Latest / Pod Save America / 2020: Cory Booker on radical love and the filibuster

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2020: Cory Booker on radical love and the filibuster · Pod Save America

• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. On our
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  Speaker 1: special episode today, I sat down with Senator Cory Booker
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  Speaker 1: of New Jersey, who is running for president and And
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  Speaker 1: we had a great conversation. We talked about his time
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  Speaker 1: as mayor of Newark and how that shaped his views
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  Speaker 1: on politics. We talked about his message of radical love
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  Speaker 1: and a revival of civic grace and how that squares
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  Speaker 1: with a Washington that is broken, a Republican party that
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  Speaker 1: is radical, and how he expects to get things done
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  Speaker 1: as president. And we had a great conversation about that.
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  Speaker 1: So without further ado... Here is my conversation with New
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  Speaker 1: Jersey Senator and 2020 contender, Cory Booker. I am here
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: with Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who is running
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  Speaker 1: for president. Good to have you here.
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  Speaker 2: It's great to be with you, man. Thank you very
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  Speaker 2: much for taking some time with me.
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  Speaker 1: So after you announced last month, I watched Street Fight
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  Speaker 1: for the very first time. And for those who don't know,
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  Speaker 1: this is the documentary about your first run for mayor
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  Speaker 1: of Newark.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, nominated for an Oscar and then lost to March
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  Speaker 2: of the Penguins.
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  Speaker 1: That's, I would not have gone that way.
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  Speaker 2: An ignominious thing.
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  Speaker 1: And so it's about your sort of narrow loss to
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  Speaker 1: Sharp James, who was the mayor of Newark at the time.
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  Speaker 1: And I have to say, I have never seen a
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  Speaker 1: nastier campaign run against anyone. I mean, he said, you know,
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  Speaker 1: you were really black, you were accepting money from the,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, some of the things he said was just crazy. Intimidation, harassment.
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  Speaker 2: Thuggery, bullying by police. It was incredible.
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  Speaker 1: And I watched that and my question after watching that was,
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  Speaker 1: how did you come from that experience and come in
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  Speaker 1: general from an experience where you have lived in an
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  Speaker 1: inner city and for so long with so much pain,
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  Speaker 1: as you talk about, and have a politics that's about
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  Speaker 1: civic grace and radical love? Because I think to myself,
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  Speaker 1: after running a campaign like that and having a campaign
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  Speaker 1: like that run against me, I might be pretty angry
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  Speaker 1: all the time. I'm wondering how politics in Newark sort
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  Speaker 1: of shaped your views.
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  Speaker 2: So Newark has been the best life experiences I've had.
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  Speaker 2: I've lived there more years than I've lived anywhere. and
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  Speaker 2: moved there when I was very young and still sort
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  Speaker 2: of shaping my whole view of the world. And you
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  Speaker 2: immediately get confronted with what exists everywhere, from suburbs to
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  Speaker 2: farm towns, is just the brokenness of life. And you
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  Speaker 2: meet these unbelievable people who have far more rights to
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  Speaker 2: be hateful than I might. The tenant president of the
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  Speaker 2: projects I lived in for almost a decade, Miss Virginia Jones,
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  Speaker 2: really one of the greatest heroes of my life, tough
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  Speaker 2: as nails, five feet in a smidgen, but could intimidate
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  Speaker 2: you more than a used linebacker. Her son was murdered
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  Speaker 2: in the lobby of the building I lived in. I
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  Speaker 2: would move into in the projects. And she never left.
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  Speaker 2: And she worked for the prosecutor. These were low-income housing,
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  Speaker 2: became public housing. And she could have moved to a
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  Speaker 2: lot of different places. And she taught me one of
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  Speaker 2: my best spiritual lessons, that hope is the act of conviction,
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  Speaker 2: that despair won't have the last word. And when you
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  Speaker 2: see people in a point of utter brokenness evidence a
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  Speaker 2: transformative love, like we saw when the Mother Emanuel shootings
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  Speaker 2: happened in South Carolina, to stand there and say through
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  Speaker 2: pain and hurt that I forgive you to this white supremacist.
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  Speaker 2: When you see people in my community who have had
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  Speaker 2: their addiction treated with jail over and over and over again,
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  Speaker 2: and then they start a nonprofit just to focus on
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  Speaker 2: young people in their community. Uh, Newark is this town where, um,
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  Speaker 2: every day when I'm home, uh, just walking my block.
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  Speaker 2: And now I've decided to make reporters who want to
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  Speaker 2: do profiles on me to come to my neighborhood where people, um,
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  Speaker 2: neighborhoods that people ignore or don't want to, don't want
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  Speaker 2: to focus on to walk with me around my community.
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  Speaker 2: Inevitably these incredible human beings will come out of their
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  Speaker 2: cars or, or I'll knock on doors and bring people
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  Speaker 2: in to meet families. that speak to the kind of
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  Speaker 2: resiliency and fierce love. If people want to say love
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  Speaker 2: is soft and namby, you know, sort of, just sort
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  Speaker 2: of like, oh, this kumbaya sentiment. I think it's the
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  Speaker 2: most ferocious, tough, hard force there is. And it has
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  Speaker 2: transformed Newark, New Jersey.
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  Speaker 1: How do you balance sort of the anger that people
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  Speaker 1: have at the system, right? There's so much anger. There's
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  Speaker 1: so much cynicism out there. And you hear a lot
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  Speaker 1: of people say like, I just, you know, someone needs
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  Speaker 1: to go blow up Washington, right? Someone needs to change everything. With,
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  Speaker 1: you know, your view, right, that I think you believe
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  Speaker 1: you can absolutely work within the system and create partnerships
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  Speaker 1: and find cooperation. Like, how do you balance that?
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  Speaker 2: Well, there's two things. First of all, I just want
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  Speaker 2: to really focus on terms, as I've learned to do
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  Speaker 2: in my days in Newark. Anger is a very good emotion.
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  Speaker 2: And if you're not angry about what's going on in America,
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  Speaker 2: then you have some moral dislocation inside your spirit, you
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  Speaker 2: should be angry. And in fact, I worry that there's
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  Speaker 2: just not enough anger. It should not have taken Donald
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  Speaker 2: Trump to trigger the anger and the taking to the streets.
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  Speaker 2: Because in my neighborhood before Donald Trump, there was children
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  Speaker 2: that could find, more easily find unleaded gasoline than unleaded water.
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  Speaker 2: In my neighborhood, the whole criminal justice system lost legitimacy
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  Speaker 2: when people see folks having a system, as Bryan Stevenson says,
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  Speaker 2: that treats you better if you're rich and guilty than
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  Speaker 2: poor and innocent. You want to be angry that you
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  Speaker 2: live around super fund sites like we do, where because
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  Speaker 2: of this Grover Norquist no tax system, even though Ronald
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  Speaker 2: Reagan reauthorized it, Mitch McConnell voted on it back in
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  Speaker 2: the day, we didn't reauthorize that small tax on chemical companies.
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  Speaker 2: And so now super funds, which were going down, are
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  Speaker 2: now proliferating. And we now have longitudinal data that shows
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  Speaker 2: that in the United States of America, if you're born
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  Speaker 2: around a super fund site, I live around two. That
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  Speaker 2: your chance, and they're mostly around low-income communities, disproportionately minority communities,
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  Speaker 2: that your chance of being born with birth defects or
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  Speaker 2: autism go up about 20%. I mean, I can go
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  Speaker 2: through the things that well before Donald Trump that should
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  Speaker 2: have had us marching in the streets. But the other
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  Speaker 2: word you used is a word I don't like. It's cynicism,
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  Speaker 2: which I think is just sort of surrender cynicism. to
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  Speaker 2: what's going on. I can't do anything. What I think
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  Speaker 2: American history is a perpetual testimony to the achievement of
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  Speaker 2: impossible things by people who didn't surrender to the seduction
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  Speaker 2: of cynicism, who said, screw Washington. I'm not going to
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  Speaker 2: wait for Strom Thurmond to come to the Senate floor
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  Speaker 2: and say, I've seen the light. It's time for those
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  Speaker 2: Negro people to have some rights. No. These were folks
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  Speaker 2: that said, I don't give a damn. Despair is not
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  Speaker 2: going to have the last word. Hate is not going
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  Speaker 2: to have the last word. I'm going to do extraordinary
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  Speaker 2: things for this country. And so for me.
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  Speaker 1: Are you worried that politics has become more cynical? Because
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  Speaker 1: it worries me. I hate cynicism too, but I worry
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  Speaker 1: that it's... I thought it was cynical when Obama ran
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  Speaker 1: in 07 and 08. I was like, oh, there's a
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  Speaker 1: lot of cynicism out there. And now, 10 years later,
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  Speaker 1: I'm like, ugh.
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  Speaker 2: But we're all responsible for that. Yeah. I mean, this
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  Speaker 2: finger pointing, I mean, come on. I've campaigned for lots
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  Speaker 2: of presidents since I was a city council person getting
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  Speaker 2: called to campaign for lots of presidents. And I would
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  Speaker 2: show up in black communities... And I would hear the
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  Speaker 2: same thing that we say when we see politicians suddenly
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  Speaker 2: come into our community, which is why we only see
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  Speaker 2: y'all around election time. And we wonder why we have
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  Speaker 2: 50% voter turnouts. And we think it's a great thing
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  Speaker 2: when it gets up to 60% because we're not speaking
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  Speaker 2: to people where they are. And we've seen the Democratic
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  Speaker 2: Party and the Republican Party screw us. And so if
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  Speaker 2: you want to combat cynicism, we need to have more
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  Speaker 2: people that are speaking to the truth of the experiences
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  Speaker 2: that we're having out there. And so you said something, Corey,
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  Speaker 2: you want to work within the system. I have two
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  Speaker 2: sort of views of this. I do what I have
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  Speaker 2: to do to get shit done. And when I was mayor,
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  Speaker 2: I was unapologetic, whether it was with my children or
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  Speaker 2: with my communities. I still remember the Trust for Public
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  Speaker 2: Land came to me and said, you're the most under-parked
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  Speaker 2: city in America. They were just like, you guys have
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  Speaker 2: no usable green spaces for your kids. And so My
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  Speaker 2: staff was making fun of me. They said, you will
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  Speaker 2: pimp a park anywhere you go. I was like, I
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  Speaker 2: will name a swing after you. And we created the
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  Speaker 2: largest parks expansion in our city in a century. Now
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  Speaker 2: there's parks all over the city of Newark, from pocket
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  Speaker 2: parks to the largest city park we built, nine acres.
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  Speaker 2: And we did that because we were just unapologetic working
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  Speaker 2: within the system. But I also knew that we had
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  Speaker 2: to change the fricking paradigm where Newark was literally the
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  Speaker 2: butt of jokes on national TV. And if I couldn't
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  Speaker 2: change the whole system and get people to reawaken a
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  Speaker 2: moral imagination about urban places, then we, it wasn't just
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  Speaker 2: working within a broken system, which I will do, but
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  Speaker 2: it's about changing people's view, which is the same way
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  Speaker 2: I view this election right now. If this election is
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  Speaker 2: just about one office and one guy and everybody thinks
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  Speaker 2: we did it, we got rid of Trump and we
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  Speaker 2: go right back to doing the stuff that we were
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  Speaker 2: doing in those 2013, 2012, 2010. We're not going to
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  Speaker 2: be okay. We're not only not going to be okay,
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  Speaker 2: but those things I listed before, environmental injustice, economic injustice,
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  Speaker 2: criminal injustice, we'll still be doing something. We have to
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  Speaker 2: figure out a way to expand the moral consciousness. And
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  Speaker 2: it's the same thing in the rural areas. I've started
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  Speaker 2: my campaign in the States going to the rural areas.
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  Speaker 2: We see an existential crisis in this country when our
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  Speaker 2: suicide rates, opioid addiction, or having a life expectancy go...
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  Speaker 2: Life expectancy is going down for all Americans. It's going
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  Speaker 2: down for white men. The farmer suicide rate is as
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  Speaker 2: high as it's been since the Great Depression. The vast
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  Speaker 2: disappearance of the independent family farm. I'm down in North
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  Speaker 2: Carolina in a black community where they're dealing with one
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  Speaker 2: of the most horrific environmental injustices I've ever seen in, in,
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  Speaker 2: in Duplin County, where you have these massive CAFOs and
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  Speaker 2: corporate agriculture and, and, and, and they take these massive
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  Speaker 2: lagoons of pig shit and they spray it over fields
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  Speaker 2: that happened to be in black communities. I could take
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  Speaker 2: you down there and show you the stuff misting into
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  Speaker 2: neighborhoods where people crowded into a room to tell me
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  Speaker 2: that they can't open their windows. It can't run their
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  Speaker 2: air conditioning. Um, They have respiratory diseases, cancers. But those
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  Speaker 2: farmers there, they're contract farmers. They're one step short of
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  Speaker 2: being sharecroppers because these corporations, Smithfield, one of the biggest ones,
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  Speaker 2: now an international conglomerate, Chinese-owned company, has put the farmers
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  Speaker 2: in a situation where they're so deeply in debt, they're
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  Speaker 2: just struggling to stay ahead, and they're trapped in a
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  Speaker 2: broken system. And so one of the things that's happened
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  Speaker 2: in America, in this slice-and-divide culture we have, is that
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  Speaker 2: the urban voter or is it the rural voter? Is
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  Speaker 2: it the factory? We talk in ways that slice and
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  Speaker 2: divide our country. And we are forgetting that that's the
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  Speaker 2: systems now, the suffering of that contract farmer or the
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  Speaker 2: rural African-American person is directly connected to a broken system.
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  Speaker 2: So that why my folks who work full-time jobs and
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  Speaker 2: catch extra shifts and still go to my corner bodega
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  Speaker 2: and use food stamps and find a Twinkie product cheaper
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  Speaker 2: than an apple, We are all caught in the same
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  Speaker 2: broken system, and it's the fact that we have the
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  Speaker 2: delusion of separateness, the dangerous delusion that we are separate
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  Speaker 2: from each other, that is undermining our whole civic space
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  Speaker 2: and our ability to solve problems. And so what I'm
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  Speaker 2: telling people in this election is, not only as a
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  Speaker 2: guy who went through a street fight, not only do
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  Speaker 2: we need to beat Donald Trump, But the way to
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  Speaker 2: beat Donald Trump is not to do Trump-like tactics. The
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  Speaker 2: incredible youth, the young people that marched against Bull Connor
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  Speaker 2: in May of 1963 in Birmingham, they didn't bring their
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  Speaker 2: own fire hoses and their own dogs. They called to
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  Speaker 2: the moral consciousness of a country. They got folk woke
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  Speaker 2: so that after their very first protest, thousands of people,
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  Speaker 2: suddenly celebrities and incredible Dick Gregory, Joan Baez, everybody was
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  Speaker 2: running down to Birmingham And segregation fell within days. They
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  Speaker 2: were able to awaken the moral conscience of this country
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  Speaker 2: because one of the biggest things I worry about in
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  Speaker 2: America is our tolerance. We preach tolerance in America. We're
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: a tolerant nation. Go home tonight and tell somebody you
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  Speaker 2: live with that you tolerate them. And to me, I
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  Speaker 2: think the problem is tolerance. Number one, it is a
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  Speaker 2: cynical aspiration to be a tolerant country, but I'm more
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  Speaker 2: concerned about the fact that we've grown too tolerant with
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  Speaker 2: the suffering of our neighbors, thinking that that somehow is
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  Speaker 2: not affecting directly your life. And so for me, if
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  Speaker 2: this election is just about Donald Trump, fine. I want
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  Speaker 2: to beat him. If I'm president on the first day
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  Speaker 2: with my pen, I'll restore the transgender military service. I'll
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: go back to some of the things he's done, mercury rules,
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  Speaker 2: methane rules. I can do a lot as your chief executive,
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  Speaker 2: but I'm not running just for that. I'm running to
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  Speaker 2: wake up the moral consciousness of our country to confront
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  Speaker 2: injustices and understand that the only way we've ever solved
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  Speaker 2: mass injustice in this country, from the workers' rights movement,
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  Speaker 2: taking people from sweatshops and child labor to workers' rights
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  Speaker 2: and public education, which both are being eroded right now,
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  Speaker 2: all the way to the civil rights movement, all of
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  Speaker 2: those things had to be done by creating broader coalitions
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  Speaker 2: of people, Republican and Democrat. I'm literally sitting before you
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  Speaker 2: right now because a Republican town in New Jersey is
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  Speaker 2: When my parents in 1969, I was just a baby,
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  Speaker 2: were denied housing because of the color of our skin.
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  Speaker 2: They were kept being told by real estate agents that
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  Speaker 2: our homes were sold. It was this coalition of folks,
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  Speaker 2: black folks, white folks, Christians, Jews, Republicans, and Democrats that
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  Speaker 2: didn't think, okay, we can't solve the, they didn't surrender
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  Speaker 2: to the cynicism of housing discrimination in America. They did
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  Speaker 2: some extraordinary stuff. They literally did a sting operation. A
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  Speaker 2: white couple bid on the house after my parents were
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  Speaker 2: told it was sold. They set up a closing. On
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  Speaker 2: the closing, the white couple didn't show up. My dad
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  Speaker 2: did and a lawyer who ends up getting, literally my father,
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  Speaker 2: him walked in and the real estate agent gets up
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  Speaker 2: and punches my dad's lawyer in the face, sticks a
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  Speaker 2: dog on my dad. And so you have to understand
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  Speaker 2: growing up, as I did too, two civil rights activist
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  Speaker 2: parents who were rough on me. They're like, boy, don't
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  Speaker 2: walk around this house like you hit a triple. You
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: were born on third base. I did what my parents
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  Speaker 2: told me to. I got all these degrees from various schools.
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  Speaker 2: And my dad's like, boy, you got more degrees in
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  Speaker 2: the month of July, but you ain't hot. Life ain't
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  Speaker 2: about the degrees you get. It's about the service you give.
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  Speaker 2: And you owe a debt in this country. And that's
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  Speaker 2: why I moved to Newark, New Jersey. And the very
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  Speaker 2: first thing I started doing was housing rights, housing organizing,
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  Speaker 2: taking on slumlords that the cynics said, you can't beat
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  Speaker 2: this guy. They had connections to City Hall. They were
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  Speaker 2: powerful guys. Well, we organize folks. And that's where strength
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  Speaker 2: comes from. And we've lost that in America right now,
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  Speaker 2: where people are suffering and hurting and feeling like they're isolated. people,
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  Speaker 2: whether they're suffering with addiction or mental health, suffering because
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  Speaker 2: they're a mom of a special needs kid that is
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: barely holding on because they can't afford childcare and they're
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: working two jobs and they can't afford housing. But we're
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  Speaker 2: not separated. We're not suffering alone. There is mass suffering
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  Speaker 2: going on in our society right now, but we're failing
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  Speaker 2: to see that we're in this together. And if this
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  Speaker 2: election is not about waking us up to that common cause,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: I sat in a diner in Iowa with a guy
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: with a Make America Great Again shirt on, and at
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: first I got the same bullheaded hitting, but I sat
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  Speaker 2: next to him and talked for a little while and
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  Speaker 2: spoke to his pain, and by the end he was
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  Speaker 2: hugging me. If we can't start breaking through these lines
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  Speaker 2: that divide us and affirm the common bond, I think
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  Speaker 2: we're gonna be stuck in a broken politics for a
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  Speaker 2: long time. I think the next five years of our
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  Speaker 2: politics in America is gonna determine the next 50 years
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  Speaker 2: of our politics, and we've gotta change course.
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  Speaker 1: There's part of me that thinks there is a difference
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  Speaker 1: between trying to reach out to Republican voters, disaffected Republicans,
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  Speaker 1: campaigning everywhere, talking to everyone, which I deeply believe in.
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  Speaker 1: There's a difference between that and... sort of the official
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Republican party in Washington.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you for adding that. Because I think when we
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: use lazy labels and just say Republicans, well, now you're
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  Speaker 2: roping in a whole bunch of people.
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  Speaker 1: No, and I never, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, they get defensive. Then they lock into their tribe. Right. Yes.
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  Speaker 1: So you proposed some really bold, ambitious policies. Medicare for all,
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  Speaker 1: Green New Deal, baby bonds, job guarantee, really great policies.
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  Speaker 2: Have you guys explained baby bonds? Because I'm really proud
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: of that.
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  Speaker 1: You do it because you should. We've talked about it
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: a little bit before, but you should.
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  Speaker 2: So we have persistent inequality in this country. And my
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: team has been looking for levers that can do that.
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  Speaker 2: And we believe in expanding EITC. I can go to
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: a lot of policies. But one of the things that
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: bothers me most about this country is not the persistent
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: wealth gap, which is a problem, but the persistent racial
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: wealth gap. And we have cities in America like Boston
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: where the average white family's wealth is about $ 280, 000. The
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: average black family's wealth is $ 8. I mean, my father
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: said this to me painfully He died six days before
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: I was elected to the United States Senate. Most hopeful
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: man I've ever met. He was born poor in the
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: deep South, segregated community to a single mom who couldn't
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: take care of him. And he comes so far and
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: he said to me, I fear that I've gone to
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: a point in this country where a kid born like
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: me and 70% of my kids are born like my dad,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: poor to a single mom in a segregated community. New
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Jersey is, I think, about the fifth most segregated state
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: in the nation because of our very racist laws going
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: into the 1970s that tried to stop black families like
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: me moving into white communities. And he moaned, said a
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: kid born like me would be better off being born
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: in 1936 than today. Now, I'm a data guy. So
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: when I was married, so I was saying, God, we trust,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: but everybody else bring me data to show me the numbers.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: On a lot of indices, my dad's right. And one
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: of them is the fact that the wealth gap was
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: closing between blacks and whites, but now it's back to
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: where it was around the time I was born. So
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Baby Bonds basically says, that every child born in this
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: country should have a stake in this economy. And wealth
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: is important. People who live paycheck to paycheck know that,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: that they don't have any wealth to fall back on
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: for emergency or to invest in the kind of things
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: that deepen wealth. Now, black communities were denied programs that
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: people brag about as pathways to the middle class, from
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: GI Bill to Social Security was written in a way
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: to exclude professions where blacks There's a lot of things
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: that help people sort of build wealth. FHA loans and
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: the like were denied. African-Americans are one of the reasons
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: why we have persistent wealth inequalities today. And so this
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: would help put a deposit in every child who would
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: get an account, a baby bond. And every year, depending
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: on your wealth of your family, like the EITC measures,
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: you would get deposits. Youngest kids would get up to
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: the youngest kids would get up. The kids from the
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: lowest income families would get up to $ 50, 000 by the
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: time they're 18. to do things that build generational wealth,
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: to start a business, to go to college, to buy
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: a home. And it's one of those levers, Archimedes, I guess,
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: said something like, give me the right lever, I can
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: change the world. This is for those of us who
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: want to see persistent racial inequality addressed in this country.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: It's one of those things that would do that. Plus,
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: for low-income families in general, it would give them a
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: stake and a leg up.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: So do you think there are, do you see any
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Republican senators who are in the Senate right now who
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: would give you a vote for baby bonds, a vote
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: for Green New Deal, vote for Medicare for All, vote
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: for job guarantee? So like, say you're president, you've got
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: a Democratic House, you've got a narrowly elected, hopefully, Democratic Senate.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Do you see any Republican senators that would join on
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the big priorities? I know on some of the small
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: stuff they probably would.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but John, I know you're an evangelist for things
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: like getting rid of the bus.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: You know where I'm getting.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: I know exactly where you're going. I can see it
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: a mile away. So let's just confront this because I
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: may have listened to your podcast one or twice and
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: heard my name evoked as a symbol of the obstruction.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: In the Democratic Party.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I am an Obama guy through and through.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: You know that.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And I am always attracted to positivity, unifying politicians. I
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: feel like the Republican Party over the last decade has
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: radicalized me a little bit.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: But it's not radical. And you and I both know
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: the origins of our Senate were not with the filibuster rule.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: So people should know their history. And so this is
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: what I say to folks like you and a lot
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: of my friends who come to me and had good
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: conversations since I announced my candidacy and got a surprise
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: question about the filibuster in my first moments of being
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: a candidate. I was sort of like, okay, filibuster rule.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Let me tell you what I think. Look, I understand
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: that the erosion of the Senate already has allowed this
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: party to do awful things. Trump tax cut, for example.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: And if I was president, I want people to know
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: very tactically, let's talk tactics, I will use reconciliation to
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: roll back the Trump tax credits and do the kind
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: of things that I think to have a tax system
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: that reflects our values, our morals, and frankly is better
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: for our economy. Giving a hedge fund guy to be
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: able to pay lower percentage of his salary in taxes
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: than a teacher doesn't reflect our values, nor does it
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: reflect what's best for our economy. And so when you
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: talk about changing the filibuster rule, I understand that we
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: are heading right now. We are heading that way to
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: people on both sides. We are heading that way. You
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: hear Trump calling for the end of the filibuster rule
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: all the time. And, and, and I understand that if
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: I am the commander in chief, the president, United States
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: fighting a tactical battle, um, that that is something that is,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: is we are moving towards, um, but understand my perspective
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: on this, which comes from decades of living in one
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: of the most vulnerable communities in the country. And if
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Donald Trump for the last two
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: years had complete sway, they wouldn't have just changed policy,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: which is nice. They would have hurt people in my community.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Literally doing policies that could cause people's death. When we
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: had a Republican governor in the state of New Jersey,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: just something like attacking Planned Parenthood for women in my
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: community who rely on Planned Parenthood for their healthcare. Planned
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Parenthood had to end hours, close options. I mean, I
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: know that these policies that people debate, I love when
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: people of privilege say, well, it doesn't make a difference
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: if I vote or not. I say, come to my
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: neighborhood and see if the outcomes of elections don't make
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: a difference. And to give those three men absolute power
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: to do anything they want, having lived my life as
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: a minority, I like minority rights. And so I will
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: balance that against, and I know because I've had this
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: conversation You fire a lot of people up on your
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: podcast who come to me and make very practical arguments.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you that for me, that door
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: is not closed. But I am also going to tell
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: you that if we can't change the larger civic spaces
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: of our country like they did in the labor movement,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: like they did in the civil rights movement, where the
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: consciousness of our country changed, if we don't see this
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: as an opportunity to swing the pendulum from Twitter trash-talking, trolling,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: hateful politics, where it's just about destroying the other. If
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: we can't get back to a understanding, and by the way,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: you're talking about reaching out to disaffected Republicans, using that
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: term broadly. I've sat with labor leaders. Half of their
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: base literally will say to me, half of my base
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: voted for the party that wants to destroy Davis-Bacon, that
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: wants to make every state a right-to-work state. That's not
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: a big leap to get a person who identifies as
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: a Republican. Just the base of our party, the labor base,
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: we're losing them. So I don't think that we are
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: that far away from in these next five years of
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: America to having a revival of civic grace and having
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: a more courageous empathy that understands that the farmer, the
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: factory worker, the inner city mom working two jobs have
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: common cause again. And in the same way that this
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: brilliant marketer I mean, he put the best carnival barkers
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: to shame with the way he has branded and campaigned
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: and spoken to folks. If we can't have a commander-in-chief
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: that understands, like I had to as a mayor, that
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: it's not just about my tactical decisions with my city council,
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: but I've got to change the entire perception of my
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: city and urban issues and attract institutional capital back to
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: my city that wouldn't even invest in Newark. to take companies.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: When I started talking about ending food deserts by bringing
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: supermarkets back into the neighborhood, I'm not joking. I went
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: to a supermarket convention and they laughed at me. I
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: had to change the larger sentiments around Newark. And right
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: now in America, I will join you, John. Should I
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: be president of the United States? Come back to the
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: White House. I'm not joking. I'm serious. Come back to
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: the White House. Help me with the tactician. Help me
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: to figure out what we have to change to get
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: things done. But join me in the larger cause of
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: our country because you and I before you know it,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: my days in politics will be over. Look, when I'm
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Trump's age, it'll be between 2040, 2050. What will America
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: look like by 2050 if we don't change our politics, sincerely,
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: with where we're going?
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: No, that's, look, that's my whole issue.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: And so my whole issue is not just changing the
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: things that are happening in the Senate that have allowed
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: for these right-wing judges to be done. They got rid
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: of the filibuster rule in the Senate. They got rid
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: of the blue slip process. I know I'm talking technically,
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: but as a Judiciary Committee member, the senators no longer
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: have a say. They literally are sitting as a circuit
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: court judge that Menendez and I were not even allowed
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: to meet with from New Jersey.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: My question is, I think you would agree that sometimes
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the media is like, oh, if only you know, Republicans
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: and Democrats in Washington would.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: By the way, call out the media. Right.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Well, that's a whole.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, no, it's not. It is. And don't call
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: them the enemy of the people. Right, right. But I
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: watch what they give oxygen to.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: They're giving... Van Jones once told me this story that
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: they had in Crossfire, they had this idea, at the end,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: they're going to do ceasefire and talk about where they agree.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that didn't fly on CNN.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: It did not fly on CNN because the people who
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: took over the show... Van Jones told me the people
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: that took over the show... Afterwards, the producers, you know
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: you want to end on a high in audiences, and
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: they have that seamless transition where one host talks to
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: the next host so that you don't lose audience. They
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: were ticked off because the ceasefire segments went way down
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: in terms of ratings.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: This is probably what I'm talking about. I don't think
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: this is an issue of personalities, right? Like if only
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Obama had more drinks with Mitch McConnell, things would have been.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: There are clearly incentive structures for Republican politicians that we
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: need to change right now. One of those is the media, right?
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: There's a conservative media machine that incents them.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: There's no false equivalency here at all because it's far
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: worse on their side of the aisle. But there are
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: incentive structures on our side as well.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: There are, but they feel– they right now, Republican politicians,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: feel more afraid of a primary challenge than they do
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: a general election challenge.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: And part of that's because of gerrymander. When primary became
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: a verb, the Republican Party changed dramatically.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: And I'm wondering how we change the incentive structure for
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party. I remember Obama always used to say
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: to me during the 2012 election, if we win this election,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: the fever will break in Washington. Finally, the fever will break.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: The fever– Did not break. And it has not broken, obviously.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to tell you again, all I know
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: is about being a grassroots organizer. I beat the machine
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: in Newark through grassroots organizing. Texas is a blue state.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: It's not voting that way yet because we haven't built
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: a 50-state party. I was shocked in Iowa and New Hampshire,
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: I'm not the best fundraiser in the world, but that
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: I led outside candidates raising money in those two states.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: And they were incredibly appreciative. Well, dear God, you don't
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: think that the issues we're talking about right now in Iowa,
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: where they haven't just assaulted Davis-Bacon, they found a loophole.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: They literally were pushing a law that says if you
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: file a workman compensation claim and you lose the claim,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: then you can be held criminally liable. I mean, the
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: stuff they're doing to public education on that, and I
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: was having honest talk with folks when I was in
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Iowa this last week, that We can get a president,
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: but if you don't change your legislature, if you don't
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: build most of these issues we're talking about, I can
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: do some things about public education when I'm a president.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: I can fully fund special needs education. I can create
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: a tax relief for teachers who reach in their own
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: pockets and give money, as I see in Newark all
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: the time, thousands of dollars, hundreds of dollars for their kids.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: I can forgive loans for people who are willing to
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: teach in rural areas, urban areas. I can do a
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: lot of that, but fundamentally... There's an assault going on
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: in public education in your state that only can be
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: stopped by electing folks. I believe fundamentally, and maybe I'm wrong,
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: but I'm willing to, if I'm president of the United States,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: this is where I'm starting. There are all these people
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: that want to support a new president. I'm going to
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: tell folks what we need to do is create a
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: 50-state organizing strategy to start preparing for 2022. When people
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: like Mikey Sherrill and all these other folks are going
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: to have their back against the wall that shouldn't, if
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: we organize, because I've seen this in the response to Trump.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: The response to Trump has been, hey, let's organize. I
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: met with this amazing table of women leaders in my state,
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: and there were women I've known for a long time,
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: heads of organizations like NOW, And then there was these
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: young millennial women who had thousands of people in New
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Jersey organized on their Facebook page who openly admit some
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: of them to me as I meet them around the
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: country that I wasn't that engaged or involved before Donald Trump.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: And if we don't sustain that kind of organizing, we
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: could turn Texas, heck, I think we could turn Texas
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: in 2020, but definitely in 2022 just by organizing people.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: You go to communities like Newark or Wayne County where
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Detroit is or Philly and and really engage with African-American community.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: I'm talking in the way we do in Newark when
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: we were organizing elections, talking to their issues, actually connecting
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: them to the policies that can help our communities. You
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: are going to get African-American turnout to go up in
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: midterm elections. And so I understand a lot of what
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: you're saying is because we look at the way things
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: have gone in the past. But one of the things
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: I hated most when I was mayor of the city
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: of Newark is people would tell me, you can't do
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: something because we tried this and it didn't work, or
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: this is the way we've always done it and it's
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: never worked. It takes new approaches, creative thinking, to create
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: real transformations. And forgive me for going on, but I
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: just want to just give you this example of we're
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: the internet generation. We have tools our parents never had.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: I was sitting at home watching The Tonight Show when
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Conan O'Brien was on it. And he did what ticks
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: me off the most is when people kick communities that
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: are already down. And he said, I hear Newark, New
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Jersey has this new health care program. I was really proud.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: I was able to drive prescription drug costs down in
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: my city in a community and get people into primary care,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: which is really good for health and driving down health
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: care costs. And it got a little national attention. And
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: here comes Conan O'Brien in his monologue, and he says,
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: I hear Newark, New Jersey has this great new healthcare program. Well,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: I think the best new healthcare program for the city
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: of Newark is a bus ticket out of town. I'm
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: the mayor of the city sitting there watching TV, hanging
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: out with my two best friends, Ben and Jerry, and
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: just lost it. But you know what I did? Because
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: this is the reputation of Newark. It's a laugh line.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: People were cracking up. I hear it about Cincinnati. I
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: hear it about Detroit. I hear it about places where dark,
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: and black and brown people live all the effing time,
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: and it pisses me off. But you know what? I'm different.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: A generation ago, or not even five years before that,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: the best angry mayor could have done, and my mayors
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: did that. My previous mayors in Newark did that. Write
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: an angry letter to the network, and interns in turn
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: would read it. Or they can call a press conference,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: and only channel 72, the Bulgarian channel, would show up.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: But we live in a different era. I went to
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: my office, and I sat there behind my desk, And
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: I used some humor and I used some straight. I said, look,
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: this is Newark, New Jersey. You know, we are a
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: great city. Bragged about my city. And Conan O'Brien, I'm
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: banning you from Newark's airport. I said, you're on the
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: no-fly list. Try JFK, buddy. And guess what happened? That
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: video went viral. Before I know it, I'm getting earned
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: media like I never got before. And he plays right
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: into my hands. He doesn't apologize. He bans me from
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: Burbank Airport. And here we are in LA, and you
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: know that I'm an LAX guy. That's no big deal.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: But we started this fight that I was getting media. Suddenly,
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: I'm calling supermarket companies, and they've heard about this stuff,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: and they're answering my calls. I'm getting the big banks
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: to talk to me now about investing in a city
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: they ignored because capital in this country is so damn lazy.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: Five metropolitan areas get the overwhelming majority of investment. By
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: the end of the fight, this kerfuffle that became a
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: national story, as I'm going on Larry King and shows
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: that never going on before, he invites me on his show.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: He apologizes and gives $ 100, 000 to Newark Charities. So I'm
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: just saying that as an example of we are a
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: different generation. I sometimes imagine if the civil rights generation
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: had the kind of organizing tools that we have. We could,
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: with a, I would be the, we've had presidents now from,
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: you know, even Barack is older than I am. You know,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: we've had folks from different generations. Our generation can't concede
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: that we are gonna be a nation where people with
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: common interests and common pain are cut up and divided.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: And so I will, I'm not joking about this. If
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: I'm president, John, you're gonna be like that Booker guy,
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: is calling me up to help me with tacticians. Of course.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: I always help. But my challenge to you is going
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: to be let's use podcasts like this to call shit out.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Look at the House bill they just passed that got
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: lost in all the things the media wanted to cover. H.R. 1. H.R. 1.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Do you know what the polls say about that?
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Very popular.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Amongst Republicans.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Well, but, you know. What got me, probably the worst
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: moment of the Obama years for me, or the most
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: frustrating moment, is a background check bill with 90% support
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: in the public, sponsored by conservative Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: and Joe Manchin, no one's idea of a liberal, goes
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: down a couple months after a school shooting. And I
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: was like, if we can't pass something that's that popular
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: among Democrats and independents and Republicans that has bipartisan support, Yes.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: What is happening? Where do we go from there? How
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: do we change that system?
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, but you understand you're saying this in the context
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: of a guy who grew up with stories about how
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: many freaking times they tried to get civil rights legislation passed. Yeah.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: And did anybody say, we tried once and it failed,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: and so let's not try voting rights or civil rights
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: or Fair Housing Act? they kept fighting and building consensus. Right.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: And even with the Senate filibuster.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Do you worry that our generation is more impatient? I
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: feel like technology has made us a little more impatient.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: Impatience is good.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Like, we do this all the time, you know, and
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: it's like.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Impatience is good. Cynicism is bad. Anger is good. Okay?
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Hate is bad.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: There are differences.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: What I'm worried about is just that people get... People
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: get disappointed when change doesn't happen fast enough, and then
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: they turn away. And I'm always trying to say to
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: people like, yeah, it takes a long time. Democrats didn't
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: do anything. They failed me too. And you're like, well, yeah.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: But let me tell you my favorite cynical moment. My
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: favorite cynical moment I had recently is, and this is
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: the politics of our, and you know the professional politics.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: So I'm running for, I'm now running from a urban city. Okay. I'm,
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: and most people don't know this. I'm the fourth popularly
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: elected black guy. Yeah. Black person in the United States history.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Number three was Obama. Uh, number two was Carol Mosley Braun.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Number one was Edmund, Edward Brooke. And so it's like,
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: there hasn't been that many black people in the Senate. Right.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: And so you get these professionals that come to you
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: and say, well, don't talk about these. You're talking about
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: criminal justice reform everywhere you go. Um, and almost like,
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: or trying to imply to you that this is an
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: issue that's only affecting black people, which, which by the way,
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: if you are living in a country that's watched your,
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: your infrastructure crumble, except for in one area, I had a,
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: I was in Poland and a Polish peer of mine
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: as a Senator, uh, was telling me, and this was
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: one of those moments I had to control my tight
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: end instincts and not create an international incident, who was
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: bragging to me about their mass transit or whatever he
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: was talking about, and you Americans, we built out the
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: best infrastructure in all of humanity. While our bridges, tunnels,
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: no broadband, China's building 18,000 miles of high-speed rail, but
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: what we were building out was was prisons and jails.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: Prisons and jails. We were building a new prison or
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: jail in America every 10 days from the time I
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: was in law school to the time I was mayor
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: of the city of Newark. And so here they're telling me,
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: because I'm now running in a state that's overwhelmingly white.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: Blacks are 12%, 13%. And they're like, don't talk. We
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: polled the state. Don't talk about criminal justice reform. It's
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: not one of the top two or three issues. You
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: need to talk about X, Y, and Z. And I'm like,
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: leaders don't. Follow consensus. Real leaders mold consensus. So everywhere
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: I went, from synagogues to wealthy suburbs, Republican communities, Democrat communities,
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: I wanted people to know why this is breaking. So
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: I get to Washington, and then people want to give
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: me a reality check. Well, you can't pass comprehensive criminal
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: justice reform. You can't do it. And I said, OK,
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: this is a challenge to me not to surrender to cynicism.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: I still remember, and maybe I'm telling you too much,
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: but I knew Chuck Grassley was key. And I'm like,
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: how can I find some common ground with a guy
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: that I can write a dissertation on my disagreements with?
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: So one day, you know how they're this, like you
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: get to preside over the Senate. Really, it's the most
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: junior guys, but I'm literally sitting there at the Senate.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: And by the way, it is like one of these
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: things that will blow your mind if you're a geek
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: because they have like the gavel that was used from
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: like the 1700s. It's still there. You could open it
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: up and like, I'm putting my, I'm trying to get
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: some DNA on that thing. And anyway, and I'm watching
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Chuck Grassley come to the floor and I've watched him
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: give speeches now that just, rankle me and he starts
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: talking about wind tax credits. And I'm like, wait a minute,
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: common ground. And I go up to him and go, Mr. Grassley, sir,
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: like the older senators often tell me, call me by
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: my first name. And I'm like, you are literally, I
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: was watching you like in high school. And we started talking.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: I go to his office and I said, help me
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: understand why you go to the Senate floor and talk
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: about longer sentences and not short. And it took me
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: years to from with the heroic leadership of Dick Durbin
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: and me trying to be his mini me and running
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: around building consensus and fighting to get things that were
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: really important to me. Like we do things, we're doing
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: things right now as you and I are sitting here,
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: there are children who haven't even been convicted of things
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: that are in solitary confinement right now, which psychological professionals
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: call torture. And so we get this bill with my
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: priorities in there and we get it done. We get
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: it passed. So what I'm telling you is that that's
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: too slow for me because it's just, as the act's called,
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: it's a first step. But I tell you, I brought
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: a guy to the State of the Union, Mr. Douglas,
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: who had a life sentence for crack cocaine weighing less
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: than baseball. A life sentence. We liberated thousands of people
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: with that piece of legislation during an era of Willie Horton,
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: where people are getting out of jail. In an era
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: of Willie Horton, we got it done. And so don't
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: tell me that We can't collectively. We've got the best
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: on our party, the best branding experts are using them
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: for materialism and corporatism and everything. But don't tell me
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: with the young people I'm meeting out there who are
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: not taking that vote that you talked about that failed
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: in the Senate. You talk to these folks coming out
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: of Parkland and communities like mine who are determined to
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: pass common sense gun safety. I just believe we can
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: get things done, especially if we can get more folk
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: woke that they are living in a nation that brags
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: about being the wealthiest country on the planet Earth but
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: has a declining life expectancy, that used to have the
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: best infrastructure on the planet Earth and in the span
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: of one generation trashed that house they inherited from their
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: parents and handing it over. When I talk to groups
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: like this, everybody agrees. I'm not joking. I mean, there
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: may be that 5%, 10% that we can't ever get to.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: And so what is our politics going to be And
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: that's why I'll die on this hill in this presidential campaign.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: I literally will. Maybe some people are going to want
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: folks to fight fire with fire. I ran a fire department.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: It's not a really good strategy. I'm going to die
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: on this hill because I want this to be more
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: than about just one guy in one office. Because my
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: communities were suffering before this guy got elected. And so
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: were factory towns. And so were farm towns. And so
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: were people that were easily angry And then felt some
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: appeal with some guy that wanted to blame it on
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Mexicans and Muslims and others. And lied to people about
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: trade because he's not doing anything about it. Lied to
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: people about Medicare that he just put a budget in
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: that cuts. We can reach back out and get those
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: people together and awaken that worker. And by the way,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: I cannot stand how working– we're going to get off
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: to working people. That's not people in my community in Newark.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: But we can get workers to see common cause. We
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: can get people in different areas of our nation to
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: see common cause. And that's what I want this election
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: to be about again. And by the way, I'm betting you,
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: and I hope to have the chance to prove this,
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: to be the guy that gets to run against Trump,
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: be the person that gets to run against Trump. I
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: bet you that not only is this a strategy that
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: this country needs, I think it's actually the best tactical
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: strategy to.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: Beat a bully.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Watch Street Fight. I'll show you how that strategy, the
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: strategy of dignity and grace, can actually win in the
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: toughest of politics.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: I thought about this interview after, in the wake of
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: New Zealand and that shooting, because you have this very
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: powerful message of radical love. What do you do as
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: president about rising white nationalism and xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism. How
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: do you fight that? Because obviously that has been fueled
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: by Donald Trump, but I know you would agree that's
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: been around far before Donald Trump and it's been a
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: problem before then. What can you actually do as president
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: about that?
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: So first of all, let's again understand that And this
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: is why I think it's good to go back and
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: read from the era of which I sprang forth. I'm
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: the child of the civil rights generation. There's some great
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: books written about King's radicalism. We've created this, as Cornel
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: West says, the Santa Clausification of King. He was a
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: really radical guy who died with 60% disapproval ratings. And
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: I love what he used to say about love. He
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: used to say, you can't legislate someone to love me.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: And that's why I need you to put some things
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: in place to protect me. That's why I was so
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: proud that Tim Scott, Kamala Harris, and I were able
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: to push forward an anti-lynching bill through the Senate after
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: hundreds of times trying. And so the first thing a
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: president has got to do is protect people. In the
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: LGBTQ community, we have about 30% of our children reporting
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: not going to school because of fear. We have a
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Department of Education, and this is one of the reasons
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: I fought so hard against Betsy DeVos, that I knew
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: she was going to trash the Civil Rights Division of
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: the Department, literally doing the things to protect From her
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: policies turning her back on the epidemic of sexual assault
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: in college campuses to turning her back on LGBTQ rights
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: and the rights of black and brown vulnerable kids. This
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: is why, as president, not only from the Department of
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: Education Civil Rights Division to the Department of Justice that
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: should be investigating these white supremacist groups that the president
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: of the United States can't even admit that there's rising
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: hate and rising anti-Semitism and rising Islamophobia in this country.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: And so you have to be a president that speaks
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: to the problems. We have had since 9-11, I think
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: around 80-ish terrorist attacks on our country. The majority of
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: them have been homegrown right-wing extremist groups. The majority of
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: those have been white supremacists. For all the billions and
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: billions of dollars we're spending to protect Americans from quote-unquote terrorism,
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: We need to focus on domestic terrorism.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Would you make sure that you appointed an attorney general
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: who would go after white nationalism? Would you try to
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: increase funding to make sure that we are investigating?
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: So you know Trump has cut funding to investigate white
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: nationalist groups at a time that the violence coming out
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: of these white nationalist groups. So yeah, I would. And
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: as a lawyer, again, who came up because of the
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: protections that were given by the DOJ, We need to
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: have a Department of Justice that is dealing with violence
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: and crime, including police shootings, which you have big city
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: police chiefs talking about needing to create greater senses of
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: accountability for law enforcement. The Department of Justice can be
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: doing so much to create safety and securities in communities
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: and to restore confidence in the criminal justice system that
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: we are fairly pursuing in justice wherever it exists.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Um, we've, uh, we spent a lot of the past
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: month talking about antisemitism. Um, and one of the issues
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: raised and the many debates we've had is really a
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: foreign policy issue. You know, should Democrats be more willing
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: to call out the Israeli government when there is a
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: prime minister who's made it his policy that there will
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: not be a Palestinian state as long as he, uh,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: is in power?
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: Um, so the short answer is yes.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: Whatever the country is, we should have the courage to
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: speak with a moral voice. I often worry that Israel
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: gets a treatment that is not applied to other countries.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: This is why I will never support the BDS movement
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: because I think it is. Call out their actions when
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: they're doing things, but dear God, you're living in a
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: neighborhood where nobody's calling for a boycott movement for China
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: which is doing things to the Uyghurs, I can go
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: through them. But the erosion of the ability for us
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: to even get to a two-state solution is the erosion
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: of a bipartisan consensus we've had in this country for
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: a long time, for a long time. This idea that
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: we should have self-determinations of people, that both Palestinians and
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: Israelis should have their own country and be able to
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: have self-determination. And so on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: I have fought against Trump's administration's efforts to pull back
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: humanitarian support from the Palestinian communities. I've gone to the
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: West Bank. I've seen just access to clean water, to
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: basic human rights. We've got to be there. We've got
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: to also make sure that Israelis have a right to
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: defend themselves and to keep themselves secure. And we've got
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: to be able to have conversations about things like, oh,
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: that are kind of as complicated as Mideast peace and
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: something more than just slogans and talk about the nuance
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: of these issues. and always lead with what our values are.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Would you put any additional diplomatic pressure on Israel as
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: president if, um, they refuse to engage in a good
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: faith discussion about a two state solution?
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: I think that we've had presidents from both parties who
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: have put them at lots of diplomatic pressure on Israel.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: And again, it's very hard to negotiate where we don't, where,
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: where there's the leadership in the Palestinian community is not
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: necessarily even leadership you can negotiate with. It doesn't necessarily speak, uh,
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: for all the various factions. So absolutely. But I continually
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: want to remind folks that, you know, Hamas and Hezbollah,
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: who are plotting every single day to kill Israelis, and
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: now that Trump, who says he's strong on Iran, has
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: basically given Iran a highway through Syria with more sophisticated
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: weapons now going to Lebanon. These are existential everyday threats
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: to the Israelis, as there are everyday threats for Palestinians
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: just to get basic health care and clean water and
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: basic rights. And so there is an urgency for us
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: to play a role in the Middle East with our
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: most critical ally, the Israelis, so that we can affirm
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: democratic ideals and principles.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: What do you see as our greatest national security threat?
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: Again, you know, I'm going to tick through things I
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: think are threats, but then I'm going to answer the
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: question in a way that you may now expect, but
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: maybe not. So climate change is a existential threat. When
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: you read military reports about what they expect to happen
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: when I'm Trump's age, what will go on in the
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: planet Earth? Should we fail? to deal with climate change?
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: The instability, the famines, the chaos on the planet Earth
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: that's going to happen. And in the United States, two
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: vulnerable communities like mine, this is an existential planetary threat
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: that would cause, you think refugee problems are refugee problems now?
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: And we have not seen a hint of what could
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: happen if we don't deal with this issue. So that's
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: definitely a threat. I can tick through more. I think
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: we are going through a planetary battle between authoritarian governments
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: and democratic governments. And democratic governments have had a very
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: tough five or so years from Brexit. to what the
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: Russians are doing aggressively. Talk to people who live in
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: Latvia or Estonia, Lithuania. Ask them if they don't feel
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: like they're in a gray war right now with the Soviets. With,
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: excuse me, flashback, with the Russians. So I can go
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: through more threats. I think that for people not to see.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: How do we win the battle against authoritarianism? Rising authoritarianism
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: around the world.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: Let's win that battle at home first.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Fair enough.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: Let's fight against authoritarian right here where we have a
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: president that sounds like authoritarian, a guy that's authoritarian, the
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: enemy of the people. Even lock her up. I mean,
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: chants like that, we've heard them in our history. People
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: are forgetting that we are coming. And this is why
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: historical amnesia really bothers me. We've heard the same anti-immigrant
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: rhetoric from a viable national party called the Know-Nothings that
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: came out against the scourge of the invasion of the immigrants.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: This time they were talking about Irish Catholics. Right. Okay? Yeah.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Every generation, history echoes. We've seen demagoguery. Father Conklin, I
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: could go through the, every generation has had their demagogues.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: And we've beat them back in the name of more democracy,
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: not less democracy. And so, first of all, I always say,
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: before you tell me about your religion, first show it
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: to me in how you treat other people. We preach
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: a civic gospel. It's in our songs. It's in our— we
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: all swear an oath. Think about back in the days
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: where one military would beat the other ones. Swear an
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: oath of loyalty. Oaths used to have a lot of power.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: We do it every day, not even thinking about the
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: words we're uttering from our mouth. We say, I swear
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: this oath to liberty and justice for all. Well, we
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: live in a country with rampant injustice, environmental, economic, criminal injustices,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: that when they're revealed, make people squirm. I'm talking about
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: even animal rights. I'm sorry, I'm an animal rights guy.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: They're trying to pass laws so that people won't even
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: see what's going on to animals in this country called
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: ag-gag laws. Because Americans aren't comfortable with injustice when they
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: see it, but somehow we've stopped seeing it. Let's just
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: focus right here at home. And this gets me to
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: the existential threat that I really think is the existential threat.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: Because when a country can't do the things that 80
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: and 90% of people agree on, and I know you
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: might try to use this as, again, to push me
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: on the filibuster.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: I'm done, I'm done, I'm done, don't worry.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: And again, come into my tactical circle, should I be
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: president of the United States? And you and I will
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: have real conversations about it.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: Walking through the Senate convincing Chuck Schumer and all the
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: rest of them to get rid of him.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You and I will have real talk about what
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: it's going to take. And your first obstacles don't have
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: to do with Republicans.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Right. Believe me, I know.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: Okay. But for us to be a country right now
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: that has allowed the dangerous delusion of divisiveness, that somehow
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: the– woman that works for United Airlines, Latina woman in
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: my city, and by the way, she doesn't work for
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: United Airlines. She cleans her planes, she delivers her food,
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: but she works for an outsourced company that suppresses her wages,
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: gives her no retirement security, that she has a different
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: cause for her life than the guy in the factory
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: town that just saw his job disappear to a country
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: with no labor protections. Or the farmer who is got
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: a CAFO, as a literal farmer said to me, a
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: Republican farmer was telling me about, that the CAFO down
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: the street from him has poisoned his well that he
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: used to drink from, and his crick, I think that's
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: pronouncing it right. That's right, it is, his crick. That
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: he used to fish from. That those three people don't
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: have aligned, urgent, common causes that are affecting their lives
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: in the most pernicious, anti-democratic ways. If we can't awaken
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: this country to that common cause, where that Latino, that
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: black factory worker like my grandfather was, UAW in Detroit,
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: that automobile worker now, or that steel worker, or that
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: coal miner that don't have common cars with the farmer,
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: if we can't, in our politics, in our civic spaces,
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: get people back to understanding, that is going to be
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: an existential threat. Because the things that we need to do,
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: I hear your podcast, I'm sorry, use labels like progressive
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: or out there on the left, Where I live, my
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: staff was showing me a tweet I put out when
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: I was mayor calling for healthcare for everybody. These aren't
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: radical ideas to me. They're efficiencies. They're things that are
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: not at all, but we've allowed our politics to be
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: distorted and shifted in a way where we're doing things
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: that are so stupid. Let me give you an example.
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: Because I had to, there was a big advantage, I think,
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: for the next president to have had to run something.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: I was a mayor. I had to govern a city. Right.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: a roughly billion dollars budget, capital budget, I can go
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: through it, through the worst recession of our lifetime, which
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: by the way, they call it a recession for the country,
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: for inner cities, it's a depression. I had to make
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: decisions like, I've heard you say that President Obama, there's
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: no good decisions. There's no good decisions.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: And they get to your desk.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: I laugh at people who call themselves fiscal conservatives. I
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: had to cut my government. There's nobody in Senate. There's
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: county executives there, governors there, mayors there, that cut their
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: governments as much as I cut my government 20 five
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: percent and raise taxes to get through an economic hell
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: and had to figure out a way to bring tens
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: of thousands of jobs to my city. Now, we did.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: Newark is going through its biggest economic development. I thought
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: creative ways we, a lot of folks helped us, thought
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: of a way out of that nightmare. But we had
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: to stay in the saddle and make tough as hell decisions.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: But one of the things that came out of that
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: was me always saying, If we can create uncommon coalitions,
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: we are going to create uncommon results. And in Newark,
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: I had these incredible moments where you had unions and
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: there are some incredible guys from the building trades that
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: I worked with. And we had some tough arguments. Arguments,
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: you know why? Because again, I'm a black guy living
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: in Newark with a majority black and brown city and
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: the unions didn't reflect my city. Right. And these really
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: good people were receptive to me saying that if they're
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: going to build the first hotel in 40 years in Newark,
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: which we built, now we've got four of them, God
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: bless Ras Baraka, that that construction is going to have
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: to be done by people. When they drive by that
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: work site, they see folk they know from the neighborhood.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: And so I got people around the table that were
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: willing to create apprenticeship programs for me for my kids,
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: that were willing to, OK, agree to 30 hours, get
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: banks that we malign. Okay, and I will malign the
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: behavior that crashed our economy. I will go after them.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: I think some independent group looked at people and showed
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: that my record in fighting against big banks, that times
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: I voted with big banks was zero, they said. But
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: when I needed to get institutional capital to build that
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: hotel that could employ hundreds of people in my city,
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: can get my kids into apprenticeship programs, I brought them
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: to the table as well. I brought community leaders to
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: the table because we all are afraid of gentrification. Ross
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: Baraka just had a big conference on it because- Newark
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: is now coming back. Our population is growing. When I
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: left Newark to become a senator, for the first time
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: in 60 years, our population was growing. So we want
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: community leaders there to know that they can help us organize.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: They can help us make sure that this isn't gentrification,
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: that we pass first source legislation in Newark to say,
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: when anybody's hiring in our city, they have to look
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: to local leaders. They have to agree to hire guys
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: with criminal convictions because, hey, lots of drugs being used
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: on Stanford's campus, but nobody's getting arrested for it. But
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: in my community, I've done this with a reporter before,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: walk the street stopping fellas asking have they ever been arrested,
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: what have they been arrested for, most Americans don't realize
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: in 2017 there were more marijuana arrests for possession than
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: all the violent crime arrests.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: And you just announced yesterday that you want their records expunged,
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: not only marijuana legalized.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: I get a little upset when people want to talk
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: about marijuana legalization, which I'm all for.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: I'm all for, but they don't talk in the same
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: breath about justice, restorative justice, things like expunging records, giving
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: people in prison pathways out, allowing people... to benefit from
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: the business opportunities that are being created.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: Is expunging the record something you need? Is that legislative
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: or is that something that you'd have to pass a
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: bill for that?
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: I'd have to pass a bill for that.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Last question. What do you think the biggest obstacle in
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: the way of fixing this system is? What is the
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: source of all this division and what has happened to
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: our politics? What are you fighting against here?
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: The opposite of justice is not simply injustice. It's apathy,
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: it's indifference, and it's inaction. I am blown away by
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: young people right now in this country and how they
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: want to work in jobs where the companies have values
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: and morals, the creativity, the artistry, but we still see
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: voting rates at 20, 30%. And young folk, if you
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: ask them about college debt, if you ask them about
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: climate change, if they voted you would see, and you
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: and I both know, that there might be some people
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: in the Republican Party that pander to, or politicians in general,
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: I don't wanna point fingers, that suddenly if they know
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: that they're gonna face in the next election 50% in
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: the midterm of young people voting, not at 20%, do
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: you think that that would change people's politics real quick?
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that would change incentives.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that would change incentives. And so there is nothing
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: that is wrong with American democracy that can't be solved
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: with more American democracy. And what I mean by that
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: is that our democracy is not a spectator sport to
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: get more people in the game. And so I understand
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: that there are people in this country that look at
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: a person like me and it fills them with hate
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: and bigotry. And I see what the Republican Party's– voice
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: on Fox News wants to try to make people believe
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: about many of us Democrats. But I just want folks
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: to know that please, please don't make this a small
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: election about one office and one guy. And it's bad,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: it's bad, it's bad. It's the things he's doing are, um,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: this is a moral moment in America again. And if
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: we can ignite something in this election, if we can have,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: and if it's not me, if we can have a leader,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: that can ignite other leaders, that could create not a campaign,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: not an election, but a larger campaign for this country.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: If we can reconceive ourselves as framers, because if you
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: don't think that Ella Baker and Mary McLeod Bethune and
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: Martin Luther King, or let's go to the folks like
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: Frederick Douglass were framers. Yeah. Because the original framers didn't
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: kind of include them. That's right.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: So they were reframers. We now have to frame this
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: country again. We have to take full responsibility. There's a
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: choice we have to make every day in our lives.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: It's to accept things as they are or take responsibility
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: for changing them. That woman is Virginia Jones. When I
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: asked her after her son was murdered, why do you
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: still stay in this, these projects? I know where you
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: live and I want the money you make. And she
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: looks at me and goes, why? Almost indignant at the question.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: She had this defiant love that was always up in
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: your face. Why do you still stay here, Ms. Jones?
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: She looks at me, she goes, because I'm in charge
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: of Homeland Security. I mean, she knew she couldn't secure
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: the whole world, but she was going to be in
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: charge of Homeland Security for that block. If more of
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: us say, I'm in charge, I'm not going to, you know,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: Alice Paul did not wait for Washington. She's the first
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: person who was ever arrested in front of the White House.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: Force fed. force-fed when she was in prison because she
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: went on hunger strikes. If we take responsibility for our
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: democracy and make this election a referendum on the direction
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: of this country, a referendum of spirit, a revival of grace,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: if we can do that in this election and I'm
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: going to call for this, I'm a progressive, I'm a
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: tactical guy, I was a mayor, I had to figure
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: out how to create safer streets, create better schools, and
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: we did in Newark. But the thing that allowed that
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: to happen was to get everybody from late night talk
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: show hosts to foundations, to unions, to reimagine the city
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: with me. Well, we need to reimagine America right now
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: because all the things we hope for and dream for
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: as this country are at stake right now. The planet
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: is in peril. We've been told we have 12 years
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: and clicking. Totalitarianism is on the rise. Our country is
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: being attacked right now by the Russians. We're finding all
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: kinds of insidious ways. I've read the reports of what
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: they want to do. They want to make us suspect
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: the truth. They want to make us lose faith in
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: our institutions. They want to make us be pitted against
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: each other. They literally are. I've watched the bots. They're
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: trying to foist us to make us hate each other more.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: If we can't now revive that grace, put more, as
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: I always say on the stump, put more indivisible back
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: into this one nation under God, If we miss this opportunity, yeah,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: Democrats might win some elections in the future, but we
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: are not going to change the country in the broad
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: scale way we need to do that gives labor back dignity,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: that makes health care a right and child poverty a wrong,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: that makes not public schools a little better, but transforms
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: public education and schools into cathedrals of learning for every child,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: not having their lives determined by the zip codes they're
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: born in. We can do all these things. It's not
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: a matter of can we. It's do we have the
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: collective will? And so I'm gonna talk to that spirit
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: in this country in amidst more and more cynicism, amidst
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: more and more people that just wanna blow folk up
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: or tell me that, oh, I hope you punch Donald
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: Trump in the face. I don't know if that's a
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: good look for a former tight end from Stanford, young guy,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: punching out our more elderly president. I want this to
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: be an election that is a referendum of spirit and,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: in my opinion, a revolution of spirit in this country,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: like I saw from my parents' generation around the civil
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: rights movement, like I saw from my grandparents' generation around
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: the labor movement, we can do that again.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Well, I very much share that hope, and I'm very
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: glad that you're running a campaign like that. Be a
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: prisoner of hope. I will. I'm there. Cory Booker, thank
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: you so much.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: For joining us. Thank you.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: We appreciate it.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: Good luck. Thank you so much. Thanks. All right. Thanks
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: for watching!