened in Minnesota, and they're happening everywhere, right?
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's become a big thing. And for me,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of it is in response to, you know,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: there was such a border policy that was allowing a
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: lot of extra people here, right? Extra people that were
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: not meeting up with their probation officer, not probation officers,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: but their attendance officers at times, that sort of situation, right?
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: So it resulted, it seems like in this situation, we
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: had to hire a lot of extra ICE agents, some
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: of them even unqualified. Anyway, it's left us in a
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: unique place in America right now, but also just another
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: place where People in the streets are having to figure
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: things out.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: And we are all the ones fighting about it online.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: Let me briefly tell you my view. People agree with
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: me or not agree with me. I agree with you
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: that our border security was weak. Okay? There is no excuse.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: All right?
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: My dad came from Poland. You know, other people's parents
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: came from all over the world. All right? You come
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: to it. There are reasons why people have kind of
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: tried to slip into the United States. 99% of the
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: times it's poverty. It's violence, drug violence in wherever it is, Mexico, Guatemala,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: or whatever. All right, but that's illegal, and it should
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: be prohibited. We need borders, strong borders. We need an
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: immigration process. In my view, okay, that's number one. Number two,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: we have between 10 and 14 million undocumented people in
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: this country right now. No one knows exactly. All right,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: but the vast majority of those people work hard, and
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: obey American law right now. During COVID, by the way,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: those were the people who were working in the meatpacking plants.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: Those are the people who got a lot of the virus.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: Those are the people who died. They kept the economy
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: going in many respects.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: In my view, and I think what most Americans agree with,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: if you have lived in this, even if you came
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: across the border illegally, but if you have obeyed the
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: rules of America, you haven't committed crimes, you're working hard,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: you're raising your family, you need a path towards citizenship
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: as part of comprehensive immigration reform. And by the way,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: given the fact that we have worker shortages all over
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: this country, we need those workers, okay? So that's, I think,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: what we need.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Especially skilled labor we need right now.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's right. And a lot of these people
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: are doing important work keeping the economy going. What Trump
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: has done is in this big, beautiful bill of his,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: greatly expanded funding for ICE, And in my view, what
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: he is doing is not just trying to get– and
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: by the way, it used to be we're trying to
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: get the criminals out of America. Remember that? Yeah. You know,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: rapists and the murderers. We're well beyond that. Now you're
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: knocking on doors of American citizens. You're arresting Americans. You're
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: arresting people who have never had.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, now they're finding anybody that makes good tapas.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: You got it. That's right. That's exactly right.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: And I think this is what frightens me. What Trump
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: is using ICE for now is a domestic military operation.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: And it's part of this intimidation. And if you stand
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: up and that woman in Minnesota, Good is her name?
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Renee Good.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: Renee Good, all right. I saw that video. You don't
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: shoot somebody in the head who is in that car.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: And I think it's Trump saying, I have the power
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: and we got domestic army. It's called ICE and we're
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: going to go out there and we're going to arrest
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: and we're going to intimidate. And part of that, this
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: is what Trumpism is about, it's intimidation. All right, you're
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: in the media, you're CBS, you say something, I'm going
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: to sue you, you know. Theo, you say something I
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: don't like, I may sue you. You know, and I
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: don't like Venezuela, I'm going to, you know, send in
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: the troops. I got the power and I'm going to
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: use it. I really, that scares me because that's what
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: authoritarianism is about. So do we, should we deal with immigration?
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: Through comprehensive reform, absolutely. I think that's what the American
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: people want. Do we want guys with masks around their
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: face dragging people out of their apartments, out of their cars?
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. I don't think that's what the
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: American people want. More and more resentment to that.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're in a tough spot too because we
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: see things more now, right? We see all of it.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: Yes, you do.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: We see it. So before you would just hear about
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: it or you knew it was a plan. That's right.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: But you didn't have the visual effect of it and
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: how the visual effect makes you feel.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: Cell phones have revolutionized politics and that. So everybody got
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: a cell phone can take a video.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the side effects. I agree.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: Trump has an authoritarian energy, right? He, there's this, you know,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: and there's, there's positive parts about that and there's negative
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: parts about that.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: I don't agree that there's anything positive about authoritarianism.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: Well, maybe authoritarianism is– I think somebody that's– like somebody that.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: Decisiveness, yes.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: That's what I mean, then.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: Decisiveness, yes. Making bold decisions, yes. Yes. Authoritarianism, disregarding the
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: Constitution and the rule of law, I'm sorry, no.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: I agree. I agree with that, and that's what I meant.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: One last question before you go, Mr. Sanders. Nick, will
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: you bring up those CEOs one more time? I just
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: want to see the faces of those good gentlemen. who
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: have made $ 15 million allegedly. I believe in $ 26 million
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: allegedly as well.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: Not allegedly. I think that's a fact.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, there you go, Bernie. I'll take that. While nurses
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: are trying to make sure that their health care doesn't
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: get discontinued at certain points. And just real quick, people
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: can get involved by donating to the NYSNA Hardship Fund,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: and we'll put the link to that, and where you
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: can show up to support the strike. It's going on
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: every day right now. There's one other big concern that
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: people have is that there is with the Epstein stuff
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: that there are people really protecting pedophiles. Do you think
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: that's as big of a thing as people think? Or
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: do you think it's more of a political kickball that
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: gets kicked around a lot?
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: Hard to say. We don't know. All I can tell
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: you is when Trump ran for office, what did he say?
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: Going to release all, underline all the files.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: Okay. I think you should. And I think the thing
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: about the Epstein files is, is it touches on everything
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: we've talked about. There is a sense we're living in
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: two worlds. You go out, you go through a red light,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: or you do something stupid, get drunk and drive, you're
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: going to be arrested, right? Right. But if you're a very,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: very wealthy person and you do some really disgusting things
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: with women and girls, well, you're rich and you're powerful
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: and you have friends. You don't have to pay the price.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: With children, that's the fear. It's like you said, we
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: can't even protect our children.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: And these guys get away with it. It's a two-tier system.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: You get punished, you're an average person, You're a billionaire.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: You could do horrible, disgusting things. Hey, no problem. That's
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: what it is. So my own view is Trump said,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: release all the files, release all the files.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: We should release them. Did you, but you never knew it,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: but when, like it was, but you don't hear anything
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: super that we don't know by being in, uh, by
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: being in your position.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: All you hear is speculation, you know, and I don't
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: want to engage in that speculation. Just release all the information.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: Let people decide.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: Let people decide.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: One more time. Bring those CEOs up. I just want
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: to see them. And, uh, And Bernie Sanders, thank you
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: so much. And yeah, I just appreciate your time.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: Well, it's my pleasure. And thank you very much for
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: the work you're doing.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: We're trying, man. You know, I'm learning as I go.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: Look, Theo, the important point is you're honestly, you know,
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: you and I can agree or not agree, but having
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: serious discussion about serious issues is exactly what the country
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: needs right now.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, thanks, man. Yeah, I do care. I know that.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: I know you do. Now I'm just floating on the
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: breeze And I feel I'm falling like these leaves I
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: must be
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: Cornerstone Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: this peace of mind I found I can feel it
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: in my bones